Lee County Sheriff's Office(NEW YORK) -- Investigators are on the hunt for a 56-year-old Minnesota woman wanted for allegedly shooting her husband to death, then targeting and killing a Florida woman who looked like her. She has crossed several states in the alleged killing spree that has spanned 1,500 miles and she hasn't been caught yet. She is expected to continue targeting other women who look like her to steal their identities, authorities said. This is a likely map of her alleged crimes that authorities have pieced together so far. Minnesota man found dead David Reiss, 54, of Blooming Prairie, Minnesota, hadn't been seen in more than two weeks as of March 23, the Dodge County Sheriffs Office in Minnesota said. His business partner became concerned and requested that authorities go to his home to check on his welfare. When they arrived, authorities found Riess' body inside the home; he had been shot multiple times. It was unclear how long he had been dead, they said. His wife, 56-year-old Lois Riess, was missing. She has been identified as a suspect in the killing. The road to Iowa Investigators believe that after David Riess was killed, Lois Riess transferred almost $10,000 from his business account to his personal account. "Lois Riess then forged his signature on three checks written from his personal account to herself totaling $11,000," the sheriff's office said. "Lois Riess does not have check-writing authority for either account." Investigators tried to zero in on Lois Riess' location and learned she had gone to Diamond Joe's Casino in Worth County, Iowa. She was already gone before authorities arrived on March 24. A second killing in Florida From there, Lois Riess allegedly made her way to Florida. She was spotted on camera, wearing a light blue shirt, at Smokin Oyster Brewery in Fort Meyers Beach, on April 5. She appeared to be chatting with 59-year-old Pamela Hutchinson. Hutchinson, of Bradenton, Florida, was found dead in Fort Myers Beach on April 9. Authorities believe Lois Reiss shot and killed Hutchinson, possibly with the same gun used in the killing of her husband. Hutchinson's purse was left in "disarray" and all cash, credit cards and ID had been removed, the Lee County Sheriff's Office said. Her car was also missing. "[Lois] Riess' mode of operation is to befriend women who resemble her and steal their identities," said the Lee County Sheriff's Office. The manhunt heads west Riess' 2005 white Cadillac Escalade was found last week abandoned in a Florida park, the Dodge County Sheriffs Office said. Authorities describe her as armed and dangerous -- and is believed to be driving Hutchinson's car, a white Accura TL with Florida license plate Y37TAA. The car has been spotted in Louisiana, as well as Corpus Christi, Texas, in the days since Hutchinson's death, the Dodge County Sheriffs Office said. Lois Riess is described as having brown eyes and light blonde hair. She is 5 feet 5 inches tall and weighs 165 pounds. A Lee County Sheriff's Office spokeswoman told ABC News that she is known to have a gambling problem and may frequent casinos. She may be using Pamela Hutchinson's identity as an alias; Hutchinson's birthday is September 1, 1958. Anyone with information is asked to call the Minnesota Bureau of Criminal Apprehension's tip-line at 1-877-996-6222. Copyright 2018, ABC Radio. All rights reserved. U.S. Catholics Hold Mass in Solidarity With Minority Christians in Mideast Students from the Archdiocese of Hartford's nine Roman Catholic schools, as well as Archbishop Leonard Blair, a Chaldean Catholic bishop from Canada and the Knights of Columbus, joined in solidarity with persecuted Christians in Iraq and Syria at a special Mass on Sunday. The students have sold olive wood "solidarity crosses" made in the Middle East and supplied by the Knights in order to assist towns destroyed by ISIS and the struggle against the terrorist organization, according to a news release. Congress and the U.S. State Department have declared ISIS' actions genocide. "We are very grateful to the Archdiocese of Hartford for its support of those who have been persecuted for their faith in the Middle East, and we have been truly inspired by these high school students who have taken time and energy to learn about this important issue and raise money to help," said Knights CEO Carl Anderson, in the release. "We hope this program will be the first of many ... across the U.S. and Canada." The Chaldean Catholic bishop of Canada, Bishop Bawai Soro, a native of Iraq, gave the homily at the Mass, celebrated at St. Mary Church. He also read the gospel in Aramaic, the language spoken by Jesus Christ. Soro said Iraqi Christians have survived the last four years only because of the aid of other Christians, the release said. "The message that I have for the Knights of Columbus is one of admiration, that you are amazing. We thank you," the bishop said, according to the release. "We are encouraged by your model; please continue. I know many of the good things that have been done have been influencing us and I know that what you see publicly is only 10 percent of the things that the Knights have been doing. We pray that this will continue and God bless you all." The Mass was followed by a reception and a question-and-answer session that included Blair, Soro, Stephen Rasche, counsel to the Chaldean Catholic Archdiocese in Erbil, Iraq, and Andrew Walther, vice president for communications and strategic planning for the Knights. "Our mission is to preserve the word and example of Christ in the Middle East, and this we are committed to do, whatever the cost," said Rasche in the statement. "In this, we are grateful for the support and solidarity we have received from our brothers and sisters in Connecticut and elsewhere." The Knights produced a nearly 300-page report detailing ISIS' actions against Christians, which helped the State Department make its declaration in 2016. The Knights of Columbus was founded at St. Mary in 1882 by the Rev. Michael McGivney, a candidate for sainthood, and now has 2 million members, the release said. In 2017, the K of C gave $177.5 million to charity and members gave more than 75 million hours of volunteer time. For Immediate Release Physicians for Human Rights (PHR) is calling for international investigation, oversight, and protection in the wake of Myanmars claim that it has repatriated the first Rohingya refugees from neighboring Bangladesh. Though PHR cannot independently verify this claim, and there are serious questions regarding its authenticity, the organization remains gravely concerned for the safety of the hundreds of thousands of Rohingya refugees who fled to Bangladesh following brutal violence in Myanmar. PHR reiterates its calls for a thorough, independent investigation into the crimes allegedly perpetrated by the Myanmar military against the countrys Rohingya population. Without full transparency and accountability, any prospect of repatriation poses further risks to the Rohingyas safety. PHRs director of programs, Dr. Homer Venters, who has documented evidence of physical and sexual violence against the Rohingya, says conditions in the region do not offer safe passage for repatriation nor guarantees of security and rights for those who return. Were talking about nearly 700,000 Rohingya who have been subjected to brutal attacks and forced into flight. Our forensic evaluations have found that many men, women, and children sustained gunshots, stab wounds, burns, and other intentional injuries. There have also been reports of mass rape. Without accountability and guarantees of full rights and protection for those who return, and complete transparency of any repatriation process to ensure that it is completely voluntary, any serious chance for a safe and dignified return is virtually impossible, and the prospect for any long-lasting peace is slim. Furthermore, any Rohingya who fears persecution on return to Myanmar must be afforded the right to seek asylum in Bangladesh, or elsewhere, consistent with international law. We once again call on the government of Myanmar to allow for a full, impartial investigation by international bodies into the campaign of violence unleashed on the Rohingya. The truth needs to be established and the perpetrators need to be held to account. Read more about PHRs work on the Rohingya crisis. Physicians for Human Rights (PHR) is a New York-based advocacy organization that uses science and medicine to prevent mass atrocities and severe human rights violations. Learn more here. Would you like to know how many people have read this article? Or how reputable the author is? Simply sign up for a Advocate premium membership and you'll automatically see this data on every article. Plus a lot more, too. Peterson's controversial bestseller (Image by Amazon.ca) Details DMCA By the time it arrived months later, I had forgotten about him and what seemed a strident but sensible feint in the ongoing feminist/ gay war against the white male. 12 Rules for Life: An Antidote to Chaos. I thought - what a corny title! Why did I ever order such a trite self-help book? I grudgingly picked it up - and was soon blown away. It slowly dawned on me that this is 'that guy', but it was neither strident, nor flakey. Is mainstream media really so distorting as to leave us all so prejudiced? A spot on a panel on Steve Paikin's TVO news show, but no platform in the public eye beyond his own youtube site. Are transactivists on campus, the darlings of mainstream media, just hysterical, spoiled brats trying to destroy the English language, dump all traditions as sexist, etc.? Peterson is the quintessential renaissance man, bringing together many ideas from the natural and social sciences, projecting a refreshing understanding of the conundrum of human existence -- both Old and New Testaments, history and philosophy (though he came to believe that Marxism is a murderous ideology and lumps Stalin with Hitler), and of course psychology, with Freud, Jung, Skinner all providing insight into the various paths to self-understanding. This is not easy stuff; he's bound to get some things wrong, and his own strong opinions are guaranteed to offend just about everyone in some way. It is occasionally long-winded and unfocused, but worth plowing through to the end. I suspect Peterson finished it in a rush, hounded by the university, government, and the omnipresent political-thought policy. Capitalizing on his notoriety, he caught the moment to make 12 Rules a bestseller. His thesis: The postmodern left reduces morality/ ideals to a cynical power grab, leaving only relative/ personal 'value judgments'. All we're left with is tolerance/ compassion for people who think differently/ different cultures. Peterson looks to myth from oral traditions, which were not just stories, but were moral in intent, telling us how humans should act. The world is a stage/ drama, not a mere place of objects. The human dialectic is between chaos/ order, female and male, yang and yin, epitomized by the tao circle. Meaning is found in the tension on the border between that ever-entwined pair. To walk that border is to stay on the path of life. Resolve chaos into order via language. I.e., language is vital, even sacred, like marriage and other human heritage, not to be treated lightly. We need a shared belief system as a code for mutually predictable relations, expectations, desires allowing for cooperation, peaceful competition. We need a clear value system because both perception and action require a goal. For this to work, we need to take responsibility to strive for goals consistent with reality. Hey, this is Islam or Christianity! Mr Alpha Lobster keeps order (Image by Magnus Kjrgaard) Details DMCA Peterson's conclusions: 1/ We too are hardwired by serotonin. Dominance hierarchies are basic to all living 'souls'. If peers despise you, your serotonin is low, a self-fulfilling prophecy as you stumble through life. This can even shut down your immune system, or render you dangerously impulsive. You see change as leading to disaster, not opportunity. 2/ Winner-takes-all. Unequal distribution is also hardwired; i.e., the pareto concept of rich get richer, the Matthew (25: 28-9) effect.* 3/ So you need a balance of compassionate self-sacrificing vs self-protective anger to defend yourself. If you can bite, you generally don't have to. The mere ability to respond, even for the lobster, is not the same as 'might makes right, but there is a whiff of it. 4/ Boys will be boys. Guys are hardwired with aggression and higher testosterone. Rather than labelling antsy boys with Attention Deficit Hyperactivity Disorder and pumping them with Ritalin, sapping their natural energy, schooling should be structured to nurture them, not to try to turn them into little girls. Peterson's book is worth it just for his advice to parents. It's full of gems: the first four years are crucial, a child really needs both a mother and father, memory is there not to be nostalgic, but to consolidate a useful version of the past to help you navigate the present and future. This is the foundation of his counselling practice, and his fame is deserved as a first-rate counsellor. The real Marx Next Page 1 | 2 | 3 (Note: You can view every article as one long page if you sign up as an Advocate Member, or higher). Would you like to know how many people have read this article? Or how reputable the author is? Simply sign up for a Advocate premium membership and you'll automatically see this data on every article. Plus a lot more, too. From Jonathan Cook website It seems that many who supported the weekend's air strikes on Syria are overlooking the significance of Robert Fisk's report this morning from Douma, the site of a supposed chemical weapons attack last week. Fisk is the first western journalist to reach the area and speak to people there. One is a senior doctor at the clinic that treated victims of what a video purported to show were chemical weapons used by the Syrian government. That doctor says the video was real, but did not show the effects of a chemical weapons attack. It showed something else. This is what the doctor is reported saying: "I was with my family in the basement of my home three hundred metres from here on the night but all the doctors know what happened. There was a lot of shelling [by government forces] and aircraft were always over Douma at night -- but on this night, there was wind and huge dust clouds began to come into the basements and cellars where people lived. People began to arrive here suffering from hypoxia, oxygen loss. Then someone at the door, a 'White Helmet', shouted 'Gas!" and a panic began. People started throwing water over each other. Yes, the video was filmed here, it is genuine, but what you see are people suffering from hypoxia -- not gas poisoning." On my social media pages there are plenty of armchair warriors furiously denying the importance of this report, by claiming either that the doctor made up the story or that Fisk is a mouthpiece for the Assad regime, or maybe both. That will not wash for reasons that ought to be obvious -- and it still won't wash even if the testimony later turns out to be wrong. The air strikes on Syria at the weekend were patently illegal according to international law. That would have been the case even had there been a chemical weapons attack in Douma, in part because it would have been necessary for independent inspectors to determine first whether the Syrian government, and not the jihadists there, was responsible. The air strikes would have been illegal too, even if it could have been shown that a chemical weapons attack had taken place and that Assad personally ordered it. That is because air strikes would have first required authorization from the UN Security Council. That is why international law exists: to regulate affairs between states, to prevent militarism of the "might is right" variety that nearly destroyed Europe 80 years ago, and to avoid unnecessary state confrontations that in a nuclear age could have dire repercussions. Had Assad been shown to be responsible, Russia would have come under enormous international pressure to authorize action of some kind against Syria -- pressure it would have been extremely hard for it to resist. But had it resisted that pressure, we would have had to live with its veto at the Security Council. And again, for very good reason. Israel, the US and the UK have used depleted uranium munitions in the Middle East, and Israel and the US white phosphorous. But who among us would think it reasonable for Russia or China to unilaterally carry out punishment air strikes on Maryland (US), Porton Down (UK) or Nes Ziona (Israel), and justify the move on the grounds that the US and UK could veto any moves against themselves or their allies at the Security Council? Who would want to champion belligerent attacks on these sovereign states as "humanitarian intervention"? But all of this is irrelevant because whatever incontrovertible information the US, UK and France claimed to have that Syria carried out a chemical weapons attack last week is clearly no more reliable than their claims about an Iraqi WMD programme back in 2002. Fisk does not need to prove that his account is definitively true -- just like a defendant in the dock does not need to prove their innocence. He has to show only that he reported accurately and honestly, and that the testimony he recounted was plausible and consistent with what he saw. Everything about Fisk's record and about this particular report suggests there should be no doubt on that score. Fisk's report shows that there is a highly credible alternative explanation for what happened in Douma -- one that needs to be investigated. Which means that an attack on Syria should never have taken place before inspectors were able to investigate and report their findings. Instead, the US-UK-France launched air strikes hours before the UN inspectors were due to begin their work in Syria, thereby pre-empting it. At the time those air strikes took place, the aggressor states had neither legal nor evidential justification for their actions. They were were simply relying on the reports of parties, like the White Helmets, that have a vested interest in engineering the Syrian government's downfall. Next Page 1 | 2 (Note: You can view every article as one long page if you sign up as an Advocate Member, or higher). Would you like to know how many people have read this article? Or how reputable the author is? Simply sign up for a Advocate premium membership and you'll automatically see this data on every article. Plus a lot more, too. From Our Future "Mission accomplished," says the President. What, exactly, was the mission? And what exactly was accomplished? Donald Trump is being mocked for using this phrase in a tweet to praise what he claims was a "perfectly executed" airstrike against chemical weapons facilities in Syria. This recalls George W. Bush's egregious evocation of the phrase in 2003 to claim an early end to the U.S. entanglement in Iraq, which is still ongoing 15 years later. History made a fool of Bush for that proclamation, which was printed on a banner behind the President as he delivered his speech proclaiming an end to the Iraqi conflict on the deck of an aircraft carrier. But Bush's foolish and lethal incursion to Iraq had the backing of virtually the entire national-security establishment. So did Donald Trump's bombing attack on Syria, as did the bombing attack he ordered last year. U.S. media, for the most part, reinforce the idea that intervention by our military is the preferred solution to global conflicts. Some of the same reporters who now mock Trump for saying "Mission Accomplished" cheered on Bush's invasion of Iraq. They remember Bush's errors, but not their own. The media's job, we are told, is to ask skeptical questions about the people in power. That didn't happen much in the runup to the invasion of Iraq, and it's not happening now. Here are the questions that should be asked -- not just on the eve of a bombing attack, but every day we continue our disastrous and drifting military intervention in the Middle East. Why couldn't the military wait for inspectors to do their jobs? Inspectors from the Organization for the Prohibition of Chemical Weapons, an international non-proliferation organization, were scheduled to arrive in Douma, Syria on Saturday, April 15 to begin investigating the reported chemical attack on civilians there. The airstrikes took place on Friday, April 14. This is a disturbing echo of the 2003 Iraq invasion. There, too, the United States was unwilling to wait for international inspectors to discover the facts before beginning the attack. Fifteen years on, we know that didn't work out very well. Why couldn't the bombing of Syria wait for inspectors to do their work? How do we know we're being told the truth? "We are confident that we have crippled Syria's chemical weapons program," said U.N. Ambassador Nikki Haley. That statement was echoed by military leaders. But a report from Agence France Presse suggests that one destroyed building, described by attacking forces as a chemical-weapons facility, was actually a pharmaceutical and research facility specializing in food testing and antivenoms for scorpion and snake bites. "If there were chemical weapons, we would not be able to stand here," said someone who identified himself as an engineer who worked at the facility. Given our country's long history of public deception from military and civilian officials, why aren't we demanding independent confirmation of the airstrikes' effectiveness? Have strikes like these ever really "punished" a country's leader -- or "sent them a message," for that matter? We keep hearing the cliche' that airstrikes like these are meant to "punish" leaders like Assad. This time was no different. And yet, it's unlikely that Assad personally suffered as a result of this attack. So who, really, are we punishing? Then there's this comment, from Defense Secretary James Mattis: "Together we have sent a clear message to Assad and his murderous lieutenants that they should not perpetrate another chemical weapons attack." Next Page 1 | 2 | 3 (Note: You can view every article as one long page if you sign up as an Advocate Member, or higher). Would you like to know how many people have read this article? Or how reputable the author is? Simply sign up for a Advocate premium membership and you'll automatically see this data on every article. Plus a lot more, too. From Wallwritings Movie Poster (Image by Prolog) Details DMCA After the Syria Bombing, did you have that pit-of-the-stomach feeling that you had been deceived about a military strike? I offer here a suggestion to clarify that feeling. It will not cure it, but clarity does have a way of easing the pain. Accept the Syria bombing as a Wag the Dog deceit, a pretense to deliver a largely harmless distraction for an ulterior motive, as in the manner of a Roman emperor staging a stadium show for the masses. Media reports used the 1997 movie, Wag the Dogas shorthand for The Syria Bombing. In the film, Dustin Hoffman plays a movie director hired to create television newscasts to distract and deceive the American public. Robert De Niro is the spin doctor who hires him. Film critic Roger Ebert explained: "Barry Levinson's Wag the Dog cites Grenada as an example of how easy it is to whip up patriotic frenzy, and how dubious the motives sometimes are. The movie is a satire that contains just enough realistic ballast to be teasingly plausible; like Dr. Strangelove, it makes you laugh, and then it makes you wonder." Before last weekend's Syria Bombing, Russia appeared to be forewarned. Putin grumbled but he did not shoot back. As feigned reality, the bombing served its purpose. The media played its role. It hyped a dramatic news conference featuring our top military and civilian leadership. President Trump was at his presidential best, carefully following his script to announce he had ordered a U.S. military attack on Syria's chemical weapons system. A more recent movie, Argo, released in 2012, was neither satire nor feigned reality. It was rather, a Hollywood production of a very real event; no shooting and no buildings blown up. The event was a rescue mission that freed six American diplomats from their hiding place in the Canadian embassy in Tehran, Iran. The six had slipped out of the Tehran U.S. embassy on Nov. 4, 1979, before 66 other American diplomats were taken hostage by Iranian militants. The six were taken in by the Canadian ambassador and hidden in his residence. Knowing that the six could not remain hidden long, President Jimmy Carter directed his chief of staff, Hamilton Jordan, to pull together a White House team working with the CIA. A CIA operative, Tony Mendez, in the film by played by Ben Affleck (who also directed the film), concocted a plan in which he would pose as a Hollywood producer traveling to Tehran to oversee the making of a science fiction film. Bringing with him six fake Canadian passports, Mendez "recruited" the hidden six to be his film crew. Back in Hollywood, news of the upcoming Tehran film-shoot was announced. Soon Tehran's movie-loving public was in a tizzy over having its very own science-fiction film. Next Page 1 | 2 (Note: You can view every article as one long page if you sign up as an Advocate Member, or higher). Would you like to know how many people have read this article? Or how reputable the author is? Simply sign up for a Advocate premium membership and you'll automatically see this data on every article. Plus a lot more, too. The art of Maureen Tepedino will be celebrated in a new exhibit entitled "Imagination: Art that Speaks to You" at the Upper West in Santa Monica on April 22nd, from 4-7pm. Tepedino has frequented the restaurant and is excited to exhibit her work at the Upper West. In addition to being a painter, she is also an interior designer. "I love to paint... painting is my passion and whenever I have the opportunity and time permits, I paint! My Art Studio is at my home in Marina del Rey so I have many opportunities to paint when I am not working on my interior design projects." Tepedino works in mixed media, along with acrylic and watercolor paints. Tepedino has been painting since childhood where she grew up in Jamaica, W.I. "I was always fascinated with art and attended museums from an early age." To this day, Tepedino said she enjoys visiting museums. "There's so much incredible works of art to see and learn from, said Tepedino. "I was recently at The Museum of Contemporary Art -- downtown Los Angeles and was moved by Jackson Pollock's Painting 'Number 1.'" Tepedino was originally introduced to Jackson Pollock's work as well as Vincent van Gogh when she was in her teens, but said she still continues to be intrigued by their work. "I identify with Jackson Pollock's style and admire his creativity and ingenuity!" Imagination is one of the works set to be featured in the exhibition. "This painting Imagination is hugely inspiring as I equate it to people, particularly children, knowing that they are not limited in their beliefs and potential. I personally believe that in life, if we use our imagination along with a strong belief system towards things that we desire, we can create and reach our full potential!" Tepedino said she doesn't generally work in series. "However, I do have a few groupings of paintings that specifically go together." The work to be shown at Upper West is a compilation of images. "They all have different names and represent different concepts and intentions." She added that her inspiration and creative process comes from within. "When I am inspired to paint, I select the colors I want to use and the images I have in mind and let my creative juices flow! My work is definitely eclectic and comes strictly from my original thoughts, feelings and experiences." As a former musician, her artwork is inspired by contemporary jazz, reggae, classical music and the blues. Tepedino's work is appreciated by interior designers, whom she collaborates with, along with art consultants, architects, contractors and more. The opening reception for "Imagination: Art that Speaks to You" takes place on Sunday, April 22nd, from 4-7 pm at the Upper West Restaurant, 3321 Pico Boulevard, Santa Monica 90404. Find out more about Maureen on her website. http://www.designbymaureen.com/ http://www.theupperwest.com Would you like to know how many people have read this article? Or how reputable the author is? Simply sign up for a Advocate premium membership and you'll automatically see this data on every article. Plus a lot more, too. Turkey's Directorate of Religious Affairs' (Diyanet) leader Ali Erbas (Image by ahvalnews.com) Details DMCA In the Turkish town of Konya, the Ministry of Education has written a report titled The Youth Are Sliding to Deism. The report explains that young Turks who are students in the state-sponsored religious imam hatip schools are becoming dissatisfied with Islam. Instead of turning to atheism, the belief that God does not exist, they are turning to Deism, the belief that God does exist. Unlike the "revealed" religions such as Judaism, Christianity, Islam, Baha'i and Mormonism, all of which claim to have a special divine revelation that they are based upon, Deism rejects the claims of divine revelations. In Deism belief in The Supreme Intelligence/God is based on the application of a person's innate reason on the laws and designs in nature. The linked to article sums Deism up well when it states Deism is belief in God without religion. The fact that young Turkish students in state-sponsored Islamic schools are leaving Islam for Deism is very upsetting to Turkish politicians and clergy, all the way up to Turkey's President Erdogan. The leader of the Nationalist Action Party was angry at the people who wrote the report (attacking the messenger) and said that they are "putting on the Turkish youth the stain of Deism, which is one stop before atheism." (As mentioned above, Deism is the opposite of atheism in that Deism is the belief that God does exist, and atheism is the belief that God does not exist.) Turkey's top clergyman and the leader of the Directorate of Religious Affairs, Ali Erbas, described Deists as being "perverse" and that they do not belong to the Turkish nation. He also believes that young Turks who are leaving Islam for Deism don't really understand what Deism is and that Deism rejects the belief in religious prophets, which means Deism rejects the belief that Muhammad was a prophet of God. Erbas said, "Deism means denying the Prophet (Muhammad). Which Muslim can deny the Prophet and remain as a Muslim?" He's obviously missing the point: the Turks who are leaving Islam for Deism DO deny the Islamic belief that Muhammad was a prophet and do not want to remain Muslims. Even though atheism and Deism are opposites, both are based on free thought and both reject the claims of divine revelations promoted by the "revealed" religions. This is why the Atheism Association in Turkey is taking a very public stand on the side of the Deists. They are tired of the government and Islamic clergy using Turkey's Penal Code 216, which prohibits "provoking the public to hatred, hostility or degrading religions", to silence atheists and all free thinkers. The Turkish Atheism Association is calling on prosecutors to prosecute Erbas and other anti-Deists who publicly say and write that Deism is a "stain" and that Deism is "perverse". It will be interesting to see what the prosecutors will do. The American revolutionary and Deist, Thomas Paine, wrote in The Age of Reason that the success of the American Revolution made it possible to have a revolution in religion based on our innate God-given reason and Deism. Paine wrote: "Soon after I had published the pamphlet Common Sense, in America, I saw the exceeding probability that a revolution in the system of government would be followed by a revolution in the system of religion. The adulterous connection of church and state, wherever it had taken place, whether Jewish, Christian, or Turkish, had so effectually prohibited by pains and penalties, every discussion upon established creeds, and upon first principles of religion, that until the system of government should be changed, those subjects could not be brought fairly and openly before the world; but that whenever this should be done, a revolution in the system of religion would follow. Human inventions and priestcraft would be detected; and man would return to the pure, unmixed and unadulterated belief of one God, and no more." In The Age of Reason, The Complete Edition, Paine wrote, "inquiry is the road to truth, he that is opposed to inquiry is not a friend to truth. The God of truth is not the God of fable; when, therefore, any book is introduced into the world as the Word of God, and made a groundwork for religion, it ought to be scrutinized more than other books to see if it bear evidence of being what it is called." This free-thought principle expressed by Thomas Paine is what is causing the young people in Turkey to leave Islam behind for Deism. Progressive Content Not Found Sometimes, authors delete their progressive content after publishing. To see if the progressive content was renamed or re-published, please click here. Congress Switchboard: 202-224-3121 "Wonderful work! An insightful, integrative adventure into what makes humans flourish. Rob Kall shows us that we know how to do this, that most of human history was about connection and that there are ways to make it happen again. He offers real solutions and practical suggestions for taking back the world for community, connection and well-beingaway from hierarchy, exclusion, and destruction. A new handbook for the necessary revolution!" Darcia Narvaez, Professor of psychology, Notre Dame, University, author of Neurobiology and the Development of Human Morality: Evolution, Culture and Wisdom Would you like to know how many people have read this article? Or how reputable the author is? Simply sign up for a Advocate premium membership and you'll automatically see this data on every article. Plus a lot more, too. Five years ago, the British Parliament said no to an attack on Syria that its prime minister wanted to join the U.S. president in launching. That action, combined with public pressure, was instrumental in getting the U.S. Congress to make clear that it would say no as well, were it absolutely forced to -- you know -- admit it existed and do anything at all. And that was key to preventing the attack. So, when Britain's prime minister this week joined the U.S. president in launching a war despite various members of Parliament and Congress warning against it, one might have thought that Prime Minister May was landing herself in deeper legal trouble than President Trump. Not at all. The ban on war found in the United Nations Charter and the Kellogg-Briand Pact applies exactly equally to all nations except the five biggest weapons dealers and war makers on earth, and effectively not at all to any of those five because thay have veto power over anything the UN or its dependencies -- including courts -- attempt to do. But Britain's violation of international law in abetting the 2003 attack on Iraq has been central to proposals supported by Opposition Leader Jeremy Corbyn to prosecute former Prime Minister Tony Blair. And the existence of such laws has been widely admitted and discussed in the UK over the years. When the existence of such laws made it into half a sentence from the ACLU this week, in contrast, it was something of a rarity. No Congress Members to my knowledge have mentioned the UN Charter or the Kellogg-Briand Pact or the fact that war is illegal no matter who launches it. In the United States, the conversation is dominated by the fact that the U.S. Constitution gives Congress, and not the president, the power to make war. But I've never found any U.S. resident who's told me that if the U.S. were bombed by a foreign nation, he or she would give a rat's campaign contribution whether the attack was ordered by an executive or a legislature. And the notion that the laws that ban war are overridden by the fact that the ancient (if sacred) Constitution mentions war is rendered ridiculous by the fact that the same sentence that gives Congress war power also gives it the power to hire pirates -- which Congress has admitted for well over a century has been banned, even as hiring proxies in Syria and elsewhere is treated as completely acceptable. This state of discourse in the United States convinces the public that only Congress has the legal authority to stop a war. And Congress, of course, makes that claim while refusing to ever act on it, to ever cut off funding or begin impeachment or simply forbid a war. In fact Senator Corker is proposing to formally put the whole charade out of its misery by declaring that presidents can do what they have done anyway since 1941, namely whatever the hell they want -- and the Constitution be damned. A limited side-discourse is concerned that the president probably has a memo from the Office of Legal Counsel pretending to explain why each new war or escalation is legal, and he's keeping it secret. My concern with this is that any concern with it seems to suggest that it matters. No memo can legalize a crime, and we should stop playing into the pretense that it might. Meanwhile, over in London, a legitimate peace advocate in Corbyn, in the very land that invented impeachment, is not moving to impeach the prime minister any more than are members of Congress who days ago said that bombing Syria would be impeachable. Instead he's proposing to create a war powers act, a law requiring a vote of Parliament prior to any war. If that'll stop a war, I'm for it. That the U.S. Constitution hasn't worked, and that the U.S. War Powers Act of 1973 hasn't worked, doesn't mean a British War Powers Act can't. If it even works 1% of the time that's all to the good. But should we give no consideration to the long-term impact of normalizing crimes by worrying over who gets to authorize them? Should we not, as long as we're proposing such things, give equal consideration to a Ludlow Amendment (the proposal stopped by President Franklin Roosevelt that would have required a vote by the public before any branch of government launched a war)? Regardless of all my concerns, I'll take Corbyn's more democratic proposal over Corker's royalist one any day. Can law become a tool to restrain formalized governmental mass murder? It hardly seems that lawlessness is the answer. But how relevant is the entire field? How does it look from the point of view of those on the receiving end of the wars and of the treaties? This topic will be explored at a global conference in Toronto this September that I encourage people to attend. Would you like to know how many people have read this article? Or how reputable the author is? Simply sign up for a Advocate premium membership and you'll automatically see this data on every article. Plus a lot more, too. With my membership in Animal Legal Defense Fund, I feel this is yet another way that I can help animals because they are, after all, God's creatures too. And I don't know about you, but my companion animals have brought me a lot of love and comfort over the years. And Peaches, a delightful miniature collie mix, was the first one to do so since 1975 when she first came into my life. So no, I don't put the blame on Mame as a popular song goes way back when. I put the blame on Peaches for changing my life completely in a very good way. I am so glad that not only have I espoused animal causes, but as a vegan since 1983 and a vegetarian before that, I no longer feast on their dead bodies. And, of course, I have taken in some homeless dogs and cats over the years. And every morning, I make sure the birds in my environs are fed. And not least of all, I try to support animal-rights concerns such as Legal Animal Defense for one of them. So this morning I was pleased to read a run-down of what Animal Legal Defense wrote regarding what they are doing for the animals. There were six pictures on their brochure, and each described what they consider the amazing work that we are helping them do for the animals. Here are the six captions that were accompanied with the pictures of the animals involved in their work: 1. Strengthening laws to protect abused and neglected mother dogs and puppies in puppy mills, and suing to enforce them. 2. Fighting dangerous Ag-Gag laws, designed to hide animal cruelty on factory farms. We already won in Utah and Idaho, and our cases are pending against North Carolina and Iowa. 3. Working in all 50 states to strengthen anti-cruelty laws and expand legal protections for animals. 4. Taking federal, state, and local governments to court when government agencies fail to enforce animal-protection laws. Next Page 1 | 2 (Note: You can view every article as one long page if you sign up as an Advocate Member, or higher). Would you like to know how many people have read this article? Or how reputable the author is? Simply sign up for a Advocate premium membership and you'll automatically see this data on every article. Plus a lot more, too. From Paul Craig Roberts Website Propaganda state (Image by Byzantine_K) Details DMCA I wonder how many people, not just Americans but those in other countries, have come to the conclusion that the United States today is a less free and less aware society than the societies in the dystopian novels of the 20th century or in movies such as The Matrix and V for Vendetta. Just as people in the dystopian novels had no idea of their real situation, few Americans do either. What are we to make of the extraordinary war crimes committed by the United States in the 21st century that have destroyed in whole or part seven countries, resulting in millions of dead, maimed, orphaned, and displaced peoples? Consider, for example, the latest Washington war crime, the illegal attack on Syria. Instead of protesting this illegality, the American media egged it on, cheering impending death and destruction. During the entirety of the 21st century, Israel, Washington's only ally -- as contrasted with the European, Canadian, Australian, and Japanese vassal states of Washington's empire -- has continued with Washington's support, protection, and encouragement the genocide of the Palestinian people. Essentially, all that is left of Palestine is a ghetto concentration camp known as Gaza which is routinely bombed by Israel using weapons and money supplied by Washington. When a bombing of Gaza is announced, God's Chosen People take their lawn chairs and picnics up on a hill overlooking Gaza and applaud as the Israeli military murders women and children. This is America's only ally. The crimes committed by the US and Israel are horrific, but meet with little opposition. In contrast, an alleged attack in which 70 Syrians are alleged to have died sets in motion the wheels of war. It makes no sense whatsoever. Israel routinely bombs Syrian targets, killing Syrians, and the US arms and supports the "rebels" that the Obama regime sent to overthrow Assad, resulting in large numbers of dead Syrians. Why all of a sudden do 70 Syrians matter to Washington? According to the Washington authorities, or to the presstitutes' reports of their statements, two or three alleged Syrian chemical weapons facilities were destroyed by Washington's missile attack. Think about this for a minute. If Washington bombed or sent missiles into chemical weapons facilities, a vast cloud of lethal gas would have been released. The civilian casualties would be many times higher than the claimed 70 victims of Assad's alleged and unsubstantiated chemical attack used as the pretext for the Trump regime's war crime against Syria. There is no evidence whatsoever of these casualties. Had there been casualties, Washington's attack would obviously be a far greater crime than the chemical attack that Washington used as cover for its own crime. Yet the American presstitutes are crowing over the lesson that America has taught Syria and Russia. Apparently, the American media consists of such immoral or moronic hirelings that the presstitutes are unable to comprehend that an attack by Washington on Syrian chemical weapons plants, if such actually existed, is the equivalent of an attack on Syria with chemical weapons. As I wrote yesterday, when I was a Wall Street Journal editor, if Washington had just announced that it had bombed the chemical weapons facilities of another country in punishment for that country's alleged use of a chemical weapon, the Journal's reporters were sufficiently intelligent to ask where are the victims of Washington's chemical attack on that country? Are there thousands of dead people from the chemical gas released by Washington's attack? Are the hospitals of the country over-filed with the injured and dying? If a reporter had brought to us a story that was nothing but a Washington press release claiming obviously impossible happenings, we would have told him to go look again and ask the obvious questions. Today the NY Times and Washington Post put the unsubstantiated report on the front page. Today reporters no longer have to check sources, because there is no longer journalism in America. When the Clinton regime in compliance with the Deep State that made the Clintons super-rich permitted 90% of the independent and diverse US media to be concentrated in the hands of six political companies, that was the end of journalism in America. All we have now is a propaganda ministry that lies for a living. Anyone in American journalism who tells the truth is either immediately fired or in the case of Tucker Carlson at Fox News is set upon by outside presstitutes in an effort to force Fox to replace him. I wonder how long before some woman pops up and claims Tucker Carlson sexually harassed her. As far as I can tell, the United States is now a police state in which all information is controlled and the population is trained to believe the propaganda or be accused of lack of patriotism and consorting with terrorists and Russians. Would you like to know how many people have read this article? Or how reputable the author is? Simply sign up for a Advocate premium membership and you'll automatically see this data on every article. Plus a lot more, too. Philadelphia's top cop, Richard Ross, an African-American, has once again exhibited his blind spot on racial bigotry by police during his defense of a specious arrest of two black men inside a Starbucks coffee shop recently that triggered strong condemnation from the mayor of the so-called City of Brotherly Love. The arrest of those black men for trespassing while they sat inside a Starbucks awaiting their meeting with a white developer to discuss a possible real estate investment deal sparked social media outrage, an apology from the corporate head of Starbucks and a strident assessment from Philadelphia's Mayor James Kenney. That Starbucks incident, Kenney said, "appears to exemplify what racial discrimination looks like in 2018." Yet, despite wide-ranging condemnations and growing protests at the Starbuck located in Center City at 18th and Spruce Streets, Philadelphia Police Commissioner Ross made a Facebook video two days after that controversial arrest where he continues to declare that his officers "did absolutely nothing wrong." Ross said his officers "were professional" in providing a "service" to the Starbucks employees at that coffee shop located in a ritzy residential area of downtown Philadelphia. Reports indicate the Starbucks shop personnel initially said the pair were loitering, later insisting their offense was trespassing. Ross' defense ignored the bigotry that ignited the encounter producing the arrest, bigotry not addressed by the predominately white group of arresting officers. Ross said police responded to a 911 call from that Starbucks reporting a "disturbance" -- apparently a reference to the non-confrontational refusal of the two men to leave the coffee shop as demanded by that shop's manager. The men insisted that they were waiting for a third party to arrive and join them. (That third person, in fact, a white developer, arrived as cops were cuffing the two black patrons, and reacted angrily to police demanding to know why they were arresting his associates -- to no effect.) A cellphone video of the incident, taken by a customer, does not show any disturbance or even loud resistance to police by the pair, who calmly submitted to the arrest. Police held the pair for over seven hours before their release after midnight. That release resulted from Starbucks personnel, who claimed a disturbance, declining to press charges and Philadelphia's District Attorneys Office stating there was a "lack of evidence that a crime was committed." Police Commissioner Ross said his officers had "legal standing to make this arrest" that arose from an apparent prejudicial response by Starbucks personnel who denied a request from the men to use the bathroom. After the men accepted the refusal to let them use the bathroom, Starbucks personnel still insisted that they leave -- a demand rejected by the two men. While the Starbucks manager cited corporate policy of bathroom access being only for paying customers, an eyewitness told a Philadelphia television station that a white jogger used the bathroom without making a purchase during the same time frame the two black men were denied use of the bathroom. Richard Ross said his officers made that arrest after police "politely" asked the men to leave three times and they refused those commands, giving officers "attitude." Ross said he made the Facebook video statement in order to "put out facts" since he did not think the police version was being "heard." Ross even played his version of a race-card, stating on the video that as an African-American he is "very aware of implicit bias." Ross' declaration implicitly contended he did not observe racism in either the actions of his officers or the actions of the Starbucks personnel who summoned police. The reaction of Commissioner Ross to what many nationwide easily see as an incident saturated with repugnant racial prejudice from Starbucks personnel and police has provoked criticism. "More egregious than the incident itself, is the tone deaf response from the police commissioner. Richard Ross is on the wrong side of history, and his assertion took on a tone opposite of the Mayor, which is telling," Chris Norris said. Norris is a Philadelphia journalist who frequently reports about abusive police practices. Additionally, Norris hosts a popular morning talk radio program on Philadelphia's WURD900AM, one of the few African-American owned talk radio stations in the United States. "If Starbucks aims to enforce its no excessive loitering policy, then they should hire security guards," Norris continued. "Philadelphia police, who are paid by taxpayers, should not be responding to calls of nonviolent trespassing." Next Page 1 | 2 (Note: You can view every article as one long page if you sign up as an Advocate Member, or higher). Would you like to know how many people have read this article? Or how reputable the author is? Simply sign up for a Advocate premium membership and you'll automatically see this data on every article. Plus a lot more, too. From Paul Craig Roberts Website Many, including Russia's President Putin, have asked why the US launched an illegal attack on Syria prior to the chemical weapons inspectors examining the site of the alleged chemical attack. This popular question completely misses the point. The US attack on Syria is a clear and indisputable war crime against a sovereign country regardless of whether Syria used a chemical weapon in driving the Washington supported terrorists from Douma. No one acted to stop Washington's war crime. Some of Washington's vassals, such as Germany and Italy, refused to participate in Washington's war crime, but no one attempted to block it. The impotent UN Security Council, to which Russia is wasting its time appealing, the EU, NATO, Russia and China themselves did nothing to stop Washington's Nazi-era war crime. Russia said that if Washington's attack harmed its citizens, there would be military consequences, but Russia did not protect its ally Syria from the attack. Perhaps it doesn't matter as Washington's attack was carefully conducted so as to have no effect except to serve as a face-saver for Trump. Apparently no one was killed and no damage was done to anything real except to a facility in which anti-venom for snake bites was being produced. On the other hand, it does matter, because of the perception that the American presstitutes have created that it was a great victory for America over the evil Syrian government and the evil Russian government that supports them. This perception, which the presstitutes have created with their fake news, justifies the war crime and will lead to more attacks on Syria. It is unlikely that the UN Security Council will condemn Washington, which pays 25% of the UN's budget. Moreover, the Security Council is loaded up with Washington's vassals, and they will not vote to censure their liege lord. Putin is wasting his time taking the matter to the Security Council, unless his purpose is to prove that every Western institution is completely corrupt. As most informed people already know this, I don't understand the point of proving the known. Putin should read Eric Zuesse's article before he puts too much faith in the UN. As I have written on a number of occasions, I admire Putin's Christian character of sidestepping the beatings he continuously takes from Washington in order to save the world from the massive deaths of a world war. The problem is that by turning the other cheek, Putin encourages more aggression from Washington. Putin is dealing with neoconservative psychopaths. He is not dealing with common sense. During the entirety of the Cold War no US ambassador to the UN spoke aggressively and disrespectfully to the Soviet representative as Nikki Haley speaks to the Russian ambassador. During the Cold War no American president would have tolerated Nikki Haley. The crazed b*tch would have instantly been fired. The Russian government is captured by delusion if the Russians believe that the US government, in which Nikki Haley is Trump's choice to be America's spokesperson to the world, in which the crazed neoconservative war monger John Bolton is a principal influence over US military and foreign policy, and in which the President himself is under threat of indictment for wanting to normalize relations with Russia, has any prospect of avoiding war. The best chance of preventing the oncoming war is Russian-Chinese-Iranian unity and a defeat for American arms in a regional context not worth the Washington psychopaths launching of nuclear weapons. Until Washington is effectively resisted, Washington's European vassals, the UN Security Council and the OPCW will stand with Washington. Once Washington experiences a defeat, NATO will dissolve and with this dissolution Washington's ability to threaten other countries will lose its cover and evaporate. Concat AG at conhIT 2018 www.concat.de www.onlinemeridian.com Concat AG along with partners n-design, Net-Design, and Identos, have a booth (hall 1.2, booth C-111) at the conhIT 2018 tradeshow in Berlin, April 17-19. Demos include; a full package for connecting medical practices to the telematics infrastructure (TI), connector hosting instead of own operation, and a GDPR-compliant hub app for mobile hospital services.Concat AG is one of only a handful of companies in Germany with a consistent supply chain to equip doctors with a full telematics package. Approximately 100 certified IT partners, professional end user-related service providers, and PED were certified and trained by Concat and can connect practices to the TI throughout Germany. As a full-service systems integrator, Concat offers the certified components required for this from a single source KoCoBox MED+ connector and card-reader units by Ingenico and/or Cherry and the VPN access. Concats technical team in Rhineland-Palatinate provides the complete support needed.The connector hosting topic premieres this year at conhIT in a simulated environment. Hospitals IT heads can learn firsthand how operating the connector gets outsourced to a highly-secured data center.Also presented for the first time is the new hub app developed by the partner Identos. It is GDPR-compliant, due to its internal cryptography procedures which address clinics who would like to forge ahead with digitalization toward mobile first. Existing clinic apps can also get integrated under the umbrella of this application. The possibilities range from secure messaging (instead of WhatsApp), with strong encryption for communication between doctors, both internally or externally, as well as with nursing staff and patients, right up to appointment processing with targeted push notifications. The use ensues by PIN, following prior verified identification.The long-standing partner n-design demonstrates the crypto engine n-sign. This modular software system contains all necessary features for signature, encryption, and authentication as required for the telematics infrastructure. This way, security-critical workflows can be realized rapidly and reliably by the highest security standards. The component for a qualified signature (QES) is in the design for the European eIDAS signature.For secure, innovative technologies in the healthcare industry, visit the Concat AG booth at #conhIT 2018 in Berlin.About Concat:Concat AG, established in 1990 and headquartered in Bensheim with 12 regional offices across Germany, is well-positioned providing a diversified portfolio of infrastructure IT, managed services & support, and cloud solutions. Concat's skilled teams deliver customized offerings including virtualization, storage, networking, and data security to help clients achieve compliance, efficiency, growth and industry transformation. Concat GmbH, a subsidiary, operates secure infrastructures in German data centres certified by ISO 9001 and 27001. Concat has been a part of Meridian Group International Inc., since 2006. Discover more atAbout Meridian Group International:Meridian Group International, privately owned and headquartered in Deerfield, IL is a highly-regarded professional organization with over 770 employees providing equipment leasing across all asset types and global IT solutions, services, and support. Customer-driven, vendor-neutral, and results focused, Meridian Group has extensive knowledge and reputation for helping businesses innovate and grow while managing costs. For more information, visitMeridian Group International9 Parkway North Suite 500Deerfield IL 60015Fran Blumenfeld847-964-2772 Duplication Media Scans Photographs to Preserve Memories http://duplicationmedia.com http://www.twitter.com/dupsmedia Photography has been evolving for centuries, from the daguerreotype process in 1839 to the development of today's digital photography. There have been various different types of photography that have developed over time, containing countless precious memories. Duplication Media, a video duplication and transfer service located in Urbandale, Iowa, has been helping people preserve their precious memories for over a decade with their photo scanning service. Jason Olson, the owner of Duplication Media, is passionate about helping his customers preserve their photos with the digitization process."Similar to how outdated video and audio tapes deteriorate over time, photographs also deteriorate. I always encourage my customers to bring their photographs in to be digitized before something unexpected happens to them like a house fire, tornado, flood, or any other unexpected occurrence," said Olson.No matter how carefully one handles and stores their photos, time and age will eventually cause the photos to fade and lose quality. Duplication Media has the tools to preserve those photos so they can be enjoyed for many years to come. Regardless of how many decades old a photograph is, Duplication Media's photo scanning process preserves and protects these cherished possessions.Once photographs are digitized, the possibilities are endless what you can do with them. They can be emailed, made into videos, posted to social media, stored on the cloud and more. By scanning the photos into a digital file, they can essentially live on endlessly in pristine condition. Whether the photos are fragile, creased, rough around the edges, or stuck to an album, Duplication Media can help. They will color correct, sharpen, reduce or eliminate dust particles, rotate if necessary, and crop the edges, using high-quality, professional equipment.Duplication Media has two different methods of digitizing photographs. If a customer brings in photos that need to be handled one-at-a-time because perhaps they're fragile, stuck in pages of photo albums, or newspaper clippings, they'll be scanned with a flatbed scanner. But if a customer has shoe boxes full of photographs then Duplication Media can run the photographs through their high speed scanner.After all of the photos are scanned, regardless of which process is used, Duplication Media makes the necessary corrections to help preserve the quality of the photograph.Olson said, "We've had customers bring in multiple totes full of photo albums plus boxes and boxes of loose photos that they don't have any idea how to organize. We're able to scan everything they give us with our two different methods. After they're all digitized, it makes it much easier for them to organize into groups."Whether a customer needs one photo scanned or thousands, Duplication Media has the equipment to meet their needs.Don't lose your precious memories...let Duplication Media preserve them. For more information on Duplication Media, please visitor follow on TwitterDuplication Media is a video duplication and transfer service company located in Urbandale, Iowa. In addition to video to DVD transfers, Duplication Media also specializes in CD & DVD Duplications, audio to CD transfers, photo scanning, slide transfers, film transfers, and more. Duplication Media has been serving the needs of customers since 2003.8126 Douglas AvenueUrbandale, IA50322 Mooring Systems for Offshore 2018 Global Industry Key Players - Single Point Mooring Systems , Scana Industrier ASA , Rigzone Mooring Systems , Lamprell Energy , Balmoral Group Market Analysis And Forecast To 2025 Global Mooring Systems for Offshore Market https://www.wiseguyreports.com/sample-request/3122497-global-mooring-systems-for-offshore-market-research-report-2018 https://www.wiseguyreports.com/reports/3122497-global-mooring-systems-for-offshore-market-research-report-2018 Global Mooring Systems for Offshore MarketThis report studies the global Mooring Systems for Offshore market status and forecast, categorizes the global Mooring Systems for Offshore market size (value & volume) by manufacturers, type, application, and region. This report focuses on the top manufacturers in North America, Europe, Japan, China, and other regions (India, Southeast Asia, Central & South America, and Middle East & Africa).Request a Sample Report @The global Mooring Systems for Offshore market is valued at xx million US$ in 2017 and is expected to reach xx million US$ by the end of 2025, growing at a CAGR of xx.x % between 2018 and 2025.The major manufacturers covered in this reportMampaey Offshore IndustriesOffspring InternationalSingle Point Mooring SystemsScana Industrier ASARigzone Mooring SystemsLamprell EnergyBalmoral GroupAdvanced Production and LoadingBalltec LimitedBlue Water Energy ServicesDe Haan Mussel KanaalLHR Services & EquipmentSBM OffshoreMultinational Craig Energy ServicesBW OffshoreMODECDelmar SystemtsGeographically, this report studies the top producers and consumers, focuses on product capacity, production, value, consumption, market share and growth opportunity in these key regions, coveringNorth AmericaEuropeChinaJapanOther RegionsThe regional scope of the study is as follows:North AmericaUnited StatesCanadaMexicoAsia-PacificChinaIndiaJapanSouth KoreaAustraliaIndonesiaSingaporeRest of Asia-PacificEuropeGermanyFranceUKItalySpainRussiaRest of EuropeCentral & South AmericaBrazilArgentinaRest of South AmericaMiddle East & AfricaSaudi ArabiaTurkeyRest of Middle East & AfricaOn the basis of product, this report displays the production, revenue, price, market share and growth rate of each type, primarily split intoTaut LegSpread MooringSemi TautDynamic PositioningCatenarySingle Point MooringOn 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, includingTension Leg PlatformsFPSOSemi-Submersible PlatformsFDPSOSPAR PlatformsFLNGThe study objectives of this report are:To analyze and study the global Mooring Systems for Offshore capacity, production, value, consumption, status (2013-2017) and forecast (2018-2025);Focuses on the key Mooring Systems for Offshore manufacturers, to study the capacity, production, value, market share and development plans in future.Focuses on the global key manufacturers, to define, describe and analyze the market competition landscape, SWOT analysis.To define, describe and forecast the market by type, application and region.To analyze the global and key regions market potential and advantage, opportunity and challenge, restraints and risks.To identify significant trends and factors driving or inhibiting the market growth.To analyze the opportunities in the market for stakeholders by identifying the high growth segments.To strategically analyze each submarket with respect to individual growth trend and their contribution to the marketTo analyze competitive developments such as expansions, agreements, new product launches, and acquisitions in the marketTo strategically profile the key players and comprehensively analyze their growth strategies.In this study, the years considered to estimate the market size of Mooring Systems for Offshore are as follows:History Year: 2013-2017Base Year: 2017Estimated Year: 2018Forecast Year 2018 to 2025For the data information by region, company, type and application, 2017 is considered as the base year. Whenever data information was unavailable for the base year, the prior year has been considered.Key StakeholdersMooring Systems for Offshore ManufacturersMooring Systems for Offshore Distributors/Traders/WholesalersMooring Systems for Offshore Subcomponent ManufacturersIndustry AssociationDownstream VendorsAvailable CustomizationsWith the given market data, QYResearch offers customizations according to the company's specific needs. The following customization options are available for the report:Regional and country-level analysis of the Mooring Systems for Offshore market, by end-use.Detailed analysis and profiles of additional market players.Table of Contents-Key Points CoveredGlobal Mooring Systems for Offshore Market Research Report 20181 Mooring Systems for Offshore Market Overview1.1 Product Overview and Scope of Mooring Systems for Offshore1.2 Mooring Systems for Offshore Segment by Type (Product Category)1.2.1 Global Mooring Systems for Offshore Production and CAGR (%) Comparison by Type (Product Category)(2013-2025)1.2.2 Global Mooring Systems for Offshore Production Market Share by Type (Product Category) in 20171.2.3 Taut Leg1.2.4 Spread Mooring1.2.5 Semi Taut1.2.6 Dynamic Positioning1.2.7 Catenary1.2.8 Single Point Mooring1.3 Global Mooring Systems for Offshore Segment by Application1.3.1 Mooring Systems for Offshore Consumption (Sales) Comparison by Application (2013-2025)1.3.2 Tension Leg Platforms1.3.3 FPSO1.3.4 Semi-Submersible Platforms1.3.5 FDPSO1.3.6 SPAR Platforms1.3.7 FLNG1.4 Global Mooring Systems for Offshore Market by Region (2013-2025)1.4.1 Global Mooring Systems for Offshore 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)1.5 Global Market Size (Value) of Mooring Systems for Offshore (2013-2025)1.5.1 Global Mooring Systems for Offshore Revenue Status and Outlook (2013-2025)1.5.2 Global Mooring Systems for Offshore Capacity, Production Status and Outlook (2013-2025)ContinuedComplete 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 UK Baby Carriers Market Trends,Size,Status and Forecast 2023 (Status and Outlook) https://www.researchbeam.com/2018-2023-uk-baby-carriers-report-status-and-outlook-market/request-sample https://www.researchbeam.com/2018-2023-uk-baby-carriers-report-status-and-outlook-market/purchase-enquiry https://www.researchbeam.com/2018-2023-uk-baby-carriers-report-status-and-outlook-market The report delivers an in-depth market analysis and prospects of the market. It includes information about the various aspects of the industry including the market overview, revenue and market share by players, sales and revenue by type and application, players profiles and sales data, market forecast, market production cost analysis, purchasing strategy and downstream buyers, marketing strategy analysis, market influences factors analysis, and research findings and conclusion.Get Sample@The data provided in the report is a result of an extensive research along with opinions from industry experts. The report covers valuable data which makes the study a useful resource for market players, investors, industry experts, and other key people interested in gaining information about the market. It helps them get readily available data along with charts and tables to help understand market trends, drivers, challenges, and opportunities.The study first provides a brief overview of the entire baby carriers market, including the product overview and scope, segmentation of the market based on type and application. The report then explains the sales, revenue and market share by players. It encompasses the sales and market share by players (2013-2018), revenue and market share by players, average price by players in 2017, manufacturing base distribution and product types by players, and competitive situation and trends.Get 15% Discount on this Report@The report provides valuable information about the prominent players operating in the market. Apart from their basic information, the report also provides details about their manufacturing base, sales area, revenue, products, and competitors. The key players profiled in the report include BabyBjorn, Chicco, Pigeon, Ergobaby, Combi, Goodbaby InternationalHoldings Limited Stokke AS, IAngel, Carnival Baby Products Co., Ltd., Blue Box (Infantino), Becute, and Lillebaby.The report segments the market based on product type, application/end-user, and region. Based on product, the market is divided into wraps, slings, mei-tai, hip seat carriers, frame backpacks, and soft-structured carriers (except hip seat carriers). Based on application, the market is classified into independent retailers, online trade, and others.The report further discusses cost analysis of baby carriers. This incorporates the main raw materials, production cost structure, and manufacturing process/method of baby carriers.The value chain, purchasing strategy and downstream buyers section comprises the value chain analysis, upstream raw materials purchasing, raw materials sources of baby carriers major players in 2017, and downstream buyers.The report also offers details on the marketing strategy analysis which covers the sales channel, product market positioning, and baby carrier distributors/traders list in the UK.The report ends with a description of the research findings and conclusion and the research methodology used for gathering the data.Check Full Report With TOC@About Us:Research Beams uniqueness lies in its highly ethical reports at economical rates because we value your relationship and growth more than money. Your growth is our aim. With the arsenal of different search reports, we help you here to look and buy research reports that will be helpful to you and your organization. Our research reports have the capability and authenticity to support your organization for growth and consistency.Contact Us:Global Head Quarters5933 NE Win Sivers Drive,#205, Portland, OR 97220United Statesphone+1 (800) 910-6452help@researchbeam.com Dimethyl Ether (DME) Market Poised to show Impressive Growth over 2025 https://www.tmrresearch.com/sample/sample?flag=B&rep_id=1508 https://www.tmrresearch.com/sample/sample?flag=T&rep_id=1508 https://www.tmrresearch.com/dimethyl-ether-market.html Dimethyl Ether (DME) Market: SnapshotMajority of the DME manufactured these days is an end-product of two-step process where the first step involves methanol generation with the help of natural gas or coal being used a feedstock. And the second step involves dehydration of methanol for the production of DME. Dimethyl Ether has the potential of replacing diesel in the conventional engines with small modifications that need to be made in the fuel injecting systems. The market potential of DME as a fuel for transport is huge as consumption of diesel in growing at a great pace because of the boom in the transportation sector.Among the variety of applications of DME, blending of LPG is considered to be the biggest market for dimethyl ether. Scarcity of LPG is a great cause of concern in the nations that have small gas reserves and thus have a very limited options of using natural gas instead of LPG. DME has proven to be a trustworthy source in such nations to cut down their imports of LPG by combining a prescribed amount of dimethyl ether in LPG without altering the current infrastructure. DME can also be used as a propellant of aerosol under the category of liquefied gas propellants. The numerous other applications of DME includes its utilization in the form of solvent, refrigerant, chemical feedstock, and for brazing and welding operations. Some of the prominent companies in the global DME market include names such as Azko Nobel N.V., Mitsubishi Corporation, Jiutai Energy Group, and Zagros Petrochemical Company among others.Request Sample Copy of the Report @Global Dimethyl Ether (DME) Market: OverviewDimethyl ether (DME), also known as methoxymethane, is the simplest ether which has widespread applications in chemicals industry and is extensively used as aerosol propellant. DME can be produced using a variety of feedstock such as biomass, methanol, and fossil fuels. The most prominent feedstock are natural gas, particularly in North America, or coal, especially in various Asian countries. The compound has several properties similar to LPG and is therefore extensively used as an excellent substitute for traditional fuels. In addition, various characteristic fuel properties of DME, particularly high cetane number and energy efficiency, make it attractive to be used in several diesel engines. Other popular applications of DME are as transportation fuel, power generation fuel, and domestic gas, thus it forms a crucial element stimulating the growth of transportation, agriculture, and construction industries.The largest producer and consumer of DME is China, where it is produced commercially. In countries such as in Japan, Korea, Egypt, and Brazil, DME has been a key energy source for decades.Request TOC of the Report @Global Dimethyl Ether (DME) Market: TrendsThe widespread use of dimethyl ether as a non-petroleum based alternative fuel is propelling the market. Since it is considered as a clean and high-performance compression ignition fuel, it can be extensively used in diesel engines; its use eliminates particulate exhaust emissions of automobiles and can significantly save the high cost of diesel particulate filters. This has spurred the demand for DME across transportation sector, especially in the North America.Most frequently, DME is blended with LPG, usually in equal proportion, to be used in domestic cooking and heating applications. Currently, more than 65% DME produced globally is blended with LPG. Blending offers many benefits in terms of its use as ultra-clean fuel for several domestic applications. China has upped the production of DME blended with LPG by using methanol as feedstock; commercial production of DME has helped China reduce the reliance on LPG-based fuel. Dehydrating methanol enhances the combustion efficiency of DME and hence is used as cost-effective fuel alternatives in heavy-duty trucks and ships. These trends are offering lucrative avenues for the market players to capitalize on.Read Comprehensive Overview of Report @Global Dimethyl Ether (DME) Market: Market PotentialConcurrent applications of DME as transportation fuel in several regions such as in Europe, Japan, and North America, portend well for the market. The use of DME, either standalone or blended with LPG, is proliferating in large number of automobiles in industrialized nations as they are considered as cleaner energy. This has in turn increasingly reduced the dependency on LPG to fuel their economies. Various performance evaluation plans are underway, especially in North America, to assess the viability of DME as alternative fuel in large commercial vehicles and urban fleets. Producers of DME source the raw materials from natural organic waste found in urban landfills, which is expected to considerably reduce the carbon footprint in the coming years. Led by these promising developments, Oberon Fuels, a producer of the Dimethyl Ether (DME) fuel, has recently announced the start of a customer demonstration of a Pinnacle-series heavy duty trucks from Mack Trucks. Oberon has partnered with the American truck manufacturing company and they are working with the NYC Department of Sanitation (DSNY) to test the vehicle operation at the Fresh Kills Landfill to evaluate fuel performance and viability. If this drives become successful, DME will expectedly reduce GHC emissions by as much as 80% by 2050. Initiatives such as these expand the potential of the market in developed and emerging nations.Global Dimethyl Ether (DME) Market: Regional OutlookCurrently, Asia Pacific is a major market for DME where it is primarily used for blending with LPG and as aerosol propellant. Advancement in infrastructure for providing domestic fuel supply to several Asian countries coupled with the surge in demand for cost-effective, clean, and alternative fuels in transportation sector have stimulated the use of DME fuels. Increasing R&D activities related to DME production in advanced nations of Asia Pacific along with increasing production capacity in Japan and China are anticipated to boost the regional market.North America market is poised to show impressive growth over the forecast period. The increasing adoption of bio-based fuel in automobiles and continued improvements in vehicular emission technology have led to the wide demand for DME as a viable alternative. Increasing R&D investment by several automobile manufacturers have contributed to the growth momentum.Global Dimethyl Ether (DME) Market: Competitive AnalysisKey automakers and fuel producers are making substantial investments in various programs meant for evaluating the viability of DME as a cost-effective and environmental-friendly fuel. Out of large number of companies exploring lucrative avenues in the DME market, major players include Akzo Nobel NV, Korea Gas Corporation, China Energy Ltd., Royal Dutch Shell plc, Mitsubishi Corporation, Oberon Fuels, Inc., Shenhua Ningxia Coal Industry Group Co., Ltd., Fuel DME Production Co., Ltd., and Grillo-Werke AG.About TMR ResearchTMR Research is a premier provider of customized market research and consulting services to business entities keen on succeeding in todays supercharged economic climate. Armed with an experienced, dedicated, and dynamic team of analysts, we are redefining the way our clients conduct business by providing them with authoritative and trusted research studies in tune with the latest methodologies and market trends.Our savvy custom-built reports span a gamut of industries such as pharmaceuticals, chemicals and metals, food and beverages, and technology and media, among others. With actionable insights uncovered through in-depth research of the market, we try to bring about game-changing success for our clients.Contact:TMR Research,3739 Balboa St # 1097,San Francisco, CA 94121United StatesTel: +1-415-520-1050Email: sales@tmrresearch.com Audio DSP System Market - by Application, Deployment Mode, Industry Vertical - Opportunity Analysis and Industry Forecast, 2018 - 2026 https://www.transparencymarketresearch.com/sample/sample.php?flag=B&rep_id=42302 https://www.transparencymarketresearch.com/audio-dsp-system-market.html https://www.transparencymarketresearch.com/sample/sample.php?flag=T&rep_id=42302 http://www.transparencymarketresearch.com Most modern desktop computers are equipped with audio hardware. This hardware allows audio to be recorded as digital information for storage and later playback. This digital information can be manipulated to change how the audio sounds when played back. Several digital audio "effects" have become commonplace because of the flexibility and fidelity of digital editing.Download PDF Brochure @The increasing demand for technically refined digital signal processing has allowed the ingress of a variety of applications, further reinforcing the maturation of the audio DSP market. The worldwide market for audio DSP is predicted to gain strength on the back of the need to build high-performance communication systems cost-efficiently.Brows the Report @Employment of DSP chips in the consumer electronics segment has endorsed the adoption of audio DSP (digital signal processing) on a larger scale. The shift from old devices to modern-day devices, such as phablets and laptops, has proclaimed the need for optimum power consumption, which has curved the focus to audio DSPs.Download TOC @Owing to challenging real-time restraints, although performance has always been the most crucial parameter for audio DSP quality comparison; the past two decades have seen a drift in the same.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: Anti-Corrosion Coatings Market Extensive Growth by 2025 https://www.tmrresearch.com/sample/sample?flag=B&rep_id=1511 https://www.tmrresearch.com/sample/sample?flag=T&rep_id=1511 https://www.tmrresearch.com/anti-corrosion-coatings-market.html Global Anti-Corrosion Coatings Market: OverviewAnti-corrosion coatings protect various metal components from oxidation, exposure to industrial and environmental chemicals, moisture, and salt sprays. Preventing contact between corrosive materials and chemical compounds, these coatings might also feature nonstick properties. As rust and corrosion prevention is a key concern of a number of industries that have high humidity, salt, water, and mist, the global market for anti-corrosion coatings market is expected to soar.Global Anti-Corrosion Coatings Market: Key TrendsWidespread usage in oil and gas equipment such as drill pipes and oil storage tanks is fuelling the demand for anti-corrosion coatings. As these equipment are exposed to underground water and marshy land, they need to be protected from corrosion from moisture. Moreover, the increasing demand for energy generation via oil sands, tar sands, shale gas, and oil shale is likely to further provide an impetus to the market.Request Sample Copy of the Report @The polyurethane coatings segment has been exhibiting significant growth thanks to the availability of a wide range of colors and glossy finish that attracts consumers. These products can endure temperatures up to 110 degrees Celsius. By application, the solvent based coatings might emerge at the fore due to government regulations emphasizing the use of low volatile organic compounds in products.Global Anti-Corrosion Coatings Market: Market PotentialIn February 2017, NEI Corporation announced that the patent and trademark regulatory body of the U.S. has issued allowance for two patent applications of the firm. These two products possess hydrophobic coatings, displaying high corrosion resistance, apart from their excellent adhesive properties.In the same month, Guntner launched a new coil protector designed for the food industry. The product possesses powder coating that is highly resistant to corrosion apart from being food safe.U.S.-based manufacturer of grapheme, Applied Graphene Materials (AGM) has been aiding James Briggs Ltd, a paints manufacturer, in the development of anti-corrosion grapheme coatings.A group of engineers and scientists has developed a hexagonal boron nitride monolayer that exhibits exceptional resistance to corrosion. Although this product needs to be developed further for it to be introduced in the commercial market, the future potential for it is immense, experts believe. Both anodic and cathodic currents were found to be unsuccessful at penetrating the automatically thin layer coating.Request TOC of the Report @Global Anti-Corrosion Coatings Market: Regional OutlookNorth America dominates the anti-corrosion coatings market, which is supported by rising volume of military investment. The U.S., flaunting one of the worlds largest fleet bases, is likely to represent maximum share of the anti-corrosion coatings market in North America.Asia Pacific is likely to emerge as a leading regional market owing to the foreign investments that have been pouring in. The extensive growth of the end-use industries such as oil and gas, power and energy, marine, tanks and pipes, and construction are responsible for increasing demand for anti-corrosion coatings in the developing countries of this region such as India, Malaysia, Singapore, Vietnam, Australia, and China. China is slated to emerge at the fore, as a vast population, immense production base, and growing volume of foreign investments propel its expansion.Read Comprehensive Overview of Report @Global Anti-Corrosion Coatings Market: Competitive AnalysisSome of the leading companies operating in the global anti-corrosion coatings market are Hempel, The Sherwin-Williams Company, BASF, RPM International, PPG Industries, Chugoku Marine Paints, AICA Kogyo, Jotun, Axalta Coating, Kansai Paints, Ashland, Tnemec, Akzonobel, Sokema, Valspar, Nippon Paints, and AnCatt.Japan-based Kansai Paint is planning to acquire Sadolin Tanzania, Sadolin Kenya, and Sadolin Uganda, with a view to tap the vast potential of the market in this region.Several companies are also making sure that they improve their production capabilities. For example, PPG Industries completed a new production line at Wuhu, China. The plant produces highly efficient high solids and waterborne coatings.About TMR ResearchTMR Research is a premier provider of customized market research and consulting services to business entities keen on succeeding in todays supercharged economic climate. Armed with an experienced, dedicated, and dynamic team of analysts, we are redefining the way our clients conduct business by providing them with authoritative and trusted research studies in tune with the latest methodologies and market trends.Our savvy custom-built reports span a gamut of industries such as pharmaceuticals, chemicals and metals, food and beverages, and technology and media, among others. With actionable insights uncovered through in-depth research of the market, we try to bring about game-changing success for our clients.Contact:TMR Research,3739 Balboa St # 1097,San Francisco, CA 94121United StatesTel: +1-415-520-1050Email: sales@tmrresearch.com Dimethyl Carbonate Market Substantial Growth Opportunities by 2025 https://www.tmrresearch.com/sample/sample?flag=B&rep_id=1514 https://www.tmrresearch.com/sample/sample?flag=T&rep_id=1514 https://www.tmrresearch.com/dimethyl-carbonate-market.html Global Dimethyl Carbonate Market: OverviewDimethyl carbonate (DMC) is a flammable, clear, and colorless liquid with a pleasant odor. Used as a methylating reagent and in the making of other chemicals, the compound is likely to witness growing demand over the next few years. It is also used in the cold sterilization of beverages, working against microorganisms that spoil beverages. Pharmaceuticals, polycarbonates, pesticides, and solvents can be some of the prominent application segments of the global dimethyl carbonate market.Recently, the production of dimethyl carbonate has undergone a favorable transition. Previously, phosgene was used to produce dimethyl carbonate, resulting in harmful by-products. However, the current use of methanol, oxygen, and carbon monoxide in the process of production is significantly less toxic and eco-friendly. In addition to these advantages, by the virtue of its biodegradable properties, the demand for green reagent is poised to soar in the coming years.Request Sample Copy of the Report @Global Dimethyl Carbonate Market: Key TrendsSectors such as optical media, automotive, electronics, lighting, glazing, appliances, and medical have been exhibiting growing demand for dimethyl carbonate. Large scale construction activities increase the demand for paints and coatings that use dimethyl carbonate due to its exceptional solubility and cost-efficiency. As this product is a VOC-exempt solvent, the paints and coatings industry widely uses it as a carrier solvent.On the other hand, tedious procedures for obtaining licenses might pose a threat to the growth of the market. Nevertheless, the high efficiency, advantageous properties, and technological advancement in the area of dimethyl carbonate is likely to bring forth substantial growth opportunities. Dimethyl carbonate can be viewed as an ideal alternative for ethanol, as it possesses lower toxicity, lower vapor pressure, and higher boiling point.Global Dimethyl Carbonate Market: Market PotentialOne of the major developments in the global dimethyl carbonate market is the collaboration of AkzoNobel with research institutes in 2015 to produce dimethyl carbonate through a catalyst, using carbon dioxide.Request TOC of the Report @The expanding market for lithium-ion batteries worldwide is likely to present opportunities potential for growth. The growth in global battery market will lend a hand to the expansion of the global dimethyl carbonate market, as advanced batteries are deployed in smartphones, tablets, laptops, electric cars, and even planes. CATL, a leading company producing batteries, aims at extending its output to emerge as the largest producer in the U.S., leaving behind the joint production of Panasonic and Tesla Motors by the end of 2017.The polycarbonate industry will also contribute towards the growth of the market. China-based Luxi Chemical, a leading company manufacturing polycarbonates, announced in December 2016 that it is planning to build two new production lines.Global Dimethyl Carbonate Market: Regional OutlookBased on geography, the global market for dimethyl carbonate can be segmented into Asia pacific, North America, Latin America, Europe, the Middle East, and Africa. North America, with the U.S. at the lead, appears to be dominating the regional milieu. The growth of this region can be attributed to the upgrading of public infrastructure coupled with government initiatives.Read Comprehensive Overview of Report @Asia Pacific has emerged as a regional market with great potential. The rising scope through applications in paints and coatings, automotive and electronics is expected to help the market achieve new heights. Moreover, the dimethyl carbonate markets in regions of Latin America, the Middle East, and Africa are slated for considerable growth.Global Dimethyl Carbonate Market: Competitive AnalysisSome of the major companies operating in the global dimethyl carbonate market are HaiKe Chemical Group, BASF SE, Sigma-Aldrich, AkzoNobel, UBE Industries Limited, Tangshan Chaoyang Chemical, Alfa Aesar, Dongying City Longxing, EMD Millipore Corporation, Shandong Shida Shenghua Chemical Group Co., Ltd., and UBE Industries. Expansion of manufacturing capacities, development of a strong product portfolio, and catering to the unfulfilled needs of various regions are some of the chief concerns of numerous market players.About TMR ResearchTMR Research is a premier provider of customized market research and consulting services to business entities keen on succeeding in todays supercharged economic climate. Armed with an experienced, dedicated, and dynamic team of analysts, we are redefining the way our clients conduct business by providing them with authoritative and trusted research studies in tune with the latest methodologies and market trends.Our savvy custom-built reports span a gamut of industries such as pharmaceuticals, chemicals and metals, food and beverages, and technology and media, among others. With actionable insights uncovered through in-depth research of the market, we try to bring about game-changing success for our clients.Contact:TMR Research,3739 Balboa St # 1097,San Francisco, CA 94121United StatesTel: +1-415-520-1050Email: sales@tmrresearch.com Printed and Flexible Sensors Market Size, Share, Type, Application Demand and Growth by 2023 https://www.psmarketresearch.com/market-analysis/printed-and-flexible-sensors-market/report-sample https://www.psmarketresearch.com/market-analysis/printed-and-flexible-sensors-market www.psmarketresearch.com Advancements in printed electronics enable sensors to be fully printed and flexible. Optomec, a provider of 3D printing solutions, launched Aerosol Jet Technology for 3D printed electronics applications. Equipment suppliers are introducing innovative machines in the market to meet the needs of printed electronics manufacturers.Request for a free sample of this research report:The major application areas of printed and flexible sensors are healthcare electronics, breath sensing, consumer electronics, drug screening devices and smart packing. Printed and flexible sensors are small in size, light weight and cost-effective compared to conventional sensors. Printed and flexible sensors are also used in various healthcare and consumer electronics portable devices, owing to its light weight property as compared to conventional sensors.On the basis of type, the printed and flexible sensors market can be categorized as piezoelectric, capacitive, gas sensors, piezoresistature sensors, digital x-ray sensors, hybrid CMOS sensors, temperature sensors, photodetectors, and biosensors. And based on technology, the printed and flexible sensors market can be categorized as ink-jet printing, gravure printing, screen printing and flexography.Rapid growth in the end-user industries of printed and flexible sensors, low-cost manufacturing of printed and flexible sensors as compared to conventional sensors and performance benefits in terms of product life cycle and sensing efficiencies over conventional sensors are some of the major growth drivers for the printed and flexible sensors market.Surging application of printed and flexible sensors in medical electronics devices, and considerable growth in Internet of Things (IoT) market, presents new market opportunity for the printed and flexible sensors market.Explore report at:Some of the competitors operating in the printed and flexible sensors market are GSI Technologies, KWJ Engineering, PolyIC, Vista Medical, Meggitt A/S, Arkema group, NikkoIA SAS, Tactonic Technologies, Electrozyme, Peratech, Synkera Technologies, DropSens, Tekscan, Thin Film Electronics, PST Sensors, BeBop Sensors, Temptime, Fujifilm Holding Corporation, Sensitronics, Interlink Electronics, ISORG, Plastic Electronic GmbH, and T-Ink.About P&S Market ResearchP&S Market Research is a global market research and consulting company. We provide market research reports, industry reports, business intelligence and research based consulting services across a range of industries.With the help of our professional corporate relations with various companies, our market research offers the most accurate market forecasting. Our analysts and consultants interact with leading companies of the concerned domain to substantiate every single data presented in our publication. Our research assists our client in identifying new and different windows of opportunity and frame informed and customized strategies for expansion in different regions.Contact:P&S Market Research347, 5th Ave. #1402New York City, NY - 10016Toll-free: +1-888-778-7886 (USA/Canada)Email: enquiry@psmarketresearch.comWeb: Stem Cell Banking Market by Bank Type, Service and Application: Industry Insight, Growth Opportunities and Demand Forecast to 2023 https://www.psmarketresearch.com/market-analysis/stem-cell-banking-market/report-sample https://www.psmarketresearch.com/market-analysis/stem-cell-banking-market https://www.psmarketresearch.com Stem cells are the cells that have the potential to differentiate into various types of cells in the body. Embryonic stem cells and adult stem cells are the two main types of stem cells. Stem cells could possibly be used to generate cells and tissues for therapy of a variety of diseases including Alzheimer's disease, Parkinson's disease, heart disease, spinal cord injury, diabetes, and arthritis. The global stem cell banking market is expected to grow due to the increasing prevalence of such diseases and increasing awareness among people about the need to preserve stem cells. The umbilical cord blood of the newborn is an abundant source of stem cells. However, some tissues and organs within body, skin, blood, and the lining of intestine are also key source of tissue-specific stem cells. The stem cells are separated from the blood or tissue, processed, tested and preserved in a stem cell bank.Request Sample Copy of the Report:North America holds the largest share in the global stem cell banking market since the majority of stem cell banking players are based in the region. The growth in the North American stem cell banking industry is mainly due to the increase in awareness among people regarding stem cell banks.The Asia-Pacific stem cell banking market is expected to grow at the fastest rate during the forecast period due to the increasing investment by government and development of new technologies, which leads to the growth in the emerging countries such as China, Japan and India.Full Explore Report:Some of the major players operating in the stem cell banking market include Cordlife Group Ltd, Cryocell International, Inc., Lifecell International Pvt. Ltd., PerkinElmer, Inc. (Viacord), StemCyte Inc., CryoSave AG, China Cord Blood Corporation, Cord Blood America, Inc., Caladrius Biosciences Inc., CBR Systems, Inc., Cordvida, Cordviva India.About P&S Market ResearchP&S Market Research is a market research company, which offers market research and consulting services for various geographies around the globe. We provide market research reports, industry forecasting reports, business intelligence, and research based consulting services across different industry/business verticals.As one of the top growing market research agency, were keen upon providing market landscape and accurate forecasting. Our analysts and consultants are proficient with business intelligence and market analysis, through their interaction with leading companies of the concerned domain. We help our clients with B2B market research and assist them in identifying various windows of opportunity, and framing informed and customized business expansion strategies in different regions.Contact:P&S Market Research347, 5th Ave. #1402New York City, NY - 10016Toll-Free: +1-888-778-7886 (USA/Canada)Email: enquiry@psmarketresearch.comWeb: Global Industrial Protective Footwear Market to reach a market size of $5.6 bn by 2022 https://kbvresearch.com/global-industrial-protective-footwear-market/ According to a new report Global Industrial Protective Footwear Market (2016-2022), published by KBV Research, the global Industrial Protective Footwear is expected to attain a market size of $5.6 billion by 2022, growing at a CAGR of 8.2% during the forecast period.The Leather market dominated the Global Industrial Protective Footwear Market by Type in 2015, and would continue to be a dominant market till 2022;growing at a CAGR of 7.1 % during the forecast period. The Plastic market is expected to witness a CAGR of 10.3% during (2016 2022). Additionally, The Rubber market is expected to witness highest CAGR of 6.5% during (2016 2022).The Construction market dominated the Global Industrial Protective Footwear Market by Application in 2015, and would continue to be a dominant market till 2022 growing at a CAGR of 6.9 % during the forecast period. The Healthcare and Life Sciences market is expected to witness a CAGR of 10% during (2016 2022). Additionally, The Chemical & Mining market is expected to witness highest CAGR of 8.8% during (2016 2022).The North America market dominated the Global Industrial Protective Footwear Market by Region in 2015, and would continue to be a dominant market till 2022; growing at a CAGR of 6.8 % during the forecast period. The Europe market is expected to witness a CAGR of 7.3% during (2016 2022). Additionally, The Asia-Pacific market is expected to witness a CAGR of 10.3% during (2016 2022).The report has exhaustive quantitative insights providing a clear picture of the market potential in various segments across the globe with country wise analysis in each discussed region. The key influencing factors of the global Industrial Protective Footwearhave been discussed in the report along with the elaborated company profiles of Honeywell International, Inc., VF Corporation, Rahman Group, Cofra Group, ELTEN Gmbh, UVEX Safety Group, Rock Fall Ltd., and Dunlop Protective Footwear.Full report :-Research ScopeThe market is segmented based on Type, Application, and Geography.Global Industrial Protective Footwear Market By TypeLeatherWaterproofPlasticRubberGlobal Industrial Protective Footwear Market By ApplicationConstructionManufacturingChemical & MiningOil & GasFood IndustryHealthcare & Life SciencesOthersGlobal Industrial Protective Footwear Market By GeographyNorth America Industrial Protective Footwear MarketU.S. Industrial Protective Footwear MarketCanada Industrial Protective Footwear MarketMexico Industrial Protective Footwear MarketRest of North America Industrial Protective Footwear MarketEurope Industrial Protective Footwear MarketGermany Industrial Protective Footwear MarketK. Industrial Protective Footwear MarketFrance Industrial Protective Footwear MarketRussia Industrial Protective Footwear MarketSpain Industrial Protective Footwear MarketItaly Industrial Protective Footwear MarketRest of Europe Industrial Protective Footwear MarketAsia-Pacific Industrial Protective Footwear MarketChina Industrial Protective Footwear MarketJapan Industrial Protective Footwear MarketIndia Industrial Protective Footwear MarketSouth Korea Industrial Protective Footwear MarketSingapore Industrial Protective Footwear MarketMalaysia Industrial Protective Footwear MarketRest of Asia-Pacific Industrial Protective Footwear MarketLAMEA Industrial Protective Footwear MarketBrazil Industrial Protective Footwear MarketArgentina Industrial Protective Footwear MarketUAE Industrial Protective Footwear MarketSaudi Arabia Industrial Protective Footwear MarketSouth Africa Industrial Protective Footwear MarketNigeria Industrial Protective Footwear MarketRest of LAMEA Industrial Protective Footwear MarketCompanies ProfiledHoneywell International, Inc.VF CorporationRahman GroupCofra GroupELTEN GmbhUVEX Safety GroupRock Fall Ltd.Dunlop Protective FootwearUnique Offerings from KBV ResearchExhaustive coverage of Global Industrial Protective Footwear MarketHighest number of market tables and figuresUnique Market Research & Analytics Tool to provide instant comparative analysis within the reportSubscription based model availableFree of cost quarterly updatesGuaranteed best priceAssured post sales research support with 10% customization freeRelated Reports:North America Industrial Protective Footwear Market (2016-2022)Europe Industrial Protective Footwear Market (2016-2022)Asia Pacific Industrial Protective Footwear Market (2016-2022)LAMEA Industrial Protective Footwear Market (2016-2022)Knowledge Based Value Research is a global brand and consulting firm serving all kinds of business verticals, government and non-governmental organizations, and not-for-profit organizations. Our motto is to extend our services that will have a lasting impact on our clients who trust us with their business goals.4F CS 27, Ansal PlazaSector 1, Vaishali 201010Delhi NCR, Ghaziabad, IndiaTel: 0120-4968631 / +91-9990696033Email: info@kbvresearch.com Port Wine Market Driven by Increasing Alcohol Trends amongst the Consumers https://www.transparencymarketresearch.com/sample/sample.php?flag=B&rep_id=39656 https://www.transparencymarketresearch.com/checkout.php?rep_id=39656 ') } else if (width >= 425) { console.log ('largescreen'); document.write('') } else { console.log ('nompuad'); document.write('') } // --> Mario Diaz, city of Houstons aviation director, said, As the only city in Texas with two airports offering international service providing a quality Spanish-language version of our website is essential, this is yet another example of the customer service that earned both Bush and Hobby airports a four-star rating by Skytrax. Our in-depth analysis of customer usage on our website confirmed the demand and need for this added value. In 2017, more than 640,000 airport website sessions, along with nearly 10% of airport wi-fi users, had their browser set to Spanish as the language of choice. This new site is an important step in making sure we serve those customers in the best way possible and make our airports as welcoming and accessible to all travelers as possible. Connections to Mexico, Latin America and the Caribbean have helped drive growing international passenger numbers at both Bush and Hobby airports. Over the past five years, traffic from the two airports to Latin America including Central and South America, Mexico and the Caribbean has increased by 32%. Bush Airport offers non-stop service to more markets in Mexico than any other airport in the USA thanks to six airlines serving Mexico, with an average of 62 daily departures to 25 Mexican destinations. At Hobby Airport, with the return of international travel in October 2015, international passengers have taken advantage of the 10 non-stop destinations offered across Latin America, Mexico and the Caribbean. Royal Schiphol Group, Eneco and the municipality of Vianen has formally opened the new Autena wind farm in the Netherlands. The farm consists of three wind turbines, two of which will supply green energy to Royal Schiphol Group. The supply provides approximately 20GWh per year, which is comparable to the annual energy consumption of 17,000 households. Eneco is set to build more wind turbines for Royal Schiphol Group over the next two years, meaning that by January 2020, all of the power for the airport company will come from newly constructed Dutch wind farms. ') } else { console.log ('nompuad'); document.write(' ') } // --> ') } else if (width >= 425) { console.log ('largescreen'); document.write('') } else { console.log ('nompuad'); document.write('') } // --> The long-term contract with Royal Schiphol Group enables Eneco to invest in new wind farms, meaning Schiphol will not be drawing power from the existing sustainable energy network. It will also increase the total supply of sustainable power in the Netherlands. The names of the wind turbines were decided by primary school pupils from Vianen, who submitted suggestions for the names. The winning entries were Flying Electric from Egbertus primary school and GreenTower from OBS Tijl Uilenspiegel. Americans glorify war. We are a violent people born out of a bloody revolution and an even bloodier Civil War over whether we should continue to subjugate and torture slaves brought here from Africa. This is not a trait confined to history, as one glance at Hollywoods products reveals that this violent temperament is still very much alive and well within the American character. We have anointed ourselves the worlds policeclearly declaring our intent to modernize the planet through force. We bombed Syria because we cant imagine dealing with a seemingly intractable problem any other way. Yes, Bashar al-Assad is a brutal despot whose only rightful place on the worlds stage resides six feet underground. Unfortunately, violence is the answer sometimes, but this is not one of those times. Removing Assad from power through force would create a power vacuum like the one we saw in Iraq, and unless we are willing to commit infinitely more resources to Syria than we have to say, Flint, that vacuum would produce untold levels of violence. One night of bombing will do nothing to loosen Assads vice grip on Syrianor will it deter him from committing future war crimesas we saw the last time this happened. Bombing Syria to send Assad a message is a wholly self-serving exercise. So long as he is propped up by despotic regimes in Russia and Iran, anything less than a full-scale invasion will do nothing to remove him from power. We bomb countries because our culture is so corrupted by violence that we literally cannot imagine any other solution to the intractable problem of terrorism, despite the fact that it is nearly inseparable from poverty. But why should we understand that bombing poor countries wont fix their problems if we dont even understand our own issues with poverty? The police here act as something of a paramilitary force in our dilapidated communities, and they can kill anyone with impunity (Police shoot and kill about 1,000 people per year, and just 26 officers have been convicted of murder or manslaughter since 2005). Americas largest city has discontinued the stop and frisk policy of violating citizens democratic rights, but there was no such thing on campus at NYU, as this supposition of violence and malfeasance was confined solely to New Yorks poorest communities. There is a sickness inherent in not just America, but Western society. Violence is the language of colonialism. Every nation who has occupied another does so through force, and it is baked into the culture that the only way to obtain something you need is to take it. Like stop and frisk, diplomacy is reserved for the rich nations, while poorer ones become victims of our heroes with badges and guns. For poor countries like Syria, diplomacy means that England and France enter into a Sykes-Picot agreement to divvy up their country however a bunch of old white men want. I spent the last week in London, and I visited the Imperial War Museum. It is filled with a litany of items from World War I to present, and as I wandered through its mesmerizing halls in the wake of our attack on Syria, I was surrounded by reminders that we had not learned from history. For example, inaccurate bombing runs is the norm, not the exception, throughout American warfare. During the Obama administration, it was revealed that the American military classified nearly all males in zones we bombed as enemy combatants. A source told The Intercept that If there is no evidence that proves a person killed in a strike was either not a military aged male, or was a military aged male but not an unlawful enemy combatant, then there is no question. They label them [Enemy Killed In Action]. This is reflective of both our inability to truly discern the bad guys from the good guys, as well as our governments desire to keep their failures hidden from the democracy theyre supposed to serve. The story of positive American intervention is a fairy tale. Every war we have launched since World War II has been a failurefrom the Korean War setting the stage for our struggles today, to the calamity of Vietnam and its modern sibling in Iraq. We believe that because America, Western Europe, and Russia stopped a madman from taking over the world in the 1940s that the answer to all madmen is war. There is no other option on the table because our foreign policy has refused to consider any other one. This is because war is immensely profitable. This is what President and former five-star general, Dwight Eisenhower, warned us about in his final presidential address when he spoke about the military industrial complex. In the councils of government, we must guard against the acquisition of unwarranted influence, whether sought or unsought, by the military-industrial complex. The potential for the disastrous rise of misplaced power exists, and will persist. Until the latest of our world conflicts, the United States had no armaments industry. American makers of ploughshares could, with time and as required, make swords as well. But we can no longer risk emergency improvisation of national defense; we have been compelled to create a permanent armaments industry of vast proportions. America is a democracy in name only. Profits drive policy far more than popular will, and this is the true nature of warfare. Before the bombs landed in Syria, it was already accepted fact that they would do very little to stop Assads slaughter, so why did we do it? Well, that one bombing run cost taxpayers at least $92 million. Thanks to the opacity of the Pentagon budget and its operations, we dont know the exact figure, but it is almost certainly higher than that. Americas merchants of death are just as despotic and bloodthirsty as Bashar al-Assad, they just have a better PR campaign around their actions. bombing is fun, MSNBC edition pic.twitter.com/qbtiBrpWLB Adam H. Johnson (@adamjohnsonNYC) April 7, 2017 Our bombs land in civilian centers in the name of freedom, while Assads fall on populations in the name of fascism. This is the central crux of the lie of American exceptionalism: our violence is good, but theirs is bad. There is no good kind of violence. My grandfather fought against Hitlers army, and he was haunted by his memories up until death. The American tradition of treating our soldiers like demigods enraged him because he did things he was not proud of. If you are the kind of person who believes that all troops are infallible, my grandfather would have despised you. Only those who have never fought in war believe that it comes without a cost to the victors. Theres a reason why we have such an intractable problem with gun violence in this country, and its directly tied to our endless wars. Americans have become the Israelities worshiping the golden calf at the base of Mount Sinai, and we practice ritual human sacrifice in our schools, churches, movie theaters, nursing homes, colleges, and any number of other public spaces in the name of the Almighty Dollar. Bombing Syria is simply the foreign side of this uniquely American coin. Americas gun problem is one of simple math, yes. If you have more guns, youre likely to see more gun violencebut we are far from the only nation with an abundance of firearms. Switzerland is loaded to the brim with weapons, yet they dont experience the kind of ritualistic violence that has become the status quo in this country. Our gun violence problem is also one of culture. There is a direct connection between Parkland, Newtown and Syria. Violence is woven into the fabric of our identity, and we have yet to understand that it is a self-perpetuating issue. Syria, Iraq, Yemen and a whole host of other countries currently under the thumb of American occupation could dramatically benefit from an anti-poverty agenda. So many kids indoctrinated into ISIS and its ilk do so because they grow up in areas where war criminals are the only ones providing any kind of societal infrastructure and opportunity. This problem is echoed in hip-hop, where gangs are explained as a necessary evil in a community bereft of any real investment by the government designed to protect them. Poverty is the common denominator for most of the worlds problems, and meeting it with violence will only exacerbate themas the last 70-plus years of American foreign policy has shamefully demonstrated. I dont know what we should do in Syria. There is no magic bullet to solve this problem, and that widely-used term proves how deep this association with violence goes in the American psyche. Iran and Russia prop up the Assad regime, and accomplishing our goal of removing Assad with violence would almost surely mean a war with those two countrieswhich means that an invasion is a non-starter. So why are we bombing Syria? What will that accomplish? What did the last bombing run accomplish? We know that we cannot advance full-scale warfare in Syria, yet we still dip our toe in that pond. Diplomacy should be our only goal in foreign relationsas our soft power is unmatched throughout the worldbut we have no clout with Russia, and even less with Iran given that we are currently fighting a proxy war against them in Yemen (while committing countless war crimes against the civilian populationsomething that ALWAYS accompanies any American intervention). We have backed ourselves into a corner with our bloodlust, and now were trying to fight our way out of this quicksand, sinking deeper with each assault. Americans must learn more from history and demand that our government avoid repeating the mistakes of the past, or this sickness will only get worse as our empire continues its steady decline. War is hell. It is not something to be glorifiedbut reviled. It is a primitive act that has no place in the society we say we want to build. We believe ourselves to be a noble people delivering modernity to the planet, yet when you actually look at our interactions with anyone who isnt our ally, our actions more closely resemble the warring tribes of humanitys distant past than our technologically advanced present. Jacob Weindling is a staff writer for Paste politics. Follow him on Twitter at @Jakeweindling. Android P is still in super-duper developer-only beta mode , but you only need to look at an iPhone X to see what your Pixel phone will look like once the new models land later this summer. Okay, I kid, but theres no denying that Google has taken at least some inspiration from Apples thousand-dollar flagship phone. First theres the support for cutout displays, better known as The Notch. One of Android Ps premier features will be proper support for cameras that jut into the screen, so apps, videos, and status bars can display properly. That was to be expected. After Essential Phone kicked off the notched aesthetic (even before the iPhone X landed), more than a few Android phones have jumped on the bandwagon, and its clear that many new phones will adopt the look going forward. Google This screenshot from a Google blog post shows a new navigation bar, with a pill-shaped home button and no recents button. The pic has since been cropped to remove the navigation bar. But a new rumor takes the iPhone X influence even further. In a since-edited screenshot in blog post about DNS security improvements in Android P, Google posted an image of what seems to be a navigation bar rather than a button at the bottom of a Pixel screen, with a back arrow next to an elongated strip similar to Apples home indicator. There isnt much to go on beyond that, but Stephen Hall at 9to5Google confirms that Google is indeed developing a new iPhone X-style gesture-based navigation bar design complete with a new pill-shaped button and refined layout that dumps the long-standing square recents button for a swipe-up gesture. This move is decidedly less expected. When Apple added its virtual navigation bar as part of the iPhone Xs iOS makeover, it was because it lost the home button, which had been affixed to the space below the screen since the beginning. A new navigation method was necessary since the old one was gone, and Apple clearly put a lot of thought into developing a system that was new yet familiar. But most Android phones lost their home buttons years ago, relying instead on a virtual array of three buttonsback, home, and recentsthat created a sense of unity across all Android phones. Even handsets with a physical home button were still flanked by back and recent keys. It was one of the few constants in Android, and I always assumed Google didnt mess with it because introducing a new method would make things too difficult for its handset partners. The Nexus and Pixel phones simply followed suit. I never had an problem with Androids navigation, but after using the iPhone X, its clear that theres a better way. Apples gesture-based navigation is simple, intuitive, and delightful, and it makes Android phones seem stale by comparison. Implementing a similar method with the Pixel 3 will make certainly Googles phone easier to navigate and feel more modern, but I cant help but wonder why Google is implement this change now rather than a year ago when the Pixel launched. And the only answer I can come up with is that Google has simply lost the ability to innovate. Stalled innovation If you look at the last few Android releases, youll find few, if any unique features. Nougats multi window and Oreos picture in picture were already popular features on Samsung phones. Rich replies within notifications first appeared in iOS 8. And as we know, Android Ps notch support was refined on the iPhone X. Jason Cross/IDG The next Pixel phone will reportedly have an iPhone X-like home bar rather than a virtual button. The same goes for the Pixel. While its hard to deny that Googles handset offers the best Android experience money can buy, it doesnt necessarily anything new to the table. The Pixel 2s premier feature, Active Edge, which lets you squeeze the sides of the phone to launch Google Assistant, debuted on the HTC U11 months before. The design is fine but nothing that you havent seen on the LG V30 or OnePlus 5T. The Pixel still doesnt have SD card support or wireless charging. And even Googles decision to remove the headphone jack was decidedly less bold after Apple did it first. Thats a shame. There was a time when Google was just as revolutionary and influential as Apple in the mobile space. The foundation of Android may have been inspired by the original iPhone, but Google took it to places Apple didnt, with smart gestures, tremendous customization, and deep integration with Googles apps and services. But as Android has gotten more dominant, Google has rested on its laurels, and now its seems as though its taken to flat-out copying the latest direction from Apple. Googles do-it-yourself AIY kits released last year are already a great way to learn the ins and outs of designing a smart home speaker powered by Google Assistant, but they always came with a caveat: You needed to bring your own Raspberry Pi to the party. But with an update available today, Google is giving you everything you need right in the box. Once again available in two flavors, Voice and Vision, Googles new kits are a one-stop solution for building the next-generation of AI devices, and include a Raspberry Pi Zero WH, micro USB connection cable, and pre-provisioned SD card. Each kit also comes with the appropriate hardware youll need to get your smart device up and running: Google Googles AIY Voice Kit includes everything you need to make a smart speaker. AIY Voice Speaker Voice bonnet Push button Mechanical hardware Button harness Google Googles AIY Vision Kit includes everything you need to make a smart camera. AIY Vision Raspberry Pi camera Vision bonnet Push button Electrical hardware Button harness Long flex cable As you might expect, the Voice Kit lets you build a voice-controlled AI speaker, while the Vision Kit allows you to make a camera the learns to recognize people and objects. Googles push with the new AIY kits is for kids and schools, with simpler documentation and STEM lesson plans, but adults will no doubt enjoy making the projects as well. Googles AIY kits are compatible with a new AIY companion Android app for wireless setup and configuration, and iOS and Chrome support are on the way. Google says the kits also work with standard monitor, keyboard and mouse setups. The new Voice AIY and Vision Kit AIY kits are available at Target for $50 and $90, respectively, with full retail availability rolling out soon. Why this matters: By its own admission, Google has shifted from being a search first company to an AI first company, so it makes sense that it would want to teach a generation of programmers all about Google Assistant. These new complete kits are an excellent way to do that, with a sharp focus on kids, schools, and STEM learning. Who knows, the next big breakthrough in AI could start with a kid playing around with one of these kits. Microsoft will take advantage of a feature Intel is enabling within the integrated graphics chips of its Core microprocessors, allowing a PC to be scanned for threats without monopolizing the CPU. Normally, your systems CPU scans the PCs memory for malware and other threats, taking up 20 percent or so of the PCs computing resources. Intel has now developed a feature called Accelerated Memory Scanning, part of what it calls Intel Threat Detection Technology, to use the GPU instead. That will drop CPU consumption to about 2 percent, Intel Platforms Security general manager Rick Echevarria (above) said in an evening briefing at the RSA Conference in San Francisco on Monday. So far only Microsoft has signed on to use the Threat Detection Technology, Echevarria said. The capability is live now, for 6th-, 7th- and 8th-generation Core chips that live within PCs that use Microsofts Windows Defender Advanced Threat Protection. But the technology is also being actively marketed to other anti-malware providers, other executives said. Those Intel executives declined to comment when asked how long it would take to integrate the technology in other solutions. The other piece of Intels Threat Detection Technology is what Intel calls Advanced Platform Telemetry, which combines machine learning with platform telemetry to better understand what threats are meaningful and need to be acted upon. That portion will be integrated within the Cisco Tetration platform for data centers. What this means to you: Right now, the only security vendor who has signed on to use this capability is Microsoft, which has integrated it within its Windows Defender ATP service for enterprises. But it sounds like a potentially smart move for consumer clients as well, especially for PCs with an integrated graphics core that might be sitting idle. (Lets hope that Windows recognizes when youre playing a game, and doesnt schedule a virus scan.) Health department outlines steps for Pfizer booster, third dose The Health Department of Northwest Michigan is putting together a checklist for residents to determine their eligibility for the single booster shot of Pfizer, or a third dose. Ever since New York City Ballets interim leadership team took over from Peter Martins, weve been curious whether theyd get a chance to try their hand at programming. (It was unclear how much Martins had done before he retired.) As it turns out, Martins left room for Justin Peck, Rebecca Krohn, Craig Hall and Jonathan Stafford to select two of the companys six commissions for the 2018-19 season. Their choicesKyle Abraham and Emma Portnerare surprising, and thrilling. Neither choreographer has made work on a large ballet company before, though Abraham created a duet with Wendy Whelan for her Restless Creature series, among his other commissions for companies like Alvin Ailey American Dance Theater and work for his own company. And though Portner has been a favorite in commercial circles for a few years now, the concert commissions have just recently started rolling in: This fall shell be collaborating with Lil Buck and Dev Hynesfor a full-length work for Hubbard Street Dance Chicago, and working with Anne Plamondon on a Fall for Dance North piece. There was a time when you could take an artist at their word when they said they were calling it quits, but nowadays the feeling of loss that comes with news of a band splitting is soon replaced by speculation as to when theyll reunite. That said, Freddie Murphy and Chiara Lee, the duo behind the enigmatic Italian cult act Father Murphy, seem determined to be taken at their word here. The top inside cover of Rising. A Requiem for Father Murphy an album so final there are two periods in the title reads Father Murphy 2001 2018, leaving little room for interpretation. The one way back now may be a resurrection, but Rising is a haunting farewell fully committed to its vision that ends the Father Murphy saga which has played out over a number of LPs, EPs and splits over the last 17 years. It is usually a cliche to describe a record as unlike any other youll hear this year, but such a statement is not only applicable to Rising, it is an appropriate frame of mind to get in before stepping into its candlelit world of ceremonial noise, natural texture and stark mysticism. The albums procession of 12 tracks assumes the configuration of a Catholic requiem. Its body is not that of a rock record or a religious ceremony, but a transubstantial state somewhere in between the two. The field recording nature of it at times mirrors the feeling of a radio drama, such as when the bleak resonating clang and chanting of the extended Sequence is followed by the crackling fire of Offertory. Rising is an album that you close your eyes and immediately see in three dimensions, and it is nearly impossible to think about anything else while absorbed in it. In Bill Callahans 2011 song Drover, the man in the song steps back and makes an observation about life on the American frontier. One thing about this wild, wild country, Callahan sings, his voice stern, deadpan, it takes a strong, strongit breaks a strong, strong mind. You can hear that interruption of the line as the drover changing his mind, revising his thoughts mid-sentence, or you can hear it as an attempt to say that both things are true. In other words, the very thing required by the wild country is the same thing most at risk. Regardless, he adds, Anything less makes me feel like Im wasting my time. When those lyrics finally surface in the new Netflix documentary Wild Wild Country, United States customs officials are tracking an Indian guru named Bhagwan Shree Rajneesh whos attempting to flee the country in a Learjet. Its 28 October 1985. His commune in Wasco County, Oregon, called Rajneeshpuram, is in disarray. Rajneesh is wanted for immigration fraud. Thousands of miles away in Germany, his former assistant Ma Anand Sheela and a group of estranged followers of the Bhagwan are arrested for attempted murder, a plot to assassinate a US attorney, and the largest bioterror attack in the history of the United States. On its own, Drover mystifies all over again the quintessential American individual, the lone cowboy whos more comfortable with and has more allegiance to his cattle than the people in the nearest town. He allies himself with the power of the creatures he drives. Man is tested by nature; man discovers himself, knows himself, through that crucible. Near the songs end, when the cattle turn on the drover, he shakes it off: I rose like a drover For I am, in the end, a drover A drover by trade And when my cattle turn on me I am a drover double-fold If all of that sounds archetypal to the point of being common, well, it is. What saves the lyrics and story of Drover are the songs structure and performance: the absence of drama in Callahans voice, the ebb and flow of the arrangement, and the creation of empty space filled by far-off brushes on a snare drum, handclaps, a sidewinder fiddle, a thunderhead of distorted guitar. This exchange between barrenness and sound creates the tragedy and emotion that the man in the song refuses to give up. Placed at the beginning of the final episode of the six that make up Wild Wild Country, Drover becomes the sound of the hammer of judgment coming down. For five-plus hours weve watched the Rajneeshees test the limits of what they can get away with, and now escape seems impossible. Its a powerful moment, and the more I think about it, the wider and more powerful it becomes. From one perspective, by mixing Drover underneath images of radar towers, immigration officers with machine guns, and the recollections of law enforcement officials, directors (and brothers) Maclain and Chapman Way show how natures formidable supremacy has been replaced today by the authority of the state. Law, not nature, will be the crucible faced by Rajneesh and his self-exiled followers. Thats how the sequence feels, even if the lyrics dont line up. The judgment of the state is in the relentless strumming of the guitar and the immovable force that is Callahans voice. Then again, take the lyrics at face value and the outcome is even more disturbing: Rajneesh, his loyal supporters, and his alienated followers in Germany are the cattle being rustled up by the feds who now sing the song. The state has conquered nature, risen above it. For I am, in the end, the state, and when my cattle turn on me, I am the state double-fold. On the other hand, at precisely the moment when Rajneesh is escorted off the Learjet, his shoulders covered by a tan overcoat, the Way brothers bring the song back in with a smack of percussion. As the guru peeks out of the plane, Callahan sings, I rose like a drover. It fits all of the stereotypes about the relationship between a guru and his followersthe cowboy and his mindless cattle, or the shepherd and his flockbut damn if it doesnt resonate. In the previous episode, weve seen how, betrayed and abandoned by Sheela and her cohort, the Bhagwan chooses to speak to his followers, called sannyasins, for the first time in four years, finally asserting the control he gave up so he could (perhaps) drive Rolls Royces around the commune. Tested, he becomes a guru double-fold. A third perspective on this sequence gets to the heart of the whole documentary, though, and judging by the Ways interview on AOL Build, they knew exactly what they were doing. Asked where the documentarys title comes from, Chapman Way names Callahans song and recites the chorus. It just felt so applicable to both Sheela and this guru who had these brilliant minds, he says, to come here and to see what happened in America to them. what happened in America to them. Im guessing that phrase still sounds foreboding even if you havent seen the miniseries. One of the many remarkable things about Wild Wild Country is how convincingly it argues, without ever saying a word about it, that frontiers still exist in the United States. They have little to do with untamed land anymore. The images of the rolling green ranch land purchased and brought back to life by the commune; the displaced and desolate nearby town of Antelope, with its diner and its church, literally taken over by the communethese certainly intensify the sense of a frontier. But the land itself is a distraction. Look at the footage from the 80s. Look into the eyes of the people in that footage, particularly Ma Anand Sheela. At times her furious determination to make Rajneeshpuram work embarrasses me. Have I ever wanted something so much? This is the frontier you can find in America anywhere a person or a group of people pursue their desire for freedom at any cost, and find their mirror images staring back at them in resistance. The Rajneeshees and the residents of Antelope may not be mirror images, but each is driven by fear, mistrust, and a belief in a freedom so absolute it becomes merely an ideal. In interviews, the Way brothers have noted, correctly, I think, that the two communities are cut from the same libertarian cloth. One group dresses entirely in red, pink, and orange, and the other in rural denim and middle-class modesty, but their ideologies are built around insular self-sufficiency, not fraternity and cooperation beyond their bounds. The familiar refrain you hear from both sides in the film that we just want to be left alone is another way of saying that we want to do things our way, and to hell with our neighbors, and to hell with whatever laws might tell us otherwise. This hard-headedness makes nearly everyone in the film unlikable, which is why its so hard to look away from them. The residents of Antelope interviewed for the documentary take advantage of their hindsight, but the shrill conservative outcries captured in 80s news station footage accumulate into a master class in xenophobia, Orientalism, and hysteria. Suspicious of outsiders, goaded by media coverage of the Jonestown Massacre in Guyana a few years prior, the prim conservatives in Antelope seem as much affected by their imaginations as they are by any hint of nefariousness on the part of the Rajneeshees. Still from S1:E23 P2 of Wild Wild Country (Netflix) Then again, it doesnt take long for the communes leaders to earn legitimate suspicion. Clearly they are driven by their own prejudicesSheela quickly goes from exhorting America as a land of opportunity to a dumping ground for hillbilliesand before you know it, theyve armed themselves. In a chilling and somehow ludicrous sequence, the Bhagwan finishes a speech. The camera follows him into a hallway and watches him disappear. Into the frame drift two magenta-clad sannyasin men who would look like Bee Gees if not for the rifles theyre carrying. Two hours in, weve watched these two incompatible groups progress from naive optimism and tepid acknowledgment of one another to a stiff frontier-thinking that sees a threat beyond every border. What strikes me, though, is how easily I sank into both sides ways of thinking, into that frontier-think and its pure intentionspure not as in innocent, but pure as in undiluted, unwavering. I could almost convince myself that buying a box of Uzis to defend ones free love and global peace commune does not send a contradictory message. I think there must be something to this untainted certainty of belief. Its fun to imagine ourselves as dictators, as gurus, as the Ma Anand Sheelas of the world who can justify any means with an end, an ethical orientation (or lack thereof) which allowed her to oversee the tainting of salad bars in the nearby town of The Dalles, which resulted in over 700 residents contracting salmonella poisoning. The frontiers that still exist in America are built on imagination and ideology, but that doesnt make them any less real. They are borderlines constructed with emotion and rhetoric, but eventually they manifest into claims on territory, roads barred by gates, and walls. Their passion is magnetic. Drover in Wild Wild Country is the sound of that intensity of desire, a force of ambition so strong that its demise can only be absolute. And here, in the film, thats what Drover brings to life: the inevitable destruction of the frontier dream. It reminds me of that American classic, Letters from an American Farmer, by J. Hector St. John de Crevecoeur, who wrote famously, What, then, is the American, this new man? We dont often speak about the end of the book, though, when the semi-fictional protagonist James is packing up and fleeing the frontier, a panicked darkness having descended upon him. I feel as if my reason wanted to leave me, he writes, as if it would burst its poor weak tenement; again, I try to compose myself, I grow cool, and preconceiving the dreadful loss, I endeavour to retain the useful guest. Though the town of Antelope regained its name, it became a ghost town. Rajneeshpuram was abandoned. And the title of the album Drover first appeared on in 2011? Apocalypse. You are the owner of this article. Get the SC business stories that matter. Our newsletter catches you up with all the business stories that are shaping Charleston and South Carolina every Monday and Thursday at noon. Get ahead with us - it's free. A statue of Dr. J. Marion Sims was moved out of Manhattan to the doctor's grave in Brooklyn this week. Sims is a controversial historical figure for the medical experiments he performed on enslaved women. File/Lauren Sausser/Staff Senior news clerk and staff writer Senior news clerk and staff writer Liz Foster joined The Post and Courier team in 2012 and, among other things, compiles events and writes the My Charleston Weekend column for Charleston Scene. Lee Correctional Institution in Bishopville, S.C., where seven inmates were killed and 17 other seriously injured in fights between prisoners. (AP Photo/Sean Rayford) Political Reporter Caitlin Byrd is a political reporter at The Post and Courier and author of the Palmetto Politics newsletter. Before moving to Charleston in 2016, her byline appeared in the Asheville Citizen-Times. To date, Byrd has won 17 awards for her work. BISHOPVILLE Gang-related disputes over territory and contraband likely sparked an hours-long melee that left seven inmates dead and 17 others seriously injured Sunday night at a maximum-security prison in South Carolina's Pee Dee region. The incident at Lee Correctional Institution is believed to be the deadliest episode of prison violence in South Carolina in recent history. It comes at a time when the state is struggling with security at its network of prisons even as the population of inmates has steadily gone down. Photos and eyewitness accounts that leaked out of Lee on Monday painted a gruesome scene of mass bloodshed, with bodies piling up inside the rural prison as officials with the S.C. Department of Corrections scrambled to assemble a team capable of safely retaking the prison from its shank-wielding inhabitants. It would take about seven hours before order was fully restored. Lee County Coroner Larry Logan was still waiting on autopsies but said most of the seven who died had been stabbed or slashed. Many were beaten as well. They were identified as Raymond Angelo Scott, Michael Milledge, Damonte Marquez Rivera, Eddie Casey Jay Gaskins, Joshua Svwin Jenkins, Corey Scott and Cornelius Quantral McClary. State officials were quick to point the finger at the proliferation of cellphones within the prisons and the inmates who use them to carry out a host of criminal schemes. Contraband is big business in the correctional system, and there's money to be made by the gangs who can smuggle it in money and territory worth fighting for. Corrections Director Bryan Stirling said officials believe "this was all about territory, all about contraband and cellphones." Gov. Henry McMaster said the incident was tragic but not surprising given the types of offenders locked up inside a prison such as Lee. The prison houses about 1,500 inmates, including some of South Carolina's most violent and longest-serving offenders. "We know prisons are places where people who have misbehaved on the outside go for rehabilitation and also to take them from the general population," he said. "It's not a surprise when we have violent events take place inside the prison any prison in this country." Still, prison violence has spiked in recent months around the state as corrections officials have struggled to fill vacancies among those who keep the peace. In 2017, the prison system recorded its deadliest year in more than a decade, with 12 homicides involving inmates, according to corrections figures. With Sunday's killings, the death toll for this year is already at nine. Lee has had other violence as well, including inmate-on-inmate killings that occurred in November and February. Last month, a correctional officer at Lee received minor injuries when he was overpowered by inmates who held him hostage for about 90 minutes before surrendering, according to prison news releases. Fighting erupts Sunday's problems began when fighting broke out in one of the prison's housing units around 7:15 p.m. A tactical response team was summoned from around the state, Stirling said. A little more than an hour later, more fights broke out in two other housing units, prompting more officer teams followed by State Law Enforcement Division agents to be called in, he said. Officers entered the first dorm around 11:30 p.m. and restored control, Stirling said. The second dorm was taken back about an hour later. Officers restored order to the final unit after 2 a.m., he said. A video believed to be posted by an inmate on Facebook showed long swirls of blood streaked across the dorm's concrete floor and an inmate lying prone and lifeless on the ground. Photos obtained by The Post and Courier showed the bodies of at least four men piled near a chain link fence. One clearly had his throat slashed. Another seemed to have suffered a severe blow to the head. At an afternoon news conference, Stirling was questioned about reports officers stood by for a considerable time before moving to help the wounded. Stirling said officers moved in just as soon as it was safe for them to do so. "Were not just gonna send one or two officers in there," he said. "We gathered as many people as we could as quickly as we could." No officers were wounded but 17 injured inmates required medical attention outside the prison, officials said. Lee County Fire/Rescue said ambulances from multiple jurisdictions lined up outside to tend to the wounded. Corrections did not provide an update of their medical status by Monday night. Some family members showed up outside the gate hoping to learn more about what happened and if their loved ones were among the wounded. Most left empty-handed. "We're on pins and needles," Shawana Johnson, whose brother Isaac Wright, 31, is in the Lee County prison. "I'm scared because I don't know what is going on. I just hope he isn't one of them." Another woman, who came to check on her son, left after officials handed her a phone number and told her to check back later. "The runaround," she said. A powder keg Rep. Mike Pitts, R-Laurens, has warned of escalating violence. He attributes it to sentencing reform that put mostly violent felons behind the razor wire, coupled with an inability to fill prison staff vacancies. "Prisons are becoming more and more dangerous just like I said they would two years ago," Pitts, a retired law enforcement officer, told The Post and Courier. "We've concentrated the worst of the worst,"he added. "At the same time, we have not been able to keep pace with the correctional officers we need. That puts a lot of stress on officers there and forces a lot of overtime on them." Former Corrections Director Jon Ozmint said sentencing reform meant fewer nonviolent inmates in the population to serve as a moderating influence. What's left are hard-core, violent offenders who often have little hope for release and little chance at rehabilitation, he said. There are no real consequences for these guys because most of them are going to lose their whole lives to prison anyway, he said. Its not unpredictable that hopeless men who were gang-bangers on the street are going to behave violently when they have nothing to lose and no incentive to behave. Stirling said six officers were working in the three dorms when the fights broke out. That left two officers per 250 to 260 inmates. Many of the officers had already worked 12 hours. Ozmint, who served as corrections director when Mark Sanford was governor, said Sundays violence had the appearance of a spontaneous fight rather than a planned and coordinated event by inmates. All three units probably would have erupted at once in a coordinated scenario, and inmates would have known better than to stage an uprising at a shift-change when double the personnel were on hand, he said. Normally, if they were planning something they know when you are thin, and thats when theyre going to do it, he said. It looks more to me like a single dorm fight that spiraled out of control. An inmate who witnessed the fighting said he saw bodies stacked up on each other and correctional officers did nothing to stop the violence or check on the injured. He said most of the inmates are affiliated with gangs, and several attackers taunted a rival gang member who was hurt. Stirling said the officers acted appropriately. "They're trained that, if they can stop it, to stop it. Remember, theyre outnumbered," he said. "Theyre trained to back out of that dorm and call for support, and thats exactly what they did." Cellphone scourge McMaster said the violence shows why cellphone signals need to be blocked in prisons. That requires federal approval. Stirling has unsuccessfully sought permission for years to do so. In this case, authorities believe gang members used cellphones to relay information between the separate dorms since the fights broke out so close together, though they have no specifics yet, Stirling said. Sen. Katrina Shealy, who sits on a Statehouse committee that oversees prisons, said she's been told the fights were gang retaliation over a stabbing a couple of weeks ago. While fights will occur in prisons "we make it a whole lot worse by allowing continued use and not just jamming it up and stopping it," said Shealy, R-Lexington. "That's the very reason we want to get rid of cellphones, so they cant communicate with each other." House Minority Leader Todd Rutherford, D-Columbia, said prison staff should immediately begin monitoring inmates' cellphone conversations and text messages. He advocated for bipartisan legislation introduced last month that would further reduce prison populations, which he says will allow for better oversight of who's left. None of the lawmakers faulted Stirling for the violence. The Post and Courier reported in 2016 that South Carolina prisons continue to grapple with low morale and staffing shortages, a volatile combination sometimes yielding deadly results. Former correctional officers said low pay, long hours and poor management all contributed to low retention rates among prison staff. After several years of pay bumps, starting salaries are between $31,260 in minimum-security prisons and $35,700 for officers keeping maximum-security inmates in line. Stirling noted that's much better than the $27,000 starting pay when he took the helm in 2013. Still, that helps explain why more than 600 prison officer positions were vacant as of February; legislators' budget proposals for the upcoming fiscal year would boost their salaries by $750 to $1,000. That remains far short of what it will take to entice people to work in prisons, Pitts said. He leads the House budget panel that oversees state law enforcement agencies and has repeatedly pushed for higher pay. "If you're going to require people to be behind the wire with prisoners, unarmed and outnumbered 100-to-1, you're going to have to pay them a lot of money," he said. A sampling of violence at South Carolina prisons The mass fighting that killed seven inmates at Lee Correctional Institution is believed to be the deadliest episode at a South Carolina prison Stirling told legislators last April that a single officer sometimes must monitor more than 200 inmates, depending on the prison and shift. State prisons are nowhere close to the national standard of four officers for every 30 inmates, he said. Mounting lawsuits The states prison agency has been hit with several lawsuits this year describing a long history of violence at many prisons, including Lee, Ridgeland, Perry, McCormick, Evans and Broad River. The lawsuits, filed by Georgetown lawyer Ed Bell on inmates' behalf, allege violence is sometimes encouraged by correctional officers. The lawsuits claim the state fails to employ enough officers and does not enforce its own policies and procedures, partly because the officers who are hired aren't adequately trained. The shortcomings result in inmates being seriously injured, the lawsuits state. A lack of supervision is a consistent theme in the lawsuits. One inmate describes being stabbed in the arm last July inside Perry Correctional in Greenville County. A month later at the same prison, six inmates with towels wrapped around their faces entered an inmate's room and demanded a cellphone, then beat and stabbed him. According to the lawsuits, not a single officer was around at the time of those attacks. Rep. Justin Bamberg, D-Bamberg, represents the family of Allen Capers, who was fatally stabbed in January at the Turbeville state prison in Clarendon County. At the time, a single officer was tasked with overseeing both sides of a dorm with more than 200 inmates. Another inmate used his cellphone to video Capers bleeding to death before anyone came to his aid, said Bamberg, who plans to file a lawsuit. No one should be surprised by what happened Sunday night, he said. "They don't have the manpower. ... A fight is going to happen but what happens in those first few minutes" determines whether it's stopped or, as in Sunday's case, seven people get killed, Bamberg said. While many people dismiss the violence as inmate on inmate, Bamberg said "going into SCDC shouldn't be a death sentence." "People are dying man. Theyre still people with families. Some of these men have kids. They still have people who love them," he said. "Some have done horrible things, but theyre paying the price for that." Andrew Knapp, Michael Majchrowicz and The Associated Press contributed to this report. Syndicated and guest columns represent the personal views of the writers, not necessarily those of the editorial staff. The editorial department operates entirely independently of the news department and is not involved in newsroom operations. Editorials represent the institutional view of the newspaper. They are written and edited by the editorial staff, which operates separately from the news department. Editorial writers are not involved in newsroom operations. Political Editor Schuyler Kropf is The Post and Courier political editor. He has covered every major political race in South Carolina dating to 1988, including for U.S. Senate, governorship, the Statehouse and Republican and Democratic presidential primaries. Columbia/Myrtle Beach Managing Editor Andy Shain runs The Post and Courier's newsrooms based in Columbia and Myrtle Beach. He was editor of Free Times and has been a reporter and editor for newspapers in Charlotte, Columbia and Myrtle Beach. Jamie Lovegrove is a political reporter covering the South Carolina Statehouse, congressional delegation and campaigns. He previously covered Texas politics in Washington for The Dallas Morning News and in Austin for the Texas Tribune. PR-Inside.com: 2018-04-17 17:55:02 COPENHAGEN, Denmark, April 17, 2018 - Bavarian Nordic A/S (OMX: BAVA, OTC: BVNRY) today held the Annual General Meeting with the results as follows: The Annual Report for 2017 was adopted. The Board of Directors' proposal to transfer the Company's result to next year was also adopted. The General Meeting adopted a resolution to discharge the Board of Directors and the Board of Management from their obligations. The proposal to increase and extend the Board of Directors' authorization to increase the share capital of the Company was adopted. The proposal to increase and extend the Board of Directors' authorization for issuing warrants was adopted. The proposed revised guidelines for incentive remuneration of the Board of Directors and the Executive Management were approved. The proposed remuneration of the Board of Directors and the Board Committees for the current financial year by payment of a fixed base fee in cash and grant of restricted stock units was approved. The proposal to amend Article 8 of the Articles of Association due to change of address of the Company's register of shareholders was adopted. The proposal to authorize the Board of Directors on behalf of the Company to repurchase own shares in the Company was adopted. Gerard van Odijk, Anders Gersel Pedersen, Erik G. Hansen, Peter Kurstein, Frank Verwiel and Elizabeth McKee Anderson were re-elected to the Board of Directors. Claus Brstrup did not seek re-election. The Board of Directors constituted itself with Gerard van Odijk as Chairman and Anders Gersel Pedersen as Deputy Chairman. Deloitte Statsautoriseret Revisionspartnerselskab was re-elected as auditors. About Bavarian Nordic Bavarian Nordic is a fully integrated biotechnology company focused on the development of innovative and safe therapies against cancer and infectious diseases. Using our live virus vaccine platform technology, MVA-BN, we have created a diverse portfolio of proprietary and partnered product candidates intended to improve the health and quality of life for children and adults. We supply our IMVAMUNE non-replicating smallpox vaccine to the U.S. Strategic National Stockpile and other government stockpiles. The vaccine is approved in the European Union (under the trade name IMVANEX) and in Canada. Registration studies are currently underway in the U.S. In addition to our long-standing collaboration with the U.S. government on the development of IMVAMUNE and other medical countermeasures, our infectious disease pipeline comprises a proprietary RSV program as well as vaccine candidates for Ebola, HPV, HBV and HIV, which are developed through a strategic partnership with Janssen. Additionally, in collaboration with the National Cancer Institute, we have developed a portfolio of active cancer immunotherapies, designed to alter the disease course by eliciting a robust and broad anti-cancer immune response while maintaining a favorable risk-benefit profile. Through multiple industry collaborations, we seek to explore the potential synergies of combining our immunotherapies with other immune-modulating agents, e.g. checkpoint inhibitors. For more information visit www.bavarian-nordic.com or follow us on Twitter @bavariannordic. Contacts Rolf Sass Srensen Vice President Investor Relations (EU) Tel: +45 61 77 47 43 Seth Lewis Vice President Investor Relations (US) Tel: +1 978 341 5271 Company Announcement no. 11 / 2018 This announcement is distributed by Nasdaq Corporate Solutions on behalf of Nasdaq Corporate Solutions clients. The issuer of this announcement warrants that they are solely responsible for the content, accuracy and originality of the information contained therein. Source: Bavarian Nordic A/S via Globenewswire Blood Transfusion Diagnostics Market: Global Market Estimation, Dynamics, Regional Share, Trends, Competitor Analysis 2013 to 2017 and Forecast 2018 to 2024 Blood Transfusion Diagnostics Market PR-Inside.com: 2018-04-17 07:27:24 Press Information Precision Business Insights Kemp House, 152 160 City Road, London EC1V 2NX satya Lead-Market +1-866-598-1553 email https://www.precisionbusinessinsights.com # 899 Words Kemp House,152 160 City Road,London EC1V 2NXLead-Market+1-866-598-1553 Global Blood Transfusion Diagnostics Market: By Technology (ELISA, Nucleic Acid Amplification, Rapid Test, Real-Time PCR, Fluorescence Assay, and Western Blot), By Product type (Platelets, Red Blood Cells, and Albumin), By Application (Disease Screening, Blood Grouping, Others), By End User (Hospitals, Blood Banks, Diagnostic Laboratories), and Geography Market Estimation, Dynamics, Regional Share, Trends, Competitor Analysis 2013-2017 and Forecast 2018-2024Global blood transfusion diagnostics market was valued at US $ XX Mn in 2017 and expected to grow at 7.0% Compound Annual Growth Rate (CAGR) over 2018 to 2024Market Outline: Blood Transfusion Diagnostics MarketBlood transfusion is a medical procedure in which the blood is donated to the patient through a narrow tube that is placed within the vein. The blood transfusion is a life-saving procedure which helps in replacing the blood loss during surgery or injury. The transfusion process is done even if the patients body is not capable of make blood owing to illness. With blood transfusion process, blood products like red blood cells, white blood cells, platelets and others are transfused to the patient. The blood transfusion diagnostics play a vital role in the blood transfusion which reduces the chance of infection.Market Dynamics: Blood Transfusion Diagnostics MarketThe development in the technology is a key factor attributing to the growth of the blood transfusion diagnostics market. The growing blood transfusion procedures and increasing prevalence of infectious diseases are anticipated to drive the growth of the market. Increase in the awareness among the healthcare fraternity regarding the blood transfusion is likely to propel the growth of the market. The automation of the blood banks are adding fuel for the growth of the blood transfusion diagnostics market. However, the risk involved in the transmission of the infectious diseases is likely to hinder the growth of the blood transfusion diagnostics market.A sample of this report is available upon request @Market Scope: Blood Transfusion Diagnostics MarketBlood transfusion diagnostics market is segmented based on the technology, product type, and end-user.Based on the technology, the market is segmented into the following: ELISA Nucleic Acid Amplification Rapid Test Real-Time PCR Fluorescence Assay Western BlotBased on the product type, the market is segmented into the following: Platelets Red Blood Cells AlbuminBased on the application, the market is segmented into the following: Disease Screening Blood Grouping OthersBased on the end user, the market is segmented into the following: Hospitals Blood Banks Diagnostic LaboratoriesRegional Analysis: Blood Transfusion Diagnostics MarketGeographically, global blood transfusion diagnostics market is segmented into North America, Europe, Asia Pacific, Latin America, and Middle East and Africa. North America blood transfusion diagnostics market is growing due to increase in the prevalence of blood related disorders. The higher awareness among the patient pool is likely to enhance the growth of the market in this region. The growing adoption of the nucleic acid amplification in the diagnosis of the blood and blood products is enriching the growth of the blood transfusion diagnostics market. The increasing adoption of the advanced treatment procedures is adding fuel for the growth of the market in this region. The Europe and the Asia Pacific regions fall next to that of the North America. The Asia Pacific market is expected to be the fastest growing market over the forecast period owing to its presence of large number of patient pool.To view TOC of this report is available upon request @Competition Assessment: Blood Transfusion Diagnostics MarketSome of the players in the global blood transfusion diagnostics market include: Abbott Diagnostics (U.S) Novartis AG (Switzerland) Becton Dickinson (U.S) BAG healthcare (Germany) DiaSorin (Italy) Fujirebio (Belgium) Grifols (Spain) Siemens (Germany) Quidel (U.S) Hologic/Gen-Probe (U.S) Biokit (Spain) Bio-Rad (U.S) Beckman Coulter (U.S) Quotient Limited (U.S) Diagast (France)Notable Market Developments: Blood Transfusion Diagnostics Market In June 2017, Grifols has launched Erytra Eflexis, the latest advancement in scalable blood typing solutions which can adapt to different laboratory workflowNeed more information about this report @Key Features of the Report: The report covers exhaustive regional information, that includes North America (the USA and Canada), Europe (Germany, France, Italy, UK, Spain, Russia, Poland and Rest of Europe), Asia-Pacific (Japan, China, India, Australia & New Zealand, ASEAN (Includes Indonesia, Thailand, Vietnam, Philippines, Malaysia, and Others), South Korea, and Rest of Asia-Pacific), Latin America (Brazil, Mexico, Argentian, Venezula, and Rest of Latin America), and Middle East and Africa (Gulf Cooperation Council (GCC) Countries, Israel, South Africa, and Rest of Middle East and Africa) The report provides granular level information about the market size, regional market share, historic market (2013-2017) and forecast (2018-2024) 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 a plethora of information about market entry strategies, regulatory framework and reimbursement scenario The report analyses the impact of the 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 @ PR-Inside.com: 2018-04-17 08:25:38 FSCwire / Press ReleaseThe following press release was disseminated by FSCwire for SolGold plc--- --- --- --- --- --- --- --- --- --- --- --- --- --- --- --- --- --- --- --- --- --- --- --- --- --- --- --- ---Bishopsgate, London (FSCWire) - SolGold plc (TSX:SOLG). has issued a press release with the following headline:Cascabel Exploration UpdateTo 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 SolGold plc, 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/SolGold plcSource: SolGold plc (TSX: SOLG, AIM: SOLG, OTC Pink: SLGGF)Date: April 17, 2018Time: 2:25 AM EDT--- --- --- --- --- --- --- --- --- --- --- --- --- --- --- --- --- --- --- --- --- --- --- --- --- --- --- --- ---The story mentioned above was issued on behalf of SolGold plc 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.) PR-Inside.com: 2018-04-17 12:00:15 FSCwire / Press ReleaseThe following press release was disseminated by FSCwire for Silver Pursuit Resources Ltd.--- --- --- --- --- --- --- --- --- --- --- --- --- --- --- --- --- --- --- --- --- --- --- --- --- --- --- --- ---Vancouver, British Columbia (FSCWire) - Silver Pursuit Resources Ltd. (TSX Venture:SPF). has issued a press release with the following headline:Grant of Options and Appointment of Investor RelationsTo 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 Silver Pursuit Resources Ltd., 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/Silver Pursuit Resources Ltd.Source: Silver Pursuit Resources Ltd. (TSX Venture: SPF, ISIN: CA82808R2019, WKN: A1W9J6)Date: April 17, 2018Time: 6:00 AM EDT--- --- --- --- --- --- --- --- --- --- --- --- --- --- --- --- --- --- --- --- --- --- --- --- --- --- --- --- ---The story mentioned above was issued on behalf of Silver Pursuit Resources Ltd. 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.) PR-Inside.com: 2018-04-17 23:00:16 FSCwire / Press ReleaseThe following press release was disseminated by FSCwire for Gray Rock Resources Ltd.--- --- --- --- --- --- --- --- --- --- --- --- --- --- --- --- --- --- --- --- --- --- --- --- --- --- --- --- ---Vancouver, British Columbia (FSCWire) - Gray Rock Resources Ltd. (TSX Venture:GRK). has issued a press release with the following headline:Gray Rock Terminates Acquisition of the Surprise Lake PropertiesTo 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 Gray Rock Resources Ltd., 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/Gray Rock Resources Ltd.Source: Gray Rock Resources Ltd. (TSX Venture: GRK)Date: April 17, 2018Time: 5:00 PM EDT--- --- --- --- --- --- --- --- --- --- --- --- --- --- --- --- --- --- --- --- --- --- --- --- --- --- --- --- ---The story mentioned above was issued on behalf of Gray Rock Resources Ltd. 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.) PR-Inside.com: 2018-04-17 08:05:03 AMSTERDAM, The Netherlands, April 17, 2018 (GLOBE NEWSWIRE) -- The 4th IBFD Africa Tax Symposium draws together tax professionals from industry, practice, government, civil society and the judiciary to explore important developments in international taxation affecting Africa. This year's symposium will be held from 9-11 May at the Sarova Whitesands Beach Resort in Mombasa, Kenya. In just three years, the IBFD Africa Tax Symposium has become Africa's key tax event. An annual initiative of the autonomous think tank the IBFD Centre for Studies in African Taxation (CSAT), the Africa Tax Symposium offers a platform for ongoing discussion about international tax developments and issues as they relate to Africa. The key topics at this year's symposium will include the impact of the Multilateral Instrument on bilateral tax treaties; the challenges of the digital economy in an African taxation context; transfer pricing and indirect tax challenges in Africa; and global exchange of information and tax transparency in the post-BEPS era. The symposium will be conducted in English, and simultaneous translation into French will be provided. "Of all of the events around the world focusing on recent developments in international taxation, there are very few that explore these developments within an African taxation context, and that is what makes this event very unique," states Belema Obuoforibo, Director of the IBFD Knowledge Centre. "The Africa Tax Symposium is one important way IBFD works to realize its goals of building tax expertise in the region by discussing well-researched opinions and exploring practical solutions that work within an African context. We are looking forward to welcoming tax professionals from throughout Africa and around the world." The symposium has quickly filled again, with limited places available before the closing date of 23 April. To register and learn more about the topics, speakers and programme, please visit the IBFD website. Supported by: AITA (Africa Industry Tax Association) Commonwealth Association of Tax Administrators West African Tax Administration Forum International Fiscal Association South Africa Contact information: Sorrel Hidding, Head of Marketing: +31 (0)61-332 5049 or s.hidding@ibfd.org. About IBFD IBFD is a leading international provider of cross-border tax expertise, with a long-standing history of supporting and contributing to tax research and academic activities. As an independent foundation, IBFD utilizes its global network of tax experts and its Knowledge Centre to serve Fortune 500 companies, governments, international consultancy firms and tax advisors. Headquartered in Amsterdam, IBFD has regional offices in Beijing, Washington and Kuala Lumpur. IBFD's Library and Information Centre is widely regarded as the world's leading research facility in the field of international and comparative taxation. Renowned as the leading expertise portal in the field of cross-border taxation and legislation, IBFD's powerful Tax Research Platform allows tax practitioners around the world to access a wealth of reliable and valuable content, enabling faster and more effective work. IBFD's complete coverage further includes courses, journals and books, and a Master's in International Tax Law (in collaboration with the University of Amsterdam). IBFD also offers government consultancy and individual client research services. About CSAT The Centre for Studies in African Taxation (CSAT) is an integral part of IBFD, an independent non-profit foundation. Consequently, CSAT is fully autonomous. CSAT's objectives are to study and provide well-researched opinions on taxation in Africa, encourage research by Africans for Africa and find practical solutions that work within an African context. These objectives serve CSAT's goal to improve Africa's capacity to collect the tax revenue needed to fund development programmes, run essential services and achieve sustainable economic growth. This goal is in support of the United Nations Sustainable Development Goals 2015, particularly Goal 17: "Revitalize the global partnership for sustainable development". This announcement is distributed by Nasdaq Corporate Solutions on behalf of Nasdaq Corporate Solutions clients. The issuer of this announcement warrants that they are solely responsible for the content, accuracy and originality of the information contained therein. Source: IBFD via Globenewswire PR-Inside.com: 2018-04-17 09:05:01 New software offering full mobility speeds up document creation process Philips Introduces New SpeechExec Enterprise Dictation and Transcription Software Speech Processing Solutions Lea Pachta lea.pachta@speech.com Tel: +43 160529-1744 www.philips.com/dictation Speech Processing Solutions, the world number one in professional dictation, announced their latest speech-to-text software Philips SpeechExec Enterprise. The new sophisticated workflow management software allows busy healthcare, legal and business professionals to streamline their document creation process and significantly reduce their workload. This press release features multimedia. View the full release here: https://www.businesswire.com/news/home/20180417005 Philips SpeechExec Enterprise Smarter communication and convenient central administration The dictation and transcription software facilitates communication by linking authors and transcriptionists. Whether the user works in a hospital, or a legal practice, the software is ideal for turning their voice into text quicker, and more efficiently than ever before. Dr. Thomas Brauner, CEO of Speech Processing Solutions explains: Philips SpeechExec Enterprise is perfect for larger organizations with multiple authors and transcriptionists, as it can easily be centrally administrated and maintained. All workflow settings, as well as the hardware input devices, can be centrally administrated and configured. The solution is also Microsoft Remote Desktop Services (RDS), Citrix and VMware ready, making the installation process easier and more convenient for both users and IT administrators. Full mobility for increased productivity The new version of Philips SpeechExec Enterprise offers full mobility, meaning recordings can created anywhere and sent for transcription immediately. Even if the user is out of the office, they can download the brand-new Philips Voice Recorder App to their smartphone and send their recordings directly to their assigned transcriptionists. Geared for on the go speech recognition The software now even works seamlessly with Philips SpeechLive transcription and speech recognition service, allowing users to receive their transcribed files directly to their smartphone or Philips SpeechAir Voice Recorder. Another new mobility enhancing feature is that dictations can now even be accessed through a web browser. This can be particularly useful when an individual wants to use their solution on a business trip, without access to their standard computer. Secure file transfer Real-time file encryption (256 bit), password protection and secure file transfer grant only authorized individuals to access documents. The optional automatic backup function protects data against accidental loss. Dr. Brauner explains: We know exactly how important security is to our customers working with sensitive data, such as patient records or legal cases. This is why our software adheres to the highest of security standards and we now even offer support for your private cloud environment. To find out more about the new software, visit: www.philips.com/dictation Download the Philips Voice Recorder App now: https://www.dictation.philips.com/products/mobile- About Speech Processing Solutions Speech Processing Solutions is the global number one in professional dictation solutions. Founded in Austria in 1954 as part of Philips, the company has been the driving force behind innovative speech-to-text solutions for over 60 years. The company has developed ground-breaking products, such as the mobile Philips SpeechAir device, the Philips PocketMemo voice recorder, the Philips SpeechMike Premium USB dictation [..] and the Philips voice recorder app for smartphones, thus delivering its promise of excellence and outstanding quality. Thanks to the latest innovation, Philips SpeechLive, designed as a cloud-based workflow solution, recording dictations is quicker and easier than ever. The tailored range of products and services offered by Speech Processing Solutions helps professional users to save time and resources and to work at maximum efficiency. Follow Speech Processing Solutions: Facebook: http://www.facebook.com/philipsvoicetracer Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/philips_dictation/ Twitter @speech_com: http://www.twitter.com/speech_com YouTube: http://www.youtube.com/philipsdictation LinkedIn: http://www.linkedin.com/company/speech-processi View source version on businesswire.com: https://www.businesswire.com/news/home/20180417005 PR-Inside.com: 2018-04-17 08:04:01 LONDON, April 17, 2018 (GLOBE NEWSWIRE) -- Earlier this year, NatWest partnered with Sensibill, a receipt management solution provider, to offer "Receipts" to all small business customers using the NatWest app. The free solution was rolled out to iOS users in January 2018, and is now available for Android users as well. Sensibill's "Receipts" tool will allow customers to capture their receipts using their smartphone camera, or email them to the app directly. It will allow users to track their spending and categorise expenses for HMRC, reconcile their receipts with statements, and export them for invoicing or accounting purposes - solving pain points that plague small business owners. The feature allows small business owners to better understand their outgoings, and simplifies their expense management and tax-filing processes, allowing them to get on with running their business. In order to deliver best-in-class innovation for their customers, NatWest will continue to seek out new ways of responding to changing customer demand, to improve and complement its digital offerings. NatWest will strive to secure the very best innovation and provide a full suite of business capabilities within their app and online banking services, to suit the evolving needs of customers. "No bank can expect to thrive without listening to the evolving needs of customers, and by partnering with Sensibill, we're offering proactive help and best-in-class innovation for free - allowing small businesses to spend less time on admin, and more time on what they do best," said Marcelino Castrillo, Managing Director of Business & Premier Banking at NatWest. Sensibill announced the opening of a UK office earlier this week, a show of commitment to the success of their partnership with NatWest. The office is based in London and will be the headquarters for Sensibill's European Operations. "Open Banking is changing the competitive climate in European banking, and innovative solutions that engage the customer, like Sensibill's receipt management technology, will help banks like NatWest differentiate themselves. We've been thrilled with the feedback so far, and look forward to strengthening our relationship with NatWest through our growing team here in London," said Robert Fillmore, Sensibill's General Manager of EMEA. About Sensibill Sensibill works with the most innovative global financial institutions to solve their customers' pain point of managing receipts. The solution is designed to meet the needs of self-employed professionals and business owners, enabling banks to better engage and capture a growing market. Since 2013, the company has been committed to building a tool that makes capturing, organizing, and retrieving receipts as efficient as possible, while unlocking deep purchase insights across all payment methods. The AI-powered service is the market leader in extracting data from receipts and is fully white-labeled, built to satisfy all bank requirements. About NatWest NatWest serves customers in England, Wales and Western Europe, supporting them with their personal, private, and business banking needs. NatWest helps customers from opening student accounts, to buying their first home, setting up a business, and saving for retirement. Alongside a wide range of banking services, NatWest offers businesses specialist sector knowledge in areas such as manufacturing and technology, as well as access to specialist entrepreneurial support. Media Contact: Roxanne Voidonicolas Content Strategist at Sensibill 647-286-5625 This announcement is distributed by Nasdaq Corporate Solutions on behalf of Nasdaq Corporate Solutions clients. The issuer of this announcement warrants that they are solely responsible for the content, accuracy and originality of the information contained therein. Source: Sensibill via Globenewswire PR-Inside.com: 2018-04-17 09:12:04 VANCOUVER, British Columbia, April 17, 2018 (GLOBE NEWSWIRE) -- Stamper Oil & Gas Corp. (TSX-V:STMP) (FSE:TMP2) (OTCQB:STMGF) ("Stamper" or "the Company"), is pleased to further provide the summary of gross reserves and parameters of well Rawat C-10 that was drilled early this year. Rawat C-10 well is light and medium oil and was drilled to an interval of between 1387.0 - 1526 meters in the Galhak (1) (Table 1) and 1552.0 m - 1595.0 meters in Galhak Sand (Table 2). Log analysis shows pay in three of the known reservoir zones of the Galhak Formation, as well as a new pay zone in the main Galhak Sand. The initial plan is to further test, and complete Well Rawat C-10 inclusive of developing necessary infrastructure for oil production. Table 1 Summary of Gross Reserves and Reservoir Parameters Probable Developed Rawat C-10 Galhak (1) Product Type: Light and Medium Oil Reservoir Parameters Reservoir Pressure, psia 2,150 Reservoir Temperature, degree F 188 Average Porosity, % 24.0 Average Water Saturation, % 30.0 Formation Volume Factor, RB/STB 1.063 Petroleum Initially-in-Place, STB/ac.ft 1226.1 Recovery Factor, % 25 Reserves Net pay, ft. 49.0 Area, acres 160 Petroleum Initially-in-Place, STB 9,612,624 Estimated Ultimate Recovery (EUR), STB 2,403,156 Cumulative Production, STB 0 Reserves, STB 2,403,156 Note: (1) Interval 1387.0 - 1526.0 meters Table 2 Summary of Gross Reserves and Reservoir Parameters Probable Developed Rawat C-10 Galhak (Sand) Product Type: Light and Medium Oil Reservoir Parameters Reservoir Pressure, psia 2,150 Reservoir Temperature, degree F 188 Average Porosity, % 22.0 Average Water Saturation, % 31.0 Formation Volume Factor, RB/STB 1.063 Petroleum Initially-in-Place, STB/ac.ft 1107.9 Recovery Factor, % 25 Reserves Net pay, ft. 88.0 Area, acres 160 Petroleum Initially-in-Place, STB 15,599,323 Estimated Ultimate Recovery (EUR), STB 3,899,808 Cumulative Production, STB 0 Reserves, STB 3,899,808 Note: (1) Interval 1552.0 - 1595.0 meters As previously announced, State Oil Corporation ("State") may farm-in up to a 50% interest pursuant to the Memorandum of Understanding ("MOU") with the Sudan operator on Block 25. State has an office and technical personnel in Sudan and upon approval of TSX.V, State will become a 100% wholly owned operating subsidiary of Stamper. Negotiations are in progress for eight year initial commitment period rather than to the three year period proposed by the operator resulting in a total exploration period of eleven years if the second and third optional commitment periods are exercised. Operating Block Block 25 prospect consists of Block 25D and Block 25E and is located in the White Nile State in the south eastern portion of the Republic of Sudan, adjacent the border with Republic of South Sudan. The land is arid and relatively flat. The area is sparsely populated and is located west of the White Nile. There is limited road system and agriculture in the area. The nearest major communities are Kosti and Rabak about 150 km north of the project area where there is a railway station, airport and a major sugar refinery. The Government of Sudan is anxious to develop its oil resources and the Company has the full support and assistance of the government. About the Galhak Formation The Galhak Formation in this area contains four reservoir zones. 1A through 4A, which overlie the main Galhak Sand. Oil is trapped in stacked high porosity sands within the reservoir zones of the Galhak Formation with individual pay zones from two to five metres in thickness. Log analysis of the recently drilled well Rawat C-10 shows pay in three of the known reservoir zones of the Galhak Formation, as well as a new pay zone in the main Galhak Sand as illustrated in Figure 1. A photo accompanying this announcement is available at http://resource.globenewswire.com/Resource/Download/519cdc92-68a9-45c6-ae13-a3caf8e5a4ab About Stamper Oil & Gas Stamper Oil & Gas Corp. is a publicly traded junior development stage international oil and gas company. The Company is engaged in the acquisition, exploration and evaluation of conventional and unconventional oil and natural gas properties with the current focus on Africa and Latin America. The Company's strategy is centred on generating sustainable long term shareholder value by exploring and developing cost effective growth of light oil reserves. For further information on Stamper Oil & Gas please visit www.stamperoilandgas.com or under our profile on SEDAR at www.sedar.com. Qualified Resource Evaluator The scientific and technical information contained in this news release has been reviewed and approved by Qamar M. Malik, MSc., Ph.D., Petroleum Engineering, who is the independent qualified resources evaluator as such term is defined under National Instrument 51-101 ("NI 51-101") and Canadian Oil and Gas Evaluation ("COGE") Handbook. ON BEHALF OF THE BOARD OF DIRECTORS "David C. Greenway" President & Director For further information, please contact: Stamper Investor Relations Phone: (604) 684-2401 Email: info@stamperoilandgas.com Neither TSX Venture Exchange nor its Regulation Services Provider (as that term is defined in the policies of the TSX Venture Exchange) accepts responsibility for the adequacy or accuracy of this release. Forward-Looking Statements This news release contains certain statements that may be deemed "forward-looking" statements. Forward looking statements are statements that are not historical facts and are generally, but not always, identified by the words "expects", "plans", "anticipates", "believes", "intends", "estimates", "projects", "potential" and similar expressions, or that events or conditions "will", "would", "may", "could" or "should" occur. Although Stamper Oil & Gas Corp. 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 may differ materially from those in forward looking statements. Forward looking statements are based on the beliefs, estimates and opinions of Stamper Oil & Gas Corp. management on the date the statements are made. Except as required by law, Stamper Oil & Gas Corp undertakes no obligation to update these forward-looking statements in the event that management's beliefs, estimates or opinions, or other factors, should change. This announcement is distributed by Nasdaq Corporate Solutions on behalf of Nasdaq Corporate Solutions clients. The issuer of this announcement warrants that they are solely responsible for the content, accuracy and originality of the information contained therein. Source: Stamper Oil & Gas Corp. via Globenewswire PR-Inside.com: 2018-04-17 07:34:01 's-Hertogenbosch, 17 April 2018 In the period from 10 April 2018 until 16 April 2018 Van Lanschot Kempen has repurchased 16,014 of its own shares (depositary receipts for Class A ordinary shares). The shares were repurchased at an average price of 25.82 per share for a total amount of 413,533. These repurchases are part of the share buy-back programme for at most 400,000 of own shares, which was announced on 22 February 2018. The total number of shares repurchased to date is 112,257. More information, including a detailed overview of the repurchase transactions under this programme, is available on www.vanlanschotkempen.com/sharebuyback. Media Relations: +31 20 354 45 85; mediarelations@vanlanschotkempen.com Investor Relations: +31 20 354 45 90; investorrelations@vanlanschotkempen.com About Van Lanschot Kempen Van Lanschot Kempen, a wealth manager operating under the Van Lanschot, Evi and Kempen brand names, is active in Private Banking, Asset Management and Merchant Banking, with the aim of preserving and creating wealth for its clients. Van Lanschot Kempen, listed at Euronext Amsterdam, is the Netherlands' oldest independent financial services company with a history dating back to 1737. vanlanschotkempen.com Disclaimer This document does not constitute an offer or solicitation for the sale, purchase or acquisition in any other way of or subscription to any financial instrument and is not an opinion or a recommendation to perform or refrain from performing any action. This document is a translation of the Dutch original and is provided as a courtesy only. In the event of any disparities, the Dutch version will prevail. This announcement is distributed by Nasdaq Corporate Solutions on behalf of Nasdaq Corporate Solutions clients. The issuer of this announcement warrants that they are solely responsible for the content, accuracy and originality of the information contained therein. Source: Van Lanschot Kempen via Globenewswire The Nigeria Communications Commission (NCC) has said that Infrastructure Companies (Infracos) must roll out visibly in one year after issuance of the licence, or they have their licences withdrawn. The Executive Vice-Chairman of NCC, Umar Danbatta, said this on Monday at an interactive session in Lagos. Mr Danbatta said that the commission attained a milestone with licensing of four infracos in line with the recommendations of the National Broadband. The News Agency of Nigeria (NAN) reports that the NCC recently licensed Zinox Technology Ltd. for South-east and Brinks Integrated Solutions Ltd. for North-east. It earlier licenced MainOne Cable Company Ltd., which should provide services in Lagos Zone and IHS, which is to cover the North-central zone including Abuja. These infracos must roll out visibly in one year after issuance of the licence, or the NCC withdraws the licences, the executive vice-chairman said. He said that the NCC had also introduced a subsidy for the infracos to be given to them on attainment of deployment milestones. As regards mobile money payment system, Mr Danbatta identified security as a challenge to the system. He said that networks in Nigeria were not as secure as they should be, adding that stakeholders were concerned about it. Mr Danbatta said that inclusiveness was one of the strategies of the National Broadband Plan. There should be an arrangement that the rural populace has equitable access to telecom service. Discussions are ongoing to see how we can overcome the security issue in service penetration. Kenya had 60 per cent penetration; Ghana has 40 per cent, while Nigerias service penetration is nowhere near these figures. The reason for the low service penetration in the Nigerian model is because it is bank-driven, and one of the challenges is security, the official said. NAN reports that Nigeria developed a five-year strategy in 2013 to scale up the nations broadband growth by 30 per cent in 2018. The plan was developed by the Presidential Committee on Broadband with representation from the various stakeholder groups. The committee was co-chaired by former Executive Vice Chairman of the NCC, Ernest Ndukwe, and Zenith Bank Chairman, Jim Ovia. The plan recommended licencing of infrastructure companies (Infracos) for the six geo-political zones in Nigeria and Lagos as a stand-alone zone (due to its huge population and revenue-generating potential) to build fiber infrastructure, among others. It also recommended licensing of wholesale wireless operators and licensing of additional retail spectrum, and re-farming of existing spectrum to accelerate 4G services. ADVERTISEMENT Innocent Idibia, better known as 2Baba, has called on the Nigeria Copyright Commission to urgently intervene in the lingering crisis rocking the Copyright Society of Nigeria (COSON). He made the plea in a letter addressed to the Director General of the Nigeria Copyright Commission, Afam Ezekunde, on Monday. President Muhammadu Buhari, Vice President Yemi Osinbajo, Senate President Bukola Saraki and the Inspector General of Police, Ibrahim Idris, were also copied in the letter. 2Baba employed the authorities to take necessary actions to halt the now embarrassing public crisis that has rocked the Copyright Society of Nigeria for years. In his letter, the music star referenced the recent arrest of the contending president of the commission, Efe Omorogbe, which was allegedly masterminded by the embattled chairman, Tony Okoroji. Mr Omorogbe, 47, is well known in the music industry for managing 2Baba for more than a decade. He condemned the drama referring to it as disheartening. According to him, It is quite unfortunate and disheartening that a simple call for accountability and transparency has degenerated into relentless media attack, harassment and intimidation of the group of people who made the call. He explained that some members of the COSONs board who are seeking accountability and transparency are allegedly being harassed and intimidated by the police. The personal interest of a few should not supersede the collective interest of generality of members and overall well-being of the society. I will like to implore you to use your good office to engage the Inspector General of Police with a view to setting the records straight and reversing the embarrassing and dangerous scenario where Mr Omorogbe and Mr Joel Ajayi, chairman and members of the commission-recognised board acting well under the directive of the regulator, are now being harassed, intimidated, demonised and prosecuted by a sister government agency The Nigerian Police Force, 2Babas petition read in part. Our CMO is under siege and our commonwealth is threatened by Chief Tony Okoroji and his agents who, for personal ends, continue to demonstrate deep contempt for regulation and the call for accountability, he wrote in the petition. The musician also said Nigeria is a nation of laws and the music industry stakeholders and regular citizens have only the government to turn to for protection at perilous times. Some members of the commissions board installed Mr. Omorogbe as the new chairman, having legally recalled Mr. Okoroji from his position as chairman of COSON. This happened in December. The former was replaced over allegations of impropriety. It was alleged that Mr Okoroji collects 10 per cent commission on licensing income deemed to have been brought in by him and primarily, because he contracts COSON projects and events to his company, TOPS Limited. Despite Mr Omorogbes election, Mr Okoroji was reinstated as the chairman at an extraordinary general meeting of COSON, held on December 19. A faction of the board loyal to Mr Okoroji reinstated him and sacked those who voted for Mr Omorogbe. The crisis got messier last week as police from Zone II Command Headquarters, Onikan, Lagos, arraigned Mr Omorogbe before an Igbosere Magistrates Court, Lagos for alleged impersonation and forgery. ADVERTISEMENT According to the prosecuting officer, Sergeant Friday Mameh, the defendants (Mr Omorogbe and others) had stormed the meeting of venue of the COSON chairman, with thugs on December 7, 2017 and conducted themselves (in a manner) likely to cause breach of peace. Mr Mameh alleged that Mr Omorogbe and others forged the COSON letter-headed papers, with intent to defraud, knowingly use the forged COSON letter headed with intent that it may in anyway be used or acted upon as genuine whether in Nigeria or elsewhere to the prejudice of COSON. Mr Omorogbe and Mr Ajayi pleaded not guilty. Their counsel, S. Ehiwelele and Chibuzor Nwankobi, prayed the court to admit them to bail on liberal terms. A total of 12 drummers and 40 musicians have qualified for the quarter-final stage in the Ariya Repete Traditional Music and Drums Talent Hunt. The talent hunt is aimed at developing drumming skills, Juju and Fuji music genres, while also rewarding up and coming acts in the music industry. The auditions and selection was held in eight cities including Sango Ota, Ogun State, Ado Ekiti, Akure, Lagos, Ilesha, Ilorin, Ibadan and Oyo where several contestants came to slug it out for a place in the quarterfinals of the competition. The artistes and groups in the first and second round of auditions impressed the judges with their talents and craftsmanship. The successful contestants will now go into the Ariya Repete Academy where they will go through mentorship and grooming from experienced musicians and managers The panel of judges in Ota who screened the qualifiers were Juju musicians, Wale Thompson of LalaleFriday fame, Adebayo Faleke, and Ace radio broadcaster, Sikiru Agboola. Others are Kabir Akanni popularly known as Baby Barrister, Dele Bravo and Babatope Temidayo popularly known as Puffy-Tee. According to the Portfolio Manager, Mainstream Lager and Stout brands, Nigerian Breweries (NB) Plc, Emmanuel Agu, the quarter finalists are competing for bigger prize money. Compared to the previous editions, the overall winner in each category will go away with a grand prize of N2 million. He further reaffirmed Nigerian Breweries commitment to discovering new talents in the two indigenous Yoruba music genres as well as in drumming. Ariya Repete creates an avenue for Fuji, Juju musicians and traditional drummers to showcase their talents as a means of promoting Yoruba language and rich heritage. We are committed to discovering new talents in the two indigenous Yoruba music genres of Juju and Fuji as well as in drumming, and the Ariya Repete platform is positioned to make this happen. The Juju artistes selected in Sango ota, Ogun State are: Prince Ade Michael who came first, while Bukola Ahmed, placed second. Also, Oriade Calypso came first, closely followed by Sulaimon Ajao in the second position and Mohammed Adewale came third, in the Fuji category. Meanwhile in the drumming category, Igba-Iwase Group came first while the Eniafe Group came second. In Ado Ekiti, Ayodele Olatunji came first in the Juju category, closely followed by Adeyemi Ase who came second. In the Fuji category, Gbenga Adeyeye came first, Saheed Aremu second, followed by Olayemi Kehinde who came third. Meanwhile, in the Drummers Category the Ayangbayi Group came first and the Alofuge Group came second. In Oyo, Sadeeq Ishola won the Fuji category, followed closely by Taiwo Suleiman while Luqman Ishola came third. In the Juju category, Femi Ayeni and Sunny Adura booked their places in the quarterfinal. In Akure, Dauda Muritala won the Fuji category while Oladele Damilola and Osoba Adeshina came second and third respectively. In Juju, Amao Babatunde came first followed by Adebayo Adetayo. In the traditional drum category, Sekere Group came first with Sakuba Group coming second. ADVERTISEMENT They all booked a space in the quarterfinal. The quarterfinalists will proceed to the Ariya Academy where they will be taught how to play Yoruba music instruments, Fuji and Juju music by prominent musicians. The talent hunt is an initiative of Goldberg premium quality lager beer. Nigerians abroad and those living in the country have been scammed several times trying to purchase a property. This can be traced to either they dont understand the process involved in acquiring a property or choose not to carry out due diligence. As a property professional, I have seen people fall prey to scam and other dubious acts making them lose millions of Naira. Even though we know that government has not played its role in providing affordable housing, the onus is up to individuals and corporate organisation to know the process involved in buying a property. With this knowledge, they would know if they are involved in the right transaction or are being scammed. After several years as a real estate consultant, it is no news that the government is not taking the appropriate step to combat the bureaucratic process involved in verifying a property and the lack of affordable housing in Nigeria. Abraham Maslows Hierarchy of Needs puts shelter as a basic need for every human. Without shelter, a mans social activities and other areas of life will be distorted. Also, adding to the fact that man needs a place to rest after the days work. What should have been a basic provision by the government has become a den of lions for scammers and fraudsters who claim to be Real Estate professionals. According to 2011 housing survey report, there is 17million housing deficit in Nigeria. These challenges of housing in Nigeria also existed in previous administrations. In 1991, the government of Ibrahim Babangida promulgated the National Housing Policy aimed at making housing affordable and accessible; but the policy failed. I would not bore you with the failures of the past administrations. Even the current administration under the leadership of Babatunde Fashola as the Minister of Works, Power and Housing also introduced a policy to address the challenge of housing in the country, you can tell the result. The foregoing shows that Nigeria is not bereft of policies. And I am sure it is not stopping soon; this is the reason I believe you should understand the process involved in purchasing a property of your own so you are not scammed. What both the state and federal government have failed to address is an indicator of the many abnormalities that happening in the housing industry. Every adult at a time or another would get involved in housing transaction, either for outright acquisition (purchase) or on Lease (rent). My focus as a practising real estate professional is to explain the process involved in the acquisition of properties (Virgin Land or a House). And to help individuals and corporate organisations who want to buy properties have the basic knowledge of what to look out for when involved in buying a property. I tailor this article to properties in Lagos, but I am sure it can be applied in other parts of the state. When considering buying a property, the first process is to sort out the aspect of finance, location & housing type. Immediately you find a property of interest and have agreed on a purchase price, quickly request for the copy of the subsisting title or registration details of the property for a title search at the Lagos State Lands Bureau. The essence of title verification at the Lands Bureau is to ensure that there is no encumbrance(s) on the property. You may not do this yourself; the service of a professional is required in the verification of Tttle. This is one of the most important aspects of buying a property, in the real sense, it is the residual interest in the property that will be transferred. This aspect must be handled with utmost professionalism. The realtor handling this process must be detailed & ensure that the buyer is protected from any provision(s) that may serve as an additional burden if the property is acquired. If possible, apply for the Certified True Copy from the Lagos State Land registry; the buyer and the realtor must be satisfied with the existing title before going ahead with the transaction. Most potential transactions end at this stage when the buyer is not satisfied with the documents provided. However, the process is different, where the property does not possess a registered title and requires a Certificate of Occupancy (C of O) after purchase. In such situation, a copy of the survey is taken to the Surveyor-Generals office for charting. This is to establish whether the property falls within the Government Acquisition Scheme or not. This is because not all properties within the government acquisition scheme are rectifiable. Another basic consideration when buying a property is the issue of development permit. The purpose of buying a property is specific, it is best to find out whether the development permit for that area will allow the intended development. Things to consider include: prevailing land use zoning, height restrictions (permissible number of floors), the allowable number of units, car parking requirements, Setbacks/ Airspace considerations and Landscape requirements. If all the issues stated above are not considered, the application for Town Planning approval to develop from the Lagos State Ministry of Physical Planning & Urban development may not be granted. This is a serious issue. The next is to carry out due diligence on the owner of the property. It is important to establish that the person selling is the owner or has instruction. Sometimes people bear the same name, impersonation or fraud. Where it is established that the Assignor (The person assigning his/her interest in a property) is not available and has confirmed his/her representative to the Assignee (The person acquiring the residual interest in a property), a Power of Attorney is required, authorising the person to act on behalf of the assignor. When the property belongs to a family, there is need to establish that the people selling are the accredited representatives of the family, to avoid dispute from an aggrieved family member(s) or Lltigation after the purchase. After you have confirmed the documents, make sure that your payment goes through bank clearing, payment is acknowledged once received by the assignor/his representatives and the signing of the Deed of Assignment is done when the assignor has received value on the payment. Finally, once the Deed of Assignment has been signed, the assignee takes physical possession of the property and commences the Title perfection process at the Lagos State Lands Bureau. Ill advise you to follow these processes to secure your transaction. Olusola Oduleye has a Masters Degree in Urban & Regional Planning from the Centre for Planning Studies, Lagos State University. He has over 19 years of experience in Town Planning & Real Estate Practice. He can be contacted on 08023026848, 08098213273. ADVERTISEMENT Facebook: https://web.facebook.com/oduleye.olusola ADVERTISEMENT Zimbabwe stuck to its plan to clear about $1.8 billion debt arrears by September with the aim to tap international capital markets by the end of the year, though that timeline would be very fast-tracked. Zimbabwean officials met with investors in New York in search for cash that would clear about $1.8 billion in arrears with the World Bank and the African Development Bank. Repayment would unlock more cash from the AfDB and is necessary to tap other sources of development financing. We need to clear the ADB and World Bank before were able to go into a programme with the IMF, said John Mangudya, governor of the Reserve Bank of Zimbabwe, at a press event following the investors meeting. What we need is a bridge financing from the likes of these investors, he said. In 2016, Zimbabwe paid off 15 years worth of arrears to the International Monetary Fund. The timeline for the arrears payment and the added funding is possible, but it would be very fast-tracked, said Dean Tyler, head of fixed income at Exotix Capital, which hosted the meeting. Some 40 to 50 international investors, institutions and hedge funds among them, attended the meeting, according to Tyler, and it follows a similar meeting in London last month. The pitch to investors comes shortly after Robert Mugabe, Zimbabwes president for nearly 30 years, was forced to resign following a de facto army coup last November. Zimbabwe became a pariah in the West after Mugabes government was accused of rigging votes and abusing human rights, and over the years it has turned to China for investment to help an economy desperate for new infrastructure. (Reuters/NAN) ADVERTISEMENT U.S. President Donald Trump is still willing to meet with Russian President Vladimir Putin in spite of increasing tensions between the United States and Russia, White House Spokesperson, Sarah Huckabee Sanders, said on Tuesday. The president still would like to sit down with him [Putin]. Again, he feels like it is better for the world if they have a good relationship. But thats going to depend on the actions of Russia, Sanders told newsmen. Sanders also said the U.S. was considering additional sanctions against Russia and will make a decision on the matter in the near future. Tensions between the U.S. and Russia have escalated in recent days over the conflict in Syria. The U.S., UK and France launched missile strikes on a number of targets in Syria on Saturday in response to the alleged use of chemical weapons in the Damascus suburb of Duma. Western states have blamed the Syrian government forces for the incident, but Damascus has denied using chemical weapons. Ties between Moscow and Washington significantly worsened after the eruption of the Ukrainian crisis in 2014. Russian-U.S. relations continued to deteriorate in 2017 over a number of issues including alleged Russian interference in the U.S. presidential election. Also by playing a row around Russian diplomatic property in the U.S. as well as U.S. pressure on the RT broadcasters activities in the U.S. In 2018, tensions have escalated even further over the U.S. decision to expel Russian diplomats over Moscows alleged involvement in the poisoning of former Russian double agent Sergei Skripal in the UK city of Salisbury. However, Russia has repeatedly denied all allegations. (Sputnik/NAN) ADVERTISEMENT A total of 28 soldiers were handed life sentences on Tuesday in three separate cases related to a failed military coup in 2016, Turkeys state-run Anadolu news agency reported. The soldiers were charged with violating and attempting to overthrow the constitution in relation to incidents in Istanbul and the south-eastern towns of Mus and Sirnak during the failed putsch on July 15, 2016, according to Anadolu. Turkey remains under a state of emergency, which was imposed after the coup attempt. This week, the Turkish parliament will vote on extending the state of emergency by another three months, which if completed would mean the country has been under emergency rule for two years. More than 50,000 people are under arrest in connection with the coup, and some 150,000 people have been purged from the civil service and the military. (dpa/NAN) The Nigerian government is in a dilemma as medical doctors on Tuesday warned it against acceding to some demands over which other workers in the health sector have called a strike. The doctors who specifically opposed salary adjustment and harmonization, one of the major demands of the Joint Health Staff Union (JOHESU), said acceding to the demand would precipitate a crisis that may lead to the collapse of the health sector of the country. JOHESU, the association of other health workers apart from medical doctors and dentists, on Monday announced its members will begin an indefinite strike from Tuesday night. The association had called a nationwide strike last September. Some of its major demands included salary adjustments, promotion arrears and improved work environment for members. On the ninth day of the September strike, the union struck a deal with government. But according to the union, six months after, government is yet to meet any of its demands. Last month, the union gave the government a 30-day ultimatum to meet the demands. That ultimatum elapses Tuesday. However, in an apparent continuation of the rivalry among health workers in Nigeria, the doctors, under the banner of the Nigerian Medical Association (NMA), described JOHESU as an illegal body and urged government to ignore its threat. JOHESU is an illegal body. it is illegal because it is not registered. Just yesterday their leadership came on air to attack doctors, the strike they are planning is against medical doctors, the NMA president, Mike Ogirima, said at a press briefing on Tuesday. The NMA insisted it is opposed to some of the demands by JOHESU, in particular about salary harmonisation. Resident Doctors On a protest Nobody is preventing them (JOHESU) from getting a salary increase. But all over the world, there is relativity package for medical workers different from other health workers. In Nigeria and other countries, doctors are always at advantaged position, that is why most of these other health workers are trying by all means to get that degree called medical doctor. But we know the difference because doctors are trained in all paraphernalia of medical practice, that is why all over the world doctors have a different salary package from others, Mr Ogirima said. He advised the government to thread with caution in engaging with JOHESU so as not to allow rascality in the health sector. It is high time the government regulated the activities of this JOHESU, we are not going to fight with them, we are humane and the health of our patients is central. Chiedozie Achonwa, the NMA chairman in Abuja, said medical doctors will be in the hospitals and continue to attend to patients even if JOHESU members across the nation embark on the proposed strike. I think everybody is entitled to make demands for an increase in salary including JOHESU. But what the government should put into consideration is that there is an internationally accepted relativity in remuneration for health workers and that relativity must be maintained. Any attempt to distort that relativity means they want the health sector to collapse and I dont think any of us wants that. We as medical doctors are not interested in strike. We are interested in the lives of our patients and doing medical outreach, Mr Achonwa said. The NMA had earlier in an open letter to the Minister of Labour and Employment, Chris Ngige, said doctors are not prepared to receive same salary with other health workers. Top on the list of issues raised in the October 3 letter was that JOHESU has no justification to demand for adjustment of salary scale as was done for CONMESS. ADVERTISEMENT Consolidated Medical Salary Structure, CONMESS, is the salary structure for medical and dental officers in the federal public service while Consolidated Health Salary Structure, CONHESS, is the salary structure for pharmacists, medical laboratory, nurses and other health workers in the health sector of the federal public service. The National Vice Chairman of JOHESU, Ogbonna Chimela on Tuesday however explained that the unions are not asking for salary harmonisation with medical doctors but for an adjusted CONHESS salary. Mr. Chimela gave more insight on the salary issue. In 2009 the government approved the CONHESS and CONMESS salary structures, the former for medical doctors while the latter is for other health care professionals. Before, medical doctors enter service on grade level 9 while the rest of us enter on 8 but after the 2009 negotiation of salary structure, medical doctors started entering service on grade level 12 while we enter at that same 8. So relativity had been established at the point of entry because they spent six years in school while other health workers spend five or four years, so you can see the years of training of the both groups are different that, is why government allows doctors to enter service at grade level 12 while we enter at 8 to maintain relativity. In 2014 there was an adjustment to the CONMESS salary and we are just agitating for our own to also be adjusted. So tell me if our salary is adjusted by 20 percent and we are on grade level 8, can it be the same as some one entering service on grade level 12? They are thinking that we want to start asking for same quantum of salary with them, but it can never be the same because our point of entry differs because if I enter service at grade level 8, before I can get to grade level 12, I would have spent nine years in service. So there is no way our paths can ever cross, they will continue to gain more until they leave service. So they are the ones that are even oppressing us, they just dont want our own adjustment to see the light of the day, he said. On the allegation that JOHESU is an illegal body, the union leader also gave an explanation. He said the unions that make up JOHESU in the health sector were registered by Decree 22 of 1978. He isted the unions as Senior Staff Associations of Universities, Teaching Hospitals and Research Institutes; National Association of Nigerian Nurses and Midwives; Medical and Health Workers Union of Nigeria; Nigerian Union of Allied Health Professionals and Non Academic Staff Union (NASU). Mr. Chimela said the five unions came together and formed JOHESU as an umbrella body due to constant pressure from NMA. So if the parent entities are registered but because of the pressure from NMA, we now formed a pressure group, would you say it is illegal? The parent bodies are legitimately registered and known by law. Prof. Isaac Adewole. Minister of Health On Monday, the Health Minister, Isaac Adewole, said the government was already working out modalities to avert JOHESU members going on strike. We are reaching out to abort the strike. Almost all demands have been met. Government is looking into remaining issues to address them comprehensively, he said. It remains to be seen, however, how the government will pacify JOHESU members without provoking the medical doctors. Victor Koreyo of the Department of Ceramics and Glass Technology, Akanu Ibiam Federal Polytechnic, Unwana, Afikpo, Ebonyi State, recently vowed to renounce his Nigerian citizenship over alleged social injustice, corruption and discrimination against him. Mr Koreyo said he was demoted for a period of eight years by the management of the institution and urged President Muhammadu Buhari to endorse his request to give up his citizenship. PREMIUM TIMES reported his initial request to renounce his citizenship and the response of an official of the university. In this exclusive interview with PREMIUM TIMES Azeezat Adedigba, he speaks on why he took the unusual decision. PT: When you renounced your citizenship, did you already have the country you wanted to go, or do you presently have dual citizenship? Mr Koreyo: I will take a stateless status with the United Nations High Commission for Refugees first. In the process, I will be looking for a country to go to which will give me asylum or citizenship. No, I do not have dual citizenship and I dont have any country in mind yet. PT: If the President of Nigeria refuses to accept your renouncement, what will be your next course of action? Mr Koreyo: I took this action because its not what I really want, it is a simple and civil action of protest for the president to take the final decision on a matter that has been dragging for too long. It is a civil action against injustice. If the president grants his assent on the renouncement, it is ok, at least bodies of civil societies can take up the course and stand for me in the struggle against injustice. If he does not grant it and my promotion was restored back, it means all the staff that were retired unjustly will benefit from the presidents judgement. I will never be part of corruption. Eighteen people have died due to social injustice and frustration in my institution. As I am speaking to you now, the school has been on strike for two month due to deduction in salaries of the staff. Although, the only way to let go in a civil way is to give the matter to the president because I want the president to take the decision especially with his stand against corruption. The corruption in the federal ministry of education cannot be explained. I want you to know that the Head of Service and Attorney General of the Federation have been in my support since the inception of the issue but the rector refused to honour the directive of the Head of service and the advice of the attorney general of the federation. In the letter I wrote to the president, I asked him to investigate the matter and if any of the issue I raised turns to be a lie constitutionally, I should be sentenced to death. PT: Demotion is not a new thing in the civil service. Why do you feel you were victimised when others are not complaining or speaking out? Mr Koreyo: The idea is, demotion should be done properly. When you are demoted, as contained in my work, it should contain an effective date. When I was promoted to chief lecturer, I have an effective date on the letter of October 1, 2007. When I was demoted in 2010, the letter does not have an effective date to reflect the policy of government they claim to be implementing, so I rejected the letter and requested them to put a date and give me a proper letter. A letter of demotion without a date can never be accepted by any organisation. Any document without a date is invalid and has no legal use. Also the action that resulted to it never followed due process because all these information were considered by the Head of Service before a letter was written to the rector to restore my position. PT: Your institution said the Masters degree you had is not relevant to your profession. Dont you think it is a justification for the action the institution is taking against you? ADVERTISEMENT Mr Koreyo: Like I said earlier, due process was not taken in all their processes. The head of service has to develop the modalities for the policy they were implementing but the Federal Ministry of Education failed in the responsibility of oversight function and they allowed the National Board for Technical Education (NBTE), to develop modalities to help the rectors mop money of some academic staff, so that these staff wont benefit from the arrears of the Consolidated Tertiary Institutions Salary Structure (CONTISS) 15 policy that came on board. I had the MBA in project management technology from the Federal University of Technology, Owerri and the programme involves 18 month of lecture and two years of thesis. The same MBA was used for my promotion from lecturer 1 to senior lecturer in 2007. In 2010 when the policy came, I was due and recommended for promotion. The scheme of service talked about having a Masters degree but it never specified the type of Maters degree. I would not have been able to teach the three courses I am teaching presently without the MBA in project management technology. The only Masters degree the ministry said is not acceptable is MBA executive. Moreover, the research area I did is related to my first degree. I did research in glass industry project and I had my first degree in industrial design with specialisation in glass technology. I followed the public service due process by going for the programme. The three courses I am teaching are Industrial management, Quality control assurance and Value and ethics in profession. This problem emanated from the planned financial crime by rectors to deny some staff of funds released for arrears and they really made billions out of it for their personal pocket. Meanwhile the circular sent by the federal ministry of education said the modalities for the CONTISS 15 will be developed by Head of Service. PT- For nursing the feeling of suicide for eight years, what has been your state of health? Are you mentally fit to lecture the students? Mr Koreyo: Once the issue became so serious, I started a non-governmental organisation to keep my mind off thinking about injustice and official corruption. Imagine a chief lecturer, Okechukwu Gabriel, who was demoted and could not cope with it, fell sick and died of frustration. To my amazement, the man died on Sunday and the school restored his promotion on Monday, without due process. The recent shake up in the Securities and Exchange Commission which led to the removal of its acting director-general, Abdul Zubair, had the backing of the presidency, PREMIUM TIMES has learnt. Last Friday, a Federal Ministry of Finance statement in Abuja announced Mr Zubairs immediate removal as the acting director-general. He was subsequently posted to the External Relations Department and was replaced by Mary Uduk. Other top officials were also redeployed, including Reginald Karawusa as acting Executive Commissioner, Legal & Enforcement; Isiyaku Tilde as acting Executive Commissioner, Operations, and Henry Adekunle as acting Executive Commissioner, Corporate Services. Since the redeployment exercise, accusing fingers have been pointed at the Minister of Finance, whom some aggrieved shareholders of Oando PLC accused of working against the process to audit the financial records of the oil and gas firm. On Sunday, the National President, Trusted Shareholders Association of Nigeria (TSAN), Mukhtar, and the National Coordinator, Proactive Shareholders Association (PROSAN), Taiwo Oderinde, in a joint statement, accused the minister of desperate attempts to shield Oando from probe. They called on President Muhammadu Buhari to order her immediate sack for causing the suspension of the former director-general of SEC, Mounir Gwarzo, and removal of Mr Zubair. We demand the immediate sack of the Minister of Finance, Kemi Adeosun, for her unwholesome interference in the smooth operation of the capital market. We believe the minister is clearly working to protect her friends in Oando Plc from the impending embarrassment that findings from the forensic audit may cause them, the shareholders said. The minister has since denied any wrongdoing. Oluyinka Akintunde, her spokesperson, dismissed the allegations as untrue and an attempt to tarnish her image. The allegations are absolutely untrue. The ministers accusers are bringing sentiments that do not have any bearing with the matter at hand just to tarnish her image. The minister has not interfered in the operations of any agency under the Ministry of finance, including SEC, Mr Akindunde said. The recent crisis was triggered by the controversial directives issued by SEC to the Nigeria Stock Exchange (NSE) on shares of Oando. The SEC directed the NSE to lift the suspension on Oando shares, reversed the directive, then reversed itself again. The suspension has since been lifted following the last directive. A presidency source told PREMIUM TIMES the federal government was thoroughly embarrassed into making immediate changes. The source who requested not to be named as he was not permitted to speak officially on the matter, said the Chief of Staff to the President, Abba Kyari, intervened by summoning an emergency meeting of all the officials involved in the Oando saga. Those summoned to the meeting on Friday at the Presidential Villa included Mrs Adeosun and the NSE DG, Oscar Onyema, who flew in from Lagos, and Mr Zubair. During the meeting, the source said Mr Zubair denied any knowledge of the April 9 letter from SEC directing the NSE to immediately lift the suspension on Oando shares and allow trading to resume the following day. He blamed the letter on a deputy director in SEC he did not name. ADVERTISEMENT Although SECs management later tried to explain the circumstances that led to the confusion and offered an apology, the damage appeared to have been done already. The commission said the decision to lift the suspension on the companys shares was usually a short term measure in accordance with normal practice to protect investors interests. However, it noted the suspension order was prolonged beyond the normal period due to several litigations by Oando and some shareholders contesting the propriety of the forensic audit and technical suspension ordered by SEC. The source said the presidency felt the development not only exposed the country to global ridicule, but constituted an embarrassment in the eyes of the international community. At the end of the meeting, the source said, the decision was taken to immediately effect reorganisation at the SEC, to help regain some trust and confidence. With reports of infiltration of the top hierarchy of SEC by agents of those against the forensic audit, not knowing who issued a letter as important as one directing the NSE to lift the suspension on Oando shares was enough justification for the changes to be effected, the source said. The Independent National Electoral Commission (INEC) has sworn in seven new Resident Electoral Commissioners (RECs) bringing the total number of serving RECs in the commission to 33. The new RECs are: Baba Yusuf and Segun Agbaje, representing Borno and Ekiti states for second term. Others are Uthman Ajidagba, Kwara; Yahaya Bello, Nasarawa State; Emmanuel Hart, Rivers; Mohammed Ibrahim, Gombe and Cyril Omorogbe, Edo. Performing the ceremony on Tuesday in Abuja, INEC Chairman, Mahmood Yakubu, expressed confidence that the new RECs would contribute to the commissions determination to make 2019 general elections the best in the country. He said with the track records of service in the academia, public service and private sector, it is gratifying to note that the new RECs made positive contributions to the society in various ways. I am equally delighted to note that some of you have managed elections at national level as RECs. I am confident that you will bring to bear on your new assignments, the experience of the recent past that will contribute to our determination to make the 2019 general elections our best elections in Nigeria. Mr Yakubu advised the new commissioners to maintain openness and consultations, as well as be firm and courageous in carrying out their new assignments. The chairman disclosed that in addition to the Ekiti and Osun governorship elections, the commission would be conducting four bye-elections this year to fill vacancies. These, according to him, include Takum state constituency in Taraba, Lokoja/Koton-Karfe Federal Constituency in Kogi, Bauchi South Senatorial District, and Kastina North Senatorial District in Kastina State. The INEC boss reassured newly registered voters in the ongoing nationwide Continuous Voter Registration (CVR) of getting their Permanent Voter Cards (PVCs) before the 2019 general elections. He added that we have consistently reassured the public that for those who registered in 2017, their PVCs would be available for collection in the first week of May 2018. Those who registered in the first quarter of this year, that is between January and March, as well as those who are registering right now in the second quarter of this year, would collect their cards thereafter. Mr Yakubu also reassured the public and those who applied for replacement of their PVCs that their cards would be available for collection before the 2019 general elections. For those who registered in Ekiti and Osun in 2017 and 2018, priority attention was given to the production of their PVCs, such that all the cards would be available ahead of the July 14 and Sept. 22 governorship elections, he said. Responding on behalf of the new RECs, Segun Agbaje, representing Ekiti State, pledged the new commissioners readiness to justify the confidence reposed in them. He said by the grace of God, we shall finish well. He expressed confidence in the leadership of Yakubu, saying with your style of leadership, we would not be surprised if 2019 elections turned out to be the best elections in the country. ADVERTISEMENT (NAN) ADVERTISEMENT The Economic and Financial Crimes Commission, EFCC, on April 17 closed its case against a retired air vice marshall, Tony Omenyi, who is standing trial for allegedly diverting over N136 million meant for the purchase of arms by the military. Mr Omenyi is being prosecuted along with Huzee Nigeria Limited, on an amended three-count charge preferred against him by the EFCC. The prosecuting counsel, M.S. Abubakar, had on January 22, 2018 presented its fifth witness, Goji Mohammed, an EFCC operative, who told the court that in the course of investigating the arms deal scandal, suspicious transactions were linked to Omenyi and Huzee Nigeria Limited. He said: We discovered that Huzee Nigeria Limited was incorporated by the first defendant and maintained a corporate account with FCMB in which he was a co-signatory. We also discovered payment made to Sky experts by NAF and in most cases you will see a corresponding payment to Huzee Nigeria Limited. He further revealed that analyses of documents from the Nigeria Air Force, NAF and the Corporate Affairs Commission, CAC, in response to requests made to them in the course of investigations, indicated that in 2013 NAF awarded contracts to Cyrus Technology with contract sum of N1.2 billion. The proceedings continued today, with the cross-examination of Mr Mohammed by the defence counsel, Goddy Uche. While being cross-examined, Mr Mohammed noted that Omenyi was not a member of the procurement planning committee of NAF, but he attended the meeting and the recommendation for the award of the contract was based on his presentation. Mr Uche then asked the witness, whether in the course of investigations, the EFCC took statements of one Adeogwu Onyeka, a staff of FCMB and the account officer of Sky Experts Nigeria Limited. However, AMr bubakar raised an objection, arguing that: this procedure is strange to me; I have not seen the document and the witness is not the maker of the statement. Subsequently, Justice Nnamdi Dimgba adjourned further hearing to June 20 and 21, 2018 when the defendant is expected to open its defence. The National Chairman of the Peoples Democratic Party, PDP, has said the allegation that he is a looter is mere blackmail. In a statement signed by his media adviser, Ike Abonyi, Mr Secondus said blackmail and intimidation of the opposition by the federal government would not stop him from carrying out the reform of his party. The federal government released a list of looters in which the PDP chairman was alleged to have collected N200 million from the office of then National Security Adviser, Sambo Dasuki. The attention of the media office of the National Chairman of the Peoples Democratic Party, PDP, Uche Secondus, has been drawn to the desperation of the federal government and its ruling All Progressives Congress (APC) to frame him up with some blatant fabrications ostensibly to distract him from carrying out his responsibility of rebuilding his party. The media office said Mr Secondus would ordinarily not join issues with the government on a matter already in court, but regrettably the administration has great contempt for the court and the rule of law and has instead chosen to use blackmail and media persecution to defame and discredit their enemies. This gimmick, according to Mr Secondus, has failed because Nigerians have come to know the antics of the drowning government. In its desperation to forge documents and defame him, forgot to reconcile their lies; the Minister of Information and Culture Alhaji Lai Mohammed and the EFCC couldnt agree on the date of the purported money collection and whether it was collected by him Secondus or by a faceless fictional Chukwura that has no surname. While they may have embarked on a wide search since 2015 for the surname of the so-called aide of the National Chairman, Alhaji Mohammad claimed in his press conference on Good Friday March 29th, 2018 that Secondus collected the money on 19th of February, 2015, EFCC on their part on April 16th, 2018, eighteen days after said the money was collected on February 9th, 2015 and in another version still quoting the same EFCC claimed February 2, 2015. The PDP chairman also described as unfortunate and tragic that an anti-corruption agency like EFCC founded and nurtured by PDP administration to tackle corruption in the system had turned itself into a pawn in the hands of APC administration to witchhunt and harass perceived enemies of government just to impress and keep job. He challenged the government and any agency with anything against him to bring such evidence to the court and stop character assassination in the media. Theres no need to be talking about a case pending in court in the newspapers. If the government has anything to say, they should file it before the court as demanded. PDP National chairman, Uche Secondus. He challenged the government to come out with the vouchers with which he was said to have signed, adding that such signature would also be subjected to forensic analysis. I never collected any money from anywhere. I didnt ask anyone to collect money for me as well and I didnt sign any voucher to collect any money. It is pure blackmail which will never work. If they are cooking up anything, with the aim of blackmailing me, it will fail. I know that the task of uprooting this non-performing government would be horrendous. But God is always on the side of the people. I can understand the frustration of a party that enjoyed enormous goodwill from Nigerians three years ago but got it squandered with its nepotic and insensitive administration. No amount of cheap blackmail and treachery will return the APC from the exit gate where Nigerians already pushed them to, awaiting 2019. The departure date for the APC has already been announced and the flight schedule would not be cancelled, because Nigerians cannot wait to see them off, the spokesperson said. ADVERTISEMENT ADVERTISEMENT There is panic among Abuja residents as police officers clashed with suspected Shiites in the Nigerian capital. Details are still sketchy but residents reported police vehicles chasing the protesters who threw stones and other objects at them. Most of the violence occurred close to the Wuse market area of the capital. Traders at the market, however, say there is calm inside. A PREMIUM TIMES reporter close to the scene of the violence reports that teargas has been used to disperse the protesters, causing panic among road users. Tuesdays incident follows the arrest of 115 Shiites on Monday after police forcefully dispersed the protesters, who then threw stones and other objects at security operatives. Details later ADVERTISEMENT Members of the Shiite Islamic Movement of Nigeria, (IMN) have confirmed they held Tuesdays protest at the Wuse Ultra-Modern Market in Abuja. The group also says 30 of its members were missing after a previous protest at the Central Business District in Abuja on Monday . The Shiites began a second day of protest at the market, Tuesday afternoon, to challenge the continued detention of their leader, Ibrahim El-Zakzaky, for whose release they had protested on Monday. Mr. El-Zakzaky was arrested shortly after a clash between Shiite members and the Nigerian Army in December 2015 and has neither been released nor arraigned by the Nigerian government, despite court orders for his release. A similar protest on Monday by the group resulted in a clash with officials of the Nigerian police, with the police confirming the arrest of 115 Shiite members. Although the Police denied any casualties during Mondays protest, a leader of the group, Abdullahi Musa, said a member was shot in the head, resulting in a serious brain injury on Monday. He added that the affected Shiite member was rushed to Kano for further treatment. One of us was shot in the head yesterday. His brain came out. He is currently being rushed to the Aminu Kano Teaching Hospital for further treatment. The police said they arrested 115 of our members, but 145 of us were the number that got missing; and I saw a van with my eyes that carried some people from among us, who looked dead, the way they were being carried. I saw them with my eyes, said Mr. Abdullahi. 30 of our members, now are yet to be accounted for, he added. Mr. Musa further said that although he cannot tell how many members were arrested on Tuesday, three trucks of IMN members were taken away by police officers at the Wuse Ultra-modern market, Abuja. I saw them take three truck load of our members today. They however did not use life ammunition today, except sticks and teargas. I myself was badly beaten with sticks by the police, Mr. Abdullahi said. Other eyewitnesses who spoke to PREMIUM TIMES said they ran into hiding when they saw the protest begin and the police came using teargas. The spokesperson for the FCT Police Command, Manzah Anjuguri, declined commenting on the matter when called by PREMIUM TIMES. Mr. Anjuguri said he was not immediately able to give any statement on the matter. I am not at the office at the moment. So I am not aware of the development, Mr Anjuguri told our reporter on phone. He also refused committing himself, when asked to give a feasible time for any update on the matter. Subsequent calls for updates were not attended to by Mr. Anjuguri. An Abuja Division of the Federal High Court had in December 2016 ordered the immediate release of Mr. El-Zakzaky and warned the Nigerian government to desist from demonising members of the group. Justice Gabriel Kolawole also gave a 45-day ultimatum to the government to comply with the court order, which included the award of N50 million in damages for detaining the plaintiff and his wife without trial. The federal government failed to comply with that court order; but filed an appeal, days after the expiration of the 45-day ultimatum given by the trial court. Nigerian senators have urged the federal government to seek international help to end killings in several parts of the country. Deputy Senate President, Ike Ekweremadu, and Dino Melaye (APC, Kogi West), made this call while contributing to a point of order raised by Suleiman Adokwe (PDP, Nasarawa South) concerning the most recent killings in Nasarawa State. A few days ago, the police in the state confirmed five persons were killed in an attack on Kadarko village and environs in Obi Local Government Area. The police said the attackers invaded the village at night and shot people indiscriminately. Mr Adokwe called on the federal government to intervene in the matter adding that the killings were unhindered and unabated for days right under the noses of the armed forces. While explaining what took place in Doma and Akwe local government areas, the senator stated that 32 persons had been confirmed dead and lamented the nation is falling into anarchy. In his remark, Mr Melaye said the country is becoming a valley of death. He described the constant deliberations by the Senate on killings as customary, ritualistic and a pattern. We should take these things beyond the rhetoric of presentation on daily basis. We are behaving as if we have kerosene flowing through our veins, not blood. Who is to protect the common man on the street? Who is to protect the palm wine tapper? Who is to protect the poor farmer in Ogbomoso? We should call a spade a spade. The President of the Federal Republic of Nigeria must show capability as the Commander-in-Chief of the Armed Forces. If we need international support, we should say so on time. If we need international collaboration we should say so on time. We should not be concentrating on creating funds for the army without looking at the police. Intelligence gathering in this country is dead. Events will happen, there will be signals that it would happen and they would happen and there would be no remedy. Before the masses begin to chase us, before they begin to destroy our vehicles and our homes, I think it is time we act and make hay while the sun shines, he said. Dino Melaye He further advised the leadership of the Senate to move and see the president and let him understand the magnitude and intensity of what is happening. Mr Ekweremadu said the killings have not been given the priority and attention they deserve as he wondered if America, United Kingdom or South Africa would let such menace linger before being abated. He agreed with Mr Melayes suggestion as he said Nigeria should not be ashamed to ask for help. We should not be ashamed to ask for help. The President met with the UK Prime Minister and he was of the opinion that Britain would help us security-wise. America is also offering to help. We should not be reluctant to come out openly and say we need help, because what we have now is a global village. We cannot be asking people to come to Nigeria and invest their monies here. They will not! Rather, let us ask them to come and help us to solve our security problem. If we solve our security problem, they will come here, with nobody asking them to come. I think the first thing to do is to resolve the issue, and it is something we all need to do, and do it fast, he added. Another lawmaker, Ben Murray-Bruce (PDP-Bayelsa) frowned at how the federal government is more concerned with exposing looters and criminals than addressing security issues in the country. Senator Ben Murray Bruce Everybody is looking at the context of who will die faster; which criminal will attack faster. The people who voted us into office did not vote to hear who is killing who; they voted for us to provide leadership for our country. Instead, we are engaging in debate about criminals, killings, maiming, looters and so on. Let nobody be surprised, if the same agreement presented in 1983 for military to take over is presented, and if they do, a lot of these people will be unemployed, and who would need to find a source of income. ADVERTISEMENT I am worried about the security of our people. People are dying, people are losing their jobs, democracy is being destroyed and we are all watching; riots all over the streets. I guarantee you that if we do not stop and fix our problem, they (people) will strike, he said. The senate, thereafter, referred the matter to an ad-hoc committee to investigate the cause of the killings and asked the relevant agencies to provide relief materials for the victims. ADVERTISEMENT A human rights organization, Amnesty International, has condemned the reaction of the Nigerian police to the Shiites protests on Monday and Tuesday in Abuja. In a statement signed by Osai Ojigho, Director Amnesty International Nigeria, the organisation said the crackdown on unarmed protesters put lives at risk. The protesters took to the Unity Fountain, beside Transcorp Hotel, to demand the release of the leader of Islamic Movement of Nigeria, Ibrahim El-Zakzaky, who has been detained without trial for over two years. They confirmed they held Tuesdays protest at the Wuse Ultra-Modern Market in Abuja, adding that 30 of their members were missing after Mondays protest. The Shiites spokesperson, Ibrahim Musa, told PREMIUM TIMES that one of the protesters was killed, over 30 injured and about 200 arrested by the police. The Nigerian government has kept the Shiite leader in custody since 2015 when his group had an encounter with a convoy of the Chief of Army Staff Tukur Buratai, leading to the massacre of about 300 Shiite members, including Mr El-Zakzakys sons. The clerics wife has also been detained since then. Several security officers from the army, police as well as civil defence on Monday dispersed the protesters as eyewitnesses said the officers fired teargas and gun shots into the air. Videos and footage have also been released by eyewitnesses showing the dispersal of the protesters and some of them throwing stones at police vehicles. The FCT police command however stated no life was lost during the Shiites protest earlier today. The police earlier said some government and police operational vehicles were destroyed by the protesters and members of the Shiite group also injured 22 police personnel during the protest. But in its statement on Tuesday, Amnesty International said the strong hand applied against the protesters was unnecessary. This was a needless resort to violence by Nigerian police against a group of unarmed protestors. The IMN members gathered in Abuja were perfectly within their rights in demanding the release of their leader from a detention described by a federal court as both unlawful and unconstitutional. Although there were reports that stones were thrown by some protestors, there is no excuse for the use of live bullets, water cannon and tear gas. These were highly reckless tactics that could easily have resulted in fatalities. Nigerian authorities must adhere to the rule of law and respect the right to peaceful protest when policing these events. It described the arrest of 115 protesters as a worrying sign that the repression of IMN members is set to continue. The group called on the Nigerian authorities to release IMN leader, Ibraheem El Zakzaky, and his wife, adding that the government must also investigate the killings on 12-14 December 2015 in Zaria in which more than 360 people were killed by the military. An 82-year-old leader of the Araromi Oke-Odo market in Alimosho local government, Taofeek Olorunkemi, has been clamped into detention by the police over allegations of murder. Mr. Olorunkemi, the Deputy Baba Oja (market leader), and eight others were arrested last Friday afternoon and arraigned before a Magistrate Court in Igbosere, Lagos. The others include Williams Falana, 78 (market secretary); Livinus Njoku, 63 (Igbo leader); Lawal Dan Galadima, 59 (Hausa leader); Nasiru Ango, 52 (leader); Musa Muhammad, 62 (leader); and Wasiu Anabi, 35 (leader). The market leaders were charged with conspiracy to commit murder, murder, causing grievous bodily harm, and willful destruction of property in 2015. They were also charged with threat to kill contractors of Alimosho Local Government Area in 2017. Another market leader, Ndubuisi Obi, was arrested on Monday and is detained at the Abesan Police Division (Area B), PREMIUM TIMES learnt. Jiti Ogunye, lawyer to the traders, said upon their arrest, his clients cellphones were seized to prevent them from communicating with anybody. And without being taken to any police station, without any statement being taken from them, without any investigation being conducted, and without being informed of, or confronted with any allegations of criminal offences, they were taken before Magistrate Court No. 16 at Igbosere, Lagos, at about 5.00 p.m., and arraigned on a Remand Application under Section 264 (1) of the Administration of the Criminal Justice Act of Lagos State, 2015, for the purpose of being remanded in prison custody . It was just before their arraignment that their cellphone sets were released to them, which enabled them to call our law firm, Mr Ogunye said. After that call, we hurriedly arranged legal representation for them, relying fortuitously on the kind disposition of a learned colleague who was still in court at that late hour. The charge attached to the Remand Application alleged conspiracy to commit murder, murder, causing grievous bodily harm, wilful destruction of property (all in year 2015), threat to kill contractors of Alimosho Local Government Council, (in year 2017), contrary to sections 233, 223, 245, 350, and 58 of the Criminal Law of Lagos State, 2015. Mr Ogunye described the polices Remand Application as full of incongruities. A market used to illustrate the story For example, the alleged criminal offences (state offences) stated to have been committed in Lagos State against the Criminal Law of Lagos State, was charged by FCID (Federal Criminal Investigation Department) in Lagos, without the knowledge or insolvent of the Lagos State Police Command. Criminal acts were allegedly committed in 2015, but were brought to court for the purpose of remand and detention in 2018; no statements were obtained from the alleged criminal defendants and no investigation was conducted before they were snatched from the market and herded to court for the purpose of securing their detention. The market leaders, including an octogenarian and septuagenarian were improbably being charged with the offence of murder; and the market leaders were arrested from the market, the venue where they allegedly committed the offences that were charged, a place within the Ogba and Ikeja Magisterial Districts, and dragged to Lagos Magisterial District in Igbosere that lacks the jurisdiction to try them, for the purpose of remanding them in undeserved prison custody. This act by the police is nothing but an unconscionable and reckless abuse of law enforcement powers. On Friday, the magistrate, B.I Bakare, granted the polices remand application and remanded the market leaders in Ikoyi prison till May 14 pending the issuance of the advice of the Director of Public Prosecution. Phone calls to Chike Oti, the spokesperson of the Lagos State Police Command, were not answered. ADVERTISEMENT Traders and residents have however, linked the travails of the market leaders to moves by the state officials to take over the market. According to the traders, the Agbado Oke-Odo local council officials and one Chris Simon, alongside his firm, Total Value Integrated Services (said to be the developer-concessionaire partner of the local council) have been relentless in their efforts to take over the market. On February 21, PREMIUM TIMES learnt, the group accompanied by eight armed soldiers and dozens of thugs stormed the market at about 4 a.m. to erect a new signboard advertising the proposed demolition and redevelopment of the market by the developer, a move the traders resisted. Another attempt was made by the group the following day and which, again, the traders resisted. Subsequently, the traders began keeping vigil at the market after they received threats that the market would be burned down. The Araromi Oke Odo (Ile Epo) market was established in 1983 by the then Ikeja Local Government Area Council, from which the Alimosho Local Government Area was later carved out, in part, before the creation of the Agbado/Oke Odo LCDA under whose governance and supervisory jurisdictions the market now falls. At inception of the market, under the management of Ikeja Local Government Council, the market land and spaces were allocated, on payment of allocation fees, to intending traders for development of their shops and stalls. Thereafter, the traders developed their shops and stalls and started trading therein. Mr Ogunye said there is a subsisting judgment of the High Court of Lagos State granting the ownership of the Araromi Oke-Odo Market land to the Founders and Trustees of the Market, and declaring that the activities of the Alimosho Local Government Area (Agbado/Oke Odo LCDA) on the land amounted to (and still constitute) acts of trespass. That judgment has not been overturned on appeal. It is, thus, a flagrant violation of the rule of law for an LGA/LCDA that is established under the law treat the orders of the court with disdain and contempt, he added. ADVERTISEMENT Shareholders of Oando PLC, are overjoyed at the rise in the companys share price by 26% following the removal of a technical suspension placed on the companys shares on October 23, 2017. The Nigerian Stock Exchange (NSE) commenced free trading of Oando shares following a directive from the SEC on April 12. The share price has experienced a price jump from N5.99 to N7.55 after only three days of trading on the Nigerian capital market. Speaking on the lifting of the technical suspension, Mr. Babatunde Badmus, Pacesetter Shareholder Association said: We are happy the SEC and the NSE has finally heeded to the pleas of minority shareholders like myself. It is unfortunate it took six long months to take effect, nonetheless we are pleased to finally be opportuned to reap from the Companys positive operations over the last 6 months. Oando minority shareholders have been the hardest hit since the imposition of the technical suspension. During the period when the companys shares were placed on technical suspension, the NSEs All-Share Index gained c.14%. By virtue of the sustained suspension, Oando shareholders have been unable to benefit from the positive sentiments in the market within this period. Should the shares have been freely tradable, a positive correlation between crude oil prices and the share price of Oando PLC would have afforded the over 270,000 shareholders an opportunity to profit from the inevitable price rally. Mr. Tambari an Oando shareholder with the Sokoto Zone Shareholders Association said; The lifting of the technical suspension is a breath of fresh air. Every true shareholder of Oando is delighted that we can finally reap a return on our investment. It is for this reason I doubt the authenticity of these shareholder groups saying the suspension shouldnt have been lifted. Havent we suffered enough? The public knows that the company is viable, this is already evident in the price jump since the NSE commenced trading. Ms. Ayotola Jagun, Chief Compliance Office and Company Secretary, Oando PLC in an interview with CNBC recently said; On day one, the day the suspension was lifted, 178 million Oando shares were on bid with only 5.5 million available for sale. The companys share price hit the NSE daily price ceiling of 10% by 10.45am; further evidence that there is a lot of interest in Oando shares and that the general mood around the market and our shares is positive. On the contrary, Proactive Shareholders Association of Nigeria (PROSAN), The Trusted Shareholders Association of Nigeria (TSAN) and the Oando Shareholders Solidarity Group (OSSG) differ in opinion on the removal of the technical suspension. They have termed Kemi Adeosuns, Minister of Finance redeployment of Dr. Zubair as A ploy by the Minister of Finance to sweep the weighty allegations against Oando under the carpet. Speaking on the controversy surrounding the lifting of the technical suspension Eng, Patrick Ajudua Oando shareholder with the New Dimension Shareholders Association said; It is worrisome how the conversation has shifted from this good news, Oando shares trading on the capital market, to the call for the Minister of Finance to be sacked. Shareholders should be happy because we have lost out the most. This is a major hurdle that has been crossed and should be celebrated. But instead troublesome and supposed Oando shareholders are not celebrating they are protesting this good news. Why would any shareholder do that? Should they not be asking for the swift conclusion of this investigation so Oando can focus on generating a profit and dividend for us shareholders. My hope and that of the members of my association is that the SEC will conclude the forensic audit as soon as possible so that the company can focus on its business operations. For 176 days, shareholders and the capital market were held to ransom. The suspension of Oando shares, which experts have argued shouldnt have lasted this long, halted the companys ability to contribute its quota to the NSE All-Share Index and denied shareholders the opportunity to benefit from its positive business operations. The suspension of Oandos shares pending a forensic audit does not follow SECs own rules using the case of MRS as an example, a forensic audit was conducted on the company but the shares of the company wasnt suspended. Under the NSE Listing Rules, there is in fact no mechanism for a Technical Suspension in the trading of listed shares. Even the Companys shareholders in South Africa were made to partake in the prolonged suffering as the Johannesburg Stock Exchange (JSE), where Oando has a secondary listing, had to institute a full suspension of trading in the shares of Oando on the JSE, so as to be consistent with the trading status of Oando shares on the NSE. Oando made four profits in a row from its FYE 2016 results to its Q3 2017 results which wasnt reflective in its share price. As a matter of fact, when a company comes out of a technical suspension the norm is for shareholders is to dump their shares as the value falls. However this has not been the case with Oando. Demand has far outweighed available shares imagine the true value of these Oando shares now if trading hadnt been suspended for 6 months. Oandos positive activities , coupled with the rise of crude oil to just over $70 these past months cannot be ignored, just last week the Nigerian National Petroleum Corporation (NNPC) announced that a consortium consisting of Oando PLC and OilServe Limited have been awarded the Engineering, Procurement, Construction (EPC) mandate for the construction of a gas pipelines stretching from Ajaokuta to Abuja as part of the Ajaokuta-Kaduna-Kano Pipeline. The pipeline is a section of the Trans-Nigerian Gas Pipeline under the gas infrastructure blueprint designed to enable the industrialisation of the Eastern and Northern parts of Nigeria and also enable connectivity between the East, West and North, which is currently non-existent. Also, the company commissioned its new office building, the Wings Office Complex, a two 12-story building which also offers a world-class indoor event space, a one-of-a-kind space that can hold up to 300 people and an outdoor waterfront area with a hosting capacity of 200 people and overlooks Lagos States waterway. The building will not only act as the companys new state of the art head office but will also be an additional revenue generator from its 27,000m2 worth of lettable office space. The hope is that the forensic audit into Oando will be concluded as soon as possible and the results published and processes put in place to ensure this doesnt occur again and more importantly so that shareholders can finally put this issue to rest and reap a return on their investments. ADVERTISEMENT The Borno Police Command on Tuesday confirmed the arrest of a female suicide bomber at the Bakassi Internally Displaced (IDPs) camp in Maiduguri. According to a statement by Edet Okon, Police Public Relations Officer, in Maiduguri, the suicide bomber was arrested by officials of the Explosive Ordinance Disposal (EOD) team, on Tuesday at about 6: 50 a.m. while lurking around the Internally Displaced Persons (IDPs) camp. He said that police officers condoned off the area, diffused the bomb and apprehended the suspect. The police spokesman added that the suspect is in police custody. Mr Okon said: On Tuesday, at about 6:50 a.m., a female suicide bomber was sighted behind Bakassi IDP camp in Maiduguri metropolis. On sighting the bomber, conventional policemen alongside the EOD team swung into action and cordoned the area, to prevent escape of the bomber into the city. The suspect, one Zara Idriss was rendered safe, arrested and is now in custody. Mr Okon called on members of the public to go about their normal activities without fear and to report any suspicious movement in their localities to security agencies. He reiterated the commands commitment to protect lives and property in the state. (NAN) ADVERTISEMENT The chairman of the Nigerian Union of Road Transport Workers (NURTW), Birnin Gwari branch, Abdu Kano, and five others who were kidnapped last week, have been freed. They were freed in the early hours of Tuesday along old Birnin Gwari town, by their captives. Five million naira was said to have been paid as ransom before they were freed after spending about a week in the bush, PREMIUM TIMES learnt. The NURTW Secretary, Birnin Gwari branch, Almustapha Ahmad, confirmed their release to PREMIUM TIMES on the telephone. According to him, the victims have since been reunited with their families. Yes they were released around 12 a.m. on Tuesday after we paid five million naira ransom to their captives. We will continue to appeal to the government to do the right thing about Funtua road because these criminals will soon take over the highway, he said. He cautioned motorists to avoid plying the route which bordered Birnin Gwari and Zamfara State from 4 p.m. The bandits are in charge of the road from 4 p.m. daily. We hope the government will do something about it, he said. A former chairman of Birnin Gwari local government, who did not want his name mentioned for safety reasons, said he visited them (the victims) at home to sympathise with them on what happened. Thank God they are hale and healthy, he said. PREMIUM TIMES last week Friday reported how the chairman and his five members were abducted at old Birnin Gwari village, about 60 kilometres from Birnin Gwari town, on Thursday. ADVERTISEMENT The National Chairman of Labour Party, Mike Omotoso, has said his partys former member, Olusegun Mimiko, is welcome back to the party. A group within the Labour Party, known as the Voice Out Vanguard, had said Mr Mimiko, a former governor of Ondo State, is not welcome to the party. The chairman, in a statement signed on Tuesday and made available to PREMIUM TIMES, said he had to clarify that the group wasnt speaking for the party. Mr Mimiko was a member of the Labour Party before defecting to the Peoples Democratic Party (PDP) in 2014. His aides have denied that he plans to return to Labour Party, but the rumour continues. My attention was rightly drawn to a report on Thisday live where a faceless group spoke on the return of Olusegun Mimiko to Labour Party, the chairman said. This personal reply is requisite because the said group, while supposedly condemned the return of the former governor, appeared to be speaking in our support. Let me state unequivocally that Dr Olusegun Mimiko is free to return to this party he helped to nurture. I have nothing against his return and I state without any reservation that his coming will be a worthwhile addition to this party especially at this time. The chairman also said Mr Mimiko was a brother and a well experienced politician whose sagacity will contribute to the growth of Labour Party. He said the party is resolute about building a well structured party where the generality of the people, not few individuals, have the way. We made a solemn promise to return this party to the masses who truly own it and that we shall make happen. Irrespective of who knocks on our door, our ideologies cannot be compromised, our resolve for best practices, internal democracy and rule of law is sacrosanct. While appealing to individuals and aggrieved members to eschew acrimony and embrace peace across board, he assured that his mandate as chairman will be upheld. I assure all, again, that the mandate freely given to me at the October 3rd Special National Convention shall be upheld for the success of the party. You have given us the mandate, we shall give you the victory. To all loyal party members across the country, thank you for standing firm, you are all the reason this great party has not been confined to the dustbin of history in spite of past dealings that only promote the interests of a very few minority. For the New World Order, a world government is just the beginning. Once in place they can engage their plan to exterminate 80% of the world's population, while enabling the "elites" to live forever with the aid of advanced technology. For the first time, crusading filmmaker ALEX JONES reveals their secret plan for humanity's extermination: Operation ENDGAME. Jones chronicles the history of the global elite's bloody rise to power and reveals how they have funded dictators and financed the bloodiest warscreating order out of chaos to pave the way for the first true world empire. Watch as Jones and his team track the elusive Bilderberg Group to Ottawa and Istanbul to document their secret summits, allowing you to witness global kingpins setting the world's agenda and instigating World War III. to Ottawa and Istanbul to document their secret summits, allowing you to witness global kingpins setting the world's agenda and instigating World War III. Learn about the formation of the North America transportation control grid, which will end U.S. sovereignty forever. Discover how the practitioners of the pseudo-science eugenics have taken control of governments worldwide as a means to carry out depopulation. View the progress of the coming collapse of the United States and the formation of the North American Union. Never before has a documentary assembled all the pieces of the globalists' dark agenda. Endgame's compelling look at past atrocities committed by those attempting to steer the future delivers information that the controlling media has meticulously censored for over 60 years. It fully reveals the elite's program to dominate the earth and carry out the wicked plan in all of human history. Endgame is not conspiracy theory, it is documented fact in the elite's own words. CARLSBAD, Calif., April 17, 2018 /PRNewswire-USNewswire/ -- This week, 583 school districts and 135 schools across the nation are being recognized by The National Association of Music Merchants (NAMM) Foundation as Best Communities for Music Education (BCME). In cooperation with researchers at The Music Research Institute at the University of Kansas, and based on survey results, NAMM each year selects school districts that receive recognition as being among the Best Communities for Music Education (BCME) and individual schools who receive the SupportMusic Merit Award (SMMA). Now in its 19th year, the awards program recognizes the outstanding efforts of teachers, administrators, parents, students and community leaders who have made music education part of the curriculum. Designations are given to districts and schools that demonstrate an exceptionally high commitment and consistent access to music education. This year, The NAMM Foundation and the University of Kansas are recognizing school districts in 41 states, along with individual schools in 35 states and the District of Columbia. Those honored include both schools and districts that have never been recognized before, as well those that have received recognition multiple years in a row. "The schools and districts we recognize this year both new and repeat honorees represent a diverse group of urban, rural and suburban districts and demographics," said Mary Luehrsen of The NAMM Foundation. "Along with a strong commitment to music education, there are two common traits that each program shares: consistent funding that anchors music education as part of the core curriculum and music programs that are located in communities where music education is viewed as a jewel of the school system. Parents, administrators and community members are proud of these local music programs and attend them regularly." Research studies continue to demonstrate the physical, cognitive and social benefits of music making. Students who are involved in a school-based music program are not only more likely to graduate high school and attend college; also, only a few years of musical training early in life improves how the brain processes sound, even later in life. Social benefits include conflict resolution, teamwork skills and learning how to give and receive constructive criticism. "Music and the arts are a critical component of the core curriculum, and strong community support and involvement in the arts helps build an even stronger foundation for student success in those areas of study and beyond," said KU researcher and professor Christopher Johnson. "Along with contributing to improved graduation rates and academic success, students in quality music programs are consistently more proficient in other subjects and develop many ancillary life-long skills. We have all noticed how the most involved music students are also exceptional critical thinkers and good listeners, able to persist through all kinds of adversities. The benefits of a strong music program extend far beyond the program itself, though the primary benefit will always be the unparalleled joys that good music brings to peoples' lives." From coast to coast, schools recognized by The NAMM Foundation are engaging students and their communities through music. Whether these are students having a chance to perform with community choral, symphony and theater ensembles in Abingdon, Pennsylvania; reduced or low-cost private music lessons for needy students in Ann Arbor, Michigan; or English language learners in Grand Forks, North Dakota building new language usage skills through music education, schools and districts are creating a community of learners and showing what they have learned to the broader community. The BCME program and the SupportMusic Merit Award evaluate schools and districts based on funding, staffing of highly qualified teachers, commitment to standards and access to music instruction. To review the list of the 583 Best Communities in Music Education, please visit: https://www.nammfoundation.org/articles/2018districts A list of the 135 schools that received SupportMusic Merit Awards can be found here: https://www.nammfoundation.org/articles/2018schools About The NAMM Foundation The NAMM Foundation is a non-profit supported in part by the National Association of Music Merchants and its 10,300 members around the world. The NAMM Foundation works to advance active participation in music making across the lifespan by supporting scientific research, philanthropic giving and public service programs. For more information about The NAMM Foundation, please visit http://www.nammfoundation.org. Contact: Jamie Horwitz, [email protected], 202/549-4921 SOURCE NAMM Foundation Related Links http://www.nammfoundation.org LONDON, April 17, 2018 /PRNewswire/ -- AIA Worldwide, a global leader in talent acquisition technologies, today announced that it has won three major awards at the 2018 Internet Advertising Competition (IAC), hosted by Web Marketing Association. The Web Marketing Association (WMA), which was founded to help set a high standard for internet marketing and corporate web development on the World Wide Web, created the IAC Awards so companies and individuals could enter their best work to be judged against other work in its own industry. The IAC Awards provide an opportunity to highlight online advertising in 96 industries and nine online formats including, online ad, video, mobile, newsletter, email, and social media. AIA Worldwide received a total of three awards across three different categories for its work on behalf of their clients, including Best Telecommunication Website, Best Restaurant Website and Best TV Website. "Creativity in employer branding continues to be smarter, technologically driven, attention grabbing and distinctive," said Russell Miyaki, senior vice president, Creative Services at AIA Worldwide. "As the global talent economy and consumer behavior shifts, so does the need to connect with candidates on their terms with consumer-centric employer brand experiences. We are once again honored and proud to be acknowledged by the IAC Awards." About AIA Worldwide AIA Worldwide is a global leader in talent acquisition technologies, committed to finding new ways to leverage software, strategy and creative to build talent and enhance our clients' employer brands- across every connection point. From healthcare to finance to retail to technology and everything in between- we've revolutionised the way companies and candidates connect. SOURCE AIA Worldwide Related Links https://www.aia.co.uk BEVERLY, Mass., April 17, 2018 /PRNewswire/ -- Altova (http://www.altova.com) announced the release of Version 2018 release 2 of its MissionKit desktop developer tools and server software products. This release introduces new tools for processing JSON with XSLT and XPath/XQuery, more flexible ways to work with functions in data mapping projects, and much more. Querying JSON with XSLT, XPath, & XQuery "Despite the growing popularity of JSON, there is still no widely-used transformation language to, for instance, transform JSON data to HTML. Similarly, no particular language for querying JSON has gained significant traction," said Alexander Falk, CEO and President of Altova. "However, functionality added to XPath/XQuery 3.1 offers developers an elegant, standardized way to query and transform their JSON data, and we've added full support for JSON in our powerful XSLT and XPath/XQuery tools to finally make it practical." More information on this, and other highlights from the newly released features: Adding to support for editing and converting JSON, XMLSpy now also supports processing and transforming JSON in its XSLT, XPath, and XQuery editors, builders, and debuggers. New Node Functions in the MapForce data mapping tool make it possible to define data processing functions and/or default values and assign them to one or more nodes without repeating the same function multiple times and without drawing mapping lines. Node Functions are easy-to-use and reduce the time required to define and maintain mappings significantly UModel now supports C++ for program code generation from UML models, reverse engineering of existing code, and round-trip engineering, adding even more power to this advanced yet affordable UML modeling tool. Adding to the popular family of server products, available in this release is the new DiffDog Server. This new product combines the rich file and directory comparison options of DiffDog with the power of today's parallel computing environments to let you automate high volume comparisons and generate diff reports automatically. And many more These and many additional features are available in Version 2018 Release 2. To view new features in each product and access trial downloads please visit: (https://www.altova.com/whatsnew) About Altova Altova is a software company specializing in tools that assist developers with data management, software and application development, mobile development, and data integration. The creator of XMLSpy and other award-winning products, Altova is a key player in the software tools industry and the leader in XML solution development tools. The company offers a complete line of desktop developer software for XML, SQL, and UML; high-performance workflow automation server products; and a cross-platform mobile development platform. Altova focuses on its customers' needs by offering a product line that fulfills a broad spectrum of requirements for software development teams. With over 5.1 million users worldwide, including 91% of Fortune 500 organizations, Altova is honored to serve clients from one-person shops to the world's largest organizations. Altova is committed to delivering standards-based, platform-independent solutions that are powerful, affordable and easy-to-use. Founded in 1992, Altova is headquartered in Beverly, Massachusetts and Vienna, Austria. Altova, MobileTogether, MissionKit, XMLSpy, MapForce, FlowForce, RaptorXML, StyleVision, UModel, DatabaseSpy, DiffDog, SchemaAgent, and Authentic are trademarks and/or registered trademarks of Altova GmbH in the United States and other countries. The names of and references to other companies and products mentioned herein may be the trademarks of their respective owners. Sales Information: [email protected] USA: 978-816-1600 EU: +43 (1) 545 5155 -0 Media relations contact: Cynthia L Neely PR & Marketing Communications Manager [email protected] 978-816-1567 SOURCE Altova AUBURN HILLS, Mich., April 17, 2018 /PRNewswire/ -- Global mobility solutions provider, AM General, today celebrated the official grand opening of its Technology and Engineering Center (TEC) after recently relocating from Livonia, Michigan. The ceremony focused on AM General's strong legacy of designing, engineering and supporting iconic, high-quality specialized vehicles and vehicle automotive systems for military and commercial customers. With the backdrop of its state-of-the-art the facility, the company emphasized its continuous commitment to growth and innovation through collaboration not only with its customers worldwide, but also with local and national defense and automotive industry leaders. AM General President and CEO, Andy Hove (center) officially opening the AM General Technology and Engineering Center with (from left to right) City of Auburn Hills Mayor Pro-Tem, John Burmeister, AM General Chief Operating Officer Steve Zink, MEDC Executive Director, Michigan Defense Center, Sean Carlson, and Oakland County Director, Economic Development & Community Affairs, Irene Spanos "The greatest economic success of any local community includes a diverse inventory of businesses that can weather the cyclical ups and downs of any one industry," said Auburn Hills Mayor Kevin McDaniel. "AM General, as a defense industry company, does just that by joining an already diverse Auburn Hills business community that is growing and thriving. We are honored to have them in our community and they have already proven to be an engaged corporate citizen," he added. The AM General TEC serves as an ideation hub that will welcome defense and non-defense customers, business partners, industry and community organizations to discuss key initiatives, not just for the company, but for the automotive and defense industries as a whole. The company has already hosted various groups to the AM General TEC. The Michigan Military Coalition recently held their Congressional Delegation Breakfast at the facility to discuss events and legislation affecting the Michigan defense industry. Additionally, the Michigan Automotive & Defense Cyber Awareness Team (MADCAT), whose mission is to leverage unique regional assets in the defense and automotive industries to drive technology innovation, encourage economic development, and create a talented workforce for Macomb County and the State of Michigan held their quarterly meeting at the AM General TEC. "We are excited to officially open our Technology and Engineering Center. While we have been working out of the TEC facility since last Fall, we wanted to take the opportunity to welcome our business partners, community and industry leaders and provide them with a more intimate view of our organization and our current initiatives," said Steve Zink, AM General Chief Operating Officer. "This new facility not only improves our day to day business operations, but it also provides us with the flexibility to bring in our partners to discuss current and future technologies that are relevant to our industry today and become the new solutions for tomorrow." The facility boasts over 74,000 square feet of office and meeting space, and an additional 102,000 square feet containing a full-service workshop for fast prototyping, testing, and quality control of current and future vehicles and automotive systems, as well as a dedicated show room for current and concept vehicle displays. It is outfitted with the latest wireless technology and messaging platform that enables employees to be fully mobile and connected, whether working locally or remotely. As an ISO9001 registered company, the grand opening ceremony was also an opportunity to tout the full compliance of the company's Quality Management System audit, which demonstrates the ability to consistently provide products and services that meet customer and regulatory requirements. About AM General AM General designs, engineers, manufactures, supplies and supports specialized vehicles for military and commercial customers worldwide. Through its military business, the company is widely recognized as the world leader in design, engineering, manufacturing and logistics support of Tactical Vehicles, having produced and sustained more than 296,000 vehicles in over 70 countries. AM General has more than five decades of experience meeting the changing needs of the defense and automotive industries, supported by its employees at major facilities in Indiana, Michigan, and Ohio, and a strong supplier base that stretches across 43 states. Please see more information about AM General at www.amgeneral.com. Media Contact: Deborah Reyes Director, Marketing and Communications / AM General Phone: 248-309-5897 E-mail: [email protected] SOURCE AM General Related Links HTTP://www.amgeneral.com ROHNERT PARK, Calif., April 17, 2018 /PRNewswire/ -- Federal income-driven repayment plans (IDRs) help borrowers who have low incomes, high payments or large families afford their student loans. Because payments are based on income and family size, even enrollees whose income has dropped may still be able to afford their payments as long as they have certified their income to reflect those changes. However, enrollment rates are relatively low. A recent report suggests those low rates are related to how these plans are described. Ameritech Financial is a private company that helps borrowers understand IDRs in the context of their own financial situation. The company also helps with application and annual recertification paperwork. "A lot of borrowers have high payments compared to their income and other expenses," said Tom Knickerbocker, executive vice president of Ameritech Financial. "With the right resources, like IDRs, they can work to get those loans under control. Borrowers shouldn't feel like their repayment is hopeless because they didn't get a key piece of information about a potential solution." The primary findings of the report show that borrowers are more likely to pursue an IDR if the discussion focuses on the protection qualities of IDRs. Specifically, the report described IDRs as insurance against unaffordable payments. That means that when their federal student loan payments are unaffordable, such plans will help borrowers stay current on them without fearing to fall into a negative financial situation. While IDRs are not insurance, for example, such plans do protect borrowers in case of disproportionate student debt-to-income ratios. Simply put, borrowers in IDR programs will be more able to avoid delinquency and default because their payments will never be more than 10 or 15 percent of their discretionary income. Such plans have the power to potentially improve borrowers' whole financial situations, as any reduction in payment may also allow borrowers to pursue other financial goals. "At Ameritech Financial, we focus on borrowers' current income and loan situation when explaining the IDR programs and how they might complement their budget," said Knickerbocker. "When their financial future is on the line, we try to help them get into a situation in which they can avoid delinquency and default. IDRs have the power to do that." About Ameritech Financial Ameritech Financial is a private company located in Rohnert Park, California. Ameritech Financial has already helped thousands of consumers with financial analysis and student loan document preparation to apply for federal student loan repayment programs offered through the Department of Education. Each Ameritech Financial telephone representative has received the Certified Student Loan Professional certification through the International Association of Professional Debt Arbitrators (IAPDA). Ameritech Financial prides itself on its exceptional customer service. Contact To learn more about Ameritech Financial, please contact: Ameritech Financial 5789 State Farm Drive #265 Rohnert Park, CA 94928 1-800-792-8621 [email protected] Related Links Ameritech Financial home page SOURCE Ameritech Financial WOODBURY, Minn., April 17, 2018 /PRNewswire/ -- Recruiting top-notch personal trainers to support the active lifestyles of over 3 million members across 4,000 gyms can feel like a strenuous, never-ending workout. Between managers, trainers and other staff, Anytime Fitness, and its franchisees, keep more than 20,000 positions filled across its constantly growing franchise system. Anytime Fitness confronts the staffing challenge with the same competitive fervor that's kept it the world's fastest growing fitness center for the past 10 consecutive years. Along with a focus on building a strong employee brand, the booming gym franchise invests in a strategic approach to recruitment, including the use of innovative technology, Hireology, an integrated hiring and talent management platform. Chuck Runyon, CEO and co-founder of Anytime Fitness, said recruiting the right candidates is essential to Anytime Fitness' success. The brand focuses on four pillars: people (empowering and investing in employees); purpose (enriching people's lives and improving the planet); profits (placing importance on growth and investments) and play (fostering an enjoyable workplace). "With a mission to improve the self-esteem of the world, we've got to have the right people in place interacting with and inspiring members," said Chuck Runyon, CEO of Anytime Fitness. "Hireology's platform and proactive hiring solutions gives us an edge in finding the best candidates. Gyms that use Hireology see not only more applicants, but the best, most suitable candidates that fit our culture." Anytime Fitness franchises opting into the Hireology platform can: Customize a recruiting strategy for their location. The program offers flexible options for owners who may have multiple locations to meet their hiring objectives. Develop effective job descriptions tailored for in-demand talent, while also showcasing employee testimonials, company culture and core values. Quickly identify the most qualified applicants. When a potential employee submits an application, the hiring and talent management system automatically sends pre-screen surveys and skills assessments. Efficiently schedule, conduct interviews and create customized interview questions to help franchisees objectively assess each candidate. "To stay competitive in the crowded fitness space, we have to live our brand values in our gyms," Runyon added. "Our franchisees look for applicants who have a sense of humor, similar values and who are hungry for personal growth. By utilizing Hireology, our gyms can more easily find trainers and other employees who embody these qualities." With constant growth, time is of the essence in filling positions. Quarter over quarter, Hireology's platform lowered each Anytime Fitness gym owner's time to hire by 23 percent. The reduction was achieved primarily by allowing owners to spend less time reviewing unqualified and unfit applicants, and instead focusing only on top talent. In turn, the decreased time spent on hiring has allowed the locations utilizing Hireology to focus more on empowering its employees and serving members. Megan Leroy, Human Resources Director of 33 Anytime Fitness locations throughout Southern Wisconsin, said, "We've been using Hireology and we love it. We're set up with nine area managers who oversee different locations. Before Hireology, I'd have resumes flow into my email that I'd have to review manually. It was disorganized and time consuming. Hireology fixed this with our new hiring process." About Anytime Fitness Ranked #1 on Entrepreneur's prestigious Top Global Franchise list, Anytime Fitness is the fastest-growing gym franchise in the world, with 4,000 gyms serving 3,000,000 members on five (soon to be all seven) continents. Open 24 hours a day, 365 days a year, Anytime Fitness prides itself on providing its members with convenient fitness options and friendly, personal service in well-maintained facilities which feature top-quality exercise equipment. Gyms are now open in all 50 states, Canada, Mexico, Australia, New Zealand, England, Scotland, The Republic of Ireland, Wales, Grand Cayman, Poland, the Netherlands, Spain, Qatar, India, Chile, Japan, Singapore, Malaysia, Hong Kong, China, Taiwan, Belgium, Italy, Sweden and the Philippines. All franchised gyms are individually owned and operated. Join one gym and use them all. About Hireology Hireology's integrated hiring and talent management platform empowers multi-location, owner-operated, and independently owned businesses to build their best teams with confidence. The company equips teams with the skills and technology needed to manage the full employee lifecycle from hire to retire in one seamless platform. With focused expertise across several industries including automotive, fitness & wellness, education, healthcare, and professional services more than 4,500 businesses today trust Hireology to help build great teams, lift customer service and drive profitability. For more information, visit www.hireology.com. SOURCE Hireology Related Links http://www.hireology.com SAN MATEO, Calif., April 17, 2018 /PRNewswire/ -- Applitools (https://applitools.com), the leader in Application Visual Management, today announced it has raised $31 million in Series C funding led by OpenView, the expansion stage venture firm, with participation from its existing investors Sierra Ventures, Magma Venture Partners, iAngels, and La Maison. Applitools will use this investment to fuel market expansion of its Artificial Intelligence (AI) Powered Visual Testing and Monitoring solution by scaling its R&D, Operations, and Sales. With tens of thousands of users across more than 300 companies, Applitools Eyes recently crossed a total of 100 million visual comparisons and one billion component level validations. Since it was founded in 2013, Applitools has raised more than $46 million. Read more about the next phase of Applitools' company journey at: (https://applitools.com/the-next-phase-of-the-applitools-journey). "Our mission is to help customers automate all visual aspects of application delivery, and address the growing importance of providing exceptional digital experiences across any device, browser, operating system, and language," said Gil Sever, CEO of Applitools. "We are excited to partner with OpenView to scale our enterprise-grade platform to support digital transformation with the velocity and quality that businesses demand." Applitools developed the first and only Visual AI Engine that mimics the human eye and brain in a reliable and scalable fashion. Applitools Eyes (https://applitools.com/features), the company's Automated Visual AI Testing and Monitoring Platform, leverages the largest data set of UI validations in the world and achieves 99.999 percent accuracy, i.e. less than 10 false detections in a million comparisons. The company's AI engine continues to evolve through machine learning by analyzing millions of new images on a daily basis. Applitools' Automated Visual AI Testing and Monitoring Platform v10 is available now. To learn more and open a free trial account, visit: (https://applitools.com/users/register). "If there's a single commonality of the fastest growing companies it's that they understand their brand is the sum of every experience a customer has with you," said Bill Macaitis, former CMO at Slack, Zendesk and SVP Marketing at Salesforce. "The need to deliver delightful, incredible digital experiences to millions of customers, 24/7, on a breadth of devices, browsers, and operating systems can be daunting. Applitools makes it easy via their Application Visual Management (AVM) approach, which enables automated validation of every aspect of the visual user experience. Applitools is a game changer." "OpenView is thrilled to partner with the Applitools team as they solve for one of the few remaining bottlenecks in the continuous delivery process visual testing," said Jim Baum, Venture Partner at OpenView who joins the Applitools board. "For modern enterprises, a web or mobile application is the face of their brand and Applitools provides a crucial protective layer." Jim will bring world class operational experience to Applitools' Board of Directors, as he was CEO of Netezza and took the company public and later drove its acquisition by IBM in 2010 for nearly $2B. To help guide Test Automation Engineers, DevOps Teams, Front End Developers, Manual QA experts, and Digital Transformation executives, Applitools created Application Visual Management - a new category framework that simplifies and automates all visual aspects of application creation, testing, delivery and monitoring. The goal is to help shorten application delivery cycles and improve software quality because what the customer sees is what matters most. By helping prevent visual flaws from occurring in the application delivery process, teams can avoid the issues that frequently result from events such as browser and operating system updates, new devices penetrating the marketplace, and the effects of dynamic content on the web. Today's DevOps toolchain only supports the functional aspects of modern application delivery in areas like testing, monitoring, Continuous Integration (CI), Continuous Delivery (CD), accessibility, security, bug tracking, collaboration, source control, and more. AVM applies Visual AI technology to add automated visual validation of all the visual aspects of application delivery to the DevOps toolchain, allowing acceleration and full automation of the entire delivery process. Fortune 100 companies have already realized significant benefits through the use of Visual AI technology and those benefits can now be offered to any Enterprise or SMB. This round of funding will be used to expand the offering with new capabilities and to target users across the entire software development, delivery, and monitoring toolchain. To learn more about AVM, download the Application Visual Management whitepaper for free at: (http://go.applitools.com/AVM-Category-Whitepaper.html). About Applitools Applitools is on a mission to help Test Automation Engineers, DevOps Teams, Frontend Developers, and Digital Transformation Executives release, test and monitor flawless mobile, web, and native apps in a fully automated way that enables Continuous Integration and Continuous Delivery (CI-CD). Founded in 2013, Applitools uses sophisticated AI powered image processing technology to ensure that an application appears correctly and functions properly on all mobile devices, browsers, operating systems and screen sizes. Applitools has more than 300 customers from a range of verticals, including Fortune 100 companies in software, banking, online retail, insurance, pharmaceuticals, and more. Applitools is headquartered in San Mateo, California, with an R&D center in Tel Aviv, Israel. For more information, please visit applitools.com. About OpenView OpenView, the expansion stage venture firm, helps build software companies into market leaders. Through its Expansion Platform, OpenView helps companies hire the best talent, acquire and retain the right customers and partner with industry leaders so they can dominate their markets. Their focus on the expansion stage makes OpenView uniquely suited to provide truly tailored operational support to its portfolio companies. Learn more about OpenView at openviewpartners.com. Applitools Media Contact: Jeremy Douglas Catapult PR-IR 303-581-7760, ext. 16 [email protected] SOURCE Applitools Related Links http://www.applitools.com LONG ISLAND, N.Y., April 17, 2018 /PRNewswire/ -- Today many people are living in a state of high anxiety in which they constantly worry about what will happen next. From politics to world events and uncertainties in their own personal lives, many of us are feeling a kinship with the storybook character Chicken Little. Yet while there are some things we cannot change, such as what happens in Russia or Washington, there are ways that we can reduce our own anxiety and fear, according to Marcia Grace author of the new book, Calm, Creative, Joyful!: Lessons in Transforming Your Life. The first in the series was recently published by Higher Mind Press. Marcia Grace Calm, Creative, Joyful!: Lessons in Transforming Your Life "Most people think that love makes the world go round," Marcia Grace observes. "But it's really guilt that does so and it drives our fear and anxiety. There are three ways we keep our guilt going: we deny its existence, we minimize it by telling ourselves it isn't so bad and we project it on to other people. For example, we may tell ourselves that we would be just fine if only our boss wasn't such an idiot or our spouse stopped behaving in ways we did not like." To reduce feelings of guilt and the anxiety that goes with it, Marcia Grace advises people to take responsibility for their feelings by acknowledging what is upsetting them, spending quiet time examining their thoughts and choosing to let go of negative thoughts that are not serving them. In Calm, Creative, Joyful! Marcia Grace helps readers develop a new understanding of the hidden motivators beneath their conscious awareness which may be keeping them feeling guilty and regretful and triggering feelings of stress, depression and anger. The book is based on lessons Marcia Grace learned from teaching A Course in Miracles for nearly 40 years. A Course in Miracles is a hugely popular self-study course on universal love and forgiveness. Marcia Grace can also talk about why meditation is not about silencing one's thoughts (and what it really entails), how to understand what really motivates people and erroneous thinking that causes discomfort and fear. About the author Marcia Grace is an author, teacher, practical mystic, interfaith minister, grandmother and workshop leader who has been guiding students through A Course in Miracles for 35 years. She holds weekly classes on Long Island teaching the principles of A Course in Miracles and online on the Zoom platform. She wrote her book to share the valuable lessons she has learned about all the ways people's egos try to keep them trapped and how people can break free. Availability: New York City, nationwide by arrangement and via telephone Contact: Marcia Grace, (631) 924-0038; [email protected], www.MarciaGrace.com SOURCE Marcia Grace Related Links http://www.marciagrace.com LONDON, April 17, 2018 /PRNewswire/ -- Market Scenario Global automotive turbocharger market has very broad market in coming recent years. MRFR analysts has predicted that automotive industry is about to grow at a rapid pace, moreover, the speedy rising sales of passenger cars and technological innovations have also been a growth momentum. The global automotive turbocharger market is expected to reach USD 24,223.3 million by 2023 with 7.97% CAGR. Download the full report: https://www.reportbuyer.com/product/5376949 Automotive industry is diversifying at a greater speed as manufacturers and suppliers race to produce lighter and more powerful vehicles in lesser time. Alternative fuels, new lightweight materials and innovative technology are transforming the manufacturing process of automotive industry. With the global economy undergoing an unprecedented level shift, major emerging countries such as China, India, Thailand, and Indonesia are becoming manufacturing hubs for global automotive players. The income levels of individuals have been steadily increasing, also resulting in the rise in their disposable income, pushing the market towards growth. The currently booming automotive industry, combined with steadily increasing disposable income, is expected to contribute significantly in the growth of the market. Market Segmentation The global automotive turbocharger market is segment based on type, application, and region. On the basis of type, Gasoline Engine segment expected to witness highest growth in global automotive turbocharger market during the forecast period due to increase power and are designed to run at much higher RPMs (Revolutions per minute) than in diesels. Diesel engine is expected to be the second largest segment because they can handle high combustion pressures created by diesel fuel. Based on application, Passenger Cars expected to witness highest growth in global automotive turbocharger market with share of 54.70% in 2016 due to increase income level. High demand for automobiles is primarily driven by rising demand of passenger car among large pool of population, increasing per capita income in emerging countries, and expansion of global auto-manufacturers into new emerging markets and others. Regional Analysis Asia-Pacific accounted for the largest market share of 40.75% in 2016 due to increase in the vehicle production in developing countries such as India and China. The demand for turbochargers is largely dependent on vehicle production in developing countries such as India and China. The vehicle production is growing, which in turn would push the demand for turbocharged vehicles. Moreover, factors such as increase in vehicle production, large population base, growing demand for diesel vehicles, upcoming emission norms, and economic shifts are driving the Asia-Pacific turbocharger market. China accounted for the largest market share with a market value of USD 2,862.6 million and is projected to grow at the highest CAGR of 9.65% during the forecast period. Key Players The key players in global automotive turbocharger market are Honeywell International Inc. (U.S.), BorgWarner Inc. (U.S), Mitsubishi Heavy Industries, Ltd (Japan), IHI Corporation (Japan), Continental AG (Germany), Cummins, Inc.( U.S.), Bosch Mahle(Germany), Bullseye Power, LLC (U.S.), Precision Turbo and Engine(U.S.) and Fengcheng Xindongli Turbocharger Co., Ltd.( China). The report for Automotive Turbocharger 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. Download the full report: https://www.reportbuyer.com/product/5376949 About Reportbuyer Reportbuyer is a leading industry intelligence solution that provides all market research reports from top publishers For more information: Sarah Smith Research Advisor at Reportbuyer.com Email: [email protected] Tel: +1 (718) 213 4904 Website: www.reportbuyer.com SOURCE ReportBuyer Related Links http://www.reportbuyer.com VANCOUVER, April 17, 2018 /PRNewswire/ - Avino Silver & Gold Mines Ltd. (ASM: TSX/NYSE American, GV6: FSE, "Avino" or "the Company") is pleased to announce first quarter 2018 production results from its Avino property near Durango, Mexico. The silver equivalent production in Q1, 2018 increased by 9% compared to Q1, 2017 due to an increase in the tonnage processed and higher gold grades at the Avino Mine, together with higher silver grades at the San Gonzalo Mine. The gold production in Q1, 2018 increased by 12% compared to Q1, 2017 whereas the silver and copper production decreased by 3% and 5% respectively. Consolidated Production Highlights for First Quarter 2018 (Compared to First Quarter 2017) Silver equivalent production increased by 9% to 656,699 oz* Gold production increased by 12% to 2,065 oz Silver production decreased by 3 % to 309,927 oz Copper production decreased by 5% to 970,165 lbs *For comparison purposes, the silver equivalent ratio has been calculated using metal prices of $16.77 oz Ag, $1,330 oz Au and $3.16 Lb Cu. Mill production figures have not been reconciled and are subject to adjustment with concentrate sales. Calculated figures may not add up due to rounding. "We're pleased with our first quarter production results, as well as the progress being made around our expansion of the Avino Mine and processing plant" said David Wolfin, President and CEO. "We anticipate that the expansion at the Avino Mine will be completed early in the second quarter of 2018, and we look forward to an enhanced production profile by the end of the year." Production Tables for First Quarter, 2018 Comparative production results from the first quarter 2018 and the first quarter 2017 are presented below: Q1 2018 Q1 2017 % Change Total Silver Eq. Produced (oz) calculated* 656,699 604,643 9% Total Gold Produced (oz) calculated 2,065 1,837 12% Total Silver Produced (oz) calculated 309,927 320,082 -3% Total Copper Produced (Lbs) calculated 970,165 1,024,853 -5% Production Table for First Quarter, 2018 Production by mine Tonnes Concentrate Produced Grade Ag (g/t) Grade Au (g/t) Grade Cu % Recovery Ag % Recovery Au % Recovery Cu % Silver Oz Gold Oz Copper Lbs AgEq Avino 2,177 56 0.58 0.43 81 68 84 178,848 1,544 970,165 480,315 San Gonzalo 841 264 1.07 N/A 79 75 N/A 135,079 521 N/A 176,384 Consolidated 3,018 86 0.65 0.43 80 70 84 309,927 2,065 970,165 656,699 For comparison purposes, the silver equivalent ratio has been calculated using metal prices of $16.77 oz Ag, $1,330 oz Au and $3.16 Lb Cu. Mill production figures have not been reconciled and are subject to adjustment with concentrate sales. Calculated figures may not add up due to rounding. Avino Mine First Quarter 2018 Production Results Comparative figures for the first quarter 2018 and the first quarter 2017 for the Avino Mine are as follows; production figures for the first quarter 2018 include production from Mill Circuit 2 and Mill Circuit 3: Q1 2018 Q1 2017 Quarterly Change % Total Mill Feed (dry tonnes) 120,631 116,553 3% Feed Grade Silver (g/t) 56 61 -8% Feed Grade Gold (g/t) 0.58 0.50 16% Feed Grade Copper (%) 0.43 0.44 -2% Recovery Silver (%) 81 86 -6% Recovery Gold (%) 68 67 1% Recovery Copper (%) 84 91 -8% Total Silver Produced (kg) 5,438 6,083 -11% Total Gold Produced (g) 48,036 38,935 23% Total Copper Produced (Kg) 440,060 464,866 -5% Total Silver Equivalent Produced (oz) calculated* 480,315 439,163 9% * For comparison purposes, the silver equivalent ratio has been calculated using metal prices of $16.77 oz Ag, $1,330 oz Au and $3.16 Lb Cu. Mill production figures have not been reconciled and are subject to adjustment with concentrate sales. Calculated figures may not add up due to rounding. At the Avino mine during the first quarter, we advanced 1,188 metres of underground development, and 116,155 tonnes of mill feed were trucked to the plant for processing. An additional 4,476 tonnes from historic stockpiles were also processed during the quarter. The blending of the historic stockpile material with fresh underground material resulted in lower copper and silver recoveries for the quarter. Gold feed grade for the quarter increased by 16% and gold production for the quarter increased by 23%. The construction of Mill Circuit #4 is almost complete, and the installation of a filter press and a bank of flotation cells from Outotec and piping for the thickener are now underway. This work is expected to be completed later this month. The start-up and commissioning of the ball mill for Mill Circuit 4 commenced during the quarter with the flotation feed from the new ball mill reporting to Mill Circuit 3's flotation cells. There have been no issues encountered, and the mill is operating at design capacity. Development is now taking place at level 16.5 near a high grade gold zone for potential future mill feed. Rehabilitation work at the San Luis portal has also started. The portal entrance has been stabilized with shotcrete and the areas with poor ground conditions have been reinforced with wire mesh and rock anchors. A new electrical substation near the portal has been installed to provide power to the mine and piping for a new water line to the portal is currently being installed. San Gonzalo Mine First Quarter 2018 Production Highlights Comparative figures for the first quarter 2017 and the first quarter 2016 for the San Gonzalo mine are as follows: Q1 2018 Q1 2017 Quarterly Change % Total Mill Feed (dry tonnes) 20,186 20,133 0% Feed Grade Silver (g/t) 264 229 15% Feed Grade Gold (g/t) 1.1 1.2 -10% Recovery Silver (%) 79 84 -6% Recovery Gold (%) 75 76 -1% Total Silver Produced (kg) 4,201 3,873 8% Total Gold Produced (g) 16,206 18,182 -11% Total Silver Equivalent Produced (oz) calculated* 176,384 165,480 7% *For comparison purposes, the silver equivalent ratio has been calculated using metal prices of $16.77 oz Ag, $1,330 oz Au and $3.16 Lb Cu. Mill production figures have not been reconciled and are subject to adjustment with concentrate sales. Calculated figures may not add up due to rounding. The silver grades at San Gonzalo for Q1, 2018 increased by 15% and the gold grades decreased by 10% compared to Q1, 2017, as a result of the mineralization of the area being mined. Mill feed for the quarter came for Levels 4-020, 5-020 and 6-020. Underground development consisted of 362 metres of drifts, 255 metres of raises, and 134 metres of crosscuts for a total of 751 metres. Additionally, the tonnage broken for the quarter was 14,677 tonnes. The plant availability for the first quarter 2018 was 96%, and there were were no major shut downs other than the normal scheduled daily monthly maintenance. Zinc Circuit The company continued its testing program for recovery of precious metals and zinc from the San Gonzalo tailings. In Q1, 2018, the Company produced 233 tonnes of low quality zinc concentrate grading 1,582 g/t silver, 6.96 g/t gold and 13.35% zinc for an additional 22,343 AgEq ounces. This product is currently being marketed and if successful, this program will continue. Quality Assurance/Quality Control Mill assays are performed at the Avino property's on-site lab. Check samples are sent to SGS Labs in Durango, Mexico for verification. All concentrate shipments are assayed by one of the following independent third party labs: AHK, and Inspectorate in the UK and LSI in the Netherlands. Qualified Person(s) Avino's Mexican projects are under the supervision of Jasman Yee P.Eng, Avino director, who is a qualified person within the context of National Instrument 43-101. He has reviewed and approved the technical data in this news release. Company Announcements Avino is pleased to introduce Peter Latta to the technical Team as Senior Technical Advisor where he will work closely with Avino's metallurgical team in Vancouver and with company-wide operations teams. Peter is a professional engineer, registered in BC, with over 12 years' experience in the mining and minerals sector. He has a bachelor's degree from UBC in Metals and Materials engineering and also received his MBA from Simon Fraser University. He has spent his career at mine operations around the world with a mixture of onsite equipment operation, installation, commissioning and troubleshooting as well as on the commercial side with business development and contract negotiation. Peter brings his energy and experience to the Avino team and the Company looks forward to his contributions for many years to come. About Avino Avino is a silver and gold producer with a diversified pipeline of gold, silver and base metals properties in Mexico and Canada employing close to 600 people, and has created over 1,600 indirect jobs in Mexico. Avino produces from its wholly owned Avino and San Gonzalo Mines near Durango, Mexico, and is currently planning for future production at the Bralorne Gold Mine in British Columbia, Canada. The Company's gold and silver production remains unhedged. The Company's mission and strategy is to create shareholder value through its focus on profitable organic growth at the historic Avino Property near Durango, Mexico, and the strategic acquisition of mineral exploration and mining properties. Avino is committed to managing all business activities in an environmentally responsible and cost-effective manner, while contributing to the well-being of the communities in which we operate. ON BEHALF OF THE BOARD "David Wolfin" David Wolfin President & Chief Executive Officer Safe Harbor Statement - This news release contains "forward-looking information" and "forward-looking statements" (together, the "forward looking statements") within the meaning of applicable securities laws and the United States Private Securities Litigation Reform Act of 1995, including the updated mineral resource estimate for the Company's Avino Property located near Durango in west-central Mexico (the "Property") with an effective date of January 31, 2018 prepared for the Company, and reference to Measured, Indicated, Inferred Resources referred to in this press release. These forward-looking statements are made as of the date of this news release and the dates of technical reports, as applicable. Readers are cautioned not to place undue reliance on forward-looking statements, as there can be no assurance that the future circumstances, outcomes or results anticipated in or implied by such forward-looking statements will occur or that plans, intentions or expectations upon which the forward-looking statements are based will occur. While we have based these forward-looking statements on our expectations about future events as at the date that such statements were prepared, the statements are not a guarantee that such future events will occur and are subject to risks, uncertainties, assumptions and other factors which could cause events or outcomes to differ materially from those expressed or implied by such forward-looking statements. No assurance can be given that the Company's Property does not have the amount of the mineral resources indicated in the updated report or that such mineral resources may be economically extracted. Such factors and assumptions include, among others, the effects of general economic conditions, the price of gold, silver and copper, changing foreign exchange rates and actions by government authorities, uncertainties associated with legal proceedings and negotiations and misjudgments in the course of preparing forward-looking information. In addition, there are known and unknown risk factors which could cause our actual results, performance or achievements to differ materially from any future results, performance or achievements expressed or implied by the forward-looking statements. Known risk factors include risks associated with project development; the need for additional financing; operational risks associated with mining and mineral processing; fluctuations in metal prices; title matters; uncertainties and risks related to carrying on business in foreign countries; environmental liability claims and insurance; reliance on key personnel; the potential for conflicts of interest among certain of our officers, directors or promoters with certain other projects; the absence of dividends; currency fluctuations; competition; dilution; the volatility of the our common share price and volume; tax consequences to U.S. investors; and other risks and uncertainties. Although we have attempted to identify important factors that could cause actual actions, events or results to differ materially from those described in forward-looking statements, there may be other factors that cause actions, events or results not to be as anticipated, estimated or intended. There can be no assurance that forward-looking 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. We are under no obligation to update or alter any forward-looking statements except as required under applicable securities laws. Neither the TSX nor its Regulation Services Provider (as that term is defined in the policies of the TSX) accepts responsibility for the adequacy or accuracy of this release. SOURCE Avino Silver & Gold Mines Ltd. Related Links www.avino.com VANCOUVER, British Columbia, April 17, 2018 /PRNewswire/ -- John Patricelli received the Realtors Care Award last week from the Real Estate Board of Greater Vancouver. The award was to honour his work with "at risk" youth through The BC Camp Choice Society (Camp Choice BC) and the East End Boys Club. John would like to take this opportunity to recognize fellow community builders who founded these organizations. Founders of Camp Choice BC: Realtors Care Award presented to John Patricelli Carolyn Dunlop , Founder and President , Founder and President Kelly Burkholder , Co-Founder , Co-Founder Liz Yeung , Co-Founder , Co-Founder Rexx Llabore, Co-Founder Joe Robinsmith , Co-Founder Jim Crescenzo, Founder of the East End Boys Club: It is through the joint efforts of these individuals that allow their organizations to make a positive change in the youth's lives. More Info: John Patricelli (PREC) is a realtor with Sutton Centre Realty, and has been serving the Vancouver and Burnaby real estate market for over 20 years. For more info visit www.johnpatricelli.com and www.campchoicebc.com. Media Contact: Lougie Cabael 604-781-7142 [email protected] Related Video http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=BEGnhkv_LRE SOURCE John Patricelli PREC Related Links http://www.i-newswire.com BRASILIA, Brazil, April 17, 2018 /PRNewswire/ -- Banco do Brasil S.A., acting through its Grand Cayman branch, a bank structured as a corporation (sociedade anonima) and a state owned company (sociedade de economia mista) under the laws of the Federative Republic of Brazil (the "Bank"), hereby announces the final tender results of its offers to purchase for cash up to U.S.$600,000,000 aggregate principal amount of Banco do Brasil's outstanding 8.500% Perpetual Notes (CUSIP: 05959LAA1 and P3772WAA0; ISIN: US05959LAA17 and USP3772WAA01) and up to U.S.$100,000,000 aggregate principal amount of Banco do Brasil's outstanding 9.250% Perpetual Notes (CUSIP: 05958A AG3 and P3772W AC6; ISIN: US05958AAG31 and USP3772WAC66) (collectively, the "Notes," and each series, a "series of Notes"), upon the terms and subject to the conditions described in the Offer to Purchase dated March 19, 2018 (as it may be amended or supplemented from time to time, the "Offer to Purchase") and the accompanying Letter of Transmittal dated March 19, 2018 (as it may be amended or supplemented from time to time, the "Letter of Transmittal" and, together with the Offer to Purchase, the "Offer Documents"). The Bank refers to the offers to purchase the Notes as the "Tender Offers," and each individual offer as a "Tender Offer." Capitalized terms used in this announcement, but not defined herein, shall have the meanings given to such terms in the Offer to Purchase. The Settlement Date (as defined in the Offer to Purchase) with respect to the Notes validly tendered on or prior to the Early Tender Date and accepted for purchase by the Bank occurred on April 6, 2018 (the "Early Settlement Date"). On the Early Settlement Date, the Bank accepted for purchase the following aggregate principal amount of Notes tendered prior to the Early Tender Date: (i) U.S.$599,988,000 in principal amount of 8.500% Notes (after proration) and (ii) U.S.$100,000,000 in principal amount of 9.250% Notes (after proration). The Bank hereby announces that as of April 16, 2018, at 11:59 p.m. New York City time (which was the Expiration Date), it had elected not to increase the Tender Caps (as provided in the Offer Documents). As the applicable Tender Caps with respect to the 8.500% Notes and the 9.250% Notes were reached upon settlement on the Early Settlement Date, no tendered 8.500% Notes and 9.250% Notes shall be accepted for purchase on the Final Settlement Date (as defined in the Offer to Purchase). Any Notes tendered pursuant to the Tender Offer but not accepted for purchase by the Bank on the Early Settlement Date will be promptly returned to Holders. The Offer to Purchase does not constitute an offer to sell any securities or the solicitation of an offer to buy any securities (other than the Notes). Any offering of securities will only be made by an offering document and any such offering may not be registered with the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission. D. F. King & Co., Inc. acted as the tender agent and as the information agent (the "Tender and Information Agent") for the Tender Offers. BB Securities Ltd., Citigroup Global Markets Inc., HSBC Securities (USA) Inc. and J.P. Morgan Securities LLC, acted as Dealer Managers (the "Dealer Managers") for the Tender Offers. The Tender and Information Agent for the Tender Offers is: D.F. King & Co., Inc. In New York. 48 Wall Street 22nd Floor New York, NY 10005 Banks and Brokers: (212) 269-5550 Toll free (U.S. only): (866) 406-2284 In London: 125 Wood Street London EC2V 7AN United Kingdom Telephone: +44 20 7920 9700 In Hong Kong: Suite 1601, 16/F, Central Tower 28 Queen's Road Central Central Hong Kong Telephone: +852 3953 7230 Website: https://sites.dfkingltd.com/bb Email: [email protected] By Facsimile (For Eligible Institutions only): (212) 709-3328 Confirmation: (212) 269-5552 Attention: Andrew Beck The Dealer Managers for the Tender Offers are: BB Securities Ltd. Operations Department 4th Floor Pinners Hall 105-108 Old Broad Street London EC2N 1ER United Kingdom Collect: +44 (20) 7367-5800 Citigroup Global Markets Inc. Liability Management Group 388 Greenwich Street, 7th Floor New York, NY 10013 United States US Toll-Free: (800) 558-3745 Collect: +1 (212) 723-6106 HSBC Securities (USA) Inc. 452 Fifth Avenue New York, New York 10018 Attn: Global Liability Management Group Toll Free: +1 (888) HSBC-4LM Collect: +1 (212) 525-5552 J.P. Morgan Securities LLC Latin America Debt Capital Markets 383 Madison Avenue New York, NY 10179 United States US Toll-Free: (866) 846-2874 Collect: +1 (212) 834-6326 SOURCE Banco do Brasil S.A. INDIANAPOLIS, April 17, 2018 /PRNewswire/ -- Bell Techlogix, a leading IT managed services and solutions company, today announced a new relationship with Noridian Healthcare Solutions (Noridian). Noridian has 50+ years of private health care sector, public sector, and government contracting experience. Noridian's award-winning services solve some of the nation's toughest health care challenges, while ensuring the highest client satisfaction. Noridian prides themselves in improving program and provider efficiencies to enhance the quality of care to millions of Americans each year. When Noridian was looking for an IT managed services provider for End User services (Service Desk, Desktop support, Workstation Engineering, Knowledge Management, and IT Asset Management) they required a partner that would provide high quality services, maintain a robust systems security structure, and a partner positioned to implement continual service improvement initiatives throughout the duration of the relationship. Noridian was also looking for a partner with ServiceNow expertise and experience. Through the RFP process Noridian discovered Bell Techlogix had flexible solutions, was compliant with the healthcare industry's stringent security requirements, and had a reputation for delivering an exceptional end user experience. "The Bell Techlogix team has been extremely engaged with the Noridian team at all levels throughout the RFP, transition and go-live processes. We are happy to have found a partner that not only meets our complex IT and security needs, but also aligns with our cultural values of constant innovation, service excellence, responsible stewardship, integrity and effective collaboration," said Todd Knain CIO of Noridian. Bell Techlogix has completed a highly successful transition with Noridian and is now providing a 24x7x365 Service Desk, Desktop support for Noridian's North Dakota and Minnesota offices, as well as Asset Management and Workstation Engineering services for over 1,600 Noridian employees across the United States. "We are delighted to announce our new relationship with Noridian," said Ron Frankenfield, CEO, Bell Techlogix. "We look forward to delivering exceptional end-user experiences for the Noridian team so that they can continue their focus on best-in-class applications, personal customer service, and meaningful results to their clients." About Noridian Healthcare Solutions: Noridian Healthcare Solutions, LLC (Noridian), a wholly-owned subsidiary of Noridian Mutual Insurance Company, delivers innovative business solutions for government agencies to reduce cost and enhance value in the health care industry. Noridian has served as a government claims contractor for Medicare since the federal program's inception in 1966. The company provides business processing services nationwide and employs more than 1,500 staff members throughout the U.S. For more information, visit www.noridiansolutions.com. About Bell Techlogix: Bell Techlogix, headquartered in Indianapolis, Indiana, provides transformational Next Generation Digital Workplace and Infrastructure Management solutions to large and mid-market enterprises, as well as the public sector. With services that build, integrate and support the next wave of operational transformation Bell Techlogix provides a true client partnership and an enhanced digital experience. Bell Techlogix provides a flexible approach that is globally capable but locally oriented that will systematically allow you to achieve growth, cost-savings and acceleration of your business. For more information on Bell Techlogix, please visit us on the web at www.belltechlogix.com , follow us on Twitter @BellTechlogixHQ , like us on LinkedIn or Facebook . SOURCE Bell Techlogix Related Links http://www.belltechlogix.com LOUISVILLE, Ky., April 17, 2018 /PRNewswire/ -- ChromaLuxe is pleased to announce that Bianca Salvo has been named the recipient of the 2018 ChromaLuxe X Lucie Foundation Scholarship. This is the first year of the scholarship which was open to both emerging and established photographers worldwide. Salvo will receive a monetary reward of $3,000, three select images printed on ChromaLuxe aluminum, and will be included in the 10th Anniversary Edition of the Month of Photography Los Angeles Group Show. She was awarded the scholarship based on her project, The Universe Makers. Bianca Salvo Bianca Salvo "ChromaLuxe would like to congratulate Bianca Salvo on winning the inaugural ChromaLuxe X Lucie Foundation Scholarship," said Steve Flores, Global Brand Manager for ChromaLuxe. "The support of fine art photography is at the core of our business and we are thrilled to have partnered with the Lucie Foundation on this scholarship." Bianca Salvo is an Italian visual artist living and working between Italy and South America. She received her MA in Fine Art Photography in 2012 from the London College of Communication in London and previous to that she graduated in 2010 from a BA in Photography and Visual Arts at the Istituto Europeo di Design in Milan. From 2013 to 2017 she was a lecturer in Creative Research in Photography at the Istituto Europeo di Design in Milan. The scholarship received more than 200 worldwide submissions. Each submission was required to include a project proposal, one-page biography, and twenty digital images. Jurors for the scholarship included: Eve Schillo Assistant Curator, Wallis Annenberg Photography Department Los Angeles County Museum of Art Paul Martineau Associate Curator, Department of Photographs J. Paul Getty Museum Federica Chiocchetti Founder & Director The Photocaptionist "ChromaLuxe has become a valuable partner to the Lucie Foundation and to the field of fine art photography," said Cat Jimenez, Executive Director of the Lucie Foundation. "This scholarship is just another way ChromaLuxe has proved its commitment to fine art photography. Congratulations to Bianca Salvo in winning this prestigious scholarship." Salvo's winning work, The Universe Makers, can be seen at the following link: http://grantpad.com/user/view/ChromaLuxe-X-Lucie-Foundation-Fine-Art-Scholarship/15226 About ChromaLuxe ChromaLuxe is the global manufacturer of premium print media, supplying high quality blank substrates for a variety of applications that require superb image quality and durability. All coatings and substrates are made in the USA with manufacturing and fabrication done in Louisville, KY. With additional locations in Belgium and Australia, ChromaLuxe serves its global customer base and provides products to more than 65 countries. ChromaLuxe is an extension of Universal Woods, the world's leading manufacturer of hard surface sublimatable products and mezzanine decking. It is also a sister brand to Unisub, which provides the highest quality custom sublimatable products. To learn more about ChromaLuxe, please visit: ChromaLuxe.com. Connect with ChromaLuxe on Facebook (facebook.com/realchromaluxe), Instagram (instagram.com/realchromaluxe) and Twitter (twitter.com/realChromaLuxe). Note: ChromaLuxe is a registered trademark of Universal Woods, Inc. All other product and brand names are trademarks and/or registered trademarks of their respective companies. ChromaLuxe disclaims any and all rights in these marks. Contact: Sara.Nicholson, ChromaLuxe 502-855-3227 [email protected] SOURCE ChromaLuxe Related Links http://chromaluxe.com CALGARY, April 17, 2018 /PRNewswire/ - Birchill Canada is pleased to report that its 100% owned shallow-cut gas plant was placed on production this past weekend. The gas plant is located in the Brazeau/Chambers area at 4-13-43-13W5 with current capacity of 45 Mmcf/d; expandable to 100 Mmcf/d. The plant is tied in via meter station directly to the NGTL main line. Birchill expects to operate the plant at capacity with natural gas/liquids sourced from its recently completed 100% WI drilling program. The program spanned two years, drilling 8 wells and targeted the Notikewin, Falher and Wilrich zones using proprietary 3D seismic. Production test rates provided the necessary confidence to proceed with the construction of a shallow cut plant. The company owns Spirit River rights in 61.5 sections of contiguous land in 3 blocks at Brazeau/Chambers (100% WI). In total, Birchill owns over 313 sections extending this W5 corridor. The 2018 capital budget will focus on maintaining current production levels while strategically expanding the company's inventory of drilling locations in multiple horizons. Birchill Canada is privately owned and represents the fourth installment of Birchill companies. www.birchill.com It is backed by Bregal Investments, a private equity provider headquartered in New York. About Bregal Investments Bregal Investments is the private equity investment business of COFRA Holding AG, a European holding company for a privately-owned group of companies. With offices in London and New York, Bregal Investments has invested over 11 billion (US$12.5 billion) globally since 2002. The Bregal group includes a number of specialist funds, of which Bregal Partners and Bregal Energy deploy capital across the energy sector from startups to growth companies. For more information, please visit www.bregal.com. SOURCE Birchill Canada PETALUMA, Calif., April 17, 2018 /PRNewswire/ -- Not every CEO is a gifted public speaker, but those who are may have a certain advantage in today's media world. While we are a text-hungry society ready to eat up shocking tweets and clickbait headlines, the importance of video as a medium is still growing. CEOs who can deliver a moving TED Talk or a create a catchy clip for YouTube might be bringing something special to the table, giving them a leg up on connecting with key client bases. Having a CEO who is comfortable in the spotlight while serving as the public face of a company could be valuable. CEOs who can also effectively communicate not just the nitty-gritty details of company functions but also vision and ideas to employees may also be at an advantage. This includes leading and inspiring everyone from executives, managers, and employees. Whether it's a small leadership meeting or a company-wide get-together, effective public speaking creates an atmosphere where team members are more focused and engaged. Brandon Frere, CEO of Frere Enterprises, is a businessman, but also feels best when communicating directly with his team. While public speaking often comes naturally to him, he is keen to hone his skills in ways that will better his companies. "I do feel at home in front of a group or even a crowd," said Frere. "It's part of the character that drove me to found businesses, to start with new ideas." And in an age of devices mediating our every move, face-to-face connections with employees can be a key part of being an effective executive. Frere continued: "Establishing that connection with my colleagues is so important to me. I don't want to be a distant figure and I work every day to make sure that doesn't happen." About Brandon Frere is an entrepreneur and businessman who lives in Sonoma County, California. He has designed and created multiple companies to meet the ever-demanding needs of businesses and consumers alike. His company website, www.FrereEnterprises.com, is used as a means to communicate many of the lessons, fundamentals, and information he has learned throughout his extensive business and personal endeavors, most recently in advocating on behalf of student loan borrowers nationwide. As experienced during his own student loan repayment, Mr. Frere found out how difficult it can be to work with federally contracted student loan servicers and the repayment programs designed to help borrowers. Through those efforts, he gained an insider's look into the repayment process and the motivations behind the inflating student loan debt bubble. His knowledge of the confusing landscape of student loan repayment became a vital theme in his future endeavors, and he now uses those experiences to help guide others through the daunting process of applying for available federal repayment and loan forgiveness programs. FrereEnterprises.com Related Links Frere Enterprises website SOURCE Frere Enterprises Related Links http://www.FrereEnterprises.com Employees from Bridgepoint Education and Ashford University partnered with Support the Enlisted Project (STEP) to sort thousands of clothing donations for military families in Southern California. The event began with opening remarks from Bridgepoint's Chief Executive Officer Andrew Clark, California Senator Joel Anderson, Ashford University President and Chief Executive Officer Dr. Craig Swenson, STEP Chief Executive Officer Tony Teravainen, and STEP Director of Development Laura White. Volunteers sorted approximately 25,000 articles of donated clothing items for STEP's Warehouse on Wheels program. "We appreciate Bridgepoint and Ashford volunteers spending their Saturday morning supporting our military families," said Senator Anderson. "STEP provides much needed services for junior active-duty military families throughout Southern California, and volunteers like those at the Heroes Day event help make it all possible." "Heroes Day is a great opportunity for Bridgepoint employees and their families to make a difference in the community," said Andrew Clark, Bridgepoint Education's chief executive officer. "I am proud of our generous employees and the positive impact our organization continues to have in the communities we serve." Heroes Day was also celebrated by Ashford's students. Students and alumni were invited to participate by volunteering in their own communities as part of Ashford's S.T.A.R. (Sharing Time and Resources) volunteer program. Ashford students, alumni, and their families volunteered alongside Bridgepoint and Ashford employees at the STEP clothes sorting event. To view photos from Bridgepoint's spring 2018 Heroes Day event, visit https://bit.ly/2H6Mucn. To view Bridgepoint's spring 2018 Heroes Day video, visit https://youtu.be/Ph8R7jfOk5A. About Bridgepoint Education Bridgepoint Education, Inc. (NYSE:BPI) harnesses the latest technology to reimagine the modern student experience. Bridgepoint owns two academic institutions Ashford University and University of the Rockies. Together, these programs, technologies, and resources represent a unique model for advancing education in the 21st century. Bridgepoint stands for greater access, social learning, and exposure to leading minds. For more information, visit www.bridgepointeducation.com or www.facebook.com/BridgepointEducation. About Ashford University Where heritage meets innovation that's Ashford University. At Ashford, students discover relevant degree programs, innovative technology, and cherished tradition. Ashford offers associates, bachelor's, and master's degree programs online, allowing students to balance life by providing the flexibility to do school work anywhere, anytime. For more information, please visit www.ashford.edu, www.facebook.com/ashforduniversity, or www.twitter.com/AshfordU. Contact: Kathleen Park 858.513.9240 x11636 [email protected] SOURCE Bridgepoint Education Related Links www.bridgepointeducation.com WASHINGTON, April 17, 2018 /PRNewswire-USNewswire/ -- On Monday, April 23, the Council on American-Islamic Relations (CAIR), the nation's largest Muslim civil rights and advocacy organization, will release a one-of-its-kind report showing "concrete evidence" that the Trump administration's Muslim Ban resulted in increased anti-Muslim discrimination and violence nationwide in the past year. CAIR's 2018 civil rights report will outline hundreds of anti-Muslim bias incidents in 2017 and indicate how many were related to the Trump administration's unconstitutional "Muslim Ban" executive orders. The new report, titled "Targeted," will also document the increase in anti-Muslim bias incidents and hate crimes in 2017 over the previous year. WHAT: CAIR New Conference to Release 2018 Civil Rights Report WHEN: Monday, April 23, 11 a.m. WHERE: CAIR's Capitol Hill Headquarters, 453 New Jersey Avenue, SE, Washington, DC, 20003 CONTACT: CAIR Research and Advocacy Department Coordinator Zainab Arain, 202-742-6410, [email protected]; CAIR National Communications Director Ibrahim Hooper, 202-744-7726, [email protected] [MEDIA NOTE: CAIR's news conference will be live-streamed on its Facebook page: https://www.facebook.com/CAIRNational - A number of CAIR chapters nationwide will hold similar news conferences in their local areas. To find out if there is a news conference in your area, contact the nearest CAIR chapter. Go to: https://www.cair.com/cair-chapters.html ] "This administration's targeting of the American Muslim community and of other minority communities is very clear and should shock the conscience of all Americans," said CAIR National Executive Director Nihad Awad. He said the anti-Muslim hate incidents documented in CAIR's report are an indictment of the Trump administration's unconstitutional policies. CAIR said it has witnessed an unprecedented spike in bigotry targeting American Muslims and members of other minority groups since the election of Donald Trump as president. Community members are being urged to report any bias incidents to police and to CAIR's Civil Rights Department at 202-742-6420 or by filing a report at: http://www.cair.com/report CAIR launched an app to share critical "know your rights" information and to simplify the process to report hate crimes and bias incidents. CAIR is urging American Muslims and members of other minority groups to download the app and utilize this resource to stay informed and empowered. For a quick download of CAIR's civil rights app, click here: http://www.cair.com/app CAIR is America's largest Muslim civil liberties and advocacy organization. Its mission is to enhance understanding of Islam, protect civil rights, promote justice, and empower American Muslims. La mision de CAIR es proteger las libertades civiles, mejorar la comprension del Islam, promover la justicia, y empoderar a los musulmanes en los Estados Unidos. CONTACT: CAIR Research and Advocacy Department Coordinator Zainab Arain, 202-742-6410, [email protected]; CAIR National Communications Director Ibrahim Hooper, 202-744-7726, [email protected] SOURCE Council on American-Islamic Relations (CAIR) Related Links http://www.cair.com NEWARK, N.J., April 17, 2018 /PRNewswire/ -- Calcagni & Kanefsky, a boutique Newark-NYC litigation and investigations firm, continues its expansion, welcoming three attorneys to its team of former Federal and State Prosecutors. The attorneys join CK's Newark offices and include Partner Walter R. Krzastek and Associate Gregory S. Mullens, as well as Of Counsel Kathleen Jackson Shrekgast. "As our firm grows, we continue attracting seasoned litigators with the exceptional talent needed to best serve clients with high-stakes matters," CK Senior Partner Thomas R. Calcagni stated. "Walter, Greg, and Kathy represent the very best of the legal profession and we're thrilled having them aboard." Walter Krzastek, most recently a Partner with a preeminent national firm, focuses his practice on white collar criminal defense and complex commercial litigation. Krzastek defends clients facing allegations of healthcare fraud, off-label promotion, and antitrust violations, and he has substantial experience prosecuting and defending employment disputes, product liability claims, and intellectual property matters. "As a trial-tested litigator, Walter has precisely the type of experience our clients value. His exceptional record of favorably resolving the most complicated white collar and commercial matters places him in the top tier of trial attorneys," Senior Partner Eric T. Kanefsky said. "I've had the pleasure of working on matters alongside Tom, Eric, and their colleagues at CK for years, witnessing the rise of the trial boutique as one of the most successful of its kind," said Krzastek. "Now, as part of this special team, I'm looking forward to adding to the remarkable, client-driven service for which the firm has become known." A former Hudson County Assistant Prosecutor, Greg Mullens joins CK's deep bench of former Federal and State Prosecutors, bringing his outstanding experience to bear in conducting sensitive internal investigations and defending clients facing criminal charges. "I'm thrilled to be joining CK, where my prosecutorial background is a natural fit with the firm's focus on helping clients resolve the most complicated criminal and civil disputes," said Mullens. CK also welcomes Kathleen Jackson Shrekgast, who joins the firm's management team as Of Counsel. A former litigator at premier international law firms in Chicago and Philadelphia, Shrekgast will focus on driving key initiatives including professional development and legal ethics. Added Shrekgast: "CK is committed to the highest standards of practice. I'm delighted to be onboard and leading that effort." Learn more: www.ck-litigation.com SOURCE Calcagni & Kanefsky LLP Related Links http://www.ck-litigation.com LOS ANGELES, April 17, 2018 /PRNewswire/ -- Clark Neubert LLP (CNLLP), California's leading women-owned cannabis law firm, today announced its expansion into Sacramento and Santa Cruz and the addition of three new team members. "Demand for legal services is skyrocketing as cannabis businesses get licensed and enter the adult use market," said founding partner Ariel Clark. "This is an exciting but complex time for business owners. We're growing to ensure our clients have every resource they need." The expansion to Sacramento reflects the firm's close involvement with cannabis legislative and regulatory efforts. Clark founded and serves as Chair of the Los Angeles Cannabis Task Force and is a senior advisor to the California Native American Cannabis Association; CNLLP co-founder and partner Nicole Howell Neubert served on State Treasurer John Chiang's Cannabis Banking Working Group and is chief policy advisor to the California Growers Association. Currently the firm has offices in LA and San Francisco. Associate Joanna Hossack, a leading expert on MAUCRSA and evolving regulations, leads CNLLP's Sacramento office. With a specific focus on entity formation and local policies, Joanna advises clients on corporate governance, business transactional matters, local permitting and state licensing, with a particular focus on the water law and environmental issues. Joanna's full bio can be found here: http://www.greenfrontier.com/team/joanna-hossackassociate/ "Market and political realities are forcing California's cannabis regulations to evolve, and Sacramento is ground zero for those negotiations," said Clark. "Joanna's legal and advocacy experience gives our clients the best, most up-to-date insights into changing laws and regulations." Senior Associate Jay Purcell joins CNLLP to expand the firm's corporate and securities practice. Purcell previously worked at Wilson Sonsini Goodrich & Rosati, PC., to support technology businesses and investors, including Google Ventures, Founders Fund, FireEye, Curse, Lynda.com, DIA Styling, and LinkedIn. In full-time cannabis practice since 2016, Purcell splits his time between CNLLP's San Francisco and Santa Monica offices, where his practice focuses on financial transactions for growth companies, employment incentives, partnership and joint venture agreements and M&A. His full bio can be found here: http://www.greenfrontier.com/team/jay-purcellof-counsel/ Associate Nicole Laggner joins CNLLP from private practice, where since 2012 she has focused on cannabis businesses in Santa Cruz and Monterey Counties. Laggner's expertise includes all aspects of cannabis business formation and compliance; she has also successfully settled denial, breach of contract and employment discrimination in the cannabis field. Previously, Laggner handled complex civil litigation and class actions for global firm Kilpatrick Townsend & Stockton. Nicole will lead CNLLP's Santa Cruz office, and her full bio can be found here: http://www.greenfrontier.com/team/nicole-laggnerassociate/ "Jay and Nicole have outstanding track records in both traditional and cannabis business law. That combination is incredibly important to businesses trying to legally operate in this highly regulated market," said Neubert. "Jay is a brilliant cannabis attorney who has managed deals for some of the world's biggest technology firms, and Nicole's expertise and relationships in Central Coast operations are unparalleled. We're excited to welcome these three stars to the firm." For more information on CNLLP, visit www.greenfrontier.com Press inquiries: 415-529-0143 or [email protected] SOURCE Clark Neubert LLP Related Links http://www.greenfrontier.com ISELIN, N.J., April 17, 2018 /PRNewswire/ -- Centrica Business Solutions announced today that the company has been selected by the Metered Energy Efficiency Transaction Structure Accelerator Coalition (MEETS AC) to join an established membership to materially advance a 21st-century global imperative: the radical reduction of energy waste in the built environment. Centrica Business Solutions is committed to developing and financing comprehensive energy solutions for commercial clients. Working in partnership with sister company Direct Energy Business, its energy supply and advisory customer base includes many household names and some of North America's largest manufacturers, serving 78% of the Fortune 100 companies with energy supply, wholesale, and distributed energy solutions. Centrica Business Solutions offers organizations end-to-end distributed energy solutions including energy insight; energy optimization such as demand response; and energy solutions including combined heat and power (CHP), solar, battery storage and standby generators enabling customers to improve operational efficiency, energy sustainability and increase business resilience. "We provide our customers with innovative tools, technology, and insights to manage their energy use through our unique propositions," said Matt Wheatley, Vice President of Sales, Centrica Business Solutions. "By joining the MEETS AC, our goal is to give customers another innovative way to finance commercial energy efficient projects." "We are grateful that Centrica has joined the MEETS Accelerator Coalition," said Rob Harmon, Founder & Director of MEETS AC. "Retail energy suppliers, utilities and building owners across the country are recognizing how MEETS can enable deep retrofits of buildings while maintaining their financial health and stabilizing the grid. Centrica is extremely well positioned to roll out MEETS at scale, nationally." The MEETS AC member-supported organizations include investors, building owners, construction and implementation companies, architects and building designers as well as energy sustainability and data management companies. For the full list of members, see here: http://www.meetscoalition.org/about-the-coalition/members/. About Centrica Business Solutions Centrica Business Solutions is part of Centrica plc an international energy and services company dedicated to satisfying the changing needs of its customers. Centrica Business Solutions has been established to help customers gain competitive advantage from energy, building intelligent end-to-end energy solutions that power performance, and resilience. Through Centrica we also provide energy trading services, and supply energy through Direct Energy in North America, British Gas in the UK, and Bord Gais Energy in Ireland. To learn more about Centrica Business Solutions, please visit: www.centricabusinesssolutions.com. SOURCE Centrica Business Solutions Related Links http://www.centricabusinesssolutions.com Cities recognized for creative strategies to tap into the power and knowledge of citizens to solve local problems Winner will receive $100,000 grand prize NEW YORK, April 16, 2018 /PRNewswire-USNewswire/ -- Cities of Service today announced 10 finalists for the Engaged Cities Award, a new effort to elevate cities that are working creatively to tap the wisdom, talents, and energy of community members to solve public problems. Underwritten by Bloomberg Philanthropies, the Award shines light on the growing number of ways city leaders are co-creating the future with residents, enabling cities around the world to learn from best practices and bring effective strategies back to their own cities. The Award is part of Michael R. Bloomberg's American Cities Initiative, a program designed to empower city leaders to generate new ideas and advance policy that moves the nation forward. In its inaugural year, the Engaged Cities Award received more than one hundred applications from cities in the Americas and Europe. The 10 finalists were selected because their efforts scored highest on key selection criteria, including significant work with citizens to tackle a public problem, clear evidence of impact, and potential to apply the strategy to other problems and geographies. The 10 finalist cities are: Bologna, Italy : The city changed its regulations to allow public collaboration between citizens and city government to improve public spaces. City staff worked with communities to design and implement projects that address local needs. : The city changed its regulations to allow public collaboration between citizens and city government to improve public spaces. City staff worked with communities to design and implement projects that address local needs. Boston, Massachusetts : The city engaged citizens to share data about unsafe streets and developed an app that encourages residents to improve their driving behaviors, with the goal of decreased traffic-related fatalities. : The city engaged citizens to share data about unsafe streets and developed an app that encourages residents to improve their driving behaviors, with the goal of decreased traffic-related fatalities. Fort Collins, Colorado : To respond to pressing fiscal needs and rising costs, city leadership educated citizens about the budget process and collected feedback in order to create a budget that aligns resources with community priorities. : To respond to pressing fiscal needs and rising costs, city leadership educated citizens about the budget process and collected feedback in order to create a budget that aligns resources with community priorities. Hamm, Germany : The shutdown of the mining industry caused a large district to suffer from economic hardship, abandoned land, and loss of identity. City leadership collaborated with residents to develop more than 540 acres of land into a public park that physically and emotionally reconnected residents. : The shutdown of the mining industry caused a large district to suffer from economic hardship, abandoned land, and loss of identity. City leadership collaborated with residents to develop more than 540 acres of land into a public park that physically and emotionally reconnected residents. Helsinki, Finland : To improve the experiences of a fast-growing immigrant youth population, the city used a human-centered design approach to rapidly prototype, develop, and implement citywide programs and services. : To improve the experiences of a fast-growing immigrant youth population, the city used a human-centered design approach to rapidly prototype, develop, and implement citywide programs and services. Huntington, West Virginia : In response to a growing health crisis, city leadership developed a hub-and-spoke approach to improve health outcomes for its residents. The city engaged citizens to develop ideas for initiatives and provided leadership and support for implementation. : In response to a growing health crisis, city leadership developed a hub-and-spoke approach to improve health outcomes for its residents. The city engaged citizens to develop ideas for initiatives and provided leadership and support for implementation. Mexico City, Mexico : City leadership created a citywide campaign to elicit citizen opinions and proposals for the city constitution using a citizen working group and online petitions, many of which were incorporated into the city's constitution. : City leadership created a citywide campaign to elicit citizen opinions and proposals for the city constitution using a citizen working group and online petitions, many of which were incorporated into the city's constitution. San Jose, California : The city invited citizens to submit their solutions to some of the city's biggest challenges in a citywide competition. The first competition resulted in a drone prototype capable of removing graffiti in difficult-to-reach places. : The city invited citizens to submit their solutions to some of the city's biggest challenges in a citywide competition. The first competition resulted in a drone prototype capable of removing graffiti in difficult-to-reach places. Santiago de Cali , Colombia : To combat a high level of violence, the city created local councils made up of residents in 15 neighborhoods. The councils launched a variety of community projects to build trust between neighbors, such as the rehabilitation of public parks and arts events, and helped resolve conflicts within the community. : To combat a high level of violence, the city created local councils made up of residents in 15 neighborhoods. The councils launched a variety of community projects to build trust between neighbors, such as the rehabilitation of public parks and arts events, and helped resolve conflicts within the community. Tulsa, Oklahoma : The city brought city staff and citizens together in person and online to analyze the large amount of data the city had collected to learn more about public problems, such as income disparity and crime, and to inform policy. "The finalists show that everyday citizens can help move their cities forward in many diverse and meaningful ways, leveraging their insights, diverse talents, and creative energy," said Myung J. Lee, Cities of Service Executive Director. "City leaders are getting more creative and experimental in the ways they are engaging community members. We are proud to highlight the work these cities have accomplished so other cities around the world can follow their lead." Local leaders are increasingly looking for new ways to involve residents in policy and program development and build trust between citizens and city government. In its recently released 2018 American Mayors Survey, Bloomberg Philanthropies found that 91% of American city leaders say engaging residents is "very important"ranking it even higher than using data, experimentation, and collaboration. Through the Engaged Cities Award, Cities of Service aims to surface a set of tools these mayors can employ to collaborate with residents in new and more significant ways. These approaches include harnessing the power of civic tech, citizen experts, informed citizen input, participatory design, impact volunteering, and citizen-sourced data. "People are often a city's greatest untapped resource," said James Anderson, Cities of Service board member and head of government innovation programs at Bloomberg Philanthropies. "These cities are changing that finding new and better ways to involve their residents and leverage their expertise to solve public problems." The Engaged Cities Award was open to cities with populations of 30,000+ in the Americas and Europe. Cities submitted their applications in January 2018. Cities of Service, along with an esteemed group of experts, will choose three winning cities, including a $100,000 grand prize winner. Winners will be announced as part of the Engaged Cities Award Summit and Dinner in May 2018. For more information about the Cities of Service Engaged Cities Award, please visit: engagedcitiesaward.org. About Cities of Service Cities of Service is an independent nonprofit organization that helps mayors and city leaders tap the knowledge, creativity, and service of citizens to solve public problems and create vibrant cities. We work with cities to build city-led, citizen-powered initiatives that target specific needs, achieve long-term and measurable outcomes, improve the quality of life for residents, and build stronger cities. Founded in 2009 by New York City Mayor Michael R. Bloomberg, Cities of Service supports a coalition of more than 235 cities, representing nearly 55 million people in 45 U.S. states, and more than 10 million people in the U.K. Visit us at citiesofservice.org or follow us on Twitter @citiesofservice. Media Contact Cities of Service, Karen Dahl, (646) 324-8390, [email protected] SOURCE Cities of Service Related Links http://www.citiesofservice.org Canopy Rivers to invest CAD $5 million in premium media and lifestyle brand SAINT JOHN, NB, April 17, 2018 /PRNewswire/ - Civilized Worldwide Inc. ("Civilized"), is pleased to announce that it has executed a strategic investment and collaboration agreement with Canopy Rivers Corporation ("Canopy Rivers"), an affiliated strategic investment partner of Canopy Growth Corporation ("Canopy Growth") (TSX: WEED). Pursuant to the agreement, Canopy Rivers will invest CAD $5 million in Civilized via a convertible debenture and the companies will work together on various online, media and event mandates relating to the cannabis industry. "Civilized lives at the intersection of modern media and cannabis," said Mark Zekulin, President of Canopy Growth. "They have a premium digital audience throughout North America and have established an events platform where individuals and industry can communicate and work together as we continue to educate stakeholders and evolve the global perception of cannabis." Civilized is aggressively implementing its monetization strategy across its three platforms: Civilized.life: a sophisticated news and entertainment website that reaches 2 million unique visitors per month throughout North America ; a sophisticated news and entertainment website that reaches 2 million unique visitors per month throughout ; Civilized S tudios: a multi-platform video content network curating, publishing and producing broadcast-quality video and original content pertaining to the all things cannabis; a multi-platform video content network curating, publishing and producing broadcast-quality video and original content pertaining to the all things cannabis; Civilized Events: a platform to provide exclusive branded experiences for both the cannabis industry and consumers from intimate dinner parties with industry executives and opinion leaders, to large-scale events such as the first-ever World Cannabis Congress to take place in Saint John, New Brunswick June 10-12, 2018 (www.worldcannabiscongress.com). "As growth and innovation continue to accelerate in the global cannabis industry, attractive opportunities extend well beyond cultivating, processing and distributing cannabis-derived products and formulations," said Sean McNulty, Co-Founder of Canopy Rivers. "This investment and partnership with Civilized is a welcomed addition to our portfolio, and we believe that collaborating with a leading media and events company will help increase the visibility of the Canopy Rivers platform and is complementary with our ongoing mission to change the global cannabis narrative." Civilized has steadily grown its media presence and brand across North America since launching in 2015. "This is a game-changing partnership for Civilized," says Derek Riedle, CEO and Publisher of Civilized. "No other industry has the high growth potential of cannabis, and we believe that high-quality media can help accelerate the development of this industry by sharing stories, ideas and information that's been more or less forbidden for the better part of a century. We're on a path to grow our multi-platform networks and I'm thrilled we are able to partner with Canopy Rivers, a leading and respected group of investment professionals and affiliate of the largest cannabis company in the world." About Civilized Worldwide Inc.: Founded in 2015, with offices in New Brunswick and California, Civilized is a premium media and lifestyle brand that embraces and highlights modern cannabis culture, reflecting the millions of motivated, productive adults who choose to enjoy cannabis as part of a balanced lifestyle, but don't define themselves by it. Reaching 2+ million unique visitors per month, North America-wide, Civilized produces engaging content for and about people who enjoy cannabis responsibly. For more information, visit: www.civilized.life About Canopy Rivers: Canopy Rivers is a unique investment and operating platform structured to pursue investment opportunities in the emerging global cannabis sector. Canopy Rivers works collaboratively with Canopy Growth to identify strategic counterparties seeking financial and/or operating support and affiliation with the Canopy Growth group of companies. The result is an eco-system of complementary and best-in-class cannabis operating companies that is representative of all the various niches in this newly developing cannabis economy. As the portfolio continues to develop, constituents benefit from opportunities to join forces with Canopy Growth and each other, resulting in an ideal environment for innovation, synergy and value creation for Canopy Rivers, Canopy Growth and the entire eco-system of portfolio companies. About Canopy Growth Corporation: Canopy Growth is a world-leading diversified cannabis and hemp company, offering distinct brands and curated cannabis varieties in dried, oil and Softgel capsule forms. From product and process innovation to market execution, Canopy Growth is driven by a passion for leadership and a commitment to building a world-class cannabis company one product, site and country at a time. SOURCE Civilized Worldwide Inc. (Civilized) SAN FRANCISCO, April 17, 2018 /PRNewswire/ -- Today, CommuniTake Technologies, the leader in high-security mobility management, announced the introduction of its new ruggedized IntactPhone R2. This handset is designed to protect security-minded organizations, operating in both harsh and corporate environments, against mobile cyber-attacks. The new ruggedized IntactPhone R2 delivers a one-of-a-kind blend of military-grade, cybersecurity capabilities and rugged hardware features, safely enabling organizations to operate in mixed environments. The landscape of mobile cyber threats continues to evolve rapidly, in magnitude and complexity. Organizations face more challenges than ever preventing cyber breaches from compromising critical operations, and maintaining trust in a mobile-first, connected world. At the same time, the diversity of nomadic workers requires IT leaders to establish a unified, enterprise mobility strategy, fit for an assortment of work conditions. The new ruggedized IntactPhone R2 delivers a one-of-a-kind blend of military-grade, cybersecurity capabilities and rugged hardware features, safely enabling organizations to operate in mixed environments. The users of IntactPhone R2 benefit from toughened hardware and software features, including: IP68 standard built into a stylish form: IntactPhone R2 is waterproof, shockproof, scratchproof and dustproof. Its smart-build is adapted to both military and civil specifications. Puncture resistant 5" FHD touchscreen: A Corning Gorilla Glass screen supports operation with gloved hand / wet finger. Up-to-date specs: 6GB RAM, 64GB ROM, high-performance Octa-core processor, and exceptionally loud and clear audio, along with a 4200mAh battery, for users on any connected lifestyle. Fingerprint and facial recognition: Two different biometric authentication options allow users to choose the way they want to protect their device. Security-rich OS: A custom-built OS that powers innovative security capabilities, to ensure user privacy. The operating system functions in an execution environment that is fully trusted. Instant secured communications: Crisp communications with built-for-security features, including locked-down private network, end-to-end voice encryption, continuously secured user-side voice communications, encrypted burst-out messages operated via a dedicated button, conference calls, self-destruct messages, and secured attachments, to support however users wish to communicate. OS-fused command center: Central defense-grade administration delivers comprehensive defense controls that address sensitive data loss, enable monitoring for risky device behavior, allow differentiated enforcement across user groups, ensure data-at-rest is encrypted and provide additional protection against careless use and malware propagation. The central protections cannot be shut-down by users of the device. Security apps: Multi-method approach for prevention and performance assurance, including anti-malware app, network protection app, threat detection app, security posture verification app, complete remote control app and self-troubleshooting app. These apps deliver superior visibility, control and threat prevention across devices, applications, users and networks. Built-in privacy: End-to-end encryption is continuously active, by default. CommuniTake Technologies cannot listen to users' communications, cannot sell their private conversations and does not hold any backdoor to user data. "CommuniTake Technologies keeps pace with the new wave of cyberattacks targeting endpoints in a unique manner; by providing the best-of-all-worlds, mobile endpoint protection platform," said Ronen Sasson, CEO of CommuniTake Technologies. "With IntactPhone R2, we are pairing a best-of-breed, mobile endpoint security solution with the durability our customers demand. It allows us to service a wider spectrum of organizations with a reliable device, superior security, unified deployment and increased ease-of-use, at a lower overall cost". For more information about the new IntactPhone R2 mobile device, please visit www.intactphone.com Attendees of the 2018 RSA Conference USA are invited to stop by the Israeli Pavilion, booths 635 and 735, April 17-19th, to learn how CommuniTake Technologies enables superior enterprise mobile security. About CommuniTake Technologies CommuniTake is a software company that builds security, productivity, and management solutions to guarantee the highest level of mobile security for individuals and organizations. CommuniTake Intact Mobile Security is a mobile Endpoint Protection Platform that dramatically improves the security of connected devices, provides powerful in-depth protection against mobile cyber-attacks, and ensures seamless device performance and remediation. CommuniTake specializes in remote access and support technology, mobile operating systems, purpose-built devices and security architecture, ensuring best-of-all-worlds mobile security and productivity solutions. Contact Info Noam Potter CommuniTake Technologies +972 4 6968900 [email protected] SOURCE CommuniTake Technologies Ltd ALISO VIEJO, Calif., April 17, 2018 /PRNewswire/ -- ConcertoHealth, the leading full-risk provider of specialized primary care and supporting clinical services for vulnerable, frail and elderly patients, announced today it is expanding its field-based care model in Michigan and Washington, to provide more support to health plans and their networks of primary care providers (PCPs) in caring for their highest-risk patients. The expansion reflects the success of the ConcertoHealth care model, which dedicates field-based care teams and "wraparound" support services to health plans' PCPs. Rather than replace or compete with the PCPs, ConcertoHealth supports their performance with an array of clinical resources, including social workers, care managers, pharmacists, clinicians, and nurses, to care for patients in any care setting, when they are most in need. To facilitate effective collaboration with PCPs, ConcertoHealth utilizes a proprietary population health analytics platform, Patient3D, which provides PCPs with a 360-degree view of each patient's status and care needs. "Health plans and their PCPs have now seen first-hand how our field-based care teams can support and extend the care they provide to their most medically and socially complex patients," said Christopher Dodd, M.D., M.S., chief care transformation officer for ConcertoHealth. "By expanding our multidisciplinary field teams, we are transforming health care delivery, supporting PCPs to provide patients with the right care, at the right place, at the right time." ConcertoHealth care managers work in collaboration with PCPs and other care team members, integrating clinical and social services to ensure the best possible healthcare outcomes. ConcertoHealth deploys its field-based care teams to visit patients at the most risk for hospital admissions, and by serving patients in post-acute settings including group homes, assisted living facilities and skilled nursing facilities. Outreach also includes visits to patients who may not be regularly visiting their PCPs, and patients who are frequent visitors to emergency departments. "Through our team-based approach, these patients have a single clinical champion to manage transitions-of-care, and design care and treatment plans that are tailored to their unique needs, ultimately helping to prevent avoidable hospitalizations and readmissions," Dr. Dodd said. "Our care teams partner with PCPs and other care providers to assure that patients receive evidence-based, preventive care to stabilize their chronic conditions. We stand shoulder-to-shoulder with patients to implement care plans that maximize their health and quality of life." "For the patients who are unengaged or unwilling to engage, our care team meets them in any setting, be it in the emergency department, an assisted living facility, or even under the bridge. Building trust with our patients is the first and most important thing we do," Dr. Dodd said. Field-based care teams and care managers are already in place in Michigan and Washington, and ConcertoHealth is in the process of expanding its team in Southwestern Michigan. This expansion is part of a multi-year growth strategy that will include Ohio and other regions next year. ConcertoHealth will recruit physicians, advanced practitioners (ARNP/PA) and clinical support team members to join its field-based clinical teams. About ConcertoHealth ConcertoHealth Inc. is the leading provider of specialized primary care and supporting clinical services for vulnerable, frail and elderly patients. ConcertoHealth provides high-touch, individualized care for patients and also deploys wraparound clinical resources to extend the reach of primary care providers. Operating exclusively in value-based agreements, the ConcertoHealth care model, elevated by Patient3D, improves overall health quality and outcomes for high-need patient populations. The ConcertoHealth care model is proven to reduce admissions by 30.3 percent and readmissions by 17.1 percent, benefitting patients, payers and their provider networks alike. The company is headquartered in Aliso Viejo, Calif. www.concertohealth.com SOURCE ConcertoHealth Related Links http://www.concertohealth.com CoreConnect addresses the confusion in marketing since the dawn of an overwhelming influx of digital tools and platforms. "We know how that feels firsthand, because we deal with this ourselves," said Touseef Mirza, cofounder of CoreConnect. "Since communication is based on connecting information and ideas to people , the understanding of the human element should remain the central focus for effective connection." The conference's framework provides a comprehensive approach, centering on the human element to create true impact: from leading authentically, to building innovative, creative teams, and to connecting with audiences in a meaningful way. The programming of the event reflects the common thread throughout the framework: human nature. Cofounder Brooke Vines, explains, "Two years ago, Keith Reinhard, said at AdWeekNY, 'No matter how advertising changes, human nature remains timeless.' This was our light bulb moment." Additional conference speakers will provide multiple perspectives on positive results generated by focusing on people and not just on the digital progress. Speakers include: Kathleen Hall, Corporate Vice President of Brand, Research, and Marketing at Microsoft; Claude Silver, Chief Heart Officer at VaynerMedia; and Debbie Millman, host of the podcast Design Matters, and Chair of the SVA Graduate Branding Program. CoreConnect attracts leaders, marketing professionals, and entrepreneurial minds. Some of the takeaways for attendees include: Discerning versus reacting in an era of rapid change Accessing your team's best work to unlock innovative ideas Creating true connection and impact About CoreConnect Founded by two curious women, Touseef Mirza and Brooke Vines, CoreConnect focuses on the importance of the human element in marketing and influence for the digital age. Mirza is an Adjunct Professor at New York University and the former CMO of The Advertising Research Foundation. Vines, an entrepreneur and owner of a successful advertising agency, also cofounded VinesBrookshire (formerly Vines Media), a creativedigital strategy firm based in Arkansas. Early bird pricing is available until April 20th, 2018. SOURCE CoreConnect Conference Related Links http://www.coreconnectconference.com DOWNERS GROVE, Ill., April 17, 2018 /PRNewswire-USNewswire/ -- Committing to upskilling and expanding North Carolina's tech workforce, Creating IT Futures is establishing a permanent home in Charlotte for its IT-Ready career program. With funding from TEKsystems and supported by a grant from Google.org to Goodwill Industries of the Southern Piedmont, Creating IT Futures will offer four IT-Ready tech support classes this year at the Goodwill Opportunity Campus. At no cost to students, IT-Ready assesses, trains, certifies and places unemployed and under-employed adults in their first jobs in the information technology (IT) field, which has a shortage of qualified workers. Over the course of eight weeks of full-time classroom training, students work toward certification in CompTIA A+. Employment in North Carolina's technology industry expanded by an estimated 10,100 jobs in 2017, according to Cyberstates 2018, the annual analysis of the nation's tech industry published by CompTIA. In total, North Carolina employers posted 90,200 jobs for technology positions last year. Charlotte is the largest tech city in North Carolina. "With support from TEKsystems, Goodwill and Charlotte Works, we ran a pilot IT-Ready class in Charlotte last year. With 800 applicants, 25 students were selected for admission with 88 percent of them graduating," said Charles Eaton, CEO, Creating IT Futures. "With the success of our pilot class, we're excited to make Charlotte one of our permanent locations, as we have had in the Twin Cities since 2012. We're particularly focused on under-represented populations in IT to help diversify the tech workforce. In the Charlotte class that graduated in October, 74 percent were people of color, 35 percent were women, and 26 percent were military veterans." Many of the October graduates are now working in tech in Charlotte. After graduating from IT-Ready and earning his CompTIA A+ certification, Brad Foster secured full-time employment with Compumedics USA, where he is a technical analyst. He troubleshoots and solves issues with complicated and proprietary medical hardware and software used for sleep studies, EEG brain scans and other neuroscience studies. "For a long time, I wanted to make such a career change, but I never had the resources or even the guarantee of a paying job on the other end. The IT-Ready class really has been a godsend for not only my professional career, but my feeling of self-worth," Foster said. "I cannot thank you (Creating IT Futures) enough." Upon graduating and earning his CompTIA A+ certification, fellow IT-Ready student Bryce Goodman accepted a position with TEKsystems, and now is deployed as a desktop support technician for Bank of America. "IT-Ready prepared me for working in a professional environment; we were required to wear business attire to every class," Goodman said. "We met with CEOs and other executives from major companies and they let us pick their brains in issues such as how they were successful, interviewing tips, or the importance of the IT field in general." There are still a few talented candidates left from the 2017 pilot class ready to be hired by Charlotte employers. Employers who wish to hire IT-Ready graduates should contact Natasha Pender at [email protected]. The first Charlotte class for 2018 began this month with the next course beginning in June. Potential IT-Ready students can check www.ITReady.com for the full list of when each class will start this year and when applications are due. What Do IT-Ready Students Learn? In the IT-Ready Tech Support class, students participate in taking apart and building desktop computers and other hardware; learn about motherboards, printers, peripheral devices, memory and physical storage, connections and mobile devices; set up computer networks and troubleshoot networks, displays, printers, and operating systems; configure operating systems and hardware; and secure networks, systems and data. IT-Ready students also receive targeted professional development in key business "soft" skills such as professional communication and presentation, teamwork and collaboration, and critical thinking and problem solving. IT-Ready graduates are grounded in these key skills and prepared to apply them on day one of their new jobs. After completing their training, the students sit for the CompTIA A+ certification exam which covers desktop and help-desk technical support duties and skills. Located at the Goodwill Opportunity Campus at 5301 Wilkinson Boulevard in Charlotte, IT-Ready classes run for eight weeks, all day, every weekday. IT-Ready students receive free tuition, books and learning materials, more than 240 hours of classroom tech and soft skills training, and certification vouchers toward the CompTIA A+ exam. Potential employers, students and community partners can learn more at www.ITReady.com. About Creating IT Futures Founded in 1998 by CompTIA, Creating IT Futures is a 501(c)(3) charity with the mission of helping populations under-represented in the information technology industry and individuals who are lacking in opportunity to prepare for, secure, and be successful in IT careers. Learn more at www.creatingITfutures.org. About TEKsystems People are at the heart of every successful business initiative. At TEKsystems, an Allegis Group company, we understand people. Every year we deploy more than 80,000 IT professionals at 6,000 client sites across North America, Europe and Asia. Our deep insights into IT human capital management enable us to help our clients achieve their business goalswhile optimizing their IT workforce strategies. We provide IT staffing solutions and IT services to help our clients plan, build and run their critical business initiatives. Through our range of quality-focused delivery models, we meet our clients where they are, and take them where they want to go, the way they want to get there. About Goodwill Industries of the Southern Piedmont Goodwill has been serving individuals and families in the Southern Piedmont region of North and South Carolina for more than 50 years. Goodwill operates 24 retail stores and has more than 30 donation sites in the region. Proceeds from the sale of donated goods fund job training and employment services for individuals facing obstacles to employment such as lack of skills, experience or education and those with criminal backgrounds. For more information, visit www.goodwillsp.org. Media Contacts: Lisa Fasold Creating IT Futures 630-678-8558 [email protected] Nathan Bowen TEKsystems 410-540-3090 [email protected] Melinda Wilshire Goodwill Industries of the Southern Piedmont 704-916-1616 [email protected] SOURCE Creating IT Futures Related Links http://www.creatingitfutures.org/ ATLANTA, April 17, 2018 /PRNewswire/ -- CryoLife, Inc. (NYSE: CRY), a leading cardiac and vascular surgery company focused on aortic disease, announced today that 2018 first quarter financial results will be released on Wednesday, May 2, 2018 after the market closes. On Thursday, May 3, 2018 the Company will hold a teleconference call and live webcast at 8:00 a.m. ET to discuss the results, followed by a question and answer session hosted by Pat Mackin, Chairman, President and Chief Executive Officer of CryoLife, Inc. To listen to the live teleconference, please dial 201-689-8261 a few minutes prior to 8:00 a.m. ET. A replay of the teleconference will be available May 3 through May 10 and can be accessed by calling (toll free) 877-660-6853 or 201-612-7415. The conference number for the replay is 13678913. The live webcast and replay can be accessed in the Investor Relations section of the CryoLife website at www.cryolife.com and selecting Webcasts & Presentations. In addition, a copy of the earnings press release, which will contain financial and statistical information for the completed quarter and full year, can be accessed in the Investor Relations section of the CryoLife website. About CryoLife, Inc. Headquartered in suburban Atlanta, Georgia, CryoLife is a leader in the manufacturing, processing, and distribution of medical devices and implantable tissues used in cardiac and vascular surgical procedures focused on aortic repair. CryoLife markets and sells products in more than 90 countries worldwide. For additional information about CryoLife, visit our website, www.cryolife.com. Contacts: CryoLife The Ruth Group D. Ashley Lee Tram Bui / Emma Poalillo Executive Vice President, Chief Financial Officer 646-536-7035 / 7024 and Chief Operating Officer [email protected] Phone: 770-419-3355 [email protected] SOURCE CryoLife, Inc. Related Links http://www.cryolife.com SAN FRANCISCO, April 17, 2018 /PRNewswire/ -- RSA CONFERENCE 2018 -- Comodo Cybersecurity, a global innovator and developer of cybersecurity solutions and a division of Comodo Security Solutions Inc., today announced the Comodo Cybersecurity Threat Research Labs' "Global Malware Report Q1 2018." Comodo Cybersecurity's report is among the first to present Q1 2018 data, and the company's threat analysis shows a very different picture from 2017. Specifically, during the first three months of 2018, cryptominers surged to the top of detected malware incidents, displacing ransomware which declined significantly in volume as the number one threat. Another surprising finding: Altcoin Monero became the leading target for cryptominers' malware, replacing Bitcoin. The reasons why are detailed in the report and the infographic. The complete report is available online. "Malware, like cyberspace itself, is merely a reflection of traditional, 'real-world' human affairs, and malware is always written for a purpose, whether it's crime, espionage, terrorism or war," said Dr. Kenneth Geers, chief research scientist at Comodo Cybersecurity. "Criminals' proclivities to steal money more efficiently were evident with the surge in cryptomining. And the continued strong correlation of attack volume with current geopolitical events shows hackers of all motivations are well aware of the opportunities major breaking news provides them." For years, Comodo Cybersecurity has tracked the rise of cryptominer attacks, malware that hijacks users' computers to mine cryptocurrencies for the attacker's profit while remaining hidden from the PC's owner. The real surge, however, started in 2017 after Bitcoin skyrocketed to $20,000. Cryptominer attacks then leaped in 2018 as cryptocurrencies' market capitalization topped $264 billion, shifting the attention of cybercriminals from ransomware. During Q1 2018, Comodo Cybersecurity detected 28.9 million cryptominer incidents out of a total of 300 million malware incidents, amounting to a 10% share. The number of unique cryptominer variants grew from 93,750 in January to 127,000 in March. At the same time, the data shows this criminal attention came at the expense of ransomware activity, with new variants falling from 124,320 in January to 71,540 in March, a 42% decrease. Two key factors drove this surge. Unlike the one and done nature of ransomware and the semi-custom nature of each target's variant cryptominers are "the gift that keeps on giving." They persist in infected machines or websites because they are often either unnoticed or tolerated by users, who find a performance impact more acceptable than dealing with the issue. And the higher value of cryptocurrencies made mining worth their while. Monero, the cryptocurrency best known for its secrecy level, took the dubious honor from Bitcoin of becoming the cryptominers' preferred target during the first quarter. According to Comodo Cybersecurity analysts, this is because its features favor cybercriminals: it hides transaction parties and amounts; cannot be tracked, blacklisted or linked to previous transactions; creates blocks every two minutes, providing more frequent opportunities for attack; and is designed for mining on ordinary computers. Other highlights of the Comodo Cybersecurity report for the last quarter include: Hackers subverted Coinhive, Crypto-Loot and other cryptocurrency mining services . These legitimate companies offer website owners a way to monetize their sites by allowing customers to willingly let their computers be used for mining. The very short JavaScript that enabled the opt-in service, however, was quickly stolen by cybercriminals and used for malicious purposes. Widely and illegitimately spread worldwide by embedding the code into websites, Chrome extensions, typosquatted domains and malvertising, the hackers' script stealthily uses system resources without the user's permission to make money by mining cryptocurrencies . These legitimate companies offer website owners a way to monetize their sites by allowing customers to willingly let their computers be used for mining. The very short JavaScript that enabled the opt-in service, however, was quickly stolen by cybercriminals and used for malicious purposes. Widely and illegitimately spread worldwide by embedding the code into websites, Chrome extensions, typosquatted domains and malvertising, the hackers' script stealthily uses system resources without the user's permission to make money by mining cryptocurrencies Password stealers became more sophisticated and dangerous . Comodo Cybersecurity observed cybercriminals increasingly develop and update malware with the goal of stealing users' credentials. Comodo Cybersecurity Threat Research Lab analyzed new variants of Pony Stealer, one of the most dangerous password stealers, which now demonstrates new capabilities in both stealing data and in covering its tracks . Comodo Cybersecurity observed cybercriminals increasingly develop and update malware with the goal of stealing users' credentials. Comodo Cybersecurity Threat Research Lab analyzed new variants of Pony Stealer, one of the most dangerous password stealers, which now demonstrates new capabilities in both stealing data and in covering its tracks Expect a ransomware resurgence . Ransomware attacks led the malware market in previous quarters, but showed a radical decrease in the number of overall detections, likely due to the shift to the low-hanging fruit of cryptominers. Ransomware's overall share of incidents dropped from 42% in August 2017 to just 9% in February 2018 . Comodo Cybersecurity Labs caution to prepare for new ransomware attacks in a changed guise, perhaps morphing into a weapon of data destruction as seen with NotPetya rather than a tool to extort a ransom . Ransomware attacks led the malware market in previous quarters, but showed a radical decrease in the number of overall detections, likely due to the shift to the low-hanging fruit of cryptominers. Ransomware's overall share of incidents dropped from 42% in to just 9% in . Comodo Cybersecurity Labs caution to prepare for new ransomware attacks in a changed guise, perhaps morphing into a weapon of data destruction as seen with NotPetya rather than a tool to extort a ransom Geopolitical malware detections correlate with current events around the world . In Q1 2018, Comodo Cybersecurity analysis yielded potential geopolitical correlations related to national elections in China and Russia . The company discovered correlations in Egypt , India , Iran , Israel , Turkey and Ukraine relative to military operations, along with other trends across Europe , Asia and Africa . In Q1 2018, Comodo Cybersecurity analysis yielded potential geopolitical correlations related to national elections in and . The company discovered correlations in , , , , and relative to military operations, along with other trends across , and Hot zones identified by malware type. Countries that currently have the most acute challenges associated with Trojans, viruses and worms include Brazil , Egypt , India , Indonesia , Iran , Mexico , Nigeria , Philippines , Russia and South Africa . Countries in a higher socioeconomic category that can afford more professional cyber defenses are often plagued by a higher ratio of application malware. Finally, countries that possess unusual malware profiles, such as Belarus , China , Israel , Japan , Kazakhstan , Turkey , U.K. and Ukraine are profiled in this Q1 2018 report Comodo Cybersecurity will host a webcast to discuss the findings with Dr. Geers, on Wednesday, May 9, 2018 at 1 p.m. EDT (register here). For more information, download the Comodo Cybersecurity Threat Research Labs' "Global Malware Report Q1 2018." ) Comodo Cybersecurity will highlight its integrated platform that helps small, mid-size and large businesses safeguard their data and systems against next-gen cyber threats at RSA Conference 2018, April 16-20, 2018 in San Francisco. Comodo Cybersecurity will demonstrate its endpoint security, network security, web and cloud security, and threat intelligence solutions at Booth #541 in the South Hall. About Comodo Cybersecurity Comodo Cybersecurity, a division of Comodo Security Solutions Inc. (CSS Inc.), is transforming cybersecurity with protection for endpoints, networks and web servers that is proven to be effective against the most advanced malware threats, including even new and unknown threats. Comodo Cybersecurity's innovative auto containment technology provides a trust verdict for every file, so that only safe files can run, without impacting user productivity or computer resources. With its global headquarters in Clifton, New Jersey, Comodo Cybersecurity also has international offices in China, India, the Philippines, Romania, Turkey, and Ukraine. For more information, visit comodo.com or our blog. You can also follow us on Twitter (@ComodoNews) or LinkedIn. Contact: Montner Tech PR Deb Montner [email protected] 203-226-9290 SOURCE Comodo Cybersecurity Related Links http://comodo.com DBS Bank, a leading bank in Asia with over $390B in assets, is at the forefront of innovation creating lifestyle banking seamlessly integrating banking into their customers' everyday lives. By leveraging KAI Banking , Kasisto's conversational AI platform, DBS created digibank , India's first mobile-only bank, and runs it with just one-fifth of the resources of traditional banks. Very quickly, DBS leveraged the platform to expand their KAI assistant from India to Indonesia and Singapore, and from mobile to the web and Facebook Messenger. In addition, the KAI-powered assistant is bi-lingual conversing in English and Bahasa Indonesia. With more than 1.8 million customers, the KAI assistant handles 82% of digibank customers' requests and inquiries without human intervention. This is the world's most mature deployment of a conversational AI assistant in a bank to date, and serves as a blueprint for the coming wave of global banking innovation. The partnership is successful because of the collaboration and shared mindset from the C-suite to engineers, business analysts, AI trainers and project managers. Both companies have cultures guided by agility and human-centered designs and work together to leverage the power of conversation to create experiences that delight customers. In the words of DBS CEO, Piyush Gupta: "With the advent of technology, banking as we know it is being completely transformed. digibank places an entire bank in our customers' hands, freeing up their valuable time, and allowing them to 'Live More, Bank Less.' As a leading bank in Asia, DBS believes in shaping the future of banking. With Kasisto's conversational AI platform, we are embracing technologies that can make banking more interactive and intuitive for customers." "We have years' worth of evidence that proves implementing conversational AI in financial institutions already greatly reduces costs while simultaneously improving the customer experience," said Zor Gorelov, CEO and Co-Founder at Kasisto. "DBS has been a champion for this kind of innovation since day one, and we're thrilled to work with DBS and to be recognized by LendIt Fintech for our shared success collaborating to change the face of banking." LendIt Fintech USA, a gathering of more than 5,000 industry professionals in San Francisco, showcases the leaders in innovation across financial services including the digital banking, fintech, blockchain and lending industries. The annual LendIt Fintech Industry Awards bring together 400 fintech influencers and innovators to celebrate outstanding achievement across 21 unique categories. For more information about DBS Bank visit www.dbs.com, and for more information about Kasisto, visit www.kasisto.com. About DBS DBS is a leading financial services group in Asia, with over 280 branches across 18 markets. Headquartered and listed in Singapore, DBS has a growing presence in the three key Asian axes of growth: Greater China, Southeast Asia and South Asia. The bank's "AA-" and "Aa1" credit ratings are among the highest in the world. DBS is at the forefront of leveraging digital technology to shape the future of banking, and has been named "World's Best Digital Bank" by Euromoney. The bank has also been recognized for its leadership in the region, having been named "Asia's Best Bank" by several publications including The Banker, Global Finance, IFR Asia and Euromoney since 2012. In addition, the bank has been named "Safest Bank in Asia" by Global Finance for nine consecutive years from 2009 to 2017. DBS provides a full range of services in consumer, SME and corporate banking. As a bank born and bred in Asia, DBS understands the intricacies of doing business in the region's most dynamic markets. DBS is committed to building lasting relationships with customers, and positively impacting communities through supporting social enterprises, as it banks the Asian way. It has also established a SGD 50 million foundation to strengthen its corporate social responsibility efforts in Singapore and across Asia. With its extensive network of operations in Asia and emphasis on engaging and empowering its staff, DBS presents exciting career opportunities. The bank acknowledges the passion, commitment and can-do spirit in all of our 24,000 staff, representing over 40 nationalities. For more information, please visit www.dbs.com. About Kasisto Founded in 2013, Kasisto is on a mission to enable companies to attract, engage, support, and transact with their customers via human-like, intelligent conversations, anytime, anywhere. Kasisto's conversational AI platform, KAI, powers omni-channel bots and virtual assistants with deep domain expertise across mobile apps, web, messaging platforms, wearables, and IoT devices. With contextual and personalized conversations, they fulfill requests, solve problems, and predict needs as well as help companies support and market their products and services. Built with the deepest AI portfolio in the industry, KAI is an agile platform with self-service tools to customize and continually improve consumer experiences and seamlessly add new features. Marquee customers include DBS Bank, Mastercard, Standard Chartered, TD Bank, and Wells Fargo. As an SRI International spin-off, Kasisto leverages decades of artificial intelligence research and IP to create a full-stack, scalable, enterprise-ready platform. For more information visit www.kasisto.com. Follow Kasisto on Twitter, LinkedIn and Facebook. About LendIt Fintech LendIt Fintech is a recognized global internet finance industry leader, founded in New York in 2013. Its aim is to gather industry elites to discuss and explore latest trends in the development of international financial technology. LendIt Fintech has become the largest event in financial services innovation as it hosts three annual conferences, LendIt Fintech USA, LendIt Fintech Europe, and Lang Di Fintech, and dozens of complementary online and in-person industry events. LendIt also owns and operates one of the world's leading industry educational channels, Lend Academy. Media Contact: Kasisto, [email protected] SOURCE Kasisto Related Links http://www.kasisto.com "The alliance between Deoleo and Vinaoliva brings together natural synergies, as our two organizations seek to revaluate and iterate our skills and processes to drive points of uniqueness and quality. We want to provide innovation to the sector and a transparent approach for our consumers with full traceability from farm to table," said Deoleo Chairman and CEO Pierluigi Tosato. The agreement will see Deoleo and Vinaoliva collaborate on improving quality from the point of origin, increased study of olive varieties and sustainability, new models of grinding through to the packaging of oils. In addition, traceability will be reinforced as a fundamental commitment to consumer transparency. Deoleo ensures the supply of a quality raw material, controlled by a joint and transparent model with Vinaoliva guaranteed fair price system for its members that prioritizes the quality and know-how of their farmers. For his part, the president of Vinaoliva, Jose Luis Gordillo, said that " growing new markets and reaching new customers who value the quality of our products is one of the key objectives of Vinaoliva that we hope to achieve with this agreement with the Deoleo multinational". This agreement is another step in Deoleo's strategy to achieve stable relationships between the different sectors that make up the olive oil production chain in Spain, following the alliance signed with (UPA) The Spanish Union of Small Farmers and Rancher in November[i]. SOURCE Deoleo NEW YORK, April 17, 2018 /PRNewswire/ -- DFW Capital Partners, a 35-year-old private equity firm based in New Jersey, has completed an investment in ReSource Pro, becoming the company's majority owner. ReSource Pro, a leader in operations efficiency and business process solutions for the insurance industry, will continue as a stand-alone entity with its existing management team tasked with expanding the company's operations. Terms of the transaction were not disclosed. "DFW's strategy has been to invest in middle market companies with strong management teams and consistent annual revenue growth," said Keith W. Pennell, managing partner of DFW. "ReSource Pro is the clear market leader for its services, with exceptional growth, client retention and service quality marks from its customers. We are excited to partner with the company and its deep management team and help support the continued growth of both its client base and service offering." Headquartered in New York with service operations across the U.S., China and India, ReSource Pro is focused on operational efficiency and analytics as key drivers of profitable growth for insurance organizations. The company was founded in 2004 and has grown from a small start-up to a global operation with more than 3,000 employees located on multiple continents. In addition to its market-leading rate of client retention, ReSource Pro has also been named by Inc. magazine as one of the fastest growing privately held companies in the U.S. for the past nine years. "We've found a genuine partner in DFW both in terms the opportunity we see to support operational transformation in the insurance industry and also in the alignment of our business cultures," said Dan Epstein, CEO of ReSource Pro. "Going forward management has a significant investment and ownership in ReSource Pro, and we are excited to partner with DFW as we embark on the next chapter of our growth and client solutions." Lazard Middle Market LLC, acted as ReSource Pro's advisor. ABOUT RESOURCE PRO ReSource Pro brings to the insurance industry tools, technology and strategic services that enable profitable growth through operations excellence. Headquartered in New York, ReSource Pro's global service centers address client operational needs around the clock. Recognized as an industry thought leader and listed as one of Inc. 5000 Fastest Growing Private Companies annually since 2009, the company is renowned for its focus on innovation, service excellence and trusted partnerships, and its unique productivity platform for insurance operations. Approximately 3,000 ReSource Pro employees provide dedicated support to more than 300 insurance organizations, consistently achieving a +95% client retention rate for over a decade. www.resourcepro.com ABOUT DFW CAPITAL PARTNERS DFW Capital Partners is a Private equity investment firm, focused exclusively on the lower middle-market. Since 1983, DFW has been investing in and acquiring high growth businesses in the Healthcare, Business Services, and Industrial Services industries. DFW partners with talented entrepreneurs, supports strong management teams, and equips them for rapid growth. DFW actively manages several pools of committed capital, with approximately $600 million in assets under management. For more information, please visit www.dfwcapital.com. Media Contact: Rod Hughes (610) 559-7585 [email protected] SOURCE ReSource Pro Related Links https://www.resourcepro.com MENLO PARK, Calif., April 17, 2018 /PRNewswire/ -- Earlens Corporation, Inc., a privately held medical technology company, announced today that its Earlens Light-Driven Hearing Aid received a Best New Product Award at the 2018 Edison Awards. The Company's rich history of innovation was recognized with the top award in the Hearing Enhancement category. The Edison Awards is an annual competition honoring excellence in new product and service development, marketing, human-centered design, and innovation. The competition is open to progressive organizations across the globe. Award winners represent "game changing" products and services, as well as excellence and leadership in innovation. This year, more than 3,000 companies submitted applications. The winners were chosen as the "best of the best" by a panel comprised of individuals selected from the world's top senior business executives, academics, and innovation professionals. "At Earlens, our employees are dedicated to our mission to deliver hearing impaired patients unparalleled sound quality and speech understanding," said Bill Facteau, President and CEO of Earlens Corporation. "On behalf of all of the employees at Earlens, we are thrilled to be recognized for our unique contribution to the advancement of hearing technology and look forward to continuing to raise the bar." Unlike conventional hearing aids that use a small speaker to amplify sound, the Earlens Hearing Aid uses focused light and a small lens resting on the eardrum. Together, they create a rich, natural sound by substantially expanding the frequency range delivered to the user. This technology also eliminates the major source of whistling afflicting conventional hearing aids. Clinical studies have shown Earlens can make it easier for people with mild to severe sensorineural hearing impairment to understand people in noisy environments, and participate in group situations. About Earlens Earlens Corporation is a privately held medical device company committed to providing hearing impaired patients a superior hearing solution. The company has developed the Earlens Light-Driven Hearing Aid, the first hearing device to use light to transmit sound. In late 2015, the FDA cleared a De Novo premarket submission allowing Earlens to market their Light-Driven Hearing Aid. Incorporated in 2005, Earlens Corporation is headquartered in Menlo Park, California. About the Edison Awards The Edison Awards is a program conducted by Edison Universe, a non-profit, 501(c)(3) organization dedicated to fostering future innovators. The Awards have been recognizing and honoring the best in innovations and innovators since 1987. They honor game-changing innovations that are at the forefront of new product and service development, marketing and human-centered design, and are one of the highest accolades a company can receive in the name of successful innovation. For more information about the Edison Awards complete program and a list of past winners, visit www.edisonawards.com. Contact Kevin Knight 214-732-9392 [email protected] SOURCE Earlens Corporation, Inc. Related Links http://www.earlens.com "We are grateful for the way in which this community has embraced EDENS for the last 10 years. The Union Market community inspires innovation of thought and opportunity, which in turn drives our team to do their very best work. We are moving to one of the most creative places in our nation's capital," said Jodie W. McLean, CEO of EDENS. McLean's remarks speak to the 1200+ jobs created and more than 50 new businesses launched within the Union Market District since 2012, 15 of which are minority-owned, 18 women-owned. The location is six minutes from the U.S. Capitol and within walking distance to NoMaGallaudet U station metro station, as well as numerous retail, food and residential amenities. Relocating from Bethesda, MD, the 12,000 square foot LEED-certified office space will be the new home for nearly 100 EDENS employees. The ground floor is open to the public and designed to be a social space for work and leisure: A bookstore and cafe has been created in partnership with local businesses Politics & Prose and The Village Cafe. This will be the first location for The Village Cafe, a casual cafe founded by Ward 7 and 8 residents and graduates of the not-for-profit BrainFood program. This gathering place will also act as a workshop, board room and retail research lab for EDENS to engage with the community. In her statement issued to the Union Market District on April 7, Mayor Muriel Bowser states: "The Union Market District that we know today, began more than 200 years ago as the Centre Market. It serves as a great unifier for D.C. connecting people from a variety of backgrounds. Currently, Union Market District is home to a diverse group of vendors and shops that showcase the vibrancy of our city." EDENS employees will join a creative workforce which is influencing and driving the Washington, D.C. economy. Those businesses include local, national and international brands Huge, Venga, Advoc8, New Columbia Solar, Creative Theory, D.C. United, Sensis, Good Fight Media, TaKorean, Reading Partners, Rana Labs, Hydroviv and Dolcezza. About EDENS EDENS is a retail real estate owner, operator and developer of a nationally-leading portfolio of 125+ retail places. Our purpose is to enrich community through human engagement. EDENS has 250 employees across offices in key markets including Washington, D.C., Boston, Dallas, Columbia, Atlanta, Miami, Charlotte, Houston and Denver. For additional information about the company and its retail real estate portfolio, visit www.edens.com. SOURCE EDENS Related Links http://www.edens.com MOUNTAIN VIEW, Calif., April 17, 2018 /PRNewswire/ -- Eightfold.ai, the first Talent Intelligence Platform to address the talent gap by harnessing the power of AI and search, today announced the unveiling of its platform and $18M in Series B funding led by Foundation Capital and Lightspeed. Inspired by the "eightfold path" philosophy that empowers people to find the career path of their choosing, Eightfold.ai is the brainchild of two of the most decorated minds in AI, Ashutosh Garg and Varun Kacholia, who have over 6000+ research citations and 80+ search and personalization patents. Formerly known as Volkscience, Eightfold.ai's Talent Intelligence Platform (TIP) has been built for enterprises to address talent acquisition and management in a holistic manner. Eightfold.ai's TIP focuses in on three key areas: talent, personalization and artificial intelligence. Talent. Eightfold.ai creates a comprehensive talent network unique to an organization by aggregating all internal and external data for an enterprise from applicants to alumni which is currently siloed across many different solutions. Eightfold.ai creates a comprehensive talent network unique to an organization by aggregating all internal and external data for an enterprise from applicants to alumni which is currently siloed across many different solutions. Personalization. By providing intelligence on people's capabilities and future potential, organizations can personalize recruiting. This empowers hiring teams and managers to be more effective in matching talent to the right opportunities at the right time, ultimately improving candidate relevance and engaging at-risk employees to avoid attrition. By providing intelligence on people's capabilities and future potential, organizations can personalize recruiting. This empowers hiring teams and managers to be more effective in matching talent to the right opportunities at the right time, ultimately improving candidate relevance and engaging at-risk employees to avoid attrition. Artificial Intelligence. Powered by purpose-built deep learning models, Eightfold.ai platform continuously learns from all the data, engagement and decisions in the enterprises to predict future roles, career alternatives and support diversity and inclusion. "Employment is a critical societal issue today and despite wide acknowledgment of the magnitude of the problem across employers of all sizes, past solutions have woefully fallen short of promise," said Ashutosh Garg, CEO and co-founder of Eightfold.ai. "With over one hundred customers already, our Talent Intelligence Platform is enabling our customers to take a holistic approach to talent acquisition and management by aligning business objectives with individual capabilities and ambitions. Every individual with the right capability and potential placed in the right role is meaningful progress for us." "Historically, companies have not been able to recognize people's core capabilities and have unnecessarily exacerbated the talent crisis," said Varun Kacholia, CTO and co-founder of Eightfold.ai. "Our Talent Intelligence Platform is purpose-built to help companies find and match the right person to the right role at the right time and, for the first time, personalize these recommendations at scale." Backed by Leading Silicon Valley Investors In addition, Eightfold.ai announced today that it has closed $18 million in Series B financing. Foundation Capital led the round and is joined by Lightspeed Ventures, who led Series A. This round brings Eightfold.ai's total funding to $24 million. "Eightfold.ai has an incredible opportunity to help people reach their full potential in their careers while empowering the workforces of the future," said Peter Nieh, partner at Lightspeed Ventures. "Ashutosh and Varun are bringing to talent management the transformative artificial intelligence and data science capability that they brought to Google, YouTube and Facebook. We backed Ashutosh previously when he co-founded BloomReach and look forward to partnering with him again." "By applying AI to the incredibly human-intensive work of hiring and retention, Eightfold.ai is poised to disrupt an outdated but massive market," said Ashu Garg, general partner, Foundation Capital. "Eightfold's intelligence platform reimagines how employees and employers discover each other, helps people find better opportunities, and saves everyone time and expense." Applying Eightfold.ai's Technology Today The company has been operating in stealth mode for over a year and has attracted more than one hundred customers from Fortune 500s to fast-growing technology companies like Heidrick & Struggles, AdRoll Group and DigitalOcean. The platform has processed over 20 million applications to-date, helped its customers increase response rates by 700 percent compared to the industry average and reduced screening costs and time by 90 percent. "Working alongside board members and senior executives at Heidrick & Struggles to identify qualified leaders, it's obvious that recruiting and retaining the right talent has never been more important than in today's competitive technology market," said Kelly Kay, global managing partner at Heidrick & Struggles. "At scale, using a machine learning platform as an ally that systematically and proactively helps both candidates and the enterprise will be crucial for addressing the talent gap." "AdRoll Group is proud to have an ongoing CEO-led initiative to bring more diverse talent to our organization. The Eightfold.ai platform has had an immediate impact for our business by surfacing a highly-qualified and diverse pool of candidates to AdRoll Group," said Daniel Doody, global head of talent at AdRoll Group. "We are excited about our early results and look forward to continuing our partnership on this important initiative for our business." "As DigitalOcean continues to experience rapid growth, it's critical we move fast to secure top talent, while taking time to nurture the phenomenal candidates already in our community," said Olivia Melman, manager, recruiting operations at DigitalOcean. "Eightfold.ai's platform helps us improve operational efficiencies so we can quickly engage with high quality candidates and match past applicants to new openings." About the Founders Ashutosh Garg, Chief Executive Officer With 6000+ research citations, 50+ patents, 35+ peer-reviewed research publications, and the outstanding Ph.D. thesis award from UIUC for his Ph.D. thesis in Machine Learning, it's fair to say that Ashutosh Garg is one of the world's experts in machine learning. After his time managing Search and Personalization efforts at both Google and IBM Research, Ashutosh founded Bloomreach, a leading vendor for Digital Experience Platforms. Now, he is applying his experience to the problem he is most truly passionate about helping the world's talent find their most meaningful and fulfilling work. Varun Kacholia, Chief Technology Officer Varun Kacholia is one of the world's leaders when it comes to search, ranking, and machine learning. After ranking #2 at the Indian Institute of Technology in 2000 and earning his Masters from the University of California, Berkeley, Varun went on to lead the Ranking team at Google and YouTube Search and the News Feed team at Facebook. Varun is the recipient of several Google Executive Awards, has accomplished 20+ patents, and is an ACM ICPC world finalist. About Eightfold.ai Eightfold.ai Talent Intelligence Platform is bridging the talent gap by leveraging the power of artificial intelligence (AI) to give candidates and employers forward-looking insights that reveal not just what someone has done, but also provide insights into their full potential. With this data companies can find, engage, and motivate their best people to help them achieve business and personal success. SOURCE Eightfold.ai CHARLOTTE, N.C., April 17, 2018 /PRNewswire/ -- Falfurrias Capital Partners, a Charlotte-based private equity firm focused on investing in growth-oriented, middle-market businesses, today announced it has closed an investment in financial technology firm Tax Guard. Tax Guard is the leading provider of proprietary data and services that help lenders accurately assess tax-related credit risk associated with potential borrowers. Tax Guard, co-founded in 2009 by CEO Hansen Rada and based in Boulder, Colorado, is the first company in the U.S. to give lenders real-time insights into a client's hidden tax liabilities, information typically not available to lenders unless and until the IRS files a tax lien. With the IRS filing far fewer liens relative to the increase in delinquent tax accounts, the visibility gap and underwriting risk for lenders has grown rapidly. "Tax Guard has been a pioneer in identifying and successfully leveraging the opportunity presented by the growth of 'shadow' tax liabilities and the complications they create for lenders in underwriting debt," said Marc Oken, co-founder of Falfurrias Capital Partners. "Tax Guard is well positioned for significant growth organically and through complementary investments, and we look forward to working with Hansen and his team to scale the business by providing new technology and data solutions to financial services providers." Chris Marshall, co-founder and former CFO of Capital Bank, an early Falfurrias Capital Partners portfolio investment, will join Tax Guard as executive chairman. Marshall was previously a senior executive at Bank of America and served as CFO of Fifth Third Bancorp. Mr. Oken, a former Bank of America CFO and Joe Price, also a former Bank of America CFO and Head of Consumer and Small Business Banking, will be joining the board along with Geordie Pierson, a principal in Falfurrias Capital Partners. "Falfurrias Capital Partners, with its unmatched depth of experience in financial services, industry relationships and understanding of the forces driving the adoption by banks of third-party technology and data solutions, is the ideal partner for Tax Guard as we seek to take advantage of the significant growth in demand from new and existing customers," said Mr. Rada. "We are excited about the insights and opportunities Marc and the rest of the team can bring to the challenge of identifying new ways to meet the evolving needs of financial institutions." Holland & Hart LLP served as legal advisor to Tax Guard on the transaction. Raymond James & Associates was Tax Guard's financial advisor. About Tax Guard Established in 2009, Tax Guard is the first company in the U.S. to give lenders insight into their clients' hidden real-time tax risks well before federal tax liens are filed. Lenders throughout the U.S. rely on Tax Guard's proprietary due diligence and monitoring reports both prior to financing and throughout the course of their lending relationships. Headquartered in Boulder, Colorado, Tax Guard utilizes a patent-pending, integrated process based on data obtained directly from the Internal Revenue Service. For more information, visit www.tax-guard.com or email [email protected]. About Falfurrias Capital Partners Falfurrias Capital Partners is a Charlotte-based private equity investment firm founded in 2006 by Hugh McColl Jr., former chairman and CEO of Bank of America, and Marc Oken, former CFO of Bank of America. The firm is focused on acquiring or investing in a diverse portfolio of growth-oriented middle-market companies. By leveraging the extensive strategic and operational experience and business relationships of the firm's principals, Falfurrias Capital Partners is positioned to be a value-added partner for both its portfolio companies and its limited partners. For more information, visit www.falfurriascapital.com. SOURCE Falfurrias Capital Partners Related Links http://www.falfurriascapital.com LOS ANGELES and KANSAS CITY, Mo., April 17, 2018 /PRNewswire/ -- InvestCloud Inc., a global FinTech firm, has announced FCI Advisors as the latest wealth manager to adopt its digital platform. FCI will use InvestCloud to digitize services and engagement for its high-net-worth and institutional clients. FCI Advisors has been using InvestCloud's document storage apps since 2014. The wealth manager has now added new functionality from InvestCloud to give clients the ability to interact with their wealth in more ways online. It allows them to monitor allocations, securities and transactions, and to review performance. The client portal also stores relevant documents and provides news content so clients can access information in one place. Rachel Stewart, Vice President, Marketing and Communications at FCI Advisors, said: "Digital isn't just for the latest generation of investors many clients are already looking for new ways to interact with their wealth. This is what the InvestCloud digital platform does for us allowing us to serve today's investors and give them the tools they need while also providing for the next generation of clients. It allows us to further our mission to counsel investors, steward their assets and create peace of mind." The digital platform is powered by the InvestCloud Digital Warehouse. Going beyond simple information storage, the Digital Warehouse aggregates data from multiple systems and custodians and integrates it into meaningful information that is securely stored. This includes external news and social media sources, alongside market and portfolio data. Founded in 1966 and headquartered in Overland Park, Kansas, FCI Advisors is a registered investment adviser with more than $8.1 billion in assets under management. It provides financial advice and investment management for institutions and high-net-worth private investors. John Wise, Co-founder, CEO and Chairman of InvestCloud, said: "There is a desperate need for the wealth industry to go digital. Wealth managers are being fired by more than two-thirds of millennials who inherit wealth, and more than 70 percent of investors are interested in a digital platform for investing. This isn't a future problem: this is an issue that is already threatening the bottom line for wealth managers." Wise added: "We are proud to work with forward-thinking firms such as FCI Advisors. By combining their long heritage and expertise in financial advice with an intuitive, involved and individual digital platform, they are leading the way in building better relationships with their clients and delivering superior performance." About InvestCloud, Inc. Headquartered in Los Angeles with a global presence, InvestCloud develops first-class , financial digital solutions, pre-integrated into the cloud. By empowering investors and managers with a single version of the integrated truth through its unique digital platform, InvestCloud creates beautifully designed client experiences and intuitive operations solutions using an ever-expanding library of digital modular apps. The result? Powerful products for individual investors and institutions alike, assembled on-demand to meet clients' specific needs. Today the InvestCloud platform supports over $1.7 trillion of assets across 670 diverse clients from wealth managers, institutional investors & institutional asset managers to family offices, asset services companies, financial platforms & banks. For more information, visit www.investcloud.com. SOURCE InvestCloud Related Links http://www.investcloud.com RIDGEFIELD, Conn., April 17, 2018 /PRNewswire/ -- Boehringer Ingelheim today announced that the U.S. Food and Drug Administration (FDA) has provided full approval for Praxbind (idarucizumab), the specific reversal agent for Pradaxa (dabigatran etexilate mesylate). Praxbind is indicated for patients treated with Pradaxa when reversal of the anticoagulant effects of dabigatran is needed for emergency surgery/urgent procedures or in life-threatening or uncontrolled bleeding. "In the rare event of an emergency situation requiring reversal, treatment decisions must be made quickly and confidently," said Thomas Seck, M.D., vice president, Clinical Development and Medical Affairs, Boehringer Ingelheim Pharmaceuticals, Inc. "We believe that the wide availability of Praxbindand the robust data on its usecan provide patients and healthcare providers with greater assurance in their anticoagulation treatment decisions." The FDA granted accelerated approval to Praxbind in October 2015, with continued approval contingent upon results from the phase III RE-VERSE AD trial, the largest study to investigate a reversal agent for a NOAC. The final results of RE-VERSE AD were published in the New England Journal of Medicine in July 2017, and showed that Praxbind immediately reversed the anticoagulant effect of Pradaxa. The majority of patients had complete reversal of anticoagulation within four hours as measured by ecarin clotting time (ECT 82%) or diluted thrombin time (dTT 99%). In the RE-VERSE AD study, no adverse safety signals were observed and there was a low rate of thrombotic events. In clinical studies, Praxbind has not shown a procoagulant effect. Healthcare providers should consider resuming anticoagulant therapy as soon as medically appropriate due to the risk of thrombosis associated with patients' underlying conditions. Praxbind is stocked in more than 3,000 hospitals in all 50 states nationwide. Healthcare providers and patients can quickly search for institutions in the U.S. where Praxbind is stocked by using a zip code locator tool available at Praxbind.com. Praxbind is distributed by U.S. hospital pharmacy distributors ASD, Cardinal Health, MPB, HD Smith and Morris Dickson. Orders can generally be filled or restocked within 24 hours. Additional information about stocking Praxbind, as well as the zip code locator tool, is available at Praxbind.com or by calling 18005426257 (Opt 1). About RE-VERSE AD RE-VERSE AD ( NCT02104947 ) is a phase III global study of patients taking dabigatran who require urgent procedures or have uncontrolled bleeding. The final analysis from RE-VERSE AD included data from patients requiring urgent procedures/emergency surgery, e.g. surgery for an open fracture after a fall, or patients with either uncontrolled or life-threatening bleeding complications, e.g. intracranial hemorrhage or severe trauma after a car accident. The primary endpoint, the degree of reversal of the anticoagulant effect of dabigatran (Pradaxa) achieved by idarucizumab within four hours, was measured by dTT and ECT. The study, which began in May 2014, is the largest study to investigate a reversal agent for a novel oral anticoagulant (NOAC) in real-world emergency settings. It enrolled a total of 503 patients at 173 sites in 39 countries, which were included in one of two groups: Group A: 301 patients (60 percent) presenting with uncontrolled or life-threatening bleeding (e.g. gastrointestinal [GI] and intracranial [ICH] bleeds) Group B: 202 patients (40 percent) requiring an invasive procedure or an emergency surgery or intervention (e.g. because of a hip fracture) About Praxbind (idarucizumab) INDICATIONS AND USAGE Praxbind (idarucizumab) is indicated in patients treated with Pradaxa when reversal of the anticoagulant effects of dabigatran is needed: For emergency surgery/urgent procedures In lifethreatening or uncontrolled bleeding IMPORTANT SAFETY INFORMATION ABOUT PRAXBIND WARNINGS AND PRECAUTIONS Thromboembolic Risk Dabigatran-treated patients have underlying diseases predisposing them to thromboembolic events. Reversing dabigatran therapy exposes patients to thrombotic risk. Consider resumption of anticoagulant therapy as soon as medically appropriate. Re-elevation of Coagulation Parameters Elevated coagulation parameters (eg, activated partial thromboplastin time or ecarin clotting time) have been observed in a limited number of PRAXBIND-treated patients. If reappearance of clinically relevant bleeding together with elevated coagulation parameters is observed, or if patients requiring a second emergency surgery/urgent procedure have elevated coagulation parameters, an additional full dose may be considered. Hypersensitivity Reactions There is insufficient clinical experience evaluating risk of hypersensitivity to idarucizumab, but a possible relationship could not be excluded. Risk of hypersensitivity (eg, anaphylactoid reaction) to idarucizumab or excipients needs to be weighed cautiously against the potential benefit. If serious allergic reaction occurs, immediately discontinue PRAXBIND and institute appropriate treatment. Risk in Patients With Hereditary Fructose Intolerance PRAXBIND contains 4 g sorbitol as an excipient. When prescribing PRAXBIND in patients with hereditary fructose intolerance, consider the total daily amount of sorbitol/fructose consumption from all sources, as serious adverse reactions (eg, hypoglycemia, hypophosphatemia, metabolic acidosis, increase in uric acid, acute liver failure, and death) may occur. ADVERSE REACTIONS The most frequently reported adverse reaction in 5% of idarucizumab-treated healthy volunteers was headache (5%). The most frequently reported adverse reactions in 5% of patients were constipation (7%) and nausea (5%). Treatment-emergent antibodies with low titers were observed in 4% of healthy subjects and 2% of patients treated with idarucizumab. USE IN SPECIFIC POPULATIONS Pregnancy and Lactation PRAXBIND should be given to a pregnant woman only if clearly needed. Caution should be exercised when PRAXBIND is administered to a nursing woman. About Pradaxa (dabigatran etexilate mesylate) Indications and Usage Pradaxa (dabigatran etexilate mesylate) capsules is indicated: to reduce the risk of stroke and systemic embolism in patients with non-valvular atrial fibrillation IMPORTANT SAFETY INFORMATION ABOUT PRADAXA WARNING: (A) PREMATURE DISCONTINUATION OF PRADAXA INCREASES THE RISK OF THROMBOTIC EVENTS, (B) SPINAL/EPIDURAL HEMATOMA (A) PREMATURE DISCONTINUATION OF PRADAXA INCREASES THE RISK OF THROMBOTIC EVENTS Premature discontinuation of any oral anticoagulant, including Pradaxa, increases the risk of thrombotic events. If anticoagulation with Pradaxa is discontinued for a reason other than pathological bleeding or completion of a course of therapy, consider coverage with another anticoagulant (B) SPINAL/EPIDURAL HEMATOMA Epidural or spinal hematomas may occur in patients treated with Pradaxa who are receiving neuraxial anesthesia or undergoing spinal puncture. These hematomas may result in long-term or permanent paralysis. Consider these risks when scheduling patients for spinal procedures. Factors that can increase the risk of developing epidural or spinal hematomas in these patients include: use of indwelling epidural catheters concomitant use of other drugs that affect hemostasis, such as non-steroidal anti-inflammatory drugs (NSAIDs), platelet inhibitors, other anticoagulants a history of traumatic or repeated epidural or spinal punctures a history of spinal deformity or spinal surgery optimal timing between the administration of Pradaxa and neuraxial procedures is not known Monitor patients frequently for signs and symptoms of neurological impairment. If neurological compromise is noted, urgent treatment is necessary. Consider the benefits and risks before neuraxial intervention in patients who are or will be anticoagulated. CONTRAINDICATIONS Pradaxa is contraindicated in patients with: - active pathological bleeding; - known serious hypersensitivity reaction (e.g., anaphylactic reaction or anaphylactic shock) to Pradaxa; - mechanical prosthetic heart valve WARNINGS & PRECAUTIONS Increased Risk of Thrombotic Events after Premature Discontinuation Premature discontinuation of any oral anticoagulant, including Pradaxa, in the absence of adequate alternative anticoagulation increases the risk of thrombotic events. If Pradaxa is discontinued for a reason other than pathological bleeding or completion of a course of therapy, consider coverage with another anticoagulant and restart Pradaxa as soon as medically appropriate. Risk of Bleeding Pradaxa increases the risk of bleeding and can cause significant and, sometimes, fatal bleeding. Promptly evaluate any signs or symptoms of blood loss (e.g., a drop in hemoglobin and/or hematocrit or hypotension). Discontinue Pradaxa in patients with active pathological bleeding. Risk factors for bleeding include concomitant use of medications that increase the risk of bleeding (e.g., anti-platelet agents, heparin, fibrinolytic therapy, and chronic use of NSAIDs). Pradaxa's anticoagulant activity and half-life are increased in patients with renal impairment. Reversal of Anticoagulant Effect : A specific reversal agent (idarucizumab) for dabigatran is available when reversal of the anticoagulant effect of dabigatran is needed: : A specific reversal agent (idarucizumab) for dabigatran is available when reversal of the anticoagulant effect of dabigatran is needed: For emergency surgery/urgent procedures In life-threatening or uncontrolled bleeding Hemodialysis can remove dabigatran; however clinical experience for hemodialysis as a treatment for bleeding is limited. Prothrombin complex concentrates or recombinant Factor VIIa may be considered but their use has not been evaluated. Protamine sulfate and vitamin K are not expected to affect dabigatran anticoagulant activity. Consider administration of platelet concentrates where thrombocytopenia is present or long-acting antiplatelet drugs have been used. Thromboembolic and Bleeding Events in Patients with Prosthetic Heart Valves The use of Pradaxa is contraindicated in patients with mechanical prosthetic valves due to a higher risk for thromboembolic events, especially in the post-operative period, and an excess of major bleeding for Pradaxa vs. warfarin. Use of Pradaxa for the prophylaxis of thromboembolic events in patients with AFib in the setting of other forms of valvular heart disease, including bioprosthetic heart valve, has not been studied and is not recommended. Effect of P-gp Inducers & Inhibitors on Dabigatran Exposure Concomitant use of Pradaxa with P-gp inducers (e.g., rifampin) reduces exposure to dabigatran and should generally be avoided. P-gp inhibition and impaired renal function are major independent factors in increased exposure to dabigatran. Concomitant use of P-gp inhibitors in patients with renal impairment is expected to increase exposure of dabigatran compared to either factor alone. Reduction of Risk of Stroke/Systemic Embolism in NVAF For patients with moderate renal impairment (CrCl 30-50 mL/min), reduce the dose of Pradaxa to 75 mg twice daily when dronedarone or systemic ketoconazole is coadministered with Pradaxa. For patients with severe renal impairment (CrCl 15-30 mL/min), avoid concomitant use of Pradaxa and P-gp inhibitors. ADVERSE REACTIONS The most serious adverse reactions reported with Pradaxa were related to bleeding. Most frequent adverse reactions leading to discontinuation of Pradaxa were bleeding & gastrointestinal (GI) events. Pradaxa 150 mg resulted in higher rates of major and any GI bleeds compared to warfarin. In patients 75 years of age, the risk of major bleeding may be greater with Pradaxa vs warfarin. Patients on Pradaxa 150 mg had an increased incidence of GI adverse reactions. These were commonly dyspepsia (including abdominal pain upper, abdominal pain, abdominal discomfort, and epigastric discomfort) and gastritis-like symptoms (including GERD, esophagitis, erosive gastritis, gastric hemorrhage, hemorrhagic gastritis, hemorrhagic erosive gastritis, and GI ulcer) Other Measures Evaluated In NVAF patients, a higher rate of clinical MI was reported in patients who received Pradaxa (0.7/100 patient-years for 150 mg dose) than in those who received warfarin (0.6). USE IN SPECIFIC POPULATIONS Pregnancy: The limited available data on PRADAXA use in pregnant women are insufficient to determine drug-associated risks for adverse developmental outcomes. Lactation: Breastfeeding is not recommended. Geriatric: Risk of bleeding increases with age. Please see full Prescribing Information , including boxed WARNING and Medication Guide . About Boehringer Ingelheim Boehringer Ingelheim Pharmaceuticals, Inc., based in Ridgefield, CT, is the largest U.S. subsidiary of Boehringer Ingelheim Corporation. Boehringer Ingelheim is one of the world's top 20 pharmaceutical companies. Headquartered in Ingelheim, Germany, the company operates globally with approximately 50,000 employees. Since its founding in 1885, the company has remained family-owned and today creates value through innovation for three business areas including human pharmaceuticals, animal health and biopharmaceutical contract manufacturing. Boehringer Ingelheim is committed to improving lives and providing valuable services and support to patients and their families. Our employees create and engage in programs that strengthen our communities. Please visit our website to learn more about how we make more health for more people through our Corporate Social Responsibility initiatives. In 2016, Boehringer Ingelheim achieved net sales of about $17.6 billion (15.9 billion euros). R&D expenditure corresponds to 19.6 percent of its net sales. For more information please visit www.boehringer-ingelheim.us , or follow us on Twitter @BoehringerUS. Boehringer Ingelheim Pharmaceuticals, Inc. either owns or uses the trademarks Pradaxa, Praxbind and RE-VERSE AD under license. SOURCE Boehringer Ingelheim Related Links http://www.boehringer-ingelheim.us MORRISVILLE, N.C., April 17, 2018 /PRNewswire/ -- Field2Base, a field service automation software company that helps businesses eliminate paper, recently hit 10 million successfully sent mobile forms resulting in about 1,200 saved trees. "The fact that we've been able to save hundreds and hundreds of trees is remarkable," said Tom Bright, CEO of Field2Base. "We are all passionate about this business and serving our customers, so to be able to help out the environment by cutting paper is the cherry on top." The calculation assumes one tree produces 16.67 reams of paper and one form equals one sheet of paper. Additionally, in light of Arbor Day approaching, Field2Base will making a donation to One Tree Planted, a non-profit based in Vermont, to plant 1,200 trees. "2018 is a big year for us; we hired new employees, re-branded our logo and website, and we're also sponsoring this year's Field Service USA conference," said Tom Bright. "We're grateful to be in the business of helping our customers save time and money." Field2Base is a sponsor for Field Service USA 2018 in Palm Springs, California. Held by World Business Research, Field Service USA is a flagship annual event gathering customers and leaders of field service together. Founded in 2002, Field2Base is a software company that provides full-service field service management solutions to customers including customized mobile forms, automated workflows, and real-time analytics. Field2Base offers easy-to-use technology that allow customers to mobilize their workforce and grow their business, while saving time and money. Located in Morrisville N.C., Field2Base has customers throughout the U.S. and around the world, which includes a variety of industries such as construction, engineering, utilities, healthcare, manufacturing, farming, and government agencies. Contact: Kayla Slake 919-349-2868 [email protected] SOURCE Field2Base Related Links http://www.field2base.com CLEVELAND, April 17, 2018 /PRNewswire/ -- On April 13, Rose Acre Farms recalled more than 200 million shell eggs after at least 22 illnesses were linked to eggs from its farm in North Carolina. Eggs included in the recall may be contaminated with a dangerous strain of Salmonella and have made their way to consumers in 10 states. This represents the largest food safety incident involving eggs since 2010, when over 550 million eggs were recalled after a nationwide Salmonella outbreak sickened thousands. According to Freedonia analyst Cara Brosius, regulations that require food safety procedures are leading to quicker identification of contaminated products. "Under the Food Safety Modernization Act, which has compliance dates staggered through 2022, food companies are required to focus on prevention of food safety incidents such as this latest Salmonella outbreak. In many cases, increased diagnostic testing, sanitation practices, and traceability efforts can allow problems to be spotted before contaminated food makes its way to consumers." For more information on the food safety products industry, see Food Safety Products in the US, a new comprehensive study published by The Freedonia Group. https://www.freedoniagroup.com/industry-study/food-safety-products-in-the-us-by-product-and-market-5th-edition-3613.htm However, the risk of unsafe products reaching consumers still exists. "This recall is unsurprising, even though eggs are frequently tested for Salmonella. Farms and processing plants use disinfectants and sanitizers to prevent the spread of dangerous pathogens, but raw, whole shell eggs are not commonly pasteurized in the US," says Brosius. "Pasteurization of raw eggs in a hot water bath can greatly reduce the chances of Salmonella contamination, but only processed egg products such as liquid egg whites must be pasteurized under current USDA regulations." Food safety products used by the food industry and the government are seeing a number of innovations. The FDA learned about a cluster of Salmonella outbreaks last month and was able to trace the source of the illnesses to the egg farm in North Carolina. Investigators inspected the farm and collected samples for diagnostic testing, which revealed the same strain of Salmonella that caused the illnesses. Brosius notes, "Rapid diagnostic testing technology already allows faster results than previously possible, and tests are only getting better. In the future, blockchain technology is expected to be used with recordkeeping in conjunction with smart labels and tags that track food products throughout the supply chain. This technology could allow the government and food producers to trace the source of an illness much more quickly, leading to faster recalls." About The Freedonia Group The Freedonia Group, a division of MarketResearch.com, is a leading international industrial research company publishing more than 100 studies annually. Since 1985 we have provided research to customers ranging in size from global conglomerates to one-person consulting firms. More than 90% of the industrial companies in the Fortune 500 use Freedonia Group research to help with their strategic planning. Each study includes product and market analyses and forecasts, in-depth discussions of important industry trends, and market share information. Studies can be purchased at www.freedoniagroup.com and are also available on www.marketresearch.com and www.profound.com. Press Contact: Corinne Gangloff +1 440.684.9600 [email protected] SOURCE The Freedonia Group Related Links http://www.freedoniagroup.com VANCOUVER, British Columbia, April 17, 2018 /PRNewswire/ -- Future Farm Technologies Inc. (the "Company" or "Future Farm") (CSE: FFT) (CSE: FFT.CN)(OTCQX: FFRMF) is pleased to announce that BCWC, LLC ("BCWC") has been named as one of 20 recipients of Priority Certification by the Massachusetts Cannabis Control Commission ("CCC"). BCWC's application to enter the recreational marijuana business will therefore be reviewed on an expedited basis. As previously announced, Future Farm has entered the Massachusetts cannabis market through its strategic partnership with BCWC, formerly known as Bristol County Wellness Center, Inc. BCWC has a special permit from the City of Attleboro and a provisional license from the Department of Public Health to build and operate a 24,700-sq ft. Registered Marijuana Dispensary ("RMD") that will grow and sell medical marijuana. Because of that achievement, BCWC had the right to apply, and did so, to the CCC for "Priority Certification". Recipients of Priority Certification are exclusively able to file the first round of applications to, among other things, cultivate marijuana for adult use (i.e. recreational use) beginning on April 16. The CCC announced on April 10th that, out of well over 200 applications for Priority Certification, it granted only 20. BCWC was one of the 20 recipients of Priority Certification. Derek Ross, BCWC's Manager, commented, "We are very proud to be one of only 20 companies chosen. Becoming a leading cultivator and retailer of adult use cannabis in Massachusetts is a key part of the BCWC strategy. We also look forward to contributing to an increase in the Massachusetts cannabis tourism industry, providing the state with revenue, tax dollars, and job growth." Mr. William Gildea, CEO of Future Farm commented, "We made the decision to support BCWC because of the experience and professionalism of Derek Ross and his team. Their success in making this very short list of applicants with Priority Certification demonstrates why that decision was a good one." He continued, "This development further solidifies our position as one of the first movers in a state that has approved, but not yet implemented, the adult use of cannabis." Future Farm's strong strategic partnership with BCWC includes loaning BCWC $5,003,100 under a Secured Convertible Promissory Note to fund completion of the 24,700 sq. ft. vertically integrated BCWC facility in Attleboro, as well as active managerial, administrative and operational support. The Note will convert automatically into a 51% ownership interest in BCWC on the date on which BCWC receives its RMD Certificate from the Commonwealth of Massachusetts. On behalf of the Board, Future Farm Technologies Inc. William Gildea, Chairman & CEO About Future Farm Future Farm Technologies Inc. is a Canadian company with projects throughout North America including California, Florida and Maryland. The Company's business model includes developing and acquiring technologies that will position it as a leader in the evolution of Controlled Environment Agriculture (CEA) for the global production of various types of plants, with a focus on cannabis. Future Farm provides scalable, indoor CEA systems that utilize minimal land, water and energy regardless of climate, location or time of year and are customized to grow an abundance of crops close to consumers, therefore minimizing food miles and its impact to the environment. The Company holds an exclusive, worldwide license to use a patented vertical farming technology that, when compared to traditional plant production methods, generates yields up to 10 times greater per square foot of land. The contained system provides many other benefits including 90% less water, fertilizer and land used, less travel costs, seed to sale security, scalability, consistency due to year-round production, cost control, product safety and purity by eliminating environmental variability. The Company is also in the business of designing and distributing LED lighting solutions utilizing the COB and MCOB technology. The Company is focused on delivering cost efficient lighting to North America via advanced e-commerce sites the Company owns and operates. LEDCanada.com, which caters to B2B customers, is a supplier of the newest and highest demand LED solutions. The Company also owns and operates COBGrowlights.com, which caters to both large and small agriculture green houses and controlled cultivation centers. Neither the Canadian Securities Exchange nor its Market Regulator (as that term is defined in the policies of the Canadian Securities Exchange) accepts responsibility for the adequacy or accuracy of this release. The Canadian Securities Exchange has not in any way passed upon the merits of the proposed transaction and has neither approved nor disapproved the contents of this press release. This news release may include forward-looking statements that are subject to risks and uncertainties. All statements within, other than statements of historical fact, are to be considered forward looking. 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 forward-looking statements include market prices, exploitation and exploration successes, continued availability of capital and financing, and general economic, market or business conditions. There can be no assurances that such statements will prove accurate and, therefore, readers are advised to rely on their own evaluation of such uncertainties. We do not assume any obligation to update any forward-looking statements except as required under the applicable laws. For further information, contact: William Gildea Director +1(888)387-3761 SOURCE Future Farm Technologies Inc. PHILADELPHIA and NEW YORK, April 17, 2018 /PRNewswire/ -- Tikun Olam, the world leader in cannabis science, and Ilera Healthcare, Pennsylvania's premier medical marijuana cultivator, processor and dispenser, have finalized a deal to bring Tikun's world-renowned medical marijuana strains to medical cannabis patients in the Keystone State later this year. This partnership combines Tikun Olam's history of peer-reviewed scientific research and unprecedented clinical data collection with Ilera's expertise in formulating and delivering high-quality pharmaceutical-grade medical cannabis products to Pennsylvanians. Products developed from Tikun Olam's proprietary strains, including its world-renowned Avidekel high-CBD strain, will be available in vape oils, tinctures and topical formulations. Tikun Olam has created numerous cannabis strains designed to deliver symptomatic relief for specific conditions in line with the 17 medical conditions approved for medical cannabis use in Pennsylvania, including autism, cancer, PTSD, epilepsy, Crohn's Disease/Colitis, chronic pain and neuropathy, to name a few. "Tikun Olam has spent years developing our strains through scientific methods," says Tikun CEO Bernie Sucher. "Finding the ideal partner that shares our focus on quality control and consistency from seed to sale was a top priority for our Pennsylvania launch, and Ilera Healthcare was our top choice." Greg Rochlin, CEO of Ilera Healthcare, sees this as a natural partnership. "Ilera is dedicated to producing consistent, high-quality medications with effects that are supported by data, and so is Tikun Olam." About Tikun Olam Tikun Olam ("repair the world" in Hebrew) is the world's leading cannabis brand and globally recognized as the pioneer of modern medical cannabis. Operating as a commercial venture for over 10 years, Tikun Olam's products have been used since 2010 in ongoing clinical trials in Israel's regulated medical cannabis market, treating over 20,000 patients for a variety of symptoms of medical conditions such as Cancer, PTSD, AIDS, epilepsy, Crohn's Disease/Colitis, multiple sclerosis, cerebral palsy, chronic pain and neuropathy. Through this access to patients, medical personnel and data collection, Tikun Olam has developed multiple proprietary strains, including the first-ever, high-CBD, "high-less" strain Avidekel, its popular high-THC strain Alaska, and its "one-to-one" CBD/THC strain Midnight. Tikun Olam's U.S. operations, established in 2015 as T.O. Global LLC, is a joint venture with Tikun Olam Ltd. (Israel). Tikun Olam also operates similar partnerships in Canada (TSX: LEAF) and Australia, all in support of its global mission to educate the traditional medical community and its patients on the applications of cannabis as a scientifically proven wellness product. Visit www.tikunolamusa.com, and follow us on Facebook, Twitter, and Instagram. About Ilera Healthcare Ilera Healthcare is Pennsylvania's premier medical marijuana cultivator, processor and dispenser, offering patients registered in the Pennsylvania Medical Marijuana program with products that provide the relief they want to lead healthier lives. Ilera Healthcare operates its primary dispensary in Plymouth Meeting, Pennsylvania, with plans to open two additional dispensary sites in Pennsylvania within the year. Through their state-of-the-art cultivation, extraction, and processing facility in Waterfall, Pennsylvania, Ilera Healthcare strives to drive medical advancements through its formulations and shape the future of medical marijuana-based therapies. For more information about Ilera Healthcare, visit http://www.ilerahealthcare.com. CONTACTS: T.O. Global LLC/ Tikun Chief Marketing Officer Stephen Gardner [email protected] Media Relations Type A Media Tracey Henry / Brenda Loughery [email protected] [email protected] Ilera Healthcare Altay Akgun [email protected] SOURCE Tikun Olam Related Links http://www.tikunolamusa.com DUBLIN, April 17, 2018 /PRNewswire/ -- The "Metal Nanoparticles Market by metal (Platinum, Gold, Silver, Iron, Titanium, Copper, Nickel), End-use industry (Pharmaceutical & healthcare, Electrical & electronics, Catalyst, Personal care & cosmetics), and Region - Global Forecast to 2022" report has been added to ResearchAndMarkets.com's offering. The metal nanoparticles market will grow from USD 12.35 Billion in 2017 to USD 25.26 Billion by 2022, at an estimated CAGR of 15.4%. Increase in application areas of metal nanoparticles, rise in demand for gold nanoparticles in the pharmaceutical & healthcare industry, and supportive government initiatives & funding are boosting the growth of the metal nanoparticles market. The pharmaceutical & healthcare segment is projected to hold the largest share and dominate the market from 2017 to 2022. The growth in adoption of metal nanoparticles in electrical & electronics industry plays a key role in changing the market; this segment is projected to grow at the second-highest rate during the forecast period. The segmentation for this report is based on metal, end-use industry, synthesis process, and region. The pharmaceutical & healthcare segment is projected to be the fastest-growing in the metal nanoparticles market during the forecast period. There are various metal nanoparticles used in image-guided in-vivo therapies as well as in in-vitro techniques in order to detect changes in organs and tissues, and to diagnose chronic diseases such as cancer and Alzheimer's. The pharmaceutical & healthcare industry requires these metal nanoparticles for target specificity in the diagnosis of diseases. Metal nanoparticles are used in pharmaceutical & healthcare, electrical & electronics, catalyst, personal care & cosmetics, and other industries (water treatment, textile, aerospace, paints, and glass). The global market, in terms of end-use industry, was dominated by the pharmaceutical & healthcare industry in 2016. The rise in demand for innovative drugs and target-specific diagnosis & therapeutics is leading to the introduction of new & advanced materials, thereby giving rise to an increased demand for metal nanoparticles. The silver nanoparticles segment dominated the market in 2016, in terms of volume, as a result of their antimicrobial efficacy against viruses, bacteria, and other eukaryotic microorganisms, and wide application areas in electrical & electronics and healthcare industries. The gold nanoparticles segment is projected to grow at the highest CAGR during the forecast period; this is attributable to their unique optical properties, rich surface chemistry, and biocompatibility. North America dominated the market for metal nanoparticles in 2016, in terms of value. The US contributes a major share in the North American market. Continued investments in support of the National Nanotechnology Initiative and growth of the pharmaceutical & healthcare industry, make this market attractive for industry participants. In 2017, Asia Pacific is estimated as the largest consumer of metal nanoparticles, with China, Japan, India, South Korea, and Australia being the major markets. Asia Pacific is projected to be the fastest-growing market for metal nanoparticles from 2017 to 2022. The low manufacturing cost, supported by government incentives, has encouraged electronic-producing companies in different regions to establish their plants in the countries of Asia Pacific. This, in turn, creates growth prospects for metal nanoparticles in Asia Pacific. Key Topics Covered: 1 Introduction 2 Research Methodology 3 Executive Summary 4 Premium Insights 4.1 Attractive Opportunities In The Metal Nanoparticles Market 4.2 Metal Nanoparticles Market, By Metal 4.3 Metal Nanoparticles Market, By End-Use Industry 4.4 North America: Metal Nanoparticles Market, By Country And End-Use Industry 4.5 Metal Nanoparticles Market: Geographic Snapshot 5 Market Overview 5.1 Introduction 5.2 Market Dynamics 5.2.1 Drivers 5.2.1.1 Growing Popularity Of Gold Nanoparticles In The Pharmaceutical & Healthcare Industry 5.2.1.2 Increasing Application Areas Of Nanoparticles 5.2.1.3 Supportive Government Initiatives And Funding 5.2.2 Restraints 5.2.2.1 Highly Complex And Expensive Manufacturing 5.2.3 Opportunities 5.2.3.1 Biological Approach To Reduce Costs And Improve The Quality Of Nanoparticles 5.2.3.2 Rising Demand From Emerging Economies 5.2.3.3 Growing Electronics Industry 5.2.4 Challenges 5.2.4.1 Volatile Price Of Metals 5.2.4.2 Growing Concerns About The Toxicity Of Nanoparticles 6 Industry Trends 6.1 Introduction 6.2 Porter's Five Forces Analysis 6.2.1 Threat Of New Entrants 6.2.2 Threat Of Substitutes 6.2.3 Bargaining Power Of Suppliers 6.2.4 Bargaining Power Of Buyers 6.2.5 Intensity Of Competitive Rivalry 6.3 Macroeconomic Indicators 6.3.1 Introduction 6.3.2 Trends And Forecast Of Gdp 6.3.3 Trends In The Pharmaceutical Industry, By Country 6.3.4 Trends In The Electronics Industry, By Country 6.3.5 Global Metal Production Trends 7 Metal Nanoparticles Market, By Metal 7.1 Introduction 7.2 Platinum 7.3 Gold 7.4 Silver 7.5 Iron 7.6 Titanium 7.7 Copper 7.8 Nickel 7.9 Others 8 Metal Nanoparticles Market, By End-Use Industry 8.1 Introduction 8.2 Pharmaceutical & Healthcare 8.3 Electrical & Electronics 8.4 Catalyst 8.5 Personal Care & Cosmetics 8.6 Others 9 Metal Nanoparticles Market, By Synthesis Process 9.1 Introduction 9.2 Chemical Methods 9.3 Physical Method 9.4 Bio-Based Methods 10 Metal Nanoparticles Market, By Region 11 Competitive Landscape 12 Company Profiles 12.1 American Elements 12.2 Nanoshel Llc 12.3 Nanostructured & Amorphous Materials 12.4 Eprui Nanoparticles & Microspheres 12.5 Us Research Nanomaterials 12.6 Tanaka Holdings 12.7 Meliorum Technologies 12.8 Nanocomposix 12.9 Bbi Group 12.10 Nanocs 12.11 Strem Chemicals 12.12 Other Players 12.12.1 Cline Scientific 12.12.2 Nano Labs 12.12.3 Cytodiagnostics 12.12.4 Nanopartz 12.12.5 Sigma-Aldrich 12.12.6 Hongwu International Group 12.12.7 Innova Biosciences 12.12.8 Blacktrace Holdings 12.12.9 Quantumsphere 12.12.10 Seashell Technology 12.12.11 Particular Gmbh 12.12.12 Plasmachem Gmbh 12.12.13 Skyspring Nanomaterials For more information about this report visit https://www.researchandmarkets.com/research/3tk5dd/global_metal?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 NEW YORK, April 17, 2018 /PRNewswire/ -- The global organic sugar market is expected to exhibit a substantial growth of 15.55% during the forecast period of 2017-2022. The demand of organic sugar is anticipated to be driven by the various factors. Organic sugar retains various nutrition which otherwise is lost during over-processing of conventional sugar. The organic unrefined sugar contains 17 amino acids, 11 minerals (such as sodium, magnesium, and calcium) and many different vitamins. It retains its fructose and glucose along with sucrose, while the processed sugar only contains sucrose and glucose. Therefore, this factor is playing a key role to drive sales of organic sugar. Read the full report: https://www.reportlinker.com/p05376951 Sugarcane crop is increasingly sprayed with harmful pesticides and chemicals during growing stage to protect crops from various pests and weeds. These pesticides can cause severe health issues among consumers. However, organic farming of sugarcane eliminates the risk of use of harmful pesticides. Hence, lack of pesticides is another key factor spiking the demand for organic sugar. The growing demand for organically produced foods is growing rapidly which is influencing higher demand and use of organic food & beverages. Evolving consumer buying habits, growing consumers concerns regarding health, the environment, and animal welfare, along with their willingness to pay premium price for healthy food is fuelling the demand of organic food & beverages market in Asia-Pacific region. Even at the global level, market is driven by factors such as increasing consumer awareness towards organic benefits associated with its consumption, adoption of organic farming methods, and implementation of organic regulations. The presence of organic food & beverages has increased over the years in conventional food supply chains due to the development of private labels and growing interest of large retailers such as Wal-Mart and Tesco to sell organic products. The market players have increased their level of investment in research to identify right formulation and to improve product functionality in order to capture lion's share and create brand recognition in organic sugar market. Also, government authorities, NGOs and farmer organizations in developing countries are promoting organic farming by financial support, market information, and trends in organic food market. Developing countries are providing subsidies to small farmers for organic farming. NGOs, farmer organizations, traders are conducting training programs to encourage farmers for adopting organic farming. Government and non-government organizations such as FiBL (Switzerland), APEDA (India), and USDA (U.S.) to support conventional farmers to switch to organic farming. Key Players The leading market players in the global organic sugar market primarily are Cosan Ltd. (Brazil), Tereos Internacional (Brazil), Shree Renuka Sugars Limited (India), Raizen S.A (Brazil), Dwarikesh Sugar Industries Limited (India), Mitr Phol Group (Thailand), Wangkanai Group (Thailand), Bunge Limited (Brazil) Study Objectives of organic sugar Market Forecast to 2022 Detailed analysis for individual micro and macro markets for organic sugar To estimate market size by Application, Region To understand the supply and demand dynamics of organic sugar Company profiling of major players & competitive positioning for the organic sugar market Value chain analysis and supply chain analysis of organic sugar Analysis of historical market trends, and technologies, and current government regulatory requirements related to organic sugar market Target Audience Organic sugar manufacturers Food Service industries Retailers and wholesalers Traders, importers and exporters Key Findings The Global organic sugar market is projected to reach USD 1314.53 million by the end of 2022 Latin America is estimated to retain its dominance throughout the forecast period and expected to reach USD 838.17 million with registering a CAGR of 15.88% Personal care application is estimated to witness a massive growth of 16.85% during the review period of 2017-2022. Regional and Country Analysis of organic sugar market development and demand Forecast to 2022 Market As per the MRFR analysis, the global market for organic sugar has witnessed continued demand during the last few years and is projected to reach USD 1314.53 million by 2022, at a CAGR of 15.55% during the forecasted period. Latin America is estimated to dominate the global organic sugar market holding a lion's share of more than 64.5% and projected to reach USD 838.17 million by the end of 2022. Central America will witness the moderate growth rate of 14.66% in the global organic sugar market. The reports also cover country level analysis: Latin America Argentina Brazil Paraguay Peru Rest of Latin America Asia Pacific Thailand India Rest of Asia Pacific Rest of the World Colombia Ecuador Mexico Guatemala Others Read the full report: https://www.reportlinker.com/p05376951 About Reportlinker ReportLinker is an award-winning market research solution. Reportlinker finds and organizes the latest industry data so you get all the market research you need - instantly, in one place. __________________________ Contact Clare: [email protected] US: (339)-368-6001 Intl: +1 339-368-6001 SOURCE Reportlinker Related Links http://www.reportlinker.com DUBLIN, April 17, 2018 /PRNewswire/ -- The "Excipients in Pharmaceuticals: Global Markets to 2022" report has been added to ResearchAndMarkets.com's offering. This report on the pharmaceutical excipient market covers an overview of excipients, classification of excipients, and their significance in the pharmaceutical industry. A detailed analysis illustrating market dynamics, market structure analysis incorporating Porter's Five Force Framework analysis and supply chain and distribution is discussed in detail. Excluded from the scope of this report is the use of excipients in cosmetics, food and beverage, and chemical industries. Emerging pharmaceutical excipients such as co-processed and multifunctional excipients and their impact on the future of pharmaceutical excipients market is also analyzed. Geographically, this report analyzes the market by the following regions: North America, Europe, Asia-Pacific, Latin America and the Middle East. Key countries with a high concentration of pharma manufacturing companies and contract manufacturing organizations, including the U.S., Europe (Germany, U.K., Italy, France and Spain), China, India and Brazil are discussed. A detailed competitive analysis of key leading pharmaceutical excipient suppliers is provided, detailing business operations and segment focus. Report Includes: 58 tables An overview of the global market for excipients in pharmaceuticals Analyses of global market trends, with data from 2016 and 2017, and projections of compound annual growth rates (CAGRs) through 2022 Detailed analyses of organic and inorganic excipients Discussion of various excipient interactions, including drug-excipient interaction, excipient-excipient interaction, and package-excipient interaction Insight into the most critical issues surrounding excipients, including technological, regulatory, economic, and political Company profiles of major players in the market, including Ashland Global Holdings, Inc., Cargill, Inc, Meggle Pharma Gmbh, The Lubrizol Corporation and Omya Ag Key Topics Covered: 1 Introduction Study Goals and Objectives Reasons for Doing This Study Intended Audience Scope of the Study Methodology Information Sources Geographic Breakdown Analyst's Credentials Related BCC Research Reports 2 Summary and Highlights 3 Circulating Tumor Cells Cancer Recent Advances in Technology Invasive Power Circulating Tumor Cells Phenotypic Characteristics CTC Clusters CTC Detection Cancer Stem Cells (CSCs) Circulating Tumor Cells- Potential Uses Proliferative Activity Epithelial Marker Genes on Circulating Tumor Cells Circulating Tumor Cells and Stem Cell-Like Phenotype CTCs and Primary Tumor Cells: Comparison Metastasis Future Directions Metastatic Development in Cancer Patients Circulating Tumor Cell Migration Important Markers of Distant Metastasis Circulating Tumor Cell Detection Methods CellSearch Method Epic Sciences Method Maintrac ISET Test Challenges for Detection Clinical Application of Circulating Tumor DNA Circulating Tumor Cells as Predictor of Response to Therapy Measurement of CTCs-Applications Conclusion 4 Incidence of Cancer Worldwide Growth in the Incidence of Cancer Causes of Cancer Risk Factors for Cancers Burden of Cancer Avoiding Risk Factors Early Detection Treatment Palliative Care World Health Organization Response World Cancer Statistics Cancer and the Global Impact Global Patterns Future of Cancer Common Types of Cancers U.S. Cancer Incidence Global Breast Cancer Colorectal Cancer Prostate Cancer Cancer in Europe Prostate Cancer in Asia Other Nations Conclusions 5 Technologies Finding Circulating Tumor Cells Why CTCs? Current CTC Detection and Isolation Methods New Technologies for Detection Cancer Prognosis CTC Detection Techniques - Requirements Nucleic Acid-based Methods Clinical Testing Summary New Emerging Technologies 6 Circulating Tumor Cells and Cancer Diagnostics Use of CTCs for Diagnosis Current Methods and Applications Circulating Tumor Cells in Prostate Cancer: Case Studies CTCs in Companion Diagnostics Newer Technologies in Development Molecular Analyses of CTC Conclusions 7 CTCs in Clinical Trials CTC Diagnostics Circulating Tumor Cell Technology Potential Therapeutic Uses of Circulating Tumor Cells Challenges in the Detection of Circulating Tumor Cells CTCs as Clinical Biomarkers PCR-based Markers Circulating Tumor Cells in Cancer -Current Status Prognostic and Predictive Value of CTCs CTCs in Clinical Cancer Management Existing Technologies in Clinical Trials Clinical Studies Using CellSearch Technology Approvals Recent Studies Possible Use of CTCs and DTCs as New Biomarkers Clinical Applications Application of CTC Technologies to Clinical Testing CTC Technologies for Clinical Development Standard Recommendations CTC Number as a Prognostic Biomarker Prognostic Studies CTCs as a Surrogate Response Biomarker CTCs as a Real-time Biopsy CTC Chip Technology and EGFR Mutation Analysis CTC Characterization after Enrichment Using the CellSearch Platform Final Remarks 8 Circulating Tumor Cell Market Invasive Cancer Cancer Survival Global Annual Oncology Market Cancer Therapy Aging and Cancer Cancer Drug Pipeline Cancer Costs in the U.S. Japan Oncology Drugs Market Breast Cancer Colon and Rectum Prostate Chemotherapy Market Cancer Testing Market Current Cancer Diagnostic Tests A Universal Tumor Test-Is it Possible? Cancer Biomarker Testing Market Molecular Diagnostics Cancer Biomarker Tests Cancer Disease Management Personalized Cancer Testing Circulating Tumor Cell Market-A New Approach Clinical Diagnostics Market Current Status of the Market Future and Next Steps 9 Patents Overview Key Patents Menarini-Silicon Biosystems/Veridex Magsweeper Scripps Research Institute (EPIC Sciences) CellPoint Diagnostics University of Washington Biofluidica Adnagen Filtini Ikonisys Aviva Biosciences Harvard University-Mehmet Toner, PhD Cellective Dx Johns Hopkins University Medical Discovery Partners Cynvenio Biosystems ScreenCell Canopus Bioscience Advanced Cell Diagnostics Biocept TRUECELLS Roche Molecular Systems and the University of North Carolina Cellectar Biosciences The General Hospital Corp. The Trustees of the University of Pennsylvania Patents Epic Sciences Immunomedics 10 Selected Company Profiles Companies Key Players Key Company Profiles Adnagen Advanced Cell Diagnostics Apocell Aviva Biosciences Biocep Ltd. Biocept Inc. Biofluidica Microtechnologies Llc Canopus Biosciences Cellmax Life Celltrafix Inc. Celula Clearbridge Biomedics Creatv Microtech Inc Cynvenio Biosystems Inc. Cytotrack Epic Biosciences Fluxion Biosciences Greiner Bio-One Gmbh Ikonisys Inc. Ivdiagnostics Inc Janssen Diagnostics Menarini-Silicon Biosystems Miltenyi Biotec Nanostring Technologies Inc. Natural Nano Inc. Rarecells Screencell Stemcell Technologies Synergex Corp. Sysmex Corp. Vitatex Inc. For more information about this report visit https://www.researchandmarkets.com/research/vbg8r8/global?w=5 Media Contact: 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 PORTLAND, Oregon and PUNE, India, April 17, 2018 /PRNewswire/ -- According to a new report published by Allied Market Research, titled, "Web Application Firewall Market by Deployment, Organization Size, and End-Use Industry - Global Opportunity Analysis and Industry Forecast, 2016-2023," the global web application firewall market was valued at $426 million in 2016, and is projected to reach $1,425 million by 2023, growing at a CAGR of 19.2% from 2017 to 2023. The aerospace & defense segment is anticipated to grow at the highest rate during the forecast period. (Logo: https://mma.prnewswire.com/media/636519/Allied_Market_Research_Logo.jpg ) North America generated the highest revenue in 2016 due to adequate infrastructural development for the adoption of web application firewall. The Asia-Pacific web application firewall market is expected to grow at the highest rate during the forecast period, owing to the remarkable economic growth in Southeast Asia, India, & other economies and growth in trend of cloud-based solutions. Request Sample Report at: https://www.alliedmarketresearch.com/request-sample/2759 The BFSI business segment contributed the highest share in 2016. This segment accounted for $93 million in 2016, and is projected to grow at the CAGR of 17.6% during the forecast period. However, the web application firewall market for aerospace & defense segment is projected to grow at the highest rate of 21.9%. The cloud segment accounted for the highest revenue share in 2016, while the on-premise segment is anticipated to grow at the highest rate of 21.2%. Technological innovation in product offerings, rise in adoption for cloud-based solutions, increase in application areas among end-use industries, and heavy venture capital investments in R&D activities to develop solutions with enhanced capabilities drive the market. In addition, government organizations and companies enhance their data security infrastructure due to rise in number of security breaches and government regulations related to IT security. This in turn boosts the market growth. The report features a competitive scenario of the global web application firewall industry and provides a comprehensive analysis of key growth strategies adopted by the major players. The key players profiled in the study are Akamai Technologies, Inc., Barracuda Networks, Inc., Citrix Systems, Inc., F5 Networks, Inc., Imperva, Inc., Fortinet, Inc., Applicure Technologies Ltd., Qualys, Inc., Cloudflare, Inc., and Radware Ltd. These players adopt competitive strategies, such as geographical expansions, mergers & acquisitions, new product launches, and partnerships & collaborations, to augment the growth of the web application firewall market. For Purchase Enquiry: https://www.alliedmarketresearch.com/purchase-enquiry/2759 Key Findings of the Web Application Firewall Market: The large enterprises segment accounted for the highest share of the global web application firewall industry in 2016, growing at a CAGR of 19.9% from 2017 to 2023. The BFSI sector of the web application firewall market generated the highest revenue share in 2016, and is projected to grow at a rate of 17.6%. The North America web application firewall market generated the highest share, valued at $181 million , in terms of revenue in 2016. web application firewall market generated the highest share, valued at , in terms of revenue in 2016. The web application firewall market for aerospace & defense segment is expected to witness the highest growth rate during the forecast period. 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. Contact: Shriram Dighe 5933 NE Win Sivers Drive #205, Portland, OR 97220 United States Toll Free: +1-800-792-5285 UK: +44-845-528-1300 Hong Kong: +852-301-84916 India (Pune): +91-20-66346060 Fax: +1855550-5975 [email protected] Web: https://www.alliedmarketresearch.com SOURCE Allied Market Research SAN FRANCISCO and TEL AVIV, Israel, April 17, 2018 /PRNewswire/ -- GuardiCore, a leader in internal data center and cloud security, today announced that Info Security Products Guide, the industry's leading information security research and advisory guide, has named GuardiCore a Gold Innovative Company of the Year and Bronze Product of the Year in Cloud Security and Deception Based Security in the 2018 Global Excellence Awards. The security industry celebrated its 14th Annual 2018 Global Excellence Awards in San Francisco by honoring excellence in every facet of the industry including products, people behind the successes and best companies. More than 40 judges from a broad spectrum of industry voices from around the world participated and their average scores determined the 2018 Global Excellence Awards Finalists and Winners. Winners were announced during the awards dinner and presentation on April 16, 2018 in San Francisco attended by the finalists, judges and industry peers. GuardiCore's flagship product, the Centra Security Platform, is the only security product on the market today that provides a single, scalable platform that covers five critical capabilities for effective data center security and protection: flow visualization, micro-segmentation, breach detection, automated analysis and response. "Info Security Products Guide's recognition of our innovative and dynamic methods and technology is rewarding and validates our position as a leader in internal data center and cloud security," said Pavel Gurvich, CEO and co-founder of GuardiCore. "These awards, recognizing the company as a whole and our specific technology platform, are a direct reflection of the efforts, commitment and success of the entire GuardiCore team to deliver to customers more accurate and effective ways to stop and respond to advanced threats in dynamic cloud and data center environments." About Info Security PG's Global Excellence Awards 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 GuardiCore GuardiCore is an innovator in data center and cloud security focused on delivering more accurate and effective ways to protect critical applications from compromise through unmatched visibility, micro-segmentation and real-time breach detection and response. Developed by cyber security experts in their field, GuardiCore is changing the way organizations are fighting cyber attacks. For more information, visit www.guardicore.com. Media Contact: Cinthia Portugal Guyer Group [email protected] 206.619.8183 SOURCE GuardiCore Related Links http://www.guardicore.com NEW YORK, April 17, 2018 /PRNewswire/ -- Halstead Property, a leading residential real estate brokerage firm in the New York metropolitan area, today announced a corporate rebrand to "Halstead." The comprehensive rebrand includes a new logo, use of color, positioning and website. The announcement was unveiled to more than 1,000 Halstead agents at the firm's Annual Meeting held on April 16th, 2018 at Cipriani's in New York City. "Halstead is at a pivotal moment, and our rebranding is comprehensive, reflecting where we are today and where we are heading. Over the years, we have evolved from a boutique New York City firm to a force operating in urban, suburban and second home markets across New York, Connecticut and New Jersey. We have built an internal foundation of incredible technology, marketing services and support companies without forgetting our mission as a real estate company based on relationships and skill. It is time to turn this outward. We have developed a brand that truly represents our strengths and this will carry us into our next chapter the best one yet," said Diane M. Ramirez, Chairman & Chief Executive Officer of Halstead. Ramirez was at Clark Halstead's side when he founded the firm in 1984. She has now overseen Halstead's two major rebrands. Halstead worked with Pentagram, the world's largest independently-owned design studio, to develop the reimagined brand. "Halstead's new visual identity showcases the company and further allows it to stand out to the public and agents alike. The look is bold, contemporary and memorable. It speaks to the firm's most powerful brand attributes while staying true to its core values and strengths," said Eddie Opara, Partner at Pentagram. The work of Halstead agents represents far more than a simple transaction agents are the trusted advisors, interpreters of the market, and much more to their clients. Like Halstead's agents, the firm's new logo is multidimensional and flexible, personifying the firm at its essence. The reimagined "H" icon is architectural, offering the ability to stand alone as well as the flexibility for rotation, growth in pattern form or in overlaying photography. The new approach to use of color is forward-thinking within the real estate industry and beyond. The corporate color set consists of a monochromatic palette of grays that anchors the brand, while three additional color sets reflect Halstead's various markets throughout the tristate region. Each of the firm's major markets Manhattan, the outer boroughs and the suburban areas has its own distinct character and qualities. The market-specific color sets, when used as an accent to the corporate grays, allow unique market characteristics to shine while maintaining a strong connection to the core Halstead brand. "Our variety of palettes taps into a growing movement in design that redefines the role of color in corporate branding. Alongside strong visual elements, this use of color allows you to appeal in a deeper way to audiences by tapping into more visceral connections that people may have to things like regions, seasons and emotions. We look forward to this exploration," said Matthew Leone, Chief Marketing Officer of Halstead. The Domaine Sans typeface epitomizes Halstead's foundation a rich history that is looking toward the future with a refined sensibility and contemporary features that are strong, elegant, robust and pragmatic. Halstead's new tagline is, "Move to what moves you." Halstead agents play a critical role in helping their clients make some of the biggest, most exciting and challenging changes in their lives, and the messaging is meant to convey elements of aspiration and passion with a flexibility that allows for wordplay in a variety of written form. While Halstead's look and tagline have changed to better represent the firm today and tomorrow, Halstead's commitment to success and service for its customers and agents remains the same. Moving forward, the company will use the Halstead name, which may be followed by Real Estate ("Halstead Real Estate") to provide context in regard to the industry. To learn more about Halstead's new brand, please visit: halstead.com/movetowhatmovesyou About Halstead As one of the top residential real estate brokerage firms in the New York metropolitan area, Halstead has more than 1,300 sales and rental agents located in premier retail storefront offices in Manhattan, Brooklyn, Queens, the Bronx, the Hamptons, Hudson Valley, New Jersey and Fairfield County, Connecticut. In addition, the Development Marketing Division of Halstead is the exclusive sales and marketing firm for many new developments in the tristate area and through the Property Management Division, Halstead manages more than 25,000 residential units within 250 buildings. To learn more, please visit www.halstead.com. SOURCE Halstead Related Links https://www.halstead.com FOUNTAIN VALLEY, Calif., April 17, 2018 /PRNewswire/ -- Members of the Board of Directors and the Executive Management Team have approved the appointment of Dru Dobbs as HeartStitch, Inc.'s new President. Effective immediately, Mr. Dobbs will officially assume the duties as President and will continue to oversee the manufacturing of the company's current product line which includes the NobleStitch EL Suture-Based Closure System, the Coap Pro for the repair of the Mitral Valve, the Remo Pro for trans-apical access and closure and the many new products being launched in Europe and the US in the coming years. Mr. Dobbs will be filling the position which is being vacated by current President, Richard Bjorkman who has asked to step down as President of HeartStitch, Inc. in order to spend more time with his family. He will continue to be a part of HeartStitch, Inc. in the CFO position as a contractor to the company. Mr. Bjorkman has expressed confidence in his successor, Dru Dobbs. Mr. Bjorkman stated: "I have watched Dru grow in his role of VP Manufacturing and Operations, handling both operational and personnel issues in a professional manner. He has a level of maturity beyond his years that will serve both him and HeartStitch well as the Company continues to grow." Mr. Richard Babcock, Director and corporate counsel for HeartStitch commented: "Mr. Dobbs has demonstrated his ability to lower costs, improve quality and manage the growing staff of HeartStitch. His efforts have had an impact on the overall success of the products and the enterprise value of the company. The members of the Board, and myself in particular, believe Dru will help make HeartStitch the leader in the structural heart market." Dru Dobbs, President of HeartStitch commented, It is a great honor to be selected to lead this talented group of people, over the past two years I have had the opportunity to implement new manufacturing, quality and corporate changes to help HeartStitch increase productivity, efficiency and lower cost while maintaining our Safety and Risk Management activities. Seeing the NobleStitch EL grow and have such a positive impact on peoples lives is the true motivation we bring with us to work every day. Seeing this widespread impact on the world this device has had in such a short time excites me for all of our future devices and projects soon to come. HeartStitch started as a whisper and is rising to become the prevalent Gold Standard and I am excited to be part of it. Prof. Anthony Nobles, Chairman, CEO and chief Clinical Specialist of HeartStitch stated: "Mr. Dobbs has demonstrated a level of professionalism over the past years he has worked at HeartStitch that exceeds that of executives with 20 years experience. I have been impressed with his problem solving, people skills and mostly his ability to listen, learn and quickly apply what is needed to run a medical device company. HeartStitch is growing rapidly with its recent success of the NobleStitch. Dru has been responsible for the scalability of the product and will be overseeing all of our facilities around the world. I am confident in his ability to lead HeartStitch into the next phase of its growth toward establishing our company as a leader in safety and quality while meeting the objectives of the Board and its shareholders." About HeartStitch HeartStitch Inc. was founded by Prof. Anthony Nobles with the intent of leveraging its technologies in the structural heart marketplace. HeartStitch is focused on the innovative suture-based systems for remotely providing suture repair of structural heart defects and other vascular structures. HeartStitch currently markets under license the NobleStitch EL device for cardiovascular suturing and PFO closure. HeartStitch develops new structural heart technologies through its international innovation development teams in California, Kazakhstan and Germany. The HeartStitch Access Pro (formally HeartStitch TA) and the HeartStitch Coap Pro (formally the HeartStitch MR) are FDA cleared for vascular suturing in the United States. HeartStitch is a registered trademark of HeartStitch, Inc. HeartStitch Access Pro Covered by or for use under U.S. and international patents including one or more of U.S. Patent Nos. 5860990, 6117144, 6245079, 6551331, 6562052, 6733509, 7004952, 7090686, 7803167, 8197497, 8348962, 8469975, 8496676, and 8709020. HeartStitch Coap Pro Covered by or for use under U.S. and international patents including one or more of U.S. Patent Nos. 5860990, 6117144, 6245079, 6551331, 6562052, 6733509, 7004952, 7090686, 7803167, 8197497, 8348962, 8469975, 8496676, 8709020, and 8771296. NobleStitch EL Covered by or for use under U.S. and international patents including one or more of U.S. Patent Nos. 5860990, 6117144, 6245079, 6551331, 6562052, 6733509, 7004952, 7090686, 7803167, 8197497, 8197510, 8246636, 8348962, 8372089, 8469975, 8496676, 8709020, and 9131938. For more on HeartStitch visit www.HeartStitch.com For more information, please contact: USA In Kazakhstan Dru Dobbs Kazbek Aubakirov P. +1 714 427 6348 P. +7 777 5009005 F. +1 714 427 6343 [email protected] [email protected] The NobleStitch is approved for PFO Closure and Cardiovascular suturing in the European Union. The NobleStitch EL is FDA cleared for Vascular and Cardiovascular suturing in the United States. Further information including warnings and precautions can be found in the instructions for use. NobleStitch EL is distributed worldwide by HeartStitch, Inc. (HeartStitch is a registered trademark of HeartStitch, Inc.). NobleStitch EL Covered by or for use under U.S. and international patents including one or more of U.S. Patent Nos. 5860990, 6117144, 6245079, 6551331, 6562052, 6733509, 7004952, 7090686, 7803167, 8197497, 8197510, 8246636, 8348962, 8372089, 8469975, 8496676, 8709020, and 9131938. SOURCE HeartStitch Related Links http://www.heartstitch.com DANIA BEACH, Fla., April 17, 2018 /PRNewswire/ -- Florida-licensed Professional Engineer Hermes Norero's transatlantic initiative brings together his engineering expertise in the construction industry internationally with the facilities of one the most important centers of applied research, quality control and certification in Europe. From now on, the Istituto Giordano will operate under Norero's supervision, testing systems and products in Europe for the US market; emphasizing on Florida's High-Velocity Hurricane Zone testing protocols. This opens up fantastic opportunities for the most innovative and cutting edge European manufacturers, as well as for consumers in the American Market. Istituto Giordano Mr. Norero is an industry leader with many years of experience working throughout the US, Europe, and Asia, particularly in the fenestration industry. He is also the Founder and President of Building Drops, Inc, an engineering consulting company that has built a reputation for combining technology and engineering with excellent customer service. Norero designed one of the first solar coating machines for a US manufacturer and is experienced in all aspects of mechanical design and project management, having worked with leading companies such as LLNL, Pratt & Whitney and Lockheed. Norero has a long-standing business relationship with the Istituto Giordano and has no hesitation in staking his reputation on its continued success. The institute currently operates both in the mandatory sector, testing systems, and products for compliance with European directives and national legislation, and the voluntary sector, testing for quality marking and certification schemes. It also conducts research on the design of test systems and trains engineers in their operation. Overall, it has 150 employees across 15 divisions. It's anticipated that this partnership will make the Istituto Giordano a European hub for testing, training, and learning for the US market. Norero will facilitate this by providing seminars and training sessions open to European manufacturers, engineers, and glaziers to help them understand the differences between the European and American markets and to tailor their products to the particular needs and expectations of the latter. Both parties are incredibly excited about this ground-breaking development and look forward to unleashing the potential that will come from higher convergence in testing and certification between the engineering industries of Europe and the US. Hermes Norero says: "This is a huge step forward in breaking down barriers between manufacturers on either side of the Atlantic. I expect it to lead to a new wave of innovation, benefitting the engineering industry globally, as well as consumers." Media contact: Joseph Quinones Tel. (954) 399-8478 E: [email protected] Contact Information: Nazario Giordano Tel. +39 0541 343030 E: [email protected] SOURCE Hermes Norero, CEO of Building Drops CHICAGO, April 17, 2018 /PRNewswire/ -- HighTower, one of the nation's largest Registered Investment Advisors, today announced it has signed a definitive agreement to acquire Salient Private Client ("SPC"), the wealth management business of Salient Partners, L.P. As part of the proposed transaction, SPC will be rebranded as HighTower Private Client. "Salient Private Client is one of the true jewels in the marketplace," said HighTower CEO Elliot Weissbluth. "We are honored to welcome their stellar financial advisors and clients to the HighTower community, and look forward to learning and sharing with them as we help change the shape of the industry." "Over the past 15 years, Salient Private Client has proven to be the premier solution for ultra-high-net-worth individuals, family office services and in-house trust capabilities in Texas and surrounding areas," said Salient Chairman and CEO John Blaisdell. "HighTower is the right partner to extend our footprint and resources across Texas and to the rest of the U.S." This transaction is HighTower's largest single-office-location acquisition to date and marks HighTower's entry into Texas, one of the biggest and fastest-growing markets in the U.S. Following the closure of the proposed transaction, HighTower will have approximately $55 billion in client assets, which will establish it as one of the largest independent, fee-based advisors in the country. SPC's existing trust company, Salient Trust Co., LTA, will become HighTower Trust Services, which will allow HighTower to provide trust services directly to clients. Heinrich Grobler will continue in his role as chief operating officer of the Houston-based SPC team. "HighTower's sophisticated platform, collaborative culture and fiduciary-minded approach to wealth management align closely with the business we've built at Salient Private Client," said Heinrich Grobler, Chief Operating Officer of Salient Private Client. "This deal represents the joining of two firms that have consistently been ahead of the curve when it comes to what high-end clients really want: expertise, high-touch service, and unobstructed, fiduciary advice." "The partnership with HighTower enhances our investment strategy and trust service offerings for current and future clients," said Stephen D. Strake, Managing Director at Salient Private Client. "We are thrilled to welcome Salient's advisors to the HighTower family," said Moss Crosby, Advisor Council Chairman and Managing Director and Partner at HighTower Twickenham. "This opportunity further broadens the suite of services on HighTower's platform, and we are excited to introduce these offerings across our entire community." SPC's principals launched the business on the Kidder Peabody and PaineWebber brokerage platforms in the late 1980s. Recognizing the need for independence to serve clients' best interests, SPC's principals, led by Andrew B. Linbeck, transitioned the business from the brokerage platform to a hybrid brokerage and fiduciary model under the Redstone brand in 1998. In 2003, they established Salient as a pure fiduciary practice and in 2004, they merged with Pinnacle Management & Trust Co., founded in 1994 by Houstonians Stephen Reckling and Stephen D. Strake, to serve multi-generational families, endowments, foundations, family offices, and 501c3 organizations. Both Mr. Reckling and Mr. Strake will continue to be actively involved with the organization. In October 2017, HighTower announced it had entered into a recapitalization agreement with Thomas H. Lee Partners, which included a significant investment of new equity capital to fund acquisitions and accelerate growth. This transaction builds on HighTower's record-setting 2017, its biggest growth year yet. The transaction is expected to close in the third quarter of 2018, subject to regulatory approvals and other customary closing conditions. About HighTower HighTower is reshaping the financial services industry from the inside out. As one of the nation's largest Registered Investment Advisors (RIAs) dedicated to providing advice, not selling a product, we are a relentless champion of the fiduciary standard. HighTower acquires independent RIAs and wirehouse teams, and also provides comprehensive services to independent financial advisory businesses. We believe that the wealth management industry can and should do a better job of serving the needs of individual investors and their financial advisors. We built HighTower upon a commitment to put our clients' best interests first. For the 6th consecutive year, HighTower ranks on the Inc. 5000 list of the fastest-growing companies in America (2012 2017). For more information, see www.hightoweradvisors.com and www.byadvisorsforadvisors.com. About Salient Private Client Salient Private Client offers a comprehensive and holistic approach to wealth management for individuals, families and foundations. We offer fiduciary trust capabilities, financial planning, wealth management, and family office and private investment services. Based in Houston, Texas, our teams have decades of experience and combine a unique and world-class perspective with a high-touch approach to client service. For more information, visit www.salientprivateclient.com. About Thomas H. Lee Partners, L.P. Thomas H. Lee Partners, L.P. ("THL") is a premier private equity firm investing in middle market growth companies, headquartered in North America, exclusively in four industry sectors: Healthcare, Business & Financial Services, Consumer & Retail, and Media, Information Services & Technology. Using the firm's deep domain expertise and the internal operating capabilities of its Strategic Resource Group, THL seeks to create deal sourcing advantages, and to accelerate growth and improve operations in its portfolio companies in partnership with management teams. Since its founding in 1974, THL has raised over $22 billion of equity capital, acquired over 140 portfolio companies and completed over 360 add-on acquisitions which collectively represent a combined enterprise value at the time of acquisition of over $200 billion. Media Inquiries HighTower: Melinda Brodbeck JConnelly (973) 850-7348 [email protected] Salient: Catherine Jones Polisi Jones Communications (917) 330-8934 [email protected] THL: Matt Benson/Kaitlin Bilby Sard Verbinnen & Co (212) 687-8080 * As of March 31, 2018. Figure represents $1.1 billion in assets under advisement and $3.4 billion in assets under management. SOURCE HighTower Related Links http://www.hightoweradvisors.com HOUSTON, April 17, 2018 /PRNewswire/ -- illumiPure Corp. is pleased to add WeedMD's Chief Scientific Officer Dr. Luc Duchesne to its Board of Advisors as Lead Scientific Advisor, Horticulture. He will be instrumental in directing illumiPure's R&D for hydroponic and vertical farm technology for crop agnostic applications. Dr. Duchesne has 30 years' experience in the issues associated with the production and commercialization of natural products, as well as a unique understanding of regulatory compliance, experimental research, and production. In addition to holding a PhD in Plant Biochemistry, an M.Sc. in Forest Pathology/Forest Sciences, and a B.Sc. in Forest Ecology/Forest Engineering, Dr. Duchesne has authored 85 peer-reviewed scientific publications. Dr. Duchesne has taught as an adjunct professor in eight universities and has acted on the editorial boards of scientific journals. He has received multiple science and business awards including the 5NR Award for Leaders in Sustainability. He is also a Founding Director of Autism Canada Foundation. John Higgins, illumiPure President and CEO: "I am pleased to welcome Dr. Luc Duchesne to the illumiPure Board of Advisors. His vast technical expertise and passion for the industry is one of the many factors that will contribute to our success." About illumiPure Corp. illumiPure Corp. designs, manufactures and markets technologically advanced Antibacterial and Fungicidal White Light LED Lighting Fixtures that deliver 24/7 disinfecting protection and high efficiency horticultural LED grow light technology. Proudly Made In The U.S.A. For more information visit www.illumiPure.com. 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. SOURCE illumiPure Corp. Related Links http://www.illumiPure.com NEW YORK and TEL AVIV, Israel, April 16, 2018 /PRNewswire/ -- Illusive Networks, the leader in deception-based cyber defense solutions, today unveiled its extensive presence at RSA 2018, including technical and product demonstrations of Illusive solutions, highlighting the company's newly announced Attack Surface Manager (ASM). Illusive's presence at the show includes extensive partner participation, including partner-led demonstrations of Illusive integrated with other enterprise security solutions including SIEM, end-point management, MSSP and more. Illusive Networks is showcasing its offerings, along with partners, at Booth #1833, RSA, Moscone Center, San Francisco, April 16 20, 2018. CRN, a brand of The Channel Company, recently recognized Illusive's partner program for investment in joint program offerings, partner training, resources, sales support and communication. Tracy Pallas, Illusive's Vice President of Worldwide Channels was named a 2018 CRN Channel Chief due to her standing in the industry, professional achievements, and commitment to the channel partner community. This week's efforts reflect Illusive's unwavering dedication to the channel. "In the crowded cybersecurity market, solution providers must be deliberate in evaluating and working with emerging companies," said Randy Watkins, Director of Security Architecture at Critical Start. We chose Illusive because its differentiated technology combined with program simplicity, strong profitability, and services opportunity aligned with Critical Start's business objectives." Illusive's Attack Surface Manager see full April 10, 2018 announcement here - preempts advanced attacks by identifying hidden credentials that enable lateral movement and otherwise facilitate advanced attacks. Representing a transformational expansion of the role of deception-based cyber defense in the kill chain, ASM proactively reveals policy violations, and empowers security professionals to make the first move by depriving attackers of the keys they need to reach critical assets before an attack ever takes place. "The ability to quickly and easily identify and preempt attack vectors that enable lateral movement will enhance the client value proposition for the use of deception in MSSP, and for Kudelski Security's MDR offering in particular," said Alton Kizziah, VP Global Managed Security Services for Kudelski Security." We can now show clients specifically where their business risk lies and offer proactive defense as a service." "As we extend our offerings to address the complete advanced attack lifecycle, we look forward to building our business exclusively with our partners, offering the most innovative, effective, and all-encompassing approach to cyber defense for enterprise security teams," says Ofer Israeli, CEO and Founder of Illusive Networks. Additionally, Illusive was named Silver Winner for New Products and Services in the 14th Annual 2018 Info Security PG's Global Excellence Awards, and will accept the award at the company's Red Carpet Awards Dinner, Monday April 16, 2018 in San Francisco. Over the past 12 months, Illusive has received recognition by The Wall Street Journal in its inaugural "Tech Companies to Watch" list; was honored as a finalist in CRN's Tech Innovators Awards; named as one of CRN's "25 Coolest Network Security Vendors"; named by Momentum Partners as one of ten cybersecurity companies on their Watch List; and named an InformationWeek "Top Vendor to Watch in 2018". The company recently announced high 2017 growth with industry-wide implementation from Fortune 50 customers alongside an expansion of its executive leadership team. About Illusive Networks Illusive Networks is a pioneer of deception technology, empowering security teams to take informed action against advanced, targeted cyberattacks by detecting and disrupting lateral movement toward critical business assets early in the attack life cycle. Agentless and driven by intelligent automation, Illusive technology enables organizations to significantly increase proactive defense while adding almost no operational overhead. Illusive's Deceptions Everywhere approach was conceived by cybersecurity experts with decades of combined experience in cyber warfare and cyber intelligence. With the ability to proactively intervene in the attack process, technology-dependent organizations can preempt significant operational disruption and business losses, and function with greater confidence in today's complex, hyper-connected world. For more information, visit us at www.illusivenetworks.com, contact us at [email protected] or follow on LinkedIn, @Illusivenw on Twitter and Facebook. SOURCE Illusive Networks Related Links http://www.illusivenetworks.com To view the Multimedia News Release, please click: https://www.multivu.com/players/uk/8302851-tork-easycube-software-unilever-hq/ Opened in 2009, Unilever's headquarters in Germany is a striking feature in Hamburg's newly re-developed harbour district. With offices and public areas, washroom visitor numbers can be as high as 5,000 on a weekday. Thanks to Tork EasyCube, mastering the challenge of delivering efficient, top quality cleaning it has become much easier for the team from facility management company Sodexo. Daily cleaning rounds reduced by 25% Christiane Doms, Site Manager for Sodexo, reports that data-driven cleaning has eliminated unnecessary cleaning rounds while increasing availability of consumables to 100%. "Connected devices throughout the building collect data on refill levels and visitor numbers. Our cleaners access this information via the Tork EasyCube application, which tells them precisely where they are needed. Thanks to need-based cleaning, we avoid unnecessary dispenser checks and are always one step ahead." The time saved through reducing cleaning rounds from 90 to 68 frees up cleaning staff for other tasks and allows them to provide even better service to customers. Additionally, their work has become less stressful and more meaningful by enabling them to focus their efforts on the tasks that really matter. Digital intelligence for a new era in facility management Looking back on eight months of working with Tork EasyCube at Unilever, Head of Cleaning & Infrastructure at Sodexo, Marc Mrotzek, says that using Internet of Things devices has proven to be effective in delivering services in a much more efficient way. "As a leading facility management company, we are always looking for new innovations to optimise the services we provide to our clients and increase their quality of life. Tork EasyCube has enabled us to both improve customer satisfaction levels as well as increase our efficiency." At Unilever, introducing data-driven cleaning is also viewed as a success. "Our top priority is to ensure that our facilities meet the highest standards for our employees. With Tork EasyCube, we have achieved this goal and all our other targets, such as on efficiency. Our expectations were definitely exceeded," concludes Rainer Ringler, Workplace Services, Unilever. (Photo: https://mma.prnewswire.com/media/676821/Tork_EasyCube.jpg ) Video: https://www.multivu.com/players/uk/8302851-tork-easycube-software-unilever-hq/ SOURCE Tork EasyCube Strategic partnership will spawn a suite of all-in-one crop treatments designed to maximize yields in broadacre crops DENVER, April 17, 2018 /PRNewswire/ -- Inocucor Corporation, a developer and producer of biological crop inputs for high-value produce and row crops, announced it has acquired ATP Nutrition, a producer of science-based plant nutrients based in Oak Bluff, Manitoba, Canada. Terms of the acquisition were not disclosed. Crop nutrients, such as those produced by ATP Nutrition and biologicals, such as Inocucor's, are designed to work together to boost plant health and grower yields. ATP will continue to operate as a plant nutrient supplier to canola, soybean, corn, pulse and cereal growers through its broad distribution network throughout North America. A key initiative of the new entity will be a collaborative effort by Inocucor's and ATP's R&D teams to develop products that synergistically drive the genetic potential of the crop by combining biologicals and plant nutrition. Products will be formulated based on plant type, geography and soil conditions. "The combination of biologicals, such as Inocucor's Synergro and Synergro Free, with plant nutrients in ready-to-use combinations is unique in the ag sector," said Donald R. Marvin, president and CEO of Inocucor. "This strategic partnership is the first major step toward Inocucor's vision to offer a broad range of products that support farmers across their crop nutrient and biological needs." "Our scientific team will now be able to work with Inocucor's top-notch R&D team to expand our science into new product formulations that balance macro and micronutrients with biologicals for agriculture. We'll also expand our geographic reach into new regions and crop markets," said Jarrett Chambers, president of ATP Nutrition, who will be the president and general manager of this wholly owned subsidiary of Inocucor. Marvin said the acquisition, while complementing Inocucor's core existing biological inputs business, will also help drive the company to profitability over the short- to medium-term. Inocucor will continue to market ATP Nutrition's micronutrient product line through its existing sales force and distributor network throughout North America. Inocucor also will continue to operate ATP's 25,000-square-foot EPA-registered R&D formulation and manufacturing facility, which also serves as headquarters for its 23 employees. In May, Inocucor will occupy its new 30,000-square-foot U.S. headquarters and commercialization office currently under construction in Centennial, Colo. Its Montreal-based, R&D-focused Technical Center of Excellence was recently expanded from 10,000 to 20,000 square feet. The company employs about 40 people in Montreal and the U.S., and anticipates adding another 25 to 30 high-level scientific and managerial professionals over the next year. Photos and graphics to accompany this announcement can be downloaded at this link: https://www.dropbox.com/sh/o7h88kjx4p35ozd/AAC_YC69HsASwM0xpCu92Apqa?dl=0 About Inocucor Inocucor is an agri-tech company that develops microbial and plant nutrition products for agriculture targeting the phyto-microbiomethe seeds, plants, root systems and the soil surrounding them. Inocucor's first product, Synergro, employs live microbes to actively improve the health of the entire phyto-microbiome. Its second product, Synergro Free, and future generations of Inocucor products are powerful biological formulations for biostimulation and biocontrol targeting high-value crops and broadacre production agriculture. For more information, visit www.inocucor.com About ATP Nutrition ATP Nutrition is a science-based plant nutrient company that develops and markets high-performance products and nutrient management plans for broadacre field crops. Its focus is on the three fundamentals of production agriculture; seed, soil, and the plant. Its revolutionary R3 Agronomic Platform bridges science and plant health in an easy-to-use, simple tool that delivers the full genetic potential of crops. ATP partners with leading distributors and retailers across North America. For more information, visit: www.atpnutrition.ca Contacts Michele Wells, Wells Communications, +303-417-0696 [email protected] or Natalie Shuman, Inocucor, +661-330-3088 [email protected] SOURCE Inocucor Corporation Related Links http://www.inocucor.com Last September its Director, Dr. Marisa Lopez-Teijon, received the Ig Nobel Prize for Medicine in the field of Obstetrics at Harvard University for the discovery of foetal hearing. The objective of the Ig Nobel is for prestigious scientists from all over the world to present their research to the public in a fun and entertaining way. As part of the European Ig Nobel Tour, Dr. Lopez-Teijon and Dr. Alex Garcia-Faura, Scientific Director of the Institut Marques, presented their work at universities in Sweden and Denmark, refuting one of the most widely accepted myths among pregnant women: "Thanks to the creation of a vaginal loudspeaker, Babypod, we have shown that foetuses can hear from the 16th week onwards when they measure 11 centimetres -- only if the sound reaches them directly from the vagina," explained Dr. Marisa Lopez-Teijon. "Foetuses can barely hear the noise from outside. So we can say that the myth of talking to babies through pregnant women's bellies is a thing of the past." Chief researcher of the study, Dra. Lopez-Teijon explained: "We also have improved in vitro fertilization by applying musical vibrations in the incubators of our assisted reproduction clinics." One of the most popular events in the Ig Nobel Tour this year took place in the Aarhus University of Copenhagen, with near 800 people attending in the auditorium. Hundreds of other people followed it by streaming from one of the 50 points enabled for the connection. Communication with the foetus is one of the aspects that aroused most interest: "By inserting a loudspeaker into the vagina of thousands of patients, for the first time we have managed to communicate with the foetus. Babypod has allowed us to discover that the foetus responds in the same way as a baby, with speech and movement. Thousands of women are already using it to communicate with their babies during pregnancy," said the Scientific Director of the Institut Marques in his speech. Institut Marques Babypod https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ZjkTA9deri0&feature=youtu.be SOURCE Institut Marques Related Links http://www.institutmarques.com ATLANTA and REDMOND, Wash., April 17, 2018 /PRNewswire/ -- Ionic Security Inc. today announced it is working with Microsoft to offer enterprises a strategic solution that extends the Microsoft Azure Information Protection (AIP) platform to interoperate with Ionic Security's best-in-class cross-cloud data trust platform. Through this collaboration, which has been in development for over a year with some of the world's largest enterprises, Ionic and Microsoft are working together on a first-of-its-kind solution: Ionic Data Trust Services for Microsoft AIP. This technology empowers joint customers the world's largest banks, insurance providers, management consulting firms, defense agencies, and technology companies to bring a common access control, privacy, accountability, and integrity plane to data natively inside Microsoft Office 365 and Microsoft Azure, across cloud providers, and within custom line-of-business applications. To enable such a seamless end-user experience and consistent management framework for enterprises, Microsoft has developed a new extensibility model for AIP's policy decision-making functionality, with Ionic Security delivering advanced data access and privacy decisions consistent with broad corporate policy. This joint solution solves two of the toughest challenges the security market wrestles with on behalf of customers: Usability and Policy Consistency. By extending the policy decision-making framework for AIP to interoperate with third-party services such as Ionic Security's real-time data trust platform, enterprises now have a consistent management framework for all their data while maintaining a native user experience in one of the world's most pervasive business productivity solutions, Office 365, across mobile, web and desktop environments. "We are excited to join forces with Microsoft to enable a powerful, yet simple, story for the world's enterprises. Native end-user experiences are proven to be the most successful way to achieve security in a large organization. Eliminating plugins with innovative interoperability between Ionic Data Trust Services and Azure Information Protection, we are bringing one of the most advanced cross-cloud capabilities powered by Ionic Security to the native user experience of Microsoft Office 365 customers," said Adam Ghetti, Founder and Chief Technology Officer of Ionic Security. Through this collaboration, Ionic Security will be able to benefit from Microsoft's encryption powering its Azure Information Protection and Active Directory Rights Management Service offerings for use with Ionic solutions for Office 365, PDFs, and other AIP-natively-supported file types. "Our customers choose Microsoft 365 and Azure to deliver continuous innovation, and do so securely. With our new extensibility framework for Azure Information Protection, and together with Ionic Security, we are helping to change the narrative of how simple it is to bring advanced security, risk, and trust management capabilities natively to some of the most utilized business productivity solutions worldwide," said Gagan Gulati, Head of Product for Azure Information Protection at Microsoft. The companies are also pleased to announce that the limited-preview of the new extensibility model for the on-premises Hold Your Own Key (HYOK) solution is available now for select customers, and that the new extensibility model will be made available later this year for Azure-powered Bring Your Own Key (BYOK) solutions. To learn more please visit https://aka.ms/aipionic and https://www.ionic.com/aip. About Ionic Security Ionic Security accelerates internet trust by protecting and controlling data everywhere it travels and anywhere it resides, whether on the corporate network, in the cloud or on mobile devices. With the industry's first Data Trust Platform, Ionic Security takes a comprehensive approach to protecting distributed data in today's borderless enterprise without proxies or gateways or changes in user behavior. The platform has been licensed to millions of users worldwide in a wide range of industries including Financial Services, Government, Retail, Healthcare, Enterprise Software, and Manufacturing. The company is headquartered in Atlanta, Georgia, and is backed by leading firms including Amazon.com, Inc., Goldman Sachs, GV (formerly Google Ventures), Icon Ventures, Kleiner Perkins Caufield & Byers, Meritech Capital Partners, TechOperators, and Hayman Capital Management, L.P. SOURCE Ionic Security ASHEVILLE, N.C., April 16, 2018 /PRNewswire/ -- Irma Ruth Williams, M.D., is recognized by Continental Who's Who as a Pinnacle Professional Member in the field of Medicine in recognition of her role as Anesthesiologist at Asheville VA Medical Center. Located in Asheville, North Carolina, Asheville VA Medical Center is dedicated to providing healthcare services to those who have served in the United States Army. Amassing over twenty years of experience in the field of anesthesiology, Dr. Williams is a distinguished professional with the industry. Dr. Williams currently serves as a Medical Doctor at the Asheville VA Medical Center. Throughout her career, Dr. Williams has attained extensive experience in the areas of preoperative medicine, geriatric and bariatric patients and training of medical students. Additionally, Dr. Williams is skilled in the areas of emergency medicine and healthcare management. An American Board Certified Anesthesiologist, throughout the course of her education and training, Dr. Williams obtained her first Bachelor of Arts degree from the University of North Carolina at Asheville, and her second Bachelor of Medical Science degree from Emory University. Thereafter, Dr. Williams would then go on to attain her Medical degree from the University of South Carolina. Later, Dr. Williams completed her Residency in Anesthesiology at the University of Kentucky from 1991-1995. To further her professional development, Dr. Williams is an affiliate of several organizations and is currently a Diplomate of the American Board of Anesthesiology, a member of the Florida Society of Anesthesiologists and the American Society of Anesthesiologists. In recognition of her professional accolades, Dr. Williams was named Top Anesthesiologist by the Research Council of America, 2011 and 2009; Top Physician by the Research Council of America, 2003-2005; Professional of the Year in Anesthesiology by Cambridge Who's Who, 2007 and 2008; Woman of the Year Award for Community Service and Professional Achievement, 2008. When she is not working, Dr. Williams enjoys cooking and reading fiction books. Dr. Williams also enjoys traveling to Haiti. Contact: Katherine Green , 516-825-5634, [email protected] SOURCE Continental Who's Who Related Links http://www.continentalwhoswho.com NEW YORK, April 17, 2018 /PRNewswire/ -- iStar (NYSE: STAR) announced today that it will release its financial results for the first quarter 2018 on Thursday, May 3, 2018, prior to the opening of the market. The Company will host an earnings conference call reviewing these results and its operations beginning at 10:00 a.m. ET. This conference call will be broadcast live and can be accessed by all interested parties through iStar's website, www.istar.com, in the "Investors" section. The dial-in information for the live call is: Dial-In: (800) 230-1093 International: (612) 332-0228 A replay of the call will be archived on the Company's website. Alternatively, the replay can be accessed via dial-in from 12:00 p.m. ET on May 3, 2018 through 11:59 p.m. ET on May 17, 2018 by calling: Replay: (800) 475-6701 International: (320) 365-3844 Access Code: 447869 * * * iStar (NYSE: STAR) finances, invests in and develops real estate and real estate related projects as part of its fully-integrated investment platform. Building on over two decades of experience and more than $35 billion of transactions, iStar brings uncommon capabilities and new ways of thinking to commercial real estate and adapts its investment strategy to changing market conditions. The Company is structured as a real estate investment trust ("REIT"), with a diversified portfolio focused on larger assets located in major metropolitan markets. Additional information on iStar is available on its website at www.istar.com. SOURCE iStar Related Links http://www.istar.com DALLAS, April 17, 2018 /PRNewswire/ -- Jacobs Engineering Group Inc. (NYSE:JEC) is expected to release its fiscal second quarter 2018 earnings results prior to market open on Tuesday, May 8, 2018, and plans to host a conference call at 10 a.m. ET, during which management will make a brief presentation focusing on the company's results and operating trends. Interested parties can listen to the conference call and view accompanying slides on the internet at www.jacobs.com. About Jacobs Engineering Group Jacobs leads the global professional services sector delivering solutions for a more connected, sustainable world. With $15 billion in fiscal 2017 revenue when combined with full-year CH2M revenues and a talent force of more than 77,000, Jacobs provides a full spectrum of services including scientific, technical, professional and construction- and program-management for business, industrial, commercial, government and infrastructure sectors. For more information, visit www.jacobs.com, and connect with Jacobs on LinkedIn, Twitter, Facebook and Instagram. Statements made in this release that are not based on historical fact are forward-looking statements. We base these forward-looking statements on management's current estimates and expectations as well as currently available competitive, financial and economic data. Forward-looking statements, however, are inherently uncertain. There are a variety of factors that could cause business results to differ materially from our forward-looking statements. For a description of some of the factors which may occur that could cause actual results to differ from our forward-looking statements please refer to our Form 10-K for the year ended September 29, 2017, and in particular the discussions contained under Items 1 - Business, 1A - Risk Factors, 3 - Legal Proceedings, and 7 - Management's Discussion and Analysis of Financial Condition and Results of Operations. We do not undertake to update any forward-looking statements made herein. For additional information contact: Investors Jonathan Doros, 817-239-3457 [email protected] Media Lorrie Crum, 303-525-2916 [email protected] SOURCE Jacobs Engineering Group Inc. Related Links http://www.jacobs.com EMPORIA, Kan., April 17, 2018 /PRNewswire/ -- The Teachers College at Emporia State University is pleased to announce a scholarship opportunity for incoming freshman planning to major in elementary or secondary education. For the fifth year in a row, the Teacher Education Scholarship from international best-selling author James Patterson, will be awarded to six incoming freshmen in education. The $6,000 renewable scholarships will be awarded to eligible applicants for the 2018-2019 academic year. Applications for the scholarship are open now through 11:59 p.m. on Thursday, May 31, 2018. The Patterson Family Foundation provides funding for James Patterson Teacher Education Scholarships at 21 colleges and universities. Patterson first introduced his scholarship to ESU in 2013, renewing it every year for the last five years. "My passion is to get more and more kids excited about reading and training the next generation of great teachers is essential to that mission," explained Patterson after presenting the scholarship in 2013. He was "looking to bring the Teacher Education Scholarships to more schools," and thought "The Teachers College would be a great addition." ESU, known for its renowned Teachers College, has been a long-time leader in education and is home to the National Teachers Hall of Fame and the Memorial to Fallen Educators. In addition, two ESU alumni were recently honored by the Kansas State Department of Education. Samantha Neill, a 2002 graduate of TTC, was named the 2018 Kansas Teacher of the Year and John Allison, a 2008 Master of Science in education graduate, was named the 2018 Kansas Superintendent of the Year. "Mr. Patterson has recognized Emporia State University's 155-year commitment to preparing outstanding teachers through his generosity funding 16 teacher education scholarships, six of which are available to incoming freshmen teacher education majors for the 2018-2019 academic year," said Ken Weaver, dean of The Teachers College. Recipients of the Patterson Scholarship must graduate from ESU with a Bachelor of Science in Education in order to remain eligible for the scholarship. Those who change majors or leave ESU will lose the scholarship and the University will permanently lose the funding for that scholarship. Applicants are asked to apply only if they have a strong commitment to become a teacher and remain at ESU. To be eligible for the award, applicants are required to submit: The 2018-2019 Free Application for Federal Student Aid (FAFSA) Typed 500-word double-spaced essay on their commitment to become a teacher Typed statement from their parent(s) detailing their interest and commitment in becoming a teacher Two letters of recommendation from teachers or other individuals with whom they have worked Official school transcript A completed supervised experience working with children form Affidavit of Understanding about the Patterson Scholar's Commitment to Teacher Education and Emporia State University signed by the applicant and her/his parent(s) ESU also offers scholarships for full-time, out-of-state freshmen, transfer and international undergraduate students. The Sunflower Scholarship is a $5,000 renewable scholarship and can be renewed for six subsequent semesters after the first year for freshmen and two subsequent semesters after the first year for transfer students. To learn more about the Sunflower Scholarship visit https://www.emporia.edu/sunflowerscholarship. About Emporia State University Emporia State University offers over 200 academic programs in the School of Business, College of Liberal Arts and Sciences, School of Library and Information Management and The Teachers College. ESU is the only public university in Kansas to have earned national recognition as a College of Distinction, an honor for universities that demonstrate innovative application of high-impact education. In addition, in the Best Colleges 2018 guidebook by U.S. News and World Report, ESU is ranked No. 2 in lowest student debt of all Midwest regional universities. U.S. News also cited ESU's School of Business as a best value for both in-state and out-of-state students and ranked the online graduate education and non-MBA online programs in the Top 100 programs in the nation. For more information, visit www.emporia.edu. SOURCE Emporia State University Related Links https://www.emporia.edu SHANGHAI, April 17, 2018 /PRNewswire/ -- JinkoSolar Holding Co., Ltd. ("JinkoSolar" or the "Company") (NYSE: JKS), a global leader in the solar PV industry, today announced that it has signed a renewed credit agreement with HSBC (China) Co., Ltd. ("HSBC") to increase its credit limit to $47 million from $25 million. "This updated agreement reflects the recognition of leading financial institutions such as HSBC in our brand, operation and financial condition," commented Mr. Charlie Cao, JinkoSolar's Chief Financial Officer. "Strong financial support will help enhance our sustained development capability and strengthen our leading position in the industry. We look forward to working closely with HSBC in the future." About JinkoSolar Holding Co., Ltd. JinkoSolar (NYSE: JKS) is a global leader in the solar industry. JinkoSolar distributes its solar products and sells its solutions and services to a diversified international utility, commercial and residential customer base in China, the United States, Japan, Germany, the United Kingdom, Chile, South Africa, India, Mexico, Brazil, the United Arab Emirates, Italy, Spain, France, Belgium, and other countries and regions. JinkoSolar has built a vertically integrated solar product value chain, with an integrated annual capacity of 8 GW for silicon ingots and wafers, 5 GW for solar cells, and 8 GW for solar modules, as of December 31, 2017. JinkoSolar has over 12,000 employees across its 8 productions facilities globally, 16 oversea subsidiaries in Japan (2), Singapore, India, Turkey, Germany, Italy, Switzerland, United States, Canada, Mexico, Brazil, Chile, Australia, South Africa and United Arab Emirates, and global sales teams in United Kingdom, Bulgaria, Greece, Romania, Jordan, Saudi Arabia, Egypt, Morocco, Ghana, Kenya, Costa Rica, Colombia, Panama and Argentina. To find out more, please see: www.jinkosolar.com Safe Harbor Statement This press release contains forward-looking statements. These statements constitute "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, and as defined in the U.S. Private Securities Litigation Reform Act of 1995. These forward-looking statements can be identified by terminology such as "will," "expects," "anticipates," "future," "intends, "plans," "believes," "estimates" and similar statements. Among other things, the quotations from management in this press release and the Company's operations and business outlook, contain forward-looking statements. Such statements involve certain risks and uncertainties that could cause actual results to differ materially from those in the forward-looking statements. Further information regarding these and other risks is included in JinkoSolar's filings with the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission, including its annual report on Form 20-F. Except as required by law, the Company does not undertake any obligation to update any forward-looking statements, whether as a result of new information, future events or otherwise. For investor and media inquiries, please contact: In China: Mr. Sebastian Liu JinkoSolar Holding Co., Ltd. Tel: +86 21-5183-3056 Email: [email protected] Mr. Christian Arnell Christensen, Beijing Tel: +86 10 5900 2940 Email: [email protected] In the U.S.: Ms. Linda Bergkamp Christensen, Scottsdale, Arizona Tel: +1-480-614-3004 Email: [email protected] SOURCE JinkoSolar Holding Co., Ltd. Related Links http://www.jinkosolar.com TAIPEI, Taiwan, April 16, 2018 /PRNewswire/ -- Kdan Mobile Software Ltd (Kdan Mobile), a global Software as a Service (SaaS) provider headquartered in Taiwan, announced today the securing of $5 million in Series A Financing. With the new backing the company plans to focus on expanding their reach in the American and Chinese markets while developing new features for enterprises and educational institutions. As an internationally competitive software service provider, Kdan Mobile continuously enhances their services. In 2017, the company extended their Creativity 365 services to offer business and education volume purchase plans and launched a new comprehensive document solution for enterprises, Document 365. To this date, Kdan Mobile's product line has exceed 120 million downloads accumulating over 3.5 million Kdan Cloud members. Kdan Mobile shares that they aim to become a global leading SaaS provider and are open to new partnerships. "Partnerships are one of the keys to our continued competitive edge. We seek partnerships that supplement our products and services. We have been actively cooperating with many international partners such as GMobi, Adonit, and LKKER. These partners help us reach a larger audience and provide resources to help our users make even more efficient use of our products and services." shared Kenny Su, CEO of Kdan Mobile. WI Harper Group, Darwin Venture Management, and Accord Ventures are the major investors in the $5 Million in Series A round of financing. Y.K.Chu, Managing Director from WI Harper Group, said "Kdan's continuous innovation and development over the years are something we value highly. With an already strong global foothold, we look forward to seeing what Kdan can become." Kenny Su claimed that the company has been profitable and that the raised funds will mainly be used for cultivating opportunities related to artificial intelligence and blockchain technology. In addition, the financial support will enable the company to further develop real-time collaboration and encrypted document solutions, which can fully support educational and enterprise needs. The company will continue promoting their software services focusing heavily on the American and Chinese markets. About Kdan Mobile Software Ltd Since 2009, Kdan Mobile has been a dedicated provider of mobile software applications and online services that allow users to better leverage their productivity and creativity. Kdan's works are being backed by more than 120 million downloads worldwide; their solutions empower the world to create, distribute, and conjoin projects via a variety of devices across platforms. Kdan Mobile is headquartered in Taiwan with operations in China and the U.S. Media Contact: Clare Lo Global Marketing & PR Specialist Kdan Mobile Software Ltd. +886-6-3131660 [email protected] http://www.kdanmobile.com/ SOURCE Kdan Mobile Software Ltd Related Links http://www.kdanmobile.com/ ENGLEWOOD CLIFFS, N.J., April 17, 2018 /PRNewswire/ -- A property that sat empty for a decade in one of New York City's hottest neighborhoods will now become housing. Kennedy Funding Financial, the Englewood Cliffs, New Jersey-based direct private lender, closed a $2 million loan to LZBC Next Level Realty, LLC. The borrower will use proceeds from the loan to fund the construction of an eight-unit, four-story walk-up building at 100 Scholes Street, a 2,500-square-foot property in the Williamsburg neighborhood of Brooklyn, NY. "Housing is in very high demand in New York City," said Kevin Wolfer, CEO of Kennedy Funding Financial. "Building apartments in one of the hottest rental markets in the United States is a very smart use of this real estate." Williamsburg is one of the most in-demand neighborhoods in New York City, with the average monthly rent for a 2-bedroom apartment hovering around $3,200. According to Wolfer, Kennedy Funding Financial takes factors such as neighborhood popularity into account when evaluating loan applications. "As a direct private lender, our process allows us to look beyond the application, so we can close a loan based on the merits of the deal itself or other extenuating factors most conventional lenders don't examine," Wolfer said. "Since these apartments will be located in a very popular neighborhood, funding a construction loan to build more housing was an easy decision for us to make." Plans for the property include four two-bedroom, one-bathroom units and four one-bedroom, one-bathroom units. The future new development is located near community parks, restaurants, movie theaters, concert venues, and shopping. A waterfront park is scheduled to open in June on the neighborhood's former Domino sugar factory site. The property is a few blocks away from the J, M, Z and L subway lines and located near the Brooklyn-Queens Expressway (I-278), an ideal location for public transportation riders and drivers alike. "A loan from Kennedy Funding Financial enables the borrower to transform this empty property into a revenue-generating investment," Wolfer said. "With prime access to transportation, shopping, and recreation, these apartments will pique the interest of many potential renters." About Kennedy Funding Financial Kennedy Funding Financial, is a nationwide direct private lender specializing in bridge loans for commercial property and land acquisition, development, workouts, bankruptcies, and foreclosures. The principals of the company have closed over $3 billion in loans to date. The firm's creative financing expertise enables the closing of loans of up to 75% loan-to-value, from $1 million to over $50 million, in as little as five days. Kennedy Funding Financial continues to actively seek new funding opportunities throughout the world. www.kennedyfunding.com SOURCE Kennedy Funding Financial Related Links http://www.kennedyfunding.com SAN FRANCISCO, April 17, 2018 /PRNewswire/ -- RSA CONFERENCE -- Lastline Inc., the leader in advanced network-based malware protection, today announced that Lastline Breach Defender received Cyber Defense Magazine's InfoSec Award for Enterprise Security products in the "Cutting Edge" category. Lastline Breach Defender uniquely provides a dynamic blueprint of a breach as it unfolds and moves laterally across a network. The innovative network threat protection system enables security teams to quickly understand the scope of the threat, including compromised systems, communication across local and external systems and data sets accessed. "To be named a Cutting Edge solution in enterprise security by Cyber Defense Magazine is great validation that Lastline Breach Defender is delivering very high value to the industry," said Bert Rankin, Lastline CMO. "It acknowledges the innovative breach protection capabilities we're providing our customers, enabling them to respond faster and more effectively to network breaches before damaging data theft can occur. When malware strikes, it's important for security teams to see and understand all the malicious activities taking place across a compromised network. Lastline Breach Defender is the only solution that provides a dynamic blueprint of a breach as it unfolds in a network, and we are proud to be able to call the solution a Cyber Defense Magazine InfoSec Award winner." After identifying a breach by correlating suspicious network activity with known malicious behaviors, Lastline Breach Defender delivers a dynamic blueprint of the network breach as it unfolds. This provides security teams with complete breach visibility, identifying every malicious behavior and every system and application affected by the attack. The product includes access to Lastline's Global Threat Intelligence Network, which provides context for malicious activity by capturing more detail about malware behaviors and Indicators of Compromise than other threat intel systems, gathered from across the company's extensive customer and partner base. Armed with this information, security teams can detect and remediate a breach faster, with fewer resources, and at lower cost. "Cybercrime, hactivism, ransomware and malware exploits are all on the rise, and Lastline has won the Enterprise Security Cutting Edge award from our magazine because they are an innovator on a mission to help stop breaches, and get one step ahead of the next threat, proactively," said Gary S. Miliefsky, Publisher, Cyber Defense Magazine. "We are proud to see Lastline delivering high value malware detection to the industry." This award was announced at the RSA Conference 2018. For more information about Lastline, please visit www.lastline.com, or visit their booth at RSAC (#1221). 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 About Cyber Defense Magazine With over 1.2 Million annual readers and growing, Cyber Defense Magazine is the premier source of IT Security information. We are managed and published by and for ethical, honest, passionate information security professionals. Our mission is to share cutting-edge knowledge, real-world stories and awards on the best ideas, products and services in the information technology industry. We deliver electronic magazines every month online for free, and limited print editions exclusively for the RSA conferences and our paid subscribers. Learn more about us at http://www.cyberdefensemagazine.com. CDM is a proud member of the Cyber Defense Media Group. Media Contact [email protected] SOURCE Lastline Inc. Related Links http://www.lastline.com Lexus passionately believes in the power of design to change the world. For this reason, Lexus nurtures and celebrates up-and-coming designers who harness the power of design to shift perspectives, communicate ideas and stimulate the imagination to shape a better future. "This year's winner permeates the current thinking about the role of design in our evolving and technologically shifting societies. Products played less of a role, and design education/teaching and thinking are at the forefront. How citizens and designers interact with products, processes and future is increasingly critical to mediating this influence of design in our increasingly future-orientated and technologically evolving world. The chosen design shows methods and techniques for engaging the public and designers in role playing possible futures and negotiating the influences of our technological world," said David Adjaye, Lexus Design Award 2018 judge and architect. Elliott P. Montgomery of Extrapolation Factory commented, "It was truly fantastic, and the experience was incredible to have worked with our mentors Formafantasma. We could not have done this without the support of Lexus." Since 2013, the Lexus Design Award has supported the next generation of designers from around the world. For our sixth year, 2018, the Award's theme is "CO-", a Latin prefix meaning with or together. Lexus believes that great design can ensure the harmonious coexistence of nature and society. In that sense, "CO-" is an approach that allows the brand to explore its true potential and that of the environment by creating new possibilities through collaboration, coordination and connection. From among the wealth of "CO-" design submissions, our elite judging committee has selected 12 finalists, four to be prototyped and eight to be shown as display panels. These will be revealed to the international design community at Lexus' "LIMITLESS CO-EXISTENCE" exhibition, held 17-22 April 2018 in the Cavallerizze in Museo Nazionale della Scienza e della Tecnologia Leonardo da Vinci during Milan Design Week, the world's premiere design event. For this exhibit, Lexus has called upon Japanese architect Sota Ichikawa to be the overall concept space designer. In the main installation, Ichikawa has used innovative methods to represent the ultimate experience of LIMITLESS CO-EXISTENCE. The Lexus LF-1 Limitless concept, earlier introduced at the North American International Auto Show, is also featured using Ichikawa's unique method. ABOUT LEXUS DESIGN AWARD 2018 PEOPLE'S CHOICE Following the strong engagement of the public with the Lexus Design Award displays in the past, Lexus has created the "LEXUS DESIGN AWARD 2018 PEOPLE'S CHOICE" allowing even more interaction than ever before. The winner is determined by votes cast on the website from 16 to 21 April and announced on 22 April, the event's final day. More information can be found on: Lexus Design Award: www.lexusdesignaward.com Lexus Design Event: www.lexusdesignevent.com Official hashtags: #LexusDesignAward; #LexusDesignEvent; Lexus Design Award 2018 Entries Selected for Prototype Development: Title CO-RKs Designers (Citizenship) Group name: DIGITALAB Brimet Fernandes da Silva (Portugal) Ana Trindade Fonseca (Portugal) Country of residence Portugal Description A generative system connecting cork thread, a sustainable material and computational process that generate design products. Mentor Lindsey Adelman Title Honest Egg Designers (Citizenship) Group name: aesthetid Paul Yong Rit Fui (Malaysia) Jaihar Jailani Bin Ismail (Malaysia) Country of residence Malaysia Description Connecting technology and new design interface to show egg's edibility. Mentor Jessica Walsh Title Recycled Fiber Planter Designer (Citizenship) Eriko Yokoi (Japan) Country of residence Japan Description Co-fusion textile and green design to repurpose used clothes. Mentor Sou Fujimoto Title Testing Hypotheticals Designers (Citizenship) Group name: Extrapolation Factory Christopher Woebken (Germany) Elliott P. Montgomery (USA) Country of residence USA Description A collaboratively imagined test site that explores speculative relationships between society, technology and the environment. Mentor Formafantasma Lexus Design Award 2018 Panel Exhibits: Title CO-Living Designers (Citizenship) Group name: Khoa Vu and Wilson Harkhono Khoa Vu (Vietnam), Wilson Harkhono (Indonesia) Country of residence USA Description A new housing system that inspires people to CO-. Title COmer Designers (Citizenship) Group name: Sistema Simple Studio Kaleb Cardenas Zavala (Mexico), Lucas Margotta Meneses (Chile), Diego Gajardo Caldera (Chile), Carlos Sfeir Vottero (Chile) Country of residence Chile Description Set of clay containers that collaboratively accompany the process of cooking, eating and sharing bread. Title Fabric Block Designer (Citizenship) Myung Duk Chung (South Korea) Country of residence South Korea Description Co-merging softness and hardness, a project that explores new ways to fabricate various objects. Title GRABBY Designers (Citizenship) Group name: I DEAL Nadezhda Abdullina (Russia) Marina Egorova (Russia) Country of residence Russia Description A co-adapting cutting board for people with special needs. Title Gravity Pen Designer (Citizenship) Jon Simmons (USA) Country of residence USA Description A tool connecting virtual reality to physical experience, by simulating weight and touch. Title PAPER SKIN Designer (Citizenship) Hiroki Furukawa (Japan) Country of residence Japan Description Connecting overlapping layers of paper to create a new material rich in color. Title Primavera Designer (Citizenship) Yael Reboh (Israel) Country of residence Israel Description To coalesce veneer and fabric laminated creates a unique armchair that stimulates imagination. Title VNWALLS GARDEN Designers (Citizenship) Group name: VNWALLS Nguyen Tien Phuoc (Vietnam), Pham Anh Tuan (Vietnam), Truong Ngoc Phu (Vietnam) Country of residence Vietnam Description An aeroponic planting machine that contributes to modern agriculture and farming methods. Judges: Sir David Adjaye / Architect Sir David Adjaye OBE is the principal and founder of Adjaye Associates. Born in Tanzania to Ghanaian parents, his broadly ranging influences, ingenious use of materials and sculptural ability have established him as an architect with an artist's sensibility and vision. His largest project to date, the $540 million Smithsonian Institute National Museum of African American History and Culture, opened on the National Mall in Washington DC in fall of 2016 and was named Cultural Event of the Year by the New York Times. In 2017, he was knighted by Queen Elizabeth II and was recognized as one of the 100 most influential people of the year by TIME magazine. Shigeru Ban Architect Born in Tokyo in 1957. Graduated from the Cooper Union. Started working for Arata Isozaki & Associates in 1982. Founded Shigeru Ban Architects in 1985. Became consultant to the United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees (UNHCR) in 1995. Established the NGO, Voluntary Architects' Network (VAN) in the same year to support disaster relief. Selected works include Nicolas G. Hayek Center, Centre Pompidou- Metz, and Oita Prefectural Art Museum. Recipient of multiple awards, including Grande Medaille d'or de l'Academie d'architecture (2004), Arnold W. Brunner Memorial Prize in Architecture (2005), Grand Prize of AIJ (2009), Honorary Doctorate from Technische Universitat Munchen (2009), L'Ordre des Arts et des Lettres, France (le grade d'officier) (2010), Auguste Perret Prize (2011), Art Prize from the Japanese Agency for Cultural Affairs (2012), L'Ordre des Arts et des Lettres, France (le grade de commandeur) (2014) and JIA Grand Prix (2016). Served as Professor at Keio University (2001-2008), Visiting Professor of Harvard University GSD and Cornell University (2010), and currently Professor at Kyoto University of Art and Design (2011-), Guest Professor at Keio University (2015-). Laureate of the 2014 Pritzker Architecture Prize. Paola Antonelli / Senior Curator MoMA Paola Antonelli is Senior Curator of Architecture & Design at The Museum of Modern Art, as well as MoMA's founding Director of Research & Development. Her goal is to promote design's understanding, until its positive influence on the world is universally acknowledged. Her work investigates design's impact on everyday experience, often including overlooked objects and practices, and combining design, architecture, art, science and technology. She has curated numerous shows, written several books, and lectured worldwide. She has taught at the University of California, Los Angeles; the Harvard Graduate School of Design; and the MFA programs of the School of Visual Arts in New York. She is currently working on an exhibition on the 111 garments that changed the world; on Design Bites, a book about foods from all over the world appreciated as examples of design; and on a book collecting her essays on the different fields of contemporary design. Birgit Lohmann / Chief Editor of designboom Born in Hamburg, Lohmann studied industrial design in Florence before moving to Milan, where she has lived and worked since 1987. She worked as a designer and product development manager for a number of Italian architects and master designers. She has also worked as a design historian for justice departments and international auction houses. As a researcher and lecturer, she has conducted seminars on industrial design at a number of prestigious international universities. In 1999, she co-founded designboom, where she is currently the Chief Editor, Head of Educational Programming and Curator for International Exhibitions. Alice Rawsthorn / Design Commentator Alice Rawsthorn is an award-winning design critic, who has written about design for the New York Times for over a decade. Her latest book Hello World: Where Design Meets Life explores design's impact on our lives. Her next book, Design as an Attitude, is to be published in May 2018 as a survey of design today. Alice speaks on design at important global events including TED and the World Economic Forum's annual meetings at Davos, Switzerland. Based in London, she is chair of trustees of the Chisenhale Gallery and the contemporary dance group Michael Clark Company, and a trustee of the Whitechapel Gallery. Alice was awarded an Order of the British Empire (OBE) for services to design and the arts. Yoshihiro Sawa / President of Lexus International Yoshihiro Sawa graduated with a Bachelor of Science degree in Engineering and Design from Kyoto Institute of Technology. He has held a number of design-related positions since joining Toyota Motor Corporation in 1980, including Chief Officer of Global Design, Planning Division. He became President of Lexus International in April 2017. Mentors: Lindsey Adelman / Designer Decades before founding her eponymous studio, Lindsey Adelman was already a designer just not publicly so. First, she was simply a precocious, curious child, building endlessly in the backyards of suburban New York, uncertain of how to make a career of it; then, an English student at Kenyon College; then, on the editorial staff at The Smithsonian Institution. Fortunately, there, her accidental discovery of industrial design in the literal form of a fabricated foam French fry propelled her off to RISD to make a life of that childhood passion. Today, from her studios in New York and Los Angeles, she manipulates light to create fixtures that are as emotive as they are physically transformative objects imbued with their own history and meaning, often unselfconsciously so, that give color and texture and depth to the world around them. Formafantasma / Designer Andrea Trimarchi and Simone Farresin are Studio Formafantasma, Italian designer duo based in Amsterdam, Netherlands. They have developed a coherent body of work characterized by experimental material investigations and explored issues such as the relationship between tradition and local culture, critical approaches to sustainability and the significance of objects as cultural conduits. Their work has been presented and published internationally and museums such as New York's MoMA, London's Victoria and Albert, New York's Metropolitan Museum, the Chicago Art Institute, the Textiel Museum in Tilburg, the Stedelijk Museum 's-Hertogenbosch, MUDAC Lausanne, the Mint Museum of Craft and Design in North Carolina and the MAK Museum in Vienna have all acquired Formafantasma's designs for their permanent collections. Andrea and Simone are lecturing and heading workshops in various Universities and Institutions. Currently teaching at the 'Well Being' and 'Contextual Design' Departments of the Design Academy Eindhoven and they are at the head of the Design bachelor at MADE Program in Siracusa, Italy. Sou Fujimoto / Architect Sou Fujimoto was born in Hokkaido in 1971. Graduated from the Department of Architecture, Faculty of Engineering at Tokyo University, he established Sou Fujimoto Architects in 2000. In 2016, he has won the 1st prize for"Pershing", one of the sites in the French competition called 'Reinventer Paris', following the victories in the Invited International Competition for the New Learning Center at Paris-Saclay Ecole Polytechnique and the International Competition for the Second Folly of Montpellier in 2014. In 2013, he became the youngest architect to design the Serpentine Gallery Pavilion in London. His notable works include; "Serpentine Gallery Pavilion 2013" (2013), "House NA" (2011), "Musashino Art University Museum & Library" (2010), "Final Wooden House" (2008), "House N" (2008) and many more. Jessica Walsh / Designer Jessica Walsh is a designer & art director working as a partner at NYC based design firm Sagmeister & Walsh. She lectures about design at creative conferences and universities internationally and teaches design at The School of Visual Arts in NYC. Her work has won numerous awards from most major design competitions including Type Director's Club, Art Directors' Club, SPD, Print, New York Festivals, D&AD, TDC Tokyo, and Graphis, among many others. She has been awarded Forbes "30 under 30 top creatives designing the future" and Ad Age's "Top 10 Visual Creatives". Her work has been featured in numerous books & magazines. Clients include the Museum of Modern Art, The Jewish Museum, Jay-Z, Snapchat, Barneys, The New York Times, Levis, Adobe, and The School of Visual Arts. She hosts mentorship programs for creative women through her initiative Ladies, Wine & Design; which has spread to over 110 chapters around the world. Her blog & book "40 Days of Dating" received over 10 million readers and is currently being turned into a movie by Warner Brothers. ABOUT LEXUS DESIGN AWARD First launched in 2013, the Lexus Design Award is an international design competition that targets up-and-coming creators from around the world. The award seeks to foster the growth of ideas that contribute to society by supporting designers and creators whose works can help to shape a better future. It provides a unique opportunity for four finalists to work with globally recognized designer as a mentor to create prototypes of their designs, and then exhibit them at one of the design calendar's most important events. ABOUT LEXUS Lexus launched in 1989 with a flagship sedan and a guest experience that helped define the premium automotive industry. In 1998, Lexus introduced the luxury crossover category with the launch of the Lexus RX. The luxury hybrid sales leader, Lexus delivered the world's first luxury hybrid and has since sold over 1 million hybrid vehicles.* A global luxury automotive brand with an unwavering commitment to bold, uncompromising design, exceptional craftsmanship, and exhilarating performance, Lexus has developed its lineup to meet the needs of the next generation of global luxury guests, and is currently available in over 90 countries worldwide. Lexus associates/team members across the world are dedicated to crafting amazing experiences that are uniquely Lexus, and that excite and change the world. *(1,263,055 units as of December 2017) Media Contact: Prue Hyman Lexus International [email protected] 212.510.4812, phone SOURCE Lexus International JACKSON, Miss., April 17, 2018 /PRNewswire/ -- Allie Mae Allen, the loveable and spirited Cocker Spaniel who told her own life story in Mardi Allen's popular anthology, Dog Stories for the Soul, has passed away following a massive seizure. With her at the time was her publisher James L. Dickerson of Sartoris Literary Group, who rushed her to the hospital during a frantic, high-speed, midnight run. Sartoris Literary Group "One moment she was stretched out on the bed, nodding off to sleepand the next she cried out and snapped to her feet, shaking violently, turning to me with pleading eyes, only to fall over on her side violently convulsing," says Dickerson. "It was the most terrifying event I have ever witnessed." Mardi Allen, her editor and guardian, was out of town at the time, and was devastated when she received word. "My heart broke when I considered life without my loving companion," says Allen, "Allie was intuitive, patient and gentle. She demonstrated remarkable understanding of human language and emotions. Without speaking she could communicate better than many humans I know." Allie Mae, whose story is titled "My Life as I See It," found herself in good company in Dog Stories for the Soul (Sartoris Literary Group), a book Memphis Parent ironically described as "a must-read for those missing their canines." Also with stories in the book are: Nobel Prize-winning author John Steinbeck, whose stories of traveling with his poodle Charley were presented in chronological order for the first time in this book without the distractions of the travelogue; Willie Morris, whose story of his childhood canine companion was made into a movie titled My Dog Skin; literary legend Mark Twain, who wrote of the horrors associated with canine research; Andrew McKean, editor of Outdoor Life magazine, whose story, "The Slough," told of the death of his bellowed hunting companion, Willow; Maria Goodavage, with her inspirational story of Lucca, a canine U.S. Marine hero in Afghanistan; and many others. "I don't know if I will ever get over losing Allie, she was so special, but re-reading her story helps," says Dickerson. "She died just weeks away from her 16th birthday, concluding a remarkable life marked by loyalty, love and trust." Mardi Allen, Ph.D., is author of Mojo Triangle Travel Guide, and co-author of several books, including Sons Without Fathers: What Every Mother Needs to Know and How To Screen Adoptive and Foster Parents. For a decade and a half, she maintained a love affair with two cocker spaniels, Allie and Mattie. Sadly, Mattie passed away in 2016 in her sleep. SOURCE Sartoris Literary Group Today, a single installment of the KIMOJI X LUMEE collection, the fan favorite "Kim Crying" Kimoji case, is available for purchase exclusively on Kimoji.com, with the entire collection available for pre-sale on LuMee.com at 3:00 PM PST - the official on-sale date for LuMee.com will be May 3 rd for $79.95. The collection offers four different designs featuring an array of Kim Kardashian West's widely popular Kimoji's, including: "Lit," "Black Collage," "Rose Collage" and the widely popular "Kim Crying" Kimoji, all cases are available for the iPhone 6/6s/6 Plus, 7/7Plus, 8/8Plus and X. "It's no secret that I've been LuMee's biggest fan since day one," said Kim Kardashian West. "The KIMOJI X LUMEE collection is our first design collaboration together and I'm excited to finally share it with our fans." The KIMOJI X LUMEE collection is the first collection that LuMee and Kim Kardashian West have designed together from start to finish and is a true example of the amazing relationship they have built. Fans will now have the opportunity to take home their own piece of the dynamic duo through this collection, and have all of their photos and videos perfectly lit. "We are thrilled to release this collection with Kim," said Robert G. Pedersen II, partner and LuMee's Chairman and CEO. "She has been a wonderful partner and has contributed so much to the LuMee brand. Not only does this new collection provide a complete mobile lighting studio for anyone with an iPhone, but we are now celebrating our partnership in a fun way that we know LuMee fans will love." As with all LuMee Duo cases, the KIMOJI X LUMEE collection features LuMee's patented front and back facing, professional quality, LED lighting with an adjustable dimmer, allowing all mobile photographers at any skill level the ability to customize their lighting preference for each photo and video. LuMee Duo cases are the ultimate tool for taking studio quality, flawless photos and videos from either side of the lens. "Working with Kim has been an unbelievable experience and she is undoubtedly LuMee's biggest supporter," mentioned Allan Shoemake, Creative Director and Inventor of the original LuMee case. "The KIMOJI X LUMEE collection is one of LuMee's proudest additions and we could not have envisioned creating a more perfect collection for our customers." About LuMee LLC: LuMee is one of the fastest-growing consumer electronics accessories and lighting companies in the world, with a line of smartphone cases that enable users to capture professional quality images and create optimal conditions for video chatting. Since the 2014 launch of the LuMee Case, the brand's flagship and patented front-facing LED lit smartphone case, the company has caught the eye of celebrities and trendsetters like Kim Kardashian West, who rave about the product's ability to achieve the perfect smartphone photo. Creative Director and Inventor Allan Shoemake, a professional photographer who has taken pictures of many U.S. presidents and celebrities, devised the concept to improve mobile phone lighting in his own life; now, the company, based in Park City, Utah, is revolutionizing the way mobile photographers of all skill levels shoot images on their smartphones. LuMee cases range from $49.95 to $79.95 and are available in many colors. To order LuMee cases and other accessories, or for more information, visit LuMee.com. Media Contact: Chelsea Giacobbe Coburn Communication [email protected] SOURCE LuMee LLC Related Links http://LuMee.com PLAYA DEL CARMEN, Mexico, April 17, 2018 /PRNewswire/ -- Mahekal Beach Resort, recognized as one of the top resorts on Mexico's Caribbean coast, proudly announces the appointment of Maria Elena Armenta as Director of Sales & Marketing. In this position, Armenta will develop and implement marketing strategies and sales initiatives to generate revenue while stimulating business and brand awareness for the authentic Playa del Carmen retreat. With more than 21 years of industry experience, Armenta brings a variety of valuable skills to Mahekal Beach Resort. Most recently, she served as Group Account Director at The Westin La Paloma Resort & Spa in Tucson, Ariz., where she was responsible for all group business from the Southeastern United States, in addition to all leisure accounts. Previously, the Mexico native held executive-level roles with multiple hospitality brands, from Preferred Hotel Group, serving as Regional Director of Florida & the Caribbean Islands, to Morgans Hotel Group, where she oversaw The Delano and The Shore Club as the Regional Director of Sales. She also spent several years in Cancun as the Director of Sales & Marketing at Nizuc Resort & Spa known as one of the best resorts in the area and as the Director of Leisure Sales at the five-star, Fiesta American Grand Coral Beach Resort & Spa. As a result, she understands the complexity of the Mexican business market and can effectively navigate the competitive landscape. "Ms. Armenta is an exceptional addition to the Mahekal team," said Lamont Meek, Chief Operating Officer of Circa Capital (co-owner and manager of Mahekal Beach Resort). "Her distinguished background, results-oriented outlook and overall passion for the job allowed Maria Elena to seamlessly ascertain our goals and objectives, and in turn develop prodigious plans that will undoubtedly contribute to our continued success." Nestled between the dense Riviera Maya jungle and Playa del Carmen's longest stretch of beach, Mahekal Beach Resort is unlike other local high-rise, corridor hotels elevators are not found at the resort, and the buildings are not much taller than the palm trees surrounding them. Hand-laid, hidden stone pathways lead to 196 private, palapa-style bungalows, all steps from the sweeping, sandy beach, complete with open-air terraces, crochet hammocks, personal plunge pools or outdoor moon showers. It embodies a Swiss Family Robinson feel with high-end finishes and touches of Mayan culture. Greeted with crisp Caribbean scents, lush vegetation and colorful bougainvillea, Mahekal Beach Resort offers a magical, memorable escape with on-property amenities including four sparkling swimming pools, a seaside hot tub, a Mayan-inspired Revive Spa and fitness center, Vida Aquatica Dive Center and five restaurants and bars, as well as thrilling adventures nearby. For more information on Mahekal Beach Resort, visit www.mahekalbeachresort.com or call toll-free 1(877) 235 4452. To engage with the resort socially, visit Facebook.com/MahekalBeachResort or find us on Twitter at @MahekalPlaya or on Instagram at @Mahekal_Beach_Resort. FOR MORE MEDIA INFORMATION: ANNA PETERSON - MACKENZIE FOX THE ZIMMERMAN AGENCY 850.668.2222/ [email protected] SOURCE Mahekal Beach Resort Related Links http://www.mahekalbeachresort.com He will be based in New York and succeeds Lloyd G. "Buzz" Waterhouse, who became interim president and CEO in October of 2017 having previously served as president and CEO from June 2012 through April 2014. Mr. Waterhouse will remain with the company until Dr. Banerjee begins his tenure and will continue to serve on the company's board of directors after he steps down as interim president and CEO. "After a thoughtful and thorough search, we chose Nana for his outstanding leadership and stellar management skills," said Larry Berg, senior partner with Apollo Global Management and chairman of the Board of McGraw-Hill Education. "Nana's deep knowledge of analytics and artificial intelligence, his lifelong passion for education and his demonstrated ability to deliver value for global employees, customers and investors will be instrumental in growing our businesses. He will continue our journey as a learning science company focused on helping students achieve better outcomes." "I want to thank Buzz for his leadership over the past six months," Mr. Berg added. "He has done a great job of moving the company forward and focusing our efforts around the key initiatives that will bring us success." "Nana is a great choice to lead McGraw-Hill Education," Mr. Waterhouse said. "His strengths dovetail with exactly what we need as we look ahead a seasoned leader who understands the critical role that data and technology can play in education. As a learning science company, we are at the forefront of innovation in K-20 and professional education, and Nana's extensive experience will be invaluable in deepening our relationships with educators." "I am honored and excited to be a part of McGraw-Hill Education," said Dr. Banerjee. "This iconic brand is founded on the reputation of its people, its content, and its tools, as the finest in the industry. I am looking forward to teaming up with our colleagues and fulfilling the promise of our vision to unlock the full potential of each learner with enhanced access and better quality learning solutions, enabled with scaled technologies and advanced analytics." Dr. Banerjee has extensive experience leading, innovating and scaling technology businesses globally. He came to Verisk as part of its acquisition of Argus, where he was chief operating officer. He served as the group president of Verisk and helped drive its transformation into a global leader in big-data and advanced analytics. He also helped drive the acquisition of several high-profile global companies during his tenure at Verisk. In prior roles, he served as head of Citibank's credit card business in the United Kingdom and as vice president of marketing at GE Capital. He began his career forecasting housing starts at The McGraw-Hill Companies' FW Dodge unit. Dr. Banerjee has a Ph.D. in applied mathematics from the State University of New York; a master of science degree in mathematics from the Indian Institutes of Technology, Delhi; and a bachelor of science degree with honors in mathematics from St. Stephens College, Delhi. About McGraw-Hill Education McGraw-Hill Education is a learning science company that delivers personalized learning experiences that help students, parents, educators, and professionals drive results. McGraw-Hill Education has offices across North America, India, China, Europe, the Middle East and South America, and makes its learning solutions available in more than 60 languages. Visit us at mheducation.com or find us on Facebook or Twitter. Contacts Media Catherine Mathis McGraw-Hill Education (646) 766-2468 [email protected] Investors David Kraut McGraw-Hill Education (646) 766-2060 [email protected] SOURCE McGraw-Hill Education Related Links http://www.mheducation.com MedeAnalytics' executive, operations, finance and analytics teams have transitioned to Richardson in a newly expanded space. The company plans to continue to grow its associate teams in Richardson to support MedeAnalytics' strong growth trajectory and continued focus on product innovation and scaled operations. "The relocation of MedeAnalytics' headquarters to Richardson showcases our commitment to expanding our operations and fulfilling our goal to be the foremost market leader in healthcare analytics," said Paul Kaiser, CEO of MedeAnalytics. "As part of our relocation, we expanded our Richardson office footprint to support our continued growth. Richardson is an ideal location due to its proximity to vast and high caliber talent pools across the Dallas Fort Worth metroplex. One example of this is our internship program with UT Dallas. We're proud of the fact that we've hired over 150 interns, of which more than 40 percent have transitioned to full time associates." MedeAnalytics has been focused solely on healthcare since 1994, helping its customers achieve success through even smarter decision-making. With the most advanced data orchestration in healthcare, MedeAnalytics' intelligent cloud-based analytics platform combines data to deliver state-of-the-art analytics, all in a business context. The company offers scalable solutions for financial management, operations, value-based care and strategic planning and the ability to tailor-build to deliver the action-ready insights organizations need to immediately realize financial and operational value. MedeAnalytics also has offices in Emeryville, California and the United Kingdom. About MedeAnalytics A pioneer in healthcare analytics, MedeAnalytics helps organizations make even smarter decisions. With the most advanced data orchestration in healthcare, our intelligent cloud-based analytics platform combines data to deliver state-of-the-art analytics, all in a business context. MedeAnalytics' scalable solutions for financial management, operations, value-based care, and strategic planning and the ability to tailor-build deliver the action-ready insights organizations need to achieve success. Helping clients realize financial and operational value almost immediately is just one of the many reasons why MedeAnalytics is the leading healthcare-only analytics provider. With offices in the U.S. and U.K., MedeAnalytics serves 1,500+ organizations and 60M covered lives, and has been named one of Modern Healthcare's Top 100 Best Places Work. Learn more at www.medeanalytics.com. Media Contact: Alessandra Nix SHIFT Communications for MedeAnalytics 617.779.1860 [email protected] SOURCE MedeAnalytics Related Links http://www.medeanalytics.com TORONTO, April 17, 2018 /PRNewswire/ - Toronto Centre for Global Leadership in Financial Supervision ("Toronto Centre") is holding an executive panel on Friday, April 20 on Cyber Security: Managing the Breach on the margins of the IMF-World Bank Spring Meetings. Cyber-attacks and cyber risk can threaten financial stability and are of critical concern to governments, central banks, supervisory and regulatory authorities, financial institutions and individuals. As cyber risk is not limited by political or geographical barriers, international coordination is needed. The panel will discuss existing regulations, guidance and supervisory practices applied by governments and what needs to be done to create cyber-resilient financial systems (see flyer). Date: Friday, April 20, 2018, 11:00 a.m. 12:30 p.m. Location: International Monetary Fund (IMF), Cedar Hall HQ1-1-660, 700 19th Street NW, Washington, DC, 20431 Opening Remarks by: Rob Stewart , Canada's G7/G20/FSB Deputy and Associate Deputy Minister of Finance; AND Tobias Adrian , Financial Counsellor and Director, Monetary and Capital Markets Department, IMF Expert Panelists: Stefan Ingves, Governor, Central Bank of Sweden, and Chair, Basel Committee on Banking Supervision; Board of Directors, Toronto Centre Carolyn A. Wilkins, Senior Deputy Governor, Bank of Canada Jan Smets, Governor, National Bank of Belgium Javier Perez-Tasso, CEO, Americas & UK Region, S.W.I.F.T Moderator: Aditya Narain, Deputy Director, Monetary and Capital Markets Department, IMF, and Board Member, Toronto Centre ABOUT TORONTO CENTRE Established in 1998, Toronto Centre for Global Leadership in Financial Supervision (Toronto Centre) is an independent not-for-profit organization that promotes financial stability and access to financial services globally. Our mission is to provide high quality capacity building programs for financial supervisors and regulators, primarily in emerging markets and developing countries. We believe that for countries to thrive, their financial systems must be stable and inclusive. By helping to build these economic foundations, our mission supports sustainable growth and job creation, and helps to reduce poverty. In turn, stable, sustainable economic growth is a vital enabler for infrastructure investments, strengthening international trade, and poverty reduction as confirmed by the UN 2030 Sustainable Development global consensus and the Addis Ababa Action Agenda. Our work is aligned with Canada's Feminist International Assistance Policy. Since our inception in 1998, we have trained more than 10,000 supervisors and regulators from over 190 countries and territories. Toronto Centre is supported by Global Affairs Canada, the IMF, Swedish Sida, and other valuable international partners. For more information, please visit www.torontocentre.org. SOURCE Toronto Centre Related Links torontocentre.org AMMAN, Jordan, April 17, 2018 /PRNewswire-USNewswire/ -- The global organization Mercy Corps is alarmed by the latest events in Syria and fears for the safety and well-being of Syrians who continue to be affected by the conflict. The reported chemical weapon attack, continued bombardment of schools and homes, and military air strikes are likely indicators for what is yet to come in other parts of Syria, the aid organization warns. "What's to come seems terrifying. Innocent men, women and children are paying the price for the world's failure to make any progress toward a diplomatic solution," says Arnaud Quemin, Mercy Corps' country director for Syria. "New military offensives are already starting in northern rural Homs. We are hearing reports of intense bombardments that began over the past few days." Some 240,000 people are trapped in the rural areas north of the city of Homs, which have been periodically cut off from aid by blockades, clashes and besiegement. According to the United Nations, so far in 2018 close to 700,000 people have been displaced due to escalating conflict in regions across the country, in addition to the 6.5 million who were already displaced. Shelters for displaced people are overcrowded and humanitarian needs are high for both residents and the newly arrived. "We must remember the threats that Syrians still face and the daily suffering they endure," says Quemin. "The humanitarian needs show no signs of decreasing. The emergency is just moving from one location to another." Mercy Corps' partners on the ground in Eastern Ghouta, outside of Damascus, worked up until the last days of the siege, which resulted in the destruction of schools, hospitals and humanitarian centers. In the final weeks of the siege, Mercy Corps' partners reached more than 65,000 people in Eastern Ghouta with winter clothing and blankets, food, child-protection services and basic hygiene supplies. Join us and support Mercy Corps' work in Syria and elsewhere in the world. SOURCE Mercy Corps Related Links http://www.mercycorps.org CLEVELAND, April 17, 2018 /PRNewswire/ -- MIM Software Inc., a leading global provider of medical imaging software, today announced it has received approval to sell MIM SurePlan LiverY90, a solution for post-treatment dosimetry of Yttrium-90 (Y90) microspheres, in Europe. MIM SurePlan LiverY90 provides tools to assist institutions in the calculation of personalized dosimetry. This supports European Council Directive 2013/59/Euratom, which requires medical physics experts to take responsibility for dosimetry including measurements for evaluation of dose delivered to a patient. Y90 dosimetry is a new add-on functionality to MIM Software's existing standalone medical device software. The functionality was determined to be an extension to scope of the existing certification and, therefore, covered under MIM Software's current CE Mark. Y90 microspheres deliver local radiation as permanent brachytherapy implants to tumors in the liver. Currently, PET or SPECT images are obtained after treatment to verify the distribution of microspheres. Now, absorbed dose from the Y90 microspheres can be calculated on a voxel-by-voxel basis using the PET or SPECT images. MIM SurePlan LiverY90 provides timesaving tools for liver and tumor segmentation, deformable registration, and allows patient-specific dose calculation on Y90 PET and Bremsstrahlung SPECT images after administration of permanent Y90 microsphere implants. The absorbed dose can be calculated for tumors and the liver to help provide important additional information to the clinician. MIM Software will demonstrate MIM SurePlan LiverY90 at the 2018 European Conference on Interventional Oncology April 22-25 in Vienna, Austria. Attendees wishing to view a demonstration can visit booth 10. About MIM Software Inc. MIM Software Inc. provides practical imaging solutions in the fields of radiation oncology, radiology, nuclear medicine, neuroimaging, and cardiac imaging. MIM offers solutions for PC and Mac workstations, mobile iOS, and cloud-based platforms. MIM is a privately held company that sells its products globally to imaging centers, hospitals, specialty clinics, research organizations, and pharmaceutical companies. For more information, visit www.mimsoftware.com. SOURCE MIM Software Inc. Related Links http://www.mimsoftware.com LITTLE ROCK, Ark., April 17, 2018 /PRNewswire/ -- MEDICAL OFFICE BUILDING SALE Mohr Capital, a privately held real estate investment firm headquartered in Dallas, Texas, has sold a 42,000 square foot medical office building in Little Rock, Arkansas. The property was developed by Mohr Capital and was completed in July 2015. Gary Horn, Chief Investment Officer for Mohr Capital, says "The property is anchored by CHI/St. Vincents Imaging Center and CHI/St. Vincents Women's Center and is located Chenault Sub-Market of Little Rock, providing Class "A" West Little Rock medical office space." VANCOUVER, British Columbia, April 17, 2018 /PRNewswire/ -- MYM Nutraceuticals Inc., (OTC:MYMMF) (CSE: MYM) (CSE: MYM.CN) (MYM.CN) (the "Company" or "MYM") is pleased to announce the launch of its Cannabis Awareness Campaign - "It all unfolds this summer", focusing on topics surrounding the impending legalization of recreational cannabis. The campaign will run for six months from April 1 to October 1, 2018, beginning in the province of Quebec followed by locations across Canada. The campaign will use billboard advertising with an accompanying online campaign both directing users to the website http://www.cannafacts.ca. The website will aim to create a dialogue on the impending legalization of recreational cannabis slated to occur this summer. Topics include: job creation, economic concerns, health risks, and production quality. The website will encourage users to participate in a nationwide discussion on issues surrounding the legalization of recreational cannabis that matter to them. "Canadians have a lot of questions regarding the impending legalization of recreational cannabis. There is a lot of confusion about how legalization will impact our families and our communities. Our goal is to create a forum for the country to discuss issues that matter to them, to help clear the air surrounding legalization", said Rob Gietl, CEO of MYM. "The cannafacts.ca website will encourage users to ask questions and express their concerns. Based on this feedback, MYM will create a newsletter that will continue the conversation using fact-based discussion and expert opinion". MYM engaged Vancouver based Signals - an award winning creative studio that develops creative and campaigns for local, national, and international clients. About MYM Nutraceuticals Inc. MYM Nutraceuticals Inc. is an innovative company focused on acquiring Health Canada licenses to produce and sell high-end organic medicinal cannabis supplements and topical products. MYM has two production projects in Quebec that when completed will have over 1.5 million sf of production space. MYM is also a partner in a 1.2 million sf production project (Northern Rivers Project) in New South Wales, Australia. Australia is an exciting new market that has recently legalized medicinal cannabis. To ensure a strong presence and growth potential within the industry, MYM is actively looking to acquire complementary businesses and assets in the technology, nutraceuticals and CBD sectors. MYM shares trade in Canada, Germany and the USA under the following symbols: (CSE: MYM) (OTC:MYMMF) (FRA:0MY) (DEU:0MY) (MUN:0MY) (STU:0MY). http://www.mymarijuana.ca/snapshot-lp-0415-a/ ON BEHALF OF THE BOARD Rob Gietl, CEO MYM Nutraceuticals Inc. http://www.mymarijuana.ca Investor Relations Terry Brown +1-855-696-2261 [email protected] Keep up to date with MYM on our social media channels: Twitter: @MYM_Nutra Facebook: @mymcanada Instagram: @MYM_Nutra This news release may contain forward-looking statements based on assumptions and judgments of management regarding future events or results. Such statements are subject to a variety of risks and uncertainties which could cause actual events or results to differ materially from those reflected in the forward-looking statements. The company disclaims any intention or obligation to revise or update such statements. For a description of the risks and uncertainties facing the Company and its business and affairs, readers should refer to the Company's Management's Discussion and Analysis and other disclosure filings with Canadian securities regulators, which are posted on http://www.sedar.com. This news release does not constitute an offer to sell or solicitation of an offer to buy any of the securities described herein and accordingly undue reliance should not be put on such. Neither the Canadian Securities Exchange (CSE or CNSX Markets), nor its Regulation Services Provider (as that term is defined in policies of the CSE), accepts responsibility for the adequacy or accuracy of this release. This news release does not constitute an offer to sell or a solicitation of an offer to buy any of the securities described herein in the United States. The securities described herein have not been registered under the United States Securities Act of 1933, as amended (the "U.S. Securities Act"), or any state securities law and may not be offered or sold in the "United States", as such term is defined in Regulation S promulgated under the U.S. Securities Act, unless registered under the U.S. Securities Act and applicable state securities laws or an exemption from such registration requirements is available. Investor Relations Terry Brown +1-855-696-2261 [email protected] SOURCE MYM Nutraceuticals Inc. WASHINGTON, April 17, 2018 /PRNewswire-USNewswire/ -- National Geographic has announced the acquisition and re-launch of Open Explorer, a community platform for explorers and scientists to document their expeditions in real-time from the field and share their journeys with the world through digital storytelling. Anyone with a story to tell or a place to explore can now share their journey and crowdfund their fieldwork, including university researchers, citizen scientists, students and professional explorers. The online platform aims to democratize exploration by lowering the barrier of entry, giving access and allowing anyone to share their stories of curiosity and adventure. For any explorer or scientist in the field, their journal is one of the most important tools. When Open Explorer was originally founded in 2014 by National Geographic Explorer David Lang, it was conceived as an answer to the question, "If Darwin were alive today, how would he have kept his notes?" Lang recognized the need for a place to record experiences, tell stories and collaborate with a community that cared about science, exploration and storytelling. Furthering the knowledge and understanding of our world has always been the core purpose of National Geographic. As such, National Geographic, in partnership with Lang, is making Open Explorer part of the National Geographic ecosystem and is focused on growing the community, connecting members with new tools and additional resources, and sharing the community's stories with the world through National Geographic's vast global storytelling portfolio. "There's never been a better time to be curious person, it's truly the golden age of exploration," said Lang, founder of Open Explorer and co-founder of OpenRov, a company that creates new tools for underwater exploration. "In a digital world filled with instant and endless information, it's easy to forget that there is so much we as humans still don't know. Nearly every app and website aims to answer questions or make some process more convenient. Open Explorer is different. It's a tool for finding better questions." Rachel Webber, Executive Vice President of Digital for National Geographic Partners, said, "For more than 130 years, National Geographic has served as a platform for exploration; today, technology enables us to empower our millions of fans around the world to participate. It's thrilling to see the diversity of projects and people in the Open Explorer community from teenagers in Chicago looking for meteorites to our National Geographic Society Explorers like Steve and Chris Boyes trekking the Okavango Delta. We're very grateful and honored that David brought this project to us, and we're excited to continue to invest in and collaborate with this inspiring community." Open Explorer Site Functionality: When users visit Open Explorer, they will find inspiring expeditions to follow and the ability to start their own projects. Users can document their work, upload photos and videos, leverage fundraising tools and collaborate with fellow expedition members. Audiences can follow expeditions for regular updates from the field and can engage on posts through comments and sharing material on social. As Lang says, "People who are empowered to explore the world around them will love their planet and people who love their planet will protect it." To interact with the community, follow expeditions or start your own, visit Open Explorer here. To follow expeditions that are happening right now, visit the Expedition Discover page. To begin building your own expedition, visit this detailed guide to get started. About National Geographic Partners LLC National Geographic Partners LLC (NGP), a joint venture between National Geographic and 21st Century Fox, is committed to bringing the world premium science, adventure and exploration content across an unrivaled portfolio of media assets. NGP combines the global National Geographic television channels (National Geographic Channel, Nat Geo WILD, Nat Geo MUNDO, Nat Geo PEOPLE) with National Geographic's media and consumer-oriented assets, including National Geographic magazines; National Geographic studios; related digital and social media platforms; books; maps; children's media; and ancillary activities that include travel, global experiences and events, archival sales, licensing and e-commerce businesses. Furthering knowledge and understanding of our world has been the core purpose of National Geographic for 130 years, and now we are committed to going deeper, pushing boundaries, going further for our consumers and reaching millions of people around the world in 172 countries and 43 languages every month as we do it. NGP returns 27 percent of our proceeds to the nonprofit National Geographic Society to fund work in the areas of science, exploration, conservation and education. For more information visit natgeotv.com or nationalgeographic.com, or find us on Facebook, Twitter, Instagram, YouTube, LinkedIn and Pinterest. SOURCE National Geographic Related Links http://www.nationalgeographic.com CHICAGO, April 17, 2018 /PRNewswire/ -- Oral Health America (OHA) today published a national report examining factors impacting the oral health of older adults. With an expected 72.1 million seniors living in the United States by 2030, OHA's A State of Decay, Vol. IV, illustrates progress in some areas and the need for continued action to ensure America's rapidly growing population of seniors age healthily and independently. Top report findings include: One-third (33%) of older adults have lost six or more teeth 25 U.S. states received a poor overall score based on six key performance measures Minnesota , Wisconsin , Iowa , Connecticut and Colorado all earned an "Excellent" Composite Score. Iowa and California made big improvements, jumping from 23 and 30, respectively, in 2016, to 3 and 9 in 2018 and all earned an "Excellent" Composite Score. and made big improvements, jumping from 23 and 30, respectively, in 2016, to 3 and 9 in 2018 The states with the lowest overall scores are Wyoming , Delaware , West Virginia , New Jersey , Arkansas , Texas , Oklahoma , Louisiana and Tennessee , with Mississippi's score being the least favorable. Alabama improved from 50 in 2016 to 29 in 2018 and with score being the least favorable. improved from 50 in 2016 to 29 in 2018 Community water fluoridation (CWF) increased to a state average of 72.6%, a national increase of about 2.2 million people Medicaid coverage of oral health benefits increased Sociodemographic factors, such as income, race, gender and education play a critical role in oral health outcomes A State of Decay, Vol. IV gives a rating of "Poor," "Fair," "Good," or "Excellent" based on state-level data analyzing six variables impacting older adult oral health: Severe Tooth Loss (loss of 6+ teeth), Dental Visits, Adult Medicaid Dental Benefits, Community Water Fluoridation, State Oral Health Plans and Basic Screening Surveys. For the first time, A State of Decay, Vol IV adds a national analysis of the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention's (CDC) individual data on severe tooth loss and recent dental visits by considering associations with sociodemographic factors. "With half of the United States receiving a 'fair' or 'poor' rating relative to meeting minimal standards for the oral health of older adults, we must identify and address the steps needed to ensure the health of our burgeoning senior population," said Beth Truett, President and CEO of Oral Health America. "As depicted in this report, even with improvements by certain states, millions of older adults are still at a disadvantage when it comes to oral health care. Access to and utilization of care and to the coverage needed to pay for care is critical to increasing the overall health and wellness of America's seniors." Federal and state policies are needed to address the underlying, systemic variables that prohibit older adults from achieving good oral health outcomes. A State of Decay, Vol. IV recommends the following to promote healthy aging and independence for this rapidly growing cohort of America's population: Reinstate, establish or maintain a comprehensive adult Medicaid dental benefit. Integrate comprehensive dental coverage in Medicare. Sustain or expand community water fluoridation. Include specific objectives for older adults in all State Oral Health Plans (SOHP). Conduct Basic Screening Surveys (BSS) of older adults in all states. Through A State of Decay, OHA continues to lead the way toward healthier mouths for older adults. States, advocates and public health coalitions that share OHA's commitment can use these actions to push forward policies needed to positively impact the oral health of older adults as a key factor for overall health. Links to the latest volume of A State of Decay and earlier editions can be viewed on astateofdecay.org. SOURCE Oral Health America Related Links http://astateofdecay.org WASHINGTON, April 17, 2018 /PRNewswire-USNewswire/ -- In celebration of National Volunteer Week, the National Park Foundation and American Express are announcing seven grants supporting volunteer capacity-building efforts at national parks across the country. Designed to support the growth of park volunteer programs, projects funded by the grants include expansion of volunteer housing space, development of recruitment handbooks, and outreach to neighboring communities. American Express' grant is part of the National Park Foundation's Centennial Campaign for America's National Parks. To date, this comprehensive fundraising campaign to strengthen and enhance the future of America's treasured national parks has raised more than $500 million in private donations from individuals, foundations, and companies. "American Express' passion for volunteerism continues to make a huge difference in the national parks community," said National Park Foundation President Will Shafroth. "Capacity-building grants boost a park's ability to reach, engage, and properly train more volunteers from diverse backgrounds." These grants complement the more than $13 million in funding American Express has provided to park-related causes since 2015. Funds have helped increase volunteerism, preserve sites within national parks, and encourage people of all backgrounds to rediscover their parks particularly in urban areas. American Express is also a premier partner of the National Park Foundation for the Find Your Park/Encuentra Tu Parque movement. "Since our founding in 1850, American Express has advocated for programs that promote community service and civic engagement," said Timothy J. McClimon, president, American Express Foundation. "National parks strengthen our communities, and we hope these grants will inspire the public to conserve and protect our public lands." Hundreds of thousands of volunteers-in-parks (VIPs) serve alongside National Park Service (NPS) employees to help preserve America's most precious natural, historical, recreational, and cultural treasures and to provide crucial services to the visitors who come to enjoy parks. The NPS works hand-in-hand with communities to engage people of all ages and backgrounds in meaningful and mutually beneficial volunteer opportunities. "Throughout the history of the National Park Service, volunteers have played a vital role in our stewardship mission and enabled us to offer exceptional recreational and inspirational experiences for generations of visitors," said NPS Deputy Director Dan Smith. "We are grateful to the National Park Foundation and American Express for helping us strengthen the VIP programs in these parks." The grant funding will be used to: Chattahoochee River National Recreation Area and Kennesaw Mountain National Battlefield (GA): Hire a shared six-month intern to assist with volunteer recruitment, training, and events and increase the diversity of the parks' volunteer corps. The grant funding will also enable the purchase of period costumes to enhance living history demonstrations. Gateway National Recreation Area (NY): Hire an intern to coordinate the volunteer program at the Staten Island Unit; restore a volunteer building using a volunteer-based crew; and purchase outreach supplies to increase the park's capacity to engage and train volunteers. Golden Gate National Recreation Area (CA): Hire a staff member to support daily volunteer activities at Crissy Field and Marin Headlands, and help the park's Community Volunteer Ambassadors raise broader awareness about the park's Historic Landscape Volunteer Days among young, diverse communities, including veterans. Grand Canyon National Park (AZ): Hire an intern to manage and lead a weekly clean-up program on the South Rim, engaging up to 15 volunteers at a time in four-hour shifts. Mount Rainier National Park and Seattle Area National Park Sites (WA): Hire a coordinator to focus on underserved community volunteer engagement, build partnerships with local organizations, and develop multi-language materials about the National Park Service and national parks in the Seattle/Tacoma area. National Mall and Memorial Parks (DC): Update the volunteer handbook, redesign the volunteer training curriculum, and conduct a pilot program of a new and improved training program. Zion National Park (UT): Build three new RV/trailer pads for volunteers, increasing the park's ability to house long-term volunteers. The last day of National Volunteer Week coincides with the first day of National Park Week, April 21. National Park Week is a great opportunity to recognize and celebrate park volunteers, as well as invite new volunteers to the NPS community. ABOUT THE NATIONAL PARK FOUNDATION Celebrating 50 years, the National Park Foundation is the official charity of America's national parks and nonprofit partner to the National Park Service. Chartered by Congress in 1967, the National Park Foundation raises private funds to help PROTECT more than 84 million acres of national parks through critical conservation and preservation efforts, CONNECT all Americans with their incomparable natural landscapes, vibrant culture and rich history, and ENGAGE the next generation of park stewards. In 2016, commemorating the National Park Service's 100th anniversary, the Foundation launched The Centennial Campaign for America's National Parks, a comprehensive fundraising campaign to strengthen and enhance the future of these national treasures for the next hundred years. ABOUT AMERICAN EXPRESS American Express is a global services company, providing customers with access to products, insights and experiences that enrich lives and build business success. MEDIA CONTACT: Alanna Sobel 202-796-2538 [email protected] SOURCE National Park Foundation Related Links http://www.nationalparks.org BEAVERTON, Ore., April 17, 2018 /PRNewswire/ -- Tektronix, Inc., a leading worldwide provider of measurement solutions, today introduced the Keithley DMM6510 6-digit Bench/System Digital Multimeter and DAQ6510 Data Acquisition and Logging Multimeter System. These new instruments combine the simplicity of a "pinch and zoom" touchscreen interface for easy and faster test setup and at-a-glance monitoring and display with the power of 15 different measurement functions, wide measurement ranges, multichannel measurements, and class-leading accuracy and sensitivity. For its latest 6-digit multimeter and data acquisition offerings, Keithley delivers a new level of simplicity providing a 5-in (12.7cm) touchscreen display with graphing, pinch and zoom, cursors, and statistics for greater insight into measurement trends and waveform characteristics saving time with setting up, monitoring, and executing measurements. The DAQ6510 Data Acquisition and Logging Multimeter System addresses the needs of environmental test, failure analysis, and quality control engineers who need to quickly set up tests on a statistically significant sample of products. Today's engineers continue to need performance, accuracy and flexibility from test instrumentation. But as time-to-market windows shrink they also need something more: simple, intuitive interfaces and fast operation that puts time back in their day. For its latest 6-digit multimeter and data acquisition offerings, Keithley delivers a new level of simplicity providing a 5-in (12.7cm) touchscreen display with graphing, pinch and zoom, cursors, and statistics for greater insight into measurement trends and waveform characteristics saving time with setting up, monitoring, and executing measurements. "The time is long-past where engineers should be forced to grapple with complex or cluttered user interfaces just because they are engineers and ultimately can figure it out," said Mike Flaherty, general manager, Keithley Product Line at Tektronix. "Instead, by delivering test instruments that simplify the complex, we're letting our customers focus on what's really important the products they are trying to design or ship out the door -- rather than trying to figure out how to use their measurement tools." DMM6500: Advanced Features and Affordability The DMM6500 6 -digit Bench/System Digital Multimeter supports 15 different types of measurements including capacitance, digitizing voltage or current waveforms, and temperature from thermocouples, thermistors, and resistance temperature detectors (RTDs). Waveforms and transients can be captured with the 1 Msample/s, 16-bit digitizer so that more measurements can be performed with one instrument and engineers can study more complex load current profiles from wireless devices such as IoT devices. The DMM6500 has class-leading sensitivity to help design engineers make measurements on low power products. DC current sensitivity is 10pA and resistance sensitivity is 1. It has outstanding accuracy, rated at 0.0025% for one year and includes two-year specifications for longer calibration cycles and lower cost of ownership. With the growth in low-power devices, driven in part by the Internet of Things, engineers increasingly need to make lower level measurements than in the past. The DMM6500's 5-in. (12.7cm) touchscreen display simplifies instrument setup with readily accessible swipe screens and minimized menu depth for fast, in-depth data analysis with "pinch and zoom" simplicity. Touchscreen cursors make it easy for designers to characterize measurements with statistical data such as peaks, average, minimum values, and standard deviation over portions of a waveform or over the whole waveform. Up to 7 million readings can be stored in the DMM, the most in the industry for this class of instrument. If more than a single channel is needed, an optional 10-channel scan card or a 9-channel temperature card can be plugged into the rear of the instrument. The DMM6500's standard interfaces are LAN/LXI and USB-TMC. Optional user-installable interfaces with six programmable digital I/O lines include GPIB, RS-232, and TSP-LINK. To enable test engineers to easily upgrade hardware in legacy test systems with minimal-to-no changes in test codes, the DMM6500 has emulation modes for the Keithley model 2000 6-digit DMM and the Keysight 34401A 6 -digit DMM. Unique to Keithley is test script (TSP) software that allows a DMM6500 to execute a test with minimal intervention from a PC. This reduces the number of command communications between PC and instrument to save test time. This internal intelligence allows a DMM6500 to perform custom operations and customize the display for specific needs such as operator instructions. With a list price of less than $1,200, the DMM6500 delivers class-leading capabilities with superior usability at the price comparable to previous generation DMMs. DAQ6510: A New Level of Simplicity The DAQ6510 Data Acquisition and Logging Multimeter System addresses the needs of environmental test, failure analysis, and quality control engineers who need to quickly set up tests on a statistically significant sample of products. With its touchscreen display, the DAQ6510 simplifies setup, execution, monitoring, and analysis of multichannel-measurement systems, which can now be completely set up from a single display. With previous data logging instruments, engineers running long term tests have been unable to assess how well a test is proceeding. The DAQ6510 solves that problem with a status display which, at a glance, will tell the engineer whether any channel measurements are outside of limits or if measurements have over-ranged. The engineer can correct a problem and minimize lost test time rather than having to wait until the end of a test to discover any problems. Built-in plotting functions allow users to display up to 20 different plots from 20 channels in one graph and easily drill down using pinch and zoom controls and then conduct further analysis using cursors and statistical functions. All of this setup, execution, monitoring, and analysis can be done on the instrument without the need for a PC. To test a statistically significant number of devices, the DAQ6510 can be combined with 7700-series Plug-In Switch Modules to test as many as 80 devices in one test system. With 12 plug-in switch modules including multiplexers, multiplexers with cold junction compensation for thermocouple temperature measurements, a matrix switch module, a control module, digital I/O module, and GHz switch modules, the DAQ6510 delivers the flexibility to build nearly any type of multichannel test system. The DAQ6510 has the same interfaces and test script processing capability as the DMM6500 to give engineers the ability to select the optimum interface and to customize instrument measurements and displays. For test engineers who prefer using a PC, setting up an automated test is greatly simplified with the new KickStart 2.0 coding-free instrument control software. Both a DMM control application and a data acquisition and logging application are available (see separate release). Availability & Pricing Both instruments are available now globally. The DMM6500 is priced from $1,140 US MSRP while the DAQ6510 is priced from $1,750 US MSRP. Wondering what else Tektronix is up to? Check out the Tektronix Bandwidth Banter blog and stay up to date on the latest news from Tektronix on Twitter and Facebook. About Tektronix Headquartered in Beaverton, Oregon, Tektronix delivers innovative, precise and easy-to-operate test, measurement and monitoring solutions that solve problems, unlock insights and drive discovery. Tektronix has been at the forefront of the digital age for over 70 years. Join us on the journey of innovation at TEK.COM. Tektronix is a registered trademark of Tektronix, Inc. All other trade names referenced are the service marks, trademarks or registered trademarks of their respective companies. SOURCE Tektronix, Inc. Related Links http://www.tektronix.com CHERRY HILL, N.J., April 17, 2018 /PRNewswire/ -- SugarHouse Online Casino is making history once again in the iGaming world by being the first in the country to introduce a new alternative payment that now makes it easier for players with credit and debit cards to reliably deposit into their online gaming accounts at PlaySugarHouse.com. Wyrz is a secure way for all players to load money from their preferred cards into their account, which until now hasn't always been so easy. Many may not be aware that one of the biggest challenges with online gaming in New Jersey has to do with depositing money to play. When a player tries to fund their account with a conventional debit or credit card payment, the transaction would often fail. But thanks to the partnership between PlaySugarHouse.com and Wyrz, that is no longer an issue for those looking to wager and win on the exciting games offered on the site. "We're excited that more of our players can now reliably use their preferred payment methods, debit and credit cards, to fund their online casino accounts at PlaySugarHouse.com," said Richard Schwartz, President of Rush Street Interactive. Wyrz is a virtual prepaid Visa card that offers users a simple, fast and secure payment method that allows them to make purchases anywhere Visa is accepted online, including PlaySugarHouse.com. Players simply enter their credit or debit card information, and if their card cannot be accepted directly, they are seamlessly redirected to purchase a Wyrz prepaid card, with no additional fees or charges thus enabling them to deposit funds into their PlaySugarHouse.com account. "We're delighted to have formally launched Wyrz in the US with Rush Street's PlaySugarHouse.com," said Justin Lunny, CEO of Wyrz. "Rush Street is a perfect partner for us with their continued focus and commitment to innovation and the player experience. Wyrz will further enhance player satisfaction, helping remove friction from the account funding process which at present can be frustrating." "Our collaboration with Wyrz to introduce this new and exciting payment method to the US market is the latest example of PlaySugarHouse.com continuing to lead the way in New Jersey with new games and payment methods for our players' enjoyment," added Schwartz. Regulated by the New Jersey Division of Gaming Enforcement (DGE), the PlaySugarHouse.com site boasts over 400 slots from Konami, IGT, Aristocrat, WMS Gaming, Bally, NYX Gaming Group, Spin Games, High 5 Games, NetEnt, Gaming Realms (Slingo) and Inspired (Virtual Sports). Visitors on PlaySugarHouse.com will also find a wide range of online table games including single-deck and multi-deck blackjack games only available at PlaySugarHouse.com. SugarHouse Online Casino features enticing player promotions, including industry low, player-friendly wagering requirements of only 1 times on bonuses and rewards. All new players receive bonus money from PlaySugarHouse.com of at least $10, and often more, to give the site a try. In addition, they can receive a 100% bonus on their first deposit of up to $100. New Jersey's premier online casino loyalty program, iRush Rewards, offers players unique and exciting benefits and rewards both online and at the SugarHouse Casino in Philadelphia. About Rush Street Interactive Rush Street Interactive, an affiliate of Rush Street Gaming, was founded by pioneers in the internet gaming industry with decades of collective experience in developing and operating online gaming sites. Rush Street Interactive is also the developer of SugarHouse's Casino4Fun website. Rush Street Gaming is one of the fastest-growing gaming companies in North America. Rush Street developed and o operates Rivers Casino in Pittsburgh, SugarHouse Casino in Philadelphia, and Rivers Casino in Des Plaines, Illinois. Rivers Casino & Resort in Schenectady, New York, is set to open February 8, 2017. All Rush Street casinos lead the markets in which they operate. For more information, visit www.rushstreetgaming.com. About Wyrz Wyrz is delivered by Prepaid Network Inc. Prepaid Network Inc. was founded by iGaming & eCommerce payments experts with extensive experience supporting leading European-regulated iGaming operators. Prepaid Network Inc delivers innovative payment solutions to its merchants to maximize payment success for their customers. Wyrz is a virtual prepaid Visa card that offers users a simple, fast and secure payment method that allows them to make purchases anywhere Visa is accepted online. The Wyrz Prepaid Visa Card is issued by Metropolitan Commercial Bank (Member FDIC) pursuant to a license from Visa U.S.A. Inc. For more information, visit: https://www.wyrz.co/. SOURCE Rush Street Interactive Related Links http://www.rushstreetgaming.com DALLAS, April 17, 2018 /PRNewswire/ -- NexPoint Residential Trust, Inc., ("NXRT" or the "Company"), (NYSE: NXRT) today announced that the Company is scheduled to host a conference call on Tuesday, May 1, 2018 at 11:00 a.m. ET (10:00 am CT), to discuss first quarter 2018 financial results. The conference call can be accessed live over the phone by dialing (334) 323-0522 or, for international callers, (877) 260-1479, and using passcode Conference ID: 6756596. A live audio webcast of the call will be available online at the Company's website, http://www.nexpointliving.com (under "Investor Relations"). An online replay will be available shortly after the call on the Company's website and continue to be available for 60 days. A replay of the conference call will also be available through Tuesday, May 8, 2018, by dialing (888) 203-1112 or, for international callers, (719) 457-0820 and entering passcode 6756596. The Company plans to issue a press release with first quarter 2018 financial results before market open on Tuesday, May 1, 2018. About NexPoint Residential Trust, Inc. NexPoint Residential Trust is a publicly traded REIT, with its shares listed on the New York Stock Exchange under the symbol "NXRT," primarily focused on acquiring, owning and operating well-located middle-income multifamily properties with "value-add" potential in large cities and suburban submarkets of large cities, primarily in the Southeastern and Southwestern United States. NXRT is externally advised by NexPoint Real Estate Advisors, L.P., an affiliate of Highland Capital Management, L.P., a leading global alternative asset manager and an SEC-registered investment adviser. More information about NXRT is available at http://www.nexpointliving.com Contact: Marilynn Meek Financial Relations Board 212-827-3773 SOURCE NexPoint Residential Trust, Inc. Related Links http://www.nexpointliving.com NEW YORK, April 17, 2018 /PRNewswire/ -- Nearly one year after returning to private ownership, INVNT achieves record revenue, global client wins, and launches a new APAC office in Sydney, Australia to answer massive global demand for live brand storytellers capable of challenging everything. The company, which creates and produces brand engagements for every audience segmentemployees, customers, partners, investors, the press, and consumershas seen revenue grow 107% since going independent in July of 2017, and is set to close the year at $50 million. Scott Cullather, CEO of INVNT Kristina McCoobery, COO of INVNT INVNT's roster of clients continues to grow worldwideadding 18 new clients since becoming independentand includes brands such as PepsiCo, Microsoft, General Motors, Dick's Sporting Goods, Xero, Temenos and SAMSUNG. Key live brand storytelling opportunities created by INVNT in the last year include the launch of Samsung's Galaxy Note8, the world debut of the Chevrolet Silverado and GMC Sierra, and the ESPN Upfront. In 2018, the company also has several key storytelling milestones in the works on behalf of brands including Atlantis, TEDx, and Subway. The company has an 81% year-over-year client retention ratea cornerstone to their success, which, according to founding partners Scott Cullather and Kristina McCoobery, reflects their desire to "keep clients for life." "It is this challenger approach, our highly competitive fee structure and our killer tribe of international talent that allows us to develop and produce the kinds of live brand engagements that keep our growing roster of global clients returning year-after-year," said Scott Cullather, CEO of INVNT. "This potent combination has helped us achieve an 81% client retention rating; a cornerstone to our success and a testament to our ability to deliver compelling, cost effective solutions." INVNTion at the Heart of Every Story A key market differentiator is INVNT's proprietary strategic and creative methodology, INVNTionthe brainchild of INVNT Chief Creative Officer Paul Blurtonwhich allows the agency to quickly ideate, design, and execute live brand experiences that tell a story and align with the client's targeted audiences, be they employees, customers, press or investors. In addition to leading INVNT's creative departmentthe fastest growing department in the agencyBlurton will now also oversee the agency's newly launched SWDSH Design Studio in Stockholm, Sweden. SWDSH will focus on pushing new and innovative 2D and 3D designs and supporting visual systems for INVNT's live brand experiences. Blurton has been with INVNT since 2011, having begun his career in England's famed West End theatre district. Global Expansion To continue to support growth in the APAC region, INVNT opened a new office in Sydney, Australia earlier this year. The office is under the leadership of Laura Roberts, Managing Director, APAC who was part of the company's founding team in 2008. INVNT also maintains satellite offices in London and a number of key U.S. locations, including Detroit and San Francisco. "Our incredibly talented and creative team of independent thinkers and our steadfast commitment to fantastic client service is a big part of how we plan to keep our clients for life," said Kristina McCoobery, COO of INVNT. "We couldn't think of a more natural fit to lead our Sydney office and help INVNT achieve global domination than Laura Roberts. As one of our original tribe members, Laura is building and nurturing a team of strategic, creative, service-minded professionals to produce the most memorable live brand storytelling experiences in the world. The experience and challenger thinking that people like Laura and Paul Blurton, our Chief Creative Officer, bring to INVNT is an essential part of our competitive edge, and why our clients are so loyal to our tribe." Company History INVNT launched in 2008 under the leadership of Scott Cullather and Kristina McCoobery. The company's positioning statement "challenge everything" applies to their innovative approach to brand communications and live events, client service, team culture, and ambitious business goals. INVNT was acquired by Time, Inc. in 2015, and Cullather and McCoobery remained in executive leadership positions at Time, Inc. Cullather and McCoobery successfully bought the company back from Time, Inc. in the summer of 2017. About INVNT Founded in 2008 by Scott Cullather and Kristina McCoobery, INVNT was created to be the best live brand storytelling agency in the world. The company's "challenge everything" positioning statement helps clients including PepsiCo, Samsung, Merck, General Motors, Subway, and ESPN to share brand stories that are on brand and on message, yet disruptive and therefore stick and spread. "The tribe" is INVNT's diverse, talented, and creative team behind the stories and brand experiences that people just can't stop talking about. INVNT's offices are strategically located in New York, London, Sydney, Detroit, San Francisco, Washington D.C. and Stockholm. For more information visit http://invnt.com/. SOURCE INVNT Related Links http://invnt.com PALM SPRINGS, Calif., April 17, 2018 /PRNewswire/ -- All-in-one homebuying platform Open Listings launched in Palm Springs today, bringing its free software and 50% commission refund to homebuyers. Now, those searching for homes for sale in Palm Springs can make a personalized real-time feed of listings, schedule house tours on demand, and create offers on any home through the Open Listings website or app. Buyers then get paired with a top-rated, local real estate agent dedicated to getting their offer accepted and closed. By utilizing the Open Listings platform and network of on-demand local agents, homebuyers also receive a 50% refund on their agent's commission. The site boasts mid century modern and notable architectural homes for sale by greats like Donald Wexler, William Krisel, or Albert Frey, to name a few. "We're excited to bring Open Listings to Palm Springs and give modern buyers a leg up with our app and savings," said Judd Schoenholtz, CEO and co-founder of Open Listings. "We now have nearly one million homebuyers shopping with us each month," added Schoenholtz. "Our software makes an overly complicated process easy. Then, the best agents take homebuyers through the last mile of closing, which makes it possible to offer a refund 3-4 times more than other online brokerages." Those searching for homes for sale in Palm Springs can sign-up for free on the Open Listings site or download the home buying app on iTunes. From there, homebuyers can use a number of robust house hunting & homebuying features: 1. House Hunt 24/7 Get a real-time feed of property matches the moment they're listed for sale. Access info like in-depth property reports, private remarks, and custom neighborhood data on-demand. Free homebuying advice from licensed real estate agents every day. Book & manage free home tours, right from the app. 2. Make Offers in Minutes Create offers online any time to get matched with a top-rated local buying agent focused on getting offers accepted. 3. Close & Save Thousands Track offer progress through a dashboard with their local buying agent and closing team. Review & sign transfer, home loan, and title documents electronically. Buyers get back 50% of their agent's commission at close -- which was an average of $8,800+ for Open Listings buyers in 2017. In addition to Palm Springs, Open Listings currently serves homebuyers across metro areas in California, Washington, and Texas including Los Angeles, San Francisco, San Diego, Seattle, and Austin. The company plans to move into more than five additional major housing markets in 2018. About Open Listings Open Listings is the all-in-one home buying platform that makes buying a home simple and more affordable. Search houses for sale 24/7, get pressure-free advice from expert agents, create offers online, and save an average of $8,500+ with their 50% commission refund. To date, Open Listings has helped buyers get over $600 million worth of homes and save $6 million in home buying fees with their 50% commission refund. Contact: Angeline Vuong, 800-501-2077, [email protected] SOURCE Open Listings Related Links http://www.openlistings.com SAN FRANCISCO and VANCOUVER, British Columbia, April 17, 2018 /PRNewswire/ -- Percolate, the System of Record for Marketing, and Allocadia, the leading Marketing Performance Management solution, today announced a partnership to further streamline the marketing process to deliver more effective marketing results. This partnership is another validation of the growing importance of the marketing operations role and technologies that support their objectives. The integration will be featured during Transition, Percolate's annual customer conference taking place in San Francisco on April 19. "Long-term marketing success is achieved by better understanding the effectiveness of key initiatives, which can only be accomplished by tracking ROI," said Randy Wootton, CEO of Percolate. "Our partnership with Allocadia not only helps CMOs and marketing teams gain a view into future activities and their projected impact, but also enables them to link their budgets with their content orchestration. This helps quantify results while driving business value. That's a huge shift away from today's backward-facing reports and campaign summaries." This joint solution of two mission critical marketing technologies - Content Marketing Platforms and Marketing Performance Management - will combine upstream marketing process management with strategic planning, budgeting and performance measurement, enabling marketing leaders to continually monitor and optimize marketing's contribution to revenue and other priority business goals. Together, Percolate and Allocadia provide visibility into the marketing process from plans and activities through to measurement of results, improve team coordination and enable marketers to more effectively and confidently run marketing like a business. "The combination of Percolate's Content Marketing Platform with Allocadia's Marketing Performance Management solution was driven by joint customer demand from leading-edge CMOs and Marketing Operations leaders who realized the value of gaining better visibility into their plans and investments while being able to collaborate more easily," said Kristine Steuart, CEO and co-founder, Allocadia. "In linking these critical functions, we are not only enabling marketing teams to maximize their resources and optimize for performance and process, but bringing increased confidence to marketers because they can now prove the business impact of their work." Steuart will be on stage at Transition 2018 in San Francisco on April 19 to further discuss the relationship between content and customer experience. She'll be joined by Percolate's Co-founder James Gross to discuss how marketing leaders can take advantage of Percolate and Allocadia together to optimize their business performance. To learn more or register for the conference, visit the Transition website. About Percolate Percolate is the leading Content Marketing Platform for the enterprise. Percolate offers solutions to introduce visibility into the marketing process, improve coordination of work, and effectively build marketing campaigns and content. The world's largest brands - including Mastercard, Cisco, Cigna, Electronic Arts, and Bosch - use Percolate to create a coordinated customer experience, reduce production costs, and understand marketing impact. Visit www.percolate.com for more information on The System of Record for Marketing. PR Contact InkHouse PR Tracey Workman [email protected] About Allocadia Allocadia is the leading Marketing Performance Management solution and creator of the #RunMarketing movement. The company's award-winning technology empowers marketers with confidence in their plans, investments, and ROI. Founded in 2010 by twin sisters Kristine Steuart and Katherine Berry, Allocadia today serves more than 10,000 marketers worldwide, managing over $25B in marketing investment to-date. Learn how leading marketing organizations at over 200 companies including Microsoft, Juniper Networks, VMware, Red Hat and Charles Schwab run the business of marketing at Allocadia.com. PR Contact Kasia Finkelstein [email protected] SOURCE Percolate Related Links http://www.percolate.com The three participating entities have a shared commitment to clinical innovation and research collaboration that enhance patient care, decrease healthcare costs and further the scientific understanding of rare genetic diseases in children. Nicklaus Children's Hospital and San Diego-based Rady Children's Institute, are part of the Sanford Children's Genomic Medicine Consortium, which is committed to advancing children's medicine through integration of genomics into pediatric care. Sanford Health is an integrated health system headquartered in the Dakotas. The goal of genomic medicine is to develop a precision care plan for each child based on determining an underlying genetic diagnosis. The collaboration between Nicklaus Children's and Rady Children's Institute will offer whole genome sequencing (WGS) to children in two settings: Acutely ill patients with undetermined illnesses in Nicklaus Children's three intensive care units (neonatal, pediatric and cardiac). These children will be eligible for rapid whole genome sequencing (rWGS) testing to provide the fastest possible results. whole genome sequencing (rWGS) testing to provide the fastest possible results. Children with chronic undiagnosed medical conditions. These children, often described as being on a "diagnostic odyssey," have typically visited multiple specialists in search of a definitive diagnosis to support treatment. Through the collaboration, Nicklaus Children's will send patient blood samples to Rady Children's Institute for Genomic Medicine in San Diego. Whole genome sequencing, bioinformatics analysis, and initial clinical interpretation will occur in San Diego and the experts at Nicklaus Children's will use the results to care for children in Miami. For acutely ill newborns and children, rWGS, a relatively new test, can provide much faster diagnoses than traditional genome testing, mapping a whole genome in less than a week. A confirmed diagnosis can be vital in the first days of life to direct appropriate, and sometimes life-saving, clinical care. For diagnostic odyssey patients, WGS is used to provide long-sought answers for families in search of a diagnosis for a chronically ill child. Often these children have visited multiple specialists and undergone myriad tests and procedures in their young lives. Whole genome sequencing can unlock answers for these families. Both efforts are part of the Personalized Medicine Initiative at Nicklaus Children's Hospital led by Jennifer McCafferty, PhD, director of Nicklaus Children's Research Institute and Personalized Medicine Initiative. "We are thrilled to be at the leading edge of genomic medicine in pediatrics. This program is a great example of how Nicklaus Children's partners on discovery and delivers on clinical impact for children and families in South Florida," said Dr. McCafferty. "Genomic medicine offers hope to parents of sick children who have not yet received a diagnosis." Both the diagnostic odyssey and intensive care unit rWGS efforts are in the research phase and not yet offered as a standard of care. Physicians at Nicklaus Children's Hospital are able to refer potential candidates to the research team for possible enrollment in these initiatives. Since July 2016, Rady Children's Institute for Genomic Medicine has performed rapid whole genome sequencing for more than 431 acutely ill children enrolled in its research studies. As of April 9, approximately one-third of patients sequenced have received a genomic diagnosis with 63 percent of those benefitting from an immediate change in clinical care. "The information we receive from whole genome sequencing is helping medical teams make treatment decisions, providing hope to these children and families," said Stephen Kingsmore, MD, DSc, president and CEO of Rady Children's Institute for Genomic Medicine. "This is the beginning of our long-term vision to save babies with rare, life-threatening diseases by making genomic testing available to NICUs, PICUs and CICUs nationwide." Membership in the Sanford Children's Genomic Consortium, which was inspired by the vision of philanthropist Denny Sanford, also includes Sanford Children's, Children's Hospital Los Angeles, Children's Hospital Colorado, Banner Children's at Diamond Children's Medical Center in Tucson and Children's Minnesota. About Nicklaus Children's Hospital Founded in 1950 by Variety Clubs International, Nicklaus Children's Hospital is South Florida's only licensed specialty hospital exclusively for children, with nearly 800 attending physicians and more than 475 pediatric subspecialists. The 289-bed hospital, known as Miami Children's Hospital from 1983 through 2014, is renowned for excellence in all aspects of pediatric medicine with many specialty programs routinely ranked among the best in the nation by U.S. News & World Report. The hospital is also home to the largest pediatric teaching program in the southeastern United States and has been designated an American Nurses Credentialing Center (ANCC) Magnet facility, the nursing profession's most prestigious institutional honor. For more information, please visit www.nicklauschildrens.org About Rady Children's Institute for Genomic Medicine The Institute is leading the way in advancing precision healthcare for infants and children through genomic and systems medicine research. Discoveries at the Institute are enabling rapid diagnosis and targeted treatment of critically ill newborns and pediatric patients at Rady Children's Hospital-San Diego and partner hospitals. The vision is to expand delivery of this integrated translational research process to enable the practice of precision pediatric medicine at children's hospitals across California, the nation and the world. RCIGM is a subsidiary of Rady Children's Hospital and Health Center. Learn more at www.RadyGenomics.org. About Sanford Health Sanford Health is an integrated health system headquartered in the Dakotas. It is one of the largest health systems in the nation with 45 hospitals and nearly 300 clinics in nine states and four countries. Sanford Health's 28,000 employees, including more than 1,300 physicians, make it the largest employer in the Dakotas. Nearly $1 billion in gifts from philanthropist Denny Sanford have allowed for several initiatives, including global children's clinics, genomic medicine and specialized centers researching cures for type 1 diabetes, breast cancer and other diseases. For more information, visit sanfordhealth.org. For more information: Nicklaus Children's Hospital Rachel Perry, 305-663-8476 [email protected] Rady Children's Institute for Genomic Medicine Grace Sevilla, 619-855-5135 [email protected] SOURCE Nicklaus Children's Hospital DES PLAINES, Ill., April 17, 2018 /PRNewswire/ -- Americaneagle.com recently launched PetComfort.com, an exciting new website brought to you by WeatherTech founder David MacNeil. The PetComfort family of products is quite different from the quality automobile accessories offered on WeatherTech.com, an Americaneagle.com customer since 1999. PetComfort The PetComfort product line includes a safe, durable feeding system, PetStep, Seat Protector, and a Pet Barrier. All of these products are manufactured in the USA, with a pet's safety and comfort at the forefront. PetComfort's non-toxic, American-made pet bowls are the start of a whole new brand for MacNeil, created with just as much passion as his original venture. After losing three dogs to cancer and discovering that toxic chemicals in feeders may have attributed to this, MacNeil wanted to promote pet health with bowls designed for cats and dogs of all sizes. The bowls are made with non-toxic materials and are certified by the NSF for home use, which means, unlike any pet bowl on the market, they meet strict standards for public health protection. From floor mats to pet bowls, MacNeil has partnered with Americaneagle.com since 1999, as the web development company has grown from a small but dynamic company to an employer of 400+ while being listed on the Inc. 5000 List five times. Americaneagle.com worked on marketing and messaging for PetComfort, as well as developing the new PetComfort.com website. The Americaneagle.com strategy team performed exhaustive research into industry trends and target audiences, along with compiling a list of veterinarians to answer questions. They conducted research on pet associations and found articles supporting the need for the new product. Americaneagle.com strategists also worked on SEO keyword research, contributed to an integrated marketing research plan and helped define the brand, including personality, tone and color palette. Americaneagle.com then designed and developed the site and continues to host it. David MacNeil commented, "Americaneagle.com helped us establish a well-known brand and the websites they design and develop for us produce outstanding business results. We are excited to continue this terrific relationship as we close in on two decades of working with Americaneagle.com." Anthony Svanascini, CEO of Americaneagle.com, commented, "We are intensely proud of our longstanding partnership with WeatherTech and the opportunity to launch the website for the innovative new line of quality pet products on PetComfort.com. David MacNeil is one of the greatest business minds in the world, and we're honored by our long, prosperous relationship with the great team at WeatherTech." The new PetComfort website at can be found at PetComfort.com. About Americaneagle.com Americaneagle.com, Inc., founded in 1978, is a leading Web design, development, and hosting company based in Des Plaines, Illinois. Currently, Americaneagle.com employs approximately 400+ professionals in offices throughout the country including Chicago, Boston, Cleveland, Dallas, Fort Lauderdale, Los Angeles, New York, Philadelphia, and Washington DC. Some of their 7,000+ clients include Komatsu USA, FASTSIGNS, Stuart Weitzman, WeatherTech.com, and the American Dental Association. For additional information about Americaneagle.com, visit www.americaneagle.com. Contact Michael Svanascini, President [email protected] 847-699-0300 SOURCE Americaneagle.com Related Links https://www.americaneagle.com FREEPORT, Bahamas, April 17, 2018 /PRNewswire/ -- PO8, the first Bahamian blockchain start-up has officially put The Bahamas on the world crypto stage. Known for its paradise islands attracting millions of tourists a year and its offshore banking, The Bahamas has now set its eyes on making Grand Bahama the crypto capital of the Americas, and PO8 is leading the way. PO8 Bahamian born Co-founder and CEO, Matthew Arnett, is spearheading PO8, a unique blockchain ecosystem democratizing and decentralizing the marine archaeology industry. Inspired by the almost two-decade marine salvage moratorium preventing underwater expeditions in Bahamian waters, PO8 is bringing marine archaeology to the blockchain to help The Bahamas retrieve long-lost historical artifacts. "PO8 is helping solve a real-life problem for The Bahamas. So much wealth and history are buried under our waters. And, so much has been taken away in the past due to lack of oversight and transparency. The salvage moratorium is finally coming to an end with PO8. We look forward to working with The Bahamas to bring back these treasures," said Arnett. Last month Minister of State for Grand Bahama, Kwasi Thompson, announced at a major blockchain conference The Bahamas' new directive to bring blockchain innovation to the country and pave the way for local and foreign businesses like PO8 to embrace Grand Bahama as the ideal place to launch blockchain and cryptocurrency businesses. Deputy Prime Minister Peter Turnquest shared a similar vision, putting blockchain at the forefront of the Ministry of Finance's exploration into digitizing financial and government services. "We are going to make that leap," Turnquest shared with attendees. For Arnett and PO8, they are taking Thompson's and Turnquest's directive to heart. "The Bahamas understands now is the time to welcome and innovate with blockchain. We are taking that leap for our nation and we hope many more will follow," affirmed Arnett. By leveraging blockchain technology, PO8 will tokenize underwater expeditions in search of thousands of historical artifacts worth billions, through decentralized applications (Dapps) on the Ethereum network. Recovered artifacts will then be digitized, forming part of its registry and auction Dapps. About PO8 PO8 is a blockchain ecosystem democratizing and decentralizing the marine archaeology industry. PO8 scalable technologies take ocean exploration to new heights in search of historical artifacts and treasures, and provide decentralized solutions for the registration, authentication, and transfer of the world's most prized artifacts. For more information visit www.po8.io. Media contacts: PO8 Raul Vasquez [email protected] https://www.po8.io Related Links Website Follow us on Twitter Related Video http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=VQDFiuSN-RM SOURCE PO8 Related Links https://po8.io CLEVELAND, April 17, 2018 /PRNewswire/ -- Demand for proppants in North America is expected to grow 4.2% per year through 2021, reaching nearly 103 billion pounds. Growth will be driven by an increase in the number of completions and the amount of proppant required per well, for both conventional (vertical) and unconventional (horizontal) types of wells. These and other trends are presented in Proppants Market in North America, a study from The Freedonia Group, a Cleveland-based industry research firm. More information about the study is available at https://www.freedoniagroup.com/industry-study/proppants-market-in-north-america-by-type-and-location-3rd-edition-3535.htm More information about oil and gas studies and custom capabilities: https://content.marketresearch.com/actionable-insights-on-oilfield-markets-freedonia-custom-research-041718 The majority of proppant demand in North America comes from the US, with Canada occupying a mere 13% of the market in 2016. Canada's market share has decreased since 2006, when it provided over 30% of North American demand for proppants. Particularly in the US, the onset of widespread unconventional drilling practices resulted in a boom in demand for proppants. While a sizable amount of unconventional drilling has taken place in Alberta and Saskatchewan, Canada's unconventional plays have not seen a strong rebound like the Permian and Oklahoma plays in the US and remained much less active in 2016. While raw frac sand has always been the dominant product type, its market position has increased even further since 2011. Raw frac sand accounted for over 95% of all proppant volume in North America in 2016, with resin-coated sand (RCS) and ceramic proppants being used only as a supplement to raw sand or in especially deep, high-pressure, high-temperature wells (e.g., in the Gulf of Mexico). Also see: #3515 Drilling Fluids & Chemicals Market in the US (May 2017) About The Freedonia Group, a division of MarketResearch.com The Freedonia Group is a leading international industrial research company publishing more than 100 studies annually. Since 1985, we have provided research to customers ranging in size from global conglomerates to one-person consulting firms. More than 90% of the industrial companies in the Fortune 500 use Freedonia Group research to help with their strategic planning. Additional Energy & Petroleum studies can be purchased at www.freedoniagroup.com, www.marketresearch.com and www.profound.com. Press Contact: Corinne Gangloff +1 440.684.9600 [email protected] SOURCE The Freedonia Group Related Links https://www.freedoniagroup.com/ This week in our biology class we went out into the hills of the Dingle Peninsula to examine the breed of Natterjack toads. These toads are one of three amphibians in all of Ireland! Also, there are no snakes in Ireland! How interesting is that? The Natterjack toads have been studied here in Dingle for a long time and they originated from Spain. Here are some pictures of them as well as a newt who was hiding in a small pond. It is very important to always be thinking about the environment! WALTHAM, Mass., April 17, 2018 /PRNewswire/ -- Raytheon Company (NYSE: RTN) will issue its first quarter 2018 earnings news release at 7 a.m. EDT Thursday, April 26, 2018. The release will be posted on Raytheon's website. The first quarter 2018 earnings results conference call will be at 9 a.m. EDT Thursday, April 26, 2018. The call will be audiocast on the Internet at www.raytheon.com/ir. Charts to be referenced during the call will be available on the website for printing prior to the call. Participants are urged to check the website ahead of time to ensure their computers are configured for the audio stream. Instructions for obtaining the required downloadable software are posted to the site. About Raytheon Raytheon Company, with 2017 sales of $25 billion and 64,000 employees, is a technology and innovation leader specializing in defense, civil government and cybersecurity solutions. With a history of innovation spanning 96 years, Raytheon provides state-of-the-art electronics, mission systems integration, C5I products and services, sensing, effects, and mission support for customers in more than 80 countries. Raytheon is headquartered in Waltham, Massachusetts. Follow us on Twitter. Investor Relations Contact Kelsey DeBriyn +1.781.522.5141 Media Contact Corinne Kovalsky +1.781.522.5899 SOURCE Raytheon Company Related Links http://www.raytheon.com Ms. Bruni, who assumes this position, after serving more than 16 years at J.P. Morgan, will be responsible for serving the international trade finance needs of MUFG's Asian Corporate Banking clients in the United States and Japanese Corporate clients in Canada. Based in New York City, Ms. Bruni will report to Steven Lotito, Managing Director and Head of Trade Finance for North America. "MUFG's trade finance business has an extensive global network that covers a majority of trade flows around the world," said Mr. Lotito. "We are dedicated to providing our clients with the best customized trade solutions that help them expand their business and Regina's impressive global perspective, and more than 20 years of trade finance expertise, makes her an ideal addition to our team." Bruni has nearly 25 years of international trade experience. She joins MUFG after serving as Head of Global Trade and Loan Products with J.P. Morgan in Brazil, where she was responsible for the trade business in Latin America. Previously, she was Global Trade and Loan Products Latin America Country Head (Andean region), based in Chile. In addition, Bruni held management positions in global trade sales and international trade in North America and Latin America with Banco Do Brasil and NationsBank/Bank of America. She is fluent in Portuguese and English. About MUFG Americas Holdings Corporation Headquartered in New York, MUFG Americas Holdings Corporation is a financial holding company, bank holding company and intermediate holding company with total assets of $154.6 billion at December 31, 2017. Its main subsidiaries are MUFG Union Bank, N.A. and MUFG Securities Americas Inc. MUFG Union Bank, N.A. provides an array of financial services to individuals, small businesses, middle-market companies, and major corporations. As of December 31, 2017, MUFG Union Bank, N.A. operated 361 branches, comprised primarily of retail banking branches in the West Coast states, along with commercial branches in Texas, Illinois, New York and Georgia, as well as 19 PurePoint Financial Centers and one international office. MUFG Securities Americas Inc. is a registered securities broker-dealer which engages in capital markets origination transactions, private placements, collateralized financings, securities borrowing and lending transactions, and domestic and foreign debt and equities securities transactions. MUFG Americas Holdings Corporation is owned by MUFG Bank and Mitsubishi UFJ Financial Group, Inc. MUFG Bank, Ltd. is a wholly-owned subsidiary of Mitsubishi UFJ Financial Group, Inc., which is one of the world's leading financial groups. Visit www.unionbank.com or www.mufgamericas.com for more information. About Mitsubishi UFJ Financial Group and MUFG Bank, Ltd. Mitsubishi UFJ Financial Group, Inc. (MUFG) is one of the world's leading financial groups, with total assets of approximately US $2.8 trillion as of 31 December 2017. Headquartered in Tokyo and with approximately 350 years of history, MUFG is a global network with over 2,300 offices across more than 50 countries. The Group has about 150,000 employees and close to 300 entities, offering services including commercial banking, trust banking, securities, credit cards, consumer finance, asset management, and leasing. The Group's operating companies include MUFG Bank, Ltd., Mitsubishi UFJ Trust and Banking Corporation (Japan's leading trust bank), and Mitsubishi UFJ Securities Holdings Co., Ltd., one of Japan's largest securities firms. MUFG Bank, Ltd. is Japan's premier bank, with a global network spanning around 50 countries. Outside of Japan, the bank offers an extensive scope of commercial and investment banking products and services to businesses, governments and individuals worldwide. Through close partnerships among our operating companies, the Group aims to "be the world's most trusted financial group", flexibly responding to all of the financial needs of our customers, serving society, and fostering shared and sustainable growth for a better world. MUFG's shares trade on the Tokyo, Nagoya, and New York (NYSE: MUFG) stock exchanges. For more information, visit www.mufg.jp/english. SOURCE Mitsubishi UFJ Financial Group, Inc. LOS ANGELES, April 16, 2018 /PRNewswire/ -- Acai is an ingredient known for health-boosting antioxidants and fiber, which is why Robeks is celebrating this berry powerful superfood this spring. Robeks most popular acai products are center stage this season, accompanied by the Robeks Power Up Photo Contest. Robeks is partnering with Zola, the Plant-Powered Hydration drink company that powers our Robeks Acai smoothies and bowls, to host the Robeks Power Up Photo Contest, a social media contest and acai promotion. To participate, Robeks customers can post a photo of themselves on Instagram enjoying their favorite Robeks acai bowl or smoothie. Entrants must follow @Robeks and @LiveZolaUS on Instagram, using the hashtag #POWERUPCONTEST. The contest runs through May 27, 2018. The first-place winner will get a $500 Robeks gift card and two second place winners will get a $250 gift card. For official rules and regulations, visit www.robeks.com/powerup. A variety of Zola-powered acai offerings are available at Robeks, including best sellers: Acai Energizer- a smoothie jam-packed with all of the antioxidants and vitamins that acai has Acai Strawnana Berry Bowl- a bowl with acai as its base, it also includes the delicious granola and fruit toppings that are all hand crafted right in front of the customer For more information on Robeks, visit www.robeks.com. Follow the brand on Facebook and Instagram. About Robeks Fresh Juices & Smoothies For over 20 years, Robeks Fresh Juices & Smoothies has been serving delicious, good-for-you smoothies and juices using only the best fruits, freshest vegetables, and natural ingredients. That will never change. With more than 80 locations nationwide, Robeks Fresh Juices & Smoothies continues to grow and expand its reach throughout the U.S. To learn more about the menu or franchising opportunities visit: www.robeks.com SOURCE Robeks Fresh Juices & Smoothies Related Links http://www.robeks.com SAN LUIS OBISPO, Calif., April 17, 2018 /PRNewswire/ -- In response to the limited functionality of current safety applications and troubling sexual assault statistics, Ulzi, (http://ulzi.com/), has developed an innovative smartphone app to give consumers the freedom to live their life freely, without having to worry about the safety of themselves or their loved ones. In response to the limited functionality of current safety applications and troubling sexual assault statistics, Ulzi, (http://ulzi.com/), has developed an innovative smartphone app to give consumers the freedom to live their life freely, without having to worry about the safety of themselves or their loved ones. Ulzi looks to address the most important key to ending violent assault: to bring empowerment to those who can intervene before an assault happens. Ulzi has created an app that gives everyone an opportunity to come to their friends' aid, giving peace of mind to their loved ones and increasing safety everywhere, "one community at a time." Ulzi has launched an Indiegogo campaign, (https://www.indiegogo.com/projects/personal-freedom-through-artificial-intelligence-apps-community#/ ), to spread awareness about their app among consumers and the investment community. Beyond bringing awareness of the issue, Ulzi looks to address the most important key to ending violent assault: to bring empowerment to those who can intervene before an assault happens, preventing trauma all together. Ulzi has created an app that gives everyone an opportunity to come to their friends' aid, giving peace of mind to their loved ones and increasing safety everywhere, "one community at a time." According to Rape, Abuse & Incest National Network, (https://www.rainn.org), the nation's largest anti-sexual violence organization, one in four women is assaulted during her college career. Additionally, a violent crime is committed every 25 seconds in the U.S., according to U.S. Department of Justice FBI crime statistics. "Ulzi's mission is to take away all of those safety worries and give you your liberty back - the freedom to do what you want when you want, without having to plan your life or base your decisions off of fear or worry," said Maxwell Fong, Ulzi co-founder. "We bring the community and artificial intelligence together in a unique, innovative way to keep you and your loved ones safe." Ulzi benefits include: Trusted Security: Advanced, multi-layered protection provides unmatched safety Advanced, multi-layered protection provides unmatched safety Connect with Your Friends: Help make your friends, family, and community safer Help make your friends, family, and community safer Better Location Tracking: Dispatch emergency response to your exact GPS location Dispatch emergency response to your exact GPS location Crowdsource Safety: Notify app users in your area as well as your loved ones so that when you're in trouble, you're never alone Notify app users in your area as well as your loved ones so that when you're in trouble, you're never alone All-In-One Security System: Built with multi-layered security for comprehensive safety, including innovative customizable features like Red Alert , Yellow Alert, Route Planning and Loved One Tracking, to take complete control of your protection on the go Built with multi-layered security for comprehensive safety, including innovative customizable features like , Yellow Alert, Route Planning and Loved One Tracking, to take complete control of your protection on the go Customizable Ulzi Geozones: Get sent alerts if a contact arrives or departs a location, and have alerts sent to your phone if a loved one or friend is in danger, anytime, anywhere Get sent alerts if a contact arrives or departs a location, and have alerts sent to your phone if a loved one or friend is in danger, anytime, anywhere Create Safe Routes: Plan, edit, and save routes: advanced monitoring allows Ulzi to detect any potential for violent and unsafe situations, like your phone getting knocked out of your hand, so you never have to wonder if your friends or family are safe Plan, edit, and save routes: advanced monitoring allows Ulzi to detect any potential for violent and unsafe situations, like your phone getting knocked out of your hand, so you never have to wonder if your friends or family are safe Yellow Alert: When you're in an awkward, uncomfortable, or unsafe situation, discreetly alert a friend to get you out Fong and co-founder Elan Timmons were inspired to start Ulzi after hearing about the sobering statistics on instances of sexual assault on college campuses. Ulzi is launching an Indiegogo campaign (https://www.indiegogo.com/projects/personal-freedom-through-artificial-intelligence-apps-community#/ ) to spread awareness about their app among consumers and the investment community. ABOUT ULZI Launched by two California Polytechnic State University-San Luis Obispo graduates, Ulzi's mission is to give everyone greater freedom to live life abundantly- to make everyone safer one community at a time. The team is made up survivors of sexual assault, their community members, and those that care deeply about making the violence statistics around the world change for good, one community at a time. For more information, please visit their Indiegogo page. Media Contact: George Pappas Conservaco/The Ignite Agency 949-339-2002 [email protected] http://ignitecfp.com SOURCE ULZI Related Links http://ulzi.com DANBURY, Conn. and HERZOGENAURACH, Germany, April 17, 2018 /PRNewswire/ -- The Schaeffler Group celebrated the 75th anniversary of its Danbury manufacturing operations located in the U.S. state of Connecticut. In just the past 15 years, the global manufacturer of precision components and systems for the automotive, industrial and aerospace sectors has invested over $55 million in its Connecticut operations. Georg F. W. Schaeffler, family shareholder and Chairman of the Supervisory Board of Schaeffler AG, as well as members of Schaeffler's Global and Regional Management Boards were joined at the festive event by numerous state and local dignitaries, including Connecticut Governor Dannel Malloy and Danbury Mayor Mark Boughton. A manufacturing powerhouse in the Constitution State since 1942 Founded in Danbury in 1942, Barden started out as a manufacturer dedicated to the production and inspection of miniature and instrument-precision ball bearings for military applications. Approximately 17 years ago, the Barden brand and the Danbury facility became part of the Schaeffler Group, and today the site is known for producing super-precision bearings with exotic finishes and surface treatments for sophisticated aerospace applications. "The high-precision products that are made right here in Danbury are crucial to Schaeffler's success in the U.S. and around the world," said Dr. Stefan Spindler, CEO of Schaeffler's Industrial division. "Nearly eight decades of experience as a full-service supplier of super-precision bearings have made the Barden brand an indispensable anchor of Schaeffler Aerospace within our Industrial division." A tradition of investing in plant, equipment and people Over the past 15 years, Schaeffler has invested $55 million in its Connecticut facilities, and the company continues to invest in Danbury's future. Moreover, Schaeffler offers vocational training programs in conjunction with local institutions such as Henry Abbot Technical School that, together with the continued financial assistance from the State of Connecticut, ensure Danbury has access to a steady stream of talented new employees. "Connecticut's manufacturing industry is a significant driver of innovation and exports, and world-class companies like Schaeffler are largely the reason why," Governor Malloy said. "Thanks to our targeted investments in the manufacturing sector and talent pipeline, our state has established a reputation as a global leader in advanced manufacturing. Schaeffler's commitment to our state and our residents is proof that Connecticut is a great place to do business, and I look forward to many more celebrations as this wonderful partnership continues to flourish." Made in Danbury, used in outer space Today, "Made in Danbury" is an integral part of Schaeffler's manufacturing operations in the U.S. From "quiet-running" bearings that allow U.S. Navy submarines to run with less noise than their predecessors idling at port, to the out-of-this-world reliability of high-precision bearings aboard NASA's recently concluded Cassini mission, Danbury continues to provide innovative bearing solutions for the most challenging applications and harshest operating environments. 6,000 Schaeffler employees in the USA Headquartered in Fort Mill, SC, Schaeffler Group USA Inc. has approximately 6,000 employees working at facilities spread throughout South Carolina, Ohio, Missouri, Michigan and, of course, Connecticut. About Schaeffler The Schaeffler Group is a global automotive and industrial supplier. Top quality, outstanding technology, and exceptionally innovative spirit form the basis for the continued success of the company. By delivering high-precision components and systems in engine, transmission and chassis applications, as well as rolling and plain bearing solutions for a large number of industrial applications, the Schaeffler Group is already shaping "Mobility for tomorrow" to a significant degree. The technology company generated sales of approximately EUR 14 billion in 2017. With more than 90,000 employees, Schaeffler is one of the world's largest family companies and, with approximately 170 locations in over 50 countries, has a worldwide network of manufacturing locations, research and development facilities, and sales companies. Schaeffler Twitter Facebook YouTube SOURCE The Schaeffler Group SEOUL, South Korea, April 17, 2018 /PRNewswire/ -- Seegene Inc. (096530.KQ), a leading developer of multiplex PCR technologies, announced that it will attend the 28th European Congress of Clinical Microbiology and Infectious Diseases ("ECCMID 2018") taking place in Madrid, Spain, from April 21 to 24, 2018, where it will introduce the "combination test," which is a high-efficiency solution that diagnoses various causes of diseases with multiplex molecular diagnosis assays. On April 22 at ECCMID 2018, Seegene will hold a symposium on the subject, "Expansion of the All-in-one platform, a solution for diagnosis of infectious diseases." Seegene will also showcase its molecular diagnostic system "SGSTAR" at its booth (#18), which is a system that allows order-to-report on the same day and enables the running of the combination test. The combination test is an efficient testing method that can accurately and timely detect pathogens for syndromic infectious diseases by simultaneously performing all possible tests for pathogens sharing similar symptoms from the same type of specimen. For example, in the case of a patient with respiratory symptoms, the combination test can accurately reveal the cause of the disease by simultaneously diagnosing whether the relevant symptoms are caused by tubercule bacillus or pneumococcus. Seegene's analysis of 325 patient samples suspected of having tuberculosis showed an unexpected result in which over one-third of the patients were infected with either tubercle bacillus and pneumococcus or just pneumococcus. This result demonstrated the utility of the combination test. Patients found with both tubercule bacillus and pneumococcus require integrated medical treatment, and if these patients miss the opportune time to receive treatment for tuberculosis, the symptoms can be further aggravated. Therefore, finding the exact cause of similar symptoms of infectious disease is critical; yet, in many cases, only one of the tests, whether for tubercule bacillus or for pneumococcus is prescribed. The need for a combination test has been presented through several medical journal articles. However, the wide spread of combined diagnostics has been hampered by non-clinical factors such as lack of reimbursement or cost of the tests. 'SGSTAR ("Seegene Sameday Test and Report")' is an innovative MDx solution, and is only available through Seegene. This unique MDx system provides order-to-report on the same day by simultaneously performing high multiplex real-time PCR testing on a single platform, regardless of specimen and assay type. With this system solution, the combination test can be concurrently implemented, and the test results can be provided on the very day of the patient's visit to the hospital. Dr. Jong-Yoon Chun, founder and CEO of Seegene, was confident in stating that, "In order to achieve on-time customized patient care and to foster a comprehensive delivery medical care to patients, a more objective and accurate testing method based on symptoms and samples is necessary. We believe that Seegene's combination test will be a breakthrough in achieving this." And he also added, "If the combination test is broadly applied, the exact cause of infectious diseases can be identified and treated. This not only contributes to the improvement in patient care, but also medical institutions and reimbursement system can save time and costs, which could create new value-added to the molecular diagnostic industry." At ECCMID 2018, Seegene will develop partnerships with general hospitals and reference laboratories for clinical studies to globally prove the effectiveness of the combination test. The combination test is not only for tuberculosis and pneumonia but is also available for HPV and sexually-transmitted infections (STI) as well as full panel tests for gastrointestinal infections (GI). About Seegene Seegene (KQ : 096530) is a world's leading developer of multiplex molecular technologies and multiplex clinical molecular diagnostics (M-MoDx). Seegene's core enabling technologies - DPO, TOCE, and MuDT - are the foundation for M-MoDx tests that can simultaneously detect multiple targets with high sensitivity, specificity and reproducibility. Seegene's products detect multi-pathogens with great reliability and throughput, ultimately providing the most economical basis for saving time, labor and cost. Seegene's mission is to maintain leadership in molecular diagnostics for infectious diseases, genetics, pharmacogenetics, and oncology using innovative proprietary technologies. For more information, please visit www.seegene.com. SOURCE Seegene Related Links http://www.seegene.com SAN FRANCISCO, April 17, 2018 /PRNewswire/ -- Sensely, a digital health company with operations in both London and San Francisco, today announced initial results of its popular virtual health assistant app, Ask NHS. Available for free on both iOS and Android, Ask NHS was launched one year ago, and has proven popular with patients who need advice when they have an urgent healthcare concern. Ask NHS is now the most frequently used triage app for navigating NHS services. Ask NHS quickly and easily allows patients to perform the following functions: Ask NHS Locate self-care information Book a doctor's appointment with participating providers Access a directory of local healthcare services Check symptoms and receive advice on next steps The service, which was initially trialed in the 4.5 million citizen West Midlands region, now has more than 100,000 members and is being deployed across additional UK regions. Ask NHS is currently ranked in the top 10 for UK medical apps, according to market intelligence platform SimilarWeb, and has garnered enthusiastic user reviews, with a current rating of 4.6 out of 5 on the UK app store. Post-usage surveys show similar user engagement, with a majority of surveyed users rating Ask NHS 8 or higher on a 1-10 scale in response to the question: How likely are you to recommend Ask NHS to your friends and family? Qualitative feedback has also been strong, with particularly positive response to Ask NHS's ease of use and convenience. Rachael Ellis, the lead NHS official who coordinated the procurement process on behalf of the trial region, commented, "The Ask NHS app is a really useful alternative for patients who need to obtain urgent advice on their health. They can receive advice 24 hours a day wherever they are and without them having to wait for or attend a GP appointment or going to A&E unless this is really necessary. This reduces the demand on GPs and on A&E departments so that they can concentrate on helping people with more complex needs and saves patients time and money." By creating a safe, reliable, and conversational digital access point for UK citizens, Ask NHS is able to deliver self-care transactions that cost the NHS a fraction of traditional telephony services, such as the widely used 111 service. In addition, according to the post-usage survey data, Ask NHS can save the NHS approximately 14% of its spend by shifting patient utilization towards lower cost, more efficient services. "An exciting aspect of these results is the aggregate channel shift, which helps enable the NHS to continue its mission of delivering world-class care for all its citizens, even at a time of increasing strain on the organization," said Adam Odessky, CEO and co-founder of Sensely. "Digital channels, when combined with a conversational user experience and clinically-validated health guidance, can have a transformative effect on large populations, enhancing patient satisfaction without compromising empathy." About Sensely Sensely helps direct patients and health plan members to the healthcare resource they need, when they need it. Offering an avatar and chatbot-based platform, Sensely intelligently and safely connects patients with clinical advice and services. With offices in London and San Francisco, and 1.4 million lives under contract, Sensely's global teams provide digital health solutions to insurance companies, pharmaceutical clients, and hospital systems worldwide. Media Contact: Adam Odessky or Dov Tamler [email protected] 415-290-3872 SOURCE Sensely HOFFMAN ESTATES, Ill., April 17, 2018 /PRNewswire/ -- To celebrate its recent partnership to provide drivers with thousands of dollars in everyday savings, Shop Your Way and GasBuddy will host a special gas station 'Tank Takeover,' awarding free gas to local Chicago residents. On Thursday, April 19, from 9 11am CT, brand representatives will be on-hand at a local gas station to reward lucky drivers who have the Shop Your Way and GasBuddy apps downloaded with up to $20 in free gas per vehicle. Shop Your Way will provide fuel throughout the morning, while supplies last. "We care about our members, and want to make life easier and more rewarding for them throughout their day," said Robert Naedele, chief commercial officer, Shop Your Way. "With Chicago gas prices at their highest in over the past three years, what better way to honor that promise than by picking up their fuel tab." This event is to celebrate the recent partnership between Shop Your Way and GasBuddy, whose Pay with GasBuddy gasoline payment service entitles hundreds of thousands of its users to a discount on nearly every gallon of gas they pump. Now, when Shop Your Way members who pair their account with Pay with GasBuddy service they will receive CASHBACK in Shop Your Way Points for every paid gas fill-up. CASHBACK in Points can be used on millions of items from Shop Your Way partners such as Sears, Kmart, Lands' End and at ShopYourWay.com. Drivers with both downloaded apps will receive free fuel on a first come, first served basis while supplies last*. For more information on the Tank Takeover location reveal, follow @ShopYourWay on Facebook and Twitter. Shop Your Way members who travel and fill up using the Pay with GasBuddy service can save hundreds per year on gasoline as they will receive**: $.30 /gallon CASHBACK in Points for paid fill-ups for first 60 days after pairing account with Shop Your Way /gallon CASHBACK in Points for paid fill-ups for first 60 days after pairing account with Shop Your Way $.15 /gallon CASHBACK in Points for every paid fill-up thereafter Shop Your Way members can learn more about GasBuddy and sign up for the service online via www.shopyourway.com/gasbuddy, instore at Sears and Kmart, or via phone (800.991.8708). *Customers participating in the Tank Takeover will receive one (1) complimentary gasoline tank fill-up per vehicle, up to a value of $20. Complimentary gasoline will be distributed in vehicle gas tanks only (i.e. no external gas canister fill-ups allowed). **Shop Your Way members will receive CASHBACK in Points after they use Pay with GasBuddy to purchase their first and subsequent gas fill ups. Points valid for 60 days. By accepting offer and Shop Your Way benefits, members agree to be bound by Shop Your Way Terms and Conditions available at www.shopyourway.com/terms. About Shop Your Way Shop Your Way is at your service 24/7 to help you in the moments that matter. Whether it's shopping your favorite brands, eating at your favorite restaurants, or simply taking an Uber to a party, you get rewarded with money-saving points that can be redeemed on millions of items across our Partner network. You can even connect with a free Personal Shopper to find everything on your list so that you can spend more time enjoying life and less time on the details. The benefits are endless with Shop Your Way, and they add up fast every time you connect. It's easy the more you do, the more you get, so start earning your rewards today. About GasBuddy GasBuddy is a smartphone app connecting drivers with their Perfect Pit Stop. With more than 70 million downloads, GasBuddy is the leader in crowdsourced information to help drivers find the best gas prices, closest stations, friendliest service, cleanest restrooms, tastiest coffee and much more. GasBuddy is the leading source for the most accurate, real-time fuel prices at more than 140,000 gas stations in the U.S, Canada and Australia. The Company's B2B Retailer Software-as-a-Service (SaaS), known as GasBuddy Business Pages, provide Fuel Marketers and Retailers their best opportunity to maintain their station information, manage their brand, and promote to their target consumer audience. NEWS MEDIA CONTACT: Sears Holdings Public Relations (847) 286-8371 GasBuddy Allison Mac (310) 571-5828 SOURCE Sears Holdings Corporation Related Links http://www.searsholdings.com sacw.net - 17 April 2018 The Washington Post Hindu anationalistsa defend accused rapists and shame India by Barkha Dutt April 11 [2018] An Indian social activist holds a placard in February 2017 during a protest against a rape at Hauz Khas village in New Delhi. (Sajjad Hussain/AFP/Getty Images) Dear India: Where are our candlelight marches, our outrage and our mass protests? Why have we been so muted in our response to the reported gang rapes of two girls, an 8-year-old child and a teenager? And no, our lazy tweets and our commiserating hashtags do not count. This week, two cases of rape and murder a one of a shepherd girl in Kathua in Jammu and Kashmir, the other in Unnao, in Indiaas most populous state, Uttar Pradesh a have been moments of acute national shame. They have proved how the powerful conspire to enable and protect sexual abusers. Worse, they have exposed the ugliest underbelly of India. Political and societal responses to these charges of rape have revealed entrenched misogyny, religious hatred and a shameful class bias. They have held up a mirror to the worst in us. We must confront this: The India we thought had changed has not changed at all. In 2012, a massive popular uprising against the gang rape of a medical student in Delhi, dubbed the aNirbhayaa (fearless) case, led to a tough new set of anti-rape laws. It was considered an inflection point in our conversation about gender. Now we know that not much is better or different. Not our politicians, not our hate-mongers a and sadly not even we, the people. For the ruling Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) and the government of Narendra Modi, the cases have been especially embarrassing, given the prime ministeras oft-quoted slogan of aBeti Bachao, Beti Padhaoa (aSave our Girls; Educate our Girlsa ). In the Unnao case, one of the accused rapists is a legislator of the BJP. The victim tried to commit suicide outside the house of Chief Minister Yogi Adityanath, a saffron-robed monk once billed as a possible successor to Modi. She alleged inaction by the state administration on her complaint, which she had filed last year. Instead, her father was arrested and died in police custody. The hospital report confirmed that he suffered 18 assault injuries, and he is on tape, not long before he died, naming the man whose goons beat him up: the brother of the lawmaker accused of the rape. In the Kathua case, you cannot read the police charge sheet without feeling nauseous. It details how a little child from the Bakherwal nomadic community had taken her familyas horses to graze in a nearby forest and never returned. The charges say she was repeatedly drugged, taken hostage and hidden inside a temple. One of the accused rapists (eight men have been arrested in connection with the case, including local police officers) was reportedly ainviteda from Meerut, hundreds of miles away, to participate. The child was strangled with her own scarf; a stone was then slammed on her head to amake sure that the victim [was] dead,a according to the charges. There is a photograph of her, smiling, wide-eyed and full of hope, in anticipation of a life yet to come. And there is a second photograph of her defaced body abandoned in the forest. You cannot look at the two pictures together without looking away almost instantly. The police say the rape and murder were part of a plot to adislodgea the shepherd community, which is Muslim, from the village. The case quickly took a hideous communal twist, with a self-appointed Hindu group (named the Hindu Ekta Manch- or Forum for Hindu Unity) staging marches in defense of the accused rapists, sounding nationalist slogans and waving the national flag a defiling all that the flag stands for. Two BJP ministers in the Jammu and Kashmir government also criticized the policeas investigation. Worse, a mob of lawyers blocked law enforcement officials when they arrived at court to file the charges, again seeking refuge behind the flag and slogans. Their demand was to take the case away from the state police and hand it over to a central agency. This was a hideous sectarian politicization of a childas rape. The silence of the top women ministers in the Modi cabinet on both the Kathua and the Unnao cases has been disturbing, and only undermines their track record as trailblazers. Women hold key portfolios of defense, foreign affairs, and information and broadcasting, among others. But what good are these path-breaking positions of authority if the women donat speak for female victims of violence and abuse? Not that men shouldnat lead by example. In 2012, the Nirbhaya gang rape in Delhi raised similar questions about whether it made any difference that a female politician governed Delhi and that the then-ruling party a the Congress a was helmed by a woman. Finally, we must reflect on our own responses. Sure, Indians are angry. We are tweeting furiously and writing posts on Facebook. But our class bias, especially in the media, has been unveiled. The Delhi rape of 2012 was close to the bone; it could have been any one of us or those who watched and read us. So the coverage that case got was instantaneous and intense. It has taken months for these cases to get to prime time. And even so, how many of us will move beyond our keyboards and spill over onto the streets a as we did for Nirbhaya? Kathua and Unnao are now known not just nationally but internationally. And yet, some will complain about this column appearing in a aforeigna newspaper. How aanti-national,a I will be told on social media by people missing the irony. These Hindu anationalistsa who spoke for accused rapists have shamed India, our constitution and, of course, Hinduism. o o o The New York Times, April 17, 2018 What the Rape and Murder of a Child Reveals About Modias India by Mitali Saran Image: A vigil for 8-year-old Asifa Bano in Jumma, India, on April 14.CreditJaipal Singh/EPA, via Shutterstock NEW DELHI a India is sliding toward a collapse of humanity and ethics in political and civic life, as the recent reports of the rape and murder of an 8-year-old girl from a seminomadic Muslim community in the disputed state of Jammu and Kashmir reveal. Politicians from Indiaas governing Bharatiya Janata Party defended the men accused of the crime and ignited a furious debate about the fundamental character of the country. The child was abducted in January and imprisoned for a week in a temple, where she was drugged, starved and raped repeatedly before being murdered. Her body was thrown into the forest. At the time the crime passed without much comment beyond the local press. Outrage finally exploded last week, after a front-page report in the Indian Express newspaper revealed terrifying details from the police charge sheet, including the fact that one of the accused, a police officer, had asked his co-conspirators to hold off killing the child so that he could rape her once more. The charge sheet and other reports strongly suggested that this was not a random crime but one deliberately in line with the ugly sectarian politics playing out across India. Intimidation of religious minorities and violence against them has increased since Prime Minister Narendra Modi led the Bharatiya Janata Party to power in 2014. Indiaas traditional secularism is now locked in battle with the new majoritarian, Hindu chauvinist politics he represents. The 8-year-old girl belonged to the Muslim Bakarwal people, who move with their sheep and horses between high mountain pastures in the summer and the plains of the Hindu-dominated Jammu region in winter. There is tension with local Hindus over the right to graze animals on the land. According to the police, the motive of the premeditated crime was to terrorize the Bakarwals and dislodge them from the area. The bereaved parents were not even allowed to bury the child in the village. They have since fled the area. A newly formed group called Hindu Ekta Manch, or Hindu Unity Forum, organized a protest march in defense of the accused, who include a retired government official and two police officers. Thousands joined in, many waving the Indian national flag. Vijay Sharma, a co-founder of the group and an organizer of the march, was also a high-ranking leader of Mr. Modias Bharatiya Janata Party in the region. Mr. Modias party shares power with a regional political party in the state of Jammu and Kashmir. Two B.J.P. ministers in the state government joined the protest in defense of the accused. aSo what if a girl died?a one of them remarked. aMany girls die every day.a They demanded that the investigation be transferred from the state police a the investigators included Muslim officers a to the federal Central Bureau of Investigation, a largely delegitimized institution that serves as a de facto arm of the ruling party. Lawyers at a court in the city of Jammu tried to physically prevent officials from filing charges against the accused and have threatened the lawyer who is representing the girlas family. Over the past week, horrified Indians have protested vigorously on social media and in some cities. The disgust and the fury at the complicity of politicians, and the federal governmentas silence, grew into a thunderous chorus demanding that the prime minister speak up and fire the ministers backing the Hindu Ekta Manch. Belatedly reacting to popular outrage, Mr. Modi finally said: aIncidents being discussed since past two days cannot be part of a civilized society. As a country, as a society, we all are ashamed of it.a He promised justice. His vague statement delicately alluded to another case in the northern state of Uttar Pradesh, where a lawmaker from Mr. Modias party is accused of rape. Mr. Modi stayed away from his partyas involvement in both cases. Yet instead of uniting India in horror, the incident has deepened religious, political and ethical divides. It has also made clear that there is no automatic political cost to crime or falsehood if it furthers the hegemonic political narrative. The politicians involved were sacked only after a huge public outcry. Government ministers, officials, right-leaning media and right-wing supporters have been perfectly sanguine about using the dead child to polarize society with whataboutery, fake news and wild conspiracy theories. A spokeswoman for Mr. Modias party, Meenakshi Lekhi, attacked opposition protests, suggesting that they were selective and opportunistic. aYou see their plan,a she said. aFirst shout aminority minoritya, then aDalit Dalita and now awomen womena and then try to somehow fix blame of state issues on the center.a An influential ex-editor tweeted that Muslim Rohingya refugees were to blame for the crime. A B.J.P. youth activist posted a comment, now deleted, on his Facebook page saying that the rape must have been fun. A pornography site reported a surge in searches for videos using the raped and murdered girlas name. The sense of national crisis today is because Indians feel a rising urgency to either counter this ethical collapse or to capitalize on it in the run-up to the next election. Mr. Modi came to power in 2014, and four years into his term, religious and cultural bigotry stands mainstreamed in Indian society. Many who voted for Mr. Modias economic promises are disappointed by his failure to deliver, and impatient with his deliberate silences around sectarian and sexual violence and hate speech by his party colleagues and ministers. The systematic destruction of democratic institutions is hard to ignore. The B.J.P. and its Hindu nationalist affiliates are bent on refashioning India into a country that is increasingly hostile to secular, democratic, pluralist and minority Indians. The rape and murder of the little nomad girl has thus taken on a larger meaning, reflecting the struggle for the fundamental character of India. An open letter to the prime minister signed by retired civil servants strongly protested athe agenda of division and hate your party a insidiously introduced into the grammar of our politics, our social and cultural life and even our daily discoursea and held him directly responsible for athis terrifying state of affairs.a This battle for the soul and future of India is likely to get more violent in the lead-up to the national elections, scheduled for next year. Mr. Modias B.J.P. is braced for a desperate, ugly fight and has a long history of using religious polarization to electoral advantage. It will be up to the citizens of India to fight for a tolerant, pluralist country and stop the degeneration of its civic and political life. Mitali Saran (@mitalisaran) is a columnist for the Business Standard newspaper based in New Delhi. o o o Indian Express Kathua chargesheet: In J-K child gangrape, rituals, a chilling invite and a police cover-up The chargesheet states that Ram masterminded the conspiracy to kidnap and, later rape and kill the girl. It states that he made SPO Khajuria and the juvenile a apart of the conspiracy and assigned them tasks separately and individuallya . Written by Muzamil Jaleel | New Delhi | Updated: April 11, 2018 THE EIGHT-YEAR-OLD was gangraped thrice inside the Devasthan or prayer hall, after the mastermind had aperformed ritualsa . One of the rapists was called from Meerut to asatisfy his lusta . The girl was confined using sedatives, then strangled and hit on the head twice with a stone a ain order to make surea she was dead. But not before another accused, a police personnel, asked the others to await because he wanted to rapea her one last time. And all this, to adislodgea a group of Bakherwal Muslim nomads from Rasana village in Kathua near Jammu. These are just some of the chilling details in the 18-page chargesheet filed Monday by J&K Policeas Crime Branch against the eight accused in the rape and murder of the girl who went missing from near her house in Rasana on January 10 a her body was found seven days later in the forests nearby. In the days that followed, the chargesheet states, the accused paid Rs 1.5 lakh as a bribe to local policemen who knew where the girl was kept and helped cover up the crime initially. The killing had sparked outrage across J&K with the government handing over the case to the Crime Branch following protests from the Bakherwal community. The case took a communal turn in Kathua, where an outfit called Hindu Ekta Manch was set up by politicians in support of the accused. Among those who backed the Manch were Lal Singh and Chander Prakash Ganga, two BJP ministers in Chief Minister Mehbooba Muftias Cabinet. Kathua chargesheet: In J-K child gangrape, rituals, a chilling invite and a police cover-up The storeroom where the victim was allegedly kept, in Kathua near Jammu. (Express Photo: Nirupama Subramanian) According to the chargesheet, the mastermind behind the rape and murder is retired revenue official Sanji Ram who is among the eight arrested, along with his son Vishal Jangotra and nephew, believed to be a juvenile. The Crime Branch had also arrested Special Police Officers (SPOs) Deepak Khajuria and Surinder Kumar, a Rasana resident Parvesh Kumar, Assistant Sub Inspector Anand Dutta and Head Constable Tilak Raj in the case. Dutta and Raj were arrested on charges of attempting to destroy evidence. According to the chargesheet, the girlas father Mohd Yousuf lodged a complaint on January 12 at the Hiranagar station that his daughter who ahad gone for grazing horses in the nearby forest at about 1230 hrs on January 10a had not returned. A FIR was lodged and police arrested Ramas nephew, leading to allegations of a cover-up by the Bakherwal community. On January 22, the case was transferred to the Crime Branch. The chargesheet states that Ram masterminded the conspiracy to kidnap and, later rape and kill the girl. It states that he made SPO Khajuria and the juvenile a apart of the conspiracy and assigned them tasks separately and individuallya . aaDeepak along with his friend Vikram went to Bitu Medical shop at Kottah Morh on January 7 evening and purchased one strip of Epitril 0.5 mg containing 10 tablets by showing the prescription of his uncle, who has a psychiatric problem and is under treatment. Although the medicine as per the prescription was not available with Bitu, he gave him Epitril 0.05 mg instead of the medicine written on the prescription,aa the chargesheet states. On the same day, it says, Ram asked his nephew to akidnapa the girl who aoften comes to the forests behind their house for grazing her horsesa . Subsequently, the juvenile ashared the entire plana worked out by Ram and Khajuria with aParvesh Kumar@Mannu, his close friend, and asked for his helpa . On January 10, the juvenile saw the girl asking about her horses. He told her that ahe had seen her horses and led her to the junglea . aHe also called accused Mannu. Sensing some trouble, the victim tried to flee but the juvenile stopped her by catching hold of her neck and covered her mouth with one of his hands and pushed her and she fell on the ground,a the chargesheet says. aThe victim fell unconscious and was raped by the juvenile (in the jungle). Thereafter, Mannu also attempted to rape her. They took her and kept her inside the Devasthan under the table over two plastic mats and then covered her,a it says. On the next day, the chargesheet says, the aparents of the girl reached the Devasthan and enquired froma Ram about the whereabouts of her missing daughter who told them that she may have gone to some relativeas housea . The prayer hall where the girl had been confined was kept locked by Ram. On the same day, according to the chargesheet, aKhajuria and the juvenile opened the Devasthan and again sedated the girl by pushing sedatives into her mouth and forced her to drink water subsequentlya . aOn January 11, the juvenile informed another accused Vishal Jangotra about the kidnapping of the girl telephonically and asked him to return from Meerut in case he wanted to satisfy his lust,aa the chargesheet says. On January 12, it says, Jangotra reached Rasana at 6 am. aAt around 8.30 am, the juvenile again went to the Devasthan and administered 3 sedative tablets to the girl while she was unconscious with empty stomach,aa the chargesheet says. By now, it says, a police party from the Hiranagar station, including Khajuria, had started searching for the girl. aKhajuriaacame to the house of accused Sanji Ram with another police official namely Iftikar Wania Khajuria advised the juvenile to ensure administering of sedatives to the victim in time,aa the chargesheet says. aDuring investigation it transpired that the accused Ram had already taken the accused police officials into confidence and settled the deal with them,a it says. The chargesheet says that Head Constable Raj, who was part of the search party, had asked Ram to bribe the police team. On January 12, Ram sent Rs 1.5 lakh to Raj through the juvenileas mother, it says. On January 13, the chargesheet says, aaaccused Vishal Jangotra, the juvenile and accused Ram went to the Devasthan where Ram performed ritualsa . Later, it says, Jangotra araped the nomad girl. Thereafter, the juvenile also raped the girla . After keeping the girl in the prayer hall for days, the chargesheet says, Ram told the other accused that it was time to kill her and adump her (body) in the foresta . aathe accused Mannu, Vishal and juvenile took the victim from the Devasthan to a nearby culverta accused Khajuria told the juvenile to wait as he wanted to rape the girl before she is killed,aa the chargesheet says. Describing the murder, the chargesheet states: aAfter committing the barbaric act of rape on the minor victim, the accused Khajuria kept her neck on his left thigh and started applying force with his hands on her neck in order to kill hera Khajuria was unsuccessful in killing her, the juvenile killed her by pressing his knees against her back while strangulating the girl by applying force on both the ends of her chunni. Thereafter, the accused, in order to make sure that the victim is dead, hit her twice on head with a stone.aa The body was dumped inside the prayer hall as the accused couldnat find a vehicle to transport it. On January 15, the chargsheet says, Ram adirecteda the other accused to athrow the body in the jungleaa. o o o scroll.in, April 12, 2018 How India reacts to the Kathua perversion will determine if the nationas moral slide can be arrested Rarely before has India so clearly faced its darkest side and refused to recognise it. by Samar Halarnkar There are, in the life of every nation, defining moments, thresholds or rubicons crossed, red lines violated, precedents set. One such defining moment is now unfolding in the town of Kathua (which is derived from a word in the local Dogri language apparently means ascorpionsa ) in the troubled state of Jammu and Kashmir. Here, in what they call the Crown of India, hundreds of townsfolk have thrown in their lot with eight men, including four police officers and a teenager, suspected of repeatedly raping, drugging, brutalizing and, finally, battering to death with a stone an eight-year-old girl whom they confined for days in a temple two months ago; police officers later tried to destroy forensic evidence by washing the girlas clothes. Protest marches, with the national flag and two ministers from the ruling Bharatiya Janata Party in attendance, wound through the town, lawyers screaming aJai Shri Rama tried to prevent the police from filing the chargesheet, the judge accepted the chargesheet only after superiors from the High Court intervened, and the town shut down on Wednesday in solidarity with the suspects. All the while, opposition political parties, including the supposedly secular Congress, and televisionas talking and shouting heads ignored every new perversion and every move towards a new red line. On Indiaas normally angry, heaving streets, where thousands once raged against the rape of a young woman called Nirbhaya, aIndiaas daughtera , all was at peace. Advertisement There is only one reason men accused of such a heinous crime have widespread public support: like the majority of people in Kathua, the suspects are Hindu; the girl was Muslim. Rarely before in 21st century India have such cruel and nakedly sectarian instincts been deployed to justify the gang rape and murder of a child. Rarely before has there been such an insult to Indiaas flag a it was used earlier this decade to drape the coffin of a Hindu who murdered Muslims in Dadri, Uttar Pradesh a its traditions and Constitution. Rarely before has India so obviously faced its darkest side and refused to recognise it. In other words, there is every evidence that the national shame of Kathua is a defining moment. How the justice system, politicians, media and the public at large react from here on as the case comes to wider national attention a mainly by force of social media a may define how India reacts tomorrow to similar crimes and situations involving religion and children, and if it will hold on to its modern, founding ideals, at a time of growing religious stress. Towards an apartheid state Former foreign secretary Nirupama Menon Rao spoke for millions of Indians horrified by the death of Asifa, the daughter of a nomad Muslim family who was abducted while grazing horses. The rape was part of a plan by radicalised Hindus to drive Muslims from the area. The plotters represent many millions of such Hindus who have crossed many defining moments; and in doing so are reaching a or already have reached a the conclusion that India must eventually become an apartheid state, a Hindu rashtra where the Hindu has first claim to everything. Indeed, on the day Hindu (and some Sikh) lawyers a they want the investigation, which is almost complete, handed over to the Central Bureau of Investigation a tried to stop the Jammu and Kashmir Crime Branch from handing over the chargesheet to the reluctant judge, a BJP legislator from Rajasthan urged Hindus to follow his lead and bar Muslims from their homes. In the cascade of depressing defining moments that have overwhelmed India this century a from killings in the name of love and religious purity to murders in the name of the holy cow a the Kathua case is particularly egregious because it involves a child, it involves a region where inter-religious relations are hanging by a thread, and it involves a nation more willing than ever to discard the rule of law. There is no shortage of child rape in India. Every day there are reports, usually ignored, of infants and children violated, battered and, often, murdered. These rapes are sometimes so violent that there are calls for an automatic death sentence to the rapists. That demand was answered recently in three states, Rajasthan, Madhya Pradesh and Haryana, all ruled by the BJP, which is why it is ironic that the party has not just stayed silent about Asifaas gruesome end but supported the alleged rapists and murderers. Rule of the mob Indeed, that is the difference between the horror of Kathua and other assaults on children a nowhere else and never have the perpetrators received official and public backing because they belong to a particular religion. The Kathua Bar Association in demanding a CBI inquiry argued that the state government had failed to aunderstand the sentiments of the peoplea . This is an old and dangerous argument. Something must be done because the majority demands it. It is an argument used to justify a variety of Indian outrages, from the censorship of cartoons, films and books to the crippling of the justice system after pogroms, such as the Delhi anti-Sikh riots of 1984 and the Gujarat anti-Muslim riots of 2002. Implicit in this asentiments of the peoplea position is that the law should cede authority to the mob. In volatile, rebellious Kashmir a where alienation from Indian authority is arguably at unprecedented levels and Hindu-Muslim relations tenuous a this stand is particularly dangerous, pushing the entire region towards a threshold of intolerance best kept at a distance. If they have the best interests of India at heart, the BJP and the prime minister can pull Kathua back from the precipice. It is not difficult: they need only say the right thing and let the law proceed without hindrance. The mob a as mobs often are a is cowardly. But to rein in the mob, the BJP must stand for what is just and lawful, qualities they have frequently abandoned when minorities are involved. It will mean a loss of face for the party among its radicalised supporters and the erosion of that vote bank. This may be too much to expect of a party whose spokespersons have been defending the suspects and questioning the investigation. Those, apparently, are Modias views of the matter. As Indiaas main opposition party, the Congress ended its strategic and disgraceful silence on Wednesday. It is not too late for Gandhi to say that he cannot accept the outrage in Kathua. In so doing, he will provide much-needed evidence that his party can a still a live up to the secular principles on which it was founded and of which it so frequently boasts. If there ever was a time for Gandhi to show he can be a leader for all Indians, and not simply imitate Modi in temple visits, it is now. As for the rest of us, if we cannot unilaterally and whole-heartedly demand justice for Asifa, if we do not accept her as Indiaas daughter, we are condemned to live another defining moment in the great, moral decline of India and join its slow slide towards the darkness. Samar Halarnkar is the editor of IndiaSpend, a data-driven, public-interest journalism non-profit. o o o The Telegraph, April 15, 2018 Killing a child: Consolidating a communal common sense Mukul Kesavan Empathy doesnt come easily to Indias prime minister. His silence after a number of Muslims were lynched by murderous vigilantes in the name of cow protection was broken only after gau goondas attacked Dalits since Dalits are part of the Hindu constituency that the Bharatiya Janata Party wants to consolidate. His more recent conspicuous silence was ended by a statement in a speech on April 13, the gist of which was later put out as two tweets by the prime ministers Twitter account. Narendra Modis sensibilities didnt allow him to specify the nature of the "recent incidents" to which he referred and of which, he declared, we, as a society, ought to be ashamed. We were left to infer that this careful euphemism referred to the rape of a young Dalit woman in Unnao and the death of her father in custody and the gang rape and murder of an eight-year-old Muslim girl in Kathua, Jammu. The uninformed reader would have never guessed from the prime ministers tweets the extent of his partys involvement in these "recent incidents". The main accused in the Unnao case is a BJP legislator who remained at large in a state run by the BJPs star chief minister, Yogi Adityanath, till the high court demanded that he be arrested. In Jammu, two BJP ministers addressed a demonstration organized by the Hindu Ekta Manch in defence of the men (policemen amongst them) charged with raping and murdering the eight-year-old girl. Inside the scope of a tweet, the prime minister went to some lengths to deflect attention from the specific contexts of these atrocities. Incidents like this, he wrote, "wherever they occur in the country" challenged our humanity. At the same time as he generalized Indias rape problem to skate over his partys unwillingness to move against the accused in Unnao and Kathua, he also tried to minimize his own prolonged indifference to these atrocities. His first tweet referred to the incidents "...which have been in public discussion the past two days..." as if to suggest that these had just come to his notice. The rape in Unnao occurred in the summer of 2017. The girl in Jammu was raped and killed in January this year. Her brutalization and death made the headlines last week because the Hindu Ekta Manch and Jammus high court bar association, urged on by two BJP state ministers, came out in defence of the rape accused. The Hindu Ekta Manch had been agitating for the release of the special police officer arrested for her rape and murder since February. For a BJP prime minister to suggest that two grotesque crimes committed in two states governed singly or in coalition by his party were news to him amounts to either an abdication of responsibility or a form of deflection. The prime ministers belated tweets were damage control dressed up as concern. But the prime minister is right in thinking there is a larger sickness in our body politic flagged by the eight-year-olds horrifying death. The BJP is the vanguard of the vicious majoritarianism that threatens basic law and order and ordinary civility in this country today, but it represents something larger than itself. It wouldnt be in office if it didnt. The little girls death, its premeditation, its motives and the concerted bid to defend the policemen and civilians accused of her murder, show us the growing concert between majoritarian politicians and a communalized civil society. The bandh called by the Hindu Ekta Manch and the massive support shown by local lawyers for men accused of rape and murder testifies to the popularity of anti-Muslim feeling in Jammu. The chargesheet alleges that four policemen, a retired civil servant, a juvenile and a temple priest conspired to abduct the eight-year-old girl, to gang rape her in a temple, to strangle her and then to bludgeon her to death because they wanted to violently dislodge her pastoral Bakharwal community from its settlements in Kathua. The Hindu Ekta Manch and Jammus lawyers dismissed the chargesheet as a prejudiced narrative constructed by a Muslim investigating officer, a motivated attempt to disrupt communal harmony in Kathua where Hindus, Muslims, Sikhs and Christians had, according to them, traditionally lived in peace. Ironically, the four demands made by the Jammu High Courts bar association when it called for a bandh on April 11 support the chargesheets claim that the girls death was born out of a communal determination to purge the area of Muslims. Each of these four demands peremptorily orders the State to help Jammus Hindus show Muslims their place. The first asks that the Rohingya refugees settled in Jammu be thrown out simply because the lawyers suspected that they were behind the stone-pelting of Indian security forces. The second demand was for more summary legal action against tribal people (the Muslim Bakharwals are a scheduled tribe) allegedly because they encroached on land. The third asked for more vigorous action against cattle transporters in the cause of gau raksha. The final demand was that the little girls case be transferred to the CBI because the local investigation was headed by a Muslim who had communalized the issue by alleging that the rape was committed in a temple which was obviously false because such a thing was inconceivable. The only common factor in this malignant manifesto is that each demand targets Muslims for the greater good of Hindu civil society. What do refugees from Myanmars Rakhine province have in common with a murdered eight-year-old Bakharwal girl? The fact that the Rohingya and the Bakharwals are both Muslim. The second demand a the prosecution of encroaching tribals a actually supports the chargesheets allegation that there was a concerted attempt to expel the Bakharwals from Kathua. The allegation that the state government had been slack in its pursuit of cattle traders and the insistence that the local investigation into the girls murder was incapable of being impartial because it was headed up by a Kashmiri Muslim are evidence of the consolidation of a communal common sense in Jammu. The reason Rohingyas live exiled lives in Jammu and elsewhere in the world is because a thousand miles southeast of Jammu, Myanmars Buddhist majoritarians defined northern Rakhines Muslims out of political existence. This is what this concerted campaign by Jammus lawyers, the Hindu Ekta Manch and their BJP cheerleaders amounts to: the de-legitimization of Muslims, the active refusal to accept them as neighbours, citizens or refugees. The evil rape and murder of a child, the attempt to expel Muslim refugees, are some of the ways in which this monstrous process can play out. The prime minister said in his first tweet that "incidents like this, wherever they occur in the country shock our sense of humanity". He has this exactly the wrong way round: it is when we lose our sense of humanity, when we dehumanize others, that incidents like this occur. The eight-year-old girl died because her killers, premeditatedly, in cold blood, decided that she wasnt human. The prime minister got one thing right; there are hundreds of millions of Indians who are shocked and ashamed by her death. His most urgent task is to address those of his supporters in Jammu and elsewhere, who arent. o o o India: Selected References on the Kathua and Unnao Brutalities 1. An 8-Year-Olds Rape and Killing Fuels Religious Tensions in India https://www.nytimes.com/2018/04/11/world/asia/india-girl-rape.html 2. Childs rape, killing in India mire in religious politics https://www.washingtonpost.com/world/asia_pacific/childs-rape-murder-in-india-mired-in-religious-politics/2018/04/12/30f8956a-3e1d-11e8-955b-7d2e19b79966_story.html?utm_term=.779835af1e4a 3. Kathua rape case: Chargesheet filed by Jammu and Kashmir Police https://www.firstpost.com/india/kathua-rape-case-chargesheet-filed-by-jammu-and-kashmir-police-reveals-details-of-horrific-crime-4427405.html 4. Asifa, Betrayed Over And Over https://www.ndtv.com/blog/asifa-betrayed-over-and-over-1836718 5. Kathua rape-murder: Asifaas family flees village https://timesofindia.indiatimes.com/india/kathua-rape-case-asifas-family-flees-village/articleshow/63739153.cms 6. Unnao Rape Case: What Has Happened So Far - A Timeline https://www.ndtv.com/india-news/unnao-rape-case-what-has-happened-so-far-a-timeline-1836833 7. Unnao rape case: Hereas everything you need to know http://indianexpress.com/article/india/unnao-rape-case-bjp-mla-kuldeep-singh-sengar-arrested-5137445/ 8. India ruling party lawmaker arrested on rape allegation https://www.washingtonpost.com/world/asia_pacific/indias-nationalist-lawmaker-arrested-on-rape-allegation/2018/04/13/dd143c98-3f83-11e8-955b-7d2e19b79966_story.html?utm_term=.c138fbdb207b 9. Kathua rape and murder case: Full text of chargesheet filed by Jammu and Kashmir Police https://www.firstpost.com/india/kathua-rape-and-murder-case-full-text-of-chargesheet-filed-by-jammu-and-kashmir-police-4426853.html 10. Kathua rape, murder case was a plot to dislodge Muslim Bakarwal community: J&K Police chargesheet https://scroll.in/article/875143/kathua-rape-murder-case-was-a-plot-to-dislodge-muslim-bakarwal-community-j-k-police-chargesheet 11. Jammu and Kashmir: Can the Forest Rights Act protect tribal communities in Jammu from eviction? https://scroll.in/article/872826/can-the-forest-rights-act-protect-tribal-communities-in-jammu-from-eviction 12. aTricolour in hands of Jammu youth could become AK-47a: Jammu Bar Association chief to govt http://indianexpress.com/article/india/tricolour-in-hands-of-jammu-youth-could-become-ak-47-jammu-bar-association-chief-to-govt-5135334/ 13. Using our national flag to defend a rapist a now thatas anti-national | By Barkha Dutt https://www.hindustantimes.com/columns/using-our-national-flag-to-defend-a-rapist-now-that-s-anti-national/story-iuju6wstoYRmrWFWuUjoKK.html 14. Kathua victimas mother: aThe girl who loved horses, meadowsa now in a lonely gravea http://indianexpress.com/article/india/kathua-rape-victims-mother-the-girl-who-loved-horses-meadows-now-in-a-lonely-grave/ 15. Kathua, Unnao: Shame on us | Pratap Bhanu Mehta http://indianexpress.com/article/opinion/columns/living-inside-a-black-hole-unnao-kathua-rape-and-murder-case-5135187/ 16. The Disquieting Nature of BJPs Response to Violence Against Women | Radha Kumar https://thewire.in/women/bjps-response-to-violence-against-women 17. The Real Instinct Lurking Behind the Kathua Horror | Aproorvanand https://thewire.in/communalism/genocidal-instinct-kathua-horror 18. No More Calmly Sailing By, Not After What Happened in Kathua |Anuradha Roy https://thewire.in/communalism/no-more-calmly-sailing-by-not-after-what-happened-in-kathua 19. What a childas death tells us | Tavleen Singh http://indianexpress.com/article/opinion/columns/what-a-childs-death-tells-us-kathua-rape-murder-case-5137756/ 20. Kathua rape: Ensure justice, UN to govt; BJP-PDP alliance under threat? http://www.business-standard.com/article/current-affairs/kathua-rape-case-modi-vows-unnao-kathua-victims-justice-rahul-gandhi-tweets-when-mufti-pdp-bjp-alliance-jammu-top-10-developments-118041400170_1.html 21. Kathua Rape: Exposing a Viral List of Lies From Ground Zero https://www.thequint.com/news/webqoof/what-really-happened-kathua-rape-case 22. An Open Letter to Yogi Adityanath http://khabarlahariya.org/justice-for-unnao-convict-rengar-open-letter-from-2011-rape-survivor-sheelu-nishad-to-uttar-pradesh-chief-minister-yogi-adityanath/ 23. Killing a child: Consolidating a communal common sense https://www.telegraphindia.com/opinion/killing-a-child-223413 24. The Little Girl of Kathua https://thewire.in/women/the-little-girl-of-kathua 25. The Last Five Days of Asifa http://www.openthemagazine.com/article/crime/asifa-the-anatomy-of-a-hate-crime 26. Sunday of protests as thousands across India demand justice in Kathua and Unnao rape cases https://www.hindustantimes.com/india-news/sunday-of-protests-as-people-seek-end-to-sexual-violence-against-women-demand-justice-in-kathua-and-unnao-rape-cases/story-tZagLwsy4yRh1hPE5bvVyK.html SAN FRANCISCO, April 17, 2018 /PRNewswire/ -- In the age of digital commerce and infinite choice, shoppers expect more high-touch retail experiences, according to a report published today by Narvar, the post-purchase experience leader. The report, "Connecting with Shoppers in the Age of Choice," analyzes responses from 1,543 U.S. online shoppers, evaluating the ways customers prefer to communicate with their favorite brands throughout the shopping journey. The boundary between online and offline is blurring as consumers integrate shopping experiences into their everyday lives. Sixteen percent of American adults39 millionnow own a smart speaker like a Google Home or Amazon Echo. Meanwhile, the retail industry is expected to invest $422 million in augmented reality (AR) and virtual reality (VR) over the next four years. The Narvar study found that 41 percent of consumers currently shop or plan to shop using the voice assistant on their phone, 31 percent via voice-controlled device, and 21 percent via AR or VR technology on a smartphone. Chatbot use, meanwhile, is nascent but growing: 29 percent of consumers use or plan to use chatbots to shop online. As people get accustomed to shopping using these technologies, they are using these channels for more than researching products. The study found that 30 percent of shoppers use voice to track their packages nearly as many as the 36 percent who use it to add items to their shopping list. As shopping behaviors evolve, so are consumers' expectations for proactive updates from retailers. Eighty-three percent of shoppers say they expect regular communication about their purchases, while just eight percent say they get too many notifications. "To deliver customer care at its highest level, brands will need to anticipate customers' wants and needs, using technologies like voice and chatbots to communicate with shoppers at every point of their journey," said Amit Sharma, Founder & CEO of Narvar. "The retailers that succeed in building loyalty with shoppers will be those that connect with people personally and communicate proactively." Key findings from Narvar's "Connecting with Shoppers in the Age of Choice" report include: Consumers are loyal to retailers that invest in customer care Shoppers will return to retailers who go above and beyond expectations to make them feel cared for. 54 percent of shoppers would give repeat business to a retailer that accurately predicts the date their package will arrive. 77 percent would give repeat business to a retailer that resends lost or damaged items with expedited shipping. Retailers stand to gainor losecustomers based on the returns process Consumers have little tolerance for hassles related to returns; they expect ease, transparency and flexibility. 76 percent of shoppers would give repeat business to a retailer that makes returns and exchanges easy. 67 percent opt to return online purchases through the mail, but 25 percent won't buy something if they don't have the option of returning to a physical store. Voice shopping is poised to go mainstream As voice technologies become present in people's living rooms, cars and phones, consumers are shopping more via voice. Device ownership has increased 42 percent in the last six months. Shopping via device has increased 41 percent in the last six months. Voice is present through the entire shopping experience Voice shopping includes much more than product discovery and transactions; people are using voice throughout their shopping journeys. Because voice device owners are more likely than other shoppers to select automatic replenishment services, retailers have an opportunity to present them with more experimental predictive experiences. 51 percent of shoppers use voice to research products, 36 percent use it to add items to their shopping list, and 30 percent use voice to track a package. 52 percent of voice device owners opt into subscription services and automatic reordering, compared to 30 percent of all shoppers surveyed. Shoppers embrace bots, and forgive them for not being perfect Shoppers are becoming more comfortable using bots to resolve simple customer care issues, but expect human support for help with complex questions, high-value and considered purchases, or nuanced issues. 65 percent of shoppers say they like using chatbots because the bots are available at any time. 14 percent say they don't like chatbots at all, compared to 25 percent just six months ago. The complete report detailing the findings of the study is available at Narvar.com. About Narvar Narvar helps retailers inspire loyalty beyond reason. As an enterprise-grade customer experience platform serving 400+ retailers like Sephora, Patagonia, Home Depot, Gap, and Bose, Narvar enables seamless post-purchase experiences that retain, engage, and delight customers from cart to doorstep, and beyond. With effortless order tracking, proactive communications, and seamless returns, Narvar applies machine learning across billions of interactions to simplify the everyday lives of consumers. For more information, visit narvar.com SOURCE Narvar Related Links http://www.narvar.com "Our mission is to help companies grow, from startups to large-scale enterprises, and one of the best ways to put them on the path to success is with proper signage that lets them stand out from their competition," said Evan Foster , National Director for Signarama Australia. "The Boost Your Business contest allows us to support a local business in a big way with a refreshed look featuring our broad array of signage options," he added. How It Works The Boost Your Business contest is open to registered businesses in Australia, including shops, restaurants, factories, offices and more. All entries must be submitted online at www.signarama.com.au/makeover-competition. Entrants will answer in 25 words or less how new signage will boost their business. Entries will be accepted until May 31, 2018. One entry per participant. A panel of judges will determine the winner. The grand prize winner will be announced around early June 2018. The prize package is valued at $15,000. The Signarama located closest to the winner will fulfill the makeover package. Businesses must be in eligible states and territories to qualify. Contest excludes NT. For full contest details and rules, visit the contest page. Signarama is a full-service sign network. From indoor and outdoor signs to vehicle signs to specialty signs, Signarama offers a number of options for customers to attract new business. Their team of experts is available for projects from start to finish, including consultation, design, production, project management, installation and fulfillment. Australia has 105 Signarama locations. The newest store opened in Fyshwick, ACT in February 2018. For more information about Signarama, visit online at www.signarama.com.au. About Signarama Signarama, the world's largest sign franchise, offers branding and messaging solutions in addition to comprehensive sign and graphic services to consumers and commercial customers from business signs, vehicle wraps, and digital signs, to advertising and marketing services. Signarama is part of a successful system of business-to-business franchise brands and development services under the United Franchise Group (UFG). As part of the $49-billion-plus worldwide sign market, Signarama has been at the forefront of the sign industry for more than two decades. Signarama was ranked Number 35 on Entrepreneur Magazine's Top Global Franchises list in 2016. With over 800 locations in 60 countries, the company expects to have more than 1,500 locations worldwide by the end of 2020. For more information, visit www.signaramafranchise.com.au. MEDIA CONTACT: Ashley Soto 305-631-2283 x1005 [email protected] SOURCE Signarama Related Links http://www.signarama.com.au Sotera Health committed to Safeguarding Global Health with Nordion's increased focus on global gamma technologies business BROADVIEW HEIGHTS, Ohio, April 17, 2018 /PRNewswire/ -- Sotera Health LLC, the world's leading, fully integrated protector of global health, today announced that it has entered into a definitive asset purchase agreement to sell the Medical Isotopes segment of its Nordion business to a subsidiary of BWX Technologies, Inc. (BWXT). This transaction will create a platform that will accelerate growth for both companies. "The world's need for gamma technology has expanded dramatically as the demand for sterilization of medical and non-medical applications has accelerated in response to increasing global regulatory demands and growing healthcare needs," said Michael Petras, Chief Executive Officer of Sotera Health. "The sale will enable BWXT to enter the medical isotope field with highly skilled employees and specialized facilities that are recognized as the best in the business. As the world's only fully integrated provider of mission-critical services to the healthcare industry, Sotera Health is excited about the additional value Nordion will bring to our gamma customers, and our other best-in-class businesses, Sterigenics and Nelson Labs." Through the agreement, BWXT will acquire essentially all of Nordion's medical isotope assets, including the radiochemical operation and contract manufacturing services in Kanata, and the medical isotope operation in Vancouver, British Columbia. Both companies will continue to operate from Nordion's state-of-the-art licensed facility in Kanata, Ontario. Approximately 150 employees will transition to BWXT at the close of the sale. "Nordion will continue to focus on accelerating growth in gamma technologies, including industrial and medical cobalt-60 which fits perfectly with Sotera Health's broader mission of Safeguarding Global Health," said Kevin Brooks, President of Nordion. About Sotera Health: Sotera Health LLC, along with its business entities, is the world's leading, fully integrated protector of global health. With over 500 years of combined scientific expertise, the company ensures the safety of healthcare by providing mission-critical services to the medical device, pharmaceutical, tissue and food industries. Sotera Health operates more than 61 facilities in 13 countries. The company has over 2,600 employees globally and touches the lives of more than 180 million people around the world each year. Sotera Health serves more than 5,000 customers worldwide including 75 of the top 100 medical device manufacturers. Sotera Health goes to market through its three best-in-class companies Nelson Labs, Nordion and Sterigenics - with the mission of ensuring the safety of healthcare each and every day. Nelson Labs offers microbiological and analytical testing and consultancy to assist customers in developing and maintaining sterilization solutions in medical devices, tissue/implantable products, and the pharmaceutical and biologics fields. Nordion is the world's largest provider of Cobalt-60 used in the gamma sterilization process as well as medical isotopes used in the diagnosis and treatment of various diseases and cancers. Sterigenics provides comprehensive contract sterilization and ionization solutions for the medical device, pharmaceutical, food safety and high-performance materials industries. Sotera Health LLC is owned by private equity firms Warburg Pincus and GTCR. Learn more about Sotera Health at soterahealth.com, about Nelson Labs at nelsonlabs.com, about Nordion at nordion.com and about Sterigenics at sterigenics.com. Contacts: Paul Monlezun Public Affairs Advisors 613-222-7184 [email protected] Kristin A. Gibbs Chief Marketing Officer Sotera Health LLC [email protected] 440-262-1412 SOURCE Sotera Health Related Links http://soterahealth.com Kimberly S. Greene will succeed Evans as chairman, president and CEO of Southern Company Gas. Stan W. Connally, Jr. will assume Greene's responsibilities as executive vice president of operations for Southern Company while continuing to serve as chairman, president and CEO of Gulf Power. "At Southern Company we are committed to having the best leadership team in the industry," Fanning said. "Today's announcements show that our leadership development continues to advance the knowledge and experience that serves our customer-focused business model to provide clean, safe, reliable and affordable energy along with premier customer service." Prior to being named chief financial officer, Beattie was executive vice president, chief financial officer and treasurer of Alabama Power from 2005-2010. He served as vice president and comptroller of Alabama Power from 1998-2005 and vice president, secretary and treasurer from 1992 through 1997. Before becoming an officer of Alabama Power, Beattie served in a variety of positions within the company's accounting, finance, treasury and corporate governance organizations. He first joined the company in 1976 as a junior accountant. Beattie has served on many non-profit boards, including the Alabama Power Foundation, the Alabama School of Fine Arts, the Alabama Trust Fund and the Greater Birmingham Salvation Army Advisory Board. Beattie and his wife, Angie, have three daughters, Jenna Lauren, Jessica Leigh, and Julie Lynne. "Art has enjoyed a remarkable career at Southern Company and has led us through some incredible moments in our history," Fanning said. "He rose to the highest ranks of the company due to his sound fiscal discipline, strategic ideas and strong professional drive. We're happy for him as he enters this new chapter of his life, but we're equally as sad to say goodbye to someone who's been an integral part of our company's growth." Evans was named CEO of then-AGL Resources in 2015. He joined the organization in 2002 and has held several positions of leadership including president, chief operating officer and chief financial officer and company treasurer. Prior to joining the company, he served in various finance and business development roles over a nine-year period at Mirant Corporation (formerly Southern Energy Inc.). Evans is a graduate of Emory University and the Booth/Kellogg program, CEO Perspectives. He lives in Atlanta with his wife, Faye. Greene began her career at Southern Company in 1991, progressing through various areas of engineering, operations and finance. She has served as COO since 2014, a role she assumed one year after returning to Southern Company as president and CEO of Southern Company Services. Prior to returning to Southern Company, she spent five years at Tennessee Valley Authority serving in executive roles including chief financial officer and chief generation officer. Greene earned a bachelor's degree in engineering science and mechanics from the University of Tennessee, a master's degree in biomedical engineering from the University of Alabama at Birmingham and a master's degree in business administration from Samford University. She serves on the board of Valero Energy Corporation. Connally has served as CEO of Gulf Power since 2012. He joined the Southern Company system in 1989 as a co-op student at Georgia Power's Plant Yates. After holding several positions in various functional areas, including customer operations, sales and marketing, and power generation, he was named sales manager for Georgia Power's central region in 1998. Connally later served as plant manager of Mississippi Power's Plant Watson and Plant Daniel and eventually plant manager of Plant Barry at Alabama Power. Prior to joining Gulf Power, he was senior vice president and senior production officer for Georgia Power. Connally earned a bachelor's degree in mechanical engineering from Georgia Institute of Technology and completed the executive education program at Emory University. He serves on the board of the Electric Power Research Institute (EPRI) and Capital City Bank Group. About Southern Company Southern Company (NYSE: SO) is America's premier energy company, with 46,000 megawatts of generating capacity and 1,500 billion cubic feet of combined natural gas consumption and throughput volume serving 9 million customers through its subsidiaries. The company provides clean, safe, reliable and affordable energy through electric operating companies in four states, natural gas distribution companies in seven states, a competitive generation company serving wholesale customers across America and a nationally recognized provider of customized energy solutions, as well as fiber optics and wireless communications. Southern Company brands are known for excellent customer service, high reliability and affordable prices that are below the national average. Through an industry-leading commitment to innovation, Southern Company and its subsidiaries are inventing America's energy future by developing the full portfolio of energy resources, including carbon-free nuclear, 21st century coal, natural gas, renewables and energy efficiency, and creating new products and services for the benefit of customers. Southern Company has been named by the U.S. Department of Defense and G.I. Jobs magazine as a top military employer, recognized among the Top 50 Companies for Diversity by DiversityInc, listed by Black Enterprise magazine as one of the 40 Best Companies for Diversity and designated a Top Employer for Hispanics by Hispanic Network. The company has earned a National Award of Nuclear Science and History from the National Atomic Museum Foundation for its leadership and commitment to nuclear development and is continually ranked among the top energy companies in Fortune's annual World's Most Admired Electric and Gas Utility rankings. Visit our website at www.southerncompany.com. SOURCE Southern Company Related Links http://www.southerncompany.com SEATTLE, April 17, 2018 /PRNewswire-USNewswire/ -- Former Microsoft CEO Steve Ballmer to hold "America's Shareholder Meeting" a live webcast and phone call walking Americans through where tax dollars come from, where they go, and what they result in. Meeting is TODAY, April 17th, Tax Day in the United States. Watch it here: https://live.usafacts.org Or here: USAFacts on Facebook Or call in here: 1-877-407-6169 (toll free) or 201-689-8797 About USAFacts USAFacts is former Microsoft CEO Steve Ballmer's non-profit, non-partisan civic initiative aimed at making government numbers more available, accessible, and understandable to Americans. This is the second year USAFacts has created an Annual Report and 10-K, reports created by USAFacts when Ballmer discovered the government didn't provide the kind of comprehensive reporting for citizens that publicly traded companies are required to do for shareholders. SOURCE USAFacts Related Links https://usafacts.org DAYTON, Ohio, April 17, 2018 /PRNewswire/ -- STRATACACHE today announced that Manish Kumar will lead all Asia-Pacific operations in the region, taking on the new role of Senior Vice President and Managing Director of Asia-Pacific. In this position, Kumar will have direct oversight into sales, services and support activities across the STRATACACHE brands, aligning operations with region-specific needs in the digital media/marketing technology market. Earlier this year, Kumar was named Vice President, Investments - Asia-Pacific for STRATACACHE Capital, helping lead deal discovery and investment on a global scale. He was a driving force behind the exponential sales growth STRATACACHE and Scala saw throughout the region in the first quarter. "Manish's vast business experience as well as contributions leading the STRATACACHE Capital team have proven he's focused on growing our brand on a global scale, realigning our offerings throughout Asia-Pacific to focus on continual growth in intelligent visual and consumer engagement solutions," said Chris Riegel, CEO of the STRATACACHE family of companies. Kumar first joined STRATACACHE in 2013, initiating and overseeing growth in the Indian market while leading sales, development, customer relations and operations in this strategic market. As a result of his work, STRATACACHE's global footprint has expanded to be the industry leader in digital signage throughout India. Possessing a Masters of Project Management and Masters of Technology Management from the Australian National University, coupled with an MBA in Marketing, Manish has an accomplished career in technology, strategic acquisitions and global business. Prior to joining STRATACACHE, Manish was Vice President at ContentKeeper Technologies, a global leader in innovative, enterprise internet filtering and security solutions. There he was successful in identifying channel and vertical opportunities in each market and increasing market revenue. About STRATACACHE STRATACACHE provides scalable customer experiences, empowering retailers to learn deeply about their customers' shopping preferences and behaviors, allowing for personalized shopper interaction. Our solutions deliver consumer activation at the point-of-decision, generating new sales opportunities and enhanced retail profitability. With 2 million+ software activations globally, we power the biggest digital networks for the world's largest brands. Across the STRATACACHE family of complementary digital media/ad tech solution companies, we have the technology, expertise and track record to bring retail innovation that delivers results. Learn more about the STRATACACHE family at www.stratacache.com, on Twitter @STRATACACHE or on Facebook. SOURCE STRATACACHE Related Links http://www.stratacache.com MADISON, Wis., April 17, 2018 /PRNewswire/ -- Sub-Zero and Wolf, the industry leaders in refrigeration, wine preservation, and premium cooking equipment, will showcase their extended product offerings at EuroCucina 2018, the International Kitchen Furniture Exhibition, April 17-22 at the Milan fairgrounds. This will mark the company's third time participating on the exhibition grounds, showcasing for the international audience its innovative, high-quality products and contemporary designs. Sub-Zero and Wolf continue to illustrate their commitment to performance and purposeful design with their latest product offerings. From Sub-Zero, the new Sub-Zero 24" integrated column refrigerator/freezer features a refrigerator and freezer behind one solid door for a seamless look, will be on display. From Wolf, the updated convection steam oven with button-less controls, and updated cooking modes, ventilation products including a ceiling-mounted hood and under-cabinet hood insert, and the new vacuum seal drawer will be at the booth. "We are always working to improve upon and expand our product offering to meet the needs of homeowners across the globe," said Jim Bakke, president and CEO of Sub-Zero Group, Inc. "Our new products at EuroCucina this year are a reflection of this, and a testament to how the engineers, chefs, and design professionals work together to provide feedback and testing to create best-in-class products." Sub-Zero and Wolf's 220-square-meter exhibit will be located in Hall 11 at Stand A20 and A26 in the Technology for the Kitchen (FTK) event area, with unique and thought-provoking applications for each appliance. In addition to new refrigeration and cooking appliances, guests will have a chance to experience a number of other product lines, including Wolf cooking modules, Sub-Zero refrigerator drawers, and select outdoor products. Throughout the booth, stunning designs will feature Sub-Zero and Wolf appliances in contemporary, transitional, and professional styles paired with high-end building materials, demonstrating the company's ability to meet consumer and design professionals' evolving needs across the world. Brand executives and engineers will be on hand to discuss product performance and features throughout the show. EuroCucina, with 120 exhibitors occupying more than 23,000 square meters of space, is Europe's only major trade show in the industry. The Milan fairgrounds will host the fair from 09:30 to 18:30, April 17-22. The event is open to members of the trade exclusively April 17-20, expanding to the general public April 21-22. For more information and tickets, click here. A third-generation, family-owned company, Sub-Zero and Wolf appliances are manufactured in the United States using only premium-quality materials that are proven to stand the test of time. For further information, or to reach a Sub-Zero and Wolf distributor in your area, please visit subzero-wolf.com. About Sub-Zero Group, Inc. Sub-Zero Group, Inc., headquartered in Madison, Wis., manufactures best-in-class appliance brands Sub-Zero and Wolf. Founded in 1945, Sub-Zero, Inc. is the leading America-based manufacturer of refrigeration, freezer, and wine storage products. Sub-Zero, the preservation specialist, pioneered the concept of dual refrigeration, ensuring that food stays fresher longer. With the acquisition of Wolf Range Company in 2000, Sub-Zero Group, Inc. added the industry specialist in residential cooking appliances with products including ranges, cooktops, wall ovens, warming drawers, and ventilation equipment. In its third generation of family ownership, the privately held company also operates manufacturing facilities in Fitchburg, Wis., and Goodyear, Ariz. Sub-Zero Group, Inc. is continually recognized for the highest achievements in appliance innovation and customer satisfaction. For more information about Sub-Zero and Wolf, visit subzero-wolf.com or follow us at facebook.com/subzerowolf, on Twitter @subzerowolf, or on Instagram @subzeroandwolf. For Sub-Zero and Wolf Customer Care, call 800-222-7820. SOURCE Sub-Zero and Wolf Related Links http://www.subzero-wolf.com ZURICH, April 17, 2018 /PRNewswire/ -- Chain IQ Group is developing very well the company has expanded its global customer base to 30 renowned major customers. Furthermore, Stefano Aversa and Douglas D. Haynes, two international distinguished top experts, were elected to the Board of Directors at the General Assembly of April 16, 2018. Since its inception in May 2014, Chain IQ has made significant achievements within a very short period of time accompanied by steady growth. Based on the spend volume the enterprise is meanwhile ranked as one of the top procurement companies globally, serving more than 30 international, well-known clients across a multiple of industries in more than 20 countries. At the Annual General Meeting of April 16, two new members were elected to the Board of Directors of Chain IQ Group. Stefano Aversa (London based) is currently serving as Managing Director, Chair of Europe, Middle East & Africa and Vice-Chair Revenue of AlixPartners, LLP. A talented and highly skilled turnaround expert with more than 30 years of experience, Mr. Aversa works with investors, Boards, and managements of industrial companies, developing business plans, driving financial and operational turnarounds, and implementing large-scale performance improvement programs. Stefano Aversa joined AlixPartners from A.T. Kearney, where he was global leader of the automotive and aerospace practice. Mr. Aversa has assisted several global industrial companies through strategic and operational transformations in Europe, North America, and Asia and led more than 100 engagements, including some of the most complex and largest international turnarounds and transformations. Stefano Aversa is a member of the World Economic Forum, the Clinton Global Initiative, and he is the Chairman of Andrea Bocelli Foundation. Douglas D. Haynes (New York based) last served as President of Point72. Prior to joining Point72, Mr. Haynes was a Director at McKinsey & Company for more than 20 years. Mr. Haynes is boasting an outstanding leadership and an impressive track record. While his engagement as Director for McKinsey he led the client service to multiple of the world's largest and most valuable enterprises ranking in the Fortune 50, he led the US Northeast region, with P&L responsibility for 1200 total staff and 120 partners and he co-led the practices for Operations (globally) and US High Tech hardware and services. Mr. Haynes delivered strategic, performance improvement, and business building projects for industry leaders in High Tech, Industrials and Financial Services. Moreover, he served on the review and promotion committees for electing Principals and Directors and served as global Dean of Engagement Manager professional development program. Previously, Douglas D. Haynes worked for the Central Intelligence Agency (CIA) and for GE's advanced materials business. He is an active community member and serves for several Boards. Claudio Cisullo, Founder and Executive Chairman of Chain IQ Group: "I am delighted Stefano Aversa and Douglas D. Haynes are joining the Chain IQ Group Board of Directors. They both are outstanding personalities with a comprehensive strategic expertise and an impressive track record. Their tremendous experience and skills will support to further strengthen and expand Chain IQ and to raise the company to its next level." Picture is available at AP Images (http://www.apimages.com) This media release is also available at www.chainiq.com/media-releases Chain IQ is an independent, global service company providing strategic, tactical and operational procurement for its clients. Chain IQ operates from its main centers Zurich (headquarters), New York, London, Singapore, Mumbai and Bucharest and is currently servicing more than 20 countries (including China, Hong Kong, Japan and Australia). Information/Contact: Elisabeth Ehrsam, Head of Public Relations and Public Affairs to the Chairman, Chain IQ Group, [email protected] SOURCE Chain IQ Group AG Related Links https://chainiq.com/ The Sunstar Foundation has celebrated the 1st Perio Link Award to bring scientific innovations in the relationship between oral and general health closer to the general population. Since 2003, the Sunstar Foundation recognises the best research papers about this relationship in distinguished awards such as the World Perio Research Award. This new prize, however, is a step forward to increase awareness among the population about how oral health is related to all the body. (Photo: https://mma.prnewswire.com/media/677286/1st_Perio_Link_Award_Infographic.jpg ) As Dr Marzia Massignani explains, Scientific Affairs Manager of Sunstar, "most of the times scientific news are exclusive to the technical community due to the network where they are naturally shared. However, we strongly believe that news impacting general health should be shared with all the population, which can directly benefit by being informed about how to improve their wellbeing. Therefore, the 1st Perio Link Award aims to share technic news from the field of oral and general health with non-science audience more simply and engagingly". The Sunstar Foundation Scientific Committee chaired by Prof. Robert J. Genco selected twenty-three papers based on impact in the field of oral and general health in the last three years. Every first author explained in a one-minute video the main objectives and findings of his paper. Finally, the viewers voted online for the best video to win the 1st Sunstar Perio Link Award. And the winner is the paper: Resolvin E1 Reverses Experimental Periodontitis and Dysbiosis, published in October 2016 by the Journal of Immunology and written by Lee CT et al. The paper, in detail, shows how we can improve the treatment of periodontal disease by having a pharmacological control of inflammation with natural molecules and, at the same time, reverse the periodontal process. The first author will be awarded during the Perio Link Night organised by the Sunstar Foundation on June 22 in Amsterdam. SOURCE Sunstar Foundation RANCHO SANTA MARGARITA, Calif., April 17, 2018 /PRNewswire/ -- SweeGen, a nature-based sweetener company, announced today that the Federal Commission for Protection Against Health Risks (COFEPRIS), led by Julio Sanchez y Tepoz, has approved SweeGen's next-generation, non-GMO Reb D sweetener derived from the stevia leaf for use in food and beverage categories already approved for steviol glycosides. This follows a review of the composition and manufacturing process of SweeGen's non-GMO Reb D stevia leaf sweetener, with documentation submitted to the organization earlier this year. SweeGen's Reb D has received positive regulatory feedback from multiple countries in a short timeframe and is now approved in the US, Peru and Mexico, with pending world-wide approvals. The company's non-GMO Reb M stevia leaf sweetener already received approval by COFEPRIS in 2017. SweeGen uses a proprietary bio-conversion process to produce both of its high-purity sweeteners. According to the OECD Health Statistics 2017, Mexico had one of the highest obesity rates worldwide. In June 2014, the country introduced a sugar tax and food and beverage manufacturers have since looked for ways to replace the sugar with zero-calorie alternatives. Reb D brings a clean sweetness from the stevia leaf, a great sugar-like taste and a sweetness time-intensity very similar to sugar. It can be used in a variety of applications such as dairy, bakery, table-top sweeteners, confectionary and beverages as well as nutritional foods and beverages. "Consumers want great tasting alternatives to sugar that are plant-based and non-GMO," said Katharina Pueller, director, natural sweetener business of SweeGen. "By using our non-GMO Reb M and Reb D stevia sweeteners, food and beverage manufacturers in Mexico can now provide healthier, reduced-calorie products without compromising taste." About SweeGen SweeGen (OTC: SWEE) is dedicated to the development, production and distribution of non-caloric sweeteners for the food, beverage and flavor industries. SweeGen's robust product pipeline, intellectual property portfolio, dedicated manufacturing capacity and R&D provide the company its foundation for innovation and delivery of high-quality sweeteners. For more information, please contact [email protected] or visit SweeGen's website www.sweegen.com. Cautionary Statement Concerning Forward-Looking Statements This press release contains forward-looking statements including statements regarding the future outlook and performance of SweeGen, Inc., and other statements based on current management expectations, estimates and projections. These statements are subject to a variety of risks and uncertainties, are not guarantees and are inherently subject to various risks and uncertainties that could cause actual results to differ materially from the forward-looking statements. These risks and uncertainties include, without limitation, those that may be discussed from time to time in the company's filings with the Securities and Exchange Commission. The forward-looking statements included in this news release are only made as of the date of this release, and SweeGen, Inc. disclaims any obligation to publicly update any forward-looking statements to reflect events or circumstances after the date hereof or to reflect the occurrence of unanticipated events. SOURCE SweeGen, Inc. Related Links http://www.sweegen.com Dr. Zachary VandeGriend is board-certified in otolaryngology and neck surgery. He has extensive expertise in facial plastic surgery, as well as nasal and sinus disease. He can be reached at 614-9250. WASHINGTON, April 17, 2018 /PRNewswire-USNewswire/ -- The Certified Development Company (CDC) Small Business Finance, a California-based SBA 504 CDC Lender, Community Advantage Lender and Microloan Intermediary, has been selected as this year's Jody C. Raskind Award recipient. This recognition is presented annually by the U.S. Small Business Administration to a mission-focused lender that has distinguished itself in helping small businesses start, grow and expand. The award will be presented by SBA Administrator Linda McMahon to CDC Small Business Finance President and Chief Executive Officer Kurt Chilcott on April 29, during the inaugural event of National Small Business Week at the U.S. Institute of Peace, in Washington, D.C. CDC Small Business Finance has facilitated over $13 billion in financing to more than 11,000 small businesses, which created and preserved 193,000 jobs. Over 20 percent of CDC Small Business Finance's loans have been made to minority small business entrepreneurs, including women and military veterans. Under Chilcott's leadership, CDC Small Business Finance became one of the first Community Advantage lenders certified and has been the number one lender in the nation since. CDC Small Business Finance approved over $47 million in capital to 369 businesses and created/retained over 3,000 jobs. CDC Small Business Finance's SBA microloan recipients totaled 254 historically, benefitting from $8.3 million in financing. In FY17 alone, they funded $1.4 million in SBA microloans, more than doubling the capital provided in FY16. Those microloan borrowers received 12 hours of post-funding business advice and created 200 jobs. The Jody C. Raskind Award was first presented in 2015 to honor mission lenders that demonstrate extraordinary commitment to the creation, growth and expansion of small businesses in underserved markets with a demonstrable impact on the communities it serves. Raskind led the SBA's Office of Microlending for many years, and was widely known in the microlending community for her commitment and dedication to small businesses, particularly in underserved areas. She died in 2014. CDC Small Business Finance's dedication to serving the most underserved and economically disenfranchised markets, acting as a champion and advocate for the interests of small business located in these communities, embodies the essence of Jody C. Raskind's legacy. Each year since 1963, the President has issued a proclamation calling for the celebration of National Small Business Week. This year National Small Business Week will be recognized April 29 May 5, with events planned in Washington, D.C., Florida, South Carolina, and North Carolina. For more information on the national events, visit www.sba.gov/nsbw. About the U.S. Small Business Administration The U.S. Small Business Administration makes the American dream of business ownership a reality. As the only go-to resource and voice for small businesses backed by the strength of the federal government, the SBA empowers entrepreneurs and small business owners with the resources and support they need to start and grow their businesses. It delivers services to people through an extensive network of SBA field offices and partnerships with public and private organizations. To learn more, visit www.sba.gov. Contact: [email protected] www.sba.gov/news Follow us on Twitter, Facebook, Blogs & Instagram Release Number: 18-25 SOURCE U.S. Small Business Administration Related Links http://www.sba.gov ATLANTA, April 17, 2018 /PRNewswire/ -- The Greater Women's Business Council, Inc. (GWBC), the largest provider of certification and development resources for women business enterprises (WBEs) in Georgia, South Carolina and North Carolina, today announced 11 corporations selected as its 2018 TOP Corporations of the Year. These corporate partners, who have demonstrated a passion for inspiring, engaging, empowering and furthering the success of women-owned businesses, will be recognized at a celebratory luncheon on April 30 at The St. Regis Atlanta. GWBC's 2018 TOP Corporations of the Year for Women's Business Enterprises are: WestRock UPS Sonoco SunTrust Randstad Grady Health Georgia Power Company The Coca-Cola Company BMW Manufacturing AT&T Accenture "These exceptional corporations are leaders and champions in contributing to the success and growth of our region's women-owned businesses, and we're honored to showcase these 'best in class innovators' in supplier diversity and procurement as our annual TOP Corporations of the Year," said Roz Lewis, president & CEO of GWBC. GWBC partners with dozens of major companies who are committed to providing a sustainable foundation to bring education, training and the standardization of national certification to women businesses in Georgia, North Carolina and South Carolina. The power of these partnerships can be seen through the numbers: GWBC's constituency is comprised of more than 900 certified WBEs that staff more than 58,000 employees and generate more than $5.6 billion in revenue. GWBC's TOP Corporations of the Year Awards is unique in that each corporate honoree's award is presented through a real-world testimony of a WBE partner whose business has been directly impacted by their support. Judged by a panel of WBEs, criteria for the GWBC TOP Corporations of the Year awards include corporations that are members of the organization; have a dedicated supplier diversity program serving Georgia and the Carolinas; meet and exceed spend goals with WBEs; and actively participate in educational and development activities with WBEs in the region. For more information on GWBC visit www.gwbc.biz. ABOUT THE GREATER WOMEN'S BUSINESS COUNCIL, INC. The Greater Women's Business Council, Inc. (GWBC) is a not-for-profit organization that provides nationally-recognized certification through its Women's Business Enterprise National Council (WBENC) network, innovative programming and value-driven events customized to the unique needs of women business owners (WBEs) in Georgia, South Carolina and North Carolina. GWBC's constituency is comprised of more than 900 certified WBEs, dozens of corporate member partners, government entities and business alliances united to inspire, engage and empower women-owned businesses. A Regional Partner Organization of WBENC, GWBC is headquartered in Atlanta, Ga., with a satellite office in the Carolinas. SOURCE The Greater Womens Business Council, Inc. Related Links http://www.gwbc.biz DALLAS, April 17, 2018 /PRNewswire/ -- The Howard Hughes Corporation (NYSE: HHC) announced today that it will release 2018 first-quarter earnings on Tuesday, May 1, 2018 after the market closes and will hold its first-quarter conference call on Wednesday, May 2, 2018 at 10:00 am Eastern Time. The Company's earnings release will be posted to the Company's website prior to the conference call in the Investor section. To participate in The Howard Hughes Corporation's first-quarter earnings conference call, please dial 1-877-883-0383 within the U.S., 1-877-885-0477 within Canada, and 1-412-902-6506 when dialing internationally. All participants should dial in at least five minutes prior to the scheduled start time, using 7775977 as the passcode. A live audio webcast will also be available on the Company's website (www.howardhughes.com). A taped replay of the call can be accessed 24 hours a day through July 2, 2018 by dialing 1-877-344-7529 within the U.S., 1-855-669-9658 within Canada or 1-412-317-0088 when dialing internationally, using the passcode 10112373. About The Howard Hughes Corporation The Howard Hughes Corporation owns, manages and develops commercial, residential and mixed-use real estate throughout the U.S. Its award-winning assets include the country's preeminent portfolio of master planned communities, as well as operating properties and development opportunities including: The Seaport District in New York; Columbia, Maryland; The Woodlands, The Woodlands Hills, and Bridgeland in the Greater Houston, Texas area; Summerlin, Las Vegas; and Ward Village in Honolulu, Hawaii. The Howard Hughes Corporation's portfolio is strategically positioned to meet and accelerate development based on market demand, resulting in one of the strongest real estate platforms in the country. Dedicated to innovative placemaking, the company is recognized for its ongoing commitment to design excellence and to the cultural life of its communities. The Howard Hughes Corporation is traded on the New York Stock Exchange as HHC. For additional information visit www.howardhughes.com. Media Contact The Howard Hughes Corporation Cristina Carlson, 646-822-6910 VP, Corporate Communications & Public Relations [email protected] or Investor Relations The Howard Hughes Corporation David R. O'Reilly, 214-741-7744 Chief Financial Officer david.o'[email protected] SOURCE The Howard Hughes Corporation Related Links http://www.howardhughes.com NASHVILLE, Tenn., April 17, 2018 /PRNewswire-USNewswire/ -- The National Music Council has announced that jazz legends Chick Corea and The Manhattan Transfer will be honored at the organization's 35th annual American Eagle Awards on Thursday, June 28 at the Summer NAMM Show in Nashville. The honors are presented each year in recognition of long-term contributions to American musical culture and heritage, the importance of music education and inspiration for all children, and the need to protect creators' rights both locally and globally. "At this year's event, we are honoring the artists who bring life and imagination to one of our country's most revered and treasured genres of music jazz," said David Sanders, Director of the National Music Council. "The time has come to celebrate the enduring legacies and versatility of Chick Corea and all the members of The Manhattan Transfer. Each has set an extraordinary standard for ongoing contribution to American musical culture and heritage, and will rightly serve as a mentor or role model for aspiring jazz artists for years to come." Recognized as one of music's most influential stylists, Chick Corea has reached iconic status as a keyboardist, composer and bandleader. Corea is a DownBeat Hall of Famer and National Endowment for the Arts Jazz Master, as well as the fourth-most nominated artist in GRAMMY Awards history with 63 nods and 22 wins, in addition to a number of Latin GRAMMYs. From straight-ahead to avant-garde, bebop to jazz-rock fusion, children's songs to chamber and symphonic works, Corea has accessed an impressive repertoire of musical genres in the past fifty years since first performing with several Miles Davis bands in the late '60s and early '70s. Yet Corea has never been more productive than in the 21st century, whether playing acoustic piano or electric keyboards, leading multiple bands, performing solo or collaborating with a "who's who" of music. Underscoring his long list of accomplishments, he was also named Artist of the Year three times this decade in the DownBeat Readers Poll. The Massachusetts-born musician remains a tireless creative spirit, continually reinventing himself through his art. As The New York Times noted, he is "a luminary, ebullient and eternally youthful." A cornerstone for great pop and jazz hits, The Manhattan Transfer has built a legacy that began at the time of their very first recording 43 years ago. The legendary quartet of Alan Paul, Cheryl Bentyne, Janis Siegel and the late Tim Hauser, has been awarded 10 GRAMMY Awards of 20 nominations and has been inducted into The Vocal Group Hall of Fame. With sold-out world tours and worldwide record sales in the millions, The Manhattan Transfer continues to bring unique and extraordinary, melodic and jazz-infused vocals to new and established audiences that span generations. With the March 2018 release of The Junction, their extraordinary contribution to American popular music continues. The new American Eagle honorees will join a "who's who" list of cultural giants including Stephen Sondheim, Quincy Jones, Herbie Hancock, Clive Davis, Van Cliburn, Benny Goodman, Lionel Hampton, Dizzy Gillespie, Morton Gould, Dave Brubeck, Marian Anderson, Max Roach, Lena Horne, Roy Clark, Elliott Carter, Ervin Drake, Theo Bikel, Roberta Peters, Odetta, Leonard Slatkin, Sesame Street, Hard Rock Cafe, and VH1's Save the Music Foundation. In 2017, the NMC also recognized the indelible contributions of songwriter/poet, Patti Smith, country legend Crystal Gale, and comedian, musician and actor, Harry Shearer at the Nashville Summer NAMM Show. The National Music Council celebrates these great artists in part to highlight the importance of the 5 Musical Rights developed and enumerated in cooperation with the International Music Council. These rights are that all children and adults must have the freedom and ability to: (1) express themselves musically in all freedom; (2) learn musical language and skills; (3) have access to musical involvement through participation, listening, creation and information; (4) develop their artistry and communicate through all media; (5) obtain just recognition and fair remuneration for their work. This year's award ceremony will take place on the evening of Thursday, June 28 at Nashville's Music City Center, and is open to industry members and Summer NAMM attendees. Tickets for this event are also available to the general public. For more information on schedule, location details, tickets and sponsorship opportunities, visit www.musiccouncil.org or contact NMC Director David Sanders at [email protected]. Proceeds from the event support the National Music Council's music education advocacy efforts. The Summer NAMM Show is the mid-year global gathering of the National Association of Music Merchants (NAMM) and its many member companies, representing the global music products industry, including music instruments and pro audio products, music retailers and educators and house of worship professionals. The awards are presented with support from The NAMM Foundation, a non-profit which works to advance active participation in music making across the lifespan through scientific research, philanthropic giving and public service programs. About The National Music Council The US Congressionally-chartered National Music Council is celebrating its 77th year as a forum for the free discussion of this country's national music affairs and challenges. Founded in 1940 to act as a clearinghouse for the joint opinion and decision of its members and to work to strengthen the importance of music in our lives and culture, the Council's initial membership of 13 has grown to almost 50 national music organizations, encompassing every important form of professional and commercial musical activity. Through the cooperative work of its member organizations, the National Music Council promotes and supports music and music education as an integral part of the curricula in the schools of our nation, and in the lives of its citizens. The Council provides for the exchange of information and coordination of efforts among its member organizations and speaks with one voice for the music community whenever an authoritative expression of opinion is desirable. www.musiccouncil.org About The NAMM Foundation The NAMM Foundation is a non-profit supported in part by the National Association of Music Merchants and its 10,300 members around the world. The NAMM Foundation works to advance active participation in music making across the lifespan by supporting scientific research, philanthropic giving and public service programs. For more information about The NAMM Foundation, please visit http://www.nammfoundation.org. Media Contacts: Chalise Zolezzi Jeanne O'Keefe NAMM The Lippin Group for NAMM Director of PR and Social Media Vice President Phone: (760) 438-8001 Phone (323) 965-1990 E-mail: [email protected] E-mail: [email protected] SOURCE NAMM Foundation Related Links http://www.nammfoundation.org Who will become Europe's next tech success story? This is the question asked by EIT Digital, a leading European player in digital innovation and education. Companies focusing on digital deep tech solutions are invited to apply for the fifth annual EIT Digital Challenge. The best ten companies will receive prizes totaling 750,000, including comprehensive international growth support. The application deadline is 14 June 2018. The EIT Digital Challenge, the contest for European deep tech innovators, is now open for entries. Fast-growing startups that already have customers - so called scaleups - are invited to enter their successful technology products in one of the following five categories: Digital Industry, Digital Cities, Digital Wellbeing, Digital Infrastructure and Digital Finance. In each category, the best two companies will receive a full year of dedicated support from the EIT Digital Accelerator. The winner in each category will also receive a cash prize of 50,000. (Photo: https://mma.prnewswire.com/media/677468/EIT_Digital_Challenge_ApiOmat.jpg ) (Logo: http://mma.prnewswire.com/media/483248/eit_Digital_Logo.jpg ) The most comprehensive prize package with a total value of 750,000 "In this fifth year of the contest, we're offering our most comprehensive prize package ever, with a total value of 750,000, and admitting ten companies at once into our acceleration programme," says Dolf Wittkamper, Head of the EIT Digital Accelerator. The Accelerator comprises a team of around 40 experienced business developers and finance experts operating from 13 cities across Europe, along with a hub in Silicon Valley. Since 2012, the EIT Digital Accelerator has supported more than 270 startups to access new markets and raise capital. Focus on deep tech companies to drive Europe's digital transformation Both the Accelerator and the contest focus on deep tech innovations: cutting edge technologies which are built around unique and differentiated scientific or technological advances, and which are often protected or hard to reproduce. "Deep tech scaleups develop disruptive solutions that are crucial for Europe's future as they fuel digital transformation," says Chahab Nastar, Chief Innovation Officer of EIT Digital. "But even though VC investment into deep tech companies is growing fast, these companies face unique challenges. Within the EIT Digital Accelerator, the winners will receive the specific support that they need to acquire European customers and raise capital." "As a European deep tech entrepreneur, it's hard to find tailored events and startup competitions where people understand your product, so we were delighted to find out about the EIT Digital Challenge," says Marcel Etzel, who won with his agile cloud platform ApiOmat last year. "Now it's great to have the experts of the EIT Digital Accelerator support our international expansion." Application criteria To successfully apply for the EIT Digital Challenge, companies must fulfill the following criteria: they must be based in one of the member states of the European Union, they have to be in the growth stage (to be proven by showing annual revenue of over 300,000 or at least 2m in total funding), and they should be in their first ten years of existence. The best entrants will be invited to a final event in the autumn to pitch in front on an expert jury. Since its launch in 2014, the EIT Digital Challenge has attracted more than 1,500 entries from 27 EU countries. Most of the winning scaleups have gone on to become internationally successful companies. The deadline for applications is 14 June 2018. For further information and an application form, please visit http://www.challenge.eitdigital.eu SOURCE EIT Digital TORONTO, April 17, 2018 /PRNewswire/ -- ThoughtWire, developers of the award-winning Ambiant IIoT platform, today announced it has appointed Franco Castaldini as Chief Marketing Officer (CMO) and Vice President of Business Development. Castaldini is a veteran marketing executive with experience leading go-to-market strategies for GE Digital, Bit Stew Systems, and Software AG. Castaldini will assume responsibility for global marketing strategy and business development and will report directly to Michael Monteith, CEO of ThoughtWire. "We are excited to have Franco join the ThoughtWire team," says Monteith. "His deep understanding of the IIoT platform and application markets and successful track record growing early stage companies make him a perfect fit. Franco's experience and leadership will make a significant impact on accelerating ThoughtWire's growth." Most recently, Castaldini led the go-to-market strategy for Predix Studio at GE Digital and was a key member of the integration team following the acquisition of Bit Stew in late 2016. At Bit Stew, Castaldini was the company's Vice President of Marketing helping grow the company's revenue 200% YoY, ultimately leading to its acquisition by GE Digital for $208 million Canada's largest financed exit of 2016. An entrepreneur at heart, Castaldini has held leadership positions in marketing, business development and product management for early, mid-size and Fortune 100 companies. "Franco's experience at Bit Stew, his knowledge and visibility across IIoT use cases, technologies, and customer challenges will put ThoughtWire on a path to be the next great IIoT success story," says Salil Munjal, Managing Partner at Yaletown Partners and ThoughtWire's Board Chairman. "We're thrilled to have Franco join another Yaletown Partners portfolio company, and with the company's recent Series A financing, the team is now on a path to becoming a breakout success." About ThoughtWire ThoughtWire's Ambiant IIoT platform equips organizations with the capability to become smarter, safer, and more energy efficient by interconnecting and orchestrating their people, workflows, data and things. Healthcare providers, Smart cities and buildings, and advanced manufacturers use Ambiant to achieve intelligent automation and provide real-time guidance to staff so they can predict and resolve issues, achieve energy efficiency and deliver optimal experiences to patients, tenants and customers. Founded in 2009, and based in Toronto, ThoughtWire earned a Frost & Sullivan Best Practices Award in 2017 and was ranked a Gartner Cool Vendor 2016. Learn more at www.thoughtwire.com . For further information: Claudia Moore, Material Insight - ThoughtWire Media Relations, Phone: (403) 703-0029, Email: [email protected] SOURCE ThoughtWire Related Links http://www.thoughtwire.com NEW YORK, April 17, 2018 /PRNewswire/ -- Ugam, a global leader in data and analytics, today announced its upcoming Ugam Customer Summit, "Actionable Analytics for Transformative Growth." The event will take place April 18-19, 2018 at the Ritz-Carlton in Half Moon Bay, California. Ugam Customer Summit is a two-day event for a curated list of industry leaders in retail and manufacturing. It is a platform for inspiration and engaging conversations in a confidential setting. The event will feature keynote sessions, presentations and roundtables, during which participants will learn how industry practitioners have operationalized data-driven decisions to drive impact. They will hear from a number of leading experts on the ways major organizations are deploying analytics and on the future of analytics. The event will also host Forrester Research Principal Analyst Brandon Purcell, who will be speaking on "Applied AI - Early Successes, Failures and Emerging Best Practices." "There is a lot of talk around data and analytics. However, many organizations are struggling with leveraging it successfully. The Ugam Customer Summit will focus on how companies are deploying analytics to improve business performance," said Sunil Mirani, Ugam CEO. "It will bring together some of the top minds in retail and manufacturing to network, learn about other success stories, discuss challenges and leave with practical applications that can meaningfully transform and grow their companies." About Ugam Ugam is a global leader in data and analytics that helps retailers, brands and market research firms transform big data into valuable insights. The company's unique managed services offering combines a proprietary big data technology platform with deep domain knowledge and analytics expertise to empower clients to make decisions that improve their business. For retailers, online marketplaces and brands, Ugam supports better merchandising, marketing and channel management decisions through the use of analytics. For market research firms and insight-based consultancies, Ugam offers a portfolio of solutions, including end-to-end research operations, technology transitioning support, and data warehousing, visualization and reporting that enables them to better serve their clients. Five of the top 10 U.S. retailers, four of the leading Australian retailers, many of the world's largest brands and online marketplaces, and 13 of the top 25 market research firms work with Ugam because of its ability to deliver high-quality insights with unmatched customer experience. Visit us at ugamsolutions.com, follow us on Twitter @ugam, and visit our LinkedIn page. Contact: Veera Fernandes Ugam [email protected] SOURCE Ugam Related Links http://www.ugamsolutions.com Close Get email notifications on {{subject}} daily! Your notification has been saved. There was a problem saving your notification. {{description}} Email notifications are only sent once a day, and only if there are new matching items. LONDON, April 17, 2018 /PRNewswire/ -- UK wholesale energy prices hit four-year highs on the forward products most regularly traded by energy companies during the winter, the ICIS Power Index reveals, as number of supply problems combined with the 'Beast from the East', increasing fundamental risk in the traded markets Energy was being traded on the forward market in the UK at the highest prices seen for four years in the first quarter of 2018, the ICIS Power Index (IPI) reveals. (Photo: http://mma.prnewswire.com/media/619935/ICIS_Logo.jpg ) The price of gas to be delivered over the next calendar year also rose to a multi-year high, reaching its highest level since early 2015. With wholesale energy costs making up 40% of a dual fuel household bill, the price increases pile pressure on UK suppliers to raise end-user bills - if they have not done so already. The release of the figures comes just days after some high-profile suppliers increased household bills. And the pressure will be on smaller suppliers. This is because a number of small companies won over swathes of new customers by offering low tariffs underpinned by what were historically low wholesale prices from 2014 to 2016. But the recent move into a higher wholesale price range means some companies may have to revisit their approach as low tariffs may no longer be sustainable. The UK saw repeated supply and demand shocks over the winter which tested the resilience of the country's energy infrastructure and boosted prices of electricity and gas on the wholesale market. The IPI ended Q1 2018 at just over 50 per megawatt-hour (MWh). This was the first time since late 2014 the 50/MWh ceiling had been breached. The index result compared with a low of 33/MWh back in early 2016 and 44.50/MWh going into the winter, a 12% increase in six months. "The 12% increase in forward prices over the winter was substantial," said ICIS power markets editor Jamie Stewart. "Markets were tested by supply failures and demand shocks - not least the Beast from the East - which squeezed networks meaning a large risk premium was priced into forward products on energy markets. This led directly to the household bill increases that we have seen in recent days." The IPI gives independent insight into wholesale power prices for both households and industrial electricity consumers, based on real market trading. The IPI is updated every working day and is freely available from the ICIS website, along with ICIS' quarterly analysis of price trends and volume. About ICIS ICIS is the world's largest petrochemical market information provider, with divisions spanning energy and fertilizers. Our aim is to give companies in global commodities markets a competitive advantage by delivering valuable information and analytics tools which enable our customers to identify and react to opportunities in markets which are constantly evolving. We have more than 30 years' of experience in providing pricing intelligence and news, forecast data, market analytics and independent consulting to buyers, sellers and analysts. With a global staff of more than 600, ICIS has employees based in London, Houston, New York, Singapore, Dubai, Shanghai, Guangzhou, Beijing, Mumbai, Tokyo, Karlsruhe, and Milan. ICIS' team of journalists is engaged in reporting market prices and news, and ICIS is fully committed to upholding the highest journalistic principles of verification, corroboration and authentication. ICIS has a compliance framework that along with its methodologies and business processes adheres to the requirements of the IOSCO PRA Principles. ICIS is a division of Reed Business Information, part of RELX Group. About Reed Business Information Reed Business Information (RBI) is a fast-growth provider of information and analytics, solving critical problems for businesses globally. Our strong global products and services hold leading positions across a wide range of industry sectors including finance, agriculture, petrochemicals and aviation where we help customers make key strategic decisions every day. RBI is part of RELX Group, a global provider of information and analytics for professional customers across industries. http://www.reedbusiness.com About RELX Group RELX Group is a global provider of information and analytics for professional and business customers across industries. The Group serves customers in more than 180 countries and has offices in about 40 countries. It employs approximately 30,000 people of whom almost half are in North America. RELX PLC is a London listed holding company which owns 52.9% of RELX Group. RELX NV is an Amsterdam listed holding company which owns 47.1% of RELX Group. The shares are traded on the London, Amsterdam and New York Stock Exchanges using the following ticker symbols: London: REL; Amsterdam: REN; New York: RELX and RENX. The total market capitalisation is approximately 29.9bn GBP / 34.6bn Euro / 42.7bn USD. www.relx.com Media contact Jamie Stewart, power markets editor, ICIS Email: [email protected] Direct: +44-(0)-207-911-1933 SOURCE ICIS CHICAGO and DETROIT, April 17, 2018 /PRNewswire/ -- UpCity, the leading online marketplace for growth-minded small-to-medium sized businesses (SMBs) seeking vetted marketing agencies and professionals, announced its 2018 Top Agencies in Detroit. The agencies and marketing services companies are rated in a variety of different areas of business expertise and represent the most vetted, best of class providers in Detroit. The full list of agencies can be found here. The top agencies are determined based on the UpCity Rating, UpCity's proprietary rating system which is based on the number and quality of customer reviews, along with certified local presence in the market, as well as the depth of expertise in the marketing areas in which they focus. The many varied service areas include Search Engine Optimization (SEO), Pay Per Click (PPC) advertising, website design, public relations, video production and much more. UpCity has developed a proprietary review and accreditation methodology and functions in the same way a Match.com does for dating or an Open Table does for reviews. Small-and mid-sized business owners in local markets need a trusted, credible and convenient source of service providers in the digital space and UpCity has provided them with that source. The Top Agency list saves the hundreds of thousands of business owners in the Detroit area time, and gives them a simple way to find the trusted marketing experts they need in today's competitive environment. "Through rigorous eligibility and qualification validation at the local market level, the 2018 Top Agencies in Detroit have shown their commitment and excellence in serving their market's businesses," notes Dan Olson, CEO and Co-founder of UpCity. He adds, "Small businesses are the backbone of the U.S. economy and the companies that earn this recognition should be proud of their role in helping the hundreds of thousands of small business owners in the Detroit area succeed and grow smartly." "UpCity has added a lot of value to the Detroit business community, linking agencies like mine with area businesses which are looking to grow. It's been valuable to us to be part of the UpCity marketplace and we are honored to be recognized as one of the top agencies in Detroit," cites Chris Drouin, Director, Ignite Media Group of Rochester Hills. About UpCity Now in its seventh year, UpCity covers 300+ local US markets and Canada, ranging from major cities, like New York, to cities of approximately 75,000 people. With 150,000 small-to-medium businesses coming to its marketplace monthly and having vetted and validated over 15,000 agencies, UpCity is the most trusted, and most turned-to, source for local businesses seeking digital marketing agencies and professionals to help them meet expansion and customer acquisition goals. UpCity helps agencies grow and run their businesses, via strategic counsel, scalable revenue and marketing services, and operations tools. CONTACT: Jim D'Arcangelo, SVP, Growth Marketing [email protected] 215.520.7579 SOURCE UpCity Related Links http://www.upcity.com NEW YORK, April 17, 2018 /PRNewswire/ -- The US Navy Veterans Mesothelioma Advocate says, "We are incredibly passionate about making certain a US Navy Veteran with recently diagnosed mesothelioma receives the very best possible financial compensation settlement. We are urging the wife, adult son or daughter of a Navy Veteran with confirmed mesothelioma nationwide to call us anytime at 800-714-0303 in the hopes we can prevent them from hiring an unqualified lawyer or law firm to assist with their loved one's compensation claim. If a US Navy Veteran with mesothelioma or their family do not retain the services of the nation's most skilled lawyers, the mistake could cost the Navy Veteran hundreds of thousands of dollars or more. Asbestos Warning Sign US Navy Veteran "We are advocates for US Navy Veterans with mesothelioma not a law firm and we only recommend the nation's most skilled and experienced mesothelioma attorneys who consistently get the best possible financial compensation settlement results for their US Navy Veteran clients. We offer on the spot access to these remarkable attorneys. We do not one US Navy Veteran with mesothelioma to get financially shortchanged. "Most US Navy Veterans with mesothelioma do not get properly compensated-we are trying to change this sad fact." http://USNavyMesothelioma.Com The US Navy Veterans Mesothelioma Advocate is offering a few vital tips for a US Navy Veteran with mesothelioma or their family members to help them obtain a better financial compensation result: The US Navy Veteran with mesothelioma should make a list of all of the ships or shipyards and specifics of how or where they could have been exposed to asbestos. Was the Veteran exposed to asbestos prior to the navy or in a job or workplace after the navy? It is this specific information that becomes the basis for a mesothelioma financial compensation claim. The group believes the mesothelioma compensation process must begin at the same time as medical treatment for the US Navy Veteran. Because mesothelioma is such an aggressive form of cancer it is vital a fulltime mesothelioma lawyer talks directly with the Veteran in person in order that they might get a very good understanding of how the person was exposed to asbestos. Does the US Navy Veteran with mesothelioma recall the names of any of their shipmates who may have witnessed their exposure to asbestos? Before a US Navy Veteran with confirmed mesothelioma or their family hires a lawyer or law firm to assist with a mesothelioma compensation claim they are urged to call the US Navy Veterans Mesothelioma Advocate at 800-714-0303 for the best possible resources and most honest advice. http://USNavyMesothelioma.Com The types of US Navy Veterans the group helps were typically assigned to a navy ship's engine room, boilers, as a machinist, mechanic, welder, plumber or steamfitter, electrical systems, ammunition storage, shipfitter, or a member of a ship's maintenance crew. The group also has extensive experience working with US Navy Veterans with mesothelioma who were assigned to a nuclear submarine. http://USNavyMesothelioma.Com According to the CDC the states indicated with the highest incidence of mesothelioma include Maine, Massachusetts, Connecticut, Maryland, New Jersey, Pennsylvania, Ohio, West Virginia, Virginia, Michigan, Illinois, Minnesota, Louisiana, Washington, and Oregon. However, based on the calls the US Navy Veterans Mesothelioma Center receives a US Navy Veteran with mesothelioma could live in any state including New York, Florida, California, Texas, Illinois, Ohio, Iowa, Indiana, North Carolina, Kentucky, Tennessee, Georgia, Alabama, Oklahoma, Arkansas, Kansas, Nebraska, North Dakota, Wyoming, Nevada, Colorado, New Mexico, Utah, Arizona, Idaho, or Alaska. http://USNavyMesothelioma.Com For information about current and former US Navy Ships or Submarines please review the US Navy website on this topic: http://www.navy.mil/navydata/our_ships.asp. Most US Navy Veterans with recently diagnosed mesothelioma are in the 70's. For an interesting look at 'life in the US Navy' today, please refer to the navy website on this topic: https://www.navy.com/navy-life/life-as-a-sailor.html. Media Contact: Michael Thomas [email protected] 800-714-0303 SOURCE US Navy Veterans Mesothelioma Advocate Related Links http://usnavymesothelioma.com EVELETH, Minn., April 17, 2018 /PRNewswire-USNewswire/ -- The United Steelworkers (USW) today proudly endorsed Minnesota AFL-CIO Secretary-Treasurer Julie Blaha's campaign to become the next State Auditor. USW District 11 Assistant Director John Rebrovich, who is also Minnesota AFL-CIO vice president, said that Blaha's record of serving the state's working families gives her a perspective that uniquely qualifies her over other candidates to provide oversight, education and representation on behalf of the state on issues faced by our cities, towns and counties. "Julie Blaha already knows the issues that impact our families the most," Rebrovich said. "Her experience includes working with local governments throughout Minnesota to improve employment conditions, increase the minimum wage and secure earned sick time protections for workers." USW Local 1259 President Shawn Scott said that Blaha's experience should enable her to directly and immediately improve the lives of Minnesotans. "As a middle school math teacher, elected statewide union official, advocate for school finance and teachers' pensions and as a member of her local economic development authority, she has already made a huge difference in many people's lives," Scott said. "Julie gets results wherever she goes." In addition to Blaha, the USW has endorsed Tim Walz in the Minnesota gubernatorial election, which will also take place on Nov. 6, 2018. The USW represents 850,000 men and women employed in manufacturing, metals, mining, pulp and paper, rubber, chemicals, glass, auto supply and the energy-producing industries, along with a growing number of workers in public sector and service occupations. More information, contact: John Rebrovich (218) 744-2757; [email protected] SOURCE United Steelworkers (USW) Related Links http://www.usw.org SAN JOSE, Calif., April 16, 2018 /PRNewswire/ -- Untangle, Inc., a leader in comprehensive network security for small-to-medium business (SMB), today announced public cloud availability of Untangle NG Firewall for Firewall as a Service (FWaaS) deployments. The updates to NG Firewall enable customers to deploy NG Firewall in AWS (Amazon Web Services) under a BYOL (Bring Your Own License) model. Untangle will demonstrate cloud deployments of NG Firewall in booth number 2140 during RSA Conference 2018, April 16-20 in San Francisco. Delivering a Consistent Security Posture and Full Visibility Across Dispersed Networks As the network perimeter expands and changes in response to the demands of distributed organizations and remote, mobile workforces, so too must strategies for securing that perimeter. Leveraging the public cloud can lead to easier scalability and lower costs. However, companies must select next-generation firewalls, like Untangle NG Firewall, that can support cloud, hybrid-cloud and on-premise deployments and offer these benefits: Moves the network security processing and traffic analysis normally done by an on-premise, next-generation firewall or unified threat management system to the cloud, changing budgeting requirements from CapEx to OpEx. Offers rapidly scalable performance not limited by on-premise hardware, enabling flexible capacity for changing environments. Ensures security measures take precedence over hardware concerns. Enables SD-WAN scenarios, so many organizations consider FWaaS in the context of other secure networking demands. Untangle Uniquely Suited to Public Cloud Deployments Untangle NG Firewall is engineered to provide full network and application security regardless of the type of deployment. NG Firewall can be deployed as software on a customer's on-premise hardware, as a turnkey appliance (hardware or virtual), or in the public cloudensuring a consistent security posture, administrative experience and complete visibility regardless of deployment type. NG Firewall inspects all traffic bi-directionally with layer 7 application profiling, advanced malware detection powered by ScoutIQTM threat intelligence, intrusion prevention, web and application filtering, and full bandwidth shaping. Organizations looking to leverage the benefits of the public cloud should require next-generation firewall functionality that makes the best use of cloud-powered architectures: Comprehensive VPN options that work seamlessly with complete bandwidth shaping and optimization, and WAN balancing and failover for network redundancy to ensure reliability and business continuity. Licensing that is sold as a service with flexible monthly, annual or multi-year billing plans, aligned to cloud consumption models and MSP business models. Ability to seamlessly manage on-premise and public cloud deployments from a single pane of glass: visualize dispersed networks, their traffic, policies, threats and alerts. Consistent security posture across hybrid environments with policy management, templates, alerts, reporting, auditing, and threat intelligence. Integration to a cloud ecosystem that provides value-added services like centralized management, proactive alerting and threat intelligence. "Customers should demand next-generation firewalls that provide security policies orchestrated by centralized, cloud-based management that allows them to rapidly scale to meet the changing cybersecurity demands at the network edge," said Scott Devens, chief executive officer at Untangle. "Untangle NG Firewall is uniquely suited to allow flexible, cost-effective deployments in on-premise, hybrid, and cloud environments with seamless integration to its value-added, cloud-based services - Command Center centralized management and ScoutIQ threat intelligence." "Our MSPs are often asked to secure large, dispersed network perimeters," said Meggin Sawyer, vice president, business solutions and cloud services at ADTRAN. "Coupling ADTRAN's ProCloud Network Management with Untangle's NG Firewall for AWS, we are able to provide MSPs with an SD-WAN enabled solution that easily addresses these concerns and provides the ability to seamlessly protect, monitor and control network traffic across the enterprise." Availability Untangle NG Firewall is available via BYOL on AWS. Pay-as-You-Go (PAYG) licensing will be available for AWS in May. Both BYOL and PAYG licensing for Azure will be available later in the year. See Untangle NG Firewall for AWS at RSA Untangle is showcasing its award-winning NG Firewall for AWS at the RSA Conference in San Francisco through April 20 in the South Hall of the Moscone Center, Booth #2140. About Untangle Untangle is an innovator in cybersecurity designed specifically for the below-enterprise market, safeguarding businesses, home offices, nonprofits, schools and governmental organizations. Untangle's integrated suite of software and appliances provides enterprise-grade capabilities and consumer-oriented simplicity to organizations with limited IT resources. Untangle's award-winning network security solutions are trusted by over 40,000 customers around the world. Untangle is headquartered in San Jose, California. For more information, visit www.untangle.com. SOURCE Untangle, Inc. Related Links http://www.untangle.com NEW YORK, April 17, 2018 /PRNewswire/ -- Vestwell, a digital retirement platform, announced today that it is partnering with Namely, a leading HR platform for mid-sized companies, to provide an all-in-one retirement experience for plan sponsors and their employees. Vestwell's retirement offering will now integrate into Namely's platform. Through single sign on, users will gain access to key benefits and retirement information, all in one place. More importantly, the new offering provides payroll integration, thus removing the significant administrative burden from plan sponsors of providing ongoing payroll information and updated election deferrals. "At Vestwell, our key objective is to modernize how retirement plans are offered and administered, and our partnership with Namely does just that," said Aaron Schumm, founder and CEO, Vestwell. "By coupling Vestwell's turnkey retirement solution with Namely's humanized and savvy HR system, we're able to create a more harmonious experience for the plan sponsor and their participants." Namely clients interested in Vestwell's services for their retirement offering will benefit from a simplified payroll integration, fast and easy onboarding, transparent pricing, and streamlined administration. "At Namely, we're focused on providing mid-sized companies with best-in-class technology for all of their HR needs," said Michael Manne, VP Sales, Namely. "We're excited to partner with Vestwell to provide our clients with a like-minded, advanced technology solution that seamlessly integrates into our HR platform." About Vestwell Holdings, Inc. Vestwell is a digital platform that makes it easier to offer and administer 401(k) plans. Vestwell removes traditional friction points through a seamless plan design, automated onboarding, streamlined administration, and flexible investment strategies, all at competitive pricing. By acting as a single point of contact, Vestwell has modernized the retirement offering while keeping the plan sponsor's and plan participant's best interests in mind. Learn more at Vestwell.com and on Twitter @Vestwell. About Namely Namely is the first HR platform that employees actually love to use. Namely's powerful, easy-to-use technology allows companies to handle all of their HR, payroll, time management, and benefits in one place. Coupled with dedicated account support, every Namely client gets the software and service they need to deliver great HR and a strong, engaged company culture. Namely is used by over 1,000 clients with over 175,000 employees globally. Headquartered in New York City, the company has raised $157.8 MM from leading investors, including Altimeter Capital, Scale Capital, Sequoia Capital, Matrix Partners, and True Ventures. For more information, visit www.Namely.com. SOURCE Vestwell Related Links http://Vestwell.com ROSH HAA'YIN, Israel, April 17, 2018 /PRNewswire/ -- Virtual Crypto Technologies Ltd. (OTCQB: VRCP), developer of software and hardware for the purchase and sale of crypto-currencies through ATMs, tablets, PCs and or mobile devices, today announced the completion of the first milestone defined in the binding MOU from January 2018, with Chiron Ltd. for the distribution of virtual-crypto's products in the territory of Turkey and North Cyprus. In January 2018, Virtual Crypto (or the "Company") signed a binding term sheet with Chiron Refineries Ltd., (TASE: CHR) granting its subsidiary, Chiron Ltd., exclusive rights as a distributor of the Company's cryptocurrency products in the territories of North Cyprus and Turkey. Under the terms of the agreement, Chiron will pay the Company a total of $250,000, $150,000 of which was made on account of future purchases. Chiron has also agreed to pay a revenue share by which the Company will receive a fee of 30% of the net revenues received. There is no minimum purchase quota in the first year of the agreement, however Chiron has agreed to purchase at least $30,000 during the second year, and $50,000 during the third year of the agreement. Chiron also acquired the option to expand the distribution business to Nigeria within 12 months of the agreement. If exercised, Chiron will pay the Company an additional fee not higher than $250,000. Chiron Refineries Ltd, is an Israeli company whose shares are listed for trade on the TASE, and its management is located in Turkey/North Cyprus which is engaged in the business of relocation of oil refineries. The company recently elected to further diversify its operation to include the "cryptocurrency accessibility" sector and entered the agreement with Virtual Crypto. According to Chiron, the company intends to market the Company's technology to casino cashiers, ATM operators, Currency Exchange offices and Coffee Shops, among other businesses who wish to offer their customers the ability to buy, sell and trade crypto currencies and provide immediate settlement of the currencies. Alon Dayan, CEO of Virtual Crypto Technologies Ltd. commented on the announcement, "We are excited to be working with the Chiron team as they seek to achieve their objectives in the cryptocurrency sector. I believe they have a significant opportunity to establish a leadership position in both Turkey and North Cyprus, and our technology will facilitate their ability to provide consumers with a secure, fast and cost-effective way to participate in the cryptocurrency market." Rony Kuperberg CEO of Chiron refineries commented "I am very impressed with Virtual Crypto Technologies' ability to achieve such an important milestone within the time frame of our MOU. I believe that after we will make the proper adjustments to our customers' needs the Virtual Crypto technologies NetoBit line of products will set a new standard in the Crypto Currency industry". About Virtual Crypto Technologies Inc. Virtual Crypto Technologies Inc. (www.virtual-crypto.com), through its wholly owned Israeli subsidiary Virtual Crypto Technologies Ltd., has developed the NetoBit Trader, a proprietary, Cryptographic algorithmic technology that it is able to confirm in real-time the purchase or sale of any cryptocurrency. Virtual - Crypto's NetoBit products dramatically improve the cryptocurrency trading experience with faster execution and lower costs. Setting a new time to transaction standard, trading in seconds rather the industry norm of 20 minutes Because of its speed, customers enjoy the best crypto exchange rate at the point of transaction. The company is marketing it's NetoBit Trader software and hardware products for the purchase and sale of cryptocurrencies through ATMs, tablets, PCs and mobile devices (the "VC Products"). Virtual Crypto Technologies further believes that the ability to immediately confirm Cryptocurrency transactions in real-time should be a major competitive breakthrough in making the purchase and sale of crypto currencies user friendly. For more information please visit http://www.virtual-crypto.com/ Notice Regarding Forward-Looking Statements This press release may contain forward-looking statements, about the Company's expectations, beliefs or intentions regarding, among other things, its product development efforts, business, financial condition, results of operations, strategies or prospects. In addition, from time to time, the Company or its representatives have made or may make forward-looking statements, orally or in writing. Forward-looking statements can be identified by the use of forward-looking words such as "believe," "expect," "intend," "plan," "may," "should" or "anticipate" or their negatives or other variations of these words or other comparable words or by the fact that these statements do not relate strictly to historical or current matters. These forward-looking statements may be included in, but are not limited to, various filings made by the Company, f/k/a Emerald Medical Applications Corp., with the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission, press releases or oral statements made by or with the approval of one of the Company's authorized executive officers. Forward-looking statements relate to anticipated or expected events, activities, trends or results as of the date they are made. Because forward-looking statements relate to matters that have not yet occurred, these statements are inherently subject to risks and uncertainties that could cause Virtual Crypto's actual results to differ materially from any future results expressed or implied by the forward-looking statements. Many factors could cause Virtual Crypto's actual activities or results to differ materially from the activities and results anticipated in such forward-looking statements, including, but not limited to, the factors summarized in the Company's filings with the SEC (under its former name, Emerald Medical Applications Corp.) In addition, Virtual Crypto operates in a relatively new industry sector where securities values are highly volatile and may be influenced by economic and other factors beyond its control. Virtual Crypto does not undertake any obligation to publicly update these forward-looking statements, whether as a result of new information, future events or otherwise. Reference is made to the disclosure contained in our Form 8-K filed with the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission on March 12, 2018, with respect to the change in our business operations and the change in the Company's name and trading symbol. For more information go to http://virtual-crypto.com/ Contact: Alon Dayan, CEO Virtual Crypto Technologies Ltd Tel: +972-54-487-7959, [email protected] SOURCE Virtual Crypto Technologies, Inc. Related Links http://virtual-crypto.com/ DENVER, April 17, 2018 /PRNewswire/ -- One of the nation's most forward-leaning media companies and one of the Internet's best cannabis guides are joining forces to give consumers and marijuana businesses greater access to a national platform of online resources. Herban Planet (PRNewsfoto/Voice Media Group) Voice Media Group owns and operates the cutting-edge digital advertising agency V Digital Services and publishes an array of iconic print newspapers and websites, including Phoenix New Times, Denver Westword and Miami New Times. In 2017, V Digital Services posted 40 percent year-over-year growth and was named to Inc. Magazine's list of the 5,000 fastest-growing companies in the U.S. Herban Planet is one of the most comprehensive online cannabis guides. With more listings and educational assets than any other web platform, Herban Planet offers a one-stop ecosystem for cannabis producers, business owners, consumers, medical professionals, patients, caregivers and activists. Now that content will be available directly from the websites of VMG's core branded properties, putting a vast nationwide marijuana database at readers' fingertips. VMG chief executive officer Scott Tobias noted that VMG and Herban Planet are already leaders in providing readers, consumers and businesspeople with information about the cannabis industry. And thanks to its decades of doing business in major markets across the country, VMG brings something else to the mix: Hundreds of long-established relationships with business owners, dispensary owners, cultivators and leading figures in the industry. Those carefully nurtured local, regional and national relationships should accelerate growth of Herban Planet's market share. Denver Westword was the first publication in the country to hire a marijuana reporter and is known for its expert coverage of the industry. And V Digital Services has long specialized in helping marijuana businesses maximize their digital footprint through its work with Marijuana Marketing Xperts. As a division of VDS, industry-leading MMX has the advantage of focusing solely on marketing for the marijuana industry and helping business owners in the rapidly growing field devise smart digital strategies designed to increase web and mobile presence, generate leads to expand their customer base, and navigate a maze of legal restrictions and regulations. Equally unique is its programmatic advertising network for cannabis, a pioneering technology specially engineered to engage audiences interested in medical and recreational marijuana. Combining Herban Planet's thriving web platform with VMG's technology, marketing and media muscle is the goal of the new partnership, said Tobias. "Joining with Herban Planet to help grow a national marijuana platform made perfect sense," he added. "We are very excited about this partnership." Herban Planet founder and chief executive officer Babak Motamedi said he's also excited about the synergies made possible by the partnership. VDS marketing services will now be available to Herban Planet customers at preferred prices, and the companies will also continue to explore additional content-sharing opportunities on their websites. "People in the industry have a choice between platforms," said Motamedi. "Now Herban Planet will be powered by a multi-market media company, so obviously we will have broader reach. We think we can really change the industry, both in terms of connectivity and bringing it more mainstream." About Voice Media Group Voice Media Group is a diversified technology company that specializes in serving advertisers, business owners and readers across the country as the digital heir to one of America's most successful media organizations. V Digital Services and Marijuana Marketing Xperts are both part of the VMG network, which also publishes five influential alternative weeklies and websites across the country. As a Premier Google Partner, VDS combines the reach of those established newspaper properties with digital strategies for customers. Media contact: Andy Van De Voorde Executive Associate Editor Voice Media Group 303-293-3558 [email protected] SOURCE Voice Media Group Related Links http://www.voicemediagroup.com HOLMDEL, N.J., April 17, 2018 /PRNewswire/ -- Vonage (NYSE: VG), a business cloud communications leader, has announced the launch of its chatbot, Vee in beta. The first virtual customer assistant integrated with a cloud-based unified communications solution, Vee enhances the customer experience on Vonage's next-generation, cloud-native platform, Vonage Business Cloud (VBC). Vee enables Vonage customers to streamline managing their account services with fast and easy access to support via simple, natural language text commands. With Vee, Vonage Business Cloud users can set up and manage their accounts, using natural language commands to ask Vee questions and receive assistance in troubleshooting issues in real time. Live chat with Vee suggests a variety of relevant options to meet a customer's needs based on the context of the questions asked. Vee can be used by both end users and account administrators that have the VBC mobile app, which comes standard with the VBC service. Vonage began testing Vee with customers in March, and has already successfully addressed more than 25,000 customer questions posted by approximately 5,000 users, saving Vonage customers valuable time. Frequent use cases include setting up a device, such as a desk phone; adding features like a Call Group or Virtual Receptionist; instructions for how to use features such as Call Recording and Document Sharing; and basic customer service questions. "Vonage purpose-built the Vee chatbot to complement Vonage Business Cloud's unique and robust set of features and functionality," said Ron Mayaan, vice president of Product Management for Vonage. "With Vee, we are enhancing the customer journey to empower businesses to more easily take charge of the vast capabilities their Vonage service provides, and to easily access customer support when they have questions or need guidance in managing their accounts. And, for customers who prefer a more personal touch, Vonage's 24/7 customer care team is always available to answer questions and lend a helping hand." Vonage Business Cloud provides customers with access to a robust portfolio of unified communications capabilities, including industry-leading mobile and desktop applications, as well as the ability to integrate seamlessly with mission-critical business applications and CRM to enhance productivity, including Salesforce, G Suite, Zoho, Clio, ConnectWise, Microsoft Office 365, Microsoft Dynamics and more. Vonage Business Cloud enables businesses to empower employees to collaborate with their colleagues more efficiently via voice, video, text and media sharing. Vee will augment these capabilities, helping customers get the most out of their service. 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) SOURCE Vonage Related Links https://www.vonage.com How to help How to help Donations to the Mott family can be made via their online crowdfunding page: https://www.gofundme.com/team-jill-fights-leukemia Supporters will hold a rummage sale on Saturday, April 21, from 8 a.m. to 1 p.m. All proceeds from the sale will go to the Mott family. The sale will be held at Orcutt Presbyterian Church, 993 Patterson Rd in Orcutt. A fundraiser barbecue will be held Saturday, May 12 at Orcutt Burger, 1099 E. Clark Ave. Tickets are $10 and can be purchased by contacting Shauna Wilson at ShWilson@orcutt-schools.net BIRMINGHAM, Ala., April 17, 2018 /PRNewswire/ -- Vulcan Materials Company (NYSE: VMC) will host its first quarter earnings conference call on Thursday, May 3 at 10:00 a.m. CT (11:00 a.m. ET). Financial results for the quarter ended March 31, 2018 will be released before the NYSE market opens on May 3. The Company invites investors and other interested parties to listen to the live webcast of the conference call at www.vulcanmaterials.com. To participate by phone, call 800-239-9838 approximately 10 minutes before the scheduled start. For international calls, the number is 323-794-2551. The confirmation code is 3160919. A replay of the webcast will be available approximately two hours after the call at the Company's website. Vulcan Materials Company, a member of the S&P 500 index with headquarters in Birmingham, Alabama, is the nation's largest producer of construction aggregates and a major producer of other construction materials primarily crushed stone, sand and gravel and a major producer of aggregates-based construction materials, including asphalt and ready-mixed concrete. For additional information about Vulcan, go to www.vulcanmaterials.com. SOURCE Vulcan Materials Company Related Links http://www.vulcanmaterials.com NEW YORK, April 17, 2018 /PRNewswire/ -- Watermark, the largest provider of assessment software for higher education institutions worldwide, has announced the close of its agreement with TCV to acquire a controlling interest in the company. TCV is one of the largest providers of capital to growth-stage private and public companies in the technology industry and has backed industry-leading technology companies, including Airbnb, Capella Education, EA, EmbanetCompass, ExactTarget, HomeAway, Netflix, Spotify, and Zillow. In addition, Quad Partners and Watermark's management team have reinvested alongside TCV and are joined by new investor Exceed Capital Partners. Watermark provides educational intelligence systems to over 1,100 higher education institutions worldwide, including a majority of the top 200 U.S. News & World Report colleges. Watermark continues to grow rapidly, with over 50 institutions joining the Watermark community or expanding their use of Watermark across the institution so far this year, including top universities such as Syracuse University, Princeton University, Michigan State University, and Prince Sattam Bin Abdulaziz University in Saudi Arabia. With over 300 employees supporting these partner institutions, Watermark will use TCV's investment to continue its growth trajectory as well as accelerate development of its innovative educational intelligence platform. "We're excited to have TCV as a financial partner. With a deep understanding of and experience in the education technology and software/SaaS markets, TCV will help us to welcome more clients to our community and to continue building solutions these institutions need to drive meaningful improvements in institutional effectiveness, program quality, and student learning," said Watermark CEO Kevin Michielsen. Assisting in the close, global independent investment banking firm Evercore advised Quad Partners, and investment banking firm Tyton Partners advised TCV on the transaction. About Watermark Watermark's mission is to put better data into the hands of administrators, educators, and learners everywhere in order to empower them to connect information and gain insights into learning which will drive meaningful improvements. Through its innovative educational intelligence platform, Watermark supports institutions in developing an intentional approach to learning and development based on data they can trust. For more information, visit www.watermarkinsights.com. About TCV Founded in 1995, TCV provides capital to growth-stage private and public companies in the technology industry. Since inception, TCV has invested over $10 billion in leading technology companies and has helped guide CEOs through more than 110 IPOs and strategic acquisitions. TCV's investments include Airbnb, Altiris, AxiomSL, Dollar Shave Club, EmbanetCompass, EtQ, ExactTarget, Expedia, Facebook, Fandango, GoDaddy, HomeAway, LinkedIn, Netflix, OSIsoft, Rent the Runway, Sitecore, Splunk, Spotify, Varsity Tutors, and Zillow. TCV is headquartered in Menlo Park, California, with offices in New York and London. For more information about TCV, including a complete list of TCV investments, visit https://www.tcv.com/. Contacts: Victoria Guzzo Director of Corporate Communications 708.588.1735 [email protected] TCV Katja Gagen Marketing 415.690.6689 [email protected] SOURCE Watermark LAS VEGAS, April 17, 2018 /PRNewswire/ -- Vantiv, now Worldpay, Inc. (NYSE: WP) announced today at ETA TRANSACT (Booth #410) it is adding the handheld PAX A920 to its line of SmartPay Series terminals. These devices feature a single software platform providing a common user experience for merchants. SmartPay terminals also use a flexible Android-based operating system with pre-loaded business application bundles specifically designed to best meet a merchant's needs. "At Worldpay we strive to create solutions for merchants that meet the new and changing demands of their customers, which is why we created our SmartPay Series," said Jon Pollock, SVP of Product Management at Worldpay. "By adding a variety of form factors, and now the handheld PAX A920, merchants can accept payments as well as streamline the same loyalty, payroll, inventory and sales tools across multiple smart devices." With an open-solution design, powered by AEVI, Worldpay can offer its channel partners and merchants innovative terminals, all of which go beyond the POS with applications that will help grow revenue through loyalty and analytics tools. "From the outset, we've sought to deliver unique flexibility and choice to merchants, by enabling the PAX A920 to our app marketplace, we continue to do just that," said Mike Camerling, CEO at AEVI. "We will continue to work with Worldpay to deploy our platform on more devices and provide even more business applications to further meet the needs of businesses in this changing payments landscape." The PAX A920 features a sleek design with a large touchscreen, a fast thermal printer and contactless capability making it ideal for line-busting, pay-at-the-table and other trending payment methods. The PAX A920 is expected to be available from Worldpay starting in June 2018. "Our A920 was designed to be a secure Android platform with the horse power to run the kind of innovative applications Worldpay and AEVI are using it for," said Andy Chau, President and CEO at PAX Technology, Inc. "We are excited to bring the most advanced Android payment solution to Worldpay's merchants. Our device's compact and elegant design provides merchants win with an easy-to-integrate solution that enhances their ability to run their business." Learn more about the SmartPay Series from Worldpay, and other merchant solutions such as FastAccess Funding, at ETA TRANSACT at Mandalay Bay in Las Vegas April 17-19 where Worldpay will be demoing AEVI-enabled devices including PAX A920. This and other information on POS solutions for small businesses from Worldpay can be found here. About Worldpay Worldpay, Inc. (NYSE: WP; LSE: WPY) is a leading payments technology company with unique capability to power global integrated omni-commerce. With industry-leading scale and an unmatched integrated technology platform, Worldpay offers clients a comprehensive suite of products and services globally, delivered through a single provider. Worldpay processes over 40 billion transactions annually through more than 300 payment types across 146 countries and 126 currencies. The company's growth strategy includes expanding into high-growth markets, verticals and customer segments, including global eCommerce, Integrated Payments and B2B. Worldpay, Inc. was formed in 2018 through the combination of the No. 1 merchant acquirers in the U.S. and the U.K. Worldpay, Inc. trades on the New York Stock Exchange as "WP" and the London Stock Exchange as "WPY." Visit us at www.worldpay.com. About PAX (www.pax.us) PAX Technology is an innovative global provider of electronic payment solutions, offering world-class, cost-effective and superior quality products. Building on its service excellence and proven leadership position, PAX is one of the fastest growing payment industry suppliers with state-of-the-art manufacturing facilities, excellent R&D capabilities and a worldwide network of sales and channel partners. PAX is listed on the Hong Kong stock exchange as PAX Global Technology Ltd. (00327.HK). About AEVI AEVI brings acquirers closer to their merchants, and merchants closer to their consumers, with an open Ecosystem that combines apps, payment services and a multi-vendor selection of payment devices. Selecting from a marketplace of high-quality apps and services, Acquirers can quickly create differentiated, innovative SmartPOS solutions under their own brands. Our centralized payments as a service platform eliminates obstacles, and helps Acquirers simplify the complex payment landscape with a single integration and access to a comprehensive suite of cloud-based, back office reporting tools for enhanced control and flexibility. We welcome Acquirers, App Solution Partners and Hardware Vendors to build on our vision of an open, collaborative payments Ecosystem unrestricted by device vendors, currencies, borders or regulations. AEVI.com. AEVI International GmbH is a subsidiary company of Diebold Nixdorf and is headquartered in Germany with operations in the United Kingdom and the Czech Republic. For more information, please contact: Worldpay, Inc. Email Telephone Adam Kiefaber, Leader of Communications [email protected] (513) 900-5097 Ian Wissman, Corporate Communications [email protected] (513) 900-5897 SOURCE Worldpay, Inc. Related Links https://www.worldpay.com SHANGHAI, April 16, 2018 /PRNewswire/ -- WuXi Biologics (2269.HK), a leading global open-access biologics technology platform company offering end-to-end solutions for biologics discovery, development and manufacturing, today announced that it had won CMO Leadership Award for Reliability at the 2018 CMO Leadership Awards Ceremony held in New York. The CMO Leadership Awards recognize top outsourcing partners, determined by feedback from U.S. and European Pharma and Biopharma companies of all sizes, working with contract manufacturing suppliers, which are presented by Life Science Leader and Industry Standard Research (ISR). Life Science Leader is a business journal for executives in emerging biotech through big pharma. More than 110 contract manufactures were assessed by 23 performance metrics in ISR's annual Contract Manufacturing Quality Benchmarking survey. This level of qualification ensures that survey responses are based on actual involvement with contract manufacturers and clear experiential data. This enables users of ISR's market research to make confident business decisions based on the experiences of their industry peers. After seven years' rapid growth, WuXi Biologics has achieved several significant milestones. In March 2018, its partner TaiMed Biologics received approval from the U.S. FDA for Trogarzo (ibalizumab). This elevated WuXi Biologics into one of the world's top 10 CMOs and the only Chinese company approved by the U.S. FDA, marking another milestone that WuXi Biologics has set in China. In December 2017, its 30,000 L biologics cGMP commercial manufacturing facility in Wuxi city entered into full operation. The new facility quintupled the existing manufacturing capability of WuXi Biologics and further strengthened its position as a global premier biologics manufacturer. The new facility in Wuxi has delivered additional capacity, greater flexibility and higher efficiency to WuXi Biologics' customers. "WuXi Biologics is honored to be recognized by the CMO Leadership Awards," said Dr. Chris Chen, Chief Executive Officer of WuXi Biologics. "We greatly appreciate the continued trust and support of our customers and partners. The award truly reflects all of the efforts we have made to provide over 200 global clients and partners with high-quality and best-in-class service to accelerate and transform biologics development from concept to commercialization. We strive to enable WuXi Biologics to become the most comprehensive capability and technology platform in the fast growing field of biologics to benefit patients worldwide." About WuXi Biologics WuXi Biologics, a Hong Kong-listed company, is the only open-access biologics technology platform in the world offering end-to-end solutions to empower organizations to discover, develop and manufacture biologics from concept to commercial manufacturing. Our company history and achievements demonstrate our commitment to providing a truly ONE-stop service offering and value proposition to our global clients. For more information on WuXi Biologics, please visit www.wuxibiologics.com. SOURCE WuXi Biologics ORLANDO, Fla., April 17, 2018 /PRNewswire/ -- Ricoh USA, Inc. today announced its plans for Xploration 18, the Customer Communications Conference. The company, which recently renewed its Elite Sponsorship with Xplor International, will highlight the ways its award-winning portfolio enables customers to succeed, including its enhanced Web Enablement Solutions Suite, which securely transforms print-centric data streams into web-ready documents. Additionally, its experts will be on hand throughout the event, April 17-19 in Orlando, to discuss many of the solutions available to companies looking to grow from Advanced Function Presentation (AFP) to Augmented Reality (AR) through to government mailing best practices. "From development to deployment on through to growth and support, everything we offer, everything we do, is geared towards enabling customer success," said John Fulena, Vice President, Commercial & Industrial Printing Business Group, Ricoh USA, Inc. "One of the major reasons we keep coming back to Xplor is its focus on encouraging conversations around how we as an industry can better enable that success. We work hard and invest strategically to better understand customers' goals and challenges, to offer tailored services and solutions to get their businesses where they want to be. At an event with the tagline 'enabling the enterprise,' Ricoh is at home." Ricoh is also unveiling enhancements to its RICOH Web Enablement Solutions Suite, aimed to help make communicating across multiple channels as consistent as it is seamless. The suite includes solutions such as AFP2PDF Plus, AFP Visual Environment, AFP Merge, Line2PDF Plus, PS2PDF, PCL2PDF and TIFF2PDF Plus, offering a variety of ways to make traditionally printed communications available for web presentment, easily and securely. Ricoh's work with Volusia County Schools is acknowledged for the 2018 Xplor Application of the Year Award. The company enabled Volusia to automate workflows to drive down turnaround times and significantly increase efficiency. By working with Ricoh, the 68-school system implemented a robust, streamlined web-to-print solution that provided huge efficiency improvements over previous processes, which only allowed users to submit one job at a time. With transparent, streamlined workflows, load balancing among printers became easier, aiding turnaround time. In fact, Volusia's print center is running so well, it can now take on outside work from local governments and non-profits to help drive revenue. This honorable mention will be presented to Volusia County Schools and Ricoh during the show. On April 17th, Ryan Kiley, Director of Strategic Production Services, Commercial & Industrial Printing Business Group, Ricoh USA, Inc. will present a Solution Snapshot on Ricoh's leadership legacy of enabling customers to succeed at 10:40am ET in ballroom C. AFP is the backbone of many customer communications operations, providing efficiency and page-level error recovery, among many other features, to enable success. Ricoh's Howard Turetzky will present "The AFP Consortium and the Future of AFP: 2017 Status Report" on Wednesday, April 18, at 9:30 a.m. in Salon 14, where he will review new architecture, present the status of current initiatives, and discuss future directions. Later that same morning, Scott Mastie will participate in "Meter Elimination for Government Mailers (and others, too)" in Salon 12. This session will dig in to more efficient mailing processes, starting with choosing to skip the meter and present directly to the United States Postal Service (USPS). Attendees will have the opportunity to learn how to drive efficiency gains and savings in their operation, government or otherwise. For details on Ricoh's full line of production print products, services and solutions, please visit https://www.ricoh-usa.com/en/products/commercial-industrial-printing and join the conversation on Facebook, LinkedIn and Twitter using #LookAtRicoh. | About Ricoh | Ricoh is empowering digital workplaces using innovative technologies and services enabling individuals to work smarter. For more than 80 years, Ricoh has been driving innovation and is a leading provider of document management solutions, IT services, commercial and industrial printing, digital cameras, and industrial systems. Headquartered in Tokyo, Ricoh Group operates in approximately 200 countries and regions. In the financial year ended March 2017, Ricoh Group had worldwide sales of 2,028 billion yen (approx. 18.2 billion USD). For further information, please visit www.ricoh.com 2018 Ricoh USA, Inc. All rights reserved. All referenced product names are the trademarks of their respective companies. Contact: John Greco Ricoh USA, Inc. (973) 882-2023 [email protected] Tracey Sheehy Breakaway Communications (212) 616-6003 [email protected] SOURCE Ricoh USA, Inc. Related Links http://www.ricoh-usa.com XIAMEN, China, and BEAVERTON, Ore., April 17, 2018 /PRNewswire/ -- Yeastar (www.yeastar.com), a leading manufacturer of VoIP PBX systems and VoIP Gateways, and VTech Communications, Inc., a global leader and manufacturer of SIP-based phones, today jointly announced a strategic partnership to provide enhanced interoperability and commence an all-round collaboration. Yeastar and VTech have been working together and investing resources to guarantee interoperability of existing products. The mutual customers of Yeastar and VTech have long been enjoining the VTech phone auto provisioning convenience with the premised-based Yeastar S-Series VoIP PBX. The ever growing demand for SIP communication solutions and the same vision shared in providing quality products to our customers have driven the two companies to form a strategic partnership and collaborate on bringing existing and new VTech SIP phone plug-and-play functionality to the new Yeastar Cloud PBX. The new partnership is a strategic fit, leveraging Yeastar's deep roots in the global SME enterprise communication market and the immense strength of VTech SIP-based phones. "We're excited to bring our SIP desksets and conference phones to Yeastar customers," said Ernie Levenson, president, VTech Communications, Inc. "Our new partnership will help companies of all sizes communicate better with their clients and colleagues. From color displays to cutting-edge VoIP signaling, our technology delivers an exceptional communications experience." The enhanced interoperability is expected to spark innovative and powerful business phone system solutions. Yeastar customers will benefit from a line of reliable and versatile business phones with quick and easy auto provisioning. VTech SIP solutions include Bluetooth and DECT connectivity; color screens; German-engineered audio; and expandability options. VTech customers can trust Yeastar VoIP phone systems and have the freedom to choose from on-premises PBX systems and cloud phone systems. The two companies will also work closely channel-wise and cooperate on arranging training activities, bundled solutions, and other endeavors. "VTech is a valued partner of Yeastar," said Alan Shen, CEO of Yeastar. "And we have been working with VTech phones for many years and we felt excited about strengthening our partnership and collaborating closely and extensively, which will certainly drive growth for both companies. We have great momentum in providing innovative business phone system solutions and improved customer experiences." About Yeastar Yeastar specializes in the design and development of innovative telecommunications equipment, including VoIP PBX systems and VoIP gateways for the SMB. Founded in 2006, Yeastar has established itself as a global leader in the telecommunications industry with a global partner network and over 100,000 customers worldwide. Yeastar products have been consistently recognized in the industry for their high performance and innovation. For more information about Yeastar or to become a Yeastar partner, please visit https://www.Yeastar.com. About VTech VTech provides a full portfolio of strong brands and a diverse collection of telecommunications products that elevate the business customer and hotel guest experience through state-of-the-art technology. They are sold through a wide network of trusted partners and are backed by industry-leading warranties and U.S.-based training and support. The company has recently added an award-winning collection of SIP phone systems, featuring compatibility with hosted and open-source PBX platforms. Founded in 1976, VTech is the world's largest manufacturer of cordless phones and the global leader in electronic learning products from infancy through toddler and preschool. It also provides highly sought-after contract manufacturing services. The VTech mission is to design, manufacture and supply innovative and high-quality products, while creating sustainable value for its stakeholders and the community. For more information on VTech Business Solutions and the ErisTerminal business phones, please visit businessphones.vtech.com. VTech is a registered trademark of VTech Holdings Limited. ErisTerminal is a registered trademark of VTech Communications, Inc. The Bluetooth wordmark is a registered trademark owned by Bluetooth SIG, Inc. and any use of such marks by VTech is under license. Media Contact: Julie Teune Edelman 503-471-6833 [email protected] SOURCE VTech Communications, Inc. Related Links http://www.vtechphones.com Vaclav Jonas has been appointed Managing Director of the Prague office and is thus responsible for all asset and property management activities of CA Immo, including tenant support and retention. Jonas will be supported by Jan Baxa, who took over the role of Head of Asset Management in the country Photos: Ca Immo [] The Collingwood home of hospitality identity Shane Delias Biggie Smalls eatery has sold for $3.58 million, setting a new record for a single-fronted retail building in the suburb. Chris Kombi and Terence Yeh of Fitzroys negotiated the sale of 86 Smith Street at a land rate of $19,456 per square metre and a 3.51% yield. The fully refurbished, three-level building of 267 square metres is leased to Biggie Smalls on the ground and basement levels on a 7x7x7-year deal, while the first floor office is also subject to a secure tenancy of 6x7x7 years. Kombi said the property sold to an interstate Chinese investor after attracting interest from local and offshore buyers. The renewal of the inner north has seen a boom in trendy medium and high-density residential developments and warehouse-to-office conversion projects along and around Smith Street, attracting more students and younger professionals and enhancing the precincts reputation as one of Melbournes leading eclectic retail, food and beverage, and nightlife offerings, he said. Collingwoods industrial roots have provided Smith Street with unique long-term growth prospects, offering a substantial residential and office development pipeline whilst retaining much of its heritage and character, and supporting the exclusive mix of retail and hospitality operators. Yeh said the recent acquisition of a 1,000 square metre-plus site by Tribe Hotels Group for a flagship offering just metres away from Smith Street demonstrated that the areas reputation had grown beyond a thriving inner-city cultural hotspot among locals, to a must-visit location for interstate and international tourists wanting to experience Melbourne. Thank you for reading! Please log in, or sign up for a new account and purchase a subscription to continue reading. Rental rates climb over seasonally strong first quarter - but at a slower pace than in 2017, according to CoreLogic's first Quarterly Rental Review for 2018 Typically the first quarter of the year is the strongest for rental appreciation and growth. Nationally, rents climbed by 0.3 per cent in March to be 1.1 per cent higher over the first quarter of 2018 and 2.2 per cent higher over the 12 months to March 2018. In comparison to the first three months of 2017 when rents increased by 1.5 per cent, the growth in rental prices has slowed (-0.4 per cent). Click here to enlarge. Rental growth over the first quarter is higher in the regional markets (+1.2 per cent) than in the capital cities (+1.0 per cent). This trend is also reflected in activity over the past 12 months rents are up 3.1 per cent in the regions compared to an increase of 1.9 per cent across the capitals. Over the first quarter, rents climbed in all capital cities except for Darwin (-0.3 per cent). The highest quarterly rental increases were in Hobart (+5.0 per cent), which also reported its strongest first quarter growth on record, and Canberra (+2.3 per cent). Over the past 12 months, Hobart reported the highest growth in rental rates (+11.7 per cent). Rents climbed higher in all capital cities except Perth (-1.3 per cent) and Darwin (-1.6 per cent). The national median rent is $427 ($426 for houses and $430 for units). Across the capital cities, the median rental is $459 per week. The median house rental in the capital cities is $460 compared to $453 for units. Across the regional markets, both houses and units averaged $355 per week. At $374, Adelaide has the cheapest weekly rent out of all the capital cities. The highest median weekly rent is in Sydney, where the cost is $582. Rental yields have increased nationally by 0.1 per cent over the past 12 months to 3.68 per cent. The highest rental yields are in Darwin (5.83 per cent) and Hobart (5.01 per cent). Melbourne (2.93 per cent) has the lowest rental yields, followed by Sydney (3.20 per cent). CoreLogic researcher Cameron Kusher says the data shows the rental market has softened. The data suggests that in most capital cities the rental market has softened, although values are still rising they are doing so at a slower rate than they have over recent first quarters of the year. From an investors perspective, large new housing supply additions and slowing rental growth means that they will need to find ways to differentiate their properties from others. Whether that is on rental cost or by renovation, we would expect that competition for tenants in most capital cities will increase. Rental yields are climbing slightly from historic low levels however, they remain lower than they were a year ago. "Investors remain most active in NSW and Vic and have been targeting capital growth rather than rental return. With values now falling, active investors should be more focused on those regions with stronger prospects for value growth and higher rental returns. If you are new to iQ you can schedule a demo and learn more about this opportunity. PSFK iQ - Where Innovators Turn for Research. Our professional-grade research platform is designed specifically for Retail and CX leaders who want to know whats next. Whether youre staying current on trends or need a real-time research partner to help you get ahead, count on PSFK iQ to deliver the info you need to make your next move. A familys ennuiinduced by dreaded weekly food shoppingis shattered by flatulence in Bruce Eric Kaplans pithily and pointedly titled picture book Someone Farted. Kaplans famously mordant cartooning (he is a frequent contributor to the New Yorker) elevates the premise of what is dealt and smelt into a new realm; its fair to say that every Krupkewell, almostis a little wiser in the end. In an email exchange with PW, Kaplan revealed the books origin but was coyer about the secret embedded in the title. Several people have told me, I pretty much hate fart jokes but I love this book. Why do you think that is? What attracted you to the subject matterand was it hard to sell? Maybe it is because the humor of the book is not focused on farts as much as it is on the characters and their foibles. The humor comes from the characters reactions to the fart, and the subsequent events caused by these reactions. Believe me, writing a fart book is probably the last thing I would choose to do. But like much of my work, it feels like the subject matter chooses me, I dont choose it. In this case, I was driving to the market one Saturday morning with my wife and kids and we were silent. Then, my daughter looked up from her book and said quietly, Someone farted. We proceeded to all blame the others and deny it was any of us. I said, this should be a childrens picture book. And an hour later, when we were home from the market, I emailed Justinmy childrens book editorand asked if he would buy a book from me called Someone Farted, and he emailed back that he would. Do you think about cartooning any differently when the audience is primarily kids? When the subject is flatulence? It is definitely different than doing a New Yorker cartoon, but not because its for kids or its about flatulence. It more has to do with the fact that a single panel cartoon is a very specific thingits just about doing one image with (usually) a caption that is hopefully extremely funny. A childrens book involves writing a narrative, then doing illustrations. It requires a different skill set, especially patience. I dont have any particular techniques for doing one or the other. For me, it is like riding a bike vs. driving a car. There are similarities, but the second you begin doing one, you slip into the different technique to get where you want to go. Naming the family Krupke is inspired. How did you decide it was the best name? My father used to tell me stories at night that he would make up about a boy my age named Brian Krupke who was similar to me. So this book is sort of an homage to him and the idea of telling fictional stories based on true-life experiences. The father in the book is unnamed, but obviously, he is the grown-up Brian Krupke. My father loved West Side Story, and used to sing Gee, Officer Krupke around the house. So yes, I guess that is most likely [his] inspiration. Finally: who did fart? Is there some kind of Easter egg hidden in the book that will explain all? In the real-life events that the book is based on, we never learned who the culprit was. To this day, no one in the family has owned the fart. So it was important to me that in the book, the person who farted is not named. However, I had my suspicions then and now, and that has probably colored my dramatization of the incident. Someone Farted by Bruce Eric Kaplan. Simon & Schuster, $15.99 Apr. ISBN 978-1-4814-9063-4 With childrens books stocked at bookstores and retailers around the world and the recent launch of Hudson and the Puppy: Lost in Paris, the founders of small press publisher La Librairie Parisienne have exceeded their early expectations. A Hollywood producer and a Los Angeles artist built the press to publish the childrens book adventures of an ex-patriate terrier named Hudson. Now they have thousands of books in printa testament to good old-fashioned handselling. About eight years ago, artist Jackie Clark Mancuso dreamed of collecting her artwork in a book. She paints with gouache, which creates more solid, vivid colors compared to the transparent medium of traditional watercolors. Mancuso shared her publishing ambition with her friend, Stephen Ujlaki, the producer of 30 feature films, made-for-TV movies and documentaries. His credits include the 2008 documentary Cachao: Uno Mas that premiered on PBSs American Masters and a 2009 film adaptation of Patricia Highsmiths The Cry of the Owl. You know what? Ujlaki said. You need story. Mancuso began working on her first book while living in Paris. She had taken leave from her job as an art director in San Francisco to spend three months in Paris. Through her paintings, she adapted her experience into a picture book about coping with overwhelming new situations, telling the story of an American terrier who learns how to make friends with French-speaking dogs. The pair began to shop the manuscript with mainstream publishers. After a few rejections, they founded La Librairie Parisienne in 2013 to publish Paris-Chien: Adventures of an Ex-Pat Dog. Promoting the book became a part-time gig for Ujlaki, who has served as the dean of the Loyola Marymount University School of Film and Television since 2010. In my experience pitching films to the studiosif they don't want to do it, then you can't do it, Ujlaki said, noting the vast difference between financing a film and a picture book. But with the book, the great thing was that it was possible to actually publish it. Mancuso began carrying copies of the newly published Paris-Chien everywhere. She took a copy to Diesel Books in the Brentwood neighborhood of Los Angeles. Diesel started stocking the book, inspiring the team to visit more bookstores. Steve and I started going out together, because I needed the moral support, she said. Its difficult to promote yourself as an artist. You feel like a door-to-door salesman, said Ujlaki. He estimated that the pair had emailed or visited about 200 bookstores around the world with the book, along with more than 150 libraries. Soon, the pair had sold out the first 1,000-copy printing of the book, and ordered three more printingsputting 10,000 copies of the book in circulation. As the first book began to succeed, La Librairie Parisienne signed with Independent Publishers Group for distribution. Mancuso published Hudson in Provence in 2015, a sequel that took her titular terrier to the French countryside where he struggled to keep up with hardy country animals. The series began to spread to museum gift shops and other retail locations, including the Norton Simon Museum, Barneys New York, and the Parisian-inspired home decor and gift boutique Le Village Marche. The retailer Anthropologie initially ordered 100 copies, but then re-upped the order to 1,200 copies. I would venture that the Anthropologie client is very much drawn to all things French, the creative and artistic world, and the lifestyle they represent, said Mancuso. I think a lot of their customers love animals, particularly dogs. In their latest picture book, Hudson and the Puppy, Hudson helps a homeless dog find a home, in a subtle homage to Charlie Chaplins The Kid. Throughout her handselling adventures, Mancuso has found great pleasure in social media outreach, interacting with readers on Instagram, Facebook, and Twitter. Instagram is her favorite platform, where her paintings and sketches have earned numerous likes from fans. She sees some possibilities for the press in this creative circle shes built online. Im thinking about books we might do with other people, she said. We are learning as we go along, said Ujlaki. Weve had more success than we originally thought [the books] would have when we started. But his goals have grown along with the series. My dream as a publisher would be to have Hudson become as much of a name as Madeline was in my generation, he said. Hudson and the Puppy: Lost in Paris by Jackie Clark Mancuso. La Librarie Parisienne, $17.99 Apr. ISBN 978-0-9886058-5-5 Omid Safi, director of the Duke University Islamic Studies Center, is well aware that books abound on Muslims and politics. Works intended to explain or defend Muslim culture or the opposite, to deliver a polemic against the religion, are a publishing constant. He wants to change the subject. In the midst of drumbeat of news and conflict, he brings a melodic note in Radical Love: Teachings from the Islamic Mystical Tradition (Yale, June). Its a collection of more than 200 poems by medieval authors that he has translated from the original Arabic and Persian "for anyone who aspires to be in a loving relationship with humanity and with God, he told PW. Safi focused on the works from the Sufi or mystic tradition of Islam, which he describes as a way of moving in the world grounded in love, beauty and tenderness, not just a capital 'M' for Muslim." Its a different publishing direction for Safi, 47, the past chairman for the Study of Islam at the American Academy of Religion. His earlier books include Progressive Muslims: On Justice, Gender, and Pluralism (Oneworld, 2003); Politics of Knowledge in Premodern Islam (UNC, 2006); Memories of Muhammad: Why the Prophet Matters (HarperOne, 2010) and Cambridge Companion to American Islam (with Juliane Hammer, Cambridge, 2013). I am mindful of the fact that when people think about Islam, the notion of a spiritual path [and] a radical idea of love, is not the first thing that comes to [their] mind," said Safi. "I just wanted to go with the good and trust the beautiful to say that love conquers hate and will have the triumph over darkness." Among the selection of poems is one by Farid al-Din Attar, author of the famous 13th-century allegory Manteq al-Tayr, The Conference of the Birds, who writes: Judge not/ Hold your tongue/ Avoid fanaticism/ Make the path your only purpose. The best-known of all the Sufi mystics, Rumi, the13th-century Persian poet, jurist, and scholar, points out in one verse, "The masters of law offer no lessons on love. " And Ayn al-Qozat Hamadini, a 12th-century philosopher, in a poem about love supreme assures readers, The only obligation in religion is to arrive at God by any means necessary. Safi very intentionally chose God, not Allah in his translations. 'Allah' is the Arabic word for God. Its an English word and Im transliterating into English here," he said. "If I had left it as Allah, the danger is that people would mistakenly think we are speaking of some other God that God and Allah are not the same." Hes not the only Muslim writer whose books expand understanding of Islam outside the context of inflammatory conflicts, Safi says. Examples he suggests include: Essential Sufism, a thoughtful, considerate and beautifully articulate book edited by Robert Frager and James Fadiman (HarperOne, 1999). Following Muhammad: Rethinking Islam in the Contemporary World by Carl W. Ernst (UNC, 2004) "whose work does not pretend that any group is somehow perfect but never wavers with fact that everyone possesses full humanity." The Lives of Muhammad (Harvard, 2014) by Kecia Ali, Boston University professor of religion, gender and ethnic studies who looks at Islam and gender in a very insightful way with scholarship at a high level. Still, Safi has not forsaken contemporary concerns. On April 4, the 50th anniversary of the assassination of Rev. Martin Luther King, Safi was among the speakers at an event at the Lorraine Motel in Memphis, where King was murdered. He said, I spoke about love as I experience it as a Muslim. But it is the same love I see Martin talked about not merely an emotion but the unleashing of God. If you love people and experience that kind of love, you cant help but be concerned when people are suffering, and you are moved to act." It is this teaching, based on his faith, that led him to write Radical Love. "The speech and the book are not different enterprises for me," he said. "A book of a few hundred poems of light and redemption and illumination is its own witness that love is an absolutely legitimate and authentic Muslim path to God." The Convergence facility is a 145,000-square-foot, five-story office building in the Discovery Park District. The building is designed to serve as a bridge to further connect Purdue University research with technology commercialization and startup creation. (Rendering provided by Browning) INDIANAPOLIS, WEST LAFAYETTE, Ind. A master plan for the $1 billion Discovery Park District unveiled today (Monday) outlines a 30-year commitment to transform the west side of the Purdue University campus into a mixed-use gateway for intellectual discourse and commercial partnerships. Purdue Research Foundation and Indianapolis-based Browning Investments LLC are partnering on the long-term project to build a preeminent environment for educational, economic, cultural and community activities. We are building off the State Street Redevelopment Project and the outstanding research that is conducted in Discovery Park. We recognize that the Discovery Park District is the next step in the evolution of Purdue University as the place to go for intellectual challenge and innovation advancement, said Dan Hasler, Purdue Research Foundation chief entrepreneurial officer. The district will provide the necessary amenities to bring current and future leaders of academics and business together. It is a long-term commitment and we are being very careful with each step of the process to make sure it is done right, because the Discovery Park District will be the front door to Purdue University for generations to come. Aspire at Discovery Park is scheduled to be complete in August 2019. Convergence will break ground later this year, pending board approval. The 145,000-square-foot, five-story mixed-use building will connect Purdue University research, industry, investors, and innovative ideas with commercial impact through collaborative research, licensing and startup creation to private enterprise. A fundamental element in Purdues mission is to support our faculty in their quest to discover, develop and deliver innovations to the public. We do this in many ways from state-of-the-art research facilities to securing private and public funding, said Suresh Garimella, Purdues executive vice president for research and partnerships. The Convergence facility will be an additional important venue for our collaborative partnerships for the commercialization of the life-changing research taking place in Discovery Park and across the Purdue campus. Among other goals, the Convergence will serve as home to the Purdue Foundry, where Purdues growing startup community will be supported. The Purdue Office of Technology Commercialization, Purdues Office of Corporate and Global Partnerships and WomenIN will be housed in the facility. Most importantly, the Convergence will be the first physical home of many of Purdues corporate sponsors. The Aspire and Convergence projects represent the first of many exciting ventures planned for the next 10-20 years as part of our master plan, said Adam Chavers, senior vice president of Browning. The careful planning of Discovery Park District sets the stage to maximize the relationship between the university and the community. It also will enhance Purdues reputation as an international leader in creating a community with both intellectual and innovative vibrancy. Highlights of the Discovery Park District master plan include: * District Core as the center and social hub of the innovation ecosystem, offering the widest mix of uses including co-working, office, lab and maker spaces. * Main Street to serve as a corridor that links multiple areas of the district and connects to both State Street and Airport Road, providing a pedestrian bike- and transit-friendly destination with a carefully curated retail experience. * An enhanced Squirrel Park that includes a mix of landscaped park spaces recreational areas and pedestrian pathways. * Residential Village for a walkable community for single-family housing needs of a wide variety of homeowners that is close to campus. * Aerospace District as one of the largest university-affiliated aerospace business hubs for companies to collaborate on research and commerce. The city of West Lafayette and the Greater Lafayette area have always enjoyed the benefits of having Purdue University as their neighbor and partner. And with the reveal of the full master plan for Discovery Park District continues this success story. This is a game-changer for its added value to all residents in and around the entire area, said West Lafayette Mayor John Dennis. The excitement is building for this major long-term development, and I look forward to the many positive results that this amazing partnership will bring to our community. In addition to the State Street Development Project, the Discovery Park District project is in large part due to the history of collaboration among Purdue, Browning, and West Lafayette, and will complement other initiatives already taking place on the west side of campus including the State Street Redevelopment Project, US 231 west side expansion, Horticulture Park, Todd's Creek relocation, new recreational fields, Purdue Early Child Care Center and the Rolls-Royce facility at the Purdue Research Park Aerospace District. For additional information visit Discovery Park District. About Purdue University Purdue University was founded in 1869 under the land-grant act. Enrollment is about 42,000 graduate and undergraduate students at its West Lafayette, Indiana campus and more than 450,000 alumni around the globe. The Wall Street Journal ranked Purdue 5th Best Public School in the U.S. The list of Purdues distinguished alumni includes many pioneers in their fields, including Neil Armstrong, the first man to walk on the moon, as well as notable faculty members such as Ei-ichi Negishi, the 2010 recipient of the Nobel Prize in chemistry, and two recipients of the World Food Prize, Philip Nelson and Gebisa Ejeta. With more than 400 research laboratories and 116 University-approved research centers and institutes, Purdue continues to fulfill its mission to expand the frontiers of knowledge and its applications, to help build a better world. About Purdue Research Foundation The Purdue Research Foundation is a private, nonprofit foundation created to advance the mission of Purdue University. Established in 1930, the foundation accepts gifts; administers trusts; funds scholarships and grants; acquires property; protects Purdue's intellectual property; and promotes entrepreneurial activities on behalf of Purdue. The foundation manages the Purdue Foundry, Purdue Office of Technology Commercialization, Purdue Research Park and Purdue Technology Centers. The foundation received the 2014 Incubator Network of the Year by the National Business Incubation Association for its work in entrepreneurship. For more information about funding and investment opportunities in startups based on a Purdue innovation, contact the Purdue Foundry at foundry@prf.org About Browning Founded in 1977, Browning remains one of the premier development companies in Indianapolis and is engaged in the acquisition, development, construction, leasing, management, ownership and disposition of investment real estate properties, primarily in the Indianapolis metropolitan area. In total, Browning has developed and constructed more than 22 million square feet of space. To learn more, visit: www.browninginvestments.com. Writer: Cynthia Sequin, 765-413-6031, casequin@prf.org Sources: Dan Hasler, 765-588-3825, djhasler@prf.org Garimella, Suresh, sureshg@purdue.edu Adam Chavers, achavers@browninginv.com John Dennis, jdennis@westlafayette.in.gov Women in Cable Telecommunications (WICT) has issued the call for nominations for the 2018 Woman of the Year and Woman to Watch honourees. The awards will be presented in October in New York during the WICT Leadership Conference, held in conjunction with the industry's Diversity Week.The Woman of the Year Award is bestowed on a woman who has made significant contributions throughout her career to her company and the overall cable telecommunications industry. She is a proven leader and asset who shows great resolve to help others along their path. WICT will select one honouree each from a programmer and an operator.The Woman to Watch Award honours a woman who shows tremendous promise for transforming the industry through her professional accomplishments. She has already demonstrated exemplary leadership skills in her company and a strong dedication to the industry. WICT will select one honouree each from a programmer, an operator and an industry supplier."We are proud to recognise and honour the outstanding achievements of our industry's finest leaders through WICT's Woman of the Year and Woman to Watch awards," said Maria Brennan, WICT president and CEO. "As the industry continues to evolve and WICT grows larger, we will once again broaden the scope of our awardees to include Woman of the Year - Operator and Woman of the Year - Programmer, as well as Woman to Watch in the Operator, Programmer and Technology ranks." Business and financial news network CBNC has begun broadcasting from its new Middle East headquarters in Abu Dhabi. Unveiled during the Capital Connection show fronted by CNBC Middle East anchor Hadley Gamble, the facility in Abu Dhabi Global Market (ADGM) will now act as the TV networks regional hub.Weve been reporting the Middle East business story to CNBCs elite global audience for years, said Gamble after the inaugural show on Monday (16 April). The launch of our new home within ADGM starts a new chapter in our reporting from the region. These new state-of-the-art studios provide us with a fantastic platform to tell the global business story through a unique Middle East lens. CNBC has revealed its guests this week will include Mohamed Khalifa Al Mubarak, chairman of Aldar Properties; HE Saif Saeed Ghobash, director general of Abu Dhabi Department of Culture and Tourism; Jassim Alseddiqi, CEO of Abu Dhabi Financial Group; Saudi Prince Turki Al-Faisal and Mohammed Al Ardhi, chairman of Investcorp.John Casey, CNBCs SVP of International News and Programming, said: CNBC broadcasts daily from the networks international headquarters in New York, London and Singapore. With the addition of our new Middle East Headquarters at ADGM, we plan to connect Abu Dhabi to the worlds financial capitals. After the American-led missile salvo against Syria comes a barrage of interception claims and counterclaims. Russia says Syrian air defences shot down most of the missiles. But the U.S. says all 105 cruise missiles reached their targets. Thats despite some 40 Syrian interceptors being fired. Given this new missile interception controversy, its worth looking at another ongoing one. Newly-published research investigates the effectiveness of Israels Iron Dome rocket interceptor systems. Iron Dome arrives Iron Dome began operating in Israel in 2011. The systems achieved international fame during the countrys 2012 and 2014 Gaza Strip conflicts. But they also triggered controversy about their true performance. Each Iron Dome system includes a radar, computer and several launchers. The radar detects incoming rockets. The computer then estimates the impact points. If any rockets threaten valued targets, the launchers shoot them down. Read more: Explainer: Israel's Iron Dome anti-missile system The systems cost Israel billions to develop, build and reload. The United States contributed $1.3 billion of that, and recently budgeted several hundred millions more. Five Iron Dome systems served during Israels 2012 Operation Pillar of Defense against Gaza. They claimed 421 rocket interceptions. Thats 85 per cent of the rockets they engaged. Observers declared the technology a game-changer that heralds the end of rockets. Nine systems participated in 2014s Operation Protective Edge. They claimed 735 rocket and mortar shell interceptions. Thats 92 per cent of those engaged. Skepticism about missile interceptions However, missile interception is difficult and often doubted, as in the Syrian case. Analysts shot down American claims of intercepting Iraqi missiles during the 1991 Gulf War. Saudi Arabias recent interceptions of Houthi missiles are likewise under fire. For Iron Dome, videos of interception attempts lack enough detail to confirm the rockets warheads were destroyed. Critics therefore have questioned Israels claims. One U.S. analyst argued the effective interception rate might have been 30 to 40 per cent. Another put it below 10 per cent. An Israeli critic called the system a bluff. (The technologys occasional missteps dont help. In 2016, a system fired at mortar shells falling outside of Israel. Last month, one launched interceptors at machine gun bullets.) In response, Iron Dome supporters have pointed to declining property damage rates. Israel had no interceptors during the 2006 Second Lebanon War. In that conflict, the country suffered 6.7 property damage insurance claims per rocket. The rate dropped to 2.9 in 2012 and 1.2 in 2014. Supporters argued the steep decrease after Iron Domes arrival proved its ironclad success. Author provided A closer look But that comparison overlooks some important details. The first is Operation Cast Lead in 2008-2009. That conflict had just 2.4 damage claims per rocket. With that included, Iron Domes 2011 debut coincides with slightly increased damage rates. Author provided The second oversight concerns rocket differences. In 2006, Hezbollah militants in Lebanon fired thousands of Grad artillery rockets at Israel. Several hundred heavier missiles reinforced the barrage. By contrast, Hamas militants in Gaza mixed Grads with smaller Qassam rockets. The average Gaza rocket warhead consequently was about half the size of those from Lebanon. Scaling the damage rates relative to warhead weight can adjust for these differences. The damage claims per standardized rocket then become 4.4, 3.9, 4.3, and 1.5, respectively. The first three numbers closeness suggests Iron Dome had minimal influence in 2012. But the subsequent large drop implies it was very influential in 2014. Author provided Estimating performance My new research investigates this topic in more detail. It suggests Iron Dome intercepted 59 to 75 per cent of all threatening rockets during Protective Edge four years ago. Threatening means the rockets struck populated areas or were intercepted beforehand. The interceptions likely avoided $42 to $86 million in property damage. They also prevented three to six deaths and 120 to 250 injuries. Those percentages include rockets anywhere in Israel. Therefore, the claim of a 92 per cent interception rate for only the areas defended by Iron Dome seems plausible. By contrast, the 2012 Pillar of Defense interceptions apparently blocked less than 32 per cent of threatening rockets. They prevented at most two deaths, 110 injuries and US$7 million in damage. The data also imply the number of rocket hits on populated areas was understated. Conversely, the number of threatening rockets seems overstated. The effective interception rate for Pillar of Defense therefore may have been markedly less than the reported 85 per cent. Improved but not impenetrable These results suggest the Iron Dome debate has been too polarized. The systems initial value may have been largely symbolic. But it later become very influential. Thats good news for Israel and its American funder. Its also reassuring for potential Iron Dome buyers facing missile threats in other parts of the world. Read more: North Korea missile crisis echoes Israel's anti-rocket strategy Only Azerbaijan has purchased any systems so far. But the U.S. Army may buy some for short-range air defence. (Canada only bought the radar.) However, the system isnt the end of rockets. Attackers can counter interceptors by firing rockets in large batches. Indeed, Israels opponents keep acquiring more rockets. Hamas in strife-filled Gaza reportedly has 10,000. Hezbollah in Lebanon has 120,000. That latter arsenal would severely strain Israeli interceptors during any future Northern War. Similarly, sophisticated attackers use technology to make their missiles hard to intercept. In their Syria strike, America and its allies used difficult-to-detect cruise missiles. Defenders cant intercept what their radars cant see. Michael J. Armstrong, Associate professor of operations research, Goodman School of Business, Brock University This article was originally published on The Conversation. Read the original article. As the war drums were being beaten for an attack on Syria in response to its apparent use of chlorine gas, I shared some of the fears of such critics as Tucker Carlson and Michael Savage that we were being led into a possible war that could end up a quagmire. My greatest reservation was the possibility of toppling Assad and reaping another Libya or Iraq, with even worse enemies taking control. And for all the brutality of the Assad regime, it has prevented wholesale religious massacres in a multi-religion state. Racism, inadvertent or otherwise, in a self-described socially responsible company, speaks to how deeply ingrained hate, fear, and discrimination is, and to just how little we, as a country, have evolved from our racist, slave-holding past. Despite escalating worries about Russia in past weeks, the skies did not fall as a result of the American-led punitive raid on Syrias chemical weapons storage and research facilities Saturday morning. Great care was taken to avoid hitting the many sites within Assad-controlled Syria which are in fact administered by powers other than the Syrian dictatornamely, Russia and Iran. A perfectly executed strike, the president declared on Twitter. Mission accomplished. U.S. ambassador to the UN Nikki Haley struck a similar tone of satisfaction. If the Syrian regime uses this poisonous gas again, she told an emergency meeting of the UN Security Council, the United States is locked and loaded. On Sunday evening, ABC preempted its regularly scheduled programming to broadcast an exclusive interview conducted by This Week host George Stephanopoulos with former FBI Director James Comey. The star treatment is part of an all-out publicity campaign that Comey, fired by President Trump less than one year ago, has launched to promote his new book, A Higher Loyalty: Truth, Lies, and Leadership. How Comeys portrayal of himself as a virtuous man selflessly devoted to the public interest fits with his rush to cash in on public service by disclosing details of his relationship with a sitting president is one of the salient questions Stephanopoulos failed to pose Sunday night. ABCs chief political anchor did elicit from Comey a variety of denunciations of Trump. They were newsworthy but no surprise. Was anyone caught off guard, for example, when the disgruntled former employee who has traded barbs with the president on Twitter likened him to a New York City mob boss? It was also, alas, no surprise that Stephanopoulos failed to ask Comey many questions that touch on eminently newsworthy issues and directly address the rule of law and the integrity of law enforcement agencies to which Comey proclaims devotion. Here are 10: 1) In December 2003, you were deputy attorney general. When then-Attorney General John Ashcroft recused himself, it fell to you to determine whether to appoint a special counsel to investigate the leak, in spring of that year, of Valerie Plames CIA employment. You named your good friend (and godfather to your daughter) Patrick Fitzgerald, who conducted a long, drawn-out investigation that resulted in the 2007 conviction of Vice President Dick Cheneys former chief of staff, Scooter Libby (pardoned by President Trump on Friday) for obstruction of justice, making a false statement, and perjury but not for leaking Plames employment. Indeed, by early autumn 2003 a few months before you appointed Fitzgerald Deputy Secretary of State Richard Armitage had informed the FBI that he leaked Plames employment. By that time, the CIA had determined that the leak did not harm national security. If, as acting attorney general, you were aware in December 2003 of the leakers identity and that the leak had not harmed national security, why did you appoint a special counsel? 2) If you were unaware of that information when you appointed Fitzgerald, why were you in the dark on facts established by law enforcement and intelligence that were vitally relevant to so grave a matter? 3) Fitzgerald chose not to pursue charges against the actual leaker, Richard Armitage. Is it fair to infer that leaking Plames identity was not a crime and to wonder why you allowed Fitzgerald to devote several years to investigating a non-crime that had already been solved and that had no impact on national security? 4) In 2015, Fitzgeralds star prosecution witness, journalist Judith Miller, recanted. Miller claimed that Fitzgerald induced her to give false testimony by withholding crucial information. Did this dramatic development give you reason to reconsider your judgment in enabling Fitzgerald to prosecute perjury-trap crimes created by his investigation? 5) Last week, at the behest of Special Counsel Robert Mueller who is investigating allegations that individuals associated with the Trump campaign cooperated with Russians to interfere in the 2016 election federal agents raided the offices and hotel room of Trumps personal lawyer Michael Cohen. They were reportedly in search of evidence concerning Cohens payment of hush money to women with whom Trump allegedly had consensual sex more than a decade ago, and other possible crimes. Last summer, Mueller ordered a guns-drawn raid of former Trump campaign manager Paul Manaforts home for crimes unconnected to Russian collusion. In the case of the Hillary Clinton email investigation, however, the Department of Justice and the FBI proceeded gingerly. Although Clintons use of a private email server to conduct State Department business likely exposed highly classified information to foreign intelligence services, the Department of Justice declined to impanel a grand jury and offered generous immunity agreements, while the FBI, which you supervised, stood by and did nothing about the Clinton teams destruction of evidence computers, phones, tens of thousands of emails. How do you explain the disparity between the FBIs hardball investigation of a Republican president and kid-glove investigation of a Democratic candidate for president? 6) In July 2016, in unprecedented defiance of well-established practice that assigns the FBI responsibility for investigating crimes and the Department of Justice responsibility for making prosecution decisions, you publicly announced that no reasonable prosecutor would bring a case against Clinton. Several distinguished and apparently reasonable former prosecutors promptly contradicted you. Did you overstate your case? 7) In your July 2016 statement, you acknowledged that Clinton and her colleagues were extremely careless in their handling of very sensitive, highly classified information. How does that differ from the grossly negligent mishandling of classified information that the law regards as a criminal act? 8) You state that you dont know whether the Christopher Steele dossier is a credible document. Yet it appears to have played a substantial role in the FBIs obtaining a warrant from the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Court in October 2016 targeting former Trump campaign adviser Carter Page. Did the FBI inform the court that the Steele dossiers allegations were unverified, and why would the FBI ever use unverified information to secure authority to surveil an American citizen? 9) According to a just-released Department of Justice Inspector Generals report, in October 2016 your then-deputy, Andrew McCabe, improperly authorized disclosure of self-serving information to the Wall Street Journal and then under oath denied having done so. Also on your watch, FBI counterintelligence agent Peter Strzok, who took a leading role in both the Clinton and Trump investigations, conducted an illicit affair with FBI lawyer Lisa Page, and throughout 2016 the lovers exchanged pro-Clinton and anti-Trump text messages on FBI devices. When informed, Mueller quietly removed them from his team. Does this litany of misconduct represent a breakdown in professional law enforcement under your leadership? 10) In May 2017, in apparent conflict with FBI policy, you leaked memos dealing with your private conversations with the president about FBI investigations. One of those memos may have contained classified material. Did you flout FBI policy and, if so, what message does your breach send to rank-and-file FBI agents and ordinary law-abiding citizens? Perhaps Comey answers some of these questions in A Higher Loyalty, which is being released to the public Tuesday. Perhaps some answers will be furnished by the soon-to-be-released larger report from Department of Justice Inspector General Michael Horowitz on the governments handling of the Clinton email investigation; by U.S. attorney for Utah John Hubers investigation into alleged abuses at the FBI and the Department of Justice concerning both the Clinton email investigation and Trump collusion investigation; and by the probes undertaken by the House Intelligence Committee chaired by Rep. Devin Nunes and by the Senate Judiciary Committee led by Sen. Charles Grassley. And maybe, just maybe, some answers particularly those about Scooter Libby, which do not fall under the purview of the government investigations will be pursued by those increasingly rare journalists devoted to understanding the rule of law and to reporting rigorously on our law enforcement agencies. James Comey's extended book tour isn't only rattling President Trump. It's also inducing a bit of post-traumatic stress disorder among Democrats, many of whom consider the fired FBI director the villain of the 2016 election. Comey's near-omnipresence on the air and online to promote the release of A Higher Loyalty complicates, if not undermines, Democrats effort to capitalize on the feud between the president and the nation's former top law enforcement official. On one hand, they are still seething over Comey's decision to issue a scathing indictment of Hillary Clinton's judgment during a July 2016 press conference to announce the FBI would be closing its investigation of the former secretary of states private email account and server. Their outrage increased in late October, just over a week before the election, when Comey said that the bureau was reopening the case a decision that prompted Democrats to openly question the director's own judgment and competence at the time and for many months afterward. Comey's admission in his book that he figured Clinton would be the next president and therefore he felt concerned about concealing a re-opened probe has incensed Democrats anew, raising more questions about the extent to which politics tainted his actions. Some Democrats have gone so far as to call Comey a "liar" and a "narcissist" looking out only for himself. Clinton Campaign Chairman John Podesta called his decision "one of the worst errors of judgment in post-Hoover FBI history." Yet on the other hand, Democrats still argue that Comey could be a credible witness in the Robert Mueller investigation when it comes to whether the president obstructed justice by firing of FBI director. And some in the party see Comey's blunt questioning of the president's moral fitness to serve, and of his ability to tell the truth, as appealing to moderate voters they hope to win back in the midterms. "It's absolutely a complicated relationship," says Josh Schwerin, who served as a spokesman for the 2016 Clinton campaign, noting the "widespread pain" felt in listening to Comey over the past few days. "It is really important to remember that this is somebody who broke FBI protocol and regulations and ended up dramatically impacting the race, if not changing the outcome, and he needs to answer for that and needs to continue to be pressed," adds Schwerin, who is now communications director for the Priorities USA super PAC. "But at the same time -- and this is where nuanced arguments are difficult to break through -- he is a witness to obstruction [of] justice, and his testimony and his retelling of what happened is an important piece in the case against Trump." Democratic strategist Patti Solis Doyle, who managed Clinton's 2008 campaign, argues that credibility and judgment are not mutually exclusive. "Democrats are still smarting, without question," Solis Doyle says. But, "I think you can have bad judgment and still be credible. ... I don't think there has been a time throughout this process that [Comey] has told a lie, as the president has said. His story has been extremely consistent. I don't think you can question his honesty." In an interview with ABC's George Stephanopoulos that aired Sunday, Comey asserted there was "certainly some evidence of obstruction of justice" by the president, but he also noted it "would depend and -- and I'm just a witness in this case, not the investigator or prosecutor. It would depend upon other things that reflected on his intent." When asked in an interview with NPR whether his book tour would undermine his credibility in the Mueller probe of Russian election interference, Comey referred to his extensive testimony before Congress. "I don't know whether I'll have to testify later but if I did, the advantage of my circumstances is my testimony is locked down," he said. "I wrote memos, I wrote written testimony, and so long as I continue to tell the truth and don't start making stuff up that's inconsistent with that testimony, I don't see an issue." But longtime Clinton friend Lanny Davis doesn't seem to consider Comey as credible. Davis told Fox News: "He's now lying on all his television interviews ... where he says he was obligated to [announce the restarting of the Clinton email probe] because he promised Congress. I call that a lie." He continued: "I respect Comey for standing up to Donald Trump, who asked for personal loyalty -- an offense against the Constitution, in my judgment. It's the only thing I respect about Comey. Everything else is a renegade narcissist, protecting his political rear end with the Republicans because he thought Clinton was going to be elected." In the book, Comey describes his thinking thusly: It is entirely possible that, because I was making decisions in an environment where Hillary Clinton was sure to be the next president, my concern about making her an illegitimate president by concealing the restarted investigation bore greater weight than it would have if the election appeared closer or if Donald Trump were ahead in all polls. But I dont know. Some Democrats have taken issue with what they see as Comey's failure to provide true clarity. "Comey used the word maybe 37 times in the interview. 8 of them were in one answer. For a lawyer and law enforcement professional at the highest levels, it's a curious tactic, but useful when talking to press, allowing him to avoid having to be definitive about anything," wrote former Clinton communications director Nick Merrill, as part of a series of tweets questioning Comey's answers in the Stephanopoulos interview. Such an observation raises questions about Comey's value as a witness in the Mueller probe. And others note the contrast of Comey's behavior with that of the special counsel. "People talk a lot about Mueller and Comey being similar, but every time I hear Comey talk about the Clinton investigation, I can only think of how Mueller would've handled everything the exact opposite way," wrote Matthew Miller, former spokesman for then-Attorney General Eric Holder. "It wouldve never occurred to Mueller that he was in an impossible position. He wouldnt have thought about himself and his position at all. He wouldve just done his job, followed the rules, and let the chips fall where they may. As youre supposed to." Beyond Comey's potential role in the special counsels investigation, others have taken issue with the way in which the former FBI director takes potshots at the president in his book, commenting on Trumps hand size, the length of his ties, and the orange hue to his skin. Those elements have been perceived by observers on both sides of the aisle as undercutting Comey's reputation as an even-handed public servant and undermining his claim to high moral ground. But some Democrats argue that other parts of the book and portions of related interviews pertaining to Trump could be persuasive. "It's one thing when I criticize Donald Trump, but it's another thing when someone whose actions led to electing him is now saying he is unfit and behaves like a mob boss," says Democratic strategist Jesse Ferguson, who served as a spokesman for the Clinton campaign. "For people who may not have liked Hillary Clinton, Comey's criticism will be the latest data point in the public indictment of the Trump administration." Others believe Comey's influence will be limited, and they look forward to putting the former FBI director in the rear view. "Democrats, liberals, progressives, and even independents, because of the way he infused politics in both investigations, will not see him as the moral authority," says Solis Doyle. "They already know [Trumps] unfit to be president on moral grounds. ... They don't need to hear it from James Comey." On the eve of his first state visit to the U.S., France's culturally attuned president elaborates on his vision for the republic, his global trepidations, and his very personal relationship with Donald Trump. As University of Georgia students are preparing for finals, some are also gearing up for Georgia's 10th Congressional District elections this May. If you have experienced G-Day in Athens before, you already know how exhausting of a day it can be. If you dont fill up with a good meal befo HARTFORD At its annual award breakfast on Tuesday, April 24, the Connecticut Science Center will celebrate individuals and organizations in STEM (science, technology, engineering, and math) who share in the mission of lifelong learning through interactive and innovative experiences that explore our changing world through science. Along with the Science Centers STEM Achievement Awards, the Petit Family Foundation Women in Science Leadership Award is presented to a female leader who makes a significant effort to support other women and encourage girls' interests in STEM. The event is generously presented by Stanley Black & Decker, with support from the Girl Scouts of Connecticut. This years honorees include Dr. Michele Dischino, professor at Central Connecticut State University; Sharon Gusky, professor at Northwestern Connecticut Community College; and the Girl Scouts of Connecticut. Selected by the Science Centers Women in Science Steering Committee and STEM Awards Selection Committee, the honorees were selected from numerous nominations submitted by the public. Through public nominations, the STEM Achievement Awards allows not only us, but the community as a whole, to acknowledge fantastic individuals and organizations in STEM, said Matt Fleury, President and CEO of the Connecticut Science Center. Our honorees, Michele, Sharon, and the Girl Scouts of Connecticut, along with our finalists, represent a group of truly remarkable individuals who are shaping our community as well as our future workforce. Sharon Gusky, the 2018 STEM Achievement Award Individual Honoree, is a biology professor at Northwestern Connecticut Community College in Winsted and is actively involved in providing professional development opportunities for educators. She is a founding member and current president of the Connecticut Association of Biology Teachers, a founding member and chairperson of the Connecticut Community College Biology Faculty Association, and a founding Fellow of the Partnership for Undergraduate Life Science Education. Gusky is the state-wide chair for the Community Colleges' Center for Teaching. She serves on the Small World Initiatives Training and Mentoring committee, is a community college liaison to the NSF funded Evalu-ATE Center and participates in the Prevalence of Antibiotic Resistance in the Environment Project. Michele Dischino, Ph.D., is the 2018 Petit Family Foundation Women in Science Leadership Award honoree. Dr. Dischino is a Professor of Technology and Engineering Education at Central Connecticut State University, where she teaches courses in a variety of science, technology, engineering and math subjects. She served as co-principal investigator on two NSF-funded grants through which she developed problem-based learning curricula used by educators throughout the U.S. and internationally. As an engineer drawn to education, she has a passion for delivering high-impact experiences to students that serve as examples of the many ways in which engineers can make the world a better place. Dr. Dischino received her Ph.D. in Bioengineering from the University of Pennsylvania and her B.S. in Mechanical Engineering from Manhattan College. The Girl Scouts of Connecticut is this years STEM Achievement Award Organization Honoree. Founded in October of 2007, the Girl Scouts of Connecticut stay true to the original Girl Scouts vision of building girls of courage, confidence, and character, who make the world a better place. Currently the largest youth organization in the state, the Girl Scouts of Connecticut provides programs focused on leadership development for girls age 5 through 17. Tickets are $40 for the general public and $35 for Connecticut Science Center Members and Corporate Member Employees. Tickets are on sale now and may be purchased online. For more information about the 2018 STEM Achievement Awards, presented by Stanley Black & Decker with support from the Girl Scouts of Connecticut, visit CTScienceCenter.org/awards/. Authorities in the Chinese capital placed a number of dissidents under house arrest over the weekend, which saw the anniversary of the death of liberal premier Hu Yaobang, which triggered a mass outpouring of grief and the student-led democracy movement on Tiananmen Square in 1989. While Hu's family members were permitted to visit his grave in the eastern province of Jiangxi, security restrictions ensured that no well-wishers visited his former residence in Beijing, which was closed and under close police guard on Sunday's anniversary. Hu was ousted from the top job as general secretary of the ruling Chinese Communist Party amid accusations of "bourgeois liberalism" in his handling of earlier student protests on Tiananmen Square, in 1987. His death of a heart attack in 1989 prompted a massive public outpouring of grief on Tiananmen Square, sparking several weeks of student-led pro-democracy protests and hunger strikes that were later ended amid a bloody military crackdown by the People's Liberation Army on the night of June 3 that year. Qi Zhiyong, whose legs were crushed by an armored vehicle during the crackdown, said he was among those place under house arrest at the weekend. "The events that took place in the run-up to the Tiananmen massacre are pretty sensitive, and security is rather tight," Qi told RFA. "They have to send people round and place me under 24-hour surveillance." "There's a police car at my gate. The guy driving it is in uniform, and the state security police are in plain clothes," he said. "I have no way of losing them, and they have to send someone, so there's a record." Under surveillance Veteran democracy activist He Depu said he has been under surveillance since last week, and warned not to go to Tiananmen Square or any other "sensitive" location such as a government department. "The police said they don't know what's going on; they're only doing their jobs, and they have to do them properly," He told RFA. "There is one police car, and they are sitting in it. There are eyes on me the whole time." "It's probably linked to [Hu Yaobang's anniversary] I expect," he said. "The monitoring of dissidents and rights activists has been much tighter than in previous years." Beijing rights activist Hu Jia said the authorities are likely gearing up to ensure that as little happens as possible ahead of next year's 30th anniversary of the Tiananmen massacre. "They also want to shut down public opinion [on the topic] overseas," Hu said. "As for right now, I think they have already started in with these measures, in preparation for next year." Family visits graves The Hong Kong-based Information Center for Human Rights and the Democracy Movement in China said around 10 family members, including Hu's son Hu Deping and daughter Li Heng, visited the graves of Hu and his wife Li Zhao at the Yaobang Cemetery on Sunday. A source close to the family told RFA that he hadn't attended the activity, but had forwarded essays to his WeChat circle in commemoration of the late premier. There arent any big events going on right now, just a lot of commemorative items on people's friend groups," the source said, confirming that the family had been to Hu's grave in Jiangxi. The Communist Party currently bans public memorials marking the June 4 massacre, and has continued to ignore growing calls in China and from overseas for a reappraisal of the 1989 student protests, which it once styled a "counterrevolutionary rebellion." The number of people killed when People's Liberation Army tanks and troops entered Beijing on the night of June 3-4, 1989, remains a mystery. Beijing authorities once put the death toll at "nearly 300," but the central government has never issued an official toll or list of names, in spite of repeated calls by the Tiananmen Mothers victims' group. Reported by Qiao Long for RFA's Mandarin Service, and by Wong Lok-to for the Cantonese Service. Translated and written in English by Luisetta Mudie. Joshua Wong (R), former Occupy Central student leader and current secretary general of pro-democracy party Demosisto, applies for a judicial review of the authorities' refusal to register the party in Hong Kong, April 17, 2018. A political party formed by the leaders of the 2014 pro-democracy Umbrella Movement in Hong Kong has stepped up its fight to win legal recognition after its application to register as a company was rejected. Former Occupy Central student leader and current secretary general of Demosisto Joshua Wong applied on Tuesday for a judicial review over the authorities' refusal to register the party. Wong is requesting that the city's High Court review the decision, after the group's application to the Companies Registry was rejected on the grounds that the party advocates self-determination for Hong Kong, which Beijing sees as akin to a pro-independence stance. "They dragged it out for nearly two years, so it's pretty clear that the Companies Registry had political issues to consider," Wong told reporters on Tuesday. "In the absence of any Hong Kong law on political parties, it is entirely reasonable for political groups to register as companies." "Demosisto isn't advocating armed revolution or any acts of violence, so why would it be turned down by the Companies Registry on political grounds? It beggars belief," he said. The rejection of the party's application comes after it was denied a bank account two years ago, making it very hard for the party to manage its finances properly, Wong said. "Hong Kong people deserve freedom of speech and deserve the right to express different political stances or opinions," he said. Chinese officials have repeatedly warned that advocates of independence for Hong Kong won't be tolerated in public life. Wong said the pro-independence Hong Kong National Party has also been refused permission to register as a company. "Last year, the pro-independence Hong Kong National Party was rejected by the Companies Registry, and this year Demosisto, which supports self-determination, was rejected when it tried to set up as a limited company," Wong said. "Maybe in future any party that espouses the principles of democracy and the rule of law, or any group that wants to end one-party rule [in China] will also be denied permission to register as a company, for overriding reasons of 'national security'?" he said. Demosisto initially had some success at the polls, with former Occupy Central student leader Nathan Law becoming the youngest ever candidate to be elected to the city's Legislative Council (LegCo) in September 2016. But last July, Law became one of six pro-democracy lawmakers to be stripped of their LegCo seats after China's parliament, the National People's Congress (NPC), ruled that oaths of allegiance must be "solemn and sincere." Last month, Demosisto's Agnes Chow was disqualified from running in a by-election to fill the seat vacated by law, because her political views were judged to be pro-independence. A blow to democracy The barring of certain candidates because of their political views sparked widespread criticism among barristers, rights groups and politicians, as well as former British and Hong Kong officials, who said the move was a blow to democracy and freedom of expression in the former British colony. An official who answered the phone at the Treasury on Tuesday said they were unable to comment on individual cases. But they said that any organization that clearly contravenes the principles of the city's mini-constitution, the Basic Law, would be disqualified from registering under the Companies Ordinance. Hong Kong's South China Morning Post newspaper reported last week that the head of a British parliamentary committee on China had traveled to Hong Kong to investigate the legal basis of election officials decision to ban Chow from running in the election. Conservative MP Richard Graham, chairman of the All-Party Parliamentary China Group, told the paper that the delegation hoped to learn more about the legal basis of the ban on Chow. In February, the British Foreign Office said it was concerned over the debarring of Chow, citing Article 26 of the Basic Law, which states that: "Permanent residents of the Hong Kong Special Administrative Region shall have the right to vote and the right to stand for election in accordance with law." Last August, a Hong Kong court jailed Wong, Law and former student leader Alex Chow for their part in the Occupy protests, after the city's department of justice said their original non-jail sentences were too lenient. They served several weeks in jail, but were later released on bail and their sentences quashed by the Court of Final Appeal, which ruled that tougher sentencing guidelines on public protest couldn't be retroactively applied. But the court warned that future sentences for those involved in mass public protests could be much tougher. Reported by Lam Kwok-lap for RFA's Cantonese Service, and by He Ping for the Mandarin Service. Translated and edited by Luisetta Mudie. Noi (not her real name) was just 17 years old when she was forced to drop out of high school in northern Laos Luang Namtha province to earn money for her family. When a middleman approached her in early 2015 about marrying a man across the border in China in exchange for around 40 million kip (U.S. $4,830)despite the legal age for marriage in China being 20she jumped at the chance. After holding a small party with her relatives, according to the traditions of her Leu ethnic group, Noi traveled to China to live with the man. During the first three months, he treated her kindly and sent small payments to her parents in Laos, but soon his demeanor changed and he began to beat her. Bride trafficking is a serious problem in China, where decades of the one-child policy led parents to routinely abort female babies and men now drastically outnumber women. The U.S. State Department recently said that China has not been making significant efforts to tackle human trafficking, and the lack of enforcement has created a situation in which brokers stand to earn high commissions enticing and kidnapping women from poorer neighboring countries to marry men there. Noi recently spoke to RFAs Lao Service about the abuse she endured in China and how she escaped her husband in late 2017 to return home to her family. If I did anything that did not satisfy him, he would slap me on the face and head, causing my eyes to bruise and swell Often he yelled at me, throwing forks, spoons, or plates at me, and leaving me with scars on my forehead, arms, and legs Even though we are poor at home, my parents never yelled, hit me, or slapped me in that way. I lived with my Chinese husband for [nearly] three years, but I didnt know where I wasI didnt know the name of the village or town. No neighbors talked to me. They only said they didnt understand me. They talked only in Chinese, which I do not speak [My husbands parents] didnt communicate with me like in Lao families, where we have fun and laugh while answering each others questions or talking about what we are doing. Very often, I had to wake up early to follow him to his rubber plantation and tap the rubber trees. It was very hard work I started to ask him to allow me to escort him to the market, so that I could make friends with some Lao truck drivers who transported goods or merchandise in China. [One morning in late 2017] I dressed as usual, so that my Chinese husband wouldnt suspect anything. As soon as he was busy [at the market] getting money for his rubber, I quickly ran to a Lao merchant driver and slipped into the back of his truck, which was full of merchandise and was covered with a dark, thick tarp The dread of remaining with my Chinese husband was stronger than that of being caught at the border, and I knew that the truck wouldnt be searched too thoroughly. [When I arrived back in Luang Namtha] I lived with my [extended] relatives for two months and only recently moved back in with my parents because I feared that he would come look for me again. If I could fix the past, I would never have married the Chinese man. I wouldnt have cared about the financial promises and I will never marry a Chinese man again for money. To Lao girls like myself, I say do not marry for money Also, girls at school are not likely to be their targetthey are looking for the girls that drop out of school, like I did. Reported and translated by Manichanh Phimpachanh for RFAs Lao Service. Written in English by Joshua Lipes. Myanmar President Win Myint (C) waves after taking his oath of office at the parliament building in Naypyidaw, March 30, 2018. UPDATED at 10:30 A.M. on 2018-04-18 Myanmar President Win Myint, who has been in office for less than three weeks, outlined an ambitious agenda for improving jobs, housing, the judiciary, and human rights in a speech on Tuesday for the Buddhist New Year, prompting political pundits to level criticism that the plan does not go far enough to bring about much-needed change in the developing democracy. In his speech in honor of the Thingyan holiday, Win Myint, who was sworn in on March 30 to replace former President Htin Kyaw, discussed a number of areas where the ruling National League for Democracy (NLD) government will make improvements, including tighter management of government departments that lag behind in reform, housing and salary increases for civil servants, electric grid expansion, road upgrades, loans for small- and medium-sized enterprises, additional financial assistance for university students, and crackdowns on corruption and illegal drug manufacturers. He also said that illegally confiscated farmlands would be returned to their owners and that those whose land was taken would receive compensation. Win Myint who as president plays second fiddle to State Counselor Aung San Suu Kyi, the countrys de facto leader also said he was strengthening Myanmar's judicial sector by instructing the chief justice and Supreme Court judges to ensure that judges at all levels exercise proper supervisory functions with full accountability and responsibility. We need to strive for a judiciary branch that is impartial, independent, and which balances fairness and judicious reasoning, he said. We need to ensure that in the face of the law all are equal and that things are done in accordance with the law. He also pledged to step up the government's efforts to prevent human rights abuses by increasing cooperation with community-based organizations, civil society groups, the media, and the people. The Human Rights Commission should endeavor to provide protection to ensure the legal basic rights of individuals, the fundamental rights of citizens, and the freedom and security of citizens at interrogation centers, police station lockups, court detention rooms, jails, and hard labor prisoner camps, in fact, in all these places without discrimination, Win Myint said. As part of the Thingyan celebrations, the president also granted amnesty on humanitarian grounds to 8,490 citizens and 51 foreigners serving jail sentences in Myanmar, including three dozen political prisoners. Among those freed were the elderly, those suffering from poor health, and drug offenders. Two Baptist leaders from northeastern Myanmars ethnic Kachin community serving prison terms for defamation and unlawful association with ethnic militia soldiers were also among those released. Dumdaw Nawng Lat, a pastor with the Kachin Baptist Convention (KBC), and Langjaw Gam Seng, a KBC youth leader, were detained by soldiers in December 2016 after giving journalists information about a church allegedly hit by military airstrikes in clashes between the government army and ethnic guerrillas in neighboring Shan state. Still in jail, however, are two reporters for Reuters news agency charged with violating the country's Official Secrets Act for their work investigating violence against Rohingya Muslims by the military in Rakhine state a crackdown that the United Nations and the United States have said amounts to ethnic cleansing. Their trial is ongoing. Though 36 political prisoners were released under the amnesty, 18 remain in different jails, 74 are undergoing trials while in prison, and 120 are undergoing trials while under house arrest, said Bo Kyi, cofounder of the Assistance Association for Political Prisoners, an organization that tracks the number of political prisoners in Myanmar jails. We would like to request the president to consider releasing them as well, he said. Political prisoners who are freed often encounter difficulty with finding a job and are discriminated against, he said. If we can eliminate this discrimination, it would be better for them, Bo Kyi said. We cant expect any better Prominent rights attorney Robert San Aung said Win Myint's plan to shore up the country's judicial sector should begin with the replacement of some of the country's top judges. People are suffering every day, he told RFAs Myanmar Service. If we cant back up the deteriorating judiciary, we cant expect any better situation for peace, democracy, and human rights. We should reshuffle some top-level judges, he said. Judicial systems in some states and regions have been destabilized. Judges in those places have to be replaced with new blood. We also need to issue a law concerning the violation of human rights [because] right now one person can be sued repeatedly, he said. It is like torturing a person. Ye Htun, a former lower house lawmaker from the Shan Nationalities Development Party and an observer of parliamentary activities and the reform process, said Win Myint should focus on replacing high-level government functionaries who do not work in the publics interest and on building trust with Myanmars powerful military. Military officers control three key defense and security ministries and hold a quarter of the seats in parliament through appointment, as guaranteed by the constitution. For the nations reform, the mindsets of the director generals and permanent secretaries of all the ministries are very important, he told RFA. If they work only in their own interest, they should be removed. If the president who has to represent and is responsible for the nation doesnt have the authority to remove or doesnt dare remove these kinds of officials, the reform process will not be successful, he said. Because the military occupies an important role in Myanmar, the government must build trust with it so Win Myint can accomplish his goals, Ye Htun said. When the president tries to implement something important, such as removing corrupt top-level officials or ones who violate laws, he needs to get agreement from both Daw [honorific] Aung San Suu Kyi and the military commander-in-chief, he said. The constitution and peace process Sai Laik, deputy secretary of Shan Nationalities League for Democracy, the political party that became the largest ethnic Shan party in Myanmars parliament after the 2015 general election that brought the NLD to power, took Win Myint to task for not discussing amending the constitution in conjunction with Myanmars peace process. He said to have a true federal union, both processes must be undertaken at the same time. President Win Myint didnt mention anything about this, he said. Does it mean the government will find another option for the peace process because the current process doesnt work? If the president doesnt work on peace and amending the constitution, it goes against what the NLD said in its election campaign statement and it will also damage the countrys politics, he said. Before the 2015 election, the NLD sought to make changes to the constitution, drafted in 2008 by a former military junta that ruled the country, to curb the political power of the armed forces. Aung San Suu Kyi is spearheading peace negotiations with the government military and ethnic armed groups in a bid to end decades-long civil war and foster national reconciliation. She has made the achievement of lasting peace the main goal of the NLD government. Reported by Kyaw Thu, Thiri Min Zin and Thinn Thiri for RFAs Myanmar Service. Translated by Khet Mar. Written in English by Roseanne Gerin. Chinese authorities have seized farmland in southern Tibet to build an airport, displacing Tibetan villagers and offering far less in compensation than the land is worth, according to a Tibetan living in the area. The land, belonging to Yushang village in the Chusha municipality of Shigatse prefectures Lhatse county, was targeted for development according to a plan announced in January by officials in the prefecture and the Tibet Autonomous Region, the source told RFAs Tibetan Service. For Tibetans in Chusha, farming has been their main source of livelihood for many years, and is a tradition handed down to them by their ancestors, the source said, adding that, The loss of so much land to Chinese development projects is having a negative impact on the daily life of the local people. Now Chinese authorities are planning to build an airport on [Chushas] farmland, and local Tibetans are being compensated at rates less than the lands market value, he said. Chinese projects have already been under way on vast stretches of land lying near Lhatse county, with new buildings being constructed, for more than a decade, the source said. But there is now a promise of new airports and railway stations in all these areas, and these will form a hub of activities for tourists and transportation links in all directions, he said. Chinas construction of airports and other development projects in Tibet have done little to lift Tibetans out of poverty and serve mainly to consolidate Chinas presence on the Tibetan plateau, according to a researcher at the Dharamsala, India-based Tibet Policy Institute (TPI). Tibetans who are the owners of the land draw little benefit from these, TIP researcher Rinzin Dorjee said in a 2016 paper, Chinas Transport and Infrastructural Build-Up in Tibet. Primarily, the infrastructure build-up in Tibet is unilaterally decided and imposed by Beijing without the consent [of] or consultation with the Tibetan people. Reported by Dolma for RFAs Tibetan Service. Translated by Dorjee Damdul. Written in English by Richard Finney. At least six civilians have been shot dead by gunmen in Afghanistan's western Ghor Province, an Afghan official says. Iqbal Nezami, spokesman for the provincial police chief, said four other civilians were wounded after their car was fired upon near Faroz Koh, the provincial capital, early on April 17. The victims were all ethnic Hazaras, a Shi'ite minority that is frequently targeted by Sunni extremists in different parts of Afghanistan. Nezami said the Hazaras were traveling from the province of Herat to Ghor when they came under attack. No one immediately claimed responsibility for attack, but the Taliban and Islamic State militants are both active in Ghor and have previously claimed attacks in the province. Based on reporting by AP and Tolo News YEREVAN -- Tens of thousands of protesters gathered in the center of the Armenian capital after lawmakers elected Serzh Sarkisian prime minister, cementing his continued dominance of power. The demonstrators massed in Yerevan's Republic Square late on April 17, holding Armenian flags and chanting "Armenia without Serzh." Protests were under way in other cities including Gyumri and Vanadzor, according to local media. Protest leader Nikol Pashinian, after announcing the start of a "peaceful peoples revolution" in Armenia, told the rally in Yerevan that "Sarkisian lacks legitimacy and has earned the hatred of Armenians." Parliament voted 76 to 17 with no abstentions on April 17 to put Sarkisian back into power just eight days after his presidency ended and his hand-picked successor, Armen Sarkisian, was elected by parliament to a single seven-year term. The appointment of Sarkisian as prime minister came as police detained at least 80 activists who were demonstrating against the move in Yerevan, where crowds have been rallying for days in protest. Despite warnings from the authorities that they would act to quell the unrest, hundreds of demonstrators blocked streets in central Yerevan on April 17, a day after dozens of protesters were hurt in clashes with police barring the path to parliament. WATCH: Protesters Arrested In Yerevan Early in the morning on Yervean's France Square, a deputy police chief handed Pashinian a notice warning that protesters had violated legislation on public gatherings and that the authorities had decided to stop the demonstrations. Pashinian tore up the warning without reading it and declared that a campaign of "total disobedience" had begun. Nearby, a group of protesters were camped out in front of a riot-police line on a central street, with rolls of razor wire separating the two sides. "I declare today the launching of a velvet [revolution], a peaceful people's revolution," Pashinian, wearing a camouflage T-shirt, said as Sarkisian addressed lawmakers from the legislature's podium before a vote that seemed certain to make him prime minister. "A revolutionary situation is brewing across the country. Demonstrators are blocking streets and...highways in the cities of Gyumri, Ijevan, Vanadzor, Kapan, and Metsamor," he added. "People are not going to work, mass strikes have begun." Police said in a statement on April 17 that they will take "legitimate measures dictated by the state to ensure the normal functioning of state structures" after Pashinian called on protesters to block government buildings and agencies as part of the protest. Human Rights Watch urged the Armenian authorities to refrain from the use of force against demonstrators, noting that in the past few years, police have repeatedly used violent force in Yerevan, mainly to disperse peaceful rallies. "Any response from the police should be proportionate and comply with UN standards," the New York-based rights watchdog said. "It's never too late for the Armenian police to abandon the disproportionate force of their traditional bad practices." The developments raised tensions ahead of the parliament session that government critics say will cap a "power grab" by Sarkisian, enabling him to retain control despite leaving the presidency less than two weeks ago. Sarkisian was first elected in 2008 in the South Caucasus country of about 3 million people and served two terms. He has maintained warm ties with Russia, which Armenia relies on for aid and investment more than a quarter-century after the Soviet collapse. Under a shift that was approved in a 2015 referendum and is now in place, Armenia changed its form of government and handed more powers to the prime minister, downgrading the president -- now also elected by parliament -- to more of a figurehead. Sarkisian had promised in 2014 that he would "not aspire" to be prime minister if Armenia switched from a presidential to a parliamentary system as a result of the referendum. Pashinian and other opposition leaders now accuse him of breaking that pledge but in his speech in parliament on April 17, Sarkisian downplayed those words, implying that critics are taking it out of context and stating that in a parliamentary republic he considers it only right that the leader of the ruling party should also serve as prime minister. Otherwise, he said, if someone else were to become prime minister, it could lead to a situation of a shadow government where the leader of the ruling party would govern instead of the formal prime minister but effectively shun political responsibility. The ruling Republican Party of Armenia (RPA) and the Armenian Revolutionary Federation (Dashnaktsutyun) factions, which together have a majority in parliament, unanimously approved Sarkisian as the nominee for the prime minister's post. At least 46 people, including six police officers, sought medical assistance in connection with the April 16 clashes between protesters and riot police, according to the Health Ministry. Pashinian himself was taken to a hospital with cuts and an eye injury after police moved in to stop the opposition lawmaker and others from entering parliament. But he left the hospital and returned to the demonstration in Yerevan, where he urged the crowd to continue the protest the following day. "We should block all entrances into the parliament," he said. Thousands of Armenians have been rallying since April 13. The protesters, many waving Armenian flags, clogged Marshal Bagramian Avenue, which leads to the National Assembly building, stopping traffic in the process. Lines of riot police stopped the crowd from advancing further toward parliament on April 16. They later rolled out razor wire to hold the surging crowd back, with some local media reporting the use of tear gas and stun grenades as well. "Something unprecedented is happening in Armenia: the same person wants to become the country's leader for a third time. We cannot let this happen," Pashinian, a lawmaker and the outspoken head of the opposition group Civil Contract, said. "The time has come to liberate Armenia's citizens. With this minor inconvenience we are trying to save you from a greater inconvenience called Serzh Sarkisian," Pashinian shouted repeatedly through a megaphone to the crowd. In a statement issued early on April 16, police said the protests were illegal and warned that law enforcement had the authority to forcibly "discontinue" street gatherings accompanied by "collective breaches of public order." The Prosecutor-General's Office said it had opened a criminal investigation in connection with alleged violations of a law on public gatherings. Sarkisian has also faced criticism from opponents who accuse the government of Armenia of corruption and economic mismanagement. Many members of the ruling party contend that the 63-year-old Sarkisian is the best candidate for prime minister given his lengthy experience, especially when it comes to talks over neighboring Azerbaijan's breakaway Nagorno-Karabakh region. Clashes over control of Nagorno-Karabakh, which is in Azerbaijan but is controlled by ethnic Armenians, have intensified in the past three years and there was a flare-up in violence there in April 2016. "I am standing here today as a leader of the party which can ensure a harmonious cooperation between the executive and legislative branches of power," Sarkisian told lawmakers on April 17 in a speech ahead of the vote. With reporting by Sisak Gabrielian, Karlen Aslanian, Narine Ghalechian, Amos Chapple, AFP, and Reuters When Armenian lawmaker Nikol Pashinian received a police notice warning that the protests he was leading were unlawful, few were surprised when he ripped it up on the spot without even bothering to read it. Pashinian has a history of defiance. The outspoken government critic and newspaper editor was sentenced to seven years in prison after being found guilty of helping organize mass protests over Serzh Sarkisian's 2008 presidential election that left 10 dead and more than 200 injured. He ended up only serving half that sentence -- which he and fellow journalists said was politically motivated and followed a rigged vote -- due to a general amnesty. But Pashinian boasted that he and other oppositionists were continuing to fight for regime change from behind bars. When the "Electric Yerevan" protests erupted in 2015 following a steep hike in energy prices, Pashinian -- who was by then an opposition lawmaker -- said police had no right to disperse a peaceful demonstration. And in 2016, Pashinian stepped in to mediate between police and a little-known armed opposition group that was holding hostages after carrying out a deadly raid on a police station. Today, the 43-year-old Pashninian's track record of civil disobedience has helped attract thousands to gather in Yerevan to protest parliament's move to cement two-term former President Sarkisian's transition to the prime minister's post. "Pashinian has been very active in civic initiatives and he has managed to encourage people to rise up," says Stepan Grigorian, a political analyst and head of the Globalization and Regional Studies Analytical Center. "Peaceful but very bold steps have been made, and that is why people believe him and have gone out into the streets," he adds. History Of Defiance A former editor in chief of and owner of Haikakan Zhamanak (Armenian Times), one of the most popular Armenian newspapers, Pashinian was elected to parliament in 2012 as a representative of the opposition Armenian National Congress party. In 2017, Pashinian set up his own party and was elected to parliament as head of the Yelk election bloc. One of its main platforms was criticizing constitutional changes approved following a December 2015 referendum changing Armenia's form of government to a parliamentary system instead of a quasi-presidential system. As a result, presidential veto powers were stripped from the president and the post was downgraded to a figurehead position elected by parliament every seven years rather than by a direct popular vote. Sarkisian was first elected in 2008 in the South Caucasus country of about 3 million people and served two terms, stepping down when the new president, Armen Sarkisian -- no relation to Serzh -- was inaugurated on April 9. He had promised in 2014 that he would "not aspire" to be prime minister if Armenia switched from a presidential to a parliamentary system as a result of the referendum, and Pashinian and other opposition leaders now accuse him of breaking that pledge. "Pashinian has used his parliamentary mandate for the interests of citizens," says Artur Sakunts, head of the Helsinki Citizens' Assembly Vanadzor Office. "Without making any claims for leadership, he has boosted civil protest. Through civil disobedience he has shown that Armenian citizens aren't indifferent to their state, aren't indifferent to the fact that Serzh Sarkisian is getting ready to occupy the post of prime minister, which will consolidate the culture of authoritarian government." Many in the crowd of protesters said Pashinian's call for the demonstrations to remain nonviolent helped convince them to join in. Ironically, Pashinian himself was taken to a hospital with cuts and an eye injury after police moved in to stop the opposition lawmaker and others from entering parliament on April 16. But hours later he returned to the demonstration, bolstering his reputation among the thousands rallying against Sarkisian outside the legislature. "As of a political figure, he has always stood out for his disobedient views and sincere criticism of the authorities, for which I have always liked him," 32-year-old Armen Ohanian told RFE/RL as he protested to keep "this vicious system from being reproduced." Written by Alan Crosby with reporting by RFE/RL's Armenian Service BRUSSELS -- The European Commission recommended that the European Union launches membership talks with Albania and Macedonia, as the French president ruled out any expansion of the bloc until it is reformed. EU enlargement commissioner Johannes Hahn said on April 17 that both Albanian and Macedonia have done a lot in the last couple of months and this should be acknowledged. As a colleague of ours said, if they deliver we have to deliver and this is exactly what happened today, he said during the presentation of the commission's report outlining progress and recommendation for the six Western Balkan countries that remain outside the EU. The report noted that opening accession talks with Albania and Macedonia was dependent on those countries "maintaining and deepening the current reform momentum." It is the first time the European Commission recommends opening EU accession negotiations with Albania, which became an official EU candidate country in 2014. However, the commission has recommended commencing negotiations with Macedonia every year since 2009, but EU member states in the council -- most notably, Greece -- have always blocked talks due to the name issue that has soured relations between Athens and Skopje ever since Macedonia became independent in 1991. Athens has objected to its northern neighbor using the name Macedonia, contending that implies territorial claims on its own northern province of the same name. Negotiations between the two countries have gathered pace this year, fostering hopes of finding a compromise that will unblock Skopje's path to eventual EU and NATO membership. Skopje has also survived bitter political infighting that culminated in April 2017 when several hundred protesters stormed parliament and beat up several lawmakers, including the current prime minister, Zoran Zaev. Reacting to the European Commissions recommendation, Zaev said the move takes Macedonia "a step closer to the EU." "It means that the political crisis is behind us," he also said. Albanian Foreign Minister Ditmir Bushati welcomed the decision as a "Great day for Albania." EU foreign policy chief Federica Mogherini said that she was positive and optimistic about chances of Serbia and Kosovo reaching a legally binding agreement on normalizing relations -- a precondition set out in the report for both countries to move forward in the EU accession process. Mogherini, who acts as a facilitator in the talks between Belgrade and Pristina, noted that the perspective and possibility of advancing and reaching an agreement are there. And I strongly believe that the current leadership on the two sides and the populations are aware that this is the time to move forward with determination, with a sense of compromise, and with a view to having a better situation for both Pristina and Belgrade, she added. Opening accession talks needs to be approved by all EU member states, and getting that approval might prove difficult. Speaking before the European Parliament in Strasbourg hours after the commission unveiled its recommendation, French President Emmanuel Macron said that enlargement needed to be preceded by reforming the EU at its current size. "For my part I will only defend an enlargement once there has been a deepening and a reform of our Europe," he said. "I don't want a Balkans that turns toward Turkey or Russia, but I don't want a Europe that, working with difficulty at 28 and tomorrow at 27, decided that it could continue to run at 30 or 32 tomorrow with the same rules," Macron said. With reporting by dpa French President Emmanuel Macron has warned Europe against the temptations of "authoritarianism" inside the European Union and around the world. Macron, in his first speech to the European Parliament since his election in May 2017, cautioned on April 17 that a "sort of European civil war" was under way. In an apparent reference to EU members Hungary and Poland, Macron said, "There is a fascination with the illiberal and it's growing all the time." "I don't want to belong to a generation of sleepwalkers, I don't want to belong to a generation that's forgotten its own past," Macron, 40, said in a speech outlining his vision for the future of the EU. "I want to belong to a generation that will defend European sovereignty because we fought to obtain it. And I will not give in to any kind of fixation on authoritarianism," he said. Populist parties won elections in Hungary and Italy in recent weeks, while the EU has been at odds for some time with Poland's right-wing government over the rule of law. Macron also proposed establishing an EU fund for communities that accept refugees -- one of the most divisive issues confronting the EU since 2015. Macron's speech was welcomed by European Commission President Jean-Claude Juncker, who said, "The true France is back." With reporting by AFP, Reuters, and AP The foreign ministers of the Group of Seven (G7) industrialized countries have called on Russia to provide "full and complete disclosure" about the poisoning of a former Russian double agent and his daughter in Britain last month. The G7 ministers said in an April 16 statement that they agreed with Britain's assessment that it is "highly likely" that Russia is responsible for the poisoning of Sergei Skripal and his daughter, Yulia, last month with a Soviet-developed nerve agent known as Novichok. Russia has vehemently denied the allegation, while the Organization for the Prohibition of Chemical Weapons (OPCW) said on April 12 that it agreed with the British findings about the type of toxin identified. The OPCW did not name the substance in its public summary but said it was of "high purity." "We share, and agree with, the U.K.'s assessment that it is highly likely that the Russian Federation was responsible for the attack and that there is no plausible alternative explanation," the G7 foreign ministers said in the April 16 statement. The Skripals were hospitalized on March 4 after being exposed to a potent nerve toxin and found unconscious on a bench in Salisbury, in southern England. Yulia Skripal, who was discharged from the hospital on April 10, said her father was "still seriously ill" and that she was also "still suffering with the effects of the nerve agent used against us," according to a British police statement. The poisoning has ignited a fierce dispute between the West and Russia, leading to a series of tit-for-tat diplomatic expulsions and other measures. The G7 foreign ministers of Britain, Canada, France, German, Italy, Japan, the United States, and the European Union called on Russia to "urgently address all questions related to the incident in Salisbury," calling the poisoning "a threat to us all." "Russia should provide full and complete disclosure of its previously undeclared Novichok program to the OPCW in line with its international obligations," they added in the statement. With reporting by AFP, AP, Reuters, and BBC Russias drive to ban access to the popular messaging app Telegram could be proving a bigger headache than the Kremlin may have imagined. In its zeal to shut down Telegram, which was founded by Russian entrepreneur Pavel Durov and his brother in 2013, millions of ordinary Russians, their businesses, and others have found themselves entangled in a cyber dragnet along with much bigger entities. So far, 16 million IP addresses have been blocked by Russias state communications regulator Roskomnadzor. The Telegram app allows users to communicate via encrypted messages that cannot be read by others -- including government authorities. To enforce the ban, Roskomnadzor has blocked millions of IP addresses belonging to servers operated by Google and Amazon, the two U.S.-based tech giants. But why? In a bid to evade the ban, Telegram moved its data to Google- and Amazon-owned cloud servers shortly after a Russian court on April 13 ruled the messaging app should be blocked in Russia for failing to hand the keys to users data over to the Federal Security Service (FSB). Roskomnadzor began implementing the court decision on April 16 by notifying Internet providers that they must restrict access to Telegram. After Telegram had shifted its data to Amazon and Google, Roskomnadzor began banning IP addresses belonging to those two Internet giants. More than 1.5 million IP addresses hosted by Google Cloud servers had been blocked by Roskomnadzor as of April 17, according to activists cited by Meduza.io. The number of blocked Amazon IP addresses was put at about 1 million by the same activists. The decision to block the messaging app followed a months-long standoff between Telegram and the FSB, which demanded the encryption keys so it could access users' messages. Durov, who left Russia in 2014, refused to give the authorities access. Among those impacted was Viber, another popular messaging app, that said on April 16 that some users in Russia were experiencing problems using the app to make calls. The company said: These issues seem to come from connectivity problems to Amazon Web Services in Russia. And that seems to have been a recurring theme. Businesses in Russia with links either to Amazon Web Services or Google Cloud have experienced website outages. The online English-language school, Skyeng, said its students were unable to log in to courses on April 16, according to a posting on Vkontakte, Russias popular social-networking site. Internet businesses in Russia were also hit inadvertently by Roskomnadzors move. The Russian online flower-delivery site, Giveme.ru, said its site was blocked on April 16. It also noted in a Facebook posting that it uses an Amazon hosting site. The Russian online courier service, Ptichka, said its website also was temporarily impacted on April 16. As a result, almost six hours of service downtime, said Vladimir Kobzev, an engineer at Ptichka. Backlash Telegram has attracted more than 200 million users worldwide since it was launched in 2013. Many lampooned Roskomnadzors decision on social media, saying the move to ban so many IP addresses had secondary repercussions, as it also blocked many legitimate web services. As for the ban on Telegram, many users were able to evade it by switching to virtual private networks (VPNs), which, so far at least, seem immune to Roskomnadzors actions. Clients of leading Internet providers in Russia -- Beeline, Megafon, Yota, MTS, and Tele2 -- said on April 16 that they were able to maintain access to Telegram by using VPNs. Durov himself took to Telegram on April 17 to say VPNs and "other proxies" were essentially making the ban meaningless. "Despite the ban, we havent seen a significant drop in user engagement so far, since Russians tend to bypass the ban with VPNs and proxies. We also have been relying on third-party cloud services to remain partly available for the rest of our users," he wrote. Roskomnadzor chief Aleksandr Zharov on April 16 warned that law enforcement would take measures against tools to avoid the blockage of Telegram. Sarkis Darbinyan, a lawyer and Internet access advocate, told Current Time TV, that VPNs may hold the key to internet freedom in Russia amid fears the Kremlin is seeking to close avenues for dissent as President Vladimir Putin heads into a new six-year term. The VPN security tool is already becoming vital not only for geeks, but for anyone who wants to stay online and feel free, Darbinyan told Current Time, a Russian-language network run by RFE/RL in cooperation with VOA. With reporting by Current Time TV Three members of Iran's security forces have been killed by suspected militants in an attack along the country's border with Pakistan, Iran's state news agency IRNA says. An Iranian police officer was shot dead in an attack on a border post in the border city of Mirjaveh in Sistan-Baluchistan Province on April 17, and two soldiers died when their vehicle was hit by an improvised explosive device, IRNA reported, quoting a statement by the Islamic Revolutionary Guards Corps. The statement said three people it described as terrorists were killed by Iranian security forces in a "firm and timely response." On April 16, Iran said security forces had seized a large amount of weapons and ammunition from militants in the area. Iranian security forces frequently clash with militants and drug traffickers in Sistan-Baluchistan. The province lies on a major smuggling route for Afghan opium and heroin. In April last year, 10 Iranian border guards were killed by militants in Mirjaveh. Based on reporting by IRNA, Reuters, AP, and AFP ALMATY -- A European delegation has met with inmates in Kazakhstan whom rights activists consider political prisoners in the tightly controlled Central Asian country. The delegation led by Polish lawmaker Marcin Swiecicki and the president of the Italian League for Human Rights, Antonio Stango, met on April 16 with jailed businessman Iskander Erimbetov and civil rights activists Almat Zhumaghulov and Kenzhebek Abishev. Swiecicki and Stango told journalists that Erimbetov told them he had been tortured in custody. Erimbetov was arrested in November 2017 and charged with involvement in money laundering by Mukhtar Ablyazov, a fugitive Kazakh tycoon and vocal critic of President Nursultan Nazarbaev. Erimbetov rejects the charge, maintaining his innocence. Swiecicki and Stango said Kazakh authorities did not let them visit a former president of uranium giant Kazatomprom, Mukhtar Dzhakishev, who is serving 14-year prison term in the central Qaraghandy region. They said they were told that Dzhakishev is in a maximum-security prison that foreigners are not allowed to visit. Dzhakishev, who was once Ablyazov's close business partner, was arrested and sentenced on corruption charges in 2009. He and his supporters say his conviction was politically motivated. Ablyazov, who has been living abroad since 2009, is wanted by Kazakhstan, Russia, and Ukraine on suspicion of embezzling some $5 billion. He denies wrongdoing and contends that the case against him is politically motivated. In June, a Kazakh court sentenced Ablyazov to 20 years in prison in absentia after convicting him of organizing and leading a criminal group, abuse of office, embezzlement, and financial mismanagement. Opponents and rights groups say that Nazarbaev, who has held power in the Central Asian country since before the 1991 Soviet breakup, has taken systematic steps to suppress dissent and sideline potential opponents. The Kazakhstan International Bureau for Human Rights considers Erimbetov, Zhumaghulov, and Abishev political prisoners. Russian President Vladimir Putin and German Chancellor Angela Merkel have discussed the situation in Syria and a controversial Baltic gas pipeline project in a telephone conversation, the Kremlin says. Putin criticized the air strikes carried out late last week by the United States, Britain, and France against Syrian government facilities, the Kremlin said in a statement on April 17. He told Merkel that strikes were an "act of aggression" that violated the UN Charter and "dealt a substantial blow" to efforts to end the seven-year war in Syria, it said. The United States says the April 14 strikes targeted the Syrian government's chemical-weapons infrastructure following a suspected poison-gas attack that killed dozens of civilians in what was then the rebel-held town of Douma, near Damascus, on April 7. The suspected attack and the air strikes added to already severe strains in Russia's relationship with the West, which has been badly frayed by issues including Moscow's interference in Ukraine and its backing for President Bashar al-Assad throughout the war in Syria, which has killed hundreds of thousands of people and displaced millions. According to the Kremlin, Putin and Merkel both stressed the importance of an "objective investigation" into the suspected attack in Douma by inspectors from the Organization for the Prohibition of Chemical Weapons (OPCW). Russia claims there was no chemical-weapons attack but has not provided evidence of that assertion. Putin and Merkel also discussed the Nord Stream 2 project, a pipeline running from Russia through the Baltic Sea to Germany, the Kremlin said. Critics say the pipeline would increase European dependence on Russia for energy and enrich its state-owned energy companies at a time when Moscow stands accused of endangering European security through alleged election meddling and other actions. The United States, Poland, and the Baltic states oppose the project. Merkel appeared to signal a decrease in support for the planned pipeline last week, saying on April 10 that there were "political considerations" to take into account. She said that she had told Putin by phone that the project could not go ahead without clarity on Ukraine's role as a gas transit route. Nord Stream 2 would decrease Russia's reliance on Ukraine as a route for pumping its gas further West, into the European Union. NOVOSIBIRSK, Russia -- The leader of a consumer-protection group in the Russian city of Novosibirsk says an arson attack has destroyed his summer house. Activist Rostislav Antonov told RFE/RL on April 17 that a man suspected of setting the dacha on fire a day earlier had been apprehended and identified as a former convict. There was no immediate comment from police. Antonov, who heads a group called Civil Patrol and is a vocal critic of Novosibirsk Mayor Anatoly Lokot, said he believed the attack is linked to his organization's work. Antonov said that earlier this year a volunteer working for Civil Patrol was violently attacked by unknown assailants. Separately, Antonov said that on April 7, several people entered a colleague's apartment, threatened to beat him up, and seized pages from Civil Patrol's newspaper containing a report on a local businessman. Civil rights activists and journalists who seek to expose corruption or question the actions of the authorities often face pressure from Russian officials and influential business people. Activists say the problem is particularly severe in provincial Russia. A Russian government agency is calling on Russians studying at universities abroad to come home to continue their studies, a campaign that appears tied to the sharp downward spiral in relations between Moscow and the West. Rossotrudnichestvo, which is tasked with overseeing the wellbeing of Russians living out of the country, unveiled a new marketing campaign April 16 with the title Highly Likely Welcome Back. The name appears to be a subtle jab at British Prime Minister Theresa May, who has said it was highly likely that Russia was responsible for the poisoning of a former Russian double agent in England. As we know, the domestic politics in a host of countries, and in Europe in particular, have increasingly taken on a harshly expressed anti-Russian character. We are obligated to highlight the negative influence of Russophobic attitudes on the activity of our compatriots, which purposely narrow their opportunities for self-realization, one unnamed Rossotrudnichestvo official was quoted by the RIA-Novosti news agency as saying. Around 60,000 Russians studied outside the country in 2014, according to the Education and Science Ministry. Genri Sardarian, dean of the department of management and politics at Moscows MGIMO, one of Russias premier universities, said his school and others around Russia are ready to accept scores of Russians to continue their studies at home. Formally known as the Federal Agency For CIS Matters, Compatriots Living Abroad, and International Humanitarian Cooperation, Rossotrudnichestvo has been around for years. Some Western intelligence agencies suspect it is used as a front organization for Russian espionage and recruiting. Worsening Ties Russia ties with the West, which have been worsening for years, took an even more dramatic turn with the nerve-agent poisoning of Sergei Skripal, a former Russian military intelligence officer who was convicted of spying for Britain in the 2000s and later deported from Russia. May blamed Moscow for the incident, which also affected Skripals daughter, Yulia. Amid the downward spiral in relations between Russia and the West, Moscow has issued periodic warnings to Russian citizens about hazards they might face outside the country. In 2016, Russian media reported that the government had instructed government bureaucrats and other officials to stop living abroad. Among prominent Russian government officials and members of the business elite whose children have studied at Western universities are Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov, Kremlin spokesman Dmitry Peskov, Duma lawmaker Sergei Zheleznyak, and Kremlin-connected bankers Pyotr Aven and Mikhail Friedman. Peskovs daughter Yelizaveta caused a minor stir in 2016, when she published a biting commentary on her Instagram, saying she learned more in a year of studying in France then a year of schooling at Moscow State University, one of Russias leading schools. Meanwhile, its gotten more difficult for Western students -- Americans in particular -- to study in Russia. The U.S. State Department issued a travel advisory in January that listed Russia as one of the most dangerous countries to visit, due to harassment and terrorism. That prompted Stanford University, in California, to suspend its study-abroad program in Russia. Still, the Association for Slavic, East European, and Eurasian Studies, a Pittsburgh-based organization focused on studies of the region, said many of its member programs were continuing their study-abroad opportunities. Russia's Federal Security Service (FSB) says it apprehended three suspected members of the extremist group Islamic State (IS) and that a fourth suspect blew himself up while being arrested. FSB officials said April 17 that the group, which they called an IS cell, was suspected of plotting a series of terrorist acts in the southwestern Rostov region. According to the FSB, the leader of the group opened fire at security officers during the arrest and blew himself up with an explosive device. The FSB frequently announces that it has foiled terrorist plots, and its account could not be independently verified. The FSB did not specify when and where the arrests were conducted. It said that an AK-47, several grenades, and manuals to make-up explosive devices had been found at the scene. The identities of the suspects have not been released. Russian authorities have said that up to 5,000 people from Russia and other former Soviet republics have joined IS in Syria in recent years. Based on reporting by Interfax and RIA Syria's envoy to the UN said experts from the global chemical-weapons watchdog are awaiting approval from a UN security team before launching their investigation in the Syrian town of Douma, the site of a suspected chemical-weapons attack that has deepened tensions between Russia and the West. The statement by Ambassador Bashar Jaafari to the UN Security Council on April 17 followed conflicting accounts by Damascus and Washington earlier in the day about whether inspectors from the Organization for the Prohibition of Chemical Weapons (OPCW) had reached Douma. Syrian state media reported that the inspectors had been able to enter the town near Damascus, after recriminations between Western governments on one side and Syria and Russia on the other about access to the site added to mounting tensions in the wake of the suspected attack. That was not confirmed by the OPCW, and U.S. State Department spokeswoman Heather Nauert said that "our understanding is that the team has not entered Douma." Jafari told the Security Council following Nauert's comments that the UN security team had entered Douma "in order to assess the security situation on the ground" and that the OPCW inspectors could begin their work in the town on April 18 if the security conditions are determined to be "sound." "The Syrian government did all that it can do to facilitate the work of this mission," he said. Nauert said earlier that the United States was concerned that evidence was deteriorating the longer inspectors were kept from reaching the site. German Chancellor Angela Merkel said that Moscow bears joint responsibility with Syrian President Bashar al-Assad's government, but that she intends to keep communication channels open with Russian President Vladimir Putin. "We know that in relation to the poison gas attack in Syria, that Russia as an ally of Assad has joint responsibility, there is no question about that," Merkel said at a news conference in Berlin with her New Zealand counterpart. Merkel, who spoke with Putin by telephone earlier on April 17, added that "it is nevertheless important to keep talking to Russia." According to the Kremlin, Putin and Merkel stressed the importance of an "objective investigation" into the suspected Douma attack. Russia claims there was no chemical-weapons attack but has not provided evidence of that assertion. On April 16, the OPCW chief said that inspectors had not yet been granted access to the site, although Russian and Syrian officials said the delay was caused by the need to check if the roads into Douma were secure. Putin also criticized the air strikes carried out late last week by the United States, Britain, and France against Syrian government facilities. He told Merkel that strikes were an "act of aggression" that violated the UN Charter and "dealt a substantial blow" to efforts to end the seven-year war in Syria, a Kremlin statement said. The United States says the April 14 strikes targeted the Syrian government's chemical-weapons infrastructure following the April 7 attack on Douma. The World Health Organization has said 43 people who died suffered "symptoms consistent with exposure to highly toxic chemicals." The Damascus government and its ally Russia insist the incident was fabricated. OPCW inspectors arrived in Syria over the weekend to establish whether chemical weapons had been used in Douma, but had been unable to get access to the site. Controversy Over Site The U.S. ambassador to the OPCW, Kenneth Ward, said on April 16 that the Russians may have already visited the site and expressed concern that they may have tampered with it with the intent of thwarting the efforts of the OPCW fact-finding mission." A French Foreign Ministry spokesman on April 17 echoed Ward's concerns, saying, "It is very likely that proof and essential elements are disappearing from this site, which is completely controlled by the Russian and Syrian armies." The Russian Foreign Ministry's spokeswoman, Maria Zakharova, reiterated on April 17 Moscows denial that Russia was trying to hamper the OPCW mission. Meanwhile, the Russian military claimed it had found a rebel laboratory for making chemical weapons in Douma containing chlorine and various ingredients for mustard gas. The United States and its allies have said the aim of the strikes was to prevent the further use of chemical weapons, not to turn the tide of the war in Syria or topple Assad. Western governments want Assad out of power and have backed opponents seeking Assad's ouster, while Russia has given him crucial military and diplomatic support throughout the seven-year war, which has killed hundreds of thousands of people and displaced millions. Both the Kremlin and Merkel's office said that in their telephone conversation, the two leaders stressed the need to foster a political settlement in Syria. "The German chancellor and the president agreed that the political process must be at the center of efforts to end the yearslong bloody conflict," Merkel's spokesman Steffen Seibert said in a statement. "Possibilities on this were discussed." French President Emmanuel Macron admitted on April 17 that air strikes in Syria "solve nothing" but said France, Britain, and the United States had been forced to step up and defend the "honor" of the international community. On April 17, state media reported that Syrian air defenses had shot down several missiles over the central province of Homs, but retracted the report several hours later. State TV said the defenses had been set off by "a false alarm," not outside aggression, while a pro-regime militia commander told Reuters on condition of anonymity that the malfunction had been caused by "a joint electronic attack" by Israel and the United States targeting the Syrian radar system. In a separate development, the French government said it plans to strip Assad of his Legion d'Honneur, France's most prestigious award. Assad was decorated with the Legion's highest rank of Grand Croix (Great Cross) by former President Jacques Chirac in 2001, shortly after taking power following the death of his father, Hafez al-Assad. With reporting by RFE/RL correspondent Rikard Jozwiak, Reuters, AFP, and AP U.S. President Donald Trump says that CIA Director Mike Pompeo met with North Korean leader Kim Jong Un in North Korea last week and that plans for a summit are being made. Pompeo's meeting with Kim "went very smoothly and a good relationship was formed," Trump tweeted on April 18. "Details of Summit are being worked out now. Denuclearization will be a great thing for World, but also for North Korea!" Trump's tweet confirmed media reports that said Trump had dispatched Pompeo to meet with Kim in an effort to arrange a summit between Trump and Kim over the authoritarian state's nuclear program. The Washington Post, which was first to report the meeting between Kim and Pompeo -- Trump's nominee for secretary of state -- said that it took place on Easter weekend. Trump's statement that it took place last week contradicts that, because Easter fell on April 1. The meeting represents the highest-level face-to-face talks between the United States and North Korea since 2000, when then-Secretary of State Madeleine Albright met Kim's father, Kim Jong Il. Earlier on April 17, Trump had said that Washington and Pyongyang have been conducting direct talks at "extremely high levels " to try to arrange the summit with Kim. "We have had direct talks at very high levels, extremely high levels, with North Korea," Trump said on April 17 as he hosted Japanese Prime Minister Shinzo Abe for a two-day summit at his retreat in Florida. "And I really believe this allows goodwill, that good things are happening. We'll see what happens," he added. Prior to the reports about the Pompeo-Kim meeting, there was some confusion about how high the talks between Washington and Pyongyang have gone. As Trump took a stroll with Abe and his wife, a reporter asked the U.S. president if he had spoken directly with Kim, according to a White House press pool report. Trump responded "yes," but it was not immediately clear if he was responding to that question or another being shouted at him. Asked a few minutes later to clarify if he had, indeed, spoken directly with Kim, Trump responded that the level of the talks was "a little bit short of that." Abe commended Trump's "courage" in agreeing to meet Kim following months of heated rhetoric over Pyongyangs nuclear-weapons program. Trump said that five locations were under consideration for the historic U.S.-North Korea meeting, which he hopes will take place in the next two months. "That will be taking place probably in early June or before that, assuming things go well," he said. "It's possible things won't go well and we won't have the meetings and we'll just continue to go on this very strong path we have taken." He also confirmed that the two Koreas are negotiating an end to hostilities before a planned meeting between the North Korean leader and the South Korean president next week. Trump said he supported efforts between Seoul and Pyongyang aimed at ending the state of war between the two countries that has continued since 1953. "They do have my blessing to discuss the end of the war. People dont realize the Korean War has not ended. Its going on right now. And they are discussing an end to the war. Subject to a deal, they have my blessing and they do have my blessing to discuss that," he said. With reporting by The Washington Post, The New York Times, AFP, AP, and Reuters Ukraine says one of its soldiers has been killed and five wounded in clashes in the country's east. The Defense Ministry said on April 17 that Russia-backed separatists violated a frequently breached cease-fire 52 times during the previous 24 hours, firing artillery, machine guns, grenade launchers, and mortars. Meanwhile, the separatists claimed that Ukrainian government forces violated the cease-fire by shelling the separatist-controlled town of Horlivka in the Donetsk region. Since April 2014, more than 10,300 people have been killed in fighting between Kyiv's forces and the separatists who control parts of the Donetsk and Luhansk regions. Cease-fire deals announced as part of the Minsk accords -- September 2014 and February 2015 pacts aimed to resolve the conflict -- have failed to hold. A new cease-fire agreement was reached in late 2017 and was meant to begin on December 23, but both sides have accused each other of repeated violations since then. With reporting by DAN and TASS The United States has banned an Albanian lawmaker and his family from entering the country over allegations of corruption. The U.S. State Department said in an April 16 statement that Tom Doshi, a lawmaker formerly with the Social Democratic Party, was barred from entering the United States, as were his wife and children. The statement alleged that Doshi was involved in "significant corruption," though it did not provide details of the accusation. Doshi, 51, was expelled from the Social Democratic Party in 2015 after he accused colleagues of conspiring to have him killed, an allegation for which prosecutors found no evidence. The United States in February barred another Albanian political figure -- former Prosecutor-General Adriatik Llalla -- on the same grounds cited in Doshi's entry ban. Albania, which officially became an EU candidate country in 2014, is seeking to tackle corruption as part of its effort to join the 28-nation bloc. Experts from both the EU and the United States are advising the Balkan nation on its reform efforts. With reporting by AP and AFP The United States says Russia agreed to extend overflight approvals for U.S. airlines, hours before a deal on the overflights was set to expire. The U.S. State Department said on April 17 that Russia granted the extension for three routes until October 28, though it did not indicate the specific routes in question. State Department spokeswoman Heather Nauert said earlier in the day that U.S. airlines had already begun diverting flights away from Russian airspace ahead of the deadline. "We don't want that kind of aviation disruption, so we're trying to facilitate a working arrangement," Nauert told reporters. She said that the Russian government had canceled a planned meeting in Washington this week to negotiate a renewal of the deal but did not give a reason for backing out. International airlines make hundreds of flights over eastern Russia each week, a short and cheap route to South Asia. The State Department said the Russian Transport Ministry had also extended approvals for cargo flights from Asia to Europe until April 20. It said Russia has suggested an alternate route after that date that was still under discussion. "We are also working to schedule discussions with Russian civil-aviation officials to discuss this and other civil-aviation matters," the State Department said, Reuters reported. "Our goal remains to provide as many benefits as possible for U.S. carriers." The extensions come amid heightened tensions between Moscow and Washington, most recently over the April 14 air strikes by the United States, France, and Britain in Syria in response to a suspected gas attack the Western allies accuse Syrian government forces of carrying out. "The Russian government did say to our embassy, when we spoke with them: 'Don't panic, we're not going to do anything to harm the U.S. aviation sector,'" Nauert told reporters. With reporting by Reuters, Sputnik, AFP, and Bloomberg Showcased at the 2018 Auto Expo earlier this year and heading for launch in the country in May, the second generation Honda Amaze is now showcased in a TVC. The next generation Honda Amaze gets better styling and added features as compared to its current counterpart. The focus keyword for Hondas new Amazes marketing campaign is BIG. Honda is going to promote the car as a sedan that is Big on space, Big on features and Big on safety. Below is the new TVC. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=KRlbhaA3kbA The good part is, the new Amaze is seen in an exterior design strikingly similar to the Honda Civic and Accord. It is based on an extended wheelbase resulting in added interior space. It gets a revised side profile with slightly lowered roofline thereby making it more aerodynamic. A new exterior shade of red will also be added to the existing color palette while rear profile is seen in a new design. Interiors of the 2018 Honda Amaze gets better driver and passenger comforts, more interior space and added room in the boot. It is done up in a dual tone with top variants getting features such as touchscreen infotainment system, cruise control, push button start etc. 2018 Honda Amaze is offered in a total of 4 engine and transmission options. Its 1.2 liter petrol gets mated to a manual and CVT gearbox. The 1.5 liter diesel also gets manual and CVT gearbox options with each of these engines being highly fuel efficient. We will be test driving the car soon, and bring you the detailed review of new Amaze. Stay tuned. Bajaj and KTM joined hands back in 2007. At that time, sales of KTM were on the decline, whereas Bajaj was no where to be seen on the world map. Fast forward 10 years, and the duo is now an example for manufacturers the world over. Bajaj and KTM has helped each other and together, they are making waves in the motorcycle industry. Riding on these waves, the partnership is all set to launch a new range of entry level Husqvarna motorcycles. The first batch of Vitpilen 401 and Svartpilen 401 will be manufactured at KTM plant in Mattighofen, Austria, where they are to be launched next month. In India, these bikes will be launched by Q3 2018. Pronunciation and meaning guide Vitpilen pronounced as vit-pi-len, means white arrow pronounced as swort-pi-len is black arrow. Both these bikes were spied on test recently by ThrustZone. The bikes you seen in the images are most likely imported from Austria. Completely undisguised, the two new bikes, Vitpilen 401 and Svartpilen 401 have already managed to create decent enough buzz in the segment. Both bikes are built on the same platform as the KTM Duke 390. It is also powered by the same 373 cc engine which powers the Duke 390. This engine might be tuned slightly to deliver power and torque differently as compared to D390. More details will only be revealed once the bikes are launched. Based on the globally successful KTM Duke 390, Vitpilen 401 and Svartpilen 401 production will shift to India by end 2018. It will be manufactured at the Bajaj plant where the KTMs are made. It is from here that these two bikes will be exported around the world. At the time of announcing Husqvarnas India production plans, Bajaj KTM had made two important points. The first part of this announcement is increase in production of KTM branded motorcycles from India. Earlier, Bajaj KTM had aimed at producing 1 lakh motorcycles of KTM brand in India. Now, the brand has revealed that a total of 2 lakh motorcycles will be produced in 2020. Second part of the announcement The 2 lakh volume will be possible because Bajaj will also produce Husqvarna branded motorcycles at their state of the art plant in Chakan the same plant where they produce the Duke 125, 200, 250, 390, RC 125, 200, 250 and 390 models. Scientists at the UNC School of Medicine have made a significant advance in the understanding of the complex and fatal neurodegenerative disease amyotrophic lateral sclerosis (ALS), also known as Lou Gehrig's disease. Autopsy studies of ALS patients often reveal the accumulation of large, fibrous aggregates of a protein called SOD1 in disease-affected motor neurons. Researchers have hypothesized that these fibrils are what kill neurons and cause ALS in some people. But in a study published in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, scientists at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill found evidence that these large SOD1 fibrils protect rather than harm neurons. "This is potentially an important finding not only for ALS research but for neurodegenerative disease research in general, because the formation of fibril aggregates is so common in these diseases," said senior author Nikolay Dokholyan, PhD, the Michael Hooker Distinguished Professor of Biochemistry and Biophysics at UNC-Chapel Hill. Large, often fibril-type protein aggregates are in fact the most obvious pathological features of Alzheimer's disease, Parkinson's disease, Huntington's disease, ALS, and other major neurodegenerative diseases. Many of the candidate drugs developed in recent years were designed to clear these protein aggregates. But none of these fibril-targeting strategies have proven effective in large clinical trials. Laboratory studies also have largely failed to prove that large SOD1 fibrils are harmful to neurons. At the same time, researchers have found that much smaller protein clusters called oligomers -- made of only a few copies of these proteins -- can be highly toxic to motor neuron-like cells grown in the lab and thus are more likely to be the chief causes of brain-cell death in these diseases. In a 2016 study, for example, Dokholyan's lab found evidence that "trimer" structures made of just three copies of the SOD1 protein are toxic to the type of neuron affected in ALS. advertisement For the new study, Dokholyan's team, including lead author Cheng Zhu, PhD, a postdoctoral researcher in his lab, conducted complicated experiments to compare how trimers affect neurons to how larger fibrils affect neurons. "One challenge is that the smaller structures such as trimers tend to exist only transiently on the way to forming larger structures," Zhu said. "But we were able to find an SOD1 mutation that stabilizes the trimer structure and another mutation that promotes the creation of the larger fibrils at the expense of smaller structures. So, we were able to separate the effects of these two species of the protein." The researchers expressed the mutant SOD1 proteins in test cells that closely resemble the muscle-controlling neurons killed in ALS. They found -- as they did in the 2016 study -- that when these cells expressed SOD1 mutants that predominantly form trimers, the cells died much more quickly than control cells containing normal SOD1. The trimer-expressing cells even died more quickly than cells expressing mutant forms of SOD1 that are found in severe hereditary ALS cases. "Looking at various SOD1 mutants, we observed that the degree of toxicity correlated with the extent of trimer formation," Zhu said. On the other hand, the viability of cells containing mutant SOD1 that strongly forms fibrils but suppresses trimers tended to be similar as wild-type SOD1, suggesting that the fibrils are protective, not merely less toxic. This suggests SOD1 fibrils aren't the problem in SOD1-linked ALS; they might be a solution. "Taking a drug to promote fibril formation could be one way to reduce toxicity in SOD1-ALS," Dokholyan said. An alternative strategy, he noted, would be to limit the formation of trimers or other small, toxic SOD1 oligomers. SOD1 normally works in cells as a two-copy structure, a dimer. Trimers and other abnormal structures appear to originate when the dimers fall apart. So Dokholyan and colleagues are looking for potential drug molecules that can stabilize the dimers. SOD1 is linked to a significant proportion of ALS cases. Mutations in the SOD1 gene account for about 12 percent of ALS cases that run in families. All of these mutations destabilize the protein's normal structure and promote abnormal SOD1 structures. SOD1 mutations also appear to account for about 1.5 percent of cases that do not obviously run in families. "Although SOD1-associated ALS represents a small fraction of all ALS cases, uncovering the origins of neurotoxicity in SOD1 aggregation may shed light on the underlying causes of an entire class of neurodegenerative diseases," Dokholyan said. The next steps for Dokholyan's lab is to pinpoint downstream cellular mechanisms of toxicity of pathological trimeric SOD1 and find drugs that mitigate the formation of trimers. One of the most significant impairments of the quality of life after a chemotherapy is infertility. Researchers have now identified the mechanism of chemotherapy-induced infertility in females. Many chemotherapeutics act by damaging the DNA. Since cancer cells divide more often than most normal cells, they react more sensitive to DNA damaging agents. One exception are oocytes. To prevent birth defects they initiate a cellular death program if DNA damage is detected. This process, called apoptosis, is triggered in oocytes by the protein p63. Oocytes contain a high concentration of an oocyte-specific isoform of p63 which plays a key role as a quality control factor in causing infertility. In contrast to men who produce new sperm cells throughout their life women are born with a finite number of oocytes. When this pool is depleted menopause starts. This pool of oocytes can be depleted prematurely by chemotherapy resulting in early menopause. This results not only in infertility but also in hormone-based problems such as osteoporosis. Scientists in the laboratory of Prof Volker Dotsch at the Institute for Biophysical Chemistry of Goethe University have now deciphered the mechanism leading to premature loss of the oocyte pool caused by treatment with chemotherapy. In non-damaged oocytes p63 exists in an inactive form. DNA damage caused by chemo- or radiotherapy results in the modification of p63 with phosphate groups which triggers a conformational change to the active form. Active p63 starts the cell death program which leads to the elimination of the oocyte. The scientists describe in the online edition of the journal Nature Structural and Molecular Biology the molecular details of this activation mechanism and the enzymes responsible for it. These results open new opportunities for developing a therapy for preserving oocytes of female cancer patients treated with chemotherapeutics. In experiments with mouse ovaries inhibiting the identified enzymes saved the oocytes from cell death despite treatment with chemotherapeutics. The most widely used biomarkers for the early detection of Alzheimer's disease (AD) are currently the concentrations of beta-amyloid and phosphorylated Tau in cerebrospinal fluid. However, it has been observed that not all individuals with alterations in these biomarkers develop the disease. In this regard, intense research efforts are being channelled into finding new biological markers that can provide information about the different stages of the disease and allow its early detection, and thus facilitate its management. A study headed by researchers at the Institute for Research in Biomedicine (IRB Barcelona) and the Institut Europeen de Chimie et Biologie (IECB) in France proposes that the presence of two beta-amyloid molecules bound together (beta-amyloid dimers) could provide a new biomarker for AD. In search of new markers for Alzheimer's disease Molecular research into AD had already established a correlation between the concentration of beta-amyloid dimers and the onset of the disease. But the nature of these dimers has been hotly debated because it was not known whether the two beta-amyloid molecules that form the dimer were linked by a chemical bond or not. This information is important because if this chemical bond is not present, the dimer can be broken when manipulating the samples during lab analysis, thereby hindering accurate measurement of its concentration. Headed by researcher Natalia Carulla, currently group leader at IECB, the team at IRB Barcelona and IECB has studied the chemical and structural properties of beta-amyloid dimers in close collaboration with IRB Barcelona's Mass Spectrometry Facility, managed by Marta Vilaseca. Postdoctoral fellow Aurelio Vazquez de la Torre and Senior Research Officer Marina Gay, the two first authors of the study, which was published in Analytical Chemistry, demonstrate that the bonds between the two beta-amyloid molecules are covalent, meaning that the molecules are held together by chemical links that are very strong and impossible to break during brain extraction. These findings were achieved using brain tissue samples from two patients with AD and a control. The researchers conclude that the beta-amyloid dimers are covalently linked in the brains of subjects with AD and that therefore they emerge as potential biomarkers of the disease, as well as therapeutic targets. "We have confirmed the potential of these dimers as biomarkers. We have found that the dimers are preserved during the tissue extraction procedure used in the lab and are consequently identical to those in the brains of patients with AD. Furthermore, we have developed a robust and sensitive method that allows us to study the dimers in any biological sample," explain Aurelio Vazquez de la Torre, a member of Natalia Carulla's team, and Marina Gay, who works in the Mass Spectrometry Platform. In this regard, these researchers have fine-tuned the techniques that have allowed the identification and characterisation of the dimers. "Because we can't work with the brains of living subjects, we now need to determine whether these dimers are present in the cerebrospinal fluid of individuals with Alzheimers disease and then perform clinical trials to associate their presence with the stage of AD. We propose that it is now feasible to validate the dimers as biomarkers for this disease," says Carulla. One of the most fundamental predictions of Einstein's theory of relativity is the existence of black holes. In spite of the recent detection of gravitational waves from binary black holes by LIGO, direct evidence using electromagnetic waves remains elusive and astronomers are searching for it with radio telescopes. Astrophysicists at Goethe University Frankfurt, and collaborators in the ERC-funded project BlackHoleCam in Bonn and Nijmegen have created and compared self-consistent and realistic images of the shadow of an accreting supermassive black hole -- such as the black-hole candidate Sagittarius A* (Sgr A*) in the heart of our galaxy -- both in general relativity and in a different theory of gravity. The goal was to test if Einsteinian black holes can be distinguished from those in alternative theories of gravity. Not all of the light rays (or photons) produced by matter falling into a black hole are trapped by the event horizon, a region of spacetime from which nothing can escape. Some of these photons will reach distant observers, so that when a black hole is observed directly a "shadow" is expected against the background sky. The size and shape of this shadow will depend on the black-hole's properties but also on the theory of gravity. Because the largest deviations from Einstein's theory of relativity are expected very close to the event horizon and since alternative theories of gravity make different predictions on the properties of the shadow, direct observations of Sgr A* represent a very promising approach for testing gravity in the strongest regime. Making such images of the black-hole shadow is the primary goal of the international Event Horizon Telescope Collaboration (EHTC), which combines radio data from telescopes around the world. Scientists from the BlackHoleCam team in Europe, who are part of the EHTC, have now gone a step further and investigated whether it is possible to distinguish between a "Kerr" black hole from Einstein's gravity and a "dilaton" black hole, which is a possible solution of an alternative theory of gravity. The researchers studied the evolution of matter falling into the two very different types of black holes and calculated the radiation emitted to construct the images. Furthermore, real-life physical conditions in the telescopes and interstellar medium were used to create physically realistic images. "To capture the effects of different black holes we used realistic simulations of accretion disks with near-identical initial setups. These expensive numerical simulations used state-of-the-art codes and took several months on the Institute's supercomputer LOEWE," says Dr. Yosuke Mizuno, lead author of the study. Moreover, expected radio images obviously have a limited resolution and image fidelity. When using realistic image resolutions, the scientists found, to their surprise, that even highly non-Einsteinian black holes could disguise themselves as normal black holes. "Our results show that there are theories of gravity in which black holes can masquerade as Einsteinian, so new techniques of analyzing EHT data may be needed to tell them apart," remarks Luciano Rezzolla, professor at Goethe University and leader of the Frankfurt team. "While we believe general relativity is correct, as scientists we need to be open-minded. Luckily, future observations and more advanced techniques will eventually settle these doubts," concludes Rezzolla. "Indeed, independent information from an orbiting pulsar, which we are actively searching for, will help eliminate these ambiguities," says Michael Kramer, director at the MPI for Radio Astronomy in Bonn. Heino Falcke (professor at Radboud University), who 20 years ago proposed using radio telescopes to image the shadow of black holes, is optimistic. "There is little doubt that the EHT will eventually obtain strong evidence of a black-hole shadow. These results encourage us to refine our techniques beyond the current state of the art and thus make even sharper images in the future." Why do our oceans contain such a staggering diversity of fish of so many different sizes, shapes and colors? A UCLA-led team of biologists reports that the answer dates back 66 million years, when a six-mile-wide asteroid crashed to Earth, wiping out the dinosaurs and approximately 75 percent of the world's animal and plant species. Slightly more than half of today's fish are "marine fish," meaning they live in oceans. And most marine fish, including tuna, halibut, grouper, sea horses and mahi-mahi, belong to an extraordinarily diverse group called acanthomorphs. (The study did not analyze the large numbers of other fish that live in lakes, rivers, streams, ponds and tropical rainforests.) The aftermath of the asteroid crash created an enormous evolutionary void, providing an opportunity for the marine fish that survived it to greatly diversify. "Today's rich biodiversity among marine fish shows the fingerprints of the mass extinction at the end of the Cretaceous period," said Michael Alfaro, a professor of ecology and evolutionary biology in the UCLA College and lead author of the study. To analyze those fingerprints, the "evolutionary detectives" employed a new genomics research technique developed by one of the authors. Their work is published in the journal Nature Ecology and Evolution. When they studied the timing of the acanthomorphs' diversification, Alfaro and his colleagues discovered an intriguing pattern: Although there were many other surviving lineages of acanthomorphs, the six most species-rich groups of acanthomorphs today all showed evidence of substantial evolutionary change and proliferation around the time of the mass extinction. Those six groups have gone on to produce almost all of the marine fish diversity that we see today, Alfaro said. He added that it's unclear why the other acanthomorph lineages failed to diversify as much after the mass extinction. "The mass extinction, we argue, provided an evolutionary opportunity for a select few of the surviving acanthomorphs to greatly diversify, and it left a large imprint on the biodiversity of marine fishes today," Alfaro said. "It's like there was a lottery 66 million years ago, and these six major acanthomorph groups were the winners." The findings also closely match fossil evidence of acanthomorphs' evolution, which also shows a sharp rise in their anatomical diversity after the extinction. The genomic technique used in the study, called sequence capture of DNA ultra-conserved elements, was developed at UCLA by Brant Faircloth, who is now an assistant professor of biological sciences at Louisiana State University. Where previous methods used just 10 to 20 genes to create an evolutionary history, Faircloth's approach creates a more complete and accurate picture by using more than 1,000 genetic markers. (The markers include genes and other DNA components, such as parts of the DNA that turn proteins on or off, and cellular components that play a role in regulating genes.) The researchers also extracted DNA from 118 species of marine fish and conducted a computational analysis to determine the relationships among them. Among their findings: It's not possible to tell which species are genetically related simply by looking at them. Seahorses, for example, look nothing like goatfish, but the two species are evolutionary cousins -- a finding that surprised the scientists. "We demonstrate this approach works, and that it sheds new light on evolutionary history for the most species-rich group of marine vertebrates," Alfaro said. Evidence suggests that developing cooking and food preparation skills is important for health and nutrition, yet the practice of home cooking is declining and now rarely taught in school. A new study published in the Journal of Nutrition Education and Behavior found that developing cooking skills as a young adult may have long-term benefits for health and nutrition. "The impact of developing cooking skills early in life may not be apparent until later in adulthood when individuals have more opportunity and responsibility for meal preparation," said lead author Jennifer Utter, PhD, MPH, University of Auckland, Auckland, New Zealand. "The strength of this study is the large, population-based sample size followed over a period of 10 years to explore the impact of perceived cooking skills on later nutritional well-being." Data were collected as part of the Project Eating and Activity in Teens and Young Adults longitudinal study conducted in Minneapolis-Saint Paul area schools. Participants reported on adequacy of cooking skills in 2002-2003 when they were 18 to 23 years old. Data was then collected in 2015-2016 on nutrition-related outcomes when participants were 30 to 35 years old. Questions assessed the perceived adequacy of cooking skills, how often they prepared a meal that included vegetables, how often they ate meals as a family, and how often they ate at a fast food restaurant. Most participants perceived their cooking skills to be adequate at age 18 -- 23, with approximately one quarter of adults reporting their cooking skills to be very adequate. There were no differences in perceived cooking skills by sex, race or ethnicity, educational attainment, or age. Perceived adequacy of cooking skills predicted multiple indicators of nutrition outcomes later in adulthood including greater odds of preparing a meal with vegetables most days and less frequent consumption of fast food. If those who perceived their cooking skills as adequate had families, they ate more frequent family meals, less frequent fast food meals, and had fewer barriers to food preparation. "Opportunities to develop cooking skills by adolescents may result in long-term benefits for nutritional well-being," said Dr. Utter. "Families, health and nutrition professionals, educators, community agencies, and funders can continue to invest in home economics and cooking education knowing that the benefits may not be fully realized until young adults develop more autonomy and live independently." Finance minister distressed over broken tablets govt provided to students Social Share A number of tablets from the last batch distributed to students have been reported to be damaged, Minister of Finance Camillo Gonsalves has indicated. Im very distressed to hear that of the tablets that we distributed just a few months ago, a number of them are now being reported damaged because parents took the tablets, aunty and uncle, and the tablets became something that were used for purposes other than education the Minister said on WE FMs Issue At Hand programme last Sunday, September 19. He was speaking in response to a question posed by the programmes hosts about the devices and the format that schooling will take come the reopening date of October 4. It is possible that given the spike in Covid-19 positive and active cases, students may return to online learning for which the tablets will become necessary. The Government had ordered in batches, thousands of tablets for students of primary, secondary and college level, as well as teachers. We cant assume that all the children have devices, thats something that were trying to get a handle on in terms of how many have been damaged, how many have to be replaced, Gonsalves continued. Another issue that has to be ironed out if schooling returns to the electronic format the Minister said, is a discrepancy in the amount of time allotted for learning per day in each school. We are trying to get from the Ministry of Education some consistency in the way in which education is being delivered to students remotely, he commented. Because some are having classes all day online, some are having an hour or two of class online, and in some cases I learned that teachers were merely recording a fifteen minute WhatsApp of instructions and sending that WhatsApp out to all the childrens parents say listen have your child read x, y and z, Gonsalves disclosed. He concluded, The discrepancies are wide, and varied and were trying to, obviously, optimally, get children into school, but if we have to do remote learning, to try our best to have some standardisation so that students can get some equality in what is offered to them online. The Securities and Exchange Commission has charged an investment adviser with orchestrating an investment scheme over several years. The SEC's complaint alleges that, from at least February 2015, Amrit J. S. Chahal, of Fairfax, Va., used his company, Kane Capital Investment Group, LLC, to fraudulently solicit approximately $1.4 million from about 50 individuals, including friends and family members. According to the complaint, Chahal lured investors by falsely claiming to be an experienced and successful trader who could generate above-market returns for clients through a low-risk trading strategy. The SEC alleges that, in reality, Chahal had substantially no experience working in the financial or securities industry or trading securities on behalf of clients. The complaint further alleges Chahal initially invested client funds in a variety of investments, but suffered significant trading losses. According to the complaint, instead of disclosing the losses, Chahal lied to his clients about their investment returns, continued raising funds, then used the money for his personal benefit, including to pay for his luxury car, rent, travel, dining, and other living expenses, and to make Ponzi-like payments to earlier investors. The U.S. Attorney's Office for the Eastern District of Virginia also announced criminal charges against Chahal. The Commodities Futures Trading Commission also charged Chahal. The SEC's complaint, filed in federal court in Alexandria, Virginia on April 12, 2018, charges Chahal with violating Section 17(a) of the Securities Act of 1933, Section 10(b) of the Securities Exchange Act of 1934 and Rule 10b-5 thereunder, and Sections 206(1) and 206(2) of the Investment Advisers Act of 1940. The SEC seeks a permanent injunction, disgorgement, and penalties. The SEC's continuing investigation was conducted by Christine R. O'Neil and Brendan P. McGlynn in the Philadelphia Regional Office. The case is being supervised by Kelly L. Gibson. The SEC's litigation will be led by Christopher R. Kelly and Sarah Hall and supervised by Jennifer C. Barry. The SEC appreciates the assistance of the U.S. Attorney's Office for the Eastern District of Virginia, the Federal Bureau of Investigation, the Commodities Futures Trading Commission, and the Virginia State Corporation Commission. Our story began in 1866 when a large number of secularist groups from around the UK came together to strengthen their campaigns. Their leader was Charles Bradlaugh. Since those early days the National Secular Society has pioneered many important social reforms and society has changed a lot. For centuries, religion-based laws forbade entry for non-believers into parliament. They banned abortion, divorce, contraception, homosexuality, blasphemy and even cremation. Those laws have now been dismantled; human rights and equality for minorities are broadly accepted and protected by law. In the struggles to bring about these reforms, the NSS has always played a prominent role and sometimes a decisive one. To mark our 150th anniversary in 2016 the National Secular Society commissioned a portrait bust of Charles Bradlaugh which is now on display in the Palace of Westminster as part of the Parliamentary Art Collection. We also produced an anniversary brochure giving a potted history of our first 150 years. Read on to find out more about our story, and some of the significant historical events and people that illustrate the NSS's rich history. Explore our story Secularism before the NSS Throughout history, different religious and political traditions have considered the relationship between individuals' personal conscience and ideology, between the divine and the secular. What today we might call the balance of freedom of and from religion. During the 18th century, the Enlightenment movement, revolutions and the emergence of the nation state, all challenged the relationship between church and state. Secularist philosophers religious and non-religious alike, created the intellectual climate in which the National Secular Society was to emerge. Inspiration came from early freethinkers. The most important of these was Thomas Paine, whose pioneering Rights of Man changed the way ordinary people thought about politics and their place in society. Also of importance was Richard Carlile, who went to jail for nine years for publishing Paine's The Age of Reason, a trenchant critique of the Bible. Later leading figures included Robert Owen, George Jacob Holyoake who first coined the word 'secularism' and our first President, Charles Bradlaugh. These freethinkers often stood at the forefront of radical and reformist movements, which gained strength in the 19th century. The Society's early years British secularism was essentially a working-class movement strongly influenced by the French revolution. In the mid Nineteenth Century the secularist movement was widespread, with many local society's being founded. However the radical and freethought leadership was fragmented and, in Bradlaugh's opinion, insufficiently positive. This would change with the founding of the National Secular Society in 1866. However deep divisions would remain, between opponents and supporters of birth control, and between those dedicated to challenging the Church's abuse of temporal power, and those dedicated to challenging its very existence. The 20th century Momentum for constitutional disestablishment at least in England declined in the twentieth century. While social changes undermined religious privilege, religious organisations played an increasing role in the expanding state. The Society's third president - Chapmen Cohen introduced a new generation to the secular cause. By the end of WWII life in Britain had become increasingly secularised, but there was still a pressing need for existing religious privileges to be challenged. Playwright Harold Pinter wrote in the 1966 NSS centenary brochure: "The fact remains that children are still indoctrinated in schools at public expenseand many humane and rational reforms remain opposedThe work of the National Secular Society remains highly important". These words remain as true today as when they were written; in some ways they are even truer. For example, the role of religion in state education has probably grown rather than declined. David Tribe and Barbara Smoker were notable Presidents in the second half of the twentieth century. They greatly increased the society's use of the media to express its views. The 21st century The 21st century has seen a drastic decline in religious observance in the UK. At the same time there has been a rise of religious diversity and increasingly personalised religion, where religious leaders' and institutions' hold over public opinion even among the religious has vastly diminished. Despite this era of secularisation, religion has remained politically influential and privileged. Religious fundamentalism has remerged as a political force. Global conflicts between capitalism and communism have been replaced in places with a conflict between secular democracy and theocracy. New, often contentious, model of both secularism and religious privilege have emerged. And secularism is increasingly being seen as a human rights issue in which people of all faiths as well as none have a stake. More information Spartacus Educational Free online encyclopedia with resources on the history of secularism. Spartacus Educational is an external website with essays and other educational material on a wide variety of historical subjects. The NSS does not necessarily endorse its resources. However we have told us that it has a number of useful resources on radical historical figures. If you have enjoyed our historical resources you may find the following Spartacus articles useful: James Watson Richard Carlile George Holyoake Charles Bradlaugh Annie Besant The National Reformer We use cookies to improve your online experience. For information on the cookies we use and for details on how we process your personal information, please see our cookie policy and privacy policy. By continuing to use our website you consent to us using cookies. Accept Cookies NEMO to commemorate the 40th anniversary of the last eruption of La Soufriere volcano Social Share April 13, 2019, will mark 40 years since the last eruption of La Soufriere Volcano. To commemorate this 40th Anniversary, the National Emergency Management Organisation (NEMO) will conduct one month of activities during the period April 4 to May 4, 2019, focusing on community preparedness for a volcanic eruption and sensitizing the public about the Volcanic Emergency Evacuation aspect of the Humanitarian Assistance and Disaster Relief (HADR) Component of the Trade Winds Exercise 2019. The activities to commemorate the 40th Anniversary will be officially launched during a Soufriere Blow Out Exhibition scheduled to take place on Friday, April 12 at the car park next to the Postal Corporation in Kingstown. This will be followed by the annual Public Educational Field Trip to the La Soufriere Volcano via the Leeward side of the island on Saturday, April 13. On Sunday April 14, there will be the Views on Issues Programme focusing on the monitoring of the volcano over the past 40 years. The other activities include schools exhibition, educational field trips and art workshops. Activities at the community level include volcano movie nights, and community evacuation planning. The activities to commemorate the 40th Anniversary of the eruption of La Soufriere volcano will be conducted in collaboration with the University of the West Indies Seismic Research Centre (UWI-SRC) and with support from the Soufriere Monitoring Unit (SMU), the Forestry Division and the UWI SRC Volcano Ready Communities Project SVG. Children can be segregated and discriminated against according to their parents' religion when it comes to school admissions. This worries me immensely. I am not looking forward to letting my children be taught superstition and myths as truth or separating them from their friends. The NSS is all we have to take on the might of these tax-exempt organisations given free access to our children by the state. This item is available in full to subscribers. Attention subscribers We have recently launched a new and improved website. To continue reading, you will need to either log into your subscriber account, or purchase a new subscription. If you are a digital subscriber with an active subscription, then you already have an account here. Just reset your password if you've not yet logged in to your account on this new site. If you are a current print subscriber, you can set up a free website account by clicking here. Otherwise, click here to view your options for subscribing. Google treats all those new TLDs that launched a few years ago as generic TLDs, and by default, those are not geotargeted. That includes the new TLDs for popular cities such as .london, .madrid, etc etc. Google's John Mueller confirmed this on Twitter but also said so back in 2014 when they were launching these new TLDs. Here is John's tweet: The new TLDs are all seen as generic TLDs, so you can already geotarget them any way you want. Yay, that's an easy wish to grant :-)) John .o()o. (@JohnMu) April 11, 2018 So even those new TLDs that clearly demonstrate local intent and geo intent, Google in these cases are treating as generic TLDs, gTLDs. Why? I suspect because they are not controlled by any specific city or country. Forum discussion at Twitter. A proposed $425 million San Francisco bond measure to kick-start vital repairs to the citys fragile Embarcadero seawall cleared an important hurdle Monday, pushing it closer to a spot on the November ballot. Citing an urgent need to make the crumbling seawall more resilient to earthquakes and the effects of sea-level rise, the citys Capital Planning Committee voted unanimously to put the bond before the Board of Supervisors, which is expected to take up the measure within a month. The proposed general-obligation bond measure needs the boards blessing before it could go before voters. Should the bond measure make it to the ballot and win a two-thirds approval from voters in November as its widely expected to do the money raised would fund the bulk of the first round of planning, construction and repair work on the seawall. The century-old structure underpins historic landmarks like the Ferry Building and protects an estimated $100 billion worth of public and private property, including vital transportation infrastructure like the Transbay Tube. The results of a poll conducted this year on behalf of the Port of San Francisco found that 73 percent of voters would support a general obligation bond for seawall improvement. The bond would not raise property taxes. Michael Macor / The Chronicle The seawall rims 3 miles of the citys waterfront from Fishermans Wharf to AT&T Park. It supports the Embarcadero roadway and a labyrinth of public and private utilities. Significant aspects of the citys emergency plan depend on the stability of the waterfront and, in turn, the Embarcadero seawall, port staff wrote in a report on the proposed bond measure. This is the most critical infrastructure that we need to start focusing on now, not just for seismic safety, but for sea-level rise, too, said City Administrator Naomi Kelly, who chairs the Capital Planning Committee. The bond measure would cover 85 percent of the $500 million needed for the first of three repair and construction phases for the seawall. The city is looking to make up the difference with a $55 million contribution from the state, which has not yet been secured. The U.S. Army Corps of Engineers, however, has agreed to chip in $10 million. The citys Planning Department and the Municipal Transportation Agency will kick in a total of $2 million, and the port will contribute $8 million. Its difficult to spend money on something we cant see, but the Embarcadero seawall is critical to the economic vitality of our city and our emergency response, Board of Supervisors President London Breed said in a statement. Breed also sits on the Capital Planning Committee. The entire seawall project, which will stretch across decades, will cost around $5 billion. Some of that money around $250 million could come from AB2578, a bill introduced by state Assemblyman David Chiu, D-San Francisco, in March. The bill, which advanced to the Assembly Appropriations Committee last week, would redirect state taxes generated from development toward shoreline improvements. On a trip to Sacramento last week, San Francisco Mayor Mark Farrell testified in support of Chius bill before the Assemblys Local Government Committee. 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. Simply put, it responsibly reinvests waterfront tax dollars where they need to go, which is back into infrastructure for the waterfront, Farrell told the committee. The first phase of the seawall rehabilitation project would last until about 2026 and would represent a down payment for the planning and prioritization and the risk-assessment work for the entire improvement program, said Port Director Elaine Forbes. After the areas of the seawall that need to be fixed first were mapped out, the bond money would then be put toward construction efforts that address areas that are the most at-risk to peoples lives, and the most important for life-safety response, Forbes said. I think its so important that we define our future on the waterfront and dont let disaster define us, she said. Its so much more expensive to solve (after a disaster), and Im really glad were trying to get ahead of this. Dominic Fracassa is a San Francisco Chronicle staff writer. Email: dfracassa@sfchronicle.com Twitter: @dominicfracassa The 4,600-square-foot home in Novato had been on the market for months. The owner offered it furnished, utilities included, for $5,000 a month, according to Zillow. Then, in October, about 30 miles to the north, the Tubbs Fire sparked. It destroyed 5,636 houses, businesses and other structures, most of them in Santa Rosa, causing demand for housing to surge in the region. Now Playing: Lisa Mast, whose home in Coffey Park survived the North Bay Fires, talks about her experience after the fire and moving back into her standing home. Video: Lea Suzuki According to state prosecutors, the rent for the Novato house jumped to $9,000 monthly. On Monday they charged the owner, Melissa Missy Echeverria, with three misdemeanor counts of price gouging. Echeverria illegally raised the rental price of the home by more than 10 percent, California Attorney General Xavier Becerra said in a statement. Echeverria did not immediately respond to calls for comment. There are some unscrupulous individuals who engage in price gouging, taking advantage of those who are already suffering, Becerra said. Its wrong, its unconscionable, and its illegal. The Sonoma County district attorneys office has investigated more than 220 complaints of price gouging since the devastating firestorm, officials said. Authorities do not know exactly how widespread the problem is across areas impacted by the fires, including Sonoma, Mendocino, Lake and Napa counties. Historically, price gouging has been difficult to prove, in part because renters fear retribution by landlords. I am hearing that it is an issue and does remain an issue, said Sue Gallagher, city attorney for Santa Rosa. Raising rental rates or sales prices by more than 10 percent within 30 days of an emergency or state-declared disaster is illegal in California. On Monday, Gov. Jerry Brown extended the disaster protections through Dec. 4, 2018, meaning rents and home prices cannot be increased more than 10 percent from what they were before Octobers wildfires. Browns previous extension was set to expire Wednesday. 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. Theres the best of humanity coming out in this fire, and theres also some of the worst of it, said Sonoma County Supervisor Shirlee Zane. You see greed. Shame on people that price-gouge. Theyre trying to make a buck on the back of people who have suffered severely. I hope the D.A. goes after every single one of them. Those convicted of violations face up to a year in jail and fines up to $10,000. The law also prohibits landlords from evicting residents in order to raise rent and doesnt allow retaliation if a resident reports an illegal price increase. Still, Sonoma County officials said some residents are afraid to come forward, especially undocumented immigrants. People need to be reminded that they shouldnt be afraid to come forward and talk to us because if they dont report the problems, we cant help them, said Ronit Rubinoff, executive director of the nonprofit group Legal Aid of Sonoma County, which is helping residents with price gouging issues. If someone is asserting a legal right, and they are retaliated against, the law protects them. You are actually safer if you complain to an agency than if you dont say anything. Lizzie Johnson is a San Francisco Chronicle staff writer. Email: ljohnson@sfchronicle.com Twitter: @LizzieJohnsonnn Former San Francisco Mayor Willie Brown admitted to a big mistake Monday, after historians and city residents balked at his idea to rename Lottas Fountain on Market Street after Ed Lee. I never should have said, rename, Brown said, sheepishly retracting the announcement he made in his Sunday Chronicle column, which caused an uproar on social media. In his piece, Brown had said he would rededicate the 143-year-old cast iron fountain this Wednesday during the annual ceremony to commemorate the 1906 earthquake. That was news to the events main organizer. No, no, no said Lee Houskeeper, a veteran publicist and pro bono producer of the earthquake anniversary event, indicating that Brown did not consult him about the name change. After the column appeared, Houskeeper fielded more than 100 furious Facebook comments and messages from people who hated the idea of stripping the 19th-century entertainer Charlotte Mignon (Lotta) Crabtrees name from the large monument at Market and Kearny streets. Brown had to confront angry critics as well, some of whom accosted him on the street. He insisted the column was a misunderstanding and said hed only meant to honor Ed Lee with a wreath on Wednesday. I clearly misstated, Brown said, adding that hed never meant to undermine Crabtree, a famed Gold Rush-era entertainer known for smoking cigars and dancing atop barrels. Snubbed by San Franciscos high society, she is a beloved character for San Francisco history buffs and an antecedent for another cigar-smoking woman Browns friend, the late Rose Pak. Crabtree was obviously someone I would have great admiration for, Brown said on Monday after he enlisted Houskeeper to write a Facebook post that tried to explain the gaffe. Hiz Honor told me this morning that he loves that cigar-smoking Lotta Crabtree and was just trying to bring attention to our 112th Quake Commemoration with his Sunday Chronicle item, Houskeeper wrote, inviting more vitriolic comments from people warning Brown to back off. Willie should have stayed in Mineola, Texas, wrote a Facebook commenter named Joe Reney. So were just gonna wipe away our history like this? NO, wrote another commenter, David Boyll. Brown also ran afoul of the #MeToo movement, Houskeeper said, since Lottas Fountain is one of the few monuments in the city thats named for a woman. San Francisco has 87 statues, but only two of them represent real women: the Florence Nightingale sculpture outside Laguna Honda Hospital, and Dianne Feinsteins bust in City Hall. Add to that the Lillie Coit Memorial Tower on Telegraph Hill, and females still account for a small portion of the citys public art. Lotta she was a talented, wild, liberated woman, said Donna Ewald Huggins, a history buff who attends the earthquake ceremony every year dressed as Lillie Coit. Crabtree started out performing for miners in her hometown of Grass Valley before gracing stages throughout San Francisco. She made a fortune investing in real estate, and commissioned the fountain in 1875 as a gift to the city. It was a meeting place after the 1906 earthquake and became the site for the earthquake memorial in 1919. The fountain sat rusting for decades until a group of historians began pestering Brown during his 1995 campaign for mayor. He promised to get the water running, and did so in 1998, with $160,000 and a crack team of engineers. Brown credited Lee, who was named S.F. Public Works director in 2000, for leading the fountain restoration effort. Huggins dismissed the idea of renaming the fountain but defended Brown, saying the former mayor had good intentions in honoring Lee, who died of a heart attack on Dec. 12. 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. I think Willies statement was more admiration for Ed Lee than denigration of Lotta Crabtree, Huggins said. Brown isnt the only one rushing to stamp Lees name on a piece of the city. In January, mayoral candidate London Breed proposed renaming Portsmouth Square after Lee, a gesture that some interpreted as a brazen political ploy. Another candidate in the mayors race, Angela Alioto, tried to one-up Breed by promoting a November ballot measure to rechristen Kearny Street in Lees honor. Alioto said the idea of renaming a major downtown artery is mild compared to Browns pitch for the Ed Lee fountain. That was so out of left field, it literally gave me goose bumps, she said. Huggins said its appropriate to put some type of Ed Lee memorial on or near Lottas Fountain, given that he attended the earthquake ceremony every year. On Sunday she made a few phone calls and raised about $8,000, which she hopes to spend on an Ed Lee sidewalk plaque. Rachel Swan is a San Francisco Chronicle staff writer. Email: rswan@sfchronicle.com Twitter: @rachelswan CARICOM Foreign Ministers engage US National Security Adviser Social Share Foreign Ministers of the Caribbean Community (CARICOM) engaged with US National Security Advisor, Jake Sullivan on Friday April 7, 2021. The discussions, in which the Prime Minister of St Vincent and the Grenadines, Dr Ralph Gonsalves participated, were viewed as introductory as well as an opportunity to exchange views on issues of mutual interest, a release stated. Emphasis was placed on the importance of addressing the Covid 19 pandemic and its economic effects through access to vaccines and to economic recovery financing. Matters relating to security and climate change were also discussed. Ministers were particularly pleased with the reset of CARICOM-US relations as this was the second high-level interaction under the Biden-Harris administration which took office in January. Last month the Foreign Ministers met with US Secretary of State Antony Blinken. At Fridays meeting, they emphasised the need for the relationship to be placed in an institutional framework to facilitate a regular and patterned schedule of meetings. Sullivan proposed regular high-level meetings, including a Summit between CARICOM Heads of Government and the US President. Paul Chinn / The Chronicle Two state bills to prevent wildfires triggered by power lines advanced in the California Senate on Tuesday, although only after their author promised significant changes to one of them that had alarmed consumer groups and solar power advocates. One of the bills, SB901, would require California utility companies to come up with plans for preemptively shutting down electrical lines in advance of a major windstorm like the one that fueled the Wine Country wildfires in October. The companies would also need to draft policies for reprogramming their reclosers, devices that automatically try to restart power lines after an unexpected interruption. Reclosers have been implicated in past wildfires, though investigators have not yet determined the cause of the Wine Country fires. Salesforce said Tuesday that it is subleasing its offices at Rincon Center at 101 Spear St. in San Francisco, as it consolidates most of its staff into three high-rises near the Transbay Terminal. The San Francisco company, which sells software that helps businesses manage sales and customer support, opened Salesforce Tower at First and Mission streets, the citys tallest high-rise, in January. Salesforce is the citys largest tech company, with 7,500 employees. With Salesforce Tower now open, we are thrilled to bring our San Francisco employees closer together in our world-class HQ urban campus, the company said. For now, it is retaining its headquarters building at 1 Market St., which it had previously said it planned to sublease, according to reports. Besides Salesforce Tower, the company has Salesforce West at 50 Fremont St., which it owns, and Salesforce East at 350 Mission St., which it leases. The company also occupies part of 123 Mission St. Even after subleasing Rincon Center, the company will have more than 2 million square feet of office space in San Francisco, according to an analysis by CoStar Group. Salesforce CEO Marc Benioff told The Chronicles editorial board this month that the company plans to max out with 10,000 employees in San Francisco. The company also has a large presence in Indianapolis, with a 48-floor Salesforce Tower in that city. Millennials want to be in cities, Benioff said. They want to work for companies in cities. Salesforce, which moved into Rincon Center in 2014, will sublease about 259,000 square feet of office space there, according to real estate data from CoStar Group. Air Quality Tracker Check levels down to the neighborhood Ratings for the Bay Area and California, updated every 10 minutes It is unclear what business will take over Salesforces Rincon Center space. Mark Ritchie, president of commercial real estate firm Ritchie Commercial, says the demand for office space among tech companies is unrelenting. Companies such as Google and Facebook have become digital nation states in terms of their size and influence, he said. Last year, Facebook, headquartered in Menlo Park, signed a lease for 432,000 square feet of office space at 181 Fremont St. in San Francisco, according to the CoStar Group. San Francisco Chronicle business editor Owen Thomas contributed to this report. Wendy Lee is a San Francisco Chronicle staff writer. Email: wlee@sfchronicle.com Twitter: @thewendylee Milos Forman, the Oscar-winning director who died at 86 on April 13, made only a dozen feature films, but they include the undying classics One Flew Over the Cuckoos Nest (1975) and Amadeus (1984), as well as a string of major and sometimes under-appreciated titles such as Hair (1979), The People vs. Larry Flynt (1996) and Goyas Ghosts (2006). Formans legacy is diverse, with films in a variety of styles and genres. Yet his work has two qualities in common, one visual, one thematic. In terms of visuals, Formans films are full of color and beauty. Forman wasnt like most directors, who would do just as well in black and white (and some would be better off). Forman understood color. He wasnt seduced by it. He wasnt overwhelmed by it. He just knew how to use it to express a place in time. Because the times and places of his films varied from film to film, he never used color twice in the same way. In Amadeus, the court in 1780s Vienna looks like a painting come to life. Its deliriously beautiful, but a little forbidding. The turn of the 20th century New York of Ragtime was slightly muted, with the suggestion of a recollection. In contrast, the 1970s colors of The People vs. Larry Flynt were electric, like some Rod Stewart video come to life. Forman was attracted to period pieces his last seven films were set in an earlier time and he made it his task to capture the dream and promise of the past in visual terms. Warner Bros. 1984 That past, imposing and sometimes complacent in its perfect beauty, was the monolith against which Formans protagonists often railed and struggled. Which brings us to the thematic characteristic of Formans films his affinity for gifted loners in conflict with hostile, indifferent or misguided authority. That was, in a sense, Formans own story. Forman was born in Czechoslovakia in 1932 to a Protestant mother who, following the Nazi invasion of that country in 1939, was so politically active that she died in Auschwitz. The man Forman assumed to be his father was also killed by the Nazis. (Forman later found out that his real father was a Jewish architect, who survived the Holocaust.) Forman came of age in a Czechoslovakia that was dominated by the Soviet Union, and despite the oppression, he thrived. His second film, The Loves of a Blonde (1965) was a hit on the international festival circuit, and so was his follow-up, The Firemens Ball (1967), a comedy that was recognized in its time as a satire of the Communist government and thus banned by the authorities. Forman had the good fortune to be fundraising in Paris at the time of the Soviet invasion of Prague in 1968, which ended the ephemeral period of liberalization known as the Prague Spring. Eventually, Forman made his way to the United States. His first significant work was his contribution to Visions of Eight (1973), an Olympics film featuring shorts from eight filmmakers. Then two years later, he entered history as an American director with One Flew Over the Cuckoos Nest, an adaptation of the Ken Kesey novel, which won five Oscars, including best picture and best director. Republic Pictures / Getty Images 1975 It was the ideal meeting of a director and a subject. Who better than the son of anti-Nazi dissidents and who better than an artist whose work had to get past Communist functionaries to tell a story in which sane people are imprisoned and the twisted and the vicious are in authority? Formans next film, Hair, seems quintessentially American, and in that Forman joins Frank Capra and Billy Wilder in the class of foreign directors with an affinity for American themes. Like Capra and Wilder, Formans films celebrated the American passion for the individual versus the mob, whether that individual was Mozart or Andy Kaufman (Man on the Moon) or Goya or Larry Flynt or the young iconoclasts of Hair. Notorious, in real life, for a personality that was rough-edged and unsentimental, he was passionate in his art about art itself and the preciousness of individual expression. Most people havent seen Goyas Ghosts. See it, if you want to understand and better appreciate Forman and his films. The movie contrasts two personalities Goya (Stellan Skarsgard), a humane man at peace with himself and possessed of a clear understanding of the world; and an Inquisition priest (Javier Bardem), who is running from himself, who is dangerous and in power. In Formans view, the people in power are always ridiculous, or clueless, or deluded, or dangerous, and sometimes all of those awful things. Its the artists that know the truth. Mick LaSalle is The San Francisco Chronicles movie critic. Email: mlasalle@sfchronicle.com Twitter: @MickLaSalle Movie newsletter Get the latest movie reviews, Mick LaSalles views, critics picks and more film news each week in the San Francisco Chronicles revamped movie newsletter! Sign up here for Popcorn Picks and other Chronicle and SFGATE newsletters like the Taploid, Chronicle Commuter, and breaking news alerts. State lawmakers on Monday suggested that funding for a small but powerful agency that disciplines unethical judges could be affected if it does not release thousands of confidential judicial complaints and investigations to the state auditor. The first audit of the San Francisco-based Commission on Judicial Performance was approved by a state legislative committee in August 2016 and has been stalled ever since as the commission has fought in court to keep the records secret. A San Francisco Superior Court judge ruled in December that the state constitution gives the 11-member commission the power to shield certain records, effectively trumping the auditors legislative authority to review government agencies. State Auditor Elaine Howle has appealed. But in a budget subcommittee hearing Monday in Sacramento, state lawmakers expressed frustration with the length of the standoff over the audit, indicating that it would be hard to approve funding for the agency if the legislature has no means to review how the commission is functioning. We are concerned about oversight, said Assemblywoman Shirley Weber, a San Diego Democrat who chairs the public safety subcommittee. To continue to fund things that we have no information about, that we dont have a sense of certainty that its operating in a manner thats in the best interest of the people of California, makes it very difficult to do that. The governors Jan. 10 budget proposal requested about $5.2 million for the commission this year, or about $160,000 more than was approved last year. The commission, established in 1960, oversees roughly 2,000 judges and receives about 1,200 complaints a year, with only a small fraction resulting in public proceedings. 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. In comments before the subcommittee, the commissions newly selected director-chief counsel, Gregory Dresser, expressed concerns that the records could become publicly accessible if released to the auditor. The auditor has disputed this, arguing that the records would be subject to the same exemptions as medical and tax information. What the commission needs is it needs certainty that all confidential records in the hands of the auditor could remain confidential, Dresser said. Lawmakers urged the commission and the auditor to try and work out their differences outside of court. The commissions budget likely will be voted on by the subcommittee in May before the overall budget is taken up by the legislature and the governor. Cynthia Dizikes is a San Francisco Chronicle staff writer. Email: cdizikes@sfchronicle.com San Franciscos affordable housing is a human tragedy that no one can ignore particularly when children are involved. But in the rush to help homeless families, the school board and some city officials appear to have gotten ahead of themselves, advocating for a family shelter at a Mission District elementary school without buy-in from parents and the broader school district community. All San Franciscans have a stake in addressing the many needs of families in crisis. A homeless child or one whose family housing consists of a friends couch and little else faces immense learning challenges. Keeping up with schoolwork and concentrating in class becomes much more difficult when day-to-day living is so uncertain. Assisting these families is simply the right thing to do. Our solutions, though, need not only to be workable and compassionate, but built around a community consensus that addresses any concerns and unintended issues that may arise. At this point, such isnt the case with the proposal to provide a first-of-its-kind homeless shelter at Buena Vista Horace Mann, a K-8 public school in the Mission District with some 600 students. School officials have identified 64 school families without stable housing. The proposal by Supervisor Hillary Ronen and school Principal Richard Zapien calls for housing up to 20 of those families at a time from 7 p.m. to 7 a.m. every day, including weekends, summers and holidays. The city would need to allocate up to $900,000 per year for the program. Using public schools to house the homeless has never been done before in San Francisco. For that matter, little precedent exists nationally. Indeed, questions remain over whether our school is the appropriate location for such an unprecedented expansion of our citys homeless services. For starters, the schools administrators have long been unable to address building maintenance complaints. As a result, Buena Vista Horace Mann needs hundreds of thousands of dollars in upgrades, including new bathroom stalls and outdoor lighting, and fixes to crumbling walls and exposed wiring. Rodents are a known problem, and maintenance staff have a difficult time keeping restrooms stocked with basic essentials such as toilet paper and hand soap. Beyond the suitability of the building itself, however, details about the proposed shelters operation are difficult to come by. Will there be adequate security on premises at all times or limits on the amount of time any one family can stay? And is this a temporary or permanent arrangement? The gym has only one shower for what is likely to be a daily population of 60 to 80 adults, children and infants. Is that adequate to address their needs? And how practical is it to expect these families to vacate the building before young students start showing up for class? All of this will likely affect the schools core activity educating children yet administrators claim that no staff resources will ever be used to serve the program. That doesnt seem realistic. Also left unsaid is whether school district officials intend to expand this experiment across the city. If so, where will the other shelters be located and in what neighborhoods? Our public schools have a hard enough time focusing on student learning. Do we really want to expand their responsibilities to solving the citywide housing crisis? As parents, we treasure our school volunteering at street fairs, cleaning classrooms and helping teachers get the supplies they need. We know whats working, and we know the schools challenges. Its vitally important, before any decision is made to open the shelter, that there is buy-in from the school community parents, faculty, school administrators and city officials need to be on the same page. Most parents were caught off guard by the proposal and learned about it only through the news media. Thats no way to gain support and trust. The city clearly has an obligation to do all it can to give homeless school-age children an opportunity to succeed. But before the city opens the door to using public schools to support family services, commonsense issues need to be addressed. We encourage all district parents to join us in this important conversation and ensure a transparent decision-making process. Andrea Castro and Johanna Lopez are Buena Vista Horace Mann K-8 Community School parents. They are joined in this view by parents Ivan Castro, Julie Mayer, Shawn Miyaki, Mirna and Jose Ornelas, David Serrano Sewell and Marisa Zuzga. The United States has long declared itself the leader of the free world. With that leadership comes moral responsibility. On April 7, 2018, the Syrian government once again used weapons so unconscionable that they are outlawed internationally. These attacks carried out by the Assad regime brutally murdered 75 people, including children, and left more than 500 others gasping for air, vomiting in the streets and collapsing under their own body weight. Some estimates suggest that Syria has carried out as many as 85 chemical attacks in the past five years. The use of these weapons required a response by the United States. We must learn our lesson from World War II and make a strong, early stand against these atrocities and stop them before they become widespread. The founders of this nation, however, enshrined in our rule of law that the president of the United States does not have unchecked power. Unlike in Syria, where leader Bashar al-Assad unilaterally orders assaults domestically and internationally, the U.S. Constitution and the War Powers Act are clear: The ultimate power to engage in military action lies with Congress. The president must now immediately brief Congress on his strategy for Syria, allow for a broader debate, and seek approval for future actions. Before 9/11, presidents generally respected the authority of Congress to exercise its right to authorize the use of force and to declare war. They did not always agree, but they respected that the process mandated that Congress be involved and ultimately had the decision-making power. In the wake of the devastating attacks on 9/11, however, Congress overcorrected and ceded much of its power by granting the president overly broad authorities to act unilaterally. It is time to return that power to Congress. This president in particular who is reactionary, unstable, lacks the expertise and steady hand to navigate complex scenarios, and has close ties to the Assad-supporting Russian regime must seek the authorization to use further force in Syria from Congress. Additionally, future actions of nations like Iran, Russia and North Korea may be calculated based on our response. Our next move needs to be in the right direction. Congress and the Trump administration should engage in conversations to devise thoughtful short-term and long-term strategies in the Middle East. Without a strategy and an end goal, we will continue to react on an ad hoc basis rather than asserting our place as a moral leader on the international stage. Mark DeSaulnier, a Democrat, represents Contra Costa County in the U.S. House of Representatives. The two candidates fighting it out in the polls to be the second and final contender to advance to the general election in the governors race couldnt be more different politically. But they do have one thing in common: They seem a bit insulted when asked to describe how they diverge. Oh, come on, Democrat Antonio Villaraigosa said during an interview with The Chronicles editorial board Monday when he was asked to outline his differences with Republican John Cox. Villaraigosa and I? How much time do we have? Cox said less than 90 minutes later when sitting in the same chair before the board. Cox, a millionaire businessman from Rancho Santa Fe (San Diego County), has never held public office, even though hes run four times previously, mostly in his native Illinois. Villaraigosa has not only led the nations second-largest city as mayor of Los Angeles, but also served as speaker of the state Assembly. They were virtually tied in the latest survey by the nonpartisan Public Policy Institute of California: Cox had 15 percent and Villaraigosa 13 percent. Both trailed Lt. Gov. Gavin Newsom, a Democrat who was backed by 26 percent of the likely voters surveyed. Twenty-four percent of both Democrats and Republicans in the poll said they hadnt made up their minds. But dont expect Villaraigosa and Cox to be battling over the same undecided voters. No, not at all, said Paul Mitchell, vice president of Political Data, which provides voter information to campaigns and pollsters in both parties. They are both fighting for voters in silos. One is looking for them in the Republican silo, one is looking for voters in the Democratic silo. The challenge for Villaraigosa is that he is battling two other major Democratic candidates former state schools chief Delaine Eastin and state Treasurer John Chiang as well as Newsom for those undecided Democrats. Cox is fighting only one other Republican candidate state Assemblyman Travis Allen, R-Huntington Beach (Orange County) for the uncommitted GOP voters. On policy issues, Villaraigosa and Cox differ across the board, nowhere more sharply than on immigration. Villaraigosa, whose father immigrated from Mexico, believes in a pathway to citizenship for undocumented immigrants and supports Californias sanctuary state law. Cox does not back either. He supports President Trumps desire to build a wall on the U.S.-Mexico border; Villaraigosa does not. Sanctuary state policy sends the wrong message, Cox said. Weve got to have our public officials and our law enforcement working together. That doesnt mean I want Gestapo going into everybodys home and yanking illegal aliens out of their houses. I dont want that. I dont think any Republican worth his salt wants that. But Cox said he didnt know what hed do with the estimated 11 million people who are in this country illegally. Im going to let the parties in Washington thrash that out. Im going to lend my voice at the right moment, Cox said. I want a situation that people can live with. Ill be governor of a state where a whole lot of people have cut in line, and I dont believe in making them citizens. Cox lumped Villaraigosa in with Newsom and others who are career politicians looking to move up the ladder. Villaraigosa shouldnt move up, he said, given what he left behind in Los Angeles. The streets are a mess. The homeless situation is worse. Hes running for governor to get a promotion and look at that city, Cox said. Villaraigosa said Cox isnt the non-politician that he presents himself to be. Hes always talking about the politicians, the politicians and the politicians, and (yet) I think hes run a half dozen times in two different states and lost every time, Villaraigosa said. Hes a decent guy. I dont think hes as right-wing as he talks. I just think hes trying to compete with Travis, who is from another planet. Joe Garofoli is The San Francisco Chronicles senior political writer. Email: jgarofoli@sfchronicle.com Twitter: @joegarofoli SACRAMENTO A San Francisco state senators bill to limit cities ability to block large apartment and condominium construction in residential neighborhoods near public transit lost a key legislative vote Tuesday, killing it for this year. State Sen. Scott Wieners SB827 became one of the most hotly debated housing bills in the country, even before its first committee hearing. That hearing was Tuesday, and the Senate Transportation and Housing Committee of which Wiener is a member voted 5-4 to prevent the bill from moving forward. Seven votes were needed on the 13-member panel for the measure to advance. Four senators were present but did not cast votes. There will be a path in the future, Wiener said when the vote appeared to be going against him. He promised to make changes in the measure and bring it back before the Legislature in 2019. Wiener spent weeks lobbying to get the bill through its first committee, but conceded last week that it probably needed another year of work to build a coalition to support it. Now Playing: Six leading candidates for California governor agreed that it's too hard to build new homes in California and offered wide ranging solutions to rein in exploding housing costs and rising homelessness. The candidates spoke separately Thursday at a housing conference in Sacramento. For decades, California has failed to build enough homes to meet demand, particularly in popular coastal cities such as San Francisco. Video: KCRA I have always known there was a real possibility that SB827 like other difficult and impactful bills that have come before was going to take more than one year, he said. Now, my job is to take the conversation started by SB827, and get to work on developing a proposal that meets the ambitious goals of this bill, while incorporating what we have learned since we introduced it. The bill would have prevented cities from applying density and height limits to block apartments and condo buildings of up to five stories if they were within a half-mile of major transit hubs, such as a BART or Caltrain station. It would also have removed density restrictions on such buildings within a quarter-mile of highly used bus and light-rail stops. Wieners measure achieved a kind of ideological symbolism as California struggles with soaring rents and home prices, caused in part by a shortage of available housing. Supporters, who included Democrats and Republicans, said it would counteract NIMBYs who refuse to entertain any development near where they live. Opponents, who also included partisans on both the left and right, called it a massive overreach by Sacramento that could destroy local neighborhoods. Among the dozens of people attending the Capitol hearing were representatives of cities and counties across the state, the Sierra Club California and tenants groups, along with several people who identified themselves simply as residents of cities that would be affected by SB827. We believe we should have a say in how our communities are built out. This removes that, said Nancy Allen of Pleasanton. She is a member of the citys Planning Commission, but said she attended the hearing as a resident. Supporters also numbered in the dozens, and included representatives of affordable housing, business and real estate groups and the San Francisco chapter of YIMBY, which lobbies for more housing in cities and suburbs. Our companies are struggling to attract and keep employees at all levels because of the cost of housing, said Bless Sheppard, a lobbyist for the Silicon Valley Leadership Group. We need to construct more homes for all Californians. Wiener cast his measure as one that would help disadvantaged Californians who despair of finding housing anywhere near where they work. He took aim at Beverly Hills and Marin County, saying they opposed his bill because it would remove an obstacle that wealthy cities use to keep new housing out of their communities. I know this bill is controversial, Wiener said. It has triggered a long overdue statewide debate precisely because it does something that will impact California positively and because housing matters. Wiener said his bill would not only help the state with its housing needs, but would put California in a better position for meeting its climate goals. Housing near public transit reduces the need for people to drive long distances to their jobs, cutting traffic congestion and greenhouse gas emissions, Wiener said. If we dont build more housing we will never get the cost of housing down, said state Sen. Nancy Skinner, D-Berkeley, who voted in favor of the bill. Wiener amended the bill twice since introducing it in January in hopes of getting it through its first committee. He lowered the allowable height of buildings from eight stories, made the implementation date 2021 instead of 2019, and included a minimum number of affordable units that projects would have to include. Some of the bills critics said it would encourage development of expensive multiunit housing that would displace longtime low-income residents who happened to live near a train station. Wiener tried to defuse the objection by amending the bill to let cities with rent control ban demolition of units covered by the price limits. He also agreed to stipulate that any tenant forced to move because of a project approved under SB827 could return to the property when it was finished, at the same monthly rent. The developer would have had to cover rental assistance during construction for up to 3 years. Few opponents were swayed by the changes. A policy that fails to adequately preserve existing sources of affordable housing and protect low-income communities from direct and indirect displacement, and ensures that development of new housing is affordable to lower-income households, is not one we can support, said Anya Lawler, a policy advocate for the Western Center on Law and Poverty. Several senators who voted against the bill nevertheless praised Wiener for proposing SB827, and indicated they might be open to the measure if he makes further changes. Sen. Mike McGuire, D-Healdsburg, said he is committed to working with Wiener over the next six months on a bill that he could support. McGuire chairs the committee that would have heard SB827 next had it passed on Tuesday. We have a housing crisis in this state, McGuire said. But we have to get this right. Melody Gutierrez is a San Francisco Chronicle staff writer. Email: mgutierrez@sfchronicle.com. Twitter: @MelodyGutierrez How they voted How members of the state Senate Transportation and Housing Committee voted on Sen. Scott Wieners SB827 on Tuesday. The bill would have made it more difficult for cities to block large apartment and condominium projects near public transit. Sen. Jim Beall, D-San Jose (chair): No Sen. Anthony Cannella, R-Ceres (Stanislaus County) (vice chair): No Sen. Benjamin Allen, D-Santa Monica: No Sen. Bill Dodd, D-Napa: No Sen. Ted Gaines, R-El Dorado Hills: Yes Sen. Cathleen Galgiani, D-Stockton: Not voting Sen. Mike McGuire, D-Healdsburg: No Sen. Mike Morrell, R-Rancho Cucamonga (San Bernardino County): Yes Sen. Richard Roth, D-Riverside: Not voting Sen. Nancy Skinner, D-Berkeley: Yes Sen. Andy Vidak, R-Hanford (Kings County): Not voting Sen. Bob Wieckowski, D-Fremont: Not voting Sen. Scott Wiener, D-San Francisco: Yes New Cuban Ambassador to SVG presents Letters of Credence Social Share The Ministry of Foreign Affairs, Trade and Commerce welcomed the newly accredited Ambassador of the Embassy of the Republic of Cuba in St Vincent and the Grenadines, H.E. Jose Manuel Ventura. On Thursday December 12, 2019, H.E. Jose Manuel Ventura, Ambassador of the Embassy of the Republic of Cuba in St Vincent and the Grenadines presented letters of credence to Her Excellency, Susan Dougan, Governor General of St Vincent and the Grenadines. Ambassador Ventura will be the Resident Ambassador of the Cuban Embassy here in St Vincent and the Grenadines. Ambassador Ventura was the First Secretary of the Embassy of Cuba and held the position of Counselor at the General Department of Latin America and the Caribbean of the Ministry of Foreign Affairs of Cuba. Ambassador Ventura also met with Prime Minister, Dr Ralph E Gonsalves, Jomo Thomas, Speaker of the House of Assembly and Vice President of the Opposition New Democratic Party, St. Clair Leacock. The Republic of Cuba and St Vincent and the Grenadines established relations on May 26, 1992. A famed Ansel Adams print has sold for over $42,000 at auction. Moonrise, Hernandez, New Mexico, shot by Adams at 4:05 p.m., on October 31, 1941, was snapped up at Swann Auction Galleries last week at the staggering price of $42,500. The striking image of the moon over a small New Mexican town was among Adams' most popular works. This particular silver print was made in 1976. Part of the image's allure is in its origin story. Adams was driving through New Mexico when he came upon the scene and instantly knew he'd found his photograph. MORE: Looking back on Ansel Adams' photographs of Japanese American internment "We were sailing southward along the highway not far from Espanola when I glanced to the left and saw an extraordinary situationan inevitable photograph!" Adams recounted in a story on his website. "I almost ditched the car and rushed to set up my 810 camera. I was yelling to my companions to bring me things from the car." In the midst of the chaos, Adams snapped the one perfect image. Love Ansel Adams' work? Check out more of his iconic images in the gallery above. Two search-and-rescue workers who had been assisting in the recovery of bodies of a Southern California family whose vehicle plunged into a Mendocino County river, killing the parents and both children, suffered major injuries Sunday night in a car crash, officials said. The driver, Anderson resident Clayton Chaney, was heading south on Highway 101 just south of Leggett around 6:45 p.m. when his 1999 Toyota Tacoma pickup went off the west edge of the road and down an embankment, according to the California Highway Patrol. The truck hit a guard rail and rolled over on to its roof, officials said. Fire personnel had to extricate Chaney, 36, and his passenger, 49-year-old Corning resident Robert Talbott, from the truck. They were taken to Howard Memorial Hospital with major injuries, CHP said. Mendocino County sheriffs officials said both men are on the Shasta County Sheriffs Office Search and Rescue team, and they aided in recovery efforts of the Thottaapilly family. On Monday, authorities found the body of the last member of the Santa Clarita family of four. Nearly two weeks had passed since the vehicle carrying the family of four father Sandeep Thottapilly, 41; mother Soumya Thottapilly, 38; son Siddhant, 12; and daughter Saachi, 9 fell into the Eel River on April 6. On Sunday, Chaney and Talbott were heading back from the search scene to a command post 10 to 15 miles away when the crash occurred, said Officer William Wunderlich, a CHP spokesman. Although Chaney tried to correct the path of the pickup before it veered onto the embankment, the Toyota reportedly began to slide in a counterclockwise manner and hit a guard rail. CHP investigators said the vehicle was traveling at an unknown rate of speed, and drugs and alcohol do not appear to have played a role in the crash. Jenna Lyons is a San Francisco Chronicle staff writer. Email: jlyons@sfchronicle.com Twitter: @JennaJourno President Donald Trump fired off a tweet on Tuesday criticizing California Governor Jerry Brown's decision to limit the National Guard troops' mission along the border with Mexico. "Looks like Jerry Brown and California are not looking for safety and security along their very porous Border," Trump wrote in his tweet that he sent off at about 5:30 a.m. PST. "He cannot come to terms for the National Guard to patrol and protect the Border. The high crime rate will only get higher. Much wanted Wall in San Diego already started!" Gov. Brown's press office responded on Twitter to the president's comment: "Nothing has changed since CA submitted its proposed agreement to the Feds for review - & you thanked us - last week. CA Guard still ready to supplement its ongoing work to combat transnat'l crime." The governor also addressed this issue in response to a reporter's question at a National Press Club event this morning in DC. "Trying to stop drug smuggling, human trafficking and guns going to Mexico to the cartels that sounds to me like fighting crime," Brown said. "Trying to catch some desperate mothers and children or unaccompanied minors coming from Central America that sounds like something else. So we want to be cooperative." He added, "I appreciate the President's tweet when he thanked me. There's been a little bit of back and forth, as you always get with bureaucrats. But I think we can find common understanding here. There's enough problems at the border and the interface between our countries that California will have plenty to do and we're willing to do it." The Trump administration said Monday that California Gov. Jerry Brown rejected terms of the National Guard's initial deployment to the Mexican border, but a state official said nothing was decided. "The governor determined that what we asked for is unsupportable, but we will have other iterations," Ronald Vitiello, U.S. Customs and Border Protection's acting deputy commissioner, told reporters in Washington. Brown elicited rare and effusive praise from President Trump last week after pledging 400 troops to the Guard's third large-scale border mission since 2006. But the Democratic governor conditioned his commitment on troops having nothing to do with immigration enforcement, even in a supporting role. ALSO, Jerry Brown to Trump: We'll beef up National Guard, but not for immigration enforcement Brown's announcement last week did not address what specific jobs the California Guard would and would not do and how state officials would distinguish work related to immigration from other aspects of border enforcement, such as fighting criminal gangs and drug and gun smuggling. Vitiello said the governor decided California will not accept terms of an initial troop rollout for the state that was similar to plans for the other three border states, Arizona, New Mexico and Texas. He said California may participate in other ways that must still be worked out. According to two U.S. officials, the initial jobs for troops include fixing and maintaining vehicles, using remote-control surveillance cameras to report suspicious activity to U.S. Border Patrol agents, operating radios and providing "mission support," which can include clerical work, buying gas and handling payrolls. The officials spoke to The Associated Press on condition of anonymity. The Associated Press contributed to this report. The city of San Jose filed a federal lawsuit Tuesday against the Trump administration over the addition of an U.S. citizenship question on the 2020 census, becoming the latest city with a large immigrant population to challenge the constitutionality of the inquiry. San Jose and the Black Alliance for Just Immigration, a California-based nonprofit, filed the complaint in the Northern District of California and named the U.S. Department of Commerce and its secretary, Wilbur L. Ross, along with the U.S. Census Bureau and acting director Ron Jarmin. SAN FRANCISCO Sailors arriving in San Francisco in the 19th century used two giant redwood trees perched on a hill to help guide their ships into the bay. The redwoods were felled for their lumber at around the time of the gold rush, but San Francisco now has a new beacon: Salesforce Tower, the tallest office building in the West. Clustered around the 1,070-foot tower are a collection of high rises built on the soft soil and sand on the edge of the bay. They represent a bold symbol of a new San Francisco, but also a potential danger for a city that sits precariously on unstable, earthquake-prone ground. San Francisco lives with the certainty that the Big One will come. But the city is also putting up taller and taller buildings clustered closer and closer together because of the state's severe housing shortage. Now those competing pressures have prompted an anxious rethinking of building regulations. Experts are sending this message: The building code does not protect cities from earthquakes nearly as much as you might think. MORE: Are you living in a liquefaction zone? It's been over a century Wednesday marks the 112th anniversary since the last devastating earthquake and subsequent inferno razed San Francisco. Witnesses on the morning of April 18, 1906, described the city's streets as rising and falling like a ribbon carried by the wind. The violent shaking ignited a fire that lasted three days, destroying 500 city blocks and 28,000 buildings. Half of the population of around 400,000 was made homeless. Many were forced to flee the city. California has strict building requirements to protect schools and hospitals from a major earthquake. But not skyscrapers. A five-story building has the same strength requirements as a 50-story building. Yet skyscrapers cast a much broader shadow of risk across a city and their collapse or impairment could cause a cascade of consequences. How safe are San Francisco's skyscrapers? Even the engineers who design them can't provide exact answers. Earthquakes are too unpredictable. And too few major cities have been tested by major temblors. "The profession does the best job we can to model and predict, but there are a number of uncertainties," said Ron Hamburger, one of the country's leading structural engineers. "We don't have as many records, particularly for large magnitude earthquakes, as we would like." MORE: How to prepare for the next big quake Previous earthquakes have revealed flaws with some skyscrapers. A widely used welding technique was found to rupture during the 1994 Northridge earthquake in Los Angeles. (Many buildings in San Francisco and Los Angeles have not been retrofitted.) California has made significant strides in earthquake preparedness over the past century. Freeway overpasses, bridges and some municipal buildings have been strengthened. Many Californians live in single-family wood frame homes, which have been found to hold up relatively well during earthquakes. But until recently, high-rise buildings were not a focus of San Francisco's seismic safety. Newer high rises across California, which are typically built around a concrete core, are designed using computer modeling. This raises concerns among experts such as Thomas H. Heaton, the director of the Earthquake Engineering Research Laboratory at the California Institute of Technology and perhaps the most prominent skeptic of building high rises in earthquake zones. "It's kind of like getting in a new airplane that's only been designed on paper but nobody has ever flown in it," he said. Last September, San Francisco's former mayor, Edwin M. Lee, responding to a scandal about a skyscraper that was sinking and leaning, ordered city officials to strengthen building codes for high rises and requested an independent study on their safety. Known as the Tall Buildings Study, it will for the first time create a detailed databaseof the more than 160 high rises, classified by building type. Ayse Hortacsu, the structural engineer who is leading the study, has deployed Stanford graduate students to pore over blueprints and records at the San Francisco Department of Building Inspection. "It would have been great to do this before this building boom in San Francisco," Hortacsu said. "But we are going to seize the moment and make the best out of it." For years the city restricted building height to 500 feet in most neighborhoods. The objection to high rises was largely cultural and aesthetic critics deplored "Manhattanization" and said high rises were not in keeping with the ethos of the city. But by 2004, city officials had put in motion a plan to redevelop a neighborhood of warehouses and vacant lots that today are the heart of downtown. The city pushed for the construction of a tall, iconic building next to the terminal the future Salesforce Tower. "We saw that as a symbol of the new San Francisco and we wanted the building to be at least 1,000 feet in height," said Dean Macris, a key figure in conceiving the new high-rise San Francisco who led the planning board under four mayors. Now retired, Macris said the issue of seismic safety of high rises was "never a factor" in the redevelopment plans of the South of Market area, or SoMa, as it's known. What shifted the debate on seismic safety was the sinking and tilting of the 58-floor Millennium Tower. When it was completed in 2009, the building won numerous awards for ingenuity from engineering associations, including Outstanding Structural Engineering Project of the Year by the San Francisco office of the American Society of Civil Engineers. The developer and city officials knew of the building's flaws for years, but kept them confidential until 2016, when news leaked to the public. The latest measurements, taken in December, show that the building has sunk a foot and a half and is leaning 14 inches toward neighboring high rises. It is across the street from Salesforce Tower and right next to a transit hub for buses, trains and eventually high speed rail that is being touted as the Grand Central of the West. With the Millennium Tower, San Francisco got a foretaste of what it means to have a structurally compromised skyscraper. If the city is hit by a severe earthquake, experts fear there could be many more. The area around Millennium Tower is considered among the most hazardous for earthquakes. The U.S. Geological Survey rates the ground there layers of mud and clay as having a very high risk of acting like quicksand during an earthquake, a process known as liquefaction. In light of the problems with the Millennium Tower, there are now increasing calls in California for a reassessment of earthquake risks, much of it focused on strengthening the building code. Right now the code says a structure must be engineered to have a 90 percent chance of avoiding total collapse. But many experts believe that is not enough. "Ten percent of buildings will collapse," said Lucy Jones, the former leader of natural hazards research at the U.S. Geological Survey who is leading a campaign to make building codes in Californiastronger. "I don't understand why that's acceptable." The code also does not specify that a building be fit for occupancy after an earthquake. Many buildings might not collapse completely, but they could be damaged beyond repair. The interior walls, the plumbing, elevators all could be wrecked or damaged. "When I tell people what the current building code gives them most people are shocked," Jones said. "Enough buildings will be so badly damaged that people are going to find it too hard to live in LA or San Francisco." In January a Southern California assemblyman, Adrin Nazarian, introduced a bill in the state Legislature that would require the building code to make new buildings strong enough for "functional recovery" after an earthquake. The bill passed its first hurdle, a committee hearing, last week. Driving the push to change the code is the notion that California has so much more to lose than it did in 1906. The billions of dollars of infrastructure, headquarters of global industries and the denser, more vertical downtown make San Francisco a much more interconnected and vulnerable place. The goal of the code, say proponents of a stronger one, should be the survival of cities strengthening water systems, electrical grids and cellular networks not just individual buildings. "We've been sitting on our hands for decades about this problem," said Keith Porter, a seismic engineer at the University of Colorado, who is hoping to spur greater public participation in a debate. Porter's research offers warnings on the economic consequences of a major earthquake in the San Francisco Bay Area. He has calculated that one out of every four buildings in the Bay Area might not be usable after a magnitude 7 earthquake, which although severe is not the worst the area could experience. At least 100 so-called soft-story buildings that require mandatory retrofitting are noncompliant and most are in the area of anticipated strong shaking. Porter calculates, hypothetically, that if buildings were built to a stronger standard, only 6 percent of buildings would be unusable. Some structural engineers, however, say our modern crop of high rises are strong enough. Ron Klemencic, the chief executive of Magnusson Klemencic Associates, the company that did the structural engineering for Salesforce Tower, says he agrees that water and sewage systems need higher strength requirements, but not high rises. "Buildings falling on top of other buildings that's not going to happen," Klemencic said. How much would stronger buildings cost to build? At a time when the average price of a home in San Francisco is above $1.2 million, even a marginal increase in price tag is bound to meet resistance. "We are already facing the concern of extremely high cost of housing and displacement," said Brian Strong, the director of the office of resilience in San Francisco's city government. In recent years the city has been focused on other seismic dangers, including older, low-rise apartment buildings with inadequate ground floor structures that could collapse, known as soft stories. Charles Richter, the earthquake pioneer who invented the scale used to measure their power, had strong opinions about skyscrapers. Don't build them in California, he said. In the years since Richter's death in 1985, construction materials have become stronger and engineering more precise. Yet Hiroo Kanamori, an emeritus professor of seismology at the California Institute of Technology who developed the earthquake magnitude scale that replaced Richter's, says the vast power and mysteries of earthquakes should continue to instill a deep humility. In recent decades scientists have recorded violent ground motions that were previously thought impossible. A soon-to-be-published paper by Caltech engineers showed that an earthquake with a similar intensity of the one that struck Chichi, Taiwan, in 1999 would bring down or render unusable numerous steel frame high rises in Los Angeles. "People say, 'Don't worry about it, it's an outlier,'" Kanamori said. "This is the problem with earthquakes. By nature of the process there are a lot of unpredictable elements. "And a single event can be catastrophic," he said. Ruling in a Bay Area case, the Supreme Court, with a crucial vote from Justice Neil Gorsuch, struck down a federal immigration law Tuesday that required deportation for any noncitizen convicted of a felony that posed a substantial risk of violence. The 1996 law is unconstitutional because its wording is so vague that it sets no clear standard for either judges or immigrants on which crimes it covers, Justice Elena Kagan said in the 5-4 ruling. She said it was similar to another law the court had overturned in 2015 requiring a 15-year prison sentence for some felons whose past convictions were for crimes posing a serious potential risk of violence language the court also found unconstitutionally murky. The 2015 ruling was written by the late Justice Antonin Scalia, a leading member of the courts conservative wing. Gorsuch, appointed by President Trump last year to succeed Scalia, had been unswervingly conservative in his decisions until Tuesday, when he invoked his predecessor in a strongly worded opinion that provided the courts more liberal justices with a decisive fifth vote. Vague laws invite arbitrary power, Gorsuch said, citing legal history from the time of the nations founding and earlier, as Scalia often did. The laws silence (in defining the crimes that require deportation) leaves judges to their intuitions and the people to their fate. While Kagans opinion applied the void-for-vagueness standard only to an immigration law that made deportation mandatory, Gorsuch suggested the same standard should apply to noncriminal laws that can cost citizens their business licenses or their homes, or even their freedom because of a mental health condition. In dissent, Chief Justice John Roberts said the law clearly instructs judges to decide whether someone is likely to use violence in carrying out a specific crime, and thus was less vague than the potential risk law the court had struck down in 2015. Justice Clarence Thomas joined Roberts dissent, but also wrote a separate dissent arguing that punitive laws can be constitutional even if they are vaguely worded. The ruling will affect thousands of noncitizens. It came in a suit by James Dimaya of Hayward, who entered the United States from the Philippines with his family as a legal resident in 1992. Dimaya, now 38, was convicted of two first-degree residential burglaries, of a homes garage in 2007 and an uninhabited house in 2009, and was sentenced to two years in prison. The government then began deportation proceedings under the 1996 law, which applied to noncitizens regardless of their legal status, and Dimaya spent nearly five more years behind bars before being released on bond in March 2015. His lawyers said no one was injured in either burglary. He now works as a phone line installer for a telecommunications company, said attorney Brian Goldman. Goldman said the ruling allows Dimaya to keep earning a living as a rehabilitated and contributing member of society instead of being sent back to a country that isnt his home. Dimaya could still be deported for his crimes, but the ruling allows him to argue that they were not serious enough to qualify for deportation, or that his removal would cause undue hardship to himself and his family. The court left intact another section of the law that requires deportation of noncitizens convicted of crimes that by definition include using, attempting or threatening violence. But the majority said Congress went too far in allowing judges to decide whether other felonies inherently pose a substantial risk of violence. How does one go about divining the conduct entailed in a crimes ordinary case? Statistical analyses? Surveys? Experts? Google? Gut instinct? Kagan asked. She noted that lower courts have disagreed on whether such crimes as car burglary and evading arrest pose a risk of violence, and cited a 2010 government study that found only 7 percent of burglaries nationwide resulted in violence. Roberts, in a dissent joined by Thomas and Justices Anthony Kennedy and Samuel Alito, said courts can readily examine the elements of a crime defined by law and decide whether they create a risk of violence. Thomas, in his separate dissent, said courts should respect decisions by Congress and the executive branch on immigration and should not overturn them for alleged vagueness. He also said Dimaya had no basis to claim the law was vague, because courts had uniformly found residential burglary to be grounds for deportation, under the now-overturned 1996 law, before Dimaya committed his first burglary, Attorney Joshua Rosenkranz, who represented Dimaya before the court, said the majority recognized that you cant banish a person from his home and family without clear lines, announced up front. Rosenkranz said Gorsuch, like Scalia, demonstrated that due process is not a liberal/conservative issue. The Trump administration, which took over the defense of the law from President Barack Obamas administration, denounced the ruling. By preventing the federal government from removing known criminal aliens, it allows our nation to be a safe haven for criminals, said Tyler Houlton, spokesman for Homeland Security Secretary Kirstjen Nielsen. He said Nielsen has been meeting with hundreds of members of Congress seeking legislation to close public safety loopholes, such as these, that encourage illegal immigration and tie the hands of law enforcement. The case is Sessions vs. Dimaya, 15-1498. Bob Egelko is a San Francisco Chronicle staff writer. Email: begelko@sfchronicle.com Twitter:@BobEgelko The ruling can be viewed here: https://www.supremecourt.gov/opinions/17pdf/15-1498_1b8e.pdf Andrew Sean Greer was at dinner in Italy when he saw his phone was full of messages. Then a friend shouted because he saw his phone! Greer told The Chronicle. Then I called Michael Chabon and asked, was it true? And he said, Yes, Andy, its true. And let me tell you, it is all good news. Greer had just found out he won the Pulitzer Prize for fiction for his novel Less. I did not see this coming! Greer said. I guess I get to meet Kendrick Lamar? he added, referring to the rapper who won the Pulitzer Prize for music. Greer concluded: And for a lesson in humility: what was I doing just before I heard the news? Coaxing a pug dog into polka-dot pajamas for the night. And what did I do first thing the morning after I heard the news? Take the pajamas off the dog. The pug showed no sense she was impressed by me at all. The Chronicle named Less one of the top 10 books of 2017. In her review for The Chronicle, Carmela Ciuraru called it philosophical, poignant, funny and wise, filled with unexpected turns. The novel centers on a struggling San Francisco author Arthur Less who, nearing age 50, decides to tour the world to escape himself. The tragicomic business of being alive, he says, is getting to him. The Pulitzer judges praised Less as a generous book, musical in its prose and expansive in its structure and range, about growing older and the essential nature of love. Greer has written five other books of fiction, including The Impossible Lives of Greta Wells, The Story of a Marriage and The Confessions of Max Tivoli. The author divides his time between San Francisco and Tuscany, where he is the executive director of the Santa Maddalena Foundation writers residency. In other prizes, the Pulitzer for general nonfiction went to Locking Up Our Own: Crime and Punishment in Black America, by James Forman Jr. In his review for The Chronicle, Richard Thompson Ford called the book by the former public defender poignant and insightful. Were tough-on-crime policies foisted on black communities by racist white politicians and police? Ford adds. Locking Up Our Own tells a more complicated story. The Pulitzer for history was awarded to The Gulf: The Making of an American Sea, by Jack E. Davis. The judges hailed it as an important environmental history of ... one of the planets most diverse and productive marine ecosystems. For biography, the prize went to Prairie Fires: The American Dreams of Laura Ingalls Wilder, by Caroline Fraser, which the judges called a deeply researched and elegantly written portrait of Laura Ingalls Wilder, author of the Little House on the Prairie series. The poet Frank Bidart won for Half-light: Collected Poems 1965-2016. Born in Bakersfield, the acclaimed poet now lives in Cambridge, Mass. His collection won the National Book Award last year. John McMurtrie is The San Francisco Chronicles book editor. Email: jmcmurtrie@sfchronicle.com Twitter: @McMurtrieSF For a list of more Pulitzer Prize winners, go to www.pulitzer.org. The 13th annual Poems Under the Dome event unites poets and poetry enthusiasts alike for a night of open mike readings at San Franciscos City Hall. The free event, in honor of National Poetry Month, is scheduled to take place from 5:30 to 8 p.m. Thursday, April 19, in the North Light Court. Performance slots are determined through a lottery during the event, and selected readers are invited to read one poem of their own authorship or a favorite by anothers pen that clocks in at less than three minutes. Poetry Under the Dome was launched in 2005 by San Francisco radio personality, activist and beat poet Diamond Dave Whitaker. The event, built around the spirit of community art sharing and inclusivity, receives support from the San Francisco Public Library, the mayors office and the Board of Supervisors, among other organizations. Rival drugstores and drug distributors rallied Monday after a report that Amazon.com had shelved plans to sell drugs to hospitals and other businesses. The CNBC report said little about whether Amazon would ultimately enter the broader retail prescription-drug market, but the idea that the online giant might not take on one segment of the supply chain was enough to send shares of pharmacies and drug distributors surging. CVS rose as much as 8.7 percent, the biggest intraday gain since December 2011. Walgreens Boots Alliance Inc. was up as much as 6.8 percent. Amazon declined to comment on the CNBC report. Economy Trump names 2 Fed nominees President Trump will nominate Richard Clarida, a Columbia University economist and former Treasury official in the George W. Bush administration, for the second-ranking job at the Federal Reserve, the White House said Monday. Clarida is a monetary policy scholar whose expertise would complement the background of the Fed chairman, Jerome Powell, who is not an academically trained economist. The White House also said Monday that Trump would nominate Michelle Bowman, the Kansas bank commissioner, for a seat on the Fed board that represents community banks. Social media Zuckerberg, EU official to meet Facebook CEO Mark Zuckerberg is set to meet with one of the European Unions leading regulators this week amid calls on both sides of the Atlantic for more oversight of digital privacy. Zuckerberg last week testified to Congress in the wake of revelations that millions of Facebook users private information fell into the hands of British consulting firm Cambridge Analytica. He is scheduled to see European Commission Vice President Andrus Ansip during a two-day trip to San Francisco starting Tuesday, the EU authority said. Earnings Credit Karma misses goal Credit Karma, one of the 10 most valuable financial technology startups, missed its 2017 revenue goal by 14 percent, according to an internal presentation. The San Francisco company, which offers personal finance tools such as credit monitoring and tax preparation, had an internal goal for 2017 revenue of $790 million, but missed that by $108 million, the document shows. Despite falling short of its target, revenue still rose about 37 percent in 2017. CEO Kenneth Lin said the goal the company had shared with investors was $700 million, which it only missed by 3 percent. Chronicle News Services Netflix posted its strongest start to a year since the Los Gatos company went public 16 years ago, thanks to strong growth in markets across Latin America and Europe. The company added 7.41 million subscribers in the first quarter of the year, easily topping analysts projections of 6.35 million. Netflix now has 125 million paying customers, the most of any online TV network. It expects to top 131 million subscribers by summer. The company, the best-performing stock in the S&P 500 this year, is proving one quarter at a time that investors confidence in its online TV service has been justified. Netflix is using its growing subscriber base and deep pockets to poach talent from the biggest program suppliers and build a Hollywood studio for the Internet age. Shares of Netflix rose as much as 8.3 percent to $333.21 in extended trading after the results were announced. The stock is up 60 percent this year. Netflix said first-quarter profit rose to 64 cents a share, up from 40 cents a year earlier and meeting analysts projections. Sales for the quarter grew 40 percent to $3.70 billion, compared with projections of $3.69 billion. For the current quarter, Netflix is predicting earnings of 79 cents and revenue of $3.93 billion. That compares with analysts estimates of 65 cents in profit and sales of $3.89 billion. Netflix has told investors it will save money by bringing development and production in-house and avoiding the markups imposed by rival studios. Still, the company plans to spend up to $8 billion this year as it expands production of films, series, documentaries, comedy specials and non-English programming. Some shows produced for specific countries are finding wider audiences, chief content officer Ted Sarandos said during a prerecorded earnings interview posted on YouTube. One example, 3%, a science fiction series shot in Portuguese for Brazil, has really scored around the world for us, Sarandos said. In February, producer Ryan Murphy agreed to leave 21st Century Fox, where he made American Horror Story, for a deal at Netflix worth a reported $300 million. Earlier, the company signed Scandal producer Shonda Rhimes, who left her longtime home at ABC to make shows exclusively for Netflix. Sarandos said he couldnt comment on reports Netflix is discussing a series with Barack and Michelle Obama or other deals that are in various stages of negotiations right now, but he said reports that Netflix wanted to move into news programs were not true. Netflix is up against an increasingly competitive online streaming market. The consumer has a lot of entertainment options, CEO Reed Hastings said. If we earn more of the consumers time, then we will continue to grow. And if we get lazy or slow, well be run over just like anybody else. In the last quarter, the company released the documentary miniseries Wild, Wild Country, the second season of Marvel comic series Jessica Jones and the horror film The Cloverfield Paradox, two of about 700 titles the company planned this year. Overall, this was a grand slam quarter for Netflix, analyst Daniel Ives of GBH Insights said in a research report. San Francisco Chronicle staff writer Benny Evangelista contributed to this report. Lucas Shaw is a Bloomberg writer. Email: lshaw31@bloomberg.net Ministry of Education Launches 2020 Athletics season Social Share THE MINISTRY OF Education and the Ministry of Sports are continuing their collaborative effort to execute sporting activities within the schools in St Vincent and the Grenadines (SVG). The 2020 athletic season was launched on Monday January 20 with a press conference at Victoria Park in which the media was brought up to date on the sporting disciplines to be executed this School term as well as the commencement date for each discipline. The season is expected to serve off with Volley ball on Friday, January 24, 2020 2:30 pm at the Girls High School (GHS) hard court. The 2020 Cricket championships will see split openings with the U-15 set to begin on Monday, January 27th and the U-19 on Monday, February 3rd. Both Male and Female Basketball championships will commence on Friday, February 7. The major athletics meet is set to climax the season at the Arnos Vale Playing Field. The Primary School meet will take place on April 16 and the secondary schools on April 17, 2020. Other athletics activities will take place as early as January 23, 2020. A man found slain in an alley in San Franciscos Chinatown over the weekend was identified Tuesday as a 49-year-old city resident with no fixed address. Quang Truong was found dead on the sidewalk near Cameron House on Joice Street around 8:30 a.m. Sunday, officials said. A 16-year-old boy died Monday morning in Petaluma from a drug overdose possibly from Xanax containing fentanyl leading to the arrest of his mother and her friend on suspicion of child endangerment and other drug charges, authorities said. Petaluma police and medical personnel received a call at 4:17 a.m. Monday from a person on the 20 block of Vallejo Street. The caller said that their roommates friend seemed to be having a seizure and his roommate and another friend were trying to put the victim in a car, the Petaluma Police Department said in a statement. Picture this: You must leave your rundown home. You scour rentals all over Oakland, but with four kids and monthly rents teetering around $2,500, you're about out of luck. You consider leaving the Bay Area for a more affordable inland region, but you and your partner's jobs are here; plus, the kids are in school. Facing this predicament about two years ago, Christine and Emilio Hernandez got creative. They stopped sleuthing Zillow and Craigslist for homes, and started eyeing the vacant properties around them. In October 2015, they snuck through a chainlink fence and into a three-bedroom house in Fruitvale. Most of the appliances had been torn out of the home a former drug and prostitution den and fire scars stained the walls and floors. Christine, Emilio and their four children moved in. They became squatters. Bryan Schatz told the story of the Hernandez family in the March-April issue of Mother Jones. Schatz found the family was not alone in its unique living situation; dozens of other people on the brink of homelessness live in the Bay Area by "squatting" occupying land or buildings that you do not own without asking permission. Squatting is one way to keep a roof over one's head in a region where median home values are over $1 million and affordable housing sparse. Alameda County's most recent homeless count found 5,629 are living unhoused a 39 percent increase from 2015. Nearly 70 percent of these individuals are unsheltered, and 82 percent said they had lived in the county before becoming homeless. READ ALSO: The Bay Area's long road to ending homelessness The Bay Area's dire housing and homelessness crises inspired organizations like Homes Not Jails (HNJ), an organization formed in 1992 that seeks to house the homeless by helping them find and utilize vacant buildings. "Since the government has been slow to act to utilize vacant buildings for housing, and people need housing now, Homes Not Jails simultaneously opens up vacant buildings and helps people who are homeless move in," a statement on the HNJ website says. The organization claims to have opened hundreds of squats in its 26 years. Many of the squats have lasted for years, and some squatters eventually retained legal ownership of their homes through a process called adverse possession. To claim adverse possession of a property, California law requires residents to have lived there for five years and to have paid five years of taxes. Then, one must wade through a complicated tangle of bureaucracy. That includes providing proof of "open and notorious" possession, meaning the squatter's presence was not hidden and the landlord could have reasonably learned about it. It's an onerous, time-consuming process, but it's been done before. READ ALSO: Bay Area residents who live in vans not to travel, but to contend with housing costs Steven DeCaprio, 45, first broke into the West Oakland bungalow he now owns 15 years ago. The place was a mess, charred by fire and strewn with dead animals. He learned the owner of the place had died in 1982, and no one had stepped up to claim the house since. He and his friends moved in. Speaking with Schatz, DeCaprio described the early iteration of the space as "Wild West meets cyberpunk." DeCaprio eventually gained title to the home. He founded an organization called Land Action to help other squatters learn and defend their rights. But homes obtained by adverse possession aren't exactly free. Through years of squatting around the East Bay, police kicked DeCaprio out multiple times. He told KALW in 2014: "You know they'd board it up, and then I'd come back with, like, a hammer. And then they welded the storm door shut with, with an arc welder, and then I came back with a can of WD-40 and a Dremel with a diamond blade. And that's when they, that's when they finally were like 'Enough's enough, you're going to jail.'" In 2016 he faced 8 1/2 years in jail and $89,000 in fines for felony conspiracy charges after assisting two Oakland squatters in 2015. The charges were dropped in 2017. In the midst of his legal battles, DeCaprio continued running Land Action and studying to become a lawyer. He passed the California bar exam, but the state refused to issue a law license on moral grounds, citing an earlier misdemeanor trespass charge. DeCaprio has filed an appeal, according to the Mother Jones story. Stories like DeCaprio's have played out across the Bay Area over the years, to varying degrees of success. In 2015 James Crombie, a former Marin County trader, was indicted by a Maryland grand jury on fraud and squatting charges after he and his family took up residence in a $1 million Bethesda home. The charges were later dropped. Later that year, San Francisco police arrested a man who was squatting in a multimillion dollar Presidio Heights home containing hundreds of thousands of dollars worth of artwork, $300,000 of which the squatter had sold off. He was booked on 10 counts of burglary. The Bay Area has a storied history of squatting, stretching at least as far back as the 1880s with the founding of the short-lived Mooneysville on Ocean Beach. The Mooneyville squatters seized prime oceanfront property under the justification that Park and Ocean Railroad had done the same, by unscrupulously grabbing federal lands. The miscreants set up a ragtag community of shanties, tents and shacks, in which they lived and hocked coffee, doughnuts and whiskey. The carousal didn't last long; authorities broke it up within weeks of its inception. READ ALSO: Bay Area adults forced to move back with parents Less than a century later, the beatniks and hippies came to San Francisco, finding refuge in public parks and abandoned Haight-Ashbury Victorians. Some of the communities they founded have held fast, inculiding the Gates Cooperative in Sausalito. Like Mooneysville, this cohort of squatters lives by the sea, or in the case of this houseboat co-op, on the sea. Founded in the 1950s and 1960s, Gates Co-Op went legit in 2014 with the support of the city and county. The houseboats were dismantled and renovated and, most importantly, converted from illegal squats to federally funded low-income housing. Many squatters' stories do not have such happy endings. As for the Hernandez family, their story remains ongoing, how it will end, uncertain. Christine and Emilio returned to their home one day to find their front door busted, the locks changed and their house pillaged, Schatz writes. The floor was flooded with flyers from M&M Mortgage. They read: "This property was found to be vacant and/or unsecured. It has been secured against entry by unauthorized persons to prevent possible damage." The house, which the Hernandez family spent two years cleaning, fixing and occupying, was eventually put up for auction. It was sold for 1 cent over the opening price to a single bidder with plans to flip the property. The median sale price for a home in Fruitvale in 2016 was $217,000, according to real estate site Trulia. In 2000, it was $97,000. The lone Fruitvale homes listed on Zillow at time of writing are priced at $599,000 and $749,000. A 2017 Zillow analysis named the neighborhood one of the five hottest Bay Area neighborhoods for home appreciation. The report projected home values to increase by 7.4 percent in the following year. READ ALSO: Houses in SF sell nearly twice as fast as rest of nation Shortly after the sale of their home, the Hernandez Family received an eviction notice. After they filed a motion to quash the notice, claiming it was not properly served, a judge ruled the eviction proceedings must start over. Christine Hernandez already has a Plan B. She's eyeing a damaged, unoccupied home with a hole in the roof and debris in the yard. "A person recently inherited the house," she told Schatz. "I want to reach out to that person and say, 'We're happy to completely clean your house. We'll paint it. We'll fix your roof. We'll take care of any business that needs to be taken care of, in exchange for you allowing us to live there for some agreed upon period of time.'" Michelle Robertson is an SFGATE staff writer. Email her at mrobertson@sfchronicle.com or find her on Twitter at @mrobertsonsf. Man to serve 23 years for molesting his daughter Social Share A PREDATOR who told authorities he sexually molested his daughter as a joke, but who in fact raped her on multiple occasions, will now be serving 23 years in prison. Justice Brian Cottle, in reviewing the facts of this case on Wednesday, February 3, commented that he found the case to be a troubling one. The offender, now 31 years old, on two occasions between July 31, 2018, and January 1, 2019 committed the crime of unlawful sexual intercourse (USI) with a girl under the age of 13. He was also charged for indecent assault. During his sentencing Cottle stated that offenders who commit repeated acts on children can expect to receive consecutive sentences from the court. A cursory glance at the list of matters scheduled for trial and any session of the criminal assizes reveals far too many of this type of offence, and by sentencing, this court would continue to demonstrate its attitude towards all who may be minded to behave in this manner, Cottle also explained. Our children must be protected, he said. It is said that on the first occasion, the father picked up his daughter from the care of her mother. Before taking his daughter to where she was supposed to go, he took her to his house. On this occasion, he violated her in three ways: by way of his fingers, penis and cunnilingus. His daughter then witnessed him ejaculating. Although she did tell someone else about this on the same day, when the father was confronted he said that the young girl was telling lies. There was no action taken after he said this. On another day, the father took the young girl to a relatives house, where he raped her. She did not report this incident at the time. However, in 2019, the daughter told a classmate about her fathers actions, and this classmate reported this to an older relative, who then told the Principal of the school she attended. The police were informed, and in an interview, the father admitted to sexually molesting his daughter and claimed there were only two instances of sexual intercourse. Although it was difficult to hear what the 31-year-old prisoner was saying at the High Court on Wednesday, he seemed to be telling the judge that he was intoxicated, smoking marijuana and has a mental illness. I wasnt in the right state of mind when this incident occurred, he mitigated. He claimed extreme remorse for his actions, and that they would not be repeated. His hope was for a suspended sentence. However, the 31-year-old already has three convictions for indecent assault of a girl under the age of 15 which all occurred in the same morning. This week he faced a maximum sentence of life imprisonment for unlawful sexual intercourse of a girl under the age of 13, and five years for indecent assault of a child under the age of 15. A social worker/workers often carry out a social inquiry on the individual to be sentenced. In an interview with them, the offender also informed them that he was intoxicated and under the influence of cannabis at the time of the offence. He told them that rubbed his penis against the vagina of his daughter as a joke. His close relative told social workers that he seemed to have a normal relationship with his daughter and she was shocked to hear of the offences. His mother said that after a road accident her sons behaviour had never been normal, but she has never observed any inappropriate behaviour on his part towards the child. Her opinion was that if the prisoner did commit the crimes that he was convicted for having committed, he was not in his right mind when he did the act, Cottle relayed. His employers said that he had often been reported for touching others inappropriately. In sentencing, Justice Cottle used the sentencing guidelines formulated for sexual offences. He placed all offences in the exceptionally serious level, given the age difference, and the age of the child. Further, the offender had tried to say that his daughter was lying when confronted in order to discourage reporting the matter. There was the obvious abuse of a position of trust. The prisoner as the father of the complainant should have been the person she could rely on the most to keep her safe, the Justice said. His level of culpability was also determined to be the highest. The judge decided to start at 66 per cent of the maximum, which equates to 20 years. He then considered what aggravated and mitigated the offence. The aggravating features outweighed the mitigating ones and steadily carried the sentence up to 27 years. However, prisoners who plead guilty at the first opportunity are entitled to a one third discount, and therefore, after this was applied the court was left with a sentence of 18 years incarceration on the first count. On the second count of USI, the 31-year-old was sentenced to five years, which will be served after the 18 year sentence is completed. For the indecent assault of his daughter, the offender will serve three years and four months, but this is to be concurrent to the other sentences. He has already been in prison for one year and nine months while awaiting the outcome of the matter, and this will also be subtracted going forward. The U.S. Senate is poised to change a rule that would allow a member who just became a new mom to bring her infant on the floor for votes. Sen. Tammy Duckworth gave birth in early April, becoming the first sitting senator to give birth while in office. The Illinois Democrat is taking an unofficial maternity leave but plans to return for votes. She hopes the Senate will reconsider its rule that forbids children from the floor and vote in favor of a resolution that would permit senators to bring children younger than one year old onto the Senate floor during votes just as many other countries allow their legislators to do. "Something as simple as ... not allowing children on the floor," Duckworth told the Guardian, "means that I can't do what female legislators have done in other countries, where they're breastfeeding, sitting at their desks waiting for a vote." Politico points out that Senate votes are often grouped together and sessions can last many hours requiring senators to be on the flood for long periods. "I can't be away from a newborn infant in the first three months for that long," Duckworth told Politico before her baby was born. Duckworth welcomed her second daughter, Maile Pearl Bowlsbey, on April 9. Duckworth, a 50-year-old veteran who lost her legs in the Iraq War, is one of only 10 lawmakers who have given birth while in Congress. Her first daughter, Abigail, was born in 2014. Duckworth says Maile's middle name is in honor of Duckworth's husband's great aunt, Pearl Bowlsbey Johnson, who was an Army officer and nurse in World War II. She says she's grateful to friends and family and "our wonderful medical teams for everything they've done to help us in our decades-long journey to complete our family." The Associated Press contributed to this report. Little Pink House deals with a legal case that has implications for everyone who owns their own home, or hopes to, or just aspires to having a precious, inviolate space where the world cant get at them. It tells the true story of Susette Kelo, a paramedic who decided she wanted to live in a quiet place, so she bought a house in New London, Conn., completely renovated it and painted it pink, as in the John Mellencamp song. In 1997, New London was a working-class city with a depressed economy, but Kelo had a beautiful view, the kind usually reserved for people with money. Much of the success of Little Pink House comes from the casting and the performance of Catherine Keener, an actress who has, simultaneously, an aura of glumness and an atmosphere of fun about her. That is, she seems like she has been sad for a long time, but now shes OK. She has her house, and shes at peace. But then Pfizer pharmaceuticals wants to move in, and the city strikes a deal for the company to build its facility right where Kelos house is standing. Suddenly legal notices are arriving by mail, and smiling young women are showing up with clipboards and offering money from the city to buy her out. Eminent domain gives the government the right to take your property (after properly compensating you) in cases when it needs to build something in the public interest say, a tunnel or a highway. But where do you draw the line in terms of defining the public interest? Does it extend to inviting a major company to build a plant, if that will increase the tax base? By that token, should every corner drug store disappear and be replaced by a Walgreens or a CVS, assuming the chain stores can pay more in taxes and employ more people? Little Pink House addresses these issues just as a matter of course as it tells the specific story of Kelo, who gradually and reluctantly becomes her neighborhoods spokeswoman. At the heart of this movie is how every person, not only on screen but in the audience watching, feels about the concept of home. It is, as it turns out, an intensely visceral thing. And if you put an actress of Keeners emotional focus and innate homespun appeal in the middle of a street, blocking her house from being crushed by bulldozers, you have drama. Add into the mix two villains, the governor and the head of the towns development corporation, played by Aaron Douglas and Jeanne Tripplehorn, respectively. These are characters that are at least semi-fictionalized. The governor has presidential aspirations and wants to show that hes brought jobs to Connecticut. The development corporation head is even worse. As played by Tripplehorn, she is someone capable of genuinely convincing herself that any side is right that happens to be paying her salary. Little Pink House tells a story with lots of bends and turns and if you can resist looking up Kelo on the Internet surprises. Its an entertaining movie, but to an extent its also a public service, in that it persuades the audience to think about an issue it might never have previously considered. Mick LaSalle is The San Francisco Chronicles movie critic. Email: mlasalle@sfchronicle.com Twitter: @MickLaSalle Little Pink House Drama. Starring Catherine Keener and Jeanne Tripplehorn. Directed by Courtney Balaker. (Unrated. 98 minutes.) Movie newsletter Get the latest movie reviews, Mick LaSalles views, critics picks and more film news each week in the San Francisco Chronicles revamped movie newsletter! Sign up here for Popcorn Picks and other Chronicle and SFGATE newsletters like the Taploid, Chronicle Commuter, and breaking news alerts. Ismaels Ghosts is a very French concoction, partly self-indulgent, partly obscure and partly long-winded, and yet, in the main, original and emotionally compelling. There are moments in this movie that are richer than anything you can possibly see in a movie theater this month, scenes that will fill you with awe. And then theres a scene of Marion Cotillard dancing solo to Bob Dylans It Aint Me Babe that makes you wonder how its possible that French people think its actually OK to dance to folk music. Or, for that matter, to subject audiences to the spectacle. At the movies center is Mathieu Amalric as the title character, a director making a movie about his estranged brother, who works overseas as a government agent. Amalrics default mode is to look like he took a bath last week and has spent the time since chain-smoking and drinking hard liquor. But as Ismael is actually like that a guy tortured by insomnia who drinks and smokes all night Amalric must up his game and appear even more unwholesome. So here he looks like he didnt wash for three weeks and then was dragged by a truck. Ismaels problem is that about 20 years ago, his young wife disappeared off the face of the Earth. As a result, he is plagued by nightmares, and so is his father-in-law, Henri, also a filmmaker and apparently one of great stature. Ismael assumes Carlotta is dead, and Henri assumes she is alive, but neither of them know whats the truth but we do: We know, because this is a movie, folks. In the movies, no one stays missing. So one day, just as Ismaels life is becoming bearable he is looking reasonably healthy and is living in a house on the beach with a thoroughly sane woman, played by Charlotte Gainsbourg Carlotta strolls in. This is where the movie becomes seriously intriguing, because director Arnaud Desplechin doesnt make things easy for the audience or for Ismael. Carlotta is something of a destructive force, and as brilliantly played by Cotillard, there is something skewed in her nature, something off, disconnected from emotion. Yet at the same time, she is charming and beautiful and has been the ground zero of Ismaels psyche for more than two decades. In a lot of ways, shes a lot more interesting than the current woman in his life, though Gainsbourg makes it clear to us that she is the water in Ismaels fish tank. If she goes, he will suffer. So its a little like Ismael must choose between what he wants and what he needs, but the movie is not so tidy as that. There are many items in motion here, some that feed the movies ideas and themes and some that dont. A particularly strong element is the story of Carlottas father, played with arresting intensity by Laszlo Szabo. His life has been defined by loss, and this has shaped him into a great artist, but also into a deeply unhappy, aggrieved and fragile man. A scene in which he has a tantrum on an airplane is a standout, in that Szabo suggests the life history leading up to it. Scenes from the movie Ismael is making and, generally, all scenes showing Ismael apart from the women in his life dont fare nearly as well. A whole sequence in which Ismael is freaking out in an old house and threatening his producer with a gun, for example, could be cut from the movie and no one would miss it, except, probably, the actors. And please, no more dancing to Dylan. All the same, Desplechins looseness, his willingness to take chances and act on inspiration, works more often than it doesnt, and makes for unusual scenes with unexpected life. Mick LaSalle is The San Francisco Chronicles movie critic. Email: mlasalle@sfchronicle.com Twitter: @MickLaSalle Ismaels Ghosts Drama. Starring Mathieu Amalric, Charlotte Gainsbourg and Marion Cotillard. Directed by Arnaud Desplechin. In French with English subtitles. (R. 134 minutes.) Movie newsletter Get the latest movie reviews, Mick LaSalles views, critics picks and more film news each week in the San Francisco Chronicles revamped movie newsletter! Sign up here for Popcorn Picks and other Chronicle and SFGATE newsletters like the Taploid, Chronicle Commuter, and breaking news alerts. A judges order directing the Trump administration to end its yearlong delay of new energy-efficiency standards for portable air conditioners, building heaters and other appliances has been put on hold by a federal appeals court. U.S. District Judge Vince Chhabria of San Francisco ruled Feb. 15 that Energy Secretary Rick Perry was violating his duties under federal law by refusing to enforce the new standards, issued by President Barack Obamas Energy Department in December 2016 and aimed at combatting climate change. Chhabria ordered Perry to publish the rules in the Federal Register, making them enforceable, within 28 days. But a panel of the Ninth U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals in San Francisco suspended Chhabrias order last week until the court considers an appeal by the administration. The judges, Ronald Gould and Richard Tallman, ordered the proceedings expedited, with written arguments through mid-July and a hearing as soon as possible thereafter. The standards would apply to floor-standing portable air conditioners, commercial boilers that heat office and apartment buildings, air compressors that power various tools, and battery chargers that provide backup power supplies for electronic products. Obamas Energy Department said the new rules would reduce greenhouse gas emissions by 99 million tons over 30 years the equivalent of taking 705,000 cars a year off the road and save consumers and businesses $8.4 billion. The standards were due to take effect in March 2017, but Perry refused to publish them in the Federal Register, and argued in court that he had no obligation to do so. Federal law requires the department to set energy-saving standards for specific categories of appliances and then to update them every six years. The department last updated its standards for commercial boilers in 2009, but has no current standards for the other appliances, according to lawsuits challenging the Trump administrations action. The suits were filed by California Attorney General Xavier Becerra, along with 11 other states, New York City and Washington, D.C., and by a coalition of environmental groups. They contended federal law required the Trump administration to put the rules into effect and then prohibited the administration from weakening the new standards. Perrys department and the Air-Conditioning, Heating, & Refrigeration Institute, a trade group, argued that a new administration has authority to continue to assess, modify or withdraw rules drafted by a previous administration. Bob Egelko is a San Francisco Chronicle staff writer. Email: begelko@sfchronicle.com Twitter: @BobEgelko WASHINGTON A mystery that went unsolved for 73 years began when Herman Mulligan threw a grenade. In the thick of some of the most vicious fighting of World War II, on the island of Okinawa, Private First Class Mulligans grenade clattered into the dark maw of a Japanese bunker and blew up a cache of ammunition. The huge explosion obliterated most of the hillside, and blasted the 21-year-old Marine beyond recognition. Amid the chaos, his unidentified body was buried in a hasty battlefield grave, while the Marine Corps listed Private Mulligan as missing in action. In the years after the war, he was reclassified as unrecoverable, and the family that knew him gradually died off, until his memory was almost as lost as his bones. The privates story could have ended there, among the roughly 72,000 American troops from World War II who have not been accounted for. But the ending has been rewritten by a black-and-white snapshot found in a Marine veterans trunk. The search for Private Mulligan started with a blood-flecked Japanese flag that Dale Maharidge, a Pulitzer Prize-winning author who teaches journalism at Columbia University, found among his fathers things after he died. Maharidges father had been a Marine on Okinawa, and the flag was a souvenir taken from the brow of a dead Japanese soldier. He also kept a dog-eared snapshot of a buddy he lost in combat Private Mulligan. Maharidge decided to track down the men of the flag, and ultimately the man in the snapshot. An amateur genealogist in Virginia named Bridget Carroll heard Maharidge give a radio interview. Before long, she had found Private Mulligans cousin, James Patterson. His family provided DNA to the Defense POW/MIA Accounting Agency, the arm of the Pentagon responsible for finding and returning lost war dead, that could identify Private Mulligan. Robert Runsby, a former Army lieutenant, also heard of the search and used an old map of Okinawa to look for unknowns buried shortly after Private Mulligan died. One of the grave sites labeled X-35 looked promising. Pressed by the family and their senators and congressmen, the agency exhumed X-35 in the spring of 2017 and sent a section of tibia to the militarys DNA lab in Maryland to be compared with the sample supplied by James Patterson. The results were a match. Dave Phillips is a New York Times writer. LOS ANGELES A 28-year-old man was arrested on suspicion of murder after a fire ripped through a Studio City recording studio, leaving two people dead and two with grave injuries. Police were tight-lipped about why they believe Efrem Demery, who was booked early Monday and is being held without bail, carried out the mysterious killings. They have not released a possible motive, and its unclear whether the victims were slain during or before the fire. Musicians who rented space from the one-story building that holds about a dozen recording studios said they did not recognize the names of the suspect or one of the victims identified by coroners officials as Devaughn Kemar Carter, 28, of Los Angeles. We all pretty much know each other so I dont think they were here much, said a 22-year-old who identified himself with the stage name Mikey Dubz. Some described a chaotic scene as they fled from the dark, soundproof studios which are used by artists around the clock when the fire broke out shortly before 7 a.m. Saturday. Shahriar Tavakoly, 50, a guitarist who rents a space, said most people work on their music all night and sleep throughout the morning. He just happened to be awake when he smelled smoke. He opened the two soundproof doors between his room and the hallway to find the corridor to the front door in flames. He raced to the exit, screaming and pounding on doors. He said the ventilation was not working, so he couldnt smell the smoke until it seeped through both doors. People who were sleeping would not have heard commotion because of the soundproofing, he said. All the walls have blankets over them to dampen the sound too, and those are very flammable, he said. A musician who goes by the stage name L.A. Pryce said he had stayed up into the early morning hours Saturday in his studio mixing a song. He dozed off on a futon, while his friend fell asleep in a chair. Sometime later, the friend woke him. Smoke made it hard to see and breathe. Soundproofed doors and walls made it difficult to hear. I barely made it out, he said. Autopsies are pending for the two men found dead at the scene. Authorities did not have new details about the conditions of those hospitalized. Shad Rabbani, who said he was in charge of leasing the building but did not own it, said the space houses independent producers and independent studios. They have a lot of clients, Rabbani said. And its 24/7, so I have no idea who is coming and who is going out. Doug Smith, Joe Mozingo and Alene Tchekmedyian are Los Angeles Times writers. PHOENIX A special prosecutor will be appointed in an appeal over the pardon of former metro Phoenix Sheriff Joe Arpaios conviction for disobeying a court order because President Trumps Justice Department is now refusing to handle the case, an appeals court ruled Tuesday. The U.S. 9th Circuit of ordered the appointment because the Justice Department lawyers who won the conviction have since declined to defend a court ruling that dismissed the case but did not erase Arpaios criminal record after Trump issued the pardon. Arpaio is a Trump ally, is running for a U.S. Senate seat and wants the court records related to his conviction expunged. Legal advocacy groups that focus on free speech, democracy and civil rights had asked for the prosecutor and have mounted a challenge to Trumps pardon of the former six-term sheriff, a Republican who lost to a little-known Democratic challenger in 2016. A federal judge last summer found Arpaio guilty of contempt of court for intentionally defying a 2011 court order that barred his traffic patrols targeting immigrants. Arpaio, now running for the Senate seat of outgoing Jeff Flake, was accused of prolonging the patrols for 17 months to boost his successful 2012 re-election campaign. Jack Wilenchik, a lawyer representing Arpaio, accused the appeals court of appointing a special prosecutor because it did not like the outcome of the case. To be appointing a new lawyer is really the 9th Circuit taking a position on the case, which it shouldnt be doing, Wilenchik said. Arpaio said the president made the right decision in issuing his pardon. I am not guilty, Arpaio said. To this day, I will say that. The groups opposed to Arpaios pardon are using the same appeals process to challenge clemency for him. The pardon issued in late August spared the 85-year-old Arpaio a possible jail sentence. Jacques Billeaud is an Associated Press writer. NEW YORK A legal fight over what should happen to records the FBI seized from President Trumps personal attorney took a surprise turn Monday when the lawyer, Michael Cohen, was forced to reveal a secret that he had also done legal work for Fox News host Sean Hannity. The disclosure came as attorneys for Cohen and Trump tried to persuade a New York judge to delay prosecutors from examining records and electronic devices seized in the raids on the grounds that many of them are protected by attorney-client privilege. U.S. District Judge Kimba Wood adjourned the hearing and rejected the request for a temporary restraining order on the grounds that it was too early for such an objection. Wood said in the hearing that if Cohen wanted the court to declare that some of his files were protected because of attorney confidentiality rules, he would have to divulge the names of the clients hes worked with since the 2016 election. One was, of course, Trump himself. Another was Elliott Broidy, a Trump fundraiser who resigned from the Republican National Committee on Friday after it was revealed that he paid $1.6 million to a Playboy Playmate with whom he had an extramarital affair. The Playmate became pregnant and elected to have an abortion. I understand he doesnt want his name out there, but thats not enough under the law, the judge said. When Hannitys name was announced, there were gasps and some laughter in a courtroom packed with journalists. Hannity is an outspoken supporter of Trump. Cohens lawyers did not describe the type of legal work he did for Hannity. On his radio show, Hannity said Cohen was never involved in any matter between him and any third party. I never retained him in any traditional sense, Hannity said. I never paid a legal fee. I had brief discussions with him about legal questions where I wanted his input and perspective. Mondays hearing began with an appearance by porn actress Stormy Daniels, who was swarmed by photographers and nearly fell as she was hustled into the courthouse. The April 9 raid on Cohen sought information on a variety of matters, including a $130,000 payment made to Daniels, who alleges she had sex with a married Trump in 2006. At issue is exactly who gets to look at Cohens seized documents and devices before they are turned over to prosecutors. Prosecutors say they raided Cohens office, home and hotel room as part of an undisclosed crime related to his personal business dealings. At stake is an investigation that could uncover the inner workings of Trumps longtime fixer and image protector. People familiar with the probe told the Associated Press that agents were seeking bank records, records on Cohens dealing in the taxi industry, his communications with the Trump campaign and information on payments made in 2016 to two women who say they had affairs with Trump, former Playboy model Karen McDougal and Daniels, whose real name is Stephanie Clifford. Tom Hays and Larry Neumeister are Associated Press writers. The body of a young girl that washed ashore in early April was identified Tuesday as 12-year-old Ciera Hart, one of four children killed and two others presumed dead after their mother drove the familys car off a Mendocino County cliff, officials said. A couple on vacation near the coast found the body on April 7 nearly two weeks after the March 26 crash and another bystander pulled her body onto the beach, according to the Mendocino County Sheriffs Office. Her identity was reportedly confirmed by DNA analysis. Cieras parents, Jennifer and Sarah Hart, both 32, of Woodland, Wash., were found dead last month in an overturned 2003 GMC Yukon located on a rocky stretch of the Northern California coastline, along with three of their adopted children: Markis, 19, and Jeremiah and Abigail, both 14. A multi-agency search remains under way for the couples two other missing children Devonte, 15, and Hannah, 16 who are presumed dead after the SUV plunged off Highway 1 near Westport. A preliminary toxicology report found that Jennifer Hart, the driver of the vehicle, had a blood alcohol content of 0.102, above the legal limit of 0.08. Her wife and two of the children tested positive for Benadryl, authorities said. Officials did not release which children had traces of the drug in their system, nor whether the amount found was consistent with normal use. An initial investigation by the California Highway Patrol indicated that Jennifer Hart may have intentionally sped off the cliff, as information stored by the SUVs computer system showed that it never stopped accelerating from the time it started moving 70 feet from the ledge until the time it made final impact. The cars speedometer was stuck at 90 mph, indicating the vehicles top speed, officials said. The Hart family gained a bit of fame in 2014, when Devonte Hart was photographed tearfully hugging a police officer in Portland, Ore., during a rally in support of protests against police brutality in Ferguson, Mo. The family was known to be politically active and a positive influence in the community, but reports of child abuse have since surfaced. Days before the crash, Child Protective Services in Washington attempted to reach the family at their Washington state home, and authorities initially suspected they had gone on a vacation. Neighbors of the family have told media outlets that Devonte said his parents werent feeding him and his siblings. After a report of abuse and neglect, the Washington State Department of Social and Health Services tried unsuccessfully to contact the family at their home three days before the familys vehicle was discovered on the Mendocino County coastline. Court records show that Sarah Hart pleaded guilty to a domestic assault charge in 2011 for abusing her 6-year-old adopted daughter when the family lived in Minnesota. Authorities on Tuesday also said Cieras name had been misspelled in previous reports and she had been incorrectly identified at the time of the accident as a 15-year-old. Annie Ma is a San Francisco Chronicle staff writer. Email: ama@sfchronicle.com Twitter: @anniema15 "Marijuana legalization cant fix mass incarceration" ... but it should help a bit | Main | Two notable opinions from SCOTUS on vagueness and habeas review April 17, 2018 "The Consensus Myth in Criminal Justice Reform" The title of this post is the title of this new paper now available via SSRN authored by Benjamin Levin. Here is its abstract: It has become popular to identify a bipartisan consensus on criminal justice reform, but how deep is that consensus, actually? This Article argues that the purported consensus is largely illusory. Despite shared reformist vocabulary, the consensus rests on distinct critiques that identify different flaws and justify distinct policy solutions. The underlying disagreements transcend traditional left/right political divides and speak to deeper disputes about the state and the role of criminal law in society. The Article offers a typology of the two prevailing, but fundamentally distinct, critiques of the system: (1) the quantitative approach (what I call the over frame); and (2) the qualitative approach (what I call the mass frame). The over frame grows from a belief that criminal law has an important and legitimate function, but that the laws operations have exceeded that function. This critique assumes that there are optimal rates of incarceration and criminalization, but the current criminal system is sub-optimal in that it has criminalized too much and incarcerated too many. In contrast, the mass frame focuses on the criminal system as a socio-cultural phenomenon. This reformist frame indicates that the issue is not a mere miscalculation; rather, reforms should address how the system marginalizes populations and exacerbates both power imbalances and distributional inequities. To show how these frames differ, this Article applies the over and the mass critique, in turn, to the maligned phenomena of mass incarceration and overcriminalization. The existing literature on mass incarceration and overcriminalization displays an elision between these two frames. Some scholars and reformers have adopted one frame exclusively, while others use the two interchangeably. No matter how much scholars and critics bemoan the troubles of mass incarceration and overcriminalization, it is hard to believe that they can achieve meaningful reform if they are talking about fundamentally different problems. While many reformers may adopt an over frame in an effort to attract a broader range of support or appeal to politicians, over policy proposals do not reach deeper mass concerns. Ultimately, then, this Article argues that a pragmatic turn to the over frame may have significant costs in legitimating deeper structural flaws and failing to address distributional issues of race, class, and power at the heart of the mass critique. April 17, 2018 at 09:00 AM | Permalink Comments The article presents a false contrast because these two perspective are not competitive but complimentary with each other. "Ultimately, then, this Article argues that a pragmatic turn to the over frame may have significant costs in legitimating deeper structural flaws and failing to address distributional issues of race, class, and power at the heart of the mass critique" Well yes it MAY. Life is full of risks. There is also a risk, however, in that in advancing a narrative of marginalization one throws oneself right onto the anarchical train. I see this article as more purity bullshit: "if you are not a black panther you are not serious about racial injustice!" Please just go away. Posted by: Daniel | Apr 17, 2018 10:49:08 AM The over critique is actually multiple separate critiques that are not necessarily compatible with each other, much less the mass critique. The mass critique begins and ends with the assumption that the current law is designed for and being used to oppress people. The over critique emphasizes certain laws that the person making the critique believes are unduly harsh or inappropriate. What laws fit that definition depends upon who is doing the critique. To use an example, one part of the over critique thinks that we are picking on big business and criminalizing behavior that otherwise would be good business practices. These people think that we should not be going after Big Pharma for its role in the opioid crisis. These same people, however, do not have a problem with us locking up people who sell their prescription medication to those hooked on opioids or forge prescriptions to get opioids. A different part of the over critique do not have a problem with tough laws regulating harmful business practices, but do think that our laws are too tough on addicts who should be treates as people with a disease rather than as criminals. Posted by: tmm | Apr 18, 2018 2:30:01 PM Post a comment Is Justice Gorsuch ready, willing, and eager to blow up the civil/criminal divide? | Main | How many federal prisoners may have Dimaya claims and how many procedural challenges will they face raising them? The title of this post is the title of this new piece by Matt Ford at The Atlantic, and the question it poses strikes me as particularly timely in light of the notable discussion of civil sanctions by Justice Gorsuch in a concurring opinion this morning in Dimaya. Here is part of the piece: The state of Indiana really wants to take Tyson Timbss Land Rover, as punishment for dealing just a few hundred dollars worth of drugs. Hes now asking the U.S. Supreme Court to let him keep it. Stories about civil forfeiture injustices are unfortunately common. What sets Timbss case apart is his legal argument: that the Eighth Amendments ban on excessive fines should shield his property from confiscation at the state level. If the Supreme Court takes up the case and agrees, the justices could impose some much-needed barriers on state and local governments voracious appetites for fees, fines, and forfeitures.... Undercover officers solicited from Timbs, buying just under four grams of heroin for less than $400. He was arrested and charged with dealing a controlled substance and conspiracy to commit theft. Timbs pleaded guilty and received a six-year sentence to be served outside prison walls. The state also tried to seize his Land Rover, kicking off the legal battle that ultimately brought him to the Supreme Court. The trial court refused to authorize the seizure. Indiana law only allowed a $10,000 fine for Timbss sentence, and the court concluded that seizing a vehicle worth four times as much as that threshold would be grossly disproportionate relative to Timbss crime. The Indiana Court of Appeals upheld the decision after their own review of the circumstances. But the Indiana Supreme Court intervened and approved the seizure. The judges unanimous opinion rested on a precedent, or lack thereof: The U.S. Supreme Court has never applied the Eighth Amendments Excessive Fines Clause to the states. Other lower courts have chosen to do so without waiting for the top justices, but Indianas Supreme Court was uninterested in following that path for Timbss benefit. Indiana is a sovereign state within our federal system, and we elect not to impose federal obligations on the State that the federal government itself has not mandated, the court declared. Timbs, with his petition in January, is now asking the U.S. Supreme Court to overturn that ruling.... But the Excessive Fines Clause is ripe for consideration in the age of mass incarceration. Impoverished Americans often lack the resources to pay off the fines and fees that can come from even a casual brush with the criminal-justice system. In a cruel twist, the inability to pay these costs can result in jail time itself. Keeping oneself out of trouble is also no guarantee of immunity: A 2014 Washington Post investigation, for example, found that police in multiple states use highway interdiction to target thousands of motorists for seizures of cash and property.... Civil-asset forfeiture, though still common, has come under increasing scrutiny across the political spectrum. Attorney General Jeff Sessionss push last year to revive the practice at the federal level drew harsh rebukes from the ACLU and congressional Republicans alike. Justice Clarence Thomas set off a signal flare of sorts last April suggesting he had doubts about the practices constitutionality. The Indiana case revolves around different legal questions that the ones Thomas was asking last year, but the underlying injustices are the same. Taking up the issue would give the justices a chance to set new limits on excessive fines and forfeitures for cash-hungry counties and cities. For Timbs and thousands of other Americans, that intervention would be a welcome relief. SALT LAKE CITY The push for legalized marijuana has moved into Utah and Oklahoma, two of the most conservative states in the country, further underscoring how quickly feelings about marijuana are changing in the United States. If the two measures pass, Utah and Oklahoma will join 30 other states that have legalized some form of medical marijuana, according to the pro-pot National Organization for the Reform of Marijuana laws. Nine of those states and Washington, D.C. also have broad legalization where adults 21 and older can use pot for any reason. Michigan could become the 10th state with its ballot initiative this year. Utah and Oklahoma already are among 16 states that allow for use an oil called cannabidiol, a compound from cannabis that doesnt get users high but can treat a range of health concerns. Justin Strekal, political director for NORML, is confident the Utah and Oklahoma measures will pass. Americas appetite for cannabis is not going away, Strekal said. We are in the death rattles of prohibition. Marijuana legalization efforts have faced some pushback from religions before including in 2016 in Arizona and Nevada from the Mormon church, and the same year from the Catholic Church in Massachusetts. But not to the scale they could face this year in Utah, where Mormons account for about two-third of the population, said Matthew Schweich, executive director of the pro-legalization Marijuana Policy Project. Mormons have long frowned upon marijuana use because of a key church health code called the Word of Wisdom, which prohibits the use of alcohol, tobacco and illegal drugs. The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints came out against the proposal this month, saying in a statement drugs designed to ease suffering should be tested and approved by government officials first. Oklahoma will vote in June on its proposal that would allow doctors to recommend that patients receive a medical marijuana license allowing them to legally possess up to three ounces of the drug, six mature plants and six seedlings. Nathan Frodsham, a 45-year-old married Mormon father of three, is hoping the measure passes so he can get off opioids and back to using the vaporized form of marijuana that he used when he lived in Seattle after his doctor recommended trying for his painful osteoarthritis in his neck. Brady McCombs is an Associated Press writer. During the meeting, Larijani mentioned the close friendship and cooperation between Vietnam and Iran over the last 45 years, saying that as the two countries celebration of the 45th anniversary of their diplomatic ties (1973-2018) this year will open up new opportunities for the two sides to further expand the bilateral relations. The Parliament of Iran has recently approved a master plan for the countrys development over the next five years which encourages foreign investment in the fields of oil and gas, petrochemistry, liquefied petroleum gas and agriculture, said the top Iranian legislator. Iran wants to cooperate with Vietnam in these areas, alongside information technology, cyber-security and environmental protection, he noted, adding that Iran welcomes and will create all possible conditions for Vietnamese enterprises to do business in his country. To raise two-way trade to 2 billion USD, he suggested the two countries set up a direct air route and simplify visa procedures to boost tourism. He also urged better coordination between the two sides in finance and banking which is vital to increase bilateral trade. PM Phuc, for his part, appreciated the proposals by his Iranian guest, saying they are closely aligned with the focus of the two nations cooperation. Welcoming Larijani to attend the Vietnam Iran business forum during this visit, Phuc said he has instructed relevant agencies to invite to the event potential Vietnamese companies that are interested in developing partnerships with peers from Iran. He asked Iran to back Vietnams candidacy for the UN Security Council from 2020-2021 and suggested the two sides increase exchanges of high-level delegations and closely work together to host celebrations of the 45th anniversary of the Vietnam-Iran diplomatic ties, thus promoting relations in all areas. Vietnam encourages Iranian firms to trade and invest in the production of agricultural products, an advantage of Vietnam, and welcomes Irans cooperation in sea transportation, port construction and support industries, the PM said. He asked the central banks of Vietnam and Iran to together work out ways to remove barriers in payment between the two sides, thus facilitating trade activiites. The Iranian leader agreed with PM Phuc, noting that he will direct relevant bodies to soon translate the ideas into reality for the benefits of both sides as well as for peace and prosperity in the region and the world at large. Larijani arrived in Hanoi on April 15 for an official visit at the invitation of National Assembly Chairwoman Nguyen Thi Kim Ngan. He will be in the country until April 18. Vietnamplus LOS ANGELES Los Angeles is planning to double its spending on homelessness, with tens of thousands of people living on the streets despite a healthy economy and low unemployment. Homeless encampments have become an all-too-familiar sight in the nations second largest city, and tents can be found lining blocks in the heart of downtown near City Hall. Mayor Eric Garcetti, a Democrat, outlined his strategy Monday to contend with the spread of encampments across the city, including investing millions of dollars in trailers and other temporary housing, along with more funding for sanitation crews to clean up the mess. Homelessness cant be swept away. We must give people a place to stay, Garcetti said in prepared remarks. Were not going to wash down sidewalks only to see an encampment return a few days later. The city plans to spend $430 million on housing and other services for the homeless in the year that begins July 1, up from $178 million in the current year, documents show. Most of the funding will come from borrowing authorized by voters in 2016 to address the citys homeless crisis. One report last year estimated that there are more than 34,000 people living on city streets, a sharp jump from the prior year. Encampments have spread widely, and part of the mayors plan will call for directing funds for emergency housing and more sanitation crews to each City Council district. Garcetti, who appears to be exploring a possible longshot presidential bid in 2020, spent Friday and Saturday visiting voters in Iowa. Micheal R. Blood is an Associated Press writer. BERKELEY (BCN) A transient was arrested for allegedly throwing industrial cleaning chemicals at a University of California at Berkeley employee in Wheeler Hall earlier this month. Berkeley police arrested William Kearney, 62, after he wandered into the department on Saturday, according to university police Sgt. Andrew Tucker. Kearney was not there to turn himself in, but police found that he matched arrest warrants from university police, Tucker said. Kearney was arrested on suspicion of assault with caustic chemicals and for failing to register as a sex offender in a separate attack. Tucker said the victim of the attack was "shaken" and had minor to moderate chemical burns, but she was grateful to hear Kearney had been arrested. The assault happened on April 4 when the woman encountered Kearney in a restroom at Wheeler Hall. She asked him to leave the bathroom because the building was closed, but he allegedly threw the caustic chemical at her and fled. Tucker said Wheeler Hall has various locks but people "wander in and out" and it is unclear when Kearney entered the building. Kearney is known in Berkeley for several cases, and he is being held on no bail at Santa Rita Jail, according to Tucker. ### SAN JOSE (BCN) The city of San Jose added a new lawsuit today to the list of challenges to a plan by the administration of President Donald Trump to add a citizenship question to the 2020 national census. The city filed the lawsuit in federal court in San Jose against the U.S. Department of Commerce and Census Bureau. Like several previous lawsuits, it claims the citizenship question is unconstitutional because the U.S. Constitution requires an "actual enumeration" of the full population. The lawsuits contend the question will deter non-citizens from answering and thus will result in an undercounting of the population. The once-per-decade census information is used to determine the size of congressional districts and allocation of federal funding. San Jose Mayor Sam Liccardo said in a statement, "In San Jose, everyone counts. "Adding a citizenship question to the 2020 Census will stoke fears and depress participation in diverse cities like San Jose, threatening hundreds of millions in funding for health, education, and other critical services upon which our entire community depends," Liccardo said. San Jose was joined in the case by the Black Alliance for Just Immigration. The lawsuit says San Jose is especially vulnerable to harm because it has historically been a home to immigrants and nearly 40 percent of its population was born in another country. The first lawsuit challenging the census question was filed in federal court in San Francisco in late March by California Attorney Xavier Becerra on behalf of the people of California. A few days later, the city of San Francisco joined six other cities and 17 states in another suit filed in U.S. District Court in New York City. Another lawsuit has been filed in federal court in Maryland by seven residents of Maryland and Arizona. Like other lawsuits, San Jose's case also claims the plan violates the federal Administrative Procedure Act, which prohibits "arbitrary and capricious" actions by administrative agencies. A U.S. Department of Justice spokesman has said the department looks forward to defending the use of the question. ### SAN FRANCISCO (BCN) Doris Ward, the first African-American woman to be president of the San Francisco Board of Supervisors, has died at 86, city officials said on Monday. Mayor Mark Farrell announced her death and said she was a fearless leader who cared deeply about San Francisco's residents. "Doris was a trailblazing presence whose courage and resolve helped inspire countless others to follow in her footsteps," Farrell said in a statement. Ward had worked for the San Francisco Community College District and the Office of the Assessor-Recorder, in addition to the Board of Supervisors. Farrell said she was compassionate, kind, a valued friend and an admired leader. Current board President London Breed said she was saddened by Ward's passing and expressed gratitude for her leadership. "Women like Doris Ward made it possible for someone like me to serve," Breed wrote on Facebook. ### A 21-year-old Santa Cruz man who was on probation was arrested on Thursday for a probation violation and possession of a loaded gun, Santa Cruz County sheriff's officials announced today. At 10:12 p.m., deputies of the sheriff's Gang Enforcement Team stopped a car in the area of Soquel Drive and Commercial Crossing for expired registration and false registration tags, according to the sheriff's office. SAN FRANCISCO (BCN) The renaming of San Francisco International Airport's Terminal 1 after former San Francisco Supervisor Harvey Milk, the state's first openly gay politician, has become official after Mayor Mark Farrell signed the legislation at a ceremony at City Hall this morning. The Board of Supervisors earlier this month unanimously approved the legislation, which took nearly five years to come to fruition. "San Francisco has a very strong place in our nation's history of civil rights activism for standing up for what is right and Harvey was the epitome of those efforts," Farrell said at this morning's ceremony. "By signing this legislation and renaming Terminal 1 at SFO as Harvey Milk, we are ensuring that his name will last forever and be synonymous with the city of San Francisco, the city that he loved so much and that we all love so much," Farrell said. "When you think about how long it took for us to get to this point, we are reminded that in many respects nothing was really easy for Harvey Milk. And quite frankly nothing has been necessarily easy for the LGBTQ community," said former Supervisor David Campos, who first started efforts to have the terminal renamed after Milk in 2013. It's only fitting that in the midst of so much violence and hatred, that we in San Francisco are sending a very clear message of hope, which is what Harvey talked about," Campos said. "This is totally thrilling when you consider the journey of Milk and the movement," Former Assemblymember Tom Ammiano said. "San Francisco is a singular city; we have singular heroes. We don't name airports after John Wayne or Ronald Reagan, we name airports after someone who has made a considerable contribution to San Francisco," Ammiano said. Ammiano worked with Milk in 1978 to defeat the Briggs Initiative, a proposition that would have banned LGBTQ people from working in California public schools. Co-founder of the Harvey Milk Foundation and Milk's nephew, Stuart Milk, attended the ceremony, saying he and his family were appreciative of the renaming. "This is a very important message to the world," Stuart Milk said. "For the people around the world who have the opportunity to fly into the great airport that SFO is and to transit though the Harvey Milk Terminal, I think it really does send that message that this community honors those who have not only led but who payed the ultimate sacrifice," he said. Milk was first elected to the board in 1977 after having become a gay rights activist and also championing the rights of farm workers, low-income tenants, laborers and homeless youth. Milk was assassinated, along with then-Mayor George Moscone, when former Supervisor Dan White gunned them down inside City Hall in 1978. Efforts to name the terminal after Milk began in 2013, with Campos first trying unsuccessfully. Campos, however, reached a compromise agreement to form a committee to recommend which of SFO's terminals or other facilities should be renamed. In 2017, following a vote by the Airport Facilities Naming Advisory Committee in support of the renaming, Supervisor Hillary Ronen introduced new legislation to begin the process of renaming the terminal. SFO's Terminal 1 is currently being redeveloped and will be completed by 2022. The $2.4 billion project will create a new boarding area, new concessions, new corridors connecting to the International Terminal A gates and Boarding Area C, and a new mezzanine with connections to the AirTrain, public transit and the Central Parking Garage. Additionally, the terminal will have a large central concourse with an art gallery and restaurants, according to airport officials. ### 554-6131 VALLEJO (BCN) Twenty people were displaced by a two-alarm fire at a Motel 7 in Vallejo on Monday afternoon, a fire department spokesman said. The fire in a first-floor room of the motel at 211 Lincoln Road W. was reported around 3:20 p.m. Four other rooms were damaged by smoke or forced entry by firefighters, Vallejo firefighter/paramedic Aaron Klauber said. An occupant of the burning room escaped safely but suffered a minor injury, and a motel employee who tried to put out the fire with a hose suffered smoke inhalation, Klauber said. Firefighters confined the fire to the first-floor room and the motel managers and the American Red Cross assisted the displaced occupants with other housing, Klauber said. Firefighters were at the scene for more than two hours and the cause of the fire is under investigation, Klauber said. ### SAN FRANCISCO (BCN) A $50,000 reward is being offered by police for information leading to the identification, arrest and conviction of the person or persons responsible for killing a young woman and her father in 2012 in San Francisco's Silver Terrace neighborhood, police said today. At about 10:20 p.m. on July 13, 2012, 20-year-old Chastity Dollison and her father 39-year-old Allen Vance and a family friend were traveling in a white, two-door Lexus east on Silver Avenue near Elmira Street when the Lexus ran out of gas. Police said as the three were waiting for a friend to help them, someone came up to the Lexus on foot and fired a gun several times into the vehicle killing Dollison and Vance. They were in the front seat of the Lexus. Police said the family friend, who was visiting from out of town and in the back seat, was shot but survived. Anyone with information about case is asked to call Daniel Cunningham of the Police Department's homicide detail at (415) 553-9515 or after hours call the operations center at (415) 553-1071. Persons wishing to remain anonymous can call the Police Department's tip line at (415) 575-4444 or text a tip by typing SFPD and the tip to 47411. ### Six people were injured in a collision involving four vehicles northwest of Santa Rosa this morning, California Highway Patrol officials said. Eric Floyd, 47, of Clearlake was driving a Saturn east on River Road near Laughlin Road around 6:30 a.m. when his car drifted into the westbound lane and struck a Ford F-450 driven by a Napa man, the CHP said. SAN JOSE (BCN) Santa Clara County and San Jose elected officials joined California Attorney General Xavier Becerra at San Jose City Hall today to discuss ongoing efforts to limit prescription drug addictions ahead of National Prescription Drug Take Back Day. The day, scheduled for April 28, will highlight the importance of safe use and safe disposal of prescription drugs, Becerra said. Becerra, San Jose Mayor Sam Liccardo, Santa Clara County Supervisor Ken Yeager, Santa Clara County Executive Jeff Smith and San Jose police Chief Eddie Garcia gathered for a news conference this morning to raise awareness of the cause before the day comes. "Combating drug abuse is not something you do by yourself," Becerra said. He said law enforcement, government leaders and community members have to become engaged to keep prescription drugs out of the wrong hands because it is not just up to police to handle those who steal drugs for their own use. "We cannot arrest our way out of this crisis," Becerra said. The state attorney general mentioned a few efforts that those with California's Department of Justice are making to limit prescription drug addictions, including the Controlled Substance Utilization Review and Evaluation System, or CURES. The CURES database, which can show specific information on when a drug has been dispensed and to who, will be mandatory for statewide use by public health, regulatory oversight agencies and law enforcement by Oct. 2, according to the attorney general's office. Becerra said the database is so vital because even prescription drugs can be deadly in the wrong hands. He used examples of children who accidentally swallow pills or medication. Liccardo gave statistics about prescription drugs to bring the point home. According to a study that he referenced, 75 percent of opioid misuse happens when someone gets their hands on a prescription that was not written for them and 90 percent of all addictions start in adolescence. Although Garcia said San Jose has not seen a specific increase in opioid addictions, which has been an ongoing national issue, it does not mean that local and state leaders should not take action now. Yeager, who has been working on getting monitored mailbox-like drop boxes for prescription medicine since 2008, is thrilled that there are now 57 drop-off kiosks for any unwanted or unused prescriptions around the county. He said the county aims to have 100 by the end of the year. The drop boxes originally began with 13 locations at health clinics and the sheriff's office but has expanded to both kiosks and mail-in services at those facilities as well as police departments, pharmacies and other locations in the city of San Jose, Yeager said. Yeager said the elected officials came together today to publicize the efforts and to make the disposal boxes and mail-in services around the county a commonly understood fixture before the nation dedicates a day to awareness of the issues surrounding the drugs. "The idea is to get the message out not just April 28, but during the rest of the year," Yeager said. ### The Santa Clara County Board of Supervisors voted unanimously today to direct county staff to develop proposals for a one-stop restoration center to address urgent behavioral health needs for the local homeless population. Supervisor Cindy Chavez asked that staff look into what Santa Clara County can do to create a center based on that of the Roberto L. Jimenez M.D. Restoration Center in San Antonio, Texas. At least one person died this morning in a t-bone collision in Oakley that also sent two other people to the hospital, authorities said. The crash was reported around 5:10 a.m. at the intersection of O'Hara Avenue and Laurel Road. Two people suffered major injuries, and one more suffered minor injuries, and all three were transported to a hospital, according to East Contra Costa Fire Protection District Battalion Chief Ross Macumber. Personnel from the Contra Costa County coroner's office confirmed that at least one of the victims in the crash has since been pronounced dead. Further details about the crash could not immediately be confirmed. A five-alarm fire early this morning at an apartment complex in San Jose sent four people to hospitals and caused firefighters to have to rescue multiple people off of balconies, a fire captain said. The fire was reported at 5:53 a.m. on the second floor of a 36-unit building at 2079 McLaughlin Ave., San Jose Fire Capt. Mitch Matlow said. Fire crews arrived and found people trying to use ropes and sheets to climb down from balconies at the building. About 20 residents on upper floors were eventually helped down with ladders, Matlow said. Fifteen people were treated at the scene but only the four required transport to hospitals, he said. An update on their conditions was not immediately available. A Santa Clara Valley Transportation Authority bus was used to shelter some of the residents. The American Red Cross also responded and has set up a reception center at the complex's clubhouse to assist displaced residents, according to Red Cross spokeswoman Cynthia Shaw. Fire crews remained at the scene as of 9 a.m. to make sure no flames remain hidden in walls of the building, he said. The cause of the blaze has not been determined and authorities do not know how many of the 36 units at the building will still be inhabitable. A 34-year-old transient and her friend were arrested on suspicion of manslaughter and child endangerment early Monday morning after her 16-year-old child died of a possible drug overdose and they allegedly didn't call for help, police said. According to police, Danielle Foernsler, a transient, and her friend 39-year-old Robert D. Harrison of Petaluma were arrested Monday. Foernsler allegedly told police she was the victim's mother after Harrison's roommate called 911 around 4:15 a.m. to report that his roommate's friend was possibly having a seizure. Police said the roommate at the residence in the 20 block of Vallejo Street went outside to see Harrison and Foernsler helping the victim -- who didn't appear to be breathing -- into a vehicle and requested an ambulance. Police arrived to find the victim unconscious. The victim was taken to Petaluma Valley Hospital and was pronounced dead at 5:09 a.m. Monday. Foernsler, who allegedly appeared under the influence of a narcotic, originally told investigating officers she was the victim's cousin, but later told detectives she lied because she had burglary warrants for her arrest and knew her child was in possession of Xanax that contained fentanyl, police said. Police said they also spoke to Harrison, who also appeared to be under the influence of a narcotic and allegedly admitted that he knew the victim was in possession of narcotics and didn't call for help when they were in distress from a possible overdose. In addition, police said they allegedly found Harrison to be in possession of a loaded firearm and loaded syringe at the residence. Foernsler was booked into Sonoma County Jail. Harrison was also booked into the county jail on suspicion of child endangerment, being under the influence of narcotics and possession of a firearm while in possession of narcotics. The victim's name hasn't been released. Petaluma police said this is the third-narcotic related overdose call in the city since Friday and 19 others in the past six months, including three that resulted in deaths. Police said fentanyl is a powerful pain reliever that can be deadly if improperly used. Anyone with more information on the case is asked to call Petaluma police Detective Walt Spiller at (707) 778-4372. A man who was found dead in an alley in San Francisco's Chinatown on Sunday has been identified as 49-year-old Quang Truong, according to the city's medical examiner's office. At 8:33 a.m., officers located him near the corner of Joice and Clay streets, according to police. The location is just across from Gordon J. Lau Elementary School. Truong was pronounced dead at the scene and police are investigating his death as a homicide. No arrests have been made and a description of the suspect was not immediately available. The city of San Jose added a new lawsuit today to the list of challenges to a plan by the administration of President Donald Trump to add a citizenship question to the 2020 national census. The city filed the lawsuit in federal court in San Jose against the U.S. Department of Commerce and Census Bureau. Like several previous lawsuits, it claims the citizenship question is unconstitutional because the U.S. Constitution requires an "actual enumeration" of the full population. The lawsuits contend the question will deter non-citizens from answering and thus will result in an undercounting of the population. The once-per-decade census information is used to determine the size of congressional districts and allocation of federal funding. San Jose Mayor Sam Liccardo said in a statement, "In San Jose, everyone counts. "Adding a citizenship question to the 2020 Census will stoke fears and depress participation in diverse cities like San Jose, threatening hundreds of millions in funding for health, education, and other critical services upon which our entire community depends," Liccardo said. San Jose was joined in the case by the Black Alliance for Just Immigration. The lawsuit says San Jose is especially vulnerable to harm because it has historically been a home to immigrants and nearly 40 percent of its population was born in another country. The first lawsuit challenging the census question was filed in federal court in San Francisco in late March by California Attorney Xavier Becerra on behalf of the people of California. A few days later, the city of San Francisco joined six other cities and 17 states in another suit filed in U.S. District Court in New York City. Another lawsuit has been filed in federal court in Maryland by seven residents of Maryland and Arizona. Like other lawsuits, San Jose's case also claims the plan violates the federal Administrative Procedure Act, which prohibits "arbitrary and capricious" actions by administrative agencies. A U.S. Department of Justice spokesman has said the department looks forward to defending the use of the question. Contra Costa County Fire Protection District firefighters extinguished a 50-acre brush fire in Antioch early Sunday morning after nearly six hours of containment efforts. The fire in the Dow Wetlands Preserve was first reported at 12:35 a.m. and was fully contained by 6:20 a.m., according to Fire Inspector Steve Aubert. He said firefighters struggled with limited access to a water supply because there weren't many fire hydrants nearby. The fire spread from reeds to a thick canopy of trees, brush and berry vines, and Burlington Northern Railroad tracks had to be shut down for a few hours due to their proximity to the blaze, according to the fire district. PG&E also surveyed several power poles for damage. The cause of the fire is still under investigation, Aubert said. Fire officials said this was the first large vegetation fire of the year in the county. No injuries were reported as a result of the blaze. A 32-year-old Clearlake man was arrested early Monday morning after leading police on a short pursuit, according to Hercules police. The suspect, whose name wasn't immediately released, was pulled over just before 12:50 a.m. Monday in a gray 2012 Dodge Charger in the area of Willow Avenue and Viewpoint Boulevard, police said. According to police, the suspect was determined to be a felon on parole. As the officer attempted to ask the suspect to get out of his vehicle, police said he fled. During the pursuit that lasted a little more than one mile, the suspect appeared ready to turn into a driveway, but then backed into patrol cars who attempted to block him in and rammed into two patrol cars, police said. The suspect was able to get away for a short period of time, but soon abandoned the vehicle in the 800 block of Coral Drive. He was captured a short time later. According to police, a search of the vehicle determined the suspect was allegedly in possession of a loaded, high-capacity, 30-round magazine on the front-passenger floorboard. Police said the suspect tossed a gun from his possession sometime during the pursuit and it was recovered a short distance from where the suspect was taken into custody. The firearm, a .40-caliber semi-automatic handgun, was also loaded with a 15-round magazine. No officers were injured during the pursuit. The suspect was taken to a hospital and was cleared to be transported to the Martinez Detention Facility. Doris Ward, the first African-American woman to be president of the San Francisco Board of Supervisors, has died at 86, city officials said on Monday. Mayor Mark Farrell announced her death and said she was a fearless leader who cared deeply about San Francisco's residents. "Doris was a trailblazing presence whose courage and resolve helped inspire countless others to follow in her footsteps," Farrell said in a statement. Ward had worked for the San Francisco Community College District and the Office of the Assessor-Recorder, in addition to the Board of Supervisors. Farrell said she was compassionate, kind, a valued friend and an admired leader. Current board president London Breed said she was saddened by Ward's passing and expressed gratitude for her leadership. "Women like Doris Ward made it possible for someone like me to serve," Breed wrote on Facebook. Twenty people were displaced by a two-alarm fire at a Motel 7 in Vallejo on Monday afternoon, a fire department spokesman said. The fire in a first-floor room of the motel at 211 Lincoln Road W. was reported around 3:20 p.m. Four other rooms were damaged by smoke or forced entry by firefighters, Vallejo firefighter/paramedic Aaron Klauber said. An occupant of the burning room escaped safely but suffered a minor injury, and a motel employee who tried to put out the fire with a hose suffered smoke inhalation, Klauber said. Firefighters confined the fire to the first-floor room and the motel managers and the American Red Cross assisted the displaced occupants with other housing, Klauber said. Firefighters were at the scene for more than two hours and the cause of the fire is under investigation, Klauber said. A transient was arrested for allegedly throwing industrial cleaning chemicals at a University of California at Berkeley employee in Wheeler Hall earlier this month. Berkeley police arrested William Kearney, 62, after he wandered into the department on Saturday, according to university police Sgt. Andrew Tucker. Kearney was not there to turn himself in, but police found that he matched arrest warrants from university police, Tucker said. Kearney was arrested on suspicion of assault with caustic chemicals and for failing to register as a sex offender in a separate attack. Tucker said the victim of the attack was "shaken" and had minor to moderate chemical burns, but she was grateful to hear Kearney had been arrested. The assault happened on April 4 when the woman encountered Kearney in a restroom at Wheeler Hall. She asked him to leave the bathroom because the building was closed, but he allegedly threw the caustic chemical at her and fled. Tucker said Wheeler Hall has various locks but people "wander in and out" and it is unclear when Kearney entered the building. Kearney is known in Berkeley for several cases, and he is being held on no bail at Santa Rita Jail, according to Tucker. A collision that occurred during what investigators are calling an "unsanctioned street race" sent two men to the hospital early this morning in Watsonville, according to the California Highway Patrol. The two vehicles crashed at 12:35 a.m. on southbound state Highway 1 just north of state Highway 129. A 19-year-old man from the Freedom area of unincorporated Santa Cruz County was at the wheel of a 2011 BMW that crashed through a guardrail, rolled over and landed on West Beach Street. He suffered major injuries and was transported to a hospital with fractures to both legs, according to the CHP. A 23-year-old Watsonville resident was at the wheel of a 2017 Chevrolet that struck a center median before crashing into a tree. He suffered moderate injuries and was transported to a hospital for a complaint of back pain. Both men were wearing their safety belts. Drugs and alcohol are not thought to have been factors in the collision, according to the CHP. ### Bodies of all four members of a Southern California family who went missing earlier this month have been found after a boy's body was found late this afternoon, Mendocino County sheriff's officials said. The Thottapilly family -- Sandeep, 41, Soumya, 38, Siddhant, 12, and Saachi, 9 -- were returning home to Santa Clarita from a vacation in Portland, Oregon, when they were reported missing by a relative who had expected them to show up at their San Jose home on April 6, but still had not seen them two days later, according to San Jose police. SAN JOSE (BCN) A five-alarm fire early this morning at an apartment complex in San Jose sent four people to hospitals and caused firefighters to have to rescue multiple people off of balconies, a fire captain said. The fire was reported at 5:53 a.m. on the second floor of a 36-unit building at 2079 McLaughlin Ave., San Jose Fire Capt. Mitch Matlow said. Fire crews arrived and found people trying to use ropes and sheets to climb down from balconies at the building. About 20 residents on upper floors were eventually helped down with ladders, Matlow said. Fifteen people were treated at the scene but only the four required transport to hospitals, he said. An update on their conditions was not immediately available. A Santa Clara Valley Transportation Authority bus was used to shelter some of the residents. The American Red Cross also responded and has set up a reception center at the complex's clubhouse to assist displaced residents, according to Red Cross spokeswoman Cynthia Shaw. Fire crews remained at the scene as of 9 a.m. to make sure no flames remain hidden in walls of the building, he said. The cause of the blaze has not been determined and authorities do not know how many of the 36 units at the building will still be inhabitable. ### SAN FRANCISCO (BCN) A public workers' advocacy group at a rally in San Francisco today criticized Sen. Dianne Feinstein, D-Calif., and Rep. Nancy Pelosi, D-San Francisco, for allegedly failing to do enough about the cleanup of radiological contamination at the former Hunters Point Naval Shipyard. Members of United Public Workers for Action also charged that the two legislators have failed to protect whistleblowers and called for a criminal investigation of their alleged lack of action. "This is the largest eco-fraud in the United States," group member Steve Zeltzer told a crowd of about 30 supporters in front of the Federal Building. "Why are most of the politicians silent?" he said. The claimed fraud concerns the U.S. Navy's former contract with Tetra Tech EC of Pasadena to remove contamination, including radioactive soil and materials, from about 500 acres of the former shipyard slated for development for industry, offices and housing. A preliminary investigation by the Navy concluded in September that there was evidence of data manipulation or falsification on soil samples taken from two parcels after the cleanup of those sections was supposed to have been completed. The two parcels make up about 40 percent of the property. The Navy said that 49 percent of the soil samples for one parcel were suspect and 15 percent were suspect for the other parcel. A second review of the information by the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency and two state agencies in December revealed more widespread alleged falsification. The EPA review concluded that a total of 97 percent of the samples in one parcel and 90 percent in the other were suspect. The two agencies joining the EPA were the California Department of Toxic Substances Control and Department of Public Health. "In summary, the data analyzed showed a widespread pattern of practices that appear to show deliberate falsification, failure to complete the work in a manner required...or both," John Chesnutt, a regional EPA Superfund manager, wrote to the Navy on Dec. 17, 2017. Chesnutt's letter was made public last week by Washington, D.C.-based Public Employees for Environmental Responsibility after that organization obtained it in a Freedom of Information Act request. Derek Robinson, the Navy's coordinator of the cleanup, said the Navy's next step is to develop a new plan for sampling the soil in consultation with the federal and state regulatory agencies. He said he hopes work will begin on the resampling by the end of the summer. "The Navy is absolutely committed to completing the cleanup as soon as possible and making sure it's thorough," he said. Tetra Tech has not had a contract with the Navy since 2015, he said. Transfer of the property to the city for redevelopment has been put on hold until the cleanup is completed, with the exception of 75 acres transferred to the city in 2004. That section was formerly used for housing and administrative offices and was not seriously polluted. The area, closed as a Navy shipyard in 1974, was designated in 1989 as an EPA Superfund site, having priority as one of the most toxic cleanup sites in the nation. The radiation contamination stemmed from the use of the yard to clean ships exposed to atom bombs and tests and for research on defense against nuclear weapons. Other contaminants from shipyard operations included petroleum compounds, mercury and lead. U.S. Attorney's Office spokesman Abraham Simmons said he could not comment on whether there is a criminal investigation of Tetra Tech or of any legislators. Pelosi spokeswoman Taylor Griffin said, "Leader Pelosi and her staff continue to closely monitor the cleanup of the Hunters Point shipyard. Following comprehensive examinations by the Navy and EPA showing contractor fraud was more extensive than initially believed, her staff is in close touch with both agencies as they formulate an appropriate plan for certain rescanning and retesting. "Public health and safety remains our top concern, while working to ensure the timely delivery of long-awaited housing and jobs when the cleanup is completed," Griffin said. A spokesperson for Feinstein was not immediately available for comment. The Navy began investigating Tetra Tech in 2012 after learning that some purported soil samples came from outside the cleanup locations. In 2016, according to a Navy fact sheet, former cleanup employees additionally alleged that potentially contaminated soil samples were swapped for clean samples, potentially contaminated soil was placed in open trenches in other areas around the shipyard, misleading data reports were prepared and computer data was tampered with to indicate lower levels of radiation. ### The makeup of San Franciscos Police Commission could shift dramatically in the next few weeks, with two members stepping down. Commission President Julius Turman will leave May 4, a year before the end of his second term. His departure coincides with that of Commissioner Bill Ong Hing, who chose not to seek reappointment to the seven-member panel when his term ends April 30. Both Turman and Hing were picked by the Board of Supervisors. Quite frankly, Im burnt out, said Turman, adding that he also wants to devote more attention to his labor and employment law practice. He announced his resignation in December. Over seven years serving on the commission, he helped revise the citys use-of-force policies, approved rules for body-worn cameras and made reforms recommended by President Barack Obamas Justice Department following a string of deadly police shootings. Last month, he helped craft a new policy for electroshock weapons, commonly known as Tasers. Hing, an immigration attorney and University of San Francisco professor, was appointed to the Police Commission in December 2016. He replaced former prosecutor and deputy public defender Victor Hwang, who left after winning a race for San Francisco Superior Court judge. Hing was the lone dissenting vote on the commissions Taser policy. He did not return calls seeking comment about stepping down. Two other commissioners, Joe Marshall and Sonia Melara, also had terms ending in April, but they were reappointed this month by Mayor Mark Farrell. They still have to be confirmed by the supervisors. The pending departures of Turman and Hing have left a cloud of uncertainty over one of San Franciscos most powerful appointed bodies. Its turbulent, said Commissioner Petra DeJesus, adding she had no idea whether the Board of Supervisors had chosen replacements. Board President London Breed was not immediately available for comment. Trying to iron out policy with only five commissioners would be crippling, DeJesus said. She noted that the Board of Supervisors could also change significantly after the June election, potentially delaying the process even more. And what if theres a horrible police shooting in the meantime? DeJesus asked. The shuffle comes at a time when police reform appears to be slowing down in San Francisco, a problem that some experts blame on the Trump administration. U.S. Attorney General Jeff Sessions ended the Justice Departments cooperation on reforms with San Francisco last fall, leaving the city in limbo until the state took over in February. Turman said that though hes troubled by the federal governments at times hostile relationship with the city, it didnt trigger his departure. I feel the commission is going in a positive direction, he said. Thats going to keep going whether Im there or not. Rachel Swan is a San Francisco Chronicle staff writer. Email: rswan@sfchronicle.com Twitter: @rachelswan Nestled among palms and bougainvillea in the hills of Marin's Greenbrae, 65 Corte Amado is part home, part personal resort. It's brand new on the market and listed for $2.6 million. Property The home, built in 1961 but extensively remodeled since, is contemporary in style: modern, clean lines, lots of glass and walnut-colored bamboo. There are approximately 3,000 square feet of living space. Inside are not one, not two, but three living rooms, all of which look out on the lush backyard. The remodel in 2008 yielded a kitchen with eat-in island/generous chopping space (and bright red bar stools). The master bedroom features a walk-in closet and swanky bath overlooking Japanese maples. The star of the property is really outside: Oversized, abundant, tropical greenery and flora grow amid a huge multi-level patio. At the center is a pool (with solar heating and automatic sweep) and hot tub, all of which overlook the panoramic vistas. Local market With close access to the hallowed Kentfield school district, Greenbrae enjoys a median home price of $2.475 million based on sales from the last 30 days. That's $826 per square foot. The sale-to-list ratio is 103 percent. Likely then, 65 Corte Amado will get asking or more. Your own private resort in the sunny hills of Marin County won't come cheaply. See the full listing here. Anna Marie Erwert writes from both the renter and new buyer perspective, having (finally) achieved both statuses. She focuses on national real estate trends, specializing in the San Francisco Bay Area and Pacific Northwest. Follow Anna on Twitter: @AnnaMarieErwert The French way of doing things often arouses envy among Americans. Leisurely, wine-soaked lunches during the workday, outfits transformed by the perfect accessory, effortlessly elegant dinner parties, perfectly behaved kidsendless ink has been spilled trying to explain just how they do it. The latest entry in the file labeled "French People Do It Better" focuses on the home. So if you're looking to add a little je ne sais quoi to your place, you might want to peruse the recently published "Home Sweet Maison: The French Art of Making a Home." American writer Danielle Postel-Vinay spent a few years in France dissecting the differences in how Americans and the French treat their abodes. She says the biggest misconception among Americans about adopting French style is that you can just mix in some French-like objects (e.g., a framed photo of the Eiffel Tower and some ornate antiques) and voila, you're all set. Adding these things may show that you are a fan of the French way of life, but will not transform your living space and your life, she says. In other words, its about more than just their decor; its about how the French actually live in their homes. So how do the French do it? For starters, every room (or space) has a role. This new book gives a fresh perspective on how the French live in their homes. HarperCollins Americans generally shape their space to fit what they need at the moment," she says. "But in a French home, each room has a more or less singular function, which makes the experience in that room more exclusive and enjoyable. Here's more on how the French treat their home, room by room, space by space. 1. Entryway/L'entree The French way: Less isnt more in the entryway; more is more. This is the place they make their first impression on guests, and the French believe in sharing what they're all about through a collection of meaningful items visitors will see the minute they walk through the door. To cop the look: The more personalized items you bring to your entry, the better," says Postel-Vinay. "I love paintings and pictures hung frame to frame so that an entire wall is full of color and image. I love shelves full of treasures, books, and precious objects. Just make sure that there is artistry and care taken to how you arrange your belongings. Maximalist principles are not a license to accumulate clutter. Another French addition to an entryway is fragrance. And we're not talking about artificial aerosolwe mean natural scents such as jasmine, lavender, and sandalwood, from essential oils or candles, to which the homeowner has a personal connection. 2. Kitchen/La cuisine Photo by Frank Shirley Architects The French way: A kitchen is about efficiency and practicality, with everything in its place and no frills. It's the place for preparing food, not the gathering place it often is in American homes. A French host would almost never allow guests in the kitchen, Postel-Vinay says. To cop the look: Dish towels, glassware, and dishes are typically uniform in color or brand. There's a place for everything, and items are always put back in their place. The French also embrace emptiness in the refrigerator and pantry, and keep just fresh ingredients and a few staples such as mustard, pickles, olive oil, and sparkling water. 3. Dining room/Salle a manger The French way: One of the most important rooms in the house, a dining room isn't a place that becomes one with the kitchen. Rather, its a room devoted simply to eating. If you dont have a separate dining room, Postel-Vinay says, you can create the feel of one with a rug and distinct lighting over the dining table to make it feel separate. To cop the look: This is a room for formality. A dining table big enough to accommodate family and friends plays a starring role, while furniture such as a hutch or cabinet should be included to hold linens, candleholders, vases, and other items used to dine. Lighting, preferably with a dimmer to set the mood, is also key. 4. Bathroom/Salle de bain The French way: One of the rooms the French are least passionate about, the bathroom is all about business, with few frills. Clean, chic, and even a bit severe, Postel-Vinay says, there is very little pleasure to be found in the French bathroom. To cop the look: The most French thing you can add to your bathroom is a bidet, Postel-Vinay says. Ideally, it will be a separate one next to the toilet; however, if you dont have room, a combination toilet/bidet will do. An electric towel warmer and a perfume or natural scent that can be spritzed as necessary are frequent staples as well. 5. Bedroom/La chambre The French way: According to Postel-Vinay, the French have a clear objective for the bedroom: to take off their clothes and get under the sheets. Their bedrooms are not fussy and tend to be neutral in color, without TVs or excess furniture. Remember, your bedroom is for bed, not for meals, family discussions, or work, she writes. Use the room for what it is intended, and it will bring you rest and joy. To cop the look: No bed-in-bag herePostel-Vinay says the French way is a comforter stuffed in a duvet cover. Bedding is all the same color without pattern, and there's no need for a flat sheet since theres always a duvet cover, which can be removed and put in the wash. 6. Laundry room/La laverie The French way: This room isnt so much about aesthetics but the effective cleaning of your clothing and linens and knowing how to fold them correctly (fitted sheet, anyone?). And get thisthey iron everything. You can take or leave that one, but Postel-Vinay says French laundry techniques are life-changing. To cop the look: The French often have a stain removal toolbox and use simple products such as white vinegar and homemade detergents instead of harsh chemical cleaners. They also frequently air-dry clothes rather than using a machine, which saves money and extends the life of fabrics. The post How the French Keep House: 6 Secrets You'll Be Dying to Steal appeared first on Real Estate News & Insights | realtor.com. YANGON, Myanmar Myanmar President Win Myint has granted amnesty to more than 8,500 prisoners, reportedly including at least three dozen political prisoners. The amnesty, announced Tuesday, coincided with Myanmars traditional New Year. It was granted to 8,490 Myanmar citizens and 51 foreigners. A statement from presidential spokesman Zaw Thay said those released included the aged, people in ill health and drug offenders. None was individually named. It also said 36 of those freed had been listed as political prisoners by the independent Assistance Association for Political Prisoners. The releases were to take place at prisons nationwide. Relatives and friends of those held waited Tuesday outside the gates at Insein Prison, in the northern outskirts of Yangon, where it was expected that more than 300 prisoners, including eight political detainees, would be released. As they came through the gate, the released prisoners looked excited, though many were reluctant to be interviewed. One of those freed was Saw War Lay, a member of the Karen ethnic minority who was arrested in 2006 and is serving a life sentence for his connection with the Karen National Union ethnic rebel group. I really would like to say many thanks to the president. And I wish he will be successful in his peace process, he said, referring to government efforts to reach an agreement with all the ethnic minorities to end decades of conflict. But I am so sad for those prisoners who (are) still inside. Win Myint became president last month, after his predecessor, Htin Kyaw, stepped down because of illness. The release of political prisoners was a priority of Aung San Suu Kyis National League for Democracy party when it took over power from a pro-military government in March 2016. Suu Kyi is the countrys de facto leader, holding the specially created post of state counselor. 1 Stranded in Mexico: Hundreds of travelers from Minnesota were stuck in Mexico after a storm at homed forced Sun Country Airlines to cancel the last flights of its seasonal service. Travelers were stranded in Los Cabos and Mazatlan. Sun Country said the passengers will receive a refund for the return portion of their flight. Airline spokeswoman Kelsey Dodson-Smith said the airline couldnt send other planes to collect the passengers because it would mean canceling other flights to other destinations. 2 Brazil protest: Members of a homeless movement briefly occupied the beachfront apartment that sits at the center of the corruption case against former President Luiz Inacio Lula da Silva. Judges ruled the apartment in the city of Guaruja was promised to da Silva as a kickback from a construction company. He is appealing the conviction and 12-year sentence. Homeless movement organizer Guilherme Boulos said Monday that da Silvas arrest is a judicial farce. WASHINGTON The White House says a decision on new economic sanctions against Russia will be made soon not committing to an announcement Monday that U.N. Ambassador Nikki Haley had said to expect. In a statement, White House press secretary Sarah Huckabee Sanders said: We are considering additional sanctions on Russia and a decision will be made in the near future. Haley had said Sunday that new sanctions were coming against Russia for enabling the government of Syrian leader Bashar Assad to continue using chemical weapons. She said Treasury Secretary Steven Mnuchin will be announcing those on Monday, if he hasnt already. She said Russia has blocked six attempts by the U.N. Security Council to make it easier to investigate the use of chemical weapons. Everyone is going to feel it at this point, Haley said, warning of consequences for Assads foreign allies. The fact he was making this more normal and that Russia was covering this up, all that has got to stop. Haley made clear the United States wont be pulling troops out of Syria right away, saying U.S. involvement there is not done. Haley said the three U.S. goals for accomplishing its mission are making sure chemical weapons are not used in a way that could harm U.S. national interests, defeating the Islamic State group and having a good vantage point to watch what Iran is doing. Were not going to leave until we know weve accomplished those things, she said. The nighttime assault on Syria was carefully limited to minimize civilian casualties and avoid direct conflict with Russia, but confusion arose over the extent to which Washington warned Moscow it was coming. The Pentagon said it gave no explicit warning. The U.S. ambassador in Moscow, John Huntsman, said in a video, Before we took action, the United States communicated with Russia to reduce the danger of any Russian or civilian casualties. Russia has military forces, including air defenses, in several areas of Syria to support Assad in his long war against antigovernment rebels. Hope Yen and Robert Burns are Associated Press writers. To continue, please log in, or sign up for a new account. We offer one free story view per month. If you register for an account, you will get two additional story views. After those three total views, we ask that you support us with a subscription. A subscription to our digital content is so much more than just access to our valuable content. It means youre helping to support a local community institution that has, from its very start, supported the betterment of our society. Thank you very much! Bank of Queensland is the latest lender to offload is life insurance business, as lenders concentrate on their core business of retail and business banking. The Brisbane-based bank will sell its life business, St Andrew's Insurance, to listed group Freedom Insurance for $65 million, with BOQ agreeing to distribute the insurance policies for three years. BOQ chief executive Jon Sutton said conditions in life insurance had changed "dramatically." Credit:Dominic Lorrimer The deal, which came as BOQ delivered 4 per cent growth in first-half profit to $182 million, follows moves by National Australia Bank, Commonwealth Bank and ANZ Bank to slash their exposure to life insurance, an industry that has been dogged by weak returns. St Andrews has made a strong contribution to the BOQ Group since its acquisition in 2010, but industry and business dynamics have changed dramatically in recent years," BOQ managing director Jon Sutton said. These changing conditions now mean St Andrews is a better long-term strategic fit for Freedom. Having declined its right to purchase leased facilities from its existing landlord, data centre operator NextDC has moved swiftly to buy its own land for three new capital city facilities at a cost of around $170 million. The expansion, unveiled yesterday, will be funded by a $281 million capital raising, underpinned by a cornerstone investment from industry super fund UniSuper. An Asia Pacific Data Centre in Sydney operated by NextDC. Credit:Gary Gross Photography Citing unprecedented demand for cloud storage, the company said it was in advanced negotiations to buy the three sites. While the company did not specify the exact locations they are in inner northern Sydney, East Perth and the emerging data centre hub of Port Melbourne. London: Qantas' "out there" idea to develop a new travel class in the cargo hold is aimed at getting middle-class Americans to shake off their reluctance to fly long-haul across the Pacific, Fairfax Media has learned. Last month, Fairfax Media revealed Qantas chief executive Alan Joyce had begun exploring a new "cargo class" concept which could be installed on super long-haul direct flights from Sydney to the US and London. Qantas is exploring the unconventional idea of flying passengers in the cargo hold. The idea, while still in incubation, could involve lie-flat bunk berths, which Airbus has announced it is developing in partnership with Zodiac Aerospace, or it could be a common area for stretching, exercise and relaxation. The idea is likely to be pitched to premium economy customers who would be allocated a time during the flight that they could use below deck. In March, Qantas debuted its first non-stop route between Australia and the United Kingdom and, while it won't provide data, it says bookings on the Perth to London leg have been very strong, particularly in business class. Joyce wants Qantas to fly from Australias east coast to London by 2022. Fading the fear that has grabbed investors from different global developments appears to be the global play at hand. US stocks rose on earnings Tuesday while key haven currency, the Swiss Franc traded to the lowest level against the EUR in three years. Strong Q1 GDP and retail sales data from China show that below the fear that economic growth remains though without the upside shocks that we had a few months ago. 1. ASX: The local sharemarket is poised to open higher, with futures pointing to a 24-point gain at the open. The question is whether the acceleration in sentiment through the past few active sessions will stretch far enough to give the Aussie index a more serious leg higher. Pre-dawn trading doesn't support genuine breakout pressure just yet. Looking into the sector breakdown, the info tech outperformance fits the global headlines, but the breadth of the green is where we should look to support a genuine trend. The lackluster volume behind this index certainly won't do it alone. 2. Wall Street receives a boost from Netflix earnings: Trade wars and Syria concerns may still be humming in the background for global investors, but that doesn't seem to be enough to keep speculative appetites in check. Following the general build up in risk appetite through Tuesday's trading session, the US markets picked up with the optimism to produce a broad bullish gap on the New York open. For the Dow and S&P 500, the jump through the open registers as bullish breakouts for three weeks of congestion. 3. IMF: The IMF's World Economic Outlook (WEO) provides some degree of enthusiasm with a 3.9 per cent pace of global growth in 2018 and 2019, but the projection further out starts to take on a cautious tone. In the here-and-now, traders were happy to have their speculative interests sated by Netflix's after hour's earnings late Monday. Earnings per share rose $0.64 compared to $0.63 expected on $3.7 billion in revenue. The real charge from this FANG member was the 7.41 million new users. As encouraging as the news is and from such a prominent market leader, this will not having the sway necessary to carry a new bull trend. We will need a steady drip feed of 'good news' if this climb is to prove significant. Australia is growing faster than most of the global markets and is now outplacing the US in terms of fintech adoption, says Noah Breslow, the chief executive of US online SME lending company OnDeck Capital, which has delivered more than $US8 billion in loans to 80,000 small businesses globally. He told the third AltFi Australasia Summit in Sydney on Monday that Australia is now the second-largest alternative finance market in the Asia-Pacific region. Noah Breslow of OnDeck. Credit:Louie Douvis We are looking at an industry that did $10 million of annual volume these are numbers from KPMG in 2013, and in 2016 that had grown to $220 million. Breslow said according to OnDeck estimates, based on our own growth and the growth of other players in the industry collectively, 2018 could see around $700 million of annual volume just here in Australia. Canberra's small and medium-sized businesses are the most confident in the country, according to a new survey that shows a big jump in their support for the ACT government. The ACT's business confidence rating went up two percentage points to +54 in the Sensis Business Index survey for the March quarter, with an increase in sales the driving factor. But the biggest growth came in business support for the territory government, which rose 21 percentage points to +9 on the index. Sensis chief executive John Allan said an increase in infrastructure spending and the perception of a supportive government was behind the wave of support. Canberra Business Chamber chief executive Robyn Hendry said with the ACT government now in the second year of its four-year cycle, there was more certainty for businesses. It was a bruising 24 hours for the outspoken Fox News host, who sat himself uneasily between claims that he was not a client of Cohen's but, equally, that their relationship ought to have been protected by "attorney-client privilege". He also made contradictory statements on television and radio, telling his TV audience "I never paid Michael Cohen" and telling his radio audience "I might have handed him ten bucks." He also told his TV audience "I never retained his services" but told his radio audience "I definitely want attorney-client privilege on this." Via his social media account, Hannity published a statement saying Cohen had "never represented" him. "I never retained him, received an invoice, or paid legal fees. I have occasionally had brief discussions with him about legal questions about which I wanted his input and perspective," Hannity said. "I assumed those conversations were confidential, but to be absolutely clear they never involved any matter between me and a third-party." Hannity described the media reaction to him being named in court as "wild speculation". The Fox News host also said he had no "personal interest in this proceeding", referring to the seizing of documents from Cohen's home, office and hotel room by FBI agents on April 9 and the subsequent court proceedings to determine how those seized documents will be handled. Hannity said his dealings with Cohen were "almost exclusively about real estate". At issue is the volume level with which Hannity publicly criticised the FBI raid on Cohen's office, while never mentioning that he was Cohen's client. Shepard Smith, another presenter on Fox News, described it as the "elephant in the room", while lawyer Alan Dershowitz, a regular contributor to Fox News, criticised Hannity's failure to disclose the connection between the two. Hannity was also reminded publicly of his own stance against ABC News anchor George Stephanopoulos when it was revealed, in 2015, that Stephanopoulos had donated money to the Clinton Foundation but failed to disclose it on air. "How could he possibly have not known that he should reveal this?" Hannity said at the time. The now disclosed connection between Hannity and Cohen has also amplified discussions in US media about the uncomfortably close relationship between the government and the right-wing media machine which serves as its cheerleader. Hannity, notably, was an adviser on messaging and strategy during the Trump presidential campaign in 2016 and has subsequently dined with the president at both the White House and Trump's privately owned Florida club property Mar-a-Lago. Being named as one of Cohen's clients might not seem that unusual were it not for the fact that Cohen has a small client roster. Since 2017, Cohen told the court, he has had only ten clients and seven of those received "strategic advice and business consulting". The other three were named as Donald Trump, Republican fund-raiser Elliott Broidy and a third, unnamed client whom Cohen did not want to name as the client, he told the court, had requested anonymity. United States District Court judge Kimba M. Wood then directed Cohen's lawyer Stephen Ryan name the client, noting that such relationships were not naturally insulated from court proceedings. Cohen then named Hannity as the third client, eliciting audible gasps from observers in the viewing gallery. Attorney Michael Avenatti, who is representing porn actress Stormy Daniels, described it as like "a bomb went off." How the media storm ignited by the revelation plays out remains to be seen, but Fox News is unlikely to withdraw backing from their star racehorse: Hannity's program is a ratings-winner for the network, which has only just got past bruising headlines from the Roger Ailes and Bill O'Reilly scandals. The Washington Post took aim at the complex matrix of relationships and blamed the "phenomenally low expectations" Hannity set for himself. Australian fashion designer Carla Zampatti is known for her support of local music, dance, theatre, and other not-for-profits. Yet it only recently occurred to Zampatti, 75, that she ought to put her money where her career is. "I suddenly thought, 'Why am I not supporting the most important part of my life fashion design?" she said this week. Carla Zampatti (right) with the inaugural winner of the Carla Zampatti Foundation Design Award, Sarah Lim. Credit:Louise Kennerley To give aspiring designers "that little extra something", Zampatti has created a new $25,000 annual award to give a fashion honours student at UTS the opportunity to further their studies overseas. Marijuana legalisation rally in Martin Place, Sydney on July 04, 1978. Credit:Fairfax Media The physical effects of smoking it are a reddening of the eyes, a dryness of the mouth, and a marked increase in appetite. Beyond this, however, any description must be hazy. Not only do the effects depend to a large extent on the individual, but most reports are highly subjective, and therefore not absolutely reliable. However, a recent issue of World Health the magazine of the World Health Organisation, reported as follows: "The general effects seem to be the liberation of certain inhibitions, accompanied by mild hallucinations. There is usually a feeling of foolish well-being, often marked by uncontrollable laughter and giggling. It does not appear to affect sleeping habits... it promotes hilarity, talkativeness and increased sociability." Don Lane, leaves the court in Phillip Street, Sydney, after a court hearing into his alleged possession of illegal drugs, 29 March 1968. Credit:Staff photographer A 22-year-old graduate of an Ivy League college in the United States, Mr Andrew Gavin, wrote last year: "At first, I was only dimly aware of any increased sensitivity to sight and sounds; holding the smoke in my lungs made me dizzy." After a few more tries over a few weeks, he went on: "It then induced a pleasant feeling of relaxation, a light-headedness, and increased awareness of colours, a more acute ear for music." Advocates of legalising marijuana see a positive danger in the present prohibition. They say that somebody who tries pot and finds it doesn't hurt him is the more easily induced to try heroin, since both are illegal and the penalties pretty much identical. Health officials in Washington estimate that 20 million Americans may have tried pot at least once, and that between 300,000 and 4.5 million smoke it regularly. Estimates in Australia seem to be less reliable. Most pot parties, rather than "like orgies in Californian fleshpots, or stupefaction in Moroccan cellars," as one Australian journal put it, in fact are remarkably tranquil. Legally, marihuana is considered a narcotic, and is classed together with heroin and morphine. As a matter of form, marihuana has been outlawed in Australia, and now severe penalties exist for those found smoking it, or having it in their possession. Some argue that society should not legislate against pot, since it is a private experience, and seldom affects anybody else outside the group smoking it. Against this, it is sometimes urged that it is necessary often to protect the individual against himself, against his more harmful desires. This argument has been considered by Dr Duncan Chappell, lecturer in Criminal Law and Criminology at Sydney's Law School. Dr Chappell wrote in Quadrant recently: "We assume that society has an interest in the personal health and welfare of its citizens... society and the law are, however, inconsistent in their attitudes in this field. For while we may compel a drug addict to seek a cure for his illness, we do not compel someone who has a potentially fatal illness, to submit to an operation." That the law is inconsistent in this regard does not mean that the law on marihuana is wrong in itself. Dr Chappell admits that marihuana frees one's inhibitions, and suppressed desires and wishes. He distinguishes, however, between desire and performance. This is substantiated by Dr Sandford Feighglass, of the University of California Medical School, who was quoted in Newsweek last year as saying: "Even if it does in fact release one's inhibitions, it is not proved that one will be moved to act." Dr Chappell says that by banning marihuana society is probably stimulating its use. He says that many who smoke marihuana are doing so as an act of defiance against authority. There is much to be said for the argument advanced by Dr Chappell and others that to separate the sources of hard and soft drugs by allowing marihuana lo be purchased in the local store would probably make it more difficult for people to get drugs like heroin. Those using marihuana would then never need to come into contact with a peddler at present the only source of hard drugs. One of the most powerful arguments against the use of marihuana rests on the finding that, among heroin addicts, a very large proportion took marihuana before graduating to heroin. This argument led Judge Charles Wyzanski in the United States to say: "It is of course absurd to say that because most users of heroin first used marihuana it proved to be a preliminary step to heroin addiction. One might as well say that, because most users of heroin once imbibed milk, milk leads to heroin." This was refuted by Ferdinand Mount, who dubbed it a "patently false analogy." To him: "Everybody has imbibed milk, but a very small proportion of the population has used marihuana. To say that from this small number are drawn almost all the even smaller number of heroin addicts is to remark on a significant association between the use of marihuana and addiction to heroin. The association is striking enough lo give rise to considerable concern." David Ausubel, in his book, 'Drug Addiction, Psychological and Sociological Aspects', stresses that habitual users of drugs have most frequently inadequate personalities. Heroin addicts, then, are an unstable minority. It is unfair to use them as an example, since there is a very marked distinction between their behaviour and that of an ordinary, pretty-well-balanced person. Confronted with the mass of argument on either side in America, the President's Commission on Law Enforcement and the Administration of Justice stated: "There are too many marihuana users who do not graduate to heroin, and too many heroin addicts with no known prior marihuana use, to support such a theory." Authorities hope a new and improved vaccine, plus two new "super vaccines" will help Australia avoid a repeat of last years record flu season. The new influenza season is unlikely to be anywhere near as bad as the severe season we had last year, which was the biggest on record, says Professor Robert Booy, director of the Immunisation Coalition a group part-funded by the companies that make our flu vaccine. There were almost a quarter of a million confirmed flu infections last year, and more than 29,000 hospitalisations including as many as 1100 deaths. Pharmacist Jane Mitchell administers the flu shot at Ascot Vale Pharmacy. Credit:Chris Hopkins That was caused by two pieces of bad luck. First, the H3 strain was in high circulation last year, and it is the most dangerous to the elderly. Compounding that, the flu vaccine was particularly ineffective against H3 last year. The good news is that an end is in sight, just possibly, to this dismal period of politics being allowed to trump the national and global interest. On Friday, Federal Energy Minister Josh Frydenberg will meet his state counterparts in Canberra for a Council of Australian Governments meeting that will decide if work is to continue on the Turnbull Government's National Energy Guarantee. And if that is not a sufficient wake-up call, how about the fact our bushfire season this year looks like stretching to Anzac Day? During this whole lost decade of fighting the ''climate wars'' rather than climate change, the challenge has only become steeper. Under the 2015 Paris climate deal, Australia agreed to reduce greenhouse gas emissions by at least 26 per cent by 2030. Yet Australia's carbon pollution has risen in each of the past five years. Back in 2007, Kevin Rudd famously declared climate change ''the great moral challenge of our generation''. Moral or not, that challenge has been met in the intervening years with policy paralysis and blame-shifting. And like a political grim reaper, it has cut a swathe through the leadership of the major parties. The NEG is far from perfect but it is the most promising compromise that has appeared for a long time on the horizon of the interlocking climate and energy debates. It imposes a twin obligation on energy retailers to reduce carbon emissions and at the same time maintain reliability standards. If it works properly, it promises to drive investment in baseload energy supply, support the transition to renewables, prevent avoidable blackouts, and short-circuit soaring household energy bills. But obstacles remain and COAG is one of them. Thanks to political leaders at all levels placing loyalty to their party above their constituencies, COAG has frequently been the place where reform goes to die. There is almost always an election looming up somewhere to derail bipartisanship and the present moment is no exception, with Victoria, NSW, and possibly the Commonwealth all set to go to the polls over the next 12 months. On the other side of the ledger, Steven Marshall's recent South Australian Liberal victory removes one obstacle, in the form of that state's headlong rush to renewables under former Premier Jay Weatherill. The most promising sign of all is that federal Labor is edging towards the NEG tent. Labor wants deeper cuts to emissions than those agreed under Paris but has realised the NEG, far from being an obstacle, may be a tool towards achieving those cuts. This is because, with parliamentary backing, the emissions targets under the NEG could be ratcheted up under a future Government. Other imperfections of the scheme including too-intermittent reviews, or the possibility states could be punished for pursuing more ambitious targets could likewise be rectified. A breakthrough on the NEG would be a major victory for Prime Minister Malcolm Turnbull, as well as burnishing Energy Minister Josh Frydenberg's future leadership credentials. But Labor leader Bill Shorten could also gain stature by showing he is capable of recognising a moment when real progress beckons and grasping it. Such sweet reasonableness could even become a template for tackling the unanswered problem of how to reduce greenhouse emissions in other parts of the economy without imposing unnecessary costs and hitting jobs. Usman Iftikhar posing with Prince Harry after winning the Commonwealth Youth Award for 2018 in London. Credit:AP London: A young Australian engineer who helps refugees start their own business has been awarded a top Commonwealth honour in London to recognise outstanding contributions to the community. Usman Iftikhar came to Australia from Pakistan with a degree in engineering but found it challenging to get meaningful work in his new home in Sydney, even after doing a masters degree in engineering management. He used that experience to create a social venture company in Parramatta that helps refugees and migrants establish startup companies in areas ranging from food to 3D printing. Prince Harry gave Mr Iftikhar the Commonwealth Young Person of the Year award at a forum in London attended by hundreds of young delegates from across the 53 member nations of the Commonwealth. Former Canterbury councillor Michael Hawatt is at the centre of a corruption inquiry. Credit:Brendan Esposito Former Canterbury councillor Michael Hawatt is alleged to have received $300,000 from a developer which he used to purchase a Gold Coast apartment, a corruption inquiry has heard. The Independent Commission Against Corruption is investigating allegations that Mr Hawatt, former councillor Pierre Azzi, then general manager Jim Montague and Spiro Stavis, the former director of planning, dishonestly exercised their official functions. Mr Azzi was a lieutenant of former premier Morris Iemma, according to statements tendered at the inquiry. Other witness statements indicate that Mr Iemma took a keen interest in the goings on at council and was called upon to try to sort out some of the infighting between the various parties. The man convicted of murdering Queensland schoolgirl Jayde Kendall is set to appeal over the decision on Tuesday. A Brisbane Supreme Court jury last year found Brenden Bennetts guilty of killing the 16-year-old and dumping her body in a field on the outskirts of Gatton in 2015. Jayde Kendall went missing in 2015. Jayde was last seen getting into her killer's red Toyota Corolla after school about 3.20pm on Friday, August 14. Her body was discovered 13 days later. EDITOR'S NOTE: The High Court overturned Cardinal George Pell's conviction for historic child sex offences in a judgment handed down April 7, 2020. In a unanimous decision all seven High Court judges found Victoria's Court of Appeal should not have upheld Pell's conviction It found the evidence could not support a guilty verdict. Allegations of sexual abuse against George Pell were the stuff of fantasy, impossible and made by witnesses with no credibility, the cardinal's lawyer has told a court as he sought to have charges against Australia's most senior Catholic thrown out. Defence counsel Robert Richter, QC, on Tuesday urged magistrate Belinda Wallington to discharge Cardinal Pell of multiple historic sexual abuse charges rather than commit him to stand trial, because, he said, there was no way a jury could find the charges proven. Cardinal George Pell arrives at court during last month's hearing. Credit:AP Cardinal Pell must now wait a fortnight before learning whether he will front a jury in a higher court, as Ms Wallington takes time to consider written and oral submissions from the 76-year-old's defence team and prosecutors. Ms Wallington will announce her decision on May 1. A former senior UK fire chief will be the new boss of the Metropolitan Fire Brigade. Dan Stephens, a leading fire fighter in the UK's north west, has stepped down from his role as chief fire officer of the Merseyside region in order to take on the MFB position. According to UK newspaper Liverpool Echo, Mr Stephens gained notoriety for his fierce opposition to government budget cuts. Dan Stephens was the Chief Fire Officer of the Merseyside Fire and Rescue Authority for seven years. He announced he was leaving his position at Merseyside on Monday and a press release from the Merseyside Fire Brigade stated that he would be moving to Australia after accepting the role of the chief executive officer of the MFB. Trinity Grammar deputy principal Rohan Brown greets students on Tuesday morning. Credit:Joe Armao There were smiles, tears and hugs at the gates of Trinity Grammar as deputy headmaster Rohan Brown made an emotional return to his beloved school. Students shook Mr Brown's hand and embraced him as they filed into the schoolyard on Tuesday morning, almost six weeks after the popular teacher was sacked for cutting a boy's hair. Among the sea of green and gold blazers was the boy whose blonde locks were chopped by Mr Brown last term. His identity has been kept secret but Mr Brown told reporters he looked magnificent. Zabi Ezedyar. Plasterer Zabi Ezedyar was visiting a Narre Warren home when he was shot several times from behind when he reached the front door and died on the pavement outside. The Kurrajong Road property was home to underworld figure Mohammed Keshtiar aka Afghan Ali who was just out of jail and paroled to live at the house with his parents. With nothing in his background to suggest he could be the target of the deadly shooting, homicide detectives are investigating the real possibility that 26-year-old Mr Ezedyar is the victim of yet another botched bikie gang shooting. Three months earlier, and just over 15 kilometres away in Keysborough, 22-year-old Mohammed "Mo" Yucel opened the garage door of his friend's place. He ducked out into the rear laneway and was about to walk the few hundred metres home when he was gunned down. Homicide squad detectives have launched a fresh appeal in the case of missing man Dean Patrick White, who was last seen in WA's Wheatbelt region last year. Mr White was last seen on March 31 in Quairading. Dean Patrick White was last seen on March 31 last year. Credit:WA Police The 55-year-old arrived in the town by car from Victoria to visit a friend. Affectionately known as 'Whitey', he lived a transient lifestyle and was known to travel across Australia in his white Toyota Landcruiser utility. Attorney General John Quigley is seeking advice from the Solicitor General in relation to a petition for clemency of Scott Austic, who claims he is doing time for a murder he did not commit. Austic was jailed for life over the 2007 stabbing murder of Stacey Thorne in the town of Boddington, 120 kilometres south-east of Perth. Scott Austic, in 2016, in a picture supplied by his family. Credit:Austic Family Austic, his lawyers and his family have always maintained he did not commit the crime. As reported by WAtoday last month Austic's legal team has sent a petition for clemency to the Attorney General in an attempt to get the case sent back to the Court of Appeal. Crystalline water and big, gorgeous waves attract surfers to the mouth of Margaret River in southwest Australia. Less clear is what has recently drawn at least one large, aggressive shark to this coastline. It might be the whale carcass rotting on one of the surf breaks. Maybe it's the surfers themselves - several of whom, in any case, have refused to let a little shark mauling spoil their fun. Ambulances arrive at the South West surf break after the first attack this week. Attacks are a known risk on these beaches. A relatively small shark bit off a chunk of someone's foot in January. A Margaret River resident wasn't so lucky in 2013, when he became the area's third shark fatality in a decade. Last week, a group of American surfers were preparing for this month's Margaret River Pro tournament when they saw a splash in the water. They flew a drone overhead, and subsequently narrated an Instagram video of two large, finned shadows prowling the shoreline. Up to 100 per cent of the population growth in some Australian suburbs has come from migration, as falling birth rates and an ageing population rapidly change the makeup of key Liberal seats in Sydney and Melbourne. The new figures, in a Treasury and the Department of Home Affairs research paper examining the economic benefits of immigration, show the electorates of Turnbull government ministers including Josh Frydenberg and Kelly ODwyer are entirely reliant on migrants for their growth. Australia's population climbed by 6 million between 1996 and 2016 - 75 per cent of which has been centred on increasingly congested capital cities. In that same period, migration accounted for 54 per cent of the overall population increase. But a new analysis of Census data shows in suburbs of Sydney and Melbourne, that figure is much higher. In parts of Sydney, such as Ryde, Parramatta, the inner-west, north Sydney, Hornsby, and the eastern suburbs, migrants accounted for more than 70 per cent of the increase in population. In Melbourne's inner-east, migrants accounted for 100 per cent of the population growth once various movements are taken into account. The Department of Home Affairs has rebuffed the CPSU's alternative resolution to the pay stoush that has dogged the department for almost five years. The Fair Work Commission held its final hearing on the matter on Tuesday, with the government's lawyer saying the proposal "should not be accepted". The main public sector union put forward an alternative proposal in its closing statement to a full bench of the Fair Work Commission on Monday, suggesting the commission could make a decision that would preserve terms and conditions within the agreement that covered staff under the then Department of Immigration and Citizenship, with an attached schedule that would preserve the terms and conditions that apply to staff within Australian Border Force that are covered under the previous Customs agreement. The CPSU said the option could come into play if the commission did not accept either side's argument in full. Paul O'Grady QC, acting for the government, told the full bench on Tuesday that the union's proposal would create more work in their decision making, rather than easing the burden. London: Foreign Minister Julie Bishop has doubled down on Australia's request that the United Kingdom divert its aid budget to the Pacific after Brexit, however she insisted she is not telling Britain how to spend its money. On Monday, the Minister for International Development and the Pacific, Concetta Fierravanti-Wells, called on the UK to divert more of their aid to the Pacific, where China has been showering tiny island states with cheap loans and aid projects. Loading The issue was highlighted by Fairfax Media's reports last week, revealing that China has sounded out Vanuatu about establishing a naval base on the island. Senator Fierravanti-Wells told two separate events on the sidelines of the Commonwealth Heads of Government meeting (CHOGM) in London that, according to government research, 80 per cent of Australians surveyed do not think there should be any further spending on foreign aid. The Turnbull government has decided against posthumously promoting one of Australia's greatest war heroes in a verdict that will disappoint some senior ministers but appease military leaders who feared any change would undermine all ranks across the Defence Force. After years of debate, Fairfax Media can reveal Sir John Monash, the general who led Australian and other troops to a series of battles that helped end World War I, will not be elevated to field marshal the highest rank in the Australian Army. Prime Minister Malcolm Turnbull has decided against the promotion, despite pleas from Opposition Leader Bill Shorten, former deputy prime minister Tim Fischer, and several Coalition MPs including Environment and Energy Minister Josh Frydenberg. Sir John Monash at his headquarters in Villers-Bretonneux soon after being appointed Lieutenant-General. Credit:Australian War Memorial Former governor-general Michael Jeffery, who wrote to Mr Turnbull to oppose any promotion, praised the Prime Minister's decision on Tuesday. The state government has rejected a plan to create a Silicon Valley-style technology hub on the old rail yards near Redfern, leaving tech giant Google once again searching for Australian headquarters. The hub, which would have created as many as 19,000 jobs, would have been Googles new base but cabinets infrastructure committee last week rejected the proposal because it did not meet a uniqueness test. Developer Mirvac submitted a plan through the governments unsolicited proposal process to redevelop the site next to Carriageworks at Eveleigh into a tech hub with Google as the anchor tenant, the Herald revealed last month. However, the proposal failed at the first hurdle after the government stated its preference for the land, which is owned by Transport for NSW, to be developed through a competitive open process. The company charged with administering millions of Australian internet domain name registrations faces the axe if it can not undertake significant reform, following a months-long review of its operations. A review into the administration of the .au top-level domain, the findings of which will be released by the Turnbull government on Wednesday, found that the companys membership model and lack of checks and balances had impeded its decision making and made it unstable. Communications Minister Mitch Fifield says auDA needs to change its ways. Credit:AAP In a statement, Communications Minister Mitch Fifield echoed the review's findings that the organisation was not fit-for-purpose, and would need to make significant changes to maintain its authority. The reviews findings include 29 recommendations to bring the operation of .au more into line with the needs of Australian internet users, including increased transparency, greater representation of stakeholders and requirements for conflict of interest checks. Jakarta: Facebook executives have endured a hostile grilling from Indonesian MPs, as the company faced threats of an audit or a shut down over the Cambridge Analytica data breach. For hours on Tuesday, senior executives from the social media giant were also hit with questions about the company's role in spreading hate speech, its impact on democracy in Indonesia, and the viability of its business model. Facebook executives including Indonesia Public Policy chief Ruben Hattari and Asia-Pacific Public Policy chief Simon Milner (on left) face questions from a hostile Indonesian Parliamentary committee. Credit:Karuni Rompies Facebook executives delivered a grovelling apology to the nearly 1.1 million Indonesians caught up in the breach, while attempting to shift the blame for the breach onto Aleksandr Kogan, the man who invented the "This is your Digital Life" app. Once downloaded by a Facebook user, the app accessed the information of users' friends and - according to Facebook - he later passed the information on to Cambridge Analytica, without the permission of the social network. Moscow: A Russian journalist who had reported recently on clandestine Russian paramilitary groups in Syria has died after falling from the balcony of his fifth-floor apartment in Yekaterinburg, authorities there said. The journalist, Maksim Borodin, 32, was hospitalised in a coma after he was found sprawled out below his balcony in the city's Kirov district on Thursday, according to New Day, the local news agency where he had worked. On Sunday morning, he died. Russian journalist, Maksim Borodin, was known as an intrepid reporter who sought out politically sensitive topics. Investigators summoned to the scene had found the door to his apartment locked from the inside, a police spokesman, Valery Gorelykh, told the local E1 news agency. "Those facts suggest that no one left the apartment and that there were probably no strangers there," he said. While police are still investigating Borodin's death, it is not being treated as suspicious, Russia's Investigative Committee said in a statement. London: Prime Minister Malcolm Turnbull will attend a security meeting with British counterpart Theresa May and other intelligence allies amid growing concern over unconscionable Russian tactics in the Syrian crisis. Mr Turnbull will head to the meeting within hours of arriving in London for this weeks Commonwealth summit, with the talks expected to consider the danger from further Russian cyber attacks after damage to British and US targets in recent days. Theresa May and Malcolm Turnbull are expected to discuss the danger from further Russian cyber attacks. Credit:AP Foreign Minister Julie Bishop blasted the Russian tactics and issued a general warning about the prospect of malicious attacks on internet services from sources in Russia. This pattern of behaviour on the part of Russia is a concern not only to Commonwealth countries but globally, Ms Bishop said. Two Islamic State fighters allegedly connected to Australian terrorism - including a plot to blow up a plane leaving Sydney last year - have been captured in Iraq. Senior Australian officials confirmed IS commander and Lebanese citizen Tarek Khayat and his Australian relative, Ahmed Merhi, were detained earlier this year, the ABC reports. Defence Minister Marise Payne said on Wednesday afternoon that while media outlets had identified the Australian man as Merhi, she couldn't confirm his identity. "I can advise that the Department of Foreign Affairs and Trade is providing consular assistance in accordance with the consular services charter," Senator Payne said. But the war isn't over, and the situation is getting worse. The Isil "caliphate" might have collapsed, but a patchwork of jihadi splinter groups have sprung up in its place. Hundreds of thousands of rebels are holed up in Idlib, the city to which fighters are evacuated whenever a ceasefire is agreed. Turkey has taken its opportunity to stamp on the Kurds by invading Afrin. The future of Raqqa, wrested from Isil by a mixture of Kurdish and rebel Arab ground forces with Western air and intelligence support, is now in flux. Only recently, Mr Trump declared he would be pulling all US forces out, although his new national security adviser John Bolton might persuade him to reconsider. Israel has stepped up its selective bombing of targets to try and curb the growing power of Hizbollah, the Iran-backed militia whose troops have been an enormous help to Mr Assad. Hizbollah's success in Syria and its enormous military build-up on the Israel-Lebanon border also mean that Iran is expanding its sphere of influence right up to the Mediterranean. This is something that neither the Gulf states nor Israel will accept (in Israel's case, for very real existential reasons). So it raises the possibility that another front in the war could soon open up, and if it does, what Russia will do is unknown. It has little appetite for a confrontation with Israel, but is militarily enmeshed with Israel's enemies. Faced with this ever-changing snake-pit of competing interests, the best option for the US - and Britain - seems to be, keep a close eye on it all and intervene opportunistically. With Russia and now Turkey deeply involved on the ground, the risks posed by intervention on any grander scale are immeasurably greater than they were in 2013, when Parliament scotched the government's attempt to extend its anti-Isil bombing campaign from Iraq. So instead, the West has to watch and help its allies when it can. These interventions will not be popular, nor will they given a definitive stamp of approval by the UN, as Mr Corbyn fatuously suggests should happen, since Russia blocks all UN resolutions that run counter to its interests. But the model that defeated Isil, in which Western air power and intelligence back up other allied forces on the ground, shows how Europe and the US can achieve some strategic aims without getting fully entangled. That, for now, is all that Western voters will allow and, to be honest, who can blame them? New York: US President Donald Trump's personal lawyer was forced on Monday, US time, to reveal in a New York federal court that Fox News personality Sean Hannity, one of Trump's most ardent defenders, was also on his client list. Michael Cohen, Trump's fiercely loyal and pugnacious lawyer, disclosed Hannity's name through one of his own lawyers at the order of the judge. Stormy Daniels, an adult-film actress who claims to have had a sexual encounter with Trump, watched from the public gallery. Daniels, in a separate civil case, is fighting a 2016 non-disclosure agreement arranged by Cohen in which she got $US130,000 ($167,000) to stop her from discussing her claim she had sex with Trump a decade prior, something Trump has denied. Hannity, 56, said on Monday that he had never paid for Cohen's services or been represented by him, but had sought confidential legal advice from him. The conservative host often uses his weeknight broadcast on Fox News to defend the President against what he sees as biased attacks by the media. Sometimes Trump praises Hannity in return. Microsoft Research Reveals Digital Culture\-\-s Key Role in Irish Organisations\-\- Competitiveness Without a strong digital culture, introducing more technology reduces employee engagement Microsoft Ireland\-\-s research shows: Only 11% of Irish employees feel highly productive in their job and 14% feel highly engaged. While 90% of employees report low innovation in their organisation. Where there is a strong Digital Culture 99% of employees experience average to high productivity and 98% experience average to high innovation. Irish organisations with a strong Digital Culture have twice as many employees who feel productive, three times as many feel innovative, four times as many feel engaged, and five times as many feel empowered. Only 16.2% of Irish employees work in organisations with a strong company culture and 16.6% say they work in a strong Digital Culture. Only 16.2% of Irish employees use a high amount of technology in their job. Irish organisations who embrace digital culture will enjoy a significant competitive advantage, according to new research from Microsoft Ireland. The research reveals Irish organisations with a strong digital culture are poised to leapfrog the less well-equipped competition as 99% of their employees experience average to high productivity and 98% experience average to high innovation. Microsoft conducted research into digital disconnect on over 20,476 employees across 21 EU countries. In Ireland, over 1,000 employees were interviewed across the 25-44 years of age range, with questions focused on the technology they used, as well as their attitudes about their jobs and performance. The research identified culture as the key ingredient for an organisation\-\-s digital success. Digital Culture is where an organisation encourages and supports technology use to get work done in the most effective way. A strong digital culture has training, access to information, manager encouragement of tech adoption, and has a clear strategic vision from leaders regarding technology\-\-s transformative potential. \One year ago, we said that organisations had two years to transform or risk losing out to competitors,\ said Aisling Curtis, Commercial Director, Microsoft Ireland. \And one year on, that message has been strengthened with this latest research highlighting the need for significant action in Ireland when we consider that a massive 84% of Irish employees believe they work within a weak digital culture. To combat this, leaders need to be clear on whether their organisation has a set of guidelines for how technology should be used and whether their people have been brought along that journey.\ Disconnection in a Weak Digital Culture The research found that poor digital culture creates disconnected employees who are disengaged from the organisation. Additionally, 93% of employees in Ireland have low to average productivity when there is a weak digital culture. Whereas where there is a strong digital culture, twice as many employees experience high productivity and three times as many employees experience high innovativeness. Alarmingly, only 16.2% of Irish employees interviewed, claimed they use a high amount of technology in their job. The impact of poorly planned digital culture on employees follows four common patterns: Distraction: Workers who are too distracted by a constant influx of messages and notifications to concentrate for sustained periods. Lack of training: Workers who aren\-\-t properly trained to use the new technology effectively. No Support: Tech that isn\-\-t adequately supported by the organisation, forcing workers to lose time because \the computers are down\. Technostress: Workers who suffer burnout because, with mobile devices and at-home-working, they feel tethered to the job around-the-clock. Winning the War for Talent For the first time, there are five generations working in organisations in Ireland, presenting challenges to leaders in terms of finding, engaging and managing talent. The research results also identified that Digital Culture can help win the war for talent as it helps engage and empower employees. Irish organisations with a strong digital culture are more likely to have: Twice as many employees who feel productive Four times as many employees who feel engaged Three times as many employees who feel innovative Five times as many employees who feel empowered For organisations to cultivate and maintain a strong digital culture, they need to ensure that they have the most up to date technology which needs to be championed by their leadership team. Another crucial factor is access to IT support for employees, and a working environment where technology is introduced as a priority. In fact, nearly half (47%) of Irish employees feel highly empowered in a strong culture. NASA Acting Administrator Robert Lightfoot said April 12 that extending durations of crews on the International Space Station could help deal with any future delays in the development of commercial crew vehicles. WASHINGTON NASA is in discussions with its Russian counterparts about extending some upcoming space station missions as a way to buy more time for development of commercial crew vehicles. During an April 12 hearing by the commerce, justice and science subcommittee of the House Appropriations Committee on the agency's fiscal year 2019 budget proposal, NASA Acting Administrator Robert Lightfoot said longer "increments" of crews on the ISS could be one way to provide more schedule margin in the event of additional delays by Boeing and SpaceX in the development of their crewed spacecraft. "Right now we don't show a gap" in U.S. access to the International Space Station, Lightfoot said in response to a question posed by subcommittee chairman Rep. John Culberson (R-Texas). "But we're looking at options at what can we do to not have a gap." [Boeing Starliner's 'Last Room on Earth' for Astronauts Photo Tour] "We're working with our partners, our Russian partners, on if we can have longer increments for crew members that go up," he said. He revisited that later in the hearing. "One thing we have is a great relationship with our Russians partners, and we're looking at other alternatives about potentially extending mission duration for the current missions that are there so that we don't gap the ability to get there," he said. NASA's current agreement with flying astronauts on Soyuz vehicles expires next year, after the agency purchased three seats on Soyuz flights launching in the spring of 2019 and returning in the fall. It's not clear what would be involved in extending ISS mission durations, such as any technical issues regarding how long a Soyuz spacecraft can remain docked to the ISS. NASA announced April 5 it had updated its existing commercial crew contract with Boeing to study modifications to the crewed test flight for the company's CST-100 Starliner. Those modifications would include adding a third astronaut and extending the spacecraft's stay at the ISS from two weeks to as long as six months. Those changes, Lightfoot noted at the hearing, were another way to mitigate the effects of additional development delays. At the hearing, Lightfoot said there was still schedule margin for the development of Starliner and SpaceX's Crew Dragon to be ready by the fall of 2019. Schedules last updated in January call for both companies to make uncrewed test flights of their vehicles in August. Boeing would then make a crewed test flight in November, followed by SpaceX in December. Lightfoot, though, hinted that those schedules would be delayed again. "We still expect to see the first test flights at the end of this year," he said, later elaborating that these were the uncrewed test flights for both companies. Culberson asked when the crewed test flights would take place, and Lightfoot said he would take that for the record. "I'm focused on the uncrewed one right now," he said. Juggling the SLS launch schedule Lightfoot also said at the hearing that NASA was revisiting the schedule for Space Launch System missions based on the unexpected windfall it received in the final 2018 omnibus appropriations bill. That bill, signed into law March 23, provided $350 million for NASA to build a second mobile launch platform for the SLS. NASA officials said last year a second platform could help shorten the gap between the first and second SLS launches, but did not include funding for it in its 2019 budget proposal, citing competing priorities. That second launch platform, which would be designed for the Block 1B version of the SLS with the larger Exploration Upper Stage, would reduce the 33-month "iron bar" in the schedule between the first two SLS missions created by the time needed to modify the current platform. That platform has been built to support the Block 1 version of SLS, which uses the Interim Cryogenic Propulsion Stage (ICPS). Lightfoot said that having a second launch platform opens the door to launching a second SLS mission with the ICPS. That could be used, he said, to launch the Europa Clipper mission, which could be ready for launch as soon as 2022. NASA's 2019 budget proposal, though, plans a 2025 launch of Europa Clipper using a commercially-procured launch vehicle rather than SLS. Another option would be to fly the first crewed Orion mission, known as Exploration Mission (EM) 2, on that second SLS Block 1. "If EM-2 flies that way, we would have to change the mission profile because we can't do what we would do if we had the Exploration Upper Stage," he said. "But that still gets humans in orbit and still allows us to check out all the systems that we wouldn't check out on EM-1." He indicated that the funding for the second mobile launch platform took the agency by surprise. "You're going to have to give us a little time, because that was just a couple weeks ago that we found out that we were getting that," he said. Defending budget cuts The two-hour hearing by the subcommittee was largely cordial, with members thanking Lightfoot for his record-setting service as acting administrator. Lightfoot announced last month he will retire from the agency at the end of April. He was called on by some members, though, to defend cuts in the 2019 proposal. That included NASA's education office as well as four Earth science missions, all of which the administration sought to cut in 2018 but which Congress ultimately funded. Lightfoot said it was continuing to work on those programs funded in 2018 despite the administration's new effort to cancel them. "We are ready to execute as we were asked to do in 2018," he said. He added that NASA has looked at ways to make its education office more effective. That office, he said, will soon be renamed the "Next-Gen STEM Office" to focus on science, technology, engineering and mathematics education activities for the next generation. But, should the administration's proposal to defund the office be approved, he said the agency would focus its education activities through its missions. "That's going to be how were going to try to inspire the next generation as we go forward," he said. "Admittedly, that's going to be a concern whether that can actually fill the void or not," he said later in the hearing. "As long as we're getting appropriated the money, we will have an education office that executes what you guys have asked us to do." Committee members also questioned plans to cancel the Wide-Field Infrared Survey Telescope (WFIRST) in the 2019 budget proposal, citing its inclusion as the top-priority large mission in the 2010 astrophysics decadal. Lightfoot said that, should WFIRST be cancelled, NASA would look at ways instrument technology developed for it could be applied to future missions. Culberson said his subcommittee planned to hold a hearing on issues with both WFIRST and the James Webb Space Telescope, whose launch NASA said last month would be delayed by about a year to May 2020. That hearing is tentatively scheduled for May 9, although Lightfoot said that ongoing reviews of JWST, including one by an independent review board established by NASA after the latest delay, will not be ready in time to support that hearing. Culberson also offered advice to members concerned about cuts to education or science programs in the administration's proposal. "The budget, again, is just a recommendation," he said. "We don't get too worked up over the budget." This story was provided by SpaceNews, dedicated to covering all aspects of the space industry. A new program included in NASA's fiscal year 2019 budget request would fund flying payloads on commercial lunar landers under development by several companies. WASHINGTON As congressional appropriators prepare to review NASA's latest budget request, a group from academia and industry are seeking support for a lunar exploration initiative included in the proposal. In an April 10 letter to the chairmen and ranking members of the House and Senate appropriations subcommittees, 72 people from the research and business communities asked Congress for full funding of the Lunar Discovery and Exploration program in NASA's fiscal year 2019 budget proposal. That program, located within NASA's Science Mission Directorate, seeks $218 million to support future exploration of the moon. That funding includes $18 million for continued operations of the Lunar Reconnaissance Orbiter spacecraft and $200 million for other lunar research activities, such as procuring flights on commercially developed lunar lander missions. [NASA's Exploration Mission 1: A Step-by-Step Return to the Moon in Pictures] "The Moon is the cornerstone of planetary science," the letter states. "The new Lunar Exploration and Discovery program will give the United States the chance to, at long last, systematically prospect for resources on the Moon's surface, gather comprehensive new samples from all over the surface, explore lunar lava tubes, investigate magnetic anomalies, and address a long list of unanswered geophysical questions whose answers have deep implications for understanding formation of the Solar System and planetary science." The letter also supports full funding of a separate program, called Advanced Cislunar and Surface Capabilities, that is part of the Advanced Exploration Systems division of NASA's exploration directorate. It seeks up to $130 million to support development of larger lunar landers, again in partnership with industry. "The proposed lunar programs," the letter states, "place U.S.-led lunar science and exploration at the core of a new era of lunar exploration program. The requested funds are required to enable a successful U.S. mission to the Moon in 2019." It also warned Congress of competition from other countries, such as China and its lunar exploration program. "China has ramped up its lunar science and exploration program as a precursor to human missions, and the U.S. must move quickly, starting with missions in 2020, to regain its historic lead in lunar science and exploration," it stated. The letter's signatories range from graduate students to tenured professors and retired scientists, as well as executives with several companies with plans to either send missions to the moon or be otherwise involved in lunar exploration. Among those who signed the letter is Apollo 17 astronaut and lunar scientist Harrison Schmitt. At a March 28 symposium on lunar exploration held here by the Universities Space Research Association, he backed the Trump administration's plans for a human return to the moon outlined in Space Policy Directive 1, signed by the president in December. "Implementation of this policy for this country, and I think the free world, is geopolitically crucial," he said. "It's critical that it be accomplished." Scientists back the exploration initiative, arguing that research performed during the decades since the end of the Apollo program have transformed our understanding of the moon and opened new lines of study that require new missions that can also enable human exploration and commercial ventures. "This is not the old moon of Apollo," said Clive Neal, a professor at the University of Notre Dame and another person who signed the letter, at the symposium last month. "We've got a new view, and universities have been heavily involved in making that a reality." The letter comes as appropriators on Capitol Hill prepare to devote attention to NASA's budget request. The commerce, justice and science subcommittee of the House Appropriations Committee will hold a hearing on the budget proposal April 12, with outgoing NASA Acting Administrator Robert Lightfoot scheduled to testify. Its Senate counterpart has not yet scheduled a hearing on the NASA budget proposal. The Senate formally approved April 10 the assignment of Sen. Richard Shelby (R-Ala.) as the new chairman of the full appropriations committee. He succeeds Thad Cochran, a Mississippi Republican who retired from the Senate at the end of March. Shelby is also taking over the defense subcommittee, giving up his chairmanship of the commerce, justice and science subcommittee. Sen. Jerry Moran (R-Kan.) will take over as chair of that subcommittee, with Sen. Jeanne Shaheen (D-N.H.) remaining as ranking member. This story was provided by SpaceNews, dedicated to covering all aspects of the space industry. COLORADO SPRINGS, Colo. The United States is getting serious about space junk, according to Vice President Mike Pence. In a speech today (April 16), Pence announced that the National Space Council will soon send President Donald Trump new recommendations to address the growing threat of space junk circling Earth. "President Trump knows that a stable and orderly space environment is critical to the strength of our economy and resilience of our national security systems," Pence told a crowd of space and military officials here at the 34th Space Symposium. "And that's why the National Space Council has developed the first comprehensive Space Traffic Management Policy, which we will soon be sending to the president's desk for his approval." [7 Wild Ways to Clean Up Space Junk] There are more than 1,500 active satellites in orbit today, along with tens of thousands of "dead" satellites and spacecraft fragments, Pence added. In fact, the U.S. military's Space Surveillance Network regularly tracks about 40,000 objects in space, including active satellites, defunct spacecraft and debris. "And as commercial companies continue to send even more satellites into orbit, the volume of space traffic will only increase in the years ahead," Pence said. There have been two major space-debris events in recent history. In 2007, China intentionally destroyed its Fengyun 1C weather satellite as part of an anti-satellite missile test, creating a debris cloud in orbit. And in 2009, a collision between an American Iridium satellite and a defunct Russian satellite spawned even more debris. Pence mentioned the 2009 satellite collision in his speech, adding that the new Space Traffic Management Policy is aimed at safeguarding U.S. assets in space. "This new policy directs the Department of Commerce to provide a basic level of space situational awareness for public and private use, based on the space catalog compiled by the Department of Defense, so that our military leaders can focus on protecting and defending our assets in space," he said. [Worst Space Debris Events of All Time] "The policy will also encourage the commercial space industry to partner and develop data-sharing systems, technical guidelines and safety standards to apply domestically, and be promoted internationally, that will help minimize debris, avoid satellite collisions during launch and while in orbit." Pence's announcement comes on the heels of the April 1 crash of China's defunct Tiangong-1 space station and the April 2 launch of a novel space-junk-cleanup experiment called RemoveDebris, which will test several ways to clean up orbital debris. While unrelated to the announcement, the Tiangong-1 crash and RemoveDebris mission illustrate the growing importance of and interest in space debris mitigation. The Space Traffic Management Policy, once signed by Trump, would follow several other major space initiatives by the Trump administration. Last December, Trump signed the Space Policy Directive 1, directing NASA to return American astronauts to the moon based on recommendations by the National Space Council, which Pence chairs. Then, Pence and the National Space Council on Feb. 21 outlined more recommendations to streamline regulations for space launches to ease the red tape facing American commercial space companies. In March, Trump announced that the U.S. may need a military "Space Force" for national security. The administration then unveiled a new National Space Policy geared toward national security and the development of "conducive" environments for commercial and international partnerships in space, according to SpaceNews. Email Tariq Malik at tmalik@space.com or follow him @tariqjmalik. Follow us @Spacedotcom, Facebook and Google+. Original article on Space.com. COLUMBUS, Ohio Outer space glows with a bright fog of X-ray light, coming from everywhere at once. But peer carefully into that fog, and faint, regular blips become visible. These are millisecond pulsars, city-sized neutron stars rotating incredibly quickly, and firing X-rays into the universe with more regularity than even the most precise atomic clocks. And NASA wants to use them to navigate probes and crewed ships through deep space. A telescope mounted on the International Space Station (ISS), the Neutron Star Interior Composition Explorer (NICER), has been used to develop a brand new technology with near-term, practical applications: a galactic positioning system, NASA scientist Zaven Arzoumanian told physicists Sunday (April 15) at the April meeting of the American Physical Society.[10 Futuristic Technologies 'Star Trek' Fans Would Love] With this technology, "You could thread a needle to get into orbit around the moon of a disant planet instead of doing a flyby," Arzoumian told Live Science. A galactic positioning system could also provide "a fallback, so that if a crewed mission loses contact with the Earth, they'd still have navigation systems on board that are autonomous." Right now, the kind of maneuvers that navigators would need to put a probe in orbit around distant moons are borderline impossible. In the vastness of outer space, it's just not possible to figure out a ship's location precisely enough to engine-firing just right. That's a big part of why so many of the most famous planetary missions NASA has managed Voyager 1, Juno, and New Horizons among them have managed only flybys of those planets' moons. Spacecraft have sometimes flown close to, but always past, major far-away moons. [How the Voyager Space Probes Work (Infographic)] Relying on Earth for navigation is also a problem for crewed missions, Arzoumian said. If that signal, connecting Earth and a distant spacecraft like a long and tenuous thread, gets somehow lost, astronauts would be hard-pressed to find their way home from Mars. Here's how the galactic positioning system would work A galactic positioning system would go a long way toward solving that problem, Arzoumian said, though he cautioned he's more a pulsar expert than a navigator. And it would work a great deal like the Global Positioning System (GPS) on your smartphone. When your phone tries to determine its position in space, as Live Science has previously reported, it listens with its radio to the precise ticking of clock signals coming from a fleet of GPS satellites in Earth orbit. The phone's GPS then uses the differences between those ticks to figure out its distance from each satellite, and uses that information to triangulate its own location in space. Your phone's GPS works fast, but Arzoumian said the galactic positioning system would work slower taking the time needed to traverse long stretches of deep space. It would be a small, swivel-mounted X-ray telescope, which would look a lot like the big, bulky NICER stripped down to its barest minimum components. One after another, it would point at at least four millisecond pulsars, timing their X-ray "ticks" like a GPS times the ticks of satellites. Three of those pulsars would tell the spacecraft its position in space, while the fourth would calibrate its internal clock to make sure it was measuring the others properly. Arzoumian noted that the underlying concept behind the galactic positioning system isn't new. The famous Golden Record mounted on both Voyager spacecraft contained a pulsar map that points any aliens who one day encounter it back to planet Earth. But this would be the first time humans have actually used pulsars to navigate. Already, Arzoumian said, his team has managed to user NICER to track the ISS through space. NASA's Station Explorer for X-Ray Timing and Navigation (SEXTANT) program, the team behind the Galactic Positioning System, had the goal of tracking the ISS to within 6.2 miles (10 kilometers) over the course of two weeks, Arzoumian said. "What the demonstration back in November achieved was more like 7 kilometers [4.3 miles] in two days," he said. The next goal for the program is to track the station to within 1.9 miles (3 km) he said. He said that eventually the team hopes to get under 0.6 miles [1 kilometer] of precision. "I think we can get beyond that, but I don't know how far," he said. And that's all in low-Earth orbit, he said, with the station wheeling in wild, unpredictable circles and half the sky blocked out by a giant planet, covering different pulsars every 45 minutes. In deep space, with a functionally unlimited field of view and where things mostly move in predictable, straight lines, he said, the task will be much easier. Already, Arzoumian said, other teams within NASA have expressed interest in building the galactic positioning system into their projects. He declined to say which, not wanting to speak for them. But it seems likely that we might see such a futuristic device in action in the very near future. Originally published on Live Science. This NASA animation shows the path 'Oumuamua an object likely to be of interstellar origin through the inner solar system. 'Oumuamua made its closest approach to the sun on Sept. 9 and zoomed away at 97,200 mph (156,400 km/h) relative to the sun. The solar system recently received its first interstellar visitor, 'Oumuamua, and researchers have now suggested a plan for a mission to meet the next guest from another star. This concept, formulated with SpaceX's Falcon Heavy rocket in mind, aims to send a spacecraft to rendezvous with an interstellar object and shoot it, so the probe can analyze the debris that gets kicked up. The first known visitor from interstellar space, a cigar-shaped asteroid named 'Oumuamua, or A/2017 U1, was detected on Oct. 19 using the Panoramic Survey Telescope and Rapid Response System (Pan-STARRS) at Haleakala Observatory on the Hawaiian island of Maui. Scientists deduced the origins of the chaotically tumbling 1,300-foot-long (400 meters) object from its trajectory, which suggests it may have come from another star, or perhaps two. Astronomers have determined that 'Oumuamua, whose name means "a messenger from afar arriving first" in Hawaiian, whipped around the sun on Sept. 9 and made its closest pass by Earth on Oct. 14. Researchers have already learned that 'Oumuamua is unlike anything seen in the solar system, varying in color across its surface in a way no astronomer could at first explain. ['Oumuamua: Solar System's First Interstellar Visitor Explained in Photos] Mysteries still abound regarding 'Oumuamua, including how it got thrown away from its parent star: Its composition suggests it should have formed close to its star and stayed gravitationally bound. Scientists expect much to remain unknown about 'Oumuamua, since the asteroid was tracked zooming away from Earth at about 85,700 mph (137,900 km/h) relative to the sun, NASA officials said. The authors of the new study assumed that other interstellar visitors like 'Oumuamua might zip through the solar system in the future, and first sought to see how capable we are of detecting such objects. They next calculated whether a mission from Earth could reach one and probe it before it flew back into interstellar space. Previous work suggested that as stars form, they may hurl many objects like 'Oumuamua away from them into interstellar space those objects would add up to about one-hundredth to one-thousandth the mass of Earth per star. The researchers suggested there may be about 10 quadrillion more 'Oumuamua-like interstellar objects than there are relatively young, metal-rich stars like the sun. The scientists then calculated the number of interstellar objects that one could detect using the Large-Scale Synoptic Survey Telescope (LSST), a telescope under construction in Chile that will photograph the entire visible sky every few nights. They estimated the telescope could detect about 1.6 percent of all incoming interstellar objects within 10 astronomical units (AU) of the sun. (One AU is equal to the average distance between the sun and Earth.) The LSST is expected to become operational in 2022. "When LSST comes online, we will have the opportunity to observe something up close that formed around another star, without having to leave the solar system," study lead author Darryl Seligman, an astrophysicist at Yale University, told Space.com. The researchers next investigated what kind of mission should rendezvous with an interstellar object. Since there are many questions regarding the makeup of these mysterious visitors, they suggested developing a probe that could fly near the object and fire a projectile at it to generate a plume of debris that the spacecraft could then analyze to deduce the object's composition. This same tactic was adopted by NASA's Deep Impact mission to the comet Tempel 1, and would require less rocket fuel than a mission that sought to match velocities with, or return a sample from, an interstellar object. The scientists assumed that any interception missions would target interstellar objects that come very close to Earth, within 1 AU of the sun, "since these missions require a smaller amount of chemical propulsion," Seligman said. "This is somewhat intuitive the closer an interstellar object gets to the Earth, the less space the rocket has to travel to intercept it." The researchers planned their mission given the capabilities of SpaceX's Falcon Heavy rocket. They estimated that approximately once every 10 years, the LSST will see an interstellar object that an interception mission using the Falcon Heavy could reach. "We propose to have a rocket ready to go, so that when LSST does see one, we can instantly send the mission," Seligman said. Seligman and his colleague, Gregory Laughlin at Yale, detailed their findings online April 11 in an article accepted by The Astronomical Journal. Follow Charles Q. Choi on Twitter @cqchoi. Follow us '@Spacedotcom, Facebook and Google+. Original article on Space.com. COLORADO SPRINGS, Colo. Orbital ATK's next rocket will be its biggest one yet, and the company has picked a fitting name for the new booster: OmegA. OmegaA, formerly known as the Next Generation Launch Vehicle, is Orbital ATK's candidate booster to launch intermediate- and heavy-class military satellites for the U.S. Air Force's Evolved Expendable Launch Vehicle (EELV) program. The rocket will compete with United Launch Alliance, Boeing and Blue Origin for military launch contracts under the Air Force's Launch Services Agreement. Orbital ATK unveiled the three-stage booster's new name here at the 34th Space Symposium. The company also announced it has selected Aerojet Rocketdyne's RL-10C engine to power the rocket's upper stage. Orbital ATK had been considering the BE-3 engine built by Blue Origin for its own New Shepard spacecraft, according to SpaceNews. This Orbital ATK rocket family line-up shows how the company's new OmegA rocket will stack up against its earlier boosters. The intermediate-class OmegA is shown to the right of the Antares rocket. At far right, the heavy-class OmegA version. (Image credit: Orbital ATK) The name is meant to represent "the bookend of the company's rocket lineup," with the "O" and "A" nods to the company's two-part name, Orbital ATK told Space.com. It's also a nod to Omega Centauri, the largest star cluster in the Milky Way. Orbital ATK's Antares, Pegasus and other rockets are named for stars and constellations. [The World's Tallest Rockets: How They Stack Up] Orbital ATK's OmegA rocket's initial intermediate-payload configuration consists of a solid-rocket booster (derived from Orbital ATK's boosters for NASA space shuttles), a second stage powered by the company's Castor 300 or Castor 600 solid-rocket motor, and a third stage powered by two Aerojet RL-10C engines. Orbital ATK's OmegA launch vehicle will use three stages and strap-on boosters to launch payloads into space, as shown in this diagram. (Image credit: Orbital ATK) By adding up to six strap-on boosters, OmegA will be capable of launching payloads of up to 22,266 lbs. (10,100 kilograms) to a geostationary transfer orbit, and payloads of up to nearly 17,200 lbs. (7,800 kg)& to geostationary equatorial orbits, according to Orbital ATK. The intermediate-class OmegA is targeted to make its first test launch in 2021. A heavy-class version could follow in 2024 if all goes well. The Dulles, Virginia-based Orbital ATK and Air Force have spent a combined $250 million over the last three years developing the OmegA rocket, and the company plans to spend more to complete the booster's development and flight-certification process. Construction is already under way on major propulsion elements, Orbital ATK officials said."Orbital ATK is very excited to partner with the U.S. Air Force to develop OmegA, our new EELV-class launch vehicle," Scott Lehr, Orbital ATK's flight systems group president, said in a statement. "Our OmegA rocket provides the best combination of performance, affordability and reliability to support the range of our customer's mission requirements." Orbital ATK is considering Launch Pad 39B at NASA's Kennedy Space Center in Cape Canaveral, Florida, as a potential launch site for its new OmegA rocket. (Image credit: Orbital ATK) The rocket's next development phase will begin after the Air Force makes its Launch Service Agreement selections this summer, which would clear the way for the OmegA's remaining development work, and the development of its launch sites. Orbital ATK is considering Launch Pad 39B at NASA's Kennedy Space Center as a potential launch site, and has released an artist's illustration of the new proposed site. Mike Pinkston, Orbital ATK's deputy general manager for launch vehicles, told Space.com that motor and engine testing for OmegA will begin in 2019, with the booster's solid-fueled stages to be tested at the company's proving grounds in Promontory, Utah. Aerojet Rocketdyne will test the RL-10C engines at its own facility in West Palm Beach, Florida. Orbital ATK is developing its largest rocket yet, the three-stage OmegA booster (shown here in an artist's illustration), as a competitor to launch military payloads into space for the U.S. Air Force. (Image credit: Orbital ATK) Email Tariq Malik at tmalik@space.com or follow him @tariqjmalik. Follow us @Spacedotcom, Facebook and Google+. Original article on Space.com. Premiere Date Revealed Series Regularly Airs on Wednesdays at 10PM ET/PT beginning May 30New York, New York March 8, 2018 HISTORYs hit Navy SEAL drama series SIX, returns for its sophomore season in a special Memorial Day premiere on Monday, May 28 at 10PM ET/PT and doubles up on the action with an all-new episode airing during its regular timeslot on Wednesday, May 30 at 10PM ET/PT. Olivia Munn (The Predator, X-Men: Apocalypse, TheNewsroom) reports in for duty and makes her SIX debut as the smart, ruthless CIA operative Gina Cline.From A+E Studios, the ten-episode second season of SIX follows Navy SEAL Team Six in a mission to destroy the terrorist network responsible for the shooting of their former team leader Richard Rip Taggart (Walton Goggins, Justified). Led by Joe Bear Graves (Barry Sloane, Revenge), the Navy SEALS will join forces with cunning and tenacious CIA officer Gina Cline (Munn) to scour Eastern Europe, infiltrating hostile territory and terrorist hotspots like Chechnya as they track the mastermind behind Michaels (Dominic Adams, Devious Maids) jihadist network. The chase will bring the Navy SEALs to the border of Russia, where the consequences of their actions could spark World War III.Also returning for season two are series regulars Kyle Schmid (Copper), Juan Pablo Raba (Narcos), Edwin Hodge (Chicago Fire), Jaylen Moore (The Night Shift), Brianne Davis (Jarhead) and Nadine Velazquez ( Flight). In addition to Munn, newcomers to season two include previously announced Eric Ladin (The Killing) and Nikolai Nikolaeff (The OA) and recurring guest star, Erik Palladino (Suits).In its first season, SIX reached 39 million total viewers across HISTORY and all A+E Networks in Live+7 Days and was cables #2 new original series in 2017 among total viewers in Live+7 delivery.SIX was created and written by Academy Award Nominee William Broyles (Cast Away, Apollo 13, Jarhead) and David Broyles, a military special operations veteran. SIX is an A+E Studios production. William Broyles, David Broyles, Bruce C. McKenna (Band of Brothers, The Pacific), Alfredo Barrios, Jr. (Burn Notice), George W. Perkins (Live from Baghdad), Meryl Poster and Barry Jossen are executive producers. Arturo Interian serves as the Executive Producer for HISTORY.A+E Networks holds worldwide distribution rights for SIX. Welcome To SpoilerTV We bring you a comprehensive and up to date spoiler service on all the major US TV shows and Movies. You can find specific show content by clicking the menu system at the top of the screen. We scour the Internet for spoilers as well as posting our own exclusive spoilers (Scripts, Casting Calls, Set Photos etc) as well as recaps and other fun articles and polls. We hope you enjoy your stay. Previously on Imposters, Maddie tried to start a new life with a clean slate but was quickly tracked down by Shelly Cohen (Lenny's ex-husband), the Bumblers tried to unsuccessfully sell Maddie's engagement ring and later decided to flee to Mexico, and Max and Patrick are both suffering the consequences of the fall out of last season's finale. This week, we open where the premiere ended - with Shelley at Maddie's door, where he quickly weasels his way into her apartment. Maddie wants to get down to business immediately, it's obvious that she's frightened, but Shelley wants to drag it out and make her sweat. Shelley makes it clear that he's only there for one thing, and that's to take Maddie to The Doctor. An altercation ensues in which Maddie tries to escape, going as far as hitting Shelley over the head with a book and then producing a knife from said book, which of course she uses to stab him. It's incredibly tense, and as we see Shelley struggling on Maddie's kitchen floor, we cut to Maddie running for her life to get away from him. Unfortunately for Maddie, he's quick on her trail, even with a stomach wound. She runs straight for Michael, the guy from the holistic wellness retreat, and asks for him to take her there immediately. Honestly, I'm a little bit suspicious of him and I don't believe he's being genuinely nice. I'm expecting Maddie to end up trusting him and him completely betraying that/working for The Doctor. Only time will tell though. 'Trouble Maybe' definitely seemed like a step up from the premiere, but I don't think this season has really started going yet, and doesn't have the same dark comedic quirks that the first season had. How long do you think it will take for Maddie and the Bumblers to reunite? Do you think Maddie will truly be able to change? Let me know in the comments. We catch up with the Bumblers in Mexico, where it appears that they're thriving. Jules (now going as Jill) appears to be a Spanish speaking art teacher, Richie (now going by Robbie) is day drinking in a bar and seemingly picking up women with cash to spare, and Ezra s(now going by Eddie) eems to be fully committed to the con, pickpocketing a man and giving him back his wallet for a reward, and then using that as a ploy to steal his watch. It's an upgrade on a move we saw him do in season one, and maybe Ezra is enjoying the con business more than he should be.In order to get back to Scottsdale and the ring, the trio need another $5000 for their fake passports/new identities. Jules is worrying over how to make that much money in the five days before the deadline, especially with Richie bringing in less than $100 a day due to his morality kicking in, however Ezra produces all the money they need right then and there. He's completely abandoned the plan they had and gone for something much more elaborate, flashy and risky as it could draw a lot of attention to them. Neither Jules nor Richie are impressed, but at the end of the day they need the money. They devise a new code for their new set of circumstances, and vow to be better people than Maddie, somehow I think at this point they're just as bad as each other. There is good in all of them, just as there is bad.Meanwhile, Maddie has checked into the wellness centre where she is promised relaxation but just can't seem to shake memories of what happened earlier that day with Shelley. As a voiceover from the woman inducting Maddie plays over, we see scenes of both Lenny and Shelley, and Maddie being quite clearly afraid as tears roll down her face in what should be her safe space. Unable to stop thinking about Shelley, she rings around local hospitals trying to find out what's happened to him. She lucks out with one called Cedarville, but when she is transferred to a detective, she quickly hangs up.Back in Mexico, Ezra seems restless and we see him jump from multiple activities until he's writing in the city centre. He stumbles upon a beautiful woman, who he quickly gets conned by. We follow the mystery woman (I totally don't buy that she doesn't know much English, and that later turns out to be right) as she turns into an apartment building and looks through his wallet. We see her looking through her bag and pockets for her phone, presumably to ring whoever she's working with, but Ezra appears behind her with her phone; it turns out he really is better at this con business than a lot of other people. He lets her know how he figured her out so quickly, and gets some flirting in whilst he does so. He asks to walk with her and although she initially seemed reluctant she lets him do so. Ezra seems really into her, and offers to work with her, promising that she'll earn at least twice as much as she does already. Once again, she seems somewhat reluctant and cautious, but it's obvious that Ezra is going to win her over.We cut to Max (whose storyline so far seems a little pointless with his screentime being pretty minimal) who's going to visit The Doctor. Max asks him to put him back to work or just kill him, because there's no way out of this life or the employ of The Doctor, and The Doctor gives him an address and tells him to wait for his decision later that night. I can't see how Max fits in to the show's long term plans any more, and hopefully they either realise that and give him something better to do, or just get rid of him.Back in Mexico, Ezra and Rosa undertake their first con involving a coffee shop and a violin. It goes off without a hitch and they make a ridiculous amount of money because of it, much to the delight of Rosa who then kisses Ezra. She tells him her name and we see them running into a fancy hotel and booking their best room, the two of them unwilling to keep their hands off of each other. It's nice of Ezra to connect with someone, but it seems too easy. Can two con artists really trust each other? The answer might be no, because in the morning she's gone without a trace with all of the money they made. Ezra has no idea where to find her, and retraces their steps from the previous day hoping to find her. He finds her in the cinema where she says she took the money to make more money. They kiss once again but something feels off to me.Back in the apartment, the Bumblers try to come up with new styles for their new identities in a pretty funny sequence. The passport pictures are taken and it should be almost time for them to return to America. Somehow I can see them either staying in Mexico a little longer or having to return there. In America however, Maddie has her first one-on-one with her advisor at the centre, and she seems to be making some immediate breakthroughs about her past. I can see this season being an emotional rollercoaster for her, and maybe she'll end up actually getting out of the life by the end of it.The episode closes with Max waiting in a motel to hear back from The Doctor. He falls asleep whilst doing so, seemingly having waited all night, and is awoken by a gun in his face - and the person holding it just happens to be Sally. I really did think we'd seen the last of her in season one, but The Doctor must have had other plans. Press Release PRIDE IS UNDER ATTACK FROM AN UNKNOWN PERSON OF POWER IN D.C. ACCUSING HIM OF RECKLESS USE OF JUSTICE, ON NCIS: NEW ORLEANS, TUESDAY, MAY 8Guest Stars Include Chelsea Field as Rita Devereaux and Mark Gessner as Journalist Oliver CraneThe Assassination of Dwayne Pride When journalist Oliver Crane (Mark Gessner) posts a scathing article documenting Prides reckless use of justice, the team is concerned about the fallout from the piece and the confidential information included in the story. Also, Rita Devereaux (Chelsea Field) warns Pride that someone in D.C. has coordinated this attack on him, and the article is just the beginning, on NCIS: NEW ORLEANS, Tuesday, May 8 (10:00-11:00 PM, ET/PT) on the CBS Television Network.CHEAT TWEET: Pride is under attack from an unknown person of power in D.C. and it starts with a scathing article documenting his reckless use of justice. 5/8 10pm #CBS #ChelseaField Guest Stars http://bit.ly/2vht2EoREGULAR CAST:Scott Bakula (Special Agent Dwayne Pride)Lucas Black (Special Agent Christopher Lasalle)Rob Kerkovich (Forensic Agent Sebastian Lund)Daryl Chill Mitchell (Patton Plame)Vanessa Ferlito (Special Agent Tammy Gregorio)CCH Pounder (Dr. Loretta Wade)GUEST CAST:Chelsea Field (Rita Devereaux)Mark Gessner (Oliver Crane)STORY BY: Chad Gomez Creasey & Katherine BeattieTELEPLAY BY: Ron McGee & Katherine BeattieDIRECTED BY: Ed Ornelas Jack Condlin, president and CEO of the Stamford Chamber of Commerce, will retire June 30 after 20 years leading the organization, the Chamber announced Tuesday. Condlin last month informed the chambers Executive Committee of his decision, according to chamber officials. Heather Cavanagh, director of events and marketing, will succeed him as president and CEO. I have been incredibly fortunate to have worked in jobs that I loved and have had the opportunity to meet and work with dedicated people, Condlin said in a statement. I am proud to have been associated for the majority of my adult life with this great place known as Stamford. Chamber officials credit Condlin with solidifying the chambers finances and overseeing committees focused on areas including womens leadership, young professionals and J.M Wright Technical High School. We are grateful to Jack for his many contributions throughout his 20-year tenure, Fanny Ferreira, chairwoman of the chambers board of directors, said in a statement. The chamber has evolved into the preeminent business-advocacy organization thanks to his leadership and his hands-on approach to work for the benefit of the Stamford chambers members. Stamford Mayor David Martin praised Condlin for helping Stamford to attract top companies and workers and compete with the economies of Westchester County and Brooklyn, N.Y., and northern New Jersey. Jack has also been an asset in helping small businesses, the backbone of our community, flourish, Martin said. In addition, over the years, Jack has made great contributions while serving on a number of boards and commissions, working to make Stamford a better place to work and live. Jack has been a great partner, and I will miss working with him. Before joining the chamber, Condlin served as executive Director of the Stamford Urban Renewal Commission from 1981 to 1984. From 1984 to 1996, he worked as executive vice president and chief operating officer of Marlo Associates, a local real estate company. In addition to her current role, which she has held for the past 18 months, Cavanagh has supported the chamber for more than 20 years as a volunteer. She has also served as the organizations Ambassador Committee. Cavanagh previously served as executive director of the Darien, Westport and South Kingstown, R.I., Chambers of Commerce. I am honored to be appointed by the Chambers Executive Committee as the incoming president and CEO, Cavanagh said. I look forward to my first meeting with the Board of Directors in September to discuss business advocacy, membership programs, economic and community development to further the interests of businesses in Stamford. pschott@scni.com; 203-964-2236; Twitter: @paulschott Brian A. Pounds / Hearst Connecticut Media U.S. Sen. Chris Murphy is coauthoring a bill that would forgive student debt for beginner farmers with less than 10 years experience, with U.S. Rep. Joe Courtney having introduced a similar bill in the House of Representatives. The Student Loan Forgiveness for Farmers and Ranchers Act would be limited to farms producing at least $35,000 in annual income on the sale of produce, and would hold participants to other requirements such as minimum lengths of time they work in the farming industry; and being in good standing on existing loan payments. Sen. Tom Udall (D-N.M.) coauthored the Senate version of the bill with Murphy. HARTFORD The Finance, Revenue and Bonding Committee debated two identical bills Tuesday, but voted to fail one and pass the other. The bills - one destined for the Senate, one for the House - proposed creating a state-run family and medical leave program. It would provide up to 12 weeks of paid family or medical leave for all private sector employees in exchange for half a percent of their salary each year. The difference between pass and fail was Rep. Patricia Billie Miller, D-Stamford. She changed her nay to a yay on the second vote over the social security-style program. At first, Miller opposed the program because it would require $20 million in start-up costs, paid for by state bonds. She was the only Democrat to vote against the bill, which has been called a Democratic priority by Senate leadership. But Miller said prior to the second vote, Speaker of the House Joe Aresimowicz, D-Berlin, personally assured her that bonding money would not be used to fund the program. That assurance moved her vote from no to yes, she said. All 25 Republicans on the committee who voted twice against the program were not swayed. If start-up costs are not funded by bonds, they could come out of the states budget, said Rep. Christopher Davis, R-Ellington. That might mean less money for other things legislators want like funding the states Medicare Savings Program. Among a host of problems Republican saw with the bill, they objected to the fact that private sector employees could not opt out of the program and state employees could not participate. Connecticut and its businesses and its people cannot afford to move this forward, said Sen. Toni Boucher, R-Wilton. We are in serious financial trouble, and bills like this put our residents and our businesses in even further trouble. Sen. Ed Gomes, D-Bridgeport, chair of the Labor Committee, which voted to approve the program in March, said at that time, the program is about helping more people afford to take time off to care for their families. Overall, the two votes Tuesday - 25 for and 26 against on the Senate bill, and 26 for and 25 against on the House bill - illustrate the slim chance the program may have for becoming a reality this year. emunson@hearstmediact.com; Twitter: @emiliemunson STAMFORD Stamford Public School students have no plans to participate in a national walkout Friday to commemorate the 19th anniversary of the Columbine High School massacre. Instead SUPER, a student union that organized the first district-wide walkout last month following the deadly school shootings in Parkland, Florida, is focusing on garnering legislative support and expanding throughout the state. It was hard because we were forming this student advocacy group while organizing our first activity, said Seth Christofor, a founding member of SUPER, at a Board of Representatives meeting Monday night. Now were looking forward to how SUPER can move forward. SUPER, which stands for Student Union for Political Expression and Representation, emerged before the March walkout as a group of local high school students who would advocate for the political goals of the teenage group. Christofor said about 50 high schools across the state are now members. Christofor, as a member of the student advisory council for the Board of Representatives education committee, told the board Monday the expanding group is planning monthly meetings for students to come together and discuss changes they want to see. Theyre also reaching out to local representatives and setting a date for a forum with students and government. Christofor added the group is hoping to establish a relationship with Stamford elected officials, including the Board of Representatives. Most of SUPERs founding members are graduating seniors who will pass the baton to current juniors. Were really trying to seek legitimacy here, Christofor said. I really want to see Stamford establish a precedent in the area to students and faculty about effective communication. Education committee chair Diane Lutz said the board would be open to discussing future relations with the group at next months meeting. If you had a better idea of the goals, I could tell you how Id support youas community member, she said. erin.kayata@stamfordadvocate.com; (203) 964-2265; @erin_kayata Should you buy a house with a bad septic system? You might wrestle with this question if you fall in love with a home only to find out during the home inspection that the septic system is in serious disrepair. Properties usually have septic systems for one of two reasons: The home is in a rural area with no public sewer available or the home is older, and while it previously didn't have access to a public sewer, it now doesbut may have not been hooked up yet. The good news is that a bad septic system doesn't automatically mean you should flush your hopes of purchasing the home. Here's when a bad septic system is a deal breaker and when it's not. Bad septic system: Repair or replace? Septics are a simple systemwater goes into the septic tank and displaces the same amount of water that travels to the drain field, says agent Adam Wise of Pearson Smith Realty in Washington, DC. Common problems with septics include tree roots impacting the soil around the drain field. A simple fix could be as easy as clearing the roots. Or a septic may be failing because a tank bafflewhat separates a tank from the drain fieldneeds repairing. In both cases, a septic professional can inspect the system and determine if a repair is possible. Such minor repairs may range from a few hundred to a few thousand dollars. But here's the thing: If there isn't an easy fix available, a bad septic will need to be completely replaced, or it will fail. Failure means the septic can no longer treat and distribute wastewater. Signs that a house needs a new septic system include toilets that drain slowly and standing wastewater on the ground above the drain field. How much does a septic system cost to replace? If a house is listed at a lower price because of a failed septic system, it could be a tremendous steal depending on the type of system that will need to be installed, says Wise. The cost of installing a new septic in the same place as the old one usually ranges from $10,000 to $15,000, depending on the soil and the type of system that will be installed. Septic systems and financing Keep in mind a bad septic system complicates the buyer's ability to finance a property. "It's often the case that the lender will require a working septic on traditional financing options," says broker Holly Gray at Re/Max Pacific Realty in Bellevue, WA. "The FHA won't approve a loan on a house with a bad septic." Who pays for septic system repairs: The buyer or the seller? In most states, home sellers must pay for the cost of repairing the septicor if it's irreparable, you might be able to persuade the sellers to replace it entirely. Agent Aaron Hendon of Christine & Company at Keller Williams in Seattle recently sold two properties with bad systems. In each case, the replacement cost was borne by the seller and the work completed before closing. When replacing a septic may not be worth it "If the leach field itself has failed, the entire septic system may need to be moved to a different location on the property," says Maryland home inspector Welmoed Sisson. In that case, a septic technician will survey the property for system requirements such as a location relative to any water sources. You'll also have to get a soil evaluation, which runs about $1,500, according to Wise. Soil technicians will be looking at soil type and slope of the property. Then a septic contractor will determine if the lot is large enough to accommodate a new drain field. Many existing systems are even with ground level, but new codes may no longer allow this and require unattractive remedies. So if there's no place with appropriate soil to move the septic to, the homeowner may be forced to install what's called a sand mound system (a literal mound of sand) or a holding tank system. The former is unsightly, and the latter could require monthly pump-outs. Keep in mind, a failed system could also have contaminated the soil around its original location, so do soil tests for potential ground contamination at the old site. Septic systems and home improvements If you're planning a large remodel in a home with a septic system, one thing to know is that any major improvements would require the owner to hook up to the public sewer system first (assuming it's available, of course). In this case, the condition of the septic tank isn't a factor as it will no longer be in use, says Gray. The cost of connecting to the municipal sewer system falls to the buyer, and is far from cheap. "We asked our septic company how much they thought it would cost to hook our previous home up to the sewer," says Sisson. The answer: "Upward of $90,000." The one upside, of course, is that you can point this out to sellers and negotiate a great bargain. In other words, a bad septic system can always be turned to your advantage. The post Should You Buy a House With a Bad Septic System? appeared first on Real Estate News & Insights | realtor.com. F ashion entrepreneur Natalie Massenet on Tuesday revealed her first venture since leaving the Net-a-Porter empire she founded, has raised $75 million (52 million) to back start-ups. The former British Fashion Council chair said her new investment business, Imaginary Ventures, has secured funding from the likes of Tom and Ruth Chapman, the couple who founded online retailer Matchesfashion. The firm, which is based in London and New York, will support growing businesses in sectors such as fashion, beauty and food. Massenet and business partner Nick Brown praised London as being one of the worlds most innovative centres at the intersection of technology and retail. Massenet said: We are really excited about the calibre of entrepreneurs and investors were talking to. She left luxury goods giant Net-a-Porter in 2015 ahead of its merger with Italian rival Yoox. M illions of Britons are getting their first real-terms pay rise for almost a year as the Brexit inflation crunch eases, official figures showed on Tuesday. Pay packets in the three months to February grew by 2.8% but adjusted for the cost of living, they are now 0.1% up on last year, the first annual rise since last March. The fillip for hard-pressed household budgets came as the figures showed unemployment falling to 4.2%, the lowest since 1975, and a healthy 55,000 rise in employment over the latest quarter. With markets expecting even stronger wage growth, the pound eased slightly after the data but remains close to its highest level since the June 2016 Brexit vote, which triggered a collapse in the currency. James Smith at ING said todays figures may well have sealed the deal for another hike to 0.75% from the Bank of Englands monetary policy committee next month. The Banks network of regional agents believe 2018 will see the best performance on pay since the crisis, as firms increasingly encounter skills shortages. But Smith added that what happens after May is less clear. While the committee has indicated they would be comfortable with raising rates for a second time this year, Brexit talks still have the potential to get noisy in the autumn. Coupled with ongoing economic fragility, this could complicate efforts to hike again later in 2018. The Office for National Statistics said 1.42 million people were unemployed over the quarter, down 136,000 on a year earlier. T he boss of shopping centres landlord Intu on Tuesday sought to dispel myths, and save its 3.4 billion tie-up with rival Hammerson amid growing shareholder concerns. David Fischel told the Evening Standard: There has been so much written about the death of retail, and we want to remind people that good-quality malls are doing well. The chief was speaking for the first time following a tumultuous month that saw French developer Klepierre make two takeover approaches for Brent Cross landlord Hammerson before walking away. The offers had prompted Hammerson to freeze an all-share takeover of Lakeside owner Intu, unveiled in December. Since Klepierre abandoned the 5 billion talks last week, a number of Hammerson shareholders are understood to have expressed concerns about Intus credentials in a tough UK retail market. Dutch pension fund APG has said it will vote against the deal. Fischel said: We want to dispel the myths that we are underinvested and overleveraged. In an unscheduled trading update, FTSE 250 firm Intu, which has 20 centres including in Watford and Uxbridge, said rents, occupancy and footfall rose between January and April 17. The balance sheet is robust. It agreed 60 new leases in the period, and predicted rental income will rise by up to 2.5% in 2018. Stifel analyst John Cahill said: The tone of the statement lies somewhere between a marketing and defence document. Hammersons board is now understood to be reviewing whether to go ahead with the deal. A controversial Israeli defence and security firm, whose products include electronic stun-guns and anti-drone tech, is working up plans for a London float, the Standard can reveal. Tel Aviv-based Avnon Group is understood to be working with advisers Stifel over plans to launch on the Alternative Investment Market later this year, potentially putting a price tag of up to 200 million on the company, according to City sources. The company, which supplies equipment and training to the Israeli government as well as international customers, was set up by Tomer Avnon in 1990. Most recently one of its subsidiaries, TAR Ideal Concepts, was reported to have trained Burmese special forces in northern Rakhine, where the government has been accused of ethnic cleansing of the Rohingya Muslim minority. In 2005, the firm was thrown out of a London arms fair for offering products such as stun guns and leg irons for sale although Avnon told the Jerusalem Post then that the move was the height of hypocrisy because we were among booths offering everything from sniper rifles to silencers, cluster bombs and all sorts of nasty stuff. Alongside TARs training and equipment, it has cyber-security subsidiaries and a Skylock anti-drone system which promises either to jam or destroy the machines using a laser burner . The group also runs Isdef, which was set up in 2007 and is Israels leading defence and homeland security trade show. According to its website, the next Isdef event will host some 300 firms and 15000 delegates. A fternoon all, and welcome to today's update on today's news coming out of the Smallcap market. I'll kick off with a couple of scoops, if that's alright with you. I hear Angus Energy (ticker: ANGS) is mulling raising 2 million to 3 million in the market by issuing new stock at 6.5p a share. The stock is currently trading at 7.16p up 2% today, in fact so watch out for that discount, pop pickers. I've seen bigger discounted issues to be honest, but you might see the price come off a tad once this news gets into the market. Angus has a stake in the Gatwick Gusher; not a prospect Ive always been especially polite about, truth be known, but I know it gets retail punters hot under the collar. No comment as yet from the company. A little birdy tells me Powerhouse Energy (ticker: PHE) is doing similar. This time its raising close to 1 million at 0.5p a share. The shares slipped back a bit today down 2% at 0.56p. Punters might be wary about buying in before the fundraiser but this business looks pretty exciting from what the PR bumpf says. Its kit converts plastic waste into electricity or hydrogen, and it's pretty small, too. One theory is you could install it into motorway service stations to provide power for electric vehicle charging stations. I hear there's an old shareholder who's been looking to clear out his stock for a while, but most of the fundraiser is for new money to commercialise its technology. Nowt from the company about the fundraiser as we went to print; instead it issued an upbeat trading statement about contracts in Romania and Bulgaria. Expect a statement about the fundraise soon, anyway. Burnt fingers across town from the poor old punters invested in Immupharma (ticker: IMM). One of those small drug discovery stocks which lives or dies on the outcome of one medicine, today it admitted its medicine to treat lupus had flopped in phase III trials. The medicine's called Lupuzor and is to treat the autoimmune disease which affects millions of people including, Shares magazine informs me, Justin Bieber's on-off squeeze, Selena Gomez. The stock fell an almighty 82% today. Having closed at 147p last night, it's now 25.2p. What's going to hurt more is that the stock had a flash crash on 20 March when it fell 20p perhaps on rumours of Lupuzor? but recovered as its loyal investors kept the faith. Trading volumes are monstrous today, as you'd expect, at 27 million against 1.7 million yesterday. Just goes to show the massive risk of investing in early stage drug companies which are effectively a binary win-lose bet on one treatment. Fracktastic news from Falcon Oil & Gas (ticker: FOG), which today announced a long-standing moratorium blocking it from fracking in Australia's Northern Territory. Investors had been waiting more than a year and a half for the news, which was accompanied by a press release from its partner on the project, Origin, which was hot-to-trot to get started. It's a bit surprising Falcon didn't take off more than it did, frankly. A 5% gain seems a little underwhelming, particularly as investors have been waiting for so long for this news. I guess it's because product won't start flowing out of the ground until next year and there's many a slip 'twixt cup and lip. As the excellent Malcy's Blog reports: Its not too late to join this caravan which should be a major play for a very long time, not least as Australia is ironically domestic gas short APC Technology (ticker: APC) has been distributing electronics for 35 years from its base in historic Rochester, selling specialist kit to the defence, property and public sectors. Its stock's had a great run since December, gaining from 5.88p to 8.25p. Today it reported a decent rise in revenue and profit for the first half of the financial year, but the stock fell sharply - 9% to 7.52p. Bit harsh, that. As well as growing earnings, the company's made a decent fist of cutting costs, too. That led some in the market to put today's share price fall down to dwindling hopes of a takeover. No pleasing some of you lot. Mark Shappers Shapland's back in the hotseat tomorrow with more SmallCap Spotlight nuggets. T he Evening Standard business team brings investors coverage and analysis on the major tech news of the day. Heres how much US investment is helping UK start-ups grow A report by UK law firm Penningtons Manches has revealed Silicon Valley investment in UK start-ups has broken the 1 billion mark in 2017 for the first time. There were 74 deals by US West Coast investors last year. Since 2011, the number of deals from Valley investments has increased by 252 per cent. Whilst West Coast investors were involved in more deals, East Coast money is also having an impact on UK start-ups. Investors provided 1.31 billion for UK companies last year. Penningtons Manches partner, James Klein, which recently launched a San Francisco office, said: "We are delighted that the findings from the report reveal such appetite from West Coast investors to nurture Britains most innovative, high potential firms. We look forward to supporting this continued interest from US investors into the future. Netflix subscribers are heating up its share price Netflix added 7.41 million new subscribers in the first quarter of 2018 / Shutterstock Netflix could be on its way to a $150 billion market cap soon following a successful first quarter of 2018. The on-demand content platform added 7.41 million new subscribers in the first part of this year around 2 million domestically in the States, which is a big deal considering there were previous concerns that the US market was slowing down. As well, all that original content is paying off. Its streaming revenue growth was up 43 per cent year-over-year, to around $3.6 billion. Thanks to these good results, investors were pretty happy. Shares in the company were up six per cent in extending trading, pushing up Netflixs market cap to over $130 billion. How long until the company reaches $150 billion? Netflix says it is going to be increasing its offering in countries around the world which should keep its investors, and its fund, ticking over nicely. Elon Musks Boring Co raises $112.5 million to build tunnels The Boring Co, one of Tesla CEO Elon Musks side project, has revealed its raised $112.5 million in funding, though 90 per cent of it has come from Musk himself. The company is building underground tunnels for a subterranean version of the hyperloop. There were around 31 unnamed investors in the fundraising round, made up of early Boring employees. As part of the Boring Cos expansion, it was recently given conditional approval from the Maryland Department of Transportation to begin building a tunnel from Baltimore to Washington. O ne in 10 FTSE 100 companies is missing targets to get more women in the boardroom, with some of the UKs best-known firms including BP, Persimmon and Sports Direct amongst the worst offenders. More than a dozen have been singled out for criticism by the Investment Association and the Hampton-Alexander Review. They include Dettol maker Reckitt Benckiser and tour operator TUI because they have all-male executive boards or there is a low proportion of women at the very top of the business. The bodies have written to 35 FTSE 350 firms, calling for change. Letters were sent to 11, including Stobart and Sports Direct, that have no female representation at board level. A further 10 companies who did not disclose their gender pay statistics, including JD Wetherspoon and the AA, were also in the firing line. The 2016 Hampton-Alexander Review set a target of 33% of senior leadership roles in FTSE 350 companies being taken by women by 2020. However, the 14 companies singled out have filled only between 9.3% and 13.4% of senior positions with women. F ashion chain Primark is banking on denim jackets and white jeans to lure more shoppers into its stores as it bucked the gloom engulfing the High Street. Same-store sales were up 3% in the UK in the 24 weeks to March 3, while overall revenues grew 8% to 3.5 billion. However, it posted a 1.5% decline in overall sales affected by warm weather in October, quickly followed by a cold snap in November on the Continent. Despite this, chief executive George Weston said it expects profits to accelerate during the rest of the year, lifted by the weaker dollar. Our stores are looking sharp and were encouraged by growth in America, he added. Pre-tax profits edged down slightly at Associated British Foods, Primarks owner. They were dragged down by its sugar business to 603 million. I n the week of the 50th anniversary of Enoch Powells disgusting Rivers of Blood speech, Britain finds itself detaining and harassing the children of the Caribbean migrants who came here, at our invitation, to help to rebuild the country and its industry after the Second World War. Named after the first ship that brought them here, the Windrush generation made their lives here, paid their taxes here, and enriched our society. They or their parents never applied for passports because they didnt need them and they trusted Britain when, in 1971, they were promised they had indefinite leave to remain by a progressive Conservative Prime Minister who had courageously rejected Mr Powell and his fellow nativist populists. Now, decades later, when these Windrush children apply for a new job, try to open a bank account, rent a property, get NHS treatment, seek support from the benefit system or travel abroad, they suddenly find they dont have the right documents. Some have been threatened with detention; a few may even have been deported no one, including the Government, knows. The Home Office is now in a panic, setting up emergency teams to help and promising assistance. The Home Secretary has apologised and said her department sometimes loses sight of the individual. The Prime Minister today says sorry too. Privately, Downing Street tells us she is furious that her chance to shine at the Commonwealth conference in London has been ruined. But there is no escaping the simple truth. The treatment of the Windrush generation was not a mistake or an oversight by an unwieldy bureaucracy. It results from a deliberate act of policy. It was Mrs May, as Home Secretary, who pursued a relentless drive to make life in Britain impossible for those who, her department believed, were here illegally all in pursuit of an arbitrary and elusive target of reducing net migration to below 100,000. Banks were required by law to see correct immigration documents. Landlords and employers were made to demand the same. The Right-wing media railed against migrants coming here to use the NHS, so the Health Secretary announced, to Tory applause, new passport checks before patients were admitted to hospitals. A succession of welfare ministers made announcements about clamping down on benefits for foreigners. Then the Brexiteers harnessed age-old hostility to immigrants to win majority support for their minority concerns about Parliamentary sovereignty. Labour politicians anxious to reconnect with the angry populist mood said they too would act against so-called uncontrolled immigration. Now Britain is reaping what it sowed. A nation built by immigrants, from Angles and Saxons, to Huguenots and Jews, African-Caribbeans, South Asians, Chinese and Europeans, has allowed anti-immigration populists to dictate its politics. It is a sight to behold, watching those who have spent a decade fuming about the ills of immigration now shedding crocodile tears about the mistreatment of the Windrush children. They should have the self-awareness to realise that this is where they have led this country. New star at Young Vic Kwame Kwei-Armah is arriving at the Young Vic and as a result Londons theatre life is getting even more exciting. Today the writer, director and actor sets out his first season in charge of the theatre, aiming to say something about the world that we live in. Thats not just talk. His first play, A Bitter Herb, tackled knife crime in Hackney. Staged in 1998 it is sadly just as relevant today as London struggles to control another rise in violence on its streets . At the Young Vic Kwei-Armah is kicking off this autumn with a musical version of Twelfth Night, bringing together professional and community actors a show he first directed at the Public Theater in New York. Hes also planning YV Unpacked, a project to take theatre outside our four walls with the aim of taking performances to places such as prisons and refugee centres. M ilitary intervention is a litmus test of the prevailing political mood. In 2018 the response to the participation of British forces in bombing Syrian chemical weapons sites has been heated and fuzzy in equal part. The weather vane has swung to and fro, from horror at the sight of gassed children to the post-Iraq, post-Afghanistan, post-modern, post-everything mood and the vain hope that someone else will sort it all out. The Commons debate yesterday was a study in obfuscation on both sides. Liberal interventionists on the Labour and Conservative benches now couch their arguments in technical discussions about safe havens for fear of sounding bellicose. The energy and intelligence that Hilary Benn lent to his embrace of intervention from the Left in 2013 has sapped or curdled in the Corbyn era into a lot of ways of arguing for not doing anything that might upset Russia. Anne McElvoy But the Governments case is also a partial one, vaguely wrapped in talk about the national interest while giving scant detail. Living with Theresa May is like never being treated as a grown-up, and it is one of the reasons her own senior ministers are always a little nervous of her. We know that British forces dropped eight missiles on the target site (out of more than 100 in the US-French-UK assault). It would have been a better service to Parliament and the country to explain what the result was and why this might help deter future chemical weapons use by President Assad. As it stands, those who do not warm to President Trumps windy reprise of mission accomplished rhetoric have been left to work out the point of the mission themselves. Even those of us who think the outcome has been the right one must bemoan a common symptom of Mayology namely that she has wavered in the direction of her leadership without explaining why. Her original pitch about national security was that, short of a direct missile strike on Maidenhead, she would stay clear of foreign entanglements. But Syria is not really a war of national interest it is one about defending the most basic values of the international order. The Prime Minister should be more candid about her logic. The reason this is so frustrating is that May made the right call. For all the arguments about Parliaments influence in such matters, the point of leaders is to make decisions including the judicious use of force. The mood in the Commons, albeit on a bad day for the Government because of the alleged deportation of Windrush descendants who came to Britain as children and have lived here for decades, was pretty clearly in favour of limited action in Syria. But parliamentary democracy deserves a better quality of information along the way. It also merits a less crass Opposition than we have seen in the Skripal and Syria cases in recent weeks. Corbynite arguments veer from the view that the United Nations should sort out the aftermath of gas attacks on civilians to dangerous diversions about whether Assad is to blame at all. After seven years of routinely gassing his own people to seize military advantage in the civil war, one would have thought the case was closed. But if you enter this debate determined to find a reason for doubt, one will present itself. On such logic, had Team Corbyns inspectors showed up at Inverness to hear Macbeths defence in the UN Banquo inquiry Thou canst not say I did it. Never shake thy gory locks at me they would have nodded sagely and declared the case unproven. ''The strikes on Syrian targets would have gone ahead with or without Britain and regardless of any vote'' Admittedly, it is harder to get centrists enthusiastic about a Western-led intervention because the failures in Iraq and Afghanistan have sapped confidence and it is easier to shout stop the than choose the right causes to commit to in a world of choices we would often rather not make. The presence of Donald Trump as blusterer-in-chief makes the anxieties of dealing with George W Bush look minor. In short, the list of do-nothing pretexts is bountiful. Strip away these irritations, and you are left with the unpalatable facts of what has happened in terms of the use of chemical warfare and crossing of the red line which that represents. Having allowed it to be crossed when David Cameron lost the vote on action in 2013, Britain would look even more appalling to help it be crossed again. Today the argument moves from the practice of warfare to the process. Having effectively backed out of a challenge on the rights and wrongs of missile strikes, the debate on the role of parliament looks pallid. It is also based on a non sequitur, namely the belief that the world would have waited on a British vote to act. Not so. It is Emmanuel Macron who has the ear of President Trump (and France dropped more missiles on Syria than Britain when push came to shove). The strikes on Syrian targets in the wake of the Douma atrocities, with scores dead and more injured, would have gone ahead with or without Britain and regardless of any vote at Westminster. So put the narcissism aside. Where the UK leaves a vacuum, other hungrier or more decisive powers will move in to fill it. The greatest danger to Britain as a force on the world stage is not a dearth of parliamentary process; its a settled sense of what we still think is worth fighting for. F URTHER to your story, [District line walkout for driver who went through three red lights set to cause travel chaos April 13], when rail companies want to remove guards in favour of driver-operated trains, the rail unions call strikes citing passenger safety as the reason. The unions claim that such a move increases passenger risk. But the Underground has had driver-operated trains for decades and enjoys a fantastic safety record. Yet when TfL redeploys a Tube driver who has passed three red lights (putting passengers in danger), Aslef calls a strike, completely ignoring the fact that the driver in question actually put passengers in danger. What if TfL had taken no action and this driver had passed another red light and caused an accident in which passengers were injured or killed? Pete Dobson THE unions have been passionate about keeping guards on trains for safety reasons. So how can they support someone who has repeatedly put passengers at risk? Its yet another example of protectionism and an excuse to punish long-suffering travellers. TfL has been very generous to give that person an office position. In most other organisations he would be out of a job. Debbie Gowns EDITOR'S REPLY Dear Pete and Debbie YOURE right that last weeks strike on the District line was infuriating for all of us who use it. Rail unions are risking the patience of Londoners and by striking in support of a driver whod agreed to move jobs after passing three red lights, they can hardly claim to be putting safety first. Its telling that while drivers at Acton depot voted to strike, those at Earls Court werent persuaded to join in. So even union members didnt seem convinced. Really, this is about control. Who decides when trains can run? Rail unions still have great power and Tube drivers are very well paid but I used the DLR a lot, which has never had drivers, and testing has just begun this year of automatic operation on Thameslink in central London. Senseless strikes like these will only encourage the switch to new technology, which should help passengers but in the end could leave drivers wishing they hadnt walked out so often. Julian Glover, Associate Editor UK should take the lead on gay rights in the Commonwealth IT IS utterly unacceptable and shameful that 37 of 53 countries in the Commonwealth, an organisation that the UK founded, criminalise homosexuality [Gold hero Toms gay rights rallying cry April 13]. The UK will now chair the Commonwealth for two years. The UK Government should, where appropriate, use the powerful resources it has including the promise of new trade deals and aid funding to help lead the push for decriminalisation of homosexuality across the Commonwealth. After Brexit, Britain must not only be a global leader in free trade, as the Prime Minister has advocated, but human rights too. Helping to decriminalise homosexuality across the Commonwealth would be a record that global Britain could be very proud of. Ryan Shorthouse Director, Bright Blue Give amnesty to Windrush settlers THIS week sees London host the Commonwealth Heads of Government meeting. We hope our government will use this opportunity to announce an amnesty to the Windrush Generation who are currently threatened with deportation and the loss of their rights, although they have worked and lived here all their adult lives. Why hasnt the Home Office maintained proper records it is causing such distress. These are Londoners who came as children, attended London schools, worked and made their lives here. Now they are threatened with deportation. This country invited the Windrush Generation as British subjects. Will the Government act this week to stop all deportations, change the burden of proof and establish an amnesty? Pauline Pearce, Chris Maines Liberal Democrat candidates Bombing of Syria was unjustified TWO wrongs do not make a right, even when the wrong is a chemical attack. The bombing of Syria by the US, UK and France is unjustified. We were not under threat of imminent attack. Mrs May bypassed Parliament and the UN to bomb Syria, and in doing so has flouted international law. Couching this wanton populism under the banns of humanitarianism just wont wash. Heaven forbid that British policy should now, as it appears, be hanging on Donald Trumps every word. Why bypass the UN in these circumstances? What gives May the right to act as an international policeman? Yes, the UK may not poison its citizens but we somehow claim the right to blow other countrys civilians to bits. Julie Partridge Take advantage of the new YIMBYs THE rise of YIMBYs [More Londoners happy to back building homes in their backyards April 11] is the shift we need. It is refreshing to see the sentiment swing in favour of millennials and those struggling to get on the property ladder. We need to start thinking about future generations, and if that means sacrificing some allotment space, then so be it. With the number of homeowners in the 25-29 age bracket dropping by up to 50 per cent since 1990, we must re-evaluate our attitudes by altering the correlation between affluent areas and difficulty in getting planning permission. With Prince Harry and Meghan Markle's royal wedding mere weeks away, rumours on who will design the bride's wedding dress has hit fever pitch. Since their engagement last year, predictions on who will create the coveted dress have been hitting social media left, right and centre. From Inbal Dror's sketches being leaked to rumours one of her fashion friends had been given the task. Bets have since been suspended, after a surge of people favoured Meghan following in the footsteps of the Duchess of Cambridge by choosing Alexander McQueen. Although we are already struggling to keep up to date with the many predictions and theories, this week a new front runner has been revealed: British brand Burberry. People. Fashion. Power. Delivered weekly. Email Sign up Sign up I would like to be emailed about offers, event and updates from Evening Standard. Read our privacy notice {{message}} {{permutiveUid}} {{message}} Fellow designer Henry Holland recently appeared on the podcast Wedding Guest Extraordinaire, hinting that the quintessentially British brand could be walking down the aisle along with Megs. Although the luxury label has recently seen a switch up, with creative director Christopher Bailey departing the brand after 17 years, Henry said, I would be quite excited if it was Christopher Baileys final bow for Burberry. I think that would be a nice thing for him to do, shes worn for them for a long time. Burberry show during the London Fashion Week February 2017 / Getty Images He's not wrong. Meghan has introduced many British brands into her wardrobe since she moved to Nottingham Cottage on the grounds of Kensington Palace, Burberry being a firm favourite. Prince Harry and Meghan Markle visit Edinburgh - In pictures 1 /19 Prince Harry and Meghan Markle visit Edinburgh - In pictures Meghan Markle during a walkabout on the esplanade at Edinburgh Castle, during a visit to Scotlan PA Prince Harry and his fiancee Meghan Markle meet a Shetland Pony as they arrive at Edinburgh Castle in Edinburgh, Scotland Frank Augstein/AP Prince Harry and Meghan Markle meet Pony Major Mark Wilkinson and regimental mascot Cruachan IV during a walkabout on the esplanade at Edinburgh Castle, during their visit to Scotland PA Prince Harry and Meghan Markle meet Pony Major Mark Wilkinson and regimental mascot Cruachan IV during a walkabout on the esplanade at Edinburgh Castle, during their visit to Scotland AP Prince Harry and his fiancee Meghan Markle meet a Shetland Pony as they arrive at Edinburgh Castle in Edinburgh, Scotland PA Meghan Markle greets wellwishers while on a walkabout on the esplanade at Edinburgh Castle, as she and Prince Harry visited Scotland PA Prince Harry and Meghan Markle during a walkabout on the esplanade at Edinburgh Castle, during their visit to Scotland PA Prince Harry and his fiancee Meghan Markle meet a Shetland Pony as they arrive at Edinburgh Castle in Edinburgh, Scotland Reuters Meghan Markle during a walkabout on the esplanade at Edinburgh Castle, during their visit to Scotland PA Prince Harry and Meghan Markle during a walkabout on the esplanade at Edinburgh Castle, during their visit to Scotland PA Meghan Markle during a walkabout on the esplanade at Edinburgh Castle, during their visit to Scotland PA Meghan Markle during a walkabout on the esplanade at Edinburgh Castle, during their visit to Scotland PA Meghan Markle during a walkabout on the esplanade at Edinburgh Castle, during their visit to Scotland PA Crowds gather ahead of a visit by Prince Harry and Meghan Markle to Edinburgh Castle PA A young girl waves a flag as she waits for the arrival of Britain's Prince Harry and his fiancee Meghan Markle at Edinburgh Castl Reuters Prince Harry during a walkabout on the esplanade at Edinburgh Castle, during their visit to Scotland PA Meghan Markle during a walkabout on the esplanade at Edinburgh Castle, during their visit to Scotland Chris Jackson/Getty Images Crowds await the arrivals of Prince Harry and Meghan Markle ahead of royal walkabout on the esplanade at Edinburgh Castle, during their visit to Scotlan PA Meghan Markle during a walkabout on the esplanade at Edinburgh Castle, during their visit to Scotland PA The 36-year-old most recently wore a tartan Burberry jacket from one of Bailey's last collections whilst on her first official visit to Scotland. And has previously sported a pair of black trousers by the brand (one of her signature styles) for a trip to Reprezent Radio. I n our Play Talk series, playwrights discuss the joys and struggles of the writing life. This week, Ella Hickson talks about trusting yourself and theatre's transformative power, ahead of her new play, The Writer, opening at the Almeida. What was the first play to make you want to write plays? I saw John Osbornes Luther when I was a kid at the National Theatre. I remember feeling really silent afterwards, like something had shifted. What was your background to becoming a playwright? I had a hard time feeling settled at university. Bedlam Theatre University of Edinburgh's student-run theatre was the first time I felt like Id found a home. I was a producer to begin with, designing the posters and so on. It took a while to think I might write something. Whats the hardest play youve ever written? Oil. I thought there was a solution out there and I just wasnt finding it or thinking hard enough, I was undermining my own confidence for years not realising it was the confidence itself that was the answer. Which brought you the most joy? The writing of The Writer was great, not pain-free but no anxiety which made for joy. Wendy and Peter Pan and Eight were glorious times and gangs to be in. Which playwrights have influenced you the most? I felt like I got permission for lyricism and heat from Tennessee Williams and Lorca, and almost everything I know about form as politics was Caryl Churchill. These days most of what challenges me is the work of contemporary writers, I feel like I always want to be in conversation with whats being made now, how were pushing things. What is your favourite line or scene from any play? Portias line to Brutus in Julius Caesar, Dwell I but in the suburbs of your good pleasure? - concise yet deadly in its depiction of status imbalance in a relationship. Whats been the biggest surprise to you since youve had your writing performed by actors? The perspective of a great actor can upend your world view. I remember writing a monologue that I was sure was about freedom it was performed by a brilliant actor who instantly made it very clear it was about loneliness. Whats been your biggest setback as a writer? Learning to trust myself has taken a long time. The anxiety of not doing so has made writing and living much harder than it needed to be. Its getting better with age. And the hardest lesson youve had to learn? Ive had to give up trying to impress people. I would pick people I knew I couldnt really get responses from and make their approval central. Theres a strange safety in that but it stops you from being great. What do you think is the best thing about theatre? And the worst? Best: the collective act of faith humans, sitting together, breathing and believing - creates transformation, right there in front of you. Worst: the increasingly pervasive idea of play as commercial product. Whats your best piece of advice for writers who are starting out? Work out what you feel, not what you think. Start from there. Are there any themes and stories you find yourself re-visiting with your plays? I think Im never sure how much were allowed to believe in things. Theres a point at which imagination or faith hits up against reality. London's best new writing theatres 1 /12 London's best new writing theatres King's Head Theatre When it opened in 1970, The Kings Head Theatre was the first theatre pub since the days of Shakespeare. With a diverse programme, it has been known for being a champion of LGBTQ+ work since the beginning. While their annual festival in July gives us a concentrated few weeks of new writing, its non-stop throughout the year across the genres. Its so popular with theatre lovers and practitioners alike - Sir Ian McKellen has been known to frequent - that it is moving a few doors down to a bigger space, so more can enjoy the magic. Bush Theatre With an emerging writers group and bursaries for BAMER writers, the Bush Theatre is a well-established powerhouse for new writing that reflects British contemporary culture. Stephen Poliakoff, Conor McPherson, Helen Edmundson and Irvine Welsh are just a few to have debuted work at the Bush in the past. Now, with Madani Younis at the helm as artistic director, they receive nearly 2,000 scripts each year and have cemented themselves as the place to go for groundbreaking work as diverse as its audiences. Philip Vile Arcola Theatre The Arcola Theatre in Dalston is a truly community focused endeavour, with endless opportunities and support when it comes to new work. Its committed to creating diverse theatre with and for local people, but its still worth visiting even if east isnt your area. For the past decade, Grimeborn - Glyndebournes ever so much trendier younger sister - has presented some of the greatest new, offbeat opera around. Recent highlights of that include the Marriage of Kim K, a combination of Kim Kardashian and the Marriage of Figaro. The Yard Every piece of work presented at The Yard theatre in Hackney Wick is new. Plays first seen on the Yard stage have transferred to the National Theatre and made their way around the country. They pride themselves on offering insights that can only be seen in theatre, and run the Live Draft series, where playwrights test their new scripts out on an audience. If you want to be fully immersed in the theatremaking experience, go here and see its inception. The Yard Theatre503 Theatre503 has a year round submission policy, the annual Playwriting Award for unproduced writers, and a rapid response short play scheme, where playwrights attend a show in the first week and submit a 10 minute script inspired by the play - a handful of scripts are selected and staged two weeks later. They stage more work from first-time writers than anywhere else in the country and many alumnae have gone onto great things, including Vinay Patel, who won a BAFTA for Murdered By My Father. Soho Theatre For comedy, cabaret, drag and one-handers, this is your place. Every year, they pick the Soho Six, a group of six invited artists, who become playwrights-in-residence. Upstairs or downstairs, there is something on every night of the week, whether its hard-hitting, real life stories or lighthearted pop culture. The Vaults You may know it for the Vaults Festival - Londons answer to Edinburgh Fringe and the capitals biggest arts festival - but the Vaults never stops. The multidisciplinary arts venue stages everything from immersive musicals to immersive drama to immersive theatrical dining (theyre big on the immersive stuff). Its a really interesting place to catch new work that might not conform to a traditional stage. Hackney Showroom Diversity, inclusivity and uniqueness are behind everything staged at Hackney Showroom. Co-artistic directors Nina Lyndon and Sam Curtis Lindsay provide the space (a warehouse full of it) for each artist or company to produce new work you wouldnt catch somewhere else. With such associate artists as Zawe Ashton, Travis Alabanza and Lucy McCormick, you can be sure that youll see something completely out of the mainstream. Royal Court Theatre The Royal Court in Sloane Square premiered John Osbornes Look Back in Anger in 1956 and was met with largely damning reviews. Only two critics, Kenneth Tynan and Harold Hobson, saw the play as a radical change for modern British drama. They went on to become two of the most respected theatre critics of all time. Since then, the Royal Court has continued to champion new writing that pushes boundaries, supporting fresh, young voices in producing work with an edge. National Theatre The National Theatre is a trusted source for some of the biggest production and names in theatre, both on stage and behind the scenes. Even so, it isnt averse to taking risks. Since launching in 2015, the New Work Department has seen thousands of artists work on developing new projects in house. Their focus is working with mid-career artists and elevating them to mainstream stages, so this is the place to go for playwrights with a few years under their belt. Old Red Lion Theatre Sunday and Monday nights at this theatre pub are scratch nights, where emerging theatre-makers can try out their new work. Plays often transfer to the West End, with Trafalgar Studios being a regular recipient: a world premiere of an unearthed Arthur Miller play, No Villain, transferred there after debuting at the Old Red Lion in 2015. Mischief Theatres The Play That Goes Wrong was born here, going on to win an Olivier and prompting similar success with The Comedy About a Bank Robbery. Finborough Theatre The Finborough above a pub in Earls Court may be tiny - just 50 seats - but it packs a punch. Dedicated exclusively to producing new work or revivals of forgotten plays, youre guaranteed to find something special, in a particularly intimate setting. Under the reign of artistic director Neil McPherson, the theatre has won numerous fringe awards, as well as the Encouragement of New Writing award from the Writers Guild of Great Britain. Are you on Twitter? Do you find it a help or a hindrance as a writer? It offers community which is essential but it also feeds a frenetic sense of external approval which is really unhelpful. How do you spend opening night? Trying to talk to as many of my friends as possible about anything that isnt the play. Whats your favourite place to watch theatre in London? They all feel like homes. I love the back seats of the Olivier, the collective hug of the Young Vic I think the Almeida is my favourite space though. Ill take anywhere that lets me take hot tea in with me. What other art forms do you love when youre not in a theatre? Im a huge film fan. Phantom Thread did something funny to me a few weeks back. If the Prime Minister said they were abolishing the theatre tomorrow, what would you do? Run for Prime Minister. Review at a glance H alfway through Marc Marons London show the generously moustachioed American read out thoughts scribbled on Post-it notes. One line was My comfort zone is uncomfortable, which sums him up. Marons speciality is the comedy of angst. Just because things are bad doesnt mean they wont get worse. The start of the gig underlined this theme as the man who famously interviewed Barack Obama for his WTF podcast discussed politics. Trump is bad but Mike Pence might be worse. What followed was a crude yet frankly hilarious routine imagining what the Vice-President might do sexually if the world was ending. If there were shades of Stewart Lee in this story there were echoes of other UK stand-ups during his set. There was the brutal honesty of David Baddiel, even a hint of Micky Flanagan in his nostalgia, particularly during an enjoyably relatable riff about life before Google, when astonishingly we had to look things up in books. The material shuttled between the profane and the quotidian. One moment he was talking graphically about masturbation, the next revealing his passion for PG Tips. Elsewhere there were anecdotes about familiar on-the-road topics such as flying and hotel design, particularly glass partitions between bed and bathroom. At the shows heart, though, was Marons eternal inability to feel OK. His self-hate certainly produces big laughs. Towards the end he confessed that he never says that sounds like fun. Which is ironic because for his audience he was plenty of fun. W hen the weather is fine, weve got street food on our mind and in a post-lockdown world, feeling like you can touch the sky is more important to diners than ever. It was back on June 1 that the government first allowed outdoor markets to come out of lockdown and welcome shoppers once again but many of Londons top street food hotspots remained closed. Boosted by the further lifting of dining restrictions on July 4's Super Saturday, more markets (both outdoor and indoor) have started welcoming back traders and hungry customers but that doesnt mean Londons street food scene will go back to normal right away. With eating al fresco thought to be safer in the age of Covid-19, outdoor markets are understandably attractive to diners but the milling and mingling they invite cause a few more logistical headaches for operators. The likes of Boxpark and Pop Brixton are offering table service from traders to its communal dining areas for the first time to prevent difficult-to-manage queues at stalls, while Camden and Maltby Street Markets are hoping their customers will stick to a one-way system around the site. Pop Brixton is even mandating that visitors need to wear masks at all times when they are not eating at their table. Food. Bars. Going out. Delivered weekly Email Sign up Sign up I would like to be emailed about offers, event and updates from Evening Standard. Read our privacy notice {{message}} {{permutiveUid}} {{message}} While the visitor experience may be a little less free-and-easy, these measures are what many of our favourite foodie venues are needing to do to survive. While 2019 was a bumper year for the opening of communal dining-focused indoor food markets, social distancing is now posing a major threat to their continued existence. Market Halls the team behind the UKs largest food hall just off Oxford Street is having to keep all its venues closed while social distancing remains and has made all of its staff redundant. Street Feasts Dinerama in Shoreditch has reopened, but its owner Jonathan Downey has warned that this summer may see its last days. If you fell in love with the street food vibe last summer, it is still perfectly possible to enjoy it again in 2020 youll just need to play by the rules. As those differ between each venue, weve put together a guide to the ways in which your favourite street food hotspots may look a little different this summer. If youre particularly keen on hygiene, its worth noting that all the open markets listed below have increased their cleaning procedures on reopening, and have hand sanitising stations located throughout venues. Desperate for a spot of pavement-side pizza or a burger on the boulevard? Heres where and how to enjoy Londons street food culture this summer. Borough Market Update: As an essential food retailer, the market has remained open for grocery traders throughout the lockdown. All areas of the market have now reopened, but with reduced seating to help maintain social distancing so youll need to eat hot food off-site if you cant find a seat. Masks need to be worn inside all shops, and visitors are encouraged to wear them elsewhere. If the market is busy, you may need to queue for entry. The market has also launched an online delivery system, in partnership with Good Sixty, offering home delivery of grocery products. Borough Markets reputation as Londons ultimate street food haven is well deserved not least for its staying power. Believe it or not, this behemoth of the London street food scene has its roots in a 12th century market that traded on the same site. Today its home to some of Londons best loved street food purveyors: pick up a chorizo roll from Brindisa or a cheese toastie from Kappacasein for maximum happiness. When: Monday-Saturday, various hours 8 Southwark Street, SE1 1TL, boroughmarket.org.uk Camden Market Update: The market reopened on June 1, but food and drink services were initially limited to takeaway and delivery. Diners can now eat and drink at seating areas, which have been rearranged to maintain social distancing. Visitors will also need to move around the market via a strict one way system, will only be able to pay by card, and may need to queue to get into some shops. A walk down Regents Canal comes with more than a few eating and drinking options: Camden Market has hundreds. This north London legend has it wrapped up all over the world, with the likes of Oli Baba's cooking up halloumi fries, Only Jerkin' offering a Caribbean-inspired twist on fried chicken and Katsu House offering Japanese curry in a bun. Vegans are also in luck, with Young Vegans selling its meat-free pies and Rudy's Dirty Vegan Diner When: Everyday, 10am-6pm Camden Lock Place, NW1 8AF, camdenmarket.com Boxpark (Shoreditch, Wembley, Croydon) Update: Boxpark reopened all three of its London sites on July 4, with food traders offering table service on-site, delivery off-site, and a click-and-collect service that can be used to collect food to eat on or off the premises. To visit, youll need to register for and download the Boxpark Black Card, which is scanned on entry to comply with the NHS track-and-trace programme. The markets will operate at a lower capacity and reduced trading hours (11am-11pm), and traders will take card and contactless payments only. When the Boxpark gang clapped eyes on a neglected space in Shoreditch, they had an idea that would turn them into one of the best known foodie entrepreneurs in the capital. At their original site in east London, and at two more in Wembley and Croydon, theyve filled under-loved corners of the capital with shipping container complexes made to house street food brands and their fans. Traders across the sites include The Athenian, Black Bear Burger, Rudies Jerk Shack, What The Pitta and Zia Lucia. These markets are largely indoor, but Shoreditch boasts a summer-ready terrace. When? Every day, various hours. Pop Brixton Hannah Miles Update: Pop Brixton reopened on July 4. Visitors will need to give their details on arrival and have their temperature checked, before being seated at a table by a host (groups of up to six only). Youll need to wear a mask at all times when you are not eating or drinking at your table. Market capacity has been capped, seating spaced out (some with partitions between them) and food can be ordered to the table via QR codes or Good Eats. Pop Brixton isnt just a delight for local customers its there for local businesses first and foremost. The initiative began as a way to support small independent businesses in the south London area, with a particular emphasis on helping those with creative skills. Shipping containers house tattoo artists, design studios, a barbers and a radio station, as well as a host of street food stalls. Popular traders include Mamas Jerk, Baba Gs, Other Side Fried and Halo Burger. When? Everyday, midday to 10pm (until 11.30pm, Thursday to Saturday) 49 Brixton Station Road, SW9 8PQ, popbrixton.org Mercato Metropolitano, Mercato Mayfair Update: The indoor market group has now fully reopened both of its locations. Both are operating at a reduced capacity, and collecting visitor details for the test-and-trace programme. Seating has been reconfigured to maintain social distancing with tables accommodating groups of no more than six, and Mercato Mayfair has added a new outdoor terrace. The group has also launched an online shopping platform offering local delivery. While feeding visitors delicious dishes is a high priority, these indoor markets have bigger ideas too. Mercato Metropolitano opened in 2016 in a disused railway station, with an ethos of supporting local businesses and the community, as well as the global environment through its approach to food and waste last year it banned all single use plastic from the site. It now has a second site in Mayfair inside the former St Marks church, and is looking to open a third in Ilford. Across the sites, a world of cuisines come from the likes of Kalimera, Leggero, Okonomiyaki and Lala. When? Every day, various hours Maltby Street Market Update: The market reopened on June 6 as a produce market, trading from Friday to Sunday. It is now also hosting a limited number of hot food traders on Saturdays and Sundays, and has also reopened its bars. The market will introduce a one-way system if and when the number of visitors exceeds a certain amount. Bermondsey residents have it so good with this petite but perpetually packed weekend market. Spilling out of the railway arches and into the street are some really superb food start ups and established stars. Out in the street, grab gooey toasties from The Cheese Truck or seriously reasonable steak from The Beefsteaks, or keep it sweet with Bad Brownie. Inside a railway arch or two, pick up Spanish jamon at Bar Tozino or a gin cocktail at Little Bird bar. When: Friday-Saturday, various hours Maltby Street, SE1 3PA, maltby.st Old Spitalfields Market Update: The market is now fully open to visitors. Aisles, walkways and dining benches have been widened or spread out, and queuing spots have been installed to help with social distancing at food stalls. Entrances and exits have also been separated, and all traders will need to wear gloves and masks, and undertake daily temperature checks. Old Spitalfields Market really is old about 350 years in fact. Luckily for contemporary Londoners, its really got into its street food stride within the last few, thanks to a 2017 revamp which newly placed 10 permanent kitchens at its centre. Current inhabitants of these spots include top traders Dumpling Shack, Montys Deli and Pleasant Lady, but the site as a whole is home to more than 40 food and drink spots, including Bleecker Burger, Ahi Poke and Wheelcake Island. When? Every day, various hours 16 Commercial Street, E1 6EW, oldspitalfieldsmarket.com Kerb Update: While all of the regular markets remain closed, the group is currently hosting a Summer of Kerb market on the South Bank outside the National Theatre, with traders including Only Jerkin, Bleecker Burger and Fundi. On its Instagram, Kerb says were cashless, weve sanitisers, masks, social distancing dots and we encourage you all to take a wander along the riverfront with your food and drink. Since it launched just five years ago, Kerb has gone from strength to strength on the street food scene. The organisation now hosts five separate markets in locations across London, from Camden to West India Quay, as well as indoor food court Seven Dials Market. Expect innovative fare from the traders here, with food from a diverse lot including ex-prisoner run Liberty Kitchen, vegan enthusiast Club Mexicana and Filipino food favourite BBQ Dreamz, which triumphed on the BBC's Million Pound Menu series. When: Various times and days, market dependant Street Feast (Dinerama, Hawker House, Giant Robot, Model Market) Dinerama: A 10 hour Field Day party is heading to Shoreditch Update: Street Feast has now reopened its Dinerama site, and will do so every Friday and Saturday until September 26. The company has, however, warned that this will most likely be our final 10 weeks before we are forced to close permanently. Dinerama is operating at half its capacity, and is requesting details for track-and-trace (not mandatory). It is also operating one-way queuing systems for its bars, and has introduced a TableSnapper app system to allow diners to order food to their table. Hawker House, Giant Robot and Model Market remain closed. Shoreditch haunt Dinerama quite literally rose from the ashes after a fire at the site in 2015, but is back to its old, hard partying self. Run by food fanatics Street Feast, Dinerama is a permanent site home to the likes of cheese peddler Raclette Brothers, ice cream expert Chin Chin Labs, burger buff Tucka Burger and a bar called German Sex Dungeon. If you dont feel like spending the evening in hipster heaven, Street Feast also look after food markets Giant Robot (Canary Wharf), Model Market (Lewisham) and Hawker House (Canada Water). When: Wednesday-Saturday, 5pm-Late 19 Great Eastern Street, EC2A 3EJ, streetfeast.com Vinegar Yard Hayden Perrier Update: The market is back open, but with a limited number of food traders more are set to reopen soon. Visitors are now able to book tables for groups of up to six and order drinks packages in advance this is encouraged, particularly as visitors will not be able to stand and drink. All visitors will need to purchase a free ticket online, which will be scanned on entry to assist the track-and-trace system. All traders have gone cashless, and the overall capacity has been reduced. One of Londons newest street food hotspots boasts a pretty impressive view of one of the capitals most recognisable landmarks. Under the gaze of the Shard, Vinegar Yard is akin to a particularly good garden party an open green space, packed with picnic tables, a weekend flea market, bars and plenty of street food. On the menu are the likes of burger buffs Baba Gs and Nanny Bills, Italian street food spot Sugo and steak slinger Up In My Grill. When? From 5pm on weekdays, from 12pm on weekends, various closing times 72-82 St Thomas Street, SE1 3QX, vinegaryard.london Brockley Market Update: The Saturday market has resumed, but will be produce-only for now, with street food to return at a later date. The market will also continue to operate as a click-and-collect grocery market (as it introduced during lockdown) with collection times available on Saturdays only. Car parks dont get much more exciting than this one in south east London. Perfect for a leisurely weekend peruse, a trip to Brockleys weekend market sees Mike + Ollie serving up fabulous flatbreads, Mother Flipper flipping their famed burgers and Luardos loading up bountiful burritos.The extensive number of quality ingredient producers who also sell at the market mean you can take amazing tastes home to your kitchen too. When: Saturday, 10am-2pm Lewisham Way, SE4 1UT, brockleymarket.com Broadway Market Update: The Saturday market has now returned, and the market will continue operating its newly launched online delivery platform Click It Local to allow visitors to shop from their favourite stalls, as well as a click-and-collect service. Has all that sunbathing on London Fields worked up your appetite? Just a hop, skip and a jump from the Hackney oasis is Broadway Market, which boasts both permanent restaurants, cafes and bars and a top street food market on Saturdays. Traders include ice cream favourite Nonna's Gelato, haggis toastie sensation Deeney's, and fried chicken fan Butchies. When: Saturday, 10am-4pm Broadway Market, E8 4PH, broadwaymarket.co.uk Southbank Centre Food Market Update: The market has returned with new safety measures in place. These include a reduced number of traders, and a restricted number of customers moving via a one-way system and entering through dedicated entrance and exit points. The market is also now cash-free, and will operate socially distant queues at food stalls. An artistically inclined stroll down the Southbank wouldnt be complete without some mind-sharpening fuel. Move from riverside to Waterloo-side of the Southbank Centre for some street eating in the cultural centres own street food market. Barbecue favourites Street Pig BBQ are on hand with barbecued meats, Horn OK Please creates veggie Indian dishes, with the savoury treats ripe for topping off with pasteis de nata from Galeta. When: Friday-Sunday, various hours Belvedere Road, SE1 8XX, southbankcentre.co.uk Street Food Union Update: The market had hoped to reopen on July 1, but is now looking towards reopening on September 1. Those on the lunchtime hunt in Soho are spoilt for choice anyway, but Street Food Union is a welcome perk. Sandwich fixes come in the form of American subs from Bayou and wraps from Lil' Falafel, which sit side-by-side with salad boxes from Dorothy's Deli and Filipino rice dishes from Spoon and Rice. When: Monday-Friday, 11.30am-2.30pm 51-53 Rupert Street, W1D 7PQ, streetfoodunion.com Market Halls Update: All of the Market Halls sites Victoria, Fulham and West End remain temporarily closed. The company said it had made the difficult decision that all its sites will remain closed while social distancing remains, but that it will reopen when it can. London loves a street food market but the British weather doesnt always feel the same way. Market Halls is behind not one, but three indoor food courts in London: the first in Fulham, the second in Victoria, and the third in the West End, which takes the accolade for the largest food hall in the UK. Each sports a different size and vibe, but all offer some of the top restaurants brands and street food favourites in the capital. Across the three, youll find the likes of BaoziInn, CookDaily, Fannys Kebabs, Flank and Gopals Corner from the Roti King team. When? Every day, various times Leather Lane Market Update: Speaking to the Standard, a spokesperson for Camden Council said that "all the councils markets, including Leather Lane, are open and have been operating within government guidelines since March 2020." Leather Lane has slipped into misnomer territory in the latter stages of its 400 year history. You might be pushed for a new pair of brogues at this market, but you can definitely find a darn good lunch. Leather Lane has been home to some of the capitals hottest street food success stories over the years (burrito bosses Daddy Donkey and sourdough saviours Crosstown Doughnuts to name but a few) and is the Clerkenwell gift that keeps on giving. When: Monday-Friday, 10am-3pm Leather Lane, EC1N 7TJ, leatherlanestars.wordpress.com O n Monday, the company behind the Avios Travel Rewards Programme used by British Airways customers announced that the scheme would be closing down on May 20. Before you panic, your points are still intact but there are a few things you need to know. An email to customers read: "In the coming months, the UK Avios Travel Rewards Programme will close but Avios, the currency, will remain. "Were doing this to simplify the programme and further improve collection and spending opportunities. Youll still be able to collect and spend Avios with many of the partners you do today, youll just have a new home to do it all from." So, your Avios balance still exists, as well as any existing bookings and transactions it's just moving to a new home. People. Fashion. Power. Delivered weekly. Email Sign up Sign up I would like to be emailed about offers, event and updates from Evening Standard. Read our privacy notice {{message}} {{permutiveUid}} {{message}} Until now, The Avios Travel Rewards Programme has operated separately to the British Airways Executive Club, despite the fact that both use the same currency Avios points. This means customers who have accounts with both have Avios accumulating in two separate schemes. Now, as the scheme closes down, a British Airways Executive Club account will be created for Avios customers who don't currently have one, and points balance will be transferred over. However, if you already have a British Airways Executive Club account as well as an account, you can transfer your Avios points across yourself by May 20 or you can opt out entirely by the same date, but you'll need to spend all your Avios within six months or lose them. If you don't, BA told Business Insider that any Avios left in your account after the programme has closed will be moved across into your British Airways Executive Club account. It could take "several weeks" to build the new accounts, but customers will be able to collect and spend Avios as normal in the meantime, according to the company. "The British Airways Executive Club will be in touch with your new account details and how to activate it when its ready," the email read. According to the Avios Group Limited (AGL), the move will bring "added benefits" to Avios members who will be able to "collect and spend Avios with even more partners than at present," including flights with British Airways, Iberia, and 11 additional OneWorld and partner airlines including American Airlines, Qantas, and Japan Airlines. The company added that members will have access to 60,000 additional partner hotels and 50,000 more sight-seeing experiences and excursions. Rob Burgess, who runs frequent flier website Head for Points, confirmed there's nothing to worry about. "Their points are safe and will be transferred over to British Airways Executive Club," he said. "The range of redemption options available via BAEC is broader than it is via Avios and no one will lose out. This move will also unravel some of the complexity in running two Avios-based loyalty schemes in the UK." However, he added that the move is an "admission of failure" by Avios to build a stand-alone multi-partner scheme in the UK. T hree cruel thieves who stole the ashes of two babies during a burglary spree around London have been convicted. Marcin Lipiec, 37, Daniel Majewski, 26 and Piotr Pawlark, 32, from Richmond, stole hundreds of pounds worth of goods including jewellery and bank cards in a string of burglaries. In one instance, they stole a box containing the ashes of twin babies who died at birth, leaving the family heartbroken. PC Jamie Oprey from Richmond and Kingston police, said the three were prolific burglars who caused misery and heartbreak for a number of families across London. He said: Thanks to some great detective work, we were able to link these three defendants to eight burglaries in London and I'm delighted that we were able to return hundreds of items of stolen property to their owners, including the children's ashes. Cruel: Image of the stolen box containing the ashes / Metropolitan Police The three were found by officers after they put out an appeal about burglary in Castlegate in December last year, in which the ashes were taken. In the theft on December 11, the items of jewellery were taken as well as a maroon box containing the ashes of the twins who died at birth. Following the appeal on December 12 a member of the public contacted police to a suspicious vehicle driving slowly along Fitzgerald Avenue, into Buxton Road. Under-pressure police officers racking up rest days amid 'crisis' claims Minutes later, police received a call to reports of a burglary in Buxton Road where the victims had been barricaded outside their own home. The property's back doors were discovered to be forced open and a safe, bank cards, passports and a laptop were reported stolen. Officers traced the reported car to an address in Wills Crescent, Whitton and attended to find the three men attempting to break into the safe that had been stolen from the Buxton Road address. Lipiec, Majewski and Pawlark, who are all Polish nationals, along with a 25-year-old woman, were arrested on suspicion of burglary. The three men were charged with burglary in the early hours of 14 December, 2017 while the woman was released under investigation pending further enquiries. Officers searched the address and recovered more than 400 items of stolen property, along with tools often associated with going equipped to commit burglary such as crowbars, hammers and rubber gloves. They also recovered hundreds the childrens ashes. Police traced the men after reports of a vehicle driving slowly through residential streets / PA Archive/PA Images The men were further charged in relation to seven other burglaries that took place over a two-weeo period. They pleaded guilty to conspiracy to commit burglary at Kingston Crown Court on Tuesday and will be sentenced at the same court on Friday May 11. A young moped rider and his passenger were injured after smashing into a car outside a busy north London station during a police chase. The crash happened on Seven Sisters Road, next to Finsbury Park Tube station, at about 3.45am on Tuesday. The rider and his female pillion passenger, both believed to be 18 years old, were rushed to hospital. Police were unable to confirm what condition they are in however it is understood that they were still being treated in hospital later on Tuesday morning. The incident has been referred to watchdog the Independent Office for Police Conduct (IOPC). A section of Seven Sisters road was cordoned off while an investigation was carried out, with heavy traffic being reported in the area on Tuesday morning. A Met Police spokesman said: "At approximately 3.45am on Tuesday, April 17, a moped carrying two persons was involved in a collision with another car on Seven Sisters Road at the junction with St Thomas Road after failing to stop for police. "As is standard, the matter has been referred to the Met's Directorate of Professional Standards and the Independent Office for Police Conduct IOPC." IOPC spokesman added: Following a referral from the Metropolitan Police, we have begun an independent investigation into a collision involving a moped in north London in the early hours of Tuesday morning. "We have been informed that the moped had failed to stop for the police prior to colliding with another vehicle. A teenager was ambushed and stabbed by a gang in two cars and left dying just yards from his front door in the latest murder in London. The 18-year-old collapsed from his wounds and died in the street in Forest Gate last night despite efforts by neighbours and paramedics to save him. He was named locally as Sami Sidhom, a Queen Mary University student who dreamed of being a lawyer. A former school friend said: He was an A-star pupil, he got very good GCSE results. I think he was studying history and law. He was very bright and the kind of friend who would always support you. He was never in any trouble. I am totally shocked by this. Sami attended the prestigious Newham Collegiate Sixth Form, where 95 per cent of its A level pupils were last year offered places at Russell Group Universities. Forest Gate stabbing: Young man knifed to death in London's third killing in two days Friend Tariq Bhugeloo added: We called him Mr Swot because he was so clever. "He was an innocent boy, a good family boy. He was no gang member. It is the latest in a surge of killings in London and brings the number of teenagers to die in homicides this year to 12. Police have launched nearly 60 murder inquiries, many of them young people who were victims of gang stabbings. Officers conduct a search of the scene of the attack in east London / John Dunne Officers and paramedics were called to the scene in Chestnut Avenue, a res-idential street, at 10.50pm. Today witnesses told how he was ambushed by a gang in two cars, who knifed him in the back and groin. A neighbour said: I heard a car screeching then someone wailing, Help me Ive been stabbed. He was stumbling across the road and collapsed near my house. A police officer stands at a cordon in Chestnut Avenue in Forest Gate, east London, where a teenager was stabbed to death late Monday night (Stefan Rousseau/PA ) / Stefan Rousseau/PA Two boys with towels rushed to the victims side to stem the bleeding while paramedics arrived, the neighbour added. I called 999. He was mumbling incoherently. It was horrific and traumatic. Witnesses said the gang who attacked him were in a silver or grey BMW and a dark Vauxhall Corsa. Loading.... One local said: Some guys in two cars jumped him and stabbed him in the right groin and back. They jumped back in their cars and sped off. It looked targeted. Another added: They left him dying. We did our best to stop the blood. We came out when we heard shouting and screaming. We were praying he would pull through. Mr Sidhom was pronounced dead half an hour later. A neighbour said: He was almost home. He was a nice boy. I saw him grow up. We are all devastated. Resident Shahana Hussain added: We saw the flashing lights and thought the worst. Gangs of boys hang around the corner where he was attacked all the time. A floral tribute left on Chestnut Avenue in Forest Gate, east London, where a teenager was stabbed to death late Monday night / Stefan Rousseau/PA I have a son who is 20, I fear for him, the streets are dangerous here. It has changed a lot. Today a police cordon remained in place around the crime scene, which is near Wanstead Flats. No arrests have been made. Mayor Sadiq Khan said: My heart goes out to the friends and family of the teenager who lost his life. I am in close contact with the police and they are doing everything they can to bring those responsible to justice. Every single death from knife crime is an absolute tragedy, and I am determined to rid our city of this dreadful scourge. Extra resources for police from City Hall are already being used for more enforcement work and perpetrators of violent crime are being targeted. We are relentlessly focusing on prevention funding services for young people which give them a path away from crime. Knifed in Brixton: Samantha Clarke with her husband Paul The latest death follows two fatal stabbings within an hour on Sunday. Samantha Clarke, 38, was killed in Brixton days after celebrating her son Joshuas 14th birthday. Her husband Paul said: She was a loving mum. Everything she did was for her son. Just 36 minutes earlier, young father Raul Nicolaie, 26, was attacked in a flat in Colindale. On Easter Monday, 17-year-old schoolgirl Tanesha Melbourne-Blake was shot dead in the street in Tottenham. A young man has been stabbed to death in east London in the third knife killing in the capital in just days. Emergency services rushed to Chestnut Avenue, Forest Gate, shortly before 11pm on Monday. The victim, believed to be 18, was pronounced dead at the scene. A witness, who lives nearby, said he was told by police that there was "blood all over the road." A cordon remained in place in the residential street overnight. Why are our children killing each other? A Scotland Yard spokesman said: Officers attended the location along with London Ambulance Service and paramedics from London's Air Ambulance. The victim - believed to be an 18-year-old man - was pronounced dead at the scene at 11.27pm. Officers are in the process of informing next of kin. No arrests have been made. It follows the fatal stabbings of two people in separate domestic incidents in the capital on Sunday. Those deaths brought the number of murders in London so far this year, where the Metropolitan Police have publicly released details, to around 59. The most recent incident has not yet been classed as a suspected murder. It also comes after 11 homicides involving teenagers in London since the start of 2018. Loading.... These include the fatal shooting of 17-year-old Tanesha Melbourne-Blake earlier this month. Tanesha was shot dead in London earlier this month The schoolgirl was shot dead on a residential street on Easter Monday. On the same evening, Amaan Shakoor, 16, became the youngest murder victim of the year so far when he was shot in an attack in Walthamstow. Eighteen-year-old Israel Ogunsola was stabbed to death in Hackney just days later. T his is one of the deadly weapons seized from gangs in London in a new crackdown on violence. The haul included this a terrifying twin bladed weapon found after a 24-year-old man was arrested after being stopped in Waltham Forest on Monday. The weapons - including a pistol - were recovered in patrols by the Mets new Violent Crime Taskforce set up to combat the surge in murders and stabbings in London. At the weekend seven people were arrested as the taskforce carried out more than 40 stop-and-searches and raided eight properties. A handgun, an axe and nine knives were found. Police also seized two sub-machine guns in raids on gangs last week. The taskforce patrols have been targeting Londons two most violent areas in recent weeks in an effort to subdue the violence. Inspector Peter Moxham, from the Violent Crime Taskforce, said: Quite often, we are patrolling in undercover vehicles and dressed in plain clothes - just because you cannot see us, does not mean we are not around. T he first person to receive two face transplants says he is getting used to his new identity. Dubbed the man with three faces, Jerome Hamon is recovering in a Paris hospital where he underwent a second transplant in January. Hamon, 43, suffers from a genetic mutation which causes severely disfiguring tumours. He underwent the worlds first full face transplant at the Georges-Pompidou European Hospital, including tear ducts and eyelids, in 2010. But the same year - in order to treat nothing more than a common cold - he was given an antibiotic incompatible with his immunosuppressive treatment. Courageous: Jerome Hamon / AFP/Getty Images In 2016, he began to display signs of transplant rejection, and his new face deteriorated. By November last year, it had to be removed. Hamon remained in hospital without a face for two months before a compatible donor was found and a successful second transplant carried out. Still recovering in hospital, he said he has quickly accepted his new identity. French medicine professor Laurent Lantieri (R), a specialist in hand and face transplant, poses with his patient Jerome Hamon / AFP/Getty Images I feel very well in myself, he told reporters. M ore than 100 students have received payouts after preparing a class action lawsuit against the London School of Economics over their appalling living conditions. Students complained of mice infestations, mould, rubbish, lack of hot water and heating. A number alleged they had become ill because of the accommodations failings. The students, all postgraduates from overseas, were paying 9,000 a year to live in Sidney Webb House, near Borough Market, which was managed by Unite Housing. They claimed their unhygienic and inhospitable conditions included black mould, dust and litter as well as construction noise. But when their complaints fell on deaf ears, some 120 students signed up to a class action lawsuit and raised more than 5,000 to pay for experts to help their case. The university, which initially resisted the claims, has now settled, paying out an estimated 60,000 in compensation 500 for each student. The students lawyer David Greene, senior partner and head of litigation at firm Edwin Coe, said more than 450 had been affected. He said: The accommodation was damp, unheated and lacked hot water for extended periods causing students to fall ill. Complaints made by students fell on deaf ears. Eventually students came to us and we worked with them to crowdfund a small amount to pay for experts to examine the mould that was caused by the conditions. The Sidney Webb Action Group said they were very pleased with the result, adding: LSE and Unite Students have also made a commitment to monitor and improve the provision of services within Sidney Webb House for the upcoming academic year. Furthermore, the university has made assurances to improve their complaints procedures for all of the residents in LSE accommodation and that the universitys legal team would, subject to approval by the relevant bodies, produce a new procedure for the 2018-19 academic year. P rince Harry and Meghan Markle are to attend a memorial service to commemorate the 25th anniversary of the murder of Stephen Lawrence. The service, to celebrate his life and legacy, will be held at St Martin-in-the-Fields, London Monday 23 April. Harry and Meghan will meet Baroness Lawrence and her son Stuart at the entrance of the church before taking their seats. During the service, Harry will read a message of support on behalf of The Prince of Wales. Stephen Lawrence: This year marks 25 years since he was killed This year marks 25 years since Stephen Lawrence was killed, and 20 years since The Stephen Lawrence Charitable Trust was founded. Baroness Lawrence, the mother of Stephen Lawrence / PA Established by Baroness Lawrence in 1998 in memory of her son, for the past 20 years the Stephen Lawrence Charitable Trust has campaigned for fairness, justice and equality for all. Father of Stephen Lawrence tells how he has forgiven his son's killers The Trust has a continuing commitment to supporting young people from disadvantaged backgrounds to create a fairer society in which everyone, regardless of their background, can flourish. Last year they supported over 2,000 young people through training, mentoring, bursaries and other activities. Prince Harry and Meghan Markle visit Invictus Games UK Team Trials 1 /20 Prince Harry and Meghan Markle visit Invictus Games UK Team Trials Prince Harry and his Meghan Markle arrive to meet participants at the UK team trials for the Invictus Games Sydney 2018 at the University of Bath Sports Training Village AFP/Getty Images Prince Harry and his Meghan Markle arrive to meet participants at the UK team trials for the Invictus Games Sydney 2018 at the University of Bath Sports Training Village AFP/Getty Images Prince Harry and his Meghan Markle watch athletes at the UK team trials for the Invictus Games Sydney 2018 at the University of Bath Sports Training Village Reuters Meghan Markle and Prince Harry, Patron of the Invictus Games Foundation meet Invictus Games hopefuls on the athletics track and field during the UK Team Trials for the Invictus Games Sydney 2018 at the University of Bath Sports Training Village Getty Images Meghan Markle watches athletes at the team trials for the Invictus Games Sydney 2018 Reuters Prince Harry and his Meghan Markle arrive to meet participants at the UK team trials for the Invictus Games Sydney 2018 at the University of Bath Sports Training Village Getty Images Prince Harry and his Meghan Markle arrive to meet participants at the UK team trials for the Invictus Games Sydney 2018 at the University of Bath Sports Training Village Getty Images Prince Harry and his Meghan Markle arrive to meet participants at the UK team trials for the Invictus Games Sydney 2018 at the University of Bath Sports Training Village PA Prince Harry and his Meghan Markle arrive to meet participants at the UK team trials for the Invictus Games Sydney 2018 at the University of Bath Sports Training Village Getty Images Prince Harry and his Meghan Markle arrive to meet participants at the UK team trials for the Invictus Games Sydney 2018 at the University of Bath Sports Training Village AFP/Getty Images Prince Harry and his Meghan Markle arrive to meet participants at the UK team trials for the Invictus Games Sydney 2018 at the University of Bath Sports Training Village AP Prince Harry and his Meghan Markle arrive to meet participants at the UK team trials for the Invictus Games Sydney 2018 at the University of Bath Sports Training Village AFP/Getty Images Prince Harry and his Meghan Markle arrive to meet participants at the UK team trials for the Invictus Games Sydney 2018 at the University of Bath Sports Training Village AFP/Getty Images Prince Harry and his Meghan Markle watch athletes at the UK team trials for the Invictus Games Sydney 2018 at the University of Bath Sports Training Village Getty Images Meghan Markle and Prince Harry, Patron of the Invictus Games Foundation meet Invictus Games hopefuls on the athletics track and field during the UK Team Trials for the Invictus Games Sydney 2018 at the University of Bath Sports Training Village Getty Images Meghan Markle and Prince Harry, Patron of the Invictus Games Foundation attend the UK Team Trials for the Invictus Games Sydney 2018 at the University of Bath Sports Training Village Getty Images Meghan Markle and Prince Harry watch participants try out for the track and field events at the UK team trials for the Invictus Games Sydney 2018 at the University of Bath Sports Training Village AFP/Getty Images Prince Harry applauds as he and Meghan Markle watch participants take part in the track and field events at the UK team trials for the Invictus Games Sydney 2018 at the University of Bath Sports Training Village AFP/Getty Images Meghan Markle meets Invictus Games hopefuls on the athletics track Getty Images Prince Harry and Meghan Markle accompanied by Invictus Games UK Team Chef de Mission Jayne Kavanagh meet participants at the UK team trials for the Invictus Games Sydney 2018 at the University of Bath Sports Training Village AFP/Getty Images W hy has Rowley Leigh stormed out of Parabola, the Design Museums restaurant, after only seven months in the job? Leigh only joined as head chef in September but his relationship with management is already fractured beyond repair: I left because of a difference of opinion with the new management, he told us. Leigh, one of Londons top chefs, founded Kensington Place, an award-winning restaurant, and ran it for 19 years. Since then hes worked at Le Cafe Anglais and writes a monthly cookery column in the FTs Magazine. Leigh was initially hired by Parabola as its resident chef in 2016 but last year he took over the reins permanently. At the time of his appointment he told Eater London: Im in charge of the thing. Ive been working with them since last year, as a consultant and guest chef. I told [owners Peter Prescott, Terence and Vicki Conran] that I thought instead of being an event venue, we should run it as a conventional restaurant with plenty of choice. And they said, Well, if thats the case, then you better do it! Leighs shock resignation follows turbulence at Prescott and Conran, the company which owns Parabola. In January this year Peter Prescott, Conrans business partner, quit as a director and sold his shares to Conran. Then Terences son Ned replaced his father as chairman. A spokesman for the company said: Certainly we werent surprised [that Leigh left]. There was a debate going on about the fact that it wasnt mutually beneficial. The agreement that was in place was such that in that eventuality we could agree to part. Hes a good man and we wish him well. - How to embarrass Boris Johnson Tricky times for Johnson family harmony. Amelia Gentleman, the formidable Guardian journalist responsible for the Windrush deportation expose, also happens to be Boris Johnsons sister-in-law. How will the pro-Brexit, anti-immigration Foreign Secretary react? Happily, Amelia is eclipsed when it comes to family causing Boris discomfort. Her father is artist David Gentleman, whose bullet-hole blood splatters created for the Stop the War Coalition in 2003 featured on Stop Bombing Syria placards at the Westminster protest yesterday. - Struggle: Hugh Grant (Photo by Jeff Spicer/Getty Images) / Getty Images Hugh Grant is an analogue actor in a digital age. There was something I needed to see on Netflix last night and Im in a new house and I couldnt get it to work, he told Pilot magazine. I asked the nanny to try. Even she couldnt sort it out. At 57, Grant is a bit beyond a nanny, we feel. - Amber Rudd took the Home Office to task for its handling of the Windrush immigration case yesterday and seemed to accuse her predecessor, Theresa May, Home Secretary 2010-16. Interesting timing for a new job to be listed yesterday: the Home Office seeks a press officer to devise imaginative media plans and punchy statements. Johnny Flynn admits his Netflix role passed over a beast of a title Fantastic: Jessie Buckley, Michael PEarce, and Johnny Flynn (Photo by Mike Marsland/Mike Marsland/WireImage) / Mike Marsland/WireImage Johnny Flynn and Jessie Buckley are fantastic in their new film Beast but where to find them? The Ham Yard Hotel in Soho. Flynn and Buckley were at an advance screening of the Michael Pearce film. Its a rare film role for Buckley, who starred in BBCs Peaky Blinders and War and Peace. Flynn plays an is-he-or-isnt-he psychopath whom Buckley takes a shine to, but because of a plot full of twists and spills they cant give anything away. One thing that Flynn is happy to talk about is his role in Netflix drama Lovesick, originally given the wincing title Scrotal Recall in the UK (quickly amended by the Americans). I think I was the only one who was weirdly attached to the name, Flynn said after American censors almost passed out. I like really bad puns proper, red-top, nasty puns. I find them funny. But it did make it easier to tell the headmistress of my sons nursery what I was doing. - The Arts Club hosted its raucous Arts Quiz last night, in aid of Ikon and sponsored by Peter Pilotto. Artists Mark Wallinger and Jeremy Deller leant their expertise as Sothebys and Christies seethed at each other across the room, and a sole representative of Phillips Gallery was granted access after the team was banned three years ago for bad behaviour. They all agreed on one thing, though: when a question asked for the identity of the painter of Salvator Mundi, the blockbusting Da Vinci, the whole room joined in an eyeroll and shouts of Attributed! - Controversial: Karl Lagerfeld (Photo by Vittorio Zunino Celotto/Getty Images) / Getty Images Chanels creative director Karl Lagerfeld has rushed to the defence of Karl Templer, Interview magazines creative director, who has been accused of harassment: A girl complained that he tried to pull her pants down and he is instantly excommunicated from a profession that up until then had venerated him. If you dont want your pants pulled about, dont become a model! Join a nunnery, therell always be a place for you in the convent. Lagerfeld says he is overwhelmed by #MeToo. Its simply too much. From now on, as a designer, you cant do anything. - SW1A A long day for John Bercow, who fulfilled his role as Speaker yesterday from 2.30pm until nearly midnight. MP Dr Julian Lewis asked if hed considered reinstating a commode behind a curtain. Bercow replied: I have not felt other than comfortable, privileged and exhilarated to have been in the chair for the past nine-and-a-quarter hours. - Asked how he stays calm in the face of Syria strikes, one adviser to Boris Johnson says he recites the Serenity Prayer every morning. God grant me the serenity to accept the things I cannot change; courage to change the things I can; and wisdom to know the difference. Amen. - An EMAIL to Labour MPs from the Parliamentary Labour Party office: A hacking attempt has been made. If you got an email from Becky Wright, do not open any attachments or click any links. Wright is an innocent trade unionist but is this the first sign of Putins cyber hoofprints? - Quote of the Day Frowned upon: Shaggy (Photo by Tim Mosenfelder/WireImage) / WireImage My feeling is that by now shes probably seen enough C ommunities Secretary Sajid Javid piled pressure today on Jeremy Corbyn to root out anti-Semitism in the Labour Party. He tweeted this morning: Another big day in Parliament today with first General Debate on antisemitism. "Sincerely hoping @jeremycorbyn will make time to at least listen to, if not speak about, this important issue #EnoughisEnough Activists also drove three large billboards past Westminster and Labour headquarters in central London ahead of the debate. Sajid Javid out pressure on Jeremy Corbyn ahead of Tuesday's debate The three billboards carried the messages: Holocaust deniers harboured by Labour, failure to act on antisemitism and Institutional antisemitism in Corbyns Labour. A convoy of three billboard advertising vans with an anti-semitism message for Jeremy Corbyn drive around Westminster / PA L abour MPs have rounded on Jeremy Corbyn for failing to better tackle anti-Semitism in the party as they shared their personal stories of abuse. Among those to take aim at Mr Corbyn was John Mann, Labour MP for Bassetlaw, who said his wife had been threatened with rape by a "leftist anti-Semite". He also said he had been targeted by members of the Corbyn-supporting campaign group Momentum for showing solidarity with Jewish Labour members. In astonishing scenes on Tuesday, others called for former London mayor Ken Livingstone to be expelled from the party for saying that Hitler had supported Zionism. Labour's Luciana Berger during her speech in the Commons, which was applauded by MPs from all sides after she spoke of the anti-Semitic abuse she had faced / PA Liverpool MP Luciana Berger said Labour must expel those with "corrosive" anti-Semitic views and criticised people who attacked her for speaking out on the issue. A standing ovation followed Ruth Smeeth's speech, in which the Labour MP for Stoke-on-Trent North read a sample of the abuse aimed at her. She added: "Enough really is enough." Former Labour minister Dame Margaret Hodge was applauded after a speech in which she said it felt as if her party has "given permission for anti-Semitism to go unchallenged". She added: "Anti-Semitism is making me an outsider in my Labour Party. To that, I simply say enough is enough. Mr Corbyn was in the Commons for large parts of the debate, with Communities Secretary Sajid Javid accusing the Labour leader of a "deeply worrying lack of leadership and moral clarity" on anti-Semitism. Shadow communities secretary Andrew Gwynne said "much more work needs to be done" on anti-Semitism, adding: "No political party has the monopoly on vice or virtue but we will put our house in order." Shadow home secretary Diane Abbott later said "one anti-Semite in the Labour Party is one too many", also saying "nothing is gained" by accusing Mr Corbyn of being an anti-Semite. Defence secretary Gavin Williamson has been speaking on BBC Radio 4's Today programme. He said that last night's airstrike against the Syrian regime was "a highly successful mission". Speaking to presenter John Humphrys, he said: "The reason we have taken this action is because we all saw the images last week of the suffering that had been inflicted on innocent men, women and children, and there has been a need to act. "That's why last night we deployed four Tornados armed with Storm Shadow cruise missiles. You will be pleased to hear all of those crews have returned safely and every early indication is that is has been a highly successful mission. "This is something we have been in discussion with the US and French over the last few days but obviously the meeting of Cabinet is where this was properly discussed." T heresa May gave a personal apology to Caribbean leaders today for the treatment of Windrush citizens threatened with deportation and denied healthcare. The Prime Minister said sorry for the shambles during a private meeting with leaders and senior ministers attending the Commonwealth summit in London. Earlier, her de facto deputy David Lidington admitted that the Government was still not sure if any people who had come to Britain as children after the Second World War had been wrongfully deported. Mrs May was attending a meeting with Commonwealth leaders from nine countries, including Jamaican premier Andrew Holness and Guy Hewitt, the high commissioner for Barbados, who have expressed anger that some blameless Commonwealth citizens had lived under the shadow of deportation for years or been refused access to free NHS treatment. Mrs May was expected to add that a crackdown on illegal migrants she announced as home secretary in 2014 was not aimed at the Windrush generation, who were valued members of the British community. The Prime Ministers office had initially declined a meeting on the issue, without telling Mrs May, but after the row threatened to overshadow this weeks Commonwealth Heads of Government Meeting, she dashed to make amends and promise action. Windrush generation arrive in Britain 1 /14 Windrush generation arrive in Britain Some of the pioneering Windrush generation arrive at Tilbury Docks, from Jamaica Getty Images The journey to the UK cost 28 Getty Images They arrived on June 22, 1948 Getty Images The ex-troopship 'Empire Windrush' arriving at Tilbury Docks from Jamaica, with 482 Jamaicans on board, emigrating to Britain SSPL via Getty Images The group were the first of the Windrush generation to emigrate to Britain Getty Images Arrivals scrutinise a map of the London Underground Getty Images The Windrush generation helped to rebuild post-war Britain Getty Images Members of the 55 Independent Squadron wait to board the Empire Windrush at Southampton, to fight in the Korean War Getty Images A black man walks past graffiti stating 'Powell For PM', referring to Enoch Powell who caused controversy with his outspoken attitude to black immigration and racial integration Getty Images Three Jamaicans (left to right) John Hazel, a 21-year-old boxer, Harold Wilmot, 32, and John Richards, a 22-year-old carpenter, arriving at Tilbury Docks Getty Images Nearly 1000 West Indian immigrants arrive in three boats trains at Waterloo Station. Many brought with them packing cases containing treasured possessions, 15th October 1961 Mirrorpix/Getty Images West Indian immigrants arriving in the United Kingdom, 19th May 1962 Mirrorpix/Getty Images Nearly 1000 West Indian immigrants arrive in three boats trains at Waterloo Station. Many brought with them packing cases containing treasured possessions, 15th October 1961 Mirrorpix/Getty Images 27th May 1956: Immigrants to Britain from the West Indies queuing up on arrival at Southampton holding documents Getty Images She was expected to promise that help would be offered to any Commonwealth citizen who has been challenged to prove their right to live in the UK. She will say that the Home Secretary apologised in the House of Commons yesterday and she wants to apologise to you today, said a No 10 source. Mrs May started the bridge-building in talks with Mr Holness at Downing Street before the summit. The official No 10 statement said: The Prime Minister said she deeply valued the contribution made by the Windrush generation and all Commonwealth citizens who have made a life in the UK, and that the UK Government would ensure the correct support was in place to give people certainty about their existing right to reside here. Mr Holness alluded to the row during a photocall with Mrs May today when he hailed discussions as a chance to strengthen and possibly reset the relationship between Jamaica and Britain. Sometimes, these ties though they bind us together sometimes they wane, he said. Sometimes they dont get the attention, so I see this as a great opportunity for us to rebuild the relationship to strengthen. Amber Rudd 'deeply concerned' over Windrush generation treatment The Windrush generation are the thousands of migrants invited to Britain between 1947 and the Seventies to help rebuild the war-shattered nation. Decades later, many were caught up in a clampdown designed to identify later waves of illegal immigrants. It meant that people raised and educated in Britain were ordered to prove their right to live in the UK or face deportation. However, some said an apology would not heal their scars. Paulette Wilson, from Wolverhampton, who came to Britain from Jamaica aged 10 in the late Sixties, spent two years under the threat of deportation, including time in a detention centre, before being told she could stay. 22nd June 1948: The ex-troopship 'Empire Windrush' arriving at Tilbury Docks from Jamaica, with 482 Jamaicans on board, emigrating to Britain. / Getty Images She said a government apology was a good thing but told BBC Breakfast: Its not ended because Ive just got a card saying I have a right to stay in England, but I still have to renew it in 2024. Asked if he was ashamed of how the Government had dealt with the issue, Mr Lidington told Sky News: I think its clear its been badly handled. There was confusion yesterday when immigration minister Caroline Nokes appeared to admit some individuals might have been deported in error. Mr Lidington told Radio 4s Today programme: We dont know of any cases where someone has been deported from this category. He said Home Office staff were searching records to see if anything had gone appallingly wrong in that way. During Mrs Mays time at the Home Office she oversaw the introduction of the 2014 Immigration Act which required the NHS and employers to take action if workers could not provide documents to show they had a right to live in the UK. T he Government has been criticised over a leaflet for people being deported to Jamaica which includes advice to put on a Jamaican accent. In a "dos and don'ts" section, the 2013 pamphlet tells deportees to "try to be Jamaican, use local accents and dialect" and notes that "overseas accents can attract unwanted attention". David Lammy, the Labour MP who has led rebukes to the Home Office over the Windrush crisis, said it was "hard to believe this document was written and published". "The fact that the Government feels this is an appropriate way to treat the ancestors of those Caribbean pioneers who were invited to Britain as citizens tells its own sad story about the treatment of immigrants in our country," he tweeted. "Try to be 'Jamaican'", the leaflet says / Government website My Lammy added: "This document harks back to 'repatriation' campaigns. This document was published when Theresa May was Home Secretary, promoting her hostile environments policy the starting point for the injustices that we are seeing writ large for the Windrush generation. "How exactly can someone pretend to be Jamaican when they are British and have lived here all their lives?" he added. The Home Office told the Standard the guide, called Coming Home to Jamaica, was put together with the help of charities and NGOs. A spokeswoman added that he had "nothing to do with people from the Windrush generation, who are in the UK legally." The guide was still on the Government's website at the time of writing. Home Secretary Amber Rudd apologised to members of the Windrush generation on Monday, admitting that they have suffered "appalling" treatment by the Government. Responding to an urgent question from Mr Lammy, Ms Rudd announced the creation of a new Home Office task force to speed up the regularisation of the status of people who arrived in the UK legally between 1948 and 1971. It came after stories emerged in the Guardian of Windrush children, now adults who have lived in the UK for several decades, were threatened with deportation because they never obtained proof of their legal status. Paulette Wilson, a former cook at the House of Commons restaurant, arrived in Wolverhampton in 1968 from Jamaica aged 10. She was taken to the notorious Yarl's Wood detention centre last October after failing to prove her right to remain. The "dos and don'ts" section of the Coming Home leaflet was written by Jamaican NGO the National Organisation of Deported Migrants, said a spokeswoman for the Home Office. Amber Rudd 'deeply concerned' over Windrush generation treatment She added: This document has nothing to do with people from the Windrush generation, who are in the UK legally. As the Home Secretary has made clear, the Home Office has set up a dedicated team to help people from that group to get the right paperwork to confirm their status in the UK. A n East End GP surgery has been asked by the Home Office to disclose a patients address in what health campaigners fear is an escalation of intrusion into confidential records. The request comes amid controversy at the willingness of NHS Digital, the health services information quango, to share patient details to help the Government to track immigration offenders. The Commons Health Committee this week said it was deeply concerned that the sharing of non-clinical data such as addresses could discourage migrants from seeking healthcare. This could cause them harm, was likely to prove more expensive to the NHS if an untreated condition worsened, and could cause wider public health issues if their children went unvaccinated for diseases such as measles, the MPs said. Now it has emerged that the Home Office wrote directly to a surgery, in Tower Hamlets, to request a patients address, rather than the common route of a request via NHS Digital. The practice, which asked not to be identified, was alarmed, and consulted the local medical committee. Dr Jackie Applebee, chairwoman of the committee, told the Standard: I said they should decline, on the basis that its a breach of patient confidentiality. It really risks losing the trust of patients if this sort of data is divulged. The practice declined to give the information to the Home Office. It is understood that the practice was asked to confirm a patients address, without being given any background. Dr Applebee said it was an escalation of a memorandum of understanding on data sharing that began last year between the Home Office, Department of Health and NHS Digital. Migrants are entitled to free health care from GPs and free emergency care at A&Es. Doctors are only obliged to set aside their duty of confidentiality and share data with other authorities on rare occasions, such as when serious crime has been committed. The British Medical Association says that most immigration cases do not meet such a high public interest threshold. The Department of Health said it was reasonable to share non-medical data between government departments. A ttacks on health workers including nurses and ambulance crews are on the rise as staff shortages help to create a hostile environment, a new study suggests. Research for Unison revealed an increase in physical assaults of almost 10 per cent in England last year, with a "staggering" 21 per cent increase in hospitals with an A&E department. There were 56,435 assaults in 2016/17 compared with 51,447 the previous year in NHS trusts which responded to a Freedom of Information (FoI) request submitted by health magazine HSJ on behalf of the union. Trusts treating fewer patients within 18 weeks of referral saw the biggest increase in assaults, as did those struggling with financial deficits. Unison head of health Sara Gorton said: "Across the entire NHS, staff shortages are harming patient care and helping to create a hostile environment where health workers are increasingly at risk of being assaulted. "It's no accident that trusts where the pressures seem the most extreme - where there are huge financial deficits or where it's a struggle to meet growing demands on services - have seen the steepest rise in the number of attacks. This desperate situation is only set to worsen as the squeeze on resources gets tighter. "Now that there is no NHS or government organisation collecting data on assaults nationally, the picture is growing increasingly unclear. The safety of staff, who care for us when we are sick or injured, and their patients should be paramount." Unison gave details of a number of incidents, including a healthcare assistant on an orthopaedics ward where a patient with mental health issues shut the door of his room, grabbed her by the arm, put her in a headlock and would not let go. A registered nurse said that staffing pressures are making the situation worse, revealing regular abuse. She has been slapped by patients and recently saw a colleague punched in the face. A male nurse in an acute admissions unit witnessed a colleague being threatened with a knife, saw a patient throw a chair through a window in anger, another aggressively threatening staff trying to prevent him from smoking on the ward, and said he has regularly been scratched and bitten by dementia patients. An NHS England spokesman said: "It is completely unacceptable that a nurse, paramedic, porter or any member of NHS staff should be assaulted physically or verbally as they care for patients. "NHS England continues to work with trusts and any of our staff affected, to help the police and other authorities do everything needed when an assault takes place." A suspicious substance has been discovered at the office of the immigration minister Caroline Nokes. Police have cordoned off the building in her constituency after discovering the substance at lunch time. Officers were called to the Conservative Club in Market Place, Romsey, Hampshire, following reports of a suspicious substance. Police are currently at the scene with colleagues from Hampshire Fire and Rescue Service and South Central Ambulance Service to deal with this incident. A spokesman for Hampshire Police said of todays incident: "We have been called to Market Place, Romsey, following the discovery of a suspicious substance. "Officers are currently at the scene with colleagues from Hampshire Fire and Rescue Service and South Central Ambulance Service to deal with this incident. "An address has been evacuated as a precaution." Romsey Town Council tweeted: Due to an ongoing incident in the Market Place #Romsey involving all blue light services there are roads obstructed by emergency service vehicles please avoid area for the time being. The discovery of the package comes in the midst of the Windrush scandal. Ms Nokes had come under fire in recent days over the mistreatment of Windrush generation immigrants many of which have been threatened with deportation. Writing for the Voice, Ms Nokes said: The overwhelming majority of the Windrush generation already have the documents they need, but some through no fault of their own have not... "Having not previously needed documentation they have now found themselves without any way of proving their status today. P rince William today said he was blown away by the ingenuity, drive and commitment of business leaders across the Commonwealth. The Duke of Cambridge said he hoped this weeks Commonwealth Heads of Government Meeting would help build valuable networks. He said: As I have travelled across the Commonwealth and here in the UK, I have always been impressed by the ingenuity, the drive and commitment of those I meet behind small and medium-sized companies particularly. Just now, I was fascinated to talk in more detail with some of you about the business ventures you have championed - so successfully - across the Commonwealth. Prince William praised business leaders across the Commonwealth / PA William was speaking at a joint session of the Commonwealth Business and Youth Forums at Queen Elizabeth II Conference Centre, London. He went on: I heard how impact investment and philanthropy are helping to encourage social change and how many of you here in this room are empowering others to achieve the same. When Catherine and I visited India in 2016, we were completely blown away by the innovation on display in the Indian businesses we met from Formula E-Cars and new ways of teaching braille. I understand this is the first time the Youth and Business Forums have met together in CHOGM week. But given the importance of the issues you are discussing today from tackling youth unemployment to nurturing entrepreneurs of the future I hope that this joint session will continue at future CHOGMs as we go forward. Just as importantly, I hope today and this week will bring opportunities, many many opportunities, to build meaningful networks and valuable partnerships for you to take forward, he said. The Prince of Wales and The Duchess of Cornwall will later attend the Commonwealth Big Lunch at the same venue. Charles will meet civil society representatives from the People's Forum. A recruitment head-hunter who branded the young and unemployed as lazy little s***s said he was just saying "what no-one else dared to say." Josh Harrison has denied that he is a bully and said that he stands by his comments. The recruiter, from Leeds, voiced his opinion in response to a LinkedIn post by entrepreneur Jack Parsons, who said the job market was broken for young people. Mr Harrison disagreed with Mr Parsons who is the CEO of Big Youth Group and claimed that "laziness" was the reason why many people are unable to find work. He wrote: Am I the only one calling bulls*** on this 'poor us' attitude that Jack Parsons and his 'crew' are pushing? I'll tell you right now that it has never been easier for a young man/lady to find a reasonably well paid job in this country and I'd go as far as to say regardless of qualifications, if you're under the age of 25 and not in work without any good medical or mental health reason then you're either a lazy little s*** or you're setting your sights way too high." He also accused young people of caring more about Instagram followers than finding employment. Kids these days measure their worth in the amount of followers they have on Instagram, they get upset if they're not a CEO by 25, he wrote. In response, Mr Parsons accused Mr Harrison of using his name to garner attention and warned him that his words could be viewed as bullying. Josh, thank you for your opinion, I'm a big believer that everyone should have freedom of speech so thank you for sharing your opinions here on LinkedIn. Unfortunately I've never heard or come across you before so it's certainly grabbed mine and many others attention by including in my name, he said. He continued: I would also like to recommend you be careful on how you use your LinkedIn profile this can come across as online bullying." Speaking to the Standard, Mr Harrison said he stands by his comments. I think most young people are doing a fine job of getting employment, I mention in the comments of my original post that I think our generation (Im only 27 myself which seems to be forgotten) and younger are at the forefront of driving technology and change within many industries, true disruption which is needed in a lot of areas. What I posted was aimed at the people you see more and more often on LinkedIn and other outlets of social media complaining and blaming everyone else for not being in work. In response to the bullying accusation, he said: Whos really the bully in this? All I did was express my opinion on something he publicly posted, he says himself hes an advocate of freedom of speech, I woke up on Monday morning with my face all over the papers, I dont think thats a coincidence. Speaking to The Sun, Mr Parsons said: I completely disagree with Josh's comments and so does 12,202 who have reached to me about the post. "It's not easy for young people. Young people don't know what they don't know just like Josh does not know how to correctly position himself [on] the issues that young people face. "Young people are labelled, misunderstood and misrepresented. They are rarely given purposeful opportunities to make a meaningful difference. "To add, those that start out themselves are often dismissed and not given the time of day. "Young people are however the future of society, culture, and commerce. Josh clearly has no idea around this and is head-hunter for senior professionals who are probably over the age of 30. He told the Standard: "I feel his (Mr Harrison's) approach to everything can be misleading and could come across as bullying. "He could have addressed this completely different." A huge clean-up operation is being launched in Salisbury at nine sites that may still be contaminated with the Novichok nerve agent used to poison Sergei Skripal and his daughter Yulia. Police are handing over the cordoned-off sites to government officials after completing their investigations at the locations after the attempted assassination of former double agent Mr Skripal. Officers and security guards will watch the sites 24 hours a day to stop intruders during the clean-up work, which could take months. Ian Boyd, the Environment Departments chief scientific adviser, who is chairman of the decontamination group overseeing the work, said: Our number one priority is making these sites safe for the public, so they can be returned to use for the people of Salisbury. Russian Spy Sergei Skripal: Salisbury Nerve Agent Incident 1 /14 Russian Spy Sergei Skripal: Salisbury Nerve Agent Incident Investigators in protective gear pursue the probe into the nerve agent attack on Sergei Skripal Getty Russian spy 'poisoning': Sergei Skripal and Yulia Skripal are fighting for life in hospital PA Personnel in hazmat suits work to secure a tent covering a bench in the Maltings shopping centre in Salisbury, where former Russian double agent Sergei Skripal and his daughter Yulia were found critically ill by exposure to a nerve agent Andrew Matthews/PA ilitary personnel are deployed to help remove vehicles from the scene after former Russian double agent Sergei Skripal and his daughter were found critically ill after exposure to a nerve agent in Salisbury Getty Images Military in protective clothing remove vehicles from a car park in Salisbury EPA Police cordon: Military personnel in Salisbury PA Traces of the nerve agent used to poison Sergei Skripal and his daughter Yulia were found at Zizzi in Salisbury PA Amber Rudd: she visited the scene where Sergei Skripal and his daughter Yulia were found after having been poisoned by a nerve agent REUTERS Personnel are helped from their hazmat suits (right), after securing a tent covering a bench in the Maltings shopping centre in Salisbury, where former Russian double agent Sergei Skripal and his daughter Yulia were found critically ill by exposure to a nerve agent Andrew Matthews/PA Personnel in hazmat suits walk away after securing a tent covering a bench in the Maltings shopping centre in Salisbury, where former Russian double agent Sergei Skripal and his daughter Yulia were found critically ill by exposure to a nerve agent Andrew Matthews/PA Police put a red bag inside a police evidence bag immediately after the nerve agent attack on a Russian spy. Officers previously issued CCTV of a woman clutching a red bag Solent news Snap Fitness 24/7 Police activity in the cul-de-sac in Salisbury that contains the home of former Russian double agent Sergei Skripal who was poisoned along with daughter Yulia with a nerve agent PA Sergei Skripal shops at Bargain Stop in a CCTV image from five days before his apparent poisoning Public Health England said that the risk to the public is low, with scientists assessing that the remainder of the Wiltshire city is safe for residents and visitors. The nine sites are: The Maltings park area, Zizzi restaurant, the Mill pub, Mr Skripals house, the home of Detective Sergeant Nick Bailey, who was also struck down by the nerve agent, two areas of Bourne Hill police station, Salisbury ambulance station, Amesbury ambulance station, and the Ashley Wood compound. Contamination levels are understood to be low at most of the sites, some of which will be boarded off. Items will be removed for chemical cleaning. Nearly 200 Army personnel, who are specialists in this work, will be part of the clean-up operation. A small cordoned area of London Road cemetery, where Mr Skripals wife and son are buried, was the first area to be reopened to the public today after extensive testing established it was not contaminated. Meanwhile, Britains cyber security chief put ministers, members of the royal family and other high-profile individuals on high alert that Russian hackers may seek to steal and leak embarrassing information about them. Salisbury spy poisoning: Yulia Skripal discharged from hospital Ciaran Martin, chief executive of the National Cyber Security Centre, warned that Russian actors may be seeking to obtain kompromat material information about individuals personal or professional lives that they would not want to be made public. The UK and the US have issued a formal alert about malicious cyber activity by Russia amid warnings that relations with Moscow have hit an all-time low. Detailing the type of possible Russian aggressive action, Mr Martin told the BBC: In terms of things like kompromat, we should be on high alert for Russian actors stealing sensitive information, possibly doctoring it, possibly not, and then leaking it to embarrass high-profile individuals. He also warned of attacks on hard infrastructure and attempts to meddle in the public discourse and free debate, including elections. Meanwhile Russian officials said inspectors from the Organisation for the Prohibition of Chemical Weapons were due to be allowed to visit Douma near Damascus in Syria today after being prevented from doing so yesterday. Moscow denies that chemical weapons were used there. M Ps have voted in a favour of a motion that they had considered Parliament's rights to be consulted on military action, marking a victory for the Government. Labour voted against the motion in a show of opposition over how they believe the Government has treated Parliament in relation to the military action in Syria. Ministers voted 317 to 256 on the motion, which stated: "That this House has considered Parliament's rights in relation to the approval of military action by British forces overseas." Jeremy Corbyn introduced the motion in his name at the beginning of the emergency debate, the second on Saturday's airstrikes in as many days, on Tuesday. Labour leader Jeremy Corbyn accused the Prime Minister of showing a 'flagrant disregard' for Parliament / PA The Labour leader accused Prime Minister Theresa May of showing a "flagrant disregard" for Parliament, and called for a new War Powers Act that would require Parliament to be consulted on military intervention. He said Mrs May's predecessor, David Cameron, had sought authority for military action on several occasions. Mrs May defended her decision to take action without seeking Parliament's approval, saying that coming to the Commons beforehand would have compromised the "effectiveness of our operations and safety of British servicemen and women". And she said a War Powers Act would mean smaller-scale and targeted military action such as that over the weekend in Syria "would become unviable". "Making it unlawful for Her Majesty's Government to undertake any such military intervention without a vote would seriously compromise our national security, our national interests, and the lives of British citizens at home and abroad," Mrs May said. "And for as long as I'm Prime Minister, that will never be allowed to happen." Mr Corbyn, who faced a bad-tempered atmosphere in the Commons with Tory MPs consistently looking to intervene, said such an Act could "specify at what point in decision-making processes MPs should be involved, as well as retaining the right of ministers to act in an emergency or in the country's self-defence". Tory MP Andrew Bridgen drew laughs in the Chamber with a sideswipe at Mr Corbyn, suggesting the Labour leader would not authorise military action even if the Isle of Wight were invaded. Mrs May warned British lives would be compromised if it became illegal for governments to launch military action without the backing of MPs / AFP/Getty Images Concluding her speech, the Prime Minister said a "clear majority" of the Commons believe the Government "did the right thing". "I realise that for some in this House, and especially for those who have not had to do what I have to, the attractive purity of a democratic principle that Parliament should always decide may still appeal more than the practice of how to ensure an effective military operation that delivers our national interest." But she said she hoped MPs could agree on her "commitment as Prime Minister to being held to account by this House for the decisions that I've taken". SNP Westminster leader Ian Blackford criticised the "failure" of the Government to recall Parliament, adding that it was to be "deeply regretted" that the "only people that haven't had a voice" were MPs. US, UK and French forces launch airstrikes on Syria 1 /15 US, UK and French forces launch airstrikes on Syria Images emerged showing the damage to a research lab near Damascus AP A fireman extinguishes smoke at a damaged lab in Damascus AP The wreckage of a building described as part of the Scientific Studies and Research Centre (SSRC) compound in the Barzeh district, north of Damascus Getty Images The wreckage of a building described as part of the Scientific Studies and Research Centre (SSRC) compound in the Barzeh district, north of Damascus Getty Images An RAF Tornado pilot checking his weapons before taking-off PA A missile lights up the sky over Damascus AP An image shows the release of a Tomahawk missile REUTERS Damage to a research lab near Damascus AP A Tomahawk missile pictured after being launched AFP/Getty Images French officials attend Defence Council in Paris AFP/Getty Images Donald Trump announces the launch of military action on Syria AFP/Getty Images Theresa May addresses a press conference in Downing Street AP Department of Defense spokeswoman Dana White and Joint Staff director Marine Lt. Gen. Kenneth F. McKenzie Jr. address reporters EPA Syrian state TV shows a missile over Damascus AP Protesters outside the Syrian Embassy, in Amman, Jordan EPA Mr Blackford argued the "time has come" for a War Powers Act, adding: "A long-standing policy of the SNP, we believe it will stop situations as we saw last week where Parliament is completely bypassed in a reckless fashion." On Monday, Mrs May accused Moscow of preventing inspectors for the Organisation for the Prohibition of Chemical Weapons (OPCW) reaching Douma. Russian officials at OPCW headquarters in the Hague later said arrangements were being made for the inspectors to travel to the site on Wednesday. However there are fears in Western capitals that - more than a week on - much of the evidence of what happened on April 7 will no longer be there. Russian foreign minister Sergey Lavrov flatly denied that Russia had "tampered" with the evidence and insisted there was no proof that chemical weapons had even been used in Douma. In the wake of the furious row over the poisoning of former double agent Sergei Skripal and his daughter, Yulia, in Salisbury he said East-West relations were now worse than they were at the time of the Cold War. Meanwhile, the UK and US have issued an unprecedented joint alert on the threat of "malicious cyber activity" by the Russian state. Britain's National Cyber Security Centre (NCSC) combined with the FBI and the US Department of Homeland Security to say Kremlin actions threaten "our respective safety, security and economic well-being". T heresa May is set to meet Caribbean leaders after ministers were forced to apologise for the appalling treatment of the Windrush generation. It came after Home Secretary Amber Rudd said she would set up a new taskforce to speed up regularisation of the immigration status of those who arrived in the UK as long ago as the 1940s. The move came amid growing anger that people who had lived in Britain since they were schoolchildren were now being denied access to healthcare and threatened with deportation over UK paperwork issues. Downing Street insisted no one with a right to be in the country would be made to leave and that the Prime Minister will seek to offer further reassurances. This is expected to come when she meets Caribbean leaders in the margins of the Commonwealth Heads of Government Meeting (Chogm) in London on Tuesday. In the Commons on Monday, Ms Rudd acknowledged the Home Office had become "too concerned with policy and strategy" at the expense of the individual. "I do not want any of the Commonwealth citizens who are here legally to be impacted in the way they have," she told MPs. "Frankly, some of the ways they have been treated has been wrong, has been appalling and I am sorry." Amber Rudd 'deeply concerned' over Windrush generation treatment Ms Rudd said fees for sorting out the paperwork of those affected would be waived so they could have their status confirmed free of charge. She said she had also given instructions that there were "no removals or detention" of Commonwealth citizens under the new assistance scheme. David Lammy branded the move as 'awful' / PA Archive/PA Images The announcement came after a cross-party group of 140 MPs wrote to Mrs May calling for an "immediate and effective" response to problems faced by members of theWindrush generation. T rainee barristers have been told they will be penalised in their exams if they wear short skirts, kinky boots or colourful socks. A guidance handbook given to students on the professional training course at BPP University warns that showing too much flesh could amount to an offence of professional conduct. The list, leaked to the blog Legal Cheek, details penalty points that can be applied to students in their advocacy assessment, which is a mock court situation. Female trainees lose two points for wearing a skirt above the knee, while male students stand to lose a point for wearing colourful socks. A three-point loss, the most costly infringement, can be awarded to any female whose bra is showing. Marked down: trainees stand to lose points for showing too much flesh / Shutterstock / Jirapong Manustro Shirts should be predominantly done UP, says the guidance. Cleavage should not be on show. Combining boots with a short skirt would also amount to a three-point loss, with the outfit described as an inappropriate combination for court by the guidance. Other offences include a mobile phone going off or having hands in pockets while addressing the judge. Both infringements can result in a three-point deduction. Trainee barristers at the University of the West of England, near Bristol, are also reportedly told they could lose points for unkempt hair. Dana Denis-Smith, the founder of the First 100 Years project, which highlights women's achievements in law, said the guidance shows how prescriptive the legal profession is. She told the Daily Telegraph: I still know women barristers who wouldn't dare to go to court without wearing a skirt, even though we've had about 30 years of women being allowed to wear trousers. This whole courtroom environment remains quite old-fashioned. BPP University trains solicitors and barristers across the UK, including at a site in central London. A spokesperson told the Daily Telegraph the list was "indicative guidance only to the sort of dress and behaviour which could adversely affect the advocate in court, and could, therefore, be penalised in a BPP assessment". He said: "Our students dress conservatively and smartly for their advocacy classes and indeed for the assessment, and this is good preparation for practice. "It is exceptionally rare that any student is ever penalised in an assessment for any of the infringements listed. "The list has not been revised for a long time, and will be reconsidered before the next publication. B razilian police today seized nearly half a tonne of cocaine worth more than 50 million which was about to be shipped to Britain. The massive haul was found yesterday inside two containers loaded with paper just hours before they were due to leave the countrys port of Santos, bound for Liverpool. Some 453kg of cocaine were distributed in bricks in 16 bags hidden inside the shipment. The containers, which were being transported on a German ship, were due to be transferred to another ship in Antwerp, Belgium, before heading on to Liverpool, Brazils Inland Revenue said. No-one was arrested and the drugs, believed to have come from Colombia and Paraguay, were passed on to Federal Police, who have launched an investigation, a spokesman added. The haul brings to over 900kg the amount of drugs destined for the UK which have been seized at Santos, Brazils largest port, in the last week. F ox News presenter Sean Hannity has been unmasked as the third mystery client of Donald Trump's lawyer in court. A judge ordered the US president's personal lawyer Michael Cohen to disclose the name of Hannity, one of Trump's most vocal defenders. Hannity, 56, said on Monday that he had never paid for Mr Cohen's services or been represented by him, but had sought confidential legal advice from him. The revelation came as prosecutors sought information about other matters, including a $130,000 (90,000) payment to adult film star Stormy Daniels, as part of the Russia investigation. The conservative host often uses his weeknight broadcast on Fox News to defend the president, and sometimes Trump praises Hannity in return. Mr Cohen was in court to ask the judge to limit the ability of prosecutors to look at documents seized in FBI raids on his home and office earlier this month. Mr Trump's personal lawyer Michael Cohen is fighting disclosure of what he says are privileged documents / AFP/Getty Images The Russia investigation has frustrated the White House as it has spread to involve some of the US president's closest confidantes. Judge Kimba Wood spent more than two and a half hours listening to arguments by Mr Cohen's lawyers, prosecutors from the US attorney's office in Manhattan and a lawyer representing the US president in the hearing. She is expected to rule later. She ordered prosecutors to give Mr Cohen's lawyers a copy of the seized materials before the next hearing. The unexpected appearance of Mr Hannity's name made him the latest prominent media personality to be drawn into the investigation's cast of supporting characters. Cohen has argued that some of the documents and data seized from him under a warrant are protected by attorney-client privilege or otherwise unconnected to the investigation. But Judge Wood said she would still need the names of his clients, and rejected his efforts to mask the identity of Hannity, a client Cohen had said wanted to avoid publicity. "I understand if he doesn't want his name out there, but that's not enough under the law," Judge Wood said, before ordering the name disclosed. FBI agents have raided the office and hotel room of Donald Trump's personal lawyer Michael Cohen / REUTERS Stephen Ryan, a lawyer for Cohen, drew gasps and laughter from the public gallery when he named Hannity as the client. After his identity was revealed, Hannity said on his syndicated radio show, and again later on his Fox News programme, that he had "occasional, brief discussions" with Cohen in which he sought out Cohen's "input and perspective." Hannity said he assumed those discussions were covered by attorney-client privilege, and insisted that none involved any matter between himself and a third party. He also said his talks with Mr Cohen "almost exclusively focused on real estate." Legal advice can be considered privileged even if given by a lawyer for free. Hannity, the top-rated personality on the most watched US cable news network, told his viewers on April 9 that the raid on Cohen was part an effort by federal investigators to wrongly impeach the president. He never mentioned his association with Cohen during that broadcast. Cohen has asked the court to give his own lawyers the first look at the seized materials so they can identify documents that are protected by attorney-client privilege. Failing that, they want the court to appoint an independent official known as a special master, a role typically filled by a lawyer, to go through the records and decide what prosecutors can see. But prosecutors want the documents to be reviewed for attorney-client privilege by a "taint team" of lawyers within their own office, who would be walled off from the main prosecution team. "I have faith in the Southern District US Attorney's Office that their integrity is unimpeachable," making a taint team "a viable option," Judge Wood said. But she also said that to help ensure fairness and the perception of fairness, "a special master might have some role here." After the hearing, Mr Cohen left without comment. T he billionaire ex-husband of Jimmy Choo founder Tamara Mellon has died in rehab aged 54. Matthew Mellon, from one of Americas wealthiest banking dynasties, died in Mexico where he was battling a drug addiction, his spokesman said. Todays statement read: Billionaire Matthew Mellon died suddenly in Cancun, Mexico, where he was attending a drug rehabilitation facility. Mellon made his fortune in cryptocurrency, turning a $2 million investment into $1 billion. He is survived by his three children, Force, Olympia and Minty. The family asks that their privacy be respected at this very painful time. Our investigations Editor David Cohen finds how easy it is to buy Opioids online His cousin Peter Stephaich also confirmed the death but declined to provide any details. Matthew Mellon with ex-wife designer Nicole Hanley / Getty Images for Hanley Mellon A close family friend today told the Standard: I spoke to him on Sunday and he was absolutely fine. Its terrible. He was such a lovely man one of the kindest and most genuine people you could meet. The family are just devastated. Mellon, an early backer of new digi-fund Ripple, previously told of his addiction demons, reportedly spending $100,000 a month on opioid pills. In 2016, he said: OxyContin is like legal heroin. And it needs to be addressed. He also blamed doctors for his addiction, saying they were writing prescriptions like they were Smarties following a surfing injury. Mellon was born in New York City in 1964 and raised in Palm Beach, Florida, and in Maine. He was a direct descendant of Thomas Alexander Mellon, founder of The Bank of New York Mellon, and Anthony Joseph Drexel, a banker who founded Wall Street firm Drexel Burnham Lambert. Opioids investigation - David Cohen From 2011 to 2013 he was the chairman of the New York Republican Partys finance committee. In the Nineties, he and Tamara were described as Londons golden couple, attending high society bashes and partying with celebrity friends including Hugh Grant and Liz Hurley. They married in 2000 at a lavish ceremony held at Blenheim Palace, following a marriage proposal involving a helicopter, poetry and a rose petal-strewn limousine. They settled down in Belgravia, with Tamara commuting between Milan, New York, Los Angeles and London to oversee her empire. In her autobiography, In My Shoes, she wrote that the pair had met at a Narcotics Anonymous meeting in London in 1998. But Mellon was unable to break his habit, she said, with him suffering a debilitating cocaine addiction. She wrote: I was in the office every day, working hard, and Matthew had nothing but free time on his hands and Id come home and find him freebasing cocaine in the kitchen. High society: Mellon with designer Ozwald Boateng / Rex Features Then his addiction would take over and he might step out to buy a paper and not come back for days. I was constantly trying to track him down... knowing that he was capable of turning up anywhere in the world. He would check into hotels, start getting the paranoid delusions of cocaine psychosis, then leave without paying his bill. The hotel managers would call me to... settle his accounts. She told how Mellon was first sent to rehab while in college and had inherited his fathers bipolar illness. His father committed suicide when Mellon was 18. She also said how Mellon was once found at a crack house in Notting Hill. Matthew Mellons eldest child, daughter Araminta, known as Minty, is from his marriage to Tamara. His other children, son, Force, and daughter, Olympia, are from his marriage to ex-wife, designer Nicole Hanley, whom he married in 2010, divorcing six years later. OxyContin was created by Purdue Pharma, the firm of the Sackler family. The painkiller, along with other opioid painkillers, is now being blamed for the worst drug crisis in US history. According to the US Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, the second most common drug involved in the 16,800 prescription opioid overdose deaths in 2016 in America was recorded as Oxycodone (such as OxyContin). A n email chastising junior staff at a top Wall Street investment bank for not being in the office after midnight has been leaked online. A mid-level banker at Moelis sent a mass email to analysts at 12.30am to say he had just walked around the New York office and found only 11 of them at their desks. The email was shared on forum Wall Street Oasis and immediately sparked a debate about working culture in the financial services industry. I know that you are ALL working very hard and are stretched thin across multiple projects," the message read. Given that new staffings continue to flow in and you are all very near capacity, the only way I can think of to differentiate among you is to see who is in the office in the wee hours of the morning." The leaked email / Wall Street Oasis The email, which lists the junior members of staff still at their desks, ends: On the bright side, we only have a week and a half until our class dinner! Looking forward to blowing off some steam with everyone! Commenters on the Wall Street Oasis blasted the leaked email, with one writing: This is why people arent going into banking. Another wrote: Never ceases to amaze me how much bankers lack human management skills. But others disagreed. This is how all investment banks work, claimed one. Moelis, a global investment bank, has not commented on the email itself, but a spokesperson told the Standard: The truth is, we all work incredibly hard to deliver the absolute best for our clients. "We have the appropriate and systematic channels in place to regularly assess the demands of our business, resource needs and experience of our talent. We have reminded our deal teams to use these channels as mechanisms to manage through busy times. We continue to make every resource available for our teams to simplify their workflow. The email has also seen the banks record put back under the spotlight. In 2015, 29-year-old junior banker Thomas Hughes jumped to his death hours after returning from a business trip to Cleveland. He was found to have taken drugs and had been in the office from 6pm until 1am, before committing suicide at 10am. Since the deaths of Mr Hughes and several other young American bankers, Wall Street banks have been under pressure to address the work/life balance of their employees. Moelis's co-president Jeff Raich reportedly held a meeting in the wake of the email saga to remind top bankers to treat young colleagues well. The bank, which employs around 500 staff, including 200 junior analysts, ranks fifth out of 137 investment banks for most hours worked. The average employee works 84.3 hours per week, according to a recent survey by the Wall Street Oasis. A false alarm led to Syrian air defence missiles being fired overnight and there was no fresh attack on Syria, military sources have claimed. A commander in the regional military alliance that backs the Syrian government told Reuters that air defence systems did fire, but that it was a malfunction and not a response to a missile attack. Syrian state television reported overnight that anti-aircraft defences had shot down missiles fired at an air base in the Homs area, and a media unit run by the Lebanese group Hezbollah said missiles had also targeted an air base near Damascus. State television did not disclose at the time how many missiles they thought had been fired or the likely source. May defends decision not to consult Parliament before Syrian airstrike The commander, who spoke on condition of anonymity, blamed the malfunction on "a joint electronic attack" by Israel and the United States targeting the Syrian radar system. The issue has been with by Russian experts, the commander said. US, UK and French forces launch airstrikes on Syria 1 /15 US, UK and French forces launch airstrikes on Syria Images emerged showing the damage to a research lab near Damascus AP A fireman extinguishes smoke at a damaged lab in Damascus AP The wreckage of a building described as part of the Scientific Studies and Research Centre (SSRC) compound in the Barzeh district, north of Damascus Getty Images The wreckage of a building described as part of the Scientific Studies and Research Centre (SSRC) compound in the Barzeh district, north of Damascus Getty Images An RAF Tornado pilot checking his weapons before taking-off PA A missile lights up the sky over Damascus AP An image shows the release of a Tomahawk missile REUTERS Damage to a research lab near Damascus AP A Tomahawk missile pictured after being launched AFP/Getty Images French officials attend Defence Council in Paris AFP/Getty Images Donald Trump announces the launch of military action on Syria AFP/Getty Images Theresa May addresses a press conference in Downing Street AP Department of Defense spokeswoman Dana White and Joint Staff director Marine Lt. Gen. Kenneth F. McKenzie Jr. address reporters EPA Syrian state TV shows a missile over Damascus AP Protesters outside the Syrian Embassy, in Amman, Jordan EPA State television showed pictures appearing to show a missile being shot in the air above the air base. It comes only days after a US, British and French attack on Syrian targets in retaliation for a suspected chemical attack on the city of Douma on the outskirts of Damascus. A Pentagon spokesman said there was no US military activity in that area tonight. S yrian anti-aircraft defences have shot down missiles fired at two of its airbases, according to the countrys state-run television. It reportedly responded to a missile attack over Homs, which targeted Shayrat air base late on Monday night. And more missiles were intercepted over another base northeast of the capital Damascus, state television and pro-Iranian Hezbollah media said. State television showed pictures of a missile that was shot in the air above the air base, but it did not specify in its reports who may be behind the attack. A Pentagon spokesman said there was no US military activity in that area tonight. Asked about the missile attack, an Israeli military spokesman said: "We don't comment on such reports." US, UK and French forces launch airstrikes on Syria 1 /15 US, UK and French forces launch airstrikes on Syria Images emerged showing the damage to a research lab near Damascus AP A fireman extinguishes smoke at a damaged lab in Damascus AP The wreckage of a building described as part of the Scientific Studies and Research Centre (SSRC) compound in the Barzeh district, north of Damascus Getty Images The wreckage of a building described as part of the Scientific Studies and Research Centre (SSRC) compound in the Barzeh district, north of Damascus Getty Images An RAF Tornado pilot checking his weapons before taking-off PA A missile lights up the sky over Damascus AP An image shows the release of a Tomahawk missile REUTERS Damage to a research lab near Damascus AP A Tomahawk missile pictured after being launched AFP/Getty Images French officials attend Defence Council in Paris AFP/Getty Images Donald Trump announces the launch of military action on Syria AFP/Getty Images Theresa May addresses a press conference in Downing Street AP Department of Defense spokeswoman Dana White and Joint Staff director Marine Lt. Gen. Kenneth F. McKenzie Jr. address reporters EPA Syrian state TV shows a missile over Damascus AP Protesters outside the Syrian Embassy, in Amman, Jordan EPA Shayrat air base was targeted last year in a US cruise missile attack in response to a chemical attack that killed at least 70 people, including children, on the rebel-held town of Khan Sheikhoun. May defends decision not to consult Parliament before Syrian airstrike Israel has struck Syrian army locations many times in the course of the conflict, hitting convoys and bases of Iranian-backed militias that fight alongside Syrian President Bashar al- Assad's forces. P iers Morgan has said Ant McPartlin "doesnt deserve sympathy" after he pleaded guilty to drink-driving. McPartlin, who checked into rehab for alcoholism and substance abuse last year, was twice the legal limit when he crashed his Mini into two vehicles in Richmond last month. At a court hearing on Monday his lawyer described what happened on the day of the crash as a brief relapse. McPartlin apologised for his actions and was fined 86,000. Fans were quick to reach out in support of the TV star, but Morgan said: He does not deserve sympathy. 'Haunted': Ant McPartlin arriving at court on Monday / Getty Images The Good Morning Britain presenter later clarified his comment, claiming McPartlin would not want sympathy for causing a crash which saw a child taken to hospital. He tweeted: To clarify, I said I dont think anyone who drink drives deserves sympathy, especially when they crash into cars with kids inside. Ant, Im sure, wouldnt want or expect any. But on a personal level, Im very sad to see him like this & wish him well with his recovery. Morgan previously said McPartlin needs some tough love. Speaking on Good Morning following his arrest on March 18, Morgan said: The public were very sympathetic to his [past] problems, this is different. Ant McPartlin very sorry after pleading guilty to drink-driving Even if you really like Ant, you've got to look at this and think you could have killed someone. He continued: What is very damaging for him is this is not just him having problems, it's him having problems and inflicting them on to completely random, innocent people. Ant McPartlin arriving at Wimbledon Magistrates Court - In pictures 1 /9 Ant McPartlin arriving at Wimbledon Magistrates Court - In pictures Rex Getty Images Getty Images PA Ant McPartlin arrives at Wimbledon Magistrates' Court Rex Features Rex TV presenter Anthony McPartlin steps from a vehicle as he arrives at Wimbledon Magistrates' Court PA Getty Images PA What he maybe needs now is tough love and someone saying you need to sort yourself out because you could have killed someone. McPartlin announced his return to rehab following the collision. He told fans he would not be returning to his work commitments for the foreseeable future. Declan Donnelly, his TV partner, fronted the remaining episodes of Saturday Night Takeaway alone including the series finale at Universal Studios, Florida. T his coming weekend, on April 22, it will be 25 years since 18-year-old Stephen Lawrence was stabbed to death by a white racist gang near a bus stop in Eltham. The story of what happened thereafter amply justifies the bold title of this three-part documentary that begins tonight and runs this week. Stephens mother Doreen, now Baroness Lawrence, said earlier this month that, with no new leads, the Met might as well close the investigation at this point. She feels that, having been fighting for justice all this time, she herself still hasnt fully grieved for Stephen. But there can be no drawing a line under this case and what it exposed about Britain, as this programme so powerfully reveals. Directed by James Rogan, it is executive-produced by Asif Kapadia and James Gay-Rees. Kapadia made the two most successful British documentary films ever, Senna and Amy, with the final part of what he sees as a trilogy, Maradona, scheduled for release later this year. He has an amazing way of cutting together archive footage and new interviews with those involved, without resorting to an intrusive voiceover, that make his documentaries dynamic in a way few other directors achieve and, whatever his input here, Stephen has much of that distinctive quality too. Father of Stephen Lawrence tells how he has forgiven his son's killers Tonights programme, Chapter One: The Loss of Joy, starts by telling us about Stephens family and his early life, including some family videos and a glimpse of Stephen at a recording of The Word in 1991. For the actual night of the killing, the programme makes free use of the dramatic reconstruction in Paul Greengrasss excellent 1999 TV film The Murder of Stephen Lawrence, supplemented by extended new testimony from Stephens friend who was with him that night, Duwayne Brooks. 25 years on: Stephen Lawrence was killed in 1993 / The Baroness Lawrence of Clarendon OBE After literally reversing back through these events at top speed, the programme returns us to Stephens parents Doreen and the self-contained Neville as they hear about his death. Then it begins a relentless counting of the succeeding days as the police so abjectly fail to bring justice to the family and community. They did not act, even though repeatedly tipped off about the names of the five perpetrators. Obviously, information is not evidence the strategy was not to arrest, says one police officer. Only after Nelson Mandela had demonstrated his support for the Lawrences were arrests made. Their solicitor, Imran Khan, observes that in the old days, trying to get the police to treat something as a racist crime was almost impossible. Six months after the murders, the charges were dropped for lack of evidence. Id really, really had enough and I was gone, says Doreen Lawrence, furiously determined to prosecute the murderers herself. Still to come in the next two episodes are that failed prosecution, the dramatic intervention by the Daily Mail with the MURDERERS front page, the Macpherson inquiry into institutional racism, the changes in the double jeopardy rule in the Criminal Justice Act and the eventual conviction of two of the five in 2012 on new evidence. Nothing is more viscerally shocking, though, than the undercover surveillance footage of the killers in tomorrows programme, proclaiming racist hate and practising stabbings. Stephen is essential viewing this week and it might yet become part of how this unending story develops further. Stephen: The Murder That Changed a Nation airs on BBC One at 9pm. Pick of the day The Late Late Show With James Corden: Best Of The Week - Sky One, 10pm Despite being a successful US talk show host, former Gavin And Stacey star James Corden still has the air of the underdog. He recently confessed to stealing a candle from the home of Mariah Carey because he had been kept waiting for so long. And a bad review of his star turn as the voice of Peter Rabbit in the recent film prompted his father Malcolm to write a letter to Mark Kermode at Radio 5 Live saying: To hear you describe our son as appallingly irritating was very difficult to listen to. Im sure youll agree that as parents we are the only ones who have permission to describe our own offspring as appallingly irritating. James Corden's Mannequin Carpool Karaoke with Victoria Beckham 1 /20 James Corden's Mannequin Carpool Karaoke with Victoria Beckham This is the official trailer for the remake of 1987's 'Mannequin,' starring Victoria Beckham and James Corden The Late Late Show This is the official trailer for the remake of 1987's 'Mannequin,' starring Victoria Beckham and James Corden The Late Late Show This is the official trailer for the remake of 1987's 'Mannequin,' starring Victoria Beckham and James Corden The Late Late Show This is the official trailer for the remake of 1987's 'Mannequin,' starring Victoria Beckham and James Corden The Late Late Show This is the official trailer for the remake of 1987's 'Mannequin,' starring Victoria Beckham and James Corden The Late Late Show This is the official trailer for the remake of 1987's 'Mannequin,' starring Victoria Beckham and James Corden The Late Late Show This is the official trailer for the remake of 1987's 'Mannequin,' starring Victoria Beckham and James Corden The Late Late Show This is the official trailer for the remake of 1987's 'Mannequin,' starring Victoria Beckham and James Corden The Late Late Show This is the official trailer for the remake of 1987's 'Mannequin,' starring Victoria Beckham and James Corden The Late Late Show This is the official trailer for the remake of 1987's 'Mannequin,' starring Victoria Beckham and James Corden The Late Late Show This is the official trailer for the remake of 1987's 'Mannequin,' starring Victoria Beckham and James Corden The Late Late Show This is the official trailer for the remake of 1987's 'Mannequin,' starring Victoria Beckham and James Corden The Late Late Show This is the official trailer for the remake of 1987's 'Mannequin,' starring Victoria Beckham and James Corden The Late Late Show This is the official trailer for the remake of 1987's 'Mannequin,' starring Victoria Beckham and James Corden The Late Late Show This is the official trailer for the remake of 1987's 'Mannequin,' starring Victoria Beckham and James Corden The Late Late Show This is the official trailer for the remake of 1987's 'Mannequin,' starring Victoria Beckham and James Corden The Late Late Show This is the official trailer for the remake of 1987's 'Mannequin,' starring Victoria Beckham and James Corden The Late Late Show This is the official trailer for the remake of 1987's 'Mannequin,' starring Victoria Beckham and James Corden The Late Late Show This is the official trailer for the remake of 1987's 'Mannequin,' starring Victoria Beckham and James Corden The Late Late Show This is the official trailer for the remake of 1987's 'Mannequin,' starring Victoria Beckham and James Corden The Late Late Show Possibly, its Cordens air of super-confidence that riles some critics, but it also allows him to play the everyman without genuflecting to his superstar guests. Adeles appearance on his Carpool Karaoke segment is the most-watched late-night clip on YouTube with 178 million views. This compilation, which pulls together some of the best bits of his nightly show, includes sketches, chat and music. Screen time Paradise Hunters - Channel 4, 9pm Weve all fantasised about starting a new life somewhere else. This documentary follows two millennials who do just that, leaving everything behind to try and set up new lives abroad. Katie gives up a job distributing music videos to work on a ranch taking tourists trekking in the wilds of New Mexico, even though she knows little about horses and hasnt ridden since she was a teenager. She is given a months trial to see whether she can cut it. Charlie stays closer to home, quitting a call-centre job and a room in his mums house to become a salmon farmer on a remote Scottish loch. It turns out to be not quite what he expected. In which version of paradise do you have to put up with the routines of fish feeding? Rich, Russian and Living in London - London Live, 7pm Im devoted. Im in love with London forever I dont know, maybe there is some English person living inside me. But Im still quite Russian, too, says model Katia Elizarova, who doesnt appear to be made of two people. Anglophilia is ever-present among these kerjillionaires, who dont avoid questions on how they made their bank managers happy. Secrets of the Royal Nursery - London Live, 8pm Royal baby: the Duke and Duchess of Cambridge outside the Lindo Wing of St Mary's Hospital with Prince George in 2013 / PA Wire/PA Images By now Prince William has finished painting the nursery in claret, white and blue trim, as well as chucking one self-assembly cot into the bin after losing the right Allen key. Royal births can be tough on royal dads with all that DIY to do or assiduously avoid for a good few months a subject that isnt given enough space during this peek into the early years of the royal babies practising handshakes with their emerald teddies. Experts discuss what takes place in a royal household during these formative months, the traditions observed when raising a child and what is considered when choosing a name for one of the poshest babes in Britain. Catch up Comedians in Cars Getting Coffee - Netflix A slight misnomer. Theyre not all comedians, and they climb out of the cars to get the coffee. Otherwise, this is Jerry Seinfeld shooting the breeze with his celebrity peers like The Trip without the plot. Its fun to observe how Alec Baldwin pronounces the word rapier to avoid being misconstrued, and to see Seinfeld riffing on the word embroiled with Ricky Gervais. The Vice Guide To Film: Danny Boyle Viceland - NOW TV W hen Airbnb started 10 years ago, it began with its co-founders Brian Chesky and Joe Gebbia inflating three airbeds in their San Francisco apartment. Since then, guests have checked in 300 million+ times into Airbnb properties, in 4.5 million places across 81,000 cities. How does a start-up go from three airbeds to a $31 billion company? With the help of artificial intelligence (AI). AI is central to everything that Airbnb hopes to achieve as a company. We caught up with the companys VP of engineering, Mike Curtis to talk about AI, data and the next steps for Airbnb. AI is intergral to Airbnb's mission to change travel Curtis joined Airbnb around five years ago, after working for several tech companies including Facebook. [Facebook] was really fun, but I felt like Airbnb was doing something that I really wanted to be a part of, he explains. It was enabling people to go out there and see the world, as opposed to spend more time on their screen. The AI terms to know AI computer intelligence, with machines doing things that we associate with humans, such as problem-solving and learning Machine learning often used as a synonym for AI but actually referring to a specific type of process where a computer can get better at something, often by using lots of data to train the system to get smarter Algorithm a process or a set of rules to be followed by a computer in order to solve a problem As the VP of engineering, Curtis manages the 1,000-strong engineering team, across four offices, including one in Beijing, China. When there is a new launch, such as the recent introduction of Airbnb Plus, the team builds all the digital products: the new sections for the website and the apps. When we think about what were going to build, we think about what is possible with technology right now to inform what we decide to do. A really important aspect of this is managing the data teams at Airbnb, who build the AI and machine learning algorithms that keep the platform moving. Every time you interact with an Airbnb app or the website, youre interacting with machine learning in some way or another, explains Curtis. For instance, AI is in search rank. When youre searching for a place to stay on Airbnb, such as Windsor, you dont see listings in alphabetical order. Instead, an algorithm is seeing the similarities in the places you click on, how long you look at them and the places you look at in the most depth. Then, it re-ranks search results to find the places where Airbnb thinks youre most likely to stay. Luxury homes from around the world on Airbnb Plus - in pictures 1 /13 Luxury homes from around the world on Airbnb Plus - in pictures Romantic Cottage in Carinthia, Austria Airbnb Poolside Villa Onnut, Thailand Airbnb Bird Island, Placencia, Belize Airbnb Home in the Austrian Alps Airbnb Mountainous Private Retreat, South Africa Airbnb Skrivarstuga inre Skargard, Sweden Airbnb Van Gogh Palace Next to Japanese Garden, China Airbnb Penthouse in central Cape Town, South Africa Airbnb Eco Bamboo Home, Bali Airbnb Bamboo Three Story Home, Bali Airbnb Simple Hanok, Seoul Airbnb Eagles Retreat The Pad, Solola, Guatemala Airbnb Creative Studio, China Airbnb We can show you the listings first that are more likely to give you the best experience offline, explains Curtis. It works for us because we dont just want to get a booking for the sake of a booking; we want you to book something which is a great experience. Then, that great experience will lead to a great review. Youll probably leave a 150-word review at the end of a stay and never think about it again. But reviews are integral to the way Airbnb functions. Theyre really critical for when youre thinking about making a booking. A few experiments we did showed reviews first on listings from people who spoke the same language, or were from the same area as you. The second ended up being really helpful for people to complete bookings. And, did you realise that Airbnb uses machine learning translation to automatically translate the messages between you and a host if you speak different languages? The fact we can do reliable machine learning translation of reviews and messages is evidence of the advancement of AI in the past few years, says Curtis. AI and the problem with bias Airbnb's AI translates messages between hosts and guests for smooth communication / Airbnb When it comes to AI, one of the big focuses is on how to prevent bias from teaching machine learning algorithms. Its great that this is an industry topic now, says Curtis. One of the ways we attempt to fight bias is by having prompts in the product that help raise awareness for our users for potential moments of bias. So theyre aware of it and so their behaviour, in turn, doesnt train the algorithms in a way that appropriates bias. For instance, when hosts sign up to Airbnb, they sign a community agreement to be welcoming of people from all backgrounds. This is setting expectations up front about what it means to be a part of our community, he says. If Airbnb sees a host reject a booking for a set of dates, it will automatically block the hosts calendar for those dates. We assume that if they cant host the person for those dates, then the place is not available. And if they choose to go back and open those dates we ask them why they rejected the guest. This is interesting because it shows that Airbnb is taking a responsibility for its community and how its hosts act. In the argument between tech companies as a platform or a service, such as the argument over whether Uber is a taxi company or merely a platform, the tech company usually argues it doesnt have a responsibility. However, Airbnb isnt taking this line. We take the view that were building a community. That means we have community guidelines, we keep track of them and thats the stance we take, explains Curtis. AI and chat: is the Airbnb concierge service coming soon? As Airbnb continues its plans to change how the world travels, China has become one of its fastest-growing markets. Ive been to Beijing many times, the first maybe 10 years ago, says Curtis. I expected it to be less developed but its one of the most urban places in the world. Seeing how much development has happened over that time is amazing. China has its own technology ecosystem, based on platforms such as WeChat, which is full of chatbots. These are AI computer programmes that simulate conversation. You can use bots in WeChat to book an Uber, find information about a product, or find a restaurant to visit. The future of AI at Airbnb could see bots recommend things to do and restaurants to visit when your travel / Airbnb Apps became incredibly complicated. But dialogue is this amazing way that you can traverse so much different technology in an intuitive way. And this makes it relevant for travel, he says. When youre planning a trip, how many apps and websites do you look at to figure out the logistics? Dialogue could be interesting for us to make it easier to plan travel and provide a concierge service whilst youre away. Could an Airbnb concierge bot be on its way? Well have to see, says Curtis. But if one does materialise, it wont be limited to text. Curtis says there is potential in voice interfaces as well, such as Amazons Alexa or the Google Assistant. You can imagine a voice interface [would work] especially for travel. If youre out in the world, wondering [where] you should go for dinner tonight, being able to invoke [recommendations] via voice command could be really powerful. For now, Airbnb is concentrating on Plus and what makes the platform work so well: expanding the ability to live like a local when youre abroad. A irbnb, the global home-sharing platform, is launching a new office of healthy tourism to benefit communities around the world. The Silicon Valley-based company says the initiative will help to drive local, authentic and sustainable tourism in cities and countries. There are around 4.85 million listings on Airbnb in over 191 countries, making the tech company bigger than any single hotel chain. With such a widespread reach, its important that Airbnb promotes sustainable tourism in order not to have a detrimental impact on the communities it affects. The new office will work with communities through partnerships, programs and events to drive travel to lesser-known places and support environmentally-friendly travel habits. Explaining the new office, Chris Lehane, Airbnbs global head of policy and communications, said: Airbnb supports tourism that is local, authentic, diverse, inclusive and sustainable. "Through the meaningful income earned by our global community of hosts; our ability to promote tourism to places that need it the most; and the inherent sustainable benefits of hosting, Airbnb is proving the type of travel that is best for destinations and travellers alike. The company has also revealed its new transparency data for 2017, demonstrating the impact Airbnb has had on home sharing in more than 300 cities and 80 countries across the world. In the UK alone, the typical host earned 3,286 renting out their space for 39 days every year. 10 castles you can stay in on Airbnb - in pictures 1 /20 10 castles you can stay in on Airbnb - in pictures Storybook Castle, New England, USA Airbnb Storybook Castle, New England, USA Airbnb Chateaux in the Loire Valley, Saint-Georges-sur-Cher, Centre, France Airbnb Chateaux in the Loire Valley, Saint-Georges-sur-Cher, Centre, France Airbnb Kilmartin Castle, Scotland Airbnb Kilmartin Castle, Scotland Airbnb Old Tower, Tuoro sul Trasimeno, Umbria, Italy Airbnb Old Tower, Tuoro sul Trasimeno, Umbria, Italy Airbnb Caher Castle, Galway, Ireland Airbnb Dairsie Castle, Fife, Scotland Airbnb Dairsie Castle, Fife, Scotland Airbnb Chateau Bordeaux, Saint-Sulpice-et-Cameyrac, Aquitaine, France Airbnb Chateau Bordeaux, Saint-Sulpice-et-Cameyrac, Aquitaine, France ANAKA Chateau Bordeaux, Saint-Sulpice-et-Cameyrac, Aquitaine, France Airbnb Borgia Castle, Tuscany, Italy Airbnb Borgia Castle, Tuscany, Italy Airbnb Castello di San Fabiano Castle, Siena, Italy Airbnb Castello di San Fabiano Castle, Siena, Italy Airbnb Augill Castle, Cumbria, UK JILL JENNINGS Augill Castle, Cumbria, UK Mike O'Neill LBIPP And in London, over 2.1 million guests travelled to the city, whilst 3.1 million of its population travelled to other destinations. As Airbnbs guests continue to travel the world, the company is looking to outside counsel on its sustainable tourism mission. It is launching a new Tourism Advisory Board, made up of global tourism experts, to keep this mission on track. Taleb Rifai, the former secretary general of the United Nations World Tourism Organisation (UNWTO) is joining the tourism board, alongside Rosette Rugama, MD of Songa Africa and Amakoro Lodge, and former director general of Rwanda Tourism. A s if Mark Zuckerbergs problems couldnt get any worse, his company, Facebook, is now facing a class action lawsuit. The suit focuses on the social media platforms use of facial recognition technology. The suit alleges that Facebook gathered biometric (biological data) information on its users, without their consent. In case you were unaware, Facebook uses facial recognition technology in its tag suggestions tech. When you upload a picture of a group of friends, the platform uses facial recognition to work out who is in the picture and suggests their accounts to tag. However, according to the suit, the use of this technology breaches Illinois state law in the US, which protects biometric privacy. Three Illinois residents, Nimesh Patel, Adam Pezen and Carlo Licata, brought the suit against Facebook. A Californian judge, Judge James Donato, has accepted this claim and ruled that any Facebook users in Illinois for whom Facebook created and stored a face template after June 7, 2011, can be claimants in the case, making it a class action suit. A Facebook spokesperson said the company is reviewing the decision. We continue to believe the case has no merit and will defend ourselves vigorously, they told the AFP. How does the Facebook class action suit affect me? If youre in Europe, you dont need to worry about Facebooks facial recognition technology. It was suspended for European users in 2012 over privacy fears. The company also maintains that it has been very open about the tool since it was launched seven years ago. Users are able to turn facial recognition off in order to prevent themselves from being suggested in photo tags. However, the suit will merely serve to inflame the anxieties over Facebook and the amount of data it holds on its users, following the Cambridge Analytica scandal. CA is accused of using Facebook data, unknowingly collected from 87 million users, in order to influence voters and win the 2016 US presidential election, and the Brexit campaign. However, the firm denies it has misused any data. Users around the world have deleted their Facebook accounts in protest at the data leak. Countries & Areas Search for country or area A Afghanistan Albania Algeria Andorra Angola Antigua and Barbuda Argentina Armenia Australia Austria Azerbaijan B Bahamas Bahrain Bangladesh Barbados Belarus Belgium Belize Benin Bhutan Bolivia Bosnia and Herzegovina Botswana Brazil Brunei Bulgaria Burkina Faso Burma Burundi C Cabo Verde Cambodia Cameroon Canada Central African Republic Chad Chile China Colombia Comoros Costa Rica Cote dIvoire Croatia Cuba Cyprus Czechia D Democratic Republic of the Congo Denmark Djibouti Dominica Dominican Republic E Ecuador Egypt El Salvador Equatorial Guinea Eritrea Estonia Eswatini Ethiopia F Fiji Finland France G Gabon Gambia Georgia Germany Ghana Greece Grenada Guatemala Guinea Guinea-Bissau Guyana H Haiti Holy See Honduras Hungary I Iceland India Indonesia Iran Iraq Ireland Israel Italy J Jamaica Japan Jordan K Kazakhstan Kenya Kiribati Kosovo Kuwait Kyrgyzstan L Laos Latvia Lebanon Lesotho Liberia Libya Liechtenstein Lithuania Luxembourg M Madagascar Malawi Malaysia Maldives Mali Malta Marshall Islands Mauritania Mauritius Mexico Micronesia Moldova Monaco Mongolia Montenegro Morocco Mozambique N Namibia Nauru Nepal Netherlands New Zealand Nicaragua Niger Nigeria North Korea North Macedonia Norway O Oman P Pakistan Palau Palestinian Territories Panama Papua New Guinea Paraguay Peru Philippines Poland Portugal Q Qatar R Republic of the Congo Romania Russia Rwanda S Saint Kitts and Nevis Saint Lucia Saint Vincent and the Grenadines Samoa San Marino Sao Tome and Principe Saudi Arabia Senegal Serbia Seychelles Sierra Leone Singapore Slovakia Slovenia Solomon Islands Somalia South Africa South Korea South Sudan Spain Sri Lanka Sudan Suriname Sweden Switzerland Syria T Taiwan Tajikistan Tanzania Thailand Timor-Leste Togo Tonga Trinidad and Tobago Tunisia Turkey Turkmenistan Tuvalu U Uganda Ukraine United Arab Emirates United Kingdom Uruguay Uzbekistan V Vanuatu Venezuela Vietnam Y Yemen Z Zambia Zimbabwe Ex-President Ion Iliescu on Tuesday left the Attorney General's Office after about an hour and 30 minutes without making statements to the press. He had been summoned to be informed that he is a subject in criminal investigation of the December 1989 Revolution, standing accused of crimes against humanity. On April 13, President Klaus Iohannis favourably approved a prosecutors' request for the criminal prosecution of Iliescu, Petre Roman and Gelu Voican Voiculescu. On December 18, 2017, the Military Prosecutor's Office announced that following the filing of evidence in the Revolution case, the investigators' conclusion was that in December 1989 there was no power vacuum. President Klaus Iohannis on Tuesday decorated several medical institutions and physicians from Bucharest and in the country, stressing the need for fast, concrete measures to solve the chronic problems of the Romanian healthcare system. "When we talk about the future, we talk about young doctors, who have the duty to carry further the names of their predecessors and the reputation of the hospitals in which they have been trained, as well as about the projects and objectives we have assumed externally. The future means universal access to the medical act and a new concept based on prevention, personalized medicine, innovation and sustainability. To achieve these goals, concrete measures are urgently needed to solve the chronic problems of the Romanian healthcare system," the head of state said at the ceremony decoration. He underscored that for Romanians, 2018 is a moment of great importance, in which "we celebrate the past and we speak about the future, about the vision, about how Romania will look in 100 years from now."In this context, Iohannis specified that the Centenary of the Great Union is the most appropriate opportunity to grant the 'Sanitary Merit' Order to the hospitals marking a significant number of years since their establishment, years in which they stood out through the results obtained in the improvement of the medical act, saying he was glad that this recognition took place during the period marking the World Health Day."When we evoke the past, we think of exceptional doctors who made our country's name known abroad, promoters of medical specialties such as urology or plastic and reconstructive surgery, hospitals bearing their name in recognition of the profound consideration and acknowledgment of their merits. We also refer to hospitals that, despite the difficulties faced by the healthcare system in Romania, succeeded in decades of existence and continue to succeed through the dedication and effort of their medical staff and management teams in offering quality services to all Romanians," President Iohannis added.He emphasized that good practice models must be recognized and capitalized on."With exceptional physicians, with management teams animated by determination and abnegation, such as those you are part of, we will have hospitals we can saenter with trust. You are examples of professionalism, responsibility, dedication, and continuous effort in the service of a noble cause - to take care of our health. I have the certainty you will contribute to that change in the Romanian medical system that we all want," President Iohannis told the doctors attending the ceremony. Head of the Muslim Cult in Romania, Mufti Muurat Iusuf, attending in Istanbul the World Muslim Minorities Summit running April 16 - 19, said that Romania is a world model as regards religious freedoms and the observance of confessional and cultural rights of the respective minorities. Addressing on Tuesday the World Muslim Minorities Summit, the top religious leader of Romanian Muslims, Mufti Muurat Iusuf, said that Romania's state policy as regards the observance of the rights of minority religious communities - the Muslim one included - can be considered a worldwide model. "I argued that the Muslim minority is a respected confessional community, with a well-defined status, that stands in accordance with its 900-year long existence on the territory of our homeland, Romania. In Romania, the Muslims' cultural and confessional rights are respected and are therefore exercised exactly according to the basic precepts, beginning with the recognition and grant of days off on official holidays to the imams' public call to prayer from mosque minarets. And let me tell you that this is not a minor thing, given that there are states in Europe where this tradition is not allowed," the Mufti told AGERPRES.According to the head of the Muslim Cult in Romania, the 66,700-strong community he represents is served by 60 imams in 78 places of worship, most of which are located in the counties of Constanta, Tulcea, Braila and Galati. The clerics are trained at the Muslim Theological Highschool in the eastern city of Medgidia and 25 teachers - most of them from among imams - teach faith in schools.The World Muslim Minorities Summit, attended by 250 senior Muslim clerics from 120 states from Europe, Africa, Asia, North and South America, Australia and India, opened on Monday at the Dolmabahce Palace in Istanbul, in the presence of Turkey's President Recep Tayyip Erdogan and Premier Binali Yildirim. The head of the Protection and Guard Service (SPP), General Lucian Pahontu welcomed at the seat of the institution Peter Drennan, the United Nations Under-Secretary-General for Safety and Security. According to a SPP press release sent to AGERPRES on Tuesday, the United Nation Under-Secretary and SPP's leadership discussed about developing the security measures carried out by the SPP squads in theatres of operations. "In this context, the UN official conveyed his thanks and appreciations, as well as those other high UN officials to the leadership of the service for the professionalism, devotion and dedication of the protection Romanian officers in missions, in theatres of operations," reads the release.The UN Under-Secretary also visited the SPP Centre of Excellence for Protection and Security and attended the opening of this year's first protection course for UN security officers."Peter Drennan was impressed with the training facilities provided by SPP and by the high training standards, both those of the SPP officers and that of the trainees sent by the UN to train in Bucharest," the quoted source further mentions.Other five training courses for UN employees are due to take place this year within the SPP Centre of Excellence for Protection and Security.The training programme started eight years ago and totaled over 22 courses, with over 300 UN protection officers. The courses organised in Bucharest within the SPP Centre of Excellence for Protection and Security are coordinated by mixed teams made up of SPP and UN trainers. The service's trainers are internationally certified and are composed of officers who have previously carried out missions under the UN aegis.The UN and SPP have been collaborating for 14 years. Meanwhile, 35 SPP teams, over 500 protection officers have carried out missions in the most active conflict areas. The SPP officers have ensured the protection on UN dignitaries in theatres of operations in Afghanistan, Sudan, South Sudan, Syria, the Central African Republic and Libya.The UN official paid a visit, Monday through Tuesday to the Protection and Guard Service. Milo Djukanovic, a pro-Western candidate, won Montenegros presidential election on April 15, pledging to continue the pro-Wests policy defying Russia. Having joined NATO, the next step is EU membership his coveted dream. The election result is largely viewed as a step to diminish Moscows influence in the Balkans. Despite his pro-Western bias, President-elect Djukanovic emphasized during the election campaign his wish to have normal relations with Russia. Western media largely ignore the fact that only 46 out of 81 Montenegrin MPs voted a year ago for ratification of NATO membership agreement. The region is largely viewed as a testing ground in new Cold War with Moscow. The West is engaged in efforts to spread its influence in the Balkans and weaken Russias position there. Thats what the EU strategy adopted in February calls for, emphasizing that the western Balkan states are geographically surrounded by the blocs members. The Albanian factor is used to advance the Wests course. The activities of Kosovo separatists, including the interethnic violence in Macedonia, and Albanians in Serbias Presevo Valley seeking union with Albania and Kosovo are links on the same chain. The idea of creating Great Albania is not dead. And Albania is a NATO member. The pressure is strong enough to make Serbia make concessions in relations with Kosovo, though only 26 per cent of Serbs now think EU membership would be a good thing. The policy boils down to reforms in exchange for possible membership. From the Wests point of view, good relations with Moscow would be an obstacle but Serbia remains a neutral state, maintaining friendly ties with its historical ally. 80 percent of Serbias gas comes from Russia, which is a link to the EAEUs big market with 180 million consumers. Serbia receives Russias military assistance, including a batch of MiG-29 fighters delivered gratuitously. In 2015, Russia prevented Serbias conviction of genocide in Srebrenica by the UN Security Council. According to a 2017 public opinion survey conducted by the Serbian Demostat research center, 41 percent of respondents perceive Russia as the greatest friend. The people remember Moscows support of Belgrades stance on Kosovo. Serbian and Russian leaders meet frequently. Unlike the US, Russia never tried to exert pressure. Meanwhile, Croatia, Slovenia, Albania and Montenegro have joined NATO. Croatia and Slovenia have joined the EU. Macedonias NATO membership bid will be considered at a NATO summit in July, despite the fact that this nation struggles with rampant corruption and ethnic tensions. NATO has actually taken Kosovo away from Serbia. Macedonia may also lose some areas with predominant Albanian population in the north-west of the country. The EU accession is also a goal. Russia is one of its most important trade partners. If Macedonia enters the EU, it will have to join Russia sanctions to deprive its economy of profits. Bosnia-Herzegovinas membership is on the agenda but it has an obstacle the Bosnian Serbs oppose the move. Their opposition is explained by Russias influence of course, the reason remembered each and every time something goes wrong. Both countries are a far cry from any standards but this principle is somehow forgotten. There is an exemption to any rule but extending membership to anyone for the sake of rolling Russia back is a very wrong idea to make the alliance weaker as an amalgam of nations, which have few things in common and contribute very differently. The alliance will have more free riders making other nations pay more. Western efforts to reduce the regions energy dependence on Russia are part of the squeeze Russia out policy. The completion of the Trans-Adriatic Pipeline (TAP) project and the plan to construct a floating liquefied natural gas terminal on Krk, a Croatian island, are to bolster the political ends. The Krk project is to encompass Slovenia and Hungary, Bosnia and Serbia. The TAP will stretch from the Caspian Sea to Albania and northwards to other Western Balkan countries as well as Italy. Interconnector pipelines between Bulgaria and Serbia also meet the Wests policy goals. Macedonia will become rich if the Turkish Stream gas project is expanded as planned. The country is the best direction as the Vardar River transportation route links Central Europe and the Aegean Sea. The pipeline will cross Greece, Macedonia, Serbia, and Hungary to reach Central Europe. Of course, becoming a member of NATO and the EU, itll have to forget about these lucrative prospects in favor of paying higher prices for the US shale gas. Voices have been raised in the US recently calling for paying more attention to the Balkans. The influential Atlantic Council calls for permanent military presence in the region. The think tank wants Camp Bondsteel in Kosovo to be transferred into the first permanent military base in southeastern Europe. The plan includes the construction of a runway to operate large aircraft. Belgrade can and should be a close partner and ally in the region, but it can only become one if it begins to meaningfully distance itself from Russia, the Atlantic Councils experts emphasize in the report issued in late 2017. The Heritage Foundation followed suit offering guidelines for American policy to oust Russia from the region to make it dominated by the US. Congress wants the Defense Department to prepare a report on cooperation between every single Western Balkan country and the Russian Federation. Gen. Curtis Scaparrotti, the top US and NATO commander in Europe, has just told Congress that Russia is at work in the Balkans and we have kind of taken our eye off the area. Last month, the general was blasted by Serbia for meddling into its internal affairs in an effort to warn Belgrade against developing cooperation with Moscow. American experts working for European think tanks call for working out joint measures to counter Russia in the Balkans. Being a battlefield in the geopolitical game will hardly benefit the countries of the region. Lured into the NATO and EU, they risk becoming pawns in big powers games. Foreign Ministry Spokesperson Hua Chunying's Regular Press Conference on April 17, 2018 2018/04/17 Q: US President Trump said on Twitter yesterday that China, along with Russia, is playing the currency devaluation game. What is your response to this? A: We have taken note of the relevant report as well as the relevant content of the twice-a-year report recently issued by the US Treasury Department. It seems that the message released by the United States is a little bit confusing. We will remain poised. Whatever other people say, we will steadily press ahead with the reform of the RMB exchange rate formation mechanism. Q: It is learned that China and Japan agreed to hold the 9th round of the High-level Consultation on Maritime Affairs in the first half of this year. Have you nailed down the time, location and topics for the Consultation? A: As agreed by the two sides, the 9th round of the China-Japan High-level Consultation on Maritime Affairs will be held in Sendai, Japan from April 19 to 20. Officials from departments of foreign affairs, defense, maritime law enforcement and management of the two sides will attend the Consultation. The mechanism of the China-Japan High-level Consultation on Maritime Affairs is a comprehensive one for communication and coordination on maritime-related affairs. China looks forward to having an in-depth exchange of views on maritime-related issues with the Japanese side so as to strengthen mutual understanding and trust. Q: The US Commerce Department has blocked US companies from selling components to ZTE for alleged violations of trade sanctions with the DPRK and Iraq. Would it be fair to view this as another skirmish in the looming trade war between China and the US? Would it be correct to characterize technology as a major battleground in the trade dispute? A: China's Ministry of Commerce this morning already responded to the US Department of Commerce's announcement of export control regarding ZTE, and I believe you may have noted that. China will closely follow the development of this case and we are ready to take necessary measures to safeguard the legitimate rights and interests of Chinese enterprises. As to the trade frictions triggered by the US Section 301 investigation, we have stated China's position clearly and resolutely on many occasions. The actions of the US constitute typical unilateralism and economic hegemony. Both China and the US are major countries in the world, and our economies are highly interdependent, which means that we should respect each other and treat each other as equals for win-win cooperation. You may have noted that recently members of the international community have kept calling on the US to respect the WTO and follow multilateral rules. An increasing number of American people, including 107 business and trade associations have come out against such behavior that is self-defeating as well as harmful to others. If the US continues to act in an arbitrary and reckless manner against the trend of the times, we will be ready in full battle array, fight back immediately and fight to the finish to win the defensive battle for multilateralism and free trade. This is not only for safeguarding China's legitimate rights and interests but also upholding the global multilateral trade system and rules. Q: Do you have any comment on the visit by the Taiwanese "President" to Swaziland tomorrow? Is the planned military exercise a response to this? A: I must correct your mistake because what you said is wrong. There is only one China in the world. Taiwan is an inalienable part of the Chinese territory. What you mentioned is the head of the Taiwan region. I only want to stress that there is but one China in the world. This is not only an objective fact and common sense but also the general consensus of the international community. Q: Recently Japan and India expressed their support to the rules-based multilateral trading regime and the global free trade system with the WTO at the core respectively during the 4th China-Japan High-Level Economic Dialogue and the 5th China-India Strategic Economic Dialogue. Many heads of state and international organizations have also voiced similar opinions. Does this suggest that China has won the support of a number of countries against the backdrop of possible exacerbating China-US trade frictions? A: We have clearly stated China's position regarding the China-US trade frictions on many occasions. As I said just now, the current China-US trade frictions regarding the US Section 301 investigation are in essence a fight between multilateralism and unilateralism, and global free trade and trade protectionism. As President Xi Jinping pointed out while meeting with Executive Chairman of the World Economic Forum (WEF) Professor Klaus Schwab yesterday, there are so many problems and challenges in today's world, which calls for equal-footed consultations and strengthened multilateral cooperation. History has repeatedly proved that isolation can only lead to a dead-end alley, and only opening up and cooperation can make the road wider and wider. Major countries bear important and special responsibility in this respect. As a responsible major country, China will cooperate with other members of the international community in opening up and seek win-win outcomes through cooperation, and play an active role and make more constructive contributions in bringing bright, stable and promising prospects to the world. Under President Donald Trump, the US has basically eliminated the only real international authority the UN used to have. Here is how this was done: The equivalent, in international law, to a domestic-law crime involving murder, rape, and theft, is an international invasion thats purely for aggressive purposes and not at all authentically a defensive act against an authentic foreign threat that was coming from the invaded foreign country. Consequently, for the US Government now to have removed the UN from any authority over international invasions, is, in domestic-law equivalency, like removing a national government from authority regarding murders, rapes, and thefts, which occur inside that nation. Such a government is no government at all. But, tragically, this is what has happened; and, so, we are now careening into World War III, in this international Wild West world, which we live in (and may soon die in, as things thus head into WW III). The US Government no longer even nominally cares whether or not the UN authorizes its invasions; but, as recently as 2003, it used to, even if only nominally, care. The US has thus effectively disgarded the UN altogether, whenever violating the UN is the only way to impose its will against a given target-country. In late 2002 and early 2003, US President George W. Bush nominally expressed a desire for the UN to authorize an invasion of Iraq, but failed to receive that authorization and then did the invasion anyway, along with only UK, Australia, and Poland, joining the US-led gang, in this destruction of Iraq. At a press conference on 6 March 2003, just 14 days before he ordered the UN weapons-inspectors to leave Iraq so that he could invade Iraq on March 20th (as he did), Bush said: Elizabeth. Q Thank you, Mr. President. As you said, the Security Council faces a vote next week on a resolution implicitly authorizing an attack on Iraq. Will you call for a vote on that resolution, even if you aren't sure you have the vote? THE PRESIDENT: Well, first, I don't think it basically says that he's in defiance of 1441. That's what the resolution says. And it's hard to believe anybody is saying he isn't in defiance of 1441, because 1441 said he must disarm. And, yes, we'll call for a vote. Q No matter what? THE PRESIDENT: No matter what the whip count is, we're calling for the vote. We want to see people stand up and say what their opinion is about Saddam Hussein and the utility of the United Nations Security Council. And so, you bet. It's time for people to show their cards, to let the world know where they stand when it comes to Saddam. Mark Knoller. Q Mr. President, are you worried that the United States might be viewed as defiant of the United Nations if you went ahead with military action without specific and explicit authorization from the UN? THE PRESIDENT: No, I'm not worried about that. As a matter of fact, it's hard to say the United States is defiant about the United Nations, when I was the person that took the issue to the United Nations, September the 12 th , 2002. We've been working with the United Nations. We've been working through the United Nations. Subsequent US Presidents havent been even that respectful of the UNs authority; and current US President Donald Trump is blatantly dismissive of it, so that hes not even requesting UN authorization for his invasions. Thus, the lesson that the US Government learned from the Iraq invasion isnt that the US Government should never again lie about what the evidence actually shows, in order to invade a country, but instead that the US Government should simply ignore the UN whenever the evidence doesnt persuade other Governments that an invasion would be authentically defensive instead of purely an act of international aggression. What might turn out to have been The Most Important UN Security Council Vote Ever was the 10 April 2018 UN Security Councils failure to require the US and its allies to provide evidence to prove that Syrias Government had gassed its own people in Douma on April 7th as the US and its allies alleged, before the US and its allies could, with even just possible legal justification, launch massive bombing of Syria as supposed punishment for the gas-attack that they were alleging. The question of whether or not the UN would authorize the American invasion wasnt even being raised; the question was only whether the alleged gas-attack needed to be independently verified before an invasion might possibly legally be launched and no proposal was passed. Unlike in the 2003 invasion of Iraq, the US never tried to win UN authorization to invade Syria in 2018, but simply invaded, casually ignoring all laws, and even denying the need for evidence to back up its allegations against Syria. A UN like this is, might as well be no UN at all, just a talking-forum and thats what now exists: its a forum merely for the constituent Governments to present their respective propagandas to the world, but no longer actually to negotiate anything, since the UN has no military, and now the US Government has become effectively whatever the US military (including its armaments corporations such as General Dynamics) want it to be and, To hell with the UN! The way now to buy the US Government has become to buy those corporations weapons, and then the US Government will ally itself with that country. This is purely transactional, in the interests of Americas armaments-firms, not in the interests of the invading public, and certainly destructive of the interests of the invaded public, no matter how profitable it may be for the owners of those armaments-firms. (One can talk instead about Wall Street, but theyre mainly the sellers of stock in Americas armaments-firms and associated products and services; so, they are middle-men who represent the interests of the aristocracy, not really themselves necessarily principals people who are within the aristocracy.) President Trump came into office promising a rebirth of American manufacturing, but, so far, the vast majority of his boost to US manufacturing has been only to the US weapons-manufacturers actually by far the largest international arms-sale in world history. On 21 May 2017, I headlined it "US $350 Billion Arms-Sale to Sauds Cements US-Jihadist Alliance and reported that the day before, US President Donald Trump and the Saud family inked an all-time record-high $350 billion ten-year arms-deal that not only will cement-in the Saud familys position as the worlds largest foreign purchasers of US-produced weaponry, but will make the Saud family, and Americas ruling families, become, in effect, one aristocracy over both nations, because neither side will be able to violate the will of the other. As the years roll on, their mutual dependency will deepen, each and every year. That, sadly, has turned out to be true and not only regarding Americas carrying the Sauds water (doing their bidding) in both Yemen and Syria, but in other ways as well. On 21 March 2018, CNBC bannered Trump wants Saudi Arabia to buy more American-made weapons. Here are the ones the Saudis want, and reported what Trump had just negotiated with Saudi Arabia's Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman al-Saud, which was a step-up in that $350 billion sale, to $400 billion. CNBC associated the Sauds arms-purchases with investments in the US, so as to mislead their audience to think favorably of these sales, but if these sales were actually investments in anything, it was in the ability of the Saud family to join even more fully with Americas aristocracy so as for them jointly to impose their will upon any country where they both want regime-change control by themselves, instead of by that invaded country's local aristocracy. (Then, the US Government issues economic sanctions against Russia for interfering in our democracy. But the Sauds, and their allies, Israels aristocracy, actually do precisely that, routinely, and very effectively!) So: CNBC said: During the Oval Office talks, Trump touted a creation of 40,000 American jobs due to Saudi military sales. The president used several maps and charts of Saudi acquisitions to further make his point. The crown prince, likewise, added that last year's Saudi pledge of $200 billion in investments will rise to approximately $400 billion and that a 10-year window to implement the deal was already under way. That was a misleading statement about the amounts, too. Here is how Indian Express had headlined and reported on 18 May 2017: "Saudi Arabia to invest $200 billion in US, purchase arms worth $300 billion: As President Donald Trump prepares for his first overseas trip, Saudi Arabia has announced to make a whopping USD 200 billion investment in the US and intends to purchase arms worth USD 300 billion from America, a senior administration official has said. There, too, the Saudi masters got their propagandists to refer to investments in relation to purchase arms worth $300 billion, which turned out, just two days later, on 20 May 2017, to be actually $350 billion and which amount of arms-purchases now has risen instead to $400 billion, which will be paid, as listed in that CNBC news-report to: Lockheed Martin, Boeing, General Dynamics, Honeywell, and Raytheon. When Trump campaigned for the Presidency, he had promised to be anything but a sales-person for Americas war-machine. But, he is so, and this is fascism: socialism for the rich, and survival of the fittest for everyone else. Trump certainly isnt a sales-person for the poor, anywhere. Hes what his fellow-fascists call a populist, in order to insult the public that they must appeal to for votes. American productivity thus will increase in the production of death and destruction; but, as economists view things, that is productivity and added Gross National Product, regardless of how much it actually immiserates the world (and, so, economic theory is part of the fraud that enables all of this, essentially, corruption). Thus, economic theory is as fraudulent as is the international news that the propaganda-agencies spread to the public. Its all a pile of bull, but lots of consumers are buying it, because its all that they know and it satisfies them theyre not even looking for more than the myths. Previously, the Biggest Arms Deal in History was between UKs aristocracy and the Sauds, the Al-Yamamah deal, which boosted UKs biggest weapons-maker, BAE, and in which the massive corruption became the subject of scandals and a Governmental inquiry, which Saudi Prince Bandar bin Sultan al-Saud forced UK Prime Minister Tony Blair to close with no report being issued. And both the UK and US claim to be democracies and both Governments accuse Russia of interfering in their democracy! If the reader wants to know why a web-search for the title of this article How US Has Virtually Destroyed UN probably turns up no mainstream newsmedia in the US-allied world, and even very few alternative news sites, then the reason isnt that they werent offered the article, because they all routinely receive the submission of each of my articles but routinely turn them down. The reason is instead that the most important truths are prohibited from publication in the US-allied world its a world dominated by lies. After all: we invaded and destroyed Iraq for no real defensive reason, and our Government has never apologized for that, much less been held accountable, at all, for it. And now, because of the US Government, the UN isnt even really a debating-forum, any more. Its just a propaganda-forum, now. The limited Trump administration led strikes against the Syrian government, included a statement by the US, UK and French governments, saying that the action wasn't intended to overthrow the Syrian government. This trio went out to warn against any future use of chemical weapons by the Syrian government. Significantly omitted from this pronouncement, is whether the Syrian government has actually used such an observation that takes into consideration other possibilities. Specifically, the use of chemical weapons by the rebels and/or that group staging a future chemical attack, for the purpose of having the Syrian government blamed. In March 2018 a cell phone photo of a Russian Mi-8 helicopter equipped with the new Rychag-AV appeared on the Internet. This Mi-8 was operating in northwestern Syria, where it would be used to jam enemy aircraft and missiles that depend on wireless communications. Russia first announced the Rychag-AV jammer in 2015 and in 2016 Russia announced that a custom version of the M-8 transport helicopter (Mi-8MTPR-1) equipped with Rychag-AV was delivered to army units operating near Ukraine. In 2017 Mi-8MTPR-1 was seen operating over Crimea and local Ukrainian hackers, using custom hardware and software they had built, reported details of Rychag-AV in operation over Crimea. Russia claims Rychag-AV can automatically detect and jam enemy radar and other electronic signals up to 400 kilometers away. Rychag-AV is designed to be operated from aircraft, trucks and ships but it can detect more signals and farther away if airborne or having its sensors and jammers mounted on a high portion of a ship (where radars have long been mounted). In addition to the Ukrainian hackers, NATO has had EW (Electronic Warfare) personnel in Ukraine for several years to monitor local Russian EW efforts. Not many details of what these monitors detected are made public since EW works best if its capabilities are a surprise. It is unknown if Russia has actually used Rychag-AV in Syria or Ukraine. Or if they did use it was it on a sustained basis (required to disrupt a large scale air operation, like the April 13 attack on Syrian chemical warfare facilities) or for short periods, just to test the equipment. Russia is still striving to update a lot of its Cold War era military equipment and EW gear was one of the few categories that had priority. These upgrades began to appear in the last decade and Russia sent most of them to Syria or used them against Ukraine to obtain some combat zone experience. Systems like Rychag-AV are similar to the jamming pods the U.S. has been developing since the 1960s. Russia has always been a decade or more behind the West in this technology. Rychag-AV is an effort catch up and uses a computerized library of signals so that whatever the Rychag-AV detects it can identify and then send out the most effective jamming signal. Rychag-AV may be able to detect signals 400 kilometers distant but the Mi-8 helicopter has a max payload of four tons and limited electrical generating capability so the jamming range is probably more like 100 kilometers (if that). So far Russia has ordered about twenty Rychag-AV systems and most of them appear to be mounted in Mi-8s. These EW helicopters would provide jamming services for helicopters gunships and ground attack aircraft and that appears to be what they are doing in Syria. So far they have only been seen in the northwest apparently guarding the main Russian airbase (Hmeimim) there. This is also about as far away from Israel as you can get because the Israelis now have a chance to monitor Rychag-AV in action as well. The Mi-8MTPR-1 replaces a similar, but much less capable, system Russia deployed on specialized Mi-8s in the 1980s. Weighing about 14 tons, and carrying a four ton load, the current Mi-8 is nearly identical to the more numerous Mi-17 export model. Mi-8/17 has a range of 800 kilometers at a cruising speed of 260 kilometers per hour. Top speed is 280 kilometers per hour. There is a crew of three and as many passengers as can be squeezed in (up to 40 people, but usually 20-30.) A sling underneath can also carry up to four tons. Some 17,000 Mi-8/17 helicopters have been built since the 1960s with about twenty percent exported. The Mi-17 is like its Mi-8 ancestor, rugged, inexpensive (under $10 million each) and better suited for less affluent nations. But the Russian Army still uses a lot of them because they are rugged, reliable, easy to maintain and cheap. For these reasons, Mi-8s are trusted to carry and operate complex and expensive systems like Rychag-AV. In 2016 Qatar announced major weapons purchase involving nearly $6 billion worth of ships. Details of the ships were lacking then but now that has all been worked out and construction begins this year and will take six years to complete. Qatar ordered an LPD amphibious ship, four 3,000 ton corvettes and two 700 ton OPVs (offshore patrol vessels). This basically replaces the smaller Cold War era Qatar navy of nine patrol boats and one LST. The LPD will be based on an existing Italian design (San Giusto-class) and an export model that was delivered to Algeria in 2014. The Algerian LPD had been ordered in 2011 and has a floodable dock for landing craft and a flight deck for helicopters. There are also hospital facilities. The crew had been training in Italy since 2013. Most Algerians live along the coast and this ship would be useful for disaster relief as well as military uses. Qatar has a similar situation. The Algerian LPD is armed with a 76mm cannon, sixteen Aster vertical launch anti-aircraft missile (with a range up to 15 kilometers) cells and two remotely controlled 25mm autocannon. The Qatari LPD has four 30mm autocannons instead. The Qatari LPD will operate NH90 helicopters which can be armed with anti-ship missiles. Five helicopters can fit on the deck and another five in the hanger deck (which can also accommodate vehicles for the amphibious troops). The dock in the rear has nine small landing craft. The vehicle/hanger deck (below the flight deck) can hold 15 armored vehicles and there are accommodations for 440 troops. The ship is operated by a crew of 150. The ship also has a small hospital with an operating room. Troop accommodations can be used to handle some patients as well as civilians in general. Fuel and other supplies allow the ship to stay at sea for 20 days at a time. The San Giorgio class amphibious transport ship is one of the smaller LPD class ships. Italy has three of them, which entered service in the late 1980s and early 1990s. The San Giorgio class ships are 133 meters (435 feet) long and displace only 8,000 tons, while most other LPDs are 20,000 tons or larger. The San Giorgio sacrifices many things (vehicle, helicopter and landing ship capacity) but they can still carry a small (400 men) battalion of troops, 36 vehicles, six landing craft (in a well in the rear of the ship) and up to six helicopters. Armament consists of two 25mm autocannons. The Algerians received an upgraded San Giorgio. The export versions for Algeria and Qatar are a little heavier (at 8,800 tons) and have the more modern equipment. Since the 1990s Qatar has acquired over twenty new patrol boats but the most recent purchase gives Qatar the largest warships it has ever owned. The suppliers are European with most (77 percent) of it from Italy and are the largest single naval export sale ever for Italy. The other 23 percent of the sale is to European firm MBDA for anti-aircraft missile systems for the new ships. The ship contract includes ten years of logistical and technical support for the corvettes and five for the LPD. All the ships will be in service by the mid-2020s. Qatar is also expanding and upgrading its ground and air forces Qatar is small (11,437 square kilometers/4,416 square miles) state with a population of 2.6 million. It has large oil revenues, giving it a per-capita GDP that is the highest in the world. The emir (ruler) has made sure that the money is shared, making the population tolerant of being ruled by a monarchy. The emir has recognized that most of the oil and gas will be gone by mid-century and is trying to build a "knowledge economy" that will keep Qatar prosperous after the oil boom is over. Qatar already has refineries, steel plants and other heavy industry and a very low unemployment rate for Qatari citizens. Qatar is one of the many emirates that occupy the western shore of the Persian Gulf. In the 19th century, the coastal emirates (city states that depended on trade, pearls, and fishing) allied themselves with Britain for protection against the Turks (who controlled what is now Iraq), Iran (always a threat to the Arabs), and the interior tribes of Arabia. Britain was interested in suppressing pirates (which often operated out of the Emirates) and halting Turkish expansion. The population of Qatar was less than 100,000 in the early 20th century and didnt really start to grow until the 1970s. For most Qatari citizens, their grandparents lived very different lives. In 1971 seven of the emirates formed a federation: the UAE (United Arab Emirates). There were immediate disputes with Saudi Arabia about where the land and water borders of the UAE should be. Some of those disputes are still unresolved. The Saudis consider themselves the leader of Arabia but most of the people of Arabia (in Yemen, Kuwait, Oman, and the UAE) frequently disagree. As a result, there is a lot of friction. Nevertheless, in 1981, the Gulf Cooperation Council was formed by Bahrain, Kuwait, Oman, Qatar, Saudi Arabia, and the UAE. In 2002 Qatar signed defense agreements with the United States. Qatar has hosted American warplanes and warships since the 1990s. At the same time, Qatar cultivated close relations with Iran and allowed its citizens to support some Islamic terror groups. That led to disputes with its fellow Arabians that are currently unsettled. Meanwhile, its not just Qatar thats buying weapons. All the Arab Gulf states have been buying heavily. Arms sales like this are not unusual for the Middle East. The oil-rich Gulf Arab states have long spent heavily on weapons to protect their wealth and independence. Since 2010 annual arms exports to this region have averaged over $60 billion a year and most of it has gone to the six oil-rich members of the GCC (Gulf Cooperation Council). Saudi Arabia, the UAE and Kuwait are the big buyers and the main reason for that is fear of Iran. On the face of it, all those purchases appear to be overkill because Iran had to, until 2015, smuggle in its arms imports, as legitimate purchases were banned by international embargoes that began piling up in the 1980s. Iranian military procurement is less than a tenth of what their Arab neighbors are spending. But the Iranians have a long tradition of doing much with little when it comes to military equipment. In addition, the Arabs have a much less impressive combat record, especially in the last century. So the oil-rich Arabs are trying to equip their troops with a lot of the best stuff available and hope for the best. Qatar goes one step further and tries to work with Iran without becoming an Iranian protectorate. That is at the heart of the current dispute with Saudi Arabia and the UAE. In addition, there is the fact that Arabia is ruled a few powerful clans (the Saudi family is the most prominent) and the Thani clan of Qatar have actually been in power (since 1825) longer than the Saudis (who founded their kingdom a century later.) Peace talks with the Taliban are still on the agenda, as are similar negotiations with the Haqqani Network. There have always been peace talks going on between the government and some Taliban factions and over the last decade, the Taliban has lost the support of many Pushtun tribes because of this. But now factions within the Taliban senior leadership are considering a peace deal. Even Haqqani Network factions are interested. The reason for this growing interest in peace deals is the realization that the Taliban did not, as leaders had assured everyone, roll to victory after the foreign troops left in 2014. That was four years ago and the Afghan government and most Afghans put up a lot more resistance than the Taliban expected. Another problem was the drug gangs, who continue to thrive but produce a product that is hated by most Afghans and regularly denounced by tribal leaders and Moslem clergy for the way the drugs turn so many young Afghans in addicts and a disgrace to their families. Cant blame this one on the Americans. It is also obvious who is getting rich from the drug trade. Afghans making a lot of money in the drug trade are not shy about showing it off. While the Taliban have tried to improve their relationships with the Afghan civilians the Taliban tendency to shut down schools and cell phone service while putting a heavy tax on local commerce heavily. All this is not popular. Its gotten to the point where more tribes are simply mobilizing their armed men into self-defense militias and telling the Taliban to stay away. In times past the Taliban would have sent in some enforcers (often foreigners) to kidnap or murder some key people and dismantle the resistance. This no longer works (the news gets around, which is who most Afghans want their cell phones and the Taliban resist that). In short, its no longer fashionable to be associated with the Taliban. This is not something that happened overnight, its been going on for a long time and has reached the point where the Taliban are seen more as part of the problem than part of any solution. All this is reinforced by a growing Pushtun nationalist movement in Pakistan. That is where most Pushtuns live but the Pushtuns are a small minority while in Afghanistan half as many Pushtuns are the largest minority in the country and a force to be reckoned with. Pushtuns on both sides of the border also agree that India is more of a friend than the Moslem majority of Pakistan who likes to treat India as an enemy (which Indians insist they are not) and Afghanistan as a subordinate nation (which the Afghans do not like at all). India can now trade freely with Afghanistan via a new sea/rail link in Iran and most Afghans prefer this to dependency on Pakistan for access to the rest of the world. Attitudes and alliances are changing and Pakistan and the Taliban they created are the big losers. The Shame Of Afghanistan For Afghanistan the internal threat of Islamic terrorism and drug gangs gets most of the headlines while the third major threat; corruption is doing most of the damage. To put in in perspective Afghanistan is one of the most corrupt nations on the planet. According to international surveys of corruption, Afghanistan ranks 177 out of 180 countries (166 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 Afghan score is 15 (15 in 2016) compared to 32 (32) for Pakistan, 28 (26) for Bangladesh, 38 (36) for Sri Lanka, 40 (40) for India, 30 (28) for Burma, 29 (29) for Russia, 41 (40) for China, 14 (13) for Syria, 62 (64) for Israel, 18 (17) for Iraq, 40 (41) for Turkey, 49 (46) for Saudi Arabia, 28 (28) for Lebanon, 33 (36) for the Maldives, 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. Afghanistans corruption score has improved since 2012 when it was 8. But Afghanistan is still near the bottom, although in 2012 Afghanistan was the bottom. At the moment the high levels of corruption, made worse by all the bribes paid by drug gangs to produce and move their heroin out of the country has crippled economic growth. With the population growing at three percent a year economic growth is stuck at about two percent a year. There is little foreign investment because of the corruption and the constant fighting with the drug gangs and their Taliban allies. The Taliban have their own agenda which is hostile to economic growth. The Taliban forbid non-religious education and any education for girls. Without better economic growth Afghanistan will continue to be the poorest nation in Eurasia and most Afghans are actually not happy about that. In addition to the corruption survey, Afghanistan did a little better in the UN sponsored World Happiness Index, coming in at number 145 (of 156). The top ten are all the usual suspects (Finland, Norway, Denmark, Iceland, Switzerland, the Netherlands, Canada, New Zealand, Sweden and Australia) and then comes Israel, the happiest country in the Middle East as well as being the most powerful militarily and one of the least corrupt. The rest of the rankings are similar to the corruption survey. The U.S. is at 18th place, UAE at 2o, Saudi Arabia at 33, Kuwait at 45, Russia at 59, Japan at 54, South Korea at 57, Libya at 70, Turkey at 74, Jordan at 90, China at 86, Pakistan at 75, Venezuela at 102, Lebanon at 88, Somalia at 98, Palestinian Territories at 104, Egypt at 122, Iran at 106, Iraq at 117, Bangladesh at 115, Burma at 130, India at 133, Yemen at 152, Syria at 150 and at 156 (last place) Burundi. Communist dictatorships like North Korea and Cuba block access to data needed for the survey and were not rated. Afghan Air Power The Afghan Air Force reported that its dozen or so A-29 aircraft now account for a third of the 15 airstrikes carried out by the Afghans each day (on average). The A-29 Super Tucano is a five ton single engine turbo-prop two-seat trainer/attack aircraft that is used by over a dozen nations. A-29s are armed with two internal 12.7mm (.50 caliber) machine-guns along with 1.5 tons of bombs and rockets. It can stay in the air for 6.5 hours at a time. It is rugged, easy to maintain and cheap. Eighteen A-29s will be in service with Afghanistan by the end of 2018 with an additional six arriving in 2019. The first A-29s entered service in Afghanistan during early 2016. These aircraft can use laser guided bombs as well as unguided ones in addition to Hellfire missiles. Meanwhile, the Americans have greatly increased their number of airstrikes, which now average about fifteen a day. The Afghan Air Force airstrikes are often small-scale, like an armed helicopter firing machine-guns and unguided rockets at ground targets. The Americans can deliver larger bombs as well as laser guided missiles from UAVs. The Afghan Air Force air support has a greater morale impact because the Afghan forces on the ground are talking to Afghan pilots. That means a lot. The main thing is the Afghan security forces now have available about 30 airstrikes a day and that level of support has not been available since before the Americans left in 2014. April 16, 2018: In the southeast (Khost province) there was another clash between Afghan security forces and Pakistani border guards. It was all about Pakistanis and Afghans disagreeing where the border was. Fighting broke out yesterday. At least seven people died, five of them Pakistani and two Afghan border police. One Pakistani border guard was captured. The Pakistani entered an area that the Afghans insisted was on their side of the border and fighting broke out when the Pakistani border guards would not back away. Today a ceasefire was arranged by tribal leaders and Afghanistan returned the bodies of the Pakistani dead and the one captured Pakistani. The Afghan government ordered the army to send additional troops to the border in case the Pakistanis escalated. These clashes are occurring more frequently. April 15, 2018: In the south (Herat, Kandahar, Laghman and Kapisa provinces) the government is training the first 5,000 volunteers for the Territorial Army. If the first 5,000 do well another 31,000 Territorials will be trained and equipped. Territorials are part time soldiers who wear the uniform and receive 70 percent of soldiers pay but only mobilize when needed to defend the area they are from. The idea of a Territorial Force has been around for a long time but the main problem has always been the ultimate loyalty and reliability of the force. The government believes it has worked out a solution. Time will tell. April 14, 2018: The Afghan security forces are having more success shutting down Taliban smuggling routes from Pakistan. These routes are used to bring in weapons, including explosives, as well as foreign Islamic terrorists. Both bombs and foreign Islamic terrorists are unwelcome in Afghanistan because that means more dead civilians. So it has become easier for the security forces to find out which remote smuggling routes the Taliban are using and disrupt them (at great cost to the Taliban). April 13, 2018: In the north (Baghlan province) the Taliban used explosives to take down an electricity transmission tower, halting the supply of electricity imported from Tajikistan and Uzbekistan. This cut power to much of Kabul. The Taliban carried out this attack because the government prevented the Islamic terrorists from using this imported power for Taliban controlled areas. This is the second time the Taliban have attacked power lines from Central Asia that pass through Baghlan. This time negotiations were undertaken to settle the matter and now repairs are underway. Meanwhile, elsewhere in Baghlan a local Taliban leader and eight of his subordinates were killed and five wounded when the Taliban leaders compound exploded as a bomb being assembled went off. That happens fairly regularly in Afghanistan where there is a shortage good skilled bomb makers and many Taliban leaders believe they can learn what they need from the Internet and are often reluctant to admit they dont know some technical detail of the process. April 12, 2018: In the north (Jawzjan province) Afghan and American ground and air attacks against local ISIL cells overnight left 22 ISIL dead and over 20 wounded. During this operation, ISIL was cleared from six villages they were using as a base area, one of the few base areas ISIL still had in the north. ISIL forces in Jawzjan have been weakened by regular clashes with Taliban forces. This fighting was common during most of 2017 and was pretty brutal, with ISIL often beheading captured (or recently killed) Taliban. All this was over control of drug smuggling routes across the border. There have been clashes between ISIL and Taliban in other parts of the country (mainly in the east) but it has been worst in Jawzjan. With government and U.S. forces increasing their attacks as well the local ISIL has lost many of its senior leaders and some factions in Jawzjan have disappeared, apparently because of casualties and desertions as well as the loss of leaders. The number of American and Afghan air strikes on ISIL in Jawzjan and other northern provinces have increased in the last month, apparently as the result of more tips from locals or even the rival Taliban forces. The Americans believe that ISIL in Jawzjan is no longer an organized force and that the remaining ISIL members are still being hunted by the security forces as well as the Taliban. The ISIL force in eastern Afghanistan (Nangarhar province) remains active and largely intact, for now. April 10, 2018: In the east (Kunar province) there was more shelling from Pakistan, this time directed at a village. This left one civilian dead and one house destroyed. Over 300 people fled their homes to avoid the rockets and shells. When it was all over nearly 200 rockets and shells had been fired. Most had landed in uninhabited areas. April 8, 2018: In the east (Nangarhar province) an American UAV attack left at least four ISIL members dead. A similar attack on the 3rd also killed four ISIL men in the same area. April 6, 2018: In an area some 60 kilometers south of Kabul the Taliban protested a recent military raid that killed the local Taliban leader and several of his associates by ordering the closure of 30 schools in the area. This left 12,000 children locked out of their classrooms. April 5, 2018: In the north (Faryab province) an American airstrike killed the Uzbek leader of ISIL in the north, along with his bodyguard. ISIL promptly appointed another Uzbek ISIL member as the new leaders. The reason foreign Islamic terrorists are so prominent in the northern Afghanistan branch of ISIL is that it provides access to Islamic terror groups in Central Asia and makes it easier for ISIL to profit from the heroin smuggling into Central Asia. The airstrike against the ISIL leader was one of many carried out in the last three days in the same area, most of them against ISIL and Taliban facilities related to drug production and smuggling operations. Recently a senior ISIL leader (the one in charge of prisoners) and three of his subordinates surrendered. They reported ISIL morale in the north was low because of the constant attacks this year. April 3, 2018: During the first three months of the year, 763 civilians were killed in Islamic terrorist and drug gang related violence. This rate of deaths is about the same as the last four years. April 2, 2018: In the north (Kunduz province) Afghan ground and air attacks on a Taliban training center killed 70 and wounded 30 Taliban, including many leaders, because the attack was timed to hit when local Taliban leaders had assembled for a meeting. The Taliban tried to spin this as a meeting of civilians but the government released UAV (ScanEagle) photos showing the compound is full of armed men, not civilians. A lot of civilians were killed or wounded, but by gunfire from Taliban security guards who fired wildly when they heard explosions in the compound. April 1, 2018: In the east (Kunar province) nearly 150 rockets were fired from Pakistan into Afghanistan. This went on into the next day. There were no casualties but the rockets damaged some crops and started some forest fires. The Pakistani Army was believed responsible but the government never takes credit for these attacks, which Afghanistan always protests. March 27, 2018: For the first time, an Afghan Air Force aircraft used a smart bomb. An Afghan A-29 attack aircraft dropped a 113 kg (250 pound) GBU-58 Paveway laser guided bomb. The A-29 also uses Hellfire laser guided missiles, as have other Afghan Air Force Aircraft, for several years. March 25, 2018: In the west (Herat province) two ISIL suicide bombers attacked a Shia mosque, leaving several worshippers dead and nine wounded. March 24, 2018: In Kabul police arrested five Haqqani Network members who were transporting 135 walkie-talkies. After interrogation, it was revealed that the five had been ordered to distribute the walkies-talkies to Haqqani Network cells in Kabul and elsewhere in eastern Afghanistan. All this proved to be very interesting to Afghan intelligence agencies. March 19, 2018: The U.S. military in Afghanistan affirmed that its current policy was not to employ hot pursuit and allow its forces to cross the border into Pakistan when pursuing Islamic terrorists. In the past, the U.S. did allow some degree of Hot Pursuit. March 17, 2018: In the east (Nangarhar province) ISIL lost at least six dead and two wounded fighting with other Islamic terror groups. If was unclear who the others were. Most likely they were Taliban or another ISIL faction. March 16, 2018: The U.S. told Pakistan that there had been no efforts by Pakistan to shut down Haqqani Network and Afghan Taliban sanctuaries in Pakistan. In reply, Pakistan repeats that those sanctuaries do not exist even though there is clear proof that they have long existed and still do. The U.S. has recently noted that Pakistan has been helpful in getting the Afghan Taliban to attend peace talks with the Afghan government. Supreme Court of Pakistan (SC) on Tuesday expressed exasperation over fake news that Lahore High Court (LHC) has barred TV channels from airing alleged anti-judiciary speeches of Pakistan Muslim League Nawaz (PMLN) supreme leader Nawaz Sharif and his daughter Maryam Nawaz. As per details, SC resumed hearing of sou motu notice pertaining to LHCs ban and termed the fake news as second attack on judiciary. Chief Justice of Pakistan (CJP) Justice Saqib Nisar during hearing remarked that every newspaper had printed the aforementioned news. Let us know where order of ban is written in the verdict, CJP remarked while adding, Fake news was aired on all TV channels. [Judiciary] suffered an attack earlier while second attack was launched by airing fake news, remarked CJP. CJ remarked airing of fake news tantamount to denigrate judiciary and that news was quoted out of the context. Pakistan Electronic Media Regulatory Authority (PEMRA) interim chairman also appeared in the court. CJP inquired PEMRA chairman about action taken against media outlets over airing fake news. There are several complains pending before PEMRA since 2017. What action PEMRA has taken against the complains being media-regulator?, inquired Justice Ijazul Ehsan. Will any outsider apprise PEMRA about their [assigned] duties? Court issued a different verdict while channel aired another version of the verdict, stated Justice Azmat Saeed. Earlier, almost all the media outlets yesterday [April-16, 2017] aired the news that LHC had slapped a 15-day ban on airing on airing anti-judiciary speeches of former Prime Minister Nawaz Sharif, his daughter Maryam Nawaz and other PMLN leaders. Former Prime Minister, Nawaz Sharif on Tuesday said Big Chaos heading Pakistan in near future, therefore supremacy of the law and constitution, votes of the masses should be given due respect. Talking with the newsmen during appearance in the avenfield reference case, Nawaz Sharif said bans over expressing, media and newspapers should end now, such decisions are only being taken in Pakistan. He added how masses can be deprived from hearing speech of their leader? He said that uncivilized restrictions cannot be placed on anyone in the country. The world has changed and so should we. Old mistakes should not be repeated, he said. Referring to the Lahore High Courts Monday verdict banning anti-judiciary speeches by Nawaz and others, the former premier said the court should make clear what anti-judiciary means. We cannot restrict someone from speaking, he said, adding that he wanted everyone to go along together. Elected governments made historic decisions, including the atomic tests which were completely conducted by the civilian government, claimed Nawaz. The three-time prime minister said he does not regret moving on. We moved on did but not compromise. The other side should have moved on too, he asserted, terming unfortunate the dharnas (sit-ins) carried out in the country against his government. EU Tax Working Group To Discuss Digital Tax, MNE Tax Issues by Ulrika Lomas, Tax-News.com, Brussels 17 April 2018 The EU's High Level Working Party (Taxation) will discuss international tax reform at its meeting on April 18. According to its agenda, released ahead of the meeting, the working party will discuss the outcome of meetings of the OECD Task Force on the Digital Economy and the G20 meeting of finance ministers, which took place in March, and the OECD Forum of Harmful Tax Practices, which met for three days ending April 6, 2018. Specifically, it will discuss proposals recently put forward by the EU Commission and the OECD for an interim digital tax measure a tax on revenues from the digital economy that would otherwise go untaxed, where companies derive revenue from online users' data or activities and their longer-term proposal for a new digital permanent establishment rule. Next, it will discuss the EU's common corporate tax base proposal, including evaluating its potential impact on national tax revenues. This project is intended to harmonize EU member states' corporate tax regimes to enable taxation of multinational groups under a formulary apportionment approach, under which tax would be levied, and the revenues allocated to member states, based upon objective factors, such as sales and employment levels in each state. The EU Presidency is to present a progress update. It will also discuss the state of play on the financial transaction tax, which appears to have been a non-starter for the EU. Under the proposed FTT directive drafted by the Commission in 2011, the tax would be imposed on all transactions in financial instruments, with the exchange of shares and bonds taxed at a rate of 0.1 percent and derivative contracts at a rate of 0.01 percent. However, the participating member states (originally just 11 of the member states) have found it very difficult to arrive at a consensus on the technical details of the new directive, particularly around the issues of how the tax will apply to derivative trades, and to transactions made by pensions funds. The Working Party is expected to also hold a "strategic discussion" on taxation of the financial sector, including with regards to value-added tax. Finally, it will discuss tax reform options and proposals for future discussion. Chinese Ambassador WU Peng Pay a Courtesy Call on President Julius Maada Bio 2018/04/17 On April 12, 2018, H.E. WU Peng, the Ambassador of the People's Republic of China to Sierra Leone, paid a courtesy call on H.E. Julius Maada Bio, the President of the Republic of Sierra Leone at State House. Ambassador WU firstly congratulated President Bio on his successful election as the President of Republic of Sierra Leone, and conveyed the congratulatory message from the Chinese President XI Jinping. Ambassador WU emphasized that, China and Sierra Leone enjoy profound traditional friendship and fruitful outcomes of cooperation in various areas. China always attaches strategic importance to its relations with Sierra Leone. China would like to work with Sierra Leone side to promote the continuous development of the Comprehensive Partnership of Strategic Cooperation between China and Sierra Leone, and bring more tangible benefits to our two countries and peoples. H.E. President Bio thanked the congratulatory message from President XI and welcomed Ambassador WU. He spoke highly of the friendly relationship that the two nations have enjoyed over the years and appreciated the continuous support from the government and people of China towards the development activities in Sierra Leone. President Bio reiterated that, Sierra Leone is ready to make concerted efforts with China to deepen the friendship, strengthen mutual trust and expand cooperation. Guam To Launch Tax Amnesty by Mary Swire, Tax-News.com, Hong Kong 17 April 2018 The Government of Guam, a US territory located in the Pacific, has announced proposals for a temporary tax amnesty program. The Government says the tax amnesty program is intended to encourage payment of outstanding taxes for the 2016 and prior tax years. Full details of the amnesty and its start date will be announced in the coming weeks. Japan Studying How To Cushion Sales Tax Hike Impact by Mary Swire, Tax-News.com, Hong Kong 17 April 2018 Japan's Chief Cabinet Secretary, Yoshihide Suga, has announced a task force will be set up to consider ways to mitigate the negative impact of the planned 2019 consumption tax rise. The task force will consider the 2014 consumption tax rise, which many consider pushed the country into recession. The task force will also study how European states have managed economic fluctuations associated with VAT rate increases, including consumers bringing forward expenditure prior to the tax rises. Suga said the task force will comprise officials from relevant ministries. Japan's consumption tax is scheduled to increase to 10 percent, from eight percent currently, on October 1, 2019. Nigeria Extends Amnesty To June 30 by Lorys Charalambous, Tax-News.com, Cyprus 17 April 2018 Nigeria's President, Muhammadu Buhari, has confirmed a final extension to the country's Voluntary Assets and Income Declaration Scheme (VAIDS) until June 30. The amnesty offers a waiver of penalties and interest on unpaid tax and a guarantee that taxpayers will not be prosecuted or subject to tax audits. It was launched to encourage voluntary compliance, as Nigeria's tax-to-GDP ratio is a meagre six percent. The Government has warned that tax evasion can result in five years' imprisonment and penalties of up to 100 percent of the tax due and compound interest of 21 percent each year. The amnesty had expired on March 31, 2018. Thank you for reading! Please purchase a subscription to read our premium content. If you have a subscription, please log in or sign up for an account on our website to continue. With the free app, 365 Threat Monitor, scan all emails as they reach your users' mailboxes to detect ransomware, phishing and spam. Get real-time phone alerts + security breach updates and delete threats instantly with just one click. Download now! Facebook on Sunday confirmed that its Messenger and Lite apps for Android smartphones routinely collect call and text histories. The call and text history logging are opt-in features for people using Messenger or Facebook Lite on Android devices, the company said in a post. The feature is designed to help users stay connected, and it improves the Facebook experience, according to the company. The Messenger feature can be turned off at any time through the apps settings. In Facebook Lite, the feature can be deactivated by turning off the Continuous Contacts Upload setting. When those adjustments are made to the programs, all previously shared call and text history is deleted, Facebook said. The feature does not collect the content of calls or text messages, Facebook addes, assuring users that their information is stored securely and that it is not sold to third parties. Surprised Users While the collecting of call and text information has been going on for years it was introduced into Messenger in 2015 discovery of the feature surprised some users and raised many hackles. Downloaded my facebook data as a ZIP fileSomehow it has my entire call history with my partner's mum pic.twitter.com/CIRUguf4vD Dylan McKay (@dylanmckaynz) March 21, 2018 A Twitter user with the handle Learn Somali noticed tracking only in connection with a visit to Somalia. Thanks for sharing the info, I have looked at mine, and my calls/messages were "tracked" only when I visited Somalia for a month, it started and ended that specific period. Did you travel to a place were FB knows no one will catch them snooping. :). Shocking is the new Normal. Learn Somali (@learnsomali_com) March 25, 2018 McKay responded that hed never left New Zealand. Facebook recorded all of her phones contacts, calls and texts from 2015 to 2016, tweeted Natalie Schluter, an associate professor at the University of Copenhagen. I downloaded my data and FB has a record of ALL contacts/calls/texts ON ANY MEDIUM from my phone 2015-2016. NB. I've never imported any contacts to FB. No FB app on my phone. I do have Messenger (but the upload contacts option is and always has been DESELECTED). https://t.co/hUKDG7pr7F Natalie Schluter (@natschluter) March 25, 2018 Author Emma Kennedy also was surprised by what she found when she downloaded the trove of data Facebook had on her. Ive just looked at the data files I requested from Facebook and they had every single phone number in my contacts. They had every single social event I went to, a list of all my friends (and their birthdays) and a list of every text Ive sent. Emma Kennedy (@EmmaKennedy) March 25, 2018 Opaque Transparency While it appears that Facebook believes it has been up front with what its Messenger and Lite apps do, not everyone agrees. Facebook wasnt sufficiently transparent about what it was doing with its apps if even developers and tech-oriented users were surprised, observed Joseph W. Jerome, policy counsel for the Center for Democracy & Technology. Part of the challenge is that well-designed transparency is really hard, he told TechNewsWorld. As the law understands it, Facebook did get users to opt in to this feature, he said, but Turn On is bolded and the default choice for users. The Not Now choice for turning off the feature is grayed out, so it looks like its not an available option. Thin Excuse Technically, Facebook is accurate that users opted in to this, but in the age of Russian meddling and Cambridge Analytica, its no excuse in users minds, said Karen North, director of the digital social media program at the USC Annenberg School for Communication and Journalism. Even the opt-in excuse is a thin one, given how the opt-in was phrased, she told TechNewsWorld. It was misleading. However, its likely that Facebooks intentions were not sinister, North added. They do it to curate an experience that will engage us, she said, and to target us, sell ads and make money. Facebook offers controls for users concerned about their privacy, but using them can be an adventure. You might as well quit your job and spend all your time trying to stay on top of the privacy changes that Mark Zuckerberg makes, quipped John Carroll, a mass communications professor at Boston University. Facebook is notorious for turning their privacy settings into a moving target, he told TechNewsWorld. Its a monumental task to constantly monitor your privacy settings, not only on Facebook, but all over the Web. FTC Opens Probe The phone-scraping revelations broke as full-page Facebook ads ran in several Sunday papers in the United Kingdom and United States, apologizing for having allowed Cambridge Analytica to use the personal data of some 50 million users for political purposes. This was a breach of trust, and Im sorry we didnt do more at the time, CEO Zuckerberg says in the ad. Were now taking steps to ensure this doesnt happen again. Meanwhile, the Federal Trade Commission added more pressure on Monday. The FTC takes very seriously recent press reports raising substantial concerns about the privacy practices of Facebook, said Tom Pahl, acting director of the FTCs Bureau of Consumer Protection. Today, the FTC is confirming that it has an open non-public investigation into these practices. Facebook ran afoul of the FTC in 2011 over sharing and publicizing members information after assuring them they could keep it private. It settled that case with the commission. This is more evidence that the FTC should have enforced its consent orders, Marc Rotenberg, executive director of the Electronic Privacy Information Center, told TechNewsWorld. Users cant be expected to monitor every change in a companys business practices. Porsche wants to expand their electric vehicle offerings but with that comes the need for a reliable charging network. Although Tesla is most well known for such a network, Porsche is also looking to setup a similar system. In an interview with Automotive News, Porsche North America CEO Klaus Zellmer outlined the company's plan to build 500 fast chargers by the end of 2019. The units will be positioned at dealerships as well as along highways to maximize their coverage. This is all in an effort to combat "range anxiety" among electric vehicle owners when going on long distance trips. Zellmer noted that the the vast majority of users will charge at home or work, but creating a network like this is necessary for "unlikely instances" where a driver would need to go more than 300 miles in a single trip. Porsche will most likely charge drivers a fee to use the system, but they haven't determined that yet for sure. Dealerships will also have the option of providing them free of charge, if they agree to take on the 6-figure installation cost of the unit itself. The chargers operate at 800-volts and can provide a whopping 350-kilowatts of power. This is enough for an 80% charge in just 20 minutes, or roughly three times faster than Tesla's current superchargers. By the time these units are installed, Porsche hopes to have a production model vehicle available based on their Mission E concept car. They are also planning a second model, based on the Mission E Cross Turismo concept, by 2020. Former Cabinet Minister, Magele Mauiliu Magele, is back in Government. This time, he will serve as the Trade Commissioner of the New Zealand Samoa Trade and Investment Commission, for the next three years. He replaces Fonoti Dr. Lafitai Fuatai who has completed his two terms. I am grateful for the opportunity to once again serve in the Government, Magele told the Samoa Observer yesterday. The former Vice Chancellor at the National University of Samoa and former Minister of Education will depart Samoa on Thursday with his wife, Tuagalelai, for New Zealand where they will be based for the next three years. Magele, while he was the Minister of M.E.S.C. received the "Exemplary Leadership Award in Education" prize at the Africa Education Leadership Awards. Speaking to the Samoa Observer, Magele is a man on a mission and does not want to waste time. He said there is a lot of work to do. For starters I am meeting with Foreign Affairs tomorrow (today) to discuss on the issues that will be the focus of the beginning of my term for the next three years, he said. I am looking into the trade between the two countries, trying to identify what needs to be changed that will benefit both New Zealand and Samoa. Secondly I will also look at Seasonal Work Scheme and also looking at the skilled trade for our people and garner the opportunities. He told the Samoa Observer the appointment couldnt have come at a better time. I look forward to the new post, he said. I was informed at the end of February and just last week I received the letter of confirmation. I want to thank the Prime Minister and the Cabinet for the confidence and belief in my ability to serve Samoa in this capacity. Again I am looking forward to serving in the new post. Tesla has been the center of controversy several times in the past. The most current example of this would be the recent semi-autonomous Tesla crash which killed driver Walter Huang but the company has received criticism on many occasions in the past, as well. In October, the company received a formal complaint from the United Auto Workers union. The organization claimed Tesla allegedly fired hundreds of employees from their Fremont factory for having union ties. Now, according to a report from Reveal, Tesla has allegedly been under-reporting the injuries their workers have received while working at the California-based factory. The outlet performed an "investigation" into the matter to determine whether or not Tesla's recent 2017 factory injury rate report -- which contained noticeably lower injury numbers than reports from previous years -- was accurate and indicative of the company's true injury rates. The outlet found that Tesla was reportedly filing many injuries under the "personal medical" category. Since injuries filed under this category do not need to be publicly reported, Reveal feels these findings could explain Tesla's lower official injury rate numbers in 2017. One such filing involved 27-year-old Alaa Alkhafagi, a Tesla factory worker who was reportedly told to clear excess paint from a clogged hose. Losing his balance after his foot got stuck in said paint, he fell and "[smashed] his head and arm." According to Reveal, the accident was never recorded in Tesla's official injury logs. Tesla has since responded to Reveal's report, emphasizing their commitment to factory safety and calling out Reveal's reporters for presenting "misrepresentative and outright inaccurate" information. The following statement excerpt details some of Tesla's biggest complaints: ...We believe in transparency and would never intentionally misrepresent our safety record to our employees or the public. Reveal showed us a number of cases where they claimed injuries should have been documented as work-related rather than personal. In fact, we have reviewed and confirmed that the recorded injuries Reveal disputed to us were properly recorded by Tesla. Their assessment reflects a lack of understanding about how injury reporting works. ...Reveal's reporters have spent several months searching for old, misrepresentative and outright inaccurate information about safety at Teslas Fremont factory. Since last fall, employees have complained to us that theyve felt harassed by these reporters after being tracked down on social media, getting unexpected phone calls without knowing how their cell numbers were obtained, and even being visited in Teslas parking lot and at their homes unannounced. Just days after a Russian court ordered a ban on encrypted messaging app Telegram, the French Government has also come out with fears of their own. French President Emmanuel Macron and his inner circle have all been heavy users of Telegram. This has security officials worried about potential issues that may be caused by using the app. As a result, France is testing its own internal private messaging app with the goal of keeping all the servers and data associated with it within French borders. A spokeswoman released the following statement to Reuters: We need to find a way to have an encrypted messaging service that is not encrypted by the United States or Russia. You start thinking about the potential breaches that could happen, as we saw with Facebook, so we should take the lead. This new app is designed to protect government officials from data breaches and the prying eyes of foreign governments. In the past, Russia has demanded that Telegram hand over encryption keys to the government. This would allow the FSB to access the private messages of Telegram's users. In addition, France has also cited the recent Facebook privacy debate as another reason to move their officials to a more secure platform. There are currently about 20 officials testing the app, but security officials hope it will become mandatory for everyone by the summer. The app is based on freely available code from the internet and may eventually be made available to all citizens. Encryption is hard and one of the first lessons in security is not to build your own cryptography, but if France can design a secure system, it may serve as a model for other governments around the world. Elizabeth Pierce, a broadband adviser selected by FCC Chairman Ajit Pai and former telecom CEO, was arrested last week on fraud charges. Prosecutors claim she tricked investors into dumping more than $250 million into her scheme before it was discovered. As the former head of Quintillion, an Alaskan fiber optic provider, Pierce worked with two New York investment companies to raise money for network expansions. Her plan was to help expand high-speed internet coverage in Alaska and to better connect it to the rest of the United States. Pierce forged signatures on contracts to make it appear as though she had secured sales agreements for the new systems. Unfortunately, "those sales agreements were worthless because the customers had not signed them," said attorney Geoffrey Berman. Pierce faces a maximum of 20 years for wire fraud of convicted. In her time at Quintillion, Pierce was a vocal advocate for bringing internet access to many remote regions of Alaska. In addition to serving as Quintillion's CEO, Ajit Pai also chose Pierce to chair the new Broadband Deployment Advisory Committee (BDAC). The goal of the BDAC was to improve high-speed internet coverage and reduce regulations required for making infrastructure improvements. Quintillion reported the incident last year to the Department of Justice and has since been cooperating with the investigation. Pierce resigned from Quintillion last August and stepped down from the BDAC in September. At this time, Quintillion does not believe the investigation will affect any services or their plans to expand coverage in Alaska. Lead photo credit - KTUU Facebook might think its facing enough problems right now, but the company's about to run into another privacy-related headache. A federal judge has just given the go-ahead for three Illinois users to file a class action lawsuit against the social network over its facial recognition systems. The suitfirst filed in 2015alleges that Facebooks photo-tagging feature violates Illinois Biometric Information Privacy Act (BIPA), which forbids collection of identifiable biometric data without a persons explicit consent. Facebooks motion to dismiss the lawsuit was rejected in May 2016. Now, US District Judge James Donato has ruled that it can proceed with class-action status. The plaintiffs say Facebooks creation and storing of face templates for automatic photo-tagging purposes is prohibited under BIPA. But despite Facebooks success in getting the case moved from Illinois to San Francisco, the judge ruled that plaintiffs claims are sufficiently cohesive to allow for a fair and efficient resolution on a class basis. Facebooks arguments that no actual harm was caused and that the Act cant apply because its servers arent in Illinois failed to convince Donato. The company also tried and failed to claim that the data it collects isnt covered by BIPA, which restricts the collection of fingerprints, voice prints, and hand or face geometry. Under BIPA, Facebook could be fined between $1000 and $5000 for every occasion that a persons image was used without their consent. A company spokesperson said it is "reviewing the ruling, adding that "we continue to believe the case has no merit and will defend ourselves vigorously." Cuba thanked on Friday the donation of medical equipment and supplies that recently arrived in the country coordinated by the Latin American and Caribbean Continental Network of Solidarity... | Read More Senior figures from the lead contractor on the Turnbull Governments Snowy 2.0 program have taken legal action to prevent federal police accessing files seized during a raid. Among those who have applied to the Federal Court for a judicial review of the AFPs actions is the former chief of the Snowy Mountain Engineering Corporation, Andrew Goodwin. Prime Minister Malcolm Turnbull, with Andrew Goodwin in the background, on a visit to SMEC in Cooma on Wednesday 28 June, 2017. Credit:Andrew Meares On Friday, Mr Goodwin was sacked as chief executive of listed engineering firm Cardno, only weeks after the board had appointed him. In a statement to the ASX, Cardno said Mr Goodwin was removed from his job after he allegedly failed to follow the "lawful directions" of the board in relation to matters involving his former employer, SMEC Holdings. City fringe office markets in Sydney and Melbourne are outshining their respective CBD centres in deal-making and capital growth, with two buildings changing hands for a combined $175.5 million. Listed Propertylink Group has signed an $82 million heads of agreement to purchase a six storey office at 1-3 Fitzwilliam Street in Parramatta, one of the best performing office markets in the country. At the same time, Abacus Property Group and Singapore-listed Wing Tai Holdings have put their foot on an eight-level office in Melbournes leafy St Kilda Road boulevard, paying $95.38 million. Propertylink said it signed a non-binding heads of agreement with Raffles Assets Australia, a subsidiary of Singapore-listed Raffles Education Corporation. The deal is subject to due diligence by Propertylink, approval by the Foreign Investment Review Board and approval of REC's shareholders. The Fitzwilliam Street building has net lettable area of 9,782 square metres and is part-leased to another REC subsidiary, the Raffles College. Jamie Olivers dream of buying back the farm in Australia is over. The Jamie Oliver Restaurant Group (Australia) Pty Ltd collapsed on Monday, with the company being placed in the hands of voluntary administrators less than 12 months after the British celebrity chef visited Australia to relaunch the six local restaurants bearing his name. Oliver bought them from another failed company in March 2017. The Canberra outlet closed immediately on Monday. The remaining five sites, in the Sydney CBD, Parramatta, Brisbane, Perth, and Adelaide, will continue to operate, salvaged by a last-minute sale to Brisbane-based Hallmark Group, best known for the Irish bar Finn McCools. (WB) LGBT rights advocates are mourning the sudden death of the former director of Lambda Legals Marriage Project. The New York Times reported David Buckel, 60, set himself on fire in Prospect Park in Brooklyn, N.Y., early Saturday morning. Media accounts indicate Buckel, who had become an environmental activist after he left Lambda Legal in 2008, left a suicide note near the area in which his remains were found. Buckel also emailed a copy of it to the New York Times and other media outlets. Pollution ravages our planet, oozing inhabitability via air, soil, water and weather, wrote Buckel in his email the New York Times said it received from him. Most humans on the planet now breathe air made unhealthy by fossil fuels, and many die early deaths as a result my early death by fossil fuel reflects what we are doing to ourselves. Buckel was the lawyer who represented the plaintiffs in a lawsuit that paved the way for same-sex marriage in New Jersey. He also championed the filing of a similar lawsuit in Iowa in 2005. Lambda Legal in a press release notes Buckel helped the organization create its focus on LGBT youth, which included its work to secure a landmark federal court ruling that said school administrators have an obligation to stop anti-gay bullying. Buckel also represented the mother of Brandon Teena, a transgender man who was murdered in Nebraska in 1993. The Nebraska Supreme Court in 2001 ruled a county sheriff did not do enough to protect Teena after he testified against the men who raped him before his death. Buckel also represented James Dale, who challenged the Boy Scouts of Americas policy of banning openly gay scouts and troop leaders. The New Jersey Supreme Court ruled in favor of Dale, but the U.S. Supreme Court in 2000 overturned the decision. The Boy Scouts of Americas National Executive Board in 2015 voted to end its organizations ban on openly gay leaders. The organization two years earlier began to admit openly gay scouts. David was an indefatigable attorney and advocate, and also a dedicated and loving friend to so many, said Lambda Legal Director of Constitutional Litigation Camilla Taylor, who is also the organizations acting legal director, in a statement. He will be remembered for his kindness, devotion and vision for justice. Susan Sommer, a former Lambda Legal attorney who is the general counsel for New York City Mayors Office of Criminal Justice, told the New York Times that Buckel was one of the architects of the freedom to marry and marriage equality movement. National Center for Lesbian Rights Legal Director Shannon Minter on Sunday described Buckel as a very good man. Very sad to learn of the loss of David Buckel, who will be remembered for his extraordinary contributions to the advancement of LGBTQ equality, said the Boston-based GLBTQ Legal Advocates and Defenders on its Twitter page. Our thoughts are with his loved ones, with our colleagues at Lambda Legal and with all whose lives he touched. Michael K. Lavers, Washington Blade courtesy of the National LGBTQ Media Association. Clive Palmer has dropped his bid to have criminal charges pursued by the corporate watchdog in relation to his troubled Sunshine Coast resort thrown out. The former federal politician and millionaire is facing one charge of aiding, abetting, counselling or procuring the commission of an offence by another person. Clive Palmer has dropped an injunction against criminal charges laid against him. Credit:AAP Palmer Leisure Coolum Pty Ltd was separately charged by the Australian Securities and Investments Commission with proposing or announcing a bid then failing to make an offer within two months. Mr Palmer had launched an injunction against the charges but this has been withdrawn, according to a notice of discontinuance lodged with the Supreme Court in Brisbane. Gemma Lloyd spent 10 years in the tech industry working in "some really archaic boys' club environments". After one-too-many sexist encounters with colleagues and clients she founded WORK180, a jobs platform that pre-screens employers to ensure they support womens careers. "One day I walked into a meeting with a colleague and a senior IT executive said, 'I guess your company only hires pretty young blondes'," Lloyd says. "I told my manager and they said to me 'Don't do anything, you'll ruin the relationship'. That was the final straw and this idea came about." Gemma Lloyd is the founder of WORK180. Credit:Penny Stephens Just three years later, WORK180 is set to expand into the United Kingdom after raising $1 million from investors including Skip Capital, the private investment fund of Atlassian co-founder and rich lister Scott Farquhar. Screening businesses Even with the advantages of a well-heeled education, few composers ever achieve international recognition. So, given the extraordinary hardships Unsuk Chin faced as a young girl growing up in Seoul the daughter of a Presbyterian minister with very little money the scale of her success today is all the more remarkable. South Korea [in the 1960s] was one of the poorest countries in the world and there was a military dictatorship in power, she says. It was also a highly patriarchal society; women were allowed to enter education but not in order to become independent. But I was always a stubborn person, determined to follow my own dreams. For the past dozen years, Melissa Rosenberg has devoted herself to some seriously gloomy characters. She was the screenwriter behind the Twilight movies and their tortured vampires, not to mention serving as the head writer on the serial killer drama Dexter, before she created the noir-superhero Netflix series Jessica Jones. Krysten Ritter as Marvel's Jessica Jones On this late January afternoon, the 6-foot-tall Rosenberg walks across her sunny, sparsely decorated Los Feliz office, exuding not a trace of gothiness. She has never been the kind of woman who favours a sepulchral black wardrobe and moody makeup, as her latest show's heroine does. But with Jessica Jones, she is able to let the spikiest elements of her imagination run amok. A hard-drinking private eye who has been physically and emotionally assaulted by a powerful man, Jessica (Krysten Ritter) harnessed her superhuman strength in Season 1 to exact vengeance and protect others from her depraved, mind-controlling abuser. Looking back, it's slightly eerie how Jessica Jones anticipated the conversations about sexual harassment and assault that bubbled to the surface of American public life these last six months. Don't let the sun fool you, you've just survived the coldest April morning in six years. It was 6.2 degrees in the city at 6.56am, equalling the previous record set on April 30, 2012. It wasn't as cold as 2009, when we shivered through 2.9 degrees. The record for coldest April morning, however, goes to April 24 in 1888, when it was a mere 1.5 degrees. And the heating wasn't quite as efficient then either. What looks like a bloody fingerprint in Michael Ward's war diary. Credit:Justin McManus If you look closely at the diary of World War I soldier Michael Ward you see what looks like a bloody fingerprint. Ward, known as Mick, served for 18 months in the bloodbath that was the Western Front in France. He was wounded in the leg and hand. Yet the tone of the writing seems, to 2018 eyes, restrained. It refers to action from Fritz - the Germans - and to spending eight days in a trench without a change of clothes. Forensic police examine the boot of the Commodore. Credit:Channel 7 A man has been charged with murder after a body was allegedly left for as long as 48 hours in a car in an industrial part of Geelong. Homicide squad detectives arrested the 40-year-old from the Geelong suburb of North Shore on Tuesday and charged him with one count of murder. Police responding to a suspected burglary found a man's body in the rear of a Holden Commodore station wagon left parked in grassland in North Shore on Sunday. It is thought the vehicle could have been in the area since Friday. The Melbourne Metro Tunnel will be "inadequate" on the day that it opens if key sections of track are not expanded and services not increased, the Victorian Greens have argued in their state election pitch. Seven months ahead of the election, the Greens have released a $5 billion transport strategy, which they claim will "transform our ageing, unreliable train lines into a reliable, high-capacity metro system". The Greens support a rail link to the airport, but it's not mentioned in their policy. They say they will wait for the outcome of the business case before deciding which route to back. Greens transport spokesman Sam Hibbins. Credit:Justin McManus The party backs the $11 billion Metro Tunnel, but warns that key sections of the rail network need to be improved before the new tunnel opens to maximise its capacity. The holes punched in the walls were, all things considered, the least of Rebecas worries. For a decade, her defacto partner waged a kind of war on her, using his skills as an amateur hunter to make her days a misery, and the nights even worse. There were plenty of times she felt sure he would kill her; when he pulled a knife, an axe, even a hunting bow on the terrified young woman. After enduring years of abuse from her partner, it was Rebeca who was put on a rental blacklist. After six months, she decided to leave and asked the real estate agent to remove her name from their shared lease. But she was told shed have to break it and incur the cost. Rebeca couldn't afford this, so she stayed. South Yarra Station is set for a $12 million makeover thanks to an election sweetener as Labor targets marginal Greens seat Prahran. The entrance to the train station on Toorak Road will be widened and the layout changed to make the station larger, with work to start in mid-2019 and be competed by the end of the year. Prahran was a key battlefield in the 2014 state election, with the Greens winning the seat by nearly 300 votes. South Yarra Station will be enlarged if Labor wins the November election. Credit:Eddie Jim These works, combined with the Metro Tunnel, will mean less queues and more trains for South Yarra Station," Transport Minister Jacinta Allan said. Forget quokkas, and give the new stadium a miss. Perths latest tourist attraction owes more to gangland murders and underworld drug dens than cuddly animals and sporting events. Starting this month, award-winning journo Sean Cowan will take to the streets of Northbridge to uncover the crimes that rocked mid-century Perth. The tour will include a number of notorious crime sites. From the exact site of a 1950s mafia murder, to the brothels and gambling dens of the 70s, the Northbridge Crime Walk will expose the seedy side of our well-trodden streets, and will introduce notorious crime figures to a whole new audience. Most people are unaware of things that went on, Cowan told Simon Beaumont on 6PR late last week. What well be talking about is the systemic crime that pervaded Perth. Tour sites will include the scene an underworld stabbing at what is now a popular restaurant on James Street, illegal gambling halls, opium dens and Roe Street brothels. Its a far cry from the Northbridge we know today, but its those people featured on the tour that have shaped the inner-city suburb known for its nightlife and cafes. Currently the general managing editor for Fairfax Medias regional arm, Cowan spent 14 years reporting for The West Australian. Immigrants consume less in government services than they pay in tax, making the federal government billions over their lifetimes, a landmark Treasury analysis has found, even when their expensive final years of life are taken into account. But the research, published by Treasury and the Department of Home Affairs, has come under fire from some population experts who believe it glosses over the link between migration and higher home prices, congestion, and strain on the environment. The landmark study found in total, permanent skilled migrants deliver the federal government a profit of $6.9 billion over their lifetimes, temporary skilled migrants a profit of $3.9 billion, and family stream migrants $1.6 billion. The analysis found a net economic benefit from immigration. Treasurer Scott Morrison and Home Affairs Minister Peter Dutton have had the report for some time. Fairfax Media unsuccessfully tried to get a copy under freedom of information rules late last year. Beijing: The global crosswinds of trade tensions between the US and China may hit the Australian smartphone market. Chinese telecommunications company ZTE, which makes Telstra-branded smartphones, and dominates cheap smartphone sales, has been banned for seven years from buying US components. A worker installs the logo of ZTE, a Chinese communications company in Nanjing, China. Credit:AP The ban, imposed by the US Commerce Department, saw ZTE shares suspended from trading on Tuesday as speculation mounted it could impact up to a third of the components it needs. The Telstra smartphone dominates the low-priced handset segment in Australia, accounting for 5.4 per cent of mobile sales according to IDC data. ZTE-branded phones are sold widely in major retail stores and account for another 3.5 per cent of the market. Brussels: Emmanuel Macron, who beat back the far-right National Front to win the French presidency, said on Tuesday that there is "an increasing fascination with illiberalism" in Europe and that divisions over values within the European Union were like "a European civil war." Speaking after the re-election this month in Hungary of Viktor Orban, the self-styled champion of "illiberal democracy," and moves against the judiciary in Poland, Macron said that Europe was in a battle between the liberal democracy that shaped its postwar vision and a new populist authoritarianism that brushes aside dissent and cares little about the rule of law. Emmanuel Macron, France's president. Credit:Bloomberg Europeans must turn away from "selfish nationalism," he told the European Parliament in Strasbourg, France. That was especially so in a world of larger and more powerful nations like Russia, China and a more disengaged United States under President Donald Trump. Less than a year into his presidency, Macron is still trying to make his mark both at home, where he is facing union unrest and strikes, and in Europe. He used the speech to further stake out a position as a leading champion of the European Union at a time when states are clamouring for more sovereignty and when populist forces have risen to weaken even his core partner, Chancellor Angela Merkel of Germany. Amman, Jordan: Syrian anti-aircraft defences have shot down missiles fired at the Syrian air base of Shayrat, in Homs province, and another base north-east of the capital Damascus, Syria's state television, official news agency and pro-Iranian Hezbollah media say. State television showed pictures of a missile that was shot in the air above the air base on Monday night, local time, only days after a US, British and French attack on Syrian targets, including the ai rbase, in retaliation for a suspected chemical attack on Douma. State television did not mention three missiles that were fired at Dumair military airport, north-east of Damascus, that pro-Iranian Hezbollah's media service reported were also intercepted by Syrian air defences. Kasope Ladipo-Ajai co-founded OmoAlata, a Nigerian food packaging business, in 2012. With plans to export products internationally, her company has already redefined the fresh foodstuff business in Nigeria. With a degree in computer science, Kasope Ladipo-Ajai gave up paid employment to start her own business. Six years later, her business supplies 500-700 packs of organic pepper-mix to retailers across Lagos every week. She tells us how she made her business a success. Why did you decide to establish a food packaging business? Most of our delicacies in Nigeria are made from fresh foodstuffs and that makes Nigerian cooking time-consuming. Busy or working people living in cities often have to eat out because they do not have the time to shop for foodstuffs and blend the tomatoes and peppers, which is what I experienced while I was in paid employment. So this inspired me to start doing research and that was how the dream of OmoAlata started. Our first product was the OmoAlata pepper-mix, which contains fresh tomatoes, onions and peppers blended into a paste, packaged and frozen. We started with this product because, virtually everywhere in Nigeria, peppers and tomatoes are used in the preparation of meals. However, even though OmoAlata means pepper seller, the business is not just about peppers, but packaging all Nigerian foods in the correct way for upwardly-mobile individuals and families those who are interested and ready to pay for the convenience, because what we are actually selling is convenience. How has your business evolved? Our factory is in Lagos. When we started, we were buying from the open market, which gave us a lot of issues as we didnt know the source of our raw materials. Now however, we are supplied directly by organic farmers on the outskirts of the city, so we can guarantee that no fertilisers or any chemicals are used in the production of the crops. In late 2016, we expanded our capacity from 500 to 5,000 packs a month. We do not yet produce up to that quantity because we are still growing the business, but we have the capacity to do so in future. I want OmoAlata to be the biggest packager of foodstuffs in Nigeria and known worldwide. The short-term plan is to start exporting to the USA in 2018 and hopefully to the UK in 2019. I am also planning to add a couple of other products to what we have right now. What is one of the key factors to building a successful business? The right marketing and branding is vital because anybody can set up a business, but building a strong brand makes a business successful. The difference between Coca-Cola and other cola products in the market is the branding. Every small business must learn to find ways to stretch the small funds available for marketing. I connected with the owner of a small marketing communication business 360 Degrees. When I have a roadshow, I ask the owner to consult for us and we do the legwork by ourselves, so we have been able to effectively advertise in a cheaper way. When people check online, they have an idea of what OmoAlata is out to achieve we might not be there yet, but we are building the brand. We want to become an international, global brand and we always ensure everything we do is taking us towards that. But you no doubt have faced challenges in establishing your business? Yes indeed. The first challenge for many Nigerian businesses is electricity supply, which is needed at the factory and at our depot office. So we have to run generators and that costs so much money. We sell to retail stores, supermarkets and also directly to consumers and the products have to be kept frozen before use, or at least refrigerated, because we do not add preservatives. Another major challenge is the delay in payments from retail stores. A few stores pay immediately, but most stores will hold on to the money until they finish selling all the products we supplied and ask for more stock before making payment for the ones they have already sold. Any entrepreneur in Nigeria that supplies products to retail stores will testify to the same challenge and this creates a real cash-flow problem for small businesses. Unfortunately, until the product grows to the point when it is a big brand, there is nothing we can do about it. What lessons would you share with other up and coming entrepreneurs, particularly if they are young women like yourself? I would say never be afraid of your dreams. If I had dwelt on how hard it would be, I would not have started at all. So start with what you have. Dont wait for the big thing. Those looking at OmoAlata from the outside will say I have achieved so much. But my partner and I started little by little and it has been hard and it is still tough. We often struggle to pay salaries and other bills. My partner has an 8-5 job and I run another business, as well. I also now have a 4-month-old baby I came back to work before my baby turned 2 months. I have to go to the factory, arrange purchases from farmers theres a lot of hustling involved. A lot of people say entrepreneurship is fantastic, but it is also hard work you have to be ready to sacrifice a lot of things. So, I would say to any young lady planning to go into business, dont be fooled by the glossy look on the outside. But if you are ready for some backbreaking work, you are passionate about what you want to do and you are sure of your goals, just persist and you will get there. If you dont persist, your business will fail. Oluyinka Alawode The headquarters of the Organisation for the Prohibition of Chemical Weapons (OPCW) are seen in The Hague, Netherlands. Credit:AP Syria and its main backers, Iran and Russia, say claims of chemical weapons use were concocted by rebels, rescue workers and the West. The team from the organisation for the Prohibition of Chemical Weapons arrived in the suburb east of the capital, 10 days after the alleged attack, raising concerns that any evidence the inspectors find could be useless. New York: International chemical weapons inspectors on Tuesday entered Douma, the Syrian town that was the site of a suspected poison gas attack that led to Western airstrikes against the Syrian government, state media reported. It is the second time recently that the organisation has been thrust into a geopolitical crisis another high-profile case, the poisoning of a Russian former spy and his daughter in Britain, also drew attention to the group. The organisation is among the few groups to have received a Nobel Peace Prize, which it did in 2013. But what is it and how do its investigators work? And what weight do its conclusions carry? What does the OPCW do? The organisation works with the 192 countries that have signed the Chemical Weapons Convention, an international agreement that "prohibits the use, development, production, stockpiling and transfer of chemical weapons." Its job is to monitor compliance with that treaty, and to work toward ridding the world of chemical weapons. It also has a role in verifying the elimination of those weapons. "For too long, Congress has given Presidents a blank check to wage war," Kaine said in a statement accompanying the announcement of the legislation. "Our proposal finally repeals those authorisations and makes Congress do its job by weighing in on where, when, and with who we are at war." The Senate Foreign Relations Committee Chairman, Republican Bob Corker, joined with Democract Senator Tim Kaine, one of Congress' most vocal advocates for a new authorisation, to draft the proposal authorising operations against al-Qaeda, the Taliban, the Islamic State and affiliated groups. Their legislation would replace the 2001 and 2002 documents Congress approved to greenlight the wars in Afghanistan and Iraq - legislation many lawmakers argue has been inappropriately stretched and strained in the years since to cover military engagements that were never envisioned. Washington: The US Senate has a blueprint for an upcoming debate on fresh terms for the country's military campaigns against extremist and terrorist groups after a bipartisan pair of senators released a long-awaited proposal to replace the current authorisations for use of military force with new legislation. Republican Senator Jeff Flake, a co-sponsor of the new proposal, pointed out that only 22 senators and fewer than 150 House members who voted to approve the 2001 authorisation known as AMUF, are still in Congress today. But Congress has faced pushback from successive administrations that have argued against any new authorisation that might restrict the president's authority to conduct military operations as deemed necessary. The new proposal appears to take some of that into consideration, authorising the executive branch "to use all necessary and appropriate force against al-Qaeda, the Taliban, the Islamic State in Iraq and Syria (ISIS), and designated associated forces." It does not cover operations against nation-states, such as recent strikes against targets in Syria to retaliate for an alleged chemical weapons attack. The new legislation stipulates that the president must notify Congress about any new forces he designates as falling under the auspices of the document within 48 hours of engaging them in hostilities. Congress would then have a 60-day window to object - or, if they miss that window, tacitly approve the designation. The authorisation does not expire, as previous proposals endorsed by Kaine and Flake would have, forcing Congress to reassess its authorisation every few years. Instead, the legislation would give Congress the opportunity to review the authorisation every four years, by requiring the president to submit periodic proposals to Congress to amend its terms. In each case, Congress would also have 60 days to weigh in on the proposals. The Challenge of Legacy by Edwin Black This is a transcript of Edwin Blacks April 11, 2018 keynote address in the Michigan Capitol Rotunda for that states official Holocaust Commemoration. Today, I come not just to mourn nor to scorn but rather to warn our world, that is, the world of today whose memories are still whistling and bristling with the torments and tribulations of a generation now passing before our eyes. But also, for the world of tomorrow - and the day after - pulsed by a generation whose e torments and tribulations may yet be in store. The outrages are audible just over the horizon. But in many cases the horizon is speeding toward us like an unstoppable tsunami preparing to crash. Many of us dwell in the dark past hoping to immunize our future from the maniacal and ideological fires that immolated six million Jews and so many others, and left a worlds hands and souls smoke-singed in the process. The Holocaust was unique among historys great cruelties for it was a 12-year international persecution and murder machine perpetrated in the glare of broad daylight as well as the dim of night, emboldened by its own German Ministry of Propaganda advertising it and amid incessant media coverage that bled across the front pages of newspapers, crackled into regular radio reports, flickered in newsreels, and even saddened the whispers and diaries of children hiding in an Amsterdam attic. The world knew. With study, revelation, and investigation, many now understand how we got here. Make no mistake. The Germans did it. Their allies and accomplices did it. Hitler did it. But Hitler had help. Der Fuhrer adopted the Jew-hating ideology of Henry Ford, whose car company distributorships mass-circulated the Protocols of the Elders of Zion and the Dearborn Independent so often quoted and lionized by Hitler. Nazism was driven by the American pseudoscience of eugenics that called for the elimination and even the chamber gassing of so-called inferior social groups, a murderous medical discipline developed in America by our great universities in the first two decades of the twentieth century, but then transplanted into Nazi Germany and even into Mengeles Auschwitz laboratory by the million-dollar charitable programs of the Carnegie Institution and the Rockefeller Foundation. Hitlers troops dismounted their WWI-era horses and stormed into Poland and the rest of Europe in a never-before-seen Blitzkrieg, driving the Blitz truck and flying JU-88 bombers both manufactured under corporate camouflage by General Motors under the direct supervision of its offices in Detroit. And it was up to IBM, the solutions company, to organize all six phases of the Holocaust: identification, exclusion, asset confiscation, ghettoization, deportation, and even extermination. With its advanced punch card technology, IBM knowingly conducted the census to identify the Jews, religious or not, made the railroads run on time, and pinpointed Jewish bank accounts to seize. Every concentration camp had its own IBM customer site. The infamous Auschwitz tattoo began as an IBM number before it morphed into other serial systems. Profit was the perfidious ally of the perpetrators of the Holocaust because whether it was the Aryanization of the corner grocery store in Berlin or the millions hidden by IBM in cloaked bank accounts in Prague, the malice and the murder was made all the more morally manageable by the tintinnabulation of money. For some, the clatter of the coins could drown out the screams of the victims So, today we know more about how we came here, but how many truly understand where we really are. Do not believe that the Holocaust is a mere scar from afar. Yes, it is a sickness but one that has re-abrupted like an irrepressible plague. We have seen the infection in Rwanda with the Tutsis, in Syria with the Yazidis and Christians, in Darfur with Black Africans. We warn, we write poetry, we assemble in Rotundas, publish books, we solemnly chant never again. Now, we know better. We silently whisper, not just never again, but, oh, no, not again. There is no hate without fear. But hate cannot triumph in a world of enlightenment. So, what is the true challenge to both our legacy and our future. Is it men with Nazi emblems and burning crosses or is it really something else? Flags, white sheets hoods, and venomous marches, we can see. Less visible is the new emerging enemy of enlightenment, and purifying spotlight. Inscribe their names upon your notepads and your desktops. Facebook, Google, Amazon and many more who in their misguided algorithms decide what shall be seen and what shall be shuttered, who will be heard and who shall be demurred. The triumph of ignorance with all its well-intended coding rises to a level of censorship only imagined by George Orwell. Last Christmas, Amazon quietly informed publishers that history books about the Holocaust and even the Third Reich could no longer display a swastika on the cover when sold outside North America. So, my book Nazi Nexus about Ford, General Motors, Carnegie, Rockefeller and IBM was re-designed without the swastika for European sale. Many more famous books chronicling the hell of Nazi Germany are now being re-designed without swastikas on the covers for overseas. A mere photo of a Holocaust history book on Facebook recently was cautioned with a warning tab to be clicked that the topic might be distressing; that book was the recently published Czech language edition of my book IBM and the Holocaust. It is now possible for routine computer programs now in use at Twitter and Facebook to create zombie accounts where the users think they are communicating with the world, but their message in quarantined and no one sees it. Goebbels needed minders sitting in newsrooms. Facebook and Twitter only to click a few keys, and most will never even know they have been muffled. Now, nations are re-inventing their history. Poland has criminalized the discussion of the involvement and collaboration of its citizen with the Nazi killing machine. The Poles were involved. When a towns Jews were publicly marched and trucked to the shooting pits, who took their property and auctioned it off the next day in the school yard or town square? Just hours after the new law took effect, the first Polish lawsuit was filed against an Argentinian newspaper that used a war-time photograph. Lithuania has followed suit quickly with a pending amendment to its Law on Consumer Protection that would outlaw books critical of the country during the Holocaust - Lithuania where 90 percent of Jews perished, and many at the hands of their Lithuanian neighbors. These laws will be used by misguided programmers in Silicon Valley to avoid liability by simply quietly shutting out the history. What if a tree falls and no one hears the sound? What if six million people perish and no one is reminded? Hitler declared who will remember the Armenians? When my mother was pushed thru the vent in the boxcar en route to Treblinka, her mother said, tell someone. My father fought as a partisan in the woods for two years with her to ensure that I would be here to tell someone. What if we tell the world and the world cannot hear us. How sad that we have struggled with Holocaust denial and belief? Might we next struggle with induced collective amnesia? Ask not what you remember. Ask what your childrens children will know. The new battleground is not in some basement or backyard where hate is brewing. Its not on the street. Its in your phone and on your screen where history, anguish, and the rallying cry of never again to all humankind will be a muffled echo within an Internet algorithm. We must fight back against the electronic ghetto, the digital ghetto, and the algorithm ghetto. This is the new Challenge of Legacy. Edwin Black is the New York Times bestselling author of IBM and the Holocaust and Nazi Nexus. Meghan Markle. Photo: Samir Hussein/WireImage In just a few short weeks, Suits star Meghan Markle is set to marry British man Prince Harry in a very royal wedding. To keep ourselves occupied until then, weve been staring at pictures of her messy bun and asking ourselves what the future duchess (of Sussex, probably) is doing at this very moment. While we often assume shes partaking in her favorite hobbies of calligraphy or cooking roast chickens, we now know that its likely she might be working out, since her former trainer has opened up about Markles passion for health and fitness. Speaking with Womens Health, trainer Craig McNamee of Catalyst Health in Toronto, who worked with the actress for three years while she was filming in the Canadian city, explained that Markle is very focused on her health. Unsurprisingly, Markle whos had an avid running and yoga routine for years was already in fantastic shape when she first started working with McNamee. So he added circuit-based strength training to her existing routine. The duo would meet up three or four days a week for 45-minute workout sessions. For Meghan, we tried to schedule these workouts early in the day, to make it a priority, McNamee told Womens Health. Generally speaking, we had a full-body approach. And since Meghan was onscreen, we really focused on posture. McNamee would have Markle do a five-minute cardio warm-up, followed by five minutes of dynamic stretching, a strength-training circuit, and then a five-minute stretching cool down. His exercises with Markle would focus on her glutes, back, and hamstrings, in addition to a bunch of core work. She apparently loved lower-body exercises that involved a mini-band, would use ten-pound kettlebells, and shed also do 20 to 25 reps with low weights, rather than heavy lifting. The trainer hasnt worked with Markle since she moved to London for her new soon-to-be royal life. But theyre apparently still in touch, and the trainer said hes confident shes keeping up with their training routine. He also, graciously, developed a sample Markle-esque circuit workout for Womens Health, which you can check out here. Yoselyn Ortega. Photo: Susan Watts/NY Daily News via Getty Images Kevin Krim leaned forward in his seat, nodding grimly as ADA Stuart Silberg delivered closing remarks at the trial of Yoselyn Ortega for the 2012 murders of Kevins 6-year-old daughter, Lucia, and 2-year-old son, Leo. Outside the courtroom doors, nearly a dozen photographers and cameramen stood behind a vinyl crowd-control barrier screen-printed with the scales of justice. Nearly two months after the trials opening statements, the jury is out at the nanny trial. After surrendering their cell phones, 12 jurors retired to a private room adjacent to court, where they are now deliberating on Ortegas plea of not guilty by reason of insanity on two counts of murder in the first degree, and two counts in the second degree. Both prosecution and defense delivered closing arguments on Monday. ADA Silberg delivered his summation, with his boss, Manhattan district attorney Cy Vance, watching from the back of the room. Kevin Krim sat in front. His wife, Marina Krim, has not been present in court since her searing seven-hour testimony about the day she walked in on Ortega wielding a knife next to Lucia and Leos bloodied bodies. On October 25, 2012, this defendant went into the bathroom of the Krim apartment and murdered two innocent children, Silberg began. On the far side of the room, a man in blue jeans operated a TV camera on a tripod. (Judge Carro permitted one local news camera during opening statements, and one yesterday.) She did it intentionally, with full understanding of exactly what it was she was doing. Every stab, every slash, each one had a purpose, and that purpose was to end the lives of those children. She had a death struggle with a 6-year-old. Ortega, who is pleading not guilty by reason of insanity, watched from her seat at the defense table even the killer seemed spellbound when Silberg described her crime. After stabbing Lucia Krim more than 20 times, as the girl twisted and turned, Ortega cut her throat. Next, Silberg said, the nanny turned her attention to Leo, slashing his throat from behind. He reminded the jurors of the crime-scene photo they reviewed during the first week of the trial. The photograph that I know youll never forget, that youll probably never be able to remove from your memory, shows how she laid them out in that tub. It was a brutal way to start a summation. But, Silberg argued, brutality is important for determining what was in the defendants mind. Since Ortega concedes that she killed the children, and is pleading not guilty by reason of mental disease or defect, the jury must assess the defendants mind. Silberg argues that Lucias death struggle demonstrates Ortegas intent to kill. To gather knives from the kitchen, then systematically kill two children with increasing efficiency, demonstrates a single-minded goal, Silberg said. Defense lawyer Valerie Van Leer-Greenberg argues that Ortega suffers from depression with psychotic features, which rendered her incapable of understanding the nature and consequences of the crime. After the crime, Ortega told several psychiatrists she believed she was carrying out orders from the Devil when she killed the children. The lawyers sweeping summation began with an overview of the insanity defense, invoking ancient Roman law and Talmudic code. (A stenographer seemed to suppress a giggle during the moment of grandeur.) Van Leer-Greenberg has been an unapologetically aggressive presence in court, moving for a mistrial on a daily basis. She cross-examined a cop so aggressively, I thought he might cry. But in her closing argument, Van Leer-Greenberg struck a gentler tone. Everyone has feelings here. No ones asking you to take them and throw them out the window, she told the jury. What Im asking you to do is to compartmentalize. Im asking you to take your feelings, keep them, put them in a section of your heart, and just think with logic. The defenses case rests largely on testimony from Phillip Resnick and Karen Rosenbaum, forensic psychiatrists who examined Ortega in the year after the crime. Ortega began reporting hallucinations during her fifth or sixth session with Rosenbaum, who described the defendant as guarded. Two of her sisters testified that Ortega had a history of mental illness; they and a neighbor said Ortega complained about a black man or black shadows that followed her and talked to her in the month before the crime. (Black symbolizes the Devil in the Dominican Republic, according to a professor called to discuss mental-health stigma in Ortegas home country.) Ortega told the doctors she has no memories of the crime, which they believe suggests a dissociative episode. ADA Silberg is as aggressive as Valerie Van Leer-Greenberg. (When Judge Carro threatened both lawyers with contempt for shouting over each other, they immediately shouted over each other in protest.) Silberg pointed to factual errors in both doctors testimonies, and highlighted apparent signs of premeditation from hours and days before the crime (including Ortega telling a sister, Take care of Jesus, raise him well; he is my son and I love him). Silberg also invoked damning testimony from Ali Khadivi, a forensic psychologist. When he examined Ortega in 2016, Ortega denied everything she told the other doctors. She said shed never heard the Devils voice, and that she didnt know who Resnick was. Khadivi concluded that Ortega feigned psychosis in the year after the crime, and that she switched to feigning amnesia for him. During Khadivis examination, Ortega repeated grievances that the prosecution argues motivated the crime: Marina Krim humiliated her in a verbal confrontation outside the childrens school, she said. She was missing out on time with her son because she spent so many hours with the Krims. That gripe, ADA Silberg argues, was Ortegas true motive. Several months before the crime, Ortegas son, Jesus, moved to New York from the Dominican Republic, where an aunt had raised him. He was 17 and just passing through. Hes on his way to college and a successful career. Yoselyn Ortega felt left behind and grew to resent Marina, who was a stay-at-home mother. Shes got to watch Marina Krim do art classes, play with her kids, take her kids to the park, all the things she missed out on doing with her son, Silberg said. This was about punishing Marina. Can you think of any way to punish a person more, or to hurt a person more? Silbergs summation also invoked family members (characterized as missing witnesses) who played critical roles in Yoselyn Ortegas life before the crime: Celia Ortega, Yaquelin Severino, and Cathy Garcia. Celia, Yoselyns sister, is the Upper West Side nanny who first recommended the nanny to Marina Krim. Yaquelin, a niece, wrote a reference letter falsely claiming shed employed Yoselyn. Cathys role is less clear: She lived in the apartment that Yoselyn shared with her son and her sister Delci, so she likely witnessed some events Delci testified to. When Silberg suggested that Celia and Yaquelin share some responsibility for the Krims decision to hire the nanny, Kevin Krim leaned forward and nodded, his mouth set in a line, and a look of fierce anger on his face. Kevin is currently working with state lawmakers to criminalize the material misrepresentation in the pursuit of jobs in child care. Ortega watched both lawyers closing statements, sometimes looking back and forth between the speakers, judge, and the remaining lawyer sitting next to her. Ortega had several emotional outbursts during the trial including laughing during a detectives testimony and crying during Khadivis but on the final two days of her trial, she was alert but calm. I have waited almost six years to get to stand before a jury, and ask the jury to hold this defendant responsible, Silberg concluded. Thats why I ask each and every one of you each and every one of you to look at the evidence, make inferences, and dont forget why were here. After the jury left and Judge Carro retired to his chambers on Monday, Silberg stepped into the courts gallery and clapped Kevin Krim in a hug. Alex Jones. Photo: Brooks Kraft/Getty Images Three parents who lost their children in the 2012 Sandy Hook school shooting are now suing conspiracy theorist and InfoWars host Alex Jones for defamation. Jones has repeatedly told his listeners that the Connecticut shooting, which claimed the lives of 20 children and six adults, was a false-flag operation in which no one died. HuffPost reports that Neil Heslin who lost his 6-year-old son and Leonard Pozner and Veronique De La Rosa whose 6-year-old was also killed filed two lawsuits in Austin, Texas, where InfoWars is based. Each suit is seeking $1 million in damages. In 2016, New York Magazine covered Pozner and how he was dealing with the rise of Sandy Hook hoaxers some of whom were harassing him personally. Conspiracy theorists erase the human aspect of history, Pozner said at the time. My child who lived, who was a real person is basically going to be erased. Even after these folks had to experience this trauma, for the next five years they were tormented by Alex Jones with vicious lies about them, their lawyer, Mark Bankston, told HuffPost. And these lies were meant to convince his audience that the Sandy Hook parents are frauds and have perpetrated a sinister lie on the American people. Jones is also facing defamation suits related to last years white supremacist rally in Charlottesville, Virginia, and Februarys shooting at Marjory Stoneman Douglas High School. He settled a separate defamation suit with Chobani last year. Senator Amy Klobuchar. Photo: Anthony Lanzilote/Bloomberg via Getty Images Senator Amy Klobuchar of Minnesota has, once again, made the most compelling case for staying in touch with all your exes: If you remain friends, you can guilt them into donating to your future political campaigns. At a TimesTalks forum this weekend, Klobuchar sat down with three other female senators Susan Collins, Republican of Maine; Joni Ernst, Republican of Iowa; and Heidi Heitkamp, Democrat of North Dakota to discuss women in politics, and the various obstacles they face. When the conversation turned to womens struggle to raise money when running for office, Klobuchar referenced her 2006 Senate run in Minnesota, which she financed in a creative way, Elle reports: by making her exes donate. I raised $17,000 from ex-boyfriends, she said. This isnt the first time Klobuchar has publicly spoken about this inspiring number she joked about it at the 2009 Washington Press Club Foundations dinner, and again in a HuffPost Live conversation in 2015 but its a statistic worth repeating, especially given the record-breaking number of women who are running for office this year. Just a tactic to keep in mind! Bir Lehlou, April 17, 2018 (SPS) - The Frente POLISARIO has called on the Security Council to use its authority to urge Morocco to engage seriously and constructively in the political process, to respect the terms of the ceasefire and Military Agreement No. 1, and to desist from taking any action that may increase tension in the region and threaten its stability and security, in information note, a copy of which obtained by SPS The Frente POLISARIO has called urgently on the Security Council to ensure that such diversionary tactics do not distract it from the real issues that must be addressed for the negotiating process between the two parties to advance towards its ultimate objective, namely a peaceful and just solution providing for the self-determination of the people of Western Sahara. POLISARIOs information note says Following is the full text of the Information note: Morocco has recently engaged in a media and diplomatic campaign of misinformation and propaganda in which it has threatened to take military action to forcibly annex the Liberated Territories of the Western Sahara, alleging that the Frente POLISARIO has violated the terms of the 199l UN- supervised ceasefire in Western Sahara. The misinformation campaign involved the dissemination of a series of fabrications and misrepresentations of the realities on the ground, particularly in terms of the geographical scheme enacted under the ceasefire and the related military agreement between the Frente POLISARIO and Morocco. In light of the above, it is necessary to clarify the following: I. Military Agreement No. 1, which regulates the ceasefire between the Frente POLISARIO and Morocco, establishes the Moroccan military wall as a line of separation between the Sahrawi and Moroccan armies pending the holding of the self- determination referendum to determine the final status of the Territory. The 2700km Moroccan military wall lined with over five-million landmines establishes a 5km wide "buffer zone" to the east and along the military wall. 2. The Agreement further establishes two restricted areas (25 km east and 30 km west of the Moroccan military wall respectively), where firing of weapons and/or military training exercises, redeployment or movement of troops, entry of arms and ammunition and improvements of defence infrastructures are not permitted. 3. Morocco's claim that Bir Lehlou and Tifariti where the UN has team sites are located within the "buffer zone" is false. Bir Lehlou and Tifariti are located 55km and 84km from the Moroccan military wall respectively. The other localities east of the military wall situated in the Sahrawi Liberated Territories are at a distance of at least 90km from the Moroccan military wall, and therefore outside the "buffer zone". Furthermore, it should be recalled that when the UN first established its presence in the Western Sahara in 1991, UN personnel were housed in preexisting Frente POLISARIO compounds in these localities. Mahbes, which Morocco has referenced, is located in the occupied Territory of Western Sahara west of the military wall. 4. Morocco's allegations regarding violations of the ceasefire by the Frente POLISARIO were refuted by the United Nations itself on 3 April 2018 through the Spokesman of the UN Secretary-General, who said, "With respect to [the situation in the buffer strip], our colleagues in MINURSO [United Nations Mission for the Referendum in Western Sahara] have not observed any movement of military elements in the northeast territory." 5. Furthermore, Morocco has rejected the deployment of a UN expert mission to address the fundamental questions related to the ceasefire and related agreements in response to the call made by the Security Council in its Resolution 2351 (2017), Operative Paragraph 3, of 28 April 2017. As recognised by the UN Secretary-General in his latest report submitted to the Security Council on 29 March 2018, the Frente POLISARIO has already accepted the deployment of the UN mission of experts, which is a clear demonstration of its strong commitment to the ceasefire and the UN peace process. In this regard, it should be recalled that the intermittent presence of Frente POLISARIO members in the Guerguerate area is strictly civilian and non-military. 6. Since the entry-into-force of the ceasefire in 1991, the Frente POLISARIO has been administering and developing the Sahrawi Liberated Territories under its control. The military regions and units of the Sahrawi Liberation Army (SPLA) have always been present in Western Sahara since the start of the liberation war against Spanish colonial presence in 1973. The Frente POLISARIO has also built vital infrastructure (such as hospitals, schools and water sources, etc.) for the inhabitants of those areas who live in localities spread across the entire Liberated Territories, including, for the last 27 years, providing security and water for the UN team sites. 7. In recent decades, senior officials and high-level foreign delegations representing European, Pan-African and national parliaments, national governments, political parties, civil society organisations and international media, have been received by the Frente POLISARIO in the Sahrawi Liberated Territories. In addition, senior UN officials including UN Secretary General Ban Ki-moon, Personal Envoy of the Secretary-General for Western Sahara Christopher Ross, Special Representative of the Secretary-General for Western Sahara William Swing and numerous members of the United Nations Mission for the Referendum in Western Sahara (MINURSO) have been received in the area. 8. Western Sahara is a Non-Self-Governing Territory awaiting a process of decolonization; its status to be decided democratically through a referendum on self-determination. By giving credence to Moroccan allegations it is as if the status of the territory has already been decided. 9. The adoption of the UN Security Council resolution on Western Sahara on 24 April 2018 is therefore an opportunity to address the root cause of the current situation, namely that Morocco has systematically reneged on all international agreements it has signed, beginning with the refusal to implement the Settlement Plan in 1991 and the refusal to engage in negotiations since March 2012. Morocco has consistently and repeatedly violated the ceasefire agreement. This includes constant reinforcement of its military presence along the military wall; systematic violations of the human rights and plunder of the natural resources of the people of Western Sahara, in contravention of international law; transferring thousands of Moroccan settlers to Western Sahara to change the demographic nature and administrative configuration of the Territory; failure to adhere to the full range of standard UN peacekeeping functions; and crossing the military wall by building a road in the Guergerate area. Most recently, Morocco has engaged in incendiary threats of war and intimidation tactics. These have included the redeployment of troops to the occupied Territory of Western Sahara, as well as aerial reconnaissance missions. 10. It is clear that Morocco's misinformation and propaganda campaign regarding the UN-supervised ceasefire and the situation on the ground in Western Sahara is a diversionary tactic designed to divert the attention of the UN Security Council away from the real issues that underlie the current stalemate caused by Morocco. I I . The Frente POLISARIO calls urgently on the Security Council to ensure that such diversionary tactics do not distract it from the real issues that must be addressed for the negotiating process between the two parties to advance towards its ultimate objective, namely a peaceful and just solution providing for the self-determination of the people of Western Sahara. The Frente POLISARIO also calls on the Security Council to use its authority to urge Morocco to engage seriously and constructively in the political process, to respect the terms of the ceasefire and Military Agreement No. 1, and to desist from taking any action that may increase tension in the region and threaten its stability and security. 125/090 Border Patrol Stretched Too Thin: 17 Agents for 53 Miles National Border Patrol Council president identifies huge gaps on southwest border WASHINGTONAt any given time, at the busiest border station in the country, only around 17 Border Patrol agents are deployed to patrol a 53-mile border, according to Brandon Judd, president of the National Border Patrol Council. The McAllen Border Patrol Station, located in southeast Texas, patrols 53 miles of the Mexican border along the winding Rio Grande. The station is one of more than 150 border stations in the country. You cannot properly patrol 53 miles of border with 17 agentsyou just cant do it, Judd said. He said around 700 Border Patrol agents are assigned to the McAllen station, but after accounting for days off, annual leave, and sick leave, approximately 400 agents are working over a 24-hour period. For the sake of border security, this is entirely unjustifiable. Brandon Judd, president, National Border Patrol Council Of those 400 agents, only around 50 are deployed to the borderwhich, over three shifts in a 24-hour period, puts about 17 agents on patrol at any given time. For the sake of border security, this is entirely unjustifiable, he said at a House hearing on April 12. The rest of the agents are tied up doing so many different duties, its not even funny, he said. My issue is the number of administrative positions [which] we shouldnt be dedicating a law enforcement officer to doing, such as [vehicle control]. Judd said support staff should be hired instead, at a smaller cost to taxpayers. Were taking law enforcement out of the field to do administration duties that could be done by a clerical positionit just doesnt make sense. He said if resources were being used properly, its likely fewer National Guard troops would need to be deployed. The Department of Defense has given provision for 4,000 guardsmen to be deployed to the border in a supporting role to Border Patrol. The number is changing daily, but as of April 16, around 900 were on the border650 in Texas, 250 in Arizona, and just over 60 in New Mexico. But Border Patrol is still about 2,000 agents below the congressionally mandated floor of 21,370 agents. Attrition is high and recruitment is difficult, Judd said. Illegal Crossings The McAllen Station falls within the Rio Grande Valley Sector, which sees the highest number of illegal border crossings in the nation. In March, illegal crossings spiked beyond what they had been for the last three years. More than 37,000 illegal immigrants were apprehended by Border Patrol in March and 14,000 of them came through the Rio Grande Valley Sector. Judd said that although the sector is reporting an official apprehension rate of 79 percent, agents have relayed to me that the sector would be lucky to have an apprehension rate of 50 percent, pointing to the misuse of resources. If the 50 percent catch rate is accurate, that means another 14,000 illegal aliens freely crossed into the United States. And the 14,000 that got away are likely a more dangerous population, said Judd, because the population that were caught were asylum-seekersunaccompanied minors and family units. Asylum seekers can enter the United States through ports of entry and accomplish the exact same thing as if they crossed the border illegally, Judd said. But the smugglers force them to cross the border between the ports of entry, because they know that its going to force us to deploy our resources to take those individuals into custody, he said. And when we deploy our resources we create huge gaps in the border where we dont have coverage, and then the smugglers cross their higher value products through. Those higher value products are usually drugs and people who would not be eligible for asylum. Emergency personnel monitor the damaged engine of Southwest Airlines Flight 1380, which diverted to the Philadelphia International Airport this morning after the airline crew reported damage to one of the aircraft's engines, on a runway in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania on Apr. 17, 2018. (REUTERS/Mark Makela) Engine Failure Causes Southwest Emergency Landing in Philadelphia By Mark Makela PHILADELPHIAA Dallas-bound Southwest Airlines Co with 143 passengers and five crew members on board made an emergency landing on Tuesday at Philadelphia International Airport after suffering engine failure, according to the airline and U.S. officials. The Federal Aviation administration said flight 1380 was diverted to Philadelphia after crew members reported damage to one of the aircrafts engines, its fuselage and at least one window. Television images showed that most of the outer casing around the left engine of the Boeing Co 737-700 had ripped away and a window near the engine on the planes left side was missing. One passenger was injured, local media reports said. Todd Baur, who identified himself as the father of a passenger from the plane, told Philadelphias NBC-10 television that a female passenger was injured when she was partially sucked into a window near the afflicted engine before being pulled back into the aircraft by other passengers. The National Transportation Safety Board is sending a go-team to Philadelphia to investigate the incident. NTSB Chairman Robert Sumwalt has scheduled a briefing for 3 p.m. EDT (1900 GMT) at Reagan National Airport in Washington. Southwest said the aircraft was bound for Dallas Love Field in Texas from New Yorks LaGuardia airport before it diverted to Philadelphia. It did not immediately provide an explanation for the diversion. We are in the process of transporting customers and crew into the terminal, Southwest said in a statement. A passenger on the flight described feeling the aircraft drop. All of a sudden, we heard this loud bang, rattling, it felt like one of the engines went out. The oxygen masks dropped, the passenger, Kristopher Johnson told CNN. It just shredded the left-side engine completely it was scary. Major safety issues aboard U.S. airlines are rare, with no accidental deaths recorded last year, according to groups that track crashes. The aircrafts maker, Boeing, said on Twitter that it was aware of the incident and was gathering more information. The planes engines are made by CFM International, a French-U.S. venture co-owned by Safran and General Electric , which was not immediately available for comment. Marty Martinez, who said he was a passenger on the plane, posted images on his Facebook of passengers wearing oxygen masks and later, of a safety official onboard the aircraft. It looks like an engine blew out then a window was blown open, he wrote. (Additional reporting by Tim Hepher in Paris, David Shepardson in Washington and Alana Wise in New York; Writing by Peter Szekely; Editing by Scott Malone, Bernadette Baum and Dan Grebler) Recommended Video: President Donald Trumps Weekly Address, April 13, 2018 Billy Brokschmidt has been in recovery from opioid addiction for two years and now lives in his sister's basement near Dayton, Ohio, on Dec. 8, 2017. (Charlotte Cuthbertson/The Epoch Times) From Prescription Pills to Heroin to Giving Back A former Air Force airman talks about his 15-year addiction and how his successful recovery is about helping others DAYTON, OhioBilly Brokschmidt cant remember the number of times he overdosed and stopped breathing, but it was probably several dozen. When I was down in Florida, I was staying with this girl named Amyshe was letting me sleep on her couchand I overdosed at her house many, many times. And she would just breathe for me for a couple of minutes until I snapped out of it. Brokschmidt, now 40, spoke of his 15-year opioid addiction from his home in his sisters basement in Dayton, Ohio, one of the areas in the country hit worst by the opioid crisis. It started when he was 23, married, and in the Air Forcehis dream job since he was a child. He had to have a series of operations on his kidney and was on convalescent leave on and off for about 18 months. For pain, he was prescribed Percocet, a drug containing opioids and Tylenol. I was getting at least 100 Percocets every month. If I ran out, I just went and asked for more, and theyd give them to me, Brokschmidt said. Theyre not doing that now because its created a lot of problems for them, but at the time, that was the wisdom. The Percocets were Brokschmidts first exposure to opioids and addiction. I was really unprepared for it. I didnt know anything about withdrawals, he said. Were terrified of that [withdrawal] sicknesswell take a drug that we know is potentially fatal to avoid that sickness. Billy Brokschmidt, former addict The first time he went into withdrawal, his wife called an ambulancethey both thought he was dying. He was taken to the base hospital in South Carolina and felt instantly better as a shot of morphine was administered. I watched it go in and felt myself get better as they were giving me the shot, Brokschmidt said. That was the moment I knew what was going on. That kicked off a 15-year addiction. In time, the Percocets werent enough and the amount of aspirin in the pills was making Brokschmidt throw up. So he started taking different oxycodone pills, Dilantin, and other prescription opioids. He got to the point where he wasnt taking them to get high, but just to stave off the horrific withdrawal process. It took about maybe seven or eight years of pills before I finally started using heroin, he said. And eventually that got to a point where youre doing it just [to] get out of bed and function. Brokschmidt tried to describe the withdrawal process, which is so bad, he said, its the reason most addicts keep taking drugs. Theres nausea, diarrhea, cold sweats, muscle aches, joint aches, stuff like that. Imagine the worst flu youve ever had and times that by about a thousand. And Im not exaggerating. When it gets you, you cant move. You actually curl up, and youll just sit there and keep sweating, and all kinds of other nasty stuff happens, he said. So in order to avoid that, addicts have no fear of death. Were terrified of that sicknesswell take a drug that we know is potentially fatal to avoid that sickness. A Miserable Existence Every day becomes a desperate search for drugs to stave off the withdrawal sickness, commonly known as dope sick. Getting money for drugs becomes an overwhelming force that overrides moral reasoning, and this is how addicts tend to destroy their relationships and jobs (if they still have one). So every day, every single day, you wake up and youre already feeling bad, Brokschmidt said. The severity depends on when you last took drugs and what kind of drugs they were. Heroin lasts a little longer, but fentanyl, the synthetic opioid flooding Ohio, only lasts a couple of hours. So pretty much right away, you have to start figuring out, How am I gonna get more for in a few hours when I start to detox again? he said. Usually I would steal or come up with some sort of lie or scheme to talk people out of their money. There were a couple of us that did it every day together. And we got pretty good at it. We would go to malls, grocery stores, and feign some sort of situation that required immediate money. We had about a $300-a-day habit that we were supporting primarily by that method. Now, Brokschmidt is still amazed every day when he wakes up feeling so good. And I dont have to sit there and think about what awful thing Im going to have to do to get money so I can go buy dope, he said. I get the feeling that people that have never done drugs before have this idea that addicts are all partying somewhere having a good time. Thats generally not the case. Its a pretty miserable existence. Brokschmidt ended up living in his car, sleeping on the back seat under a blanket. He had overdosed in the car, and the fire department had broken a couple of windows to get in. They saved him, but it made a desolate winter in Ohio even worse. I knew it was a bad situation obviously, but I didnt let that living situation get in the way of me finding dope every single day. But his dire living situation did help steer him toward getting clean. Brokschmidt had tried to get clean about 11 times during his 15-year addiction, but nothing seemed to stick. I went to three different treatment centers. I traveled across the country trying to get away from it. One time, I went to Wichita, freaking Kansas. Literally in the middle of nowhere. I thought for sure Id be safe there. I found dope within three days. He had tried to get clean by going it alone or with people who were in a similar situation. It was just a recipe for disaster, he said. At no point during this time did I want to be addicted, he said. I didnt feel like I had a choice. I kept trying over and over again. I went to three different residential treatment centers. And I tried a couple, what they call, holistic approaches, as well. And none of them were working for me. I didnt think anything could work for me. Success at Last Two big differences stand out about Brokschmidts last, and successful, attempt at treatment. One, his living conditions were extreme enough for him to want to change, and two, he didnt try to do it alone. I had to have the right people around me to do it. And that included disconnecting from basically everyone that I knew. After 15 years, everyone I know, socially, is an addict. So I had to cut that part out of my life. I had to delete every number in my phone. Besides his family, Brokschmidt found a huge amount of support among the local Dayton Families of Addicts (FOA) group. FOA is a nonprofit support group founded in 2013 by Lori Erion, a mother who was trying to navigate the addiction and recovery system while her daughter was hooked on heroin. The meetings are weekly and unlike AA, theyre not anonymous. Addicts and anyone touched by addiction are welcome to attend. Six people turned up at the first meeting in 2013, and the group has since grown to about 90 on an average week. It was at his first FOA meeting that Brokschmidt had a life-changing moment. Every week, about half the people are family members thatve never touched a drug. They just dont know how to deal with whats going on with their loved ones, he said. So this mother asked a question that I knew the answer to. I cant overstate how important that moment was. That was the first time I felt useful to society in 15 years. Brokschmidt said answering that question was so monumental, it is up there with the moment his son was born. It was absolutely instrumental to my recovery progressing as well as it has so far, he said. Brokschmidt launched himself into helping FOA and hasnt looked back since. He has been clean for two years in March and attributes it to his volunteer work helping other addicts. Most people in recovery that I talked to say they struggle with it, if not every day, then at least on a regular basis. For whatever reason, I dont seem to have that problem. I really think its because of the volunteer work, he said. The constant exposure to it is somehow making it so I dont have a daily struggle with trying to stay clean. He is a peer supporter who tries tirelessly to help addicts who overdose and those who want to get clean. The Dayton Police Department prints off a list of people who have overdosed in the past week, and often Brokschmidt rides with an officer to visit them. Well just go to the address and offer them treatment. While were doing that, when live overdoses happenwe get about eight every single day in Daytonso when live overdoses happen, we stop knocking on the doors, and go to the overdose, Brokschmidt said. Most of the people I talk to dont take my help or listen to it, but we get a few that do. And if Im able to stay in contact with them, its fun to watch their progress. You can actually see the personality changes. Brokschmidt said one doctor told him that it takes up to a year after a long addiction for the brain chemicals of a drug addict to get back to a level thats healthy and normal for a human. And if you watch somebody in that process, you can see what theyre talking about, just how they react to things, he said. Solving the Crisis Eighty percent of new heroin users start their addiction through prescription pills. That means 80 percent of heroin [addiction] is preventable, Brokschmidt said. So if we can rein in the drug companies especially, and the physicians that are prescribing these drugs, that literally eliminates 80 percent of the addicts on the street today. So that right there is the lions share of dealing with it. But recovery is where his time is spent, and thats a complex beast. Formed by his own experiences, Brokschmidts wish would be to have recovery services available immediately to addicts. At one point, it took two months for Brokschmidt to get into a residential treatment centernot because there were no beds available during that two months, but because of insurance problems. I very well could have died during the intermediate time. You know what Im saying? Cause you know in your heart I got high every single day of those two months, waiting, he said. In 2016, more than 64,000 Americans died of a drug overdose, and almost two-thirds of those deaths involved an opioid. Forty percent of all opioid overdose deaths involve a prescription opioid. So I think that when somebody calls wanting help, [and] you ask them to wait, youre gambling. Youre playing with that persons life. At the least, Brokschmidt said, theres a real need for immediate, 24-hour detox centers, for both overdose patients and addicts who want to get clean. It needs to be as easy to get the help as it is to get the dope. So I can call a dope [dealer] right now and have it delivered to my house faster than a pizza could get here, he said. [And] when someone overdoses, the ambulance doesnt take you to the hospital, they take you to the detox facility. Its got to be medically assisted or people wont go to it. The most commonly used version of the medication-assisted treatment is suboxone, which is a combination of buprenorphine (an opioid) and naloxone (which blocks the effects of opioids). Suboxone has been used for opioid addiction since 2002, and methadone, the other main medication-assisted treatment, has been around for decades. Vivitrol is a relatively new drug, which is an injection of naltrexone that blocks opioid receptors in the brain for one month at a time. Brokschmidt said of all the people he has ever met, only one person has said they gave up drugs cold turkey the first time they tried. For the other 99.99 percent of us, its a process. It takes several attempts. I do believe if you make enough attempts, you will get there eventually, he said. The problem is, most people die or end up in prison before that happens. A Bright Future Brokschmidt is making up for lost time, and although his Air Force dream is gone, he is now working toward gaining more credentials in the recovery field. Really, after 15 years, thats the only thing Im an expert at now, he said. He has repaired relationships with family members and is thankful to be living in his sisters basement, which is decked out like a man cave with a pool table, dart board, and his bikehis prized possession. Last summer, Brokschmidt finally told his son, now 14, about his addiction and recovery. I actually hid it from him his entire life. He never knew. He lives with his mother, and thats the reason I was able to hide it from him, he said. He is looking forward to visiting his son in Florida this year. I dont have bad days anymore. The last two years have been super cool. Ive been having way more fun than I deserve, he said. Every morning, I wake up, and Im just happy. For Help If you or someone you know needs help for an opioid addiction, call the national helpline: 1-800-662-HELP (4357) Or find resources online at SAMHSA.gov Recommended Video: A Mother Shares the Story of Her Sons Heroin Overdose In Running for Senate in California, Paul Taylor Answers to Higher Purpose Retired businessman wants to help Californias businesses, enforce rule of law, and restore traditional values A new voice has entered California politics, with the campaign of a retired California businessman for the Senate seat currently held by Dianne Feinstein, who has served in that body since 1992. Paul Taylor, a Republican, wants to help California businesses become competitive, to enforce the rule of law, and to restore traditional values, as he seeks through politics to serve a higher calling. A signature issue for Taylor is illegal immigration. He has vowed to end Californias status as a sanctuary state, and a top priority for him is the enforcement of existing immigration law. San Francisco may be the city with the strongest advocacy in the United States for sanctuary policies. Taylor recently issued a statement saying: I urge the City and County of San Francisco join the ranks to stand up against the illegal sanctuary state. It is an affront to law-abiding citizens, legal immigrants, and commonsense Californians. Taylor has proposed using the E-Verify system, which allows employers to check their records against information in the Social Security database to track illegal immigrants with criminal records. Reviving Business Much of Taylors campaign is focused on bringing companies back to California, and promoting business-friendly operations in the state and local governments. I started working for myself when I was 10 years old, going out to spray address numbers on peoples curbs in front of their houses, Taylor said. At a dollar a piece, I was making $20 to $25 a daya lot more than many people with full-time jobs on those days. Taylor learned about making an honest dollar at home; his father was a businessman. Taylor had originally started college as a pre-med student, but his familys influence led Taylor to decide to become an entrepreneur. Taylor successfully founded three companies before his retirement, and the success of his businesses created thousands of jobs in the San Francisco Bay Area. There are lots of reasons that companies have left [California]. A lot of them have to do with the fact that there are so many regulations, so much restriction, and so many laws, Taylor said. Taylors comments about businesses leaving California are substantiated by recent media reports. An article published by the California Business Journal quoted a study that called California a hostile business environment. The study was conducted by Joseph Vranich, president of Spectrum Locations Solutions, a consultant firm in Irvine, California. Something I want to do is to reduce the [government] oversight, because we dont need to be baby-sat. Paul Taylor, U.S. Senate candidate for California According to Vranichs study, California continues to drive thousands of companies out of state. The article also quoted The Wall Street Journal as saying, Californias problem is that smart people have figured out they can make it better elsewhere. Something I want to do is to reduce the [government] oversight, because we dont need to be baby-sat, Taylor said. He believes that politicians should give more trust and freedom to the business world, instead of making too many rules to regulate businesses. He believes that the overly regulated environment is one of the major reasons that California is losing jobs to countries like China and Pakistan. Taylor also believes that government should provide more opportunities for new towns to be developed for business. Corporations like Apple can put their new offices in the newly developed areas, and cities like Cupertinothe site of Apples headquarterswont have to suffer through increasingly worse traffic conditions. Called to Politics Taylor and his wife, Jenny, are both very devoted Christians. Gary, the pastor of Taylors church, appraised Taylor. He is a solid Christian who loves the Lord. He is a good husband. He is a go-getter, and has accomplished a lot of things in his life on a huge scale, Gary said. He is not afraid of challenges. He really believes that God has a plan for him, and God has used him so much in his whole life, and God has called him for politics this time. Taylor is involved in his churchs mens ministries, and his wife has been in charge of the publication of an eight-page monthly magazine called Faith Life for many years. In a letter Taylor wrote to President Donald Trump, Taylor recounted how he got into politics. At the age of 8, I received a hint from God: Someday I would be involved in politics, he wrote. When Taylor turned 60, he was diagnosed with terminal stomach cancer. That day, I calmly knelt down in front of God and prayed, You told me I would be involved in politics, and I am still waiting for that opportunity. If you are to use me in politics, please heal me. Taylors prayer was answered, and his cancer was miraculously healed, he said. In his letter to Trump, he wrote: For several decades, our nation under God has suffered grave spiritual, moral, and economic attack from both internal Progressives and external Communistsled by Red Chinese. The State of California, specifically in San Francisco, has become the nations base camp for Communists. Mega-donor, left-wing billionaires and loyalists from Red China collude with local politicians. Meanwhile, Hollywood media, cast in a supporting role, poison our world with agenda-laden entertainment and vitriol. Taylor also wrote, It is time to push back hard against the godless, Cultural Marxists infecting our State, and vowed to restore traditional values in California. San Francisco and California are well known for their support for progressive politicians. With his candidacy for the Senate, Taylor is looking to give California the opportunity to embrace a return to a more conservative approach. IndyCar wheelman James Hinchcliffe is usually seen competing on the track in his Honda, although, it has been announced that harness racing fans will soon be able to see the native of Oakville, Ont. get in the racebike and take the lines very soon. Hoosier Park Racing & Casino has announced that it is set to host Celebs in the Sulky, the first-ever IndyCar Driver celebrity race for charity, which will take place on Friday, April 27 at 6 p.m. Just off the race circuit and taking the reins in the sulky, world-famous Verizon IndyCar Series drivers Alexander Rossi, James Hinchcliffe, Robert Wickens, and Zach Veach will pair with Hoosier Parks leading harness drivers, Trace Tetrick, John DeLong, Sam Widger, and Ricky Macomber. James Hinchcliffe (Brian Spurlock-USA TODAY Sports) Hoosier Park will contribute $1,500 to the winning drivers charity during a cheque presentation, which will be held just after the celebrity race. The remaining three charities will also receive $500 each. Hoosier Park guests of all ages are invited to meet the celebrity drivers during an autograph session in the lower level of the Terrace Showroom following the charity race. Each of the four celebrity drivers will also be competing in this years 102nd Running of the Indianapolis 500, held at the Indianapolis Motor Speedway on May 27. Celebs in the Sulky is sponsored by Flat 12 Bierwerks, located at 414 Dorman St. in Indianapolis. To kick off the event, Hoosier Park will offer Flat 12 Bierwerks exclusive Hinchtown Hammerdown brew on Friday, April 27. The pilsner-style beer, brewed in collaboration with James Hinchcliffe, will be available throughout the day and evening. Dan Patch Wit Beer, another Flat 12 Bierwerks exclusive brew, will also be available during the event. The elite Wit beer was created in honour of Dan Patch, a Hoosier icon and the most historic harness horse in Indiana history. Guests may enjoy the Belgian Witbier year-round at Hoosier Park. Were thrilled to host Celebs in the Sulky, the first-ever IndyCar celebrity race for charity, here at Hoosier Park, said Tony Renz, director of marketing partnerships for Hoosier Park and Indiana Grand. May is a big month for racing fans, and this event will help set the pace for the entire summer. My personal thanks go out to the folks at Flat 12 Bierwerks for their help in putting this all together. Its going to be a great event to raise awareness for four great causes. (With files from Hoosier Park) The Awan IT Scandal Put Congressional Data at Risk Congressional IT workers paid by 44 House Democrats gained unauthorized access to sensitive networks The emails and personal files of at least 44 House Democrats could have been stolen and transferred overseas by their own IT workers, in a scandal that has been quietly brewing in Congress. At the center of the controversy are Imran Awan, his brother Abid Awan, and five other family members and associates. They worked as shared IT employees for 44 House Democrats and had access to the House members sensitive data, including emails, calendars, constituents data, and personal files, despite having little to no IT experience. Click on timeline to enlarge. All of the 44 House members had waived the background check on the employees, according to an inspector generals report. Some of the members serve on committees that handle sensitive and sometimes classified information, such as the House Permanent Select Committee on Intelligence, the House Committee on Homeland Security, and the House Committee on Foreign Affairs. The IT workers were paid an estimated $7 million by Congress since 2004, despite the fact that some of them were often not seen at work and in some cases worked remotely from Pakistan. In September 2016, the House Office of Inspector General warned House leadership and the Committee on House Administration that the IT workers had made unauthorized logins on systems of House members they were not employed by, and in some cases continued to log in to the computers of members who had previously fired them. They also logged in using the personal credentials of congressmen, the office found. The findings came during the heat of the 2016 presidential race and as WikiLeaks was publishing emails taken from the Democratic National Committee, which was chaired by Rep. Debbie Wasserman Schultz (D-Fla.), who had employed Imran Awan since 2005. Despite the findings, access to congressional servers by the IT workers was not restricted until months later, after the election. An analysis spanning seven months by the IG found that the five IT workers made excessive logons to a server belonging to a group similar to the DNC, the House Democratic Caucus. A total of 5,735 logons were recorded, an average of 27 times per day. Excessive logons are an indication that the server is being used for nefarious purposes and elevated the risk that individuals could be reading and/or removing information, said the IG in the briefing, which was not publicly released. The IG briefing also reveals that Dropbox had been installed on at least two computers that were uploading files online, in defiance of House policy. The Dropbox accounts contained thousands of files, which, according to the IG, contained information that was likely sensitive. The House leaders, Paul Ryan and Nancy Pelosi, did not ban the five IT workers from the network until Feb. 2, 2017, when their access was blocked by the sergeant at arms. The Committee on House Administration put out a statement that acknowledged suspicious activity and said a theft investigation was ongoing. Awan Family Imran Awan, who immigrated from Pakistan to the United States in 1997 under the diversity lottery program, was hired in 2004the same year he gained citizenshipby Rep. Xavier Becerra (D-Calif.), Rep. Gregory Meeks (D-N.Y.), and, soon after, Wasserman Schultz. Imran quickly began earning among the highest salaries on Capitol Hill. After his salary hit a pay cap under congressional rules that prevent staffers from earning more than congressmen, other Democrats began adding Imrans relatives to their own payrolls as IT aides, even though they did not have any background in IT. In 2005, Imrans brother Abid joined the payroll, and in 2007 Imrans wife, Hina Alvi Awan, was added. In 2011, Abid Awans wife, Ukrainian-born Natalia Sova, was added to the congressional payroll. Civil court documents show that during this time, Abid and his wife were running a used car dealership named Cars International A, which accepted a loan from Ali al-Attar, an Iraqi political figure of Iranian heritage who is wanted by the IRS and FBI on unrelated tax fraud charges. In 2012, Abid Awan filed for bankruptcy, discharging $1.1 million in debts, despite his high salary. Documents showed that Abid Awan owed money to a man named Rao Abbas, who reportedly worked at McDonalds. Shortly after, several House Democrats began paying Abbas as their ostensible IT aide. In 2014, the youngest Awan brother, Jamal, was added to the payroll at age 20 and was soon earning as much as a congressman. In total, the IT workers received $7 million in congressional pay and were responsible for the IT of 1 in every 5 House Democrats, or 44 in total. Imran Awan himself took frequent trips to Pakistan and told associates he worked remotely from that country, The Daily Caller reported. Background checks on the Awans and their associates were waived despite a number of red flags. Background checks are designed, in part, to reveal weaknesses, such as financial difficulty, that could be exploited by outside actors. Suspicious Activity on Server The House Democratic Caucus, whose server was identified as ground zero of the cybersecurity problems, was led by Becerra from 2013 to January 2017, when he became Californias attorney general. The total logons onto the system, 5,735 during a seven-month period, were considered suspicious, as the computers in offices managed by the shared IT employees were accessed in total less than 60 times during the same time period. The IG investigation also revealed that the pattern of login activity suggests steps [were] being taken to conceal their activity. This included the use of active role servers, which could have been used to grant access on a temporary basis and could have been used to evade network monitoring. The Democratic Caucus server could be used to store documents taken from other offices or evidence of other illicit activity, according to the IG presentation. The unusual login activity could also indicate computers were used as a launching point to access other systems for which access may be unauthorized. The installation of Dropbox on two Democratic Caucus computers used by the IT workers raises concerns that those computers could have been used to transfer data out of Congress to other groups or nation-states. According to other congressional IT workers, congressional staff and IT workers are prohibited from using Dropbox due to security concerns. While file sharing sites, such as Dropbox, have legitimate business purposes, use of such sites is also a classic method for insiders to exfiltrate data from an organization, the IG report states. Sensitive Data and Potential Blackmail Among the data hosted on the IT systems of House members are emails, calendars, House members personal files, and personal information of constituents who have contacted their representatives office. Such sensitive data could prove useful to companies and other entities around the world. We know that there are countries and companies, entities around the world, who would pay a lot of money to have access to some members calendars, to their e-mails, see who they are meeting with, see what theyre saying about those meetings, that could be very valuable information, said Rep. Louie Gohmert (R-Texas), during an informal hearing on the issue in Congress on Oct. 10, 2017. In certain cases, personal files and data could also be used to blackmail politicians. Investigations Following its warning to House leadership on Sept. 20, 2016, the Office of Inspector General provided another briefing on Sept. 30, warning of continuing unauthorized access by the IT workers. The investigation was then taken away from the inspector general in October and handed over to Capitol Police, despite the police having no cybersecurity expertise. In January, Imran Awan was able to travel to Pakistan unimpeded. A server belonging to the House Democratic Caucus was stolen after the inspector generals report named it as evidence in a hacking probe, three senior government officials told The Daily Caller. Around the same time, the head of the caucus, Rep. Xavier Becerra (D-Calif.), left Congress to become Californias attorney general. On Feb. 2, 2017, the sergeant at arms officially banned the IT workers from the House network. A day later, most of the 44 House Democrats ended their contracts with the IT workers and fired them. Wasserman Schultz did not fire Imran, saying the IT worker could service her technology needs without connecting to the House network. She also added Hina Alvi Awan as a second IT aide well after the investigation was underway. In March 2017, Hina left for Pakistan with her children without notifying their schools. Prosecutors say that FBI agents had been surveilling her, and that they approached her at the airport, where she refused to speak to them. A search revealed Hina was carrying $12,400 in cash and many of her personal belongings, some packed in cardboard boxes. Despite this, she was allowed to board the plane. When Imran Awan tried to leave the country on July 24, the FBI arrested him at the airport. A month later, on Aug. 17, both Imran and Hina were indicted for bank fraud. In September, Hina reached a deal with prosecutors to return to the United States from Pakistan. Missing IT Equipment The initial investigation by the Office of Inspector General also found that the shared IT employees were involved in irregular purchases of technology, such as iPads, iPhones, and other equipment. Under congressional rules, inventory must be kept of all purchases by House members of equipment that has a purchase price of $500 or more. The IG found that some offices that employed the Awans were signing off on forms that manipulated pricing to make expensive products appear like they cost less than that. Examples of purchases made this way include an iPad with an original cost of $799, that was billed for $499 together with Apple Care that was billed for $350, despite its actual cost being $88. To accomplish this, the Awans allegedly worked with CDW Government, a major government contractor, which says it is cooperating with prosecutors but has been told it is not a target. The IG report also found that 75 pieces of equipment with a total purchase price of $118,416 went missing from one of the offices where Abid Awan worked. The office was later revealed to be that of Rep. Yvette Clarke (D-N.Y.). The missing equipment included laptops, iPads, TVs, video conferencing equipment, and computers. The IG report said Abid Awan, who was responsible for the equipment, made contradicting statements about it. Family members of the Awans told The Daily Caller that they shipped a significant number of devices, such as iPads and iPhones, to Pakistan. But one of Imran Awans lawyers said it was congressmen who wanted invoices falsified. This is what experienced members of Congress expect: to expedite things, they adjust the pricing, Aaron Page told The Daily Caller. Abid Awans attorney, Jim Bacon, told The Washington Post: In a fluid situation, you do what youre ordered to do. It sounds to me like theres a lot of scapegoating here. Wasserman Schultzs Laptop Two months after being banned from the House IT network by the sergeant at arms, Imran Awan left a laptop with a username RepDWS in a phone booth, along with a letter to prosecutors and copies of his House ID card and drivers license, according to a Capitol Police report. The bag was found by Capitol Hill police and seized. During a televised hearing on May 18, 2017, Wasserman Schultz threatened the Capitol Police chief with consequences if the laptop was not returned. She hired a lawyer in an attempt to prevent prosecutors from looking at the contents of the laptop. In August 2017, Wasserman Schultz seemingly changed course, saying: This was not my laptop. I have never seen that laptop. I dont know whats on the laptop. Emails of Wasserman Schultz released by WikiLeaks reveal that Imran Awan had the login to her iPad. This means he would have had access to all of her personal information, including her calendar, emails, and notes. In an October court appearance, Imran Awans lawyer, Chris Gowen, said he feels very strongly that the RepDWS laptop should not be used as evidence, citing attorney-client privilege. Both Imran Awan and Wasserman Schultz have been provided with an image of its hard drive. In the six months since, prosecutors have postponed the next court date four times, pointing to voluminous discovery and discussions about the attorney-client privilege argument. Observers of the justice system say such delays would not be necessary for a bank fraud case and tare a sign that prosecutors are stalling while they build the cybersecurity and fraud cases. Imran Awan remains out of jail with a GPS tracking monitor, which his lawyer has repeatedly requested be removed. On Dec. 18 prosecutors objected to that request. Taking into account (1) Awans strong connections to Pakistan, (2) the wealth he already transferred there, and (3) his attempt to depart to Pakistan while knowing he was under investigation, the government asserts that Awan is a flight risk, they wrote. Epoch Times reporter Joshua Philipp contributed to this report. Trump Admin Sanctions Russian Oligarchs and Officials Over Malign Activity Around the Globe The United States Treasury Department sanctioned seven Russian oligarchs and 17 top government officials on Friday in response to what it described as Moscows hostile activity around the globe, including conventional warfare, cyber attacks, and attempts to subvert Western Democracies. The Treasury listed 7 Russian oligarchs, a dozen companies that they control, and 12 government officials. Treasury Secretary Steven T. Mnuchin cited Russias malign activity in eastern Ukraine and supplying the Assad regime in Syria with weapons as some of the reasons for the sanctions. Russian oligarchs and elites who profit from this corrupt system will no longer be insulated from the consequences of their governments destabilizing activities, Mnuchin said in a statement. Fridays action was being planned for a significant amount of time and coordinated with Americas allies in Europe, according to a senior administration official. The sanctions are not in response to a specific instance but target a pattern of events dating back to before President Donald Trump took office. But most importantly this is in response to Russias continuing attack to subvert Western democracies, a senior administration official said in a call with reporters. Many of the oligarchs are being sanctioned for the first time and are close to Russian President Vladimir Putin. American officials expect the sanctions to be noticed far and wide given the high profiles of the people being sanctioned and their proximity to the Kremlin. Individuals and companies will see consequences in near term and will have to adjust their planning, said a senior administration official. The seven oligarchs sanctioned were Viktor Vekselberg, Andrei Skoch, Kirill Shamalov, Igor Rotenberg, Suleiman Kerimov, Oleg Deripaska and Vladimir Bogdanov. Shalamov is an energy executive who married Putins daughter in 2013 and subsequently catapulted into the billionaire club surrounding the president. Deripaska has been accused of threatening to kill business rivals, wiretapping government officials, money laundering, extortion, and racketeering. He is allegedly linked to an organized crime group and has allegedly ordered the murder of a businessman. The sanctions are the latest in a diplomatic tit-for-tat between Washington and Moscow. Sixty American diplomats left Russia this week after the Kremlin retaliated for the expulsion of Russian intelligence officers from the United States in connection to the poisoning of a former Russian spy, Sergei Skripal, in the United Kingdom. The poisoning led to the coordinated expulsion of 100 Russian diplomats and intelligence officers from 20 countries. The United Kingdom alleges that Russia was behind the poisoning. Russia vehemently denies the claim. Recommended Video: Trump Wants to Create a Space Force President Donald Trump, Microsoft CEO Satya Nadella, and Amazon CEO Jeff Bezos attend a meeting of the American Technology Council in the State Dining Room of the White House in Washington, DC, on June 19, 2017. (Chip Somodevilla/Getty Images) Trump Defends Retailers Threatened by Amazon Points out loopholes retailer used to become giant WASHINGTONPresident Donald Trump has fired a warning shot at Amazon Inc. over the online retail giants practices that are driving thousands of retailers out of business as the company increases its competitive advantage through loopholes. Chief among those loopholes was Amazons failure in the past to collect state sales taxes. Amazons record on this issue has improved; it now collects the taxes in all 45 states that have state sales taxes. However, it is collecting them only on its direct sales and not on sales that third-party merchants make through the Amazon website. Nearly half of items sold on Amazon are coming through third-party retailers, according to a CNBC report. These retailers can benefit from Amazons facilities and payment system, but they are not required to collect sales taxes. Theres no question that Amazon is capable of collecting these taxes, said Carl Davis, research director at the Institute on Taxation and Economic Policy, a nonprofit research organization. Its just not doing so. And the result is a price advantage over other businesses. Some states have figured out a way to solve this problem. Washington and Pennsylvania passed legislation requiring online retailers to collect taxes on third-party transactions. Were seeing this incredibly large company getting involved in almost every area of commerce. And I think it is important to take a look at the power and influence that Amazon has. Bernie Sanders, U.S. senator In Washington state, not only Amazon but also online stores like Wal-Mart and Etsy have agreed to collect these taxes. Whether every state could do that or not remains to be seen, said Davis. Combined local and state sales tax rates range between 5 percent and 10 percent, depending on the state. Shares of Amazon plunged following a report that Trump is set to go after it. Before the news came out, the tech stocks including Amazon had already been hit by growing fears of a regulatory clampdown following Facebooks data scandal. And on top of all this, Trump lashed out at Amazon on Twitter. Amazon shares slid nearly 12 percent in just one week, losing more than $85 billion in market value. I have stated my concerns with Amazon long before the Election, Trump wrote in a tweet on March 29. Unlike others, they pay little or no taxes to state & local governments, use our Postal System as their Delivery Boy (causing tremendous loss to the U.S.), and are putting many thousands of retailers out of business! The White House rejected claims that the presidents criticism was part of a personal grudge against The Washington Posts critical coverage of Trump. Press secretary Sarah Huckabee Sanders said on March 28 that the president is always looking to create a level playing field for all businesses, and the presidents treatment of Amazon is no different. Tax Breaks and Subsidies The competitive advantage Amazon gained by avoiding the collection of sales taxes in many U.S. states, along with subsidies from states, helped the company grow from a website that only sold books to become the worlds largest online retailer. According to a 1992 U.S. Supreme Court ruling, online retailers can avoid collecting sales taxes if they dont have a physical presence, like a store or distribution center, in that state. To take advantage of this tax loophole, Amazon first located its distribution centers in states with a small population or no sales tax. This is one of the ways the company has kept its prices low compared to local retailers and brick-and-mortar stores such as Wal-Mart and Best Buy. However, starting in 2011, Amazon made a significant change to its strategy. To provide rapid delivery service to its customers, it started building facilities across the country and started collecting state sales taxes, except for items sold on the marketplace. Amazon is only one part of the problem, according to tax experts. Other e-commerce companies avoid collecting sales taxes as well. The Supreme Court has recently agreed to hear a case that could overturn prior precedent, allowing state and local governments to collect billions in internet sales taxes. That decision could change the landscape quite a bit, said Davis. After the ruling, which is expected by the end of June, states will have more clarity on what is and is not allowed. So theres a little bit of a wait and see approach going on. In addition to tax benefits, extracting economic development incentives, such as subsidies, has been a crucial part of Amazons expansion strategy for the last decade. As Amazon grew, the company pushed states to allow it to build facilities without collecting sales taxes, and it even convinced many states to subsidize its expansion in return for creating jobs. Amazon is very actively seeking out tax incentives for warehouses, data centers, and now for its second headquarters as well, which is not entirely unusual, Davis said. Almost all big corporations are doing that, he added. Amazon has received public subsidies worth more than $1.4 billion for its facilities built in the United States since 2000, according to Good Jobs First, a nonprofit organization that tracks public subsidies. Delivery Boy Trump also accuses Amazon of using the post office as its delivery boy, claiming that Amazon is underpaying the U.S. Postal Service (USPS). While we are on the subject, it is reported that the U.S. Post Office will lose $1.50 on average for each package it delivers for Amazon. That amounts to Billions of Dollars, he wrote in a Mar. 31 tweet. If the P.O. increased its parcel rates, Amazons shipping costs would rise by $2.6 Billion. This Post Office scam must stop. Amazon must pay real costs (and taxes) now! Trump was referring to a Citigroup analysis published in April last year. According to the Citigroup report, the irrational pricing keeps the USPS unprofitable, and Amazon is benefitting from discounted rates and has greater flexibility in its system. If the shipping costs were fairly charged, the delivery cost per parcel would be $1.46 higher for Amazon and the annual impact would be $2.6 billion in incremental costs on average, stated the Citigroup report. The U.S. Postal Service suffered a loss of $2.7 billion in 2017. Trump also took aim at Bezos-owned The Washington Post, calling it a lobbyist and fake. The Failing N.Y. Times reports that the size of the companys lobbying staff has ballooned, and that does not include the Fake Washington Post, which is used as a lobbyist and should so REGISTER, he stated in his March 31 tweet. Sen. Bernie Sanders (I-Vt.) joined Trump in criticizing Amazon, saying that the company has gotten too big. What we are seeing all over this country is the decline in retail, Sanders told CNN on April 1. Were seeing this incredibly large company getting involved in almost every area of commerce. And I think it is important to take a look at the power and influence that Amazon has. Robert Mueller Warning: Many News Stories on RussiaCollusion Probe Are Wrong Many stories about the investigation into collusion between the Trump campaign and Russia have been wrong, according to a spokesman for the office of Special Counsel Robert Mueller. The spokesman did not articulate which stories have been inaccurate, but the statement was issued amid media inquiries about a McClatchy DC article that said Mueller had evidence that President Donald Trumps personal lawyer, Michael Cohen, traveled to Prague, contrary to testimony Cohen gave under oath. What I have been telling all reporters is that many stories about our investigation have been inaccurate, the Mueller spokesperson said, according to Daily Caller and Washington Times. Be very cautious about any source that claims to have knowledge about our investigation and dig deep into what they claim before reporting on it. If another outlet reports something, dont run with it unless you have your own sourcing to back it up. The McClatchy story was quickly amplified by a number of major news outlets, including Reuters, The Washington Post, and The Guardian, despite the fact that Cohen has vehemently denied the claim and provided travel documents, including a passport, showing he was in California with his son. Cohen also testified under the penalty of perjury that he never traveled to Prague. Bad reporting, bad information and bad story by same reporter Peter Stone @McClatchyDC. No matter how many times or ways they write it, I have never been to Prague, Cohen tweeted shortly after the McClatchy story was published. I was in LA with my son. Proven! Bad reporting, bad information and bad story by same reporter Peter Stone @McClatchyDC. No matter how many times or ways they write it, I have never been to Prague. I was in LA with my son. Proven! https://t.co/ra7nwjUA0X Michael Cohen (@MichaelCohen212) April 14, 2018 The Prague story is vital to news outlets which have pushed the Russia-collusion narrative for more than a year because it would confirm one allegation from the so-called Steele dossier, a collection of reports compiled by a British ex-spy that forms the core of the collusion narrative. Hillary Clinton and the Democratic National Committee covertly funded the dossier. It was then used by the FBI to apply for a warrant to spy on the Trump campaign, despite containing a barrage of claims that even Steele could not verify. The claim that Cohen traveled to Prague only exists in the Steele dossier and was never verified by another source. Glenn Simpson, the co-founder of Fusion GPS, the firm that paid Steele, pushed the claim to news media and government investigators. Simpson still believes the claim and told the House Permanent Select Committee on Intelligence that Cohen may have traveled to Prague via a yacht and a Russian airplane. The statement from Muellers office reaffirms sworn testimony by former FBI Director James Comey who told the Senate Select Committee on Intelligence last year that many media reports about Trump-Russia collusion were wrong. Comey specifically discredited a Feb. 15, 2017, New York Times article that claimed that Trumps 2016 presidential campaign had repeated contacts with senior Russian intelligence officials in the year before the election. At the hearing, Sen. Tom Cotton (R-Ark.) pressed Comey further on the piece from The New York Times, asking, Would it be fair to characterize that story as almost entirely wrong?, to which Comey replied, Yes. Comey went on to discredit other media reports, which have frequently cited unnamed intelligence and government sources to push their narrative that the Trump campaign colluded with Russia to influence the election. All of you know this. Maybe the American people dont, Comey said, addressing the Senate committee. He said when it comes to reporters writing stories about classified information, people talking about it often dont really know whats going on. The stuff of science fiction has become our staff of life. Mobile phones, genetic modification, 3-D printing - we're now accustomed to these miracles, but even 10 years past the tech gold rush, stories about Silicon Valley still fascinate us. Several 2018 novels show different approaches to life in the wired lane. Funny, sad, scary, creepy and sometimes all of the above, these books will make you think about how much of our time is devoted to the digital world. --- Tech-chick lit "Sophia of Silicon Valley," by Anna Yen (William Morrow) Anna Yen has worked with Steve Jobs and Elon Musk, experiences that charge her fun debut novel with special insight on Silicon Valley. Sophia, her unusual hero, has some personal challenges that complicate her professional ambitions: She's a Type 1 diabetic whose successful first-generation immigrant parents worry about her blood sugar and her game face in equal measure. A fascinating insider's look that also succeeds as a roman a clef. --- Social media comic novel "Sociable," by Rebecca Harrington (Doubleday) Elinor Tomlinson, the main character in Rebecca Harrington's extremely funny new novel, has recently been dumped by her journalism-school boyfriend. While he got a "real" gig with an online news source, she has resigned to working for Journalism.ly, creating clickbait-y lists (like this one). Harrington's novel starts out in the "Go, girl!" vein but ultimately covers more difficult territory as Elinor negotiates the new world of content - and the content of her new world. --- Gadget guru comedy of errors "The Glitch," by Elisabeth Cohen (Doubleday, May 22) Shelley Stone, CEO of Conch, has a doppelganger hanging around, a somewhat-younger Shelley who has access to adult Shelley's intimate information. That's especially scary because Conch's behind-the-ear device provides a user's medical, motivational, personal and social data. Cohen details Big Tech precisely, from deskside snacks and drugs (almonds, Ativan) to upstairs vs. downstairs (C-suite, shipping). But the best part of her novel is its global view on gadgetry. When Shelley decides to follow her nose - OK, her (BEGIN ITAL)ear(END ITAL) - from home to halfway around the world, she discovers something that not even her Conch can figure out. --- Warm-but-edgy lit "Tell the Machine Goodnight," by Katie Williams (Riverhead, June 19) Pearl works at Apricity, where a machine tells people what will make them happy: "Go for long walks. Take a class in book binding. Remove the color yellow from your home." Recommendations differ for each customer, but those who take the advice seem more content. At home, though, things are less content for Pearl. Her son seems determined to be miserable, refusing to return to school after being hospitalized for an eating disorder. Maybe, just maybe, everyone (including Pearl's boss) needs to rely less on a device and more on human relationships, especially once the Apricity machine begins handing out strangely dark commands. --- Terrifying sci-fi "The Feed," by Nick Clark Windo (William Morrow) Imagine a mash-up of "Black Mirror" episodes in post-apocalyptic Britain after the breakdown of a near-universal network known as the Feed. It runs inside users' heads, allowing them to access "mundles" (memory bundles), truly instant messaging, search capacities and more. The man who founded the Feed used his family as test subjects, and he has developed a healthy distrust of the service. But his wife and most other people use it like addicts. When it stops working? All hell breaks loose. --- Madcap thriller "The Oracle Year," by Charles Soule (Harper Perennial) Some will recognize Soule's name from his best-selling comic books, including "Daredevil, "She-Hulk" and "Death of Wolverine." But anyone will enjoy this comically fast-paced tale about Will Dando, who wakes up one day with 108 wacky and world-shattering predictions. Knowing how much power this gives him, he sets up a website called Oracle.com and parcels out the forecasts. He and his best friend make billions from market manipulations, but before they can enjoy their Swiss bank accounts, world leaders and gangsters are after them. --- Dystopian cautionary tale "Mother of Invention," by Caeli Wolfson Widger (Little A, May 22) Would you volunteer for a clinical trial in which human gestation collapses from nine months to nine weeks? Tessa Callahan, the frazzled CEO of Seahorse Solutions, has three such volunteers at her Silicon Valley "incubator," but the women respond in quite different ways to their not-so-delicate conditions. When one pregnancy challenges the trial's strict norms, Tessa must choose between her blind ambition and her eyes-wide-open experiment. It's funny, sad, scary, thoughtful and essential for anyone who has ever said of a working mother, "I don't know how she does it." --- Patrick is the editor, most recently, of "The Books That Changed My Life: Reflections by 100 Authors, Actors, Musicians and Other Remarkable People." Syrian Bishop Appeals for Peace Following the latest attacks in Syria, one of the country's leading bishops has issued an impassioned plea for peace -- saying that the country needs prayer and not further violence. Melkite Archbishop Jean Abdou Arbach of Homs, Hama and Yabroud told Catholic charity Aid to the Church in Need that after seven years of war -- and the latest bombing raids on the country -- Syrians are tired of the conflict. Archbishop Arbach said: "People cannot take any more. "They simply want to live an ordinary life, to sleep peacefully in their beds and wake and go to work, and not to the sound of falling bombs. "It is enough -- it is too much." The prelate called for everyone around the world to pray for the Syrian people and for lasting peace. He said: "We want and we need peace -- please pray for us. "We need prayers, prayers and more prayers. It is the only thing that can bring us unity in this country." He added that Pope Francis had also asked for prayers for the situation in Syria. On Sunday (15th April), Pope Francis said: "I am deeply disturbed by the present world situation, in which notwithstanding the instruments at the disposition of the international community, it struggles to agree on a common action in favour of peace in Syria and in other regions of the world." He added: "I pray incessantly for peace, and I invite all people of good will to continue to do the same. "I appeal anew to all responsible political leaders, so that justice and peace may prevail." Archbishop Arbach added: "What was the point of this war? "Everything has been destroyed, there are millions of refugees... If only the politicians of the world would work for peace and not for war." ACN is helping with projects in ??Homs including scholarships for 4,000 students and the provision of essential foodstuffs and medicines. The charity is also supporting repair of homes and Church buildings. Archbishop Arbach said that up to 80 percent of churches and catechetical centres in his archdiocese have already been rebuilt. Trot Insider has learned that Standardbred horseman Rick Forgie has passed away at the age of 53. Forgie passed away suddenly at home last Thursday (April 12). Rick is the proud father of his beloved daughter, Tristen (the daughter of Pam Wilkinson-Forgie). Rick was predeceased by his parents, Douglas Forgie Sr. and Liette Brisebois. He leaves behind his brothers, Perry and Doug Jr.; and sister, Tammy. Rick will also be missed by his nieces, nephews, aunts, uncles and many cousins and friends. Rick was an accomplished trainer/driver and raced everywhere from Sarnia to Woodbine, and Flamboro to Clinton, and many small tracks in between. He got his start at Rideau Carleton Raceway and Connaught Park, and eventually worked his way to Pompano Park in Florida and the Meadowlands Racetrack in New Jersey. Rick accumulated 1,058 wins as a driver and steered his mounts to $3,914,235 in purse earnings. Horses that paraded from his training operation recorded 161 victories and banked $48,411 in purses. The Forgie family will be hosting a celebration of life in Rick's memory on Saturday, May 12 at 2 p.m., at the Aylmer United Church in Aylmer, Quebec. In lieu of flowers, donations may be made to the Heart Institute or the Ontario Standardbred Adoption Society. There will be a memorial race held in Rick Forgie's honour at Clinton Raceway on Sunday, May 20. Please join Standardbred Canada in offering condolences to the family and friends of Rick Forgie. STAMFORD Jury selection in Norwalk murder case is to begin Wednesday, and a judge is due to rule on a lawyers request that his clients confession be thrown out. Bertony Thompson, 48, is accused of strangling his longtime girlfriend, Jacalyn Silverman, 62, to death. Thompson has been in prison since Sept. 10, 2014, the day he was accused of killing his Silverman in their Wolfpit Avenue apartment. Thompson has been unable to raise a $1 million court appearance bond. A Stamford judge had offered Thompson a 30-year prison sentence in return for a guilty plea. But Thompson and his attorney, Allen Williams, turned the offer down because Thompson says he remembers nothing of the killing and never intended to kill Silverman. Thompson also rejected a 28-year plea deal. The trial is to begin April 30 with Judge John Blawie presiding. If convicted, Thompson could be sentenced to the maximum for murder in Connecticut, 60 years in prison. In a motion to throw out Thompsons confession filed at the Stamford courthouse, Williams argued that his client has no recollection of talking to detectives in Norwalk Hospital after Silvermans body was discovered. Williams said that 40 hours before a filmed interview took place at Norwalk police headquarters, Thompson had been taken to Norwalk Hospital with a blood alcohol reading of .409, about five times the legal driving limit of .08. Williams said police talked to Thompson in the hospital without warning him of his constitutional rights after they contested his claim that he did not remember the facts the police claim he later provided. Williams said the police said they tried to record the interview, but the recording device was inadvertently put on pause during the conversation. In a subsequent interview filmed at police headquarters, Williams said, Thompson can clearly be seen in physical distress and was therefore incapable of voluntarily waiving his constitutional rights. Police said Thompson told detectives that he and Silverman got into a tussle over his drinking. He said he grabbed her by the throat and pushed her. He said he then went downstairs to drink more. After returning to the bedroom, he realized Silverman was dead and laid down beside her until police and firefighters arrived. The circumstances of the interrogations, Williams said, forces the conclusion that ... because of his demonstrated mental capacity he did not nor could he knowingly, had he been given his rights in each occurrence, give his consent to either interrogation. Norwalk police got wind something was wrong in the apartment when a cousin of Thompsons told police that Thompson sent his father in South Carolina a text on Sept. 10, 2014, reading please bring my body home. After firefighters forced their way into the apartment through a window, they found Thompson passed out in bed with Silverman dead beside him. Scratches and bruises were observed on her neck. The Office of the Chief Medical Examiner later determined that Silverman, 62, had been strangled. Thompson, who was had scratches on his neck, was taken to Norwalk Hospital in an unresponsive state while apparently very drunk. When first roused, he was seen to begin crying and then became unresponsive again, his arrest affidavit states. jnickerson@stamfordadvocate.com NORWALK A Stamford man was charged with two counts of manslaughter Tuesday in connection with a wrong-way, head-on crash on Connecticut Avenue in January that killed two men. Police also said the man was driving under the influence of drugs or alcohol. Members of the Norwalk Police Department, assisted by the United States Marshals Service Violent Fugitive Task Force and Stamford Police Department, served an active arrest warrant on Anthony Domond. Domond, 33 of Prince Place, had been wanted in connection with the double fatal crash that occurred near 789 Connecticut Ave. that killed Frank Peterson III, 50; and Anthony Johnson, 40, both of Stamford. Peterson had picked up Johnson at Bertuccis Italian Restaurant on Connecticut Avenue, where Johnson had a job washing dishes in the kitchen. Johnsons father, John Johnson, said the two then headed up Connecticut Avenue to grab a hamburger, possibly at nearby McDonalds. After picking up the food, they went south on Connecticut Avenue toward the Interstate 95 entrance ramp in Darien when they crashed in front of the Double Tree Hotel. Frankie was a very careful driver and a wonderful person, said Johnsons father. Johnson and Peterson were the best of friends who were helping each other keep their lives on track. Johnson said his son, who struggled with drugs, was in rehab and working hard to rebuild his life. Johnson said Peterson regularly picked his son up from work, a reflection of how close they were. Police say Domond was driving westbound on Connecticut Avenue near Richards Avenue when he entered the eastbound lane of Connecticut Avenue and struck a vehicle that was traveling eastbound. At 10:11 p.m. Patrol Officers responded to two-car motor vehicle crash and found a Subaru sedan and a BMW in the roadway with extensive damage. Peterson and Johnson were dead at the scene and Domond had sustained serious injuries, police said. The Norwalk Fire Department extricated all three men. Connecticut Avenue remained closed for several hours while Norwalk Police Accident Investigators and the Crime Scene Unit processed the scene. Johnsons sister, Gina Johnson, said, My brother had a heart of gold. He had an amazing mind and will truly be missed and I hope he is at peace. He died with his best friend at his side and that is all I can say. I pray that everyone involved in this situation finds the peace they need. Norwalk Police Crash Investigator Officer Chris Wasilewski investigated the incident. As a result of his lengthy investigation, the arrest warrant was issued for Domond. Domond was charged with two counts of manslaughter, operating a motor vehicle while under the influence and reckless driving. His bond was set at $200,000. Previous reporting by John Nickerson was used in this story. Top athletes spend hours studying the previous matches of their opponents because they understand the importance of learning from the competition. The same is true of smart entrepreneurs. When youre starting a business and trying to figure out how to attract your target audience, study your competitors. They will become your best teachers. To make your business better than your competition, you also need to learn the tactics and strategies your opponents use so that you can do it better to win over your customers. You can start this process by doing an analysis of your competitors. Heres how its done. Related: How Small Startups Can Profit From Competitor's Woes Study their blogs and social media. Begin your competitor analysis by taking a closer look to understand what theyre doing right and which areas need improvement. Dont be afraid to adapt some of their ideas and make them even better to grow your own business. Make sure you create a list of your competitors balanced with businesses that are ahead of you and those that are falling behind. You can learn a lot from both on what to do and what not to do. Visit each of the competitors' business blogs. Explore to understand their strategy and start gathering data such as what kind of blog posts they create, how often they publish blog posts and which posts generate the most comments and shares. Which blog posts get the most attention? If youre planning on creating a content strategy that outsmarts your competition, the best strategy is to analyze the blogs of your competitors, one by one, to figure out which posts generate the most buzz. Then you can create similar content for your blog to generate more shares and leads. You can start by using Buzzsumo. This tool allows you to analyze a website or a blog to figure out which posts and what type of topics generate the most shares on social media. Simply enter the URL of your competitor website into the search box to begin the analysis. Using the Buzzsumo search results, you can take notes to create a unique and more effective content strategy for your blog. Repeat the process for all your competitors, and youll have yourself a killer list of blog topics. How do they generate traffic? The next step is to understand how your competition generates traffic to their website. Which channels do they use to attract visitors? Which social networks generate the most traffic to their blogs? SimilarWeb is a great tool you can use to figure this out. Using this tool, you can learn more about the traffic sources that generate the most traffic to a website. In the search results page, youll see a section that shows all the referral traffic channels of your competitors website. You can use this data to create content that better targets specific social media and other traffic channels. Related: How to Stand Out on Social Media, Even With Heavy Competition Analyze audience interests and their competition. Everyone has competition. Even your competitors have their own opponents. You can learn a lot by analyzing the competition of your competitors, too. To do this, simply scroll down on your SimilarWeb search results. Youll notice a section that shows a list of competitor businesses related to the website. Click on a link to get a detailed analysis of that website and see what theyre doing to compete with others. Its also important that you understand what kind of topics and websites your target audience is interested in. SimilarWeb has a solution to that as well. Switch to the "Audience" tab to see the other categories, websites and topics that interest the audience of your competitors. You can use these topics to create blog posts to attract the audience away from your competitors. Which keywords should you rank for? When researching your competition, youll notice that organic search traffic is the biggest source of traffic for almost every website. Its achieved by creating great content targeting specific keywords. You can analyze your competitors to figure out which keywords they rank the best. You can use a tool like SpyFu to figure out the top keywords used by your competitors. Now, you can try and outrank your competition for these same keywords by creating more in-depth and informative content on your blog. But, an even better approach is to find related keyword ideas with low competition to target through your blog content. You can do this using KWFinder tool. Simply enter a keyword and the tool will give you a list of related keywords with a score on the possibility of ranking for the keywords. Related: How to Play Nice With Your Competitor(s) So Everyone Wins Conclusion. The purpose of a competitor analysis is to understand how your competitors work and the strategies they use. Dont make the mistake of following their path to make your content and marketing strategy exactly like your competition. Take the lessons and incorporate them into your own marketing strategy that better serves your target audience. Focus on creating quality content to attract your audience and, eventually, your competition will start researching you for tips. Related: Honest Vulnerability Is a Better Personal Brand Than Pretending Life Is Perfect Hemp Is the Multibillion-Dollar Cannabis Opportunity Few Have Heard About How This Franchisor Found Sweet Success With an Ice Cream Experiment Copyright 2018 Entrepreneur.com Inc., All rights reserved NORWALK After being medically cleared and discharged from Norwalk Hospital emergency department Monday night, a woman violently resisted requests for her to leave, police said. Police were dispatched to the hospital at 11:19 p.m. on a report of a disturbance. STAMFORD-Before jury selection begins Wednesday in a Norwalk murder case, the attorney representing Bertony Thompson will argued to throw out his clients confession that he strangled his long-time girlfriend to death. Thompson, 48, has been in jail since the day he allegedly killed his girlfriend Jacalyn Silverman, 62, in their Wolfpit Avenue apartment on Sept. 10, 2014, unable to raise a $1 million court appearance bond. A Stamford judge offered Thompson a 30-year jail sentence in return for a guilty plea to the murder. But Thompson and his attorney Allen Williams turned the offer down because Thompson says he remembers nothing of the killing and never intended to kill Silverman. In January Thompson also rejected a second, 28-year offer. The trial is scheduled to begin April 30 with Judge John Blawie presiding. If convicted Thompson could be sentenced to the maximum for murder in Connecticut, 60 years in jail. In a motion to throw out Thompsons confession filed at the Stamford courthouse, attorney Allen Williams argues that his client has no recollection talking to detectives in Norwalk Hospital after Silvermans body was discovered. Williams said 40 hours before a filmed interview took place at Norwalk police headquarters, Thompson had been taken to Norwalk Hospital with a blood alcohol reading of .409, about five times the legal driving limit of .08. Williams said police talked to Thompson in the hospital without warning him of his constitutional rights after they contested his claim that he did not remember the facts the police claim he later provided. Williams says the police say they tried to record the interview, but the recording device was inadvertently put on pause during the conversation. In a subsequent interview filmed at police headquarters, Williams says Thompson can clearly be seen in physical distress and therefore incapable of voluntarily waiving his constitutional rights. Police say that Thompson told detectives that he and Silverman got into a tussle over his drinking. He said he grabbed her by the throat and pushed her. He said he then went downstairs to drink more. After returning to the bedroom, he realized Silverman was dead and layed down beside her until police and firefighters arrived. The circumstances of his interrogations Williams said, forces the conclusion that ... because of his demonstrated mental capacity he did not nor could he knowingly, had he been given his rights in each occurrence, give his consent to either interrogation. Norwalk police got wind something was wrong in the apartment when a cousin of Thompsons told police that Thompson sent his father in South Carolina a text on Sept. 10, 2014 asking him, please bring my body home. After firefighters forced their way into the apartment through a window, they found Thompson passed out in bed with his girlfriend dead beside him. Scratches and bruises were observed on her neck. The office of the Chief Medical Examiner later ruled that Silverman, 62, had been strangled. Thompson, who was observed to have scratches on his neck, was taken to Norwalk Hospital in an unresponsive state while apparently very drunk. When first roused, he was seen to begin crying and then became unresponsive again, his arrest affidavit states. jnickerson@stamfordadvocate.com Donor Leaders Reminded Effective PR Still Crucial in Fueling Nonprofits' Mission Communications strategist emphasizes ongoing importance of traditional news coverage as social media efforts expand Contact: Ty Mays, 770-256-8710, tmays@inchristcommunications.com DALLAS, April 17, 2018 /Standard Newswire/ -- Social media may have opened up new ways for nonprofits to share their message, but a traditional public relations strategy remains crucial in ensuring groups are well funded for their mission, leaders are being reminded this week. There's a direct link between how churches, ministries and other organizations engage the news media and the health of their bottom line, media consultant Palmer Holt will tell participants in the Chief Development Officer Forum at the Christian Leadership Alliance (CLA) Outcomes Conference in Dallas, April 17-19. Holt's full-service InChrist Communications (ICC, www.inchristcommunications.com) agency is sponsoring the daylong gathering at the conference, which brings together leaders of major Christian nonprofits from across the country. "We wanted to support the development officers forum because we know that what they do is so vital in ensuring their organizations can continue to do what they have been called to," said Holt, an award-winning communications professional with more than 25 years' experience in journalism, corporate and agency public relations, marketing and advertising. "And we wanted to encourage them not to lose sight of how significant traditional public relations can be." In a recent blog on the issue, "Positive PR Remains Crucial in Reaching Nonprofit Donors," Holt cited how nonprofit information group GuideStar noted that, "From building awareness and credibility to supporting fundraising efforts, a well-executed, strategic public relations program can make the difference between achieving one's goals or falling desperately short of them." Holt explained how an integrated communications strategy of "horizontal frequency"-- when PR efforts result in people hearing the same message across a spectrum of different channels in the same time period, compounding the messaging effect -- can improve donor appeal response rates. It can also help create a positive media profile that can mitigate the impact of negative news. When missions agency SIM USA found itself at the center of the 2014 Ebola crisis in West Africa, after two of its workers there contracted the disease, ICC's crisis communications support helped the organization generate 30,000 positive media hits over a five-month period, with equivalent ad value of more than $300 million. ICC has further strengthened its donor communications expertise with the addition of Mark Kordic to its team. A donor consultant with three decades of experience, he has helped groups fund ministry growth in international missions, Christian radio, Christian higher education and healthcare, as well as local churches. "The best harvests come from soil that has been well prepared, and the same is true for fundraising initiatives," said Holt. "To that end, traditional public relations is essential. When someone has recently read something positive about your organization in an article, heard an interview with a representative on television or radio, seen it shared on social media and website, and then receive your direct mail piece, they are likely to be closer to a 'yes.'" In addition to sponsoring the CLA forum, ICC is also offering a free strategy session in which nonprofit leaders can discuss their needs. InChrist Communications (www.InChristCommunications.com) is a national, full-service communications firm primarily serving faith-based ministries, businesses, churches and individuals. Core services include branding, marketing, advertising, public relations/publicity and media relations, social media, crisis communications, donor development services, special events and creative services. Wall Street analysts have given Greencore Group a "Buy" rating, but there may be better buying opportunities in the stock market. Some of MarketBeat's past winning trading ideas have resulted in 5-15% weekly gains. MarketBeat just released five new stock ideas, but Greencore Group wasn't one of them. MarketBeat thinks these five companies may be even better buys. View MarketBeat's top stock picks here. Ormat Technologies, Inc. operates as a holding company. The firm engages in the provision of geothermal and recovered energy power business. It operates through the following segments: Electricity, Product and Energy Storage. The Electricity segment focuses in the sale of electricity from the company's power plants pursuant to PPAs. The Product segment involves in the manufacture, including design and development, of turbines and power units for the supply of electrical energy and in the associated construction of power plants utilizing the power units manufactured by the company to supply energy from geothermal fields and other alternative energy sources. The Energy Storage segment consists of battery energy storage systems as a service and management of curtailable customer loads under contracts with U.S. retail energy providers and directly with large commercial and industrial customers. The company was founded in 1965 and is headquartered in Reno, NV. Read More 9 hours ago Union jobs? Ford's plan for new EV factories raises question NASHVILLE, Tenn. (AP) Fords blockbuster announcement this week that it would build four sprawling new factories in Kentucky and Tennessee by 2025 and hire nearly 11,000 workers raised a big unanswered question: Just how good will those jobs be? No one not Ford, not the United Auto Workers union, not the future job holders themselves yet knows how much the workers will be paid or whether they will vote for union membership. Read Article Noem announces relaunch of new social studies standards review process The standards proposed by the Department of Education (DOE) will be "set aside," Noem said, and she has asked DOE officials to restart the process from the beginning. BEIJING Facing the risk of a trade fight with the United States, China announced plans Tuesday to allow full foreign ownership of automakers in five years. The change would scrap rules that require global automakers to work through state-owned partners an arrangement that forces those foreign companies to share technology with potential competitors in China. It was unclear whether Beijings action might mollify U.S. President Donald Trump, who has threatened to slap tariffs on $150 billion (U.S.) of Chinese goods in response to complaints that Beijing pressures foreign companies to hand over technology. The possibility of a trade war between the worlds two largest economies has shaken financial markets and could threaten the steady economic growth that is buoying most of the regions of the world. Read more: Opinion | David Olive: Dont let the sweet talk fool you: Chinas trade goals have not changed Canadian sectors that could feel impact of U.S., China trade war Trumps trade war with China could financially hurt farmers who voted for him If you keep poking at the economic expansion, it could turn around and bite you, Maurice Obstfeld, the International Monetary Funds chief economist, told reporters Tuesday as the IMF issued its latest forecast for global growth. There arent going to be any winners coming out of a trade war. The lending agency kept its forecast for global economic growth this year at 3.9 per cent, which would be the fastest pace since 2011. But Obstfeld warned that that bright outlook depends on avoiding a major trade conflict. In China, the move to open the auto industry reflects growing official confidence in the countrys young but fast-growing automakers and a desire to make the industry more flexible as Beijing promotes the development of electric cars. Automakers had been awaiting details since President Xi Jinping announced last week that ownership restrictions would be eased and auto import duties reduced. Some analysts saw Xis promise as an attempt to placate Trump. But Chinese government spokespeople said the plans had nothing to do with Beijings trade dispute with Washington. Tuesdays announcement coincided with a Commerce Ministry order to importers of U.S. sorghum to post bonds to pay possible anti-dumping duties in a separate dispute. It said preliminary results of a trade inquiry had found that U.S. sorghum, a grain used as animal feed and in liquor distilling, was sold at improperly low prices that hurt Chinese farmers. In the meantime, limits on foreign ownership of electric vehicle producers will be eliminated this year, the Cabinets planning agency said. That change will be followed by a similar repeal for makers of commercial vehicles in 2020 and for passenger vehicles in 2022. Following a five-year transition period, all ownership restrictions will be lifted, said the announcement by the National Development and Reform Commission. Until now, such major global automakers as General Motors Co. and Volkswagen AG have been allowed to own no more than 50 per cent of a joint venture with a Chinese partner. And they were limited to two ventures. Foreign automakers complied as the necessary price to access to Chinas populous market, which passed the United States in 2009 as the worlds biggest by number of vehicles sold. Sales of sedans, SUVs and minivans last year totalled 24.8 million units. About 55 per cent of them were American, European, Japanese and Korean brands. Some Chinese-foreign automotive joint ventures go back more than two decades. General Motors, for instance, started its Chinese operations in 1997. It now sells more than 4 million vehicles annually there more than it sells in any other market, including in the United States. GM sells vehicles under five brand names in China Buick, Cadillac, Chevrolet, Baojun and Wuling and is traditionally among the two top-selling companies there. The company could enjoy a big financial boost if it manages to shed its Chinese partners. Last year, the Detroit company made $1.95 billion off its 50 per cent equity stake in China. Its unlikely that foreign automakers would sever themselves completely from their Chinese partners even after the phase-in period, said Jeff Schuster of the consulting firm LMC Automotive near Detroit. Its difficult to unwind; youve already got the relationships established, Schuster said. But Schuster does envision the U.S. and other foreign automakers reducing the size of their Chinese partners ownership stakes and separating their intellectual property from those partners. You could see (autonomous vehicle) development peel away from the joint venture partner, he said. It all comes down to balancing your risk over your intellectual property against the cost of developing on your own. The move was a response to U.S. President Donald Trump's tariff on steel and alumnimum. (The Associated Press) Independent Chinese brands such as Geely, which owns Swedens Volvo Cars, SUV maker Great Wall and electric car brand BYD Auto, are developing technology and increasing exports. Geely has bought a nearly 10 per cent stake in Daimler AG, becoming the German automakers biggest shareholder and gaining leverage to push for technology sharing. State-owned Dongfeng Motor Group, which has joint ventures with Nissan Motor Co. and other brands, bought a 14 per cent stake in Frances PSA Peugeot Citroen in 2014. Chinese companies such as Geely and Great Wall have financial power and technology resources, said industry analyst John Zeng of LMC Automotive. Its not like 10 years ago, when foreign brands had a big technology advantage. He said the latest shift is part of Beijings effort to accelerate development of electric vehicles, which have a central role in the ruling Communist Partys industry plans. China is the worlds biggest electric vehicle market, with last years sales rising 53 per cent over 2016 to 770,000 vehicles. Beijing is using sales quotas and fuel efficiency standards to press global automakers to help local suppliers develop battery technology. A deputy industry minister said in September that Beijing was developing a timetable to join France and Britain in ending sales of gasoline cars. BYD Auto is the biggest global electric car producer by number of units sold and has a factory in California that produces electric buses. BYD Auto manufactures under its own brand and also has a joint venture, Denza, with Daimlers Mercedes unit. Foreign brands will not have as much of an advantage as they had with combustion engines, said Zeng. More or less, Chinese brands already compete with them on a similar level in electric cars. The European Union Chamber of Commerce in China welcomed the announcement and said it looked forward to details in a negative list promised by Xi. That would lay out which industries are off-limits to foreign investors, leaving the rest of the economy open to competition, instead of the current practice of requiring approval for every activity. The European Chamber hopes that this list will be concise to allow much greater participation of foreign enterprise across multiple industries in China, the groups secretary general, Adam Dunnett, said in a written statement. Read more about: I sit back and dream. I cannot believe what we have accomplished. Important people interested in us. A new paradigm of not only a case, but how to do a case. Chevron wanting to settle. Billions of dollars on the table. A movie, a possible book. I cannot keep up with it all. From the notebook of the defendant in the case of Chevron Corp. vs. Steven Donziger. The story unfolding this week in a Toronto courtroom pivots on a central question: can Chevron Canada Ltd., described as a seventh level wholly-owned subsidiary of Chevron Corp., be held financially accountable for the environmental devastation delivered upon the Oriente region of Ecuador by Texaco Inc.? The simple facts are these: in the late 1960s, Texaco led an oil company consortium that began extracting commercial crude in the Amazonian jungle. In 1993, Texaco was sued in the state of New York over an estimated 18.5 billion tonnes of toxic sludge that leached through open pits or direct dumping into the region around Lago Agrio, affecting approximately 30,000 Ecuadorian villagers. Read more: Amazonians take Chevron to Ontario court That suit was ultimately dismissed on the grounds of forum non conveniens. Ecuador, not New York, was ruled the appropriate venue for the case. The suit was relaunched in Ecuador in May 2003, seeking damages and remediation for environmental harm. By that time Texaco had been taken over by Chevron. In 2011, an $18-billion (U.S.) judgment was rendered in Lago Agrio against Chevron, a sum later reduced to $9.5 billion. Ever since, the Indigenous plaintiffs have been seeking a forum to collect on that judgment. As recently as November, courts in Argentina and Brazil dismissed the reach of the plaintiffs as extra-territorial. Chevron has no assets in Argentina. So here we are at the Ontario Court of Appeal. The plaintiffs do not allege wrongdoing by Chevron Canada. This is not in dispute. The essence of the case is extraordinarily important: can a hydra-headed corporation escape financial responsibility by claiming that the legal domicile is the wrong one? In the contemporary world of massive multinational corporations, particularly in the extractive industries, can one subsidiary be immune from financial enforcement when another is found guilty? The history books are full of legal tragedies where a North American corporate entity escaped liability for the disasters of their subsidiaries. Bhopal comes to mind. In the Chevron case there are two tragedies. The first is the environmental nightmare delivered upon the Huaorani people. The second is that for all its merits, the case is a mess. The reader might well wonder: if a court in Ecuador ruled that Chevron had to pay up, why was the finding not enforced by the courts in New York, as was the expectation? I hope I am not belittling the gravity of the proceedings when I note that this is the point of the story where we pivot to a script that reads more Hollywood than University Avenue. The protagonist is the above-named Steven Donziger, a Harvard-trained lawyer who by all accounts took up the environmental case with, as a New York court would find, the honest desire to improve conditions for the group known as the Lago Agrio Plaintiffs (LAPs). That desired outcome, United States District Judge Lewis Kaplan would find, was overdue and Donziger, a journalist well-travelled in Latin America before he trained as lawyer, seemed the right pitbull for the job. What wasnt right was the way in which the case against Chevron was pursued. At the beginning of his 484-page ruling in Chevron Corp. vs. Steven Donziger, Kaplan summarized his conclusion that Donziger and the Ecuadorian lawyers he led corrupted the Lago Agrio case. They submitted fraudulent evidence. They coerced one judge, first to use a court-appointed, supposedly impartial, global expert to make an overall damages assessment and, then, to appoint to that important role a man whom Donziger hand-picked and paid to totally play ball with the LAPs. They then paid a Colorado consulting firm secretly to write all or most of the global experts report, falsely presented the report as the work of the court-appointed and supposedly impartial expert, and told half-truths or worse to U.S. courts in attempts to prevent exposure of that and other wrongdoing. Ultimately, the LAP team wrote the Lago Agrio courts judgment themselves and promised $500,000 to the Ecuadorian judge to rule in their favor and sign their judgment. Kaplan described the case as extraordinary, sad and, yes, Hollywood-esque. The takeaway was this: given the abundant evidence that the Ecuadorian courts decision was neither fair nor impartial, its finding against Chevron was not entitled to recognition in New York. Donziger was found guilty of wire fraud, witness tampering, money laundering and more, and was prevented from profiting in any way from the egregious fraud that occurred here. He appealed. Ten months ago, the United States Supreme Court declined to hear it. What Kaplans decision did not do was bar enforcement of the Lagro Agrio judgment elsewhere in the world. So here we are. Of course, the story is even messier than that. Alberto Guerra, a former Ecuadorian judge who had been removed from the bench and who testified to ghostwriting the Lago Agrio multibillion-dollar decision for sitting judge Nicolas Zambrano, was relocated to the United States. Chevron paid for the move and, as of the time of Kaplans ruling, was paying him $10,000 a month for living expenses, plus a leased car. Guerra claimed that he feared retaliation from the Republic of Ecuador for testifying in the case. So the peoples of the Amazonian rain forest are triple losers. They lost financially in the Sixties when Texaco drilled for that black gold. They lost environmentally in the decades that followed. And they have consistently lost judicially. Canada is the right place to fight the global fight against transnational extractive companies. I just fear that we have the right cause, but the wrong case, before us. jenwells@thestar.ca Tim Hortons is moving its Canadian headquarters to downtown Torontos Exchange Tower after more than 50 years in Oakville. The change that will affect all 400 head office employees is expected to take place by the end of the year and is part of a corporate modernization plan, said Tim Hortons president Alex Macedo on Monday. We want to make sure our company, our brand, remains very contemporary. We want to be a more innovative company so that we can continue to fuel the growth not only for the brand, but for our restaurant owners, he said. Read more: Tim Hortons hit by supply delays Feds investigating Tim Hortons owner over claims theyre failing to honour commitments Tim Hortons falls from 4th to 50th in survey of Canadians most admired brands Share your thoughts Tim Hortons, franchisees spat over $700M plan to reno most Canadian locations Calling the move a very significant investment, Macedo said the company expects the downtown location will help provide better marketing plans, launch more appetizing products and make sure we get more guests into the restaurants. Suburban-based corporations are increasingly moving into downtown areas in a bid to attract talented employees who want the amenities, lifestyle and quick commute available in the core, said George Spezza, Torontos director of Business Growth Services in Economic Development and Culture. Employers will go where the talent is. Were seeing a huge concentration of younger talent in the downtown area, he said. Youre seeing a trend of companies wanting to be closer to access that talent. Cost factors into location decisions and the 905-area communities surrounding Toronto have had an advantage but that gap is narrowing, said Spezza. Overall, Canadian cities are enjoying a commercial-property boom with sales reaching a record $43 billion last year, according to a report from CBRE Group Inc. earlier this year. In Toronto, Tim Hortons move follows Coca-Cola, Google and eBay, which have all set up in the core in the last five years. The citys ability to compete has lately been underlined by its place on Amazons 20-city long short list of possible headquarters sites a list whittled down from 238. The downtown, particularly the central business district, is exploding, attracting creative and technology-based industries, said Spezza. A number of the professional service firms, the Deloittes, the KPMGs, the PWCs, have consolidated a lot of their operations and moved into the downtown core, he said. Tims will occupy about 65,000 sq. ft. on the third floor and fourth floors of the 36-storey Exchange building at King and York Sts. Our focus on innovation labs, idea sharing and creativity will be core to our new space, the company said on Tuesday. Headquartered in Oakville since it opened its first restaurant in 1964, Tim Hortons will retain a significant presence there with its Tims University training centre for franchisees and managers, said Macedo. But the fate of its existing building, near Dorval Dr. and the QEW, has not yet been determined. Oakville is sad to see Tims leave, but its location there will be an excellent, strategic opportunity for other businesses, said a statement from Oakville Mayor Rob Burton. Over the last year, we have attracted nearly 1,000 jobs and issued nearly $300 million of new construction building permits, he added. About half of the head office staff live in the Oakville area, the other half commute there from Toronto. Macedo said Tim Hortons employees will be fully supported in the move and the companys innovation efforts. Were going to take advantage of everything Toronto has to offer to make sure our employees are happy about the move. Were going to train them in innovation, were going to train them in culinary, were going to train them in everything thats very easily available in Toronto that perhaps they cant find in Oakville, he said. Ultimately, I think everyone will understand that the main reason that were going out there is to understand what our guests want so we can provide for them as quickly as possible, said Macedo. Last month, Tim Hortons announced it was renovating its stores with lighter, natural looking exteriors and upgraded interiors. Macedo was appointed to head up the brand last December after earning a reputation for rescuing strained franchisee relations at Burger King, another brand owned by Tims parent company, Restaurant Brands International (RBI). Some Tim Hortons store owners those belonging to a group called the Great White North Franchise Association have lately complained that RBI, part of Brazilian parent 3G Capital, is mismanaging the business by downloading costs onto franchisees and introducing cost-cutting measures that lower the restaurant standards. About 1,800 of Tim Hortons 4,000 Canadian stores are located in Ontario. Toronto has 3.6 million sq. ft. of recently completed office space and another 7.4 million sq. ft. under construction. Downtown Toronto experienced historically low office vacancy rates late last year, according to a report from commercial real estate broker Cushman & Wakefield. It showed rents in the financial core for Class A office space averaged $29 per sq. ft., compared to $17.81 in the Mississauga City Centre and $12.43 in Oakville. Read more about: EDMONTONHigh school English teacher Kevin McBean says he has always been open with his students about being gay. Still, hes had two incidents in his six years of teaching in which students called him homophobic slurs. I think that Im lucky Im at a school where I feel supported by my colleagues and my admin and by my students, he said. But I know thats not the case in every school and I know thats not the case in every district. Thats why McBean, who teaches at M.E. LaZerte, said he welcomes a new guide released by the Alberta Teachers Association on the weekend to support sexual and gender minority teachers. The 20-page Breaking the Silence brochure outlines legislation, policies and other supports for teachers who have faced discrimination or harassment based on their sexual or gender expression. I think this document is just a reminder to teachers working in those districts that they are not alone, and that the ATA is supportive, provincial legislation is supportive, and they dont have to feel that they have to live in isolation or live closeted or in fear of discovery of their sexual orientation or gender identity, McBean said. ATA Executive Staff Officer Andrea Berg, who spearheaded the creation of the document, said the organization wants teachers to know their rights and feel valued. The brochure references a national survey organized by the University of Winnipeg showing 67 per cent of educators were aware of a teacher being harassed by students because they were presumed to be gay, lesbian or bisexual. More than a quarter said they were aware of a teacher being harassed by their colleagues for the same reason. You put a lot of your heart and soul into teaching, and its difficult to turn off sometimes who you truly are. And we want our teachers to feel safe and be able to express who they are, using their professional judgment of course, Berg said. She said she has seen cases across Alberta where school boards or parents have asked teachers not to share information about their sexual orientation or gender identity. Some individuals may have been impeded from accessing benefits for their same-sex spouses. Some of our teachers may have been told by their employer to keep their personal relationship hidden from students or from other staff, Berg said. Unfortunately, the concerns are still coming in here at the association. Berg said there has been a lot of focus on support for sexual and gender minority students, but that support has not been as visible for teachers. Teachers are taking it upon themselves in some cases this year has seen the formation of the first Gay-Straight Alliances and Queer-Straight Alliances for teachers, she said. The University if Winnipeg study also showed 23 per cent of educators were aware of a teacher being harassed by students because of their gender expression, and 10 per cent who were harassed by their colleagues for their gender expression. Jan Buterman, who was fired from a St. Albert Catholic school in 2008 for coming out as transgender, is apprehensive about the guide. He said it will likely be useful to some, as a lot of teachers are not necessarily aware of what the ATA can do for them if they are facing harassment or discrimination. There is some nice aspirational stuff here, and probably very helpful for a number of teachers who wont know a lot of this, Buterman said. Buterman also said the use of the term sexual and gender minority is a positive sign that the ATA might be paying more attention to the plight of transgender teachers. However, he takes issue with a section about Catholic school boards that reminds teachers to be aware of their contractual obligations when it comes to spousal benefits. I would say they are basically outright admitting that they are not going to be willing to stand up for those rights that they just told you about if your board is Catholic, Buterman said. Berg said things get tricky in Catholic schools, as ATA affirms the right of denominational schools to require a declaration of faith as a condition of employment. Once a teacher is hired, however, the Alberta Human Rights Act prevents discrimination on terms of gender or sexuality. Berg said teachers with concerns should contact the ATA before talking to their employer. More than four-fifths of teachers surveyed in the University of Winnipeg study agreed that clear school system support for sexual and gender minority teachers would be very helpful to create safe schools for students. Read more about: HALIFAX As soon as Lt.-Cmdr. Emily Lamberts boots hit the asphalt, she yelled for her companion. Bell. Bell. Bell bolted from the crowd gathered to see the ships dock at the Halifax Canadian Forces Base and began licking Lamberts face. The captain of the Her Majestys Canadian Ship (HMCS) Summerside smiled, just as happy as her dog to be reunited after a three-month mission to West Africa. HMCS Summerside and Kingston returned Tuesday from their deployment following engagements with West African nations, where their mission was building partnerships, promoting maritime security, and fostering relationships in the Gulf of Guinea. Lamberts father and mother were waiting for their daughter in a crowd of family, friends, supporters and colleagues who weathered the wind and rain. Trevor Lambert couldnt be more proud of his daughter. Before they left, all sorts of donations came in from the Halifax area. Books, medical supplies. They made several trips to schools to remind people that women can do anything, he said. HMCS Kingston was the first ship to dock, while HMCS Summerside was behind schedule due to wind conditions across the Atlantic. Lambert spoke highly of the trip to West Africa. It was fantastic to be able to sail the Atlantic and meet different navies across the coast of Africa. It has been a trip of a lifetime, she told reporters. Lambert said the operation involved work with many communities. We did a lot of community outreach events with International Womens Day, she recalled. It was special for me, because we were able to pass on our thoughts and inspire young women and show that non-traditional jobs are something they can aspire to as well. Lambert said its not just Canadas mission to promote a better perception of women. This is not just Canadas, but everyones responsibility, she said. When we talk about women in different roles it is important we carry on that conversation with young men as well. The captain of HMCS Kingston, Lt.-Cmdr. Matt Woodburn, said he too was happy with the way Canada preformed its at-sea portion of the operation helping to increase security. Both Emily and myself worked with six or seven different countries in the West Africa region. We offered our ships as platforms to be able to learn from each other, Woodburn said. We allowed them to see what we have on our ships and how we conduct business for maritime security. Security along the West Africa coast is important. Commander Peter Koch was training in his zone when there was a piracy event in the adjacent zone. Pirates attacked a commercial fishing vessel, Koch recalled. The area has been a hotbed for pirate activity, including drug-smuggling and illegal fishing. That ship was attacked in the adjacent zone during the time of our exercise, Koch said. Communication training that had just been provided from the Canadian Navy helped the maritime zones in West Africa decide how and who should respond to the incident. One of the significant concerns in that region is illegal fishing, he said. That creates economic issues on land and people that used to legally fish end up turning to criminal activity to provide income. Lambert said it feels good being back home. We came back home in a wind storm. We appreciate everyone coming out. It reminds us that we are Canadians when we come home and it is a little colder than expected, she said. Although these missions have not been carried out often in West Africa, that is going to change. For us, this is the second time we have been to West Africa. But we plan to go back for the next three to five years, so it will become typical, Lambert said Its important for Canada to continue to build relationships with other like-minded navies, she said. Hopefully we can see more peace and security in the region, which is what Canada is looking for not just here, but around the world. Correction - April 17, 2018: This article was edited from a previous version to remove the term Leading Commander from Lt.-Cmdr. Emily Lambert and Lt.-Cmdr. Matt Woodburn. Read more about: HALIFAX A Montreal-born yoga instructor who was found dead in her Halifax home had defensive injuries on her hands and fingers, a medical examiner testified Tuesday at Nicholas Butchers second-degree murder trial. It looked as though an altercation or struggle had occurred at the scene, Dr. Marnie Wood told the 14-member Nova Scotia Supreme Court jury. Wood said she went to Kristin Johnstons home on Halifaxs outskirts on March 26, 2016, hours after the 32-year-old woman was found dead on a blood-soaked bed in the master bedroom. Read more: Yoga teacher Kristin Johnston had injuries to neck, hands, Halifax murder trial told Halifax yoga teacher killed in 2016 planned to start new chapter in B.C. Hard to forget: In pre-recorded testimony, deceased officer describes night of yoga teachers death She performed an autopsy on Johnstons body the next day. Wood said Johnstons death was caused by sharp force injuries to her neck that led to a fatal amount of bleeding, and that the injuries were consistent with being caused by a single-edge blade. The trial has heard that a steak knife was found on the bed next to Johnstons lifeless body. Wood, who was qualified to give opinion evidence at the trial, said there were injuries to Johnstons right and left jugular veins. She estimated that with those injuries, Johnston would have died within five minutes or less. Wood also described injuries on her fingers and the palms of her hands as defensive. She agreed with defence lawyer Peter Planetta that theres no way to determine the type of knife used to cause the injuries. Exactly which single-edged blade and the exact size of that blade is impossible to determine with certainty, she said. The jury has heard that officers were called to the scene in Purcells Cove after Butcher called 911 and told the dispatcher he had killed his girlfriend and tried to kill himself. He also told the dispatcher he had cut off his hand. Police have testified that a mitre saw was found in the bedroom next to an amputated hand. RCMP Sgt. Adrian Butler, a blood stain pattern analyst, testified Tuesday about the gruesome scene inside Johnstons home. Butler said a large saturation stain found on the bed was consistent with Johnston receiving injuries to her neck and bleeding in the spot in which she was found lying on her back. Saturation stains and hand transfer stains were located on the bottom half of the pillow, said Butler, as the jury flipped through a book of crime scene photos. A minimum of two hand transfer stains were located on the pillow. A large, concentrated saturation stain 60 centimetres by 121 centimetres in size was located on the north side of the bed. Butler, an expert witness, said there were also hundreds of blood spatter stains on a pillow, comforter and the floor. He said there were pools of blood on the bedroom floor near the mitre saw, along with hundreds of cast off spatter stains on the wall near the saw as well as stains on the saws handle. It appears Butchers hand has been reattached, as it is occasionally visible in the courtroom as he sits at his lawyers bench during the proceedings. The jury has heard that the businesswoman had just shut down her yoga studio and spoke to friends about ending her relationship with Butcher. The 36-year-old man, a graduate of Dalhousie University law school who worked with Young Drivers before his arrest, has pleaded not guilty. Earlier Tuesday, RCMP Cpl. Christian Hochhold testified that he analyzed a cellphone that belonged to Johnston. Hochhold, an expert in the forensic analysis of computers and other electronic devices, said he extracted a plethora of data, including emails, text messages, photos and Facebook messages. Those messages included exchanges Johnston had with friends in the weeks, days and hours before her death. Hochhold told the jury it would take an extreme amount of dedication to alter the text messages sent and received on the phone. Read more about: HALIFAXThe Nova Scotia government announced changes to its doctor recruitment incentive programs Tuesday as it faced criticism over the provinces failure to attend a recent recruitment event in Newfoundland and Labrador. Premier Stephen McNeil said it was completely unacceptable that Nova Scotia was the only province that didnt send recruiters to a national meeting of rural doctors in St. Johns this past weekend. McNeil said his government would be asking for an explanation from the Nova Scotia Health Authority, which is responsible for recruitment. Ive asked the minister of health to reach out to the chair of the health authority for a clearer understanding of why they werent there, he said. The Opposition Tories raised the issue Tuesday during question period, citing a CBC report that said the authority decided the trip to Newfoundland would have been too expensive and hadnt yielded results in the past. Thats not good enough, said McNeil. Obviously, we need more (doctors) ... Thats why its unacceptable that they (the authority) werent at the recruitment drive. Interim Progressive Conservative Leader Karla MacFarlane said her jaw dropped when she heard the authority had passed on the recruitment fair. We have a crisis happening in rural Nova Scotia and we know there are 100,000 people without a doctor, she said. Surely, we should have sent someone to see what type of recruitment was potentially there. Meanwhile, the government said it would immediately remove geographic restrictions on three programs that offer financial incentives to doctors who chose to work in rural areas. Health Minister Randy Delorey said doctors who work in urban centres would now be allowed to take advantage of the programs. He said the changes were made after doctors and medical residents asked for more flexibility. We are recognizing that the need for physicians is not restricted just to rural communities, he said. Previously, the Tuition Relief Program, the family Medicine Bursary and the Debt Assistance Plan were only available to rural doctors. The Tuition Relief Program repays up to $120,000 of a doctors medical school tuition in exchange for a five-year commitment to practice in the province, while the Family Medicine Bursary provides residents $60,000 to establish a family practice in exchange for a three-year commitment to practice in Nova Scotia. The Debt Assistance Plan offers eligible physicians who choose to practice in the province between $20,000 and $45,000. Under the changes, the three programs will also be made available to doctors working in full-time, part-time and locum positions. Read more about: DARTMOUTHPolice say charges are expected against a Dartmouth man in what is now a homicide case. According to Halifax Regional Police, officers and paramedics were called to an apartment on Portland St. just before 9 p.m. Monday over a report of a man in medical distress. The man was pronounced dead at the scene. Right away, police treated his death as suspicious. In an update to media on Tuesday night, they confirmed it was a homicide. They have identified the victim as 52-year-old Darren Clyde Reid of Dartmouth. They also said a 68-year-old Dartmouth man was arrested at the scene late Monday night and he is expected to face charges. This is not a random act as the victim and the suspect knew one another, a police statement reads. StarMetro was on the scene Tuesday morning and approached a man who identified himself as the victims roommate. Ive known him for 30 years. I dont want to talk about it, out of respect for him and his family, said the man, who wouldnt give his name or any further details. Police say anyone with information about the homicide is asked to contact police or Crime Stoppers. With files from Silas Brown Correction - April 17, 2018: This article was edited from a previous version to remove comments made by a worker at the scene to StarMetro without realizing he was speaking to media. Read more about: Its a place where people are, literally, fighting for life. Thats why the Toronto hospital Sunnybrook Health Sciences Centre tapped two internationally renowned war photographers to shoot its latest branding campaign called Where Impossible Becomes I'm Possible." Shot in real time, it aims to capture the grit, courage and resilience of patients, and the determination of staff fighting seemingly unbeatable odds, in a hospital that is recognized worldwide as a leader in patient care, research and education. We wanted to document in an unvarnished, unfiltered, way exactly what happens at the front lines of Sunnybrook, says Pam Ross, the executive vice president and chief operating officer of Sunnybrook Foundation, which is the hospitals fundraising arm. We didnt want an ad photographer. We didnt want to take an artful approach. We wanted a literal, objective, clear and straightforward documentation of reality. Photojournalists Ron Haviv and Christopher Morris spent a week capturing more than more than 10,000 images on the front lines of impossible in a hospital that focuses on cancer, heart and vascular issues, high risk pregnancies and newborn care, and image guided brain therapies. Ross says that what sets Sunnybrook apart is that it treats the province's most critically ill - "Our patients are the sickest of the sick - and is known for creating life-saving interventions. This is highlighted in the campaigns video, featuring dramatic black and white photographs accompanied by the voice over: Bring us Stage 4. Bring us one pound, six ounces. Bring us third-degree. Bring us your world turned upside down....Bring us your worst and well give you our best. The campaign is aimed at building awareness about Sunnybrook and helping its fundraising efforts each year it strives to raise $60 million for the ongoing needs of the hospital. When asked how much the campaign cost, Sunnybrook said its tough to come up with an actual dollar figure because it received a lot of in-kind support from people who donated time and resources. The hospital worked with advertising agency No Fixed Address on the campaign, which will run in print, TV and digital media throughout the year. Initially, they reached out to two Canadian photojournalists, but neither was available, so they asked Haviv and Morris, award-wining photographers and founding members of the photo agency VII, based in New York City. Haviv, the lead photographer on this project, is known for raising awareness about human rights issues and documenting conflicts in Iraq, Afghanistan and Libya. A front line doesnt necessarily have to have someone with a gun, says Haviv. There are people fighting battles be it patients or doctors, in this case and its life or death....What I felt was this constant fight to survive and get out of there alive, and better than when they walked in. He says hes always overwhelmed when people allow a photographer to be present during crucial moments in their lives. In part, he says, thats why the photo of a woman reacting with utter relief and joy to how well cancer treatment is going, is among his favourite images. This campaign, while under the guise of advertising, is still working within that idea of showing the world whats happening in a place like Sunnybrook and whats going through the minds of both the staff and patients. And, trying to enforce the idea about the importance of health care. These type of campaigns, where you kind of combine the idea of journalism with raising awareness through the vehicle of advertising, is something that can be incredibly successful. And I hope that it will be. Branding expert Brent Barr, an instructor at Ryerson Universitys Ted Rogers School of Retail Management, says the campaign successfully taps into an issue we care about, health care. They are separating themselves on skill and experience, says Barr. And theyre doing it through a very gritty, very thought-provoking campaign. He says that from a psychological perspective, the gritty images will raise the stakes in the eyes of viewers, forcing them to stop and look an impressive feat in a world where people are bombarded with between 30,000 and 50,000 messages a day. From a marketing perspective, I give them full marks, he says. This is going to raise the awareness of what separates (Sunnybrook) from everybody else. WINNIPEGFacebook Canada is offering closed-door briefings to MPs tasked with publicly grilling the company later this week over the Cambridge Analytica scandal, the Star has learned. An email obtained by the Star from Facebook Canadas public policy team invited members of the House of Commons Ethics committee to meet privately with the company before their public testimony on Thursday. New Democrat ethics critic Charlie Angus called the offer highly unusual, and said in 14 years in parliament hes never seen a major corporation attempt to meet with committee members on the eve of testifying. It speaks to, I think, Facebooks disregard as a massive international corporation lobbying various governments on major policy, Angus said in an interview Monday. This is an attempt to hear our concerns so theyre better prepared for television, and perhaps, outside of the view of the public, kind of win us over. Thats not how committee work is supposed to be done. The omnipresent social media company has been on the defensive for weeks after revelations that 87 million users had their data unknowingly harvested, including more than 622,000 Canadian users. That personal information was then used by consulting firm Cambridge Analytica to attempt to help political campaigns to sway the vote, including the 2016 U.S. presidential campaign and the Brexit referendum. We would like to extend to you a courtesy pre-brief on the Cambridge Analytica situation, reads the email from Facebook Canada public policy associate Jessica Smith. Should this be of interest, please let us know and we will work with your office to schedule a briefing. The Star requested an interview with Facebooks Smith Monday afternoon, and sent a detailed list of questions. A public relations officer replied to say Smith was not available. Instead, the company sent a brief statement that did not directly address the Stars questions. Facebook has made a number of recent public announcements to address concerns the situation with Cambridge Analytica has raised, including on data security, ads, and transparency and election security, wrote Facebook spokesperson Meg Sinclair in an email. In advance of this weeks hearing, we have extended an offer to brief committee members on those steps as well as what we know as our reviews of the situation continue. No new information will be shared. The House of Commons Access to Information and Ethics committee is scheduled to begin at least two weeks of hearings into the Cambridge Analytica/Facebook scandal on Tuesday. Privacy Commissioner Daniel Therrien, who has begun a formal investigation into Facebook, is scheduled to be the committees first witness. Kevin Chan, the head of Facebook Canada, is scheduled to testify on Thursday. The committee is following their counterparts in the U.K. and the U.S. in demanding the company divulge more information about the Cambridge Analytica scandal, and more broadly the companys handling of users personal information. Cambridge Analytica allegedly obtained the personal data of more than 80 million Facebook users, predominantly in the United States, through a third-party researcher. That researcher was able to harvest the data through a personality quiz app, that collected information not only about those users that took the quiz, but their extended social network meaning peoples data may have been collected and sold without their consent or even knowledge. Facebook began notifying those users whose data was compromised last week, including more than 622,000 Canadians. The scandal has led to formal investigations by privacy watchdogs in Canada and the U.K., as well as the Federal Trade Commission in the U.S. Testifying before Congress last week, Facebook founder and CEO Mark Zuckerberg said he believes that government regulation of the company is inevitable. Read more about: NORTH BATTLEFORD, Sask.A Saskatchewan farmer acquitted in the fatal shooting of a young Indigenous man is giving up his guns and has been ordered to pay a $3,000 fine after pleading guilty to unsafe storage of an unrestricted firearm. Gerald Stanley pleaded guilty Monday in North Battleford provincial court to the charge that involved six rifles and shotguns. The Crown said none of them had trigger locks. The Crown dropped a second count of unsafe storage of a restricted handgun. Stanley was acquitted in the death of 22-year-old Colten Boushie, who was shot and killed on Stanleys farm in August 2016. With members and supporters of the Boushie family looking on, the judge accepted a joint recommendation for the fine and a 10-year ban on possessing a firearm. Stanley is also forfeiting all of his guns, which the defence said are pretty common in many rural homes. Mr. Stanley doesnt desire to own a gun ever again, his lawyer Scott Spencer told court. Family and supporters of the Boushie family shouted murderer as Stanley walked into the courthouse to enter a plea. Boushies brother, Jace Baptiste, said Monday it hurt to see Stanley walking freely into court. If that was me or any other Indigenous person that was standing trial for murder or any kind of gun charges, wed be on remand, Baptiste said outside court. We wouldnt be out walking freely in street clothes, smiling around. Wed be sitting in jail clothes, incarcerated. Distraught family and supporters of slain Indigenous man Colten Boushie called for justice outside a Battleford, Sask., courthouse after a jury delivered a not guilty verdict for Gerald Stanley on Feb. 9. (The Canadian Press) On his Facebook page, Baptiste said the sentence shows an Indigenous life is only worth $3,000 in the court of law. Im lost for words. Stanley left the courthouse through the back door with deputy sheriffs guarding the route out of the parking lot. Boushie was one of five young people who drove onto Stanleys farm near Biggar in 2016. His friends testified they were looking for help with a flat tire. Stanley told the trial he thought they were trying to steal an all-terrain vehicle. He testified he fired warning shots to scare them away and the gun accidentally went off again when he went to pull the keys from their SUV. Read more: Colten Boushies family says farmer trying to exploit Indigenous mans death Toronto publisher rejects Gerald Stanleys request to tell his side of Colten Boushies death OTTAWAPrime Minister Justin Trudeaus weekend summit on the fate of the Trans Mountain pipeline has failed to ease tensions over the controversial project. One day after the emergency meeting, his government is being attacked from both sides of the political spectrum, staunch opponents in British Columbia have vowed the pipeline expansion will never be built, and Alberta has introduced new legislation that could restrict vital oil and gas exports to its western neighbour. The frenzy of activity came after Trudeau interrupted a foreign trip to return to Ottawa to discuss the pipeline expansion with the premiers of B.C. and Alberta, NDP leaders who are at loggerheads over the project. Earlier this month, Kinder Morgan, the Texas-based company behind the $7.4-billion project, suspended non-essential spending and threatened to drop the pipeline altogether if opposition cant be smoothed over by May 31. Trudeau responded Sunday by saying Ottawa will provide some sort of financial backing for the pipeline details of which will be sorted out in closed-door negotiations with Kinder Morgan and that his government will pass legislation to assert federal jurisdiction over oil pipelines that cross provincial borders. Alberta Premier Rachel Notley similarly pledged to offer financial support to ensure the pipeline is built, and on Monday, her government in Edmonton introduced a new bill that will give its energy minister more powers to restrict oil and gas exports. The bill sends a clear message: we will use every tool at our disposal to defend Albertans (and) to defend our resources, Notley said Monday, adding that the bill is not aimed at punishing B.C., which gets much of its energy from shipments along the existing Trans Mountain pipeline, which has been operational since 1953. Even so, opponents of the pipeline were just as assertive in denouncing the project that would nearly triple the capacity of the existing Trans Mountain pipeline, which runs from Edmonton to the B.C. city of Burnaby, to carry bitumen from Albertas oilsands for export on fuel tankers from Burrard Inlet. Burnaby Mayor Derek Corrigan said he was embarrassed Trudeau and Notley are kowtowing to Kinder Morgans May 31 ultimatum, and questioned the influence of the multinational corporation on the Canadian government. This is simply obedience to corporate will, Corrigan said during a press conference with Indigenous leaders on Monday. Well continue to fight this project to our last breath. Stewart Phillip, Grand Chief of the Union of British Columbia Indian Chiefs, accused Trudeau of breaking promises to renew the federal governments relationship with First Nations by approving the pipeline expansion without the consent of all affected communities. He said Canadas courts have ruled that consultation isnt enough to approve resource projects in Indigenous territory, and predicted the Liberal governments repeated assertions that the pipeline will be built have only fuelled opponents will to stop it. If the threats continue, (the opposition) will only become more entrenched, he said. The answer is still no. The Kinder Morgan Trans Mountain pipeline will never be built. Speaking in the House of Commons, Natural Resources Minister Jim Carr defended the pipeline, and said the government engaged in unprecedented consultation before approving the project in December 2016. He said 44 communities signed benefit agreements with Kinder Morgan on the project, including 33 in B.C. We know that projects like this dont achieve consensus everywhere. We do know that theyre in the national interest, Carr said. Phillip countered that there are still communities along the pipeline route that dont support the project, including the Tseil-Waututh on Burrard Inlet, and the nearby Squamish Nation, which would see increased oil tanker traffic off the coast of its territory. No one expect our own nation can give consent for our territory, said Khelsilem, a Squamish council member, during Mondays press conference. Meanwhile, opposition parties peppered the Liberals with questions about the pipeline during Question Period. Conservatives repeatedly asked when will the pipeline get built, after party leader Andrew Scheer accused Trudeau of failing to act quick enough to reassure Kinder Morgan that opposition wouldnt stop the pipeline, and said the Liberal governments revamp of the environmental assessment process and plan to impose carbon pricing across the country have driven investors from Albertas oilsands. The reason why the stakes are so high for Trans Mountain is because of the governments disastrous energy policy from start to finish, Scheer said in the House Monday. NDP MP Charlie Angus said the government is running roughshod over Indigenous rights in its efforts to meet Kinder Morgans deadline, while the partys leader in the House, Quebec MP Guy Caron, said its not clear that the federal government has sole jurisdiction over the pipeline. NDP Leader Jagmeet Singh called on Ottawa last week to refer the matter to the Supreme Court of Canada, as B.C. Premier John Horgan pursues a ruling on whether his government in Victoria has power over environmental regulations related to the project, such as rules affecting oil shipments by sea from the pipeline terminal in Burnaby. The government has dismissed the possibility of a Supreme Court reference, and Carr added Monday that the project was already approved by the B.C. government though it was the Liberal government that Horgans NDP defeated in last years provincial election. Speaking outside the House, Green Party Leader Elizabeth May said the Liberals are caught up in an attempt by Kinder Morgan to blackmail the government for financial support for the pipeline, and questioned why the federal government should spend taxpayer money to help the Texas company. Its a grand pretext. Its smoke and mirrors. Its a con job, she said. If this prime minister wants to be and God, I want him to be; I so want Justin Trudeau to be the climate leader the world wants then dont let Kinder Morgan be an albatross around your neck that makes you break promise after promise. Carr disagreed that the government is being blackmailed. Kinder Morgan is expressing a frustration with uncertainty, he said. Theyre on the verge of having to make very important financial decisions about how much to invest in the project. Theres already more than a billion dollars in investment. And certainty clearly is important to them. We understand that, and we will seek to give more certainty to the project. With files from The Canadian Press Read more about: VICTORIABritish Columbias attorney general says Albertas proposed fuel restriction law is a politically motivated bluff that will result in an immediate lawsuit from his province and likely lawsuits from oil companies. David Eby said government legal experts looked at the Alberta legislation tabled Monday and concluded its unconstitutional, against the law and designed to not be enacted. Clearly the legislation is a bluff, Eby said Tuesday. They dont intend to use it. If they did try to use it we would be in court immediately seeking an injunction to stop them from using it, but we would probably have to get in line behind oil companies that would be concerned about contracts that they have with companies in B.C. to deliver product. Read more: Alberta limiting oil shipments expected to harm more than just B.C. Saskatchewan premier says province will also table oil-ban bill Constitution allows B.C. to regulate, but not stop, national pipeline: experts Albertas proposed legislation and B.C.s response are the latest manoeuvres in the escalating dispute over the $7.4-billion Trans Mountain pipeline expansion that runs from Edmonton to Burnaby, B.C. The federal and Alberta governments support the project, while B.C. opposes it, saying it is defending its coast from a potentially catastrophic oil products spill. So far, about 200 people have been arrested at a construction zone near the pipelines terminal site in Burnaby for allegedly breaking a court injunction keeping protesters away. Indigenous leaders and local Vancouver area municipal politicians have also warned of increasing civil unrest as people from across Canada mount anti-pipeline protests. Eby said he believed the Alberta legislation was intended to never be adopted, but if Alberta Premier Rachel Notleys government does pass the law, then B.C. will immediately launch court action. We think they are very unlikely to use this, given the analysis and we think they know it, and it is a bill for political purposes only, Eby said in the legislature Tuesday during question period. Notley said the legislation sends the message that Alberta is prepared to defend its resources. It would direct pipeline companies, truckers and rail operators on how much oil product they ship and when. Violators would face fines of up to $1 million a day for individuals and $10 million a day for corporations. Saskatchewan Premier Scott Moe said Tuesday his province will support Alberta in the fight over the Trans Mountain pipeline expansion by introducing its own legislation on oil exports. He said his government will bring in a bill in the coming days that could result in less oil moving to British Columbia. Moe said he wants the Saskatchewan legislation passed shortly so it can work in tandem with Albertas legislation. The Canadian Association of Petroleum Producers called the Alberta bill a very strong tool it hoped was not needed. B.C. Opposition Liberal jobs critic Jas Johal said the province must end the escalating dispute before gas prices increase sharply in Metro Vancouver. Without Albertas energy, B.C.s economy would come to a standstill, he said. The B.C. premier (John Horgan) created this crisis; will he fix this mess before gas prices hit $2 a litre? Gasoline prices in Metro Vancouver are currently hovering near $1.55 a litre. Kinder Morgan, the U.S.-based pipeline builder, announced earlier this month that it was pulling back on spending for the project and gave Prime Minister Justin Trudeaus government until May 31 to give a clear signal the project will proceed. Trudeau, Notley and B.C. Premier John Horgan met Sunday in Ottawa to discuss the pipeline, but remain deadlocked. Trudeau repeated the federal governments commitment to ensure the project is completed, saying his government will hold private, financial talks with Kinder Morgan. Eby said the B.C. government is expecting to announce shortly that it has filed a reference case to the courts to determine if it has jurisdiction over the pipeline in the province. Read more about: EDMONTONAn Edmonton lawyer has been suspended by his employer after a 16-year-old girl was fatally injured in what police allege was a hit-and-run collision at a crosswalk. Shane Stevenson, who is 47, is charged with impaired driving causing death, driving over the legal limit causing death and hit and run causing death. Dentons Canada LLP says in a statement issued late Monday afternoon that Stevenson is a Dentons Canada partner in its Edmonton office and that hes been suspended from the firm pending further investigation. Police say the girl was pronounced dead at hospital after she was hit late Sunday night at a crosswalk equipped with flashing lights. They allege the driver fled from the scene, but an off-duty police officer who had stopped for the pedestrian saw what happened and followed the vehicle while providing information to a 911 dispatcher. An arrest was made soon after. Read more: Off-duty officer nabs truck driver who struck and killed woman in Edmonton crosswalk Read more about: OTTAWACanadas privacy commissioner is calling on the government finally to bring in concrete rules over how political parties collect and use Canadians personal information. "If there was ever a time for action, I think, frankly, this is it, Daniel Therrien told the House of Commons ethics committee Tuesday as the first witness at its study of the Facebook/Cambridge Analytica scandal And after years of inaction, the major parties might finally be listening. Therrien said that rules governing how federal parties collect, store and exploit Canadians personal information are long overdue. And he told reporters the Liberal government recently contacted his office to discuss the issue. Read more: Opinion | Tim Harper: With elections looming, Canada cannot be complacent on policing social media Facebook Canada offers closed-door briefings to MPs ahead of meeting More than 600,000 Canadians caught in Facebook data scandal If the government is to focus on what is achievable before the next election, I would say to ensure that political parties are governed by privacy legislation, Therrien said. But while he was clear about his offices need for powers to inspect and make orders when we find that violations occur, he added that I still do not see a very clear intent to act from the government. U.K.-based Cambridge Analytica is accused of obtaining data from 87 million Facebook users, using it to build voter profiles, and selling the analysis to political campaigns. Facebook says more than 622,000 Canadian users data was obtained by Cambridge Analytica. But as MPs ponder whether Facebook needs stricter federal regulation an outcome Facebook CEO Mark Zuckerberg described as inevitable theyre also facing some awkward questions about how their parties exploit personal information. There are currently no rules or oversight for political parties data operations. Privacy laws governing government departments and private companies do not apply, and while parties have their own privacy policies, theyre effectively self-policing. Nathaniel Erskine-Smith, the Liberal deputy chair on the committee, said that gap in Canadas privacy laws needs to be addressed. Obviously, Cambridge Analytica, Facebook, the public attention thats been drawn to this issue creates the public space to have the conversation, Erskine-Smith said. Theres been political will across the table at this committee for a long time. Both Conservative MP Peter Kent and NDP MP Charlie Angus agreed that, as the public becomes more aware of how political actors use citizens personal information, rules for Canadian political parties are required. I think it is now an obligation, an unavoidable obligation, for the government to consider bringing political activities, political data management, into and under the provisions of the Privacy Act, said Kent. Given the ability of (Facebook) to be so easily distorted, we have to have that conversation, said Angus. For political parties, we need to talk about putting political parties under (privacy laws) There has to be some level of accountability for this powerful use of data. The committee is scheduled to resume its study on Thursday, when Kevin Chan, the head of public policy at Facebook Canada, is expected to testify. Facebook CEO Mark Zuckerberg batted away often-aggressive questioning Tuesday from lawmakers who accused him of failing to protect the personal information of millions of Americans. (The Associated Press) The committee has also summoned Christopher Wylie, the Canadian whistleblower who helped found Cambridge Analytica, to testify next week. Read more about: Over the next 18 months, at least four elections will shape the future of this nation. Starting in Ontario, followed by Quebec, Alberta and the country as a whole, voters will go to the polls. New Brunswick also votes this year and another vote in British Columbia cannot be ruled out. But with these key contests looming, there has been very little serious discussion in this country about how voters will receive information they need to cast informed ballots, and the overall security of our democratic process. Its time for a serious look at how our votes can be manipulated by bots and fake news, and whether the electoral process itself is safe from meddling by internal or external sources. Read more: Privacy watchdog wants rules for how political parties use Canadians personal data Opinion | Emma Teitel: Four tips to help Kathlene Wynne up her populist game Facebook Canada offers closed-door briefings to MPs ahead of meeting Federal MPs began important hearings Tuesday on data privacy concerns and their repercussions, and Privacy Commissioner Daniel Therrien made it clear the data of 622,161 Canadians harvested from Facebook could be used to influence an election in this country. Yet there is a puzzling, laissez-faire approach from our governments, which seem to find comfort in studies that show the remnants of the mainstream media hold greater levels of trust here than their peers in other countries. They seem to still take false security from the fact Canada has largely immune to interference or onslaughts of fake news, the likes of which we have seen in Britain, France and the United States. We like to think that we are fail-safe because we have paper ballot backups, but a cyber attack could corrupt the process before we need to start counting by hand. The Communications Security Establishment has warned that cyber attacks on the 2019 federal election can be expected, and Facebook has promised an election integrity project ahead of that vote. Part of that initiative will involve an education program from Ottawa-based MediaSmarts, which will try to educate citizens on how to spot fake news, differentiate between fact and opinion, and identify malicious posts. A study for Elections Canada recommends a process for monitoring and regulating bots, which mimic the social media accounts of real people to spread propaganda and misinformation, shape public opinion or spread malicious attacks against candidates. Rolled together, these are helpful, but largely amount to band aids. Something more substantive is required. There are lessons for Canada in Europe. All major parties in Germany agreed before last years parliamentary elections there that they would not use social media bots and would strongly condemn their use. They also passed a law providing penalties of up to $60 million for social networking providers who did not quickly take down defamatory or fake news reports. It worked. An Oxford University study found only a tiny fraction of social media election traffic came from automated accounts, overwhelmingly from the far right anti-immigration party. Further, German social media users shared links to professional news sources over junk news sources by a ratio of 4:1, a much higher rate than the researchers found in the U.S. or U.K. elections. In this country, political bot campaigns have so far been ham-handed and largely ineffective. Elizabeth Dubois, an assistant communications professor at the University of Ottawa studied the use of bots in the Ontario Progressive Conservative leadership race, has suggested parties transparently declare whether they are using them and for what purpose - during a campaign. Indeed, banning them may be going too far because not all bots are evil. Parties can use bots to amplify policy announcements, for example. With 9.5 million millennials eligible to vote in the coming elections, it is important to look at where they might go to build their voting acumen. Canadians still overwhelmingly favour Facebook when we use social media. YouTube is the second most favoured, with Twitter next (although with just a fraction of the interaction of Facebook). But numerous studies have indicated YouTube will take over as the most popular social media platform for young voters those voting for the first or second time this year or next followed by Instagram and Snapchat. Facebook and Twitter lag far behind. By 2020, close to 80 per cent of global internet traffic will be attributed to video. Canadians will continue to surround themselves with more sophisticated devices, which will make them vulnerable to manipulation, and the dark side of human nature will continue to lure the mischievous and malicious to evermore sophisticated ways to manipulate. The question is whether our policymakers are sufficiently literate on data manipulation to deal with a threat that is out there for all to see. Tim Harper is a former Star reporter and Toronto-based freelance columnist. Tjharper77@gmail.com Twitter: @nutgraf1 Read more about: Regular customers say the Salvation Armys thrift store on Parliament St. will leave a hole in the Regent Park community when it closes its doors for good next month. The stores 15-year lease agreement for the building at 252 Parliament St. ended this year. Faced with what director of retail operations Michele Walker called a substantial increase in rent, the Salvation Army made the decision to shut the store down. Both Walker and Daniel Odorico, president of The Downing Street Group the company that has owned the building for a year and a half confirmed that despite several rounds of negotiations, a deal to renew the lease could not be reached. Neither would say how far apart they were. Odorico said the Salvation Army was give 60 days notice to vacate the building by the end of May. This is no more than a decision by a tenant on where theyd like to be and what kind of rents they can pay, and no more than an owner deciding what market rates theyd like their tenants to pay, he said. We are very sad and disappointed to be leaving, Walker said. Its a store that does a lot of good for the community. Salvation Army thrift stores provide a voucher program through local Salvation Army social services. This particular branch, Walker said, was the highest voucher provider in the country, filling a large need in the community for access to affordable clothing, household items and more. To the local community, it is more than just a place to buy a discounted toy or electronic gadget for their child which they could otherwise not afford, Sylvia Grady, a frequent shopper, wrote in an email to the Star. Grady said the thrift store is one of the busiest shes experienced in all of Toronto, and one she goes out of her way to shop at. Its a meeting place, she wrote, An opportunity to share news, and a chance to have a bit of fun with friends and neighbours. Chris McCallan, who has frequented the store for the last six years, said, People need a place to shop cheaply, especially in Regent Park. For McCallan, the Regent Park Salvation Army was more than just a thrift store it was a hangout for residents, and a place for emotional support. People would just come in and just say hello and meet one another. In any community, you need support for how people live, and this is an important support, he said. As the area becomes more dense with the development of condos and the removal of the old Regent Park, McCallan worries that the things that support lower income folk are disappearing. I think people are going to have a harder time finding affordable clothing, he said. I think theyre going to have a harder time finding things like dishes and shows and things for their families. Theres a lot of people with small kidsand I saw them shopping there and getting a lot of stuff for not much money. Thats got to help when youre on a low income. The staff will be kept on until May 30 but the store will close on May 12. We really, really would like to stay in the community, Walker said. If anybody out there has any opportunities that could be an option for us, we would love to hear about them. Correction - April 17, 2018: This article was edited from a previous version that mistakenly said the Salvation Army store will stay open until May 30. In fact, the store will close on May 12 but the staff will stay on until May 30. Torontos proposed restrictions on Airbnb and other short-term home rentals now appear likely to be delayed, dismaying those who want the rules in place before the citys busy tourist season begins. New rules passed in December by city council, including a ban on nightly rentals of self-contained basement apartments and otherwise vacant condos, were supposed to take effect June 1. But challenges by four short-term rental hosts at what was formerly the Ontario Municipal Board, based on city rezoning required to enact Torontos new licensing rules, are now set to be heard Aug. 30 and 31. Carleton Grant, director of policy and strategic support for the citys licensing department, said what is now the provincial Local Planning Appeal Tribunal might not issue its decision for six to eight weeks after the hearing. The city can still act on complaints against short-term rental owners that arent licensed as hotels, he said, but wont actively implement the new bylaw with the spectre of a ruling that could force changes in it. We're in a holding pattern, Grant said in an interview Monday. Unless something happens quickly, June 1 (implementation) is in jeopardy. We're working hard in the background to have everything ready to go June 1, knowing that, unless the landlords withdraw their separate challenges, that wont happen, he said. If the late August hearing proceeds, and the tribunal issues a decision, the city would likely then give all parties time perhaps 30 days before enforcing the rules. Toronto hopes limiting such rentals to a hosts primary residence will stamp out so-called ghost hotels, which cater to visitors who come and go and sometimes annoy long-term neighbours with noisy parties. Many councillors also worry that letting basement apartments and condo units become short-term rentals is depleting Torontos affordable housing stock. Airbnb, the San Francisco-based online rental platform, said in December that about 700 of its 10,000-plus Toronto hosts rented out secondary suites that would be illegal under the new bylaw. Other companies and individuals own many other units that would also become illegal. Jeff Hodgart is among those appealing the new rules. He states in a January letter to the then-OMB that he bought 200 St. Helens Ave. in 2009 as a semi-detached multi-unit dwelling and in January 2016 converted two units to short-term rentals. Hodgarts lawyer, Aaron Crangle, told the Star his client feels the city is unfairly trying to put the burden of providing affordable housing onto private individuals like him. The city didnt do its job building affordable housing, or take other actions, so why is it on my client to provide it? Crangle said. The appeal notice states the city has no planning justification to restrict the use of the property as it has been intended to be used and has been used since the renovations were undertaken. Thorben Wieditz, a spokesperson for the Fairbnb coalition that includes hotel owners and unions that pushed the city to crack down on short-term rentals, said he doesnt expect to see the regulations enforced until sometime next year. A lot of condo owners who put up with noisy, inconsiderate people coming and going from neighbouring Airbnbs were hoping the regulations would be enforced in time for the tourist season. They wanted a calmer summer than last year, and those folks are disappointed this is not taking place, he said. Wieditz said that, as of June 1, Airbnb should delist any units that would become illegal once the new bylaw comes into force, even if the company is not yet required to do so. Alex Dagg, an Airbnb spokeswoman, said in a written statement that company continues to work with city officials toward a June 1 implementation date, adding: We are proud to be cooperating with the city to find solutions, and we encourage all home-sharing platforms that operate in Toronto to stand up and do the same. But she would not say if Airbnb would enforce the rules on June 1 even if not required to by the city, saying: Our host community is eager to comply with the citys rules not the wishes of a well-funded hotel industry front group such as Fairbnb. Councillor Paula Fletcher expressed dismay at a possible delay in implementation of the new bylaw, noting there is a proposal for a multi-unit building in her wards Riverside district that neighbours fear could become the sort of short-term ghost hotel the new bylaw would ban. Don Peat, spokesman for Mayor John Tory, said the mayor believes the new regulations strike the right balance between embracing new technologies while protecting neighbourhoods and keeping the city affordable for residents looking to rent an apartment and he looks forward to the outcome of the OMB hearings and the enactment of these new regulations as soon as possible. The University of Toronto community is coming together to help the owner of a hotdog stand on the campus after it burned down Sunday night. A GoFundMe page has been set up by first-year graduate student David Wosnick, who said the hotdog stand located outside John P. Robarts Library, near Harbord and St. George Streets, is a staple at the university. My heart kind of broke when I saw the picture, said Wosnick, who became aware of the incident after seeing pictures of the stand engulfed in flames on social media. Everyone has, at one point, probably drop by to get a hotdog from that stand before. Read more: Online donations for Humboldt Broncos hockey team will close in two days Humboldt GoFundMe donors have their own stories, their own reasons for giving GoFundMe says it will need several months to distribute $9M raised by Humboldt Broncos campaign Wosnik said hes been in contact with the family who owns the stand after the fire. They have told him that they suspect a propane tank explosion caused the blaze. Toronto police said they were called to the fire around 8:43 p.m. Fire crews were able to knock down the blaze immediately. It is not known if winds brought by the storm were a factor in the fire, but police believed it originated in the propane tank. The family is devastated, Wosnick said. But they are hoping to bounce back and open a new hotdog stand with the help of the campaign. The fundraiser passed its $5,000 goal in less than 48 hours, raising more than $5,800 in donations from 405 people as of noon Tuesday. Wosnick is overwhelmed but not surprised by the support from the university community. Its a story of unity and a story of how university students were able to band together for a good cause, said Wosnick, who added that the family is thankful for the help theyve received. A.J. Davidson was coming out of the library when he saw the hotdog stand was already on fire. He said by the time firefighters arrived the cart was destroyed. All of the hotdog guys around U of T work ridiculous hours and are always friendly, said Davidson, who is a first-year life science student. Im hopeful that his insurance or the GoFundMe will let him recover. On a winter afternoon in 2016, Michelle Raftiss long search brought her to the steps of St. Michaels Cathedral, the seat of the Roman Catholic Archdiocese of Toronto. She was nervous, and had carefully prepared what she would say to Cardinal Tom Collins. She was done with secrets and lies. Raftis is the daughter of a Catholic priest, a truth the 55-year-old had to hide most of her life. She wanted to know why the church she was raised in allowed a priest to abandon his child. I wanted a written apology from the church, Raftis says. In Canada and around the world, children of priests have emerged from the shadows to press the Vatican and their local dioceses to recognize they exist. The Vatican appears to have no data on the number of clergy who break their vows of celibacy and father children. But with more than 400,000 Roman Catholic priests ministering to 1.1 billion Catholics, offspring are likely to be found across the globe, says Bill Kilgallon, who recently finished a three-year term as a leading member of Pope Franciss Commission for the Protection of Minors. In Canada alone, about 20 sons and daughters of priests have personally contacted Coping International, a recently formed online support group out of Ireland that is pushing the Roman Catholic Church and its priests to acknowledge parental responsibilities. The Star spoke to four of these now adult children, and to a Quebec woman who sued a diocese over the priest who fathered her son. The children all struggled with the guilt of a suffocating secret, the financial and emotional strains of being forsaken by their biological father, and the silence of priests focused on avoiding scandal. The truth was further buried by mothers who didnt tell their dioceses that a priest had fathered their child. During the 1960s and 70s when these children were born, such an admission would have deeply shamed the women. Raftis learned at 13 that her biological father was Rev. Charles Van Item, a family friend who died in 2015. Her mother warned her to never tell anyone. When he was alive, I didnt want to embarrass him, which is funny to say because he walked away from his (parental) duties, says Raftis, a Catholic grade school teacher who lives in Barrie, north of Toronto. I didnt want to embarrass my mother, either. Raftis bottled it up, and while still in her teens developed a major ulcer. Later, she would struggle with her mental health. She confided in her future husband when they were dating, and he was supportive. But her attempt to tell her father-in-law reinforced the indictment she long expected from God-fearing society. What would you call the child of a priest? she tentatively asked him. The devils child, he replied. That clamped me up, big time, Raftis says. On the March day Raftis walked into Collinss basilica office for that scheduled meeting in 2016, the cardinal greeted her and her husband Ed warmly. They sat in high-backed chairs, a round coffee table separating Raftis and her husband from the cardinal and another priest. She asked for written acknowledgement that Van Item was her father and an apology from the church for what she considers a breach of trust. Collins didnt dispute Van Items paternity but declined her requests. He offered instead to pay for counselling. In an interview, Collins said he first became aware of Raftiss case when Coping International contacted him in August 2015, almost four months after Van Item died. He adds its the only case of a priest fathering a child hes come across during 21 years as a bishop. If a similar case comes up on his watch, Collins says his message to the priest would be unequivocal: I would tell him: leave the priesthood and become responsible for your child. When you are the co-creator of another human person, who is a child of God, you have very strong and weighty responsibilities, he adds. Collins insists that the actions of priests like Van Item shouldnt raise doubts about the vow of celibacy. It says nothing about celibacy, any more than adultery says anything about marriage. What it says in both cases is about the frailty of the human person, and their need to repent and do what is right. He sees celibacy as a tradition that dates back to Jesus and St. Paul, one that ennobles those who commit to it. Our sacred commitments, whatever they may be, make us more profoundly what God wants us to be, and they focus life in a glorious way, he adds. Read Toronto Archbishop Thomas Collins full reply to the Toronto Star. Catholic priests could happily marry until the 12th century, when ecumenical meetings known as the Lateran councils banned them from doing so. According to the Vaticans secretary of state, Archbishop Pietro Parolin, the ban wasnt strictly enforced until the Council of Trent in the 16th century. Eastern rites within the Roman Catholic Church, such as the Ukrainian Greek Catholic Church, allow married men to become priests. And married Anglican priests who convert and become Roman Catholic priests can remain married. But celibacy remains a mandatory vow for seminarians entering the Roman Catholic priesthood, and a topic of heated debate as the number of priests declines worldwide. Pope Franciss predecessor, the now retired Benedict XVI, called celibacy for priests a sign of full devotion to the Lord and repeatedly insisted it was here to stay. Francis has been less categorical. He has raised the possibility of ordaining married men as priests. And before becoming pope, he described celibacy as a matter of tradition, rather than dogma. It can change, he added. In the meantime, the Vatican has failed to recognize the children of priests, despite striking modern examples. In 2012, Los Angeles Bishop Gabino Zavala resigned after acknowledging he was the father of two teenage children. In 2006, a Vatican investigation revealed that Mexican priest Marcial Maciel Degollado, founder of the Legionaires of Christ order, had fathered several children with two women and sexually abused seminarians. In 2001, the National Catholic Reporter published the contents of several reports by womens religious orders, describing the sexual abuse of nuns by priests in some two dozen countries. Pressure is mounting for the church to hold such priests accountable as parents. In France, Anne-Marie Mariani founded in 2012 an organization called the Children of Silence, which supports the sons and daughter of priests. Her parents fell in love in Algeria in the 1950s, when her father was a priest and her mother a nun. Shes written three letters to Pope Francis calling on him to ease the emotional burden of children like her with a gesture of recognition. Children of priests are everywhere on Earth and theres not one word for them from the Vatican, says Mariani, 67, by phone from Paris. Were a reality that isnt talked about. What are they afraid of? The efforts of these children are bearing fruit. On Aug. 31 last year, the Irish Catholic Bishops Conference blazed a trail by issuing principles of responsibility regarding priests who father children while in ministry. The wellbeing of his child should be his first consideration, the bishops state. At a minimum, no priest should walk away from his responsibilities. The statement was a direct response to the efforts of Coping International, a self-help mental health resource founded by Irish psychotherapist Vincent Doyle, himself the child of an Irish priest. If a priest can take care of his flock, he can take care of his child, Doyle says. He adds that dioceses shouldnt make that more difficult by forcing these fathers to quit the priesthood, thereby leaving them unemployed. The Canadian Conference of Catholic Bishops seems unwilling to follow Irelands lead. It told the Star it is very concerned about priests who break their vow of celibacy. But the consequences of sexually active priests are strictly matters for local diocese and religious orders, according to the conferences media relations official, Deacon Rene Laprise. The Vatican may decide the matter for them. Last September, after lobbying by Doyle and an article on the issue in the Boston Globe, Vatican officials asked the Commission for the Protection of Minors to expand its mandate and develop church guidelines for the children of priests. Kilgallon personally informed Pope Francis in a subsequent meeting that the task had been given to a commission working group. Kilgallon hopes the Vatican guidelines force a sharp change in the approach of local churches, which he describes as mirroring the way they historically dealt with priests who sexually abused children. The reluctance has been the feeling that if you admit things openly it can damage the reputation of the church, it can damage peoples faith in the church, says Kilgallon, who until February was also director of the National Office for Professional Standards of the Catholic Church of New Zealand. What the (sex) abuse issue has shown is that the best way to protect the church is to protect the children, not the other way around, he adds in a phone interview from his Auckland home. In 2012, when Pope Francis was Cardinal Jorge Bergoglio of Buenos Aires, he was quoted in an interview as saying that a priest who fathers a child has to leave the ministry and should take care of that child, even if he chooses not to marry that woman. For just as that child has the right to have a mother, he has a right to the face of a father. For as long as she can remember, Chiara Villar was told to live a lie. Her biological father is Rev. Anthony Inneo, a Roman Catholic priest who is now 85. She grew up calling him Popi; he lovingly called her bella. He would visit Villar and her mother regularly in their small Niagara Falls apartment. Her earliest memories are of his smell Brut cologne mixed with cigarette smoke his shiny black shoes and his white collar, which she would playfully pull out every chance she got. In private, Inneo was a doting father; in public, a stranger. Villar was repeatedly told to keep his identity secret, but never told why. My mother and father never sat down with me and said, This is why we have to lie priests have to remain celibate. He broke a rule but we love you still, says Villar, now a 37-year-old mother of twins living in Burlington. It made for an emotionally trying childhood. In junior kindergarten she stood frozen with fear in a circle as the teacher asked each child what their parents did for a living. She doesnt remember her answer, just the pain of lying. When asked to draw family trees, shed leave one side blank. On Fathers Day, shed dutifully make a card in class and give it to Inneo the first chance she got. If he took her to the park, or showed up at her birthday party, Villar was told to say he was her uncle or a family friend. In later years shed sometimes say she was a love child. There was never a consistent story, she says. It was so confusing. The questions raised in a young girl were profound: Who is this man? Who am I? Villar says her mother, Maria Mercedes Douglas, provided few answers. Douglas only recently told her about the night in the early 1970s when she met a handsome Inneo in a Buffalo bar. He wasnt wearing his collar and introduced himself as a social worker. They kept in touch and eventually became intimately involved. Rev. Anthony Inneo Learning Inneo was a priest came as a shock to Douglas. But the single mother of a daughter from a previous relationship agreed to move into his Welland rectory. She kept house and played the piano during special church services. By the late 1970s, Inneo had moved with Douglas and her daughter to a home he built in Acapulco, Mexico. In 1981, the family moved back north Douglas to Buffalo, where she gave birth to Villar, and Inneo to a parish close by in the Diocese of St. Catharines. He was 47. He soon set Douglas and her daughters up in the Niagara Falls apartment. Then, when Villar was 9, he moved the family to a large, isolated house he built on a 35-acre property surrounded by farmland. Inneo lived in the rectory of St. Anns church in Niagara Falls. Villar and her mother moved out of the house two years later, when Douglas met the man she would marry. Every Friday, until Villar was 16, her mother dropped her off for supper with her dad. Villar would race through the front doors and glimpse her dad at the stove, usually making pasta with a cigarette in his mouth. Shed continue through dark corridors to the empty church, gazing with fascination and some fear at the statue of Jesus Christ on the cross. Hanging out at a rectory as a little girl is eerie, she says. Shed make her way upstairs to her fathers bedroom and bathroom, looking for clues about her mysterious Popi, whose parents and siblings she never got to meet. In a box in his closet she once found pictures one of her mother and father in swimsuits, another of her dad with his brother and likely his parents at a 50th wedding anniversary. She took both. I was hoarding stuff about him to make sense of our relationship, Villar says. She didnt become fully conscious about her dad being a priest, and his role in the church, until she was about 12, when priests began teaching religion classes at her Catholic school. The vow of celibacy she learned from boys laughing at how priests arent supposed to have sex. She began to wonder if people knew her secret, if they whispered it behind her back. If she didnt get a part in a school play, was it because the drama teacher knew? It destroyed my confidence, she says. Questions to her father became more pointed and visits to the rectory more tense. After one bad visit she went home, smashed a glass on the floor and used the pieces to cut herself. She was 13. She did well in school, and even became prom queen. But emotional blows came frequently. In Grade 9, as hundreds of high school students gathered in the gym for mass, Villar looked up to the altar and realized, Oh my God, my dads giving mass. She sat mortified as boys made fun of her fathers Italian accent. She rebelled. During visits she called her father a hypocrite, lied about being pregnant and planning an abortion, or blurted the most blasphemous thought that came to mind. One day she cracked open a box of communion wafers and began munching on them as if they were chips. In January 2000, Douglas sued Inneo for money she claimed he owed her from their time in Acapulco. Superior Court in Welland denied her claim but sparked an agreement that resulted in Inneo paying his daughter $500 a month during her time in university, according to court documents examined by the Star. Villar and her father stopped seeing each other for a couple of years, before resuming contact via hundreds of emails and, again, with visits. Especially in my 20s, my project was for him to turn (away) from the church and just be my dad, Villar says. There were pleas, there was crying. Inneo would say he couldnt bear the damage it would do to his reputation. During one visit, Villar implored her father to introduce her to the Inneo side of her family. He wouldnt hear of it. I am a public person with mission to accomplish, Inneo told Villar in a 2010 email. My reputation is extremely important and cannot be compromised. Please, I beg you, understand my position. You and (your husband) Jason are always welcome to my house. My house is your house. Chiara you know that popi loves you and nobody or anything will take you out of my heart. Inneo signed it, Love. Popi. Villar and her husband, Jason Mitrow, would eventually spend every Sunday having breakfast with Inneo at the rural home he built. She would often find him watching hours of video he shot of her as an infant. Im seeing this video footage of this man who seems like a really amazing dad to this baby, Villar says of the first time she saw the films. What happened? She surreptitiously digitized one of the films and keeps it as a prized possession. A warm relationship developed during the Sunday visits, but the pain of not being acknowledged openly by her father didnt subside. And by 2012, Inneo was experiencing memory loss. By his bedside he always had a big picture of me, Villar says. Our last visit I said to him, Hey Popi, whos that pretty girl there? He said to me, Oh, shes really special to me. Her name is Chiara and her mom wanted to abort her. And I told her mom not to and shes been close to me ever since. The last time she saw him, in November 2015, Inneo was in a nursing home. She showed him pictures of his two granddaughters and told him she loved him. He did not recognize me one bit, she says. I love this man, yet I am so deeply hurt by the secrecy that comes with growing up as a daughter of a Roman Catholic priest, Villar says. Margaret Jong, vice-chancellor of the Diocese of St. Catharines, said the diocese is not aware of any priests in ministry at present who have children. Referring specifically to Inneo and Villar, Jong added: Due to the historic nature of the troubling case there is no additional credible information that we can provide relating to that specific case. Read Margaret Jongs full reply to the Toronto Star. Writing on behalf of Bishop Gerard Paul Bergie, Jong said the diocese does not have a policy about priests who father children. If the bishop learned that a priest had fathered a child, he would want to ensure that the priest take responsibility for his child, Jong said. Of course, parental obligations would take precedence over responsibilities to the church. In most cases, if a priest wanted to pursue a relationship and have a family, he would voluntarily leave ministry, rather than leaving it to his bishop to make the decision to remove him from ministry. A Polish bishop, acting on an anonymous villagers letter, sent investigators to Regina Kowalskas home. The bishops inquisitors confronted the frightened woman: was the local Roman Catholic priest the father of her two young sons? Kowalska placed her right hand on a crucifix. She swore he was not. She lied to protect the priest who begged her not to tell the truth. My mum was so conflicted, says her younger son, Janusz Kowalski, now 54 and living in Vancouver. I couldnt imagine that moment . . . In her mind, the church was her life and here she is, lying on the cross. She did that, says her son, because the priest she loved promised to take care of her and their children. That pledge, like his mothers heart, would be broken. Regina Kowalska was the youngest of 12 siblings in Samborowo, a farming community in northern Poland. Shed dreamed of becoming a nun and often volunteered at the church. There, the teenager caught the eye of Rev. Boleslaw Petlicki, more than 20 years her senior. Their illicit romance required subterfuge. Petlicki would sneak from the rectory, quietly put a ladder to the girls second-floor window to steal a kiss or more. The villagers clued in when the teens belly grew. The whole village turned against her because (they thought) how dare this young bitch seduce our priest? says Kowalski, noting his mother was only 19 when she gave birth. Jozef Kowalski was born first in October of 1962. Janusz, also fathered by Petlicki, arrived 14 months later. (The boys surnames are the masculine version of their mothers Kowalski.) Janusz Kowalski says its difficult for Canadians to imagine the shame and humiliation his mother endured. Reginas own family was angry with her. When she was pregnant with Janusz, her mother pressured her to abort her grandchild. Imagine abortion in Catholic Poland in the 60s. This is a big no-no, says Kowalski. But the reason was it looks bad on the priest. This resonates in my mums life (where) the church was more important than family. Kowalska provided for her boys she was a professional cook but she also spun lies to safeguard Petlickis reputation. In their early years, she told her sons their fictitious father died in a bus crash and that Petlicki was their uncle. Boleslaw Petlicki When Kowalski was 6, the priest bought his mother a two-bedroom home far from their village. Petlicki told Regina that hed ask for a transfer to work closer to the family. It never happened. Hed visit every few months, with most stays ending in arguments. There were rumours of another woman and another child. The priest came less often over the years, and the pair broke up. Kowalski was disappointed to learn at 13 that Petlicki was his biological father. He wasnt fond of the man who destroyed my mums life and abused his post by having an affair. Still, he has come to better understand his mothers devotion to Petlicki, who died in 2006, as having that religious experience of being close to a priest. In Poland, in that time and it still continues, having a priest in the family is like a huge blessing, he says. A second priest came into Reginas life, one closer to her age. Hed visit, enjoy her superb cooking and spend time with her sons. It made her happy. But the priests frequent calls were actually to see Kowalski, who is gay. Kowalski said one day he had a blow-up with his mother and told her of their close relationship. He was about 17 and expected his mother to explode. Instead, she asked that nothing physical occur with the priest because we have to save him for the church. Kowalski did not inform his mother that he and the priest were intimate. When Kowalski later ended things, his mother was upset because the priest stopped visiting. Again, church was more important for her than family itself, Kowalski says. He adds her piety came at a personal cost. I would see some of those very soft moments when she would completely burst into tears to a Polish song when the words would go, I know very well what being lonely means, he says. She did suffer from not having support, not having a loving person beside her, not having a normal life. Regina Kowalska At 53, Regina Kowalska married for the first time after reconnecting with an old friend. Janusz, whod immigrated to Canada in 1989, was her best man. In a decision that surprised her son, she and her husband moved back to Samborowo. Kowalska died in January, at 74. Janusz Kowalski flew to the community that once shunned his mother. On short notice, about 100 mourners attended her funeral, which he says would have pleased her. The Kowalski brothers sorted through their mothers belongings and came across a trove of faded letters between her and Petlicki. They were sent when their parents still lived in the village, when a future together seemed possible. The world as Susan Zopf knew it began collapsing one day after school in Edmonton, when her older sister taunted the 12-year-old: Guess what? Your fathers a priest. Zopfs mother confirmed it. She had an affair with the familys parish priest, Rev. Albert Andreatta, while he counselled her and husband Alfred through a troubled patch in their marriage. The young girl absorbed the news: Alfred Zopf, whom she thought was her dad, died when she was 8. Now Zopf had a new dad. A secret one. She was shattered. This is my experience of having a father, then not having a father, then finding out he wasnt my father, then finding out all the lies from the moment I was born, says Zopf, now 43 and a single mother of three young children living in Camrose, Alta. Andreattas paternity was safeguarded by her mother, who feared being shunned by their close, pious Catholic community. Zopf says shes telling her story now because shes tired of the lies spread to protect others, including the church without recognition of the crushing impact on her. This is about me and my relationship with my spirituality, the church, the spiritual abuse and all the other abuse that comes from it, she says, noting she no longer attends mass. Zopf met Andreatta once at her mothers insistence, shortly after she learned the truth. She, her mother and a trusted school friend drove to Surrey, B.C., where Andreatta was pastor at a local parish. Zopf recalls she was mortified at having to sit in a restaurant beside the old priest whod been in his 50s her mother, about 28 when Zopf was conceived. Rev. Albert Andreatta (SURREY LEADER) She doesnt remember much of the conversation, other than he shared medical history details, but was certain he knew that he was my father. The two never connected again. Zopfs mother declined to be interviewed for this story. Her daughter asked that her mothers first name not be used. The Andreatta revelation sparked Zopfs anger during her teenaged years. She felt like an unwanted child. She learned that Alfred Zopf had a vasectomy years before her 1975 birth; he knew Andreatta fathered the baby girl. (The Zopfs divorced two years before Alfreds death.) Susan says Alfred was not a mean-spirited man but he didnt bond with her because I was just that constant reminder of betrayal. After Alfred Zopf died, Andreatta never offered the family support. Not a single Christmas card was sent, recalls Susan. As a human being, he should have stepped up, she says of the priest. As a man of God, he should have stepped up. Shame on him. Shame on the church. Andreatta, an American who died in 1989, belonged to the Salesians of Don Bosco, a religious order with a chapter in San Francisco. In May 2016, Coping International, through its founder Doyle, contacted the Salesians on Zopfs behalf to discover more about Andreatta. In response, the orders health adviser phoned Zopf to discuss her case then referred her back to the Salesians. Zopf was not contacted by the chapters superior, Rev. Ted Montemayor, until this March. In a phone interview, Montemayor says theres no record of Andreatta reporting he had a child. However, he says hes sympathetic to Zopfs situation. The minute youre a priest and youre in a position of counselling or spiritual direction or whatever it is, obviously there is some power involved, says Montemayor. So to that extent, if theres hurt and obviously the daughter is going through a lot or has gone through a lot then for that hurt, for that wound, we are sorry that that has happened. Montemayor says Zopfs experience has prompted his order to establish guidelines about parental responsibilities for priests. Zopf says Catholic dioceses and religious orders need to go beyond offering apologies and free counselling and take strong action to provide for mothers and their children. She wants priests who become fathers to be made to fulfil their parental responsibilities, whether they remain priests or not. This is a major human rights violation, says Zopf. Women are just left and abandoned with a baby. In 1966, France Bedard gave birth to a son fathered by the local parish priest. She was 18, and reluctantly gave him up for adoption. She had started working a year earlier as a live-in maid in the presbytery of a parish in St-Marc-des-Carrieres, a village 50 kilometres west of Quebec City. One night, Rev. Armand Therrien pulled her into his room. I said, No, no, no, Bedard, 70, says in a phone interview from her home in Longueuil, near Montreal. France Bedard (Erick Labbe/Le Soleil) He put his hand over my mouth so I couldnt scream. He said if you scream the (other) priest will hear. I immediately felt guilty. I told him, Im a virgin, Ive never known a man. He said, Tonight youll find out what a man is. Traumatized and ashamed, Bedard knew shed get no comfort from what she describes as an abusive, dysfunctional and church-fearing family. The Quiet Revolution that would shake off the dominance of the Catholic Church in Quebec society had yet to leave its mark. She kept her sexual assault a secret and continued working at the presbytery. Bedard says Therrien, who died in 2008, preyed on her vulnerability and lack of family support to eventually seduce her into an intimate relationship. She became pregnant, and rejected Therriens suggestion of an abortion. She would see her son again 30 years after the adoption, after a determined search. His life had been difficult, troubled by alcohol and drug abuse. By then Bedard was married with three children. In 2005, she approached the Archdiocese of Quebec and requested damages. When it refused, she went to police, and Therrien was charged with rape and gross indecency. A court-ordered DNA test proved he was the father of Bedards son. Therrien died days before his trial. Bedard then sued the archdiocese and Therriens estate for $200,000 in damages. In the widely publicized Quebec City trial, the archdioceses lawyer accused Bedard of lying about the rape, insisting the child was the result of a consensual love affair. In 2012, Quebec Superior Court Justice Edouard Martin noted in his ruling that no one can remain insensitive to the distress (Bedard) lived through. The moral wound remains painful. The reverend Therrien seduced the claimant. The pregnancy, the birth of the baby and the forced consent to adoption followed. The claimant suffered a grave injustice, regardless of how the first sexual relation occurred. She had a clear right to reparation of the damage. Yet Martin ruled against Bedard, saying the three-year statute of limitations for civil suits in such cases had expired. The Court of Appeal arrived at the same decision in 2014. Bedard doesnt see the rulings as a defeat. Her case encouraged others who were sexually abused by priests to come forward. In 2008, she co-founded what is now called the Committee for Victims of Priests. Partly due to her case, Quebec changed the statute of limitations for civil suits in sexual assaults to 30 years. Quebecs Liberal government is now under pressure to remove all time limits in such cases. In my heart, I won, she says. The pipe-smoking priest with the heavy Dutch accent stood at the hospital window, cradling his newborn daughter, Michelle, in his arms. Rev. Charles Van Item struggled with a decision. Joanne Johnston, his lover and the wife of Van Items good friend made it for him. My mum said he offered to leave the priesthood, take her, me, my two older sisters, and run away, says Michelle Raftis, Van Items daughter. My mother turned him down. She knew he wasnt in love with her. I think he was very happy my mother said no, the Barrie schoolteacher continued. I think that was the last thing he wanted. Joannes husband, Gerard, knew of the affair. He also knew the baby wasnt his but stayed in the rocky marriage. He allowed Van Item to continue his regular visits to the Johnstons rambling Pickering home after the baby was born. Charles Van Item He came for dinners and everything, he continued to do that, says Raftis, who recalls Van Items presence and that Gerard Johnston didnt balk. How awkward would that have been? It went on for years until I found out. Gerard had met Van Item when both were students at a seminary in Toronto. Joanne was training to become a nun. Gerard and Joanne met at a social event, fell in love and walked away from their religious studies to get married. Raftis, at 13, discovered the truth about her biological father from a family friend who blurted it out at a restaurant dinner with a small group. By then, the Johnstons had separated. (Both are now deceased). She vividly remembers her mothers warning to protect the priest: You cant tell anyone. You can never have a father-daughter relationship with him. You just have to go on your merry old way. And I was like, Holy s--t, Raftis says. And I didnt tell anybody. Van Item stopped visiting when he learned Raftis knew he was her father. She kept his secret and would think of him at the weirdest times. Id be standing in the schoolyard looking around, saying I wonder what they would think if they knew who my father was? she says. That popped into my mind a lot. Still does, today. Raftis didnt reconnect with Van Item until the first of her three children was born. She and Ed Raftis, her husband of 35 years, recall getting a large gift basket sent to her hospital room in Edmonton. Raftis didnt realize at first it was from Van Item. Raftis phoned the priest. She needed his medical history and realized she knew little about him: that he had been a Second World War PoW held in his native Holland, where he was tortured, for years. When in Canada, Van Item received regular shock therapy treatments, which Raftis believes were to relieve wartime trauma symptoms. Van Item and Raftis began calling each other more often. But they werent always warm chats. One of the first conversations was (him saying) I told my bishop, Raftis says, referring to Van Item telling her that hed reported her birth to the Archdiocese of Toronto. She says it felt like a pre-emptive strike in case she asked him for money. It was almost like: dont try to get anything out of me. My bishop knows, she continues, adding I didnt ask him that, I wasnt threatening him. The Raftis family moved back to Ontario in 1998, later settling in Barrie. Van Item, by then, had built a home near Orangeville, where he was a pastor at St. Timothys Parish. Hed also worked at St. Clements in Toronto. Raftis visited him a few times in Orangeville. Once, she asked for money when Ed was self-employed and she was out of work: $250 a month for two years to cover benefit payments. Van Item obliged. Raftiss roiling feelings about her father persisted guilt, frustration, anger, regret. At her husbands urging, she wrote to the then head of the Archdiocese of Toronto, Cardinal Aloysius Ambrozic, in early 2002. She wanted help in improving their father-daughter relationship. The cardinal did not respond, but Rev. Brian Clough, of the archdioceses marriage tribunal office, travelled to Barrie to meet her and her husband, according to correspondence examined by the Star. After an investigation, Clough made clear to Raftis in a letter seen by the Star that Van Item was indeed her father. He added that Cardinal Ambrozic had no objection to Raftiss desire for a closer father/daughter relationship with Van Item. Still, Raftiss visits to Orangeville were often strained. She says Van Item was cold, even around his grandchildren. One visit made her realize a deeper relationship with her father was impossible. He told her, without being asked: Im not a family man, never have been, dont want to be. That really just shut me down, says Raftis. Curious to find others like her, she began searching online, typing the words children of priests with little success. That changed in 2015 when the website Coping International popped up. Raftis connected with founder Vincent Doyle. Doyle encouraged her to seek a formal apology from the Archdiocese of Toronto. Cardinal Collins granted her a meeting, but the apology never came. Raftis says the church should develop policies that ensure priests who father children live up to their financial and emotional responsibilities. She believes the church should also rethink the mandatory vow of celibacy. Is the vow that strong? Obviously not, Raftis says. So stop saying you gotta take this vow when its not actually happening Theyre breaking it because theyre human. As for her own father, a final slap. Van Item died without anyone informing Raftis. Shed understood the priest had a close friend who was supposed to alert the Raftis family if he was seriously ill or had died. A lifelong pipe smoker, hed developed emphysema. Raftis learned of his death when she saw Van Items obituary online. Yes, it upset me. It pissed me off, she says. There was no closure but there was no beginning, either. To reach the reporters, contact mormsby@thestar.ca or scontenta@thestar.ca.This article has been updated to clarify the rules of the Ukrainian Greek Catholic Church regarding married priests. Feature writers Mary Ormsby and Sandro Contenta talk about the struggles of doing justice to the deeply personal stories of the secret Canadian children of Catholic priests who suffered from being forsaken by their fathers. Read more about: I texted [my brother] Abdullah [Kurdi] and told him to meet me downstairs for coffee. We made our way to the hotels restaurant, with its big-screen TVs broadcasting the latest horrifying news from Syria. The majority of the hotel guests registered little more than a passing interest in the unfolding events on the news. They seemed entirely removed from all forms of suffering and pain. Even though we were in the Middle East under those impossibly blue skies, the weather so hot it felt like a foreign world, a world entirely removed from the humble one we had grown up in, and even more so from the brutal reality of war and poverty. We sat in silence again, overhearing the fashionable tourists and business people ordering their expensive breakfasts, breakfasts that cost more than a refugee makes for an entire week of back-breaking labour. What are we doing here? I asked Abdullah. Sister, dont you think I ask myself that question every minute? We could write a book. Youre right. We should. For Rehanna and the boys. For all the innocent people victimized by war. His face turned ashen and his eyes filled with tears. I followed his gaze to the TV screen: that photograph of Alan again. Ibni. My son. Allah yerhamak ya rohi. Rest in peace, my beloved, Abdullah said. Then he turned to me. I need to get out of here. The midday heat was like a brick wall, but the streets were quiet. We didnt speak, we just let our tears run. After a while, we sat down on a bench in a square with a splashing fountain. As the sun shone down on us, I tried to help Abdullah open up. Abdullah, what exactly happened that night? You need to talk about it. Abdullah was silent for a while. Then he spoke. The waves were too strong. I did everything I could to save them. But it wasnt enough. I couldnt save them, Fatima. Abdullah put his head in his hands and started to sob. Mitl raffit alain. It happened in the blink of an eye. They were gone. I knelt down on the ground in front of him and hugged his shins to my chest, his bony knees pressing into my collarbone. I cant breathe, he said. No one can understand our pain unless they walk in our shoes. I let go and stood up. I took his hand and pulled him up from that bench. We walked back to the hotel and Abdullah went to his room. I wondered if I had gone too far, asked too much. But slowly, over the following days, he shared more details with me, and eventually I was able to see just how traumatic that night had been. The boat was too small for all of us, Abdullah said. The bow was pointed, so there wasnt much space on the floor of the boat. Everyone was quiet as we boarded. Alan was still fast asleep, and Ghalib was half asleep. The Turkish man whom Abdullah had met earlier was at the helm, speaking in gestures as the refugees boarded. Rehanna and I sat down at the bow. Ghalib was in my lap, and Alan was in Rehannas. Right away, the waves were slamming against the boat. It woke up Ghalib and Alan. The sensation of the spray of water on his face made Alan laugh. It made Ghalib cry. I held Ghalib to my heart, saying, la tkhaf baba habibi. Dont be scared, sweetheart. The waves were so strong and powerful, and the boat was so overloaded that it started to take on water. People started screaming. We were like rag dolls against the thudding waves. In panic, the driver dived off the boat. I was sitting close to the front, but I could reach out with one hand and hold on to the steering wheel. The boat was drifting in the open sea, and I tried to steer it, but I was still holding Ghalib, and Rehanna was holding on to me too. Abdullah told me the waves overwhelmed the overloaded boat. It capsized, throwing everyone into the sea. It was pandemonium in the water. I held Ghalib and Alan and tried to corral them with one arm, and Rehanna was still holding my arm; we had our arms hooked at the elbow. I was using my legs too, trying to hold up the boys with one knee and Rehanna with the other. I kept screaming, Breathe! But the waves kept pummelling us underwater. Rehanna was the first one gone. She kept yelling, Save the kids! Then I couldnt hear her voice anymore. She was gone, just like that, Abdullah said, snapping his fingers. I could only pray that her life jacket would save her. Each time a wave knocked us underwater, I tried to get under the boys and push them up to the surface, minshan yitnafsoo, so they could breathe. But as soon I got them back to the surface, a new wave knocked them back under. I dont know how long it went on like that. There was a lot of yelling and screaming, but I didnt hear the boys make any sounds. I was yelling to myself, Dont die. Please dont die. Ya Allah saidon. Oh God, help them. Abdullah thought about trying to swim to the shore, but the current was strong and the waves were knocking him sideways; the twinkling lights of the Turkish coastline seemed too far away. He could only hope that bystanders would hear the passengers desperate cries and send a rescue boat. During one momentary break in the waves, he got a look at Ghalibs face. Ghalibs mouth was hanging open, and white froth was coming out. He wasnt breathing. His eyes were open, but they were like glass. I was frantic, trying to see Alans face too. Each time Abdullah was able to get Alans head above the water, the boy made no sound. His body was limp, his head lolling to the side. And his eyes were blank, staring. Abdullah thought that if he had a chance to do CPR, he might be able to bring Alan back from the dead. But it was impossible to do anything in that water. I held on to the boys for as long as I could, trying to keep their heads above the water. I could not bear to let them go. But I was no match for those waves. One after the other, Ghalib and Alan slipped from my grasp. It was like the sea opened its mouth and swallowed them. Rah kilshi. Everything was gone. I went crazy, thinking, I just want to die so that we can be together again. Abdullah gave up the fight and let himself sink under the water. He didnt move his arms or legs. He just wanted to sink to the bottom of the sea and drown. But he kept bobbing back up to the surface. I thought, Theyre so light. If I float, maybe theyll float too. I swam around in circles, frantically calling their names. But no one came to the surface. I was all alone. It was still dark, even with the moonlight. At some point, a searchlight found him in the ink-black sea. It was the coast guard. A helicopter also appeared. As it cast its spotlight on Abdullah, he looked around hopefully for his family for anyone. When the coast guard ship got to Abdullah, the Iraqi man who had been on his boat reached into the water and pulled him out of that sea. Marti, awladi. My wife, my kids! Abdullah yelled. He noticed a man holding a searchlight, and so he grabbed it and went to the edge of the boat, hunching down and casting light across the black water. He couldnt find them, but he couldnt stop calling out to them. The boat and the helicopter searched the waters until daylight. But then the boat began to turn back to the shore. Keep circling! yelled Abdullah. But the coast guard told him they needed to get back to the shore. I said to myself, Inshallah, theyre going to be waiting at the dock. The shock and trauma had split his mind in two, and when he saw the ambulances lined up along the street, his hope turned to dread. As soon as my feet hit that dock, I lost it. I became hysterical, hitting myself. I tore at my chest and my T-shirt ripped apart. I started running down the dock, crying their names. I got near one of the ambulances and saw an Iraqi couple from the boat. Did you find your family? No. They said, Come to the hospital. But I couldnt leave the shore. I wanted to look for my family. I went into the coast guard station, but the police said, You need treatment. Well take you to the hospital. Im not leaving without my family, I told them. I was crazy, sobbing. After maybe an hour, I convinced myself that they were alive at the hospital and that I had to get there. A police officer drove Abdullah. En route, the officer stopped to pick someone up. I think he was a mullah or a sharia lawyer, Abdullah said, but he was speaking Turkish to the policeman. I thought I heard him say, Rest in peace. I lost all hope. But then I said, No, no, no. Theyre still alive. When they got to the hospital, Abdullah didnt want to go inside. He sat outside on a bench for a while, crying and pulling at his hair. Someone from the hospital eventually came out and took him in. A police officer asked him some questions about the names of the smugglers. Where did you leave from? he asked Abdullah. When I told them where wed left from, he said, Thats right across the street from the police station. Nobody goes from there. Abdullah was asked to identify the bodies, and then later, he was given one more chance to see them after the autopsy. That last look at them will scar my heart forever and ever, Abdullah said. They lay in front of him, too white and covered in bruises and scratches. They had stitches from being autopsied. By then it was the middle of the night. Afterward, Abdullah was given the bag of his familys clothes and told to go get some sleep, as if he could ever do such a thing. I was walking down the same streets we had walked down together, but now I was alone. I called out, Where are you, Rehanna? Ghalib? Alan? I asked God, Is it just a bad dream? Please let me wake up from this nightmare. From THE BOY ON THE BEACH by Tima Kurdi. Copyright 2018 by Tima Kurdi. Reprinted by permission of Simon & Schuster Canada, a Division of Simon & Schuster, Inc. Tima Kurdi will be doing events across Canada visit www.boyonthebeachbook.ca for more details. Read more about: The weather was perfect for a court case that multinational oil company Chevron has said it would fight until hell freezes over and then out on the ice. With the city outside awash in snow and slush, their opponents four Indigenous leaders from Ecuador gathered at a press conference bare-chested and barefoot, wearing ceremonial necklaces and feather headdresses to explain why they believe an Ontario court can help redress what they call the Amazons Chernobyl. They have come on behalf of their people to seek compensation for decades of toxic oil contamination allegedly left in the Amazon by the oil company Texaco, which is now owned by Chevron. Read more: Opinion | Jennifer Wells: Ecuador villagers fight with Chevron: Right place, right cause but the wrong case? Chevron long ago liquidated all of its assets in Ecuador, and now the indigenous people are pursuing the company in court around the world attempting to get it to pay up after a court in Ecuador ruled against the company. Chevron has refused to pay, saying the decision was fraudulent. I issue a call to action for Canadian courts to bring us justice and enforce the judgement thats been made, said Domingo Peas, a member of the Achuar nation and a representative of the Confederation of Indigenous Nationalities of the Ecuadorian Amazon. On Tuesday, the indigenous leaders will make their case in the Ontario Court of Appeal that Chevron Canada should be held liable for the damages. In 1993, the Amazon Defense Coalition of Ecuador sued Chevron on behalf of the more than 30,000 indigenous people and farmers affected by the pollution. In 2011, they won a $9.5 billion (U.S.) ruling, which was later upheld by Ecuadors Supreme Court. Chevron says the Ecuador decision is invalid. The judgement against Chevron Corporation in Ecuador was the product of corruption and fraud, said Chevron spokesperson Sean Comey in a statement. The fraudulent Ecuadorian judgement should be unenforceable in any court that respects the rule of law. At the press conference in downtown Toronto Monday, Hugo Camacho, a founder of the Amazon Defense Coalition, said, To live in our area is like living in hell. Many people have died in our communities due to cancer and other diseases caused by the contamination, he added. We are still being poisoned by the oil and toxic pits that Chevron has left behind. Its in the water, the ground, the air and the animals. The Ecuadorians have found support from indigenous people in Canada, who have also been forced to deal with the legacy of pollution from resource extraction. The Assembly of First Nations passed a resolution last December calling on Canada to enforce foreign court rulings made in favour of indigenous people affected by companies operating in Canada. Former National Chief of the Assembly of First Nations Phil Fontaine, who visited the Amazon to see the pollution first hand, said the Amazonian people were some of the most courageous people he had met. Weve come to the realization that it gives us far greater strength to work together. Together, its much easier to demonstrate the seriousness of the environmental challenges that both of us face from destructive and ill-considered resource development projects, Fontaine said. Rafael Pandam, a member of the Achuar nation and president of the Indigenous Amazonian Parliament of Ecuador added: We are not here as foreigners, we are here as brothers because there are no borders. Just as transnational corporations are united among themselves, so to here in Canada we are unified among indigenous communities. No one has denounced or brought Chevron to justice, Pandam added. If we win this case here in Canada, it will set a historical precedent across the world. We will do this all together indigenous people, lawyers and scientists and it will be a historical moment. Read more about: Jerry Brown, the California governor who was in town to talk climate change with Premier Kathleen Wynne, was snubbed Monday by the Progressive Conservatives, who refused to allow him to address the Ontario legislature. Wynne noted her governments rebuffed request after holding a fireside chat with Brown, a leader whose states economy is the sixth largest in the world, bigger than that of all of Canada. We were hoping that Governor Brown would be able to speak to the legislature, Wynne told reporters. The Conservatives blocked that because I think, essentially, they dont want to talk about climate change. They dont want to talk about that problem. They dont want to talk about solutions. And that is extremely short-sighted. Brown was instead introduced during question period, receiving a standing ovation from all parties. A spokesperson for the Progressive Conservatives said dignitaries come to Queens Park all the time and arent afforded the opportunity to address the legislature. Wynne held a campaign-style event alongside the California governor on the taxpayer dime, said Simon Jefferies. At this event, (she) bragged about Ontarios expensive cap-and-trade carbon tax that makes life harder for Ontario families and our economy more uncompetitive. Weeks ago, the Liberals said, they approached the opposition parties about allowing Brown to speak in the legislature, a move that requires unanimous consent. The Tories declined. Dignitaries to address the legislature have included former PC premier Ernie Eves in 2005, Lieutenant Governor James Bartleman in 2006, Japanese Ambassador Kaoru Ishikawa in 2011, and Quebec Premier Philippe Couillard in 2015. Ontario and Californias climate change actions are linked alongside Quebecs in a shared carbon market, where polluters can buy extra and sell unused carbon credits. So far, Ontario has brought in $2.4 billion, which it has used to fund environmentally friendly initiatives. The federal government requires every province to have a carbon pricing system by the end of the year. Ontario PC Leader Doug Ford has said he opposes any carbon tax and is willing to go to court to fight it. The Ontario PCs have been clear we will scrap Kathleen Wynnes carbon tax scheme, Jefferies said. We will put money back into the pockets of Ontario taxpayers and stand up for our job creators. Read more about: Putting meat on the bones of a promise to ease taxes for the poor, Doug Ford says he would provide an income-tax credit for minimum-wage earners if a Progressive Conservative government is elected on June 7. Ford, who has pledged to freeze the benchmark at $14 by axing the Wynne governments plan to raise it to $15 in January, said his tax move would save about $817 a year for a full-time, minimum-wage earner making $28,000 over 50 weeks. Our plan is to put money back into your pocket instead of the governments, put money back into the businesses pockets, so they can thrive and get ahead and hire people, he told supporters Monday at an Ottawa restaurant. But the Canadian Centre for Policy Alternatives said minimum wage workers would be better off with the $1 hourly increase because most dont pay income taxes thanks to deductions for child care, dependents and medical expenses. What youre comparing is the increase in the minimum wage versus the reduction in taxes, economist Sheila Block said in an interview Monday, saying the $1 minimum wage increase is worth $1,950 a year before taxes for a 37.5-hour week. You still wind up being about $1,100 ahead with the move to $15 rather than with this tax credit. Conservatives and some business groups have argued the steep rise in the minimum wage to $14 this year, from $11.40, has hurt small employers. They also contend the additional $1 increase is a disincentive for hiring more staff and could lead to job cuts. Previously, Ford had said income tax would not apply to Ontarians earning less than $30,000 a year and accused Premier Kathleen Wynne of raising the minimum wage so the government could bring in more tax revenue. At that income level, Block said, 2015 statistics from the Canada Revenue Agency show 4.9 million Ontarians who had total incomes of $30,000 or less filed taxes, with two-thirds paying no income tax. The rest faced an average tax bill of $485. NDP Leader Andrea Horwath, who would also raise the minimum wage to $15 next year, dismissed Fords pledge as bumper-sticker talk. People who are making the minimum wage dont even pay taxes at this point in time and (under) Doug Fords plan by driving down the minimum wage even further theyre not going to be in the position to be paying income taxes in the first place, she said. With files from Robert Benzie Read more about: This just in Ontarios Tories have ceded first place to the opposition New Democrats. Not in polls, but platforms. With the June 7 election just weeks away, Andrea Horwaths NDP is first out of the gate with a fully-costed, 97-page catalogue of campaign promises if they form Ontarios next government. Or a shopping list, should the election produce a minority government that requires NDP support to prop it up. Caring and sharing (as in taxing) top the list cheaper child care (averaging $12 a day, details to come); partial pharmacare for all ages; denticare for those who need it; and more health care spending; all bankrolled by higher taxes on the rich and corporations. Lower hydro rates also rank high. Read more: Horwath promises NDP will give Ontario full dental coverage, convert student loans to grants Opinion | Can the Ontario Liberals spending spree keep them in the election race until June 7? NDP vows to do better on child care than free preschool care If all this sounds familiar, it is last months Liberal budget was similar, but different. Premier Kathleen Wynne promised free child care for pre-schoolers, financed by even bigger deficit spending than the NDP, but the Liberals final campaign platform remains a closely guarded secret. In fact, Ontarios Progressive Conservatives led the way on ideas last November when they unveiled The Peoples Guarantee, but their campaign policies are now in limbo. As soon as Doug Ford replaced Patrick Brown as party leader last month, he suspended the PC platform until further notice leaving the field wide open for New Democrats to get a head start. To their credit, the NDP is attempting to set the agenda. As theyve been trying to do ever since Horwaths flawed 2014 campaign, which famously deviated from the partys ideals and let Wynne eat their lunch on the left. Now, the NDP is back back to their roots as a progressive force. And backed by a leader who increasingly looks like shes on a roll, even if she remains stuck in the polls. Its about time, because Horwath is running out of time. This is her third provincial campaign, and nearly nine years after becoming leader she is now the political veteran facing off against a rookie Ford and a wounded Wynne. It has been a slow climb, but judging by her highly charged speech to party supporters Monday roused by the throbbing beat of Young & Wild (by the Strumbellas) the NDP leader is finding her mojo. With mojo comes the magic of campaign math, which can sometimes be an optical illusion. While Horwath may gain traction with soaring rhetoric, her platform remains slippery in spots brimming with good ideas on caring, but burdened by a black hole on hydro promises that sound too good to be true. Like the Liberals with their ambitious budgetary spending, the New Democrats stress caring while downplaying paying for it. Horwaths child care plan will cost $12 a day on average (free for household incomes below $40,000), but what if your family income exceeds, say, $85,000? Cant say just yet, but well get back to you once were in government. How much less will hydro cost you? Trust us, we can do what no other party in power has ever done with hydroelectric power reduce hydro costs (and therefore rates) by an unprecedented 30 per cent. The NDP keeps blaming rising hydro rates on the Liberals partial privatization of Hydro One a logical leap, given that the utilitys transmission rates remain independently regulated. In another leap (of faith), Horwath vows to buy back what Wynne sold for more than $9 billion, and claims she can do it without costing taxpayers a penny: shell merely repurpose whats left of the dividend stream from the governments remaining stake in Hydro One to buy the rest of it back. Were it only so easy to buy companies using dividends. But the shell game gets worse, for those precious dividend streams are already accounted for in future budgetary spending, so if the money is repurposed to buy back Hydro One, a future NDP government would have to replace the lost funds to pay for ongoing budget items. The Hydro One buy-back may be Horwaths Achilles heel as she tries to push an otherwise plausibly bold platform on child care. The NDP fiscal plan calls for a budget deficit of roughly half the $6.7 billion projected in the Liberal budget in 2018-19, thanks to higher taxes on the rich and corporations a party perennial, but fair enough. May the best platform prevail in the coming campaign. That is, if campaign platforms matter anymore. They surely do for New Democrats, who were first off the mark Monday; and the Liberals have promised one soon (based on their spring budget). Well see soon enough whether Fords PCs and voters are content to rely on campaign populism as a substitute for substance. Martin Regg Cohn is a columnist based in Toronto covering Ontario politics. Follow him on Twitter: @reggcohn Read more about: Doug Ford is stepping up his war of words against Kathleen Wynne, vowing to unleash outside auditors on her if he wins the June election. Echoing Donald Trump's lock her up mantra about Hillary Clinton, Ford told a crowd in Brockville on Tuesday that Wynnes Liberals are up to no good. The rookie Progressive Conservative leader said that if he is elected, hell commission an outside audit of Wynnes reckless spending on his first day in office. If Kathleen Wynne tried to pull these kinds of shady tricks in private life, then there would be a few more Liberals joining David Livingston in jail, Ford said. Livingston, the last chief of staff to former premier Dalton McGuinty, is free on bail after being sentenced last week to four months in jail for the wiping of computer hard drives related to the cancelled gas plants affair. While neither McGuinty nor Wynne was implicated in the investigation or subsequent trial, Ford said the conviction demonstrated the need for responsibility, accountability, and trust in government after almost 15 years of Liberal rule. Ontario deserves answers about how big Kathleen Wynnes mess really is, he said. Ford cited auditor general Bonnie Lysyk, who has been critical of the Liberals accounting and spending practices, but also promised outside auditors would probe the entirety of Kathleen Wynnes fiscal mess and follow the money to see how your tax dollars are really being spent. Ford who has bristled at being compared to Trump is unhappy that Wynne and her ministers are promoting her Liberal governments March 28 budget at events across the province. Coincidentally, it was at his news conference during the budgets media lock-up that the PC leader first publicly used the incarceration imagery. The only people that should be locked up are the Liberals for this budget, he quipped to reporters. In the Legislature, Tory MPP Jim Wilson said the Liberals are clearly campaigning on the taxpayer dime each and every day. Every year, we bring in a budget, Wynne countered. We go out into the province and talk about that budget. That is what we are doing. That is what their party did. That is what the (NDP government) did. That is what governments do, to make sure people understand what is in the budget so that they will know what to expect, she said. But the premier took a partisan shot of her own at both Wilson and Ford. I completely understand why he doesnt want me to be talking about a fair-wage policy in this province. I completely understand why he doesnt want me to be talking about childcare, care for seniors or more funding for hospitals, said Doug Ford has been named leader of Ontarios Progressive Conservatives. The former Toronto city councillor says the other leadership candidates will play a critical role if the party forms government after the June election. (The Canadian Press) None of those things would be possible under their leader, Doug Ford, because hes going to cut across government. Post-election audits are not unusual at Queens Park. When the Liberals first took office in 2003, they hired former provincial auditor Erik Peters, who had retired two weeks earlier, to examine the books of the just-defeated Conservative government. Read more about: Ontario should revamp its OHIP+ pharmacare plan to make families with private drug coverage use their own plans first, freeing up cash to fund expensive medications for children and young adults with rare diseases in a common sense approach, says a patient advocacy group. The Canadian Cystic Fibrosis Treatment Society pitched the idea to the major political parties Tuesday with an eye to the June 7 provincial election, arguing that making private plans the first payer for prescriptions instead of taxpayers would keep public coverage in place for families without drug plans. OHIP+ came into effect Jan. 1 and provides 4,400 medicines to Ontarians aged 24 and under for no charge, regardless of income, partly in a bid to push other provinces and the federal government into a national pharmacare plan. Premier Kathleen Wynne has promised to extend OHIP+ to seniors 65 and over if her government is re-elected. The Wynne government is wasting millions to pay for medications that were already being covered, Chris MacLeod of the Canadian Cystic Fibrosis Treatment Society told a news conference, where he was accompanied by a 15-year-old girl whose family cant afford the medication she needs. Reinvest those savings to cover medications kids cannot get access to now, urged MacLeod, who said his own health has improved dramatically since he got on a groundbreaking cystic fibrosis drug called Kalydeco through private insurance at his law firm, Cambridge LLP. The teen, Victoria Vigneau of Bradford, said she deals with constant and everyday pain from inflammation and mucous in her lungs, causing her to miss more than two months of school last year with four hospitalizations and extreme fatigue from normal activities. Her mother, Carol Vigneau, said Orkambi, the drug her daughter needs for her genetic variant of CF, isnt covered on the familys private insurance or through OHIP+. Its a life-saving drug for Victoria to let her have a normal life, she said. MacLeod did not have an estimate of the potential savings from his idea. Governments have struggled for years with pressures to fund expensive new generations of targeted drugs that can provide health breakthroughs for a wide variety of rare diseases. Ontario provides some such medications through its exceptional access program. But the lack of widespread coverage has prompted lobby groups to hold occasional news conferences seeking help, often focusing on the plight of a handful of patients. The sticker price for Orkambi is $250,000 a year, but that could be lowered if the province negotiated a bulk deal with the manufacturer Vertex Pharmaceuticals, as was done by the government with Vertex-made Kalydeco several years ago after pressure from the family of another young girl, MacLeod said. Progressive Conservative MPP Jeff Yurek, a pharmacist, raised the issue with Wynne in the Legislature, saying the government is moving too slowly to improve access to medications for rare diseases outside of the exceptional access program. I understand that there are other medications that will need to go on the formulary, replied Wynne, who did not make any specific commitments, but accused the Conservatives of planning health care cuts as part of party leader Doug Fords commitment to cut four cents of every dollar in provincial spending, or about $6 billion. For his part, Yurek could not say whether a Conservative government would make the change to OHIP+ that MacLeod requested, but he said it plans to find savings in the health care system to reinvest in spending on drugs for rare diseases. The PC party has no intention of cutting OHIP+, he added. NDP Leader Andrea Horwath said her party, if elected, would provide 125 common drugs free of charge to Ontarians with no age restrictions, and would keep the exceptional access program in place. Read more about: HAVANAThrough the Space Age, the fall of the Berlin Wall and the Internet era, Cubans held one constant: A Castro ruled the nation. That is about to change. Raul Castro, 86, is expected to step aside as Cubas president this week, ending the epochal run of two brothers who sent shock waves through 20th-century politics. Nearly two decades into this century, and less than two years after Fidel Castros death, his brothers exit from Cubas top job leaves this insular island at a crossroads, weighing how fast, if at all, to embrace change. Read more: Raul Castro denies responsibility for attacks on diplomats in Cuba, clouding investigation Castros death, Trumps election might lead to more Cuban sea crossings This is an important moment for Cuba, but the truth is, nobody knows what to expect, said Camilo Condis, general manager of Artecorte, a community project in Havana. I mean, other than Fidel and Raul, who is there? You didnt really know anyone else. In a session of the National Assembly opening Wednesday and probably culminating with a succession vote on Thursday members are expected to replace Castro with Miguel Diaz-Canel. Born after the revolution, Diaz-Canel, 57, grew up in the shadow of the olive-drab-wearing guerrilleros who remain a powerful if aging force in Cubas decision-making apparatus. He is viewed as a consensus builder unlikely to push for quick or radical reform. Castro has laid the groundwork for his exit for years, and the passing of the torch is highly symbolic. When Raul took the reins from Fidel in 2008, a Castro was still in charge. This time, the succession amounts to a tricky effort to build a new generation of leaders without the Castro name, a move considered essential to cementing the central role of Cubas communist system. This is about institutionalizing the regime, said Jorge Dominguez, a Cuba expert and professor of government at Harvard University. Its about Raul Castro saying, I am president, but I have a term, and then someone else is going to lead . . . . If you are someone who really wants the regime to endure, its what Raul needs to do. The transition is happening at a time when a decade-long opening under Castro has already begun to alter the fabric of Cuban life. Access to the internet is still subpar, but hotspots are more widely available than ever before. There are now more than 5 million cellphones in this nation of 11.5 million people. More than 550,000 Cubans work in the private sector. After years in which Cubans were forced to obtain permission to leave the country, Cubans these days can travel freely. It is now possible to buy and sell real estate. Yet in a country where streets are still swimming in 1950s Chevys and Fords, Cuban life can feel stuck in time, and plagued with problems that never really went away. Locals talk of periodic shortages eggs, potatoes, toilet paper. In a potential sign of discontent, turnout in recent municipal elections stood at 82.5 per cent the lowest in four decades, and a stunningly low number in a country where citizens face high pressure to vote. Perhaps not surprisingly in a one-party state, few here are openly clamouring for radical political change. And in an important sense, this weeks transition will not mean the end of Castro leadership, since Raul will remain the head of the powerful Communist Party. But some are testing the boundaries of official tolerance through independent-minded blogs and social media. More and more Cubans are calling for a path to economic prosperity. That desire for advancement is presenting Cubas ruling elite with a growing challenge: how and whether to more closely follow in the footsteps of communist societies like China and Vietnam, which have managed to ring-fence their one-party systems while vastly expanding the private sector. Cubas economic opening has been far slower, and has unfolded in fits and starts. We may find that the only way to preserve the achievements of the revolution is to change the country in substantial ways, said Carlos Alzugaray, a former Cuban diplomat based in Havana. Cubas National Assembly will pick Castros successor, with Diaz-Canel seen by insiders as by far the most likely successor. An engineer often seen toting a tablet computer, he has been serving as Cubas first vice president. Though he lacks the Castro name the most senior member of government among the Castro brothers children is Rauls son, Col. Alejandro Castro Espin, who heads counterintelligence Diaz-Canel is without doubt blessed by Raul Castro. He has been a constant presence at the side of his reform-minded mentor. But he has also curried favor with the hard-liners, who have largely succeeded in stalling a more drastic opening here. Some Cubans hope that, given his relatively young age, Diaz-Canel may be willing to take economic reforms further than the Castros ever did. Yet he is also viewed as a party ideologue who was skeptical of the thaw with the United States under former president Barack Obama and whose position on freedom of expression appears to have hardened in recent years. In a video leaked last year, for instance, Diaz-Canel is shown in a party meeting threatening to block a website for acting against the revolution. The people are committed to socialism and the historic generation that led us here, Diaz-Canel told journalists last month. Cuba watchers are waiting to see any shifts this week in the makeup of the nations ruling councils of ministers and state, and are particularly keen to see whether senior figures in the revolution, now in their 80s, remain in place. The transition is complicated by a seesaw in U.S.-Cuba relations. The thaw under Obama has given way to a new frost under U.S. President Donald Trump. After allegations of a mysterious attack that left nearly two dozen U.S. diplomats stationed in Cuba with brain injuries, Washington has left only a skeleton crew at its embassy in Havana. The United States is now forcing Cubans looking for visas to apply in Guyana, nearly 2,000 miles away, putting the brakes on a host of personal trips and cultural exchanges. The islands nascent private sector, meanwhile, is under strain, because of actions by both the Cuban and U.S. governments. Cuban officials last year put a temporary halt on issuing new licenses for private businesses, arguing that time was needed to ensure that the islands new crop of entrepreneurs were paying taxes and operating within the law. The freeze was seen as motivated by influential party officials still highly skeptical of change. At the same time, Cuban officials say Trump administration policies have curtailed the flow of American tourists, who had begun to stream into the country in larger numbers under Obama. Cubans like Julia de la Rosa and Silvio Ortega see themselves as caught in the middle of the two countries policies. In the first few months of 2017, Americans accounted for nearly 70 percent of the visitors at the 10-room home that de la Rosa and Ortega rent out on Airbnb a number that has fallen to about 10 percent in recent months. You have to understand, when Obama came to Cuba [in 2016], people here thought he was like a movie star, and that maybe the problem of relations would be solved, de la Rosa said. But now we find thats not the case, and we in the private sector are the ones paying. And yet, at least one line of communication is still flourishing: the one between Cubans on the island and Cuban exiles and their children in the United States. In recent years, more and more Cuban islanders including some who still at least partly embrace the revolution have been traveling to cities like Miami, bringing a diversity of political opinion to U.S. Cuban culture. Young Cuban Americans, meanwhile, continue to discover their roots through visits to the island, sparking a growing dialogue across the Straits of Florida. Andrew Hevia, a 33-year-old half-Cuban Miamian and co-producer of the Academy Award-winning film Moonlight, for instance, is heading to Havana this month for the first time. His visit is being organized by CubaOne, a nonprofit that has brought more than 100 Cuban Americans to the island since 2016. My grandmother, who passed a number of years ago, would have been the one who had the most problems with me going, he said. But, he added, the conversation in Miami has changed about going to Cuba . . . maybe its that theres less resistance in my parents generation, or that [my generation is] taking the initiative, forcing things to come along. STRASBOURG, FranceFrench President Emmanuel Macron compared political divisions in Europe to a new type of civil war as he warned Tuesday of the need to counter growing nationalism. In a speech to European Union lawmakers, Macron urged the EU to better protect its citizens from the wars and authoritarian regimes that could divide the continent. The French leader, who wants to help lead the EU, invoked the spectre of a Europe where some kind of civil war emerges, where our differences, our national egoisms, sometimes seem more important than whats uniting us. Read more: Emmanuel Macron has set his sights on remaking Europe Trudeau talks climate change, Mali peacekeeping mission with Frances Macron French President Macron to hold talks with Saudi crown prince in Paris Democracy has the best chance of fighting nationalism, he told members of the Strasbourg-based European Parliament. Faced with authoritarianism, the answer is not democratic authoritarianism, but the authority of democracy. European Commission President Jean-Claude Juncker said Macrons rise to power in France has given new hope to the European Union. But Juncker stressed that the worlds biggest trading bloc isnt a club led by France and Germany. Europe is an ensemble, even with Britain set to leave the EU next year, he said. During Macrons speech, some European lawmakers raised placards reading Stop the war in Syria and Hands off Syria to protest joint airstrikes Saturday by U.S., Britain and France on chemical weapons facilities in Syria. Countering critics of the airstrikes, Macron showed signs of anger. (We) are outraged each time by images weve seen of children, women who died of a chlorine attack, he said, almost shouting. Do we sit back? Do we defend rights by saying: rights are for us, principles are for us, and realities are for other? No! No! He said the U.S., France and Britain intervened in a legitimate, multilateral framework and stressed that the airstrikes specifically targeted three Syrian chemical weapon facilities without any human life loss. On the topic of the EU itself, he told the lawmakers that its important to have a democratic, critical debate on what Europe is about. Macron said citizens want a new project for the EU that addresses their concerns and fears at a time when allies such as the U.S. are turning their backs on multilateral trade and climate change pacts. All EU countries, except Britain and Hungary, have agreed to seek the opinions of their citizens on the EUs future through debates and online consultations by summer. Macron called for an energetic campaign for the European Parliament election in May 2019, two months after Britains scheduled departure from the EU. However, he ruled out enlarging the EU until the existing members are more deeply integrated and the bloc has undergone reforms. He said now wasnt the time to allow Western Balkan countries to join. Macron will meet with German Chancellor Angela Merkel in Berlin on Thursday, as France and Germany aim to agree on proposals for EU reforms by June. Read more about: WASHINGTONThe Supreme Court on Tuesday struck down a law that allowed the government to deport some immigrants who commit serious crimes, saying it was unconstitutionally vague. The decision will limit the Trump administrations efforts to deport people convicted of some kinds of crimes. The vote was 5-4, with Justice Neil M. Gorsuch joining the courts four more liberal members to form a bare majority, which was a first. Gorsuch wrote that the law crossed a constitutional line. Vague laws, he wrote in a concurring opinion, invite arbitrary power. Read more: In 7 months on U.S. Supreme Court, Neil Gorsuch has been just what conservatives hoped for and what liberals feared Gorsuch had voted with the courts conservative majority in February in a different immigration case, one that ruled that people held in immigration detention, sometimes for years, are not entitled to periodic hearings to decide whether they may be released on bail. His vote in Tuesdays case was not entirely surprising, though, as he has a skepticism of vague laws that do not give people affected by them adequate notice of what they prohibit. The case, Sessions v. Dimaya, No. 15-1498, was first argued in January 2017 before an eight-member court left short-handed by the death of Justice Antonin Scalia. The justices deadlocked 4-4, and the case was argued again in October after Gorsuch joined the court. A Justice Department spokesman urged Congress clarify the law. Certain crimes committed by an illegal alien, visa holder, or an alien otherwise granted lawful status in the United States, should trigger their removal, said the spokesman, Devin OMalley. We call on Congress to close criminal alien loopholes to ensure that criminal aliens who commit those crimes for example, burglary in many states, drug trafficking in Florida, and even sexual abuse of a minor in New Jersey are not able to avoid the consequences that should come with breaking our nations laws. The case concerned James Dimaya, a native of the Philippines who became a lawful permanent resident in 1992, when he was 13. In 2007 and 2009, he was convicted of residential burglary. The government sought to deport him on the theory that he had committed an aggravated felony, which the immigration law defined to include any offence that, by its nature, involves a substantial risk that physical force against the person or property of another may be used in the course of committing the offence. In 2015, in Johnson v. United States, the Supreme Court ruled that a similar criminal law was unconstitutionally vague. Justice Elena Kagan, writing for the majority in Tuesdays case, said the reasoning in the Johnson case also doomed the challenged provision of the immigration law. She quoted at length from Scalias majority opinion in Johnson, which said courts could not tell which crimes Congress had meant to punish. We can as well repeat here what we asked in Johnson, Kagan wrote, paraphrasing Scalia. How does one go about divining the conduct entailed in a crimes ordinary case? Statistical analyses? Surveys? Experts? Google? Gut instinct? She added that lower courts had been unable to apply the immigration law consistently. Does car burglary qualify as a violent felony? she asked. Some courts say yes, another says no. What of statutory rape? Once again, the circuits part ways. How about evading arrest? The decisions point in different directions. Residential trespass? The same is true. Justices Ruth Bader Ginsburg, Stephen G. Breyer and Sonia Sotomayor joined all of Kagans opinion, and Gorsuch most of it. When the Johnson case was before the Supreme Court, the government warned that a ruling striking down the law at issue there would make the immigration law equally susceptible to constitutional attack. Both laws, the government said then, required courts to identify features of a hypothetical typical offence and then to judge the risk of violence arising from them. But when Dimayas case reached the Supreme Court, the government said there were significant differences between the two laws, focusing on minor variations in their wording. In dissent, Chief Justice John G. Roberts Jr., joined by Justices Anthony M. Kennedy, Clarence Thomas and Samuel A. Alito Jr., made a similar point. Kagan responded that some of Roberts analysis was slicing the baloney mighty thin. The government also argued that the two laws should be treated differently because one concerned crimes and the other immigration, which is a civil matter. In its brief, the government said civil laws are hardly ever so vague as to violate the Constitution. Although the court has on occasion tested civil provisions for vagueness, the brief said, it has struck down those provisions under the due process clause because they were so unintelligible as to effectively supply no standard at all. Kagan disagreed. This courts precedent forecloses that argument, she wrote, because we long ago held that the most exacting vagueness standard should apply in removal cases. A 1951 Supreme Court decision, Jordan v. De George, indicated that both criminal and immigration laws should be tested against the same constitutional standard for vagueness in view of the grave nature of deportation. Near the end of her opinion, Kagan again quoted Scalia. Insanity, he wrote in a 2011 dissent, is doing the same thing over and over again, but expecting different results. Kagan said it was time to heed that advice. We abandoned that lunatic practice in Johnson, she wrote, and see no reason to start it again. At last weeks U.S. Senate hearings on Facebook, Senator Kennedy told Facebook CEO Mark Zuckerberg what many of us want to say to tech companies in general: your user agreement sucks. Zuckerberg conceded that users do not read these agreements but claimed they still have lots of control over their information because they are given tools to control the audience of disclosure. Both are at least partially right but both are missing the point: Privacy legislation is not mere consumer protection legislation, it is human rights legislation; our statutory framework and its enforcement mechanisms needs to reflect this. Canadians concerned about the state of our own privacy laws should focus on five things. First, there are different scales of transparency. Understanding what it means for Google maps to collect location data is one thing; understanding what it means for multiple apps to collect location data and share it with third party ad libraries, who will aggregate it and use it to profile you, is quite another. User agreements and individual tools rarely help consumers understand the latter. This transparency gap was at the heart of some of the questions Zuckerberg often failed to answer regarding Facebook: what information does Facebook collect in addition to user-generated content, how are people being profiled, and does it track browsing activity or activities across devices, even when a user is logged out of Facebook? We need practices of transparency that scale. Second, individual control is not the same thing as meaningful choice. I can have individual control over my food choices and still only have a choice between a chocolate chip muffin and a bag of Doritos. If an individual is in the middle of a food desert without healthy choices available, telling her about the empowering effects of better food labels will ring hollow. Similarly, privacy debates need to move beyond a focus on informing individuals and instead ask about whether the informational infrastructure incentivizes disclosure for commercial data sharing or whether it provides meaningful privacy choices. Third, meaningful choice is not about satisfying individual preferences, but mitigating collective concerns. The Cambridge Analytica scandal has shown very clearly that how data is collected, analyzed, and used implicates many broad public concerns. Whether the choices available to individuals are meaningful depends upon how we collectively value privacy. It is also crucial that we see that these values extend beyond privacy and can also involve questions of equality, freedom of expression, and democratic participation, to only name a few. Fourth, it is public regulators who can best safeguard the public interest at stake here. Lets give them the tools to do so. Our regulators can investigate transparency at a different scale from individuals, they can ask questions regarding the availability of meaningful choices, and they can deliberate about the collective value of privacy and related concerns. They are the ones we must empower. Fifth, empowering our public regulators requires updating our privacy laws. However, if we do this by simply strengthening the individual control model then we will have failed. There are many specific proposals for strengthening PIPEDA, Canadas main private sector privacy law, including the recent report of the Standing Committee on Access to Information, Privacy and Ethics. The deeper problem that we need to grapple with in reforming PIPEDA is that its very purpose is to balance privacy with business interests. This might have been appropriate 20 years ago. But it fails badly in the new data-driven economy where data collection, sharing and use in myriad ways are at the very heart of business practices. PIPEDA currently builds a privacy compromise into the very heart of our privacy protection. This is exacerbated by the fact that the privacy commissioner has no power to make orders or issue fines. Instead we need to take seriously what the Supreme Court of Canada has now repeatedly stated privacy law, even when it applies to the private sector, is quasi-constitutional. Privacy legislation is not mere consumer protection legislation, it is human rights legislation; our statutory framework and its enforcement mechanisms needs to reflect this. In Canada we are comfortable with placing a burden on businesses to accommodate human rights, even if it involves requiring them to spend money and change business practices. We need to see this shift in relation to privacy so that the private sector builds us an infrastructure that offers apples in addition to chocolate chip muffins and does not engage in unsafe practices. The ultimate choice will be up to individuals, but individuals will choose within an environment of meaningful choices consistent with our most basic public values. Lisa M. Austin, Professor, Chair in Law and Technology, University of Toronto Faculty of Law. @Lisa_M_Austin Read more about: Dont punish police for attempting to save lives, Opinion, April 16 The subject this time is naloxone instead of guns, tasers, clubs or excessive force. Whenever someone dies in Ontario in a police situation, a review by the Special Investigations Unit (SIU) is required by law. Having official oversight of police when their actions result in a death seems very reasonable. Keep in mind that most SIU investigations have exonerated the police, public opinion notwithstanding. Adrian Woolley, the writer of this opinion piece who is the head of a police union, thinks an exception should be made for naloxone. After all, the police were only there to help. Far too many of these help situations have ended in the death of the person needing the aid. The police are people too. They can make mistakes. Mistakes that, given their extra powers, can lead to death. Oversight is reasonable and should be used for each death. Dead is dead, whether by bullet, electrical jolt or needle. Each needs to be examined to determine the causes and follow up if needed, up to and including criminal charges if appropriate. David Kister, Toronto Read more about: The lynch mob never showed up at Carlton and Parliament, but the anger unleashed when Cabbagetown residents refused a daycare in their neighbourhood last week was visceral. Normally mild-mannered Toronto and polite media had no problem venting their rage at yet another outrageous display of NIMBYism, worse still, one that involved the rich and powerful. Who can blame them? If its not whiney Cabbagetowners, its Annexers Margaret Atwood and Galen Weston or smug North Torontonians kvetching about loss of privacy or threatened property values. But before anyone throws that first stone, its worth recalling that theres another side to Torontos growing army of backyard guardians. It was NIMBYs, after all, who stopped the demolition of Old City Hall, who saved Union Station, who killed the Spadina Expressway and helped keep the city liveable. Read more: Cabbagetown daycare proposal refused at city hall over traffic concerns Share your thoughts Opinion | Edward Keenan: Consider the character of a neighbourhood that rejects a daycare Opinion | Christopher Hume: When it comes to garbage trucks, bigger is no longer better One persons villain is another persons urban hero. Children, of course, are untouchable. Any effort to thwart something as sacred as a daycare is guaranteed to raise hackles. Our failure to provide affordable daycare and adequately fund the education system speak of a larger indifference to youth, but if anyone asks, we care deeply about kids. The hypocrisy notwithstanding, its worth looking a little more closely at what happened in Cabbagetown. Was the neighbourhood rejecting daycare because it dislikes children? Or was it something else? Its true a lot of nonsense has been spouted about everything from noise to loud colours, but what else is new? Every neighbourhood has its share of fools and Cabbagetown is no exception. The problem with kids is cars. In a city where many parents drive little Zack and Zoe to school or daycare, even the quietest residential streets are transformed into congestion zones twice a day. To make matters worse, a good percentage of these parents feel the need for tank-sized SUVs. Every morning and afternoon, they show up in their obscenely large vehicles, clogging roads and sidewalks, fouling the air and endangering pedestrians, including their own children. The last thing Cabbagetown or any other part of Toronto needs is more cars, especially the vehicular mastodons popular with pathologically over-protective parents. Even strollers have ballooned to Hummer-like proportions. Cabbagetown is a 19th-century neighbourhood that predates the car; its streets are narrow and its houses close together. Little wonder it would be illegal under Torontos existing planning regulations, which are designed around the needs of cars and drivers. But even in suburban areas where roads wide, straight and fast encourage speeding, the daily drop-off and pick-up can be a nightmare. What this says about modern-day planning and city-building efforts is not reassuring. Our failure to grasp even the most basic elements of the liveable city is another topic, but clearly Official Torontos efforts to handle complex situations such as this have accomplished little. If anything, they have made conditions worse. Requests for city hall to install a crosswalk or assign a crossing guard are greeted with hostility and can take years. Little wonder that NIMBYism flourishes in every corner of the city, especially those built when the prevailing urban design values were compactness, connectivity and coherence. Acting councillor Lucy Troisis argument that Cabbagetown is delicate shouldnt be taken too seriously, but neighbourhoods can be easily damaged. This has nothing to do with kids and everything to do with our willingness to sacrifice the public realm to the demands of traffic. Though like every neighbourhood in Toronto Cabbagetown could undoubtedly use more daycare facilities, the area already has its share. Sadly, Cabbagetowners make it all too easy for the rest of Toronto to sneer at them. They confirm everything people love to hate about entitled downtown elites who care about nothing but themselves. But if this episode says anything, it is that the city must come to grips with its traffic problem. And despite what Tory would have us believe, that wont be accomplished simply by enforcing rules that drivers routinely ignore, getting rid of double parkers, illegal turners, speeders and the like. Whats needed is a reduction of the number of cars and a wholesale reorganization of the streets that reflects the priorities of a city where people come before cars and where being liveable takes precedence over being driveable. If you came from a culture where divorce carries a significant stigma, how far would you go to save your reputation, especially if its your second divorce? Would you go so far as to lie about being abused? About being raped? About being starved? Lawyer George Tsimiklis seemed to be making the suggestion at the Superior Court of Justice in Toronto Monday that a woman who had entered into an arranged marriage had concocted a story of being abused and tortured and starved in order to escape the marriage without stigma of divorce. Tsimiklis was cross-examining the woman were calling Sakhi, as her real name is under a publication ban. Sakhis husband Rajinder Gupta has pleaded not guilty to multiple charges of sexual assault, assault and uttering threats in the judge-alone trial before Superior Court Justice James Diamond that began last week. Guptas mother Sheela Gupta has pleaded not guilty to assault and uttering threats and his father Vinod Gupta pleaded not guilty to a single count of uttering a threat. Sakhi last week testified in Punjabi, through an interpreter, that her husband slapped, bit, choked, sexually assaulted and threatened her during their three-month marriage. Crown attorney Kelly Simpson showed the court 15 photographs taken at Trillium Health Centre of bite marks and bruises over Sakhis body. According to rules of your Hindu traditions, Tsimiklis said, there are two honorable ways to leave marriage: One, if your marriage was not consummated. Two, if your whole family subjected you to conditions such that you had no choice (to leave) despite making every effort to make the marriage work. Here is the thing about Hinduism. There are no hard and fast rules. Traditions constantly evolve based on local cultures. So when Tsimiklis sounded out those rules, I rushed to Google them. No luck. I messaged friends: they hadnt heard of this get-out-of-marriage-free card. I looked up Indias Hindu Marriage Act. It lists multiple reasons for divorce, not just two. I asked Tsimiklis who referred me to an assistant who said he would give me the source of that knowledge Tuesday. Perhaps Tsimiklis was trying to establish a cultural framework around acceptance of divorce rather than a religious one. Cross-examination at a sexual assault trial is at the heart of the tensions between the judicial system and the #MeToo movement. How do you prove a woman is lying without appearing to rely on the lying woman trope? For minority women, their culture and traditions provide an alternative access point to motives. All day Monday, Tsimiklis touched upon themes of shame and honour and expectations of maintaining Hindu traditions as he attempted to poke holes in Sakhis testimony. Except, the fluidity of Hindu traditions means many of these rules or expectations cannot be applied universally. Which might be why the cross-examination went something like this: Tsimiklis: In Hindu tradition, even with a ceremony you are not considered married until you have sexual relations with each other? Sakhi: I have not heard of that. Im not aware that its not considered a marriage. Tsimiklis: In Hindu culture there are only two ways to get divorced and maintain your honour. Sakhi: What do you mean by maintain your honour? Tsimiklis changed tack to try to establish that she had already used up one of those two rules before: You were married once before. But in that marriage is it your evidence that the marriage was never consummated? Yes. Youre aware that your parents told Rajinder Guptas parents that despite being married you had never consummated that marriage? Yes. You would agree if you had consummated your first marriage and divorced that you would not be desirable to Rajinder Guptas parents? They would know whether I was good for them. Because in either case I would have advised them. Tsimiklis persistently made the point Sakhi hadnt told her parents about being sexually or physically assaulted (implicit that it was because it didnt happen) to which Sakhi said she hadnt had the opportunity as Gupta was always around and also, she didnt want to tell them everything. Tsimiklis said all the discussions between the two families were about her behaviour, about her cooking abilities, about her difficulties with Gupta and how his parents spoke to her. None of these met the standards of the second rule he mentioned. These meetings were about problems that would not justify a divorce, he said. She wasnt restricted from eating, he said. Is it not true that you didnt like their food and were not permitted to make another meal as they were on a budget? No. They said go ahead and eat (the one already prepared)? No. It was towards the end of the day that Tsimiklis found some inconsistency to Sakhis testimony. When he asked whether on the day she alleged Gupta inserted four fingers in her vagina if any other violations took place, she said she didnt remember. Last week you remembered? he asked, referring to her earlier testimony that intercourse took place. Tsimiklis will continue his cross-examination on Tuesday. Shree Paradkar writes about discrimination and identity. You can follow her @shreeparadkar In Southern California, the largest protest is in Los Angeles, a gathering that has typically drawn thousands of people. But demonstrations are planned throughout the region, from Orange County to the Inland Empire, from Redondo Beach to the San Gabriel... Notwithstanding Prime Minister Justin Trudeaus decision to double down on the expansion of the Trans Mountain pipeline, the plan faces the same hurdles today as it did before he hauled the feuding premiers of Alberta and British Columbia to Parliament Hill for a Sunday meeting. The federal bid to take a financial stake in the project may ensure it survives albeit on a publicly funded respirator beyond the May 31 deadline set by its parent company Kinder Morgan to fish or cut bait. If Trudeau is willing to pump an unspecific amount of taxpayers money in the project in such short order, his government (along with that of Alberta) must have concluded that the risks that the Houston-based company will otherwise walk away are real. Read more: Justin Trudeau says the federal government remains determined to see the Trans Mountain pipeline expansion built after Kinder Morgan hit pause on the project, but the prime minister wouldnt say what Ottawas next steps would be. (The Canadian Press) B.C. government cant have their cake and eat it too: Green Party leader Andrew Weaver Alberta introduces legislation to restrict flow of oil amid dispute with B.C. Special prosecutors considering charges against Elizabeth May for Trans Mountain protest But keeping the pipeline expansion alive with an injection of federal funds will neither detract its opponents from fighting it every step of the way nor eliminate the threat of more litigation. On the contrary, Trudeaus promise of new federal legislation to re-affirm Ottawas constitutional authority on the file is likely to open yet another front in the legal battle or even to expand the existing one. In Canada, no law federal or provincial is immune to a court challenge. If anything, this weekends meeting with the feuding premiers mostly demonstrated the limits of the power of a prime minister to force a province into line. When it comes to Trudeaus signature climate change compromise, it could be the first of many such demonstrations. Within the span of the next two years, the prime minister could be facing off in court against as many as six of the 10 provinces including the four larger ones over some aspect of his carbon pricing and energy policies. B.C. premier John Horgan is still determined to refer the question of whether his province has the constitutional competence to regulate the substances that transit through its territory to his provinces highest court. He will be asking the judges to determine whether Ottawas determination to pursue an infrastructure project it decrees to be of strategic national interest can de facto trump the environmental jurisdiction of a given province. Quebec could join B.C. in court sooner than later. That provinces main interest is not so much the actual Trans Mountain project as the means Trudeau is contemplating to achieve his ends. It has been a longstanding Quebec practice regardless of which of its parties is in government to challenge moves that could be construed as a federal attempt to expand Ottawas constitutional authority at the expense of the provinces. The environment is a shared federal-provincial responsibility. In an open letter published this weekend, Quebecs intergovernmental affairs minister, Jean-Marc Fournier, assured Horgan of his governments support in the current battle. At the same time, Manitoba and Saskatchewan are preparing to take the federal government to court over its plan to impose a carbon tax on the provinces whose climate change plans do not meet the greenhouse gas emissions reduction targets set by Ottawa. Should Doug Fords Tories win this springs election they could be joined by Ontario and in the event of a Jason Kenney victory next year also by Alberta. It will take more than the few weeks between now and the end of May for the Trans Mountain saga to come to a definitive conclusion. But it is already possible to start assessing the damage to Trudeaus consensus-building efforts on the climate change front. When he initially set out to champion the Trans Mountain pipeline expansion, Trudeaus goal was to demonstrate that Canadas energy ambitions could be reconciled with a national carbon pricing policy. In an ideal world, the hope was to turn carbon pricing from the wedge issue that it had been over Stephen Harpers tenure into a non-partisan concept in the same way, for instance, that political support for the principle of medicare has come to obliterate party lines. Two years later, the opposite is happening. His support for the Trans Mountain expansion is pitting Trudeau against two of the provinces most aligned with his climate change agenda, the bulk of Canadas ecological movement and a significant section of the indigenous leadership. At the same time, political opposition to his carbon pricing policy is become even more entrenched. The prime ministers efforts on behalf of Trans Mountain will not earn him any gratitude in many pro-pipeline quarters. At this rate, Trudeaus legacy could be a precedent that gives future federal governments more leeway to steamroll the environmental obstacles that stand in the way of their development ambitions. Chantal Hebert is a national affairs writer. Her column appears Tuesday, Thursday and Saturday. Read more about: VANCOUVERThe leader of B.C.s Indigenous protest against the Kinder Morgan pipeline says he is not backing down despite Prime Minister Justin Trudeaus statement Sunday that he would use federal legislation and taxpayers money to ensure the pipeline is built. Trudeau met with B.C. Premier John Horgan and Alberta Premier Rachel Notley Sunday in an effort to solve the impasse between the two provinces, one week after Kinder Morgan suspended all non-essential spending on the project. But at least one Indigenous leader said he was offended that Indigenous communities were not invited to the discussion. We should be at the table. We should be discussing these matters that go through our traditional territory. By not having us there, it says a lot, said Will George, Tsleil-Waututh Nation member leading the resistance movement behind the traditional Coast Salish Watch House on Burnaby Mountain. Justin Trudeau says the federal government remains determined to see the Trans Mountain pipeline expansion built after Kinder Morgan hit pause on the project, but the prime minister wouldnt say what Ottawas next steps would be. (The Canadian Press) He and his supporters built a traditional Coast Salish Watch House at the site last month. StarMetro reached him there for a phone interview Sunday. Its really highly offensive that (Trudeau) doesnt want to hear us on this matter. But hes going to hear this my message to him is that this pipeline will not get built, he said. George said he intends to stay, day and night, until the project is dead. Meanwhile, Horgan came out of Sundays meeting vowing to proceed with a B.C. court reference to challenge Ottawas claim to sole jurisdiction over the environment. While interprovincial pipelines fall under federal jurisdiction, the environment is not expressly listed as a sole responsibility of either the federal or the provincial government in the constitution, and has in the past been considered a shared responsibility. Horgan wants a ruling from the court that would allow his minority NDP government to block Kinder Morgan from increasing flows of heavy crude, in the name of protecting B.C.s coastal waters. But one political observer said it is unlikely a court decision would happen in time for Kinder Morgans May 31 deadline. I dont expect the court to get back that quickly, said Michael Prince, a social policy professor at the University of Victoria. He said protests could play a large role as Kinder Morgan continues to lose money on the project every time protesters successfully delay construction. Certainly the question of protest and demonstration looms large in the backdrop, he said. With files from Bruce Campion-Smith and Tonda MacCharles, Toronto Star Read more about: Vancouver Green Party Leader Andrew Weaver supports B.C.s NDP government in its battle against Kinder Morgans Trans Mountain pipeline expansion, but when it comes to LNG, he says they cant have their cake and eat it too. Theres an incompatibility in having a plan to reduce greenhouse gas emissions and building capacity to increase greenhouse gas emissions. You cant have it both ways, he told StarMetro Vancouver. Its much like Mr. Trudeau is trying to argue we need to triple oilsands production and build the Trans Mountain pipeline in order to have a climate plan, it doesnt make any sense. Last month, Premier John Horgan announced tax breaks as an incentive for liquefied natural gas projects, including LNG Canadas proposed export terminal in Kitimat, B.C. In a statement to StarMetro last week Environment Minister George Heyman said his government has always maintained we would welcome potential LNG development only if fits within our four conditions, which include our climate goals and our legislated GHG reduction targets. Weve committed to reduce our greenhouse gas emissions by 40 per cent below 2007 levels by 2030 and by 80 per cent by 2050. That remains our goal, he added. Weaver, however, said thats just not possible with LNG even with forthcoming federal regulations aimed at reducing emissions of methane a powerful greenhouse gas by 20 megatonnes a year, the equivalent of removing five million cars from the road each year. Environmental organizations expect these new regulations as early as this week, but Weaver says those could help reduce emissions from existing industry, not a massive expansion. And, even with the existing industry recent studies show emissions have been significantly underestimated, said Dale Marshall, Environmental Defences national program manager. Industry, meanwhile, is confident it can achieve the reductions the federal government is aiming for, said Terry Abel, the Canadian Association of Petroleum Producers executive vice-president. However, companies are looking for more flexibility in the regulations, including different standards for old and new equipment. Let us spend our money where we get the biggest bang for the buck but still get you to the exact same target, he said, explaining it may not make sense to spend a lot on an old facility close to the end of its life, when a company could achieve greater reductions by spending that same money on another source of emissions. Without a doubt changes and improvements at old facilities will occur, its just more changes may occur at some facilities than they will at others, he said. Marshall said environmental groups were open to more flexible regulations if the industry and government could assure them there would be a rigorous monitoring and reporting system in place, but the accountability wasnt there, he said. He wanted to new regulations to include reporting based on on-site monitoring and measurement, not formulas established for different devices. That wasnt adopted because it was too expensive, he said. In its absence, hes expecting more detailed regulations requiring more frequent leak detection and specific equipment. But the regulations may not require the best available technology and hes expecting they will still allow some flaring, when natural gas is burned off at the top of stack. In a statement, McKennas press secretary Caroline Theriault noted methane has 25 times the warming potential of carbon dioxide and that reducing emissions from the oil and gas industry will make an important contribution to reducing greenhouse gas emissions in Canada. As Marshall explained, there are costs to reducing methane but companies also have an opportunity to capture it and sell it on the market as fuel to offset those costs. Ainslie Cruikshank is a Vancouver-based reporter covering the environment. Follow her on Twitter: @ainscruickshank Read more about: VANCOUVERThe Facebook posts of a British Columbia man acquitted of terrorism-related charges clearly show he wasnt just a couch jihadist with a big mouth but someone who was becoming radicalized by Daesh (also known as ISIS or ISIL) and advocating for lone wolf attacks, an RCMP officer has testified. Const. Tarek Mokdad of the forces national security division told an Immigration and Refugee Board hearing Monday that he was involved in the investigation of Othman Hamdan before his arrest in Fort St. John, B.C., in 2015. Mokdad said he wrote a report in 2015 based on the history of Islamic extremism and jihad and another last year on 85 of Hamdans Facebook posts. He referenced both reports at the hearing and said he testified at Hamdans trial in B.C. Supreme Court, but the reports were not entered as evidence at the proceedings. Hamdan is a Jordanian national who was granted refugee status in Canada after moving from the United States following the September 2001 attacks but now the Immigration and Refugee Board is considering whether his posts represent a security risk to Canada and if he should be deported. Mokdad read numerous posts authored by Hamdan, who also used at least one alias on Facebook. I get it from the horses mouth, he said of Hamdans posts, adding the man was buying into the cause of Daesh with his unwavering support for the group using violence, versus someone who would simply be reading propaganda online and not acting on it. They talk big but they dont do anything, said Mokdad, who was testifying via video from London, Ont. He read his Arabic translation of two posts from the second report and said Hamdan discussed infrastructure in Canada, including a dam in Revelstoke, B.C., and the Nipigon River Bridge near Nipigon, Ont., suggesting they were weak targets. Mokdad said its common for Daesh supporters to identify areas susceptible or open to attack. This is something that they never bothered to talk about in court because they never bothered to look at the report, he said. Mokdad said many of Hamdans posts used a flag adopted by Daesh in 2007 as well as a banner and other symbols the group employs to try and legitimize its political and religious agenda. He said Daesh has used Facebook as a podium to spread its propaganda, which is open literally to everyone on this planet and often shared by attaching trending hashtags unrelated to the topic. Islamic State (Daesh) supporters dont need to go anywhere but their couch, Mokdad said, calling the online practices of the Deash the invasion of Facebook. Hamdans posts clearly indicated he provided advice, support and how-to information on conducting lone wolf attacks by using various methods including a car, a knife and poison, though he didnt author the post about weapons, Mokdad said. He called for lone-wolf attacks. He called for them plainly and clearly. Mokdad also suggested Hamdan became part of Daeshs media team after hed received an invitation to migrate to the group. Hamdans lawyer, Peter Edelmann, suggested its not uncommon for material promoting Daesh to be posted online and that its regularly featured on a site called Jihadology.net. However, Mokdad said the site is operated by a reputable think tank providing education and analysis on how to fight radical behaviour, not akin to what Hamdan posted on Facebook about wishing to be a soldier and martyr of Daesh. This is not just nefarious. This says to me its somebody whos got leanings towards the Islamic State, he said. The Canadian government lists Daesh as a terrorist entity, saying its tactics include suicide attacks, using vehicles and improvised explosive devices, armed attacks, hostage takings and videotaped beheadings. A B.C. Supreme Court judge who acquitted Hamdan last September said the mans posts may have been offensive but they didnt constitute terrorism. Hamdan has been detained since his acquittal after the Immigration and Refugee Board ruled his release would endanger the public. In January, Hamdan filed a lawsuit against the B.C. and federal governments, arguing his charter rights were violated through a malicious prosecution. Denise Reid, a lawyer representing Public Safety Canada, told the hearing that sheriffs photographed drawings in Hamdans cell of a symbol used by Daesh and one of several hed included in his Facebook posts. Read more about: VANCOUVER A new era of tech startups is seeing the growth of a third wave driven by deep tech sectors like artificial intelligence, blockchain and robotics that will transform the real world, according to the Global Startup Ecosystem Report 2018. The report, which surveyed Vancouver among 45 cities in 22 countries by Startup Genome and the Global Entrepreneurship Network, said global venture capital investments in startups hit an all-time high in 2017 with $140 billion invested in startups and $2.3 trillion created in value from 2015 to 2017 a 25.6 per cent increase from 2014 to 2016. The report highlights Vancouvers strengths in clean tech, gaming, as well as health and life sciences. Sean Elbe, manager of technology sector development at the Vancouver Economic Commission, said the report validates the trend toward deep tech he has seen over the last 10 years. Deep tech is in, apps and hoodie-wearing entrepreneurs are out, he said. Subsectors that saw the most growth were in their early phase growing from smaller numbers of startups, such as advanced manufacturing and robotics, which had a staggering 189.4 per cent increase over five years. Emerging agriculture tech and new food followed with a 171 per cent increase, then blockchain with a 162 per cent increase, and lastly, big data and analytics, with a 77.5 per cent increase. Elbe said not all the findings in the report reflect growth locally and that he is disappointed to see gaming declared as a declining industry with a reported 27.2 per cent decrease of funding deals. The gaming industry is in fact growing and adopting artificial intelligence technology at a rapid rate, explained Elbe. However, Vancouver fell short in the sense-of-community category, where it scored 3.9, below the global average of 4.9. Given the high percentage of immigrant founders, which is another aspect where Vancouver has strengths, the founders not from our community take some time to integrate, said Elbe. James Raymond, manager of research and analysis at the Vancouver Economic Commission, said the reports research methodologies were robust. The reports authors used 83 metrics such as team experience, the amount of funding companies receive and how well connected each ecosystem is. Competition among cities has gotten higher as each city looks to attract and foster the tech startup community, said Raymond. Vancouver currently ranks as the top startup ecosystem in Canada and 15th globally, according to the report published last year by Startup Genome. Read more about: VANCOUVEROn Monday, Immigration Minister Ahmed Hussen announced new policies that will allow more people with disabilities and illnesses to be granted immigration status. The Immigration Act will be amended to decrease the number of people found medically inadmissible to Canada. Under the current regime, immigration applicants whose annual medical costs would exceed $6,655 the average annual cost for a Canadian are considered too expensive. The changes, which triple the threshold, to $19,965, come into effect on June 1. The announcement was seen as a victory for some families in B.C. whose applications had been denied because of the old rules. Emeline B., who requested anonymity due to an ongoing immigration application, is a single mother from the Philippines who came to the country eight years ago under the live-in caregiver program. In 2017, her application for permanent residency for her and her 12-year-old son, Laurence, whom she had been forced to leave behind in the Philippines, was denied. Laurence, who has autism, was deemed medically inadmissible due to the cost of his special education. It was like, how am I going to support him now? she said. Emeline was granted an appeal and is now applying for status again. Since her arrival, Emeline has worked as a caregiver, housekeeper and care clerk. She sends money back home for her son, who attends an expensive school for children with disabilities. She has not seen him in two years. She hopes the change will bring them together in Canada. Its very, very good news. It feels like a relief, said Emeline. But immigration advocates say that the changes dont go far enough. Natalie Drolet, a lawyer and director of the Migrant Workers Centre in Vancouver, says the immigration policies will still bar some people with disabilities or illnesses from obtaining immigration status. The message that today's announcement sends is that its OK to discriminate against some immigrants based on disabilities or medical conditions, which I think really falls short of what is fair and just, said Drolet. Jenny Kwan, NDP immigration critic, said the changes indicate ongoing discrimination toward people with disabilities, and does not account for what they can offer to benefit Canadian society. The policy is flawed, said Kwan. In their cost-benefit analysis, there is no benefit side of the equation. When the entire family unit comes, the entire family contributes to Canadian society, economically, socially, and politically. In Ottawa, Hussen said that the changes we are announcing today are a major step forward in ensuring our immigration system is more inclusive of persons with disabilities, and reflect the values of Canadians, he told the Star. With files from Nicholas Keung. Cherise Seucharan is a reporter in Vancouver. Email her at cherise.seucharan@metronews.ca. Read more about: Vancouver A Vancouver city councillor concerned about the threat of corruption is calling for a simpler zoning process on the Cambie corridor. NPA Coun. Hector Bremner has put forward a motion to pre-zone the corridor, an area the city has designated for more density. He argues it would remove the need for each new development to apply for extra density and negotiate individual community amenity contributions while easing public concerns about the chance of backroom deals. Perception of corruption or actual corruption comes from the actual lack of transparency, Bremner said. All we need to do is set the table for transparency and all we need to do is act in accordance with the law that it lays down. If you have that consistency, you dont have the appearance of corruption any longer. He said everyone along the corridor is concerned about the current decision-making process and said council is meddling in the zoning process. But critics say the motion, scheduled for Tuesdays council meeting, is just political spin that takes advantage of public cynicism over the way development decisions get made. Lawyer Nathalie Baker said its absurd to suggest city councillors are meddling by looking at applications individually. The first thing Id point out is that council members are elected to city council to make rezoning decisions. Theyre meant to listen to the public and make decisions in the public interest, Baker said. Bakers father was an NPA councillor and her brother, Gregory, is currently the president of the party, but she stressed she is not a member of the party and was speaking as a lawyer and resident. When it comes to corruption, I think the bigger concern is how (city-owned) land deals are being looked at in camera and I think what we want to do is have a more open process. Melody Ma, a community activist who was part of a group that successfully fought to defeat a condo proposed for Chinatown, called Bremners motion political spin. On Twitter, she laid out several ideas to combat the perception of corruption at city hall, such as anti-corruption training within city hall, an accessible and transparent whistleblower process and a corruption inquiry. Neither Bremner or Baker could provide any examples of actual corruption at Vancouver city hall. But Baker believed an inquiry would be a good idea, if for no other reason to find out where the process is failing and make it more efficient. To make matters more complicated, Bremner is facing a conflict of interest complaint filed by Raza Mirza, a Vancouver resident who believes Bremner should have recused himself from several council meetings where, Mirza alleged, policies or plans that may have affected clients of Bremners public relations firm were discussed. Bremner dismissed the complaint as dirty politics. The complaint will be assessed by a third party before a decision is made as to whether or not to move ahead with an investigation, according to City of Vancouver conflict of interest policies. Gordon Price, former NPA councillor and fellow of Simon Fraser Universitys city program, charged Bremners corruption concerns are just politics. Bremner has identified Vancouverites fear of corruption and the need for housing and hes running on it, Price said. Simpler zoning used to be in place in Vancouver, Price said: its what gave the city the West End, a dense, walkable neighbourhood filled with unremarkable apartment buildings. That kind of development approach is also responsible for the Vancouver Special, a cheap, flexible house design common across East Vancouver. The city moved away from that kind of zoning in the 1970s, Price said. Vancouver decided it wanted to become a city that was, shall we say, better designed, Price said, musing that people living in Vancouvers neighbourhoods might protest if their streets began to fill with cheap, cookie-cutter housing. But (Bremners) not telling us that. Hes focusing on the opportunity for corruption, and on the other end of the scale, Melody Ma and a school of young people in particular are reacting to what the development process has produced in Chinatown and other places just a general antipathy that its a way of selling out concrete boxes to speculators. Price said Bremner should be more specific when flirting with corruption concerns. Hes going to have to prove that that red line of corruption has been approached, that there may have been an opportunity, the possibility is more than likely, Price said. Tell us more. Jen St. Denis is a general assignment reporter based in Vancouver. Follow her on Twitter: @jenstden Read more about: GODFREY Following a pattern of complaints against solicitors for alternative electricity suppliers, village officials are warning residents to be vigilant about door-to-door salesmen promising better electrical rates. Godfrey Village Clerk Pam Whisler, who first noticed the pattern, said solicitors who promise significant savings on electricity if a resident switches over have been caught operating unlicensed, have used aggressive techniques to push their project, and have made untrue claims about how much customers will save. In addition to door-to-door sales, some residents also reported receiving mailers advertising the services. They knock on a door, they barge through the doors, and they make themselves at home, Whisler said. In one recent case, Whisler who spoke about the matter at a recent Godfrey Village Board meeting, and in an interview with The Telegraph said an elderly resident saw their bill jump about $300, after a preliminary teaser rate expired, and a cold snap increased electricity usage. One common trick, Whisler said, was for the companies to offer a free month of electricity, and then hike rates up to more than what the resident was initially paying. Now theyre going to tell you that they dont increase the rates, but I do know that the rates go up higher, she said. Were just asking people to be very careful. Whisler said some of the companies were attempting to create the appearance they were affiliated with Ameren. Whisler provided a sample mailer, which had been turned over by a resident. Congratulations! it said. As a Godfrey resident, and an Ameren customer, you are eligible to receive the following one month of free electricity supply! Its our way of saying thank you. Please call now to claim this benefit. A spokesman for the company said they were no longer sending the mailers out, because it was creating confusion, and causing people to think they were affiliated with Ameren. The company is one of at least four Whisler said that have been operating within Godfrey. One of the companies Houston based Direct Energy, LP has been caught by officials soliciting without a license. Direct Energy, according to the Houston chapter of the Better Business Bureau, has racked up over 400 complaints, causing the organization to issue an advisory. Consumers are reporting the door-to-door associates are aggressive, pressure the consumer to see utility bills, soliciting where there are signs requesting no solicitation (three complaints were due to elderly people who have dementia) and misleading potential consumers stating they will save up to $100.00 per month, the BBBs bulletin said. Direct Energy did not respond to a request for comment. Whisler is asking village residents to report any unlicensed solicitors selling electrical services to the Madison County Sheriffs Department. Licensed solicitors are issued identification by the village. Im just concerned for my residents, if they get into this, Whisler said. Its just a lot of aggravation to switch back over. Reach Alex Heeb at 618-208-6451 or on Twitter @alexheebs ALTON A man who allegedly hit two Alton firefighters responding to an open burning call Sunday, knocking one down, is facing two felony charges. The Madison County States Attorneys Office on Monday charged David W. Preis, 57, of the 3200 block of Myrle Boulevard in Alton, with two counts of aggravated battery to a fireman, Class 2 felonies. Third Circuit Judge Richard Tognarelli set bond of $100,000. Neither firefighter required medical treatment and continued working the shift, said Chief Bernie Sebold of the Alton Fire Department. Sebold said it is the first time someone attacked his personnel as they wore full gear that identifies them as being firefighters. Obviously it very much took them by surprise, Sebold said. They werent expecting an individual to react like that. One charge says Preis punched Battalion Chief Tom House about the body with his fist, knowing House was a firefighter engaged in the execution of his official duties, thereby enhancing the battery charge. House was working as a firefighter in turnout gear, not as a supervisor in uniform. The second charge on the warrant says Preis punched engineer Michael Shewmaker about the face and body with his fist, likewise knowing Shewmaker was a firefighter engaged in the execution of his official duties. Sebold said someone called 911 at 5:19 p.m. to report brush burning in a deep ravine by a wooded area and railroad tracks behind the empty, former Kmart building at 2851 Homer Adams Parkway. Weve had calls there in the past 12 months for open burning but every time we got there no one was around, he said. Our guys went into the woods, saw somebody was there and asked what he was doing. At that time, he became aggressive as he approached two personnel, allegedly hitting the firefighters. He knocked one down and swung at another, Sebold said. At that point, he took one of the personnels portable radios from his coat pocket who he had knocked down, and threw it into the woods. The suspect then ran through the woods southeast toward the Myrle-Charlotte Court area, with a fire captain using his radio to summon police. Police arrested the fleeing man in the Myrle-Charlotte area, with another source saying an officer used a Taser gun to subdue the suspect. Open burning is not allowed in the city. Per Alton ordinance, leaf burning is legal in the spring from 10 a.m. to 6 p.m. on Wednesdays and Saturdays only, April 15 to May 30, within a metal container and not on public streets or alleys. Reach Linda N. Weller at 618-208-6450 or on Twitter @Linda_Weller This is one part of a 10-part series introducing this years YWCA of Alton Women of Distinction honorees. The YWCA of Alton will host the 28th annual Women of Distinction dinner on Thursday, April 19, at 6 p.m. at the Lewis and Clark Community College Commons in Godfrey. ALTON An Alton educator of 48 years, Mary Buckley openly notes that she has no shelf cluttered with awards and honors but her life story bears resemblance to an Academy Award-winning cinematic flick. The 2018 YWCA of Alton Women of Distinction honoree grew up the 12th of 13 children in rural Kentucky. Before Buckleys teen years, her mother was partially paralyzed by a stroke. Her father worked long hours in a wood shop. Buckley would wake at 4 a.m. to cook the family breakfast and pack lunches, in time to catch the bus at 6 a.m. Between the dozen siblings, schools spanned 25 miles apart. It was nice to make it home by late evening to make dinner. One of her lifes mottos remains, When the going gets tough, you just get tougher. The highly intelligent, stubbornly-strong black girl attending a recently-integrated school remained pathless into her senior year of high school. To make matters cloudier, her bread-winning father passed away a year before she was to graduate. She waited for a sign for where to go next but didnt have to wait long. When opportunity knocks, you go for it, Buckley says. If it wasnt for the scholarship I received, I wouldnt have gone to college. I wouldnt be here today I might not have gotten to do what Ive always loved doing. And it all began by chance and from the support of those who believed in her. Everything Ive done has been in Gods plan, she said. Some things that have happened to me, I have no idea how theyve happened. My scholarship, I didnt even apply for it. I had talked to somebody who knew I wanted to go to college. They knew I had the grades And then I found out I got a scholarship because my name was in the paper. It came as a total surprise to Buckley. When she got the news, she thought it was a prank. So, I looked in the newspaper, and there it was, she remembers. I started college that summer. I didnt even wait for fall. A fulfilling teaching career later, Buckley retired from the Alton School District in 2003. Shes served as a substitute teacher since. Last Tuesday was her 70th birthday, and she celebrated in the best way she knew how working. There is nowhere I would have rather been on my 70th birthday, than in a class with fifth-graders, she says. Not long after college, and some time served substitute teaching wherever she could while living with brothers whod transplanted to Metro East, she was hired into the Alton School District. From day one, Buckley served with only the well-being of her students in mind. In her 48 years, she says she made it a point to call the parents of every student at the beginning of the year, to open the lines of full communication and mutual awareness. If a child might be having a bad day, I wanted to know why, and not punish them for that if there was something going on at home, she said. I always wanted to show respect to the students, so I could expect them to respect me. In a half-century of service in Alton, Buckley has used her personal experiences of struggle in youth to uplift the the local youth of today. Just one example is her volunteerism in the All Gods Children Have Shoes campaign. I love being there to watch the children try on their new shoes, and just see their little faces glow, She says. It just makes me feel excited. What better pleasure than to see a child get a new pair of shoes? I can relate to that. When I was young, we seldom got a new pair of shoes. Shes also very proud of her work fighting sickle cell anemia, with her campaign called Buckleys Precious Ones, named after a former student with the affliction, Precious. Throughout her interview with The Telegraph, Buckley recounted with passion numerous students shes taken under her wing, making sure they were given opportunities to grow, perhaps taking children on a weekend museum trip anything that wasnt available to herself growing up. Letters nominating her for the 2018 YWCA of Alton Women of Distinction honor are impassioned and prolific. As her oldest niece, she has mentored me in ways that have empowered me to first become an Illinois State Scholar, a graduate from the University of Miami and now a manager an consultant within the Federal government, along with a slew of organizations that give back and help the community as she has done, one unsigned nomination reads. As a young girl, I would see her interact with her female students as she tutored them, became involved in their home life, even brought them to her home and created new experiences for them While Buckley doesnt like to talk about it, she has also offered solace to others as a survivor of breast cancer. She is quite a remarkable woman, reads another nomination letter. She is also a Cancer Survivor and she gives advice, comfort and support for women with breast cancer. One of Buckleys most cherished local workspaces has been serving on scholarship committees, including for Morning Star Missionary Baptist Church, Elijah Lovejoy Memorial and others. Perhaps those efforts remain close to her heart as she remembers how her life has changed and how shes been empowered to change the lives of many others since the day she was surprised with her college scholarship. In defining her life thus far, she enjoys referencing the Langston Hughes poem Mother to Son. In part, it reads: But all the time Ise been a-climbin on, And reachin landins, And turnin corners, And sometimes goin in the dark Where there aint been no light. So, boy, dont you turn back. Dont you set down on the steps Cause you finds its kinder hard. Dont you fall now- For Ise still goin, honey, Ise still climbin, And life for me aint been no crystal stair. I truly believe that you can do anything you want to, if you just stay focused, give it your all, and keep God in your life, Buckley says. You will make a way. Nathan Woodside is a freelance photographer and reporter for the Telegraph. Members of the Graham family of evangelism fame have a history of making outrageous statements that offend intelligent people who possess a functioning conscience. During a conversation in the Oval Office with President Richard Nixon on Feb. 1, 1972, Billy Graham condemned the total Jewish domination of the media and said, This stranglehold has got to be broken or the countrys going down the drain. Even an arch-cynic like Nixon was surprised by the bluntness of Grahams anti-Semitism and asked, You believe that? Yes, sir, Graham replied. Oh, boy, said Nixon. So do I. I cant ever say that but I believe it. Graham also told Nixon that he had friends in the media who are Jewish. They swarm around me and are friendly to me, he told Nixon, but They dont know how I really feel about what theyre doing to this country. Ironically, this hateful conversation occurred after Nixon and Graham had attended a prayer breakfast together. Graham had no idea the conversation was secretly being taped by Nixon. These anti-Semitic remarks first came to light in 1994 with the publication of The Haldeman Diaries: Inside the Nixon White House. Graham vigorously denied making such comments but was totally busted when the actual audio tape itself was made public by the National Archives in 2002. Billy Graham died on Feb. 21 of this year, but at least two of his children are making names for themselves. Franklin Graham, his fathers anointed heir to his evangelical empire, has demonstrated a propensity for making jaw-dropping statements. Today, however, lets focus on comments made by Anne Graham Lotz, Billy Grahams daughter. Lotz is no conservative lightweight. Shes the author of over a dozen books and, while not a college graduate, holds no less than six honorary doctorates from such academic institutions as Eastern Baptist Theological Seminary and Seoul Womens University. During an interview on an Iowa radio talk show in 2016, Lotz voiced the opinion that Gods judgment is on the United States for its embracing of evolution, which Lotz defined as the worship of four-footed creatures and animals. The poor thing obviously confused evolution with zoolatry. Lotz is quoted by Jerry Pierce in an article titled The Shadow of Sin is Spreading, which appeared in the January 2018 issue of Decision magazine. Decision is published by the Billy Graham Evangelistic Association. Lotz contends that God is trying to rouse humanitys attention by permitting natural disasters and even natural phenomena, such as last years total solar eclipse, to occur. She believes Gods wrath is coming. And Im talking about something like a nuclear strike, an earthquake that splits us in two, an EMP (electromagnetic pulse) attack that devastates our electrical grid. Something major that would be a game-changer for America, because we are so defiant and rebellious and idolatrous and immoral. News flash to Anne Graham Lotz: this is 2018, not 1018. Disasters such as earthquakes, hurricanes and floods are not sent by a deity to punish us for our transgressions, nor is a solar eclipse meant to terrorize a population into repentance. Theyre all natural phenomena that science has long possessed the ability to explain. An EMP attack and a nuclear strike would occur not because God willed them into existence or allowed them to happen, Mrs. Lotz. The former could be attributed to an intelligence failure on the part of our military and the CIA. The latter could be assigned to a different kind of intelligence failure in the form of the 62 million voters who put Donald Trump in the White House. John J. Dunphy is the author of Lewis and Clarks Illinois Volunteers and Abolitionism and the Civil War in Southwestern Illinois. He owns The Second Reading Book Shop in Alton. The Jodhpur court on Tuesday granted Salman Khan permission to travel outside India. Salman is out on bail after he was convicted in the 1998 blackbuck poaching case. He was sentenced to five years in jail by the Jodhpur District and Sessions Court recently after he was found guilty of killing tow blackbucks during the shooting of his film Hum Saath Saath Hain. Salman was convicted under Section 9/51 of the Wildlife (Protection) Act. The four other co-accused actorsSaif Ali Khan, Tabu, Neelam and Sonali Bendrewere acquitted by the court. Salman had spent two nights in jail before he was granted bail on a bond of Rs 50,000 and two sureties of like amount. The actor is currently working on director Remo D'Souza's Race 3. Besides Salman, Race 3 features Anil Kapoor, Jacqueline Fernandez, Bobby Deol and Daisy Shah. He will aslso be seen in Ali Abbas Zafar's Bharat. On Tuesday, Priyanka Chopra confirmed she will be acting along with Salman Khan in Bharat. The pair will be seen together after a gap of 10 years. The Quantico actress said in a statement: Bharat it is! I'm looking forward to begin shooting this film and working with Salman and Ali again after a considerable time. Bharat will feature Salman sporting five different looks spanning 60 years, wherein a crucial part will showcase the actor in his late 20s, looking much leaner and younger. The film, produced by Atul Agnihotri's Reel Life Production Pvt Ltd and Bhushan Kumar's T-Series, will release on Eid 2019. Jammu and Kashmir's ruling coalition partner BJP on Tuesday asked all its ministers to resign, but this did not mean that the BJP was pulling out of the Mehbooba Mufti government, said top party sources. According to the sources in the Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP), the decision was taken at a core group meeting, chaired by party vice president Avinash Rai Khanna, at the party headquarters in Jammu. "All BJP ministers have been directed to submit their resignations from the state council of ministers," the source said, but clarified that this did not mean withdrawal of support to the government. "All BJP ministers have resigned ahead of a cabinet reshuffle and this does not in any way mean the BJP has pulled out of the government," the source said. Sources in the Peoples Democratic Party told IANS the resignations of the BJP ministers is a prelude to the BJP's reconstitution of their part of the council of ministers without any bearing on the continuation of the coalition government in the state. A statue of B.R. Ambedkar was cleansed with milk by members of dalit community in Karnataka on Monday alleging that the statue was polluted by right-wing activists. The incident came close on the heels of the 127th birth anniversary of Ambedkar, during which several leaders cutting across partyline paid tribute on the statue in Hubbali. As the statue was touched by the BJP leaders and Manuvadis, it had become impure, a dalit leader was quoted as saying by a daily on Tuesday. He accused that after Narendra Modi became the prime minister, atrocities on dalits have reached a new height in the country. It is just a warning to anti-dalits and Manuvadis to purify their conscience, he said. The incident came days after members of dalit community "cleansed" an Ambedkar's statue in Vadodara soon after Union minister Maneka Gandhi and some BJP leaders paid floral tributes on his birth anniversary. A day after the controversial audio clip of a woman professor 'luring' four girl students into granting sexual favours to a higher level officer went viral, the politics behind the issue has started playing out. While there are reports that the issue could be covered up, enquiries have been ordered by the governor and the state government into the case. Even as professor Nirmala Devi was arrested from her residence at Aruppukottai after a five-hour drama of her locking the door from the inside, academicians and politicians wonder if she is merely the tip of the iceberg as there are questions on 'who is behind her' and 'if she is just a tool'. Nonetheless, the issue brought to light the friction between the governor and the state government, and the perverted mindset of the officials of higher education department in the state. The state government had ordered a probe by CBCID, the highest investigating agency of the state, only a day after the governors office appointed a one-man committee, headed by retired IAS officer R. Santhanam to probe into the issue. Meanwhile, the enquiry committee appointed by Madurai Kamaraj University (MKU), to which the Devanga Arts College in Aruppukottai at Virudhunagar district is affiliated to, has been withdrawn. The probe was withdrawn after MKU Vice Chancellor P.P. Chelladurai met with Governor Banwarilal Purohit at Raj Bhavan on Tuesday morning. Tamil Nadu DGP T.K. Rajendran has ordered a CBCID probe in the issue. The enquiry, according to a press note from Tamil Nadu governments Department of Information and Public Relations, has been transferred to the CBCID, under section 511 of IPC Act, and section 67 of Information Technology Act. Meanwhile, surprisingly, the governor has called for a press conference this evening to throw more light into the Nirmala Devi audio clip, and to clarify on the controversies surrounding Raj Bhavan in the issue. In every such issue, the spirit of the law is that the governor, being the chancellor of all the universities, will initiate action, after taking advise from the council of ministers. However, in this case, the state government wasn't taken into confidence before the governor appointed a one-man committee to probe into the case. One thing to be noted is how fast the Raj Bhavan decided to act and set up a probe panel. It may be recalled that within two hours of the issue being reported, an enquiry committee was formed by the governor's office. It may be noted that such expeditious action wasn't seen when there were media reports of Governor Purohit, while reviewing the implementation of the Swacch Bharat scheme, got into an occupied bathroom in Cuddalore. The governor's office refuted the allegations, and a press note was issued, calling the media reports mischievous and scurrilous. There were also media reports of a home ministry probe ordered against the governor of a south Indian state, on allegations of sexual charges. However, these media reports, combined with the state governments action of transferring the case to CBCID, despite a committee appointed by the governor himself, has brought to light the frictions between the Edappadi K. Palaniswami-led state government and Banwarilal Purohit. Sources say the audio, which was actually recorded by the students on March 19, was purposely leaked to fix the top man at Raj Bhavan. Sources also say the students had actually filed the complaint with the college management in March itself, immediately after the incident. Congress president Rahul Gandhi today dodged a query on acquittal of right-wing activist Swami Aseemanand in the 2007 Mecca Masjid blast case, which has prompted BJP to seek his apology for his party 'using' terms like "saffron terror" in the past. The Congress president, who began his three-day visit to his Lok Sabha constituency Amethi and to neighbouring Rae Bareli represented by his mother Sonia Gandhi this morning, refused to take the question on the Hyderabad court verdict. Asked by a reporter to comment on the verdict, Rahul, while emerging out of a programme, ignored the poser and told his driver to move ahead. Soon after an anti-terror court in Hyderbad acquitted Assemanand and four others in the 2007 blast case, the BJP alleged that the Congress has long "defamed" Hindus for votes and demanded that Rahul and his predecessor Sonia Gandhi apologise for their party leaders using in the past terms like "saffron terror" and "Hindu terror." Slamming the Congress over the issue after the verdict, BJP spokesperson Sambit Patra said that the opposition party's "appeasement politics" of "defaming" Hindus has been exposed. The NIA court earlier on Monday acquitted Aseemanand and four others in the Mecca Masjid blast case, ruling that the prosecution failed to prove charges against the accused in the case. A massive blast had ripped through the Mecca Masjid on May 8, 2007, during Friday prayers, killing nine people and wounding 58. The case was initially probed by the local police before being transferred to the CBI, and finally to the country's premier anti-terror investigation agency NIA in 2011. Earlier on his arrival here, Rahul was given a warm welcome by his party workers. He visited the house of a senior party leader Babban Dwivedi at Pure Badgain to express condolences over his mother's death and subsequently, also met some farmers working in the fields and inquired about their condition. He also visited Pali, Urermau and Teunsi villages under Jagdishpur assembly segment and sought to know about the local people's problem. Local BJP leaders, meanwhile, claimed that the Congress president's programme for inaugurating a five-km-long road built under the PMGSY has been put on hold. "The road in Thauri area was constructed under the PMGSY and it will be inaugurated by Smriti Irani... Rahul Gandhi will be invited in that programme and, if he wants, he can attend it," BJP's district unit president Uma Shankar Pandey said. When contacted, PMGSY's Executive Engineer K.K. Srivastava said the road is still incomplete and cannot be inaugurated till it's built completely. Even as the Central government swung into action on Tuesday to ease anxiety over a shortage of cash in several states, senior opposition leaders took the opportunity to target the BJP and linked the shortage to the demonetisation decision of 2016. Congress president Rahul Gandhi blamed the situation on Prime Minister Narendra Modi, alleging the PM 'destroyed' the banking system. Speaking to a news agency, Rahul said, During demonetisation also, we were forced to stand in queues as he (Prime Minister Modi) snatched Rs 5,00-1,000 rupee notes from our pockets and put in businessman Nirav Modi's pocket." Meanwhile, West Bengal Chief Minister Mamata Banerjee saw an opportunity to reprise her role as a major opponent of demonetisation. Banerjee tweeted that the cash shortage in several states reminded her of the #Demonetisation days and asked, Is there a Financial Emergency going on in the country? Seeing reports of ATMs running out of cash in several States. Big notes missing. Reminder of #DeMonetisation days. Is there a Financial Emergency going on in the country? #CashCrunch #CashlessATMs Mamata Banerjee (@MamataOfficial) April 17, 2018 Banerjee was one of the most vocal critics of the demonetisation decision of November 2016, taking a line that was more outspoken than even the Congress. She, along with Delhi Chief Minister Arvind Kejriwal, had staged protests over the decision, calling for a rollback. The move was interpreted as an attempt to build up her national 'profile' as an alternative to the BJP and Congress. Reports of currency shortages in at least six statesGujarat, eastern Maharashtra, Madhya Pradesh, Bihar, Andhra Pradesh and Telanganastarted appearing on Tuesday. Finance Minister Arun Jaitley sought to assure the public, saying that the RBI had more than adequate currency in circulation. He attributed the temporary shortage to a 'sudden and unusual increase' in demand in some areas. (With agency inputs) The Congress on Monday attacked the Modi government over its proposal to install a chip in television set-top boxes to ascertain viewership data, dubbing the move a serious breach of privacy and the "next stage of surveillance". Congress communications in-charge Randeep Surjewala alleged that Information and Broadcasting Minister Smriti Irani wanted to now know what shows people watch within the four walls of their bedrooms. In a Twitter post, Surjewala referred to the Modi government as "surveillance sarkar" which had shattered to pieces the right to privacy. "BREAKING! The Next Stage of Surveillance by BJP Revealed! "In a serious breach of privacy, Smriti Iraniji wants to know what show you watch on your TV, within the four walls of your bedroom, without your permission! Why? "'Ab ki baar Surveillance sarkar'. The right to privacy broken into pieces," he tweeted. The Information and Broadcasting Ministry has proposed installing a chip in new television set-top boxes which will provide data about channels watched and for how long. A senior official of the ministry said the move is aimed at getting "more authentic" viewership figures for every channel. "This would help advertisers and the DAVP to spend their advertising expenditure wisely. Only those channels which are widely watched will get promoted," the official added. The Directorate of Advertising and Visual Publicity (DAVP) is the nodal agency of the government for advertising by various ministries and its organisations. The Information and Broadcasting Ministry told the Telecom Regulatory Authority of India (TRAI), "It is also proposed to ask DTH operators to install a chip in the new set-top boxes which can give data about channels watched and their duration." The proposal was part of the ministry's response to a number of recommendations made by the TRAI on issues related to new direct-to-home licenses. The acquittal of Swami Aseemanand among five accused of the 2008 Mecca Masjid blast case is symbolic of the crumbling saffron terror cases in the country. In the year 2011, during the previous UPA regime, the Union home ministry asked the National Investigation Agency (NIA) to inquire into the alleged involvement of right-wing extremists in six terror cases, and one murder case of former RSS pracharak Sunil Joshi. In May 2016, in an exclusive interview with THE WEEK, the then NIA DG Sharad Kumar had said from 2011 to 2016, the threat of perception of saffron terror had undergone a sea change. There is no saffron terror threat in the country, Kumar told THE WEEK. Since 2008, there has been no activity that has come to the notice of the agency. Hence, there is no question of any threat,'' he had said. Two years hence, fresh allegations have begun with the BJP now accusing the Congress of deliberately coining the word ''saffron terror'', which, it claimed, was nothing but a political conspiracy. The question, however, that still remains unanswered is who carried out these terror blasts that claimed several lives. The NIA probe has not been able to identify the culprits after several years of investigations. The terror cases were related to blasts in Samjhauta Express in Haryana (2007), Malegaon in Maharashtra (2006 and 2008), Ajmer Dargah in Rajasthan (2007), Modasa in Gujarat (2008) and Mecca Masjid in Hyderabad (2008). The investigators suspected the involvement of right-wing extremists in all these cases, which is why the home ministry decided to bunch the cases and hand over the investigations to the NIA. The Mecca Masjid blast case is second among the Hindu terror cases where trial has concluded and the judgment has been pronounced, acquitting the accused. The trial in the Ajmer Dargah blast case resulted in conviction of only threeJoshi, Devendra Gupta and Bhavesh Patelout of nine accused persons. Those acquitted included Swami Aseemanand. In the Sunil Joshi murder case, the NIA handed over prosecution of the case to the Madhya Pradesh police saying it has not found any evidence to suggest that his murder was linked to the larger Hindu terror conspiracy. It said Joshi was killed by his own men. The court didnt even frame charges in the case, and discharged all accused eight persons, including Pragya Singh Thakur last year. Incidentally, all charges were also dropped by NIA against key accused Pragya Thakur in the 2008 Malegaon blast case, and the court is yet to take a call on the matter. The investigation into the Modasa blast case also resulted in a naught after the case was closed for lack of evidence, while the trial in the 2006 as well as 2008 Malegaon blast cases is yet to begin. All eyes are now on the Samjhauta blast case in which the NIA has filed charges against Hindu extremists and the trial is going on in the matter. What is noteworthy is that 42 of 209 witnesses deposed so far in the Samjhauta Express case have turned hostile, casting shadow over the success of NIA in the case. There are total 299 witnesses in the case. Even in the Dargah Ajmer Sharif case, 27 out of 149 witnesses had turned hostile during the course of trial. This time round, 66 out of 226 witnesses have turned hostile in the Mecca Masjid blast case derailing the probe once again. The NIA's flip-flop in the investigations of the alleged Hindu terror cases had first seen allegations surfacing when former special public prosecutor Rohini Salian had claimed that Suhas Warke, a superintendent of police in the NIA, had asked her to go soft on the accused in the Malegaon blasts case after the BJP came to power in 2014. The Congress had then demanded that all cases being handled by the NIA be monitored by the Supreme Court to ensure that there was no pressure on the agency. Whether it is SIMI or Abhinav Bharat, the investigations need to be done without any interference, Congress spokesman Ajoy Kumar had said. Prime Minister Narendra Modi arrived in Sweden late night on Monday as part of the India-Nordic Summit. The prime minister was received by his Swedish counterpart Stefan Lofven at the Stolkhome Arlanda airport. Modi also received a ceremonial reception. On Tuesday, Prime Minister Modi is scheduled to meet King of Sweden King Carl XVI Gustaf in the morning followed by a walk with Swedish Prime Minister Stefan Lofven from Sogerska to Rosenbad. Later in the day, the prime ministers of both the countries will sign bilateral agreements followed by a press conference. Prime Minister Modi is further scheduled to take part in the Sweden-India business day. Prime Minister Modi will also attend the India-Nordic Summit and Commonwealth Heads of Government Meeting (CHOGM) in Sweden. Indian Ambassador to Finland Vani Rao confirmed that issues related to global security would be discussed at the India-Nordic Summit. "Global security is definitely on the agenda for discussion. In the recent past, European countries have been a target of terrorism and violent extremism. The European Union is more sensitive to the issue now, which gives us an opportunity to sensitise them about the threat of terrorism and violent extremism, and how these groups are active in our neighborhood, particularly in South Asia," she said. Rao stated that Prime Minister Modi would be holding talks with the prime ministers from the Nordic nations, namely Denmark, Finland, Iceland, Norway, and Sweden, both in the summit and through one-on-one engagements on how they could contribute to India's flagship programmes. "This is the first time the summit is taking place here. The Nordic region countries are similar in terms of socio-economic status and industrialisation. They also possess stable governance and strong stance on environmental matters. We will engage with them in a similar manner, and examine how they can help our missions like Make in India, Skill India, Startup India and Smart Cities programmes. We are also looking at leveraging their expertise in the areas of food processing, renewable energy, and so on," she said. Talking about the bilateral engagement between Prime Minister Modi and his Finnish counterpart Juha Sipila, Rao stated that a high-level dialogue would be taking place to review and strengthen bilateral ties, with trade and investment as the key focus. "Prime Minister Modi and the Finnish PM are meeting after almost two years. It will be a high-level dialogue, where the two leaders would review the bilateral agenda, and how the same can be strengthened and diversified. While trade and investment will be the focus, we are also looking to explore engagement in new areas. For example, Nordic countries have expertise in vocational education and clean technology; these are some areas of interest. Apart from this, the two leaders will also discuss matters pertaining economic and financial cooperation," she said. The community event is scheduled to be held at the Stockholm University in the evening, after which Prime Minister Modi will depart for London at night. The forthcoming visit of Prime Minister Modi's visit to the UK will focus on enhancing India-UK tech partnership. He will attend the CHOGM in London from April 19 to 20. After concluding his visits to Sweden and the UK, the Prime Minister will meet Chancellor Angela Merkel in Berlin for a brief while and both the leaders will exchange views on a number of bilateral, regional and global issues. Tamil Nadu Deputy Chief Minister O. Panneerselvam is likely to visit Delhi on Wednesday to meet Union minister Ravi Shankar Prasad. During the meeting, Panneerselvam will discuss the implications of 15th Finance Commission, and the Terms of Reference (ToR) of the commission, which adversely affects the financial interests of Tamil Nadu. Known to be a developed and a welfare state, Tamil Nadu would lose close to Rs. 40,000 crore if the ToR comes into effect. The DyCM meeting with Prasad is considered crucial, given the fact that the state government skipped the finance ministers' conclave organised by Kerala Finance Minister Thomas Isaac recently. Finance ministers of Tamil Nadu and Telangana were absent when the finance ministers of south Indian states met to discuss the 15th Finance Commission. However, sources say the real purpose of OPS Delhi visit is to meet Prasad, who is the law minister, over the verdict in the case of the disqualification of 18 MLAs. The Madras High Court is yet to pronounce its verdict on the issue. The AIADMK government, led by Edappadi K Palaniswami, is a actually minority now without the required numbers in the assembly. At this juncture, it is important to note that there were several reports on Prasad saying he is instrumental in stalling several recommendations of the collegium for elevations of several judges to the high courts and Supreme Court. Punjab Chief Minister Capt Amarender Singh is slated to expand his cabinet on Apr 27, said informed sources. This will be the first expansion since he assumed office in Mar 2017. The chief minister will visit Delhi on Thursday, and consult Congress president Rahul Gandhi on the names. He may add about ten members to his cabinet, which now has nine ministers including the chief minister. While cabinet expansion has always been about balancing different communities and castes, talent and new comers, the trickiest thing for a Congress chief minister now is to balance between the young and the old. Singh, during his campaign days, had ruled out future contests saying he would turn 85 by next elections, and would prefer to leave the field to younger people. But senior MLAs have not exactly said that in the context of cabinet inclusion, at a time when the party does have many young legislators. The contenders include four to six time legislators. The chief minister however will push for new blood when he meets Gandhi. Then comes the rank. The formula that has been worked out so far was to make MLAs who have served more than three or more terms a cabinet rank minister, and those with less legislative experience junior ministers. Former VHP leader Pravin Togadia began his indefinite fast in Ahmedabad on Tuesday to publicise his demands, including construction of a Ram Temple in Ayodhya. The 62-year-old Hindutva leader quit the post of VHP international working president last week after his nominee, Raghav Reddy, lost a key organisational poll. Togadia launched the fast outside the state VHP headquarters in the Paldi area after 12pm on Tuesday with some Hindu priests and supporters. Togadia had earlier said his hunger strike would be aimed at the welfare of Hindus and to draw attention to his demands. These included construction of a Ram Temple at Ayodhya, a nationwide ban on cow slaughter, enforcement of the common civil code and resettlement of displaced Kashmiri Pandits. The surgeon-turned-firebrand leader had launched a scathing attack on Prime Minister Narendra Modi after he quit the VHP, a rightwing outfit with which he had been associated with for decades. Earlier, Togadia was to sit on fast at GMDC Ground, but the police denied permission, after which the venue was shifted on Tuesday to outside the VHP headquarters. "We were denied permission by the police to go ahead with a fast at GMDC Ground, so we had to change the venue (located around 5km away)," said former VHP city president Raju Patel. Togadia quit the rightwing organisation after former Himachal Pradesh governor V.S. Kokje was elected VHP international president, defeating Reddy, last Saturday. Modi and Togadia, both of whom hail from Gujarat and started out as Rashtriya Swayamsevak Sangh volunteers, drifted apart in the last decade with Modi's rise. Togadia had made a sensational claim last month, saying a Rajasthan Police team had come to Ahmedabad to "abduct" him and he feared he could be eliminated in a "fake encounter." During the long-drawn tussle within the state BJP between Modi (before he became PM) and former chief minister Keshubhai Patel, Togadia was believed to have backed the latter. The former VHP leader belongs to the Patel community. Togadia recently met Patidar quota agitation leader Hardik Patel, who had campaigned against the BJP in the 2017 Gujarat Assembly elections. NEW YORK, APRIL 16, 2018 Reuters, the worlds largest international multimedia news provider, was today awarded two 2018 Pulitzer Prizes from Columbia University. This marks the first time in Reuters history that it has received two Pulitzer Prizes in one year. Reuters journalists Clare Baldwin, Andrew R.C. Marshall, Manuel Mogato and team were recognized in the International Reporting category for their series of investigations that exposed the organization responsible for thousands of deaths: the Philippine police. Awarding the prize to Reuters, the Pulitzer committee recognized the team for relentless reporting that exposed the brutal killing campaign behind Philippines President Rodrigo Dutertes war on drugs. Adnan Abidi, Mohammad Ponir Hossain, Hannah McKay, Cathal McNaughton, Damir Sagolj, Danish Siddiqui and Soe Zeya Tun were recognized in the category of Feature Photography for their coverage of the mass exodus of the Rohingya people to Bangladesh. The Pulitzer judges honored the team for shocking photographs that exposed the world to the violence Rohingya refugees faced in fleeing Myanmar. In a year in which many Pulitzers were rightly devoted to U.S. domestic matters, were proud at Reuters to shine a light on global issues of profound concern and importance, said Stephen J. Adler, editor-in-chief, Reuters. The series of investigations from the Philippines demonstrated how police in the presidents drug war have killed with impunity and consistently been shielded from prosecution. The extraordinary photography of the mass exodus of the Rohingya people to Bangladesh demonstrates not only the human cost of conflict but also the essential role photojournalism can play in revealing it. Im incredibly proud of the brave and resilient Reuters teams that chronicle the consequences of government policy and behavior around the world. Reuters Reuters, the news and media division of Thomson Reuters, is the worlds largest international multimedia news provider reaching more than one billion people every day. Reuters provides trusted business, financial, national and international news to professionals via Thomson Reuters desktops, the world's media organizations and directly to consumers at Reuters.com and via Reuters TV. Follow news about Reuters at @ReutersPR. CONTACT Heather Carpenter PR Manager, Head of Special Projects Reuters heather.carpenter@thomsonreuters.com 646-223-8551 China Unicom (Hong Kong) Limited, an investment holding company, provides cellular and fixed-line voice, and related value-added services in the People's Republic of China. It also provides broadband and other Internet-related, information communications technology, and business and data communications services. In addition, the company offers communications technology training, technical, and Internet information and value-added telecommunications services; telecommunications network construction, planning, and technical consulting services; and consultancy, survey, design, and contract services relating to information and construction projects. Further, it provides customer, project design consultation and management, property management, e-payment, venture capital investment, communications technology development and promotion, auto informatisation, financial, data processing, and tourism and information services; advertising design, production, agency, and publication services; technology development, transfer, and consulting services; and technology promotion service of intelligent transportation system's products. Additionally, the company offers technology development and consultation, and other services; technology research and development, consultation, and services of TV video and mobile video; internet of things technology, and online data processing and transaction services; and big data, and cloud computation and infrastructure services. It also provides online video and reading materials; network music; financing leasing services; and data analysis and application services, as well as sells handsets and telecommunication equipment. As of December 31, 2019, it had approximately 254 million 4G subscribers, 83 million fixed-line broadband subscribers, and 54 million fixed-line local access subscribers. The company was incorporated in 2000 and is based in Central, Hong Kong. China Unicom (Hong Kong) Limited is a subsidiary of China Unicom (BVI) Limited. Read More American Consumer News, LLC dba MarketBeat 2010-2021. All rights reserved. 326 E 8th St #105, Sioux Falls, SD 57103 | U.S. Based Support Team at [email protected] | (844) 978-6257 MarketBeat does not provide personalized financial advice and does not issue recommendations or offers to buy stock or sell any security. Our Accessibility Statement | Terms of Service | Do Not Sell My Information 2021 Market data provided is at least 10-minutes delayed and hosted by Barchart Solutions. Information is provided 'as-is' and solely for informational purposes, not for trading purposes or advice, and is delayed. To see all exchange delays and terms of use please see disclaimer. Fundamental company data provided by Zacks Investment Research. Wall Street analysts have given iShares Core U.S. Aggregate Bond ETF a "N/A" rating, but there may be better buying opportunities in the stock market. Some of MarketBeat's past winning trading ideas have resulted in 5-15% weekly gains. MarketBeat just released five new stock ideas, but iShares Core U.S. Aggregate Bond ETF wasn't one of them. MarketBeat thinks these five companies may be even better buys. View MarketBeat's top stock picks here. Tower and Infrastructure Providers Association (TAIPA) industry association for Telecommunication Infrastructure Providers today assessed that 566 mobile towers have been sealed by Delhi by municipal corporations out of 11,500 total mobile towers in Delhi despite the fee deposit of 48 crore rupees lying with municipal corporations. While, 1150 mobile tower sites are ready for deployment, however, awaits permissions. This altogether is impacting the overall ease of doing business, development of a robust telecom infrastructure and addressing the growing the data needs of customers. The Delhi tower policy, 2010 was challenged by the telecom industry in Delhi High Court imposing issues such as exorbitant permission fee of Rs. 5 lakhs for 5 years only and Rs. 1 lakh per service provider for sharing and restriction on locations etc. For ease of doing business, in January 2017, Delhi High Court referred mediation settlement was signed by the industry with the municipal corporations offering provisions such as deemed approval for 30 days, appointment of nodal officers, documentation as per DoT guidelines, 2013 and fee part was also renegotiated to Rs. 1 lakh to 2 lakhs and revised guidelines to be issued in line with DoT advisory guidelines, 2013. However, even after a year, the mediation settlement has still not been implemented down the line with the municipal corporations and have resulted into the sealing of critical infrastructure amounting to 113 crores approximately and no new permissions have been processed for the installation of telecom infrastructure. It is worth highlighting that all the municipal commissioners have issued directions for the implementation of mediation settlement agreement, however, representatives of various departments down the line are conspicuous in following the same. While highlighting the bone of contention, Mr. Tilak Raj Dua, Director General, TAIPA said Non-implementation of mediation settlement and lack of comprehensive tower policy in Delhi is creating knotty situations for the development of a robust telecom infrastructure. It is the high time that the telecom infrastructure need to be treated as the essential critical infrastructure like others such as Roads, Transport and water supplies etc. as the formation of new Digital India solely depends upon the enhanced telecom infrastructure. These street furniture enables emergency services, e-governance, e-health and e-education services and in the near future it will enable newer technologies such as 5G, VR, AI and IoT etc. The telecom tower industry has held numerous meetings with municipal corporations of Delhi to discuss the implementation of mediation settlement and the issues industry have been facing for more than 8 years now. After the notification of Delhi Tower policy date 2010, the Government of India has notified two enabling guidelines/rules for enabling seamless provisioning of telecom infrastructure i.e. DoT advisory guidelines, 2013 and Right of Way (RoW) rules, 2016. Most recent RoW rules, November 2016 offers salient features such as no restriction on location of telecom towers, single window clearance mechanism, defined time-period for approvals, appointment of Nodal officers, nominal administrative fees, and deemed approvals etc. extensively supporting the Digital India mission. Further Mr. Dua added These avoidable delays in implementation of policies, notification of policies and suo-moto coercive actions on sealing the mobile towers leads to solemn issues such as slow internet speed, network congestion and call drops etc. The overall regressive act impacts the ease of doing business and forms a misconception that the industry is not making adequate investments. There is an immediate need to notify a comprehensive mobile tower policy for enabling speedy installation of telecom infrastructure in Delhi in order to make city a world class super-fast internet metropolitan. Today, Delhi alone has around 11,500 mobile towers and caters to more than 58 million wireless telecommunication subscribers. These towers are shared among TSPs with the average tenancy ratio of 2.2. It is imperative to mention that Delhi needs to double the tower count in the near future to address the growing need of data and making inception of newer technologies a practical equation. Technuter.com News Service Cohoes Scores of students in fourth through eighth grades will have the opportunity learn about musical theater, songwriting and making music videos during a three-week pilot program in arts education being launched this summer at Cohoes Music Hall. Running July 9 to 27, one part of the program will feature instruction in all aspects of musical theater, including sessions on dance, acting and voice for 75 students. The curriculum is being designed by staff of Albany-based Park Playhouse, which stages its nonsummer productions at the music hall and brings its scholastic touring productions to school audiences of more than 25,000 annually. Instructors will also be from the Cohoes City School District. In separate component of the program, Peak Music, a music school in Cohoes that offers instruction in guitar, voice and songwriting, will offer a songwriting and video camp called Ignite Music Passion. One-week sessions, each for eight students, will be held for three age groups during the same weeks in July as the musical-theater camp. The program will end with a showcase night at the music hall with a performance by the musical-theater students and the premiere of the music video for a song written by participating Ignite students. Both programs will free, underwritten by Prime Cos., Pioneer Bank and the Cohoes LDC. The approximate cost is $15,000, said Holly Brown, executive director of Cohoes Music Hall. Park Playhouse, Peak Music, the music hall, city schools and the city of Cohoes are partners in the inaugural effort. "This is such a tremendous opportunity for the students of Cohoes," district Superintendent Jennifer Spring said in a statement accompanying the announcement. She said, "Just last year, we were able to add back band and chorus at our elementary schools. Now, we are forming key partnerships with music professionals to help further inspire our students and strengthen their engagement in the arts." Mayor Shawn Morse said in a statement, "This is a great example of community resources working together to engage students with high-quality, hands-on arts education in our great city. Providing our students with more opportunity to channel their inner creativity is an integral part of development." Sign up for The Knick Get the latest news and some area history with our afternoon newsletter. Brown said studies show that performing-arts education enhances childrens interpersonal skills, collaborative abilities, and boosts confidence. Additionally, she said, exposure to arts education helps students make sense of their emotions and develop new ways to express themselves. "This is an important experience that lasts long after the final showcase performance is over," Brown said. "I look forward to working alongside these professionals to grow arts education in this city and our region." Registration forms for the Summer Arts Education Program will be available in the main offices of Cohoes elementary schools and the middle school beginning April 23. Albany The state's top lawyer is launching a probe into firms that trade virtual "cryptocurrency," citing concerns over potential defrauding of investors in products where values can swing wildly in short periods of time. State Attorney General Eric Schneiderman is questioning 13 online exchanges about their ownership and operations, including the use of robotic programs, efforts to detect market manipulation, potential conflicts of interest and outages when investors are locked out of making trades. Eight of those firms do not have required state licenses to deal with New York customers, according to the state Department of Financial Services, which has regulated online cryptocurrency firms since 2015. "Virtual currency is also a highly speculative sector, featuring significant volatility, instability, and risk," Schneiderman wrote to the companies. "Moreover, published reports indicate the sector has attracted fraudsters, market manipulators, and thieves." "Consumers in New York and across the country have a right to transparency and accountability when they invest their money," he continued. "Yet too often, consumers don't have the basic facts they need to assess the fairness, integrity, and security of these trading platforms." The most widely traded cryptocurrency, Bitcoin is created through the use of complex computer algorithms. Skyrocketing in value during 2017, Bitcoin peaked at more than $13,800 on Dec. 1. representing a gain of more than 13,000 percent for the year. By March 1, it was worth about half of that peak. It was currently trading late Tuesday for slightly less than $8,000. There are now a host of other new cryptocurrencies being offered to potential investors. In February, the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission issued dozens of subpoenas and information requests to technology companies and advisers involved in this red-hot market for cryptocurrencies, according to reporting in the Wall Street Journal. Schneiderman's office's Investor Protection Bureau sent letters to: (1) Coinbase, Inc. (GDAX); (2) Gemini Trust Company; (3) bitFlyer USA, Inc.; (4) iFinex Inc. (Bitfinex); (5) Bitstamp USA Inc.; (6) Payward, Inc. (Kraken); (7) Bittrex, Inc.; (8) Circle Internet Financial Limited (Poloniex LLC); (9) Binance Limited; (10) Elite Way Developments LLP (Tidex.com); (11) Gate Technology Incorporated (Gate.io); (12) itBit Trust Company; and (13) Huobi Global Limited (Huobi.Pro). DFS records indicate that just five of the firms currently have appropriate licenses to sell to New York customers, including Coinbase, Gemini Trust Company, bitFlyer USA, Circle Internet Financial Limited, and itBit Trust Company. Schneiderman's letter asked exchange owners to describe efforts in place to "detect, prevent, block, or penalize suspicious trading activity or market manipulation." Other areas where Schneiderman wants answers include: Ownership and control of the company. Basic operation and fees. Sign up for The Knick Get the latest news and some area history with our afternoon newsletter. Trading policies and procedures. Outages and other suspensions of trading. Internal controls. Privacy and money laundering. According to the Attorney General's press release, "certain trading platforms have formal rules barring access in New York and may not have a license to engage in virtual currency business activity in New York. Among other topics, we are asking platforms to describe their measures for restricting trading from prohibited jurisdictions." Financial Services Superintendent Maria Vullo issued a statement that did not mention the Attorney General's probe or any potential role that her agency may be playing in it. "DFS took the lead in 2015 in regulating the virtual currency market and has demonstrated the importance of strong state supervision of the financial services markets through regulations that protect the industry and consumers from money laundering and the threat of cyberattacks," she wrote. "DFS continues to be vigilant concerning risks in these markets, and recently issued guidance to ensure that virtual currency companies take necessary steps to guard against fraud, and to be extra vigilant about manipulation. As the cryptocurrency markets continue to grow and evolve, DFS will keep pace to ensure that they do so with under robust regulatory supervision and with solid consumer protections in place." ALBANY Chris Tague, the Republican nominee in next week's special election to replace former state Assemblyman Peter Lopez, has a seemingly demanding day job as general manager of Cobleskill Stone Products, a construction-services company that also produces sand and gravel. In 2011, Tague also held a second job as a part-time aide in the office of former Assemblyman Steve McLaughlin, whose district office was about an hour's drive from Tague's residence in Schoharie. The part-time government job paid about $10,000 a year and Tague, who doesn't live in McLaughlin's former district, said he worked about 17.5 hours a week on a regular basis, which entitled him to the state's taxpayer-subsidized health care plan. Tague said in a written response that he had taken the health care coverage. As the Times Union reported last year, state legislators often give "community liaison" positions that carry the health care benefits to political allies. As long as they list working at least 17.5 hours a week "on a regular basis," staffers of any salary level can enjoy the benefits of New York's insurance coverage while still working in private-sector jobs. The sand and gravel industry that has been a major backer of McLaughlin, who vacated his Assembly seat after he was elected Rensselaer County executive last November. In a Republican-leaning Assembly district, Tague is the favorite to win the seat formerly held by Lopez, a Republican who left the Assembly in October to become a regional administrator for the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency. Tague, who is the Schoharie town supervisor, is running against Democrat Aidan O'Connor, a Greene County legislator, in the April 24 special election. Middleburgh high school teacher Wes Laraway is also running as an independent. Tague lives in Schoharie, which like his company's office in Cobleskill is outside McLaughlin's former Assembly district. Tague worked for McLaughlin in 2011 as a "community relations director." Tague's time sheets listing his work hours for 2011 obtained by the Times Union through a Freedom of Information Law request indicate that he often reported working two to three hours per day for McLaughlin. Tague never listed working on weekends. Tague's Schoharie residence was destroyed by Hurricane Irene in late August 2011, which he said was one reason he left McLaughlin's staff that September. "I was a part-time constituent liaison and assisted with constituent casework, administrative duties, community outreach events, and attended local events on behalf of Mr. McLaughlin," Tague said. "I stepped down from my position in September of 2011 because of new responsibilities at Cobleskill Stone. What also accelerated my decision was the emotional and physical toll of losing everything in the hurricane, which put into perspective that I needed to spend more time at home helping our community and my family rebuild." Hurricane Irene's historic flooding devastated Schoharie and the surrounding area when it struck on Aug. 28, 2011. Though the storm destroyed his home that week, Tague's time sheets show he maintained his Assembly duties: He listed working 4.5 hours on Aug. 29, five hours the next day, and two hours the day after that, bringing him to the minimum 17.5 hours. Sign up for The Knick Get the latest news and some area history with our afternoon newsletter. "Yes, my home was destroyed but my jobs and bills didn't go away," Tague said. "I was fortunate that my mother's house was not harmed and I was able to live there. I simply could not afford to stop working and with everything in my home destroyed there was nothing to save. So I continued to work and joined friends, family, neighbors, and volunteers when I could to clear out the house." Tague said that when he was vice president of the Schoharie County GOP, he had helped McLaughlin during his Assembly campaign. McLaughlin won election in 2010 and assumed office in January 2011. "After the campaign, I was asked if I would be interested in a part-time job as a constituent liaison because of my small business, construction and agricultural experience, and I accepted," Tague said. "The valuable and positive experiences I gained helping constituents and understanding how state government works have helped prepare me to serve the residents of the 102nd Assembly District." Beginning in August 2011, McLaughlin himself began signing off on Tague's time sheets. Employee hours are self-policed by Assembly members and their staff. On a financial disclosure form for 2017, Tague listed making between $50,000 and $75,000 at Cobleskill Stone, as well as drawing between $1,000 and $5,000 as a consultant to Delaware County. In addition, he made $12,700 from Schoharie County and nearly $9,000 from the town of Schoharie, according to the Empire Center's SeeThroughNy.net website. In January, the Times Union reported that Rich Crist, McLaughlin's campaign director during last year's county executive campaign, was added to McLaughlin's Assembly payroll last September in a part-time position that paid the equivalent of $67,000 a year. Crist, who never obtained a state ID, said at the time that the work included "interaction with state, county and local offices on various issues, response to correspondence, preparation and delivery of proclamations and commendations," among other tasks. Most of Crist's hours listed on the Assembly payroll sheets indicate he worked between one and four hours per day, seven days per week. He also worked on state holidays, the records indicate including Thanksgiving. A Cumberland Farms manager was charged with multiple felonies after Colonie police said he tried to meet up with a teenage girl for sex. Colonie police said Steven M. Frazee, 56, of Castleton-on-Hudson, was charged April 13 after a two-month investigation. According to investigators, Frazee messaged police on at least three occasions in February and March, believing he was talking to a 13-year-old girl. The messages sent on the internet and by text were sexual in nature, police said. Frazee set up a meeting at a Latham apartment complex last Friday and was arrested when he arrived. Police searched his vehicle, home and electronic devices. He was charged with three counts of attempted dissemination of indecent material to a minor. Sign up for The Knick Get the latest news and some area history with our afternoon newsletter. Police said they dont have evidence that Frazee had molested any victims and there was never a teenager in communication with him. Anyone who believes they may have been a victim or has information is asked to call Colonie police at 518-783-2744. This investigation was aided by the FBI Child Exploitation Task Force and the New York State Police Troop G Computer Crimes Unit. Frazee was sent to the Albany County Correctional Facility to await arraignment. A Clifton Park man on Monday pleaded guilty to distributing child pornography, according to the U.S. Attorneys Office in the Northern District of New York. William C. Ruff, 43, admitted that on eight occasions between Oct. 10, 2016 and Dec. 17, 2016, he used file-sharing software to distribute child porn on the internet, some of the videos and images depicting children as young as 3 years old, federal attorneys said. Columbia County Sheriff's Office COPAKE - A gust of hurricane-force winds flipped an empty tractor trailer on its side on Route 22 just south of Weed Mine Road on Monday morning, Columbia County Sheriff's Office said. Deputies said a gusts on Copake Flats rushed underneath the trailer causing it to topple and slide down an embankment at 9:22 a.m. The driver, 53-year-old Meyette Howard of Altamont, was taken to Columbia Memorial Hospital with back pain. CLIFTON PARK Texas televangelist Joel Osteen will dedicate the new Northway Church near Exit 10 of the Northway Road on Thursday, 24 hours before Osteen's "A Night of Hope" tour in 11 cities comes to the Times Union Center in Albany. Osteen, whose Lakewood Church in Houston has 52,000 members, will participate in an "inspirational building dedication and celebration" of the Northway Church, led by founding Pastor Buddy Cremeans. The nondenominational evangelical church, now 15 years old, started in Malta and moved late last year from a shopping plaza nearby in Clifton Park on Route 146. Construction of the new building with seating for 1,200 in 2017 drew opposition from town residents who said it would lead to traffic congestion and clear a wooded area that was popular for walking and jogging. Osteen's 7 p.m. appearance in Clifton Park will be by invitation only. "It will be a small ceremony for the family," his spokeswoman, Andrea Davis, said Monday in phone call from Texas. The church in Clifton Park did not return a call and emails from the Times Union, and it is unclear who will be invited to the program there. Town Supervisor Phil Barrett, who ordered additional traffic patrols near the church when it opened, said he doesn't anticipate a need for additional patrols Thursday night. More for you Joel Osteen to lead 'A Night of Hope' at Times Union Center on April 20 Sign up for The Knick Get the latest news and some area history with our afternoon newsletter. Victoria Osteen and Debbie Cremeans each play a prominent role in their husband's preaching onstage. Northway also has satellite congregations in Westchester County and Delaware, televising services from the main church. Millions of people around the world watch Osteen's weekly services, a multimedia events that feature music, preaching and inspiring messages from his church in a former indoor stadium. Osteen also has his own satellite radio channel on Sirius XM. Tickets for "A Night of Hope" in Albany are $15. Door open at 6 p.m. and the event begins at 7:30 p.m. He brought a "A Night of Hope" to the Times Union Center six years ago. This year's tour makes its next stop in Brooklyn at the Barclays Center on July 13. COLONIE It wasn't until he saw his youngest son, watching TV upside down from his favorite chair in the living room, legs draped over the back, that Charles M. Blow learned to forgive himself. "He was 7, and it just struck me like a load of bricks how small he was," he said. The New York Times columnist was himself just 7 years old when his male, teenage cousin sexually assaulted him. He never spoke about it, not in any meaningful way at least, until he was 44 and published a memoir in 2015 titled "Fire Shut Up in My Bones." He shared the story again at a state-sponsored summit in Colonie Tuesday designed to raise awareness of male sexual assault. "I lay there on my side, shocked and silent," he wrote of the moments after the assault. "I stared at the dim light shining through the crack beneath the door, thinking that my older brother lay just beyond it, thinking that had I screamed he would have come running. But what would I have told him? Surely I would have gotten in trouble. Somehow this was my fault. Surely I had done something awful to make him do what he had done." Or worse, he thought, already awake to the homophobia guiding society's rules maybe he wanted it, maybe that's why he didn't scream. "To me, that was even more frightening than the first," Blow wrote. The state Office of Victim Services invited Blow to speak at its summit, titled "Seeking Solutions: Starting the Conversation about Male Sexual Assault," as part of an effort to give male victims of sexual assault and abuse their own #MeToo moment, said director Elizabeth Cronin. About 200 people attended. Joining in the movement in which women nationwide became empowered to speak out about the sexual harassment, abuse and assault they had faced in their lifetime were a number of men, including actors Brendan Fraser and Terry Crews, who decided to speak out about their own assaults. Most recently, Pulitzer Prize-winning author Junot Diaz revealed his story of childhood abuse, and its ripple effects on his life, in a New Yorker essay published last week. About 14 percent of reported rapes involve men and boys, while one in every six reported sexual assaults is against a boy, according to the National Alliance to End Sexual Violence. Studies estimate that as many as one in four American men have suffered sexual abuse at some point in their lives. Many suffer in silence, Blow and experts contend, due to stigma and gender stereotypes. "It's all about homophobia," Blow said. "Whether we call it that or not, that's what it is." Despite science and research suggesting otherwise, the mythologies surrounding homosexuality and sexual abuse namely, that one is a consequence of the other remain rampant. Sign up for The Knick Get the latest news and some area history with our afternoon newsletter. "If you are straight, nothing can make you gay, not even sexual assault," said Blow. But societal norms and taboos play a huge role in whether or not a person speaks up, experts say. If men are to be masculine, then revealing yourself as a victim betrays that idea. And if society believes that male-on-male sexual contact (forced or consensual) predisposes one to homosexuality, and homosexuality is bad, then speaking up about even unwanted contact exposes oneself to judgment. "It is in this lie, the lie that has sunken into countless men, that keeps many of them from ever telling what was done to them," said Blow. "They don't want to be viewed by society as being less than a real man. This is tragic because it means that homophobia is not just doing harm to gay men. Homophobia is then doing harm to straight men." Statistics remain elusive, but there is a general perception among treatment providers and victim advocates that most male sexual assault occurs in childhood. Half of all juvenile victims of sexual assault are under 12 years old and, of this group, the most common age of victims is 4 years old. The most likely perpetrator of that abuse is a 14-year-old boy. For male victims, this abuse is most likely to come from a family member or acquaintance, and is most likely to occur in the home. Upsetting family dynamics is a major reason that children won't report abuse, experts say. "A lot of parents make the mistake of saying around children, 'If somebody ever did that to my kid, I'd kill 'em,'" Blow said. "That is not reassuring to the child who has been abused. They think, I say something, this person is harmed. I say something, the family loves this person. I say something, all of a sudden it throws the whole family into chaos. I say something, this person can never come around again. It's an incredible burden on the shoulders of those kids." ALBANY The former owner of a now-shuttered Fulton County leather company pleaded not guilty Monday to a federal indictment alleging he illegally stored hundreds of gallons of hazardous waste in his old factory. Robert James Carville, 56, of West Palm Beach, Fla., who owned the Carville National Leather Corp. a tannery in Johnstown that closed in 2013, faces up to a $41.7 million fine and up to three years in federal prison if convicted of the top charges. Several Taiwanese brands showcased their sterling products, each boasting state-of-the-art technology, during an event that marked the opening of the Taiwan External Trade Development Council (TAITRA)s New liaison Delhi office on April 17. Founded in 1970 to help promote foreign trade, TAITRA assists Taiwan businesses and manufacturers in reinforcing their international competitiveness and coping with the challenges they face in foreign markets. It is jointly sponsored by the government, industry associations, and several commercial organizations. It opened its first branch office in Mumbai in 1992 to enable Taiwanese businessmen to expand their business opportunities in India. The opening ceremony of the office was held at ITC Maurya, New Delhi. On the occasion, leading Taiwanese brands like Tokuyo, Edimax, Gigabyte, VIVOTEK, Advantech and Thermaltake showcased some of their most advanced products with superlative Taiwanese technology. Tokuyo, the premier Taiwanese massage product brand, displayed its massage chair (IOT) that comes in a modern argyle leather avataar. This chair is a great space saver and has a unique foot roller. Its heating function provides great de-stress action. The brand also showed off its massage chair that comes with back 3D movement along with rolling and press function on foot. Edimax Technology Co.Ltd, a Taiwanese manufacturer of data networking products, showcased among other products its wireless AP Controller Edimax Pro APC500 which is a device with web-based wireless network management system. The 2 x 2 AC1200 Dual-Band In-Wall PoE Access Point which was also at the exhibition is a powerful wireless solution designed to meet the needs of modern mainstream businesses. Its other sterling product is the Edimax AirBox: Smart Air Quality Detector which has temperature and Humidity Sensors. It is connected to a proven, advanced cloud network 24/7 so you can check data anytime and anywhere. Gigabyte Technology Co Ltd, the international manufacturer and distributor of computer hardware products, displayed its classic Ultra Compact PCBRIX a versatile compact PC available with a choice of processors. Redefining the desktop PC in terms of miniaturization with a form factor that sits in the palm of a hand, BRIX offers leading performance in the tiniest of form factors. VIVOTEK Inc, a leading brand in global security surveillance, showcased its VIVOTEK H.265 Cybersecurity Enhanced Dome Camera which is the new flagship H.265 dome network camera, embedded with Trend Micros anti-intrusion software, empowering it to automatically detect and prevent credential-based attack as well as block suspicious events, and enable users to enjoy higher levels of network security. Thermaltake Technology Co Ltd, a manufacturer of PC cases designs, power supplies, cooling devices and peripherals displayed its benchmark Tempered Glass Edition Full Tower Chassis which is designed to expand the legacy of the View Series line-up. The View 71 Tempered Glass Edition Full Tower Chassis features unrivaled cooling support and expandability surrounded in tempered glass for a one of a kind view. Global intelligent systems leader Advantech Co. Ltd also made its presence felt at the event. Advantech Co Ltd is a leader in offering trusted, innovative products, services and solutions. The company displayed its benchmark product UTX -3117 which is a plug & play IoT gateway to simplify deployment with multi-connectivity, optimized thermal solution, wide range power input and IoT software integration. The offering is ideal for smart city, smart retail, smart energy and industry 4.0. These and many other TE products will be displayed once again in India for people to experience them first-hand when Taiwan Excellence will participate in two more events during the year. From May 17 to 19, these products will be showcased at the Taiwan Expo to be held at Pragati Maidan in New Delhi. Similarly, Taiwanese brands will also be a part of the Smart Asia convention to be held at the Bengaluru International Exhibition Centre in Bengaluru from October 4 to 6. Technuter.com News Service NEWCOMB, N.Y. The 10th Mountain Division used a privately owned mine made famous for its adjacent Adirondack ghost town for its aviation training this month. "The historic town of Adirondac housed the workers of the iron mines which once yielded the mysterious wonder metal, titanium. While the mine area itself is not accessible by the public, the 'ghost town' and a 48-foot blast furnace remain in this wilderness area," according to the Visit Adirondacks tourism site. The 10th Combat Aviation Brigade's Fort Drum soldiers used the Tahawus Mine to simulate a large-scale battlefield as part of the aviation exercise taking place through Wednesday. The training was dubbed "Falcon's Peak." The mine is owned by Paul Mitchell, who allowed the military to train on his land free of charge. Why is Tahawus famous? The ghost town of Adirondac and the adjacent Tahawus Mine were made famous as the site of Theodore Roosevelt's "Midnight Ride" to the presidency in 1901. When President William McKinley was shot by an anarchist in Buffalo on Sept. 6, 1901, Roosevelt was on Lake Champlain in Vermont meeting with outdoorsmen and rushed to be at the president's side. But when the president was stabilized, Roosevelt left Buffalo to assure the public of the leader's seemingly good health. Roosevelt traveled to the Tahawas Club, a hunting and fishing club built in the old mining town of Adirondac in Essex County. He was climbing Mount Marcy when the president's health took a turn for the worst. Roosevelt took a wagon and then several trains to Buffalo, where he was told the President had died. Roosevelt was then inaugurated. See More Collapse While Fort Drum occupies its own large footprint in Essex County and the North Country, its "limited boundaries make it difficult to simulate a battlefield consisting of large distances needed to conduct realistic tactical aircraft training," a military spokesman said in a Tuesday news release. "Tahawus Mine and the surrounding area allows for the aviation unit to train not just the pilots, but the planners as well," Staff Sgt. Nicholas Farina of the 27th Public Affairs Detachment said. Pilots in 17 aircrafts trained to fly against threats by traveling "across northern New York in a low, tactical fashion, using the terrain to their advantage to try to avoid detection and any air defense artillery threats," Maj. Derek Martin, the simulations officer, said in the news release. Military officials began planning Falcon's Peak in August, meeting with the mine's owner, State Police and local government officials to determine how to best simulate a battlefield in a civilian area. Notifying the public that pilots who typically fly at 1,000 feet or higher to avoid making too much noise would be flying low to the ground over residential areas as military convoys drove on local roadways was "a top priority," Martin said. Sign up for The Knick Get the latest news and some area history with our afternoon newsletter. "We try to be good stewards, unless we are in a tactical mission where we have to fly low," he said. "So when we do, we inform the public to ensure they understand why." The State Police released information to the media and put out reverse-911 messages to local residents prior to the drill. Despite high winds, rain and snow, Martin said he characterized the training at the Tahawus Mine as a success. "It's wet. It's cold. This is what 10th Mountain soldiers do," Martin said. "They are mountain tough for a reason." Andrew Harnik / Associated Press One of this year's Pulitzer Prize recipients has Capital Region roots: Devlin Barrett of the Washington Post grew up in Troy. Barrett, who covers national security and law enforcement for the Post, was part of an 11-member team that won the award Monday for its coverage of the investigation into Russian meddling in the 2016 election. QUEENSBURY The husband-and-wife owners of Arlington Equipment Company were indicted Tuesday on charges that they defrauded business owners and laundered hundreds of thousands of dollars through shell companies. Robert J. Mirel, 71, and Debra Burnett, 65, allegedly defrauded firms and individuals throughout the state and nation by pretending to sell glass installation equipment, according to state Attorney General Eric Schneiderman's office. The investigation, dubbed Operation Bob the Builder, revealed that Arlington was one of the only manufacturers of glass manipulators in North America at the time the business started in Queensbury. Glass manipulators are used by glass and glazing companies to install heavy glass in high-rise buildings and position custom pieces of glass at angles other than 90 degrees. The indictment alleges that since 2012 Mirel and Burnett took advantage of this near-monopoly for nearly five years, taking a 50 percent down payment from customers and then not delivering the product. In 2013, they allegedly terminated all of employees, but continued to take orders for glass. In other cases, they also allegedly told customers the glass was ready to ship and that the customers would have to pay their balance before they could be delivered. They allegedly stole more than $1.2 million in this way from more than 40 customers. The couple is also accused of not compensating several employees. Sign up for The Knick Get the latest news and some area history with our afternoon newsletter. They also allegedly laundered the money they stole through other companies and using new victims' money to build manipulators for earlier victims who did not receive what was promised. The two have been charged with 29 counts including grand larceny and money laundering in Warren County Court. Mirel is being held on $500,000 bail. Burnett had her bail set at $100,000. If convicted on all charges, which also include criminal tax fraud, scheme to defraud and offering a false instrument, Mirel and Burnett face five to 15 years in prison. "As we allege, the defendants orchestrated a brazen scam to trick unsuspecting businesses, consumers, and even their own employees resulting in millions of stolen dollars," Schneiderman said. "Companies are obligated to provide consumers with the goods and services they pay for and workers with fair pay and my office will continue to hold those who try to shirk these legal responsibilities to account." ALBANY City Mayor Kathy Sheehans campaign is under fire for allegedly taking more than $38,000 in excessive campaign contributions, filing late reports and hosting a fundraiser with a raffle for theater tickets, according to a complaint filed by the state Board of Elections. Risa Sugarman, chief enforcement counsel for the state BOE, filed the complaint last month seeking a hearing to recover the $38,060 in excessive campaign contributions and $2,000 in penalties for late campaign report filings dating back to 2009. The complaint specifically notes 2017s 10-day post-primary and 27-day post-general campaign reports. The state also argues that the Albany mayor's campaign accepted contributions in exchange for an opportunity to win tickets to see the Broadway show Hamilton at the Richard Rodgers Theater in New York City, violating state General Municipal Law preventing political parties from conducting raffles. Both Sheehan and her campaign treasurer Allen Maikels were notified of the issues on Dec. 13, but no refunds have been given to contributors for the excessive donations or the illegal raffle. The state attempted to resolve the issues through telephone conversations, but the issues persisted, according to the complaint. The complaint was filed in mid-March. The campaign committee has been working with state Board of Elections to amend filings and ensure compliance, said Joe Bonilla, a Sheehan campaign spokesman, in an emailed statement Monday. Sheehan's campaign filings had issues last year, from missing information to improperly listed contributions, according to a Times Union analysis of the filings. Maikels previously explained that late campaign finance filings and missing information specifically regarding contributions from the local 21st Century Albany Political Action Committee were because costs were still being tabulated after the deadline. According to the complaint, Sheehans campaign accepted more than legally allowed in campaign contributions from 16 supporters, including some from local unions and corporations. The allowable limit for Sheehans campaign, including primary and general election limits, was $4,174 for the period from Nov. 6, 2013, to Nov. 7, 2017. These limits are calculated by multiplying the number of enrolled voters in a party, excluding inactive voters, by $0.05 for the primary limit and the number of registered voters in a candidate's jurisdiction by $0.25 for the general election limit. The top compaign contributions over the limit were from IUOE Local 158 VPAF State (Upstate New York Operating Engineers union) with total contributions $4,126 over the limit; Northeast Regional Council of Carpenters NY Non-Partisan PEC $4,087 over the limit; and Plumbers and Steamfitters Local 7 - $3,976 over the limit. Some corporations that excessively contributed to Sheehans campaign have worked with the city, including Roemer, Walls, Gold & Mineaux, LLP where Elayne Gold, the citys attorney in labor contract negotiations, is a founding partner; Creighton Manning Engineering LLP which is the lead engineer on the Madison Avenue road calming project; and Hodgson Russ LLP which the city hired last year to examine improperly given tax breaks. Sign up for The Knick Get the latest news and some area history with our afternoon newsletter. When Democratic mayoral opponent Frank Commisso Jr. criticized Sheehan for taking contributions over the limit last July during the Albany mayoral election that pitted Sheehan against Commisso and former Common Council President Carolyn McLaughlin in a Democratic Primary, the incumbent mayor had said if there were any campaign contribution overages her campaign would refund the money. If we have any contribution that exceeds the limit, we'll return it, Sheehan said. If any candidate has a question or concern about somebody exceeding the limit, that's an easy one to fix. It's unclear why the refunds haven't been given. Those involved in her campaign declined to answer specific questions or comment further on the states complaint. Sugarman declined to comment because it is a pending matter. ALBANY Attorneys for former Senate Majority Leader Dean Skelos and his son, Adam, are again seeking to impugn a cooperating witness who testified against them in their first trial. This time it's Charles Dorego, senior vice president and general counsel at Glenwood Management, the Manhattan luxury real estate giant that's at the center of both the Skelos case and the re-trial of former Assembly Speaker Sheldon Silver. Both Skelos and Silver were convicted in 2015, but now await new trials in the coming months due to a subsequent U.S. Supreme Court decision that vacated both verdicts. Dean Skelos is accused of extorting payments from several businessmen that went to his son, allegedly in exchange for government favors. The Skeloses' attorneys, however, argue in a new court filing that Dorego may have committed perjury when he testified in the first trial under a non-prosecution agreement. "There is strong evidence that Dorego received hundreds of thousands of dollars in kickbacks for steering Glenwood's title insurance work to companies controlled by Steven Swarzman, another potential government witness," the Skeloses attorneys write. Swarzman, the grandson of Glenwood founder Leonard Litwin, controlled a pair of title-insurance companies that obtained a great deal of work from Glenwood, according to the court filing. He was involved in arranging a $20,000 title insurance referral to Adam Skelos. "When Dorego was asked at trial whether Swarzman had paid him for these referrals, Dorego gave vague, evasive, and inconsistent answers. He first denied it, then claimed that Swarzman had 'sometimes' paid Dorego 'out of his proceeds for title work' for purported 'legal fees' accrued over the years, although he did not believe that these payments amounted to 'hundreds of thousands of dollars.'" The lawyers continue that, "These two stories cannot both be true. And given the nature of these inconsistencies, it is likely that Dorego gave false testimony at trial." In seeking evidence about the alleged kickback scheme and other matters for the retrial, the Skeloses' attorneys served subpoenas on Dorego, Swarzman, and Glenwood. The Manhattan U.S. Attorney's office has sought to quash the subpoeanas, as have the subpoena recipients. The Skeloses' defense memorandum asks the federal court to force the recipients to provide the evidence requested. Sign up for The Knick Get the latest news and some area history with our afternoon newsletter. "Rather than investigate the basis for these subpoenas and obtain the documents for itself, which would be the appropriate thing to do, the government again asks this Court to shield one of its star witnesses from scrutiny," the Skeloses' attorneys write. Dorego testified during the first trial that he referred title insurance business to Adam Skelos, resulting in the $20,000 payment, and eventually helped Adam secure a job at AbTech Industries, in order to ensure that Dean Skelos continued to support Glenwood's legislative agenda. A Glenwood attorney declined to comment on the filing. The U.S. Attorney's office is also seeking to quash subpoenas issued by the Skeloses' team seeking information about the business dealings of insurance executive Anthony Bonomo, another cooperating witness. The Skeloses attorneys argue that Bonomo broke his non-prosecution agreement by not revealing allegedly fraudulent dealings running his former company, medical malpractice firm Physicians' Reciprocal Insurers. The company gave Adam Skelos what amounted to a no-show job, and Dean Skelos in 2015 supported a law allowing PRI to continue operating in the red. But the Skeloses' attorneys say Bonomo's alleged misdeeds would give him other incentives to help prosecutors and curry favor with lawmakers such as Skelos. MECHANICVILLE The inspector general of the state Office of Court Administration is investigating Francine Baker, the wife of Mayor Dennis Baker, for her alleged role in incidents described in a harassment complaint lodged against the couple by the city's police department. Francine Baker is the chief city court clerk. OCA spokesman Lucian Chalfen confirmed the investigation, which coincides with the city's own internal review. Chalfen also said that OCA has appointed a clerk to Mechanicville City Court. "Due to a complaint made by the Mechanicville Police Department, the deputy chief administrative judge for courts outside New York City and the administrative judge for the judicial district felt it appropriate that while the allegations are being investigated by our inspector general's office, we moved over a clerk from a neighboring city court, to assist with the day-to-day matters and avoid any appearance of impropriety," Chalfen said. Filed in January, the complaint by the city's Police Benevolent Association claimed Mayor Baker regularly intimidated, harassed, demeaned and threatened officers. His wife, the complaint alleged, harassed patrolmen to write more tickets because "court numbers are way down and the clerks didn't have enough to do." On Monday, Francine Baker said the only reason an additional clerk has been appointed to her court was because she needed help filling a job vacancy for deputy clerk that has been open since September. "We need someone brought over here to help with the caseload," she said. "But there is no difference in the court, absolutely none." Allegations against Dennis Baker, who has been in office since January 2014, were broader, including not following protocol at crime scenes, calling the Chief Joseph Waldron, Sgt. William Rabbitt and patrolmen and desk officers "useless" and "idiot," and using profanities to berate them. Baker, a former police officer, also demanded that officers write more tickets even in private parking lots, the complaint alleges. The complaint was filed with the Commissioner of Accounts Kimberly Dunn, who handles all personnel matters for the city. In February, the City Council voted to hire attorney Robert S. Hite to investigate the complaint. Dunn said they are hoping to get a report from Hite soon. "The investigation is ongoing," Dunn said. "It's not something we can rush. But everyone wants to see a resolution. Right now, it's out of our hands." Sign up for The Knick Get the latest news and some area history with our afternoon newsletter. Since the complaint was filled, supporters of the Republican mayor have said that Dunn manipulated the Police Benevolent Association to fabricate the complaint. Baker supporters says that Dunn, who has two sons in the police force, put them up to it to boost her own mayoral ambitions. Dunn insisted that is not true: "I don't want to be mayor," she said. "I'm well-suited for my job. The reason the complaint was filed with me is because I handle payroll, insurance. It had to land in my office. The idea is quite ridiculous." Mayor Baker, who said he has no idea what is going on in his city court, is represented by Ballston Spa attorney James Walsh. In February, the mayor said that the city is paying for his lawyer. But on Monday, Dunn said the city will not cover those bills. Francine Baker has no legal representation. When asked about the cost of Walsh's work, she responded, "It has nothing to do with me." Motorola today announced further expansion of their retail presence and entered Madhya Pradesh with the opening of 60 new Moto Hubs, including 25 Moto Hubs each in Indore and Bhopal and 10 in Jabalpur. Moto Hub is a key destination that provides easy access and availability of all motorola products to customers; where they will be able to experience the entire portfolio of Motorola devices at convenient locations including the online exclusive devices like the popular moto e4 plus and moto g5s plus, apart from the newly launched moto x4 and moto z2 force. According to GFK, Madhya Pradesh has emerged as a significant market in India with approximately 3.5L smartphones sold every month; thus contributing 16% of the total Western market. Bhopal and Indore further contributes 8% and 18% of the total smartphones sold in the state respectively. Sanjay Bhattacharya, Regional Sales Lead, Motorola Mobility India said, Motorola has been expanding retail presence across the country and we are now entering the heart of India, Madhya Pradesh with our first Moto Hub stores in three of the most prominent cities Indore, Bhopal and Jabalpur. These will offer a unique Moto experience to our valued customers. We will continue to expand our retail presence in the state and enhance customer experience by making our product portfolio accessible to them and ensure that their varying needs are met. As part of the strategy to consolidate its retail presence across the country, Motorola recently advanced its retail footprint in the southern market by announcing 100 Moto Hubs across Tamil Nadu with 50 Moto Hubs in Chennai and 100 new Moto Hubs in Karnataka across top 8 cities out of which 50 will be in Bengaluru. In addition to this, it also announced the opening of 50 new Moto Hubs in Mumbai and 25 Moto Hub stores in Kolkata respectively. Motorola commenced the year 2018, with the opening of 50 new Moto Hubs in New Delhi. Motorola has also collaborated with Poorvika Mobiles across 43 cities in Tamil Nadu, Pondicherry and Karnataka and with Big C and Lo t Mobile stores across 55 cities in Andhra Pradesh and Telangana to provide retail access to consumers. All Moto Hub stores house the entire portfolio of Motorola devices, including moto e4, moto e4 plus, moto c, moto c plus, moto g families including moto g5s plus, moto g5s, moto g5 plus and moto g5 as well as moto z franchise and moto mods along with Motorola accessories like on-ear and in-ear headphones, moto shells and covers. We're about to find out just how Samsung follows up on the Galaxy Note 8. Samsung today (Aug. 9) is set to pull back the curtain on the Galaxy Note 9, with rumors surrounding the new big-screen phone tipping everything from upgraded cameras to a whole new Bixby assistant to a smarter Bluetooth S Pen. (Image credit: Evan Blass/@evleaks) With Samsung's Unpacked event set to begin in a few hours, here's one last look at the rumors we've heard about the Galaxy Note 9, with Samsung providing many of the juiciest tidbits. What are the Galaxy Note 9 specs? When it debuts later today, there shouldn't be too many surprises under the Galaxy Note 9 hood, thanks to a steady stream of leaks that have painted a pretty clear picture about the phone. Display Size 6.4 inches Processor Snapdragon 845 RAM 6GB/8GB Internal Storage 64GB/128GB/256GB/512GB Rear Camera Dual 12-MP cameras with variable aperture Front Camera 8-MP Battery 4,000 mAh OS Android Oreo Colors Black, Brown, Blue Purple One major bit of spec-related news to break concerns the phone's battery, which will reportedly see an increase from 3,300 mAh to 4,000 mAh based on a document from a Brazilian telecommunications certification board shared on SlashLeaks. Samsung has reportedly been eyeing a larger capacity battery even though the design of the Note 9 figures to be unchanged from its predecessor. Samsung has essentially confirmed you'll get battery life in its next phone, first with a video depicting the woes of a rapidly draining phone battery and promising that things will change on August 9 the same day as its Note 9 launch event. Another video a leaked Note 9 launch video that Samsung wishes you didn't see promises "all-day battery" for the new phone. Samsung is also all but certain to deliver the Qualcomm Snapdragon 845 processor inside the handset, according to recently leaked benchmarks on HTML5Test. This chip turned in some impressive numbers on our Galaxy S9 benchmark tests, though the overall horsepower falls short of the iPhone X's A11 Bionic chip. The Note 8 (above) has 6GB of RAM, but the Note 9 could step that up to 8GB. The Galaxy Note 8 came with a robust 6GB of RAM, but other phones like the OnePlus 6 are shipping with up to 8GB, so it will be interesting to see whether Samsung offers this as an option. Eldar Murtazin of Mobile Review claims to have gone hands-on with the Galaxy Note 9 and says that the phone will have 6GB of memory in its standard configuration but that an 8GB option will be available, too. We would like to see an upgrade in storage. And a recent leak points to the Galaxy Note 9 getting just that; the top-end model could have up to 512GB of storage. In his report, Murtazin says the standard Note 9 will offer 64GB of storage, with 256GB and 512GB configurations also available. A report on SamMobile suggests that the base model Note 9 could feature 128GB of storage, though there's a possibility that could be for markets outside the U.S. At any rate, Samsung is certainly promising more storage in its Note 9 teaser videos, and its leaked launch video suggests that there will be a 512GB model of the new phone. MORE: How to Reduce Data Usage on Your Smartphone Like the Galaxy Note 8, you can expect to find a big screen featuring an 18.5:9 aspect ratio. There's no telling yet, however, exactly how big that display will be, though initial rumblings from website SamMobile point to a 6.4-inch screen. That 6.4-inch screen size is backed up by a report from The Bell out of Korea. Bloomberg's report on the Note 9's release date says Samsung will focus on improving the camera in this year's model. That sounds like the Note 9 could adopt some of the camera improvements introduced with the Galaxy S9 earlier this year, including a variable aperture for better photos in low-light settings and multiframe noise reduction. What about the Note 9's S Pen? The S Pen has been one of the major strengths of the Note lineup, and it could be gaining more powers with the Note 9's release. At the very least, Samsung's leaked launch video promises an "all new powerful S Pen" that's been redesigned for the Note 9. (Image credit: IceUniverse/@UniverseIce) Samsung hasn't revealed any details about those powers, but other sources have. Leaker Ice Universe tweeted that the S Pen will add Bluetooth connectivity, which will let you use the stylus to control the phone remotely, including tasks like controlling music playback. Yet another tweet featured a flyer prominently displaying the updated stylus. The FCC published a filing that essentially confirms Samsung is preparing a Bluetooth-equipped S Pen. On Reddit, poster Wan997 says that the S Pen's button can double as the remote shutter for the Note 9's camera. The color of your S Pen will also reflect the color of memos you jot down with the stylus' Screen Off Memo feature. And 40 seconds of charging will apparently give you half-an-hour of S Pen use. What software will the Note 9 run? On the software side, you can expect Samsung's Galaxy Note 9 to be running Android Oreo, but whether it's Android 8.0.0 or Android 8.1 isn't yet clear. The newer Android 9 Pie, released just days ahead of the Note 9 unveiling, will likely be reserved for the upcoming Pixel 3 line. The Note 9 could also arrive with some significant software pre-installed. Both 9to5Google and XDA Developers say that the phone's release will mark the debut of the popular Fortnite battle royale game on Android. What's more, the Note 9 could be the only device where you can play Fortnite initially, as Samsung may have arranged for an exclusivity window for the app. It's apparently part of the phone maker's plan to position the Note 9 as a great phone for gamers. Even if there is an emphasis on gaming, expect Samsung to continue to tout the Note 9 as a productivity booster. To that end, WinFuture says you'll be able to hook up a Note 9 to an external display using a DisplayPort-enabled USB-C cable and use the phone as a portable PC. That would mean you wouldn't need to lug around a DeX Pad or DeX Station dock, if true. When will Samsung release the Note 9? Today's the day. Samsung's Unpacked event begins at 11 a.m. ET you can watch the live stream here and the new phone is almost certain to ship Aug. 24. (Image credit: Samsung) Several rumors have suggested the Note 9 will ship on August 24, with a Korean carrier accidentally revealing the date. Samsung has essentially confirmed August 24 as a ship date, by letting you register to pre-order the phone early. Doing so ensures you'll get the Note 9 by August 24, Samsung says. (The pre-order site also teases information about trade-ins, where turning in a newer device like an iPhone X could knock $450 off the Note 9's price tag.) Last year, the Galaxy S8 didn't ship until mid-September, so Samsung is really speeding up the launch of the Note 9, allegedly because Galaxy S9 sales are slower than expected. Getting the Note 9 out as quickly as possible would help Samsung sidestep possible direct competition with Apple's next round of iPhones, which could launch in September. What about Bixby? According to a report in the Korea Herald in a recent interview, Samsung's Research AI Center chief Gray G. Lee said that the Galaxy Note 9 will come with a next-generation version of the company's artificial intelligence features. He said that the features will be baked into Bixby 2.0, which will debut on the Galaxy Note 9. "Samsung's AI vision has five directions: user centric, always learning, always there, always helpful and always safe," Lee said in the interview, according to Slashgear. At Mobile World Congress earlier this year, Samsung mobile chief DJ Koh confirmed that his company will be delivering the second-generation of Bixby in the Galaxy Note 9. Bixby 2.0 on the Galaxy Note 9 should be able to do a lot more than today's version. Samsung unveiled Bixby 2.0 late last year and called it a "bold reinvention" of the company's virtual personal assistant. Not much is known about all the ways Bixby 2.0 will innovate on last year's version, but Samsung has confirmed that it will be capable of recognizing individual voices. It'll also be capable of being integrated into apps and services, expanding its reach in mobile. For what it's worth, IceUniverse tweeted that a "Bixby 2.0 based AI UX" or interface powered by artificial intelligence will be part of the Note 9. MORE: Bixby 2.0 Will Bring Samsung's Assistant to Your TV and Fridge Will there be an in-screen fingerprint sensor? Although the Galaxy Note 8 offers a fingerprint sensor, it's on the back of the phone, and moving its location below the rear cameras (as Samsung did with the S9) won't make it much more convenient to use. A reader built into the screen would likely make unlocking the Note 9 a lot faster. But it doesn't look like it's going to happen, at least with this phone. According to ChosunBiz and SamMobile, Samsung has decided to save the in-display sensor for the Galaxy S10, rather than launching it in the Galaxy Note 9. What will the Note 9 look like? While some early reports about the Note 9 suggested the new phone might have a boxier design, more recent leaks have indicated we're going to see a phone that looks a lot like the Note 8. Our best looks come via Twitter, from well-known leaker Evan Blass who posted an image on Twitter that appears to be the Note 9 and its new S Pen stylus. The image shows that the fingerprint sensor has moved below the dual rear camera lenses and that the S Pen has a button, presumably tied to its new Bluetooth features. (Image credit: Android Headlines) The front of the phone in Blass' leak squares with an earlier image that appeared on Android Headlines, which posted a leaked render of the front of the Note 9 provided by what it called a reliable source. That leak shows a phone that repeats the Note 8's Infinity Display, though with slightly thinner bezels to squeeze in a bigger display. That's consistent with previous reports. Leaker Ice Universe tweeted in late March that the Note 9's design would be "consistent with the S9's." He also said it would employ the same cameras as the Galaxy S9+. Based on Ice Universe's reporting, Samsung may be saving its serious updates for the Galaxy S10 in 2019. (Image credit: IceUniverse/@UniverseIce) Another leaked design, again from Ice Universe, shows a front screen that looks a lot like the Galaxy Note 8. However, the bezels appear to be thinner on the new phone, according to BGR. That would allow for a slight increase in screen size without making the Note 9 any larger than the Note 8. Samsung pulled off a similar trick with the Galaxy S9, shrinking the bezels from the S8 will keep the screen size the same; that made for a more compact phone. What colors will the Note 9 come in? (Image credit: Android Headlines) Samsung may be planning to shake things up from the Note 8's color scheme. A leaked render posted at Android Headlines shows off the phone in black, brown and blue. (Expect Samsung to come up with fancier names, such as Midnight Black, to describe the colors.) Another report at TechRadar pointed to a purple version of the Note 9. Will the Note 9 fold in half? No, you're thinking of Samsung's foldable phone project, reportedly called the Galaxy X. That long-rumored phone isn't arriving until early 2019. MORE: The Best Android Phones You Can Buy Right Now Will the Note 9 support 5G networking? While carriers are working to rollout higher-speed 5G networks, those efforts won't really pay off until 2019. Qualcomm, which is heavily involved in the migration to the new networking standard, tells us that the first 5G-ready devices are likely to be mobile hotspots; 5G phones won't arrive until next year. With the Note 8 landing in August, it's going to use LTE. For the latest on 5G networking, turn to our 5G guide. What will the Note 9 cost? We still don't know how Samsung will price the Galaxy Note 9, but if history is any guide it will be in the same $930 to $960 range as the current Note 8. The Galaxy S9 starts at $720 and the S9+ at $840, so it's reasonable to expect that the Note 9 will command a similar $100 premium over the larger S9+. For what it's worth, Polish site Spider's Web claims the Note 9 will cost 4,299 zloty in Poland in line with the price of the Galaxy Note 8. That's adding to the speculation Samsung's not planning a big change in price for its new phone. A leaked Indonesian sales flyer posted at SlashLeaks also shows pricing that translates to around $935 for a 128GB phone and $1,210 for a 512GB model. Credit: Shaun Lucas/Tom's Guide SAN FRANCISCO -- Successful phishing attempts may soon be a thing of the past, if efforts by Google, Microsoft and other companies prove fruitful. Google and its partners are leading the move away from passwords and toward physical USB security keys, Google researchers Neal Mueller and Collin Frierson said at the BSides SF security conference here Monday (April 16). Google itself distributed USB security keys to its own employees a few years ago, with good results. (Image credit: Shutterstock) "In the four years since Google deployed security keys," Mueller said, "we've had zero successful phishing attempts at Google." That doesn't mean that phishers aren't trying. Even security-conscious people will fall for a well-crafted phishing attack, and phishers are creating better-looking phishing pages all the time. Your correspondent was taken in recently by one, and only his antivirus software prevented his credentials from being stolen. MORE: Here's the One Gmail Setting You Should Activate Now Phishing doesn't require any hacking, since it's essentially a con job -- "social engineering," to use the industry term. All you have to do is fool someone into giving up his or her username and password. Because it relies on human nature, which is hard to fix, phishing is still a leading cause of data breaches, online theft and account takeovers. Mueller and Frierson said that a survey of Gmail data revealed 12 million people had fallen victim to successful phishing attacks in a single year -- far more than the 788,000 people who had fallen victim to keylogging malware. (Image credit: A recent lineup of Yubico security keys. Credit: Yubico) Two-factor authentication (2FA) doesn't always help defeat phishing, especially if the second factor is a one-time passcode sent via SMS text message. Earlier on Monday, Jerrod Chong of Yubico demonstrated an extremely convincing phishing attack that targeted Gmail and asked the victim to enter his or her mobile phone number for verification purposes -- which would have allowed the attacker to intercept and capture the texted one-time passcode. Even knowing the victim's phone number isn't necessary for a one-time break-in, Mueller and Frierson pointed out. When a phisher fools a victim into entering his or her Google credentials into a fake Google login page, the attacker can immediately enter the stolen credentials into the real Google login page. Google will send out a one-time passcode to the victim's phone -- which the victim will enter into the fake login page. Yubico makes the well-known Yubikey security key, and it along with Google leads the FIDO (Fast IDentity Online) Alliance to standardize non-password authentication methods. USB security keys like the Yubikey or Google's own security keys have proven to be effective defenses against phishing attacks, and they're supported by Facebook, Dropbox, Salesforce and many other companies. MORE: What Two-Factor Authentication (2FA) Is - And How to Enable It Only the legitimate user will possess the physical key to plug into a USB port or tap against a mobile phone. (Many security keys also have NFC functions to wirelessly connect with mobile devices at very short range.) The FIDO Alliance is in the process of replacing its existing U2F (Universal Two-Factor) standard with what it calls FIDO 2, Chong said. Part of FIDO 2 is the upcoming WebAuthn standard, announced earlier this month, which will let users log into websites without passwords. With FIDO 2, Microsoft and Mozilla are joining the FIDO Alliance. The end result of FIDO 2 is to have people not use passwords at all, Chong said. But when we asked him how a user would sign up for a web account in the first place with no password, Chong didn't have a solid answer. He could say only that the FIDO Alliance was looking at "different options." However, the current FIDO U2F standard provides plenty of protection, Mueller and Frierson said, Google's own implementation of the standard verifies the user by examining 38 different factors. For example, the user's preferred operating system, preferred browser, level of browser encryption and general location are already known to Google. If I usually use Chrome on Windows 7 from New York, but someone logging in as me is using Edge on Windows 10 from Kiev, Google will reject the attempt until that person can plug in my USB security key. "Security keys are much more user-friendly than a one-time password," Mueller said. The G7 ThinQ packs a slew of premium features, including an AI camera and Boombox speaker, in a perfectly fine package. But it still feels like an imitator, not an innovator. The name of LGs new flagship phone the G7 ThinQ doesnt exactly roll off the tongue. LG tacked on the ThinQ moniker (pronounced thin Q and not think) to emphasize how smart this smartphone is. And the G7 is pretty intelligent. Its 16-megapixel dual-lens rear camera can adjust its settings on the fly for any scenario youre shooting in, which makes it dummy-proof. The phones focus on Google Assistant, in the form of a dedicated button beneath the volume controls, means you can tap Google to perform many basic tasks. But a great camera and helpful voice-activated assistant are just table stakes for premium smartphones in 2018. LG could have differentiated the G7 with a fresh design, but instead the company made an Android version of Apples iPhone X, complete with a notch (though one you can disguise with a software bezel, suggesting that LG isnt committed to it). The G7 ThinQ is a solid phone, but it isnt the boundary-pushing stand-out that the company needs to compete with Apple and Samsung. We've updated this review now that the LG G7 ThinQ is on sale, with pricing information. Price and Availability In the U.S., the G7 ThinQ will only be available to order through a carrier. Sprint, Verizon and T-Mobile now sell LGs latest flagship, with the phone costing $750 at T-Mobile and Verizon and $792 at Sprint. Project Fi, Google's wireless service, plans to offer the phone, too, though it's still listed as coming soon at that site. You can also get the G7 at US Cellular if you live within that regional carrier's coverage area. AT&T is forgoing the G7 in favor of the more expensive LG V35 ThinQ, which has the same camera features as the G7 but features an OLED screen instead. That phone goes on sale June 8. This review is based on my time with a U.S. pre-production unit. LG G7 ThinQ Specs Price $750-$792 Display (Resolution) 6.1 inches (3120 x 1440) Rear Camera 16-MP (f/1.6) main lens and 16-MP (f/1.9) wide-angle lens Front Camera 8-MP (f/1.9) CPU Snapdragon 845 RAM 4GB Storage 64GB microSD Yes, up to 2TB Battery 3,000 mAh Battery Life (Hrs:Mins) 8:35 Colors Platinum Gray, Aurora Black, Moroccan Blue, Raspberry Rose Size 6.03 x 2.83 x 0.31 inches Weight 5.71 ounces Display: Solid, but not OLED A smartphone with an edge-to-edge display that sports a cut-out for the front-facing camera and handset earpiece otherwise known as a notch isnt exactly cutting-edge anymore. Apple Essential and Huawei all have flagships with cut-outs at the top of their expansive displays; Asus will soon join them. The OnePlus 6, set to be unveiled later this month, is rumored to feature a notch, too. So when LG took the wraps off the G7 ThinQ, complete with a notch, we werent surprised. At this point, Samsung is the lone hold-out. The G7s 6.1-inch, 3120 x 1440 display has a larger than standard 19.5:9 aspect ratio, which makes it wider than the 18:9 screen on last years LG G6. The new phones notch is easily disguised with a software-based bezel under Settings > Display > New Second Screen. There are five bezel colors to choose from, including a rainbow gradient. But when you select black to disguise the notch altogether, the cut-out is still visible if you look closely. Thats because brightly lit LCD panels cant match the true black and richer colors of an OLED display. MORE: These Smartphones Can Replace a Compact Camera Its also unclear why LG calls the software bezel a new second screen, similar to a feature available on the LG V20 a few years ago, because its not really a second screen. Its just where your icons live. You still have to swipe down to view notifications. The G7s display covers 138.8 percent of the sRGB color gamut, compared to the 231 percent covered by the Galaxy S9s OLED panel. Samsungs panels are impressive. To compare, Huaweis $799 Mate 10 Pro also has an OLED display, but its color range and accuracy are in line with the G7s. The Mate 10 Pro covers 147.2 percent of the color gamut and scored 0.62 on the Delta-E color accuracy test (numbers closer to zero are better). The G7 notched a 0.37 Delta-E score. The G7s display was bright and clear when I streamed the latest Ant-Man and the Wasp Trailer on YouTube, but the Galaxy S9s screen was easily the winner. Ant-Mans crimson suit and the gleaming red of a smashed tomato popped through Samsungs phone. The colors were less saturated on the G7s display. One of the G7s selling points is its brightness. LG says its display can reach peak brightness of 1,000 nits, which means it should be easier to view in daylight. We simulated glaring sunlight in our indoor lab and used a light meter to determine how bright the LCD panel could get. The G7 cleared 900 nits with brightness turned to 100 percent, which is the highest peak weve seen in any smartphone weve tested. The G7 ThinQ looks like the iPhone X and Galaxy S9 had a baby. But that doesnt mean much in real-world scenarios. I used the G7 outside many times over the course of my time reviewing the device, usually with brightness turned up all the way, and the display didnt seem any brighter than other phones Ive used. When we shot the G7 on a slightly overcast day in the Brooklyn Botanic Garden, our photographer couldnt see any detail on the screen at all through his DSLR lens, so we had to move to a shaded location. Design: Playing it safe The G7 ThinQ looks like the iPhone X and Galaxy S9 had a baby. The device, which is a little over six inches tall, is covered with Gorilla Glass 5. Like last years G6, the G7 supports wireless charging. And LG is keeping the headphone jack around on this phone. A new button located a safe distance from the volume rocker on the side of the device calls up Google Assistant. (More on that later.) Overall, the G7 is a nice-looking phone. LG offers four shades: Platinum Gray, Aurora Black, Moroccan Blue and Raspberry Rose, which is the version I tested for this review. The phone feels comfortable to hold, though not exactly easy to use one-handed. Its also incredibly lightweight at 5.71 ounces, making it more svelte than the G6 but not quite as light as LGs own V30. But LG is playing it safe with this phone. The company was a trendsetter when it introduced the G6, which was part of the first wave of smartphones to feature an edge-to-edge display with super-thin bezels and an ultra-wide 18:9 aspect ratio. Now it feels like the company is trying to catch up to Apple and Samsung. The notch, the assistant button, the high-shine, jewel-toned finishes LG isnt breaking any molds. Its not even trying. Camera: AI ups the ante One of the G7s standout features is its 16-megapixel dual-lens camera. LG has been putting a standard lens and a secondary wide-angle lens in its cameras for a few generations now, but the G7s camera system is a lot smarter. Like the V30 and V30S ThinQ he device uses EyeEms image recognition technology to identify 1,162 objects and categorize them in 18 scenes, such as food, flowers and landscape. In AI mode, which you can turn off, the camera automatically optimizes its settings depending on what youre shooting. Once it locks onto the scene, the phone vibrates lightly to give you the go-ahead to start shooting. An icon denoting the scene, such as a fork and knife for food or a snowflake for snow, appears on the lower left of the live preview so you know that the camera settings are tuned to the correct category. AI gives LGs camera a leg up on the competition. The image recognition, which happens almost instantly, is almost always spot-on. Occasionally the camera will misidentify a scene, like when I was shooting a bed of tulips and a snowflake icon appeared on-screen, but it corrects itself within a few seconds if you aim the camera elsewhere and then point it back toward the scene you want to capture. AI gives LGs camera a leg up on the competition. I captured tulips in full bloom at the Brooklyn Botanic Gardens on both the G7 and dual-lens shooter on Samsungs Galaxy S9+. With AI assistance, the G7 captured the saturated shades of marigold, lilac, peach and pink tulips contrasted with the green of the flower stems and grass. The S9+ capably captured the flower beds, but its images were less vivid and the color contrasts were less stark compared to the G7. But the G7s camera failed to impress when I attempted to shoot the Chrysler Building from a few blocks away. The camera captured the richly hued purple flowers at the edge of the frame, but details in the slightly overcast sky and in the Chrysler Buildings windows were missing. The Mate 10 Pros camera, which also offers image recognition features, more accurately captured the scenes contrasts, such as the white cloud wisps against the blue sky. The Chrysler Building appears more starkly against the blue backdrop. The Galaxy S9+ also captured the sky more accurately than the G7, but the Mate 10 Pro took the best shot here. When it comes to food photography, the G7 wins. Its camera, which automatically optimized its settings for food, highlighted the contrasts of golden doughnut, white sugar and deep brown chocolate drizzle. The same plate of mini doughnuts appeared dull in the images captured by the S9+ and the Mate 10 Pro. The G7 also shines in low-light scenarios. LG uses pixel binning, which combines four nearby pixels into one superpixel to quadruple light sensitivity, to deliver brighter photos without flash. This happens automatically, but the device alerts you when it activates low-light mode and you can turn it off by tapping the low-light icon on-screen. The processing takes several seconds, comparable to taking a photo with flash, but at least youre not blinding anyone. I found the G7s low-light mode delivered better shots of objects than of people. The dimmer the environment, the lower the resolution, so while the image is bright, its also full of noise. Photos of friends in an extremely dark bar made it seem like they were having drinks a brightly lit room, but the image quality looked like I had used my 2006-era flip phone to shoot them. Photos of beers in a dimly lit outdoor bar were much less noisy. The G7 is unusual in that the secondary lens in its dual-lens set-up is a wide-angle lens rather than a telephoto one, but the device is still capable of shooting portraits where the subject of the photo is brought into focus and the background is blurred. A sliding tool on the the live preview lets you adjust the strength of the portrait effect, and you can also edit the image after shooting. I found the live preview didnt accurately show what the final portrait would look like the resulting photo was always better than the preview indicated, which is good, but I wish the preview was more true-to-life. The 8-megapixel front-facing camera is also capable of shooting portraits. Like the rear camera, the G7s selfie cams portrait effect can be adjusted in post. The front-facing portraits are best for solo selfies. For duos or groups, you have to position everyone so youre all on the same plane; otherwise one person will be blurred into the background. Audio: Powerful Boombox Speaker, but surround sound is better The G7s audio prowess is a highlight that sets the phone apart. LG turned the inside of the G7 into a resonance chamber, which makes the device a powerful speaker when you pump the volume up. Thats probably enough to annoy an entire subway car, my husband said as I blasted Justin Timberlakes thumping Damn Girl. The G7 is noticeably louder than other smartphones, as I learned when I played the same song on the stereo speakers my iPhone 7 Plus to compare. The G7s sound was definitely booming. But its still just a smartphone speaker. If you want to blast tunes as you clean your house or need a speaker to provide the soundtrack to your next party, youll need something more powerful, like a Bluetooth speaker. The G7s Boombox speaker is a fun bonus when playing car-racing games, because the vibrations make the device feel like a steering wheel thrumming with the power of a souped-up engine. The G7s built-in DTS-X 3D surround sound is the audio feature I really need. When you plug in a pair of wired headphones and activate the surround sound option in the Settings app (under Sound quality and effects), music sounds like its playing all around you. You can choose to listen to tracks balanced in front, from side to side or wide. I prefer wide. This feature makes each layer of a song sound distinct, even on a pair of cheap headphones. Its awesome. The phone also supports Hi-Fi Quad DAC for experts with lossless audio files or who subscribe to Tidals Hi-Fi tier. Performance: Powerful and reliable LG released last years G6 with a processor that was quickly outmatched by a newer Snapdragon chip (835, at the time). The company didnt make the same mistake twice. With Qualcomms latest Snapdragon 845 chip and 4GB of RAM, we expected the G7 to match the Galaxy S9, powered by the same processor and the same amount of RAM. The G7 is up there with the top-performing flagships in our benchmarking tests. On the Geekbench 4 test of overall system performance, the G7 hit 8,566 higher than both the Galaxy S9 (7,276) and the S9+, which has 6GB of RAM but clocked 8,295. The Mate 10 Pro (with a Kirin 970 processor) and Snapdragon 835-powered V30 are nowhere near as powerful, notching scores of 6,784 and 6,131, respectively. MORE: Best Smartphones on the Market Now With a dozen other apps open, I sailed my Subaru off ramps and easily cleared the tops of police cars in the graphically intensive Need for Speed: No Limits. Each race loaded quickly and my car responded instantly as I pressed a thumb to the screen to steer left or right. The G7s Boombox speaker is a fun bonus when playing car-racing games, because the vibrations make the device feel like a steering wheel thrumming with the power of a souped-up engine. Its an easy way to get a hit of adrenaline on a relaxing weekend afternoon. On 3DMarks Sling Shot Extreme OpenGL ES 3.1, a demanding test of graphics performance, the G7 scored 4,201. The Galaxy S9 and S9+ were higher-performing with scores of 4,617 and 4,634, respectively. We also tested the G7s performance using a real-world scenario, exporting a 2-minute 4K video file. The device took just 3 minutes and 16 seconds to handle that task. The Galaxy S9 was slower at 3:29 while the S9+, with its extra RAM, was faster at 2:32. Software: Google Assistant shines Instead of creating its own voice-activated assistant to compete with Siri, Alexa or Bixby, LG went all-in with Googles own Assistant. This was a good move. Beneath the G7s volume rocker on its left edge is a dedicated button to summon the assistant without having to say Hey Google. Google Assistant is just as useful on the G7 as it is on other devices, such as the Pixel 2. The assistant can play music for you, give you the weather forecast, set reminders and timers, among other useful tasks. Google and LG teamed up on 32 commands specific to the G7, many of them camera-focused. You can ask Assistant to launch the AI Cam, or to take a photo in portrait mode. If you ask Assistant to take a photo, be ready to shoot the camera gives you just three seconds before it clicks the shutter. Im not sure the G7 really needs an Assistant-dedicated button, especially one that cant be reprogrammed for other tasks (though LG says that may be possible in a future software update should enough people demand it), given that there are two other ways to summon Google Assistant. Saying Hey Google still works, and so does a long press on the home button. Pressing a physical button is no more convenient than those options. The G7 is shipping with Android 8.0 Oreo; LG says it will be upgradeable to Android P, rolling out later this year. Battery Life: Needs improvement LGs flagship smartphones consistently fall short when it comes to battery life, and the G7 ThinQ is no exception. The phones 3,000 mAh battery should fall in line with the smartphone average of 9 hours and 50 minutes. In the Toms Guide Battery Test, continuous web-surfing over T-Mobiles 4G LTE network, the G7 lasted 8 hours and 35 minutes. MORE: Smartphones with the Longest Battery Life Rival flagships such as the Galaxy S9, Mate 10 Pro and iPhone X all last hours longer than the G7 in our testing. The Mate 10 Pro still reigns supreme with its impressive 14:33 battery life. LGs flagship smartphones consistently fall short when it comes to battery life, and the G7 ThinQ is no exception. The G6 suffered from the same critical issue, lasting 8 hours and 39 minutes in our testing. The V30 turned in an even more pitiful performance, lasting just 6 hours and 30 minutes. LG includes a fast-charging cable in the box, which quickly juices the G7 back up to 100 percent, but a smartphone released in 2018 should have a long-lasting battery and support quick-charging, not force you to choose one or the other. Bottom Line LG must be frustrated. Past attempts at innovation, the modular G5 and the G6, which pushed smartphone cameras and displays forward, havent toppled Samsung. Meanwhile, Huaweis camera technology and OnePluss vivid displays and affordable price are making those companies more competitive. So LG scaled back its ambitions with the G7, a flagship phone that follows in the footsteps of the companys rivals. Thats not to say the G7 is a bad phone. But by taking the features that have made other flagships stand out and bundling them in one tidy package, LG isnt doing anything to differentiate itself. The G7 is a fine phone. But its not a must-buy. Credit: Shaun Lucas/Tom's Guide Image 1 of 3 Image 2 of 3 Image 3 of 3 Startup company Exklim is currently running a Kickstarter campaign for its portable external graphics dock, with a price point that challenges one of Lenovos products of similar design. The Exklim ex Core is a portable eGPU dock that features an Nvidia GeForce GTX 1050 4GB MXM graphics card in a small Thunderbolt 3-powered chassis that measures in at a mere 5.9 x 4.1 x 0.8 and weighs 1.57lbs. The I/O consists of two Intel TB3 ports (Type-C), a USB-C power input (for the included 90W power adapter), and an HDMI 2.0 port for additional video output. The ex Core comes in three different models (colors): T-White, X-White, and G-Dark. If the idea of a GTX 1050 TB3 graphics enclosure sounds familiar, it's because one of the big-box brands already got there. The Lenovo Thunderbolt 3 Graphics Dock is strikingly similar to the ex Core, with a GTX 1050 4GB MXM graphics and tiny chassis. However, the Lenovo dock offers more USB and networking connectivity, with a gigabit Ethernet port, two USB 3.0 ports, and one USB 2.0 port. It only has one TB3 Type-C port (the ex Core has two), but it does offer two more display output options (one HDMI 2.0, two DisplayPort 2.0). Despite the slight differences, the ex Core is priced within a few dollars of the $399 Lenovo Thunderbolt 3 Graphics Dock, with Early Bird backers able to get T-White and G-Dark versions of the ex Core for about $407 USD after shipping (to US address). However, the X-White version (the third image in the album above) costs a little bit more at $447. At first glance, it doesnt seem the Kickstarter-backed Exklim is offering something the market doesnt already have; Lenovo has the branding and manufacturing bit already taken care of, and Exklim isnt pricing the eGPU at a deeper discount than the already established competitor. However, the ex Core is able to provide the graphics horsepower without the need to connect the AC adapter, instead drawing power from the connected TB3-enabled laptop to power the GPU and ports. Lenovos TB3 Graphics Dock is designed to be tethered to the wall with an AC adapter and provides power to your connected device. It may be portable in a sense, but not to the same extent as the ex Core. Although it may seem like a better mouse trap at this particular price point in the eGPU market, the ex Cores primary strength (untethered graphics-boosting glory) doesnt make much sense for gamers playing games without an AC adapter connected quickly drains the laptops battery, especially with a 90W device also running at full bore. Furthermore, Nvidias Battery Boost driver is set to limit framerates to 30 FPS in an effort to save battery life, so you wouldnt be seeing the full benefit of the eGPU without a source of power for at least one of your devices (laptop or dock). It is nice to have a single cable to connect the ex Core, and we see the value for on-the-go CAD developers and professionals who could use the GPU horsepower in the field, but one way or the other, youll have to power your setup if you expect to see results in games. The Exklim ex Core T-White and G-Dark are available on the companys Kickstarter page for about $407 USD. The X-White is available for around $447, and all three of the ex Core eGPU docks have limited quantities still available. According to a recent report, the French government is currently developing an end-to-end encrypted alternative to WhatsApp and Telegram that its officials could use without worrying about foreign spying. Fear Of Foreign Surveillance Although Telegram was recently banned in Russia for not providing the encryption keys to the Russian government, the French government has more to fear than just Russian spies. In 2012, the U.S. government was accused of infecting the PCs of President Sarkozys advisors with a variant of the Flame virus (also believed to be developed by the U.S. government), exposing national secrets. Other leaks later revealed that the U.S. government has been spying on Germanys chancellor Angela Merkel, too. All of this could explain why the French government trusts neither the Telegram app (whose founders are Russian) nor the Facebook-owned WhatsApp. Compared to Telegram, WhatsApps messages are at least supposed to be end-to-end encrypted and only users should ever have access to them, at least in theory. In practice, WhatsApp implementation of end-to-end encryption isnt as strict as Signal, for instance. For one, users are not warned by default when someone else is impersonating the people with which theyre communicating. Second, WhatsApp has given itself the ability to re-encrypt user messages with its own key before they arrive to the recipient so that when the recipient changes SIM cards, they can still receive the messages. However, this breaks the end-to-end encryption and if WhatsApp can use it in this situation, then it can use it in others, too, such as for lawful (or unlawful) interception requests. A spokesperson for the French government told Reuters: We need to find a way to have an encrypted messaging service that is not encrypted by the United States or Russia. You start thinking about the potential breaches that could happen, as we saw with Facebook, so we should take the lead. A Matrix/Riot-Based Chat Application Although the French governments spokesperson said that the governments app will be based on open source software found freely available on the internet, she declined to name it. However, Matrix developers have confirmed that the app in question will be based on the federated chat Matrix protocol (a more modern XMPP/Jabber competitor) and, more specifically, on the Riot client, which uses this protocol. Riot also comes with built-in support for the double ratchet end-to-end encryption algorithm, also used by Signal. Riot uses a variant of the double ratchet algorithm called Olm for strong end-to-end encryption for private conversations between two individuals, and Megolm, a variant for end-to-end encrypted group chats. Megolm has variable privacy options in its library that developers will have to tweak before deploying. The reason for this is that some developers may prefer additional user convenience over maximum security. Taking Control Of Own Data The recent Cambridge Analytica privacy scandal seems to have reminded the French government and others, too, that you dont have much control over your data if it's being stored and processed by someone else. The French government will be able to fully control the Riot-based application by using open source code with its own modifications, if needed, and then run it on its own servers. The French governments spokesperson said that eventually this app may be available to everyone. However, French citizens will need to consider the fact that the app could also make enable their own government to spy on them more easily. If the apps source code remains public and transparent, and end-to-end encryption is enabled by default, it may not be a significant concern. It may still be preferable for citizens to use some other secure application developed by a non-profit group, whether that group is French or foreign. Pininfarina is not a full-fledged automaker. The company that made its name as one of the premier auto design studios in the world is now called Automobili Pininfarina. Its expected to launch a fleet of electric SUVs as part of its future offerings, but the first model to come out of the newly-minted automaker will be the furthest thing from an SUV. According to boss Michael Perschke, the first model to carry the Automobili Pininfarina badge will be an electric hypercar. Perschke didnt dive into any details, but he did confirm a few notable facts about the planned hypercar Pininfarina isnt messing around, is it? The Mahindra-owned automaker is already aiming high with plans to develop an electric hypercar as its first-ever production model. Speaking with Automotive News Europe, Michael Perschke left no room for interpretation with the companys first offering. It will be a true hypercar, he said. Thats it. No caveats. No conditions. No nothing. Perschke didnt dive into any details, but he did confirm a few notable facts about the planned hypercar. Owing to its electric powertrain, the Pininfarina boss indicated that the yet-to-be-named hypercar will have as much as 300 miles of range between charges. He didnt say how much power itll carry, but that didnt stop him from dropping another bombshell: the hypercar will be able to sprint from 0 to 62 mph in under two seconds, a staggering number that puts it in the ballpark of the second-generation Tesla Roadsters own hyped acceleration time of just 1.9 seconds. Not surprisingly, the Pininfarina electric hypercar will carry a price tag of around $2.5 million. If everything goes according to plan, we could see the electric hypercar as early as 2020 Now that weve had a few seconds to let this news sink in, the speculation now turns to what kind of model Automobili Pininfarina has in store. Have we seen it before in a concept version before? After all, Pininfarina has debuted a number of hypercar-worthy designs in recent years, most notably the hydrogen-powered H2 Speed that we saw in its evolved form the first concept was shown in 2016 at the 2018 Geneva Motor Show. Even if it doesnt look like the H2 Speed, we can at least expect this future model to look like a legitimate hypercar because, well, this is Pininfarina were talking about here. If everything goes according to plan, we could see the electric hypercar as early as 2020. Since this will be Pininfarinas first-ever model as a standalone automaker, you can be sure that the company will do everything it can to make a lasting first impression before its fleet of SUVs arrives soon after the hypercars launch. References The Pininfarina H2 Speed Evolves from Simple Concept to Full-Blown, Hydrogen-Powered Racecar Read our full review on the 2016 Pininfarina H2 Speed. Read more Pininfarina news. The Kia Proceed Concept turned a lot of heads at the 2017 Frankfurt Motor Show. Initially thought of as a design study to determine the design direction of the next-generation Ceed, the positive reception surrounding the concept forced Kia to rethink its initial plans for the car. A production version is now in the works, and word on the street is that it will make its debut at the 2018 Paris Motor Show this October. Kia has not formally announced plans to turn the Proceed Concept into a production car, but it is understood that a third member of the Ceed family is on its way Kia has not formally announced plans to turn the Proceed Concept into a production car, but it is understood that a third member of the Ceed family is on its way. A high-ranking Kia executive in this case, the companys head of product planning, David Labrosse even dropped a few crumbs to fuel the speculation on what model this could turn out to be. Speaking with Auto Week, Labrosse hinted that a third version of the Ceed is arriving and the likely place for its arrival would be in Paris sometime in the last quarter of the year. Since the Paris Motor Show is held annually in October, this is most likely the event that Labrosse is alluding to. To keep the fire of speculation going, another Kia exec Kia Europes former COO, Michael Cole mentioned that the new Ceed will be sportier than the hatchback and wagon models that debuted at the 2018 Geneva Motor Show. Cole didnt dive into the specifics, but if his comments are to be believed, a production version of the Proceed shooting brake concept could be the model that the Korean automaker is preparing in time for its debut in Paris this October. It would make sense for the third member of the Ceed family to be different from the hatchback and wagon models that we already saw in Geneva. Creating a separate identity would give customers plenty of options to choose from as far as the Ceed lineup is concerned. Granted, were not expecting Kia to keep the design as it is, but the overall profile of the concept gave us chills that we rarely get from a Kia concept. Selfishly, we want it to be a shooting brake. Like everybody else, we saw what the concept version looked like in Frankfurt last year, and we were floored by how stunning it looked. Granted, were not expecting Kia to keep the design as it is, but the overall profile of the concept gave us chills that we rarely get from a Kia concept. Were not fans of the concepts interior, so if there are changes to be made, Kia can start there. If the third variation of the Kia Ceed ends up being a shooting brake, it could also serve as a successor to the three-door Pro Ceed coupes that Kia offered during the first two generations of the model. Knowing what we know about Kias plans for the Ceed a hot hatch and a crossover are two other models that are being discussed it makes sense to give the whole lineup some diversity. A shooting brake with a lot of the concepts bells and whistles would go a long way in doing just that. References Read our full review on the 2017 Kia Proceed Concept. Read our full review on the 2018 Kia Ceed. Read more Kia news. Source: Autoweek Vacation Agent Magazine A version of this article appears in print in the March 2018 issue of Vacation Agent Magazine. Subscribe AN unvaccinated accountant at the Urban Development Corporation of Trinidad and Tobago (UDeCOTT) is now facing the effects of not taking the jab, as she will soon be placed on no-pay leave due to the companys policy. Do you have a news tip? Want to share good news story, or do you have information that should see the light of day? Then we want to hear from you. More here I ask the question whether we have a labour market because I am not sure if we do. There are scenes that have not been appearing in landscapes I used to know. For example, I have a vivid memory of adolescent black males wearing ties and heading to work. In the 1960s. Maybe in the civil service, or teaching. Hi , I am flying to LA from Melbourne with United Airlines on premium economy. I booked my ticket via Expedia. I wanted to upgrade to business but so far I have been unable to do so as apparently its a restricted ticket. United wont give me a price and Expedia is saying they cannot give me a price because this was a special deal ticket. Has anyone flown with United able to get an airport upgrade ( paying a fee of course)? I flew to Mauritius earlier in the year amd I was able to get a paid upgrade to business at he airport. I know other airlines do it when theres availability. Can anyone also advise if there is paid internet on the flight? Thanks You must purchase it from one of the authorized agents at Each agent sets their own price in the local currency + shipping. You can compare the total price. You are actually purchasing an exchange voucher. After you arrive in Japan, youll exchange the voucher for the actual pass. -:- Message from Tripadvisor staff -:- This topic has been closed to new posts due to inactivity. We hope you'll join the conversation by posting to an open topic or starting a new one. To review the Tripadvisor Forums Posting Guidelines, please follow this link: http://www.tripadvisor.com/pages/forums_posting_guidelines.html We remove posts that do not follow our posting guidelines, and we reserve the right to remove any post for any reason. Most people on this forum advise against car hire, since public transport in a Japan tends to be easier and extremely efficient. If you hire a car then I would use it just for the section between Tokyo and Kyoto, as it will be of little or no use in Tokyo, Kyoto or Osaka. Osaka can easily be visited as a day trip from Kyoto, so I would consider dropping your nights in Osaka and allocating an extra day or two to Tokyo. "For me, trying to analyze the service and server, scrutinizing for signs of "bad service" in order to adjust the tip is just way too much work for me when I'm having an enjoyable meal out. I tip 20% to virtually everyone, rounded up or down to whatever bills I have handy if I'm tipping in cash." If I've learned nothing else from this forum over the years, it is that anyone looking for a reason to tip less, or even not at all, will always find one. Life isn't really that complicated. Treat others the way you hope they will treat you, applies to many situations, including tipping. Edited: 3 years ago I am leaving the USA perminately and flying to Canada I have a layover at the Newark Airport, for like a hour or more. I want to know if I will have to go anywhere near the American Boarder Patrol at this Airport during my layover or before I can re board my Air Canada plane, would anyone know the answer to this question?? There are several reliable courier companies in Kenya that provide professional delivery services locally and abroad. If you wish to make a delivery, you need to know the available options and the terms and conditions A fragile package ready for delivery. Photo: @Westend61 (modified by author) Source: UGC Courier companies in Kenya provide merchandise shipments to various destinations. These agencies maintain the highest standards with regards to security, speed, accessibility, and reliability. They help move documents and parcels via Kenya railway services, merchandised cargo, train services, and bus services. Top 10 courier companies in Kenya Companies offering courier services in Kenya specialize in all types of deliveries ranging from low to high volume packages. These deliveries vary from regional, national and international, ensuring that they cut across different market demands. Courier services come in handy to anyone seeking professionalism. Hiring such services removes the burden of worrying about lost packages or late deliveries. Presently, there are over 100 logistics management agencies and below is a list of courier companies in Kenya. 1. G4S With skilled and dependable conveyance, G4S is one of the top-most preferred courier agencies. It offers a wide range of transport services, with their motorbike carriage being the most consumed locally. Its dispatch places are deliberately spread nationwide while offering affordable courier charges in Kenya. 2. Posta Kenya Among the oldest courier companies in Kenya, Posta courier services are ideal for local and inter-region deliveries. Its mailing station services are accessible with cost-friendly packages. The firm has more than 600 outlets countrywide. 3. DHL Worldwide Express Ltd DHL lego advert. Photo: @dhl Source: Facebook Some of the services that clients enjoy from DHL include express parcel and packaging, transit monitoring options, among others. Delivery of goods can either be through water, rail, road or air. DHL is universally recognized as one of the registered courier companies globally. 4. United Parcel Service United Parcel Service (UPS) is among the most significant supply chain management systems in the world. It serves approximately 8 million clients in over 200 countries daily and is one of the most reliable courier agencies. Its Kenyan establishment is located at the SDV Transami Complex, Airport North Road, Embakasi. 5. Fargo Courier If you are trading internationally, the Fargo Courier services are ideal. Well-known for its high standards and reliability, Fargo is an option for dealers receiving international packages in Kenya. Furthermore, its warehouses are conducive and secure for shipment storage. 6. Expected Mail Delivery Service (EMS) Kenya Anyone seeking global delivery services can rely on EMS. Famous as one the fastest and secure logistics platforms for all merchandise, it has offices in over 175 countries. In Kenya, its offices are located along Kenyatta Avenue behind Posta. 7. Skynet Worldwide Express Skynet delivery service advert. Photo: @skynetworldwideexpress Source: Facebook As its name suggests, Skynet provides logistic solutions globally. Its economy express offers freight shipment for documents and other merchandise. Shipments are tracked virtually while adhering to strict timelines, which are overseen and maintained by professionals. 8. Seabourne International Limited One of the things that stand out at Seabourne International Limited is the exemplary customer service. Clients booking cargo services with them attest to first-class treatment. It is one of the courier companies in Nairobi with its offices situated in Belle Vue at the Mirage Plaza, 2nd Floor. 9. ABC International Cargo Logistics Limited Located along Gilgil Road, off Enterprise Road, ABC International Logistics company guarantees hassle-free services to its clients. It is an international cargo logistics provider company with a broad market spilling to more than 28 countries. 10. TNT Express Worldwide Kenya With global recognition, TNT is one of the most reliable national courier companies for all delivery needs. It connects business to people by offering door-to-door shipping through water, air and road to more than 200 countries. Other courier companies in Kenya Many shipment agencies continue upgrading their standard operating procedures to suit customer needs. Below is an extended list of affordable courier companies in Kenya: Express Messengers Limited One World Courier Ltd Prestige Courier Services Ltd Securicor Kenya Limited Timeless Courier Services Kenya Ltd Data Rush Services Ltd Urban Cargo Networks Ltd Roy Parcel Services Provincial Parcel Carriers Kenya Ltd FedEx Express Ltd Real-Time Courier Services Ltd Aramex Worldwide Movers Kenya Ltd Kenya Airways Cargo, and Sheffield cargo logistics Ltd With the increasing demand for shipping services daily, the cargo industry has become competitive. Firms are now offering cutting-edge solutions to address customer needs. With the increasing demand for shipping services daily, the search for top-notch courier companies in Kenya is on the rise. There are numerous local and international freight service providers. Therefore, when seeking freight services, look out for those that offer convenience and cost-friendly services. Tuko.co.ke published an article about different ways to ship cargo from USA to Kenya. This short read is a listing or reliable shipping companies that will deliver your package safely to Kenya at the best price. Do you know these seven shipping companies? Do you know where their offices are located? What about their terms of service? Read this article for all these details and more. Source: Tuko There are several NGOs in Kenya who are touching the chords of humanity and are actively working on different sectors to reduce the poverty level in the country as well as to uplift the standard of living of the people. We bring you a list of NGOs in Kenya who are trying to improve the condition by giving their best efforts on several sectors.The NGOs in Kenya are working along the various cross sections of various sectors like education, environment, agriculture, water, peace, population, poverty alleviation; and by providing training and counselling to the small scale enterprises to improve the standard of living in our country. NGO in Kenya The NGO in Kenya basically get their memberships from regional, national, and international NGOs operating in Kenya and working with the host of CBO groups. The main focus of their work is to improve different sectors of our country which adds value to our countrys economy in big measure. The National Council for NGO, which is popularly known as the NGOs Council, is a self regulating non partitioned body that works in co-ordination with other allied groups. The basic task of this council is to formulate the rules and regulations for various registered NGOs in Kenya and to monitor their operation. NGO Co-ordination Board The Nongovernmental Organization Coordination Board was established in the year 1990 under the Nongovernmental co-ordination act (Cap19) of 1990. The main responsibility of the board is to regulate and enable the NGO sector in Kenya. The board is currently working under the Ministry of Devolution and Planning. They also have the responsibility of inter alia registering and co-coordinating with various national and international NGOs in Kenya. Basically NGO Co-ordination Board operates to ensure smooth functioning of the various organizations in Kenya. NGOs in Nairobi There are several NGOs in Nairobi, which are operating in the country diligently to improve the current status of the nation. Lets explore some of the names of various such organizations in the country. Habitat for Humanity Kenya (NGO) Undugu Society of Kenya CARE International Kenya World Vision Kenya Youth Alive Kenya Veterinaires Sans Frontieres - Germany (VSF-G) Netherlands Development Organisation Care International National NGO Coordinating Committee on Desertification (Nairobi, Kenya; +254 20 22490730) Family Health International HelpAge International Non Governmental Organizations Co-ordination Board The Cradle Children's Foundation Norwegian Refugee Council Kenyan Heart National Foundation (Nairobi, Kenya; +254 20 4452214) International Rescue Committee How to register an NGO in Kenya? There are several steps that need to be followed for registering an NGO in Kenya. Source: wikihow Reservation needs to be done by filing form 2 upon the payment of Rs 1000. Form 3 should be duly filled with two copies with the contact details of the organization along with the photos of the 3 top officials of the organization. Form 1 should be filed duly stating the name of the contact person of that particular organization. Form 1 and Form 3 will be issued on the payment of Kes 400/- For all foreign based NGOs, at least 1/3rd of the members must be Kenyans. There are more formalities that need to be done for registering an NGO in Kenya. So, if anyone wants to know more, they can visit the NGO bureau website to get complete details about how to register an NGO in Kenya. List of registered NGOs in Kenya There are several renowned bodies that fall under the list of registered NGOs in Kenya such as: African Conservation Centre African Wildlife Foundation Aga Khan Foundation Amici del Mondo World Friends Onlus Amref Health Africa Asante Africa Foundation Carolina for Kibera Cemiride East African Wildlife Society Family Health International Fauna and Flora International FEMNET The Fred Hollows Foundation Friends of Peoples Close to Nature HF Foundation Awareness Against Human Trafficking (HAART) Jamii Bora Kenya Human Rights Commission KOMAZA Mikindani Center of HOPE Pragya Kenya Rhino Ark Source: ITARC The work load for the NGOs in Kenya has increased over the past few decades and so the NGOs in Kenya are looking for volunteers who can accompany them in their operations. NGO Bureau in Kenya The NGO Bureau in Kenya is responsible for maintaining the register of national and international NGOs which are operating in Kenya with precise sectors as per the mandate. They also conduct annual meetings and discussions on the annual reports of the NGOs in Kenya. There are several steps taken in Kenya to improve the condition of the people who are below the poverty line by these NGOs and the regulating body of NGOs are monitoring the affairs of the other NGOs to improve the condition of the nation. Source: Tuko Moi University is a famous public university of Kenya. With a huge number of courses offered by the Moi University, it attracts students from all over the world. With its motto foundation of knowledge Moi has created its own path. Source: MOI Source: UGC The history of Moi University The University was established at first in 1984 by the Parliament of Kenya. In the first year of the university's existence, it only had a single department, The Department of Forestry. This department was given by the University of Nairobi. The number of students enrolled that year was eighty-three. The university had opened a school of medicine in the year 1996 and that was the second school of medicine in Kenya, established at that time. Moi Universitys first Vice-Chancellor was Professor D. Ohiambo who has served the University for the Tenure of four years from 1984 to 1988. Location of Moi University main campus in Kenya Source: google map Moi University which is a public university is located in Kesses, which is thirty-five kilometres from Eldoret town, Uasin Gishu Country, in Rift Valley, Kenya. Profile of Moi University Moi University has set its philosophy to putting knowledge to work. Dissemination, discovery and the implication of knowledge, all are balanced synergistically, in this University. Moi University, the knowledge campus for the student are driven by the various process of involvement like world affairs involvement, involvement in nurturing inquisitorial minds; transferring the knowledge to the job market and also the societal problem involvement in Kenya and also worldwide. Vision of Moi University Moi University has the vision To be the University of choice in nurturing innovation and talent in science, technology and development. Mission of Moi University Moi University has the mission To preserve, create, and disseminate knowledge, conserve and develop scientific, technological and cultural heritage through quality teaching and research; to create conducive work and learning environment, and to work with stakeholders for the betterment of society. Moi University- Core Value. The core values of Moi University is to defend intellectual and promote academic freedom and scholarly and also have the motive to uncompromisingly doing the search for truth. The values of Moi University are explained below: Encouraging innovation, teamwork, tolerance, networking and peace culture. Embracing transparency, excellence and accountability. Practising meritocracy, professionalism, integrity, social justice and equality. Maintaining discipline, responsibility, self-respect, institutional loyalty, international competitiveness and national patriotism. In order to remain relevant and competitive, Moi University is in the path of continuous improvement. Schools and Institutes under Moi University Moi University School of Aerospace Science Moi University School of Biological Science and Physical Sciences Moi University School of Arts and Social Sciences Moi University School of Agriculture and Natural Resources Moi University School of Business and Economics Moi University School of Engineering Moi University School of Education Moi University School of Human Resource Development Moi University School of Law Moi University School of Information Sciences Moi University School of Tourism Hospitality and Events Management Moi University College of Health Science Moi University School of Medicine Moi University School of Public Health Moi University School of Dental Surgery Moi University School of Nursing Institutes Peace and Reconciliation Institute Institute for Gender Equity, Research and Development Student life at Moi University Student life in Moi University Kenya is full of enthusiasm and happening. The student will have all the updated facilities in the serene and fascinating environment of the University. Students are been nourished with knowledge and all the newly developed technologies. Students find a new home of innovation in the University. Social life The social life of the student in the Moi University is very much happening. Student gets home like treatment at this University. In the University a shopping center name Stage is present which supply most of the daily consumables of the student. In the locality of the University, there are nightclubs, convenience stores, and mini marts and other economic facilities are available there. Moi University launched an online platform for shopping, named Uni mall in 2017 to serve the student's commodity needs. Religious facilities are also available within the campus at St. Michaels Chapel (Catholic) and Grace Chapel (Protestant). Societies and clubs There is a number of societies for engagement of the pupil like Enactus, etc. The Moi University radio station of the student is 103.9MUFM. Some of the Moi University newspaper/publications are Legacy, The 3rd Eye and etc. Student body The Moi University Kenya has its own organisation, named Moi University Students Organisation (MUSO) which helps the community of student in the context of social and academic welfare. The organisation holds an election every academic year in the month of October or November. Campuses of Moi University The lists of campuses are noted below: 1. Moi University main campus The main campus is Eldoret West Campus which is located at Kenya Ports Authority (KPA). Landmark: Next to Kenya Pipeline in the Uganda Eldoret Highway near about 4 kilometres from the main Eldoret Town. The West Campus has a population of a student of 6000 approx. The students are involved in various schools like Arts, Economics and Business, Tourism and Human Resource Development, Event Management and Hospitality. The Moi University Eldoret West campus offers degree, masters, diploma and PhD Programmes are continue in the in both day and night session. 2. Moi University Mombassa Campus It is situated in Mombassa County. In the coastal region of Kenya, Mombassa County. The Mombassa Campus was established in 2008 with a minimum number of students, 65 students who enrolled themselves in the School of Business and Economics, Information Science and Human Resource Development. The campus offers programmes under Privately Sponsored Students Programme (PSSP). 3. Moi University Nairobi Campus Is situated within Bazar Plaza which is at the Junction of Biashara Street, Moi Avenue and Tubman Road. The Campus was inaugurated on 14th November 2005. 4. Town Campus Moi University College of Health Sciences Medical Complex Moi University School of Aerospace Sciences Moi University School of Law 5. Moi University Nakuru campus 6. Moi University Bomet campus 7. Moi University Kitale campus Moi University online hostel booking and their charges The charges or the rates of the different of Moi University hostels are given below: Any inquiry regarding the online booking of Moi University room booking can call +254 (0) 53 43620. READ ALSO: Moi University Courses Offered and Fee Structure Moi University management The following lists of the people are the member of University Governance. Prof. Miriam Were, she is the chancellor of the Moi University. Dr Jeremiah N. Koshal, Chairman of Council Prof. Laban P. Ayiro, Moi University Vice-Chancellor Prof. Daniel Tarus, Deputy Vice-Chancellor, Finance Prof. Isaac N. Kimengi, Deputy Vice-Chancellor, Academics, Research & Extension Prof. Nathan O. Ogechi, Deputy Vice Chancellor, Student Affairs Moi University admission requirements The regular students get admission in the Moi University, according to minimum number requirement which will be set by KUCCPS that academic year. Private students who wish to join the arts programmes should have minimum C+. The private students who wish to take the science programme should have C (plain) with the required subject fulfilment. Moi University application forms Students who wish to enrol themselves in the Moi University, Kenya, Click here Moi University online results of different examination conducted by the university To get result Moi University exam result online you must Sign here by using your official Moi University email. If you dont know or dont have the official email then please visit the ICT department of Moi University to get the official email id. READ ALSO: Moi University Vice Chancellor, Laban Ayiro, says he was a slum dweller Moi University admission letters Students who want to know about their selection in the Moi University for the various programme that is offered by the university for the first year, they can get their confirm Admission Letter and can also access more information regarding their getting chance to study in the Moi UniversityMoi University Notable Alumni MugoKibati (1991) Engineering Mildred Barya, Literature, poetry Ronald Osumba, Law KawangoAgot, Philosophy David Kenga, Sport NdukuKilonzo, Economics Vincent Makori, Journalism Peter Kagwanja, Politics James Ole Kiyiapi, Politics Omar Hassan, Politics Aden Duale, Politics MwangiKiunjuri, Politics Joshua Kutuny, Politics Abbas Abdullahi Sheikh Siraji, Politics Moi University logo SOURCE: MOI Moi University Courses Eligibility criteria for admission to Moi University Students have to appear in the entry exam set by KUCCPS in order to be eligible for admission under Moi University in regular courses. Students who are willing to take admission for the arts program have to score a minimum of a C+ grade in order to be eligible for admission to Moi University. A minimum of C+ grade required for the students who are willing to take admission for the science program. READ ALSO: Moi University online hostel booking 2018 Fees structure SOURCE: MOI Other information: Along with the fees represented above, students are requested to have with them at least Ksh. 18,000.00 per year for catering services, Ksh. 9000.00 per year for books and Ksh. 3,500.00- 5,000.00 for accommodation for University residence. Indemnity required on field trips and attachment will be borne by students as and when required. N.B.: The above fee structure is subject to revision at the sole direction of the university. SOURCE: MOI Other information: Along with the fees represented above, Students are requested to have with them at least Ksh. 18,000.00 per year for catering services, Ksh. 9000.00 per year for books and Ksh. 3,500.00- 5,000.00 for accommodation for University residence. Indemnity required on field trips and attachment will be borne by students as and when required. N.B.: The above fee structure is subject to revision at the sole direction of the university. SOURCE: MOI Other information: Along with the fees represented above, Students are requested to have with them at least Ksh. 18,000.00 per year for catering services, Ksh. 9000.00 per year for books and Ksh. 3,500.00- 5,000.00 for accommodation for University residence. Indemnity required on field trips and attachment will be borne by students as and when required. N.B- The above fee structure is subject to revision at the sole direction of the university. Moi University hostel booking procedure With the help of the ICT department and the Hostel department of Moi University, students can now book hostel rooms online with some easy steps. In order to access the booking portal a valid registration number of the students of Moi University is needed along with valid Email-id and Student ID number. For the first time user, go to the Book Room service then click on the new link in order to activate the account Enter the Username and Password to login. You will be guided by logging in. After the procedure of booking a room is completed wait for the approval of the authorities in order to confirm your booking for the specific hostel rooms you have chosen. NB: ONLY REGISTERED STUDENTS OF MOI UNIVERSITY ARE ELIGIBLE TO BOOK HOSTEL ROOMS FROM THIS PORTAL. Payment procedure for booking rooms All the payments of the Moi University must be made in the Moi University accommodated account: National Bank- 01021027999600. Please ensure to provide the Registration Number and Name in the deposit slip. The payment must be done with corresponding to the hostel rents. After the payment method, the student needs to scan the receipt and have to upload it to the portal for future assistance Any incorrect information will be marked as a disciplinary case according to the terms and conditions of the Moi University. Moi University Contacts Information Name: Moi University, Main Campus, Kesses Postal Address: P.O Box 3900-30100 Eldoret County: Uasin Gishu County, Kenya Mobile: +254 790940508, +254 736138770, +254 771336911 Email: info@mu.ac.ke Website: http://www.mu.ac.ke/ ADDRESSES Main Campus: P. O. Box 3900 Tel. 053 43001 8/43620 +254 Students Mail P. O. Box 4810 Eldoret College of Health Sciences: P. O. Box 4606, Eldoret Tel. 053- 32781/ 32783 Town Campus Annex: Students Mail P. O. Box 7256 Eldoret Eldoret West Campus: P. O. Box 8210, Eldoret Tel. (053) 61129, 63604 Moi University Library Services The Moi University has digital library system for their students. There are several services students can acquire from the library. SOURCE: MOI Moi University has expanded considerably since its humble beginning in April 1985. Currently, the University library network consists of the main library and five branch libraries at Chepkoilel Campus, Town Campus, Town Campus Annex, Eldoret West Campus and School of Environmental Studies documentation Centre. The British Government financed the Margaret Thatcher Library, on the Main Campus. It was completed in 1994. The Library has a capacity of one million volumes and can seat about 2500 readers at once. OPENING HOURS Semester Time Weekdays 8.00 a.m. 10.00 p.m. Saturdays 9.00 a.m. 5.00 p.m. Sunday 1.00 p.m. 5.00 p.m. Vacation Weekdays 9.00 a.m. 5.00p.m Weekends Closed Public Holidays Closed Computer Services Offered on Moi University campus E-mail and Internet Services The Information Resource Management Centre (IRM) is proud to offer you Internet and e-mail services. You are invited to access the World Wide Web (www). With these services, you will be able to retrieve a vast quantity of information in the global village cheaply and easily. These services are currently being offered at the IRM Offices in the Margaret Thatcher Library (MTL), 2nd floor, room LS04 during normal working hours - Monday to Friday Between 8.00 a.m. and 5.00 p.m. and also at MUSO Bureau in the Students Centre (Main Campus). Contact: support@irmmoi.com OR irm@mirmmoi.com Students Organisation The Dean of the Moi University approved the registration of all the students organisation and societies within the Moi University. The student Governing Council looks after all the students activities of the students organisation under the Moi University. The followings are some of the students organisation and societies registered with the Moi University. Moi University Forestry Students Association (MUFSA) Wildlife Students Association of Moi University (WASAMU) Cultural and Music Club Literature Students Association African Drama Club Chama Cha Kiswahili Cha Moi University (CHAKIMO) Christian Union (C.U) Young Christian Students (YCS) Seventh Day Adventists (SDA) Muslims Students Association Moi University Choir Science Students Association Technology Students Association Moi University Social Club Association of Economics Students of Moi University (AES) Management and Economics Students Association French Club Rotaract Club of Moi University Presidential Award Scheme Political Science Club Wood Science and Technology Student Association Rugby Club Karate Club Moi University Business Studies Club Moi University Club Swimming Club A general Information Booklet 33 Social-cultural Club 28. Refugee Welfare Club Know Aids Awareness Club AIDS Awareness Club Moi University Information Sciences Students Association Catholic University Students Association Association of Students interested in Economics and Commerce Red Cross Rangers and Rover Moi University Youth in Action Association Peace Unit Programme (PUP) 38. Students in Free Enterprise (SIFE) Moi University Theatre Arts Association St. Johns Ambulance, Moi University Source: Tuko.co.ke Recently, the current Cabinet Secretary for Education in Kenya, Amina Mohamed, made significant steps to ensure that there are more chances for Kenyans to study abroad through scholarships. The Ministry of education scholarships Kenya features an array of study program competitively available for Kenyan learners who want to further their knowledge abroad. These programs to study in other nations are now available through the Ministry of Education portal and are open for public application before the designated deadlines. Source: YouTube READ ALSO: Bungoma Governor unveils a whooping KSh 400 Million to sponsor 40,000 needy students Ministry of Education Kenya scholarships 2018 The Ministry of Education through its official websites recently advertised various scholarships meant for Kenyan youths. The scholarships feature learners at different levels of study including undergraduate, postgraduate, and Ph.D. categories. Most of these programs are available in international schools. However, some of the scholarships feature local universities and colleges. The Ministry of Education is overly committed to helping applicants secure these great programs limited in the count. The team is on the move to offer applicants with sufficient information as they apply. Some of the insights delivered by the ministry of education include financial aids, grants, and local scholarships. This information is beneficial for learners to acquaint themselves with financial and other preparatory details. Source: Youth Village Kenya Ministry of Education scholarships: Procedure of application Eligible learners are required by the Ministry of Education to fill out an online based application form. It is also advisable to indicate the scholarship you are interested in for the ease of processing. Applicants should equally provide their names as they appear in the national identity cards. Other fundamental details required in the form include contact details, previous education profile, former and current institutions of study, as well as the academic qualifications of the interested candidate. Check the official education site for a detailed copy of the application form. Ministry of Education scholarships in Kenya Mauritius scholarships 2018 This scholarship program was offered by the Ministry of Education and Human Resource, Tertiary Education and Scientific Research of the Republic of Mauritius. The scholarship targeted Kenyan applicants who are below twenty-five years of age. The advertisement was seeking five Kenyan undergraduate students eligible to enroll in the different offering at Mauritius. Although the deadline for this application was on 23rd March 2018 as described in the application form, you can get adequate information that will enable you to prepare well for the next opening when advertised. You can also find other scholarships for Africans to study in Mauritius on the scholarship portal. Source: ScholarshipPortal China scholarship 2018 Before 8th March 2018, the peoples Republic of China government was searching for thirty-five Kenyan learners for the year 2018/2019 to enroll for their Doctorate, Masters, and Undergraduate studies. The scholarships were reserved primarily for applicants who meet the following admission criteria. China scholarship 2018: Undergraduate Must have scored a minimum of B plain in Kenya Certificate of Secondary Education Must be twenty-five years of age or younger Good scores in core subjects is an added advantage for particular specialties Must have completed secondary education within the past three years Must have received a KCSE certificate China scholarship 2018: Masters Applicant must be aged thirty-five years and below Must have attained at least 2nd class honors (Upper division) degree Must be in public service and have served for at least two years since graduation China scholarship 2018: PhD Applicants must be aged forty years and below Have recognized bachelor and masters degrees Be actively working as a public servant Thailand scholarship 2018 The government of Thailand was seeking five competent Kenyan learners for every scholarship to enroll in their Masters academic programs. The application guideline pdf explains further on the nineteen scholarships open for application. The preliminary application forms were to be submitted before 16th March, 2018 by 5pm. Go through the requirements to be ready when the next advert is made. Russian scholarship The Russian Federation offered Kenyan government a total of thirty-four partial scholarships targeting undergraduate, masters, and Ph.D. learners. The Russian government will cater for most expenses on tuition, accommodation, and monthly allowances. Learners are however expected to fund their flight and health insurance coverage costs. The deadline for this scholarship was 13th March 2018. Egypt scholarships for Masters degree programme 2018 The government of Egypt sought to recruit Kenyan students for masters degree program in the following study areas; Electronics and Communication Engineering Robotics Engineering Computer Science & Engineering Energy Resource Engineering Environmental Engineering Chemical & Petrochemical Engineering Industrial Engineering and System Management Applicants were to submit there appliaction forms before 1st March this year. Indonesia scholarships for Masters degree programme 2018 The Republic of Indonesia has advertised masters degree program scholarships for Kenyan learners. The program came into the limelight of developing country collaborative partnership. Learners from engineering, humanities, social science, education, and engineering are encouraged to apply. This program is still open for application; the deadline being 30th April 2018. Visit the official site and download the detailed form. This is an attractive position that you should not miss! Some other scholarship programmes you might be interested in, are as listed below. Visit the Ministry of Education for further description and eligibility Commonwealth Masters scholarships in low and middle-income countries- Open for Kenyan Masters program studies This scholarship will proceed under collaborative funding from Fellowship Plan and Commonwealth Commission funding. The scholarship program is targeting students from low and middle-income countries. In essence, the program was drafted to search for talented learners and enroll them in masters programs. Career development and professionalism are among the vital goals unleashed by this program. Darmasiswa scholarship on language, art and culture of Indonesia, 2018 The scholarship programme advertised by the Republic of Indonesia, Ministry of Education and Culture. The scholarship is open for three eligible Kenyan citizens interested to learn Indonesian Language culture and art. Scholarships ministry of education Kenya platform unveiled that the program will commence on Aug/Sept 2018 and last for a year. Interested applicants should make prior applicant before the deadline lapses. The Indonesian government will cater for most parts of tuition fees for up to Rp. 2,950,000 or $219 USD. The amount will, however, vary depending on the city where the learner will be staying. International Masters of Public Health (IMPH) the youth of excellence scheme: Chinese government scholarship IMPH is another scholarship programme given to Kenyan learners courtesy of Tsinghua University in collaboration with The Peoples Republic of China. The scholarship is available for one Kenya to pursue China tenable International Masters of Public Health programme. The government of Hungary scholarships: 2018 Applicants for this lucrative program seeking one hundred learners are expected to qualify for undergraduate and postgraduate studies. Applicants should first visit Hungarian Universities to identify potential areas of research under these prolific scholarship programs. Eligibility: Undergraduate At least a B (Plain) in KCSE Aged 23 years and below Have an original KCSE certificate. Source: Youth Village Kenya READ ALSO: Are You Eligible For These Scholarships To Study In Budapest Universities? Indian government scholarships 2018/2019 The Indian government has offered fifty-two lucrative scholarship for Kenyan learners at undergraduate, Masters, and Ph.D. studies. The scholarship form part of a research program tenable in Indian Universities and colleges. African Scholarship Scheme drives the research program for the academic year 2018/2019. For more scholarship programs visit Ministry of education of Kenya scholarships today and learn more. READ ALSO: Scholarships in Kenya for Undergraduates Jomo Kenyatta Foundation scholarship 2018 - application form and requirements Scholarships for Kenyan students to study abroad 2018 Chevening Scholarship Kenya for Aspiring Students Education sponsors in Kenya 2018 Source: Tuko Breaking News Latest - Journalist Dennis Omondi is admitted to Apolo hospital in India - Omondi is suffering from leukemia whose treatment is expensive - At least four bone marrow tests have proved incompatible Kenyan journalist Dennis Musundi Omondi who was diagnosed with acute Leukaemia and admitted to an Indian hospital has failed to get compatible bone marrows. Doctors had conducted bone marrow tests on Omondi's four brothers but unfortunately, none of them matched his type. Send 'NEWS' to 40227 to receive all the important breaking news as it happens READ ALSO: Mambo 5 usiyoyajua kuhusu marehemu Kenneth Matiba "My four brothers have done bone marrow test as donors but unfortunately, none of them matches with me. With this it means I will have to wait for long as the hospital figures out where on earth to get someone who has similar cells/bone marrow like mine. This means more cost," he tweeted on Monday, April 16. READ ALSO: Kenyan journalist Dennis Omondi in need of urgent medical aid finally flies to India, still needs your financial assistance Dennis Musundi Omondi who was diagnosed with acute Leukaemia and admitted to an Indian hospital failed to get compatible bone marrows. Photo: Dennis Ole Omondi/Twitter. READ ALSO: Journalist pleads with Uhuru, Ruto to help him raise KSh 12 million for bone marrow transplant in South Africa The West TV senior news reporter left the country on Wednesday, February 7, after months of being admitted to Kenya National Hospital as doctors monitored his situation. According to his doctor at the Apollo Hospitals, Chirag Shah, the procedure, including three weeks stay at the hospital would amount to an approximated KSh 1,663,306.45 (USD16500). Unable to raise the amount, Omondi did not receive any treatment and his hospital bill accumulated to KSh 6.5 million. Kenyans went to his rescue and managed to raise KSh 3.5 million. Do you have a hot story or scandal you would like us to publish, please reach us through news@tuko.co.ke or WhatsApp: 0732482690 and Telegram: Tuko news. From a House girl to an MCA - On Tuko TV Source: Tuko Newspaper - Kindness is like a spark from a match that creates a forest fire and sometimes even a friendly smile can save life - In the spirit of kindness, a KWS ranger took it upon himself to carry a disabled girl to the top of Aberdare ranges to view the waterfall - She had been left behind by her attendants and teachers as they could not carry her uphill One thing people overlook far too much is the simple yet effective act of kindness by men in uniform. In this cold world overtaken by selfishness and greed is a desperate need for those little acts of care by such men. That cannot have been captured better than a Kenya Wildlife Service ranger who was seen taking the Utumishi kwa Wote mantra in pride and stride. Send 'NEWS' to 40227 to receive all the important breaking news as it happens READ ALSO: Mambo 5 usiyoyajua kuhusu marehemu Kenneth Matiba In a Facebook post by Anyama wa Anyama and seen by TUKO.co.ke, the ranger shows compassion to a disabled Form two student, and he turned her day completely around. In this cold new world overtaken by selfishness and greed is a desperate need for these little acts of care by men in uniform. Photo: Anyama wa Anyama/Facebook. READ ALSO: None of the bone marrows matches with mine - Kenyan journalist battling cancer Philip Wesa offered to carry Deborah Nyaboke on his back to the top of Aberdare ranges in order for her to view Chania Falls. "KWS Ranger Philip Wesa is one service man amongst many. He sacrificed to carry a disabled Deborah Nyaboke on his back in a hilly Aberdare National park in effort to make her view the Chania Falls," wrote Anyama READ ALSO: Mombasa teenager rescued from jaws of death after blowing mum's KSh 20k on sports betting Deborah, with her fellow students and teachers from Joyland special school in Kisumu were on a tour of the ranges, when she was left in the school van because she could not climb the hill on her own. "Nyaboke had been left in the vehicle by her teachers and attendants as they ascended the Aberdare since she couldn't climb on her own and only left to receive the information from her colleagues," Anyama added. READ ALSO: Veteran politician Kenneth Matiba is dead Wesa touched, decided to go back to the vehicle, clutched his gun then hoisted the poor Deborah on his back. Photo: Anyama Wa Anyama/ Facebook READ ALSO: Do not buy tokens through your phones - Kenya Power warns Kenyans Wesa touched, decided to go back to the vehicle, clutched his gun then hoisted the poor Deborah on his back. He ensured she joined her colleagues at the park and her dream was realized. What a man! Do you have a hot story or scandal you would like us to publish, please reach us through news@tuko.co.ke or WhatsApp: 0732482690 and Telegram: Tuko news. From a House girl to an MCA. Tuko / Tuco - Kenya Source: Tuko - A court had awarded Matiba KSh 945 million for illegal detention and torture in the 1990s - He passed away before he could receive the compensation that has now accrued to over a billion - He was also being compensated for the collapse of his business empire as a result of the infamous detention The Orange Democratic Movement (ODM) party Secretary General Edwin Sifuna has challenged the government to pay the late veteran politician Kenneth Matiba his compensation before his burial. Sifuna suggested the government should move with speed to compensate Matiba's family for the illegal detention and torture he suffered during the retired president Daniel arap Moi's regime. Send 'NEWS' to 40227 to receive all the important breaking news as it happens Orange Democratic Movement (ODM) party Secretary General Edwin Sifuna challenged the government to compensate the late Kenneth Matiba's family before burial.Photo: Capital FM. READ ALSO: Veteran politician Kenneth Matiba is dead "One would expect that the cheque will be presented to the family before the speeches begin at his burial," Sifuna said in a Twitter post seen by TUKO.co.ke on Tuesday, April 17. It is understood the government is yet to compensate the late Matiba's family, six months since the High Court awarded the fallen second liberation hero KSh 945 million for his unlawful detention and torture in the 1990s. He was also compensated for the collapse of his business empire. Matiba's family lawyer, John Mburu, argued the compensation had accrued over the months and is now a staggering KSh 1.7 billion including interest. READ ALSO: Moi, Kibaki, Uhuru abandoned Matiba and its shameful - Gitobu Imanyara The veteran passed away on Sunday, April 15, at Karen Hospital, Nairobi, after ailing for years. He was 85 at the time of his death and will always be remembered for his painful struggle and fight for multi-party democracy in Kenya. The second liberation icon was detained without trial in the 1990s and it was during the said incarceration that his health first came to question after he suffered a stroke. READ ALSO: Kenneth Matiba to be accorded state burial - government announces The government had announced Matiba will be accorded a state burial. "We have constituted a committee made up of the late Matiba's family and government officials to assist in preparations for the official funeral," a statement dispatched to newsrooms on Monday, April 16, read . Do you have a hot story or scandal you would like us to publish, please reach us through news@tuko.co.ke or WhatsApp: 0732482690 and Telegram: Tuko news. From a House girl to an MCA - On Tuko TV Source: Tuko Editor's Note: Today's TUKO.co.ke blogger is Sammy Kwinga, a regular commentator on social and political issues. He delves into the murky waters of Judiciary reforms in Kenya and explains why President Uhuru Kenyatta should borrow a leaf from DRC's president Joseph Kabila. It doesnt happen often, but Democratic Republic of Congo president Joseph Kabila has this week gatecrashed global media headlines for all the right reasons. The world could not ignore his bold move on Monday to send home over 250 of the countrys magistrates accused of corruption, or who did not have a law degree. Send 'NEWS' to 40227 to receive all the important breaking news as it happen READ ALSO: Uhuru meets Prince William, Duke of Cambridge during his UK tour President Uhuru and Prince Wiliiam. Uhuru should emulate DRC Joseph Kabila in reforming Kenya's judiciary. Photo: Uhuru Kenyatta/ Facebook The extraordinary purge is set to redefine the war against graft and ineptitude in judicial systems across the African continent. Here in Kenya, the gravity of corruption and incompetence in our corridors of justice is legendary that it needs no introduction or description. As you read this piece, an orphan, a widow or an elderly Kenyan is agonisingly weeping because a judge unfairly ruled against them in favour of a wealthy plaintiff or defendant who could buy justice. READ ALSO: 13 stunning photos of the Mombasa beauty set to walk down the aisle with Ali Kiba Somewhere in Nairobis leafy suburbs, a moneyed murderer is calmly devouring goat ribs and gulping down some expensive whisky, not bothered a whit by the pending judgment. He has the judges phone number on fast dial and is guaranteed of victory against poor Naliaka from Kawangware, whose husband he executed in cold blood. It is a painful predicament President Mwai Kibaki understood all too well and made efforts to eradicate when he ordered the "radical surgery" on the judiciary in 2004. READ ALSO: Stop risking your entire future for a few bottles -socialite Huddah Monroe warns slay queens The purge saw 25 judges and 82 magistrates named in the Ringera report removed from service. But lack of a sustained effort has eroded these gains. Former Chief Justice Willy Mutunga, not once, and not twice, decried corruption in the corridors of justice and even proposed a repeat of the 2004 surgery. Upon assuming office, current CJ David Maraga also admitted that corruption is rife in the judiciary and promised to tackle it head on. But has a single head rolled since? Chief Justice David Maraga promised to tackle corruption in Kenya's judiciary/. Photo: PSCU READ ALSO: Westlands and CBD to have full car-free days as government increases NYS buses The citizenry has in recent days only desolately watched as the judiciary metamorphoses into a monstrous evil axis captured by enemies of the state. Epitomized by impunity, and perhaps vitalized by the passive war against graft, some judges have taken it upon themselves to paralyze the operations of the Executive in the form of irrational rulings and court orders, all in apparent disregard of common decency and public interest. There are real fears that many critical judgments are being externally authored by activists. Straight-shooting Interior Cabinet Secretary Fred Matiangi best illustrated this catastrophe, backed by facts, when he said one can actually sell poison in this country because all you need to do is get a court order on your door and you sell poison.That is the stark reality, sadly. Yes, we are talking about the judges who casually made reckless rulings that pushed the country to the edge last year. We are talking about their colleagues who blatantly took political sides to preach secession in courtrooms. Have we not heard of magistrates releasing known terrorists, well against intelligence cautions that the culprits will massacre Kenyans once free? Interior Cabinet Secretary Fred Matiang'i What of the killer drivers slapped with ridiculous fines despite overwhelming evidence that they deliberately drove dangerously and killed in the process? There are a myriad other pointers of a Judiciary operating in a vacuum. It is beyond argument that judicial officers wield immense powers and discretion. They have the power to literally decree life or death; power to decide who wins and who goes away empty-handed. These powers are, however, held in trust and should be wielded cautiously, applied judiciously, and only in the public interest. The fact that the opposite is happening in Kenya points to a monumental problem that we must collectively address as a nation. Kabila has presented Uhuru with the perfect lesson on how to handle this crisis - by sending the rotten lot home. Such a purge should come sooner, take the cruelest form, and take no prisoners. It is just what the doctor ordered. Opinions expressed in this column do not represent those of TUKO.co.ke but are solely those of the author TUKO.co.ke welcomes writers, bloggers, photographers and all sorts of noise makers to become a part of our Bloggers network. If you are a seasoned writer or a complete newbie, apply and become Kenyan's next star blogger. Send us some info about your career, interests and expertise and why youd like to contribute to the Blogger Network at news@tuko.co.ke. Please send us the link to your blog and three examples of your work. Similarly, If you have any thoughts, feelings, comments or suggestions on the above article, feel free to shoot us an email on news@tuko.co.ke ALSO WATCH: Top-4 Inspiring And Lovely Families of Powerful Kenyan Politicians. Tuko / Tuco - Kenya on TUKO TV Source: Breaking News The Attorney General says he is not the Government but is it's attorney at law, as he spoke about the legal challenge now before the Courts regarding the process as outlined in the Constitution for the appointment of Gary Griffith as the Acting Police Commissioner. One Ukrainian soldier was killed and five servicepersons were wounded in the anti-terrorist operation (ATO) area in eastern Ukraine over the past day. Ukrainian Defense Ministry's Spokesperson for ATO issues Dmytro Hutsuliak said this at a press briefing on Tuesday, an Ukrinform correspondent reported. "Unfortunately, one serviceperson was killed in enemy shelling... Also, three Ukrainian soldiers were wounded in enemy attacks, another one suffered combat injury, he said. He added that the wounded soldiers were immediately taken to hospitals. Two soldiers are in critical condition, another one is in moderately grave condition. Among those injured is female soldier, who serves as a nurse-anesthetist. She was taken to hospital, her condition is satisfactory, Hutsuliak said. He also added that Russian-backed militants continued to violate the ceasefire regime and launched 52 attacks on the positions of the Ukrainian Armed Forces, using weapons that are prohibited by the Minsk agreements. The Ukrainian side retuned fire 20 times over the past day. iy Russian-supported militants continue to violate the ceasefire in the area of the disengagement of forces and hardware of the conflicting parties near the settlement of Stanytsia Luhanska in Luhansk region, reads a report posted on the Facebook page of the ATO headquarters, with reference to the Ukrainian side of the Joint Center for Control and Coordination. "The Ukrainian side of the JCCC informs that the militants of the Russian occupation troops continue to violate the ceasefire in the area of the disengagement of forces and means of the parties near the settlement of Stanytsia Luhanska. In order to prevent the disengagement of forces and means scheduled for April 20, militants fired at Ukrainian positions from large-caliber machineguns. Representatives of the OSCE SMM were informed about this," the statement reads. The report notes that "the disengagement of forces in this area has been impossible for the second year in a row due to the systematic violation of the requirements of the Minsk agreements by invaders." "The Ukrainian side of the JCCC also notes that Ukrainian Armed Forces units are ready to withdraw forces if the commanders of the Russian occupation administration strictly fulfill the requirements of the framework decision on the disengagement of forces and means on the contact line," the report says. op Ukraine maintains its interest in the Baltic, Adriatic, Black Sea Initiative put forward by the Croatian president and believes that joining it meets its objectives, Ukrainian Deputy Prime Minister for European and Euro-Atlantic Integration Ivanna Klympush-Tsintsadze has said. She stated this at a meeting with Croatian Prime Minister Andrej Plenkovic in Zagreb, where she is on a working visit, according to the government portal. "Ukraine is one of the largest countries in the Black Sea region and has close historical, political and economic ties with all member states of this initiative. We believe that Ukraine's joining the initiative is in line with its interests and objectives, in particular, in the energy component. I hope that Croatia will support our desire to join this initiative," Klympush-Tsintsadze said. She also welcomed plans by the Croatian government to implement large-scale projects aimed at ensuring energy security in Central and Eastern Europe and expressed Ukraine's willingness to discuss the possible format for Ukraine's participation in these projects, in particular, the construction of a LNG terminal on the island of Krk and the Ionian Adriatic Pipeline. Klympush-Tsintsadze praised the positive dynamics of economic cooperation between the two countries, especially in industry and energy. She called for the participation of Croatian enterprises in Ukrainian projects and vice versa. Plenkovic, in turn, said he was satisfied that Ukraine was ready to take part and contribute to the LNG terminal project. "This is a strategic task for Croatia, but I think that this can also be a strategic thing for you, as this project can ease your energy security situation," he said. He also noted that Croatia currently has a large demographic deficit, in particular, the shortage of skilled workers. According to him, the relevant ministries of the Ukrainian and Croatian sides have already begun work on an agreement on cooperation in this area. "This can be a win-win situation. I think that such an arrangement can be very positive for both countries," Plenkovic said. op Relations between Ukraine and Poland are developing successfully, in particular, in the economic sector. Ambassador Extraordinary and Plenipotentiary of the Republic of Poland to Ukraine Jan Pieklo said this at a press conference in Ukrinform on Tuesday. "In most sectors, the relations between Ukraine and Poland are good and very good, particularly with regard to cooperation in the economy. In recent years, the parties have recorded the constant growth of trade exchange between the countries," the ambassador said. Thus, in 2017, the total value of trade amounted to almost $6.2 billion (26% more than in 2016). The Ukrainian exports to Poland amounted to $2.7 billion (23.8% more than in 2016), but the Ukrainian imports from Poland amounted to more than $3.4 billion (28.2% more than in 2016). Poland is Ukraine's first export market in the European Union (ahead of Italy, Germany and the Netherlands) and the second largest supplier of goods from the EU after Germany, according to statistics provided by the embassy to Ukrinform. ish The termination of cooperation with the Commonwealth of Independent States (CIS) will not affect the economy of Ukraine. Prime Minister of Ukraine Volodymyr Groysman stated this during Svoboda Slova talk show on ICTV, an Ukrinform correspondent reports. "It in no way can affect the [Ukrainian] economy," the prime minister said. According to Groysman, the Ministry of Foreign Affairs is developing documents on this issue and they will be discussed at a meeting of the Cabinet of Ministers. As reported, President Petro Poroshenko in his speech at the 11th Kyiv Security Forum stated that Ukraine plans to officially terminate its cooperation with the CIS and close its representative offices at the relevant institutions in Minsk. iy Croatia has consistently supported the territorial integrity of Ukraine. It is aware of the deteriorating humanitarian situation in Donbas and human rights violations in Crimea. Deputy Speaker of the Croatian Parliament Zeljko Reiner said this during a meeting with Deputy Prime Minister for European and Euro-Atlantic Integration of Ukraine Ivanna Klympush-Tsintsadze in Zagreb, the Governmental portal reported. "Croatia constantly declares at the international level that the territorial integrity and sovereignty of Ukraine should be respected. We are fully aware of the deterioration of the humanitarian situation in Donbas and human rights violations in Crimea," Reiner said. In turn, Klympush-Tsintsadze states that Ukraine highly appreciates Croatia's support and cooperation at the international level, in particular, in the Parliamentary Assembly of the Council of Europe, as well as Croatia's principled position on condemning Russian aggression and supporting the territorial integrity of our country. She thanked Croatia for the active humanitarian support of Ukraine, noting that over the past two years more than 1,500 Ukrainian children and ATO soldiers rested in Adriatic resorts of this country. The Office of the Council of Europe in Ukraine welcomes the approval by the Government of Ukraine of the state social program for ensuring equal rights and opportunities for women and men, which is an important step to enhance gender equality in all areas of public life in the country. The Office of the Council of Europe in Ukraine said this in a statement posted on its official website. Additionally, the program foresees to consider a gender component in economic and social development programs, to improve the mechanism of gender legal expertise, to establish a comprehensive system for responding to cases of gender-based discrimination, to expand the sex-disaggregated statistical information, to reduce gender imbalance in areas of state service and management of human resources, as well as to introduce a gender component into program of reforms, reads the statement. The Office also stressed that all the relevant institutions should have the relevant knowledge to effectively implement the program. The implementation of the program will also contribute to fulfill Ukraine's international commitments on gender equality, such as the Council of Europe Gender Equality Strategy 2018-2023, the Convention on the Elimination of All Forms of Discrimination against Women (CEDAW) and the Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs), reads the statement. On this day, in 1991, the Verkhovna Rada of Ukraine, the first of the former Soviet republics, adopted the law "On the Rehabilitation of Victims of Political Repression in Ukraine." The number of victims of political repression in Ukraine cannot be counted. Some experts believe that almost 1.5 million people were arrested in Ukraine (over 50% of them being Ukrainians) from the early 1920s to the late 1980s. Many of them were shot dead, while others went through prisons, exile, expulsion, hard labor, concentration camps, or were forced to visit psychiatric institutions. Terror and repression affected almost all strata of the Ukrainian population: academics, politicians, military, priests, cultural workers, and peasants. Massive repressions during the Stalinist regime (in the 1930s) became particularly tough and painful. For example, 197,617 people were convicted in Ukraine in 1937-1938, and 122,237 were sentenced to death. The lion's share of these sentences was issued by the organs of extrajudicial sentencing, the so-called NKVD troikas, which contradicted even the norms of the Constitution that was in force at that time. The rehabilitation of victims of illegal repression began almost immediately after the start of the de-Stalinization process. In 1953, the Supreme Court of the USSR was granted the right to review the decisions of the former extrajudicial authorities ("troikas") under the protests of the Prosecutor General. In Ukraine, about 250,000 citizens were rehabilitated under this category of cases in 1956-1959. But checks were conducted only on the statements of those repressed or their relatives, therefore, over the next 28 years only 85,000 cases were reconsidered and 60,000 people were rehabilitated. The rehabilitation processes revived again during perestroika. Since 1989, 180,000 citizens have been rehabilitated in two years. The law "On the Rehabilitation of Victims of Political Repression in Ukraine," which was adopted on April 17, 1991, first of all determined that rehabilitation is applied to persons who, for political reasons, were unreasonably sentenced by courts or extrajudicial bodies (or in any extrajudicial order) on the territory of Ukraine from 1917 and until the entry into force of this law. Rehabilitation also concerned citizens who were exiled and expelled from their permanent place of residence and deprived of their property for political, social, religious, national and other motives under the pretext of "fighting the kulaks", for the so-called "aiding the bandits," etc. The honorable name of those who suffered for persuasion was restored. In 2010, the law "On the Rehabilitation of Victims of Political Repression in Ukraine" was amended in terms of the status of persons who suffered from political repressions in their childhood and in terms of guarantees of their social protection. Ukraine and the United States will cooperate in the fight against international drug trafficking. This was discussed during a meeting between Ukrainian Interior Minister Arsen Avakov and Acting Administrator for the Drug Enforcement Administration (DEA) of the U. S. Department of Justice Robert W. Patterson, the press service of the Interior Ministry reported. "For us, it is very important to cooperate with foreign law enforcement agencies, in particular, in the field of countering drug trafficking. Today, criminal groups operate not only within the borders of one country. They actively use innovative technologies, digital payment platforms and virtual crypto currency. In order to collect electronic evidence, it is necessary to organize interaction between bodies, including at the international level," Avakov said. The parties agreed on a Memorandum of Cooperation between the National Police of Ukraine and the Drug Enforcement Administration (DEA) of the United States Department of Justice. The Drug Enforcement Administration (DEA), as a component of the U. S. Department of Justice, is the federal government's greatest weapon in the fight against the illegal drug trade. ish Fifteen servicepersons of the Armed Forces of Ukraine have left for the course of rehabilitation in Georgia. This is reported by the General Staff of the Armed Forces of Ukraine. "The ATO participants will undergo the course of medical and psychological rehabilitation in sunny Georgia for ten days. This is the second such group of officers, soldiers and sergeants of the Armed Forces of Ukraine who will undergo rehabilitation this year," reads the report. Also, the Ukrainian soldiers were instructed to hand over the award to the family of the deceased Georgian soldier David Sikharulidze, who participated in combat actions in Donbas. iy The judicial reform, one of the most complex and vital reforms for Ukraine, is continuing. It is difficult to overestimate its meaning, since public trust in judges is one of the lowest among state bodies. Last year, Ukraine elected a new Supreme Court, which was created for the first time in transparent competitive procedures by the High Qualification Commission of Judges of Ukraine (HQCJ). Now the HQCJ should evaluate the work of approximately 5,300 judges in terms of their suitability for their jobs according to criteria of competence, professional ethics and integrity. The Public Integrity Council (PIC) was created in 2017. Its purpose, according to the law, is to assist the HQCJ in determining the compliance of judges with the criteria of ethics and integrity by providing its opinions or information on judges for the purpose of evaluation. However, at the end of March, the PIC stated that it would stop participating in the process on the qualification evaluation of judges, because, according to it, the HQCJ made changes to its rules of procedure, which limited the activity of the PIC. The High Qualification Commission of Judges of Ukraine, in turn, stated that it did not refuse to cooperate with the Public Integrity Council, because its conclusions are important to the commission and that the amendments to the HQCJ's rules of procedure were made in order to improve cooperation with the PIC based on the recommendations of European experts. The commission also stated that, according to the law, withdrawal of the PIC would not affect the legality of HQCJ decisions. In addition, according to the Council of Europe's opinion on the rules of procedure the Public Integrity Council of April 10, 2017, European standards do not prohibit the involvement in this process of professionals who can make a useful contribution to evaluating candidates for judges, but these professionals carry out only an advisory function. On March 27, the High Qualification Commission of Judges continued to conduct interviews with judges without the Public Integrity Council, while a PIC member appealed to the Supreme Court to recognize as unlawful and ineffective the provisions of the HQCJ's rules of procedure. Ukrinform discussed these and other problematic issues in the process of updating the judicial system in Ukraine with Chairman of the High Qualification Commission of Judges of Ukraine Serhiy Koziakov. Q: Can you explain in more detail the reasons for a conflict with the Public Integrity Council? What amendments were made by the High Qualification Commission of Judges of Ukraine to its rules of procedure, which resulted in the withdrawal of PIC members from the evaluation process? A: It is information noise that is stirred up for a certain purpose. According to Article 87 of the law "On the Judicial System and the Status of Judges," the Public Integrity Council is created to facilitate the work of the High Qualification Commission of Judges, not to replace our functions, not to manage the commission, but to facilitate the work of the HQCJ. It is extremely important to realize that all other relations are beyond the scope of the law. We carry out or have to carry out joint work with the PIC as part of procedures on the qualification evaluation of judges or candidates for judges. These procedures are established only by the HQCJ, therefore the rules for submitting documents within the procedure are at the discretion of the commission. Just imagine, you submit documents for a competition. The terms of the competition indicate how these documents should look and when to submit them. For some reason you do not have questions to the body that established the rules, don't you? You may be dissatisfied with them, but you have to comply with them. The same applies to any other documents that arrive at the body that carries out respective procedures. This is especially true for auxiliary bodies without an independent status that were created to facilitate the activities of this body. The same situation is here - the rules of procedure of the HQCJ set requirements for providing information and conclusions in advance (ten days before the interview), the signing of documents by all members of the PIC who participated in their adoption, and the provision of judges with the opportunity to explain the facts revealed by the PIC. These are simple conditions that are contained in the recommendations and reports of the Consultative Council of European Judges (Opinion No. 17), the Council of Europe, the Bureau of Diplomatic Institutions and Human Rights/OSCE. The same conclusions also contain rather rigid recommendations for giving a judge the right to respond in the event of complaints against him. It is also important to understand what the commission is. The commission is a state body in the judicial system. The commission is a collegiate body consisting of 16 members. Of these, ten are judges or judges in retirement, and six are lawyers or lawyer-scientists. Each judge has dozens of years experience in courts. Lawyer-scientists have dozens of years experience of teaching or representing their clients in courts. The commission's members also include those who participated in the creation of a large number of public associations, dating back to the late 1980s. They also took an active part in their work, including in the late 1980s and early 1990s, during the events of the Orange Revolution, and during the Revolution of Dignity. The first mandate of the HQCJ is the selection and training of future judges, as well as the holding of a qualification exam for them, which will be taken into account during competitions for positions in local courts. Last September's testing of candidates for posts of judges could have been included in the Guinness World Records 4,128 candidates participated in the competition for 700 vacant posts. There were two tests on the possession of the state language and on the knowledge of law. A total of 700 out of 4,128 scored the required number of points and got the right to study at the National School of Judges. So, we have future candidates for the posts of judges. We have already begun training assistant judges at the National School of Judges. They will study for three months. Other lawyers will study a little longer - the law provides for up to a year, but it may be faster, since the courts urgently need new judges. The number of candidates who participated in the selection already speaks about the level of trust in the HQCJ. These people came from all over Ukraine to take part in the procedures we are currently conducting. It turns out that there were six people competing for one post. Currently, we have taken a simplistic approach to the task of judicial reform. There are two popular words: "cleansing" and "renewal." Appeals are made: "We need to dismiss as many judges as possible!" And who will administer justice? Just in June-September 2016, 1,600 judges resigned. However, note that they quit not evenly all over the country, they may quit all at once, the entire staff may quit. For example, the resort town of Yaremche now has not a single judge. Can you imagine? I should mention that, as a rule, it takes from 18 to 24 months to prepare a new judge "from scratch." If it's a former assistant, then it goes faster, but still not less than a year. So we can make a conclusion. The second task of the High Qualification Commission of Judges of Ukraine is to accompany any career movements of judges - either from one local court to another, or from a local court to an appellate court, or when a judge wants to change the specialization. All these career movements are now being conducted on the basis of a competition as part of a procedure called a qualification evaluation. This procedure was introduced after the Revolution of Dignity and it is extremely difficult, compared to other countries in the world. The procedures under which judges received positions in courts in an extremely closed manner three years ago cannot be compared to the present at all. Therefore, we need to talk about our work as a whole, understanding the breakthrough made from the point of reference of reform. Q: What exactly is included in the qualification of judges? Tests? Exams? A: The evaluation consists of two stages stated in the law. The first stage is an exam during which the judge takes a test on the knowledge of law and performs the practical task on writing a draft court decision. The exam lasts for seven hours. The test is anonymous, and its code is checked by a computer program. The practical task is also anonymous, but it is checked by HQCJ members. Every member of the commission is tasked with checking a certain amount of work. The works have a dual code to prevent corruption at the level of interpersonal arrangements. Each work is checked by at least three members of the commission, and the computer automatically displays the average score. If the judge gets at the first stage a score not lower than the one determined by the commission, then he goes further. In the same part of the procedure, the judge undergoes a five-hour psychological test and has a thirty-minute interview with a psychologist. At the second stage, the commission carries out an interview with a judge on the basis of a judicial dossier study, which includes a detailed candidate's questionnaire, responses from the state authorities to the commission's requests, for example, from the National Agency on Corruption Prevention, the National Anti-Corruption Bureau of Ukraine, the Justice Ministry, the Defense Ministry; exam results; the results of professional activity - how many cases the judge heard, how much was changed, canceled, why they were changed or canceled; information on the existence of disciplinary complaints and the results of their consideration; PIC materials; information from any citizen regarding this judge. There are about 200-300 pages in each dossier. All these dossiers, except for personal data, are available on the HQCJ's website. This information is confidential in other countries. Q: The PIC says that the HQCJ turned the qualification evaluation into an "assembly line" - 50 judges per day, five minutes per each judge... A: Such statements, if they sound like this, are either unprofessional or manipulative. Do you know for how long the commission works with a judge as part of qualification evaluation? For five months already. We announced the beginning of the evaluation back in October last year. Qualification evaluation is carried out in accordance with the judge's position - it is established whether the judge may continue to work or not. In November-December 2017, psychological testing was conducted for the first 1,000 judges. How does it happen? Candidates generally take four tests that last for about five to six hours during one day. After the computer fixes the first results in these tests, the psychologist communicates with the judge for half an hour. And then he makes the final conclusion - this is another half an hour. A lot of points depend on psychological tests. After all, the psychologist gives a conclusion according to professional and social criteria and in terms of integrity. Sometimes they write very unpleasant things for the judge. One more hour is needed to check the work. So this is seven hours. The judge's dossier is studied by several people. Each member of the HQCJ has three inspectors. Each dossier is first studied by an inspector who is an experienced lawyer and then he hands it over to a member of the commission who verifies the draft conclusions, especially if they are meaningful materials from the NABU and the NACP. It lasts for several hours, because 300 pages should be carefully looked through and checked. That is, in total, the evaluation of one judge or a candidate for a judge's position takes 11-12 hours. In addition, there are discussions and then interviews the duration of which depends on whether there was any discrepancy in the documents. Therefore, when they speak about "five minutes," this is at least incorrect... After all, when the procedure for evaluating the first 1,000 judges already lasts five months, what kind of "five minutes" can we talk about? Q: The Public Integrity Council also stated that the evaluation procedure was nontransparent, in particular, that the interviews were not broadcast online. A: It's an absolute lie. We have four panels, and each of them should consider the cases of 16 judges per day - eight before and eight after lunch. At the same time, there is a simultaneous broadcast of the work of all panels on the HQCJ's channel on Youtube. On the first day of the evaluation there was a technical failure on one panel and after the broadcast these interviews were not saved. But the next day, we restored everything and now anyone can watch previous interviews, and, as always, follow the interviews of HQCJ members with judges online. Is a technical failure on one day over a long period of time a fair accusation? I will add that all procedures during the exam are also broadcast on the Internet. Commission decisions on candidates are also made public on the website. We really want members of the Public Integrity Council to return to the level of transparency in their activity, which was observed at least during the competition to the Supreme Court. Now there is a strange situation a state body acts more transparently than the public. Q: How long are the interviews? Are there any time norms? A: On the first day, in one of the panels, some interviews were short, lasting about seven minutes. How does the interview take place? The dossier speaker makes a brief report on a judge, and this takes about two minutes. Before that, other members of the commission are already examining all the materials regarding the judge on the computer screen. If we established that the judge had decent marks for the exam, if there were very few decisions changed or canceled, if the NABU did not find anything, if the PIC did not give us a negative opinion, if the judge heard 10,000 cases for the entire period of his or her work, if there were no disciplinary complaints and no reprimands pronounced, for how long will it be necessary to communicate with him or her? Not for long. We communicate much longer during the interview with those judges who have problems with the quality of their work, with unethical behavior, inconsistencies in income declarations, and so on. We often ask uncomfortable questions and get oral and written explanations, documentary evidence. I emphasize that this is not a competition where the best one should be chosen. This is an assessment of the suitability for the position occupied, i.e. the position on which the judge has been working for a long time. There are no clearly defined time norms for the interview. As a rule, the HQCJ starts interviews at 09:00 and finishes them at 17:00, sometimes at 19:00. Four panels hear about 50-60 judges per day. Then the colleagues go to the deliberation room, staying there on average an hour or two. This does not mean that all 64 judges successfully pass the qualification evaluation. Fourteen out of 16 judges may successfully pass, one does not pass, and the decision on one more is postponed. Now, following six days of interviews, decisions on 64 judges have been postponed, mainly due to the findings of the PIC, and four judges did not confirm their suitability for the job. There were no conclusions of the PIC on those who did not pass the evaluation. This is a sign of the commission's principled position regarding the quality of the evaluation. Q: The HQCJ is accused that during these first interviews the conclusions of the Public Integrity Council were postponed and simply not considered because of "illegal" clauses of the HQCJ's Rules of Procedure, according to the PIC. A: I emphasize once again that the HQCJ's Rules of Procedure are fully in line with the law and recommendations of European experts, so they have to be respected. Before withdrawing from the evaluation process, the PIC managed to provide us with about a hundred conclusions and information on judges. But they should not be anonymous, but signed by those PIC members who voted for them. It is not difficult at all. Together with the PIC, we are participants in the state administrative procedure. All commission members, if they participate in making a collegial decision, should sign its text, even if they were against it. Then why is it difficult for PIC members to do it? The High Qualification Commission of Judges gave the PIC ten days to address shortcomings. These requirements are fairly simple to implement, so that the PIC's documents could help the HQCJ in its work. Therefore, they are now postponed, and we hope that the PIC will still bring them to the state that we could consider them. I want to point out that we also worked out legal options as to how we will take into account the information contained in the conclusions if the PIC does not comply with the rules of our rules of procedure regarding the proper execution of documents. Q: What are the shortcomings? A: As I said, the conclusions were not signed by members of the Public Integrity Council who were present at the meetings at which the decisions were approved. The protocols do not include a list of PIC members who were present during their meetings. The protocols also do not contain the name of the judge on whom the conclusion was drawn up. Therefore, we postponed the consideration of all these draft decisions that were provided by the PIC. The thesis that the HQCJ "neglected" the conclusions of the PIC is untrue. Interviews with judges on which there are PIC conclusions were postponed for a certain time and will be scheduled later. Judge for yourself - is there any sign of equality between "postpone" and "neglect"? Of course, it is not forbidden to use harsh words, but it is not serious in professional work. For example, of the 16 judges whose evaluation is scheduled for one day, only three can have the conclusions of the PIC. The evaluation process on the others is ongoing, it cannot be stopped. There is one more significant problem. Documents from the PIC can come at 16:00 on the eve of the day of interview with the judges, which begins at 09:00, and, according to the HQCJ, these documents must be submitted ten days before the day of the meeting. Excuse me, but the commission needs time to study the documents. European experts who have repeatedly investigated the results of the joint work of the HQCJ and the PIC during the competition to the Supreme Court have also repeatedly stressed that in the event of a negative opinion on the judge, the PIC should also provide the judge with the right to a response. Q: But you are accused of making changes to the HQCJ's Rules of Procedure allegedly "illegally." There is even a claim to the Supreme Court regarding this... A: These accusations are not true, because the commission has the right to determine the provisions of the rules of procedure. This is how the procedures are conducted, including the terms, order, and requirements for documents. The PIC says that they have their own rules of procedure, and they work according to them. But we do not instruct them how to work. However, there is a limit. The law says that it is the Public Integrity Council that assists us. As soon as the results of their work come to us, the evaluation procedure takes place in accordance with our rules of procedure, to which the HQCJ has the full power to make changes. This is what we did on the basis of the experience gained during the competition to the Supreme Court and the recommendations of experts from the Council of Europe and the European Commission. Why ten days? Because we have 200-350 pages of dossiers that need to be processed, and we need to check the documents provided by the PIC, draw conclusions and include them in a report. Each commission member still has 60-90 dossiers of this kind. Can they be processed if the opinion of the PIC is obtained right before the evaluation day? Therefore, the fulfillment of the requirements of the HQCJ's Rules of Procedure is a normal attitude to our workflow. Regarding the work of the HQCJ, I will give the following example. The previous composition of the commission set a record in 2013 - 74 meetings (our work is based on meetings). In 2017, we had 355 meetings. This means that a package of documents is being prepared for each meeting, then we review them, make a decision, and another set of documents is being prepared. If we have such a number of meetings - 355, then we have to calculate the days, hours, take into account the weekends, and predict possible technical failures. Q: How many PIC opinions on judges does the High Qualifications Commission of Judges take into account? A: Such predictions for the future cannot be made. For example, we took into account more than 40% of the PIC's opinions during the competition to the Supreme Court. Some candidates who had negative conclusions were not included in the list of winners, while the other part in general stopped participating in the competition before it was completed. But we need to take into account the fact that we had such experience during the competition. The PIC writes an opinion about the judge's unsuitability for the job and posts it on its website. The whole country reads it. The judge begins to provide arguments, and it turns out that not everything mentioned in the text of the opinion is true and reliably confirmed. Sometimes PIC members themselves canceled their opinions, and sometimes the judge came to the meeting and, in the presence of PIC members, provided us with documents stating that the opinion did not correspond to reality. In this regard, European experts recommended that the judge be given the right to a response before the hearing of his or her case at a meeting of the HQCJ, and we also included this in our rules of procedure. For example, it may be so that the name, surname and patronymic of the judge completely coincide with the data of another person who regularly visited Russia. Given the volume of information, the experience of the competition to the Supreme Court, it is clear that such mistakes could be made. Therefore, it was necessary to think how to minimize them, so it was proposed to give the judge the right to a response. The PIC is not strongly opposed to this provision, but says that judges do not always want to provide explanations. We still need to think on the options to solve this problem. In addition, during the formation of the Supreme Court, the PIC canceled its negative opinion in 12 cases, and there is no liability for this. Therefore, when the Public Integrity Council states that the HQCJ should have taken into account all the opinions, we are warning that it is impossible to heed all the opinions, because we have to make a broader analysis of the dossier of the judge than just an opinion, and we are responsible for our decisions before society and the court. Pay attention to one more point. In order to disagree with the opinion of the PIC, the HQCJ must overcome it by at least 11 votes out of 16. The PIC has no limitations. They can support a negative opinion on a judge, for example, with six votes out of 17. Is it fair that a public body approves a negative opinion with six votes out of 17, while a state body overcomes it with 11 votes? Here is an example. The HQCJ had information that a judge's mother owns seven apartments in a very expensive city of Ukraine. We asked him to explain who his mother was. He replied that she is a cleaner in a charity fund. It turned out that she had worked all her life, but the position he named would have given her an opportunity to earn, perhaps, only a two-room cooperative apartment during the Soviet time. We stopped the passage of this judge in the competition to the Supreme Court, and now he has trouble. The procedure of qualification evaluation for the suitability for the post occupied can result even in the loss of a job by a judge, and therefore, lawsuits are possible. I will add another important factor. Ukrainian judges very effectively defend themselves in the European Court of Human Rights. Therefore, we are very attentive to the whole procedure and demand that we and the PIC adhere to the minimum rules on which the fate of a person depends. Q: The PIC says that the competition to the Supreme Council has taken place, but nothing in the country has changed, meaning that nothing changes during the qualification evaluation. A: Such a statement is, unfortunately, a frank manipulation of public opinion, because the new Supreme Court, which was created for the first time under transparent competitive conditions, has already issued several thousand first decisions. Their opinion has to be taken into account when making conclusions. It's easy to criticize. Let's look at the results. Maybe we can already praise new judges for something. During the first hundred days of its work, the Supreme Court protected the right of a citizen to proper assistance in connection with pregnancy and childbirth, defended the right of pensioners of the Interior Ministry to recalculate the pension, taking into account the monetary support of the police, the right of a participant in a LLC to peacefully own property, canceled the court fee for cases on the protection of consumer rights in all instances and many others. Judges write judgments in a new, much more understandable manner. Judgments are presented in a more understandable language. Scientists and lawyers who have never worked in the courts now work in the Supreme Court. These are their decisions taken jointly with experienced judges. Let's not even praise the new judges of the Supreme Court! Is there something to blame them for? Do we have any hint of a possible corrupt element in their decisions? If not, then we will continue to watch. Every day. All together. The new procedure for the qualification evaluation of the entire Ukrainian judiciary, which is currently being held by the High Qualification Commission of Judges, is also unprecedented. All judges in the country are preparing for exams. A total of 21 of judges did not pass them, and four of them did not pass the interviews, that is, a total of 25. A total of around 2,500 judges have resigned over the past two years, including because of their reluctance to undergo such a serious scanning of professional and private life of judges. Can someone call one more example of such a deep procedure, which is called re-certification in other government institutions? I say no. I will also say more. Judges and experts from other European countries who are familiar with how this is happening in our country say confidently that only we do it so thoroughly and decisively. This is judicial reform in action, and it is expected that it does not always get support. After all, calls for the dismissal of even more judges, or even all of them, sometimes obscure the justification of radical actions that may lead to chaos. It is important to understand that the dismissal of even a great number of judges will not automatically lead to a change in those who are left. Similarly, the arrival of new judges in the system does not mean that they will automatically be professional and honest. A number of deep and systematic organizational measures and time are needed to radically change the court. The Venice Commission says that judges' qualification evaluation should be limited in time, conducted quickly and effectively with the highest degree of caution. During its conduct, we act exclusively within the legislative framework of Ukraine and international standards. We receive support from international and public organizations, and diplomats. Let's listen to their comments. During the first six days of interviews the evaluation has been passed so far by 70% of judges. Others have not yet passed it due to the conclusions of the PIC and for other reasons. This is a serious result. I stress that the refusal of the PIC to perform its auxiliary functions in the course of qualification evaluation of judges, according to the law and opinions of international organizations, does not affect the legality of the decisions of the HQCJ and the evaluation process itself. Undoubtedly, working in tandem would be more effective. But for this purpose, the PIC should be more responsible - sign its decisions and protocols and submit documents on time, provide judges with the opportunity to explain the facts revealed by the PIC. We invite members of the Public Integrity Council to be allies, rather than opponents in the process of rebooting the judiciary, as stipulated by the law of Ukraine "On the Judicial System and the Status of Judges." I emphasize that we are conducting a dialogue with the PIC at different levels, including with the assistance of international donors. A frank conversation is always the best form of communication than the language of aggressive confrontation. We are doing one thing, aren't we? The interview was taken by Oleksandr Trokhymchuk Photo by Pavlo Bahmut Ukraine's first helicopter has taken off from the territory of JSC Motor Sich in Zaporizhia for its maiden flight. According to an Ukrinform correspondent, the event was attended by Honorary President and General Aircraft Designer of JSC Motor Sich Viacheslav Bohuslayev, Zaporizhia Mayor Volodymyr Buriak, Chairman of Zaporizhia Regional Council Hryhoriy Samardak and Deputy Head of Zaporizhia Regional State Administration Zinaida Boiko. "We were waiting for this for ten years, and today we will make the first flight. The certification will last for a year. We submitted an application to two organizations - the national certification center of the Ukrainian aviation administration and the international certification committee," Boguslayev said. The MSB-2 Nadiya light multipurpose helicopter is an upgraded modification of the Mi-2. The maximum height at which the helicopter can fly is 5,000 meters, and the flight range is 720 kilometers. The Nadiya is intended for patrolling roads, monitoring pipelines and gas pipelines, for use by units of the State Emergency Service, air medical services, the State Border Guard Service and for other defensive purposes. The company plans to launch the production of helicopters this year. op A Ukrainian diplomat pointed out at the lack of steps toward a political settlement around Transnistria. Ukraine's Special Representative for Transnistrian Settlement Viktor Kryzhanivsky says Ukraine is ready to provide its territory for the withdrawal of Russian troops from Transnistria, while the Russian Federation is showing no willingness to withdraw its forces from the region. Speaking at a panel discussion in Kyiv titled "Traps of the Transnistrian settlement: How to avoid them", he said Ukraine agrees to the withdrawal of Russian troops from Transnistria via the Ukrainian territory, an UNIAN correspondent reports. "We still agree on the use of our territory because our principled position is that Russian troops should be withdrawn from there, they should have long been withdrawn, and today our position remains unchanged, therefore we are providing all the assistance possible," Kryzhanivsky said. At the same time, he drew attention to the recent statement by Russian Deputy Prime Minister Dmitry Rogozin that Russia would not withdraw troops from Transnistria. According to Kryzhanivsky, Russian Duma also said that it was impossible to withdraw Russian troops and ammunition from Transnistria due to the "unstable situation in Ukraine." "But all these stories are for those with mental issues," Kryzhanivsky said. Read alsoDangers of Russia withdrawal corridor from Transnistria via Ukraine"Russia shows no readiness to withdraw its troops, and they will cling to anything, looking for some new excuses. Our position remains unchanged: we will provide the territory, we will ensure an unhindered and safe withdrawal of Russian troops and ammunition from the territory of Transnistria as soon as Russia begins to do this or at least expresses its readiness," he said. The diplomat also noted that Ukraine's position on the settlement of the Transnistrian conflict remains unchanged. "This is about reaching a settlement of the Transnistrian conflict as soon as possible, based of preserving sovereignty and territorial integrity of Moldova. Such a mandate I received from Ukrainian President Poroshenko, and there cannot be any compromise," Kryzhanivsky said. He also noted that efforts were being made to speed up the settlement process. However, as the Ukrainian diplomat pointed out the lack of steps toward political settlement, i.e. "the return of Transnistria back to a single state of Moldova." "There is no progress in terms of a political settlement," Kryzhanivsky said. At the same time, he called Russia's position an important factor in the Transnistria settlement. "[Russia] is not ready, and it is not clear when it will be ready to resolve this conflict, because for them the preservation of any conflicts on the territory of the former USSR is a very important factor of maintaining influence on new states," he said. In turn, Ambassador of Moldova to Ukraine Ruslan Bolbochan said that his country stands for a political-diplomatic settlement based on respect for the territorial integrity and independence of Moldova within the internationally recognized borders. At the same time, he noted that Moldova supports granting of a special status to the Transnistrian region. Read alsoUkraine, Moldova, Georgia decry Russian presence - media"Another very important issue of military presence. We are in favor of transforming the current peacekeeping mission into a civilian mission with an international mandate, and we stand for the complete withdrawal of Russian troops from the territory of the Republic of Moldova and for the withdrawal of ammunition from our country's territory," Bolbochan said. He has also that the Moldovan government is committed to promoting a direct dialogue between Chisinau and Tiraspol. The diplomat expressed gratitude to Ukraine for supporting Moldova's efforts in the Transnistrian conflict settlement. Separately, Bolbochan said that any military exercise in Transnistria is a matter of concern. "According to some information, last year there some 300 such military trainings were held. This is too much, and we are concerned," Bolbochan said. The diplomat refused to specify the number of Transnistrian mercenaries detained. Ambassador of the Republic of Moldova to Ukraine Ruslan Bolbochan states that "instructors" from the unrecognized Transnistria who collaborated with Russian-backed militants in Donbas have been detained in Moldova, thanks to cooperation and information exchange between Ukrainian and Moldovan security officials. "We've been seeing a very high-level dialogue between Moldova and Ukraine. This promotes very close interdepartmental interaction between representatives of the two countries' border and customs services, and those of security agencies," he said at a panel discussion "Traps of the Transnistrian settlement: How to avoid them" held on April 17, an UNIAN correspondent reports. Read alsoUkraine ready to provide Russia with corridor for withdrawal of troops from Transnistria"It's no secret that the so-called "instructors" were detained in the Chisinau airport and other places, and following that, [brought to justice] in accordance with our legislation," Bolbochan added. However, the diplomat refused to specify the number of such detainees, and how often such arrests are carried out. A corresponding appeal from UOC of the Kyiv Patriarchate and Ukrainian Autocephalous Orthodox Church has been signed to Ecumenical Patriarch Bartholomew. President of Ukraine Petro Poroshenko on Tuesday, April 17, announced the start of the procedure for the creation of a unified Ukrainian Orthodox Church. The relevant agreement was reached at 7-hour long negotiations between Poroshenko and Ecumenical Patriarch Bartholomew and Synode members held during a presidential visit to Turkey, Poroshenko said at a meeting with heads of parliamentary factions on Tuesday. "Ukraine is as close as ever to the emergence of its own Unified Orthodox Church," the president said, adding that he cannot elaborate on all details of the agreements reached. A number of elements are needed for the process to see success. First, a corresponding appeal from UOC of the Kyiv Patriarchate and Ukrainian Autocephalous Orthodox Church, which has already been signed to Ecumenical Patriarch Bartholomew in a rare united move of the two churches, according to Poroshenko. Read alsoPriests of UOC of Moscow Patriarchate reportedly pray for militants in Donbas, bless arms media Poroshenko expressed hope that the new UOC would be created before the 1030th anniversary of baptism of the Kyiv Rus and called on Parliament to support the appeal to Constantinople. The president called the developments around a possible creation of a United Orthodox Church which would not be subordinate to Moscow a "historic event." The president ruled out the possibility of banning any other churches in Ukraine and noted that the state will remain separated from church. The enemy continued employing proscribed weapons against Ukrainian forces. Russia's hybrid military forces attacked Ukrainian army positions in Donbas 52 times in the past 24 hours, with one Ukrainian soldier reported as killed in action (KIA) and another five as wounded in action (WIA). "In the Luhansk sector, militants fired proscribed 152mm and 122mm artillery systems, 82mm mortars and grenade launchers at the Ukrainian positions near the village of Zaitseve," the press center of the headquarters of Ukraine's military operations reported on Facebook Tuesday morning. "Besides, the aggressor employed infantry fighting vehicles and grenade launchers against the Ukrainian fortified positions near the village of Luhanske, grenade launchers near the village of Krymske, and heavy machine guns near the villages of Stanytsia Luhanska and Novoluhanske," the report says. Read also"DPR" terrorists suffer significant losses near Dokuchaievsk volunteers"In the Donetsk sector, the defenders of the village of Pisky came under fire from 120mm and 82mm mortars, infantry fighting vehicles and heavy machine guns." The enemy opened fire from grenade launchers of various systems and small arms at the defenders of the towns of Maryinka and Avdiyivka, the Butivka coal mine, and the villages of Vodiane, Verkhniotoretske, Hnutove, Kamianka, Novotroyitske and Shyrokyne," the press center said. The militants also used armored personnel carriers against the Ukrainian fortified positions near the village of Vodiane, cannons of infantry fighting vehicles near the villages of Talakivka and Hnutove, heavy machine guns near Maryinka, and the villages of Lebedynske, Talakivka, Pyschevyk and Pavlopil. Moreover, the defenders of the villages of Nevelske, Opytne, Lebedynske, Hnutove and Talakivka were fired upon from small arms. An enemy sniper was also active in the area of Shyrokyne. No casualties have been reported. Sounds of explosions were heard the airfield as well as in the central and eastern blocks of the militant stronghold overnight Tuesday. "About 10 blasts were heard at about 02:00, our windows trembling," a Luhansk local said, according to Liga.net. No casualties have been reported on Tuesday. Read also"DPR" terrorists suffer significant losses near Dokuchaievsk volunteers"As always, militants might accuse the Ukrainian military of shellings, and try to make it look that way. Everyone is just laughing at this," another local added. The man said that following announcements on a possible introduction of peacekeepers, terrorists and Russian propagandists might deliberately attempt to escalate the situation in the city and raise anxiety among the locals over the alleged "offensive by Ukrainian Armed Forces." One of the pro-militant websites reported that four units of military equipment, which were supposed to participate in "Victory Parade" on May 9, had allegedly been damaged. They were fired upon by small arms on Tuesday afternoon. U.S. Special Representative for Ukraine Negotiations Kurt Volker has commented on a recent attack on personnel of Voda Donbasa's Donetsk Water Filtration Plant by Russian-led forces in eastern Ukraine, saying that targeting civilians is unacceptable. "Very worrisome. Targeting civilians is unacceptable: #NotATarget," he tweeted on Tuesday evening. Read alsoDonetsk water filtration plant's staff bus comes under fire, five wounded As UNIAN reported earlier, five employees of the Donetsk water filtration plant were wounded when they were fired upon by small arms on Tuesday afternoon. They were going to work by bus. One of them is in a critical condition. "In light of today's tragic incident, I wanted to share this info on how the Russia-led forces have encroached on the DFS [Donbas Filtration Station] over the last two years," he wrote, retweeting his tweet for December 19, 2017. He then shared satellite imagery showing the deployment of Russian troops close to the station. "Russia-led forces are as close as 500 m from Donetsk Water Filtration plant. Need ceasefire and withdrawal of heavy weapons ASAP per Minsk agreements," his December 19 tweet said. The station supplies water to towns and villages in government-controlled and Russian-occupied areas in Donbas: Avdiyivka, Krasnohorivka, and Verknetoretske, as well as the temporarily-occupied Donetsk, Yasynuvata, and the villages of Vasylievka and Spartak. A spokesman for Voda Donbasa said the station might be completely shut down on April 18. The Astute-class submarine is believed to have spent several days trying to evade detection in a tense and dangerous contest. A British attack submarine has been locked in a cat-and-mouse pursuit by Russian submarines and warships, military sources revealed. While British PM Theresa May was deciding last week whether to launch strikes against Syria, a drama began beneath the surface of the eastern Mediterranean, according to The Times. A Royal Navy submarine armed with cruise missiles is believed to have been hunted by at least one, and possibly two, Russian submarines dubbed the Black Hole by western naval experts because they are so quiet. Two Russian frigates and an anti-submarine aircraft are also thought to have been searching for the British boat as it maneuvered to put its Tomahawk cruise missiles within range of Syrian military targets. The Astute-class submarine is believed to have spent several days trying to evade detection in a tense and dangerous contest. Read alsoRussia boosts navy presence in Azov Sea, provocations possible Ukraine militaryRussian and British submarines have increasingly stalked each other in the north Atlantic, North Sea and the Mediterranean in recent years as tensions have grown. This is believed to be the first time an underwater duel has taken place in the build-up to strikes. The British submarine has been protected by the US navy, which began flying P-8 maritime patrol aircraft over the eastern Mediterranean last Wednesday to track Russias ships and subs. The P-8 has sensors to find vessels and can deploy missiles, torpedoes and mines. Kilo-class Russian hunter-killers, stationed at Russias naval base at Tartus in Syria, are believed to have led the hunt. They are powered by two diesel generators and an electric drive, which allows them to operate extremely quietly, and can be armed with torpedoes, cruise and anti-ship missiles. The two Kilos would be a considerable threat, Iain Ballantyne, author of The Deadly Trade, a book on submarine warfare, said. Read alsoEUCOM: No indication Russian air defense systems deployed during Syria missionBritains submarine has limited firepower. It is likely to have been carrying no more than 20 Tomahawk cruise missiles, which it can fire 1,000 miles while submerged. Some American submarines can carry 154 Tomahawk missiles. Submarine commanders are trained to fire only a small number of missiles at one time to avoid detection. Ultimately the question did not arise: the British sub did not take part in the strikes. The envoy says that Russia will not limit itself to a verbal response in case it is attacked in a cyber domain. Speaking at an information security conference in Germany's Garmisch-Partenkirchen, organized by the Russian Government, special representative of the Russian president, Andrei Krutskikh, said Russia "will not forgive" external cyberattacks. "What do we expect? Do we all want to die? Don't we want to have a drink tonight here, in Garmisch?" he said, according to Europeiska Pravda. Read alsoRussia says it will respond firmly to new U.S. sanctions media"So I want to take this chance to reassure everyone that Russia has changed. We are not afraid of anyone, and we are not saying this out of arrogance. However, we will not forgive a single cyberattack," said Krutskikh. The envoy assured that Russia would not limit itself to verbal answers. "Therefore, if you wish, your little pug in Europe may bark on Russian cyber-elephant we won't react to that verbally and neither will we comment on every attack," Krutskikh said. Project managers at Rossotrudnichestvo are convinced that Russian students studying abroad actually want to return home "for political reasons." Russia's Federal Agency for the Commonwealth of Independent States Affairs, Compatriots Living Abroad, and International Humanitarian Cooperation (Rossotrudichestvo) has launched a campaign to return Russian students from the UK and other countries deemed "unfriendly" back to the Russian Federation. Masterminds behind the campaign titled "Highly Likely Welcome Back" are convinced that a significant number of students abroad actually want to return to Russia "for political reasons," Russia's Kommersant wrote. Students who will be returning to Russia will be offered assistance to ensure they continue their studies at the Moscow State Institute of International Relations (MGIMO) or get job, for example, in Russia's Far East. Read alsoSyria bombings: Johnson warns UK must prepare for Russian retaliationAt the same time, students and experts interviewed by journalists in Britain say they experience no pressure from the authorities. The British Embassy in Russia assured that the UK, as always, welcomes Russians who come for education or tourism purposes. According to the Russian Ministry of Education and Science, about 60,000 Russian students were studying at foreign universities in 2017. It was earlier reported that the British authorities were considering imposing new sanctions against Russians who are owners of businesses in the United Kingdom. Pashinyan urged protesters to occupy the prosecutor's office and supreme court buildings. Protests are ongoing in the Armenian capital Yerevan against former president Serzh Sargsyan becoming prime minister, while opposition leader of the protest claimed to launch a nationwide "velvet revolution" following earlier arrests of a few dozen protesters. Sargsyan, who served as the former Soviet republic's president for a decade, was expected to be instated as prime minister in a parliamentary vote, Daily Sabah wrote. Sargsyan left the presidency this year upon reaching his term limit. Opposition members have decried changes to the constitution that will increase the incoming prime minister's powers. Read alsoArmenia Police: Twenty-nine protesters detained in Yerevan clashesDemonstrators led by opposition politician Nikol Pashinyan, a member of Armenia's federal parliament, have been blocking major streets in Yerevan for days. Several demonstrators were injured on Monday as police used tear gas to disperse a crowd, witnesses said. Pashinyan urged protesters to occupy the prosecutor's office and supreme court buildings. "Occupy the buildings and do not leave or let anybody inside," Pashinyan told supporters, adding that the current situation in the country calls for a revolution. Karandaaz Pakistan arranged an international conference in Islamabad in partnership with The World Bank to share data insights on the state of financial inclusion of women in Pakistan and present Bill & Melinda Gates Foundations Global Strategy on Gender and Financial Inclusion Islamabad, (UrduPoint / Pakistan Point News - 17th Apr, 2018 ) Karandaaz Pakistan arranged an international conference in Islamabad in partnership with The World Bank to share data insights on the state of financial inclusion of women in Pakistan and present Bill & Melinda Gates Foundations Global Strategy on Gender and Financial Inclusion. Representatives from the World Bank, Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation, leading banks and telcos, and the FinTech industry attended the event. The conference highlighted the most significant challenges and barriers faced by low-income women to accessing formal financial services. Karandaaz has taken many initiatives in the recent past to improve the state of womens financial inclusion. One such initiative is to research, design and develop an agent banking model that will serve low-income women in partnership with Unilever, JazzCash, and Womens World Banking. Karandaaz in partnership with Information Technology University (ITU) of the Punjab has initiated three research projects through the Fintech Center to improve the existing knowledge on womens use of digital financial services. Karandaaz is also working on a study to improve the payment processes for BISP beneficiaries. Karandaaz also showcased its Women Entrepreneurship Challenge 2017 at the conference. The 2017 round of this challenge helped over 35 women-led businesses by providing them customized business training, mentorship and access to finance. The purpose of these initiatives to demonstrate successful models for increasing womens financial inclusion in Pakistan and their ability to play an active role in overall economic growth of the country. Evidence from nearly 100 emerging economies shows that increasing womens participation in the economy leads to other gains at home, at work, and in society at large. Women have limited agency in financial matters with the men in the family holding this responsibility. Results from a study of an ongoing research programme called Financial Inclusion Insights (FII), supported by the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation found that only 16% of Pakistani women who derive their income from the formal economy have sole control over their incomes. Speaking at the conference, Melinda Good, Operations Manager, World Bank Pakistan said, Empowered Pakistani women can transform the countrys socio-economic reality. Currently, womens labor force participation is 25%, only 1 in 100 women are entrepreneurs, and only about 1 in 10 women are financially included. There is an untapped potential here. The World Bank Group is working closely with the Government and other stakeholders to increase womens participation in the economy and their access to relevant financial services such as payments, savings, insurance and credit. Sarah Hendriks, Director, Gender Equality, the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation stressed on the need for greater financial inclusion of women, Millions of women around the world face barriers to earning a living and controlling their assets. This is especially true of the worlds poorest women. The Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation will invest $170 million designed to help drive womens financial inclusion, enhance womens participation in agricultural markets, and support a new wave of self-help groups that can empower the next generation of women and girls, she said. CEO Karandaaz, Mr. Ali Sarfraz stressed on the importance of greater financial inclusion for women. Fostering financial inclusion for women is a core and cross-cutting theme for Karandaaz Pakistan. If we have to make any tangible progress on the UNs Sustainable Development Goals, Pakistan needs to act immediately to ensure womens participation in the process of development. We are focusing on womens economic empowerment as a key way to drive progress in the deep, complicated intersection of poverty and inequality. he said. Karandaaz Pakistan, is promoting financial inclusion for individuals by employing technology enabled digital solutions and access to finance for micro, small and medium businesses through a commercially directed investment platform. The company has financial and institutional support from the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation and the United Kingdoms Department for International Development (DFID). Rajib to be buried in Patuakhali Govt Titumir College student Rajib Hasan, who died at Dhaka Medical College Hospital early Tuesday after getting his right arm lost being pressed between two buses in the city, will be laid to eternal rest in Bauphal upazila of Patuakhali district. Bachchu Mia, sub-inspector of DMCH police camp, said Rajib's body will be taken to the High Court premises from the hospital where his first namaz-e-janaza will be held at 2pm. Later, the body will be sent to Patuakhali for burial, he said. UNB Patuakhali correspondent said Rajib will be buried at the village of his maternal grandfather at Chashpara in Bauphal after the body reaches there. Earlier, in the morning, an autopsy was conducted on Rajib's body at the DMCH. Dr Pradip Biswas, who conducted the autopsy, said "There's no major injury to his hand. But there's blood clots in the brain and a portion of skull was broken due to the accident." The life support of Rajib was removed around 12:40 am at the Intensive Care Unit of Dhaka Medical College Hospital. He had been kept on life support at the hospital since April 10. Rajib, son of late Helal Uddin of Indrakun village in Bauphal, lost his parents in his early age. Since then, he had been the guardian of his two younger brothers. On April 3, Rajib Hasan, a 2nd year student of Govt Titumir College, was going to attend his classes by a double-decker bus of Bangladesh Road Transport Corporation (BTRC). He was standing on the rear gate dangling his right hand outside as the bus was overcrowded. When the bus got stranded at the Sonargaon crossing near Panthakunja park, a 'Sajan Paribahan' bus tried to make its way through the narrow space in between the BRTC bus and the footpath. However, Rajib's right hand was pressed in between the two buses and got severed from the elbow. Being rescued, the victim was first taken to MH Samorita Hospital at Panthapath and then shifted to the DMCH. -- UNB, Dhaka. (@FahadShabbir) Speakers at a seminar held here on Tuesday called upon Chinese and Pakistani media to play a meaningful role to highlight the importance of China-Pakistan Economic Corridor (CPEC), a flagship project of Belt and Road Initiative which is not only beneficial for the people of Pakistan and China but also a model for the win-win cooperation for the entire world. BEIJING, (UrduPoint / Pakistan Point News - 17th Apr, 2018 ) :Speakers at a seminar held here on Tuesday called upon Chinese and Pakistani media to play a meaningful role to highlight the importance of China-Pakistan Economic Corridor (CPEC), a flagship project of Belt and Road Initiative which is not only beneficial for the people of Pakistan and China but also a model for the win-win cooperation for the entire world. The seminar on "Belt and Road and building a community with shared future for China and Pakistan" was jointly organized by Guangming Daily and Jang Media Group. Speaking on the occasion, Deputy Head of Mission, Embassy of Pakistan, Beijing, Mumtaz Zahra Baloch said that Pakistan and China relations are based on equality, mutual trust and harmonious coexistence and have progressed over the years. She said this relationship has developed into one of the most important relationships in Asia which serves as a model of friendship between neighbours. Mumtaz Baloch said the CPEC has added another dimension of cooperation in an already strong multi-faceted relationship between Pakistan and China, adding, the BRI is a model for regional integration and win-win cooperation. Pakistan's Vision 2025 emphasizes on regional connectivity and economic cooperation through physical infrastructure development, empowering people and people to connectivity. By the year 2025, Pakistan is expected to establish an efficient and integrated transportation system that facilitates the development of a competitive economy. She said the common themes in BRI and Vision 2025 have made the development of the CPEC a natural choice for Pakistan and China. With construction of Gawadar port, roads and railway network, the CPEC would emerge as a vital bridge connecting silk road economic belt and maritime silk route. Pakistan, she said is fully aware of challenges for the development of CPEC. There are some forces which are opposing BRI and CPEC but their opposition against development and prosperity is baseless. She said the entire nation is united for overcoming all the challenges to CPEC as it enjoys support from all over the country, adding, "We believe the connectivity and development are critical for progress, prosperity, and security of our nation." The CPEC is a recipe of economic development, enhancing trade and energy security and a model for win-win cooperation for all countries. Mumtaz Baloch said media exchanges offer an invaluable opportunity to the people of the two countries to broaden the base of our friendship. To reach out all sections of society and spread the message of Pak-China friendship, the media has a critical function in propagating goodwill bridged by earlier generations of Pakistanis and Chinese from all segments of society and this will be a relationship which will be inherited by future generations. She urged the media to play its role and share this message with the people of Pakistan and China and the rest of the world. She said the signing of a memorandum of understanding between Guangming Daily and All Pakistan Newspapers Society (APNS) today is yet another important step to further promote friendship. Editor-in-Chief of Guangming Daily, Zhang Zheng emphasized the importance of CPEC, a flagship project of Belt and Road Initiative and said the media should take responsibility to further strengthen economic cooperation between the two countries. He said the mainstream media should repel the western propaganda against the CPEC and BRI and play its critical role in actively highlighting the project of economic prosperity and bringing our two people closer the mutual benefits. Senior Vice President, APNS and Chief Editor of Daily Ibrat, Kazi Asad Abid said the CPEC is a buzz word for not only Pakistan but also for South Asia. He said many people in Pakistan are excited about the opportunities to be available under the CPEC and asked the media from both the countries to play their role for a proper understanding of this project. He said the exchanges of media and people to people contact to further promote our economic and cultural bonds. Deputy Director, Chinese Foreign Affairs Committee of the CPPCC national committee in his speech said the completion of Port Qasim has helped minimize electricity shortage in Pakistan. And it has provided employment opportunities to the locals. He expressed the confidence that more countries would join the BRI after witnessing the benefits after completion of projects being completed by both China and Pakistan. Director of State Council Information Office Zhang Ye emphasized on strengthening cooperation between China and Pakistan for better understanding among people between the two countries. There are challenges in forming a public opinion but media can play a vital role in creating a better environment and bridge civilizations, people to people contact and cultural exchange. He said people will understand each other through the media coverage and for this purpose, cooperation between the media organization is important. Counselor of the Asian department of the ministry of foreign affairs, Yao Wen said there were more than 200,000 exchanges between China and Pakistan since the signing of CPEC framework. Currently, over 22,000 Pakistani students are studying in universities across China out of which around 5,000 enjoy scholarship, he added. He expressed a need of building media corridor between the two countries to aware the people about the fruits of economic development and prosperity under the CPEC. Chief Editor of Daily "The Spokesman" and former Federal secretary, Ashfaq Ahmed Gondal discussed the responsibility of media in promoting CPEC and strategies to counter challenges. He said the CPEC is a milestone and it is expected to bring investment opportunities to stabilize socio-economic development in the country. He said the World Bank has commended the CPEC as an economic engine for the South Asian region. Director of the foreign exchange and cooperation department of People's Daily, Fu Zimei highlighted the media cooperation in the construction of Belt and Road. He stressed a need to hold more media exchanges to enhance understanding and learn from each other experience, adding, "We need to increase media coverage of CPEC and BRI." Deputy Director of International Department of Xinhua news Agency, Tian Fan called for providing better reports and information services for CPEC. Director Jang Media Group, Masroor Ahmed in his speech highlighted the significance of CPEC in developing the relations between China and Pakistan. He expressed a need to expedite the implementation of CPEC projects as opponents of this mega project hatching conspiracies for its delay. Deputy Editor in Chief of Economic Daily, Ding Shi stressed a deeper cooperation between media from both countries and promote construction of CPEC. Editor in Chief of Daily National Herald Tribune, Ghulam Akbar shared with the audience historical background of Pakistan China relations and their progress. He said both the countries are natural partners and even high mountains cannot create hurdle between this friendship. Deputy Editor in Chief of China Daily, Gao Anming threw light on strengthening the media cooperation between China and Pakistan and assist the BRI. Deputy General Manager of China Construction Group, Yu Xiangrong shared his experience during the construction of Port Qasim project. This project is completed under CPEC framework. Vice President of China Red Cross Foundation, Liu Xuanguo said the first aid unit is functioning in Gawadar under the foundation and providing medical and emergency treatment to the people. He informed a second first aid unit of this kind will be set up in Quetta and hoped to get support from the government and people of Pakistan in this regard. Later, Secretary of the Secretariat of All-China Journalists Association, Wang Dongmei read out Beijing Declaration of China and Pakistan Media Forum. The representatives from China and Pakistan signed the Beijing Declaration of China and Pakistan Media Forum. All China Journalists Association and All Pakistan Newspapers Society signed an agreement of Belt and Road News Communication and Cooperation. (@ChaudhryMAli88) Federal Minister for Education and Professional Training, Engr. Muhammad Baligh Ur Rehman Tuesday said that training was very essential alongside imparting education to students. ISLAMABAD, (UrduPoint / Pakistan Point News - 17th Apr, 2018 ) :Federal Minister for Education and Professional Training, Engr. Muhammad Baligh Ur Rehman Tuesday said that training was very essential alongside imparting education to students. He was addressing on the occasion of signing of Memorandum of Understanding (MoU) between National Education Foundation (NEF) and Master Muhammad Ayub Park school F-6/3 Islamabad here at Ministry office on Tuesday. Secretary, Ministry of Federal Education and Professional Training, Akbar Hussain Durrani and Joint Education Advisor Muhammad Rafique Tahir were also present. He said that children were our assets and it was very important to inculcate a positive thinking in them. The minister also emphasized upon the character building of youth and said that our youth should adopt positive attitude so that they could differentiate between right and wrong. He said that present government took steps for the promotion of quality education in the country and increased funding for education sector. The minister also lauded Master Muhammad Ayub for imparting free education to needy and poor students. Later on, Memorandum of Understanding (MoU) was signed between National Education Foundation and Master Muhammad Ayub Park School, F-6/3 Islamabad. The National Education Foundation (NEF) adopted Master Muhammad Ayub Park School under its School Adoption Program. On the occasion, NEF provided Master Muhammad Ayub Park School with teachers' chairs (5), black board with stand (5), plastic mats for students (10), water cooler medium size (5), rough register (200), English note book 4 lines (200), urdu note book (200), Mathematics note book (200), exam sheet English, Urdu and Maths (25 packets). NEF will also provide free of cost books to students of Master Muhammad Ayub School besides teacher honorarium Rs 5,000 per month. (@ChaudhryMAli88) A semiofficial South Korean delegation left for Latin America on Tuesday to promote health care companies' inroads into the region's market, the foreign ministry said SEOUL, (UrduPoint / Pakistan Point News - 17th Apr, 2018 ) :A semiofficial South Korean delegation left for Latin America on Tuesday to promote health care companies' inroads into the region's market, the foreign ministry said. The 34-member delegation will visit Brazil, Colombia and Mexico, as well as the Inter-American Development Bank (IDB), an international development organization with the membership of 48 countries in the region, from April 17-29, according to the Ministry of Foreign Affairs. The delegation is composed of 34 government officials and businessmen from the medicine and medical device industries. In the host countries, the delegation will meet with government officials and host local events to draw attention to the South Korean health care industry and call for the local governments' support for Korean firms' entrance into their markets, the ministry said. During their meetings with the health ministries of Brazil and Colombia, in particular, the delegation plans to appeal for government support for approving imports of Korean drugs and medical devices. With a market value of about US$19.9 billion, Brazil commands the biggest market for medicine in Central and South America, according to the ministry. With the IDB, the delegation plans to discuss joint projects, the first cooperative project with the regional development organization since South Korea joined it in 2005. This would further enhance Korean companies' chances to make inroads into the Central and South America's health care industry, worth about $55 billion, the ministry added. (@rukhshanmir) Azad Jammu & Kashmir Prime Minister Raja Farooq Haider Khan Tuesday said that all was set to stage massive anti-India protest demonstration on April 18 by British Kashmiris against the Indian Prime Minister Narendra Modi to condemn his affiliation with violent Hindu nationalism and rising attacks on minorities, vulnerable and women in India. MIRPUR (UrduPoint / Pakistan Point News - 17th Apr, 2018 ) , :Azad Jammu & Kashmir Prime Minister Raja Farooq Haider Khan Tuesday said that all was set to stage massive anti-India protest demonstration on April 18 by British Kashmiris against the Indian Prime Minister Narendra Modi to condemn his affiliation with violent Hindu nationalism and rising attacks on minorities, vulnerable and women in India. "Talking to journalists in London Tuesday evening, Raja Farooq Haider said that genocide of Kashmiris under Modi government has increased. The Azad Kashmir Prime Minister said that he had reached London especially to show solidarity with the people of Indian occupied Kashmir by confronting Modi on atrocities against Kashmiris under his watch", says a message reaching and released to the media here. Farooq Haider said that every child in the liberated territory of AJK was upset and perplexed over the recent repeated tragic incidents of the Indian violence and state terrorism in occupied Jammu Kashmir in which dozens of Kashmiri youths were martyred by the brutal occupying Indian forces in fake encounters. "The people of Kashmir have been facing a wave of repression and atrocities at the hands of government forces and time have come the people of Kashmir will resist it with full determination and remain united," Farooq Haider said. The Prime Minister lamented that the use of deadly weapons including pellet guns against the peaceful Kashmiri protestors has become order of the day in the bleeding valley under the bloody anti-Kashmiri policies of Modi for their "crime" of demanding the freedom of their motherland from Indian clutches. Unveiling the prevailing bleak picture of the occupied valley, AJK Prime Minister underlined that the students in occupied Kashmir were shot dead after being abducted and then they had been declared as they have been killed in an encounter, this is how the massacre of Muslims is being done in occupied Kashmir. "There is no example of such massacre of Muslims and innocent civilians in occupied Kashmir in history, brutal Indian forces atrocities are not hidden from anyone" Farooq Haider maintained. He arrived in London on Sunday night to lead the mass anti-India protest rally, in a bid to attract the attention of world leaders over atrocities in Kashmir. The protest rally is scheduled to be held on Wednesday to "shame" Indian Prime Minister Narendra Modi, who arrived in the British capital on Tuesday. Besides the premier, the leadership of the main political parties of AJK assembled in the UK "on the invitation of the member of House of Lords, Nazir Ahmed" to join the protest at the Parliament Square. Turnout of Kashmiris is expected to be huge at the protest as Prime Minister of Azad Kashmir Raja Farooq Haider, PPP opposition leader in AJK Assembly Chaudhary Yaseen, Jamaat-e-Islami leader Abdul Rasheed Turabi, several British parliamentarians including Naz Shah MP, Lord Nazir Ahmed, Khalid Mahmood, Shabna Mahmood, Afzal Khan and others have mobilised the over seas Kashmiris to join the protest. Haider appealed to the Kashmiri diaspora to fully participate in the scheduled rally to register their anger and abomination against Indian forces' unprecedented excesses in occupied Kashmir. Azad Jammu and Kashmir (AJK) President Sardar Masood Khan Tuesday said the Kashmiri refugees had always played a vibrant role in the Kashmir freedom movement. MIRPUR (UrduPoint / Pakistan Point News - 17th Apr, 2018 ) , :Azad Jammu and Kashmir (AJK) President Sardar Masood Khan Tuesday said the Kashmiri refugees had always played a vibrant role in the Kashmir freedom movement. Talking to a delegation representing the Kashmir Refugee Action Committee led by its chairman Gohar Ahmad Kashmiri, which called on him here at the Presidency, Sardar Masood said resolution of the refugee problems was on priority of the AJK government and the people of Azad Kashmir and Pakistan always stood by their refugee brothers and sisters to facilitate them. Members of the delegation thanked the AJK president for effectively advocating the Kashmir issue and helping raise the profile of this conflict at the international forums. President Masood said,"We will never be intimidated by India's machinations and manoeuvres in suppressing the freedom movement. The dark night of Indian oppression in Indian Occupied Kashmir will soon come to an end and the people of Indian occupied Kashmir (IoK) will continue their struggle for ascertaining their right to self-determination. " The delegation informed the president of their issues which included: firstly, assurance that the AJK government will fully implement the 6% recruitment quota notified for the refugees; secondly, resolving issues of fee reimbursement of refugee students under the Prime Minister Pakistan Fee Reimbursement Program; thirdly, monetary assistance to students studying in medical colleges of Azad Kashmir and Pakistan; fourthly, complete implementation of the Charter of Demand presented by the Refugee Action Committee; and lastly, providing homes for the refugees at satellite town. The members of the delegation expressed their satisfaction over the increase of living allowance announced by the Government of AJK and the revival of two special seats for refugees at Muzaffarabad Medical College. They also requested the President that under the true spirit of quota the recruitment of refugees in the Police Department be made regular instead of temporary basis. The President reassured that steps would be taken to ensure their demands are fulfilled. UNITED NATIONS, (UrduPoint / Pakistan Point News - 17th Apr, 2018 ) :Pakistan was elected to two important United Nations' panels on Monday, a feat that Ambassador Maleeha Lodhi said was a recognition of Islamabad's positive contribution to the work of the world body, The panels are: the UN Committee on Non-Governmental Organizations (NGOs) and the UNICEF Executive Board. The elections took place at a session of the 54-member Economic and Social Council (ECOSOC), the economic arm of the United Nations. Re-elected for the sixth time to the UN Committee on NGOs, Pakistan polled 43 of the 53 member states present and voting. Five candidates were competing four seats in the Asia Pacific Group. "Pakistan's election to the Committee is a strong vote of confidence by the international community in our positive role and contribution in the work of the United Nations", Ambassador Lodhi said after the election. "As a member, Pakistan will continue to promote cooperation by the UN with civil society organizations working alongside governments to improve the lives of people across the world." The Committee oversees the implementation of the legal framework governing NGOs' participation in the work of the UN. It considers the applications of NGOs for consultative status and makes recommendations to ECOSOC. This consultative status provides NGOs access to a range of fora at the UN, including the Human Rights Council, ECOSOC and its subsidiary bodies, UN conferences, and events organized by the President of the General Assembly. "Pakistan has a diverse and thriving civil society", Ambassador Lodhi said, adding, "The government has always demonstrated a longstanding commitment to and encouraged participation of civil society in discussions aimed at finding solutions to the challenges faced by the world today". She assured the countries which voted for Pakistan of the country's firm commitment to uphold the purposes and the principles of the UN Charter, including through its membership of the Committee on NGOs. Pakistan's last term in the UNICEF's Executive board was from 2013-2015, during which Ambassador Maleeha Lodhi also served as its President. Created in 1946 by the UN General Assembly, UNICEF works in 190 countries and territories to save children's lives, to defend their rights, and to help them fulfill their potential. "Pakistan attaches great importance to protecting and promoting the rights of children, which is both smart economics and a moral obligation", Ambassador Lodhi commented after the election, pointing out that Pakistan was one of the co-initiators of the 1990 World Summit for Children, which led to the adoption of the landmark Conventions on Rights of Child. "As a member of the UNICEF Executive Board, Pakistan reaffirms its commitment to implement the ambitious SDG targets on improving child health and education, addressing malnutrition, ending violence against children, eradicating poverty and reducing inequality among children", Dr. Lodhi said. APP/ift The Energy Ministry of Saudi Arabia will soon announce opening two new oil fields that were discovered in the first three months of this year, Arab media reported, citing a communication from the kingdom's oil company Saudi Aramco More than half of the UK population believes that the government should prioritize the health of the country's citizens during the ongoing COVID-19 outbreak over the rapid reopening of the economy, according to a fresh poll published on Thursday Amid the COVID-19 situation, the Competition Commission of Pakistan (CCP) in order to facilitate the local and foreign investors intending to invest in Pakistan through mergers, acquisitions, and joint ventures, has launched an Online Merger and Acquisition Application filing system Arab stock markets plunged almost a quarter in value in the first three months of 2020 due to the coronavirus pandemic and the collapse in oil prices, a UN agency said Thursday The government would provide Rs 37.00 billion subsidy on fertilizers to growers under its agriculture relief package in order to cope with the COVID-19 after effects to maintain food safety and security in the country China's industrial output returned to growth for the first time this year in April, official data showed Friday, but another sharp drop in retail sales indicated crucial consumer demand remains weak, which could scotch hopes for a quick economic recovery Records 17051 To 17075 (Total 65775 Records) Business news Business news is important part of the news. World business news, Pakistan business news, and top business news are available on this site. Urdu Point provides you finance news, economic news, stock market news, gold rates, silver rates etc. For all types of business news visit Urdu Point. Business news matters a lot as they directly link the economy. CPEC news, PSX news and BTC news are also found on Urdu Point. You can have the today currency rates, today gold rates and today business news on the same page. All types of news about Bitcoin, Bitcoin Pakistan and business news are available here. You can get the information about the petroleum prices, gold rates, gold and silver prices, and CNG prices on Urdu Point. If you want to learn bullion rates, bullion rates in Pakistan go for Urdu Point. Urdu Point is best for all kinds of business news, business news Pakistan and business news today. If you want the search results for the dawn business news, latest business news, international business news and world business news you can find here easily. We also give information about good news messages in business communication and bad news messages in business communication. International business news is normally latest business news. For all the latest business news and Pakistani business news visit us. Urdu point has news about currency rates, gold rates and silver rates. Urdu Point also gives you information about good news letter in business communication and bad news letter in business communication. To improve the business communication you must have the business news, latest business news and top business news. You can read business plus news and dawn business news here. We provide latest business news in Pakistan and world latest business news. If you are looking for the bad news messages in business communication and good news messages in business communication go for Urdu Point. We also have information about PSM news in business recorder. To get the updates about gold rates, gold rates in Pakistan, gold rates in Karachi and today gold rates visit Urdu Point. Gold jewelry is popular among women and gold rate does not matter when women fell in love with jewelry. Gold rates vary daily. Stock exchange and economy directly depend on gold rates. Gold rates in Pakistan and gold rates in the world are different. Live gold rates and live currency rates in Pakistan can also be searched. There is much difference between currency rates in Pakistan and foreign currency rates. This site provides you all information about open market currency rates, open market currency rates in Pakistan and currency exchange rates. International currency rates and open market currency rates are found here. Business news contains the information about gold rates, currency rates, foreign currency rates, currency rates Pakistan, bitcoin news and bullion rates in Pakistan. Daily business news and today business news can be read here. Urdu Point provides top business news for the readers. Open market currency rates and foreign currency rates matter in business news. To read all types of business news, top business news, latest business and currency news, bitcoin news and gold rates visit Urdu Point. Two Belarusians who sought refuge in the Swedish embassy in Minsk in September are still there five months later, Sweden's foreign ministry said Tuesday, in a case turning into a diplomatic headache The International Monetary Fund (IMF) expects that the Russian economy will experience a boost in recovery by the middle of 2021 as the national COVID-19 vaccination program has already started, the fund said following Article IV consultations with the Russian authorities Records 43201 To 43225 (Total 280870 Records) World News Due to the diverse and sudden change in global politics and international relations, everyone is interested to see world news about their friends and enemy states both. There are very less sites that are doing unbiased reporting about global scenario. Urdu Point gives world news today. The site provides world news live streaming for its users. BBC world news is one of the accurate news giving and it tries to do unbiased reporting but still not every news group is totally unbiased. Urdu Point gives latest world news. The site provides accurate breaking world news. Urdu Point gives unbiased, accurate and timely news world. It provides exclusive world news headlines for the users. CNN world newsis also a news group, covering whole world political and social events. PTV world news gives a little biased news towards government. Urdu Point provides world latest news for its users. All the important world breaking news are given by the site. CPEC is a project of global importance. Urdu Point gives accurate CPEC news. After a lot of proceedings in China Pakistan relationswhole world is looking forward to the results of these relations for both nations. Urdu Point gives accurate news about Pak China relations. Urdu Point gives all the latest news about America and Pakistan relations. Indo Pak relations are of great importance for both states. Urdu Point provides news about India Pakistan relations. It gives all the scenario of India Pakistan dispute. As we are getting close to China, politically and socially. People of both states want to know the news about neighboring country. Urdu Point all the China news. The site also gives accurate India news. The site also provides perspective of Indian news Pakistan. Urdu Point gives all the accurate Kashmir news for the global readers. There is no state who is not interesting in knowing USA news. Urdu Point gives American news. All the concerned countries wants to know white house news as soon as it is possible for them. Guardian is also covering news reports about global politics and society. Urdu Point gives accurate international news. The site have the privilege of breaking international news with great accuracy and timeliness. It also have the facility of breaking global news with accuracy. Urdu Point posts all the news from the world. People are concerned about knowing news from globe. (@ChaudhryMAli88) Islamabad police have arrested 180 outlaws including 45 absconders, recovering looted items worth over Rs. 17 million from their possession during the last 15 days, a police spokesman said on Tuesday. ISLAMABAD, (UrduPoint / Pakistan Point News - 17th Apr, 2018 ) :Islamabad police have arrested 180 outlaws including 45 absconders, recovering looted items worth over Rs. 17 million from their possession during the last 15 days, a police spokesman said on Tuesday. During the fortnightly crackdown, 18 dacoity cases were traced and 24 persons were arrested besides looted items worth Rs. 4 million recovered from them. Police also arrested, 13 bike and car -thieves involved in 26 different crimes of bike lifting and car theft. Police recovered vehicles, bikes worth Rs.12.9 million from their possession. Likewise, police nabbed 46 drug pushers and recovered 17 kilogram hashish, 4,872 gram heroin and 478 wine bottles from them respectively. Meanwhile, police also arrested 45 proclaimed offenders and court absconders. During the same period, police arrested 45 other accused and recovered 43 pistols and two Kalashnikovs from them. A total of 215 cases were submitted in courts after completing investigation. The police have been conducting combing and search operation to ensure protection to the lives and property of the citizens. A total of 11 suspects were held during these operations while action was taken against 417 vagabonds. A total of 337 beggars were also held during action against professional alm-seekers and legal proceeding was initiated against them. SSP Islamabad Najeeb ur Rehman Bugvi said that activities of criminal elements would not be tolerated and those involved in such acts would have to face action as per law. Meanwhile, CIA Police arrested 2 drug traffickers namely Shahid Mehmood son of Muhammad Sidique and Imran Shahzad son of Shoukat Masih both residents of GB-437 tehsil Samanduri District Faisalabad and recovered 700 Bottles of Liquor from their possession while further investigation is underway. (@ChaudhryMAli88) Ministry of Housing and Works has completed around 80 percent roads' work of commercial areas of I-12 sector to facilitate residents of the sector and others. ISLAMABAD, (UrduPoint / Pakistan Point News - 17th Apr, 2018 ) :Ministry of Housing and Works has completed around 80 percent roads' work of commercial areas of I-12 sector to facilitate residents of the sector and others. "Former Prime Minister Muhammad Nawaz Sharif had directed to construct roads in the commercial area of I-12 which are almost near completion," an official told APP. The official said that land has been acquired for the development of D-13 and soon, the development work will be started in the area. He said that the sectors were opened in 1996 but unfortunately development work could not initiated by the previous governments. He said the Federal Government Employees Housing Foundation (FGEHF) is in the process of acquiring more land in Bara Kahu to accommodate its remaining members. He said the additional plots will be made available after the completion of the process. The confirmation of service particulars of the federal government employees as well as employees of constitutional bodies to whom consent letters were issued for Bara Kahu Housing Scheme, have been obtained from their concerned departments, he said. He said the plot position of Bara Kahu Housing Scheme is tentative as the final layout plan of the sector has not been approved by the Capital Development Authority (CDA) as yet. In view of this, Provisional Offer Letters (POL) has been issued by keeping a safety margin to avoid any shortfall due to variation in the final plan, the official added. JS body for finalisation of ethnic minority groups' list The parliamentary standing committee on Cultural Affairs Ministry recommended for quick finalisation of the list of ethnic minority groups. It also suggested keeping provision of inclusion if any name of the ethnic groups is dropped from the list. The recommendations came from a meeting held on Monday at the Jatiya Sangsad Bhaban here with its President Simin Hossain Rimi, MP, in the chair. Members of committee, Cultural Affairs Minister Asaduzzaman Noor, Kazi Keramat Ali, Manoranjan Shil Gopal, Pankaj Debnath, Pinu Khan and Jebunnesa Afroz, were present at the meeting, among others. It held detailed discussion on progress of implementation of the recommendations for development of Bangladesh National Museum and Bangladesh Lok O Karu Shilpa Foundation (Bangladesh Folk Arts and Crafts Foundation). The meeting also stressed the need for holding talks on expending cultural programs in primary and secondary level schools and madrashas aimed at preventing militancy and terrorism. (@ChaudhryMAli88) All Pakistan Clerks Association (APCA) Bahawalpur division chapter will join protest of the organization in front of the Parliament House to press for implementation of their demands including increase in salaries, time scales and others BAHAWALPUR, (UrduPoint / Pakistan Point News - 17th Apr, 2018 ) :All Pakistan Clerks Association (APCA) Bahawalpur division chapter will join protest of the organization in front of the Parliament House to press for implementation of their demands including increase in salaries, time scales and others. According to a press release issued here, a meeting of APCA (education Department) was held with Mehboob Khan in chair that was attended by other office-bearers. The meeting reviewed arrangements to move to Islamabad to join the protest being staged by central organization of APCA in front of the Parliament House to press their demands. The statement said that millions of clerks of the country have been facing financial constraints due to inadequate salaries. "Clerks of all Pakistan seek remarkable increase in their salaries in upcoming budgets of the national and provincial assemblies," it said. As a part of outreach to academia and engagement with Pakistani-Americans, Ambassador Aizaz Ahmad Chaudhry paid a day-long visit to Richmond, capital of Virginia, Monday. ISLAMABAD, (UrduPoint / Pakistan Point News - 17th Apr, 2018 ) ::As a part of outreach to academia and engagement with Pakistani-Americans, Ambassador Aizaz Ahmad Chaudhry paid a day-long visit to Richmond, capital of Virginia, Monday. The Virginia Commonwealth University (VCU) hosted a lunch in honour of Ambassador Chaudhry and other distinguished guests from the United States government and academia. While speaking on the occasion Ambassador Chaudhry stressed the importance of the multi-faceted Pakistan-US relationship in diverse fields including, education, culture, economic, defence and security. He expressed hope for better and continued Pak-US relations for the benefit of both the nations, says a press release received here on Tuesday. At the VCU, the Ambassador Chaudhry also interacted with participants of Humphrey Fellowship Programme including Pakistani students. He appreciated such educational programmes, which not only exposed the participants to a global environment, but also enhanced their capacity. Ambassador Chaudhry also met with Pakistani-American community notables including professionals from Association of Physicians of Pakistani-Descent of North-America (APPNA)'s Virginia chapter. He congratulated APPNA for building a successful and the largest organization of Pakistani origin professionals and lauded their work for country of their heritage. He also appreciated the important contributions that Pakistani-Americans had made to the progress and prosperity of the United States. The ambassador noted that Pakistani diaspora was serving as a strong bridge between Pakistan and the United States. The ambassador remarked that the Pakistan Embassy and our four consulates remain committed to serving the consular needs of the community. He also appreciated the role of the community in promoting the values of tolerance, harmony and understanding. He also noted Pakistani diaspora's increasing participation in political life of their adopted homeland. (@FahadShabbir) American Ambassador, David Hale hosted a group of International Relations students from the University of Peshawar for a lively discussion on the US-Pakistan relationship and the role of diplomacy in promoting peace. PESHAWAR, (UrduPoint / Pakistan Point News - 17th Apr, 2018 ) :American Ambassador, David Hale hosted a group of International Relations students from the University of Peshawar for a lively discussion on the US-Pakistan relationship and the role of diplomacy in promoting peace. According to a press release issued here on Tuesday, Ambassador Hale talked about his own study of international relations and its influence on his career. "Diplomacy provides solutions to the most complex of challenges," he said, "and Pakistan's next generation of leaders, which you represent, can help bring peace and stability to the region." This meeting with ambassador was part of a half-day program. American officers briefed the students on the Embassy's work and explained study and exchange programs available in the United States for Pakistani students. They also had lunch with American diplomats and viewed some of the Pakistani artwork on display at the Embassy. "What a wonderful place to work!" said one of the students. "This was a unique opportunity for my students to speak with an ambassador and gain a deeper understanding of Pakistan's relationship with the United States," said Dr. Syed Hussain Shaheed Soherwordi, Chairman of the University of Peshawar's Department of International Relations. "The chance to share perspectives with American diplomats shows the strong educational cooperation we have with the United States," he added. (@FahadShabbir) Leaders of top political parties Maulana Fazlur Rehman, Hasil Khan Bizenjo, Mehmood Khan Achakzai and Mian Iftikhar Hussain Tuesday pledged to support "respect my vote" movement launched by Pakistan Muslim League- Nawaz (PML-N). ISLAMABAD, (UrduPoint / Pakistan Point News - 17th Apr, 2018 ) :Leaders of top political parties Maulana Fazlur Rehman, Hasil Khan Bizenjo, Mehmood Khan Achakzai and Mian Iftikhar Hussain Tuesday pledged to support "respect my vote" movement launched by Pakistan Muslim League- Nawaz (PML-N). They extended their cooperation to supreme leader of PML-N Muhammad Nawaz Sharif during a seminar on topic of "upholding of sanctity of vote based on the constitution, democracy, supremacy of Parliament and rule of law" here at National library. Chief of Jamiat Ulema islam (JUI) Maulana Fazlur Rehman said Panama papers was a conspiracy hatched abroad to destabilize Pakistan. He said Pakistan was created through a democratic process with a lot of sacrifices but people's right to govern through vote was not accepted. Chief of National Party Hasil Bizenjo said Nawaz Sharif was removed from office on the basis of holding an Iqama. He said Pakistan was at the crossroads and all institutions should be respected and Parliament should lead the country in strengthening democratic process. Those who get vote of the people should have the right to form a government, he added. He criticized Tehreek i Insaf for damaging politics of Pakistan and for introducing a culture against values of Pakistani society. Bizenjo said some forces always tried to paint the Parliament in bad light, adding such an attitude was contrary to the interests of the country. Leader of Awami National Party Mian Iftikhar assured of his party's support for the campaign of respect of vote and supremacy of parliament. He said there were numerous incidents in the history of Pakistan, when aspirations of the people were suppressed and people belonging to political parties died in violent incidents. Mian Iftikhar said, "We support democracy and will not accept conspiracy against the democratic system." He said ANP has a history of giving sacrifices for peace and rule of law and his own son was murdered by terrorists when he (Iftikhar) steadfastly stood up against terrorism. Chief of Pakhtunkhwa Milli Awami Party Mehmood Khan Achakzai vowed to protect constitution of Pakistan, saying it was a social contract between people of the federating units. "I will defend the constitution and will only respect those who respect the constitution." All the leaders urged that youth of Pakhtun Tahafuz Movement (PTM) in tribal areas should be engaged and the issues pointed out by them should be resolved. (@ChaudhryMAli88) Ayan Khan , a political worker and brother of Pakistan Tehreek-Insaf (PTI) Member Provincial Assembly Nagina Khan has accused his sister and PTI ministers in the KP cabinet of massive corruption, saying corruption was rampant in government departments. PESHAWAR, (UrduPoint / Pakistan Point News - 17th Apr, 2018 ) :Ayan Khan , a political worker and brother of Pakistan Tehreek-Insaf (PTI) Member Provincial Assembly Nagina Khan has accused his sister and PTI ministers in the KP cabinet of massive corruption, saying corruption was rampant in government departments. Addressing a press conference at press club Chakdara, brother of the PTI's MPA alleged that members and ministers of the PTI were involved in corruption, adding his sister Nagina allegedly sold her vote for Rs 80 million during recently held senate elections, incurring loss and blemishing image of her party. The PTI chief Imran Khan misled the people who voted his party into power in the province and all his promises and slogans of change proved wrong as corruption was rampant in different departments. Few days before Senate elections, he recalled, he divulged in a meeting with PTI chief Imran Khan and KP Chief Minister Pervaiz Khattak that certain members of the party including his sister were going to sale their respective vote to the Pakistan Peoples' Party (PPP). But none of them paid heed to my revelation which proved right and stood substantiated as 14 members of the PTI including her sister sold out their votes. He alleged that ministers of the PTI were receiving bribes for recruitment in different departments, revealing his sister too sold positions in public health department Malakand. He urged the Chief Justice Supreme Court to take legal action against corruption and irregularities which was rife and had plagued departments across the province. (@ChaudhryMAli88) Director Anti-Corruption Establishment Rawalpindi Arif Raheem said corruption was the mother of all evils which must be eliminated from the society as it affects progress and prosperity of the country. RAWALPINDI, (UrduPoint / Pakistan Point News - 17th Apr, 2018 ) :Director Anti-Corruption Establishment Rawalpindi Arif Raheem said corruption was the mother of all evils which must be eliminated from the society as it affects progress and prosperity of the country. He was addressing a seminar "Say No To Corruption" held at Fatima Jinnah Women University (FJWU) here on Tuesday. Arif Raheem said if a country wanted to achieve sustained socio economic development with healthy investment, corruption must be eliminated at all cost. Social evils are the root cause of the destruction of any society, he added. He said: "People of Pakistan should collectively think about to resolve this issue so that both the poor and the rich would get equal rights." At the end, Anti-Corruption walk was arranged by FJWU students and faculty members and Additional Registrar FJWU Humayun Iqbal presented souvenir to the guest speaker. :Minister of Tourism for Gilgit-Baltistan Fida Khan Tuesday thanked Lahore Chamber of Commerce for the cooperation to organize a three-day Cultural Festival of Gilgit-Baltistan in Lahore. ISLAMABAD, (UrduPoint / Pakistan Point News - 17th Apr, 2018 ) :Minister of Tourism for Gilgit-Baltistan Fida Khan Tuesday thanked Lahore Chamber of Commerce for the cooperation to organize a three-day Cultural Festival of Gilgit-Baltistan in Lahore. Talking to ptv, he said objective of holding cultural festival in Lahore was to introduce GB culture and grabing attention of national and international investors and business community. He said GB had great opportunities for investment in different sectors including fruits, dry fruits, organic food and gems and jewelery, adding that many investors had showed their interest for investment in these sectors. The minister said GB was full of natural scenes and rich of natural resources but need to explore them. Fida Khan thanked Punjab Chief Minister Muhammad Shehbaz Sharif for giving 25 buses as a gift to the GB government for promotion of tourism in the area. He said Gilgit-Baltistan had dire need of establishing hotels, resorts and hostels in the area and those who would invest in these sectors, the government would exempt them from tax for four years. He said lot of job opportunities would be created after the investment in the area and people would benefit due to promotion of tourism and development in GB. (@ChaudhryMAli88) Governor Sindh Muhammad Zubair Tuesday said that federal government had launched three projects worth Rs.50 billion to facilitate the people of Sindh province. ISLAMABAD, (UrduPoint / Pakistan Point News - 17th Apr, 2018 ) :Governor Sindh Muhammad Zubair Tuesday said that Federal government had launched three projects worth Rs.50 billion to facilitate the people of Sindh province. Talking to a private news channel, he said that peace had been restored in Karachi with initiatives of Pakistan Muslim League-Nawaz (PML-N), government. Appreciating the Rangers, and Law enforcement agencies for restoration of peace in the biggest city of the country, he said that provincial government had supported the present government for improving law and order situation there. He said that after restoration of peace, a large number of youth would have job opportunities in this area. The investors were sighting this area for investment purpose, he added. Having no mandate in Sindh, the PML-N had given special focus on resolving the genuine issues of Karachi, he said and added in the past, no attention was paid to Sindh regarding development. As far as development works were concerned, he said no political party could compete with PML-N. To a question Zubair said a big project in Thar was executed under China Pakistan Economic Corridor. The Dolphin Force seized heavy quantity of fireworks from a car and arrested six accused from Abdullahpur. FAISALABAD, (UrduPoint / Pakistan Point News - 17th Apr, 2018 ) -:The Dolphin Force seized heavy quantity of fireworks from a car and arrested six accused from Abdullahpur. A police spokesman said here Tuesday that Dolphin Force team stopped a car near Abdullahpur chowk but the driver accelerated it instead of stopping. Dolphin Force chased the vehicle, caught the car riders red-handed while transporting fireworks. The police recovered more than 400 packs of fireworks from the vehicle , arrested 6 accused men. Further investigation was underway. The Khyber Pakthunkhwa Assembly Monday was adjourned sine die within seven minutes of the start of proceedings as lack of quorum in the House was pointed out by a PTI lawmaker to prevent minority MPA-elect Baldev Kumar from taking oath. PESHAWAR, (UrduPoint / Pakistan Point News - 16th Apr, 2018 ) :The Khyber Pakthunkhwa Assembly Monday was adjourned sine die within seven minutes of the start of proceedings as lack of quorum in the House was pointed out by a PTI lawmaker to prevent minority MPA-elect Baldev Kumar from taking oath. Soon after the recitation of verses from the Holy Quran, Mehmood Jan, who was presiding over the session, invited Baldev to take oath. Fazle Elahi of the Pakistan Tehreek-e-Insaf (PTI) pointed out the lack of quorum as only ten members were present in the House. The chair ordered ringing of the bell for three times, but the qourum could not be completed. Upon which the session was prorogued after the chair read out the Governor's order of prorogation. Speaker Asad Qaiser had earlier issued the production order of Baldev Kumar in the assembly session on the directives of Peshawar High Court. On February 26 this year, Baldev was stopped by the treasury and opposition members from taking oath, who created a rumpus in the House. Some of them even threw shoes at him to express their anger for allegedly killing their colleague late special assistant to chief minister Sardar Soran Singh in Buner district in April 2016. The MPA-elect is behind the bars in connection with Sardar Soran Singh's murder. He was declared MPA-elect after Soran Singh's murder as he was at the second spot on the priority list of the PTI for the minority reserved seats. When Manoj met Demi Moore! Two-time National Award winning actor - Manoj Bajpayee with his finest acting skills and diverse portrayal of roles has won hearts of many people over the years including B-Town celebrities. His enthusiasm and passion towards acting is a delight to watch when he transforms himself for a particular role in the film. With an enviable filmography boasting of power-packed performances in films such as Satya, Shool, Gangs of Wasseypur and Aligarh behind him the actor has admirers not only in India but all around the world. The latest addition in his admirer list is none other than Hollywood actress Demi Moore. Manoj Bajpayee is in Los Angeles, the USA to attend a film festival where his film Galli Gulliyan had been the opening film. Interestingly, the actor also made a point to attend the special screening of his upcoming film Love Soniya organized by the makers where he met Demi Moore who is also part of the film. (@ChaudhryMAli88) :National Accountability Bureau (NAB) Lahore has arrested four accused involved in Saaf Pani Company corruption scam. LAHORE, (UrduPoint / Pakistan Point News - 17th Apr, 2018 ) :National Accountability Bureau (NAB) Lahore has arrested four accused involved in Saaf Pani Company corruption scam. According to NAB sources, accused Dr. Zahirud Din, Muhammad Saleem Akhtar, Nasir Qadir Bhaddar and Muhammad Masood Akhtar have been arrested by the NAB. Accused Dr. Zahirud Din had been working as Chief Technical Officer (CTO) in Saaf Pani Company accompanied by accused Nasir Qadir Bhaddal who had been working as Chief Procurement Officer (CFO) in the same company. Moreover, Associated consultant Engineer (ACE) accused Muhammad Saleem Akhtar was the Procurement and Contract Specialist attached with Saaf Pani Company Project and accused Muhammad Masood Akhtar, Managing Director, KSB Pumps was the then contractor when financial loss was made. The accused with malafide intention installed around 116 water filtration plants in Bhawalpur Region on exorbitant rates. The accused allegedly made all Units operational on for more higher rates as compared to market cost, causing a loss worth millions of rupees to national exchequer. The NAB Lahore Investigation officials provided them a fair opportunity to defend the allegations but they failed to defend. The NAB will produce all four accused before honourable accountability court for their physical remand for further investigation. (@rukhshanmir) National Highway Authority (NHA) striving for early construction of ongoing road infrastructure projects has accomplished 18 mega projects during past four and a half years. ISLAMABAD, (UrduPoint / Pakistan Point News - 17th Apr, 2018 ) :National Highway Authority (NHA) striving for early construction of ongoing road infrastructure projects has accomplished 18 mega projects during past four and a half years. In 2017, National Highway Authority (NHA) completed three mega projects Lowari Tunnel, 75 kilometres section of Karachi-Hyderabad Motorway and 47-km section of Burhan-Havelian Motorway also known Hazara Motorway, an official of the authority informed APP on Tuesday. He said that 75 kilometre section of Karachi-Hyderabad Motorway (M-9) was inaugurated in February last year.The 75-km portion starts from Lucky Cement area and goes all the way till Lanikot Bridge. The motorway is being constructed by FWO under Built Operation Transfer (BOT) basis. Another mega project,he said, Lowari tunnel located on Nowshera-Chitral National Highway (N-45) was completed at a cost of about Rs 27 billion and opened for traffic in July,2017. Work on the project gained momentum in 2013 when the present government came to power.The mega highway project was initiated in 2005 but its work was stopped at times due to a shortage of funds, and at others due to a change in design and security reasons. He said that the 47-km Burhan-Shah Maqsood section of another important project Hazara Motorway became operational on December 27 last year. Its remaining portion is likely to be completed by May this year. Giving further details of the NHA projects completed in past four years, he said that balance work of 193 km Gwadar-Hoshab section of M-8 was completed in February 2016 at the cost Rs 13 billion. Similarly, he added, balance work of 111 km Kalat-Quetta-Chaman was completed in December 2016 at the cost Rs 6 billion. Another important project completed during 2016 was 144 km Raikot-Thakot section of Karakoram Highway which cost Rs 6. 3 billion. Jalkhad-Chilas section of N-15,he said, was completed in June 2016 at the cost Rs 3.75 billion. He said that about 197 km Sehwan-Rattodero section of Indus Highway was upgraded in December 2016 and the project cost over Rs 14 billion. Sultan Bahu Bridge on river Chenab was completed in June 2016 at the cost Rs 4.3 billion, the NHA official said. He said that Rs 18.6 billion were spent on the completion of Basima-Nag-Panjgoor-Hoshab Highway (N-85) which was completed in December 2015. Work on the project had started in 2007 and it had become a sick project due to unusual delay in completion. He said that the NHA completed two sections of the Faisalabad-Multan Motorway in 2015. About 56 km Khanewal-Multan section was completed in March 2015 at the cost Rs 12 billion and 58 km Faisalabad-Gojra section in November 2015 at the cost Rs 9.6 billion. Similarly 24 km Attaabad Tunnel was completed in September 2015 at the cost Rs 27.5 billion,he said adding that about 132 km Waigum Rud-Khajori-Bewata section N-70 was completed in March 2015 and the project cost Rs 3.24 billion. Moreover, 252 km roads were rehabilitated in May 2015 at the cost Rs 12 billion and 35 km section of Kohala-Muzaffarabad Highway and two bridges in AJK were built under Flood Emergency Rehabilitation Programme in December 2015. Khushal Garh Bridge on N-80 completed in April 2014 which cost Rs 1.15 billion,whereas Sukker-Jacobabad section of N-65 completed in September 2014 cost 8.57 billion. North-bound section of Lyari Expressway in Karachi was opened in January 2018 , marking it as fully operational 15 years after work on the project first began.The project includes four interchanges and 20 bridges has helped in alleviating the rush caused by a large volume of traffic in the mega city. (@rukhshanmir) The participation of Pakistan in the 24-country military exercise Gulf Shield 1 in Saudi Arabia will prove a tough bid against terrorism and ensure peace in the region, senior defence experts have opined. ISLAMABAD, (UrduPoint / Pakistan Point News - 17th Apr, 2018 ) :The participation of Pakistan in the 24-country military exercise Gulf Shield 1 in Saudi Arabia will prove a tough bid against terrorism and ensure peace in the region, senior defence experts have opined. Defence analyst Lt Gen (R) Tallat Masood said Pakistan had long been cooperating with Saudi Arabia to strengthen its defence against any external aggression and any internal disturbance. Pakistan's participation in the alliance showed its commitment to Saudi Arabia's integrity and defence, which also shows its deep rooted relationship with the kingdom, he added. Dr Hassan Askari Rizvi, a political scientist and military analyst said the visit of Prime Minister Shahid Khaqan Abbasi along with Army Chief General Qamar Javed Bajwa to Dammam to witness Gulf Shield 1 exercise showed Pakistan's commitment and efforts against militancy and for regional peace. He said Pakistan wanted to establish good friendly relations with all regional countries and enjoyed cordial relations with Saudi Arabia in various fields including security and counter-terrorism. Air Vice Marshal (R) Shahzad Chaudhry said Pakistan had very close relationship with Saudi Arabia and participation of both the civilian and military top leadership in the exercise showed that the country would share its expertise with the military coalition to tackle the challenges of militancy and terrorism. It also showed Pakistan's commitment and efforts against militancy, terrorism and for regional peace, he said, adding that it, however, was a continuous process. Professor of Meritorious Studies at the University of Karachi Moonis Ahmar termed it a good opportunity for militaries of the Muslim countries where they would exchange their expertise with one another and take effective measures to counter threats and challenges of militancy and terrorism. He said the presence of Pakistan's top leadership in Saudi Arabia clearly indicated that Pakistan was determined to play its significant role for the security and sovereignty of the kingdom. He said bilateralrelationshipbetween the two countries had grown further since Pakistanjoined the IslamicMilitaryAlliance to Fight Terrorism (IMAFT), which was headed by its former army chief Gen Raheel Sharif. The IMAFT, created bySaudiArabia in December 2015 to combat Daesh and other terror groups, had 39 members, including Turkey and Malaysia with a command center in Riyadh. Saudi King Salman bin Abdulaziz Al Saud received the leaders, defence and foreign ministers, and heads of different armed forces at the event, held in the desert around 140 kilometres north east of Dammam. Apart from Prime Minister Abbasi, Minister for Defence Khurram Dastgir Khan, Chief of the Army Staff General Qamar Javed Bajwa and senior officials of the three services witnessed the ceremony, besides Pakistan's Ambassador to Kingdom of Saudi Arabia Vice Admiral (Retd) Khan Hasham Bin Saddique. Former army chief General Raheel Sharif also witnessed the event. The joint tri-services exercise held along the East Coast of the Kingdom under the Eastern Command of Royal Saudi Land Forces was designed to boost coordination and provide a hands-on experience of working together to achieve common objectives. Former ambassador to United Nations Munir Akram Tuesday said Pakistan's foreign policy did not need any altering although emerging US-India strategic cooperation had significance for Pakistan. Speaking at a "Public Talk" titled "The 2018 US Nuclear Posture Review ISLAMABAD, (UrduPoint / Pakistan Point News - 17th Apr, 2018 ) :Former ambassador to United Nations Munir Akram Tuesday said Pakistan's foreign policy did not need any altering although emerging US-India strategic cooperation had significance for Pakistan. Speaking at a "Public Talk" titled "The 2018 US Nuclear Posture Review: Global and Regional Security" organized by Strategic Studies Institute Islamabad (SSII) here, he said the 2018 US NPR would have numerous implications for global and regional security. He deplored that Indian nuclear force expansion and its war-fighting doctrine (Cold Start) had never invited the US or Western criticism. Ambassador Akram said although South Asia had not been mentioned in the NPR but it had been covered in the context of non-proliferation. "NPR also identifies China as strategic rival and endorses entire nuclear modernization and sustenance programme of the US in response to the expansion of Chinese nuclear arsenal," he added. He said, however, the 2018 US Nuclear Posture Review's importance should be viewed in relation to its predecessors. "Previous reviews were focused on the retention of nuclear weapons and were favourable for arms control and disarmament initiatives as well", Munir Akram said. In her concluding remarks, Director General SSII Dr. Shireen Mazari highlighted that the purpose of the talk was to highlight the new trends in the United States Nuclear Policy and its implications in regard to Pakistan's regional interests. She reiterated that Pakistan should remain wary of the US-India strategic partnership. The public talk was attended by large number of people, including members of civil society, bureaucrats, university students and media representatives. (@ChaudhryMAli88) Minister of State for Interior Talal Chaudhry on Monday said the PML-N would contest turncoats and defeat them in the general election. FAISALABAD, (UrduPoint / Pakistan Point News - 16th Apr, 2018 ) :Minister of State for Interior Talal Chaudhry on Monday said the PML-N would contest turncoats and defeat them in the general election. Talking to APP, the minister said that those who changed parties were not loyal to anyone but they were fair-weather friends, and the PML-N would defeat all such elements in the general election. He said the PML-N had started pace of progress and prosperity in the country. However, some elements wanted to create hindrance in the pace of national development by hatching conspiracies against this most popular party but they did not know that people of Pakistan were fully aware of their nefarious designs and they would reject all anti development elements bitterly in general election. Talking about politics of his native constituency in Jaranwala, the State Minister hit hard upon those who changed their loyalties and said, "Lota elements cannot face the PML-N in NA-102 as they have lost their credibility among their voters due to repeated change of their loyalties for more than half dozen. " "I will also contest elections against 'Lota' elements instead of loyal candidate of any party," he said, adding the PTI had also failed to find any suitable candidate to contest general election against the PML-N in NA-102. He said the PML-N would win the general election 2018 with a thumping majority due to its people-friendly policies. He said the PML-N had also given bright future to people of Jaranwala in the shape of motorway, university, hospital and carpeted roads. Therefore, people of this area would also vote and support the PML-N in the election, he added. Pakistan Muslim League-Nawaz (PML-N) Quaid Nawaz Sharif on Tuesday said that staging protest while staying within legal limits is the right of every person. Islamabad, (UrduPoint / Pakistan Point News - 17th Apr, 2018) : Pakistan Muslim League-Nawaz (PML-N) Quaid Nawaz Sharif on Tuesday said that staging protest while staying within legal limits is the right of every person. Talking to journalists in accountability courtroom, Sharif asserted that they agree with the person who speaks in favour of human rights and against atrocities. "We forgave for the country. I wish that everyone stay united and learn lesson from the past," said the former Prime Minister. Former prime minister Nawaz Sharif remarked that the world has changed and so should we. "Old mistakes should not be repeated," he said. Referring to the Lahore High Court's Monday verdict banning 'anti-judiciary' speeches by Nawaz and others, the former premier said the court should make clear what 'anti-judiciary' means. "We cannot restrict someone from speaking. Uncivilised restrictions cannot be placed in the country," he said, adding that he wanted everyone to go along together. "Elected governments made historic decisions, including the atomic tests which were completely conducted by the civilian government," claimed Nawaz. The three-time prime minister said he does not regret moving on. "We moved on did but not compromise. The other side should have moved on too," he asserted, terming unfortunate the dharnas (sit-ins) carried out in the country against his government. He said the National Accountability Bureau is inquiring into the widening of Raiwind Road in 2013 [which leads to Nawaz's residence], adding that, "in 1990 we started the motorway there should be a case on it too and one over the atomic tests". "I see widespread discord if the people's aspirations are not adhered to," he said further. Referring to recent waves of defections within the party, the PML-N supremo said those who left us were never ours. Adding to that, Nawaz's daughter Maryam said the PML-N has its dedicated vote bank which is not seasonal. Talking about the government's plan to merge the Federally Administered Tribal Areas with Khyber Pakhtunkhwa province, Nawaz said the tribes people should get their rights. (@ChaudhryMAli88) Punjab Chief Minister Muhammad Shehbaz Sharif inaugurated the National History Museum set up at Greater Iqbal Park, here Tuesday. LAHORE, (UrduPoint / Pakistan Point News - 17th Apr, 2018 ) :Punjab Chief Minister Muhammad Shehbaz Sharif inaugurated the National History Museum set up at Greater Iqbal Park, here Tuesday. After the inauguration, the Chief Minister visited the museum and paid rich tributes to the heroes of Pakistan Movement. Talking on the occasion, Chief Minister Shehbaz Sharif said, National History Museum was a wonderful project of national importance which had beautifully revived the history of Pakistan. "It's a historical opportunity at the Greater Iqbal Park which will attract the tourists," he said. He said, "The basic concept of freedom, freedom struggle and the initial phase of establishment of Pakistan have been beautifully depicted." He appreciated National History Museum project, adding that international standard museum had been established in the park and he was sanguine to watch the historical movement for Pakistan. In fact, this museum had revived the memory of struggle for Pakistan, Shehbaz Sharif said. The Chief Minister said as Greater Iqbal Park was a wonderful addition to the beautiful city of Lahore, establishment of National History Museum was a similar landmark of history. "Greater Iqbal Park is the historical place where resolution for the establishment of Pakistan was approved in 1940 and Quaid-e-Azam Muhammad Ali Jinnah formally launched the Pakistan Movement," he added. He said, "Pakistan is the greatest bounty of Almighty Allah and 70 years have passed now. We should ask this question to ourselves that how much objectives of creation of Pakistan have been fulfilled and this question should be judged honestly and in a transparent manner because nations are formed through hard work. If we hold our transparent accountability today then facts would be divulged that destination is still far away." He said, there were plenty of people who worked hard for national development while many others had ruined this country. "Many people have worked hard and there are a number of people who have wasted the time. But we should move forward by learning from it," he added. He said National History Museum gave an opportunity to have a glimpse of the past and it would also be a place of attraction for the tourists. He said Pakistan had the necessary ability to move forward with speed as a major chunk of population was based on youth which was an engine of development. He said, "Time will come when Pakistan will achieve a respectable place in the comity of nations as it is a gift of Almighty Allah." The Chief Minister congratulated relevant provincial ministers, chief secretary, Commissioner Lahore Division, DG PHA and his team for working hard to complete this innovative project. He asked the people to work hard, move forward and give respect to everybody but fear Almighty Allah only. He said that NAB was an institution of accountability which had to play its role. He also inaugurated the lake in Greater Iqbal Park and appreciated that best boating facility had been provided for recreation. "The people can witness the struggle for Pakistan in this park where recreation facilities, along with information and historical facts, has been provided," concluded the Chief Minister. (@FahadShabbir) :Punjab government banned Kabbadi during recess in both government and private education institutions following the incident of student's death in a village school of Khanewal. MULTAN, (UrduPoint / Pakistan Point News - 16th Apr, 2018 ) :Punjab government banned Kabbadi during recess in both government and private education institutions following the incident of student's death in a village school of Khanewal. In a letter to CEOs of District Education Authority, Chief Minister's Monitoring Force School Education Department, has banned such activities like Kabbadi during recess time in schools across the province. The heads of schools have been directed to impose a ban on all such activities which may cause serious incidents. In-charge of recess times have been asked to keep an eye on students to avoid such activities in future. Heads of the schools have also been directed to ask the teachers to guide the students in this connection. (@ChaudhryMAli88) Resignation of another Member of the National Assembly (MNA) defecting to Janoobi Punjab Sooba Mahaz, Rana Muhammad Qasim Noon, was received by the NA Secretariat Tuesday as three others quitting their seats are yet to confirm their signatures on their resignation letters. ISLAMABAD, (UrduPoint / Pakistan Point News - 17th Apr, 2018 ) :Resignation of another Member of the National Assembly (MNA) defecting to Janoobi Punjab Sooba Mahaz, Rana Muhammad Qasim Noon, was received by the NA Secretariat Tuesday as three others quitting their seats are yet to confirm their signatures on their resignation letters. A National Assembly spokesman stated in a press release that Noon's resignation had been received by the Assembly Secretariat. However, he chaired a meeting of the National Assembly's Standing Committee on Rules and Privileges as chairman. The spokesman stated that chairing any such meeting, claiming perks and privileges or participating in the House proceedings after resignation, was in violation of the Rules of business. Meanwhile, NA Speaker Sardar Ayaz Sadiq has once again invited three other MNAs to his office for verification of signatures on their resignation letters. The members, Makhdoom Khusro Bakhtyar, Tahir Bashir Cheema and Makhdoomzada Basit Bokhari, had tendered their resignation after they had quit Pakistan Muslim League-Nawaz to form an alliance for South Punjab province. As per requirement of the rules and procedure of the National Assembly, any member, who submits his or her resignation letter, has to appear before the Speaker for verification of his or her signatures. Since, the three members had sent their resignations to the National Assembly Secretariat, their appearance before the Speaker was mandatory. They were invited to the Speaker's chamber to verify their signatures on April 16, but they did not turn up. Therefore, Speaker Sardar Ayaz sadiq once again invited them for April 20 to verify their signatures. According to the Speaker's Office, out of total eight MNAs, who had announced to resign, four had submitted their resignation letters. Remaining four include Dr Ramesh Kumar Vankvani, Ch. Bilal Ahmed Virk, Bhawan Das and Rana Umer Nazir Khan. (@ChaudhryMAli88) The performance of National Testing Service (NTS) an attached department of COMSATS is under question mark as there should be a regulatory body to check its working ISLAMABAD, (UrduPoint / Pakistan Point News - 17th Apr, 2018 ) :The performance of National Testing Service (NTS) an attached department of COMSATS is under question mark as there should be a regulatory body to check its working. It was observed in the meeting of the Public Accounts Committee (PAC) held here under the Chairmanship of Leader of the Opposition in the National Assembly Syed Khursheed Shah who also directed that the objections of NTS audit should be reviewed in the Departmental Audit Committee (DAC) of Ministry of Science and Technology. The meeting was also attended by the Senator Azam Khan Swati, MNA's Sahibzada Nazeer Ahmad Sultan, Abdul Rasheed Godail, Syed Ghulam Mustafa Shah, Shahida Akhter Ali, and Raja Javaid Ikhlas, and officials from the concerned departments. In the committee meeting the objection of the Higher education Commission (HEC) were also reviewed. During a review on the objection of International Islamic University Islamabad (IIUI) Rector IIUI Dr Masoom Yasinzai said that the employees of varsity could not bear the health related expenses and the hospitals were also ignoring the treatment of IIUI employees. PAC directed IIUI to take permission from the board and said that the universities should follow the rules and regulations regarding the medical allowance in light of the recent decision of the High Court under which any autonomous body has no right to take decision itself regarding financial matters. PAC directed the Allama Iqbal Open University (AIOU) to contact with the ministry of finance for the provision of medical allowance facility to their employees. The committee also directed the AIOU officials to appear in the meeting on April 24 after resolving the issues with Ministry of Finance. Vice Chancellor AIOU Dr Shahid Siddiqui said that PAC should help the university for the provision of facilities to our employees as equal to the other institutions. To a question regarding the fee structure of the COMSATS, Rector of the university Dr Qamar told the committee that the fee of Quaid-e- Azam University is less than our varsity. Audit Officials told PAC that COMSATS University has spend Rs 85 million illegally on the Pakistan-China Business Forum, while replying on this Rector of the university Dr Rahail Qamar said that a report is being prepared in this regard. During the review on the Audit objections, Syed Khursheed Shah remarked that medical allowances should be given free to all without any discrimination. Secretary Finance and Technology said that the funds are very insufficient from the government to meet the requirements. He said that the officials from the COMSATS were also in the NTS Board adding that an audit was conducted of NTS on the directions of HEC. Dr Qamar said that NTS is basically a project of COMSATS which is working under the ministry of science and technology. Syed Khurshid Shah said that Testing Services has become a business now adding that these types of businesses should be banned. The testing system should be under control of the renowned universities, he said and added, the universities should introduce their own testing system after the removal of NTS system. 'Matarbari Deep Seaport to operate from 2023' Chairman of Chattogram Port Authority Commodore Zulfiqur Aziz speaking at on workshop on Matarbari Port Development\" at Chattogram Port Training Institute Auditorium on Monday. Sarwaruddin, Chattogram Bureau : The long waited Moheshkhali Deep Seaport (now renamed Matarbari ) under Moheskhali Upazila of CoxsBazar district is expected to operate commercial activities from 2023 . With this aim of operating commercial deep seaport, government has taken this project as a first track priority basis . The Matarbari deep sea port will be build with the models of Kalima and Nigata(east) seaport of Japan. This was disclosed by the Chairman of Chattogram Port Authority Commodore Zulfikar Aziz while addressing a seminar on Stakeholder Consultation workshop on Jaica Preparatory Survey of Matarbari Port Development' held at Port Training Institute auditorium in the port city on Monday as chief guest. Officials of JICA in Bangladesh attended the seminar. The chief guest on the seminar told that after completion of the ongoing projects including PCT, Laldia terminal, Bay Terminal, this pioneer port Chittagong will have capacity of 70 lakh TEUs containers annually. Port chairman also said mother vessels sizes 325 to 350 meters long carrying 8000 TEUs containers will be able to anchor in the port berth . He also s aid this deep sea port will be used for 1200 MWs capacity coal based power plant. Port chairman hoped that the construction of the much talked deep sea port will be completed by 2023 . Among others JICA representative Wasau, senior Director of Overseas coastal Development Institute of Japan Takasi Shimada, CPA member Mr. Jafar Alam also spoke in it. The CPA member delivered the whole scenario of the deep sea port through multimedia projections. Moreover, CPA will act as coordinating agency of the Matarbari coalbased power plant. CPA member in his presentation said that the Intitiative of Bay Bengal Industrial Growth Belt' after Prime Minister Sheikh Hasina's visit to Japan in 2014. Japan Prime Minister emphasis on development of power section, expansion of communications, and establishment of industrial zone under the initiative. Bangladesh Govt also called upon the Japanese govt for preparing a master plan for integrated development in south Chattogram and Cox's Bazar . Then JICA prepared a master plan for coal based power plant in Matarbari in 2016. The seminar was told that a feasibility study for development of 16 meters draft and 250 metes wide channel was also conducted for the sea port. Jafar Alam told that the coal based power plant and the deep sea port will be developed with the financial assistance of Japan government and the CPA will supervise the port activities and will operate. The vessels with high draft can not take berth in any seaports of Bangladesh, so as to ensure berth facilities of vessels with deep draft, the project for developing Matarbari seaport was taken as priority project of the government under seventh five plan, sources added. Referring to ports of neighbouring countries, Jafar Alam said that vessels carrying 2500 TEUs containers can take berth in Chattogram Port whereas vessels with 19000 TEUs, 13000 TEUs and 7000 TEUs can take berth in Colomboo seaport, Japan Nigata seaport and Chennai seaport respectively. Matarbari will be the first deep sea port of the country and in first phase two terminals will be developed for berth ing 350 meters long 16 meters draft vessels carrying 8000 TEUs containers . Initiatives were also taken for developing infrastructure of road and rail communications to and from Chattagram port , CPA chief added. Minister for Railways Khawaja Saad Rafique on Tuesday acknowledged the commendable services of Federal Secretary and Chairperson Railways, Parveen Agha on her retirement. ISLAMABAD, (UrduPoint / Pakistan Point News - 17th Apr, 2018 ) :Minister for Railways Khawaja Saad Rafique on Tuesday acknowledged the commendable services of Federal Secretary and Chairperson Railways, Parveen Agha on her retirement. Chief Executive Officer (CEO) Pakistan Railways Javed Anwar, AGMs and DGs also accolade her leadership. Parveen Agha joined the Civil Services in 1981 and is from 9th Common Training Programme.She has served at various levels before joining Ministry of Railways in October, 2014. As a Chairperson, Ministry of Railways, she played a vital role in resurrection of Pakistan Railways. She gave special attention in creation of Train Approaching Warning System at Level Crossings (TAWC) and Train Collision Avoiding System (TCAS), creation of updated reservation offices and relaunching of freight service between Iran and Pakistan. She was the pillar behind swift jump of Pakistan Railways revenue to Rs.40.1 billion. She helped in resurrection of Pakistan Railways. From 1983 -1985 she was initially posted as Assistant Director in PTA &T Audit. She remained deputy director from 1985-1990 in Audit and Accounts Training Institute, Lahore. She served as Financial Expert Secondment through Commonwealth, Ministry of Finance, Mozambique from 1990 -1992. She worked as Deputy Director Audit in Pakistan Railways Head Quarter from 1992-1995.For a year she remained Director Audit, Performance Evaluation Cell. For next three years she worked as Deputy FA &CAO in Pakistan Railways. From 1999 -2002 she acted as Director Finance in Parks and Horticulture Authority,Lahore.She worked as Director Finance, Punjab Institute of Cardiology ,Lahore from 2002 -2009.For next three years she worked as Director General PIFRA.From 2011-2012 she acted as Deputy Auditor General in Lahore. She remained Member Finance ,Ministry of Railways from 2012 -2014. She holds Degree in Applied Psychology from University of Punjab. She attended Executive Development Management Course at University of Harvard ,USA in 2009.She has wide experience over 30 years in accounting, internal-auditing and general Administration with government and high profile public sector corporate entities. The Government of Sindh has offered land on lease to Pakistan Tourism Development Corporation (PTDC) at Sadho Baila, a sacred place of Hindu religion near Sukkur and Gorakh Hill Station for promotion of tourism. ISLAMABAD, (UrduPoint / Pakistan Point News - 17th Apr, 2018 ) :The Government of Sindh has offered land on lease to Pakistan Tourism Development Corporation (PTDC) at Sadho Baila, a sacred place of Hindu religion near Sukkur and Gorakh Hill Station for promotion of tourism. Managing Director PTDC Chaudhry Abdul Ghafoor told APP that PTDC is willing to work on joint venture with provinces for promotion of tourism. He said that PTDC also planned to establish a spot for tourism at Sukkur, Sindh. Sadho Bela is an island in the Indus River near Sukkur, Sindh that is famous for its highly revered Hindu temples. Gorakh Hill Station is situated on one of the highest plateaus of Sindh, spread over 2,500 acres (10 km2) of land. It is very attractive to nature-lovers owing to its temperate weather and beautiful surroundings. The Gorakh Hill station is situated 423 km from Karachi and nearly 8-hour driving distance. The Hill station attracts thousands of tourists from across Sindh province. It is situated at an elevation of 5,689 ft (1,734 m) in the Kirthar Mountains, 94 kilometres (58 mi) northwest of Dadu city. zkz (@rukhshanmir) Three teenaged girls were abducted from various parts of Taxila and Wah here on Tuesday. Wah cantt, (UrduPoint / Pakistan Point News - 17th Apr, 2018 ) :Three teenaged girls were abducted from various parts of Taxila and Wah here on Tuesday. According to details ,Deen Mohammad has reported Taxila Police that two persons have abducted his teenage niece while Mubarak Ali reported to Wah Cantonment Police that his 16 years old daughter was abducted by unknown persons. Similarly Rukhsana Bibi reported Wah Saddar Police that his daughter was abducted by unknown persons. Police registered the cases against the accused and started further investigation. (@rukhshanmir) Albania's former chief prosecutor is under investigation for money laundering and other financial crimes, prosecutors said Tuesday, the same day the European Commission recommended the opening of accession talks. Tirana, (APP - UrduPoint / Pakistan Point News - 17th Apr, 2018 ) :Albania's former chief prosecutor is under investigation for money laundering and other financial crimes, prosecutors said Tuesday, the same day the European Commission recommended the opening of accession talks. Adriatik Llalla, once one of Albania's most powerful men, is also suspected of making false declarations of property, Borana Gjidiaj of the prosecutor's office in the northeastern port of Durres told AFP. Llalla, who left office in November at the end of his term, is barred from entering the United States "due to his involvement in significant corruption", the State Department announced in February. The European Union has made the fight against corruption a priority for Albania. After EU diplomatic chief Federica Mogherini announced that the EU backed the opening of formal membership talks with the former communist country, Prime Minister Edi Rama acknowledged that hard work lay ahead. He told reporters in Tirana that Tuesday marked "the opening of a new, more difficult phase of reforms and reinforcing the fight against crime and corruption." Albania's planned judiciary reforms include a requirement that judges' property declarations be verified. Authorities have already examined the files of some 800 judges. In late February, Rama said 17 top judges and prosecutors had retired in order to avoid probes into their property. (@ChaudhryMAli88) The EU on Tuesday backed the opening of formal membership talks with Albania and Macedonia as the bloc looks to expand into the Balkans and grow for the first time in years. Brussels, (APP - UrduPoint / Pakistan Point News - 17th Apr, 2018 ) :The EU on Tuesday backed the opening of formal membership talks with Albania and Macedonia as the bloc looks to expand into the Balkans and grow for the first time in years. The announcement comes a month ahead of a summit in Sofia when the leaders of six Balkan nations will be given fresh hope of eventually joining the EU, amid rivalry between Brussels and Moscow over the region. Skopje and Tirana both welcomed the move and vowed to work hard to remove obstacles on the long way to full membership. EU diplomatic chief Federica Mogherini said the European Commission, the executive arm of the EU, recommended that member states "open accession negotiations with Albania and with the former Yugoslav Republic of Macedonia." Mogherini stressed that any prospective members must make sweeping reforms to secure their entry to the club, which currently counts 28 countries as members -- although Britain is set to leave next year. European Commission President Jean-Claude Juncker put all enlargement on hold four years ago, and the Balkans states have become increasingly impatient. Montenegro and Serbia are the frontrunners to join, having already started the formal membership process, with Albania, Bosnia, Kosovo and Macedonia lagging behind. In February the EU unveiled its new strategy for the region, which aims to give membership to some states by 2025 but insists they must first resolve all border rows. The EU has been wary of admitting new members before they settle their differences. The border rows will be a particular point of contention in a region still bedevilled by the aftermath of the bloody break-up of Yugoslavia in the 1990s. These include a bitter and long-running dispute between Macedonia and EU-member Greece over its name, which Athens insists refers to its own northern province. Belgium is set to name a square in Brussels after late Congolese independence hero Patrice Lumumba, the first public place in the former colonial power to honour him, an official said Tuesday. Brussels, (APP - UrduPoint / Pakistan Point News - 17th Apr, 2018 ) :Belgium is set to name a square in Brussels after late Congolese independence hero Patrice Lumumba, the first public place in the former colonial power to honour him, an official said Tuesday. Brussels mayor Philippe Close said that the local council would vote next Monday on his proposal for the tribute to Lumumba, who was assassinated in 1961. The socialist mayor told RTBF radio he was "extremely proud" to end what he called a "taboo" in Belgium after years of efforts by the Congolese community for some kind of memorial to Lumumba. "On June 30, Brussels, for the first time, while have a Patrice Lumumba Square, that will happen at the local council and we are extremely proud to acknowledge that," he said. A square in the Matonge area, the heart of Brussels's vibrant Congolese community, will be named after Lumuba and a plaque erected there in his honour, Close said. "This is an area everyone knows, which has a very deep symbolism for our community. It's a great victory," Lydia Mutyebele, a local socialist councillor who led the project, told AFP. Mutyebele, now 39, was born in the Congo but came to Belgium at the age of six. She said Lumumba was an "emblematic figure" for the whole African continent. Lumumba embodies for many young people "an attachment to an Africa that know very little about, because they were born here," she said. The gesture comes on the 60th anniversary of the 1958 Brussels Expo, which included a "Congolese village" -- effectively a human zoo -- that was meant to show Belgium's colonial power. Lumumba became the first democratically-elected prime minister of the former Belgian Congo after it won independence in 1960 Popular at home, he was considered too pro-Soviet by the Americans and was assassinated on January 17, 1961, at the age of 35, with the alleged complicity of the CIA, Britain's MI6, and Belgian intelligence. Lumumba was killed after a coup led by Joseph-Desire Mobutu. Mobutu renamed the country Zaire. It is now known as the Democratic Republic of Congo. A bomb that exploded outside an Indian diplomatic post in southern Nepal caused damage and drew attention for being a rare attack on a foreign mission, officials said. Kathmandu, (APP - UrduPoint / Pakistan Point News - 17th Apr, 2018 ) :A bomb that exploded outside an Indian diplomatic post in southern Nepal caused damage and drew attention for being a rare attack on a foreign mission, officials said. The homemade device went off late Monday at Biratnagar, 200 kilometres (125 miles) southeast of Kathmandu and close to the Indian border. "There were no injuries in the pressure-cooker bomb blast, but the wall suffered some minor damage. We are investigating," senior district police official Arun Kumar told AFP. Police suspect involvement of a Maoist splinter group which had called a strike in the area, but no one has claimed responsibility for the explosion. (@rukhshanmir) Two more people have been kidnapped on the Colombia-Ecuador border by the same group responsible for the recent abductions and killing of two journalists and their driver, Ecuador said Tuesday. Quito, (APP - UrduPoint / Pakistan Point News - 17th Apr, 2018 ) :Two more people have been kidnapped on the Colombia-Ecuador border by the same group responsible for the recent abductions and killing of two journalists and their driver, Ecuador said Tuesday. The latest kidnappings were claimed in a video sent by the same dissident FARC rebels who claimed responsibility for the killing of the Ecuadoran news team, Interior Minister Cesar Navas said. "Through the channel of communication we have with the so-called Guacho we have received information yesterday evening about a new kidnapping of two citizens," Ecuador's Interior Minister Cesar Navas said. A FARC splinter group named the Oliver Sinisterra Front -- led by Patricio Arizala, alias Guacho -- is responsible for a number of recent deadly attacks on security forces in the border area, last week claiming the kidnapping and killing of the journalists and their driver in a crime that shocked Ecuador. Navas said a video sent by the group via WhatsApp shows a handcuffed middle-aged couple flanked by armed men in military fatigues, making a plea for help to President Lenin Moreno not to allow them to suffer the same fate as the journalists. The Names of the man and woman and their nationalities are unknown. There have been no reports of anyone missing in the border area. "He's trying to play again with Ecuador. He wants us to comply with his demands," Navas said. Reporter Javier Ortega, 32, photographer Paul Rivas, 45, and their driver Efrain Segarra, 60, all worked for the influential El Comercio newspaper and were following a story on violence in the border area when they were kidnapped on March 26. On Monday the dissident rebel group said it had suspended return of the bodies of the dead men because of the ongoing military operation. Both Ecuador and Colombia sent troops into the jungle to hunt down the killers. (@ChaudhryMAli88) A falling tree at a wildlife park in northern Cameroon killed three students on a school trip, an official told the country's state radio. Yaound, (APP - UrduPoint / Pakistan Point News - 17th Apr, 2018 ) :A falling tree at a wildlife park in northern Cameroon killed three students on a school trip, an official told the country's state radio. "Following a tornado, a tree fell on to a group" of Nigerian students staying in Bouba Ndjida national park, regional governor Jean Abate Edi'i said. Sixteen students were also injured and taken to Garoua, the capital of the Northern Region. The group of 50 students and six staff were on a school trip, according to Cameroon state radio. The park is known for its elephant population. In February, six troops and two guides were killed at the park during a clash with heavily-armed poachers on horseback. Rescuers discovered two corpses of truck drivers and are searching for other missing people after a bridge fell down in East Java province of Indonesia on Tuesday, a disaster agency official told Xinhua JAKARTA, (APP - UrduPoint / Pakistan Point News - 17th Apr, 2018 ) ::Rescuers discovered two corpses of truck drivers and are searching for other missing people after a bridge fell down in East Java province of Indonesia on Tuesday, a disaster agency official told Xinhua. Three trucks and one motorcycle plunged into the river when the bridge situated in Tuban subdistrict suddenly collapsed at about 11:00 a.m. local time, spokesman of national disaster management agency Sutopo Purwo Nugroho said. "So far two corpses of the truck drivers are recovered. They remain being trapped inside the damaged trucks," he told Xinhua in a text message. However, the spokesman did not elaborate further about the other drivers of the vehicles and the riders of the motorcycle. Search and rescue operation for the victims of the incident is underway now, he added. Fresh off the heels of multiple sold out shows across America, Jo Koy returns to the Treasure Island Theatre June 8 at 7:30 p.m. Additionally due to high demand, a second show has been added and will take place at 10 p.m. The comedian, who got his start producing his own shows at the historic Huntridge Theater, put his skills to good use producing his third comedy special Jo Koy: Live from Seattle. After the special debuted on Netflix in 2017, Koy performed 11 sold-out shows in Honolulu, with more than 23,000 tickets sold. To celebrate the accomplishment, the mayors office in Honolulu proclaimed Nov. 24 as Jo Koy Day. Koy rose to prominence with performances on The Tonight Show and Comic View and began touring relentlessly, on USO and Def Jam Comedy tours, on Carlos Mencias Punisher tour and with Chelsea Handler and Jon Lovitz, and finally on his own. Since then, he has had two specials on Comedy Central, Dont Make Him Angry in 2009 and Lights Out in 2012. Also a regular panelist on Chelsea Lately, Koy appeared on more than 100 episodes from 2009 through the finale. Koy currently hosts his weekly podcast The Koy Pond on Podcast One. He can also be seen on the Kevin Hart & Lionsgate platform LaughOutLoud.com as the host of the unscripted series Inglorious Pranksters. Koys stage name comes from the Filipino term Jokoy which means joker and was his childhood nickname. Tacos & Tequila (T&T), located inside Luxor Hotel and Casino on the world-famous Las Vegas Strip, will host its 5th Sexy de Mayo fiesta in celebration of Cinco de Mayo (Pictured: Carmen Ortega). Known for flavorful cuisine, mucho tequila, and high-energy atmosphere and antics, this years edition, Sexy de Mayo Cinco, invites guests to meet and mingle with sizzling international model and popular social media personality, Carmen Ortega, dance to the sounds of world-renowned Los Angeles-based mariachi band, Mariachi Los Toros, and enjoy $5 drink specials including el Jimador shots and Dos Equis. Tacos & Tequila, a highly-stylized Mexican restaurant and bar with a fun, high-energy vibe and flavorful menu is located at Luxor Hotel and Casino. The 8,000-square-foot venue is open daily from 11 a.m. until 11 p.m. for lunch and dinner, as well as for a Mariachi Brunch every Saturday and Sunday from 11 a.m. until 3 p.m. The design embodies the cool modernism of Mexico City, as well as incorporating traditional elements of Mexican style and high-end Las Vegas panache, all complemented by a menu of Mexican and American cuisine curated by Corporate Executive Chef Saul Ortiz. The event is open to the public, with no admission fee or minimum purchase required. Some Syrian children have spent their whole lives in wartime conditions. Even those who escaped the conflict are suffering the consequences. Experts say the effects of the protracted war are devastating for the physical, mental and educational development of a whole generation of Syrians. VOAs Zlatica Hoke reports the fate of Syrian children was discussed by experts at a forum in Washington on Monday. Australia is cracking down on so-called orphanage tourism to prevent trafficking of children in Southeast Asia, trying to tame demand from tourists wanting to do good, top politicians said Monday. Children in countries such as Cambodia are taken from their homes and put into orphanages to attract donations and support from volunteers from Australia, say major charities such as Lumos, which works to help children in orphanages. The United Nations and nonprofit groups including Save the Children have warned against the practice known as orphanage tourism, which activists consider a form of modern slavery. Australians are among the top donors for such orphanages, driving up a demand for these institutions, officials said. "We have created the problem for the region, so now we have to work with other countries to fix it," Australian Senator Linda Reynolds said at an event in London on the sidelines of a weeklong Commonwealth Heads of Government Meeting (CHOGM). "We need to be part of the solution, and we are not waiting to act," she told Reuters, calling the phenomenon the "perfect 21st-century scam" where people get a "sugar rush" of doing good and sharing it on social media. Australia is expected to pass tough new anti-slavery laws this year and lawmakers are pushing for orphanage tourism to be included, according to Reynolds. The government last month launched a "Smart Volunteering" campaign to discourage citizens from taking part in short-term, unskilled volunteering projects in overseas orphanages. "Our volunteers many young people and students are unwittingly taking part in human trafficking ... paying up to $2,000 to do so," said Australian foreign minister Julie Bishop. "Kids are given up by their families and become tourist attractions," she said. "We don't want to add to the misery of children in the region. "We need to address this scourge." The number of orphanages in Cambodia a regional hot spot is growing quickly even though most children living in them have at least one parent, according to the U.N. Cambodia last year launched a crackdown on bogus institutions. At least eight million children live in orphanages and other institutions worldwide, yet four in five have at least one living parent, according to Lumos, which was founded by Harry Potter author J.K. Rowling. Yet this form of trafficking may be easier to tackle than others in a trade estimated to enslave 40 million people globally and raise annual profits of $150 billion, Lumos said. "It is definitely solvable as the demand has been created by people who are genuinely trying to do good," said Georgette Mulheir, head of Lumos. "We just need to redirect that energy." Arab ire at US Jerusalem move looks unlikely to spark action Israel occupied mainly Palestinian East Jerusalem and the surrounding region in 1967 Six-Day War and later annexed it, declaring the city its capital. AFP, Dubai : Arab leaders at a summit in Saudi Arabia have slammed Washington's decision to recognise Jerusalem as Israel's capital and move its embassy there, but analysts say their words are unlikely to lead to action. The shift by US President Donald Trump has sparked deep anger across the Arab world, particularly among Palestinians, who see East Jerusalem as the capital of their future state. But it seemed clear at the Arab League summit, held in the eastern city of Dhahran on Sunday, that regional rulers, particularly in the Gulf, are unwilling to jeopardise close ties with Trump as they seek to counter Iran. "Generally, Arab League summits produce more rhetoric than action," said Denis Bauchard, an expert from the French Institute on International Relations. "I don't think this will go beyond declarations." For Riyadh, he said, "what is essential is the relationship with Washington". Israel occupied mainly Palestinian east Jerusalem and the surrounding region in the 1967 Six-Day War and later annexed it, declaring the city its capital. Neither move was recognised by the international community-but the United States is now set to shift its embassy from Tel Aviv to Jerusalem in May. That breaks with decades of US policy and international consensus that the status of the city should be settled in negotiations. Nour Odeh, a Palestinian political analyst, said Palestinians had low expectations for any Arab response. "Ordinary people and politicians alike understand the dismal state of Arab affairs, and no Arab government is going to confront Trump," she said. Saudi King Salman dubbed the Dhahran conference the "Jerusalem summit" and used his opening speech to denounce Washington's decision and announce a $150 million donation for the maintenance of Islamic heritage in the eastern part of the holy city. Other leaders queued up to add their criticism, and the summit's final statement also slammed Trump's move. But an Arab diplomat, who asked not to be named, said that "even Washington's allies (Riyadh, Abu Dhabi and Cairo) know very well that they don't have many diplomatic options". "Their aim is to improve the situation of the Palestinians as much as possible, but they won't go as far as confronting" the Trump administration, the diplomat said. Ghassan Khatib, a Palestinian academic and former minister, said they were "not capable" of doing so, "especially with all the problems in the Arab world". He said Arab governments were "not willing to risk their relationships with the United States." The American decision on Jerusalem comes as ties warm between the US and key allies in the region-Saudi Arabia, Egypt and the United Arab Emirates. That follows years of tension under former president Barack Obama as Washington improved ties with Iran, culminating in a historic 2015 deal to lift sanctions in exchange for curbs on Tehran's nuclear programme. Saudi Arabia and Iran have spent years fighting proxy wars across the region, from Syria to Yemen. Trump has openly sided with Riyadh and threatened to back out of the Iran nuclear accord-possibly also in May. "Saudi Arabia and the UAE... have felt since the nuclear deal with Iran that Washington was not taking into account their concerns about Iran's strong presence in the region," said Khalil Harb, editor of Journal, an Arabic-language website focusing on Gulf affairs. The two countries are now trying "to push the Trump administration... to review the American position on the nuclear deal. At a political moment like this, Riyadh doesn't want to embarrass or anger America," he said. Karim Bitar, from the Paris-based Institute of International and Strategic Affairs, said those states are "so concerned with the Iranian threat that they realise that they might have to coordinate the anti-Iranian effort with the US and Israel." Bangladeshi Prime Minister Sheikh Hasina said on Tuesday more international pressure was needed on Myanmar to take back Rohingya refugees, rejecting an assertion claim by the Myanmar government that it had repatriated a family of five. "The international community needs to put more pressure on Myanmar so that they take back their own people and ensure their security," Hasina told an audience in London. "Myanmar says they are ready to take back the Rohingya, but they are not taking the initiative." U.N. officials say nearly 700,000 mostly Muslim Rohingya have fled into Bangladesh from Myanmar's Rakhine state to escape a military crackdown since August, amid reports of murder, rape and arson by Myanmar troops and Buddhist vigilantes in actions which the United Nations has likened to "ethnic cleansing." Myanmar has denied nearly all allegations, saying it has been waging a legitimate counter-insurgency operation. Speaking at a separate event in London, Britain's foreign minister Boris Johnson and Canadian counterpart Chrystia Freeland called for a meaningful investigation into reported atrocities. "The (Myanmar) authorities need to demonstrate that they are serious about the safety and security of the Rohingya," Johnson said. Hasina said Bangladesh had submitted the names of 8,000 Rohingya families for repatriation to Myanmar, but that Myanmar had so far refused to take them back. Myanmar and Bangladesh agreed in January to complete a voluntary repatriation of the refugees in two years. She disputed an assertion by Myanmar that it had repatriated five members of a Rohingya family from Bangladesh, describing them as having been living in the no man's land between the two countries. "They were living in the borderlands, with some of their family members in their camps. Maybe (Myanmar) wants to show the world they are taking them back. It's a good sign. If they want, then why only 1 family? We have have already submitted the names of 8,000 (Rohingya) families, but they've not taken them back," she said. Hasina also confirmed a plan to move 100,000 Rohingya refugees to a uninhabited low-lying island in the Bay of Bengal, dismissing fears that it would be put them at the mercy of floods. "We are expecting to move those who are in a vulnerable place to the island. Bangladesh can always be flooding and it does. The camps are very unhealthy. We have prepared a better place for them to live, with houses and shelters where they can earn a living," she said. "Where they are living now, the monsoon season is coming up, there can be land erosions, accidents are taking place." Aid agencies, however, are fearful of the relocation plan and believe it would expose Rohingya refugees to cyclones, floods and human traffickers. The state of California has opted not to take part in the Trump administration's effort to send National Guard troops to the country's southern border with Mexico, a Defense Department official said on Monday. Robert Salesses, a deputy assistant secretary at the Defense Department, said at a media briefing that California has declined a request to commit more than 200 troops to the effort. Salesses said talks with California are ongoing. Earlier this month, President Donald Trump and Defense Secretary James Mattis authorized up to 4,000 National Guard personnel to help the Department of Homeland Security secure the border in four southwestern U.S. states. Currently, 900 National Guard troops have been deployed in Texas, New Mexico and Arizona, officials said Monday. Lieutenant Colonel Tom Keegan, a spokesman for the California National Guard, said in a statement that "state officials have not rejected anything" since California Governor Jerry Brown responded last week with a proposed agreement. Keegan added: "The federal government has not yet responded. The next step is for the federal government to respond by signing the Memorandum of Agreement." Brown's office referred questions to Keegan. Tyler Houlton, a spokesman for Homeland Security, said Brown "shares our interest in securing our southern border. DHS and our federal partners are committed to working with the governor to mobilize the California National Guard to assist DHS's frontline personnel in our vital missions." Salesses said the federal government had asked California to provide 237 National Guard troops to two sectors near the Mexican border. "They will not perform those missions," Salesses said, adding talks are continuing with the California National Guard. He said the tasks sought were primarily operational support, including motor transport maintenance, radio communications, heavy equipment operations, administrative responsibilities and operating remote surveillance cameras. Ronald Vitiello, acting deputy commissioner at U.S. Customs and Border Patrol, said Monday California may be willing to take part in other missions but Brown had determined that some tasks sought for assistance were "unsupportable." Trump has been unable to get the U.S. Congress or Mexico to fund his proposed wall along the border. National Guard troops will not construct any sections of a proposed border wall, officials said Monday. National Guard troops are not taking part in direct border security and are not performing law enforcement work. Mexican President Enrique Pena Nieto has sharply rebuked Trump over the plan. A Russian official says a team of chemical weapons experts is set to make a visit Wednesday to the site east of Syria's capital where a suspected chemical attack killed dozens of people earlier this month. The investigators from the Organization for the Prohibition of Chemical Weapons arrived in Syria on Saturday, but so far have not been able to begin their work in Douma. The U.S. envoy to the OPCW, Ken Ward, said Monday it was his understanding Russia had already visited the site and he raised concerns of tampering before the OPCW carries out its fact-finding mission. Russian Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov denied the accusation, telling the BBC he guarantees Russia "has not tampered with the site." Lavrov said that evidence cited by the United States, Britain and France to justify last Saturday's missile attack on three Syrian chemical weapons facilities was based "on media reports and social media." He denied any chemical weapons attack had occurred, accusing Britain of staging the attack. Russia further blamed the Saturday airstrikes for the delays in the OPCW team being able to access Douma. Syrian media reported another missile attack early Thursday in Homs province, saying government air defenses shot down most of the missiles fired at an air base. The reports did not say who was responsible, and the U.S. military said neither it nor the coalition it leads was operating in that area at the time. OPCW Director-General Ahmet Uzumcu said Monday that Russian and Syrian officials had informed the team that there are "still pending security issues to be worked out before any deployment could take place" to Douma. In Moscow, Russia's Deputy Foreign Minister Sergei Ryabkov said the mission was not allowed in because it lacked approval from the United Nations Department for Safety and Security. U.N. officials in New York disputed the claim. "The United Nations has provided the necessary clearances for the OPCW team to go about its work in Douma," said U.N. spokesman Stephane Dujarric. "We have not denied the team any request for it to go to Douma." He added that U.N. Secretary-General Antonio Guterres is very supportive of the investigation. "The secretary-general wants to see the fact-finding mission have access to all the sites it needs to have access to, so that we can have the most thorough and full picture of the facts," Dujarric said. EU foreign policy chief Federica Mogherini said ahead of a ministerial meeting there is a clear need to push for re-launching a U.N.-led peace process for Syria. At the U.N. Security Council, France has proposed a new draft resolution that addresses three key aspects of the conflict chemical weapons, humanitarian issues and the political process. "So, this is our road map, and we will work very hard, in good faith, in good spirit, to listen to everybody, in order to try to move ahead with our draft resolution and move forward toward an inclusive political settlement of the crisis," Frances envoy Francois Delattre told reporters Monday. Margaret Besheer contributed to this report. Chile's President Sebastian Pinera on Monday proposed a bill to boost free technical education, days ahead of a planned student march in Santiago, the first such protest since he took office a month ago. Pinera, a businessman and ex-president whose first term was marred by massive student protests seeking an education overhaul, said his proposal would increase public financing for technical colleges, allowing new students to attend free of charge and helping reduce a shortage of graduates in technical fields. "Higher technical education has not received the recognition it deserves from the government," Pinera said in a speech announcing the proposal. Trade unions in Chile have said at least 600,000 technical professionals are needed in fields ranging from construction to mining in the world's top copper producer. Pinera's announcement comes four days before university students have promised to take to Santiago's streets to protest a recent decision by the country's constitutional court overturning a law that had prohibited for-profit companies from controlling universities. Pinera addressed the increasing tensions in his speech. "I want to take advantage of this opportunity to make clear that free higher education is here to stay; there will be no profiteering from higher education," he said. During Pinera's first administration between 2010 and 2014, hundreds of thousands of students demonstrated on the streets of Santiago to demand universal access to free higher education. Democratic Republic of Congo plans to set up a special fund to manage all aid donations under a new draft law, its cabinet said on Tuesday, a week after it failed to show up at an international donors conference. The United Nations is seeking $2.2 billion to support about 13 million people in Congo this year caught up in a litany of humanitarian crises caused by ethnic and militia conflicts that conjure some of the worst memories of the 1998-2003 civil war. At a conference last week international donors pledged $528 million towards that effort, including bringing food to 2.2 million children with severe acute malnutrition that makes them susceptible to death from disease. In a statement, Congo's cabinet said its new Humanitarian Fund Management Agency would "manage, monitor and control humanitarian funds and work to channel all financial flows affecting the humanitarian sector" in the country. It was not clear how the new fund would work, whether international donors would agree to send money into an account run by the Kinshasa government, and whether the new fund would jeopardise funding already agreed under previous rules. A U.N. spokesman said it was waiting for "further clarity" from the Congolese government before commenting. Still, the decision to change the way it accepts funds came at a delicate time for the Central African copper producer. President Joseph Kabila's refusal to step down from power when his mandate ran out in 2016 has led to a breakdown in state authority in much of the remote east of Congo, stoking age-old conflicts that have forced 4.3 million people from their homes. The decision also coincides with a cooling in Congo's international relations capped by Kabila's decision not to attend the U.N. pledging conference in Geneva last week. Kinshasa has denied there is a humanitarian crisis in the giant central African country, and accused foreign powers of stigmatizing the country and scaring away investment. Women believed to have links to the Islamic State militant group suffer "harrowing" sexual exploitation and discrimination in Iraq's refugee camps, a leading rights group said on Tuesday. Female-led households are abused, mistreated and deprived of food and health care but those seen as having ties to the militants are particularly targeted, Amnesty International said in a report. Islamic State swept through Iraq in 2014, enforcing a strict form of Islam and displacing more than 2 million people from their homes. The Amnesty report focused on camps in the Nineveh and Salahuddin provinces in Iraq's north, regions that had been under militant control until taken back by U.S.-led forces. Sexual mistreatment was occurring in each of the eight camps visited, Amnesty said. "Women who are perceived to have ties to I.S. are facing such a high degree of discrimination and very serious human rights violations," Nicolette Waldman, Iraq researcher for Amnesty, told the Thomson Reuters Foundation. "What was shocking to me was the sexual violence. We found it to be widespread. The way that these women were being exploited ... was just harrowing," she said. One woman was quoted in the report saying: "We cannot be alone outside the camp, it's not safe for us. But really it's the same inside the camp. Nowhere is safe." Reports of abuse inside and outside such camps were confirmed to the Foundation by several rights organizations working in Iraq. Waldman said those targeting women included security forces protecting the camps and members of militia groups. "They're abusing their power," she said. Representatives for the Iraqi government did not immediately respond to a request for comment. Women whose husbands or fathers have been killed or gone missing are vulnerable to forced marriages, destitution and violence, aid workers say. Many are at added risk if they are illiterate and do not know how to obtain identity documents for access to government help or food aid. "After what they've gone through, their vulnerability makes them victims of human exploitation once again," Karl Schembri, Middle East regional media adviser for the Norwegian Refugee Council, told the Foundation. Amnesty warned the situation was likely to get worse due to funding shortfalls for the country's humanitarian crisis. Iraqi officials say $88 billion is needed for reconstruction alone, significantly more than what has been pledged or given by international donors. Turkey is regressing in several areas, says a European Commission annual report in the group's harshest criticism yet of Ankara's efforts to join the European Union. The report also ruled out any further progress in Turkey's accession in the current situation. "I am afraid the country continues to make huge strides away from the EU," said European Commissioner for Enlargement Johannes Hahn at a news conference. "The commission repeatedly called on Turkey to reverse this trend as a matter of priority and make very clear recommendation on this in today's report." The commission issues an annual progress report on all EU applicants from fields covering human rights to the economy. This year's findings are widely considered among the most critical in Ankara's decades-long membership bid, with particular criticism in the areas of justice, public administrative reform, fundamental rights and freedom of expression. Turkey has been under emergency rule since a 2016 failed coup. Tens of thousands of people have been arrested in a resulting crackdown, along with hundreds of thousands of others being fired from their jobs. On Thursday, parliament is expected to extend emergency rule for three months, with the government arguing the country still faces a threat by conspirators. The commission strongly criticized the crackdown, calling for "an end to the state of emergency, without any delay." The report ruled out any further progress in Ankara's membership bid, saying, "Under the current circumstances, it's unthinkable to open up new [accession] chapters." To achieve membership, any applicant country has to complete 38 chapters. Ankara has completed only one chapter, with several European countries already blocking further progress. "These [EU report] words are probably the harshest we've ever seen in the past decades," said political scientist Cengiz Aktar. "Turkey is now, for the EU, a third country, not a membership candidate. It's not a country that negotiates; the progress report talks mainly more about regrets rather than progress." While Ankara's membership bid remains frozen, the report acknowledged Turkey's economic prowess, describing it as "much advanced" and a "functioning market economy." Turkey has a customs union with the European Union and its 80 million people are an important market for European companies. Turkey's hosting of refugees, mainly from the Syrian civil war, was also praised, with the commission describing "outstanding efforts" to provide for the four million refugees in the country. Since Ankara signed an agreement with the European Union, Turkey is acting as a gatekeeper to stem the flow of refugees into Europe. Despite the critical report, relations are predicted to continue. "Turkey is a key, strategic neighbor and we will continue our cooperation," said EU enlargement commissioner Hahn. "The relationship with the EU will continue as now through ad hoc deals," said Aktar. "Economically, Turkey is important to the European Union, the energy connection, the lucrative contracts, tenders," said political analyst Atilla Yesilada of Global Source Partners. But he said Turkey now poses a dilemma for Europe. He said in the EU, there are "pragmatists" who don't care about human rights. "They want accession [membership process] to end and start a new partnership purely based on economic deals. "And obviously," he continued, "there are the liberals who want Turkey to improve and not to have any relationship whatsoever until Turkey improves. But at this point, the EU is not in a united position to make an offer to Turkey and they are going to let things reside and will adopt the path of least resistance, which means not to give anything to Turkey but at the same time not upsetting it." Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan officially maintains that Turkey is committed to EU membership and is pressing Brussels for further progress in the country's accession aspirations. Experts, however, point out that Ankara has given little indication it is prepared to address Brussels' criticisms over human rights, leaving little expectation of progress and a growing belief Ankara's bid is all but dead. But a rupture in Turkey-EU relations is unlikely even as Turkey faces increasing isolation from its traditional Western allies and ongoing turmoil in Syria. "Turkish foreign policy is in a bit of trouble right now; it's almost exclusively concentrated on Syria and the future of Syria," said international relations expert Soli Ozel of Istanbul's Kadir Has University. He said Ankara probably "will want to reduce the tensions with Europe because "Syria takes up all the energy; it involves relations with Russia, relations with Iran, relations with the United States." Some of Europe's biggest venture capital firms are buying into sales of new virtual coins or asking their investors to give them the freedom to do so, in a sign of mainstream investor backing for the booming but controversial crowd-funding tool. Germany's HV Holtzbrinck Ventures, which has more than 1 billion euros ($1.23 billion) under management, is talking to its investors about changing the terms of its next fund so it can buy tokens directly, Jan Miczaika, a partner at the firm, told Reuters. Lakestar, the Zurich-based firm run by Klaus Hommels, has made at least four investments in crypto and blockchain-related businesses since early 2017, among them ShapeShift, an exchange, and Blockchain, a wallet provider, and it is preparing to invest in a combination of coin and equity stakes in more. Smaller and newer funds like BlueYard Capital and Fabric Ventures are focusing specifically on investments around blockchain a distributed ledger technology that can remove the need for centralizing institutions often by buying virtual coins. Venture capitalists usually take equity stakes in start-ups, gaining a say in how the company is run and legal and governance certainties over their investments. Buying into initial coin offerings (ICOs), as the sale of digital tokens is known, can be far more risky. They offer little more than a promise the tokens will be worth more in future. But with hundreds of start-ups ICOs last year raised $6.3 billion seeking to raise capital for new projects, investors say that to gain access to cutting-edge technology they need the flexibility to compete. "It's the internet in the early 1990s, you have to experiment," said Nicolas Brand, a partner at Lakestar. "I have to find the best way of backing the best entrepreneurs and we need to be agile in how we invest." Regulators have raised serious questions about the transparency of ICOs and the risks of scams, although authorities in countries from Switzerland to France have disclosed plans to attract new launches. Supporters say blockchain will disrupt industries from finance to logistics and that ICOs are a novel way of crowd-funding. Tokens are the route to make money. They embody the idea that consumers will need to own and use them to buy services, from playing computer games to online shopping. When demand for those products spreads, the token prices will rise, creating value for earlier owners like venture capitalists. "The [blockchain] technology is very exciting. Ninety-five percent of the tokens will go to zero. On the other hand, the other 5 percent are very interesting and could go on to revolutioniZe the market," said Miczaika at HV Holtzbrinck. Equity to ICO Unlike some big U.S. funds, most big European venture capitalists are avoiding the world's biggest ICO, by messaging app Telegram, people familiar with the funds say, citing concerns about the amount a reported $1.7 billion it has raised. Broader worries about the quality of teams looking to cash in on ICOs are common, and some funds say that far from being a threat to the venture capital model, most ICOs are a fad. Those that survive will find themselves wanting the support and hand-holding that conventional venture investment offers. "We need to get our heads around ICOs, but I don't see it as a threat. I don't think I've missed a company which I wish I'd invested in but couldn't because it did an ICO," said Suranga Chandratillake, partner at London-based Balderton Capital. To date, venture activity has focused on crypto companies like HV Holtzbrinck's investment in ICO platform Upvest or Point Nine Capital's stake in peer-to-peer bitcoin lender Bitbond, which tapped into the crypto-trading craze and followed on from a series of investments by well-known U.S. venture funds. Investors said the next round of activity would target projects offering the building blocks for blockchain's development, such as software development networks. They will benefit if the largely unproven technology matures. Buying into the coins is necessary for aligning themselves to such projects, they argue. "We came to the conclusion that if we really want to do decentralized tokens we have to be a part of it," said Ciaran O'Leary, who co-founded Berlin-based BlueYard and invested in the 2017 ICO by data storage network Filecoin, which was worth an estimated $200 million. Risks ICOs also present major governance and legal concerns, including how to store coins safely after several large hacks. To keep their investments safe, venture firms are looking at storing coins offline or in wallets where no transaction can take place without the agreement of multiple individuals. Max Mersch, a partner at Fabric Ventures, said his firm had also introduced multi-year lock-ups prohibiting quick dumping of coins, to encourage longer-term investment horizons and so partners had time to shape governance. Risks aside, venture capitalists say the potential impact of tokens is too hard to ignore. "A token is a very powerful innovation and in the best token projects, the fund-raising is actually a byproduct," said Lakestar's Brand said. "The token is about activating network effects on steroids," he said, predicting they would have the power to take on "rival monoliths like Facebook". Hungarian Prime Minister Viktor Orban's office said on Monday an "irresponsible" migration policy on the part of the European Union had stoked religious intolerance in western Europe that was threatening Jews there. His office issued a statement a week after Orban was re-elected by a landslide to a third straight term with a fierce anti-immigrant campaign that vilified Hungarian-born, Jewish-American tycoon George Soros for promoting liberal open-door values in Hungary and elsewhere in central and eastern Europe. The right-wing nationalist premier has presented himself as the savior of Hungary's sovereignty and Christian values against what he calls an "invasion" of Muslim migrants. His office used the occasion of Hungary's Holocaust Remembrance Day to reiterate its strong criticism of EU migration policies. "There is only one way to counter worryingly strengthening anti-Semitic phenomema...Europe must return to its values stemming from Judaeo-Christian traditions," Orban's office said. "The religious intolerance that threatens Europe - which is a direct consequence of the irresponsible migration policy of Brussels - has translated into unprecedented violence in the western half of the continent," it said, alluding to a number of deadly Islamist militant attacks since 2015. Orban has repeatedly pledged zero tolerance of anti-Semitism. But some comments he made last year rattled Hungarian Jews, including praise for Miklos Horthy, Hungary's wartime Nazi-allied leader who only suspended deportations of Jews in 1944 after half a million had been sent to the gas chambers. Orban has also played up the idea that "external forces and international powers" like the EU, which Hungary joined in 2004, and the United Nations want to meddle in internal Hungarian affairs and force the country to accept migrants. He has said his government's policy of rejecting migrants also serves the interests of European Jewish communities. However, Orban has drawn strong western EU and U.S. criticism for drafting so-called "Stop Soros" legislation that would slap a 25 percent tax on foreign donations to NGOs that the government says back migration in Hungary. Orban told state radio last month activists were being paid by Soros to "transform Hungary into an immigrant country." Soros has rejected the campaign against him as "distortions and lies" meant to create a false external enemy to distract Hungarians. Vitaly Bespalov, a 23-year-old journalism school graduate, had no idea what to expect when he arrived at a nondescript four-story business center in St. Petersburg to interview for a job. Everything about the building at Savushkina 55 seemed odd. Security was heavy and the windows were tinted. Guards dressed in camouflage demanded his passport and his home address before letting him into the building. And, as he negotiated his entry, Bespalov noticed a woman enter the lobby in a rage. "She was yelling something about how she refused to be part of this," says Bespalov. Everything about the place was strange. The year was 2014 and, as Bespalov was to learn, the building was the home of the Internet Research Agency - the company that would later be indicted by special counsel Robert Mueller on charges of conspiring to tamper in the 2016 U.S. presidential campaign. At that time, however, the agency was more concerned with the aftermath of another election - this time at home. In December 2011, tens of thousands of Russians took to the streets and social media, alleging the Kremlin had carried out mass fraud in the countrys parliamentary elections. As Russians shared evidence of ballot stuffing and called others to join the protests, state media stayed silent. The difference in realities was glaring. The Kremlin decided they needed to make the online world and state television tell the same story, says Bespalov, who described his experiences working at the notorious troll factory to VOA. The aspiring journalist had moved from his native Siberia earlier to St. Petersburg on the promise of a job with a local news website. But the job fell through. As a newcomer to St. Petersburg, Bespalov sent out resume after resume, looking for anything that involved editing or reporting. The rejections piled up until one day the phone rang. He was invited for an interview. Even better: The job paid double the going rate for writing gigs. I had no idea who it was, Bespalov says. They just called and told me to show up tomorrow at this address - Savushkina 55. And I didnt understand what the job was or what the company was, but I said, Sure, why not? Having negotiated his way through the heavy security, he was shown into an interview with a woman named Anna. He took a writing test and showed his writing samples - sympathetic takes on Russias opposition movement, LGBT rights, and the feminist art collective Pussy Riot. From those articles alone, my political views were obvious. I still dont understand why they took me, he says. But Anna came back with a smile and said, Well, we dont cover the kind of stories you do, but you know how to write. He got the job. Inside the troll factory On his first day, Bespalov was assigned to cover the war in eastern Ukraine. Sort of. He was told to rewrite articles from other websites for a handful of fake Ukrainian news sites. His task: to change the text in order to give articles the appearance of originality and a distinctly pro-Russian slant. Wed switch the word annexation of Crimea for reunification, or call the government in Kyiv a fascist junta while writing favorably about the separatist rebels in eastern Ukraine, he says. If there had been mere doubts before, Bespalov now knew for sure: He was in the epicenter of a propaganda machine. With the realization came a dilemma, he says. I could either leave right away, so as not to ruin my reputation as a journalist, he says. Or, I thought, I can stay and find out more and publish a big story about it somewhere. Bespalov went undercover. A mole among trolls. He paints a gloomy picture of troll life inside Savushkina 55. Teams worked eight- to 12-hour shifts around the clock, seven days a week. Department heads monitored their work. Surveillance cameras were everywhere. Conversation among employees was discouraged. In quick chats during cigarette breaks, Bespalov came to the conclusion that most trolls cared or thought little about what they were doing. I know people whove been there for three years and never thought once what it was all about. They were there for the money, he says. Bespalov sketches out a highly structured operation, noting a fake news division on one floor, and bloggers and social media commentators on another. Also within the structure - a graphics department - which seemingly built an endless number of picture memes called "demotivators" for everyone to use. Bespalov concludes the point of all this was to complete what he calls a circle of lies - a feedback loop where troll postings reinforced Kremlin news on state media, pushing one central idea which he characterizes as Make Russia Great Again. In contrast to 2011, the internet and state media had now merged into one. The work was directed at the Russian audience, Bespalov says. Even the fake Ukrainian sites werent there to change minds in Ukraine. The point was to remove Russians doubts about the war in Ukraine and about ourselves because we have a weak economy, because we have few political freedoms. And because Russia cant launch a company like Apple or develop an innovative space program. But what we can do is create the appearance of a great country. Not make the country better, but create the impression we have. Exit strategy In the end, Bespalov spent three-and-a-half months at the Internet Research Agency. He says that once he felt hed learned all he could, he quit. And he did publish his investigation - anonymously, out of fear for his safety. In fact, Bespalov was threatened, he says, after others at the IRA began suspecting he was the source of the article. But eventually, the threats faded - in part, he suspects, because it turns out he wasnt the only journalist working undercover at the IRA. Other local media outlets had come out with investigations. By this point, everybody knew about it, he says. And the troll factory would have remained old news if not for its role in the 2016 U.S. presidential elections. Bespalov says he has little light to shed on that operation, other than that the agency had started advertising for English-speaking positions around the time he left. We see that all the journalists who have written from inside the troll factory worked there back in 2014 or 2015, he says. That tells me that the system has gotten more cautious. Accidental types like me no longer can get work there. Nonetheless, Bespalovs willingness to talk about his experiences have made him a go-to source for Western media covering the election scandal - and a punching bag for Russian state media. A recent NBC News report featuring Bespalov prompted Russias state media to run a piece disparaging his claims. The program also pilfered his social media accounts - mocking his alternative lifestyle, tattoos and liberal political views. Bespalov says his actions have been misrepresented on both sides of the Atlantic. In the U.S., they label me as Vitaly Bespalov, former troll, not a journalist, he says. And from the Russian side, Im a liar and traitor. A lot of my friends tell me, Enough already. No more interviews. Have you lost your mind? Do you want to get killed? Youve told your story and talking to more people about it wont change anything. Indeed, there were indications that the trolls recently geared up for another election - this time Russias 2018 presidential campaign. An account on Telegram by a user named Kremlebot, who claims to work in the Internet Research Agencys Russian division, wrote that employees were tasked with boosting voter turnout - a widely acknowledged goal of Kremlin spin doctors eager to lend a veneer of legitimacy to Vladimir Putins reelection bid. Requirements included sending selfies from polling stations to agency managers as well as playing up the competitiveness of the race. Could Kremlebot be housed in Savushkina 55? Unlikely. Today, a giant For Rent sign hangs in the windows of Bespalovs old office. The Internet Research Agency had already moved on and the trolls along with it. Syrian air defence shoots down missiles over Homs Syrian air defence shot down missiles over the central province of Homs, the state news agency said. Reuters, Amman : Syrian anti-aircraft defences shot down missiles fired at the Syrian air base of Shayrat in Homs province late on Monday and another base northeast of the capital, Damascus, Syria's state television and pro-Iranian Hezbollah media said. State television showed pictures of a missile that was shot in the air above the air base only days after a U.S., British and French attack on Syrian targets in retaliation for a suspected chemical attack on the city of Douma on the outskirts of Damascus. State television did not mention three missiles that were fired at Dumair military airport, northeast of Damascus, that pro-Iranian Hezbollah's media service reported were intercepted by Syrian air defences. Opposition sources say Dumair airport is a major air base used in a large-scale military campaign waged by the Syrian army with Russian firepower that regained eastern Ghouta, a rebel enclave on the outskirts of Damascus. A Pentagon spokesman said there was no U.S. military activity in that area at this time. Asked about the missile attack, an Israeli military spokesman said: "We don't comment on such reports." Shayrat air base was targeted last year in a U.S. cruise missile attack in response to a chemical attack that killed at least 70 people, including children, on the rebel-held town of Khan Sheikhoun. Israel has struck Syrian army locations many times in the course of the conflict, hitting convoys and bases of Iranian-backed militias that fight alongside Syrian President Bashar al- Assad's forces. Israel has long said Iran was expanding its influence in a belt of territory that stretches from the Iraqi border to the Lebanese border, where Israel says Iran supplies Hezbollah with arms. Hezbollah and other Iranian-backed militias have a large military presence in Syria and are well entrenched in central and eastern areas near the Iraqi border. Deputy Hezbollah leader Sheikh Naim Qassem told pro-Syrian government television channel al Maydeen he expected a reaction to the death of at least seven Iranian military personnel during a missile strike earlier this month on the T-4 airfield near Homs, which Iran blamed on Israel "The deliberate Israeli slaying of Iranians in the T4 base will have a response but we don't know its nature or its details," Qassem said in the television interview. The heavily armed and Tehran-backed Shi'ite movement has been a vital military ally of President Bashar al-Assad in the seven-year-old Syrian war. Hezbollah, which last fought a major war with Israel in 2006, has however said it would not open a new front against its arch-foe from Lebanon. Qassem said the powerful militia did not fight in all the main battles in Syria but was present in any area that was needed. He did not elaborate. Islamic State militants executed a 12-year-old boy on charges of helping local police in northern Afghanistan, according to a senior Afghan government official who spoke to VOA. The boy was accused of supplying food and water to an Afghan local police check post in northern Jawzjan province. The kid was apparently helping his brother-in-law, who is a member of (the) Afghan local police, fighting against militants in Kota-e-Osti district, Lutfullah Azizi, Jawzjan province governor, told VOA. It is not the first time that IS militants are committing atrocities against civilians. They have previously killed women in summary executions. IS has been active in its stronghold of eastern Afghanistans Nangarhar province, where it first emerged in 2015. Over the years, the group has expanded its presence to pockets of the north as well, particularly in Jawzjan province. Recruiting in Jawzjan Provincial officials told VOA that the group has been recruiting in northern Jawzjan. IS group has been recruiting men and women in Qosh Tipa and Darzab districts. They are training women to fight, Babar Eshchi Jawzjan, provincial council chief, told VOA. Joint Afghan and U.S. special forces operations are targeting IS militants in the northern Jawzjan and eastern Nangarhar provinces. In April 2017, more than 20 militants, including Qari Hikmatullah, an Uzbek national and IS-K commander in northern Afghanistan, were killed in Jawzjan, according to U.S. officials. In Nangarhar, at least 19 IS members were reportedly killed by Afghan special forces Monday night in the Dara Noor, Bati Koot, Deh Bala, Roudat and Heska Mena districts, according to the Bakhtar News Agency, Afghanistan's official news agency. Verge of defeat Gen. John Nicholson, commander of the NATO Resolute Support Mission in Kabul, said in a statement issued on Saturday that IS is on the verge of defeat in northern Afghanistan because of the ongoing joint Afghan and U.S operations against the terror group. The recent Afghan and U.S. special operations raid will lead to the tactical defeat of IS-K in northern Afghanistan, Nicholson said. Afghan and U.S. forces have killed 90 IS fighters this year, the majority of them in the Darzab district of northern Jawzjan province, a U.S. military statement said. Mirwais Bezhan contributed to this report from northern Afghanistan. TEL AVIV - Israel is making a new effort to engage the people of Iran, as the two regional rivals trade increasingly tough rhetoric and threaten to attack the other in self-defense. Under that Israeli initiative, the nation's government-funded broadcaster re-launched Farsi-language radio programming for Iran in January after an eight-month hiatus. 43-year-old Netanel Toobian, a native of the Iranian city of Isfahan, is the radio shows new Israeli director and also serves as a host. He migrated to Israel with his family 30 years ago, escaping rising anti-Semitism in post-Islamic Revolution Iran. Three decades later, tensions between Iran and Israel have been increasing. Iranian Supreme Leader Ayatollah Ali Khameneis website posted a video of him speaking to Syrian visitors on March 1 about his 2015 prediction that Israel, or the Zionist regime as he calls it, will disappear in 25 years. I said that you [Israel] will not see the next 25 years. By Allahs favor, that day will come, Khamenei said. Five days later, Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu told American pro-Israel group AIPAC in Washington that he is determined to stop Iran from becoming nuclear-armed, despite Tehrans denials that it seeks such a capability. Last week, we read in the Book of Esther about an earlier Persian attempt to exterminate our people, Netanyahu said. They failed then, they will fail now. The Israeli prime minister also struck a conciliatory tone toward the Iranian people, sympathizing with what he called their suffering, hopes and courage in advocating for freedom from Islamist rule. We stand with those in Iran who stand for freedom, he said. Israels renewed Farsi radio programming is another element of its public outreach toward Iranians. Overseeing that programming is the Israeli Public Broadcasting Corporation, also known as Kan. It began operating last May as part of a government reform of state-funded broadcasting. Israel had been producing Farsi-language radio shows for decades, but they went off the air when the former Israel Broadcasting Authority closed, just before Kans debut. The previous Farsi program director, Iranian-born journalist and commentator Menashe Amir, had served as a Voice of Israel Persian broadcaster for 57 years. In January, he began directing and hosting his own Farsi news show from his home in the Israeli West Bank settlement of Har Adar. In a recent interview with VOA Persian at Kans new Tel Aviv studios, Toobian said he has tried to learn from Amirs experiences, while also experimenting with a fresh approach to Farsi programming. "Our target audience is the younger generation of Israelis, Iranians anyone who speaks Persian and is interested in this marvelous, rich and historic culture, Toobian said. (For them,) we are playing a younger kind of music and raising more topics that younger people are interested in listening to, or being involved in. Since January, Kan has been broadcasting that content to Iranians live via satellite and through a live stream on its Farsi web page. It also has been offering on-demand access to the Farsi shows through an online archive. Irans government traditionally has tried to prevent its people from accessing foreign news programming that it deems hostile toward its Islamist system. Toobian appeared unfazed. Despite the limitations that the regime imposes, especially on the internet, and on [mobile] applications that have been blocked or limited in one way or the other, the Iranian people are smarter than that. They can bypass all these limitations either by VPN or other means. If they want, I think they can listen to us. Toobian said he and his team of three freelancers plan to interact more with Iranians by eventually taking calls from listeners and launching a new Facebook page to complement the team's Twitter profile. The Israeli broadcaster said his goal is to send Iran a message that it has little reason to be Israels rival, as the two nations do not share a border or compete for the same natural resources. In the decades prior to its 1979 Islamic Revolution, Tehran had a cooperative relationship with Israel, selling oil to the Jewish state in return for Israeli assistance in developing Irans agriculture and armed forces. Our main purpose, for me personally and for the whole Persian section of Kan, is to build a bridge and to renew this historic friendship, Toobian said. This report was produced in collaboration with VOA's Persian Service. Israel is making a new effort to engage the people of Iran, as the two regional rivals trade increasingly tough rhetoric and threaten to attack the other in self-defense. Under the Israeli initiative, the nation's government-funded broadcaster recently re-launched radio programs in Farsi with a new host. VOAs Michael Lipin went to the host's Tel Aviv studio to find how he is trying to connect with a young Iranian audience. Each year, thousands of African migrants depart Libya in rickety boats and risk their lives seeking better opportunities in Europe. Many other migrants remain in the North African country, drawn by opportunities but also subjected to mistreatment at the hands of smugglers and traffickers. Libya has long-attracted migrants in search of better lives. But unresolved security challenges, a weakened infrastructure and a depreciating currency have led to harsh conditions and stark choices for many migrants who find themselves living there. Othman Belbeisi is the chief of mission in Libya for the International Organization for Migration (IOM), an intergovernmental group that works to make migration safer. In an interview with VOA, Belbeisi said that Libya has always been both a destination and transit country for migrants, but poor governance, an ailing infrastructure and economic challenges have restricted migrants options and bred lawlessness. Thats resulted in what Belbeisi calls modern-time slavery, in which people are held against their will and forced into life-threatening situations. Libya hosts about 700,000 migrants from 35 countries, he said. Some have just arrived, but many others have lived in the country for years. They come with different expectations. Some plan to work. Others intend to stay only briefly, before realizing they dont have the means to move on. Many are from West Africa, and most lack valid travel documents. Need for security In addition to Libyas migrant population, about 165,000 Libyans have been internally displaced. Both groups are especially vulnerable to challenges faced by the entire society, including an unreliable telecommunications network and a health care system in disarray. More investment and development are needed to rebuild Libyas infrastructure, but improved security must come first, Belbeisi said. Everything else can be achieved once you have security, he said. Without security, we will continue to be challenged if we want to achieve anything. In the absence of security, smuggling and trafficking networks have proliferated and wield considerable power. At smuggling hubs, migrants are held captive and experience inhumane conditions. Yet migrants are often the ones punished. Unfortunately, we see the migrants being criminalized and detained. And the smugglers many of them are free, Belbeisi said. Searching for something better In Libya, the IOM is most concerned with an increasing number of deaths, both in the desert and at sea. Theres been an uptick in migration flows to Europe across the Mediterranean for the past three years, although the numbers have tapered off recently. Those who take boats across the Mediterranean do so as a last resort, Belbeisi said. There are no guarantees of survival, nor of success in Europe. But when staying put no longer offers any benefits, people move forward. Most of the migrants who are leaving have nothing, so they are looking for anything by taking the boats, Belbeisi said. Voluntary return From the IOMs perspective, its important to provide information about risks but also to allow migrants to make personal decisions. One initiative the IOM uses to provide options to migrants facing difficult choices is a voluntary return program. Through this program, migrants who wish to return home can receive assistance in leaving Libya, and participate in vocational training and reintegration programs upon returning home. The IOM handles voluntary returns on a case-by-case basis and treats the program not as an endorsement to return home but rather as an option for those who want it. Solutions To understand the challenges migrants face, Belbeisi advocates a comprehensive approach that rejects oversimplified labels like economic migrants in favor of a more nuanced understanding of how and why people leave their homes to rebuild their lives. For Belbeisi, that means focusing on labor migration along with family reunification. The key to improving the situation for migrants in Libya is to create regular migration channels, according to Belbeisi. That will require a coordinated effort from many nations. Libya can contribute to the solution, but Libya cannot take responsibility alone. This is a global responsibility, he said. More than 100 parts for U.S. space agency NASA's deep-space capsule Orion will be made by 3-D printers, using technology that experts say will eventually become key to efforts to send humans to Mars. U.S. defense contractor Lockheed Martin, 3-D printing specialist Stratasys, and engineering firm PADT have developed the parts using new materials that can withstand the extreme temperatures and chemical exposure of deep-space missions, Stratasys said Tuesday. "In space, for instance, materials will build up a charge. If that was to shock the electronics on a space craft, there could be significant damage," Scott Sevcik, Vice President Manufacturing Solutions at Stratasys told Reuters. 3-D printing, or additive manufacturing, has been used for making prototypes across a range of industries for many years, but is being increasingly eyed for scale production. The technology can help make light-weight parts made of plastics more quickly and cheaply than traditional assembly lines that require major investments into equipment. "But even more significant is that we have more freedom with the design ... parts can look more organic, more skeletal," Sevcik said. Stratasys' partner Lockheed Martin said the use of 3-D printing on the Orion project would also pay off at other parts of its business. "We look to apply benefits across our programs missile defense, satellites, planetary probes, especially as we create more and more common products," said Brian Kaplun, additive manufacturing manager at Lockheed Martin Space. Orion is part of NASA's follow-up program to the now-retired space shuttles that will allow astronauts to travel beyond the International Space Station, which flies about 260 miles (420 km) above Earth. The agency's European counterpart, ESA, has suggested that moon rock and Mars dust could be used to 3-D print structures and tools, which could significantly reduce the cost of future space missions because less material would need to be brought along from Earth. More than 200 South Sudanese child soldiers were freed Tuesday at a ceremony in Bakiwiri, near the city of Yambio. Forty children dressed in military or police uniforms marched in a symbolic military parade, then laid down their weapons and removed their fatigues, as instructed by a commanding officer. They replaced their uniforms with U.N. Mission in South Sudan-issued T-shirts emblazoned with the hashtag, "Children are not Soldiers." In war-ravaged South Sudan, that slogan remains a goal, not a reality. The U.N. Children's Fund estimates that some 19,000 South Sudanese children are still being held by armed groups across the country. Some of the children released Tuesday were abducted by the rebel South Sudan Liberation Movement, or SSLM. Others were kidnapped by SPLM (Sudan People's Liberation Movement) In Opposition rebels and were forced into military service. A 13-year-old boy, speaking under an alias, "Michael," told VOA's South Sudan in Focus he was abducted more than four years ago. "I was abducted by five men who showed up while I was out fetching water," he said. "They told me not to run or scream. And then they took me with them. The men belonged to the SSLM." During his four years of captivity, Michael said he was forced to fetch and carry water long distances, collect firewood, and cook for the rebels. He trained on wooden rifles because he was too small to carry a real gun. He was released when the SSLM rebels signed a peace deal with the government. Michael said he was integrated into the South Sudan army earlier this year. Fifteen-year-old Asunta, who is identified by her first name only to protect her identity, was also abducted by SSLM rebels. Speaking in her native Zande, Asunta said she was taken in late 2015 during an attack by rebels on her community. "I was going to the farm with my father when the rebels attacked. My father ran and I was captured and taken by the rebels of the SSLM," said Asunta. Asunta said she and other kidnapped girls were raped repeatedly by rebel commanders for months. "In the first week I and three other girls were forced to fetch water and cook for the rebels. Then after that we were forced to be the wives of a rebel commander there," she said. Matthew DeCristifano, a child protection officer with UNICEF, said the U.N. children's agency will re-screen and assess some of the children who are being released "to determine if they have any immediate and urgent needs such as requiring care arrangements or interim care. "All the children who are screened will be assigned social workers who are going to follow up and monitor those children for the next six to 12 months depending on their individual needs," said DeCristifano. He said the children will also receive trauma counseling and psycho-social support to help them process what they have been through. Tuesday's event marks the second large release of child soldiers by the warring parties. The first took place in Yambio in early February, when more than 300 children were either returned to their families or released to UNICEF-supported care centers. Niger's military has detained a suspect who it believes could be the militant leader who was being pursued when an ambush left four American soldiers dead in October, the American ambassador said Tuesday. U.S. Ambassador Eric P. Whitaker told The Associated Press he does not know the identity of the detained suspect but that the head of Niger's special forces is hopeful it's a known extremist leader. At the time of the October ambush that also left five Nigeriens dead, U.S. forces and their counterparts from the Niger military were pursuing Doundou Chefou, a militant suspected of being involved in the kidnapping of an American aid worker. Authorities on Tuesday were awaiting identification of whether the man in custody is Chefou. "Detentions by Nigerien forces are ongoing," Whitaker said. A U.S. investigation into the October ambush, which was claimed by fighters linked to the so-called Islamic State group, has not yet been released. "Regrettably, they were ambushed by ISIS Greater Sahara forces," said Whitaker. U.S. officials familiar with the military investigation into the Niger ambush said last month that it concluded the team didn't get required senior command approval for their risky mission to capture Chefou. As a result, commanders couldn't accurately assess the mission's risk, according to the officials who spoke on condition of anonymity to discuss the results of the not-yet-released investigation. The investigation finds no single point of failure leading to the attack, which occurred after the soldiers learned Chefou had left the area. It also draws no conclusion about whether villagers in Tongo Tongo, where the U.S. team stopped for water and supplies, alerted IS militants to American forces in the area. Still, questions remain about whether higher-level commanders - if given the chance - would have approved the mission, or provided additional resources for it. Before October, there had not been any major incursion like that into Niger before, said the commander of Special Operations Command Africa, Maj. Gen. Marcus Hicks, who warned that the extremist threat has been marching south in the Sahel at an unprecedented level. Threats in the region include al-Qaida-linked fighters in Mali and Burkina Faso, IS group-affiliated fighters in Niger, Mali and Nigeria and the Nigeria-based Boko Haram. All take advantage of the vast region's widespread poverty and poorly equipped security forces. U.S. special operations forces have been advising local troops on the continent for years, just under 1,000 across Africa. Even before the October attack, the U.S. began to shift away from assisting tactical units on the front lines toward training, advising and assisting farther up the chain of command at the battalion level, Hicks said. Nigerian police fired bullets and tear gas to disperse Shi'ite Muslim protesters marching for their leader's freedom in the capital on Monday, and organizers said at least one demonstrator was killed and several were wounded by gunfire. Islamic Movement of Nigeria (IMN) leader Ibrahim Zakzaky has been jailed since December 2015, when security forces killed hundreds of members in a crackdown on a group estimated to have 3 million followers. The violent repression of the group and the detention of its leader have drawn accusations that President Muhammadu Buhari's government is abusing human rights. The IMN, which has held regular peaceful protests in Abuja in recent months, says Zakzaky must be freed after a court ruled his detention without charge illegal. The crackdown has sparked fears that IMN could become radicalized, in much the same way the Sunni Muslim militant group Boko Haram turned into a violent insurgency in 2009 after police killed its leader. "As we started protesting, they started shooting tear gas and using water cannons," Abdullahi Muhammad, an IMN youth leader, told Reuters by phone. "We refused to disperse and they used bullets as well, and they shot so many people." "They want to push us to violence but they couldn't, so that is why they are using live ammunition, thinking that killing will stop us. No amount of killing will stop us," he added. Muhammad said he witnessed police dragging bullet-hit protesters into a van and sitting on them, adding that he did not know if they were dead or alive. At least eight other IMN members were hit by bullets and were now receiving treatment, Muhammad told Reuters. An IMN statement said at least one protester was killed. Police said in a statement the protesters had injured 22 officers, and they arrested 115 demonstrators. The IMN statement said about 230 members were arrested. Nearly all of the Muslims that make up around half of Nigeria's population are Sunnis. The IMN was founded in the 1980s after the revolution in mainly Shi'ite Iran in 1979, which inspired the group's founders. A judicial inquiry after the December 2015 clashes concluded that the military had killed 347 IMN members in Zakzaky's home base, the city of Zaria. Soldiers buried the bodies in mass graves. The group calls the incident "the Zaria massacre." A Reuters journalist near the scene of Monday's demonstration heard gunshots ring out and was stung by tear gas in the air. Videos uploaded on social media showed wreaths of the gas enveloping Abuja's streets in the upmarket Maitama district, near the landmark Transcorp Hilton hotel. Other videos showed protesters pelting an armored police vehicle with rocks before it sped away, and people fleeing the area. "The only thing that will stop these protests is when the government frees our leader," said Muhammad. Police fired tear gas at Shi'ite Muslim protesters Tuesday in the Nigerian capital of Abuja during a second day of clashes with demonstrators who are demanding the release of their religious leader. Shi'ite leader Ibrahim Zakzaky has been imprisoned without being charged since December 2015. Scores of protesters were arrested Tuesday by armed police, according to Deji Adeyanju of Concerned Nigerians, a civil society organization that is participating in the protests. "The more they attack, the more [we] come out," Adeyanju said. Police did not immediately comment on Tuesday's protests. Zakzaky, the leader of the Islamic Movement of Nigeria (IMN), has been in government custody since troops and his supporters clashed in the city of Zaria in December 2015. He remains in jail despite court orders that he be released. The IMN and the government have been in conflict for years as the IMN seeks to encourage a revolution in northern Nigeria, where Sunni Muslims are the majority. Zakzaky's followers and police also clashed Monday in the capital, resulting in the arrests of at least 115 people. NRBs can help sustain momentum of dev Bangladesh Ambassador to the Netherlands Sheikh Mohammed Belal has urged expatriate Bangladesh community to act as a networker and to represent cultural heritage of Bangladesh in their destination country. He also urged the Non-Resident Bangladeshis (NRBs) to disseminate knowledge and experience gathered in the Netherlands for the development of beloved motherland - Bangladesh. Ambassador urged all to contribute towards realising the dream and aspiration of Father of the Nation Sheikh Mujibur Rahman while sharing of Bangladesh's graduation from LDC status to a middle income country. He was addressing a function celebrating Bangla New Year 1425, said a press release on Tuesday. To celebrate Bangla New Year more than 700 people gathered at the Bangladesh House in the Netherlands. Apart from large number of expatriate Bangladesh community, Deputy Mayor of the Hague Rabin Baldewsing, Foreign Ministry officials, Ambassadors of India, Sri Lanka, Malaysia, Indonesia, Vietnam, Yemen, Afghanistan, Mexico and South Africa, local media, leaders and members of Netherlands Awami-League were present in the celebration. The daylong programme began with the traditional Mangal Shovajatra (New Year Peace Rally). This year the theme of the shovajatra was 'Culture for Humanity', both expatriate Bangladesh community and foreign dignitaries participated in the rally with joy and festivity. NRBs from the Netherlands and other parts of Europe joined the celebration. 'Bangladesh House'- the residence of Bangladesh Ambassador was beautifully decorated with traditional motifs, alpona, balloons, festoons, posters, flowers to showcase the Bengali culture. Bangladesh origin adults and children were adorned in colourful traditional outfits to invigorate the Boishakhi flavour. U.S. President Donald Trump on Tuesday endorsed Seoul's efforts to try to negotiate with Pyongyang to end the Korean War. "They do have my blessing to end the war," Trump told reporters as he sat next to Japanese Prime Minister Shinzo Abe at the start of their meeting. "People don't realize the Korean War has not ended. It's going on right now. And they are discussing an end to the war." Active combat in the war ended in 1953 with an armistice signed by the United States (which commanded U.N. forces), North Korea and China. South Korea was not a signatory, and the two Koreas have never established diplomatic relations. Abe praised Trump for agreeing to hold a summit with North Korean leader Kim Jong Un, saying the move took "courage." Trump said the summit "will be taking place probably in early June or a little before that, assuming things go well. It's possible things won't go well, and we won't have the meetings, and we'll just continue to go along this very strong path that we've taken." High-level talks in progress Shortly afterward, in an extended bilateral meeting, Trump revealed that in preparation for the summit, "we have also started talking directly to North Korea. We have had direct talks at extremely high levels." The president said of the North Koreans that "they do respect us, we are respectful of them." Abe expressed relief that Trump pledged to address with Kim issues of concern to Tokyo, including abductions of Japanese citizens over the decades. He praised the U.S. president for maintaining a tough stance toward Pyongyang's nuclear weapons and ballistic missile programs. "Donald, you demonstrated your unwavering determination in addressing the challenge of North Korea," the Japanese prime minister told Trump. According to Larry Kudlow, assistant to the U.S. president for economic policy, "a lot of key issues are on the line" during the two days of talks between Trump and Abe. The discussions Tuesday at Trump's Mar-a-Lago resort off Florida's Atlantic coast are focusing on North Korea and then will turn to trade issues Wednesday, according to White House officials. "We're certainly going to be taking into account the full range of threats North Korea poses to regional security," said Matt Pottinger, senior director for Asian affairs on the National Security Council. Japanese officials also want to avoid having Trump try to link any trade negotiations to security matters, a separation strictly maintained during decades of post-World War II diplomacy between the former enemies. But Trump has frequently stated that military allies, such as Japan and South Korea, should pay more for American forces defending them. "I don't think Prime Minister Abe will leave Mar-a-Lago with anything other than a high degree of confidence in the alliance," predicted Pottinger. Steel, aluminum tariffs There is disappointment in Japan that despite the close relationship between Trump and Abe, the U.S. government has not exempted Tokyo from tariffs placed on steel and aluminum imports. "It will be under discussion," Kudlow told reporters. "It's a key point on the agenda." On a related topic,"the United States would probably like to see a free-trade agreement [with Japan] come out at some point," Kudlow told reporters early Tuesday afternoon, hours before Trump and Abe met. The economic adviser also said that "there's nothing at all concrete" yet on a possible U.S. return to what was the 12-nation Trans-Pacific Partnership. "It will come up in the summit, no question about it," Kudlow said in reference to the TPP, from which Trump withdrew shortly after becoming president. Kudlow, a conservative economic commentator who recently joined the Trump administration, also denied any linkage between TPP and China trade issues. But he said a global trade coalition of the willing needed to be formed as a bulwark against Beijing. China, added Kudlow, "really needs to play by the rules, or there will be consequences." One unscheduled item appeared to have been added to the Trump-Abe agenda: "We're going to sneak out tomorrow and play a round of golf if possible," Trump told reporters Tuesday afternoon. At least one protester was killed when a riot broke out during a protest Tuesday in Pakistani city of Karachi in response to the rape and murder of a six-year-old girl. Angry protestors accused police of negligence in the case. District police chief Aamir Farooqi said the girl disappeared Sunday and her body was found Monday in western Karachi. He said the first forensics report indicated the girl may have been raped before being strangled. More than a dozen people were reported injured during the protest, mostly police, who fired guns in the air and attacked protesters with batons.Two protesters sustained gunshot wounds, one of whom died. Farooqi said police are investigating whose bullet caused that death. The riots occurred months after another six-year-old was raped and killed in the city of Kasur, triggering nationwide outrage and debate over how Pakistan fails to protect its most vulnerable citizens. A Pakistani court imposed four death sentences on the man who was charged with the killing. With experts warning that heavy rains and cyclonic storms could devastate new Rohingya settlements in Bangladesh, several aid agencies have begun efforts to protect the refugees ahead of the impending monsoon season, which typically starts in May. The aid agencies are doing work on different levels to stave off the risks of flooding and landslides, including efforts to move many refugees away from the unsafe areas. We are trying to relocate as many families as possible and move them to safer ground. We are also advocating very strongly with the government of Bangladesh to find suitable new flatlands so that we can quickly move the families. The government has allocated additional land, said Caroline Gluck, United Nations refugee agency (UNHCR) spokeswoman in Bangladesh. But it's very forested and hilly and it requires lot of work to make it habitable and suitable for relocations. We are trying to do that now. But, it's a race against time. Mohammad Abul Kalam, Bangladeshs refugee relief and rehabilitation commissioner, said plans to save the refugees from potential disasters are moving forward quickly. In a first major step we are expanding the largest refugee camp by 500 or 600 acres (100 - 200 hectares) on its west. We believe we will be able to relocate over 100,000 of the refugees who are facing risks of floods and landslides to this safer area. The progress of this plan is going on well and we have in fact already relocated 10,000 people to this safer ground, Kalam told VOA. In about a month, all related work will be over and no refugees will finally be left at risk, Kalam said. Mass arrivals Following a military crackdown in August, in which Myanmars soldiers were accused of rape, murder and arson in Rohingya villages in Rakhine state, hundreds of thousands of ethnic Rohingya Muslims began fleeing the Buddhist majority country. Although Myanmar has consistently denied the charge of atrocities by the soldiers, since August, over 700,000 Rohingya Muslims have crossed over to southeastern Bangladesh, where most of them are living in flimsily built bamboo-and-plastic shacks, on newly deforested hills. Coxs Bazar district, which registers one of the highest rainfalls in the country and often is lashed by cyclonic storms, is now hosting over one million Rohingya refugees on 3,000 acres (about 1200 hectares) of land. Around half a million of them live in the over-congested area known as Kutupalong-Balukhali. After a landslide and flood risk hazard mapping of the area was completed by the UNHCR, using drone images and computer modeling, aid agencies have warned that around one-third of the areas in Kutupalong-Balukhali are particularly at risk during the oncoming monsoon season. Noting that it is the most densely crowded refugee camp in the world, Zia Choudhury, country director of NGO CARE, said Kutupalong-Balukhali was standing at the edge of a disaster. The land is hilly, fragile and entirely unsuited to unplanned, settlement at this scale. The shelters are tightly packed on all available land, leaving just small gaps for roads and drainage. Many of the shelters are precariously perched on very inappropriate places, including the slope of the hills. Were deeply concerned that during cyclone and torrential rains many of the shelters will simply collapse and wash away, Choudhury told VOA. CARE is working in one refugee camp on the hilly slopes in Coxs Bazar to make it safe from floods and storms. Flimsy shelters In Balukhali refugee camp, Sayeedul Amin, a Rohingya, said that since he fled Myanmar many weeks after violence broke out in August, he found no space to build his shack in a safer flatland area. I had to build the shelter for my family on the slope of the mountain which is very unsafe. So far during the dry days we did not face much crisis. But, we know we will be in big trouble with heavy rain and strong winds during monsoon. I think the roof made of plastic sheet will be blown away by storm, Amin told VOA. Shofi Ullah, a Rohingya house builder, said most refugees cannot not afford to build better quality houses that could withstand the fury of natural disasters. In [Myanmar], we used to build house mostly using robust timber poles. And, the roofs were strongly built using wooden planks. Rains or storms could not damage those houses easily. But, here, the people are building very weak type bamboo-and-plastic strictures, Ullah told VOA. High risk According to UNHCR, around 150,000 refugees are facing a high risk of floods and landslides across the hilly slopes in Coxs Bazar district. The UNHCR, the International Organization for Migration (IOM) and World Food Programme (WFP), in cooperation with some Bangladesh government agencies and others, are using heavy earth moving machinery to level hundreds of hectares of land around the Kutupalong-Balukhali camp. UNHCR'S Caroline Gluck says her agency is also training the refugee community for what they can do to alert themselves, to protect themselves and others, including early warning systems and getting training on first aid and what to do in the even of an emergency. An earlier version of this story misidentified refugee Sayeedul Amin. VOA regrets the error. U.S. Congressman Charlie Dent, a leader of a moderate group of Republicans and a frequent critic of President Donald Trump, said Tuesday he would resign from Congress next month. "After discussions with my family and careful consideration," I have decided to leave Congress in the coming weeks," Dent said. "It is my intention to aggressively advocate for responsible governance and pragmatic solutions in the coming years." Dent previously announced he would retire from Congress in September for personal reasons while also complaining that the Republican Party, which controls both houses of Congress and the White House, has shifted further to the right. Dent's initial announcement was made amid threats from Trump supporters to launch a campaign to replace him. Dent is chairman of the Tuesday Group, an informal alliance of several dozen moderate Republicans. He and Trump clashed in 2017 over the battle to replace the Affordable Care Act, commonly known as Obamacare an effort that eventually failed. He also submitted legislation Friday that would protect special counsel Robert Mueller's investigation into Russia's meddling in the 2016 U.S. presidential election from any attempts by the Trump administration to oust him. Dent's resignation could lead to a costly special election if the Democratic governor in Dent's home state of Pennsylvania orders one. Republicans would have to spend millions of dollars to defend the seat. It is unclear if Gov. Tom Wolf would schedule a special election before the November 6 midterm elections. Democrat Conor Lamb was victorious in a March special election in Pennsylvania's 18th Congressional District, which Trump won by 20 points in 2016. Dent's 15th district, which Trump captured by an 8-point margin, is more competitive for Democrats. A Russian investigative journalist, who recently wrote about the deaths of Russian mercenaries in Syria, has died after falling from his 50th-floor balcony in the city of Yekaterinburg. Maxim Borodin, 32, was found badly injured on the pavement under his balcony and taken to a hospital, where he died Sunday, according to his employer, the news website Novy Den (New Day). Local police said they did not see any foul play, but his death prompted intense speculation among friends and colleagues. Borodin's friend, Vyacheslav Bashkov, wrote on Facebook that Borodin contacted him early in the morning on Wednesday, the day before the fall, and told him that there was a man with a gun on his balcony, and that several others in masks and camouflage clothing were lurking in the stairwell leading to his apartment building. Bashkov said that Borodin had called back an hour later and said he had been mistaken and that he thought the armed men were probably taking part in a training exercise. Borodin regularly covered high-profile corruption cases and crime in Russia. In February, he broke a story about Russian mercenaries who died in an armed confrontation with U.S. forces near Deir-Ezzor, Syria. Last year, he gave an interview to a Russian independent channel TV Rain and talked about the controversial film Matilda, then was subsequently hit on the head by an unknown assailant with a metal pipe. Russia ranks first on the European Federation of Journalists list of countries with the highest number of journalists murdered in Europe. Since 1992, 38 journalists have been murdered in Russia, according to the U.S.-based Committee to Protect Journalists. Most of those cases remain unsolved. The U.S. State Department says Russia has tried to block an international watchdog from investigating a suspected chemical attack in Syria "by making it more complicated" for the specialists to do their work. "They probably want to do that because they recognize that the longer that a site goes untested the more that the elements, the chemicals, can start to disappear," State Department spokeswoman Heather Nauert told Alhurra television. The investigators from the Organization for the Prohibition of Chemical Weapons arrived in Syria on Saturday, but so far have not been able to begin their work in Douma. A Russian official says the OPCW team is set to visit the area east of Syria's capital on Wednesday. Russia has blamed the delays on airstrikes carried out Saturday by the United States, France and Britain on three Syrian chemical weapons facilities. Russia's Deputy Foreign Minister Sergei Ryabkov also said the mission was not allowed in because it lacked approval from the United Nations Department for Safety and Security. U.N. officials in New York disputed the claim. "The United Nations has provided the necessary clearances for the OPCW team to go about its work in Douma," said U.N. spokesman Stephane Dujarric. "We have not denied the team any request for it to go to Douma." He added that U.N. Secretary-General Antonio Guterres is very supportive of the investigation. "The secretary-general wants to see the fact-finding mission have access to all the sites it needs to have access to, so that we can have the most thorough and full picture of the facts," Dujarric said. The U.S. envoy to the OPCW, Ken Ward, said Monday it was his understanding Russia had already visited the site and he raised concerns of tampering before the OPCW carries out its fact-finding mission. Russian Foreign Minister Sergey Lavrov denied that accusation, telling the BBC he guarantees Russia "has not tampered with the site." Lavrov said that evidence cited by the United States, Britain and France to justify Saturday's missile attack was based "on media reports and social media." He denied any chemical weapons attack had occurred, accusing Britain of staging the attack. The Group of Seven leading industrialized nations issued a joint statement Tuesday endorsing the airstrikes. "We fully support efforts made by the United States, the U.K. and France to decrease the capacity to use chemical weapons by the Assad regime and to prevent their future use," the leaders of Canada, France, Germany, Italy, Japan, Britain, the United States and European Union said. Syrian media reported another missile attack early Thursday in Homs province, but later said it was a false alarm and not an outside attack that triggered air defense systems. Syrian media reported another missile attack early Thursday in Homs province, saying government air defenses shot down most of the missiles fired at an air base. The reports did not say who was responsible, and the U.S. military said neither it nor the coalition it leads was operating in that area at the time. Nauert told Alhurra the United States is pushing for a renewed focus on the so-called Geneva process the United Nations began in 2012 as a roadmap for ending the Syrian conflict with a new constitution and elections. "The only thing that I can hope that is positive that came out of the terrible news in Syria last week is to reinvigorate that political process," she said. "So it is our hope now that countries will go back to the Geneva process and well be able to make some progress there." EU foreign policy chief Federica Mogherini made a similar call Monday ahead of a ministerial meeting, saying there is a clear need to push for re-launching the U.N.-led peace process. Margaret Besheer contributed to this report. The U.N. refugee agency reports that Horn of Africa asylum seekers and migrants arriving in Yemen are being detained under horrific conditions by different armed groups and criminals profiting from the situation. The agency says it is following the cases of some 100 Somali and Ethiopian migrants who arrived in Yemen recently and are being detained near Aden. UNHCR spokesman William Spindler says the new arrivals may have broken immigration laws, which is not an unusual or worrisome development. What is of concern, he says, are the harsh conditions under which the refugees and migrants in detention are living. "Reports of abuse inside detention facilities are numerous, with some new arrivals being subject to physical and sexual violence," said Spindler. "Survivors have described to UNHCR being shot at, regular beatings, rapes of adults and children, humiliations including forced nudity, being forced to witness summary executions, and denial of food. Spindler says there are an unknown number of other makeshift prisons in Yemen where people are kept in captivity, subject to brutality, and held either for ransom or extortion. In the past, he says, those who arrived in Yemen would go to refugee camps where they would be screened and processed. But, with the collapse of law and order in the country, he says the situation has become more dangerous. He says many people including armed groups, smugglers and criminals are taking advantage of the refugees and migrants in terrible ways. Since February, Spindler says the UNHCR has made numerous interventions on behalf of those held in detention. He tells VOA these efforts are consistently frustrated because no one knows who is in command in this war-torn country. It is very chaotic and very difficult to really know who is really in control. As you know, the country is divided," said Spindler. "There are rival administrationsThere is not a clear line of responsibility that we can directly go and appeal to the authoritiesand we receive reports of people being held by smugglers and we have no access to these places. Yemens economy is in tatters and its health system in a state of collapse after three years of unabated war. The UNHCR warns people not to undertake the perilous journey to Yemen. It says Somalis fleeing in search of asylum and Ethiopians seeking a better life risk drowning in the Gulf of Aden, while those who survive face abuse and exploitation. Still, the agency says about 87,000 people arrived in Yemen last year and people are arriving at a similar rate this year as last. A couple dozen South Sudanese demonstrators and political activists, some aligned with the SPLM in Opposition (SPLM-IO), gathered in front of the White House Monday to protest the ongoing war in their native country. About 25 protesters chanted People of South Sudan are dying, and We need peace in South Sudan. Speaking in Arabic, Elizabeth James, a protester from Tennessee, said time is running out to act on South Sudan. Let us not leave this search for peace in the hands of the government and the rebels, she said. They will take their own time because of what, because of their own personal interest. James drove nine hours to make Mondays protest, saying it was her duty to voice her concerns. And where are we the citizens of South Sudan? Every day we are dying, everyday we are hungry, everyday we are scattered, everyday we go to other countries, James said. The protesters held signs and wore shirts that read President Trump will make South Sudan great again, while other signs targeted the African trade bloc, the Intergovernmental Authority on Development (IGAD) saying IGAD has failed and (is) too corrupt to bring peace to South Sudan. Isaac Gang, opposition party representative to the United States and a protest organizer, said IGAD has a chance to turn things around as they organize the upcoming peace talks. I really believe if the stakeholders in South Sudan take advantage of (the high level revitalization forum) something good can come out of it, said Gang. But if we go back to the usual intransigence people will use this opportunity as a waste of time as opposed to an opportunity to bring peace. The talks are scheduled to take place in the coming weeks at the African Union headquarters in Addis Ababa, Ethiopia. US action In September, the U.S. Treasury Department imposed sanctions on Malek Reuben Riak Rengu, former SPLA deputy chief of defense for logistics, former army chief Paul Malong Awan and Information Minister Michael Makuei. In February, the U.S. State Department issued a domestic arms restriction on South Sudan, barring arms transfers to the country. The ban has little practical effect, since the United States does not sell weapons to the country. But the ban does prevents any U.S. company or citizen from providing military equipment or defense services to the country's warring factions. Protester Choul Lieth agrees with the State Departments move to impose sanctions. The sanctions (Trump) imposed on those oil companies is great for the people of South Sudan. Also the individual sanctions will help the people of South Sudan because these people are the ones destroying South Sudan and if they are being sanctioned and they cannot move around or they cannot make any business then the people of South Sudan will have a chance for peace, said Lieth. Fragments of a meteorite that fell to Earth about a decade ago provide compelling evidence of a lost planet that once roamed our solar system, according to a study published Tuesday. Researchers from Switzerland, France and Germany examined diamonds found inside the Almahata Sitta meteorite and concluded they were most likely formed by a proto-planet at least 4.55 billion years ago. The diamonds in the meteorite, which crashed in Sudan's Nubian Desert in October 2008, have tiny crystals inside them that would have required great pressure to form, said one of the study's co-authors, Philippe Gillet. "We demonstrate that these large diamonds cannot be the result of a shock but rather of growth that has taken place within a planet," he told The Associated Press in a telephone interview from Switzerland. Gillet, a planetary scientist at the Federal Institute of Technology in Lausanne, said researchers calculated a pressure of 200,000 bar (2.9 million psi) would be needed to form such diamonds, suggesting the mystery planet was as least as big as Mercury, possibly even Mars. Scientists have long theorized that the early solar system once contained many more planets some of which were likely little more than a mass of molten magma. One of these embryo planets dubbed Theia is believed to have slammed into a young Earth, ejecting a large amount of debris that later formed the moon. "What we're claiming here," said Gillet, "is that we have in our hands a remnant of this first generation of planets that are missing today because they were destroyed or incorporated in a bigger planet." Addi Bischoff, a meteorite expert at the University of Muenster, Germany, said the methods used for the study were sound and the conclusion was plausible. But further evidence of sustained high pressure would be expected to be found in the minerals surrounding the diamonds, he said. There was confusion Tuesday about whether a team of international experts had arrived in Douma, Syria, to determine whether chemical weapons were used in an attack there 10 days ago. Syrian state TV and the White Helmets volunteer rescue group said separately that a fact-finding team from the Organization for the Prohibition of Chemical Weapons had come to Douma. But a U.S. State Department spokeswoman contradicted those reports Tuesday afternoon. "Our understanding is that the team has not entered Douma," Heather Nauert said. Syria's U.N. ambassador, Bashar Jaafari, said at a Security Council meeting that the U.N. security team was in Douma on Tuesday. ''The Syrian government has implemented all necessary measures to facilitate the arrival of the fact-finding mission to Syria," Jaafari said. "Today, the security team the U.N. security team entered Douma around 3 p.m. Damascus time, 8 a.m. New York time, in order to assess the security situation on the ground. If this security team, this United Nations security team, decides that the situation is sound in Douma, then the fact-finding mission will begin its work in Douma tomorrow. The decision for the arrival of the fact-finding mission is the decision of the United Nations and the OPCW alone. The Syrian government did all that it can do to facilitate the work of this mission.'' Arrived Saturday OPCW investigators arrived in Syria on Saturday, the day that the U.S., Britain and France launched missiles targeting Syrian chemical weapons facilities. But the inspectors initially were not allowed to go to Douma, near Damascus, to try to verify the nature of the suspected gas attack. With the 10-day delay since the attack, the French foreign ministry said, "It is highly likely that evidence and essential elements disappear from the site, which is completely controlled by the Russian and Syrian armies." Ken Ward, the U.S. ambassador to the chemical weapons watchdog, said Monday that the Russians had already visited the site and "may have tampered with it," which Moscow rejected. In the hours immediately after the missile strike, U.S. President Donald Trump basked in its success: But on Tuesday, French President Emmanuel Macron adopted a more nuanced view of the attack. "Three countries have intervened, and let me be quite frank, quite honest this is for the honor of the international community," he said in Strasbourg, France. "These strikes don't necessarily resolve anything, but I think they were important." U.S. military officials have said the strikes were designed to send a powerful message to Syria and its backers, showing the U.S., Britain and France could slice through the nation's air defense systems at will. "We did what we believe was right under international law," U.S. Defense Secretary Jim Mattis told reporters Tuesday at the Pentagon. "I hope that this time the Assad regime got the message," he added. The U.S. State Department had accused Russia of trying to block the inspectors from investigating the attack in Douma "by making it more complicated" for the specialists to do their work. "They probably want to do that because they recognize that the longer that a site goes untested, the more that the elements, the chemicals, can start to disappear," the State Department's Nauert told Alhurra television. Russia had blamed the delays on the U.S., French and British missile strikes. Russia's Deputy Foreign Minister Sergei Ryabkov also said the mission was not allowed in because it lacked approval from the U.N. Department for Safety and Security. U.N. officials in New York disputed the claim. Russia and Syria say no chemical attack occurred at Douma. Russian Foreign Minister Sergey Lavrov said that evidence cited by the United States, Britain and France to justify the missile attack was based "on media reports and social media." He accused Britain of staging the attack. The U.S. and its allies blame the regime of Syrian leader Bashar al-Assad for the chemical weapons attack. Syrian media reported another missile attack early Thursday in Homs province, but later said it was a false alarm and not an outside attack that triggered air defense systems. Meanwhile, State Department spokesperson Nauert told Alhurra the United States was pushing for a renewed focus on the so-called Geneva process, which the United Nations began in 2012 as a road map for ending the seven-year Syrian conflict with a new constitution and elections. "The only thing that I can hope that is positive that came out of the terrible news in Syria last week is to reinvigorate that political process," she said. "So, it is our hope now that countries will go back to the Geneva process and we'll be able to make some progress there." EU foreign policy chief Federica Mogherini made a similar call Monday ahead of a ministerial meeting, saying there was a clear need to push for relaunching the U.N.-led peace process. VOA's Margaret Besheer at the United Nations and Jeff Seldin at the Pentagon contributed to this report. Refer armys sexual violence, other crimes to int'l court Rohingya lawyer says 'Security Council failed us' Razia Sultana UN News : The United Nations Security Council has failed to prevent the Rohingya refugee crisis, and the 15-member body must refer sexual violence and other crimes against the ethnic group to the world's top criminal court, a Rohingya lawyer said on Monday. "Where I come from, women and girls have been gang-raped, tortured and killed by the Myanmar Army, for no other reason than for being Rohingya," Razia Sultana said on behalf of non-governmental organizations during a Security Council open debate on preventing sexual violence in conflict. The debate, addressed by Deputy Secretary-General Amina Mohammed and Pramila Patten, Special Representative of the Secretary-General on Sexual Violence in Conflict, was held as the Council prepares for a visit later this month to Myanmar and its neighbor Bangladesh, which hosts hundreds of thousands of Rohingya refugees. Ms. Sultana urged the Council members to meet with women and girl survivors during the trip. Since August last year, more than 670,000 Rohingya have fled Myanmar. "This is the fastest refugee movement since the Rwanda genocide," Ms. Sultana said. "However, the international community, especially the Security Council, has failed us. This latest crisis should have been prevented if the warning signs since 2012 had not been ignored," she added. Ms. Sultana said that her own research and interviews provide evidence that Government troops raped well over 300 women and girls in 17 villages in Rakhine state. With over 350 villages attacked and burned since August 2017, this number is likely only a fraction of the actual total. "Girls as young as six were gang-raped," she said. This year's UN Secretary-General's report on sexual violence in conflict lists the Myanmar military for the first time. She said the Council must refer the situation in Myanmar to the International Criminal Court without delay. Deputy Secretary-General Amina Mohammed told the Council that: "This year, in Myanmar and many other conflict situations, the widespread threat and use of sexual violence has, once again, been used as a tactic to advance military, economic and ideological objectives." "And, once again, it has been a driver of massive forced displacement," she added. "Let us intensify our efforts to end the horrific litany of sexual violence in conflict so that women, girls, men and boys have one less burden to bear as they work to rebuild shattered lives." A decade ago, the Council adopted the groundbreaking resolution 1820, which elevated the issue of conflict-related sexual violence onto its agenda, as a threat to security and impediment to peace. It seeks to "debunk the myths that fuel sexual violence," and rejects the notion of rape as an "inevitable byproduct of war" or mere "collateral damage." Since then, the issue has been systematically included peacekeeping missions. Pramila Patten, Special Representative of the Secretary-General on Sexual Violence in Conflict, addresses the Security Council's open debate on women, peace and security. But "it is clear that words on paper are not yet matched by facts on the ground. We have not yet moved from resolutions to lasting solutions," said Pramila Patten, Special Representative of the Secretary-General on Sexual Violence in Conflict. Stigma and victim-blame give the weapon of rape its uniquely destructive power, including the power to shred the social fabric, and turn victims into outcasts. It is also the reason that sexual violence remains one of the least-reported of all crimes. "It is a travesty and an outrage that not a single member of ISIL or Boko Haram has yet been convicted for sexual violence as an international crime," she said. As recommendations, she called on the international community to establish a reparations fund for survivors of conflict-related sexual violence, while stressing the need for a more operational response to stigma alleviation, as well as the need to marshal sustained funding for the gender-based response. A concept note circulated in advance of this meeting asked delegates to share national experiences regarding specific measures taken to prevent conflict-related sexual violence, particularly long-term initiatives focused on women's empowerment, advancing gender equality, and ensuring that perpetrators of sexual violence are brought to justice. The note also posed several other discussion questions, including one about how the Council - when establishing and renewing the mandates of UN peacekeeping and political missions, as well as relevant sanctions regimes - can more effectively promote gender equality, the empowerment of women in conflict and post-conflict situations, and accountability for sexual violence crimes. A spike in inter-communal violence in central Mali has sent about 3,000 people fleeing to Burkina Faso over the past few weeks, the U.N. refugee agency reports. Since February, dozens of people have been killed and homes and other property destroyed as clashes between the Dogon and Peul communities have increased, according to the U.N. agency. "The new arrivals in Burkina Faso include 2,000 Malian citizens, as well as 1,000 Burkinabe who had been living in Mali for many years," said UNHCR spokesman William Spindler. "With many afraid to travel by road, for fear of kidnappings and murder, they arrived via unofficial border crossings, on foot or in light vehicles. The new displacement adds to the challenges faced by people of the region." Before this latest influx, Burkina Faso had been hosting some 24,000 Malian refugees since the start of Mali's conflict in 2012. The new arrivals are adding to the humanitarian needs of Burkina Faso, and to the strain of aid agencies trying to meet them. Spindler says food is in short supply and health facilities are overstretched. He says most of the new arrivals are living with friends or relatives in hard-to-reach areas. UNHCR is urging those new arrivals to move to a refugee camp farther from the border, where they could be registered. Spindler says the refugees would then have access to basic social services, and be better protected from rising banditry and violence in areas hosting Malian refugees. The new White House economic adviser apologized Tuesday to U.N. Ambassador Nikki Haley after suggesting she was suffering from "momentary confusion" when she announced over the weekend that new sanctions against Russia were imminent. Haley had fired back at Larry Kudlow, saying, "With all due respect, I don't get confused." A White House official said Kudlow, the director of the National Economic Council, called Haley to apologize Tuesday afternoon in an effort to mend fences. The official spoke to The Associated Press on condition of anonymity to describe private discussions. A striking intra-administration quarrel played out in public when Kudlow told reporters during a briefing in Florida that Haley "got ahead of the curve" when she said the U.S. would be slapping new sanctions on Russia on Monday in retaliation for the country's support for Syria's Assad government after its latest suspected chemical attack. Kudlow said additional sanctions are under consideration but have yet to be implemented. Of Haley, he said, "There might have been some momentary confusion about that." Haley had said Sunday during an appearance on "Face the Nation" that Treasury Secretary Steven Mnuchin would be announcing new sanctions directed at companies associated with Syria's chemical weapons program on Monday, "if he hasn't already." But Monday came and went without an announcement. On Tuesday, following Kudlow's remark that she must have been confused, Haley said in a statement to Fox News: "With all due respect, I don't get confused." The dispute between Haley's team and the White House had been playing out largely behind the scenes since Haley's initial comments. The White House has been struggling to explain Haley's remarks amid reports that President Donald Trump put the brakes on the new sanctions. Several administration officials have disputed that characterization, saying Haley was out of the loop. Three senior administration officials said there were several attempts to get Haley to back off or clarify her comments, but she refused. The officials said that, under the plan conceived last week, the sanctions would have been announced Friday night, at the same time U.S., French, and British forces launched a missile strike on Syrian President Bashar Assad's chemical weapons facilities. But the sanctions were not ready in time for Trump's Friday night statement, so they were delayed. The officials said a decision was then made to announce the sanctions as an answer to Russia's response to the strikes. But that plan was re-evaluated and then put on hold over the weekend as it became clear that Russia's response was less robust than anticipated. The officials were not authorized to discuss private administration deliberations publicly and spoke to the AP on condition of anonymity. A National Security Council memorandum sent overnight Friday said the new sanctions would be announced soon, but it did not specify a date. Over the next 36 hours, officials began to delve deeper into the proposed sanctions and decided to hold off on anything imminent, but Haley was unaware, the officials said. On Monday, a new memo went out from the NSC saying that additional sanctions were under consideration, but no decision had been made. In the face of Haley's refusal to clarify on Sunday, draft language was sent to her suggesting again that she do so, the officials said. Haley and her office ignored that so the White House decided to push back, the officials said. On Capitol Hill, House Speaker Paul Ryan, R-Wis., applauded the administration Tuesday as having "moved miles in the right direction" on Russia policy. "Not only did we scuttle the reset, not only are we now sanctioning Russian citizens, not only are we sanctioning Russian oligarchs, we're sanctioning Russia itself. We have so improved our policy with respect to Russia, far more hawkish, far more realistic," he said. The new U.N. envoy for Yemen warned Tuesday that reports of a possible military operation around a major urban center and a key seaport could ruin any hopes of ending that countrys civil war. We also hear unconfirmed reports that movements of forces in Yemen are on the increase and that the terrible prospect of intensive military operations in al-Hodeida, long heralded, may be soon forthcoming, Martin Griffiths told council members. The U.N. has previously warned that the Yemeni government and the Saudi-led coalition were preparing an offensive on Hodeida seaport to stop Iranian-backed Houthi rebels from using it to smuggle arms and ammunition into the country. WATCH: UN Yemen Envoy Warns of Possible Military Operation Around Hodeida Our concern is that any of these developments may in a stroke, take peace off the table, Griffiths told the U.N. Security Council in his first briefing since taking up the post as envoy last month. I am convinced that there is a real danger of this. We all need urgently and creatively to find ways to diminish the chances of these game-changing events, upsetting and derailing the hopes of the great majority of Yemenis, he said. Hodeida is Yemens fourth largest city and is densely populated. Its port is a key lifeline, handling nearly 80 percent of the countrys food imports. The Saudi-led coalition briefly blockaded the port last year Yemens U.N. ambassador, Khaled Alyemany, said the government has no intention to advance on Hodeida. We know that advancing over Hodeida, a heavily populated area, it will be too much, Alyemany said in response to reporters questions. We understand as a government that it is not time. It is not appropriate. He said the government supports Griffiths push for fresh peace talks. Griffiths told council members that he plans to present them with a framework for negotiations within the next two months to end the three-year long conflict. A political solution to bring an end to this war is available, Griffiths said. Its outlines are no secret: the end of fighting, withdrawal of forces and handover of heavy weapons in key locations, together with an agreement on the establishment of an inclusive government. The conflict has caused the worlds largest humanitarian crisis. More than 22 million Yemenis three quarters of the population require humanitarian assistance. The threat of famine looms over millions, and the country is at risk for another cholera outbreak. Last year's epidemic struck more than 1 million people. Yemen, the Saudi-led coalition and the United States accuse Iran of supporting the Houthi rebels. To achieve enduring peace in Yemen, Iran must stop its interference and its violations of the arms embargo this council imposed, U.S. Ambassador Nikki Haley told council members. She urged the council to take action to stop the flow of arms to the Houthis. The Houthis must realize that if they continue to use banned weapons in war, the international community will be united in condemning them, Haley said. Microsoft, Facebook and more than 30 other global technology companies on Tuesday announced a joint pledge not to assist any government in offensive cyberattacks. The Cybersecurity Tech Accord, which vows to protect all customers from attacks regardless of geopolitical or criminal motive, follows a year that witnessed an unprecedented level of destructive cyberattacks, including the global WannaCry worm and the devastating NotPetya attack. "The devastating attacks from the past year demonstrate that cybersecurity is not just about what any single company can do but also about what we can all do together," Microsoft President Brad Smith said in a statement. "This tech sector accord will help us take a principled path toward more effective steps to work together and defend customers around the world." Smith, who helped lead efforts to organize the accord, was expected to discuss the alliance in a speech on Tuesday at the RSA cybersecurity conference in San Francisco. The accord also promised to establish new formal and informal partnerships within the industry and with security researchers to share threats and coordinate vulnerability disclosures. The pledge builds on an idea for a so-called Digital Geneva Convention Smith rolled out at least year's RSA conference, a proposal to create an international body to protect civilians from state-sponsored hacking. Countries, Smith said then, should develop global rules for cyberattacks similar to those established for armed conflict at the 1949 Geneva Convention that followed World War Two. In addition to Microsoft and Facebook, 32 other companies signed the pledge, including Cisco, Juniper Networks, Oracle, Nokia, SAP, Dell and cybersecurity firms Symantec, FireEye and Trend Micro. The list of companies does not include any from Russia, China, Iran or North Korea, widely viewed as the most active in launching destructive cyberattacks against their foes. Major U.S. technology companies Amazon, Apple, Alphabet and Twitter also did not sign the pledge. Some 900 National Guard troops are deploying to the U.S.-Mexico border to support Border Patrol operations, but they will not perform any law enforcement functions while on the White House-ordered assignment, Homeland Security officials said Monday. The majority of the military members who have arrived or are headed to the border are National Guard troops from Texas, with roughly 650. In Arizona, there will be approximately 250, and in New Mexico, about 60. California on Monday said it would no longer allow its National Guard troops to fulfill the mission as requested by the Department of Defense. Californias governor had said the troops would participate, but not in immigration enforcement. President Donald Trump reacted on Twitter early Tuesday: "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. The high crime rate will only get higher. Much wanted Wall in San Diego already started!," he said. The Associated Press reported the tenuous agreement between the federal government and the state soured over the weekend. U.S. Customs and Border Protection (CBP) deputy commissioner Ron Vitiello told reporters during a news conference Monday that the troops which may total up to 4,000 would be stationed along the border until CBP can bolster its own forces. In an April 4 memo to the secretary of Homeland Security and the attorney general, President Donald Trump said the troops were needed to curb drugs, gangs and illegal crossings on the U.S. border with Mexico. "The situation at the border has now reached a point of crisis, he said in the memo. However, previous presidents also saw the need to deploy the National Guard to assist Border Protection agents in the area. Six thousand were sent under President George W. Bush, while 1,200 were deployed under President Barack Obama, according to the U.S. Department of Defense. The National Guard will assist Border Patrol at least through the end of September, officials said, by performing tasks such as operating surveillance cameras, maintaining vehicles and clearing brush. They will not be law enforcement. They will not perform law enforcement functions, reiterated Bob Salesses, deputy assistant secretary of defense for Homeland Defense Integration and Defense Support of Civil Authorities (DSCA). Doug Ducey, the Republican governor of Arizona, one of four southern border states, was eager for troops from his state to join the effort. In an op-ed published April 9, he wrote: Despite what some may say, our southern border is not secure. The announcement by President Trump to call up the National Guard to support the mission of the Border Patrol is needed and welcomed. California's Democratic Gov. Jerry Brown said the state would contribute 400 troops but said that not all would be on the border. "Let's be crystal clear on the scope of this mission," Brown wrote in the letter to defense secretary James Mattis and Homeland Security secretary Kirstjen Nielsen. "This will not be a mission to build a new wall. It will not be a mission to round up women and children or detain people escaping violence and seeking a better life. And the California National Guard will not be enforcing federal immigration laws." Rather, the California-based troops would focus on transnational gangs, human trafficking, and arms and drug smuggling "throughout the state," Brown said in the April 11 letter. That agreement had fallen apart by Monday, however. CBPs Vitiello said the planned mission will continue without the California National Guard. U.S. Department of Homeland Security Secretary Kirstjen Nielsen warned on Tuesday that a European data privacy law taking effect next month may have "unintended consequences" that harm the United States' ability to protect itself from cyber attacks. The European Union law, called the General Data Protection Regulation (GDPR), is the biggest overhaul of online privacy since the birth of the internet, giving Europeans the right to know what data is stored on them and the right to have it deleted. Online data privacy is important and contextual across borders and different cultures, Nielsen said during a keynote appearance at the RSA cyber security conference in San Francisco. But "what we don't want are the unintended consequences of preventing the research community to be able to give us a heads up on (cyber) threats that are coming our way," she said. "In other words, through trying to protect a citizen's privacy we eliminate the ability of many of the vendors and researchers who otherwise have access to data to see the trends in attacks," Nielsen said. While some U.S. officials have in recent months raised concerns publicly about the European law, Nielsen is the most senior Trump administration official yet to do so. Her remarks suggest that any attempts by the U.S. Congress to legislate comprehensive privacy protections would face hurdles from the Trump administration. Calls for new digital privacy rights in American law have increased after disclosures that the political consultancy Cambridge Analytica obtained data on more than 87 million Facebook users from quizzes that were supposed to be for academic research. Among the Trump administration's concerns are limitations the law seeks to impose on accessing data about website registrations that can often offer clues for investigators pursuing cyber criminals. The strong limits on what can be done with data on users are a source of concern for security professionals in government, internet companies and outside forensics and investigations providers. As things stand, many European uses and others who sign on to online services housed within the region would not be giving companies explicit permission to use their data in probes of fraud or other criminal activity, security experts told Reuters this week. Unless the GDPR is amended, companies and outside investigators will lose access to material that many users have not realized they were giving up. The experts said that they were working on ways to recover access to some of that material, which they declined to detail. The most straightforward would be an explicit declaration when users join what data could be used as evidence against people that harm them or against the users themselves. On Monday, White House cyber coordinator Rob Joyce on Twitter said that GDPR would "undercut a key tool for identifying malicious domains on the internet." He added: "Cyber criminals are celebrating GDPR." Joyce said at a conference last month that U.S. officials were trying to persuade European regulators to allow a carve out in the law for security researchers to continue collecting data pertinent to data breaches or other cyber crime investigations. U.S. senators announced long-awaited legislation on Monday to provide congressional authorization for campaigns against militant groups in Iraq, Syria and elsewhere, as lawmakers push to take back authority over the military from the White House. A group led by Senators Bob Corker, the Republican chairman of the Foreign Relations Committee, and Tim Kaine, a committee Democrat, proposed an Authorization for the Use of Military Force (AUMF) that would authorize "all necessary and appropriate force" against al-Qaida, the Taliban, Islamic State and associated forces. Despite coming days after the U.S. bombing of Syria over chemical weapons, the proposed legislation does not authorize military action against any nation state, including Syria. It also does not set an end date for military action, although it proposes a congressional review every four years. Both Republican and Democratic members of Congress have long argued that they ceded too much authority over the military to both Republican and Democrat presidents with no time limits after the Sept. 11 attacks. Under the U.S. Constitution, Congress, not the president, has the right to authorize war. But presidents have used AUMFs passed in 2001 for campaigns against al Qaeda and affiliates, and one passed in 2002 for the war in Iraq, to justify a wide range of conflicts since. Corker said he expected the Foreign Relations Committee to debate and possibly vote on the new AUMF as soon as next week. It was not immediately clear if the House of Representatives would take up the measure. To become law, it would have to pass the Senate and House and be signed into law by President Donald Trump. Noting that Foreign Relations has been trying to pass a new AUMF for years, Corker said it was too soon to discuss the view of the Senate's Republican leaders. "I don't really worry about much beyond having a successful vote in the committee," he said. Trump national security aides have pushed back against congressional calls for a new AUMF. However, CIA Director Mike Pompeo, Trump's nominee to be secretary of state, told senators last week it would be useful for lawmakers to weigh in on the military campaign. The legislation also would require the president to report to Congress on any new military actions and allow lawmakers to vote on whether to reject them. It would repeal the 2001 and 2002 AUMFs after being in effect for 120 days. Rajib Hasan dies 1st Namaz-e-janaza held at HC premises: Burial in Patuakhali today Staff Reporter Rajib Hossain, a student of Government Titumir College who lost his right arm in a bus accident in the capital, succumbed to his injuries at Dhaka Medical College Hospital (DMCH) at Monday midnight. Earlier he was put on life support since Apirl 10. Rajib's life support was removed at the Intensive Care Unit of Dhaka Medical College Hospital around 12:40 am on Tuesday, Rajib's aunt Jahanara Begum said. Rajib lost his right arm while going to college by a double-decker bus of Bangladesh Road Transport Corporation (BTRC). The accident occurred when it was hit by a bus of Sajan Paribahan at SAARC Circle on April 3, she said. The autopsy of Rajib's body was conducted by a medial team lead by Dr Pradip Biswas at DMCH on Tuesday morning. "There's no major injury to his hand. But there's blood clots in the brain and a portion of skull was broken due to the impact of the accident," the Dr said. DMCH Forensic Doctor Prodip Biswas said Rajib died following a brain hemorrhage, he added. Rajib's uncle Zahidul Islam, said Rajib's first namaz-e-janaza was held at the mosque adjacent to the High Court after Zohr prayers on Tuesday. Zahidul also said they would take the body to Rajib's Indrakun village in Bauphal upazila in Patuakhali after the second Namaz-e-janaza around 9:00am on Wednesday. Following the local administration's instruction, the relatives of the deceased have taken all preparations to burry him at their family graveyard, he added. Son of late Helal Uddin Rajib lost his parents in his early age. Since then, he was the guardian of his two younger brothers, maintaining the family through severe hardships. Rajib was rushed to Samorita Hospital in Panthapath, immediately Ofter the accident and later transferred to DMCH on April 4 for better treatment. Doctors could not re-attach his severed arm. On April 5, Health Minister Mohammad Nasim visited Rajib and assured his family that the government would bear the full cost of his treatment. The Minister had also assured that Rajib, upon his recovery, would be given a government job on humanitarian grounds. Yemen's Houthi militia, which is supported by Iran and Lebanon's Hezbollah, has vowed to step up its missile and rocket attacks on neighboring Saudi Arabia, which is leading a coalition of Arab and Gulf states trying to push the Houthis out of the Yemeni capital Sanaa. Houthi militiamen chanted slogans against the United States and Israel earlier this month as they fired ballistic missiles into Saudi Arabia. Sunday, at the 29th annual Arab summit in Dhahran, Saudi King Salman accused Iran of supplying the Houthis with missiles. He called the Houthis "terrorists" backed by Iran. He welcomes the U.N. condemnation of the Houthis for firing 119 missiles at Saudi cities, including Mecca. Former Iranian president Abolhassan Bani-Sadr told VOA he was not sure if the missiles came from Iran, but argued the Houthis are using them because the Saudi-led coalition has inflicted serious damage with its airstrikes on Yemen. He said the Saudis have never treated Yemen as an independent country, but as a protectorate. He insisted the Saudis are conducting a savage war in Yemen and justifying it by claiming Iran is supporting and selling arms to the Houthis. University of Paris Professor Khattar Abou Diab told VOA the Houthis recently vowed to fire a missile a day into Saudi Arabia. He said many countries criticize the Saudi-led coalition for its airstrikes on Yemen and the resulting humanitarian crisis, but few complain about the Houthis taking children hostage or firing missiles at Saudi Arabia. He says the Houthis also pose a regional threat for attacking vessels in world shipping lanes. Saudi analyst Jamal Khashoggi argues the Houthis have significant support in Yemen and believes Riyadh should seek a pluralistic regime. "They [the Houtis] are a force to be reckoned with. They are popular in Yemen. The problem is that they want to control [all of] Yemen, at least the Yemen republic before 1992, not the south ... and this is not a working recipe. They cannot control all of Yemen. They cannot bring Yemen back to the time of the monarchy. Yemen is a republic." Khashoggi thinks the international community needs to put pressure on Iran. "The international community should pressure Iran to get the Houthis to agree to some peaceful understanding in Yemen. But at the same time, Saudi Arabia also needs to believe truly in democracy for Yemen. I think the Saudis are also reluctant, as much as the Iranians, about democracy. Each country wants to impose its blueprint in Yemen," Khashoggi said. But Bani Sadr thinks it might be difficult to get Iranian leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei to change his behavior, because his regime relies on outside conflicts to survive. He said Khamenei recently insisted Iran was living the best moments of its history, because it is not just a regional, but a world power. This, Bani Sadr stressed, is how the regime profits from war to impose itself domestically. Khattar Abou Diab thinks Iran is playing a dangerous game that could back-fire. He said Saudi Arabia is the target of Houthi missiles, but it also has missiles that can reach Tehran and could set off a tit-for-tat war, igniting a very dangerous "regional" conflict. Khashoggi doubts "there will be outright war", because "both sides know the high costs of a direct confrontation." But Bani Sadr is less certain. "Very often we think threats are merely verbal," he said, "and then suddenly war breaks out, as we saw in 1980, when Saddam Hussein attacked Iran." A High Court judge is expected to give judgment next week on an urgent application in a matter in which the Movement for Democratic Change formation led by Nelson Chamisa is seeking an interim order to bar expelled vice president Thokozani Khupe from using the party name and logo. Justice Francis Bere reserved judgement in the case heard on Tuesday in Zimbabwes second largest city, Bulawayo, in which Khupes attorney Lovemore Madhuku argued that the matter was not urgent since Khupe still maintains that she is the legitimate acting president of the MDC-T. Madhuku noted that the controversy over the leadership wrangle should be sorted first before the court determines the use of the party name and logo. He also argued that Khupe has already challenged her withdrawal from parliament by the Chamisa formation and as a result, this needs to be addressed too before other issues raised by the other MDC-T faction. On the other hand, Nkomo argued that the matter needs to be determined as an urgent case since Khupe is no longer a member of the MDC-T following her expulsion from the party and her failure to challenge the move using proper channels of the opposition party once led by the late Morgan Tsvangirai. Another matter raised in the High Court was over the authentic MDC-T constitution as the two formations produced different versions. Khupe recently wrote a letter to the Zimbabwe Electoral Commission claiming that she is the leader of the MDC-T. Chamisa and Khupe clashed over the leadership of the opposition party soon after Tsvangirais death in February this year. The two claimed the presidency of the party resulting in the National Council, the highest decision-making body outside Congress, to endorse Chamisa as the legitimate leader of the MDC-T. But Khupe refused to recognize Chamisas leadership. The Zimbabwean government has fired 16,000 striking nurses vowing to replace them with newly-trained and retired nurses. According to the state-controlled Zimbabwe Broadcasting Corporation, Vice President Constantino Chiwenga dismissed the nurses as in his capacity as the supervisor of the social services cluster. In a statement, Chiwenga claimed that the Health Service Board (HSB) had conceded to the nurses demands by releasing $17,114.446 to the Ministry of Health to pay outstanding allowances for the striking workers. What makes the whole action deplorable and reprehensible is the fact that as agreed yesterday (Monday), the government today released and transferred $17,114.446 into the account of the Ministry of Health and Child care for on-payment to the striking nurses. While this demonstrates good faith in the part of government, the prompt transfers which have been effected against demonstrable economic challenges facing the country, has not quite surprisingly persuaded the striking nurses to go back to their stations in the interest of saving lives and helping helpless patients under their care. The government now regards this lack of remorse as politically motivated and thus as going beyond concerns of conditions of service and worker welfare. Chiwenga noted that the government has instructed the HSB to engage all unemployed but trained nurses in Zimbabwe, who are expected to replace the fired nurses. We have also authorized the board to recall retired nursing staff into the service Funds originally released to meet demands of the striking nursing staff will now be re-directed and allocated towards meeting the costs of effecting this new directive and arrangements which will be implemented with immediate effect. But Zimbabwe Nurses Association secretary general Enock Dongo told VOA Studio 7 that they leant about the governments move to fire them on ZBC. We have not been formally told about our dismissals by the government as we heard this on ZBC. As far as we are concerned this is a non-event. Nurses are demanding an upward review of their salaries currently pegged at $284 per month, night duty and medical allowances and related issues, some of them which have been outstanding for many years. The government owes some nurses more than $1,000 in outstanding allowances. Please enable cookies on your web browser in order to continue. The new European data protection law requires us to inform you of the following before you use our website: We use cookies and other technologies to customize your experience, perform analytics and deliver personalized advertising on our sites, apps and newsletters and across the Internet based on your interests. By clicking I agree below, you consent to the use by us and our third-party partners of cookies and data gathered from your use of our platforms. See our Privacy Policy and Third Party Partners to learn more about the use of data and your rights. You also agree to our Terms of Service. Army deployment unlikely: EC Staff Reporter : Election Commission (EC) on Tuesday said, they have no plan so far to deploy Army in the upcoming Gazipur and Khulna City Corporation polls. "We have no plan so far to deploy Army during the Khulna and Gazipur city corporations' election," Election Commission (EC) Secretary Helal Uddin Ahmed said while talking to journalists after the CEC and EC's meeting with BNP's six member delegation team at the Nirbachan Bhaban in the city's Agargaon. Chief Election Commissioner KM Nurul Huda and other Election Commissioners were present on the occasion. The election to the two city corporations will be held on May 15. The BNP team led by its standing committee member Dr. Khandaker Mosharraf Hossain met the EC. The other members of the delegation were party standing committee members Dr Abdul Moyeen Khan, Nazrul Islam Khan and Amir Khasru Mahmud Chowdhury and Vice-Chairman Chowdhury Kamal Ibne Yusuf. "The Chief Election Commissioner (CEC) and other Election Commissioners said several times there is no decision as yet to deploy Army during any local government election," the EC Secretary said. The BNP has demanded deployment of army seven days before the elections at Khulna and Gazipur. Helal Uddin Ahmed said the EC may accept the BNP's all those proposals which are acceptable in light of the Constitutions and other rules and regulations. Experts to be allowed to visit Syria`s Chemical hit site: Russia The Organisation for the Prohibition of Chemical Weapons will be given access to an alleged chemical attack site in Syria on Wednesday, Russia says. Experts arrived in Damascus on Saturday, but they have been unable to visit the nearby town of Douma because of "security issues" cited by Russia. US officials have raised concerns that Russia, the Syrian government's ally, might have tampered with the site. The government insists the incident in Douma on 7 April was fabricated. Opposition activists, medical organisations and rescue workers say more than 40 people were killed when aircraft dropped barrel bombs filled with toxic chemicals on the town while it was still held by rebel forces. The US, UK and France say that, based on open source information and their own intelligence, they are confident chlorine and possibly a nerve agent were used. On Saturday, they carried out missile strikes on three targets they said were "specifically associated with the Syrian regime's chemical weapons programme". Russian and Syrian officials had cited "pending security issues" for not allowing inspectors from the OPCW to travel to the site of the alleged attack, the global watchdog's director general said on Monday. Syrian authorities had instead offered the inspectors the chance to interview 22 people who they said were at the location of the alleged attack and could be brought to Damascus for interviews, according to Ahmet Uzumcu. If the OPCW inspectors are able to travel to Douma on Wednesday, it will have been 11 days since the attack. They are expected to gather soil and other samples to help identify any chemicals that might have been used. US ambassador Kenneth Ward said at an OPCW meeting at The Hague on Monday that there were fears that Russian forces had tampered with the site after the last rebel fighters were evacuated last week, Reuters news agency reported. "It is our understanding the Russians may have visited the attack site," Mr Ward was quoted as saying. "It is our concern that they may have tampered with it with the intent of thwarting the efforts of the OPCW Fact-Finding Mission to conduct an effective investigation." France's foreign ministry said in a statement on Tuesday that it was "very likely that proof and essential elements are disappearing from this site". Russian Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov has denied any interference. "I can guarantee that Russia has not tampered with the site," he told the BBC. He said the allegations of chemical weapons use were "based on media reports and social media" and that the incident was "staged". The Syrian government denies ever having used chemical weapons. However, experts from the UN and the OPCW have ascribed four chemical attacks to the government during the civil war, including an attack on the rebel-held town of Khan Sheikhoun in April 2017 that involved the nerve agent Sarin. A correspondent for US network CBS gained access to the alleged attack site in Douma on Monday. Seth Doane spoke to residents of a building where at least 30 bodies are reported to have been found. "All of a sudden some gas spread around us," one man said. "We couldn't breathe, it smelled like chlorine." Another resident, who said many members of his family were among those killed, showed the CBS crew a yellow compressed gas canister that appeared to have punched a hole in the roof of the building. The canister looked similar to others photographed in the wake of other alleged chlorine attacks. A Swedish journalist who also visited the building in Douma said he felt a discomfort in his throat and smelled a strong odour as he entered its basement. The day of the suspected chemical attack, Douma still under rebel control - the last rebel-held town in the Eastern Ghouta region outside Damascus. Thousands of people were sheltering in basements from the government's bombardment, when two bombs filled with chemicals were allegedly dropped several hours apart on two separate locations. The World Health Organization said that according to reports from its medical partners in Douma, an estimated 500 patients presented to health facilities exhibiting signs and symptoms consistent with exposure to toxic chemicals. Five killed in gunfights Staff Reporter : Five persons, including three suspected robbers, were killed in separate encounters with the members of law enforcing agencies in Dhaka, Brahmanbaria and Rajbari districts on Tuesday. In Dhaka, three suspected robbers were killed in a shootout with the members of Rapid Action Battalion (RAB) in Dhamrai upazila of Dhaka around 4:00pm. Some arms, including pistol and machete, were recovered from the spot, said Abu Sayeed Al Mamun, Officer-in-Charge (Investigation) of Dhamrai Police Station quoting the elite force. RAB launched the drive receiving secret information that some 10-12 armed persons were staying in Kelia area of Dhamrai to commit robbery, he said. Sensing presence of the law enforcers, they opened fire. RAB fired back in retaliation, leaving three of them dead, added the OC. In Brahmanbaria, a suspected mugger was killed in a "gunfight" with police early in the morning, hours after he was arrested in Akhaura Upazila. The deceased was identified as Khokon Sutradhar, 30, said Mosarraf Hossain Tarafder, Officer-in-charge (OC) of Akhaura Police Station. Khokon was caught by an angry mob when he was trying to snatch Tk 18 lakh from a representative of British-American Tobacco Company near Janata Bank at Lal Bazar of Akhaura on Monday noon, the police official said. Based on information given by Khokon, a police team with Khokon went near to the Titas Railway Bridge around 2:45am to recover firearms and capture his accomplices. Sensing the police presence, Khokon's cohorts started firing at the police. In reply, police also fired that triggered the "gunfight". At one stage, police found bullet-hit body of Khokon lying on the spot, but all of his cohorts managed to flee the scene, the OC said. In Rajbari, an alleged member of an outlawed party was killed in a 'shootout' between police and his cohorts in Sadar Upazila of Rajbari in the wee hours of Tuesday. The deceased was identified as Saidur Rahman, 32, said Asma Siddika Mili, Superintendent of Police (SP) in Rajbari. "Acting on a tip-off, a team of Detective Branch of police started crackdown when a group of outlaws was holding a clandestine meeting in Joukura Ferry ghat area in the Upazila. During the drive, the outlaws showered bullets on the law enforcers, triggering the "gunfight"," she said. Saidur was found dead on the spot after the gunfight. Saidur was accused in seven cases including two murder cases, the SP said. BNP demands army deployment Staff Reporter : The BNP leaders on Tuesday demanded army deployment in Khulna and Gazipur city corporation polls to regain trust of voters. They made this demand while meeting with Chief Election Commissioner (CEC) KM Nurul Huda and other election commissioners at Nirbachon Bhaban in the morning. "After the one-sided national polls on January 5, 2014, the voters lost their trust upon the Election Commission. In such a circumstance, it is very important to deploy army in the upcoming city corporation polls to regain the voters trust," BNP Standing Committee Member Dr. Khandaker Mosharraf Hossain said this to a group of journalists after meeting with the CEC. A six-member BNP delegation placed the demands to the CEC, led by Khandaker Mosharraf Hossain. The elections of Khulna and Gazipur city corporations are scheduled for May 15. Dr. Mosharraf said that they demanded deployment of army seven days before the polls. The party leaders also opposed to introduce electronic voting machine (EVM) in the city polls. Dr. Mosharraf said the EVM system is not going well in those countries where it was introduced. The BNP also demanded immediate withdrawal of Gazipur Police Super Harun-ur-Rashid and other partisan officials in the police and administration to ensure a proper atmosphere for the city polls. Dr. Mosharraf said the Election Commission assured them that they would consider BNP's logical demands. The BNP delegation also raised question over the EC's move to form a coordination committee for the two city polls accommodated with the Divisional Commissioners. The BNP team questioned the EC that under which sections of laws they formed such committee as there is no pre-examples of such committee. The other members of the BNP delegation were party Stranding Committee Members Dr. Abdul Moyeen Khan, Nazrul Islam Khan and Amir Khasru Mahmud Chowdhury, and Vice-Chairman Chowdhury Kamal Ibne Yusuf. 171 Bangladeshis detained in US-Mexico border for six months The United States Customs and Border Protection Division (CBP) says 171 Bangladeshis have been detained at Mexico's Laredo border with USA from October to April 12, 2017. They were made to try to enter the United States illegally with Mexico. 180 Bangladeshis were detained at the same border in the financial year (October-August). The number of illegal Bangladeshi nationals entering the US has raised concerns about the US immigration reform and the Federation of American Immigration Reforms (FAA), the largest and most influential organization in the US. In an article published on the website of the Immigration Reform Dot Com, published an article, Matty and Brian, head of the research department. He writes - It seems that, the Laredo border of Texas has become the main road to enter the United States of South Asian and Afghan illegal immigrants through Latin America. Mr. Bryan has expressed special concerns with Bangladeshis. He showed two reasons for his concern - One, Isis and Al Qaeda in Indian subcontinent (AQIS) and some other militant groups are active in Bangladesh and they are collecting members from Bangladesh. "So it is possible that some of these illegal immigrants from Bangladesh may have links to those terrorist organizations." Two, if people from a remote country like Bangladesh can enter Latin America and enter the United States of America, then in other countries where there is a problem of terrorism, people can also take the same path with encouragement. "It is time to ensure that the unprotected south border can not misuse the terrorists." Last year a search report from the US magazine Los Angeles Times said that the number of Bangladeshi, Indian, Nepali and Pakistanis illegally entering the United States through Latin America became increasingly huge. According to official statistics, the report said that in the 11 months before August 2016, 4060 people of these four countries entered the United States, among whom 3604 were detained. But seven years ago this number was only 225. The Los Angeles Times wrote - These South Asian immigrants came to Brazil primarily from Chartered Air from Dubai. After that, inland on Bolivia, Peru, Ecuador, Panama City and Guatemalan enter Mexico. It takes a few months to reach the US border by reaching such a distance. Dangerous jungle, hills, extortion and robberies are on the way. If the guardians can not escape the sight of the border, many times they are caught or caught, they seek political asylum. Nearly 4,000 South Asians were detained on Mexico border in the 2016 fiscal year. Real income of working people falls: CPD Staff Reporter : The Centre for Policy Dialogue (CPD) has said that Bangladesh is sliding towards an 'income less employment' situation as real income of working class people has declined. The independent think tank came up with remark after analysing the state of the Bangladesh Economy in the fiscal year of 2017-18 on Tuesday. At a budget recommendation press conference held at the CIRDAP auditorium in the city, the CPD also doubted the outcome of the GDP growth and pointed a finger on the possibility of capital flight ahead of the national elections. Distinguished fellow of the research organisation Dr. Debapriya Bhattacharya, presenting CPD's recommendations for fiscal 2018-19 budget, said, though employment generation marked some increase in FY2017, the real income has declined. He said, "Female workers and rural workers are facing more decline in their real monthly income while the unemployment rate among the youth with higher education is increasing. Regional discrimination is also there as the decline is higher among the people from North Bengal and South-East Bengal." According to CPD analysis, the real monthly income of female suffered 3.8 per cent erosion, while that of man suffered 1.9 per cent erosion, and in urban area, male workers monthly income increased 0.9 per cent while in rural area male workers face 4.1 per cent erosion. He said, "More than one-third of the total youth labour force with higher education remained unemployed. He also termed the current state of banking sector as an ominous sign for the country's economy. A handicapped banking system is building up." Fearing the possibility of money laundering before the upcoming national elections, Dr. Debapriya said, the banking sector of Bangladesh has been plagued by financial scams, non-performing loans, inefficiency, and slack monitoring and supervision. He mentioned that, "Every time before election, the remittance increases but more money gets laundered. Money laundering happens through banking sector, unstable capital market and high import payments." Dr Khondaker Golam Moazzem, CPD Research Director. Dr. Golam Moazzem, CPD Research Director, told the programme that, "As institutional investors like banks play a significant role in controlling the capital market, proper monitoring should be there." In the analytical presentation, the CPD also urged the government to design the budget for stable macro-economy. It also recommended to increase allocation for social security and to keep Rohingya crisis in mind while preparing the budget. According to CPD, estimated US$1.1 billion will be required to cover the expenditure for the Rohingya on account of food security, sanitation, shelter, site management and health. Information on the flow of international fund, the usages of the fund for Ronghyas should be made readily available, it said. Transparency in the allocation of budget, at the ministerial level, in view of the Rohingya crisis, should be ensured, urged CDP in the recommendation. According to the think tank, Bangladesh Bank must pursue a cautious monetary policy in the coming months, the central bank should consider discouraging imports of consumer and luxurious commodities by raising L/C margins for import, and the budget for FY2019 should consider raising the tax-free income ceiling to Tk 3 lakh in order to provide respite to lower middle income households. It also recommended that government should consider reducing the personal income tax rate for the first slab to 7.5 per cent from the prevailing rate of 10 per cent, the adjustments of corporate tax rates should be done in a staggered way over the medium term in order to absorb any revenue shock. The CPD has also come up with some recommendations in the run-up to the election. Independent and rigorous economy-wide analyses should be conducted for all types of reforms, emphasise should be given on timely implementation of VAT and SD Act 2012, establishing a Public Expenditure Review Commission for ensuring accuracy of cost of estimation of public investment projects, considering establishment of a permanent Local Government (Finance) Commission towards effective devolution of power and introduction of appropriate financing modalities for local government, it added. Speakers at the programme stressed the need for looking at the qualitative result of GDP growth and how the increasing GDP is having its impact on general people's lives. CPD Distinguished Fellow Professor Mustafizur Rahman and its Executive Director Dr Fahmida Khatun also spoke in the occasion while its Research Fellow Towfiqul Islam Khan gave the presentation. Todays Headlines The most important news stories of the day, curated by Post editors and delivered every morning. Email address By signing up you agree to our Terms of Use and Privacy Policy Nightmare on city streets People suffer as 26 service providers maintain no coordination Tuesday\'s photo from in front of Jatiya Press Club. Syed Shemul Parvez : Different public service providers have made the Dhaka city streets into a nightmare for the commuters as they continue to digging the streets almost everywhere in the capital in the name of repairing roads or improving public services. Since the middle of the last year, around 26 service providers, including Dhaka WASA, BTCL, TITAS, DESA, DESCO and RAJUK, have been carrying out their development works without any coordination among them, making the government development projects a continuous source of sufferings for the dwellers. City experts, however, observed that the whole city is unplanned. The service companies did not work following a master plan. So, the digging is increasing day by day. They laid stress on adoption of an integrated plan to carry out development activities of all service providers, otherwise, 'sufferings of the dwellers will not be reduced'. Due to lack of coordination among different service providers, implementation of different development projects of WASA, TITAS, DESCO and DESA are increasing only public sufferings, they added. It seems that there is no one to see whether the ongoing drainage development projects, worth billions of taka, are being implemented within the shortest period of time as the implementation involves digging of streets almost everyday in the city. At some places streets are left devastated for months after being dug, and nobody knows actually when this unending drainage repairing will end. It seems the contractors are not accountable to anyone as they carry out their works at their own will, lingering the construction day after day. Contacted on the issue, former UGC chairman and a renowned city expert Professor Mohammad Nazrul Islam told the New Nation: "Digging is needed for development, but it must be done following a proper plan and in coordination among different projects. It must be ensured that a same street is not dug twice by two different service providers." He said the digging should be done at the shortest possible time with a view to reducing public sufferings. However, Asaduzzaman, Additional Chief Engineer of Dhaka South City Corporation (DSCC), argued it is very natural that people would face some temporary difficulties due to the digging for the sake of better services. He hoped that the on going implementation of the projects would finish within June next. Actually, the city dwellers are fed up with the digging of roads and reforming drain work month after month. Road becomes closure due to cavity on one side. So vehicles cannot trips properly, rather it creates terrible traffic jam. Many businesses have to shut down for the digging. Daily commuting in the commercial hub of the capital's Motijheel and Gulistan have become hazardous due to the digging of streets that started more than a month ago. Abdul Matin, a businessman from the city's RK Mission Road, observed that once the work started no one knows when it would end. But here in Motijheel one day's transactions mean millions of Taka. "A market at RK Mission Road is completely closed for the last month due to sidewalk digging," he informed. Similar situation prevails almost in other places in Dhaka city, including Mirpur, Shewrapara, Kazipara, Mohammadpur, Adabar, Gabtoli, Dhanmondi, Pallabi, Kafrul, Banani, Gulshan, Mohakhali, Badda, Rampura, Khilgaon, Basaboo, Malibag, Mouchak, Fakirapool, Kamlapur, Sayedabad, Jatrabari, Purana Paltan, Azimpur, New Market, Naya Paltan, Lalbagh, Hazaribagh, Jigatola and Rayerbazar. Police have to know what is for political leaders to deal with NEWS media reported that the three joint conveners of Bangladesh Shadharan Chhatra Odhikar Sangrakkhan Parishad, who led last week countrywide demonstration for quota reformation in government services, were picked up by a gun-toting group later known as DB police when they were passing by the Dhaka Medical College Hospital boarding a rickshaw. They were suddenly intercepted and dragged into a white microbus blindfolded. The ultimate destination of the microbus was DB office in the city's Mintoo Road. DB at a press briefing yesterday claimed that three students were called to their office to show video footages to identify the culprits involved in vandalizing and arson in VC's bungalow. But the question is -- why they would be picked up so abruptly? The way police followed to call the students for the quizzing is counterpointing to citizen's dignity and also prohibited by Supreme Court. Though they were released after a few hours, we think it was an incident of abduction. The students said they were not quizzed or showed any video clips. It seems nothing but a clear intimidation to compel students to stop their legitimate demands despite Prime Minister's announcement to accept their demand. Surprisingly, when the three were being picked up in Dhaka, police in Jhenaidah interrogated one of their fathers to know whether the family had any political affiliation. The acts of the police were totally unaccepted. Rights campaigners expressed deep concern over such an "attitude" of the law enforcing agencies. On Wednesday, Prime Minister Sheikh Hasina in parliament announced that there would be no quota in government jobs and asked the students to end the demonstration. When PM accepted the legitimate demands of the youths, why such harassments are being committed? Why their cases are not withdrawn? The police have not yet explained convincingly why some of them had to be taken blindfolded in the style of Pakistani days. We have learnt the ways of free country where government has no way of behaving like a power addicted force. It is the responsibility of every citizen to cooperate with police to find out criminal activities. But to treat political activist as criminal is fundamentally wrong and failure of political leaders to deal with political problem politically. Police must distinguish between criminal activities and political activities involving political injustice. WSU Board of Trustees Approves New Degrees to Help Drive Northern Utah Economy April 17, 2018 OGDEN, Utah Weber State Board of Trustees has approved several new degrees that will help students fill positions in engineering and technology fields that are in high demand in Northern Utah and around the nation. Trustees have approved two new masters degrees in computer science and electrical engineering; three bachelors degrees in mechanical engineering, manufacturing systems engineering and Spanish translation. These are the first degrees approved by WSU Trustees, since the Utah Legislature changed the degree-approval process in 2017 with SB 238. We are delighted that WSU soon will offer additional graduate degrees in engineering and computer science in the College of Engineering Applied Science & Technology (EAST), said Provost Madonne Miner. Our current engineering degrees have been very popular, additional degrees provide graduates a wider range of employment options, as well as enhanced salaries. In addition, our regional employers have indicated a strong and ongoing demand for engineers and computer scientists. We are poised to respond more fully to their needs. Weber State has offered a four-year engineering degree since 2010. In that time, the number of students majoring in electrical engineering has grown to 186 with 108 graduates, of those 102 are working in Utah with 49 at Hill Air Force Base. Along with Silicon Slopes, in the Utah County region, Northern Utah hosts numerous aerospace, manufacturing and light-industrial companies that employ engineers of all kinds. Weber State is strategically located to meet the needs of the local industry. Engineering is one of the largest and most in-demand degrees in the United States, said Kirk Hagen, WSU engineering chair. The Northern Utah region is industrially rich with medical, aerospace and recreational related companies. As Weber State begins offering additional engineering degrees, these local industries can be more fully served by qualified college graduates produced in their own backyard. Faculty in the departments of computer science, engineering and engineering technology developed the programs in collaboration with their advisory committees comprised of representatives from government and industry. The programs will begin offering courses in fall semester 2018. We are going to repeat the success we had with our electrical engineering program, said David Ferro, dean of the College of Engineering, Applied Science & Technology. We will have the full complement of theory, science and math needed for an engineer combined with extensive labs and hands-on experience. Our students will be able to hit the ground running in industry and at Hill Air Force Base. No surprise. That's our reputation. Our interns and grads are ready out of the gate. These new masters degrees bring a total of 15 graduate degrees to Weber State University for a total of more than 225 degree programs and certificates. Visit weber.edu/east for more news about the College of Engineering, Applied Science & Technology. Visit weber.edu/wsutoday for more news about Weber State University. Let's face it ever since Alexander Hamilton had the Lin-Manuel treatment, every historical figure under the sun is now a possibility for a stage adaptation. The likes of Tina, Sylvia and Six are already ahead of the trend, but we thought we'd round up some of the most iconic figures who would make for great musicals. Amelia Earhart Harris & Ewing 1. Amelia Earhart The record-breaking pilot, the first female aviator to fly across the Atlantic, had something of a dramatic life her family trekking across the US and Canada, surviving the Spanish flu epidemic and her rise to celebrity status as "Queen of the Air". And she was also a talented musician, known for her banjo playing and poetry writing. The show would also have a tragic ending the pilot disappeared in 1937 near Papua New Guinea. NB it was brought to our attention that Take Flight does exist already then it's definitely due for a revival! Frida Kahlo Sotheby's 2. Frida Kahlo Artist, revolutionary and all-round feminist wonder, Frida Kahlo also had a dramatic life, tackling polio at a young age, having a caustic relationship with muralist Diego Rivera and slowly but surely emerging out of her husband's shadow to be recognised as an artistic icon. But more than that, the magical realism of Kahlo's work will make for a visual delight on the stage an all out celebration of Mexican identity with a political twist. There may already be one on the horizon a piece called Blue House has been in the works since 2016. Other suggested show titles (based on famous Kahlo paintings): The Two Fridas or Diego and I Sappho WolfgangRieger 3. Sappho The classics and musical theatre both know how to draw big audiences, so why not combine them into a new musical? And Sappho is a bit of a legend a writer of lyric poetry and one of the earliest known female poets. She was also a symbol of love and desire between women (academics have called her the patron saint of lesbians), so an LGBTQ icon in the making. Suggested show title: Lovers on Lesbos or Ode to Aphrodite Maya Angelou in 2013 York College ISLGP 4. Maya Angelou Writer, poet, musician, philanthropist and political activist, Missouri-born Angelou's campaigning changed thousands of lives, especially through her involvement with the Civil Rights Movement. Angelou passed away in 2014, so a musical reflecting on her life would be a timely one. As a musician she recorded her first album, Miss Calypso, which went on to inspire the 1957 film Calypso Heat Wave. So why not put that same story on the stage? It almost seems too feasible not to happen. Suggested show title: Caged Bird or Calypso Anna Ivanovna (right) at the ice palace Painting by Valery Jacobi 5. Anna Ivanovna Elsa wasn't the first one to have a frozen palace 18th century Russian Empress Anna Ivanovna built one way before they were cool. The Russian leader, who had an eccentric sense of humour, built the ice palace as a wedding venue for a member of her court she'd taken a particular dislike to. The prince in question then had to stay alive overnight in the sub-zero conditions with his new bride, sleeping on an ice bed with logs of ice in a fireplace of ice. Definitely not a Disney tale. The Empress was also a keen hunter she kept a rifle by her window so she could shoot down birds whenever she felt like it. Suggested show title: Love Is An Open Door (but not in an ice palace when your Empress doesn't like you) Malala Yousafzai DFID / Malala Yousafzai 6. Malala Yousafzai The youngest Novel Prize laureate is already an incredible figure on the world stage surviving an attack by Taliban gunman in Pakistan in 2012 in retaliation for her activism, before going on to recover, speak in front of the UN and confronting Barack Obama about his use of drones in Pakistan. She's currently studying at Oxford University, but who knows where she'll go from there. Maybe a trilogy of musicals would be more suitable? Suggested show title: same as the documentary about her life He Named Me Malala Fake visa factory busted in city, 4 held Four members of fake visa-making gang were arrested by DB Police with some equipment from city\'s Uttara area. This photo was taken from in front of DB office on Tuesday. Staff Reporter : Detective Branch (DB) of Police detained four persons from city's Uttara on Monday night on charge of producing fake visa documents. The detainees are Ziaul Haque Jewel, Jakaria Mahmud, Md Mahbubur Rahman and Mamun Hossain. The DB men seized several Bangladeshi passports, fake visas, fake letters of appointment and other computer machinery also during the drive, Police said. "A team of DB conducted drive in separate areas in the capital and arrested four persons from Uttara in connection with the producing fake visa documents," Detective Branch Joint Commissioner Abdul Baten said this in a press briefing at DMP Media Center on the Minto Road on Tuesday. The four fraudsters collected huge amount of money from the commoners, after alluring them of managing visas for Schengen countries of Europe and North Cyprus, the DB official said. Fourteen Bangladeshi passports with fake Schengen visas, fake bank account statement and huge met sticker paper used in visa document preparation were recovered from them, he said. Besides, fake North Cyprus invitation paper, bank guarantee, a computer CPU, a monitor, scanner and other accessories were also seized from them, the police official said. Several Bangladeshi passports, fake visas, fake letters of appointment and other computer machinery were seized s well, he added. A case was filed with the police station in this connection, he said. Manitoba has become the third province in Canada to start tracking third-party reports of sexual assault incidents, offering an alternative that can empower survivors who are too afraid or don't want to go to police. Hey there, time traveller! This article was published 16/4/2018 (1264 days ago), so information in it may no longer be current. Manitoba has become the third province in Canada to start tracking third-party reports of sexual assault incidents, offering an alternative that can empower survivors who are too afraid or don't want to go to police. Winnipeg police, Manitoba RCMP and representatives from the provincial government helped make the policy announcement Monday, alongside partners from community agencies who will help administer the third-party reports. Manitoba joins Yukon and British Columbia in adopting the policy. Manitoba Status of Women Minister Rochelle Squires praised the move, saying she wished she'd had a similar option to turn to for help when she was sexually assaulted at age 13. "As a survivor of sexual violence, I think that third-party reporting certainly does give choices for people who have been stripped of choice in a very profound way. And so it also allows survivors to access supports in, perhaps, a gentler way than walking into a police station," she said. In Winnipeg, Sage House at Mount Carmel Clinic and Heart Medicine Lodge at Ka Ni Kanichihk will help collect reports from sexual assault survivors wanting to share their stories. Those reports can then be relayed anonymously to police, so long as the person reporting is over the age of 16. (If they are 15 years old or younger, agencies must report the allegations to Child and Family Services.) Klinic Community Health Centre on Portage Avenue will also field in-person reports and phone calls from urban and rural areas. Klinic already has a hotline for people wanting to talk about sexual assaults (1-888-292-7565) and the centre expects to get more calls now that third-party reporting is available, said counsellor Megan Mann. "Knowing that were having a press release and theres going to be a lot of coverage on it. I think at the beginning at least well get an uptake of historical reports, as well as more recent ones," Mann said. Klinic fields about 4,000 sexual assault-related calls per year, or roughly 200 per month. Executive director Nicole Chammartin said those numbers have gone up recently. "We have been asked regularly over the last year if we have seen an increase with #MeToo and #TimesUp and all of these campaigns. We definitely have been seeing an increase since about mid-last fall," Chammartin said. More resources may be needed to support callers beyond the three full-time staff Klinic already employs and the 40 to 60 trained volunteers it has working the phones, Mann said. Squires said the province will be closely monitoring the agencies' intake and volume of calls to see if they need more resources or money down the line. While police won't be making any arrests based off anonymous third-party reports, having extra data handy could help them identify trends and serial predators, noted members of the Winnipeg Police Service sex crimes unit. It's believed less than five per cent of sexual assaults are currently reported to police. "Its hard to know the extent of a problem when its so under-reported. And so what third-party reporting will also allow us to do is get a sense of what might those numbers actually look like, or whats a closer estimate to what those numbers look like, given that we know the majority of people arent making formal reports," Chammartin said. Sgts. Krista Dudek and Cam MacKid, members of the sex crimes unit, pointed out that if an offender is mentioned repeatedly in third-party reports, police can go back to the community agencies, ask them to liaise with the sexual assault survivors and see if they'd be open to talking to officers. Knowing multiple people have reported similar behaviour sometimes emboldens survivors to find strength in numbers, MacKid said. "I think there is that myth out there that if you speak with police, youre automatically in an investigation," said Dudek. "Well, an investigation has started. You can speak with us and say, You know what? Im not comfortable going forward right now. I want to wait. And were OK with that we absolutely understand that not all victims are there yet, but we do encourage them to make a statement." Want to get a head start on your day? Get the days breaking stories, weather forecast, and more sent straight to your inbox every weekday morning. Sign Up I agree to the Terms and Conditions, Cookie and Privacy Policies, and CASL agreement. Leslie Spillett, executive director of Ka Ni Kanichihk, acknowledged many Indigenous people and people of colour don't trust police enough to report sexual assault allegations to officers first. She suspects the vast majority of unreported sexual assaults stem from Indigenous communities. Considering the backdrop of the ongoing national inquiry into missing and murdered Indigenous women and girls, Spillett said third-party reporting is "a little bit overdue, but its very timely in lots of ways." "Indigenous women experience rates of violence at five to one, compared to other groups and so this resource, this opportunity or this access to being able to tell your story to someone... its often the beginning of a journey, its often the first step," Spillett said. Community advocates, such as those at Ka Ni Kanichihk, can also offer "culturally safe" atmospheres where survivors can come forward, Spillett said, providing access to traditional medicines, elders and counselling services. jessica.botelho@freepress.mb.ca Twitter: @_jessbu Brian Pallister says he has no intention of withdrawing a threat to sue the Winnipeg Free Press over its coverage of his tax situation in Costa Rica. Hey there, time traveller! This article was published 17/4/2018 (1263 days ago), so information in it may no longer be current. Brian Pallister says he has no intention of withdrawing a threat to sue the Winnipeg Free Press over its coverage of his tax situation in Costa Rica. In answer to questions in the legislature Tuesday, the premier said he would defend his reputation and integrity "in the face of false attacks against it." PHIL HOSSACK / WINNIPEG FREE PRESS Premier Brian Pallister in Question Period Tuesday. "I have a record of always paying my bills. I have a record of obeying the laws, like most members of this chamber, of obeying the laws of this province, this country and the countries I visit," he said. It was Pallister's first appearance in the house since Friday, when his lawyer, Robert Tapper, put the Free Press on notice of a possible defamation suit. The premier did not scrum with reporters afterwards. NDP MLA Andrew Swan (Minto) repeatedly asked Pallister if he would withdraw threats of legal action against the newspaper. The Free Press reported more than two weeks ago that the premier's holding company in Costa Rica had been flagged for non-payment of the country's luxury tax on his vacation home there. Pallister said the next day that he would determine if his property is subject to the tax. He said he had been advised that it wasn't, but if he owed money he would pay it. As recently as Monday, while attending a meeting in St. Laurent, Pallister said he was still determining whether he owed tax on the Central American home. "We're making that determination as we speak," he told reporters. "There's a process to do that, and that involves a number of things. So, we've embarked on that." Want to get a head start on your day? Get the days breaking stories, weather forecast, and more sent straight to your inbox every weekday morning. Sign Up I agree to the Terms and Conditions, Cookie and Privacy Policies, and CASL agreement. In the legislature, Swan called Pallister's legal threat an attack on press freedom. "The premier's choice to threaten Winnipeg Free Press was intended to cast a chill over reporting and over reporters," he said. "If you seek the truth, if you ask difficult questions, there are consequences." Swan also asked Pallister whether taxpayers' dollars were being used to pay for his legal fees. "No, of course not," Pallister replied, adding he would never use public funds to defend his own reputation. Swan said Pallister's legal threat is part of a pattern. "He lashes out and he threatens others when there are uncomfortable questions raised. In this case, these are questions he himself acknowledged were important just two weeks ago." Swan said the lawsuit threat "hangs over the press" just like Bill 8, currently before the legislature, which would end government requirements to publish a notice or document in a newspaper and instead require that it be published in the Manitoba Gazette. After much pushback from the province's newspapers, the government announced recently that it would backtrack on Bill 8 and another bill that would have amended two dozen laws to remove government notices in newspapers. The government later clarified that it would proceed with the two bills but delay proclaiming sections affecting the publication of notices in newspapers. larry.kusch@freepress.mb.ca ST. LAURENT Premier Brian Pallister wants the federal government to fast-track environmental approval for a new outlet channel to prevent future flooding around Lake Manitoba. Hey there, time traveller! This article was published 16/4/2018 (1263 days ago), so information in it may no longer be current. MIKAELA MACKENZIE / WINNIPEG FREE PRESS Premier Brian Pallister chats with farmers Ross and Helen Jermey at the meeting. ST. LAURENT Premier Brian Pallister wants the federal government to fast-track environmental approval for a new outlet channel to prevent future flooding around Lake Manitoba. Pallister has written to Prime Minister Justin Trudeau, asking Ottawa to designate the outlet as an emergency construction project. Speaking to a community meeting in St. Laurent (90 kilometres northwest of Winnipeg), Pallister said Monday he said he will travel to the nations capital in 10 days time to make his case. He told the crowd of about 200 the flood-control measure should have been undertaken decades ago. In 2011, a devastating flood displaced whole communities, swamped farmland, ruined cottages and businesses and cost governments hundreds of millions of dollars in compensation payments. It also sparked a renewed commitment to build outlet channels for Lake Manitoba and Lake St. Martin. Considerable planning has already been done on the two outlets, which will cost an estimated $540 million. 'It's time for governments to get their act together and it's time to get this thing built' Premier Brian Pallister on a proposed outlet channel "Its time for governments to get their act together and its time to get this thing built," Pallister told the meeting, organized by local Progressive Conservative MLA Derek Johnson and attended by eight members of the PC caucus. MIKAELA MACKENZIE / WINNIPEG FREE PRESS Dan Meisner talks to Premier Brian Pallister a town hall on the proposed Lake Manitoba outlet in St. Laurent, Manitoba on Monday. Pallister noted a contract already has been announced for the construction of an access road to a channel construction site. The province began consultations with Indigenous communities last year on the preferred routes for both lake channels. "Dozens of meetings have been held; others will be held," the Manitoba premier said, adding he hoped the consultation process could wind up late this year, paving the way for construction to begin in 2019. Pallister said he hopes the project can avoid a full-blown federal environmental review, similar to what Ottawa has ordered for the proposed Manitoba-Minnesota Transmission Project hydroelectric line. "There is a federal environmental process that can be invoked. We dont see the legitimacy of that," he told reporters. "But we respect the right of people to apply for that federal process." On the weekend, Pallister promoted Mondays meeting with a series of tweets from his official Twitter account. The tweets contained links to videos featuring individuals who had been impacted by the 2011 flood, and backed swift construction of the outlet channels. A number of those who attended the meeting were adversely affected by the flood or survived a close call and demanded quick action on the large flood-prevention project. Others questioned the proposed route of the Lake Manitoba outlet and expressed concern their land would be expropriated. "We need to get this done the sooner the better," said Moosehorn cattle producer Ross Jermey, who attended the event with his wife, Helen. They said the 2011 flood severely damaged a half-section of the couples hay land, and it remains unfarmable. Its not worth their while to reclaim the land until there is adequate flood protection in place, Jermey said. Dan Meisner, deputy reeve of the Rural Municipality of Grahamdale, was critical of the proposed route for the Lake Manitoba outlet channel. He called it "the Bipole III of water projects in Manitoba," because its twice as long as an alternate route he favours and affects more farmland. (Bipole III is a hydro transmission project under construction in Manitoba that will run almost 1,400 km in length.) Want to get a head start on your day? Get the days breaking stories, weather forecast, and more sent straight to your inbox every weekday morning. Sign Up I agree to the Terms and Conditions, Cookie and Privacy Policies, and CASL agreement. Meisner said his municipality will lose 3,000 acres of farmland and the $20,000 in tax revenue that go with it. He said the route hes championing while posing some engineering issues would cost about the same amount as the governments preferred route and be built largely on Crown land. The governments preferred route also involves moving a section of Highway 239, he said. A provincial government spokesman declined to share Pallisters letter to the prime minister with the Free Press. The office of federal Infrastructure Minister Amarjeet Sohi said Monday it was reviewing the provinces application for federal funds to build the outlets. "This is an important project to our government, which we made clear through its inclusion in Budget 2016," spokesman Brook Simpson wrote. "We understand how vital this project is to Manitobans and look forward to having more to say on its funding source and timing soon." with files from Dylan Robertson larry.kusch@freepress.mb.ca The provincial government has delayed scrapping the longstanding requirement of posting government notices in newspapers. Hey there, time traveller! This article was published 16/4/2018 (1264 days ago), so information in it may no longer be current. The provincial government has delayed scrapping the longstanding requirement of posting government notices in newspapers. That's delayed, not withdrawn. Sports, Culture and Heritage Minister Cathy Cox acknowledged in an interview Monday the province could choose to reverse its field again and eliminate the requirement at any time. On the other hand, the requirement could be there forever, she said. "We're leaving it open." Cox said her major concern with the proposed plan to remove notices from newspapers is the lack of internet connectivity across northern Manitoba, which the province and Ottawa plan to rectify over the next five years with a $60-million project to improve communication services. Cox told a community newspapers event Saturday she has decided to backtrack on bills 8 and 19, which would have amended two-dozen bills to remove the requirement to publish government notices in newspapers. Instead, newspapers would still be an option. Bill 8 deals with the modernization of government notices and Bill 19 is about planning changes would emphasize that notices of public business from planning matters to environmental hearings to boundary changes to human rights complaints be posted online. "We're delaying. There's more work that needs to be done," the minister said. "We're very sincere in saying we're not ready. We moved too quickly. We're going to wait until we get more connectivity." The provincial government will still proclaim parts of the legislation which cover operations of the Queen's printer and which will make The Manitoba Gazette available online for free, Cox said, noting her decision had nothing to do with the loss of revenue to community newspapers if she pulled the government notices. " Want to get a head start on your day? Get the days breaking stories, weather forecast, and more sent straight to your inbox every weekday morning. Sign Up I agree to the Terms and Conditions, Cookie and Privacy Policies, and CASL agreement. It's not about revenue, it's about listening to Manitobans," she said. Winnipeg Free Press publisher Box Cox applauded the minister's decision. "I am glad the government is taking more time to consider the matter of public notices and how they should be done in the 21st Century," he said Monday. In the legislature, New Democrat James Allum accused the minister of using the possibility of proclaiming the elimination of the requirement as a threat against media. "The right thing for her to do is withdraw both of those bills," Allum said. "They continue to hold a hammer over local media." nick.martin@freepress.mb.ca China Hydroelectric Corporation is a developer, owner and operator of small hydroelectric power projects in China. The projects are located in Zhejiang, Fujian, Yunnan and Sichuan. As of December 31, 2012, wholly owns 22 operating hydroelectric power projects and have controlling interests in three operating hydroelectric power projects. In March 2012, the Company sold 100% of the Yuanping hydroelectric power project. In April 2013, the Company sold the Yuheng hydroelectric power project, a 30 megawatt (MW) project located in Fujian province. In July 2014, the Company announced that it has completed the merger with CPT Wyndham Sub Ltd., a wholly-owned subsidiary of CPT Wyndham Holdings Ltd. Read More (GGP) (NYSE:GGP) posted its quarterly earnings results on Tuesday, July, 31st. The real estate investment trust reported $0.09 earnings per share (EPS) for the quarter, missing the Thomson Reuters' consensus estimate of $0.10 by $0.01. The real estate investment trust earned $583.14 million during the quarter, compared to analyst estimates of $593.94 million. The firm's revenue was up 4.9% compared to the same quarter last year. During the same quarter in the prior year, the company earned $0.35 EPS. View (GGP)'s earnings history. NGL Energy Partners LP is an energy partnership that transports, treats, recycles, and disposes of produced water generated as part of the energy production process. It also transports, stores, markets, and provides other logistics services for crude oil and liquid hydrocarbons. The firm operates through the following segments: Water Solutions, Crude Oil Logistics, Liquids Logistics, and Corporate & Other. The Water Solutions segment transports, treats, recycles, and disposes of produced and flow back water generated from oil and natural gas production. The Crude Oil Logistics segment purchases crude oil from producers and marketers and transports it to refineries or for resale at pipeline injection stations, storage terminals, barge loading facilities, rail facilities, refineries, and other trade hubs. The Liquids Logistics segment conducts supply operations for natural gas liquids, refined petroleum products and biodiesel to a range of commercial, retail and industrial customers across the United States and Canada. The Corporate & Other segment include corporate expenses that are not allocated to the reportable segments. The company was founded in 1940 and is headquartered in Tul Read More The following companies are subsidiares of The Travelers Companies: 10762962 Canada Inc., 350 Market Street LLC, 8527512 Canada Inc., Aetna Life and Casualty Co, American Equity Insurance Company, American Equity Specialty Insurance Company, Aprilgrange Limited, Arch Street North LLC, Auto Hartford Investments LLC, Bayhill Restaurant II Associates, Camperdown Corporation, Constitution State Services LLC, Discover Property & Casualty Insurance Company, Discover Specialty Insurance Company, F&G UK Underwriters Limited, Farmington Casualty Company, Fidelity and Guaranty Insurance Company, Fidelity and Guaranty Insurance Underwriters Inc., First Floridian Auto and Home Insurance Company, Gulf Underwriters Insurance Company, IHP Capital Partners Fund VIII L.P., Northbrook Holdings Inc., Northfield Insurance Company, Northland Casualty Company, Northland Insurance Company, Phoenix UK Investments LLC, SPC Insurance Agency Inc., Select Insurance Company, Simply Business Holdings Inc., Simply Business Inc., St. Paul Fire and Marine Insurance Company, St. Paul Guardian Insurance Company, St. Paul Mercury Insurance Company, St. Paul Protective Insurance Company, St. Paul Surplus Lines Insurance Company, Standard Fire Properties LLC, Standard Fire UK Investments LLC, TCI Global Services Inc., TPC Investments Inc., TPC U.K. Investments LLC, The Automobile Insurance Company of Hartford Connecticut, The Charter Oak Fire Insurance Company, The Dominion of Canada General Insurance Company, The Family Business Institute LLC, The Phoenix Insurance Company, The St. Paul Companies Inc., The Standard Fire Insurance Company, The Travelers Casualty Company, The Travelers Home and Marine Insurance Company, The Travelers Indemnity Company, The Travelers Indemnity Company of America, The Travelers Indemnity Company of Connecticut, The Travelers Lloyds Insurance Company, TravCo Insurance Company, Travelers (Bermuda) Limited, Travelers Brazil Acquisition LLC, Travelers Brazil Holding LLC, Travelers Casualty Company of Connecticut, Travelers Casualty Insurance Company of America, Travelers Casualty UK Investments LLC, Travelers Casualty and Surety Company, Travelers Casualty and Surety Company of America, Travelers Casualty and Surety Company of Europe Limited, Travelers Commercial Casualty Company, Travelers Commercial Insurance Company, Travelers Constitution State Insurance Company, Travelers Distribution Alliance Inc., Travelers Excess and Surplus Lines Company, Travelers Global Inc., Travelers Indemnity U.K. Investments LLC, Travelers Insurance Company Limited, Travelers Insurance Company of Canada, Travelers Insurance Designated Activity Company, Travelers Insurance Group Holdings Inc., Travelers Lloyds of Texas Insurance Company, Travelers London Limited, Travelers MGA Inc., Travelers Management Limited, Travelers Marine LLC, Travelers Participacoes em Seguros Brasil S.A., Travelers Personal Insurance Company, Travelers Personal Security Insurance Company, Travelers Property Casualty Company of America, Travelers Property Casualty Corp., Travelers Property Casualty Insurance Company, Travelers Seguros Brasil S.A., Travelers Syndicate Management Limited, Travelers Texas MGA Inc., Travelers Underwriting Agency Limited, Ultramar Travel Management, United States Fidelity and Guaranty Company, Xbridge Limited, Zensurance Brokers Inc., and Zensurance Inc.. MAXIMUS, Inc. engages in the operation of government and human services programs. It operates through the following segments: U.S. Services; U.S. Federal Services; and Outside the U.S. The U.S. Services segment offers a variety of business process services, and appeals and assessments for state, provincial and national government programs. The U.S. Federal Services segment includes process solutions, program management, as well as system and software development, and maintenance services for various United States federal civilian programs. The Outside the U.S segment comprises of national, state, and county human services agencies with a variety of business process services, and related consulting services for welfare-to-work, child support, higher education institutions, and other human services programs. The company was founded by David V. Mastran in 1975 and is headquartered in Reston, VA. Read More Mandalay Resources Corporation, a natural resource company, engages in the acquisition, exploration, extraction, processing, and reclamation of various mineral properties. It explores for gold, silver, and antimony deposits. The company holds a 100% interest in the Costerfield gold-antimony mine covering an area of 7,540.78 hectares (ha) located in Central Victoria, Australia; and the Bjorkdal gold mine that comprises 9 mining concessions and 19 exploration permits located in Vasterbotten County in northern Sweden. It also holds a 100% interest in the Cerro Bayo silver-gold mine covering 29,495 ha of exploitation concessions and 45 hectares of exploration concessions located in the Cerro Bayo district, southern Chile. In addition, the company holds a 100% interest in the Challacollo silver-gold project, which includes 98 mining exploitation concessions covering an area of 20,378 ha located to the southeast of the port city of Iquique, Chile. Mandalay Resources Corporation was incorporated in 1997 and is headquartered in Toronto, Canada. Read More 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.. Canadian Imperial Bank of Commerce, a diversified financial institution, provides various financial products and services to personal, business, public sector, and institutional clients in Canada, the United States, and internationally. The company operates through four strategic business units: Canadian Personal and Business Banking; Canadian Commercial Banking and Wealth Management; U.S. Commercial Banking and Wealth Management; and Capital Markets. The company offers chequing, savings, and business accounts; mortgages; loans, lines of credit, student lines of credit, and business and agriculture loans; investment and insurance services; and credit cards, as well as overdraft protection services. It also provides day-to-day banking, borrowing and credit, investing and wealth, specialty, and international services; correspondent banking and online foreign exchange services; and cash management services. The company serves its customers through its banking centers, as well as direct, mobile, and remote channels. Canadian Imperial Bank of Commerce was founded in 1867 and is headquartered in Toronto, Canada. Read More Celanese Corp. engages in the provision of technology and specialty materials businesses. It operates through the following segments: Engineered Materials, Acetate Tow, Acetyl Chain and Other Activities .The Engineered Materials segment includes the engineered materials business, food ingredients business and certain strategic affiliates. The Acetate Tow segment serves consumer-driven applications and is a global producer and supplier of acetate tow and acetate flake used in filter products applications. The Acetyl Chain segment includes the integrated chain of intermediate chemistry, emulsion polymers and ethylene vinyl acetate (""EVA"") polymers businesses, based on similar products, production processes, classes of customers and selling and distribution practices as well as economic similarities over a normal business cycle. The Other Activities segment consists of corporate center costs, including administrative activities such as finance, information technology and human resource functions, interest income and expense associated with financing activities. The company was founded by Camille Dreyfus and Henri Dreyfus in 1918 and is headquartered in Irving, TX. Read More Richwood, TX (77531) Today Thunderstorms likely. Potential for heavy rainfall. High 81F. Winds ESE at 5 to 10 mph. Chance of rain 100%.. Tonight Mostly cloudy with showers and a few thunderstorms. Low 73F. Winds E at 5 to 10 mph. Chance of rain 50%. Conagra Brands, Inc. engages in the manufacture and sale of processed and packaged foods. It operates through the following segments: Grocery and Snacks; Refrigerated and Frozen; International; and Foodservice. The Grocery and Snacks segment includes branded, shelf stable food products sold in various retail channels in the United States. The Refrigerated and Frozen segment comprises branded, temperature controlled food products sold in various retail channels in the United States. The International segment consists branded food products, in various temperature states, sold in various retail and foodservice channels outside of the United States. The Foodservice segment focuses in the branded and customized food products, including meals, entrees, sauces, and a variety of custom-manufactured culinary products packaged for sale to restaurants and other foodservice establishments in the United States. The company was founded by Alva Kinney and Frank Little in 1919 and is headquartered in Chicago, IL. Read More Wall Street analysts have given Concord Medical Services 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 Concord Medical Services wasn't one of them. MarketBeat thinks these five companies may be even better buys. View MarketBeat's top stock picks here. The following companies are subsidiares of HP: 3Com, 3PAR, ABB CADE, AOME Holdings Ltd., Alpha Holding One B.V., Alpha Holding Two B.V., Anatolus Holding B.V., Antila Holding B.V., Apogee, Apogee Corp, Apollo Computer, AppIQ, Applied Optoelectronic Tech, Aptitude Management Consulting W.L.L., Aquarius Holding S.C.A., ArcSight, Arteis, Artivision Technologies, Aruba Networks, Atos Origin, Atos Origin Middle East group, Aurasma Limited, Autonomy Corporation, Avantek, BT & D Technologies, Bitfone Corporation, Bluestone Software, Boonton Radio, Bristol Technology Inc., Bromium, CEC Europe Service Management, CGNZ, CaLan, Caleum Holding B.V., Callisto Holding B.V., Colorado Memory Systems, Colubris Networks, Colubris Networks, Columba Holding B.V., Compaq Cayman Holdings Company, Compaq Cayman Holdings General Partnership II, Compaq Cayman Islands Vision Company, Compaq Information Technologies, Compaq Information Technologies LLC, Computer Insurance Company, Computing and Printing Global Services Mexico S. de R.L. de C.V., Computing and Printing Mexico S. de R.L. de C.V., Computing and Printing Professional Services Mexico S. de R.L. de C.V., Consera Software, ConteXtream Inc, Convex Computer, Crater Holding B.V., David Vision Systems GmbH, Dazel, Division, Dorado Holding B.V., EDS (Electronic Data Systems), EEsof, EYP Mission Critical Facilities, Elara Holding B.V., ElseWare, Eon Systems, Eucalyptus Systems, Eunomia Holding B.V., ExcellerateHRO, Exstream Software, Extreme Logic, F&M Scientific Corporation, F.L. Moseley Company, Flame Holding B.V., Fortify Software, Four Pi Systems, Gram Global Operations Limited, Gram Inc., HP Austria GmbH, HP Belgium BVBA, HP Bermuda Holding One L.P., HP Bilgisayar ve Bask Teknolojileri Limited Sirketi, HP Bilgisayar ve Bask Teknolojileri Limited Sirketi Ankara Subesi, HP Brasil Industria e Comercio de Equipamentos Eletronicos Ltda, HP Brasil Industria e Comercio de Equipamentos Eletronicos Ltda.Branch 01 (Tambore), HP Brasil Industria e Comercio de Equipamentos Eletronicos Ltda.Branch 2 (Sorocaba), HP Brasil Industria e Comercio de Equipamentos Eletronicos Ltda.Branch 3 (Porto Alegre), HP Canada Co., HP China Holding B.V., HP Colombia SAS, HP Computing and Printing Middle East FZ-LLC, HP Computing and Printing Nigeria Ltd, HP Computing and Printing Systems India Private Limited, HP Computing and Printing d.o.o. (Beograd), HP Computing and Printing d.o.o. (Zagreb), HP Deutschland GmbH, HP Deutschland Holding GmbH, HP Europe B.V. Regional Dubai Branch, HP Europe BV Amsterdam Meyrin Branch, HP Finland Oy, HP France Holding SAS, HP France SAS, HP France SAS Bahrain Branch, HP Global Trading B.V., HP Global Trading B.V. Kazakhstan Branch, HP Hewlett Packard Group LLC, HP Holdgate Co., HP Inc (Thailand) Ltd., HP Inc AP Hong Kong Limited, HP Inc Argentina S.R.L., HP Inc Bulgaria EOOD, HP Inc Chile Comercial Limitada, HP Inc Costa Rica Limitada, HP Inc Czech Republic s.r.o., HP Inc Danmark ApS, HP Inc Gulf, HP Inc Hong Kong Limited, HP Inc Magyarorszag Kft., HP Inc Polska sp. z o.o., HP Inc Romania SRL, HP Inc Slovakia s.r.o., HP Inc Tunisie SARL, HP Inc UK Holding Limited, HP Inc UK Limited, HP Inc. Peru SRL, HP Information Technology R & D (Shanghai) Co. Ltd., HP International Sarl, HP International Sarl (Puerto Rico Branch) LLC, HP International Trading B.V., HP International Trading B.V. (Puerto Rico Branch) LLC, HP Italy Holding S.r.l., HP Italy S.r.l., HP Japan Inc., HP Korea Inc., HP Luxembourg S.C.A., HP Nederland B.V., HP New Zealand, HP Norge AS, HP PPS Asia Pacific Pte. Ltd., HP PPS Australia Pty Ltd, HP PPS Costa Rica Limitada, HP PPS India Operations Private Limited, HP PPS Israel Ltd, HP PPS Malaysia Sdn. Bhd., HP PPS Maroc SARL, HP PPS Multimedia Sdn. Bhd., HP PPS Philippines Inc., HP PPS Sales Sdn. Bhd., HP PPS Services India Private Limited, HP PPS Singapore (Sales) Pte. Ltd., HP PPS Sverige AB, HP Pakistan (Private) Limited, HP Panama S. de R.L., HP Printing and Computing Solutions S.L.U., HP Printing and Personal Systems Hellas EPE, HP Production Company Limited, HP Puerto Rico LLC, HP Schweiz GmbH, HP Solutions Creation and Development Services S.L.U., HP South Africa Proprietary Limited, HP Taiwan Information Technology Ltd., HP Technology (Beijing) Co. Ltd., HP Technology (Beijing) Co. Ltd. Chengdu Branch, HP Technology (Beijing) Co. Ltd. Guangzhou Branch, HP Technology (Beijing) Co. Ltd. Nanjing Branch, HP Technology (Beijing) Co. Ltd. Shanghai Branch, HP Technology (Shanghai) Co. Ltd., HP Trading (Shanghai) Co. Ltd, HP Trading (Shanghai) Co. Ltd. Dalian Branch, HP Trading (Shanghai) Co. Ltd. Zhangjiang Branch, HP WebOS LLC, HP-PPS Ecuador Cia. Ltda, HPCP-Computing and Printing Portugal Unipessoal Lda., HPI Bermuda Holdings LLC, HPI Brazil Holdings LLC, HPI CCHGPII LLC, HPI CCHGPII Sub LLC, HPI Federal LLC, HPI J1 Holdings LLC, HPI J2 Holdings LLC, HPI Luxembourg LLC, HPQ Holdings LLC, Hadar Holding B.V., Handspring Corporation, Heartstream, Hewlett Packard Distribution Center Panama S. de R.L, Hewlett-Packard (Chongqing) Co. Ltd, Hewlett-Packard (Chongqing) Manufacturing Export Procurement and Settlement Co. Ltd., Hewlett-Packard (Japan NK) Holdings C.V., Hewlett-Packard Angola Ltda., Hewlett-Packard Arabia LLC, Hewlett-Packard Cambridge B.V., Hewlett-Packard Company Archives LLC, Hewlett-Packard Copenhagen B.V., Hewlett-Packard Danube B.V., Hewlett-Packard Development Company L.P., Hewlett-Packard Enterprises LLC, Hewlett-Packard Europe BVAbu Dhabi Branch, Hewlett-Packard G.K., Hewlett-Packard Global Holdings B.V., Hewlett-Packard Global Investments B.V., Hewlett-Packard India Sales Private Limited, Hewlett-Packard Indigo B.V., Hewlett-Packard Indigo Ltd., Hewlett-Packard Industrial Printing Ltd., Hewlett-Packard Industrial Printing Solutions Europe BVBA, Hewlett-Packard International Pte Ltd, Hewlett-Packard International Pte Ltd Taiwan Branch, Hewlett-Packard Ireland (Holdings) Ltd., Hewlett-Packard Ireland 1 Limited, Hewlett-Packard Ireland Limited, Hewlett-Packard KSA Ltd, Hewlett-Packard KSA Ltd. Qatar Branch, Hewlett-Packard Lisbon B.V., Hewlett-Packard MENA FZ-LLC, Hewlett-Packard MENA FZ-LLC Libya Branch, Hewlett-Packard Malaysia Manufacturing Sdn. Bhd., Hewlett-Packard Mercator B.V., Hewlett-Packard Munich B.V., Hewlett-Packard Products B.V., Hewlett-Packard Products C.V., Hewlett-Packard Products CV 1 LLC, Hewlett-Packard Products CV 2 LLC, Hewlett-Packard Services Saudi Arabia Company, Hewlett-Packard Singapore (Private) Limited, Hewlett-Packard Sunnyvale B.V., Hewlett-Packard Vietnam Ltd., Hewlett-Packard West Indies Limited, Hewlett-Packard World Trade LLC, Hiflex Software, HyperX, IBRIX, IndiGo, Indigo America Inc., Kale Holding B.V., Kale Holding B.V. (Puerto Rico Branch) LLC, Knightsbridge Solutions, Lefthand Networks, Limited Liability Company HP Inc, Logoworks, Lyra Holding B.V., MacDermid ColorSpan, ManageOne, Melodeo, Mensa Holding B.V., Mercury Interactive, Metrix Network Systems, NUR Macroprinters, Neoware, Nihon HP Nin-I Kumiai, Novadigm, NuView ManageX, Nur do Brasil Ltda, OOO "Hewlett-Packard RUS", Opelin, Opelin, Open Skies, Opsware, Opsware, Optimization Systems, Optotech, OuterBay Technologies, OuterBay Technologies, PERSIST Technologies, PFE Investments Ltd., PIXACO, PROLIN, PT Hewlett-Packard Indonesia, Palm, Palm, Palm Asia Pacific Limited Taiwan Branch, Palm Comercio de Aparelhos Eletronicos Ltda., Palm Europe Limited, Palm Global Operations Limited, Palm Inc., Palm Ireland Investment, Palm Latin America Inc., Palm South America LLC, Palm Trademark Holding Company LLC, Pearl Holding Cooperatief U.A., Peregrine Systems, Perseus Holding B.V., Phoenix Holding L.P., PipeBeach, Polaris Holding One L.P., Polaris Holding Two L.P., PolyServe, Propus Holding B.V., Qosnetics, Quartz Holding Co, RLX Technologies, Regor Holding B.V., SPI Dynamics, Samsung Printing Solutions, Scitex, Scitex Vision, Scope Communications, Scorpius Holding B.V., Security Force Software, Shoreline Investment Management Company, Shunra Software, Shunra Software, Silverwire Holding, Snapfish, StorageApps, Stratavia, Synstar, Tabblo, Talking Blocks, Tall Tree Insurance Company, Techink International Pte. Ltd., Technology Partners, Telegra, The Technology Partners, Tourmaline Holding B.V., Tower Software, Tower Software Engineering Pty Ltd, Transoft Networks, Trellis Software & Controls, Triaton, Trinagy, TruLogica, Trustgenix, Turquoise Holding L.P., VeriFone, Verifone, Versatest, Vertica Systems, Vesta Holding B.V., Vital Technology Pte Ltd, Voltage Security, VoodooPC, and ZAO Hewlett-Packard A.O.. Intu owns and manages some of the best shopping centres, in some of the strongest locations, in the UK and Spain. Our UK portfolio is made up of 17 centres, including eight of the top-20, and in Spain we own three of the country's top-10 centres, with advanced plans to build a fourth. We are passionate about creating compelling experiences, in centre and online, that make our customers smile and help our retailers flourish. We attract around 400 million customer visits and 26 million website visits a year offering a multichannel approach that truly supports retail strategies. Our strategic focus on prime, high-footfall flagship destinations, combined with the strength and popularity of our brand, means that intu offers enhanced footfall, dwell time and loyalty. This helps our tenants flourish, driving occupancy and income growth. We are committed to our local communities, with our centres supporting nearly 130,000 jobs (representing about 3 per cent of the total UK retail workforce), and to operating with environmental responsibility. We have already met or exceeded a significant number of our 2020 environmental targets. Read More Sony Corporation designs, develops, produces, and sells electronic equipment, instruments, and devices for the consumer, professional, and industrial markets worldwide. The company distributes software titles and add-on content through digital networks by Sony Interactive Entertainment; network services related to game, video, and music content; and home and portable game consoles, packaged software, and peripheral devices. It also develops, produces, markets, and distributes recorded music; publishes music; and produces and distributes animation titles, game applications based on animation titles, and various services for music and visual products. In addition, the company offers live-action and animated motion pictures, as well as scripted and unscripted series, daytime serials, game shows, animated series, television movies, and miniseries and other television programs; operates a visual effects and animation unit; manages a studio facility; and operates television and digital networks. Further, it researches, develops, designs, produces, markets, distributes, sells, and services video and sound products; interchangeable lens, compact digital, and consumer and professional video cameras; display products, such as projectors and medical equipment; mobile phones, tablets, accessories, and applications; and metal oxide semiconductor image sensors, charge-coupled devices, large-scale integration systems, and other semiconductors. Additionally, it offers Internet broadband network services; creates and distributes content for various electronics product platforms, such as PCs and mobile phones; and provides life and non-life insurance, banking, and other services, as well as batteries, recording media, and storage media products. It has collaboration with The UNOPS. The company was formerly known as Tokyo Tsushin Kogyo Kabushiki Kaisha and changed its name to Sony Corporation in January 1958. The company was founded in 1946 and is headquartered in Tokyo, Japan. Read More The following companies are subsidiares of BP: 200 PS Overseas Holdings Inc., 563916 Alberta Ltd., ACP (Malaysia) Inc., AE Cedar Creek Holdings LLC, AE Goshen II Holdings LLC, AE Goshen II Wind Farm LLC, AE Power Services LLC, AE Wind PartsCo LLC, AM/PM International Inc., ARCO, ARCO British International, ARCO British Limited, ARCO Coal Australia Inc., ARCO El-Djazair Holdings Inc., ARCO Environmental Remediation L.L.C., ARCO Exploration Inc., ARCO Gaviota Company, ARCO International Investments Inc., ARCO International Services Inc., ARCO Midcon LLC, ARCO Oil Company Nigeria Unlimited, ARCO Oman Inc, ARCO Resources Limited, ARCO Trinidad Exploration and Production Company Limited, ARCO Unimar Holdings LLC, Actomat B.V., Advance Petroleum Holdings Pty Ltd, Advance Petroleum Pty Ltd, Air BP Albania SHA, Air BP Brasil Ltda., Air BP Canada LLC, Air BP Croatia d.o.o., Air BP Finland Oy, Air BP Iceland, Air BP Limited, Air BP Norway AS, Air BP Sales Romania S.R.L., Air BP Sweden AB, Air Refuel Pty Ltd, Allgreen Pty Ltd, AmProp Finance Company, American Oil Company, Amoco (Fiddich) Limited, Amoco (U.K.) Exploration Company LLC., Amoco Bolivia Petroleum Company, Amoco Bolivia Services Company Inc., Amoco Canada International Holdings B.V., Amoco Capline Pipeline Company, Amoco Chemical (Europe) S.A., Amoco Chemicals (FSC) B.V., Amoco Cypress Pipeline Company, Amoco Destin Pipeline Company, Amoco Environmental Services Company, Amoco Exploration Holdings B.V., Amoco Guatemala Petroleum Company, Amoco International Finance Corporation, Amoco International Petroleum Company, Amoco Leasing Corporation, Amoco Louisiana Fractionator Company, Amoco MB Fractionation Company, Amoco MBF Company, Amoco Main Pass Gathering Company, Amoco Marketing Environmental Services Company, Amoco Netherlands Petroleum Company, Amoco Nigeria Exploration Company Limited, Amoco Nigeria Oil Company Limited, Amoco Nigeria Petroleum Company, Amoco Nigeria Petroleum Company Limited, Amoco Norway Oil Company, Amoco Oil Holding Company, Amoco Olefins Corporation, Amoco Overseas Exploration Company, Amoco Pipeline Asset Company, Amoco Pipeline Holding Company, Amoco Properties Incorporated, Amoco Remediation Management Services Corporation, Amoco Research Operating Company, Amoco Rio Grande Pipeline Company, Amoco Somalia Petroleum Company, Amoco Sulfur Recovery Company, Amoco Tri-States NGL Pipeline Company, Amoco Trinidad Gas B.V., Amoco U.K. Petroleum Limited, Amprop Illinois I Limited, Amprop Inc., Anaconda Arizona Inc., Arabian Production And Marketing Lubricants, Aral Aktiengesellschaft, Aral Luxembourg S.A., Aral Services Luxembourg Sarl, Aral Tankstellen Services Sarl, Arco Mediterraneo Inversiones S.L., Areas Noriega S.L., Areas Singulares Reyes S.L., Aspac Lubricants (Malaysia) Sdn. Bhd., Atlantic 2/3 UK Holdings Limited, Atlantic Richfield Company, Atlantic Richfield Companyd, Autino Holdings Limited, Autino Limited, Auwahi Wind Energy Holdings LLC, B2Mobility GmbH, BASS Management Pty Ltd, BP (Abu Dhabi) Limited, BP (Barbados) Holding SRL, BP (Barbican) Limited, BP (China) Holdings Limited, BP (China) Industrial Lubricants Limited, BP (GTA Mauritania) Finance Limited, BP (GTA Senegal) Finance Limited, BP (Gibraltar) Limited, BP (Guangzhou) Advanced Mobility Limited, BP (Hunan) Petroleum Company Limited, BP (Indian Agencies) Limited, BP (Shandong) Petroleum Co. Ltd, BP (Shanghai) Trading Limited, BP - Castrol (Thailand) Limited, BP AMI Leasing Inc., BP Absheron Limited, BP Advanced Mobility Limited, BP Africa Limited, BP Africa Oil Limited, BP Akaryakit Ortakligi, BP Alaska LNG LLC, BP Alternative Energy Holdings Limited, BP Alternative Energy Investments Limited, BP Alternative Energy North America Inc., BP Alternative Energy Trinidad and Tobago Limited, BP America Chembel Holding LLC, BP America Chemicals Company, BP America Foreign Investments Inc., BP America Inc, BP America Inc., BP America Limited, BP America Production Company, BP Amoco Chemical Company, BP Amoco Chemical Holding Company, BP Amoco Chemical Indonesia Limited, BP Amoco Chemical Malaysia Holding Company, BP Amoco Exploration (Faroes) Limited, BP Amoco Exploration (In Amenas) Limited, BP Andaman II Ltd, BP Angola (Block 18) B.V., BP Argentina Exploration Company, BP Argentina Holdings LLC, BP Aromatics Holdings Limited, BP Aromatics Limited, BP Asia Limited, BP Asia Pacific (Malaysia) Sdn. Bhd., BP Asia Pacific Holdings Limited, BP Asia Pacific Pte Ltd, BP Australia Capital Markets Limited, BP Australia Employee Share Plan Proprietary Limited, BP Australia Group Pty Ltde, BP Australia Investments Pty Ltd, BP Australia Nominees Proprietary Limited, BP Australia Pty Ltd, BP Australia Shipping Pty Ltd, BP Australia Swaps Management Limited, BP Aviation A/S, BP Benevolent Fund Trustees Limited, BP Berau Ltd., BP Biocombustiveis S.A., BP Bioenergia Campina Verde Ltda., BP Bioenergia Ituiutaba Ltda., BP Bioenergia Itumbiara S.A., BP Bioenergia Tropical S.A., BP Biofuels Advanced Technology Inc., BP Biofuels Brazil Investments Limited, BP Biofuels Louisiana LLC, BP Biofuels North America LLC, BP Biofuels Trading Comercio Exportacao Ltda., BP Bomberai Ltd., BP Brasil Ltda., BP Brazil Tracking L.L.C., BP Bulwer Island Pty Ltd, BP Business Service Centre Asia Sdn Bhd, BP Business Service Centre KFT, BP CIV Pty Ltd, BP Canada Energy Development Company, BP Canada Energy Group ULC, BP Canada Energy Marketing Corp., BP Canada International Holdings B.V., BP Canada Investments Inc., BP Capellen Sarl, BP Capital Markets, BP Capital Markets America, BP Capital Markets America Inc., BP Capital Markets p.l.c., BP Car Fleet Limited, BP Caribbean Company, BP Castrol KK, BP Castrol Lubricants (Malaysia) Sdn. Bhd., BP Central Pipelines LLC, BP Chembel, BP Chemicals (Korea) Limited, BP Chemicals East China Investments Limited, BP Chemicals Investments Limited, BP Chemicals Limited, BP China Exploration and Production Company, BP Comercializadora de Energia Ltda., BP Commodities Trading Limited, BP Commodity Supply B.V., BP Company North America, BP Company North America Inc., BP Containment Response Limited, BP Containment Response System Holdings LLC, BP Continental Holdings Limited, BP Corporate Holdings, BP Corporate Holdings Limited, BP Corporation North America, BP Corporation North America Inc., BP D-B Pipeline Company LLC, BP D230 Limited, BP Danmark A/S, BP Developments Australia Pty. Ltd., BP Dogal Gaz Ticaret Anonim Sirketi, BP East Kalimantan CBM Limited, BP Eastern Mediterranean Limited, BP Egypt Company, BP Egypt East Delta Marine Corporation, BP Egypt East Tanka B.V., BP Egypt Production B.V., BP Egypt Ras El Barr B.V., BP Egypt West Mediterranean (Block B) B.V., BP Energy Asia Pte. Limited, BP Energy Colombia Limited, BP Energy Company, BP Energy Europe Limited, BP Energy Solutions B.V., BP Energy do Brasil Ltda., BP Energia Mexico S. de R.L. de C.V., BP Espana S.A. Unipersonal, BP Estaciones y Servicios Energeticos Sociedad Anonima de Capital Variable, BP Europa SE, BP Exploracion de Venezuela S.A., BP Exploration & Production Inc., BP Exploration (Absheron) Limited, BP Exploration (Alaska), BP Exploration (Alaska) Inc., BP Exploration (Algeria) Limited, BP Exploration (Alpha), BP Exploration (Alpha) Limited, BP Exploration (Angola), BP Exploration (Angola) Limited, BP Exploration (Azerbaijan), BP Exploration (Azerbaijan) Limited, BP Exploration (Canada) Limited, BP Exploration (Caspian Sea), BP Exploration (Caspian Sea) Limited, BP Exploration (D230) Limited, BP Exploration (Delta), BP Exploration (Delta) Limited, BP Exploration (El Djazair) Limited, BP Exploration (Epsilon) Limited, BP Exploration (Gambia) Limited, BP Exploration (Greenland) Limited, BP Exploration (Madagascar) Limited, BP Exploration (Morocco) Limited, BP Exploration (Namibia) Limited, BP Exploration (Nigeria Finance) Limited, BP Exploration (Nigeria) Limited, BP Exploration (Psi) Limited, BP Exploration (STP) Limited, BP Exploration (Shafag-Asiman) Limited, BP Exploration (Shah Deniz) Limited, BP Exploration (South Atlantic) Limited, BP Exploration (Xazar) Pte. Ltd., BP Exploration Angola (Kwanza Benguela) Limited, BP Exploration Argentina Limited, BP Exploration Australia Pty Ltd Level 15, BP Exploration Beta Limited, BP Exploration China Limited, BP Exploration Company (Middle East) Limited, BP Exploration Company Limited, BP Exploration Indonesia Limited, BP Exploration Libya Limited, BP Exploration Mexico Limited, BP Exploration Mexico S.A. De C.V., BP Exploration North Africa Limited, BP Exploration Operating Company, BP Exploration Operating Company Limited, BP Exploration Orinoco Limited, BP Exploration Personnel Company Limited, BP Exploration Peru Limited, BP Express Shopping Limited, BP Finance Australia Pty Ltd, BP Finance p.l.c., BP Foundation Incorporated, BP France, BP Fuels & Lubricants AS, BP Fuels Deutschland GmbH, BP GOM Logistics LLC, BP Gas & Power Investments Limited, BP Gas Europe S.A.U., BP Gas Marketing Limited, BP Gas Supply (Angola) LLC, BP Ghana Limited, BP Global Investments, BP Global Investments Limited, BP Global Investments Salalah & Co LLC, BP Global West Africa Limited, BP Greece Limited, BP Guangdong Limited, BP High Density Polyethylene - France, BP Holdings (Thailand) Limited, BP Holdings B.V., BP Holdings Canada, BP Holdings Canada Limited, BP Holdings International B.V., BP Holdings North America, BP Holdings North America Limited, BP Hong Kong Limited, BP India Private Limited, BP Indonesia Investment Limited, BP International, BP International Limited, BP International Services Company, BP Investment Management Limited, BP Investments Asia Limited, BP Iran Limited, BP Iraq N.V., BP Italia SpA, BP Japan K.K., BP Korea Limited, BP Kuwait Limited, BP LNG Shipping Limited, BP Latin America LLC, BP Latin America Upstream Services Inc., BP Lubricants KK, BP Lubricants USA Inc., BP Luxembourg S.A., BP Malaysia Holdings Sdn. Bhd., BP Management International B.V., BP Management Netherlands B.V., BP Marine Limited, BP Mariner Holding Company LLC, BP Maritime Services (Singapore) Pte. Limited, BP Marketing Egypt LLC, BP Mauritania Investments Limited, BP Mauritius Limited (in liquidation), BP Middle East Enterprises Corporation, BP Middle East LLC, BP Middle East Limited, BP Midstream Partners GP LLC, BP Midstream Partners Holdings LLC, BP Midstream Partners LP, BP Midwest Product Pipelines Holdings LLC, BP Mocambique Limitada, BP Mocambique Limited, BP Muturi Holdings B.V., BP Nederland Holdings BV, BP Netherlands Upstream B.V., BP New Ventures Middle East Limited, BP New Zealand Holdings Limited, BP New Zealand Share Scheme Limited, BP Nutrition Inc., BP Offshore Gathering Systems Inc., BP Offshore Pipelines Company LLC, BP Offshore Response Company LLC, BP Oil (Thailand) Limited, BP Oil Australia Pty Ltd, BP Oil Espana S.A., BP Oil Hellenic S.A., BP Oil International, BP Oil International Limited, BP Oil Kent Refinery Limited (in liquidation), BP Oil Llandarcy Refinery Limited, BP Oil Logistics UK Limited, BP Oil New Zealand Limited, BP Oil Pipeline Company, BP Oil Senegal S.A., BP Oil Shipping Company, BP Oil UK Limited, BP Oil Venezuela Limited, BP Oil Vietnam Limited, BP Oil Yemen Limited, BP Olex Fanal Mineralol GmbH, BP One Pipeline Company LLC, BP Pacific Investments Ltd, BP Pakistan (Badin) Inc., BP Pakistan Exploration and Production Inc., BP Pension Escrow Limited, BP Pension Trustees Limited, BP Pensions (Overseas) Limited, BP Pensions Limited, BP Petrochemicals India Investments Limited, BP Petroleo y Gas S.A., BP Petrolleri Anonim Sirketi, BP Pipelines (Alaska) Inc., BP Pipelines (BTC) Limited, BP Pipelines (North America) Inc., BP Pipelines (SCP) Limited, BP Pipelines (TANAP) Limited, BP Pipelines TAP Limited, BP Polska Services Sp. z o.o. Ul., BP Portugal -Comercio de Combustiveis e Lubrificantes SA, BP Poseidon Limited, BP Products North America, BP Products North America Inc., BP Properties Limited, BP Raffinaderij Rotterdam B.V., BP Refinery (Kwinana) Proprietary Limited, BP Regional Australasia Holdings Pty Ltd, BP River Rouge Pipeline Company LLC, BP Russian Investments Limited, BP Russian Ventures Limited, BP SC Holdings LLC, BP Scale Up Factory Limited, BP Senegal Investments Limited, BP Services International Limited, BP Servicios de Combustibles S.A. de C.V., BP Servicios territoriales S.A., BP Shafag-Asiman Limited, BP Shipping Limited, BP Singapore Pte. Limited, BP Solar Energy North America LLC, BP Solar Espana S.A., BP Solar International Inc., BP Solar Pty Ltd, BP South America Holdings Ltd, BP Southern Africa Proprietary Limited, BP Southern Cone Company, BP Subsea Well Response (Brazil) Limited, BP Subsea Well Response Limited, BP Taiwan Marketing Limited, BP Technology Ventures Inc., BP Technology Ventures Limited, BP Train 2/3 Holding SRL, BP Transportation (Alaska) Inc., BP Trinidad Processing Limited, BP Trinidad and Tobago, BP Trinidad and Tobago LLC, BP Turkey Refining Limited, BP Two Pipeline Company LLC, BP UK Retained Holdings Limited, BP Venezuela Investments B.V., BP West Aru I Limited, BP West Aru II Limited, BP West Papua I Limited, BP West Papua III Limited, BP Wind Energy North America Inc., BP Wiriagar Ltd., BP World-Wide Technical Services Limited, BP Zhuhai Chemical Company Limited, BP+Amoco International Limited, BP-AIOC Exploration (TISA) LLC, BPA Investment Holding Company, BPNE International B.V., BPRY Caribbean Ventures LLC, BPX (Eagle Ford) Gathering LLC, BPX (KCS Resources) LLC, BPX (Karnes) Gathering LLC, BPX (Permian) Gathering LLC, BPX (WSF Operating) Inc., BPX Energy Inc., BPX Midstream LLC, BPX Operating Company, BPX Production Company, BPX Properties (GP) LLC, BPX Properties (LP) LLC, BPX Properties (NA) LP, BTC Pipeline Holding Company Limited, BXL Plastics Limitedv, Bahia de Bizkaia Electridad S.L., Baltimore Ennis Land Company Inc., Black Lake Pipe Line Company, Brian Jasper Nominees Pty Ltd, Britannic Energy Trading Limited, Britannic Investments Iraq Limited, Britannic Marketing Limited, Britannic Strategies Limited, Britannic Trading Limited, Britoil Limited, Burmah Castrol, Burmah Castrol Australia Pty Ltd, Burmah Castrol Holdings Inc., Burmah Castrol PLC, Burmah Castrol South Africa (Pty) Limited, Burmah Chile SpA, Butamax Advanced Biofuels, CASTROL Austria GmbHb, CH-Twenty Inc., CNAA, Cadman DBP Limited, Casitas Pipeline Company, Castrol (China) Limited, Castrol (Ireland) Limited, Castrol (Shanghai) Management Co. Ltd., Castrol (Shenzhen) Company Limited, Castrol (Tianjin) Lubricants Co. Ltd., Castrol (U.K.) Limited, Castrol Australia Pty. Limited, Castrol B.V., Castrol BP Petco Limited Liability Company, Castrol Brasil Ltda., Castrol Caribbean & Central America Inc., Castrol Colombia Ltda., Castrol Del Peru S.A., Castrol Egypt Lubricants S.A.E., Castrol India Limited, Castrol Industrie und Service GmbH, Castrol KK, Castrol Limited, Castrol Lubricants RO S.R.L, Castrol Mexico S.A., Castrol Namibia (Pty) Limited, Castrol Offshore Limited, Castrol Pakistan (Private) Limited, Castrol Philippines Inc., Castrol Servicos Ltda., Castrol Ukraine LLC, Castrol Zimbabwe (Private) Limited, Centrel Pty Ltd, Charge Your Car Limitedc, Chargemaster, Chargemaster (Europe) GmbH, Chargemaster Limited, Charging Solutions Limited, Clarisse Holdings Pty Ltd, Coastwise Trading Company Inc., Consolidada de Energia y Lubricantes (CENERLUB) C.A., Conti Cross Keys Inn Inc., Coro Trading NZ Limited, Cuyama Pipeline Company, DHC Solvent Chemie GmbH, Dermody Developments Pty Ltd, Dermody Holdings Pty Ltd, Dermody Investments Pty Ltd, Dermody Petroleum Pty. Ltd., Dome Beaufort Petroleum Limited, Dome Wallis (1980) Limited Partnership, ECM Markets SA (Pty) Ltd, Elektromotive Limited, Elite Customer Solutions Pty Ltd, Elm Holdings Inc., Energy Global Investments (USA) Inc., Enstar LLC, Estacion de Servicio Alto Campoo S.L., Estacion de Servicio Ganzo 10 S.L., Estacion de Servicio Reocin 9 S.L., Estacion de Servicio Santillana II S.L., Estacion de Servicio Sardinero S.L., Estonian Aviation Fuelling Services, Europa Oil NZ Limited, Exomet Inc., Expandite Contract Services Limited, Exploration (Luderitz Basin) Limited, Exploration Service Company Limited, FWK (2017) Limited, FWK Holdings (2017) LTD, Finite Carbon, Flat Ridge 2 Holdings LLC, Flat Ridge Wind Energy LLC, Foseco Holding Inc., Foseco Holding International B.V., Foseco Inc., Fosroc Expandite Limited, Fotech Solutions Ltd, Fowler Ridge Holdings LLC, Fowler Ridge I Land Investments LLC, Fowler Ridge II Holdings LLC, Fowler Ridge III Wind Farm LLC, FreeBees B.V., Fuel & Retail Aviat ion Sweden AB, Fuelplane- Sociedade Abastecedora De Aeronaves Unipessoal Lda, GOAM 1 C.I S. A .S, Gardena Holdings Inc., Gelsenkirchen Raffinerie Netz GmbH, Grampian Aviation Fuelling Services Limited, Guangdong Investments Limited, Highlands Ethanol LLC, Hosteleria Noriega S.L., IGI Resources Inc., Insight Analytics Solutions Holdings Limited, Insight Analytics Solutions Limited, Insight Analytics Solutions USA Inc., International Bunker Supplies Pty Ltd, Iraq Petroleum Company Limited, Jupiter Insurance Limited, Ken-Chas Reserve Company, Kenilworth Oil Company Limited, Kingbook Inversiones Socimi S.A., Latin Energy Argentina S.A., Lebanese Aviation Technical Services S.A.L., Limited Liability Company BP Toplivnaya Kompania, Limited liability company Setra Lubricants, Lubricants UK Limited, Lytt Limited, Manormaker (Nominee No. 1) Limited, Manormaker (Nominee No. 2) Limited, Manormaker GP Limited (99.90%) 11 Black Horse Lane, Mardi Gras Transportation System Company LLC, Markoil S.A., Masana Petroleum Solutions (Pty) Ltd, Mayaro Initiative for Private Enterprise Development, Mehoopany Holdings LLC, Mes Tecnologia En Servicios Y Energia S.A., Minza Pty. Ltd., Mountain City Remediation LLC, No. 1 Riverside Quay Proprietary Limited, Nordic Lubricants A/S, Nordic Lubricants AB, North America Funding Company, OMD87 Inc., OOO BP STL, Omega Oil Company, OnSight Analytics Solutions India Private Ltd., Orion Delaware Mountain Wind Farm LP, Orion Energy Holdings LLC, Orion Energy L.L.C.b, Orion Post Land Investments LLC, Oyambre 1 S.L., PRODUITS METALLURGIE DOITTAU, PT BP Petrochemicals, PT Castrol Indonesia, PT Castrol Manufacturing Indonesia, PT Jasatama Petroindo, Pacroy (Thailand) Co. Ltd., Peaks America Inc., Pearl River Delta Investments Limited, Petrocorner Retail S.L.U., Phoenix Petroleum Services Limited, Pozuelo 4 S.L., Prospect International C.A. (In liquidation), Puente Arce 4 S.L., Remediation Management Services Company, Richfield Oil Corporation, Rio Corvo 2 S.L., Rolling Thunder I Power Partners LLC, Romax Insight Korea Ltd., Ropemaker Deansgate Limited, Ropemaker Properties Limited, Ruhr Oel GmbH, Rusdene GSS Limited, SOFAST Limited, SRHP, Saturn Insurance Inc., Sherbino I Holdings LLC, Sherbino Mesa I Land Investments LLC, Sociedade de Promocao Imobiliaria Quinta do Loureiro SA, Societe de Gestion de Depots d'Hydrocarbures - GDH, South Texas Shale LLC, Southeast Texas Biofuels LLC, Southern Ridge Pipeline Holding Company, Southern Ridge Pipeline LP LLC, Sp/f Decision3 (GreenSteam) Company, Standard Oil Company, Standard Oil Company Inc., Standard Oil of Ohio, Stryde Limited, Sunrise Oil Sands Partnership, TISA Education Complex LLC, TJKK, Taradadis Pty. Ltd., Telcom General Corporation, Terre de Grace Partnership, The Anaconda Company, The BP Share Plans Trustees Limited, The Burmah Oil Company (Pakistan Trading) Limited, The Standard Oil Company, Toledo Refinery Holding Company LLC, Torrelavega 7 S.L., Union Texas International Corporation, Vastar Pipeline LLC, Veba Oel AG Veba Oel, Verenium, Viceroy Investments Limited, Villacarriedo 8 S.L., Warrenville Development Limited, Water Way Trading and Petroleum Services LLC, Welchem Inc., West Kimberley Fuels Pty Ltd, Westlake Houston Development LLC, Whiting Clean Energy Inc., Windpark Energy Nederland B.V., and Winwell Resources L.L.C. Magna International Inc. designs, engineers, and manufactures components, assemblies, systems, subsystems, and modules for original equipment manufacturers of vehicles and light trucks worldwide. The company operates through four segments: Body Exteriors & Structures, Power & Vision, Seating Systems, and Complete Vehicles. Its Body Exteriors & Structures segment provides body and chassis systems, as well as engineering and testing services; exterior systems, including fascia and trims, front end modules, front integration panels, liftgate modules, active aerodynamics, engineered glass, running boards, truck bed access products, and side doors; and roof systems, such as modular and textile folding roofs, and hard and soft tops. The company's Power & Vision segment offers dedicated hybrid, dual and e-clutch, and manual transmissions; engine drive plates and accessories; AWD/4WD products, rear drive modules, and hybrid and battery electric drive systems; transmission, engine, and driveline components; advanced driver assistance systems, camera systems, ultrasonic sensors, and electronic controllers; interior and exterior mirrors, actuators, door handles, overhead consoles, and camera monitoring systems; head, tail, and fog lamps; signal and other lighting products; and latching systems, door modules, window systems, power closure systems, hinges and wire forming, and handle assemblies. Its Seating Systems segment provides seat structures, mechanism and hardware solutions, and foam and trim products. The company's Complete Vehicles segment offers vehicle manufacturing and engineering services. It also designs, engineers, and manufactures tooling products. Magna International Inc. was founded in 1957 and is headquartered in Aurora, Canada. Read More The following companies are subsidiares of CVS Health: @Credentials Inc., ACS ACQCO CORP., ADMINCO Inc., AE Fourteen Incorporated, AHP Holdings Inc., AMC - Tennessee LLC, APS Acquisition LLC, ASCO HealthCare LLC, ASI Wings LLC, AUSHC Holdings Inc., Accendo Insurance Company, Accordant Health Services L.L.C., Active Health Management Inc., Administrative Enterprises Inc., AdvancePCS SpecialtyRx LLC, AdvanceRx.com L.L.C., Advanced Care Scripts Inc., Aetna, Aetna (Beijing) Enterprise Management Services Co. Ltd., Aetna (Shanghai) Enterprise Services Co. Ltd., Aetna ACO Holdings Inc., Aetna Asset Advisors LLC, Aetna Behavioral Health LLC, Aetna Better Health Inc., Aetna Better Health Inc., Aetna Better Health of California Inc., Aetna Better Health of Florida Inc., Aetna Better Health of Kansas Inc., Aetna Better Health of Michigan Inc., Aetna Better Health of Missouri LLC, Aetna Better Health of Nevada Inc., Aetna Better Health of North Carolina Inc., Aetna Better Health of Oklahoma Inc., Aetna Better Health of Texas Inc., Aetna Better Health of Washington Inc., Aetna Capital Management LLC, Aetna Card Solutions LLC, Aetna Corporate Services LLC, Aetna Dental Inc., Aetna Dental of California Inc., Aetna Financial Holdings LLC, Aetna Florida Inc., Aetna Global Benefits (Asia Pacific) Limited, Aetna Global Benefits (Bahamas) Limited, Aetna Global Benefits (Bermuda) Limited, Aetna Global Benefits (Europe) Limited, Aetna Global Benefits (Middle East) LLC, Aetna Global Benefits (Singapore) PTE. LTD., Aetna Global Benefits (UK) Limited, Aetna Global Benefits Limited (DIFC UAE), Aetna Global Holdings Limited, Aetna Health Holdings LLC, Aetna Health Inc., Aetna Health Insurance (Thailand) Public Company Limited, Aetna Health Insurance Company, Aetna Health Insurance Company of Europe DAC, Aetna Health Management LLC, Aetna Health and Life Insurance Company, Aetna Health of California Inc., Aetna Health of Iowa Inc., Aetna Health of Michigan Inc., Aetna Health of Ohio Inc., Aetna Health of Utah Inc., Aetna HealthAssurance Pennsylvania Inc., Aetna Holdco (UK) Limited, Aetna Holdings (Thailand) Limited, Aetna Inc., Aetna Insurance (Hong Kong) Limite, Aetna Insurance (Singapore) Pte. Ltd., Aetna Insurance Company Limited, Aetna Integrated Informatics Inc., Aetna International Inc., Aetna Ireland Inc., Aetna Korea Ltd., Aetna Life & Casualty (Bermuda) Ltd., Aetna Life Assignment Company, Aetna Life Insurance Company, Aetna Medicaid Administrators LLC, Aetna Multi-Strategy 1099 Fund LLC, Aetna Network Services LLC, Aetna Partners Diversified Fund LLC, Aetna Pharmacy Management Services LLC, Aetna Resources LLC, Aetna Risk Assurance Company of Connecticut Inc., Aetna Rx Home Delivery LLC, Aetna Services (Thailand) Limited, Aetna Specialty Pharmacy LLC, Aetna Student Health Agency Inc., Aetna Ventures LLC, Aetna Workers Comp Access LLC, Alabama CVS Pharmacy L.L.C., Alaska CVS Pharmacy L.L.C., Allina Health and Aetna Insurance Company, Allina Health and Aetna Insurance Holding Company LLC, American Continental Insurance Company, American Drug Stores Delaware L.L.C., American Health Holding Inc., Arbor Drugs, Arizona CVS Stores L.L.C., Arkansas CVS Pharmacy L.L.C., Badger Acquisition LLC, Badger Acquisition of Kentucky LLC, Badger Acquisition of Minnesota LLC, Badger Acquisition of Ohio LLC, Banner Health and Aetna Health Insurance Company, Banner Health and Aetna Health Insurance Holding Company LLC, Banner Health and Aetna Health Plan Inc., Beauty Holdings L.L.C., Best Care LTC Acquisition Company LLC, Busse CVS L.L.C., CCI Foreign S.a R.L. (R.C.S. Luxembourg), CCRx Holdings LLC, CCRx of North Carolina LLC, CHP Acquisition LLC, CP Acquisition LLC, CVS 2948 Henderson L.L.C., CVS 3268 Gilbert L.L.C., CVS 3745 Peoria L.L.C., CVS AL Distribution L.L.C., CVS AOC Corporation, CVS AOC Services L.L.C., CVS Albany L.L.C., CVS Bellmore Avenue L.L.C., CVS Care Concierge LLC, CVS Caremark Advanced Technology Pharmacy L.L.C., CVS Caremark Indemnity Ltd., CVS Caremark Part D Services L.L.C., CVS Caremark TN SUTA LLC, CVS Foreign Inc., CVS Gilbert 3272 L.L.C., CVS Health Solutions LLC, CVS Indiana L.L.C., CVS International L.L.C., CVS Kidney Care Advanced Technologies LLC, CVS Kidney Care Health Services LLC, CVS Kidney Care Home Dialysis LLC, CVS Kidney Care LLC, CVS Manchester NH L.L.C., CVS Media Exchange LLC, CVS Michigan L.L.C., CVS Orlando FL Distribution L.L.C., CVS PA Distribution L.L.C., CVS PR Center Inc., CVS Pharmacy Inc., CVS RS Arizona L.L.C., CVS Rx Services Inc., CVS SC Distribution L.L.C., CVS State Capital L.L.C., CVS TN Distribution L.L.C., CVS Transportation L.L.C., CVS Vero FL Distribution L.L.C., Campos Medical Pharmacy LLC, Canal Place LLC, Care Pharmaceutical Services LP, CareCenter Pharmacy L.L.C., Carefree Insurance Services Inc., Caremark Arizona Mail Pharmacy LLC, Caremark Arizona Specialty Pharmacy L.L.C., Caremark California Specialty Pharmacy L.L.C., Caremark Florida Mail Pharmacy LLC, Caremark Florida Specialty Pharmacy LLC, Caremark Hawaii Mail Pharmacy L.L.C., Caremark Hawaii Specialty Pharmacy LLC, Caremark IPA L.L.C., Caremark Illinois Mail Pharmacy LLC, Caremark Illinois Specialty Pharmacy LLC, Caremark Irving Resource Center LLC, Caremark Kansas Specialty Pharmacy LLC, Caremark L.L.C., Caremark Logistics LLC, Caremark Louisiana Specialty Pharmacy LLC, Caremark Maryland Specialty Pharmacy LLC, Caremark Massachusetts Specialty Pharmacy L.L.C., Caremark Michigan Specialty Pharmacy LLC, Caremark Minnesota Specialty Pharmacy LLC, Caremark New Jersey Specialty Pharmacy LLC, Caremark North Carolina Specialty Pharmacy LLC, Caremark Ohio Specialty Pharmacy L.L.C., Caremark Pennsylvania Specialty Pharmacy LLC, Caremark PhC L.L.C., Caremark Puerto Rico L.L.C., Caremark Puerto Rico Specialty Pharmacy L.L.C., Caremark Redlands Pharmacy L.L.C., Caremark Repack LLC, Caremark Rx L.L.C., Caremark Tennessee Specialty Pharmacy LLC, Caremark Texas Mail Pharmacy LLC, Caremark Texas Specialty Pharmacy LLC, Caremark Ulysses Holding Corp., Caremark Washington Specialty Pharmacy LLC, CaremarkPCS Alabama Mail Pharmacy LLC, CaremarkPCS Health L.L.C., CaremarkPCS L.L.C., Central Rx Services LLC, Claims Administration Corp., Cofinity Inc., Compscript LLC, Connecticut CVS Pharmacy L.L.C., Continental Life Insurance Company of Brentwood Tennessee, Continuing Care Rx LLC, Coram Alternate Site Services Inc., Coram Clinical Trials Inc., Coram Healthcare Corporation of Alabama, Coram Healthcare Corporation of Florida, Coram Healthcare Corporation of Greater D.C., Coram Healthcare Corporation of Greater New York, Coram Healthcare Corporation of Indiana, Coram Healthcare Corporation of Massachusetts, Coram Healthcare Corporation of Mississippi, Coram Healthcare Corporation of Nevada, Coram Healthcare Corporation of North Texas, Coram Healthcare Corporation of Northern California, Coram Healthcare Corporation of Southern California, Coram Healthcare Corporation of Southern Florida, Coram Healthcare Corporation of Utah, Coram LLC, Coram Rx LLC, Coram Specialty Infusion, Coram Specialty Infusion Services L.L.C., Coventry Consumer Advantage Inc., Coventry Health Care National Accounts Inc., Coventry Health Care National Network Inc., Coventry Health Care Workers Compensation Inc., Coventry Health Care of Illinois Inc., Coventry Health Care of Kansas Inc., Coventry Health Care of Missouri Inc., Coventry Health Care of Nebraska Inc., Coventry Health Care of Virginia Inc., Coventry Health Care of West Virginia Inc., Coventry Health Plan of Florida Inc., Coventry Health and Life Insurance Company, Coventry HealthCare Management Corporation, Coventry Prescription Management Services Inc., Coventry Rehabilitation Services Inc., Coventry Transplant Network Inc., D & R Pharmaceutical Services LLC, D.A.W. LLC, Delaware CVS Pharmacy L.L.C., Delaware Physicians Care Incorporated, Digital eHealth LLC, District of Columbia CVS Pharmacy L.L.C., E.T.B. INC., Echo Merger Sub Inc., Eckerd Corporation of Florida Inc., Employee Assistance Services LLC, Enloe Drugs LLC, Enterprise Patient Safety Organization LLC, EntrustRX, Evergreen Pharmaceutical LLC, Evergreen Pharmaceutical of California Inc., Express Pharmacy Services of PA L.L.C., FOCUS HealthCare Management Inc., First Health Group Corp., First Health Life & Health Insurance Company, First Script Network Services Inc., Florida Health Plan Administrators LLC, Garfield Beach CVS L.L.C., Generation Health L.L.C., Geneva Woods Health Services LLC, Geneva Woods LTC Pharmacy LLC, Geneva Woods Management LLC, Geneva Woods Pharmacy Alaska LLC, Geneva Woods Pharmacy LLC, Geneva Woods Pharmacy Washington LLC, Geneva Woods Pharmacy Wyoming LLC, Geneva Woods Retail Pharmacy LLC, Georgia CVS Pharmacy L.L.C., German Dobson CVS L.L.C., Goodhealth Worldwide (Asia) Limited, Goodhealth Worldwide (Global) Limited, Goodyear CVS L.L.C., Grand St. Paul CVS L.L.C., Grandview Pharmacy LLC, Group Dental Service Inc., Group Dental Service of Maryland Inc., Health Care Management Co. Ltd., Health Data & Management Solutions Inc., Health Re Inc., Health and Human Resource Center Inc., HealthAssuance Pennsylvania Inc., Healthagen LLC, Highland Park CVS L.L.C., Holiday CVS L.L.C., Home Care Pharmacy LLC, Home Pharmacy Services LLC, Hook-SupeRx L.L.C., Horizon Behavioral Services LLC, Idaho CVS Pharmacy L.L.C., IlliniCare Health, Indian Health Organisation Private Limited, Innovation Health Holdings LLC, Innovation Health Insurance Company, Innovation Health Plan Inc., Interlock Pharmacy Systems LLC, Iowa CVS Pharmacy L.L.C., JHC Acquisition LLC, Kansas CVS Pharmacy L.L.C., Kentucky CVS Pharmacy L.L.C., LCPS Acquisition LLC, Langsam Health Services LLC, Lo-Med Prescription Services LLC, Lobos Acquisition LLC, Longs Drug Stores, Longs Drug Stores California L.L.C., Louisiana CVS Pharmacy L.L.C., MHHP Acquisition Company LLC, MHNet Life and Health Insurance Company, MHNet Specialty Services LLC, MHNet of Florida Inc., Managed Care Coordinators Inc., Managed Healthcare LLC, Martin Health Services LLC, Maryland CVS Pharmacy L.L.C., Med World Acquisition Corp., Medical Arts Health Care LLC, Medical Examinations of New York P.C., Melville Realty Company Inc., MemberHealth LLC, Mental Health Associates Inc., Mental Health Network of New York IPA Inc., Meritain Health Inc., Merwin Long Term Care LLC, MetraComp Inc., Minor Health Enterprise Co Ltd., MinuteClinic, MinuteClinic Diagnostic of Alabama L.L.C., MinuteClinic Diagnostic of Arizona LLC, MinuteClinic Diagnostic of Florida LLC, MinuteClinic Diagnostic of Georgia LLC, MinuteClinic Diagnostic of Hawaii L.L.C., MinuteClinic Diagnostic of Illinois LLC, MinuteClinic Diagnostic of Kentucky L.L.C., MinuteClinic Diagnostic of Louisiana L.L.C., MinuteClinic Diagnostic of Maine L.L.C., MinuteClinic Diagnostic of Maryland LLC, MinuteClinic Diagnostic of Massachusetts LLC, MinuteClinic Diagnostic of Nebraska L.L.C., MinuteClinic Diagnostic of New Hampshire L.L.C., MinuteClinic Diagnostic of New Mexico L.L.C., MinuteClinic Diagnostic of Ohio LLC, MinuteClinic Diagnostic of Oklahoma LLC, MinuteClinic Diagnostic of Oregon LLC, MinuteClinic Diagnostic of Pennsylvania LLC, MinuteClinic Diagnostic of Rhode Island LLC, MinuteClinic Diagnostic of South Carolina L.L.C., MinuteClinic Diagnostic of Texas LLC, MinuteClinic Diagnostic of Utah L.L.C., MinuteClinic Diagnostic of Virginia LLC, MinuteClinic Diagnostic of Washington LLC, MinuteClinic Diagnostic of Wisconsin L.L.C., MinuteClinic L.L.C., MinuteClinic Online Diagnostic Services LLC, MinuteClinic Physician Practice of Texas, MinuteClinic Telehealth Services LLC, Mississippi CVS Pharmacy L.L.C., Missouri CVS Pharmacy L.L.C., Montana CVS Pharmacy L.L.C., NCS Healthcare LLC, NCS Healthcare of Illinois LLC, NCS Healthcare of Iowa LLC, NCS Healthcare of Kansas LLC, NCS Healthcare of Kentucky Inc. (Oh, NCS Healthcare of Montana LLC, NCS Healthcare of New Mexico LLC, NCS Healthcare of Ohio LLC, NCS Healthcare of South Carolina LLC, NCS Healthcare of Tennessee LLC, NCS Healthcare of Wisconsin LLC, NIV Acquisition LLC, Navarro Discount Pharmacy, Nebraska CVS Pharmacy L.L.C., NeighborCare Holdings Inc., NeighborCare Inc., NeighborCare Pharmacy Services Inc., NeighborCare Services Corporation, NeighborCare of Indiana LLC, NeighborCare of Virginia LLC, New Jersey CVS Pharmacy L.L.C., Niagara Re Inc., North Carolina CVS Pharmacy L.L.C., North Shore Pharmacy Services LLC, NovoLogix LLC, OCR Services LLC, Ocean Acquisition Sub L.L.C., Ohio CVS Stores L.L.C., Oklahoma CVS Pharmacy L.L.C., Omnicare, Omnicare Holding Company, Omnicare Inc., Omnicare Indiana Partnership Holding Company LLC, Omnicare Pharmacies of Pennsylvania East LLC, Omnicare Pharmacies of Pennsylvania West LLC, Omnicare Pharmacies of the Great Plains Holding LLC, Omnicare Pharmacy and Supply Services LLC, Omnicare Pharmacy of Tennessee LLC, Omnicare Pharmacy of the Midwest LLC, Omnicare Property Management LLC, Omnicare of Nebraska LLC, Omnicare of Nevada LLC, Omnicare of New York LLC, Oregon CVS Pharmacy L.L.C., PE Holdings LLC, PHPSNE Parent Corporation, PP Acquisition Company LLC, PRN Pharmaceutical Services LP, PT Aetna Management Consulting, Pamplona Saude e Beleza LTDA, Part D Holding Company L.L.C., PayFlex Holdings Inc., PayFlex Systems USA Inc., Pennsylvania CVS Pharmacy L.L.C., Performax Inc., Pharmacy Associates of Glenn Falls LLC, Pharmacy Consultants LLC, Phoenix Data Solutions LLC, Precision Benefit Services Inc., Prime Net Inc., ProCare Pharmacy Direct L.L.C., ProCare Pharmacy L.L.C., Prodigy Health Group Inc., Professional Risk Management Inc., Pt. Aetna Global Benefits Indonesia, Puerto Rico CVS Pharmacy L.L.C., Red Oak Sourcing LLC, Resources for Living LLC, Rhode Island CVS Pharmacy L.L.C., Roeschens Healthcare LLC, RxAmerica, Schaller Anderson Medical Administrators Incorporated, Scrip World LLC, Sheffield Avenue CVS L.L.C., Shore Pharmaceutical Providers LLC, Silverscript Insurance Company, Soma Intimates, South Carolina CVS Pharmacy L.L.C., South Wabash CVS L.L.C., Specialized Pharmacy Services LLC, Spinnaker Bidco Limited, Spinnaker Topco Limited, Stadtlander Drug Company, Stadtlander Pharmacy, Sterling Healthcare Services LLC, Superior Care Pharmacy LLC, Sutter Health and Aetna Administrative Services LLC, Sutter Health and Aetna Insurance Company, Sutter Health and Aetna Insurance Holding Company LLC, T2 Medical Inc., TCPI Acquisition LLC, TargetPharmacy, Tennessee CVS Pharmacy L.L.C., Texas Health + Aetna Health Insurance Company, Texas Health + Aetna Health Insurance Holding Company LLC, Texas Health + Aetna Health Plan Inc., The Vasquez Group Inc., Thomas Phoenix CVS L.L.C., Three Forks Apothecary LLC, U.S Healthcare Holdings LLC, U.S. Healthcare Properties Inc., UAC Holding Inc., UC Acquisition LLC, UNI-Care Health Services of Maine LLC, Universal American - Medicare Part D Business, Utah CVS Pharmacy L.L.C., VAPS Acquisition Company LLC, Value Health Care Services LLC, Vermont CVS Pharmacy L.L.C., Virginia CVS Pharmacy L.L.C., Virtual Home Healthcare L.L.C., Warm Springs Road CVS L.L.C., Washington CVS Pharmacy L.L.C., Washington Lamb CVS L.L.C., Weber Medical Systems LLC, Wellpartner LLC, West Virginia CVS Pharmacy L.L.C., Westhaven Services Co LLC, Williamson Drug Company LLC, Wisconsin CVS Pharmacy L.L.C., Woodward Detroit CVS L.L.C., Work and Family Benefits Inc., ZS Acquisition Company LLC, Zinc Health Services LLC, Zinc Health Ventures LLC, bSwift LLC, and iTriage LLC. Royal Dutch Shell plc operates as an energy and petrochemical company worldwide. The company operates through Integrated Gas, Upstream, Oil Products, Chemicals segments. It explores for and extracts crude oil, natural gas, and natural gas liquids; markets and transports oil and gas; produces gas-to-liquids fuels and other products; and operates upstream and midstream infrastructure necessary to deliver gas to market. The company also markets and trades natural gas, liquefied natural gas (LNG), crude oil, electricity, carbon-emission rights; and markets and sells LNG as a fuel for heavy-duty vehicles and marine vessels. In addition, it trades in and refines crude oil and other feed stocks, such as gasoline, diesel, heating oil, aviation fuel, marine fuel, biofuel, lubricants, bitumen, and sulphur; produces and sells petrochemicals for industrial use; and manages oil sands activities. Further, the company produces base chemicals comprising ethylene, propylene, and aromatics, as well as intermediate chemicals, such as styrene monomer, propylene oxide, solvents, detergent alcohols, ethylene oxide, and ethylene glycol. Royal Dutch Shell plc was founded in 1907 and is headquartered in The Hague, the Netherlands. Read More Imperial Brands PLC, together with its subsidiaries, manufactures, imports, markets, and sells tobacco and tobacco-related products. It offers a range of cigarettes, fine cut and smokeless tobacco, papers, and cigars; and next generation product (NGP) portfolio, such as e-vapour products, as well as oral nicotine and heated tobacco products. The company sells its products under various brands, including Davidoff, Gauloises, JPS, West, L&B, Bastos, Fine, Winston, News, Parker & Simpson, blu, Kool, Horizon, Jade, Cohiba, Montecristo, Romeo Y Julieta, Backwoods, Skruf, Golden Virginia, Rizla, and Knox in approximately 160 countries worldwide. It also provides logistics services that include the distribution of tobacco and NGP products for tobacco and NGP product manufacturers; and various non-tobacco and NGP products and services. In addition, the company is involved in the management of a golf course; marketing of papers; restaurant business; distribution of pharmaceuticals, POS software, and published materials and other products; printing and publishing activities; and provision of long haul transportation, industrial parcel and express delivery, advertising, and support management services. Further, it owns the trademarks; and retails its products. The company was formerly known as Imperial Tobacco Group PLC and changed its name to Imperial Brands PLC in February 2016. Imperial Brands PLC was founded in 1901 and is headquartered in Bristol, the United Kingdom. Read More The following companies are subsidiares of Sealed Air: AFP (Shanghai) Limited, AFP Inc. (Branch), AFPTOH LTD, Aconcagua Distribuciones SRL, Air Ride Pallets Hong Kong Limited, Austin Foam Plastics Inc., Auto-C LLC, Automated Packaging Systems, B+ Equipment, B+ Equipment SAS, Beacon Holdings LLC, Biosphere Industries, BluPack (New Zealand), Blue Dot Packaging Pty Ltd., CPI Packaging Inc., CPI Packaging Systems Inc., Cactus (Shanghai) Trading Co. Ltd., Cactus Shanghai Trading Co. Ltd., Ciras C.V., Ciras C.V. - Luxembourg Branch, Ciras C.V. Luxembourg Branch, Cleanwise Inc., Cryovac (Malaysia) SDN. BHD, Cryovac (Malaysia) Sdn. Bhd., Cryovac Brasil Ltda., Cryovac Chile Holdings LLC, Cryovac Holdings II LLC, Cryovac Inc., Cryovac International Holdings Inc., Cryovac LLC, Cryovac Leasing Corporation, Cryovac Londrina Ltda., Cryovac Packaging Portugal - Embalagens Ltda., Cryovac Packaging Portugal Embalagens Ltda, Cryovac Sweden AB, Cryovac-Sealed Air de Costa Rica S.R.L., DELTAPLAM Embalagens Industria e Comercio, Deltaplam Embalagens Industria e Comercio Ltda, Diversey, Diversey Australia Pty. Ltd., Diversey Austria Trading GmbH, Diversey B.V., Diversey Belgium BVBA, Diversey Brasil Industria Quimica Ltda., Diversey Canada Inc., Diversey Centroamerica S.A., Diversey Danmark ApS, Diversey Hungary Acting Off-shore Capital Management Limited Liability Company, Diversey J Trustee Limited, Diversey Trustee Limited, Diversey Ceska republika s.r.o. clen koncernu Diversey, Entapack Pty. Ltd., Fagerdala (Chengdu) Packaging Co. Ltd., Fagerdala (Chengdu) Packing Co. Ltd. (Chongqing Branch), Fagerdala (Chongqing) Packaging Co. Ltd. (Branch), Fagerdala (Huiyang) Packaging Co. Ltd, Fagerdala (Huiyang) Packaging Co. Ltd. (Branch), Fagerdala (Shanghai) Foams Co. Ltd., Fagerdala (Shanghai) Polymer Co. Ltd., Fagerdala (Shenzhen) Packaging Co. Ltd., Fagerdala (Suzhou) Packaging Co. Ltd., Fagerdala (Suzhou) Packing Co. Ltd. (Hefei Branch), Fagerdala (Thailand) Limited, Fagerdala (Xiamen) Packaging Co. Ltd., Fagerdala Leamchabung Limited, Fagerdala Leamchabung Ltd., Fagerdala Malaysia Sdn Bhd., Fagerdala Mexico S.A. de C.V., Fagerdala Mexico S.A. de C.V. (Chihuahua Branch), Fagerdala Mexico Supply Chain S.A. de C.V., Fagerdala Packaging Inc. (Indiana), Fagerdala Shanghai Foams Co. Ltd., Fagerdala Singapore Pte Ltd, Fagerdala Singapore Pte Ltd (Branch), Fagerdala Singapore Pte. Limited, Fagerdala Singapore Pte. Limited (Taiwan Branch), Fagerdala Singapore Pte. Ltd., Fagerdala Suzhou Packaging Co. Ltd., Fagerdala Suzhou Packaging Co. Ltd. (Hefei Branch), Fagerdala Thailand Ltd., GEIE VES, Getpacking.com GmbH, Indonesian Rep Office of Sealed Air Hong Kong Limited, Invertol S. de R.L. de C.V., JCS Sealed Air Kaustik, JSC Sealed Air Kaustik, Kevothermal LLC, Kevothermal LLC, Kevothermal Limited, Nelipak Holdings, Pack-Tiger GmbH, Packaging C.V., ProAseptic Technologies S.L., Producembal - Producao de Embalagens Ltda., Proxy Biomedical Ltd., Reflectix Inc., SLD Air Packaging Paketleme Malzemeleri Ticaret Limited Sirketi, Saddle Brook Insurance Company, Sealed Air (Asia) Holdings B.V., Sealed Air (Barbados) S.R.L., Sealed Air (Canada) Co./CIE, Sealed Air (Canada) Holdings B.V., Sealed Air (China) Co. Ltd., Sealed Air (China) Co. Ltd., Sealed Air (China) Limited, Sealed Air (China) Ltd., Sealed Air (India) Limited, Sealed Air (Israel) Ltd., Sealed Air (Korea) Limited, Sealed Air (Latin America) Holdings II LLC, Sealed Air (Malaysia) Sdn. Bhd., Sealed Air (New Zealand), Sealed Air (Philippines) Inc., Sealed Air (Singapore) Pte. Limited, Sealed Air (Singapore) Pte. Ltd., Sealed Air (Thailand) Limited, Sealed Air (Ukraine) Limited, Sealed Air Africa (Proprietary) Limited, Sealed Air Africa (Pty.) Limited, Sealed Air Americas Manufacturing S. de R. L. de C. V., Sealed Air Argentina S.A., Sealed Air Australia (Holdings) Pty. Limited, Sealed Air Australia Pty Ltd., Sealed Air Australia Pty. Limited, Sealed Air B.V., Sealed Air Belgium N.V., Sealed Air Central America S.A., Sealed Air Chile S.P.A., Sealed Air Colombia Ltda., Sealed Air Corporation (US), Sealed Air Denmark A/S, Sealed Air Embalagens Ltda., Sealed Air Europe Holdings C.V., Sealed Air Europe Holdings LP, Sealed Air Finance B.V., Sealed Air Finance II LLC, Sealed Air Finance II LLC (Sucursal Mexico), Sealed Air Finance Ireland Unlimited Company, Sealed Air Finance Luxembourg S.a.r.l., Sealed Air Finance Luxembourg S.a.r.l. Luxembourg (L) Root Finance Branch, Sealed Air Finance Luxembourg S.a.r.l. US Finance Branch, Sealed Air Funding Corporation, Sealed Air Funding LLC, Sealed Air General Trading LLC, Sealed Air Global Holdings C.V., Sealed Air Global Holdings I C.V., Sealed Air Global Holdings I LLC, Sealed Air GmbH, Sealed Air Hellas S.A., Sealed Air Holding France S.A.S., Sealed Air Holding France SAS, Sealed Air HoldingS I LLC, Sealed Air Holdings (New Zealand) Pty. Ltd., Sealed Air Holdings I C.V., Sealed Air Holdings LLC, Sealed Air Holdings South Africa Proprietary Limited, Sealed Air Hong Kong (Jakarta Indonesia Branch), Sealed Air Hong Kong Limited, Sealed Air Hungary Ltd., Sealed Air International Holdings LLC, Sealed Air International Holdings LLC , Sealed Air Investment and Management (Shanghai) Co. Ltd., Sealed Air Investment and Management Co. Ltd., Sealed Air Japan G.K., Sealed Air Korea Limited, Sealed Air LLC, Sealed Air Limited, Sealed Air Luxembourg (I) S.a.r.l., Sealed Air Luxembourg (II) S.a.r.l., Sealed Air Luxembourg S.a.r.l., Sealed Air Management Holding Verwaltungs GmbH, Sealed Air Multiflex GmbH, Sealed Air Netherlands (Holdings) I B.V., Sealed Air Netherlands (Holdings) II B.V., Sealed Air Netherlands (Holdings) II B.V. - Deutsche Zweigniederlassung, Sealed Air Netherlands (Holdings) II B.V. - Deutsche Zweigniederlassung, Sealed Air Netherlands (Holdings) III B.V., Sealed Air Netherlands (Holdings) III B.V., Sealed Air Netherlands Holdings V B.V., Sealed Air Nevada Holdings Limited, Sealed Air Norge AS, Sealed Air OY, Sealed Air Packaging (India) Private Limited, Sealed Air Packaging (Shanghai) Co. Limited, Sealed Air Packaging (Thailand) Co. Ltd., Sealed Air Packaging LLC, Sealed Air Packaging Materials (India) LLP, Sealed Air Packaging Materials (India) LLP, Sealed Air Packaging S.L.U., Sealed Air Paketleme Malzemeleri Ticaret Limited Sirketi, Sealed Air Peru S.A.C., Sealed Air Polska Sp. Zoo, Sealed Air Pty Limited, Sealed Air S.A S., Sealed Air S.A.S., Sealed Air S.r.l., Sealed Air South Africa (Pty.) Ltd., Sealed Air Svenska AB, Sealed Air Taiwan Limited, Sealed Air US Holdings (Thailand) LLC, Sealed Air Uruguay S.A., Sealed Air Venezuela Corporation, Sealed Air Verpackungen GmbH, Sealed Air de Mexico Operations S. de R.L. de C.V., Sealed Air de Venezuela S.A., Sealed Air s.r.o., Shanklin Corp, Shanklin Corporation, Soinpar Industrial Ltda., TART s.r.o., TART s.r.o. Joint Venture, TTS-Ciptec, TXAFP Asia Pacific Ltd., TXAFP GP LLC, TempTrip LLC, Trigon Industries, and Vietnamese Rep Office of Sealed Air Hong Kong Limited. The following companies are subsidiares of Xerox: A B S Digital Limited, Acorn Business Machines (Holmfirth) Limited, Alloy Acquisitions Corp. LLC, Altodigital Networks, Altodigital Networks Limited, American Photocopy Equipment Company of Pittsburgh LLC, Amici, Arena Group, Arena Group Holdings Limited, Arena Group Limited, Arizona Office Technologies Inc., B 2 Business Systems Limited, Back2Business Limited, Bessemer Insurance Limited, Bessemer Trust Limited, Boise Office Equipment Inc., Bright Ceramic Technologies Inc., Bunch CareSolutions, Business Systems (North Wales) Limited, CPAS Systems, CREDITEX - Aluguer de Equipamentos S.A., CTX Business Solutions Inc., Capitol Office Solutions LLC, CareAR Holdings LLC, CareAR Inc., Carolina Office Systems Inc., Carr Business Systems Inc., Chicago Office Technology Group Inc., ComDoc Inc., Concept Group, Concept Group Limited, Connecticut Business Systems LLC, Consilience Software, Continua Limited, Continua Sanctum Limited, Conway Technology Group LLC, Copyrite Business Solutions (Holdings) Limited, Copyrite Business Solutions Limited, Copytrend Limited, Criterion IT Limited, Customer Value Group, Dahill Office Technology Corporation, Digitex, Digitex Canada Inc., Docucentric Holdings Limited, Document Systems, Eastern Managed Print Network LLC, Elan Marketing Inc., Electronic Systems Inc., Fovia (Innovation) Limited, G-Five Inc., GDP Technologies Inc., Global Imaging Systems, Global PR Corporation, Gyricon LLC, Healthy Communities Institute, Heritage Business Systems Inc., ITEC Group, Image Technology Specialists Inc., ImageQuest Inc., Imagetek Office Systems, Impika, Impika SAS, Inland Business Machines Inc., Institute for Research on Learning, Integrity One Technologies Inc., Intrepid Learning, Invoco Group, Irish Business Systems, LRI LLC, LaserNetworks, LaserNetworks Inc., Lateral Data, Learn Something, Lewan & Associates Inc., Limited Liability Company Xerox (C.I.S.), M & S Reprographics Limited, MRC Smart Technology Solutions Inc., MT Business Holdings Inc., MT Business Technologies Inc., MWB Copy Products Inc., Mail A Doc Limited, Merizon Group Incorporated, Michigan Office Solutions Inc., Minnesota Office Technology Group Inc., Mitral Systems Limited, Mr. Copy Inc., Nemo (AKS) Limited, NewField IT, NewField Information Technology LLC, NewField Information Technology Limited, Northeast Office Systems LLC, Osprey Business Systems Limited, PARC China Holdings Inc., Pacific Services and Development Corporation, Palo Alto Research Center Incorporated, Platinum Digital Print Solutions Limited, Precision Copier Service Inc., Quality Business Systems Inc., Quilver Business Services Limited, R. K. Dixon Company, RRXH Limited, RRXIL Limited, RRXO Limited, RSA Medical, Rabbit Copiers Inc., Reflex Digital Solutions (UK) Limited, Reprographics Egypt Limited, Saxon Business Systems Inc., Smart Data Consulting, SoCal Office Technologies Inc., Stem Networks Limited, Stewart Business Systems LLC, Stewart of Alabama Inc., StrataCare, Talegen Holdings Inc., Tektronix - color printing, Text Comm Limited (in receivership), The Xerox (UK) Trust, The Xerox Foundation, Time Business Systems Limited, Triton Business Finance Limited, Una-Stem Limited, Veenman B.V., Veenman Financial Services B.V., WDS, WaterWare Internet Services, XC Asia LLC, XC Global Trading B.V., XC Trading Hong Kong Limited, XC Trading Japan G.K., XC Trading Korea YH, XC Trading Malaysia Sdn. Bhd., XC Trading Shenzhen Co. Ltd., XC Trading Singapore Pte Ltd., XEROX CZECH REPUBLIC s r.o., XESystems Foreign Sales Corporation, XFS Secured Borrowing 2020-1 LLC, XHC Acquisition Corp., XMPie, XMPie Inc., XMPie Ltd., XRI Limited, XRO Limited, Xerox (Europe) Limited, Xerox (Ireland) Limited, Xerox (Nederland) BV, Xerox (Romania) Echipmante Si Servici S.A., Xerox (UK) Limited, Xerox (Ukraine) Ltd LLC, Xerox A/S, Xerox AG, Xerox AS, Xerox Argentina Industrial y Comercial S.A., Xerox Austria GmbH, Xerox Bulgaria EOOD, Xerox Business Equipment Limited, Xerox Business Services Bulgaria EOOD, Xerox Business Solutions Inc., Xerox Business Solutions Southeast LLC, Xerox Buro Araclari Servis ve Ticaret Ltd. Sti, Xerox Canada Inc., Xerox Canada Ltd., Xerox Canada N.S. ULC, Xerox Capital (Europe) Limited, Xerox Capital LLC, Xerox Computer Services Limited, Xerox Comercio e Industria Ltda, Xerox Corporation, Xerox DNHC LLC, Xerox Dienstleistungsgesellschaft GmbH, Xerox Distributor Operations Limited, Xerox Egypt S.A.E., Xerox Equipment Limited, Xerox Equipment UK Limited, Xerox Espana S.A.U., Xerox Exports Limited, Xerox Finance AG, Xerox Finance Leasing S.A.E., Xerox Finance Limited, Xerox Financial Services B.V., Xerox Financial Services Belux NV, Xerox Financial Services Canada Ltd., Xerox Financial Services Danmark A/S, Xerox Financial Services Finland Oy, Xerox Financial Services LLC, Xerox Financial Services Norway AS, Xerox Financial Services SAS, Xerox Financial Services Sverige AB, Xerox Foreign Holdings LLC, Xerox Foreign Sales Corporation, Xerox GmbH, Xerox Health Care LLC, Xerox Hellas AEE, Xerox Holding Deutschland GmbH, Xerox Holdings (Ireland) Limited, Xerox Holdings Inc., Xerox Hungary Trading Limited, Xerox IBS Limited, Xerox IBS NI Limited, Xerox India Limited, Xerox International Joint Marketing Inc., Xerox Investments Europe B.V., Xerox Israel Ltd., Xerox Italia Rental Services Srl, Xerox Kazakhstan Limited Liability Partnership, Xerox Latinamerican Holdings Inc., Xerox Leasing Deutschland GmbH, Xerox Leasing GmbH, Xerox Limited, Xerox Luxembourg SA, Xerox Mailing Systems Limited, Xerox Manufacturing (Nederland) B.V., Xerox Maroc S.A., Xerox Mexicana S.A. de C.V., Xerox Middle East Investments (Bermuda) Limited, Xerox N.V., Xerox Overseas Holdings Limited, Xerox Overseas Inc., Xerox Oy, Xerox Pensions Limited, Xerox Polska Sp. z o. o, Xerox Portugal Equipamentos de Escritorio Limitada, Xerox Products Limited, Xerox Products UK Limited, Xerox Professional Services Limited, Xerox Realty Corporation, Xerox Renting S.A.U., Xerox Reprographische Services GmbH, Xerox S.A.S., Xerox S.p.A., Xerox Secured Borrowing 2020-1 LLC, Xerox Servicios Compartidos Guatemala y Compani Limitada, Xerox Servicos e Participacoes Ltda, Xerox Shared Services Romania SRL, Xerox Sverige AB, Xerox Technology Services India LLP, Xerox Technology Services SAS, Xerox Telebusiness GmbH, Xerox Trading Enterprises Limited, Xerox Trinidad Limited, Xerox UK Holdings Limited, Xerox XHB Limited, Xerox XIB Limited, Xerox Xf Holdings (Ireland) DAC, Xerox de Chile S.A., Xerox del Ecuador S.A., Xerox del Peru S.A., Zeno Office Solutions, Zeno Office Solutions Inc., Zoom Imaging Solutions Inc., and inVentiv Patient Access Solutions. Zayo Group Holdings, Inc., through its subsidiaries, provides bandwidth infrastructure solutions for the communications industry in the United States, Canada, and Europe. The company operates in six segments: Fiber Solutions, Transport, Enterprise Networks, Zayo Colocation (zColo), Allstream, and Other. The Fiber Solutions segment provides dark fiber, and fiber-to-the-tower and small cell mobile infrastructure services for carriers and other communication service providers, Internet service providers, wireless service providers, media and content companies, large enterprises, and other companies. The Transport segment offers lit bandwidth infrastructure solutions comprising wavelength, Ethernet, wholesale IP services, and SONET services through its metro, regional, and long-haul fiber networks for carriers, content providers, financial services companies, healthcare, government entities, education institutions, and other medium and large enterprises. The Enterprise Networks segment provides connectivity and telecommunications solutions comprising Internet, wide area networking products, managed products, and cloud based computing and storage offerings to medium and large enterprises. The Zayo Colocation (zColo) segment offers data center infrastructure solutions consisting of colocation space, and power and interconnection services to a range of enterprise, carrier, cloud, and content customers. The Allstream segment provides cloud VoIP and data solutions, such as voice offerings; and unified communications, as well as telecommunications services, including Ethernet, and IP/MPLS VPN solutions. The Other segment provides network and technical resources to customers in designing, acquiring, and maintaining their networks. Zayo Group Holdings, Inc. was founded in 2007 and is headquartered in Boulder, Colorado. Read More Former FBI director James Comeys hour-long interview on ABC News Sunday night was a further demonstration of the intensity of the conflict between the White House and those sections of the military-intelligence apparatus that have spearheaded the anti-Russian campaign against President Trump. Comey was given unprecedented media time. The actual interview with ABC News host George Stephanopoulos lasted five hours, and the network shared the transcript of the entire discussion with the New York Times and Washington Post, which published lengthy pieces Monday amplifying the media campaign against Trump. There was little new of a factual character in Comeys remarks, nor are there apparently any further revelations to be had in his book, A Higher Loyalty, which goes on sale in bookstores today. But Comey was afforded a platform to denounce Trump as morally and ethically unfit to be president, although he rejected a proposed impeachment of Trump, declaring that he had to be ousted through the 2020 elections. The entire discussion between Stephanopoulos and Comey unfolded on the basis of nauseating hypocrisy, as though the president of the United States, the chief executive of the global affairs of American imperialism, the commander-in-chief of the armed forces that do the bidding of Wall Street and the giant corporations, was under normal conditions some sort of exemplar of moral leadership. To name only the three chief executives before Trump: Bill Clinton waged war against virtually defenseless populations in Somalia, Serbia and Iraq, bombed Sudan and Afghanistan, and slashed social welfare spending for the poorest of the poor. George W. Bush invaded and occupied Iraq based on lies about weapons of mass destruction, while pushing through the biggest tax break for the wealthy since Ronald Reagan. Barack Obama extended Bushs wars in Iraq and Afghanistan, added his own in Libya, Yemen and Syria, and engaged in weekly terror Tuesdays at which he approved lists of targets for assassination by drone missile. On the domestic front, he pushed through a reactionary counter-reform to slash spending on health care while overseeing the build-up of a surveillance state to monstrous proportions. These are the mass killers and enemies of the working class against whom Donald Trump supposedly fails to measure up morally. It would be more accurate to say that in the gangster/con man president, the American ruling class has finally, like Oscar Wildes Dorian Gray, found a figure that accurately displays its corruption in all its grotesque dimensions. Comey understandably does not like what he sees, but he has played a significant role in all four administrations, most notably his four years as head of the FBI, one of the most notorious repressive agencies on the planet. For all his pontificating, he ran an agency that is a byword for persecution of working people and minorities, political spying and brutality and violence. The main issue in the conflict between Trump and those sections of the military-intelligence apparatus represented by Comey is US foreign policy, particularly toward Russia. Given the opportunity by his interviewer, Comey declared flatly that the Russian government might have something on Trumpi.e., it might be in possession of incriminating material that could be used to blackmail the US president. He also said that Trump was just as unwilling to criticize Russian President Vladimir Putin in private conversations as he was in public statements. You would think that in privatetalking to the FBI director, whose job it is to thwart Russian attacks, you might acknowledge that this enemy of ours is an enemy of ours, Comey said. But I never saw. And so I dont know the reason. But Comey was careful to say nothing of any substance about the findings of the FBI investigation into alleged Russian intervention in the 2016 elections, during the 20 months that he was in charge of it. He would speak freely only about Trumps repeated requests that he spike the investigation into retired General Michael Flynn, Trumps former national security advisor, suggesting that the president was engaged in obstruction of justice, an impeachable and potentially criminal offense. Trump continued his twitter blasts against Comey and Comeys former deputy, Andrew McCabe, declaring that they and other officials had committed many crimes, although he did not name any of the supposed crimes or suggest any specific action by federal prosecutors. In a tweet the day before, Trump suggested that Comey should be jailed for leaking classified information to the press and for lying to Congress, although again he did not bother with specifics. The bulk of Trumps energy Monday, however, was devoted to court proceedings in New York City, rather than rebutting Comey. Federal District Judge Kimba Wood held an extraordinary hearing at which Trumps longtime personal lawyer, Michael Cohen, sought to convince her to suppress materials seized by the FBI during raids April 9 on his home and office. The raids were conducted based on a search warrant obtained by the office of the US Attorney for the Southern District of New York. Cohens attorneys claimed that much of the material taken by the FBI was covered by attorney-client privilege, with Cohen either as the attorney or the client, depending on the document in question. Judge Wood rejected a motion to bar prosecutors from reviewing the seized material, but ordered prosecutors to provide a list of all the items to Cohen so he could present further requests for suppression. The federal courthouse took on a circus atmosphere, with the presidents personal lawyer battling the presidents public lawyer (the Department of Justice), while another personal lawyer for Trump, Joanna Hendon, moved to allow Trump to personally review all the seized material, in addition to the motion sought by Cohen. Hendon said the president is objecting to anyone other than himself making the initial determination of privilege, warning the judge, Theres tremendous risk that privileged material could not be recognized as such. In effect, Trump was arguing against his own Justice Department and the office of a US attorney he recently appointed, and seeking the right to see all the seized documents before any federal prosecutor could do so. At one point, Wood ordered Cohen to make public the names of his clients (so that the validity of his claims of attorney-client privilege could be tested) and Cohen admitted that in the past 18 months he has had only three clients: Trump, former Republican National Committee finance vice-chair Elliott Broidy, and right-wing Fox News commentator Sean Hannity. Federal prosecutors argued that the bulk of the material seized from Cohens home and office concerned his business dealings, not his work as a lawyer, and revealed that none of the thousands of emails on Cohens computerone of the items seizedwere between Cohen and Trump. The only apparent concession to Cohen and Trump was the judges statement that she was considering appointing a special mastera court officer separate from the prosecutors officeto review the materials, in order to avoid any appearance of political bias. She asked both sides to brief her further on this issue. It is evident that the Trump White House now views the Cohen investigation as an even more direct and dire threat than the investigation into alleged Russian interference into the 2016 elections and possible Trump campaign collusion being conducted by Special Counsel Robert Mueller. The Russia investigation, while endlessly hyped in the media, is a fraud, since Trump is not the agent of Vladimir Putin or the Russian oligarchs whose interests Putin defends, but the personification of the corrupt American financial oligarchy. Any serious investigation into Trumps business dealings in Manhattan real estate, casino gambling, reality television production and other forms of corporate swindling would rapidly produce enough evidence to warrant an indictment on countless criminal chargessomething that is true of nearly all of the American corporate elite. Following the air strikes by the United States, France and Britain on Syria, the European Unions foreign ministers appealed on Monday for a political solution. By means of pressure on Russia and Iran, they hope to accomplish what they have not been able to achieve with the help of the now largely defeated Islamist militias: regime change in Damascus. Although the attack on Syria was in clear violation of international law, the EU foreign ministers meeting in Luxembourg explicitly endorsed it. The Council understands that the targeted US, French and UK air strikes on chemical weapons facilities in Syria were specific measures taken with the sole objective of preventing further use of chemical weapons and chemical substances as weapons by the Syrian regime to kill its own people, declared a resolution adopted unanimously. The Council is supportive of all efforts aimed at the prevention of the use of chemical weapons. German Foreign Minister Heiko Maas said during the meeting that everyone with influence in the region should be involved in a political solution, but not the Syrian government. Anyone deploying chemical weapons against his own population could not be part of the solution, he declared. Maas went on to say that since a resolution within the framework of the United Nations was not possible due to Russian vetoes, another route would now be sought. However, Maas added, bringing peace to Syria without Moscow would not be possible. German government spokesman Steffen Seibert spoke along similar lines in Berlin. Although he left open the possibility of a transitional period, he stressed that a long-term solution is therefore conceivable in our view only without Assad. In several French media outlets, French President Emmanuel Macron offered his services as a mediator in a new diplomatic initiative aimed at Russia and Turkey. France has the task of speaking to everyone, he said. Macron boasted that the perfectly executed air strikes were a complete success. He claimed that he convinced US President Donald Trump not to withdraw US troops from Syria and to restrict the attacks to chemical weapons sites. The calculations in Berlin and Paris are clear. They expect that Russian President Vladimir Putin, who has indicated his willingness to reach a compromise on numerous occasions and is under increased pressure due to economic difficulties brought on by US sanctions, will back down. But regardless of how Moscow responds, this can serve only as a further escalation of the Syrian conflict. Leading representatives of the US ruling elite, including opponents of Trump, have let it be known that they will not relent until Washington has reestablished its unchallenged preeminence in the Middle East, where it has been waging war for the past 25 years. France, the former colonial power in the region, and Germany are pursuing definite imperialist interests. The alleged gas attack in Douma, for which no reliable evidence has been presented, served as a deliberate provocation to escalate the war. Former Foreign Minister Sigmar Gabriel, who is seen as more hostile to the US and more Russia-friendly than his successor Maas, has also called for a harder line in the Syria conflict in articles and public appearances over recent days. In an opinion piece in the daily Tagesspiegel, the Social Democratic politician effusively praised the latest attacks. It is right and necessary, he wrote, to show the Assad regime and thereby all other similarly structured systems of power and militaries: we will not look away and watch on impassively. Gabriel complained of the lack of a Syria strategy from the West and made clear that he meant by this a stronger military intervention. Already at the beginning of the conflict, he complained, the entire WestGermany and Europe includedwas not prepared even to impose a no-fly zone on the Syrian army. In 2011, the establishment of a no-fly zone was the cover for a brutal US-NATO air war that brought about the overthrow of the Gaddafi regime in Libya, plunging the country into civil war and completely subordinating it to the imperialist powers. Now, Gabriel continued, Europe must deal with the consequences of its inaction. When we were needed, we werent there. And today, in a world of carnivores, nobody is interested in us as vegetarians. We are standing on the sidelines of the conflict because the strategy of clean up the world, but dont get wet resulted only in we Europeans having to deal with the consequences of the civil war... but having no influence on the course of the conflict. Germany least of all, since while Donald Trump consulted with the presidents of Turkey and France and the British prime minister about what to do, he did not consult with the German government. Gabriel, who as foreign minister tirelessly advocated a more aggressive pursuit of Germanys great power ambitions, knows very well what he is talking about. He was among the first signatories of a statement from the Carl-Friedrich von Weizsacker Foundation that appeals to the powerful of this world to search, with the common application of reason, for new pathways out of the danger. The statement explicitly warns of the danger of a nuclear world war. An era of growing political tensions and military confrontations between the major powers [is] emerging, with the return of an arms race, it states. Through the use of conventional and nuclear technology, the internal dynamic of this armament is coming ever closer to the point of no return. beyond which nobody really dares or wants to go, it states. None of the structural reasons that led to the First World War has really been overcome, the statement continues. This is a remarkable admission. What precisely were these structural reasons? The transition of capitalism into its imperialist phase, the emergence of monopolies, the dominance of finance capital over industrial capital, and the struggle among the major powers for the redivision of the world that results from this. The claim that the war danger can be averted through the common application of reason is absurd, as demonstrated by the experiences of World War I and World War II. It is also refuted by looking at the first signatories of the statement, who, together with some artists and academics, include leading personnel from the military and political establishment. The statement was initiated by the former general inspector of the German Army and chairman of the NATO Military Committee, Harald Kujat. Signatories include former SPD Interior Minister Otto Schily, the editor of the military journal European Security and Defence Review, Hartmut Buhl, right-wing extremist historian Jorg Baberowski, and many representatives from business, including the former chair of the Herbert Quandt BMW Foundation, Jurgen Chrobog. These people are not concerned with avoiding war, as Gabriel repeatedly makes clear in his public appearances, but with remilitarization and securing for Germany, as was said prior to World War I, a place in the sun. A weak Europe, Gabriel wrote in Tagesspiegel, will not be respected by anyone. Not by the strongthe US, Russia and Chinaand not by the weak, for example, many African states. Europe will be able to enforce its position, values and interests in the world only if we stand together much more than before in uncomfortable and high-risk situations such as in Syria. New Zealand Labour Prime Minister Jacinda Ardern declared on April 14 that New Zealand accepted the US-British-French missile strikes on Syria. Ardern revealed that her government had been informed about the attack hours in advance. Ardern repeated the justifications put forward by the US, UK and France for the missile attacks, claiming they had responded to the grave violation of international law, and the abhorrent use of chemical weapons against civilians. The action was intended to prevent further such atrocities being committed, she said. This is a farrago of lies. The attack on Syria was an illegal act of aggression. US President Trump, French President Macron and British Prime Minister May, whose governments lack any popular support, are presiding over yet another imperialist war crime, which poses the immense danger of opening up a major war with nuclear-armed Russia. The pretext for the attack on Syria was the unproven allegation that President Bashar al-Assads military used banned chemical weapons against US-backed militias in the city of Douma. The claims are based on dubious footage made by the pro-US White Helmets, whose forces were on the verge of being defeated by the Syrian regime, which had no military reason to carry out such an attack. The real motive of Washington and its allies is to assert their strategic position in the Middle East, which has been weakened by Russian and Iranian intervention that stymied the US regime-change operation in Syria. The Syrian war is leading toward a direct US confrontation with Russia, which Washington this year declared to be its main strategic competitor alongside China. The response of New Zealands Labour-led government underscores that it, no less than the previous National Party government, is prepared to take the country into a catastrophic war in support of its US and European allies. Asked if she would send troops to Syria, Ardern did not rule it out, telling reporters: Thats a hypothetical. We havent been asked. Her government has kept more than 100 New Zealand soldiers in Iraq and a handful in Afghanistan. Ardern denounced Russia for vetoing UN Security Council resolutions that would have paved the way for a UN-backed military intervention. She said she would discuss the war with French, German and British leaders during an upcoming visit to Europe. The Labour Party, far from being a progressive alternative to National, as presented by liberal, trade union and pseudo-left commentators, is a pro-imperialist party. It supports the closest alliance with Australia, the US and European powers in order to ensure their support for the NZ ruling elites own neo-colonial operations in the Pacific. Labour agreed with the previous National Party governments announcement in 2016 that $20 billion would be spent to upgrade the military over 15 years to make it inter-operable with the US and other allies. At the same time, Labour is continuing to underfund basic services such as healthcare, housing and education. The Labour-Green-New Zealand First coalition government was installed following last Septembers election with Washingtons support, in order to align New Zealands foreign policy even more closely with the US. While Labour and the right-wing populist NZ First were negotiating their coalition agreement, US ambassador Scott Brown publicly criticised the National Party governments reluctance to endorse Trumps threats to annihilate North Korea. He made clear that the Trump administration expected a firmer pro-US stance from the next government. Shortly after becoming prime minister, Ardern said she would be prepared to support an attack on North Korea. She and Deputy Prime Minister Winston Peters have also denounced Chinese investment and diplomatic activity in the Pacific. Earlier this month, following pressure from Britains high commissioner, the government abandoned efforts to restart trade negotiations with Russia. Ardern and Peters, who is also foreign minister and NZ First leader, expressed support for the British governments belligerent stance against Moscow, echoing its lie that it had proof Moscow organised the poisoning of Russian double agent Sergei Skripal and his daughter Yulia. The working class is overwhelmingly antiwar. A poll of more than 3,700 people by TVNZ last year found 90 percent opposed New Zealand involvement in Syria. Yet this opposition finds no expression in the political establishment. The Green Party, which is part of the government, cynically attempted to distance itself from Arderns embrace of the assault on Syria. One MP, Golriz Ghahraman, wrote on the Spinoff that the attack was a continuation of a policy that protects American and western interests and a breach of international law. Greens co-leader James Shaw quickly downplayed the column, telling the bFM radio station on April 16: I agree with both the prime minister and with Golriz. He said the missile strikes were unlawful and the war in Syria had been made worse by US support and training for anti-Assad forces. However, Shaw echoed the unsubstantiated claims that the Syrian military carried out the Douma chemical attack. The Greens supported the 1999-2008 Labour government, which strengthened New Zealands alliance with Washington. Labour sent SAS forces to join the US-led invasion of Afghanistan following the September 2001 attack on the World Trade Center, and a contingent of army engineers to support the occupation of Iraq. The Greens initially opposed the invasion of Afghanistan, but later supported New Zealands participation in the war, which the party fraudulently presented as peacekeeping. Today, the Green Party is once again propping up a Labour government and seeking to provide a progressive coloration to its support for war in the Middle East and elsewhere. The authors also recommend: New Zealand government under pressure to expel Russian diplomats [5 April 2018] New Zealands Pacific reset aims to reassert imperialist dominance [12 March 2018] New Zealand government and opposition back US war in Syria [14 April 2017] The US and its allies have ramped up the propaganda war against Russia over Syria with unsubstantiated accusations that Organisation for the Prohibition of Chemical Weapons (OPCW) inspectors were being blocked from entering Douma, the site of the alleged chemical weapon attack on April 7. The Western claims are utterly hypocritical, given that the US, Britain and France carried out air strikes on targets in Syria on Saturday without waiting for the OPCW inspection team to conduct their inquiries. Moreover, none of the allies has provided any proof to justify unleashing more than 100 cruise missiles against Syrian targets. US ambassador to the OPCW, Kenneth Ward, set the stage, declaring at an OPCW meeting in The Hague: It is our understanding the Russians may have visited the attack site. We are concerned they may have tampered with it with the intent of thwarting the efforts of the OPCW fact-finding mission to conduct an effective investigation. In a tweet to the media on Sunday, the British delegation complained that Russia and Syria have not yet allowed access to Douma, insisting unfettered access essential and demanding Russia & Syria must co-operate. Russia rejected claims of tampering with evidence. Tomorrow [Tuesday] the security services with the United Nations will test the routes [into Douma]. And on Wednesday is when we plan the arrival of OPCW, a senior Russian official said in The Hague yesterday. The governments and media that propagated a deluge of unsubstantiated claims of a chemical weapons attack in Douma as proven fact, to justify an illegal attack on Syria, are now seeking to cover their tracks. A new round of lies and evasions is being prepared in the event that the OPCW inspectors find no evidence of chemical weapons being used. The Washington Post, for instance, declared: The suspicions of tampering heightened concerns that the truth about the suspected April 7 attack may never be known. The article made no effort to explain the obvious contradiction: if the truth may never be known, what was the basis for the US-led attack on Syria? Last weekend, the US, France and Britain, backed by five other countries, voted down a Russian resolution in the UN Security Council condemning the missile strikes on Syria and calling for an immediate halt to aggression and any further use of force. The vote was deeply divided, with China and Bolivia voting for the resolution and four countries abstaining. US ambassador to the UN Nikki Haley provoked a bitter Russian response when she declared in a CBS interview on Sunday that the US was about to impose more sanctions on Russian firms doing business in Syria. The White House later declared that, while additional sanctions were under consideration, a decision was yet to be made. In The Hague, Alexander Shulgin, Russias representative to the OPCW, slammed Western claims, saying: Not a single witness or affected patient in hospital has been found. Nor any traces of chemical ammunition have been identified. Instead, we managed to find those who participated in filming the faked video, which was eventually presented as proof of a chemical attack. The Washington Post acknowledged that 13 medical workers, including nine doctors, had appeared on Syrian government television to explain that the patients were suffering from asthma, not the effects of a poison gas and that people were hosed down with water when someone in the room shouted chemicals, chemicals. But it dismissed the report, citing claims by pro-US Islamist activists that the statements were coerced. An on-the-spot report in the Independent by veteran Middle East journalist Robert Fisk lends further credibility to Russias claims. He visited Douma yesterday with a group of journalists and was able to walk about the town freely. He noted that he talked to many people amid the ruins of the town who said they never believed in gas storieswhich were usually put about, they claimed, by the armed Islamist groups. Fisk reported the comments of Dr Assim Rahaibani, from the clinic where the gas videotape was made that has been replayed endlessly in the Western media as proof of a chemical attack. While not present at the time, Rahaibani explained: I was with my family in the basement of my home three hundred metres from here on the night but all the doctors know what happened. There was a lot of shelling and aircraft were always over Douma at nightbut on this night, there was wind and huge dust clouds began to come into the basements and cellars were people lived. People began to arrive here suffering hypoxia, oxygen loss. Then someone at the door, a White Helmet, shouted Gas, and a panic began. People started throwing water over each other. Yes, the video was filmed here, it is genuine, but what you see are people suffering from hypoxianot gas poisoning. As Fisk noted, the White Helmetsmedical first responders partly funded by the British Foreign Officeare part of the pro-Western Islamist militias that left Douma in a convoy for northern Syria. Their motive for staging an attack is obviousto create a pretext for a stepped up US-led military intervention against the Syrian government of President Bashir al-Assad. In the deluge of propaganda in the Western media, no one has suggested any possible motive for the Syrian government to conduct a chemical attackright at the point when its troops were about to retake Douma. Logic is replaced by the relentless demonisation of the Assad regime and its Russian and Iranian backers. The dangerous and volatile situation in Syria was further highlighted by unconfirmed reports today of missiles fired toward the Shayrat airbase to the southeast of the Syrian city of Homs in the early hours of the morning. The Pentagon denied any involvement and the Syrian media accused Israel. The danger is that a minor incident can become the basis for a dramatic escalation of the confrontation between the US and Russia that could lead to conflict between the two nuclear-armed powers. Country United States of America US Virgin Islands United States Minor Outlying Islands Canada Mexico, United Mexican States Bahamas, Commonwealth of the Cuba, Republic of Dominican Republic Haiti, Republic of Jamaica Afghanistan Albania, People's Socialist Republic of Algeria, People's Democratic Republic of American Samoa Andorra, Principality of Angola, Republic of Anguilla Antarctica (the territory South of 60 deg S) Antigua and Barbuda Argentina, Argentine Republic Armenia Aruba Australia, Commonwealth of Austria, Republic of Azerbaijan, Republic of Bahrain, Kingdom of Bangladesh, People's Republic of Barbados Belarus Belgium, Kingdom of Belize Benin, People's Republic of Bermuda Bhutan, Kingdom of Bolivia, Republic of Bosnia and Herzegovina Botswana, Republic of Bouvet Island (Bouvetoya) Brazil, Federative Republic of British Indian Ocean Territory (Chagos Archipelago) British Virgin Islands Brunei Darussalam Bulgaria, People's Republic of Burkina Faso Burundi, Republic of Cambodia, Kingdom of Cameroon, United Republic of Cape Verde, Republic of Cayman Islands Central African Republic Chad, Republic of Chile, Republic of China, People's Republic of Christmas Island Cocos (Keeling) Islands Colombia, Republic of Comoros, Union of the Congo, Democratic Republic of Congo, People's Republic of Cook Islands Costa Rica, Republic of Cote D'Ivoire, Ivory Coast, Republic of the Cyprus, Republic of Czech Republic Denmark, Kingdom of Djibouti, Republic of Dominica, Commonwealth of Ecuador, Republic of Egypt, Arab Republic of El Salvador, Republic of Equatorial Guinea, Republic of Eritrea Estonia Ethiopia Faeroe Islands Falkland Islands (Malvinas) Fiji, Republic of the Fiji Islands Finland, Republic of France, French Republic French Guiana French Polynesia French Southern Territories Gabon, Gabonese Republic Gambia, Republic of the Georgia Germany Ghana, Republic of Gibraltar Greece, Hellenic Republic Greenland Grenada Guadaloupe Guam Guatemala, Republic of Guinea, Revolutionary People's Rep'c of Guinea-Bissau, Republic of Guyana, Republic of Heard and McDonald Islands Holy See (Vatican City State) Honduras, Republic of Hong Kong, Special Administrative Region of China Hrvatska (Croatia) Hungary, Hungarian People's Republic Iceland, Republic of India, Republic of Indonesia, Republic of Iran, Islamic Republic of Iraq, Republic of Ireland Israel, State of Italy, Italian Republic Japan Jordan, Hashemite Kingdom of Kazakhstan, Republic of Kenya, Republic of Kiribati, Republic of Korea, Democratic People's Republic of Korea, Republic of Kuwait, State of Kyrgyz Republic Lao People's Democratic Republic Latvia Lebanon, Lebanese Republic Lesotho, Kingdom of Liberia, Republic of Libyan Arab Jamahiriya Liechtenstein, Principality of Lithuania Luxembourg, Grand Duchy of Macao, Special Administrative Region of China Macedonia, the former Yugoslav Republic of Madagascar, Republic of Malawi, Republic of Malaysia Maldives, Republic of Mali, Republic of Malta, Republic of Marshall Islands Martinique Mauritania, Islamic Republic of Mauritius Mayotte Micronesia, Federated States of Moldova, Republic of Monaco, Principality of Mongolia, Mongolian People's Republic Montserrat Morocco, Kingdom of Mozambique, People's Republic of Myanmar Namibia Nauru, Republic of Nepal, Kingdom of Netherlands Antilles Netherlands, Kingdom of the New Caledonia New Zealand Nicaragua, Republic of Niger, Republic of the Nigeria, Federal Republic of Niue, Republic of Norfolk Island Northern Mariana Islands Norway, Kingdom of Oman, Sultanate of Pakistan, Islamic Republic of Palau Palestinian Territory, Occupied Panama, Republic of Papua New Guinea Paraguay, Republic of Peru, Republic of Philippines, Republic of the Pitcairn Island Poland, Polish People's Republic Portugal, Portuguese Republic Puerto Rico Qatar, State of Reunion Romania, Socialist Republic of Russian Federation Rwanda, Rwandese Republic Samoa, Independent State of San Marino, Republic of Sao Tome and Principe, Democratic Republic of Saudi Arabia, Kingdom of Senegal, Republic of Serbia and Montenegro Seychelles, Republic of Sierra Leone, Republic of Singapore, Republic of Slovakia (Slovak Republic) Slovenia Solomon Islands Somalia, Somali Republic South Africa, Republic of South Georgia and the South Sandwich Islands Spain, Spanish State Sri Lanka, Democratic Socialist Republic of St. Helena St. Kitts and Nevis St. Lucia St. Pierre and Miquelon St. Vincent and the Grenadines Sudan, Democratic Republic of the Suriname, Republic of Svalbard & Jan Mayen Islands Swaziland, Kingdom of Sweden, Kingdom of Switzerland, Swiss Confederation Syrian Arab Republic Taiwan, Province of China Tajikistan Tanzania, United Republic of Thailand, Kingdom of Timor-Leste, Democratic Republic of Togo, Togolese Republic Tokelau (Tokelau Islands) Tonga, Kingdom of Trinidad and Tobago, Republic of Tunisia, Republic of Turkey, Republic of Turkmenistan Turks and Caicos Islands Tuvalu Uganda, Republic of Ukraine United Arab Emirates United Kingdom of Great Britain & N. Ireland Uruguay, Eastern Republic of Uzbekistan Vanuatu Venezuela, Bolivarian Republic of Viet Nam, Socialist Republic of Wallis and Futuna Islands Western Sahara Yemen Zambia, Republic of Zimbabwe This Week's Deals with Gold Include Rise of the Tomb Raider, Halo 5, A Bunch of Horror Games Entertainment E! News 90 Day Fiance: Happily Ever After? star Angela Deem is always an open book, but did we really need to see her open her legs? Warning: this NSFW image will be burned into your brain. Former FBI Director James Comey is not buying President Donald Trumps claims that no one respects women more than him. In a new interview with ABC News George Stephanopoulos that aired Sunday evening, Comey described the president as a man who talks about and treats women like theyre pieces of meat as the former FBI director explained why he sees Trump as morally unfit to run the country. Comey, who is promoting his new book A Higher Loyalty: Truth, Lies, and Leadership, out Tuesday, did not elaborate on his claim about Trumps treatment of women. The subject has been under heavy scrutiny ever since the infamous Access Hollywood tape surfaced in the final days before the 2016 election. After facing widespread backlash at the time, Trump apologized for comments he made on the recording in which he bragged about sexually assaulting women and grabbing them by the py but went on to repeatedly dismiss them as locker room talk. Since then, at least 19 women have come forward to accuse Trump of sexual misconduct, including unwanted kissing and groping. Trump has strongly denied all the allegations and repeatedly insisted that no one respects women more than me. In his new book, Comey also claims that Trump repeatedly pressed him to investigate the alleged existence of the infamous so-called pee tape, which purportedly shows Trump watching Russian prostitutes urinate on a Moscow hotel bed in 2013. It bothered him if there was even a one-percent chance his wife, Melania, thought it was true, Comey writes of the alleged encounter, which Trump has denied. RELATED VIDEO: PEOPLE Writer Natasha Stoynoff Breaks Silence, Accuses Donald Trump of Sexual Attack Comey also wrote that he wondered why Melania might think there was even a 1-percent chance the allegations were true, claiming there is zero chance his own wife would believe such a claim. In what kind of marriage, to what kind of man, does a spouse conclude there is only a 99 percent chance her husband didnt do that? Comey writes. Story continues The president initially retaliated by lashing out at Comey on Twitter, calling him a proven leaker and liar and an untruthful slimeball. He also criticized Comey in a series of tweets following the ABC interview, again calling him a slimeball and a liar. Slippery James Comey, a man who always ends up badly and out of whack (he is not smart!), will go down as the WORST FBI Director in history, by far! Trump declared on Sunday. Jim Carrey is the chatter of the internet once again with his latest painting. This time, the 56-year-old actor likened a sea creature to a popular Fox News host who was caught in a scandal yesterday. Carrey couldnt help but taunt Sean Hannity after the TV host was named as one of Michael Cohens secret clients during a hearing in New York yesterday. The bombshell news had everyone talking in the media and, of course, on social media. Hannity denied being Cohens client, saying on Twitter, Michael Cohen has never represented me in any matter. I never retained him, received an invoice, or paid legal fees. Hannitys denial didnt stop Carrey from using the TV host as the subject of his most recent painting. Many fans applauded the actors creation, enjoying the latest work of art. Carrey, though, shows little sign of stopping, given the prodigious number of artworks hes released so far, with subjects including Donald Trump, Sara Sanders, Jared Kushner, Stormy Daniels, and several other political figures. Ronan Farrow and New York Times writers Jodi Kantor and Megan Twohey have been awarded the Pulitzer Prize for public service in recognition of their bombshell reports on Harvey Weinstein, which brought to light decades of alleged sexual misconduct and sexual assault. The scandal surrounding the producer, which went on to launch the larger #MeToo movement and Times Up movements, began in October of last year, after Kantor and Twohey published a feature in The New York Times, in which eight women, including actress Ashley Judd, accused the actor of sexual harassment and assault. Following the allegations, the movie mogul announced plans to take a leave of absence in a statement to the NYT. He was subsequently fired from his company and banned for life from the Producers Guild of America. In March, the Weinstein Company, which he co-founded with his brother Bob, filed for bankruptcy and revoked all of the non disclosure agreements former and current employees of the production company had signed. Ronan Farrow, Jodi Kantor and Megan Twohey Ronan Farrow, Jodi Kantor and Megan Twohey RELATED: Rose McGowan on Harvey Weinstein: How Many Women Does It Take For Him to Be Charged? Days after Kantor and Twoheys report, the New Yorker published an additional expose written by Farrow, which included 13 womens accounts of alleged sexual harassment and assault or rape at the Hollywood producers hands. The report also included an audio file in which Weinstein can be heard telling a model named Ambra Battilana Gutierrez that he allegedly touched her breast without consent because its what hes used to. A spokesperson for Weinstein previously told PEOPLE in a statement that any allegations of non-consensual sex are unequivocally denied by Mr. Weinstein. Mr. Weinstein has further confirmed that there were never any acts of retaliation against any women for refusing his advances. Harvey Weinstein Harvey Weinstein After the Pulitzer Prize news was announced, Ronans mother Mia Farrow wrote on social media that she was so so so proud of her son, who had previously opened up about how having Woody Allen as a father made him someone who understood the abuse of power from an early age. Story continues You see early in life with that kind of a family background the way in which the most powerful men in America wield power for good and for ill, he told The Hollywood Reporter in January. Years before taking on Weinstein, Ronans sister Dylan publicly claimed in 2014 that Allen molested her as a child. Allen has long denied the allegations made by daughter Dylan, and earlier this year told CBS This Morning, I never molested my daughter as all investigations concluded a quarter of a century ago. Want to keep up on the latest from PEOPLE? Sign up for our daily newsletter to get our best stories of the day delivered straight to your inbox. RELATED: 10 Famous Women Sound Off On the Fight for Equality in Hollywood and Beyond Following Farrow, Kantor and Twoheys initial reports, countless woman and men across a wide variety of industries have felt emboldened to speak out against sexual harassment and misconduct they had endured, but previously did not feel comfortable speaking about publicly. Leading females in Hollywood have since teamed up to create Times Up to combat mistreatment in the workplace, and create funds to help people whove experienced misconduct access legal help. Many have also joined the #MeToo movement, sharing their own stories of sexual harassment with the world. The phrase Me Too, first began trending on Twitter in October after actress Alyssa Milano, who starred in Charmed alongside Weinstein accuser Rose McGowan, wrote: If all the women who have been sexually harassed or assaulted wrote Me too as a status, we might give people a sense of the magnitude of the problem. The manager who called police on two black men who had refused to leave a Philadelphia Starbucks no longer works there, a company spokeswoman confirmed to ABC News today. The news follows Starbucks CEO Kevin Johnsons comments this morning that he will order managers of the coffee giant's stores to undergo training on how to spot "unconscious bias" after witnesses said the men were arrested at a Philadelphia shop for doing nothing but sitting at a table. "I'll say the circumstances surrounding the incident and the outcome at our store on Thursday were reprehensible," Johnson said in an exclusive interview with ABC News "Good Morning America" today. "They were wrong, and for that, I personally apologize to the gentlemen that visited our store." PHOTO: CEO of Starbucks, Kevin Johnson speaks to 'Good Morning America,' April 16, 2018. (ABC News) A Starbucks spokesman told The Inquirer and Daily News of Philadelphia that the manager left the downtown store at 18th and Spruce Streets in what the company called a mutual decision. Johnson, the chief executive officer, was in Philadelphia this morning, a day after protesters rallied Sunday at a downtown Philadelphia Starbucks, where the two black men, who have yet to be identified, were led out in handcuffs Thursday by police and accused of trespassing. The demonstrators had demanded Starbucks fire the manager of the store for calling the police. As Johnson was being interviewed on GMA this morning, about two dozen protesters were at the downtown Philadelphia Starbucks chanting, "A whole lot of racism, a whole lot of crap, Starbucks coffee is anti-black." The protesters later held a sit-in inside the Starbucks shop. "We don't want this Starbucks to make any money today. That's our goal," Abdul-Aliy Muhammad, one of the protest's organizers and co-founder of the Black and Brown Workers Collective, told The Associated Press. PHOTO: Two men were arrested at a Starbucks in Philadelphia, April 12, 2018. (Twitter) In response, the companys CEO said this morning, Starbucks will conduct a thorough investigation of the incident and he hopes to ask the two men who were arrested to "join me in finding a constructive way to solve this issue." Story continues Protesters rally at Philadelphia Starbucks where two black men were handcuffed and arrested for 'trespassing' Protesters at Starbucks chant company is 'anti-black' Johnson said he has yet to speak to the men, who have retained an attorney. "Clearly, there's an opportunity for us to provide clarity and in addition to that I'd say there's training, more training that we're going to do with our store managers, not only around the guidelines but training around unconscious bias," Johnson said. PHOTO: A general view of a Starbucks Coffee shop, Nov. 28, 2015. (John Keeble/Getty Images, FILE) The 28,000 Starbucks store across the nation may have slightly different regional guidelines on how to handle situations that warrant police intervention, he added. "Now, there are some scenarios where the police should be called. If there's threats or disturbance, those may be appropriate times," Johnson said. "In this case, none of that occurred. It was completely inappropriate to engage the police." The arrests of the men were captured on video and tweeted by Melissa DePino, a 50-year-old mother of two who told ABC News she has vowed not to patronize Starbucks again. The video has since been viewed more than 9 million times. "It was humiliating for those guys," DePino said. "They were completely minding their own business." Both men were later released and the charges they were facing -- trespassing and disturbance -- were dropped Thursday night. PHOTO: Two men were arrested at a Starbucks in Philadelphia, April 12, 2018. (Twitter) Philadelphia District Attorney Larry Krasner also refused to prosecute after Starbucks asked to not press charges. Philadelphia Police Commissioner Richard Ross Jr. said in a video testimonial released by the police department Saturday that his officers "did absolutely nothing wrong." "I can tell you candidly these officers did a service they were called to do," he said. Philadelphia Mayor Jim Kenney slammed Starbucks for the incident, saying it "appears to exemplify what racial discrimination looks like in 2018." PHOTO: Commissioner Richard Ross of the Philadelphia Police Department gives a statement on the incident that occurred at a Starbucks on April 12, 2018. (Philadelphia Police Department ) Reggie Shuford, executive director of the ACLU of Pennsylvania, also condemned the incident, saying in a statement today that "it shows that black people can't even 'wait while black.'" "Starbucks failed these men and all of its customers by treating them in this unfair and demeaning way," Shuford said. "Based on all eyewitness accounts, there was no need for police intervention. These men were terribly disrespected by Starbucks employees." Shuford also faulted the police for arresting the men, adding Ross needs to change his department's policies and procedures. Starbucks may be able to decide who sits in its store, but only the police could decide to arrest these men," Shuford said. Johnson, the CEO, said Starbucks accepts full responsibility for what occurred. "Starbucks was built as a company that creates a warm, welcoming environment for all customers," he told GMA. "That didn't happen in this case. That, I know. And so it's my responsibility to ensure that we review everything. We review the actions of the store manager, we review the guidelines that were provided and we review and invest in the training necessary to ensure that doesn't happen again." It appears that, just like last year, Donald Trump will not be attending the White House Correspondents Association dinner, which will be held on April 28. Instead, White House Press Secretary Sarah Huckabee Sanders will attend in his place. But the galas featured entertainer, Michelle Wolf, has not entirely given up on getting the president to show upand on Monday night, the comedian took her best shot at goading the president into attendance. When she first found out that Trump would be skipping the annual event this yearjust as he did when her former Daily Show colleague Hasan Minhaj hosted in 2017Wolf admitted she was relieved. But not because she was afraid to make fun of the president to his face: The first thing I thought was, Oh, thank God. I don't have to hear Trump eat, Wolf told Jimmy Kimmel during his Monday broadcast. You know he doesnt chew with his mouth closed. Hes probably a real smacky eaterlike a mouth breather at the same time. If the president does decide to show up, however, It would be real fun, Wolf said with a grin. Id like to look him in the eye; I like making fun of people when theyre there. The best way to get Trump to do anything, Kimmel suggested, is to dare him. And so, Wolf issued a challenge: I dare you, you poor little man! Ill give you five dollars if you come. By the end of the broadcast, the offer rose to $10. Last year, Minhaj delivered a scorching speechalso without the president in attendance. On the same night, Samantha Bee held her own event, the Not the White House Correspondents Dinner, as counter-programming. Given Wolfs knack for delivering fiery segments of her own during her time on The Daily Show as a correspondent, her selection this year makes perfect senseespecially as both she and Minhaj prepare new late-night programs with Netflix. Wolfs, titled The Break, will offer a respite from the deluge of political developments pouring out of Washington. Story continues 22 Movies and TV Shows That Will Save Us in 2018 Westworld (Season 2) By John P. Johnson/HBO. Grown-ish By Eric Liebowitz/Freeform. Superhero Smorgasbord By Zade Rosenthal/Walt Disney Studios Motion Pictures/Everett Collection. The Winter Olympics By Julian Finney/Getty Images. Black Klansman Left, by Jason LaVeris/FilmMagic; Right, by Kevin Mazur/WireImage. The Incredibles 2 Courtesy of Walt Disney Studios. The Happytime Murders Left, by Allen Berezovsky/Getty Images; Right, by Stefanie Keenan/Getty Images. Jessica Jones (Season 2) By Myles Aronowitz/Netflix. Mamma Mia! Here We Go Again From Universal/Everett Collection. Roseanne From ABC. Oceans 8 By Barry Wetcher/Warner Bros. The Assassination of Gianni Versace By Jeff Daly/FX. The Chi By Matt Dinerstein/SHOWTIME. A Wrinkle in Time By Atsushi Nishijima/Courtesy of Walt Disney Studios. After they tie the knot on May 19, Prince Harry and Meghan Markle will jet off on their honeymoon in Namibia, Travel + Leisure confirmed to People. Hoanib Valley Camp, a luxury camp which is home to unique wildlife, has been tipped as a possible honeymoon spot for the couple. The animals are a major draw for Harry, as conservation efforts in Africa are one of his principal causes. Brussels (AFP) - The EU on Tuesday backed the opening of formal membership talks with Albania and Macedonia as the bloc looks to expand into the Balkans and grow for the first time in years. The announcement comes a month ahead of a summit in Sofia when the leaders of six Balkan nations will be given fresh hope of eventually joining the EU, amid rivalry between Brussels and Moscow over the region. Skopje and Tirana both welcomed the move and vowed to work hard to remove obstacles on the long way to full membership. EU diplomatic chief Federica Mogherini said the European Commission, the executive arm of the EU, recommended that member states "open accession negotiations with Albania and with the former Yugoslav Republic of Macedonia." Mogherini stressed that any prospective members must make sweeping reforms to secure their entry to the club, which currently counts 28 countries as members -- although Britain is set to leave next year. European Commission President Jean-Claude Juncker put all enlargement on hold four years ago, and the Balkans states have become increasingly impatient. Montenegro and Serbia are the frontrunners to join, having already started the formal membership process, with Albania, Bosnia, Kosovo and Macedonia lagging behind. In February the EU unveiled its new strategy for the region, which aims to give membership to some states by 2025 but insists they must first resolve all border rows. The EU has been wary of admitting new members before they settle their differences. The border rows will be a particular point of contention in a region still bedevilled by the aftermath of the bloody break-up of Yugoslavia in the 1990s. These include a bitter and long-running dispute between Macedonia and EU-member Greece over its name, which Athens insists refers to its own northern province. - 'Drift to Russia' - Macedonian Prime Minister Zoran Zaev, whose country's NATO membership bid has also been held up by the row, said his government wanted to resolve the dispute as soon as possible. Story continues "We are making efforts to finish this before the summit... but we would be even happier if it can happen earlier," Zaev told a press conference in Skopje. Albanian Prime Minister Edi Rama said the former communist country has "passed the historic test of our rapprochment with Europe" but acknowledged hard work lay ahead. Rama told reporters in the capital Tirana that it marked "the opening of a new, more difficult phase of reforms and reinforcing the fight against crime and corruption." Mogherini told reporters at the European parliament that Montenegro and Serbia have "progressed well" with their reforms, adding that "maintaining and deepening the current reforms must continue in all areas." These areas are the rule of law, human rights, democratic institutions and public administration as well as ensuring economic competitiveness. An ally of Russia, Serbia has refused to recognise its former breakaway province of Kosovo since it declared independence a decade ago. Five EU countries also do not recognise its independence. Bulgaria, which currently holds the EU's rotating presidency, has warned it is now or never for expanding the European Union into the Balkans as concerns grow about Moscow's influence in the bloc's eastern backyard. French President Emmanuel Macron underscored the concerns, saying: "Yes to anchoring them in the EU and not letting them drift toward Turkey and Russia." But Macron insisted on reforming the bloc before admitting them, saying: "I will not defend any new enlargement until there is a deepening and improvement of our own Europe." London (AFP) - British Prime Minister Theresa May on Tuesday told former colonies anti-gay laws once imposed by her country "were wrong then, and they are wrong now". The premier raised discriminatory legislation affecting same-sex couples, women and girls, in an address to Commonwealth leaders in London. "I am all too aware that these laws were often put in place by my own country. They were wrong then, and they are wrong now," she said in a speech to the biennial Commonwealth Heads of Government Meeting (CHOGM). "As the UK's prime minister, I deeply regret both the fact that such laws were introduced, and the legacy of discrimination, violence and even death that persists today," she added. Same-sex marriage is legal in Britain, but many countries have held onto legislation imposed by their former colonial rulers. Globally 72 countries criminalise same-sex relationships, according to a 2017 report by the International Lesbian, Gay, Bisexual, Trans and Intersex Association. The organisation pinpoints British colonial-era legislation still being used in Commonwealth members including Uganda, Malaysia and Singapore. Britain's premier said her government would back plans to scrap such laws: "The UK stands ready to support any Commonwealth member wanting to reform outdated legislation that makes such discrimination possible." May's speech was met with applause, but her criticism of other countries' laws could cause a further rupture to the summit which has already been hit with a scandal over emigres to Britain. The prime minister apologised to Caribbean leaders after her government threatened to deport some of the hundreds of thousands of people who moved to Britain from the region in the 1950s and 1960s. Those who did not get their papers in order are now being treated as illegal as part of the government's crackdown. But following a backlash May has written to each of the Caribbean countries affected outlining how Britain intends to rectify the situation. The row has cast a shadow over the summit, which the UK government had hoped would be an opportunity to promote trade with Commonwealth countries, ahead of Britain leaving the European Union next year. Yerevan (AFP) - Tens of thousands rallied in the Armenian capital on Tuesday after ex-president Serzh Sarkisian was elected prime minister by the country's parliament despite several days of protests, an AFP journalist reported from the scene. Opposition leader Nikol Pashinyan - who organised the protest - said "tens of thousands" gathered in Yerevan's Republic Square to denounce Sarkisian's efforts to extend his chokehold on power after he stepped down as president last week. Holding Armenian flags and chanting "Armenia without Serzh!" protesters filled Yerevan's main square after lawmakers backed the candidacy of the Kremlin-supported veteran politician with 77 to 17 votes. His second and final term as president ended last week. The opposition denounced the vote -- which made Sarkisian Armenia's top leader under a new parliamentary system of government -- saying the 63-year-old lacked popular support. "Sarkisian lacks legitimacy and has earned the hatred of Armenians," Pashinian told the rally. Earlier in the day he announced "the start of a peaceful velvet revolution in Armenia," and called on supporters to "paralyse the work of all government agencies." "We must not allow Armenia's transformation into an autocratic country where the same man remains in power for an indefinite time," 23-year-old student Karen Mirzoyan, told AFP at the rally. Another protester, 38-year-old Roza Tunyan, said Sarkisian "lied to Armenians and broke his earlier promise not to become prime minister after his presidential term expires." - 'Extinct volcano' - On Tuesday morning, several thousand demonstrators marched through the centre of the capital Yerevan and staged sit-in protests outside government buildings. They blockaded the entrances to about a dozen government buildings, including those housing the foreign ministry and the central bank. Sarkisian blamed the opposition for the unrest. Story continues "Extinct volcanoes should not wake up if we want to live in a prosperous Armenia, in a country with the rule of law. And volcanoes will not awake if no one provokes them." Rallies were also held in the country's second and third largest cities of Gyumri and Vanadzor. Police said 80 demonstrators were briefly detained. On Monday police used stun grenades as protesters sought to break through a barbed wire cordon in the centre of Yerevan in an effort to get to the parliament building. Authorities said 46 people including six police and opposition leader Pashinyan required medical help. The spokesman for the ruling party, Eduard Sharmazanov, has dismissed the protests as "the opposition's artificial and fake agenda". - 'Perpetual rule' - Sarkisian, a shrewd former military officer who also held the office of prime minister in 2007-2008, has been in charge of the landlocked South Caucasus nation of 2.9 million since winning a presidential vote in 2008. The country's new president, Armen Sarkisian, was sworn in last week but his powers will be weaker under the new system of government. Even though the two men share the same surname, they are not related. The constitutional amendments were passed after a referendum in December 2015, with some 63 percent of the voters backing the changes. After the plebiscite, thousands of opposition supporters rallied in protest against alleged mass violations at polling stations. Council of Europe observers have said the referendum was marred by allegations of large-scale vote-buying and multiple voting, among other irregularities. Opposition politicians say the shift to a parliamentary republic with a powerful prime minister has been designed to increase Serzh Sarkisian's grip on power in the impoverished Moscow-allied country. "Sarkisian wants to perpetuate his rule," the leader of the opposition Heritage party, Raffi Hovannisyan, told AFP. After Sarkisian was first elected in 2008, 10 people died in bloody clashes between police and supporters of the defeated opposition candidate. He won a second presidential term in 2013. Damascus (Syria) (AFP) - Thousands of Syrians gathered Monday in Damascus in defiance of Western strikes on the country and to celebrate the regime reconquering a former rebel bastion outside the capital. The United States, France and Britain early Saturday targeted what they said were chemical weapon sites after an alleged toxic attack on Eastern Ghouta on April 7. Later Saturday, President Bashar al-Assad's army announced it had retaken the whole of the region east of Damascus from rebels after an almost two-month military assault. On Monday, Syrians gathered in the capital's largest square -- Umayyad Square -- ahead of the anniversary of the departure of French troops from the country in 1946. A day before the public holiday, schools took part in the demonstration at which some participants held up Syria's national flag and portraits of Assad. "God, Syria and Bashar -- nothing more," protesters chanted. The square was closed off to traffic, and decorated with images of Assad in military uniform and sunglasses, as well as of his father and predecessor Hafez. US President Donald Trump triumphantly declared "Mission Accomplished!" after Saturday's strikes on purported chemical weapons sites that were largely vacated. "We're here to celebrate the victory of the Syrian army in Eastern Ghouta and to send a message to Trump and his allies that they failed," Assad supporter Naila Badr said, her hair wrapped in a white headscarf. The missile strikes launched by the three countries "only show their impotence, while the army wiped out the terrorism they were funding", said the young woman. The regime and its supporters describe all rebels, including those recently defeated in Eastern Ghouta, as "terrorists". "Yes, yes, yes -- a million times yes to Bashar al-Assad," said Radina Awad, another participant who wore sunglasses. "We want to live in peace. All these states should leave us alone," she said. Story continues The last rebels were bussed out of Eastern Ghouta after the alleged chemical attack on their final holdout of Douma, which rescuers and medics said killed more than 40 people. Damascus and its ally Moscow say the allegations of a chemical attack are "fabrications". Syria's civil war has killed more than 350,000 people since it started in 2011 with the brutal repression of anti-government protests. Photo credit: Brendan Smialowski - Getty Images From Good Housekeeping Former First Lady Barbara Bush died today, just days after a family spokesman announced she had decided to against seeking medical treatment to prolong her life. A former First Lady of the United States of America and relentless proponent of family literacy, Barbara Pierce Bush passed away Tuesday, April 17, 2018 at the age of 92," read a statement from the office of George H.W. Bush. She is survived by her husband of 73 years, President George H. W. Bush; five children and their spouses, 17 grandchildren, seven great grandchildren; and her brother Scott Pierce. She was preceded in death by her second child, Pauline 'Robin' Bush, and her siblings Martha Rafferty and James R. Pierce. Statement by the Office of @GeorgeHWBush on the passing of Barbara Pierce Bush this evening at the age of 92. pic.twitter.com/c6JU0xy6Vc - Jim McGrath (@jgm41) April 17, 2018 While the announcement did not confirm the cause of death, CNN reported this week that Bush struggled with Chronic Obstructive Pulmonary Disease (COPD) and congestive heart failure. The 92-year-old had also battled Graves' disease, a thyroid condition, in the past. COPD is a chronic inflammatory lung disease that causes obstructed airflow from the lungs, according to the Mayo Clinic. Sufferers experience symptoms like shortness of breath, wheezing, chronic coughing, and frequent respiratory infections. The disease stems from long-term exposure to irritating gases or air particles, most often from cigarette smoke. About 20 to 30% of smokers develop COPD. The strong ties between the habit and the disease have prompted many people to wonder if the first lady smoked, a habit she admitted to in her 2015 autobiography, Barbara Bush: A Memoir Story continues "The year 1968 began with me taking a very important step: I gave up smoking," she wrote. "I had been a smoker since age 18 and knew I should quit but just never did." She went on to recall a time when she had gone to the hospital for a small surgery, and had woken up in the middle of the night and lit a cigarette while still groggy from medication. Photo credit: The George Bush Presidential Library and Museum/Handout/Corbis - Getty Images "At that very moment a tiny nurse came into the room, got me back into bed, and before charging out of the room, informed me she'd be back to talk to me in the morning," Bush remembered. "True to her word, after she got off duty, she took the time to come in and read me the riot act. She told me I was addicted and a disgrace. Addicted? Me? I couldn't forget that nurse and on New Year's Day I quit." While Bush beat her nicotine addiction decades ago, she apparently smoked very heavily for the 25-year period between 1943 and 1968. The mom once "smoked Newports by the pack," according to a 1992 Vanity Fair profile. While the Bush family hasn't confirmed whether Barbara is one of the 15.7 million Americans with COPD, they revealed she spent her final days in "great spirits." "Shes a fighter. She's an enforcer," the TODAY anchor and granddaughter Jenna Bush Hager said on Monday. Hager added that her grandpa - Barbara's husband of over 73 years - remained close by her side. "I think the fact that theyre together and that he still says, I love you Barbie every night is pretty remarkable,' she stated. Barbara personally addressed her health problems in a 2013 interview with CSPAN. "I don't have a fear of death for my precious George or for myself because I know that there is a great God," she said at the time. "I know we'll see Robin again, one way or another, and our families. I have a great faith." You Might Also Like New York (AFP) - The young wife of accused Mexican drug kingpin Joaquin "El Chapo" Guzman on Tuesday spoke publicly for the first time since her husband was extradited to the United States last year, voicing concern for his health in solitary confinement. Emma Coronel, a 28-year-old former beauty queen and mother of the couple's twin girls, complained after his latest pre-trial hearing in a Brooklyn federal court about being barred from visiting her husband in jail or talking to him by telephone. Guzman, 61, accused of running the Sinaloa crime syndicate, one of the world's biggest drug empires, is scheduled to go on trial on September 5. "I have not seen him in 15 months. I see him in court. I do not have any communication with him, no visits or calls. Only the girls and the lawyers can see him," she said in Spanish, dressed in tight black pants, a white blouse, high heels and mirrored aviators. "My concern is your health because I know that you are very bad psychologically... because of what the lawyers have told me, and that's what worries me. How are you going to reach a good judgment if you are in poor health," added his wife of 11 years. Guzman's defense lawyers have complained repeatedly about the harsh conditions of his detention in solitary confinement since he was handed over to the United States on January 19, 2017, after twice escaping prison in Mexico. He has been held in solitary confinement in New York, cooped up in a cell 23 hours a day, and has complained repeatedly about his health and conditions of confinement. Accused of running the Sinaloa Cartel, a powerful criminal syndicate, Guzman is facing 17 charges. If convicted he is likely to spend the rest of his life in a maximum security US prison. El Chapo's lawyer, Eduardo Balarezo, refused to let Coronel take questions from the press, and said his client will undergo a new psychological evaluation in the next two weeks. Guzman can speak to his lawyers only through a glass panel. Story continues He greeted his wife with a wave at the beginning and end of Tuesday's hearing, which heard arguments from the defense and prosecution on whether Guzman's partial payment of legal fees should be admitted as evidence at trial of drug trafficking. Judge Brian Cogan deferred a ruling and set the next hearing for May 30. Between 800 and 1,000 people will be earmarked as potential jurors for what is expected to be a three- to four-month trial. Each of them will have to fill out a questionnaire that will include questions, for example, on their television drama viewing about drug cartels. From that, the pool will be whittled down to 40, from which the final 12 jurors and six alternates will be selected on the first day of the trial. Video: DEA Agent Who Helped Capture 'El Chapo' Speaks Out Watch news, TV and more on Yahoo View. A major GOP donor is jumping ship and now hes contributing to Democratic candidates in hopes of flipping the House of Representatives and/or the Senate in this years midterm elections. Seth Klarman, the billionaire CEO of the Baupost Group who the Economist once dubbed The Oracle of Boston, called out Republicans for failing to keep President Donald Trump in check. The Republicans in Congress have failed to hold the president accountable and have abandoned their historic beliefs and values, Klarman told the Boston Globe. For the good of the country, the Democrats must take back one or both houses of Congress. Klarman, an independent who donated more than $7 million to GOP candidates during the presidency of Barack Obama, has now cut checks to Democrats in 56 House races and 22 Senate elections, the newspaper reported. I received a tax cut I neither need nor want. Im choosing to invest it to fight the administrations flawed policies and to elect Democrats to the Senate and House of Representatives, Klarman said. Klarman also donated $2 million to nonprofits backing core Democratic issues, including gun control and the environment, the Globe reported. While Klarman contributed far more to Republicans in 2016, he actually backed Hillary Clinton in the presidential race, calling Trump completely unqualified for the highest office in the land, according to Reuters. His views have not changed since the election. Last year, Klarman described Trump as a threat to democracy, per audio obtained by New York magazine. He also warned against Trumps protectionist agenda in a letter to his investors, saying such policies not only dont work, they actually leave society worse off, The New York Times reported. In the same letter, he sounded the alarm about the Trump-backed tax cuts that were ultimately enacted by the Republican-led Congress. The Trump tax cuts could drive government deficits considerably higher, Klarman wrote, noting that cuts in 2001 under President George W. Bush fueled income inequality while triggering huge federal budget deficits. Story continues Now, hes putting his money where his mouth is, donating his own proceeds from those cuts to work against the Republicans who enacted them. Also on HuffPost Sen. John McCain (Ariz.) "Donald Trumps behavior this week, concluding with the disclosure of his demeaning comments about women and his boasts about sexual assaults, make it impossible to continue to offer even conditional support for his candidacy," McCain said in a statement. Sen. Kelly Ayotte (N.H.) Ayotte never formally endorsed Trump, but said she was withdrawing her support. "I wanted to be able to support my party's nominee, chosen by the people, because I feel strongly we need a change in direction in our country. However, I'm a mom and an American first, and I cannot and will not support a candidate who brags about degrading and assaulting women. I will not be voting for Donald Trump or Hillary Clinton and instead will be writing in Governor Pence on election day." Donald Trump's statements are beyond offensive & despicable. While I cannot vote for Hillary Clinton, I will not vote for Trump. #utpol Gary R. Herbert (@HerbertForUtah) October 8, 2016 Donald Trump's behavior makes him unacceptable as a candidate for president, and I won't vote for him. Full statement: pic.twitter.com/Ge7GU1TSvm Rep. Martha Roby (@RepMarthaRoby) October 8, 2016 Rep. Cresent Hardy (Nev.) "I will no longer support the guy at the top of the ticket," Hardy said on Saturday. Sen. Dan Sullivan (Alaska) "We need national leaders who can lead by example on [sexual assault and domestic violence]. The reprehensible revelations about Donald Trump have shown me that he can't. Therefore I am withdrawing my support for his candidacy," Sullivan said in a statement. Rep. Ann Wagner (Mo.) "I have committed my short time in Congress to fighting for the most vulnerable in our society. As a strong and vocal advocate for victims of sex trafficking and assault, I must be true to those survivors and myself and condemn the predatory and reprehensible comments of Donald Trump," Wagner said in a statement to the St. Louis Post-Dispatch. ""I withdraw my endorsement and call for Governor Pence to take the lead so we can defeat Hillary Clinton." Rep. Rodney Davis (R-Ill.) "The abhorrent comments made by Donald Trump are inexcusable and go directly against what I've been doing in Washington to combat assaults on college campuses. Because of this, I am rescinding my support for Donald Trump and asking to have my name removed from his agriculture advisory committee. With the terrible options America has right now, I cannot cast my vote for any of the candidates, so I hope Donald Trump withdraws from the race so the American people can elect Mike Pence as our next president," Davis said in a statement to the St. Louis Post-Dispatch. Sen. Shelley Moore Capitol (W. Va.) "As a woman, a mother, and a grandmother to three young girls, I am deeply offended by Trump's remarks, and there is no excuse for the disgusting and demeaning language. Women have worked hard to gain the dignity and respect we deserve. The appropriate next step may be for him to reexamine his candidacy. Sen. Cory Gardner (Colo.) "I will not vote for Donald Trump, he said in a statement. If Donald Trump wishes to defeat Hillary Clinton, he should do the only thing that will allow us to do so step aside, and allow Mike Pence to be the Republican partys nominee. If he fails to do so, I will not vote for Hillary Clinton but will instead write-in my vote for Mike Pence. Alabama Gov. Robert Bentley "I endorsed Governor John Kasich for President, because I felt like he was the most qualified and the best person to lead our nation. I certainly won't vote for Hillary Clinton, but I cannot and will not vote for Donald Trump," Bentley said in a statement. Rep. Tom Rooney (Fla.) As the father of three young sons, I dont want my boys growing up in a world where the President of the United States is allowed to speak or treat women the way Donald Trump has, Rooney said in a statement. "My greatest responsibility in life is to try and be a good husband and father. If I support Donald Trump, I will be telling my boys that I think it is okay to treat women like objects and Ill have failed as a dad. Rep. Erik Paulsen (Minn.) "I will not be voting for him, Paulsen said in a statement. Rep Joe Heck (Nev.) I can no longer look past the pattern of behavior and comments that have been made by Donald Trump, Heck said on Saturday. Therefore, I cannot in good conscience continue to support Donald Trump. Rep. Frank LoBiondo (N.J.) Saying this election has been incredibly disappointing is an understatement. It never had to be this way. We should be debating the issues that affect our nations future. Instead we have two horribly flawed choices. It is clear that neither Donald Trump nor Hillary Clinton can unify a deeply divided country.I have repeatedly and strongly spoken out against Mr. Trump when he degrades and insults women, minority groups and Gold Star military families. I will not vote for a candidate who boasts of sexual assault. It is my conclusion that Mr. Trump is unfit to be President.Similarly Secretary Clintons dishonorable actions flagrantly ignoring federal laws, repeated failures in judgment on critical foreign policy and national security decisions, and intentionally lying to Congress and the American people have disqualified her.I cannot support and will not vote for Donald Trump or Hillary Clinton to be President of the United States. I will write in Governor Mike Pence for President, LoBiondo said in a statement. I can no longer endorse Donald Trump. Read my full statement: pic.twitter.com/lfa9mYZbdC Senator Mike Crapo (@MikeCrapo) October 8, 2016 Sen. Deb Fischer (Neb.) "The comments made by Mr. Trump were disgusting and totally unacceptable under any circumstance. It would be wise for him to step aside and allow Mike Pence to serve as our party's nominee," Fischer said in a statement. But she later said she planned to vote for Trump anyway. Rep. Bradley Byrne (Ala.) "Donald Trump's comments regarding women were disgraceful and appalling," Byrne said in a statement. "There are absolutely no circumstances when it would ever be appropriate to speak of women in such a way." "It is now clear Donald Trump is not fit to be President of the United States and cannot defeat Hillary Clinton. I believe he should step aside and allow Governor Pence to lead the Republican ticket." Byrne later said that he would, after all, support the Republican ticket. Rep. Scott Garrett (N.J.) Garrett said that Trump's running mate, Indiana Gov. Mike Pence, would be "the best nominee for the Republican Party to defeat Hillary Clinton," according to the AP. Garrett later said he still intended to vote for the GOP nominee. "Donald Trump remains the nominee of the Republican Party, and Rep. Garrett has always said he will vote for the Republican Party nominee, his campaign manager said. Rep. Jason Chaffetz (R-Utah) "I'm out. I'm pulling my endorsement," Chaffetz said in an interview on Friday. "I can not support in any way, shape or form the comments or approach Donald Trump has taken. This is so over the top, it is not even acceptable in locker rooms. It shouldn't be acceptable anywhere. We are talking about the president of the United States. I want someone of high moral values." But less than a month later, Chaffetz tweeted that he would vote for Trump after all. Sen. John Thune (S.D.) "Donald Trump should withdraw and Mike Pence should be our nominee effective immediately," Thune tweeted. But Thune said he still intends to vote for Trump. Love HuffPost? Become a founding member of HuffPost Plus today. This article originally appeared on HuffPost. The Marvel Cinematic Universe as we know it appeared to come to an end with Avengers: Infinity War. But how did it begin? When did any of the major events actually happen? Does Black Panther take place before or after Spider-Man: Homecoming? Did Thor really arrive on Earth during the events of Iron Man 2? Steve Rogers went missing in 1945, but how long was he frozen? The first Guardians of the Galaxy and Vol. 2 take place how many months apart? And how does Ant-Man and the Wasp fit into all this? With 19 movies set before the events of Infinity War, theres a lot to keep track of, and Marvel Studios didnt make the timeline all that easy. Sure, the night the Winter Soldier killed Howard and Maria Stark may have been explicitly stated on screen as Dec. 16, 1991, but Marvel has been notoriously coy about when present-day films actually are set. But fear not, true believers, our crack team of Marvel experts has got you covered. And by crack team, we mean one person, me, who spent way too much time watching every single Marvel film looking for blink-and-you-miss-it clues to create what we believe to be the closest to a definitive timeline of Earth-199999. This is an extended cut of a video we made for the hardcore MCU maven, featuring every significant moment (and a few seemingly insignificant ones) throughout the history of the Marvel Cinematic Universe. (Check it out on our Facebook page.) First, a note on our methodology. Before you troll us asking why we set The Avengers in 2010, even though it was released in 2012, let us tell you what we used to figure this all out: Spider-Man: Homecoming. Yes, the 2017 reboot of our favorite wall-crawler was our key to unlocking the mysteries of the universe. Fans will recall that Homecoming was firmly set eight years after the events of The Avengers, with the majority of the film taking place two months after the events of Captain America: Civil War. That gave us a place to start. Then and this was a huge deduction on our part, so be impressed Captain America says he was frozen for 65 years in the detention video Peter is forced to watch. So, if he was frozen in 1945, that means he awoke in 2010. Since Avengers takes place shortly after Steve Rogers was revived, it meant that not only was Avengers set in 2010 but that Homecoming was set in the fall of 2018. In Civil War, former Gen. Thunderbolt Ross tells that Avengers theyve been acting unsupervised for four years, which meant that Winter Solider occurred in 2014. In Thor: Ragnarok, Thor tells Bruce Banner that the Battle of Sokovia was two years ago, meaning Age of Ultron was most likely set in 2016. Story continues Similarly, you might be questioning why Iron Man 3 is set after Thor: The Dark World. Well, thats in part thanks to a fella named Ben Popplewell, who reminded us that Tony Stark asked Maya Hansen if there was a 12-year-old in her car. Maya then corrected him, saying that the kid would be 13. Since the opening scene is set on New Years Eve 1999, a baby theoretically conceived that night would have been born around Sept. 30, 2000. Add 13 years and it equals 2013. Were good at math. You might quibble that if Happy Hogan said he has been holding on to Tonys engagement ring since 2008, wouldnt that mean that Iron Man 2 was also set in 2008, not 2009? And trust us, we debated that as well. For days. But, then we considered Tony Stark the man and found it perfectly consistent with his character that he would impulsively buy Pepper Potts a wedding ring when he returned from Afghanistan, long before he publicly admitted his feelings to his erstwhile assistant. We found other clues in featured props. For example, a newspaper glimpsed in Ant-Man showed a photo of Scott Lang dated 2004, implying that Lang was most likely sent to prison in 2005. We also referenced what little official statements have been made by the studio. Right before the release of The Avengers, Marvel published what was, even then, a fairly complicated timeline of the events leading up to the crossover. The timeline not only showed that Iron Man took place over the course of nine months, it also detailed Nick Furys Big Week the overlapping events of Iron Man 2, Thor, and The Incredible Hulk all of which took place six months after Tony Stark said, I am Iron Man. Similarly, writer-director James Gunn has stated that both Guardians of the Galaxy films take place in 2014; and both Kevin Feige and director Scott Derrickson have stated that there isnt a reference to Rhodeys injury from Civil War in Doctor Strange. Some of this was, admittedly, pure guesswork. Thanoss 1996 adoption of Gamora was based solely on figuring out her age based on her height. I believed she was 3 or 4; our own Ethan Alter said she was 4 or 5; and my significant other who with her decades of experience working with children and the ability to Google the average height of a seven year old firmly stated that if Thanos is 67 (marvel.com) then Gamora should be about 7 years old. So we determined her age to be 7 and then, referencing her current age, we did some more math and went from there. Similarly, we chose dates according to what felt right based on available information, such as when Black Widow graduated from the Red Room she was born in 1984 or the four-year gap between Avengers and Winter Soldier again, we refer you to Civil War. Civil War also provides a good reference point for locating the events of Ant-Man and the Wasp in the MCU timeline. Its stated early on in the Ant-Man sequel that Scott Lang has been serving a two-year house arrest in his ramshackle San Francisco home, which places us in the near-future of 2020. The bulk of the film takes place in the three days leading up to the official end of his sentence, and he packs a lot into that relatively short time span: not only does he reunite with the Pyms and tangle with the phasing villain Ghost, but he also aids Hank and Hope from rescuing Janet van Dyne from the purgatory of the Quantum Realm. So how does this sync up with the events of Thor: Ragnarok we hear you ask? Good question! For that, allows us to quote the wise words of one Jeff Goldblum, whose Sakaar-dwelling Collector tells the Asgardian warrior that time works real differently around these parts. Were taking that to mean that by the time that Hulk, Thor and Loki return to normal space, two years have elapsed, putting the destruction of Asgard and their subsequent encounter with Thanos firmly in 2020. And while, yes, feelings arent facts, were not talking about real events. Were talking about fictional characters. Fictional. Characters. So please, save your trolling comments for a post about actual world events. Suffice to say this timeline is by no means perfect, but in all likelihood its the closest were going to get to an accurate one until Marvel Studios reboots. Basically: This is all correct, until it isnt. Read more from Yahoo Entertainment: By David Shepardson WASHINGTON (Reuters) - The state of California has opted not to take part in the Trump administration's effort to send National Guard troops to the country's southern border with Mexico, a Defense Department official said on Monday. Robert Salesses, a deputy assistant secretary at the Defense Department, said at a media briefing that California has declined a request to commit more than 200 troops to the effort. Salesses said talks with California are ongoing. Earlier this month, President Donald Trump and Defense Secretary James Mattis authorized up to 4,000 National Guard personnel to help the Department of Homeland Security secure the border in four southwestern U.S. states. Currently, 900 National Guard troops have been deployed in Texas, New Mexico and Arizona, officials said Monday. Lieutenant Colonel Tom Keegan, a spokesman for the California National Guard, said in a statement that "state officials have not rejected anything" since California Governor Jerry Brown responded last week with a proposed agreement. Keegan added: "The federal government has not yet responded. The next step is for the federal government to respond by signing the Memorandum of Agreement." Brown's office referred questions to Keegan. Tyler Houlton, a spokesman for Homeland Security, said Brown "shares our interest in securing our southern border. DHS and our federal partners are committed to working with the governor to mobilize the California National Guard to assist DHSs frontline personnel in our vital missions." Salesses said the federal government had asked California to provide 237 National Guard troops to two sectors near the Mexican border. "They will not perform those missions," Salesses said, adding talks are continuing with the California National Guard. He said the tasks sought were primarily operational support, including motor transport maintenance, radio communications, heavy equipment operations, administrative responsibilities and operating remote surveillance cameras. Story continues Ronald Vitiello, acting deputy commissioner at U.S. Customs and Border Patrol, said Monday California may be willing to take part in other missions but Brown had determined that some tasks sought for assistance were "unsupportable." Trump has been unable to get the U.S. Congress or Mexico to fund his proposed wall along the border. National Guard troops will not construct any sections of a proposed border wall, officials said Monday. National Guard troops are not taking part in direct border security and are not performing law enforcement work. Mexican President Enrique Pena Nieto has sharply rebuked Trump over the plan. (Reporting by David Shepardson; editing by Leslie Adler and James Dalgleish) Kano (Nigeria) (AFP) - Nigeria is facing calls to establish how many of the missing Chibok schoolgirls are still alive, after claims that nearly 100 of them may have lost their lives in captivity. Parents of the missing girls and supporters gathered in the small town in remote northeast Nigeria on Saturday to mark the fourth anniversary of the kidnapping that sparked world outrage. But soon after the end of their vigil and prayers, a Nigerian journalist who has been involved in negotiations with the Islamist group said only a "handful" of the girls survive. Ahmad Salkida wrote in a lengthy thread on Twitter that "only 15" of the 112 girls still being held were alive. "Many of the girls have died as a result of cross fires and bombardments of the security forces that no doubt were intent on rescuing them," he added. The Nigerian government in response neither confirmed nor denied the claim. President Muhammadu Buhari's spokesman, Garba Shehu, said only that Salkida's claim was "not known" to them or anyone working on their behalf. "The facts as known to our officials and the international contacts assisting this process are that the remaining Chibok girls are there," he added. "We are not relenting on getting their release." - Grief and alarm - A total of 276 girls were seized from the Government Girls Secondary School in Chibok on April 14, 2014 and 57 managed to escape in the immediate aftermath. Since then, 107 have either been found or released as part of a government deal with the jihadists. Claims that some have died or been killed are not new. In August 2016, Boko Haram released a video purporting to show about 50 of the students. "Some of them have died as a result of aerial bombardment," a masked gunman tells the camera. One of the girls then gives details about an air strike by Nigerian armed forces. Ayuba Alamson Chibok, a community leader in the town whose cousin is among the missing, said parents and relatives were all aware of those claims. Story continues "After the 82 girls were released (in May 2017) I spoke with some of them and they confirmed that some girls were killed in military strike on the camp they were being held," he told AFP. "The released girls confirmed to me that 11 of their colleagues died in that air strike and many others were injured." There was "no way of knowing" if more had been killed in similar action since then, said Alamson, calling on Boko Haram to release a "proof of life" video for the remaining hostages. The latest numbers quoted were alarming -- and the authorities in Abuja should work towards finding out the situation as soon as possible, he said. "This claim has added to the grief of parents. The government should act fast. The longer it takes to resolve this issue, the more the future of these girls is destroyed," he added. - Human shields - Nigeria's military still strictly controls movements in the northeast, where the Islamist insurgency has killed at least 20,000 and made more than 2.6 million homeless since 2009. That makes access to information difficult but two security sources with close knowledge of operations against Boko Haram said there may be some truth in the claims. Both declined to give their names, as they were not authorised to speak to the media. One said it was "indisputable... that some of them perished in air strikes against Boko Haram positions on at least three occasions" between February 2015 and February this year. The air strikes targeted a Boko Haram base on the Cameroon side of the border with Nigeria; a militant camp on an island on Lake Chad; and the Sambisa Forest area of Nigeria's Borno state. "In all these cases Boko Haram used the girls and other hostages as human shields," the source said. The second source agreed with Salkida's claim the remaining girls were now married to senior commanders in the group, which would make negotiations for their return more challenging. In a video released on January 15, one Chibok girl indicated as much. "We are the Chibok girls that you cry for us to return to you. By the grace of Allah we will not return to you," she said. Canada has summoned home the families of diplomats from Cubas capital city, Havana, after a number of embassy workers have suffered from unexplained health problems. Government officials issued the recall as 10 Canadians continue to show symptoms such as dizziness, nausea, and difficulty concentrating, the BBC reports. Some of those showing symptoms include minors. According to a report by a Canadian medical specialist, the symptoms may be linked to a new kind of brain injury. Twenty-one American diplomats suffered similar symptoms last year. Washington recalled its staff in September and issued a travel warning against Cuba. According to officials, those who appeared to recover from the ailments have seen the symptoms resurface, BBC reports. The mysterious illnesses were originally believed to be caused by covert sonic attacks. An infrasonic or ultrasonic weapon can cause hearing loss and physical pain by emitting a sound not audible to a human ear within the vicinity of the victim. Cuba has rejected these allegations. Foreign Minister Bruno Rodriguez of Cuba described the accusations as political manipulation in October, the BBC reports. Canada has also disregarded those theories. More than million Canadian tourists visit Cuba every year. A 71-year-old Australian nun was held by police in the Philippines for 22 hours, accused of involvement in political activities, in what is seen as part of a clampdown on foreigners instigated by President Rodrigo Duterte. Sister Patricia Fox was released on Tuesday, pending further investigation, after she had been apprehended the day before by immigration officers in Quezon City, SBS News reported. The Catholic Bishops Conference of the Philippines (CBCP) said it was told the arrest was because she was deemed an undesirable alien for joining protest rallies in Davao Oriental in Mindanao earlier in April. These are claims her lawyer, Jobert Pahilga, denies. Trending: Ten-Foot Shark Reeled in by Tourist Fishermen in Rare Catch in Florida Pahilga said in a statement that Fox has done nothing wrong or illegal that would warrant her arrest, detention and possible deportation. The Philippines Bureau of Immigration (BI) said she had participated in farmer protests in the past but had not been doing so at the time of her arrest. RTX5N6KG REUTERS/Bobby Yip Fox has been working with farmers and indigenous peoples in the country for nearly three decades. Don't miss: What Was Matthew Mellon's Cause of Death? Cryptocurrency Billionaire and Banking Heir Dies Aged 54 Her lawyer said she visited Tagum City to document reported human rights violations against farmers in Mindanao for a report intended for government agencies. Philippines Intelligence services (NICA) said they had a photos of her raising a clenched fist with the banner Stop Killing Farmers as well as wearing a Philippines agricultural union T-shirt. Her lawyer said: Contrary to the claim of NICA, Sister Pat did not join any rally in Tagum or Davao or in any province of Region XI for that matter." Story continues Most popular: Pennsylvania House Passes Bill Banning Abortions For Down Syndrome The countrys immigration commissioner, Jaime Morente, recommended Fox be released after it was confirmed she had a valid missionary visa. She will remain in the Philippines until the investigation is completed. Renato Reyes, who heads the left-wing Bagong Alyansang Makabayan (New Patriotic Alliance), said her arrest was part of a government clampdown on foreigners who have shown solidarity with Filipinos. This comes after President Duterte threatened to arrest officials of the ICC and after immigration officials deported an EU parliamentarian [Giacomo Filibeck]," he said. Manila Auxiliary Bishop Broderick Pabillo told the CBCP: The grip is getting tighter on people who manifest dissent against the abuses of the government. This is already happening without martial law. What would it be if there were martial law which hangs heavy in the air. This article was first written by Newsweek More from Newsweek China has said it will "protect the interests of Chinese firms" after the U.S. banned American firms from selling parts to China's ZTE Corp for seven years. As Laura Frykberg reports, it's a potentially devastating move for the telecoms equipment maker and exacerbates tensions between the world's two largest economies. James Comey (Photo illustration: Yahoo News; photos: Saul Loeb/AFP/Getty Images, AP) James Comeys book tour began in earnest on Tuesday with the former FBI director scheduled for no less than eight high-profile interviews to promote his much-anticipated memoir, A Higher Loyalty, over the next three days. Comey appeared live Tuesday on ABCs Good Morning America, where he sat down with George Stephanapoulos for the second time in less than a week. (Stephanapoulos interviewed Comey last week at the former FBI directors home in Virginia for a primetime special that aired Sunday night.) Comey appeared on GMA for a town-hall style forum in front of a live studio audience in Times Square. The former FBI director also gave an interview that aired on NPRs Morning Edition on Tuesday. He will appear later on NPRs Fresh Air. Fox News, whose leading personalities have savaged Comey and his book, will have him on next week. The latest interviews produced no new revelations about Comeys interactions with President Trump before his firing, but they gave Comey a chance to respond to Trumps flurry of combative tweets about him including the presidents suggestion that Comey ought to be jailed. That is not normal, Comey said on GMA. That is not OK. First of all, hes just making stuff up. But, most importantly, the president of the United States is calling for the imprisonment of a private citizen, as hes done for a whole lot of people who criticize him. That is not acceptable in this country. I hope people read the book and see why the rule of law is such an important value in this country, Comey continued. And key to that is that the president doesnt get to decide who goes to jail. Comey said Trumps early-morning tweetstorms pose a danger to the American public. Were numb to it, he said. We wake up in the morning and see the president of the United States is accusing people of crimes without evidence and pronouncing them guilty and saying they should be in jail. That should wake all of us up with a start, but theres been so much of it that were a little bit numb, and thats dangerous. Story continues On Tuesday night, Comey will appear on CBSs Late Show With Stephen Colbert. On Wednesday morning, hell be on ABCs The View. On Thursday, hell appear on CNNs The Lead With Jake Tapper and MSNBCs Rachel Maddow Show. Between the cable news hits, Comey will sit down with David Remnick for a taping of The New Yorker Radio Hour before a live audience at Town Hall in Manhattan. Comey will also take part in a CNN town hall on April 25, followed by an interview with Fox News Bret Baier the next day. Related: Why Comey doesnt want Trump impeached Perhaps anticipating an onset of Comey fatigue, CNN promoted Tappers interview to viewers this way: You have heard from James Comey, but you havent heard him answer Jake Tappers questions. Trump, who castigated Comey on Twitter ahead of the book tour, has not tweeted about his former FBI director since Sunday. On Fox & Friends the presidents favorite morning show co-host Steve Doocy mocked ABCs breathless promotion of its Sunday night Comey special, gleefully noting that it drew fewer viewers than the Country Music Awards telecast on CBS and ABCs reboot of Roseanne. Comeys book, though, is already at the top of Amazons bestseller list. And its publisher, Macmillan, said earlier this week that it was printing 850,000 copies of A Higher Loyalty to meet the expected demand. Read more from Yahoo News: Havana (Cuba) (AFP) - Cuba opens a new chapter when Raul Castro steps down from the presidency on April 19, ending six decades of single-family rule launched by his brother Fidel. Here are some key facts about the island. - Historic thaw with US - Ties between communist Cuba and the United States, roughly 150 kilometers (90 miles) apart, have been fraught due to US occupations and Cold War enmity that took the neighbors to the brink of nuclear war. A historic thaw began in 2014, when Barack Obama and Raul Castro simultaneously announced plans to normalize ties. In 2015, they reopened their embassies and the following year, Obama traveled to Havana for talks with Castro, setting aside a bitter five-decade standoff. A US trade embargo first set in 1962 remains in place, however. The rapprochement has been partially rolled back by Obama's successor, Donald Trump. In October 2017, Trump held Cuba responsible for mysterious "acoustic attacks" against US diplomats stationed there. - Six decades of Castro power - On January 1, 1959, dictator Fulgencio Batista, in power since a 1952 coup, was overthrown in a revolution led by Fidel Castro who established a socialist republic. In 1961, anti-communist Washington severed diplomatic relations. Months later, Castro's forces defeated 1,400 rebels in the US-backed Bay of Pigs invasion. The US discovery of Soviet missiles in Cuba in 1962 set off the most serious crisis in the Cold War, threatening nuclear conflict. Cuba was plunged into economic turmoil when the Soviet Union collapsed in 1991, surviving after legalizing use of the US dollar and opening up to tourism. In 2006, Castro, who was ill, temporarily transferred power to his brother Raul, the defense chief. Raul was named president in 2008 and three years later, Fidel also handed him leadership of the all-powerful Communist Party. Fidel died in November 2016, aged 90. - Centuries as a colony - Cuba became a Spanish colony after explorer Christopher Columbus landed in 1492, and it used African slaves for labor until 1886. Story continues During its 1895-1898 war of independence, the last of three, the United States backed the Cuban rebellion against Spain and sent troops to the island to shore up the struggle. After Spain's defeat, Cuba was essentially ceded to the United States, which installed a provisional military government. Cuba became independent in 1902, but Washington retained control by grafting the "Platt Amendment" onto its constitution, giving it the right to intervene in Cuban affairs. Most of the law was repealed three decades later. - Doctors, cigars, China - Eighty percent of the Cuban economy is controlled by the state, but Raul Castro unveiled reforms in 2011 to boost the private sector's role. A leading source of hard-currency income comes from thousands of doctors hired out to countries in Africa and Latin America under government-to-government contracts. The island also earns revenue from exports of nickel, tobacco and citrus products, as well as from tourism, with 4.5 million visitors in 2017. Sale of Havanas, the reputed Cuban cigar, leaped 12 percent in 2017 after the Chinese developed a taste for them. The island was a leading sugar exporter until the collapse of the Soviet Union, its major buyer, but it is trying to revive the industry. In 2017, China became Cuba's top commercial partner, replacing Venezuela, which is mired in a major economic crisis. Economic growth on the island, home to 11 million people, rose to 1.6 percent in 2017 up from 0.5 percent the previous year. Havana (Cuba) (AFP) - Here are key dates in the life of Cuba's outgoing President Raul Castro, the brother and successor of the late revolutionary leader Fidel Castro. - June 3, 1931: Born in Biran, a village in eastern Cuba. - 1953: Raul is sentenced to 13 years in prison for attacking a military barracks with a group of revolutionaries led by his brother Fidel. He is released two years later as part of an amnesty. - 1956: Takes part in an expedition led by his brother that leaves from Mexico to wage revolution in Cuba, becoming a military commander the following year. - 1959: After his brother unseats dictator Fulgencio Batista, Raul is appointed Cuban defense minister, holding the post until 2008. - 1961: Leads operations against the attempted invasion by US-backed anti-Castro forces in the Bay of Pigs. - 1976: Officially becomes number two in the government, as first vice-president of the Council of State. - 1989: Plays the role of "prosecutor" in the trial of General Arnaldo Ochoa, a hero of the Angola war executed after drug trafficking accusations. - 2006: He is handed power by his sick brother Fidel, taking over officially as president in 2008. - 2010: Gives the green light for the release of dissident political prisoners, hailed as a breakthrough. - 2011: Succeeds Fidel as head of the all-powerful Cuban Communist Party. - 2013: Re-elected for a last presidential term. - 2014: Announces a historic rapprochement with Washington, 52 years after the US embargo on the island. The two countries re-establish diplomatic ties the following year. By Laila Bassam DOUMA, Syria (Reuters) - It used to provide fresh food for the Syrian capital; now its hungry people are queuing for bread handouts from a truck. For over a week now, Syrian government flags have flown over Douma, the biggest town in the agricultural eastern Ghouta region near Damascus, since rebels there surrendered after five years of siege. They said an alleged chemical weapons attack by Syrian President Bashar al-Assad, which prompted Western air strikes on Saturday, had driven them to give up - although he says there was no such attack. International chemical weapons inspectors had not been able to visit Douma by Monday evening, with Britain saying Syria and Russia had been unable to guarantee their safety, though Russia blamed the delay on Saturday's Western airstrikes. However, a tour of Douma organized for media by the government showed security forces standing on street corners near leftover rebel graffiti, and Russian military police patrolling the streets. People were jostling in a long queue to receive the bread, rice and pasta being handed out from state aid trucks at a major roundabout. "Look at this humiliating scene," said Amin Darkush, the region's deputy police chief, watching dozens of people chasing a truck distributing bread. "People here only ate bread made of barley." FOOD STORES The United Nations said there were severe shortages of food in eastern Ghouta throughout the government's siege, though the main rebel group there said it had enough in its stores to last another year. Hungry residents located large reserves of food after the rebels left, the Syrian Observatory for Human Rights war monitoring group said. During the siege, basic staples were often available in eastern Ghouta, but at very high prices. All around Darkush were signs of the weeks of bombardment, some of the fiercest of the war, that brought the siege to an end. Most of Douma's remaining residents live in damaged buildings, on streets covered in rubble and the remains of home furnishings. On Omar bin al-Khattab Street, a group of injured young men stood around, leaning on crutches. All that remains of the rebels is the slogans painted on walls and shop fronts: "Eastern Ghouta, land of heroes and foundry of men", "Douma is the graveyard of the Shabiha (pro-Assad militias)" Outside the remains of a pharmacy, a group of veiled women were hoping to find medicine. "My son was injured when a bomb hit our house," one said. "There is no medicine or bandages to treat him with. His leg might be amputated." Monday's government tour did not include the building where on April 7, according to rescue workers and medics who were in town at the time, dozens of people were killed by poison gas as they sheltered from the bombardment. UNDERGROUND HOSPITAL The OPCW inspectors arrived in Damascus on Friday, and were still waiting to visit Douma. Assad, backed by his strongest ally Russia, has denied using or possessing any such weapons. Hours after the attack was reported, the rebels controlling Douma agreed to withdraw. The hospital where the victims of the alleged attack were treated is underground, concealed beneath the shell of a large concrete Agriculture Ministry building whose exterior bears the scars of years of warfare: scorch marks and holes blasted in walls and roofs. Huge vaulted tunnels, lined with metal, are big enough to allow ambulances to drive down to basements and chambers dug under the town. The hospital - which has an operating theater and an intensive care ward - is still being used. Marwan Jaber, a medicine student at the hospital, told reporters on the media tour that none of the patients that night had suffered chemical weapons injuries, but that they were asphyxiated by dust and smoke in the bombardment. Medical aid groups and the White Helmets rescue organization have said such statements - already aired on state television in recent days - were made under duress. Relief organizations say dozens of men, women and children were killed, and footage of young victims foaming at the mouth and weeping in agony has been used to help justify the Western intervention. (Reporting by Laila Bassam in Douma; Writing by Angus McDowall in Beirut; Editing by Kevin Liffey) A young boy shows his arm skin damaged by Buruli ulcer in Ivory Coast - AFP Warning: graphic content Australia is facing a rapidly worsening epidemic of gruesome flesh-eating ulcers that have baffled experts and prompted calls for urgent medical research to uncover the cause. Scientists said the Buruli ulcer, a bacterial infection which is most commonly seen in tropical parts of Africa, is being reported in increasing numbers in temperate rural areas in the state of Victoria. The number of annual cases has increased more than 400 per cent, with a record 182 cases reported in 216 and 236 in the first 11 months of 2017. The community is facing a worsening epidemic, defined by cases rapidly increasing in number, becoming more severe in nature, and occurring in new geographic areas, said an article on the outbreak in the Medical Journal of Australia. The infection typically starts as a sore on the arm or leg that fails to heal and slowly enlarges, causing severe lesions of the skin and potentially requiring amputations. Sufferers often initially dismiss the initial symptoms as an insect bite. A severe ulcer on the knee of an 11-year-old boy, which took six months to heal Credit: Medical Journal of Australia "It can really become very severe and eats away at the skin and soft tissue leading to, often, long-term cosmetic deformities, even mobility issues and occasionally it's actually associated with death," Professor Daniel O'Brien, the articles lead author and an infectious diseases expert, told ABC News. The outbreak has occurred in coastal areas in Victoria, including the Bellarine and Mornington peninsulas. But it has also reportedly spread to some suburbs in Melbourne, the countrys second-largest city. It is believed to be the only current outbreak in the developed world. Scientists have called for urgent funding to research the causes of the outbreak. The infection is believed to spread via mosquitoes and possums. "We actually don't know for sure we have some clues about what may be the causes, but nobody really knows why it's located here, why it moves into new areas, and in fact how we catch it," Professor OBrien said. Story continues Known as Mycobacterium ulcerans, the infection can often be treated with antibiotics, though severe cases can require surgery or amputation. Possum and mosquitoes are believed to help spread the disease Credit: Auscape Gus Charles, a 12-year-old, developed a lump on his knee after visiting the Mornington Peninsula for a family holiday. Several doctors misdiagnosed it before a surgeon sliced into the lump and found a huge pus-filled abscess, according to a report in Fairfax Media. Gus eventually underwent plastic surgery and spent six months recovering. "When I first saw it after surgery I fainted because it was pretty bad," he told ABC News. His mother, Sally, told Fairfax Media: He complained about it a bit, but hes a pretty tough kid. And then the lump started to get bigger and bigger." She added: It was horrible. Hes a tough kid, but he was rocked by this. Protect yourself and your family by learning more about Global Health Security Donald Trump, the US president, has attempted to improve relations with Russia since taking office - Copyright 2018 The Associated Press. All rights reserved. Donald Trump felt misled by aides over the expulsion of 60 Russian diplomats for the Salisbury spy poisoning and pushed back on Theresa Mays demands to act, The Washington Post has reported. The paper said the US president was left furious after discovering that Germany and France had only sent home a handful of Russians over the incident. Aides reportedly had to explain that the US was matching the European Unions entire number of expulsions rather than that of major EU countries. Mr Trump was still left fuming, with one source saying that a lot of curse words were used, according to The Washington Post. The president was also said to have pushed back on Mrs Mays call for Russian expulsions after the poisoning of double agent Sergei Skripal and his daughter Yulia. Why are you asking me to do this? he reportedly told the Prime Minister. Whats Germany going to do? What about France? Mr Trump insisted that the poisoning was largely a European problem, according to The Washington Post. The White House did not directly deny Mr Trump was unhappy over the expulsions, instead saying the president had been tough on Russia. A British source said he did not recognise the account of the phone call. The reports cast doubt over Mr Trumps commitment to hold a firm line against Russia over the Salisbury attack. Sergei Skripal with his daughter Yulia Credit: East 2 West Mrs May led a diplomatic blitz to get allies in the West to expel Russian diplomats after she accused the Kremlin of being behind the attack. America expelled 60 Russian diplomats who they said were really spies far exceeding Britain, which expelled 23 Russians, and France and Germany, who each kicked out four. According to The Washington Post, Mr Trump initially said well match their numbers, adding: Were not taking the lead. Were matching. But the president appeared to think he was matching individual European nations rather than the EU as a whole, leading to a backlash when the news triggered headlines. Story continues I dont care about the total, Mr Trump reportedly screamed, pointing to the number of diplomats Germany and France were expelling. Mr Trump tried to improve relations with Russia after taking office, but has hardened his rhetoric in recent weeks after the Salisbury poisoning and Syria chemical attack. Sarah Sanders, the White House press secretary, was asked whether Mr Trump had been unhappy over the expulsion of 60 Russians on Monday. She replied: The President is the one that gave the directive. The President has been clear that he's going to be tough on Russia. But at the same time, he'd still like to have a good relationship with them. But that's going to be determined by whether or not Russia decides if they want to be a better actor in this process or not. Donald Trump married Melania in 2006. She is his third wife - Barcroft Media Donald Trump has called his wife Melania my rock and foundation in some of the most revealing comments about their marriage since claims of cheating surfaced. The US president said he wouldnt be the man I am today without Mrs Trump in a message to supporters urging them to sign her birthday card. The remarks come after two women the porn star Stormy Daniels and ex-playboy model Karen McDougal claimed affairs with Mr Trump during his current marriage. Mr Trump has denied the allegations. Mrs Trump declined to travel with the president to his first State of the Union speech and was hundreds of miles away when an interview with Ms Daniels was broadcast. The message from Mr Trump read: "Family is one of life's most wonderful treasures, and serving as America's First Family has been a truly great privilege! Melania Trump in a sessions with students at the White House Credit: USA-TRUMP/MELANIA This month, our family is looking forward to a very special day. Please join us in celebrating the First Lady and my beautiful, kind-hearted and exceptional wife Melania's birthday by signing her card. Melania is my rock and foundation, and I wouldnt be the man I am today without her by my side. "She's the cornerstone of our family, and an incredible mother to our son, Barron. I'm so proud of her accomplishments, and I hope you'll wish her well on her special day. The president married Mrs Trump, a 47-year-old former model, in 2006. He was previously married to Czech model Ivana Zelnickova and actress Marla Maples. WASHINGTON (Reuters) - The head of the Senate environment committee said on Monday the Environmental Protection Agency must give a full public accounting of its approval of $43,000 for a private soundproof phone booth for agency chief Scott Pruitt. It is critical that EPA and all federal agencies comply with notification requirements to Congress before spending tax payer dollars," Senator John Barrasso, a Republican, said in a statement. "EPA must give a full public accounting of this expenditure and explain why the agency thinks it was complying with the law. The EPA violated the law when it approved the phone booth last year for Pruitt's office, the Government Accountability Office, a congressional watchdog, said earlier on Monday. (Reporting by Timothy Gardner; editing by Jonathan Oatis) LUXEMBOURG (Reuters) - The European Union should not stop its accession talks with Turkey despite a lack of progress and questions about the rule of law in the country, Germany's EU minister said on Tuesday. The European Commission is expected to hand out its most critical report on talks with Turkey since the country launched its bid to join the European Union over a decade ago. "It is in the hands of those responsible in Turkey to decide whether they want to be a member of this European community of values," Michael Roth said on arrival to a meeting of EU ministers in Luxembourg. "I would suggest we do not slam the door shut. That would be a wrong signal toward those in Turkey who still long for European values," he added. But Austria's minister Gernot Bluemel said the talks should be halted. "We don't believe Turkey should become a part of the European Union," Bluemel said. (Reporting by Gabriela Baczynska, Robert-Jan Bartunek) Luxembourg (AFP) - A top EU official on Tuesday hailed progress in talks with Poland over controversial reforms Brussels fears undermine judicial independence, but warned Warsaw it must produce "concrete results" in the coming weeks. European Commission Vice President Frans Timmermans said there was a "clear willingness" to solve the festering row between Poland and the EU. Brussels launched unprecedented legal action against Warsaw in December over "systemic threats" to the independence of the Polish judiciary, and on Tuesday Timmermans presented his assessment of Warsaw's response to EU ministers in Luxembourg. "We are making progress... there is a clear willingness on both sides to continue making progress," Timmermans said. Earlier this month, following talks in Warsaw between Timmermans and the rightwing government, the Polish parliament made amendments to the controversial reforms. On Tuesday, Timmermans said it was "positive that we're now making steps forward but we still need concrete results in the days and weeks to come", urging Poland to come up with answers by May 14. Poland's EU Affairs Minister Konrad Szymanski said Warsaw would not act "under international pressure" and warned that "all scenarios are still on the table". The stakes are high if Warsaw fails to satisfy Brussels. It could be stripped of its voting rights in the bloc under the Article 7 procedure of the EU treaty -- covering systemic threats to the rule of law -- which has never been used against a member state before. However, Poland's ally Hungary, which has also clashed with Brussels over democracy issues, has vowed to veto any sanction. The tussle with Warsaw is part of a pattern of rising tension within the EU between the liberal governments of the bloc's western members and some of its more conservative eastern countries. French President Emmanuel Macron warned on Tuesday that divisions between democracy and authoritarianism in Europe were becoming like a "civil war", in a thinly-veiled reference to the likes of Poland and Hungary. Washington (AFP) - An FBI agent faced up to five years in prison Tuesday after pleading guilty to providing classified documents to a reporter in the second leak case pursued by the Trump administration linked to The Intercept. Terry Albury admitted in a Minnesota court to charges that he disclosed information on how federal agents assess and manage informants during 2016 and 2017. The names of the reporter and media outlet which received the information were not given in court documents. But specifics of the leaked materials and the timing laid out in the charges pointed to The Intercept, an online publication which frequently breaks important stories on national security. The Intercept posted a story on January 31, 2017 on how the FBI woos and pressures immigrants, including Muslims, to become confidential sources, and then when finished sometimes hands them over to immigration authorities for deportation. It was the second case pursued by the Trump administration against a leaker to The Intercept. The online magazine has infuriated officials since it was created in 2014. Using top secret documents released by former government intelligence contractor Edward Snowden, it built a record of exposing secret activities of the US National Security Agency, including illegal surveillance. In June 2017 the FBI arrested an NSA contract employee, Reality Winner, for leaking documents on Russian interference in US election systems. Her arrest was announced just hours after the Intercept posted a story based on the documents. President Donald Trump and Attorney General Jeff Sessions have pledged to extend and toughen the previous Barack Obama administration's crackdown on leakers, after a rash of losses and disclosures of national security materials. The Justice Department is now investigating about 30 leak cases, including some involving materials provided to the media in the early months of the Trump administration that embarrassed or hurt the White House. "As this prosecution demonstrates, we will not waver in our commitment to pursue and hold accountable government officials who violate their obligations to protect our nations secrets and break the laws they have sworn to uphold," said Assistant Attorney General John Demers in a statement. Albury risked up to 10 years in prison, but prosecutors have asked for a maximum sentence of about five years on one count of making an unauthorized disclosure of national defense information and one count of unlawful retention of national defense information. Skopje (AFP) - A small landlocked country, Macedonia has for a quarter of the century been struggling to win recognition of its name over protests from neighbouring Greece. Here are five things to know about this impoverished state. - Name debate - Macedonia's official name at the United Nations is the Former Yugoslav Republic of Macedonia, or FYROM, which is a result of the 25-year-long row with Greece, which has a northern province also called Macedonia. A number of countries have recognised the Balkan state under its constitutional name of Macedonia, including the United States, Russia and even China. However, the dispute with Greece has been a major obstacle to Macedonia's integration with the West. In 2008 Greece vetoed Macedonia's memberhip of NATO and has blocked negotiations on EU accession ever since the country became a candidate in 2005. But Athens and Skopje have recently resumed dialogue with a will to find an agreement, which would pave a way for Macedonia's accession talks. - Deceptive flags - Passing through the northwest of Macedonia, a traveller could think they were in Albania. Under a 2005 accord, residents have the right to fly the red and black Albanian flag and the two headed-eagle is prevalent over a number of villages. Macedonia is home to around two million people, mostly Orthodox Slavs and an ethnic Albanian minority that makes up around a quarter of the population. Having avoided inter-ethnic war during the bloody break-up of Yugoslavia in the 1990s, Macedonia found itself in conflict in 2001 when ethnic Albanian rebels launched an insurgency. Up to 200 people were killed during the seven-month conflict with Macedonian armed forces. The internationally-brokered Ohrid agreement, reached in August 2001, provided greater rights for Macedonia's Albanian minority, including power-sharing, better representation in the public sector and official status for the Albanian language. - Poor statistics - Story continues Macedonia is one of the poorest countries in Europe with an average salary of 386 euros ($476) and a quarter of its active working age population is unemployed. Youngster are particularly badly affected. Many have joined a massive migration of the population. The authorities have revealed no official figure and have not organised a census since 2002, but according to the World Bank about a half a million people -- or a quarter of today's population - have left in last 10 years. - Disputed heroes - Two historic personalities make Macedonians especially proud and adorn the country's infrastructure: Mother Teresa and Alexander the Great. Both, however are disputed, with the warrior king also claimed by Greece and the saint by Albania -- although she was born in Skopje under the Ottoman Empire, Theresa was of Albanian ethnicity. - Sun without electricity - It is on the national flag and Macedonia boasts 280 sunny days a year, according to the Meteorological Institute. That makes it one of the most sunny countries in the world. However, Macedonia is also the European nation that produces the least solar energy: 0.04 percent of total production, says the Agency for Energy. The sun attracts tourists throughout the mountainous country, a paradise for hikers with three national parks, 50 lakes and thousands of kilometres of trails. Its cuisine -- a mix of Ottoman, Mediterranean and Austria-Hungarian influences -- has a reputation of being the finest in the Balkans. As does its wine. Miami (AFP) - A young survivor of the February 14 school massacre in Florida who was repeatedly shot while protecting fellow students filed the first civil lawsuit Tuesday against the shooter. Anthony Borges, 15, is suing gunman Nikolas Cruz, 19, for the attack at the Marjory Stoneman Douglas High School in Parkland. Seventeen people were killed in Cruz's rampage, and 17 others wounded. Borges, praised in the media as a "hero" and nicknamed "Iron Man" by his fellow students, was shot in both legs and the back by Cruz. Despite the injuries, he managed to shut a door, preventing the shooter from entering the room where around 20 students were hiding. In doing so, he was shot twice more. Borges was released from the hospital on April 4 and still recovering after nine surgeries and seven weeks in hospital. He is still not well enough to speak. The lawsuit names James and Kimberly Snead -- the couple that housed Cruz when the shooter's adoptive mother Lynda died in November 2017 -- as well as the estate of Lynda Cruz and three Florida mental health institutions that treated Cruz at different times. The lawsuit, filed in Broward County Circuit Court, charges Cruz with assault and battery, and is seeking damages, medical expenses and compensation for the loss of past and future wages. The health institutions are being sued for negligence, since they "knew or should have known" that Cruz "suffered from mental illness and was a threat to others," the lawsuit reads. Borges family attorney Alex Arreaza earlier said that the family will sue the Broward County school board and the county sheriff's office for failing to protect the students from Cruz, an ex-student who had shown mental instability as well as violent tendencies. In Florida, state institutions are entitled to six months notice before lawsuits are filed. Borges was rolled in on a wheelchair at a press conference two days after he was released from the hospital. Still weak, he remained silent while attorney Arreaza read a statement. "I don't know why I survived," the statement read, "but I will tell you that my family and I will dedicate the rest of our lives to seeing that something like this never happens again." The Borges family left Venezuela more than 15 years ago over political instability and fears over rampant crime. Anthony Borges was born in the United States. London (AFP) - Former Cambridge Analytica boss Alexander Nix has refused to appear for a second grilling by British lawmakers, the MPs' scrutiny panel investigating him said Tuesday. The ex-CA chief executive was due to appear on Wednesday before parliament's culture, media and sport committee over the British political consultancy firm's highly controversial work. They wanted to probe inconsistencies in the testimony he gave before the committee on February 27. But Nix told them he could not appear, citing Information Commissioner Elizabeth Denham's ongoing investigation into claims that CA may have illegally harvested Facebook data for political ends. "We do not accept Mr Nix's reason for not appearing in a public session before the committee," said Damian Collins, who chairs the committee. "We have taken advice and he is not been charged with any criminal offence and there is no active legal proceedings, and we plan to raise this with the information commissioner when we meet her this week. "There is therefore no legal reason why Mr Nix cannot appear. The committee is minded to issue a formal summons for him to appear on a named day in the very near future. We'll make a further statement about this next week." CA suspended Nix, 42, on March 20 after recordings emerged of him boasting that the firm played an expansive role in US President Donald Trump's 2016 election campaign, doing all of its research, analytics as well as digital and television campaigns. In undercover filming captured by Channel 4 television, he is also seen boasting about entrapping politicians and secretly operating in elections around the world through shadowy front companies. PARIS (Reuters) - French President Emmanuel Macron said on Monday France will contribute 50 million euros ($61.9 million) toward urgent humanitarian aid for Syria following a meeting with a group of non-governmental organizations (NGO) in Paris. "This evening I brought together NGOs working on the ground in Syria. Faced with the humanitarian situation, France is setting up an emergency program of 50 million euros," Macron said on his official Twitter account. The funds will be allocated to NGOs and U.N. agencies working on the ground in Syria, including the U.N. office for humanitarian affairs, the French president's office said. Some two dozens NGOs participated in the meeting with Macron at the Elysee presidential palace, including Action Aid, Handicap International, the Red Cross, and Care. According to United Nations estimates, some 13 million people including six million children are in need of humanitarian aid in Syria, ravaged by a seven-year war that has displaced millions. The United Nations said on Thursday that it was hopeful of getting aid to at least 100,000 Syrians who are desperate for help after months of battle ended years of siege around the rebel-held enclave of eastern Ghouta. (Reporting by Marine Pennetier; Writing by Bate Felix; Editing by Sandra Maler) Paris (AFP) - The French government plans to strip Syrian President Bashar as-Assad of his Legion d'Honneur, France's most prestigious award, days after participating in airstrikes against suspected chemical weapons sites in Syria. "The Elysee confirms that a disciplinary procedure for withdrawing the Legion d'Honneur (Legion of Honour) is underway," Macron's office said late Monday. Assad was decorated with the Legion's highest rank of Grand Croix (Great Cross) by former president Jacques Chirac in 2001, shortly after taking power following the death of his father Hafez al-Assad. Only a French president, who by tradition is the top-ranking Legion member, can decide to withdraw the distinction from a foreigner. About 3,000 people are granted the distinction each year, including 400 foreigners recognised for their "services rendered to France" or for defending human rights, press freedom or other causes, according to the Legion's web site. Assad has been accused of a series of chemical attacks on his own people during the brutal civil war which has torn Syria apart since 2011. He has become a pariah for Western powers while maintaining the support of Russian President Vladimir Putin, whose military intervention in the conflict gave Assad the upper hand against rebel opposition groups. Putin himself is also a recipient of the Legion's Grand Croix, decorated by Chirac in 2006. It is not the first time President Emmanuel Macron has stripped a foreigner of France's highest honour, having moved to withdraw the award from Hollywood mogul Harvey Weinstein after a series of accusations of sexual harassment and rape. Macron had already signalled he planned to crack down on Legion d'Honneur handouts, surprising many in July by awarding just 101 to mark Bastille Day instead of the customary 500-600. Former president Francois Hollande drew critics' ire by granting the honour to Saudi Arabia's previous crown prince Mohammed bin Nayef in 2016 despite a sharp increase in death sentences by Saudi courts, a punishment France has long deemed inhumane. Story continues In 2010 France made it easier to take back the award, created by Napoleon, from foreigners who have committed "dishonourable acts". Lance Armstrong lost his after the seven-time Tour de France winner was found to have used performance-enhancing drugs, and fashion designer John Galliano's was pulled in the wake of an alcohol-fuelled volley of anti-Semitic slurs. French citizens are automatically stripped of the Legion of Honour if convicted of crimes leading to prison sentences of at least one year. Paris (AFP) - The French government said Tuesday that it was "highly likely" evidence would "disappear" from the site of a suspected chemical attack in Syria before weapons experts arrive in the area. Accusing Russia and Syria of denying access to the experts dispatched to probe the alleged April 7 poison gas attack in Douma, the French foreign ministry said: "It is highly likely that evidence and essential elements will disappear from the site, which is completely controlled by the Russian and Syrian armies." Russia has denied trying to obstruct the investigation and said the inspectors from the Organisation for the Prohibition of Chemical Weapons (OPCW), who arrived in Damascus on Saturday, are due to visit Douma on Wednesday. In a statement, the French foreign ministry said it was "essential that Syria give full, immediate and unimpeded access to all the OPCW's requests, whether relating to sites to visit, people to interview or documents to consult." The warning came as the US ambassador to the OPCW, Ken Ward, voiced fears that Moscow might already have "tampered with" evidence at the site. Russian Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov rejected the allegation, telling the BBC: "I can guarantee that Russia has not tampered with the site." Lavrov charged that it was the United States, France and Britain who were "standing in the way" of the investigation by ordering air strikes "in the blink of an eye" before the OPCW team had a chance to do their work. The three Western powers fired around 100 missiles at three suspected chemical facilities in Syria on Saturday, saying they had proof that the government of President Bashar al-Assad was behind the Douma attack. Addressing the European Parliament in Strasbourg on Tuesday, French President Emmanuel Macron said the strikes aimed to defend "the honour of the international community" in the face of Syria's suspected violation of the UN Chemical Weapons Convention. "These strikes don't necessarily resolve anything but I think they were important," he said. Strasbourg (France) (AFP) - French President Emmanuel Macron will on Tuesday address the European Parliament for the first time in a bid to shore up support for his ambitious plans for post-Brexit reforms of the EU. The energetic young French leader wants big changes in the face of growing scepticism about the European project, but there has been a marked lack of enthusiasm from Berlin to Budapest. Macron's speech to MEPs in the eastern French city of Strasbourg is part of a charm offensive ahead of European Parliament elections in May 2019, the first after Britain's departure. "He will say that it is urgent to take action at a difficult time both inside the European Union, and outside," said the Elysee, the French presidency, ahead of Macron's address. Internal problems include election results in Italy and Hungary which both saw eurosceptics surge in popularity, compounding fears that the 2016 Brexit vote was part of a pattern. Externally the EU is dealing with the war in Syria -- France and Britain joined the US in air strikes targeting the regime's alleged chemical weapons at the weekend -- a hostile Russia, and the unpredictable figure of Donald Trump in the United States. Macron said in a television interview on Sunday that Europe was experiencing a "rise in illiberalism... the populism of people who call the rule of law into question." Later this week Macron will travel to Berlin for crucial talks with German Chancellor Angela Merkel to try to win her support for his plans for the future of the eurozone. - Merkel party cools - Merkel's conservative CDU party pushed back on Monday against plans for deeper eurozone integration, including a separate eurozone budget and the expansion of the EU's bailout fund. Any reforms have to be "in the European and in the German interest," CDU secretary-general Annegret Kramp-Karrenbauer told reporters. EU leaders are set to adopt preliminary Macron-backed plans for eurozone reforms and for an overhaul of its troubled asylum system in June, but there is still a large amount of work to do. Story continues Merkel is due to address the European Parliament in November, officials said on Monday. In contrast, Merkel made a joint speech with then-French president Francois Hollande in Strasbourg in 2015 in which they urged unity in the face of the migrant crisis. European lawmakers welcomed Macron's decision to address the parliament but urged him to turn words into action as soon as possible. Macron had "lots of projects for Europe" but "not everything he has proposed has been well received", said Manfred Weber, a Merkel ally who heads the centre-right European People's Party, the biggest group in the European Parliament. He added that it was a "handicap" that Macron -- who rose to power on the back of his new En Marche party -- did not belong to any of the main political groups in the European Parliament. By Alastair Macdonald and Gilbert Reilhac STRASBOURG (Reuters) - French President Emmanuel Macron urged Europeans on Tuesday to halt a retreat into national antagonisms and rebuild the European Union as a bulwark for liberal democracy against a disorderly and dangerous world. Addressing the European Parliament, he won applause from lawmakers after condemning the rise of "illiberal democracies" even within the EU and portraying a "Europe that protects" people. Dozens of nationalist MEPs sat in silence, however. Macron noted he was too young to have known the wars that preceded the EU but his family and northern French home region had seen "every blood letting". Echoing the language of historians about Europe's slide into war a century ago, he said he would not belong to another "generation of sleepwalkers" and let the EU wither in what he called an atmosphere of "civil war". Selfish nationalism was gaining ground, Macron warned. But it was a "game of fools" to halt or reverse sharing sovereignty among EU states in the face of challenges ranging from climate change and mass migration to the growing power of multinational corporations and authoritarian states -- a reference to China and Russia, among others. Europe's ally the United States was, he lamented, also being "tempted by unilateralism". "We need a sovereignty that is stronger than just our own, which complements but does not replace it," Macron said in Strasbourg, a French frontier city which has become a symbol of Franco-German reconciliation after centuries as a prize of war. The pro-EU rhetoric of his first year in office has stirred enthusiasm from some. "The real France is back," declared Jean-Claude Juncker, the EU chief executive, after Macron spoke. But the French leader faces a struggle to persuade German Chancellor Angela Merkel, and especially her more conservative supporters, to throw their weight behind grand European designs from Paris. NO TO NATIONALISM Macron tackled critics among his National Front opponents at home and European leaders such as newly re-elected Hungarian Prime Minister Viktor Orban, rejecting visions of illiberal democracy, hostile to immigration and intolerant of criticism. "In the face of authoritarianism, the response is not authoritarian democracy but the authority of democracy," Macron said. He went on to describe nationalism as a dead end. "We must hear the anger of Europe's peoples today," he said. "They need a new project. Those who trade on that anger are risking nationalisms tearing Europe apart." Far-right lawmaker Florian Philippot, a former National Front member, accused Macron of humiliating France's historic statehood by playing to an audience of unrepresentative European elites. Left-wingers criticised the president for supporting free markets, including labour reforms which have triggered a weekly round of paralysing rail strikes in France. Calling for fellow EU leaders to follow his example in holding a public dialogue on Europe's future, Macron noted that he was launching the process later that day in eastern France. With a little over a year until elections to the European Parliament, he lamented the fact that fewer than half of EU citizens bothered to turn out for previous such votes. He volunteered that France was ready to pay more into the EU budget currently being negotiated as Britain leaves -- on condition that the Union reforms in ways that France wants. Macron ran through his wish list for deeper EU integration as Britain prepares to leave next March. This included new taxation of digital businesses, more support for refugees, closer cooperation in defence and a stronger common approach to running the EU's single currency. Macron was speaking at the invitation of the European Parliament, which has asked leaders of all the member states to give their views on the EU's future following Brexit. Responding to a call from a British lawmaker to maintain close ties, Macron took a dig at Brexit, saying that the best way to have close relations with the EU was to be a member. (Additional reporting by Michel Rose in Paris; editing by David Stamp) Strasbourg (France) (AFP) - French President Emmanuel Macron warned Europe on Tuesday against the temptations of "authoritarianism" both around the world and inside the European Union itself. In his first speech to the European Parliament, Macron warned that there was a "sort of European civil war", adding that "there is a fascination with the illiberal and it's growing all the time." "I don't want to belong to a generation of sleepwalkers, I don't want to belong to a generation that's forgotten its own past," the 40-year-old president said in a speech outlining his vision for the future of the EU. "I want to belong to a generation that will defend European sovereignty because we fought to obtain it. And I will not give in to any kind of fixation on authoritarianism," he added. The young French president's call to arms comes after populist parties won elections in Hungary and Italy in recent weeks, and as Brussels confronts Poland's right-wing government over the rule of law. Macron's election last year, defeating the far-right candidate Marine Le Pen, and his ardent pro-Europeanism have made him the poster boy for a revived post-Brexit EU whose proponents aim to battle the challenges of populism. But he has struggled to win support for all his proposals, and his speech to MEPs is part of a charm offensive ahead of European Parliament elections in May 2019, the first after Britain's departure. Later this week Macron will travel to Berlin for talks with German Chancellor Angela Merkel to try to boost flagging support for his plans for the future of the eurozone. Macron also proposed on Tuesday to create a European fund for communities that take in refugees in a bid to tackle one of the most politically toxic issues facing the EU. "I propose creating a European programme that directly financially supports local communities that welcome and integrate refugees," Macron said. Macron's speech was welcomed by European Commission President Jean-Claude Juncker, who said: "The true France is back." BERLIN (Reuters) - The Group of Seven industrialized nations condemned the alleged chemical attack in eastern Ghouta in Syria on April 7 and backed "proportionate" efforts by the United States, Britain and France to stop the future use of such weapons. "We fully support efforts made by the United States, the U.K. and France to decrease the capacity to use chemical weapons by the Assad regime and to prevent their future use," said the leaders, referring to Syrian president Bashar al-Assad. "We still stand by a diplomatic solution to the conflict in Syria," they added in the statement released by Germany on Tuesday. (Reporting by Madeline Chambers; Editing by Andrew Heavens) (This version of the April 10 story has been corrected to show in eighth paragraph that suspects have been brought back from 18 countries) ANKARA (Reuters) - Three Turkish nationals detained in Gabon over links to the Fethullah Gulen movement that Ankara blames for a failed 2016 coup have been brought to Turkey, Turkish President Tayyip Erdogan said on Tuesday. Speaking to lawmakers from his ruling AK Party, Erdogan vowed to continue to seek supporters of the U.S.-based cleric "no matter where they run." "Gabon has returned three important Gulenists to our country. No matter where they run or how much they run, we will go after them," he said. Turkey's state-run Anadolu news agency, citing security sources, said the three suspects had been captured in an operation carried out by Turkish intelligence. It said the three were brought back to Turkey and handed over to authorities for questioning. The suspects, identified as Osman Ozpinar, Ibrahim Akbas and Adnan Demironal, were involved in the administration of schools run by Gulen's network, Anadolu said, adding that they were also users of ByLock, an encrypted messaging app the government says is used by the cleric's supporters. It said the three were detained by authorities in Gabon on March 23 and also faced charges of membership in an armed terrorist organisation. Ankara blames Gulen, who has lived in self-imposed exile in Pennsylvania since 1999, for orchestrating a failed coup in 2016 and has carried out a widespread crackdown on alleged supporters of the cleric's network. Gulen denies any involvement. Deputy Prime Minister Bekir Bozdag, the government's spokesman, said last week 80 people suspected of links to Gulen's network had been brought back to Turkey from 18 different countries. Last month, Kosovo authorities arrested six Turkish nationals linked to schools financed by Gulen's movement and extradited them to Turkey, prompting Kosovo's prime minister to dismiss his interior minister and secret service chief. Kosovo's parliament also voted to investigate the arrests. "We've gotten six Gulenists from Kosovo and three from Gabon. Let's see where the next ones come from," Erdogan said. Since the abortive putsch in July 2016, nearly 160,000 people have been detained and a similar number of civil servants sacked from their jobs, a United Nations report found last month. Ankara says the measures are necessary given the extent of the security threats it faces, including from Gulen's network, which it considers a terrorist group. (Reporting by Tuvan Gumrukcu and Tulay Karadeniz; Editing by David Dolan) Frankfurt am Main (AFP) - Investor confidence in Germany tumbled to its lowest level since 2012 in April, a key survey showed Tuesday, as geopolitical concerns and trade tensions weighed on Europe's top economy. The ZEW economic institute's monthly barometer tumbled to -8.2 points, a steep decline from last month's 5.1 points, adding to concerns that Germany's robust economy could be headed for a slowdown. "The reasons for this downturn in expectations can mainly be found in the international trade conflict with the United States and the current situation in the Syrian war," ZEW chief Achim Wambach said in a statement. The drop in investor morale was worse than expected, with analysts polled by Factset predicting a reading of -1.5 points. A breakdown of the monthly ZEW poll, which surveyed some 200 analysts and investors, showed their assessment both of the current economic situation in Germany and the outlook for the coming months declined. The last time confidence among financial players fell into the red was in July 2016, shortly after Britain's shock vote to quit the European Union. April's reading is also the worst since the eurozone debt crisis sent the ZEW index plunging to -15.7 points in November 2012. It comes after US President Donald Trump fanned fears of a trade war between the world's top two economies after threatening punitive duties on billions of dollars worth of Chinese imports, prompting vows from Beijing to respond in kind. Capital Economics analyst Jessica Hinds said "the escalation in protectionist rhetoric" had worried Germany's export-oriented firms. But she said a slew of "disappointing official data" out of Germany was also to blame for the bleaker mood, suggesting that Europe's powerhouse lost some momentum at the start of the year. Confidence among German businesses fell back in March, the influential Ifo survey showed last month, while the latest industrial orders and production figures were underwhelming. Story continues But Hinds stressed there was no reason to be overly concerned about the German economy. "While Germany is vulnerable to increased protectionism, at this stage we doubt that an all-out trade war will materialise," she said. "Overall, then, we expect only a modest slowdown and see the German economy expanding by 2.5 percent this year," she added. BERLIN (Reuters) - Germany's role in the Syrian peace process must be to secure the channels of communication with Russia that are necessary to achieve a political solution to the country's seven-year-old civil war, Foreign Minister Heiko Maas said on Tuesday. Maas's remarks came as Western foreign ministers braced for another round of diplomacy on the conflict at a Toronto summit this weekend, from which Russia, the strongest international backer of Syrian President Bashir al-Assad, will be absent. Germany backed missile strikes by the United States, Britain and France against Syrian targets over the suspected use of chemical weapons by Assad's forces, but also wants to avoid further isolating Russia, despite a sharp cooling in relations. "The aim we are pursuing in the foreign ministry is to keep Germany an appreciable part of the peace initiative," Maas told a joint news conference with visiting Canadian Foreign Minister Chrystia Freeland. "The aim ... is that in our role we can be the ones who can prop open the window for dialogue with Russia," he added. Since taking office earlier this year, Maas, a Social Democrat, has spearheaded a harsher line towards Moscow, one which has divided his party, which sees itself as the heir to Germany's pioneering "Ostpolitik" policy of opening up to the Soviet Union in the 1970s. "We have to use this moment to get the political process going again," he added. "We also need Russia for this dialogue." (This version of the story fixes typo in name in headline) (Reporting by Sabine Siebold, writing by Thomas Escritt; Editing by Paul Carrel and Gareth Jones) Guatemala City (AFP) - Guatemala's president on Monday hailed as a victory for democracy a referendum vote in favor of sending a border dispute with Belize to the International Court of Justice. The disagreement, whose roots go back two centuries, has seen tensions spike from time to time. Two years ago Guatemala mobilized 3,000 troops along the densely forested and unmarked border zone after an incident in which a Guatemalan teen was fatally shot. A Belize border patrol had opened fire under being shot at, but an investigation by the Organization of American States ended up finding it not responsible for the teen's death. The referendum was agreed under a 2008 accord to send the dispute to The Hague-based ICJ, if the populations of Guatemala and Belize approved. Belize has not yet set a date for its referendum, although officials say it could take place next year. Guatemalans voted Sunday to send the case to the court, but turnout was a paltry 26 percent. The vote in favor was 96 percent. Guatemalan President Jimmy Morales on Monday called the vote "a success because democracy was strengthened and the national identity was reaffirmed". The ambassador from Belize, Alexis Rosado, welcomed the vote as living up to a commitment. "Later it will be our turn," he said. Analysts here say it could a decade to resolve the dispute in The Hague. Bunia (DR Congo) (AFP) - A first group of around 600 people who fled deadly violence in the Democratic Republic of Congo in early February returned to their homes in the northeast on Tuesday, authorities said. They returned voluntarily, said Laurent Chelo, secretary general of the social affairs ministry. "No one was forced to return, there is an enthusiasm to go back," he said. The internally displaced people had been sheltering at a camp set up at the main hospital of Bunia, the capital of northeastern Ituri province. Congolese authorities transported the group in trucks to the village of Katoto, around 20 kilometres (12 miles) away. The troubled province is caught in a cycle of violence between the Hema and Lendu communities, cattle herders and farmers who have long fought over land -- a conflict that has recently intensified. At least 120 people have been killed in the region since February, according to an AFP tally, and humanitarian groups say violence has forced around 300,000 more from their homes. Some of those who escaped to Bunia have been living with host families, while around 2,000 had been living in tents at the hospital camp. Katoto was at the centre of the killings. Some of the escapees said they do not believe it is safe enough to go home. "The attackers have not been disarmed and all of a sudden we are asked to return," said Helen, a mother of eight children from Katsi, about 50km from Bunia. Those willing to return were given kits containing plastic sheeting, mattresses, cooking utensils, food and nets for fishermen, Chelo said. The government aims to repatriate more than 950 households, or some 5,000 internally displaced people, to several other villages in Ituri. Dave Majumdar Security, Middle East What did Russia or Assad do about it? The Inside Story of How America, France and Great Britain Attacked Syria The Pentagon has provided a detailed breakdown of exactly how the United States and its allies, France and Britain, struck at Syrian regime targets on April 13. As expected, the allied powers used cruise missiles to strike at the regime, both to minimize the danger to aircrews and as a precaution in case Russian air defenses attempted to intercept the attack. The United States, the United Kingdom and France, three of the five permanent members of the U.N. Security Council, conducted a proportional, precision, coordinated strike in response to the Syrian regime's continued use of chemical weapons, Joint Staff Director Lt. Gen. Kenneth F. McKenzie Jr. told reporters at the Pentagon on the morning of April 14. This combined military strike was directed against three distinct Syrian chemical weapons program targets. The Targets The allied forces struck at three targets in Syria. Against the first target, the Barzeh Research and Development Center, which is located in the greater Damascus area, we employed 76 missiles, McKenzie said. 57 of these were Tomahawk land attack cruise missiles, and 19 were joint air-to-surface standoff missiles, or JASSMs. Recommended: How Israel Takes U.S. Weapons and Makes Them Better. Recommended: North Koreas Most Lethal Weapon Isnt Nukes. Recommended: 5 Worst Guns Ever Made. The target seems to have been destroyed. Initial assessments are that this target was destroyed, McKenzie said. This is going to set the Syrian chemical weapons program back for years. We also note that we've successfully destroyed three buildings in metropolitan Damascus, one of the most heavily defended airspace areas in the world. All three allies hit the second target. Against the second target, the Him Shinshar chemical weapons storage facility, which is located in Syria, just west of Homs, 22 weapons were employed, nine U.S. TLAMs [Tomahawk land attack missile], eight Storm Shadow missiles, three naval cruise missiles, and two SCALP land attack cruise missiles, McKenzie said. This target was attacked by all coalition forcesour Tomahawks, the British Storm Shadow, and then the French missiles went against it as well. Story continues The French struck the third target by themselves using the SCALP missile. Against the third target, the Him Shinshar chemical weapons bunker facility, we deployed seven SCALP missiles, McKenzie said. Again, the initial assessment is that this bunker facility was successfully hit. The Launch Platforms U.S. air and naval forces carried out the American portion of the strike, marking the operational debut of Lockheed Martins stealthy AGM-158B Joint Air-to-Surface Standoff Missile-Extended Range (JASSM-ER). A pair of U.S. Air Force B-1B Lancer strategic bombersescorted by fighters and U.S. Marine Corps. Grumman EA-6B Prowler electronic attack aircraftlaunched 19 of the new air-launched cruise missiles. However, the bulk of the strike came from the sea, with the U.S. Navys Ticonderoga-class cruisers, Arleigh Burke-class destroyers and a Virginia-class attack submarine delivering the brunt of the attack. First, in the Red Sea, the Ticonderoga-class, Monterey, fired 30 Tomahawk land-attack cruise missiles. And the Arleigh Burke-class destroyer Laboon fired seven Tomahawks. In the North Arabian Gulf, the Burke-class destroy Higgins fired 23 Tomahawks, McKenzie said. In the Mediterranean, the Virginia-class submarine John Warner fired six Tomahawk missiles. France, meanwhile, used a combination of naval and airpower to strike at Syria. In the Eastern Mediterranean the French frigate Languedoc fired three missiles of their naval version of the SCALP missile, McKenzie said. Additionally, our French allies flew a combination of Rafales and Mirages, and launched nine SCALP missiles, he added. The British Royal Air Force also contributed air assets in the form of Typhoon multirole fighters and Tornado bombers that fired the Storm Shadowwhich is the British name for the SCALPcruise missile against Syrian targets. Our British allies flew a combination of Tornadoes and Typhoons, and launched eight Storm Shadow missiles, McKenzie said. Syrian Air Defenses Syrian air defenses were totally ineffective against the incoming attack. None of our aircraft or missiles involved in this operation were successfully engaged by Syrian air defenses, and we have no indication that Russian air-defense systems were employed, McKenzie said. We are confident that all of our missiles reached their targets. At the end of the strike mission, all our aircraft safely returned to their bases. In fact, the Pentagon says that the Syrians only launched missileswithout guidanceafter the incoming strike had already hit. We assessed that over 40 surface-to-air missiles were employed by the Syrian regime, McKenzie said. Most of these launches occurred after the last impact of our strike was over. It is likely that the regime shot many of these missiles on a ballistic trajectory. I mean, by that, without guidance. And we assess that the defensive efforts of Syria were largely ineffective, and clearly increased risk to their people based on this indiscriminate response. When you shoot iron into the air without guidance, it's going to come down somewhere. The Russians allege that Syrias largely antiquated collection of S-125, S-200, Buk, Kvadrat and Osa air defense systems shot down the majority of the incoming air strike. "According to available information, a total of 103 cruise missiles were fire, Col. Gen. Sergei Rudskoi, head of the Russian General Staffs Main Operations Department, told the state-owned TASS news agency. The Syrian air defense systems basically comprising Soviet-made weapons successfully repelled the strikes by aircraft and naval ships. A total of 71 missiles were intercepted." However, the Russian claim is laughable. The fact of the matter is that even advanced Russian air defense systems such as the S-300V4 and the S-400 are not able to provide area air defense coverage against cruise missiles. Cruise missiles take advantage of low altitudes to hide in the shadows of radar coverage, thus without airborne cueing, even something like an S-400 cannot provide more than point defense capability against cruise missiles. Indeed, only the U.S. Navys Naval Integrated Fire Control Counter Air (NIFC-CA)which relies on the Northrop Grumman E-2D Advanced Hawkeye aircraft to provide airborne target cuingcan claim to provide some manner of area coverage against cruise missiles in a maritime environment. It is very doubtful that even NIFC-CA would provide good protection against cruise missiles over land where terrain masking poses a serious problem. Speaking of Russian air defenses, the Kremlins forces stayed out of the fray and did not attempt to engage the incoming missiles. However, even then, the Pentagon carefully avoided Russian forces, and thus Moscows forces were out of position to help their Syrian allies even if the Kremlin had been inclined to do so. I didn't say the Russian air defenses were not turned on. I said they weren't employed, McKenzie said. The Russian Response Thus far, the Russian response to the attack on Syria has been limited to rhetoric for the most part. However, the Russians had stated they would only respond with force if allied forces directly struck them. However, the alliesparticularly Francetook pains to avoid escalation. We refuse any possibility of military escalation, French Defense Minister Florence Parly said. "We had ensured that the Russians were warned beforehand." The United States was less direct about the level of coordination with the Russians. Probably the best way to understand it is this: The Russians don't have a veto on anything we do, and that's probably the best way to describe it, McKenzie said. We're not cooperating with them in Syria. We don't want to get into a fight with them. They don't want to get into a fight with us. The best way to do that is to share certain information about what you're doing, carefully -- carefully metered out by us, and I'm sure the same by them. But we're not cooperating with them, and they have no veto over what we do. Meanwhile, Moscow has started a propaganda offensive against the United States in response to the attack on Syria. The Russian disinformation campaign has already begun, Pentagon Chief Spokesperson Dana W. White told reporters. There has been a 2,000 percent increase in Russian trolls in the last 24 hours. Therefore, we will keep you all abreast of the facts moving forward. Dave Majumdar is the defense editor for The National Interest. You can follow him on Twitter: @davemajumdar. Read full article What kind of a nation wants to be associated with the mass murder of innocent men, women, and children? President Trump asked Russia and Iran Friday night after launching air strikes against the Syrian regime. The nations of the world can be judged by the friends they keep. Despite his speechwriters best efforts, if there is one thing Donald Trump and Iran share it is an inability to be shamed. Over the last seven years no country has done more, financially and militarily, to back the Bashar al-Assad regimes mass murder of Syrians than the Islamic Republic of Iran, a theocracy that claims to rule from a moral high ground. Within hours of joint American, French, and British targeted military strikes in Syria, Iranian president Hassan Rouhani called Assad to pledge his solidarity. At a time of great economic hardship in Iran, Tehran has provided billions of dollars to arm, train, and pay tens of thousands of Arab, Afghan, and Pakistani Shia militants help Assad crush Sunni Islamist rebels. Tehran, the victim of heinous chemical weapons attacks by Saddam Hussein three decades ago, has provided Assad the means to deliver these same weapons, while simultaneously denying that he uses them. The question is why? Distilled to its essence, Tehrans steadfast support for Assad is not driven by the geopolitical or financial interests of the Iranian nation, nor the religious convictions of the Islamic Republic, but by a visceral and seemingly inextinguishable hatred for the state of Israel. As senior Iranian officials like Ali Akbar Velayati, a close adviser to Supreme Leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, have commonly said, The chain of Resistance against Israel by Iran, Syria, Hezbollah, the new Iraqi government and Hamas passes through the Syrian highway. Syria is the golden ring of the chain of resistance against Israel. So long as the 78-year-old Khamenei remains in power, this hatred will justify Tehrans continued commitment of blood and treasure to support Assads use of all means necessaryincluding chemical weaponsto preserve his rule. Story continues Recommended: How Syria Came to This Though Israel has virtually no direct impact on the daily lives of Iranians, opposition to the Jewish state has been the most enduring pillar of Iranian revolutionary ideology. Whether Khamenei is giving a speech about agriculture or education, he invariably returns to the evils of Zionism. The Zionist regime is a true cancer tumor on this region that should be cut off, Khamenei said in a 2012 speech. We will support and help any nations, any groups fighting against the Zionist regime across the world. Given Israels military superiority, Khameneis stated strategy is not Israels short-term annihilation, but its long-term political dissolution. If Muslims and Palestinians unite and all fight, he commonly says, the Zionist regime will not be in existence in 25 years. In ostensibly trying to avenge what he portrays as one injustice, however, Tehran has helped Assad perpetrate a far greater one. The number of Syrian deaths since 2011 (an estimated 500,000, though the UN has stopped counting) is more than five times greater than the approximately 90,000 Palestinians killed in the last 70 years of the Palestinian-Israeli conflict, while more than twice as many Syrians (12 million) as Palestinians have been displaced. Indeed since 2011 far more Palestinians have been killed by Assad (nearly 3,700) than by Israel, including by chemical weapons. If their way to return Palestinians back home is displacing millions of Syrians, said my friend Kassem Eid, one of around half a million Palestinian refugees who grew up in Syria, and a victim of one of Assads chemical weapons attack, I don't want to go back to Palestine. Recommended: Trump's Syria Strategy Actually Makes Sense * * * The Iran-Assad alliance is a study in contradictions. While Iranian advocates for secularism are viciously repressed, Assad routinely says, The most important thing is that Syria should be secular. Iranian women who defy the mandatory hijab are subject to violence and imprisonment, while Hezbollah fighters celebrate military victories in Damascus nightclubs alongside scantily-clad escorts. While nude Renaissance art is censored in Europe so as not to offend the religious sensibilities of visiting Iranian officials, Assads forces have deliberately used rape as a tool of repression against opponents. Khamenei implores his subjects to buy Iranian products to boost economic self-sufficiency, while Tehrans largesse has helped subsidize Assads wife Asmaaan unveiled fashionistasustain what looks like her primary passion: shopping in London. From the outset of the Syrian uprising in 2011, Assad and Iran assiduously sought to crush moderate opposition and indulge radical Islamists in order to engineer a no-win proposition for the West: Assad or jihadists. Yet Tehran has tried to portray its role in Syria as an existential battle for Iran, against the forces of Sunni radicalism. Syria is Irans 35th province, said Mehdi Taeb, a head of the Revolutionary Guards intelligence wing and a close advisor to Iranian Supreme Leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei. If we lose Syria we wont be able to hold Tehran. While Assads collapse would undoubtedly be a strategic blow to the Islamic Republic, Iran has been a nation-state for virtually 2,500 years before now without the benefit of a Syrian vassal state. Just as Russia outlived the USSR, so will Iran outlive the Islamic Republic. Recommended: Neither Precise Nor Proportionate Today the Tehran-Damascus axis has come to resemble a mutually exploitative love affair: Iran likes Syria for its body (which borders Israel and serves as Tehrans waystation to Hezbollah), and Syria likes Iran for its money. In exchange for Iranian largesse, Assad has forsaken his sovereignty. Syria is occupied by the Iranian regime, said former Syrian Prime Minister Riad Hijab. The person who runs the country is not Bashar al-Assad but [Iranian Revolutionary Guard Corps commander] Qassem Suleimani. As for the other half of the couple, Tehrans staggering expenditures in Syriaestimated to be several billion annuallyhave become a growing cause of popular resentment amidst deteriorating economic conditions in Iran. During anti-government protests last January in Iran, residents of Mashhada large Shiite Shrine town--chanted Leave Syria alone, think about us. Though Iranians feel the financial costs of the Syria war, Tehran has outsourced the human costs. Irans 40,000-strong Shia foreign legioncomposed of Lebanese, Afghans, Iraqis, and Pakistanishave endured five times more casualties in Syria than Iranians. Afghan militiasknown as the Fatemiyoun Divisionhave paid the highest price. Most are not enthusiastic holy warriors but undocumented manual laborers, some underage, whom the Iranian Revolutionary Guards present with an offer they cant refuse: 10-year residency permits in Iranmitigating the risk of forced deportationand $800 per month to go to Syria, purportedly to protect the Shiite shrine of Sayyida Zainab, a granddaughter of the Prophet Muhammad, outside Damascus. Lacking basic training and often illiterate, these Afghan troops are instead used as initial assault cannon fodder. "Sometimes we had no supplies, said one former Afghan fighter, no water, no breadhungry and thirsty in the middle of the desert. For Palestine. * * * The burden of defending Irans role in Syria to Western audiences has fallen on the shoulders of Tehrans U.S.-educated Foreign Minister Javad Zarif. Among Zarifs considerable talents is an ability, and willingness, to tell brazen untruths with tremendous conviction. Shortly after Zarif insisted Iran had no boots on the ground in Syria, for example, the Revolutionary Guards announced their 1,000th casualty. In the aftermath of each chemical weapons attack by Assad, Zarif has systematically absolved Assad of responsibility by following the same playbook: First, remind everyone that Saddam Husseinbacked by Western powersused chemical weapons against Iran during the 1980-1988 Iran-Iraq war. In other words, Syrian children are not the victims; Iran is still the victim. Second, ambiguously condemn chemical weapons use "by anyone." This allows Zarifs Western allies to acknowledge his humanity. When pressed, however, Zarif has always claimed that it was the Syrian oppositionbacked by American and Israelthat has used chemical weapons, not Assad. Zarif has paid little reputational cost for this whitewashing; the Nobel Peace Prize committee continues to mention him as an annual nominee. After seven years, and with billions of dollars of sunk costs, an assertive Russian partner, and a U.S. president that aspires to withdraw from the region, Tehran feels vindicated in Syria. It is alleged to be building permanent military bases outside Damascus, with armed drones capable of reaching Israel. Periodic, limited U.S. military strikes against Assads weapons depots are not likely to change this calculus. Hopes that Assads mass repression or use of chemical weapons would compel Tehran to reassess its support have been proven wrong. Just as Iranians today frequently evoke how Saddam used chemical weapons against Iran over three decades ago, Syrians will have similarly long memories of Iranian complicity. While Friday nights missile shower illustrated the clear power asymmetry between Washington and Tehran, the last seven years have also illustrated the two countries asymmetry of commitment in Syria. In contrast to Donald Trumpwho did not care about Syria last week and will likely not care about Syria next weekAyatollah Khameneis opposition to Israel, and his commitment to Syria, has not wavered for four decades. Like Captain Ahab chasing Moby Dick, the 78-year-old Khamenei will take this pursuit to the grave with him. In the 1998 movie American History X, a vivid portrait of Americas neo-Nazi movementAmericas Islamist equivalentEdward Nortons character is a young radical sent to prison for committing a hate crime. When a sympathetic former teacher visits him in prison to try to talk sense, he remains intransigent. The teachers simple parting comment, however, was powerful enough to cause Norton to reflect. Just ask yourself one thing, said the teacher. Has anything youve done made your life better? Amidst all the carnage and destruction in Syria, a similar question could be posed to Khamenei. Has anything that Iran has done in Syria, or elsewhere for that matter, advanced its goal of destroying Israel and liberating Palestine? Khamenei appeared to contemplate this question recently. Today the body of Muslim world is severely wounded, he said. Enemies of Islam have managed to baffle the Muslim world by staging war and discord, giving the enemy more security in the region. In Western Asia, the Zionist regime thrives in a safe haven, while Muslims are posed against one another. Long live Palestine. Read more from The Atlantic: This article was originally published on The Atlantic. Tehran (AFP) - An Iranian lawmaker on Tuesday criticised a recent crackdown on environmental activists and officials, saying it risked "bad consequences for the country", the semi-official ISNA news agency reported. Parliament's environmental and transparency committees held a closed-door session in which they discussed the arrest on espionage charges of several NGO workers earlier this year. One detainee later died in custody. "Some... have accused these individuals of spying, but the expert views of the Intelligence Ministry are almost exactly contrary to them," said Mohammad Reza Tabesh, head of parliament's environment committee, according to ISNA. He was relaying information provided by the head of the government's Environment Protection Agency (EPA), Isa Kalantari. Iran has multiple and competing intelligence agencies. One is under the moderate government of President Hassan Rouhani and another under the Revolutionary Guards, who have opposed his efforts to rebuild ties with the West. The lawmakers discussed Kaveh Madani, a young water expert who took leave from his post at London's Imperial College last year to become deputy head of the EPA. It was revealed on Monday that Madani, who had faced weeks of pressure from hardline opponents of the government, had abruptly resigned while travelling outside the country. Kalantari told the lawmakers that Madani had wished to carry on his work "despite the pressures exerted," according to the account given by Tabesh. "But he resigned because his parents were not happy." Madani released a cryptic message on Twitter on Tuesday. "Yes, the accused has escaped from a land in which online ignorance has rejected science, knowledge and expertise," he wrote. "They have realised that finding a guilty person, enemy and spy is much easier than accountability and participation in resolving problems." Madani's appointment had been seen as a test of Rouhani's efforts to attract expat Iranians back home. Story continues But Madani he was briefly detained in February in mysterious circumstances, then vilified by hardliners after photos were released purporting to show him dancing and drinking on holiday. Among the environmentalists arrested in recent months were seven members of the Persian Wildlife Heritage Organisation. Its head, renowned environmentalist Kaveh Seyed Emami, died in Tehran's Evin prison in February after being accused of spying for the United States and Israel. Iranian authorities said he committed suicide in his cell, but this has been disputed by the family. Iran is suffering from a range of extreme environmental problems, including world-beating levels of air pollution and years of drought that have devastated swathes of its agricultural land. Iran has threatened to punish Israel for its airstrikes in Syria, after reports emerged that an unnamed Israeli military official had confirmed his country was behind an attack on an Iranian drone base in Homs province. Bahram Ghassemi, the spokesman for Iran's Foreign Ministry, has now warned Tel Aviv will be punished for its aggressive action. The occupying Zionist regime will, sooner or later, receive an appropriate response to its actions, Haaretz reported. Earlier this month, at least seven Iranian military personnel were killed in the missile strike on the T4 airfield, including Colonel Mehdi Dehghan, who led the drone unit. Syria, Iran and Russia all blamed Israeli forces. Trending: Church Plans Semi-Automatic Gun Buyback After 'Heartbreaking' Parkland Shooting, Plans to Melt Bump Stocks Though Israels secretive military regularly refuses to either confirm or deny its actions, an unnamed military source admitted to the New York Times that his country was behind the strike. The source noted: It was the first time we attacked live Iranian targetsboth facilities and people. Israeli f-16 REUTERS/Amir Cohen The source said the air base was targeted because it was serving as an Iranian drone command and control base. In February, Israel shot down an Iranian drone launched from Syria which it claimed was armed with explosives. The target of the drone is still unclear. Israel responded to the drone incursion by launching missile strikes from F-16 warplanes against Iranian targets within Syria. One aircraft was shot down by Syrian air defense systems on its return to Israel. Read More: Tel Aviv DiaryIf Trump Quits Syria, Israel Will Be Left To Fight Iran Alone | Opinion Don't miss: Russian State Media Shows What a Nuclear Explosion Near the White House Might Look Like Story continues After this months attack on the T4 base, Israeli Defence Minister Avigdor Lieberman warned that Israel will not allow Iranian entrenchment in Syria no matter the price to pay. We have no other option. Allowing Iran to strengthen itself in Syria is like accepting that the Iranians strangle us. Meanwhile, Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu has said his country will continue to move against Iran in Syria. Netanyahu drone Lennart Preiss/MSC 2018 via Getty Images Deputy Hezbollah leader Sheikh Naim Qassem echoed the threats from Tehran. He told pro-Syrian government television channel al-Maydeen: "The deliberate Israeli slaying of Iranians in the T4 base will have a response but we dont know its nature or its details. Yossi Kuperwasser, former director-general of Israel's Ministry of Strategic Affairs, said that conflict between the two countries is not necessarily inevitable. In a press briefing, Kuperwasser told reporters that Israel and Iran are in an ongoing armed conflict around Iranian aspiration to turn Syria into a base from which it can improve its capability to hit Israel. Most popular: Elon Musk Reveals Giant Party Balloon Plan to Return SpaceXs Launched Rockets However, given the potency of Israel's military and intelligence services, Kuperwasser believes Iran will likely proceed with caution. Tomahawk launch Robert S. Price/Courtesy U.S. Navy/Handout via REUTERS Israel has bombed Syrian sites several times in the course of the countrys civil war. The Israeli government has targeted Iranian installations and weapons supply lines in an attempt to curb Tehrans spreading influence in the country, which has grown significantly with its support of Syrian President Bashar al-Assad. Israel claims Iran is also supplying the Lebanese Hezbollah militiawhich has also been heavily involved in the fighting in Syriawith weapons and training. Now in its seventh year of civil war, Syria has become a diplomatic powder keg. Numerous nations with conflicting interests are operating in the country, and tensions are high. The increasing strain between Israel and Iran comes just days after a large U.S, U.K. and French attack on suspected Syrian chemical weapons storage and production facilities in response to an alleged chemical attack on civilians in the rebel-held city of Douma, near Damascus. This article was first written by Newsweek More from Newsweek Baghdad (AFP) - Iraq on Tuesday sentenced a French woman to life in prison for belonging to the Islamic State group, raising to more than 180 the number of such convictions of foreign women since the country's defeat of IS. Djamila Boutoutaou, a 29-year-old of Algerian origin, told a Baghdad court that she left France with her husband, a rapper. She said she thought they were going on holiday but "when I arrived in Turkey I discovered that my husband was a jihadist". She said she was forced by her husband to join IS and live in the "caliphate" that the jihadists proclaimed in 2014 straddling Syria and Iraq. Boutoutaou, who appeared in court wearing a brown headscarf, said she and her two children had been forced to live in a "cave". Her husband was killed near the former jihadist stronghold of Mosul, northern Iraq, and her son died in bombardment, Boutoutaou said, before she and the wife of a neighbour fled and surrendered to Kurdish peshmerga fighters. Two women from Russia, both holding children in their arms, were also sentenced to life in prison at the same hearing, while five from Azerbaijan were condemned to death along with a woman from Trinidad. Iraq declared victory in December against IS, which at one point controlled a third of the country. The Iraqi anti-terrorism law empowers courts to convict people who are believed to have helped IS even if they are not accused of violence. In January, an Iraqi court condemned a German woman to death after finding her guilty of belonging to IS. A court the following month sentenced another French woman to seven months in jail for entering Iraq illegally but ordered her release on time already served. Under Iraqi anti-terrorism laws, a total of 97 foreign women have now been condemned to death since January and 185 others to life imprisonment by courts in Baghdad, a judicial source told AFP. Most of the women were from Turkey and republics of the former Soviet Union. Iraqi authorities have not announced any of the sentences being carried out. James Comey slammed President Donald Trump for saying on Twitter that he should be jailed for his actions as FBI Director, arguing that the American people are becoming dangerously numb to the President undermining the key tenets of the United States. That is not normal that is not OK. First of all, hes just making stuff up. Most importantly, the President of the United States is calling for the imprisonment of a private citizen as hes done for a whole lot of people who criticize him. That is not acceptable in this country, Comey, whom Trump fired in May 2017, told ABC News George Stephanopoulos Tuesday on Good Morning America. I hope people read the book and see why the rule of law is such an important value in this country. And key to that is that the President doesnt get to decide who goes to jail. On @GMA, James @Comey warns "we're numb" to Pres. Trump's tweets calling for jailing of opponents. "That's dangerous." "One of the things I hope to do is encourage people to think about that and focus on that, rather than becoming numb to it." https://t.co/Z3azAupFmC pic.twitter.com/AvEM6qmmRE This Week (@ThisWeekABC) April 17, 2018 Comey made his second appearance on ABC on the day his highly-anticipated book, A Higher Loyalty, is being released. The book chronicles Comeys tenure FBI Director during the 2016 elections and the first months of the Trump administration. Trump fired Comey last May, initially citing recommendations from the two top officials in the Department of Justice, who argued he should be terminated based on his handling of the probe into Hillary Clintons private e-mail server. But later that week, Trump conceded in an interview with NBC News Lester Holt that he had always intended to fire Comey and was frustrated with the investigation into Russian meddling in the 2016 election. A little over a week after Comey was fired, Rosenstein appointed Robert Mueller as Special Counsel in the Russia investigation. Story continues On Sunday morning, just hours before Comeys first interview with Stephanopoulos to discuss the book, Trump had tweeted the calls implying Comey should be jailed, arguing that he leaked classified information and lied to Congress, claims Comey said Trump was fabricating. The big questions in Comeys badly reviewed book arent answered like, how come he gave up Classified Information (jail), why did he lie to Congress (jail), why did the DNC refuse to give Server to the FBI (why didnt they TAKE it), why the phony memos, McCabes $700,000 & more? Trump tweeted. The big questions in Comeys badly reviewed book arent answered like, how come he gave up Classified Information (jail), why did he lie to Congress (jail), why did the DNC refuse to give Server to the FBI (why didnt they TAKE it), why the phony memos, McCabes $700,000 & more? Donald J. Trump (@realDonaldTrump) April 15, 2018 Comey also voiced concern that Americans are becoming numb to these types of Trumps tweets which he said was a hazardous road to travel. We wake up in the morning and see the President of the United States is accusing people of crimes without evidence, he said. That should wake us all up with a start, but theres been so much of it that were a little bit numb, and thats dangerous. Sen. John McCain has undergone surgery due to an intestinal infection, his office announced Monday. A statement said that Republican senator, who has been fighting brain cancer since a diagnosis last year, is hospitalized in a stable condition, The Washington Post reports. McCain, 81, is being treated at the Mayo Clinic in Phoenix, Arizona for an infection linked to diverticulitis, which occurs when pouches form on the walls of the colon. Last July, McCain was diagnosed with glioblastoma, an intense form of brain cancer that also afflicted the late Senator Edward M. Kennedy and Beau Biden, the son of former vice president Joe Biden. While undergoing chemotherapy and radiation, McCain regularly attended Congress. But since December, the senator has been recovering from the effects of the treatment at his home in Arizona. McCains office issues frequent updates on his health, but it has not said when or if the senator will return to Washington, the Post reports. My father @SenJohnMcCain is in stable condition - he continues to inspire me everyday with his intense grit and determination. Thank you to the doctors at Mayo Clinic in Phoenix and to everyone who is praying for him. Meghan McCain (@MeghanMcCain) April 16, 2018 His daughter, Meghan McCain, tweeted that her father continues to inspire me everyday with his intense grit and determination. A Korean Air heiress accused of assault has been suspended by her father's company as police Tuesday launched a criminal investigation into claims she threw water into a man's face in a business meeting. Cho Hyun-min, a marketing executive at the South Korean flag carrier, is the latest scion of its founding family to spark controversy through her hot-tempered behaviour. Four years ago her older sister Cho Hyun-ah made global headlines for angrily kicking a cabin crew member off a plane after being served macadamia nuts in a bag rather than a bowl -- an incident quickly dubbed "nut rage". The row over the younger Cho, 36, emerged after reports that she flew into a rage during a meeting with an advertising agency manager last month. She allegedly threw water into the man's face because she did not like one of the his responses. Seoul police, which earlier opened a preliminary inquiry to see if Cho had broken any laws, said Tuesday they were launching a formal probe based on testimony of the participants in the meeting. Following the incident Cho sent a wide-ranging apology by email to "every single person at the advertising agency and Korean Air employee that I have worked with." "I was so absorbed by my passion for work that I could not restrain my reckless remarks and actions, leaving many people deeply disappointed and hurt," she wrote. But her apology has failed to placate many in South Korea, where hugely powerful family-run conglomerates have long been dogged by criticism of their founding families' brash behaviour. A Korean Air labour union expressed "indescribable regret" over Cho's behaviour. "Because of the latest controversy ... some 20,000 workers who have worked so tirelessly for the firm have become targets of public criticism," it said. "Why should the Korean Air employees feel so ashamed?" The head of South Korea's ruling Democratic Party urged the ouster of Cho -- a granddaughter of Korean Air's late founder and daughter of the current chairman Cho Yang-ho. Story continues "We should no longer see these unqualified, unethical scions (of the founding families) getting a free ride into the top management," Choo Mi-ae said Monday. Korean Air has partially disputed media reports, saying Cho "only threw a cup with water onto the floor" but on Monday suspended Cho from her duties. Throwing water into someone's face can amount to assault in the South where a housewife was fined about $650 in 2015 for hurling water at a real estate broker during a heated argument. The 2014 "nut rage" incident saw Cho Hyun-ah, then the firm's vice president, forcing two flight attendants to kneel and beg for forgiveness on a Seoul-bound flight from New York before ejecting one of them out of the plane before takeoff. North and South Korea are discussing plans to formally end the 65-year-old conflict between the two countries, South Korean newspaper Munhwa Ilbo reported Tuesday, citing an unidentified senior government official with knowledge of diplomacy and security issues. According to the official, who remained anonymous as is common for government figures in South Korea when discussing delicate matters with the press, the easing of military tensions and the end of the military confrontation is a high priority on the agenda of the summit scheduled for April 27 between South Korean president Moon Jae-in and North Korean leader Kim Jong Un. Officials of the two countries are busy arranging the summit, according to South Korean news reports. Further meetings between representatives of the two Koreas are planned for this week to finalize the summit's details, such as security protocols and media coverage, while a direct hotline between the countries' leaders is expected to be established by Friday, South Korean news agency Yonhap reported Tuesday. Trending: Tax Day 2018: Where To Get Free Food And Discounted Meals On April 17 04_17_Panmunjom Jung Yeon-Je/AFP/Getty Images The two leaders would meet for the first time in the South Korean "Peace House," a building on the southern side of the truce village of Panmunjom where the warring sides signed an armistice in 1953, three years after the Korean War began. It would mark the first time a North Korean leader sets foot on South Korean soil. As the armistice was never followed by a peace treaty, the two countries technically remain at war, establishing the 160-mile-long Demilitarized Zone (DMZ) to function as a heavily guarded border area separating the two countries. Any talks on formally ceasing hostilities would involve discussing changes to the DMZ. Story continues Moon made it clear throughout the electoral campaign last year that a peace agreement with the North is a top priority, together with the denuclearization of the Korean peninsula in which Pyongyang would have to commit to giving up its weapons and cease its uranium enrichment programs. Intentions to work toward a peace treaty were expressed in the two previous Korean leaders' summits in 2000 and 2007, but did not produce an official agreement. This article was first written by Newsweek More from Newsweek The French president addressed the European Parliament, laying out his vision for the future of the continent - REUTERS The European Union risks being torn apart by a civil war between its liberal and authoritarian democracies, Emmanuel Macron, the president of France has warned. Speaking in the European Parliament in Strasbourg, Mr Macron said that the EU must build a new European sovereignty and embark on much needed reforms to save the bloc. The ardent Europhile was given a standing ovation and numerous compliments by adoring MEPs during the plenary debate on the future of Europe after Brexit. We have a context of division and indeed doubt within Europe, Mr Macron said. There seems to be a sort of European civil war where selfish interests sometimes appear more important than what unites Europe. In a thinly-veiled swipe at Hungary and Poland, Mr Macron said Europe was in the grips of a fascination with the illiberal. Brussels is at loggerheads with Warsaw over Polands controversial judicial reforms and there are also concerns about the rule of law in Hungary after strongman Viktor Orbans election campaign, which was won by stoking fears over immigration. Members of the European Parliament hold placards saying "Stop the War in Syria" before a debate on the Future of Europe Credit: VINCENT KESSLER/REUTERS We are seeing authoritiarinism all around us, Mr Macron said, The response is not authoritarian democracy but the authority of democracy. In these difficult times, European democracy is our best chance, he added before warning against the deadly tendency of national selfishishness and egotism that could lead the continent to the abyss. Evoking the Second Word War, Mr Macron said he belonged to a generation that had never experienced war and that he suffered the luxury of forgetting what happened to our ancestors. I dont want to be part of a generation of sleepwalkers. A generation that has forgotten its past, he declared as the plenary chamber broke into applause. Story continues I will not give in to any kind of fixation on authoritarianism, said Mr Macron, I want to belong to a generation that will defend European sovereignty because we fought to attain it. European sovereignty is the system I believe in, Mr Macron said. Defending Europe is not defending something abstract or the dilution of our own sovereignty. In quotes | Macron on Brexit Mr Macron, under pressure domestically as he tries to force through unpopular labour reforms, even took a swipe Donald Trump, the US president and at his ally in the strikes on Syria. We share so much with country but this country has rejected multilateralism, free trade and climate change, he said before exhorting MEPs to listen to the anger of the people of Europe who felt abandoned by the bloc. Florian Philippot, a French MEP in Nigel Farages Europe of Freedom and Direct Democracy group, attacked Mr Macron, branding him the EUs top pupil repeating all the canons of the European catechism. Mr Philippot, a former member of Marine Le Pens National Front, praised Britain for breaking free of its chains and to hoots and catcalls called for a Frexit referendum that would allow France to go out into the world. Mr Macron gave him short shrift and said the French people had spoken when they elected him last year. You lost because the French people decided otherwise, Mr Macron told the MEP. The French president called for a European fund for communities taking in migrants and insisted that Brexit must not derail EU spending suggesting a tax could be levied to raise money for the EU Budget. He also demanded that eurozone banking integration picked up pace and other reforms. Mr Macron's speech will be seen as a direct response to growing authoritarianism in countries like Hungary Credit: Bernadett Szabo/REUTERS Mr Macron, who praised Michel Barnier, the EUs chief Brexit negotiator, for his handling of the talks was greeted with unabashed admiration by Europhiles in Strasbourg. Outside the parliament a demonstration was held against the French president. The true France is back, declared Jean-Claude Juncker, the president of the European Commission. This house has waited a long time for a French president like you, Manfred Weber, the German MEP who leads the largest party in the European Parliament, told Mr Macron. But hard left MEPs accused Mr Macron of breaking international law by launching missile strikes on Syria. On Brexit, Mr Macron said he was in favour of the most integrated relations, the closest relations with the UK. There is a solution that we are very familiar with and that is EU membership, he told MEPs. I am very fond of our friendship with the UK but there is no cherry-picking in the single market, he added after praising Michel Barnier, the EU's chief Brexit negotiator. I believe in Europe so therefore I believe in what we have done, he said referring to the EU's insistence that Britains Brexit red lines would limit the UK-EU relationship to a trade deal rather than full access to the single market. We have to be consistent, he said in Strasbourg as Syed Kamall, the most senior Tory MEP shook his head. That is what democracy is about. Front Bench promotion - end of article Video: Macron Says He Has Proof of Chemical Attack in Syria Watch news, TV and more on Yahoo View. Rabat (AFP) - King Mohammed VI has returned to Morocco after an absence of several weeks during which he underwent a heart operation in a Paris clinic, sources close to the palace said Tuesday. Media reports said Mohammed's private plane landed on Monday night in Casablanca, the economic capital of Morocco, and he was expected Tuesday in the northern city of Fez for official functions. The 54-year-old king has not been in Morocco at least since February 26 when he underwent the operation to normalise his heart beat. Mohammed, who has ruled since his father Hassan's death in July 1999, would resume his normal activities after a period of rest prescribed by his doctors, according to an official statement issued at the time. The king's lengthy absence stirred rumours on social media and also raised questions in diplomatic and business circles. A frequent visitor to France, Mohammed's first official function since the operation was an April 10 meeting with French President Emmanuel Macron. He did not, however, attend the Arab summit held Sunday in the Saudi city of Dhahran. Myanmar's president on Tuesday announced pardons for more than 8,500 prisoners, including three dozen jailed in political cases, as part of an annual amnesty marking the country's traditional new year. President Win Myint, who took office last month after his predecessor suddenly resigned, said the pardons were granted on humanitarian grounds during the Buddhist new year festival known as Thingyan. The amnesty was extended mostly to drug offenders, as well as more than 50 foreigners and 36 political prisoners, according to a breakdown posted on Facebook by government spokesman Zaw Htay. Among those released were two Baptist church leaders jailed last year on charges of supporting ethnic minority rebels in the war-torn northeast in a case criticised by rights groups. The ethnic Kachin men were detained by soldiers in December 2016 after giving journalists information about a church allegedly hit by military airstrikes in Shan state. "Now we are free and we feel happy... I hope our land will be peaceful in the future so this kind of thing would not happen again," Langjaw Gam Seng, the church youth leader who was sentenced to two years and three months, told AFP after his release from prison in the town of Lashio in the state. An NGO that helps political prisoners welcomed the overall amnesty but called for the release of at least eight more prisoners of conscience who remain in jail. Around 200 others in Myanmar are also facing trials linked to political activities, said spokesman Aung Myo Kyaw from the Assistance Association for Political Prisoners. "The government can help them by cancelling the cases from the courts," he told AFP. Myanmar has freed thousands from its jails since a military junta ceded power in 2011 after five decades of brutal repression. Hundreds of political prisoners were released shortly after the civilian government of former democracy activist Aung San Suu Kyi took office in 2016 following a sweeping election victory. Story continues But hopes of a new era of free expression have been dampened by a surge in prosecutions under a online defamation law in recent years. The arrest of two Myanmar journalists working for Reuters has raised global alarm over worsening media freedoms in the fledgling democracy. The reporters, Wa Lone and Kyaw Soe Oo, face up to 14 years in prison under the Official Secrets Act, which bars the possession of classified documents. They were arrested in December while reporting on Myanmar security officers' role in the extrajudicial killings of 10 Rohingya men in Rakhine state, where troops are accused of waging an ethnic cleansing campaign against the Muslim minority. Netflix CEO Reed Hastings briefly addressed the data privacy concerns raised over the last month regarding the tech industry. Dont call Netflix (NFLX) a tech company. That was one of the takeaways from Netflixs first-quarter 2018 earnings interview a pre-recorded video equivalent of the traditional company earnings call in which CEO Reed Hastings fielded a broader question about whether he thinks Netflix will be affected by government concerns around data privacy. The issue emerged this March following reports that Cambridge Analytica had harvested the data of up to 87 million Facebook (FB) users. During hearings over the course of two days last week, Facebook chief executive Mark Zuckerberg defended the company he started in 2004, which continues to derive the vast majority of its revenues from advertising in Facebook on desktop and mobile devices. Im very glad we built a business not to be ad-supported but to be based on subscription, Hastings said in an indirect reference to Facebooks core business. During the first three months of the year, Netflix added 7.4 million new customers, topping analysts estimates of 6.5 million. Were very different from the ad-supported business, and weve always been very big on protecting all of our members viewing. We dont sell advertising. So, I think were substantially inoculated from the other issues that are happening in the industry and thats great. Hastings, who is a Facebook board member, further distanced Netflix from the data privacy concerns surrounding tech companies at the moment by suggesting his company is more of a media company more in the same vein as say, The Walt Disney Co. (DIS) or CBS Corp. (CBS) than a pure tech company. Id point out that well spend over $10 billion on content and marketing and $1.3 billion [this year] on tech, added Hastings. Just objectively, were much more of a media company in that way than pure tech. Now, of course, we want to be great at both, but again, were really pretty different from the pure tech companies. Hastings attempt to distance Netflix from ongoing data privacy concerns in tech follows on the heels of remarks last month made by Apple CEO Tim Cook, who has been surprisingly outspoken on the topic. Story continues [Apple could] make a ton of money if we monetized our customer, Apples (AAPL) chief executive said in reference to Facebooks core business model. Weve elected not to do that. JP Mangalindan is the Chief Tech Correspondent for Yahoo Finance covering the intersection of tech and business. Email story tips and musings to jpm@oath.com. Follow him on Twitter or Facebook. More from JP Lagos (AFP) - A photograph of a man with an assault rifle in front of cattle is frequently used to illustrate Nigerian media stories about bloody clashes between farmers and herders. Another shows men armed with machetes on the rampage. The issue with both is they have nothing to do with Nigeria or the violence: one is from South Sudan, the other from the Central African Republic. The conflict in Nigeria looks set to be a key issue in the run-up to next February's presidential election at which President Muhammadu Buhari is seeking a second term. How it is reported could be key to the results but the Nigerian Union of Journalists (NUJ) and Buhari's spokesman, Garba Shehu, are already unhappy. Shehu said "the frequent expressions of hate speech... (were) a source of concern" and drew comparisons to the incitement to violence before the genocide in Rwanda in 1994. "Those beating the gongs of war and fanning the embers of discord" should be brought to order, he said in a statement in February. Parliament is now debating new legislation to criminalise hate speech. - Outright fabrication - Buhari's response to the crisis has by many accounts been tepid, despite the deaths of hundreds of people since the start of this year, mainly in Nigeria's central states. The so-called Middle Belt, where the predominantly Muslim north meets the largely Christian south, has long been a flashpoint for clashes between the two sides. But what is primarily a battle for land and water fuelled by climate change and rapid population growth has been seized upon by identity politicians and religious leaders. In Benue state, where Governor Samuel Ortom banned open grazing for cattle, 73 people from farming communities were killed in one attack in January. He alleged afterwards there was an orchestrated plot by the nomadic Fulani herders, who are Muslim, to exterminate his people, the Tiv, who are Christian. The Miyetti Allah Cattle Breeders Association of Nigeria (MACBAN) rejects the claim. Story continues Many media reports of attacks, however, suggest religious differences are a prime motivation. Social media users and bloggers in particular have been accused of sensationalism and developing the trope about "killer herdsmen" with outright falsehood. The Kogi state police commissioner Ali Aji Janga told AFP last month that several reports were entirely fabricated or ascribed to Fulani herders when it was general criminality. One report, in which Fulani herders were said to have killed 10 people in a village, including the local chief and his wife, was "a figment of imagination", he said. "The report was not only false, it was mischievous aimed at distorting the peace in the state," he added. - 'Ethnic profiling' - Critics of Buhari have said the herders have become emboldened since he came to office three years ago because of his failure to address the underlying issue. Thousands of people have been killed over several decades but the former military ruler is also a Fulani Muslim and has been accused of not wanting to act against his kinsmen. Nobel laureate Wole Soyinka, whose property in southwest Nigeria was overrun with cattle, has even said the herders had "declared war against the nation". "Their weapon is undiluted terror," he wrote in January. "Why have they been permitted to become a menace to the rest of us?" NUJ president Waheed Odusile said the overall media coverage of the conflict was fair and there were expected differences of opinion. But he added: "What is disturbing is the ethnic profiling of the conflict. They tend to make the violence look like a north-south, Christian-Muslim problem." Describing all herdsmen "as Fulani Muslim is dangerous and can jeopardise the peace and unity of Nigeria", he added, warning the media "not to heat up the polity by playing up the nation's faultlines". MACBAN for its part has blamed cattle rustlers and foreign criminals for the frequent raids on farming communities. As elsewhere around the world, Nigerian media organisations, reflect the views of their owners -- many of them politicians or the politically well-connected. But readers increasingly needed to be cautious about what they were being told, according to David Ajikobi, Nigeria director of fact-checking website Africa Check. "It's not true that every herdsman is Fulani," he said, pointing to the involvement of Yoruba and Igbo in cattle herding. "A blanket categorisation of herders as Fulani is stereotyping the issue and such a tendency should be avoided." By Estelle Shirbon LONDON (Reuters) - Prime Minister Theresa May apologized to 12 Caribbean nations on Tuesday for immigration officials' harsh treatment of people from those countries who migrated to Britain as children after World War Two. The "Windrush generation" were invited to Britain to plug labor shortfalls between 1948 and 1971, but some of their descendants have been caught up in a tightening of immigration rules overseen by May in 2012 when she was interior minister. Some people have been wrongly labeled illegal immigrants, asked to provide documentary evidence of their life in Britain they had never previously been required to keep, and in some cases denied rights, detained and threatened with deportation. "I want to apologize to you today because we are genuinely sorry for any anxiety that has been caused," May told leaders and diplomats from the Caribbean countries, who were in London for a summit of Commonwealth heads of government. The scandal over the mistreatment of people from what were once British colonies has cast a shadow over the summit, which is supposed to strengthen Britain's ties to fellow Commonwealth countries as it prepares to leave the European Union. Jamaican Prime Minister Andrew Holness highlighted the issue at a plenary session of the summit, drawing cheers from his fellow leaders as he said the Windrush generation had enriched Britain and contributed to society. "Now these persons are not able to claim their place as citizens," he said. May was on stage as he spoke, having delivered her own speech just before. Named after a ship that brought migrants from Jamaica, Trinidad and Tobago and other Caribbean islands in 1948, the Windrush generation enjoyed a special status, but that has been eroded over the years by successive immigration reforms. "NATIONAL DISGRACE" After an outcry caused by coverage in British media of people who had lost jobs or been denied healthcare because of unwarranted doubts over their rights, the government set up a dedicated team at the interior ministry to solve cases. "We would also like to reassure you that there will be no removals or detention as part of any assistance to help these citizens get their proper documentation in place," wrote Caroline Nokes, the immigration minister, to Caribbean foreign ministers and ambassadors. There was confusion over whether any Windrush descendants had already been deported after Nokes and other ministers gave conflicting details on Monday. "We have no information, we do not know of any cases where somebody has been deported who is in this category," Cabinet Office Minister David Lidington said on Tuesday. David Lammy, a member of parliament from the opposition Labour Party who has argued passionately for justice for the Windrush migrants, tweeted that he had just received a call from an elderly mother whose son was due to be deported on Wednesday. "This is a national disgrace," he said. "What is going (on) makes me ashamed of our great country." Later on, Lammy tweeted again that he had received a call from Nokes who had informed him that the deportation had been halted and the case would be reviewed. Although the government has described the problems facing Windrush individuals as a result of bureaucratic bungling, critics such as Lammy have said the situation stems from the Conservative government's hostility towards immigrants. May's six-year tenure at the interior ministry was marked by a determination to reduce immigration numbers, a goal she has continued to emphasize as prime minister and in Brexit negotiations. In 2013, her ministry sent vans around multicultural neighborhoods instructing illegal immigrants to "Go Home or Face Arrest". (Reporting by Estelle Shirbon and William James; Editing by Kevin Liffey and Alison Williams) For the rest of his days, John Stender will carry part of his daughter inside him. Specifically, one of her kidneys, which she donated to save his life. "I did it for him, but I did it for the family, too," she told InsideEdition.com Tuesday. "I want him to be here. I want him to see his grandchildren grow up. I want him to walk me down the aisle." Her father was diagnosed with kidney failure about two years ago, and his name was placed on a transplant list. He spent three days a week on dialysis and wasn't able to travel because his survival involved being tethered to a machine. The family talked among themselves about donating an organ, but John, 70, didn't want to put his loved ones through the grueling tests and subsequent surgery. Meanwhile, his health declined. And then he ran out of options. His doctors told him he had, perhaps, two more years of life. After that, there was nothing more to be done. "We had a real, raw, emotional conversation," Hailee said. The 30-year-old had already completed the necessary tests and was deemed a perfect match for her father. Now it was just a matter of scheduling the surgery. On March 12, Hailee and her dad were wheeled into surgery at Cleveland Clinic Hospital. She had been told that she would feel worse than her father when she woke up. He was gaining a functioning organ, she was losing one. She was not prepared, however, for the instantaneous change in her father. She burst into tears the first time she saw him after surgery. "He looked so good," she said. "I got so emotional. His color was better, he was more engaged and more aware. He was laughing. He looked healthy. And that was with only two days of having a kidney." "Seeing that made everything," she said. "I would do it again in a heartbeat." Recuperating from her major surgery has not been easy. "For a few weeks, it was intense," she said. Simply standing and walking were extremely painful. Her surgeons "cut through everything. They take some of your organs and move them over so they can get to work." Story continues Her dad, who is a county commissioner in the family's home state of West Virginia, is staying in Cleveland while he recovers from the transplant and his physicians closely monitor him for any signs of his body rejecting the new organ. So far, everything has been great, Hailee said. "We go for walks," she said. "The first time we walked, I couldn't keep up with him. He was already at the end of the block and I was just standing there, " she said, laughing. "He feels blessed." RELATED STORIES New England Patriots Star Rob Gronkowski Visits Fan Waiting for Heart Transplant Mom Receives Kidney Transplant After Her Kids Create Viral Plea on Social Media Man Who Needs Kidney Transplant Finds Out His Wife Is a Match on Custom Baseball Card Related Articles: Philadelphia (AFP) - Catastrophic engine failure on a Southwest Airlines flight from New York to Dallas killed a mother-of-two and forced an emergency landing Tuesday, the first fatal incident in US commercial aviation for nearly a decade. The Boeing 737-700 took off without incident but minutes into the flight, passengers heard an explosion in the left engine, which sent shrapnel flying through the window, shattering the glass and leading oxygen masks to drop, witnesses said. "We believe there were parts coming out of this engine," Robert Sumwalt, chairman of the National Transportation Safety Board, told a news conference, confirming engine failure but no fire. "There is one fatality," Sumwalt said. The person killed was later revealed to be Jennifer Riordan, a 43-year-old bank executive and mother-of-two from Albuquerque, New Mexico, according to officials from her hometown and state as well as local media. US media reported seven people were slightly injured. "We are saying this is an engine failure," Sumwalt said. Southwest Airlines said flight 1380 had been en route from New York's LaGuardia domestic airport to Dallas Love Field with 144 passengers and five crew members onboard. It landed at Philadelphia International Airport at 11:20 am (1520 GMT) after the crew reported damage to one of the engines, the fuselage and at least one window, the Federal Aviation Administration said. - Community leader - "We are deeply saddened to confirm that there is one fatality resulting from this accident. The entire Southwest Airlines family is devastated and extends its deepest, heartfelt sympathy to the customers, employees, family members, and loved ones affected by this tragic event," the company said in a statement. Riordan, who was a vice president of community relations for Wells Fargo bank according to her LinkedIn profile, was described by local officials and media as a well-known community leader and philanthropist with two school-age children, whose husband Michael was their city's former chief operations officer. Story continues "Today, Albuquerque lost a thoughtful leader who has long been part of the fabric of our community... this is a tremendous and tragic loss for Jennifer's family and many others throughout our city," tweeted Albuquerque Mayor Tim Keller. "Her leadership and philanthropic efforts made this a better place every day and she will be terribly missed." Tributes also came from New Mexico Senator Tom Udall and Governor Susana Martinez. - Dramatic recording - NBC News meanwhile released a recording of what it identified as communications between air traffic control in Philadelphia and the pilot, giving dramatic insight into what witnesses called a terrifying flight. "We have a part of the aircraft missing, so we're going to need to slow down a bit," said a woman, who appeared to be the pilot. "Use caution for the downtown area," replies air traffic control. "Could you have the medical meet us there on the runway as well? We've got injured passengers," says the voice from the plane. "Is your airplane physically on fire?" asks air traffic control. "No, it's not on fire but part of it's missing. They said there is a hole and someone went out," the pilot replies. "Something is wrong with our plane! It appears we are going down!" wrote passenger Marty Martinez on a Facebook live-stream that showed him looking panicked and breathing through oxygen mask. "Engine exploded in the air and blew open window 3 seats away from me. Explosion critically injured woman sitting in the seat next to the window," he added. US television footage showed the jet on the tarmac at Philadelphia as officials swarmed around the fuselage examining the stricken engine, manufactured by CFM, a joint venture between French company Safran and America's General Electric. - 'Free fall' - "All of a sudden we heard an explosion," Martinez told CBS. "There was a boom and within five seconds the oxygen masks dropped." "I thought I was cataloging the last moments of my existence," he said of his Facebook transmission. "It was absolutely terrifying." Passengers tried in vain to plug the hole in the window as the plane started to plummet and tilt in turbulence with flight attendants crying and passengers instructed to brace for landing, Martinez said. "It just felt like a free fall," he said. "It was the scariest experience." It was the first fatal incident in US commercial aviation since the crash of Colgan Air Flight 3407 in February 2009, a Bombardier Dash-8 on a scheduled flight from Newark, New Jersey to Buffalo, New York. Fifty people were killed. Aviation experts drew comparisons on US television to another engine failure on a Southwest Airlines 737 flight from New Orleans to Orlando in 2016, which precipitated an emergency landing in Pensacola, Florida. "We want to look at this particular event and see what the factors are related to this. Maybe they're related to the previous event or maybe not. But we need to understand what's going on here," said the NTSB chairman. Americans own a lot of guns. With more than 300 million of them in civilian hands, according to some estimates, the U.S. is the most heavily armed society in the world. This proliferation hasnt happened overnight. Firearms have been an American tradition for centuries. Many families have passed down guns for generations. But Americans have also continued to buy plenty of new guns, leading to record sales in recent years. The U.S. loves its guns. But what happens when someone owns a firearm they dont love, and they want to get rid of it without putting it back on the market? If that describes you, we want to talk. Heres why: Although reselling guns can be relatively straightforward, disposing of them isnt. Many police departments host gun buybacks or amnesty programs, allowing the public to turn in weapons, often with the promise of modest compensation. But after people give up those firearms, its hard to say what will happen to them. Some law enforcement agencies destroy surrendered guns, but many instead auction them or pawn them to licensed dealers, which then resell them. Sometimes, those weapons end up being used in shootings. For anyone uncomfortable with that possibility, the options for getting rid of guns are limited. There are ways to destroy firearms on your own, though it can be difficult, depending on the type of weapon and your familiarity with firearms. There are also more innovative alternatives, like groups that take unwanted guns and melt them down into shovels or art. But none of these methods are particularly simple or easy. If you find yourself in this predicament and arent sure what to do, please fill out the form below, send me a tweet or an email nickw [at] huffpost.com or leave a comment. Love HuffPost? Become a founding member of HuffPost Plus today. This article originally appeared on HuffPost. Gaza City (Palestinian Territories) (AFP) - Several thousand people protested in the occupied West Bank and Gaza Strip on Tuesday to mark an annual day in support of Palestinians jailed by Israel. A few thousand gathered in the Gaza Strip, while there were smaller demonstrations across the West Bank as Palestinians marked Prisoners' Day. Around 6,500 Palestinians are currently in Israeli prisons for a range of offences and alleged crimes, according to the Palestinian Prisoners' Club. Of those, around 500 are detained under so-called administrative detention laws, it says. Administrative detention allows Israel to detain people without charge or trial for renewable six-month periods. The prisoners' club also says around one million Palestinians have been detained by Israel since the country was founded in 1948. Dozens of girls carrying photographs of women prisoners demonstrated on Tuesday outside the headquarters of the International Committee of the Red Cross, west of Gaza City. In Nablus in the northern West Bank, around 1,000 people gathered, while a few hundred demonstrated in Bethlehem and Ramallah. There were no reports of major clashes. Washington (AFP) - The US military's hands-off approach on the ground in Syria is ceding influence to Russia and Iran, a top lawmaker warned Tuesday, as the Pentagon said it has seen the Islamic State "resurge" in parts of the country. Senate Foreign Relations Committee chairman Bob Corker said Moscow and Tehran have "significant influence" in the war-ravaged Middle Eastern nation due to their years-long commitment, while President Donald Trump signals the US could be headed for the exits there. When asked whether he wanted a greater US troop presence to shape events in Syria, Corker was somber. "I think the administration's plans are to complete the efforts against ISIS and to not be involved," he said, using another acronym for the jihadist group. A frustrated Corker spoke after exiting a classified briefing by Secretary of Defense James Mattis and top generals, who explained the Pentagon's strategy to lawmakers following last weekend's missile strikes on Syria. "Syria is Russia and Iran's now. They will be determining the future," he said. "We may be at the table, but when you're just talking and have nothing to do with shaping what's happening on the ground, you're just talking." Republican Senator Lindsey Graham, expressed alarm about a lack of US engagement in the country where insurgents have waged a brutal civil war against the regime of President Bashar al-Assad. "Everything in that briefing made me more worried, not less," he said. - 'All tweet, no action' - "There is no military strategy on the table to deal with the malign influence of Iran and Russia," Graham said. After the pinpoint air strikes that Trump telegraphed on social media, "I think Assad... believes we're all tweet, no action," he added. Democrats joined in the criticism, with Senator Chris Coons, warning that Trump's administration has "failed to deliver on a coherent plan" in Syria. Story continues "If we completely withdraw, our leverage in any diplomatic resolution or reconstruction, or any hope for a post-Assad Syria, goes away." Meanwhile, Colonel Ryan Dillon, a spokesman for the US-led coalition fighting IS in Syria and Iraq, said Assad's regime and Russia have not always been able to hold the terrain recaptured from IS. "As we look at ISIS in areas where we are not operating, where we are not supporting our partners on the ground, there has been ISIS elements who have been able to come back and take territory (including in) some of the neighborhoods in southern Damascus," Dillon said. "We've seen ISIS start to resurge in areas west of the Euphrates River." The US military is closely watching IS in Syria and Iraq, where the jihadists have lost 98 percent of the land they once held, according to the Pentagon. Progress however has halted in recent weeks in areas where the US-led coalition is fighting IS through the Syrian Democratic Forces, a local proxy group, due to Turkish military action in the north. Ankara in January launched a bloody operation around Afrin to push Kurdish fighters out of the city. Many of the Kurds who had been engaged in anti-IS operations have quit that fight to support comrades in Afrin. Related Video: The Images From Syria That Shocked the World For more news videos visit Yahoo View. Manila (AFP) - The Philippines is set to deploy hundreds of riot police to top holiday island Boracay to keep travellers out and head off potential protests ahead of its six-month closure to tourists, the government said Tuesday. President Rodrigo Duterte has branded the tiny central island and its world-famous white-sand beach a "cesspool". He has ordered visitors be kept away from April 26 so facilities to treat raw sewage can be set up and illegal structures torn down. On Tuesday, authorities laid out a lockdown plan to keep out all foreign and Filipino tourists using more than 600 police, including a 138-member "crowd dispersal unit". "In any transition, especially for a drastic action such as this, there is always confusion, uncertainties, and low morale," the regional police director, Chief Superintendent Cesar Binag said at a public forum on the island, aired on national television. "What we did was to identify the sources of confusion, sources of uncertainty and sources of low morale that might result to agitation and eventually into a security issue," he added. Boracay residents will be obliged to carry new identification cards and will be banned from boating and night swimming, he said. Entry to the 1,000-hectare (2,470-acre) island, located 300 kilometres (186 miles) south of Manila, will be limited to a single small sea port. Island residents' new identity cards are expected to be distributed three days before the shutdown, and security forces will conduct a "capability demonstration" next week, Binag said. Businesses in the area, which previously lobbied for a phased rehabilitation, have warned that an abrupt shutdown could lead to bankruptcies and job losses for many of the island's 17,000 hotel, restaurant and other tourism workers, plus some 11,000 construction workers. The island drew two million visitors last year, earning the country more than a billion dollars in tourism revenue, according to official data. Story continues The abrupt decision to close Boracay has forced hundreds of hotels, restaurants, tour operators and other businesses to cancel bookings, leaving clients fuming. The threat of closure first emerged in February when Duterte accused Boracay's businesses of dumping sewage directly into the island's turquoise waters. "I will close Boracay. Boracay is a cesspool," Duterte said in a speech in his southern home city of Davao. The Duterte government maintains it is legal for it to deploy police and bar tourists from the island. Luxembourg (AFP) - Poland's rightwing government broke the law by logging in one of Europe's last primeval forests, the EU's top court ruled on Tuesday, setting up a fresh clash between Warsaw and Brussels. Logging in the Bialowieza Forest, a UNESCO world heritage site, began in May 2016 but the European Commission took Poland to court last year arguing that it was destroying a forest that boasts unique plant and animal life. "The forest management operations concerning the Puszcza Bialowieska Natura 2000 site that have been undertaken by Poland infringe EU law," the European Court of Justice (ECJ) said in a statement. "The implementation of those operations in fact results in the loss of a part of that site," the Luxembourg court added. In Warsaw, the Polish government said it would comply with the court ruling, which it must do "without delay" in order to avoid financial penalties. Bialowieza, which straddles the border with Belarus, includes one of the largest surviving parts of the primeval forest that covered the European plain 10,000 years ago. Its vast woodland is home to 800 European bison, the continent's largest mammal. The government of the Law and Justice party (PiS) has said it is clearing dead trees to contain damage caused by a spruce bark beetle infestation, as well as to fight the risk of forest fires and preserve road traffic. Activists, scientists and other critics allege Poland is engaged in commercial logging. The court formally ordered Poland in July to suspend logging pending a final ruling, and in December it threatened the government with fines of up to 100,000 euros ($118,000) a day if it continued. The EU judges found that the Polish government failed to carry out "an appropriate assessment" of the impact of its forest management plan before launching it in 2016. It said Warsaw's argument for felling trees failed to show the management plan was justified by the spread of the spruce bark beetle. Story continues - Poland 'will comply' - The court also found that the Polish plan failed to comply with EU obligations protecting nests, eggs and breeding places of bird species living in the forest. Poland said it would "comply" with the ruling. "We have just received the official draft of the decision, which will be carefully analysed at the ministry," the environment ministry's spokesman Aleksander Brzozka told AFP. "But, as (Environment) Minister Henryk Kowalczyk has said several times, Poland will comply with the ECJ decision," Brozka added. Andreas Baumueller, an executive at the European office of conservationist group WWF, said: "Today is a clear victory for Europes wildlife. Nature cannot be ignored and neither can EU law." The case is the latest in a string of issues causing tension between Warsaw and Brussels, which has watched the Polish administration's recent judicial reforms with alarm. In December, after months of warnings, the European Commission launched an unprecedented procedure against Poland that could strip Warsaw of its voting rights in the bloc if it does not scrap the reforms. EU ministers are considering the rule-of-law issue in Luxembourg on Tuesday. Poland's right-wing government has also faced an international row over a law making it illegal to attribute Nazi crimes to the Polish state. Mateussz Morawiecki, who has eased tensions on the court reforms since becoming premier in December, fanned the flames by saying there were "Jewish perpetrators" as well as Polish ones in the Holocaust. WARSAW (Reuters) - Poland will respect a ruling by the European Union's top court on Tuesday that found it had violated EU law with increased logging in its ancient Bialowieza forest, the Environment Ministry said. "We are waiting for details of the court's official ruling. As declared earlier, Poland will observe the court's judgment," a spokesman said. The Luxembourg-based European Court of Justice said the logging endangered many species of birds and insects in the ecologically important forest. (Editing by Robin Pomeroy) Warsaw (AFP) - Polish nationalist movement Ruch Narodowy (RN) said Tuesday it had filed a complaint with prosecutors against Israel's president under Poland's controversial new Holocaust law for having attributed responsibility to Poland for Nazi German crimes. It follows a press statement released by Israeli President Reuven Rivlin's office last week after his meeting with Polish counterpart Andrzej Duda in Poland's southern city of Krakow on the occasion of the annual March of the Living at the site of the former Nazi German death camp Auschwitz-Birkenau. According to the statement, Rivlin had said during the talks, "There is no doubt that there were many Poles who fought the Nazi regime, but we cannot deny that Poland and Poles had a hand in the extermination." The RN movement said Rivlin "had attributed responsibility for Nazi crimes to the Polish state," which is forbidden under the new Holocaust law. The legislation, which came into effect last month penalises such statements with fines or a jail term of up to three years. The Israeli statement "requires quick and effective judicial proceedings and a serious penalty, both in terms of general prevention measures and public expectations," the RN wrote on its website. "The author acted with the goal of consciously and intentionally committing a forbidden act." The RN said it lodged the complaint with the IPN Institute of National Remembrance, with is charged with prosecuting Nazi and communist-era crimes. Poland's Holocaust law was meant to protect the country from false accusations of complicity in the Holocaust. But it has drawn strong criticism from Israel and Jewish organisations, which accused Warsaw of denying the participation of certain Poles in the genocide of Jews. Israel also expressed deep concern that the law could open the door to prosecuting Holocaust survivors for their testimony. During World War II, Poland was invaded by Nazi Germany and ceased to exist as a state. Six million Poles, half of them Jews, were killed during this period. Photo illustration: Yahoo News; photos: Getty Images (3) The Democratic committee man from Michigan had something to say about punctuation. At the end of that paragraph, said Barry Goodman, a member of the DNCs rules and bylaws committee, the P for public should be capitalized if party is capitalized with a P. DNC members were slogging through the tedious work of refining a public statement at their March 8 meeting in Washington, D.C. Goodman, a personal injury lawyer from Detroit, wanted to make sure that both words were capitalized just so we dont look like public and party are different in terms of importance. Goodman meant well, but his sentiments revealed a common but profound misunderstanding about American politics. Most people think of political parties as powerful, when in fact they have been losing power for 50 years. Populism is popular these days, and many Americans like Goodman want to make the political system more fair. They want to empower the average voter and reduce the influence of the wealthiest. But its become increasingly clear to many that anti-party reforms have gone too far and are now having a multitude of negative impacts on our politics, even as idealists push for still more reductions of party power. We like to believe that the fate of a government lies in the hands of its citizens. If the people hold democratic values, democracy will be safe, write Steven Levitsky and Daniel Ziblatt, authors of the recent book, How Democracies Die. This view is wrong, the Harvard government professors write. What matters more is whether political elites, and especially parties, serve as filters. Put simply, political parties are democracys gatekeepers. The anti-party attitude, which is explored in depth in the Yahoo News podcast The Long Game, is not exclusive to the left. Donald Trump and his supporters are just as anti-establishment, anti-elite and disdainful of political parties as many Democrats. The loud complaints on the left about party interventions in House primaries in 2018 come from the same sheet music that Trump sang from in 2016 when he criticized the idea of convention delegates and a rigged system. Story continues And this anti-party sentiment draws from the same well that produces a disregard for institutions and norms, a big theme of former FBI Director James Comeys warnings about Trump in his newly released book. These attitudes reveal one of two things. People either dont realize how much parties have been weakened over the last half-century, or they are ignorant of the evidence that ineffectual parties put democracy on a path toward instability and even authoritarianism. But current party leaders also seem to lack this historical perspective. Former RNC chairman Reince Priebus did nothing to unite the GOP around an alternative to Trump in 2016. And now, DNC chairman Tom Perez is fully on board with weakening the power of the Democratic Party by reducing the number of superdelegates in the presidential primary. Perez spoke briefly at the beginning of the March 8 meeting, praising the group for its work. He talked of rebuilding trust after the 2016 primary, in which Bernie Sanders supporters complained that the DNC tilted the playing field in favor of Hillary Clinton. Im confident that whats going to come out of this is a bold report that addresses the compelling need for reform, Perez said. Perezs sentiments are the norm. But the ongoing process of diminishing the power of parties is actually endangering democracy, according to a growing number of experts and political observers. Democrats are resisting empowering their own party officials as they head into the 2018 midterms and toward a 2020 showdown with President Trump. The Democratic Congressional Campaign Committee has made moves to help congressional candidates in Democratic primaries who it felt had the best chance of beating a Republican opponent. This has sparked howls of outrage. This attitude could leave Democrats vulnerable to a presidential primary in 2020 that splits the moderate vote among a number of establishment candidates and opens a path for a demagogue of the left. The unforeseen consequences are that it increases the possibility that the Democrats get their own Trump, Levitsky told Yahoo News. Or else a nominee who appeals to hardcore liberal progressives but who cannot beat Trump, giving him another four years in office. Download or subscribe on iTunes: The Long Game by Yahoo News **** In the 1968 Democratic primary, Eugene McCarthy got 3 million votes, Bobby Kennedy got 2 million, and Hubert Humphrey didnt run in any primaries, and received only 110,000 votes as a result. Yet Humphrey was the nominee. Party bosses picked him over McCarthy at the convention (Kennedy was assassinated before the convention took place). During the 2012 Republican primary, I got an education on how the delegate system worked in most states. I saw there were effectively two different primaries. Voters went to the polls and many of them thought that was it. But there was still a delegate process in place that required candidates to recruit supporters and organize to get them elected at three successive conventions, usually starting at the precinct level, then up to the county, then at the state convention the delegates to the national convention would be elected. Most people have no idea this system exists. At first I was puzzled by how complicated the delegate world was. But upon reflection, I saw how that kind of organization could only be built by candidates who appealed to a broad swath of some of the most active, engaged and informed voters in each party. A demagogue who had lots of money and fame, but not much credibility or qualifications, could build a different kind of popular support through TV and social media exposure. But most party regulars would see through that type of candidate, and charlatans wouldnt be able to build a credible delegate operation. This remained true in 2016, when Trump arrived in Cleveland for a convention largely composed of delegates who had been recruited by other candidates. When I recently asked one of the most authoritative Republican rules experts, an attorney, what the chances were that the GOP convention delegates would have chosen someone other than Trump if theyd been freed to vote their preference, this person answered bluntly: Trump had a 99 percent chance of being replaced in that scenario, he said. Parties are the best vehicle to sustain a set of beliefs. They outlast individuals, and they are built to perpetuate a general political point of view through the work of everyday people. They are the only long-standing, durable actors in American politics. Individuals, politicians, movements all come and go, but the parties stay with us, and thats what institutions do when they work is they transmit values from generation to generation, said Jonathan Rauch, a senior fellow at the Brookings Institution. People dont believe in parties partly because the whole notion of establishment, hierarchical authority has been discredited. Anti-establishment thinking has been one of the most constant and dominant trends of the last half-century. Seismic failures like the Vietnam War and Watergate, then the Iraq War, the Catholic church scandal and the 2008 economic collapse have created cynicism and anger. And technology has played a big role. TV and the internet have both undermined the value of expertise and elevated the place of image and emotion in public discourse. Additionally, American culture has become so individualistic that most people probably couldnt even describe what an institution is, or what theyre good for. Yet if and when they work properly, institutions do two basic things: They protect us, and they propel us. Institutions can protect us from the abuse of power by giving us a structure to work through, and to appeal to, when there are abuses. They are supposed to prevent authority from being concentrated too narrowly. Conversely, they also protect us from chaos by preventing authority from being dispersed too broadly. Institutions can propel us to do and accomplish things we could never do on our own. They enable people to come together and act in a cohesive and coherent way. This kind of collective accomplishment does require lines of authority and for some peoples opinions to ultimately matter more than others. But its a balance between the extremes of everyone having an equal say (think Occupy Wall Street) and one person deciding everything (think dictatorship). Yuval Levin, editor of National Affairs magazine, noted that when institutions work properly, they also shape our character. Individualism is essential to freedom. I think its a wonderful thing, he said. But we are not born ready to be individualists. To make use of our freedom in ways that are constructive requires a person who is formed in a certain way to be able to use our freedom responsibly. Our institutions turn us into human beings who are capable of being free men and women, who will choose to do the right thing, generally speaking, and so can be left free to choose, and dont have to be coerced into being responsible, Levin said. But while all institutions can play a formative role, some do so in a more positive way than others. For example, the worlds of television and New York real estate shape an individual in a much different way than do the institutions of politics, government, law and the university. Donald Trump is the first president to enter the presidency without being molded by the institutions and cultures that have shaped the character of every other president in American history. And Trump illustrates the change in the way that many people now view institutions, not as something bigger than themselves, but as something to make themselves bigger. Weve come to think about institutions more and more as ways of providing platforms for individuals to be themselves, rather than creating molds that form individuals to be reliable and trustworthy, Levin said. To Trump, the presidency is not an office to be respected and preserved. Rather, it is a role to be played, with the goal being his own self-promotion, rather than service to the country and its citizens, Levin said. The presidency is part of a larger constitutional system, and its really when you take the shape of that office within that system that you become most powerful, Levin said. Hes playing this role thats not the role of the president. That leaves the rest of the system missing the president. But it also means everybody has to deal with this other thing at the heart of the system, which is just a kind of performance artist doing something else. **** The changes to party primaries after the 1968 election took power away from party bosses and put it in the hands of regular voters. The changes were well intentioned, but it took that power away from party regulars, Rauch said. So theyre no longer in a position to say, If youll vote for me on this tough bill, this debt limit bill, Im gonna help make sure theres not a primary challenge in your district. Parties are no longer able to protect their people on the tough votes so that means its every person for themselves. That means [former House Speaker John] Boehners in a situation where he cant go to someone and say, Look, help me with this deal, Ill make sure you get some help in the election. Congress has also enacted reforms like eliminating earmarks that have reduced its own ability to achieve compromise and pass legislation. Congressional leaders are far less able to corral votes than in the past. And so despite the widespread belief in an all-powerful establishment the political system is increasingly out of control, creating a negative feedback loop. People blame dysfunction on the establishment and call for more reform. The reform further weakens the ability of parties and party leaders and increases dysfunction and chaos. And public outrage grows, leading to calls for more reform. Parties make it possible for politicians to deliver on the promises they make during campaigns. But they also can shape those promises and keep them from getting out of touch with reality. Trumps promise to build a wall and make Mexico pay for it would have been one of the countless things a strong party would have pointed to as evidence Trump was not a serious candidate for president. But now that he is in office, his supporters are likely to be even more disillusioned and angry if the promise isnt fulfilled. But Trump, or any politician who doesnt fulfill an outlandish promise, can always blame the establishment, and many voters will eagerly agree. You go from the deficiencies in the nomination system, to the myths that then dominate modern elections, to a government that then doesnt deliver on those myths, and then a public that gets more and more unhappy about government, said Elaine Kamarck of the Brookings Institution. That}s not the case when you have powerful intermediaries. What you have is you have presidents, governors coming in without the institutional backing of a political party. Surprise, surprise, they cant get anything done. When politicians cant get anything done, it breeds distrust. It breeds anger, Kamarck said. The weakening of parties has meant the weakening of government. People dont like that, but very few people see the connection between political parties and government. Kamarck, one of the leading experts on primary politics and an influential DNC member, has proposed a new pre-primary process through which a party could signal to its members who it finds acceptable and who is not. That could take place through a convention that precedes the primary elections, or through a requirement that party elders make endorsements before voters start going to the polls. The party could even decide that candidates who did not receive a certain percentage of a pre-primary convention vote would not be on the ballot. Of course, the objection many raise is that this would be undemocratic. But parties are private organizations. They arent obligated by the Constitution or the law to run their candidate selection process a certain way. **** Rauch argues that a less directly democratic system, with stronger parties, would represent more people rather than less. The paradox of populism [is] if you have an election, not everyone turns up, and the factions that do turn up are gonna be the most motivated, or theyre gonna be the elites, or theyre gonna be the people who know how to manipulate the system, Rauch said. And so whats really gonna happen is youre gonna get narrow factions which are going to predominate. You have to have a hybrid system. Yes, you have to have elections and direct participation. Thats essential to provide a check on government and a reality test. But you also need people who are there for the long term. You need experts and professionals, career politicians who will be around, who will be able to look at all this, and look around and say OK, who is not represented in that primary election? he said. The United States Constitution created a hybrid system. The House of Representatives was directly democratic, with voters picking candidates every two years. But the Senate was much more removed from the people. At the founding, senators were elected by state legislatures, not voters. This changed in 1913 with the ratification of the 17th amendment. But senators still have longer terms to insulate them from the passions of the moment. This is intended to give them the ability to do things sometimes that may not be popular, but which might be needed, in the recognition that many voters have short memories. And as Levitsky and Ziblatt explain in How Democracies Die, the Electoral College was originally designed to be a buffer between the will of the people and the presidency. But the rise of political parties in the early 1800s transferred the responsibility to keep dangerous figures out of the White House from the Electoral College to the parties. In other words, the American Constitution created a rigged system in a positive sense. It was rigged to prevent too much power from being concentrated in the hands of one person, and it was also rigged to make sure the people did not have too much say over who would govern them. Too often, Americans discuss the political system microscopically. Trumps criticism of delegates ignored that whoever emerged from the party primary would have to compete in the general election, where the peoples votes filtered through an electoral college that distributed power among all 50 states evenly were the final word. A system in which parties put presidential hopefuls through a rigorous process, where party insiders with political expertise were given a significant place of influence, would be a way for a party to then submit a candidate to the whole nation. Party leaders will always have vastly more information about candidates their strengths and flaws, their ability to govern and work with Congress, their backing among various interest groups and coalitions than voters and caucus goers do, Seth Masket, chair of the political science department at the University of Denver, wrote in the New York Times recently. That information is useful, even vital, to the task of picking a good nominee. Maskets study of political reforms in a number of states has shown that reforms that have weakened parties and given voters more input have counterintuitively made politics more opaque and less democratic. Each attempt to drive parties from the political sphere exacts a price on democracy, decreasing transparency, accountability, and other things we claim to hold important in our governing systems, he wrote in his book, The Inevitable Party: Why Attempts to Kill the Party System Fail and How They Weaken Democracy. Parties, in fact, fill a gap between the realm of what there is to know about politics and what is actually known by voters. We know from a great deal of public opinion research that most voters do not follow politics closely, he wrote. People are busy, they have jobs, responsibilities, children, hobbies, health concerns and the like. And for many, voting is not a big enough reward for all the work required to become truly expert about politics. They have little idea which legislator voted for which bill, calling into question the whole concept of elections as moments of accountability, Masket wrote. Parties, however, make such accountability possible. They serve as a convenient cue for voters, allowing them to make informed voting decisions. Parties, Masket wrote, are the greatest instruments for organizing elections, turning out voters, running government, and developing policy ideas and seeing them enacted that weve ever produced. In December, Perez told Yahoo News that one of his two biggest goals for the 2020 election was that voters and candidates felt the Democratic primary was fair. What would that mean? Nobody had a thumb on the scale, he said. In other words, Perez wants the party to be secondary, maybe even an afterthought, to how the party decides what ideas and policies it stands for. Voters will be the primary driver. The problem with this is that it makes it very hard for politicians to take unpopular stands that might be necessary in the long run, such as endorsing a need for painful fiscal reforms. If the 2020 Democratic primary goes off the tracks, Perez and others in the Democratic Party will likely say that the voters expressed their will, and theres nothing a party can do. But history shows thats not the case. _____ Read more from Yahoo News: Brasilia (AFP) - Aecio Neves, a Brazilian senator who narrowly lost the 2014 presidential election, will face trial for corruption and obstruction of justice, Brazil's top court decided Tuesday. A panel of Supreme Court justices ruled Neves would be tried for allegedly accepting two million reais ($588,000) from meat industry tycoon Joesley Batista. The money was allegedly paid in return for favorable legislation in Congress. Neves, from the center-right Brazilian Social Democratic Party (PSDB), denies the charges, which stem from Batista's plea deal with prosecutors. He is also charged with trying to hinder the anti-graft probe. His trial means that anti-graft charges have now successfully been brought against leading figures from all three major parties in Brazil. Ex-president Luiz Inacio Lula da Silva, who founded the Workers' Party, was jailed this month after being convicted of accepting an apartment as a bribe. Several major figures from the center-right PMDB have also been prosecuted, while President Michel Temer, who is a member of it, faces two corruption charges. Neves, narrowly beaten to the presidency by Dilma Rousseff from the Workers' Party, said he and his sister and cousin would be cleared. "I did nothing wrong. My priority is to present the court with all the facts that show the complete correctness of my and my relatives' actions," he said in a statement. Grandson of a president and a former governor of Minas Gerais state, Neves has long been a heavyweight in Brazilian politics and a leader of opposition to the Workers' Party. Brazilian politicians have been under heavy fire from an unprecedented anti-graft campaign led by prosecutors with so-called operation "Car Wash," which over the last four years has uncovered systemic bribery and embezzlement throughout the political and business elite. Today, Prince Harry made his debut speech as Commonwealth Youth Ambassador and took it as an opportunity to thank his bride-to-be, Meghan Markle, for her continued support. At the Commonwealth Youth Forum, the 33-year-old told the audience that he is incredibly grateful that the woman Im about to marry will soon join him in his newfound role. And the crowd couldnt resist a congratulatory cheer, which led Prince Harry to give a bashful grin. In his debut speech as Commonwealth Youth Ambassador, Prince Harry revealed that he is incredibly grateful for Meghan Markles support [Photo: Getty] Though things may have proven a little awkward, as the royal took a seat by Theresa May at the Queen Elizabeth II Conference Centre just days after it was announced that the Prime Minister is not invited to the royal wedding. In a decision to rule out all political leaders, Donald Trump and Barack Obama have also eliminated from the May 19 guest list. Her Majesty The Queen, Head of the Commonwealth, has appointed Prince Harry as a Commonwealth Youth Ambassador. pic.twitter.com/iCD1z9aSuz Kensington Palace (@KensingtonRoyal) April 16, 2018 Prince Harrys new role as Commonwealth Youth Ambassador was announced by Kensington Palace last week and is designed to highlight and support the work and aspirations of young people across the Commonwealth, on both UK engagements and overseas tours to Commonwealth countries. Theresa May has not been invited to Prince Harry and Meghan Markles May 19 wedding [Photo: Getty] In his debut speech, Prince Harry added: In my new role, I will work to support The Queen, my father The Prince of Wales, and my brother William, all of whom know that young people are the answer to the challenges of today. On Wednesday, Meghan will join Harry at a Commonwealth Youth Forum Reception for the first time. Though its hardly surprising, as the soon-to-be newlyweds expressed an interest in the Commonwealth during their engagement interview. As a consequence, the pair are rumoured to be planning a Commonwealth tour set to take place after the royal wedding. Story continues Once theyve tied the knot, the couple are also expected to take on further charity work together. Again, the news is not surprising as the pair have asked attendees to forgo wedding gifts at their nuptials and have instead given them a list of charities to donate to. For instance, Harry and Meghan have listed the likes of homeless charity, Crisis and social-welfare organisation, Wilderness Foundation UK, as companies close to their hearts. Follow us on Instagram, Facebook, and Twitter for nonstop inspiration delivered fresh to your feed, every day. Read more from Yahoo Style UK: 10 things Meghan Markle wont be allowed to do once shes a fully-fledged royal From Ralph and Russo to Alexander McQueen: The names tipped to design Meghan Markles wedding dress Prince Harry and Meghan Markles royal wedding: The date, details and latest news Los Angeles (AFP) - A real estate tycoon and accused murderer whose life story inspired an HBO documentary series appeared in a Los Angeles court at a hearing that will decide whether he will stand trial. Flashing autopsy photos and calling witnesses and experts to the stand, prosecutors argued that Robert Durst, 75, murdered his friend Susan Berman in 2000 because she was set to be questioned by New York police over the disappearance of his wife Kathleen in 1982. Durst remained expressionless through the proceedings on Monday as Karen Minutello, a prosecution witness who managed a building Durst lived in with his late wife, testified Kathleen "was afraid of him" and wanted to move out. The prosecution also presented testimony from Mark Fajardo, a former Los Angeles County coroner, who said he reviewed Berman's autopsy and believed she was shot in the back of the head from no more than an inch away, despite the original report stating the distance could not be determined. Nathan Chavin, a long-time friend of both Durst and Berman, testified in February 2017 that he discussed the latter's death at a 2014 dinner with Durst. Durst invited Chavin to eat because, according to Chavin, he wanted to discuss Berman as well as the fate of his first wife. Durst said he "had no choice" but to kill Berman, Chavin told Los Angeles Superior Court Judge Mark Windham. "'I had to. It was her or me. I had no choice,'" Chavin told the judge, quoting Durst. Durst was arrested in March 2015 in a New Orleans hotel room hours before the final episode of the six-part HBO documentary "The Jinx: The life and Deaths of Robert Durst." The series delved into the disappearance of his wife as well as the killing of Berman and the 2001 death of a neighbor in Texas who was found dismembered. At the time, Durst was living under an assumed name in Texas and pretended to be a mute woman, prosecutors said. He claimed self-defense and was acquitted after a high-profile trial. Story continues In the HBO documentary's explosive finale, Durst is heard muttering to himself, "What the hell did I do? Killed them all, of course," apparently unaware that a wireless microphone remained switched on while he used the bathroom. "You're caught," he said at another point. "What a disaster." Durst's preliminary hearing is set to resume Tuesday. Ted Galen Carpenter Security, Middle East For one, it is a flagrant violation of the U.S. Constitution. Here Are All the Reasons Striking Syria Was a Bad Idea The air and missile strikes that the United States and its British and French allies launched against Syrian government targets are reprehensible for so many reasons. First, Washingtons action is a flagrant violation of the U.S. Constitution. Except in cases of responding to an attack on the United States, that document gives Congress, not the president, the authority to decide whether to involve the republic in combat. Punishing a foreign regime for an alleged outrage against its own citizens does not qualify, and arguments to the contrary are either disingenuous or historically illiterate. Second, there is not even certainty that Bashar al-Assads government was the guilty party for the chemical attack that triggered the Western response. As I noted in an earlier article, there are several other suspects, most notably the various rebel factions trying to oust Assad from power. Those groups, reeling from a series of military defeats, have a powerful incentive to lure Washington into deeper involvement in Syrias civil war on their side. Conversely, Assad has no incentive to provoke the United States. Third, by degrading the Syrian governments military assets with the latest attacks, the West risks enabling the largely Islamist rebel coalition to snatch victory from the jaws of defeat in the Syrian conflict. The most powerful faction in that coalition is Jabhat Fatah al-Sham (formerly the Nusra Front, Al Qaedas Syrian affiliate). Assad is assuredly a corrupt and brutal ruler, but to help empower such an Islamist successor regime is hardly in Americas best interest. Fourth, the airstrikes needlessly create new tensions in Washingtons already abrasive relationship with Russia. So far, the Kremlin has reacted with restraint, and everyone needs to hope that attitude continues. But even if Vladimir Putin refrains from escalating his countrys own military involvement in Syria (or taking action in other locales such as Georgia and Ukraine) the new cold war between Moscow and the West will deepen. Story continues Worst of all is the sanctimonious hypocrisy of the Western powers regarding their justifications for the air strikes. Trump, as well as British prime minister Theresa May and French president Emmanuel Macron, portrayed the assault on Syria as a moral imperative to deter the use of chemical weapons in the international system. Beyond that objective, they painted Assad and his government as an exceptionally vile enemy. In his address to the American people announcing the raids, President Trump charged that the Assad regime again deployed chemical weapons to slaughter innocent civilians. The new incident, Trump insisted, confirmed a pattern of chemical weapons use by that very terrible regime. The evil and despicable attack left mothers and fathers, infants and children thrashing in pain and gasping for air. These are not the actions of a man. They are crimes of a monster instead. Trump also sharply criticized Russia and Iran for their longstanding support of Assad. To Iran and to Russia, I ask: What kind of a nation wants to be associated with the mass murder of innocent men, women and children? The nations of the world can be judged by the friends they keep. No nation can succeed in the long run by promoting rogue states, brutal tyrants, and murderous dictators. The latter statement deserves a prize either for cluelessness or diamond-studded gall. The United States has never had a problem supporting rogue states, brutal tyrants and murderous dictators. Washingtons alliances with such regimes, including the Shah of Iran, Nicaraguas Somoza family, a succession of genocidal generals in Guatemala, Zaires Mobutu Sese Seko, Egypts Hosni Mubarak and the Saudi royal family (among others) provide ample evidence of chronic moral insensitivity. Daniel Larison, a columnist for the American Conservative, provides a stinging rebuke to the hypocritical moral posturing of the Western powers. Citing Trumps (apparently rhetorical) question of what kind of nation wants to be associated with the mass murder of innocent men, women, and children, Larison responds: Trump should know the answer, since he just hosted one of the chief architects of the war on Yemen that the U.S. has backed to the hilt for the last three years. Britain welcomed the Saudi crown prince earlier on, and France just hosted him in the last few days. All three have been arming and supporting the Saudis and their allies in Yemen no matter how many atrocities they commit. There may be governments that have the moral authority to lecture Syria and its allies over their atrocious conduct, but the Trump administration and our British and French allies arent among them. The Saudis and their allies have used the weapons sold to them by the United States and other Western governments to slaughter innocent Yemeni civilians by the thousands, including cluster munitions that almost every nation on earth has outlawed. If the United States and its European allies believe that attacking Assad will strike an effective blow against the future use of chemical weapons by Syria or other nations, that is a policy debate worth having. If, as is more likely, they believe that weakening Assads forces can save the rebels from imminent defeat, and that a successor regime controlled by those rebels would be better for both the Middle East and Americas security interests, that is a policy debate worth having. But they should at least spare us the moral preening and hypocritical posturing. Those three nations did not even disown Saddam Hussein for his repeated use of poison gas, throughout the 1980s, including the killing of at least five thousand of Iraqs Kurdish citizens at Halabja in 1988. And Washington has rarely attempted to restrain its menagerie of authoritarian allies from engaging in other atrocities. Indeed, as Larison notes, the United States, Britain and France are outright accomplices in Saudi Arabias current slaughter of innocents in Yemen. The Western powers need to get their own moral houses in order before lecturing Russia, Iran, and other countries. Ted Galen Carpenter, a senior fellow in defense and foreign policy studies at the Cato Institute and a contributing editor at the National Interest, is the author of ten books, the contributing editor of ten books, and the author of more than 700 articles on international affairs. Image: A U.S. Air Force B-1B Lancer bomber, being deployed to launch strikes as part of the multinational response to Syria's use of chemical weapons, is refuelled by a KC-135 tanker aircraft over an undisclosed location, April 14, 2018. U.S. Air Force/Handout Read full article On April 9, President Donald Trump sat in the Cabinet Room with his national security team, including the Joint Chiefs of Staff and the nations four-star combatant commanders, and described the raid on his lawyer Michael Cohens office and hotel room as an attack on our country. To say the least, it was an odd description in front of individuals who have spent their lives defending the country against actual attacks. And it was a vivid illustration of the challenges our senior military leaders feel in working for President Trump. Mere days later, the media published a quote from former FBI Director James Comeys book A Higher Loyalty that describes his impressions of Trump, in which Comey wrote that he had flashbacks to my earlier career as a prosecutor against the Mob. The silent circle of assent. The boss in complete control. The loyalty oaths. The us-versus-them worldview. The lying about all things, large and small, in service to some code of loyalty that put the organization above morality and above the truth. Comey reaffirmed this assessment in his interview with 20/20 that aired on April 15. As someone who spent over seven years as one of those Combatant Commanders one of a small group of 4-star officers charged with the responsibility to send young men and women into combat I often find myself wondering what it must be like to serve as a senior admiral or general in todays world. Our senior military swear an oath upon every promotion: not to the office of the President, but to the Constitution. How are they executing their oath of office today? Certainly previous presidents have manifested challenges similar to those presented today, from personal failings of character to rapid mood swings to erratic policy choices. But it is hard to remember a time where the level of unease has been so high. I hear this frequently from many senior admirals and generals still working today, and I feel their sense of extreme discomfort. That is not a good place for the republic. Story continues (A disclaimer: I am a registered independent and worked as a Combatant Commander for both President George W. Bush and Barack Obama. I respected both for their character, honesty and the evident respect they had for their military, although there were times I disagreed with policy choices each made. I was vetted for Vice President by Hillary Clinton and interviewed for a Cabinet position by then President-elect Trump at their requests. Anyone who knows me would say I am a political centrist.) In todays environment, our senior active-duty military face three significant challenges: First, they have a leadership and discipline problem with the character issues manifested in the Presidents day-to-day behavior, from an alleged payoff through Cohen to silence a porn star to deliberate misstatements about the size of the crowd that attended his inauguration. As uniformed officers who must exert discipline and demand courage, honor, commitment and truthfulness from their troops, they are challenged by the misalignment between the personal failings of the President and the standards for the force of which he is the statutory leader. A second challenge is the erratic nature of policy, much of which directly affects the armed forces. All of our senior military have immense respect for the constitutional, legal and entirely appropriate civilian oversight of the military that is the bedrock of our system. The Presidents authority as Commander in Chief will not be challenged. Full stop. But it is hard for our senior military leaders to chart a course when the destination keeps changing. A case in point would be in the lead-up to Syrian strikes, where we first saw a Trump tweet that emphatically announced Tomahawk strikes (nice and new and smart! missiles), followed by a reversal to say it could come at any moment or not at all. Trump also hated and campaigned against the Trans-Pacific Partnership (TPP), a trade agreement with enormous security implications. But recently he opened the possibility of rejoining it. Ideally, a nation would surprise our opponents tactically (not telegraphing strikes makes great sense) but have consistent strategic positions. What makes serving the Trump Administration so difficult for our senior military is the propensity to do the opposite: we are strategically inconsistent on everything from NATO (is it obsolete or a terrific partner?) to, again, Syria (is the United States getting out or staying engaged?) and the TPP (is it the worst deal ever or worth rejoining?). All of this makes military planning very, very difficult. Third and finally, our senior military are inevitably being pulled into the politics of the moment by both the media and Congress something they deeply want to avoid because it violates the very heart of the military profession in the United States. There will be constant pressure to seek statements that may be construed as political. The media will look for wedge issues between the Pentagon, Foggy Bottom and the White House, thus creating confusion about how to execute military operations as the ultimate commanders intent becomes blurred. Additionally, Congress will seek support for their preferred political positions about everything from controversial personnel policies (i.e. service by transgender individuals) to the type of new hardware that the Department of Defense purchases. This can result in senior military crossing wires with the political leadership in the White House. Senior military are also constantly testifying in front of Congress and frequently doing media interviews and so often are in the hot seat as a result. All of this distracts our military leaders, undermines their credibility with civilians and therefore weakens our security. This brings us to senior military themselves and how they react. When President Trump said in an April 3 news conference that we were getting out of Syria immediately, even up here in Boston I could have sworn I heard a distant explosion to the south. That must be Jim Mattiss head blowing up, I thought. The abrupt announcement ran counter to Secretary of Defense Mattiss long-articulated positions on the region and the recent on-the-record statements of several senior military officials. It is the sheer chaos of it all that is difficult for our generals and admirals. Militaries, for better or worse, are extremely orderly organizations. Lets face it, the Department of Defense is a world where 1.5 million people get up every morning and put on uniforms. When someone gets a new job in the military, we call it getting a set of orders. Uniformity, an orderly process, thoughtful planning, a defined hierarchy militaries thrive in such an environment. Our senior military will try hard to avoid the political maelstrom. They will decline media interviews (and we as a public are far poorer for not having clarity on decisions our military is making about significant operations); they will make only the blandest of pronouncements in public testimony (again, we lose); they will avoid giving meaningful speeches, for fear they will be publically contradicted or criticized from the White House; and they will, most unfortunately, be tempted to simply depart the service, as H.R. McMaster recently did after being removed from his position of National Security Advisor. All of this weakens our national security even further. The erosion spreads. A few weeks ago, at a public speech in a synagogue near New York City, an elderly man asked me a question in front of hundreds of people. After some inflammatory comments about the current Administration, he said: Admiral, isnt it time the military should do something about all of this? I was shocked into near silence by the potential implications of the question whether the military would override civilian control and insert itself forcefully into todays political debates. There are few certainties in this world, but heres one: I would bet my life that the U.S. military wont step into the political fray and do something in the manner this man suggested. But the fact that I was even asked such a question speaks volumes about where we are in our national discourse and disturbs me deeply. I hope our admirals and generals can keep their heads down and ensure the military does not become embroiled in domestic politics, and that Secretary Mattis can continue to run interference with wisdom and caution between the Pentagon and the White House. If he cannot, I fear a creeping politicization of our active-duty military, and therefore a diminishment of our national security. Above all, the White House must take care to avoid pulling the military into the heart of an increasingly political fray. By Daniel Trotta NEW YORK (Reuters) - Reuters won Pulitzer Prizes on Monday for international reporting and photography while the New York Times and Washington Post shared honors for exposing sexual harassment in America and detailing the U.S. investigation of Russia's involvement in the 2016 presidential election. The Pulitzers, the most prestigious awards in American journalism, recognized Reuters in international reporting for exposing the methods of police killing squads in Philippines President Rodrigo Duterte's war on drugs, and for feature photography documenting the Rohingya refugee crisis in Myanmar and Bangladesh. "In a year in which many Pulitzers were rightly devoted to U.S. domestic matters, we're proud at Reuters to shine a light on global issues of profound concern and importance," Reuters Editor-in-Chief Stephen J. Adler said. It was the first time Reuters has won two prizes in one year. In the Philippines coverage, Reuters reporters Clare Baldwin, Andrew R.C. Marshall and Manuel Mogato "demonstrated how police in the president's 'drug war' have killed with impunity and consistently been shielded from prosecution," Adler said. The coverage included a report that revealed how a police anti-drug squad on the outskirts of Manila had recorded an unusually high number of killings. Many members of the squad came from a distant place that was also Duterte's hometown, where the campaign's brutal methods originated during his time as mayor there. Asked on Monday for comment on the Pulitzer award, Duterte's spokesman Harry Roque offered his congratulations to the Filipino member of the Reuters team, but stood by a campaign he said was lawful and necessary. "Definitely, I'd have to congratulate Manuel Mogato but the fact remains that the policy of the president on the drug war is that the drug war is legitimate, intended to protect the youth from the ill effect of drugs," Roque said during a regular news briefing. Roque said the government would defend state officials involved in drug-related killings who had followed the law, but not those who had broken it. "If the killings are contrary to law and unjustified, it will cause the criminal prosecution of the policemen themselves," Roque said. ESSENTIAL ROLE The Reuters photography staff was honored for images of the violence endured by the Rohingya, a Muslim minority, as they fled Myanmar for Bangladesh. "The extraordinary photography of the mass exodus of the Rohingya people to Bangladesh demonstrates not only the human cost of conflict but also the essential role photojournalism can play in revealing it," Adler said. Reuters reporters Wa Lone and Kyaw Soe Oo have been jailed in Myanmar since Dec. 12, charged under the colonial-era Official Secrets Act, while investigating the killing of 10 Rohingya Muslim men in Rakhine state. In the United States, major media took other Pulitzers for reporting that shaped the political and cultural agenda. The New York Times and the New Yorker magazine shared the honor for public service for their reporting on sexual harassment allegations against Hollywood producer Harvey Weinstein. New York Times reporters Jodi Kantor and Megan Twohey won for their report on Weinstein, which triggered a series of similar allegations against influential men in politics, journalism and show business and gave rise to the #MeToo and #TimesUp movements that have encouraged victims to come forward. The New Yorker's Ronan Farrow was recognized for a Weinstein report that detailed the allegations of a woman who reported her accusations to New York police. Authorities have since renewed a criminal investigation of Weinstein. The Washington Post won the investigative reporting prize for breaking the story that the Alabama U.S. Senate candidate Roy Moore had a history of courting teenage girls. The Moore report came as stories of men abusing their power over women abounded, contributing to changing public attitudes. Moore, a Republican backed by President Donald Trump, had been favored to win the special election but lost to Democrat Doug Jones. The New York Times and the Washington Post shared the honor for national reporting for their coverage of the investigation into Russian involvement in the 2016 U.S. presidential election. The award was given "for deeply sourced, relentlessly reported coverage in the public interest that dramatically furthered the nation's understanding of Russian interference in the 2016 presidential election and its connections to the Trump campaign, the President-elect's transition team and his eventual administration." The Pulitzers have been awarded since 1917, after being established in the will of newspaper publisher Joseph Pulitzer. The 17-member Pulitzer board is made up of past winners and other distinguished journalists and academics. It chose the winners in 14 journalism categories plus seven that recognize fiction, drama, history, biography, poetry, general nonfiction and music. Kendrick Lamar became the first rapper to win a Pulitzer Prize, taking the music award for his album "DAMN." Reuters won a Pulitzer Prize in 2014 for international reporting by Marshall and Jason Szep on the violent persecution of the Rohingya. The Reuters photography staff also won the breaking news photography award in 2016 for photos of Middle Eastern refugees arriving in Europe. Reuters' first Pulitzer, for breaking news photography, came in 2008 for Adrees Latif's photo of a Japanese videographer fatally wounded during a street demonstration in Myanmar. (Reporting by Daniel Trotta; Additional reporting by Neil Jerome Morales in MANILA; Editing by Leslie Adler) By Radu-Sorin Marinas BUCHAREST (Reuters) - Romania's President Klaus Iohannis rejected on Monday a request by the justice minister to sack the head of the country's anti-corruption agency, the latest twist in a row over graft that has spurred large-scale street protests over the past two years. The anti-corruption prosecution agency, the DNA, has earned the praise of the European Commission for its efforts under Laura Codruta Kovesi to tackle high-level sleaze in Romania. But Justice Minister Tudorel Toader has accused Kovesi of exceeding her authority and damaging Romania's image abroad. He launched a legal bid in February to have her sacked, in a move that sparked renewed street protests by anti-graft campaigners. "(The minister's) arguments for a revocation did not convince me," Iohannis, a centrist often at odds with the leftist-led government, told reporters after his advisers had examined Toader's request. "Most of the reasons do not even meet the legal provisions," said Iohannis, who has often praised the DNA's work. Romania's judicial watchdog has also spoken out against dismissing Kovesi. Responding to the president's announcement, Toader said on his Facebook page that the government would appeal to the Constitutional Court. He did not say when it would act. DNA sent roughly 1,000 people to trial last year, Kovesi has said, including three ministers, six lawmakers and two deputy ministers. A third of the defendants were accused of committing fraud with European Union funds. At the same time, DNA prosecutors won 713 convictions, including for four lawmakers, 28 mayors and 30 managers of state institutions and companies. Some trials were years old. Investigations have shown some public works contracts are overpriced and some payments are made for fictitious works. Transparency International ranks Romania among the EU's most corrupt states and Brussels keeps its justice system under special monitoring. (Editing by Gareth Jones) Douma, the site of a suspected chemical weapons attack, has now been 'liberated' from rebels by Assad - AP Chemical weapons experts are due to arrive in Douma on Wednesday to probe the alleged poison gas attack, Russian officials said, as the US voiced fears Moscow may already have "tampered with" evidence at the site. Following weekend missile strikes on Syria by the US, France and Britain, Russia traded accusations with Western nations on Monday, dismissing as "a blatant lie" accusations that Moscow was hindering the investigation in Douma. The four nations confronted each other in tense emergency talks at the Organisation for the Prohibition of Chemical Weapons (OPCW) in The Hague as inspectors prepare for a difficult and dangerous mission. Syrian state media early Tuesday said air defence had shot down missiles over the central province of Homs, with the strikes reportedly targeting regime air bases. It was not known who carried out the attack, with Pentagon spokeswoman Heather Babb saying: "There are no US or coalition operations in that area." Israel's military declined to comment, as is its custom. Initial reports indicated that the incident may have been a false alarm and that Syrian forces may have opened fire by mistake. Syrian authorities distribute bread, vegetables and pasta to Douma residents more than a week after the attack Credit: Hassan Ammar/ AP The developments came as UK parliament geared up for its second debate on the West's missile strikes on chemical weapons facilities at the weekend. Ahead of an emergency debate called by Jeremy Corbyn has insisted on parliamentary approval for intervention, Lord Hague told BBC Radio 4's Today programme on Monday morning that the Government had quite possibly made a mistake by recalling MPs to vote on action in Syria after the chemical attack in 2013. He said: I dont subscribe to the idea that any military action makes things worse. There have been many military actions and wars that have made it worse. "But I do strongly believe that if in 2013 Parliament had given us the permission to launch limited strikes ... I do strongly believe that there would have been less Russian adventurism, less foreign intervention and fewer attacks by chemical weapons in the years since then. Story continues The weekend missile strikes by the US, Britain and France were in response to an alleged chlorine and sarin gas attack in Douma on April 7 in which 40 people were said to have been killed. OPCW director general Ahmet Uzumcu said his nine-strong, all-volunteer team had reached Damascus, but so far "the team has not yet deployed to Douma". Syrian and Russian officials had warned of "pending security issues to be worked out before any deployment could take place," Uzumcu said. Igor Kirillov, head of Russia's radiological, biological and chemical protection unit, told reporters the roads still had to be de-mined and cleared and would be tested by UN security services on Tuesday. "On Wednesday is when we plan the arrival of the OPCW experts," he added at a press conference in the Russian embassy in The Hague. Pro Assad supporters were among an anti-war demonstration outside parliament in London on Monday Credit: TOLGA AKMEN/ AFP The US ambassador to the OPCW, Ken Ward, claimed however the Russians had already visited the site and "may have tampered with it with the intent of thwarting the efforts of the OPCW fact-finding mission". The Kremlin dismissed the claims. "I can guarantee that Russia has not tampered with the site," Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov told the BBC. And the Russian ambassador to the Netherlands, Alexander Shulgin, said it was a "blatant lie" that Moscow was hampering the investigation. Instead he said it was the United States, France and Britain who were "standing in the way" of the investigation by ordering air strikes "in the blink of an eye" before the OPCW team had had a chance to do their work. The missiles that US, French and British warships fired on suspected chemical facilities Saturday constituted the biggest Western attack against the regime in the seven-year war to topple Syrian President Bashar al-Assad. The targeted sites were largely empty, and were all said to be facilities for chemical weapons storage or production. British Prime Minister Theresa May and French President Emmanuel Macron faced anger Monday from their lawmakers for conducting the air strikes with the United States. Despite polls showing scant support for the move, May said it had been her "responsibility as prime minister to make these decisions," while Macron also defended his move as part of his constitutional powers. France urged OPCW nations to boost the organisation's work so it can completely dismantle Syria's "secret" toxic weapons programme. And the United States called for a clear condemnation by the OPCW of "the Syrian government for its reign of chemical terror". A boy sits on a chair along a damaged street in Douma, which was allegedly hit with a chlorine attack Credit: ALI HASHISHO/REUTERS The trio of Western powers that carried out the strikes warned they would repeat the operation if Damascus used chemical weapons again. Regime forces have now entered Douma and declared the entire Eastern Ghouta region around it fully retaken, ending a five-year siege and reclaiming an opposition bastion on the edge of the capital. Even though the OPCW team was not allowed in, the Syrian authorities organised a tour of the town for some foreign press. It included a visit to the main hospital to which the victims of the alleged chemical attack where taken. Medical student Marwan Jaber said no chemical weapons were used on April 7. "Suffocation cases arrived as a result of the debris, dust, fire and smoke. They were given routine treatment", he said. But "strangers entered as we were in a state of chaos and spread a rumour among people there had been a chemical attack, and people became alarmed". Damascus and Moscow have vehemently denied that any chemical weapons were used in Douma and alleged instead that grim videos showing civilians foaming at the mouth after the attack were staged. Russian ambassador Shulgin repeated the accusations telling reporters in The Hague that Douma residents had not been able to produce "a single body". Despite the recent and necessary American-Franco-British airstrikes against President Assads chemical weapons infrastructure, the United States is losing in Syria and condemning its oppressed citizens and freedom fighters to lose as well. As President Trump plans to withdraw U.S. forces there, Presidents Putin of Russia, Rouhani of Iran, and Erdogan of Turkey wrapped up another summit, consolidating even more power and influence in the region at the expense of Americas allies. The order of the Middle East is at stake, our country must re-engage. America, the most powerful nation in the world, should be driving policy. Sometimes pictures speak crucially. Two photographs of powerful triumvirates in the 20th and 21st centuries cry out for a change in U.S. policy, halting our diminishing role in the world and its cost to humanity. Trending: Who Is Tammie Jo Shults? Pilot who Landed Southwest Flight Safely Hailed As a Hero In the first picture, U.S. President Franklin Delano Roosevelt, British Prime Minister Winston Churchill and Soviet Premier Joseph Stalin at Yalta anticipate victory in World War I. Roosevelt bridges the gap between Churchill and Stalin, confirming Americas leadership. GettyImages-74932574 (1) Herbert/Hulton Archive/Getty Images In the second picture, Turkeys religious zealot, Recep Tayyip Erdogan, hosts the latest summit of self-aggrandizers, holding hands with Russia's modern-day tsar Vladimir Putin and Hassan Rouhani, the public face of Iran's fundamentalist theocracy. At the last summit in Sochi, Rouhani was overjoyed that Russia, Iran and Turkey were creating a new Middle East. At this latest summit, the Iranian president lashed out at the illegal presence and interference of the United States in Syria, blaming Washington for the countrys disintegration. Never mind that Iran poured in thousands of troops and its terrorist proxy militias, led by Hezbollah, to prop up the brutal barrel-bomb dropping regime of Bashar al-Assad. Story continues Washington's absence is an appalling failure in foreign policy. It allows three autocratic governments to advance, a murderous dictatorship to survive, and the chance of democratic engagement in the region and the world to fade. With the help of the Trump administration's own National Security Strategy the situation can be amended. There are precedents. Washingtons constructive role in the 20th century began in 1905 when President Theodore Roosevelt coaxed Moscow and Tokyo into signing the Treaty of Portsmouth, ending the Russo-Japanese War. A couple of months after Yalta in mid-century, Franklin Roosevelt died, but the Marshall Plan of Harry S. Truman, Roosevelts successor, enabled post-war Europe to rebuild, including the creation of a democratic and friendly West Germany. Don't miss: Call Of Duty: Black Ops 4 Reportedly Cuts Campaign for Multiplayer Focus In the 1980s, Ronald Reagan's tough stance toward the Soviet Union led to a treaty that reduced nuclear weapons and helped bring down the Iron Curtain. In 1995, Bill Clinton witnessed the Dayton Accords among Serbia, Croatia and Bosnia Herzegovina, ending the horror of mass murder in the Balkans. 20th century America led the effort to build a better world, and nations depended on that. RTX5GD2E REUTERS/Umit Bektas In the 21st century, that crucial role has often been abdicated. Barack Obama tried to sidestep crises, naively dismissing emerging Islamic State militant group (ISIS) terrorists as a J.V. team. He threatened to bomb Syrian President Bashar al-Assad's installations because he used chemical weapons but didn't follow through. His red lines were pale, and his attempts to lead from behind were pale policy. Russia, Iran and its Shiite militias, and with their aid murderous Assad, unleashed devastating attacks on any opposition in Syria, including America's Arab and Kurdish allies. Enemies advanced destruction, chaos, and despair, and by the time Donald Trump took office, Iran was asserting itself across the Middle East, not just in Syria and Lebanon, where Hezbollah dominates the national army, but in Iraq and Yemen as well. After an Assad chemical weapons attack a year ago, Mr. Trump correctly fired 59 missiles at the Syrian air base that launched a chemical weapons massacre. Along with the British and French, he now authorized the attack with 105 Tomahawks for the gassing of civilians in Douma, a second right move. But in a war filled with atrocities, including many more chemical weapons attacks over the course of the civil war, missiles fired on two occasions are a small gesture and, with Assad and his Iranian and Russian backers poised to recapture the last remaining stronghold of the Syrian opposition, too late to ensure a moral outcome in this modern-day tragedy that cost half a million lives. Shayrat air base Syria STRINGER/AFP/Getty Images Mr. Trump is perplexingly outsourcing American policy in Syria. At the Asia Pacific Economic Cooperation summit in Vietnam last year, he bowed out of participating in the structuring of a peace agreement, yielding leadership to Russia's Putin, and he has now twice confirmed his intent to bring home American troops. In contrast, Americas National Security Strategy commits us to counter Russian subversion. It correctly identifies Irans theocracy as "the world's leading state sponsor of terrorism" and commits Washington to "neutraliz[ing] Iranian malign influence." Apparently unimpressed or unaware of that, when Mr. Trump was charged with introducing the policy, he instead highlighted Mr. Putin's gratitude for a CIA warning that enabled Moscow to capture jihadist terrorists. Most popular: Comeys Book Angers Clinton Allies Just as Much as it Infuriates Trump The Kremlin, Iran and Turkey threaten anti-Assad groups and attack Americas Arab and Kurdish allies. Russia mouthed a decision to have the Kurds at the negotiating table but withdrew its troops in Northeastern Syria so that Turkey could unleash air strikes and a ground invasion against Kurds in the region. Washingtons dream of peaceful ethnic, cultural and religious groups living in harmony in the Middle East has become a nightmare in which Moscow, Tehran and Ankara have their way. Russia has become the major power broker in the region, fortifying its naval base in Syrias Mediterranean port of Tartus and an air force base in Khmeimim, giving the Kremlin its greatest military foothold in the region. Washington must respond as the National Security Strategy suggests, reasserting its support of Arab and Kurdish allies by opposing Iran, Russia and now also Turkey. In a recent whirlwind victory lap of Turkey, Syria and Egypt, Putin revealed his intent to create client states. Moscow is bustling. Already infamous for nuclear installations, missiles and missile defense systems in Iran, Putin sought to reestablish Russia's alliance with Cairo. Having already sold S-400 surface-to-air missile batteries to Turkey and installed them in Syria, Moscow contracted to sell weapons to Egypt. In response, Cairo has granted Russia air force landing rights on Egyptian military bases. Iran, boosted by the windfall of the nuclear deal, is also bulking up. Major General Qasem Soleimani, the commander of its Quds Force, blatantly defies UN international travel sanctions. He flew to Moscow and met Mr. Putin before Russia entered the Syrian war, and he has popped up in Iraq as a military adviser to the Shiite Hashd al-Shaabi forces that together with Hezbollah have ethnically cleansed wide stretches of territory to gain Iran a corridor through Iraq, Syria and Lebanon to the Mediterranean. This not only provides a ground route for weapons to Assad and the Lebanese Iranian factotum, terrorist Hezbollah. It also positions Iran to attack Israel from short distances by land, air and sea. Once Sunni-Shia adversaries, Iran and Turkey, lusting for power, have three common aims: crush the Kurds, back Qatar in the dispute with Saudi Arabia and the UAE, and take on Israel. Mr. Erdogan, a defender of the fundamentalist Sunni Muslim Brotherhood, somehow sees himself as advancing the re-creation of the Ottoman Empire through an alliance with radical Shiite Iran. There is no morality involved. Turkey idly stood by as ISIS attacked the Kurds in Kobani, launched its ironically named "Operation Olive Branch," an incursion into northern Syria to pulverize the Kurds, and, as with the Ottoman genocide of the Armenians and Assyrians, will in partnership with Iran keep attacking the Kurdish people, who gallantly helped to defeat the Islamic State. Aware that Mr. Trump is failing the Kurds, Israel has been protecting itself by attacking arms and weapons research facilities as well as an Iranian base under construction in Syria. Though well-armed and bold, Israel is a small country. Alerted to the danger Israel and other allies confront, the U.S. should block Iran from co-opting Syria, stop the Turks from attacking the Kurds and lead negotiations that will result in a balanced resolution of the war in Syria, from which all foreign countries, including the U.S., withdraw. The National Security Strategy recognizes a need to protect American allies in the region, and Mr. Trump should do so for the Kurds, who suffered thousands of casualties to defeat ISIS and are crucial to regional balance. The U.S. should protect our Arab and Israeli allies as well. The viciously crushed Iranian people's movement is over for the time being, but the people's plight lives on, and America must support them by taking economic and political action against the kleptocratic theocracy that is suppressing them. Moscow, Tehran and Ankara must be prevented from building their new Middle East. President Trump, who is not averse to reversing himself, must reassert Washingtons commitments in region. The world needs American leadership, working toward justice and peace. Jonathan Wachtel served as Director of Communications and Spokesperson for the U.S. Mission to the United Nations. As a journalist he covered global conflicts for ABC, Fox and Worldwide Television News. Albert Wachtel, a professor at the Claremont Colleges, has written for many national journals and newspapers. He has four books out and ran for Congress in 1992. The views expressed in this article are the author's own. This article was first written by Newsweek More from Newsweek The male caller tells the dispatcher that someone is in his backyard beating on my window and I dont know whats going on. He says he cant get out of bed to see, and a woman in the background says he has no legs. Clarks grandfather, Tommy Thompson, has lost his legs to complications from diabetes, according to Clarks uncle, Curtis Gordon. Family members said it was typical for relatives to knock on the rear window so Thompson could use a remote garage door opener to let them into the house. The dispatcher advises the man to stay inside until he is contacted by police. The police confirmed Monday that the call came from within the Thompsons home. Clarks grandmother, Sequita Thompson, earlier said she was watching a video of a granddaughter dancing when she heard booms. She said she crawled to where her granddaughter was sleeping on the couch, pulled her to the floor, then crawled to her husband and told him to call 911. She said the family believes in hindsight that Clark may have been asking to be let into the house when the shooting happened. At least three new body camera videos show responding officers asking whether others have muted their microphones, a move that could spark fresh criticism of the department. The two officers who shot Clark muted their microphones several minutes after. The department now bans officers from turning off or muting cameras in most instances. Another clip shows two responding officers performing CPR on Clark after handcuffing him. Come on buddy, wake up, breathe for me, one says, before a medic arrives and says hes gone. The first body camera footage released showed officers waited more than five minutes after shooting Clark to begin administering medical aid. A spokesman who assisted Clarks family with the funeral, Adam Keigwin, was not able to immediately provide comment from the family on the new materials including the 911 call. Clarks brother, Stevante Clark, did not answer his cellphone and the voice mailbox was full. Scott Pruitt, the head of the Environmental Protection Agency, broke spending laws when he installed a $43,000 soundproof privacy phone booth in his office, the Government Accountability Office ruled Monday. Under federal law, Presidential appointees are allotted $5,000 to decorate their offices, unless Congress is notified in advance about a higher level of spending. Pruitt exceeded the allotment without notifying Congress, the GAO determined, thereby violating the Financial Services and General Government Appropriations Act and the anti-deficiency act. The EPA did not immediately respond to request for comment; the organization had said that the phone booth should not be included as part of office decorations, a claim the GAO rebutted in its report. EPAs statements place the privacy booth squarely within the meaning of furnish, as the booth equipped the office with something that EPA asserts it needed. Accordingly, section 710 [of the Financial Services and General Government Appropriations Act] applied to this obligation and EPA was required to notify the appropriations committees of its proposed obligation, Thomas Armstong, the GAOs General Counsel wrote in a letter to Democratic lawmakers on Monday. Pruitt has come under scrutiny for his extravagant spending habits in recent weeks, after reports emerged that he had subverted the White House by giving salary raises to his favorite aides which he has denied any involvement in and the cost of his travel. Last week, Democratic lawmakers sent letters to both Pruitt and President Trump with new allegations from a former aide to Pruitt, Kevin Chmielewski, who told lawmakers Pruitt purchased bulletproof vests and weapons in the name of enhanced security, and based his travel plans on incurring frequent flyer miles or visiting his home state of Oklahoma. The lawmakers requested documents from Pruitt that would confirm these allegations. The new information provided by Mr. Chmiewelski, if accurate, leaves us certain that your leadership at EPA has been fraught with numerous and repeated unethical and potentially illegal actions on a wide range of consequential matters that you and some members of your staff directed, the lawmakers wrote to Pruitt. Senators on Tuesday accused the Trump administration of handing a blank check to Saudi Arabia in its 3-year-old war in Yemen despite a stalemate on the battlefield and a spiraling humanitarian crisis. Grilling top officials from the State Department, Defense Department, and U.S. Agency for International Development at a Senate Foreign Relations Committee hearing, lawmakers from both sides of the aisle expressed frustration that the administration could not articulate a clear strategy, use its influence with Riyadh to safeguard civilians, or promote a diplomatic settlement. Sen. Bob Menendez (D-N.J.), the ranking member of the committee, said the Trump administrations approach to Yemen was marked by an alarming absence of strategy. If your son was shooting off his pistol in the backyard and doing it indiscriminately and endangering the neighbors, would you give him more bullets or less? asked Rand Paul, the libertarian-leaning Republican Kentucky senator. Our strategy is to give [the Saudis] more bombs, not less. David Satterfield, the State Departments acting Middle East envoy, and Robert Karem, the Pentagons assistant secretary for international security, argued the administration helped minimize civilian casualties by sharing intelligence and logistical support with the Saudis and pressuring them to allow in humanitarian supplies. We will do all in our power to assure humanitarian and commercial needs are met in Yemen so that this crisis, from its humanitarian standpoint, can be alleviated to the maximum extent possible, Satterfield said. Sen. Ben Cardin (D-Md.) questioned whether the Pentagon could confidently say its efforts have reduced civilian casualties, given that it is not able to provide numbers to back up that claim. The proof is in the results, and we dont know whether the results are there or not, he said. This is the U.S. reputation on the line, and we expect you to know if you report something. If you cant report it, fine. But dont make statements that you cant back up. Story continues Four times, Sen. Todd Young (R-Ind.) asked Satterfield if U.S. support for the coalition was conditional on it not attacking Yemens ports, which are key to delivering assistance. Four times, Satterfield dodged the answer, in a heated exchange. Senator, you are posing, with all due respect, a hypothetical. We would have to see the circumstances in order to give a response to that question, Satterfield said. So its not conditional, Young said. Between March 2015, when the Saudi-led coalition launched its campaign, and March of this year, the Saudi-led coalition has carried out 16,847 air raids, or an average of 15 airstrikes a day, according to the Yemen Data Project. The Office of the U.N. High Commissioner for Human Rights assessed that Saudi-led airstrikes were responsible for 61 percent of the civilian death toll since the start of the conflict. Administration officials at the hearing painted the conflict as a proxy war between Saudi Arabia and its regional archrival, Iran, which backs the Houthi rebels who control much of the western part of the country, including its capital, Sanaa. Yemen has become a testbed for Irans malign activities, Karem said. He cited the 13 ballistic and other long-range missiles the Houthis launched at Riyadh in the past month as one example. The United States believes Iran supplied the Houthis with the missiles. Sen. Bob Corker (R-Tenn.), the chairman of the committee, acknowledged the threat faced by Saudi Arabia and its allies from Iranian-backed Houthi rebels but said he had concerns about how the Gulf coalition was carrying out its military campaign. Of course, Saudi Arabia is a longtime U.S. partner, but partners must be candid with each other, Corker said, adding that he has raised his concerns about the air war with Saudi officials, including the crown prince. International aid agencies say the humanitarian situation in Yemen is deteriorating by the day and that the United States should use its influence with Saudi Arabia to ease the crisis. Aid groups that do work in Yemen say more than 8 million people on the brink of famine, more than a million people have contracted cholera, and more than 1,300 cases of diphtheria have been reported. With lawmakers losing patience, the Senate Foreign Relations Committee is considering a bipartisan bill that aims to check the administrations unfettered support for the Saudi-led campaign and exert pressure on Riyadh to ease the humanitarian crisis and find a diplomatic solution. The bill requires the State Department to regularly certify that Saudi Arabia is taking steps to end the Yemen civil war, alleviate the humanitarian crisis, and demonstrate it is reducing the risk of civilian casualties in its bombing campaign. Right now, the status quo is there is no legal requirement for the administration to engage Congress on Yemen, says a Democratic Senate aide involved with the bill. The committee has yet to formally debate and vote on the bill, but it could come up for discussion this month, aides say. The bill, sponsored by Young and Sen. Jeanne Shaheen (D-N.H.), has won an endorsement from additional senators, including Sen. Chris Coons (D-Del.). But its unclear if the bill will win majority support on the committee. Some Democrats and aid groups would like to see tougher language to keep the pressure on the Saudis, while Republicans are wary of any action that ties the hands of the administration or possibly undercuts the Saudi-led coalitions contest with Iranian proxies. With a couple of small changes, [the bill] could be game-changing in a positive way, says Scott Paul, a Yemen expert with Oxfam. Seven aid groups including Oxfam, Save the Children, and Mercy Corps wrote a letter to Senate Foreign Relations Committee members urging them to strengthen the bill by forcing the State Department to report on detailed and independently verifiable issues, according to the document, which was obtained by Foreign Policy. The signatories argue the bill should focus on steps to lift the blockade on key ports for shipments of humanitarian and commercial goods; eliminate processes that are stalling shipments; open commercial air travel to Sanaa; and take concrete steps to broker a political settlement in coordination with the United Nations. Last month, lawmakers debated another bill that would have completely halted U.S. military support for the Saudi campaign. The bill failed in the senate but received 44 votes in support and forced the White House to undertake a concerted lobbying effort to defeat it. If the administration doesnt make a coherent case to Congress about its strategy, such a bill could garner even more support the next time around, Menendez said during the hearing. Absent a compelling articulation of how continued U.S. military support to the coalition is leveraging movement towards a political track to negotiate an end to the war, it is reasonable to expect that the next vote on U.S. military support may have a different outcome, he said. Organizers of the World Surf League have delayed an event in Australia by 48 hours after two shark attacks, insisting the competitors safety remains paramount. A statement was released early on Tuesday morning as the WSL continued to put the event at the Margaret River Pro on hold following the double attack on Monday. A first man, Alejandro Travaglini, managed to bodysurf back to the beach with his leg bloodied after being mauled by a four-meter long shark off Gracetown on Monday morning, according to SBS News. Trending: Hawaii's Physician-Assisted Suicide is a Fatal Mistake | Opinion The West Australian names the second victim as Jason Longgrass from Denmark, and GWN7 News published photos of the 41-year-old being treated at Cobblestones beach, just hours after the first attack. Images also showed the puncture marks the sharks jaws had made on his surfboard. According to reports, Mr. Longgrass said he had been unaware the beach was closed, and he described the shark as being four meters long. Mr. Longgrass's close call came hours after Mr Travaglini had to bodysurf his way back to shore after being attacked. The 37-year-old father-of-two fought off the shark before it returned and dragged him underwater, according to the Western Australian. Mr. Travaglinis friends used rope from the surfboard as a tourniquet and gave him first aid before emergency services arrived. He was flown to Royal Perth Hospital and is said to be in a stable condition after undergoing surgery. These incidents forced organizers of the WSL to temporarily suspend the Margaret River Pro. Don't miss: 'Thank Kevin Hart for That': Dwyane Wade Rolls Back the Years After Trash Talk We have actioned our well-established safety protocols and are gathering all the latest information to determine next steps, a statement read. We will continue to liaise with all involved, most importantly the surfers, their safety remains paramount. Todays competition has already been called off and all surfers have been advised not to surf in the area. We are constantly evaluating the situation and will update as soon as possible. Story continues Peter Jovic, a surf photographer, witnessed the first attack from the beach. Most popular: Could This Plastic-Eating Enzyme Save the Earth From Waste? "If anyone is familiar with the Mick Fanning moment at Jeffreys Bay a couple of years ago, it was very similar to that, where a shark pretty much popped up and ended up knocking a surfer off his board," he told ABC radio. "There was a lot more thrashing around after that, it was pretty hard to see what was going on. "The surfer who was being attacked ended up miraculously body surfing into a little wave and getting pushed in by a local at the same time, who was out there with him, and making it to shore before everyone came to his aid." Beach closures have been put in place across the Gracetown area. A surfer has been flown to a Perth hospital after a shark attack. The Margaret River Pro surf event nearby has been suspended.https://t.co/kzDXoCzc6l pic.twitter.com/2iE8Iqopjc Nine News Perth (@9NewsPerth) April 16, 2018 This article was first written by Newsweek More from Newsweek By Tatiana Jancarikova BRATISLAVA (Reuters) - Slovak Interior Minister Tomas Drucker resigned on Monday after just three weeks in office, saying he could not square public demands for the sacking of the country's top policeman with what he said was a lack of evidence against him. Tens of thousands of Slovaks have joined the country's biggest demonstrations in decades after February's killing of journalist Jan Kuciak, who had focused on corruption in business and politics. The rallies forced the resignation of long-serving prime minister Robert Fico last month, along with the entire cabinet including his long-term ally Robert Kalinak as interior minister. The three-party coalition led by Fico's Smer party formed a new cabinet in which Drucker, a political independent, took the Interior Ministry but quickly became the second chief of the department to fall over the scandal. Fico remains the leader of Smer, maintaining strong political influence from outside the cabinet. Protesters say the changes have not been deep enough and police chief Tibor Gaspar should also quit. Speakers at rallies across the EU country in recent weeks have criticised him for ineffectiveness in prosecuting corruption. Drucker said he had found no grounds to fire the police chief and had not asked him to resign. "I don't think it would be right for me to directly fire Gaspar (despite) the polarisation he's causing. If I should increase the polarisation instead of neutralising it, I have no right to remain as minister," Drucker told reporters. The former health minister said he would leave politics altogether. PRESSURE FROM BOTH SIDES President Andrej Kiska, a long-time adversary of Fico, said when appointing the new cabinet last month that he had agreed with Drucker that a change in the police leadership was needed. Gaspar has won the backing of new Prime Minister Peter Pellegrini who said on the weekend he was a top professional. "It's the minister who appoints and removes the police chief but it's not entirely up to him, the decision is usually a result of political negotiations," political analyst Martin Slosiarik said. "Robert Fico, whose Smer party has been losing voter support in past weeks, is gesturing towards his core voters who want to see him as a strong leader not bowing to pressure." Gaspar said he was surprised by Drucker's resignation and would evaluate the situation. People on the streets have demanded the police chief's removal as an assurance that Kuciak's murder will be investigated thoroughly. They see Gaspar as too close to Smer and Kalinak. Some of Kuciak's reporting dealt with deals between the government and Slovakia's biggest privately-owned security firm, whose owner is related to Gaspar. The police chief has denied any wrongdoing. No senior Slovakian politician has gone to prison for corruption in the past decade, according to Transparency International. The special prosecutor in charge of cases of alleged abuse of power among public servants and politicians personally oversaw 61 cases from 2009 to 2017 but did not press criminal charges in any. But in a case handled by another prosecutor last year, two ex-ministers were sentenced to nine and 12 years for rigging a public tender in 2007. Both remain free pending appeal. (Reporting by Tatiana Jancarikova; Writing by Jan Lopatka; Editing by Andrew Roche) Social media has emerged as a key battleground in the U.S. and Russian media campaign to promote their sharply divergent accounts of chemical weapons in Syria. The intelligence assessments presented over the weekend by the United States and France to justify missiles strikes against Syria for its alleged use of chemical weapons in a Damascus suburb relied to an unusual degree on information gleaned from open source material and social media. Russia, meanwhile, is mustering an army of internet trolls to shift blame for the chemical weapons attack. The development reflects the evolution of social media as a key source of propaganda on Syria but also as a critical source of evidence in building a case for airstrikes. I cant think of any other examples where so quickly online footage has been used as one of the main justifications for military action, says Ben Nimmo, who studies disinformation as a fellow at the Atlantic Council. The heavy reliance of President Donald Trumps administration on publicly available information marks a shift from his predecessors, which insisted on obtaining physical evidence of chemical weapons use with an established chain of custody before considering the use of force. It also highlights the difficulties Western intelligence agencies have faced in obtaining such evidence blood, hair, or soil samples from the Damascus suburb of Douma in the days following the April 7 chemical weapons attack that left nearly 50 dead and hundreds wounded. Access to the battlefield in Syria has become increasingly difficult to obtain over the past year, particularly in areas under the control of Syrian, Russian, and Iranian forces, according to diplomatic sources. In general, access has become more restrictive over the past year as the Syrian government has intensified its military campaign on the ground, one U.N. Security Council diplomat says. There is less access and less information than there used to be. Story continues That has left Western policymakers relying on open-source material to make the case for Syrian culpability. The White House hinted that it may have obtained intercepts or possibly satellite imagery documenting Syrian planning of the operation. But the administrations publicly released justification rested heavily on social media, press reports, and local and international organizations, including the World Health Organization and a local NGO whose aircraft spotters detected Mi-8 helicopters circling Douma during the attack. The U.S. conclusion, according to a White House assessment issued after the airstrikes, is largely based on a review of news sources, public reports detailing victims symptoms, and video and photographs showing two barrel bombs allegedly used in the attack. The accounts are buttressed by unspecified reliable information indicating coordination between Syrian military officials before the attack. All together, the evidence points to the regime using chlorine in its bombardment of Duma. U.S. authorities also obtained some unspecified information that points to the regime also using the nerve agent sarin, the assessment says. A separate assessment by the French government notes that it has yet to analyze any chemical samples in its laboratories: The French services analysed the testimonies, photos and videos that spontaneously appeared on specialized websites, in the press and on social media in the hours and days following the attack. Testimonies obtained by the French services were also analysed. After examining the videos and images of victims published online, they were able to conclude with a high degree of confidence that the vast majority are recent and not fabricated. In an address to the British Parliament, Prime Minister Theresa May said Russia was currently backing a wider operation to conceal the facts of what happened in Douma and cited reports that Syrian authorities have been searching evacuees from Douma to ensure samples are not being smuggled from this area. But she also acknowledged that Britains case against Syria was built on open-source reports including videos and photographs that were reviewed by British medical and scientific experts, as well as firsthand accounts by NGOs and aid workers. The World Health Organization has received reports that hundreds of patients arrived at Syrian health facilities on Saturday night with signs and symptoms consistent with exposure to toxic chemicals, she said. Based on our assessment, we do not think that these reports could be falsified on this scale. These assessments, which acknowledge the limits of Western intelligence agencies knowledge, represent a departure from previous decision-making on military action in Syria, where U.S. policymakers have typically sought to obtain physical evidence of chemical weapons use before launching a retaliatory strike. When the United States last year fired 59 Tomahawk missiles at a Syrian air base in retaliation for its role in an April 4, 2017, sarin attack against the rebel-controlled town of Khan Sheikhoun, Western officials had begun to amass a wealth of evidence tying Syrian President Bashar al-Assads forces to the attack. Within days of that attack, Western operatives had obtained soil samples containing the nerve agent sarin, according to Jean Pascal Zanders, a chemical weapons expert. The British had samples of the agent itself, he says. Later that month, the French government declassified a report claiming it had also analyzed soil samples indicating that a strain of the nerve agent sarin developed by Syrian scientists had been used in the attack. Syrian victims, meanwhile, slipped across the nearby border with Turkey, where foreign doctors were able to take blood samples of those exposed to the chemical agent. U.N. inspectors subsequently confirmed that Syrian forces had attacked Khan Sheikhoun and three other towns with chemical weapons. Following the latest chemical attack, Ahmet Uzumcu, the director-general of the Organisation for the Prohibition of Chemical Weapons, deployed a fact-finding mission to Syria over the weekend to look into allegations of chemical weapons use. But Russian and Syrian authorities on Monday blocked the inspectors access to Douma, citing pending security issues. Instead, they offered to bus victims into Damascus to be interviewed by the inspectors. Syria and Russias monthslong siege of Douma has complicated the challenge of obtaining proof. Douma has been completely surrounded by the Syrian government and has been subject to intensive bombardment as part of the regime offensive since February, says Gregory Koblentz, the director of the biodefense graduate program in the Schar School of Policy and Government at George Mason University. The problem is that the territory is now occupied by the Syrian government and the crime scene is no longer secure. It doesnt lend itself to a credible investigation, he adds. Its like the criminals came back to the scene of the crime and they can do whatever they want with the evidence before the cops show up. Still, the lack of hard physical evidence has contributed to an air of uncertainty over precisely what kind of nerve agent was used in the attack. U.S., British, and French officials claimed with confidence that Syria dropped chlorine bombs on Douma; they were less sure about the use of a nerve agent in the attack. Before the U.S. airstrikes, NBC News cited two unidentified officials claiming Washington has obtained smuggled blood and urine samples from a victim in Douma that show traces of poisoning by chlorine and a nerve agent. But the U.S. assessment, released immediately after the U.S.-led missile strikes, did not include that specific claim, citing only unspecified information indicating that sarin may have been used. U.S. Defense Secretary James Mattis, meanwhile, voiced uncertainty during his Friday press briefing over the use of sarin, saying, We are not clear on that yet. Were very confident that chlorine was used, he added. We are not ruling out sarin right now. The Trump administrations willingness to embrace the allegations of chemical weapons use contrasts sharply to that of President Barack Obamas administration, according to Francois Heisbourg, a French security expert who frequently advises the French government on security matters. The Obama White House, Heisbourg says, had initially expressed deep caution after French officials shared the results of blood, hair, and urine samples collected by French reporters. The administration at the time insisted on establishing the chain of custody of such samples, something that was virtually impossible without on-the-ground inspections by international inspectors. Obama, Heisbourg says, was reluctant to cross the red line he had previously drawn in threatening a military response to the use of toxic agents. We literally had to shove the samples in the face of the Americans, he adds. The response from Washington was, No, we need more proof. But the proof was there. This time around, if the Russian or Syrian authorities cleaned up the crime scene, the inspectors should be able to detect tampering and report it, according to Heisbourg. Will everybody accept it? Of course not, he says. The Russians can pretend that this was done by a band of Swedish clowns, and some people will believe it. 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. By Mark Makela PHILADELPHIA (Reuters) - An engine on a Dallas-bound Southwest Airlines flight with 149 people aboard apparently exploded on Tuesday, forcing an emergency landing in Philadelphia as one passenger was killed and another one was nearly sucked out a window of the plane, the airline and federal officials said. The fatality on the flight from New York was the first in a U.S. commercial aviation accident since 2009, according to National Transportation Safety Board (NTSB) statistics. After an engine on the plane's left side blew, it threw off shrapnel, shattering a window and causing cabin depressurization that nearly pulled out a female passenger, according to witness accounts and local news media reports. "We have a part of the aircraft missing, so we're going to need to slow down a bit," the plane's captain, Tammy Jo Shults told air traffic controllers in audio released on NBC News. Asked by a controller if the jet was on fire, Shults responds it was not but added, "They said there is a hole and someone went out." "A woman was partially, was drawn out of the plane and pulled back in by other passengers," Todd Bauer, whose daughter was on the flight, told NBC's affiliate in Philadelphia. NTSB Chairman Robert Sumwalt told a news briefing in Washington that one person had been killed, but declined to elaborate. The fatality was a passenger, according to Southwest Chairman and Chief Executive Officer Gary Kelly. NO FIRE "The entire Southwest Airlines Family is devastated and extends its deepest, heartfelt sympathy to the customers, employees, family members and loved ones affected by this tragic event," Southwest said in a statement. Flight 1380 had 144 passengers and five crew members, Sumwalt said. One passenger was taken to the hospital in critical condition, and seven other people were treated for minor injuries at the scene, said Philadelphia Fire Department spokeswoman Kathy Matheson. Matheson could not confirm how the passenger in critical condition sustained her injuries. Sumwalt said the NTSB believes parts came off of the engine but it has not determined if it was an "uncontained engine failure." There are protection rings around the engine to keep shrapnel from coming out. Even though we believe that there were parts coming out of this engine, it may not have been in that section of the engine that technically would qualify this as an uncontained engine failure, he said. "We don't think there was a fire at all," he told the media briefing before departing for Philadelphia. He said the NTSB sees about three or four uncontained engine failures a year, including non-U.S. carriers. 'EVERYBODY WAS GOING CRAZY' Flight 1380 was diverted to Philadelphia after crew members reported damage to an engine, the fuselage and at least one window, the Federal Aviation Administration said. "Everybody was going crazy, and yelling and screaming," passenger Marty Martinez told CNN. Martinez said objects flew out of the hole where the window had exploded, and "passengers right next to her were holding onto (the woman being pulled out). And, meanwhile, there was blood all over this man's hands. He was tending to her." Television images showed that most of the outer casing around the left engine of the Boeing Co 737-700 had ripped away and a window near the engine on the plane's left side was missing. Southwest said the aircraft had been bound for Dallas Love Field in Texas from New York's LaGuardia Airport before it diverted to Philadelphia. "All of a sudden, we heard this loud bang, rattling, it felt like one of the engines went out. The oxygen masks dropped," a passenger, Kristopher Johnson, told CNN. "It just shredded the left-side engine completely. ... It was scary." Southwest shares fell more than 3 percent after the NTSB reported the fatality, then cut losses to close down 1.1 percent at $54.27 a share on the New York Stock Exchange. Boeing said on Twitter that it was aware of the incident and was "gathering more information." The plane's engines are made by CFM International, a French-U.S. venture co-owned by Safran and General Electric, which was not immediately available for comment. (Additional reporting by Tim Hepher in Paris, Andrew Hay in New Mexico, David Shepardson in Washington, Alana Wise and Peter Szekeley in New York; Writing by Dan Whitcomb; Editing by Bill Tarrant and Jonathan Oatis) Brian Katulis, Peter Juul Security, Middle East A U.S. Navy F/A-18F Super Hornet aircraft assigned to Strike Fighter Squadron (VFA) 213 prepares to land on the flight deck of the aircraft carrier USS George H.W. Bush (CVN 77), not shown, in the Persian Gulf Oct. 3, 2014, as the ship supports operations in Iraq and Syria. President Barack Obama authorized humanitarian aid deliveries to Iraq as well as targeted airstrikes to protect U.S. personnel from extremists known as the Islamic State in Iraq and the Levant. U.S. Central Command directed the operation One night of strikes doesnt constitute a strategy to halt Syrias civil war and stabilize the country. Strikes without Strategy in Syria, Years in the Making President Donald Trumps targeted airstrikes with France and the United Kingdom against the Assad regimes chemical-weapons capabilities came a little more than a week after Trump made clear his intention to wash his hands of the conflict by withdrawing all U.S. troops from northeastern Syria. The strikes were aimed at deterring the Syrian governments appalling use of chemical weapons against its own people. But the action over the weekend did not constitute a strategy to halt the fighting in Syria and alleviate the humanitarian catastrophe produced by the countrys civil war. The lack of a clear and realistic U.S. policy on Syria didnt start with Trump. Since the start of Syrias civil war in March 2011, America has lacked the will and capacity to shape the trajectory of events in Syria in any meaningful way. In the first three years of the conflict, the Obama administration tried to stay above the fray and limit Americas direct involvement. With the rise of the Islamic State in the summer of 2014, however, the Obama administration shifted toward a counterterrorism strategy in parts of Syria overrun by either the Islamic State or Al Qaeda. While the Defense Department followed through on the anti-Islamic State strategy drawn up by the Obama administration, the Trump administrations Syria policy became even more incoherent. In the opening months of his presidency, Trump signaled a possible grand counterterrorism bargain with Assads patron in Moscow. But his unilateral action a year ago of launching cruise missiles against a Syrian air base to retaliate for a sarin nerve agent attack that left dozens dead was an early sign of the limits on the possibilities of U.S.-Russia cooperation in Syria. The center of gravity for Trumps approach to Syria has centered on the anti-Islamic State campaign. Raqqa fell in October 2017, creating important questions regarding the future of Americas role in Syria after the fall of the Islamic State. Story continues The Trump administration has yet to answer key questions about the next phase of U.S. policy in Syria. Trumps first Secretary of State, Rex Tillerson, attempted to provide some answers in a January 2018 speech, outlining a board set of goals to be pursued by a small but enduring American military presence on the ground in northeastern Syria. Gen. Joseph Votel, the head of U.S. Central Command, echoed Tillerson in remarks to reporters who accompanied him on a February visit to liberated Raqqa. But at the end of March, President Trump overruled the course of action favored by his foreign-policy team, telling an Ohio rally that American troops would be coming out of Syria very soon, and the United States would let the other people take care of it now. Though Trump apparently wanted to pull American forces out of Syria within forty-eight hours, Secretary of Defense Jim Mattis reportedly convinced the president to give the military another six months to eliminate the remainder of the Islamic State. This weekends strike lays bare the incoherence that defines the Trump administrations approach to Syria. In the span of less than four months, the United States went from an enduring military presence in northeastern Syria to withdrawal in six months to strikes against the Assad regime. Syrias civil war is emblematic of the problems plaguing todays Middle Easta deadly internal conflict between multiple factions has given rise to many terrorist networks and served as a vortex that has sucked in regional and global powers. For years, the United States has tried to contain the damage and limit risks to its interests by Syrias conflictwithout success. The flood of millions of refugees into Europe, combined with the reemergence of the politics of fear in America after the rise of the Islamic State, have had a direct impact on America. Resolving Syrias conflict is in Americas national interestand this will require an integrated approach that elevates diplomacy, and not just military moves. One night of strikes doesnt constitute a strategy to halt Syrias civil war and stabilize the country. The military strikes this weekend should serve as a wakeup call on the need for a new debate about Americas overall role in resolving the conflict in Syria. Brian Katulis is a senior fellow at the Center for American Progress. Peter Juul is a senior policy analyst for National Security Policy at the Center. Image: A U.S. Navy F/A-18F Super Hornet aircraft assigned to Strike Fighter Squadron (VFA) 213 prepares to land on the flight deck of the aircraft carrier USS George H.W. Bush (CVN 77), not shown, in the Persian Gulf Oct. 3, 2014, as the ship supports operations in Iraq and Syria. President Barack Obama authorized humanitarian aid deliveries to Iraq as well as targeted airstrikes to protect U.S. personnel from extremists known as the Islamic State in Iraq and the Levant. U.S. Central Command directed the operations. Flickr / U.S. Department of Defense Read full article Caracas (AFP) - Venezuela's opposition-controlled National Assembly on Tuesday approved plans to prosecute President Nicolas Maduro for corruption, in a non-binding yet symbolic vote by a legislature which is effectively powerless. During the session, lawmakers voted to impeach Maduro over his alleged involvement in the vast corruption scandal centering on the Brazilian construction giant Odebrecht that has engulfed much of Latin America. Journalists were unable to attend the session after being blocked by the military police. "There are sufficient grounds to take this legal process forward over acts of corruption," read the resolution, which was approved by 105 deputies but rejected by the two lawmakers representing the regime. The vote however only has symbolic value as the Supreme Court, which is loyal to Maduro, has systematically blocked all of the National Assembly's efforts to prosecute the president or his government. The opposition won a historic victory in legislative elections in late 2015, taking 112 of the National Assembly's 167 seats. However it has never been able to exercise any real power, especially after Maduro installed a powerful new body, the Constituent Assembly, in July 2017. The Assembly's 545 seats are filled with Maduro allies and has unlimited powers to dissolve the National Assembly or amend laws. On Twitter, Venezuela's top prosecutor Tarek William Saab denounced the National Assembly's vote as "a farcical and immoral act," saying it lacked any "legitimacy." Saab's predecessor, Luisa Ortega Diaz said last year that she had proof implicating Maduro and his close allies in the Odebrecht scandal, prompting a major government backlash and forcing her to flee the country in August. Last month, Brazil's Estado newspaper said Maduro had awarded Odebrecht almost $4 billion for public works in exchange for donations to his 2013 campaign, citing documents in the possession of Brazilian and Venezuelan prosecutors. Gripped for months by its worst political and economic crisis in decades, Venezuela is becoming increasingly isolated on the international stage, with Maduro facing mounting criticism over his authoritarian rule. Damascus (AFP) - Syrian state media on Tuesday retracted reports of an overnight missile attack on the central province of Homs, saying a "false alarm" had activated its air defences. "Last night, a false alarm that Syrian air space had been penetrated triggered the blowing of air defence sirens and the firing of several missiles," a military source told state news agency SANA. "There was no external attack on Syria," the source added. In the early hours of Tuesday, Syrian state media reported that air defence systems had shot down missiles over Homs province. It branded the incident an "aggression" but did not name a specific country. Big explosions were heard overnight near Shayrat air base, southeast of Homs city, and near Damascus where two other air bases are located, the Syrian Observatory for Human Rights reported. Syrian military positions in Homs province have been bombed twice in just over a week. On Saturday, a volley of American, British, and French missiles slammed Syrian military positions in Homs province and around Damascus. And on April 9, Syria accused Israel of striking the T-4 air base in Homs. Both the US and Israel appeared to deny involvement in Monday night's incident. An Israeli military spokesman said he was "not aware" of the incident and US defence spokeswoman Heather Babb said there were no American operations in the area. Damascus (Syria) (AFP) - Syrian air defence shot down missiles over the central province of Homs, the state news agency said Tuesday, with the strikes reportedly targeting regime air bases. The news agency did not give further details and it was unclear who was behind the attack, which Syrian state television branded as an "aggression". Big explosions were heard near Al Shayrat Air base, southeast of the city of Homs, and in eastern Qalamoun near Damascus where two other air bases are located, the Syrian Observatory for Human rights reported. Observatory chief Rami Abdel Rahman said missiles did not hit any of the air bases. Following reports of an Israeli strike, an Israeli military spokesman said: "I'm not aware of such an incident." In Washington, Pentagon spokeswoman Heather Babb said: "There are no US or coalition operations in that area." Shayrat air base was targeted by US Tomahawk missiles in April last year in a strike ordered by President Donald Trump in retaliation for a suspected chemical attack on the rebel-held town of Khan Sheikhun in Idlib. According to the Pentagon, US intelligence had established that the base was the launchpad for the alleged chemical attack. AMMAN (Reuters) - Syrian anti-aircraft defenses shot down missiles fired at the Syrian air base of Shayrat in Homs province late on Monday and another base northeast of the capital, Damascus, Syria's state television and pro-Iranian Hezbollah media said. State television showed pictures of a missile that was shot in the air above the air base only days after a U.S., British and French attack on Syrian targets in retaliation for a suspected chemical attack on the city of Douma on the outskirts of Damascus. State television did not mention three missiles that were fired at Dumair military airport, northeast of Damascus, that pro-Iranian Hezbollah's media service reported were intercepted by Syrian air defenses. Opposition sources say Dumair airport is a major air base used in a large-scale military campaign waged by the Syrian army with Russian firepower that regained eastern Ghouta, a rebel enclave on the outskirts of Damascus. A Pentagon spokesman said there was no U.S. military activity in that area at this time. Asked about the missile attack, an Israeli military spokesman said: "We don't comment on such reports." Shayrat air base was targeted last year in a U.S. cruise missile attack in response to a chemical attack that killed at least 70 people, including children, on the rebel-held town of Khan Sheikhoun. Israel has struck Syrian army locations many times in the course of the conflict, hitting convoys and bases of Iranian-backed militias that fight alongside Syrian President Bashar al- Assad's forces. Israel has long said Iran was expanding its influence in a belt of territory that stretches from the Iraqi border to the Lebanese border, where Israel says Iran supplies Hezbollah with arms. Hezbollah and other Iranian-backed militias have a large military presence in Syria and are well entrenched in central and eastern areas near the Iraqi border. Deputy Hezbollah leader Sheikh Naim Qassem told pro-Syrian government television channel al Maydeen he expected a reaction to the death of at least seven Iranian military personnel during a missile strike earlier this month on the T-4 airfield near Homs, which Iran blamed on Israel The deliberate Israeli slaying of Iranians in the T4 base will have a response but we dont know its nature or its details, Qassem said in the television interview. The heavily armed and Tehran-backed Shiite movement has been a vital military ally of President Bashar al-Assad in the seven-year-old Syrian war. Hezbollah, which last fought a major war with Israel in 2006, has however said it would not open a new front against its arch-foe from Lebanon. Qassem said the powerful militia did not fight in all the main battles in Syria but was present in any area that was needed. He did not elaborate. Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu said after the U.S., British, and French strikes in Syria his country will continue "to move against Iran in Syria." (Reporting by Suleiman Al-Khalidi in Amman; Additional reporting by Nayera Abdullah in Cairo, Yara Bayoumy in Washington and Maayan Lubell in Jerusalem; Editing by Leslie Adler, Peter Cooney and Michael Perry) LONDON (Reuters) - Iran will soon resume direct flights from Tehran to Erbil, a city in Iraq's Kurdistan, an Iranian official said on Tuesday, almost six months after the Baghdad government imposed an air ban on the region in retaliation for an independence vote. Flights will start again on April 27, Morteza Ebadi, the Iranian consul general in Erbil, was quoted as saying by the news agency ISNA. Foreign airlines suspended flights to Erbil and Sulaimaniya in the region in September 2017, obeying a notice from the Baghdad government, which controls Iraqi air space. Ebadi said talks were under way to resume flight to Sulaimaniya as well. Iraqs Kurds overwhelmingly backed independence in the September referendum, defying neighbouring countries, which fear the vote could lead to renewed conflict in the region. Iran re-opened a few border crossings with Iraqi Kurdistan in October and January, which it had closed after the referendum at the request of Baghdad. Iran has its own Kurdish minority and opposes independence for Iraqi Kurds. (Reporting by Bozorgmehr Sharafedin, editing by Larry King) By Hasmik Mkrtchyan YEREVAN (Reuters) - Tens of thousands of demonstrators rallied in the centre of the Armenian capital on Tuesday to protest as parliament voted to allow former president Serzh Sarksyan to become prime minister in the former Soviet republic. Sarksyan was president from 2008 and demonstrators said he was switching jobs but clinging to power. Under a revised constitution approved by referendum in 2015, the prime minister will hold power while the presidency becomes largely ceremonial. Sarksyan's ally Armen Sarkissian was sworn in as president last week after being elected by parliament and in March Sarksyan said he would become prime minister to allow him to share the benefit of his experience. "I have enough influence and power to make the executive and legislative branches of power work effectively," Sarksyan told parliament on Tuesday. Parliament voted 77 to 17 in favour of his appointment. Armenia seceded from the Soviet Union in 1991 but remains dependent on Russia for aid and investment. Many Armenians accuse the government of corruption and mishandling an economy that has struggled to overcome the legacy of central planning. The protesters massed in the main square and surrounded or blocked entrances to governments buildings and organised sit-ins. Local media said protests were also underway in Armenia's two other big cities - Gyumri and Vanadzor. Police warned demonstrators to disperse or face tear gas. On Monday, dozens were injured in scuffles with police and around 80 protesters were arrested, police said. Opposition activists also held rallies in recent weeks to protest Sarksyan's campaign to become prime minister and thousands blocked the centre of the capital Yerevan. "I am declaring a start of a peaceful, velvet revolution in Armenia," opposition MP Nikol Pashinyan told protesters in central Yerevan, many of whom were young people with no affiliation to a political party. (Writing by Margarita Antidze; Editing by Matthew Mpoke Bigg) Paris, TX (75460) Today Light rain this morning with thunderstorms developing for the afternoon. High 79F. Winds light and variable. Chance of rain 90%.. Tonight Scattered thunderstorms early, overcast overnight with occasional rain likely. Low 68F. Winds SE at 5 to 10 mph. Chance of rain 70%. Locally heavy rainfall possible. By Gabriela Baczynska LUXEMBOURG (Reuters) - The European Union's highest court said on Tuesday that Poland broke environmental laws with large-scale logging in an ancient forest, a ruling that comes as its nationalist government seeks to ease tensions with the bloc. The European Court of Justice (ECJ) delivered its final decision on the environmental row over the Bialowieza forest as EU ministers separately reviewed their negotiations with Warsaw over reforms to the Polish judiciary. Critics say these reforms threaten the independence of the courts in Poland and the issue has become a flashpoint in relations between Poland and the bloc. "In spite of the progress made (in negotiations), the results are not sufficient," Germany's EU minister Michael Roth said as he called for more concessions from Warsaw. The European Commission's deputy head Frans Timmermans, who leads the talks with Poland, echoed that view, saying there was "still a long way to go". The Polish parliament has already approved some amendments to the judicial overhaul to assuage EU concern that the ruling Law and Justice (PiS) party is weakening democracy in the bloc. After two years of feuding with the EU over issues that also include migration, PiS has brought in a new prime minister, Mateusz Morawiecki, who is seeking a rapprochement with the EU. Morawiecki, in an interview on Monday, said more concessions were "likely" and government sources say Warsaw is now keen to resolve the dispute because it could otherwise hinder Poland's access to EU development funds. Warsaw might otherwise stand to lose since some EU members are pushing to make access to funding from the bloc's joint coffers after 2020 conditional on respect for the rule of law. Both Warsaw and the EU's political capital Brussels have recently sounded more upbeat on chances for a deal, with diplomats pointing to mid-May as the make-or-break date. "This is a real chance to seek a compromise solution, which would be in the interest of Poland and the EU," Poland's Deputy Foreign Minister Konrad Szymanski said after the ministerial talks where he presented Warsaw's latest thinking. PRIMEVAL FOREST Bialowieza has played into the wider concerns over the rule of law in Poland as Warsaw for months ignored environmentalists' protests and an ECJ order last July to stop logging immediately. ECJ judge Marek Safjan said on Tuesday that the logging in the World Heritage site, which is also home to the rare European bison, had endangered many birds and insects. Warsaw stopped the logging earlier this year as part of the broader campaign to improve ties with the EU. Environment minister Jan Szyszko, who was responsible for the increased logging, has now been dismissed, and the ministry said on Tuesday it would respect the ruling. "Poland will observe the ruling," the current Environment Minister Henryk Kowalczyk said in a statement, adding Warsaw would be sending proposals to Brussels on a possible new protection plan for the forest. In 2016, Poland had tripled logging quotas and said spruce and pine trees that were more than 100 years old had to be felled because of a beetle infestation. The ECJ said on Tuesday that was not justified. Green groups say irreversible damage has been done to the delicate habitat. "The Polish government should consider enlarging the national park," said James Thornton, head of the environmental campaign group ClientEarth. "This is the only way to guarantee that devastation of the forest will not happen again." (Additional reporting by Agnieszka Barteczko in Warsaw and Robert-Jan Bartunek in Brussels, Writing by Gabriela Baczynska; Editing by Richard Balmforth) President Donald Trump has reportedly decided to halt the roll-out of sanctions against Russia for its support of Syrian President Bashar al-Assad, contradicting a top diplomat's claims that the sanctions would be announced on Monday. US Ambassador to the UN Nikki Haley said this weekend that the US would roll out the new sanctions as part of its plan to send a "strong message" about the Assad regime's alleged use of chemical weapons. On Monday morning, however, White House Press Secretary Sarah Huckabee Sanders said the administration was still considering such a move, and that the decision would be made "in the near future". The announcement came after Mr Trump told national security advisers he was uncomfortable carrying out the planned sanctions, according to the Washington Post. Administration officials told the Post it was unlikely Mr Trump would approve the sanctions without another "triggering event" by Russia. A Russian Foreign Ministry official said the Trump administration had assured them shortly after Ms Haley's comments that the sanctions were not coming, according to the Post. The White House did not immediately respond to a request for comment. Ms Haley said on Sunday that the sanctions would be implemented shortly, in response to Russian President's continued support of Mr Assad. The US claims Mr Assad used poisonous gas in an attack on the Syrian town of Douma, which is believed to have killed dozens of civilians. The Syrian government and Russia have denied any involvement in the attack. The US, Britain, and France carried out an air strike on suspected chemical weapons facilities in Syria on Friday. Ms Haley promised a diplomatic response was coming as well. "You will see that Russian sanctions will be coming down," Ms Haley said on CBS' Face the Nation on Sunday. "[Treasury Secretary Steve] Mnuchin will be announcing those on Monday if he hasn't already, and they will go directly to any sort of companies that were dealing with equipment related to Assad and chemical weapons use." Story continues She added: "I think everyone is going to feel it at this point. We wanted their friends Iran and Russia to know that we meant business and that they were going to be feeling the pain from this as well." The comments were met by a harsh rebuke from Russia, which called the proposed sanctions "international economic raiding". The sanction campaign against Russia is truly assuming the nature of an obsessive idea, Kremlin press secretary Dmitry Peskov said, according to Interfax. "...We see them as going against international law. The Trump administration decided shortly thereafter to characterise Ms Haley's comments as a misstatement, according to the Post. The US is testing other diplomatic responses to the situation, including pushing a draft UN resolution that calls for an independent investigation into alleged chemical weapons attacks and identifies those responsible. The Trump administration also recently expelled 60 Russian diplomats from the US, after the poisoning of a Russian double agent in the UK was tied to Moscow. Russian has denied any involvement in the poisoning. The US Justice Department and several congressional bodies are currently investigating possible Trump campaign ties to Russia. Mr Trump has denied all allegations of collusion. ANKARA (Reuters) - Turkish President Tayyip Erdogan said on Tuesday he would meet with the head of the Nationalist Movement Party (MHP), after Devlet Bahceli floated the prospect of an early election. Bahceli suggested the presidential election, scheduled for November 2019, could be brought forward to August this year. The ruling AK Party and the MHP will enter the next elections under an electoral alliance. Erdogan said he would meet with Bahceli on Wednesday. (Reporting by Ercan Gurses; Writing by Ali Kucukgocmen; Editing by David Dolan) By Jim Finkle and Doina Chiacu (Reuters) - The United States and Britain on Monday accused Russia of launching cyber attacks on computer routers, firewalls and other networking equipment used by government agencies, businesses and critical infrastructure operators around the globe. Washington and London issued a joint alert saying the campaign by Russian government-backed hackers was intended to advance spying, intellectual property theft and other "malicious" activities and could be escalated to launch offensive attacks. It followed a series of warnings by Western governments that Moscow is behind a string of cyber attacks. The United States, Britain and other nations in February accused Russia of releasing the "NotPetya" virus, which in 2017 crippled parts of Ukraine's infrastructure and damaged computers across the globe, costing companies billions of dollars. The Kremlin did not immediately respond to a request for comment. But Russia's embassy in London issued a statement citing British accusations of cyber threats from Moscow as "striking examples of a reckless, provocative and unfounded policy against Russia." Moscow has denied previous accusations that it carried out cyber attacks on the United States and other countries. U.S. intelligence agencies last year accused Russia of interfering in the 2016 election with a hacking and propaganda campaign supporting Donald Trump's campaign for president. Last month the Trump administration blamed Russia for a campaign of cyber attacks that targeted the U.S. power grid. American and British officials said that the attacks disclosed on Monday affected a wide range of organizations including internet service providers, private businesses and critical infrastructure providers. They did not identify victims or provide details on the impact of the attacks. "When we see malicious cyber activity, whether it be from the Kremlin or other malicious nation-state actors, we are going to push back," said Rob Joyce, the White House cyber security coordinator. Relations between Russia and Britain were already on edge after Prime Minister Theresa May blamed Moscow for the March 4 nerve agent poisoning of former Russian spy Sergei Skripal and his daughter Yulia in the city of Salisbury. "This is yet another example of Russia's disregard for international norms and global order - this time through a campaign of cyber espionage and aggression, which attempts to disrupt governments and destabilize business," a British government spokesman said in London. Britain and the United States said they issued the new alert to help targets protect themselves and persuade victims to share information with government investigators so they can better understand the threat. "We don't have full insight into the scope of the compromise," said U.S. Department of Homeland Security cyber security official Jeanette Manfra. The alert is not related to the suspected chemical weapons attack in a town in Syria that prompted a U.S.-led military strike over the weekend targeting facilities of the Russian-backed Syrian government, Joyce said. Shortly after the announcement, the White House said Joyce would leave his post and return to the U.S. National Security Agency. U.S. and British officials warned that infected routers could be used to launch future offensive cyber operations. "They could be pre-positioning for use in times of tension," said Ciaran Martin, chief executive of the British governments National Cyber Security Centre cyber defense agency, who added that "millions of machines" were targeted. (Reporting by Jim Finkle and Doina Chiacu; Additional reporting by Estelle Shirbon in London, John Walcott and Makini Brice in Washington and Jack Stubbs and Maxim Rodionov in Moscow; Writing by Will Dunham; Editing by James Dalgleish) LONDON (Reuters) - The nerve agent used to poison former Russian spy Sergei Skripal and his daughter at his home in England last month was delivered in a liquid form, the BBC reported officials as saying. Skripal, 66, and his daughter Yulia were found slumped on a bench in the city of Salisbury on March 4. Britain has blamed Russia for the attack which the authorities said was carried out using a Novichok form of nerve agent. Moscow denies the accusation and says Britain is trying to whip up anti-Russian hysteria. The BBC said the Department for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs which is handling a clean-up operation in Salisbury had said a "very small amount" of Novichok was used with the substance delivered in a "liquid form". Police have previously said they believed the poison had been applied to the front door of Skripal's modest home. Yulia Skripal, 33, was discharged from hospital a week ago while her father is no longer in a critical condition. (Reporting by Michael Holden; editing by Stephen Addison) * Chemical weapons experts' access to site blocked * West says no more strikes planned just now * Allied leaders face scrutiny at home * More sanctions mooted by US, EU (Adds detail) By Laila Bassam and Anthony Deutsch DAMASCUS/THE HAGUE, April 16 (Reuters) - The United States accused Russia on Monday of blocking international inspectors from reaching the site of a suspected poison gas attack in Syria and said Russians or Syrians may have tampered with evidence on the ground. Moscow immediately denied the charge and blamed delays on retaliatory U.S.-led missile strikes on Syria at the weekend. In the fraught aftermath of the suspected attack in Douma and the West's response, Washington also prepared to increase pressure on Russia, Syrian President Bashar al-Assad's main ally, with new economic sanctions. European Union foreign ministers threatened similar measures. And in London and Paris, British Prime Minister Theresa May and French President Emmanuel Macron faced criticism from political opponents over their decisions to take part in the air strikes against Syria. Syria and Russia deny unleashing poison gas during their offensive on Douma this month, which ended with the recapture of the town that had been the last rebel stronghold near the capital Damascus. Relief organisations say dozens of men, women and children were killed. Footage of young victims foaming at the mouth and weeping in agony helped to thrust Syria's civil war -- in which half a million people have been killed in the past seven years -- to the forefront of world concern again. Inspectors from the Hague-based Organization for the Prohibition of Chemical Weapons (OPCW) travelled to Syria last week to inspect the site, but have yet to gain access to Douma, which is now under government control after the rebels withdrew. "It is our understanding the Russians may have visited the attack site," U.S. Ambassador Kenneth Ward said at an OPCW meeting in The Hague on Monday. Story continues "It is our concern that they may have tampered with it with the intent of thwarting the efforts of the OPCW Fact-Finding Mission to conduct an effective investigation," he said. His comments at the closed-door meeting were obtained by Reuters. Russian Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov denied that Moscow had interfered with any evidence. "I can guarantee that Russia has not tampered with the site," he told the BBC. Britain's delegation to the OPCW accused Russia and the Assad government of stopping inspectors from reaching Douma. "Unfettered access is essential," the British delegation said in a statement. "Russia and Syria must cooperate." The team aims to collect samples, interview witnesses and document evidence to determine whether banned toxic munitions were used, although it is not permitted to assign blame for the attack. Britain's Ambassador Peter Wilson said in The Hague that the United Nations had cleared the inspectors to go but they had been unable to reach Douma because Syria and Russia had been unable to guarantee their safety. Moscow blamed the delay on the air strikes, in which the United States, France and Britain targeted what the Pentagon said were three chemical weapons facilities. "We called for an objective investigation. This was at the very beginning after this information [of the attack] appeared. Therefore allegations of this towards Russia are groundless," Kremlin spokesman Dmitry Peskov said. U.S. envoy Ward also condemned the Syrian government for what he called its "reign of chemical terror". The inspectors met Syrian Deputy Foreign Minister Faisal Mekdad in the presence of Russian officers and a senior Syrian security official in Damascus for about three hours on Sunday. OPCW inspectors have been attacked on two previous missions to the sites of chemical weapons attacks in Syria. HORRIBLE, MISERABLE Syrian flags flew in Douma on Monday, security forces stood on street corners and Russian military police patrolled the streets. State aid trucks handed out bread, rice and pasta to people who had lived under siege for years. A government-organised media tour did not include the building where, according to rescue workers and medics who were in town at the time, dozens of people were killed by poison gas. Doctors at the hospital where suspected victims were treated told reporters on the tour that none of the patients that night had suffered chemical weapons injuries -- they were asphyxiated by dust and smoke in a bombardment. Medical aid groups and the White Helmets rescue organisation have said such statements - already aired on state television in recent days - were made under duress. The U.S.-led strikes did nothing to alter the strategic balance or dent Assad's supremacy and the Western allies have said the aim was to prevent the further use of chemical weapons, not to intervene in the civil war or topple Assad. British Foreign Secretary Boris Johnson made this clear on Monday as he arrived at a meeting of EU foreign ministers in Luxembourg, telling reporters: "I'm afraid the Syrian war will go on in its horrible, miserable way. But it was the world saying that we've had enough of the use of chemical weapons." The 28 ministers endorsed the missile strikes and considered steps to deepen Assad's isolation. "The European Union will continue to consider further restrictive measures against Syria as long as the repression continues," they said in a statement after their talks. The U.S. ambassador to the United Nations, Nikki Haley, said on Sunday the United States would announce new economic sanctions aimed at companies dealing with equipment related to Assad's alleged use of chemical weapons. DOMESTIC OPPOSITION The Western leaders also faced scrutiny at home over their actions. Britain's May will make a statement to parliament on Monday on her decision and will repeat her assertion that Assad's forces were highly likely responsible for the attack. The allies could not wait "to alleviate further humanitarian suffering caused by chemical weapons attacks", according to excerpts of her speech. But she will be questioned over why she did not seek parliamentary approval for the action, a decision that she and her ministers say was driven by the need to act quickly. Jeremy Corbyn, leader of the main opposition Labour Party, has questioned the legal basis for Britain's involvement. Britain has said there are no plans for future strikes against Syria, but Johnson warned Assad that all options would be considered if chemical weapons were used against Syrians again. In France, the conservatives, the far-left and the far-right have all criticised the strikes. Prime Minister Edouard Philippe on Monday will respond to their criticism in a debate in parliament on Monday afternoon. The French Constitution bars presidents from going to parliament and President Emmanuel Macron will therefore not be questioned by law-makers. (Reporting by Leila Bassam in Damascus, Anthony Deutsch in Amsterdam, Jack Stubbs and Andrey Ostroukh in Moscow, Jeff Mason, Susan Cornwell and Joel Schectman in Washington, Michelle Nichols in New York, Samia Nakhoul, Tom Perry, Ellen Francis and Angus McDowall in Beirut, Kinda Makieh in Barzeh, Syria, Elizabeth Piper, Michael Holden and Guy Faulconbridge in London, Laurence Frost, Michel Rose and Ingrid Melander in Paris, Writing by Angus MacSwan; Editing by Janet Lawrence) Washington (AFP) - US airlines have begun diverting flights away from Russian airspace just hours before a deadline to renegotiate access agreements is to expire, the State Department said Tuesday. Every day, dozens of American flights cross Russian skies on their shortest and most lucrative routes to South Asia, but their permission to do so was due to run out at 7:59 pm (2359 GMT). State Department spokeswoman Heather Nauert said the US ambassador to Moscow, Jon Huntsman, was in last-minute discussion with Russian officials to facilitate a breakthrough in talks with airlines. Russian civil aviation officials had been due to attend discussions hosted by the State Department in Washington, but canceled. The airlines sent representatives to the talks. Nauert said the Russians had not indicated why they had backed out of the meetings. But the decision came after Saturday's US-led air strikes on Syria angered Moscow, which has previously attempted to use air routes as diplomatic bargaining chips. "Some... commercial carriers are now making the decision to reroute their flights because they're concerned about that expiration," Nauert told reporters. "We don't want that kind of commercial aviation disruption." Despite the imminent deadline, however, the US spokeswoman held open the possibility of a last-minute arrangement. "We've ramped up our engagement," she said, explaining that what had been contacts between airlines and Russian officials facilitated by a junior US official now included the ambassador. "Russia has not yet indicated whether it will extend the approvals," the spokeswoman continued. "But the Russian government did say to our embassy, when we spoke with them: 'Don't panic, we're not going to do anything to harm the US aviation sector.' "We certainly hope that that is the case. We're expecting a Russian response later today. We hope that they will stand by it." * Chemical weapons experts' access to site blocked * West says no more strikes planned just now * UK, French leaders face scrutiny at home * More sanctions mooted by US, EU (Adds U.K.'s May, more possible U.S. sanctions, Russian defence ministry) By Laila Bassam and Anthony Deutsch DAMASCUS/THE HAGUE, April 16 (Reuters) - The United States accused Russia on Monday of blocking international inspectors from reaching the site of a suspected poison gas attack in Syria and said Russians or Syrians may have tampered with evidence on the ground. Moscow denied the charge and blamed delays on retaliatory U.S.-led missile strikes on Syria at the weekend. In the fraught aftermath of the suspected attack in Douma and the West's response, Washington also prepared to increase pressure on Russia, Syrian President Bashar al-Assad's main ally, with new economic sanctions. European Union foreign ministers threatened similar measures. And in London and Paris, British Prime Minister Theresa May and French President Emmanuel Macron faced criticism from political opponents over their decisions to take part in the air strikes against Syria. Syria and Russia deny unleashing poison gas on April 7 during their offensive on Douma, which ended with the recapture of the town that had been the last rebel stronghold near the capital Damascus. Relief organisations say dozens of men, women and children were killed. Footage of young victims foaming at the mouth and weeping in agony has thrust Syria's civil war -- in which half a million people have been killed in the past seven years -- to the forefront of world concern again. Inspectors from the Hague-based Organization for the Prohibition of Chemical Weapons (OPCW) travelled to Syria last week to inspect the site, but have yet to gain access to Douma, which is now under government control after the rebels withdrew. "It is our understanding the Russians may have visited the attack site," U.S. Ambassador Kenneth Ward said at an OPCW meeting in The Hague on Monday. Story continues "It is our concern that they may have tampered with it with the intent of thwarting the efforts of the OPCW Fact-Finding Mission to conduct an effective investigation," he said. His comments at the closed-door meeting were obtained by Reuters. Russian Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov denied that Moscow had interfered with any evidence. "I can guarantee that Russia has not tampered with the site," he told the BBC. "UNFETTERED ACCESS" Britain's delegation to the OPCW accused Russia and the Assad government of stopping inspectors from reaching Douma. "Unfettered access is essential," the British delegation said in a statement. "Russia and Syria must cooperate." The team aims to collect samples, interview witnesses and document evidence to determine whether banned toxic munitions were used, although it is not permitted to assign blame for the attack. Britain's Ambassador Peter Wilson said in The Hague that the United Nations had cleared the inspectors to go but they had been unable to reach Douma because Syria and Russia had been unable to guarantee their safety. Moscow blamed the delay on the air strikes, in which the United States, France and Britain targeted what the Pentagon said were three chemical weapons facilities. "We called for an objective investigation. This was at the very beginning after this information [of the attack] appeared. Therefore allegations of this towards Russia are groundless," Kremlin spokesman Dmitry Peskov said. Russia's defence ministry later said the United States and its allies had hit military targets at the weekend and not just research facilities, Interfax news agency reported. The Syrian military destroyed 71 out of 103 cruise missiles detected in Syrian airspace, RIA news agency quoted the defence ministry as saying. U.S. envoy Ward also condemned the Syrian government for what he called its "reign of chemical terror". The inspectors met Syrian Deputy Foreign Minister Faisal Mekdad in the presence of Russian officers and a senior Syrian security official in Damascus for about three hours on Sunday. OPCW inspectors have been attacked on two previous missions to the sites of chemical weapons attacks in Syria. HORRIBLE, MISERABLE Syrian flags flew in Douma on Monday, security forces stood on street corners and Russian military police patrolled the streets. State aid trucks handed out bread, rice and pasta to people who had lived under siege for years. A government-organised media tour did not include the building where, according to rescue workers and medics who were in town at the time, dozens of people were killed by poison gas. Doctors at the hospital where suspected victims were treated told reporters on the tour that none of the patients that night had suffered chemical weapons injuries -- they were asphyxiated by dust and smoke in a bombardment. Medical aid groups and the White Helmets rescue organisation have said such statements - already aired on state television in recent days - were made under duress. The U.S.-led strikes did nothing to alter the strategic balance or dent Assad's supremacy and the Western allies have said the aim was to prevent the further use of chemical weapons, not to intervene in the civil war or topple Assad. At a meeting in Luxembourg, the 28 European Union foreign ministers endorsed the missile strikes and considered steps to deepen Assad's isolation. "The European Union will continue to consider further restrictive measures against Syria as long as the repression continues," they said in a statement after their talks. The U.S. ambassador to the United Nations, Nikki Haley, said on Sunday the United States would announce new economic sanctions aimed at companies dealing with equipment related to Assad's alleged use of chemical weapons, though the White House said on Monday that no decision had been taken yet. "We are considering additional sanctions on Russia and a decision will be made in the near future," White House spokeswoman Sarah Sanders said. DOMESTIC OPPOSITION The Western leaders faced scrutiny at home over their actions, with Britain's May facing questions over why she did not seek parliamentary approval for the action. She told parliament the decision to conduct air strikes against Syria was in the British national interest and not as a result of pressure from U.S. President Donald Trump. "We have not done this because President Trump asked us to, we have done it because we believed it was the right thing to do, and we are not alone. There is broad-based international support for the action we have taken," May said. Asked whether she could order new strikes if chemical weapons were found to have been used in the future, she said: "Nobody should be in any doubt of our resolve to ensure that we cannot see a situation where the use of chemical weapons is normalised." May has said she did not seek a green light from parliament for the attacks due to the need to act quickly. Jeremy Corbyn, leader of the main opposition Labour Party, has questioned the legal basis for Britain's involvement. Britain has said there are no plans for future strikes against Syria, but Foreign Secretary Boris Johnson warned Assad that all options would be considered if chemical weapons were used against Syrians again. In France, the conservatives, the far-left and the far-right have all criticised the strikes. Prime Minister Edouard Philippe was due to respond to their criticism in parliament on Monday. The French constitution bars presidents from going to parliament and Macron will therefore not be questioned directly by lawmakers. (Additional reporting by Jack Stubbs and Andrey Ostroukh in Moscow, Jeff Mason, Susan Cornwell and Leslie Wroughton in Washington, Michelle Nichols in New York, Samia Nakhoul, Tom Perry, Ellen Francis and Angus McDowall in Beirut, Kinda Makieh in Barzeh, Syria, Elizabeth Piper, Michael Holden and Guy Faulconbridge in London, Laurence Frost, Michel Rose and Ingrid Melander in Paris, Writing by Angus MacSwan and Richard Balmforth; Editing by Gareth Jones) Neil Gorsuch, Trumps appointee to the court, sided with the four liberal justices on the issue The Supreme Court has ruled to restrict mandatory deportation of immigrants convicted of some crimes, just as President Donald Trumps administration is looking to increase them. In a 5-4 ruling, the court said the wording of the statute requiring the removal of non-citizens who commit certain felonies was unlawfully vague, a ruling that could limit the Trump administrations ability to step up the removal of immigrants with criminal records. Mr Trumps appointee to the court, conservative judge Neil Gorsuch, joined the courts four liberal justices in siding with convicted California burglar James Garcia Dimaya, a legal immigrant from the Philippines. The ruling concerns a provision of immigration law that defines a crime of violence. In the US federal criminal code, a crime of violence includes offences in which force either was used or carried a substantial risk that it would be used. Such a conviction would make someone eligible for possible deportation and helps to speed up the process. Both the Obama and Trump administrations have defended the principle with Mr Trump pushing for more violent offenders to be removed from the country. In 2015, a federal appeals court in San Francisco struck down the provision as too vague, which increased the risk of arbitrary or discriminatory enforcement in violation of the US Constitution, and the Supreme Court agreed. The appeals court based its ruling on a Supreme Court decision from 2015 that voided a similarly worded part of another law regarding longer custodial sentences for criminals. Supreme Court Justice Elena Kagan wrote that the 2015 decision tells us how to resolve this case. Dimaya came to the United States from the Philippines as a legal permanent resident in 1992 at age 13 and lived in the San Francisco Bay area. Federal authorities ordered Dimaya deported after he was convicted in two California home burglaries, in 2007 and 2009, though neither crime involved violence. He received a two-year prison sentence for each conviction. Story continues In 2010, the Obama administration brought removal proceedings against Dimaya. The Justice Departments Board of Immigration Appeals refused to cancel his expulsion as his convictions counted as an aggravated felony under the Immigration and Nationality Act, which authorises removal of non-citizens who have been convicted of some violent crimes and that aggravated felony as a crime of violence. In joining the four liberal judges, Justice Gorsuch was continuing the jurisprudence of Justice Antonin Scalia, who also sided with liberals when it came to the vagueness of statutes used to convict criminal defendants. Mr Gorsuch was appointed to the Court in the wake of the Justice Scalias death in 2016. Only eight justices heard the case last term after Justice Scalias death, and in late June, the court announced it would re-hear arguments in its current term, likely so that Justice Gorsuch could break a possible tie. A huge cache of stone inscriptions from one of Africa's oldest written languages have been unearthed in a vast "city of the dead" in Sudan. The inscriptions are written in the obscure 'Meroitic' language, the oldest known written language south of the Sahara, which has been only partly deciphered. The discovery includes temple art of Maat, the Egyptian goddess of order, equity and peace, that was, for the first time, depicted with African features. [In Photos: Beautiful Pyramids of Sudan] Ancient civilization of Meroe Scientists investigated the archaeological site of Sedeinga, located on the western shore of the Nile River in Sudan, about 60 miles (100 kilometers) north of the river's third "cataract," or set of shallows. The Meroitic inscriptions were found during excavations in late 2017 in what is today Sudan. An aerial photo of the dig site is shown here. Vincent Francigny/Sedeinga archaeological mission Archaeologists first heard of the site from the tales of 19th-century travelers, who described the remains of the Egyptian temple of Queen Tiye, the chief wife of Amenhotep III and one of the most illustrious queens of ancient Egypt, according to the Encyclopedia Britannica. Amenhotep III's reign from about 1390 B.C. to 1353 B.C. marked the zenith of ancient Egyptian civilization in both political power and cultural achievement, according to the BBC. The sandy area was once part of ancient Nubia, known for rich deposits of gold. Nubia hosted some of Africa's earliest kingdoms, and a few even ruled Egypt as pharaohs, according to the Oriental Institute at the University of Chicago. The site of Sedeinga is home to a large necropolis, known as the "city of the dead," stretching more than 60 acres (25 hectares). It holds the vestiges of at least 80 brick pyramids and more than 100 tombs from the kingdoms of Napata and Meroe, which lasted from the seventh century B.C. to the fourth century A.D. These kingdoms mixed the cultures of Egypt and the rest of Africa in ways still seen in Sudan today, researchers said. Napata and Meroe formed a civilization known as the kingdom of Kush by their ancient Egyptian neighbors. Meroitic, the language of Meroe, borrowed written characters from ancient Egyptian. [Photos: Royal Nubian Statue With Egyptian Hieroglyphics] Story continues "The Meroitic writing system, the oldest of the sub-Saharan region, still mostly resists our understanding," Vincent Francigny, an archaeologist at the French Archaeological Unit Sudan Antiquities Service, and co-director of the Sedeinga excavation, told Live Science. "While funerary texts, with very few variations, are quite well-known and can be almost completely translated, other categories of texts often remain obscure. In this context, every new text matters, as they can shed light on something new." Huge cache of inscriptions Now, the scientists revealed they have unearthed the largest collection of Meroitic texts yet. The inscriptions are funerary in nature. "Every text tells a story the name of the deceased and both parents, with their occupations sometime; their career in the administration of the kingdom, including place names; their relation to extended family with prestigious titles," Francigny said. From these inscriptions, "we can, for example, locate new places, or guess their possible locations, or learn about the structure of the religious and royal administration in the provinces of the kingdom," Francigny said. The texts "also tell us what kind of town or settlement was connected to the cemetery we are excavating," he said. Based on evidence from texts, the site's context, and numerous imported goods found in the graves there, the researchers think Sedeinga was a key place for commercial roads that avoided the meandering and the cataracts of the Nile to the north "to go straight to Egypt through desert roads," Francigny said. "The town would have developed and become wealthy around this activity." The researchers also discovered numerous samples of decorated sandstone, including chapel art depicting the Egyptian goddess Maat with Nubian features. "Meroe was a kingdom where, among others, some Egyptian cultural and religious concepts were borrowed and adapted to local traditions," Francigny said. "We should not see Meroe as a passive recipient for foreign influences instead, Meroites were very selective about what they could borrow to serve the purpose of the royal family and the development of their pharaonic, but non-Egyptian, society." High-ranking women The scientists noted that a number of artifacts at Sedeinga were dedicated to high-ranking women. For instance, one stele an upright decorated slab of stone in the name of a Lady Maliwarase described her as the sister of two grand priests of Amon, and as having a son who held the position of governor of Faras, a large city bordering the second cataract of the Nile. In addition, a tomb inscription described a Lady Adatalabe, who hailed from an illustrious lineage that included a royal prince. In Nubia, a matrilineal society, the tracing of one's descent through the female line was "an important aspect in royal family lineages," Francigny said. For instance, "at Meroe, with the figure of the 'candace,' a sort a queen mother, women could, in the royal context, play an important role and be associated with the exercise of power. It is unclear if, at a lower level, women could also play key roles in the administration of the kingdom and the religious sphere." Intriguingly, on several occasions at archaeological sites related to the kingdom of Meroe, the scientists noted that Meroites were sometimes fascinated with random items with unusual shapes. "For example, near temples where only priests could enter, it is not unusual to find places made for popular offerings; these offerings were sometime made of oddly shaped natural stones that seemed supernatural because their shapes look like religious symbols or anatomical parts of the human body," Francigny said. "We even found some inside of the most sacred room, the 'naos,' of some Meroitic temples, near the statues of the gods." In the future, the researchers hope to locate graves dating back to the earliest stages of the site, "during Egyptian colonization," Francigny said. "Unfortunately, in this region the Nile moves toward the east," and so slowly eats away at the excavation site, "which means that there is likely a chance that the settlement that was close to the river was completely destroyed," he said. Original article on Live Science. Editor's Recommendations UPDATE: Washington Detective Given 5 Day Suspension for Drawing Gun on Biker Today the Washington detective who drew his gun on a motorcyclist back in August will learn his fate UPDATE: After initially covering the story, Detective Richard Rowe of the Woodinville Police Department has been hit with a punishment of a whopping five-day suspension. King County Sheriff Mitzi Johanknecht said in a written statement that she reduced Rowe's punishment from the recommended 10 day suspension to a five-day suspension because of mitigating factors, including stress that Rowe and his family went through due to media attention. This seems so wrong on so many levels. The fact Rowe was hounded by media seems justified as he did a really shitty and dangerous thing. The fact he's keeping his job is objectively ridiculous. Hopefully Alex Randall sues. Original story continues below. In recent years there has been a disturbing trend of copsoften off dutyunnecessarily drawing guns on motorcyclists. While many of these incidents are prompted by riders piloting their machines recklessly, the dangerous and disproportionate measure is deeply concerning for obvious reasons. A quick Youtube search reveals how frequently these situations occur (like this one, or this one, or this one where the cop actually shoots the biker because "muscle memory"). The consequences for the cops actions have varied case to casebut they're typically just a slap on the wristbut later today we will learn the fate of a King County, Washington, detective who drew his weapon on a motorcyclist while off duty back in August of 2017. HOW TO NOT GET SHOT: What to do when pulled over by police On August 16, 2017, Alex Randall was out for a spin when a routine Wednesday afternoon ride took a dramatic and harrowing turn. Randall was pushing his bike a bit too hard, or at least off-duty Woodinville Police Department Detective Richard Rowe thought so. This prompted Rowe to draw his gun and confront Randall while waiting at a stoplight. Randall appears to notice the off-duty, plain clothed detective (who looks like a regular ass person and not a cop) in his mirror as the cop approaches him, though he still sounds legitimately startled when confronted with staring down the barrel of a gun. Story continues Alex Randall posing on his Yamaha R1 (photo courtesy of the Seattle Times) How ya doing? says the detective as he walks up, with a handgun fixed on the rider who exclaims Oh shit! in response to the firearm pointed at him. The mere fact Rowe opened with a friendly greeting suggests there was absolutely no need to draw his weapon. After a brief back and forth, the cop demands the biker take out his ID while keeping him in the sights of his gun the entire time, even while holding his ID. The clip was all caught on Randalls hemet cam and quickly went viral. Rowe defended his actions, explaining that he saw Randall look in the rear-view mirror, lean back, and then drop his hands to his waist area, which Rowe supposedly took as an indicator that Randall had seen him and had a weaponthough the footage clearly shows Rowes gun drawn as he approaches. "His use of firearms, his judgment, and his emotion with how he conducted this stop, just seemed to say, hey, put him behind a desk or something. Just don't have him interacting with the public, said Randall during one of his many news appearances following the incident. In the investigation, realizing he's lied in very significant ways, that's a terminable offense. I don't want someone with that level of integrity on my streets policing people. Because that will get people hurt. That will get people killed." WHY BIKES AND GUNS DONT MIX: Florida man shoots himself during crash Rowe as he approaches Randall After the incident, Randall took to his youtube channel, Squid Tips, recording a trio of 20-30 minute videos (here's the latest one) in which he discusses the ordeal and its subsequent legal proceedings. When Randall was asked if he thought Rowe would keep his job, he responded saying, Im sure he will and it's absolutely terrifying. If they do anything less than fire him, this is not going to be the end of it, I'm going to pursue a civil suit because that's not right." MOTO COPS GET BIGGER GUNS: Mounted units in Arizona get AR-15s After the footage was released, Rowe was placed on administrative leave. Former King County Sheriff John Urquhart said he didnt want Rowe out working on the streets until the investigation concluded, adding he found the video to be upsetting and that the deputys use of force likely violates department policy. Detective Rowe is a 19 year veteran of the Woodinville Police Department which works with the King County Sheriffs Office. Today, King County Sheriff Mitzi Johanknecht is scheduled to announce a decision on the investigation into the incident. Even though his finger is off the trigger, pointing the barrel of a gun at someone like this seems really dangerous Well be sure to update you on the outcome of the case. All seven inmates who were killed following an eight-hour prison riot in South Carolina have been identified, with authorities questioning how best to prevent similar violent scenes occurring inside jails. Seventeen more inmates were seriously injured following the riot at the high-security Lee Correctional Institution in Bishopville, which was eventually brought under control just before 3 a.m. on Monday following multiple inmate on inmate altercations across three housing units. All seven fatalities in the riot were the result of stabbings using homemade knives, according to Lee County coroner Larry Logan. Trending: Malaria Changes Humans' Scent, Making Them More Attractive To Mosquitoes The incident was the deadliest riot to occur at a prison in the U.S. since nine inmates and one guard died in 1993 at the Southern Ohio Correctional Facility in Lucasville, according to Steve Martin, a consultant who helps the federal government monitor prison systems, reports Reuters. The South Carolina Department of Corrections has now confirmed the names of all seven inmates killed in the riot. The prisoners were between 24 and 44 years old and serving between 10 years and life for violent offenses. SC inmates South Carolina Department of Corrections South Carolina Inmates Raymond Scott, 28, was serving 20 years for assault and battery of a high and aggravated nature and an additional weapons charge. According to The State, Scott shot a male clerk during a robbery while the clerks 5-year-old son was present. Don't miss: New Mexico City Hits Trump With Law Making It Harder to Deport Undocumented Immigrants Eddie Gaskins, 32, was serving 10 years for first-degree criminal domestic violence after threatening his ex-girlfriend with a shotgun after entering her home uninvited, reports the Berkley Observer. Story continues Michael Milledge, 44, was sentenced to 25 years for trafficking crack cocaine, as well as other offenses, including assault and battery and possession of a firearm. Joshua Jenkins, 33, was serving two concurrent 15-year sentences for attempted murder and voluntary manslaughter stemming from a 2011 incident in Berkeley County, as well as a two-year concurrent sentence for second-degree burglary. He was one of four men convicted following the death of Brittany Aigoro after a robbery at her home in St. Stephen, South Carolina. Cornelius McClary, 33, was serving 25 years for first-degree burglary, battery, first-degree burglary, firearms provision and criminal conspiracy in Williamsburg County in 2011. Damonte Rivera, 24, was serving life without parole for the 2012 murder of Alfonza Thomas following a home invasion in Georgetown, South Carolina. Most popular: InfoWars' Alex Jones Sued by Sandy Hook Parents Over 'Vicious' Lies about 2012 School Shooting Corey Scott, 38, was serving 22 years for aggravated assault and battery, kidnapping and armed robbery in McCormick and Florence counties. He also received an additional eight-year assault and battery charge sentence while in prison, which ran concurrently with his original sentence, reports The State. SC inmates 2 South Carolina Department of Corrections This was all about territory. This was about contraband, this was about cellphones, Bryan Stirling, director of the state Department of Corrections, told reporters during a press conference in the wake of the riot. These folks are fighting over real money and real territory while they are incarcerated. House Minority Leader Todd Rutherford described the deaths of the inmates as "simply unacceptable, reports the State. He added that reform and funding in the judicial system is desperately needed in order to prevent another incident. We have way too many people in prison," Rutherford said. "When you have 30 inmates and 10 are the most violent and need supervision, (and) the rest are drug offenders, that corrections officer still has to oversee 30 people." South Carolina Governor Henry McMaster urged cellphones to be jammed in prisons in order to prevent this sort of violence. It is thought that inmates were using contraband phones to alert others that fights were breaking out in other dorms. "There are prisons around the countrystate prisons, federal prisonsthat would be safer with this jamming," McCaster said. Democratic State Senator Gerald Malloy added: "It's an incredibly bad day in South Carolina," he told Associated Press. "We failed. That's it." GettyImages-947088066 LOGAN CYRUS/AFP/Getty Images This article was first written by Newsweek More from Newsweek Federal investigators said Tuesday afternoon that one person was killed after a failed engine forced a Southwest Airline flight to make an emergency landing in Philadelphia. The flight, which had taken off from New York Citys LaGuardia Airport, had to land when an engine explosion caused a window to break, depressurizing the plane. According to initial reports, a female passenger was sucked toward the broken window and had to be hospitalized after landing. Albuquerque station KOAT TV later identified the passenger as Jennifer Riordan and confirmed that she had died. Riordan was the vice president of community relations for Wells Fargo bank in New Mexico and a noted community volunteer, according to the Albuquerque Journal. Her family released a statement on her death, asking for privacy during this time. STATEMENT from the family of Jennifer Riordan, the @SouthwestAir passenger killed during the explosive decompression of SWA 1380 this morning. She was an Albuquerque, NM resident. pic.twitter.com/s4nf6O22JW Jason Whitely (@JasonWhitely) April 18, 2018 Southwest also released a statement about the death on Tuesday, calling the event tragic. Seven other people were reportedly treated for minor injuries. Flight 1380 was scheduled to fly to Dallas but made an emergency stop in Philadelphia after an engine on the left side of the plane blew out. Passenger Marty Martinez told CBS Philadelphia that the sequence of events after the engine exploded was terrifying. The engine exploded and it broke a window, Martinez said. First there was an explosion and almost immediately, the oxygen masks came down and, probably in a matter of 10 seconds, the engine then hit a window and busted it wide open. #UPDATE Window was blown out in the 17th row causing a loss of cabin pressure as the #Airplane made a rapid decompression and returned to the ground. The flight 1380 was from #NewYork #laguardia to #Dallas #LoveField in #Texas. Reports of a female passenger with serious injuries. pic.twitter.com/zE8rg0OP0R Scot Tanner Buchholz (@BScotTanner) April 17, 2018 Martinez told CNN he was sitting just a row or two away from Riordan, whose arms and body were sucked toward the broken window. Story continues He said passengers held on to her while nonstationary objects flew out the hole. Another man relayed similar information from his daughter-in-law, a passenger on the plane, telling NBC Philadelphia that when the window imploded, a female passenger was partially sucked out and other passengers needed to pull her back in. The aircraft was flying around 32,500 feet when the engine blew out. Aviation expert Arthur Wolk told the station that the planes rate of descent indicated that the pilot had control of the aircraft. Southwest Airlines released this statement about the emergency landing to HuffPost: We are aware that Southwest flight #1380 from New York La Guardia (LGA) to Dallas Love Field (DAL) has diverted to Philadelphia International Airport (PHL). We are in the process of transporting Customers and Crew into the terminal. The aircraft, a Boeing 737-700, has 143 Customers and five Crewmembers onboard. We are in the process of gathering more information. Safety is always our top priority at Southwest Airlines, and we are working diligently to support our Customers and Crews at this time. Boeing responded with more information about the aircraft: UPDATED STATEMENT ON SWA FLIGHT #1380: Boeing is aware of the event and is providing technical assistance to the investigation. As per international protocol governing civil aviation investigations, questions about the investigation should be directed to the NTSB. Boeing Airplanes (@BoeingAirplanes) April 17, 2018 The Federal Aviation Administration released this statement about the landing: Love HuffPost? Become a founding member of HuffPost Plus today. #BREAKING FAA statement on Southwest Flight 1380 pic.twitter.com/FyPS7Mud0U Jeffrey Cook (@JeffreyCook) April 17, 2018 Passengers also posted photos on social media of the damaged plane. They also thanked the crew. @SouthwestAir These are the heros of SWA 1380 NYC to Dallas We lost an engine mid-flight and they guided back to Philly saved 149 on board pic.twitter.com/RNA8sXRBZA Kristopher Johnson (@EMMS_MrJohnson) April 17, 2018 This story has been updated with news that a person on the plane has died. Please check back for updates. This article originally appeared on HuffPost. ZTE is going to have some trouble making phones for the United States. The Chinese company was just hit by a ban on American exports from the Department of Commerce. Farysa Hamza/Shutterstock.com Farysa Hamza/Shutterstock.com That ban will keep ZTE from getting parts from U.S.-based suppliers such as Qualcomm, Intel, Microsoft and Dolby for seven years. Qualcomm is perhaps the biggest loss for ZTE, as it will be difficult to make phones that work in the U.S. without the mobile processor platforms Qualcomm builds. (There are other processors that should work fine on spectrum in Europe and Asia.) It's unclear how this will affect upcoming phones from ZTE. This comes as punishment for illegally shipping telecommunications equipment to Iran and North Korea. As part of a plea deal, ZTE was supposed to reproach any employees involved and revoke bonuses. But according to the Department of Commerce, bonuses were paid in full. The company paid monetary fines, and also agreed that it would give up its export rights if it failed to rebuke its employees. Now, the U.S. is pulling the trigger. "ZTE made false statements to the U.S. Government when they were originally caught and put on the Entity List, made false statements during the reprieve it was given, and made false statements again during its probation," Secretary of Commerce Wilbur L. Ross, Jr. said in a statement. Tom's Guide has reached out to ZTE for comment, and will update if we hear back. The move could have repercussions for budget phone shoppers. While ZTE makes a range of models, it's made particular in-roads in the U.S. with budget handsets that are sold through discount and prepaid carriers. Chinese phone companies have been under increased scrutiny lately. U.S. intelligence agencies have cited potential Chinese espionage as a concern, causing carriers to back out of selling Huawei's Mate 10 Pro. We did a deep dive on Huawei and ZTE, and while governments certainly see the phones as a risk, there is little evidence that ZTE and Huawei are spying on you, specifically. AMMAN Syrian anti-aircraft defenses shot down missiles fired at the Syrian air base of Shayrat in Homs province late on Monday and another base northeast of the capital, Damascus, Syria's state television and pro-Iranian Hezbollah media said. State television showed pictures of a missile that was shot in the air above the air base only days after a US, British and French attack on Syrian targets in retaliation for a suspected chemical attack on the city of Douma on the outskirts of Damascus. State television did not mention three missiles that were fired at Dumair military airport, northeast of Damascus, that pro-Iranian Hezbollah's media service reported were intercepted by Syrian air defenses. Opposition sources say Dumair airport is a major air base used in a large-scale military campaign waged by the Syrian army with Russian firepower that regained eastern Ghouta, a rebel enclave on the outskirts of Damascus. Police is investigating a possible hate crime in the Mateh Binyamin Regional Council on Sunday after the Yesh Din organization reported hateful graffiti was sprayed and tires were punctured in Palestinian villeges next to the A'ali settlement in the Samaria region of the West Bank. Writings such as "Stop the Administrative order" and "Expel or kill" were sprayed. Syrian state television reported early Tuesday that the country's air defense systems intercepted missile attacks at two military bases in the country. Media outlets affiliated with the regime of President Bashar al-Assad reported that the attackin the Homs regionwas aimed at the Shayrat base, situated southeast of the city. Follow Ynetnews on Facebook and Twitter State television showed pictures of a missile that was shot out of the air above the airbase mere days after a US, British and French strike on Syrian targets in retaliation for a suspected chemical attack on the city of Douma on the outskirts of Damascus. Footage of alleged missile interception in Syria X The Shayrat base itself was attacked last year by American forces as a punitive measure following an earlier chemical attack by Assad's regime in Khan Shaykhun. An American Tomahawk missile launched at Syria during Saturday's strike (Photo: AFP) The American Defense Department quickly put out a statement in the wake of the reported attack saying, "There is no US military activity in that area at this time." "We do not have additional details to provide," Pentagon spokesman Eric Pahon said. The Reuters news agency reported the IDF Spokesperson's Unit declined comment as well, and no reports pointed a finger in blame at Israel thus far. .. pic.twitter.com/r0fBTk1nZ6 Mhd Zahreddine (@mhd_zahreddine) April 16, 2018 As it stands, it appears the attack was orchestrated by local rebel forces, acting as proxies for an Arab, American or other interest in the regionsimilarly to the activities of the Houthi rebels in Yemen being directed by Iran. A senior Syrian military official said six missiles were launched at a military airbase on the Homs suburbs, and three additional projectiles targeted a military airfield in a-Dumair, on the Damascus outskirts. The Syrian Observatory for Human Rights war monitor confirmed the launch at the Syrian capital's suburbs. An initial report attributed the attack to fighter jets. The New York Times quoted a senior IDF official Monday as saying that the attack on the T-4 military base that claimed the lives of 14 people last week was carried out by Israel The official confirmed to the Times that the strike on the Tiyas Military Airbase in Syria's Homs last week was intended to hit Iranian installations and personnel. The strike on the T-4 base was blamed on Israel Speaking to the newspaper's senior analyst Thomas Friedman, the officer said the attackwhich claimed the lives of seven Iranian soldierswas "the first time we attacked live Iranian targetsboth facilities and people." In the rare admission of Israeli responsibility for a strike, the officer told Friedman, "This is the first time we saw Iran do something against Israel, not by proxy. This opened a new period." Hours after the article was published, the paper's senior analyst added that the IDF Spokesperson's Unit rejected the report, stressing that Israel does not comment on foreign publications. Deputy Hezbollah leader Sheikh Naim Qassem told pro-Syrian government television channel al Maydeen he expected a reaction to the deaths of the Iranian personnelincluding the commander of the elite Quds Force's drone unit which Iran blamed on Israel. "The deliberate Israeli slaying of Iranians in the T-4 base will have a response but we don't know its nature or its details," Qassem said in the television interview. Six Iranian personnel were killed in the strike, including drone unit commander Col. Dehghan (top left) On the backdrop of recent events, the IDF has deployed forces in increased numbers in the Golan Heights, both on the ground and the air, in preparation for a potential Iranian retaliation. The United States, France and Britain attacked a series of targets in Syria this past weekend in retaliation for the regime's chemical attack on Douma two weeks ago. US President Donald Trump addressed the nation early Saturday, saying he had ordered "precision strikes on targets associated with the chemical weapons capabilities of Syrian dictator Bashar al-Assad." In the subsequent strike, more than 100 missiles were launched at structures associated with the country's chemical weapons capabilities, with Syria claiming that its air defense systems intercepted and diverted the trajectory of most missiles. British Prime Minister Theresa May also verbally attacked Assad Saturday afternoon, saying, "Anyone using chemical weapons against his own people will be punished." In a statement to the press, May said Britain had unequivocal proof that Assad was behind the Douma attack, and that he continued harboring additional chemical weapons with the intent of using them. Deputy Secretary-General of Hezbollah Naim Qassem said Monday in an interview to Al Mayadeen that, "By attacking the T-4 base Israel wanted to show it's in control of the conflict, that's unacceptable to us." "The Iranians killed by Israel will be avenged. An Iranian retaliation against Israel is expected, but its nature is still unknown to us," he added. The Group of Seven industrialized nations condemned on Tuesday the alleged chemical attack in eastern Ghouta in Syria on April 7 and backed "proportionate" efforts by the United States, Britain and France to stop the future use of such weapons. "We fully support efforts made by the United States, the UK and France to decrease the capacity to use chemical weapons by the Assad regime and to prevent their future use," said the leaders, referring to Syrian president Bashar Assad. "We still stand by a diplomatic solution to the conflict in Syria," they added. The US-led attack on Syria's chemical weapons facilities did not achieve most of its objectives and will not deter President Bashar Assad, according to Israeli intelligence assessments. Follow Ynetnews on Facebook and Twitter "If President Trump had ordered the strike only to show that the US responded to Assad's use of chemical weapons, then that goal has been achieved," according to a senior defense establishment official. "But if there was another objectivesuch as paralyzing the ability to launch chemical weapons or deterring Assad from using it againit's doubtful any of these objectives have been met." Another intelligence official added that, "The statement of 'Mission Accomplished' and (the assertion) that Assad's ability to use chemical weapons has been fatally hit has no basis." Scientific research center in Damascus destroyed in strikes Officials in Israel's defense establishment, including in the Mossad, estimate Assad has been able to keep 5-10 percent of his chemical weapons stockpiles after the signing of an agreement to disarm Syria of its chemical weapons in September 2013, and he has been making attempts to hide what's left. After US President Donald Trump began making threats last week of an imminent strike, the Syrians have made additional efforts to move away, scatter and hide planes, launching measures and munitions. According to Israeli appraisals, since the signing of the 2013 agreement, Syria has used chemical weapons in about 100 instances, with 100 additional inconclusive cases. Assad has reportedly used sarin and mustard gas in these attacks, but not VX, the most lethal of the chemical weapons in his possession, as he is believed to be saving it as a "doomsday weapon." The Syrian president also makes frequent use of chlorine, which the US failed to include in the original agreement. Based on the information gathered so far, only some of the chemical weapons facilities known to Israel were destroyed in the US-led attack. However, an Israeli official noted, "Even if all of them had been destroyed, they don't include all of the chemical weapons, some of which is difficult to tell where the Syrians had hidden them." US-led strike in Syria (Photo: AP) The fact there were no reports of chemicals leaking following the strikes only serves to bolster assessments that the major stockpiles haven't been hit. In addition, the Syrian Air Force only suffered a minor hit, and so the Syrian ability to drop these chemical weapons on their targets has hardly been compromised. The bottom line, the officials said, is that "only a partial damage was caused to the chemical weapons stockpiles and launch capabilities." In addition, Israeli intelligence officials believe "Assad has not been deterred from using chemical weapons again" due to Trump's declaration that American forces would leave Syria soon and comments from other American officials that there were no future attacks planned. "If you want to shootshoot, don't talk," quoted a diplomatic source. "In the American case, this is mostly talk. They themselves show actions are not going to follow," he criticized. Israeli officials believe the United States has been intentionally underplaying its ability to operate against Syria, so it doesn't have to do so. On several occasions, Israeli officials have pointed to their American counterparts that the United States has the ability to do more for the Syrian people and were met with shrugs and bizarre assertions that this was not possible operationally. Palestinian terrorists set fire to a wheat field in the Sha'ar HaNegev Regional Council Monday afternoon by flying a kite laden with combustible materials across the border from Gaza. There were no casualties reported. Follow Ynetnews on Facebook and Twitter Monday's incident marked the third time in as many days such incidents took place near the Gaza Strip border fence. At least two kites were flown from Gaza into Israeli territory Saturday and Sunday, causing fires in their wakethe last of which was ignited in the Kissufim Forest in the Eshkol Regional Council. Palestinian footage of terrorists flying incendiary kites X The IDF is monitoring the new, quickly growing trend. Farmers and security personnel from the Israeli comminutes adjacent to the Gaza border were asked to be particularly alert to the phenomenon and and call in firefighting teams if necessary. A Palestinian carrying an incendiary kite Protesters near the border have also made judicious use of tires in recent protests, setting them ablaze to obscure visibility for IDF snipers while causing severe air pollution in their wake. The burned wheat field in the Sha'ar HaNegev Regional Council The kite method may have been selected because the terrorists operating them feel relatively safe doing so, based on the assumption the IDF will not target them aerially. They are, however, operating the kites from behind earthen batteries out of fear of being hit by snipers on the ground. The relative success of kites in causing damage to the Israeli side has naturally emboldened the Palestinians in their use, with arsonists attempting to aim them at swaths of land where brush fires could be created or at IDF outposts near the border. Due to the wind naturally blowing on a west-to-east vector, fires caused by the kites do not cross over the border into the strip. A burned out tin carrying combustible materials Sanctions levied on 14 Gaza transport companies On a matter also related to recent protests, Coordinator of Government Activities in the Territories (COGAT) Maj.-Gen. Yoav Mordechai announced sanctions on 14 Gaza transportation companies whose vehicles were used to ferry Hamas members and other rioters to the border region. "As we have warned, sanctions will be levied on company owners, and neither they nor their families will receive privileges. Every link of theirs to Israel will be cut off," COGAT said. Violent riots on the strip's border this past Friday led to the death of a 28-year-old Palestinian man in clashes with IDF forces. Some 10,000 Palestinians participated in the riots , which centered around five hotspots. The IDF communicated that several attempts to damage or cross the security barrier were made, including an explosive device placed in the vicinity of the Karni crossing, near Gaza's Shuja'iyya neighborhood. The device detonated on the Palestinian side and has apparently wounded several protesters. COGAT Mordechai announced sanctions will be imposed on 14 Gaza bus companies Protests at the border were less severe than in previous weeks, with thousands of rioters throwing stones and burning tires. Palestinians also brought a large Israeli flag to one of the protest's centers and trampled it, intending to burn it as well as other flags. The IDF said forces on the ground deployed crowd control measures and fired live rounds at main instigators. No damage will be allowed to be caused to security infrastructures or the fence, the army added, and violent rioters and terrorists involved in such actions will be dealt with. "Tell Israel to wait until May 15, when the fighting Palestinian rebellion will break out and nothing will stop it. Wave after wave, until we meet in Jerusalem," Hamas's Gaza deputy leader Khalil al-Hayya said, referring to Nakba Day, to be commemorated next month when the March of Return campaign reaches its apex. In his remarks, al-Hayya ignored news earlier in the day of the IDF destroying a Hamas terror tunnel on the Gaza-Israeli border. The High Court of Justice (HCJ) approved on Tuesday a petition against Minister of Defense Avigdor Lieberman's decision to bar Palestinians from entering Israel to participate in the traditional Israeli-Palestinian Memorial Day ceremony. The HCJ's ruling said, "Lieberman's decision utterly ignores the bereaved families and the public's feelings, both of which sought to hold the ceremony as in years prior." Moreover, the HCJ approved the entry to the country of 90 Palestinians for the purpose of attending the ceremony. In anticipation of Israel's 70th Independence Day, the police will strike 300,000 criminal records of civilians. As part of the move, cases closed due to lack of evidence and interest to the public will be automatically stricken from offenders' records. Head of the police's Criminal Information Section Elisha Kogan presented the criteria for cases to be automatically stricken in the near future, being persons with up to two closed cases and with no prior convictions or open cases. The High Court of Justice ordered Defense Minister Avigdor Lieberman on Tuesday to allow the entry of 90 Palestinians into Israel for an Israeli-Palestinian Memorial Day ceremony Follow Ynetnews on Facebook and Twitter The 13th annual "alternative" Memorial Day ceremony, organized by Combatants for Peace and the Israeli-Palestinian Bereaved Families for Peace, will be held Tuesday evening, Memorial Day eve, at 9pm, in Tel Aviv's Ganey Yehosha Park. Over 4,000 people are expected to attend. "We believe that the sentence 'In their death, they ordered us to live,' is not just a slogan, but also a call for action," the organizers said. "We work to change reality together, to realize the shared hope for peace, and to allow all who live on this piece of land to live." Defense Minister Avigdor Lieberman (Photo: Shamir Elbaz) Author David Grossman, whose son fell in the Second Lebanon War, and Dr. Amal Abu Sa'ad, whose husband Yaqoub Abu al-Qiyan was shot dead by police in Umm al-Hiran, are set to speak. "We have decided to make the conditional order peremptory and instruct the defense minister to allow 90 Palestinians to enter Israel to participate in the joint ceremonysimilar to the number of permits given in 2016provided that after a suitable individual examination there would be no security-related or other reason not to allow it," the High Court ruling said. Ceremony organizers welcomed the High Court's ruling, saying, "We're happy the court made it clear that even the defense minister has limitations, and that he should keep his personal preferences to himself. Lieberman won't tell bereaved families how to mark their pain. The Israeli-Palestinian remembrance ceremony will be held this year as well with the participation of Palestinians, and will be the biggest since it was first held 13 years ago. The general public is invited to take part." The Defense Ministry rejected the requests of 110 Palestinians to enter Israel for the ceremony, prompting event organizers to turn to the High Court. The defense minister, they argued, was motivated by political considerations and had no authority to refuse the requests. The alternative Memorial Day ceremony in 2015 (Photo: Chai Ashkenazi) Lieberman, meanwhile, asserted that "it is our duty to safeguard the Memorial Day for Israeli Soldiers as a state, national day of mourning. I won't allow the politicization of bereavement. I respect the justices of the High Court, but my response to the court is that I am unwilling to lend a hand to the desecration of Memorial Day." Police will deploy in large numbers outside the venue due to an expected demonstration by right-wing activistsincluding rapper The Shadowwho promised to "sabotage" the event. Last year's event also drew protesters, who cursed and spat at participants. "There's no escaping it, we must all stand against the disgraceful memorial day ceremony for terrorists," The Shadow wrote on his Facebook page. "Last year, I protested against the ceremony, and I was accused of things I didn't do. I debated on whether to show up (this year), because I didn't want to encourage people to come to the ceremony, but as time went by I realized there is no choice, and you and I must go there and make the fallen's cries heard. I would have preferred commemorating the fallen in peace and quiet, but I am forced to go, shout curse words and demonstrate. If we don't do this together, this will continue being legitimate." TEHRAN Iran's official IRNA news agency says gunmen have shot and killed two guards at an outpost along the country's southeastern border with Pakistan. Tuesday's report says the guards and the attackers, whom IRNA identified as terrorist suspects, exchanged gunfire for two hours before dawn on Tuesday at the Mirjaveh border crossing. IRNA identified the killed guards as Maj. Vahid Hosseinzadeh and soldier Abolfazl Gholampour. A false alarm led to Syrian air defense missiles being fired overnight and there was no fresh attack on Syria, state TV said Tuesday. Follow Ynetnews on Facebook and Twitter Syrian state TV reported overnight that anti-aircraft defenses had shot down missiles fired at the Shayrat air base in the Homs area, and a media unit run by the Lebanese group Hezbollah said missiles had also targeted an air base near Damascus. A senior Syrian military official said six missiles were launched at a military airbase on the Homs suburbs, and three additional projectiles targeted a military airfield in a-Dumair, on the Damascus outskirts. Footage of alleged missile interception in Syria X A commander in the regional military alliance that backs the Syrian government attributed the malfunction to "a joint electronic attack" by Israel and the United States targeting the Syrian radar system. The issue had been dealt with by Russian experts, said the commander, who spoke to Reuters on condition of anonymity. The US Defense Department quickly put out a statement in the wake of the reported attack saying, "There is no US military activity in that area at this time." "We do not have additional details to provide," Pentagon spokesman Eric Pahon said. The IDF Spokesperson's Unit has declined comment as well, and no reports pointed a finger in blame at Israel thus far. Reports pointed to local rebel forces as responsible for the attack, acting as proxies for an Arab, American or other interest in the regionsimilarly to the activities of the Houthi rebels in Yemen being directed by Iran. The reported fresh attack happened mere days after a US, British and French strike on Syrian targets in retaliation for a suspected chemical attack on the city of Douma on the outskirts of Damascus. The Shayrat base itself was attacked last year by American forces as a punitive measure following an earlier chemical attack by Assad's regime in Khan Shaykhun. Several signsincluding the arson of a mosque , hateful graffiti and confrontations between Hilltop Youths and IDF soldierspoint to growing tensions in the West Bank between the hard-line settlers and the army. Follow Ynetnews on Facebook and Twitter Shin Bet and the police carried out an extensive wave of arrests in the wake of the deadly terror attack in Duma. They have also endeavoredin conjunction with the armyto evacuate outposts and issue restraining orders and prohibitions against congregating. CCTV footage of the arsonists X Several acts of Jewish terrorism were uncovered during the investigation into the Duma attack, while simultaneously,several youths questioned in the probe reported undergoing difficult experiences in the interrogation room. 'Price tag' sprayed on the exterior of the torched mosque (Photo: Zacharia Sadeh) Calm was eventually restored to the volatile areas, and the Shin Bet and police continued carrying out the policy of administrative orders and evacuations. In the 18 months since, however, extremist youths renewed acts of violence once again. Last month, for example, hateful graffiti was sprayed in east Jerusalem's Beit Hanina and in the village of Fara'ata, in the Samaria region of the West Bank, with the latter incident seeing "Stop administrative orders" and "Administrative price tag" inscribed. A settler throwing stones at Palestinians (Photo: Zacharia Sada, Rabbis for Human Rights) This past weekend, a mosque in the village of Aqraba in the Samaria was torched, and graffiti saying "Revenge" and "Price tag" were discovered at the scene. In the villages of a-Lubban ash-Sharqiya and Aswiya, meanwhile, "Deport or kill" and "Stop administrative orders" were sprayed. Three disparate elements have accelerated the process of escalation in relations between Hilltop Youths and security forces. The first is the increasingly frequent evacuations of hills and outposts by the State. Several significant outposts have been evacuated in the past few weeks, including Maoz Esther, Geulat Zion and Rosh Yosef near Itamar. Shattered windows in the wake of a price tag attack (Photo: Zacharia Sada, Rabbis for Human Rights) "We bother no one," one of the youths said. "We're only in the hills, and then police come, raise a stink over a small wooden structure and bother us." The second element relates to the serious terror attacks in the West Bank earlier this year, including the shooting attack that claimed the life of Rabbi Raziel Shevah and the stabbing attack that claimed the life of Rabbi Itamar Ben Gal at Ariel Junction. Calls of "revenge" were made during the two victims' funerals The third element has to do with the strict punishments meted out against Hilltop Youths convicted of hate crimes in what has been dubbed the "Nahliel underground." The youthsfound guilty of throwing a grenade into a school in the village of Beitillu and assaulting a Palestinianwere handed down hefty prison sentences. Police and the Shin Bet are currently staying the course vis-a-vis the administrative order policy, despite growing frictions and danger of further escalation. Sergeant Noam Belachsan, 20, will be discharged from the IDF in about three months. Belachsan, who serves as a commander in the Navys simulators unit, cant wait for her trip to the magical beaches of Thailand. Follow Ynetnews on Facebook and Twitter Completing her military service symbolizes another milestone she can take pride in. But as in the other important and joyful events in her life, she wont have her father by her side to embrace or encourage her. Noam Belachsan. 'I have no brothers or sisters to share my pain with' (Photo: Elad Gershgoren) In February 1999, when Noam was just 18 months old, her father, Major Eitan Belachsan, was killed while leading his paratroopers unit on an operational activity against Hezbollah cells in southern Lebanon. The force he commanded was ambushed by terrorists. An engineering officer, First Lieutenant Liraz (Raz) Tito, and a team commander, First Lieutenant David-Yaakov Granit, were also killed in the battle. Eitan was 30 years old. He was survived by his wife Raya, his daughter Noam, his parents, his two brothers and his sister. Noam was aware of the heavy disaster that had struck her family from a very young age. When I was three or four years old, and the kindergarten children would ask me where my father was, I would reply: My father is dead, she says. Memorial Day schedule 2018 I quickly realized that was my reality. I have missed my father in many stages of my lifeduring birthdays, at my bat mitzvah, in school, and primarily during last years ceremony for outstanding soldiers. As I stood on the stage and received the certificate of merit, I missed my fatherwho had also received a certificate of merit from the chief of staffso much. I wanted him there, standing on the stage beside me for a few minutes, taking pictures of me. Its a shame he couldnt see me at that moment. Noam felt she had come full circle at the outstanding soldiers ceremonies. Her father, who was a highly esteemed officer, had received the certificate of merit, and now his daughter, who didnt get to know him, is receiving a certificate proving that like father, like daughter. Both me and my mother feel the great loss, she says painfully. Everyone spoke about my father and many people admired him both as a commander and officer and as a person who combined values of giving and helping. Im the only one who didnt know him at all. There are many moments when I feel I really missed out. Noam with her father before his death. 'I'm sure he's proud of me' Despite her fathers absence, Noam feels he is always there. Dad is with me every single minute, wherever I go. I am certain he would have been happy to see me and would have definitely been proud of the path I have taken and of the choices I have made as a commander and in general. Sometimes, when things get tough or when I ponder what to do, I ask Mother: What would dad say? What should I do? Now, on Memorial Day and during the ceremonies, the yearning is even stronger. I have no brothers or sisters to share my pain with, Noam explains. My mother and I hurt and comfort each other. On Memorial Day, I think about all the bereaved families that have lost their loved ones. The most difficult day is the day of dads memorial service. I practically break down there. Every year, we hold a leadership conference in his memory at the Tel-Hai College, and many officers and commanders arrive and talk about him. And I never even got to hug him for a second. I never got to say, Thank you, dad, or I love you. I miss something that I never had. Despite the bereavement, Noams mother succeeded in directing her daughter towards promising paths. Every day, I thank my mum for the motto she gave me, that we must keep living and enjoying ourselves. Mom is worthy of admiration and appreciation. She is bigger than life, and the place I am in today is largely thanks to her. As Noam keeps talking about Eitan, she is suddenly faced with the horrible realization that in a few years from now, she will reach the age iat which her father's life was snatched from her. She wipes away the years, tries to convey a sense of business as usual, and then breaks down and takes a few minutes to calm down. Sometimes its so difficult not to have known my father, but Im following in his footstepsleading, commanding, excelling, succeeding. Im sure hes proud of me now. Now lets go to the beach. WARSAW, Poland -- A Polish nationalist group has asked prosecutors to investigate whether the Israeli president broke a new Holocaust speech law during a visit to Poland last week. The National Movement says it believes Reuven Rivlin might have violated legislation that criminalizes falsely blaming the Polish nation for the crimes of Nazi Germany. The group's vice president, Krzysztof Bosak, said it formally filed its request to prosecutors on Tuesday. Thousands of Jews from around the world came together on Tuesday evening to honor Israel's fallen soldiers, members of security forces and terror victims in a special memorial service in English. Follow Ynetnews on Facebook and Twitter The ceremony for Diaspora Jews, which is organized by Masa Israel Journey, took place at the IDF Armored Corps' Memorial Site in Latrun. Education and Diaspora Affairs Minister Naftali Bennett and Jewish Agency director and Israel Prize laureate Natan Sharansky joined bereaved families, 3,000 Jewish community leaders and 4,000 Jewish youths from the world over to remember the fallen. "The ceremony we're holding will allow young Diaspora Jews to be real partners in a day that carries immense weight in Israeli society," said Liran Avisar Ben Horin, the CEO of Masa Israel Journey. "The ceremony, in its unique format, has over the years become an emotional memorial service in which Diaspora Jews bow their heads along with the entire nation of Israel in memory of the fallen," Ben Horin continued. "Masa brings thousands of participants from dozens of countries around the world to experience with us the Israeli reality during this period of Holocaust Remembrance Day, Memorial Day and Independence Day, which hold great significance for all of us," he went on to say. "The events we hold during those days are another link in the chain that we create with dedication throughout the years, and they are meant to continue strengthening the unbreakable bond that every Diaspora Jew has to the State of Israel and the people of Israel." Interview with father of Sean Carmeli (: , ) X The ceremony featured the story of Sgt. Sean Carmeli, an American lone soldier in the Golani Brigade who was killed in the Gaza Strip during the 2014 Operation Protective Edge, alongside other lone soldiers who gave their lives to protect Israel. The ceremony, which was also held in English, was simultaneously translated into French, Spanish and Russian, and broadcast live to Jewish communities around the world, as well as on Masa Israel's Facebook page. A Polish nationalist group asked prosecutors Tuesday to investigate whether Israel's president broke a law that criminalizes blaming the Polish nation for the crimes carried out during the Holocaust by Nazi Germany. Follow Ynetnews on Facebook and Twitter The National Movement said it thinks Israeli President Reuven Rivlin might have violated the new Holocaust speech law during a visit to Auschwitz last week. At issue in the group's complaint are comments in which Rivlin reportedly told Polish President Andrzej Duda that Poland allowed the implementation of Germany's genocide, National Movement Vice President Krzysztof Bosak said. President Rivlin delivers remarks at March of the Living X Rivlin said in other remarks made to Duda that Poles had murdered Jews and inherited property, adding that This was a terrain that allowed the Nazis to do whatever they liked not only in Poland but throughout Europe. The alleged comments during commemorations at Auschwitz last Thursday were carried in Israeli media and were not part of Rivlin's public remarks. President Rivlin and President Duda (Photo: Tomreko) Bosak said it would be unacceptable if Rivlin asserted that Poland bears any responsibility for the Holocaust. While the National Movement understands that diplomatic immunity protects the Israeli president from prosecution, it wants the nature of the president's remarks to be clarified, he said. "We are interested in the truth of what he said," Bosak said. "It is important for us." He also said his group was seeking to test the law, which is not being enforced in practice after sparking a dispute with Israel. The law, which formally took effect in March, criminalizes blaming Poland for crimes committed by Nazi German forces during their wartime occupation. The Polish government says its aim is to prevent Poland from unfairly being blamed for crimes that Germany committed on occupied Polish soil. Israel, however, fears the true intent is to whitewash Polish crimes by repressing discussion about those Poles who helped the Germans kill Jews during the wartime occupation. JERUSALEM - Israel released details on Tuesday about what it described as an Iranian "air force" deployed in neighbouring Syria, including civilian planes suspected of transferring arms, a signal that these could be attacked should tensions with Tehran escalate. Iran, along with Damascus and its big-power backer Russia, blamed Israel for an April 9 air strike on a Syrian air base, T-4, that killed seven Iranian Revolutionary Guards Corps (IRGC) members. Iranian officials have promised unspecified reprisals. Israeli media ran satellite images and a map of five Syrian air bases allegedly used to field Iranian drones or cargo aircraft, as well as the names of three senior IRGC officers suspected of commanding related projects, such as missile units. The information came from the Israeli military, according to a wide range of television and radio stations and news websites. Israel's military spokesman declined to comment. Principals of Arab schools in Israel don't plan to ignore the country's 70th Independence Day, but they're also not going to toe the line with the way the holiday is marked in Jewish schools. Follow Ynetnews on Facebook and Twitter There are 388,000 students from the Arab sector in the Israeli education system in nearly 4,000 different educational institutions, and they too will have no studies on Independence Day. According to the 2016 Democracy Index conducted by the Israel Democracy Institute, the Israeli identity of Israeli Arabs is only second to their religious identity, parallel to their Arab identity and ahead of their Palestinian identity. 55 percent stated that they were proud to be Israelis while 38 percent said that it gave them no pride. Dr. Muhammad Halil Dozens of school principals, heads of education departments in the Arab sector and even academics refused to be interviewed for this story and talk about how and if they mark Independence Day in Arab schools. Those who did agree to be interviewed admitted there is an intentional silence observed around the holiday. "For the children, it's just another day off," one of them said. "They don't even know what Independence Day is. This situation is convenient to all." According to Dr. Khaled Abu Abasa, director of the Masar Institute for Education, schools in the Arab sector ignore Independence Day as a general rule. "I don't think they mark that day in any way," he said. "The schools remain closed and Independence Day goes by silently. They don't talk about it, and they move on, and that's a shame. The teachers and principals are afaird to discuss the topic." Dr. Abasa dubbed it the "culture of silence" prevalent in Arab sector schools. "They try to move on and not talk about political issues, and later we meet the Arab students in academia and find out they have no basic knowledge of their history," he said. Dr. Khaled Abu Asbah "In addition, there is a culture of intimidation. Meaning, the teachers and principals are trying not to discuss values, because it requires a very serious and deep discussion. The schools are achievement-oriented, and less about political education," Dr. Abasa explained. "As for Independence Day, the children simply don't know that holiday, and don't understand its meaning at all," he continued. Dr. Abasa called to open these thorny issues up for discussion in Arab schools, but noted that "for that, we need the backing of the Education Ministry, because policy comes from above." "Ultimately, this is a Jewish and democratic state," said an Education Ministry source . "The system operates according to the principles of the Declaration of Independence, recognizing the right of minorities in the state, and thereby makes the necessary adjustments in the school system, but certainly, it is impossible to please everyone." "I live in this country and respect it, but I have no connection to this day," says the director of the education department in one of the Arab municipalities. "The principals in the Arab sector do not feel a connection to this day, and rightly so. "The state has not done enough to connect us and we do not feel that this day is relevant to us," he continued. "We have to think about how to connect the citizens to the country, but we are different and we are in a situation that is unnatural." For them, he explained, Independence Day represents a dark chapter in their history. "This day is our Nakba (catastrophe) Day, that is the truth. Perhaps if we were to receive recognition, the feeling will change, but as long as that is not the case, how can we identify?" However, the administrator pointed out that among the Bedouin sector, the situation is slightly different from that in the Arab sector. "Because of militay service, some schools in the Bedouin sector certainly mark Independence Day." Muhammad Khalil, a principal of a high school in Bi'ina, is among the few who do mark Independence Day. Prof. Hussam Haick (Photo: Eli Gershgorn) "As a principal, I believe we have to be an inseparable part of the state," he said. "We'll give students the freedom to express themselves and ask questions about this day. Even if the students don't talk about this to us at school, they are certainly talking about the Nakba with their parents and family. I personally encourage my students to be a part of the country and be loyal citizens, but we have a problem." In response to the assertions, the Ministry of Education described the "Image of Israel" project on the occasion of the 70th anniversary celebrations, which will also take place in the non-Jewish sector. As part of the project, students are exposed to significant landmarks in the history of the state. The Ministry stressed that events related to the Arab sector will also be integrated into the program, including the abolition of military rule over Israeli Arabs, the Six-Day War, Land Day events, the first direct broadcast of Voice of Israel Radio in Arabic and the research contribution of Prof. Hossam Haick from the Technion Engineering Faculty. However, the ministry stresses that the choice of topics and the manner of dealing with the project is subject to the consideration of the schools. The wife of Israel's Ambassador to Senegal Paul Hirschson, dropped out of a meeting for diplomatic spouses after pressure from wives of Arab diplomats led the hostess of the event and wife of the French ambassador in Senegal to ask her not to attend. Follow Ynetnews on Facebook and Twitter Jeanne Hirschson arrived in Senegal two and a half years ago with her husband and joined the Diplomatic Spouses' Organization, which conducts social activities such as fundraising for charity, site visits and meetings with the Senegalese public, with the support of the wife of the Russian ambassador to Senegal who was its president. In time, she was also appointed vice-president of the club, a position she left about a month ago. Two weeks ago, Valerie Bigot, the wife of the French ambassador in Senegal and former French ambassador in Israel Christophe Bigot, held a social event for members of the organization in her home and invited Hirschson, who agreed to attend. L to R: Jeanne and Paul Hirschson The day before the event, however, Hirschson got a phone call from Bigot who retracted the invitation. "I advise you not to come because it is uncomfortable for many people to have you present. Your presence is problematic. Not everyone loves Israel," Hirschson was told. Speaking to Ynet, Hirschson said it came as a complete shock. "The wife of the French ambassador tells the wife of the Israeli ambassador not to attend the event just because she is Israeli. That's how I hear and that's how I understand it," she answered her. Bigot responded by clarifying her request: "I'm not telling you not to come. I just think that if you come, it will not be pleasant for you. There might be conflicts. There might be people who leave. I am worried that the event will not go smoothly." Ambassador Hirschson in Senegal Hirschson, appalled, decided she would not attend an event where she was not wanted. "It is very unpleasant, especially since the wife of the French ambassador was my friend and they served in Israel," Hirschson lamented, stressing she was therefore not angry at her, but felt sorry for her. She concluded that she will continue her work in the organization until her husband ends his mission in August. Her husband, though, decided to publicize the incident, chastising those responsible for his wife's humiliating treatment in a series of tweets, crediting Senegal's first lady Marieme Faye Sall, an honorary member of the organization, for objecting to previous attempts to exclude Israel from the organization's events. Doesn't surprise or even bother that spouses of some Arab ambassadors to Senegal, who don't (yet) have diplomatic relations with Israel, object to the spouse of the Israeli ambassador being at diplomatic spouses' events. https://t.co/WKNBBM4olN Paul Hirschson (@paulhirschson) April 10, 2018 "What the French ambassador's wife did was unacceptable. It is not only humiliating, it is not properit is contrary to the constitution of the organization. I would understand if such a request came from the Algerians, but when it comes from (the wife of a) European ambassador, it's simply shameful," he told Ynet. "Because Senegal is a friendly country that is 95 percent Muslim, it is easy for Europeans not to stand up for their principles and abandon Israel, even though my wife was very active in the organization for a year and a half and did a lot." More than 7,500 people took part Tuesday evening in an alternative memorial ceremony, held jointly by left-wing Israelis and Palestinians, to remember fallen IDF soldiers and Israeli victims of terror, as well as Palestinian victims of the ongoing Israel-Palestinian conflict. Follow Ynetnews on Facebook and Twitter The event, held in Tel Aviv's Yarkon Park, went aheadwhile Israel marked its national Memorial Dayunder a heavy security presence comprising hundreds of police, cavalry and detectives from the Tel Aviv District. It took place for the first time in an open space after the organizers claimed that it was prevented from being held in Holon. Outside the ceremony, about 150 right-wing activists demonstrated. Writer David Grossman, who will receive the Israel Prize for Hebrew Literature and Poetry on Independence Day, said during the ceremony that "there is a lot of noise and commotion around our ceremony, but we aren't forgetting that it's a ceremony of commemoration and communion, and the noise is present too. In our event, there is a deep silence of the void created by the loss." David Grossman. 'It's so easy to devote oneself to hatred and rage' (Photo: Tal Shahar) He went on to mention his son Uri, who was killed in the Second Lebanon War. "My family and I lost Uri, a young, smart, cute and funny man-in the war. Even now, 12 years later, it's hard for me to talk about him in public. The death of loved one is the death of an entire, unique private culture, with its own special language and secret, and it will cease to exist and there will be no other culture like it. "It's so easy to devote oneself to hatred and rage and a desire to take revenge, but every time I am tempted by hatred I lose the live contact to my son. Something there is distorted. I have made my decision and made my choice, and it seems that everyone present here has made the other choice. There is creation and there is grief that connects us too. Old enemies can also connect to each other from within the grief and because of it." Grossman, who was occasionally applauded by the audience, added: "I have learned that each family member can mourn as he pleases. No one can tell another person how to mourn. That applies both to a private family and to Israel's large bereavement family. "There is a feeling of a shared fate and a fate which only we can understand, and so if the 'bereavement family' definition is real and sincere, please respect our way. It deserves respect. It isn't a simple and obvious way. It's filled with internal contradictions, but that's our way of providing meaning to the death of our loved ones after their death and this is our waynot to act and not to despair, so that the war may die out in the future and may cease completely, and we may get to live a full life rather than survive from one disaster to another. "We, Israelis and Palestinians who have lost our loved ones, people who may have been dearer to us than our own lives, we touch reality through an open wound. A person who has been wounded this way doesnt fall into illusions and knows that life is an endless compromise. Bereavement makes us more sober concerning the limitations of power or the illusions of those with power in their hands. We are more suspicious and are disgusted by manifestations of nationalistic arrogance or leaders' haughty statements. We are practically allergic to that." 'Israel is a fortress, but it isn't a home yet' He added that "Israel is celebrating its 70th anniversary this year. If only we could celebrate more and more generations of people living alongside a Palestinian state in peace, living a day-to-day routine, a safe routine, and feeling at home. A home is a place with clear and stable walls, whose inhabitants are familiar with its intimate relations, reflecting future and continuity. We aren't there yet. We, the Jewish people, must be a home. Israel is a fortress, but it isn't a home yet. "If the Israelis don't have a home, the Palestinians won't have a home either, and vice versa. If Israel isn't a home, Palestine won't be a home either. I have granddaughters aged six and three, and for them Israel is an obvious thing, that we have a state, roads, schools, hospitals, a language with rich Hebrew." (Photo: Tal Shahar) Grossman went on to attack Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu and Defense Minister Avigdor Lieberman. "I belong to a generation in which these things weren't obvious, and this is the place I'm talking from, this approach that we have finally come home. But an Israel which has been oppressing a people for 70 years and launching an apartheid is less of a home. When the defense minister prevents peace-seeking Palestinians from attending a peace-seeking gathering, that's less of a home. When the prime minister incites against human rights organizations and tries to enact laws overriding the High Court, Israel becomes less of a home for us all." He added that "when Israel discriminates against the periphery residents and discriminates against the residents of south Tel Aviv and is insensitive towards Holocaust survivors and the elderly, and when hospitals collapse, it is less of a home and it's a dysfunctional home. When it discriminates against a million and a half Palestinian citizens of Israel, it's less of a home both for the minority and for the majority. When Israel denies the Jewishness of millions of Reform and Conservative Jews, it's less of a home. When one has to prove one's loyalty to the government and to the ruling party, Israel is less of a home." Grossman revealed he would divide half of the prize money he is expected to receive on Independence Day between the Parents Circle-Families Forum and the Elifelet organization, which helps children of refugees. "I see these as bodies that engage in divine service and do the most humane things that the government should have done itself. I want a home with life that won't be enslaved by fanatics with a messianic vision, a state that conducts itself out of concern for the man living in it, out of compassion and tolerance for all dialects of being Israeli, because that is the divine truth. I hope that in 70 years from now, our grandchildren will be standing here, Israelis and Palestinians, each singing his own anthem with one joint sentence, "To be a free people in our land." 'The State doesnt treat me as an equal' Dr. Amal Abu Saad, widow of Yaqoub Abu al-Qiyan who was shot to death by police officers on February 2017 in Umm al-Hiran, spoke at the ceremony too. "I belong to the Bedouin society, which is part of the Palestinian society, and I am a citizen of the State of Israel. And if that were not enough, one of those identities allegedly contradicts the other too. It doesnt have to be that way, but it is. The State of Israel, whose identity card I carry, doesnt treat me as an equal among equals," she said. Dr. Amal Abu Saad (Photo: Tal Shahar) Dr. Abu Saad added, "Bullets of the Israeli security forces killed my husband, who was a Bedouin, a Palestinian and an Israeli citizen just like me. Police officer Erez Amedi Levy was killed in the same incident. He was buried in the military plot and recognized as a fallen soldier. While my husband, an-award winning educator, was immediately branded a terrorist, and we have been neglected. "The investigations into the incident clearly show that Yaqoub did not carry out a terror attack, yet the case hasn't been closed and no one has offered a solution. I'm raising six young children on my own, without a roof over my head. No one is taking responsibility for the disaster that took place there. "I have learned that the narrative of the other should be recognized, even if it isn't fully accepted. We must connect to the other's pain and recognize the other's rights. I have learned that complexity, despite being more difficult, is better than recklessness and the quick solutions we see today." (Photo: Tal Shahar) Among the protesters, dozens of La Familia and Lahava members chanted Death to Arabs and Death to Terrorists. The protesters burned a Palestinian flag and lit memorial candles in memory of fallen IDF soldiers and victims of terror. Attorney Itamar Ben-Gvir, a right-wing activist who was among the demonstrators, slammed the "insane Left" for the initiative. "The crazy and insane Left is here. How can one compare the murdered saints who sacrificed their souls for the sanctification of Israel and the scum that threw Molotov cocktails and committed murder?" Ben-Gvir said outside the ceremony. "Thank God they were killed. In every sane world (sic), terrorists are eliminated, and here terrorists are praised." The rapper Yoav Eliasi, known as "The Shadow," vowed to turn up in greater numbers next time the annual event is held. Right wing protesters (Photo: TPS) "Next time we will show up by the thousands. We can't treat this day with contempt," he said, before clarifying that the protesters were against terrorists, not Arabs. "We are not chanting 'Death to Arabs' but rather 'Death to terrorists.' Another activist, Ran Karmi Buzaglo, said that the activists had come "to give a voice to our fallen sons who died protecting the homeland. Their event is shameful for the bereaved families. We will not allow for it to proceed as if nothing is happening. On Tuesday morning, the Supreme Court ordered Defense Minister Avigdor Lieberman to allow the entry of 90 Palestinians to the ceremony. The court ordered that the same number of entry permits be issued as in 2016, provided that a rigorous examination finds that they pose no security threat. (Photo: Tal Shahar) Lieberman, who sought to prevent the Palestinians from entering for the event, attacked the judges for their decision. "The High Court of Justice created an equivalence this morning between bereavement and terrorism, between murdered and murderers," he said in a scathing tweet. "The court's decision is an affront to this most stately and unitifying day for the people of Israel. The end result is division instead of unity." Almagor, the organization of terror victims, expressed anger over the ruling that allowed Palestinians to attend the ceremony. "We oppose the decision of the High Court of Justice to allow Palestinian terrorist fighters and their families to attend the joint ceremony, Meir Indor, chairman of the organization said. "They do not have the right to enter Israel. It is a privilege. The courts can make exceptions for unique medical cases. But that is not the case. It is almost like conducting a joint ceremony for the SS men the executors, and the victims, on Holocaust Memorial Day." Yuma News Yuma, Arizona - The Arizona Western College Jazz Festival is being held in conjunction with the Village Jazz Series on Thursday, April 19. The performance will take place from 6 to 8 p.m. in the village area of the Yuma Palms Mall (in front of Harkins Theatres.) This years guest artist will be trumpeter Gilbert Castellanos from San Diego. Hell be accompanied by the AWC Jazz Ensemble. Castellanos will also be holding a master class on Wednesday, April 18, on jazz and trumpet musicianship and technique. The class will run from 4 to 6 p.m. in room 102 of the Music Building on the AWC Yuma Campus. Students, faculty, and community members are welcome to join. For more information, contact Professor Shawn Pollard at This email address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it. or at (928) 344-7573. With education becoming compulsory tool to meet with the fast-paced competitive nature of the work place. Short professional courses in Ghana is becoming a norm by many workers to either supplement your qualifications or give you an edge over your competition. Many workers employ it for career development and to increase their chances in employment. ISSER Ghana Short professional courses in Ghana offers learners who want to achieve the same qualifications rather than go through the normal courses that takes up to four years. Many people dismiss the short courses, but in reality, it is the best way to achieve qualifications to pamper up your CV in case you are seeking for employment. Take up the short courses in Ghana 2018 to specialize in your career and earn professional qualifications in your career. Short courses at GIMPA School of Public Service and Governance We have compiled a list of professional courses in Ghana offered in various institutions around Accra and the rest of Ghana. We have included the admission requirements for the short courses in Ghana 2018 below. Here are the best short courses offered at GIMPA: 1. Executive leadership The course targets chief directors, directors of ministries, corporate planners, heads of schools, regional/ district directors of education, executives of non-governmental institutions, chief executives and senior managers. All applicants are required to have at least two-year or more working experience in their line of work. The course lasts for 3 days in which during the period the learners are equipped with skills on how to manage and direct employees in an organization. They also learn the process of overseeing the activities of the organization to ensure they fulfill the objectives of the business. They also learn strategic planning development and their involvement in decision making process of the organization. Sources: PWC 2. Women management (middle level) The short course targets managers, supervisors, heads of sections and their assistants, senior staff in the health ministry, female heads of schools and house managers and educators. All applicants are required to have a two-year working experience in their fields of work. The course lasts two weeks in which learners are equipped with skills and techniques of handling the activities in the organization to ensure the objectives are reached. They also learn how to coordinate all activities of the organization and understand the relationship between different departments in the organization. Finally, they learn how to cope with the changes in the working environment and how to deal with gender discrimination in the organization and how to handle such cases. 3. Project planning and management The target group for the course included workers responsible for the process of monitoring and evaluation of projects during the phases of design and implementation. It also caters for administrators in different organizations like the health and urban planning workers. The course lasts for two weeks in which during the learning period students are introduced to the current trends in the project planning and how to cope with the changing design environment. They are also taught on how to make a designing project to meet the sustainable development goals that are mandatory with the Government of Ghana. Source : Health trace gh 4. Health administration and management The program targets workers in the senior health board both in the public, private and non-governmental sectors. All workers are required to have at least five years working experience in their field of work. The four weeks program equips the applicants with skills of how to supervise the staff at the medical professions. They also learn the processes of planning, coordinating, directing and controlling the activities of the medical institution. They also learn how to effectively ensure that the health care facilities provide high quality health care. 5. Monitoring and evaluation The program targets a wide range of workers involved during the initial phase of designing of projects up to the final stage of implementation. This includes directors, managers, researchers and consultants. All applicants require more than 5 years working experience in the project planning process of an organization activities. The three days program is meant to equip the learners with decision making tools during the designing of a project. They also learn the dynamics that make a proper project with consideration to the other aspects of the organization. They are also taught how to gauge the proposals of other stakeholders in order to decide on the most effective means of carrying out the project. 6. Disaster risk reduction and safety management The program targets workers of disaster risk organizations, health sector workers, fire service workers and other interested parties in the disaster risk reduction and safety management. Learners require at least two years experience in the related field in order to gain much on the short course. The program takes on 6 Saturdays from the beginning of the course. Learners are equipped with skills of how to develop an organizations risk management framework that can enhance disaster management. They learn how to assess potential threats in the environment and putting in place the effective preventive measures to help reduce the socio-economic impacts of the threats. 7. Certificate in gender management The program targets project manages, researchers, consultants, women advocates, women organizations, staff of non-governmental organizations, volunteers, trainers, governmental officials and field workers. All members of the public are legible to apply for the program as an add on to their qualifications. Students learn to appreciate the importance of gender inclusion in the work place for the sustainable growth and meeting the objectives of the organization. Learners are equipped with skills on the practical application of gender theories and research in the organization in order to advance leadership and participation and economic power and the importance of gender inclusion in the policy making process and implementation. Learners can also use the program to complement their professional degree programs. Source: Website Ghana 8. Advanced certificate in database programming with net framework The program extends the skills of learners with programming techniques including the components of net framework, database connectivity and web application development. Students learn to develop a logical thought process for creating high quality professional programming content. The program covers programming topics like object-oriented, manipulating XML, multi-thread and object serialization. Learners are expected to have at least a two-years working experience in the programming field and holders of a certificate in database programming with net framework. It adds to the qualifications of a holder of a Bachelors degree in the related field of study. Learners are guaranteed to attain concepts and techniques to help them shape the programming world in organizations. Short business courses in Ghana for WASSCE graduates 1. Certificate in business management The course lasts for 1 years where learners re equipped with techniques and responsibilities involving the supervision of employees in an organization. They also learn how to examine human behavior in order to predict and encourage productive business relationships. They learn how to combine skills and knowledge with good leadership qualities to help them run their own businesses or hold a management position in an organization. Requirements Applicants must have passes in all four core subjects and any two electives at the WASSCE or its equivalent. The course program also invites learners with interest in acquiring skills in business management with two year working experience. 2. Excel for accounting and finance The program compliments CPA holders and other people with roles in accounting and finance. Learners are equipped with the advanced level Excel skills for working CPA and other professionals in the accounting and finance world. The course is ideal for graduate seeking positions in accounting and finance. Learners learn how to create workbooks and sheets and data entry by use of basic functions like sorting and summing. Upon completion of the four modules learners are awarded with a certificate. Source: FCTA 3. Financial management The program targets managers, executives, researchers, consultants and qualified student with at least a diploma in a business-related course. The working individuals require at least a two-year working experience in their line of work. The programs also open up for students with at least a diploma in any of the business-related courses. Learners are equipped with skills on how to produce financial reports, direct investment activities and develop plans and strategies to achieve the objectives of the organization. They also learn how to make basic financial statements to improve the financial and operational performance of the organization. 4. Customer relationship management Targets small scale and large-scale business owners, managers, researchers, consultants and qualified students with at least WASSCE passes with four core subjects including English Language, Mathematics and Integrated Science. Learners are equipped with skills on how to form strategies and practices, and using the data gained to analyze and manage customer interactions throughout the lifecycle of a customer with the main objective of improving the relationships. They also learn data analysis for the purpose of customer retention with the aim of growing sales. READ ALSO: Courses offered at Knust and their cut off points 5. Advanced certificate in procurement compliance Learners are equipped with skills on ensuring the effectiveness of the governance of an organization through internal and external audit compliance. They learn means of delegating through a systematic approach to enable validation of compliance from the procurement function to influence the annual financial statements. The course targets auditors, procurement practitioners, manages, executives, researchers, consultants and qualified students with a certificate in procurement compliance or any related field of study. Upon completion of the 5-day course learners are awarded with a certificate fully accredited by Qualifi, which is an official UK Government recognized awarding body. Source: Pinterest 6. Advanced corporate governance Learners are equipped with skills on how to organize company boards and solve the underlying issues that forms the creation of corporate governance. They also learn how to establish the corporate values and setting the organization direction. They learn the principles and functions of the Board and how they are related. They are taught on the current trends changing the landscape of governance in organizations. The program targets company executives, directors, company secretaries, corporate lawyers, senior managers and shareholders representatives. Also, students with at least certificate in Corporate governance can enroll. 7. Advanced masterclass in business administration The programs include a range of topics from finance, marketing, accounting and operational management. The course aims to give the learners a deeper understanding of how the different aspects affect one another. They also develop leadership and negotiation skills in creating a relationship between departments and the public. Learner are introduced to new techniques shaping the work place and how they affect their roles. The program targets senior managers, public sector officials, researchers, consultants and executives. The program is a complement to holders of a bachelors degree in Business Administration and learners with at least a certificate in Business administration or a related field of study. 8. Advanced strategic human resource management and leadership Learners are equipped with skills to evaluate new human resource strategies. They also learn how to review a performance management system. They learn how to analyze the HR strategy using the SWOT and PESTLE analysis. They also develop their leadership skills in order to motivate other workers and build successful teams to accomplish the objectives of the organization. The program targets senior directors, senior managers, operational managers and departmental directors who have responsibilities in Human Resource and organizational development. It also complements holders of Bachelors degree in Human Resource. Source: 10Times 9. Advanced accounting and budgeting for managers The program caters for managers accountable with financial responsibilities. They are introduced to basic bookkeeping and accounting concepts and techniques that enables them manage the financial aspects of their role. They also learn skills on how to review the different approaches used in the public, private and non-governmental sectors. They learn how to measure budgetary performance through putting up a budget that will make them justifiable for expenditure in the organization. The program targets managers, supervisors, budget holders, operations managers, sales and marketing employees. It also targets officials involved in the budget making and planning process in the organization. Learners are expected to have a wider understanding of finance upon completion of the course. List of University of Ghana short courses 2018 These are the short courses on can take at the University of Ghana: Malaria monitoring and evaluation Learners are introduced to fundamental concepts and tools for monitoring the malaria program. Learners are engaged through workshops where they have the chance to participate with other to complete group projects aimed at the designing of the monitoring and evaluation plans. Learners are taught to develop new strategies to help in the fight against malaria. The program invites general members of the public with at least WASSCE passes in core subjects including English Language, Mathematics and Integrated Science. Also, staff in the health sector with at least two years working experience can enroll for the program that is usually held annually HIV/AIDS monitoring and evaluation Learners are equipped with skills on data collection needed to plan, coordinate and implement the HIV response and also assess the effectiveness of the HIV response. They also learn how to identify the most effective approaches when it comes to HIV/AIDS programs. The data collected by the learners is used to carry out scientific research and present a holistic framework for the collection of information. The program targets holders of WASSCE certificates with passes in two core subjects including English Language and Mathematics. The program complements holders of a bachelor degree in the related field of study. Improving public health intervention in management The Legon short courses offers learners with skills on how to develop evidence base for action. They also learn to create a package of high priority health intervention that will create a major impact. They learn how to plan, coordinate, control and evaluate the health intervention programs for the best performance. They learn how to form partnerships and coalitions between the private, public and non-governmental organizations sectors. They also carry an awareness program of the health intervention programs available in the organization. The program targets workers in the health institution with at least two years working experience. It also compliments learners with a bachelor degree in the related field of study. ASQS Ghana Ghana Telecom University short courses Graduate certificate in information technology Learners are equipped with skills and knowledge on an essential area of IT to assist in their career development. Students learn more about multi-skilling, multi-tasking and cross-skilling which are highly sought after by employers. They also develop specialized knowledge of software design and engineering database, and web design concepts and technologies to develop software systems. The course targets learners with a Bachelors degree in a technology related discipline or workers in the IT field with at least three years working experience or part-time equivalent. The program also includes other units like critical thinking and self-management to create an all-rounded individual with leadership skills to impact the ever-changing technological world and in the work place. IT networking: Introduction to system analysis Learners are introduced to web development, troubleshooting and implementation of web sites. They also learn how to use various types of information systems to support the functions and operations of organizations. They also learn the process of planning, building, using and updating information systems in the organization that guides project management. Learners get to implement philosophies that drives project management in institutions. The program targets executives involved in project management, senior managers, researchers, consultants, IT specialists and complements holders of a Bachelors degree in Information Technology or a related field of study. It also targets workers in a technology related field with at least two-years working experience. Certificate in software development The program is designed to help IT specialists and developers in the software development sector with techniques and tools that engage worldwide communities. They also learn how to handle different programming techniques and also build on their leadership skills. They learn how to design and code applications using tools and resources. They are introduced to principles of structured programming and object-oriented design. Upon completion, learners are equipped with a certificate with accreditation from Free Technology Academy. The program targets IT specialists and students with a Bachelors degree in a related field. All learners are skilled on how to cope with the changing landscape of software development in Ghana. Source: AiSAD.gh Certificate in network computing Learners are introduced to evaluating, installing, configuring and maintaining computer hardware components and operating systems. They also learn how to select an appropriate network design. They learn to solve IT system problems and the needs of an organization in applying troubleshooting methods. They also learn how to apply network safety safeguards for the organization. Learners require WASSCE passes in at least two core subjects including English Language and Mathematics. IT specialists and workers in a technology related field with at least two-years working experience can also enroll. The program complements holders of Bachelor of Degree in a related field of study. The 12 months program awards certificate upon completion and passing of all learners. Diploma in logistics and supply chain management Learners are introduced to the new concepts shaping logistics and supply chain management. Learners get to know how to handle logistic activities like inventory management, warehousing, distribution and customer service. The skills develop from this program are applied in purchasing, procurement, sourcing from suppliers and continuing the process of supply. Both for the large and small organizations. The program targets people seeking entry into the CIPS Purchasing and supply diploma course. It also targets transport personnel and management executives. Learners are introduced on concepts and techniques to cope with the changing design of logistics and supply management in Ghana. Learners with a certificate in Logistics and Supply chain management can also enroll. It complements holders of Bachelors degree in the related field of study. Executive diploma in corporate leadership The program uses a theory driven and first-hand experience to give learners techniques and skills in engaging in personal development exercises that aims to test the way learners conduct themselves in the corporate environment. They are also empowered with leadership skills to ensure the organizations objectives are met through the managing of business functions and driving performance in the competitive technology world. The program targets supervisors, managers, corporate leaders and workers with at least five year working experience in a leadership role in the organization. It complements holders of Bachelors Degree in Corporate Governance and adds up qualifications of workers. Learners are guaranteed a certificate upon completion of the program READ ALSO: Central University College - courses offered and their fees Source: Yen.com.gh With the current harsh economic conditions, it has become harder for deserving and qualified students to achieve their potential in education. But with the introduction of scholarships to study in Ghana, many of the learners have been able to successfully finish their careers in the most of the higher learning institutions in Ghana. Source: Pinterest The scholarships to study in Ghana are hard to come by but with the right directions and insight, you will realize there are many chances to fulfill your dreams and kick start your careers. Many students fail to look into these opportunities and end up passing them. However, we have compiled a list of the free scholarships to study in Ghana that are handed by some of the higher learning institutions in Ghana and the rest of the world. How to get a scholarship to study in Ghana The list of scholarships for Ghanaian to study in Ghana include opportunities in foreign countries and most of the leading institutions in Ghana. The scholarships also cover different fields of study. We have gone a step further to indicate the qualifications and the criteria of applying the scholarships and the best places to get it. 1. KNUST and Mastercard undergraduate scholarships The MasterCard Foundation recently formed a Scholars program in conjunction with the Kwame Nkrumah University of Science and Technology. The scholarships targets students living in economically disadvantaged backgrounds. Applicants must also have exemplary performance in the just concluded WASCCE national examination. Source: ghpage The scholarship seeks consideration for all subjects undertaken by the students in the different fields of interest. Although, preference is made for learners in the field of science. The scholarships provide full coverage for tuition, accommodation, learning materials, transport and stipend. Applicants have the chance to study in the leading Higher Education University in Ghana in the fields of their interest. Successful applicants are expected to go through the Go Back Give Back initiative carried by the foundation. The selection process for successful candidates includes review of individuals achievement, commitment to program, involvement in activities in the community and leadership qualities. 2. Scholarship to study in University of Ghana (educational pathways international scholarship scheme) Individuals interested in the scholarships are instructed to send their applications to the Student Financial Aid Office at the institution. The scholarship to study in Ghana University is designed for gifted students with exemplary performance in their field of study. Source: Ghpage The scholarship provides coverage for tuition, learning materials, transport, accommodation all throughout the four academic years as long as the applicants meets the high academic standards. Qualifications include Level 100 students who reside in poverty-stricken areas of Ghana. Applicants are required to provide proof of limited income of the family or theyre in capabilities to settle most of the insufficient education related funds. The University Scholarship Application forms are to be submitted at the Student Financial Aid office. READ ALSO: Government offers scholarships to SHS students in Denkyira Obuasi 3. University of Westminster undergraduate scholarship The scholarship targets qualified students with exemplary performances from developing countries with challenges in funding their education. The scholarship to study masters in Ghana gives opportunities to academically endowed students with full time degree at the institution. The scholarship covers full tuition fees, accommodation, transport, living expenses, flights to and from London. The scholarship is not limited to a specific field of study or interest. It covers all undergraduate programs offered at the university. The institution was Britains first polytechnic university. It is one of the leading institution in Britain offering quality education to learners. Source: wikipedia Upon completion of the course, learners are required to return to Ghana to implement the skills and techniques learnt to help boost the economy of Ghana. Recipients of the scholarship go through a thorough selection stage where their academic performance, code of conduct, working experience and dedications are put to the test. The scholarships cover the four-year academic years. 4. The Tertiary Education Scholarship Trust This aims to offer opportunities for economically disadvantaged students with exemplary performance to scholarships to study in Ghana 2018. It provides both full time and partial scholarships for undergraduate study with no limitation in the field of study for the students. It aims to provide bright Ghanaian who are financially challenged to get higher education and in future to make significant contributions to the social and economic development with their communities. Source; Pinterest The fund is the first step towards bringing together sponsorship and mentorship for students in the pursuit of academic and professional excellence. Applicants are required to download the newsletter and the application form at the official website www.testforghana.com. The TEST program provides 100% donations to disbursed to the accounts of the students in the various learning institutions recognized in Ghana. During the selection process not only will be academic performance tested and considered but also their individual achievements, leadership qualities and community service. Applicants must also declare to use the opportunity to use the skills and techniques to better their communities and the Ghana at large. 5. The Joint Japan World Bank graduate scholarships program The scholarship is open for men and women in developing countries with professional experience and a known history of supporting Ghanas development efforts who are applying for a master degree program in a development related subject. Upon completion of the program, the scholars are to commit to return to Ghana and use the skills, knowledge, concepts and techniques to impact the society in terms of social and economic development. The scholarship covers tuition, accommodation, transport, learning materials, health insurance and travel allowances. Applicants must not have a dual citizenship of any developed country. They must also have a Bachelors degree earned at least of 3 years before the application deadline date. They must also have a three-year development-related working experience in their field of interest. They must also before the deadline of the application date, be admitted for the upcoming academic year to at least one of the preferred university masters program and located outside Ghana. READ ALSO: Ghana Chevening Scholarship 2018 6. GE scholarship The scholarship is funded by the General Electric Company which is engaged in the development of infrastructure in Ghana for several years. It is involved in the supply of technology, services, investment and supply chain development in the power, transportation and health care sectors. It partnered with the University of Ghana to offer scholarships for qualified and economically disadvantaged students in the technology field. Source: wikipedia The scholarship targets under-graduate students in the areas of degree in Bachelor of science in Computer Science and Bachelor of Science in Applied Sciences. All the qualified and selected students can renew the scholarship annually provided they maintain a Grade Point average of (GPA) 2.5 or better. Applicants are to download and submit the GE-FUND APPLICATION FORM at the Students Finance Aid Office. Applicants must be a Level 100 student and having obtained an aggregate of 15 or better at the WASSCE. They must also be able to demonstrate their financial in capabilities to cover most or all of the educational related expenses. They must also have the will to succeed in their endeavors. 7. Australia Awards scholarships The scholarships were introduced to foster links between Australia and its neighbors. They were set up to promote knowledge for the development of developing skills. Applicants are given the opportunity to study in some of the most prestigious institutions in Australia. The scholarship caters for tuition fees, accommodation, transport allowances, health insurance and learning materials. Source: wikipedia The scholarships targets learners with a working experience and a bachelors degree in a field of related study that are from an economically disadvantaged background. Scholars after completing their courses are supposed to return to Ghana to apply the skills and technologies to help develop Ghana. Learners are also able to enhance their leadership skills in order to transform their communities. The scholarship can be renewed annually provided that the scholar maintains high academic performance in their field of study. All the scholars are expected to use the skills and techniques in the development of Ghana. Scholarships are mainly at postgraduate level. The beneficiaries of these program are among some of the most celebrated professionals in different fields of study making serious changes and empowering the community. 8. OFID Masters scholarships The OPEC Fund for International Development targets students from financially disadvantaged backgrounds with potential in their related field of study. The applicants are mentored and financed to achieve their dreams of pursuing higher education. Holders are also required to give back to society upon completion of their program. Applicants are required to include their admission forms for the masters program in the recognized university in a related field of study especially in development. The scholarship comprises of tuition fees, flights to and back, accommodation, and living expenses. The scholarship applies for courses by any recognized university in the world. Learners are required to use the skills and techniques gained to help in the development of Ghana. 9. York University undergraduate scholarships It is the third largest and most prestigious higher learning institution in Canada. The International Entrance Scholarship was established to cater for scholars undertaking the undergraduate programs in different fields of study. They provide full sponsorship for the four academic years the scholars undertake. The scholarship comprises of tuition fees, transport allowances, accommodation, learning materials and living expenses. Learners can apply to undertake any of the related fields of interest offered at the higher learning institution. Recipients must go through a thorough selection process where their academic performances, community involvement, leadership qualities and individual achievement are looked into. READ ALSO: How to get scholarships in Ghana? A case of the Ghanaian Water Bicycle inventor 10. Oxford Africa initiative, United Kingdom Targets learners who have completed an appropriate humanities or social sciences Ph.D. They mostly prefer scholars with affiliation with ARUA associated higher learning institutions. They offer scholarship in the course of visiting fellowship program. Scholars are provided with full sponsorship through the four academic years. Source: wikipedia The learners also are entitled to tuition fees, transport allowances, accommodation and learning materials. The selection process involves review of the scholars lifetime achievements, leadership qualities, involvement in community services and dreams. The learners are expected upon completion of the course, to return to Ghana to apply the skills and knowledge gained to create the economic development of Ghana. There are also other institutions that give scholarships to those students that need it. They include: The University of Tsukuba, Japan Graduate school of Humanities and Social Sciences. Scholarship to study law in Ghana Students are offered opportunity to study law in the Ghana School of Law. Commonwealth Scholarship and Fellowship Plan The program offers opportunities of scholarship to study medicine in Ghana Source: Yen Newspaper I say this without an iota of doubt that African countries are far behind their counterparts in the West in all dimensions of life and more so in matters of development. Its not because the latter has great intellectual capabilities than we are but the environment, education and socialization makes all this difference. Evidently, this can be seen in the diversion between cultural practices in Ghana and those of the west. Source: Compassion Cultural practices in Ghana for instance have both the good and the ugly bit of it. The good cultural practices in Ghana allow for historical heritage passage, continuity and preservation. This brings a sense of belonging and identity African people boast about. On the other hand are some bad cultural practices that are barbaric, demeaning, in humane, senseless and traumatizing to say the least. Ghana is home to many people of diverse backgrounds with different communally accepted beliefs, norms, customs, morals, art, setup and law different from one community to the next and from people to other people. In this piece, I will outline some of the socio cultural practices in Ghana. Those that were traditionally practiced and are still or not practiced today. I will broadly categories them into positive and negative cultural practices in Ghana and mention the repercussions of each. This will help tell apart the ethical from unethical, hence know which requires maintenance and preservation and which ones should be condemned. Here is the list of cultural practices in Ghana; List of cultural practices in Ghana Source: anoghana Human being by decent is a social being, no wonder the Englishmen came up with the mantra, no man is an islander. Meaning human beings are interdependent on each other, there interaction is what brings about a society then rules that govern it, its leadership, shared beliefs among other things. Allow me to take you back to school and define culture; culture is a learned human behavior applicable to member of that particular society and can be passed down to others, shared and is dynamic in approach. Culture is a good thing since it is the focal point to which the meaning of life is tied to. Other reasons why culture is important is because it encourages evolutionary enlightment, safeguarding future generation, instill moral values; its a school of life, leads to self realization and bring responsibility and discipline. Ideally, culture is a good thing but some corrupt and primitive minds have incorporated practices that are outright not acceptable in this modern day and age. READ ALSO: Dont give me a state burial when I die Efia Odo tells government Positive cultural practices in Ghana Culture has been stereotypically associated with old, outdated, irrational and illiterate practices. Yes, there is some truth in this but in everything is a silver lining. Here are the good socio cultural practices in Ghana; 1. Birth rites example of cultural practices in Ghana Source: blogspot They were conducted and still are conducted after the baby is born as a sign of welcoming them into the larger family. Ordinarily this took place on the 3rd or 4th day following birth. Members of the family would gather up together make merry, feast, sing and dance as they welcome the new addition. Some rites and declaration would be made by the elders including naming. Among the Akan people this ceremony was referred to as Din to but according to their practices it would be 8 days after the baby is born, the baby was to remain indoors before this event was conducted. Conceptually this would give the baby its identity and position in the community it was born in. this would mean they are accepted and share in the beliefs and practices of that community. This is a positive cultural practice in Ghana. 2. Circumcision rites for boys example of socio cultural practices in Ghana Source: trip down memory lane Male circumcision is a written history. From the days of Abraham who was first commanded of God to circumcise every male in his flock this practice has been done from one generation to the next. This was the entry point to adulthood among the people of the masculine gender. Circumcision entailed the painful excision of the fore skin as a mark of initiation. Traditional, boys who were going through this rite were segregated from the community and taken a distance far of where the procedure would be done as well us being taught their roles as men, how to protect their kinsmen among other generational norms fit for their knowledge. Today, this cultural practice in Ghana is still being practiced although westernization has brought some slight shift in its application for instance there is the use of sedatives or drugs to cause numbness in bid to ease pain when the procedure is being conducted. Segregation is not done as was in the past but somewhat still is. How so, the bottom line is that circumcision rite for boy is a positive cultural practice in Ghana and still being practiced. 3. Puberty rites Source: CIEE This was done mostly by the Akan, Bragro, Krobos, Gas and the Dipo people. It was performed on girls after their first menstruation as an initiation into womanhood. They would be secluded from the community taught about family, marriage and culture. This would help them maintain their dignity symbolized by virginity until marriage which was the primary qualification for one to go through the rite. If a girl was deflowered meaning had lost their virginity, the family was on shame. Ordinarily such a girl would be cast out along the other who got pregnant before marriage. Alternatively, cleansing rites had to be performed. This helped girl not to indulge in pre-marital sex and unwanted pregnancies at teenage. These positive cultural practices in Ghana are still being performed up to date. 4. Marriage rites Source: eagleee Here above I made a remark that human beings are social beings, allow me to repeat the cliche. You and I would agree that as people advance in age, they tend to develop an inherent attraction towards people of the opposite sex. The culmination of this is what is called marriage; the coming together of people of the opposite sex who have a desire to live together. READ ALSO: Ghanaian wedding decorations ideas As was with other cultural practice in Ghana so is in the world. Families would meets up, negotiate, agree on the bride price then be given a girl for marriage. Traditionally, the gods would be appeased and the elders would bless the union. This is one of the good cultural practices in Ghana today. Young people are married off having been counseled and blessed for the lifetime commitment. This has over time help upheld the meaning of marriage as sacred, honorable and undefiled. List of outmoded cultural practices in Ghana Source: Afrikanfacts Turning the pages of the cultural practices in Ghana is the ugly side of it. I bet this is because most of these traditions were made by people who were somewhat backward, illiterate and uncivilized to say the least. This make it unfit that some of the norms they put forward are very inhuman, insensitive and long suffering. I believe some were made selfishly with no regard of other people. Unfortunately women and child are on the receiving end of it. These harsh negative cultural practices in Ghana tend to heavy lie on them. In fact women have no right of expression in the traditional African setup yet are human too. Here are the examples of socio cultural practices in Ghana that demean humanity; 1. Female genittal mutilation Negative cultural practices in Ghana Source: Graphic Male circumcision is a common cultural activity in many African countries and even in the West. However, the Ghanaian elders of the ancient times must have copied it the wrong way altogether. Female circumcision is not a transition from childhood to adulthood as in the later but mutilation and the highest disregard to humanity. It entails removal of the genittals not the fore skin as in the latter. These cultural practices in Ghana was so the girl would maintain their sexual purity until marriage as the painful ordeal would hold them back from engaging in any sexual relations before then. Thanks to education and ongoing research about the female body, female genittal mutilation is gradually on the south trend. The effect of outmoded cultural practices in Ghana sadly would even be death. The consequence of female genittal mutilation is excessive bleeding, blocked or complication during childbirth some which could even get fatal. Besides, this was an infringement of their human rights not forgetting use of unsterilized tool that could spread infections. 2. Child betrothal and marriage Source: face2faceafrica This means that a girl is married off before the age of puberty. Parents would make the negotiations concerning the planned marriage for their daughter without their consent. This was done by some unremorseful parents due to poverty especially in the Northern region where people are living in abject poverty. Poverty is associated with these negative cultural practices in Ghana. About 70 % of the families in Northern Ghana are poor with 71% of them being illiterate and 79% of the children not attending school. A struggling family then decides to marry off their girl at a tender age to have some means of survival. Commonly, the man marrying the girl is her grandfathers age and often a rich man. The effect of this outmoded cultural practice in Ghana is that the girl child was denied their right to education, freedom of choice and often went underpowered. Their lives lie solely at the mercy of their husband. This rendered their lives useless and characterized by pain and hurt. READ ALSO: Ghanaian Traditional Wedding Dresses: Different Styles, Brands, Lengths, Ages and How to Wear Them 3. Trokosi Source: photoshelter The Ewe tribe conducted this rite to virgin girls around the Volta region of Ghana. A virgin girl would be driven out of their home and taken to the shrines as a ransom for their parents evil or wrongdoings. They would then serve at the shrine denying them an opportunity to lead a normal life including getting married. Sadly, the priest would often take advantage of such girls and have sexual relations with them and made decisions about her life on her behalf. However, these evil cultural practices in Ghana have since reduced considerably. 4. Tribal marks / Scarification Source: Huffpost This was a form of beatification done on women. Their bodies would be pierced or cut to make these marks or scars on their body. Worthwhile noting, this procedure was not done by a medical expert, often the instruments used would go unsterilized leading to infection, wounds that are not responding to treatment. In bizarre scenarios, girls would lose their lives to infections or even excessive bleeding. This cultural practice in Ghana threatens life and is somewhat primitive. However, the government has acted speedy and these have been stooped lest for those who still want to continue with such scarification procedures under wraps. 5. Widowhood rites Source: msmagazine Women whose spouse had passed away had to go through this rite. The rites vary from one community to the next but the common practices include ritual bathing, confinement, hair shaving, wife inheritance just to mention but a few. This would traumatized them to the core of their being considering they were already in their low moment of life trying to deal with death, loneliness, denial anger and acceptance of the departed. Some would be subjected to unimaginable humiliation causing them social, psychological and emotional torture and trauma. This practice is still being practiced in remote areas though it has subsided from the past. Widowhood rites makes to the list of outmoded cultural practices in Ghana. 6. Killing disabled and deformed children Source: trueafrica I belong to the school of thought that believes that illiteracy and ignorance are entwined. Due to lack of knowledge there are communities in West Africa, precisely Ghana that belief children who are born deformed or due to ailments or other caused end up disabled are due to evil powers possession. To spell out the evil spirit they have to be cast out lest they bring misfortunes to the community. Often communities living in the remote areas would kill deformed children. Again this is barbaric and a negative cultural practice in Ghana. However, government has intervened at these practices are no longer done at the public glare if they are actually happening. READ ALSO: 5 serious social problems in Ghana and their solutions Source: Yen.com.gh Each time we have a conversation concerning a fashion topic; most Ghanaians fade away and start to think of fashion trends making headlines in the runways in destinations like Paris and Italy. This got me thinking, are we as a nation blind of the modern African dress styles for women that we have to look up to other places for inspiration? Or is it a far-fetched illusion that our local fashion industry has met the par of international standards yet? No matter what your conclusion is, there is no doubt that the African wear styles are taking over. With the support of industry stakeholders, we could soon start seeing some of the African wear for ladies in fashion runways in foreign countries. We are psyched especially with the modern Ghanaian dress styles that are causing a stir in the streets. A big kudos should go to the local designers who are incorporating our African wear for women with modern fashion trends to give us a perfect blend of trendy but yet culturally sensitive fashion items. To those who are still in doubt of the fact that African wear styles are the next big thing in the fashion industry worldwide, we have put up a comprehensive list of the best of the best African wear styles for women. If you are a believer of the rich African culture and heritage, these styles will help you look stunning in any kind of occasion be it a day at the office, wedding, engagement or funeral. We have you covered. Dont sit around and wait for an outsider to convince you that these designs are dapper. Be proactive. African print styles Ankara The Ankara African print has been around for some time now and has managed to capture the attention of the international fashion franchise. It features vibrant and colorful patterns with wax prints. It is a representation of the Africa culture to the world. Want to make your normal outfit Afro-centric? Add a bit of patch work of Ankara wax and watch the magic unfold. The have been worn by celebrities around the word and a common feature in fashion runways too. Ever since it landed in Ghana, the design has multiply evolved. Many of our local designers have expertized on the Ankara wax to give us some of the most fashionable items we have yet to get over. There are no restrictions to the Ankara wax, thus it has opened a field of opportunities and ideas for both designers and lovers of the print. You dont have to go full beast mode but just a little hint of the Ankara wax and you are set to go. Here are some of the ideas that have managed to cross border when it comes to the Ankara wax. There is still space for more ideas, so dont feel limited. Modern ankara dress styles 1. Ankara faux wrap maxi dress This is specially made for the conservative women who are somewhat afraid of showing off too much skin. It has a V-neck with long with straps sleeves with gather elastic at the wrist. It is long and elegant and covers the ankles. It also has hidden pockets and an invisible zipper on the center back. It is perfect for a special event like a wedding. It is also a favorite for the older generation since it looks decent and beautiful. Throw in a necklace to complete the look. Did I mention that it is attached with a sash? 2. Ankara jumpsuit We know that some of the designs can cost an arm and a leg, so if you are operating on a tight budget, the Ankara jumpsuit it meant for you. First, you can wear it to the office and also on the weekends when you are chilling out with your friends. It is also perfect for events and you can never go wrong in them. If you have a wonderful derriere and want to show it off to the world, wear some matching pants and the let the jumpsuit capture the attention of the world. Thrown in a slim bag and make up and you can even stand a chance at the runway. Kente cloth Lets talk about the native Ghanaian print that has been with us since time immemorial. I mean we grew up with our parents owning at least a pair of kente clothing in their closet. Especially if you were born of royalty, your father must have wrapped it around his shoulders on your birthday. Well forget about the olden days, because there are different kente African dress styles for young women that have made a comeback. And this time, it is not the heavy fabric that was wrapped around your waist and shoulders like slave chains. The kente has managed to be modified and include in some of the latest modern African attire dress. Here are some ideas that are currently in use of the kente clothing: 1. Kente short African dress The dress is serves as a vital accessory in any girls closet. They are really easy to style and bring out the beauty of the woman. Especially if you have long beautiful legs, its the perfect time to show them off. They dress runs from the shoulders and above the knees. The kente prints add an extra charm to perfect the style especially when heading out. You can also design a handbag with the same kente material to compliment your dress. It is perfect with cute flat shoes or pumps 2. Kente baby doll dress Source: Pinterest The modern Mennonite dress is sleeveless with the waistline just below the bust and a loose skirt that ends at the knee. From the waist above, you can design the dress in a monotone color such as black or white. Another recent addition is wearing denim jacket over the white or black top. For the skirt, you can design with the kente print. The African straight dress styles features a loose skirt and hanging with different multicolored patterns. The dress is cute and is recommendable for women with medium waist. You can also tie a kente cloth ribbon over the best to make it more stylish. 3. Kente polished cotton dresses with batik flare A combination of batik print and kente is an added touch that can make a dress look really good. It is the perfect message you want to send to let everyone know that you are sexy and elegant. It is a formal dress that can be worn during special events and to work. Fit in some side pockets to make it more comfortable. The blend of the kente and batik prints creates a totally unique print that is an eye-catch for many. You can also transform the dress into a jumpsuit and you will be able to pull out the move. 4. Kente African casual wear with denim There is nothing more appealing than the vintage denim which has been around for a while and kente print which represents our African heritage. This two awesome fashion items can be fused together to create a perfect casual wear. The most noticeable style includes the denim jacket with hint of kente print along the sleeves and at the back of the jacket. The long-sleeved denim jacket is a common fashion accessory in most of your closets. But its quite boring when it is just worn just plain. But when you include the prints along the sleeves and back, it becomes a masterpiece. 5. Kente jumpsuit African print dresses Source: Selectastyle The altered arrangements of the colors that make the kente print an admirable piece of clothing. Remember it is important to choose the right cuts that fit your body shape. The kente fabric is elastic and can stretch to accentuate the shape of your body. It does not have to be tight, loose jumpsuits are also an eye catch. Add in some side pockets to make it more comfortable. It has a sport-comfort vibe that can be paired off with sneaker if its on a weekend or flats shoes for a day to the office. Dashiki African wear styles for ladies People always get it wrong with dashiki by thinking it is just a T-shirt. You couldnt be more wrong, Ghanaians are used to the synonymous loose-fitting garment, embroidered with a V-neckline dashiki that is unisex. But modern designs have improved on the original designs. It has been incorporated in various styles making it more famous than before. The print is known by anyone, but the designs are still new to many people. Here is some of the dashiki designs are currently the in-thing. READ ALSO: Latest African Styles for Ladies 2020 1.Modern dashiki dress The dashiki print is incorporated in the T-shirt dress making it not only comfortable but also perfect for the warm weather. The lovely T-shirt dashiki dress is great for a night out of town; you can also wear it over a pair of shorts, casual jeans or leggings. It has a V-neckline with the African wax print on the center front, sleeve, and bottom. It also embroidered in the mid-calf length dress with curved hem and side slits. The dress can be designed in an array of colors but the most dominant ones come in black, red and blue. 2. Modern African dress designs with dashiki top Dashiki top is a great addition to long straight skirts or pencil skirts reaching just below the knee. You can also wear it together with stylish designs of tops and trousers. It is also compatible with a pair of straight trousers for that weekend vibe. They can be narrowed to the bottom, straight or even flared from the hip all dependent on the type of figure. They are also work appropriate, to pull the business look choose a one-color dashiki latest style with a discreet pattern or gentle embroidery in tone with the basic color of the item. 3. Dashiki skirt and top styles This is for the fashion gurus who want to pose for a more modest and low key look. The tone for the design should be similar to the main dashiki color. Go for bright colors that make the pattern on the fabric stand out more. For the cut, the straight cuts are always a classic move to pull. If you are a plus size with wide hips, then you can choose the alternative of the dashiki A-silhouette and make it wider than the classic version. In case you want to wear the pants version, then you will have enough length that reaches the middle of your thigh. 4. Dashiki simple African print dresses When choosing a simple dashiki dress, do not be afraid of the bright colors and trendy designs for your look. It is a conservative look for the outfit that makes you feel comfortable and awesome when you wear it. Depending on your taste, you can go for the knee-length or ankle length, both scenarios will make a great outfit. But the knee-length dress is more conservative and is good for the weekends. But if you are confident, wear the knee length dress to work and pair it up with a pair of cute flats. Kitenge modern African dresses styles Kitenge is a common piece of fabric that comes from different parts of the continent. In Malawi, it is called chitenge but the fabric is the same as the ones in East Africa and West Africa. It has traditionally been used by women as head-scarves and cloth designs. They stand out due to the bright prints and attractive patters. Initially, it was stuck only on dresses but designers have incorporated into modern African dresses styles and designs. The type of kitenge fabric can be designed into different designs depending on your age, figure and taste in fashion. Designers have added a twist to many of the designs to make them more attractive and work appropriate. They can also be worn in different occasions including; formal functions, informal functions such as graduation after parties, weddings and picture shoots. It is becoming largely accepted by the international market as models have been seen rocking the fabric in fashion runways. 1. Kitenge chiffon styles in Ghana Source: Ghana Rising You can never go wrong when in a chiffon, it is a necessity and if you lack one rush to your nearest designer. You are really missing out on a lot if you havent jumped on the chiffon train. The kitenge chiffon gown is a trendy outfit in the market and the cocktail and festive outfits are usually long. They come in an array of different colors with options to the knee length dresses. For the knee-length, you can go for the different African short dress styles. 2. Kitenge silhouettes as latest fashion styles Africa Silhouettes are generally straight, A-shaped dresses that come with a narrow waist. The kitenge fabric is inserted running from the shoulders to the feet. They are common especially during the summer. Depending on your taste, you can go for long-sleeved but often they are sleeveless. A common trend is the ones with the shoulder straps. The neckline also comes in different designs like classical: oval, V-shaped or boat. They can be also used for casual and pulls out the modest and decent look. A good thing about the dress is that it doesnt need a lot of accessories. 3. Kitenge chiffon formal African wear for women Source: NanayahStudio The kitenge fabric is elastic and can stretch for fit different sizes and accentuates your figure perfectly. The chiffon looks elegant on its own but with the kitenge print addition, it kills the look. You can add a belt to hide the pot belly if you have one. You can also add ornaments in the decoration area. Remember, the way to perfect the look is going completely simple and natural. Plus size women should not wear items with a big difference in length. You can opt for the midi pencil skirt with emphasis on the hemline below the knee. 4. Kitenge African print tops for ladies with plain pants Planning to go out for a weekend with the girls but have no casual look to pull off? What about a Kitenge top matched with plain color pant or casual jeans? The crop top is the current fashion item for the young women especially who want to show off their finely lined body. The best way to rock a rock top is accompanied with something high-waist. Do not be afraid to show off the skin of your stomach above the belly button. If you do not want to show off too much skin, wear it with a high waist skirt and a blazer. It looks so cute from a distance. You can also pair the kitenge crop top with a loose cardigan and cutes shoes for that perfect date look. Another favorite way to hop on the trend is to wear a loose one over a tight skirt. It is way more conservative and doesnt expose your mid-section and looks really cute. Another idea is to wear the kitenge crop top and an overall. Especially a denim overall will make the look classic. You would have kill two fashion trends with one stone. It is perfect for a night out with the girls. Especially for the young generation, you can attend classes making you the envy of others. Agbada modern Nigerian dress styles Agbada for a long time has been a fashion item for men, which features a large gown worn during special and formal occasions. But fashion has changed the concept, to give women a gist of what it feels like to wear the Agbada. The dress symbolizes more than just wealth and status in the society. They are extremely wide at the shoulders with the neck embroidered and the pocket styles in silk. They feature knee-length tops with represent the Yoruba style. The style used to be not too main stream but it has been modified to add a new definition. The feminine version of the Agbada resembles that of the men but it has been the cuts have been modified to define the female figure. It also comes with frills at the shoulder with embroidered center and a V-neckline. It is one of the simple African print dresses that are more fashionable when accompanied with accessories and makeup with flat cute shoes. You can also add a bit of details with the headscarf in order to keep up with the culture and trend. It is common in formal cultural events or occasions themed according to st READ ALSO: African fashion styles 2020 Source: Yen - Members of University of Ghanas Commonwealth Hall, and their counterparts from Katanga Hall in KNUST have clashed - The clash which occurred moments before an inter-hall debate left one person injured Members of University of Ghanas Commonwealth Hall and Kwame Nkrumah University of Science and Technologys Katanga Hall have clashed at Legon. The clash has led to the injury of one person and the arrest of 10 students. A file photo of the Commonwealth Hall READ ALSO: Ebony was severally abused by her former manager Bullet Father reveals According Emmanuel Dzivenu, a UG student with the Universitys radio station, Radio Univers, the injured student suffered severe injuries. In an interview on Citi FM, Emmanuel noted that there is a heavy police presence on campus with many of students fearing further reprisals. He further explained that the clash came on the back of an alleged attack of a Commonwealth student by the visiting Katanga students on the Legon campus. It is believed the action of the Katanga students infuriated the Commonwealth students who descended from the hills to fight the visiting Katanga boys. Join YEN on Instagram to be always informed and entertained! But Emmanuel said the timely intervention of the police foiled the disturbance. The students of Katanga Hall in KNUST are in UG for an inter-hall debate that was expected to take place. YEN.com.gh brings to you a new video of John Mahamas 2020 bid and allegations of double salaries taken by some former ministers: READ ALSO: 'Braless' celebrities spotted at the 2018 VGMA Do you have a hot story or scandal you would like us to publish on YEN.com.gh? Please contact us on Facebook or Instagram now. Source: Yen.com.gh - Moesha Boduong has said in an interview with CNN that she sleeps around for money - Her comment has earned her huge backlash from the public - But Kumchacha has asked that Ghanaians forgive Moesha and move on YEN.com.gh has sighted a post in which self-acclaimed prophet, Kumchacha, is making a case for actress Moesha Boduong. Kumchacha is asking Ghanaians to forgive Moesha for some comments she made in an interview with CNN few days ago. Moesha had told Christine Amanpour of CNN that she sleeps with a married man for money and survival. Moesha expressing herself in the CNN interview READ ALSO: Tell the world how your 2 mansions came about Shatta Michy to Shatta Wale Moesha explained that Ghanas economy is so hard and is such a way that women cannot make enough money on their own without depending on men. But Moeshas generalization of her view has not gone down well with some Ghanaians who have not failed to castigate her. She has been ridiculed and called all sort of names, with only about two or three people who have defended her. READ ALSO: Ebony's response to her managers when they asked her about her 17 tattoos She has also apologized for her unfortunate comments. The latest person to have come to Moeshas rescue is prophet Kumchacha. She has apologized so all the Ghanas and all the womens forgive her, YEN.com.gh heard Kumchacha say as he tried to express himself in English. READ ALSO: I am always crushing on Nana Ama McBrown Patapaa confesses He quoted Romans 3: 23 as his basis for asking Ghanaians to forgive Moesha because all people have sinned. Kumchacha has been in the news recently claiming that Patapaa has been cursed and so he can never win any awards in his career. READ ALSO: Im done with you - Shatta Wale angrily tells Shatta Michy Check out some of the trending news in Ghana in YEN.com.gh's video below READ ALSO: Moesha is cheap for sleeping with married man for only rent Rosemond Brown Do you have a hot story or scandal you would like us to publish on YEN.com.gh? Please contact us on Facebook now! Source: Yen Newspaper - A report by a research firm, CDD-Ghana, show that the NPP can win elections today - The report shows that the NPP can pull 49 percent of votes as against NDC - NDC has criticized the report saying it is propaganda for the NPP If there was an election today, the New Patriotic Party (NPP) will win hands down. This is according to a research conducted by the Centre for Democratic Development (CDD). According to the Afrobarometer report by the CDD, the NPP will win by a wide margin of 49 percent whereas the opposition NDC will win by 22 percent. READ ALSO: Ghanaian footballer dies by drowning in pool What this means is that most Ghanaians believe the NPP can deliver on their promises. The survey also showed that 33 percent of Ghanaians have pledged their love and trust for the NPP. The opposition NDC has hit hard on the report. According to the party, the CDD, through which the report came from, is a supporter of the NPP. National organizer of the NDC, Kofi Adams, argues that the research organization is using propaganda to bring the NDC down to its knees. Join YEN on Instagram to be always informed and entertained! Barely two years since the 2016 elections, the opposition NDC has been strategizing on best ways to capture power in the 2020 elections. Top of their strategies has been the unity walks aimed at rebuilding the grassroots of the party. READ ALSO: 6 hard truths about why most Ghanaian women don't like a guy with 6 packs Meanwhile, former president and presidential candidate of the NDC, John Dramani Mahama says he is not interested in contesting the elections in 2020. Mahama says his main priority is to rebuild the strength of the NDC before thinking of any political role in the next elections. YEN.com.gh brings to you a new video of John Mahamas 2020 bid and allegations of double salaries taken by some former ministers. Do you have a hot story or scandal you would like us to publish on YEN.com.gh? Please contact us on Facebook or Instagram now. Source: Yen.com.gh Popular Ghanaian musician, Denning Edem Hotor, known in showbiz circles as Edem, has called on all Ghanaians to take the question posed by Nana Aba Anamoah at the recent Vodafone Ghana Music Awards, serious. According to the musician, the question is very important for the growth of the music industry and therefore Ghanaians need not take it jokingly. Nana Aba Anamoah had asked a top official from Trace TV, a French television network devoted to urban contemporary music videos, on the night of the awards why the network doesnt play too many Ghanaian music videos. Nana Aba Anamoah READ ALSO: Ghanaian footballer dies by drowning in pool Ghana is the new world. You must play our videos, we are producing fantastic music videos, we are producing fantastic videos, we are producing fantastic music. Give us the top spot, Nana Aba said. In an Instagram post, Edem has also shared his sentiments on the matter and asked all to take the renowned broadcaster serious. Dear Ghanaians lets not take this moment jokingly . @thenanaaba Asked a very Pertinent question that was evaded, which raises eyebrows..And lets not take the bring money part jokingly...Trace yall can represent the continent fairly and it wont hurt a fly ...Please do cc oga @samo3553 #Ghanasound #Ghanaontrace @4sytetv the way u Dey show others love..U see what Dey happen and to all the Tv and Radio this is why we say support us if others wont.From Music to movie to comedy and anything creative arts/ ...Dear trace,u can change the narrative and represent Africa..We know you can @tracenaija @trace_urban," Edem wrote. READ ALSO: Wild sea waves swallow homes in Volta Region Check out some of the trending news in Ghana in YEN.com.gh's video below: Do you have a hot story or scandal you would like us to publish on YEN.com.gh? Please contact us on Facebook now! Source: Yen Citi, a leading global bank, has announced the official opening of its new offices in Riyadh, Saudi Arabia, located at the Kingdom Tower. We are delighted to establish an office in the Kingdom and be open for business on the ground. The expansion to Saudi is in line with our strategy to be present in the regions biggest economy and contribute to its transformation, said Michael L Corbat, chief executive officer, Citi. Citi continues to support the Kingdoms national agenda for a diverse and sustainable economy and we aim to play a key role towards realizing this vision. We will strive to make a positive financial and social impact by providing Citis best in class resources, capabilities and practices to our partners and stakeholders. In 2017, the Saudi Arabian Capital Market Authority (CMA) granted Citi a license to provide a range of Investment Banking, Debt and Equity Capital Markets, Markets, and Securities Research capabilities to its local and international institutional clients. Citigroup Saudi Arabia recently held its inaugural board meeting in Riyadh, setting the stage for the global bank to deploy its suite of corporate products on the ground to help support Saudi Arabias economic transformation. Saudi Arabia is a strategically important market for Citi and we are very proud to re-establish our operations to serve our client base here, said Carmen Haddad, Citi country officer-Saudi Arabia and vice chairperson-Citigroup Saudi Arabia. Citi looks forward to playing an active role in the Saudi banking sector with the aim of supporting the Kingdoms Vision 2030. At the opening ceremony, the Citi Foundation also announced the renewal of their fifth year of partnership with Education For Employment (EFE), the leading youth employment organization in the Mena region, through a grant worth $300,000. The EFE-Citi Foundation partnership is part of the Citi Foundations Pathways to Progress initiative designed to equip urban youth with career readiness tools and opportunities to thrive in todays economy. This year, 40 youth from Saudi Arabia will benefit from the EFE program along with youth in the UAE, Morocco and Tunisia. The EFE partnership falls within our efforts to reach 500,000 youth globally and to help the next generation become work-ready, said Haddad. Were thrilled to continue our partnership with EFE and to help young Saudis build financial and workplace skills. EFEs 67,000 alumni demonstrate a simple truth: when youth have access to opportunity, they can thrive in life and build brighter futures for their families through five years of partnership, the Citi Foundations visionary support for EFE has directly enabled hundreds of Mena youth to enter the world of work, and has helped us build the organizational foundation needed to scale this impact in the long-term, said Andrew Baird, president and CEO, EFE-Global. TradeArabia News Service Bloom Properties, a specialist in the development of integrated and sustainable communities, said work was progressing well on its Park View and Soho Square developments at Saadiyat in Abu Dhabi and on track for delivery by the end of this year. A unit of Bloom Holding, the developer was updating investors and home buyers on the ongoing construction activities across its diverse range of projects in Abu Dhabi and Dubai at the 12thedition of Cityscape Abu Dhabi currently underway at the Abu Dhabi National Exhibition Centre (Adnec). At the event, Bloom Properties is showcasing an extensive selection of its residential offerings. These projects include Bloom Heights and Bloom Towers in Dubais Jumeirah Village Circle (JVC), as well as Park View and Soho Square mixed-use developments on Saadiyat in Abu Dhabi. Bloom said work on both its Abu Dhabi projects was going as per schedule. The main works on Park View and Soho Square are on track in the university neighbourhood of Saadiyat, with hand over set for Q4 2018, it added. On the Dubai projects, the developer said it had recently awarded the main construction contract for Bloom Towers, while the construction works at Bloom Heights was progressing as per plan. These developments are scheduled for handover in Q4 2020 and Q4 2019 respectively. In order to woo buyers at the event, Bloom Properties has launched an exclusive zero per cent down payment offer besides a waiver on registration fees and service charge for one year on its Abu Dhabi developments. Valid only during the show from April 17 to 19, the offer is in line with Blooms efforts to enable buyers to purchase its high-value residential units at convenient terms, said a top official. "Bloom Properties is marking an emphatic participation in this years Cityscape Abu Dhabi to reaffirm its confidence in the local real estate market. At Bloom, we believe that we can accomplish sustainable success only if we make our offerings more attractive to a cross-section of investors and tailor these offerings to their unique requirements," remarked CEO Sameh Muhtadi. "Our exclusive Cityscape Abu Dhabi offer provides a good reason for buyers to invest in our projects and benefit from their unmatched value propositions, he added.-TradeArabia News Service Royal HaskoningDHV, an international engineering and project management consultancy, said it has won a contract to carry out a detailed market study for the Haramain High Speed Railway project coming up in Saudi Arabia. The Haramain High Speed Railway is a new 449-km rail line which will provide a world-class passenger service from the Saudi cities of Makkah to Madinah, via Jeddah and King Abdullah Economic City. The contract was awarded by Al Shoula Consortium, which will operate the railway on behalf of the Saudi Railways Organization (SRO). The consortium is operating within a 12-year railway operations franchise contract for the Saudi Governments SRO. Royal HaskoningDHV has a long track record in Saudi Arabia and has previously worked on projects in the kingdom including consulting engineering services for a new state-of-the-art logistics park in Jeddah. As per the deal, Royal HaskoningDHV will undertake an extensive survey programme along the full railway corridor and at key station locations along the route. These surveys will examine in detail current travel patterns, potential passenger profiles, economic characteristics and customer expectations towards the rail service, said a statement from the Dutch company. They are planned to be executed at strategically identified sites such as highway check points, bus and taxi interchanges in Makkah and Jeddah, key locations in King Abdulaziz International Airport terminals, and on board the new railway service, it stated. Following this, a comprehensive technical analysis will be carried out to examine future travel demand and estimate passenger demand forecasts for the new high speed railway, it added. Dr Marwan Al Azzawi, the director of transport and planning at Royal HaskoningDHV, said the company was signed up for the job due to its expertise in railways and transport planning. "We have been working in the Middle East for over 50 years and our local knowledge of Saudi Arabia, combined with the international expertise in railways and transport planning, makes us well placed to undertake this important market study," remarked Al Azzawi. Royal HaskoningDHVs technical analysis will help the SRO to identify its most likely customer passenger levels and their needs. It will also help to develop targeted operations strategies to offer passengers the most suitable and efficient services. "Our work will enable the government in Saudi Arabia to deliver this world-class high speed railway service for the country," he added.-TradeArabia News Service The Dubai Health Authority (DHA) and Islamic Affairs and Charitable Activities Department have signed a memorandum of understanding to establish a dialysis centre, worth Dh30 million ($8.16 million), in Al Twar area, in Dubai, UAE. This is in line with Dubai governments efforts to collaborate with other authorities and government entities to provide the best health, social and humanitarian services, said Humaid Al Qutami, chairman of the board and director general of DHA after signing the deal with Dr Hamad Al Shibani, director general of the Dubai Islamic Affairs and Charitable Activities Department. Al Qutami pointed out that DHA was keen on collaborating with different entities that shared the goals of the Dubai government and vision in order to achieve customer satisfaction. "This partnership would provide the best prevention and treatment services for kidney disease to people with limited means who need regular dialysis, with the support of the Islamic Affairs and Charitable Activities Department," he added. On the deal, Dr Al Shaibani, said his department was committed to the responsibilities and services to the community and its members, especially the patients. He pointed out that the department was keen to build bridges of co-operation and strengthen its relations with all institutions to achieve the Dubai government'sd desired goals, and promote a climate of decent and safe living for all members of society.-TradeArabia News Service Mercedes-Benz Vans Middle East and North Africa (Mena) was recognised with first place at the Daimler AGs Van overseas markets - Market of the Year Award, for its outstanding sales achievement last year. Covering nine regions including Eastern Europe, Africa, Latin America and South East Asia, the award compares 2017 to 2016 taking into consideration as a primary focus sales growth and performance in both retail and group sales, said a statement from the company. Regional success for Mercedes-Benz Vans Mena comes alongside global records for unit sales and revenue in 2017. Daimler AGs van division handed over a total of approximately 401,000 vans and multipurpose vehicles to its customers in 2017, compared to 359,100 in 2016, it said. The regional centre was also awarded second place, amongst 116 markets, in after sales for the fastest performance development in parts sales and service, compared to the same period in 2016, it added. In 2017, Mercedes-Benz Vans Mena recorded outstanding sales growth of close to 100 per cent, with all model series in the region contributing to this growth with best-ever figures. Growth was notably driven by the mid-size segment with the Vito van and the V-Class multipurpose vehicle delivering record numbers, it stated. The Vito the versatile mid-size van offering maximum benefit, low operational cost, high levels of safety and payload recorded the highest sales growth of 2017, with retail sales tripling when compared to the previous year. The V-Class is also exceeding expectations since its official launch in 2016 and continues to be very popular with regional customers due to its combination of exceptional functionality with high-class appeal, recording a 70 per cent increase in retail sales compared to the previous year. In the last full year before the model change, the Mercedes-Benz Sprinter confirmed its reputation as one of the most successful commercial vehicles of all time and as the bestseller from Mercedes-Benz Vans Mena in 2017 with sales growing by 64 per cent. The Sprinter established the large-van segment in 1995 and has defined it, both globally and regionally ever since. Thomas Greipel, general manager, Mercedes Benz Vans Mena, said: Achieving the award represents an exceptional performance by our regional team and partners. We have great expectations for this year, from our viewpoint the most important market launch in the van segment is coming soon with the new Sprinter, he said. Volker Meinecke, head of Mercedes-Benz Vans customer service and parts sales development, overseas, said: We have a new organisational set-up in the Middle East live since 2017 with dedicated van after-sales personnel. The team accomplished various projects throughout the year with immense success, which resulted in this top performance in 2017. Thank you to the team for the great dedication and result. We are looking forward to future success, he added. TradeArabia News Service Roland Berger, a leading global consulting firm, has announced the appointment of a new partner to strengthen its Middle East team. The new partner, Richard Paton, is joining Roland Berger in Abu Dhabi with a mandate to enhance the firm's infrastructure, public sector and defence practice across the Middle East, said the company in a statement. Paton has over 20 years' experience, eight years having been spent in the region and the last five years in Riyadh, Saudi Arabia. He joins Roland Berger from an international business consultancy, where he was head of infrastructure advisory services for the Middle East and South Asia, as well as head of PPP and public-sector strategy in Saudi Arabia, advising governments across the region on complex PPP financing structures, said the statement. Kushal Shah, the managing partner for the Middle East at Roland Berger, said: "Our Middle East practice is going from strength to strength, and we are delighted to be growing our team further by onboarding Paton as partner." "Having previously been involved in the largest PPP transactions across the Middle East including three airports, nuclear and renewable financing projects, school and hospital PPPs he brings a wealth of experience as well as an innovative commercial approach, balancing government risk with private sector funding," stated Shah. On his new role, Paton said: "I am delighted to be joining Roland Berger. Their mix of entrepreneurship, innovation and depth of expertise provides an excellent platform from which to deliver exceptional advice to our clients." When not in a consulting role, Paton has worked for the UK government as an economist briefing ministers on energy policy and macroeconomics before becoming the Head of Regulatory Review for the Office of Fair Trading, leading economic investigations of mergers and acquisitions and their impacts on market structure, competitiveness and consumers, said the company statement. In addition, he had the opportunity to work for and advise foreign government ministers, including those of Singapore and Saudi Arabia, it added.-TradeArabia News Service Kuwait plans to invest a whopping KD34 billion ($113 billion) over the next five years mainly to boost oil exploration and production activity both inside and outside the country, reported Kuwait News Agency (Kuna). This comes as part of Kuwait Petroleum Corporation's (KPC) 2040 ambitious road map for the country's oil sector with the ultimate goal to maximize revenue generation to the Kuwait's economy, said the Kuna report citing the countrys oil minister. "Through this we aim to raise production of nonassociated gas to nearly 500 million standard cu ft per day by the end of 2018," remarked Oil Minister Bakhit Al Rashidi. He was delivering his keynote address at opening of the Fifth Kuwait Oil and Gas Conference and Exhibition. Kuwait's consumption of natural gas is about 60 per cent for refining and petrochemical sector while the remaining 40 per cent for power generation sector, he stated. The minister said that KPC had realized the growing role of the private sector and moved early on to outsource many services and materially locally, thus contributing to the growth and competitiveness of the private sector. The execution of long-term strategy will enable the oil sector to move forward and adapt to the future successfully, said Bakhit, who is also the Minister of Electricity and Water. "This strategy includes achieving four million barrels per day of crude oil production by 2020 and creating the mechanisms to maintain such production levels," he added. The SPE International Conference and Exhibition on Health, Safety, Security, Environment, and Social Responsibility has opened with more than 750 attendees from 48 countries and 174 companies. Organised by the Society of Petroleum Engineers (SPE), the three-day event returns to the region for the first time since 2006. The keynote address was delivered by Abdulmunim Saif Al Kindy, Director, Upstream Directorate, Adnoc, followed by speeches from Abdulla Al Marzooqi, Conference Chair and Manager, Group Health, Safety and Environment Unit, Adnoc; and Khalid A. Zainalabedin, SPE Regional Director, Middle East and North Africa, Saudi Aramco. We know that our commitment to 100 per cent HSE is not only the right thing to do but the smart thing as it makes solid business sense, underpins Adnocs 2030 strategy to deliver a more profitable upstream, a more economic and sustainable gas supply, and a more valuable downstream, said Al Kindy. The theme of this years conference is Continuing HSSE and Social Responsibility Excellence for a Sustainable Future and will put a strong focus on discussion topics in all areas of health, safety, and the environment. Professionals from all over the world will be sharing best practices, new techniques, compliance and community engagement strategies, and much more, said Al Marzooqi. The SPE continues to host this international conference with the firm belief that bringing together global professionals in all areas of health, safety, and environment to share their best practices, new technologies, new techniques, compliance strategies and community engagement can focus attention on HSE best practices that serve our industry and communities. By doing so, SPE continues our core mission of providing opportunities for enhancing the technical and professional competencies of our members by disseminating, and exchanging the technical knowledge required to meet the worlds energy needs in a safe and environmentally-responsible manner, said Zainalabedin. The event features three days of plenary and panel sessions, technical sessions, knowledge sharing ePoster sessions, and a state-of-the-art exhibition featuring both regional and international companies who will showcase their innovations, products, and services. School and university students looking to embark on a career in the oil and gas industry will participate in bespoke programmes and activities. The Energy4me student workshop will focus on students, aged 16 to 17, with the aim to engage them in STEM-related subjects. The university programme features the events Oil and Gas: Expat-ations of Living Abroad; Student Sustainability Challenge: Harnessing Sustainability through HSSE; SPE Cares x Emirates Environmental Group (EEG): One Root, One Communi-Tree; and the Career Pathways Fair. -- Tradearabia News Service Marriott International today announced ambitious growth plans for its Middle East and Africa region following signings for more than 30 properties and over 5,000 rooms in the last 12 months. The signings put Marriott on track to increase its portfolio in the region to nearly 370 hotels an increase of more than 50 per cent over the next five years. This will amount to more than 80,000 rooms across 21 brands, including the introduction of brands in the region such as Edition, Element and AC Hotels by Marriott. Also in line with its development plans, the company and its property owners expect to add 30,000 new jobs across the region in the next five years. Marriott Internationals planned growth over the next five years underscores the substantial emphasis that regional governments are placing on growth and investment in the travel and tourism sector. The company estimates that the 30 projects signed in the last 12 months will drive investment of about $1.8 billion by the property owners. It is a really exciting time for the Middle East and Africa regions travel and tourism sector. With clear and ambitious visions set out by regional governments to grow and invest in the sector, the industry is thriving more than ever, said Alex Kyriakidis, president and managing director, Middle East and Africa, Marriott International. At Marriott International, we are proud that we and our owners are opening a huge range of jobs, as well as contributing to the ongoing growth and diversification of the regions economy. Marriott Internationals announcement of its growth plans in the region comes ahead of the Arabian Hotel Investment Conference, which has centred its 2018 theme on Focus on the Future. The conference is taking place under the patronage of His Highness Sheikh Saud Bin Saqr Al Qasimi, UAE Supreme Council Member and Ruler of Ras Al Khaimah; and founding patron Sheikh Ahmed bin Saeed al Maktoum, chairman of Dubai Airports, president of Dubai Civil Aviation Authority and chairman and CEO of Emirates Airline and Group. During the annual event, Kyriakidis will join the Regional Leaders in the Hot Seat panel session to discuss how hotel operators are supporting owners and adjusting to a maturing and shifting regional market. Marriott Internationals growth in the region is a result of consistently delivering value to our owners. Our long-established presence in the region, global footprint, compelling portfolio of diverse brands, award-winning loyalty programs and strength of our distribution platforms continue to position us at the forefront, enabling us to leverage trends to benefit our stakeholders in the region, added Kyriakidis. We remain focused on working with our owners to identify synergies and increase efficiencies across hotels by implementing shared services, remote solutions, complexing of hotels where relevant and possible and by bringing state-of-the-art technology to leverage scale, ultimately improving profitability. Strong growth momentum for luxury and upscale brands This dynamic region continues to present immense development opportunities for the company to strengthen its competitive position across established and fast-growing markets, said Samir Baidas, chief development officer, Middle East and Africa, Marriott International. Our growth plans across the Middle East and Africa not only reflect the high demand for our brands, but also the trust ownership groups have in Marriott International. Historically featuring a portfolio of hotels primarily in the upper-upscale segment, Marriott Internationals robust development pipeline in the region also highlights strong growth opportunities for its luxury and upscale brands: Across its seven luxury brands, Marriott International operates over 30 hotels with more than 10,000 rooms across the Middle East and Africa and plans to nearly double the number of hotels in the next five years. That growth will begin with the launch of its Edition brand in Abu Dhabi later this year. The company is also expanding its portfolio of upscale brands across the region where there is strong demand for stylish, smart and affordable hospitality. The companys upscale brands - such as Courtyard by Marriott, Aloft, Element and Residence Inn by Marriott - represent over 40 per cent of the properties expected to open in the next five years across the Middle East and Africa. The growth of Marriott Internationals upper-upscale brands, spearheaded by Marriot Hotels, Marriott Executive Apartments and Sheraton, remains steady accounting for 30 per cent of its hotels expected to open in the next five years. - TradeArabia News Service Travelport today announced a new long-term technology partnership, via Travelports distributor in Oman, with Eihab Travels, one of Omans most reputable travel companies. Eihab Travels, an Iata accredited agency established in 1978, will use Travelports industry-leading point of sale solution, Travelport Smartpoint, to provide corporate as well as leisure travel services to major multinational corporations, prominent Middle East firms and individuals. Aided by Travelports support, the companys consultants will benefit from intelligent, fast and accurate search of high-quality content from over 400 airlines, 650,000 hotel properties and 35,000 car rental locations. With over 250 airlines signed up to use Travelports unique merchandising technology, the company is able to display, gain powerful information around, and sell branded fare families and ancillary products (such as paid seat assignments, baggage fees, priority boarding, etc.) from these airlines. Having recently become the first global distribution system (GDS) to be certified by Iata as a Level 3 Aggregator under its New Distribution Capability (NDC) initiative, Travelport will soon further benefit the company by creating NDC connections with airlines as they become available. Commenting on the new partnership, Dinesh Poojary, general manager of Eihab Travels, said: We are delighted to now offer our consultants real-time access to the best fares and content through a platform that enables us to quickly respond to customers personalised needs. We are confident that Travelports edge in technological innovation and advanced position in NDC certification will help us further differentiate our travel services and deliver exceptional customer service. Matthew Powell, Travelports managing director for the Middle East, Africa and South Asia at Travelport, commented: We are pleased to have signed this new partnership with Eihab Travels and are proud to power its business via Travelports distributor in Oman. This agreement demonstrates the tremendous value we are able to provide travel agencies through our leadership in technology, content and service. We look forward to working with Eihab Travels to continually find new ways to set them apart from their peers by delivering exceptional value to their customers. - TradeArabia News Service Despite the ongoing increase in supply, Abu Dhabi hotels witnessed an increase in occupancy levels during the first quarter of the year, registering a 5 per cent jump to 79 per cent, JLLs Q1 2018 Real Estate Market Overview Report revealed. According to the Abu Dhabi Tourism & Culture Authority, the number of guests staying at hotels in the emirate earlier this year rose by 15 per cent (compared to Q1 2017) to reach 405,850. This increase was in part driven by visas now being granted on arrival for Chinese visitors, Abu Dhabis largest overseas source market, ahead of India and the UK. With the UAE now undertaking increased business with China, the hospitality sector has witnessed positive sentiment, said Peter Stebbings, Head of Abu Dhabi operations. The notable increase of Chinese visitors is supported by Abu Dhabis Department of Culture and Tourism Authoritys investment into Baidu, the Chinese equivalent of Google, which commenced in Q4 of 2017. Attractions such as the opening of The Louvre Museum continued to boost visitor numbers from France he added. Hospitality ADRs, however, continued to decline due to increased supply, dropping 16 per cent to $117 in Q1 compared to the same period in 2017. Consequently, RevPAR dropped by 12 per cent to reach $92 in the year-to-February 2018 compared to the same period last year. The drop in RevPAR is attributed to the International Defence Exhibition & Conference (IDEX) not being held this year as this exhibition has historically had a positive impact on performance in this period. Total hospitality inventory reached 22,000 in Q1 with the completion of Rotana Saadiyat Beach Hotel and Pearl Rotana Capital Centre. Approximately 1,400 keys remain to be delivered by the end of 2018 including Fairmont Marina, Beach Arjan by Rotana, and Edition Al Bateen Harbour Hotel. - TradeArabia News Service Roseate Hotels & Resorts, the uber-luxury hospitality brand from India-based Bird Group, today shared that it is looking for strategic acquisition opportunities to establish its footprint in the Middle East hospitality market. After establishing itself as one of Indias most respected Indian luxury hotel brand, Roseate Hotels and Resorts will bring its trademark hospitality to one of the leading global tourism hotspots - the Middle East. The company will be participating in Arabian Travel Market (ATM) from April 22 to 25, at booth no. HC0660, Sheikh Saeed Arena, Dubai International Exhibition and Convention Centre. Speaking about their foray into the Middle East region, Ankur Bhatia, executive director, Bird Group, said: The Middle East is an attractive business and leisure destination with tremendous growth potential; therefore, it is imperative for a company with global aspirations such as ours to have a presence here. We are excited to participate at ATM and explore business opportunities in the region. The brand offers a collection of uber-luxury hotels consisting of five niche hotels across India and the UK and more under development. The name Roseate comes from a bird with pink-hued plumage. Avant-garde, imaginative and contemporary in design, each Roseate hotel has a story to tell. Key focus is laid on service, aesthetics and detailing of hotels that pave way to stylised accommodation with high business efficiencies at city hotels and exquisite leisure option at resort location. Within India, the group has presence with two properties namely The Roseate and Roseate House in New Delhi along with the third property, The Roseate Ganges, which will be unveiled in Fall2018. Their presence in the UK includes Roseate House London, The Roseate Reading as well as The Roseate Villa Bath. All these properties embody the brands philosophy of showcasing a new spectrum of hospitality. Over the past 4 years, the brand has been recognized by some of the most influential organizations in the travel and hospitality industry. Some of the key acknowledgements being: Conde Nast Traveller Middle East Readers Choice Award 2017 - Favourite Hotel Resort for Wellness; Outlook Traveller Boutique Awards 2017 - Best City Hotel; Make My Trip Customers Choice Award 2017; and Goibibo Certificate of Excellence 2016-17 (Roseate House); among others. - TradeArabia News Service WTM Latin America 2018, the leading B2B travel event in Latin America, witnessed record participation numbers of almost 12,000 an increase of 7 per cent over the previous year. The event, which took place between April 3-5 in Sao Paulo, saw a record number of 11,963 senior industry professionals in attendance. During the show, approximately 12,000 business meetings were held during the five sessions of Speed Networking. Furthermore, the Business Travel Tourism was a huge success with around eight brand activations, including chats, seminars and conferences. Over the three-day show, we saw busy corridors, busy sessions at the five Speed Networking meetings, well-known speakers and a lot of networking. Were also really pleased with the number of business meetings that took place over at the event generating more business deals, said Luciane Leite, director at WTM Latin America. With 42 travel operators companies represented at WTM Latin America 26 of them located in the Tour Operators Area and 16 occupying stands at the Blue and White Pavilions the operators celebrated the presence of the travel agents and some of them have already shown interest in returning for the 2019 edition, such as R11, Grou Turismo, Travel Ace, Intertouring, HotelDO Brasil, TT Operadora and ITA. Countries such as Turkey, Ecuador, Peru and Indonesia have also shown interest in returning next year. This year, WTM Latin America brought together six new exhibitors from the hospitality sector Royal Palm Plaza, Wyndham Hotels, Master Hotel, Maksoud Hotel, Hotel Alfa Moscow and the Brazilian group Hoteis Luzeiros. In addition, the event welcomed top tourist cities in Brazil, Ilhabela, Paraty and Porto de Galinhas. The seventh edition will be held from April 2-4, 2019, at the Expo Center Norte, in Sao Paulo. - TradeArabia News Service Mumbai, (IANS): The Maharashtra Police carried out multi-city raids on Tuesday against prominent Dalit activists and supporters in a fallout of the January 1 caste riots in Koregaon-Bhima, official sources said here. The raids which started at around 5 a.m., and were carried out by several teams of the Pune police in Mumbai, Pune and Nagpur, in the homes and offices of various Dalit activists. Besides, the police also zeroed in on those involved or connected with the Elgaar Conference of December 31, 2017 held in Pune, which was addressed by Gujarat Dalit leader and MLA Jignesh Mewani and JNU leader Umar Khalid, Chhattisgarh activist Soni Sori and Bhim Army president Vinay Ratan Singh. Support TwoCircles The Pune police also raided and searched the home of prominent lawyer Surendra Gadling in Nagpur. He was representing several alleged Maoists in different courts. Searches continued at the premises of the leftist organization, Kabir Kala Manch and Republican Panthers Party in connection with the Elgaar Conference and leaders like Ramesh Gaychor and Sagar Gorkhe. In Mumbai, searches were carried out at the residences of Left activists Sudhir Dhawale and Harshali Potdar. The police carried search warrants at all the places. Reacting sharply to the police action, Bharipa Bahujan Mahasangh President Prakash Ambedkar termed it as harassment and diversionary tactics of the government. Instead of arresting Sambhaji Bhide, alias Guruji, the main culprit who fuelled the Koregaon-Bhima riots, the government is indulging in these diversions. Police have already arrested Milind Ekbote, but not Bhide yet, said Ambedkar, grandson of B.R. Ambedkar, architect of the Indian Constitution. The Elgaar Conference was held in Punes Shaniwarwada, later Koregaon-Bhim witnessed riots on January 1 which left one dead, followed by the retaliatory Maharashtra shutdown call issued by Ambedkar and other parties on January 3. It is impossible to not hear the term Bangladeshi when you are in Assam. It is a term that divides Assam; a region where human migration precedes national boundaries by centuries. No one ever says that there are no Bangladeshis in Assam; the questions seem far more focused on what to do with them. It is also pretty clear that no one exactly knows who a Bangladeshi is: Assamese Muslims, Bengali Muslims, Bengali Hindus and sometimes even Assamese Hindus, along with even Nepalis and Bodos, have all been signalled out as Bangladeshis. When human lives are reduced to statistics and government policies put one religion against the other, it is the marginalised who suffer the most. The Idea Of a Foreigner: The Assam Accord, signed in 1985, has played an extremely important role in this regard. The issue of foreigner was central to this Accord. Contested migrations after two partitions (1947 and 1971) along with a subsequent surge in Assamese nationalism resulted in a policing of foreigners. As a result, the Assam accord enlisted a series of measures to be taken as part of a Memorandum of Understanding between the then Prime Minister Rajiv Gandhi and the All Assam Students Union along with Assam Gana Sangram Parishad. One of the most important points of the Accord was that all foreigners who had arrived after March 1971 be expelled from the state. Support TwoCircles The Creation of a D voter: Following the Accord, it was in July 1997 that the Election Commission of India (ECI) asked the state government to segregate its citizens and non-citizens. Following this, the ECI prepared a list of voters in the state and mark D (doubtful) next to the names of people who were suspected to be non-citizens. In 1997, this list included 3.5 lakh names. As of February 2017 according to Assam Parliamentary Affairs minister Chandra Mohan Patowary, the Assam Border Police were conducting investigations into 6,21,688 cases related to foreigners till October 2016. Of these, 4,44,189 were referred to the 100 Tribunals established in the state, where about 2,01,928 cases are still pending. Detentions: Among the cases that have been resolved however, are the stories of about 1,800 persons who have been detained across Assam on charges of being a Bangladeshi. Even the most cursory conversations with the families of the detained people show that almost all the detainees belong to poor families who could barely afford any lawyers or appeal against the judgement issued by the Foreigners Tribunal. Since this issue comes under the Foreigners Act, 1946 and Foreigners (Tribunal) Order, 1964, a lot of times the lawyers are unaware of how to approach the case but nevertheless take it for easy money. In this three-part series, TwoCircles.net looks at how detention camps are wreaking havoc with the lives of people, especially Muslims, across the state. In the second of a three-part series, we tell the story of Kamala Begum, a middle-aged Bengali woman who was born and brought up in Barpeta. However, due to a mix of legal complications and incompetent lawyers, Begum has been in detention for nearly three years now with no hopes of coming out. After her arrest, her daughters dreams were crushed and her husband remains bedridden, dependent on well-wishers to survive. Read Part One Here By Amit Kumar, TwoCircles.net The month was September, the year 2015. Mumtaz Dewan, then 19, was in her fourth semester at the Kayakuchi College located in the Kayakuchi village of Sarthebari Tehsil of Barpeta district. During one of her classes, her mobile rang. It was her mother, Kamala Begum, calling. This was not something unexpected, Mumtaz thought. She called her back after the end of her class, only to be stunned by what her mother said on the phone. I am in the SP officemy appeal was dismissed in the Gauhati High Court. They are going to take me to the detention camp, was all she could say before she burst into tears on the phone. In just a few minutes, the lives of Mumtaz and Kamala changed forever. Nearly three years later, Mumtaz says she remembers the entire day like it happened yesterday as she welcomes us to her fathers house. It is an extremely overcast day and as there is no electricity, we sit in near darkness until Mumtaz opens a side-door. The house was allotted to the family as part of the Indira Awas Yojana in the early 70s. As we sit on plastic chairs, she begins telling us about the tragic story of Kamala Begum, her mother and an illegal Bangladeshi residing in Assam. My mother was declared a D voter in 2014that time, she used to work in the Barpeta office of a Guwahati-based NGO, cleaning dishes and making tea, Mumtaz says in the beginning. With a salary of Rs 3,000, she took care of her ailing husband but more importantly enrolled her daughter in college so that she could study and make a career. That was her biggest dream, Mumtaz says, as her voice begins to quiver. She did not have a son and my elder sister had already got married, so she wanted to do everything to ensure that I can become something and take care of them, Mumtaz says, now in tears. When her name was listed as a Doubtful voter in 2014, Kamala Begum was incensed. Usually, after a person is deemed D Voter, he/she receives a summons from the Foreigners Tribunal asking him/her to appear before the Tribunal and prove their citizenship. But Kamala did not have the patience to wait. She went to the Tribunal on her own accordfor her, this was a matter of disrespect and extremely insulting. She would say How can I be called a Bangladeshi when I have lived all my life here? She wanted to do everything in her power to get rid of that label, Mumtaz recalls. However, once in the Tribunal, things began to go downhill for Kamala. Kamala might have been passionate about her case, but, as Mumtaz points out, she was illiterate and could not understand the legal proceedings. She was born about 20 km away from her home in Kayakuchi in the same district but had never voted in her native village. There is every chance that in some documents, her names spelling might have been misspelt or that her name appeared on another electoral roll. It could also be that her fathers name might have been spelt wrong which put her legacy in question, Mumtaz says. The family was not helped by the fact that their lawyer in the Barpeta Foreigners Tribunal was incompetent. Saiful Islam, Kamalas nephew and the only member of the family who can manage to visit her regularly, explains. When she lost her case in the FT towards the end of 2014, we were shocked. The lawyer, who I do not wish to name, took a lot of money but clearly did not do his job well. So, we approached the High Court hoping that the ruling will be overturned. he says. Until the Gauhati High Court passed a verdict, she was mandated to appear in the Barpeta SP office every month. I do not know how or why, but the case in High Court also fell apart, says Mumtaz. In September 2016, when my mom went to appear before the SP, she was told that her case had been dismissed in the HC also and that she was under arrest. Our lawyer, who was arranged by a political leader following our pleas, was so uninterested in the case that he did not even bother to inform the family, she adds. The arrest of Kamala brought Mumtaz and her fathers life to a complete standstill. Left without the only breadwinner in the family, Mumtaz and her father had to depend on their extended family to meet even the basic needs. With only two semesters left, Mumtaz had no choice but to drop out of college. Who would pay my fees in the absence of my mother? she says, her voice still shaking from the traumatic memories of the period. I went from the chances of building my career to being married to my uncles son within months. Now, I was just another housewife with no independence and with no one to take care of my father, she says. By now, tears are rolling down her cheeks as her father, who is sitting next to her, stares at us dead silent. Even though it is March, he is wrapped in two old shawls and on days he is feeling better, he can barely manage to go the toilet. After marriage, you are a member of that family. You have to do things the way they want you to domy in-laws are much more considerate than my sisters in-laws but they also dont want me to be visiting my mother every week or month. In fact, last year I met her after a gap of nearly 12 months and havent been able to meet her since, she says. Given that she has no money of her own, she cannot ask her in-laws to pay for the travel and give her money so that she can give some to her mother, Mumtaz says. But the bad news did not end for the family here. After the HC, the court managed to go to the Supreme Court also, only for her case to be rejected there also. Till date, we do not know why our case has been rejectedthe HC and SC refused to overturn the FT order but even now we do not know what exactly did the FT find so fishy about her case, Mustafa Ali, Kamalas brother, says. Sitting next to him is the mother of Kamala Begum, Rashida Begum who is in her early 90s. Barely able to walk and partially deaf, Rashida starts crying the moment she hears her daughters name. I havent seen my daughter in three years nowmy family says she has a tumour and diabetesI want to see her before I die. How can they do this to my daughter, Rashida says in a tearful voice. People around me ask: why dont you go to see her? I tell them how can I? I can barely walk and will not be able to sit on a bus for so longit hurts me so much every time I think of her. She was born in this house, she adds. It is a question that still brings tears to all the family members. We are all Indian citizens until now at leastthen how can she be a Bangladeshi? How does this even happen and what can we do about this? Will they send her to Bangladesh? No. They just want her to die in the detention camp, says Mumtaz. To be honest, even deportation would be better than the condition in which she is being kept right now. No human deserves to be treated like this, least of all an Indian citizen in her own state, says Saiful. Copyright 1995 - . All rights reserved. The content (including but not limited to text, photo, multimedia information, etc) published in this site belongs to China Daily Information Co (CDIC). Without written authorization from CDIC, such content shall not be republished or used in any form. Note: Browsers with 1024*768 or higher resolution are suggested for this site. 0108263 License for publishing multimedia online Registration Number: 130349 Registration Number: 130349 A few weeks ago, Donald Trump invited Vladimir Putin to meet -- maybe even at the White House. After U.S.-led missile strikes in Syria, the two nations officials cant get into the same room without insulting each other. Bloomberg reports in its article Syria Strikes Lock U.S. and Russia Into New Era of Animosity that speaking at an emergency session of the United Nations Security Council Saturday, hours after the U.S., France and the U.K. launched missiles intended to take out Syrias chemical weapons capability, American Ambassador Nikki Haley called on Russia -- the main backer of the Syrian regime -- to take a hard look at the company it keeps. Her Russian counterpart Vassily Nebenzia retorted that the U.S. and its allies were engaged in the diplomacy of myth-making. Now, the U.S.-Russia relationship, already under severe strain over issues from Russian meddling in the 2016 American presidential campaign to its role in Syria and Ukraine, may be irretrievably broken for the foreseeable future. There may be too much bad blood, too much suspicion and too much anger on both sides to turn the animosity around. While for now no significant new U.S. sanctions seem likely --limiting Russian market losses after last weeks sharp declines -- in Moscow, lawmakers are starting Monday to discuss a draft law with counter-measures against the U.S.. The U.S. says Russia is blocking investigators from the scene of the chemical attack that prompted the latest airstrikes. Russia has argued both that the attack in the Syrian city of Douma never happened or that it was orchestrated by the U.S. and its allies to provoke a military response. Americans need to understand that the wars of the future will look more like this: Russia is investing significant resources to create propaganda and disinformation, said Senator Ben Sasse, a Nebraska Republican, after Russia claimed that almost all the missiles fired into Syria were shot down -- an assertion the U.S. denied. Our enemies will work to create confusion and distrust among Americans here at home. What limited cooperation there was between the two countries has ground to a halt. A November agreement between the two sides to press all parties in Syria toward negotiations known as the Geneva process has stalled and they have abandoned plans for more de-escalation zones to ease the violence. Instead, Russia is attempting to create such zones with Turkey and Iran. From the White House, there is still hope that Russia will change its posture, and Trumps informal invitation for an eventual meeting with Putin hasnt been rescinded. After his last call with President Putin on March 20, the president confirmed that the two had discussed a bilateral meeting at a number of potential venues, including the White House, Robert Palladino, a spokesman for the National Security Council, said in a statement Sunday night. The desire for a meeting still stands, as the president believes a better relationship with Russia is in our mutual interest. That said, the president has been consistent and tough on Russia. While we would like to work with Russia, we also recognize that an improved relationship will require the Russian government to take positive steps, and the president will continue to hold them accountable for malign activities, Palladino said. Spurning Meetings In the meantime, though, routine diplomacy has given way to pettiness. Russias ambassador to the U.S., Anatoly Antonov, cant get meetings with top officials and had asked for help from Republican Senator Orrin Hatch to do so, Politico reported last month. Trump, previously reluctant to criticize Putin directly even as others in his administration have done so, has dropped any such restraint. When he announced his plan for the strikes against Syria on Friday night, he said Russia must decide if it will continue down this dark path or if it will join with civilized nations as a force for stability and peace. Valery Solovei, a political scientist at the Moscow State Institute for International Relations, which trains Russias diplomats, said I think, yes, this is the end. And not only in Syria, but also in all spheres of Russian-American relations. Some well-informed sources say Putin is furious and plans to put more hardliners in important positions during an upcoming reshuffle in his administration and government. The biggest fear on both sides -- of a hot conflict between the two nuclear-armed rivals -- appears to have been eased for now given the limited nature of the latest strikes in Syria and the use of U.S.-Russian deconfliction channels before the attack to make certain their planes werent in the same airspace. But the risk of close calls -- and potentially lethal conflicts -- remains. The dean of the Department of Philology at the Pushkin State Russian Language Institute, Andrei Shcherbakov, told Vestnik Kavkaza about the development of the institute's contacts with the universities of the North and South Caucasus. - What can you say about your university's cooperation with the universities of the North Caucasus? - Pushkin State Russian Language Institute has long established close ties with the universities of the Caucasus region, in particular with Pyatigorsk State University, which students and teachers constantly participate in the conferences, organized by us in Moscow, and the "Russian Language Ambassadors in the World" program. We maintain contacts with the universities of the Chechen Republic and Dagestan. Our institute is primarily interested in the Caucasian region because there we can work out methodological methods for teaching Russian as a second native language in conditions of a limited Russian-speaking environment. In this sense the Caucasus is really an interesting platform. The Caucasian republics are an example of the successful coexistence of two, three or more languages. There are twelve state languages in Dagestan. Such rich linguistic diversity requires both study, description and special attention to the position of the Russian language in these regions, since Russian is the state language of the Russian Federation and proficiency in it gives great opportunities for the professional and other realization of any Russian citizen. Our Faculty of Philology is attended by representatives of more than 40 Russian regions, as well as 80 countries of the world. - And what about your contacts with the universities of the South Caucasian countries? - Pushkin State Russian Language Institute has established and maintained contacts not only with the Azerbaijan University of Languages, but also with the Baku State University and other organizations. There is a Russian center of science and culture in Azerbaijan, which also promotes educational and cultural projects. We support the "Russian Language Ambassadors in the World" project. Two expeditions to Azerbaijan were held already, when students of Russian universities came to Azerbaijan's schools and universities and taught their peers and younger children Russian. In addition, they also started to learn the Azerbaijani language. Such youth projects give us an opportunity to say with confidence that the relations between our countries will develop exceptionally positively. Recently, our relations with Azerbaijan have intensified in all areas. First of all, of course, at the level of cultural and educational exchanges. Four students from Azerbaijan attend the Department of Philology at the Pushkin State Russian Language Institute. Two post-graduate students, one at bachelor's and one at master's level. Of course, this is a very small number for our countries, but I think that as a result of our joint work, due to the fact that we have established close contacts with the Azerbaijan University of Languages, there will be a lot of joint projects, and such mutual student exchanges will also become usual. The increasing number of students will come to our institute, and our students will have the opportunity to visit Azerbaijan, get acquainted with the Azerbaijani language, Azerbaijani culture. This is a good basis for the relations between the countries to develop positively in the future. - Thanks to Heydar Aliyev's efforts, the national and cultural diversity acquired the form of ideology, the traditions of multiculturalism are strong in Azerbaijan ... - Heydar Aliyev is a major political figure. It is impossible to underplay Heydar Aliyev's contribution to the development of Azerbaijani-Russian ties. One of these areas is the promotion of multiculturalism and tolerance. This is actually the state ideology of Azerbaijan. This is very important in the sense that both Azerbaijan and Russia are multinational, multi-confessional countries. If we talk about development, about friendship between our countries, it is important that the principles laid down and formulated by Heydar Aliyev be embodied and become the ideological basis for the development and prosperity of our countries. - How does the government support the Russian language in Russia? - The position of the Russian language as a state language is the issue of state policy. The state follows the situation in the field of preserving and promoting the Russian language very closely. The attention of senior government officials to the issues of the Russian language has been very serious recently. Suffice it to say that we have two councils on the Russian language. One under the President of the Russian Federation, the second - under the government. This means that the functioning of the Russian language on the territory of Russia is a matter of the highest national priority. The international forum titled "Great Victory achieved through unity: the feat of partisans and underground workers in the Great Patriotic War" will start its work on April 25 in Bryansk. Azerbaijani journalist Jamilya Alekperova is one of the permanent participants of this international event. On the eve of opening of the forum, Jamilya plans to visit a memorable obelisk in Bryansk with the name of her great-grandfather, who died in the first year of the war in the battles on the territory of the Lugansk region, carved on it. - What was the motive for you to visit your native places connected with the name of great-grandfather, who died during the Great Patriotic War? - It's a holy mission for me. For a long time I knew that my great-grandfather died in the first year of the war near Lugansk, but did not know the circumstances of his death and where he's buried. I also did not know that there is a small monument in the Bryansk region, in the village of Khalevich of the Novozybkovsky district, to the Red Army soldiers, including my great-grandfather, Vasily Ivanovich Rebenok. Then, I firmly decided to visit this place and get my great-grandfather included in the "Immortal Regiment" lists. For me, this is the only possible solution to preserve the memory of a man who gave his life for a better future for all of us. Many thanks to my friends from Moscow, the North-South Center, the Sodruzhestvo press club, the Bryansk searchers, and all those who helped and assisted me in addressing that issue. Believe me, these are not formal words of gratitude, I am touched to tears by such an attitude towards an ordinary person's request to help restore the memory of her ancestor. - You are a regular participant of the "Great Victory achieved through unity" forum. What do you get from communicating with colleagues from other countries in the format of this international site? - This is a forum of like-minded people, a meeting of people who cherish the memory of the Great Victory. It is very unfortunate that every year it is more difficult for our veterans to get to the venue of the event. But they got a lot of spirit, like many years ago. Now the increasing number of young people, guys from search groups, historians and journalists take part in our event. There is a passing of the torch to a new generation. Therefore, it is always interesting for me to take part in such meetings. It;s not just a meeting with like-minded people, it always has a special atmosphere. - What does Azerbaijan feel about the events of the Great Patriotic War? - I think the answer is obvious. Every fifth citizen of Azerbaijan took part in the Great Patriotic War with weapons in his hands. During the war, Azerbaijani oil workers provided the Soviet Union with 80% of its oil and oil products. 128 natives of Azerbaijan were awarded the title of Hero of the Soviet Union. Everyone knows these figures, but not only heroic deeds are behind them, but also the grief of irreplaceable loss. 300 thousand citizens of the USSR from Azerbaijan were killed during the war. Every year Azerbaijan holds a solemn ceremony to commemorate the victims of the Great Patriotic War. President Ilham Aliyev lays a wreath to the monument of the two-time Hero of the Soviet Union, Major-General Hazi Aslanov, meets with veterans. It is no exaggeration to say that Azerbaijan cherishes the memory of the war. And this is not only a state, but also a family tradition. I was brought up to have the respect for our common memory of the great war. Expressions of protest against the nomination of former President Serzh Sargsyan as candidate for Armenian prime minister have a completely objective basis - the citizens are tired of the ineffective leadership of the Karabakh clan, which led the country into an economic, political and demographic impasse, former head of the Central Bank of Armenia Bagrat Asatryan said, speaking with a correspondent of Vestnik Kavkaza. "Ten years of Serzh Sargsyan's leadership have been unsuccessful, the republic's results in virtually all spheres were negative. The GDP in dollar terms decline, the national debt tripled and poverty level rose by several percent. But the most terrible result of this decade is the scale of population migration, we lost about 440 thousand people, and this is only official data," he pointed out. "The only thing Sargsyan did was destroy the political field and prepare all the bases to ensure the continuation of his power. Several years ago, when he agreed on an allegedly constitutional reform, he said that he would not be nominated for any posts. Apparently, now he forgot about such promises, and his only goal is to remain in power," Bagrat Asatryan added. But the sweep of competitors did not reduce the number of those dissatisfied with Sargsyan in Armenia. "We have practically no opposition left, but our young people came to the streets against Sargsyan, the movement of representatives of all universities of Yerevan is also protesting. This means that the protest wave will not stop in the coming days. And I would like to hope that the March 1, 2008 bloodshed will not happen again, when these terrible, illegal elections took place. Sargsyan appointed himself president and used violence against the protesters. No one has yet been punished for the crime against the people," the former head of the Armenian Central Bank recalled. The expert expressed confidence that the power of the Karabakh clan is weakened now. "All these external challenges, the economic situation, unresolved consequences of the crisis prove each time that there is no real power in Armenia. There are a bunch of people who care about only two things - their personal enrichment and retention of power. During the 10 years of Sargsyan's presidency, none of the serious social and economic problems of the republic was solved. There are some changes in the economy, but in general negative tendencies prevail," Bagrat Asatryan said, adding that the majority of citizens are biased against Sargsyan. "People hold mostly negative opinions of his reappointment as prime minister. They negatively evaluate the results of his activities. Everyone is unhappy with the social and economic situation, the criminogenic situation, corruption, which overlap each other and make life in the country even more difficult," he concluded. Leader of Armenias Civil Contract opposition party and lawmaker Nikol Pashinyan stated that he is launching a peaceful peoples velvet revolution in Armenia and called on people to protest against the nomination of former President Serzh Sargsyan as candidate for prime minister the republic. "A revolutionary situation is brewing across the country. Demonstrators are blocking streets and transnational highways in the cities of Gyumri, Ijevan, Vanadzor, Kapan and Metsamor. People are not going to work, mass strikes have begun," he said, speaking in Yerevans France Square. According to him, it is necessary to continue to show flexibility, continue the network struggle, rule out any use of force against law enforcement forces, but paralyze the work of all state structures throughout the country. "We will now march to the government buildings to block their work, we will hold sit-ins inside or outside the buildings," ARKA cited Pashinyan as saying. Pashinyan and other protesters marched from France Square in central Yerevan to block the building of the Prosecutor General's Office. The Armenian parliament is holding a special meeting where the countrys new prime minister is due to be elected. The only candidate is former Armenian President Serzh Sargsyan. The radical opposition is holding a mass march, all downtown streets in the capital city have been paralyzed. NATO Secretary General Jens Stoltenberg met with the President of Turkey Recep Tayyip Erdogan in Ankara, the Turkish presidential source said. They discussed preparations for the Brussels Summit in July and current security challenges. Stoltenberg said that NATO realizes Turkeys importance as an ally state,adding that NATO and Turkey have always provided mutual support, and the relations between Ankara and NATO are at the highest level. NATO chief also thanked Turkey for the support in the air operations in Syria. Head of the Presidential Administration of Azerbaijan Republic Ramiz Mehdiyev is celebrating his 80th birthday today. Yesterday, President of the Republic of Azerbaijan Ilham Aliyev has congratulated Ramiz Mehdiyev on the occasion of his anniversary and awarded him Shohrat Order for his fruitful activity in the strengthening of statehood and his huge contribution to the development of science in the Republic of Azerbaijan. Mehdiyev thanked the head of state for the award and recognition of his activity, stressing the exceptional services of Ilham Aliyev in strengthening the modern Azerbaijani statehood, the foundation of which was laid by national leader Heydar Aliyev, and noted that under the leadership of the head of state great strides were made in all spheres in Azerbaijan. Mehdiyev was born on April 17, 1938, in Baku. He graduated from Azerbaijan State University. From May 7, 1957, until August 16, 1962, he worked at Xzrdnizneft state company. From December 28, 1965, through January 26, 1968, he was a consultant at the Central Committee of Azerbaijan Communist Party, and then the second secretary of its Nakhchivan chapter. Mehdiyev then moved to Moscow and worked as a scientist and researcher at the Philosophy Studies Department of Moscow State University. After returning to Baku, he worked as a teacher at the Scientific Communism Department of Azerbaijan State University. On May 21, 1974, Mehdiyev was hired as an analyst and assistant department director at the Science and Education, and Ideology and Propaganda departments of the Central Committee of the Azerbaijan Communist Party. On December 12, 1978, he was appointed the first secretary of the 26 Baku Commissars Party Committee. On July 15, 1980, he became the director of the Party Organization Department at the Central Committee of Azerbaijan Communist Party. On December 8, 1983, he was appointed the secretary of the Central Committee. From June 1, 1988, through February 4, 1994, he was a department director at the Social Political Research and Information Institute of the Azerbaijan National Academy of Sciences. In the 1980s and 1990s, he was a deputy to the Supreme Soviet of Azerbaijan SSR elected twice and in 1995 was elected to the National Assembly of Azerbaijan. From February 4, 1994, until February 7, 1995, he was the director of the General Issues Department of the Presidential Apparatus and from February 7, 1995, he serves as the head of the Presidential Administration of Azerbaijan Republic. EU foreign policy chief Federica Mogherini said that new sanctions on Tehran was not foreseen to be a decision today. "There is no consensus at the moment on the fact that these measures would be useful in this moment or appropriate in this moment. I do not exclude that this would happen in the future but this is not the case today. And as I said this is not linked to the JCPOA. It is more linked to the discussion on the war in Syria, on which, by the way, we as the European Union keep a very open channel with the Iranian authorities," she said after the meeting. Mogherini added that further consideration on how to deal with Iran's role in Syria "will happen in the coming days or weeks," the AP reported. Meeting in Luxembourg, EU foreign ministers strongly defended the 2015 nuclear deal between Tehran and world powers and declined to impose new sanctions against Iran over its role in the Syrian conflict. The OSCE will monitor the line of contact between Azerbaijani and Armenian troops tomorrow, Azerbaijans Defense Ministry said in a statement. The monitoring will be held under the mandate of the OSCE Chairperson-in-Office Personal Representative along the line of contact near Azerbaijan's Fuzuli district. On the Azerbaijani side, the monitoring will be held by Gennadi Petrica and Simon Tiller, who are the field assistants of the OSCE Chairperson-in-Office Personal Representative. On the Azerbaijani territories occupied and controlled by Armenian armed forces, the monitoring will be held by Andrzej Kasprzyk, Personal Representative of the OSCE Chairperson-in-Office, and his field assistants Ognjen Jovic and Mihail Olaru. Armenias former president Serzh Sargsyan has been elected a Prime Minister with 77 votes for and 17 against, speaker of the National Assembly Ara Babloyan said. Serzh Sargsyan was nominated by the Republican Party of Armenia and ARF Dashnakustyun. Protests have continued for few days in Yerevan and other Armenian cities aimed at preventing Sargsyan from assuming the position of prime minister. The protest has been led by leader of Armenias Civil Contract opposition party and lawmaker Nikol Pashinyan. The deputy chairman of the Armenian National Congress Levon Zurabyan told Vestnik Kavkaza earlier that the previous 10 years of Serzh Sargsyan's presidency were marked by the worsening of the country's life in all spheres, and the continuation of his reign bring new problems for the republic. "The state debt increased from $1.5 billion to $7 billion during his reign. The population decreased by 400 thousand people - and this is due to the official information only. The rate of emigration has reached about 50 thousand citizens leaving Armenia every year not just for temporary earnings, but for good," he listed. "The clan, mafia, and noncompetitive economy have only strengthened and intensified in these 10 years, squeezing out the typical competitive business. By 2018, Armenia has received an absolutely ineffective, corrupt government that will not last long. Taking into account all that happened in Armenia during 10 years of Serzh Sargsyan's rule, people can only treat him with a negative attitude, and this is a general attitude towards him. Of course, we should note that despite this the Republican Party of Armenia received high support during the parliamentary elections, but these elections were falsified completely," Levon Zurabyan stressed. The deputy chairman of the Armenian National Congress party Aram Manukyan pointed to Armenia's total isolation under Sargsyan's rule. "We are bypassed by all regional and international routes - transport, railway, oil, gas, any others. Armenia is not just under the political blockade, but also under the economic one, it is blocked on every side and not involved in any regional projects. Even our government does not want to participate in regional programs, that is, we simply do not exist in the Caucasus, and this situation has not changed in last 20 years," he noted. "Over the years, we have been bypassed by a lot of projects, including the Baku-Tbilisi-Ceyhan pipeline and the Baku-Tbilisi-Kars road, which were built through Georgia instead of Armenia, and now these are the North-South International Transport Corridor and China's Silk Road. We seem to be out of the region. De jure there is Armenia in the Caucasus, but it is not involved in any of the projects passing through the Caucasus. We are at an economic impasse, and therefore no one invests in Armenia. If before we received at least $3-4 billion of investments a year, then last year the republic received only $120 million of investments, it's nothing," Aram Manukyan assessed Sargsyan's "achievements". South Korea hopes that Kazakhstan will support the international efforts aimed at resolving the nuclear problem in the Korean Peninsula, South Korean Foreign Minister Kang Kyung-wha said. Kazakh Foreign Minister Kairat Abdrakhmanov, in turn, said that Astana hails the reopening of the inter-Korean dialogue and hopes that the forthcoming summit will bring the relations between Pyongyang and Seoul to a new level, Interfax-Kazakhstan reported. Abdrakhmanov added that South Korea and Kazakhstan have similar positions on topical international issues. US President Donald Trump is still willing to meet with Russian President Vladimir Putin despite increasing tensions between the United States and Russia, White House spokesperson Sarah Sanders said. "The President still would like to sit down with him. Again, he feels like it's better for the world if they have a good relationship. But that's going to depend on the actions of Russia," Sanders told reporters. Earlier, US President Donald Trump proposed meeting with Russian President Vladimir Putin in Washington when they spoke by phone in March. Serzh Sargsyan deceived the expectations of the people to whom he promised not to be nominated for leadership positions, ex-mayor of Yerevan Vahagn Khachatryan told the correspondent of Vestnik Kavkaza, commenting on the protests in Yerevan and other cities of Armenia against against the nomination of former president as the republic's new leader - prime minister. "Indeed, many people expected that he would not put forward his candidacy, but would propose the candidacy of Karen Karapetyan to the post of prime minister. Many people believed this because, four years ago when the Constitution was amended, he said that he was not going to rule the country for the third time - and even stressed that, according to his experience, the same person should seek a third term," he explained. "Many believed him then and hoped that he really would not hold power, but give it to someone else. Right now, these people are protesting against the continuation of the destructive policies that have been conducted under Serzh Sargsyan in Armenia for a very long time," Vahagn Khachatryan drew attention. "Now it is difficult to predict how the events will develop further, since the scale of the action is really big, young people, students took to the streets, who are known to be impressionable. I do not know whether they are guided by their hearts, or they believe the Yelk leader Nikol Pashinyan, or there is something else, but young people are more concerned about the current situation than the older generation, and now they took to the streets and protect their rights, demanding the replacement of Serzh Sargsyan's failed policy," the former mayor of Yerevan concluded. The situation in central Yerevan is gradually heating up on the eve of the National Assembly's meeting, at which the elections of Armenia's Prime Minister will be held. The opposition seeks to derail the parliamentary vote on the countrys new prime minister, which is scheduled to begin at 12.00 local time (11.00 Moscow time). The protests are aimed at preventing former president Serzh Sargsyan from assuming the position of prime minister. Traffic at some streets was paralyzed as activists have erected barricades of cars, benches and dumpsters. Protesters have also set up a tent camp at the France Square in Yerevan. Traffic jams, caused by the protests, triggered sporadic clashes between drivers and activists and at least one mass brawl. Leader of Armenias Civil Contract opposition party Nikol Pashinyan called for massive and total civil disobedience and what he called network blockade of the parliamentary building. "We will not let the vote on the prime ministers candidacy to take place, we will block all ways leading to the parliament to keep lawmakers out of the building," Pashinian said. Pashinyan called on opposition activist to surround government buildings throughout the country, including ministries, mayors offices, city and village administrations. "We need to block the entrances, go inside and declare strikes, but everything must go peacefully, we should refrain from any kind of violence or damage to property," ARKA cited him as saying. Pashinyan also called to block the movement of public transport, the work of the underground. He also said that about 30 of his supporters had been taken into custody during clashes with the police. "About three dozen of our supporters are currently at police stations. I call on their friends and relatives to block the capitals streets and avenues rather than going to the police," Pashinyan said. The police press service has confirmed the detention. Armenian health authorities said 46 people - including 6 police officers - sought medical help after a clash between opposition activists and riot police in Yerevan yesterday. Police used tear gas and stun grenades against the protesters, who tried to break through a barbed wire cordon in Yerevan. According to the health ministry, part of citizens, having received out-patient treatment, were discharged from hospitals. They had injuries of the lower extremities. Police officers were injured with blunt and cutting objects. One of the policemen was operated on because of a vein injury. Armenia has gone through a constitutional reform to turn the country from a presidential republic into a parliamentary one. The president will become a ceremonial head of state, who will be appointed by parliament and whose authority will be purely representative. In line with the countrys new constitution, the prime minister will become the head of the executive branch with vast powers, including to determine the general guidelines of the governments policy. The ruling Republican Party of Armenia nominated Serzh Sargsyan, whose 10-year presidential tenure expired on April 9, to the post. HCM CITY Many Vietnamese firms are set to participate in the 2018 Selangor International Business Summit (SIBS) in Malaysia to exchange information and seek business opportunities, a meeting heard in HCM City on April 16. To be held from September 6 to 16 at the Malaysia International Trade and Exhibition Centre in Kuala Lumpur, it will feature three main events the 2018 Selangor International Expo, the 2018 Selangor-Asean Business Conference, and the 2018 Selangor Smart City and Digital Economy Convention. Dato Hasan Azhari Haji Idris, CEO of Invest Selangor Berhad, the events organiser, said amid the current global economic situation it was imperative for ASEAN members to operate as a united community and support each other. As the gateway to ASEAN, Selangor would act as a centre point that hosts and connects a rich network of trade industry players globally by leveraging a solid platform like SIBS, he said. Sofian Akmal Abd. Karim, the Malaysian consul general in HCM City, said: Through its rich network, the summit presents opportunities for local and foreign multi-national corporations to showcase their products and services. Subsequently, it also acts as a strategic avenue for marketing, collaborations and partnerships, and provides exposure as well as information on the latest technological developments. Faizal Izany, trade counsellor at the Malaysian consulate, said one of the summits main events, the food and beverage-focused 2018 Selangor International Expo, would be a good platform for Vietnamese food producers to promote their products in Malaysia as well as ASEAN and global markets. Vietnamese enterprises would also have a chance to learn about halal food and how to get the certification to penetrate the huge global halal market, he said. Idris said the 2018 SIBS was expected to have a total of 1,000 booths and 25,000 visitors, up from 691 and 22,071 last year. At the meeting, the Viet Nam Exporters Association and other business groups based in HCM City said they would send business delegations to the summit. Trade between Viet Nam and Malaysia was worth US$10.06 billion last year after rising by 19 per cent. The two countries are striving to lift their trade to $15 billion by 2020 under their Strategic Partnership framework. Karim said Selangor was the largest of Malaysias 13 states in terms of GDP, making up about 22.7 per cent of the countrys economy in 2016. It was also one of the most developed states and most populated, he added. Invest Selangor provides information, facilitation services and start-up and expansion assistance for businesses planning to invest in the state. VNS HA NOI High logistics costs and inefficient logistics networks continue to provide a challenge for policy makers, hamper businesses, and threaten competitiveness. Prime Minister Nguyen Xuan Phuc, during his speech at a national logistics conference on April 16, reaffirmed the importance of capable logistics infrastructure in Viet Nam s economic growth. The industry is valued at billions of US dollars, and is one of the 12 priority industries supported by the ASEAN community. And yet, this attractive service sector may soon be taken over by foreign firms, seeing as domestic ones have yet to become fully established on the market, said the PM. He quoted Benjamin Franklin, "Beware of little expenses. A small leak will sink a great ship", emphasising the potential harm that high logistics costs and ineffectual transport can cause to the economy. As assessed before by the World Bank, logistics costs in Viet Nam are equivalent to about 20.9 per cent of total GDP, of which transport costs account for 60 per cent. The same number in China is around 19 per cent, while it is 18 per cent in Thailand ; 11 per cent in Japan and roughly 10 per cent in European countries. This puts Viet Nam at number 64 out of 160 countries on the World Banks Logistics Performance Index. "High logistics costs are among the biggest barriers for Vietnamese enterprises competitiveness, mainly due to unreasonable investment and poor connections between different modes of transport," said the PM. Therefore, the Government must actively promote reducing the cost of logistics for businesses via concrete deeds, such as the recently approved Action Plan to improve Viet Nams competitiveness and develop logistics services by 2025. There should be strong State support mechanisms and policy planning in the sector, since its functions are not just limited to freight forwarding, but also include other activities such as warehousing, packaging and cargo handling. "If the logistics sector is well and good, it will save transportation and product costs, and increase firms competitiveness and profit", added PM Phuc. Speaking at the conference, Deputy Prime Minister Trinh inh Dung addressed four current issues facing the logistics sector, as well as possible solutions to be enforced. The first and foremost problem involves institutions and policy, as current legal regulations on logistics may need to be amended to keep up with present day industry demand. There is also indication that some localities with domestic ports have yet to properly locate warehouses and shipyards to store goods, thus pushing transport costs up. The second issue that the Deputy PM mentioned was related to infrastructure development, chiefly with regard to connecting transport routes between logistics centres such as ports, railways, airports, and cargo transshipment ports. Thirdly, he discussed inefficiency in linking different modes of transport, highlighting some difficult to explain issues such as market favourability for high cost transport modes. Sea and railway transport account for 4.7 and 0.39 per cent of total transport respectively, while road transport accounts for nearly 80 per cent, yet road transport is favoured over the cheaper alternatives. Finally, he suggested that logistics firms focus on the operation scale expansion and human resources training. Meanwhile, Deputy Minister of Transport Nguyen Van Cong stated that the domestic aviation sector is accelerating air cargo services development and establishing its own freighter network, encouraging investors to finance regional cargo airports with the appropriate incentive mechanisms. According to the Ministry of Transport (MoT), the estimated cost of transporting a 40 foot long container (about 12 metres) by road from Ha Noi to HCM City (excluding the cost of unloading and loading at both ends) is about VN40 million (US$1,780), practically 10 times more expensive than by sea, and 2.5 times more expensive than by rail. Cong said that the high cost is due to unfair competition, mainly through intermediaries, which has done little to optimise the national transport sector. Notable examples are high petrol prices and BuildOperateTransfer (BOT) charges. Railway, inland waterways and seaway transportation are lower in cost, but transport time is much longer, with higher loading and unloading fees and outdated carriers. Cong added that in order to reduce logistics costs, the MoT should invest in the formation of a national high-speed road network, dedicated to ensuring efficient connections between industrial parks, key economic centres, and important traffic hubs, as well as between sea ports, railway stations and inland water ports. VNS HCM CITY Cooking oil producer Tuong An Vegetable Oil Joint Stock Company (TAC) announced an increase in the dividend for last year to 24 per cent from the earlier plan of 16 per cent at its annual shareholders meeting on April 16. It came on the back of outstanding business results, with pre-tax profits growing by over 98 per cent to VN166 billion (US$7.3 million). Revenues only rose by 9 per cent to VN4.3 trillion ($188 million). The company attributed the results to the strong growth in the economy and the cooking oil market. Nguyen Thi Hanh, chairwoman of TAC, said: The cooking oil industry is expected to grow by 8.7 per cent in 2015-20. Consumption in Viet Nam is still lower than in neighbouring countries. TAC last year made changes to its product portfolio with a focus on healthy products, she said. Hanh also hailed the merger with food producer KIDO Group. The merger with KIDO has helped us develop our logistics and distribution systems. She said the company was now the second biggest cooking oil producer. The meeting also approved a 24 per cent dividend for this fiscal year. In 2018, TAC targets pre-tax profits of VN250 billion on revenues of VN5.1 trillion ($223.6 million). Hanh told the meeting that the targets were challenging but achievable since demand remained huge. TAC plans to enter new segments with a focus on high-end products to meet the relentlessly growing demand for healthy products, she revealed. We will partner with domestic and foreign investors to enter the canned/packaged products market including sugar, instant noodles, sauces and spices. The company would continue to expand its distribution system, she said. TAC, established in 1977, has two plants in Nghe An Provinces Vinh City and Ba RiaVung Tau Province. VNS HA NOI Vietnam Competition Authority (VCA), under the Ministry of Industry and Trade, has decided to conduct a preliminary investigation into Grabs purchase of Ubers stakes in Viet Nam. The acquisition is suspected to breach regulations on economic concentration under the countrys Law on Competition 2004. The investigation will span 30 days, starting from the day the decision was issued last week. Following Grabs announcement on March 26 about its purchase of Ubers operations in Southeast Asia, including Viet Nam, VCA sent a dispatch to GrabTaxi requesting information and documents related to the acquisition. However, GrabTaxi claimed since the combined market share of both Grab and Uber in Viet Nam was less than 30 per cent, it did not have to inform the competition authority before proceeding and completing this transaction in Viet Nam. VCA then held a working session with GrabTaxis legal representative on April 6, but the firm failed to provide evidence proving its claim. VCA urged the company to carefully assess the market share after acquisition to ensure compliance with regulations on economic concentration under the competition law before conducting transactions in Viet Nam. Meanwhile, an Uber representative, who met VCA on April 12, said the company had officially stopped operations and closed all offices in Viet Nam from 11.59pm on April 8, which meant the transaction between Grab and Uber was already complete in the country. Grab is one of the most frequently used O2O (online-to-offline) mobile platforms across 195 cities in Southeast Asia. More than five million people use the combined platform daily. Viet Nam is not the only country where Grab is currently under fire. Other Southeast Asian countries, such as the Philippines, Singapore and Malaysia, are all requesting a detailed explanation of the companys acquisition of Uber fearing Grabs monopoly in the market. VNS An automated customs control system for exports and imports was launched at Ha Nois Noi Bai International Airport on April 16. Photo baohaiquan.vn HA NOI An automated customs control system for exports and imports was launched at Ha Nois Noi Bai International Airport on April 16. According to Deputy Director of Ha Noi Customs Department, Tran Quoc inh, after a five-month pilot period, the system had benefited importers and exporters, warehouse businesses and customs because the system links goods management information at three stages: pre-clearance, customs clearance and post-clearance. Accordingly, customs offices applied concentrated information technology to exchange and update information with warehoure businesses, helping them monitor goods from arrival to departure and transportation between locations subject to customs supervision. The system has been piloted by Hanoi Customs Department at Noi Bai Airport since October 16. The air cargo warehouse of the Noi Bai Cargo Terminal Service JSC was the first unit to implement this pilot. Enterprises importing and exporting through automated management and monitoring systems will know goods information and the location of goods in warehouse to speed up customs procedures, helping them reduce the cost and time to store goods in warehouses. Meanwhile, aviation warehouse businesses are provided with goods information through the system. They do not waste time, money or labour to write, print, prepare or deliver documents of each flight to the customs office. NCTS general director Nguyen Xuan Phuc said his company had made efforts with the customs office to gradually complete software and carry out the pilot. Up to now, the system has brought practical effects in reforming and modernising the process of operation, shortening time for goods clearance for enterprises and helping businesses reduce labour costs and travel time to handle the procedures, increasing production and business efficiency for importers and exporters, said Phuc. Appreciating the results of the system, Deputy General Director of the General Department of Customs Hoang Viet Cuong affirmed that this event was not only important for customs but also for all businesses, especially exporters and importers doing business in Noi Bai Airport. This system has adopted international standards in the management of goods transported by air. This represents the commitment of the customs sector in the process of reform and modernisation, said Cuong. "In the future, units under the General Department of Customs and Hanoi Customs Department should continue to complete the system, expanding it to meet the requirements of reform and modernisation to generate favourable conditions for people and businesses," said Cuong. After five months of pilot implementation, this modern system has connected to all three warehouses of NCTS, Aviation Logistics Service JSC and Aviation Vietnam Air Cargo Services JSC. Customs data shows that during the period, 175,766 customs declarations have been managed and monitored automatically on the system. VNS HA NOI The Ha Noi Stock Exchange has approved The Ha Noi Textile Garment Company (Hanosimex) to list 20.5 million shares on Unlisted Public Company Market (UPCoM) on April 19. The reference price for its shares, which will be listed under code HSM, will begin at VN15,800 (US$0.7) per share, equivalent to market capitalisation of VN431 billion ($18.9 million) Hanosimex, formerly named Ha Noi Fibre Plant, was put into operation in 1984. The company was equitised in 2007, with the State holding 57 per cent of charter capital, worth an estimated VN205 billion. Since then, the company has not increased its charter capital. As of January 9, 2018 Hanosimex had two major shareholders holding 76.19 per cent of its charter capital, namely the Viet Nam National Garment and Textile Group (Vinatex), owning 57.57 per cent of capital, and Viet Nam Textile and Garment Infrastructure Development and Production and Trading Company (Vinatex ICT), holding 18.62 per cent of capital. The company has plants in Ha Noi, Hung Yen, Ha Nam, Nghe An and Ha Tinh, operating in spinning, sewing, scarf production, textile weaving, trading and logistics. Hanosimex owns three land plots, including one spanning 2,600 sq m at No 25, Lane 13, Linh Nam Street in Ha Nois Hoang Mai District. The land plot is not in use. The two others have been used, including one with an area of 125,000 sq m in ong Van II Industrial Park in the northern province of Ha Nam and one spanning 68,540sq m in Nam Giang Industrial Cluster in the central province of Nghe Ans Nam an District. The company earned VN2.4 trillion in revenue, of which revenue from the fibre industry reached VN1.6 trillion, 70 per cent of total revenue. Revenue from sewing reached VN335 billion, accounting for 14.2 per cent of total revenue. The textile industry brought in VN215 billion, contributing 9.11 per cent of total revenue. In 2017, the companys after-tax profit touched nearly VN60 billion. Hanosimex aims to earn VN2.5 trillion in revenue in 2018 and VN2.8 trillion in 2019. After-tax profit is expected to reach VN77 billion and VN82 billion respectively in 2018 and 2019. VNS Taxi firm Vietnam Sun Corporation (Vinasun) plans to cut its full-year revenue for the fourth time for 2018 due to rising competition from foreign ride-hailing firms. Photo vnexpress.net HA NOI Taxi firm Vietnam Sun Corporation (Vinasun) plans to cut its full-year revenue for the fourth time for 2018 due to rising competition from foreign ride-hailing firms. The figure for 2018 could be set at VN2.16 trillion (US$96 million), down VN1.07 trillion year-on-year, of which transportation and merchandise income would account for VN2 trillion and the remainder would come from asset sales. Vinasun also forecasts its post-tax profit for this year would be VN95 billion, half of the figure in 2017. This is the lowest figure for the firm in the past nine years. The earnings forecast would be submitted for approval at the firms annual shareholder meeting, which is scheduled for April 27. The company has not yet published its full-year financial report for 2017. In 2018, the taxi company will focus on preserving its market share and keeping its business operating properly in the face of strong competition from rival ride-hailing applications. In order to do that, Vinasun will buy at least 700 high-quality vehicles, develop its non-cash payment methods and diversify its business co-operation models. In addition, Vinasun will propose the transport ministry categorise business activities of ride-hailing applications to assure a fair market for domestic taxi firms. Vinasun has reported slower growth rates in both net revenue and profit since the two ride-hailing applications Uber and Grab entered Viet Nam in mid-2014. From 2010-15, Vinasuns net revenue increased from over VN1.64 trillion to VN4.25 trillion. The HCM City-based taxi company also recorded that its post-tax profit grew from VN179.4 billion to VN329.3 billion. In 2016, however, the companys net revenue grew at a slower pace to reach VN4.5 trillion, while its post-tax profit fell to roughly VN312 billion. In the first half of 2017, Vinasun performed even worse as its net revenue dropped 16 per cent year on year to VN1.9 trillion and its post-tax profit declined by a third to VN100 billion. The taxi firm is listing nearly 68 million shares on the HCM Stock Exchange. Its shares have dropped gradually by nearly 60 per cent since September 28, 2016 to close Monday at VN13,400 (60 US cents) per share. Tougher taxi market after merger According to Vinasuns deputy general director Ta Long Hy, the merger between Uber and Grab in Viet Nam could result in a monopolistic taxi market and local taxi companies could suffer from such a market condition. After Uber and Grab merged, the total number of ride-hailing app vehicles had increased to 78,000 across the country and that number was much bigger than 20,000 traditional taxis in Viet Nam, he said. The number of high-tech taxis is accounting for 80 per cent of the overall market, which could lead to a market monopoly for the foreign firm. And it is the question on how the Government would solve the problem, cafef.vn cited Hy as saying. Traditional taxi firms would have to adapt to new market conditions, he said. Vinasun has developed an application to meet rising demand from customers and keep up with market trends. In the near future, both taxi drivers and passengers would know exactly how much a fixed trip would cost based on the expected travel distance in the application, just like other ride-hailing firms, instead of using the meter to calculate the fares for passengers, he said. VNS HCM CITY Bahrain will open its trade promotion offices in Ha Noi and HCM City to facilitate trade with Viet Nam and other countries in the ASEAN bloc. This was announced by Sheikh Daij bin Isa Al Khalifa, chairman of the ASEAN-Bahrain Business Council, at a meeting with Le Thanh Liem, vice chairman of HCM City Peoples Committee, on Monday. Bahrain, which boasts huge oil reserves and is a financial centre of the Middle East, has various favourable policies to attract foreign investors, including those from Viet Nam, Khalifa said. He added that the ASEAN-Bahrain Business Council was established in 2017 to bolster business ties as well as exchanges in trade, sports, tourism and culture between Bahrain and the ASEAN member nations. The councils delegation is on a visit to Viet Nam to attend a trade fair in Ha Noi and seek trade cooperation opportunities in the country, he said. Liem applauded Bahrains initiative to open a trade representative office in the southern hub, expressing his hope that the visit will bolster trade ties between the two countries in general and between Bahrain and HCM City in particular. HCM City welcomes businesses from Bahrain to join its smart city projects, he said, adding that the city always rolls out a red carpet for Bahrains firms to land long-term investment in the city. VNS HA NOI Property developer Vingroup has announced that Vinhomes and another member company of the group has signed a cooperation agreement with Singapores sovereign wealth fund, GIC Private Limited. Under the agreement, GIC will invest US$1.3 billion in two forms: investing in Vinhomes shares and providing a debt instrument to Vinhomes (such as loans) to implement its projects. Credit Suisse (Singapore) Limited acts as the consultant agency of this business deal. GIC is one of the three reserves management entities of the Government of Singapore and is now one of the largest financial investors in the Vietnamese capital market. At present, GICs main investments in Viet Nam include Masan Group (some 5 per cent of the shares), Vietjet Air (5 per cent), Vinamilk (0.7 per cent), FPT (3.5 per cent) as well as PAN Group and Vinasun, with a total value of some VN15 trillion ($657.9 million). Vinhomes, a subsidiary of Vingroup, is responsible for real estate development of the group. The company has a charter capital of nearly VN26.38 trillion and submitted dossiers to list more than 2.6 billion shares on HCM City Stock Exchange in early April. VNS HA NOI Vietnamese and Iranian firms yesterday exchanged bilateral trade cooperation opportunities at the Viet Nam - Iran Business Forum. The forum came alongside the ongoing visit to Viet Nam of the Speaker of the Parliament of Iran, Ali Ardeshir Larijani. Speaking at the forum, oan Duy Khuong, Vice Chairman of the Viet Nam Chamber of Commerce and Industry (VCCI), said he expected further economic, trade and investment cooperation promotion towards the import-export bilateral turnover goal of US$2 billion. In 2017, two-way trade reached $164.6 million, a 41 per cent increase compared to 2016, but not quite on par with estimated bilateral potential, said Khuong. Larijani said that the Iranian market was currently in need of imported commodities such as seeds, vegetable oil, rice and paper raw materials. He added that Viet Nam could export to Iran competitively priced and reasonable quality goods such as rice, tea, coffee, cashew nuts, pepper, rubber, motorcycle parts and vehicles, while importing from Iran petroleum, asphalt, chemical products and plastic components. Priority should be given to fields such as oil and gas energy and petrochemical products, especially liquefied gas, telecommunications or agro-fisheries. In addition to trade and investment, tourism is also a potential area for bilateral cooperation, said the Iranian Parliament Speaker. At yesterdays forum, Iranian parliament delegates said that Iran s current foreign investment policies were extremely accommodating, with six economic zones guaranteeing 15 years of corporate tax exemption for investors, along with many other incentives. Larijani also requested improvement in direct bilateral trade, as many of Viet Nam s manufactured goods in Iran are imported via an intermediary country. "We want to learn about Viet Nam s agricultural development experience," said Larijani. Viet Nam is ready to share its experiences of agricultural development with Iran, said Prime Minister Nguyen Xuan Phuc yesterday, adding that he expects that Iran would soon reply to the Memorandum of Understanding on rice trade for Viet Nam, which will provide support and facilitate many Vietnamese large enterprises in doing business with Iranian partners. Viet Nam also hopes for Iran s cooperation in ship building, wharfs construction and other auxiliary industries. Earlier yesterday, Nguyen Thi Kim Ngan, National Assembly Chairwoman, said that Viet Nam hopes to promote the telecommunication field as a breakthrough sector for bilateral cooperation. At the moment, Viet Nam s Viettel Military Industry and Telecoms Group and PetroVietnam Group (PVN) have shown great interest in investing in the Iranian telecommunications market. Larijani suggested some other solutions to boost bilateral trade, including the establishment of a direct flight path and the simplification of visa procedures at the border to promote co-operative tourism. He also expressed hope that by settling issues regarding payment methods or visa issuance, two-way trade turnover will significantly improve. The business forum was co-organized by the VCCI and the Viet Nam-Iran Business Council, in cooperation with the Iranian Embassy in Ha Noi. VNS HA NOI The Ministry of Agriculture and Rural Development (MoARD) recently asked concerned agencies and localities to tighten the management of dyke maintenance and flood prevention for the coming rainy season. The minister asked provincial Peoples Committees to repair and maintain dyke systems and other related constructions, focus on handling dykes and dams damaged by floods and storms in 2017, prepare plans to protect important dyke systems and ensure operationalisation of the flood prevention system before the onset of the rainy season this year. Local authorities have been asked to allocate all sources to handle any problems before, during and after the rainy season as well as to take necessary steps to prevent mishaps caused by storms and floods. Provincial departments of agriculture and rural development are required to collaborate with district authorities and army forces by June 15 to conduct general inspections of dyke systems and prepare plans to protect dykes, dams and areas in danger. According to the Vietnam News Agency, MoARD has also asked Viet Nam Disaster Management Authority to guide localities on evaluating dyke systems and approve protection plans as well as inspect and urge the implementation of dyke maintenance during floods and stormy season. Meanwhile, from May 1, HCM City Greenery Parks Company will set up 17 quick response teams during working hours to handle incidents of falling trees in the coming rainy season. People can also notify the company in its subsidiary offices at Nguyen Thong Street, District 3; Ly Thuong Kiet Street, District 11; Hoang Minh Giam Street, Phu Nhuan District; Street No.3, District 9; No.20A1, Nguyen Van Bua Street, in Xuan Thoi Son Commune, Hoc Mon Distrcict; and the companys headquarter in Cong Truong Quoc Te, District 3. Le Cong Phuong, the companys director, told Tuoi Tre (Youth) newspaper that 2018 was expected to witness many severe weather conditions, including heat waves, drought, salt water intrusion and decline of underground water levels. The company, therefore, is planning to plant new trees while handling old ones to minimise accidents caused by falling trees. The construction of pavements and buildings negatively affect the growth and development of tree roots. Moreover, severe waterlogging in the city softens the soil, making trees collapse, Phuong said. VNS KIEN GIANG Duong ong, the largest river that supplies water for Phu Quoc Island in southern Kien Giang Province, is polluted with garbage and waste water. The river water has turned black because of the oil scum being discharged from boats; garbage such as plastic bags, used bottles, old clothes and dead animals have covered the water surface from Hung Vuong Bridge to Dinh Cau Estuary. Nguyen Minh Triet, deputy head of Phu Quoc Provinces Public Work Management Board, told Thanh Nien (Young People) newspaper that the workers collected more than three tonnes of garbage from less than one kilometre length of the river. Triet said a major concern was that the river, which stretched up to some 21.5km , was the main source of water for daily use and production activities for the residents and tourists on the island. Currently, some 322 establishments are operating along the river. Many are engaged in the fish sauce production business. However, these businesses have no sewage treatment system. Triet said the waste water was being treated only through the sedimentation tank, and then discharged directly into the river along canals. The deterioration of the water quality has affected the beauty of the river and disrupted the living conditions of the local people along the river. Pham Van Nghiep, vice chairman of the provincial Peoples Committee, said the river was not polluted from the headwaters, but the discharge of waste water and garbage from households on both sides of the river had inflicted the damage. The recent land price hike, which led to the establishment of illegal residential areas, also contributed to the pollution of the river, he said. VNS HA NOI A Memorandum of Understanding (MoU) for a master plan on improving the sewerage system in the central province of Ha Tinh was signed between Viet Nam and South Korea on Monday. The signing ceremony was part of an environmental forum held between environmental leaders of the two countries on Monday in Ha Noi. The MoU was signed between ang Ngoc Son, vice chairman of the Ha Tinh Provinces Peoples Committee and Nam Kwang Hee, president of the Korea Environmental Industry & Technology Institute (KEITI). It expressed the two parties intention to improve the quality of Ha Tinh Provinces sewerage system and river water, with a focus on Ha Tinh City, Hong Linh and Ky Anh towns, and Thai Yen Commune in the province. A master plan on rehabilitating the current public sewerage system in the central province will be developed from now until May 2019. It costs some US$0.6 million, which will be sponsored by the South Korean Ministry of Environment. In the process of developing the master plan, some cooperative projects such as site survey and diagnosis and demand estimation will be run between South Korean environmental companies and Ha Tinhs authorities. The master plan will be established by areas and phases based on the results from these projects. Speaking at the forum, a representative from KEITI identified Ha Tinh Provinces demands for an improved sewerage and drainage system. The province is getting urbanised in areas where modern sewerage systems have not been built, so the current public sewerage system should be improved and expanded for a sustainable development, he said. The aftermath of the environmental disaster occurring in the Vung Ang Beach in 2016 that killed thousands of fish and affected the neighbouring provinces also calls for strong efforts to preserve water resources in the province, he added. The development of the master plan is one of several collaborative efforts between Viet Nam and South Korea in the environmental field, said Tran Hong Ha, Minister of Natural Resources and Environment (MONRE) at the forum. Ha thanked South Korean Minister of Environment Kim Eunkyung for the practical support in terms of developing human resources, improving management capacity, and researching and applying environmental technologies. During the high-level visit of South Korean President Moon Jae-in to Viet Nam in March, leaders of the two countries agreed that our co-operation in environmental protection is contributing to the sustainable development goals of the international community, he said. Minister Kim Eunkyung and I have agreed to be the pioneers in actualising the environmental agreements made between the South Korean and Vietnamese presidents, he said. VNS National Assembly Chairwoman Nguyen Thi Kim Ngan (r) receives Speaker of the Parliament of Iran Ali Ardeshir Larijani in Ha Noi yesterday. VNA/VNS Photo Trong uc HA NOI National Assembly Chairwoman Nguyen Thi Kim Ngan has expressed her belief that the ongoing visit by Speaker of the Parliament of Iran Ali Ardeshir Larijani will contribute to consolidating the traditional friendship and co-operation between the two nations. During talks with the Iranian parliament leader following a welcome ceremony in Ha Noi on April 16, Ngan lauded the effective implementation of the Joint Comprehensive Plan of Action (JCPOA), also known as the Iran nuclear deal, which she said has helped facilitate the socio-economic development of Iran. She called for close co-ordination between the two countries to lift two-way trade to US$2 billion, with attention given to specific fields. The Vietnamese National Assembly (NA) leader also expressed the countrys wish to receive Irans diplomatic note supporting Viet Nams run for a seat in the United Nations Security Council for 2020-21, as previously agreed by the two countries leaders. Larijani, for his part, congratulated the Vietnamese NA on successfully holding the 26th Annual Meeting of the Asia-Pacific Parliamentary Forum. He said he believed that the two countries will achieve the ambitious trade target, adding that Iran can assist Viet Nam in the field of oil and gas, and is eager to learn from Viet Nams experience in the agriculture sector. The Iranian parliament speaker suggested potentially boosting ties in fields such as pharmaceuticals, medical equipment, banking connectivity, and tourism, as well as in film, television, and the exchange of lecturers and students. He also said that while the two sides have previously operated several chartered flights, they must consider launching direct flight services to step up economic development, especially in the areas of trade and tourism. Both sides agreed to enhance the exchange of state visits of all-levels, and to co-ordinate more closely in global and regional forums, including the Inter-Parliamentary Union. The two leaders agreed that although bilateral trade reached $164.6 million in 2017, up 41 per cent from the previous year, the figure has yet to match its massive potential. Speaker Larijani said that the statistics havent fully reflected actual bilateral trade revenue since many Vietnamese products in Iran were imported via a third country. He noted that the Iranian Government is in the process of creating more favourable conditions for Vietnamese tourists, including granting visas at ports of entry. If the Vietnamese Government also provides similar conditions, bilateral trade will increase, he said. Ngan pointed out similarities between the two countries, such as that Iran is a populous Middle Eastern country while Viet Nam is a populous nation in Southeast Asia. The two should therefore prioritise the trading of goods that each side specialises in, and speed up the settlement of payment hurdles. Alongside this, they should encourage market surveying, trade promotion, and investment between the two countries businesses. She said the fields of information technology and telecommunications hold major co-operation potential. Viet Nam wants to make bilateral partnerships in these spheres, and use them to make a breakthrough in bilateral ties, thereby stimulating co-operation in other fields. Viet Nams military-run telecom group Viettel is very interested in the telecom market of Iran, she said, asking Iran to create favourable conditions for Viettel to take part in telecom projects in the Middle Eastern nation. Larijani said his country will support the Viet Nam National Oil and Gas Group (PetroVietnam) to reactivate the Danan project - the $115 million project involved building temporary oil wells in Irans Danan oil field. His current visit is also aimed at hearing the opinions of Vietnamese businesses interested in investing in Iran so as to remove obstacles and strengthen partnerships. As well as investment and trade, Iran is ready to provide scholarships for Vietnamese students to study the Persian language and other subjects. They are also keen to continue exchanging university lecturers, and step up cultural and tourism cooperation through organising exhibitions, film screenings and other cultural events. Regarding parliamentary ties, Ngan affirmed that parliamentary relations are an important channel in Viet Nams foreign policy. She expressed her hope that the two parliaments will bolster delegation exchanges at all levels, especially between specialised committees to share legislative and supervisory experience. She noted that during the 14th NA of Viet Nam, an 8-member Viet Nam-Iran parliamentary friendship group was created, chaired by Vice Chairman of the NAs Judicial Affairs Committee Nguyen Van Pha. She said that the two sides should further bring into play their parliamentary friendship groups to enhance co-operation between the two parliaments. The two leaders also agreed to push the effective implementation of the signed agreements between the two nations, including deals reached by the countries inter-governmental committees. Regional and international issues of shared concern were also discussed during the talks. Ngan pointed to the importance of the East Sea, which is a major shipping route linking Europe, the Middle East and Africa with Southeast Asia. The route is used in the transportation of 50 per cent of all goods delivered by sea around the world. Maintaining the peace, stability, and security of navigation in and over the East Sea is in the common interest of all countries inside and outside the region, she said, stressing that Viet Nam advocates the settlement of East Sea disputes by peaceful means, in line with international law. She said that Viet Nam respects the 1982 UN Convention on the Law of the Sea, paying attention to diplomatic and legal processes along with the rights and legitimate interests of relevant parties. Sharing the view, Speaker Larijani said that Iran will prioritise finding diplomatic solutions in resolving conflicts and disputes. At the end of the talks, Ngan accepted an invitation to visit Iran from the Iranian Speaker, saying that she will arrange time for the visit. The Vietnamese NA leader chaired a banquet for the Iranian guests in the evening of the same day. VNS A ceremony to repatriate remains of US servicemen missing in action during the war in Viet Nam took place at a Nang international airport on Sunday, according to the Ministry of Foreign Affairs. Photo baodanang.vn HA NOI A ceremony to repatriate remains of US servicemen missing in action during the war in Viet Nam took place at a Nang international airport on Sunday, according to the Ministry of Foreign Affairs. Attending the ceremony were representatives from the Vietnamese Office for Seeking Missing Persons, US Consul General in HCM City Mary Tarnowka, and delegates from the Vietnamese Defence Ministry and the US MIA Office in Ha Noi. The Vietnamese side handed over to the US side three sets of remains found during the 130th joint search from FebruaryApril 2018. Forensic experts have examined the remains and suggested sending them to Hawaii for further verification. Speaking at the event, a representative from the US government spoke highly of Viet Nams humanitarian policy as well as the full and increasingly effective co-operation of the Vietnamese Government and people. It was the 143th hand-over of remains of US servicemen missing in action since 1973. VNS inh La Thang, former chairman of the Member Council of the Vietnam Oil and Gas Group (PetroVietnam), who was involved in the OceanBank case, has appealed against his jail sentence to the Ha Noi Peoples Court. VNA/VNS Photo HA NOI inh La Thang, former chairman of the Member Council of the Vietnam Oil and Gas Group (PetroVietnam), who was involved in the OceanBank case, has appealed against his jail sentence to the Ha Noi Peoples Court. Earlier, the court on March 29 handed down an 18-year jail sentence to Thang, also former minister of Transport and former chairman of the HCM City Peoples Committee, for his role in the OceanBank case that caused losses of VN800 billion (US$35.2 million) to the State budget. The Ha Noi Peoples Court has also received appeals of five other defendants in the case two weeks after it issued the verdicts. They included Nguyen Xuan Son, former deputy general director of PetroVietnam, sentenced to 30 months in prison, Vu Khanh Truong, a former member of the Member Council of PetroVietnam, sentenced to 5 years in jail, Nguyen Thanh Liem and Phan inh uc, also former members of the PetroVietnam Member Council, receiving non-custodial re-education periods of 20 months and 15 months, respectively and Ninh Van Quynh, former chief accountant and former head of the department of finance, accounting and auditing of PetroVietnam, 23 years behind bars. The court also ordered the defendants to compensate VN800 billion for the losses they caused to PetroVietnam. Of the total, Thang has to refund VN600 billion ($26.4 million), Quynh VN100 billion ($4.4 million) and Vu Khanh Truong VN40 billion ($1.76 million). Each of the four other defendants has to repay VN15 billion ($660,000). Quynh, who was found abusing his position and power to misappropriate VN20 billion ($880,000) from OceanBank, had previously refunded the amount. In 2008, after failing to establish Hong Viet Commercial Joint Stock Bank, PetroVietnam decided to invest in OceanBank. From 2008 to 2011, Thang instructed and decided on PetroVietnams investment in OceanBank to become a shareholder of the bank. Under his instruction, Truong, Liem, uc, Son and Quynh carried out three contributions of the groups capital totalling VN800 billion to OceanBank. Due to OceanBanks poor capability and violations committed by Ha Van Tham, former chairman of OceanBanks Board of Directors, the bank suffered serious losses, leading to the loss of the whole VN800 billion invested by PetroVietnam, then the State Bank of Vietnam was forced to buy OceanBank at zero Viet Nam ong. VNS Chau Thi Thu Nga at the High-Level Peoples Court in Ha Noi. Photo vnexpress.net HA NOI The High-Level Peoples Court in Ha Noi has maintained the life sentence given to Chau Thi Thu Nga, former National Assembly deputy and former chairwoman and general director of the Land and Housing Construction and Investment JSC (Housing Group), for swindling to appropriate assets of the B5 Cau Dien housing project. At an appeal trial in Ha Noi on April 16, Nga and Housing Group were also ordered to refund more than VN240 billion (US$10.5 million) to clients. Nga alone has to compensate more than VN54 billion ($2.3 million). The court ruled no agencies had assigned Housing Group and HAIC Company as investors of the project. The adjusted planning of the project had not been approved and its construction had yet been licensed. Housing Group had not been permitted to take money in advance from those who wanted to buy apartments in the project. However, Nga still instructed her eight subordinates to publicise false information about the legal situation and progress of the project, make a model of the project and plant poles at the site. The court reduced punishment for some of Ngas accomplices. VNS Prime Minister Nguyen Xuan Phuc (r) receives Speaker of the Parliament of Iran Ali Ardeshir Larijani in Ha Noi on April 16. VNA/VNS Photo Thong Nhat HA NOI Iran wishes to promote ties with Viet Nam, Speaker of the Parliament of Iran Ali Ardeshir Larijani told Prime Minister Nguyen Xuan Phuc during their meeting in Ha Noi on April 16. During the meeting, Larijani mentioned the close friendship between Viet Nam and Iran over the past 45 years, saying that as the two countries celebration of the 45th anniversary of their diplomatic ties (1973-2018) this year will open up new opportunities to expand bilateral relations. The Parliament of Iran has recently approved a plan for the countrys development over the next five years which encourages foreign investment in oil and gas, petrochemistry, liquefied petroleum gas and agriculture, said the top Iranian legislator. Iran wants to work with Viet Nam in these areas, alongside information technology, cyber-security and environmental protection, he noted, adding that Iran will create all possible conditions for Vietnamese enterprises to do business in his country. To raise two-way trade to US$2 billion, he suggested that the two countries set up a direct air route and simplify visa procedures to boost tourism. He also urged better co-ordination between the two sides in finance and banking. PM Phuc, for his part, appreciated the proposals by his Iranian guest, saying they are closely aligned with the focus of the two nations co-operation. Welcoming Larijani to attend the Viet Nam-Iran business forum during his visit, Phuc said he has instructed agencies to invite to the event Vietnamese companies that are interested in developing partnerships with peers from Iran. He asked Iran to back Viet Nams candidacy for the UN Security Council from 2020-21 and suggested the two sides increase exchanges of high-level delegations and closely work together to host celebrations of the 45th anniversary of the Viet Nam-Iran diplomatic ties. Viet Nam encourages Iranian firms to trade and invest in the production of agricultural products and welcomes Irans co-operation in sea transportation, port construction and support industries, the PM said. He asked the central banks of Viet Nam and Iran to work out ways to remove barriers in payment between the two sides, thus facilitating trade. The Iranian leader agreed with PM Phuc, noting that he will direct relevant bodies to translate the ideas into reality for the benefits of both sides and for peace and prosperity in the region and the world at large. VNS HCM CITY A former police officer of a department under the Ministry of Public Security was sentenced to eight years in prison on charges of espionage and property plundering. On Monday, Ho Chi Minh City Peoples Court sentenced Nguyen Hoang Duong to seven years in jail for espionage attempts and one year for property plundering. According to the indictment, from July 22-29, 2016, Duong had blackmailed his sister to get VN100 million (US$4,500) but failed. He also texted his senior colleague for VN10 million. On September 18 that year, Duong was on leave but went to his office to make a copy of classified documents. He then illegally went to Cambodia for gambling. On September 22, 29 and 30, Duong contacted the Chinese Embassy in Cambodia and Radio Free Asia in an attempt to trade the classified documents for money. He was arrested on October 4. He admitted to stealing the classified documents to sell them for gambling money. VNS Timeline: September 22, 29 and 30, 2016: Duong used his email and cell phone to contact the Chinese Embassy in Cambodia and Radio Free Asia to provide them copies of secret documents in exchange of money for gambling. October 4, 2016: Yang was arrested, and his attempt to sell classified documents was foiled. He admitted that he wanted to sell the classified information to foreigners to have money for gambling. April 16, 2018: The defendant repented his act during the trial. Considering his behaviour, personal background and the consequence of his crime, the Trial Panel sentenced Duong to eight years imprisonment, lower than the Procuracys suggestion of 13-14 years for two crimes. HA NOI Viet Nam wants to step up its friendship with Iran and both sides should work to bolster economic, trade and investment ties to live up with their potential, said General Secretary of the Communist Party of Viet Nam Central Committee Nguyen Phu Trong. Holding a reception in Ha Noi on April 16 for Speaker of the Parliament of Iran Ali Ardeshir Larijani, who is on a four-day visit to Viet Nam, Party leader Trong affirmed Viet Nams consistent foreign policy of independence, self-reliance, diversification and multilateralism of relations on the basis of international principals, equality and mutual benefits. The Party chief took the occasion to congratulate Iran on its successes in political stabilisation, development and increasing position in the international arena. He expressed his delight at the strong relations between Viet Nam and Iran. He recommended the two countries strengthen co-ordination at regional and international forums while promoting the exchange of delegations as well as exchange activities in culture, sports, education-training and tourism. The moves will bring benefits to both sides, for interests of their people and for regional and global peace and development, he stressed. Ali Ardeshir Larijani, for his part, lauded Viet Nams achievements in regional and international arenas, believing that under the leadership of the Communist Party of Viet Nam, the Vietnamese people will reap more successes in national construction, protection and development. He asserted his determination to further the friendship between the legislative bodies, states and people of Viet Nam and Iran. Iran is ready to work with Viet Nam in petrochemistry, mining, tourism, aviation, pharmaceuticals, security, defence and banking, among others, he noted. He invited Party General Secretary Trong to visit Iran and the Party chief accepted the invitation with pleasure. VNS HCM CITY As profits rise from shrimp-rice rotation models, Kien Giang Provinces Vinh Thuan District plans to expand the cultivation area to a total of 10,000ha. Under the highly profitable model, farmers use the same field to grow blue-legged prawns and white-legged shrimp in the dry season, while rice is cultivated in the rainy season. Pham Van Hau, vice chairman of the Vinh Thuan District Peoples Committee, said that breeding prawns lasts for six months and shrimp three months. With such a schedule, farmers can harvest three crustacean crops and one rice crop a year. The model provides an average profit of about VN300 million (US$13,200) per ha per year, he said. The district plans to expand the model in Vinh Binh Nam, Vinh Binh Bac and Binh Minh communes, which are located along the Cai Lon River, and in Tan Thuan Commune. The shrimp bred under this model is considered clean because farmers do not use chemicals. In addition, the quality of the field soil improves and provides natural food for the shrimp. Also, farmers no longer have to worry about selling their products as traders come to their fields to buy the shrimp. Vo Van Sua, who has 3ha of land in Vinh Binh Bac Commune, said he earns a profit of more than VN900 million ($36,600) a year from shrimp and rice. In the past, his family bred black tiger shrimp and did not always earn a profit. To enhance efficiency, the district will expand the market for blue-legged prawns as farmers are more willing to switch to the model when there is a stable outlet. Under the districts agricultural restructuring plan, the district is developing the rotation model, but many farms are still breeding only shrimp, he said. This could lead to polluted water resources and soil degradation, which could damage farms. This year, the district will register a collective brand for its blue-legged prawn and rice planted under the shrimp-rice rotating model, he said. Shrimp and rice are two key agricultural products in the Cuu Long (Mekong) Delta district of Vinh Thuan, where the soil is affected by aluminum and saltwater intrusion. The districts blue-legged prawns are sold domestically and also exported to Cambodia. Last year, the district bred about 23,880ha of various kinds of shrimp with a total yield of about 12,580 tonnes, up 20 per cent against 2016. Of the figure, blue-legged prawn accounted for 5,551 tonnes, and white-legged shrimp and black tiger shrimp the rest. VNS HCM CITY The Ministry of Education and Training will reduce the enrollment quota for teaching majors in the 2018-19 academic year by 33 per cent compared to the figure of last year. All universities, colleges and other education establishments will enroll no more than a total of 35,000 students in the academic year, compared to the total of 54,000 targeted last year. Nearly 43,000 people enrolled last year. The reduction follows a review on January 5 of teaching needs in each locality and schools training capacity, according to the ministry. Tran Anh Tuan, deputy head of the ministrys Tertiary Education Department, told Tuoi tre (Youth) newspaper that schools with training majors meeting social demands will not have their enrollment reduced. Ha Noi University of Education, the schools of education at Hue University and Thai Nguyen University, and HCM City University of Education will have lower enrollment quotas. Ha Noi University of Education No 2 and a Nang University of Education will be allowed to keep their enrollment quota of last year, equal to 1,220 and 434 new students, respectively. Beginning in the 2017-18 academic year, Bac Lieu University and Tien Giang University stopped enrolling new students in their departments of education. Schools that plan to open new departments to train teachers for the new high school education programme should begin to do so this year, the ministry said. The ministrys Tertiary Education Department said the reduction would create conditions for them to open more training courses to retrain high school teachers for the new high school education programme. In recent years, the ministry has been reducing the enrollment quota for teaching majors, with the aim of having only 10 per cent of the countrys total newly enrolled students to be teaching majors by 2020. From 2013 to 2016, the quota for training teachers was higher than the ministrys targets. Nearly 100 schools were allowed to train teachers at various levels. The country has more than 12,000 unnecessary teachers at secondary schools and 4,200 at high schools, according to the ministry. However, kindergartens are facing a shortage of more than 34,000 teachers, and primary schools, 5,300. Reducing the scale of training is expected to improve education quality and increase job opportunities for teaching graduates, according to the ministry. The ministry has also taken steps to improve quality assessment at schools that train teachers. It plans to publicise the assessment results in an effort to motivate schools to improve education quality. VNS HA NOI The Ministry of Finance has proposed a tax on houses depending on their construction value as part of a draft law on property tax. Under the proposed law, there are two options: imposing tax on houses with construction value of either more than VN700 million (US$30,400) or VN1 billion ($43,500). The proposed tax rate is 0.3 or 0.4 per cent annually, with only the surplus construction value above the proposed threshold to be taxed. For example, if the threshold is set at VN700 million, the owner of a VN1.7 billion ($74,000) house would have to pay tax on VN1 billion, equivalent to VN3-4 million ($132-176) per year. The construction value of a house is determined by factors including its type, scale and how many years it has been in use since construction. If the tax on houses worth more than VN700 million is applied, the finance ministry will be able to collect property tax of about VN23.3 trillion ($1.01 billion) to VN31 trillion ($1.4 billion) per year. If the second option is approved, the tax collection is estimated to vary from VN22.7 trillion ($987 million) to VN 30.3 trillion ($1.3 billion). The ministry currently favours taxing houses worth more than VN700 million at a rate of 0.4 per cent. According to Pham inh Thi, director of Ministry of Finances Tax Policy Department, data from other countries show that the lowest property tax rate stands at 0.2 per cent. However, countries mostly apply high rates like Indonesias 0.5 per cent and the 1-2 per cent in the Philippines. He said taxing houses and trade-service construction work will impact enterprises production and business. The draft is scheduled to be submitted to National Assembly for feedback in 2020. The ministry is also seeking to increase land tax. Under the same draft law, land taxes in some categories might rise by multiple times compared with those currently stated in the Law on Non-Agricultural Land Use Taxes. For example, housing land might get a 0.3 to 0.4 per cent tax rate, ten times higher than current minimum rate of 0.03 per cent. The draft law on property tax also proposes tax on personal vehicles such as planes, yachts and cars worth more than VN1.5 billion ($65,000). Controversies heated Truong Thanh uc, chairman of the BASICO Law Firm, said a property tax law was necessary, however, peoples incomes must be taken into consideration when studying the law enforcement, he said. ang Hung Vo, former deputy minister of environment and natural resources, agrees with the land tax hike by ten times, saying that housing land tax of 0.4 per cent, 0.5 per cent-tax on business, trade and service land are reasonable. In the future, it could be increased to 0.7 to 1 per cent. If land tax is high, land prices will fall, while if the tax is low, speculative hoarding might happen. If the tax is high, anyone who wants to buy land must consider whether they can afford the tax or not, he said. However, he opposed the housing property tax proposal, adding that developed countries impose housing tax depending on house area (not on value). Nguyen Anh Tu, a State officer living in Ha Noi, told Vietnam News Agency that a house in Ha Noi and HCM City can not be bought for less than VN700 million. I had to borrow 70 per cent of the house value from the bank to afford the payment, not to mention additional fees. Now if I have to pay an annual property tax, I dont know when I could pay off the debt, he said. Finance and banking specialist Nguyen Tri Hieu told the agency that imposing tax on land and houses is crucial to create equality in owning properties. However, the property tax law should require land tax only. People already pay personal income tax. There will be overlapping taxes if we require people to pay tax on the money they use to buy a house, he said. Le Hoang Chau, president of HCM City Real Estate Association, said if the law takes effect, the real estate market will be impacted, slowing business and investment activities. Disagreeing with the proposal, HCM City Real Estate Association proposed no tax on houses worth less than VN1 billion to support low-income and low middle-income people. Chau also proposed a 0.4 per cent-tax on housing land, apartment building land and houses worth more than VN1 billion. VNS HA NOI Young workers face higher rates of diseases and accidents than older workers, but fatalities among young workers are less common, according to experts at the forum For a generation of safe and healthy workers: Improving work safety conditions for young workers held in Ha Noi on April 16. The forum was organised by the Occupational Safety and Health Administration under the Ministry of Labour, Invalids and Social Affairs (MOLISA) and the International Labour Organisation (ILO). The forum was held in response to the World Day for Safety and Health at Work, which will fall on April 28. During the forum, experts exchange information and experiences related to safe work conditions for young workers, who are between 15 and 24 years old. Ha Tat Thang, director of the Occupational Safety and Health Administration, said that as a country with a great number of young workers, Viet Nam had issued different policies and regulations related to ensuring work safety for young workers over the past few years. The policies and regulations state that enterprises and employers must provide training about work safety for young workers and safe work condition norms in the agricultural, forestry and fishery sectors. However, the country still faces challenges in preventing and limiting work accidents in general, and work accidents for young workers in particular, including challenges in improving awareness and skills on work safety, he said. Thang expressed his hope that during the forum, experts would find solutions to resolve the challenges and not only improve working conditions and health for young workers, but also promote sustainable work options for them. Efforts from the community will be connected to prevent risks and different forms of child labour, said Thang. Valentine Offenloch of the ILO said that more than 2.3 million people in the world died annually as a result of work accidents and diseases. Ever year, an additional 313 million people suffer non-fatal work accidents that nonetheless leave serious consequences. Valentine suggested including content about safe working conditions in curricula in high schools and vocational schools to set up a generation of safer and healthier workers. Young workers should be encouraged to discuss and raise their opinions about work safety, she said. Youth and their organisations should be allowed to join the construction and implementation of work accidents and disease-preventing programmes. HA NOI Deputy Prime Minister Vu uc am has called for tough punishment for faking medicines and medicinal supplements which poses risks to human health. The order came after the Health Department in northern Hai Phong City seized Vinaca Companys drugs, made from bamboo charcoal powder, claiming to treat cancer and help rejuvenate the body from exhaustion. am ordered the Health Ministry and Ministry of Public Security to work closely with the police and health departments of related localities to impose fines on Vinaca. Criminals involved in fake drugs cases have a lot of tricks under their sleeves, am said, adding that all activities related to producing and selling of fake products, fake medicines and functional foods must be punished, especially violations related to the treatment of incurable diseases. Patients suffering from incurable diseases must be treated with quality products, he said. For a long-term solution, am asked the health ministry to continue tracking the origin of drugs and managing more than 4,000 pharmacies nationwide. This project was piloted for one year and it is time to expand it to help people distinguish between fake and authentic drugs and supplementary foods, he said. Early this year, Hai Phong City police discovered thousands of Vinaca Companys products being manufactured at a facility of ao Thi Chuc in Kien An District. The seized products including 154 boxes of CO3.2 anti-cancer drugs. Chuc was unable to provide the legal documents for the medicines and confessed that the drugs were made from bamboo charcoal powder. The manufacturer only needed to pour the powder into capsules to make the drug. Vu Tuan Cuong, head of the health ministrys Drugs Administration, confirmed that CO3.2 anti-cancer drug was fake and requested people not to use it. Pham Van Cac, deputy head of Police General Department under the Ministry of Public Security, said the manufacturing facility of Vinaca Company was unlicensed. The product may have been consumed in other localities. The police are further investigating the case. VNS PARIS, France New Zealands Prime Minister Jacinda Ardern on Monday pushed for a "progressive" free-trade agreement with the European Union in the coming months, while saying British ideas about turning the Commonwealth into a trading platform were a "longer run aspiration". "I believe an EU-New Zealand FTA presents an opportunity to conclude an agreement that is a model for progressive and inclusive trade," Ardern said after talks with French President Emmanuel Macron in Paris. New Zealand mainly exports agricultural products to the bloc, which could agree as early as May to open negotiations having decided to fast-track the process last year. Both Ardern and Macron said the talks would take into account environmental and social concerns while being "mutually beneficial". "Some of the concerns being raised domestically in New Zealand will be similar to the ones raised in France," Ardern said in reference to potential resistance from French and European farmers. "Our goal is a model that will demonstrate to the public that we want to deliver free-trade agreements that can benefit and be prosperous for both our citizens." Ardern said she would pursue an EU deal along with separate trade talks with Britain, which is leaving the European Union next March and is seeking to negotiate its own agreements. "Its really a matter of sequencing," Ardern said in an interview at the end of the French leg of her Europe tour which will see her travel to Berlin and London. "For us, we would see both as being incredibly important." Britain accounts for about one third of the 15 billion dollars of annual trade between the EU and New Zealand, Ardern said. The British government is hoping a summit of leaders from the 53 members of the Commonwealth on Thursday and Friday, which Ardern will attend, will boost business with its historic partners. The Commonwealth has been touted by some leading proponents of Brexit as an alternative trading network for Britain as it strikes out on its own outside the EU. "There is a platform in the future to be built on around trade. ... but thats a longer run aspiration," she said. Ardern said that the Commonwealth summit could be "a response to the current international environment." "We should be seeking opportunities for multilateral agreements that operate under a rules-based framework that push back on ideas of protectionism because it does not serve small states," she said. Macron also backed a free-trade deal with New Zealand on Monday, but insisted it would take into account new conditions set by him for all future agreements. "Future trade accords... must be coherent with our political engagements and will be coherent with the social model we defend in Europe, our goal of acceptable social standards and responsibilities, and environmental commitments," he said. "What our farmers wont understand is that we negotiate with nations who dont have the same health or environmental standards," he said. "I believe that what we are setting out with New Zealand is the right response to this, and I think this accord can be reached," he said. AFP TRIPOLI The number of migrants detained in Libya has dropped by four-fifths since May 2017, a senior government official said on Monday. General Mohammad Bishr, head of a government department set up to tackle clandestine migration, said the number of migrants held by authorities had fallen from 27,000 in May to 5,200. He said that had allowed the closure of 20 of the countrys 53 migrant detention centres since May 2017. He attributed the change to the accelerating repatriation of migrants, particular by the International Organization for Migration (IOM). Several African countries have also repatriated hundreds of their nationals, particularly since a CNN report showing what appeared to be a slave market in Libya. Bishr said many of the migrants still in the country, particularly from Ethiopia, Somalia or Eritrea, are recognised by the United Nations as refugees and are waiting to be sent to third countries. Some 48,000 refugees are registered in Libya, according to the UNs refugee agency UNHCR, which hopes to transfer between 5,000 and 10,000 refugees to third countries in 2018. In the chaos that followed the fall and killing of former dictator Moamer Kadhafi in a 2011 uprising, Libya has become a key transit point for sub-Saharan African migrants seeking to embark on dangerous journeys to Europe. A UN panel of experts found in February that human trafficking is on the rise in the North African country and that Libyan forces may be helping rebel groups tighten their control of smuggling routes. Many migrants face harsh treatment and exploitation in Libya. Bishr acknowledged that conditions in centres run by the countrys unity government were not ideal. "But we try to provide a minimum of services to the most vulnerable, especially women and children," he said. AFP RAF Centennial Celebration by A. Kevin Grantham The United Kingdoms Royal Air Force (RAF) kicked off its centennial celebration in the Washington, DC area on Sunday, April 15, 2018. The National Air and Space Museum (NASM), Steven F. Udvar-Hazy Center, located in Chantilly, Virginia, hosted the event which featured hundreds of smartly dressed Royal Air Force personnel, historical artifacts and informative lectures, and, of course, some very nice British aeroplanes. The Steven F. Udvar-Hazy Center is uniquely situated on the grounds of Dulles International Airport, making it an ideal location to host live aviation events. Planning for the celebration began several weeks back as an impressive lineup of attending aircraft began to take shape with the Canadian Warplane Heritage Museums Avro Lancaster and at least seven Spitfires booked to attend. Unfortunately, mechanical issues and a strong cold front pushing east kept many of the warbird owners from bringing their airplanes to the celebration. The Collings Foundations Spitfire was the last to cancel, but Rob Collings and his family flew down from Massachusetts to support the event anyway. The first aircraft to arrive was a Boeing P-8 Poseidon, operated by a British Royal Air Force crew. The Lancaster was next, along with a PT-17 Stearman biplane, piloted by Heather Penny, and Tim Trimbles P-26. John Sessions B-25, named Grumpy after the Snow White character, managed to navigate through the cold front and arrived at Dulles Airport late Saturday evening. It took Richard Wilsher two days and nights to fly his de Havilland Chipmunk across the country as well, but by Sunday morning, all of the aircraft were on display. The museum opened at eight oclock. NASM volunteers, along with men and women from the RAF, greeted the visitors with small British flags, informational flyers, and all sorts of event swag. Noted historians and official participants held lectures around the museum highlighting 100 years of RAF history. The lines to tour the display aircraft on the ramp outside the museum stretched a good distance. Crew members from each aircraft were on hand to answer spectator questions and to hand out information cards. One group of reenactors also brought an RAF Jeep and Hillman Staff Car to help enhance the historic nature of the event. Children and adults alike were fascinated by the Hillmans right hand steering column. Inside the museum, the Royal Air Force Band entertained the public with choreographed marches and British aviation movie scores from films like The Magnificent Men and Their Flying Machines, 633 Squadron and The Battle of Britain. Also, the Queens Colour Squadron demonstrated precision marching drills at various times during the day. Veteran World War II pilot Flight Lieutenant (Flt.Lt.) Richard E. Boyd (retired) DFC closed the event. Flt.Lt. Boyd flew the Lancaster bomber during the war and related some of his interesting experiences during that time. He flew 33 missions (11 in the day and 22 at night) in the course of his wartime career. He described the reliability of the Avro bomber and its 22,000 pound bomb capacity. The duration of most of his missions was 4 to 6 hours, with the exception of the flight to bomb Dresden, Germany. On that mission, said Boyd, we could only carry about a 4,000 pound bomb load. We needed the extra weight for fuel as the mission was 8 to 9 hours long. Flt.Lt. Boyd flew 33 missions without a casualty. Well, I did have one, recalled Boyd. On one mission, my radio operator needed to go to the toilet. I had a rule about knowing where my crew members were at all times. So, my radio operator was required to plug his headset when he got to the toilet. He reported in, and all seemed OK until we heard screaming over the interphone. The toilet in the Lancaster has a metal seat, and at 12,500 feet it is frozen. When the radio operator sat down, he became stuck. The resolution washe had to sit until the seat warmed enough to release his skin leaving behind a telltale mark of the incident! The RAF Centennial Celebration was a resounding success, despite the small number of flyable airplanes on display. It was evident throughout the event that both the RAF and NASM staff members followed the World War II slogan Keep Calm and Carry On. The author would like to express his sincere thanks to Pat Robinson, David Schwartz, and the entire NASM staff for making this article possible. A gallery showing the aircraft during their arrival at the Great British Fly-in on the much sunnier Saturday afternoon A gallery showing images from the Great British Fly-in WarbirdsNews wishes to express our thanks to Kevin Grantham for his excellent report and images, and also to NASMs Pat Robinson and Dave Schwartz who facilitated our great access to the event. Paducah Man Arrested on Multiple Felony Charges Advertisement By West Kentucky Star Staff Apr. 16, 2018 | MELBER, KY By West Kentucky Star Staff Apr. 16, 2018 | 10:39 PM | MELBER, KY A Paducah man was arrested on multiple felony charges following an overnight incident. On Monday, the McCracken County Sheriffs Department responded to a home in the Melber community. The resident stated that on Sunday evening, 22-year-old Johnathan S. Poole was a guest in the home. During the visit, Poole allegedly ingested methamphetamine, took a knife and held the resident against their will for an extended period of time. Poole reportedly made unwanted sexual contact with the resident, and destroyed the resident's cellular telephone. Later on Monday morning, Poole allegedly took cash from the wallet of the victim and fled. Later on Monday, McCracken County Sheriffs detectives received information that Poole could be in Graves County. With the assistance of the Graves County Sheriffs Office, Poole was taken into custody without incident. He was taken to the McCracken County Sheriffs Department where he confessed to the incident. Poole was out on bond at the time of the incident and had an active warrant for felony theft from McCracken County. Poole has been previously charged with attempted murder in McCracken County. He was arrested on charges of 1st degree robbery, 1st degree burglary, 1st degree unlawful imprisonment, 3rd degree sexual abuse, and 1st degree possession of a controlled substance-1st offense methamphetamine. Poole was lodged in the McCracken County Regional Jail. past daily news Sep 13 (1) Sep 09 (15) Sep 06 (12) Sep 04 (10) Sep 03 (10) Aug 31 (17) Aug 29 (14) Aug 26 (13) Aug 22 (11) Aug 21 (12) Aug 19 (21) Aug 14 (6) Aug 13 (10) Aug 10 (10) Aug 08 (9) Aug 07 (10) Aug 06 (10) Aug 05 (8) Aug 03 (8) Aug 02 (7) Aug 01 (7) Jul 31 (14) Jul 29 (1) Jul 27 (7) Jul 25 (5) Jul 24 (10) Jul 22 (11) Jul 19 (16) Jul 17 (6) Jul 16 (10) Jul 15 (13) Jul 12 (7) Jul 11 (5) Jul 10 (8) Jul 08 (8) Jul 07 (3) Jul 06 (5) Jul 05 (8) Jul 04 (11) Jul 03 (8) Jul 02 (7) Jul 01 (5) Jun 30 (8) Jun 28 (7) Jun 27 (8) Jun 26 (7) Jun 25 (8) Jun 24 (6) Jun 23 (6) Jun 22 (9) Jun 20 (5) Jun 19 (9) Jun 18 (8) Jun 15 (9) Jun 13 (13) Jun 11 (11) Jun 09 (19) Jun 06 (10) Jun 04 (10) Jun 03 (8) Jun 01 (6) May 31 (5) May 30 (5) May 29 (6) May 28 (7) May 27 (7) May 26 (6) May 25 (4) May 23 (6) May 22 (6) May 21 (4) May 20 (7) May 19 (9) May 18 (4) May 17 (6) May 16 (5) May 15 (7) May 14 (3) May 13 (3) May 12 (9) May 10 (3) May 09 (7) May 08 (4) May 07 (3) May 06 (5) May 05 (8) May 03 (9) May 02 (1) May 01 (5) Apr 30 (8) Apr 29 (5) Apr 28 (4) Apr 27 (7) Apr 26 (12) Apr 25 (4) Apr 24 (8) Apr 23 (7) Apr 22 (5) Apr 21 (3) Apr 20 (1) Apr 19 (5) Apr 18 (3) Apr 17 (6) Apr 16 (6) Apr 15 (5) Apr 14 (2) Apr 13 (4) Apr 12 (2) Apr 11 (4) Apr 10 (3) Apr 09 (3) Apr 08 (3) Apr 07 (5) Apr 06 (3) Apr 05 (10) Apr 04 (2) Apr 03 (3) Apr 02 (9) Apr 01 (7) Mar 31 (10) Mar 30 (6) Mar 29 (7) Mar 28 (5) Mar 27 (3) Mar 26 (10) Mar 25 (4) Mar 24 (5) Mar 23 (10) Mar 22 (6) Mar 21 (5) Mar 20 (11) Mar 19 (8) Mar 18 (5) Mar 17 (4) Mar 16 (11) Mar 15 (10) Mar 14 (7) Mar 13 (7) Mar 12 (5) Mar 11 (3) Mar 10 (3) Mar 09 (5) Mar 08 (6) Mar 07 (8) Mar 06 (6) Mar 05 (12) Mar 04 (6) Mar 03 (8) Mar 02 (6) Mar 01 (8) Feb 28 (7) Feb 27 (5) Feb 26 (6) Feb 25 (7) Feb 24 (3) Feb 23 (6) Feb 22 (4) Feb 21 (3) Feb 20 (1) Feb 19 (6) Feb 18 (4) Feb 17 (4) Feb 16 (2) Feb 15 (5) Feb 14 (3) Feb 13 (6) Feb 12 (6) Feb 11 (4) Feb 10 (6) Feb 09 (6) Feb 08 (4) Feb 07 (6) Feb 06 (4) Feb 05 (2) Feb 04 (3) Feb 03 (5) Feb 02 (1) Feb 01 (4) Jan 31 (8) Jan 30 (2) Jan 29 (4) Jan 28 (1) Jan 27 (4) Jan 26 (7) Jan 25 (4) Jan 23 (4) Jan 22 (8) Jan 21 (2) Jan 20 (2) Jan 19 (3) Jan 18 (4) Jan 17 (2) Jan 16 (7) Jan 15 (6) Jan 14 (4) Jan 13 (6) Jan 12 (5) Jan 11 (4) Jan 10 (5) Jan 09 (4) Jan 08 (5) Jan 07 (4) Jan 05 (5) Jan 04 (4) Jan 03 (3) Jan 02 (2) Jan 01 (1) Dec 31 (5) Dec 29 (4) Dec 28 (5) Dec 26 (3) Dec 25 (2) Dec 24 (3) Dec 23 (2) Dec 22 (4) Dec 21 (4) Dec 20 (3) Dec 19 (3) Dec 18 (2) Dec 17 (1) Dec 16 (4) Dec 15 (2) Dec 14 (3) Dec 13 (7) Dec 12 (5) Dec 11 (4) Dec 10 (3) Dec 09 (2) Dec 08 (2) Dec 07 (4) Dec 06 (4) Dec 05 (1) Dec 04 (5) Dec 03 (3) Dec 02 (5) Dec 01 (6) Nov 30 (5) Nov 29 (10) Nov 28 (6) Nov 27 (2) Nov 26 (3) Nov 24 (2) Nov 23 (5) Nov 22 (4) Nov 21 (3) Nov 20 (6) Nov 19 (2) Nov 18 (5) Nov 17 (5) Nov 16 (3) Nov 15 (2) Nov 14 (3) Nov 13 (3) Nov 12 (2) Nov 11 (4) Nov 10 (5) Nov 09 (4) Nov 08 (5) Nov 07 (5) Nov 06 (5) Nov 05 (4) Nov 04 (5) Nov 02 (4) Nov 01 (4) Oct 31 (9) Oct 30 (9) Oct 29 (3) Oct 28 (2) Oct 27 (6) Oct 26 (6) Oct 25 (6) Oct 24 (3) Oct 23 (6) Oct 22 (4) Oct 20 (3) Oct 19 (6) Oct 18 (5) Oct 17 (5) Oct 16 (4) Oct 15 (5) Oct 14 (2) Oct 13 (4) Oct 12 (7) Oct 11 (5) Oct 10 (4) Oct 09 (5) Oct 08 (10) Oct 07 (1) Oct 06 (10) Oct 05 (6) Oct 04 (8) Oct 03 (3) Oct 02 (4) Oct 01 (6) Sep 30 (5) Sep 29 (1) Sep 28 (6) Sep 27 (6) Sep 26 (5) Sep 25 (3) Sep 24 (6) Sep 23 (5) Sep 22 (7) Sep 21 (6) Sep 20 (6) Sep 19 (5) Sep 18 (3) Sep 17 (5) Sep 16 (5) Sep 15 (5) Sep 14 (6) Sep 13 (4) Sep 12 (5) Sep 11 (7) Sep 10 (6) Sep 09 (5) Sep 08 (3) Sep 07 (4) Sep 06 (8) Sep 05 (6) Sep 04 (7) Sep 03 (3) Sep 02 (4) Sep 01 (5) Aug 31 (8) Aug 30 (6) Aug 29 (6) Aug 28 (6) Aug 27 (1) Aug 26 (4) Aug 25 (3) Aug 24 (7) Aug 23 (4) Aug 22 (4) Aug 21 (4) Aug 20 (7) Aug 18 (5) Aug 17 (8) Aug 16 (8) Aug 15 (4) Aug 14 (6) Aug 13 (5) Aug 12 (4) Aug 11 (2) Aug 10 (5) Aug 09 (4) Aug 08 (8) Aug 07 (4) Aug 06 (3) Aug 05 (4) Aug 04 (4) Aug 03 (10) Aug 02 (9) Aug 01 (8) Jul 31 (1) Jul 30 (3) Jul 29 (2) Jul 28 (11) Jul 27 (10) Jul 26 (10) Jul 25 (7) Jul 24 (5) Jul 23 (3) Jul 22 (2) Jul 21 (7) Jul 20 (10) Jul 19 (8) Jul 18 (7) Jul 17 (1) Jul 16 (10) Jul 14 (7) Jul 13 (6) Jul 12 (11) Jul 11 (7) Jul 10 (5) Jul 09 (6) Jul 08 (5) Jul 07 (8) Jul 06 (4) Jul 05 (6) Jul 04 (6) Jul 03 (7) Jul 02 (6) Jul 01 (2) Jun 30 (7) Jun 29 (7) Jun 28 (5) Jun 27 (8) Jun 26 (5) Jun 25 (6) Jun 23 (4) Jun 22 (4) Jun 21 (5) Jun 20 (8) Jun 18 (2) Jun 17 (3) Jun 16 (4) Jun 15 (3) Jun 14 (7) Jun 13 (4) Jun 12 (7) Jun 11 (3) Jun 10 (2) Jun 09 (8) Jun 08 (8) Jun 07 (8) Jun 06 (10) Jun 05 (14) Jun 04 (6) Jun 03 (6) Jun 02 (8) Jun 01 (6) May 31 (7) May 30 (2) May 29 (7) May 28 (7) May 27 (2) May 26 (4) May 25 (5) May 24 (4) May 23 (5) May 22 (5) May 21 (5) May 20 (3) May 19 (10) May 18 (6) May 17 (3) May 16 (6) May 15 (2) May 14 (3) May 13 (5) May 11 (1) May 10 (5) May 09 (3) May 08 (4) May 07 (2) May 06 (4) May 05 (6) May 04 (5) May 03 (5) May 02 (1) May 01 (6) Apr 30 (6) Apr 29 (7) Apr 28 (8) Apr 27 (9) Apr 26 (14) Apr 25 (6) Apr 24 (6) Apr 23 (7) Apr 22 (1) Apr 21 (8) Apr 20 (3) Apr 19 (6) Apr 18 (4) Apr 17 (7) Apr 16 (1) Apr 15 (8) Apr 14 (1) Apr 13 (7) Apr 12 (10) Apr 11 (7) Apr 10 (2) Apr 09 (2) Apr 08 (4) Apr 07 (3) Apr 06 (6) Apr 05 (6) Apr 04 (9) Apr 03 (4) Apr 02 (5) Apr 01 (2) Mar 31 (5) Mar 30 (4) Mar 29 (8) Mar 28 (5) Mar 27 (9) Mar 26 (4) Mar 25 (5) Mar 24 (11) Mar 23 (10) Mar 22 (9) Mar 21 (10) Mar 20 (11) Mar 19 (5) Mar 18 (7) Mar 17 (3) Mar 16 (7) Mar 15 (6) Mar 14 (6) Mar 13 (9) Mar 12 (6) Mar 11 (3) Mar 10 (3) Mar 09 (5) Mar 08 (6) Mar 07 (13) Mar 06 (6) Mar 05 (3) Mar 04 (7) Mar 03 (4) Mar 02 (5) Mar 01 (6) Feb 28 (6) Feb 27 (4) Feb 26 (5) Feb 25 (6) Feb 24 (6) Feb 23 (9) Feb 22 (6) Feb 21 (7) Feb 20 (8) Feb 19 (6) Feb 18 (3) Feb 17 (4) Feb 16 (6) Feb 15 (5) Feb 14 (7) Feb 13 (5) Feb 12 (3) Feb 11 (4) Feb 10 (5) Feb 09 (9) Feb 08 (8) Feb 07 (7) Feb 06 (10) Feb 05 (7) Feb 04 (2) Feb 03 (8) Feb 02 (7) Feb 01 (5) Jan 31 (4) Jan 30 (4) Jan 29 (7) Jan 28 (3) Jan 27 (7) Jan 26 (8) Jan 25 (6) Jan 24 (6) Jan 23 (5) Jan 22 (4) Jan 21 (6) Jan 20 (8) Jan 19 (6) Jan 18 (8) Jan 17 (12) Jan 16 (5) Jan 15 (4) Jan 14 (8) Jan 12 (6) Jan 11 (6) Jan 10 (7) Jan 09 (4) Jan 08 (6) Jan 07 (4) Jan 06 (6) Jan 05 (9) Jan 04 (9) Jan 03 (4) Jan 02 (6) Jan 01 (8) Dec 31 (2) Dec 30 (1) Dec 29 (5) Dec 28 (4) Dec 27 (8) Dec 26 (4) Dec 24 (5) Dec 23 (7) Dec 22 (12) Dec 21 (4) Dec 20 (7) Dec 19 (3) Dec 18 (5) Dec 17 (3) Dec 16 (1) Dec 15 (7) Dec 14 (10) Dec 13 (7) Dec 12 (12) Dec 10 (3) Dec 09 (6) Dec 08 (7) Dec 07 (12) Dec 06 (6) Dec 05 (13) Dec 04 (6) Dec 02 (8) Dec 01 (8) Nov 30 (6) Nov 29 (7) Nov 28 (7) Nov 27 (4) Nov 26 (8) Nov 24 (2) Nov 23 (5) Nov 22 (11) Nov 21 (7) Nov 20 (3) Nov 19 (10) Nov 18 (7) Nov 17 (6) Nov 16 (11) Nov 15 (10) Nov 14 (7) Nov 13 (3) Nov 12 (5) Nov 11 (12) Nov 10 (4) Nov 09 (14) Nov 08 (10) Nov 07 (11) Nov 06 (8) Nov 05 (5) Nov 04 (11) Nov 03 (9) Nov 02 (10) Nov 01 (8) Oct 31 (12) Oct 30 (5) Oct 29 (5) Oct 28 (5) Oct 27 (11) Oct 26 (13) Oct 25 (9) Oct 24 (10) Oct 23 (8) Oct 22 (5) Oct 21 (11) Oct 20 (8) Oct 19 (6) Oct 18 (5) Oct 17 (5) Oct 16 (6) Oct 15 (4) Oct 14 (9) Oct 13 (10) Oct 12 (11) Oct 11 (9) Oct 10 (10) Oct 09 (7) Oct 08 (5) Oct 07 (10) Oct 06 (9) Oct 05 (14) Oct 04 (9) Oct 03 (12) Oct 02 (4) Oct 01 (9) Sep 30 (5) Sep 29 (7) Sep 28 (13) Sep 27 (10) Sep 26 (11) Sep 25 (3) Sep 24 (9) Sep 23 (7) Sep 22 (10) Sep 21 (12) Sep 20 (12) Sep 19 (4) Sep 18 (5) Sep 17 (7) Sep 16 (11) Sep 15 (8) Sep 14 (5) Sep 13 (8) Sep 12 (8) Sep 11 (6) Sep 10 (10) Sep 09 (5) Sep 08 (9) Sep 07 (8) Sep 06 (11) Sep 05 (2) Sep 04 (8) Sep 03 (2) Sep 02 (6) Sep 01 (9) Aug 31 (9) Aug 30 (7) Aug 29 (9) Aug 28 (4) Aug 27 (8) Aug 26 (6) Aug 25 (5) Aug 24 (8) Aug 23 (4) Aug 22 (5) Aug 21 (2) Aug 20 (4) Aug 19 (6) Aug 18 (4) Aug 17 (4) Aug 16 (6) Aug 15 (3) Aug 14 (4) Aug 13 (7) Aug 12 (6) Aug 11 (3) Aug 10 (5) Aug 09 (8) Aug 08 (9) Aug 07 (7) Aug 06 (7) Aug 05 (7) Aug 04 (7) Aug 03 (11) Aug 02 (6) Aug 01 (9) Jul 31 (11) Jul 28 (7) Jul 27 (11) Jul 26 (5) Jul 25 (5) Jul 24 (1) Jul 22 (3) Jul 21 (2) Jul 20 (9) Jul 19 (8) Jul 18 (6) Jul 17 (7) Jul 15 (4) Jul 14 (2) Jul 13 (6) Jul 12 (10) Jul 11 (11) Jul 10 (2) Jul 09 (3) Jul 08 (5) Jul 07 (5) Jul 06 (6) Jul 05 (3) Jul 04 (6) Jul 03 (5) Jul 02 (3) Jun 30 (8) Jun 29 (5) Jun 28 (6) Jun 27 (4) Jun 26 (4) Jun 25 (1) Jun 24 (5) Jun 23 (11) Jun 21 (5) Jun 20 (5) Jun 19 (7) Jun 17 (4) Jun 16 (7) Jun 15 (4) Jun 14 (6) Jun 13 (4) Jun 12 (4) Jun 11 (6) Jun 10 (6) Jun 09 (8) Jun 08 (6) Jun 07 (8) Jun 06 (7) Jun 05 (5) Jun 04 (7) Jun 03 (1) Jun 02 (9) Jun 01 (5) May 31 (8) May 30 (7) May 29 (5) May 28 (5) May 27 (4) May 26 (4) May 25 (4) May 24 (3) May 23 (5) May 22 (2) May 21 (3) May 20 (7) May 19 (11) May 18 (1) May 17 (7) May 16 (3) May 15 (4) May 14 (3) May 13 (4) May 12 (4) May 11 (11) May 10 (2) May 09 (6) May 08 (6) May 07 (2) May 06 (3) May 05 (4) May 04 (5) May 03 (8) May 02 (4) May 01 (4) Apr 30 (6) Apr 29 (13) Apr 28 (5) Apr 27 (7) Apr 26 (5) Apr 25 (5) Apr 24 (2) Apr 23 (7) Apr 22 (9) Apr 21 (11) Apr 20 (2) Apr 19 (2) Apr 18 (5) Apr 17 (5) Apr 16 (6) Apr 14 (5) Apr 13 (2) Apr 12 (9) Apr 11 (10) Apr 10 (6) Apr 09 (5) Apr 08 (3) Apr 07 (10) Apr 06 (7) Apr 05 (7) Apr 04 (7) Apr 03 (9) Mar 31 (12) Mar 30 (9) Mar 29 (7) Mar 28 (4) Mar 27 (3) Mar 26 (6) Mar 25 (3) Mar 24 (8) Mar 23 (7) Mar 22 (4) Mar 21 (10) Mar 20 (6) Mar 19 (6) Mar 17 (7) Mar 16 (11) Mar 15 (6) Mar 14 (9) Mar 13 (4) Mar 12 (6) Mar 10 (3) Mar 09 (9) Mar 08 (10) Mar 07 (4) Mar 06 (5) Mar 05 (3) Mar 04 (2) Mar 03 (4) Mar 02 (5) Mar 01 (5) Feb 28 (3) Feb 27 (8) Feb 26 (9) Feb 24 (11) Feb 23 (8) Feb 22 (9) Feb 21 (8) Feb 20 (7) Feb 19 (4) Feb 18 (9) Feb 17 (6) Feb 16 (5) Feb 15 (7) Feb 14 (11) Feb 13 (2) Feb 12 (5) Feb 11 (5) Feb 10 (3) Feb 09 (10) Feb 08 (9) Feb 07 (9) Feb 06 (2) Feb 05 (9) Feb 03 (7) Feb 02 (5) Feb 01 (7) Jan 31 (4) Jan 30 (5) Jan 29 (6) Jan 28 (5) Jan 27 (2) Jan 26 (7) Jan 25 (7) Jan 24 (8) Jan 23 (4) Jan 22 (14) Jan 20 (8) Jan 19 (10) Jan 18 (11) Jan 17 (9) Jan 16 (5) Jan 15 (3) Jan 14 (9) Jan 13 (6) Jan 12 (7) Jan 11 (7) Jan 10 (2) Jan 09 (7) Jan 08 (6) Jan 07 (10) Jan 06 (8) Jan 05 (7) Jan 04 (9) Jan 03 (8) Jan 02 (5) Jan 01 (14) Dec 30 (13) Dec 29 (13) Dec 28 (9) Dec 27 (5) Dec 26 (4) Dec 25 (7) Dec 24 (4) Dec 23 (5) Dec 22 (4) Dec 21 (8) Dec 20 (3) Dec 19 (8) Dec 18 (9) Dec 16 (8) Dec 15 (5) Dec 14 (5) Dec 13 (8) Dec 12 (4) Dec 11 (17) Dec 09 (8) Dec 08 (5) Dec 07 (10) Dec 06 (12) Dec 05 (6) Dec 04 (8) Dec 02 (6) Dec 01 (7) Nov 30 (9) Nov 29 (6) Nov 28 (11) Nov 27 (6) Nov 26 (15) Nov 24 (7) Nov 23 (15) Nov 22 (9) Nov 21 (6) Nov 20 (11) Nov 18 (11) Nov 17 (13) Nov 16 (8) Nov 15 (13) Nov 14 (7) Nov 13 (7) Nov 12 (3) Nov 11 (13) Nov 10 (13) Nov 09 (6) Nov 08 (9) Nov 07 (6) Nov 06 (4) Nov 05 (12) Nov 04 (8) Nov 03 (9) Nov 02 (8) Nov 01 (6) Oct 31 (10) Oct 30 (8) Oct 29 (3) Oct 28 (8) Oct 27 (15) Oct 26 (10) Oct 25 (10) Oct 24 (13) Oct 23 (9) Oct 21 (8) Oct 20 (13) Oct 19 (6) Oct 18 (11) Oct 17 (8) Oct 16 (14) Oct 14 (9) Oct 13 (11) Oct 12 (9) Oct 11 (13) Oct 10 (7) Oct 09 (15) Oct 07 (7) Oct 06 (11) Oct 05 (18) Oct 04 (14) Oct 03 (1) Oct 02 (10) Sep 30 (11) Sep 29 (11) Sep 28 (11) Sep 27 (15) Sep 26 (7) Sep 24 (9) Sep 23 (11) Sep 22 (7) Sep 21 (17) Sep 20 (20) Sep 19 (4) Sep 18 (11) Sep 16 (10) Sep 15 (12) Sep 14 (9) Sep 13 (12) Sep 12 (14) Sep 11 (4) Sep 10 (8) Sep 09 (9) Sep 08 (5) Sep 07 (13) Sep 06 (15) Sep 05 (8) Sep 04 (11) Sep 03 (10) Sep 02 (12) Sep 01 (12) Aug 31 (14) Aug 30 (14) Aug 29 (8) Aug 28 (8) Aug 27 (9) Aug 26 (12) Aug 25 (6) Aug 24 (8) Aug 23 (12) Aug 22 (6) Aug 21 (5) Aug 20 (6) Aug 19 (9) Aug 18 (4) Aug 17 (7) Aug 16 (11) Aug 15 (2) Aug 14 (12) Aug 12 (15) Aug 11 (11) Aug 10 (6) Aug 09 (7) Aug 08 (3) Aug 07 (4) Aug 06 (5) Aug 05 (7) Aug 04 (7) Aug 03 (4) Aug 02 (5) Aug 01 (5) Jul 31 (7) Jul 30 (5) Jul 29 (9) Jul 28 (8) Jul 27 (8) Jul 26 (7) Jul 25 (6) Jul 23 (8) Jul 22 (6) Jul 21 (5) Jul 20 (9) Jul 19 (5) Jul 18 (15) Jul 15 (14) Jul 14 (5) Jul 13 (6) Jul 12 (12) Jul 11 (8) Jul 10 (3) Jul 09 (11) Jul 08 (8) Jul 07 (7) Jul 06 (10) Jul 05 (4) Jul 04 (4) Jul 03 (5) Jul 02 (7) Jul 01 (8) Jun 30 (7) Jun 29 (10) Jun 28 (8) Jun 27 (4) Jun 26 (5) Jun 25 (4) Jun 24 (2) Jun 23 (11) Jun 22 (5) Jun 21 (7) Jun 20 (3) Jun 19 (7) Jun 18 (10) Jun 17 (11) Jun 16 (5) Jun 15 (5) Jun 14 (7) Jun 13 (14) Jun 11 (6) Jun 10 (8) Jun 09 (9) Jun 08 (11) Jun 07 (14) Jun 06 (16) Jun 03 (8) Jun 02 (12) Jun 01 (5) May 31 (7) May 30 (15) May 28 (7) May 27 (5) May 26 (21) May 25 (14) May 24 (10) May 23 (7) May 22 (8) May 21 (11) May 20 (5) May 19 (4) May 18 (10) May 17 (11) May 16 (5) May 15 (6) May 14 (7) May 13 (12) May 12 (10) May 11 (7) May 10 (13) May 09 (4) May 08 (7) May 07 (3) May 06 (6) May 05 (9) May 04 (14) May 03 (7) May 02 (10) May 01 (10) Apr 30 (6) Apr 29 (9) Apr 28 (5) Apr 27 (9) Apr 26 (8) Apr 25 (8) Apr 24 (6) Apr 23 (14) Apr 22 (16) Apr 21 (11) Apr 20 (7) Apr 19 (16) Apr 18 (8) Apr 17 (7) Apr 16 (10) Apr 15 (8) Apr 14 (5) Apr 13 (11) Apr 12 (10) Apr 11 (8) Apr 10 (12) Apr 09 (5) Apr 08 (13) Apr 07 (9) Apr 06 (11) Apr 05 (15) Apr 04 (7) Apr 03 (15) Apr 02 (5) Apr 01 (11) Mar 31 (12) Mar 30 (10) Mar 29 (8) Mar 28 (7) Mar 27 (12) Mar 26 (8) Mar 25 (8) Mar 24 (7) Mar 23 (15) Mar 22 (17) Mar 21 (9) Mar 20 (8) Mar 19 (4) Mar 18 (16) Mar 17 (8) Mar 16 (19) Mar 15 (13) Mar 14 (7) Mar 13 (20) Mar 11 (5) Mar 10 (11) Mar 09 (13) Mar 08 (13) Mar 07 (7) Mar 06 (6) Mar 05 (9) Mar 04 (10) Mar 03 (16) Mar 02 (16) Mar 01 (13) Feb 29 (8) Feb 28 (6) Feb 27 (16) Feb 26 (10) Feb 25 (6) Feb 24 (12) Feb 23 (14) Feb 22 (9) Feb 21 (11) Feb 20 (8) Feb 19 (12) Feb 18 (12) Feb 17 (11) Feb 16 (8) Feb 15 (9) Feb 14 (7) Feb 13 (10) Feb 12 (11) Feb 11 (13) Feb 10 (5) Feb 09 (6) Feb 08 (4) Feb 07 (9) Feb 06 (13) Feb 05 (10) Feb 04 (11) Feb 03 (7) Feb 02 (19) Jan 31 (21) Jan 29 (11) Jan 28 (10) Jan 27 (13) Jan 26 (7) Jan 25 (5) Jan 24 (2) Jan 23 (8) Jan 22 (13) Jan 21 (11) Jan 20 (9) Jan 19 (13) Jan 18 (4) Jan 17 (11) Jan 15 (7) Jan 14 (13) Jan 13 (9) Jan 12 (9) Jan 11 (5) Jan 10 (8) Jan 09 (7) Jan 08 (7) Jan 07 (6) Jan 06 (11) Jan 05 (7) Jan 04 (7) Jan 03 (3) Jan 02 (8) Jan 01 (5) Dec 31 (10) Dec 30 (9) Dec 29 (7) Dec 28 (9) Dec 27 (4) Dec 26 (1) Dec 25 (5) Dec 24 (6) Dec 23 (6) Dec 22 (7) Dec 21 (6) Dec 20 (7) Dec 19 (13) Dec 18 (16) Dec 17 (10) Dec 16 (13) Dec 15 (11) Dec 14 (8) Dec 13 (4) Dec 12 (9) Dec 11 (10) Dec 10 (12) Dec 09 (10) Dec 08 (13) Dec 07 (7) Dec 06 (12) Dec 05 (8) Dec 04 (11) Dec 03 (12) Dec 02 (16) Dec 01 (14) Nov 30 (10) Nov 29 (11) Nov 28 (15) Nov 27 (16) Nov 26 (11) Nov 25 (9) Nov 24 (13) Nov 23 (10) Nov 22 (1) Nov 21 (7) Nov 20 (12) Nov 19 (10) Nov 18 (11) Nov 17 (11) Nov 16 (10) Nov 15 (3) Nov 14 (10) Nov 13 (14) Nov 12 (8) Nov 11 (13) Nov 10 (10) Nov 09 (6) Nov 08 (9) Nov 07 (11) Nov 06 (12) Nov 05 (17) Nov 04 (12) Nov 03 (11) Nov 02 (5) Nov 01 (12) Oct 31 (11) Oct 30 (11) Oct 29 (10) Oct 28 (18) Oct 27 (16) Oct 26 (11) Oct 25 (9) Oct 24 (12) Oct 23 (11) Oct 22 (14) Oct 21 (12) Oct 20 (17) Oct 19 (12) Oct 18 (13) Oct 17 (15) Oct 16 (14) Oct 15 (10) Oct 14 (16) Oct 13 (12) Oct 12 (13) Oct 11 (8) Oct 10 (12) Oct 09 (21) Oct 08 (22) Oct 07 (19) Oct 06 (18) Oct 05 (6) Oct 04 (17) Oct 03 (13) Oct 02 (14) Oct 01 (13) Sep 30 (14) Sep 29 (15) Sep 28 (12) Sep 27 (11) Sep 26 (15) Sep 25 (13) Sep 24 (9) Sep 23 (10) Sep 22 (12) Sep 21 (8) Sep 20 (4) Sep 19 (12) Sep 18 (12) Sep 17 (16) Sep 16 (21) Sep 15 (14) Sep 14 (7) Sep 13 (5) Sep 12 (10) Sep 11 (16) Sep 10 (7) Sep 09 (8) Sep 08 (10) Sep 07 (7) Sep 06 (5) Sep 05 (8) Sep 04 (9) Sep 03 (8) Sep 02 (11) Sep 01 (10) Aug 31 (4) Aug 30 (6) Aug 29 (1) Aug 28 (10) Aug 27 (8) Aug 26 (8) Aug 25 (14) Aug 24 (4) Aug 23 (3) Aug 22 (5) Aug 21 (13) Aug 20 (9) Aug 19 (13) Aug 18 (3) Aug 17 (3) Aug 16 (3) Aug 15 (6) Aug 14 (8) Aug 13 (7) Aug 12 (12) Aug 11 (9) Aug 10 (8) Aug 09 (14) Aug 08 (6) Aug 07 (1) Aug 06 (4) Aug 05 (8) Aug 04 (6) Aug 03 (6) Aug 02 (2) Aug 01 (6) Jul 31 (6) Jul 30 (3) Jul 29 (6) Jul 28 (8) Jul 27 (7) Jul 25 (4) Jul 24 (6) Jul 23 (5) Jul 22 (3) Jul 21 (7) Jul 20 (5) Jul 18 (6) Jul 17 (5) Jul 16 (4) Jul 15 (9) Jul 14 (2) Jul 13 (8) Jul 12 (1) Jul 11 (5) Jul 10 (8) Jul 09 (3) Jul 08 (3) Jul 07 (13) Jul 05 (2) Jul 04 (5) Jul 03 (6) Jul 02 (6) Jul 01 (7) Jun 30 (7) Jun 29 (3) Jun 28 (1) Jun 27 (4) Jun 26 (7) Jun 25 (4) Jun 24 (6) Jun 23 (9) Jun 22 (4) Jun 21 (3) Jun 19 (4) Jun 18 (7) Jun 17 (7) Jun 16 (7) Jun 15 (11) Jun 12 (6) Jun 11 (3) Jun 10 (10) Jun 09 (3) Jun 08 (3) Jun 07 (4) Jun 06 (2) Jun 05 (9) Jun 04 (8) Jun 03 (9) Jun 02 (6) Jun 01 (4) May 30 (7) May 29 (9) May 28 (13) May 26 (8) May 25 (5) May 24 (2) May 23 (8) May 22 (9) May 21 (7) May 20 (4) May 19 (6) May 18 (7) May 17 (8) May 15 (9) May 14 (5) May 13 (8) May 12 (6) May 11 (6) May 09 (7) May 08 (6) May 07 (11) May 06 (7) May 05 (4) May 04 (11) May 03 (5) May 02 (4) May 01 (9) Apr 30 (6) Apr 29 (4) Apr 28 (9) Apr 27 (4) Apr 26 (3) Apr 25 (5) Apr 24 (3) Apr 23 (10) Apr 22 (8) Apr 21 (9) Apr 20 (3) Apr 19 (4) Apr 18 (8) Apr 17 (7) Apr 16 (4) Apr 15 (6) Apr 14 (8) Apr 13 (3) Apr 12 (6) Apr 10 (2) Apr 09 (4) Apr 08 (5) Apr 07 (5) Apr 06 (2) Apr 05 (2) Apr 04 (5) Apr 03 (7) Apr 02 (7) Apr 01 (12) Mar 31 (12) Mar 30 (3) Mar 29 (1) Mar 28 (2) Mar 27 (6) Mar 26 (2) Mar 25 (5) Mar 24 (4) Mar 23 (7) Mar 22 (4) Mar 21 (6) Mar 20 (9) Mar 19 (9) Mar 18 (8) Mar 17 (9) Mar 16 (7) Mar 15 (11) Mar 13 (5) Mar 12 (12) Mar 11 (9) Mar 10 (12) Mar 09 (4) Mar 08 (5) Mar 07 (5) Mar 06 (5) Mar 05 (5) Mar 04 (6) Mar 03 (11) Mar 02 (5) Mar 01 (8) Feb 27 (9) Feb 26 (9) Feb 25 (8) Feb 24 (6) Feb 23 (4) Feb 22 (3) Feb 21 (6) Feb 20 (3) Feb 19 (10) Feb 18 (9) Feb 17 (7) Feb 16 (5) Feb 15 (2) Feb 14 (8) Feb 13 (12) Feb 12 (8) Feb 11 (10) Feb 10 (7) Feb 09 (6) Feb 08 (3) Feb 07 (2) Feb 06 (7) Feb 05 (4) Feb 04 (11) Feb 03 (5) Feb 02 (7) Feb 01 (4) Jan 31 (5) Jan 30 (8) Jan 29 (12) Jan 28 (6) Jan 27 (8) Jan 26 (13) Jan 24 (8) Jan 23 (12) Jan 22 (8) Jan 21 (10) Jan 20 (8) Jan 19 (6) Jan 18 (9) Jan 17 (6) Jan 16 (4) Jan 15 (11) Jan 14 (4) Jan 13 (6) Jan 12 (7) Jan 11 (6) Jan 10 (2) Jan 09 (6) Jan 08 (5) Jan 07 (6) Jan 06 (4) Jan 05 (4) Jan 04 (3) Jan 03 (6) Jan 02 (2) Jan 01 (3) Dec 31 (6) Dec 30 (4) Dec 29 (6) Dec 28 (4) Dec 27 (4) Dec 26 (2) Dec 25 (3) Dec 24 (5) Dec 23 (7) Dec 22 (5) Dec 21 (4) Dec 20 (4) Dec 19 (5) Dec 18 (8) Dec 17 (5) Dec 16 (9) Dec 15 (7) Dec 14 (3) Dec 13 (10) Dec 12 (10) Dec 11 (9) Dec 10 (10) Dec 09 (11) Dec 08 (5) Dec 07 (5) Dec 06 (6) Dec 05 (9) Dec 04 (3) Dec 03 (8) Dec 02 (10) Dec 01 (6) Nov 30 (1) Nov 29 (3) Nov 28 (9) Nov 27 (3) Nov 26 (7) Nov 25 (12) Nov 24 (3) Nov 23 (8) Nov 22 (4) Nov 21 (3) Nov 20 (12) Nov 19 (6) Nov 18 (10) Nov 17 (12) Nov 16 (5) Nov 15 (5) Nov 14 (12) Nov 13 (3) Nov 12 (7) Nov 11 (8) Nov 10 (7) Nov 09 (6) Nov 08 (5) Nov 07 (5) Nov 06 (6) Nov 05 (12) Nov 04 (9) Nov 03 (6) Nov 02 (14) Nov 01 (3) Oct 31 (6) Oct 30 (7) Oct 29 (9) Oct 28 (9) Oct 27 (3) Oct 26 (6) Oct 25 (9) Oct 24 (8) Oct 23 (4) Oct 22 (3) Oct 21 (4) Oct 20 (2) Oct 19 (11) Oct 17 (6) Oct 16 (7) Oct 15 (7) Oct 14 (8) Oct 13 (5) Oct 12 (8) Oct 11 (6) Oct 10 (5) Oct 09 (11) Oct 08 (10) Oct 07 (8) Oct 06 (3) Oct 05 (7) Oct 04 (8) Oct 03 (3) Oct 02 (10) Oct 01 (3) Sep 30 (7) Sep 29 (6) Sep 28 (5) Sep 27 (8) Sep 26 (11) Sep 25 (11) Sep 24 (15) Sep 23 (8) Sep 22 (9) Sep 21 (4) Sep 20 (8) Sep 19 (9) Sep 18 (10) Sep 17 (10) Sep 16 (5) Sep 15 (5) Sep 14 (7) Sep 13 (5) Sep 12 (5) Sep 11 (8) Sep 10 (6) Sep 09 (7) Sep 08 (5) Sep 07 (2) Sep 06 (4) Sep 05 (7) Sep 04 (11) Sep 03 (7) Sep 02 (7) Sep 01 (2) Aug 31 (3) Aug 30 (1) Aug 29 (10) Aug 28 (5) Aug 27 (4) Aug 26 (10) Aug 25 (6) Aug 24 (9) Aug 22 (11) Aug 21 (8) Aug 20 (12) Aug 19 (8) Aug 18 (4) Aug 17 (4) Aug 16 (3) Aug 15 (6) Aug 14 (4) Aug 13 (7) Aug 12 (8) Aug 11 (7) Aug 10 (12) Aug 08 (5) Aug 07 (6) Aug 06 (6) Aug 05 (8) Aug 04 (5) Aug 03 (4) Aug 01 (7) Jul 31 (6) Jul 30 (12) Jul 29 (4) Jul 28 (5) Jul 27 (7) Jul 25 (7) Jul 24 (8) Jul 23 (8) Jul 22 (3) Jul 21 (8) Jul 20 (6) Jul 19 (3) Jul 18 (8) Jul 17 (2) Jul 16 (7) Jul 15 (6) Jul 14 (9) Jul 13 (10) Jul 11 (9) Jul 10 (8) Jul 09 (3) Jul 08 (7) Jul 07 (7) Jul 06 (7) Jul 05 (10) Jul 04 (4) Jul 03 (6) Jul 02 (6) Jul 01 (8) Jun 30 (5) Jun 29 (6) Jun 28 (1) Jun 27 (15) Jun 26 (10) Jun 25 (9) Jun 24 (16) Jun 23 (6) Jun 22 (12) Jun 20 (6) Jun 19 (8) Jun 18 (10) Jun 17 (6) Jun 16 (7) Jun 15 (5) Jun 14 (5) Jun 13 (13) Jun 12 (7) Jun 11 (14) Jun 10 (3) Jun 09 (2) Jun 08 (2) Jun 07 (7) Jun 06 (16) Jun 05 (7) Jun 04 (18) Jun 03 (12) Jun 02 (8) May 31 (3) May 30 (6) May 29 (6) May 28 (7) May 27 (4) May 26 (4) May 25 (6) May 23 (4) May 22 (8) May 21 (5) May 20 (6) May 19 (2) May 18 (9) May 17 (1) May 16 (5) May 15 (5) May 14 (7) May 13 (7) May 12 (7) May 11 (4) May 10 (4) May 09 (5) May 08 (10) May 07 (4) May 06 (13) May 05 (4) May 04 (10) May 02 (2) May 01 (5) Apr 30 (9) Apr 29 (6) Apr 28 (3) Apr 27 (4) Apr 26 (9) Apr 25 (9) Apr 24 (7) Apr 23 (11) Apr 22 (7) Apr 21 (3) Apr 20 (10) Apr 19 (6) Apr 18 (5) Apr 17 (6) Apr 16 (6) Apr 15 (7) Apr 14 (11) Apr 13 (4) Apr 12 (5) Apr 11 (9) Apr 10 (4) Apr 09 (6) Apr 08 (6) Apr 07 (3) Apr 06 (6) Apr 05 (10) Apr 03 (9) Apr 02 (9) Apr 01 (12) Mar 31 (4) Mar 30 (9) Mar 29 (10) Mar 28 (7) Mar 27 (8) Mar 26 (8) Mar 25 (15) Mar 24 (11) Mar 23 (8) Mar 22 (7) Mar 21 (14) Mar 20 (6) Mar 19 (11) Mar 18 (11) Mar 17 (12) Mar 16 (8) Mar 15 (8) Mar 14 (13) Mar 13 (8) Mar 12 (10) Mar 11 (8) Mar 10 (7) Mar 09 (3) Mar 08 (12) Mar 07 (15) Mar 06 (16) Mar 05 (9) Mar 04 (6) Mar 03 (12) Mar 02 (20) Feb 28 (11) Feb 27 (8) Feb 26 (11) Feb 25 (6) Feb 24 (14) Feb 23 (5) Feb 22 (6) Feb 21 (8) Feb 20 (11) Feb 19 (7) Feb 18 (4) Feb 17 (8) Feb 16 (11) Feb 15 (3) Feb 14 (10) Feb 13 (4) Feb 12 (10) Feb 11 (7) Feb 10 (7) Feb 09 (4) Feb 08 (6) Feb 07 (5) Feb 06 (4) Feb 05 (10) Feb 04 (5) Feb 03 (4) Feb 02 (4) Feb 01 (3) Jan 31 (3) Jan 30 (5) Jan 29 (2) Jan 28 (6) Jan 27 (3) Jan 26 (2) Jan 25 (5) Jan 24 (7) Jan 23 (4) Jan 22 (4) Jan 21 (5) Jan 20 (5) Jan 19 (6) Jan 18 (7) Jan 17 (6) Jan 16 (4) Jan 15 (3) Jan 14 (5) Jan 13 (4) Jan 12 (5) Jan 11 (3) Jan 10 (5) Jan 09 (6) Jan 08 (6) Jan 07 (3) Jan 06 (1) Jan 05 (4) Jan 04 (5) Jan 03 (3) Jan 02 (6) Jan 01 (2) Dec 31 (6) Dec 30 (1) Dec 29 (5) Dec 27 (1) Dec 26 (2) Dec 25 (4) Dec 24 (8) Dec 23 (2) Dec 22 (1) Dec 20 (3) Dec 19 (8) Dec 18 (3) Dec 17 (4) Dec 16 (3) Dec 15 (3) Dec 14 (3) Dec 13 (3) Dec 12 (4) Dec 11 (4) Dec 10 (7) Dec 09 (5) Dec 08 (2) Dec 07 (5) Dec 06 (6) Dec 05 (10) Dec 04 (9) Dec 03 (4) Dec 02 (2) Dec 01 (8) Nov 29 (5) Nov 28 (7) Nov 27 (5) Nov 26 (9) Nov 25 (3) Nov 24 (5) Nov 23 (6) Nov 22 (5) Nov 21 (12) Nov 20 (12) Nov 19 (10) Nov 18 (4) Nov 17 (3) Nov 16 (8) Nov 15 (7) Nov 14 (7) Nov 13 (6) Nov 12 (12) Nov 11 (6) Nov 10 (3) Nov 09 (4) Nov 08 (10) Nov 07 (5) Nov 06 (5) Nov 05 (9) Nov 04 (4) Nov 03 (4) Nov 02 (3) Nov 01 (3) Oct 31 (10) Oct 30 (4) Oct 29 (11) Oct 28 (3) Oct 27 (7) Oct 26 (7) Oct 25 (6) Oct 24 (7) Oct 23 (11) Oct 22 (2) Oct 21 (7) Oct 20 (4) Oct 19 (6) Oct 18 (7) Oct 17 (5) Oct 16 (8) Oct 15 (5) Oct 14 (5) Oct 13 (3) Oct 12 (7) Oct 11 (20) Oct 10 (2) Oct 09 (4) Oct 08 (21) Oct 07 (20) Oct 06 (34) Oct 04 (24) Oct 03 (21) Oct 02 (3) Oct 01 (7) Sep 30 (3) Sep 29 (5) Sep 28 (6) Sep 27 (5) Sep 26 (6) Sep 25 (5) Sep 24 (2) Sep 23 (8) Sep 22 (4) Sep 21 (3) Sep 20 (9) Sep 19 (11) Sep 18 (5) Sep 17 (7) Sep 16 (6) Sep 15 (3) Sep 14 (7) Sep 13 (8) Sep 12 (11) Sep 11 (7) Sep 10 (6) Sep 09 (5) Sep 08 (3) Sep 07 (6) Sep 06 (10) Sep 05 (7) Sep 04 (7) Sep 03 (5) Sep 02 (4) Sep 01 (8) Aug 31 (5) Aug 30 (7) Aug 29 (10) Aug 28 (7) Aug 27 (6) Aug 26 (6) Aug 25 (3) Aug 24 (8) Aug 23 (6) Aug 22 (6) Aug 21 (8) Aug 20 (8) Aug 19 (4) Aug 18 (2) Aug 17 (5) Aug 16 (7) Aug 15 (4) Aug 14 (3) Aug 13 (4) Aug 12 (6) Aug 11 (6) Aug 10 (4) Aug 09 (8) Aug 08 (6) Aug 07 (4) Aug 06 (6) Aug 05 (4) Aug 04 (12) Aug 03 (3) Aug 02 (4) Aug 01 (10) Jul 31 (3) Jul 30 (7) Jul 29 (3) Jul 28 (6) Jul 27 (4) Jul 26 (5) Jul 25 (4) Jul 24 (7) Jul 23 (10) Jul 22 (8) Jul 21 (5) Jul 20 (4) Jul 19 (7) Jul 18 (9) Jul 17 (10) Jul 16 (11) Jul 15 (5) Jul 13 (5) Jul 12 (9) Jul 11 (11) Jul 10 (12) Jul 09 (6) Jul 08 (5) Jul 07 (8) Jul 06 (9) Jul 05 (10) Jul 04 (8) Jul 03 (10) Jul 02 (12) Jul 01 (8) Jun 30 (5) Jun 29 (6) Jun 28 (23) Jun 27 (18) Jun 26 (12) Jun 25 (14) Jun 24 (15) Jun 23 (11) Jun 22 (11) Jun 21 (15) Jun 20 (9) Jun 19 (8) Jun 18 (11) Jun 17 (7) Jun 16 (6) Jun 15 (6) Jun 14 (6) Jun 13 (5) Jun 12 (6) Jun 11 (9) Jun 10 (10) Jun 09 (9) Jun 08 (6) Jun 07 (2) Jun 06 (6) Jun 05 (4) Jun 04 (3) Jun 03 (4) Jun 02 (3) Jun 01 (6) May 31 (3) May 30 (5) May 29 (8) May 28 (7) May 27 (2) May 26 (2) May 25 (8) May 24 (7) May 23 (6) May 22 (9) May 21 (6) May 20 (5) May 19 (6) May 18 (9) May 17 (10) May 16 (11) May 15 (5) May 14 (11) May 13 (6) May 12 (7) May 11 (7) May 10 (5) May 09 (3) May 08 (10) May 07 (8) May 06 (11) May 05 (5) May 04 (9) May 03 (3) May 02 (2) May 01 (5) Apr 30 (5) Apr 29 (8) Apr 28 (6) Apr 27 (4) Apr 26 (9) Apr 25 (11) Apr 24 (4) Apr 23 (11) Apr 22 (7) Apr 21 (5) Apr 20 (7) Apr 19 (10) Apr 18 (8) Apr 17 (10) Apr 16 (8) Apr 15 (4) Apr 14 (5) Apr 13 (7) Apr 12 (11) Apr 11 (6) Apr 10 (7) Apr 09 (6) Apr 08 (3) Apr 07 (3) Apr 06 (9) Apr 05 (10) Apr 04 (7) Apr 03 (2) Apr 02 (6) Apr 01 (4) Mar 31 (3) Mar 30 (4) Mar 29 (3) Mar 28 (5) Mar 27 (10) Mar 26 (5) Mar 25 (4) Mar 24 (5) Mar 23 (7) Mar 22 (6) Mar 21 (9) Mar 20 (5) Mar 19 (5) Mar 18 (9) Mar 17 (2) Mar 16 (8) Mar 15 (10) Mar 14 (9) Mar 13 (10) Mar 12 (10) Mar 11 (2) Mar 10 (1) Mar 09 (6) Mar 08 (4) Mar 07 (4) Mar 06 (3) Mar 05 (3) Mar 04 (7) Mar 03 (6) Mar 02 (8) Mar 01 (9) Feb 28 (6) Feb 27 (3) Feb 26 (8) Feb 25 (7) Feb 24 (3) Feb 23 (4) Feb 22 (4) Feb 21 (7) Feb 20 (4) Feb 19 (4) Feb 18 (2) Feb 17 (1) Feb 16 (6) Feb 15 (6) Feb 14 (5) Feb 13 (4) Feb 12 (7) Feb 11 (2) Feb 10 (2) Feb 09 (5) Feb 08 (5) Feb 07 (9) Feb 06 (4) Feb 05 (9) Feb 04 (3) Feb 03 (3) Feb 02 (10) Feb 01 (9) Jan 31 (5) Jan 30 (8) Jan 29 (5) Jan 28 (3) Jan 27 (4) Jan 26 (5) Jan 25 (6) Jan 24 (5) Jan 23 (4) Jan 22 (8) Jan 21 (3) Jan 20 (3) Jan 19 (7) Jan 18 (3) Jan 17 (6) Jan 16 (8) Jan 15 (7) Jan 14 (9) Jan 13 (1) Jan 12 (7) Jan 11 (1) Jan 10 (3) Jan 09 (3) Jan 08 (5) Jan 07 (4) Jan 06 (2) Jan 05 (3) Jan 04 (5) Jan 03 (4) Jan 02 (4) Jan 01 (4) Dec 31 (3) Dec 30 (4) Dec 29 (5) Dec 28 (8) Dec 27 (4) Dec 26 (4) Dec 25 (2) Dec 24 (4) Dec 23 (4) Dec 22 (7) Dec 21 (5) Dec 20 (3) Dec 19 (4) Dec 18 (6) Dec 17 (4) Dec 16 (5) Dec 15 (5) Dec 14 (8) Dec 13 (3) Dec 12 (6) Dec 11 (8) Dec 10 (5) Dec 09 (4) Dec 08 (4) Dec 07 (7) Dec 06 (7) Dec 05 (6) Dec 04 (6) Dec 03 (7) Dec 02 (1) Dec 01 (6) Nov 30 (2) Nov 29 (8) Nov 28 (16) Nov 27 (7) Nov 26 (5) Nov 25 (2) Nov 24 (6) Nov 23 (5) Nov 22 (5) Nov 21 (5) Nov 20 (15) Nov 19 (8) Nov 18 (2) Nov 17 (3) Nov 16 (5) Nov 15 (7) Nov 14 (6) Nov 13 (9) Nov 12 (7) Nov 11 (8) Nov 10 (3) Nov 09 (5) Nov 08 (8) Nov 07 (9) Nov 06 (9) Nov 05 (1) Nov 04 (4) Nov 03 (8) Nov 02 (6) Nov 01 (3) Oct 31 (6) Oct 30 (7) Oct 29 (3) Oct 28 (3) Oct 27 (4) Oct 26 (4) Oct 25 (8) Oct 24 (4) Oct 23 (1) Oct 22 (6) Oct 21 (1) Oct 20 (8) Oct 19 (6) Oct 18 (10) Oct 17 (6) Oct 16 (15) Oct 15 (4) Oct 14 (5) Oct 13 (3) Oct 12 (9) Oct 11 (7) Oct 10 (1) Oct 09 (5) Oct 08 (7) Oct 07 (3) Oct 06 (8) Oct 05 (5) Oct 04 (3) Oct 03 (7) Oct 02 (6) Oct 01 (6) Sep 30 (8) Sep 29 (6) Sep 28 (13) Sep 27 (10) Sep 26 (8) Sep 25 (8) Sep 24 (8) Sep 23 (3) Sep 22 (7) Sep 21 (9) Sep 20 (7) Sep 19 (8) Sep 18 (4) Sep 17 (3) Sep 16 (4) Sep 15 (8) Sep 14 (5) Sep 13 (7) Sep 12 (7) Sep 11 (9) Sep 10 (4) Sep 09 (10) Sep 08 (4) Sep 07 (12) Sep 06 (13) Sep 05 (15) Sep 04 (5) Sep 03 (4) Sep 02 (6) Sep 01 (9) Aug 31 (7) Aug 30 (6) Aug 29 (8) Aug 28 (11) Aug 27 (2) Aug 26 (6) Aug 25 (15) Aug 24 (6) Aug 23 (8) Aug 22 (5) Aug 21 (6) Aug 20 (7) Aug 19 (2) Aug 18 (5) Aug 17 (5) Aug 16 (11) Aug 15 (4) Aug 14 (6) Aug 13 (9) Aug 12 (4) Aug 11 (5) Aug 10 (6) Aug 09 (5) Aug 08 (7) Aug 07 (9) Aug 06 (4) Aug 05 (4) Aug 04 (4) Aug 03 (8) Aug 02 (9) Aug 01 (10) Jul 31 (11) Jul 30 (4) Jul 29 (3) Jul 28 (11) Jul 27 (4) Jul 26 (7) Jul 25 (7) Jul 24 (4) Jul 23 (8) Jul 22 (5) Jul 21 (4) Jul 20 (10) Jul 19 (6) Jul 18 (9) Jul 17 (6) Jul 16 (7) Jul 15 (6) Jul 14 (4) Jul 13 (7) Jul 12 (8) Jul 11 (6) Jul 10 (14) Jul 09 (6) Jul 08 (5) Jul 07 (4) Jul 06 (9) Jul 05 (8) Jul 04 (5) Jul 03 (8) Jul 02 (5) Jul 01 (5) Jun 30 (6) Jun 29 (3) Jun 28 (3) Jun 27 (4) Jun 26 (8) Jun 25 (3) Jun 24 (5) Jun 23 (14) Jun 22 (11) Jun 21 (5) Jun 20 (8) Jun 19 (7) Jun 18 (4) Jun 17 (3) Jun 16 (12) Jun 15 (12) Jun 14 (10) Jun 13 (10) Jun 12 (9) Jun 11 (6) Jun 10 (12) Jun 09 (4) Jun 08 (3) Jun 07 (12) Jun 06 (6) Jun 05 (7) Jun 04 (6) Jun 03 (3) Jun 02 (4) Jun 01 (8) May 31 (4) May 30 (3) May 29 (8) May 28 (7) May 27 (4) May 26 (3) May 25 (5) May 24 (9) May 23 (16) May 22 (12) May 21 (11) May 20 (7) May 19 (10) May 18 (8) May 17 (8) May 16 (10) May 15 (8) May 14 (5) May 13 (1) May 12 (6) May 11 (9) May 10 (9) May 09 (10) May 08 (9) May 07 (6) May 06 (5) May 05 (7) May 04 (10) May 03 (7) May 02 (9) May 01 (10) Apr 30 (4) Apr 29 (9) Apr 28 (12) Apr 27 (9) Apr 26 (4) Apr 25 (5) Apr 24 (9) Apr 23 (4) Apr 22 (7) Apr 21 (8) Apr 20 (9) Apr 19 (6) Apr 18 (4) Apr 17 (2) Apr 16 (4) Apr 15 (10) Apr 14 (7) Apr 13 (5) Apr 12 (7) Apr 11 (7) Apr 10 (7) Apr 09 (6) Apr 08 (7) Apr 07 (10) Apr 06 (8) Apr 05 (8) Apr 04 (9) Apr 03 (6) Apr 02 (4) Apr 01 (4) Mar 31 (11) Mar 30 (12) Mar 29 (16) Mar 28 (8) Mar 27 (10) Mar 26 (12) Mar 25 (6) Mar 24 (9) Mar 23 (3) Mar 22 (12) Mar 21 (12) Mar 20 (14) Mar 19 (8) Mar 18 (7) Mar 17 (8) Mar 16 (4) Mar 15 (10) Mar 14 (9) Mar 13 (9) Mar 12 (6) Mar 11 (5) Mar 10 (13) Mar 09 (8) Mar 08 (10) Mar 07 (12) Mar 06 (6) Mar 05 (4) Mar 04 (2) Mar 03 (3) Mar 02 (12) Mar 01 (8) Feb 29 (11) Feb 28 (5) Feb 27 (3) Feb 26 (13) Feb 25 (10) Feb 24 (13) Feb 23 (10) Feb 22 (9) Feb 21 (18) Feb 20 (6) Feb 19 (7) Feb 18 (9) Feb 17 (5) Feb 16 (9) Feb 15 (7) Feb 14 (6) Feb 13 (5) Feb 12 (6) Feb 11 (4) Feb 10 (8) Feb 09 (5) Feb 08 (8) Feb 07 (10) Feb 06 (7) Feb 05 (7) Feb 04 (5) Feb 03 (11) Feb 02 (4) Feb 01 (3) Jan 31 (12) Jan 30 (7) Jan 29 (7) Jan 28 (7) Jan 27 (12) Jan 26 (7) Jan 25 (11) Jan 24 (4) Jan 23 (6) Jan 22 (8) Jan 21 (12) Jan 20 (11) Jan 19 (6) Jan 18 (6) Jan 17 (11) Jan 16 (9) Jan 15 (4) Jan 14 (3) Jan 13 (6) Jan 12 (9) Jan 11 (9) Jan 10 (10) Jan 09 (5) Jan 08 (10) Jan 07 (5) Jan 06 (6) Jan 05 (8) Jan 04 (5) Jan 03 (8) Jan 02 (7) Jan 01 (7) Dec 31 (10) Dec 30 (11) Dec 29 (6) Dec 28 (5) Dec 27 (10) Dec 26 (4) Dec 25 (5) Dec 24 (7) Dec 23 (2) Dec 22 (9) Dec 21 (8) Dec 20 (8) Dec 19 (5) Dec 18 (1) Dec 17 (5) Dec 16 (6) Dec 15 (5) Dec 14 (13) Dec 13 (8) Dec 12 (7) Dec 11 (9) Dec 10 (12) Dec 09 (7) Dec 08 (11) Dec 07 (9) Dec 06 (11) Dec 05 (10) Dec 04 (6) Dec 03 (8) Dec 02 (6) Dec 01 (14) Nov 30 (7) Nov 29 (8) Nov 28 (8) Nov 27 (6) Nov 26 (9) Nov 25 (10) Nov 24 (12) Nov 23 (10) Nov 22 (10) Nov 21 (10) Nov 20 (4) Nov 19 (4) Nov 18 (8) Nov 17 (9) Nov 16 (9) Nov 15 (12) Nov 14 (6) Nov 13 (9) Nov 12 (3) Nov 11 (9) Nov 10 (10) Nov 09 (10) Nov 08 (7) Nov 07 (8) Nov 06 (10) Nov 05 (8) Nov 04 (7) Nov 03 (10) Nov 02 (11) Nov 01 (10) Oct 31 (5) Oct 30 (8) Oct 29 (8) Oct 28 (8) Oct 27 (11) Oct 26 (6) Oct 25 (9) Oct 24 (10) Oct 23 (5) Oct 22 (14) Oct 21 (10) Oct 20 (8) Oct 19 (11) Oct 18 (13) Oct 17 (7) Oct 16 (6) Oct 15 (9) Oct 14 (7) Oct 13 (12) Oct 12 (13) Oct 11 (9) Oct 10 (8) Oct 09 (9) Oct 08 (7) Oct 07 (12) Oct 06 (8) Oct 05 (13) Oct 04 (11) Oct 03 (7) Oct 02 (5) Oct 01 (14) Sep 30 (12) Sep 29 (12) Sep 28 (11) Sep 27 (11) Sep 26 (7) Sep 25 (10) Sep 24 (3) Sep 23 (7) Sep 22 (8) Sep 21 (8) Sep 20 (8) Sep 19 (7) Sep 18 (5) Sep 17 (14) Sep 16 (7) Sep 15 (11) Sep 14 (13) Sep 13 (11) Sep 12 (9) Sep 11 (5) Sep 10 (4) Sep 09 (13) Sep 08 (11) Sep 07 (11) Sep 06 (16) Sep 05 (1) Sep 04 (10) Sep 03 (8) Sep 02 (8) Sep 01 (7) Aug 31 (1) Aug 30 (6) Aug 29 (2) Aug 28 (3) Aug 27 (6) Aug 26 (8) Aug 25 (5) Aug 24 (5) Aug 23 (6) Aug 22 (7) Aug 21 (6) Aug 20 (4) Aug 19 (9) Aug 18 (7) Aug 17 (7) Aug 16 (10) Aug 15 (2) Aug 14 (5) Aug 13 (5) Aug 12 (10) Aug 11 (5) Aug 10 (4) Aug 09 (8) Aug 08 (3) Aug 07 (5) Aug 06 (12) Aug 05 (5) Aug 04 (7) Aug 03 (6) Aug 02 (7) Aug 01 (14) Jul 31 (7) Jul 30 (7) Jul 29 (13) Jul 28 (10) Jul 27 (6) Jul 26 (7) Jul 25 (7) Jul 24 (4) Jul 23 (12) Jul 22 (14) Jul 21 (6) Jul 20 (9) Jul 19 (12) Jul 18 (9) Jul 17 (4) Jul 16 (6) Jul 15 (8) Jul 14 (15) Jul 13 (8) Jul 12 (10) Jul 11 (6) Jul 10 (6) Jul 09 (6) Jul 08 (6) Jul 07 (9) Jul 06 (15) Jul 05 (6) Jul 04 (10) Jul 03 (6) Jul 02 (6) Jul 01 (11) Jun 30 (7) Jun 29 (4) Jun 28 (8) Jun 27 (8) Jun 26 (5) Jun 25 (11) Jun 24 (9) Jun 23 (10) Jun 22 (8) Jun 21 (8) Jun 20 (6) Jun 19 (5) Jun 18 (15) Jun 17 (8) Jun 16 (13) Jun 15 (15) Jun 14 (11) Jun 13 (6) Jun 12 (15) Jun 11 (7) Jun 10 (7) Jun 09 (18) Jun 08 (20) Jun 07 (17) Jun 06 (9) Jun 05 (9) Jun 04 (12) Jun 03 (13) Jun 02 (14) Jun 01 (8) May 31 (13) May 30 (8) May 29 (6) May 28 (8) May 27 (17) May 26 (8) May 25 (13) May 24 (12) May 23 (9) May 22 (4) May 21 (4) May 20 (11) May 19 (14) May 18 (6) May 17 (10) May 16 (4) May 15 (5) May 14 (28) May 12 (9) May 11 (17) May 10 (15) May 09 (12) May 08 (5) May 07 (4) May 06 (10) May 05 (8) May 04 (10) May 03 (5) May 02 (6) May 01 (8) Apr 30 (8) Apr 29 (12) Apr 28 (6) Apr 27 (11) Apr 26 (12) Apr 25 (6) Apr 24 (3) Apr 23 (5) Apr 22 (10) Apr 21 (19) Apr 20 (13) Apr 19 (11) Apr 18 (11) Apr 17 (5) Apr 16 (12) Apr 15 (11) Apr 14 (17) Apr 13 (6) Apr 12 (16) Apr 11 (10) Apr 10 (1) Apr 09 (18) Apr 08 (14) Apr 07 (6) Apr 06 (10) Apr 05 (21) Apr 04 (12) Apr 03 (4) Apr 02 (13) Apr 01 (8) Mar 31 (10) Mar 30 (11) Mar 29 (10) Mar 28 (8) Mar 27 (6) Mar 26 (12) Mar 25 (15) Mar 24 (10) Mar 23 (12) Mar 22 (12) Mar 21 (8) Mar 20 (4) Mar 19 (11) Mar 18 (7) Mar 17 (7) Mar 16 (9) Mar 15 (10) Mar 14 (4) Mar 13 (2) Mar 12 (14) Mar 11 (13) Mar 10 (7) Mar 09 (9) Mar 08 (17) Mar 07 (5) Mar 06 (7) Mar 05 (13) Mar 04 (10) Mar 03 (14) Mar 02 (12) Mar 01 (18) Feb 28 (8) Feb 27 (2) Feb 26 (9) Feb 25 (13) Feb 24 (17) Feb 23 (13) Feb 22 (12) Feb 21 (11) Feb 20 (11) Feb 19 (16) Feb 18 (17) Feb 17 (15) Feb 16 (15) Feb 15 (15) Feb 14 (10) Feb 13 (8) Feb 12 (10) Feb 11 (15) Feb 10 (11) Feb 09 (13) Feb 08 (10) Feb 07 (9) Feb 06 (6) Feb 05 (15) Feb 04 (15) Feb 03 (11) Feb 02 (14) Feb 01 (15) Jan 31 (11) Jan 30 (9) Jan 29 (19) Jan 28 (9) Jan 27 (9) Jan 26 (16) Jan 25 (19) Jan 24 (17) Jan 23 (8) Jan 22 (15) Jan 21 (9) Jan 20 (11) Jan 19 (7) Jan 18 (9) Jan 17 (6) Jan 16 (7) Jan 15 (12) Jan 14 (9) Jan 13 (14) Jan 12 (11) Jan 11 (13) Jan 10 (8) Jan 09 (8) Jan 08 (20) Jan 07 (11) Jan 06 (11) Jan 05 (8) Jan 04 (14) Jan 03 (6) Jan 02 (7) Jan 01 (7) Dec 31 (14) Dec 30 (15) Dec 29 (7) Dec 28 (10) Dec 27 (4) Dec 26 (3) Dec 25 (11) Dec 24 (9) Dec 23 (9) Dec 22 (15) Dec 21 (12) Dec 20 (11) Dec 19 (4) Dec 18 (16) Dec 17 (6) Dec 16 (12) Dec 15 (14) Dec 14 (11) Dec 13 (10) Dec 12 (6) Dec 11 (10) Dec 10 (17) Dec 09 (11) Dec 08 (12) Dec 07 (16) Dec 06 (11) Dec 05 (5) Dec 04 (12) Dec 03 (15) Dec 02 (15) Dec 01 (12) Nov 30 (16) Nov 29 (7) Nov 28 (11) Nov 27 (13) Nov 26 (13) Nov 25 (16) Nov 24 (15) Nov 23 (10) Nov 22 (10) Nov 21 (4) Nov 20 (8) Nov 19 (9) Nov 18 (16) Nov 17 (11) Nov 16 (11) Nov 15 (10) Nov 14 (9) Nov 13 (6) Nov 12 (10) Nov 11 (12) Nov 10 (15) Nov 09 (9) Nov 08 (10) Nov 07 (6) Nov 06 (7) Nov 05 (12) Nov 04 (14) Nov 03 (10) Nov 02 (13) Nov 01 (9) Oct 31 (9) Oct 30 (11) Oct 29 (18) Oct 28 (13) Oct 27 (23) Oct 26 (12) Oct 25 (14) Oct 24 (20) Oct 22 (18) Oct 21 (18) Oct 20 (19) Oct 19 (12) Oct 18 (11) Oct 17 (5) Oct 16 (18) Oct 15 (8) Oct 14 (11) Oct 13 (9) Oct 12 (13) Oct 11 (6) Oct 10 (7) Oct 09 (27) Oct 08 (14) Oct 07 (10) Oct 06 (9) Oct 05 (7) Oct 04 (10) Oct 03 (6) Oct 02 (9) Oct 01 (13) Sep 30 (12) Sep 29 (13) Sep 28 (8) Sep 27 (9) Sep 26 (8) Sep 25 (14) Sep 24 (4) Sep 23 (14) Sep 22 (20) Sep 21 (11) Sep 20 (6) Sep 19 (9) Sep 18 (14) Sep 17 (8) Sep 16 (17) Sep 15 (6) Sep 14 (11) Sep 13 (9) Sep 12 (4) Sep 11 (7) Sep 10 (14) Sep 09 (12) Sep 08 (17) Sep 07 (12) Sep 06 (13) Sep 05 (9) Sep 04 (20) Sep 03 (16) Sep 02 (16) Sep 01 (10) Aug 31 (13) Aug 30 (4) Aug 29 (9) Aug 28 (6) Aug 27 (8) Aug 26 (11) Aug 25 (10) Aug 24 (14) Aug 23 (12) Aug 22 (13) Aug 21 (10) Aug 20 (13) Aug 19 (15) Aug 18 (8) Aug 17 (10) Aug 16 (8) Aug 15 (3) Aug 14 (11) Aug 13 (12) Aug 12 (15) Aug 11 (10) Aug 10 (17) Aug 09 (6) Aug 08 (13) Aug 07 (11) Aug 06 (13) Aug 05 (11) Aug 04 (11) Aug 03 (10) Aug 02 (7) Aug 01 (6) Jul 31 (10) Jul 30 (21) Jul 29 (14) Jul 28 (13) Jul 27 (16) Jul 26 (10) Jul 25 (15) Jul 24 (17) Jul 23 (15) Jul 22 (15) Jul 21 (19) Jul 20 (17) Jul 19 (9) Jul 18 (7) Jul 17 (26) Jul 16 (18) Jul 15 (20) Jul 14 (16) Jul 13 (19) Jul 12 (11) Jul 11 (5) Jul 10 (13) Jul 09 (11) Jul 08 (8) Jul 07 (12) Jul 06 (16) Jul 05 (9) Jul 04 (5) Jul 03 (15) Jul 02 (11) Jul 01 (14) Jun 30 (13) Jun 29 (19) Jun 28 (8) Jun 27 (9) Jun 26 (16) Jun 25 (22) Jun 24 (17) Jun 23 (11) Jun 22 (15) Jun 21 (14) Jun 20 (8) Jun 19 (17) Jun 18 (10) Jun 17 (10) Jun 16 (17) Jun 15 (13) Jun 14 (14) Jun 13 (4) Jun 12 (13) Jun 11 (15) Jun 10 (25) Jun 09 (10) Jun 08 (23) Jun 07 (14) Jun 06 (20) Jun 05 (10) Jun 04 (11) Jun 03 (12) Jun 02 (21) Jun 01 (14) May 31 (10) May 30 (14) May 29 (8) May 28 (23) May 27 (20) May 26 (16) May 25 (13) May 24 (12) May 23 (10) May 22 (18) May 21 (14) May 20 (12) May 19 (18) May 18 (14) May 17 (13) May 16 (4) May 15 (7) May 14 (16) May 13 (13) May 12 (8) May 11 (18) May 10 (8) May 09 (7) May 08 (13) May 07 (11) May 06 (15) May 05 (18) May 04 (17) May 03 (7) May 02 (5) May 01 (11) Apr 30 (19) Apr 29 (21) Apr 28 (18) Apr 27 (16) Apr 26 (8) Apr 25 (11) Apr 24 (9) Apr 23 (20) Apr 22 (23) Apr 21 (5) Apr 20 (16) Apr 19 (13) Apr 18 (6) Apr 17 (6) Apr 16 (16) Apr 15 (18) Apr 14 (13) Apr 13 (14) Apr 12 (9) Apr 11 (3) Apr 10 (16) Apr 09 (14) Apr 08 (12) Apr 07 (18) Apr 06 (7) Apr 05 (11) Apr 04 (9) Apr 03 (19) Apr 02 (17) Apr 01 (16) Mar 31 (16) Mar 30 (22) Mar 29 (16) Mar 28 (16) Mar 27 (19) Mar 26 (31) Mar 25 (25) Mar 24 (26) Mar 23 (27) Mar 22 (22) Mar 21 (22) Mar 20 (13) Mar 19 (21) Mar 18 (20) Mar 17 (24) Mar 16 (18) Mar 15 (9) Mar 14 (9) Mar 13 (29) Mar 12 (15) Mar 11 (11) Mar 10 (11) Mar 09 (20) Mar 08 (12) Mar 07 (6) Mar 06 (21) Mar 05 (22) Mar 04 (19) Mar 03 (9) Mar 02 (20) Mar 01 (11) Feb 28 (11) Feb 27 (27) Feb 26 (15) Feb 25 (18) Feb 24 (17) Feb 23 (19) Feb 22 (24) Feb 21 (10) Feb 20 (14) Feb 19 (25) Feb 18 (16) Feb 17 (19) Feb 16 (23) Feb 15 (8) Feb 14 (11) Feb 13 (25) Feb 12 (16) Feb 11 (12) Feb 10 (18) Feb 09 (12) Feb 08 (14) Feb 07 (8) Feb 06 (27) Feb 05 (28) Feb 04 (24) Feb 03 (17) Feb 02 (20) Feb 01 (23) Jan 31 (16) Jan 30 (20) Jan 29 (26) Jan 28 (17) Jan 27 (21) Jan 26 (24) Jan 25 (16) Jan 24 (14) Jan 23 (16) Jan 22 (17) Jan 21 (19) Jan 20 (21) Jan 19 (17) Jan 18 (13) Jan 17 (14) Jan 16 (10) Jan 15 (21) Jan 14 (16) Jan 13 (19) Jan 12 (30) Jan 11 (14) Jan 10 (11) Jan 09 (8) Jan 08 (23) Jan 07 (13) Jan 06 (21) Jan 05 (15) Jan 04 (18) Jan 03 (9) Jan 02 (12) Jan 01 (15) Dec 31 (18) Dec 30 (7) Dec 29 (13) Dec 28 (11) Dec 27 (8) Dec 26 (6) Dec 25 (8) Dec 24 (28) Dec 23 (12) Dec 22 (12) Dec 21 (17) Dec 20 (19) Dec 19 (19) Dec 18 (22) Dec 17 (24) Dec 16 (17) Dec 15 (29) Dec 14 (22) Dec 13 (12) Dec 12 (22) Dec 11 (24) Dec 10 (25) Dec 09 (18) Dec 08 (15) Dec 07 (21) Dec 06 (24) Dec 05 (30) Dec 04 (28) Dec 03 (26) Dec 02 (22) Dec 01 (33) Nov 30 (23) Nov 29 (9) Nov 28 (18) Nov 27 (25) Nov 26 (17) Nov 25 (23) Nov 24 (27) Nov 23 (12) Nov 22 (10) Nov 21 (15) Nov 20 (23) Nov 19 (23) Nov 18 (24) Nov 17 (21) Nov 16 (20) Nov 15 (13) Nov 14 (15) Nov 13 (27) Nov 12 (23) Nov 11 (19) Nov 10 (21) Nov 09 (13) Nov 08 (16) Nov 07 (16) Nov 06 (32) Nov 05 (24) Nov 04 (20) Nov 03 (29) Nov 02 (12) Nov 01 (15) Oct 31 (20) Oct 30 (22) Oct 29 (27) Oct 28 (20) Oct 27 (23) Oct 26 (21) Oct 25 (15) Oct 24 (23) Oct 23 (26) Oct 22 (27) Oct 21 (28) Oct 20 (24) Oct 19 (13) Oct 18 (9) Oct 17 (30) Oct 16 (8) Oct 15 (20) Oct 14 (14) Oct 13 (17) Oct 12 (16) Oct 11 (8) Oct 10 (19) Oct 09 (22) Oct 08 (16) Oct 07 (18) Oct 06 (23) Oct 05 (7) Oct 04 (15) Oct 03 (21) Oct 02 (17) Oct 01 (22) Sep 30 (25) Sep 29 (20) Sep 28 (17) Sep 27 (13) Sep 26 (20) Sep 25 (15) Sep 24 (24) Sep 23 (23) Sep 22 (18) Sep 21 (20) Sep 20 (11) Sep 19 (24) Sep 18 (25) Sep 17 (25) Sep 16 (19) Sep 15 (21) Sep 14 (15) Sep 13 (10) Sep 12 (23) Sep 11 (23) Sep 10 (25) Sep 09 (25) Sep 08 (17) Sep 07 (3) Sep 06 (17) Sep 05 (14) Sep 04 (24) Sep 03 (16) Sep 02 (11) Sep 01 (19) Aug 31 (20) Aug 30 (11) Aug 29 (24) Aug 28 (24) Aug 27 (16) Aug 26 (26) Aug 25 (21) Aug 24 (15) Aug 23 (19) Aug 22 (15) Aug 21 (25) Aug 20 (27) Aug 19 (19) Aug 18 (24) Aug 17 (14) Aug 16 (10) Aug 15 (15) Aug 14 (16) Aug 13 (21) Aug 12 (30) Aug 11 (19) Aug 10 (8) Aug 09 (12) Aug 08 (17) Aug 07 (21) Aug 06 (26) Aug 05 (23) Aug 04 (21) Aug 03 (12) Aug 02 (7) Aug 01 (19) Jul 31 (21) Jul 30 (25) Jul 29 (29) Jul 28 (23) Jul 27 (17) Jul 26 (11) Jul 25 (21) Jul 24 (14) Jul 23 (15) Jul 22 (19) Jul 21 (15) Jul 20 (9) Jul 19 (10) Jul 18 (15) Jul 17 (22) Jul 16 (18) Jul 15 (21) Jul 14 (20) Jul 13 (7) Jul 12 (9) Jul 11 (29) Jul 10 (19) Jul 09 (17) Jul 08 (26) Jul 07 (21) Jul 06 (18) Jul 05 (14) Jul 04 (20) Jul 03 (17) Jul 02 (24) Jul 01 (23) Jun 30 (23) Jun 29 (18) Jun 28 (16) Jun 27 (16) Jun 26 (17) Jun 25 (23) Jun 24 (32) Jun 23 (29) Jun 22 (8) Jun 21 (17) Jun 20 (25) Jun 19 (28) Jun 18 (19) Jun 17 (25) Jun 16 (23) Jun 15 (9) Jun 14 (11) Jun 13 (14) Jun 12 (22) Jun 11 (19) Jun 10 (17) Jun 09 (15) Jun 08 (16) Jun 07 (7) Jun 06 (29) Jun 05 (27) Jun 04 (24) Jun 03 (22) Jun 02 (22) Jun 01 (13) May 31 (9) May 30 (26) May 29 (19) May 28 (15) May 27 (15) May 26 (23) May 25 (13) May 24 (12) May 23 (24) May 22 (13) May 21 (21) May 20 (18) May 19 (16) May 18 (7) May 17 (12) May 16 (25) May 15 (24) May 14 (23) May 13 (19) May 12 (17) May 11 (8) May 10 (6) May 09 (14) May 08 (21) May 07 (26) May 06 (14) May 05 (14) May 04 (3) May 03 (3) May 02 (24) May 01 (13) Apr 30 (15) Apr 29 (24) Apr 28 (24) Apr 27 (11) Apr 26 (8) Apr 25 (13) Apr 24 (27) Apr 23 (15) Apr 22 (21) Apr 21 (19) Apr 20 (17) Apr 19 (8) Apr 18 (20) Apr 17 (27) Apr 16 (27) Apr 15 (21) Apr 14 (8) Apr 13 (8) Apr 12 (7) Apr 11 (7) Apr 10 (22) Apr 09 (15) Apr 08 (15) Apr 07 (17) Apr 06 (14) Apr 05 (5) Apr 04 (12) Apr 03 (19) Apr 02 (17) Apr 01 (19) Mar 31 (25) Mar 30 (13) Mar 29 (9) Mar 28 (16) Mar 27 (23) Mar 26 (22) Mar 25 (17) Mar 24 (25) Mar 23 (16) Mar 22 (13) Mar 21 (24) Mar 20 (27) Mar 19 (20) Mar 18 (24) Mar 17 (17) Mar 16 (11) Mar 15 (6) Mar 14 (20) Mar 13 (28) Mar 12 (30) Mar 11 (20) Mar 10 (21) Mar 09 (12) Mar 08 (8) Mar 07 (17) Mar 06 (20) Mar 05 (19) Mar 04 (15) Mar 03 (17) Mar 02 (8) Mar 01 (12) Feb 28 (16) Feb 27 (17) Feb 26 (8) Feb 25 (23) Feb 24 (15) Feb 23 (8) Feb 22 (10) Feb 21 (24) Feb 20 (14) Feb 19 (24) Feb 18 (19) Feb 17 (27) Feb 16 (13) Feb 15 (11) Feb 14 (15) Feb 13 (13) Feb 12 (13) Feb 11 (21) Feb 10 (16) Feb 09 (15) Feb 08 (10) Feb 07 (17) Feb 06 (21) Feb 05 (17) Feb 04 (14) Feb 03 (23) Feb 02 (5) Feb 01 (8) Jan 31 (17) Jan 30 (22) Jan 29 (23) Jan 28 (10) Jan 27 (24) Jan 26 (12) Jan 25 (9) Jan 24 (12) Jan 23 (19) Jan 22 (19) Jan 21 (14) Jan 20 (21) Jan 19 (12) Jan 18 (8) Jan 17 (20) Jan 16 (14) Jan 15 (23) Jan 14 (8) Jan 13 (20) Jan 12 (9) Jan 11 (7) Jan 10 (18) Jan 09 (11) Jan 08 (18) Jan 07 (13) Jan 06 (12) Jan 05 (12) Jan 04 (11) Jan 03 (10) Jan 02 (9) Jan 01 (9) Dec 31 (12) Dec 30 (11) Dec 29 (6) Dec 28 (9) Dec 27 (13) Dec 26 (15) Dec 25 (8) Dec 24 (6) Dec 23 (8) Dec 22 (5) Dec 21 (6) Dec 20 (14) Dec 19 (17) Dec 18 (14) Dec 17 (14) Dec 16 (13) Dec 15 (9) Dec 14 (9) Dec 13 (11) Dec 12 (16) Dec 11 (18) Dec 10 (4) Dec 09 (24) Dec 08 (11) Dec 07 (19) Dec 06 (6) Dec 05 (26) Dec 04 (15) Dec 03 (20) Dec 02 (17) Dec 01 (11) Nov 30 (10) Nov 29 (18) Nov 28 (21) Nov 27 (10) Nov 26 (22) Nov 25 (16) Nov 24 (12) Nov 23 (8) Nov 22 (18) Nov 21 (9) Nov 20 (17) Nov 19 (16) Nov 18 (16) Nov 17 (5) Nov 16 (9) Nov 15 (21) Nov 14 (17) Nov 13 (20) Nov 12 (16) Nov 11 (13) Nov 10 (9) Nov 09 (10) Nov 08 (16) Nov 07 (15) Nov 06 (18) Nov 05 (19) Nov 04 (16) Nov 03 (11) Nov 02 (5) Nov 01 (17) Oct 31 (17) Oct 30 (21) Oct 29 (9) Oct 28 (16) Oct 27 (6) Oct 26 (6) Oct 25 (16) Oct 24 (18) Oct 23 (14) Oct 22 (17) Oct 21 (10) Oct 20 (6) Oct 19 (8) Oct 18 (11) Oct 17 (12) Oct 16 (14) Oct 15 (19) Oct 14 (15) Oct 13 (11) Oct 12 (9) Oct 11 (10) Oct 10 (23) Oct 09 (13) Oct 08 (15) Oct 07 (20) Oct 06 (13) Oct 05 (4) Oct 04 (16) Oct 03 (17) Oct 02 (17) Oct 01 (20) Sep 30 (17) Sep 29 (9) Sep 28 (8) Sep 27 (14) Sep 26 (20) Sep 25 (19) Sep 24 (13) Sep 23 (11) Sep 22 (9) Sep 21 (5) Sep 20 (8) Sep 19 (21) Sep 18 (12) Sep 17 (20) Sep 16 (16) Sep 15 (10) Sep 14 (6) Sep 13 (18) Sep 12 (14) Sep 11 (24) Sep 10 (17) Sep 09 (16) Sep 08 (16) Sep 07 (10) Sep 06 (20) Sep 05 (13) Sep 04 (23) Sep 03 (14) Sep 02 (12) Sep 01 (11) Aug 31 (11) Aug 30 (13) Aug 29 (18) Aug 28 (14) Aug 27 (21) Aug 26 (10) Aug 25 (8) Aug 24 (10) Aug 23 (17) Aug 22 (15) Aug 21 (14) Aug 20 (20) Aug 19 (20) Aug 18 (7) Aug 17 (9) Aug 16 (11) Aug 15 (12) Aug 14 (14) Aug 13 (19) Aug 12 (14) Aug 11 (6) Aug 10 (12) Aug 09 (7) Aug 08 (18) Aug 07 (16) Aug 06 (16) Aug 05 (20) Aug 04 (12) Aug 03 (8) Aug 02 (12) Aug 01 (14) Jul 31 (16) Jul 30 (16) Jul 29 (11) Jul 28 (8) Jul 27 (9) Jul 26 (17) Jul 25 (20) Jul 24 (17) Jul 23 (11) Jul 22 (18) Jul 21 (7) Jul 20 (10) Jul 19 (14) Jul 18 (11) Jul 17 (15) Jul 16 (12) Jul 15 (10) Jul 14 (8) Jul 13 (8) Jul 12 (17) Jul 11 (18) Jul 10 (16) Jul 09 (13) Jul 08 (10) Jul 07 (12) Jul 06 (8) Jul 05 (16) Jul 04 (14) Jul 03 (17) Jul 02 (13) Jul 01 (16) Jun 30 (19) Jun 29 (7) Jun 28 (19) Jun 27 (21) Jun 26 (27) Jun 25 (23) Jun 24 (23) Jun 23 (12) Jun 22 (9) Jun 21 (18) Jun 20 (15) Jun 19 (24) Jun 18 (21) Jun 17 (13) Jun 16 (9) Jun 15 (9) Jun 14 (18) Jun 13 (24) Jun 12 (18) Jun 11 (23) Jun 10 (25) Jun 09 (24) Jun 08 (27) Jun 07 (5) Jun 06 (25) Jun 05 (30) Jun 04 (23) Jun 03 (22) Jun 02 (16) Jun 01 (17) May 31 (18) May 30 (19) May 29 (17) May 28 (23) May 27 (15) May 26 (10) May 25 (19) May 24 (16) May 23 (16) May 22 (27) May 21 (20) May 20 (26) May 19 (6) May 18 (8) May 17 (20) May 16 (8) May 15 (18) May 14 (5) May 13 (21) May 12 (9) May 11 (8) May 10 (12) May 09 (18) May 08 (11) May 07 (27) May 06 (12) May 05 (16) May 04 (19) May 03 (14) May 02 (18) May 01 (18) Apr 30 (25) Apr 29 (27) Apr 28 (11) Apr 27 (10) Apr 26 (18) Apr 25 (10) Apr 24 (29) Apr 23 (29) Apr 22 (14) Apr 21 (15) Apr 20 (20) Apr 19 (22) Apr 18 (16) Apr 17 (32) Apr 16 (12) Apr 15 (21) Apr 14 (21) Apr 13 (15) Apr 12 (13) Apr 11 (14) Apr 10 (16) Apr 09 (20) Apr 08 (36) Apr 07 (22) Apr 06 (11) Apr 05 (28) Apr 04 (20) Apr 03 (29) Apr 02 (32) Apr 01 (18) Mar 31 (12) Mar 30 (9) Mar 29 (15) Mar 28 (22) Mar 27 (24) Mar 26 (17) Mar 25 (17) Mar 24 (13) Mar 23 (5) Mar 22 (12) Mar 21 (15) Mar 20 (18) Mar 19 (19) Mar 18 (16) Mar 17 (10) Mar 16 (6) Mar 15 (18) Mar 14 (24) Mar 13 (18) Mar 12 (18) Mar 11 (17) Mar 10 (13) Mar 09 (12) Mar 08 (18) Mar 07 (25) Mar 06 (16) Mar 05 (16) Mar 04 (22) Mar 03 (17) Mar 02 (6) Mar 01 (23) Feb 29 (19) Feb 28 (25) Feb 27 (26) Feb 26 (23) Feb 25 (12) Feb 24 (13) Feb 23 (15) Feb 22 (26) Feb 21 (31) Feb 20 (12) Feb 19 (21) Feb 18 (15) Feb 17 (10) Feb 16 (15) Feb 15 (19) Feb 14 (15) Feb 13 (25) Feb 12 (20) Feb 11 (9) Feb 10 (7) Feb 09 (28) Feb 08 (20) Feb 07 (22) Feb 06 (20) Feb 05 (19) Feb 04 (14) Feb 03 (16) Feb 02 (28) Feb 01 (37) Jan 31 (27) Jan 30 (31) Jan 29 (18) Jan 28 (14) Jan 27 (10) Jan 26 (18) Jan 25 (26) Jan 24 (34) Jan 23 (21) Jan 22 (21) Jan 21 (18) Jan 20 (18) Jan 19 (18) Jan 18 (26) Jan 17 (24) Jan 16 (23) Jan 15 (30) Jan 14 (20) Jan 13 (18) Jan 12 (24) Jan 11 (11) Jan 10 (23) Jan 09 (22) Jan 08 (17) Jan 07 (17) Jan 06 (9) Jan 05 (18) Jan 04 (15) Jan 03 (19) Jan 02 (14) Jan 01 (6) Dec 31 (12) Dec 30 (4) Dec 29 (15) Dec 28 (11) Dec 27 (7) Dec 26 (10) Dec 25 (16) Dec 24 (13) Dec 23 (16) Dec 22 (11) Dec 21 (26) Dec 20 (28) Dec 19 (14) Dec 18 (25) Dec 17 (23) Dec 16 (19) Dec 15 (22) Dec 14 (38) Dec 13 (26) Dec 12 (25) Dec 11 (27) Dec 10 (31) Dec 09 (15) Dec 08 (30) Dec 07 (31) Dec 06 (27) Dec 05 (38) Dec 04 (25) Dec 03 (27) Dec 02 (15) Dec 01 (36) Nov 30 (23) Nov 29 (17) Nov 28 (23) Nov 27 (13) Nov 26 (16) Nov 25 (14) Nov 24 (18) Nov 23 (21) Nov 22 (21) Nov 21 (24) Nov 20 (20) Nov 19 (23) Nov 18 (17) Nov 17 (17) Nov 16 (34) Nov 15 (25) Nov 14 (17) Nov 13 (21) Nov 12 (18) Nov 11 (9) Nov 10 (15) Nov 09 (9) Nov 08 (9) Nov 07 (12) Nov 06 (8) Nov 05 (4) Oct 29 (1) Oct 01 (1) Jul 29 (1) May 11 (1) Jul 11 (1) Tom Shone at The New Statesman: Casablanca is best described as cinematic magic that occurred accidentally on purpose, writes Rode in pointed rebuke of the film critic Andrew Sarris, for whom the picture was merely the happiest of happy accidents and Curtiz the most divisive exception to auteur theory. Auteur theorys point-man in America, Sarris could no more countenance the idea that it might be the theory rather than Curtiz that is at fault placing him in the Lightly Likeable category than the old communist apparatchiks could conclude that their system was at fault rather than the people. Curtiz was a cinematic genius said the screenwriter Robert Buckner who could make a picture when he didnt know what it was about. How can you proclaim your boy an artist, his every work bearing his imprint as breath animates the body, when he is responsible for films as wildly different as the tough-knuckled Angels with Dirty Faces, the sweeping Charge of the Light Brigade, the effervescent The Adventures of Robin Hood, the svelte Mildred Pierce, and the most dearly be-loved film of all time, Casablanca. Oh, and White Christmas? more here. A good Italian meal is easy enough to come by in San Francisco. But a great Italian meal, now that's a little harder. And then there's the Italian meal sooo good that Anderson Cooper broke his no-food-on-Instagram rule to share a taste of the pizza. Welcome to Che Fico. The newest addition to the ever-bustling Divisadero corridor, Che Fico's second story location could easily be overlooked by oblivious passersby. And that would be too bad, because they're truly serving some the best rustic Italian food we've had. They should put a sign over the door: Pizza Orgasms Here. (Sorry, Pizza Orgasmica.) Ascend the long narrow staircase and enter to a vibrant scene where you're likely to notice the wallpaper first. Strewn with quirky illustrations of figs, the wallcovering is a nod to the restaurant's name, which literally translates to "What a Fig." Che Fico is also Italian slang for "Oh, that's cool." And it is. Massive skylights peer down from soaring ceilings; there's a large L-shaped bar where you will inevitably wait for a table (reservations are already booked a month out); and a glass-walled salumi room offers a peep at the cured meatswhich reminds us, you're here to eat. Chef David Nayfeld and James Beard Awardwinning pastry chef Angela Pinkerton met while working at NYC's Eleven Madison Park (read: that's a big deal); Nayfeld also opened Joel Robuchon's restaurant at the MGM Las Vegas (another BFD). The team has been laboring over this restaurant for the past four years, and you can taste the effort in their perfect handmade pastas, pizzas, and pastries. Click through below for some of the best, must-order dishes. Tip: Order a bit of it all. (Photography by Sarah Chorey) The menu's Cucina Ebraica section is dedicated to the Judeo-Roman cuisine of Italythink "peasant comfort foods," in honor of Nayfeld's parents, who fled communist Russia for Rome's Jewish community. Our favorite: the suppli al telefono, a rice croquette filled with provolone cheese and tomato sauce. // Che Fico, 838 Divisadero St. (Fillmore), chefico.com Redding, Calif.-- An investigation that started with the murder of a Redding man in Reno, Nevada has led to the connection between several different high profile incidents in and around Shasta County over the past few months. All of the following information comes from a 9-page document that details the full investigation by the Redding Police Department into the connection between these incidents. Those incidents in question are the Murder of Patrick McDaniel in Reno, The Discovery of a C4 like explosive on Hiatt drive in Redding across from Buckeye School of the arts on February 15th, The discovery of Hundreds of pounds of explosives at a Happy Valley residence on February 27th, and finally the robbery of a Shasta County Sheriffs Office storage facility on Oasis road in Redding. The men in question in this incident are Justin Greene, Joseph Stauffer, and Daniel Kuykendall. They along with Patrick McDaniel were able to put together explosives and weapons to try and sell them in a prearranged deal in Reno. The document authored by Redding Police also carefully records several interviews with this gentleman as well as citing several witnesses to the different actions of these 4 men. The weapons sale included several firearms, high capacity magazines, and explosives all gathered by the men in question over the month of January and beginning of February. The sale of arms in Nevada resulted in the Death of Patrick McDaniel and thats when the buying party stole his car and drove away with all of the items. Police in Reno arrested Michael Kizer for the possession of those items but it is unclear at this time if he is a suspect in the murder of McDaniel. Joseph Stauffer was also arrested in Reno at the scene of McDaniels death for stealing money off of McDaniel as well as deleting all the contents of his phone to erase evidence linking all of the crimes together. After he was released he returned to Redding where he lives. The report is unclear about any further details in Reno due to the Reno Police Department handling all the details of that investigation. Reno Police then contacted Redding Police and the Shasta County Sheriffs office due to the fact that the weapons and high capacity magazines were labeled with SCSO for Shasta County Sheriffs Office. In a statement to Redding Police, Stauffer said that McDaniel alone broke into the storage facility alone and received no help from Stauffer. He did, however, say that he helped McDaniel hide those weapons on his property specifically under his house. He was also able to hide bricks of C4 and other explosives in a dryer that didnt work on his porch in order to keep them separate for safety. This is where the explosives found on a Happy Valley residence as well as at a residence on Hiatt drive comes into the picture. Justin Greene who is currently in Jail is suspected along with Daniel Kuykendall of stealing those explosives after a robbery at the home in Happy Valley where later on explosives were found as a result of the investigation. The report alleges that the two were looking for a toolkit that they could steal from the home to make a complete set. Upon entering the back barn of the house they discovered blasting caps, detonation cord and an explosive like C4. The report says this happened sometime in mid-January. Through jail interviews and recordings, the police were then able to piece together that Kuykendall and Greene had ditched some of the explosives in a non-working toilet and lawnmower in the yard of a home on Hiatt Drive. The report also mentions that this was a favorite hiding spot for Greene for things he had stolen. The McAlexanders (The couple who lives at the home) also knew about that because they suspected that Greene had something to do with the explosives according to the report. While the report isnt exactly clear about the how the rest of the explosives were then connected with Stauffer and McDaniel it also saying that Kuykendall was the connection between the two sides. Action news now was able to make contact with Daniel Kuykendall who said about the incident [Redding Police] came over here with the bomb squad and clogged up the neighborhood for 2 hours... didn't find one stitch of evidence. He has maintained his innocence throughout this investigation even walking out of an interview at one point demanding an attorney says the report. Through different jail visits with various friends and relatives, Greene tells people to stay away from the area and that the couple that lived at the home had no idea it was there. While it doesnt give an exact date the report alludes that the explosives were most likely left at the home around January 31st, which was 16 days before they would be found. In one jail visit, one of his relatives mentions that they should grab the explosives and blow a hole in the side of the Shasta County Jail to free Greene. On February 15th a note was left on the McAlexanders door saying that there were explosives on the property, which is when Redding police were contacted. That incident resulted in the closure and evacuation of Buckeye School of the Arts and was dealt with by the Shasta County Bomb Squad. There they found all of the explosives left by Kuykendall and Greene. That also linked Redding Police to the home in Happy Valley where the explosives were stolen. Though the home was under new ownership, the original owner was according to the report a Shasta County Sheriffs office investigator who brought home those explosives as evidence in his cases. Through this investigation, those explosives were discovered on February 27th prompting the evacuation of a half-mile radius around the site. This forced law enforcement officials on March 6th to burn down the barn containing the explosives rendering the remaining explosives safe. In total, the men involved face 20 charges between them including possession of a destructive device, first-degree residential burglary, and importation into the state of an assault weapon just to name a few. The next court date for the three is set for May 1st. For most pension schemes, cyber risk is primarily managed by their providers, such as administrators, investment managers, actuaries. For those schemes, understanding third parties security controls and any subsequent cyber risks is essential. But the current practice of simply asking generic security questions is resulting in trustees having to take on a major project while potentially ending up no better informed of the risks. Guidance Paul McGlone, partner in Aon's retirement business, said: "Some of the guidance from the Regulator is quite detailed. But while it's helpful to have a well thought out scope of what you're looking for, trustees may find themselves having to assess encryption standards, penetration testing and countless policies and sub-policies. That isn't helpful. Trustees should not need to become cyber experts. But they do need a way of determining how much detail to go into - and when to stop. The approach needs to be proportionate to the risks and the size of the scheme." Where schemes are running their own services, such as an in-house administration team or investment function, the risks can be quite different. Data Onno Janssen, CEO Aon Global Risk Consulting & Cyber Solutions EMEA, said: "Whether pension schemes are administered in-house, or through a mix of third parties, the responsibility for the security of the sensitive data remains with trustees. Therefore they should be able to describe how their schemes sensitive data is securely stored, processed, accessed, and shared. If internal functions or third party providers are unable to add detail to that, then it might be prudent to dig a little deeper and consider engaging the help of security experts. As well as assessing providers, trustees also need to be alive to the other aspects of cyber risk. Cyber Risk Paul McGlone said: Regulator has highlighted Incident Response Plans, and we fully support that. We are working with schemes to put these in place for themselves, as well as understanding those set up by their providers. Wider than this, we suggest trustees should be looking at insurance cover, as a typical trustee liability policy won't cover many of the costs arising from a cyber attack." Onno Janssen said: Its crucial to have an overall framework to deal with cyber risk. That way issues such as insurance don't get forgotten. Aon has developed a six part cyber resilience framework that we use across all types of organisations. This framework allows us to deal with cyber threats in a robust fashion - from assessing and quantifying the risk, testing and improving controls, transferring the risk away from the balance sheet by having appropriate insurance, and finally responding to an event or incident. It ensures that in the rush to deal with the issue you don't miss out an important step." Paul McGlone said: Not the least risk are the trustees themselves. Even if providers have great controls, it only takes one trustee to be attacked for the whole system to be compromised. There are some simple steps that trustees can take, and Aons Trustee Security Policy addresses this, allowing schemes to adapt and adopt for their own trustees, and enabling them to have a common set of standards among themselves." By Dale Critchley, Policy Manager, Aviva Despite that, it has caused some uproar that employees and employers will now have to contribute more to their pension. I dont want to appear flippant. I know that for some, times are hard and being asked to contribute more to a pension is going to be a big ask for some people and the companies they work for. But we need to think long-term. Keeping minimum contributions at 2% wouldnt help many people. A pension pot based on 2% contributions would be very small by the time someone retires. Our figures show an average earner could end up with just 30,000*. Raising contributions to 5% and that same person could see a pot of 66,000. Taking it one step further and raising contributions to 8% (as they will from April 2019) and the same average earner could end up with a pot worth 101,000. The difference increased contributions can make is clear and its important we focus on the positives that a workplace pension has to offer, instead just looking at the affordability challenges. Which brings me to the crystal ball. There is a real sense of deja-vu at the moment. Back in 2012 when auto-enrolment was first introduced, there were a lot of predictions being made. We were told opt-outs could be as high as 30%, pension providers would turn their backs on smaller businesses and there wouldnt be enough advisers to support all the employers that would need to set up a scheme. None of these things happened, which is why we need to put the crystal ball away now. No one really knows how the British public are going to react just look at the Brexit vote. Auto-enrolment has been incredibly successful and theres little reason to think that wont continue. It works because people do not need to act. Its one of the rare times in life when doing nothing pays. Just by staying in their workplace pension scheme, they will pay in more, their employer will pay in more and the government will pay in more through tax relief. There are very few, if any, financial products that offer this type of reward. Miami-based Aeronautical Engineers Inc (AEI) has signed a contract for a fourth CRJ200 SF freighter conversion for Mexico-based carrier Aeronaves TSM (TSM). Modification work will start in June of 2018 and delivery of the converted aircraft is scheduled for October this year. The work will be carried out at Commercial Jets Dothan, Alabama facility. The AEI CRJ200 SF has a capacity of eight 61.5 x 88 containers or pallets. Ultimately, TSM plans to operate many more similar freighters, said AEI. The carrier currently operates nine AEI MD-80SF series and two CRJ200 SF freighters, and is the converters largest Central American customer. TSM serves customers throughout the Americas including the US, Canada, Mexico, Guatemala, El Salvador, Nicaragua, Costa Rica and Panama. Other aircraft in its cargo fleet include 25 Metro IIIs, 4 Convair 640s, six DC-9-30s and two DC-9-15s. Read more freighter conversion and MRO news Share this story Hyundai Power Transformers will begin a $33 million expansion of its Montgomery facility this July, which is expected to create 86 jobs. Company officials say the expansion will increase production of its power transformers by more than 60 percent. Gov. Kay Ivey called the move a "significant investment" in the state. Company officials say the expansion to a "smart factory" will include a new training facility. HPT, built in 2011, is the Korean company's first production plant established in the U.S. within the electric power industry and currently employs 300 people. It can produce 14,000 MVA (mega volt amps) annually, or 80 units of power transformers. The additional jobs will include additional sales labor force in preparation for expanding its market exposure to high voltage circuit breakers, rotary machines and power distributors. Construction for the expansion on Folmar Parkway in Interstate Industrial Park will begin in July with expanded production beginning in December 2019. Alabama Commerce Secretary Greg Canfield said the state has worked hard to develop long-lasting relationships with Korean companies. "This expansion will serve to deepen the company's roots in the state and extend our partnership to a new level," Canfield said. Company officials said the moves take the company one step closer to achieving its plan of generating $200 million in revenue by 2021. HPT President/COO J.S. Kim said Alabama Industrial Development Training, as well as the state's two and four-year colleges, have helped power its workforce development. "HPT is proud of the mutual support and progress in the ongoing relations of HPT and the city, County of Montgomery, and state agencies in providing both technical and production job opportunities in Alabama. The power transformers produced at HPT requires a highly technical developed workforce," Kim said. Hyundai Electric recently announced that it is acquiring 100 percent ownership of HPT from Hyundai Heavy Industries to "accelerate its strategic approach towards the U.S. transformer market," according to a statement. Those interested in applying can email recruit@hhiamerica.com. Hyundai Motor America has announced a plan to bring usage-based insurance to its drivers, which it says will mean lower premiums in the future. Hyundai is working with Verisk, a data analytics provider in insurance, financial and energy financial services, among other fields. According to Hyundai, the company is now part of the Verisk Data Exchange, which means it will supply Verisk with driving data via the Blue Link connected car service, from car owners who consent. Blue Link connected car services are now available on the entire Hyundai lineup for 2018. What this means is Verisk will collect data on how individual drivers move around - how fast, how far, etc. This will allow for a more personalized calculation of the risk that all insurance companies formulate when offering coverage. Hyundai says this will help reduce insurance costs. "Our alliance with Verisk will enable new value-added services for our customers," said Manish Mehrotra, director of digital business planning and connected operations for Hyundai Motor America. Hyundai said later this year, owners and lessees will gain access to their Verisk Driving Score, a metric that assesses individual driving behavior. If a driver opts in, insurers can use the score from the Verisk Data Exchange for usage-based insurance programs, available in 42 states and the District of Columbia. Driving tips and reports can also be provided to customers to encourage safer driving. Hyundai owner consent will be required to provide data to the exchange or individual insurers. President Donald Trump's two-day Florida summit with Japanese Prime Minister Shinzo Abe kicked off today, with ramifications for regional stability related to the Korean peninsula and China. But what kind of effect will the talks have for Alabama's Japanese corporate citizens? Japan constitutes the third largest source of Foreign Direct Investment (FDI) into the United States, with its 2016 total exceeding $424 billion, according to the White House. In fact, Japan was the top international creator of U.S. jobs last year, with investments directly creating more than 860,000 American jobs, nearly half of which are high-wage manufacturing jobs. But at the same time, Japan has a trade surplus of about $70 billion last year with the U.S., according to CNN Money. Welcome Prime Minister Abe! pic.twitter.com/538EYyfWDq Donald J. Trump (@realDonaldTrump) April 17, 2018 For Alabama, Japan is the fifth largest market nation for goods made here, importing $682.6 million last year, a nearly 30 percent jump year over year. Then there is Japanese investment here. Honda, for example, employs about 4,000 employees in Lincoln. Alabama's newest automaker, the $1.6 billion Mazda-Toyota plant announced in January, is planned for Huntsville. There are also other Japanese-based corporations in Alabama across various fields. Various reports have Trump seeking a better trade deal with Japan, at the same time U.S. officials are looking to get back into the Trans-Pacific Partnership (TPP), which Trump pulled out of last year. On April 12, Trump tweeted that the U.S. is "working to make a deal with the biggest of those nations, Japan, who has hit us hard on trade for years!" Why should the U.S. give the trade pact a second look? As Reuters points out, it may help blunt expected economic gains in the region by China. For Abe, he's looking to exempt Japan from Trump's recently imposed steel and aluminum tariffs. According to the Associated Press, Larry Kudlow, the director of the National Economic Council, says issuing Japan a waiver and opening negotiations on a new trade agreement are "all on the table." Most other key U.S. allies, including Australia, Canada, the European Union, and Mexico have been granted exemptions. At the same time, Abe is looking to gain some points back home at a time when he's in the middle of a land scandal. Politico speculates that Abe might ask for something in return if prodded by Trump on trade concessions. "Why not seek tax breaks for Honda, Nissan and Toyota, which, by extension, provide more than 1.5 million U.S. jobs in places like Tennessee and Alabama? How about a preferential scheme for U.S.-Japan technology sharing?" Politico asks. When Deidre Downs was crowned Miss America more than a decade ago, the idea of legalized gay marriage and Miss America later marrying her same-sex partner in Alabama would have been an unimaginable future. Times have changed. Former Miss Alabama 2004 and Miss America 2005 Deidre Downs Gunn married her girlfriend, attorney Abbott Jones, in a ceremony Saturday, April 14, at the Birmingham Museum of Art. They flew out Sunday night from Atlanta for a honeymoon in Ireland. By Monday morning, their wedding was the talk of Alabama. About 200 people who attended were sworn to secrecy until after the event, with People magazine having an exclusive agreement to share the news. Deidre, a UAB obstetrician-gynecologist specializing in reproductive endocrinology and infertility, and Abbott shared their joy from their honeymoon in a statement to AL.com on Monday: "When we turned to recess down the aisle after the ceremony and really took notice of all of the family and friends who had gathered to celebrate our marriage, we felt so blessed to be surrounded by so much love and support," they wrote in a joint statement. Their union may have left Alabama surprised and a little stunned, but perhaps also wowed by the boldness and beauty of the ceremony. "It was beautiful; it was gorgeous," said Nan Teninbaum, president of the Miss Alabama Pageant, who attended the ceremony. "I love and I support Deidre. I wish her the very best of everything." The ceremony was officiated by an openly lesbian minister, the Rev. Jennifer Sanders, pastor of Beloved Community Church in Birmingham. "It was a beautiful wedding," Sanders said. "They are a wonderful, happy couple. It was a joy to perform the ceremony." Some observers saw it as a breakthrough, a potentially game-changing moment in the fight for gay and lesbian rights in America and in one of the most conservative states in the nation. Deidre is a 2002 graduate of Samford University, a Baptist-affiliated school where she earned her bachelor's degree in history. Samford was founded by the Alabama Baptist Convention, and Southern Baptists in the state and nationally remain on the record as staunchly opposed to gay marriage. "I think it has a huge impact because Samford is so proud of her," said Brit Blalock, founder of SAFE Samford, a gay and lesbian alumni group which has lobbied for fair treatment and representation at the school. "That's one of their prize graduates. She's done so much for the community. For the LBGTQ community at Samford, it's nice to see her being so authentic." Deidre, in a statement to AL.com while on her honeymoon, responded. "One of my favorite quotes is by Coco Chanel," she said. "'Beauty begins the moment you decide to be yourself.' It can take courage to be who you are and to realize your worth as a person, but once you do it is such a beautiful and freeing thing. And once you do, that allows you to live with authenticity and compassion -- for yourself and for others." Blalock noted that Seasons, the alumni magazine at Samford that prints alumni wedding announcements, declined to print a wedding announcement submitted last year for two men who were married. She wonders if the same would hold true if Deidre submitted her same-sex wedding announcement. A spokesman for Samford University, contacted Monday, said the university did not immediately plan to make a statement about Deidre and her marriage. Will Deidre's coming-out affect her perception at Samford? "I'm sure there are some people who are shocked and may re-evaluate how they feel about her," Blalock said. "That would be a shame, because she has established herself as an outstanding individual. This new information doesn't change anything about her character, in my opinion." Blalock, a 2008 Samford graduate, remembers attending the Miss Alabama ceremony on the Samford campus when Deidre was crowned Miss Alabama in 2004. "She was very well-beloved on campus, talented, beautiful," Blalock said. "Samford was very proud to lift her name up. I hope they are still proud because she is a phenomenal person. During her time as Miss America, she was campaigning for cancer research." Now Deidre can be a role model for lesbians unashamed of their sexuality. "It makes me very proud," Blalock said. As a teenager and young adult, Deidre was a member of Baptist Church of the Covenant in Birmingham. "She's a wonderful person and a fabulous doctor," said the Rev. Sarah Shelton, pastor of Baptist Church of the Covenant the past 16 years. "I want nothing but her happiness. I am very proud of her." For the newly married couple, their wedding was not a political statement, but an expression of love. "Abbott and Deidre's wedding was a classic Southern fairy tale -- a photographer's dream," said Kelli Hewett Taylor, owner of Kelli & Daniel Taylor Photography. "We loved being part of it. Every detail was soft, beautiful and elegant. Those two are so in love. There's an undeniable electricity when they are together. I think you can really see that, in person or in camera." Abbott said in a statement to AL.com: "Deidre is the most beautiful person I've ever met, both inside and out," she said. "I have no doubt she will continue to be a role model to so many, especially to young women who can look to her and see that regardless of who they love, they can be beautiful, intelligent, and confident in their own skin." A 70-year-old man was killed Monday in a two-vehicle crash in Hale County. Alabama State Troopers on Tuesday identified the victim as Jimmy Allen Hare. He was 70. The crash happened at 2:45 p.m. on Alabama 61 about two miles north of Uniontown, said Senior Trooper Reginal King. Hare, of Greensboro, was killed when the 2012 Toyota Camry he was driving collided with a 2000 Chevrolet C33. Hare was pronounced dead at the scene. The driver of the Chevrolet, 18-year-old Patrick Thomas Brewer, was taken to UAB Hospital with undisclosed injuries. The crash remains under investigation. An Alabama evangelist faces seven new felony charges on child sex crimes, according to jail records. Acton Bowen, the 37-year-old Gadsden native and founder of Acton Bowen Outreach Ministries, was booked into the Etowah County Detention Center shortly before 10:30 a.m. Tuesday. Jail records show Bowen is charged with two counts of second-degree sodomy, two counts of enticing a child for immoral purposes and three counts of second-degree sexual abuse. His bond in Etowah County is set at $500,000, records show. Sheriff Todd Entrekin said in a news release that Bowen allegedly sexually abused four juveniles between the ages of 12 and 17 over a period of many years. Several of the victims are adults who are just now reporting these crimes. Bowen was jailed in Etowah County after surrendering to the U.S. Marshals Gulf Coast Regional Fugitive Task Force about 10 a.m. The newest charges are believed to involve more than one victim. Just last week, Hoover police arrested Bowen - who has described himself as a speaker, best-selling author and visionary - on charges of second-degree sodomy, enticing a child to enter a vehicle or house for immoral purposes and second-degree sex abuse. His victim in Hoover is a boy under the age of 16 and over the age of 12. Court records in the Jefferson County case say he engaged in deviate sexual intercourse with the teen boy, and also enticed him into getting into a 2010 Jeep Wrangler for the purpose of sodomy. Police have said the Hoover victim is a family acquaintance of Acton Bowen. "While working this case, our detectives developed great working relationships with investigators from the Etowah County Sheriff's Office, as well as several other agencies,'' Hoover police Capt. Gregg Rector said Tuesday. "When we met with the first victim, our worst fear was that there could be more young boys who had been by molested and preyed upon by Acton Bowen. It appears our worst fears are now becoming reality. Sadly, this case continues to mushroom with each passing day." Bowen has denied the allegations. "I have not done what I am accused of and have not acted inappropriately in any way,'' Bowen said in a press statement to AL.com issued last week. "My family and I trust the legal system and the people who are entrusted with the duty of protecting each of our rights. I believe the truth will stand and I will be vindicated of this false accusation. We ask that each of you keep everyone involved in this process in your prayers." The day after Bowen was released from jail, his wife of three years filed for divorce in Etowah County. Ashley Bowen's divorce complaint mentions the criminal charges against her husband and notes, "she has fully cooperated with law enforcement with regards to any information requested from her related to the investigation of the crimes for which (Acton Bowen) is alleged to have committed." In addition to the divorce complaint, Ashley Bowen also asked for emergency temporary possession of their Etowah County home. ""She fears for her immediate safety from (her husband) and any third parties that may attempt to contact (her husband) as a result of the crimes for which he has been alleged to have committed." On Friday, two of the ministry's board members stepped down, include attorney Trenton Garmon, who worked as an attorney for former Alabama Chief Justice Roy Moore during his failed campaign bid for U.S. senate last year. Garmon said he and board member Josh Dodd maintained, among others, two very clear standards which they asked Acton to abide by. The first was to maintain on all his electronic devices a paid internet monitor program called "Covenant Eyes". That was intended to protect Bowen from any allegation that he had viewed or was viewing pornography. And to protect the integrity of the ministry. Garmon said he personally received reports each month via email and never had a report that indicated any issue. As a second means of ensuring the sexual integrity of the ministry was protected, Dodd and Garmon requested that Acton implement an advanced version of the Billy Graham Rule which they called the "Guardian Policy." "We requested that he never be alone with any female other than his wife. And we requested that he never be alone with a male minor which I considered to be someone under 16 years old,'' Garmon said. "I was told that these minimums were being followed. Yet, in light of the allegation, it appears that the Guardian Policy was not always honored. This is not to imply criminal guilt by any means, yet our policy was not abided by. As you may be aware he has publicly denied the criminal allegations." Still, Garmon said, given the weight and gravity of the allegations," it does not seem wise nor prudent to maintain my status as a Board Member for the Acton Bowen Outreach. Mr. Dodd is of the same opinion and is also stepping down from the Board of ABO." "A priority of this sheriff's office is to always protect those who cannot protect themselves," Entrekin said. "This investigation is very active and ongoing. Additional charges are to be expected." Upon release, Bowen is to have no contact with the victims, no unsupervised contact with anyone under 18 years old, must surrender his passport and will be supervised by Etowah County Community Corrections. Etowah authorities thanked the Hoover Police Department, Shelby County Department of Human Resources, James M. Barrie Center for Children, FBI and the US Marshal's Gulf Coast Regional Fugitive Task Force. Anyone who feels they have information concerning this is asked to contact investigator Brandi Fuller at 256-546-2825. This story will be updated as more information is released. A man sought in a Jefferson County shooting that left his ex-wife on life support is now in custody. Dereck Jamaille Walker, 46, turned himself in Tuesday in Pensacola, said Jefferson County sheriff's Chief Deputy Randy Christian. He faces charges in the critical wounding of 45-year-old Habibba Moneque Walker, a mother of three. "He provided a confession and the gun used was recovered,'' Christian said. He is in the custody of the Escambia County Sheriff's Office. Extradition procedures will begin, and he will be transported back to Jefferson county when the process is complete. Authorities said he was pulled over in a traffic stop, confessed to the shooting and told lawmen they could find the gun in the glove box. Jefferson County sheriff's deputies and rescue workers were dispatched just before 8 a.m. to a home in the 300 block of Trenton Street on a reported shooting. When they arrived, they found the victim suffering with critical injuries, Christian said. The investigation showed that the victim's ex-husband broke into the home where the victim lived with her children. The two boys saw their father coming in the window with a gun and fled to the neighbor's house. Two shots were heard a short time later. The victim was trying to run out the back door when shot two times. The suspect then fled the scene in a silver Acura before deputies arrived. Habibba Walker remains on life support. Christian said she is not expected to survive. Friends and family said they are shocked by the shooting. They describe Habibba Walker, a nurse's assistant at the VA Hospital, as an angel on earth. Habibba Walker "She is my best friend and I was saddened and hurt when I heard the news it broke my heart,'' said cousin Tennelle Morris. "I couldn't understand why somebody so kind-hearted would be treated in such a way." "BiBi is an angel,'' said co-worker Christina Patterson, "and I'm not saying that because she was my friend. She just really was." Christian said they found two domestic violence reports and a protection from abuse order from 2011, but said the couple later reconciled. In the petition for protection from abuse, Habibba Walker wrote that her husband had punched her, slapped her, made harassing telephone calls to her and threatened to kill her. Dereck Walker had to complete a domestic violence intervention program, which he did in 2012. His group leader noted that initially Dereck Walker was focused on his wife's behavior rather than taking responsibility for his own behavior, The group leader went on to say that Dereck Walker was able to identify more high-risk situations that he handled without violence. "He continues to have male privilege issues,'' he wrote, "but reports being able to walk away instead of allowing his emotions to control his behavior." In 2016, Dereck Walker wrote a letter to the court that read, "We are considering reconciling our differences. Our 7-year-old sons need their father daily. They are almost running over her and acting out in school. They always say how much they miss their father. "Also, every time you watch the news, the youth are acting as if they lost their minds. So I really need to be in my childrens' life daily and guide them in a more perfect direction. Please dismiss the protection order so we can raise our children properly. It has been over four years with no incident. I have learned much discipline and self-control and discipline skills from the classes your referred me to. Thanks for the help." The case was dismissed in October 2016. Christian said they reconciled, but then eventually divorced in December 2017. Morris said investigators believe she was the last person to speak with Habibba Walker and said her cousin did not express any concern. She said the couple had been married 25 years. "She is a loving mother, a loving wife, a loving sister and cousin,'' Morris said. "She was just promoted on her job she received a couple of awards for best attitude customer service and how she treated her patients." Morris said her cousin lived for her three boys - one who is in his early 20s. "She is very outgoing,'' she said. "She enjoys being around people. She enjoys helping people. She always puts others before herself." The former Alabama prison guard suspected in a string of violent sexual assaults in at least three states has been linked by DNA to previously-unsolved crimes in Homewood and Birmingham. Matthew Lee Moore, a 48-year-old former corrections officer at the St. Clair Correctional Facility, was arrested by police in Georgia in late March on multiple charges related to an alleged sexual assault that happened more than two years ago in Fulton County. He has since been charged with two additional sexual assaults for a total of three in Sandy Springs and Cobb County and is a suspect with DNA evidence in three others in Alabama and Florida. Detectives believe that there may be many other victims who have yet to come forward and on Tuesday asked that they do so. Sandy Springs police on Tuesday had a press conference in Georgia. A Homewood detective along with a sergeant from the Jefferson County Sheriff's Office Metro Area Crime Center were in attendance, as well as representatives from the FBI, the Fulton County District Attorney's Office and the Cobb County Police Department. Moore, who lived in a Springville trailer not far from the prison, had worked for the Alabama Department of Corrections since 2001. He immediately resigned his position upon his arrest while he was at work. "It's hard to believe there are people out there amongst us that are this twisted," said Chief Deputy Randy Christian of the Jefferson County Sheriff's Office. "I'm sure this one has hurt more than we know about yet. The good news is his reign of terror is over." In the first Georgia case, authorities charged Moore with aggravated sodomy, false imprisonment and assault with the intent to commit rape of a female victim in Sandy Springs. He is now charged in Georgia with a 2010 sexual assault that took place on Hammond Drive in Sandy Springs, police said Tuesday. The new charges against him include impersonating a police officer, rape, aggravated sodomy, false imprisonment, possession of a firearm during the commission of a felony, and aggravated assault with intent to rape. He remains jailed in the Fulton County Jail. Authorities tell AL.com that DNA links Moore to a 2008 attack at a Homewood motel and a similar crime in 2010 at a Birmingham motel. Homewood police Sgt. John Carr said that agency's case happened at the Econo Lodge on Oxmoor Road. The victim, a prostitute, had a male customer come to her room. He started to assault her, but she was able to pull a gun and then shot him. The suspect fled the scene and it is unclear if he sought medical treatment, but his blood was left behind. Investigators were never able to identify him. The Birmingham case, said Birmingham police Lt. Pete Williston, happened in 2010 at a hotel on U.S. 280. He said additional details weren't immediately available, but said DNA also helped identified Moore as a potential suspect in their case. They have not, however, been able to locate the victim in the nearly eight-year-old case but the investigation is ongoing. In November 2017, the sheriff's Metro Area Crime Center became involved in the case of what they describe as a multi-state serial rapist. Authorities said they were initially contacted by the Sandy Springs Police Department after a CODIS hit came back connecting a 2015 rape in Sandy Springs to CODIS hits for the Homewood attack and the rape in Birmingham, Christian said. In November 2017, Jefferson County's Metro Area Crime Center became involved in a case involving a multi-state serial rapist. Authorities said they were initially contacted by the Sandy Springs Police Department after DNA connecting a 2015 rape in Sandy Springs to the Homewood attack and the rape in Birmingham. Police linked the DNA evidence using the Combined DNA Index System, better known as CODIS. The CODIS system stores and tracks DNA information to allow law enforcement investigators to cross-reference the specimens. All 50 states are part of the CODIS database, which Alabama joined in 1995. DNA is collected from all felony arrestees and sent to ADFS. In 2017 alone, the department matched more than 700 offenders to unsolved cases. Members of Jefferson County's Metro Area Crime Center from Homewood, Vestavia and Birmingham assisted in coordinating the local investigations with the Sandy Springs investigation. To date, Moore has been connected to six rapes by CODIS hits. Sandy Springs assembled a task force made up of all agencies that had cases connected by CODIS hits, along with the FBI. The task force met in Georgia in December 2017 and established an operational plan. In March, a 64-year-old victim was assaulted in Jupiter, Florida. Information developed by investigators led them to the employee housing area of the St. Clair County Correctional Facility, which is where Moore was taken into custody without incident. The Metro Area Crime Center assisted with Identifying a suspect based off information obtained through the course of the investigation. In addition, the MACC provided local support and access to local resources which aided the Sandy Springs Police Department in the execution of multiple search warrants and the arrest of the offender. The MACC has also assisted with the investigation into the offenses which occurred in the 2008 Homewood rape and the 2010 Birmingham rape. Sandy Springs Deputy Chief of Police Keith Zgonc told Fox 5 in Atlanta that "This case is a perfect example of how federal, state, local law enforcement can partner, work well together, coordinate their efforts and solve a case that's very important to solve." "Even though charges have been filed in this case,'' the chief said, "this case is considered an active investigation and investigators believes there are potentially more victims out there. Regardless of how these encounters were arranged these crimes are violent, serious, and we're asking for any victims to come forwards and corporate with authorities." Anyone who has been a victim of a sexual assault or an attempted assault by Moore are asked to contact Detective Will Johnson at 770-551-3314. A 48-year-old Selma woman has been convicted of stabbing another woman during a 2016 fight over a man. Dallas County District Attorney Michael Jackson said a jury convicted Haiwatha Ford of first-degree assault after a two-day trial. The jury only deliberated for nine minutes before reaching their decision. The assault happened in the early-morning hours of April 6, 2016 at Cheer's Package Store in Selma. The victim, Ursula Smith, told police she had gone to the store to buy an alcoholic beverage and coincidentally arrived at the same time as Ford. The two were in a conflict over a man, she said. The argument began inside the business and escalated as both women left the store and got into a fistfight. At that point, authorities said, Ford pulled a knife and stabbed Smith several times in the both arms. The entire event was captured on store surveillance video. Dallas County Circuit Judge Marvin Wiggins ordered a pre-sentencing investigation and report. Ford is expected to be sentenced in several months, Jackson said. The judge also revoked Ford's bond and remanded her to the Dallas County Jail. She faces between 10 to 20 years in prison. The district attorney had this to say: "Hiawatha slings a knife better than a butcher from Winn Dixie." Gov. Kay Ivey and Huntsville Mayor Tommy Battle may not be on the debate stage together in the foreseeable future. But they will be together in meetings next week. In Japan. Ivey and Battle are leading a contingent to Japan to meet with officials from Toyota and Mazda to continue discussions on the $1.6 billion plant the two automakers will be building in Huntsville - a project expected to bring about 10,000 direct and indirect jobs to north Alabama. "We're going to say thank you to Toyota and Mazda," Ivey said during a visit to Huntsville last Friday. "They've been to see us several times so I'm returning their hospitality. So we'll go and see them." While Ivey and Battle are the top two fundraisers by far in the race to win the Republican nomination for governor, they will be stepping off the campaign trail to fly - separately - to Japan in what Battle said will be a whirlwind trip. "We'll meet over there and we'll be in the same meetings," Battle said Tuesday. "When it comes down to recruiting industry and working together to recruit industry, we're all on the same team." In the gubernatorial race, of course, Battle has been a leading critic of Ivey's reluctance to participate in candidate debates. Ivey skipped one debate last week and has said she will not attend the debate Wednesday hosted by Reckon by AL.com. On Tuesday morning, Battle retweeted an editorial from a Birmingham television station calling for Ivey to join the debates before the June 5 primary and said, "I couldn't have said it better myself." Credit over the Toyota Mazda project - now officially named the Mazda Toyota Manufacturing USA, Inc. - has been a source of friction in the campaign. On March 26, Ivey released a campaign ad that touted her vision to bring the car-making facility to rural Limestone County in the Huntsville city limits. Four days later, Battle's campaign released a video titled "The Real Story Behind Toyota-Mazda" - a rebuttal to, as the video said, "state officials taking credit for this. But the fact is, our team worked hard for 10 years for this." Battle also said he has made four recruiting trips to Japan as Huntsville's mayor. Ivey said this will be her first trip to Japan. The Real Story Behind Toyota-Mazda from Tommy Battle on Vimeo. Battle said he met with Tim Ingle, vice president of Toyota North America, during a trip to Washington earlier this week with the Huntsville-Madison County Chamber of Commerce. Ingle, Battle said, was one of Toyota's lead representatives who "helped us get to that finish line." "It's going to be very quick," Battle said of the trip to Japan. "It's over on Tuesday, meet Wednesday, coming back Thursday. Obviously, we're all on the campaign schedule. We're scheduled to meet with some of our good friends from Toyota, who we already know, and to make new friends with the folks from Mazda. I think it's very important go to over there and thank them for the partnership." Work on the plant site will soon be intensifying, Battle said. Bids are due next week for grading work at the site and groundbreaking is anticipated later this year. The Mazda Toyota Manufacturing facility is expected to begin production in early 2021. "That's a large piece of property to grade 1,200 acres and get it to a finish for elevation and ready to be built on," Battle said. "We're hoping for a dry summer because we've got a lot of dirt to move." Alabama is improving its ability to respond to health emergencies and meets the overall national average in preparedness, according to a new report. The report also cites areas that need improvement. The fifth annual National Health Security Preparedness Index was released today by the Robert Wood Johnson Foundation. It measures states on their capacity to respond to disease outbreaks, severe weather, terrorism and other emergencies that threaten lives and health. Alabama scored a 7.1 on a 10-point scale, equaling the national average. Two-thirds of states showed improvement, although significant gaps remained between states and regions, the report said. Researchers use 140 factors to compile state scores. Examples include the number of bridges that are in good or fair condition, the number of pediatricians and flu vaccination rates. Alabama showed the greatest improvement in the category called "environmental and occupational health," increasing its score from 4.9 in 2013 to 6.7 this year, just above the national average. Glen Mays, who leads a research team at the University of Kentucky that develops the index, said factors in that higher score include improvements in laboratory testing for wastewater hazards and in testing and monitoring the food supply for potential hazards. Mays said community drinking water systems in Alabama are doing a better job of meeting federal clean water standards. "All three of those things --laboratory testing of wastewater, laboratory testing of food hazards and drinking water system compliance with federal standards -- all of those have improved," Mays said. Mays said one category where Alabama has room for improvement is in "community planning and engagement." The state's score was 5.7, while the national average was 6.0. "Even though in this category Alabama is still pretty close to the national average it is a little bit behind overall. And this is an area where we're measuring basically the strength of relationships that exist among public health and medical care and other community organizations that need to play a role in planning for and responding to emergencies," Mays said. Alabama's improvement and overall rating puts it ahead of some neighboring states, Mays said. There are clusters of states in the deep South, southwest and mountain west that fall significantly below the national average, he said. "Some of the states that are having trouble in health security seem to be falling further behind. So that's a trend we need to continue to pay attention to," Mays said. The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention originally developed the National Health Security Preparedness Index. Mays said the CDC later signed an agreement with the Robert Wood Johnson Foundation to fund the report because the index was, to some extent, an evaluation of the CDC's own work. The index is now a collaboration involving more than 30 organizations, according to a press release from the Robert Woods Johnson Foundation. Here's how Alabama scored in the six categories: Health security surveillance, the ability to monitor and detect health threats, and to identify where hazards start and spread so that they can be contained rapidly: 8.4, up from 7.0 in 2013; national average was 8.1. Community planning and engagement, the ability to develop and maintain supportive relationships among government agencies, community organizations and individual households: 5.7, up from 4.7 in 2013; national average was 6.0. Information and incident management, the ability to deploy people, supplies, money and information to the locations where they are most effective in protecting health: 8.5, up from 7.3 in 2013; national average was 8.8. Healthcare delivery, the ability to ensure access to high-quality medical services across the continuum of care during and after disasters and emergencies: 5.4, up from 5.2 in 2013; national average was 5.2. Countermeasure management, the ability to store and deploy medical and pharmaceutical products that prevent and treat hazardous substance effects and infectious diseases: 7.7, up from 7.6 in 2013; national average was 7.7. Environmental and occupational health, the ability to maintain the security and safety of water and food supplies, to test for hazards and contaminants in the environment, and to protect workers and emergency responders 6.7, up from 4.9 in 2013; national average was 6.6. Health Security Assessment for Alabama by Mike Cason on Scribd A young girl pulled into a car, kidnapped, sexually assaulted. Another girl, even younger, telling relatives about being molested. An uncle and a nephew facing off, pistols pointed at each other, both held at gunpoint by a deputy. An arc of 20 years spans the moments, say investigators and prosecutors, a connection that has been exposed thanks to a remarkable effort to transform the way sexual assault cases are handled in Mobile. This week the Mobile Police Department officially announced that Roderick Lee Williams, 54, had been charged for the kidnapping and sexual assault of a girl in 1998. It is not the first local arrest stemming from a sexual assault cold case. But police describe it as the first to be directly related to the work of the Promise Initiative -- a joint effort by Mobile Police, the district attorney's office, the Rape Crisis Center, and the Alabama Department of Forensic Sciences. Williams has entered pleas of not guilty. He is presumed innocent, pending a trial yet to come. The charges in the 1998 case stem from an old sexual assault evidence kit that received modern testing. But to leave it at that makes it seem as cut-and-dried as an hour-long episode of your favorite TV police procedural: At the 50-minute mark the evidence report comes back from the lab, at 55 minutes there's an arrest and at 58 minutes the gavel comes down on a guilty conviction, the victim thanks investigators for long-awaited justice and the credits roll. There has been a lot more to it. There's more to come. All along, investigators have been motivated by the hope that they might not just crack cold cases, but might identify and stop serial predators. After years of work, they're finally getting there. This arrest will not be the last. A nationwide initiative In 2009, a problem began to emerge in Detroit, Los Angeles and elsewhere: Some law enforcement agencies across the county had hundreds or even thousands of sexual assault kits sitting in storerooms, more or less forgotten. Each rape kit held physical evidence from a person, usually a woman, who'd complained of being assaulted. But for a variety of reasons, the kits sat filed away in storerooms and the cases went nowhere. The documentary "I Am Evidence," backed by actress Mariska Hargitay's Joyful Heart Foundation, focuses in large part on Wayne County, Mich., where a new prosecutor discovered the backlog and committed to whittling it down. That effort did close cold cases. But what really surprised investigators was the number of serial offenders they unearthed. A significant portion of the suspects identified by DNA evidence turned out to be suspects in similar cases, or even to have been convicted in others. It was a realization that raised the stakes: Testing the kits wasn't just a way to punish old crimes. It was a way to identify predators who were still out there hurting people. As the issue gained more attention, the Bureau of Justice Assistance, part of the Department of Justice, launched its Sexual Assault Kit Initiative (SAKI). It put millions of dollars behind the issue, awarding grants to law enforcement agencies eager to tackle the program. Among them was the Mobile Police Department, which pursued the grants vigorously. In 2015 it received more than $800,000 to begin the process of cataloging and retesting more than 1,700 stored kits dating back to 1979. It got another SAKI grant in the 2016 cycle for about $120,000 to renovate its evidence room. And in the 2017 cycle it won nearly $2 million to help it build a Special Victims Unit that will carry forward what one investigator calls "a whole new mindset for these investigations." One person driving the effort has been police department administrative staffer Laura Angle, whose current titles are public safety grants administrator and U.S. Department of Justice SAKI grant site coordinator. Her pursuit of the grants put Mobile in a really rare category. Nationally, only about 40 jurisdictions have ever gotten SAKI grants, and only a fraction of those have been repeat winners. Mobile is not the only Alabama winner, however: The Jefferson County district attorney's office received $1.5 million in the 2016 grant cycle, funding a multi-year effort to get a handle on the backlog of kits, test them, and improve various aspects of prosecution. On TV, it's as simple as sending the kits off for DNA analysis and then collaring the culprit when the results come back a few minutes later. In real life, in Mobile, it has meant assembling an unprecedented task force to make hard decisions and see them through. It's part of an effort called The Promise Initiative, and the indictment of a suspect such as Roderick Williams is something it's been working toward literally for years. "We're at the end of the 2015 grant," Angle said at a recent meeting. "It's been a long road but we've gotten a lot done." A working union Once a month, in a conference room at Mobile Police Headquarters, the SAKI Multi-Disciplinary Team (MDT) meets. In recent months, an AL.com reporter was invited to sit in on the MDT's discussions. The gathering can easily run to more than 20 people, including representatives of the Rape Crisis Center at Lifelines Counseling Services; the Mobile Police Department and the Mobile Fire-Rescue Department; usually a sizeable contingent from the office of Mobile County District Attorney Ashley Rich; researchers from the University of South Alabama; and sometimes a representative from the Alabama Department of Forensic Science. Participants hint that it took a lot of work to hammer the group together. Despite a common goal, the various agencies had their own priorities and sensitivities. Years into the process, they seem to have things down to a science. Meetings usually open with Angle giving a report on organizational matters, logistics and funding. Mobile police Lt. Matthew James (Lawrence Specker/LSpecker@AL.com) Then Lt. Matthew James, head of the police department's Special Victims Unit, gives the latest numbers. At the March meeting, for example, James reported that 723 kits had been submitted for DNA testing since the project began. Testing so far had yielded 92 hits in CODIS, a federal DNA database. A few kits remained to be submitted, and they were to be doled out to the state Department of Forensic Sciences over the next several months. After the numbers, usually, James brings up a few specific cases for discussion. That's when it becomes clear just how complex this effort has been. Not every old kit was found to require testing. Many of those that were tested turn out to lead nowhere: Maybe they identify a suspect who turns out to be dead or serving a life sentence for some other crime. (In some cases, the victims are dead dead or missing.) Maybe the evidence still doesn't identify a suspect, despite present-day technology. If the victim is alive and the suspect is available for prosecution, then comes a step that puts Mobile Police Det. Corrie Hoium and Rape Crisis Center Victims Advocate Katie Ritchie in the spotlight: victim notifications. They usually are the ones who call and visit the victim, bringing word that there's a chance at justice for a crime that happened five or 10 or 20 years ago. It's a job that can't possibly ever be easy. They bring an offer of closure -- but only if the victim is willing to proceed with prosecution, and the potential of having to relive the crime in court. Sometimes, Hoium said, "the conversation is literally two minutes long" and the answer is no. Sometimes the floodgates open. Sometimes the victim is out of state, or in prison, or was a small child when the alleged crime happened. Many opt not to pursue it. They've put it behind themselves and moved on. They don't need the grief. The SAKI team respects that, even though it potentially means the suspect won't be brought to justice. Another thing that emerges from the MDT discussions is that these cold cases often are not cut and dried. At one meeting, Lt. James brought up one involving a woman familiar to some of the people in the room. She had a history of serious mental illness, and a pattern of having sexual encounters, accusing her partner of rape and then being unable to recall details of the encounter or even the accusation. In short, she was an accuser who was easy to dismiss out of hand. But under the whole new mindset, dismissing an accuser out of hand is one of the first things you don't do. A problematic witness such as this, or a prostitute, can in fact be the victim of an assault. If she is, and if society lets the perpetrator get away with it, the predator likely becomes bolder and bolder. "I know how this is going to go," said one participant in the discussion, as the group grappled with the case. "I don't see how we get around notifying her," said another. A consensus took shape: They would notify her. But they would go in with their eyes open. Another case up for discussion illustrated the procedural difficulties that can arise. Investigators think they've identified a guy who broke into a home and assaulted an 11-year-old, years ago. They think he's a serial offender. "He's just a gem," commented one MDT participant, as the group went over his record. But he's also in another state and appears to be homeless. So which comes first? Do they begin taking steps to have him picked up by local authorities, or do they need to start the wheels turning on prosecution before local authorities will agree? Do they need to notify the victim first? On TV, it's a win if you nail a suspect, a loss if you don't. In real life, sometimes, a win is just knowing that you did everything you could. You just have to accept that some cases remain ambiguous because of the limitations of the evidence. The team does not think that Roderick Williams is one of those cases. In broad daylight In 1998, at a convenience store off Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. Ave., a stranger in a car called over a schoolgirl who was 12 or 13 at the time. He persuaded her to take his money and go into the store and make a purchase for him. When she came back out, he dragged her into the car, drove off and assaulted her. The investigation went nowhere. The evidence kit went into storage. In 2017 it was retested and matched to Williams, whose DNA was in CODIS. Investigators speculate he got into the database thanks to some narcotics convictions in the intervening years. The victim wanted to proceed. The next step was to get a fresh sample from Williams, to verify the match. That sample was collected late last year. Then in December, according to police and court documents, a young girl told relatives that Williams had touched her inappropriately. According to a police affidavit, this led to a standoff on the evening of Dec. 10. An off-duty Mobile County deputy was working security at a central Mobile apartment complex when he responded to a disturbance and came across a dramatic scene: The deputy "saw Williams standing with a black Taurus 9mm semi-automatic pistol in his hand and pointing it at his nephew, who was standing and pointing a black Highpoint 9mm firearm at Williams." He held the two at gunpoint until Mobile police arrived. Williams soon faced a variety of charges, including sexual abuse of a person younger than 12. He also had become subject to the interest of the U.S. attorney's office in Mobile. The feds hit him with a charge of being a felon in possession of a firearm, and that prosecution took precedence. In late February he entered a guilty plea. Sentencing is set for May and could involve up to 10 years in prison. In the interim, the DNA verification in the 1998 case came back positive. In January he was indicted on first-degree rape and kidnapping charges. But because he was still in the hands of federal prosecutors, with the U.S. Marshals Service holding him in the Baldwin County jail, Mobile prosecutors had to wait. The indictment remained secret. On April 5 he finally was booked into Mobile County Metro Jail on the rape and kidnapping charges. As of Tuesday, jail records indicated that a local gun charge and the sexual abuse charge from December had been dropped, but Lt. James said he expects prosecution of that sexual abuse case to proceed as well. Bond is $100,000 each for the 1998 kidnapping and rape charges, plus another $1,000 for a domestic violence count from a separate situation. A hearing has been scheduled for May 10, at which a trial date will be set. Williams remains innocent until proven guilty. The indictment alone is seen as a landmark event by many involved in the case. "I feel vindicated," said Assistant District Attorney Tandice Hogan. "I see that what we're doing is paying off." 'A forgotten thing' The SAKI team didn't invent the concept of doggedly looking for fresh leads in cold rape cases. Before the grants and the MDT came along, the Mobile Police Department had at least one investigator, Lt. Joe Rose, whose work resulted in cold-case arrests and convictions. The SAKI approach has put money and muscle behind the effort. The backlog of kits is almost a thing of the past. More indictments and arrests are in the pipeline. Beyond that, SAKI has fueled a level of intra-agency cooperation that participants hope will last. It has prompted an ongoing change in the way victims are handled, including training for incoming police cadets to help them recognize trauma and its effects. "I think this grant has been an eye-opener for our department," said Det. Hoium. Everyone's watching the prosecution of Williams. But it's also about the victim. That's particularly the case for Hoium and Ritchie, who've had the most contact with her. "Officers, we're more like, yeah, this is personal," said Hoium. "You can see how this impacted her life," said Ritchie, the counselor. Then she added, of assault victims in general: "They are the most resilient human beings I've ever encountered. And that's empowering to me." "She's a phenomenal person," Hoium said of the woman in the 1998 case. She wasn't alone that day. According to investigators, at least one friend saw her dragged into the car and carried away. From that point on, for 20 years, she lived in a world apart. "She actually felt like it was just a forgotten thing," said Hoium. "That the only one who remembered it was her." Ritchie acknowledged the reality that any case, old or new, won't necessarily end with the verdict the prosecution wants. That's part of it. But win or lose, the effort makes a difference for the victims. "I think it's really important for victims to see Tandice has their case and is fighting like hell for them," Ritchie said. A conviction could, possibly, help persuade other victims to overcome their reluctance and press forward. Either way, they may see that police and prosecutors are no longer content to let forgotten cases be forgotten. "One thing that's changed is that our definition of success isn't always prosecution," said Hogan. "Just find out the truth. The metric of truth is just finding out what happened behind this kit." The production company for a play based on Alabama native Nelle Harper Lee's "To Kill a Mockingbird" has filed a lawsuit against the executor of the late author's estate. The counter lawsuit was filed Monday in the southern district of New York. Lee's longtime attorney Tonja Carter filed a lawsuit in the southern district of Alabama last month, claiming Rudinplay, Inc. signed a contract with Lee in 2015 for the rights to produce the "To Kill A Mockingbird" play, and gave her the right to select the playwright and review the script. Lee, of Monroeville, approved producer Scott Rudin's selection of Aaron Sorkin as the playwright before her death in 2016. Carter is seeking a declaratory judgement against the New York production company, because she claims Rudinplay agreed in the contract the play "shall not derogate or depart in any manner from the spirit of the Novel nor alter its characters." But, Carter claims in her lawsuit, several characters have been altered substantially and some new characters have been added to the play. "In particular, Ms. Lee would have refused any alteration to the character of Atticus Finch - which, in the play's current form, is altered significantly. As the personal representative of the Estate of Nelle Harper Lee, I must protect the integrity of her beloved American classic, and therefore had no choice but to file a lawsuit against Rudinplay for failing to honor its contract with Ms. Lee," Carter said in a statement. Rudinplay filed a counter lawsuit against Carter and Lee's estate on Monday. In their lawsuit, the company says the play is set to premiere on Broadway in December. Their lawsuit states, "In August, 2017, Rudinplay sent a draft script of the play to Ms. Lee's literary agent in London. Rudinplay did not receive substantive comments until approximately six months later, when Ms. Carter alleged that the script departed from the spirit of the Novel and altered its characters... By this time, Rudinplay had already incurred significant expenses in bringing the play to fruition, including casting the play, entering into contracts with the cast members and a general management company, and reserving a theater on Broadway." Rudinplay's lawsuit asks the judge to rule the contract has not been violated so the play can premiere as scheduled and so "the public will not be deprived of an opportunity to view and enjoy this extraordinary creative work." The company is also seeking damages. In Carter's lawsuit, she says she informed Rudinplay of her concerns about the script beginning in September. She claims the company did not send her an updated script until February; "Rather than addressing the concerns that Ms. Carter had expressed in September 2017, the new version of the script exacerbated her concerns," her lawsuit says. On March 5, Carter's lawsuit states, she sent a letter to the production company expressing concerns about changes made to the characters Atticus Finch, Scout Finch, Jem Finch, Calpurnia, and Tom Robinson. On March 9, an attorney for Rudinplay responded and, according to court records, said "if the Author believes that the Play derogates or departs from the spirit of the Novel, or alters its characters, the Author's remedy is that the Author 'will be afforded an opportunity to discuss with the Owner [Rudinplay] resolutions of any such concerns. The Author is therefore not the final arbiter of what 'derogates or departs from the spirit of the Novel, or alters its characters.'" One of Carter's attorneys, Matthew Lembke, said in a statement: "Rudinplay's new complaint is full of wild and baseless allegations that seem only meant to distract from the real issue - whether Rudinplay has violated its written contractual promise that it would not alter the characters in Harper Lee's classic novel." Lawyers for Rudinplay did not respond to request for comment by the time of publication. This post will be updated. Matt Akin, who has been the Huntsville school superintendent for a year and a half, is being given an offer to lead the breakaway Gulf Shores City Schools as its first superintendent. The school board's unanimous vote did not come as a complete surprise: Akin was the only candidate who received a full interview. That public interview took place last Thursday. "The actual motion was to authorize legal counsel to enter into contract negotiations" with Akin, Gulf Shores School Board President Kevin Corcoran said Monday afternoon. If the talks don't pan out, the board will move on consider other candidates, he said. In a statement released later Monday, Akin said he looked forward to reviewing the terms of the contract and that it was "an incredibly unique opportunity to be able to work with the board to develop a new school system from the ground up." Akin also praised the Huntsville system in his statement, saying that "The foundation is in place to support greatness" and "I believe that Huntsville City Schools can be a model school system for the country ... I will work tirelessly with the board and staff to ensure Huntsville City Schools will have all the elements in place to start the 2018-2019 school year." If Akin and the Gulf Shores system do come to agreement, Akin will step into a key role in a potentially bumpy transition. The coastal community's city council voted in October to move forward with the creation of its school system, breaking away from the Baldwin County School System. Conflicts with the county swiftly emerged, particularly over the question of whether the new system could begin operations in the 2018-19 school year, or should wait until the 2019-20 year. In November, the city's five-person school board was filled. Following some contentious city-county negotiations, in early February the board hired former Pike Road schools superintendent Suzanne Freeman as interim superintendent for six months. "This is to remove a legal argument on whether a superintendent needs to be in place to move ahead with negotiations," Corcoran said at the time. In mid-February, however, Baldwin County Schools halted negotiations and asked interim state superintendent Ed Richardson to intervene. The start date was the main issue of contention. Terry Wilhite, spokesman for the Baldwin County system, said Monday that Richardson had not yet weighed in on the issue. He provided a statement from Baldwin County Superintendent Eddie Tyler congratulating Gulf Shores. "As a neighboring school system, we stand ready to assist in any way that we can," Tyler said. "I look forward to working with Dr. Akin as a District 1 Superintendent colleague." Corcoran likewise said that the parties still were waiting for word from Richardson. He said he thought Richardson would be able to "devote some attention to that this week." AL.com news partner WHNT-TV19 reported that Akin had notified Huntsville school board members that he planned to accept the offer "pending contract negotiations." WHNT reported that Akin's salary in Huntsville was $195,000 at that the anticipated pay range for the Gulf Shores position was $130,000 to $185,000. Note: This story was updated at 9 p.m. Monday to add details from Akin's statement. The wife of failed Senate candidate Roy Moore is criticizing Pulitzer for recognizing journalists who covered allegations her husband had sexual contact with teenage girls in the 1970s. "When journalism becomes a political tool to assassinate someone's character with false accusations because they disagree with him politically, it is no longer journalism and not worthy of any prize," Kayla Moore said in a Monday night Facebook post. The Washington Post and Alabama Media Group's/AL.com's John Archibald were awarded Pulitzer Prizes yesterday for work done on the Moore story. The staff of the Washington Post was awarded in the investigative reporting category for "purposeful and relentless reporting that changed the course of a Senate race in Alabama by revealing a candidate's alleged past sexual harassment of teenage girls and subsequent efforts to undermine the journalism that exposed it." The Post first published the allegations against Moore in a bombshell Nov. 9, 2017 report. Archibald won in the commentary category for "for lyrical and courageous commentary that is rooted in Alabama but has a national resonance in scrutinizing corrupt politicians, championing the rights of women and calling out hypocrisy." Among the columns cited in the award were those dealing with Moore, who lost a December election to Democrat Doug Jones. Jones was the first Democrat elected to represent Alabama in the U.S. Senate in 25 years. Roy Moore has denied the allegations against him and recently filed a counterclaim against Leigh Corfman, one of the women who accused him of sexual contact with her as a teen. Corfman's suit claims Moore defamed her by calling her a liar when denying allegations he sexually abused her in 1979 when she was a 14-year-old high school freshman and he was a 32-year-old assistant district attorney. Alabama doesn't need "folks in Washington" or "out-of-state liberals" instructing the state on what it should do with Confederate monuments, Gov. Kay Ivey said Tuesday. Ivey, during a campaign appearance in Foley, defended a new campaign ad released earlier in the day that touted the Alabama Memorial Preservation Act of 2017, which she signed into law less than 11 months ago. "I believe the people agreed with that decision and support in protecting our historical monuments," Ivey said after speaking at a Baldwin County Young Republicans function. Her appearance also occurred one day before the Reckon by AL.com GOP governor's debate at 7 p.m. Wednesday at the Lyric Fine Arts Theatre in Birmingham. Ivey said she does not plan to attend. "We can't and shouldn't even try to charge or erase or tear down our history. We must learn from our history," Ivey said. The law requires local governments to obtain state permission before altering or renaming historically significant buildings and monuments that date back to 40 years or longer. The law also creates a 11-member commission which is charged with determining whether historic buildings or monuments can be moved or renamed. Ivey, in her campaign ad, criticized Alabama outsiders for pushing an agenda on the state. "Up in Washington, they always know better," Ivey said at the beginning of the clip. "Politically correct nonsense, I say." She then claimed that "special interests" are pursuing the removal of the monuments. But the law has seen plenty of opponents in Alabama, including the NAACP and members of the Alabama Black Caucus, which is an arm of the Alabama Democratic Party. "We oppose the preservation act," said Bernard Simelton, president of the Alabama NAACP. "We still oppose it. We certainly think it's an attempt to preserve the Confederacy." The law is subject of recent litigation in Jefferson County Circuit Court, where the city of Birmingham is pitted against the Alabama Attorney General's Office. In August 2017, two months after the law was passed, then-Birmingham Mayor William Bell ordered the Confederate Soldiers and Sailors Monument in Linn Park covered with plastic - later, plywood - while lawyers could explore legal options. Bell said at the time he wasn't going to have the statue torn down, even though there were calls for its removal. A rash of Confederate monuments across the U.S. were either removed or torn down in the wake of the Charleston, South Carolina, church massacre in 2015. The issue has prompted standoffs in some cities, with defenders of the monuments claiming that governments should not remove symbols of cultural heritage. Those defending their removals believe the monuments memorialize a government whose founding principles were based on the expansion of slavery. The Mobile Area Chamber of Commerce has announced that David Rodgers has been promoted to the position of vice president for economic development. Rodgers' predecessor was Troy Wayman. In December, Wayman was hired as president and CEO of One Acadiana in Lafayette, La., an organization that describes itself as "a bolder, re-energized version of the former Greater Lafayette Chamber of Commerce." Rodgers, a Mobile native, previously was a senior project manager for economic development. According to the Chamber he worked on successful campaigns to bring several significant projects to Mobile, including Canfor Southern Pine's 2016 decision to relocate its headquarters to downtown Mobile, a Continental Motors expansion announced last year and the Walmart distribution center being built west of the city. Chamber President and CEO Bill Sisson said Rodgers' strengths included "a strong working relationship with the Alabama Department of Commerce and site selectors from across the country." According to the Chamber, Rodgers "will oversee and direct the Chamber's economic development functions, including new business development, business retention and expansion, international trade and workforce development. Additionally, he will oversee the day-to-day operations of the Chamber's current economic development program of work - Partners for Growth (PFG)." The statue of Dr. James Marion Sims, a 19th-century doctor who experimented on slaves, was moved Tuesday morning from Central Park to the Green-Wood Cemetery in Brooklyn, where the controversial physician is buried. The decision to move the statue from Fifth Avenue and 103rd Street was made following recommendations from a mayoral panel that reviewed statues and monuments throughout the city. Mayor Bill de Blasio established the panel in August 2017 after violent white supremacist protests in Charlottesville, Virginia, over the planned removal of a Robert E. Lee monument. Sims is considered the father of gynecology by many, but he made his advancements by experimenting on enslaved African-American women without using anesthesia, historians say. "In its current location, the Sims monument has come to represent a legacy of oppressive and abusive practices on bodies that were seen as subjugated, subordinate, and exploitable in service to his fame," the panel wrote in a report released in January. The Sims statue is the only monument in the city that the commission recommended to move. It will be kept in storage at Green-Wood until the cemetery constructs a historical display, which will put Sims' work into context and be placed near his grave site, a spokeswoman for the cemetery said. "Placing the sculpture near his grave site is not meant to glorify him," the president of Green-Wood, Richard J. Moylan, said in a statement. "Rather, it is a visual focal point that will bring attention to a factual display that Green-Wood will build to document Sims' story including his shameful experimentation on enslaved women in the South between 1845 and 1849. "As a National Historic Landmark, the responsibility to preserve this history, and not to whitewash it, is something Green-Wood takes very seriously." A temporary sign will be placed at the Central Park site where the statue was until the city decides what to put in its place, officials said. Sims practiced medicine in Alabama from 1835 to 1849 before moving to New York. The Department of Defense has released video showing the USS Higgins firing a Tomahawk missile during last weekend's strike against Syria. The guided-missile destroyer fired Tomahawk land attack missiles Saturday, targeting three structures in Syria in retaliation for an apparent chemical weapons attack. Among the missiles launched were Joint Air to Surface Standoff Missiles, or JASSMs, produced at the Lockheed Martin plant in Troy. Fifty-seven Raytheon Tomahawks were also part of the strike. New and improved traffic flow along Mobile's Water Street corridor is taking a little longer than expected to implement. But it's coming, along with some other improvements. Back in August 2017, Mobile Mayor Sandy Stimpson took part in a ceremonial groundbreaking and predicted that the work would be done by the end of the year. When complete it would involve new control equipment for the traffic signals, improving flow; ADA-compliant curbs; and a re-striping that would give the street fewer lanes for vehicles, but would add new pedestrian and bicycle lanes. The timetable didn't hold. In early April, Stimpson told the Mobile City Council that delays had included difficulties getting the right equipment delivered for the traffic signal work. Other parts, like the handicap-accessible curb ramps, had gone on as planned. Meanwhile, administrators had come to realize that if they re-striped the lanes now, the work would have to be redone in a year or so when Water Street was due to to get a fresh coat of asphalt. Stimpson said that city officials were looking for ways to move up the repaving, to avoid that wasted expense. On Tuesday, two related items appeared on the council's agenda. Jennifer White, head of the city's Traffic Engineering Department, said they stem from a new timetable developed in coordination with the Alabama Department of Transportation. Currently, White said, the new signal-control equipment has been installed along Water Street. It is still operating the lights under the old timing scheme. In late spring and early summer, the city will put barricades along the street, making traffic use the lanes that will exist after the planned restriping. Traffic engineers will observe the traffic flow, develop a new timing scheme for the traffic and then fine tune it during a test run. Then, probably in late summer, ALDOT will repave Water Street, after which the striping and other fixtures for the new car, bike and pedestrian lanes will be laid down. White said that if things go to plan, the new and improved Water Street, complete with new lane scheme and new traffic light timing, will be fully operational by September or October. In keeping with its normal order of business, the council held over the new Water Street contracts for one week, likely setting the stage for a vote on April 24. One involves an agreement with ALDOT for resurfacing, striping and sign replacement and specifies no monetary amount. The other increases an existing contract with Thompson Engineering by $61,000, to reflect the additional scope of work in plans and bid documents. I stumbled into a corner of the swamp I've never been to before and it was spectacular. It was off the Tensaw River, which represents the eastern edge of the vast Mobile-Tensaw Delta. These edge forests are different than the woods you see out in the center of the Delta, with a different mix of trees, vines and animals. Partly, that's because they don't flood as often, or as deeply. Here, you'll find a mix of cypress, sweet gum, and tupelo, all the trees you'd expect in a swamp, but also lots of oaks, sycamores and fringe trees. Thickets of saw palmetto spread below the canopy, and an array of vines climb skyward. Buttonbush and a dozen other shrubs fight for sunlight at the water's edge. Blackberries and Alabama's native wisteria drape over wild rice bushes that are just coming into flower. Scarlet tanagers and prothonotary warblers were plentiful. Yellow-crowned night heron nests are overhead, always over water, and always constructed in such a slap-dash fashion it seems impossible they could support a family of such large birds. In one forgotten slough, I came upon a squadron of egrets wading the shallows. The scene was as old as time, the birds slowly picking their way through a tangle of aquatic plants, harvesting frogs, snails, minnows, anything that moves. What there was very little of were signs of people. In many of the places I visit these days, particularly in these creeks and bayous, which are closest to civilization, I see trash. Not a lot, but always something. A candy bar wrapper, a Bud Light can, a reminder that someone has been to this place before you. And worse, the realization that they left it uglier than they found it. But not on this spectacular "lake." For reasons unknown, many of the edge swamps are described on maps and by locals as lakes, such as Byrnes Lake along County Road 225. But Byrnes Lake is not a lake at all. It is actually a river mouth, where a creek is flowing into the Mobile-Tensaw Delta along the Tensaw River. So it was with my new spot. I'm not going to name it out of deference for the nesting birds. Too much activity could threaten the survival of the chicks. Yellow-crowned night herons are by nature spooky birds, easily startled. And they make their nests right over the water, seemingly always. I've seen rookeries in the delta disappear as the birds sought more private quarters for their courting. I found myself quite exhilarated as I made my way into this swamp for the first time. I had to cross a long shallow mouth to make it in, so shallow I almost turned back. Then, suddenly, about an eighth of a mile in, the channel opened up and I was suddenly in a snaky river eight feet deep, the banks solid walls of Roseau cane. I ran on plane until it narrowed up and started to shallow. With most of my favorite places in the Delta, the places I return to year after year because they are so special, I know my way through the various creeks and rivers without consulting a map. I know where the mud bars that can ground you are, and where the logs and snags are. But here I didn't know anything. I didn't know what was going to be growing and living in it. I didn't know my way. The stretch I was in appeared on my GPS as dry land, so not much use for navigating. After 20 years exploring the Delta by boat, there are fewer and fewer areas I haven't explored. To find this one much closer to the boat ramp than almost anywhere else I visit feels like I've got a secret the other kids don't know. As I write this, I'm sitting deep in the swamp, typing on my laptop. I can hear woodpeckers, warblers, kinglets, tanagers, bullfrogs, tree frogs, and the wind through the stiff palmetto fronds and the giant blades of rice grass. While typing the above, a tiny prothonotary warbler landed on a cypress right by the boat. I started watching him sing and could hear another answering, with the same, "sweet-sweet-sweet" call. After a moment, a red-shouldered hawk shot out of the forest and swooped low over the creek. I'm sure he was following the call of the warbler, homing in on it for the kill. This time, the warbler saw the hawk and not the other way around. The tiny bird dashed off into the forest headed the opposite direction. I hope he finds his girl and the hawk finds another soprano to have for dinner. Tiera Fletcher is a Structural Analysis Engineer at Boeing in Huntsville, working on the NASA Space Launch System. America is on its way to Mars -- powered by an amazing team of people from all across the country, many of whom are gathering in Colorado Springs at the Broadmoor for Space Symposium, the world's premiere meet up of space leaders, experts, and entrepreneurs. Tiera Fletcher is a rocket engineer at Boeing Co. in Huntsville. It's the culmination of a new day for American space travel that is reflected across the workforce in Boeing, where I am a Rocket Structural Engineer helping build NASA's Space Launch System rocket to power deep space missions like the trip to Mars. Boeing's space team is increasingly diverse, a huge leap forward from the days when only certain kinds of people were thought to have the right stuff. For me, it's more than ever seemed possible growing up in a small town in Georgia. Driven by a passion for science, by age six, I was using whatever I could get my hands on to make model rockets and airplanes (pink, of course). While my classmates scrambled for recess, I chose math and the playground of my mind. A supportive middle school science teacher taught me how the things we learned in class connected to the real world and urged all of us to develop our creativity and imagination. As we enter this new American space age, every student should have that kind of mentor, especially girls who sometimes get cut down when they step out of traditional lanes. At first, I questioned if I should even apply to MIT, since only 13 percent of U.S. engineering jobs are held by women. But MIT changed my life, offering a chance to learn and work with leaders of aerospace academia and astronauts. At a campus career fair, I met a recruiter from Boeing. I was amazed that he seemed to care as much about me as a person than as me as an engineer. He said that, in this business, values and who you are at the core matter - we talked as much about southern cuisine as engineering! For girls looking to move forward in engineering, it's a vital lesson - the "whole you" matters. While some of my classmates were attracted to splashy marketing from other companies, I focused more on the family and team ethos of Boeing. That proved wise and like many female engineers, I have thrived in this collaborative team building environment. Now I have the everyday adventure of participating in Boeing's unrivaled leadership in every aspect of space exploration. I get to help build on the amazing heritage that produced the Mercury capsule that carried John Glenn into orbit, the Apollo-era Lunar Rovers that carried our astronauts across the surface of the moon, the Space Shuttle, and the International Space Station. Today, that means a chance to work with the team building the CST-100 Starliner, which will be the first private spacecraft to carry astronauts into orbit and engineers who are revolutionizing satellite technology. Other teams are strengthening the space station and developing the next generation of space outposts. And the centerpiece is our work building the SLS to send astronauts to Mars. This is all possible in an environment that is committed to full participation and equal opportunity. The company has been making massive investments in STEM education to boost women in engineering. As a kid I could only dream of building rockets. Now, as a part of the Boeing family, I get to help send astronauts to Mars while also propelling female engineers forward. And for every other little girl out there dreaming of the stars, I say, the door is open - come on in! Protesters gather outside a Starbucks in Philadelphia, Sunday, April 15, 2018, where two black men were arrested Thursday after Starbucks employees called police to say the men were trespassing. The arrest prompted accusations of racism on social media. Starbucks CEO Kevin Johnson posted a lengthy statement Saturday night, calling the situation "disheartening" and that it led to a "reprehensible" outcome. (AP Photo/Ron Todt) It's been awhile since I was followed around a department store by a really-bad-at-being stealth salesperson or a not-very-undercover security guard as I browsed the merchandise. Or since someone (yes, white) stepped off an elevator upon seeing we were the only two inside. Or crossed the street as someone (see, above) saw me approaching on the sidewalk. Or assumed I was paying cash for the car I was looking to purchase (because that's how drug dealers did it) rather than with a down payment, good credit, and financing. Maybe as a more-ahem-seasoned African-American man, I'm a bit less threatening to some than a few decades ago. (Especially during my afro-and-beard days!) Maybe the years have bred at least a modicum of racial wisdom, tolerance, and enlightenment in some--from institutions once infected with systemic racist practices to individuals bred with racial biases, stereotypes, and misconceptions. Some conscious, some not. Maybe a little bit of both. Not enough, though, to prevent small daggers of racism--in the "Letter from Birmingham Jail," published 55 years ago today, Rev. Martin Luther King similarly described "the stinging darts of segregation..."--from still being thrown my way... ... by someone, for instance, who hands me their valet parking ticket, assuming I am the valet rather than someone waiting on my own car. ... by a salesperson who helps another customer (yes, white) even though it is clear I was there first... ... by a cashier who asks for identification when I pull out a particular charge card. Not enough, clearly, to prevent the ugliness that transpired at a Philadelphia Starbucks last Thursday when a store manager called the police on two young African-American men who were--egad--sitting at a table waiting for a friend before ordering anything. She called them, reports say, after they refused to leave, as she had asked. Because they hadn't ordered anything. Police arrested the two men--who were, by all eyewitness accounts, nothing but polite and cordial--then hand-cuffed and perp-walked them out of the place. Even after their friend, who just happens to be white, arrived and inquired as to why they were being treated like this. (The privileged can do that--question cops--without getting attitude, arrested, or worse.) Their crime? Starbucks While Black, apparently. Starbucks CEO Kevin Johnson, center, walks towards a meeting with Philadelphia Mayor Jim Kenney and other officials Monday April 16, 2018, at Philadelphia City Hall. Starbucks wants to add training for store managers on "unconscious bias," Johnson said Monday, as activists held more protests at a Philadelphia store where two black men were arrested when employees said they were trespassing. (AP Photo/Jacqueline Larma) CEO Kevin Johnson has since repeated the word "reprehensible" about a trillion times as the company responded to the raging tempest that ensued because another customer, Melissa DePino, possessed the presence of mind to shoot the episode on her phone and, most important, the boldness of spirit to post the video online for the rest of us to see. Starbucks Witness: Implicit Bias Exists and White People Need to Speak Up When They See It https://t.co/E9wJYwlKqB via @TheRoot Melissa DePino (@missydepino) April 15, 2018 Johnson apologized repeatedly and sincerely, saying unequivocally that the incident was wrong, it should never have happened and that this spilled and scorching triple-shot latte stops with him. FULL INTERVIEW: "I personally apologize..." Starbucks CEO Kevin Johnson one-on-one with @RobinRoberts in his first interview after two black men were handcuffed at a Philadelphia store. FULL STORY: https://t.co/4CL5j2lPL7 pic.twitter.com/AVnguPqAxa Good Morning America (@GMA) April 16, 2018 He asked to meet with the two men arrested in order to offer a face-to-face apology (they agreed, reportedly)--even as a phalanx of protesters on Monday forced the store to temporarily close. He blamed the store's faulty guidelines for dealing with customers (guidelines, oddly, that reach of the chain's 28,000 stores has the freedom to craft for themselves)--though did not reveal the fate of the store manager. As of this writing, the corporate mouthpiece would only say she was "no longer at the store," not whether she was at any Starbucks store. (Which I would certainly want to know; if she got busted down to barista, I certainly wouldn't trust her to make my decaf, sugar-free cinnamon dolce breve latte.) The incident left me SMH, as it did many others, especially other African Americans. My mind mined my memory chip for similar moments I experienced during my life--moments that, thankfully, did not end in a perp-walk. Including moments when, likely like you, I sat in a Starbucks waiting for a friend, colleague or client, probably pecking away at this laptop. And for that, I could have been arrested? Are we really still doing this? Yes, we are. We are because no matter how far we've come, the cancer of racial ignorance still flows through the veins of too many. Because it only takes a drop of bias to obliterate any well-meaning but naive institutional "guideline". Because a whole new generation of black men--none of whom were even born the first time I was followed around a department store--has been demonized such that not ordering an overpriced cappuccino is, well, a crime. I'm not calling for a boycott here. Not this time. I am asking that each of us--including those with biases and privilege--realize that, yes, we're still doing this, and we'll keep doing it until we acknowledge and share those biases and discover a way to purge them, even from our unconsciousness. While sitting in the Birmingham jail, King wrote: "We have waited for more than 340 years for our constitutional and God given rights." He listed a litany of indignities endured by African Americans of that era--some as egregious (and real crimes) as lynching, some as dehumanizing as trying to "explain to your six year old daughter why she can't go to the public amusement park that has just been advertised on television, and see tears welling up in her eyes when she is told that Funtown is closed to colored children." Once you've felt those "darts," he wrote: "...then you will understand why we find it difficult to wait." And wait. "There comes a time when the cup of endurance runs over," King also wrote, "and men are no longer willing to be plunged into the abyss of despair." This cup--venti, thank you--has long-since overflowed. Hopefully, yours has, too. Roy S. Johnson's column appears in The Birmingham News, the Huntsville Times, the Mobile Register and AL.com. Hit me up at rjohnson@al.com or/and follow me at twitter.com/roysj. As Emily Mauldin walked by Library West on Monday morning, she noticed an unusual sight in the Plaza of the Americas: a pitched tent. Inside, there was loose clothing, some newspapers, pillows and a small stuffed giraffe. The items represented potential belongings of an imaginary Syrian family. The 18-year-old UF chemistry junior was one of about 20 people who stopped at a small blue tent. It was set up by Students Organize for Syria to simulate the living conditions experienced by refugees of the Syrian conflict. The Syrian Center for Policy Research estimates roughly 470,000 Syrians were killed in the ongoing civil war from 2011 to 2016. In that same time period, an estimated 6 million refugees have attempted to escape the violence. Sophia Timm, the organizations chair for the Books Not Bombs campaign, said she put the event together for those forgotten victims. The display was meant to raise awareness for the national Books Not Bombs campaign, which tries to give scholarships to refugees. Timm, a 21-year-old UF biology and anthropology senior, said she, along with her club, donated the tent and supplies out of pocket. She said it's important students stay up-to-date on the conflict and to not be fooled by misinformation that might keep them from getting involved. The Books Not Bombs campaign has been receiving a lot of support from other college campuses because students understand the value of a good education, she said. But the campaign hasnt been able to secure any Florida scholarships, Timm said. So Students Organize for Syria plans to educate people about the Books Not Bombs fundraiser and online petitions to try and make the scholarship a statewide award. "The best way to help refugees is to educate them," Timm said. "When the conflict is over, Syria is going to need doctors and lawyers and people who are educated to rebuild." Maudlin said that with the news focused on the airstrikes in Syria ordered by President Donald Trump Friday night, refugees haven't received as much coverage as they should. According to NPR, the airstrikes targeted the facilities of the Syrian government connected to a recent chemical weapons attack on civilians. "The victims get forgotten when politics are involved," Maudlin said. "I think it's really deplorable." Enjoy what you're reading? Get content from The Alligator delivered to your inbox Subscribe Now Sophia Timm, a 21-year-old UF biology and anthropology senior and the Students Organize for Syrias chair for the Books Not Bombs campaign, holds up a sign outside the mock-refugee tent. Students Organize for Syria say the display simulates the living conditions of refugees fleeing the Syrian Civil War. Florida voters will decide whether the rights of victims will become part of the states constitution in Novembers General Election. Voters will be able to vote on considering Marsys Law, which would guarantee victims receive timely notifications when there are changes in whether an offender is in custody or major developments in a criminal case, said Jennifer Fennell, a spokesperson for the proposal. It will also guarantee the right of victims and their families to be present and speak at court proceedings. The proposal has received support from Alachua County Sheriff Sadie Darnell, as well as 23 out of 66 other state sheriffs. On Monday, the Florida Constitution Revision Commission voted 34-3 in favor of placing Marsys Law on the 2018 general election ballot on November 6, Fennell said. The commission is made up of 37 commissioners who meet once every 20 years to examine the Florida Constitution and propose changes for voter consideration. In order for it to pass and become part of the states constitution, it will need 60 percent of the votes in the general election, Fennell said. Florida is one of 15 states that does not provide clear and enforceable rights for victims of crimes in its constitution, Fennell said. I think everybody who is involved in the criminal justice process is concerned with making sure victims have a voice and they are treated with dignity and respect, Fennell said. Thats what Marsys Law for Florida would do. Sheriff Darnell was not immediately available for comment. Alachua County Sheriffs Office spokesperson Sgt. Brett Rhodenizer said the rights of the victims are not currently specified in Florida state law. Rhodenizer said the support from Darnell and two dozen other sheriffs shows that law enforcement officials will continue to promote and protect victims rights. Marsys Law does not establish specific day-to-day changes, but it guarantees and codifies the rights of the victims, Rhodenizer said. We can, should and must protect the rights of the accused up to and through their conviction, but we also have to protect the rights of our victims in crime, he said. Adam Baker / Flickr Enjoy what you're reading? Get content from The Alligator delivered to your inbox Subscribe Now A woman was hit by a car and dragged 40 yards within the Spyglass Apartments complex early Monday morning, Gainesville Police said. At about 4:58 a.m., police received a call that a woman, whose name has not been released, was hit near a pool inside the Spyglass Apartments complex, located at 701 SW 62nd Blvd., GPD spokesperson Officer Ben Tobias wrote in an email. She was dragged for about 40 yards underneath the car that hit her and is in serious but stable condition, he said. The car stopped at the apartment complexs exit gate. Witnesses lifted the car off the woman and pulled her out from under it, Tobias said. She was taken to UF Health Shands Hospital where she remains. Tobias said police were trying to determine if the cars driver was under the influence, but they have not made any arrests. Police did not respond to additional questions about the driver or woman. Contact Robert Lewis at rlewis@alligator.org. Follow him on Twitter at @Lewis__Robert. The UF Student Senate will decide Tuesday whether it will ask the university to limit the use of single-use plastic straws on campus. The UF Student Government Senate Judiciary Committee voted to support asking students to reconsider using single-use plastic straws. The resolution a written statement with no legislative weight was unanimously approved by the UF Student Government Senate judiciary committee Sunday night and will be taken to a vote on the Senate floor on Tuesday. All dining locations except for Gator Corner Dining Center, The Fresh Food Company and Arredondo Cafe offer plastic straws, said Zachary Amrose, the resolutions author. Amrose said the resolution doesnt call on the university to ban plastic straws outright, just to limit the availability of plastic straws, or popularize substitutes like paper drinking straws. Plastic straws are kind of an unnecessary feature of the modern world, he said in the meeting. Plastic drinking straws are among the top 10 most common items found in beach cleanups, according to the resolution. Cities across the United States have banned or limited straws including Fort Myers and Miami Beach in Florida, according to the New York Times. A petition to be sent to UF President Kent Fuchs asks that straws be banned from campus. The petition has 2,600 signatures, according to the resolution. The committee also passed the Diversity Empowerment Act, which would have the Student Government Diversity and Programming Committee serve under the leadership of the Student Body president, vice president and treasurer. The purpose of the committee is to foster more diversity campus. This change was promised by Impact Party during campaigning in the 2018 election to revitalize the committee under new leadership, according to Alligator archives. We really felt the need with our ticket, we really wanted diversity inclusion to be at the forefront of what we were doing, former Impact Party President Omarley Spence said. We wanted to make sure it was part of our platform too. The act added the Student Body vice president to the committees members. Enjoy what you're reading? Get content from The Alligator delivered to your inbox Subscribe Now Two bills were unanimously failed at the committee meeting. One bill wanted to increase the number of allowed absences for graduate senators from three to five combined absences because of their higher course loads and outside involvement. During the meeting, Sen. Libby Shaw (Impact, Journalism) questioned why graduate senators deserve more absences than other senators. When they run to be a senator, they know exactly how many absences theyre allowed, so they shouldnt run to be a senator if they cant be at the Senate meetings, Shaw said. The committee also agreed it would be difficult to implement for undergraduate student senators who take graduate courses or other students who have a large course load. The Candidate Accountability Act was tabled last week but was unanimously failed Sunday. It would have updated the policies on what kind of excuses executive candidates could submit 24 hours before a debate and required the Supervisor of Elections to host a public forum if there is only one ticket, such as during the 2017 election. The committee members couldnt speak to the Supervisor of Elections before requiring the public forum and failed the bill. Contact Christina Morales at cmorales@alligator.org. Follow her on Twitter at @Christina_M18. As Jack E. Davis met with a graduate student in his Keene-Flint Hall office Monday afternoon, his phone began to ring. And ring. And ring. When he finally checked it, he saw the message: Congratulations you won the Pulitzer. A stream of calls, texts and emails followed suit. Davis, a UF professor and environmental historian, won the 2018 Pulitzer Prize for history for his book The Gulf, about untold stories from Americas cultural and environmental relationship with the Gulf of Mexico. The award, considered one of the most prestigious in the literary world, was announced in New York at Columbia University. It feels pretty remarkable; Im stunned, Davis said. I was literally speechless, and I had to push the phone across the desk to the student for him to read. Davis said the acclaim his book has received is a testament to how people around the country care about the Gulf of Mexico as something more than a source of oil. He wrote the book to restore the identity of the Gulf of Mexico as an integral character in American culture after it was tarnished by the BP oil spill of 2010, he said Other finalists for the award were Fear City by Kim Phillips-Fein and Hitler in Los Angeles by Steven J. Ross. Steve Orlando, a UF spokesperson, said UF is lucky to have Davis. I grew up on the Gulf of Mexico, and I can tell you he got it exactly right, Orlando said. Marcela Mulholland, a UF sustainability studies and political science junior, was in Davis History of Sustainability class during Fall semester and said she hadnt read his book. Now I really want to read the book because its obviously good, the 20-year-old said. And I can get him to sign a copy. Contact Elliott Nasby at enasby@alligator.org. Follow him on Twitter at @_ElohEl. Enjoy what you're reading? Get content from The Alligator delivered to your inbox Subscribe Now Jack E. Davis UF Levin College of Law students had the lowest passing rate among Florida law school students who took the most recent bar exam, according to results released by the Florida Supreme Court on Monday. All law students need to pass the bar exam to practice as an attorney in Florida. Of the 22 UF law students who took the exam over two days in February, only seven passed a rate of 31.8 percent. The results are utterly unacceptable given the caliber of our students and the quality of their education, Laura Rosenbury, dean of the law school, wrote in a statement Monday. Efforts by the school to prepare students for the February test were insufficient, and the college is considering a different approach for future exams, Rosenbury said. Whitney Smith, a spokesperson for the law school, said the college and its faculty will consider intervening more in the courses students are taking. In an email to law students, Rosenbury said the school will implement a bar preparation program for students during the three years they are at UF and consider controlling which classes students take. Given these shocking and disheartening results, we are rethinking this approach and doubling down on our intervention strategy, Rosenbury said in an email. All third-year law students will be required to submit a study plan and complete a free diagnostic exam before they graduate, according to the email. Administration will also provide support for third-years who are identified as at risk of failing. Law students from Florida schools had an average passing rate of 53.4 percent. Florida International University students had the highest passing rate at 85 percent. The passing rate for students from Florida State Universitys law school was 76.7 percent. Patrick Brathwaite, a second-year UF law student, hasnt taken the bar exam yet but said the exam was a wake-up call for both the students and school. Unfortunately, it takes a bad thing to find reason to improve a lot, the 28-year-old said. Contact Elliott Nasby at enasby@alligator.org. Follow him on Twitter at @_ElohEl. Enjoy what you're reading? Get content from The Alligator delivered to your inbox Subscribe Now Posted on: April 17, 2018 12:44 PM The Primate of the Anglican Church of Kenya, Archbishop Jackson Ole Sapit, has called for the speedy appointment of new electoral commissioners and electoral reforms in the country. He made his remarks as three members of the Independent Electoral and Boundaries Commission (IEBC) stood down; making the body inquorate. Last year, the countrys Supreme Court ordered a fresh general election, saying that the original 8 August poll was neither transparent or verifiable. Sitting President Uhuru Kenyatta, won the revised poll despite continued criticism of the process by opposition leader Raila Odinga. Archbishop Jackson today (Tuesday) called on the Kenyas Parliament to move swiftly appoint a team to vet new Commissioners, saying that the current situation leaves the country in a dilemma with a number of by-elections to be conducted, according to the Standard newspaper, but we pray that Parliament can speed up the process to form a new team. The drafting and implementation of reforms will bring stability among IEBC commissioners and lawfully guarantee their independence, he said. We need a commission that is cohesive enough and one able to deliver services to Kenyans by not taking personal stand and interest. Posted on: April 17, 2018 10:34 AM The international ecumenical body the World Council of Churches (WCC) is urging the international community to find a way to break the cycle of violence in Syria. In a statement issued following the airstrike carried out by France, the UK and US against suspected chemical weapons facilities, the WCC say that a just and sustainable peace for all Syrians can only be brought about through a political solution and that it is intolerable that atrocities are still being perpetrated against civilians. In the statement, they say that the UN Security Council has repeatedly failed to adopt sufficiently strong and consistent measures to put an end to these atrocities, to implement a durable ceasefire, to ensure respect for international law and accountability for all those who have committed war crimes and crimes against humanity, including the use of chemical weapons. In addition to calling for an immediate ceasefire, the WCC is asking for unconditional humanitarian access to all regions in Syria, the commitment of all parties to respecting international law and to seeking peace through dialogue and a political process rather than by armed force, the resumption of the UN-led Geneva peace process, and the prompt return in safety and dignity for all civilians who have been forcibly displaced from their homes and lands. WCC member churches in Syria and the region will have an important role to play in healing wounded memories and in bringing all Syrians together in a common narrative, for the preservation of Syrias rich diversity and the restoration of social cohesion, the statement said. In this, the WCC assures the churches in Syria that the ecumenical family will accompany them together with the whole people of Syria on this path, in working for a just peace and for human dignity. Police investigate Rod Liddle for language hate Ever hear of language hate? Rod Liddle has been accused of committing this new crime. In his Sunday Times column on plans to rename the second Severn crossing the Prince of Wales Bridge, Liddle quipped: The Welsh, or some of them, are moaning that a motorway bridge linking their rain-sodden valleys with the First World is to be renamed. They would prefer it to be called something indecipherable with no real vowels, such as Ysgythysgymlngwchgwch Bryggy. Let them have their way. So long as it allows people to get out of the place pronto, should we worry about what it is called? Liz Saville Roberts MP, of Welsh nationalists Plaid Cymru (PC), asked, What legal defence we have in situations like this? She says Liddles words amount to prejudice. Given a platform on Radio Cymrus Post Cyntaf programme, Roberts opined: The two things in particular which incensed me were his attempts to belittle the Welsh language, and to compare poverty in Wales with Englands wealth as a first world nation as something amusing We have to ask when we should put up with this and whether or not the Sunday Times cares about readers here in Wales. It is disheartening it also begs the question what legal defence we have in situations like this. Whether you describe this as racist or not, it is prejudice and is being used against us as Welsh people. Nineteen people have complained about Liddle to the newspaper regulator IPSO. And thats not all. Welsh Language Commissioner Meri Huws, tells us: While it is important that we respect freedom of expression on different topics, the increase in the offensive comments about Wales, the Welsh language and its speakers is a cause for concern. Over recent months we have seen a number of situations where people have been insulted and this is totally unacceptable. A few months ago, I joined with others to declare that action is needed to stop these comments, and stated that legislation is needed to protect rights and to prevent language hate. I will now call a meeting with interested individuals and groups to discuss the matter further and think of ways to move the agenda forward. And then the police got involved. North Wales Police and Crime Commissioner Arfon Jones said Liddles words were offensive and irresponsible. The people whove contacted me come from across the political divide, said Jones. Whatever their party allegiances, they are saying with one voice that if this article had been written in relation to Jewish people, or any other race, it would quite rightly be deemed to be totally unacceptable. For some reason, the sneering classes in London believe that Wales is fair game. I agree his shock jock approach to journalism is offensive and irresponsible. Im pretty offended that a weak joke about a bridge is linked so lazily to the murderous persecution of Jews and the rise of violent anti-Semitism, a hatred now woven into the fabric of the Labour Party. If Jones needs to co-opt anti-Jewish hate to make his point about a journalists to-deadline comment on a Welsh bridges name, he needs to read more. He should also consider that free speech is all about being irresponsible and not seeking approval from anyone, least of all the police. When the police get involved in what things can be and cannot be said, we should all worry whatever our prejudices. Paul Sorene Posted: 17th, April 2018 | In: News Comment | TrackBack | Permalink (ANSA) - Brussels, April 17 - European Home Affairs Commissioner Dimitris Avramopoulos on Tuesday urged Italy to adopt safer and more secure identity papers. "Italy is one of the EU countries that still has paper identity cards," he said in presenting a package of measures to boost EU security. "I'm not here to blame but to facilitate authorities. "The countries that have less secure documents must come up to par. "With the challenge we have with foreign fighters returning to Europe, it is no longer acceptable that over 88 million EU citizens should use paper identity cards. "We propose that in two years, all paper ID cards should be scrapped, and that in five years all cards should carry biometric data. "No criminal or terrorist should any longer have a chance of hiding behind forged identity cards". (ANSA) - Rome, April 17 - New wiretaps could lead to the reopening of the case of the murders in the Somalia capital Mogadishu on March 20 1994 of TG3 reporter Ilaria Alpi and her cameraman Miran Hrovatin, judicial sources said Tuesday. The wiretaps are said to have been made in 2012 between Somali individuals talking in Italy about the deaths of Alpi and Hovratin, sources said. The transcripts were sent from Florence prosecutors to Rome prosecutor Maria Rosaria Guglielmi and filed by her Tuesday with a preliminary investigations judge for a hearing set to determine whether to shelve the case as requested by Rome prosecutors last June. Judge Andrea Fanelli, in light of the new wiretaps and documents field by Alpi's family, adjourned the hearings until June 8. Rome prosecutors will work on the transcripts sent by Florence colleagues over the coming weeks. Alpi's mother Luciana said she "took note" of the new evidence but said "i don't want to get my hopes up". A Somali man who spent nearly 17 years behind bars for the killings but was subsequently cleared, Hashi Omar Hassan, said "Ilaria's family must have justice". On March 30 Hassan got over three million euros in compensation for his wrongful conviction and time in jail. In October 2016 a Perugia court reversed Hassan's conviction. Prosecutor Dario Razzi told the court Hassan "did not commit" the crime. He was the only person convicted of the murders. Alpi, 32, and Hrovatin, 45, were ambushed and shot in their jeep in Mogadishu by a seven-man commando on March 20, 1994. Initially, it was thought that the journalist was murdered in revenge for clashes which had broken out between the militias of Somalia's warlords and Italian peacekeepers. But a 1999 book by Alpi's parents called The Execution alleged that Alpi and Hrovatin were killed to stop them revealing what they knew about an international arms and toxic-waste ring implicating high-level political, military and economic figures in both countries. The book accuses the Italian secret services of playing a major role in this ring. In 2015 Ahmed Ali Rage, who was also known as Gelle and who was a key witness for the prosecution in the trial that led to the conviction, said that Hassan was "innocent". Rage told a new trial that he "never told anyone" Hassan was part of the murder commando. Hassan was released into the custody of social services in 2015 with 10 years to go on his 26-year sentence. "Thank God it's over," said Hassan at the time. Alpi's mother Luciana, who backed Hassan's battle against the miscarriage of justice, said that she was "happy" Hassan had been cleared, but added that she was "bitter and depressed" that the real culprits had not been brought to justice. "It's as if she and Miran Hrovatin died of the heat in Mogadishu," Luciana Alpi told ANSA. "We don't have the truth and I don't think we ever will". Photos taken of the dead body of Alpi, who worked for public broadcaster RAI's third channel, and a medical report on the deaths, along with other key evidence including Alpi's notes, camera and video cassettes, mysteriously went missing on the journey back from Africa to Italy, fuelling suspicions of a cover-up. Speaking to RAI Channel 3, Rage in February 2015 claimed that he was asked to testify against Hassan. "I did not see who fired the shots," he reportedly told RAI 3. According to the Italian diplomat who investigated the case in Somalia, former ambassador Giuseppe Cassini, the driver who acted as a key witness for the prosecution was "an unreliable individual who would do anything to survive". Hassan, who travelled to Italy in 1998 to give evidence in a probe into brutality by Italian soldiers, was acquitted of involvement in the two murders at the end of a first trial in July 1999. But he was found guilty by an appeals court in 2000 and sentenced to life in prison. Italy's supreme Cassation Court upheld the guilty verdict in October 2001 but reduced the sentence from life to 26 years because it said the crimes were not premeditated. Hassan's lawyers said he was not in Mogadishu at the time of the killing and was tricked into coming to Italy. (ANSA) - Rome, April 17 - New wiretaps could lead to the reopening of the case of the murders in the Somalia capital Mogadishu on March 20 1994 of TG3 reporter Ilaria Alpi and her cameraman Miran Hrovatin, judicial sources said Tuesday. The wiretaps are said to have been made in 2012 between Somali individuals talking in Italy about the deaths of Alpi and Hovratin, sources said. The wiretaps were made in a Florence probe into the trafficking of trucks decommissioned by the Italian army from Italy to Somalia, judicial sources said. Some 15 people have been placed under investigation in the probe and the indictment of four of them, all Somalis, has been requested, sources said. The transcripts were sent from Florence prosecutors to Rome prosecutor Maria Rosaria Guglielmi and filed by her Tuesday with a preliminary investigations judge for a hearing set to determine whether to shelve the case as requested by Rome prosecutors last June. Judge Andrea Fanelli, in light of the new wiretaps and documents field by Alpi's family, adjourned the hearings until June 8. Rome prosecutors will work on the transcripts sent by Florence colleagues over the coming weeks. Alpi's mother Luciana said she "took note" of the new evidence but said "i don't want to get my hopes up". A Somali man who spent nearly 17 years behind bars for the killings but was subsequently cleared, Hashi Omar Hassan, said "Ilaria's family must have justice". On March 30 Hassan got over three million euros in compensation for his wrongful conviction and time in jail. In October 2016 a Perugia court reversed Hassan's conviction. Prosecutor Dario Razzi told the court Hassan "did not commit" the crime. He was the only person convicted of the murders. Alpi, 32, and Hrovatin, 45, were ambushed and shot in their jeep in Mogadishu by a seven-man commando on March 20, 1994. Initially, it was thought that the journalist was murdered in revenge for clashes which had broken out between the militias of Somalia's warlords and Italian peacekeepers. But a 1999 book by Alpi's parents called The Execution alleged that Alpi and Hrovatin were killed to stop them revealing what they knew about an international arms and toxic-waste ring implicating high-level political, military and economic figures in both countries. The book accuses the Italian secret services of playing a major role in this ring. In 2015 Ahmed Ali Rage, who was also known as Gelle and who was a key witness for the prosecution in the trial that led to the conviction, said that Hassan was "innocent". Rage told a new trial that he "never told anyone" Hassan was part of the murder commando. Hassan was released into the custody of social services in 2015 with 10 years to go on his 26-year sentence. "Thank God it's over," said Hassan at the time. Alpi's mother Luciana, who backed Hassan's battle against the miscarriage of justice, said that she was "happy" Hassan had been cleared, but added that she was "bitter and depressed" that the real culprits had not been brought to justice. "It's as if she and Miran Hrovatin died of the heat in Mogadishu," Luciana Alpi told ANSA. "We don't have the truth and I don't think we ever will". Photos taken of the dead body of Alpi, who worked for public broadcaster RAI's third channel, and a medical report on the deaths, along with other key evidence including Alpi's notes, camera and video cassettes, mysteriously went missing on the journey back from Africa to Italy, fuelling suspicions of a cover-up. Speaking to RAI Channel 3, Rage in February 2015 claimed that he was asked to testify against Hassan. "I did not see who fired the shots," he reportedly told RAI 3. According to the Italian diplomat who investigated the case in Somalia, former ambassador Giuseppe Cassini, the driver who acted as a key witness for the prosecution was "an unreliable individual who would do anything to survive". Hassan, who travelled to Italy in 1998 to give evidence in a probe into brutality by Italian soldiers, was acquitted of involvement in the two murders at the end of a first trial in July 1999. But he was found guilty by an appeals court in 2000 and sentenced to life in prison. Italy's supreme Cassation Court upheld the guilty verdict in October 2001 but reduced the sentence from life to 26 years because it said the crimes were not premeditated. Hassan's lawyers said he was not in Mogadishu at the time of the killing and was tricked into coming to Italy. (ANSA) - Rome, April 17 - Premier Paolo Gentiloni told the Lower House on Tuesday that the fact Italy did not actively take part in the United States-led air strikes in Syria does not mean it is neutral. "Italy is not a neutral country, one that choose on a case-by-case basis whether to side with the Atlantic alliance or Russia," he said. "It is a coherent ally of the United States and not starting with this or that American administration, of Kennedy or Nixon, Reagan or Clinton, Bush or Obama. "We have chosen sides". Gentiloni said that the air strikes by the United States, France and Great Britain in Syria were "a justified, targeted and limited response" to alleged chemical weapon attacks by the Assad regime on its own people. "There are no indications of civilian victims or of collateral damage. "The response was coordinated with the actors present to avoid civilian victims". Italy only provided logistical support, via the Aviano air base, to the strikes on Syria, Gentiloni said. He stressed no "direct action aimed at hitting Syrian territory" had come from Italian territory. The Russian veto at the United Nations blocks establishing the truth about the suspected Syrian regime chemical weapons attack on the Syrian town of Douma, Gentiloni said. "The city of Douma, which was the last stronghold of the rebels, was the target of an attack in which according to all evidence the use of chemical weapons was repeated: probably chlorine mixed with sarin or similar agents" he said. "Various sources have confirmed dozens of dead and hundreds of injured. "But we have the certainty, unfortunately, that following Russia's veto on the (UN) Security Council's proposal, the initiative to establish the truth and responsibilities has been blocked. Gentiloni said "I think we can't accept going back 100 years to the end of the First World War and again legitimise the use of chemical weapons, we cannot accept it". (ANSA) - Strasbourg, April 17 - French President Emmanuel Macron told the European Parliament Tuesday that "there is perfect understanding between Italy and France" on migration. Macron stressed the importance of reforming common asylum rules "with the same rules valid for all". In other remarks on migrants, Macron said that a "poisoned debate must be freed up". He said that selfishness must be stopped as there was a risk of a European "civil war". Macron also said the right response in Europe was not "authoritarian democracy". (ANSA) - Verona, April 16 - Italian winemakers are following the Christopher Columbus route ever more and making their way to America but also eastward, with double-digit growth in Russia, Japan and China. The 52nd edition of Vinitaly, the largest wine festival in the world, opened with good prospects for Italian wines to expand even more. Some 4,380 exhibitors - 130 more than in 2017 - are taking part at the Verona exhibition grounds, with a bipartisan political and institutional presence. "Vinitaly is an exceptional event and a true source of pride for Verona, the Veneto region and the entire country. This is where there is the best of Italy," said Senate speaker Maria Elisabetta Alberti Casellati, who inaugurated the event. Consumers ever more sensitive to good wine are found in major US cities and among Americans under age 35. Some 71% of New Yorkers are considered 'wine-addicted', while 28% of US consumers have drunk Italian wine over the past 12 months. However, in this longstanding market for Italian wine exports, 4 out of every 10 people have never drunk Italian-made wine. The US is thus a mature market with wide potential growth margins, according to the Vinitaly-Nomisma Wine Monitor survey on consumption habits in five US states: New York, California, Illinois, Minnesota, and Wisconsin. The survey spurs on a sector that is seen in good health in Vinitaly. Revenue in Italy from wines and sparkling wines, said Italian farmers association Coldiretti, grew by 5% and rose in 2017 to a record high over 10.6 billion. This was mostly due to exports, which rose to their highest ever level at 6 billion (+6%), while slight growth was seen also on the domestic market to 4.6 billion, in part due to household consumption (+2%). "Five years ago," former Minister of Agricultural, Food and Forestry Maurizio Martina said, "the wine sector was important but not so central. I am proud of this because the record high of 6 billion in 2017 was partially to our credit." At the most important event of the sector and at a delicate political moment, League leader Matteo Salvini and M5S party chief Luigi Di Maio were present. The League party chief said that he was at the exhibition to "pay homage to entrepreneurship that resists, creates jobs and does great things for Italian production despite the restrictions laid on it by Europe". Di Maio instead noted that "it is important to support, including in Brussels, this sector that has invested in tradition and innovation." Some stimulus came also from the 'King of Tortellini', Giovanni Rana. "Wine is the pearl of Italian-made products, a driving force behind everything," he said. "However, it is necessary for entrepreneurs to look beyond Italy." "Wine is the pearl of Italian-made products, a driving force behind everything," he said. "However, it is necessary for entrepreneurs to look beyond Italy." DAMASCUS - Inspectors from the international chemical weapons watchdog have entered the town of Douma in Eastern Ghouta to investigate the suspected chemical attack attributed to Syrian government forces on April 7, Syrian state TV said on Tuesday. The inspectors of the Organisation for the Prohibition of Chemical Weapons (OPCW) entered Douma accompanied by the Syrian police present in the area, the source said. Their first visit to the site of the alleged attack will end on Tuesday. German Chancellor Angela Merkel also intervened with respect to the crisis. No peace process is possible without Russia, so despite "Putin's co-responsibility with the Assad regime it is necessary to continue dialogue with Russia", she said during a press conference with the New Zealand premier. Meanwhile French President Emmanuel Macron said the raids in Syria by France, US and Great Britain had "saved the honour of the international community". "We haven't declared war on anybody and we did not intervene with a declaration of war," he said. Meanwhile, the Wall Street journal reports that the Trump administration is counting on its Arab allies to replace the US military contingent in Syria and help stabilise the northeast of the country following the defeat of ISIS. According to administration sources security adviser John Bolton has recently held talks with the head of Egyptian intelligence to explore Egypt's willingness to contribute to the effort. The initiative follows the request made by the US administration to Saudi Arabia, Qatar and UAE to donate billions of dollars to cleaning up northern Syria. Now it seems Trump is counting on the deployment of Arab troops. TEL AVIV - Israeli authorities closed its crossing points with the West Bank last night ahead of Remembrance Day and Independence Day. The crossings will open again on Thursday. Tension is rising in the area after dozens of Palestinian vehicles were damaged by unknown individuals in the Luban a-Sharkya and a-Sawya villages near Nablus. Hebrew graffiti was found on the cars and nearby streets supporting extremist fringes of the Israeli settler movement. The attack is the second of its kind this week and the police have opened an investigation while the military has stepped up its forcible removal of Jewish extremists from the West Bank. Some 25 have been removed thus far. US response in Syria justified, targeted - Gentiloni No reports of civilian victims says premier (ANSAmed) - ROME, APRIL 17 - Premier Paolo Gentiloni told the Lower House on Tuesday that the air strikes by the United States, France and Great Britain in Syria were "a justified, targeted and limited response" to alleged chemical weapon attacks by the Assad regime on its own people. "There are no indications of civilian victims or of collateral damage. "The response was coordinated with the actors present to avoid civilian victims". that the fact Italy did not actively take part in the United States-led air strikes in Syria does not mean it is neutral. "Italy is not a neutral country, one that choose on a case-by-case basis whether to side with the Atlantic alliance or Russia," he said. "It is a coherent ally of the United States and not starting with this or that American administration, of Kennedy or Nixon, Reagan or Clinton, Bush or Obama. "We have chosen sides". Gentiloni said that the air strikes by the United States, France and Great Britain in Syria were "a justified, targeted and limited response" to alleged chemical weapon attacks by the Assad regime on its own people. "There are no indications of civilian victims or of collateral damage. "The response was coordinated with the actors present to avoid civilian victims". Italy only provided logistical support, via the Aviano air base, to the strikes on Syria, Gentiloni said. He stressed no "direct action aimed at hitting Syrian territory" had come from Italian territory. The Russian veto at the United Nations blocks establishing the truth about the suspected Syrian regime chemical weapons attack on the Syrian town of Douma, Gentiloni said. "The city of Douma, which was the last stronghold of the rebels, was the target of an attack in which according to all evidence the use of chemical weapons was repeated: probably chlorine mixed with sarin or similar agents" he said. "Various sources have confirmed dozens of dead and hundreds of injured. "But we have the certainty, unfortunately, that following Russia's veto on the (UN) Security Council's proposal, the initiative to establish the truth and responsibilities has been blocked. Gentiloni said "I think we can't accept going back 100 years to the end of the First World War and again legitimise the use of chemical weapons, we cannot accept it".(ANSAmed). US wants Arab force to replace its troops in Syria, WSJ To help stabilize northern part of country post-ISIS (ANSAmed) - NEW YORK, APRIL 17 - The Trump administration is asking its Arab allies to replace the US military contingent in Syria and help stabilize the northeastern part of the country after the defeat of the Islamic State (ISIS), reported the Wall Street Journal on Monday. The paper said that ''John Bolton, President Donald Trump's new national security adviser, recently called Abbas Kamel, Egypt's acting intelligence chief, to see if Cairo would contribute to the effort''. The initiative, it stressed, follows a request by the US administration to Saudi Arabia, Qatar, and the UAE to contribute billions of dollars to rehabilitate northern Syria. The administration is now calling for Arab troops to be sent as well.(ANSAmed). Qatar Airways has announced a new codeshare agreement with Air Italy, starting 24 April. The new agreement provides codeshares on Air Italys routes between Milan-Malpensa Airport and six domestic cities across Italy, including Catania (CTA), Rome (FCO), Naples (NAP), Olbia (OLB), Palermo (PMO) and Calabria (SUF). The agreement also consists of Air Italys route between Rome Fiumicino Airport and Olbia Costa Smeralda Airport (OLB). Qatar Airways first began flying to Italy in 2002 with a service from Doha to Milan. A year later, the airline launched direct service to Rome. In 2011, the award-winning airline started operating to Venice, and in 2016, Qatar Airways further strengthened its commitment to the country with a daily service to Pisa. Qatar Airways Group Chief Executive Officer, Akbar Al Baker, said: We are pleased to be announcing this codeshare with the newly-launched Air Italy. The new agreement will provide seamless connectivity for Qatar Airways passengers arriving at our Italian gateways, onto further domestic destinations, enabling them to explore this beautiful country This codeshare between Qatar Airways and Air Italy demonstrates the strengthening ties between Italy and Qatar; two countries that share many economic affiliations. With more than 30 years aviation experience, Captain Mohamed Roshdy Zakaria knows the airline business from top to bottom. When he became EgyptAir CEO in 2012, he had already been a chief pilot examiner and instructor on the Airbus 300-B4, the Boeing B767 and B777, and he had been instrumental in creating and building the airlines integrated operation control centre (IOCC). Consequently, when it came to stepping down from the airlines hot seat, Zakaria knew early retirement was not an option. Instead, he took up the reins at Egypts first private aviation company, Smart Aviation. Stepping into his office in the Ministry of Civil Aviation building, it was clear that Zakaria is hands-on very hands-on. We need fuel in the Gulfstream now and where are the crew? he barked down the telephone. He had picked up on a charter opportunity for a Gulfstream G450 managed by Smart. We have just one-hour-and-a-half to get crew, catering, fuel and permits, he said. Zakaria has been tasked with turning around the loss-making charter business, which had been formed in 2007 and operating in the VIP sector since 2009. So far it is working, he said. We have seen losses reducing each quarter and I am confident that we will now be turning into profit when the 2017 results are out. We have seven aircraft in the fleet, six Cessna Citation Sovereigns one is managed by us and the others owned and the Gulfstream, which we manage. The operator is part of the Avinode network and is seeing its international charters increasing. We lost a lot of our market after the revolution and it hasnt recovered, said Zakaria. It has picked up over the past year but is probably only to 80% of what it was before. The Sovereigns are ideal for medical evacuation activities and two of the fleet have been made ready for medevac operations. These are the only real air ambulances in Egypt, Zakaria said. Smart also operates a King Air 350 for inspection and calibrating navigational aids. We have worked on the systems at most Egyptian civil and military airports and also won contracts in Oman and Saudi Arabia. We have also begun working in South Sudan, he added. Patria's subsidiary Milrem LCM and BAE Systems have signed a contract to support Estonia's fleet of CV9035 Infantry Fighting Vehicles (IFVs). First Infantry Brigade of Estonian army at military parade with CV9035 IFVs (Picture source: Estonian MoD) Milrem LCM, an Estonian provider of defense vehicle lifecycle management, will provide maintenance and repair services for CV9035 vehicles from its facilities in Estonia. The first batch of IFVs arrived in Estonia in October 2016, followed by a second shipment in December 2017. The agreement is part of BAE Systems' wider contract with the Estonian government to maintain and sustain 44 CV9035 vehicles acquired from the Netherlands in 2014. This co-operation will provide long-term benefits to the Estonian Defense Forces by sustaining and developing these vehicles for years to come. "We are proud to work with BAE Systems' as its preferred maintenance support partner in Estonia. Milrem LCM is committed to providing the most reliable framework for the Estonian Defense Forces as the country seeks to increase the combat capability of its land forces, now and in the future," says Kuldar Vaarsi, CEO of Milrem LCM. BAE Systems is also teaming with Milrem LCM in the pursuit of the CV90 Support Vehicles re-build program. The requirements, expected from the Estonian Center for Defense Investment later this year, are predicted to cover the maintenance, repair and rebuild of an additional 37 CV90 Mk.I vehicles procured from Norway. Once outfitted, the support vehicles will form part of the same mechanized battalion as the CV9035. Estonia is one of seven user nations operating CV90 IFV. There are more than 1,280 vehicles in 15 variants in service with Denmark, Estonia, Finland, Norway, Sweden, Switzerland and The Netherlands. The Dutch SME High Eye is now ready to meet Malaysian Armed Forces' requirement for unmanned aerial platforms with its HEF 32 VTOL UAV, being showcased this week at DSA 2018 exhibition, April 16-19. The HEF 32 is an unmanned helicopter with a two-blade single rotor. High Eye HEF-32 UAV being promoted at DSA 2018 The HEF-32 strength lies in the fact that it weighs less than 25 kg and it will fit in any small van or estate car without any prior disassembly, whilst still being able to easily outperform all electric competitors. It offers flight times up to 4.5 hours even when carrying modest payloads. It never needs a recharge, which means that except for some short refuelling stops, the mission can always continue. The system operates fully automatic and through nearly all weather conditions. Several sensors are used to improve safety, the pilot's orientation and to aid his navigational capabilities. A wide variety of options is available to further increase its operational capabilities. Flexible payload interfaces allow the integration of multiple sensors at once. High Eye offers the HEF 32 UAV and all the periphery required for a basic mission operation, in one basic system package. This includes a flight ready HEF 32, Ground Control Station, omni-directional ground antenna, Operations Manual, Maintenance Manual, Illustrated Parts Breakdown, checklists, maintenance frame, tools, transportation box and parts required for the first 200 hours of operation. The propulsion is provided by a 32cc two-stroke petrol engine, which drives the rotors via a maintenance-free, industrial quality, hybrid transmission. Fuel is supplied via a large fueltank and a simple gravity-feed system. The HEF 32 will fly beyond 4.5 hours with a payload of 2 kg, without refuelling. In hover, it will easily fly 3 hours, whilst only using 5 litres of petrol. It is currently limited at 70 knots, which equals 130 km/h. Because of a safe excess of power, it can fly comparatively high and altitudes in excess of 6000 feet offer no problem for the system. The datalink is supplied by Silvus Technologies and provides a dual MIMO IP link, which is used for the telemetry, flight controls and the payload. The data-link is fully redundant and acts as a self-healing mesh network, allowing data-relaying and multi-location payload streaming. Operations in reduced line-of-sight conditions are made possible through the MIMO capabilities. The system can be provided in many different frequency bands and output strengths can be tuned to local regulatory requirements. With the normal antenna systems, as supplied with the HEF 32, the datalink range exceeds 15 km with live streaming video. A tracking antenna can be supplied as an off-the-shelf upgrade, which can increase the range up to 50 km with moderate bandwidth capabilities. The Company EDIC NIMR based in United Arab Emirates presents its Ajban Long Range Special Operations Vehicle (LRSOV) and Ajban 440A light protected vehicle at DSA 2018, the International Defense and Security exhibition in Malaysia. The Malaysian army would like to acquire a new light combat vehicle for his special forces. NIMR Ajban Long Range Special Operations Vehicle (LRSOV) at DSA 2018, the International Defense and Security Exhibition in Malaysia. (Picture source Army Recognition) The NIMR Ajban Long Range Special Operations Vehicle (LRSOV) is a open-top, long-range 44 reconnaissance variant in the AJBAN family of vehicles developed by NIMR Automotive, a part of Emirates Defense Industries Company (EDIC), for special operations forces. The AJBAN LRSOV is based on the NIMR 44 chassis. It offers accommodation for four crew members and can be optionally fitted with an additional seat for carrying additional occupant. The platform offers superior 360 situational awareness. The vehicle is fitted with ring mount located on the top of the open-top architecture that can be fitted a 7.62mm or 12.7mm machine gun. The side of the vehicle can be equipped with swivel weapon station can be armed with 7.62 or 5.56mm caliber machine gun. The Ajban SOV is powered by an engine developing 296 hp at 2,500 rpm coupled to a 6 speed automatic transmission. It can run at a maximum speed of 110 km/h with a maximum cruising range of 700 km. NIMR Ajban 400A multi-purpose protected tactical vehicle at DSA 2018, the International Defense and Security Exhibition in Malaysia. (Picture source Army Recognition) The AJBAN 440A is a multi-purpose protected patrol variant in AJBAN-class family of 44 tactical vehicles also designed and developed by NIMR Automotive. The Ajban 440A is based on a 44 chassis with a double crew cab a the front and an open-top cargo compartment at the rear. It has a length of 5.6m and a wheelbase of 3.3m, while its height and width are 2.35m. It has a gross weight of 10,750kg and has a payload of 1,200 kg maximum. The armoured crew cabin can accommodate up to four personnel, including a driver and a commander. The personnel enter or leave the vehicle through two doors fitted on either side. A bullet-proof glass window is provided on each door to provide situational awareness and ballistic protection for crew members. The standard configuration of the vehicle is equipped with a self-recovery winch, a self-sealing protected fuel tank, and a battery management system. The Turkish Company FNSS continues to market its range of wheeled and tracked combat armoured vehicles in the Southeast Asia region during DSA 2018, the International Defense and Security Exhibition in Kuala Lumpur, Malaysia. As a globally trusted Turkish company with a highly active presence in the Southeast Asian region, FNSS continues to add value to its military users with tailor-made defense solutions. PARS 8x8 Gempita with anti-tank guided missile turret at DSA 2018, the International Defense and Security exhibition in Malaysia (Picture source Army Recognition) The Turkish Company FNSS has a full family of Tracked and wheeled Armored Combat Vehicles, designed with the necessary mounting provisions to transform the vehicle into various configurations based on user requirements. After year 2000, FNSS developed a new generation of 6x6 and 8x8 Wheeled Armored Combat Vehicles named PARS. Today, the vehicles employ the latest design and technologies from commercial offthe-shelf (COTS) which have been Militarized (MCOTS) to meet the performance and durability of modern military operational requirements. FNSS has the capability to meet the specific requirements of its customers by incorporating a variety of weapon stations and mission systems. In 2011, FNSS signed a master agreement with its Malaysian partner Deftech for the development and production of 257 each Malaysian AV8 (8x8) Armored Wheeled Vehicles called Gempita in 12 configurations. The vehicle is based on the PARS 8x8 armoured technology. Last year, the Turkish Company FNSS unveiled the latest member of the wheeled armoured vehicle family named as PARS 4x4. The vehicle is fully amphibious without any preparations and capable of carrying ATGM launchers or RWS for specific missions. Scale model of Kaplan-20 tracked armoured vehicle at DSA 2018, the International Defense and Security exhibition in Malaysia (Picture source Army Recognition) In January 2007, FNSS was awarded a contract by the Turkish MoD (Ministry of Defense) to design, develop, and manufacture Armored Amphibious Assault Bridge (AAAB) platforms, which use the main automotive components of the FNSS designed 8x8 PARS Vehicles. FNSS completed the delivery of 52 AAAB units to Turkish Land Forces in 2013. The AAAB project was followed by the design, development, and production of the Amphibious Armored Combat Earthmover (AACE), which extended the combat engineering capability of Turkish Land Forces. The delivery of 12 units was completed in 2012. FNSS also designed, developed and manufactured a medium weight tracked armored platform named, as ACV-30 medium weight amphibious tracked armored. In 2015, FNSS unveiled its new-generation, tracked armoured fighting vehicle (AFV), KAPLAN at the International Defence Industry Fair IDEF 2015. The vehicle is intended to meet tactical and technical needs of the modern infantry and cavalry units. The vehicle is fully amphibious and it can be deployed in special operations, full-spectrum conflicts, reconnaissance, independent infantry operations, and mechanised/armoured infantry operations. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . This week in classrooms across New Mexico, students from grades 3-11 will begin taking the standardized test known as PARCC. For the sake of our childrens futures, I am calling for this to be the last time they take the test. The results have been in for a long time: PARCC is a colossal and expensive failure for our state. The next governor must change the states education policy to return to sensible assessment and teaching practices, and do away with this gold-plated experiment that has damaged our system of education. During her tenure over the last seven years, Gov. Susana Martinez and her head of Public Education, Hannah Skandera, wasted millions of dollars worth of state taxes on The Partnership for Assessment of Readiness for College and Careers (better known by its acronym, PARCC). PARCC is the standardized test linked to national Common Core curriculum in math and English. Pearson Education Inc., a private for-profit global corporation based in London, holds the contract to produce PARCC tests in New Mexico. Implementing it has been the focus of the states education policy. The corporations surrounding the test have profited enormously, while New Mexico remains at the bottom in the nation for student achievement. Instead of using scarce public dollars for proven methods of bettering education smaller class sizes, more professional development for educators, and more books, librarians, nurses, counselors and instructors for art, dance and music the Martinez administrations policy has been to funnel millions to corporations for the PARCC curriculum and tests, and its technology. Classroom teachers and parents never had any serious input into the exam. Instead, it was handed down to states and schools from huge corporations, which stood to profit from its adoption, and the federal government. The Martinez administration and Skandera promised that PARCC and Common Core just needed implementation time to turn around student achievement. They told us that evaluation of teachers by student test scores would result in better teaching, which in turn would close the achievement gap between well-off and poor children in our state. They were wrong. The complete failure of the PARCC exam is proven not only in New Mexico but across the U.S. in states that adopted it. That is why other states are abandoning PARCC. The Nations Report Card, which is what the National Assessment of Educational Progress (NAEP) is regularly called, assesses what students know and can do in various subjects. 2017 NAEP scores show no improvement in student achievement after years of PARCC-style reforms based on business practices. It wasnt always this way. From the early 1970s until 1999, NAEP scores were rising in our country before corporate changes took over federal education policies. While tens of millions of dollars were diverted from K-12 classrooms in New Mexico to for-profit contracts for federal standards, tests and technology, we now face a massive teacher shortage. Blaming of teachers, schools ad students accompanied all the reforms represented by PARCC testing. That too was a huge mistake. PARCC does harm. It is part of the push for privatization of our public schools. There are better ways to assess the learning of school-age children. I am all for accountability in our schools. But it is time we begin to listen to parents and teachers again. Residents of New Mexico must seize the opportunity presented by the 2018 elections to change the direction of our public schools and vote against the trend of high-stakes annual testing of children and the privatization of our public education. Instead, we must create new momentum for learning that is authentic and that furthers the character, intellect, and the lives of New Mexicos children. After this school year, let us say Adios! to PARCC. (EDITORS NOTE: Howie Morales is a New Mexico state senator from Silver City. Contact him at [email protected]) by Put yourself in the position of a member of the Metropolitan Museums search committee: Despite all the pressure to choose anyone but another white malesomewhat wrong-headed pressure, imhoI think youd have picked Max Hollein (at left) to be the next director of the museum too. For many reasonsas I will outline. Ive commented favorably and specifically about Hollein here beforelet me go through some of those posts quickly. In 2012, I noted the way he had expanded the Stadel Museum in Frankfurt to accommodate modern/contemporary art. I cited four reasons, including his approach to fundraising. At the time, I had not seen the addition, but last year I did visit Frankfurt and I saw it. While I know that some people, some curators, do not like itone told me it looked too much like a shopping centerI disagree. It is a bit white-boxy, but so are most contemporary art museum that were built from a scratch. This one was inserted underground. I think it is about the best suite of galleries that could have been built on that spot. In 2013, I cited the Stadels exhibition for Hans Thoma, a once heralded but lost forgotten artist born in 1839. As wrote then: I commend the Stadel for going against the crowd, digging into its collection it owns nearly ninety paintings and several hundred works on paper by Thoma and showing an artist that seems so retro. Max Hollein, the museums director, said he was doing it because Thoma, in his day, played a central role in German art and society. In 2014, I called attention to two articles, one interviewing Hollein, one Philippe de Montebello, on the job of a museum director. Aside from offering a pretty good (short) definition, Hollein appropriately mentioned local context. In 2016, when he was appointed to his post at the Fine Arts Museums of San Francisco, I called attention to a video that also outlines his views. also commenting on the individuality of museums, among other things. In 2017, Hollein commented in a San Francisco Chronicle article about cuts to the NEA budget, which I reported here. Also last year, I commented twice about one of Holleins digital efforts. once at FAMSF, the online guides to an exhibition that visitors can read before they go (and why he believes in them), and later noting how the Stadel continued with what he started there after he left. Taken together, those postsand I had no intention to be definitive; there may have been other even more incisive interviews of him and/or actions to notegive us a pretty good view of his approach to his job, his museum and artistic philosophy and, in some ways, his character. I do not think the other candidates in the running have be so transparent. Also, remember that he was initially a student of former Guggenheim director Thomas Krens (he began his career as chief of staff and executive assistant to him). Krens is known for playing a bit fast and loose, butsince weve seen no evidence so far that Hollein does the sameits good experience to have had. If nothing else, Krens knew how to raise money. He also knew how to think big, and reinforced Holleins own tendency to do so. Hollein, too, is experienced at raising money (important for the Met) and has completed a building project (ditto). He has successfully gotten along with FAMSFs key donor, Dede Wilsey, who likes to rule the roost there. SF sources tell me he has charmed many locals and Ive heard no tales of alienation. Curators, mostly, seem to like working with him (ok, I heard one complaint, but theres always one.) Hollein knows his art history and understands the need for a mix at the Met. (Further evidence of his interest in a broad art program is here). He is, I think, press-savvy and that is a big plus because other people at the Met (I shall hold my tongue for the moment) are not. At 48, he is the right age. If he makes no disqualifying mistakes, hell be there for 20 yearslong after Met President/CEO Daniel H. Weiss (at right), who is 60, leaves and allows Hollein to take the CEO title. The board wont have to go through another tedious search for years. Reviewing all these items, as a trustee, wouldnt you have picked Hollein? There is a risk and its the relationship between him and Weiss. Weiss has asserted his superiority in a few subtlestarting with the announcement itself, which he made. In the past, since the board did the hiring, the announcement would most likely been made by the chairman of the board. UPDATE: Interestingly, I just noticed that it was only the email sent to the press that began Met President and CEO Dan Weiss announced today that Max Hollein has been elected the tenth Director of The Metropolitan Museum of Art. The press release posted online begins The Metropolitan Museum of Art announced today that Max Hollein has been elected its next Director. I am not sure what all that is about, unless someone remarked about the email release. Now, back to my original post: Further, Weiss reportedly told one journalist that he was an art historian with an MBA and that Hollein was an art historian with an MBAwhich seems to me a laying down of facts, yes, but in a way that reinforces the idea that Hollein has nothing on Weiss and that, despite the similarities, they are equals: Traditional syntax would have placed the speaker second in the sentence, not first, unless a message was being conveyed. And, truth be told, Hollein can one-up Weiss in certain ways. As The New Yorker put it: Hollein unarguably brings more expertise to the institution than his new boss does. Weiss is a medieval-art historian who rose through academia to become a college president and came to the Met from Haverford College. Hollein, by contrast, arrives in New York from two years as the director of the Fine Arts Museums of San Francisco[and in his] brief tenureaccomplished a great dealincluding savvily implementing digital programs to broaden the museums appeal to the coveted millennial demographic.Before San Francisco, Hollein ran a trifecta of museums in Frankurt: the Stadel Museum, the Schirn Kunsthalle, and the Liebieghaus sculpture collection[where] hows organized under his watch range from Albrecht Durer and Cranach the Elder to Henri Matisse and Julian Schnabel. At the Stadel, Hollein oversaw a sixty-nine-million-dollar renovation that was critically lauded.[and]perhaps most importantly for the Met, Hollein, unlike his predecessor, is a fund-raiser with a proven track record. Equally notable, Weiss never let the impending appointment of a director stand in his hiring pathhe has already filled some jobs that, I am sure, Hollein would have liked a say in. Most notably, there wasjust last monththe appointment of Michael Gallagher as Deputy Director for Conservation and Sherman Fairchild Chairman of Paintings Conservation. On the other hand, I do give Weiss credit for taking the fall on the change in admissions policy (which went into effect Mar 1). It was good to get that over with long before Hollein arrives. The board, in my opinion, made a mistake a year ago when it gave in to Weisss request (demand?) to be CEO. I understand the need for stability at the Met, someone to make decisions while trustees took their time finding the right director. The board has semi-redeemed itself with the choice of Hollein. Now the questions are: how will they get along? Can they be partners? Or has the Board created another muddle? IHCL operates 145 hotels globally across four continents. Indian Hotels Company (IHCL) that runs the Taj brand of luxury hotels, on Tuesday announced its entry into Saudi Arabia with a 340-keys property in Makkah. Mumbai: Indian Hotels Company (IHCL) that runs the Taj brand of luxury hotels, on Tuesday announced its entry into Saudi Arabia with a 340-keys property in Makkah. The property - fourth in the Middle East region for IHCL - is scheduled to open in January 2023 and will come up in partnership with Umm Al Qura Development and Construction Company in the tony King Abdul Aziz Road (KAAR) project, one of the largest urban rejuvenation projects in Makkah. Puneet Chhatwal, managing director and chief executive officer of IHCL said, "We are happy to bring the first Taj hotel to Saudi Arabia. We are committed to expanding our presence in the MENA (Middle East and North Africa) region. This hotel will be our fourth venture in the MENA region." The group already manages a property in the Burj Khalifa downtown area of Dubai and will be opening two more hotels in Dubai in the next 12-18 months. The proposed hotel is situated within walking distance of the Grand Mosque of Masjid Al-Haram, the main attraction for over 6 million pilgrims who visit the city each year. As the birthplace of prophet Muhammad, Makkah is the holiest city for Muslims and the KAAR project is considered as one of the most important development projects in Makkah. IHCL operates 145 hotels globally across four continents, 11 countries and 72 locations and is among the largest domestic hospitality chains. Congress president, Rahul Gandhi has already concluded much of his Karnataka tour and going by party sources, may address a few more rallies. By contrast, the BJP seems to be heavily banking on Prime Minister Narendra Modi to see it through these elections. (Photo: AP) Bengaluru: Despite claims by the Congress party that Prime Minister Narendra Modi has given up the idea of campaigning in Karnataka as the BJP is on a losing wicket here, it appears he is likely to address 10 or 12 rallies in Chikkodi, Raichur, Bengaluru and Vijayapura , starting April 18 or 20. Party general secretary and Udupi-Chikkamagaluru MP, Shobha Karandlaje said that the state unit had requested the Prime Minister to hold over 12 rallies in the state. Congress president, Rahul Gandhi has already concluded much of his Karnataka tour and going by party sources, may address a few more rallies. Local party leaders and Chief Minister, Siddaramaiah himself are so popular that Mr Gandhi might not make the effort to tour the state again, they added. By contrast, the BJP seems to be heavily banking on Prime Minister Narendra Modi to see it through these elections. "He addressed a few rallies and now, his tour will be finalised only after the finalisation of candidates. For us, Mr Modi has to present the candidate to the voters as this will send a different message to them," said a senior leader, recalling that the last time Mr Modi addressed rallies, he coined two catchy phrases, Ten percent sarkar and Seeda Rupaiah (instead of Siddaramaiah) government to say that state government is corrupt. Transport minister also talked about plans to build Chambal expressway that would be connected to Delhi-Mumbai expressway. Union Minister Nitin Gadkari has announced development of a new highway alignment between Delhi and Mumbai, the Ministry of Road Transport and Highways said in a statement. (Photo: File/PTI) New Delhi: Union Minister Nitin Gadkari on Monday said a new express highway connecting Delhi and Mumbai will be built at a cost of Rs 1 lakh crore. The transport and highways minister also talked about plans to build Chambal expressway that would be connected to the Delhi-Mumbai expressway. The Chambal expressway will benefit states like Madhya Pradesh and Rajasthan. Gadkari has announced development of a new highway alignment between Delhi and Mumbai, the Ministry of Road Transport and Highways said in a statement. "A sum of Rs 1 lakh crore will be spent on this expressway ... Nitin Gadkari outlined major initiatives of his ministry for de-congestion of Delhi NCR. A total of ten projects are underway costing Rs 35,600 crore," it said. About 40,000 commercial vehicles enter Delhi on a daily basis, which cause pollution and congestion in the city state, Gadkari, who is also holding the portfolio of water resources and Ganga rejuvenation, said in the statement. An ambitious scheme of developing Eastern and Western Peripheral Expressways around Delhi was taken up, and the Eastern Peripheral Expressway will be inaugurated by Prime Minister Narendra Modi on April 29. Similarly, to ease traffic in East Delhi, Delhi-Meerut Expressway was envisaged, and its Delhi-Dasna portion will also be inaugurated by the prime minister on the same day by a road show. Gadkari informed that work on signal-free corridor from Dhaula Kuan to Airport has been awarded at a cost of Rs 260 crore. He said, eight-lane fully access-controlled Dwarka Expressway is being developed in four packages. While three packages have already been awarded, the work on the expressway is likely to start in a month's time. Total investment on the project is Rs 9,500 crore. Additionally, under improvement of Mahipalpur at Rangpuri, a bypass is being envisaged to connect Dwarka/ NH8, he said. Regarding development of major junctions on NH8 in Gurgaon like the flyover and underpass at IFFCO Chowk, Signature Tower intersection, Rajiv Chowk and Hero Honda Chowk, the minister said the work costing Rs 1,000 crore has been substantially completed. Mr Gandhi pointed out that there were as many as 19,675 cases of rapes of minor children in 2016, terming them as shameful. New Delhi: Amid national outrage over Kathua and Unnao rape cases, Congress president Rahul Gandhi on Monday asked Prime Minister Narendra Modi to fast track cases of rapes of minors and punish the guilty if he was serious about providing justice to the countrys daughters. Mr Gandhi pointed out that there were as many as 19,675 cases of rapes of minor children in 2016, terming them as shameful. There were 19,675 rapes of minor children reported in 2016. This is shameful. PM should fast-track these cases and punish the guilty if he is serious about providing justice for our daughters, Mr Gandhi said on Twitter, using the hashtag SpeakUp. The BJP and the Opposition parties led by the Congress have been locked in a bitter battle over the rapes in Kathua and Unnao. Both the parties had levelled charges against each other for politicising the issue. The Congress had accused the Prime Minister of being silent while the rapes have been taking place in the BJP-ruled states. Expressing anguish over the two incidents which have triggered widespread outrage, the Prime Minister had said such crimes challenge the very concept of social justice and as a society and a country we all are ashamed of it. I want to assure the nation that no criminal will be spared. Justice will be done. Our daughters will get justice. We all will have to work together to end this internal evil, he added. The Congress had also questioned the silence of Union ministers Sushma Swaraj and Smriti Irani. The Congress said that when the UPA was in power Ms Swaraj and Ms Irani were the first to comment on rapes taking place why the studied silence now? The Congress, along with the entire Opposition, will also raise the issue women safety in the Monsoon Session of Parliament. Pakistan has repeatedly denied India consular access to Jadhav on the grounds that it was not applicable in cases related to spies. India had moved The Hague-based ICJ in May last after Jadhav, 47, was sentenced to death by a Pakistani military court on charges of espionage and terrorism. (Photo: ANI | twitter) New Delhi: India on Tuesday filed a fresh set of pleadings in the International Court of Justice (ICJ) relating to the case of its national Kulbhushan Jadhav, who was sentenced to death by a Pakistani military court in April 2017 on charges of espionage and terrorism. The second round of written reply by India in the case was in response to the submissions by Pakistan in the ICJ on December 13, 2017, the Ministry of External Affairs (MEA) said. India had moved The Hague-based ICJ in May last after Jadhav, 47, was sentenced to death by a Pakistani military court on charges of espionage and terrorism. A 10-member bench of the ICJ on May 18 had restrained Pakistan from executing Jadhav till adjudication of the case. "In keeping with the Order of the International Court of Justice of 17 January 2018, India today submitted its reply in the court in the case of Kulbhushan Jadhav," the MEA said. It said India remains committed to make all possible efforts to "secure and protect" the rights of Jadhav. Following an order by the ICJ, India had filed its written pleadings in the case on September 13, 2017 and Pakistan submitted its "counter memorial" on December 13 last. "Today, India filed its Reply to Pakistan's submissions to the court. Pakistan has been given time till July 17 by the court to file its response (Rejoinder)," the MEA said. India has been maintaining that the trial of Jadhav by a military court in Pakistan was "farcical". In its statement on Tuesday, the MEA reiterated this stand. Pakistan claims that its security forces arrested Jadhav from restive Balochistan province on March 3, 2016 after he reportedly entered from Iran. However, India maintains that Jadhav was kidnapped from Iran where he had business interests after retiring from the Navy. Jadhav's sentencing had evoked a sharp reaction in India. India had approached the ICJ for "egregious" violation of the provisions of the Vienna Convention on Consular Relations, 1963, by Pakistan in Jadhav's case. Pakistan has repeatedly denied India consular access to Jadhav on the grounds that it was not applicable in cases related to spies. In reply to a query on the Phagwara clash, the chief minister said the situation was completely under control. Chandigarh: Punjab chief minister Captain Amarinder Singh on Monday dismissed reports of differences with PPCC president Sunil Jakhar as a media creation, even as he declared that the Navjot Singh Sidhu case was none of the Akalis business and they should stay out of it. In an informal chat with mediapersons after flagging off a fleet of nine new ambulances here, the chief minister lauded Rajya Sabha MP Ambika Sonis initiative in procuring these ambulances under the MPLADS Fund and urged other members of Parliament to follow suit. Responding to questions, the chief minister said there were absolutely no problems between him and Gurdaspur MP Sunil Jakhar. It was the creation of the media, which had blown out of proportion a small incident in which Jakhar had left without meeting him because he had to go somewhere else, said Captain Amarinder Singh. Ruling out the need for Local Government Minister Navjot Singh Sidhu to quit over the Supreme Court proceedings in the road rage case against him, Captain Amarinder Singh said the situation did not warrant Mr Sidhus resignation. He lambasted the Akalis for seeking his resignation, asking them to keep out of the affair, which was nothing to do with them. In reply to a query on the Phagwara clash, the chief minister said the situation was completely under control. He said some are in the custody and the others will be arrested soon. The BJP attacked the Congress for using the words saffron terror. New Delhi: Former Union home minister Shivraj Patil, who was ousted after the 26/11 Mumbai attack, on Monday took a jibe at his successor, Sushil Kumar Shinde, for using the words saffron terror. The BJP attacked the Congress for using the words saffron terror. Mr Patil talking to a TV news channel said, The words saffron terror such questions should be asked of those who use such words, but not me. Denying ever using the words saffron terror, he, however, added, Witness that went hostile should be cross-examined. It is the failure of the person who has not come to the correct conclusion and has committed the crime. Media should not draw conclusions, but wait till the judgement copy is out. Have I ever used this?... Its a case of terrorism. Does the court chargesheet one for saying such words (saffron or Hindu terror), countered Mr Patil. He served as a Union minister between May 2004 and November 2008. To a query whether senior Congress leaders, including former Union home ministers P. Chidambaram, Mr Shinde and former Madhya Pradesh chief minister Digvijay Singh have made such statements, he said: You should address this question to whosoever said it. Mr. Patil also asked the reporters whether there is any resolution to the effect passed by the Congress. Agrees to consider fathers plea to shift rape case trial outside state. New Delhi: The Supreme Court on Monday asked the J&K police to continue the protection being granted to the family members of the eight-year-old girl, who was brutally gangraped and murdered at Kathua in the state, along with their lawyer and a friend assisting them in pursuing the case. The top court also agreed to consider the victims father plea seeking transfer of the trial of the case outside Jammu and Kashmir, preferably to Chandigarh. A three-judge Bench of Chief Justice Dipak Misra and Justices A.M. Kanwilkar and D.Y. Chandrachud also directed the state to provide protection to the lawyer Deepika Singh Rajawat who is appearing for the victims family and the counsel assisting the family. The bench issued notice to the state on the petition from Mohd Akhtar, victims father, seeking transfer of the trial outside Kathua court to a court in Chandigarh on the grounds that the atmosphere in Kathua was not conducive for fair trial. The bench posted the matter for further hearing on April 27. The minor girl, aged about eight years, was abducted, raped and murdered in the Kathua district of Jammu region in January this year. A chargesheet have been filed in the court of chief judicial magistrate, Kathua, state of Jammu and Kashmir. Indira Jaising, senior counsel for the petitioner, submitted that a fair trial is an inseparable facet of Article 21 of the Constitution, and there is an apprehension in the mind of the petitioner, the biological father of the victim, that there would be no fair trial inasmuch as there has been protest by the members of the Bar and further there may be issues relating to witness protection. Counsel also said that there should be protection for the victim as well as the lawyer who has a right to protect the interest of the victims in the Court. She, however, said she had faith in the state police, which had conducted a brilliant investigation leading to filling of chargesheet, and there was no need for transfer of the case to the CBI. Counsel Shoeb Alam for the state submitted that the victims family had already been granted police protection and the lawyer would also be provided protection. The police had filed a petition in high court stating that Rajasthan may witness Panchkula-like violence. Asaram Bapu, who is currently lodged in the Jodhpur Central jail, is facing trial in two sexual assault cases: one in Rajasthan and the other in Gujarat. (Photo: PTI/File) Jodhpur: The Jodhpur High Court on Tuesday decided to pronounce the verdict against self-styled godman Asaram Bapu in regard to a rape case in a jail court to avoid any law and order situation in Rajasthan. The police had filed a petition in the high court stating that Rajasthan may witness Panchkula-like violence, which broke out after the conviction of controversial godman Gurmeet Ram Rahim Singh in a rape case. "The judgment will now be pronounced in the jail keeping law and order of the state in mind on April 25," Additional Advocate General Shiv Kumar Vyas said. The Jodhpur Schedule Caste and Schedule Tribe Court on April 7 completed its hearing in the rape case against the godman and the judgement in the case is scheduled for April 25. Also Read: Jodhpur: The Jodhpur High Court on Tuesday decided to pronounce the verdict against self-styled godman Asaram Bapu in regard to a rape case in a jail court to avoid any law and order situation in Rajasthan. The police had filed a petition in the high court stating that Rajasthan may witness Panchkula-like violence, which broke out after the conviction of controversial godman Gurmeet Ram Rahim Singh in a rape case. "The judgment will now be pronounced in the jail keeping law and order of the state in mind on April 25," Additional Advocate General Shiv Kumar Vyas said. The Jodhpur Schedule Caste and Schedule Tribe Court on April 7 completed its hearing in the rape case against the godman and the judgement in the case is scheduled for April 25. Also Read: Asaram case: Rajasthan police appeals HC to shift verdict date to April 17 Asaram, who is currently lodged in the Jodhpur Central jail, is facing trial in two sexual assault cases: one in Rajasthan and the other in Gujarat. In the case registered in Rajasthan, a teenage girl had accused Asaram of sexual assault at his ashram in Manai village near Jodhpur. While in Gujarat, the two Surat-based sisters had lodged separate complaints against the self-styled godman and his son Narayan Sai, accusing them of rape. The Jodhpur Police arrested Asaram on August 3, 2013, and since then, he is in prison. Asaram, who is currently lodged in the Jodhpur Central jail, is facing trial in two sexual assault cases: one in Rajasthan and the other in Gujarat. In the case registered in Rajasthan, a teenage girl had accused Asaram of sexual assault at his ashram in Manai village near Jodhpur. While in Gujarat, the two Surat-based sisters had lodged separate complaints against the self-styled godman and his son Narayan Sai, accusing them of rape. The Jodhpur Police arrested Asaram on August 3, 2013, and since then, he is in prison. Though the Sena opposed the project, its Transport Minister Diwakar Raote has never been aggressive in his opposition to it. Mumbai: Maharashtra chief minister Devendra Fadnavis has directed the officials to speed up the groundwork for the Mumbai-Ahmedabad bullet train project so as to begin construction in June. Mr Fadnavis on Monday chaired a meeting of top state and central officials associated with the Bharatiya Janata Partys (BJP) headline project that will connect Mumbai and Ahmedabad by a high-speed rail corridor. The state government is ignoring the opposition to the project from the Shiv Sena, Maharashtra Navanirman Sena and the Congress-Nationalist Congress Party combine. Though the Sena opposed the project, its Transport Minister Diwakar Raote has never been aggressive in his opposition to it. Another Sena Minister Eknath Shinde, who heads the public works department, facilitated land acquisition in Thane district by asking for compensation of five times of the guideline rate. Niti Ayog vice-chairman Dr Rajiv Kumar, officials of the High Speed Rail Corporation, Mumbai Metropolitan Region Development Authority (MMRDA) commissioner U.P.S. Madan, Urban development department principal secretary Nitin Karir, district collectors of Thane and Palghar and other officials attended the meeting. Mr Fadnavis and Dr Kumar reviewed the land acquisition process and directed the officials to disburse the compensation amount without delay. BJP leaders believe that Mr Fadnavis is not giving much importance to Senas opposition to the high-speed rail project and the Nanar refinery project. Despite some opposition from local residents, the land acquisition is progressing smoothly in 10 villages in Thane district. Fadnavis has directed the police not to proceed against the Sena workers, sources have said. Mumbai: The Shiv Sena on Tuesday called off its protest at chief minister Devendra Fadnavis residence following his assurance on withdrawing the cases against party activists who had protested against the murder of its two workers in Kedgaon, Ahmadnagar. Mr Fadnavis gave the assurance to Public Works Minister Eknath Shinde helping to ease the rising tension between the partners in government, the Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) and the Sena Meanwhile, Sena chief Uddhav Thackeray will on April 25 visit Kedgaon to meet the families of murdered party workers Sanjay Kotkar and Vasant Thube. The Sena had threatened to stage the rally in front of Mr Fadnavis Mumbai residence, Varsha, if the police arrested the Sena workers over the incidents that occurred during protests against the murders in Ahmadnagar. The Sena has clarified that if the cases were not withdrawn byApril 25, it would protest before Varsha. Mr Fadnavis has directed the police not to proceed against the Sena workers, sources have said. Mr Fadnavis had directed the police to drop cases against Republican Party of India (RPI) workers, who had participated in nationwide shut down after violence in Bhima Koregaon. But in the Ahmadnagar matter, all the BJP workers who allegedly attacked the district police chiefs office following the arrest of MLA Sangram Jagtap, have not been arrested. The governments prolonged silence on the two cases and the BJPs complicity in protecting the accused is likely to have two important consequences. The Narendra Modi slogan about protecting the girl child (Beti Bachao) was turned on its head to mean that the girl child had to be saved from the BJPs lumpen leaders. (Representational image) Justice for the child rape victim in Kathua in Jammu has become a national rallying cry against the ruling BJP. The stomach-churning incident of an eight-year-old Muslim girl being raped repeatedly in a temple in Jammu has shaken the nations conscience. Angry protesters have poured into the streets all over India. People have also watched with disbelief the brutality of the Uttar Pradesh police in torturing and killing the father of a rape victim in Unnao and trying to protect the accused, a powerful MLA from the BJP. Together, the Kathua and Unnao rape cases have brought public anger against the BJP to a boil. With even United Nations Secretary-General Antonio Guterres asking for justice for these rape victims, Indias reputation has been tarnished globally yet again. And domestically, the disillusionment with the Narendra Modi brand of governance has multiplied. The governments prolonged silence on the two cases and the BJPs complicity in protecting the accused is likely to have two important consequences. The support for Prime Minister Narendra Modi among women voters is likely to suffer a major erosion. And the chalk-and-cheese coalition in Jammu and Kashmir between the Peoples Democratic Party (PDP) and the BJP is likely to come apart. The BJP was already at a gender disadvantage in the 2014 general election more men than women voted for it. According to the National Election Studies data of the Centre for the Study of Developing Societies, the BJP suffered an acute gender gap in states like Assam, Karnataka, Odisha, Uttar Pradesh, West Bengal, Uttarakhand and Jharkhand while its support was marginally higher among women in Delhi and Madhya Pradesh. As awareness about its attitude towards rape increases, the BJP could have women voters abandoning it. The Unnao rape case helped focus national attention also on the ordeal of the minor raped in Kathua, ignored by the national media for nearly three months. However, the filing of the chargesheet in the case, the communalisation of Jammu by BJP leaders protest marches to protect the rape accused and the stand taken by chief minister Mehbooba Mufti somehow came together at around the same time, when the Unnao rape case was being splashed in the media. There was no way then that the public discourse could be limited only to one rape case, ignoring the other. The public twinning of the two cases made the Kathua minors ordeal a pan-Indian rallying cry for justice. After all, her rape showcased communalism at its worst kidnapping, confining, sedating and repeatedly raping a child in a temple and using her rape to evict her community from a predominantly Hindu area. This criminality was compounded with the BJP trying to protect the perpetrators. The arrogance of communal politics suddenly became vividly apparent. When stark gender violence is seen to have state support, then the victims religion is immaterial to those who feel potentially targeted. Women are far more sensitive when the danger is not only to themselves but to the pre-pubescent body of their daughters. The strong moral position taken by them was evident in the number of women who turned up in the street protests. Many women, including officers of the Indian Police Service, changed their profile pictures on social media to that of the minor raped in Kathua in a show of solidarity. Young women announced on television that they would never vote for the BJP again. The Narendra Modi slogan about protecting the girl child (Beti Bachao) was turned on its head to mean that the girl child had to be saved from the BJPs lumpen leaders. The Kathua case could also make the BJP lose power in Jammu and Kashmir. It has already begun affecting the PDP-BJP relationship. After being on the backfoot, Ms Mufti retrieved some ground by forcing the resignation of the two BJP ministers who had tried to protect the rape accused. It is not coincidental that the resignations came after her brother and Cabinet colleague Tassaduq Mufti issued a threat to call off the alliance. He said the PDP and BJP had become partners in a crime (for which) an entire generation of Kashmiris might have to pay with their blood. He threatened that if the BJP did not honour the agenda of alliance, the PDP would have no option but to take one last bow and apologise to the people for having unknowingly pushed them into something they did not deserve. Although his comments were about the overall crisis in the state, it forced the BJPs hand in the Kathua rape case. The party had to beat a retreat by forcing two of its ministers to resign. The BJP is smarting under public rebuke and fighting the impression that its partymen were directly involved in the minors rape and murder, which they were not. This, however, is just the beginning of the unravelling of the BJPs image. One of the ministers involved has now claimed he went to Kathua on the direction of his state party president. This implicates the entire party and has the potential of causing further damage to the BJP. The PDP-BJP relationship has always been tense. Only a month ago, a PDP minister who, allegedly at the BJPs prompting, claimed that Kashmir was witnessing a social crisis, not a political one, had to be sacked. In the second round, the BJP lost two ministers and is now waiting for an opportune moment to exact revenge. However, the BJP is unlikely to have much time as Ms Mufti is keen on convicting the rape accused within 90 days through a fast-track court. When the perpetrators are punished in the next three months, there could be another crisis in the state. At that point, the PDP might, to quote Tassaduq Mufti, take its last bow, apologise to the people of the state and go into political exile for survival. That would be the end of the BJPs rule, even if in a doomed coalition, in Jammu and Kashmir. About 20 officials and top civil servants are testing the new app which a state-employed developer has designed. The US social network, which bought WhatsApp in 2014, has drawn heavy criticism since it acknowledged that information about many millions of users wrongly ended up in the hands of political consultancy Cambridge Analytica. The French government is building its own encrypted messenger service to ease fears that foreign entities could spy on private conversations between top officials, the digital ministry said on Monday. None of the worlds major encrypted messaging apps, including Facebooks WhatsApp and Telegram - a favourite of President Emmanuel Macron - are based in France, raising the risk of data breaches at servers outside the country. About 20 officials and top civil servants are testing the new app which a state-employed developer has designed, a ministry spokeswoman said, with the aim that its use will become mandatory for the whole government by the summer. We need to find a way to have an encrypted messaging service that is not encrypted by the United States or Russia, the spokeswoman said. You start thinking about the potential breaches that could happen, as we saw with Facebook, so we should take the lead. The US social network, which bought WhatsApp in 2014, has drawn heavy criticism since it acknowledged that information about many millions of users wrongly ended up in the hands of political consultancy Cambridge Analytica. The French governments encrypted app has been developed on the basis of free-to-use code found on the Internet and could be eventually made available to all citizens, the spokeswoman said. She declined to give the names of either the codes or the messaging service. FOND OF TELEGRAM Macrons inner circle - now government advisers or ministers - have grown fond of the Telegram app, which they used to plot his rise to power and his presidential election campaign last year. Macron, an economy minister in the previous Socialist administration, wanted at the time to use an encrypted messaging service that even his rivals in the last government could not crack, a close adviser to Macron told Reuters. Since then, most of his lawmakers have joined the app and the president himself can often be seen online on Telegram, sometimes in the early hours of the morning. But privacy concerns started growing earlier this year, and security tools from French security firm Thales (TCFP.PA) installed on officials work smartphones prevented the use of either WhatsApp or Telegram. The telegram was set up by a Russian entrepreneur who has come into conflict with the authorities. Russias state telecommunications regulator said on Monday it had begun blocking access to Telegram after the company refused to comply with an order to give state security access to its users secret messages. Both WhatsApp and Telegram promote themselves as ultra-secure because all their data is encrypted from start to finish. WhatsApp relies on open industry standards created by the developers behind Signal, a rival messaging app, while Telegram relies on its own, home-grown encryption techniques. According to experts, routers will continue to be a target for attackers as a way of getting a foothold in a victims infrastructure. Kaspersky Lab also detected a peak of threat activity in the Middle East. For example, the StrongPity APT launched a number of new Man-in-the-Middle (MiTM) attacks on internet service provider (ISP) networks. During the first three months of the year, Kaspersky Lab researchers discovered a wave of new APT activity based mainly in Asia more than 30 per cent of Q1 reports were dedicated to threat operations in this region. A peak of activity was also observed in the Middle East with a number of new techniques used by actors. These and other trends are covered in Kaspersky Labs latest quarterly threat intelligence summary. In the first quarter of 2018, Kaspersky Lab researchers continued to detect cyber activities by advanced persistent threat (APT) groups speaking languages including Russian, Chinese, English and Korean, among others. And while some well-known actors didnt show any noteworthy activity, a rising number of APT operations and new threat actors were detected in the Asian region. This rise is explained in part by the Olympic Destroyer malware attack on the Pyeongchang Olympic Games. Highlights in Q1, 2018 include: Continuous rise of Chinese-speaking activity, including the ShaggyPanther cluster of activity targeting government entities mainly in Taiwan and Malaysia, and CardinalLizard, which in 2018 increased its interest in Malaysia alongside an existing focus on the Philippines, Russia, and Mongolia. Recorded APT activity in South Asia. Pakistan military entities have been under attack from the newly discovered Sidewinder group. IronHusky APT apparently stops targeting Russian military actors and transfers all its efforts to Mongolia. At the end of January 2018, this Chinese-speaking actor launched an attack campaign on Mongolian government organizations before their meeting with the International Monetary Fund (IMF). The Korean peninsula remains in focus. The Kimsuky APT, targeting South Korean think tanks and political activities, has renewed its arsenal with a completely new framework designed for cyberespionage and used in a spear-phishing campaign. Furthermore, a subset of the infamous Lazarus group, Bluenoroff, has shifted to new targets including cryptocurrency companies and Point of Sales (PoS). Kaspersky Lab also detected a peak of threat activity in the Middle East. For example, the StrongPity APT launched a number of new Man-in-the-Middle (MiTM) attacks on internet service provider (ISP) networks. Another highly skilled cybercriminal group, the Desert Falcons, returned to target Android devices with malware previously used in 2014. Also, in Q1, Kaspersky Lab researchers discovered several groups routinely targeting routers and networking hardware in their campaigns, an approach adopted years ago by actors such as Regin and CloudAtlas. According to experts, routers will continue to be a target for attackers as a way of getting a foothold in a victims infrastructure. During the first three months of the year we saw a number of new threat groups of different levels of sophistication, but which, overall, were using the most common and available malware tools. At the same time, we observed no significant activity from some well-known actors. This leads us to believe that they are rethinking their strategies and reorganising their teams for future attacks. said Vicente Diaz, Principal Security Researcher at Kaspersky Lab GReAT team. The newly published Q1 APT Trends report summarises the findings of Kaspersky Labs subscriber-only threat intelligence reports. During the first quarter of 2018, Kaspersky Labs Global Research and Analysis Team created 27 private reports for subscribers, with Indicators of Compromise (IOC) data and YARA rules to assist in forensics and malware-hunting. (source) The Redmi S2 will feature an 18:9 display, dual rear cameras and Face Unlock. Xiaomi has started 2018 on a high note with its range of Redmi devices, especially with the ultra-popular Redmi Note 5 Pro. While Xiaomi launched the Redmi 5 last month as its new budget offering, it seems that the company has something else in its bag to join the Redmi 5 in the budget segment. Expected to be called the Redmi S2, the device will boast of some premium features aimed at the budget segment. The device will be unveiled in the Chinese and Indian markets only; if the leaks are to be believed. Chaps going by the name of FunkyHuawei.club in XDA forums have unearthed certain firmware files that have leaked important details about an upcoming Xiaomi smartphone going by the name of Redmi S2. One of the highlighting features of this rumoured Redmi S2 is the presence of a dual camera setup a feature which has just started seeping into the budget segment. The dual camera setup includes a 12MP + 5MP setup, while the front camera will be dealt by a 5MP shooter. The 5MP front shooter will also play a major importance as the firmware files suggest the presence of Face Unlock, which is found on the Redmi Note 5 Pro as of now. Apart from that, the Redmi S2 is destined to carry an 18:9 display with a full HD+ resolution. The device will use the Redmi Note 5s Snapdragon 625 chipset, which means that it should perform well on an everyday basis considering a lower-res screen with a sufficiently powerful chipset. The leaked files have till now mentioned the presence of only one variant 2GB RAM with 16GB of storage. The S2 will also debut with MIUI 9 based on Android 8.1 Oreo. The specifications also mention a 3080mAh battery keeping the device alive. Xiaomis budget models aim to provide the best value for a particular price. While Redmi S series has been mentioned in the companys portfolio yet, Xiaomi could end up introducing another new series of smartphones in the Indian market alongside last years Android One series and the Redmi Y series. Theres no mention of a tentative launch date, but expect Xiaomi to unveil it sometime soon as the leaks of the device have already started flowing here and there. (source) The man was reportedly depressed about how long it was taking for his status to be adjudicated by authorities. The protest began on Sunday, two days after an Indian national in his thirties, who has not been publicly identified, was found hanging in a shower stall at the centre in Ibaraki, northeast of Tokyo. (Representational image) Tokyo: More than 40 people at a Japanese immigration detention centre are on hunger strike after an Indian detainee committed suicide last week, officials and local media said Tuesday. The protest began on Sunday, two days after an Indian national in his thirties, who has not been publicly identified, was found hanging in a shower stall at the centre in Ibaraki, northeast of Tokyo. The man was reportedly depressed about how long it was taking for his status to be adjudicated by authorities. "We presume that they (the strikers) have refused food to push for provisional release," said Daisuke Akinaga, an official at the immigration centre. "We also presume that the suicide set off the hunger strike," Akinaga told AFP. He declined to comment on the nationality of the strikers or how many people were refusing food, but Kyodo News said more than 40 detainees were involved. About 330 people are being held at the immigration centre, according to the officials there. Japan has strict immigration laws and accepts very few asylum seekers, granting refugee status to just 20 people out of nearly 20,000 applicants last year. The government says most applicants are economic migrants, but activists and the UN say Japan imposes onerous evidence requirements that can be impossible to meet, even for those in real danger. Activists, lawyers and migrants in Japan have complained for years about harsh treatment by some immigration officials and dire conditions at detention centres. They have also urged the country to review its policy on detaining people at immigration centres for lengthy periods of time. "Detention periods are abnormally long in Japan," said Hiromitsu Masuda, of rights group Provisional Release Association in Japan. "Such protests are likely to be repeated unless Japan changes the policy," Masuda told AFP. Activists say asylum seekers wait an average of three years for a decision on their status, and that even for those granted permission to stay, integration can be difficult. The arrival of the OPCW inspectors in the former rebel enclave is scheduled for today. The British delegation denounced the blocking of investigations. US experts talk about chlorine and nerve gas in the blood and urine of the victims. Lavrov: Accusations against Russia "fabricated". More (unconfirmed) missile attacks overnight on a base in Homs. Damascus (AsiaNews / Agencies) - Inspectors of the Organization for the Prohibition of Chemical Weapons (OPCW) will be able to access Douma, in eastern Ghouta, the scene of an alleged chemical weapons attack by the government army. The attack, denied by Russians and Syrians, provoked the joint response of the United States, France and the United Kingdom, with a series of raids over the last week that triggered an escalation of tension. The international team of experts has been in the Arab country since April 14th, but until now had not been given the go-ahead to gain access to the territory that has just returned under the control of the Damascus government (with the help of Moscow). The British delegation denounced the blocking of the investigation into the chemical attack, accusing the Kremlin of wanting to delay the investigation. It is now 11 days since the final act of the government offensive against the rebel stronghold (with jihadist infiltrations) on the outskirts of the capital. Experts will have to collect soil fragments and other components to ascertain the presence of chemicals. US experts in the OPCW expressed concern about a possible "contamination" of evidence by the Russian military. An accusation rejected by Moscow, according to which the wait is due only to a technical "delay" and there has been no tampering. Sources from the Russian Foreign Ministry quoted by the Tass state news agency say that the delay "is due to the effects of the attack by the US and its allies". In an interview with the BBC, the head of Russian diplomacy Sergei Lavrov ensured that Moscow "did not tamper with" the area, rejecting the British accusations. He added that the alleged evidence provided by Washington, London and Paris is based only on "testimonies collected on social networks and in newspapers" and are all "fabricated". Finally, Lavrov has harsh words of criticism of the three powers of the Western bloc who launched their retaliation before the OPCW experts carried out their independent investigation. US sources reiterate the allegations, claiming to have collected samples of blood and urine from victims showing traces of chlorine and nerve gas. Meanwhile, tension remains high even on the military level: the Syrian state TV spoke of a new missile attack overnight. Anti-aircraft aircraft shields reportedly reacted to missiles intercepted in the airspace of the Homs region. The attack would target a military air base on the outskirts of Shayrat. This is the same base targeted last year by the missile raid ordered by US President Donald Trump, in response to the chemical attack against the city of Khan Sheikhun. Earlier Israel admitted that it had launched an attack between 8 and 9 April, where the t4 base was hit east of Homs. Saudi police arrested her employer. Agnes Mancilla underwent emergency abdominal surgery. In February, allegations of abuses of domestic workers sparked tensions between the Philippines and Kuwait. The Church set up a migrant desk in its 86 dioceses. Riyadh (AsiaNews/Agencies) A Filipina domestic worker is in a Saudi hospital after her employer forced her to drink bleach, the Philippines Department of Foreign Affairs announced yesterday. On 2 April, Agnes Mancilla underwent emergency abdominal surgery after she was taken unconscious to a hospital in the southwestern Saudi city of Jizan. We are working closely with [the] authorities in Jizan to make sure that justice will be given to Agnes Mancilla, the Department said in a statement. The victim, it added, is in serious but stable condition in hospital and Saudi police have arrested her female employer, who has not been named. Mancilla had worked in Saudi Arabia since 2016 but was repeatedly physically abused by her lady employer who also failed to pay her salary, the statement went on to say, citing Edgar Badajos, the Filipino consul in the Saudi city of Jeddah. The report is the latest about alleged mistreatment of Filipino workers in the Middle East. In February, allegations of abuse of domestic workers caused a diplomatic flap between the Philippines and Kuwait. Filipino President Rodrigo Duterte lashed out at Kuwait, where the body of a murdered Filipina maid was found stuffed in a freezer. Duterte ordered the repatriation of 10,000 Filipino migrants who had remained in the emirate and the "total ban" on new departures for Kuwait, one of the many countries in the Middle East that host more than 2 million Filipino workers. Duterte claimed that Arab employers routinely rape their Filipina workers, force them to work 21 hours a day, and feed them scraps. To fill the gap left by departing Filipinos, the Kuwait government turned to Ethiopian migrant workers. Last week Duterte said Kuwait had agreed to his demands to improve the working conditions of Filipinos, following negotiations between the two countries on a labour accord. One of his key demands is that Filipino workers be allowed to keep their mobile phones and passports which can be confiscated by employers under current conditions. Duterte said he would visit Kuwait to witness the signing of the agreement, without giving an exact date. At present, some ten million Filipinos work abroad, many of them in Saudi Arabia, United Arab Emirates, Hong Kong, Kuwait and Qatar. Through remittances sent home, overseas Filipinos contribute to the countrys economy. In previous years, the money sent home saved the Philippines from a financial crisis and transfers are still one of the major sources of revenue for the national economy. According to the Central Bank of the Philippines, overseas Filipinos sent home at least 1,400 billion pesos (US$ 2.6 billion) between January and November last year. For its part, the Filipino Catholic Church continues to monitor the situation of Filipinos living abroad and their families left behind at home. "One of the alarming social realities that our country is facing today is the phenomenon of overseas migration," said Father Leonardo Adaptar, director of the diocesan migrant ministry in the Diocese of Cubao, speaking to AsiaNews. "However, more and more negative stories are coming in, pertaining to their issues and concerns of migrants and their families," he added. There is a greater need to monitor and pastorally provide overseas Filipinos and their family with help, particularly in terms of legal guidance, counselling and welfare, he explained. To this end, each of the countrys 86 dioceses has been tasked with setting up a migrant desk in partnership with the Commission for the Pastoral Care of Migrants and Itinerant People of the Catholic Bishops' Conference of the Philippines. (Santhosh Digal contributed to this article) by Melani Manel Perera Celebrations were held on Saturday in the town of Mathagal. Some 200 Hindu families brought votive offerings to the god Ganesh. "Sustainable peace and harmony are inevitable for a country to make progress," says opposition leader. Colombo (AsiaNews) Hindu Tamils met last Saturday (14 April) in Mathagal, Jaffna Peninsula, to celebrate the Sinhalese and Tamil New Year (Aluth Avurudda) and promote a united and peaceful Sri Lanka. Our desire and prayer are to have a united country in which Tamils can enjoy the same respect and love throughout the nation," they said. "Not only Tamils, but the whole Sri Lankan nation must live together with love and respect, said Guru Sellappa Mangaleshwaran, the main kurukkal or priest at a local Hindu temple following Shaivism, at the Arashadi Siththy Vinayagar Kovil*. People must live with their minds at peace and in happiness. This country must travel all possible paths, there must be no barriers. This is my desire and prayer for the New Year." The New Year celebrations began at 7 am with a pooja (a votive offering to the gods in the temple). At least 200 Hindu families participated in it. The ceremony was accompanied by Tamil songs and music, whilst each family donated a large plate full of fruit, sweets, coconuts and flowers, and placed it in front of the statue of the god Ganesh for the blessing. At the end, each family brought home the blessed offerings, to share with family and neighbours. L. Sindhuja, a primary school teacher, prayed for her young pupils. Vijeyalakshmi Vimalachandra, who teaches at the Nunasi Vidyalaya School, said several families of fishermen and farmers came to the temple. "I prayed for unity and peace, which are not yet visible in our country, she added, This island must move forward and join forces." A group of young women, Yalini, Nirajini, Thushanthini and Krishani, expressed the same wishes. President Maithripala Sirisena also issued a message for Aluth Avurudda. In it, he said, "The New Year binds with the traditional customs which blooms inter relations and family relationships and showers the human thoughts with refreshing fragrance which flows to the future with our deep understanding and respect we have for the traditions of the New Year." Tamil opposition leader Rajavarothiam Sampanthan also issue a message. "Lasting peace and harmony is inevitable for a country to make progress in development and other areas of concern, he said. My prayer is that in this New Year we will be able to overcome all the obstacles and challenges in framing a new Constitution which paves the way to achieve a lasting solution to the national question and gives the rights to the people to live with dignity, self-respect and self-esteem. * Kovil is the Tamil term for a Hindu temple in the Dravidian style of architecture. Among them, 6 thousand prisoners convicted for drug related offences, 2 thousand members of the armed forces and police and 36 political prisoners. The mandate of the newly elected president: "Is to bring peace and joy to the hearts of the people". Naypyitaw (AsiaNews / Agencies) - The new president of Myanmar announced this morning that more than 8 thousand prisoners will be released under an amnesty. Government sources say that the presidential pardon, signed by the newly elected Win Myint, represents a gesture of peace and is part of the Burmese New Year celebrations. "In order to bring peace and joy to the hearts of the people, and for humanitarian support, 8,490 prisoners in prisons will be pardoned," reads a statement released by the presidential office. Through a post on Facebook, government spokesman Zaw Htay reports that more than 6,000 prisoners who have been convicted of drug-related offenses are affected by the provision. They are joined by almost 2 thousand members of the Myanmar armed forces and police, who are imprisoned under the Military Law or the Police Disciplinary Law. The amnesty will also cover a total of 36 prisoners belonging to a list provided by a human rights organization, the Assistance Association for Political Prisoners (Aapp). In recent years, hundreds of political prisoners have been released from Myanmar prisons on the occasion of amnesties; dozens of them in April 2016, days after the part of the Nobel Peace Laureate Aung San Suu Kyi took power, after almost 50 years of military rule. The Democratic leader, who has spent years under house arrest, said that freeing the remaining political prisoners remains a top priority. Before the grace announced today, according to the AAPA, 240 political activists were arrested or are awaiting trial in Myanmar. By Sandeep Gopalan, Pro Vice-Chancellor (Academic Innovation) & Professor of Law, Deakin University Shutterstock Up to 400 Australian organisations may have been snared in a massive hacking incident detailed today. The attack, allegedly engineered by the Russian government, targeted millions of government and private sector machines globally via devices such as routers, switches, and firewalls. This follows a cyber attack orchestrated by Iranian hackers revealed last month, which targeted Australian universities. Read more: Explainer: how internet routers work and why you should keep them secure A joint warning by the US and UK governments stated that the purpose of the most recent attack was to: support espionage, extract intellectual property, maintain persistent access to victim networks, and potentially lay a foundation for future offensive operations. The Russians modus operandi was to target end-of-life devices and those without encryption or authentication, thereby compromising routers and network infrastructure. In doing so, they secured legitimate credentials from individuals and organisations with weak password protections in order to take control of the infrastructure. Cyber attacks are key to modern conflict This is not the first instance of Russian aggression. The US city of Atlanta last month was crippled by a cyber attack and many of its systems are yet to recover including the court system. In that case, attackers used the SamSam ransomware, which also uses network infrastructure to infiltrate IT systems, and demanded a ransom payment in Bitcoin. Baltimore was hit by a cyber attack on March 28 that disrupted its emergency 911 calling system. Russian hackers are suspected to have taken down the French TV station TV5Monde in 2015. The US Department of State was hacked in 2015 and Ukraines power grid and military infrastructure were also compromised in separate attacks in 2015 and 2017. But Russia is not alone in committing these attacks. In December 2017, North Korean hackers were blamed for the WannaCry attack that infected over 300,000 computers in 150 countries, affecting hospitals and banks. The UKs National Health Service was particularly bruised and patients had to be turned away from surgical procedures and appointments. Iran has conducted cyber attacks against numerous targets in the US, Israel, UAE, and other countries. In turn, Iran was subjected to a cyber attack on April 7 that saw computer screens display the US flag with the warning dont mess with our elections. Prosecuting hackers is ineffective The US government has launched prosecutions against hackers most recently against nine Iranians for the cyber attacks on universities. However, prosecutions are of limited efficacy when hackers are beyond the reach of US law enforcement and unlikely to be surrendered by their home countries. As I have written previously, countries such as Australia and the US cannot watch passively as rogue states conduct cyber attacks against targets within our jurisdiction. Read more: Is counter-attack justified against a state-sponsored cyber attack? It's a legal grey area Strong countermeasures must be taken in self defence against the perpetrators wherever they are located. If necessary, self defence must be preemptive any potential perpetrators must be crippled before they are able to launch strikes on organisations here. Reactive measures are a weak deterrent, and our response should include a first strike cyber attack option where there is credible intelligence about imminent attacks. Notably, the UK has threatened to use conventional military strikes against cyber attacks. This may be an overreaction at this time. Educating the public is essential Numerous cyber attacks in recent years including the current attack have targeted common household devices, such as routers. As a result, the security of public infrastructure relies to some extent on the security practices of everyday Australians. So, what role should the government play in ensuring Australians are securing their devices? Unfortunately, cybersecurity isnt as simple as administering an annual flu shot. Its not feasible for the government to issue cybersecurity software to residents since security patches are likely to be out-of-date before the next attack. But the government should play a role in educating the public about cyber attacks and securing public internet services. The city of New York has provided a free app to all residents called NYC Secure that is aimed at educating people. It is also adding another layer of security to its free wifi services to protect users from downloading malicious software or accessing phishing websites. And the city of Jonesboro, Georgia is putting up a firewall to secure its services. Read more: Artificial intelligence cyber attacks are coming but what does that mean? Australian city administrations must adopt similar strategies alongside a sustained public education effort. A vigilant public is a necessary component in our collective security strategy against cyber attacks. This cannot be achieved without significant investment. In addition to education campaigns, private organisations banks, universities, online sellers, large employers must be leveraged into ensuring their constituents do not enable attacks through end-of-life devices, unsupported software, poor password protection policies and lack of encryption. Governments must also prioritise investment in their own IT and human resources infrastructure. Public sector IT talent has always lagged the private sector due to pay imbalances, and other structural reasons. It is difficult for governments to attain parity of technical capabilities with Russian or North Korean hackers in the short term. The only solution is a strong partnership in research, detection tools, and counter-response strategies with the private sector. The Atlanta attack illustrates the perils of inaction an audit report shows the city was warned months in advance but did nothing. Australian cities must not make the same mistake. Sandeep Gopalan does not work for, consult, own shares in or receive funding from any company or organisation that would benefit from this article, and has disclosed no relevant affiliations beyond their academic appointment. Originally published in The Conversation. By Alan Finkel, Australias Chief Scientist, Office of the Chief Scientist Joker/Shutterstock Every time a scandal breaks in one of the thousands of places where research is conducted across the world, we see headlines to the effect that science is broken. But if its broken today, then when do we suggest it was better? Point me to the period in human history where we had more brilliant people or better technologies for doing science than we do today. Explain to me how something broken so spectacularly delivers the goods. Convince me I ought to downplay the stunning achievement of say the detection of gravitational waves. Read more: No science minister, and it's unclear where science fits in Australia I agree, practising science has its frustrations, like every other human endeavour; and scientists can and do go wrong. But the only place to find the Golden Age of Science is in the future by making it ourselves. So lets not tell ourselves that science is broken. Lets agree that we all share in the responsibility to improve it, by keeping open the mental bandwidth to ask and explore hard questions. Here, in no particular order, are some of the things that Ive been thinking about. The future of the scientific paper Earlier this month The Atlantic magazine published a provocative essay headlined The scientific paper is obsolete. The scientific paper has done great things since it was developed in the 1600s. Today we could certainly say that production is booming. But the peer-review system is critically overloaded. The irony is, were working so hard to generate papers, we dont have time to read anybody elses. One has to ask, have we hit Peak Paper? My tentative response is no. The scientific paper has endured for a reason, and it still holds. Its an efficient way to structure and communicate information. But what do you think? Will we still be publishing papers in 2050? And how else could we do it? The pressure to publish I was lucky to train under a great scientist, Steve Redman. These days we would describe him as unproductive: he published, at most, two or three papers each year. But every one of those papers was deeply considered, meticulously crafted and, as a result, deeply influential. I think we would all agree that commitment to quality over quantity is the ideal. Authors could invest more time in their papers, and peer reviewers could invest more time in their critique. In the real world, we know that the incentives often skew the other way. But where do you intervene to break the cycle? I recently came across a radical suggestion: a lifetime word limit for researchers. I suspect it would be very difficult to enforce but what about a variation: change the focus from publications to CVs. For starters, lets contemplate a rule that you can only list a maximum of five papers for any given year when applying for grants or promotions. Your CV would have to list retractions, with an explanation. On the recommendation of Jeffrey Flier, the former Dean of the Harvard Medical School, candidates for promotion would have to critically assess their own work, including unanswered questions, controversies and uncertainties. Predatory journals If journals are the gatekeepers, then predatory journals are the termites that eat the gates and make the community question the integrity of the structure. Read more: Who will keep predatory science journals at bay now that Jeffrey Beall's blog is gone? A predatory journal is one that typically charges high fees for publication with little or no credible peer-review process. As such they have no credibility. How do we fight back? How do we arm people in the community who arent scientists, and dont know anything about impact factors and journal rankings and editorial standards, to recognise quality? Is there an analogy to fair-trade coffee: a stamp that consumers can look for on the product that demonstrates it complies with a certain standard? Could we have an ethical journal stamp, building on the excellent work of the Committee On Publication Ethics? Artificial intelligence Bloomberg reports that there are now five ways to command a multi-year, seven-figure salary. It used to be four: chief executive officer, banker, celebrity entertainer, professional athlete. Now add on a person with a PhD in artificial intelligence (AI). This is the AI century. Like all great waves in technology, it breaks on researchers first. Time and time again, we get the future we make the future before it sweeps over everyone else. But what does it mean for research training? What roles that scientists do today, will robots do tomorrow? What roles that no one can do today will become possible, with the power of humans and robots combined? Read more: Finkel's Law: robots won't replace us because we still need that human touch A better future To these, I could add more questions. Let me simply conclude with the two things I know for certain. One, that these questions are crucial, because the future of science is the fate of the world. And two, that as long as we are scientists, we will never cease to ask them. We will know that science is truly broken if we ever give up the quest to make it better. This article is based on a keynote speech Alan Finkel delivered at the 2018 Quality in Postgraduate Research Conference in Adelaide, April 17. Alan Finkel does not work for, consult, own shares in or receive funding from any company or organisation that would benefit from this article, and has disclosed no relevant affiliations beyond their academic appointment. Originally published in The Conversation. Can anyone let me know what's involved with endorsing my UK police check application for my spouse visa? I would like to know how much work is involved for whoever I nominate. I do not have a close friend on the list so would be nice to inform them what to expect and if it will be time-consuming. The Uganda government will commercially produce an electric vehicle that has been in development by university students since 2011. Kiira Motors Corp., which is a partnership between the Uganda government and Makerere University, has designed the Kiira EV, which was developed to create sustainable transportation solutions in Uganda. The Kiira EV runs on rechargeable lithium batteries and cost $35,000 to build, according to the Uganda Radio Network. Kiira Motors Corp. has developed an electric car, a hybrid car, and a solar bus, according to Bloomberg Technology. The Kiira Electronic Vehicle Project looks to garner investment by businesses in the manufacturing of vehicle parts, increase demand for natural resources, and create more than 2,000 direct jobs, according to the Uganda Cabinet reports Bloomberg. Photo courtesy of Nissan. Nissan's industrial complex in Resende, Brazil, has produced 30,000 cars that were made for exporting to markets overseas, according to the automaker. In its first year of producing vehicles for export, the plant produced 10,000 units, and in the following year saw a 200% increase, said Nissan. Between November 2017 and March 2018, the Nissan March, Nissan Versa and Nissan Kicks export models were responsible for a leap from 20,000 to 30,000 units. Since December, the Argentinian market started to sell the Nissan Kicks that was produced at the Resende Industrial Complex. Argentina had already been receiving the March hatchback and the Versa sedan from Brazil's plant. Both models made in Brazil are also sold in Bolivia, Chile, Costa Rica, Panama, Paraguay, Peru and Uruguay. The timing coincides with the second anniversary of the plant's export program, which has grown as the result of increased demand in Latin America, according to Nissan. Photo courtesy of Toyota Australia. Toyota Australia has unveiled three new models for its Hilux light commercial nameplate in the region, which were designed to meet the demands of the regions conditions and its customers. The automaker launched 4x4 versions of the new double cab Rugged X, Rogue, and Rugged models, according to the automaker. All three models are powered by a 2.8-litre turbo-diesel engine. The engine generates 174 hp and 331 lb.-ft of torque when paired with a six-speed automatic transmission. The Rugged X is designed for off-road usage, and can support a vertical load of 165 pounds and can secure up to 440 pounds in the rear. Meanwhile, the Hilux Rogue includes a hard tonneau cover for added protection and security in the bed. Pricing for an automatic Rugged X starts at $63,690; the Rogue is priced from $61,690, and the Rugged model is priced at $56,990 with a six-speed automatic. Wacker takes over SynCo Bio Partners of Amsterdam Capacity of acquired fermentation plant for pharmaceutical actives totals some 2,000 liters Wacker Biotechs overall capacity doubles as a result SynCos expertise in manufacturing live microbial products and in filling finished pharmaceuticals expands Wackers portfolio Plant acquisition is a key step for Wacker, supporting ongoing expansion in the high-growth biopharmaceuticals market and securing sufficient GMP production capacities for existing and new customers Munich, Germany and Amsterdam, the Netherlands, April 17, 2018 / B3C newswire / -- Wacker Chemie AG has acquired a Dutch site for manufacturing biopharmaceuticals, live microbial products and vaccines, plus the associated business, from SynCo Bio Luxembourg S.a.r.l.. The Munich-based chemical company announced the acquisition today. For WACKER, maintaining SynCos existing customer relationships is a top priority. Moreover, WACKER is keeping on SynCos employees. Both parties have agreed not to disclose the purchase price. This strategic acquisition is a key step for our ongoing expansion in the high-growth biopharmaceuticals market, explained Auguste Willems of WACKERs Executive Board. The new plant will enable us to satisfy robust market demand today and in the coming years and to strengthen our position as a leading contract manufacturer of microbial-derived biopharmaceutical proteins. Founded in 2000, SynCo Bio Partners has some 110 employees and operates two fermentation lines with current capacities of 1,500 and 270 liters. These lines manufacture microbial-derived biopharmaceuticals, not only for clinical testing, but also for the commercial market. There is a further line of single-use fermenters, which provides additional and flexible production capabilities. SynCos service offering is rounded out with a fill and finish facility, which enables the complete manufacture of pharmaceuticals from the active agent to the filled product. The facilities meet Good Manufacturing Practice (GMP) quality standards, and they have already been inspected by the European Medicines Agency (EMA) and the US Food and Drug Administration (FDA) and approved for the manufacture of specific pharmaceutical proteins. Expanding our production capacity strengthens our market position sustainably, said Gerhard Schmid, president of WACKER BIOSOLUTIONS. The additional fermentation lines double our current capacity, which increases our ability to produce key pharmaceuticals cost effectively, using advanced microbial techniques. We look forward to continuing the comprehensive support for SynCos existing customers, while also offering them the proprietary technologies of Wacker Biotech. The acquisition will significantly expand our portfolio of technologies and services. SynCos expertise in manufacturing live microbial biopharmaceuticals is a valuable complement to WACKERs know-how as a full-service supplier. Live microbial products represent a promising new class of actives, offering innovative therapies for serious illnesses and new vaccines against cholera, for example. About Wacker Biotech Wacker Biotech GmbH is a full-service contract manufacturer of biopharmaceutical proteins based on microbial systems. The companys services range from molecular biology, analytical services and process development through to the GMP-compliant manufacture of clinical test samples and pharmaceutical actives for the commercial market at its German-based Jena and Halle plants, which are GMP compliant, and FDA and EMA certified. Above all, Wacker Biotech offers proprietary technologies that satisfy market needs for cost-efficient production and maximum quality. Wacker Biotech is a wholly-owned WACKER subsidiary. Contact Wacker Chemie AG Media Relations & Information Christof Bachmair +49 89 6279-1830 This email address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it. www.wacker.com The Company in Brief: WACKER is a globally-active chemical company with some 13,800 employees and annual sales of around 4.9 billion (2017). WACKER has a global network of 23 production sites, 21 technical competence centers and 50 sales offices. WACKER SILICONES Silicone fluids, emulsions, rubber grades and resins; silanes; pyrogenic silicas; thermoplastic silicone elastomers WACKER POLYMERS Polyvinyl acetates and vinyl acetate copolymers and terpolymers in the form of dispersible polymer powders, dispersions, solid resins and solutions WACKER BIOSOLUTIONS Biotech products such as cyclodextrins, cysteine and biologics, as well as fine chemicals and PVAc solid resins WACKER POLYSILICON Polysilicon for the semiconductor and photovoltaic industries Delegation of key Illinois business representatives gets insights on Vetters global production capabilities and US manufacturing status Visit included a mixture of economic discussions and tours of production and logistics sites Update of existing and planned production capabilities was provided Governor was impressed with Vetters quality approach and continuous organic business growth Ravensburg, Germany, April 17, 2018 / B3C newswire / -- Vetter, a global leader in prefilled drug-delivery systems was paid a special visit today at its Ravensburg, Germany facilities by Illinois Governor, Bruce Rauner. The governor was accompanied by a delegation of approximately twenty key state and county representatives including notable Illinois economic institutions and organizations. Together with Vetter management, the contingent discussed present local and global economic issues affecting manufacturing and trade. The delegation was also given a guided tour of one of the companys aseptic production sites and its center for visual inspection and logistics. I enjoyed meeting members of the Vetter team and touring their high-quality pharmaceutical manufacturing facility here in the beautiful town of Ravensburg, said Governor Rauner. It was exciting to hear about their history and their growth plans for the future. Vetter is an important Illinois corporate citizen and we look forward to supporting their continued success in our state. It is a distinct honor that the governor of Illinois paid a special visit to our German headquarters, said Udo J. Vetter, Chairman of the companys Advisory Board and member of the owner family. This visit by such a prestigious delegation of individuals is another confirmation of the successful work and contribution we are making to the US life science industry. Having the opportunity to discuss the current economic environment is of central importance for future initiatives, added Peter Soelkner, one of the three Vetter Managing Directors involved in the gubernatorial meeting. Also, the opportunity to better understand our individual positions and thoughts as trading partners from both sides of the Atlantic was most beneficial. Over the course of the visit, Vetter outlined the status of its site for injectable development services in Skokie. The current 37,000 sq ft facility at the Illinois Science+Technology Park is presently undergoing a further expansion of more than 12,000 sq ft which includes storage areas as well as office space. This expansion is due to the continuous increase in customer demand, and consequently, an increase in project work within the early clinical development of injectables. In addition, Vetter reviewed its future plans for the companys Des Plaines property. The pharmaceutical service provider completed the purchase of the 18-acre site in Des Plaines in 2017 as an integral part of the companys one stop shopping initiative, enabling a fast project start-up upon completion of cooperation agreements with customers. Initial renovations at the site are complete. Most recently, office space for Vetters US Key Account Management, Human Resources and Legal departments was equipped and is now ready for use. Caption: Taking a guided tour in one of Vetters aseptic production sites are Bruce Rauner (Governor of the State of Illinois, third from left), Sean McCarthy (Director at Illinois Department of Commerce and Economic Opportunity, first from left), Mark Peterson (President and CEO at Intersect Illinois, fourth from left) with Udo J. Vetter (Chairman of the companys Advisory Board and member of the owner family, second from left) and the Vetter Managing Directors Peter Soelkner, Thomas Otto, Oliver Albrecht. (Picture source: Vetter Pharma International GmbH) For high resolution please click the image. Find the Vetter press kit, additional press releases, high-resolution pictures and more background information in our Download Center. About Vetter Headquartered in Ravensburg, Germany, Vetter is a global leading contract development and manufacturing organization (CDMO) with production facilities in Germany and the United States. The company, which currently employs 4,400 individuals worldwide, has long-term experience offering services ranging from early development support including clinical manufacturing, to commercial supply and various packaging solutions for vials, syringes and cartridges. Vetters customers range from small and midsize to the worlds top 20 pharmaceutical and biotech companies. As a leading solution provider, the CDMO recognizes its responsibility in supporting the needs of its customers in developing devices that contribute to increased patient safety, convenience, and enhanced compliance. In addition, the company places high importance on social responsibility including environmental protection and sustainability. Contact Vetter Pharma International GmbH Markus Kirchner Corporate Spokesperson / Media Relations Eywiesenstrasse 5 88212 Ravensburg Germany +49 (0)751-3700-3729 This email address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it. Unfortunately, our website is currently unavailable in your country. We are engaged on the issue and committed to looking at options that support our full range of digital offerings to your market. We continue to identify technical compliance solutions that will provide all readers with our award-winning journalism. HERNANDO COUNTY A 16-year-old Hernando County high school student was arrested for making bomb threats against Central High School during an online game, officials said. Student arrested for threatening to bomb Central High 16-year-old charged with intimidation, written threat The Hernando County Sheriff's Office received at least two complaints Monday regarding a bomb threat against Central High. The people who notified the sheriff's office said they had been playing an online trivia game application called "Game Show," when a player with the username of "Nidolabz" commented on the messaging screen saying, "I am going to set off an explosive at Central High School, Spring Hill, Florida tomorrow." The other players took screenshots of the comments and alerted authorities. Detectives were able to trace the username to a student at Springstead High School and made contact with him at his home. The student told deputies that his friend, a 16-year-old male, is the person who utilizes the username "Nidolabz." Once deputies made contact with teen who admitted to make the threat saying it was a "joke." The teen was arrested and charged with intimidation and written threats to kill or injure. LAKELAND Changes are coming to the old John Cox Elementary Building on Lakeland Hills Boulevard. While the current tenants are looking forward to moving out to a new home, a tuition-free middle school is waiting in the wings to move in. Lakeland Volunteers in Medicine planning new facility on Lake Wire Academy Prep Center a private, tuition-free middle school Academy Prep hopes to open Summer 2019 Lakeland Volunteers in Medicine currently operates out of the John Cox building. Their planned $4.5 million facility will be located on Lake Wire, near the United Methodist office complex. Once in their new home, LVIM will be able to see more patients and expand some critical areas. Well be able to expand mental health, because well be able to design something that is conducive to mental health, said LVIM president Bobby Yates. Yates said LVIM hopes to start construction this summer if it gets all the government approvals it needs. Its very exciting," he said. "Its exciting to me. Its exciting to the board. The Volunteers are excited about it." Once LVIM's move is complete, a private, tuition-free middle school for disadvantaged students, The Academy Prep Center, will move into the old school building. The school already has locations in Tampa and St. Petersburg. Students attend classes for about 11 hours a day and parents have to be involved. Academy Prep is funded by private donations and scholarships. Once students graduate from the middle school, Academy Prep gets students into private prep schools with full-ride scholarships. But they also know they are financially strapped, so they provide full tuition scholarships for all these students," said Head of School Lincoln Tamayo. "Then we work with those students and their families and the schools where we send our kids to make sure they make it all the way through the pipeline." Getting into Academy will be competitive. It is a very, very big deal. It is. It is. There is on other way to put it but to say it is a life changer, said Tamayo. Academy Prep hopes to be open for summer classes in 2019. Publix Supermarkets Vice Chairman Barney Barnett has been a driving force in the bringing the school to Lakeland. Famous Oregon Native Returns to Coast for Comedy Festival Published 04/17/2018 at 5:36 AM PDT By Oregon Coast Beach Connection Staff (Lincoln City, Oregon) Comedy will go coastal this month, as a favorite and now-famous son of Oregon returns to the central coast to headline the first annual Undertow Comedy Festival, held in Lincoln City from April 26 to 28. A variety of comedians from around the country will be gracing this first voyage into silliness, all armed with their best material. The big highlight is the headliner: former Salemite Ron Funches. Funches is is a multitalented comedian, writer and producer who has been featured on television shows such as The Tonight Show, Conan, @midnight, Curb Your Enthusiasm and many others. On the big screen, he has starred in the movies Trolls and Get Hard. He was the voice behind Cooper in Trolls. Funches said he is looking forward to headlining this inaugural festival. While born in California, he spent plenty of his younger years in Oregon, even some on the Oregon coast. I lived in Salem as a kid, so I visited the Oregon coast a lot, said Funches. I actually lived in Yachats for a while in my early 20s. Its a pretty cool area. How Funches got involved with the festival is an interesting aspect: he said it was through personal connections. The organizers wanted to make a festival to honor our fellow comedian and friend Will Woodruff, who died last December. They reached out to me and asked if I would do it for Will, and I said yes, of course. Tory Ward, one of the event coordinators, said he is thrilled to have Funches headlining the festival. When I heard that Ron agreed to headline, I got so excited, said Ward. Hes absolutely hilarious and its a rare treat to have a comedian of his caliber on the coast. Other comedians performing at the Undertow Comedy Festival include Judah Friedlander, Laurie Kilmartin and Ron Lynch. You can also catch MTVs Jeff Dye, who was also E! Networks Hello Ross! Another featured performer is Shane Mauss, who has been seen on series such as Funny as Hell and Problematic with Moshe Kasher. The shows will be held nightly at three different venues around Lincoln City: the Beach Club Events Center, the Lincoln City Cultural Center, and The Eventuary. Tickets start at $39 and are available for purchase at UndertowComedy.com. Save on the laughs and buy a weekend pass. For more information about the Undertow Comedy Festival visit the LIncoln City website. ----- Lincoln City Hotels/Lodgings for this event - Where to eat - Map and Virtual Tour More About Oregon Coast hotels, lodging..... More About Oregon Coast Restaurants, Dining..... Coastal Spotlight LATEST Related Oregon Coast Articles Back to Oregon Coast Contact Advertise on BeachConnection.net All Content, unless otherwise attributed, copyright BeachConnection.net Unauthorized use or publication is not permitted Gary Jansen has lived an unusual life. A senior editor at one of the largest publishing houses in the world, Jansen has worked closely with numerous bestselling religious authors over a long career. He is an accomplished Catholic author and thinker, and most notably, has served as editor and publisher to both Pope Francis and Pope Benedict XVI. But we havent even gotten to the unusual part yet. Because apart from these impressive credentials, Jansen has done something even more incredible. Hes come up against ghostsand won. Many of us have had brushes with the unknownthat soft creak in the hallway, a subtle movement in the darkened corner of a bedroom, or mysterious figures glimpsed through the ruined windows of a rotting house. But most of what we attribute to the work of ghosts is really just the human mind doing what it does best: keeping us alert to potential dangers, even when none are present. And yet, something very real is going on when it comes to ghosts. A recent study conducted by the Pew Research Center shows that 18 percent of Americans not only believe in ghosts, but claim to have seen one. Further, a full 29 percent claimed to have felt the presence of the dead. Most of the time, these encounters are fleeting and harmless. But when objects start flying and the scares get a little too intense, who you gonna call? Forget the Ghostbusters. To get rid of spirits, were going to look to Jansens otherworldly memoir, Holy Ghosts, a book which details his familys terrifyingand very realencounter with a pair of spectral intruders. Within, you can find out how these ghosts affected his family, how he eventually got rid of them, and most poignantly, how the experience unexpectedly strengthened his faith. If you think you might be suffering from the presence of a ghost, and need relief, weve distilled Jansens experience into a set of steps that will help you heal your haunting right now. This is what worked for Gary Jansen, and it can work for you, too. Lets dig in. Find Out Whats Really Going On Its easy to blame the supernatural for the things that go bump in the night, but the truth is this: what youre experiencing is probably natural. Strange sounds can be the result of the structure of a home expanding and shrinking in response to changes in temperature. Inexplicable movements can be blamed on drafts. And the feeling of being watched can stem from, well, thinking about being watched. These natural problems have natural solutions, and so if you try banishing ghosts when all you really have is a drafty house, youre still going to be left with a drafty house. Gary Jansen, ever a rational thinker, experienced mysterious electrical surges tearing through his body, watched his young son tearfully refuse to enter a certain room of his home, and even witnessed toys begin activating themselves, and still did his best to rule out natural causes. Of course, in this case, there were none. His was a real haunting. And if strange things are happening inside your home that have no natural cause, its time to move on to the next step. Seek Professional Aid When it comes to ghosts, its dangerous to go it alone. Youre going to need help. When Jansen found himself in need of answers, he turned to one of his more unusual editorial connectionsa woman who could communicate with ghosts. Mary Anne Winkowski is not a psychic. She doesnt even like the word. All she knows is that she sees and hears things that other people cantnamely ghosts. And when Jansen called her up, she immediately diagnosed his problem. There wasnt just one ghost haunting Jansens house. There were two. Over the phone, Winkowski gave detailed information on the human identities of the ghosts, all of which Jansen was later able to independently verify. One of these spirits was relatively harmless. The other? Not so much. If you suspect that a ghost is in your home, youll need help, too. Your local priest is a great resource, but Winkowski recommends giving the priest every detail you can concerning your particular haunting. In order to bless and protect a home, she says, a priest needs to know what hes blessing. But beyond describing Jansens haunting, she also proposed solutions, giving him the tools he needed to rid himself of his uninvited guests. Lets take a look at a few of those tools. Arm Up Smudge stick? Check. Water and sea salt in a spray bottle? Check. Prayers? Check. Congratulations. Youre ready to take on a ghost. These are the tools Mary Anne Winkowski recommended Jansen use to drive the ghosts from his home. Some of these may sound like New Age mumbo jumbo, but theyre not. These are tools that, inexplicably, work again and again in situations involving troublesome human spirits. A smudge stick, as Winkowski explains, is made of sage and sweet grass. She mailed a few sticks to Jansen, instructing him to light them on fire on a fireproof plate or pan, and then put them out, creating smoke. He was to take these smoking sticks through every room of his home, praying the Lords Prayer as he used the sticks to outline every door and window he came across. This calms a spirit and drains its energy, making it all the easier to convince it to cross over. It is not unlike the incense a priest might burn at a funeral. She also instructed him to take a spray bottle, fill it with water, and add in a tablespoon of sea salt. This, she said, should be used to spray the corners of his house, as well as any secondhand objects which might have come into his home, bringing spiritual forces with them. Hauntings, like everything else, run on their own set of rules. While our limited human senses can never fully come to know these spiritual rules, experience tells us that certain tools simply work. Arm yourself with these tools, use them with wisdom, and youll cure your haunting. Seal the Deal by Healing Your Haunting The most important tool at your disposal, when it comes to ridding yourself of a ghost, is an unexpected one. Love. Ghosts arent evil, as something like a demon is. Ghosts are confused. Theyre hurting. Theyre lost in a sort of purgatory. And so, if you remember only one thing about them, let it be this: they were once people, just like you, and they deserve your mercy. A ghost isnt an enemy to be vanquished, but a diseased being to be cured. In the end, Jansen and his family emerged from their ordeal with a normal, happy home. But the final act that did this wasnt the battle to the death so often depicted in film and literature. NoHoly Ghosts gets far more real than that. Once Mary Anne Winkowski confirmed that the ghosts were weakened enough and ready to depart for the light, she instructed Jansen to invite the spirits to cross over. He did, praying not for their expulsion, but for their good, as he led them out of his home. Ill always pray for you, he said, in a moment of kindness. And that was it. When Jansen awoke the next morning, he found silence and a sense of lightness, where there had previously been an air of oppression and a symphony of strange noises and happenings. Jansen helped his ghosts move on, and if you follow these steps in a spirit of love rather than hate, you can, too. Dont fight your haunting. Heal it, and youll find that peace replaces the chaos youve endured. Music has long been an important part of Christianity. From the early Christians who sang psalms to the modern phenomenon of Christian rock, Christians have always had music in their hearts. Most Christians have favorite hymns that they look forward to singing in church. Some prefer songs that can be sung all year round while others favor seasonal songs. The Christmas song Hark the Herald Angels Sing is often listed as being a Christians favorite hymn. Almost as popular is the Easter hymn Jesus Christ Is Risen Today. No matter how much Christians love their favorite hymns, they do not always want to listen to hymns. In those cases, there is thankfully a large library of Christian music that is not made solely for worship. Christian pop, Christian rock, Christian inspired country music, Gospel music, the list goes on and on. That list is so long, however, that sometimes it can be difficult for Christians to know where to start looking for new music. In those cases, it can be helpful to know where to start. For those who are just beginning to build their music library or simply want to remember some Christian classics, here are four songs that every Christian should know. "Oceans" Hillsong is an Australian based worship band that was originally founded as part of Hillsong Church. The band started out as part of Hillsongs youth ministry in 1998, but it has since risen to great popularity among Christians across the world. Their stated mission is to reach and influence the world by building a large Christ-centered, Bible-based church, changing mindsets and empowering people to lead and impact in every sphere of life. One of Hillsongs most successful songs was Oceans. This song is long and builds slowly, but its lyrics and soothing melody are worth it. The song focuses on the idea of trusting in God even in difficult times or when a person does not understand what is happening. The refrain states that I will call upon Your name/and keep my eyes above the waves/when oceans rise, my souls will rest in Your embrace/for I am Yours and You are mine. Perhaps the most famous lines of the song, however, are those of its bridge. Spirit lead me where my trust is without borders/let me walk upon the waters/wherever You would call me/Take me deeper than my feet could ever wander/And my faith will be made stronger/in the presence of my Savior. "I Can Only Imagine" I Can Only Imagine is the most successful Christian song of all time. The song was originally recorded for the MercyMe album The Worship Project in 1999, but it was re-recorded for the bands major-label debut on the album Almost There. The moving lyrics to the song were written in approximately 10 minutes by MercyMe vocalist Bart Millard. The song has become the focus of the feature length movie I Can Only Imagine, but for most Christians the song is still most memorable for its simple but moving lyrics. The song describes trying to imagine what it will be like to meet Jesus after death and the many contradictory actions a person would feel equally moved to make. The song asks if people will dance for you, Jesus/or in awe of You be stillwill [they] sing hallelujah!/will [they] be able to speak at all? No one knows. As the song says, all anyone can do is only imagine. "Christ is Risen" Matt Mahers song is perfect for the Easter season and has been used in churches as part of Easter services. The simple melody is easy to play and easy to learn which makes it popular among some music ministries. The song celebrates the resurrection of Christ with its simple but powerful chorus: Christ is risen from the dead/trampling over death by death/come awake, come awake/come and rise up from the grave/Christ is risen from the dead/we are one with Him again/come awake, come awake/come and rise up from the grave. Despite its beautiful verses, perhaps the most powerful lines are those of the final bridge. Quoting 1 Corinthians 15:55, the bridge asks Pauls famous question with an air of defiance and triumph in order to remind Christians exactly what Christ defeated with His death and resurrection. O death, where is your sting?/O hell, where is your victory? "Blessings" Laura Storys song, Blessings, addresses how Christians pray for what they think they need, but God gives what is truly needed. Blessings states that [God] hear[s] each spoken need/ yet love[s] us way too much to give us lesser things. The song deals with how Christians can sometimes have fair-weather faith and see trouble as a sign that God is not listening. Those trials, however, can sometimes be blessings in disguise. The simple melody and accompaniment of Blessings allow the words to take center stage so that the message of finding God in everything can shine through. Life is not always easy, but there may be hidden blessings in even the worst trials. As Blessings encourages Christians to wonder if [Gods] blessings come through rain drops/what if Your healing comes through tears?/ What if a thousand sleepless nights are what it takes to know Youre near?/What if trials of this life are Your mercies in disguise? Revelation is one of the most popular books to discuss among Christians. Everyone has an opinion on when the famous events of the Book of Revelation will take place. Preachers and parents discuss who they believe the Antichrist is or will be when he comes. Almost every disaster that has ever struck the world is seen as being a sign of the end times.Most Christians assume that the events of Revelation are set to take place is some distant future. Others, however, argue that Revelation is happening now. Still others argue that Revelation is purely metaphorical or that the events of the famous book have already occurred. These four viewpoints make up the four main interpretations of the events of the end times described in the Book of Revelation.The most popular interpretation is known as futurism. This is the belief that the events of Revelation will take place somewhere in the future. Futurists emphasize that the Antichrist has not yet come to the world, and thus, the prophecies from the Book of Daniel, Book of Matthew and Book of Revelation have not yet come true. Most Christians who discuss Revelation take this view, as evidenced by the sheer number of blogs, documentaries and sermons describing how to recognize when the end of the world arrives. Though there are a number of contradictory theories about the timing of the yet-to-come Great Tribulation among futurists, the theories tend to be united by their literal interpretation of the prophecies in the Bible.Idealists, on the other hand, believe that the events of Revelation are not meant to be interpreted literally. The heavenly battle referenced in Revelation 12, for example, is not an actual battle but a metaphor for the constant war between good and evil in the human soul. As such, most idealists do not put as much importance on predicting the identity of the Antichrist or the ten-horn kingdom.Preterism is the belief that the events of Revelation, especially the Great Tribulation, have already occurred. Preterists often hold that Revelation actually took place in the first century A.D. for a variety of reasons. One of the most commonly cited reasons is that in Daniel, the end times are associated with the destruction of the power of the Israelites. This actually occurred in A.D. 70 when the Temple was destroyed. Jesus predicted this destruction of both the Temple and the Holy City during the Olivet Discourse in Matthew 23:38-24:4.The disciples questions in Matthew 24:3 is often mistranslated as What shall be the sign of your coming and of the end of the world? The use of world, is not the correct translation of the Greek aeon. Aeon refers to a particular stage or period of history. The verse should thus be translated what shall be the signof the end of the era?Preterism takes lost cultural context into consideration when interpreting Revelation. For example, the world meant something different during the biblical period. In that age, the world did not encompass the entire globe as it is known today. Instead, the world was often seen to extend only as far as the Roman Empire stretched. Pauls epistles, of course, illustrate that the Gospel had indeed spread to the edges of Romes reach before Pauls death.The fourth and final major interpretation of the Book of Revelation is historicism. Historicism is the belief that Revelation is always in the process of being fulfilled. It does not happen all at once or even within one lifetime. Instead, the events of Revelation have been slowly occurring since the death of Jesus Christ. Historicists hold, for example, that the destruction of Jerusalem and the Temple was the fulfillment of Daniels prediction that a terrible tragedy would scatter the power of the holy people. Similarly, historicists hold that the fourth beast described in Daniel 7 was the Roman Empire. Daniel 7:12 states that the other three beasts, commonly identified as the Grecian, Medo-Persian and Babylonian empires, were allowed to live for a period of time. These empires, of course, have already fallen today and their lives have ended.Both futurists and historicists tend to be fascinated with finding the prophecies of Revelation, Daniel and Matthew that they believe are being fulfilled in modern times. For example, Matthew 24:14 says that this gospel of the kingdom will be preached in the whole world as a testimony to all nations, and then the end will come, and Revelation 14 describes an angel who had the eternal gospel to proclaim to those who live on earthto every nation, tribe, language and people. Both of these events have come true in the futurist, historicist and preterist view. Preterists and some historicists hold that the world meant the Biblical definition of the world, the Roman Empire. Christianity has certainly reached the corners of that once great empire seeing as the heart of Catholicism sits proudly in the center of Rome itself. Futurists and some historicists, meanwhile, point out that Christianity has spread to the edges of the actual globe. There are few people in the world today who have never heard of Jesus Christ, and Christianity has a presence in every inhabited country in the world.Predictions of the end times also focus heavily on the disasters that will come before Christ returns. Matthew 24 says that there will be famines and earthquakes in various placesthe sun will be darkened, and the moon will not give its light; the stars will fall from the sky, and the heavenly bodies will be shaken and Luke 21 lists the natural catastrophes as great earthquakes, famines and pestilences in various placesnations will be in anguish and perplexity at the roaring and tossing of the sea. Both gospels also state that nation will rise against nation, and kingdom against kingdom. As tensions rise throughout the world, it is very possible that these prophecies are on the edge of being fulfilled. Though there is no proof, some people also argue that the Antichrist is already working to gain political, military and economic control in this world.Prophecies are difficult to predict, but Christians have a lot riding on accurately predicting or identifying the time of Revelation. After all, it is then that the world as it is known today will come to a close, and Christ will once again walk among men. Very little is more Catholic than the Papacy. This ancient institution has been the subject of both fascination and scorn from Protestants and Orthodox Christians. While Catholics look to the Pope as the head of the Church, some Protestants claim that the entire Papacy is nothing but a ploy to lure otherwise devout Christians away from Christ. The Pope was always of interest to Catholics, but for much of the modern era, the Pope was of very little interest to anyone outside of Catholicism. That, however, changed after a number of Popes made it clear they would not sit on the sidelines of events that shaped the world. Though mistakenly labeled a Nazi sympathizer, Pope Pius XII and the Vatican sat at the center of a spy network that worked in Nazi Germany. Pope John Paul II refused to be silent about the horrors that took place behind the Iron Curtain and in the Soviet Union, and he was instrumental in ending the Communist reign in Eastern Europe. Pope Francis has been in the news repeatedly and has become a beloved figure by both Catholics and non-Catholics alike. For all that the Pope and the Papacy have been in the spotlight in recent years, there is still a great deal of confusion surrounding even the most basic information about this Catholic institution. The history of Christianity is filled with people who continued to hold fast to their faith even in the most dangerous of circumstances. Some of these men and women became martyrs for their faith. Others survived and brought inspiration to thousands of Christians across the globe. These brave believers lived throughout history. Beginning with Saint Stephen, the first martyr, Christianity has been defined by those who refused to apostatize and reject Christ. In ancient times, these brave men and women often paid the ultimate price for their loyalty to God. Although most Western Christians merely face ridicule, Christian persecution is on the rise in todays world. Western Christians may find themselves losing their jobs or threatened with lawsuits when they stand up for their beliefs, and Christians in the Middle East and South-East Asia have found themselves at the mercy of a lynch mob for refusing to deny Christ. Sadly, this is not a new situation for Christianity. Although the religion has become the largest faith on the planet, it is still made up of with believers who suffer in the name of God. This is not new for Christians, but that does not make the bravery of those who hold fast to their faith any lesser. Here are six people who risked everything for faith throughout history. For Immediate Release, April 17, 2018 Contact: Brett Hartl, (202) 817-8121, bhartl@biologicaldiversity.org Senate to Vote on Eliminating Protections Against Aquatic Invasive Species WASHINGTON The Senate will vote Wednesday on a bill that includes a dangerous rider effectively eliminating the Environmental Protection Agency's authority to regulate discharges from large ocean vessels, which often contain invasive aquatic organisms like zebra mussels from other parts of the world. If approved, S. 1129 the Coast Guard Authorization Act would transfer all authority to regulate ballast water discharges to the U.S. Coast Guard. The change ignores the fact that the Coast Guard has never taken independent action to regulate ballast water and includes no meaningful requirement that the Coast Guard set stricter limits on discharges into fresh or saltwater bodies. Republicans are giving foreign shipping interests the green light to cause irreparable harm to some of our nations most beautiful waters, said Brett Hartl, government affairs director at the Center for Biological Diversity. The GOP is essentially sacrificing native wildlife and telling communities that rely on these bays and lakes to foot the bill for the cleanup, if thats even possible. The legislation also completely strips away the ability of ordinary citizens to protect clean water by bringing citizen suits against polluters. Non-native species from ballast water can inflict widespread and expensive damage to bays, rivers and lakes. For years the EPA has been tasked under the Clean Water Act with stemming the spread of non-native species arriving in ballast, and the shipping industry has aggressively fought standards requiring vessels to be retrofitted to address the problem. Ballast water is water carried in a ships ballast tanks to improve its stability. When ships take on ballast water, the plants and organisms in that region also get picked up and re-released in other regions, where they become pests. In 2008 the 9th Circuit Court of Appeals held that the EPA must regulate and address the spread of invasive species from ballast water under the Clean Water Act. In 2015 the 2nd Circuit Court of Appeals agreed with the 9th Circuit and held that the EPA needed to do even more under the Clean Water Act to require that the most effective technology be used to clean and remove aquatic organisms from shipping vessels' ballast water. Non-native aquatic species have already ravaged San Francisco Bay and the Great Lakes, said Hartl. Without question this legislation will make the problem exponentially worse. Its a gift to big shipping companies and an insult to taxpayers, who already help support billions of dollars in restoration efforts just to keep current invasions from ballast water from getting worse. Approximately 52 million gallons of ballast water gets dumped into U.S. waters each year, and 55 percent to 70 percent of 180 known introductions of invasives to the Great Lakes were caused by ballast water. The Cannes Lions International Festival of Creativity in partnership with the Association of National Advertisers' (ANA) CMO Masters Circle, announced the launch of the CMO Growth Council. Philip Thomas, Ascential Events CEO and chairman-elect of Cannes Lions. First-of-its-kind global leadership agenda Clear correlation between creativity and business success Cannes Lions champions the clear correlation between creativity and business success, and for nearly two decades the worlds biggest marketers have used the Festival as an opportunity to see what great creative looks like and learn more about the people behind the greatest work in the world. We are delighted to be partnering with the ANA on this important initiative and working with the worlds biggest advertisers to unleash the power of creativity to drive growth. A transformative, strategically aligned powerhouse The CMO Growth Council will initially be comprised of 20 CMOs from some of the worlds biggest global brands. Chaired by Marc Pritchard, chief brand officer for the worlds biggest advertiser, Procter & Gamble and chairman of the ANA, the CMO Growth Council will represent the collective agenda and voice of a unified community of marketings leaders.The ultimate aim is to support the international community of CMOs with a first-of-its-kind global leadership agenda. The agenda will be advanced with an ongoing roundtable discussion, presentations and workshops covering a wide range of common marketing challenges to marketings future and drive growth.The partnership with the ANA is an ongoing, annual effort that will pivot between Cannes Lions and the ANA Masters of Marketing Conference in the autumn, extended to local regions throughout the year.Commenting on his role, Marc Pritchard said, CMOs all over the world are facing similar growth challenges and opportunities. The CMO Growth Council offers an important platform for marketing leaders from around the world to discuss, collaborate and take actions to help drive the entire industry forward. I have high hopes for what we can achieve together.Key activities during Cannes Lions include the CMO Growth Council annual meeting followed by a keynote session at a specialist half-day programme exclusively programmed for brand marketers at the Festival.Speaking on the formation of the council, Ascential Events CEO and chairman-elect of Cannes Lions Philip Thomas, commented:Our goal with this partnership is to create a transformative, strategically aligned powerhouse that brings a lasting impact to the international marketing scene, said ANA CEO Bob Liodice. The common theme for all activities is to drive worldwide business growth a goal that weve been pursuing in the US through the pursuit of the ANAs CMO Masters Circle and a 12-point agenda for business growth.The complete 12-Point Leadership Agenda for Growth can be found here and covers: Creativity and Brand Excellence, Talent Development, Organisation, Measurement, Brand Purpose, Gender Equality, Inclusiveness and Diversity, Digital Supply Chain, Transparency, Brand Safety, Advocacy and the Future of Marketing and Advertising Growth.The full list of council members will be released ahead of the Festival. NEWSWATCH: The Public Investment Corporation (PIC) has confirmed that it will not be investing in Sagarmatha Technologies. The PIC has confirmed it will not be investing in Iqbal Surves embattled tech start-up, Sagarmatha Technologies. https://t.co/7DgpKtFo00 Mail & Guardian (@mailandguardian) April 14, 2018 JSE pulls plug on Sagarmatha listing https://t.co/IyqYzXJwys Business Day (@BDliveSA) April 12, 2018 Dr Surve did not borrow money from the PIC nor did the PIC lend any money to Dr Surve. The PIC also did not lend money to the Sekunjalo Group. To infer otherwise is highly defamatory. To reiterate, neither Dr Surve nor Sekunjalo Investments are in debt to the PIC. All of Independent Medias debt is from shareholders, who collectively have a residual interest in the business. This is a very different type of debt to that of a bank loan. In other reports: More on Twitter: RIP Sagarmatha Your non-listing on the JSE was a rare unifying event for all market participants Now who has some AYO shares to lend out? pic.twitter.com/BkB8xKhCqq JSE School Bus (@JSE_School_Bus) April 11, 2018 Marc Hasenfuss article on aborted Sagarmatha listing in Business Times is what good financial journalism should be. Not previous hatchet like jobs of same issue Ive read in previous days. Pity few good financial journalists around who are sober with facts Sure Kamhunga (@sure_kamhunga) April 15, 2018 The more Iqbal Surve says about that joke Sagarmatha, the worse he makes it for himself. Here, he issues forth a spew of straight up lies and purposely misleading information: https://t.co/2wBViihxnn Dirk de Vos (@DirkdeVos) April 17, 2018 Following the deliberations by the investment committee, it was decided that the PIC will not participate or invest in Sagarmathas private placement and IPO [initial public offering], said Deon Botha, head of corporate affairs at the PIC.Botha said the corporation was requested to participate in the private placement of shares in anticipation of the public listing of Sagarmatha on the Johannesburg Stock Exchange (JSE) on Friday and that the company would have to raise R3-billion in order to list, reported Lisa Steyn in Sagarmatha and other fairy tales in the(M&G).Sagarmatha released a Sens statement saying that the company cannot continue with the listing, due to technical non-compliance with the JSE listing requirements as a result of the company not submitting relevant financials to both the Companies and Intellectual Property Commission and the JSE in time, Steyn continued.Ann Crotty ofsaid that this announcement came more than 24 hours after the JSE told it the listing could not go ahead, with no explanation as to the delay in informing the market According to Sam Sole, senior investigative journalist at the AmaBhungane Centre for Investigative Journalism, the problem started in 2013 when the group owning Independent Media in Ireland went bankrupt and wanted to sell the company.They overpaid a political premium because, in my view, they wanted to get control of what was then the largest English newspaper in the country, said Sole. For more of his views on this, read Iqbal Surve funds scramble exposed ' onOn this basis, Steyn said founder Iqbal Surve is already indebted to the PIC which loaned him the money to acquire Independent Media in 2013, and his response to this statement reads as follows:In his article The curious case of Sagarmatha and the listing that never was on, Bruce Whitfield believes: There is something decidedly odd about the fact that the most-hyped planned listing on the JSE has fizzled out without so much as a fight.Terry Bell ofsays, this should be a wake-up call to labour , a clear - and local - signal that a new age is dawning which, given existing economic and social systems, could tear apart the fabric of society.Essentially, by investing in Sagarmatha, the PIC would be paying off the debt that Surves Sekunjalo consortium had borrowed to buy Independent Media, said Dewald Van Rensburg on. A PIC investment in Sagarmatha would mean giving money to a company that would have Independent Media group, which already owes the PIC hundreds of millions of rands, as its major asset. And so the unicorn died ... (Sasha Planting on Investing in social and developmental causes has become increasingly innovative lately, moving away from one-directional donations and suchlike. Social investors now use a mix of finance models to put their money where it has the potential to grow substantially. They are looking for opportunities where their investment will have considerable long-term impact, while contributing to sustainable, meaningful development. They also want to evaluate that impact accurately, to measure the return on their investment. For a more in-depth look at these trends, download the full research report: https://nextgeneration.co.za/2018-csi-trends-forecasts-and-impacts-research-report/ For enquiries and further details, contact Reana Rossouw of Next Generation Consultants at az.oc.noitarenegtxen@wuossorr or on 011 593 2316 or 083 440 0654. This is the conclusion of Reana Rossouw, director of Next Generation Consultants, after extensive research on the latest trends in the social investment and development sectors. The companys 2018 research report,, has just been released.Looking back at 2017, it became clear that the following developments are shaping the social investment, development and innovation landscape, while presenting new and profitable opportunities:The number of social enterprises and impact investors contributing to a larger pool of resources and new investment themes, have increased over the past year. This gave birth to blended finance models, including a mix of grants and donations, microloans, seed capital, equity finance, debt finance, social and impact investment, indicating a swing to for-profit models of development. Pure donations and grants have been replaced by new approaches to development and funding, greater scale and innovation and the expectation of financial growth and repayment.Social and impact investors applied blended finance models to invest in social, economic and environmental problems and use the interest and profit from their interventions to reinvest in development. Financing development challenges is seen as a good investment that provides valuable returns and commercial opportunity, while contributing to positive and sustainable development.Monitoring, evaluation and impact assessment came into its own in 2017. It was partly driven by social investors wanting to ensure return on their investments and understanding the solutions theyve invested in and the difference it made. Impact assessment went from a mere overhead cost to a strategic imperative, with programme funding now including the cost of performance management and measurement.Online giving technology combined with 24/7 access and global news cycles, the growth of social media platforms, cryptocurrencies and crowdfunding, as well as conscious consumerism, have connected investors, philanthropists, causes, communities and civil society. This led to a powerful mix of involvement, participation and contribution to causes around the globe and support our primary trend of blended finance. It also provides new opportunities for fundraising that could lead to greater sustainability in the development sector.Millennials and Generations X and Z are the new social investors, donors and grantmakers, and they support political and social causes that are important to them: inclusivity, gender equality and ideological liberalisation. They differ from previous generations of givers because they have different interests and priorities, they give and invest differently, and go about volunteering differently. This generation is clear about their focus on human and civil rights, and social justice and African governments have taken heed. Policies are being rewritten to include the youth in high-level decision-making, and youth-led NGOs and PBOs get on average 40% more of all funding.The importance of social justice organisations to hold the private as well as public sector to account was never more important than in 2017. This greater social consciousness culminated in investments that could strengthen and promote democracy, safety and social cohesion, a free press, rural democracy and gender equality. Funders can no longer ignore the plight of financial sustainability of these defenders of justice.Social investors started recognising the power of technology to solve complex and persistent social issues. They realised that agritech, fintech, edutech and healthtech solutions do not only provide increased access to basic services and transactions but could also ensure faster progress in eliminating poverty and inequality. Investors are therefore no longer looking to NPOs and NGOs that do not recognise the impact of technology to fast-track and scale solutions. They rather fund the development of technology, such as mobile applications, that also provide return in the form of commercialisation opportunities, to speed up the process of social development.Investors showed massive collaboration and integration with governmental and institutional support. This was most evident in the explosion of incubators and accelerators, formal partnerships and co-working spaces in South Africa, more so than in any other African country. Enterprise development has become a major investment opportunity, integrating with trends such as technology development, the growth of social entrepreneurship and the development of new investment portfolios and themes.Social enterprises have shown the capability to solve social issues (poverty) with economic solutions (job creation and employment) and simultaneously improve environmental challenges. This growth in new concepts such as inclusive development, and in particular the circular economy, has proven that an integrated development approach (economic, social and environmental development) can lead to sustainable development. The notion that development support should be provided for free does not apply anymore. New concepts such as pay for services are changing the development landscape forever.In 2017, social and impact investment, philanthropy and grantmaking became institutionalised in Africa. Indigenous funding and development models got the recognition they deserved. Although international organisations are still needed to contribute to Africas sustainable development, they can no longer dictate development strategies and policies with their own agendas. Africans are demanding local content, local resources and implementation.Innovative funding models have entered the development landscape and investors now put their money where deeper impact, greater sustainability and return on investment can be guaranteed, Rossouw says. Leveraging technology, the sector is moving faster, changing the investment focus, investing bigger and taking a greater risk to make a lasting difference in communities and the environment, while making a profit. Andre Le Roux, BASA Chairman: "The Awards reflect a deeply committed corporate sector and a creative sector that's grown into a viable and important component of the national economy." Entries are now open for the immensely prestigious and highly contested Business and Arts South Africa (BASA) Awards partnered by Hollard.Now in their 21st year, the Awards recognise South African businesses that invest in the arts and in the creative economy. This investment not only enables artists to thrive, but it also affects the health and robustness of investing businesses. Investment in the arts brings the benefits of impactful strategic thinking to boardrooms. It helps deliver better understanding of markets and market dynamics. It delivers collateral with which businesses may position their brands in an increasingly cluttered marketplace. And it provides scope for CSI interventions.Its our great honour and privilege to present these Awards for the 21st time this year, says Andre Le Roux, Chairman of the BASA board. Over the years we have seen how the Awards have grown and matured into what they are today: a reflection of a deeply committed corporate sector and of a creative sector thats come of age as a viable and important component of the national economy.The BASA Awards partnered by Hollard also showcase how the arts are a tool for bringing about transformation in its broadest sense. Bringing the diverse, inquiring and questioning voices of artists to the corporate table enables meaningful conversations around what kind of a society we need to build and what corporates can and must do to realise this vision of a transformed, inclusive society, says Heidi Brauer, Chief Marketing Officer at Hollard. Its these conversations that keep Hollard coming back as a BASA Awards sponsor.Whilst awards are an important acknowledgement of the vision and application of their recipients (and, indeed, of all finalists), the value of the Awards lies also in the fact, that they spur the broader economy into deeper investment in the arts, says Michelle Constant CEO of BASA. This effectively creates an inclusive South African economy, where the value of creativity in business is not only recognised, but also sought after and highly valued.The Awards are open to all companies investing in or sponsoring arts events, projects or organisations in South Africa or Africa. They are also open to all companies investing in or sponsoring South African or African arts events outside of South Africa. There is no entry fee.There are 11 categories. Awards will be made for work done during 2017. The categories are:(For the most innovative and progressive partnership in all mediums of creativity that serves the interests of all partners equally, and that is characterised by originality)(For a business supporting the arts for the first time: irrespective of size, budget, or purpose.)(Awarded to a partnership that celebrates audience engagement, or that has contributed significantly to brand, market and audience development, while promoting the business through above-the-line media. It could also go to a business/arts partnership that has contributed to regeneration or sustainable growth, through a marketing, CSI or other budget.)(Will go to a global-level partnership that builds brand reputation and audience across international borders through either an event or marketing project.)(Awarded to a business that has developed and expanded its commitment to an arts project over three years or more. The value to the arts project, to the broader community and to the business, must be clear.)(For consistent and innovative support by editorial media.)(Recognising outstanding initiative, with best use of a project, which is an integral part of the business strategy.)(For vital support given to the arts by a small company with up to 200 full-time employees and an annual turnover of no more than R10 million.)(For quantifiable non-monetary support to the arts.)(Awarded to projects with an implicit educational and development element.)(For business support of arts and culture projects which contribute towards the growth of communities and jobs, and support tourism opportunities.)Entries opened on 13 April 2018 and will close on June 15 2018. Adjudication will start on 13 July 2018 and finalists will be announced on 31 August 2018. The Awards event takes place at Freedom Park in Tshwane on 17 September 2018.For more information and for details on how to enter, please go to http://www.basa.co.za/basa-awards/ or contact Teboho Sandamela on az.oc.asab@ohobet or 011 447 2295. East Coast Radio has walked away with four awards at this weekend's prestigious Liberty Radio Awards ceremony in Sandton. Afternoon Drive presenter Bongani Mtolo with ECR's General Manager Boni Mchunu East Coast Radio's Jane Linley-Thomas with her Liberty Radio Award East Coast Radios Bongani Mtolo has scooped the best Afternoon Drive Presenter (commercial), while Jane Linley-Thomas interview with Vanessa Goosen for #GetReal walked away with the best podcast on radio award. The KwaZulu-Natal-based radio station was also honoured to receive two Bright Star awards.Daytime producer Simon Carter and the stations former breakfast producer were recognised in the Bright Star category for making their mark in the industry.East Coast Radios General Manager Boni Mchunu says, We are proud to have been honoured in a number of categories. I would like to congratulate Bongani, Jane and Simon for their outstanding achievements. These industry awards are testament to just how dedicated our team is to producing compelling content and great radio.The station was nominated in no less than ten nominations, including being short-listed as a nominee for Station of the Year in the commercial category. You watch music videos from Vevo, I am sure. Perhaps you've also heard of Maker Studios and Machinima (the former of which was sold to Disney for $500m and the latter which had a network of 30,000 gaming YouTubers). These are all Multi-Channel Networks or MCNs. TymonOziemblewski via Pixabay What is a MCN? Why do they matter to brands? Shedding the stigma The local market is relatively unaware of what an MCN is or even the role they play. The model globally is shifting, and it is important to demystify the concept and illustrate why MCNs important for you and your brand.A Multi-Channel Network (MCN) is an organisation that works with video platforms such as YouTube to assist a channel owner [or YouTuber] with "product, programming, funding, cross-promotion, partner management, digital rights management, monetisation/sales, and/or audience development" in exchange for a percentage of the ad revenue from the channel (1). MCNs are YouTube certified companies.The best way to describe a MCN is to look at the traditional model of TV where you have your big broadcasters or networks like the SABC. They have multiple channels below them and in those channels you have shows. On YouTube, there are similar structures but the ownership dynamics are vastly different leaving the power in the creators hands. If you are a YouTube creator, you are producing regular programming (or shows) on your channel.The channel you post those on is your own and you own all the rights to the content (albeit if you infringe on someone elses rights to the same piece of content). MCNs then sign a few of these channels on to their network and effectively manage them with optimisation techniques to grow their audiences and help them obtain potential brand collaborations to begin building a revenue model with their content. They have a very small stake in multiple channels as opposed to a full stake in one channel.Because MCNs have special access to YouTube software called a Content Management System (CMS), they are able to collate multiple assets of video or channels and compare the data across those channels and videos to analyse demographics and relevant statistical data. This is not provided to the average content creator and is beneficial for companies with multiple assets.MCNs also have the added benefit of working with a wide range of content creators who reach diverse audiences and produce great quality video content at a fraction of the price of traditional TV and production which means that the turnaround time is much faster and the outcome is focused on the desired platform so you can be assured of the ROI.MCNs also have greater insight into content being uploaded on the platform and are able to work alongside companies to develop content strategies for YouTube communication that is based on statistical data providing brands with the most likely opportunity to have their content fill a gap in the consumer market and achieve the desired results in the end.Globally, MCNs have gathered a bad reputation because they were so focused on profit margins and signed thousands upon thousands of channels from all over the world in the hope to gain a small portion of their ad revenue. In doing this, they couldnt provide the one-on-one analytical support, and most certainly, not the brand support needed. They became redundant as the creators who had large enough audiences could employ their own team.However, the MCNs still retained large clout because of the creative reach they could achieve through the assets they were managing; in turn, big production houses and studios saw this potential and wanted to own the creative potential. YouTube is a content machine and the creators posting content online are the specialists in the space that is a hugely profitable model in the digital era of content production and consumption!As we move more and more into the digital era and as more and more video content is consumed on the internet, finding the specialists in optimising that content is going to be vital for brands looking to build a presence on a platform like YouTube. Online video is the inevitable next step, getting clued up on how MCNs operate and how they operate will give you a head start on your next campaign. ...implements ease of doing business reforms Companies and Intellectual Property Authority has taken a step forward to implemet the ease of doing business reforms through the assistance of New Zealand which is rated number one in the world as far as ease of doing business is concerned, a top executive of the authority has disclosed. Speaking to BG Business recently, Registrar General of CIPA, Conductor Masena disclosed that the infrastructure is 75 percent complete and they are just waiting for the current sitting parliament to pass the Bill. Government of Botswana has partnered with the New Zealand government to modernise our business and we have already put infrastructure in place to rollout the system and the New Zealand will just come with their expertise, they are ready to start anytime, they are just waiting for us, said Masena. New Zealand was first announced number one in October 2016 after Singapore had retained the top spot for over a decade.The value of the system is about P7 million on the project. The ease of doing business is a national priority under pillar one of vision 20136, which seeks to achieve sustainable economic development for the country through making Botswana a destination of choice for investment. Botswana has dramatically dropped ten places down this year in Doing Business. In 2017 Botswana was number 71 in the world and in the latest ratings, this country dropped drastically to number 81. On a related matter, Permanent Secretary for the Ministry of Investment, Trade and Industry, Peggy Serame, said the country has over the years been criticised for its stiff laws which are considered to be inhibiting the ease of doing business in Botswana, but according to ministry of investment, trade and industrys that will soon come to an end. To address these challenges (ease of doing business), government has adopted the doing business reform framework that is aimed towards reducing turnaround time for starting a business, paying taxes, facilitating cross border trading, issuing construction permits, just to name but a few, said Serame. Leading furniture retail group, Furnmart Limited has announced that profits for the twelve months period to January 2017 will be more, despite reduced disposable income and poor economy. In a statement released recently, Furnmart Managing Director, Daniel le Roux highlighted that Profit After Tax(PAT) is expected to be higher than last year. However, the BSE listed group has not disclosed why bottom line is up. The board of directors of the company would like to bring to the attention of shareholders that the companys profit after tax for the period ended 31 January 2018 is expected to be significantly higher than that for the corresponding period ended 31 January 2017, said the company. Shareholders have been advised to exercise caution when dealing in ordinary shares of Furnmart Limited, until a full announcement of the results is made, reads the statement. In the same period last year the group experienced subdued trading conditions due to closure of some of its operations. The group recorded 25.8 percent decline in operating income to P55.8 million is which was also attributed to the winding down of the Zambian operations, higher operating expenses and lower finance income earned, partially offset by a decrease in debtors costs. The group said its revenue of P624 million for the period was only marginally higher compared to the previous year. For its full year ended July 2017, the group recorded marginal decrease in revenue of P1.17 billion compared to P1.18 billion recorded in the prior year. Commenting on the results, the Group Chairman, Tobias Mynhardt explained that excluding the discontinued operations, revenue increased, compared to the prior year. Gross profit margins were lower than last year, mainly due to the closing down of sale operations and a very competitive, subdued trading environment elsewhere, said Mynhardt. He said the groups businesses in the chosen markets and territories are well positioned to take advantage of the inevitable improvement in market conditions. Our focused management teams will continue to seek growth opportunities in the region. Management will continue with moderate new store growth, primarily in South Africa, said Mynhardt. The company stated that the difficult trading environment was brought about by low economic growth, increased competition and high levels of consumer debt in the region. Profit after tax increased by 35 percent to P64.5 million compared to P47.7 million recorded in 2016. Operating income declined by 5.6 percent to P130.2 million due to the closing down of Zambia shops, higher operating expenses and lower finance income earned. During the year the group opened four new Furnmart stores and it is now trading out of 120 stores in three countries, Botswana, South Africa and Namibia. Central Securities Depositories(CSDs) are an important component to the capital market, as they play a crucial role in mitigating risk in the industry, one of Bank of Botswanas (BoB) deputy Governors, Andrew Motsomi has told a conference. He was speaking at the 27th meeting of the Africa Middle East Depositories Association (AMEDA) meeting in Kasane on Tuesday. There is indeed no doubt that securities depositories play a critical role with respect to mitigation and management of systemic risk and the promotion of the stability and integrity of financial markets, both on the domestic front as well as across the world, noted Motsomi. A central securities depository (CSD), is generally defined as a specialist financial entity which holds securities such as shares either in certificated or uncertificated form so that ownership can be easily transferred through a book entry rather than the transfer of physical certificates. In Botswana, this function is performed by Central Securities Depository Botswana (CSDB) which is headed by Masego Pheto. According to the BoBs second in command, securities regulators are required to play an increasingly pivotal role in addressing systemic risk, particularly in the context of the lessons drawn from the global financial crisis pertaining to systemic risk and promotion of financial stability. Motsomi was referring to the 2008/9 financial crisis which crushed markets globally. According to Motsomi, the introduction of the CSDB by the BSE a decade ago marked a critical milestone in the evolution of the national payment systems in Botswana. The CSD system has significantly transformed the operations of the capital markets in the country, by inter-alia, improving the safety of investor assets, improving the efficiencies and integrity of securities market transactions as well as contributing to the minimisation and mitigation of systemic risk, stated. Since its establishment, the CSBD continue to be well received by international investors and rating agencies. This is reflected by the year on year growth of foreign investor participation in the domestic bourse. The evolution of CSDs to position themselves as a one-stop-shop is commendable, though the pace of evolution may not be the same in every market, noted Motsomi as a matter of fact. There has been a notable trend and transition from traditional core services of registry, custody and reporting to a more diversified service of products and services which include inter-alia, liquidity management, cross border settlement, collateral management, payments gateways, e-voting, e-IPOs, trade repositories and fund trustee management, securities borrowing and lending. Equally, CSDs have significantly evolved to embrace investor outreach initiatives helping the regulators and the supervisory bodies to shoulder this task, he added. He urged AMEDA to develop focus groups that can explore the integration of these core and added services among its members, and create a conducive environment for others to hand hold others. According to background information from BSEs head of market development, Thapelo Moribame, the AMEDA meetings are dedicated towards the review of the associations financial performance, as well as conducting workshops on the relevant topics that impact the operations of the Central Securities Depositories in the AMEDA region. AMEDA is a non-profit organization comprised of Central Securities Depositories and Clearing Houses in Africa & the Middle East and was formed for the benefit of its member community, as an elective, inter-professional and regional facility geared towards fostering the spirit of cooperation, reciprocity and harmony among members. Toxic relations between Botswana National Front (BNF) President Advocate Duma Boko and his deputy Dr. Prince Dibeela is now playing out in the open, Botswana Guardian has learnt. The two have been keeping their differences a close guarded secret, the strained relationship that has affected the entire BNF Central Committee. In the recent developments Adv. Boko left the party without an acting President when he went on a Parliamentary assignment outside the country. According to sources, the president took this decision after his deputy failed to follow strict instructions given to him while Adv. Boko was away on official assignment some weeks back. It is alleged that the President had told Dr. Dibeela that he should convene a Central Committee meeting with a specific item that the meeting should discuss the partys preparedness for its primary elections and the Mochudi East bye-election. Adv. Boko left on Sunday for Azerbaijan on official trip as an election observer after addressing a Democratic Alliance (DA) Congress in South Africa. The 18-member central committee is divided into two factions- one supporting Boko and the other on Dr Dibeelas books. On Advocate Bokos corner is said to be Moeti Mohwasa, the Secretary General; Justin Hunyepa, the Publicity Secretary; Tona Mooketsi, the Organising Secretary; and Kwenantle Gaseitsiwe, an additional member. The remaining 12 members on the other hand are with Dr Dibeela. Dr. Dibeelas faction is also said to be planning Advocate Bokos downfall as it pushes for a special congress this year. Dr Dibeela did not bring the letter to the meeting. The central committee discussed other issues other than those the president directed. One of them was to bolt out of Umbrella for Democratic Change (UDC). It is now in the open that the twos toxic relationship cannot be hidden anymore. As we speak the party does not have acting president as should be the case, said an insider. This is said to have annoyed Adv. Boko who also plans to suspend the deputy president. The BNF President has also appointed MP for Kanye South Abraham Kesupile acting Leader of Opposition. He had recently appointed MP for Ghanzi North also BNF Treasurer Noah Salakae. Salakae is associated with Dr Dibeelas camp and Adv. Boko is said to have deliberately appointed Salakae as LOO just to get back at Dr Dibeela. BNF Publicity Secretary Justin Hunyepa said people are blowing out of proportion the relationship between the president and his deputy. He said as politicians they would always differ on some issues but that does not mean the relationship is toxic. Hunyepa stated that Adv. Boko did not appoint anyone on acting basis because he would not be gone for a long time. Boko is expected back in the country tomorrow (Saturday). Hunyepa could however not describe his definition of short or long time. Frankly speaking, I hardly hear of acting president in both ruling and other opposition parties though the presidents travel internationally. Ndaba Gaolathe of Alliance for Progressives, Advocate Sidney Pilane of BMD and Dumelang Saleshando of BCP all have had international travel but I have not heard of someone acting in their respective political organisations, said the publicity secretary. He also did not want to be drawn into discussing the alleged defying of the president by his deputy. Dr. Dibeela could not be reached for comment as his phone rang unanswered and had not responded to a message sent to him through WhatsApp at press time. The rivalry between the two BNF leaders started when Botswana Congress Party (BCP) joined Umbrella for Democratic Change (UDC). Dr Dibeelas faction is said to have been in support of the Botswana Movement for Democracy (BMD) disagreement on the BCP membership in the UDC. At the time before the BMD split its President Ndaba Gaolathe was said to be one of those who were not happy with the arrangement at UDC inclusive of BCP. Following the BMD split Dr. Dibeelas led faction called for the removal of the BMD from UDC because it was now the weakest link in the coalition. Opposition parties in Francistown region may cash in on the infighting between aggrieved Botswana Democratic Party members, if the matter is not addressed promptly. Member of Central Committee (MCC) Shaw Kgathi was unceremoniously forced to abandon a meeting recently which he had been sent by the party leadership to give the recent Bulela Ditswe winners at Francistown South a go ahead to start their 2019 general elections campaigns. But his mission was interrupted by furious members who forced him to go back to party headquarters to start afresh by resolving the previous primary election protests which were never addressed. So serious is the matter that some BDP members interviewed on condition of anonymity said the party is likely to lose the Francistown city constituencies in the coming general elections as those disgruntled will most likely sabotage BDP and hand over the two constituencies to the opposition. Francistown Regional chairperson Badumetse Medupi does not agree with the current stance taken by some democrats. He told Botswana Guardian that there is a difference between party policy and self-interest. Medupi is greatly, disturbed by the current developments sayinmg there is an existing party policy regarding membership registration which those gunning for primary elections tend to deliberately ignore to serve their own personal interests. At BDP voter registration books are handled by the party structures who make it a point that members are registered ahead of any general elections or on any ordinary day they would prefer to do so. This clearly reflects that those interested in contesting for any political positions are in the dark about the party policy since they are only driving their self-interests, Medupi said. He said candidates must focus on recruiting members of their side instead of castigating the party concerning membership registrations which has a specific department to handle. One year after Botswana established diplomatic relations with the State of Palestine, Botswana Guardian reporter Ernest Moloi asks Botswanas Permanent Representative to the United Nations, Ambassador Charles Ntwaagae what progress has been observed in the protracted Israeli/Palestine internecine conflict. Botswana Guardian: Do we see the (Israeli/Palestine) conflict as a humanitarian/human rights or peace and security issue; and in all these categories, what is our foreign policy posture regarding the Peoples of Palestine? Ambassador Charles Ntwaagae: Botswana remains resolute in its support for the Palestinian people in their quest to realize their inalienable right to self determination and the pursuit of freedom, peace, dignity and stable existence. It is in light of this that Botswana, as a gesture of continued support and solidarity, established diplomatic relations with the State of Palestine on 08 March 2017. While we welcome ongoing efforts by the Middle East Quartet (United States, European Union, Russia, and United Nations), which continues to work tirelessly to find a lasting solution to the Middle East situation; Botswana regrets that in 2018, Palestinians still live in the face of an unrelenting human tragedy of multiple conflicts and fragile environment. The Government of Botswana remains steadfast in her support for the International communitys efforts to resolve the Conflict in the Middle East, peacefully and amicably. We are still of the belief that, there is room for both Israel and Palestine to co-exist as good friendly neighbours. The conflict is among the worlds oldest and most protracted. The conflict is multifaceted and has historical, religious, cultural, legal, political and economic dimensions. It would therefore be naive to view the conflict exclusively from the perspective of humanitarian, human rights, peace and security dimensions only. This explains why the conflict remains one of the worlds oldest and most protracted, which inevitably received and continues to receive wide coverage by the international press. The point is that both Israelis and Palestinians have human rights which have to be respected by both sides to the conflict. Humanitarian issues relate to the welfare of the estimated 6 million Palestine refugees. In this respect, Botswana supports the work of the United Nations Relief and Works Agency for Palestine Refugees in the Near East (UNRWA). The protracted Israeli-Palestinian conflict remains a threat to international peace and security. Hence, continued international efforts to resolve this old conflict. Botswana as a Member of the United Nations supports these ongoing international efforts to find a durable solution to the conflict through relevant United Nations Security Council and General Assembly Resolutions. BG: What is Botswanas Position regarding the Two-State solution? How has Americas (Donald Trump) recognition of Jerusalem as the capital of Israel aided or abetted the conflict between the Palestinians and Israelites? CN: Botswana is committed to Multilateralism and to the multilateral system that underpins it. It is therefore important to note that the position of Botswana on the question of Palestine is firmly rooted on principles of international law, specifically the various Resolutions adopted by the United Nations General Assembly and Security Council on the Question of Palestine. In line with these Resolutions, the future of the City of Jerusalem is among those that have been designated in the peace negotiations as final status issues, still to be negotiated and agreed between Israel and Palestine. It is in the light of this that Botswana views the recently announced decision by the US Government to recognise Jerusalem as the capital of Israel as an unduly pre-emptive move, which also has the potential to undermine the integrity of the Two-State solution, as well as compromising the United States impartiality in the peace talks. Botswana supports the two-State solution, which is considered by the international community as the only way to ensure a durable solution to the Israeli-Palestinian conflict. The two-State solution underlines a negotiated settlement by Israelis and Palestinians. It entails having two sovereign States the State of Israel and the State of Palestine living peacefully side by side. BG: Who are the original occupiers of Palestine/alternatively what are the internationally-defined boundaries of the land originally known as Palestine? How did Israel come into being in the Middle East? CN: Botswana as a Member of the United Nations is largely guided by principles of international law with respect to questions of territorial disputes of other sovereign States. In this instance, it would be recalled that, the Assembly Resolution 181 (1947) (Partition Plan) adopted the plan to partition the British Mandate of Palestine into Two States, one Arab and one Jewish, with Jerusalem placed under a special international regime, and is still recognised and regarded by the UN as applicable. Furthermore, the 1949 Armistice signed by Israel and Arab States as well as Resolutions 242 (1967) and 338 (1973) are internationally recognised as a basis for the legitimate call for Israel to withdraw its armed forces from territories it occupied. The aforestated Resolutions provide the broad historical context of this dispute. BG: Do you suppose the United Nations Organisation has any locus standi to resolve this conflict, given that it is an interested party by virtue of demarcating the 1947 boundaries that created the state of Israel? CN: Yes, the United Nations has locus standi to resolve this conflict. As the only multilateral organisation with near universal membership, the UN is enjoined by its Charter to find global solutions to global problems and challenges. Action by the UN is premised on relevant Security Council and General Assembly Resolutions. As far back as 1948, by Resolution 54(1948), the United Nations Security Council determined that the situation in Palestine was a threat to international peace and security and consequently ordered cessation of hostilities. Since then, the United Nations has remained actively engaged in efforts to resolve the conflict. In these efforts, the United Nations has enlisted the support of other players, including the neighbouring countries, the Arab League and the Middle East Quartet (the UN, US, Russia and EU). It has to be appreciated that both Israel and Palestine need a third party to assist them to amicably resolve this conflict, which makes the involvement of the UN imperative, on account of its universal membership, international legitimacy and moral authority, as well as primary responsibility for maintenance of international peace and security. BG: How has the Israel/Palestine conflict affected bilateral & multilateral trade and other fraternal relations between Botswana and Israel and Botswana and Palestine? CN: The Israeli-Palestinian conflict has not had any adverse effect on bilateral relations, either between Botswana and Israel or between Botswana and Palestine, or both. Botswana has otherwise maintained a balanced approach to its relations with both Israel and Palestine and enjoys cordial relations with both of them. The Government of Botswana and the State of Israel have maintained close relations based on mutual respect and understanding. The two countries established formal diplomatic relations in 1993, following the latters signing of a peace accord with the then Palestinian Liberation Organisation that same year. Furthermore, the two countries established economic and technical cooperation in a number of fields, including agriculture, health, water resource management, human resource development and education. Batswana have in the past taken advantage of scholarships administered by the Israeli Centre for International Cooperation, MASHAV, which is responsible for the design, coordination and implementation of Israels development cooperation programmes. As a demonstration of our continued support and solidarity with the Palestinian people, Botswana established diplomatic relations with the State of Palestine in March 2017. We remain resolute in our support for the Palestinian people in their quest to realise their inalienable right to self determination. BG: What has been the position of the African Union and the Arab League on this conflict and do you suppose multilateral diplomacy can ever resolve this dispute? CN: The quest to find a just and lasting resolution of the Israeli/Palestinian conflict enjoys overwhelming support from the international community, including the Arab world, African Union, Asia and European Union. The Arab league has been at the forefront of the efforts to find a lasting solution to the Israel - Palestine conflict. In its support for Palestine, the Council of the League of Arab States adopted in 2002, an Arab Peace Initiative calling for full Israeli withdrawal from all the Arab territories occupied since June 1967, and Israels acceptance of an independent Palestinian state, with East Jerusalem as its capital, in return for the establishment of normal relations in the context of a comprehensive peace with Israel. The question of Palestine is a standing agenda item of the Summit of the African Union and every such Summit issues statements of support and solidarity with the Palestinian people. For example, at the last Ordinary Session of the African Union Summit, held in Ethiopia in January 2018, the African Union reiterated its support to the Palestinian position in its vision of a final solution to the conflict based on the principle of a Two-State solution and the full withdrawal by Israel from the occupied Palestinian and Arab territories. BG: As Botswanas representative at the United Nations what role do you suppose Botswanas much-vaunted peace credentials can play in the resolution of an impasse of such large scale and magnitude? And have you at any time proposed any resolution to the structures of the UNO? CN: The fact that Botswana enjoys a fairly good reputation internationally as one of the Africas most politically stable countries, and also a champion of democracy, good governance, respect for the rule of law and human rights, provides the country with the moral ground to leverage peaceful resolution of this conflict. To this end, Botswana uses every available opportunity at the United Nations (and also at other fora such as the African Union and Commonwealth) to reiterate its unequivocal support for the Two State Solution with the Israeli and the Palestine living side by side, in peace and security. The Israeli/Palestinian issue is consistently reflected in the statements Botswana delivers during the annual Sessions of the UN General Assembly. In addition, the United Nations Security Council conducts quarterly Open Debates on the Middle East Question, with particular focus on Palestine and Botswana consistently delivers statements of support to the Two State Solution during these meetings. The delegation also lends support to Resolutions that support the humanitarian and human rights situation of the people of Palestine in different fora of the General Assembly. Botswana also always issues a Message of Solidarity with the Palestinian People, during commemoration of the International Day of Solidarity with the Palestinian People which takes place on 29 November of every year. Botswana Congress Party (BCP) leadership finds itself between a rock and hard place over its swap of constituencies with the Botswana Movement for Democracy (BMD). In its effort to find a constituency for its President Dumelang Saleshando who also serves as Umbrella for Democratic Change (UDC) Vice President, BCP has approached its colleagues in the UDC, BMD to swap constituencies. BCP had proposed that it be given Maun West in exchange for Nata-Gweta which is one of BCPs 17 constituencies. According to a letter seen by this publication written to BCP by BMD Secretary General Gilbert Mangole, BMD is not interested in Nata-Gweta. Mangole indicated in a letter dated April 6th 2018 that they can only accede to the exchange request if they get Francistown West. Some time ago your partys Vice President and National Chairperson approached the leadership of BMD with the request to exchange Maun West for Nat/Gweta Constituency. About two weeks ago BMD leadership informed your National Chairperson that regrettably the BMD was unable to accept Nata/Gweta and could be happy to exchange Maun West for Francistown West. Your party National Chairperson undertook to place the matter before BCP executive for a decision, wrote Mangole to the BCP. BCP is said to be failing to reach a decision on the matter, as some believe Francistown West is winnable under the BCP. The party is said to have made inroads and some candidates have been identified. It is alleged that veteran politician Vain Mamela was requested by some to relocate to Francistown West. Another BCP member who has been lured to the constituency is BCP 2014 Parliamentary candidate for Tati East Maria Kusasa. Kusasa was lured after the BCP decided to give Tati East to Botswana Peoples Party (BPP) another contracting partner in the UDC. While some believe the Francistown West is a fair deal some argue that the BCP has credible candidates in Mamela and Kusasa to win the constituency. Kusasa was allegedly convinced by former Francistown West MP Dr Habaudi Hubona to relocate. Dr Hubona is allegedly not contesting for the coming elections. The division within the BCP could find the party back at square one in its bid to find Saleshando a constituency. The BCP leader is said to have expressed interest specifically in Maun West and Councillors in that constituency have also expressed that they would be more than pleased to have Saleshando as their candidate for 2019. Failure by the BCP factions to deal with the matter in time could cost Saleshando the constituency where he is believed to stand a better chance due to his family and business ties in Maun. The BMD has announced that on the 5th of next month it would hold primary elections in all its 14 constituencies Maun West included. BMD allegedly wants Francistown West for BPP to field its President Motlatsi Molapisi following their bilateral meeting in Francistown early this year. BCP Information and Publicity Secretary Dithapelo Keorapetse said the party is not divided on any issue. He revealed that as the BCP Central Committee they are meeting on Thursday (yesterday). If the letter is there then it would be presented to the committee and we would take it from there after our deliberations on the letter, he said. Last week, BCP Vice President Dr Kesitegile Gobotswang released a statement that they could not trade Francistown West because dynamics at the constituency have changed. He said they looked at the issue of gender balance and that Mamela had initially relocated from the constituency for the benefit of the UDC project and moving him again would not be fair on him. This has however been seen by others as just a factional stance as the party is yet to meet on the matter. It is now public knowledge that factional wars exist within the BCP, as those who already have constituencies are not prepared to let go of them. It is alleged Ditimamolelo- a group of BCP activists who are engaged in a fight to protect Saleshando post 2014 general elections is now in control of most of the BCP constituencies and are not willing to give way for the party president. Ditimamolelo was first made known to the public in November 2014 during a public rally in Old Naledi where they vowed to defend the party and its leader against any attack by other political parties following the BCPs dismal performance in the 2014 polls. BMD survived being kicked out of the UDC at the February UDC congress. Some of those who called for removal of BMD within the UDC are said to have done so due to their interests in certain constituencies assigned to the BMD. It has been argued that the BMD is no longer trusted to deliver some of its constituencies it has been assigned to manage on behalf of the UDC. BMD has lost many members to other political parties but more people left the party to the newly formed Alliance for Progressives (AP). Botswana has been challenged to embrace adaptation to climate change, given its environmental social and economic circumstances. Speaking at the Inter-Governmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) meeting for authors, Professor Thelma Krug Inter-Governmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) vice-chairperson told over 100 international scientists gathered in Gaborone this week that Botswana is prone to climate change due to its fragile environments and semi-aridity. Botswana is highly vulnerable to climate change particularly agriculture or livestock, woodlands and forest, water and health, said Professor Krug at the 4th Lead Author session of the IPCC. She said climate change is likely to add to existing stresses for Botswana causing significant changes in prevalent vegetation and rangeland cover, affecting species types, composition and distribution, as well as those depending on them. Adaptation to climate change in Botswana is vital given the environmental, social and economic circumstances, said Professor Krug. In the Southern Africa region, Botswana is one of the countries affected by loss of livestock under prolonged drought conditions given its extensive rangeland, making it difficult to provide adequate provision of water for livestock production. Slumber Tsogwane, Botswanas vice president said the nation needs to effectively respond to the negative effects of climate change. Botswana is located in a region where the rate of warming exceeds that of the global average. The vulnerability of the country to the adverse effects of climate change needs to be better understood, as well as its implications on environmental and socio-economic sectors such as health, water, tourism, infrastructure, agriculture and overall development, said Tsogwane. Botswana government has decided to resuscitate the P500 million-credit facility extended to Zimbabwes Short Term Emergence Recovery Programme (STERP) in 2009. This was revealed by Minister of International Affairs and Cooperation, Vincent Seretse this week. Seretse stated that former President Ian Khama expressed the commitment of Botswana Government to resuscitate the credit line.We had signed on our side but Zimbabwe could not sign because of the challenges that they were facing. When President Emmerson Mnangagwa visited Botswana he made enquiry about it. The then President Khama promised that it would be dealt with and as we speak relevant ministries are busy with it. We are hopeful that in few months time everything would be concluded, said Seretse who was appointed to head the foreign affairs ministry last week. He stated that the draft agreement was submitted to Zimbabwe in April 2011. Botswana government would provide a partial guarantee for the lines of credit while Zimbabwe would provide a counter guarantee and indemnity to Botswana for the risk or exposure. In addition, the Export Credit Insurance Company Botswana (BECI) will enter into subsidiary finance guarantee agreements with participating local banks. The two countries have reached an agreement that 70 percent of the resources will go towards the manufacturing sector while the remaining 30 percent will go towards other sectors. The Bilateral Investment Promotion and Protection Agreement (BIPPA) was signed in March after the two governments recognised opportunities for increased investment in the two countries and a need to conclude the agreement in the shortest possible time.Seretse who was addressing the media at his office in Gaborone on Wednesday this week said Zimbabwes economy has not fully recovered as some international investors have not returned to the country in full force. The minister stated that maybe a major shakeup could be expected after Zimbabwes elections expected later this year. Seretse explained that the investors want to see if indeed the elections would be free and fair and observe what would happen there afterwards. When Mnangagwa was here he explained that everyone is welcome back to Zimbabwe. He promised free, fair and credible elections. That was the highest stake the president has put on the table. He has invited SADC and international bodies to freely come to Zimbabwe and observe the elections. This should motivate investors, the minister said. According to the minister things are shaping up for Zimbabwe as the country has also been invited to come back into the Commonwealth. It was suspended in 2002 over political violence against opponents of former president, Robert Mugabe regime. Membership of the Commonwealth brings both economic and political support. BCP challenges Presidents powers in court Masisis presidency is unconstitutional - Rantao Botswana Congress Party (BCP) is expected to approach the High Court on urgency to challenge President Mokgweetsi Masisis powers regarding appointment of Vice President and dissolution of Parliament. The BCP this week wrote a letter to Speaker of National Assembly Gladys Kokorwe challenging Masisis powers to appoint a vice president as they believe that section 35 (1) under which he ascended to the presidency does not give him overriding powers to appoint a vice president. The party threatened to approach the courts if the Speaker fails to act on their demands. By Wednesday evening Kokorwe had not yet responded to the BCP letter. Dumelang Saleshando, president of the BCP, told Botswana Guardian that the speaker has until end of Thursday (yesterday) to have executed her duty of convening the National Assembly to elect the President. If she fails to do that then we would proceed with the litigation, said Saleshando. Kokorwe could not be reached for comment. This publication is however informed that the speaker has been advised not to make such an undertaking and wait for the litigation. The letter was copied to the Attorney General Advocate Abraham Keetshabe and titled, Election of the President of the Republic of Botswana under Section 35 (4) as read with Section 35 (5) of the Constitution of Botswana. The BCP through its lawyers Dingake Law Partners states in the letter that its clients BCP (the party), MP for Ramotswa Samuel Rantuana and MP for Selibe Phikwe West Dithapelo Keorapetse opine that there are four (4) types of Presidents envisaged under the Constitution, and these are; Section 32 President; Section 35 (1) President; Section 35 (2) President; and Section 35 (4) President. The law firm indicated that as provided for by the Constitution, only Section 32 and Section 35 (4) Presidents are substantive holders of office with the power to make appointments (revoke the appointment of Vice President) or dissolve Parliament. Section 32 states; Election of President after dissolution of Parliament. Sub section (1) Whenever Parliament is dissolved an election shall be held to the office of President in such manner as is prescribed by this section and, subject thereto, by or under an Act of Parliament. Sub section (2) Nominations in the election of a President shall be delivered to the returning officer on such day and at such time as may be prescribed by or under any law for the time being in force in Botswana; the nomination of a candidate in an election of a President shall not be valid unless it is supported, in such manner as may be prescribed by or under an Act of Parliament, by not less than 1000 persons registered as voters for the purpose of elections to the Assembly. His Excellency President Mokgweetsi Eric Masisi is neither a Section 32 nor Section 35 (2) President. Further, he did not ascend to the office of President following an election by Parliament. And to this extent, does not qualify as one (President) under Section 35 (4) as read with Section 35 (5) of the Constitution, the letter states. BCP argues that therefore President Masisi is, remains and has always been a Section 35 (1) President; and must be treated as such. Section 35 (1) indicates that whenever the President dies, resigns or ceases to hold office, the Vice-President shall assume office as President with effect from the date of the death, resignation or ceasing to be President. The party further argues that the Constitution in terms of Section 35 (3) provides that a Section 35 (1) President shall not exercise the powers of the President to revoke the appointment of Vice President or dissolve Parliament. Section 35 (4) and (5) provide for a mechanism of transforming a President under Section 35 (1) and Section 35 (2) into a fully-fledged President. Until such a president is fully-fledged their powers are limited to the extend (sic) provided by Section 35 (3) of the Constitution. The process of transforming a Section 35 (1) President shall take place on the seventh (7) day after the office of President becomes vacant, or such earlier day as may be appointed by the speaker as provided for under Section 35 (4) of the Constitution. To the extent that you have not convened the National Assembly on such earlier date for election of the President, our clients demand that you give an undertaking to us in writing, no later than the 11th of April 2018 at 09hrs00min that you will convene the National Assembly for purposes of election of the President under Section 35 (4) of the Constitution no later than the 12th April 2018 at 24hrs00mis, reads the letter from Dingake Law Partners adding that they hold instruction to approach to approach court on an urgent basis if no undertaking is given and within the requested period of time for an appropriate injunction. Fresh Comedy series is a getaway from the general politics of the world and allows one to kick back and relax once in a while. Held every Tuesday at Cresta President Hotels The Meeting Place restaurant, the laugh-a-thon sessions, offers a chilled ambience with good food, fun and affordable drinks. The weekly sessions are frequented by the young working class, corporates who bring their staff or clients, as well as arts lovers, and socialites, all who want to enjoy a low-key week night out with a difference. The line-up includes some of the citys finest comedians such as BK, Brian, Kgafela, Jonny Pula and Trics. Charles Manase is the host with the most. According to a representative of the organisers, Pitch Marketing and Advertising, the aim of the comedy sessions is to provide a platform for upcoming and established comedians to share their experiences, tricks of the trade and skills, in effort to contribute to the growth of the comedy industry in Botswana. We would like to grow so as to establish other shows in urban centres nationwide. The short term goal is to have a fresh line-up with fresh jokes and games, he said. He added that the attendance currently averages 50 people each week and doubles at month end. We want an intimate feel. We have started having a regular fan base and we hope that the attendance will grow, although we would like to keep that small crowd feel. These coming school holidays, ESTeRES Boutique Agency has got your children covered. The local agency is hosting three holiday camp events. The third edition of the kiddies camp will once again be held in Sasakwe. The camp is open to children aged between 5 and 10 years. Activities to look forward to include Arts & Crafts, Games, Hiking, Yoga, Story Telling, Team Building excersises, Dance, Star Gazing, Cloud Watching and Cookery. Campers will be provided with free transport to and from the venue and all meals are provided. Halaal meals are also available on request. The event takes place on the weekends of April 21 and 22nd, 28*29th and May 5 and 6th. Organiser, Michelle Phetlhe, explains that the event seeks to give parents the opportunity to take a breather, while allowing children to do something a little different during the school holidays. Phetlhe explains that today, children spend so much of their time on technological gadgets and hardly have time to just be children, and explore the world around them in the right setting. As children spend so much time indoors these days, holiday camp provides a wonderful opportunity to get outside and explore freely, she says. Other benefits of the camp include developing confidence, enhancing social skills, and unplugging from technology. Coming to holiday camp means joining our community where everyone must agree to cooperate, understand and respect each other. When they live with others, kids share duties and chores, resolve conflict, and see firsthand the importance of good communication, she explains. Before parents worry about letting go of their children and being far away from home, Phetlhe explains that to start with, they are only taking a small number of children, 14 in total. This she says, allows them to give all the children attention and ensure that they all have as much fun as possible and take part in all activities. They have teacher aides who will assist the children with whatever help they need. But she says that the plan is to get the children to be as independent as possible, and that in the instances where they might require help, teacher aides will be on hand to assist. The venue is an estate situated 30 kilometres from Gaborone. The estate has chalets with en-suite bathrooms, a main house with a kitchen (where meals will be prepared), and a braai area for bonfires and outdoor cooking. The Army Commanders Conference which began on Monday was addressed by MoS Defence, Subhash Bhamre and Army Chief Gen Bipin Rawat. A Twitter Photo NEW DELHI (PTI): Top Army commanders have commenced deliberations on key challenges facing the nation, particularly along the borders with China and Pakistan. During the six-day conference, which began Monday and is chaired by Army Chief Gen Bipin Rawat, issues such as infrastructure development for capacity enhancement along the northern borders, review of strategic railway lines, optimisation of limited budget to ensure making up of critical deficiency in ammunition would be discussed, according to a Defence Ministry statement. Issues related to Border Road Organisation projects and matters relevant to operations, administration and welfare of troops will also be discussed for planning and execution. During the conference, Subhash Bhamre, Minister of State in the Defence Ministry, stressed on the need to be prepared for the highly dynamic internal and external security challenges. Bhamre emphasised that the Government was fully seized of the requirements of the Army for capability development, force modernisation and development of its infrastructure. "He reiterated the need to optimise the fiscal resources through synergised capacity building within the three services through enhanced indigenisation and self-reliance," the statement stated. In his opening remarks, Gen Rawat stressed on the need to work in a collaborative manner for retaining and enhancing the current levels of combat effectiveness. He gave emphasis to laying down judicious priorities to ensure that the allocated resources are utilised optimally and the force modernisation is carried out unabated. The J-10C is an improved variant of J-10 fighter aircraft (in picture). A file photo BEIJING (PTI): China's new indigenously developed multi-role stealth fighter jet J-10C, capable of striking precisely both land and maritime targets, were put into active combat duty Monday, the military said. The third-generation supersonic fighter jets are equipped with an advanced avionics system and multiple advanced armament, making it capable of precisely striking both land and maritime targets within medium and close range, the People's Liberation Army Air Force (PLAAF) said in a statement. China had in February commissioned the latest J-20 stealth fighter into its air force's combat service. The J-20 is China's fourth-generation medium and long-range fighter jet. The Chinese supersonic fighter jet had made its debut in July last year, when the PLA marked its 90th anniversary, at Zhurihe military training base in Inner Mongolia Autonomous Region. The fighter will enrich the air force's offensive and defensive system and improve its capability to fulfil duties and missions, the statement said. Shen Jinke, a spokesperson for the PLAAF, said that the aircraft will advance training and war readiness, and sharpen its striking, defensive, and air delivery capabilities. It will also firmly safeguard China's airspace security and national strategic interests in the new era, Shen was quoted as saying by the state-run Xinhua news agency. Taiwan's state-owned news agency the Central News Agency (CNA) had earlier reported that the J-10C is more streamlined than the J-10 B to reduce drag. Hong Kong military analyst Leung Kwok-leung said that the J-10C has stealth capabilities entirely different from existing stealth warplanes. The J-10C fuselage absorbs radar waves and weakens its signals, as a result, the waves do not bounce back to the radar, making the plane stealth, the state-run Global Times said Monday quoting the CNA report. It is a brand new stealth technology, it said. The news of induction of the new warplane came at a time when Chinese military held its biggest ever military exercises and parade in the disputed South China Sea last week. The naval hardware seen at the parade, inspected by Chinese President Xi Jinping, showcased achievements made by the People's Liberation Army Navy, including nuclear submarines in its modernisation drive, military observers said. A researcher at the PLA Naval Military Studies Research Institute, Senior Captain Cao Weidong said that the Navy received a large number of new weapons with advanced capabilities over the past five years and new hardware features a higher information capability and optimised joint operation system and thus can better carry out sophisticated joint operations. Cui Yiliang, editor-in-chief of Modern Ships magazine, said the Navy showed almost all of its new hardware delivered during the past 10 years. It is now capable of conducting every naval operation, from strategic strike to amphibious assault, he said. "The nuclear-powered ballistic missile submarines involved in the parade are of the latest generation and have many improvements compared with their predecessors. The new nuclear-powered attack submarines are reportedly capable of launching cruise missiles," he said. Wu Peixin, a defence industry analyst in Beijing, said the PLA Navy has been steadily and rapidly catching up with the US Navy in terms of technological and operational capabilities of its hardware. NEW DELHI (PTI): The Indian and French defence and aerospace industries associations have signed a memorandum of understanding (MoU) to promote partnerships between the companies of the two countries. A statement by Groupement des Industries Francaises A ronautiques et Spatiales (GIFAS), the French Aerospace Industries Association, said it signed the MoU on Monday with the Society of Indian Defence Manufacturers (SIDM) in the field of aerospace and defence. The MoU will allow the implementation of measures to promote a mutually beneficial cooperation in aerospace and defence manufacturing, research and technology, human capital, engineering services, systems integration. "The signing of this MoU between our two bodies is an excellent opportunity to develop the cooperation between France and India and shape the aerospace and defence industry of the future," GIFAS managing director Pierre Bourlot and SIDM director general Subrata Saha said after signing the MoU. Speaking at a seperate event, Eric Trappier, CEO of Dassault Aviation, which manufactures Rafale, said France has been very transparent in the pricing of the fighter jet with India and some parts of the deal have to be kept secret. Congress had alleged a "scam" in the defence deal. Trappier said Dassault has an advantage in the new multi-billion Indian fighter jet procurement plan floated by India. Last week, the Indian Air Force initiated the procurement of 110 fighter aircraft for its depleted combat force now languishing at 31 fighter squadrons against a desired strength of 42. Trappier said his company won the last time on performance and cost, and it can do it again. In 2015, the NDA government scrapped a US$ 20-billion medium multi-role combat aircraft (MMRCA) project to acquire 126 fighters, in which Rafale had emerged winner. Later, in an inter-governmental deal, India bought 36 Rafale fighters from France in a euro 7.8 billion contract with Dassault that requires Rafale deliveries to commence in June 2019. Researchers at the University of Bristol are looking for people with an inherited neurological condition called Friedreich's ataxia (FA) to take part in a study into whether a stem cell therapy could be a treatment for FA. The small, pilot study aims to recruit seven people to find out if the bone marrow stem cell mobilising drug, granulocyte-colony stimulating factor (GCSF), could improve blood markers and potentially treat the condition. GCSF, which is commonly used in diseases related to the blood, as well as in healthy people prior to bone marrow donation, activates stem cells within the bone marrow and causes them to circulate around the body. People with FA will be invited to take part in the study and if they are suitable, GCSF will be injected just under the skin for five consecutive days. The injections will be at identical doses to those given to healthy people prior to bone marrow donation. Blood samples will then be taken over the subsequent two weeks to find out whether the drug has led to changes in blood markers, which would indicate a positive response to the drug. The blood samples will be analysed to determine how GCSF changes blood markers that are relevant to FA. The research team will also analyse the biochemical composition to see if there are changes and how long the change lasts for. The patient taking part in the study will be assessed by a doctor before the initial drug administration, at the final drug administration and two weeks after the final drug dose. A further blood test to monitor baseline blood tests will be taken two weeks after the final dose to ensure there have been no effects of GCSF on baseline blood tests. Dr Alastair Wilkins, Reader in Neurology in the Bristol Medical School (THS) and North Bristol NHS Trust, said: "There has been much excitement and hope over a number of years that stem cell therapies might provide an effective treatment for a variety of neurodegenerative diseases including FA. "Of all the types of stem cell therapies which have been put forward, we believe that bone marrow stem cell mobilisation currently holds the most promise, not least as these treatments are safe and have been used extensively for many years for other conditions." Dr Julie Greenfield, Head of Research at Ataxia UK, added: "We are delighted to be supporting this exciting research study. It is the first trial of this kind in people with Friedreich's ataxia, a currently incurable condition for which there is an urgent need to develop treatments." Paul Howe, a supporter of the charity Ataxia UK and whose niece has the condition, commented: "I've watched my niece, Victoria, suffer for years with progressively worsening muscle problems throughout her body. By taking part in the trial, I hope a treatment can be found for this little-known condition that affects mobility, speech, movement and, which currently has no cure." The research team suggest a larger and longer clinical trial should be carried out if the study shows there is an improvement in blood markers and a positive response to the drug. The pilot study will also help researchers to define the dosage and selection of patients for a future larger clinical trial. The study has been funded by the University's Elizabeth Blackwell Institute for Health Research (EBI) and the ataxia charities FARA and Ataxia UK. BUCKS COUNTY >> Now that grape picking and processing season is inching to an end for the six family-owned wineries of the Bucks County Wine Trail, the wineries are offering a chance for guests to come celebrate and taste the fresh-pressed fruits of their labor. The Bucks County Wine Trail will hold its annual Harvest Celebration on the weekend of... School of Management undergrads present research, social innovation projects Accounting student Jonathan Berr shared his experiences as an audit intern at the Port Authority of New York and New Jersey. From left, Best Social Innovation Poster went to Samuel Ignaczak, Farhana Rashid and Hira Kashif for their project, "Women in Leadership: Western Africa vs. Western World." In total, 39 undergrads showcased their work as individuals or in teams during the annual Undergraduate Management Poster Competition. Duy Vo was awarded Best Applied Experience Poster for his project, "Putting Robotics in Human Health Care," about his internship at Univera. Anna Turova and Olivia Miller presented what they learned about social innovation and entrepreneurial leadership during a study abroad experience in Ghana. Dong Hwan (Aiden) Lim and Sangrok Lee were honored with the Best Research Poster and Viewer's Choice awards for their project, "Future of Convenience Stores." At center, Wesley Mark and his teammates presented their research on predicting stock or cryptocurrency movements to make better purchases. This experience is valuable for any student who wants to improve their communications skills and get to know more people in the School of Management. BUFFALO, N.Y. Internships in hospitality and auditing, global learning experiences in Ghana and Costa Rica, and the Terese Kelly Investment Group these were among the subjects on display in the University at Buffalo School of Management during the Undergraduate Management Poster Competition on April 5. At the event, formerly known as the DEAL Expo, business administration and accounting undergraduates presented posters highlighting their research, social innovation and applied learning activities. On the research side, Dong Hwan (Aiden) Lim and Sangrok Lee junior accounting majors from Seoul and Daegu, South Korea, respectively took top honors and a $750 prize for their project Future of Convenience Stores, in which they analyzed a fictions retail company planning to add new stores. After researching the convenience store industry and comparing the company with its competitors, the team conducted a cost-benefit analysis and developed a strategy for successful expansion and automation. In addition to Best Research Poster, Lim and Lee also won the Viewers Choice award and an additional $500 prize. Through this project, we learned to consider both quantitative and qualitative aspects of a problem, and how to work together as a team, Lim says. This experience is valuable for any student who wants to improve their communications skills and get to know more people in the School of Management. For Best Social Innovation Poster, seniors Farhana Rashid of Woodside, Hira Kashif of Buffalo and Samuel Ignaczak of Pittsford won a $750 prize for their project, Women in Leadership: Western Africa vs. Western World. The team presented on the women leaders and business owners they met during their study abroad experience in Ghana, particularly in open-air markets, as well as the contrasting roles women play in American and Ghanaian culture. Best Applied Experience Poster went to Duy Vo, a business administration major from Buffalo with dual concentrations in management information systems and operations and supply chain management. Vo, who received a $750 prize, shared his experiences as a business process intelligence intern at Univera, where he worked on projects to streamline processes and increase automation. Now, nine School of Management teams that presented during the competition will go on to the UB-wide Celebration of Student Academic Excellence on April 26. The Kolkata Bench of the National Company Law Tribunal (NCLT) has approved Vedanta's resolution plan for Electrosteel Steels, paving the way for the debt resolution of the first of 12 cases mandated by the Reserve Bank of India (RBI) under the Insolvency and Bankruptcy Code (IBC). The resolution plan, which was approved by a 100 per cent vote by the committee of creditors (CoC), will come into force with immediate effect, according to the NCLT order. 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 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 Samsung is the most trusted brand in India followed by Sony and LG, the TRAs Brand Trust Report 2018 said here on Tuesday. topped among the fast moving capital goods (FMCG) "Samsung leads the list second year in a row to become India's most trusted brand. Sony and LG follow to retain pole positions as India's second and third most trusted brands," the report said. While topped among the FMCG brands, it ranked 13th in the overall rankings, according to the report. The report also said that Tata rose a position higher and was ranked fourth among the brands while Apple slipped one position to the fifth position. Honda topped in the auto sector, while lost a postion in the overall list to rank seventh this year. Google ranked 18th this year improving from the 40th rank it held in 2017, it said. Public sector lender State Bank of India was 21st in the list of most trusted brands in the country, but the most trusted in banking and financial service institutions. The study covered 2,488 consumer-influencers across 16 cities in India, it said. The Delhi High Court on Monday dismissed a plea seeking to change the date of the re-examination of the Class 12 economics paper, which the has decided to conduct on April 25 after the paper was leaked. A bench of Acting Chief Justice Gita Mittal and Justice C. Hari Shankar rejected the plea by NGO Suniye, which sought the date change or making it optional on the grounds that the decided date was close to some entrance examinations including the Defence Academy and engineering. Apart from this, the court was hearing two different pleas related to the Central Board for Secondary Education (CBSE) Class 10 mathematics paper. While hearing one of the pleas by a group of students seeking re-test of Class 10 mathematics paper, the court asked the to submit the records relating to the board's decision not to conduct re-examination and listed the matter for April 20. The order came after the court was apprised by the CBSE's counsel that it has issued a notification that the Class 10 maths examination will not be re-conducted as it cannot afford to hold it again and make over 16 lakh students appear in it. The court disposed off a plea by NGO Social Jurist after the counsel Ashok Agarwal said he was satisfied with the board's decision of not holding the re-examination for the Class 10 paper. Social Jurist had sought that the be directed to hold the Class 10 exam in April, if required, and not in July as it had proposed earlier. The CBSE told the court that it had decided not to hold the re-examination of the Class 10 maths paper as a scientific evaluation of random answer sheets did not indicate any unusual pattern to believe that there was widespread benefit of the alleged paper leak. The CBSE also said that another reason was that Class 10 was a gateway to Class 11 and therefore "remains largely an internal segment of school education system". The leak of the Class 10 maths and Class 12 economics question papers has affected lakhs of students across India. At a time when the Reserve Bank of India (RBI) and banks are blaming the cash management companies for automated teller machines (ATMs) running dry, representatives of the ATM industry said it is banks that are unable to meet the demand for cash. ATM service providers do a daily calculation of the cash required, called indent, which is sent to banks in the night for the following day. Till March end, 90 per cent of the daily demand was being met by the banks. However, it has now reduced since the first week of April, said V Balasubramanian, spokesperson of the ... The government on Tuesday said it is working with the US to resolve all trade issues even as America has decided to review India's eligibility to enjoy duty-free access for certain products under a tax benefit scheme. The US has also added India to its watch list of countries alleging questionable foreign exchange policies. Besides, it has dragged India to WTO's dispute settlement mechanism challenging Indian export incentive schemes. Commerce and Industry Minister Suresh Prabhu said the US is India's important trading partner and the latter has a large trade surplus with it. "We have special relation with the US, which is multi-faceted, multi dimensional and also very strategic. We are working with the US to address the trade issues," he told reporters here. He said that over four million Indians are living in the US and it is one of the major markets for goods and services exports. "In a situation like this, the US has taken certain unilateral actions. So we will follow the rules of WTO (World Trade Organisation) as well as we will talk to them. We are completely in the control of situation," he added. Prabhu said that the assistant US Trade Representative (USTR) was here last week and "we are in touch with the US at all levels". On the issue of imposing high duties on steel and aluminium by the US, he said India's exports of these two commodities to America is not significant. "I can assure you one thing that the only guiding principle for engagement with the US is to protect India's commercial interest in its entirety," he added. As many as 3,500 Indian products from sectors such as chemicals, medical devices and engineering get duty free access to the US market under the Generalized System of Preferences (GSP), introduced in 1976. The review can impact exports of those 3,500 Indian products to the US market as removal of duty benefits would make those items uncompetitive. According to the USTR, the total US imports under GSP in 2017 was $21.2 billion, of which India was the biggest beneficiary with $5.6 billion, followed by Thailand ($4.2 billion) and Brazil ($2.5 billion). The bilateral trade between the countries has increased to $64.52 billion in 2016-17 from $62.11 billion in the previous fiscal. A parliamentary panel has called Reserve Bank Governor on May 17 to answer queries on a spate of banking scams unearthed in the last few months, sources said. The Standing Committee on Finance, headed by veteran Congress leader M Veerappa Moily, today raised several queries related to the banking sector with Financial Services Secretary Rajiv Kumar. "We have invited the RBI Governor on May 17. We will be asking him about the scams and other banking regulations," said a source. Former Prime Minister Manmohan Singh, who is member of the Committee, attended the meeting. Patel had recently said that the RBI doesn't have adequate powers to deal with pubic sector banks. "We would like to know what kind of powers the RBI Governor needs," another source said, adding that regulation is an important part and that is why the Governor has been called. The panel, sources said, discussed a spate of banking scams, both in public and private sector banks. When asked if PNB and ICICI Bank issues figured during the meeting, the source said issues related with "all commercial banks, including ICICI Bank" were discussed. The finance ministry officials gave part replies to queries of the lawmakers and they have been given three weeks time to file a complete report on questions. US Energy Secretary said on Tuesday that Westinghouse Electric Co is emerging out of bankruptcy and is now capable of delivering the planned six nuclear reactors to India on time. On his first visit to India, Perry said India must look at "broad portfolio" of energy sources to deliver reliable electricity to its growing population and not just at affordability. Civil nuclear cooperation has been a cornerstone of US-India relations. The 2016 deal, under which Westinghouse was to build six AP1000 reactors in Andhra Pradesh, was concluded after more than a decade of diplomatic efforts. But it was in limbo after Westinghouse in March last year filed for bankruptcy following an estimated $13 billion of cost overruns at two US projects. "The most important development is that Westinghouse is coming out of its bankruptcy" by shedding problematic parts of the company, Perry said. "Westinghouse is exceptionally good at building reactors. They are the best reactor manufacturer in the world. Their technology is the best in the world. So they are now ready to go, build reactors." Asked if Westinghouse is capable of implementing the project on time, he said: "Absolutely." Perry said the Trump administration thinks nuclear energy is very important and it would use it for 'leaning forward' in its partnership with various countries. "India is on top of that list."He rejected doubts being raised on spending millions of dollars on large and expensive foreign-built nuclear plants when dropping renewable power prices had provided with a surfeit of electricity generation, saying sustainable reliable power is key to meeting growing energy needs. "Having a diverse portfolio (of energy sources) is really important. Does that mean that every one of those sources of energy will be cheaper than other, probably not. What is more important - reliability or affordability"," he asked. India, he said, is growing rapidly and there is a need for a million new jobs every month. "Having a broad portfolio of energy is really important to do that," he said. "The argument I am making is that if this is just about the cheapest form of electricity that you can get here, you are going to have problems, you are going to have some challenges because at some point of time just relying on cheapest form of electricity will not address the economic challenges that you are going to have, the growth that you are going to have," he said. Giving an example of his Texas state, he said the state deregulated the electrical industry, made it very competitive, kept low rates and had a broad portfolio. "Everybody wants to buy whatever they buy at the cheapest price they can get it. But you have to keep in mind that you may be putting in jeopardy your reliability at the altar of affordability," he said. India has one of the world's oldest nuclear power programmes, having built Asia's first research reactor in 1954. But electricity generated from nuclear remains a small part of the energy basket. The country has 22 reactors providing up 2.1 per cent of the country's overall capacity, compared with 17.7 per cent from renewable sources and 58.7 per cent from coal. Perry said India and US are leaders in the non-proliferation while "China and Russia don't care about non-proliferation." "India and US should be very close partners. Our historic structures of democracy, following the rule of law, our constitutional freedoms, all of those would be a signal that these are countries that share a lot of same values," he said. A batch of solar power projects with a total capacity of 7,670 megawatts (MW) is set to be put out to tender in the next two months where the benchmark tariff will vary according to location. Also, there will be no viability gap funding for bidders, like earlier auctions, to quote lower than the market rate. For a 3,000 MW project cluster (250MWx12), the maximum tariff payable is set at Rs 2.93 a unit for 25 years. Bidders will have to quote below the benchmark rate. Location of the projects and sale of power will be managed by Solar Energy Corporation of India (SECI), the nodal ... As Chamundeshwari in Mysore is headed for a high voltage political battle with ruling Congress deciding to field Chief Minister Siddaramaiah, a traditional stronghold of JD (S), all eyes are on the next move by BJP. Chamundeshwari is not a new constituency for Siddaramaiah from where he has won elections five times since 1983 before shifting base to neighbouring Varuna in 2008. However, this time around, its going to be a do or die battle from him, especially after his request for contesting from a second seat was turned down by the party high command which did not want to ... The Syrian army began preparatory shelling on Tuesday for an assault on the last area outside its control near Damascus, a commander in the pro-government alliance said. Recovering the Yarmouk camp and neighbouring areas south of the city would give Assad complete control over Syrias capital. Yarmouk, Syrias biggest camp for Palestinian refugees, has been under the control of Islamic State fighters for years. Although most residents have fled, the United Nations says several thousand remain. Assad has benefited from Russian air power since 2015 to regain large ... Prime Minister Theresa May on Tuesday personally apologised to Caribbean leaders after her government threatened to deport people who emigrated to Britain in the 1950s and 1960s. At a meeting in Downing Street, May told representatives of the 12 Caribbean members of the Commonwealth that she took the treatment of the so-called Windrush generation "very seriously". "I want to apologise to you today. Because we are genuinely sorry for any anxiety that has been caused," she told the hastily-convened gathering. She added: "I want to dispel any impression that my government is in some sense clamping down on Commonwealth citizens, particularly those from the Caribbean." The government has faced outrage for its treatment of people who came to Britain between 1948, when the ship Windrush brought over the first group of West Indian immigrants, and the early 1970s. They and their parents were invited to help rebuild Britain after World War II and with many of them legally British -- they were born while their home countries were still colonies -- they were given indefinite leave to remain. But those who failed to get their papers in order are now being treated as illegal, which limits their access to work and healthcare and puts them at risk of deportation if they cannot provide evidence of their life in Britain. The row, which one MP called a "national shame", has been hugely embarrassing for the government as it coincides with this week's meeting of the 53 Commonwealth heads of government in London. Timothy Harris, prime minister of Saint Kitts and Nevis, expressed hope that Britain would "do the right thing and make good any injustice," including through compensation. Jamaican Prime Minister Andrew Holness, who earlier had a bilateral meeting with May, said he wanted a "speedy" response. The now elderly people involved "have significantly contributed to the building and enrichment of the country", he said. "Now these persons are not able to claim their place as citizens." Britain has written to each of the Caribbean governments setting out how it intends to rectify the situation, notably by helping anyone affected to find the necessary paperwork to regularise their immigration status. It has promised to waive the usual fee for residency cards, and "reimburse reasonable legal costs" incurred so far. Holness said to May in their talks: "Prime minister, we welcome your response and we look forward to a speedy implementation of your proposed solution. "It will lead to security, certainly for those who have been affected... It is time for the inclusive prosperity for which we stand as Commonwealth people." Antigua and Barbuda Prime Minister Gaston Browne earlier said an apology from May "would be welcome" but he was "pleased" the government had stepped in. "Many of these individuals do not have any connection with the country of their birth, would have lived in the UK their entire lives and worked very hard towards the advancement of the UK," he said. The issue has come to light following a clampdown on illegal immigration in recent years, with requirements for people to have documentation to work, rent a property or access benefits including healthcare. But it has sparked concern about London's ability to deal with millions of European citizens currently living in Britain who want to stay after Britain leaves the European Union next year. Ministers have agreed they will be given indefinite leave to remain, but they must apply for a new status. Guy Verhofstadt, the European Parliament's Brexit coordinator, was quoted by The Independent as saying: "This will be deeply worrying for millions of EU citizens in the UK who will now fear similar treatment after Brexit." A spokesman for May's office said: "Work has been going on for some time now in creating a system to handle those claims. "We're confident that we will be able to do it in a smooth and efficient way. investigators on Tuesday entered a Syrian town hit by an alleged chemical attack, after days of delay and warnings by Western powers that crucial evidence had likely been removed. The suspected gas attack on April 7 on Douma, near Damascus, reportedly left more than 40 people dead and was blamed by Western powers on the regime of Syrian President Bashar al-Assad. In response, the United States, France and Britain conducted unprecedented missile strikes on Syrian military installations, but Paris admitted on Tuesday they were a matter of "honour" that had solved nothing. "Experts from the chemical weapons committee enter the town of Douma," state news agency SANA wrote, referring to the Organisation for the Prohibition of Chemical Weapons (OPCW). The inspectors arrived in Damascus on the day of the Western strikes but had not been allowed to enter Douma. France and the United States appeared to question the purpose of such a mission, warning that any incriminating evidence had likely been removed by now. "It is highly likely that evidence and essential elements disappear from the site, which is completely controlled by the Russian and Syrian armies," the French foreign ministry said. The US ambassador to the OPCW, Ken Ward, had claimed Monday that the Russians had already visited the site and "may have tampered with it". In an impassioned defence to the European Parliament on Tuesday, France's President Emmanuel Macron admitted that Saturday's strikes had been a more political than a military decision. "Three countries have intervened, and let me be quite frank, quite honest -- this is for the honour of the community," he said in the French city of Strasbourg. "These strikes don't necessarily resolve anything but I think they were important," Macron added. The French leader was also set to strip Syrian President Bashar al-Assad of a prestigious award he was granted by former president Jacques Chirac in 2001. "The Elysee confirms that a disciplinary procedure for withdrawing the Legion d'Honneur (Legion of Honour) is under way," Macron's office said. The war of words continued to spiral between the Russian-backed Syria regime and the West but a military escalation looked to have been averted despite both sides trading threats after the strikes. Yet, a report on state news agency SANA that Syrian air defences had shot down missiles over Homs province overnight raised fears that further action had indeed been taken. It branded the incident an "aggression" but did not name a specific country. Big explosions were heard overnight near Shayrat air base, southeast of Homs city, and near Damascus where two other air bases are located, the Syrian Observatory for Human Rights reported. Later Tuesday, however, SANA retracted the report, stressing there had been "no external attack" on Syria. "Last night, a false alarm that Syrian air space had been penetrated triggered the blowing of air defence sirens and the firing of several missiles," a military source told the agency. Both the US and Israel appeared to deny involvement in the overnight incident, which would have been the third time that Homs province was bombed in just over a week. After Saturday's strikes, which destroyed mostly empty buildings, the trio of Western powers trying to reassert influence on the seven-year-old war have appeared to favour diplomatic action. A series of meetings were scheduled in a bid to relaunch talks aimed at ending a war that has left more than 350,000 people dead and displaced more than half of the Syrian population. Analysts have said however that it would take more for the West to mount a meaningful challenge to Russia's weight as a broker. "For a new diplomatic initiative to work, the balance on the ground must be changed... otherwise the regime backed by Russia and Iran will still have the upper hand and no political transition is possible," said Nabeel Khoury. "As it is, even with this latest bombing, the West does not have a seat at the table," said the former US diplomat, currently a fellow at the Atlantic Council think-tank. Elon Musk's Boring Company has raised $112.5 million in equity, the firm said in a regulatory filing on Monday, as it seeks to build underground tunnels for its hyperloop transportation project. Musk, who also leads electric vehicle maker Tesla Inc and rocket company SpaceX, is seeking to revolutionize transportation by sending passengers packed into pods through an intercity system of giant, underground vacuum tubes known as the hyperloop. The funding comes about five months after Musk said the Boring Company would compete to fund, build and operate a "loop" to ... In a grand hotel ballroom on Tuesday, Huawei executives laid out a soaring vision for the future. The Chinese electronics giant, already the worlds biggest supplier of the equipment that powers the wireless age, now wants to provide the digital backbone for artificial intelligence, the internet of things and other transformative technologies. But that future is increasingly looking as if it will not include the United States. Last week, the company laid off five American employees, including William B. Plummer, the executive who was the face of its Sisyphean efforts to ... The New York Times and The New Yorker won the for public service Monday for explosive reporting that brought down Harvey Weinstein and spawned a cultural watershed on the issue of sexual harassment. The prestigious prize was awarded to the Times team led by Jodi Kantor and Megan Twohey and New Yorker contributor Ronan Farrow, for reports that disgraced the Hollywood mogul and sparked an avalanche of accusations against other powerful men. Since the Times and New Yorker articles last October, more than 100 women have publicly accused the producer of misconduct ranging from sexual harassment to rape, sparking the #MeToo movement that has seen a string of influential men lose their jobs and reputation. Weinstein's marriage has ended, he has been under police investigation in London, Los Angeles and New York, hit by a litany of civil lawsuits and his former production company has been forced to file for bankruptcy. Farrow, 30, is the son of actress Mia Farrow and film director Woody Allen, and something of a prodigy who has previously fronted his own television show, worked in Afghanistan and Pakistan for late US diplomat Richard Holbrooke, and formerly advised then Hillary Clinton on global youth issues when she was secretary of state. The former Rhodes scholar, who graduated from Yale Law School at just 21, has sided with his sister Dylan's claims that Allen molested her when she was seven. Allen has repeatedly denied the allegations. "So so so proud," tweeted Mia Farrow minutes after her son's award was announced. Ronan Farrow paid tribute to his co-winners and The New Yorker. "This moment gets called a reckoning, but we just started telling the truth about old abuses of power. Thanks to all who keep doing so," he wrote on Twitter to his nearly half a million followers. The 102th edition of the Pulitzer Prizes were announced at Columbia University in New York by administrator Dana Canedy at a time when the US news media still under assault from the White House for peddling "fake news." Canedy praised the winners but also counselled the media to do more to improve trust with a sceptical public and to work harder to include more varied gender and racial perspectives. The Washington Post won the Pulitzer in the investigative category for relentless reporting seen as having influenced the outcome of the 2017 Senate race in Alabama, revealing Republican candidate Roy Moore's alleged past sexual harassment of teenage girls. Moore's opponent Doug Jones won the race last December, becoming Alabama's first Democratic senator in 25 years and dealing a humiliating blow to President Donald Trump's Republican administration. The New York Times and The Washington Post shared the national reporting prize for furthering understanding of Russian interference in the 2016 election, and the connections between Russian actors and the Trump campaign, his transition team and administration, Canedy said. "Winners uphold the highest purpose of a free and independent press even in the most trying of times," she announced. "These courageous, inspiring and committed journalists and their news organisations are undaunted in their mission in support of the fourth estate. "It is a mandate that has been under a seemingly relentless assault of late but that remains central to a healthy democracy," she added. Reuters won the 2018 prize in reporting for coverage of Philippine President Rodrigo Duterte's war on drugs. Reuters also won in the feature photography category for its coverage of the Rohingya crisis. The prize for breaking news photography went to Ryan Kelly of The Daily Progress for a chilling image that captured the moment of impact by a car at a racially-charged protest in Charlottesville, Virginia that left one woman dead last August. The Pulitzer for fiction went to Andrew Sean Greer for "Less" about growing older and love. The history prize was awarded to "The Gulf: The Making of An American Sea," and the prize in drama for "Cost of Living" by playwright Martyna Majok. WPP entered uncharted territory on Monday after the exit of founder Martin Sorrell left the world's biggest advertising company rudderless at a time of intense industry change. Shares in WPP fell 6 percent after Sorrell, the driving force behind 33 years of dealmaking and relentless expansion, stepped down on Saturday after the board investigated an allegation of misconduct. David Herro of Harris Associates, WPP's biggest shareholder according to Thomson Reuters data, said Sorrell would be missed. "Sir Martin is a visionary, a legend in advertising and a skilful ... Uttar Pradesh Chief Minister Yogi Adityanath will meet Israeli Ambassador to India Daniel Carmon here on Tuesday. The Chief Minister will meet the Israeli envoy at his office where the two will hold a discussion on horticulture. Later in the day, the Chief Minister will hold a cabinet meeting. Israeli ambassador and the Chief Minister are also likely to discuss possibilities around defence corridor, which is being planned in Bundelkhand region. (This story has not been edited by Business Standard staff and is auto-generated from a syndicated feed.) YSR Congress party leaders on Tuesday submitted a letter to President Ram Nath Kovind requesting his intervention to prevail upon the Central Government to grant Special Category Status (SCS) to Andhra Pradesh. The letter was written by party chief Jagan Mohan Reddy. Yesterday, Andhra Pradesh Cabinet finalised the strategy for the one-day hunger strike-led by Chief Minister N. Chandrababu Naidu over the same issue. Naidu will sit on hunger strike on April 20 in Vijayawada against the Centre over the demand of SCS. The Centre and Andhra Pradesh government have been at the loggerheads over the SCS issue ever since the announcement of 2018-19 Union Budget. The TDP alleged that the BJP-led Centre ignored the demand of SCS to Andhra Pradesh in the budget. The matter intensified after ruling Andhra party-Telugu Desam Party (TDP) severed its alliance with the BJP in the state. (This story has not been edited by Business Standard staff and is auto-generated from a syndicated feed.) The Andhra Pradesh Cabinet sub-committee held a meeting on Tuesday to monitor and make arrangements for the hunger strike of Chief Minister N. Chandrababu Naidu which is to be held on his birthday, April 20. The hunger strike will be organised in Indira Gandhi Stadium from 7: 00 am to 7:00 pm. It will be called 'Dharma Porata Deeksha' or 'Fight for Justice'. On behalf of the five crore people of Andhra, Chief Minister Naidu will call out the broken assurances by the Central Government regarding the Special Category Status (SCS) promised during state bifurcation. "It is the first time in India that a Chief Minister of a state will go on a hunger strike on his birthday. He has decided that instead of festivities or celebrations, he would want to dedicate the day to fight for the rights of Andhra Pradesh," the sub-committee said. The sub-committee comprises of five ministers Kala Venkata Rao, Devineni Umamaheswara Rao, Kollu Ravindra, N Anand Babu and Nara Lokesh. Collectors and police officers of Krishna and Guntur districts, along with other higher officials took part in the cabinet sub-committee meeting earlier today. (This story has not been edited by Business Standard staff and is auto-generated from a syndicated feed.) The much-awaited film of Salman Khan, 'Bharat', has found its leading in the 'Desi girl' of Bollywood, Priyanka Chopra. 'Bharat' will be Priyanka's next big Bollywood outing after 2016's 'Jai Gangajal'. Moreover, Salman and Priyanka will be teaming up after 10 years, 2008's 'God Tussi Great Ho', making the association all the more special. Director Ali Abbas Zafar and producer Atul Agnihotri traveled to New York to meet Priyanka and gave her the narration of the film. Priyanka loved the storyline and was convinced immediately to do the film. The shooting of the film has already begun and it will next be moving to London, Spain, Poland, Portugal, and Malta. The film will feature Khan sporting five different looks spanning 60 years, wherein a crucial part will showcase the actor in his late 20s, looking much leaner and younger. Salman's one look - the one from his 'Karan Arjun' era - is stirring a lot of buzz on the Internet. The flick is an official adaptation of 2014 Korean film, 'Ode to My Father', and is slated to release on Eid in 2019. (This story has not been edited by Business Standard staff and is auto-generated from a syndicated feed.) Congress president Rahul Gandhi on Tuesday called the recent cash crunch as a result of Prime Minister Narendra Modi' Government's weak banking system. "Modi ji has destroyed the banking system of the country, that's what I have to say about it. During demonetisation also we were forced to stand in queues as he (Prime Minister Modi) snatched 500-1000 rupee notes from our pockets and put in businessman Nirav Modi's pocket," the Congress supremo told ANI. He also took a dig at BJP-led Central government's slogan 'Ache Din' and questioned as to when 'these goods days' are going to come. The people in various states of the country, including Delhi, Karnataka, Andhra Pradesh, Rajasthan, Uttar Pradesh, Madhya Pradesh, Telangana, Maharashtra, Bihar are facing cash crunch and are not able to withdraw cash from some ATMs. Earlier, Union Finance Minister Arun Jaitley called the cash crunch as a 'temporary shortage' and assured that the situation will be tackled quickly. (This story has not been edited by Business Standard staff and is auto-generated from a syndicated feed.) China, it seems, is in the throes of an unprecedented economic and financial crisis. According to an article published in the Jing Rong Jie (Financial World) website, and reported by the chinascope.org website, Beijing spends a huge 15 to 17 percent of its gross domestic product (GDP) each year in meeting its interest payments. The Jing Rong Jie (Financial World) website quotes Mao Zhenhua, the Founder and Chairman of the China Chengxin Credit Management Company, as saying at the recently held Tenth Chinese Mulan (Women) Entrepreneur Annual Conference, that given this enormous outgo towards reducing interest-related debt, Beijing has made prevention of financial risk one of its top priorities. Mao further states that while China has emerged as one of the world's economic powers post the global financial crisis of 2008, it also has acquired the notoriety of printing the most money in the According to The Jing Rong Jie (Financial World) and the chinascope.org websites, a majority of businesses in China are wrestling with a huge amount of debt. The Jing Rong Jie mentions that surplus production in China has created a business scenario where supply is greater than demand, and where stock-related pricing and real estate is too high. The report concludes by warning that China has created an economic bubble for itself that could lead to a financial crisis. It is pertinent to note that given the above scenario, the Chinese leadership has over the past year initiated steps to ensure tighter control of the economy, which may last for some years. (This story has not been edited by Business Standard staff and is auto-generated from a syndicated feed.) The Ministry of External Affairs (MEA) on Tuesday assured that the Indian Embassy in Kathmandu is in touch with the Government of Nepal and that the security authorities in Nepal are investigating the minor explosion which took place near camp office of the Indian embassy in Kathmandu's Biratnagar on Monday night. "No one has been injured in the incident. Our Embassy in Kathmandu is in touch with Government of Nepal. The security authorities in Nepal are investigating the matter," MEA's official spokesperson Raveesh Kumar, said, in a statement. The Camp Office was targeted in the blast that occurred on Monday night at around 8:15 PM, District Police Office, Morang's Chief SP Arun Kumar BC informed. "The wall of the Embassies Contact Office in Biratnagar has been damaged. The investigation is underway," Kumar informed ANI over phone. "The blast has damaged the glasses of the house around the Office. We are accessing the damage and the reason behind the blast as of now we are not able to get a concrete reason and proofs to trace who is behind the blast. But we suspect the splinter group Biplab Maoist to have hand behind the blast," he added. (This story has not been edited by Business Standard staff and is auto-generated from a syndicated feed.) Photographic evidence has emerged that Pakistan based terror-outfits Jaish-e-Mohammad (JeM) and Jamaat-ud-Dawah (JuD) are backing Sikh militants with an aim to malign India, as LeT's chief Hafiz Saeed is seen with Sikh militant leader Gopal Singh Chawla in Lahore. Gopal Singh Chawla, under the instructions from the Pakistani authorities, recently stopped Indian officials from entering Gurudwara Panja Sahib on April 14 (Baisakhi day). Earlier on April 12, the officials were also stopped from meeting the Sikh pilgrims when they reached Wagah - the first station when a train crosses over to Pakistan. The embassy officials went to meet the Indian pilgrims as a standard practice to help them out with consular duties and emergencies. A group of around 1,800 Indian pilgrims reached Pakistan to visit the shrines on the occasion of Baisakhi, which marks the 320th birth anniversary of the Khalsa. The visit of pilgrims takes place under a bilateral agreement on facilitating religious visits. To run Pakistan's anti-India propaganda, the Sikh militants also placed posters of Sikh Referendum 2020 in Parikarma of Gurudwara Panja Sahib, the holy Sikh shrine. Indian said High Commissioner Ajay Bisaria, who was to greet the pilgrims on Baisakhi, was also "compelled" to return for unspecified security reasons while on his way to Gurdwara Panja Sahib. The Ministry of External Affairs (MEA), in a statement described it, as an "inexplicable diplomatic discourtesy" in violation of the Vienna Convention. This also violated the 1992 bilateral protocol on the treatment of each other's diplomats, which the two countries "reaffirmed" recently, said the statement. The terror outfits in Pakistan work under the patronage of country's intelligence agencies, including the Inter-Services Intelligence (ISI) to malign India's image. They use these outfits to wage a proxy war against India and create troubles within the country. (This story has not been edited by Business Standard staff and is auto-generated from a syndicated feed.) India on Monday called for an impartial and objective investigation by the Organisation for the Prohibition of Chemical Weapons (OPCW) into the alleged use of chemical weapons in Syria's Douma two weeks ago. The above statement was made by Ambassador and Permanent Representative of India to OPCW Venu Rajamony at the 58th meeting of the executive council of the OPCW, that was convened to discuss allegations regarding the use of chemical weapons in Douma. Ambassador Rajamony pointed out that the use of chemical weapons anywhere, at any time, by anybody, under any circumstances, cannot be justified and the perpetrators of such abhorrent acts must be held accountable. He said any use of chemical weapons is in complete disregard of humanity and is reprehensible and contrary to the provisions of the Chemical Weapons Convention as well as accepted international norms. Ambassador Rajamony commended the OPCW for its prompt deployment of the fact-finding mission to Douma and expressed appreciation to the Director-General and OPCW staff for their commitment to the aims and work of the organisation often in challenging circumstances. The Ministry of External Affairs (MEA) on Saturday said India was closely following the situation in Syria. "We have taken note of the recent strikes in Syria. India is closely following the situation. The alleged use of chemical weapons, if true, is deplorable. We call for an impartial and objective investigation by the Organisation for the Prohibition of Chemical Weapons to establish the facts. In the meantime, we urge all Parties to show restraint and to avoid any further escalation in the situation. The matter should be resolved through dialogue, negotiations, and on the basis of the principles of the United Nations' Charter and in accordance with the international law. We hope that the long drawn suffering of the people of Syria would come to an end soon," the MEA statement read. On April 7, an unconfirmed chemical strike was carried out in Syria's Douma, a rebel-controlled town in Eastern Ghouta, claiming the lives of over 70 civilians, including children. The White Helmets, a voluntary aide group, pinned the blame for the assault, which claimed more than 70 civilian lives, on the Syrian President Bashar al-Assad's regime. However, the regime has rejected the claim, calling it a "fabrication" by Jaish al-Islam, the Islamist group controlling the area. Russia, which has backed Assad throughout the seven-year-long civil war, rejected the claim too. United States President Donald Trump was left infuriated by the attacks, who had pledged serious action against the parties responsible. On April 14, airstrikes were launched by a coalition including the US, the United Kingdom and France, on targets in Syria's capital Damascus. (This story has not been edited by Business Standard staff and is auto-generated from a syndicated feed.) India and Sweden agreed to bolster their collaboration in the field of defence and space and science respectively. According to a statement by the Ministry of External Affairs (MEA), the two countries will explore the finalisation of a bilateral agreement on exchange and mutual protection of classified information for cooperation in defence. Also, the two sides will enhance Indo-Swedish dialogue on defence cooperation, proceed with India-Sweden defence seminars in India and Sweden in 2018-19 and explore, together with the ISBLRT, opportunities for investment in Defence Production Corridors in India. India and Sweden will encourage industry partners to develop supply chains for small and medium-sized enterprises (SMEs) with major Defence and Aerospace Original Equipment Manufacturers (OEMs). In space and science, the two countries will acknowledge the importance of bilateral cooperation on space research, technology, innovation and applications. Both sides will encourage the space agencies and other space entities to enhance space cooperation under the Memorandum of Understanding (MoU), particularly in Earth observation, planetary exploration and satellite ground station activities, through inter-alia an Indo-Swedish Space Seminar and a visit by an Indian delegation to Swedish space establishments. Both the countries will also explore possible collaboration between the European Spallation Source (ESS), hosted by Sweden, and Indian partners. (This story has not been edited by Business Standard staff and is auto-generated from a syndicated feed.) US Senator John McCain has undergone surgery to "treat an intestinal infection related to diverticulitis," his office said on Monday. McCain, 81, is in a "stable condition." "On Sunday, Senator McCain was admitted to Mayo Clinic in Phoenix, Arizona, and underwent surgery to treat an intestinal infection related to diverticulitis," CNN reported, his office as saying, in a statement. "Over the last few months, Senator McCain has been participating in physical therapy at his home in Cornville, Arizona, as he recovers from the side effects of cancer treatment. He has remained engaged on his work as Chairman of the Senate Armed Services Committee, and has enjoyed frequent visits from his family, friends, staff and Senate colleagues. Senator McCain and his family are grateful to the senator's excellent care team, and appreciate the support and prayers they continue to receive from people all over the country," the statement added. The Arizona Republican's daughter and co-host of the American talk show "The View" Meghan McCain took to Twitter and underscored her father's "intense grit and determination." "My father @SenJohnMcCain is in stable condition - he continues to inspire me everyday with his intense grit and determination. Thank you to the doctors at Mayo Clinic in Phoenix and to everyone who is praying for him," she tweeted. My father @SenJohnMcCain is in stable condition - he continues to inspire me everyday with his intense grit and determination. Thank you to the doctors at Mayo Clinic in Phoenix and to everyone who is praying for him. Meghan McCain (@MeghanMcCain) April 16, 2018 McCain is also combating brain cancer for which he has been undergoing treatment in his home state since late last year. (This story has not been edited by Business Standard staff and is auto-generated from a syndicated feed.) India on Tuesday submitted a fresh set of pleadings in the International Court of Justice (ICJ) in regard to the case of retired naval officer Kulbhushan Jadhav, who was sentenced to death by a Pakistan Military Court in April last year on charges of espionage and terrorism. The pleadings were filed in response to Pakistan's submissions to the court. Pakistan has been given time until July 17, 2018, by the court to file its response (rejoinder). It may be recalled that India first approached the court on May 8, last year, for egregious violations of the provisions of the Vienna Convention on Consular Relations, 1963 by Pakistan in the matter. The court on May 18, 2017, indicated provisional measures as requested by India and passed an order obligating Pakistan not to carry out the sentence that was awarded to Jadhav through a farcical trial by Pakistan. As per the court order, India had filed written pleadings (Memorial) in the case on September 13, 2017, and Pakistan filed its Counter-Memorial on December 13, 2017. India remains committed to making all possible efforts to secure and protect the rights of Jadhav. Jadhav was arrested in Balochistan, Pakistan, over charges of alleged involvement in espionage and subversive activities for India's intelligence agency - the Research and Analysis Wing (RAW). India, however, maintains that Jadhav was a former naval officer and kidnapped from Iran where he had business interests after retiring from the Indian Navy. On April 10, 2017, Jadhav was sentenced to death by a Field General Court Martial (FGCM) in Pakistan. On May 18, 2017, the International Court of Justice (ICJ) stayed the hanging, after India approached it against the death sentence. (This story has not been edited by Business Standard staff and is auto-generated from a syndicated feed.) Police on Monday arrested a man for impersonating as an All India Institute of Medical Sciences (AIIMS) doctor. The man has been identified as Adnan Khurram. The police said that the accused is originally a resident of Village Baradi Baireya, East Champaran, Bihar, and was presently residing at Batla House, Jamia Nagar. According to police, Khurram made a booklet having his name written on it which can be only possessed by the junior resident doctors of the AIIMS. He impersonated as an AIIMS doctor to facilitate treatment of his family members, police said. A case under section 419 (impersonation) and section 468 (forgery for purpose of cheating) of the Indian Penal Code (IPC) has been registered against him. (This story has not been edited by Business Standard staff and is auto-generated from a syndicated feed.) The Muttahida Qaumi Movement (MQM) South African delegation on Tuesday called on the party leaders of South African Communist Party (SACP) at Congress of South African Trade Union (COSATU) House here to discuss the persecution of Mohajirs by the armed forces in Pakistan. The MQM South Africa delegation headed by Mohammed Saleem, member of Central Executive Committee MQM, Rashid Minai, Organiser MQM South Africa, and members of South Africa Central Organising Committee, Nasir Mohammad, Mohammad Khalid, Asad Sheikh and Nadir Mohammad met with, First Deputy General Secretary, Solly Mapaila, Second Deputy General Secretary Chris Matlhako and Ex-officio full-time Central Committee member, Reneva Fourie of SACP. During the meeting, views were shared regarding the persecution, which had taken place with South African natives during the Apartheid era, and how under the leadership of Nelson Mandela, freedom was obtained. Comrade Solly felt pained on hearing the news of the Mohajirs facing ongoing victimisation by the state forces of Pakistan, including the Inter-Services Intelligence Agency (ISI), para-military rangers and police forces. The MQM South Africa delegates explained the ongoing military-led crackdown which was launched in 2013 against the MQM and its workers, saying how the leader of MQM Altaf Hussain has been the subject of a media blackout, whereby his photos and voice cannot be used across any media throughout Pakistan and labeling Hussain as a traitor and terrorist. Also, materials regarding the extra-judicial execution of members of MQM, including the party's deputy convener, Professor Dr. Hassan Zafar Arif and details of enforced disappearances of MQM members were also handed over. Comrade Solly was deeply concerned about the victimisation being faced in present times. He added that it reminded him of the Apartheid era, and being labelled a terrorist is nothing new to their movement as Nelson Mandela was also labelled a terrorist throughout his freedom movement. He also referred to Hussain as "My Leader", and promised his unwavering solidarity and comradeship to Hussain and his millions of followers. Comrade Solly also informed that the SACP will collectively seek clarification from the representatives of Pakistan based in Johannesburg in regards to the injustices being faced by Hussain, his followers and why till date an inquest has not been launched into the brutal murder of Professor Dr. Arif and 22,000 workers and sympathisers of MQM, who have been brutally murdered since 1992. Comrade Solly and his members had sent a message to Mr. Hussain and his million of followers, "We have fought oppressors under the leadership of our liberation movement headed by the Africa National Congress (ANC) and finally secured democratic victory under our beloved leader and our father President Nelson Mandela. We lost thousands of lives, and eventually gained our freedom. Issues such as what the Mohajirs are facing in Pakistan are similar to what we have been through. We assure you of our commitment and will assist in gaining your freedom ". He and his team assured MQM South Africa of future co-operation, and to ensure that we work together collectively for a common cause. (This story has not been edited by Business Standard staff and is auto-generated from a syndicated feed.) Former Pakistan prime minister Nawaz Sharif will be leaving for London on Wednesday, to visit his unwell wife Kulsoom Nawaz, the Express Tribune quoted a national news channel, Express News as reporting. Sharif will be accompanied by his daughter Maryam Nawaz on the visit, which was necessitated after his wife was again taken to the hospital owing to her deteriorating condition, their family spokesperson told the daily. A cancer patient, Kulsoom Nawaz has been in the United Kingdom for medical treatment for the past one year. In September last year, she was elected to the National Assembly of Pakistan for the first time from NA-120 (Lahore-III) constituency. The seat had fell vacant after her husband was disqualified from the post of prime minister by the top court of Pakistan in the Panama Papers case. In February, the Supreme Court also disqualified Sharif from the post of ruling Pakistan Muslim League-Nawaz (PML-N) party chief, and on April 13, it further put a lifetime ban on the former prime minister from contesting elections. (This story has not been edited by Business Standard staff and is auto-generated from a syndicated feed.) Former Under Secretary of the Ministry of Home Affairs, R.V.S Mani, on Tuesday, said that the Investigation Agency (NIA) painted the 'Hindu Terror' angle in every case. "The original case by the CBI, which had gathered a lot of evidence and was progressing well, the then political leadership of the home ministry transferred the case from one central agency to another, handing the case to NIA. I don't know what they did with the original evidence, but since then the saffron terror narrative was enforced," Mani said "Initially they did only saffron terror cases, I think it was more of a painting agency than an investigation agency, they were colouring everything (every case) in saffron," he added. Asserting that the alleged religious politics that the Home Ministry played with several acts of terror in the country was after his transfer from the ministry, he said, "The seeds of Hindu terrorism were sowed in the Home Ministry only after my transfer. I have left the government and have no selfish motives. I took voluntarily retirement 22 months before the due date. I am standing with truth. Chasing after posts is a politicians' job, not mine." Stating that the cases built in the name of 'Hindu Terror' are breaking down everywhere as they have no substantial claim, he said, "The cases are falling flat as only truth has evidence and witnesses, you can forge a document and everything, but, on cross-examination the cases fall flat and that is how it has happened, which was very much expected." A special NIA court at Nampally had yesterday acquitted all five accused in the case, including Nabha Kumar Sarkar alias Swami Aseemanand, due to lack of evidence provided by the agency against the accused. The verdict in the case comes nearly after 11 years. The blast that took place on May 18, 2007, at the Mecca Masjid in Hyderabad during Friday prayers killed eight people and left 58 injured. It was alleged to be the result of a conspiracy hatched by Hindu fringe groups. (This story has not been edited by Business Standard staff and is auto-generated from a syndicated feed.) Best known for playing Judge Harry Stone in television comedy series 'Night Court', Harry Anderson has passed away at the age of 65. Anderson was found dead at his home in Asheville, North Carolina, on Monday. "This morning at 6:41 a.m. the Asheville Police Department responded to the home of actor Harry Anderson where he was found deceased," the Asheville Police Department told the Hollywood Reporter. "No foul play is suspected." Anderson, who played a goofy but big-hearted judge in the 1980s sitcom, earned three Emmys for his role. He also appeared on 'Cheers', starred as humorist Dave Barry on the 1990s show 'Dave's World' and played Richie Tozier in the miniseries adaptation of Stephen King's 'It'. 'Stunned' by his death, celebs took to social media to pay their tribute. "I interviewed Harry Anderson when I was 15 years old and he was so kind, and frank and hilarious. The interview is in my book Sick In The Head. He was a one of a kind talent who made millions so happy," tweeted Judd Apatow. "Stunned by the passing of Harry Anderson, one of my comedy and magic inspirations growing up. We became friendly over the years - he worked at the @MagicCastle_AMA and recently sold me a handful of great magic memorabilia. My sincere condolences to his family. #RIP," wrote Neil Patrick Harris. (This story has not been edited by Business Standard staff and is auto-generated from a syndicated feed.) A new report released by the Human Rights Commission of Pakistan (HRCP) has again severely criticized the country's human rights record over the past year. The HRCP report card, according to the Pakistan Today web site, has maintained that people continue to disappear in Pakistan, sometimes because they criticize the country's powerful military or for advocating better relations with India. The HRCP also indicates that the blasphemy law continues to be misused, especially against dissidents. The 296-page report says deaths linked to terrorism declined in 2017, but adds that attacks against Pakistan's minorities were rising. "Freedom of expression and freedom of association is under attack, except for those who carry the religious banner," HRCP spokesman I A Rehman, was quoted, as saying at the release of the report on Monday (April 16). It was critical of religious conservative organisations resisting laws aimed at curbing violence against women, laws giving greater rights to women and removing legal restrictions on social exchanges between sexes. Religious minorities in Pakistan continue to be a target of extremists, it said. Last year, a government-mandated commission on enforced disappearances received 868 new cases, more than in two previous years, the report said. The commission located 555 of the disappeared but the remaining 313 are still missing. "Journalists and bloggers continue to sustain threats, attacks and abductions and blasphemy law serves to coerce people into silence," the report said. (This story has not been edited by Business Standard staff and is auto-generated from a syndicated feed.) Amid the banking scams unearthed in the recent past, the Parliamentary Committee has reportedly summoned Reserve Bank of India (RBI) Governor Urjit Patel. As per sources, the RBI Governor has been summoned to appear before the Committee on May 17 in the wake of recent banking scams and the issue of non-performing assets (NPAs). Sources further claimed that the decision to summon the Reserve Bank Governor was taken during a Committee meeting held earlier in the day, attended by former Prime Minister Manmohan Singh and senior Congress leader M Veerappa Moily, among others. A number of banking scams have surfaced in the recent past involving state and private lenders such as Punjab National Bank (PNB), ICICI Bank, and so on. Earlier in March, Urjit Patel had stated that it was not possible for any banking regulator to catch or prevent all frauds. Delivering the inaugural lecture at National Law University, Gandhinagar, Patel said, "There has been a tendency in the pronouncements post revelation of the fraud that RBI supervision team should have caught it. While that can always be said ex post with any fraud, it is simply infeasible for a banking regulator to be in every nook and corner of banking activity to rule out frauds by 'being there'. If a regulator could achieve such perfect outcomes, it would effectively imply that the regulator can do anything that banks can do, and by implication, can simply perform the entire banking intermediation activity itself". Furthermore, Patel noted that the RBI had issued precise instructions via three circulars in 2016 to all banks to eliminate such hazards, but PNB failed to follow instructions. He also said that it is essential for banking regulatory powers to be ownership neutral. In case of private banks, Patel said the real deterrence arises from the market and regulatory discipline. On a related note, the Central Bureau of Investigation (CBI) earlier this month had questioned former RBI Deputy Governor Harun Rashid Khan in connection with the Rs. 13,500 crore PNB scam involving billionaire businessman Nirav Modi. The CBI also questioned four other RBI officials in connection with the said scam, the noted diamantaire and his maternal uncle and partner Mehul Choksi are prime accused. (This story has not been edited by Business Standard staff and is auto-generated from a syndicated feed.) Prime Minister Narendra Modi on Tuesday met with the Prime Ministers of Denmark, Finland, Iceland and Norway respectively, ahead of the Indo-Nordic summit. The Prime Minister first met with his Danish counterpart Lkke Rasmussen and signed bilateral agreements on animal husbandry, dairying and urban development. Prime Minister Modi then met with his Icelandic counterpart Katrin Jakobsdottir. During the meeting, the Prime Minister called for Icelandic companies to invest in India and further strengthen collaboration in geothermal energy, blue economy, education, tourism and culture. Prime Minister Narendra Modi met with his Finnish counterpart Juha Sipila. The two sides discussed on how to deepen cooperation further in the fields of energy, space and education. He then finally met with his Norwegian counterpart Erna Solberg, wherein both sides discussed ways on further collaboration in trade and investment, shipping and port-development, blue economy, renewable energy, health, Information Technology (IT) and green transport solutions. Later today, the Prime Minister and his Swedish counterpart Stefan Lofven will co-chair the first-ever Indo-Nordic summit. Finally, he will address a community event for the Indian diaspora in Stockholm University before flying to the United Kingdom today. On Monday, Prime Minister Modi arrived in Sweden on a historic visit, in what was the first visit by an Indian Prime Minister after 30 years. The Prime Minister is currently on a five-day visit to Sweden, the United Kingdom and Germany. (This story has not been edited by Business Standard staff and is auto-generated from a syndicated feed.) Prime Minister Narendra Modi undertook a short walk with his Swedish counterpart Stefan Lofven from Sogerska to Rosenbad here on Tuesday ahead of the delegation-level talks. Before the walk, Prime Minister Modi earlier exchanged views on bilateral and regional issues. Prior to this, the Prime Minister kicked off the second and last day of his Sweden visit by meeting with the King of Sweden Carl XVI Gustaf and discussed on ways of strengthening bilateral ties in key sectors. Prime Minister Modi will address a gathering of select business leaders at the Sweden-India business forum later in the day. He and his Swedish counterpart will co-chair the first-ever Indo-Nordic summit, and will also conduct separate bilateral meetings with the Prime Ministers of Denmark, Finland, Iceland and Norway. Finally, he will address a community event for the Indian diaspora living in the Scandinavian country before flying to the United Kingdom today only. On Monday, Prime Minister Modi arrived in Sweden on a historic visit, in what was the first visit by an Indian Prime Minister after 30 years. Lofven received him at the Stockholm airport as a special gesture. Prime Minister Modi was accorded a ceremonial reception and met with the Indian community in the city. (This story has not been edited by Business Standard staff and is auto-generated from a syndicated feed.) The Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) on Tuesday accused the Congress party of defaming Hindu community on the international level. Referring to a telegram sourced from Wikileaks, Patra said that during the UPA regime the Congress party president Rahul Gandhi, in a conversation with then US Ambassador Tim Roemer, had labeled Hindu community as a bigger threat than the Lashkar-e-Taiba. "We have the full telegram sent in 2009 by the then US Ambassador Tim Roemer to the US State Department. One the first page is written 'reaching out to Rahul Gandhi and other young parliamentarians. In the telegram it's written that Rahul ji told US envoy 'there was some support for the LeT in certain elements in India's Muslim community, but the bigger threat may be of the rise of radical homegrown Hindu groups which create tension," BJP spokesperson Sambit Patra said at a press conference. Patra further demanded an apology from Congress leaders including Rahul, Sushil Kumar Shinde and P Chidambaram for using the term 'saffron terror' in Mecca Masjid blast case. Earlier on Monday, Patra targeted the Congress Party for allegedly defaming and disrespecting the Hindu religion and said that the latter was doing this just for the sake of "votes". His statement came after a special Investigation Agency (NIA) court at Nampally in Hyderabad acquitted all the accused, who were allegedly belonged to a right-wing group, in the Mecca Masjid blast case. (This story has not been edited by Business Standard staff and is auto-generated from a syndicated feed.) Punjab Minister Navjot Singh Sidhu's advocate on Tuesday argued in the court that it was not his client's fault behind the death of the victim in a road rage case. "It was not the fault of the accused due to which the victim died," said RS Cheema in the courtroom and narrated the whole scenario. The arguments in the road rage case, which involved Sindu remained inconclusive today and will continue on Wednesday. A two-judge bench of the Supreme Court, headed by Justice Jasti Chelameswar and also comprising Justice Sanjay Kishan Kaul, was hearing the submissions made by the Sidhu's lawyer, RS Cheema on the case. Sidhu's advocate argued that it was not his client fault behind the death of the victim and narrated the whole scenario to both the judges. A lawyer appearing for the Punjab government, Sangram Singh Saron, had submitted to the apex court that the statement given by Sidhu, denying his involvement in the case was false. On April 12, the Punjab government told the Supreme Court that the statement given by Sidhu denying his involvement in the case was false. After the Punjab government sought his conviction in the road rage case, Sidhu on April 13 said he would submit to the majesty of the law. The road rage incident dates back to December 27, 1988, when Sidhu had allegedly punched one 65-year-old Gurnam Singh in Patiala, Punjab, resulting in the latter's death. The Sessions Court Judge of Patiala on September 22, 1999, had acquitted Sidhu and his associate, Rupinder Singh Sandhu, due to lack of evidence in the case. The trial court had acquitted Sidhu, whereas the Punjab and Haryana High Court reversed his acquittal, convicting him under Section 304 Part II, Indian Penal Code (IPC), for culpable homicide not amounting to murder. The victim's family had appealed to the Supreme Court that earlier imprisonment sentence of three years given by the Punjab and Haryana High Court should be enhanced. However, the Punjab government appealed to the apex court to uphold three-year imprisonment. (ANI) According to the prosecution, the road rage case involving Sidhu is 30-year-old case. The alleged incident took place on December 27, 1998, when Sidhu, in a road rage case, allegedly beaten Gurnam Singh on his head, as a result of which Gurnam Singh succumbed to his injuries. (This story has not been edited by Business Standard staff and is auto-generated from a syndicated feed.) Fox News host Sean Hannity has been revealed as one of only three private legal clients who United States President Donald Trump's personal attorney Michael Cohen has been representing. The revelation came as a federal judge rejected a bid by the US President and Cohen to prevent US prosecutors from examining a cache of documents and recordings seized from Trump's long-time confidant, reported the Guardian. The office of Michael Cohen was raided by the Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI) last week. In a statement, Stephen Ryan, a lawyer for Cohen, said that the bureau had "seized the privileged communications" between Cohen and his clients. Furthermore, the documents carrying information related to porn star Stormy Daniels, who alleged that she had an affair with Trump in 2006, were also seized from the office by the FBI. Trump had branded the FBI raids as an "attack on our country." According to the report, Hannity, an ardent supporter of the US President, soon after the revelation, said his legal relationship with Cohen involved "occasional discussions with him for his input and perspective" and that he had assumed those discussions were confidential and covered by client confidentiality. "Michael Cohen has never represented me in any matter. I never retained him, received an invoice, or paid legal fees. I have occasionally had brief discussions with him about legal questions about which I wanted his input and perspective," Hannity posted on Twitter. "I assumed those conversations were confidential, but to be absolutely clear they never involved any matter between me and a third-party," the cable news veteran, wrote, in another tweet. His show "Hannity" reportedly is the most-watched cable news program, averaging 3.2 million viewers in the first quarter of 2018, up from 1.8 million in the early months of 2016. (This story has not been edited by Business Standard staff and is auto-generated from a syndicated feed.) Amid the ongoing Facebook data leak row, a new study has said that over 3000 on Google Play have been improperly collecting data on children. The Independent reported that more than 3,300 Android on Google Play have been improperly collecting data on children. Citing the International Computer Science Institute research (ICSI), it said that more than half of 5,855 Android on Google Play were potentially violating US privacy laws that protect children under 13 from invasive data collection. The ICSI researchers used a new automated system to determine whether the apps complied with the Children's Online Privacy Protection Act (COPPA). "One of the most disturbing findings from the study was that 256 of the apps collected the location data of children without the permission of parents. Other data improperly collected included personal details like names, email addresses and phone numbers," The Independent report said. The researchers said that the study results are representative given that the apps that were examined represent the most popular free ones on Google Play. The researchers could not evaluate apps running on iPhones and iPads as they did not have access to Apple's iOS data. The Independent could not get reaction from Google as its spokesperson was not immediately available for comment. The study comes as more than 20 consumer advocacy groups claimed that YouTube is violating COPPA by deliberately profiting from the data collection of children. Prime Minister Narendra Modi on Tuesday reiterated Sweden's strong commitment towards 'Make in India' initiative and called it an important partner for the country. At a joint press statement here, Prime Minister Modi said, "Sweden has been a strong partner ever since Make in India's inception. Prime Minister Lofven himself joined in along with a very big business delegation in our 'Make In India' programme in Mumbai in 2016 during his visit." Terming the relations between India and Sweden as "win-win partnership" and "perfect match", the Prime Minister said two documents - an Innovation Partnership and Joint Action Plan have been signed to further bolster the bilateral ties between the two countries. Prime Minister Modi said the two countries were focusing on key sectors such as renewable energy, urban transport and waste management, which are related to the quality of life of the Indians. The Prime Minister added that he and his Swedish counterpart would discuss with top Swedish businessmen on trade and investment. On cooperation in the defence sector and cybersecurity, he further said, "Sweden has always been India's partner in the defence sector. There will be new opportunities in the defence sector. We have decided to strengthen relations as far as cyber security is concerned. We have set up a common task force for cybersecurity in the field of defence." Prime Minister Modi underlined that Sweden was assisting and collaborating India in the fields of innovation, investment, manufacturing and start-ups. After the joint statement, Prime Minister Modi and his Swedish counterpart met with leading Swedish businessmen and children of Indian diaspora living in the country. Before the delegation-level talks, Prime Minister Modi undertook a short walk with his Swedish counterpart Stefan Lofven from Sogerska to Rosenbad in Stockholm earlier in the day. He also called on the King of Sweden Carl XVI Gustaf and discussed on ways of strengthening bilateral ties in key sectors. Later today, the Prime Minister and his Swedish counterpart will co-chair the first-ever Indo-Nordic summit, and will also conduct separate bilateral meetings with the Prime Ministers of Denmark, Finland, Iceland and Norway. Finally, he will address a community event for the Indian diaspora living in the Scandinavian country before flying to the United Kingdom today. On Monday, Prime Minister Modi arrived in Sweden on a historic visit, in what was the first visit by an Indian Prime Minister after 30 years. The Prime Minister is currently on a five-day visit to Sweden, the United Kingdom and Germany. (This story has not been edited by Business Standard staff and is auto-generated from a syndicated feed.) Bhushan Kumar of T-Series has taken it upon himself to bring a delight to the Hindi-speaking audience of the world. Kumar has joined hands with UV creations, one of the leading production houses in the South, to bring an upcoming film 'Saaho' to the Hindi market. The news was broken on the Internet by Taran Adarsh, an Indian film critic and a trade analyst, from his official Twitter handle. He wrote, " #NewsBreak: Bhushan Kumar joins hands with Prabhas and UV Creations for #Saaho... #Saaho will be presented by TSeries and Bhushan Kumar... Directed by Sujeeth... Will hit the screens next year". The film, starring Telugu actor Prabhas a.k.a the 'Baahubali' and Bollywood's Shraddha Kapoor, is being shot in Hindi, Telugu, and Hindi simultaneously. It is being shot at striking locations in, around and outside the country. Apart from Prabhas and Shraddha, the film also stars Neil Nitin Mukesh, Jackie Shroff, Mandira Bedi, Mahesh Manjrekar, and Chunky Pandey in pivotal roles. The ultra-modern action flick will see Prabhas' return to the big screen after the record-shattering 'Baahubali: The Conclusion'. The film is written and directed by Sujeeth and is slated to hit the theaters next year. (This story has not been edited by Business Standard staff and is auto-generated from a syndicated feed.) Ahead of Prime Minister Narendra Modi's arrival at London, United Kingdom, High Commissioner Yashwardhan Kumar Sinha on Tuesday informed that issues related to terrorism and economic offenders will be the focus of the visit. "Economic offender issues will be discussed in the visit along with some of the cases being monitored by the court. Terrorism will also be discussed." Sinha further informed that Prime Minister Modi will also be honoured to a private audience with Queen Elizabeth, an event which has been organised previously for only three nations. Further, an event named ' Bharat ki Baat sabke saath' will be held in to discuss the impact of technology on the Sinha said, "UK's investment in India's was earlier in No. 1 and now is second after Japan. So, we in the true sense are bilaterally related." "As far as bilateral is concerned Prime Minister of India came in 2015, UK Prime Minister went in 2016 and now this, so high level meets and also at Ministerial level is happening basically to cement the relationship between them," Sinha added. Considering the political and economic instability to be faced by the United Kingdom with respect to the Brexit event, the bilateral talks between India and the UK will be of immense importance. He then mentioned of the age-old indigenous practice of Ayurveda in India and how the tourists especially visit the country to enjoy the Ayurveda treatment. Prime Minister Narendra Modi after wrapping up his one-day visit to Sweden has now left for the United Kingdom for a three-day visit to the nation. (This story has not been edited by Business Standard staff and is auto-generated from a syndicated feed.) Tamil Nadu Governor Banwarilal Purohit on Tuesday categorically denied having any association with a college professor arrested for asking her students to extend sexual favours to university officials in exchange of financial and academic rewards. In the audio clip of Nirmala Devi's conversation with her students, she also mentioned she was close to Purohit. Countering her claim, Purohit told media, "I've not even seen her face till date, she hasn't met me." He further assured stringent punishment for the accused and said, "Let the police do its job. As far as the university is concerned, the Vice Chancellor narrated everything to me and I've set up a committee for investigation." An audio clip of the Mathematics professor at Devanga Arts College in Aruppukottai, went viral where she was heard asking her students "to adjust with some officials" of the university, for higher marks and monetary rewards. On the basis of the audio clip, Nirmala Devi was arrested earlier in the day. (This story has not been edited by Business Standard staff and is auto-generated from a syndicated feed.) United States President Donald Trump said he is looking forward to host Japan's Prime Minister Shinzo Abe, who is scheduled to arrive in the country. Trump took to his Twitter account to say, "Getting ready to meet Prime Minister Abe of Japan, a truly fine gentleman!" Getting ready to meet Prime Minister Abe of Japan, a truly fine gentleman! Donald J. Trump (@realDonaldTrump) April 17, 2018 Prime Minister Abe on his on a two-day visit to the US will stay at Mar-a-Lago resort in Florida as per the statement by the White House on Monday. The leaders are expected to hold discussions on trade negotiations and relations with North Korea on the sidelines of the scheduled visit of President Trump to North Korea in May, as reported by the Hill. The US, UK, China, Japan and South Korea are all supporting the denuclearisation of the Korean peninsula. The US President also hosted Abe at the Florida resort in February last year. Calling the resort as "the winter White House," President Trump has also hosted Chinese President Xi Jinping. Later on April 27, both North-South Korea are expected to hold a summit in an endeavour to improve bilateral ties between them. (This story has not been edited by Business Standard staff and is auto-generated from a syndicated feed.) The National Cyber Security Centre of the United Kingdom along with the Forensic Bureau of Investigation and the United State Department of Homeland Security has issued a formal warning regarding the global cyber attacks by the Russian government. The UK and the US issued a joint alert accusing Moscow of mounting a 'malicious' internet offensive that appeared to be aimed at espionage, stealing intellectual property and laying the foundation for an attack on infrastructure, as reported by the Guardian. A rare joint conference was held by the senior security officials of the UK and the US to blame the Kremlin for targeting the government institutions, private sector organizations, and infrastructure. Rob Joyce, the White House cyber-security coordinator has issued a range of actions including sanctions and indictments upon Russia. Joyce further said that the meeting is not connected to Friday's raid over Syria. It was not retaliation for the US, UK and French attack as the US and UK had been investigating the cyber-offensive for months. The representatives from the FBI, the US Department of Homeland Security and the UK's National Cyber Security Centre (NCSC), which is part of the surveillance agency GCHQ participated in the meeting. Further, the cyber-exploits were directed at network infrastructure devices worldwide such as routers, switches, firewalls, network intrusion detection system. (This story has not been edited by Business Standard staff and is auto-generated from a syndicated feed.) On the occasion of Vaisakhi, the Afghan Hindu community organised the opening ceremony of their first temple in Maryland, United States. Afghan Hindus are a small community and the DC Metropolitan area is home to around 300 Afghan Hindus and Sikhs. The opening ceremony of AsaMai Hindu Temple of Washington Metropolitan was also attended by Afghanistan's Ambassador to the United States, Hamdullah Mohib, who along with his team received a warm welcome, the Afghan Embassy at the US stated on Monday. The envoy congratulated the Afghan Hindu community of the area on the opening of their first temple and expressed his desire to establish close relations with the Afghan Hindu community. He also offered Afghan embassy's support to the community when needed. The Hindus and Sikhs of Afghanistan constitute a small minority in their homeland too. (This story has not been edited by Business Standard staff and is auto-generated from a syndicated feed.) Pakistan's Deputy High Commissioner Syed Haider Shah on Tuesday underscored that Islamabad is "always happy to host Sikh pilgrims." "We are always happy to host them, we deal with these issues in the light of our bilateral agreements and protocols," Haider Shah said. His remarks came in the backdrop of the ongoing controversy regarding the denial of consular access to Sikh pilgrims visiting Pakistan. The Pakistan's Deputy High Commissioner was summoned on Monday to lodge a "strong" protest over the attempts of inciting the Indian pilgrims. Last week, around 1,800 Sikh pilgrims from India had travelled to Pakistan to celebrate Baisakhi at Gurdwara Panja Sahib in Rawalpindi. However, Pakistani authorities reportedly blocked the Indian High Commission from performing basic consular and protocol duties for its citizens. Soon after this, India lodged a strong protest with Pakistan and said that such incidents during the visit of pilgrims were against the spirit of the bilateral Protocol of 1974 governing the exchange of visits of pilgrims between the two countries. However, Pakistan's Ministry of Foreign Affairs spokesperson Dr Mohammad Faisal released a statement on Sunday stating that the Secretary of the Evacuee Trust Property Board (ETPB) suggested cancellation of the visit considering an emotionally charged environment and the possibility of any untoward situation. (This story has not been edited by Business Standard staff and is auto-generated from a syndicated feed.) A new research has pinpointed some genes that can trigger depression. As per the research conducted by the University of Edinburgh, nearly 80 genes that could be linked to depression have been discovered. The findings could help explain why some people may be at a higher risk of developing the condition, researchers said. The study could also help researchers develop drugs to tackle mental ill-health, experts said. Depression affects one in five people in the UK every year and is the leading cause of disability worldwide. Life events - such as trauma or stress - can contribute to its onset, but it is not clear why some people are more likely to develop the condition than others. Scientists analysed data and scanned the genetic code of 300,000 people to identify areas of DNA that could be linked to depression. Some of the pinpointed genes are known to be involved in the function of synapses, tiny connectors that allow brain cells to communicate with each other through electrical and chemical signals. The scientists then confirmed their findings by examining anonymised data held by the personal genetics and research company 23andMe, used with the donors' consent. Professor Andrew McIntosh, who leads the Edinburgh-based research group, said, "Depression is a common and often severe condition that affects millions of people worldwide. These new findings help us better understand the causes of depression and show how the UK Biobank study and big data research has helped advance mental research". "We hope that the UK's growing data research capacity will help us to make major advances in our understanding of depression in coming years", continued McIntosh David Howard, the lead author of the study, said, "This study identifies genes that potentially increase our risk of depression, adding to the evidence that it is partly a genetic disorder. The findings also provide new clues to the causes of depression and we hope it will narrow down the search for therapies that could help people living with the condition." The study appears in the journal Nature Communications. (This story has not been edited by Business Standard staff and is auto-generated from a syndicated feed.) The Sindhi Congress (WSC) organised 'Remembrance Day' on Sunday here, to remember the men and women who worked, struggled and those who laid their lives for the betterment and emancipation of Sindhi people. The event drew community members from New York, New Jersey, and Connecticut. The moderator of the event, WSC Information Secretary Farhan Kaghzi thanked the community members for their participation and help in organising the event. Shahida Soomro, member of WSC and International Sindhi Women Organisation (ISWO), highlighted the recent work of WSC and urged the community to join WSC to help in the activism for the rights of Sindhi people. WSC General Secretary Saghir Shaikh gave an impressive presentation on the history of WSC work and activism. He highlighted the recent work on enforced disappearances, enforced conversion of the of Sindhi Hindu Girls and land rights of Sindhi people. Ali Khaskheli, Organiser Sindh United Party (SUP), commended the work of WSC especially of highlighting the enforced disappearances of political workers in Sindh province of Pakistan. Zakir Bullo, Information Secretary of Sindhi Association of North America (SANA), condemned the recent incident in Sindh where human rights activist Sasui Lohar was forcibly removed from Sufi Conference. Renowned poet Saeen Abdul Ghaffar Tabassum who was one of the attendees, encouraged the Sindhis to fight for their rights. Renowned writer Hassan Mujtaba discussed Saeen G.M.Syed's work "Sindhi Ja Soormaan", the book that introduced the real heroes of Sindh. He suggested WSC to work with other nationalists of Pakistan for enforced disappearances. Atta Vistro, member of Organising Committee Jeay Sindh Qaumi Mahaz (JSQM), thanked the organizer for the event and assured his party's commitment to the rights of Sindhi people. SANA former regional secretary Khalid Channa appreciated WSC's long history of activism for highlighting human rights violations in Sindh. Unrepresented Nations and Peoples Organisation (UNPO) US Program Organizer, Marvin Kumetat, introduced UNPO and its member nations. He too thanked WSC for highlighting the disadvantageous status of Sindhi nation. He said the UNPO would continue to work with WSC to raise their voice against human rights violations in Sindh. WSC Vice President Zubair Bhambro and G.M. Syed Memorial Committee concurred the G.M. Syed award to Dr. Hyder Lashari. "The G. M. Syed Memorial Awards are conferred to those whose work with dedication to honour the memory of Saeen GM Syed, a visionary leader who pioneered the Sindhi freedom movement and was a beacon of the Sindhi people's struggle for national self-determination," Bhambro said, and added, "The G. M. Syed Memorial Award is bestowed on Dr. Hyder Lashari in appreciation for his struggle and advocacy for democracy, civil rights and freedom for Sindhi peoples and to recognize his literary and grass-roots work on Sindh and G M Syed." Hyder Lashari acknowledged G.M.Syed Memorial Committee for the award and also talked about his long struggle for rights of Sindhi people. In the end, Saghir Shaikh displayed a video on the missing person, compiled by Sasui Lohar. (This story has not been edited by Business Standard staff and is auto-generated from a syndicated feed.) Adani Ports and Special Economic Zone rose 0.81% to Rs 390.95 at 9:24 IST on BSE after the company said it signed a long term regasification pact with Indian Oil Corporation for Dhamra LNG terminal. The announcement was made after market hours yesterday, 16 April 2018. Meanwhile, the S&P BSE Sensex was up 5.03 points, or 0.01% to 34,310.46. On the BSE, 27,000 shares were traded in the counter so far compared with average daily volumes of 1.82 lakh shares in the past two weeks. The stock had hit a high of Rs 394 and a low of Rs 390 so far during the day. The stock hit a record high of Rs 451.55 on 24 January 2018. The stock hit a 52-week low of Rs 318.10 on 17 April 2017. Adani Ports and Special Economic Zone (APSEZ), India's leading port infrastructure developer and part of the Adani Group, said it signed a long term agreement with Indian Oil Corporation (IOC) to provide Liquefied Natural Gas (LNG) regasification services on a use or pay basis to the state-run refiner, at its upcoming LNG import terminal at Dhamra in Odisha. As per the contract, IOC has booked 3 million tonnes per annum (MTPA) regasification capacity spread over 20 years. IOC plans to supply the gas to its refineries in Paradip in Odisha and Haldia in West Bengal. The terminal is expected to be commissioned during the second half of 2021. The proposed Dhamra LNG import terminal is designed for an initial capacity of 5 MTPA, expandable up to 10 MTPA. Initially, it will have two full containment type tanks of 180,000 m3 capacity each. It will be first of its kind in India and second LNG terminal on the east coast after IOC's Ennore terminal in Tamilnadu. It will have a jetty capable of handling a wide range of LNG supply vessels, including the largest Q-max fleet from Qatar. The terminal will be capable of reloading LNG to service proximate markets via the marine route and will also have truck loading gantries to help grow the nascent but exciting LNG by truck market. On a consolidated basis, net profit of Adani Ports & Special Economic Zone rose 19.5% to Rs 1001 crore on 21.74% rise in net sales to Rs 2688.85 crore in Q3 December 2017 over Q3 December 2016. Adani Ports and Special Economic Zone (APSEZ) is India's largest port developer and operator. APSEZ has 10 strategically located ports and terminals on both the western and eastern coastline of India Mundra, Dahej, Kandla and Hazira in Gujarat, Dhamra in Odisha, Mormugao in Goa, Visakhapatnam in Andhra Pradesh, and Kattupalli and Ennore in Chennai representing 24% of India's total port capacity. APSEZ is currently developing a transhipment port at Vizhinjam, Kerala. APSEZ owns and operates India's largest commercial port, Mundra, in Gujarat. Powered by Capital Market - Live News (This story has not been edited by Business Standard staff and is auto-generated from a syndicated feed.) At meeting held on 17 April 2018 Super Crop Safe announced that the a meeting Board of Directors of the Company was held at its registered office on 17 April, 2018 to consider various matters laid before the board and board has approved the following: 1. To issue 3,10,000/- Equity Shares of the Company on preferential basis to strategic investors (Non-Promoter) subject to approval of members at EGM. 2. To issue 5,90,000/- Warrant convertible into 5,90,000/- Equity Shares of the Company on preferential basis to promoter and 1,00,000 Warrants convertible into 1,00,000 Equity shares of the Company on preferential basis to strategic investors (Non-Promoter) subject to approval of members at EGM. 3. Approved the draft notice of EGM to be held on Wednesday, 23 May, 2018 at its registered office at C-1/290, GIDC Estate, Phase I, Naroda, Ahmedabad for issue of 3,10,000 Equity Shares on preferential basis and issue of 6,90,000 Convertible Warrants. 4. Authorized board to open a separate bank account for preferential issue. Powered by Capital Market - Live News (This story has not been edited by Business Standard staff and is auto-generated from a syndicated feed.) At least 17 persons including women were injured in a police action on Monday night while taking part in a protest demanding the construction of a hospital at Khundrakpam in Imphal East district of Manipur, police said on Tuesday. According to reports, the protesters were demanding the construction of the hospital in Sagolmang area, while the state's Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP)-led government is believed to be giving final touches to a plan to construct the same in Keirao constituency of the state. The police resorted to a cane-charge and used tear gas shells to disperse the crowd, which left 17 persons injured. Chief Minister N. Biren Singh said: "The government had planned some years ago to construct the hospital at Sagolmang. However, since a land dispute arose there, it was decided that the proposed hospital would be shifted to the Keirao constituency." T. Lokeswor, a Congress MLA and a former speaker said: "If there is a land dispute obstructing the construction of the hospital, the government should put out documents in the public domain." Some activists felt that the people of the constituency and the neighbouring areas should not be punished in this manner simply because the elected representative belongs to the opposition Congress. Monday's torchlight procession of thousands of persons, who walked over 15 km, is the second such protest in the recent past. S. Yaiskul, Convener of the Joint Action Committee opposing the plan to shift the hospital, said: "Majority of the people in the Khundrakpam constituency are below the poverty line. They can't afford the medical bills for quality treatment in Manipur or other states. We shall not rest till the government reverts its decision." --IANS il/nir/bg (This story has not been edited by Business Standard staff and is auto-generated from a syndicated feed.) The New York Times and The New Yorker have jointly won the 2018 Pulitzer Prize for public service for their reporting on exposing powerful and wealthy sexual predators, including allegations against Hollywood movie maker Harvey Weinstein. Pulitzer Prize Administrator Dana Canedy announced the winners of the 2018 Pulitzer Prizes at the Columbia University Monday in New York City, Xinhua news agency reported on Tuesday. The New York Times also shared the honour for national reporting with The Washington Post for their coverage of the investigation into Russian involvement in the 2016 US presidential election. The Press Democrat of Santa Rosa, California, won the breaking news award for coverage of the wildfires that swept through California's wine country last fall. The Arizona Republic and the USA Today Network took the Explanatory Reporting prize for their reporting on U.S. President Donald Trump's proposed border wall. American rapper and songwriter Kendrick Lamar's "DAMN" won the Pulitzer Prize for music. It is the first non-classical or jazz work to win the award. The 30-year-old musician won five Grammy awards in January for the album. The Pulitzer Prize for Fiction went to "Less" by American novelist Andrew Sean Greer. It is a delightful book about growing older and the essential nature of love. The Pulitzers, the most prestigious honours in American journalism, have been awarded since 1917. Public service award winners receive a gold medal, and the other awards carry a prize of $15,000 each. --IANS pgh/ (This story has not been edited by Business Standard staff and is auto-generated from a syndicated feed.) The Unique Identification Authority of India (UIDAI) on Tuesday told the Supreme Court that the collection of biometric and demographic information under Aadhaar was not an atomic bomb as it sought to dismiss the hyper phobia the unique identity card's critics have created around it. "Collection of information under Aadhaar is not an atomic bomb. Please remove the fear and phobia created by the petitioners (opposing it). There is no question of leaking or sharing of information," the UIDAI told a five-judge constitution bench headed by Chief Justice Dipak Misra. Buttressing the point, senior counsel Rakesh Dwivedi appearing for the UIDAI told the bench, also comprising Justice A.K. Sikri, Justice A.M. Khanwilkar, Justice D.Y. Chandrachud and Justice Ashok Bhushan, that the UIDAI has matching technology and not analysing technology which he described as learning algorithms. Justice Chandrachud said: "The apprehension of the sharing of data is not symptomatic but real. The data available can be used to influence elections. We have seen this in past experience. Whether democracy can survive where data is used to influence the electoral outcome..." Having adverted to the apprehensions, Justice Chandrachud asked Dwivedi: "You must think of what are the nature of safeguards that can be introduced." "We can't have a blinkered view of reality" because of your limitations, Justice Chandrachud said, since "we are going to lay down a law that will affect future generations." "How the requesting entities will use the data is a matter of concern," said Justice Chandrachud pointing out to data being used for election, an apparent reference to the leak of data of a social media site during the US Presidential election. The court said this as Dwivedi said that they have some limitation of technological knowledge coupled with a little bit of exaggeration and lamented the "Hyperbole being created by the petitioner". He said the information being collected under Aadhaar is not genetic information or genetic data but for simple identification and authentication. Describing Aadhaar as a simple device for identification and authentication, Dwivedi said: "We can't analyse the data. It can't be surreptitiously obtained by any one. A lot of thought has gone into making the design and architecture of Aadhaar." Telling the court that there are forces working against Aadhaar and that search engine Google and smart card companies do not want it, Dwivedi tried to make light of the plea for an interim order citing authentication failure in six crore cases. "We welcome the test of fire. Unless we do it we can't win the trust of the people," Dwivedi said pointing to challenges being thrown at the implementation of Aadhaar. "What is the purpose of opening Aadhaar platform to private entities," Justice Chandrachud asked as Dwivedi told the bench that the entire funding of the project is from the consolidate fund of India. Dwivedi said in all major fields like aviation, defence, infrastructure there was public-private partnership, assuring the court that all the private entities were under their control and are "bound by law". The court was hearing a batch of petitions, including by former Karnataka High Court Judge K.S. Puttuswamy, Magsaysay awardee Shanta Sinha, feminist researcher Kalyani Sen Menon, social activists Aruna Roy, Nikhil De, Nachiket Udupa and others challenging the constitutional validity of the Aadhaar scheme on the touchstone of the fundamental right to privacy. Dwivedi will continue his arguments on Wednesday. --IANS pk/him/bg (This story has not been edited by Business Standard staff and is auto-generated from a syndicated feed.) After the Delhi Government's General Administration Department cancelled appointment of nine advisors in the Delhi cabinet, the ruling dubbed the order as conspiracy by the Central government. The GAD issued a notification cancelling the appointment of nine advisors and consultants out of which four, Deputy Chief Minister Manish Sisodia said, were "not even working with the government anymore". He also alleged that the main purpose of the order was to discharge leader Atishi Marlena as "she is making huge contributions to develop the educational system in Delhi's government schools" "This is a conspiracy by (the Narendra) Modi government, which doesn't have any other job but to hamper the wors done by our party in the capital," Sisodia told media. "The purpose of this order is to confuse the press so that the public can be confused," he added. He said that the Centre and BJP governments in various states have "failed" to open schools. "They can't run universities, they can't prevent rapes," said Sisodia. The nine advisors whose appointment have been cancelled are Amardeep Tiwari (Media advisor to the Law Minister), Arunoday Prakash (Media Advisor to Deputy CM), Raghav Chadha (Advisor to Finance Minister), Marlena (Media Advisor to Deputy CM), Dinkar Adib (OSD to Minister Satyender Jain), Ram Kumar Jha (Advisor, Logistics to Sisodia), Samir Malhotra (consultant, Satyender Jain) and Prashant Saxena, Rajat Tiwari (ADC to Power Minister). Sisodia, however, said that Chadha, Malhotra, Saxena and Tiwari were not working on these posts anymore, while the others were working on posts created during the previous governments. He stressed that the Centre was making attempts to "flop the flourishing education system" in Delhi. "Modi's advisors tell him to prevent rapists, our advisors tell us to educate women." He said Marlena, an alumnus of St Stephen's and Oxford University, was working in the field of education with Delhi government at a salary of just Re 1. "It is a matter of pride for Delhi and its government." Amidst reports of a cash crunch and empty ATMs, Finance Minister Arun Jaitley on Tuesday sought to allay fears, saying "there is more than adequate currency in circulation", even as the government blamed "unusual demand" for shortages in some areas. In a bid to tackle the "unusual" currency demand, the government has also decided to increase printing of Rs 500 notes by five times. "Have reviewed the currency situation in the country. Overall there is more than adequate currency in circulation and also available with the banks. The temporary shortage caused by 'sudden and unusual increase' in some areas is being tackled quickly," Jaitley tweeted. At a hurriedly-called press meet, Economic Affairs Secretary S.C. Garg, said: "There is no cash crunch in the country. There is around Rs 18 lakh crore currency supply now, which is close to the circulation during the demonetisation period. We keep Rs 2.5-3 lakh crore more currency in stock for excess demand." He said there was unusually high demand for currency in the last couple of months. As opposed to an average demand of about Rs 20,000 crore a month, "in the first 13 days of April itself there was a demand of Rs 45,000 crore", he said. In the last few days the government has pumped cash into the system to meet the demand, he said. "We still have a reserve of Rs 1.75 lakh crore." "We have taken steps to increase the supply of currency in case the demand were to go up further. To give you an example, Rs 500 notes -- we print about 500 crore of notes per day. We have taken steps to raise this production five times," Garg said. "Very soon, in the next couple of days, we will have a supply of about Rs 2,500 crore worth of Rs 500 notes per day. In a month, supply would be about 70,000-75,000 crore. These notes alone can more than meet the demand of any month," he said. Garg attributed the sudden cash demand to localised phenomena. "This unusual spurt in demand is seen more in some parts of the country like Andhra Pradesh, Telangana, Karnataka, Madhya Pradesh and Bihar," the Finance Ministry said in a statement on Tuesday. There were, however, reports of shortages in Maharashtra, Gujarat and Punjab as well. The statement said the government, along with the Reserve Bank of India (RBI), has taken all steps to meet this unusual demand. Asked whether there was any hoarding of the Rs 2,000 notes, Garg said at the press meet: "In this system, there are about 6.70 lakh crore worth of Rs 2,000 notes. They are more than adequate to meet the transaction demand of customers... But, off late, we have noted somewhat lesser inflow coming back from circulation. "We have not got this investigated, but you can assume that this one note is most suitable for people to keep with themselves. There has been some tendency of some people using Rs 2,000 notes, but that does not affect the overall supply of the Rs 2,000 notes." SBI Chairman Rajnish Kumar also stepped in to allay fears, telling a TV channel that "there has been adequate supply of currency from the RBI". "In certain states, the demand has gone up. These states are Madhya Pradesh, Telengana, Andhar Pradesh, north Bihar and Punjab. One possible reason is the procurement season has started and the demand for payment to farmers has gone up. In Maharashtra there is no shortage of cash, as far as SBI is concerned," Kumar said. "We had adequate reserves of currency notes which have been used to meet fully the extraordinary demand generated so far. We continue to have in stock adequate currency notes of all denominations, including of Rs 500, 200 and Rs 100, to meet any demand," the Finance Ministry statement said. "The government would like to assure all the people that there has been adequate supply of currency notes which has met entire demand so far. The government would also like to assure that it would be supplying adequate currency notes to meet even higher levels of demand if such demand were to continue in the coming days/months," it added. The statement further said the government is taking all steps to ensure that ATMs are supplied with cash and to get faulty ATMs working at the earliest. Reacting to the situation, West Bengal Chief Minister Mamata Banerjee on Tuesday said it reminded her of the demonetisation days. She also wondered whether there was a "financial emergency" in the country. Congress President Rahul Gandhi too criticised the government and slammed Prime Minister Narendra Modi for what he described as destroying India's banking system by ushering in "acchhe din" for fugitive jewellers Nirav Modi and Mehul Choksi. "Modiji destroyed the banking system. Nirav Modi fled with Rs 30,000 crore and the Prime Minister didn't utter a word. We were forced to stand in queues as he snatched Rs 500-1,000 notes from our pockets and put them in Nirav Modi's pocket," he said. --IANS ag/sac/hs (This story has not been edited by Business Standard staff and is auto-generated from a syndicated feed.) Apprehending trouble from thousands of followers of Asaram in case of an adverse judgment, the Jodhpur court will pronounce its verdict in a rape case against him inside the premises of the Central Jail here on April 25. Considering an appeal from the Jodhpur Police Commissioner, a division bench of the Rajasthan High Court on Tuesday ordered the trial court to deliver its verdict inside the jail premises. The division bench comprising Justice Gopal K. Vyas and Justice Ram Chandra Singh Jhala also issued guidelines to the Jodhpur Police Commissioner and the District Magistrate and Collector to ensure law and order in the city on the verdict day. According to the high court's order, the Central Jail Superintendent and the district administration have been directed to make all arrangements for proceedings inside the jail for the pronouncement of the judgment. The Police Commissioner, anticipating a huge presence of the godman's followers in the city on the judgment day, moved the high court to seek directions to the SC/ST cases trial court for pronouncing the judgment inside the jail. He also feared that the followers could indulge in vandalism and arson after the verdict. The final arguments in the case were completed in the court of SC/ST Cases Special Judge Madhu Sudan Sharma on April 7. Asaram was arrested in 2013 after a minor girl from Saharanpur (Uttar Pradesh) had reported sexual assault by Asaram in his ashram during her stay in Manai village on the outskirts of Jodhpur. Thereafter, he was then brought from Indore and jailed in the Jodhpur Central jail. Several clashes have been reported between the police and his followers since then. Asaram was booked under relevant sections of the Protection of Children from Sexual Offences Act and the SC/ST Act and was denied bail by the Supreme Court. He can face a maximum of 10 years of jail if found guilty. --IANS arc/nir/bg (This story has not been edited by Business Standard staff and is auto-generated from a syndicated feed.) A 71-year old Australian nun was arrested in the Philippines over her alleged involvement in political activities, the country's Bureau of Immigration said on Tuesday. According to a bureau statement, Sister Patricia Fox, a nun belonging to Sisters of Our Lady of Sion en Philippines, was arrested on Monday for "violating the conditions of her stay by attending protest rallies and engaging in political activities", reports Efe news. The nun, who has been working in the Philippines for the past 27 years, was detained at the Immigration Bureau, waiting for her lawyer to submit her passport. Once the document is submitted, the special Inquest Prosecutor "will submit her findings and recommendations whether to file necessary charges or release Fox for further investigation" the statement said. Fox has been working with some of the most underprivileged communities in several regions in the country, including in the southern island of Mindanao, according to the Catholic Bishops Conference of the Philippines, who condemned her arrest. Manila's Auxiliary Bishop Broderick Pabillo, who visited the nun at the Immigration Bureau, called the nun's arrest a sign that the government was beginning to crack down on critics. However, Immigration Bureau spokesperson, Antonette Mangrobang, said that the law of the land does not allow any foreigner to participate in political activities. The nun's arrest comes a day after the Deputy Secretary-General of the Party of European Socialists, Giacomo Filibeck, was barred from entering the country over his participation in a human rights forum. Filibeck was part of an international mission in 2017 that had harshly criticised the killings under President Rodrigo Duterte's controversial anti-drug campaign, and which led to the inclusion of his name on a government blacklist. --IANS ksk/sac (This story has not been edited by Business Standard staff and is auto-generated from a syndicated feed.) The Congress on Tuesday demanded Union Finance Minister Arun Jaitley, External Affairs Minister Sushma Swaraj and Rajasthan Chief Minister Vasundhara Raje quit their posts, if appearing as a lawyer for someone was a crime. The party's response came after the BJP claimed PNB fraud case accused Mehul Choksi enjoyed the "patronage" of Congress President Rahul Gandhi and that is why H.S. Chandramauli, who represented Choksi in a criminal case in 2015, was given a Congress ticket in Karnataka. "Some bhakt channels ran that Congress has given ticket to Mehul Choksi's lawyer and have committed a crime. The lawyer himself has clarified that he has nothing to do with Mehul Choksi. As a lawyer, he may have represented him in a case long time back. But it is not a crime," said Congress spokesperson Jaiveer Shergill. He said that if becoming anyone's lawyer is wrong, then BJP should seek the resignation of Jaitley, whose daughter was a lawyer for Nirav Modi's companies, Sushma Swaraj, whose husband and daughter were lawyers for former IPL chief Lalit Modi and Vasundhara Raje who wrote a letter favouring Lalit Modi when he was in London. "But BJP is stooping to that level of questioning who is a lawyer of whom. The BJP brigade is the biggest spokesperson, protector and lawyer of all the absconders and fraudsters of the nation who have taken benefit of BJP's 'Udaan Scheme' for scamsters who have taken away the money," he added. --IANS sid/vd (This story has not been edited by Business Standard staff and is auto-generated from a syndicated feed.) Senior BJP Leader C.P. Thakur on Tuesday said that the party will contest more seats than its allies in Bihar in the 2019 parliamentary polls. "The Bharatiya Janata Party will contest from majority of the 40 Lok Sabha seats in Bihar in the 2019 polls," Thakur, also a BJP Rajya Sabha MP, told reporters here. Janata Dal-United leader and Bihar Chief Minister Nitish Kumar who joined hands with the BJP last July and formed the government after dumping the RJD and the Congress, contested the last Lok Sabha polls alone and won only two seats. Nitish Kumar is eyeing to contest over a dozen Lok Sabha seats in 2019 with the BJP, Thakur said. The Lok Janshakti Party of Union Minister Ram Vilas Paswan which won six seats in the last elections, is trying to contest from no less than 10 seats. Another BJP ally RLSP of Union Minister Upender Kushwaha might contest from over half a dozen seats. Thakur however, refused to reveal the exact number of seats the BJP will contest. --IANS ik/ksk/bg (This story has not been edited by Business Standard staff and is auto-generated from a syndicated feed.) After an explosion at the camp office of the Indian Embassy in Nepal on Monday night, a senior official here said on Tuesday that the incident is being probed. "A minor explosion took place along the rear boundary wall of the camp office of Embassy of India at Biratnagar, Nepal at about 8.15 p.m. on April 16, 2018," External Affairs Ministry spokesperson Raveesh Kumar said in response to queries. "No one has been injured in the incident," he said. "Our Embassy in Kathmandu is in touch with Government of Nepal. The security authorities in Nepal are investigating the matter." A pressure cooker bomb went off near the Indian Embassy field office in Nepal's Biratnagar late on Monday damaging the walls of the premises, Nepal Police said. No one has claimed responsibility. It is suspected that a splinter group of the Maoists led by Netra Bikram Chand could be responsible for the blast due to its anti-Indian rhetoric in the past. --IANS ab/bg (This story has not been edited by Business Standard staff and is auto-generated from a syndicated feed.) The body of a trekker from New Delhi who went missing for seven days in the snow-bound mountains in Himachal Pradesh's Manali was found on Tuesday, police said. Rescuers traced the body of Akhil Chadha, 30, after massive search operation from the Hamta Pass in Kullu district, police said. Chadha was trekking along with 12 people, who were accompanying a guide and potters, when he went missing on April 10. The parents of the missing trekker had announced a reward of Rs 1 lakh for providing information about his whereabouts. The body was traced in a deep trench, police said. His bag and trekking stick were traced on Monday. "There is no injury mark on the trekker's body. Prime facie it seems that he died of cold climatic conditions and inhospitable terrain," Deputy Superintendent of Police Sher Singh told IANS. The cause of the death could be ascertained after the autopsy, he added. The local administration got over 40 trekkers, comprising police, locals and trekkers of the Atal Bihari Vajpayee Institute of Mountaineering and Allied Sports, involved in the rescue operation. Two Indian Air Force choppers also carried out search in the snow-covered hills on Saturday. --IANS vg/vd (This story has not been edited by Business Standard staff and is auto-generated from a syndicated feed.) Rescuers discovered the bodies of two truck drivers and were searching for other missing people after a bridge fell down in Indonesia's East Java province on Tuesday, a disaster management agency official said. Three trucks and one motorcycle plunged into a river when the bridge situated in Tuban sub-district suddenly collapsed at 11 a.m., the National Disaster Management Agency's spokesman Sutopo Purwo Nugroho told Xinhua news agency. However, he did not elaborate about the other drivers of the vehicles and the riders of the motorcycle. Search and rescue operations were underway. --IANS soni/bg (This story has not been edited by Business Standard staff and is auto-generated from a syndicated feed.) With political parties demanding a CBI probe into the alleged attempt at sexual trafficking of college students by a professor, the Tamil Nadu Police chief ordered the transfer of the case to the Crime Branch-Crime Investigation Department (CBCID). Considering the importance of the case, the Tamil Nadu Director General of Police (DGP) ordered to transfer the case from Arupukkottai Police Station in Virudhunagar district to the CBCID, a government statement said. On a complaint lodged by R. Ramasamy, Secretary, Devanga Arts College in Arupukkottai, a case has been registered against Assistant Professor Nirmala Devi over attempt to lure some students into sex trade, according to the statement. On the other hand, the Madurai Kamaraj University said it had decided to scrap its proposal to set up a five-member committee to probe the alleged sexual trafficking complaint. In a statement, Vice Chancellor P.P. Chellathurai said: "The university is keen that all details with regard to the incident be inquired into without any bias. Hence the proposal to form an internal committee in the university has been withdrawn." "The high powered inquiry by R. Santhanam, IAS (retd), ordered by the Chancellor will commence forthwith for which the university will be rendering all necessary assistance," he said. Based on the report from the university, Governor Banwarilal Purohit, in his capacity as the Chancellor, had ordered for inquiry by a high powered committee, the statement said. Leaders of political parties, however, came down heavily on the committees set up by the Governor and the Vice Chancellor and demanded a probe by the Central Bureau of Investigation (CBI). PMK leader S. Ramadoss said committees appointed by Purohit and Chellathurai to probe an alleged sexual trafficking complaint were not legally valid. Supporting the arrest of the female professor who allegedly tried to lure her students to extend sexual favours to top officials of the university in Tamil Nadu, he said only a CBI probe was only justified. It was on Monday that Governor Purohit and Chellathurai had ordered a high-level inquiry into the matter by the retired IAS officer, Santhanam. But Chellathurai told reporters in New Delhi on Monday that a five-member committee had been constituted to investigate the case. "Governor Purohit is only a Chancellor of the university. He does not have the power to govern or probe malpractices in the colleges," Ramadoss said, adding only the college management had the power to take action against a professor found to be misguiding the students to take a wrong path. "A shadow of suspicion is on all the top officials of the university and hence Chellathurai can face an inquiry committee but can't set up one," the PMK leader said. Ramadoss said the accused professor's mobile phone call records should be checked to determine others involved. Nirmala Devi, who taught at the Devanga Arts College in Aruppukottai, was at the centre of a storm after audio clips of her talks with some students suggested that they yield themselves to keep the "higher-ups" in the Madurai Kamaraj University happy, so that the college keeps getting facilities. The clips went viral in the social media. Police in Virudhunagar district has questioned her so far. DMK leader M.K. Stalin told reporters that only a Vice Chancellor of a university could set up an inquiry committee and not the Governor in the capacity of the Chancellor. "It is not known why the Governor as the Chancellor acted in this manner. There seems to be some confusion. Only a high court-monitored CBI probe will bring out the truth," he said. --IANS vj/nir/vd (This story has not been edited by Business Standard staff and is auto-generated from a syndicated feed.) The CBI on Tuesday said that it had filed a fresh case against the directors of three companies on the charge of cheating a consortium of five banks led by the Punjab and Sindh Bank to the tune of Rs 621 crore. A Central Bureau of Investigation (CBI) official said that a case of cheating was registered on Monday against Surya Pharmaceuticals Pvt Ltd (SPPL) Promoter-Directors Rajeev Goyal, his wife Alka Goyal, his son and Emsons Organic Pvt Ltd Director Suhail Goyal, Dubai- based Kobian Pvt Ltd Director Pramod Agarwal, who is also proprietor of Nimbus FZE, and directors and unknown public and private servants. The agency action came on a Punjab and Sindh Bank complaint on April 11, wherein it was alleged that the loan was not used for the purpose it was sanctioned. The CBI official said searches were carried out at various places, including residences and office premises of the accused at two locations each in Delhi, Punjab's Patiala and Chandigarh as well as in Haryana's Panchkula. It is the second CBI case against the SPPL. Another CBI case was registered against the company and its directors in May 2014 on the State Bank of India's complaint regarding alleged fraud of Rs 157 crore. --IANS aks/tsb/bg (This story has not been edited by Business Standard staff and is auto-generated from a syndicated feed.) The Union Home Ministry has cancelled nine posts of advisors held by AAP members in the Delhi cabinet, sparking a fresh face-off between the Centre and the ruling party in the capital. The General Administration Department (GAD) of the Delhi government, citing a Home Ministry letter dated April 10, said on Tuesday that the appointment of advisors and consultants in various ministries stands cancelled. These include Aam Aadmi Party (AAP) leaders Atishi Marlena, Raghav Chaddha and Arunoday Prakash -- all advisers to Deputy Chief Minister and Finance Minister Manish Sisodia. The government has also cancelled the posts held by Amar Deep Tiwari as media adviser to Law Minister, Prashant Saxena and Samir Malhotra as consultants to Power Minister, Rajat Tiwari as aide-de-camp in office of Minister of Power, Ram Kumar Jha as adviser (logistics) in the office of Minister, GAD and Dinkar Adeeb as OSD to Home Minister. "The appointees officiating are not in the list of posts approved for the ministers and Chief Minister of Delhi. No prior approval of the Central government has been taken for creation of said posts on which these person have been appointed," the GAD said. "Therefore, creation of posts by Delhi cabinet for accommodating these appointees is void ab-initio, being done by an agency not competent under the law to do so. Since creation of these posts and subsequent appointments on these posts are not valid, all previous orders regarding creation of these posts and appointments made against them are hereby cancelled." The cancellation sparked an angry reaction from the AAP that dubbed this move by the Centre as a "diversionary tactic" of the BJP to divert attention from recent incidents of rapes and cash crunch in the country. "Impressive diversionary tactic by the MHA (Home Ministry), at the behest of the BJP. To divert attention from spate of rapes, cash crunch etc. An opportune time to rake up non issues with AAP like retrospective sacking for a post I held for 45 days in 2016 for a paltry sum of Rs 2.50," tweeted Chaddha, who is also an AAP spokesperson. --IANS bns/sar/vd (This story has not been edited by Business Standard staff and is auto-generated from a syndicated feed.) Tamil Nadu Governor Banwarilal Purohit on Tuesday said Cauvery issue was close to his heart and has been assured by Union Water Resources Minister Nitin Gadkari that the matter relating to the constitution of a river management board was under process. Addressing a press conference, he said he had talked to Gadkari on Tuesday who told him that the issue "was under preparation and we are doing it". He dismissed any in the matter, saying he was sure that something positive will be done for the farmers and people of Tamil Nadu. Purohit said the Cauvery issue was close to his heart and within a week of his taking over as Governor last October he had attended a Governor's conference in Delhi where in a speech he had said that farmers of Delta region in Tamil Nadu were dependent on waters of Cauvery. "The farmers are agitated over the issue. Hence, it is reiterated that Cauvery management board and Cauvery water regulatory committee are constituted immediately in accordance with the final order of the Cauvery Water Disputes Tribunal." Tamil Nadu has been rocked by protests of late over the Centre's failure to constitute the Cauvery Management Board within six months of the Supreme Court verdict in February. Asked about the demand of opposition parties led by DMK leader M.K. Stalin for an appointment with Prime Minister Narendra Modi, he said the demand has been forwarded. --IANS sar-vsc/bg (This story has not been edited by Business Standard staff and is auto-generated from a syndicated feed.) The process of naming an eminent jurist to the Selection Committee for appointing the Lokpal had begun, the Centre told the Supreme Court on Tuesday. A meeting was held on April 10 and recommendations in this regard have been made, Attorney General K.K. Venugopal, appearing for the Centre, told a bench of Justice Ranjan Gogoi and Justice R. Banumathi. Refusing to pass any order at this stage, the bench said it expects the process of appointing the Lokpal would be completed at the earliest. The matter will now be heard on May 15. On April 10, Leader of the Congress Party in Lok Sabha Mallikarjun Kharge yet again declined the government's invitation to attend a meeting of the Lokpal selection committee as "special invitee" terming it "misleading". Pointing out that there is no provision in the Lokpal and Lokayuktas Act for a "special invitee", Kharge, in a letter to Prime Minister Narendra Modi, said there was no sense in attending the meeting without rights of participation or voting. He had earlier also refused to attend a meeting called by Prime Minister to choose a Lok Pal. Senior advocate P.P. Rao was earlier named as the eminent jurist in the selection panel but the post fell vacant after he passed away in 2017. Earlier, the Centre had informed the apex court that a meeting of the Selection Committee was scheduled to take place to deliberate on the steps to be taken to appoint a Lokpal. The committee comprises the Prime Minister, Chief Justice of India, Lok Sabha Speaker, the leader of the largest opposition party in the Lok Sabha and an eminent jurist. The jurist is appointed by the President on the recommendation of the Selection Committee with the Prime Minister as its Chairman. The court was hearing a contempt petition filed by NGO Common Cause after the government failed to act on the April 27, 2017, judgment of the top court, holding that the "Act, as it stands today, is an eminently workable piece of legislation and there is no justification to keep the enforcement of the Act under suspension till the amendments, as proposed, are carried out". The court's observation had come while addressing the question whether the Lokpal law, as it exists today, is so "unworkable" that it (court) should refuse its enforcement, notwithstanding the fact that the Lokpal Act had come into force by a January 16, 2014, notification. The Centre had flagged two hurdles in implementing the Lokpal law. First, that it provides for the selection panel to have the Leader of Opposition (LOP) as one of its members. However, there is no recognised Leader of Opposition in the current Lok Sabha. The other hurdle it cited relates to the tenure of the eminent jurist to be appointed by the Selection Committee. Referring to the provisions of the Lokpal and Lokayuktas Act, 2013, and the amendments the government wanted to bring, the judgment had said that Sub-Section (2) of Section 4 of the Lokpal Act says that the appointment of the Chairperson or a Member of the Lokpal will not become invalid merely because of the reason of any vacancy in the Selection Committee. --IANS gt/vsc/sac (This story has not been edited by Business Standard staff and is auto-generated from a syndicated feed.) A charge-sheet has been filed against four Delhi University (DU) students for "misbehaving" with Information and Broadcasting Minister Smriti Irani on an occasion in 2017, police said on Tuesday. A senior Delhi Police officer told IANS that the charge sheet was filed on Monday against the four on charges of "stalking, drunken driving and insulting the modesty of a woman". In April 2017, four DU students were arrested for "chasing, misbehaving and overtaking" Smriti Irani's car in an inebriated state in the Chanakyapuri area here. They were arrested following a complaint by the Minister's security staff. --IANS nkh/in/vm (This story has not been edited by Business Standard staff and is auto-generated from a syndicated feed.) The BJP on Tuesday said that the Gitanjali Group's Mehul Choksi, who is an accused in the multi-crore PNB fraud case, enjoyed the "patronage" of Congress President Rahul Gandhi. "Choksi enjoyed the patronage, strength and support of Rahul in the party," Bharatiya Janata Party spokesman G.V.L. Narsimha Rao said while addressing a press conference here. Rao alleged that it was the reason why H.S. Chandramauli, who represented Choksi in a criminal case in 2015, was given a legislator ticket from the Madikeri constituency for the Karnataka Assembly election next month. The BJP leader said the 2015 criminal case against Choksi was later converted into a civil case. Rao also said that Chandramauli had been a legal consultant to Karnataka minister K.J. George in the DSP M.K. Ganapathi suicide case. Slamming the Congress's connection with Choksi, the BJP leader said: "First Rahul had promoted Choksi's Gitanjali Jewellery in 2013. "Then in 2013, former Finance Minister P. Chidambaram had removed the Director of the Allahabad Bank for denying to restructure a loan of Rs 1,550 crore to Choksi when he highlighted the lacunae in it. "The premises of Abhishek Manu Singhvi in Mumbai was rented to Choksi and even his wife bought jewellery worth Rs 5 crore from unaccounted cash. "One incident can be a coincidence, but multiple coincidences is a political conspiracy." The BJP leader also described Choksi as the third Robert Vadra of the Congress and said: "Choksi is third son-in-law of Congress after (Priyanka Gandhi's husband) Vadra and Vijay Mallya, who is an accused in a Rs 9,000 crore bank loan case." --IANS aks/ksk/bg (This story has not been edited by Business Standard staff and is auto-generated from a syndicated feed.) Fox News host Sean Hannity, an ardent supporter of Donald Trump, was named as the third "mystery" client of Michael Cohen, the US President's longtime personal lawyer, the media reported. It was revealed in a Lower Manhattan courthouse on Monday that Cohen's first client was Trump, the second was Republican fund-raiser Elliott Broidy, who admitted to paying a former Playboy model after she became pregnant during their affair, and the third was revealed as Hannity. Hannity has gone from giving advice on messaging and strategy to Trump and his advisers during the 2016 campaign to dining with him at the White House and Mar-a-Lago, reports The New York Times. His show "Hannity" is the most-watched cable news programme, averaging 3.2 million viewers in the first quarter of 2018, up from 1.8 million in the early months of 2016. Monday's disclosure occurred during the hearing on the expanding criminal investigation into Cohen's affairs. Federal investigators raided Cohen's home, office and hotel room on the morning of April 9. In a legal filing before the hearing on Monday, Cohen said that, since 2017, he had worked as a lawyer for 10 clients, seven of whom he served by providing "strategic advice and business consulting". The other three were Trump, Broidy and a third person who went unnamed. The mystery was solved when Kimba M. Wood, a judge in the US District Court for the Southern District of New York, ordered that Cohen's lawyer, Stephen Ryan, disclose the name of the client in question, who turned out to be Hannity, The New York Times reported. However, Hannity has denied that he was a client of Cohen's, saying that he had never paid him for his services and that his discussions with him were brief and centred on real estate. "Michael Cohen has never represented me in any matter. I never retained him, received an invoice, or paid legal fees. I have occasionally had brief discussions with him about legal questions about which I wanted his input and perspective," The Fox News host tweeted on Monday evening. "I assumed those conversations were confidential, but to be absolutely clear they never involved any matter between me and a third-party." --IANS ksk/sac (This story has not been edited by Business Standard staff and is auto-generated from a syndicated feed.) Bollywood actor Salman Khan, out on bail in a 1998 blackbuck poaching case, was on Tuesday granted permission to travel to the US, Canada and Nepal. Judge Chandra Kumar Songara of the Sessions Court here gave the permission soon after Salman submitted a plea. Salman's case was presented by senior advocate Mahesh Bora after brief arguments by public prosecutor Pokar Ram. Salman was granted bail in the poaching case here on April 7 after being sentenced to a five-year jail term. The actor spent two nights in jail following the court's verdict, after which he was granted bail. District and Sessions Court Judge Ravindra Kumar Joshi had asked the actor not to leave the country without the court's permission. Salman was granted bail on a personal bond of Rs 50,000. The actor has started shooting for Ali Abbas Zafar's "Bharat", which will also feature Priyanka Chopra. --IANS arc/rb/sar/vm (This story has not been edited by Business Standard staff and is auto-generated from a syndicated feed.) The Delhi Food and Supplies Department Commissioner has been transferred to the Land and Buildings Department following a letter from the Aam Aadmi Party (AAP) government seeking his sacking after they allegedly found "corruption" in the delivery of rations in the city. Food and Supplies Department Commissioner K.R. Meena told IANS that he received the transfer order on Tuesday, adding that he would be joining as the Principal Secretary of the Land and Buildings Department of the Delhi government. Food and Supplies Department Minister Imran Hussain, in a letter on Friday, had asked Lt. Governor Anil Baijal to sack the Commissioner, citing huge corruption in the distribution of rations in the city. Earlier too AAP ministers have attacked Meena for alleged corruption in the department. --IANS nkh/nks/sac (This story has not been edited by Business Standard staff and is auto-generated from a syndicated feed.) Citizens would be compensated for unscheduled power cuts lasting longer than one hour, if a policy approved by the Delhi government on Tuesday gets a green signal from Lt. Governor Anil Baijal. Chief Minister Arvind Kejriwal on Tuesday approved the policy to provide compensation to users in case of "unscheduled power cuts by the private power distribution companies" and it was later sent to the Lt. Governor for approval. The policy would now need Baijal's approval to come into force. "According to this new policy, in the case of an unscheduled power cut, the DISCOMS (power distribution companies) will have to restore the electricity within one hour, and failure to do so shall result in a penalty of Rs 50 per hour per consumer for the first two hours and Rs 100 per hour per consumer after two hours," an official statement said. The compensation would be provided to consumers in their monthly electricity bills. "The Delhi government is confident that the LG will concur with the policy and endorse this pro-consumer step, which will become a model for other governments across the country to follow," the statement added. Citizens would be compensated for unscheduled power cuts lasting longer than one hour if a policy approved by the Delhi government on Tuesday gets a green signal from Lt. Governor Anil Baijal. Chief Minister Arvind Kejriwal on Tuesday approved the policy to provide compensation to users in case of "unscheduled power cuts by the private power distribution companies" and it was later sent to the Lt. Governor for approval. "According to this new policy, in the case of an unscheduled power cut, the discoms (power distribution companies) will have to restore the electricity within one hour, and failure to do so shall result in a penalty of Rs 50 per hour per consumer for the first two hours and Rs 100 per hour per consumer after two hours," an official statement said. The compensation would be provided to consumers in their monthly electricity bills. "The Delhi government is confident that the LG will concur with the policy and endorse this pro-consumer step, which will become a model for other governments across the country to follow." In case of a power cut, a consumer has to file a "no current" complaint through SMS, email, phone, mobile application or website and along with their name, Consumer Account (CA) number and mobile number. The power distribution company would then attend to the complaint and send a confirmation message to the consumer with power restoration date and time. The respective compensation amount would be then credited to the CA number automatically and a message would be sent to the consumer. This amount would be then adjusted in the consumer's monthly electricity bill. --IANS nkh/him/vd (This story has not been edited by Business Standard staff and is auto-generated from a syndicated feed.) Amidst the geo-political tension of trade war, Sunil Bharti Mittal, Chairman, International Chamber of Commerce criticised the move to hike tariffs on imports by the United States and said any adverse change in the open, multilateral trading system would hurt all countries. "Open markets underpinned by the rules-based multilateral trading system have been a vital driver of prosperity across the world over the past 50 years. Any erosion of that system will come at quite a cost to us all," Mittal said in a statement here on Tuesday. "Tariff hikes will inevitably impact small businesses that often rely heavily on imported goods and services. Longstanding US trade policies, such as the Generalized System of Preferences (GSP), have been shown to play a key role in supporting the growth of domestic small businesses and associated job creation," he added. The US, blaming China for intellectual property theft, released a list of 1,300 products that could possibly be imposed with a tariff of 25 per cent -- worth a total of $50 billion -- unless China mended it ways. The very next day China came up with a list of US imports that could be charged with a 25 percent tariff, again worth approximately $50 billion. US President Donald Trump retaliated the following day saying that the US government is considering imposition of tariffs on another $100 billion of Chinese imports. In response, China warned on Friday that it was ready with a "fierce counter-strike" of fresh trade measures if Trump follows through on his threat and that it would fight the US "at any cost". Mittal further said: "A progressive closing of the world's largest economy to trade will damage both US and global growth prospects. In an interconnected world, international commerce cannot be governed by zero-sum policy decisions. We encourage the US and all its trading partners to find new ways to resolve ongoing trade tensions through multilateral dialogue -- and without recourse to further tariff increase." On Tuesday, Commerce Minister Suresh Prabhu said India is engaged with the US in "working out" issues arising from the the latter's last month protectionist measures of raising duties on steel and aluminium imports. --IANS ag/hs (This story has not been edited by Business Standard staff and is auto-generated from a syndicated feed.) As the BJP attacked Congress President Rahul Gandhi for "defaming Hindus globally" citing Wikileaks revelations, the party said the BJP should first reply on Union Finance Minister Arun Jaitley's stand that "BJP used Hindu nationalism as a tool to attract votes". "They have exposed themselves in a bid to attack Rahul Gandhi on Wikileaks (reports)," said Congress spokesperson Jaiveer Shergill. The Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP), before attacking Rahul Gandhi on the Wikileaks issue, should explain Arun Jaitley's stand that the "BJP uses Hindu nationalism as a tool to attract votes", he said. "Jaitley further said 'Hindu nationalism is the classic opportunity and a tool for opportunism' and said 'Modi is a polarising personality' in his discussion with a US diplomat in 2005. "The BJP should reply on this first. If they wish to attack Rahul Gandhi based on Wikileaks (reports), they should first seek reply from their own Minister," he added. Referring to a cable of the US Embassy in New Delhi, Shergill said: "Jaitley argued that Hindu nationalism will always be a talking point for the BJP. He characterised this as an opportunistic issue." "In India's north-east, for instance, Hindutva plays well because of public anxiety about illegal migration of Muslims from Bangladesh. "With a recent improvement of Indo-Pakistan relation," he added, "Hindu Nationalism is now less resonant in New Delhi but that could change with another cross-border terrorist attack, for instance, on the Indian Parliament," said Shergill. "Jaitley agreed with the Charge d'affairs point that Modi was a polarising personality," he added. The Congress leader said: "They are attacking Rahul Gandhi on Wikileaks (reports) just to divert attention from people's issues. "Today, again there is no money in ATMs, atrocities on Dalits are increasing, government is silent on Rafale, Nirav Modi and Mehul Choksi, also on spurt in the profit of businesses of Jay Shah and Piyush Goyal. They just want to run away from giving reply on these issues," he added. --IANS sid/nir/bg (This story has not been edited by Business Standard staff and is auto-generated from a syndicated feed.) Veteran actress Shabana Azmi says for the government's "Beti Bachao, Beti Padhao" campaign to be effective, "our betis (daughters) should be alive". Shabana shared her thoughts at Anu and Shashi Ranjan-organised 20th Beti FLO GR8 Awards 2018, which she attended here on Monday night with Jeetendra, Amit Sadh, Bhumi Pednekar, Huma Qureshi, Anup Jalota and Amruta Fadnavis. Reacting to the shocking incident involving the abduction, rape and murder of an eight-year-old in a village near Kathua in Jammu and Kashmir, Shabana said: "Our country is living in multiple centuries at one time. We are living in the 18th, 19th, 20th and 21st centuries at a time, and this we are experiencing in the way we treat women of this country. "Our women have achieved great heights in their respective careers and have become leaders. But on the other hand, we read and watch such news that I don't have words to express (my emotions). We should all unite and ensure these kinds of incidents don't happen. "We always say 'Beti Bachao, Beti Padhao', and we should work towards that. But for that, firstly, our betis (daughters) should be alive." Other celebrtities also reacted to the incident. Huma said: "It's sad, tragic and heartbreaking. People behind it should be punished. If we are not able to protect an eight-year-old girl as a society, then it is really shameful. "A lot of people are giving political angles to it. I feel very upset about that also. I think justice is what we should be fighting for and arguing about -- and not about making the issue political." On the 20th Beti FLO GR8 Awards 2018, Huma said: "We all believe in the cause of women empowerment and it has become necessary that we encourage women, because girls can also bring glory to our country, just like boys. "Girls are doing so much better in every field. Whatever I am today is because of my mother and how she pushed me and supported me. So I am all for the cause of women's empowerment." --IANS iv/rb/sac (This story has not been edited by Business Standard staff and is auto-generated from a syndicated feed.) An AIADMK faction led by sidelined leader V.K. Sasikala told the Delhi High Court on Tuesday that as per the party constitution, the office of General Secretary holds the "supreme authority" in the functioning of the AIADMK. Sasikala's counsel and Senior Advocate Kapil Sibal told a bench of Justice G.S. Sistani and Justice Sangita Dhingra Sehgal that the selection of the AIADMK General Secretary has to be done by the primary members. The counsel said that without convening a meeting of the party's primary members, the Election Commission cannot decide which faction represents the original AIADMK. The counsel submitted that the rival faction led by Tamil Nadu Chief Minister O. Palaniswami and Deputy Chief Minister O. Panneerselvam have overturned the AIADMK constitution by repealing the post of General Secretary in September 2017, when Sasikala was the interim General Secretary, and hence could not claim to be the rightful successor. The court listed the matter for April 20 for further hearing. The faction led by Palaniswami and Panneerselvam in March moved the Supreme Court against the order of a bench of a single judge of the Delhi High Court, which has allowed sidelined AIADMK leader T.T.V. Dinakaran's plea to use a common symbol preferably "pressure cooker" and a suitable name for carrying out political activities as a unified entity. The Supreme Court has stayed the order of the high court and directed its Acting Chief Justice to constitute a division bench to hear the matter again. The single judge's order had come on Dinakaran's interim plea seeking directions that his group can continue to carry out its political activities as a unified entity during the pendency of his main application regarding the "two leaves" symbol. The AIADMK split into two factions after the death of former Chief Minister of Tamil Nadu J. Jayalalithaa. One faction is led by Palaniswami and Panneerselvam and the other by Sasikala and Dinakaran. In December 2017, Dinakaran won the Radhakrishnan Nagar (R.K. Nagar) bypoll as an Independent candidate contesting with the "pressure cooker" symbol. Dinakaran has also challenged the Election Commission order which awarded the two leaves symbol to the faction led by the Tamil Nadu Chief Minister and his deputy. --IANS akk/nir/bg (This story has not been edited by Business Standard staff and is auto-generated from a syndicated feed.) Claiming that Goa Chief Minister Manohar Parrikar was responding well to treatment abroad, the state BJP on Tuesday slammed the media for its repeated questions on his health. BJP legislator and the party's Goa unit Spokesperson Nilesh Cabral rejected the Congress demand for regular bulletins on the health of Parrikar, under treatment in the US for advanced pancreatic cancer. "The Chief Minister is not well -- everybody knows it. He is being treated and is showing good recovery. And when he is fit to travel, as per the medical advice, he will fly back from the US," Cabral said. Parrikar was moved to a medical facility in New York last month, a few weeks after he was first hospitalised on February 15, when he experienced stomach pain. Parrikar, who was hospitalised in Goa and Mumbai earlier, has not attended office for nearly two months. While there were no health bulletins by medical professionals on the severity of Parrikar's ailment, informal updates from the Chief Minister's Office have maintained that he is suffering from "mild pancreatitis". Responding to criticism by the Congress over Parrikar's decision to appoint a three-Minister committee to run the state in his absence, the BJP leader drew similarities between Goa and Tamil Nadu which were, he claimed, governed by committees of ministers in the absence of the Chief Minister. "A similar thing has happened in Tamil Nadu when four of its ailing Chief Ministers have been admitted to hospitals in India and abroad. Similar committees were formed and that state has functioned well," Cabral said. --IANS maya/tsb/bg (This story has not been edited by Business Standard staff and is auto-generated from a syndicated feed.) Google has joined hands with CyArk, a California-based 3D laser scanning non-profit, to build virtual reality (VR) representations of historical sites around the world that are at risk of destruction due to human conflict or natural disasters, media reports said. The joint effort -- called the Open Heritage project -- will use CyArk's (short for cyber archive) laser-scanning technology to capture and archive the imperiled archaeological wonders from all over the world, the Verge reported late on Monday. The archived data could be re-created in VR format, so that it can be preserved and explored online either on a computer, through a mobile device, or while wearing a VR headset. "With modern technology, we can capture these monuments in fuller detail than ever before, including the colour and texture of surfaces alongside the geometry captured by the laser scanners with millimeter precision in 3D," Chance Coughenour, a digital archaeologist and programme manager with the Google Arts and Culture division, said in a press release. "These detailed scans can also be used to identify areas of damage and assist restoration efforts," Coughenour added. Founded in 2003 to digitally record, archive and share the world's cultural heritage, CyArk has recorded over 200 monuments in all seven continents. The company uses laser-scanning system, as well as high-resolution photography captured by drones and DSLR cameras. "For many of the sites, we have also developed intricate 3D models that allow viewers to inspect from every angle, using the new Google Poly 3D viewer on Google Arts and Culture," Coughenour said. Google and CyArk are also planning to release the source data of the models. The Open Heritage models will be available online and on the Google Arts and Culture mobile apps for iOS and Android. Those mobile apps will also support the VR tours through Google's Daydream platform, the report said. Google Arts and Culture, which first went live back in 2011, has over the past seven years, partnered with 1,500 museums from over 70 countries to bring their collections online and put more of the world's culture at your fingertips. "This project marks a new chapter for Google Arts & Culture, as it is the first time we're putting 3D heritage sites on the platform," Coughenour noted. --IANS rt/vd (This story has not been edited by Business Standard staff and is auto-generated from a syndicated feed.) A team of Google researchers has developed a Machine Learning (ML) and Augmented Reality (AR)-powered microscope that can help in real-time detection of cancer and save millions of lives. In the annual meeting of the American Association for Cancer Research (AACR) in Chicago, Illinois on Monday, Google described a prototype Augmented Reality Microscope (ARM) platform that can help accelerate and democratise the adoption of deep learning tools for pathologists around the world. The platform consists of a modified light microscope that enables real-time image analysis and presentation of the results of ML algorithms directly into the field of view. The ARM can be retrofitted into existing light microscopes around the world, using low-cost, readily-available components, and without the need for whole slide digital versions of the tissue being analysed. "In principle, the ARM can provide a wide variety of visual feedback, including text, arrows, contours, heatmaps or animations, and is capable of running many types of machine learning algorithms aimed at solving different problems such as object detection, quantification or classification," Martin Stumpe, Technical Lead and Craig Mermel, Product Manager, Google Brain Team, wrote in a blog post. Applications of deep learning to medical disciplines including ophthalmology, dermatology, radiology, and pathology have shown great promise. "At Google, we have also published results showing that a convolutional neural network is able to detect breast cancer metastases in lymph nodes at a level of accuracy comparable to a trained pathologist," the post said. However, because direct tissue visualization using a compound light microscope remains the predominant means by which a pathologist diagnoses illness, a critical barrier to the widespread adoption of deep learning in pathology is the dependence on having a digital representation of the microscopic tissue. Modern computational components and deep learning models, such as those built upon open source software "TensorFlow", will allow a wide range of pre-trained models to run on this platform. The Google team configured ARM to run two different cancer detection algorithms -- one that detects breast cancer metastases in lymph node specimens and another that detects prostate cancer in prostatectomy specimens. While both cancer models were originally trained on images from a whole slide scanner with a significantly different optical configuration, the models performed remarkably well on the ARM with no additional re-training, the Google Brain Team noted. "We believe that the ARM has potential for a large impact on global health, particularly for the diagnosis of infectious diseases, including tuberculosis and malaria, in the developing countries," Google noted. --IANS na/vm (This story has not been edited by Business Standard staff and is auto-generated from a syndicated feed.) The central government on Tuesday said that it has co-contributed Rs 120.92 crore for nearly 14 lakh "eligible subscribers" of the Atal Pension Yojana during FY 2016-17. According to the Ministry of Finance, the scheme provides for the government to make co-contribution for those who have registered before March 31, 2016 with an amount of 50 per cent of the "subscribers contribution up to a maximum of Rs 1,000". As per the scheme, subscribers will be eligible for co-contribution for a period of five years from 2015-16 to 2019-20 -- "only those subscribers who are not income tax payers and not part of any other social security schemes are eligible for Government of India co-contribution". "The Government of India through PFRDA (Pension Fund Regulatory and Development Authority) has released co-contribution for the FY 2016-17 for nearly 14 lakh eligible subscribers amounting to Rs 120.92 crore," the ministry said in a statement. "The subscribers who have any pending contributions in their APY (Atal Pension Yojana) account till March 2017 won't be paid with co-contribution. They have been advised by PFRDA to regularise their APY account so as to get government of India co-contribution." The APY provides minimum guaranteed pension ranging between Rs 1,000 to Rs 5,000 per month for the subscriber from the age of 60 years. The scheme is being implemented through APY Service Providers comprising of public sector banks (PSBs), private sector banks, regional rural banks (RRBs), cooperative banks and the department of post. The statement added that the total number of subscribers registered under APY as on April 12, 2018 has crossed 97.60 lakh. --IANS rv/bg (This story has not been edited by Business Standard staff and is auto-generated from a syndicated feed.) PMK leader S. Ramadoss on Tuesday said committees appointed by Tamil Nadu Governor Banwarilal Purohit and the Vice Chancellor of Madurai Kamaraj University P.P. Chellathurai to probe an alleged sexual trafficking complaint were not legally valid. Ramadoss welcomed the arrest of a female professor who allegedly tried to lure her students to extend sexual favours to top officials of the university in Tamil Nadu. He said only a Central Bureau of Investigation (CBI) probe was justified. On Monday, Governor Purohit and Chellathurai had ordered a high-level inquiry into the matter by a retired IAS officer, R. Santhanam. But Chellathurai told reporters in New Delhi on Monday that a five-member committee had been constituted to investigate the case. "Governor Purohit is only a Chancellor of the University. He does not have the power to govern or probe malpractices in the colleges," Ramadoss said. He said only the college management has the power to take action against a professor found to be misguiding the students to take a wrong path. A shadow of suspicion is on all the top officials of the University and hence Chellathurai can face an inquiry committee but cannot set up one, according to the PMK leader. He said the accused professor's mobile phone call records should be checked to determine others involved. The woman professor, who taught at a college in Aruppukottai, was at the centre of a storm after audio clips of her talk with some students suggesting that they yield themselves to keep the 'higher-ups' in the Madurai Kamaraj University happy so that the college gets facilities. The clips went viral on the social media. Police in Virudhunagar district are currently questioning her. Meanwhile, DMK leader M.K. Stalin told reporters that only a Vice Chancellor of a University can set up an inquiry committee and not the Governor who is the Chancellor. "It is not known why the Governor as the Chancellor acted in this manner. There seems to be some confusion. Only a High Court monitored CBI probe would bring out the truth," Stalin said. --IANS vj/ksk/hs (This story has not been edited by Business Standard staff and is auto-generated from a syndicated feed.) The Punjab and Haryana High Court on Tuesday directed that a compensation of Rs 20 lakh be paid to the wife of a Shiromani Akali Dal leader of Punjab who was killed in 2015 in a shootout by the police who mistook him for a gangster. The high court ordered the compensation to Mukhjit Singh Mukha's wife Harjit Kaur. She had approached the high court against the Punjab government. Justice Rakesh Kumar Jain gave the order as the court found the Rs 5 lakh compensation given by the then state government was inadequate. The victim was only 38 years old when he was waylaid by a team of the Punjab Police in Amritsar district on June 16, 2015, and was indiscriminately fired upon. Mukha received 23 gunshot wounds and died. The Punjab Police later set up a special investigation team (SIT) to probe the incident. The police team responsible for the shootout admitted that they mistook Mukha to be a gangster. The Akali Dal was in power when the incident took place. The then Deputy Chief Minister and Shiromani Akali Dal president, Sukhbir Singh Badal, who was also the state Home Minister, announced the Rs 5 lakh compensation. He also promised a government job to the victim's wife but it was not given. --IANS js/him/bg (This story has not been edited by Business Standard staff and is auto-generated from a syndicated feed.) At a time when big enterprises globally are looking to create a robust 5G ecosystem for the commercial roll-out of the technology, Huawei on Tuesday said the company will launch an end-to-end 5G solution by the second half of this year. According to Huawei's Rotating Chairman Eric Xu, the company is committed to investing in 5G. "We are fully committed to 5G investment and by the second half of this year, we're going to launch an end-to-end 5G solution," Huawei's rotating Chairman Eric Xu said here on Tuesday. Speaking during his keynote at the 2018 edition of the Huawei Analyst Summit (HAS), Xu said 5G will result in faster speed and decrease networking costs. "5G is just another product line at Huawei. It is a natural evolution of the technology -- from 2G to 3G to 4G and now 5G," Xu told the gathering. According to Xu, there is no fundamental difference between 4G and 5G and for the consumers, it is all about faster speed. "We don't have other material differences in experiences for the consumer between the two technologies," he said. The executive said that 4G infrastructure today is robust and the 5G technology will first be targeted at dense areas to meet growing demand from the consumers for more bandwidth. When asked about the US restricting access to China-made smartphones and telecoms infrastructure owing to security concerns, Xu refused to comment directly but said Huawei's position in the US market has not changed. "We're focused on what we can do and provide better services to our customers,' Xu said. According to him, Artificial Intelligence (AI) will help the telecom industry worldwide to improve networks. In February, Huawei and telecom services provider Bharti Airtel announced to have successfully conducted 5G network trial under a test set-up in India. The trial was conducted at Airtel's Network Experience Centre in Manesar (Gurugram). During the test trial, a user throughput of more than 3Gbps was achieved. This is the highest measured throughput for a mobile network in 3.5 GHz band with 100MHz bandwidth and end-to-end network latency of approximately 1 msec, the company said. "We have been focusing on developing 5G ecosystem and use cases and the show with Bharti Airtel impressively demonstrates the performance capability of 5G in 3.5 GHz band," said Emmanuel Coelho Alves, Director, Wireless Marketing, Huawei HQ. The company, which began investing in 5G research in 2009, is aiming to invest $600 million in the 5G technology by end of this year. "The 5G era is approaching, and we are confident that 5G deployment in India will happen in line with global timeline," Jay Chen, CEO, Huawei India, told IANS recently. Huawei in September last year released its 5G-oriented mobile bearer solution 'X-Haul' for operators in India to build end-to-end 5G networks. (Aadil Mir is in Shenzhen at the invitation of Huawei. He can be contacted at aadil.hussain@ians.in) --IANS ahm/na/bg (This story has not been edited by Business Standard staff and is auto-generated from a syndicated feed.) In a setback to the Telangana government, the Hyderabad High Court on Tuesday revoked the disqualification of two legislators of opposition Congress from the state Assembly. Justice B. Siva Sankara Rao set aside the expulsion of Komatireddy Venkat Reddy and S.A. Sampath Kumar and directed that their membership be restored. The court observed that if they have done anything wrong, the government may take disciplinary action but removing them from the House was not proper. The two legislators were disqualified from the Telangana Assembly last month after they tried to disrupt the Governor's address on the first day of the Budget Session on March 12. Amid the ruckus, the Congress members allegedly threw headphones, injuring Council Chairman K. Swami Goud in his eye. The legislators denied the allegations. The next day, the Assembly passed a resolution expelling the two Congress members. The Congress legislators had challenged their disqualification and also a gazette notification issued by the Legislature Secretary notifying vacancy for Nalgonda and Alampur (SC) Assembly constituencies, which they were representing. Earlier, in its interim order, the court had directed the Election Commission not to issue poll schedule for by-elections in their constituencies for six months. The Congress leaders, in their petition, argued that that they were not given any notice or opportunity to explain the alleged obstruction or interruption or undignified behaviour at the time of Governor's address, but they were singled out as Chief Minister K. Chandrasekhar Rao had a personal vendetta against them. Reacting to the court verdict, Venkat Reddy said justice has prevailed and the Chief Minister "fell in his own trap". The former minister said despite all its conspiracies, the TRS could not harm him. State Congress chief Uttam Kumar Reddy said the court judgment was a "slap on the face of the TRS government", adding at least now the government should mend its ways and function in a democratic fashion. --IANS ms/him/vd (This story has not been edited by Business Standard staff and is auto-generated from a syndicated feed.) The Indian Institute of Technology Delhi (IIT-D) is planning to invite startup ideas from Ph.D. degree holders nationwide to 'incubate' them for becoming the future "Google and Facebook", the Institute Director said here on Tuesday. Under the initiative called 'Platform for Harnessing Deep Technology', the institute will select up to 20 such projects, tentatively, and will provide the future entrepreneurs with accommodation and access to resources to help them convert their models into reality. It will only accept proposals of Ph.D. degree holders from technical institutions. "There are about 25,000 Ph.D. holders (technical) in the country, who may struggle to find a job... There are not many opportunities for them apart from, maybe, become teachers," IIT-D Director V. Ramgopal Rao told the media. Those people, he said, who have a startup model to propose can apply for a "fellowship" under this incubation programme and the IIT Delhi "will provide them accommodation and access to facilities". The initial grant for the project will be Rs 20 crore and an announcement will be made about the projects selected in the coming months. The IIT-D is also organising the 14th edition of its Open House on Saturday, during which it will showcase innovative projects it finished and embarked upon in the last one year. Some of these projects include nasal filters to block pollutants while breathing, a flexi-crutch for ease and comfort in walking for the disabled and biodegradable tableware made from rice straw. -- IANS vn/nks/bg (This story has not been edited by Business Standard staff and is auto-generated from a syndicated feed.) India has called for an impartial and objective investigation by the Organisation for the Prohibition of Chemical Weapons (OPCW) into the alleged use of chemical weapons in Syria recently. The demand was made by Ambassador to Holland and Permanent Representative of India to OPCW Venu Rajamony at the 58th Meeting of the Executive Council of the OPCW convened on Monday to discuss allegations regarding use of chemical weapons in Douma, Syria. Stating that the alleged use, if true, is deplorable, Rajamony pointed out that the use of chemical weapons anywhere, at any time, by anybody, under any circumstances, cannot be justified and the perpetrators of such abhorrent acts must be held accountable. He said any use of chemical weapons is in complete disregard of humanity, and is reprehensible and contrary to the provisions of the Chemical Weapons Convention as well as accepted international norms. He commended the OPCW for its prompt deployment of the Fact Finding Mission to Douma and expressed appreciation to the Director General and OPCW staff for their commitment to the aims and work of the organization often in challenging circumstances. --IANS vsc/vm (This story has not been edited by Business Standard staff and is auto-generated from a syndicated feed.) India and the five Nordic nations of Sweden, Denmark, Iceland, Norway and Finland on Tuesday agreed to deepen cooperation in innovation and climate change in the first India-Nordic Summit held here during the course of Indian Prime Minister Narendra Modi's visit here. "During the Summit, the Prime Ministers pledged to deepen cooperation between India and the Nordic countries and focused their discussions on key issues related to global security, economic growth, innovation and climate change," the Indian External Affairs Ministry said in a statement following the meeting. "They acknowledged that innovation and digital transformation drive growth in an interconnected world, which underpin a growing engagement between India and the Nordic countries," it stated. "The Summit emphasized the India's strong commitment to innovation and digital initiatives as key to prosperity and sustainable development, with national flagship programmes such as Make in India, Start-up India, Digital India and Clean India." Ahead of the Summit, Modi held separate bilateral meetings with his counterparts from Denmark, Iceland, Norway and Finland. Modi held the first meeting with Danish Prime Minister Lars Lokke Rasmussen. In a tweet, Indian External Affairs Ministry spokesperson Raveesh Kumar said the two leaders "had a good meeting on renewing and enhancing cooperation and expressed their mutual desire to take the relationship forward". After the meeting, the two sides exchanged MoUs in the areas of urban development, animal husbandry and dairying, food safety and agricultural research and education. Modi then met his Icelandic counterpart Katrin Jakobsdottir. "PM urged Icelandic companies to look at India as an investment destination in blue economy and geothermal energy and strengthen cooperation in education, tourism and culture," Kumar said. Following the meeting, the two sides signed an MoU on the establishment of an ICCR Chair for Hindi language between the Indian Council for Cultural Relations and the University of Iceland. Modi then held a meeting with Norwegian Prime Minister Erna Solberg. According to the Indian spokesperson, the two leaders had an "engaging interaction" on trade and investment, shipping and port-development, blue economy, renewable energy, health, information technology and green transport solutions. Finally, the Indian leader met Finnish Prime Minister Juhu Sipila. "We had excellent discussions on deepening avenues of cooperation between India and Finland," Modi said in a separate tweet. India and Sweden co-hosted the India-Nordic Summit on the second and final day of Modi's visit to Sweden. For India, Nordic countries are a potential source for clean technology, environmental solutions, port modernisation, cold chain, skill development, innovation among other areas. According to figures provided by the Indian External Affairs Ministry, India's trade with the Nordic countries totaled around $5.3 billion in 2016-17, with cumulative foreign direct investment in India at $2.5 billion. Earlier on Tuesday, Modi held a bilateral summit with Swedish Prime Minister Stefan Lofven following which India and Sweden signed a Joint Action Plan and an Innovation Partnership for a Sustainable Future. --IANS ab/qd (This story has not been edited by Business Standard staff and is auto-generated from a syndicated feed.) With the aim to build a win-win partnership with Sweden making use of the opportunities offered by India's development programmes, the two countries on Tuesday signed a Joint Action Plan and an Innovation Partnership following a bilateral summit between Indian Prime Minister Narendra Modi and his Swedish counterpart Stefan Lofven here. Jointly addressing the media here along with Lofven after their talks, Modi said that Sweden has been a strong contributor to the Make in India programme from the beginning and recalled that the Swedish Prime Minister himself led a big business delegation to the Make in India summit in Mumbai in 2016. "The main theme of our discussions today was how to develop a win-win partnership between Sweden and India through the opportunities offered by India's development programmes," Modi said. "As a result, we agreed to a Joint Action Plan and an Innovation Partnership." Stating that innovation, investment, start-ups, manufacturing were among the main areas of cooperation between the two countries, he said that attention was also paid to renewable energy, urban transport and waste management to improve the quality of life of the Indian people. According to the Joint Action Plan, both sides will initiate a multi-stake holder Innovation Partnership for a Sustainable Future, underpinning the mutual commitment to drive prosperity and growth and address societal challenges such as climate change and sustainable development through innovation. The Action Plan also aims to exchange knowledge and explore cooperation on smart cities, including transit-oriented urban development, air pollution control, waste management, waste-to-energy, waste-water treatment, district cooling and circular economy, including through dialogue and capacity building. The two sides also agreed to exchange know-how and explore cooperation in the areas of electro-mobility as well as renewable fuels. The Joint Action Plan aims to deepen collaboration between the two countries in smart, sustainable and renewable energy, women's skills development and empowerment, space and science, and health and life sciences. "Defence and security is an important pillar of our bilateral relationship," Modi said in his address to the media. "Sweden has been partner of India in defence sector for a long time. I am confident that new opportunities for cooperation in this sector will arise in the future, especially in defence production." Modi said that both sides also agreed to further strengthen security, especially cyber security cooperation. According to the Joint Action Plan, both sides agreed to explore the finalisation of a bilateral agreement on exchange and mutual protection of classified information for cooperation in the defence area and encourage industry partners to develop supply chains for small and medium sized enterprises with major defence and aerospace original equipment manufacturers. "One more thing that we have agreed upon is that the importance of our relationship should be reflected at the regional and global levels," Modi said. "We have been closely cooperating on the international platform and this will continue." Modi also said developments in Europe and Asia came up for detailed discussion during the bilateral summit. According to the Joint Action Plan, both sides "reaffirmed the need for reform of the UN Security Council, including its expansion, to make it more representative, accountable, effective, and responsive to the realities of the 21st century". "Both Prime Ministers called for greater unity and stronger international partnership to counter terrorism, disrupt terrorist networks and financing, and to prevent violent extremism," it stated. On his part, Lofven said that he believed that Sweden and India make a perfect match. Stating that India is undergoing an unprecedented economic transformation, he said that Sweden has a lot of innovative solutions to offer in this connection. "I am very pleased to announce that the Swedish government will kick start our Innovation Partnership by providing up to 50 million Swedish kronor (Over $59 million) for innovation cooperation with India in the field of smart cities and sustainability," Lofven said. Following the summit, Modi and Lofven participated in a round table with Swedish CEOs during which the CEOs were exhorted to invest in India and participate in the country's flagship initiatives, External Affairs Ministry spokesperson Ravessh Kumar said in a tweet. Earlier in the day, Modi called on Sweden's King Carl XVI Gustaf at the Royal Palace here and the two leaders exchanged views on strengthening bilateral cooperation. India and Sweden will on Tuesday also co-host the first ever India-Nordic Summit, where, apart from Modi and Lofven, the Prime Ministers of the other four Nordic countries of Denmark, Finland, Iceland and Norway will also be present. Modi will hold separate bilateral meetings with the leaders of the other four Nordic countries on the sidelines of the summit. The Indian Prime Minister arrived here on Monday evening on the first leg of his three-nation tour of Europe that will also see him going to Britain and Germany. This is the first prime ministerial visit from India to Sweden in 30 years after the visit of then Prime Minister Rajiv Gandhi in 1988. After attending an Indian community event here late on Tuesday night, Modi will depart for London on the second leg of his tour. --IANS ab/bg (This story has not been edited by Business Standard staff and is auto-generated from a syndicated feed.) Iraq said it has executed 13 convicted prisoners over charges of terrorism, despite international calls to end the death penalty. "Eleven convicts were accused of charges ranging from car bombings, killing of security members and kidnappings," the Iraqi Ministry of Justice said in a statement on Monday, without giving further details on the other two convicts, Xinhua reported. The ministry renewed its commitment to "implement the law without being affected by any pressures". The increase of executions in Iraq has sparked calls to stop capital punishment by the UN mission in Iraq, European Union and some international human rights groups, which have criticized the lack of transparency in Iraqi courts. Death penalty in Iraq was suspended on June 10, 2003, but was reinstated from August 8, 2004. --IANS pgh/ (This story has not been edited by Business Standard staff and is auto-generated from a syndicated feed.) The Jharkhand government on Tuesday recommended an investigation by the CBI into the death of a woman doctor from the state in Kerala. "Jharkhand Chief Minister Raghubar Das has given his approval to recommend CBI probe into the death of Dr. Mamta Rai," said a government press release. Mamta, a resident of Seraikela-Kharsawan district of Jharkhand, who had gone to Kochi, was found dead in a hotel. The family members demanded a Central Bureau of Investigation (CBI) probe into the doctor's death, as they suspect that a doctor-friend of the deceased was behind her death. She was doing her post-graduation from AIIMS in dermatology and had gone to Kochi to take part in an academic conference. Her body was found hanging from the ceiling fan of the hotel room in January this year. --IANS ns/nir/bg (This story has not been edited by Business Standard staff and is auto-generated from a syndicated feed.) Former Jammu and Kashmir minister Choudhary Lal Singh staged a protest march here on Tuesday demanding a CBI probe in the Kathua rape and murder case. Singh stepped down as the Forest Minister along with Chander Prakash Ganga, who held the industries portfolio in the PDP-BJP government, after a public outcry over their participation in Hindu Ekta Manch rally which was held in defence of the accused in the crime. "She was our own daughter. We are fighting to punish her culprits, but it is unfortunate that people living far away are interpreting this case without knowing the facts," Singh told supporters who gathered in the city's Satwari Chowk area. On Monday, Governor N.N. Vohra accepted the resignations of the ministers. --IANS sq/ksk/vm (This story has not been edited by Business Standard staff and is auto-generated from a syndicated feed.) North Korean leader Kim Jong-un expressed his desire to strengthen ties with China during a ballet performance by a Chinese troupe here, state-run news agency KCNA reported on Tuesday. On Monday, Kim, along with his wife Ri Sol-ju, watched the Chinese artistes perform "Red Women Company", reports Efe news agency. After the performance, the couple met the troupe and Kim expressed hope the visit "would serve as a significant occasion in carrying forward and further consolidating the traditional DPRK-China friendship". The visiting Chinese troupe will participate in a festival as part of cultural exchanges between the two countries. China and North Korea's relations had been strained until Kim travelled to meet Chinese President Xi Jinping in March. The visit came before the planned summits between North Korea and South Korea and the US. It also marked Kim's first trip abroad and the first meeting with a foreign president since he came to power in 2011. The delegation of artistes, headed by the director of international relations of the Communist Party of China, Song Tao, arrived in Pyongyang last week, KCNA reported. Song watched the performance along with North Korean politburo's members, such as the regime's number two, Choe Ryong-hae. Kim and Song spoke in a friendly way and the Chinese emissary said Xi attached great importance to the joint agreement in cultural matters with North Korea and conveyed his will to deepen exchanges in this and other fields. Beijing's support for UN sanctions against Pyongyang in the wake of its nuclear and ballistic missile tests had worsened the bilateral relation between the two allies in the recent years. --IANS ksk (This story has not been edited by Business Standard staff and is auto-generated from a syndicated feed.) The last key accused in the murder of a former radio jockey was arrested here on Tuesday, police said. Appunny was part of a four-member gang who killed Rajesh on March 27 at his studio near Thiruvananthapuram. Last week, the police arrested gang leader Alibhai, a resident of Alappuzha district, upon his arrival from Qatar at the Trivandrum International Airport. A few days after the murder, Alibhai had flown to Qatar, where he works in a gymnasium. The police suspect that the gym's owner was the actual mastermind, as Rajesh who was also in in Qatar, had an affair with his former wife. The police was now trying to repatriate the owner of the gym, but the Qatari authorities have imposed a travel ban on him. --IANS sg/ksk/vm (This story has not been edited by Business Standard staff and is auto-generated from a syndicated feed.) The Maharashtra Police carried out multi-city raids on Tuesday against prominent Dalit activists and supporters in a fallout of the January 1 caste riots in Koregaon-Bhima, official sources said here. The raids which started around 5 a.m. were carried out by several teams of the Pune police at the homes and offices of various Dalit activists in Mumbai, Pune and Nagpur in an attempt to unravel alleged links with Maoists in these urban centres. A raid was also carried out at the residence of activist Rona Wilson in New Delhi. Besides, the police also zeroed in on those involved or connected with the Elgaar Conference of December 31, 2017 held in Pune which was addressed by Gujarat MLA Jignesh Mewani and JNU student leader Umar Khalid, Chhattisgarh activist Soni Sori and Bhim Army President Vinay Ratan Singh. The police also raided and searched the home of prominent lawyer Surendra Gadling in Nagpur. He was representing several alleged Maoists in different courts, including the former Delhi University professor G.N. Saibaba. Searches continued at the premises of the Leftist organisation Kabir Kala Manch (KKM) and Republican Panthers Party in connection with the Elgaar Conference and other leaders like Ramesh Gaychor and Sagar Gorkhe. In Mumbai, searches were carried out at the residences of Left activists Sudhir Dhawale, Harshali Potdar and Jyoti Jagtap. The police produced search warrants at all the places and carried away laptops, literature and pamphlets. The raids followed a complaint registered against the KKM and other activists for organising the Elgaar Conference. Reacting sharply to the police action, Bharipa Bahujan Mahasangh President Prakash Ambedkar termed it "harassment and diversionary tactics" by the government. "Instead of arresting Sambhaji Bhide, alias Guruji, the main culprit who fuelled the Koregaon-Bhima riots, the government is indulging in these diversions. "Police have already arrested Milind Ekbote, but not Bhide. The police must declare what evidence they have found against these people," said Ambedkar, grandson of B.R. Ambedkar, chief architect of the Indian Constitution. Republican Dalit Panthers Party President Sumedh Jadhav said the raids "are a serious matter" and expressed apprehension that the police are likely to arrest many activists involved with the Elgaar Conference. Ambedkar had met Chief Minister Devendra Fadnavis on several occasions demanding Bhide's arrest, but the state government later gave a clean chit to the Hindutva leader in the matter. The Elgaar Conference was held in Pune's Shaniwarwada, later Koregaon-Bhim witnessed riots on January 1 which left one dead, followed by the retaliatory Maharashtra shutdown call issued by Ambedkar and other parties on January 3. --IANS qn/him/bg (This story has not been edited by Business Standard staff and is auto-generated from a syndicated feed.) A mentally challenged minor girl was allegedly raped by a youth and two of his friends filmed the crime in the national capital, said a police officer on Tuesday, adding that all the accused have been arrested. According to the police, accused Bunty and two of his friends were arrested on Monday night. "Bunty has been booked for rape and under the Protection of Children from Sexual Offences Act (POCSO), and his friends under the relevant sections of IPC and the IT Act for their involvement in the crime," the police officer said. He said the incident took place on Friday and was reported to the police the next day after the family of victim, 12, saw the video clip on their WhatsApp. The victim stays with her family in Mangolpur Kalan of Rohini in west Delhi. The family was shocked to see the video and immediately informed the police about the incident, the officer said. "Bunty, who is a neighbour of the victim, on the day of crime took her to some places in good faith in the locality. "Finally, he took the girl to a community center and at a secluded place committed the crime in front of two of his friends. The scene of crime was identified through the video they had made," the police officer said. The victim's family also alleged that the accused's family members were mounting pressure on them to withdraw the case. "Accused Bunty is a powerful person and his other family members have strong hold in the area. They are mounting pressure on us to withdraw rape case against Bunty after his arrest. They are also pressurising us to leave Mangolpur Kalan locality," victim's mother said. --IANS sp/nir (This story has not been edited by Business Standard staff and is auto-generated from a syndicated feed.) German Chancellor Angela Merkel and Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan have discussed the situation in Syria and the possible political process there. Steffen Seibert, spokesperson of the German federal government, said at a press conference on Monday that the two leaders agreed on telephone call that the situation was particularly urgent, Xinhua news agency reported. Merkel and Erdogan also exchanged views on the possibilities of promoting the political process in Syria, according to Seibert, who added the two leaders also discussed bilateral relations. Seibert said at the press conference that given the situation in Syria, a new political process needs to get underway. "A long-term, peaceful solution can only be imagined" without Bashar al-Assad, added Seibert. --IANS pgh/ (This story has not been edited by Business Standard staff and is auto-generated from a syndicated feed.) Indian Prime Minister Narendra Modi on Tuesday started his official engagements in Sweden by calling on King Carl XVI Gustaf at the Royal Palace here. "Royal start to the day! PM @narendramodi called on His Majesty the King Carl XVI Gustaf of Sweden," External Affairs Ministry spokesperson Raveesh Kumar tweeted. "Leaders exchanged views on strengthening bilateral cooperation across several sectors," Kumar said. Modi arrived here on Monday evening on the first leg of his three-nation tour of Europe that will also see him going to Britain and Germany. Later on Tuesday, Modi will hold a bilateral summit with Swedish Prime Minister Stefan Lofven following which a number of agreements are expected to be signed. This apart, Modi and Lofven will attend a round table of Swedish CEOs. India and Sweden will on Tuesday also co-host the first ever India-Nordic Summit, where, apart from Modi and Lofven, the Prime Ministers of the other four Nordic countries of Denmark, Finland, Iceland and Norway will also be present. Modi will hold separate bilateral meetings with the leaders of the other four Nordic countries on the sidelines of the summit. He will also attend an Indian community event at Stockholm University late on Tuesday night before departing for London on the second leg of his visit. --IANS ab/vm (This story has not been edited by Business Standard staff and is auto-generated from a syndicated feed.) Indian Prime Minister Narendra Modi on Tuesday held separate bilateral meetings with his counterparts from Denmark, Iceland, Norway and Finland ahead of the first ever India-Nordic Summit here. Modi held the first meeting with Danish Prime Minister Lars Lokke Rasmussen. In a tweet, Indian External Affairs Ministry spokesperson Raveesh Kumar said the to leaders "had a good meeting on renewing and enhancing cooperation and expressed their mutual desire to take the relationship forward". After the meeting, the two sides exchanged MoUs in the areas of animal urban development, animal husbandry and dairying, food safety and agricultural research and educaion Modi then met his Icelandic counterpart Katrin Jakobsdottir. "PM urged Icelandic companies to look at India as an investment destination in blue economy and geothermal energy and strengthen cooperation in education, tourism and culture," Kumar said. After the meeting, the two sides signed an MoU on the establishment of the ICCR Chair for Hindi language between the Indian Council for Cultural Relations and the University of Iceland. Following this, Modi held a meeting with Norwegian Prime Minister Erna Solberg. According to the Indian spokesperson, the two leaders had an "engaging interaction" on trade and investment, shipping and port-development, blue economy, renewable energy, health, information technology and green transport solutions. Finally, the Indian leader met Finnish Prime Minister Juhu Sipila. "We had excellent discussions on deepening avenues of cooperation between India and Finland," Modi said in a separate tweet. India and Sweden are co-hosting the India-Nordic Summit on the second and final day of Modi's visit to Sweden. For India, Nordic countries are a potential source for clean technology, environmental solutions, port modernisation, cold chain, skill development, innovation among other areas. According to figures provided by the Indian External Affairs Ministry, India's trade with the Nordic countries totaled around $5.3 billion in 2016-17, with cumulative foreign direct investment in India at $2.5 billion. Earlier on Tuesday, Modi held a bilateral summit with Swedish Prime Minister Stefan Lofven following which India and Sweden signed a Joint Action Plan and an Innovation Partnership for a Sustainable Future. --IANS ab/him/vd (This story has not been edited by Business Standard staff and is auto-generated from a syndicated feed.) Indian Prime Minister Narendra Modi met his Swedish counterpart Stefan Lofven ahead of their bilateral summit here on Tuesday. "A relationship that has grown in intensity over the years and has a huge potential! PM @narendramodi met with @SwedishPM Stefan Lofven," Indian External Affairs Ministry spokesperson Raveesh Kumar tweeted. "The two leaders had a productive exchange of views on bilateral and regional issues," Kumar said. Earlier in the day, Modi called on Sweden's King Carl XVI Gustaf at the Royal Palace here and the two leaders exchanged views on strengthening bilateral cooperation. Following Tuesday's summit, a number of agreements across various sectors are expected to be signed. This apart, Modi and Lofven will attend a round table of Swedish CEOs. India and Sweden will on Tuesday also co-host the first ever India-Nordic Summit, where, apart from Modi and Lofven, the Prime Ministers of the other four Nordic countries -- Denmark, Finland, Iceland and Norway -- will also be present. Modi will hold separate bilateral meetings with the leaders of the other four Nordic countries on the sidelines of the summit. The Indian Prime Minister arrived here on Monday evening on the first leg of his three-nation tour of Europe that will also see him going to Britain and Germany. This is the first prime ministerial visit from India to Sweden in 30 years after Rajiv Gandhi's visit in 1988. After attending an Indian community event here late on Tuesday night, Modi will depart for London on the second leg of his tour. --IANS ab/vm (This story has not been edited by Business Standard staff and is auto-generated from a syndicated feed.) A hotline between South Korean President Moon Jae-in and North Korean leader Kim Jong-un for a direct dialogue is likely to be set up later this week, a senior Blue House official said on Tuesday. Im Jong-seok, chief of staff for Moon, told a press briefing that the hotline was due to be installed around Friday as talks had already been held twice on that issue, Xinhua news agency reported. He said that the exact date of the first Moon-Kim conversation via the telephone was yet to be decided. Moon and Kim agreed to hold their first face-to-face meeting on April 27 at the border village of Panmunjom. They decided to establish a direct hotline and have the first telephone talks before the summit takes place. If necessary, Im said, the possibility was always open for Chung Eui-yong, chief of the National Security Office of the Blue House (Presidential House), or Suh Hoon, head of the National Intelligence Service (NIS), to visit Pyongyang before the inter-Korean summit. As special emissaries for Moon, Chung and Suh met Kim in Pyongyang in early March when the two Koreas agreed to hold the third-ever inter-Korean summit in late April. Im said communication channels with North Korea through South Korea's intelligence agency were always open. He added that many issues would be discussed between the two sides during the second round of working-level talks for security, protocol and media coverage for the Moon-Kim summit. The working-level dialogue is set to be held on Wednesday in Panmunjom. --IANS soni/bg (This story has not been edited by Business Standard staff and is auto-generated from a syndicated feed.) In a bid to strengthen its retail presence in central region, Motorola India on Tuesday announced has opened 60 "Moto Hubs" in Madhya Pradesh, including 25 Moto Hubs each in Indore and Bhopal and 10 in Jabalpur. Customers can here experience the entire portfolio of Motorola smartphones, including the online exclusive devices like Moto E4 plus, Moto G5s Plus, newly-launched moto X4 and Moto Z2 Force, the company said in a statement. "Moto Hub will offer a unique Moto experience to our valued customers and we will continue to expand our retail presence in the state," said Sanjay Bhattacharya, Regional Sales Lead, Motorola Mobility India. Motorola recently announced 100 Moto Hubs across Tamil Nadu with 50 Moto Hubs in Chennai and 100 new 'Moto Hubs' in Karnataka across top eight cities out of which 50 will be in Bengaluru. Additionally, the Lenovo-owned brand also announced the opening of 50 new Moto Hubs in Mumbai and 25 Moto Hub stores in Kolkata, respectively. Motorola has also collaborated with Poorvika Mobiles across 43 cities in Tamil Nadu, Pondicherry and Karnataka and with Big C and Lot Mobile stores across 55 cities in Andhra Pradesh and Telangana to provide retail access to consumers. --IANS sku/vd (This story has not been edited by Business Standard staff and is auto-generated from a syndicated feed.) Former President Pervez Musharraf secretly handed over as many as 4,000 Pakistanis to foreign countries, mainly to the US, in exchange for money, the commission on missing persons has said. National Commission for Enforced Disappearances President Justice (retd) Javed Iqbal on Monday said that during the Musharraf regime, then Interior Minister Aftab Sherpao handed over 4,000 people to foreigners, reported The News. He was briefing the National Assembly's Standing Committee on Human Rights over the issue of missing persons in the country. Accusing the Parliament of not raising its voice against the former president and the minister, Iqbal, who is also a former National Accountability Bureau Chairman, said Musharraf had himself admitted to having done so. "He should have been questioned that according to which law he handed people to foreign elements," he said, adding that 70 per cent of the missing individuals were involved in militancy and that those who had returned "were too scared to open up about their experiences". --IANS him/vd (This story has not been edited by Business Standard staff and is auto-generated from a syndicated feed.) The Myanmar government has granted amnesty to 51 foreigners serving prison terms in the country, the President's Office said on Tuesday. The amnesty was granted as a gesture to mark the new calendar year in the country, in view of relations with the foreign nations and on ground of humanity, the announcement said. The pardoned foreign prisoners were deported, Xinhua news agency reported. It was also the first amnesty announcement after new President U. Win Myint assumed office on March 30. --IANS in/ (This story has not been edited by Business Standard staff and is auto-generated from a syndicated feed.) Actres Naomie Harris says she practised crying as a child. "I would spend hours in front of the mirror, pretending to be someone else, making myself cry, trying out accents - I just loved it, and would literally spend the whole day doing that. I was really lucky, because some mothers would have thought 'Oh my God my child is just crazy', but my mum actually said 'Ah, she has a talent, she has an interest'," Harris told Irish Independent newspaper. "She enrolled me at the Anna Scher Theatre School, and everything started from there, because they had an agency attached to the school and I started auditioning and got jobs," Harris added. The actress said she moved into a "weird profession" in light of her shy nature, reported femalefirst.co.uk. "What I really enjoyed was losing myself in character, finding out what it was like to be someone else, and getting inside that and disappearing, that's what I really loved as a child," she said. She has overcome her shyness. Harris added: "I'm not shy anymore, but I'm not comfortable being in the spotlight, I'm not someone that enjoys being observed. I'm more of an observer, but I do still love that thing of where you find a character to such an extent that you actually feel like someone else, there's a freedom in that which I really enjoy." --IANS dc/rb (This story has not been edited by Business Standard staff and is auto-generated from a syndicated feed.) The National Company Law Tribunal's (NCLT) Kolkata bench on Monday approved Vedanta Ltd's resolution plan for the insolvent Electrosteel Steels Ltd, one of the 12 large corporate defaulters identified by the Reserve Bank of India. During the insolvency proceedings, the debt-laden company's resolution professional, Dhaivat Anjaria, had submitted Vedanta's resolution plan before the bench for final disposal after lenders declared it as "successful resolution applicant". "The approved (by Committee of Creditors) resolution plan shall come into force with immediate effect," the order said. Vedanta informed stock exchanges that it was declared "successful resolution applicant" under the Corporate Insolvency Resolution Process of the Insolvency and Bankruptcy Code, 2016 and had received the Letter of Intent. The company also said it had accepted the terms outlined in it. "Pursuant to the resolution plan, a wholly-owned subsidiary of the Vedanta, will subscribe for the share capital of Electrosteel for an aggregate amount of Rs 1,805 crore ($ 275.7 million) and provide additional funds aggregating of Rs 3,515 crore ($ 536.9 million) by way of debt," the company said in a statement on Tuesday. Upon implementation of the resolution plan, the company will hold approximately 90 per cent of the paid up share capital of the steel maker. The remaining 10 per cent will be held by Electrosteel's existing shareholders and the financial creditors who receive shares in exchange for the debt owed to them, it added. During the insolvency proceedings, Vedanta's counsel had informed that the Anil Agarwal-promoted company have made an offer of Rs 5,320 crore for the bankrupt steel firm, while the liquidation value stands at Rs 2,899 crore. "The funds received by steel maker as debt and equity will be used to fully settle the debts owed to the existing financial creditors of , by payment of Rs 5,320 crore (US$ 812.6 million)," it said. The company was referred to the bankruptcy court by the State Bank of India after the Reserve Bank of India had on June 13 asked banks to refer a dozen troubled companies to the NCLT. The resolution professional had received bids from Vedanta Ltd, Edelweiss Alternative Asset Advisors, Tata Steel and Renaissance Steel in January this year for the insolvent steel maker. Vedanta emerged as the H-1 bidder, followed by Tata Steel. Renaissance Steel was the third highest bidder. According to the order, the total admitted financial debt of the corporate debtor, Electrosteel Steels Ltd, was Rs 13,395 crore. However, Kolkata-based steel maker owns and operates a greenfield integrated steel manufacturing facility near Bokaro, Jharkhand, India, which has a current capacity of 1.5 million tonnes per annum (mtpa) and the potential to increase to 2.5 mtpa. Abhishek Dalmia-led Renaissance Steel, one of resolution applicant, had alleged that its two rival bidders, Vedanta Ltd and Tata Steel, were not eligible to bid for the insolvent steel maker as per the Section 29A of the Insolvency and Bankruptcy Code (IBC). The Kolkata bench of the NCLT on March 20, had directed the resolution professional (RP) of the debt-laden company to place all the objections of Renaissance Steel against the eligibility of Vedanta and Tata Steel to bid for the insolvent company before the Committee of Creditors for an "independent consideration" of the committee. Vedanta's plan was, however, approved by the Committee of Creditors by 100 per cent voting shares of the committee. The court, in fact, dismissed the objection raised by the Renaissance Steel. The directors of the Vedanta believe that the transaction will complement the group's existing iron ore business as the vertical integration of steel manufacturing capabilities has the potential to generate significant efficiencies. Its directors do not expect the transaction will have any material impact on the Group's earnings for the financial year ending March 31, 2019 and anticipate returns to be received in the following years. --IANS bdc/vd (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.) Nepal's national flag carrier, Nepal Airlines Corporation (NAC), on Tuesday formally received two new aircraft from a Chinese manufacturer. With the addition of the two 17-seater Y-12e planes to its fleet, the NAC has completed taking the delivery of all six Chinese-made planes as part of a deal between Nepal and China, Xinhua news agency reported. At a ceremony held at the Tribhuvan International Airport in Kathmandu, Chinese supplier AVIC International Holding handed over the planes to NAC officials in the presence of Nepali Minister for Culture, Tourism and Civil Aviation Rabindra Adhikari and Chinese Ambassador to Nepal Yu Hong. Addressing the gathering, Adhikari said the addition of the Chinese aircraft will contribute to the economic development of the Himalayan country. "These aircraft are the symbol of cooperation between Nepal and China. I am confident that with these planes, NAC will be able to serve the demand of general public and contribute in national economy," he said. The minister said that the two aircraft will be in operation within 100 days. However, he sought support from the Chinese supplier regarding operation, maintenance and spare parts. The NAC had signed an agreement with AVIC International Aero-Development to procure six aircraft -- two 56-seater MA60 and four 17-seater Y-12e in November 2012. Nepal acquired the six Chinese aircraft, two in grants and four in loans. --IANS soni/bg (This story has not been edited by Business Standard staff and is auto-generated from a syndicated feed.) It would soon be possible to travel between Delhi and Mumbai in just 11-12 hours as the two metro cities would be connected through an expressway, Union Road Transport and Highways Minister Nitin Gadkari said on Tuesday. The expressway, built at a cost of around Rs 1 lakh crore, will be completely access controlled and would significantly reduce travel time between the two cities, he said during the launch of a joint study report on "Insurance requirements of the Indian logistics and warehousing industry and their customers". Gadkari said through a new highway alignment between Delhi and Mumbai, the government would bring down the land acquisition cost from Rs 7 crore per hectare to Rs 70-80 lakh per hectare. The Minister said while India is one of the fastest growing economies in the world, the logistics costs were quite high compared to other countries. "As our economy grows, we need to increase our exports which would be very difficult without bringing down our logistics cost." He said compared to trucks travelling an average 800 km per day in the US, in India they travelled only 200-250 km. "I assure you that next year, we will make sure that trucks are able to travel an average of 400 km per day," he said. --IANS vv/him/bg (This story has not been edited by Business Standard staff and is auto-generated from a syndicated feed.) Nine states, including Gujarat, Karnataka and Maharashtra, contribute around 82 per cent of all e-way bills being generated, Bihar Deputy Chief Minister Sushil Modi said on Tuesday. "The highest number of e-way bills have been generated by Gujarat (19.39 per cent) followed by Karnataka (15.32 per cent) and Maharashtra (12.43 per cent)," said Modi, who heads the group of ministers on GST-Network. These three states, along with Haryana, Uttar Pradesh, Delhi, Tamil Nadu, Rajasthan and Punjab, contribute about 82 per cent of total e-way bills generated, he said. Modi, who is also Bihar Finance Minister, said that since the e-way bill was introduced for intra-state movement of goods in some states since April 15, there has been increase of 25 per cent in generation of e-way bills, which would rise further. Expressing confidence on the system to handle the increasing load, he said over 10 lakh e-way bills were generated on Monday without a glitch and that the system is designed to handle more than 75 lakh e-way bills in a single day. Encouraged by the success of the implementation of inter-state e-way bill nationwide and and intra-state in some states, Bihar, Haryana, Jharkhand, Tripura, Madhya Pradesh and Uttarakhand will also implement it for intra-state movement of goods from Friday. Earlier, the e-Way bill system for intra-state movement of goods was implemented for Uttar Pradesh, Gujarat, Andhra Pradesh, Telangana and Kerala from April 15. In Karnataka, it was implemented along with inter-state implementation on April 1. --IANS vv/vd (This story has not been edited by Business Standard staff and is auto-generated from a syndicated feed.) German Foreign Minister Heiko Maas has said Syrian President Bashar al-Assad should not be part of the solution to Syrian conflict. On Monday, Steffen Seibert, the official spokesperson for Chancellor Angela Merkel (CDU), also said that a "long-term solution" to the Syrian conflict was "only possible without Assad", Xinhua news agency reported. The hawkish comments by senior German politicians on Monday come despite Berlin's refusal to participate in US-led airstrikes in response to reports of alleged chemical assault on the town of Douma. On Saturday, the US, France and Britain launched missile strikes on Syrian military positions in retaliation for the alleged chemical attack, without waiting for the results of the investigation. The Syrian government side denied the accusations, accusing the rebels of staging and fabricating the attack to frame the Syrian army and attract foreign military campaign. --IANS pgh/ (This story has not been edited by Business Standard staff and is auto-generated from a syndicated feed.) One person was killed and several injured during a protest here to demand justice for a minor girl, who was raped and murdered, turned violent with demonstrators pelting stones at the police and nearby vehicles. The girl, who had gone missing on Sunday, was found dead in the bushes in the city's Manghopir area on Monday night. She was identified on Tuesday as a resident of Baloch Goth, Orangi Town. The post-mortem report revealed that she had been raped before being strangled, according to a Geo News report. Relatives and locals placed the body of the girl on Orangi Road demanding that the authorities take notice of the incident and arrest those behind the heinous crime. The protest later turned violent when police personnel attacked the demonstrators after being pelted with stones. Police resorted to a baton charge and aerial firing. As a result, two protesters were severely injured and taken to a hospital where one, identified as Abdul Rehman, succumbed to his wounds. The demonstration brought traffic to a halt in the area. Ten police personnel, including a deputy superintendent of police and two station house officers were also injured in the clashes, Dawn online reported. A police official said the minor girl's body bore marks of torture and was sent for autopsy. Two out of three suspects mentioned by the girl's parents were arrested. Meanwhile, Pakistan Tehreek-e-Insaf MPA Khurram Sher Zaman claimed that the deceased protester was a "party worker who was killed as a result of police's straight firing on peaceful protesters". --IANS soni/bg (This story has not been edited by Business Standard staff and is auto-generated from a syndicated feed.) Pakistan on Tuesday rejected as "falsehood" the Indian charge of "attempts to incite Sikh pilgrims" to raise the issue of Khalistan. Foreign Office spokesperson Mohammed Faisal "categorically rejected Indian allegations" in a series of tweets, a day after India summoned Pakistan's Deputy High Commissioner and lodged a strong protest over attempts being made to raise the Khalistan issue during the visit of Sikh pilgrims to that country. "By spreading such falsehoods, India stokes the controversy regarding visit of Sikh pilgrims, attending the Baisakhi and Khalsa ceremonies in Pakistan," tweeted Faisal. He said: "Pakistan welcomes Hindu and Sikh pilgrims from all over the world, including India. Pakistan has made arrangements to extend maximum facilitation to the visiting Sikh pilgrims during their visits to sacred places in Pakistan." According to the Indian External Affairs Ministry, around 1,800 Sikh pilgrims have been travelling to Pakistan from April 12 under a bilateral agreement on facilitating visits to religious shrines. India, on Sunday, protested to the Pakistan foreign office that visiting Sikh pilgrims to Pakistan were not allowed to meet the Indian high commissioner and other Indian diplomats. MEA said Indian diplomats were forced to turn back when they went to meet the pilgrims at the Punja Sahib gurudwara. India called it "inexplicable diplomatic discourtesy", pointing out that this amounted to a "clear violation of the Vienna Convention of 1961, the bilateral Protocol to visit Religious Shrines, 1974 and the Code of Conduct (for the treatment of diplomatic/consular personnel in India and Pakistan) of 1992". Faisal tweeted that Pakistn "remain committed to continuing such cooperation, which is in line with our religious ethos, traditions of hospitality, and provisions of the 1974 Protocol on Visits to Religious Shrines. No amount of Indian propaganda could succeed in turning this right into a wrong," tweeted Faisal. He further said that India "should respect international and inter-state norms, respect all religions, especially minorities, and refrain from indulging in pointless provocation which only vitiates an already charged environment to the detriment of all". --IANS soni/hs (This story has not been edited by Business Standard staff and is auto-generated from a syndicated feed.) A 71-year-old Australian nun, who was detained in the Philippines over her alleged involvement in political activities, was released on Tuesday. Sister Patricia Fox, a nun belonging to the Sisters of Our Lady of Sion en Philippines, was arrested on Monday for "violating the conditions of her stay by attending protest rallies and engaging in political activities", the Philippines Bureau of Immigration said in a statement earlier on Tuesday. "I've participated in rallies to demand land rights for farmers, to release political prisoners. I call it part of our duty as the religious to support and stand for the poor. I haven't attended rallies for politics, but for human rights," Fox told the local media after her release. Fox has been working in the Philippines for the past 27 years, reports Efe news. The Philippines authorities will be probing the allegations against the nun and might file appropriate charges against her, Fox's lawyer Jober Ilarde Pahilga told reporters. Over the past two decades, Fox has been working with some of the most underprivileged communities in several regions in the country, including in the southern island of Mindanao, according to the Catholic Bishops Conference of the Philippines, who condemned her arrest. Manila's Auxiliary Bishop Broderick Pabillo, who visited the nun at the immigration bureau, called the nun's arrest a sign that the government was beginning to crack down on critics. However, Immigration Bureau spokesperson Antonette Mangrobang said that the Philippines law does not allow any foreigner to participate in political activities. The nun's arrest comes a day after the Deputy Secretary-General of the Party of European Socialists, Giacomo Filibeck, was barred from entering the country over his participation in a human rights forum. Filibeck was part of an international mission in 2017, which had harshly criticised the killings under President Rodrigo Duterte's controversial anti-drug campaign, and which had led to the inclusion of his name on a government blacklist. --IANS ksk/bg (This story has not been edited by Business Standard staff and is auto-generated from a syndicated feed.) President Ram Nath Kovind will visit Jammu and Kashmir on a two-day trip beginning Wednesday where he will address a university convocation and also visit the Vaishno Devi hill shrine. On Wednesday, the President will address the 6th convocation of Shri Mata Vaishno Devi University in Katra, according to a statement from the Rashtrapati Bhawan. On the same evening, he will attend a civic reception at Amar Mahal in Jammu. On Thursday, he will visit the Shree Mata Vaishno Devi shrine before returning to Delhi. His itinerary, however, doesn't include the Kashmir Valley that is on the edge in the wake of recent civilian killings during anti-militancy operations by security forces. --IANS sar/vd (This story has not been edited by Business Standard staff and is auto-generated from a syndicated feed.) A parliamentary panel has called RBI Governor Urjit Patel on May 17 to answer queries on banking frauds and the powers that the central bank needs for better regulation of public sector banks (PSBs). Sources said the decision was taken at a meeting of the Standing Committee on Finance, headed by Congress' M. Veerappa Moily. "The Reserve Bank of India (RBI) Governor has been invited to attend the meeting on May 17," a source said. Last month, Patel said the RBI's regulatory powers over PSBs were weaker than those over the private sector banks. His remarks came in the wake of bank frauds including that of over Rs 13,500 crore at the Punjab National Bank (PNB). According to the sources, the parliamentary panel would ask the RBI Governor questions about the frauds and better regulation. The panel members also made several queries about the banking sector to Financial Services Secretary Rajiv Kumar. Sources said some members also referred to reports of cash crunch in different parts of the country. Finance Ministry officials answered some queries and sought three weeks to file replies to the others. Sources said Insolvency and Bankruptcy Board of India Chairman M.S. Sahoo was also present. The committee discussed banking frauds in both public and private sector banks. The PNB fraud was discussed with special reference to fugitive jeweller Nirav Modi. Sources said BJP member Nishikant Dubey said that RBI had failed to discharge its role in preventing bank frauds and has sought changes in the Reserve Bank of India Act 1934 to fix responsibility in such cases. Sources said some opposition members asked if middle-level officials were the only ones responsible for the PNB fraud and if it was a systemic failure. They said in the frauds surfacing in the banking sector, there were mistakes which were being repeated. A member asked about the pace of corrective measures implemented in the wake of the frauds and what more needs to be done. The panel members also raised queries about the controversy over conflict of interest in the Rs 3,250 crore loan given by the ICICI Bank to the Videocon Group in 2012. The controlling shareholder of Videocon Group co-founded a separate company with the spouse of ICICI's CEO Chanda Kochhar. A significant portion of the loan has since become non-performing. Former Prime Minister Manmohan Singh was among the panel members present. Another source said the panel discussed the situation in the banking sector and the way ahead with questions about the non-performing assets, Insolvency and Bankruptcy Code and auditing standards. "It was more of a questioning meeting," the source said. --IANS ps/him/vd (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.) Avid fans of the UK royal family were on Tuesday camping outside the hospital where Catherine, Duchess of Cambridge, was expected to give birth to her third child. Fans Maria Scott, Terry Hutt and John Loughrey have been staked out next to the Lindo Wing at St. Mary's hospital in London since Sunday, Efe news reported. They are eagerly awaiting the arrival of the newest addition to the royal family and securing a spot outside the hospital would ensure they catch the first public appearance of the new royal, whenever he or she is born. Adorned in outfits patterned in Union Jacks -- the flag of the UK -- the trio are familiar faces at events related to the royal family. Catherine was expected to give birth later in the month to her third child with Prince William, the Duke of Cambridge. Prince George was born in 2013 and Princess Charlotte two years later. --IANS soni/bg (This story has not been edited by Business Standard staff and is auto-generated from a syndicated feed.) Rome, April 17 (IANs/AKI) Syria's key ally Russia has a vital role to play in ending Syria's devastating conflict and negotiating peace in the war-torn country, Italy's Prime Minister Paolo Gentiloni said on Tuesday. "We challenge Russia to play its part in a negotiated peace settlement together with the United States, Iran, the Arab World and Europe," Gentiloni told Italy's lower house of parliament. "It's a road that we need to travel along with everyone's help and Russia's contribution is crucial," he added. --IANS/AKI vd (This story has not been edited by Business Standard staff and is auto-generated from a syndicated feed.) South Africa will host an investment summit later this year to lure 1.2 trillion rand (about $100 billion) over five years, President Cyril Ramaphosa has said. Ramaphosa on Monday said he will extend an invitation to leading investors and leaders of business to attend the Investment Summit scheduled for August or September this year, Xinhua news agency reported. "The investment conference, which will involve domestic and international investors in equal measure, is not intended merely as a forum to discuss the investment climate," said Ramaphosa. South Africa, he said, would rather expects the conference to report on actual investment deals that have been concluded and to provide a platform for would-be investors to seek out opportunities at the South African market. "Given the current rates of investment, this is an ambitious but realizable target that will provide a significant boost to our economy," the president said. He voiced confidence that the conference will produce results that can be quantified and quickly realised. Ramaphosa was speaking before leaving for London to attend the Commonwealth Heads of Government Meeting (CHOGM 2018). He said he will utilize the opportunity to engage with major investors and business leaders based in the UK. For South Africa, the CHOGM 2018 is an opportunity for the marketing and promotion of South Africa as an investment destination, Ramaphosa said. The CHOGM 2018 will be held on April 17-18 to discuss common international challenges facing Commonwealth states, including weak global trade and investment flows. Ramaphosa said his government will dispatch four special envoys on investment to Asia, Middle East, Europe and the Americas to meet with potential investors before the Investment Summit. --IANS pgh/ (This story has not been edited by Business Standard staff and is auto-generated from a syndicated feed.) Former Congress President Sonia Gandhi arrived in her parliamentary constituency of Rae Bareli on Tuesday evening, in her first visit thre in nearly two years. Soon after her arrival, she inaugurated the IMA building constructed in Nehru Nagar. IMA office bearers informed Sonia Gandhi that the building was completed a year back and that they plan to treat poor patients free of cost. Gandhi, who is the UPA chairperson, had given Rs 10 lakh in 2015-16 from her MPLAD fund for construction of this building. The ground floor of the two-story building has since been completed and was on Tuesday inaugurated by her, an office bearer of IMA told IANS. Another Rs ten lakh has been granted for further construction of the building. Sonia Gandhi, who has not been keeping too well for the last few months, has a jam packed schedule for Wednesday where she, along with her son and Congress President Rahul Gandhi, will meet the people of the constituency as well as inaugurate the Passport Seva Kendra at the chief post office. Both will then leave for Delhi later in the day. --IANS md/vd (This story has not been edited by Business Standard staff and is auto-generated from a syndicated feed.) Students seeking justice for the Kathua rape and murder victim, clashed with the security forces on Tuesday in Jammu and Kashmir's Sopore town, police said. Students of the Government Degree College Sopore staged a protest march earlier in the day. The security forces intervened using tear smoke shells to disperse the agitating students. The authorities had decided to open the college from Tuesday after it remained closed for several days as a precautionary measure. --IANS sq/ksk/vm (This story has not been edited by Business Standard staff and is auto-generated from a syndicated feed.) Chemical weapons inspectors in Syria will be permitted to visit the site of an alleged chemical attack on Wednesday, Russia has said. The international team has been in the country since Saturday, but has not been allowed to visit Douma, the BBC reported. The attack on April 7, prompted military strikes on Syrian government targets by the US, Britain and France a week later. Syria and its ally Russia deny any chemical attack took place - with Russia calling it a "staged thing". Early on Tuesday, Syrian state media said the country's air defences had responded to a missile attack over the western city of Homs. The missiles targeted Shayrat air base, it said - but did not say who fired the missiles, the BBC report added. Another report, from the pro-Iranian Hezbollah militia, said that Syrian air defences had intercepted three missiles targeting Dumair military airport, north-east of here. --IANS in/ (This story has not been edited by Business Standard staff and is auto-generated from a syndicated feed.) Syrian air defences responded to a missile strike, believed to be carried out by Israel, that targeted two airbases in Syria after midnight on Tuesday, according to the War Media, the media wing of the Syrian army. Six missiles targeted the Shayrat airbase in the central province of Homs and the Syrian air defences intercepted most of them, Xinhua reported citing the report, adding that three other missiles targeted the Dumair airbase in the Dumair area in the eastern Qalamoun region north of Damascus and were all intercepted before reaching their targets. Meanwhile, the state news agency SANA reported the overnight attack in Homs, spelling no further details but added that the source of the missile strike is not yet known amid speculations that Israel is more likely to be behind the attack after the Pentagon denied carrying out operations on the aforementioned airbases. The Shayrat airbase was hit by a US missile strike in April of 2017 over allegations of chemical weapons' use by the Syrian army in Idlib province in the same year. Pan Arab al-Mayadeen TV said the targeting of the Dumair airbase comes a day before a deal was to be reached for the evacuation of rebels from that area. The fresh attack comes as the US, France, and Britain launched a missile strike on Syrian military positions in the capital Damascus and in Homs last Saturday over the same allegations of chemical weapons' use by the Syrian government forces. Also, the Israeli warplanes fired missiles on the T-4 airbase in the eastern countryside of Homs on April 9, killing 14 soldiers, including Iranian fighters, according to the Syrian Observatory for Human Rights. Meanwhile, the Syrian state TV aired still image of what it said was the air defences intercepting the missiles. No country has yet claimed the attack after midnight but US officials recently said that Washington wasn't planning another strike after the missile strike on Saturday. --IANS pgh/ (This story has not been edited by Business Standard staff and is auto-generated from a syndicated feed.) In a bid to expand trade ties with India, Taiwan will host its first-ever promotional event - Taiwan Expo - here next month, according to an announcement by the Taiwan External Trade Development Council (TAITRA) on Tuesday. At the curtain raiser event here, TAITRA also announced the opening of its Delhi office. The private sector body has three existing offices in India -- in Kolkata, Mumbai and Chennai. Though India and Taiwan do not have official diplomatic relations, the two sides signed a Bilateral Investment Promotion and Protection Agreement in 2002. TAITRA Chairman James C.F. Huang told reporters here that Taiwan had earlier not paid much attention to India owing to factors of distance and lack of understanding of Indian society and culture. However, India's recent economic reforms and its impressive economic growth had made Taiwanese companies understand the importance of India, he said. As head of the private trade promotion body, Huang has led as many as seven business delegations to India in the last year. "Our Delhi office will hold the first-ever Taiwan Expo in India over May 17-19 to showcase the latest Taiwan technology and products. "With the opening of our Delhi office, we will also be signing an MoU on trade promotion with Ficci (Federation of Indian Chambers of Commerce and Industry)," he said. He added that TAITRA had already signed an agreement with India's Society of Manufacturers of Electric Vehicles for enhancing partnership on electric vehicle development. Noting that Taiwan had contributed in the development of the industrial base of countries like China and Indonesia and that there are over 100,000 companies from his country operating in China, Huang said that Taiwan seeks to create similar kind of industrial hubs in India, particularly in areas of Taiwanese expertise like petrochemicals, machine tools, green energy and smart cities. Bilateral trade increased from $1.2 billion in 2000 to $6 billion in 2016 and there are over 100 Taiwanese companies working in different sectors of the Indian economy, he added. --IANS bc/him/bg (This story has not been edited by Business Standard staff and is auto-generated from a syndicated feed.) In a bid to expand trade ties with India, Taiwan will host its first-ever promotional event - Taiwan Expo - here next month, according to an announcement by the Taiwan External Trade Development Council (TAITRA), which will also open its Delhi office on the occasion. The private sector body TAITRA has three existing offices in India -- in Kolkata, Mumbai and Chennai. Though India and Taiwan do not have official diplomatic relations, the two sides have signed the Bilateral Investment Promotion and Protection Agreement in 2002. TAITRA President and CEO Walter M.S. Yeh told reporters here that Taiwan had earlier not paid much attention to India owing to factors of distance and lack of understanding of Indian society and culture. However, India's recent economic reforms and its impressive economic growth had made Taiwanese companies understand the importance of India, he said. As head of the private trade promotion body, Yeh has led as many as seven business delegations to India in the last year. "Our Delhi office will hold the first-ever Taiwan Expo in India over May 17-19 to showcase the latest Taiwan technology and products. "With the opening of our Delhi office, we will also be signing an MoU on trade promotion with Ficci (Federation of Indian Chambers of Commerce and Industry)," he said. He added that TAITRA had already signed an agreement with the India's Society for Manufacture of Electric Vehicles for enhancing partnership on electric vehicle development. Noting that Taiwan had contributed in the development of the industrial base of countries like China and Indonesia and that there are over 100,000 companies from his country operating in China, Yeh said that Taiwan seeks to create similar kind of industrial hubs in India, particularly in areas of Taiwanese expertise like petrochemicals, machine tools, green energy and smart cities. Bilateral trade increased from $1.2 billion in 2000 to $6 billion in 2016 and there are over 100 Taiwanese companies working in different sectors of the Indian economy, he added. --IANS bc/him/vd (This story has not been edited by Business Standard staff and is auto-generated from a syndicated feed.) Amid talks on the formation of a political front ahead of the 2019 general elections, Telangana Chief Minister K. Chandrasekhar Rao will meet his Odisha counterpart Naveen Patnaik here in the first week of May, informed sources said. Rao, who heads the Telangana Rashtra Samithi, will meet Patnaik, the Biju Janata Dal President, in Bhubaneswar, they added. Rao will first visit the world famous Jagannath temple in Puri and then call on the Odisha Chief Minister, the sources said. Though there is no formal political agenda, both leaders are likely to discuss the current political situation and formation of an alternative front as both the parties are maintaining equi-distance from the Bharatiya Janata Party as well as the Congress. However, Patnaik said they would not discuss the possibility of a third front. "The Telangana Chief Minister is visiting Puri on a pilgrimage. On the way, he will pay a courtesy call (on me). There will be no discussion on the federal front or anything that has to do with politics," Patnaik told reporters here. Even though Patnaik has so far not revealed his plans vis-a-vis national politics, the proposed meeting is expected to throw light on the BJD's future course of action with regard to the federal front. Rao met West Bengal Chief Minister Mamata Banerjee in Kolkata last month and Janata Dal-Secular chief and former Prime Minister H.D. Deve Gowda last week. --IANS cd/tsb/bg (This story has not been edited by Business Standard staff and is auto-generated from a syndicated feed.) Ten persons were killed and rail, road and air traffic was disrupted in West Bengal as twin storms accompanied by rains lashed through the city on Tuesday night felling trees, uprooting electric poles and triggering house collapse. Mobile and Internet services were hit with the storm snapping overhead wires and damaging mobile towers. Of the ten persons killed, four each died in Kolkata and Howrah districts. One death was reported from Bankura and another from Hooghly following the twin norwesters that had gale speed of up to 98 km. In Kolkata, two persons travelling in an autorickshaw died on Lenin Sarani near the city centre when a tree fell on the vehicle. One person was killed when a house collapsed in the Anandapur area in the eastern part while a pedestrian was killed when a tree fell on his head in Behala on the southern outskirts. Three died in Belur and one in Dumurjola of Howrah district, state police control room officials told IANS. One person died after being struck by lighting in Indus of Bankura district. Electrocution claimed one life in Hooghly district. The metrological office said a norwester -- seasonal storm common in this part of the world -- with gale speed of 84 km per hour hit the city and other South Bengal districts around 7:42 pm. Another storm struck Kolkata and adjoining districts with a wind speed of upto 98 km soon after at 7:55 pm. The twin storms played havoc with the public transport system, as trams and trains halted on their tracks with the overhead wires snapping. Flight services were affected for 100 minutes at the NSCBI Airport as planes bound for Bhubaneswar, Delhi and Agartala took off late. Suburban train services of South Eastern Railway and Eastern Railway went haywire as trains were stopped at various stations. In South Eastern Railway's Howrah division, services were disrupted in Howrah-Bardhaman and Howrah-Tarakdewhar sections, badly inconveniencing thousands of passengers. A flyover railing got uprooted and fell on platform numbers 19 and 20 of Howrah station. However, no one was injured. Two mobile towers in Uttarpara and Hindmotor of Hooghy district gave way, throwing vehicular traffic off-gear. In Eastern Railway's Sealdah division, train movement was disrupted in various sections. The Kolkata Metro Railway services were hit when a tee fell between Dum Dum and Noapara stations, as passengers got stuck in the tunnel. Toshiba Software India (TSIP), a 100 per cent subsidiary of Japan's Toshiba Corporation, on Tuesday said it appointed Takashi Ishikawa as its new Managing Director. Taking over the role of MD from Hidehido Koka, Ishikawa reiterated the group's commitment to pursue the "Make-in-India and Export-from-India" policy. "Toshiba Software India is an intrinsic part of the Group's digital and software transformation," Ishikawa said on his appointment. "I look forward to pursue the 'Across and Beyond' philosophy to set new benchmarks for service delivery and customer delight," Ishikawa added. "Our 'Across and Beyond' philosophy is in line with the Group's commitment to 'Make-in-India and Export-from-India', aimed at establishing TSIP as a technology hub for industries like robotics and AI (Artificial Intelligence)," Ishikawa said. A post graduate in mechanical engineering from Stanford University in the US, Takashi Ishikawa is a Toshiba veteran for almost three decades and has been associated with many new product developments. He joined Toshiba Software India in June 2014. --IANS gb/vm (This story has not been edited by Business Standard staff and is auto-generated from a syndicated feed.) The US Embassy here on Tuesday said that Indians planning to visit the US this summer should apply early for visas due to heavy demand. In a statement, the Embassy said that applicants across India may have to wait 30 days or more for a visa interview appointment to become available and that it expects this wait time to continue for at least the next few months "Mission India's non-immigrant visa workload is one of the largest in the world, processing over a million visas a year," the statement said. "In the last five years, the demand for visas to travel to the United States has increased by over 60 per cent." According to the statement, the Embassy in New Delhi and the four Consulates across India "are constantly working to improve service and meet demand, but applicants should be aware that the summer is a peak travel season and there will be delays in getting visa appointments". It also advised applicants are to beware of scams and fraud and reminded them that the only way to get a US visa is through official channels. "Someone can either apply and have an interview at a US Embassy or Consulate, or if they have had a visa before and meet certain criteria, they may qualify to have their visa renewed," the statement said. "Anyone claiming they can guarantee a visa in exchange for a fee is attempting to defraud you. Applicants should be smart and apply the right way," it added. --IANS ab/vm (This story has not been edited by Business Standard staff and is auto-generated from a syndicated feed.) Two workers were killed and another was injured in a fire at an illegal factory in west Delhi, police said on Tuesday. Satendar Kumar and Arvind Kumar, both hailing from Bihar, were killed in the fire that began around 10.50 p.m. on Monday at the crockery manufacturing factory in Nawada area. Police said that prima facie an electrical short circuit caused the fire, which was put out by 1 a.m. on Tuesday, adding that the injured person's condition was stable. Senior officials of the South Delhi Municipal Corporation told IANS that the unit did not have the necessary factory licence from the local body. Chief Fire Officer Atul Garg said the unit did not possess the mandatory no-objection certificate from the Delhi Fire Service. The officer said the factory had only one entry-exit point and the three victims were found trapped behind the exit door that was found locked. Police said the factory owner was being questioned. An FIR has been registered, though no arrest has been made. Last week, four workers were killed in a fire in an illegal factory in a residential area in Sultanpuri in west Delhi. In January, 17 people were killed and 30 injured in a fire in another factory in Bawana in north Delhi. --IANS nkh/tsb/bg (This story has not been edited by Business Standard staff and is auto-generated from a syndicated feed.) Two sisters were shot dead in Uttar Pradesh's Etawah district on Tuesday and their bodies dumped in a field, police said. Sandhya, 19, and Shalu, 15 were real sisters and had gone to toilet late night in their village Kela Mau under Basehar police station but did not return, leading to worry among their family. members. Their bodies were discovered by villagers in the morning when they were off to their fields. Senior Superintendent of Police, Etawah, Ashok Tripathi said that empty bullet shells have been recovered from the crime scene and they were trying to ascertain whether the bullets found in the bodies of the girl duo match these cartridge shells. Owing to the sensitivity of the matter, Inspector General, Kanpur Zone, Alok Singh also rushed to the village where he met the family members of the victim and pacified the villagers by saying that the case will be cracked soon and the culprits sent behind bars. --IANS md/vd (This story has not been edited by Business Standard staff and is auto-generated from a syndicated feed.) A special CBI court sent, to four days police custody, the five arrested accused in the Unnao minor rape case including prime accused BJP MLA Kuldeep Singh Sengar's brother Atul Sengar, officials said. A CBI official said: "The court has given four day police custody of five arrested accused including Atul Sengar, Bauaa, Vineet, Sonu and Shalu earlier arrested in the case." An agency official said in Delhi that the Central Bureau of Investigation (CBI) has brought the five arrested accused in the Unnao rape case to its Lucknow branch for further questioning. According to the CBI officials, the Bangarmau legislator's brother was arrested by the Uttar Pradesh Police on April 10, while his associates were arrested on April 9, after the victim's father - whom they had brutally thrashed while in police custody - died. The CBI action came in the wake of the four cases it registered in the rape case following a request to the Central government from the Uttar Pradesh government. In the first FIR, the CBI named Sengar and Shashi Singh, a woman who allegedly took the rape victim to the Bharatiya Janata Party leader's house. The CBI had arrested the BJP MLA after day-long questioning on Saturday. A court has sent him to the seven-day CBI custody. The second FIR is against four of Sengar's accomplices -- Vineet, Baua, Shailu and Sonu -- on charges of rioting, criminal intimidation and voluntarily causing hurt. The third one is a cross FIR filed by Atul Sengar, who claimed that he was attacked by the victim's father. The CBI registered the fourth case against Shashi Singh's son Shubham on Tuesday, an official said. On Saturday, the CBI has arrested the BJP MLA on basis of a SIT preliminary report. He was sent to seven days CBI custody by a court. His aide, Shashi Singh, who is accused of taking the victim to the lawmaker, was also arrested on Sunday and sent to four days police custody. The victim tried to set herself ablaze outside Chief Minister Yogi Adityanath's residence on April 8, claiming inaction in the rape case that took place in 2017. Later the same day, her father was picked up by the police and allegedly roughed up by Atul Sengar and his aides, following which he died. --IANS aks/vd (This story has not been edited by Business Standard staff and is auto-generated from a syndicated feed.) Amidst reports of a cash crunch and empty ATMs, Finance Minister Arun Jaitley on Tuesday sought to assuage fears, saying "there is more than adequate currency in circulation", even as the government blamed "unusual demand" for shortages in some areas. "Have reviewed the currency situation in the country. Overall there is more than adequate currency in circulation and also available with the banks. The temporary shortage caused by 'sudden and unusual increase' in some areas is being tackled quickly," Jaitley tweeted. "There is no cash crunch in the country. There is around Rs 18 lakh crore currency supply now, which is close to the circulation during the demonetisation period. We keep Rs 2.5-3 lakh more currency in stock for excess demand," said S.C Garg, Economic Affairs Secretary. He said there was unusually high demand for currency in the last couple of months. As opposed to an average demand of about Rs 20,000 crore a month, "in the first 13 days of April itself there was a demand of Rs 45,000 crore", he said. "In the last few days we have pumped cash into the system to meet the demand. We still have a reserve of Rs 1.75 lakh crore." Garg attributed this sudden cash demand to localised phenomenon. "This unusual spurt in demand is seen more in some parts of the country like Andhra Pradesh, Telangana, Karnataka, Madhya Pradesh and Bihar," the Finance Ministry said in a statement on Tuesday. It said the government, along with the Reserve Bank of India (RBI), has taken all steps to meet this unusual demand. "We had adequate reserves of currency notes which have been used to meet fully the extraordinary demand generated so far. We continue to have in stock adequate currency notes of all denominations, including of Rs 500, 200 and Rs 100 to meet any demand," the statement said. "The government would like to assure all the people that there has been adequate supply of currency notes which has met entire demand so far. The government would also like to assure that it would be supplying adequate currency notes to meet even higher levels of demand if such demand were to continue in the coming days/months," it added. The statement further said the government is taking all steps to ensure that ATMs are supplied with cash and to get non-functional ATMs working at the earliest. Reacting to the situation, West Bengal Chief Minister Mamata Banerjee on Tuesday said it reminds her of the demonetisation days. She also asked whether a "financial emergency" was going on in the country. --IANS ag/sac (This story has not been edited by Business Standard staff and is auto-generated from a syndicated feed.) Veteran journalist T.V.R. Shenoy passed away at a private hospital here on Tuesday night, family sources said. He was 77. He is survived by his wife Sarojam and daughter Sujatha and son Ajith. His body will be flown to Delhi, where the last rites would be performed. Conferred the Padma Bhushan in 2003, he had been working as a journalist in Delhi for a long time. Hailing from Cherai in Kerala's Ernakulam district, Shenoy began his career with Indian Express and in 1965, joined the Delhi bureau of Malayala Manorama and served with them for well over a quarter of a century. He was a former Editor of The Week magazine and Sunday Mail and wrote on diverse issues as a columnist. Kerala Chief Minister Pinarayi Vijayan, while condoling the death of Shenoy, remarked that he was the foremost Malayali journalist in the country. "On account of his five decade professional career happening in Delhi, he was often the 'ambassador' of Kerala in Delhi," he said, adding that while people differed with him on political aspects of his writings, he was always highly-respected by all. Leader of Opposition Ramesh Chennithala said that he has lost an "elder brother" as he, while being an MP, always used to discuss various issues with Shenoy, who was a friend, philosopher and guide to him. "Shenoy was a towering journalist and his loss is going to be a loss for journalism," he added. --IANS sg/vd (This story has not been edited by Business Standard staff and is auto-generated from a syndicated feed.) Actress Bhumi Pednekar, who has featured in films laced with social messages, says incidents like the rape of an eight-year-old in Jammu and Kashmir's Kathua, shows people are moving towards animalistic and beast-like mentality. Bhumi spoke to the media at the 20th Beti FLO GR8 Awards 2018 here on Monday night. She said: "The kind of circumstances that our country is going through, I feel scared thinking about future generation. We are moving towards animalistic and beast-like mentality, which is really heartbreaking. "I feel justice must be served to the girl and many other victims like her who have experienced a shameful act like this, so that it doesn't happen again. I am an optimistic person and I feel there will be stricter laws and punishment to zero down incidents like these and so that people will think twice before committing such crimes." Currently, Bhumi is busy with Abhishek Chaubey's "Son Chiriya", in which she will be seen with Sushant Singh Rajput. "We have released my first look for 'Son Chiriya'. As of now, I can't reveal too many details about the film but I can say that it's a special film in a short span of my career. We have worked really hard for this film. This film has a really good director and cast. "It's a different kind of film and I am sure this film will have the same amount of impact like my previous films," she said. Bhumi was felicitated at the Beti FLO GR8 Awards 2018. "I feel really happy when people appreciate your (my) work. Year 2017 has been really successful year for me. Two of my films ('Toilet - Ek Prem Katha' and 'Shubh Mangal Saavdhan') released last year and both of them received appreciation from the audience and they had a major impact on the viewers." --IANS iv/rb/vd (This story has not been edited by Business Standard staff and is auto-generated from a syndicated feed.) The Uttar Pradesh Sunni Wakf Board on Tuesday told the Supreme Court that it won't stake claim to the ownership of the Taj Mahal. Asking senior counsel A.D.N. Rao appearing for the Archeological Survey of India (ASI) to take instructions, a bench of Chief Justice Dipak Misra, Justice A.M. Khanwilkar and Justice D.Y. Chandrachud said that once the Board pressed its right over the monument then it has to adjudicate the issue. "Once you have registered the monument as a Wakf property, your statement that you will not be staking claim will not help," said the bench. The court directed the next hearing of the matter on July 27. In its earlier hearing on April 11, the apex court had asked the Wakf Board to produce an original title document bearing the signatures of Mughal Emperor Shah Jahan to prove its claim. --IANS pk/ksk/vm (This story has not been edited by Business Standard staff and is auto-generated from a syndicated feed.) The Uttar Pradesh Sunni Wakf Board on Tuesday told the Supreme Court that it won't stake claim to the ownership of the Taj Mahal. Asking senior counsel A.D.N. Rao appearing for the Archaeological Survey of India (ASI) to take instructions, a bench of Chief Justice Dipak Misra, Justice A.M. Khanwilkar and Justice D.Y. Chandrachud said that once the Board pressed its right over the monument then it has to adjudicate the issue. "Once you have registered the monument as a Wakf property, your statement that you will not be staking claim will not help," said the bench and directed the next hearing on July 27. In its hearing on April 11, the apex court asked the Wakf Board to produce an original title document bearing the signatures of Mughal Emperor Shah Jahan to prove its claim. Telling the court the Taj Mahal is owned by the almighty, the Sunni Wakf Board on Tuesday said it has no document from the Mughal rulers or their descendents bestowing the 17th century monument in its favour. The Board said the monument belonged to it as its members have been continuously performing Urs on the death anniversary of Emperor Shah Jahan and Friday Namaz at the Majid located in the compound of the Taj Mahal. Such a course would create problems, observed the bench. In an obvious reference to a decedent of Mughal empire, the Board told the court that no human can lay claim to the magnificent monument. Y.H. Tucy, who claims to be the great grandson of last Mughal Emperor Bahadur Shah Zafar, has said that the Taj Mahal is the nation's property and no one can claim right over it. "Remember Emperor Shah Jahan has not written a deed in favour of Waqf," Tucy had told IANS in an interview. The Archaeological Survey of India moved the top court in August 2005 after the Wakf Board registered the Taj as Wakf property. The top court then issued notices on ASI's plea and stayed the board's move and the matter is pending since then. --IANS pk/him/ (This story has not been edited by Business Standard staff and is auto-generated from a syndicated feed.) We are now approaching nine years for the current business expansion in the US. We are already tied for this being the second-longest expansion on record, and it seems to have the legs to continue for a while longer. The current cycle reached a trough in June 2009, and will have completed 106 consecutive months of economic expansion by the end of April 2018. This will make it tied for second place with the business expansion between February 1961 and December 1969. In May, this cycle will move into second place for the duration of expansion, with only the 10-year business expansion between ... With reference to Commoners and Kings (April 14), the story of Bikaner House would not be complete without the man who built itSir Ganga Singh, Bikaners then Maharaja and one of the most outstanding members of the princely order. He was outstanding because of his attainments in his state as also his leadership of the princely fraternity. He built the Gang canal that brought waters of the Sutlej from Ferozepur, Punjab, to his state, creating an oasis, a granary in a part of the Thar Desert. As a leader of the princely order he was the founder chancellor of the ... A month after the Delhi High Court reinstated 20 AAP MLAs, who had been dismissed by the Election Commission, the Delhi government on Tuesday cancelled the appointment of nine advisors, including the one to Deputy Chief Minister Manish Sisodia, after the Union Home Ministry said that these posts were "not sanctioned". According to an order issued by General Administration Department of the Delhi government, the MHA had written in its letter that these posts on which the appointees are officiating are not in the list of posts approved ... 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 A 12-year-old boy allegedly committed suicide after he was not given food by his mother in central Delhi's Kamla Market area today, police said. No suicide note was found. The Class 7 student came home in the afternoon and asked his mother to serve him food, but she allegedly refused, they said. The boy's mother said she would give him food after returning home, police said. She found him hanging from the ceiling fan when she returned, they said. He was rushed to a hospital where he was declared brought dead, police said. (This story has not been edited by Business Standard staff and is auto-generated from a syndicated feed.) A 14-year-old girl was allegedly raped by a distant relative in her native village in Uttar Pradesh and found to be six-weeks pregnant during a medical examination conducted in a hospital here after she complained of pain in the abdomen, police said. Police said the family hailed from Unnao in Uttar Pradesh. The girl and her parents, who work as migrant labourers here, had gone to their native place and stayed there for a month when the incident took place, DSP (Central), Chandigarh Police, Krishan Kumar said. The girl was raped by a distant relative, he said. He said after the victim complained of pain in the abdomen, she was taken to a hospital here by her parents where it was found that she was six-weeks pregnant. Hospital authorities informed the police and later a complaint was filed by the father of the minor girl. According to the complaint, the family came to know about the pregnancy when the girl complained of pain in her abdomen on Monday. DSP Kumar said a case was registered under the provisions of the Protection of Children from Sexual Offences (POCSO) Act and other relevant provisions of the law and further investigations were on. A court in Chandigarh had in October last year convicted two brothers after finding them guilty of raping their 10-year-old niece, who delivered a baby in August, 2017, after the Supreme Court dismissed her abortion plea. On July 28 last year, the Apex Court had dismissed a plea seeking its nod to terminate the 32-week pregnancy after taking note of a medical report that abortion was neither good for the girl nor for the foetus. (This story has not been edited by Business Standard staff and is auto-generated from a syndicated feed.) Punjab police arrested two alleged drug smugglers after seven kg of heroin was recovered from their possession here. Acting on a tip-off, a team of special operational cell of the Punjab police yesterday arrested the accused near the Airport road with drugs in their possession, a police official said The accused, residents of Amritsar, were identified as Ranjeet Singh and Gursewak Singh, he said. According to the police, both the accused were waiting at the Airport road to deliver the consignment of drugs to someone. A case has been registered against the accused, and the police is investigating the matter for further details. (This story has not been edited by Business Standard staff and is auto-generated from a syndicated feed.) Two Indian Americans, running as candidates for Senate and Congressional elections, have raised USD 4.6 million and USD 1.2 million respectively. Shiva Ayyadurai, 54, is running as an independent senatorial candidate from Massachusetts against the powerful incumbent Elizabeth Warren from the Democratic party. Trying to run an unconventional campaign on the slogan of "Only A Real Indian Can Defeat The Fake Indian", Ayyadurai said that his campaign ended March 2018 with a total of USD 4.6 million in contributions. The first quarter of 2018 saw the campaign receiving over USD 2.5 million and it had over USD 105,000 cash on hand, he said. The Warren campaign has not released its latest figures. But at the start of the year, she had more than USD 14 million in her campaign account. The Mumbai-born scientist and entrepreneur is known for his controversial claim of being the "inventor of email", based on the electronic mail software called "EMAIL which he wrote as a high school student in the late 1970s. The "Shiva 4 Senate" campaign said its fund-raising contributions, a formidable social media presence, combined with nearly 4,000 volunteers, who have signed on to the campaign across Massachusetts, reflect the enormous strength of this historic grassroots campaign. On April 5, the campaign received a letter from the City of Cambridge stating that fines of USD 300 per day would be levied along with legal action if the campaign refused to take down the signage "Only A Real Indian Can Defeat The Fake Indian." "Clearly, Elizabeth Warren and the Establishment fear the Shiva 4 Senate campaign," he said. Meanwhile, an Indian American Congressional candidate from Maryland, Aruna Miller has raised USD 1.2 million in less than a year after she announced her electoral bid for the US House of Representatives. If elected in the November 2018 elections, she would be only the second Indian American woman to be elected to the US House of Representatives. Pramila Jayapal from Washington State is the first Indian American woman to be elected in the 2016 general elections. Miller, 53, currently a state legislature, is seeking to enter the House of Representative from the 6th Congressional District of Maryland. As the top fundraiser in the race, the Miller campaign reported raising USD 325,761 in the first quarter of 2018, bringing her total raised to USD 1,188,423 for the eleven months of her campaign. Miller's quarterly fund-raising total is nearly twice her nearest competitor. Miller's FEC reports show that over 3,200 individual contributors to date have given a total of over 3,800 distinct contributions to her campaign, with 98 per cent of the contributions coming from individuals. A career civil engineer, she worked for 25 years for Montgomery County. In 2010, she was elected to the Maryland House of Delegates where she represents the 15th District and serves on the Appropriations Committee. The current Democratic incumbent to this Congressional District John Delaney has said that he will not seek re-election and instead has announced to run for 2020 Democratic party's presidential primary. The primary elections for Maryland's 6th Congressional District is scheduled for June 26. Apart from Miller, four others including an Afghan-American Nadia Hashimi have declared themselves in the race. (This story has not been edited by Business Standard staff and is auto-generated from a syndicated feed.) Eight 'Biswa Bangla' retail stores, set up by the state government to promote local art and crafts, has generated revenues of about Rs 17 crore in the last fiscal, a state government official today said. "We generated about Rs 17 crore revenue in the last fiscal and all the stores are doing well," MSME secretary Rajiva Sinha said today on the sidelines of launching an MCCI helpdesk for MSMEs. "We are meeting our operational cost," he said. Biswa Bangla is an initiative to promote the state?s dying arts and crafts, and it differs from other marketing companies running after numbers, Sinha said. Expansion of the number of stores are dependent of supply of artisans involved in the particular art or product, he said. "However, we are looking forward to expand in airports and we have sought information about available space with Airports Authority of India in the airports managed by them," he said. The brand is tapping shop-in-shop outlets in modern retail chains and has recently forged a tie up with Future Group. However, the plan for running Biswa Bangla stores in the UK and China has been ruled out due to various logistics and import-export related hurdles, Sinha said. Sinha said, Biswa Bangla will tap e-commerce with select products with their existing site of BiswaBangla.in. He said Biswa Bangla do not have plans to tap e-tailers like Flipkart, Amazon or Snapdeal. Biswal Bangla was conceived in 2013 and the first store to sell products under the brand came up in 2014 in Kolkata. Some states have evinced interest in the business model of Biswa Bangla and are looking at adopting it, Sinha said. (This story has not been edited by Business Standard staff and is auto-generated from a syndicated feed.) In more good for the Assamese film industry, a movie on children raised during a violent period in Assam has received as many as eight nominations at a US festival. "Xhoihobote Dhemalite" (Rainbow fields) directed by Bidyut Kotoky has received nominations for best feature film, director, screenplay, actor (Nakul Vaid), actress (Dipannita Sharma), supporting actor (Victor Banerjee), cinematography (Satya Prakash Rath) and score (Anurag Saikia) at the Love International Film Festival (LIFF), Los Angeles. The awards will be announced on July 7 at a ceremony in Beverly Hills. "It is indeed an honour. These recognitions are especially satisfying as it came from a festival whose goal is to bring the world closer together and promote love and healing through cinema," says Mumbai-based Kotoky. The film, based on true events, narrates the psychological trauma children went through during the Assam agitation in the 1980s. The film also features seasoned actors like Naved Aslam, Nipon Goswami and Nikumoni Barua. In 2017, the film won the Best Foreign Film Award' in the Hollywood International CineFest. It was premiered in the Indian Panorama of the International Film Festival of India (IFFI), Goa. "Xhoihobote Dhemalite" is semi-autobiographical in nature, inspired by true incidents from Kotoky's life. It is produced by India Stories, a Mumbai-based production house, and co-produced by Kotoky's Dhruv Creative Productions and Kurmasana Kreates, a US-based production house. The LIFF was founded by Ata Servati, poet, playwright and activist in 2016. US First Ladies Michelle Obama and Laura Bush were honoured in the first year as the 'Ambassadors of Love & Peace' for their work with children. All proceeds from this year's LIFF will go to The Lotus Light Children's Charity (TLLCC) whose mission is "to build a league of empowered, educated, proactive individuals who will have the necessary resources to be able to reach out to impoverished children throughout the world". At the recently-announced National Award, Assamese film "Village Rockstars" was named the best feature film. Directed by Rima Das, the critically-acclaimed film about a village girl who dreams of making it big, also won awards for best location, sound recordist, editing and best child artiste (Bhanita Das). (This story has not been edited by Business Standard staff and is auto-generated from a syndicated feed.) The tussle between the AAP Government and the Centre further escalated today with the cancellation of appointment of nine advisors to Delhi ministers, including those assisting Deputy CM Manish Sisodia, following the Union Home Ministry's directions which said these posts were "not sanctioned". Launching a scathing attack on the Centre over the issue, Sisodia said that the Narendra Modi government's order was a "conspiracy to derail" the " revolution" in Delhi. Since no BJP government has been able to deliver anything in and health sectors, the Centre is trying to paralyse the AAP government, he alleged, adding his advisor Atisi Marlena, who was playing a "vital role" in improving the system, has been "targeted". According to an order issued by General Administration Department of the Delhi government, the MHA had written in its letter that these posts on which the appointees are officiating are not in the list of posts approved for the ministers and the chief minister of Delhi. "No prior approval of the central government has been taken for creation of said posts on which these persons have been appointed on co-terminus basis," the GAD order stated. The Home ministry had sent the letter to GAD on April 10. The services are under the Lieutenant Governor. Among the nine advisors whose appointment has been cancelled are Amardeep Tiwari (media advisor to law minister), Arunodya Prakash (media advisor to deputy chief minister), Raghav Chadha (advisor to finance minister), Atishi Marlena (media advisor to deputy chief minister). Following the move, Sisodia took to twitter and said, "Modi Govt's order to remove Delhi govt advisors is a conspiracy to derail education revolution in Delhi. "Real intention of the order is to paralyse our govt work, since no BJP govt has been able to deliver anything on education & health," he said. Sisodia tweeted,"No wonder why Modi govt decided to remove advisors like @AtishiMarlena - an Stephenian who later studied at Oxford, then worked as Rhodes scholar, and then joined Delhi Education govt as advisor. She was working with me on Re 1/pm salary for last 3 years." Later addressing reporters, he said that the Centre wants to "undermine" the education system in Delhi. Sisodia said that the BJP-led government has targeted his advisor Marlena through this order as she is playing a vital role in improving the education system. The deputy chief minister said that out of nine advisors, only four are currently working with the Delhi government. "Prime Minister Narendra Modi has decided to undermine the Delhi's education system that is why this order has been issued today," Sisodia alleged. The Arvind Kejriwal government and the Centre have been at loggerheads on a range of issues, especialy appointment of officials. (This story has not been edited by Business Standard staff and is auto-generated from a syndicated feed.) Vice-president All India Muslim Personal Law Board (AIMPLB) Maulana Kalbe Sadiq, who was undergoing treatment at a city hospital here, was today shifted to Medanta hospital in Gurgaon. The noted Shia cleric was rushed to the Medanta hospital in Gurugram by air ambulance after his condition deteriorated, his son Kalbe Hussain told PTI on phone. "He had fallen ill in February but had recovered ... he again fell ill about a week ago", Kalbe Hussain said. He added that doctors suspect stomach cancer and that tests are being carried out to decide on the future course of treatment. (This story has not been edited by Business Standard staff and is auto-generated from a syndicated feed.) Taking his party's fight against the Congress to the Gandhi family's home turf, BJP president Amit Shah will attend several programmes and address a rally in Congress leader Sonia Gandhi's constituency Rae Bareli on April 21, a senior party leader said today. Though Shah will be in Rae Bareli, party workers from neighbouring areas, including Congress president Rahul Gandhi's constituency Amethi, will be attending the programmes, the leader said. Shah, who is scheduled to address a big political rally, will also hold meetings with party workers to review the BJP's preparedness for the 2019 general elections, a senior party leader said on condition of anonymity. Though it swept Uttar Pradesh in the 2014 general elections, the BJP lost both Rae Bareli and Amethi to the Congress. The party, under Prime Minister Narendra Modi and Shah, has been making a determined bid to wrest Amethi from Rahul Gandhi. It pitted Union minister Smriti Irani against the Gandhi scion in Amethi in the last Lok Sabha elections. Irani, who has been regularly visiting Amethi and has taken various developmental initiatives there, is likely to be the party's candidate from the constituency in the next general elections. (This story has not been edited by Business Standard staff and is auto-generated from a syndicated feed.) Armenia's parliament today elected former president Serzh Sarkisian prime minister in a move that will see the 63-year-old maintain his grip on power despite major protests. Lawmakers voted 77 to 17 to approve the candidacy of the veteran politician after his second and final term as president ended last week. Sarkisian will remain the ex-Soviet country's leader under a new parliamentary system of government, which the opposition says has been designed to maintain his chokehold on power. (This story has not been edited by Business Standard staff and is auto-generated from a syndicated feed.) Sixteen indigenous groups of Assam today told a joint committee of parliamentarians that the proposed Citizenship (Amendment) Bill will violate the idea of secularism of the Constitution by distinguishing illegal immigrants on the basis of religion. The groups also said it will threaten the existence of the ethnic communities in the state. The groups told the Joint Committee on the Bill to amend the Citizenship Act, 1955, headed by BJP MP Rajendra Agrawal, that the proposed Bill to grant citizenship to the Hindu Bangladeshis is totally unacceptable to the ethnic communities and the people of Assam. "The proposed Bill violates the very idea of secularism of our Constitution. The Bangladeshis, the illegal immigrants, must not be differentiated on the basis of religion. All post-1971 illegal immigrants must be expelled irrespective of their religion as per the Assam Accord," All Bodo Students' Union, president, Promod Boro said at a press conference. Boro said under no circumstances the ethnic communities and the people of Assam will agree with the purpose and content of the proposed Bill. "The proposed Bill will destroy or exterminate the indigenous ST, SC and other ethnic communities of Assam and will reduce the indigenous people of the state into minorities," he said. Predicting a "vigorous mass movement" against the proposed Bill, secretary general of the All Assam Tribal Sangha Aditya Khaklari said if it is passed by Parliament, it will disturb the peaceful environment of Assam and will encourage fresh illegal infiltration into the state. Introduced in the Lok Sabha, the Citizenship Amendment Bill, 2016, seeks to allow illegal migrants from certain minority communities in Afghanistan, Bangladesh and Pakistan eligible for Indian citizenship by amending the Citizenship Act of 1955. It seeks to allow illegal migrants belonging to the Hindu, Sikh, Buddhist, Jain, Parsi or Christian communities coming from Afghanistan, Bangladesh or Pakistan to not be imprisoned or deported. It also appeals for the minimum years of residency in India to apply for citizenship to be lessened from at least 11 to six years for such migrants. The Bill, however, does not extend to illegal Muslim migrants. The proposed amendments are not acceptable to the indigenous groups from Assam as it contradicts the Assam Accord of 1985, which clearly states that illegal migrants who entered India after March 25, 1971, would be deported irrespective of their religions. (This story has not been edited by Business Standard staff and is auto-generated from a syndicated feed.) The Delhi High Court was today informed that the Delhi Assembly Secretary, whose repatriation to his parent department -- the All India Radio (AIR) -- had become a contentious issue between the Speaker and the Lieutenant Governor, has been sent back with effect from February 26. The development was communicated to the high court on behalf of Speaker Ram Niwas Goel, who had been opposing the repatriation of House secretary Prasanna Kumar Suryadevara even though then Lieutenant Governor (LG) Najeeb Jung had ordered that he be sent back to AIR. The counsel for Goel also told the court that since Suryadevara has been repatriated, the Speaker was not pressing the plea challenging the LG's decision to send him back. In view of the submission made on behalf of the Speaker, Justice Rajiv Shakdher dismissed the matter as not pressed. According to the written instructions given to the lawyer for the Assembly, Goel had received a communication from the Speaker of Andhra Pradesh Legislative Assembly requesting him to spare Suryadevara for them. Besides this, the written instruction also said that Suryadevara told Goel that his parent department has asked him in writing to return so that the proposal of deputing him to the Andhra Pradesh assembly could be considered. "In view of the request of the Speaker of a sister legislature and keeping in view the future career prospects of the officer concerned in legislative arena, the Speaker (Goel), with the hope and belief that Suryadevara will not be further harassed by his parent department for simply following the instructions of the Speaker and the (Delhi) Legislative Assembly, reluctantly agreed to relieve Suryadevara from his duties with effect from February 26, 2018. "Accordingly, Prasanna Kumar Suryadevara stood relieved from the position of Secretary, Legislative Assembly, NCT of Delhi," the court was informed by the lawyer. The lawyer for the LG, meanwhile, told the court that since Suryadevara joined his parent department, he has faced disciplinary action there. The high court had on February 23 asked Suryadevara, who was loaned to the AAP government by the Centre for a year, how he could continue in the post when his parent department, AIR, wanted him back. The court had also asked how the Speaker could hold the official back without the consent of his parent department. Suryadevara, an officer belonging to Newsreader-cum-Translator (Telugu) cadre, had on the last date told the court that he wanted to work in the legislature. The official was relieved by the LG in August 2016, a decision that was challenged by the Speaker in the high court. Goel had refused to relieve the official, insisting that since he, as the Speaker, held a constitutional office, the LG cannot repatriate the assembly secretary without his concurrence. Suryadevara had earlier served in the offices of Lok Sabha Speaker Somnath Chatterjee for five years and Rajya Sabha Chairman Hamid Ansari for over six years. (This story has not been edited by Business Standard staff and is auto-generated from a syndicated feed.) Biopharmaceutical company AstraZeneca today announced its decision to further invest USD 90 million in India over the next five years. The announcement was made following a meeting between the company's Executive Vice President for International Region Leon Wang and Prime Minister Narendra Modi, who is now on a visit to Sweden, the company said. The investment commitment would span across AstraZeneca's diverse footprint in India with an aim to strengthen its manufacturing, clinical operations, patient safety ?regulatory science, IT services and commercial operations, it said. Furthermore, the investment would support scientific data generation, quality manufacturing, science talent development and collaborative development of innovative solutions to improve the standard of care of non-communicable diseases in India. The company, in a release here, also said the commitment aligns closely with Indian government's initiatives to create a stronger business, innovation, and health care environment such as "Skill India", "National Health Policy" and "Ayushman Bharat." Leon Wang said AstraZeneca has a long-standing commitment in India of 40 years, adding, "our latest investment reflects our commitment to address the unmet needs in non-communicable diseases, enable high-value job creation and boost medical innovation in the country." At present, AstraZeneca has a workforce of over 4,000 employees in India spanning manufacturing, sales and marketing, clinical operations, IT services, digital services and Global medicines development, the release said. AstraZeneca Pharma India Limited (AZPIL), a listed company, is headquartered in Bengaluru. ? ? ? The company's manufacturing facility here has a sophisticated production facility designed to meet the most stringent international standards, conforming to World Health Organisation cGMP (current Good Manufacturing Practices) norms, it said. AstraZeneca also has a sizeable clinical operation and is expanding its global medicines development unit that focuses on patient safety and regulatory science in India, the release said. (This story has not been edited by Business Standard staff and is auto-generated from a syndicated feed.) Biopharmaceutical firm AstraZeneca today said it will invest $90 million (around Rs 5.9 billion) in India over the next five years. The announcement follows signing of a bilateral innovation partnership for a sustainable future between Sweden and India, AstraZeneca said in a statement on Tuesday. "Our latest investment reflects our commitment to address the unmet needs in non-communicable diseases, enable high-value job creation and boost medical innovation in the country," AstraZeneca Executive VP for International Region Leon Wang said. The company believes, this investment commitment across AstraZeneca's business footprint in India will make a positive impact. It also aligns closely with the government's vision for healthcare and innovation, Wang said. This investment commitment will be aimed at strengthening manufacturing, clinical operations, patient safety and regulatory science, IT services and commercial operations, AstraZeneca said. (Only the headline and picture of this report may have been reworked by the Business Standard staff; the rest of the content is auto-generated from a syndicated feed.) Unusual spurt in currency demand in states like Uttar Pradesh, Madhya Pradesh, Andhra Pradesh as well as poll-bound Karnataka led to dry ATMs in several parts of the country, sending the government scrambling to make contingency plans to cover the deficit. The government said it suspects that Rs 2,000 notes were being hoarded and plans to increase 5-fold the printing of Rs 500 notes. Within a month, it said, Rs 70,000-75,000 crore will be printed. The Reserve Bank said the printing of currency has been ramped up in all the four note presses, and the shortage in some pockets is due to logistical issues. ATMs of both public and private sector lenders in several cities were either not operating or showed no cash signs, a situation that officials insisted was not alarming and did not warrant panic. Cities and towns across Andhra Pradesh, Telangana, Karnataka, Madhya Pradesh, Gujarat, Maharashtra, Bihar, Rajasthan and Uttar Pradesh were impacted by the cash crunch. Some ATMs downed shutters with 'No cash' and 'Out of service' signs, prompting the government to move currency from surplus regions. Some ATMs in national capital Delhi too went dry. Political leaders from Rahul Gandhi of Congress to TMC's Mamata Banerjee trained guns on the government saying ATMs running dry was a reminder of demonetisation days. While Finance Minister Arun Jaitley assured hassled customers that the government will fix the problem quickly, officials attributed the cash crunch to crop procurement and hoarding of high denomination currency ahead of elections in Karnataka. Such crisis was however not witnessed in any of the previous procurement seasons. "Overall there is more than adequate currency in circulation and also available with the Banks. The temporary shortage caused by 'sudden and unusual increase' (in demand) in some areas is being tackled quickly," Jaitley, who has been away from office since April 2 due to a kidney ailment, said in a tweet. Jaitley said he has reviewed the currency situation in the country. The government is checking with banks and the Reserve Bank of India to ensure adequate supply of currency. A statement by the finance ministry confirmed reports of cash shortages and some ATMs running dry or becoming non-functional in some parts of the country. "There has been unusual spurt in currency demand in the country in last three months," it said. While currency supply increased by Rs 45,000 crore in the first 13 days of April, "unusual spurt in demand" was seen more in some parts of Andhra Pradesh, Telangana, Karnataka, Madhya Pradesh and Bihar, it said. Economic Affairs Secretary Subhash Chandra Garg said the Reserve Bank will increase five-fold the printing of Rs 500 notes to about Rs 2,500 crore a day to deal with the cash shortage. "So, in a month, we will be printing about Rs 70,000-Rs 75,000 crore. This should give you assurance that we are geared up to meet the rising demand," he said. The government, he said, suspects that Rs 2,000 notes are being hoarded as they are not coming back into the circulation fast enough. "There is also a perception that there may be shortage of currency in the future. So people have started withdrawing and it has contributed to the crisis," he said. "We keep adequate stock of currency notes, which is one-sixth of the currency in circulation." Currently, the currency in stock is about Rs 2 lakh crore and the reserves are adequate to meet any unusual spurt in demand, he said. He assured that there was no reason for anyone to fear or any apprehension that either private sector or public sector banks are in danger. "Our banking is totally safe and people should not have in any apprehension in keeping deposits," he said. Minister of State for Finance Shiv Pratap Shukla said the government has formed a committee to address the problem of currency shortage in certain states and the issue would be resolved in next 2-3 days. The currency problem originated in the southern states and may have been fuelled by rumours that money in banks is not safe due to a certain provision in the proposed Financial Resolution and Deposit Insurance (FRDI) Bill, 2017. RBI report shows that the currency in circulation in the country has reached the pre-demonetisation level of about Rs 17 lakh crore. "The Government of India with the Reserve Bank of India have taken all steps to meet this unusual demand. We had adequate reserves of currency notes which have been used to meet fully the extraordinary demand generated so far," the finance ministry statement said. "We continue to have in stock adequate currency notes of all denominations, including of Rs 500, Rs 200 and Rs 100 to meet any demand," it added. The government said there has been adequate supply of currency notes to meet entire demand. "The government would also like to assure that it would be supplying adequate currency notes to meet even higher levels of demand if such demand were to continue in the coming days/months." Also, steps are being taken to ensure that ATMs are supplied with cash and non-functional ATMs normalised at the earliest. SBI Chairman Rajnish Kumar said it would not be correct to state that there is a currency shortage in the country. There has been an "imbalance" due to the crop procurement season, when demand for currency goes up. He said Punjab, Madhya Pradesh and Uttar Pradesh are seeing heightened demand due to procurement season. (This story has not been edited by Business Standard staff and is auto-generated from a syndicated feed.) Several parts of Andhra Pradesh, Telangana, Madhya Pradesh, Bihar and poll-bound Karnataka have reported shortage of currency and ATMs running down, which the government today attributed to unusual spurt in demand in last three months. Finance Minister Arun Jaitley said the "temporary shortage" in certain states is being "tackled quickly" and that there is "more than adequate" currency in circulation. Jaitley, who has been away from office since April 2 due to kidney ailment, said he has reviewed the currency situation in the country. "Overall there is more than adequate currency in circulation and also available with the Banks. The temporary shortage caused by 'sudden and unusual increase' (in demand) in some areas is being tackled quickly," he said in a tweet. The government is checking with banks and the Reserve Bank of India to ensure adequate supply of currency. A statement by the finance ministry confirmed reports of cash shortages and some ATMs running dry of cash or becoming non-functional in some parts of the country. "There has been unusual spurt in currency demand in the country in last three months," it said. While currency supply increased by Rs 45,000 crore in the first 13 days of April, "unusual spurt in demand" was seen more in some parts of Andhra Pradesh, Telangana, Karnataka, Madhya Pradesh and Bihar, it said. Minister of State for Finance Shiv Pratap Shukla said the government has formed a committee to address the problem of currency shortage in certain states and the issue would be resolved in next 2-3 days. "The Government has set up state-wise committee and RBI has also formed a committee to transfer currency from one state to other because for money transfer you need the permission of the RBI. It (the shortage) will be solved in 2-3 days," he said. RBI report shows that the currency in circulation in the country has reached the pre-demonetisation level of about Rs 17 lakh crore. "The Government of India with the Reserve Bank of India have taken all steps to meet this unusual demand. We had adequate reserves of currency notes which have been used to meet fully the extraordinary demand generated so far," the finance ministry statement said. "We continue to have in stock adequate currency notes of all denominations, including of Rs 500, Rs 200 and Rs 100 to meet any demand," it added. The government said there has been adequate supply of currency notes to meet entire demand. "The government would also like to assure that it would be supplying adequate currency notes to meet even higher levels of demand if such demand were to continue in the coming days/months." Also, steps are being taken to ensure that ATMs are supplied with cash and non-functional ATMs normalised at the earliest. SBI Chairman Rajnish Kumar said it would not be correct to state that there is a currency shortage in the country. There has been an "imbalance" due to the crop procurement season, when demand for currency goes up. He said Punjab, Madhya Pradesh and Uttar Pradesh are seeing heightened demand due to procurement season. (This story has not been edited by Business Standard staff and is auto-generated from a syndicated feed.) Bangladesh Cultural Affairs Minister Asaduzzaman Noor today visited Santiniketan to review construction of the 'Bangladesh Bhavan' at Visva-Bharati University complex and finalise Prime Minister Sheikh Hasina's visit for its inauguration. "We want this Bhavan to be inaugurated by the end of May. We have been told that the Prime Minister of India will soon come to Santiniketan to attend the convocation of Visva Bharati. "It will be a matter of great significance if the Prime Ministers of both India and Bangladeh attend the inauguration programme of this cultural complex. We believe that this Bhavan will be a centre of attraction at Santiniketan," Noor said. The 'Bangladesh Bhavan' has been built with financial assistance from the Bangladesh government. It would house a cultural complex including a library and a museum. The Bangladesh delegation led by Noor would hold a meeting with the Visva Bharati authority tomorrow to finalise the schedule of Hasina's visit to Santiniketan. The issue of how the newly-built Bhavan would function and cater to the needs of educationists and research scholars would also be discussed at the meeting. Noor was accompanied by Md Nasiruddin Ahmed, Secretary, Ministry of Cultural Affairs, Ashish Kumar Sarkar, DG, Department of Public Library, Faizul Latif Chowdhury, DG, Museum and other dignitaries from Bangladesh. Meanwhile in Kolkata, Bangladesh Prime Minister's Political Advisor Hussain Taufiq Imam said the government condemns attacks and killings of intellectuals in the country. "We strongly condemn such acts which are inexcusable. We are handing out strongest kind of punishment for those having committed such crimes," he said. The Sheikh Hasina government has been successfully fighting fundamentalists and terrorists, Imam told reporters on the sidelines of a programme on the occasion of Sheikh Mujibur Rahman's birthday. Claiming that there is no political problem in Bangladesh now, he said, "To conduct (general) elections, the Awami League government has formed a national committee." Asked if opposition BNP would also be taking part in the upcoming polls next year, he said, "There can be political differences but everyone must take part in general elections. (This story has not been edited by Business Standard staff and is auto-generated from a syndicated feed.) Bangladesh Cultural Affairs Minister Asaduzzaman Noor today visited Santiniketan to inspect the Bangladesh Bhavan at the Visva-Bharati university complex. The Bhavan, built with the financial assistance of the Bangladesh government, would house a cultural complex including a library and a museum. "We want this Bhavan to be inaugurated by the end of May. We believe that this Bhavan will be a centre of attraction at Santiniketan," Noor said. "We have been told that the Prime Minister of India may come to Santiniketan to attend the convocation of Visva Bharati. It will be a matter of great significance if the Prime Ministers of both India and Bangladesh attend the inauguration programme of this cultural complex," he said. Meanwhile in Kolkata, Bangladesh Prime Minister's Political Advisor Hussain Taufiq Imam said the government condemns attacks and killings of intellectuals in the country. "We strongly condemn such acts which are inexcusable. We are handing out strongest kind of punishment for those having committed such crimes," he said. The Sheikh Hasina government has been successfully fighting fundamentalists and terrorists, Imam told reporters on the sidelines of a programme on the occasion of Sheikh Mujibur Rahman's birthday. Claiming that there is no political problem in Bangladesh now, he said, "To conduct elections the Awami League government has formed a national committee " Asked if the opposition BNP would also be taking part in the polls, he said, "There can be political differences but everyone must take part in general elections. (This story has not been edited by Business Standard staff and is auto-generated from a syndicated feed.) A Pune police team today searched the residence of a lawyer here in connection with his "provocative speeches" at an event organised to mark the 200th anniversary of the Bhima-Koregaon battle which was marred by incidents of violence, officials said today. The programme, "Elgar Parishad", was organised at Shaniwar Wada in Pune on December 31 last year to commemorate the battle in which the British Army comprising Dalits had defeated the Peshwas. Police officials said the Bhim Nagar residence of advocate Surendra Gadling was searched between 6:30 am and 1 pm in connection with an FIR registered in Pune pertaining to the Elgar Parishad. Gadling had earlier given legal help to a number of leaders suspected to be involved in naxal activities, including suspended Delhi University professor GN Saibaba who was sentenced to life in prison on March 7 last year for alleged Maoist links and anti-India activities. Talking to reporters, Gadling alleged that the men in uniform were troubling people like him and allowing the perpetrators of the Bhima-Koregaon violence to go scot-free. "I did not participate in the Bhima-Koregaon event. However, we had collected funds for it like we do for any such programme. The police are troubling us and allowing those behind the violence to go scot-free. These raids are meant to silence people who have stood up to the RSS," he alleged. He claimed that the search party took away research material he had collected over a period of 25 years. "They even took away exam notes of my son and daughter. Pen-drives, hard drives and such items belonging to my wife were also confiscated," he alleged. (This story has not been edited by Business Standard staff and is auto-generated from a syndicated feed.) The Sourav Ganguly-led technical committee of the BCCI has unanimously recommended the reinstatement of Bihar and inclusion of northeastern states in the 2018-19 Ranji Trophy. The northeastern states played the BCCI U-19 tournaments last season as the Board wanted to gradually integrate them into the system. "The technical committee unanimously approved the inclusion of Bihar in the Ranji Trophy 2018-19 season. However, the committee felt in the view of the Hon'ble Supreme Court of India's judgment dated July 18, 2016, the North Eastern associates and affiliate members must also be considered," BCCI acting secretary Amitabh Choudhary said in a statement. The recommendations of the technical committee will be sent to the Committee of Administrators (CoA) and then ratified by the BCCI general body. The technical committee proposed a slew of recommendations during its meeting in Kolkata. "The Ranji Trophy 2018-19 season is proposed to have 4 Groups with the introduction of pre-quarterfinals. The format will remain as the Home-Away basis. The proposed Ranji Trophy format will be implemented for Under-19 and Under-23 junior men tournaments. "It is proposed that the sequence of the BCCI 2018-19 domestic season is in the following order Duleep Trophy, Vijay Hazare Trophy, Ranji Trophy League phase, Mushtaq Ali T20, Ranji Trophy knockouts, Deodhar Trophy. It is proposed that Mushtaq Ali T20 will have semi-finals after the super league stage." The Duleep Trophy is to be played with four teams using the pink Kookaburra ball, each teams representing the four groups of Ranji Trophy. "The Deodhar Trophy is proposed to have four teams, one each from the four Ranji Trophy groups. (This story has not been edited by Business Standard staff and is auto-generated from a syndicated feed.) The BJP today questioned the Congress for giving a ticket for Karnataka assembly polls to a lawyer who had represented billionaire jeweller Nirav Modi's uncle Mehul Choksi, both accused in the PNB fraud, in a cheating case in the state high court in 2016. The in-charge of BJP's national information and technology cell, Amit Malviya, used the hash-tag #CongressWithNirav on Twitter and asked why lawyer H S Chandramouli was given ticket from Madikeri while it was denied to Chief Minister Siddaramaiah's legal advisor and party spokesperson Brijesh Kalappa, who hails from the area. Malviya tweeted, "What is so special about H S Chandramouli, lawyer of Nirav Modi's uncle Mehul Choksi, that Congress gave him a ticket from Madikeri while denying one to Brijesh Kalappa, Siddaramaiah's legal advisor and party spokesperson? Rahul's friends over CM's aide? #CongressWithNirav." The trigger for this tweet was Kalappa's cryptic message on Twitter yesterday: "I have never represented Mehul Choksi nor have I been given the party nomination." Chandramouli was Choksi's advocate when he moved the Karnataka High Court in 2016 against the state overnment and S V Hariprasad, a city-based businessman who had filed the complaint of cheating against Choksi. Nirav Modi and Choksi are among the accused in the scam related to alleged cheating of the Punjab National Bank to the tune of about USD two billion. Kalappa, a Congress loyalist, has been a ticket aspirant since 2009 but without any success. In an emotional post on Facebook post that concluded with superstar of yesteryears Rajesh Khanna's famous dialogue 'Pushpa, I hate tears', Kalappa said, "I have been denied Lok Sabha ticket 2009 and 2014, Rajya Sabha ticket in 2014, 2016, 2018 and now assembly." He said, "I will swallow the ignominy of being ousted from the race by a person who joined the party in 2016, got a legislative council ticket the same year, lost and the same person now bags the assembly ticket for Madikeri." In a wry remark, he said he would try his luck in gram panchayat election next time. "Someone in my party is clearly telling me to seek nomination for a constituency befitting my status. But those FB friends I love and respect - don't shed tears for me. "After so many disappointments, I am entitled to use Rajesh Khanna's immortal words, 'Pushpa, I hate tears'." Kalappa highlighted the branding of some persons as unelectable for denying them ticket time and again. "Many of us in the INC too have made the mistake of calling people 'unelectable' - those same persons have more than proved us wrong, totally wrong! I am a victim of one such campaign, why? Because I wear normal clothes, eat at small places, don't travel with a retinue, am honest, down to earth." The Congress is facing severe backlash from many party strongmen, loyalists and sitting MLAs who have been denied ticket for the May 12 assembly polls. The supporters of ticket aspirants went on the rampage at several places in Karnataka yesterday. (This story has not been edited by Business Standard staff and is auto-generated from a syndicated feed.) The BJP today said Congress leaders Rahul Gandhi and Sonia Gandhi should apologise for defaming Hindus "globally" and cited a telegram sourced from Wikileaks to back its demand. The BJP's renewed attack on the Congress comes a day after a special anti-terror court acquitted rightwing activist Swami Aseemanand and four others in the 2007 Mecca Masjid blast case in Hyderabad. "If Congress considers India to be its own, then Sonia Gandhi and Rahul Gandhi must apologise to the whole country for defaming the great Hindu religion by trying to prove that there was something called saffron terror'," BJP spokesperson Sambit Patra said at a press conference. He showed a telegram sourced from Wikileaks quoting a conversation during the former Congress-led UPA government between then US ambassador and Rahul Gandhi. According to the transcript of the conversation, Rahul Gandhi said saffron terror was a bigger threat than the Lashkar-e-Taiba. "This shows the mindset of Rahul Gandhi towards Hindus. His party has always take Hindus for granted," Patra said. Yesterday, Patra said people would teach the Congress a lesson in the Karnataka Assembly polls as they had in the 2014 Lok Sabha elections when it was reduced to 44 seats. "For its appeasement politics, the Congress targeted and defamed Hindus and the country for merely some votes. That conspiracy has been exposed. The Congress has been exposed like never before," he had said after the verdict came in. (This story has not been edited by Business Standard staff and is auto-generated from a syndicated feed.) The leader of opposition in the Delhi Legislative Assembly today approached the high court seeking to quash a resolution passed in the House directing the AAP government to present a status report on files which have been delayed or blocked by the LG office. The plea is likely to come up for hearing tomorrow before Justice Rajiv Shakhdher. The petition filed by Leader of Opposition and BJP MLA Vijender Gupta also sought quashing of the outcome report of the office of the Lieutenant Governor prepared by the Delhi government. The joint plea has been filed by Gupta and BJP MLAs Om Prakash Sharma, Jagdish Pradhan and Manjinder Singh Sirsa. On March 26, the Delhi Assembly passed a resolution directing the AAP government to present a "status report" on files which have been "delayed or blocked" by the office of Lieutenant Governor Anil Baijal. The resolution, moved by AAP MLA Sourabh Bharadwaj, stated that the report should list the files which have been "delayed or blocked" by the LG office. The plea sought direction to the "Speaker of the Delhi Assembly not to allow the proceeding to the extent which reflects the conduct of the Lt. Governor as distinct from the government and quash the ruling of April 6". The plea claimed that "such resolution is also in violation of Rule 264 (f) of the Rules of Procedure and Conduct of Business in the Legislative Assembly of the National Capital Territory of Delhi. It clearly states that a member while speaking shall not reflect upon the conduct of any governor." It said that the opposition cannot allow the illegality to take place in the Legislative Assembly being stakeholders in ensuring the repute and majesty of the institution in general. The plea said that "on April 5, the Leader of the Opposition had sent a letter to the Speaker stating his objections to such resolution; however, the objections were overruled by the Speaker". "The Lieutenant Governor is also intimated about the 'Outcome Report of the Office of the Lieutenant Governor'; on April 6, 2018 as the LG is not even consulted while preparing this report nor a copy is supplied to him," it said. The resolution also stated that the status report should be presented on the lines of outcome budget of the Delhi government, presented by Deputy Chief Minister Manish Sisodia last week. According to the resolution, there have been several media reports as well as the Budget speech of Sisodia last week that mentioned "the role of the L-G's office for delay and roadblocks in effective execution of projects" of the elected government of Delhi. (This story has not been edited by Business Standard staff and is auto-generated from a syndicated feed.) The BJP city unit today welcomed the removal of nine advisors of Delhi ministers, saying "a wrong has been corrected". The appointments of the advisor were cancelled on the direction's of the Ministry of Home Affairs (MHA). In a letter to the Delhi government's General Administration Department on April 10, the MHA said no approval of the central government was taken for creation of the posts to which the nine advisors were appointed on a co-terminus basis. The appointments were made "flouting" recruitment rules, financial concurrence and approval of the competent authority, BJP MLA and Leader of Opposition Vijender Gupta alleged. "Cancellation of the appointments of the nine advisors corrects the wrong done in appointing them. Most of them were awarded with plump salaries, houses, cars and phones for their political connections," he said. Delhi BJP spokesperson Praveen Kapoor said the party welcomes the removal as it will relieve the burden on the state exchequer. "We welcome their removal as it brings to end a big financial burden on the state exchequer," he said. Gupta alleged that the advisors were "political workers and office bearers" who were "rewarded" with the appointments of their political work. The Shunghlu Committee had questioned their appointments. In most of the cases, they were appointed without ensuring that the posts existed or not, he claimed. "No financial concurrence was obtained. They were appointed without ensuring that they fulfil the required qualifications and experience," Gupta said. The Cabinet cleared their appointments without getting approval from the competent authority, he alleged further. According to an order issued by the GAD, the MHA had written in its letter that these posts on which the appointees are officiating are not in the list of posts approved for the ministers and the chief minister of Delhi. "No prior approval of the central government has been taken for creation of said posts on which these persons have been appointed on co-terminus basis," the GAD order stated. (This story has not been edited by Business Standard staff and is auto-generated from a syndicated feed.) A bomb went off outside the office of the Indian consulate in Nepal's Biratnagar last night but no one was injured in the "minor explosion", officials said. Spokesperson in the Ministry of External Affairs Raveesh Kumar said Indian embassy in Kathmandu was in touch with the Nepal government over the incident and that the security authorities in that country were investigating the matter. "A minor explosion took place along the rear boundary wall of the camp office of embassy of India at Biratnagar, Nepal at about 20:15 hours on April 16. No one has been injured in the incident," Kumar said. Sources in the security establishment in New Delhi said the explosion caused a hole of around 1 feet by 1.5 feet in wall of the consulate towards the secluded rear side of the office building. They said no one was in the office at the time of the explosion. The camp office of the consulate was set up during the floods in Nepal and north Bihar. A senior officer of Nepal police said it was investigating to find out who caused the blast, according to Kathmandu Post. Investigating officers suspect that cadres of a local political group have caused the blast. The party had called a general strike in Biratnagar yesterday. The security around the blast site has been upped after the incident. Biratnagar is the industrial capital of Nepal and 6 km north of the border of Bihar. (This story has not been edited by Business Standard staff and is auto-generated from a syndicated feed.) Expressing dismay over the killing of a tiger in Lalgarh in West Bengal by locals, an animal protection body today asked the state government to book those responsible for it and also involve experts to tackle such conflict situations. The adult tiger that had strayed into the forest of Lalgarh in West Midnapore district last month was killed by the locals recently and the carcass was recovered from the forest. The organisation, World Animal Protection, said that the local hunters used spears and bows and arrows to kill the cornered creature on April 13 and urged the authorities to investigate if it was a victim of "ritual hunting". "We call upon the state government to involve experts from outside in case they lack the requisite ability to humanely tackle conflict situations involving tigers and other species of endangered wildlife in Bengal. "We reiterate our original request of humane and professional handling of all animals caught in conflict situations, effective coordination between all departments, enhanced sensitivity among the local populace for protecting wildlife among others," said Gajender K Sharma, India Country Director, World Animal Protection. The body also strongly urged the government to conduct a proper investigation into the death of this tiger and strict implementation of the Wildlife Protection Act with regards to any ritual practices that kill large numbers of wild animals. The body said that the big cat had been roaming in a 30-sq-km swathe stretching across Jhargram, West Midnapore and Bankura districts since March 2, when it was spotted first. From drones to live traps and tranquilising teams, forest officials had tried different techniques to capture the animal but all these efforts failed, leading to the death of the tiger at the hands of the local villagers who indulge in ritual hunting. "We urge the authorities to bring to book those responsible for killing the tiger and punish them along with those who failed in their duty to secure the safety of this migrant animal, Gajender said. The body said that it is also currently the hunting season for tribals that has led to massive killing of all kinds of wild animals and India's national animal that is protected under Schedule I of the Wildlife Protection Act. It has also come to light that several protocols laid by National Tiger Conservation Authority for tackling tigers in conflict situations were violated during the attempts to capture the tiger and the area in the vicinity of where the tiger was spotted was not adequately secured, it said. (This story has not been edited by Business Standard staff and is auto-generated from a syndicated feed.) Drug firm Cadila Healthcare today said it has divested its entire shareholding in German subsidiary Bremer Pharma GmbH to Alivira Animal Health Limited, Ireland. "The Company has divested its entire shareholding in Bremer Pharma GmbH, Germany (Bremer), Wholly Owned Subsidiary of the Company," the company informed BSE. Consequently, Bremer ceased to be a subsidiary of the company, it added. This was done on an enterprise value of Euro 22,63,431 on which share sale value is Euro 8,27,344. (This story has not been edited by Business Standard staff and is auto-generated from a syndicated feed.) US Senator John McCain, who is battling brain cancer, was in stable condition today after undergoing surgery to treat an infection, an aide said, adding that Senate colleagues have made frequent visits to see him. "On Sunday, Senator McCain was admitted to Mayo Clinic in Phoenix, Arizona, and underwent surgery to treat an intestinal infection related to diverticulitis," spokeswoman Julie Tarallo said. McCain, 81, was diagnosed last year with an aggressive type of cancer, glioblastoma, after a brain tumor was discovered by doctors. It has led to a reduced role in Congress for the veteran lawmaker, who was the Republican presidential nominee in 2008 and currently chairs the powerful Senate Armed Services Committee. His wife Cindy McCain took to Twitter to say that her husband was "doing well after his surgery. Looking forward to getting back to Hidden Valley," the couple's ranch in Arizona. "Over the last few months, Senator McCain has been participating in physical therapy at his home in Cornville, Arizona, as he recovers from the side effects of cancer treatment," Tarallo said. "He has remained engaged on his work as chairman of the Senate Armed Services Committee, and has enjoyed frequent visits from his family, friends, staff and Senate colleagues." While McCain has not been seen in Washington for some months, his daughter Meghan expressed optimism in March that her father would be back in the Senate by the summer. Despite being from the same Republican Party, McCain was a major thorn in the side of President Donald Trump during his tumultuous first year in office. The senator effectively sank Trump's attempts to scrap the health care reforms passed into law during Barack Obama's presidency by voting against a repeal soon after being diagnosed with cancer. McCain, a former prisoner of war in Vietnam, was first elected to the House of Representatives in 1982 from the southwestern state of Arizona. He has served in the Senate since 1987. (This story has not been edited by Business Standard staff and is auto-generated from a syndicated feed.) The Central Administrative Tribunal (CAT) has lashed out at the Bihar government for not providing security to an IAS officer, who has repeatedly complained of threat to his life from the "transport mafia", saying it apprehended a "repeat of Satyendra Dubey murder case". The Principal Bench of the CAT, headed by its Chairman Justice Permod Kohli, said it was the duty of the Centre and the Bihar government to protect his life. The Tribunal was hearing a complaint filed by 2013 batch IAS officer Jitendra Gupta, seeking inter-state transfer from Bihar to Haryana, alleging threat to his life for acting tough against the 'transport mafia' in Bihar. "If he is not taken out of Bihar, we are afraid, there could be a repeat of Satyendra Dubey murder case, in which a bright young engineer (Dubey) working as Project Director in NHAI, Gaya, Bihar who had apprehended threat to his life and had sought security, which was not provided, was murdered by the road construction mafia," the bench, which also comprised member K N Shrivastava, said. Observing it was unfortunate that no action was taken by the state to provide personal security to the officer and his family members, the CAT said "it is the duty of the respondents (Centre and state) to save the life of the applicant and, prima facie, there is a threat to his life. This can easily be done if the applicant is taken out of Bihar for the present." The tribunal also quashed the Centre's decision declining the request of the officer to be transferred to Haryana, holding it "ab initio illegal, arbitrary and unreasonable" and asked it to consider his name again for inter-state transfer. Gupta has alleged that the mafia, in connivance with the state vigilance department, has implicated him in a false case alleging that he seized four trucks on July 3, 2016 and demanded bribe for releasing them. He was arrested in the case and had to spend a month in jail. After being released on bail, Gupta moved the Patna High Court against the FIR against him. The high court had quashed the FIR on October 28, 2016. The Supreme Court had also upheld the high court order and directed the Centre on May 9, 2017, to consider his inter-state transfer after noting the threat perception. The state government, in a letter to the Centre, however, said there was no probable threat to the officer's life and he could continue in the state 'fearlessly'. The Tribunal noted that the proposal for inter-cadre transfer of Gupta on the ground of extreme hardship was again placed before the Committee headed by the Secretary (Personnel) of the Department of Personnel and Training (DoPT) at its meeting held on August 17, 2017. The Committee had then recommended that the proposal may be submitted to Appointments Committee of the Cabinet (ACC) for consideration. The Centre, on December 6 last year, had rejected the request for inter-cadre deputation. The CAT had then directed the Centre's counsel to submit the reason rejecting "such a sensible and pragmatic recommendation". Maintaining that the decision not to transfer Gupta "does not record any reasons", the CAT said "such an order is obviously arbitrary, unreasonable and illegal" and is "liable to be quashed and set aside". (This story has not been edited by Business Standard staff and is auto-generated from a syndicated feed.) The Delhi Police has filed a charge sheet against four Delhi University students for allegedly misbehaving with and stalking union minister Smriti Irani in 2017. The final report was filed before Metropolitan Magistrate Snigdha Sarwaria who took cognisance of the charge sheet and put up the matter for October 15. The four youths, identified as Sitanshu, Karan, Avinash and Amit, were booked on charges of stalking, criminal intimidation and intention to insult the modesty of a woman. "I take cognisance of the offence as mentioned in the charge sheet. Considering the overall facts and circumstances of the cases, there is sufficient material on record to issue summons against the accused," the judge said, noting that the accused were on bail. In April 2017, the police had alleged that the drunk students had followed Irani's car in Lutyens' Delhi, following which they were detained. Acting on a complaint, the police had intercepted the car in which the four youths were travelling. The students, in the age group of 18-19 years, were detained at the Chanakyapuri police station in the diplomatic enclave here. The incident had occurred near the US embassy, the police had said. It had claimed that the medical examination of the accused had confirmed the presence of alcohol in their blood. (This story has not been edited by Business Standard staff and is auto-generated from a syndicated feed.) Chemical weapons experts are due to arrive in Douma tomorrow to probe an alleged poison gas attack, Russian officials said, as the US voiced fears Moscow may already have "tampered with" evidence at the site. Following weekend missile strikes on Syria by the US, France and Britain, Russia traded accusations with Western nations yesterday, dismissing as "a blatant lie" accusations that Moscow was hindering the investigation in Douma. The four nations confronted each other in tense emergency talks at the Organisation for the Prohibition of Chemical Weapons (OPCW) in The Hague as inspectors prepare for a difficult, dangerous mission. OPCW director general Ahmet Uzumcu said his nine-strong, all-volunteer team had reached Damascus, but so far "the team has not yet deployed to Douma" -- scene of an alleged chlorine and sarin gas attack on April 7 where 40 people were said to have been killed. Syrian and Russian officials had warned of "pending security issues to be worked out before any deployment could take place," Uzumcu said. Igor Kirillov, head of Russia's radiological, biological and chemical protection unit, told reporters the roads still had to be de-mined and cleared and would be tested by UN security services today. "On Wednesday (tomorrow) is when we plan the arrival of the OPCW experts," he added at a press conference in the Russian embassy in The Hague. The American ambassador to the OPCW, Ken Ward, claimed however the Russians had already visited the site and "may have tampered with it with the intent of thwarting the efforts of the OPCW fact-finding mission". The Kremlin dismissed the claims. "I can guarantee that Russia has not tampered with the site," Russian Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov told the BBC. And the Russian ambassador to the Netherlands, Alexander Shulgin, said it was a "blatant lie" that Moscow was hampering the investigation. Instead he said it was the United States, France and Britain who were "standing in the way" of the investigation by ordering air strikes "in the blink of an eye" before the OPCW team had had a chance to do their work. The missiles that US, French and British warships fired on suspected chemical facilities on Saturday constituted the biggest Western attack against the regime in the seven-year war to topple Syrian President Bashar al-Assad. The targeted sites were largely empty, and were all said to be facilities for chemical weapons storage or production. Both British Prime Minister Theresa May and French President Emmanuel Macron faced anger yesterday from their lawmakers for conducting the air strikes with the United States. Despite polls showing scant support for the move, May said it had been her "responsibility as prime minister to make these decisions," while Macron also defended his move as part of his constitutional powers. (This story has not been edited by Business Standard staff and is auto-generated from a syndicated feed.) The Chhattisgarh government will file a review petition in the Supreme Court challenging its order modifying certain provisions of the Scheduled Caste and Scheduled Tribe (Prevention of Atrocities) Act, Chief Minister Raman Singh said today. Singh said his government had also revoked a police department circular for implementation of the Supreme Court order across the state. The Supreme Court guidelines, which several Dalit groups claimed allegedly diluted the stringency of the SC/ST (Prevention of Atrocities) Act, led to a nationwide shutdown on April 2. Violence during the protests that day saw several people killed and scores injured. "On March 20, Supreme Court had delivered a judgement on the Scheduled Caste and Scheduled Tribe (Prevention of Atrocities) Act. The state government will file a petition in the Supreme Court against the decision," Singh told reporters. "In this connection, the state's police headquarters had issued an order. That order stands cancelled with immediate effect," he said. "The state government is affected by the judgement. In Chhattisgarh, it is the responsibility of the government to protect the honour of SCs and STs. The state government has always been sensitive towards them," he said. "The state government is completely capable of protecting the interests of SCs and STs. Therefore, we took this decision immediately," he added. Singh said his government would present its side strongly in the apex court. On being asked about the lack of coordination between the state and the Centre, he said that his government got to know about the Centre's decision to file a review petition against the order yesterday. "When we came to know about the stand of the Centre, we took a decision on the matter yesterday," he said. He hit out at the opposition Congress claiming that the party was making grandiose statements on the issue but was doing nothing about it. On April 6, the state's Additional Director General (Crime Investigation Department) RK Vij had issued a circular to all superintendents of police, asking them to strictly implement the top court's March 20 judgement. The circular laid down that, as per the Supreme Court order, a public servant could be arrested under the SC/ST Act only after approval of the appointing authority while a private individual could be arrested following the senior superintendent of police's approval. (This story has not been edited by Business Standard staff and is auto-generated from a syndicated feed.) China has activated new intermediate and long-range missiles capable of precision strikes on medium and large warships, official media here reported. The domestically developed missiles, which were recently used by a missile brigade of the People's Liberation Army's (PLA) rocket force, is capable of nuclear counterattacks, and marks a further development of Chinese artillery's combat capabilities, state-run China Central Television (CCTV) reported. It is capable of precision strikes on medium and large targets on land, and similar sized warships at sea, official tabloid Global Times quoted the CCTV report as saying. "This breakthrough means that the missile's reaction time is quicker, and its station-keeping ability is more precise," Zhang Junshe, a senior research fellow at the PLA Naval Military Studies Research Institute, told the daily. In recent years, the PLA Rocket Force, which is created as part of the reforms initiated by President Xi Jinping has been focusing on improving its nuclear counterattack capabilities and medium-to-long range precision strikes. It is more "combat ready, and launches on time and causes serious damage," the report said. (This story has not been edited by Business Standard staff and is auto-generated from a syndicated feed.) A Chinese doctor who called a popular brand of traditional medicine "poison" has been detained without charge by police for three months, in a case that has angered the country's medical community. Physician Tan Qindong said in a December article that the popular "Hongmao Medicinal Liquor" was toxic, prompting a complaint from the Inner Mongolia-based drug maker, local media reported. Hongmao is popular among the elderly but Tan questioned the evidence behind claims made by the manufacturer that the product could cure illnesses including joint pain and coronary heart disease. Tan was detained by police from northern Inner Mongolia at his home in the southern city of Guangzhou -- more than 2,300 kilometres away -- on January 10. He has languished in detention for three months, even though police have not pressed charges, which has roiled China's medical community. "Government organisations must respond to different academic opinions with caution, and avoid criminalising civil disputes," the Chinese Medical Doctor Association said in a statement Monday. Traditional Chinese medicine (TCM) is an enormous industry in China, with a total value in excess of $130 billion in 2016, according to the official agency Xinhua. The case is the latest in a series of skirmishes between proponents of TCM, which lacks medical trials to prove the efficacy of some substances, and doctors advocating for evidence-based, peer-reviewed medicine. Responding to public uproar over the case, the state drug administration on Monday ordered Hongmao to "adhere to national drug advertising rules". China's drug regulator approved the alcohol to be sold as an over-the-counter traditional Chinese medicinal product in 2003. But since 2010, the medicinal wine has been temporarily pulled from shelves in three provinces, due to "exaggerated advertising claims," data from the drug regulator showed In February, the company's advertisements were banned in Shaanxi province as part of a crackdown on food fraud and false advertising. Hongmao Pharmaceutical Co. could not be reached for comment. Activists say growing demand for various TCM remedies such as rhino horn and pangolin scales -- which have no proven medical properties -- have decimated vulnerable animal species and filled the coffers of global wildlife trafficking syndicates. (This story has not been edited by Business Standard staff and is auto-generated from a syndicated feed.) A clean-up operation in the British city where a former Russian spy was poisoned began Tuesday, with officials saying the nerve agent used was delivered in "liquid form" and small quantities. The attack on ex-double agent Sergei Skripal and his daughter Yulia on March 4 in Salisbury has damaged relations between Moscow and the West. The environment ministry, which is in charge of the clean-up, said an area of the cemetery in Salisbury where Skripal's wife and son are buried was re-opened on Tuesday. But nine other sites, including a pub and a restaurant the Skripals visited shortly before collapsing, remain closed off. Counter-terror police are gradually handing the sites over to specialist cleaning teams. The work is expected to take several months. Around 190 specialist military personnel are supporting the operation. Suspected sites are tested, items which may have been contaminated are removed for chemical cleaning and then re-testing, the department said. The environment ministry's chief scientific advisor Ian Boyd said: "Thanks to detailed information gathered during the police's investigation, and our scientific understanding of how the agent works and is spread, we have been able to categorise the likely level of contamination at each site. "Meticulous work is required." The Skripals were found slumped on a bench in Salisbury, having earlier visited a pub and a restaurant. Sergei Skripal, 66, remains in the city's hospital, though he is improving rapidly and no longer in a critical condition, doctors said in their last update on April 6. Yulia Skripal, 33, has been discharged and is continuing her recovery in a safe house. The Group of Seven industrial powers condemned the attack "in the strongest possible terms" on Tuesday. They agreed it was "highly likely" that Russia was responsible and there was "no plausible alternative explanation". Moscow vehemently denies any suggestion of involvement. (This story has not been edited by Business Standard staff and is auto-generated from a syndicated feed.) A 24-year-old labourer was arrested for allegedly killing his contractor following a fight over payment in Dwarka, police said today. On the intervening night of March 30 and 31, the contractor, Lalu, got into a quarrel with two of his labourers. He was found with severe injuries on his body the next morning and was rushed to a hospital where he died during treatment, police said. The accused had fled from Delhi after the incident. During investigation, it was found that one of the suspects made a call to his father from the victim's cell phone. The team collected the call detail records and traced the mobile number to the father of one of the suspects. A police team went to the suspect's home in Gorapkhpur, Uttar Prdesh, but he was not found there. The suspect was identified as Sanjay and his father told the police team that he was in Delhi, police said. Subsequently, he was nabbed from near the Dhansa Border, they said. Sanjay revealed that he along with his associate Rajesh had killed Lalu. Lalu was a contractor from Punjab and during the harvesting season, he provided labourers to owners of combined harvesters in Delhi, police said. The accused duo worked for Lalu. On March 30, the duo finished some work and Lalu received Rs 1,000 as payment of which he gave Rs 250 to each of the two labourers and kept Rs 500 for himself. They quarrelled with Lalu and asked him to divide the amount in equal parts, but the contractor allegedly scolded and slapped them, police said. When Lalu was sleeping, they attacked him with bricks and killed him. (This story has not been edited by Business Standard staff and is auto-generated from a syndicated feed.) Bollywood superstar Salman Khan was today allowed by a court here to travel abroad for promotional events. The 52-year old actor was awarded a five-year jail term on April 5 by a trial court for killing two black bucks in October 1998 and was granted bail on April 7 by the district and sessions court. District and sessions judge Chandra Kumar Songara was hearing Salman's plea seeking permission to travel to Nepal, the US and Canada for some promotional events??. The judge granted permission on the condition that Salman would duly intimated to the court information of his travel and stay abroad. Salman was held guilty of killing two black bucks, an endangered animal included in the schedule-I of the Wildlife (Protection) Act-1972, during the shooting of the film "Hum Sath Sath Hain". His co-stars Saif Ali Khan, Tabu, Neelam and Sonali Bendre were also accused in the case but the trial court acquitted them by giving them the benefit of doubt. (This story has not been edited by Business Standard staff and is auto-generated from a syndicated feed.) A police official, accused of torturing and compelling his wife to kill herself, has been granted bail with a Delhi court observing that there was an unexplained delay of around two months in lodging an FIR against him. Additional Sessions Judge Prem Kumar Barthwal granted the relief to the 31-year-old sub inspector on a personal bond of Rs 50,000 with one surety of the like amount with a direction that he would join the probe as and when required by the investigating officer. The court also directed him not to leave the country without its permission and not to tamper evidence or influence witnesses in the case. The order came on a plea of the accused in a domestic violence and abetment of suicide case lodged by his father-in-law against him in January 2018, over two months after the official's wife committed suicide in November 2017. The court noted that immediately after the death of the woman on November 6, 2017, her father did not allege any ill-treatment by the accused to his daughter in a statement before the magistrate. The court also relied on the submission of the accused that his wife took her life as she was depressed because she was suffering from polycystic ovarian disease. In his plea seeking bail, the sub-inspector had said that he was happily married since April 2016 and had never demanded any dowry from his wife or her family. The prosecution, however, said that the accused had made a demand of a car, a flat in Gurgaon and around Rs 15 lakh in cash and had inflicted injuries on his wife. The accused denied all the allegations and claimed a false case was lodged by his father-in-law who concealed from him and his family the medical history of his wife. He had said that his wife, who was undergoing medical treatment for infertility which resulted into depression, committed suicide while he was out of on official duty and this case was lodged only to humiliate and tarnish his family's reputation and to harm his job. The court noted that in a statement given before a magistrate a day after the incident, the father of the deceased had stated that the victim was staying happily with the applicant and had never complained against her in-laws. (This story has not been edited by Business Standard staff and is auto-generated from a syndicated feed.) The CPI(M) Congress is likely to witness a showdown at its mega meet beginning here tomorrow, as this highest decision-making body seems polarised between factions supporting and opposing an understanding with the Congress to take on the BJP, party insiders said. About 765 delegates will participate at the five-day meeting that will determine the political line of the major Left party, that has seen its political fortunes decline over the years and recently lost its bastion Tripura to the BJP. With the next general elections just a year away, the Party Congress assumes added significance as any decision taken here will form the basis of the political line underscoring the CPI(M)'s strategy to better its performance from the nine Lok Sabha seats it won in 2014. "In the Party Congress which is the highest decision making body of our party, we will debate and adopt the political line for the party," a party leader said requesting anonymity. At the centre of the debate is the nature of the equation with the Congress and how it will play out in the months before the general elections. The political resolution adopted by the Party Congress will hold the key, he said. Party sources said an overwhelming number of about 8,000 amendments have been received on the draft political resolution, which would be voted at the Congress. A large chunk of them concern whether or not to join hands with "all secular, democratic forces", implying the Congress too, to form an anti-BJP platform, they said. Over the last two months, the CPI(M) has been witnessing acrimonious debate between the factions in the Politburo and the Central Committee over the draft resolution with general secretary Sitaram Yechury and his predecessor Prakash Karat on opposing sides. The present draft resolution, ruling out any electoral understanding with the Congress, is backed by Karat and has found majority support in the Central Committee meeting last month. Preferred over a document proposed by Yechury, the draft resolution rules out treating the Congress as an ally or a partner in a united front since it has the same "class character" as that of the BJP. It notes that both are parties of the ruling classes and the Congress has proved to be incapable of consistently fighting communal forces. It also identifies the BJP as the main threat today given its basic link to the RSSand since it is in power. That is why, it states that the CPI (M) cannot pursue a line of treating both the BJP and the Congress as equal dangers. The draft resolution also underlines that the CPI(M)'s tactical approach should be to cooperate with the Congress and other secular opposition parties in Parliament on agreed issues. Outside Parliament, it has advocated cooperation with the Congress to mobilise people on issues of workers and farmers and against the communal threat. There is a growing feeling within the party that the party can adopt a middle path to incorporate both the political views to end the ideological differences between the two factions, a leader said. Karat wrote in an editorial last month titled Uttar Pradesh Portents' in the CPI(M) mouthpiece People's Democracy, the UP by-elections provide important lessons for the future in terms of election tactics to defeat the BJP... If the major non-BJP parties unite, then the smaller parties and forces can extend support to them. (This story has not been edited by Business Standard staff and is auto-generated from a syndicated feed.) Several hundred Cypriot, Palestinian and Syrian protesters waved Syrian flags and chanted anti-Western slogans in front of the US Embassy in Cyprus to condemn the American-led airstrikes in Syria. Protesters from a coalition of left-wing groups and Cyprus' communist-rooted AKEL party said the "aggression" against Syria on Saturday was unjustified without proof the regime of President Bashar Assad used chemical weapons on its own people. "It hasn't been proven that chemical weapons were used and by whom, if they were used," Christina Christofia, the daughter of former Cyprus President Dimitris Christofias, said yesterday. "In our estimation, it's just another manufactured excuse for another military, imperialistic intervention." Participants at the protest, who included families with small children, also criticized the use of Cyprus as a launch-pad for attacks against the Syrian people. British warplanes took off from a UK air base in the east Mediterranean island nation, a former British colony, to take part in Saturday's missile strikes against suspected chemical weapons facilities in Syria. Demonstrators outside the US Embassy chanted "Imperialism is the one enemy" and "Coups, wars, terror, that's NATO's black legacy." A group calling itself the Syrian Arab Community unfurled a banner describing the airstrikes a "reckless and irresponsible act" while a protester wrote "Hands Off Syria" on the asphalt in green paint. A dozen riot police were on hand during the rally, but kept a discreet distance. (This story has not been edited by Business Standard staff and is auto-generated from a syndicated feed.) The release of "Daas Dev" has been pushed by a week and the Sudhir Mishra-directed film will now arrive in theatres on April 27. Starring Rahul Bhat, Richa Chadha and Aditi Rao Hydari, the film is a modern-day retelling of Sarat Chandra Chattopadhyay's classic novel "Devdas". It was earlier slated to release on April 20. The of the date shuffle was announced on the film's Twitter page. A statement by banner, Saptarishi Cinevision Production, read that the team "voluntarily pushed/extended" the release date of the film to April 27 to avoid clash with films opening this week. Iranian filmmaker Majid Majidi's first India-set film "Beyond The Clouds", Abhay Deol-Patralekhaa-starrer "Nanu Ki Janu" and "Rampage", featuring Hollywood star Dwayne Johnson, are among films set to release this Friday. "With around four Bollywood films and few regional films releasing on April 20, the makers felt that they required a cleaner window to reach out to the audience. Keeping this in mind producers and the distribution team took a strategic call to push the film's release by a week," the statement read. "I trust my release partners-presenter and distributor. I believe they are doing a fabulous job backend. We have a clutter free date now and every producer makes a film with this anticipation of a dream run, so have I," producer Sanjeev Kumar said in the release. Set against the backdrop of Uttar Pradesh, "Daas Dev" is a film about power, love and addiction. It will explore the reverse journey of Devdas - from a servant (das) to a god (dev). This film has been presented by Storm Pictures and distributed by Shringar film. (This story has not been edited by Business Standard staff and is auto-generated from a syndicated feed.) A 23-year-old woman and her lover have been arrested for allegedly shooting dead her father for opposing their relationship, the police said today. The incident took place on April 7 when the victim returned to his house in Shamli district from Delhi. He was shot dead by three persons, Circle Officer Ashok Kumar said. We have arrested the deceased's daughter, Kavya, her lover Samir Ahmad and one Shadab in the case, he said. The victim, Rakesh Rohela, used to work in Delhi. He was opposed to his daughter's relationship with Ahmad, the police officer said. (This story has not been edited by Business Standard staff and is auto-generated from a syndicated feed.) Delhi Chief Minister Arvind Kejriwal today approved a policy to compensate consumers for unscheduled power cuts by electricity discoms in the national capital. The discoms have to pay a penalty of Rs 100 for each hour of such a power outage. The policy will come into effect after the approval of Lt Governor (L-G) Anil Baijal, said a Delhi government statement. "In a first of its kind pro-power consumer policy in the country, Chief Minister Arvind Kejriwal today approved the power department's policy for compensating consumers for unscheduled power cuts by private power distribution companies in Delhi," the statement said. The government hopes that the policy will be approved by the L-G. In 2016, Kejriwal had alleged that an order of his government to compensate power consumers for unscheduled electricity cuts was cancelled by the then L-G, Najeeb Jung. The latest policy has been sent to Baijal for final approval, the statement said. "The Delhi government is confident that the L-G will concur with the policy and will endorse this pro-consumer step, which will become a model for other governments in the country," it said. Under the policy, discoms will be exempted from paying penalty in the first hour of an unscheduled power cut. For the next hour, consumers will be paid Rs 50, after which compensation will be paid at a rate of Rs 100 per hour. The first hour exemption from penalty will be available once a day for the discoms. There are three private power discoms including the BSES companies BYPL and BRPL, and the Tata Power Delhi Distribution Limited (TPDDL) that supply power to the city, barring areas under the New Delhi Municipal Council and the Delhi Cantonment. The compensation earned by the consumers will be adjusted against their monthly power bill. In case, the compensation is not paid by the discoms, the consumers can lodge a complaint with the Delhi Electricity Regulatory Authority(DERC). The amount of compensation in such cases will be Rs 5,000 or five times of the compensation payable, whichever is higher, said the statement. The affected consumers will be required to file a "no current" complaint through SMS, email, telephone, mobile apps or official websites of discoms, giving their particulars such as name, consumer account (CA) number, mobile number. The discoms will attend to the complaint and will send a confirmation message to consumers with the date and time of restoration, the statement said. It said that after the permissible time limit ends, the respective compensation amount will be automatically credited to the CA number without any manual intervention and a message will be sent to the consumer. (This story has not been edited by Business Standard staff and is auto-generated from a syndicated feed.) Germany wants to make dishes with tongue-twisting names such as 'Bratwurst' and 'Maultaschen' familiar to Indians, and its tourism office here is set to launch a host of online events as part of a global campaign to promote itself as a culinary destination. At a press conference held here, a top official of the German National Tourist Office (GNTO) in India said the campaign will focus on various segments of travellers, such as the "youth and DINKs (double income no kids)", which are quite active on social media. "Our tourism theme for this year is 'Culinary Germany: More to Explore' and a number of special food-and-drinks-themed guided tours have been designed for tourists, ranging from wine to cheese and beer to asparagus," Romit Theophilus, the GNTO's India Director, said. Some of themes for tours are -- Algau Cheese Route, Old Salt Road, Baden Asparagus Route, Lower Saxony Milk Route and Saxony Wine Route. German cuisine is as diverse as its scenery, from 'Pannfisch' fried fish in the north to green sauce and 'Bratwurst' sausages in central Germany to dumplings, 'Maultaschen' pasta pockets and 'Eisbein' ham hock in the south, Theophilus said, adding that there is something for everyone. "And, we want to make these dishes with tongue-twisting names familiar to Indians. And, so the online events will help connect us with people," Theophilus said. "Germany continues to be one of the most sought after travel destinations for Indians travelling aboard," the GNTO, the official representative of the German National Tourism Board (GNTB), said. "The country witnessed 8,52,224 visitor overnights in 2017, making for a 13.8 per cent growth over 2016. Owing to this steady growth, the GNTO India forecasts a 5-8 per cent growth in visitor overnights for the year 2018," it said. Visitor overnight is defined as one overnight stay by a traveller and if he or she stays for multiple days, then all those days are combined to arrive at the cumulative overnights, Theophilus said. "Our Facebook campaign will start soon, whereby we will reach out to travellers through promotionals and other online events. Also, there will be an influencer blogger hangout, and Indian and German chefs mash-up events to popularise German dishes. Our plate is full," he said. The Facebook page of the GNTO India now boasts of over one million followers, and "we want to be more aggressive in digital marketing than television campaigns", Theophilus said. Asked if there has been a spike in tourist influx from India to Germany post-Brexit in 2016, the official said, "No such increase has been found". About popularity of Indian cuisine in Germany, Theophilus said, "It is quite popular and there are nearly 2,000 restaurants across the country which offer Indian cuisine, with over a 100 of them in Berlin." He said, the travellers from India mostly belonged to the age group of 25-45. "Also, the number of solo travellers and female business travellers were growing." Besides food and natural beauty, heritage and architecture is a major draw for travellers, he said. Bavaria, known for its Neuschwanstein Castle, a 19th-century Romanesque Revival palace, iconic landmarks in Cologne such as the Cologne Catherdral, Dresden, for its buildings bearing ornate facade, and architecture of the city of Berlin, are popular from heritage point of view. "Next year, we are celebrating 100 years of Bauhaus. And, that along with value for money would be theme in 2019. And, in 2020, the theme would be (composer and pianist Ludwig van) Beethoven," he said. Founded in Weimar in 1919 by architect Walter Gropius, Bauhaus was a German art school operational from 1919 to 1933 that combined crafts and the fine arts, and was famous for the approach to design that it publicised and taught. (This story has not been edited by Business Standard staff and is auto-generated from a syndicated feed.) Differences in the CPI(M) over its draft political resolution on electoral understandings with other political outfits including the Congress may lead to a vote -- a rare occurrence in the party -- at a crucial meeting beginning here tomorrow. The Marxist party is divided on whether to have an understanding with the Congress and the draft political resolution which deals with the issue has seen a record submission of almost 8,000 amendments from its members. Once adopted at the five-day party congress, the resolution would chalk out the political roadmap for the party for three years and will include the path it will take for the 2019 general elections. The two sides -- one led by general secretary Sitaram Yechury and the other by his predecessor Prakash Karat -- have for long debated the issue, making this mega conference even more crucial as the defeat of what is called the Yechury line would also decide whether he would continue to hold the top post, party sources said. Yechury is believed to be in favour of forging an understanding with the Congress. The amendments to the draft resolution have been submitted by party members from across the country on the political path they believe it needs to follow. Most of the proposed changes are on whether the CPI(M) should join hands with "all secular, democratic forces", including the Congress. The Bengal unit, which supports Yechury, has come prepared to "fight it out till the end", a party member said, adding that it may even consider going in for a vote, a rare occurrence in the history of the congress, which is the highest decision-making body of the Communist Party of India (Marxist). "We have to change with the times. It is the need of the hour to consolidate all secular and democratic parties to fight communal BJP. For that we have to take the Congress with us. After all, it is the biggest opposition party," said a leader from Bengal, requesting anonymity. Under the CPI(M)'s constitution, the new central committee (CC), which is elected by the congress, decides on the new general secretary of the party. Though Yechury, who was elected to the post in the 2015 Visakhapatnam congress, has two more terms left, a change in leadership could occur if his line is defeated. A party general secretary can hold the post for three terms, each of which is for three years. According to party insiders, the Karat-led faction supported by the Kerala unit may also suggest the name of former Tripura chief minister Manik Sarkar as the new general secretary. Sources in the Tripura unit of the party, however, said Sarkar was not very keen on holding the post, the highest in the party, especially after the recent electoral debacle in the state. The Yechury faction is also likely to press for the circulation of an alternative draft of the political resolution presented by the general secretary, whereas the Karat group would push for the official draft finalised by the CC to be circulated among the delegates. The official draft, which is against the party forging any electoral understanding with the Congress, found majority support at a CC meeting last month. The official draft resolution rules out treating the Congress as an ally or a partner in a united front since it has the same "class character" as that of the BJP. It notes that both are parties of the ruling classes and the Congress has proved to be incapable of consistently fighting communal forces. The CPI(M) state units have been moving amendments to the final draft resolution and based on the discussion at the conference, the draft can be finalised with or without the proposed changes. (This story has not been edited by Business Standard staff and is auto-generated from a syndicated feed.) The DMK urged Prime Minister Narendra Modi today to withdraw the Centre's plea seeking clarification over the Cauvery issue and constitute forthwith the Cauvery Management Board to implement the apex court order on it. In a letter to Modi, DMK working president M K Stalin also sought an appointment with him, saying he and the leaders of other opposition parties wanted to apprise him of the Tamil Nadu natives' sentiments over the issue and seek his immediate intervention in it. He said the Centre's March 29 clarification plea seeking a further extension of three months to implement the apex court's order was perceived as "unfair, unjust and unreasonable and consequently has pushed the entire state into a crisis." Stalin, who is the Leader of the Opposition in the state assembly, urged Prime Minister Modi to direct the Ministry of Water Resources to immediately withdraw the clarification plea from the court. The apex court had on April 9 directed the Centre to frame a draft Cauvery management scheme and file it by May 3 for implementation of its judgement on distribution of water among Tamil Nadu, Karnataka and other riparian states. Stalin said the leaders of opposition parties wanted to apprise Modi of the "looming agricultural crisis in the state.. of the sentiments in Tamil Nadu and urge you to intervene in this issue immediately." A meeting of the opposition parties led by DMK, held here yesterday, has decided to seek an appointment to meet Modi on the Cauvery issue, saying the AIADMK government has not implemented a resolution passed at the Feb 22 all-party meeting to meet the PM. Last week, the opposition leaders had urged state Governor Banwarilal Purohit to facilitate a meeting with Prime Minister Modi. In his letter today, a copy of which was released to media, Stalin said, "There is an outpouring of public sentiment," due to non-implementation of the Supreme Court's judgment on the Cauvery issue. Pinning the blame on the AIADMK regime, he claimed "the people of Tamil Nadu have given up hope that the present government would effectively represent their voice or ensure protection of their rights." The DMK leader requested the Prime Minister to enforce apex court's Feb 16 judgement in "the letter and spirit by duly constituting the Cauvery Management Board at the earliest, and not wait till the next hearing on May 3, 2018 or the Karnataka election." He also wanted Modi to reprimand the Union Water Resources Minister and the Ministry's Secretary for their "inappropriate and contumacious interviews (to media) which have further vitiated the issue." Stalin said he was writing to the Prime Minister on behalf of "the political parties from Tamil Nadu, farmers associations, traders' groups, labour unions and the citizens of Tamil Nadu," who have been aggrieved on the Cauvery issue. He drew Modi's attention to the apex court's judgement directing the Centre to frame a scheme within six weeks to put into operation the final award of the Cauvery Water Disputes Tribunal, thereby resolving the decades-long dispute once and for all. (This story has not been edited by Business Standard staff and is auto-generated from a syndicated feed.) The Hague has become the first city in the Netherlands to ban cannabis smoking from downtown areas following numerous complaints by fed-up residents. Since last week "it's illegal to use soft drugs at 13 public spaces," the city said in an online statement seen by AFP today. The ban "to fight nuisance" includes the bustling city centre, the Hague's main train stations and shopping streets, it said. "During the last few years the city council has received numerous complaints about the smell and noise caused by joint-smoking people," it added. Police will enforce the ban with an undisclosed fine, but until the end of April offending smokers will be let off with a warning "to get used to the new measure." The city, the seat of the Dutch government, and police will also start an information campaign and distribute leaflets at cannabis cafes, hotels and hostels. An English version for tourists will also be available. The Netherlands in 1976 decriminalised the sale of small amounts of cannabis -- less than five grammes (less than 0.2 ounces) -- and a person is allowed to grow five plants for personal use. Wholesale marijuana cultivation and retail sales, which is mainly controlled by criminal gangs, are prohibited. In recent years, politicians have pushed back against the tolerant policies adopted in the 1970s, including closing down the country's notorious cannabis coffee shops. The country's top legislative court, the Council of State, in November gave Amsterdam the green light to reduce the hours that cannabis cafes are allowed to do business near schools. (This story has not been edited by Business Standard staff and is auto-generated from a syndicated feed.) The European Union today followed China in complaining to the World Trade Organisation (WTO) over US tariffs on steel and aluminium imports. "Having a substantial interest as an exporter in this case, the European Union requests consultations with the United States" to agree "safeguards", the EU said in a statement published on the world trade body's website. US President Donald Trump sparked fears of a trade war in March when he decided to impose steep tariffs on steel and aluminium imports, primarily to target China, but also EU countries. Brussels said in the document the aim of the discussions would be to "exchange views and seek clarification regarding the proposed measures" and to reach "an understanding on ways to achieve" protection, as set out in the WTO's Agreement on Safeguards. The EU said it wanted to hold the consultations "as soon as possible". A European Commission source told AFP: "The discussions between the EU and the US are currently ongoing. Contacts continue at several levels, notably on the issue of global overcapacity in the steel and aluminium sectors. "In these discussions, the European Commission is insisting on getting a full and unconditional exemption from the announced steel and aluminium tariffs." On April 5 China also filed a complaint with the WTO, but Beijing went through its Dispute Settlement Body. (This story has not been edited by Business Standard staff and is auto-generated from a syndicated feed.) Vice President M Venkaiah Naidu today said the farm sector in Assam needs innovative practices for sustenance and called upon farmers to take up allied activities such as poultry, dairy and fisheries. "There have been many advances in farming practices like precision farming, vertical farming and robotic farming. We must see if these innovations can be tried out in your state," Naidu said. He was speaking at the inauguration ceremony of the year-long golden jubilee celebrations of Assam Agricultural University in Jorhat. India needs to respond effectively to the changing needs of the farm sector and agricultural universities have an important role to play to ensure its sustenance, Naidu said. "Knowledge makes all the difference. The educational institutions must generate new ideas, extend the frontiers of scientific knowledge and search for practical solutions to challenging problems," he said. The farmers who toil on the farms should be empowered with knowledge, financial credit, warehousing and insurance facilities, he said. "Achieving self sufficiency in the pulses and oilseed sector is a challenge before the country. With the dedication demonstrated by our agriculturists and the cutting-edge research being conducted in our laboratories, I am sure we will achieve self sufficiency in these two crops soon," Naidu said. The "contemporary realities" like climate change, fatigued soil health, diminishing water resources and endangered bio-diversity are currently affecting agricultural practices, he said. Farming as a profession is becoming increasingly "uneconomical" and, therefore, "unattractive", he said, adding that "fewer people are now opting for agriculture practices. In order to meet these challenges effectively, we need highly skilled and motivated human resources, persons who will think out of the box and institutions that foster innovation". Naidu urged scientists and state governments to encourage farmers to take up diversified activities, such as fishery and poultry. Expressing satisfaction with the Assam government's efforts to revitalise the animal husbandry sector, he said: "This is, in my view, the need of the hour. Farmers should be encouraged to diversify and take up allied activities to cushion them against uncertain and uneven returns from farming". Assam Governor Jagadish Mukhi, Agriculture Minister Atul Bora and other dignitaries were among those present at the programme today. Talking about the agriculture growth in the state, Naidu said the farming sector in Assam is marching ahead slowly but steadily. "Presently, I believe, it is growing at around 5 per cent. Rice production has increased from 3.8 million tonnes in 2001-02 to 5.2 million tonnes in 2016-17. This is still far below its potential of 12 million tonnes. "Similarly, pulses production increased from 0.85 lakh tonnes to 1.08 lakh tonnes and oil seeds from 1.56 lakh tonnes to 2.15 lakh tonnes in this period. While the state is self sufficient in rice, special efforts are needed to increase production of oil seeds and pulses," the vice president said. Apparently, a great scope exists in the wheat sector too, Naidu said. "I understand that wheat is not a popular crop with farmers of this state. The production is only 0.34 lakh tonnes against a demand of around 6 lakh tonnes. The university, state government and the farmers have to work together to realise the complete potential," he added. (This story has not been edited by Business Standard staff and is auto-generated from a syndicated feed.) The fate of the judge, who quit hours after exonerating Hindutva preacher Swami Assemanand and four others in the Mecca Masjid blast case yesterday, was unclear today as speculation swirled over the reason for his surprise action. There was no official word on whether his resignation has been accepted, with a top official of the Hyderabad High Court saying instructions have been issued not to go public about the issue. "Instructions have been issued not to speak about the issue," the official, who did not want to be named said. He, however, acknowledged the matter was discussed at the level of the chief justice of the high court. Speculation was rife in the judicial circles in Hyderabad that K Ravinder Reddy, the special judge for NIA cases, might have put in his papers to protest allotment of judges from Andhra Pradesh to the subordinate courts in Telangana. The Fourth Additional Metropolitan Sessions Judge had put in his papers to the Metropolitan Sessions Judge citing "personal reasons" for his abrupt decision, which was termed as "intriguing" by Hyderabad Lok Sabha MP and AIMIM chief Asaduddin Owaisi. Reddy had reportedly invited the wrath of the high court in 2016 when he participated in a protest for setting up a separate high court for Telangana and against the posting of judges from Andhra Pradesh to subordinate courts in the new state. "He was among the 11 subordinate court judges who were suspended by the Hyderabad High Court in June 2016 for protesting appointment of the judges who hail from Andhra Pradesh to the courts in Telangana and over the demand for setting up a separate high court for Telangana," a source in the Telangana Federation of Bar Association said. The Hyderabad High Court -- which is common for Andhra Pradesh and Telangana -- had in June 2016 suspended the 11 judges on disciplinary grounds for participating in the agitation. Lawyers and judicial employees from Telangana had also participated in the agitation. The suspension was, however, revoked the next month. Amid speculation over the timing of Reddy's resignation, a senior judicial officer had said yesterday it had "nothing" to do with the judgement in the Mecca Masjid blast case. (This story has not been edited by Business Standard staff and is auto-generated from a syndicated feed.) The first-ever Taiwan Expo will be held here next month as the businesses from the two sides look to forge deeper ties and boost cooperation in areas like smart cities, electric vehicles, green technology and healthcare. Taipei World Trade Centre (TWTC) also launched its office here today with the objective of promoting trade between India and Taiwan. "I have to confess that we (Taiwan) have not paid enough attention to India in the past. But things have changed a lot in the past few years... Yes, we are late, but it is never too late if we are determined to catch up," Taipei World Trade Centre Chairman James CF Huang said addressing a press conference here. Taiwan is a sensitive issue for China, which claims the cash-rich island as its territory and a part of "one China". India has no formal diplomatic relations with Taiwan. The de facto Indian mission in Taipei is the India-Taipei Association and the Taiwanese maintain the Taipei Economic Cultural Centre in New Delhi. Around 130 vendors from Taiwan will showcase their high quality products and services at the three-day expo being organised between May 17-19. "India is making incredible economic progress and as an economic partner to India, Taiwan can greatly contribute to that progress. By working together we can create world's greatest manufacturing centre here in India,"said Walter Yeh, President & CEO of Taiwan External Trade Development Council (TAITRA) at another event here. "We are focused on six major fields, smart cities; electric vehicles; green technology; healthcare; culture and tourism. They are designed to correspond to Prime Minister (Narendra) Modi's key economic policies," Yeh said. He highlighted that the Taiwan electric vehicle alliance can supply all key components for building electric vehicles in India, as the country looks to ramp up its use of electric vehicles. India is one of the five countries apart from Indonesia, Vietnam, Thailand and Malaysia where Taiwan Expo is being organised this year. India had last year signed an industrial cooperation agreement with Taiwan. The bilateral trade was worth USD 6.3 billion in 2017. Considering the close economic ties between the two countries, we expect the annual trade will grow manifolds in the years to come on the back of our fresh investments. Taiwan Expo is being organised in India at a very conducive time when many companies in both the countries are keen to tie-up with each other for economic benefits, said Yeh. (This story has not been edited by Business Standard staff and is auto-generated from a syndicated feed.) Against the backdrop of a nationwide outrage caused by the alleged rape and killing of an eight-year-old girl in Kathua, veteran actor Shabana Azmi has said that "our betis (daughters) should be alive and safe" for the "Beti Bachao, Beti Padhao" campaign to be effective. Recently, several Bollywood celebrities had joined a protest to demand justice for the victims of the Kathua and Unnao rape cases that have generated a groundswell of anger against the perpetrators. "On one hand, we see our women who have reached great heights and have become great leaders. But on the other hand, on a daily basis, we read and watch such that we are left speechless," Azmi told reporters on the sidelines of the 20th Beti FLO GR8 Awards 2018 function held here last night. "It is our responsibility to unite and ensure that these incidents do not happen, because we say 'Beti Bachao, Beti Padhao' which should happen, but for that, it is important that our betis (daughters) should be alive too," she said. "Beti Bachao, Beti Padhao" (save girl child, educate a girl child) is a social campaign of the Union government that aims to generate awareness and improve the efficiency of welfare services intended for girls. Azmi further said the people should make it a point that such incidents do not recur in the country. "Today, we must also remember girls, who have had a very unfortunate existance... It is very important for us to come together and say, 'this must not happen.' This cannot happen in our country. This country will change, it is a beautiful country, if we all come together," she said. In Kathua district of Jammu and Kashmir, an eight-year-old child from a minority nomadic community was allegedly held in captivity in a small village temple for a week in January this year during which she was kept sedated and sexually assaulted before being bludgeoned to death. Eight persons, including a juvenile, were arrested in the case. The trial in the case began yesterday. In Uttar Pradesh's Unnao, a teenage girl alleged that she was raped by a ruling BJP MLA who has been arrested by the CBI, which is probing the case. (This story has not been edited by Business Standard staff and is auto-generated from a syndicated feed.) The National Green Tribunal today rapped the East Delhi Municipal Corporation over its report on a recent fire incident at the Ghazipur landfill site, saying it cannot allow non-compliance of its orders to solve the issue. Irked at the approach of the corporation, a bench headed by acting Chairperson Justice Jawad Rahim summoned the Police Commissioner and the Commissioner of the EDMC to appear before it on April 23 and submit a detailed report. The green panel said except for stating that tenders have been floated, no statement was "forthcoming" from the EDMC about the actual and effective steps being taken to avert the instances of fire in terms of its earlier directions. Noting that the EDMC lawyer's submission that he did not have instructions from the municipal body and said,"as the situation is serious, we expected serious approach by the corporation which was lacking." "We cannot allow such non-compliance by indifferent attitude of the authorities concerned and avoid perishing of the life of the people, factual information about the steps taken or being taken is essential. "Hence, we direct the Commissioner, EDMC and the Commissioner of Police, NCT Delhi to be present before the Tribunal giving us the factual action taken report on the action taken in pursuance to our order dated March 22, 2018 apart from the detailed report," the bench said. The NGT's direction came after advocate Sanjay Upadhyay, who has been appointed as amicus curiae in the matter, informed the bench that the police and the corporation have not filed the report despite its March 22 direction. The lawyer had earlier told the NGT that after a major fire on another fire had broken on March 18 at the landfill site and as per the tribunal's order in case of such incidents, appropriate action be taken against the authorities concerned. Advocate Balendu Shekhar, the counsel for the EDMC submitted that the corporation was trying its best to curb the methane generation in the landfill site which is the main cause for the fire incidents. He said the corporation has time and again informed the tribunal about the situation at the Ghazipur landfill site which is already saturated, and a plea seeking more land has been moved which is pending. However, the NGT was unimpressed and observed that the authorities were lacking seriousness in managing the problem. The tribunal had earlier directed the Delhi government, the Delhi Development Authority (DDA) and EDMC to file a compliance report pertaining to recurring incidents of fire at the Ghazipur landfill site. Recently, the EDMC had moved a plea seeking direction to the DDA to hand over a 130-acre piece of land at Sonia Vihar and a 50-acre plot at Ghonda Gujran for solid waste management facilities on a priority basis. The NGT had earlier directed the Delhi government and the civic bodies to submit an action plan for identifying alternative landfill sites and setting up waste-to-energy plants in the city. It had said it was unfortunate that at a time when the national capital was grappling with huge quantum of waste to the tune of 14,000 metric tonnes daily, the authorities were involved in a "blame game" and showing an irresponsible attitude. (This story has not been edited by Business Standard staff and is auto-generated from a syndicated feed.) The government is "examining" the responses furnished by Facebook and Cambridge Analytica on the data breach issue, while it keeps a close watch on global developments on the matter, a senior IT Ministry official said today. The US social networking giant is facing intense scrutiny from its users as well as governments across the globe after a data leak scandal hit about 87 million users. British data analytics and political consulting firm Cambridge Analytica has been accused of harvesting personal information of millions of Facebook users illegally to help political campaigns and influence polls in several countries. The Indian government too had shot-off notices to both the companies questioning them on the impact of the data breach, following which Facebook admitted that nearly 5.62 lakh people in India were "potentially affected" by the incident. Facebook has over 20 crore users in the country. "The responses are being examined in the context of global developments," the official in IT Ministry said. Noting that the data leak episode was global and the nature of irregularities involved were "by and large similar", the official said that the IT Ministry is keeping a close watch on the developments that are unfolding across countries that have been hit by the data fiasco. In its reply to the Indian government's notice, Facebook had informed that "only 335 people" in India were directly affected through the installation of an app and another 5,62,120 people were "potentially affected" as friends of those users. Cambridge Analytica, on the other hand, is believed to have responded saying it had not used the personal information of Indian users from Facebook. Facebook, which is facing probes in multiple markets over potential breach of user confidentiality, had said yesterday that it is introducing a third-party fact-checking programme in India to combat the spread of "false news" on its platform, starting with a pilot in Karnataka, which goes to polls next month. (This story has not been edited by Business Standard staff and is auto-generated from a syndicated feed.) The government today said it will decide on next course of action over patent and royalty issue on Bt cotton seed after studying the recent Delhi High Court order that dismissed the US-based agri-biotech firm Monsanto's plea to enforce patent for its genetically modified (GM) technology. The Union Agriculture Ministry has already fixed the maximum sale price of BT cotton seeds along with royalty fee for 2018 kharif season. "We will study the Delhi High Court order and will take a decision in a week's time," Agriculture Secretary S K Pattanayak told reporters, responding to a query about the ministry's further course of action in light of the court judgement in a case between Monsanto and Nuziveedu Seeds. "The case was between two private parties. We will abide by the court's direction to the government," he added. For the 2018 kharif season, maximum sale price of BT cotton seed has been fixed at Rs 740 per packet of 450 grams, lower from Rs 800 per packet last year. The royalty fee or trait value to be paid by domestic seeds firms to technology developer Monsanto Mahyco Biotech (India) Ltd (MMBL) has been reduced to Rs 39 per packet from Rs 49. From March 2016, the government started controlling prices of cotton seeds, including the GM versions, by fixing a uniform maximum sale price. Last week, a bench of Justices S Ravindra Bhat and Yogesh Khanna in Delhi High Court had partially allowed the counter-claims of three Indian seed companies that Monsanto does not have a patent for its BT cotton seeds. BT cotton is the only GM crop allowed for commercial cultivation in the country. Over the last decade, Bt cotton technology has been adopted on over 95 per cent of the country's cotton growing area, making India the second largest producer and exporter of the cash crop. (This story has not been edited by Business Standard staff and is auto-generated from a syndicated feed.) Tamil Nadu Governor Banwarilal Purohit today said strict action would be taken in the episode involving a woman college lecturer, who allegedly lured girl students to provide sexual favours to varsity higher officials and asserted that the guilty would be punished. "The matter is very serious..it should not have happened and the guilty has to be punished," he said. In this connection a one man committee, led by retired bureaucrat R Santhanam had been appointed, he told reporters here at a press conference, his first since assuming office last October. In an obvious reference to opposition parties like DMK questioning his action to appoint the one man panel, Purohit quoted legal provisions and said that as chancellor of the varsity, he was empowered to constitute the committee. The Governor said that "without consulting him," the Madurai Kamaraj varsity had initially constituted an internal committee and it was later revoked in view of the one man panel being named by him. The Raj Bhavan, in a separate press release citing legal provisions and Supreme Court orders in various cases, said "the state government cannot advise the chancellor to act in a particular manner." Varsity Acts of the state legislature were "distinct from the provisions of Article 164 of the Constitution, which prescribes that the Council of Ministers will aid and advise the Governor," it said. Citing the alleged immoral behaviour of an assistant professor of the Aruppukottai college, the Raj Bhavan said it warranted immediate action. "The Chancellor, acting on the report of the university, therefore ordered a high powered enquiry by retired IAS officer R Santhanam," it said. Asserting that swift action was taken in an unbiased manner to bring out the truth, the Raj Bhavan said the action was entirely in accordance with the Constitutional and legal position. "There is and there will be no attempt to shield anybody and it shall be ensured that the guilty do not go without punishment," the release said. To a question on the opposition demand for a CBI probe, Purohit said issues like sending the matter to the Central probe agency would be looked into, based on the findings of the one man panel. "After receiving the report, we will see what needs to be done," he said. Purohit, who took a volley of questions in this regard, said if a CBI probe was needed, he would be the first person to order (endorse) it. He said the Committee's findings would be made public through the media and steps were being taken to institutionalise more safeguards. "We are establishing a mechanism and we are working on that," the Governor said. Asked about the woman lecturer claiming in her audio that she knew the Governor and had access to him like in a recent convocation, Purohit said he participated in many such events. "How am I supposed to know if somebody is moving here and there? I do not know the lady at all", he said. Purohit said he had not even seen her and added that he was surrounded by his entire team all the time. "Even a bird" could not approach him without permission, he said. Earlier in the day the probe into the case was transferred to Tamil Nadu Crime Branch Police. Assistant Professor Nirmala Devi was arrested yesterday on a complaint by the college and a women's forum after an audio clip of her purported conversation with students went viral on social media on Sunday. Devi of Devanga Arts College in Aruppukottai in Virudhunagar District, about 500 km from Chennai, was alleged to have made the overtures to a group of girls a month ago and had already been suspended. In the audio, Devi is heard saying that the girls adjust with some officials, "for getting 85 per cent mark and money," in what is seen as a suggestion for sexual favours. She, however, has denied a sexual angle to her advice and claimed she had made it "in the right spirit" and not with any hidden motive or agenda. Purohit ordered the probe in his capacity as Chancellor of Madurai Kamaraj University (MKU), to which the Devanga Arts College is affiliated to. The main opposition party DMK questioned Purohit's action in ordering the probe by the one man panel. Party working President M K Stalin said only the Vice Chancellor of a university acts as the head and could address issues of staff and students of colleges affiliated to it and not the Governor, who is also its Chancellor. "How can Governor appoint the enquiry officer by taking up the powers of the vice-chancellor?," he asked He said the legal provisions cited by Purohit were related to the powers of the vice-chancellor. "The Governor's action raises a question if President's rule is in force in Tamil Nadu", he said. Stalin urged Chief Minister K Palaniswami to complain against Purohit for his intervention and 'usurping' of powers. Meanwhile, a PIL was filed in Madras High Court today, seeking to transfer the probe to the CBI. Petitioner G S Mani,a lawyer, submitted that if the probe has to take place properly, it should be transferred to the central agency as there was every chance of the evidence being tampered with "The state police is not effective to do a free and fair investigation against the unknown accused, who are highly influential and hence the probe should be transferred to CBI," he said. (This story has not been edited by Business Standard staff and is auto-generated from a syndicated feed.) The Allahabad High Court on Tuesday adjourned the hearing on a petition challenging the election of an Uttar Pradesh BJP lawmaker to next week. The petition alleged that UP cabinet minister S P Singh Baghel had procured a Scheduled Caste (SC) certificate, despite belonging to the Other Backward Class (OBC), and contested a reserved seat, Tunda, in the last year's state Assembly polls. Justice M C Tripathi today adjourned the hearing to next Monday while hearing the petition, filed last year by Prem Pal Singh, a Bahujan Samaj Party (BSP) candidate, who had also contested from the Tundla seat. The counsel for the BJP MLA had requested the court to adjourn the hearing, saying that Baghel's reply was "under preparation" and a copy of it would be served to the petitioner's counsel within three days. Last May, the court had issued a notice to the cabinet minister and had directed the minister to submit his defence by way of a written statement, along with a list of documents. (This story has not been edited by Business Standard staff and is auto-generated from a syndicated feed.) The Delhi High Court today pulled up the historic Delhi Public Library for lack of concern for "valuable" books kept at its Karol Bagh premises whose roof is crumbling. The high court said extensive damage must have been done to the books which are kept at the library and sought to know from the authorities why they have not been taken away. A bench of Acting Chief Justice Gita Mittal and Justice C Hari Shankar said Delhi Public Library (DPL) was not at all interested in maintenance of the books and asked it to inform the court on the date of hearing, i.e. May 24, where it would shift the books, otherwise the court would take a serious view of it. The bench noted that despite the critical status of the building, books have not been taken away and left to suffer. "It (library) holds valuable books. If the library had any concern about the books, every efforts could have been made to remove them from the falling structure," it said. During the hearing, the court was informed that during pendency of the petition, portions of the building were falling down. The court had on December 6 last asked the library to preserve its books, which are locked up in the premises in question since November, 2016. It had directed the authorities to shift the books, CDs, computers, catalogues and other important material lying in the premises to Delhi Public Library's head office or any other safe location. The court was hearing a petition filed by some scholars and journalists, who had moved against the corporations' notices to the library to vacate the premises, claiming that the building was structurally unfit and dangerous. The high court earlier also said that it was "appalled" by DPL's lack of concern towards its property and books. The first Delhi Public Library was started by Prime Minister Jawaharlal Nehru across the Old Delhi Railway Station in 1951. The court on December 4, 2016 had extended till March 20, 2017 its order restraining the North Delhi Municipal Corporation from demolishing the building. It had directed the authorities to lock the library while ensuring that no life was put in danger. The library was issued the first notice by the corporation on September 15, 2016 and the next one on November 4, 2017, asking the library to vacate so that the building could be demolished. Seeking quashing of the notices, the petitioners have alleged that the owner of the premises, Dimple Enterprises,"wants a commercial complex in place of the library in order to make money from the land". Funded by the Ministry of Culture, the Delhi Public Library is an autonomous body which has around 45 branches and mobile libraries across Delhi. Officers from both central and Delhi governments, intellectuals, members of legislative assembly and councillors are its members. (This story has not been edited by Business Standard staff and is auto-generated from a syndicated feed.) Indian Hotels Company (IHCL) that runs the Taj brand of luxury hotels, today announced its entry into Saudi Arabia with a 340-keys property in Makkah. The property - fourth in the Middle East region for IHCL - is scheduled to open in January 2023 and will come up in partnership with Umm Al Qura Development and Construction Company in the tony King Abdul Aziz Road (KAAR) project, one of the largest urban rejuvenation projects in Makkah. Puneet Chhatwal, managing director and chief executive officer of IHCL said, "We are happy to bring the first Taj hotel to Saudi Arabia. We are committed to expanding our presence in the MENA (Middle East and North Africa) region. This hotel will be our fourth venture in the MENA region." The group already manages a property in the Burj Khalifa downtown area of Dubai and will be opening two more hotels in Dubai in the next 12-18 months. The proposed hotel is situated within walking distance of the Grand Mosque of Masjid Al-Haram, the main attraction for over 6 million pilgrims who visit the city each year. As the birthplace of prophet Muhammad, Makkah is the holiest city for Muslims and the KAAR project is considered as one of the most important development projects in Makkah. IHCL operates 145 hotels globally across four continents, 11 countries and 72 locations and is among the largest domestic hospitality chains. (This story has not been edited by Business Standard staff and is auto-generated from a syndicated feed.) A durable intelligent artificial leg and an affordable pocket gadget for soil testing are among the new innovative products developed by students of the IIT Delhi. The products are outcome of research projects by students, staff and faculty and will be on display at the fourteenth edition of 'Open House'. The intelligent artificial leg uses smart-sensing technology in shoes to adapt to the movement of the user, officials said. "We look forward to provide opportunities for visitors to experience the state-of-the-art innovations of our students and faculty at IIT Delhi. "It is our objective to create a nurturing eco-system for students to inspire them to work on innovative solutions for our socio-economic challenges," Director, IIT Delhi, V Ramgopal Rao, said. A live display of pioneering research projects, technical workshops by industry experts and a guided showcase of the on campus laboratories are some of the highlights of the scheduled on April 21. Some of the other products that will be on display include an upper lim robotic rehabilitation device for objective physiotherapy in case of a stroke, a nasofilter, an affordable pocket spectrophotometer for field diagnosis and soil testing, and digitally accessible braille. "IIT Delhi's Open House is a platform for the culmination of a year's worth of inimitable innovations undertaken by students and faculty alike," said SK Khare, Associate Dean, Research and Development, IIT Delhi. (This story has not been edited by Business Standard staff and is auto-generated from a syndicated feed.) India today filed a fresh set of pleadings in the International Court of Justice (ICJ) relating to the case of its national Kulbhushan Jadhav, who was sentenced to death by a Pakistani military court in April last year on charges of espionage and terrorism. The second round of written reply by India in the case was in response to the submissions by Pakistan in the ICJ on December 13 last year, the Ministry of External Affairs (MEA)said. India had moved The Hague-based ICJ in May last after Jadhav, 47, was sentenced to death by a Pakistani military court on charges of espionage and terrorism. A 10-member bench of the ICJ on May 18 had restrained Pakistan from executing Jadhav till adjudication of the case. "In keeping with the Order of the International Court of Justice of 17 Janaury 2018, India today submitted its reply in the court in the case of Kulbhushan Jadhav," the MEA said. It said India remains committed to make all possible efforts to "secure and protect" the rights of Jadhav. Following an order by the ICJ, India had filed its written pleadings in the case on September 13, 2017 and Pakistan submitted its "counter memorial" on December 13 last. "Today, India filed its Reply to Pakistan's submissions to the court. Pakistan has been given time till July 17 by the court to file its response (Rejoinder)," the MEA said. India has been maintaining that the trial of Jadhav by a military court in Pakistan was "farcical". In its statement today, the MEA reiterated this stand. Pakistan claims that its security forces arrested Jadhav from restive Balochistan province on March 3, 2016 after he reportedly entered from Iran. However, India maintains that Jadhav was kidnapped from Iran where he had business interests after retiring from the Navy. Jadhav's sentencing had evoked a sharp reaction in India. India had approached the ICJ for "egregious" violation of the provisions of the Vienna Convention on Consular Relations, 1963, by Pakistan in Jadhav's case. Pakistan has repeatedly denied India consular access to Jadhav on the grounds that it was not applicable in cases related to spies. (This story has not been edited by Business Standard staff and is auto-generated from a syndicated feed.) Prime Minister Narendra Modi along with his counterparts from Sweden, Norway, Finland, Iceland and Denmark today vowed to deepen cooperation between India and the Nordic countries, as the leaders deliberated on key issues of security, economic growth and climate change. Modi and the leaders of the five Nordic countries participated in the first India-Nordic Summit co-hosted by India and Sweden here. Modi, Danish Prime Minister Lars Lokke Rasmussen, Finnish Premier Juha Sipila, Iceland Premier Katrin Jakobsdottir, Norwegian Premier Erna Solberg and Swedish Prime Minister Stefan Lofven participated at the Summit titled 'India-Nordic Summit:Shared Values, Mutual Prosperity'. "The Prime Ministers pledged to deepen cooperation between India and the Nordic countries and focused their discussions on key issues related to global security, economic growth, innovation and climate change," a joint statement issued after the summit said. "They acknowledged that innovation and digital transformation drive growth in an interconnected world, which underpin a growing engagement between India and the Nordic countries," it said. The leaders reaffirmed the importance of free trade as a catalyst for achieving inclusive growth and realising the Sustainable Development Goals. They acknowledged that innovation and digital transformation drive growth in an interconnected world, and underpin a growing engagement between the Nordic countries and India, it said. The role of the Nordic countries as global innovation leaders was underlined. The Nordic approach to innovation systems, characterised by a strong collaboration between public sector, private sector and academia, was discussed, and synergies were identified with India's rich pool of talent and skills. The summit emphasised the Indian government's strong commitment to innovation and digital initiatives as key to prosperity and sustainable development, with national flagship programmes such as Make in India, Startup India, Digital India and Clean India. Nordic solutions in clean technologies, maritime solutions, port modernisation, food processing, health, life-sciences and agriculture were also discussed. The leaders noted that the unique strengths of India and the Nordic countries offer immense opportunities for trade and investment diversification and mutually beneficial collaboration, the statement said. During the talks, the importance of the rules-based multilateral trading system as well as open and inclusive international trade for prosperity and growth was underlined. Modi and the leaders acknowledged that terrorism and violent extremism were major challenges for the international community. "They discussed global security, including cyber security, based on their shared values of human rights, democracy and the rule of law, and their commitment to uphold the rules-based international system. They also discussed export control and non-proliferation," it said. The Nordic countries welcomed India's application for membership of the Nuclear Suppliers Group and reaffirmed their commitment to work constructively within the Group with the aim of reaching a positive outcome at the earliest opportunity, the statement said. India and the Nordic nations also reaffirmed their support for the UN and the Secretary-General's reform efforts to ensure a UN fit to support member states to deliver on Agenda 2030 and took note of his proposals to strengthen the UN, including in the areas of development, peace operations, peacebuilding and conflict prevention. The Nordic countries and India reaffirmed the need for reform of the UN Security Council, including its expansion in both permanent and non-permanent seats to make it more representative, accountable, effective and responsive to the realities of the 21st century. The Nordic nations agreed that India is a strong candidate for a permanent seat in a reformed UN Security Council expanded with both permanent and non-permanent members, the statement said. The leaders reaffirmed their commitment to implementing the 2030 Agenda for sustainable development as well as the ambitious implementation of the Paris Agreement. They agreed that a strong partnership can help spur innovations, economic growth, sustainable solutions and mutually beneficial trade and investments. Ahead of the summit, Modi held bilateral meetings with his counterparts from all five Nordic countries. India has substantial economic ties with the Nordic nations. Annual India-Nordic trade is about USD 5.3 billion while the cumulative Nordic FDI into India is worth USD 2.5 billion. Five MoUs were signed on the occasion with the Nordic countries. These include on cooperation in the field of sustainable and smart urban development, animal husbandry and dairying, food safety cooperation, and agricultural research and education with Denmark, and on the establishment of an ICCR Chair for Hindi Language with Iceland. Modi is here on the first leg of his five-day foreign tour which will also take him to the UK and Germany. (This story has not been edited by Business Standard staff and is auto-generated from a syndicated feed.) India has initiated a probe into the alleged dumping of EVA sheets used in solar cell industry, imported from China, Malaysia, Saudi Arabia, South Korea and Thailand. The investigation on imports of 'Ethylene Vinyl Acetate (EVA) sheets for solar modules' is carried out by the Directorate General of Antidumping and Allied Duties (DGAD), which is an arm of the commerce ministry. In the probe, the directorate would determine the existence, degree and effect of the dumped products on the domestic industry. If established that dumping had caused material injury to domestic players, the DGAD would recommend imposition of anti-dumping duty on the imports of the sheet from these nations. In a notification, the DGAD said that it has found sufficient evidence of dumping of the products from these five countries. "The authority hereby initiates an investigation into the alleged dumping, and consequent injury to the domestic industry... to determine the existence, degree and effect of alleged dumping and to recommend the amount of antidumping duty, which if levied, would be adequate to remove the injury to the domestic industry," it said. RenewSys India has filed an application for imposition of anti-dumping duty on the imports of these sheets from these countries. The period of probe is October 2016 - September 2017. However, for the purpose of injury investigation, the period will also cover the data of 2014-16. The product under consideration for the purpose of present investigation is used in the manufacturing of solar PV (photo voltaic) modules. This is one of the most essential component which keeps glass, cell and backsheet integrated and support the module mechanically during its service life time. According to experts, dumping of these products is happening because of the huge domestic solar market. On January 11, 2010, India had launched its national solar policy, named Jawaharlal Nehru National Solar Mission. The country has an ambitious target of generating 20,000 megawatt (MW) of solar power by 2022. Many foreign companies are interested in supplying solar equipment to tap the growing sector in India. Anti-dumping duties are levied to provide a level playing field to local industry by guarding against cheap below-cost imports. Imposition of anti-dumping duty is permissible under the World Trade Organisation (WTO) regime. Both India and China are members of the Geneva-based body. The duty is aimed at ensuring fair trading practices and creating a level-playing field for domestic producers vis-a-vis foreign producers and exporters. (This story has not been edited by Business Standard staff and is auto-generated from a syndicated feed.) India and Sweden today decided to strengthen their defence and security cooperation, and agreed on an innovation partnership for a 'win-win" outcome as Prime Minister Narendra Modi held talks with his Swedish counterpart. In a joint press statement after his talks with Swedish Prime Minister Stefan Lofven, Modi said they focused on how Sweden can help India in its development journey. The two sides have agreed an innovation partnership and a Joint Action Plan, the Prime Minister said. Modi said India and Sweden have agreed to strengthen their defence and security cooperation, including in areas of defence production and cyber security. On his part, Swedish Prime Minister lauded India "global power" and said the two countries are a "perfect match". There has been an intensification of cooperation in areas such as green technology and smart cities. Lofven said India and Sweden have agreed to work on a security agreement. (This story has not been edited by Business Standard staff and is auto-generated from a syndicated feed.) India has won an election to a crucial non-governmental organisation committee in the UN after garnering the highest number of votes besides getting elected by acclamation to other subsidiary bodies in five separate polls. The UN's Economic and Social Council (ECOSOC) held elections to a number of its subsidiary bodies here yesterday. The ECOSOC focusses on advancing the three dimensions of sustainable development economic, social and environmental. Following the elections, India's Permanent Representative to the UN Ambassador Syed Akbaruddin told PTI that the "results reflect, yet again, the broad support and many friends India has amongst UN members". India topped the election to the Committee on Non-Governmental Organizations. In one round of secret balloting, the Council elected Bahrain, China, India and Pakistan in the Asia Pacific States category and Brazil, Cuba, Mexico and Nicaragua (Latin American and Caribbean States) to serve a four-year term beginning on January 1, 2019. India got the highest number of votes at 46, followed by Pakistan (43), Bahrain (40) and China 39. Iran lost the elections, having got only 27 votes. The Council elected by acclamation 11 other nations to serve the same four-year term. The Committee on Non-Governmental Organizations is a standing committee of ECOSOC and its main tasks include consideration of applications for consultative status and requests for reclassification submitted by NGOs and consideration of quadrennial reports submitted by NGOs in General and Special categories. India was also elected by acclamation to the Commission on Population and Development for a term beginning April 16, 2018 and expiring in 2021. Under its terms of reference the Commission is to assist the Council by arranging for studies and advising the Council on population issues and trends, integrating population and development strategies and population and related development policies and programmes. The Council elected India and Kuwait (Asia-Pacific States) by acclamation to the Commission for Social Development, filling outstanding seats for a four-year term beginning on the date of election. The Commission's purpose was to advise ECOSOC on social policies of a general character and, in particular, on all matters in the social field not covered by the specialised inter-governmental agencies. India was among the 17 members elected by acclamation to the Commission on Crime Prevention and Criminal Justice. The elected members, to serve a three-year term beginning on January 1, 2019 and expiring on December 31, 2021 include Algeria, Burkina Faso, Nigeria and Swaziland, Iraq, Iran, Kuwait, Thailand, Belarus, Brazil, Cuba, Mexico Austria, France, Turkey and the United States. The Commission acts as the principal policymaking body of the UN in the field of crime prevention and criminal justice. Its mandate includes improving international action to combat and transnational crime and the efficiency and fairness of criminal justice administration sytems. India was among 14 nations elected by acclamation by the Council to the Executive Board of the Development Programme (UNDP), Population Fund (UNFPA), Office for Project Services (UNOPS). The elected members will serve three-year terms beginning January, 2019. For the Executive Board of the United Nations Entity for Gender Equality and the Empowerment of Women (UN-Women), the Council elected by acclamation 16 members, including India, for a three-year term beginning January 2019. An Indian-origin investment adviser has been charged by US federal authorities for orchestrating a fraudulent million dollar investment scheme over several years. Amrit J S Chahal, 30 of Fairfax, Virginia has been charged by the Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC). The US Attorney's Office for the Eastern District of Virginia also announced criminal charges against Chahal. The Commodities Futures Trading Commission also charged Chahal. The SEC's complaint alleges that, from at least February 2015, Chahal used his company, Kane Capital Investment Group to fraudulently solicit approximately USD 1.4 million from about 50 individuals, including friends and family members. Chahal is the President, Chief Executive Officer, and sole employee of Kane Capital. Chahal has never held any securities licenses, nor has he ever been associated with a registered broker-dealer or investment adviser other than Kane Capital. According to the complaint, Chahal lured investors by falsely claiming to be an experienced and successful trader who could generate above-market returns for clients through a low-risk trading strategy. The SEC alleges that, in reality, Chahal had substantially no experience working in the financial or securities industry or trading securities on behalf of clients. The complaint further alleges Chahal initially invested client funds in a variety of investments, but suffered significant trading losses. According to the complaint, instead of disclosing the losses, Chahal lied to his clients about their investment returns, continued raising funds, then used the money for his personal benefit, including to pay for his luxury car, rent, travel, dining, and other living expenses, and to make Ponzi-like payments to earlier investors. (This story has not been edited by Business Standard staff and is auto-generated from a syndicated feed.) Iraq today sentenced a French woman to life in prison for belonging to the Islamic State group, the latest in a series of court rulings since the country's defeat of IS. Djamila Boutoutaou, a 29-year-old of Algerian origin, told a Baghdad court that she had left France with her husband, a rapper. She said she thought they were going on holiday but "when I arrived in Turkey I discovered that my husband was a jihadist". She said she was forced by her husband to join IS and live in the "caliphate" that the jihadists proclaimed in 2014 straddling Syria and Iraq. Her husband was killed near the former jihadist stronghold of Mosul, northern Iraq, and her son died in bombardment, Boutoutaou said. Two Russian women, both holding children in their arms, were also sentenced to life in prison at the same hearing. Iraq declared victory in December against IS, which at one point controlled a third of the country. The Iraqi anti-terrorism law empowers courts to convict people who are believed to have helped IS even if they are not accused of violence. In January, an Iraqi court condemned a German woman to death after finding her guilty of belonging to IS. A court the following month sentenced another French woman to seven months in jail for entering Iraq illegally but ordered her release on time already served. Several dozen Turkish women have been sentenced to death under Iraqi anti-terrorism laws. (This story has not been edited by Business Standard staff and is auto-generated from a syndicated feed.) Bollywood actor Abhishek Bachchan, who is here for the filmming of director Anurag Kashyap's "Manmarziya", says he has a special bond with Kashmir as he often accompanied father Amitabh Bachchan as a child during film shootings. "It is nostalgic for me because I have come here when my father used to shoot his films here. It is truly a heaven on earth and I am very happy to be back. It is still as beautiful as it used to be," the actor told reporters here. Kashmir was once the favourite shooting location for Bollywood films but things changed with the beginning of insurgency in the 1990s. Things have changed with a number of directors such as Kabir Khan, Vishal Bhardwaj, Imtiaz Ali and now Kashyap exploring the location. "I am very sure that they will start coming back. In the past couple of years, we have seen a fair amount of films coming from all over India to shoot in Kashmir and I think that trend will grow," he said. "I think the kind of production help you get over here, the facilities are fantastic. We have shot so many films; Indian film industry has shot so many films in Kashmir. I have done a fair bit of shooting up in Leh. This is the first time I have done a shooting around Srinagar and Sonamarg," he added. (This story has not been edited by Business Standard staff and is auto-generated from a syndicated feed.) ?An Indo Tibetan Border Police (ITBP) jawan?today allegedly?committed?suicide?by shooting himself with his service rifle at its camp in Chhattisgarh?s?naxal-affected Rajnandgaon district, police said. "Constable Gagan Singh (31), belonging to ITBP's 44th battalion, shot himself with his service rifle while he was on duty this afternoon at his camp in Mohla police station area," Rajnandgaon Superintendent of Police Prashant Agrawal told PTI. "He was deputed as a driver and he shot himself inside a car parked within the camp. He was rushed to a hospital where medical authorities declared him dead on arrival," the SP said. The official said that Singh was a native of Jalgaon district in neighbouring Maharashtra. "The reason behind the act is not yet known. A case has been registered and further investigations are underway," he said. Yesterday, a CRPF assistant sub inspector had allegedly committed suicide by shooting himself in the paramilitary?s Group Centre camp in the state?s Bilaspur district. (This story has not been edited by Business Standard staff and is auto-generated from a syndicated feed.) The wife of a doctor arrested after several children died in BRD Medical College here last year has alleged that her husband and other doctors were being denied medical care in jail. The district prison authorities have rejected the charge. Dr Shabistan Khan's husband Kafeel Ahmed is among the nine accused in a case registered after the deaths last August, allegedly due to lack of oxygen supply. She alleged at a press conference at her home that the doctors lodged in the prison may be "killed". She said her husband suffered a heart stroke on March 29 but was not given proper treatment. "The former BRD Medical College principal, Dr Rajiv Mishra, is suffering from liver disease and diabetes but he is also not getting proper medical attention," she claimed. Dr Khan said another accused, Dr Purnima Shukla, who is suffering from a hairline fracture, is also not getting the required attention. "I met Dr Rajiv. He has turned pale and lost weight. My husband has also lost weight and they need good treatment," she said. "Over eight months have passed but no justice has been delivered," she added. She said the doctors were being made scapegoats for the tragedy when the "big fish" were responsible. She blamed the state government's medical department for allegedly not releasing funds for the company supplying oxygen cylinders to the hospital. When contacted the jail's senior superintendent said Dr Kafeel had some health problems. The prison cardiologist did a check-up on him and prescribed some medicines. The prison authorities have sought security personnel to accompany him for visits to doctors outside, he said. He said Purnima Shukla hurt herself when she slipped while going to the bathroom, and was given medical treatment. "The condition of Dr Rajiv and Dr Purnima is improving," he said. (This story has not been edited by Business Standard staff and is auto-generated from a syndicated feed.) A group of people from different organisations here appealed people to maintain communal harmony in the region, and stand against the communal being played over the rape and murder of a minor girl in Jammu and Kashmir's Kathua district. The meeting held yesterday had participants from over two dozen organisations, and was led by former IPS officer and former vice-chancellor of Baba Ghulam Shah Badshah University Masood Choudhary. "In the backdrop of heinous crime of rape and murder of a minor girl in Kathua district in January, the Gurjardesh Charitable Trust appreciates unanimous concern of whole country in seeking justice for the victim and underlines the need to maintain peace and communal harmony, a spokesman of the trust said. According to the spokesperson, the meeting was attended by people from different castes, communities and religions to send out the message that there is no space for communal in the region. Hailing Jammu and Kashmir Chief Minister Mehbooba Mufti for taking "bold stand" on the issue, the participants in the meeting said there is no need for the CBI's investigation into the issue. Mehbooba has taken a principal stand against her own ministers, questioning their presence in the pro-rapist rally. "There is no need for CBI probe, especially when the family of the victim is satisfied with the probe," the spokesman said quoting Choudhary, the patron of the trust. Recalling the words of former prime minister Atal Bihari Vajpayee where he talked about following 'Raj Dharma' (the ruler's duty), Choudhary, according to the spokesperson, said Mehbooba did exactly the same with this issue. Importantly, the state's chief minister with regard to Kathua rape has assured the people that the investigations into the case are on fast track, adding that "law will not be obstructed by the irresponsible actions". Also, the two BJP ministers had resigned following accusations of attending a rally in support of the culprits in the Kathua gangrape and murder case. Now the minorities in Kathua and Samba are feeling secure that the government is with them, Masood said in his statement, adding that such steps instill a sense of security among the minorities as they feel police, administration and government is standing behind them. Chairman of the Trust Hameed Choudhary, also present at the event, invited people at the Gurjar Centre to hold more such discussions and help removing the prevailing gaps in the society. (This story has not been edited by Business Standard staff and is auto-generated from a syndicated feed.) The Jawaharlal Institute of Postgraduate Medical and Research (JIPMER) here is holding the 2nd international undergraduate medical students conference here from April 20 to 22 to 'promote research and showcase academic brilliance.' Over 1,300 delegates from within and outside the country were expected to take part in the conference 'CONNAISSANCE 2018', a release said today. The meet aims at promoting research activities and showcasing academic brilliance among undergraduate medical students of the country and abroad, it said. Students from the country would have interaction and exchange ideas with the foreign delegates, the release said. Participants would also have a hands-on experience in different fields such as 'basic life support, safe delivery of baby, surgical skill, radio diagnostics, writing of scientific papers, research methodology and yoga', the release said. (This story has not been edited by Business Standard staff and is auto-generated from a syndicated feed.) A US judge in Seattle has ordered President Donald Trump not to ban transgender troops from serving in the military, saying it's unclear whether recent changes to his administration's policy are constitutional. US District Judge Marsha Pechman was one of four judges nationwide who blocked Trump late last year from overturning an Obama-era directive allowing transgender troops to serve openly. The Justice Department asked her to dissolve that ruling, citing changes that would allow transgender troops to serve in limited cases. Because the changes were announced just last month, the sides had not had time to argue whether the policy is discriminatory or whether the military is entitled to set its own policy, given its expertise in what's needed for national defence, Pechman said in an order Friday. She told the parties to prepare for trial. "Because transgender people have long been subjected to systemic oppression and forced to live in silence, they are a protected class," Pechman wrote. "Therefore, any attempt to exclude them from military service will be looked at with the highest level of care." She also said the government must show that the ban "was sincerel motivated by compelling interests, rather than by prejudice or stereotype, and that it is narrowly tailored to achieve those interests." The Pentagon lifted its longstanding ban on transgender troops in 2016. Trump took defence leaders by surprise last July, when he tweeted that the US government would not allow transgender members to serve. It triggered a number of lawsuits, and federal judges in Seattle; Baltimore; Washington, D.C.; and Riverside, California, blocked Trump from rescinding former President Barack Obama's policy. The Pentagon began allowing transgender people to serve and enlist on January 1. Defence Secretary Jim Mattis also launched a review on the issue, forwarding recommendations to Trump in February. Trump issued a memo March 23 giving the Pentagon the go-ahead to implement a policy that would block transgender people from serving in many cases. Transgender people who have been diagnosed with gender dysphoria or have a history of the condition would be banned, with some exceptions. Those who can show they have been stable for 36 months would be allowed to serve if they adhere to the standards for their "biological sex." Anyone who has transitioned to their preferred gender or who needs medical treatment to do so would be presumed ineligible for service, though they could seek individual waivers allowing them to serve. (This story has not been edited by Business Standard staff and is auto-generated from a syndicated feed.) The Kathua rape case today appeared to cast its shadow on the J&K with the BJP asking all its nine ministers to resign to bring in fresh faces, days after two other party leaders had to quit the coalition government amid a nationwide outcry over their presence at a rally against the charge sheet in the gruesome incident. The day also saw BJP MLA Lal Singh, who along with his party colleague Chander Prakash Ganga had to quit as ministers last Friday, hold a roadshow from Jammu to Kathua during which he demanded a CBI probe to ensure justice for the victim and asked Chief Minister Mehbooba Mufti to resign for her "failure" to address the issue. The BJP has been under pressure from the opposition parties and civil society ever since Singh and Ganga took part in a rally against the chargesheet in the rape-and-murder of an eight-year-old girl in Kathua, which was seen by many as support for the accused in the case. The two ministers subsequently resigned. While Singh embarked on a roadshow earlier today, the BJP's state unit later in the evening asked all its nine remaining ministers in the two-year-old government, led by PDP's Mehbooba Mufti, to tender their resignations to enable the party to bring in fresh faces in the state government. According to top state government sources, a reshuffle is now likely to take place later this week in the government. The state can have a maximum of 25 ministers including the chief minister. Currently, 14 portfolios are with the PDP and the remaining with the BJP. Singh trained his guns on Mufti and demanded that she should resign, saying it was her "biggest failure" and if she has "wisdom and conscience", she should resign. "If two ministers can sacrifice their posts in the interest of peace, those who are actually responsible for creating such an atmosphere should listen to their conscience," Singh said targeting the PDP leader. The tone of Singh was completely different from his speech at the March rally in Kathua where he had demanded a CBI probe accusing the crime branch of Jammu and Kashmir Police of arresting people without any proof. However, Singh appeared to be changing his narrative today, saying he wanted a CBI probe so that justice could be ensured for the victim. Internet services in Jammu were snapped by the police as several rumours were floating in the city. "Some of the rumours and misinformation campaign has potential of spreading communal tension in the city, therefore, we snapped it," a senior police officer said, adding a decision to restore the services will be taken tomorrow. Singh, the former forest minister, said the CM has failed to understand the popular sentiment and was yet to seek a CBI probe into the brutal incident. Asked about his decision to resign from the state government, Singh blamed the media for "creating a perception" and forcing him to quit. "We resigned because the perception created by the national media was not good. It portrayed the situation in a wrong way, which was not the case at all. It was portrayed that the entire Jammu region was siding with rapists," he said. "It (the perception) created problems for our prime minister and country. It was not good. So, we preferred to resign. We have not done anything wrong," Singh added. The brutal gang rape and murder of the girl has already seen a nationwide outrage with protests being observed across the country. The case is also being reportedly widely in the international media. (This story has not been edited by Business Standard staff and is auto-generated from a syndicated feed.) Telangana Chief Minister K Chandrasekhar Rao will meet his Odisha counterpart Naveen Patnaik in the first week of May to explore the feasibility of forming a non-BJP, non-Congress front before the 2019 Lok Sabha polls, an official statement said today. The meeting between Rao, who heads Telangana's ruling party TRS, and Patnaik, the BJD chief, would take place in Bhubaneshwar. Owing to the Odisha assembly currently being in session, it has been decided to hold consultations in next month, the release said. In his bid to cobble together a front of like-minded non-BJP and non-Congress parties, Rao had met West Bengal Chief Minister Mamata Banerjee in Kolkata last month. He had also held consultations with former prime minister and JD(S) boss H D Deve Gowda as per his plans to forge an alternative front. The TRS leader, however, had failed to secure a firm commitment from Banerjee, who heads the Trinamool Congress, about her willingness to keep the Congress out of the proposed alliance. On her part, Banerjee had held consultations with NCP leader Sharad Pawar and Sanjay Raut, a Rajya Sabha MP of the BJP's estranged ally Shiv Sena, to discuss ways to forge an anti-BJP front at the national level. (This story has not been edited by Business Standard staff and is auto-generated from a syndicated feed.) Rapper Kendrick Lamar has created history by being the first non-classical or jazz winner to win for Music for his album 'D.A.M.N.'. The 30-year-old artiste is known to have had a deep impact on a racially fraught America and has emerged as the bona fide King of Rap. The album was perhaps the most inspired piece of work in the list of winners, EW reported. In the journalism segment, The New York Times and The New Yorker shared the Public Service award for their avant garde reportage on uncovering the long-running Harvey Weinstein saga of sexual harassment and abuse in Hollywood last October. The prize was awarded to the Times team, led by Jodi Kantor and Megan Twohey and New Yorker contributor Ronan Farrow, for reports that brought down the disgraced media mogul and sparked movements such as #MeToo and Time's Up - encouraging women to call out men who abuse their position. Over 100 women, including Ashley Judd, Rose McGowan, Angelina Jolie, Lupita Nyong'o, Salma Hayek, have publicly accused the producer of misconduct ranging from sexual harassment to rape. Andrew Sean Greer took home the Pulitzer in Fiction for his comic queer novel "Less". In Letters and Drama catergory, Caroline Fraser's Prairie Fires won the prestigious award for Biography and Martyna Majok's acclaimed off-Broadway play 'Cost of Living' won the Pulitzer for Drama. In 20 of the categories, each winner receives a certificate and a $15,000 cash award. The judge of a fast track court hearing a case of alleged custodial death of 2002 Ghatkopar blast accused Khwaja Yunus today said that the appointment of the special public prosecutor for case has been cancelled by the state government. Additional Session Judge V S Padalkar said appointment of special public prosecutor Dhiraj Mirajkar has been cancelled by the judiciary department. Mirajkar was the third public prosecutor in the 2003 case. Earlier, advocate Yug Chowdhary had resigned from the case without attributing any reason and in 2013, advocate RB Mokashi had resigned as well. Only one witness has been examined in the case so far. Yunus, a software engineer working in Dubai, was picked up from Marathwada's Parbhani in December 2002 in connection with the blasts that took place in suburban Ghatkopar at that time. While police had claimed that Yunus escaped in January 2003 after the vehicle in which he was being taken to Aurangabad met with an accident in Jategaon, a co-accused in the blast case Abdul Mateen alleged that Yunus died in police custody. While police filed a case in Parner police station over the "escape" of Yunus, the high court ordered the state CID to close the FIR as an inquiry had found it to be fake. The CID then filed a fresh FIR on the basis of the statement given by Mateen, who said that Yunus was tortured to death. A Criminal Investigation Department inquiry indicted 14 policemen, but the government sanctioned the prosecution of only four--Sachin Waze, Rajendra Tiwari, Rajaram Nikam and Sunil Desai -- for murder. In February, the CID had approached court seeking to put on trial former police officer Praful Bhosale and three others in the Khwaja Yunus custodial death case. The CID filed the application a month after key prosecution witness, Mohammed Abdul Mateen, deposed before the trial court here that he had seen Bhosale, then assistant police inspector Hemant Desai, and two other policemen (identified only as "Vhanmane and Khot" in the plea) assaulting Yunus in the police lock-up. (This story has not been edited by Business Standard staff and is auto-generated from a syndicated feed.) Win McNamee/Getty Images(WASHINGTON) -- Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell said a new bill that would shield special counsel Robert Mueller from being fired by President Donald Trump will not be brought up on the Senate floor, ending a bipartisan effort that had been in the works for months. I'm the one who decides what we take to the floor. That's my responsibility as the Majority Leader, and we will not be having this on the floor of the U.S. Senate, McConnell, R-Ky., said emphatically in an interview Tuesday on Fox News. The comments are the first time the Republican leader has said he will not bring the bipartisan legislation up for consideration, despite renewed concern mostly from Democrats, although a handful of Republicans have joined in that the president will fire Mueller or Deputy Attorney General Rod Rosenstein, who oversees the investigation of possible collusion between the Trump campaign and the Russians. The president has recently stepped up his public and private criticism of DOJ officials and the Russia probe, lashing out at Mueller on Twitter and openly musing to reporters about firing the special counsel in a meeting last week, saying many people are telling him to sack Mueller, adding, Well see what happens. Despite that, McConnell has said he does not believe the president will fire Mueller. Senate Democratic Leader Chuck Schumer said it would be a mistake not to pass the bill, adding, We ought to head off a constitutional crisis at the pass, rather than waiting until its too late. Nevertheless, McConnell's sentiment is echoed by many of his fellow Senate Republicans. Sen. Jim Lankford, R-Okla., told reporters Tuesday that he did not see a need for the legislation, calling it a political distraction. It would not hurt if we passed legislation to send a message to the White House that we want the investigation to continue, Sen. Collins, R-Maine, told ABC This Week anchor George Stephanopoulos on Sunday. But the fact is that the president is never going to sign that legislation, and there are some legitimate constitutional concerns about it. But Senate Judiciary Committee Chairman Chuck Grassley, who last week said Trump would be committing suicide if he sacked the special counsel, scheduled the Mueller protection bill for consideration in his committee in just over a week. The measure would give any special counsel 10 days to seek an expedited judicial review if he or she were fired. Sen. Thom Tillis, R-N.C., Lindsey Graham, R-S.C., Chris Coons, D-Del., and Cory Booker, D-N.J., introduced the bill. I dont know from where Leader McConnell gets his confidence that President Trump will not take action to end this investigation, given the number of times this President has tweeted or has spoken directly or indirectly in ways that I think threaten this investigation, Coons said. The reality here is that there are stronger and stronger signals that this President -who has acted in an abrupt and unconventional and untraditional and unwise way - may very well do exactly the same against Bob Mueller and it would be wise for us to take it up and consider it. Grassley, an Iowa Republican, who, like a number of Republicans, has expressed concern that the bill is an unconstitutional infringement on the presidents powers as chief executive, had been preparing an amendment to the legislation, though the contents of the measure have not yet been released. Sen. Dianne Feinstein, D-Calif., said she expected to receive a copy of that amendment on Wednesday. A Grassley aide told ABC News that the McConnell announcement would not change committee plans. This doesn't really change anything as far as the committee is concerned. Chairman Grassley said if the authors of the various proposals put forward a consensus bill, he'd bring it up. That remains the plan, the aide said in an e-mailed statement to ABC News. That is not likely to be welcome news to a number of Republicans who have also voiced private concerns about bucking a president still popular with the GOP base. House Democrats have introduced a companion bill. House Speaker Paul Ryan has not committed to giving that measure a floor vote. Copyright 2018, ABC Radio. All rights reserved. The Kremlin today dismissed as "groundless" warnings from Britain and the United States that Russian state-sponsored hackers were threatening their crucial computer networks. "We don't know what these new accusations are based on," said President Vladimir Putin's spokesman Dmitry Peskov. "As before, neither our American nor our British colleagues have bothered to search for arguments, even weak ones," he said during a regular briefing. Peskov added that the claims were "groundless" and "unjustified". Washington and London said in a joint statement Monday that Russia's hacking operation aimed "to support espionage, extract intellectual property, maintain persistent access to victim networks and potentially lay a foundation for future offensive operations". The US Department of Homeland Security said the hacking was part of a broad operation dubbed Grizzly Steppe, which DHS says comprises concerting cyber attacks by Moscow's civilian and military intelligence agencies. The announcement came in an unprecedented joint alert that underscored closer cooperation between Western governments fighting what they say is an ongoing, multi-faceted hacking and online disinformation campaign by Moscow. (This story has not been edited by Business Standard staff and is auto-generated from a syndicated feed.) BJP leader Lal Singh, who had resigned from the state cabinet over the Kathua rape and murder case, today led a rally in support of CBI probe into the incident and called for the resignation of J&K CM Mehbooba Mufti for her "failure" to address the issue. Singh and industries minister Chander Prakash Ganga had resigned on April 13 over their participation in an earlier rally in support of the accused in the gang rape and murder of an eight-year-old girl in Kathua district. The former forest minister said the chief minister had failed to understand the popular sentiment and was yet to seek a CBI probe into the brutal incident. It is her (Mehbooba Mufti's) biggest failure. If she has wisdom and conscience, she should resign, Singh told reporters here. "If two ministers can sacrifice their posts in the interest of peace, those who are actually responsible for creating such an atmosphere should listen to their conscience," he said targeting the PDP leader. Singh also said that he would press for CBI probe into the incident. Asked about his decision to resign from the state government, Singh blamed the media for "creating a perception", thus forcing him to take such a step. "We resigned because the perception created by the national media was not good. It portrayed the situation in a wrong way, which was not the case at all. It was portrayed that the entire Jammu region was siding with rapists," he claimed. There was no need to resign had the media not created such a perception, the BJP leader said. "It (the perception) created problems for our prime minister and country. It was not good. So, we preferred to resign. We have not done anything wrong," Singh added. The brutal gang rape and murder of the girl from the nomadic Bakerwal community and Prime Minister Narendra Modi's "silence" on the issue were also written about in an editorial of the New York Times. In the editorial titled 'Modi's Long Silence as Women in India Are Attacked', the NYT editorial board said Modi tweets frequently and considers himself a "talented orator" yet he "loses his voice when it comes to speaking out about the dangers faced by women and minorities who are frequent targets of the nationalist and communal forces that are part of the base of his Bharatiya Janata Party". (This story has not been edited by Business Standard staff and is auto-generated from a syndicated feed.) New alignment for the greenfield Delhi-Mumbai express highway is likely to reduce land acquisition cost by up to Rs 20,000 crore as the highway will travel through backward and undeveloped areas, Union Minister Nitin Gadkari said today. The proposed project will also cut travel distance between the two metros by 125 km. The minister said as compared to land acquisition cost of Rs 7 crore per hectare for the existing highway between Delhi and Mumbai, the new alignment will see land acquisition cost to reduce to Rs 70 to 80 lakh per hectare. The government has planned to build a new express highway connecting Delhi and Mumbai on a new alignment at a cost of Rs 1 lakh crore. "Land acquisition for the new Delhi-Mumbai express highway will cost Rs 16,000 crore to Rs 20,000 crore less. The new alignment will be from Ring Road of Delhi to Jaipur to Alwar from where it will reach Sawai Madhopur to Mumbai via Vadodara," the Road Transport & Highways minister said on the sidelines of an event here. Addressing an event by Transport Corporation of India (TCI) for the launch of "Insurance Requirements of the Indian Logistics & Warehousing industry and their Customers," Gadkari said not only travel distance between both the metropolises will reduce by 125 km after this new express highway but one can reach Mumbai from Delhi in 11 hours on car. He said the Vadodara to Mumbai part will be built at a cost of Rs 44,000 crore in five packages and work is likely to begin in a month as tenders have been already out. The minister said the new express highway will result in reduction of the logistics cost and will develop the socially backward areas in Rajasthan, Gujarat, Haryana, Maharashtra and Madhya Pradesh. The government has plans to build Chambal expressway that would be connected to the Delhi-Mumbai expressway and will benefit states like Madhya Pradesh and Rajasthan, he added. "The new alignment of the highway which we made goes from backward areas of Rajasthan and Madhya Pradesh, Gujarat, Haryana as well. All backward areas of the four states will develop industrially. There will be poverty alleviation," the minister said. About logistics, he said the trucks will be able to move faster on the new express highway which will be access-controlled. "Our problem is our trucks run 200 to 250 km a day. In the US it is 700 to 800 km. Trucks will take 40 per cent time as compared to the existing time, the minister said. On insurance requirements of the logistics and warehousing industry, Gadkari made it clear that insurance can not be made mandatory and it is up to consumers to decide. "It is the duty of insurance companies to convince consumers," he said. TCI and Insurance Institute of India has released a joint report on the insurance requirements of India's logistics and warehousing sector. Exploratory study recommended mandatory insurance of cargo by shipper & a comprehensive risk management policy for logistics service providers. The study by TCI, a multi modal integrated logistics provider was conducted jointly with the Insurance Institute of India (III). The joint exploratory study found that Logistics Service Providers (LSPs) continue to be highly vulnerable due to the often unfair allocation of risk between them and shippers. The study also suggested that the sector build internal capacity to understand insurance needs, evaluate its own risk capacity, and make informed decisions with respect to insurance purchases in the future. "Unlike developed economies, all goods being transported are not insured. In fact, LSPs and Warehouse Service Providers (WSPs), and Transporters end up taking insurance on behalf of their customers for direct cash debits' for significantly high amounts. "This is a huge cost and the risk impact is not only on large organised players but on the small transporters it is an unbearable risk," Vineet Agarwal, MD-TCI Group said. (This story has not been edited by Business Standard staff and is auto-generated from a syndicated feed.) Simultaneous elections to Lok Sabha and state assemblies can be held in two phases beginning 2019, provided at least two provisions of the Constitution are amended and ratified by majority of the states, the Law Commission said today. Some provisions of the Representation of the People Act will also have to be amended by a simple majority in Parliament, it said. Putting up its working paper on holding simultaneous polls in public domain today, the law panel has sought the views of constitutional experts, political parties and other stakeholders before finalising its report. Those interested in placing their views on the issue have been asked to submit their stand by May 8. According to the working paper, the second phase of simultaneous polls can take place in 2024. The document states that the leader of the majority party be elected prime minister or the chief minister by the entire house (Lok Sabha or state assembly) to ensure the stability of the government as well as the Lok Sabha or the assembly. The document has proposed amending the Constitution (Articles 83 (2) and 172 (1) dealing with tenures of Lok Sabha and state assemblies) and the Representation of the People Act to extend the terms of state legislative assemblies to effect the move. It suggests that in case a government falls mid-term, the term of the new government would be for the remaining period "and not for a fresh five-year term". "As an abundant caution and in order to avoid a challenge (in the courts) to amendments on the ground of not having obtained ratification by majority of the states, such ratification could be obtained for the proposed (constitutional) amendment," the working paper states. The states which are recommended to be covered under phase I are where assembly polls are due in 2021. These include Andhra Pradesh, Assam, Bihar, Madhya Pradesh and Maharashtra. States which will come under phase II are Uttar Pradesh, Gujarat, Karnataka, Delhi and Punjab. To hold elections in these states along with Lok Sabha polls, the terms of the assemblies have to be extended. Based on a suggestion made by the Election Commission, the working paper also says that a no-confidence motion against the government should be followed by a confidence motion. This would ensure that if the opposition does not have numbers to form an alternative government, the regime in office cannot be removed. Chief Election Commissioner Om Prakash Rawat had a word of caution on simultaneous polls when he recently said that the legal framework required for holding of the two elections together would take a lot of time to get ready. "We cannot put the cart before the horse. Logistical issues are subservient to legal framework. Unless legal framework is in place, we don't have to talk about anything else because legal framework will take a lot of time, making constitutional amendment to (changing) the law, all the process will take time, he said. He had said once the legal framework is ready, the EC would deliver. EC is a creation of the Constitution. We have to perform willy-nilly, deliver the election, whatever way prescribed in the law, he had said. (This story has not been edited by Business Standard staff and is auto-generated from a syndicated feed.) The Maharashtra Police today conducted searches at the offices and residences of supporters of organisations such as Kabir Kala Manch and Republican Panther on suspicion of their alleged connection with Naxal activities in urban areas, an official said. Various teams, headed by the Pune Police, carried out the searches since the morning in different parts of the state, including Pune, Mumbai, Nagpur and Gadchiroli. The police questioned some supporters and Dalit activists of organisations such as Kabir Kala Manch and Republican Panther in connection with their alleged links with Naxal activities during the searches, an official said. The teams, working on some inputs, were examining laptops, hard disks, mobile phones etc. of the activists to ascertain the communication mode, he added. In Nagpur, a Pune Police team, searched the residence of a lawyer in connection with his "provocative speeches" at an event organised to mark the 200th anniversary of the Bhima-Koregaon battle which was marred by incidents of violence in January, officials said. The programme, "Elgar Parishad", was organised at Shaniwar Wada in Pune on December 31 last year to commemorate the battle in which the British Army, comprising several Dalits, had defeated the Peshwas. Police officials said the Bhim Nagar residence of advocate Surendra Gadling was searched between 6:30 am and 1 pm in connection with an FIR registered in Pune. Gadling had earlier extended legal help to a number of leaders suspected to be involved in Naxal activities, including suspended Delhi University professor GN Saibaba who was sentenced to life in prison on March 7 last year for alleged Maoist links and anti-India activities. Meanwhile, sources in the state government said the searches conducted today were part of the action against Naxal activities in urban areas. "Central agencies have conducted the searches not only in Maharashtra but also in Delhi. Not just Elgar Parishad, nationwide raids have been conducted on people and institutions suspected to be associated with Naxal activities in urban areas," they said. Talking to reporters, Gadling alleged that the men in uniform were troubling people like him and allowing the perpetrators of the Bhima-Koregaon violence to go scot-free. "I did not participate in the Bhima-Koregaon event. However, we had collected funds for it like we do for any such programme. These raids are meant to silence people who have stood up to the RSS," he alleged. He claimed that the search party took away research material he had collected over a period of 25 years. "They even took away exam notes of my son and daughter. Pen-drives, hard drives and such items belonging to my wife were also confiscated," he alleged. (This story has not been edited by Business Standard staff and is auto-generated from a syndicated feed.) The Maharashtra cabinet today approved a single window system to grant permission to those wanting to shoot films, television programmes, serials, commercials and documentaries on government land. State Culture Minister Vinod Tawde said producers would have to apply online and permission would be granted in 15 days. He said that the system will start as a pilot project in Mumbai and would then be extended to the entire state based on the feedback received. The decision was taken at a cabinet meeting chaired by Chief Minister Devendra Fadnavis today. He added that this move, which has been brought as part of the Maharashtra Right to Public Service Act, did not include shoots that are intended to be done on private land. "The single window system would be applicable to land that falls within the jurisdiction of 14 government departments," Tawde informed. He added that in case permission is not given in 15 days, then it would be deemed as granted. "In case of a delay in giving permissions, action would be taken against the concerned officer under the Maharashtra Right to Public Service Act. This is part of the government's efforts to increase the ease of doing business in the state," Tawde said. He informed that the state-run Maharashtra Film, Stage and Cultural Development Corporation, located at Dadasaheb Phalke Chitranagari, popularly known as Filmcity, in suburban Goregaon would be the nodal agency. "A portal developed by the corporation, http://maharashtrafilmcell.com will have all details of the scheme including permissions, processing fees among other things," he said. (This story has not been edited by Business Standard staff and is auto-generated from a syndicated feed.) An alleged drug peddler has been arrested after 1.5 kg of charas (cannabis resin) was recovered from his vehicle on the Jammu-Srinagar national highway, the police said today. A police team stopped the vehicle coming from Srinagar at Nagrota yesterday and seized the contraband from its driver, a police spokesperson said. A case has been registered against the driver under relevant sections of law, and police is investigating the matter for further details, the spokesperson said. (This story has not been edited by Business Standard staff and is auto-generated from a syndicated feed.) Gold worth Rs 70 lakh was today stolen from a jeweller travelling on the Durg-Danapur South Bihar Express, railway police said. "The incident happened when the train was travelling through Raigarh district. The jeweller, Rakesh Kumar Jain, was in a sleeper compartment of the train on his way from Raipur to Raigarh. His bag, containing 5700 grams of gold worth Rs 70 lakh, was stolen today," a railway police official said. According to Jain's complaint to the police, he had gone to the toilet around 12:25pm and found his bag missing when he returned to his berth. "The train was passing through Kharsia area at that time," the official said. A case of theft has been registered and further investigations are underway, he said. (This story has not been edited by Business Standard staff and is auto-generated from a syndicated feed.) Meghalaya Chief Minister Conrad K Sangma today said his government will strive to strike a balance between economic activities and environment protection. The chief minister's comments came in the backdrop of the impact of an NGT ban on coal mining in the state four years ago. Speaking in the state Assembly, Sangma said, "I want to stress on the fact that this government realises the importance of the economic activity of coal mining in our state, and it is very important that this must continue." The chief minister had met Coal Minister Piyush Goyal and PMO officials last week in Delhi, and moved the Centre to consider invoking Para 12 A (b) of the Sixth Schedule to the Constitution to exempt the state from applicable Central mining laws. The Meghalaya Assembly had passed a resolution in this regard in 2015. "We are also resolving today once again to continue working for this (pressing for the Centre's consideration). I assure that we are going to work towards it and find way forward in this particular case," the CM told the House. Stating that the ban imposed on April 17, 2014 had affected inflow of Rs 4,000 crore coal trade, Sangma said it caused the state government Rs 700 crore royalty loss in a year. He said that paper mills in Silchar which were dependent on coal from Meghalaya were also affected, apart from cement plants in the state, whose captive power facilities run on coal. Sangma said that prior to 2014, environment protection measures were not properly undertaken, and this resulted in a number of rivers and waters getting contaminated. "The sulphur content went up, paddy fields were affected and at the same time even the land that was used, there was no land reclamation done," he said. (This story has not been edited by Business Standard staff and is auto-generated from a syndicated feed.) A seven-year-old girl attending a wedding ceremony was allegedly raped and strangulated to death here early on Tuesday by a man hired to set up tents on the occasion, police said. Enraged over the incident, the victim's family blocked the Etah-Farrukhabad road while opposition parties slammed the Yogi Adityanath government for the "sudden spurt" in rape cases. The incident in western Uttar Pradesh comes at a time when the Yogi Adityanath government is fighting public anger over the rape of a teenager allegedly by a ruling party MLA in Unnao. According to police, the incident took place at around 1.30 am near Mandi Samiti gate on the Aliganj road here where the girl had gone with her family to attend a wedding. Sonu Jatav (19), who was given the task of putting up tents for the marriage ceremony lured the girl, raped her and subsequently killed her, Superintendent of Police Akhilesh Chaurasia said, adding that the man was in an inebriated state. "After this, the accused fled the spot. The body of the girl was found in an under-construction house in the vicinity of the marriage venue. A rope was found tied around the neck of the girl," he said. The girl was rushed to the district hospital where she was declared brought dead. The body of the girl has been sent for post-mortem examination. "On the basis of complaints filed by family members, police have arrested Sonu Jatav," he said. The SP also said, "A case has been registered against the accused for rape and murder of the girl. POCSO Act has also been slapped on the accused since the victim is a minor." Angry family members of the minor girl blocked the Etah-Farrukhabad road demanding Rs 10 lakh as compensation. Slamming the ruling BJP, Samajwadi Party spokesperson and MLC Sunil Singh Sajan said, "I simply fail to understand why the law and order in the state has deteriorated so much after the BJP has come to power in UP. "On the one hand, the government claims that encounters are going on in the state and on the other, the crime ratio has surged in the state. The BJP had claimed that as soon as they come to power, the law and order of UP will improve. But, going by the sudden spurt of incidents, I feel that even the minor girls are not all safe in the state," he said. The Congress too attacked the BJP government on the incident. UP Congress spokesperson Ashok Singh said, "It is an irony that criminal elements are roaming freely in the state, and UP has become virtually the number one state in the country going by a spurt of rapes and other crimes. Congress will soon launch a mass movement across the state to highlight the surge in crime in the state." The BJP, however, said the party does not believe in saving criminal elements. "Unlike the past state governments which used to shield criminal elements, the BJP believes in ensuring that swift action is initiated against criminals. The police in UP are working without any dabaav (pressure) and prabhaav (influence). FIRs which were not registered in the previous state governments' regime, are now being immediately registered. King Mohammed VI has returned to Morocco after an absence of several weeks during which he underwent a heart operation in a Paris clinic, sources close to the palace said today. Media reports said Mohammed's private plane landed on Monday night in Casablanca, the economic capital of Morocco, and he was expected Tuesday in the northern city of Fez for official functions. The 54-year-old king has not been in Morocco at least since February 26 when he underwent the operation to normalise his heart beat. Mohammed, who has ruled since his father Hassan's death in July 1999, would resume his normal activities after a period of rest prescribed by his doctors, according to an official statement issued at the time. The king's lengthy absence stirred rumours on social media and also raised questions in diplomatic and business circles. A frequent visitor to France, Mohammed's first official function since the operation was an April 10 meeting with French President Emmanuel Macron. He did not, however, attend the Arab summit held Sunday in the Saudi city of Dhahran. (This story has not been edited by Business Standard staff and is auto-generated from a syndicated feed.) Nagaland government today launched an interactive mobile app through which farmers can seek solutions to their problems and know about diseases of plants. Agriculture Minister G. Kaito Aye launched the 'NagaFarmDoctor', an app for android phones. The state Department of Agriculture, has developed the app with two features ? an interactive part where farmers can submit their queries, and the other part where they can view information about diseases of plants, an official of the department said. The app also has a feature by which farmers can interact with one another, as can be done in WhatsApp. The minister also encouraged department officials to visit remote villages and help farmers achieve self-sufficiency. (This story has not been edited by Business Standard staff and is auto-generated from a syndicated feed.) The Shiv Sena's opposition to the proposed Nanar refinery in the coastal Konkan in Maharashtra is part of a "deal" it has struck with the BJP whose real intention is to shift the project to neighbouring Gujarat, senior Congress leader Radhakrishna Vikhe Patil alleged today. He also attacked the BJP-led Maharashtra government over "tardy" implementation of the Rs 34,000 crore loan waiver, announced by Chief Minister Devendra Fadnavis in June last year. "The protests by the Shiv Sena against the Nanar project are part of a deal with the BJP. The Centre ultimately wants to shift the refinery project to Gujarat. However, since the BJP cannot do so directly, it has roped in the Sena to stage protests. "The BJP would scrap the project for a while and claim that it was doing so to honour the wish of the people (before shifting it to Gujarat). Both the parties are fooling people," the Leader of Opposition in the Maharashtra Legislative Assembly said. The Rs 3-trillion project envisages setting up of the world's largest oil refinery complex in the ecologically-sensitive Ratnagiri district. Local farmers and fishermen have been opposing the project on the ground that it would permanently damage the ecology in the region. Parties like the Shiv Sena, which is a constituent of the BJP-led government, the Maharashtra Navnirman Sena (MNS) have come out strongly against the project. Vikhe Patil said the loan waiver had failed to cater to the genuine farmers. "A total of 696 farmers have committed suicide in the state in three months after the waiver was announced. In Umred taluka of Yavatmal district, a farmer recently lit his own pyre and committed suicide. The government had granted the waiver not for the welfare of farmers but for the self promotion in the name of peasants," Vikhe Patil said. The Congress leader said the waiver has failed to bail out the farmers who are in distress. "While campaigning for the 2014 Lok Sabha polls, Narendra Modi had assured that the minimum support price (MSP) of agri commodities would be set with 50% profit margin for farmers. However, after becoming prime mnister, Modi had no time for farmers. This shows the BJP's insensitive attitude towards farmers," he said. (This story has not been edited by Business Standard staff and is auto-generated from a syndicated feed.) Chhattisgarh Chief Minister Raman Singh has said development is the weapon being used against Naxalites, with the government providing villagers in the rebel-hit remote forests of Bastar with roads and electricity. The chief minister also said constructing roads in the Bastar region of Chhattisgarh was the "toughest battle in the world". "The biggest pain of the Naxalites is why we (the government) are building roads and electrifying the region," he told reporters here yesterday. The outlawed rebels did not have faith in democracy and protested against every election, as well as development and the construction of roads in the region, Singh said. The 'ladai' (battle) is about electrification and road construction as we build more roads worth Rs 800 crore in the region," he said. The chief minister said the government's challenge was to build roads for the villagers as well protect those constructing them. "We have dual challenges in the region - construction of roads and providing security to those constructing the roads," Singh said, adding by doing so it had developed villages. Singh described as "routine" the Naxalite diktat to locals not to take part in Prime Minister Narendra Modi's programme in Bijapur district's Jangala last week. It is a routine thing. More than 40,000 people took part in the programme. This war (with the Naxals) is going on and I daily participate in various programmes even though I get threats from the ultras," he said. To a query on how much of the troubled region in the state was under the control of the outlaws, he said the Naxalites believed they controlled over 20 per cent of Bijapur and Sukma districts. But now anyone can travel in Dantewada even on scooters, he said, adding that with the construction of roads till Bhopalpatnam, he occasionally took motorcycle rides in areas which were earlier inaccessible. Roads and electricity build confidence among the people, he said. Endorsing Prime Minister Modi's comment that Naxal leaders are outsiders who stay safe and let the locals die, Singh said the leadership had a four-layer security cover with women and children on the outside periphery to prevent security forces from firing at them. The Naxalites in Bastar also take the benefit of inter-state borders. They conduct an attack in Chhattisgarh and then flee to neighbouring Andhra Pradesh or Odisha and vice versa. It is a huge area - 40,000 sq km area - which is larger than Kerala," he said. (This story has not been edited by Business Standard staff and is auto-generated from a syndicated feed.) A corporator of the NCP, arrested for allegedly vandalising the office of Ahmednagar SP, died due to a heart attack at Pune's Sassoon Hospital while he was under judicial custody, an official said today. Kailas Giravale (55), admitted to the hospital on April 15 after he complained of severe chest pain, suffered a heart attack and died around midnight on Monday, Ranjankumar Sharma, Superintendent of Police (SP), Ahmednagar, said. The Ahmednagar councillor, a supporter of NCP MLA Sangram Jagtap, was arrested on April 8 by the Bhingar police for allegedly vandalising the SP's office in the Western Maharashtra district, he said. The ransacking took place after Jagtap, an MLA from Ahmednagar district, was detained at the SP's office in connection with the killing of two local Shiv Sena leaders. Initially, Giravale was sent in two-day police custody by a local court and shifted to the Nashik Central Prison on April 10 after being remanded in judicial custody, Sharma said. While in judicial custody, he was produced before a magistrate on April 14 and sent to one-day police custody in another offence registered at the Kotwali police station in Ahmednagar district in Western Maharashtra, he said. On April 15, he complained of chest pain and was refereed to the Civil Hospital in Ahmednagar from where he was shifted to the Sassoon Hospital, around 125 km away, for further treatment, said the official. The corporator was in judicial custody till April 27, he said. (This story has not been edited by Business Standard staff and is auto-generated from a syndicated feed.) Newly-elected VHP international president V S Kokje will visit Ayodhya on Sunday. According to sources in the Vishwa Hindu Parishad (VHP), Kokje will take a holy dip in the river Saryu on Monday, after that he will offer prayers at the disputed Ram Janambhoomi and Hanuman Garhi temples. On Monday afternoon, he will attend a conference of sadhus in Ayodhya. Kokje, a former judge of the High Courts of Madhya Pradesh and Rajasthan, was elected as VHP's international president last week, defeating senior leader Pravin Togadia's nominee Raghava Reddy, prompting Togadia to quit the organisation. After becoming the VHP international president, he had said, "The issue of constructing a temple at the Ram Janmabhoomi in Ayodhya is still our priority. We hope the decision of the court in this regard will be out soon. (This story has not been edited by Business Standard staff and is auto-generated from a syndicated feed.) Noting that forest fires normally occur in April every year causing huge damage to the environment, the National Green Tribunal has directed the Ministry of and Forests (MoEF) to finalise National Policy on Forest Fire within two weeks. A bench headed by acting NGT Chairperson Justice Jawad Rahim directed the Ministry to get all requisite approvals and finalise the plan. The ministry told the green panel that all the states have complied with the direction of the tribunal and submitted their response to the Draft National Policy on Forest Fire. After receiving suggestion from all the states, the ministry was re-examining the draft policy and had fixed a workshop schedule to enable all stakeholders to participate in the effective discussion to finalise such policy. The ministry sought two weeks' time for finalising the document. "Though we have acceded to grant of time, but in view of the fact that forest fires normally occur in the month of April every year, we direct the Ministry of Environment, Forest and Climate Change to get the all requisite approval that are required from the Minister and give finality to the National Policy of Forest Fire and make it implementable," the bench said while posting the matter for next hearing on April 24. The MoEF had in February sought extension of time by three months to finalise the draft national plan. The tribunal had earlier rapped the Centre for remaining a "mute spectator" to the recurring forest fires in the hilly states, and directed the ministry to formulate a national policy. The green panel had said that advanced planning and implementation of fire management and crisis management plan for forest fires could have prevented massive fires that engulfed the Himalayan states of Uttarakhand and Himachal Pradesh in recent years. The tribunal also held that in order to ensure effective participation of the people living in villages close to forests, the labour for fire prevention and control should be sourced preferably from the same area and special incentive provided to such people. The tribunal was hearing a plea filed by senior advocate Rajiv Dutta against the massive forest fires in hilly areas. He had claimed that large area of forests, along with diverse biological species, have already become extinct as a consequence of these preventable forests. "If no urgent steps are taken, further devastation would be caused to a huge chunk of flora and fauna which are considered as wealth of the nation," he had said. (This story has not been edited by Business Standard staff and is auto-generated from a syndicated feed.) Nigerians constituted about 40 per cent of foreigners arrested for drug crimes in the country last year, says a latest report by the Narcotics Control Bureau (NCB). According to the data compiled by the central agency for the year 2017, out of the total 397 foreigners arrested in India for drug crimes, 157 were Nigerians, 95 were from Nepal, 46 from Myanmar and 13 from South Africa. Nigerians, as per the data, constitute the highest and account for about 40 per cent of the foreigners arrested for such crimes last year. The Narcotics Control Bureau, the enforcement agency tasked to coordinate efforts against drug menace, itself arrested 21 Nigerians, while the rest were apprehended by other departments, including various state police units. A senior official in the anti-narcotics establishment said the figures reflect a trend of the involvement of Nigerians and those from other African countries in such crimes. In 2016, he said, 68 Nigerians and 91 Nepalese nationals were arrested across the country for drug crimes, followed by 27 Myanmarese and five from South Africa. "These figures (of arrests of foreign nationals) are by and large the same each year. We have found that the challenging and poor socio-economic conditions of those hailing from the African region are responsible for them being lured into such crimes," the official said. "All these cases are also brought to the notice of local embassies or High Commissions of the respective countries as the proceedings under the Narcotic Drugs and Psychotropic Substances Act (NDPS) continue," he said. The other countries whose nationals were arrested for drug crimes last year include Bolivia (7), Bangladesh (6), Sri Lanka (6), Uganda and Rwanda (5 each) and Venezuela (4) among others. (This story has not been edited by Business Standard staff and is auto-generated from a syndicated feed.) The Premier of Australian state of New South Wales (NSW), Gladys Berejiklian, today said she will facilitate investments from pensions funds and other long term investors into Indian infrastructure sector. "We have been told about the huge infrastructure needs in India and I will look at how our pensions funds and other long term investors who are looking for good returns can participate in it," she told reporters here. She, however, did not quantify the amount of investment which can be seen coming into the country. Berejiklian added that she knows about the interest shown by similar investors from Canada in Indian projects across asset classes and affirmed that funds from her state will try to emulate the same. The Premier, who is on a four-day visit to the country, met Mahindra Group's Anand Mahindra, Chief Minister of Maharashtra Devendra Fadnavis and representatives from Jet Airways and the Hinduja Group today. The state is seeking investments into a new city which it will developing surrounding an upcoming international airport off Sydney, she said, stressing that there are a host of similarities between an Indian city like Mumbai which is also developing infrastructure. She said defence, aerospace, Internet and communications technology and logistics are the broad area where NSW is seeking investments from Indian companies. Berejiklian stressed that she does not want natural resources like coal to be the focus area of her visit. The state is also looking to co-productions and investments in cinema, she said, adding that there is also a huge Indian diaspora in her state. (This story has not been edited by Business Standard staff and is auto-generated from a syndicated feed.) Pakistan today rejected Indian allegations of "attempts to incite Indian pilgrims" on the issue of 'Khalistan.' India yesterday summoned Pakistan's Deputy High Commissioner in New Delhi and lodged a strong protest over attempts to raise the Khalistan issue during the visit of Sikh pilgrims to that country, while asking Islamabad to immediately cease all such activities aimed at undermining India's sovereignty and territorial integrity. Reacting to New Delhi's action, Pakistan's Foreign Office (FO) said, "By spreading such falsehoods, India has chosen to deliberately stoke further controversy around the visit of Sikh pilgrims, currently attending the Baisakhi and Khalsa Janamdin ceremonies in Pakistan." It said Pakistan welcomes Hindu and Sikh pilgrims from all over the world, including India. Pakistan has made arrangements to extend maximum facilitation to the visiting Sikh pilgrims during their visits to sacred places in Pakistan, the FO said. It said the Sikh community has been protesting against the Government of India for screening a controversial movie in India, which hurts their religious sentiments. "These protests had started in India and other parts of the world before the Sikh Yatrees arrived in Pakistan," the FO said. In view of the charged situation and the explicit refusal of the Sikh Yatrees to meet Indian officials, the Indian High Commissioner cancelled his visit on April 14, 2018, the FO said. "Indian attempts to distort the truth and obfuscate facts are unethical and regrettable," it said. "No amount of Indian propaganda could succeed in turning this right into a wrong," it claimed. India should respect the international and inter-state norms, respect all religions, especially minorities, and refrain from indulging in pointless provocation which only vitiates an already charged environment to the detriment of all, the FO said. (This story has not been edited by Business Standard staff and is auto-generated from a syndicated feed.) Punjab Chief Minister Captain Amarinder Singh today directed the finance department to immediately release the grant of Rs 8 crore, already sanctioned in the budget, for the completion of the Punjab State War Heroes' Memorial and Museum (PSWHMM) at Amritsar. The chief minister issued the directive while chairing the governing body meeting of the PSWHMM here, said an official release. Reviewing the progress of the ongoing works at the state-of-the-art museum, Amarinder directed the Culture & Tourism department to earmark dedicated sections in the galleries, representing the various historic wars fought by Punjabis, to enable the younger generations to connect with their glorious military past. "The awareness of one's rich legacy was the only way to face future challenges. This monument would go a long way in motivating the youth to imbue the spirit of patriotism and nationalism," the chief minister said. He added that as a military historian himself, he could well understand the importance of such memorials. Underscoring the need to make the monument financially self-sustainable in future, the CM asked the tourism and cultural affairs department of explore avenues for the same and ensure that the maintenance and upkeep of the world-class memorial does not get affected. With that, he also asked the department to submit a detailed proposal to start a light and sound Show (Projection Mapping) around the vista, which would be a star attraction, especially for the tourists returning from Attari-Wagah after witnessing the beating of retreat ceremony. The project, to be implemented in PPP mode, would entail an estimated expenditure of Rs 10-12 crore. The proposal mooted by principal secretary (finance) for issuing a special single dedicated card to enable the tourists to visit all the historic places in a hassle-free manner was also deliberated on. "Lakhs of devotees visit Amritsar to pay obeisance at the Golden Temple and abroad everybody, and they would also be keen to visit other places of historical and cultural significance," he pointed out. (This story has not been edited by Business Standard staff and is auto-generated from a syndicated feed.) Photographs which claim to show Syrian volunteer rescue workers, known as the White Helmets, staging a chemical attack in Eastern Ghouta were actually taken from a film set, according to Factuel, an AFP fact-checking blog. The White Helmets, a humanitarian organisation made up of some 3,000 volunteers, has regularly been the target of disinformation campaigns by the Syrian regime and conspiracy theorists online. The photos -- which show actors covered in dust, with bloody makeup and a clapper board -- were presented by supporters of Bashar al-Assad as proof that the alleged chlorine and sarin gas attack in the rebel-held town of Douma on April 7 was fake. But the photos come from the set of a Syrian film called "Revolution Man", supported by the Syrian culture ministry, and were published in February on a Facebook page devoted to the movie. The film's premiere was also reported by the official Syrian agency SANA on March 9 -- a month before the alleged chemical attack. According to SANA, the film tells the story of a journalist in search of fame "who illegally enters Syria to take pictures and videos of the war". After failing to achieve his goal, he "fabricates a chemical attack to give his photos a global impact", the agency said. The investigative site Bellingcat reported the pictures were also shared by the Russian public channel Russia 1, which presented them as proof that the chemical attack was fake. On April 7 the Syrian American Medical Society (SAMS) and the White Helmets jointly said dozens of people died in a "poisonous chlorine gas attack" in Douma. The White Helmets has often conducted daring rescues of people trapped in the rubble of bomb sites and their videos have frequently gone viral online. The group has been credited with saving thousands of civilian lives. The US, Britain and France launched missile strikes at the weekend in response to the alleged chemical attack. France has said it has "proof" that "chemical weapons were used" by Assad's regime. The Syrian government denies involvement. Assad's ally Russia has said it has "irrefutable evidence" that the chemical attack was "staged" with the help of the UK. Inspectors from the International Organisation for the Prohibition of Chemical Weapons entered Douma Tuesday to begin a field investigation into the alleged attack. But Western powers and experts have warned key evidence had likely already been removed or tampered with. (This story has not been edited by Business Standard staff and is auto-generated from a syndicated feed.) Prime Minister Narendra Modi today invited top Swedish firms to invest in India and said stronger bilateral business relations would augur well for the people of the two countries. Modi, who held talks with his Swedish counterpart Stefan Lofven earlier in the day, was welcomed by children in traditional Indian costume on his arrival at the Stockholm City Hall here to attend the Roundtable Meeting with Swedish CEOs. "Stronger business relations between India and Sweden augur well for the people of our nations. Met a group of leading Swedish CEOs at the roundtable in Stockholm," Modi tweeted after he and Premier Lofven interacted with top Swedish business leaders. Prime Minister Modi exhorted top Swedish CEOs to invest in India and participate in flagship initiatives, External Affairs Ministry Spokesperson Raveesh Kumar said. "Sweden remains a valued partner for the @makeinindia initiative. PM highlighted the various investment opportunities in India," a tweet on the PMO handle said. Carsten Gronblad, Sweden's trade commissioner to India, said around 30 CEOs or representatives of firms participated in the meeting. "One of the main message from the speakers was that they consider India as a very strategic market and that they would like to partner India meeting certain challenges. "If we look at Swedish investments, they are increasing over the last few years. Swedish companies have committed to invest USD 1.1 billion in India over the next two years," he told PTI. The companies from Sweden have already invested USD 1.5 billion in India over the last three years, Gronblad said. This cumulative investment in India over a span of five years is more than that had been done over the last 20 years, he noted. The major investors would be the likes of Ikea, AstraZeneca and Volvo trucks, he said. Charles Frump, MD of Volvo Car India, who attended the meet, said Volvo shared their vision of electrified vehicles with Prime Minister Modi and stated how it was in line with the Indian government's vision. One of the key feedbacks from companies participating was how red-tape can be further reduced, Frump said. Juvencio Maeztu, CEO IKEA Group, and Hakan Buskhe, CEO Saab, were among the top business leaders who attended the roundtable. Sweden has a long history of investments in India. Many of the major Swedish companies such as Ericsson and Swedish Match (WIMCO) entered India even before it became independent. Since then, numerous other Swedish companies such as Atlas Copco, Sandvik, Alfa Laval, Volvo, Astra Zeneca and SAAB have invested in India. Though the bilateral trade fell to USD 1.9 billion in 2016-17, as compared to about USD 2.17 billion in 2015-16, Swedish investments and other economic activities in India have been on the rise. India's exports to Sweden amounted to USD 710 million, while India's imports from the nordic country totaled USD 1,160 million in 2016-17. (This story has not been edited by Business Standard staff and is auto-generated from a syndicated feed.) Prime Minister Narendra Modi today had a "productive exchange" of views on bilateral and regional issues with his Swedish counterpart Stefan Lofven and called on Swedish King Carl XVI Gustaf. "A relationship that has grown in intensity over the years and has a huge potential! PM @narendramodi met with @SwedishPM Stefan Lofven," External Affairs Ministry spokesperson Raveesh Kumar tweeted. Kumar said the two leaders had a "productive exchange of views on bilateral and regional issues." Earlier, Prime Minister Modi called on King Gustaf and exchanged views on strengthening bilateral cooperation across several sectors. Modi arrived here in the capital of Sweden yesterday, the first bilateral visit by an Indian premier to the Nordic nation in 30 years. Swedish Prime Minister Lofven received Modi at the airport last night. the Two leaders travelled together in the same vehicle from the airport to the hotel. Modi will also hold bilateral meetings with leaders of four other Nordic nations - Finland, Norway, Denmark and Iceland. "10 engagements in 10 hours- a hectic day begins for PM @narendramodi in Stockholm! Call on King of Sweden, bilateral meeting with @SwedishPM & 4 Nordic countries' leaders, roundtable meeting with Swedish CEOs, call by Leader of Opposition, India-Nordic Summit and Community event," Kumar tweeted. Modi is here on the first leg of his five-day foreign tour which will also take him to the UK where he will attend the Commonwealth Heads of Government Meeting (CHOGM). Ahead of his visit, Modi said in New Delhi that he was looking forward to deepening bilateral engagement with both countries in a number of areas including trade, investment and clean energy. Modi had said he and Lofven would interact with top business leaders of both countries and chart out a future roadmap of cooperation in sectors such as trade and investment, science and technology, clean energy and smart cities. India and Sweden will also jointly organise the India-Nordic Summit in Stockholm today. The summit will also be attended by the prime ministers of Finland, Norway, Denmark and Iceland. From Sweden, Modi will tonight travel to the UK where he will attend the CHOGM, besides holding bilateral talks with his British counterpart Theresa May. He will also have a brief stopover in Berlin, Germany, on April 20 while on his way back home. (This story has not been edited by Business Standard staff and is auto-generated from a syndicated feed.) Prime Minister Narendra Modi today met with the leaders of the five Nordic countries at the First India-Nordic Summit here and discussed ways to enhance ties with them. "Bonding together with a region representing quality and innovation and potential to be our partners in development. PM @narendramodi with Nordic leaders from Sweden, Denmark, Iceland, Norway and Finland at the First India-Nordic Summit," External Affairs Ministry Spokesperson Raveesh Kumar tweeted. The Nordic countries comprise Denmark, Finland, Iceland, Norway and Sweden. Danish Prime Minister Lars Lokke Rasmussen, Finnish Premier Juha Sipila, Iceland Premier Katrin Jakobsdottir, Norwegian Premier Erna Solberg and Swedish Prime Minister Stefan Lofven were present in the Summit meeting. Ahead of the Summit, Prime Minister Modi held bilateral meetings with his counterparts from all five Nordic countries. Modi is here on the first leg of his five-day foreign tour which will also take him to the UK and Germany. (This story has not been edited by Business Standard staff and is auto-generated from a syndicated feed.) The Supreme Court today took exception to the union water resources department secretary not filing an affidavit in a matter relating to the Polavaram Project in Andhra Pradesh despite its order and directed him to do so in three days. The direction came after the apex court was informed that a chief engineer of the department has filed an affidavit instead of the secretary. "There is an order of this court. You have to comply with it," a bench comprising Justices Madan B Lokur and Deepak Gupta told the counsel representing the Centre. "This is not in compliance of our order. We direct the secretary of the water resources department to file the affidavit within three days," the bench said. The bench had on February 15 asked the secretary of the department and several states, including Odisha and Telangana, to file "specific affidavits" stating they were bound by the 1980 award of Godavari Water Disputes Tribunal which had adjudicated the river water utilisation dispute among the basin states of Godavari and Krishna. The court, which was hearing a matter related to Indira Sagar Polavaram Project on river Godavari in Andhra Pradesh, was today informed that these states have filed their affidavits as per the direction. During the hearing, the counsel for Odisha said the controversy was with regard to the capacity and specifications of the Polavaram dam as mentioned in the tribunal award. He said the capacity of the project was scheduled to be 36 lakh cusec but the design was for 50 lakh cusecs which would lead to submergence of a large portion of area. Odisha had earlier raised the issue of submergence of a number of villages in the state due to the construction of Polavaram project. The project is under construction in West and East Godavari Districts of Andhra Pradesh and its reservoir spreads to parts of Chhattisgarh and Odisha. According to the tribunal's verdict, the agreements arrived between the riparian states at the sub-basin level were vetted by the states of the entire Godavari basin and no state could back out of the total tribunal award. Odisha had earlier told the apex court they were not pressing their plea seeking blanket injunction for Andhra Pradesh from proceeding with construction of the Polavaram project, but it should be done in accordance with the 1980 tribunal award and other laws. The petition has claimed that the project will submerge about 600 habitations in Andhra Pradesh, Chhattisgarh, Odisha and Telangana and also about 8,000 acres of forest and 500 acres of the wild life sanctuary. The environment clearance of the project was cancelled by the National Environment Appellate Authority in 2007 but the Andhra Pradesh High Court had stayed it as an interim measure. The Ministry of Environment and Forest had given a direction to stop the construction work of the project on February 8, 2011, but had later kept its own order in abeyance. (This story has not been edited by Business Standard staff and is auto-generated from a syndicated feed.) The Supreme Court today said copies of the PIL, alleging that police officers are being appointed as special executive magistrates and they act as judges in certain cases, be served to all the states so as to enable them to file their response in the matter. A bench headed by Chief Justice Dipak Misra directed that the copies to be served to them within a week and sought their replies within six weeks. "Let a copy of this petition be served on the standing counsel for all the state respondents, so that the said states can file affidavit with regard to the position in vogue in those states," the bench, also comprising justices A M Khanwilkar and D Y Chandrachud, said. The matter was posted for further hearing in the first week of July. Earlier, on April 5, the bench had expressed surprise and asked as to how police officers can be allowed to perform the job of executive magistrates under the Code of Criminal Procedure (CrPC) to deal with bail bonds from persons for ensuring law and order. The court, however, had considered the submission of Delhi Police that Section 21 of CrPC expresses intention of the legislature that the police may be bestowed with the magisterial power. The PIL, filed by lawyer Aldanish Rein, alleged that police officers, whose role is to investigate, are being appointed as special executive magistrates and they act as judges in certain cases. It was alleged that these executive magistrates are entrusted with the task to ensure peace and empowered to accept or reject bonds from people for maintaining law and order. Rein, in his plea, cited an example from Delhi where an executive magistrate had refused to accept the bond given by a person in a case relating to public nuisance and was sent to judicial custody. The plea challenged the powers of executive magistrates under Chapter VII of the CrPC, especially the power under sections 107, 111 and 116, by which they allegedly arbitrarily reject bonds given by persons, involved in cases relating to public scuffle or nuisance, promising to keep peace. (This story has not been edited by Business Standard staff and is auto-generated from a syndicated feed.) A series of demonstrations, including a silent protest to condemn the rape and murder of an eight-year-old girl in Jammu and Kashmir's Kathua district, have been planned by various groups at Parliament Square here during Prime Minister Narendra Modi's visit to the UK this week. The silent protest tomorrow, being promoted jointly by some Indian women's groups in Britain, is calling on members of the Indian diaspora in the country to join in by wearing some symbolic white clothing to register their condemnation of "atrocities that are taking place in India". "Following the horrific rape and murder of eight-year-old in the Kathua region of Kashmir, there will be a congregation meeting to silently protest and publicly express pain, sorrow and shock," the protest statement reads. The silent demonstration will coincide with an anti-India protest, being spearheaded by Pakistani-origin peer Lord Ahmed, at Parliament Square tomorrow afternoon. Alongside Sikh Federation UK and Pakistan-occupied Kashmir supporters, the so-called "Minorities Against Modi" group has been circulating some buses on the streets of London with banners such as "Free Kashmir" and "Punjab Referendum 2020 Khalistan". "The primary focus of Sikhs protesting will be the Indian PM, Narendra Modi, but they will also be there to show support for the Canadian PM, Justin Trudeau, for standing up for the rights of Sikh nationalists when he recently visited India," a statement from Sikh Federation UK said. A counter pro-India demonstration, titled "British Indians Welcome PM Modi" is also planned at the same time at Parliament Square, ahead of Modi's 'Bharat Ki Baat, Sabke Saath' in-conversation event at nearby Central Hall Westminster tomorrow evening. The group has been running their own vans on the streets of London welcoming Modi to the UK with the message of "Two Great Nations; One Glorious Future". Earlier tomorrow, a "Modi Not Welcome" protest by Caste Watch UK and South Asia Solidarity Group is planned outside 10, Downing Street. "On the one hand, Modi talks about bringing people together and of 'Bharat Ki Baat, Sabke Saath', but on the other hand his cohorts RSS storm troopers continue to brazenly defy the law unleashing violence on Dalits and religious minorities, a Caste Watch UK spokesperson said. Meanwhile, there have been allegations and counter-allegations doing the rounds among India-related societies of some UK universities, which had issued a letter addressed to the Indian PM earlier this week calling for "extraordinary measures" for justice in recent rape cases reported from different states in India. "We deplore all acts against humanity. However, we were not formally consulted via official correspondence about certain contents of NISAU's letter to PM Modi," a statement from Queen Mary Indian Society said. The National Indian Students and Alumni Union (NISAU) UK, which had claimed that 19 Indian societies were among the signatories of the letter, condemned "fake allegations" being circulated on social media. Indian officials involved in organising the four-day prime ministerial visit to the UK have said that protests and demonstrations are "part and parcel of any democratic society" and there are no plans to curtail them in any way. "The main thing is they should be peaceful and not prove disruptive to any of the official engagements," an official said. Modi is arriving late this evening in the UK and will embark upon a packed day of bilateral engagements with British Prime Minister Theresa May and the royal family tomorrow before going into formal multilateral discussions as part of the Commonwealth Heads of Government Meeting (CHOGM) later in the week. (This story has not been edited by Business Standard staff and is auto-generated from a syndicated feed.) Rajasthan Chief Minister Vasundhra Raje today ordered immediate withdrawal of a police circular for the implementation of a Supreme Court order on the Scheduled Castes and Scheduled Tribes (Prevention of Atrocities) Act, saying it was issued without her knowledge. The March 23 circular issued by Additional Director General of Police (Civil Rights) M L Lathar directed district police chiefs and police commissioners to implement the Supreme Court verdict putting restrictions on the arrest of people under the Act. I came to know that without my knowledge, some of the state government officers issued the circular which created confusion in the state. I have given directions to home minister and police headquarters to immediately issue a letter of clarification, Raje said in a statement tonight. She said that the state government was committed to protecting the rights of people belonging to SC/ST communities. The Supreme Court verdict of March 20 drew widespread protest. Some Dalit groups called a Bharat Bandh on April 2 during which at least 12 people were killed in the violence. The central government had on April 2 filed a review petition in the Supreme Court against its verdict that laid down stringent "safeguards" before registering a case under the Act. The chief minister said that the state government supported the review petition by the central government in the Supreme Court. The state's additional advocate general in New Delhi has been directed for making the state a party in the review petition. The Rajasthan unit of the Congress slammed the state government for issuing the circular. Rajasthan Congress chief Sachin Pilot said that the real face of the BJP had been exposed. He said that while the Centre filed review petition in the Supreme Court to revoke the changes in the Act, BJP-ruled state governments were implementing the Supreme Court's March 20 verdict. "The Centre agrees with the apex court order and has filed the review petition just to mislead people," he said in a statement. (This story has not been edited by Business Standard staff and is auto-generated from a syndicated feed.) Reacting to the controversy over including 'Ramji' in Dr. B.R Ambedar's name, UP Governor Ram Naik today asserted that 'Ram' was part of the full name of the Indian Constitution's key architect and that is how he used to sign in the constituent assembly. "Some people have the speciality of raking up controversies in .. in Uttar Pradesh, Dr Ambedkar's name was not being used properly and so I had given a suggestion in this regard to the government," said the Governor who was here to attend a school programme in Dharhara village under Sukhpura police station area. "A postal stamp released on the centenary functions of his birth anniversary also bore his full name as Dr Bhim Ram Rao Ambedkar... his signatures in the constituent assembly also had his full signatures,' Ram Naik said. To a question on Samajwadi Party allegation that he had remained very vocal during the Akhilesh Yadav governmet, but has gone silent during Yogi Adityanath's regime, Ram Naik said he had been in the Raj Bhawan for over three years now and had never said anything which had political overtones. "It is another thing if someone sees political colour in my statements," he said, adding he has the constitutional responsibilities and does not get involved in political allegations. The Governor, however, said he as always been putting his views on the incidents taking place in the state. "I had given two suggestions to the then CM Akhilesh Yadav for holding foundation day of the state and organising a programme to mark 100 years of Bal Gangadhar Tilak's slogan "swaraj mera janmasiddh adhikar hai (Self-rule is my birthright)' which he did not accept but Adityanath accepted," he added. Akhilesh Yadav had recently alleged that Governor had been very vocal during his government while he has remained mostly silent during Yogi Adityanath's regime. Earlier in the day , two MPs and a district unit president of the ruling party boycotted the programme organised for the Governor, accusing the local administration of ignoring them. BJP's Salempur MP Ravindra Kushwaha and the new Rajya Sabha member Sakaldeep Rajbhar along with the party's district president Vinod Shankar Dubey boycotted the programme, alleging that both the district administration and the school misbehaved with them and invited them neither to the helipad nor for garlanding Naik. They said they will complain about it to the Chief Minister Adityanath and Lok Sabha Speaker Sumitra Mahajan. Meanwhile district Superintendent of Police S P Ganguli said the district administration's role was limited to extending security to the Governor as it was a private programme held by the school. (This story has not been edited by Business Standard staff and is auto-generated from a syndicated feed.) Uttarakhand Chief Minister Trivendra Singh Rawat today urged investors in Thailand to invest in the state, as it has emerged as one of the most preferred investment destinations in the country. The chief minister also emphasised the government's investor-friendly policies,availability of basic facilitiesand good climate to attract investment. Addressing a seminar on food processing in Bangkok, Rawat said a single window system has been put in place for speedy clearance of investment proposals in the state, where the rate ofelectricity for industries is lowest compared to other states, an official release here said. He also underscored the state's investment potential in food processing and the concessions being offered to entrepreneurs to invest in the sector. The chief minister also highlighted steps being taken by his government to promote organised farming of aromatic and medicinal plants, which abound in the Himalayan state whose great climate and scenic beauty attracts visitors from all over the world. (This story has not been edited by Business Standard staff and is auto-generated from a syndicated feed.) Iran's official agency says a rescue helicopter has crashed in the Persian Gulf, killing at least two people on board. IRNA reported that the helicopter was flying from an offshore rig toward Kish Island yesterday, transporting an oil worker who had suffered a heart attack. It says the oil worker and a paramedic died in the crash. Another two passengers are missing, and the pilot survived. Aviation crashes in Iran are often blamed on the country's aging aircraft fleets, which were poorly maintained during years of sanctions over Iran's nuclear program. (This story has not been edited by Business Standard staff and is auto-generated from a syndicated feed.) The UN Security Council has failed to prevent the Rohingya refugee crisis, and the 15-member body must refer sexual violence and other crimes against the ethnic group to the International Criminal Court, a Rohingya lawyer said at an UNSC debate. "Where I come from, women and girls have been gang-raped, tortured and killed by the Myanmar army, for no reason other than for being a Rohingya," Razia Sultana said on behalf of non-governmental organisations during a Security Council open debate on prevention of sexual violence in conflict. The debate, addressed by Deputy Secretary-General Amina Mohammed and Special Representative of the Secretary-General on Sexual Violence in Conflict Pramila Patten was held as the Council prepares for a visit later this month to Myanmar and its neighbouring Bangladesh, which hosts hundreds of thousands of Rohingya refugees. Sultana urged the Council members to meet with women and girl survivors during the visit. Since August last year, more than 670,000 Rohingya have fled Myanmar. "This is the fastest refugee movement since the Rwanda genocide," Sultana said. "However, the international community, especially the Security Council, has failed us. This latest crisis could have been prevented if the warning signs since 2012 had not been ignored," she added. This year's UN Secretary-General's report on sexual violence in conflict lists the Myanmar military for the first time. She said the Council must refer the situation in Myanmar to the International Criminal Court, the world's top criminal court, without delay. "The Myanmar military is listed for the first time in this year's Secretary General's report on sexual violence in conflict. In light of this and the ongoing impunity of the army, the Security Council must refer the situation in Myanmar to the International Criminal Court without delay for the horrific crimes committed against the Rohingya as well as for violations against other ethnic groups," she said. Sultana said her own research and interviews provide evidence that government troops raped well over 300 women and girls in 17 villages in Rakhine state. With over 350 villages attacked and burned since August 2017, this number is likely to be only a fraction of the total. "Girls as young as six were gang-raped," she said. Mohammed told the Council that this year, in Myanmar and many other conflict situations, the threat and the act of sexual violence has, once again, been used as a "tactic to advance military, economic and ideological objectives." "And, once again, it has been a driver of massive forced displacement," she added. "Let us intensify our efforts to end the horrific litany of sexual violence in conflict so that women, girls, men and boys have one less burden to bear as they work to rebuild shattered lives." A decade ago, the Council adopted the groundbreaking resolution 1820, which elevated the issue of conflict-related sexual violence onto its agenda, as a threat to security and impediment to peace. It seeks to "debunk the myths that fuel sexual violence," and rejects the notion of rape as an "inevitable byproduct of war" or mere "collateral damage". Since then, the issue has been systematically included in peacekeeping missions. But "it is clear that words on paper are not yet matched by facts on the ground. We have not yet moved from resolutions to lasting solutions," Patten said. "It is a travesty and an outrage that not a single member of the ISIL or the Boko Haram has yet been convicted for sexual violence as an international crime," she said. As recommendations, she called on the international community to establish a reparations fund for survivors of conflict-related sexual violence, while stressing the need for a more operational response to stigma alleviation, as well as the need to marshal sustained funding for the gender-based response. A concept note circulated in advance of this meeting asked delegates to share national experiences regarding specific measures taken to prevent conflict-related sexual violence, particularly long-term initiatives focused on women's empowerment, advancing gender equality, and ensuring that perpetrators of sexual violence were brought to justice. The note also posed several other discussion questions, including one about how the Council when establishing and renewing the mandates of UN peacekeeping and political missions, as well as relevant sanctions regimes can more effectively promote gender equality, the empowerment of women in conflict and post-conflict situations, and accountability for sexual violence crimes. (This story has not been edited by Business Standard staff and is auto-generated from a syndicated feed.) A lawyer from Myanmar's Rohingya Muslim minority focusing on the trauma, mass rape and trafficking of its girls and women is urging the UN Security Council to refer Myanmar to the International Criminal Court for "horrific crimes" against the Rohingya and other ethnic groups. Razia Sultana has been working with Rohingya girls and women in refugee camps since 2014. She told the council: "Where I come from, women and girls have been gang raped, tortured and killed by the Myanmar army for no other reason than for being Rohingya." Sultana was the first Rohingya woman to address the UN's most powerful body on the plight of her people. She spoke at a meeting today on sexual violence in conflict and called for international pressure to end oppression of the Rohingyas. (This story has not been edited by Business Standard staff and is auto-generated from a syndicated feed.) Agricultural experts from SAARC nations will present a position paper on ways to address impact of climate change on agriculture at the SAARC regional summit, which kicked off today. More than 80 senior officers and agricultural experts from Afghanistan, Bangladesh, Bhutan, India, Maldives, Nepal, Pakistan and Sri Lanka attended the inaugural session of the three-day conference in Hyderabad. The experts will also discuss adaptation measures for climate resilient agrarian systems. "The consultation will not only strengthen partnership among SAARC countries on climate resilient agricultural systems, but also cover research, economics and innovative policy towards climate smart agriculture in South Asia. "A discussion on the UNFCCC decision on agriculture will also be held during the conference," an official statement said. The conference on "Climate Resilient Agricultural Policies, Strategies and Programmes" was inaugurated by Telengana Chief Secretary Shailendra Kumar Joshi, at ICAR-National Academy of Agricultural Research Management (NAARM). Joshi said that it was a unique opportunity to shape and strengthen the process, as well as global attention and action to support climate resilient agricultural systems and dependent communities. We, in South Asia, have many things in common in agricultural practices, food systems and therefore, there is a great opportunity to share our experiences towards effective adaptation to climate change, Joshi said. The regional consultation is also opportune because parties to the UNFCCC at CoP23 had put in place for the first time a joint work programme on climate change and agriculture, the Koronivia Joint Work on Agriculture. SAARC accounts for one-fourth of the global population and around 67 per cent of its population lives in rural areas (as per 2014 statistics). Almost half of the workforce is employed in the agriculture sector and around 42 per cent of South Asia's landmass is under agricultural operation, the statement said. Much of the agricultural production in the region is undertaken by small holders and an average range of landholding in SAARC countries varies between 0.3 to 1.4 hectares. Agriculture plays a central role in South Asian economies, lives and livelihoods. Crops grown in the region are important, both for regional and global food security, it added. (This story has not been edited by Business Standard staff and is auto-generated from a syndicated feed.) The opposition Shiromani Akali Dal (SAD) today asked the Congress government to withdraw all cases registered against Dalits in connection with clashes with members of Hindu right-wing groups in Phagwara in Punjab. The Scheduled Caste Wing of the SAD also demanded the arrests of the "perpetrators of the ghastly unprovoked attack" on Dalits on April 13. It said that a case had been registered against 16 people, but only four of them had been arrested till now. The clashes broke out between members of a Dalit outfit and Hindu right-wing groups on April 13 over installation of a board carrying a picture of B R Ambedkar at Gol Chowk here on National Highway (NH)-1. (This story has not been edited by Business Standard staff and is auto-generated from a syndicated feed.) A Saudi-led coalition battling Yemen's Huthi rebels has warned them of a "painful" response if they mounted new attacks on Saudi Arabia using what it said were Iran-supplied drones. Riyadh said last week it had shot down two drones in the south of the kingdom as well as intercepting ballistic missiles fired from rebel-held parts of Yemen, the latest in a series of similar incidents. "If the Huthis continue targeting industrial or residential facilities, the response will be hard and painful," said coalition spokesman Turki al-Malki, displaying what he claimed were remnants of the intercepted aircraft. But in a sign of defiance, the rebels late yesterday fired a new missile towards southern Najran province, which was intercepted by Saudi air defence, the kingdom's state-run Al-Ekhbariya TV reported. Malki told reporters in the eastern city of Al-Khobar that the airport of rebel-held capital Sanaa was used as a military base to orchestrate the drone strike. The Saudi-backed Yemeni government last week said the drones were "made in Iran", adding that Yemen's military did not possess such aircraft and it was "impossible to manufacture them locally". Iran backs the Huthis, who seized the capital Sanaa in 2014, prompting a Saudi-led military coalition to intervene against the rebels the following year. But Tehran has repeatedly denied arming the rebels, which would violate a United Nations weapons embargo slapped on Yemen in 2015. Saudi Arabia in March 2015 launched a coalition of Arab states fighting to roll back the Huthis in Yemen and restore the country's internationally recognised government to power. Nearly 10,000 people have since been killed in Yemen's conflict, in what the United Nations has called the world's worst humanitarian crisis. (This story has not been edited by Business Standard staff and is auto-generated from a syndicated feed.) The Cambridge Analytica data leak controversy on Tuesday found mention in the Supreme Court, which red flagged the threat of probable misuse of citizens' information by entities which were getting Aadhaar details authenticated by the UIDAI. A five-judge constitution bench headed by Chief Justice Dipak Misra, hearing clutch of petitions challenging Aadhaar and enabling 2016 law, referred to the Cambridge Analytica controversy and said these are not "imaginary apprehensions" and, in the absence of robust data protection law, the issue of misuse of information becomes relevant. "The real apprehension is that elections are swayed using data analytics. These problems are symptomatic of the world we live in," the bench, also comprising Justices A K Sikri, A M Khanwilkar, D Y Chandrachud and Ashok Bhushan, said. "Please do not bring Cambridge Analytica into this. The UIDAI simply does not have the learning algorithms like Facebook, Google to analyse details of users," senior advocate Rakesh Dwivedi, appearing for Unique Identification Authority of India (UIDAI) and the Gujarat government, said. Besides the Aadhaar Act does not authorise any kind of data analysis, he said, adding the UIDAI has "simple matching algorithms" which give answers like 'yes' or 'no' after it receives a request for Aadhaar authentication from a requesting entity. The bench, which posed several searching questions, asked the lawyer why the authorities were allowing private entities to use the Aadhaar platform for various purposes and referred to the legal provision to this effect. "Why are words 'body corporate or any person' used in section 57 of the Act. It breaks the nexus of the Act with the Consolidated Fund of India... What is the point of involving private parties in the Aadhaar infrastructure," the bench asked. Dwivedi responded by saying that "it does not allow any 'chaiwala' or a 'panwala' to become a requesting entity under the Act. It is a limited exercise. The UIDAI will not approve anyone to become a requesting entity (RE) unless it is satisfied that the particular entity needs to use the facility of authentication." He also referred to private companies like Reliance venturing into the defence sector and said at some point in time, the court will have to decide the aspect where private firms were dealing with public functions of the state, which are currently being carried out by public sector companies. Dwivedi also dealt with the persistent allegation that the people were being given a number identity as was done by dictator Adolf Hitler in Germany. "Hitler counted citizens to identify Jews, Christians etc. Here, we do not seek details like caste, creed and religion from the citizens," he said, adding that the history of numbers began in India and "numbers are beautiful and fascinating". He also urged the bench not to give in to the "hyper phobia" against the Aadhaar created by the petitioners opposed to the "inclusive scheme" of the government based on a law and the proper infrastructure. "Lobbies favouring smart cards do not want this scheme to succeed as they are opposed to Aadhaar," the senior lawyer said, adding there have been efforts from many quarters to ensure that this scheme, which is more secure and works offline, does not work. The bench then referred to the provisions of the Aadhaar Act and said the misuse of information at the end of UIDAI may not happen, but there could be a possibility of misuse or commercial abuse of information by private entities involved in Aadhaar authentication. To this, the lawyer said the Aadhaar Act provided enough data protection to citizens and contained provisions to punish the offenders for any breach and moreover, the core biometric details cannot be shared by UIDAI. "No data protection law can provide hundred percent protection. The test should be 'reasonable, fair and just'," he said, adding that "aggregation, analysis or transfer of data" is not allowed under the statute. The lawyer also referred to uncertainties faced in life and said nothing was 100 per cent secure as people died in air travel and accidents on the highways. He then referred to the fact that documents like passport, PNR and boarding passes of airlines contain numbers only and it does not mean that identity of an individual is lost. He said biometric details do not contain genetic data and they are not intrusive and they are used in instant digital authentication of Aadhaar holder. "Aadhaar is not just an exercise to provide benefits and weed out fakes but also to bring the service providers face to face with the beneficiaries. That is the revolutionary aspect of Aadhaar," he said. "Aadhaar is not the panacea for all evils but the problems that were occuring on account of fake identity documents will be solved," he said. The bench took note of the plea that Aadhaar cannot be struck down solely on the ground that it is "probabilistic". However, it said, "If probability leads to deprivation of fundamental rights, then there should be safeguards in place to ensure that this deprivation does not happen. There should be an administrative machinery in place to ensure no genuine beneficiary is deprived." The advancing of arguments remained inconclusive and would resume tomorrow. The Supreme Court today upheld the Centre's decision to scrap the 2012 Limited Competitive Examination (LCE) to fill up the shortage of officials in the Indian Police Service, saying it "was not arbitrary, discriminatory and capricious". The top court said the decision taken by the central government to scrap the examination meant for officers of the state police service, central police organisation and the army "was taken in larger public interest". A bench of Justices M B Lokur, Kurian Joseph and Deepak Gupta said it cannot be oblivious to the fact that if the Union is compelled to make the appointments, it will lead to a plethora of litigation where those recruited to the IPS between 2013 and 2018 will claim seniority over the persons who appeared in the LCE. "In view of the foregoing reasons, the decision of the Government to scrap the process of recruitment to the IPS through the LCE cannot be termed to be arbitrary, discriminatory or capricious. The decision is a reasonable one in the facts and circumstances of the case", the bench said. The top court accepted the Centre's contention that when the committee headed by retired IPS officer Kamal Kumar made the recommendation for LCE, the vacancy of police officers was 30 per cent, but as on January 1, 2018, it had come down to 15.65 percent. "When we examine the decision taken by the Central Government in a holistic manner, we have no doubt that the decision to scrap the LCE recruitment has been taken in the larger public interest. The decision is definitely not mala fide. It is not actuated by extraneous reasons. It cannot be said that the decision is arbitrary," it said. The bench said one cannot lose sight of the fact that the induction through LCE was mainly limited to persons belonging to the State Police Services and the Central Police Organisation and any such induction would have led to a consequential shortage in these organisations. "The gain, if any, in the IPS, would be set off by a consequent shortage in the State Police Services and the Central Police Organisation," it said and added that the officers, who may have been selected in the year 2013 at the upper age limit of 35 years or 36 years would now be 5 years older. "No doubt, they are members of the State Police Service or the Central Police Organisation, but their induction or recruitment in the IPS is delayed by more than 5 years. When the Government laid down a policy that upper age limit was 35 years, it must have had some reason for fixing the upper age limit. That purpose is now defeated," it said. Various petitions were filed in different High Courts challenging the amendments made to the recruitment rules of IPS. Some candidates, who appeared in the LCE-2012, also approached the court seeking declaration of the results of the examination. Some members of the armed forces engaged on Short Service Commission were not given permission to appear in the examination or interview on the ground that they could not leave the armed forces before completing their tenure of service. They too moved the court praying that they should be permitted to appear in the examination and interview. In 2015, 14 cases from different high courts were transferred to the apex court in view of the Centre's plea seeking adjudication of the cases at one place. (This story has not been edited by Business Standard staff and is auto-generated from a syndicated feed.) A special court holding the Sheena Bora murder trial today permitted the investigation officer in the case to be present in the court during its proceedings to assist the public prosecutor. Special judge J C Jagadale granted permission to the case IO to be present in the court during the trial on a CBI plea. The court gave the permission hearing both the prosecution and defence counsel on the matter. In a plea to the court earlier, the CBI had sought its permission for IO's presence during the trial saying the case was a complicated one involving voluminous evidence and testimonies to prove the guilt of the accused and the special public prosecutor needed his active support and assistance during the trial. The agency had said the presence of IO K K Singh, also a witness in the case, was vital for the prosecution. Rules provide that during examination of a witness in a case, another witness of the same case cannot be present in the court. In order to be present, it is mandatory for the witness to have the permission of the court. The court is scheduled to record the statement of a key witness, Kajal Sharma tomorrow. Her testimony couldn't be recorded on two previous hearings as key accused Indrani Mukerjea was not present in the court on health grounds. Till now, the court has completed the recording of evidence of accused-turned-approver Shyamvar Rai and Mumbai police Sub-Inspector Ganesh Dalvi, who had registered the FIR in the case in August 2015, before the case was taken over by the CBI. As per the police, Mukerjea's daughter, Sheena Bora, 24, was abducted and killed on April 24, 2012, allegedly over a financial dispute, and her body disposed of in a forest in adjoining Raigad district. Mukerjea, her former husband Sanjeev Khanna and driver Shyamvar Rai were arrested for the crime. Rai later turned an approver in the case. (This story has not been edited by Business Standard staff and is auto-generated from a syndicated feed.) The Shia Waqf Board today moved the Supreme Court seeking a ban on hoisting of green flags with crescent and star at buildings and religious places, terming it "un-Islamic" and resembling the flags of a Pakistani political party. Syed Waseem Rizvi, the chairman of Uttar Pradesh Shia Central Board of Waqfs, claimed in his plea that during his visit to Mumbai and other places in the country, he saw flags on several buildings and religious structures, which were allegedly a cause of tension between Hindu and Muslim communities. The plea alleged that the flags hoisted resembled the flags of the Pakistan Muslim League, which belongs to the "enemy country". It claimed that the crescent star flags in green colour owes its origins to the erstwhile political party, Muslim League, founded by Nawaz Waqar Ul-Malik and Mohammad Ali Jinnah in 1906, but in the present day, it was being used by Indian Muslims who were treating it as an Islamic flag. Such flags are being hoisted in Muslim-dominated areas with "utmost impunity", the plea said, claiming that the crescent and star in a green backdrop have never been part of any Islamic practice and does not have any role or significance in Islam. It said that Pakistan, as an "enemy country", has been responsible for a series of terror attacks on our country and promoting and propagating cross border terrorism. "Our country remains vulnerable to the hidden attacks by the Pakistani intelligence agencies through their militant network which is very active in our country", he claimed. "Hoisting of enemy flags by persons under wrong belief that it is a religious flag, require immediate attention of the government agencies," it claimed. (This story has not been edited by Business Standard staff and is auto-generated from a syndicated feed.) Deputy Chief Minister Manish Sisodia today supported DCW chairperson Swati Maliwal's demand for a law to secure death penalty for those who rape minor girls and setting up of fast-track courts to complete the trial of such cases in six months. He also supported her demands regarding recruitment of 66,000 police personnel in Delhi police and better forensic labs. Sisodia visited Rajghat to lend support to Maliwal whose hunger strike entered its fifth day today. He said that the recruitment of police personnel would provide employment to the youth as well security to women, a DCW statement said. AAP MP ND Gupta also reached Rajghat to support Maliwal. Representatives from many bar associations and some medical associations also reached Samta Sthal and extended their support. The AIIMS RDA has also extended its support to Maliwal. Hundreds of students marched from Zakir Hussain College towards Samta Sthal, before being stopped by the police at Turkman Gate. Maliwal said she was expecting a reply from the prime minister on her letters but he had already left for London. "Now nobody wants a lecture from the PM over social values. The country expects a system from him to stop rapes," she said. (This story has not been edited by Business Standard staff and is auto-generated from a syndicated feed.) A six-year-old girl was raped and strangled to death in Pakistan's southern Sindh province, triggering violent protests that led to the death of a person allegedly in police firing, media reports said today. The girl, who had gone missing on Sunday, was found dead in the bushes in Manghopir yesterday night. She was today identified as a resident of Baloch Goth, Orangi Town. The police had confirmed that the child's body bore marks or torture. The post-mortem at Abbasi Shaheed Hospital confirmed that she was raped and tortured. There were marks of cigarette burns as well, Samaa TV reported. Further investigations are underway as samples taken from the body have been sent for chemical examination, the report said. Relatives and area residents placed the body of the deceased girl on Orangi Road in protest but took the body back to their home after it turned violent with demonstrators pelting stones at police and nearby vehicles. Two people were injured as police resorted to firing and teargas shelling to disperse the protesters. A man who was injured allegedly by police firing later died after being taken to a medical centre, Dawn reported. Ten police personnel, including a deputy superintendent police and two station house officers, were also injured in the incident. Rangers personnel were deployed in the area after which the situation came under control, the report said. The rioting comes months after the rape and murder of a seven-year-old girl in Kasur, whose body was found from a dump in January. The girl in Kasur district was abducted outside her home. She had gone to a religious tuition centre near her house in Kasur city, some 50 km from Lahore, on January 5 from where a man said to be a 'serial killer' abducted her, police said. The horrific incident shocked the entire country and drew national and international condemnation. The accused in the case was later sentenced to death and was also found to be involved in other cases of rape and murder in the area. (This story has not been edited by Business Standard staff and is auto-generated from a syndicated feed.) State governments are with the Centre on the issue of recalling the Supreme Court order allegedly diluting the Scheduled Caste and Scheduled Tribe (Prevention of Atrocities) Act, home ministry officials said. The comments came in the wake of reports that some state governments have already directed their police to strictly implement the March 20 apex court order, which has upset Dalits groups leading to protests. "The Centre has made abundantly clear that there should be no dilution of the SC/ST Act. It has filed a review petition in the Supreme Court for recall of its order. As far as states are concerned, they are also on board. They are in touch with the Centre and many of them are taking steps. Some have already announced that they will associate with the Centre," a ministry official said. There were reports that some state governments have issued formal orders, instructing police chiefs to strictly implement the Supreme Court order that forbids arrest under the SC/ST Act without sanction. However, some states said they would file petitions in the Supreme Court challenging its order modifying the SC/ST Act, another official said. Chhattisgarh has announced its intention to challenge the apex court order while Kerala has already filed a review petition. To protests the March 20 order, some Dalit groups had called a Bharat Bandh on April 2 during which at least 12 people were killed in violence. Another bandh was called on April 10 called by people opposed to caste-based reservations in jobs and education. The central government had on April 2 filed a review petition in the Supreme Court against its verdict that laid down stringent 'safeguards' before registering a case under the Act. (This story has not been edited by Business Standard staff and is auto-generated from a syndicated feed.) India's sugar production has touched an all-time high of 29.98 million tonnes till April 15 in the current season on higher cane output, leading to a surge in arrears to farmers at over Rs 20,000 crore, according to industry body ISMA. The association demanded that the government should provide production-linked incentive to cane farmers as it was done in 2015-16 marketing year. Sugar marketing year runs from October to September. Sugar output of India, the world's second largest producer, stood at 20.3 million tonnes in the 2016-17 marketing year. The annual domestic demand is estimated at 25 million tonnes. "Sugar production in the current season up to April 15, 2018, has crossed the expected levels and the Indian sugar industry has already produced 299.80 lakh tonnes," Indian Sugar Mills Association (ISMA) said in a statement. As many as 227 sugar mills were still crushing sugarcane. Sugar production in Maharashtra has almost reached its past record and mills produced 10.49 million tonnes up to April 15, 2018. Mills in Uttar Pradesh produced record 10.48 million tonnes of sugar. Crushing operations are almost over in Karnataka and only one sugar mill was operational as on April 15, 2018. The state has so far produced 3.63 million tonnes of sugar. "The actual sugar production up to April 15, 2018, is already 5 million tonne more than the estimated sugar consumption for the whole season up to September 30, 2018," the association said. On bumper production, ISMA said sugar prices have been under severe pressure in the last 4-5 months and have fallen by Rs 9 per kg across the country. As compared to the cost of production, the current ex-mill sugar prices are around Rs 8 per kg lower and the sugar mills are incurring substantial losses. "Inability to pay cane price because of highly depressed sugar prices, has translated into huge cane price arrears of farmers. As on March 15, 2018, the cane price arrears reported to the government was already over Rs 18,000 crore across the country," ISMA said, adding that arrears could have crossed Rs 20,000 crore now. To clear outstanding payment, the association demanded that the government should bail out mills and farmers as it did in 2015-16. Like 2015-16 sugar season "when the Modi Government helped the sugar mills and sugarcane farmers with Rs 4.50 per quintal of sugarcane as part of FRP, there is an immediate need for the government to pay a part of the FRP once again in the current year when the distress is even greater", ISMA said. According to the government data, outstanding payments to sugarcane farmers stood at Rs 18,044 crore as of April 12 of which Rs 8,869 crore was owed by mills in Uttar Pradesh. Karnataka millers owed Rs 2,420 crore while Maharashtra factories were to clear Rs 2,213 crore farmers' dues. India's largest sugar firm Bajaj Hindustan has the maximum outstanding of Rs 2,709 crore based on the cane price fixed by the UP government. Modi Group, which has two mills in UP, owed Rs 514 crore, followed by Mawana Sugars Rs 436 crore, Simbhaoli Sugars Rs 383 crore and Rana Sugars Rs 364 crore, a senior food ministry official told reporters. (This story has not been edited by Business Standard staff and is auto-generated from a syndicated feed.) All the 114 militants of a Hmar militant outfit, who had laid down arms on April 13, have received Rupees three lakh each as part of the rehabilitation package, a senior Home department official said. The surrender of the Hmar People's Convention (Democratic) leaders and cadres followed the signing of the memorandum of settlement by the Mizoram government and the outfit in Aizawl on April 2 last. The surrendered militants have returned to their respective villages, the official said. The Hmar rebels had laid down 45 weapons, including four sniper rifles, one grenade launcher, nine AK assault rifles, one M-16 carbine assault rifle and 13 double-barrel guns. They had also surrendered 2,892 rounds of ammunition, launcher shells and five radio sets on April 13. The surrendered weapons were handed over to state Home Minister R. Lalzirliana. (This story has not been edited by Business Standard staff and is auto-generated from a syndicated feed.) Sweden today backed India's bid for membership of the Nuclear Suppliers Group (NSG) as it welcomed New Delhi's recent accession to the international export control regimes, including Wassenaar Arrangement and Missile Technology Control Regime. Swedish Prime Minister Stefan Lofven expressed his country's support to India during his talks with Prime Minister Narendra Modi here. India's membership to the 48-member elite nuclear club is being primarily opposed by China on the pretext that it is not a signatory to the Non-Proliferation Treaty. Out of the four export control regimes that work to keep proliferation of Weapons of Mass Destruction (WMD) in check, India is a member of the Missile Technology Control Regime (MTCR), the Wassenaar Arrangement and the Australia Group. "Prime Minister Lofven welcomed India's recent accession to the international export control regimes, including to Australia Group (AG), Wassenaar Arrangement (WA), Missile Technology Control Regime (MTCR), and The Hague Code of Conduct against Ballistic Missile Proliferation (HCOC), and expressed support for India's membership of the Nuclear Supplier Group (NSG)," according to Sweden-India Joint Action Plan. Sweden also extended support to India's permanent membership of a reformed and expanded United Nations Security Council. Prime Minister Modi thanked his Swedish counterpart for Sweden's support to India. (This story has not been edited by Business Standard staff and is auto-generated from a syndicated feed.) France, Britain and the United States carried out air strikes targeting chemical weapons sites in Syria to defend the "honour of the international community", French President Emmanuel Macron said today. "Three countries have intervened, and let me be quite frank, quite honest -- this is for the honour of the international community," Macron said in an impassioned defence to the European Parliament. (This story has not been edited by Business Standard staff and is auto-generated from a syndicated feed.) Syrian state-run media reported that the country's air defences confronted a new "aggression," shooting down missiles over the central region of Homs early today. The reports did not say who carried out the pre-dawn strikes. The government-run Syrian Central Media said the missiles targeted the Shayrat air base in Homs. Earlier this month, four Iranian military personnel were killed in an airstrike on Syria's T4 air base, also in Homs. Syria and its main allies Iran and Russia blamed Israel for that attack. Israel did not confirmed or deny mounting the raid. The reports came just a few days after the United States, Britain and France conducted airstrikes targeting alleged chemical weapons facilities in Syria, in retaliation for a suspected chemical weapons attack that they blamed on the Syrian government. Experts from the international chemical weapons watchdog are now in Damascus and have been waiting to visit the site of the suspected chemical attack in the town of Douma, just east of Damascus. On Monday, Syrian and Russian authorities prevented investigators from the Organization for the Prohibition of Chemical Weapons from going to the scene, the head of the OPCW said, blocking international efforts to establish what happened and who was to blame. The US and France say they have evidence that poison gas was used in the April 7 attack in Douma, killing at least 40 people, and that Syrian President Bashar Assad's military was behind it. But they have made none of that evidence public, even after they, along with Britain, carried out airstrikes on Saturday, bombing sites they said were linked to Syria's chemical weapons program. Syria and its ally Russia deny any chemical attack took place, and Russian officials went even further, accusing Britain of staging a "fake" chemical attack. British Prime Minister Theresa May accused the two countries - whose forces now control the town east of Damascus - of trying to cover up evidence. The lack of access to Douma has left unanswered questions about the attack. OPCW Director-General Ahmet Uzumcu said Syrian and Russian officials cited "pending security issues" in keeping its inspectors from reaching Douma. "The team has not yet deployed to Douma," Uzumcu told an executive council meeting of the OPCW in The Hague on Monday. Instead, Syrian authorities offered them 22 people to interview as witnesses, he said, adding that he hoped "all necessary arrangements will be made ... to allow the team to deploy to Douma as soon as possible." Russian military police were ready to help protect the OPCW experts on their visit to Douma, said Maj. Gen. Yuri Yevtushenko of the Russian military's Reconciliation Center in Syria. Igor Kirillov, a Russian chemical weapons protection expert in The Hague, said the team is set to visit the site Wednesday. Earlier Monday, Russian Deputy Foreign Minister Sergei Ryabkov said the inspectors could not go to the site because they needed approval from the U.N. Department for Safety and Security. He denied that Russia was hampering the mission and suggested the approval was held up because of the Western airstrikes. "As far as I understand, what is hampering a speedy resolution of this problem is the consequences of the illegal, unlawful military action that Great Britain and other countries conducted on Saturday," he said. However, UN spokesman Stephane Dujarric said the United Nations has "provided the necessary clearances for the OPCW team to go about its work in Douma. We have not denied the team any request for it to go to Douma." Until Saturday, Douma was the last rebel-held town near Damascus, and the target of a government offensive in February and March that killed hundreds and displaced tens of thousands. Hours after the alleged chemical attack, the rebel faction that controlled the town, the Army of Islam, relented and was evacuated along with thousands of residents. The Associated Press, during a government-organized visit Monday to Douma, spoke to survivors and witnesses who described being hit by gas. Several said a strange smell started spreading and people screamed, "It's chlorine! It's chlorine!" The AP visited a two-room underground shelter where Khaled Mahmoud Nuseir said 47 people were killed, including his pregnant wife and two daughters, 18-month-old Qamar and 2 1/2-year-old Nour. A strange smell lingered, nine days after the attack. Nuseir, 25, said he ran from the shelter to a nearby clinic and fainted. After he was revived, he returned to the shelter and found his wife and daughters dead, with foam coming from their mouths. He and two other residents accused the rebel Army of Islam of carrying out the attack. As they spoke, government troops were not far away but out of earshot. Nuseir said a gas cylinder was found leaking the poison gas, adding that he didn't think it was dropped from the air because it still looked intact. Separately, the AP spoke to a medic who was among those who later were evacuated to northern Syria. Ahmed Abed al-Nafaa said helicopters were flying before the attack and when he reached the site, people were screaming "chlorine." He said he tried to enter the shelter but was overcome by a strong smell of chlorine and his comrades pulled him out. The accounts contradict what the Syrian government and Russia have reported: that there was no gas attack in Douma. (This story has not been edited by Business Standard staff and is auto-generated from a syndicated feed.) Tata Consultancy Services (TCS) today said it has opened North America Insurance hub for business operations in Cedar Rapids, Iowa. The move, part of a multi-year deal between TCS and Transamerica announced in January this year, will transform the administration of Transferal's US insurance and annuity business lines, TCS said in a statement. It will also accelerate the enhancement of Transamerica's digital capabilities and modernise its platforms to service all lines of its business customers, the statement added. "Iowa is proud to welcome the TCS North America Insurance hub to Cedar Rapids. This move is a positive one, not only for the local business environment, but also for our state's leadership on the national stage in the insurance industry," Iowa Governor Kim Reynolds said. As part of the over USD 2 billion deal, TCS will now administer Transamerica's life insurance, annuity, supplemental health insurance, and workplace voluntary benefits products, and manage the administration of more than 10 million policies. The Mumbai-based company also plans to expand its 'goIT' and 'Ignite My Future in School' programmes into Cedar Rapids in 2018 and beyond to engage with students and teachers to pursue computer science education and digital skills. TCS has invested nearly USD 3 billion in the US over the past three years and is among the top two job creators in IT services in America, the statement said. (This story has not been edited by Business Standard staff and is auto-generated from a syndicated feed.) Telangana Congress president N Uttam Kumar Reddy today hailed the Hyderabad High Court verdict quashing the notification expelling two state congress MLAs from the state assembly. "The development is a slap on the face of the TRS government," he said. Reddy alleged that the TRS government indulged in an undemocratic action. "The downfall of the TRS government has now begun," he said. RC Khuntia, in-charge of Congress affairs in Telangana, said in a release "Ultimately, justice has prevailed and illegal decision on expulsion of two elected MLAs has been rejected," he said. On March 13, Komatireddy Venkat Reddy and S A Sampath Kumar were expelled from the Telangana Legislative Assembly, a day after "unruly" incidents during the Governor's address to the joint sitting of legislature. The Hyderabad High Court today quashed the notification issued by the Legislature Secretary expelling the two MLAs from the state assembly. (This story has not been edited by Business Standard staff and is auto-generated from a syndicated feed.) Three BJP-ruled states and Tamil Nadu will move the Supreme Court against its order on the SC/ST Act with the Centre maintaining that state governments are on board in seeking a recall of the verdict, days after violent protests by Dalit groups engulfed several parts of the country. Following a nudge from the top BJP brass, Madhya Pradesh, Rajasthan and Chhattisgarh -- all of whom had reportedly taken steps to implement the verdict -- have revoked their decision and decided to join the Centre in filing review pleas. Official sources also said the Centre is keeping ready an ordinance to annul the order of the court, depending on the outcome of its petition. The court on March 20 had laid down guidelines to prevent the alleged misuse of the Scheduled Castes and the Schedule Tribes (Prevention of Atrocities) Act. Dalit groups have, however, vehemently protested against the verdict, saying it dilutes the law and will lead to a rise in cases of atrocities against the scheduled castes and tribes. A 'Bharat Bandh' called by them on April 2 had turned violent, leading to deaths of at least 11 persons. While the Centre has already filed a review plea, a top BJP leader told reporters that the party's central leadership has spoken to the chief ministers of Chhattisgarh, Madhya Pradesh and Rajsthan, where police chiefs were asked to implement the March 20 order, to keep in abeyance the decision and move the court with their review pleas. In Raipur, Chhattisgarh Chief Minister Raman Singh told reporters that his government is moving the Supreme Court against its order while it has also revoked a police department circular on implementation of the verdict. "The state government is affected by the judgement. In Chhattisgarh, it is the responsibility of the government to protect the honour of SCs and STs. The state government has always been sensitive towards them and will move the apex court against its order," he said. Tamil Nadu government also announced that it will move the apex court. The decision was arrived at a meeting chaired by Chief Minister K Palaniswami with his cabinet colleagues, including his deputy O Panneerselvam, an official release said. Opposition parties have used the issue to attack the ruling BJP, which has been assiduously wooing Dalits under Prime Minister Narendra Modi and its president Amit Shah. Indicating that more states will move the apex court, home ministry officials said state governments are with the Centre on the issue of recalling the Supreme Court order. "The Centre has made it abundantly clear that there should be no dilution of the SC/ST Act. It has filed a review petition in the Supreme Court for recall of its order. As far as states are concerned, they are also on board. They are in touch with the Centre and many of them are taking steps. Some have already announced that they will associate with the Centre," a ministry official said. With the NDA government facing flak from the opposition over Dalit issues, Union minister and BJP ally Ram Vilas Paswan said the Modi dispensation will now push for reservation for schedules castes and tribes in promotion in government jobs and may bring an ordinance. (This story has not been edited by Business Standard staff and is auto-generated from a syndicated feed.) Following a nudge from the top party brass, three BJP-ruled states have decided to keep in abeyance implementation of the Supreme Court order on the SC/ST Act and will file review pleas against the directive, a top leader said today. While Chhattisgarh, Madhya Pradesh and Rajasthan had reportedly taken steps to implement the order, they have now decided to put its execution in abeyance and approach the apex court for a review. "We have spoken to these chief ministers and their governments will soon file a review petition in the court. It is natural that the implementation of the order will be put in abeyance till the judiciary takes a final call," the party leader said on the condition of anonymity. The court recently laid down guidelines to prevent the alleged misuse of the Scheduled Castes and the Schedule Tribes (Prevention of Atrocities) Act. Dalit groups have, however, vehemently protested against the verdict, saying it dilutes the law and will lead to a rise in cases of atrocities against the scheduled castes and tribes. The Centre has already filed a plea seeking review of the Supreme Court directive in the wake of largescale protests by Dalit organisations. In its order on March 20, the apex court had said the law's misuse had led innocent citizens being framed as accused and public servants deterred from performing their duties, which was never the intention when the Scheduled Castes and the Scheduled Tribes (Prevention of Atrocities) Act was originally enacted. Opposition parties have used the issue to attack the ruling BJP, which has been assiduously wooing wooed Dalits under Prime Minister Narendra Modi and its president Amit Shah. As per reports, Chhattisgarh, Madhya Pradesh and Rajasthan governments recently issued formal orders, instructing their police chiefs to implement the March 20 Supreme Court order. After the judgement, various Dalit MPs from the BJP-led ruling NDA alliance, including Ram Vilas Paswan and Ramdas Athawale, had met Modi to expresses their concerns and demanded that the Centre should challenge the order. Modi has also asserted that his government will not allow any dilution of the law to prevent atrocities against SCs and STs. Representing the government's view, Union Law Minister Ravi Shankar Prasad had said the government "differs" with the reasoning given by the Supreme Court judgement for "virtually redoing the entire architecture" of the Act. (This story has not been edited by Business Standard staff and is auto-generated from a syndicated feed.) Justin Trudeau has become the first Canadian prime minister in history to address France's parliament, wrapping up his trip to Paris before he heads to London to meet British Prime Minister Theresa May and Queen Elizabeth II. In Tuesday's wide-ranging and rousing speech, Trudeau reaffirmed French-Canadian friendship, touted shared goals to combat terrorism and praised French airstrikes in Syria last week. Trudeau also said France's role in Mali, where Canada has joined the peacekeeping mission, was "an inspiration for the international community." Prompting a standing ovation, he said "we declare ourselves for progressive trade, for diversity, for immigration, for the protection of the environment, for gender equality." Trudeau said that gender equality will be a big theme at June's Group of Seven meeting that Canada is hosting in Charlevoix, Quebec. (This story has not been edited by Business Standard staff and is auto-generated from a syndicated feed.) Two Pakistanis were killed when Iran's border security forces fired at a group of people allegedly trying to enter the country illegally, according to a media report. On April 12, a group of 15 Pakistanis belonging to different cities of Pakistan tried to illegally enter Iran, Express Tribune reported. The Iranian Border Force fired on the people who crossed the border, killing two. Iranian force then arrested five people, while the remaining eight disappeared after crossing the border, it said quoting Pakistani authorities According to reports, Iranian authorities have handed over the bodies and arrested people to Pakistan Levies Force. Levies officials shifted the bodies to the District Head Quarter Hospital in Gwadar. The deceased were identified as Shahzeb Khan Wali, 27 and Omar Sadiq, 27, both belonging to Bannu area of Khyber-Pakhtunkhwa province. Those who were arrested were also moved to Gwadar. The arrested included Wahid Khan, Shah Fayyaz Khan and Saifullah Khan from Khyber-Pakhtunkhwa, Muhammad Sagar belonging to Karachi and Muhammad Maqam from Jhang. This is the second incident in a month involving Pakistanis trying to illegally enter Iran. In March, two Pakistani youths, who were illegally going to Turkey to travel from Iran, were killed by the Iranian forces. Every year thousands of people from Pakistan and Afghanistan illegally travel to Iran to find a job in Europe. Last year, 20 people from Punjab were killed by a banned organisation in Turbat after they were kidnapped. (This story has not been edited by Business Standard staff and is auto-generated from a syndicated feed.) Two bombs of the World War II era were found when workers were digging a pond at a village in Nadia district of West Bengal. The bombs are 50 inches in length and 38 inches in diameter, a police officer said today. "The two bombs seem to be of the World War II period. We have informed the Army for necessary action," the officer said. Armymen came from Kolkata, around 100 km from here, and inspected the bombs yesterday, he said adding that they would take it away after getting permission from the authorities concerned. A pond was being dug at Chhoto Chupria village under Hanskhali police station area on Saturday when two large cylinder-like objects were found. The cylinders resemble bombs used during the World War II. The police recovered the bombs and kept them under pile of sand in the compound of Hanskhali police station. An official of Nadia district administration said, in the early 1940s, an area which is now Kalyani city, used to be known as Roosevelt Town and an US airbase was located there. Kalyani is around 40 km from Hanskhali. It is possible that the two bombs belonged to that airbase, the police officer said. (This story has not been edited by Business Standard staff and is auto-generated from a syndicated feed.) DDU Gorakhpur University today cancelled the exams in two subjects after their papers, one of which matched the original, surfaced on social media. The BA/BSc part one Mathematics and BA part two Sociology papers went viral on social media yesterday, a day before the exams were to be held. A committee formed under Pro Vice Chancellor S K Dixit found that the Mathematics paper was actually leaked while the Sociology paper available on social media didn't match the actual question paper. The Deen Dayal Upadhyaya University Gorakhpur has informed police about the paper leak. It sent letters to district magistrates and superintendents of police of the concerned districts, drawing their attention to the incident. The new dates for the two papers will be decided on April 19, university officials said. University spokesman Harsh Sinha said some "miscreants" had tried to create problems. He said the Sociology paper which went viral was based on the previous years' papers while the Mathematics paper matched the original. "The University didn't take a risk and decided to cancel both the papers," he said. He said the VC has sent letters to the DMs and SPs and the process of registering an FIR had begun. (This story has not been edited by Business Standard staff and is auto-generated from a syndicated feed.) An American pastor has denied accusations that he aided terror groups or spied against Turkey, speaking at the beginning of his trial in a case that has strained ties between Turkey and the United States. Andrew Craig Brunson, a 50-year-old evangelical pastor from North Carolina, faces up to 35 years in prison on charges of "committing crimes on behalf of terror groups without being a member" and "espionage." Brunson was arrested in the aftermath of a 2016 coup attempt for alleged links to the outlawed Kurdistan Workers' Party, or PKK, as well as a network led by US-based Muslim cleric Fethullah Gulen, who is blamed by Turkey for the coup attempt. He served as pastor of Izmir Resurrection Church, a small Protestant congregation, and has lived in Turkey for 23 years. Brunson denies any wrongdoing. "I don't accept any of the allegations or accusations," the state-run Anadolu Agency yesterday quoted Brunson as telling the court in the town of Aliaga, some 60 kilometres north of the Aegean coastal city of Izmir. "I did not engage in any illegal activity. I had no relations with anyone engaged in such activity," Brunson said. "I am a Christian pastor. I did not join an Islamic movement. Their aims and mine are different." The agency said the pastor delivered his defense statement in Turkish. The pastor also told the court he would never work against Turkey. "On the contrary, I love Turkey. I have been praying for Turkey for 25 years," the Cumhuriyet newspaper quoted Brunson as saying. Cumhuriyet said the pastor wept in court during an afternoon session, saying being alone in a cell had affected his psychological state. North Carolina Senator Thom Tillis and Sam Brownback, US ambassador-at-large for religious freedoms, observed the trial, which the court later adjourned until May 7. "The Administration is deeply concerned about this case," Brownback told reporters outside the courthouse. "We completely believe (that) Andrew Brunson is innocent. We are hopeful (that) the judicial system will find that." He added: "You'll continue to see very high-level US government interest in this until he is released." In the United States, Republican Senator James Lankford of Oklahoma warned of possible congressional action against Turkey, if Brunson is not released. "It is unconscionable that Turkey, a NATO ally, has unjustly held an American pastor in prison since October 2016," Lankford said. Prosecutors are seeking a 15-year prison sentence for crimes Brunson is charged with committing in the name of Gulen's group and the PKK. They want the pastor to serve another 20 years, if he also is found guilty of obtaining state secrets for political and military spying purposes using his religious work as cover. (This story has not been edited by Business Standard staff and is auto-generated from a syndicated feed.) Describing saffron colour as "religiously ideal" for Hindus, senior Congress leader Digvijay Singh today said he had never used the word "Bhagwa Aatankwad" (saffron terrorism). "I have never used the word Bhagwa Aatankwad. I have used the term 'Sanghi Aatankwad' (Sanghi terrorism). Saffron is the ideal colour for us in religious matters," Singh, who recently completed "Narmada Parikrama," told reporters here. He added, "The colour of terrorism is neither green nor saffron. It may be any religion, fanaticism spreads hatred and then terrorism is born." Asked if the Congress was pursuing an agenda of "soft Hindutva" vis-a-vis BJP, Singh said, "There is no word as Hindutva in my dictionary. This word has nothing to do with the Hindu religion." He alleged that Vinayak Damodar Savarkar coined the word "Hindutva" to give a militant hue to "Sanatan dharma". Asked about the acquittal of Swami Aseemanand and four others in the 2007 Mecca Masjid blast case by the Special NIA Court in Hyderabad yesterday, the Congress leader said, "After this government (Narendra Modi government) came to power, I had already said the people of right-wing extremism involved in terrorist incidents would be acquitted." Talking about MP Chief Minister Shivraj Singh Chouhan's statement that there was a conspiracy behind the recent shortage of currency, Singh said demonetisation had completely failed. He said, "There are BJP governments at the Centre and in Madhya Pradesh. Even if Shivraj (Singh Chouhan) is trying to say that there is conspiracy behind the scarcity of the notes, then this statement reveals their abilities." Terming the idea of holding the elections of the Lok Sabha and Legislative Assemblies together as completely impractical in the Indian context, Singh said that it is not possible to implement such an election system in the country. Describing the issue of Dalit identity as the "reality of Indian politics", he alleged the ruling BJP was responsible for recent conflicts between Dalits and upper caste communities. He said, "It is obvious that lack of employment is creating frustration among the educated youths of upper castes. There is a lot of contribution to this by the people (BJP leaders) who are in government now. They had earlier ensured confrontation between Hindus and Muslims. Now they are creating a gap between Dalits and upper castes." He also alleged that the Narendra Modi government did not take proper legal steps on the Supreme Court order on the provisions of the Scheduled Caste / Scheduled Tribe (Prevention of Atrocities) Act. At the same time, the government's intelligence system failed to find out that Dalit outfits were going to organise "Bharat Bandh" on April 2 on such a large scale, he said. (This story has not been edited by Business Standard staff and is auto-generated from a syndicated feed.) Brainstorming sessions to improve the safety processes and methodologies in training and operational domains and lectures by experts were among the highlights of a two-day safety review which concluded at the Southern Naval Command here today. The review was held under the aegis of the recently constituted Indian Naval Safety team (INST) based here which has been mandated to co-ordinate with various authorities within the navy to improve the "risk-safety matrix" in training and operations. Vice Chief of the Naval Staff Vice Admiral Ajit Kumar chaired the maiden safety review, which would hereafter be held annually and termed as Annual Safety Review (ASR), a Defence release said. It was inaugurated by Vice Admiral A R Karve, Flag Officer Commanding in Chief of the command yesterday, it said. As part of the review, a ?Safety Expo? was organised with the participation of more than 15 renowned Indian industries, specialising in manufacturing marine and industrial safety equipment. Its aim was to increase awareness of personnel with regard to the latest trends in Personnel Protective Equipment (PPE) and various safety solutions. In addition, guest lectures by subject matter experts from the fields of marine, industrial and aviation safety were also held today. The safety review was attended by delegates from Integrated Headquarters of the Ministry of Defence (Navy), Headquarters of Western, Eastern and Southern Naval Commands, Safety Class Authorities, Operational Authorities, Naval Area Commanders, Dockyards, logistic support organisations, Armament Depots as well as training establishments, the release said. The Navy by virtue of the hazardous conditions and challenging environment that its ships, aircraft and submarines operate in has multiple safety class authorities. The authorities ensure an assured amount of safety while maintaining the operational tempo during the multifarious tasks undertaken in the interest of national security, the release said. A need was felt for a central nodal agency such as the INST to coordinate amongst all the ?class authorities? and advise them to ensure a uniform safety protocol pan-navy, it added. (This story has not been edited by Business Standard staff and is auto-generated from a syndicated feed.) One panel shows two skeletons reading a story headlined Electric crematorium for Delhi' and wondering what would happen if there was a power breakdown, another depicts an impoverished man begging Indira Gandhi to give him back his "gareebi". The two cartoons, the first a commentary on the lack of even the most basic infrastructure and the other mocking Indira Gandhi's 'Gareebi Hatao' programme, are but a small sampling of the late Rajinder Puri's works. The cartoonist-commentator, who died in 2015, is described variously "pugnacious", "unwavering" and "acerbic" by his friends and admirers, who gathered here last week for the release of "What a Life!", a collection of his political cartoons. The book, by author Arvindar Singh and filmmaker-critic Partha Chaterjee, features 130 political cartoons from 1960 till 2010. The cartoons underscore the continuing relevance of many of the issues he took up and also the fact that Puri always dared to speak truth to power. So, there's a cartoon of former PM Indira Gandhi, showing Puri as a barking dog while she holds a sketch imagining herself as an angel and one of Jawaharlal Nehru as Napoleon making a retreat in Moscow with bodies strewn all around after the Indo-China war of 1962. "Puri, just like other sensitive cartoonists, was a case of wounded humanity , said long-time friend, veteran journalist Vinod Dua, part of the panel to discuss Puri's works. I never considered him a humorist. He was a satirist," he added. Dua made special mention of the "Gareebi Hatao" cartoon, showing a poor man telling an imperious Indira Gandhi, "Please madam can I get back my gareebi? I have been miserable ever since it was removed." This is to tell you that Puri anticipated 'achhe din' much before most of us did, Dua said, and many laughed. Puri's political activism and anti-establishment approach coupled with his sharp wit helped him hit bull's eye, also the name of his column, his friends said. The cartoonist was also famous for writing limericks below his cartoons. He was pugnacious always anti-establishment and a firm believer in democracy. He used to say my job is to respect people's verdict whatever it is and I would do it by according critical support to it'. He was also, if you want to use the word, nationalist in the true sense," said eminent journalist Saeed Naqvi. According to Naqvi, people should buy this book to see "politics in public life of 60s, 70s, 80s and so on. Puri worked for The Hindustan Times and The Statesman, both as a cartoonist and writer, and even dabbled in politics. He was a founding general secretary of the Janata Party in 1977. Though a trenchant critic of the grand old party, the Congress, Puri was not biased against any one party or individual. It was probably why Nehru, often at the receiving end of Puri's wit, got a much celebrated tribute when he died in 1964. "The Void", which showed a white silhouette of Nehru against a sea of people is also the cover page of the newly launched book. (This story has not been edited by Business Standard staff and is auto-generated from a syndicated feed.) The White House scrambled today to walk back UN Ambassador Nikki Haley's weekend announcement that new economic sanctions against Russia are imminent, but stressed the penalties are still being considered. Haley created a firestorm Sunday when she said the new sanctions would be imposed by the Treasury Department on Monday, when, in fact, no such announcement was planned, according to two officials familiar with the matter. In a statement, White House press secretary Sarah Huckabee Sanders tried to clarify the situation, but her explanation created more confusion and led to suggestions that President Donald Trump had personally intervened to halt the sanctions from taking effect today. "We are considering additional sanctions on Russia and a decision will be made in the near future," Sanders said in a statement. The two officials, who were not authorised to discuss private administration deliberations publicly and spoke on condition of anonymity, said Haley had misspoken when she said on CBS' "Face the Nation" that Treasury Secretary Steven Mnuchin would announce the sanctions Monday "if he hasn't already." Haley said the sanctions would target those who are enabling Syrian leader Bashar Assad's government to continue using chemical weapons. The two officials said the administration had no plans to announce Syria-related sanctions on Russia this week, although they noted that two entities were hit with such penalties last month in a largely overlooked portion of a sanctions package that dealt mainly with Russian interference in the 2016 presidential election and hacking. After Haley's comments, some in the administration suggested the sanctions now being considered could be rolled out Monday. But others said it would be wiser and more effective to wait for a period longer than three days after the US, British and French infuriated Russia with their missile strikes on Syria on Friday. The officials could not say when the new sanctions would be announced. Meanwhile, President Donald Trump continued to hail the missile attack as perfectly carried out. Trump tweeted "Mission Accomplished" on Saturday after US, French and British warplanes and ships launched more than 100 missiles nearly unopposed by Syrian air defences. While he declared success, the Pentagon said the pummelling of three chemical-related facilities left enough others intact to enable the Assad government to use banned weapons against civilians if it chooses. Trump's choice of words recalled a similar claim associated with President George W. Bush following the US-led invasion of Iraq. Bush addressed sailors aboard a Navy ship in May 2003 alongside a "Mission Accomplished" banner, just weeks before it became apparent that Iraqis had organised an insurgency that would tie down US forces for years. Later Sunday, Trump sent a letter to congressional leaders informing them in writing of his decision to order the strike. Under the War Powers Resolution, the president must keep Congress informed of such actions. (This story has not been edited by Business Standard staff and is auto-generated from a syndicated feed.) By Norihiko Shirouzu and Adam JourdanBEIJING/SHANGHAI (Reuters) - China will scrap a limit on foreign ownership of automotive ventures by 2022 in a major policy shift to open up the world's biggest car market, even as trade tensions simmer between Washington and Beijing.In a move welcomed by Germany's powerful car industry, China's state planner said on Tuesday it would remove foreign ownership caps for companies making fully electric and plug-in hybrid vehicles in 2018, for makers of commercial vehicles in 2020, and the wider car market by 2022.China imposed ownership restrictions in 1994, ... By James Pomfret and Venus WuGUANGZHOU, China (Reuters) - As Washington and Beijing face off in a simmering trade dispute, Chinese exporters are expressing concerns about an escalation, although many say they expect the worst to be averted as negotiations continue.In a survey of 135 Chinese exporters, including 84 from the Canton Trade Fair, China's largest, and 51 from an electronics event in Hong Kong, 65 percent expressed some "worries" about a trade war.But only 26 percent expected a "full-blown" trade war to play out as negotiators on the Chinese and U.S. sides draw up tariff lists that ... (Reuters) - India's Fortis Healthcare Ltd , the target of two rival takeover bids, received an unsolicited investment offer of up to $350 million from a unit of Chinese conglomerate Fosun International , the company said in a regulatory filing on Tuesday.Fosun Healthcare in a letter to Fortis said it has offered up to 156 rupees ($2.38) per Fortis share and won't hold more than 25 percent stake in the hospital and diagnostics chain.Fosun has also offered a cash infusion of 1 billion rupees within the next 45 days, including the option of immediately subscribing to a convertible debt, if ... BERLIN (Reuters) - German investor morale plunged to its lowest level in more than five years in April as economic data weakened and uncertainty linked to rising trade tensions between China and the United States increased, a survey showed on Tuesday.The ZEW research institute said its monthly survey showed a reading for economic sentiment among investors had dropped for a third month in a row to -8.2 from 5.1 in March.The reading was the lowest since November 2012 and compared with the Reuters consensus forecast for a reading of -1.0. A separate gauge measuring investor assessment of the ... STOCKHOLM (Reuters) - Sweden and India will strengthen their cooperation on defence, their prime ministers said on Tuesday, a move that could aid Sweden's Saab in its bid to sell its Gripen jet to replace India's Soviet-era MiG fighters.Last week, India issued a request for information for 110 combat jets for the air force, marking the first step toward a long-delayed deal that could be worth more than $15 billion."Sweden and India have agreed to work towards a security agreement allowing us to exchange certain types of classified information required to work together on defence materials," ... By Manoj KumarNEW DELHI (Reuters) - Taiwan will next month open a trade office in New Delhi, part of its efforts to expand business ties with Asia's third largest economy amid China's insistence on One China policy, a senior Taiwanese trade official said on Tuesday. As Taiwan and India do not have a diplomatic relationship, the trade office in New Delhi is expected to provide services to Indian and Taiwanese companies to expand business. India's bilateral trade with the island-nation is expanding steadily touching $6.3 billion in 2017, up a quarter on the previous year. "We don't have ... The United States has banned American firms from selling parts and software to China's ZTE Corp for seven years, potentially devastating for the telecoms equipment maker and exacerbating tensions between the world's two largest economies. The move, first reported by Reuters, comes at a time when the two countries have threatened each other with tens of billions of dollars in tariffs in recent weeks, fanning worries of a full blown trade war that threatens global supply chains as well as business investment plans. The US Commerce Department imposed the ban following ... LOGAN The criminal case for Michael B. Powell has been postponed, after he was found incompetent to stand trial. The 21-year-old Idaho man was accused of extorting nude photos and videos from a Hyrum girl. Powell was in 1st District Court Tuesday morning. Last year he was arrested and charged with aggravated sexual extortion of a child, a first-degree felony, and 12 counts of sexual exploitation of a minor, a second-degree felony. Defense attorney Bryan Galloway told the court his client had been evaluated by two psychologists. Both had determined, Powells mental state at the present time prevented him from understanding the criminal charges filed against him. Galloway said the prosecutors were in agreement on the reports. They asked the court to transfer Powell to the Utah State Hospital, where physicians will attempt to restore him to competency. Judge Kevin Allen said he also agreed with the conclusion, stating that he was aware of the defendants criminal and mental history. He explained to Powell, there was a strong likelihood that his competency will be restored and hell be able to proceed with the criminal case. Police allege, Powell had a relationship with the 17-year-old girl that began two years ago. During that time, he convinced her to send him nude photos of herself. He then began blackmailing her for more graphic photos and videos, threatening to send the pictures to her family, if she didnt comply. The threats allegedly continued through social media and text messages until the victim contacted a school resource officer at Mountain Crest High School. Deputies were able to access the social media accounts and text messages. They tracked them to the defendant, who was living in Pocatello, Idaho. Powell was arrested and transferred to the Cache County Jail. He was being held on $100,000 bail. will@cvradio.com LOGAN A judge has sentenced Azadeen Altom to prison, after the convicted sex-offender previously admitted to groping a woman inside a grocery store in February. Judge Kevin Allen ordered the 43-year-old Logan man to a term of zero-to-five-years, calling the case disturbing. Altom appeared in 1st District Court Monday afternoon. In March, he pleaded guilty to one count of forcible sexual abuse, reduced to a third-degree felony. He was arrested in February, after a woman claimed he assaulted her, while she was shopping. The woman reported the defendant approached her and grabbed her buttocks. In March 2018, Altom walked into Mt. Logan Middle School and was seen sitting in the schools cafeteria, watching a group of girls. A month later he was arrested, after officers were called to a store on report that he was harassing a teenage girl. During Mondays sentencing, defense attorney Bryan Galloway said Altom, who is originally from Sudan, doesnt understand the culture here and needs more education to live in society. He didnt believe the defendant was a sex offender or stalker, he just doesnt understand what is legal and what is not. State attorney Griffin Hazzard disagreed, saying if Altom is not able to grasp cultural differences, and understand that you dont walk up to woman and grab them, he cant be in society. He also noted the defendants criminal behavior has been going since 2012. Judge Allen recognized the cultural differences, but said he didnt know of any culture where it is appropriate to grab a woman in the grocery store after just meeting them. He explained no woman or man should have to put up with that type of behavior in our community. will@cvradio.com Car accident at Ombe Bridge W. Musa Three workers of the Buea Council in the South West region are among the five men who died in a fatal road accident Sunday April 15, 2018 around the Ombe Bridge. The five were returning from a birthday which held in Limbe before their journey ended at the Ombe Bridge. Reports say Elvis Ekongolo, Ngou David Wotany and Anyi Che Eugene, and two others were on top speed when they experienced brake failure at the bridge and despite efforts to deviate from an oncoming vehicle, their car flipped over the bridge. The first two, are said to be relatives to the Mayor of Buea Patrick Ekema. The Communication Officer at the Buea Council, Oscar Musonge, said the victims went to Limbe Saturday April 14, 2018 to celebrate the birthday of the wife of Anyi Che Eugene, market master of Muea market in Buea. Upon returning from the birthday party Sunday afternoon to Buea, they were about 10 in two different vehicles. The wife of Anyi Eugene whose birthday was celebrated was in another car. Elvis Ekongolo was market master at Buea Central market, Anyi Che Eugene, market master of Muea market in Buea, while Ngou David Wotany was Tax Clerk at the Beua Council, the former and latter, brothers of the Mayor. Newspaper reports reveal that Ngou David Wotany, Tax Clerk at the Beua Council was returning to Buea to also celebrate his birthday, April 15. He died leaving behind his wife and a four months old daughter. No official statement has been made by the Council. | BY Kim Shaw | Tom Doctoroff is Chief Cultural Insights Officer at global brand and marketing consultancy, Prophet. Previously he was Asia-Pacific CEO at J. Walter Thompson headquartered in China and today he posted on LinkedIn his comment on the ramifications of Sir Martin Sorrell leaving WPP. Let us spare the ad hominem attacks and schadenfreude for a man who, through grit and passion, forged an industry over three decades. Sir Martin Sorrells swift and sad downfall is a flashing red light for the entire communications industry. His shocking professional demise is de facto proof that investors and clients have lost confidence in the ability of holding companies to generate growth for brands. They are being disintermediated. In-house agencies are the rage. Clients deal directly with Facebook and Google. Content is produced by brand managers. They have fallen into a vicious spiral of fee cuts and talent degradation. Holding companies, with perhaps WPP most guilty of the ultimate marketers sin, never clearly defined its value proposition. It remains an aggregation of hundreds of P&L centers, each reaching for its own small piece of sky. Horizontality or mini-agencies created for individual clients resulted in further silofication, not integrated solutions that elevate brands. In the end, Sorrell, a maestro of financial control, oversaw a portfolio of companies assets that, for a long spell, rewarded shareholders. But they were never clustered to enable the marcomms industry calling: building brands that fuel growth by becoming important parts of consumers lives. A proud bean counter, did he and does WPP truly appreciate the power of ideas to forge long-term loyalty? Marketers crave three basic things: a) strategic and creative ideas that provide conceptual and executional consistency across a shape-shifting offline and digital landscape, b) a touchpoint plan that exposes consumers to these ideas in a way that encourages behavioral change and, ultimately, purchase and c) cost-efficiency in reaching that is, targeting consumers. WPP will need to aggressively redeploy its assets in a way that enhances its credibility as a orchestrator of these objectives. The transition will be painfully bloody. In my humble opinion, there are five structural changes all easier said than done that need to take place before communications conglomerates regain the conceptual and executional high ground. First, although I am no investment banker, non-essential operating companies (opcos) will need to be sold to: a) provide the cash necessary for structural experimentation and b) escape the tyranny of quarterly reporting. (Do holding companies really need to field research? Will we ever really be makers of, in what P&Gs CMO Marc Pritchard calls shiny objects at the speculative edge of digital engagement?) Second, advertising agencies must reclaim their rightful place as the center of the solar system or idea conductors, not low-end producers of television commercials and print ads. Why? Because only advertising agencies producers of brand and creative ideas people want to engage with attract both creative and strategic minds who work, more or less, harmoniously to define and spread brand purpose. Media shops and PR companies have never fully demonstrated their ability to be creative, despite massive investment. And thats because these companies cultural centers of gravity is incompatible with advertising agencies brand-centricism. Transaction trumps inspiration. Scale upends insight. Unfortunately, over the past 20 years, large agencies have been denuded and demeaned. This must end. Agencies must go back to the future to become media-neutral strategists, idea generators and executors. Due to lack of financial incentives and disparagement of their skills as legacy, mid-level agency executives have fled for sexier realms. Third, the number of P&Ls need to be drastically reduced to encourage enlightened consolidation of resources and cross-functional collaboration. The goal should not be, as it currently is, cost cutting and minimization of redundancies. High-end marketing consultancies that specialize in customer-driven business strategy should move closer to the people who execute ideas. Verbal branding experts must sit beside copy writers. Visual and branding identity pros should move closer to art directors. Quick turn-around content producers should sit in the middle of it all. Fourth, media and PR empires must be disaggregated. Media planning and buying are different animals. Media planners belong back in the agencies, as do programming and syndication specialists, because they determine how and when consumers interact with ideas. Media buyers, including hi-tech programatic buyers (performance marketers), focus on efficiency and cost. A similar divided Red Sea of talent exists in PR companies. The vast majority of revenue is still generated through traditional churn-and-burn media mentions. Higher-order peer-to-peer communications marketing (Richard Edelmans holy mission) remains on the fringes, both financial and culturally. These latter conceptualizers must move closer to like-minded warriors who aspire to brand elevation. Fifth, digital must disappear as a specialization. The world is digital. All agency talent across all domains must become fluent in creating ideas that are fundamentally platform-neutral. The platform builders are an entirely different breed. The website creators, AI and IoT experimenters and VR enthusiasts should sit within one entity. And holding companies should implement financial incentives for farmers (conceptual distillers) and cowboys (systematic thinkers) to play nicely with one another. | BY Ricki Green | Alt.vfx and ARC EDIT have today announced their expansion into Melbourne with the opening of a new shared studio space. The new space housed with key staff and artists from both companies will service a growing number of clients in Victoria and beyond. Says Antony Newton, post production supervisor at Alt: We are delighted to open the doors of our new studio with our pals from ARC. Weve been close since they opened in Sydney last year, so it made sense for us to share resources and space in an exciting new venture for Melbourne. Its in a place that will be very familiar to the local industry Tates Place in South Melbourne. Says Joseph Perkins, executive producer at ARC: We have a strong relationship with our clients down here and the city itself so were all really excited about this. Graeme Pereira and Peter Sciberras are based out of Melbourne and the rest of the roster are available as locals. Im super happy to finally have our own space, alongside the champs at Alt. Both companies kick the space off with several significant campaigns along with Pereira jumping onto a feature via Causeway Films. | BY Ricki Green | Award winning creative David Jackson has joined DDB Sydney as a creative partner. Jackson (known as Jacko) is a passionate creative who has won over 150 creative awards for a number of globally acclaimed campaigns. Previously, Jackson spent four years as creative director at M&C Saatchi, where he helmed some of the agencys most awarded work including the acclaimed Game of Balls campaign for testicular cancer awareness and the innovative NRMA Fire Blanket. Prior to that, he spent three and half years at Y&R/VML. Says Jackson: DDB is one of the best creative networks on this planet. The chance to work with Ben (Welsh) again and be part of the talented team he is leading with Tara (Ford) was an invitation I couldnt say no to. Change is what challenges our creative souls and I am looking forward to the opportunity to collaborate with new creative people across DDB Sydneys diverse set of brands. Over his career, Jackson has worked with a range of brands including NRMA Insurance, CommBank, Optus, Heineken, Jagermeister, DC Shoes, Quiksilver, Colgate, Revlon, The Australian, LG and Kelloggs. In his spare time, Jackson is passionate about creating work that betters the community, from his much-awarded Missing Person Pre-Roll to Colgates Mouth-guard sponsorship of the Rabbitohs that continues to educate kids on the importance of dental care. Hes most proud of the Signed Finds by Vinnies campaign, which earned millions for the local charity. Despite being a self confessed digital-first creative, he once had a scholarship to NSW College of Fine Arts for painting and hopes to one day have a portrait hung in the Archibald. DDB Sydney chief creative officer Ben Welsh said Jackson is a great fit for the agency. | BY Ricki Green | 7-Eleven Australias Slurpee has picked up an international social media Shorty Award for the second year running, beating work for Adidas and The Walking Dead in the best use of Instagram story category. The category honours the most effective and creative use of an Instagram story by a brand, agency or organisation. The brand won the award for its Slurpee tap of war campaign, which was the first gamified and competitive Instagram story that got fingers tapping and fans clapping. A two-player game of skill between Slurpers using the left and right functionality on Instagram. Created by one of 7-Elevens digital creative partners, Isobar, the Slurpee tap of war campaign was focused driving engagement from Slurpee consumers, by using Instagram stories in a new and Slurpee way. According to 7-Eleven head of brand and communications, Jess Richmond, the campaign was incredibly successful. Says Richmond: In the 24 hours the story was live, we had close to 400,000 total taps, more than 4.5 taps per second. We had an average of six rematches per player, and lots of player sharing on social media from a completely organic campaign, not supported by spend. The campaign was also recognised by Facebook, showcasing it in a best practice and innovation case study. Isobar associate creative director, Emma Park, said their team can push the boundaries creatively with the support of the Slurpee team. | BY Lynchy | In this digital age, the impact of fake news has become a worldwide phenomenon. It reaches an unprecedented height during the 2016 US election, and its been one of the most talk-about issue in most mainstream media. Indonesia, the 4th most populous country in the world with an equally large digitally savvy population, fake news is prevalent and has a negative impact on the society. It played a part in several civil unrest and caused confusion during times of crisis. Even though spreading malicious fake news online is punishable by Indonesian law, enforcement and prosecution proves difficult. Hakuhodo Indonesia, together with Telkomssel, one of the largest telecommunication company in Indonesia, set out to educate the public about the seriousness of this offense by launching the Fake News campaign. The ads depict common social media users seemingly sharing malicious fake news online, with the interface of various social media apps formed into prison bars, a visual twist using the very tool that spreads hatred being their ultimate incarceration. The visual ends with the message that sharing malicious fake news is a serious and punishable crime under the Indonesian law. Notice for the Postmedia Network This website uses cookies to personalize your content (including ads), and allows us to analyze our traffic. Read more about cookies here. By continuing to use our site, you agree to our Terms of Service and Privacy Policy. Monday, April 16, 2018 at 10:12PM At the end of last month, Razer announced it was bringing Android Oreo to Razer Phone users. And now it seems that time has come. Android 8.1 is rolling out now to Razer Phone users. Its rolling out slowly over the coming weeks so if it hasnt landed on your device yet, you just need to wait for it a bit. According to Razer, what you can expect from the update include a cleaner visual design, under-the-hood improvements for a better overall experience, Dolby Atmos app improvements, and support for the Netflix widget. The update will also include major security patches and bug fixes. Source: Android Central news, latest-news Australians need to know the truth about the frontier wars before the country is able to heal and move forward peacefully, the convener of an Aboriginal Tent Embassy camp says. The Frontier Wars Story Camp starts at the tent embassy on Thursday and runs until Anzac Day, when hundreds of people are expected to march to the Australian War Memorial in recognition of the Indigenous people killed in conflicts during the settlement of Australia. Those conflicts, known as the frontier wars, are not recognised by the Australian War Memorial and the exact death toll is unknown, but camp convener Chris "Peltherre" Tomlins said millions of Aboriginal people were "wiped out" defending Australia against the settlers. Mr Tomlins, who has travelled to Canberra from Yambah in the Northern Territory, said he hoped to see people of all races at the camp. "People talk of peace, but you cant have peace unless you know what happened in the past," Mr Tomlins said. "It's really important for people of all races because it's not about discrimination, it's about unveiling the truth of what happened in this country so black and white Australians can walk together." Encouraged by the support Indigenous people received this year in the campaign to change the date on which Australia Day is celebrated, Mr Tomlins said he believed they were closer to gaining recognition of the frontier wars. "What I saw on Australia Day was utter confusion," he said. "I think we're creating a lot of awareness of Aboriginal issues and people are asking the question, 'What is an Australian'? Nobody knows, because most Australians are walking around not knowing about the terrible things that happened here. "Trying to build a future without a past ... it's impossible." During the camp, Dark Emu author Bruce Pascoe will lead free storytelling sessions each day at 10am and 4pm, while floral activist Hazel Davies will tell the creation story of the desert pea as an indigenous blood flower, the native equivalent of the red poppy. Ms Davies will also make a desert pea frontier wars wreath, which she will consecrate at the tent embassy's sacred fire before taking it to the Australian War Memorial on Anzac Day. Mr Tomlins said more than 100 people from around Australia, plus a few from the US, had already indicated they would attend the camp. He expected "a few hundred" in total throughout the week. /images/transform/v1/crop/frm/silverstone-ct-migration/118339e6-532c-4fcb-a7b3-72c816f87cd0/r0_279_5338_3295_w1200_h678_fmax.jpg news, act-politics Canberra's small and medium-sized businesses are the most confident in the country, according to a new survey that shows a big jump in their support for the ACT government. The ACT's business confidence rating went up two percentage points to +54 in the Sensis Business Index survey for the March quarter, with an increase in sales the driving factor. But the biggest growth came in business support for the territory government, which rose 21 percentage points to +9 on the index. Sensis chief executive John Allan said an increase in infrastructure spending and the perception of a supportive government was behind the wave of support. Canberra Business Chamber chief executive Robyn Hendry said with the ACT government now in the second year of its four-year cycle, there was more certainty for businesses. "In its first year, the government is still implementing a lot of its policies, but by the second year, businesses know more about where the government is at," Ms Hendry said. "Business confidence and certainty go hand in hand, and business really likes certainty." Ms Hendry said alongside an increase in sales, higher export numbers and the strong growth of industries like tourism, which added 1100 jobs last year, had businesses feeling more confident. The ACT faced some challenges though, she said, including the cost of workers' compensation and the impact of rates increases. "We're also always competing for talent, and some of the feedback we're getting is that while the education system is strong, what people are lacking is real life skills," Ms Hendry said. "Businesses want more work-integrated programs to increase graduates' value. We also need to ensure that the people who are studying here are aware of the career opportunities available in Canberra, so that they stay here." Despite the boost this quarter, business confidence in the ACT is still down 10 percentage points on the same time last year, when it was +64 on the Sensis index. Ms Hendry said people shouldn't read too much into that drop, with the March 2017 results coming after a long period of uncertainty that included the 2016 ACT and federal elections. "The [business confidence rating] bobs up and down, and elections create no end of uncertainty," she said. While the ACT government's popularity surged by 21 percentage points in the latest Sensis survey, support for the federal government rose just two points to a neutral position. The survey, which reflects the view of 1000 small and medium-sized Australian businesses, shows businesses in the ACT and Tasmania share the most positive outlook at +54 on the index. The national average of +42 remains unchanged from the last quarterly survey, conducted in December. /images/transform/v1/crop/frm/silverstone-ct-migration/69356220-08ee-436d-97f3-9d5e0550ad1f/r149_0_1675_862_w1200_h678_fmax.jpg news, latest-news Anyone will soon be able to get themselves into Canberra's most exclusive bar. In the past, the QT Lounge on the 15th floor of QT Canberra was only open to invited members, or for functions and special events. From May 4, they're opening the bar up to the public on Friday nights from 5-10pm. Sitting on the top floor of the boutique New Acton hotel, the bar offers impressive views over Lake Burley Griffin and Civic on one side, and towards Black Mountain on the other. As well as the fully stocked bar down one end, there will be a new food menu with bar snacks and share plates, plus table service. When the QT Lounge first opened in 2014, as part of the revamp to QT Canberra from the former Rydges Lakeside, membership to the lounge was offered to the nation's top 300 influencers, from federal cabinet members to ambassadors and business leaders. While places are opening up to the general public, space is still tight so you can't just turn up and head up the lift. To get in you need to register for the guest list here. /images/transform/v1/crop/frm/silverstone-ct-migration/a90ab707-fa2c-4947-89ee-4fc9f5a7275e/r0_44_1119_676_w1200_h678_fmax.jpg news, latest-news Canberra Hospital has failed to meet several areas of healthcare standards in its accreditation process, some of which have put vulnerable patients at "extreme risk". An at times scathing interim accreditation report by the Australian Council on Healthcare Standards has identified 33 of 209 core criteria where standards were not met. The hospital now has about 90 days to address the areas which were not met in order to keep its national accreditation. Of the 33 areas not up to standard, two were classed as extreme risks, six as high risks, 15 moderate risks while the remaining were rated as low risks. The report found the hospital had failed to protect mental health patients who are at an increased risk of harm, with the risk level labelled as extreme. The results come just weeks after ACT Health announced a major restructure and parted ways with director general Nicole Feely. Minister for Health Meegan Fitzharris said the fact the issues raised were mostly related to governance validated their decision to restructure. She said ACT Health was taking immediate action to address the issues. The ACHS conducted the organisation-wide review from March 19 to 23, and assessed ACT Healths implementation of the 10 national standards. Assessment occurred through provision of evidence, meetings with key staff and site visitsacross Canberra Hospital and Health Services. The two extreme risks related to mental health, with concerns over the five suicides in the past three years at the hospital and the failure of the hospital to take immediate action after. "There appears to have been no regular ligature points audit undertaken nor was there any action plan done to implement strategies to prevent further cases," the report said. "The delay in immediate actions post suicides and the delay in undertaking regular ligature audits and implementing the results of the engineers report into ligature points places the patients/consumers at extreme risk." The most systemic problems were around the current governance system of the hospital, the report finding "some decision making priorities were not aligned to ensure patient safety". It found while there were now good systems in place for to manage clinical services, the relationship with the governing body was unclear. The report highlighted the many levels of approval decisions had to go through, with decision making often lengthy and convoluted when significant patient safety issues were identified. "The current governance system with lack of clarity, role confusion and poorly defined accountable structures creates a high risk for the organisation," the report said. It also found infection prevention was not reviewed at the highest level of governance in the organisation. It highlighted a risk of a legionella outbreak and a failure to mitigate the risk after positive legionella samples in 2016. The report found the hospital was not routinely completing surgical safety checklist - with completion rates at 79.8 per cent - which put patients at risk of receiving the wrong procedure, treatment or investigation. Ms Fitzharris and Minister for Mental Health Shane Rattenbury said they were concerned by the issues raised, but confident that they would be addressed. "Of note to me are the findings of the ACHS that there is a lack of clarity and a policy gap between corporate and clinical governance, and its recommendation to review the governance system," she said. "These are precisely the issues that the ACT Health transition team is currently addressing as part of the ACT Health restructure that will be subject to consultation over the coming months." ACT Health interim director general Michael De'Ath said he took immediate action after seeing the report with a group of senior staff to ensure the assessors' concerns were addressed. "Can I can be very clear not being accredited is not an option for us." Mr Rattenbury said the re-accreditation process would help improve the health system. While this feedback is disappointing, we are taking decisive action to improve coordination and integration across the mental health system, responding to many of the issues raised in the accreditation report and will rectify these issues over the coming months, he said. The accreditation process is designed to help us improve as a service. As I have said previously, our mental health services are led by dedicated and professional staff, but we know there is work to do to improve our systems and processes so that we can ensure patients receive the right care in the right place at the right time." /images/transform/v1/crop/frm/silverstone-ct-migration/c27702fe-0f1a-4e68-9ff5-0f23d72f96e4/r0_108_2000_1238_w1200_h678_fmax.jpg news, latest-news ACT Policing have found the 11-year-old Canberra girl reported missing on Tuesday. She was last seen around 4pm on Saturday April 14 in Narrabundah. Police sought to reassure her that she was not in trouble. They have now thanked the community for their assistance. /images/transform/v1/crop/frm/silverstone-ct-migration/18775d94-c8a5-49dd-92be-ab2f40b280ea/r0_96_1200_774_w1200_h678_fmax.jpg news, latest-news The Department of Home Affairs has accused the main public sector union of "cherry-picking" from enterprise agreements, while the union has labelled the government's approach to bargaining as "scorched earth". The four-year battle between the government and employees in the new Department of Home Affairs is entering its final stages, with lawyers beginning their closing statements at a Fair Work Commission hearing in Canberra on Monday. The Department of Home Affairs' lawyer Paul O'Grady QC told the full bench of the commission that it would be wrong to give "presumed primacy" to the enterprise agreement that covered former Customs staff members. Former Customs staff are covered by what was described on both sides on Monday as a more "generous" agreement than other staff, which are covered by an agreement for the former Department of Immigration and Citizenship. Mr O'Grady argued that the Customs agreement should not be the "starting point" for a new agreement, and said that the Community and Public Sector Union's proposed workplace determination tried to get the "best of all worlds" in choosing elements from the two agreements in its proposal. He said the union's position was based "not on principle but on convenience". Tony Slevin, acting for the union, said that while the term "cherry picking" was used in a derogatory way, his client didn't shy away from advocating for the most generous terms in each agreement. "We do take a highest common denominator approach," he said. It was the union's position that no one should lose pay and conditions that they were previously entitled to under a new agreement and that staff members working in the same teams, but originating from two different departments, should not have different terms and conditions. Mr Slevin argued that while the department itself is new, the commission should respect the 25 years of agreements that had previously been agreed to. Negotiations over an enterprise agreement for staff in Home Affairs have been complicated by the 2015 merger of the then Department of Immigration and Border Protection and the Department of Customs to become Australian Border Force. More than 15,000 staff will be covered by the new agreement after the creation of the new Home Affairs department, which absorbed Border Force, late last year. The hearing also covered the role of the government's workplace bargaining policy, which caps wage rises and limits concessions that can be made by government departments. Mr O'Grady said that the policy should be seen as "an element of the government's fiscal strategy" and that it "reflects the range of economic and budget challenges the government is facing". The government has previously argued that the CPSU's proposed agreement would cost $469 million more than what it has put on the table. Mr O'Grady said the CPSU's evidence about where the funds would come from was "speculative". "Ultimately if that's the path you go down there would have to be a decision made at the highest level of government [about the funding] and it wouldn't pay to speculate about what direction they would go," he said. The hearing continues on Tuesday. /images/transform/v1/crop/frm/silverstone-ct-migration/e468602b-019a-4a2a-82b5-379a5a32653f/r0_116_2000_1246_w1200_h678_fmax.jpg news, latest-news SES crews have been called in to assist police after a suspicious fire tore through a north Brisbane property where two women and a man were found dead on Tuesday morning. A police spokesman said the volunteers, trained in line searches, were expected to meet with police first thing Wednesday morning at the Everton Hills address to help search the area. Police were investigating the 24 hours leading up to the suspicious fire and have called for witnesses or anyone with dashcam footage from the area to contact Crime Stoppers immediately. We are now in the process of ... conducting further investigations to establish what exactly took place over the course of this morning and in fact the last 24 hours of events that people may or may not have seen within this street or within this area, Detective Acting Inspector Joe Zitny told media on Tuesday afternoon. I seek the assistance of the community for any people that may have noticed anything or saw something remarkable, or something out of place or something different in the vicinity. Emergency services were in the process of retrieving the bodies from the Everton Hills address on Tuesday afternoon after neighbours heard yelling and an explosion about 5.40am. Fire crews were called to the home, where neighbours have since reported smelling fuel and seeing flames bursting through the roof, double the height of the two-storey house. QFES Inspector Steven Bates said the building was badly burnt and fire crews had to stablise some of the floorboards to give police access to certain rooms. Police and forensic teams were expected to remain at the crime scene for a number of days. From her home across the street, Rowena Ostrofski heard what sounded like something heavy being dropped on the ground, large enough to vibrate the floor, and a woman shouting help. Inspector Daniel Bragg said the fire was being treated as suspicious. "It was a loud explosion, quite significant, and the neighbour that heard that explosion contacted the police," he told reporters near the Pavonia Street home. "I'm told that the fire could be seen from a fair distance away and it was the flames and the smoke that actually led people to the address." He said one neighbour had told police that there was "some yelling beforehand" and confirmed police were looking into multiple reports that one or more vehicles were heard driving away from the home but said no evidence had been found to back that up. "At this stage, we do not know what happened here. A very thorough investigation will be conducted into this." Inspector Bragg said all options were being explored in relation to the cause of the blaze. The fact that weve got three deceased persons inside a house with a house fire, particularly adults, would obviously lend a lot of weight that wed treat it as deliberately lit, he said. Were not saying it is, we dont know, but we will treat it as deliberately lit until otherwise. Ms Ostrofskis husband, Lindsay, said there were vicious flames underneath the house and the whole thing went up within a matter of seconds. I hear glass breaking so I went to the kitchen and check it, Ms Ostrofski said. Then I hear a womans voice saying help, help' and then I look at the bigger window and I saw the smoke on the roof. Luke Demnar said he was one of the first on the scene after seeing flames from the top of the nearby hill as he arrived home from dropping his wife in the city. (Ive) run up through the house to see if we can find anyone, he said. We couldnt get in because the flames were too big. (We) pretty much looked in through the doors. The whole house was just engulfed, there was no way we could get in, at all. The only place that wasnt engulfed in flames was the garage and we had a look through there and everything looked normal. We couldnt see anyone or anything like that. Mark Dumont, whose neighbouring house was damaged slightly in the fire, said he thought the explosions were caused by the fire, rather than the other way around. "It was huge. All the upper level was engulfed. The explosions, all the glass was going everywhere," he said. After six crews battled the blaze for about 40 minutes in the morning, fire investigators spent the rest of the day determining what happened. Superintendent Bevan Moore said firefighters had to force their way into the building, which was made more difficult because the fire was burning through the roof. Reports from neighbours have indicated that there were unusual noises associated with the fire and so there has been reports that we need to do further investigations to determine the cause, he said. There were explosions reported by neighbours, the smell of fuel, things like that. Another man, Nathan Wynne, heard the explosion from his home on neighbouring Lily Street and rushed down to help. He said he heard a road bike "just roar away" after the "boom" of the explosions. Carol Maior said her husband, Doug, heard two cars driving away at speed, after two explosions, a small one followed by a bigger one. "When you see something like that you hope everyone got out but its sad to hear there was people passing away," she said. Neither Inspector Moore nor Inspector Bragg would comment on where the deceased were found or where the fire appeared to have started. Police were yet to formally identify the victims but multiple neighbours said they thought a woman and her adult son had lived there for about two years and kept to themselves. Several neighbouring properties were evacuated as firefighters fought successfully fought to stop the intense blaze from spreading. Inspector Moore said video of the fire showed flames likely twice the height of the house. -with Amy Mitchell-Whittingdon /images/transform/v1/crop/frm/silverstone-ct-migration/6faedfe8-276c-4ab1-ab09-93ec7d472e5b/r0_257_5056_3114_w1200_h678_fmax.jpg Cape Coral police have hit the streets, hoping someone will recognize the man who held up a Cape Coral bank. Uniformed officers were going door to door early Tuesday in the area of the Fifth Third Bank at 2724 Del Prado Boulevard South, showing video-captured photos of the robber. The bank was held up at 1 p.m. Monday by a man who displayed a gun strapped beneath a shirt worn jacket-style, demanded cash, and then fled on foot. No one was harmed but nearby St. Andrew School was placed on lockdown as a precaution. Cape Coral Police Department detectives have released a composite of the bank robber, who is described as a white male 56-57, weighing approximately 200 pounds. He was wearing a blue hat featuring a cobra snake, orange button-up shirt with a white Hard Rock Cafe T-shirt underneath. Anyone with any information on this case or this mans identity are asked to contact the Cape Coral Police Department at (239) 574-3223 or 911. After nearly two months of treatment, a female loggerhead sea turtle returned to the ocean. Staff from the Clinic for the Rehabilitation of Wildlife gathered today on the beach off the Sanibel Lighthouse to release their patient. The subadult turtle was found floating off the Sanibel Causeway on Feb. 27 and diagnosed with loggerhead anemia syndrome and brevitoxicosis, or red tide poisoning. She was severely severely anemic, CROW Hospital Director Dr. Heather Barron said. She added that the turtle had high levels of brevetoxins from the red tide. Its definitely always a concern, Barron said of brevitoxicosis. Brevitoxicosis can affect a turtles nervous system, as well as its gastrointestinal tract, according to CROW staffers. Turtles with red tide poisoning oftentimes cannot fend for themselves or hunt for food. Sometimes, they are too weak to surface for air or even dive, leaving them vulnerable to boat strikes. The loggerhead turtle was treated for both ailments, which included iron shots and oral supplements, along with intravenous nutrition because she could not eat on her own when she was first admitted. A lot of supportive care, she said. She was extremely thin. The turtle weighed about 132 pounds, as compared to a healthy 172 pounds at her release. Along with gaining back the weight, the turtles blood work had returned to normal. Barron noted that sea turtle nesting season has begun; it runs April through October. Were keen to getting her back out there, she said. Like other patients treated by CROW, the turtle was tagged. If she does come back in, then we know shes been with us before, Barron said, noting that it also helps with monitoring the species. It allows us to keep track of the sea turtles in this area. On April 10, CROW released an adult female Kemps ridley sea turtle near the same spot. Admitted on March 27 after being found floating at the Sanibel Marina, it was also treated for red tide poisoning. In the case of the Kemps sea turtle, which is a critically endangered species, it was given IV fluid therapy and supportive nutrition. Like the loggerhead, she was unable to feed herself at first. Staff also used a new treatment for red tide poisoning that it is researching in partnership with another group. CROW reported last week that a subadult-juvenile female loggerhead, rescued on March 18 in the Bowmans Beach area, had recently died. It also had been diagnosed with red tide poisoning. One turtle remains in CROWs care, after another had to be put down on April 16. Since February, CROW had been treating and monitoring a juvenile green sea turtle, which was discovered floating at Stump Pass near Manasota Key. It had an old boat strike injury at the rear of its shell, along with a severed spine. With severe nerve damage, it had little use of its back flippers. The biggest concern, however, was its decreased GI mobility due to the nerve damage. Barron explained that the turtle was unable to expel waste from its body. Its gastrointestinal tract wasnt working properly, she said. Once all options were exhausted, including trying medications for its GI tract, it was euthanized. Fortunately, CROWs remaining patient is on the mend. On April 5, a subadult female loggerhead was found floating off of Cayo Costa. The turtle had a head wound with a skull fracture and a wound to one of her front flippers, likely from a boat propeller. Shes doing great, Barron said today. Shes eating like a pig. The turtles blood work came back normal, so no red tide poisoning was present. Barron estimated that its injuries were probably three weeks old. She had severe trauma to her head and one of her flippers, she said, adding that the turtle had likely been debilitated and floating since the boat strike happened. Shes literally a swimming skeleton. Weighing about 66 pounds upon being admitted, the turtle has received IV therapy and supportive nutrition to help stabilize her and encourage weight gain. An ideal number is about 110 pounds. Barron noted that once the turtle reaches a healthy weight, it can be released. Staff is using a topical treatment for its flipper, which may require minimal surgery. Well have to see how she does, she said. The head injury is not a concern. Barron explained that turtles have two layers of bone and the injury only affected the first layer. CROW recently received an $18,000 grant through the Sea Turtle Grants Program, which is funded by the sales of Floridas sea turtle license plate. It will pay for a new turtle tank and a filtration system. Currently, CROW has three tanks for its patients. To learn more about CROW, visit www.CROWClinic.org. CROW is at 3883 Sanibel Captiva Road, Sanibel. Former restaurant owner Ann Walter recently reminisced about the Harbor House Restaurant for a group of Sanibel Historical Museum and Village volunteers at the Volunteer Update. The Harbor House started out as Jacks Place, owned by Jack Cole. Known as a character, he had a shooting range in the back. Jacks Place was built in 1948, making it the first restaurant on the island. It has continued as a restaurant since that time. The Walters Bill and Anne purchased it in 1981, almost on a whim. Neither Bill nor Anne had any restaurant experience at all. But they made it work. The Harbor House received national praise from the New York Times, National Observer, Chicago Tribune, Miami Herald and more. The Walters always gave everything their personal attention; everything was always fresh and made from scratch. Walter and her husband worked on the restaurant floor almost every night of the week. People loved the fact that the owners were in the dining room, she said. They were disappointed if we werent there. The restaurant become famous for its key lime pies made from fruit trees behind the restaurant which were topped with meringue, making them unique. We went through 10 big pies a day, more in season, she said. The Walters sold the Harbor House in 1999 and retired. The restaurant became Dolce Vita and is now Il Cielo. Bill Walter passed away in 2014, and Walter keeps busy in a number of island organizations. I think Historical Village volunteers loved hearing stories about the early restaurants on the island, Emilie Alfino, executive director of the Sanibel Historical Museum and Village, said. And, of course, Anne is absolutely charming. Everyone learned a lot. The Sanibel Historical Museum and Village is open from 10 a.m. to 4 p.m. Tuesday through Saturday. In May, it will switch to its summer hours, which are 10 a.m. to 1 p.m. Tuesday through Saturday. Admission is $10 for ages 18 and older; youth and members are free. Free docent-guided tours are at 10:30 a.m. and 1:30 p.m., based upon docent availability. For information, call 239-472-4648 or visit online at www.sanibelmuseum.org. The Sanibel Historical Museum and Village is at 950 Dunlop Road. (Video by: Sean Keeley) It looked like a scene from a James Bond movie. A speed boat was being chased by a helicopter on Okanagan Lake Thursday morning and it was creating a 'wake' with some residents. A few people even thought it was a police chase. But it was not, it was a Vector V-40 high performance speed boat built in Kelowna. The vessel was being put through a series of tests before it's shipped off to Monaco to ferry around VIPs during the Formula One, for the Vector Martini Racing Team. Then it will make its way to England for the London to Monte Carlo endurance race. It has twin V-10s in it, it runs 110 miles an hour, explains Rex Jardine, owner of Vector Power Boats from Kelowna. The V-40 is the most prestigious and most powerful boat Vector has ever built. Start to finish, the build took about four months and its been a lot of late nights during the last week or so just to get it out on the water. Purchased for a price in the seven figure range, the boat had to be tested before it made its journey over the Atlantic to Monaco. Photo: Contributed - Shawn Talbot It was so unbelievable, we were so pleased, says Jardine of the test run. We had next to no glitches and it is world class, it can compete with anything out there. The company that bought it is called Vector Martini Racing." The helicopter, owned by Valhalla, that followed the boat during its test run was filled with photographers and a camera crew they were shooting the V-40's big debut. While some Kelowna residents thought the morning spectacle was a police chase, others complained to the RCMP filing noise complaints. I was driving the boat and I couldnt talk to the gentleman next to me, says Jardine. We dont like to make this much noise, but for an hour or two every couple of years, that we have to do a shake down, I apologize, but we employ a great group of people. During the London to Monte Carlo Venture Cup Race the boat will travel over 2,400 miles in 15 days visiting 11 cities and five countries. Photo: CTV The BC SPCA is looking into animal cruelty charges after 45 neglected dogs living in "unacceptable" conditions were surrendered by a former breeder near Victoria. The Havanese and Javanese-Cross dogs were covered in feces and urine and exposed to high levels of ammonia, the SPCA says. The individual was co-operative and voluntarily surrendered the animals, (which) range in age from one-and-a-half to 15 years, Marcie Moriarty, the BC SPCA's chief prevention and enforcement officer, said in a statement. Our staff have spent the past few days assessing the physical and psychological well-being of the dogs and providing immediate medical care for any issues." The dogs have been taken in by multiple SPCA shelters on Vancouver Island and aren't yet up for adoption. with files from CTV Vancouver Island Photo: Contributed Please help us raise money for the players and families affected. Money will go directly to families to help with any expenses incurred. As of Monday morning, this GoFundMe campaign had amassed $11.7 million of their $4-million goal. The aftermath of the horrific crash has pulled, hard, at our heart strings. So many lives lost in one instant, most of them young people full of promise. And we are just starting to learn about the life-long injuries sustained by the survivors. We ache for a way to express our feelings and to show our support. The GoFundMe campaign allows us to put our money where our hearts are. I suspect those directly impacted by this tragedy feel each and every donation, big or small, like an embrace. And the growing total might offer solace as a monumental demonstration of love and support. Those of us contributing to that total might feel that we are making a concrete difference in a situation where so much is broken that is impossible to fix. Its a beautiful thing. Very beautiful. I wonder, though. By shining the full weight of our attention, love and financial support on this tragedy and those directly impacted by it, might we be missing out on a broader opportunity? We were in varying degrees of shock as we heard the initial news headlines of a crash resulting in 15 (now 16) dead and an aftermath suggestive that the rest of the 29 bus occupants had suffered dramatic injuries. The same feelings do not arise from news reports of the one or two killed here and there on Canadas roads. Perhaps because we hear about the one-off casualties so often? But if we put our minds to it, the magnitude of losses from those drip, drip, drip fatalities are much more shocking. Transport Canada statistics show 1,858 fatalities in 2015 (the most current year easily available online). Averaging that number over 365 days is an average of five deaths per day. I am submitting this column on Monday, April 16, 10 days after the bus crash. Running the average, likely 50 Canadians have been killed in road traffic incidents over that time period. British Columbia averages would have a likelihood of eight to nine British Columbians dead over that 10 days. With another eight to nine to come in the next 10 days. And the next after that. I doubt that the much larger numbers of other families who have lost loved ones on our roads and have been left with life altering injuries since April 6, begrudge the love and support we are showing to the victims of that disaster. Nor that those who will continue to be affected by the ongoing, drip, drip, drip of crashes and collisions will either. But imagine a campaign that would give us an opportunity to collectively show our love and support to every family losing a loved one, and everyone suffering life altering injuries on our roadways. One that allows us to put our money where our hearts are. Not to reimburse the expenses of the victims and victims families that will largely be reimbursed by insurance companies. Rather, to go toward stopping the incessant drips. It is common for the families of those lost to various medical conditions and diseases to ask for donations to particular research organizations in lieu of flowers at funerals. There are also mass, annual events like the Run for the Cure and other fund raising activities and campaigns where those affected can put our money where our hearts are. Why dont we have the same for the shocking, continuing and entirely preventable tragedies on our roadways? I imagine a national road safety society. The goals of that society might be to: Ensure that we continue to feel the ongoing senselessness of road tragedies, not just the time to time when a tragedy the magnitude of what occurred on April 6, hits the news. Those losing loved ones and those left with life altering injuries would be encouraged to share their stories which the society would circulate through social media and other platforms; Identify concrete steps that can be taken to fix whats broken with our driving attitudes and the laws that not only fail to address them but perpetuate them (such as the ongoing ridiculously inconsistent laws that prohibit hand held but not hands free cell phone use while driving, in the face of clear science that both are similarly distracting); Lobby the governments of each of our provinces and territories to effect changes and also to make road safety a much higher priority in terms of resources; and Conceive of and implement road safety campaigns on a national level. Are there those among us who might choose to put our bruised hearts in a direction that might prevent these ongoing, daily tragedies and work to create such a society? The society would have legs beyond the news event of this tragedy that will inevitably pass from our collective consciousness like every other news event. It will give all of us impacted by injuries and deaths on our roadways a way to make a real difference in prevention. Could there be a better memorial of those killed and so profoundly impacted by this tragedy than such a society? Photo: TRACS The first batch of vaccine to protect domestic and feral rabbits from a disease that has devastated some communities in B.C. is now available for owners and veterinarians. The B.C. Ministry of Agriculture announced Monday the vaccine for rabbit hemorrhagic disease has arrived from Europe and will be handed out to the 50 veterinary clinics that requested the medicine. The disease was first noticed on Vancouver Island when rabbits started dying in early March, but it has since spread to Richmond and Delta in Metro Vancouver. The vaccine is produced in France, and the first batch shipped to Canada contains all of the vaccine currently available, including 1,090 individual doses and a second batch is due in the province in May. The Ministry confirmed in a statement that the French vaccine offers the best protection from the disease and is only made by one manufacturer. Rabbit hemorrhagic disease, which affects European rabbits, causes internal bleeding, organ damage and is extremely infectious. Photo: CTV B.C. attorney general David Eby B.C.'s attorney general is threatening to sue if a new law introduced in Alberta causes gasoline prices to skyrocket. David Eby says it's unconstitutional for one province to use energy policy to punish another province, and B.C. is prepared to take legal action against Alberta. The Alberta government introduced legislation that would allow for the restriction of oil, gasoline and natural gas leaving that province, which could cause fuel prices in B.C. to jump. Eby's comments come as those for and against the construction of the Trans Mountain pipeline expansion dig in, including Indigenous Peoples, business leaders, protesters and politicians. Pipeline owner, Kinder Morgan, has suspended all non-essential spending on the $7.4 billion project as the federal government tries to reassure the company's investors by May 31 that the project will move forward despite opposition from the B.C. government. Meanwhile, the B.C. government is denying Prime Minister Justin Trudeau's claim that it has been mum on how Ottawa should reinforce environmental protections and offering as proof a detailed list of six demands it says were provided to the federal government in February. The list of items was provided to the federal Liberals right after B.C. warned it was considering whether to restrict the flow of diluted bitumen into the province should the Trans Mountain pipeline expansion be allowed to proceed, an official told The Canadian Press. They include: Ensuring enough emergency tow vessels in response to increased tanker traffic off the B.C. coast. Specific plans to respond in the event of an environmental incident related to the pipeline. Improvements to make the pipeline itself safer. A compensation plan in the event of a spill causing the loss of public use of a marine environment. Improved research into the behaviour and cleanup of spilled diluted bitumen. Weaning marine coastal communities off diesel-fuelled electricity. On Sunday, following a meeting with the premiers of B.C. and Alberta over the Trans Mountain impasse, Trudeau said he was open to making additional investments and improvements in environmental protections. But since the NDP government was elected in B.C. last summer, it has "not specifically put forward proposals on how they would like to see us improve the Oceans Protection Plan," he said. B.C. Environment Minister George Heyman wouldn't accuse Trudeau of lying outright. "What I'm saying is we've been engaged with the federal government, there's been ongoing discussion and we've raised a number of issues," Heyman said. "We've indicated to them the kinds of things we think would be helpful to prevent contamination of the coast line from a spill and a variety of hazardous products." Photo: Facebook A Victoria mother is pleading for the return of statuettes stolen from a roadside memorial to her son. AJ Wakeling died in October 2012 after being hit by a vehicle on Sooke Road in suburban Langford. He was just 13 at the time. Yannick Aubin placed the angel statuettes and crosses as a way to remember her son and also as a reminder for drivers to slow down. "My son is in my heart, hes always by my side and my boys' side. What do you have? A cold black heart," Aubin posted on Facebook. with files from CTV Vancouver Island Photo: CTV The tolls have been gone for months, but the bills still remain. Tolls came off the Port Mann and Golden Ears bridges in B.C.'s Lower Mainland more than seven months ago but the tab for unpaid bills sits at $33 million. Reminders have been sent to drivers, and some cases have been sent to collections. ICBC can even refuse to renew your driver's licence or insurance, but the demands seem to be met with a collective shrug. "Your bill isn't going away," TransLink spokesperson Jill Drews said. "We will make every effort to collect what's outstanding." About $18 million is owed to TransLink in unpaid Golden Ears tolls. And $15 million is owed to TreO from the Port Mann. Those bills are also collecting interest, and ICBC can also assess a $20 processing fee. with files from CTV Vancouver Photo: Colin Dacre Concrete bricks will be dismantled to give crews access to the arches of Memorial Arena The City of Penticton is taking a look at the arches of Memorial Arena over the next few weeks. Crews will be removing the concrete block construction at the base of each arch to examine the condition of the glulam beams. Inspection of the arches was recommended in a 2016 study of the facilitys roof. This week involves preparing the building for the detailed inspection, says Bregje Kozak, Director of Recreation and Facilities. Next week, we will have a specialized team of wood remediation experts on site to help us determine our options and a plan. Last summer, the city dug up the piles anchoring the arches to the ground. This time, crews will be dismantling the bricks encasing the arches. Its expected remediation work on the arches will happen this summer. The arena will remain operational the entire time. Facility users will notice openings in the interior of the building, but the areas will be localized with no impact to overall operations, says Kozak. Alanna Kelly A family is living in a hotel room after a fire ripped through their home, killing their six pets and leaving them without a house. Cherylee Morrison was in Penticton when she receive the horrific news about the home she was renting. Her children were all on a walk and no one was at their home off McKenzie Road in Kelowna as firefighters were battling the large blaze. The fire took over their home and killed four dogs, one cat and a pet duck. I dont think it has even hit me yet, said Morrison. My dogs were everything. Her daughter, Victoria Cooper, said they were told the dogs did not suffer and that they died from inhaling carbon monoxide in their sleep while they were in the home. There wasnt even any marks on their paws of them trying to get out, said Cooper. A family pet cat did survive the blaze and it wasnt until they came back to the home a day later that they found him. We really didnt expect to find him because so far there has just been nothing, said Morrison looking around at what remained of her home. The family said they are still in shock and are experiencing waves of grief, but also moments of positivity. We are grateful for what we still do have and grateful the kids werent home, said Cooper. Her siblings Gloria, 8, and Xavier, 13, attended school on Monday and said they wanted to see their friends. The family is now focused on trying to find somewhere to live. We have to find housingmain priority is finding a place to live and something reasonable for a low-income family and single parent, said Morrison. The family would like to thank everyone who has offered support and if you would like to donate you can do so at this link. Platoon Capt. Kelly Stephens said Monday that the cause of the fire was still being investigated. The family said firefighters told them it appears the blaze started on a back balcony. Photo: Contributed Conceptual master plan drawings of the Capri redevelopment with the park and skating rink highlighted. Once burned, twice shy. That's the attitude Kelowna city council seemed to take Monday in deferring acceptance of a master plan for redevelopment of the 20-acre Capri Mall site. The plan differed slightly, which concerned some councillors still smarting after not getting what they thought they were from the Central Green site. In an unprecedented, and unusual move, council not only deferred a decision on the master plan, but also gave approval for construction of the first of 14 residential buildings, a 22-storey tower, for the corner of Capri Street and Sutherland Avenue. Council went back and forth on the merits of the revised master plan for the 20-acre site, a plan that was altered from one approved two-years ago. Much of the issue surrounds use of the public park, and in particular, and NHL-size ice rink at the centre of the development. Coun. Luke Stack said he was uncomfortable not knowing whether the rink would be controlled by the developer or the strata council. "All the density we have supported here was because we were getting some public amenities, but I'm not comfortable at this point that it is a public amenity," said Stack. "It sounds to me like it's a private amenity that they will let someone use from time to time." Stack said the original plan had a more "inviting passageway" through the site. It showed how roads and bike paths went through the property and where the transit stops would be located. "It looked more inviting to the public...now, I'm seeing more of a fortress type of mentality around what could be a private amenity." Leo Mariotto, president of ICR Projects, the developer of the site, told council the master plan before them is just an evolution of the original. He said the intent is not to change any of the amenities promised two years ago. He promised public access to the park and rink, saying the intent is for everyone to enjoy the rink, shop and go to a bar, if there is one. "There's no question we can provide public access," he said. As for timing, Mariotto said the plan is for the three towers along Capri Street to be built first, with the fourth and fifth towers along Sutherland Avenue to go next. "The fourth tower would require the food store to relocate. "Although I can't say the ice rink would start at that time, once the towers along Sutherland are built, it is logical the ice rink would then happen." But, he said, that logic could change over five, 10 or 20 years. Despite assurances nothing had changed, council wanted certainty. They also wanted answers to several questions which were not forthcoming to their satisfaction. "I have no doubt the developer is coming to us in good faith, but the thing I have is that so many questions weren't answered, I can't, in good faith, go to the public and say I did my job," said Coun. Maxine DeHart. "This is a huge thing for use...but I just think we need some better answers." Mayor Colin Basran, one of three on council to vote against deferral, says he likes the new plan, but understood a majority on council want some clarity before moving forward. "With all the drawings and all the modeling, council just wants to be sure that what's being brought forward is actually what gets built, or as close to it as possible," said Basran following the meeting. But, we have to remember too that to build this site out is going to require a lot of time. We have to recognize there are a number of things that are going to change over time like market demand, like best practices, like trends, building materials and requirements. "While there may be an expectation from the public that what's presented should be exactly what is going to be built, but I think what was found out today was it's merely aspirational to a degree and things will evolve over time." The developer and staff will sit down to try and bring clarity to some of the concerns before returning to council. Photo: DriveBC The Coquihalla northbound is closed at the Box Canyon chain-up area because of a motor vehicle incident. No detours or alternate routes available. and no estimated time of opening has been set an assessment is in progress. More snow is expected for the Coquihalla today, possibly 5 centimetres. Environment Canada has a snowfall warning in effect for the Trans-Canada Highway - Eagle Pass to Rogers Pass and Highway 3 - Paulson Summit to Kootenay Pass, as much as 10 to 20 centimetres is expected. A low pressure system which has moved over southern Alberta, gave significant snow to the Yoho Park - Kootenay Park region last night. An additional 2 to 4 cm of snow is expected before the snow tapers off later this morning as the low weakens. Be prepared to adjust your driving with changing road conditions. Visibility may be suddenly reduced at times in heavy snow. Photo: The Canadian Press Former FBI Director James Comey says it's "not OK" or "not normal" for the president to call for the jailing of private citizens. President Donald Trump suggested earlier this week that Comey should be jailed and accused him of leaking classified information and lying to Congress. Comey said during a live interview Tuesday on ABC's "Good Morning America" that Trump is "just making stuff up." Comey says Trump calling for him and other perceived enemies to be jailed "is not acceptable in this country" and that "the president doesn't get to decide who goes to jail." Trump fired Comey last year amid the FBI's investigation into Russian interference in the 2016 presidential election. Comey is promoting his book, "A Higher Loyalty." UPDATE: 4:10 p.m. DriveBC has clarified that the detour around a washout undermining Highway 33 east of Kelowna is closed to all commercial vehicles, not just oversized loads. The highway remains closed 22 kilometres east of the Highway 33/97 junction. A detour via Goudie Road to Cardinal Creek Road is for light traffic only. Commercial vehicles are required to take Highway 97 and Highway 3. UPDATE: 2:50 p.m. Despite a Ministry of Transportation edict that no oversize loads are allowed on the detour via Goudie Road until further notice, semis are continuing to use the bypass around this morning's landslide. Numerous Castanet readers have reached out stating tractor-trailers are driving on Sun Valley Road. "We are dumbfounded that no one is policing this," said one resident. "Something is going to happen." UPDATE: 1 p.m. Highway 33 remains closed in both directions east of Kelowna. An estimated time of reopening is not yet available. No oversize loads are allowed on the detour via Goudie Road until further notice, DriveBC reports. That follows concerns raised by residents that the detour road will not hold the weight of commercial truck traffic. "It's disintegrating," one angry resident told Castanet. "Residents are prepared to take whatever action (is) necessary." UPDATE: 12:10 p.m. Steve Sirrett, district manager with Transportation B.C., tells Castanet crews are on scene and working to assess the damage. "Ultimately it appears the ground was over saturated and the bank gave way, crews are on site now and will be working continuously to get the road re-built and back open." Castanet reporter Alanna Kelly is on scene now. UPDATE: 8:20 a.m. The washout on Highway 33 appears to be far more serious than originally thought, the photo clearly shows the pavement hanging by a thread for approximately 45 metres. Fixing the slide is likely going to take a significant amount of time which means the detour via Goudie Road and Cardinal Creek will be in use for the duration. Kari Fargo, who lives in the Joe Rich area called Castanet Tuesday morning to plead with drivers to "please slow down in that area. "It's not a highway and there are children and school buses on Goudie Road." ORIGINAL: 6:55 a.m. There has been another closure this morning, Highway 33 is closed in both directions, from Mission Creek Bridge to Kelowna a 23.2-kilometre stretch, because of a washout. There is a detour via Goudie Road and Cardinal Creek Road. Crews are on scene assessing the situation and an update will be provided later today. Photo: The Canadian Press A Sunday, March 25, 2018 file photo shows an advertisement in The New York Times is displayed, in New York. The chair of the British Parliament's media committee says that Cambridge Analytica's former CEO, Alexander Nix, says he will no longer testify at an upcoming session on fake news, citing an ongoing investigation by the information commissioner's office. Nix had been recalled by the committee to testify Wednesday following testimony by whistleblower Christopher Wylie on the use of data mine from some 87 million Facebook users in the campaign for Donald Trump's presidential election. Committee chair Damian Collins rejected Nix's reason for not appearing, as he has not "not been charged with any criminal offence and there is no active legal proceedings." Collins says Tuesday that the committee "is minded to issue a formal summons for him to appear on a named day in the very near future." Photo: The Canadian Press Russian military police officers check a weapons factory in the town of Douma, the site of a suspected chemical weapons attack, near Damascus, Syria, Monday, April 16, 2018. International inspectors have entered the Syrian town where an alleged chemical attack was carried out earlier this month, Syrian state media reported Tuesday, after they had waited for days in the capital for permission from Syrian and Russian authorities. The fact-finding mission from the Organization for the Prohibition of Chemical Weapons is investigating reports that government forces launched an April 7 chemical attack in the final stages of their fight to retake the town of Douma from rebels. The alleged gas attack, which Syrian activists say killed more than 40 people, prompted punitive U.S., British and French airstrikes. Syria and its ally Russia deny any chemical attack took place, and Russian officials have accused Britain of staging a "fake" chemical attack. British Prime Minister Theresa May says Syria and Russia whose forces now control the town east of Damascus are trying to cover up evidence. Journalists were allowed access to the suspected attack sites on Monday, but the OPCW said Syrian and Russian authorities blocked the inspectors. The Associated Press spoke to survivors and witnesses who described being hit by gas. Several said a strange smell started spreading and people screamed, "It's chlorine! It's chlorine!" The U.S. and France say they have evidence that Syrian President Bashar Assad's forces used poison gas in the attack, but they have not provided any evidence, even after Saturday's punitive missile strikes. Douma was the last rebel-held town near Damascus, and the target of a government offensive in February and March that killed hundreds of people and displaced tens of thousands. Hours after the alleged chemical attack, the rebel faction that controlled the town, the Army of Islam, relented and was evacuated along with thousands of residents. The site visit came hours after reports of more international air strikes on Syrian military installations. The Syrian military later said a false alarm set off air defence systems early Tuesday, retracting earlier reports of a pre-dawn "outside aggression" on its airfields in the central Homs region and a suburb of Damascus. The Pentagon denied any American military activity in the area. There was no comment from Israel, which frequently carries out airstrikes in Syria but rarely acknowledges them. Photo: The Canadian Press Adult film actress Stormy Daniels leaves federal court following a hearing Monday, April 16, 2018, in New York. The porn actress alleging a sexual affair with President Donald Trump says she is "done being bullied." Stormy Daniels appeared on ABC's "The View" Tuesday. She said she is speaking out because she is tired of being threatened. She also said this relationship isn't what she wants to be known for. Daniels, whose legal name is Stephanie Clifford, says she had sex with Trump in 2006 and that Trump's personal attorney Michael Cohen paid her $130,000 days before the 2016 election for her silence. In a recent CBS interview, she said she was threatened to keep quiet by an unidentified man in a Las Vegas parking lot in 2011. Photo: Hartmut Witschel. Joe Rich residents woke up to a large dump of snow Tuesday morning in the hills east of Kelowna. Hartmut Witschel said his location on Goudie Road received 22 centimetres overnight. "Have a sunny day," Witschel said. The Okanagan Connector also got snowed on heavily last night, which is creating a challenge for drivers. Send your photographs to [email protected] Photo: The Canadian Press An apparent headless body that prompted a major police operation in southern Germany has turned out to be a doll. Police in Baden-Wuerttemberg state say a passer-by spotted what appeared to be a clothed but headless corpse covered in blood lying by a stream in Remstal, near Stuttgart, late Monday. Officers cordoned off the suspected crime scene and firefighters were called to retrieve the body, which was lying in an inaccessible place. In a statement Tuesday, police said that only once firefighters reached the site were they able to determine that it was, in fact, a lifesize doll. Photo: The Canadian Press Egypt's top mufti has issued a fatwa, or a religious decree, saying that buying Facebook "likes" is prohibited under Islam because it's a form of fraud and deception. Grand Mufti Shawki Allam regularly issues all sorts of fatwas, usually in response to questions by Muslims seeking religious guidance in matters related to even the most trivial issues. The questions are asked of the Dar al-Ifa, the Sunni Muslim institution in charge of religious rulings, mainly based on the Muslim holy book of Quran and the sayings of the Prophet Muhammad. The mufti posted on the institution's Facebook page earlier this week that it is "religiously prohibited" to pay someone to click a "like" on a promotion. Allam says "it's deceptive," citing Muhammad's saying, "He who deceives is not of us." Photo: Contributed New details are being revealed about the sale of three low-budget motels in Penticton. The Western Investor is reporting the motels sold for $5 million. Castanet News first reported the sale of the Mayfair, Sun Valley and Meadowlark motels on Skaha Lake Road in March. Sources now tell Castanet the property has been purchased by Seacliff Properties, the Vancouver-based firm behind Vernons The Rise development. The lots are zoned by the City of Penticton for high-density residential and commercial up to 282 units. The three motels have a combined 57 units all rented on a monthly basis generating $478,000 annually, according to the listing for sale. Seacliff could not immediately be reached for comment. Alanna Kelly Longtime Joe Rich resident Ralph Ormerod says it started to hail Monday night, which quickly turned to snow and now is rushing water. He lives in Joe Rich, directly above where a large section of Highway 33 let go into Mission Creek on Tuesday. Ormerod has lived on Huckleberry Road for 20 years and says there have been two slides in the past 10 days. This is the first slide we have had directly below our property. The one we had two weeks ago (was) more towards the switchback (on Highway 33), he said. Ormerod spent much of this morning diverting water around his home. Everyone is trying to do something to have it go around their house rather than through, he said. We are feeding the water down there. A wildfire occurred just below his home two years ago, which destroyed many of the trees in the area. Ormerod took Castanet on a hike through the forest to show how water is running through the hill down to Highway 33 and also pooling in some areas. Obviously, next to Highway 33, below us where the fire was, you dont really have the amount of absorption in the ground that we used to have, said Ormerod. Two people living at Heartland RV Park said they first heard about the slide at 6 a.m. All we knew was a slide came down somewhere, and the bus couldnt show up, said Sandrina Chartrand. Chartrand was told the school bus would not be picking students up on Highway 33 near Heartland Ranch and instead would be picking them up at the corner of Highway 33 and Goudie Road. The highway is gone... its gone, she said. The two slides are on either side of where she lives, and the ground is saturated and looks unstable, she added. Photo: The Canadian Press/file photo Family and supporters of a young Indigenous man shot and killed on a Saskatchewan farm used the international stage of the United Nations Tuesday to advocate for change in the criminal justice system. A side event at the United Nations Permanent Forum on Indigenous Issues in New York focused on the death of 22-year-old Colten Boushie and his family's experience with police and the courts. Farmer Gerald Stanley was acquitted in Boushie's August 2016 death earlier this year, sparking rallies and outrage across the country. Boushie's cousin Jade Tootoosis said silently sitting in the courtroom during the trial "was the most traumatic thing" for the family. When the verdict came out, she said her "world just crumbled." "Ultimately, I wanted to have hope that something would come of this, that Indigenous people, that we are not just seen as criminals like they continue (to make) my brother out to be," Tootoosis said. Boushie, who was a member of the Red Pheasant First Nation, and four other young people drove onto Stanley's farm near Biggar, Sask., in 2016. During the trial, Boushie's friends told court they were looking for help with a flat tire. But Stanley testified he thought the group was trying to steal an all-terrain vehicle. He said he fired warning shots to scare them away and the gun accidentally went off again when he went to pull the keys from their SUV. Boushie was shot in the back of the head as he sat in the front seat. Tootoosis was part of a delegation that included Boushie's mother, Debbie Baptiste, his uncle Alvin Baptiste, Saskatchewan lawyer Eleanore Sunchild, the family's lawyer Chris Murphy and former Red Pheasant First Nation chief Sheldon Wuttunee. The group criticized the jury selection process, which resulted in no visibly Indigenous jurors, the Crown's communication with the family and the RCMP investigation into Boushie's death. "Justice was not served through the legal system," Wuttunee said. Tootoosis said the family wanted to share their story but also advocate for all Indigenous people who have dealt with racism and the court system. She said her cousin's death showed it is no longer an Indigenous issue or a Canadian issue it is a human rights issue. "We are entitled to justice, fairness and equality, but it is denied," she said. Stanley pleaded guilty Monday to unsafe storage of an unrestricted firearm and was fined $3,000. He received a 10-year ban on possessing a firearm and forfeited his guns. Tootoosis said it showed that an Indigenous life is worth less than an all-terrain vehicle. "He was shot in the back of the head, executed, because this white man saw a quad was worth more than his life. We are human beings," she said. Seventy-four educators and economic and workforce development professionals have been awarded certificates as the first graduates of TNTrained, an initiative of the College System of Tennessee and its partners, the state Department of Economic and Community Development and the state Department of Labor and Workforce Development.TNTraineds mission is to "create a unified approach to recruiting and retaining businesses and jobs to the state by providing professionals in public higher education and state agencies with a common knowledge base of practices, strategies and skills for working with industries considering Tennessee for new locations and expansions." The program, led by the College Systems Office of Economic and Community Development, also developed a toolbox of resources for graduates to use as they work together in recruiting business."The program will make it easier for the state agencies in charge of recruiting new business and industry to pull in the resources of the states community and technical colleges earlier in the recruitment process.The colleges are often involved in providing specialized training for employees and potential employees of new industries," officials said.The inaugural class of TNTrained students opened Jan. 31 for 40 hours of training, spread over four separate sessions during the next 2 and one-half months. The class concluded April 9 when the students gathered at Tennessee College of Applied Technology Murfreesboros new Smyrna Campus to present their capstone projects and receive their certificates.Addressing the graduates were Tennessee Board of Regents Chancellor Flora W. Tydings, Tennessee Economic and Community Development Commissioner Bob Rolfe, Labor and Workforce Development Commissioner Burns Phillips and TBR Vice Chancellor for Economic and Community Development Carol Puryear. The Board of Regents governs the systems 13 community colleges and 27 colleges of applied technology.The graduates included 64 administrators, instructors and staff from the community and technical colleges, including 10 college presidents, five officials from the Department of Economic and Community Development, two from the Department of Labor and Workforce Development, two from the TBR system office and one from the University of Tennessee Center for Industrial Services.The capstone projects were case studies in economic development projects. Students worked in small teams during the preceding sessions to plan how they would work with specific industrial prospects, then presented their plans at the final session.Chancellor Tydings thanked the graduates and the College Systems state partners, including the two commissioners, for their commitment and support for TNTrained. Thanks to the hard work of those in this room, a system approach to workforce development has been developed. With your efforts, TNTrained has created the foundation for how we as a system will advance a unified approach to attracting and retaining business and industry. Developing a shared culture and language that leverages the strengths of your institution or department is one of the best pillars that you have built. The goal is to provide the best workforce development program in the world. TNTrained and the institutions that make this brand strong stand as a statewide system that uses a common process and shared tools and that has the ability to create relevant training for industry at a moments notice, the chancellor said.Commissioner Phillips agreed. This is a great day and this is a great group of people. I would suspect that we are one of the first states as we are in many things to do something like this. It is incredibly important and so very much needed. Congratulations to all of you, he said.Commissioner Rolfe said TNTrained is the latest in a line of game changers in Tennessee economic development. In todays world, recruiting new companies has become enormously competitive. Whats different about today is, when we go to recruit these companies with our colleagues inside of ECD, we now include Labor and Workforce Development and TBR. What Im so excited about is we include your professionals and your teams on the front end.Vice Chancellor Puryear, who helped develop TNTrained, told the graduates, I started the session in January by saying we had the best workforce leaders in the room. As I stand here today and after watching the presentations, I know beyond a shadow of a doubt, you are the best and I am proud to have been a part of the TNTrained sessions with you.Front-end involvement by colleges and universities is important, the officials agreed, because companies are focused on education and quality of the workforce as they decide where to invest in new or expanded locations.For example, when the Belgian manufacturer Van Hool NV announced its decision last week to build its first U.S. manufacturing plant in Morristown, Tn., CEO Filip Van Hool said, The presence of highly regarded technical colleges and well-trained workers in Hamblen County, together with the support and cooperation of all parties involved, convinced the Van Hool executive board to make the largest investment outside Belgium in the companys 71-year history."The company is investing $47 million in a facility to manufacture public transit and commuter vehicles for U.S. transit agencies. The decision will create 640 jobs in the Morristown area over five years. Guest Commentary Audio Article This is a short history of the Morgan family farm before the possible development of the remaining 49 acres east of Chesterton. Jesse and Jane Morgan arrived in Northwest Indiana in 1833 after traveling through Ohio, northern Indiana, stopping off in LaPorte County for a... Echoes of the Past Audio Article 10 Years Ago Wednesday, Sept. 28, 2011 Bethlehem Lutheran Church will host a wellness screening event. . . CHS girls soccer team beats LaPorte 5-0 and clinches a share of the DAC title. Scoring goals are Rosie Biehl (2), Hannah Kollar (2), and Sam... Voice of the People I can drive on the left lane of Ind. 49 and not have to deal with the truck traffic any more. I dont think I know you Jim Ton but apparently youre the one that made this happen. My life is a little better now.... 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... Andrews says he and some of his five co-founders most with genetic science backgrounds sketched out the idea while enjoying a glass of wine at an oncology conference. Andrews, who led genetic science at Thermo Scientific and founded a biotech venture capital firm in 2015, says they conducted trials with 500 people and identified 10,000 pieces of genetic data that affect taste perception. They trimmed that down to 19 genes and alleles by choosing ones that had appeared in multiple past scientific studies and then compared them with how trial participants answered 100 food and wine questions: Do you like your coffee black? Do you love compote with your cheese? From all this data, they created eight wine flavor profiles with help from consulting winemakers including Nils Venge and Ed Zbragia. Current customers answer just 12 questions and an algorithm crunches the answers and gene data. "It's fun and it actually works," says Andrews. According to the state, insurers in the program are supposed to provide members certain access to primary care doctors, behavioral health providers, dentists, obstetricians/gynecologists, hospitals, specialists and pharmacies. Members should be able to see those providers within certain time frames and not have to travel beyond certain distances. Throughout the grocery industry, in Chicago and nationally, retailers have been ramping up mobile ordering, delivery and pickup options for increasingly tech-savvy consumers on the go. The self-scanning technology is yet another option for shoppers who don't want to deal with lines at checkout, said Meijer spokesman Frank Guglielmi. The old-fashioned way of paying for groceries will still be available. "I've spent the last few days in Philadelphia with my leadership team listening to the community, learning what we did wrong and the steps we need to take to fix it," Starbucks CEO Kevin Johnson said in a news release Tuesday. "While this is not limited to Starbucks, we're committed to being a part of the solution. Closing our stores for racial bias training is just one step in a journey that requires dedication from every level of our company and partnerships in our local communities." In January, when the Tribune reported that plans for a supertall skyscraper next to Tribune Tower were in the works, Ald. Brendan Reilly, 42nd, indicated a general openness to the project's height but reserved the right to press for design changes and lower the number of parking spaces. At the time, the plans called for the new skyscraper to rise 1,388 feet, a foot shorter than Trump Tower. Since then, the plans grew, though not, the developers insisted, because of a desire to top the tower built by the current president. Starbucks spokeswoman Jaime Riley said in an emailed statement that the company had offered unconscious bias training to corporate employees, though not to workers in the store, but could not offer any further detail about the training format. It has the potential, at least, to advance how the training is done: The company said it would be guided by several heavyweight names on racial bias issues, including former U.S. Attorney General Eric Holder; NAACP Legal Defense and Education Fund president Sherrilyn Ifill; Equal Justice Initiative founder Bryan Stevenson and Anti-Defamation League CEO Jonathan Greenblatt. They will also help measure its effectiveness, a critical issue that training experts said is often lacking in many diversity training programs. Early bird tickets for adults will be $10 each and go on sale April 23. Only 100 tickets will be available. Traditionally, tickets have been $20. Early bird tickets for students, senior citizens and children 6-11 will also be available for $5 each. Children 5 and younger are admitted free. Shakespeare's "Macbeth" has been modern-dressed (and cussed-up) many times on stage and screen. The Chicago Shakespeare Theater, which presented a sizzling update in 2009, will offer another new take on the Scottish play beginning April 25. But Nordic crime stalwart Jo Nesbo sets his novel's version in 1970s drugged-up, industrial England. Written in hardboiled noir style, the book casts Macbeth, who was sexually abused in an orphanage and became hooked on speed as a teenager, as respected head of the SWAT unit. His conniving wife Lady, "who once supported myself on the oldest profession in the world," owns the swanky Inverness Casino. Owing to what she sees as Macbeth's central flaw, his "lack of evil," she has her work cut out for her in spurring him to kill Duncan, the honorable chief of police. All hell breaks loose think of Kurosawa after Duncan is found with a dagger in his neck and Macbeth assumes his job. "I put my hand on her shoulder and said, 'I'm taking care of this cute little guy,'" Joseph recalled of the day in 2004 when she led the teen mom to the baby in his incubator. "I said, 'You know that you saved his life, right? I don't want you to hang your head. You gave him the best chance you could,'" Joseph recalled. "All of a sudden, she went from looking down to up at me, and we just connected." What's in your egg. Labels like cage-free are targeted at meat, dairy and eggs. Those terms may conjure up images of small Norman Rockwell-esque farms, but again, Goldstein and Karr say that only organic products have specific guidelines about animal welfare and access to outside. Nonorganic cage-free only means the hens aren't confined in cages, but they could live in a crowded room with tens of thousands of birds. Nonorganic pasture-raised means birds have access to the outside, but they may not go, and that "pasture" could be a screened-in porch with a concrete floor. Carter recalls the first boutique and remembers, "We were bare, but we were determined." "We only had 10 racks of dresses, one 6-foot table of shoes, and one 6-foot table of jewelry," she said. "Maybe 20 girls showed up, and we were kind of devastated. So we let the girls (each) take two dresses. We were happy to give it to them but sad that more girls didn't come." The fine U.S. District Judge Virginia Kendall hit Joel Brodsky currently representing Chicago police Officer Robert Rialmo in a high-profile police shooting case with may be the largest in Chicago federal court history payable to the district court itself, said Brodsky's friend and attorney Joseph "The Shark" Lopez. Lopez said he will ask a federal appeals court to halt enforcement of the order as he prepares an appeal. "My husband is probably the only person in the entire history of the United States who is serving any kind of sentence for simply asking for campaign contributions," Blagojevich told host Tucker Carlson during the brief interview. The disgraced governor was a contestant on Trump's program "The Celebrity Apprentice" in 2010 as he faced charges that he tried to sell off President Barack Obama's Senate seat. You should have been outraged when you saw the video of police in Grand Rapids, Mich., approach 11-year-old Honestie Hodges with their guns drawn as she walked out of her home headed to the store. Police had swarmed the house looking for an older woman, and handcuffed the child even as she cried for them to stop. At Porter's 2003 trial, prosecutors called four eyewitnesses to testify about who killed Harrison and all recanted previous identifications of Porter. The key witness, a teenager, said he was coerced by authorities to ID Porter. Prosecutors had no physical evidence pointing to Porter. And Porter, who is average height and was overweight at the time, did not match the description of the shooter, whom witnesses called tall and lanky. He was described as 19 to 25 years old, about 5-foot-8, 160 pounds with a light brown complexion and short black facial hair. He was wearing a black hoodie with gold writing and tan pants. The burglars drove the car through the front of the store, got out and grabbed merchandise from the shelves, police said. "It seems to me that leadership at times demands that people stand up for what's right and educate those they serve," he said. "It is not just a matter of taking a poll on where people are; moral leadership that we expect of those we elect to office requires them at times to say what is right. And that, I think, is important for them to consider at this moment." The Independent Police Review Authority ruled the shooting justified because Officer Petain Navez thought Fields had a gun and feared for his life when he opened fire. Fields was changing his car's license plate in his garage when he was shot in the abdomen. But Etter and his union apparently interpreted the meeting differently. Nearly two months later, according to district officials, the vice president of the local teachers union sent an email to the entire district faculty and staff claiming "school leaders treated Mr. Etter in a discriminatory manner," according to an open letter released in response the next day by Kellenberger and Superintendent Todd Stirn. In another alleged scheme, Lazzara convinced Nuveen to pay for box seats to a Cubs game at Wrigley Field and a skybox for a Bears game at Soldier Field by falsely telling her employer that the tickets would be "provided to the winners of a charity auction to which the company had donated," according to the charges. Garcia and Ortiz capitalized on those changes last month by running an aggressive campaign that alleged Dan Burke was out of touch with his district. Ald. Burke was asked Monday if he was worried about winning re-election in the face of those same progressive voices. "It's never been any problem, any acts of gang violence or anything like that, that should restrict me from trying to do shows, so I'm just trying to get to the root of the problem, whether I have to hire more security or whatever the case may be," Wright said. "If there were eight, nine, 10 officers who had gotten the loans and they were all moving to Chatham I would be more frustrated," Moore said. "But just two, I really want to see the city do more outreach and see if we can get people moving into some of these other neighborhoods in the coming months." Emanuel would be unlikely to allow an elected board to have that kind of power. After a competing proposal was introduced by the Grassroots Alliance for Police Accountability to allow the police superintendent and command staff to run the day-to-day operations of the department while an elected commission got final say on policy decisions, Reboyras brought forward two of his own ordinances that would allow the oversight board to play a more advisory role. In contrast, Biss, the Democratic runner-up with 26.6 percent of the vote, raised $5.5 million to go with $1.6 million he already had in his campaign fund. Biss spent $7.2 million, with $4.5 million used for TV ads and another $500,000 on digital advertising as he sought to appeal to younger voters. His spending, based on the more than 337,000 ballots he received, amounted to $21.56 per vote. California's all-Democratic leadership has positioned the state as the national leader in battling the Trump administration, especially on immigration issues. Government leaders at the state level and in big cities have condemned mass raids and deportation efforts, the president's call for a border-spanning wall with Mexico and the attorney general's "zero tolerance" order to prosecute people caught illegally entering the United States for the first time. Sen. John McCain, R-Ariz., speaks to reporters on Capitol Hill on Oct. 31, 2017. McCain's office said April 16, 2018, that he is in stable condition in Phoenix after intestinal surgery. (Susan Walsh / AP) "I will not be resigning the governor's office," he said. "In three weeks, this matter will go to a court of law, where it belongs and where the facts will prove my innocence. Until then, I will do what the people of Missouri sent me here to do: to serve them and work hard on their behalf." The police were criticized for their handling of the situation. On Monday, the department referred to the police commissioner's Facebook Live video from Saturday. Commissioner Richard Ross said in the video that one or both of the men asked to use the restroom but had not purchased anything. An employee said Starbucks company policy was to refuse the use of the restrooms to non-customers and asked the men to leave, according to Ross. The employee called the police when they refused. By law, Gov. Tom Wolf must decide within 10 days of Dent's departure when to hold a special election. It would have to be at least 60 days after Dent's departure. That would mean any vote to fill the seat would happen well after Pennsylvania's May primary, and in July at the earliest. At that point, there would be less than six months left in the term, with Congress planning to be in recess for much of that time. One option that would spare the state added expense but leave the district without a representative would be to hold the special election concurrently with November's general election. That's what happened in Philadelphia after Rep. Chaka Fattah was convicted on corruption charges in 2016. This me-first approach to taxation is particularly true when it comes to property taxes, which are the main basis for public school funding in affluent communities. While overall, the federal government provides only about 9.3 percent of funding for public schools, with the rest pretty much split between state and local sources, this obscures sizable variation across states and localities. South Dakota, for example, receives about 15 percent of its public school funding from the U.S. government, while school budgets in New Jersey and Connecticut (two of the five richest states) rely on 4.1 percent federal funding. The mix of state and local dollars varies significantly as well. Illinois schools, for example, rest on local funding for 65 percent of their budget (and the state for 26 percent), while Hawaii is at the other extreme, with 84 percent state funding and only 2.5 percent local. "The big difference is that when it was time to make hard choices and hard decisions, Indiana buckled down and made them," he said. "Illinois kicked the can down the road. When all that pension stuff was starting to bubble up and nobody did anything in Illinois, we had (former) Gov. Mitch Daniels to make those hard decisions." But other Republicans remain silent. After all, even as polling shows 48 percent of Missouri voters think their governor should resign, that position is not shared by self-identified Republicans, 58 percent of whom say he should remain on the job. Greitens received a standing ovation at a fundraiser held last weekend and rumors are flying that local donors are threatening to withhold support from Republicans who speak out against their governor. That in turn led Missouri's Democratic Sen. Claire McCaskill who is running for re-election this fall to take to Twitter: "That is rampant corruption. Hope someone in law enforcement investigates." "Michael Cohen never represented me in any legal matter," he said. "I never retained his services, I never received an invoice, I never paid Michael Cohen for legal fees. I did have occasional brief conversations with Michael Cohen he's a great attorney about legal questions I had. Or I was looking for input and perspective. My discussions with Michael Cohen never rose to any level that I needed to tell anyone that I was asking him questions, and to be absolutely clear, they never involved any matter, any sorry to disappoint so many matter between me, a third party, a third group at all. And my questions exclusively almost focused on real estate. I have said many times on air, I hate the stock market I prefer real estate. Michael knows real estate. So in response to all the wild speculation, I want to set the record straight here tonight." From the cries for more education money, I sense our schools are having a tough enough job just handling the current course load. And, as I recently read in the Tribune, almost one half of the proposed $3.4 billion education appropriation would go toward pensions. Isn't that unsustainable situation important? I would think that should be a key topic of discussion. (Teachers union vote? Check!) Granted, it appears even the military experts seem to be of the same opinion as President Donald Trump, but then again, what pressures may they be facing from within, based on this man's history during his term of office? Is what he seeks just more self-gratification of his supposed leadership? Or can we actually take his word at face value for once? He has put himself and the rest of us in this quandary, and now it appears we must live with this constant uncertainty. It shouldn't have to be like that. Yet, it appears he has no one else to blame than himself, and maybe so do we. 3214 N. Southport Ave., No. 3N, Chicago: $1,299,000 | Listed: Aug. 18, 2021 This three-bedroom home has two full bathrooms, one half-bath, and crown molding. The kitchen has hardwood flooring, fresh tile backsplash, a pantry, an island and space for a table. An open concept living and dining room on the main level features wainscoting and a fireplace. A separate family room and a breakfast nook are also on the main level, and an upper-level living room can be converted into a fourth bedroom. This home has five private outdoor areas, including a composite rooftop deck, a front porch, an enclosed brick space thats turf and tile, and two rear decks. A wet bar with a wine refrigerator, a storage room, and garage parking complete this home. Agent: Tommy Choi, Keller Williams, 773-851-5840 *Some listing photos are virtually staged, meaning they have been digitally altered to represent different furnishing or decorating options. To feature your luxury listing of $800,000 or more in Chicago Tribunes Dream Homes, send listing information and high-res photos to ctc-realestate@chicagotribune.com. Join our Chicago Dream Homes Facebook group for more luxury listings and real estate news. "They are made from human-grade ingredients, and yes, I've actually tasted them, " De La Paz said. "They kind of taste like bland, healthy cookies. But there are a couple types that are really good, so when I give those to my dog, Rascal, sometimes we have to share." A former student was also accusing James of having sex with her when she was underage in the 1990s and photographing her naked, the Beacon-News reported in December. A motion by prosecutors on the agenda for the Feb. 15 hearing James skipped sought to admit her testimony as other evidence, along with a sampling of uncharged items found on James' laptop computer, including thousands of photos and videos of child pornography. That motion was still pending. During the course of the next year, depending on the plan the workers choose, employees would pay between 10 percent and 12.75 percent of their health plan premiums. By the end of 2019, that percentage would increase to 17.5 percent. Souvannarath confessed to the plot, a senior police official told The Associated Press in 2015. The senior police official, who spoke on the condition of anonymity because he was not authorized to speak publicly, said Souvannarath confessed after she was arrested at the Halifax airport and that she had prepared a number of pronouncements to be posted on Twitter after her death. Shepherd also was arrested at the airport as he waited for his friend's arrival. At the local level, he said, religion is treated with more sensitivity than at the national level, where the press tends to fall into the more "familiar political model" that shapes every question with a conservative or liberal bent. If the Catholic Church speaks out about immigration, for example, "we can expect a positive response by the media," Malloy noted. "But if we get into the more personal and moral family issues, you can feel the chill come through the door." Emily Nakiganda, an eighth grader from Carpentersville who has attended St. Anne since the third grade, said the school has challenged her each day to become a better student, while Principal Dawn Kapka said she sees many students use the lessons they learn at St. Anne in their lives outside of school. At the time of his arrest two years ago, authorities said that Damiano stole about 1,800 prescription hydrocodone pills, valued at about $1,770, while he was working as a pharmacy technician at a Woodstock Walgreens. The thefts occurred between October and December 2015, officials said. The pay stub Gee submitted differed from one provided by the Village of Robbins on the dates worked, hourly pay rate, hours worked, current pay for the period and year-to-date pay, prosecutors said. Her pay stub also lacked a village watermark and was formatted differently than official Robbins pay stubs, the complaint states. Calvary Assembly of God: 18620 Governors Hwy. Three free workshops to help participants in the Royal Ranger Derby Race cut out and assemble a wooden car will be held from 9:30 a.m. to noon April 14, from 7 p.m. to 9 p.m. April 20 and from 9:30 a.m. to noon April 21. Royal Ranger Derby Race Day will be from 9 a.m. to 1:30 p.m. April 28. Registration is $10. The event includes door prizes and food for sale. Trophies and plaques will be awarded for speed and design to winners in every age group. Information: 708-957-0986 or www.calvaryflossmoor.com. "It's just ironic that after all of the attempts that have been made to get the state and the county involved in the mismanagement taking place in the city of Harvey, that this is where (Sen. Napoleon Harris) wants to get involved," said Alderman Chris Clark, a critic of Mayor Eric Kellogg's administration. "And instead of protecting the pension funds, it appears that he's making an effort to protect the people who were responsible for the problem in the first place." He had defrauded his in-laws out of hundreds of thousands of dollars by forging their signatures on letters and checks, allowing the transfer of their money into his business checking account, according to the government. Glick convinced one family to pay him $700,000 in fees for his services, even though, unbeknownst to them, he had already misappropriated hundreds of thousands of dollars from them, the U.S. attorney said in a news release at the time he was charged. "She then was helped to get to Lockport and from there to the Beebe farm, which was just northeast of Crete," McClellan said, adding that it happened in 1842 instead of 1843 as historians previously believed. The rural area also was home to the Beebe-Beach, Cushing, Cook, Batchelder, Brown and Wood families, all of whom vowed to aid the fugitives. They were all part of the Congregational Church, which had a long-standing reputation as a nest for abolitionists willing to help fugitives. Your problem with the city of Chicago, the state and Cook County are these overpaid salaries and then you have pension money and the rest of it. That's where to cut corners. These people are getting $200,000 and $300,000 a year. That's uncalled for. Cut there. All of you should quit taxing everybody to death. Look at House Speaker Mike Madigan taxing the people in the state. He should be impeached. "We are not against the Second Amendment, we are not 'trying to take your guns,' we are not trying to take away your freedom," a series of Tweets posted last week said. "We are trying to make it so that these recent mass shootings and everyday gun violence happening all across America becomes a rarity and keep it from becoming the norm." Aschenbrenner has a list of nearly 1,000 seniors to whom she sends alerts and newsletters to keep them posted on the latest scams, she said. But the easiest way to not get scammed, she said, is to not answer the phone when it is an unknown number. Let voicemail or the answering machine pick it up, she said. Redeemer, at the northwest corner of St. Charles Road and Kenilworth Avenue, first came to the city last July for permission to convert land around its Redeemer Center north of St. Charles between Kenilworth and Arlington Avenue into six residential lots. A key part of the plan is to replace the existing large parking lot with a smaller lot wrapping around the west and south sides of the center. According to the proposed policy change, should ETHS staff feel that content is inappropriate, or they must censor or confiscate a student publication, "school officials shall have the burden of showing justification without undue delay prior to a limitation of student expression under the Speech Rights of Student Journalists Act. The superintendent or designee shall develop written procedures to implement this policy." Adrian V. Croitor, 40, of the 2000 block of West Farwell Avenue, Chicago, was charged with aggravated driving under the influence of alcohol, improper lane usage, two counts of aggravated fleeing and eluding, failure to reduce speed to avoid a crash and driving an uninsured motor vehicle after an incident at 1:11 a.m. on April 9 near the intersection of Green Bay Road, police said. For Jordanian-born Samaher Saleh, the journey to citizenship started when she and her U.S.-born husband Omar met in Jordan and later married. Semaher Saleh accompanied her husband back to the U.S. about decade ago. Two of the couple's four children were on hand Monday to watch their mother become a U.S. citizen. All Pace 213 buses at the northern end of the route would travel west on Lake Cook Road to Northbrook Court. After reaching Northbrook Court, the buses would continue north on Route 41 to Central Avenue in Highland Park, where they would turn off the highway and travel east to the Metra station. According to Florip, there is additional video from officers who ran out of the station after the officer radioed, "Shots fired, I'm involved," which can be heard twice in the video released Tuesday. Lyons can also be heard yelling after he gets out of the squad car for the suspect to "get down," and the BB gun Prado allegedly carried can be seen in the street. "We couldn't be more thrilled to be back in this area. We really want to make Naperville the flagship location," she said. "The brand is trying to emulate the experience in Naperville. The patio part of the experience, with windows and natural light, is important. We have an olive tree that will be inside the restaurants. It creates that courtyard feeling in Naples of sitting at the piazza and watching people coming in and out." Beginning around 2000 and continuing through Dec. 19, 2011, he conspired with an independent contractor to falsify information supplied to the IRS in the Employer's Quarterly Federal Tax Return (Form 941) filed by the companies, as well as in false W-2 forms the companies provided to their employees and the IRS, according to the statement. " 'A Chorus Line' is a way of giving those kids in this school a shout out to all they devote to the fine arts," she said. "There isn't another musical that makes that statement and highlights what people do because they love it . It really is a tribute to all of our kids, told through fictional characters." A lunch will follow at noon at Iannelli Studios, 255 N. Northwest Highway, the former home and studio of artist Alfonso Iannelli who contributed to the design of the Pickwick and many of its interior and exterior features, the Kalo Foundation said. April Mendez, vice president of programs for Fresh Coast, said the group will hold one final planning meeting with artists who are fashioning the murals. She said the work should be completed in May and June. Residents could start enjoying the project by July or August, she said. Fresh Coast has done about 20 similar projects across the country. What would be two full days of filming had begun on a TV pilot for a still unnamed situation comedy described as being similar to "The Office" but set in a gym. Its writer, Donovan West, of Houston, hopes the sitcom will be picked up by Amazon, Netflix, or Hulu, or perhaps even one of the major TV stations. Assistant U.S. Attorney Jill Koster on Monday said Snyder and his defense attorney, Jackie Bennett Jr., have failed to show how emails they say were subject to attorney-client privilege but seen by trial attorneys is grounds to dismiss the charges against the Portage mayor for infringing on his constitutional rights. Trump's constant branding of real events as fake has squandered U.S. credibility. When the United States correctly tries to discredit others' disinformation and propaganda, it is now the country that cried wolf. A search of the website Factbase, which aggregates all the president's words, shows that Trump has used the "fake news" label more than 350 times since December 2016. This month alone, he has used it to cast doubt on topics including Syria, special counsel Robert S. Mueller III, China, North Korea, the North American Free Trade Agreement, Attorney General Jeff Sessions and Sinclair Broadcasting. "It has been an honor to serve the Vernon Hills community as village manager the past four years. I leave my position with a great sense of accomplishment and appreciation," Kalmar said in the statement attached to his separation agreement. "I want to specifically thank all the current and former village board members I have worked with over the years for their guidance and support, the many committee members and the outstanding Vernon Hills village employees who I have had the honor of working with and, finally, the residents of the village for their support and patience as we worked to provide the highest levels of service possible." Irene Smith said she was taken by surprise when she learned last month she had been named the 2018 Woman of the Year by the Winnetka-Northfield Chamber of Commerce. Scott Myers, the Chamber's 2018 Man of the Year, said he was humbled and a little embarrassed at learning of his award. Pueblo Means Business looks to open one-stop-shops for businesses Efforts to create a "one-stop shop" for those looking to start a business in Pueblo County are expected to come to fruition some time in 2022. You are here: Arts The cultural relics authority of northwest China's Shaanxi Province is formulating a plan to repair a terracotta warrior statue whose thumb was stolen by a member of the public while on display at a Philadelphia museum last year. The statue, which dates back to at least 209 B.C., has already been returned to China, along with the recovered thumb, according to the Shaanxi Provincial Cultural Relics Bureau. Last year, a 24-year-old American man stole the thumb from the statue when it was on display at the Franklin Institute in Pennsylvania. "The incident was unusual, but the bureau will not end overseas displays and other activities of its cultural relics," said Zhou Kuiying, the bureau's deputy director. Stricter security measures will be made for future displays, he added. Participants attend the event "Development Dimensions of the Sharing Economy -- Learnings from China" at Palais des Nations in Geneva, Switzerland, on April 16, 2018. Representatives of Chinese companies shared on Monday their experience in sharing economy at the event, part of the E-Commerce Week organized by the United Nations Conference on Trade and Development (UNCTAD). (Xinhua/Xu Jinquan) Didi Chuxing, a major ride-sharing company from China that provides transportation services for hundreds of millions of users, on Monday was used to illustrate what is the "sharing economy" during a UN event in Geneva. "Didi is so well known in China. In 2017, Didi completed 7.4 billion rides. It has 450 million users in China and in only five years Didi has become a huge platform," said Jianhua Li, Chief Development Officer of Didi Chuxing, at an event titled "Development Dimensions of the Sharing Economy -- Learnings from China". "We started as a taxi-connecting platform. In China, you can make a reservation through the Didi app," he said. "Development Dimensions of Digital Platforms," is the theme of the fourth E-Commerce Week organized by the United Nations Conference on Trade and Development (UNCTAD) which started Monday. It explores the growing role of digital platforms and concrete steps to harnessing these evolving technologies for sustainable development. UNCTAD said that it has been estimated that the so-called "sharing economy" will surge from 14 billion U.S. dollars in 2014 to 335 billion U.S. dollars by 2025, and the interest in its implications for development is also surging. "Most services relating to the 'sharing economy' use digital platforms to achieve a more efficient utilization ('sharing') of physical assets (e.g. house, car, physical space, machinery, clothes) or time," says UNCTAD in a statement. It can be applied to cooking, cleaning, or running errands, as well as knowledge and know-how. Often, sharing economy activities involve an exchange of money as well as the creation of some employment. "At Didi, we don't have cars, we connect people," said Li, noting that development is key to the company. "We have about 10,000 employed in the company who are engineers," said Li. "We think what we are doing is consistent with the goals of the United Nations and with the Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs)." "Some people are surprised that this platform has provided 21 million jobs opportunities," said Li. "We pay people weekly... so we can help reduce poverty and have a positive impact on the general economic environment." The sharing economy can meet "people's increasing demand for a better life" as well as the requirement for "a coordinated development among economy, society and nature," and thus can become a key force in China's economic growth and social development, according to an official from China Cyberspace Administration at the event. China has given the greenlight to "Internet hospitals" but stressed that safety is the bottom line. This message was disclosed at a regular government policy press conference held by the State Council Information Office Monday. "Medical institutes can set up Internet hospitals to offer approved services. Internet companies can also operate Internet hospitals but have to anchor their services to brick-and-mortar hospitals," said Jiao Yahui, an official with the National Health Commission. She said efforts would be sped up to push government guidelines on online medical services, drawing up requirements and procedures to apply for running Internet hospitals. The move is expected to drive the country's fast-developing Internet medical care sector to new heights. Online consulting sites set up by tech startups, such as haodf.com and chunyuyisheng.com, have become very popular in China in recent years. Through websites or phone apps, people can choose the best doctors across the country to consult on their health concerns. Based on uploaded medical scans and descriptions, the doctors can give advice but they need to see the patients in person to authorize the diagnosis, prescribe drugs or order treatment. Jiao told the press conference that it was now allowed for patients of "certain" chronic or common diseases to use the Internet to complete hospital return visits, which means following up treatment with the doctors they have seen in person. "Supervision of the online and off-line services is combined," Jiao said. "We must strictly guard the bottom line of safety." Last week, the State Council approved a plan to expand the use of Internet technologies to boost the medical sector. Big hospitals are asked to provide online services for appointments, checking examination results and others. Online medicine should cover all medical unions and county-level hospitals to connect better medical resources in east China with the demands of central and western areas. Jiao said the measures were aimed at saving on hospital trips. "Let the information run (the errands) instead," she said. Yu Xuejun, another National Health Commission official, said the measures would be taken to safeguard patient privacy and data safety. Ireland will start exporting beef to China very shortly, announced the Irish agriculture minister on Monday. The announcement was made by Michael Creed, Minister for the Department of Agriculture, Food and the Marine (DAFM), in a press release posted on the DAFM website. He said that DAFM will complete the final technicalities to allow the export to commence in the coming weeks. With the commencement of the Irish beef exports to China, Ireland will become one of the first European Union (EU) countries to gain the access to the Chinese beef market which was closed for the beef exports from the EU about 17 years ago following a breakout of mad cow disease in Europe. In early 2016, Hungary became the first EU member state allowed to export beef to China. Creed viewed the opening of the Chinese beef market for Ireland as "an excellent opportunity" for the Irish beef sector. He said that opening and developing new markets is a key part of the Irish government's response to the uncertainties arising from Brexit. "Our agri-food exports to China have increased roughly five-fold from around 200 million euros (about 247 million U.S. dollars ) to nearly one billion euros last year," said Creed, adding that "this has been a remarkable achievement and underlines the importance of the Chinese market". According to the DAFM, China's consumption for quality imported beef is expected to rise significantly, driven by increasing urbanization, higher disposable incomes and health awareness. (1 euro=1.238 U.S. dollars) The names of 3,607 members of the Imperial Japanese Army's (IJA) clandestine Unit 731, known for conducting heinous live germ and chemical warfare experiments on thousands of Chinese victims, have been disclosed by the National Archives of Japan, a research professor said Monday. "It is the first time that almost all the real names of the unit's members have been unveiled. We will post them on the website so they can be utilized for research," Katsuo Nishiyama, professor emeritus of Shiga University of Medical Science, told a press briefing on the matter Monday. The names of those working at the headquarters of the notorious unit, as well as their ranks and other information including their addresses and family members, are disclosed on the list, which is dated Jan. 1, 1945. The list covers 52 surgeons, 49 engineers, 38 nurses and 1,117 combat medics operating out of the headquarters of the unit, deceptively dubbed the Epidemic Prevention and Water Purification Department of the Kwantung Army. Unit 731 of the IJA was based in the Pingfang district of Harbin, the largest city then in northeast China. The unit was set up at around 1936 and conducted vivisection experiments on live human beings to test germ-releasing bombs and chemical bombs among other criminal atrocities. The unit became Japan's top-secret biological and chemical warfare research base and operated as the nerve center of Japanese biological warfare in China and Southeast Asia during World War II. At least 3,000 people were used for human experimentation by Unit 731 along with a small percentage of Soviets, Mongolians, Koreans, and soldiers of the Allied Forces taken captive. Some of those killed in ways unimaginable were just children. More than 300,000 people across China were killed by Japan's biological weapons during WWII. The first list containing details of Unit 731's war criminals was released in Japan after a request in 2015, but information on the unit's participants was heavily redacted. A declassified list released in January still obscured some of the information of the unit's personnel. The notorious Unit 731 managed to keep its atrocities largely concealed due to the International Military Tribunal for the Far East not prosecuting the unit's commanders under condition they handed over the germ warfare data to the United States. Right wing forces here have also, since the unit's abominable crimes committed before and during WWII, attempted to sequester the facts of the unit, going as far as denying its actual existence. A documentary released on Aug. 13, by Japan's public broadcaster NHK, however, through testimonies of Unit 731 participants and authentic records of the Khabarovsk War Crimes Trials in 1949, presented vividly the cruel and irrefutable historical truth to a public here who knew little of this aspect of the IJA's deplorable war crimes. You are here: China Chinese biologist Xu Tian has given up tenure at Yale University in the US to work as a chair professor at Westlake University in Hangzhou, reports the Zhejiang News. Xu Tian says he made the decision to work on education and innovation, suggesting Westlake University has the potential to provide him with opportunities to explore those areas. Xu has a doctorate from Yale, and served as the vice chair of the Department of Genetics at Yale for 15 years. During his time in Yale, his lab discovered the genes and transduction pathways associated with growth regulation. This has helped contribute to cancer and rare disease diagnosis. Westlake University, a private university, was officially established in Hangzhou earlier this month. It's mandate is to train top level talent and join the ranks of world-class research institutes. The Beijing municipal government signed a framework agreement on continuing poverty alleviation assistance to Hebei province on April 14, and detailed the assistance tasks in the next three years. The city will spend 2.62 billion yuan (US$420 million) on the three-year plan toward poverty alleviation goals by 2020. According to authorities, Beijing has been assigned by the central government to give specific assistance to 89 counties in seven provinces, including 23 counties and districts in Hebei province's Zhangjiakou city, Chengde city and Baoding city. Based on the framework agreement, Beijing and Hebei governments will focus their efforts on areas of high poverty, injecting more funds, recruiting more talents, and implementing more favorable policies and measures. The governments will pay more attention to special groups among the impoverished population, spending over 80 percent of funds on programs for registered poor people. Poverty relief will be primarily provided to people impoverished by illnesses or disabilities and those who can't afford education. Targeted measures will be taken to assist different persons and households based on the approach of classifying the impoverished people into five groups, and specifying the guidelines on strengthening six key poverty alleviation tasks. The Beijing government is also aiming to collaborate with various Beijing-based enterprises and social organizations in joint poverty alleviation efforts. The agreement set seven tasks as priorities. The first task is to make good use of the funds. Authorities are expected to strengthen financial support to poor areas and set up a mechanism for growing the poverty alleviation funds. Second, the governments will provide more assistance in human capital. Government officials from Beijing and Hebei will enhance exchanges with more officials from Beijing dispatched to poor areas to assist or manage specific poverty relief tasks. Technical talents will also be dispatched to provide support in agriculture, education, medical treatment, and volunteer services. The officials and talents will receive relevant training to raise the awareness and practical abilities of helping the poor. Third, the governments will carry out alleviation work through local businesses. Base on the market-oriented principle, Beijing and Hebei will contribute to the construction of a number of special industry bases in poor areas that local people can engage in, and cultivate a number of local cooperative organizations and leading enterprises that help poor people to operate businesses. Fourth, the governments will carry out support in employment. Business exchanges and cooperation in employment and entrepreneurship services will be carried out regularly. Integrated post training and short-term skill training will be provided to the local poor people in need. Fifth, the governments will pair up each other's districts and counties to facilitate direct assistance in poverty alleviation. The 14 districts in Beijing are expected to partner with the 23 counties and districts in Hebei province to help the latter shake off poverty. Sixth, the governments will offer targeted assistance to poor people. They will provide targeted medical treatment to help the registered poor people with major diseases. They will support poor villages in environment improvement and construction of agricultural production facilities. They will improve basic medical facilities and support the construction of community-level public cultural projects in poor areas. The governments are also encouraging the integration of poverty relief with ecological protection and restoration. Seventh, Beijing and Hebei will improve overall planning of poverty alleviation and enhance social mobilization for the next six years. A work platform will be established to encourage various private organizations and citizens to participate in the tasks and offer assistance to poverty relief, and to help people with medical conditions and disabilities, the elderly, and people without sufficient education. Prosecutors in northern China have accused a doctor of damaging the reputation of a pharmaceutical company by posting false information online. The reputation of a pharmaceutical liquor made by Hongmao Pharmaceutical - which the company says is good for health - had been harmed, according to a statement on Sunday from police in Liangcheng county, Inner Mongolia autonomous region. Distributors are demanding refunds, resulting in heavy economic losses for the company, the police said. The company complained to authorities in December that online information calling the liquor a poison was false, and a case was filed on Jan 2. Police found that an article headlined "Chinese magic pharmaceutical liquor is a toxic substance from heaven", written by Tan Qindong, had been widely spread online. Liangcheng police detained Tan on Jan 10 based on what they said was clear evidence, and prosecutors issued an arrest warrant on Jan 25. A police document quoted by Red Star News, an online media portal for Chengdu Economic Daily, said the company claimed to have suffered losses of about 1.42 million yuan ($223,000) because of the article, which led two pharmaceutical distributors and seven individual customers to return the liquor and ask for refunds. According to Red Star News, Tan, 39, lives in Guangzhou, Guangdong province, and holds a master's degree in anesthesiology from Central South University in Changsha, Hunan province. He has a license to practice medicine and was an anesthesiologist at the Third Affiliated Hospital of Southern Medical University. China Monday unveiled three state administrations in the ideological sector, created as part of the Party and state institutional reform. Senior Communist Party of China (CPC) official Huang Kunming attended the ceremonies to launch the State Film Administration, the State Administration of Radio and Television, and the State Administration of Press and Publication -- which doubles as the National Copyright Administration. Their functions used to fall under the one administration of the State Council. The new film and press administrations will now be governed by the Publicity Department of the CPC Central Committee headed by Huang. The television administration remains with the State Council. The film administration, for example, is tasked with supervising film-making, releasing, screening, enforcing film content checks, hosting big film events, and overseeing international exchanges. Huang, a member of the Political Bureau of the CPC Central Committee, said the restructuring showed the need to strengthen the Party's overall leadership in these areas and was good for advancing the ideological governing system and the sector's prosperity. Huang called on efforts to "enhance cultural confidence, be innovative, stick to the correct orientation, place the people at the center of the work and strive for new progress." Syria [Photo/Xinhua] Perhaps the most repulsive, pervasive myth of the Syrian civil war is the idea that the West "did nothing" and let the slaughter continue. In reality, however, there has been an intervention going on since 2011. The West tried intervention and nation building in Iraq and failed, then tried intervention and non-nation building in Libya, and that ended in disaster. Syria was different. Assad had Russia and Iran to fall back on allies, which Saddam and Gaddafi lacked. And the Obama administration didn't calculate that Russia would intervene in favor of Assad to save their naval base in the Mediterranean. It was a strategic miscalculation, as this is the first time the interventionists faced a resistance from another great power. As Britain, France and the United States bomb Syria for an alleged chemical weapons attack, this history is worth repeating. In the most boneheaded policy ever promoted by any Western government, it was Obama's call for Assad to step down that started this crisis. The rebels were supplied with Qatari- and Saudi-funded weaponry, and given diplomatic support by Israel, Turkey and the West. Assad was bolstered by Iran and Russia, both wary of losing their influence in the vast stretch of land extending to the Mediterranean basin. The result has been untold suffering, and it continues. Anyone now shedding tears about the humanitarian crisis needs to remember that none of this would have happened if the Syrian rebels were not armed by the forces which are opposed to Iran and Assad. There would be no revolution, much less a civil war. This has been a pattern: to instigate trouble in places and then intervene. Except, in Syria and Ukraine, Russia had naval bases, and decided to put its foot down rather than risk losing it. The strikes are, needless to mention, on shady legal ground. There were no U.N. votes. There was no U.N. mandate. The Organization for the Prohibition of Chemical Weapons didn't have time to do their investigation before the strikes were called in. The legality of the strikes is dubious and lacks any measurable legitimacy, rendering the constant claim that rule of law is important in international relations hollow. International law remains at the mercy of great power whims. More interesting was the painstaking work from the Brits, French and Americans to notify Russia. No strikes were done near any Russian base, whether in Tartus, Latakia or Khmeimim. The French notified the Russians beforehand for deconfliction, and it is quite possible that that info was conveyed to Assad. It is simply a way to let Assad know that the West is helpless and has to strike, but as long as chemical weapons are not used, Assad can continue to win the war which he is winning anyway. The West has no appetite for a long-term intervention in the Middle East. Assad and Russia know that as well, which is why it is baffling that Assad used these chemical weapons. It defies logic. If I were a military commander advising Assad, why would I tell him to do the one single thing that would bring about Western military intervention? That's not a question I alone ask, but a question taken up by sensible thinkers in the West, including former naval commanders like Admiral Lord West of the United Kingdom. Ultimately, this bombing didn't serve its intended purpose, and only showed how constrained the options are. It is a signal to Assad and the Russians that no one in the West is interested in Syria, and it is merely optics for domestic purposes. It also showed that international laws are meant only to be broken. Finally, it showed that deterrence doesn't really work, and will perhaps not stop the use of chemical weapons in the future either. It was just a waste of cash, a gigantic virtue signaling, full of sound and fury, signifying nothing. Sumantra Maitra is a columnist with China.org.cn. For more information please visit: http://www.china.org.cn/opinion/SumantraMaitra.htm Opinion articles reflect the views of their authors only, not necessarily those of China.org.cn. Flash Chinese President Xi Jinping said on Monday that China would cooperate with the international community in opening up and seek win-win results through cooperation. Xi made the remarks while meeting with Klaus Schwab, founder and executive chairman of the World Economic Forum (WEF), at the Great Hall of the People in Beijing. Currently, the world economy has seen some positive momentum, but many problems faced have not been fundamentally resolved, he said. "The three fundamental contradictions, namely insufficient global growth momentum, lagging global economic governance and imbalance in global development, which as I pointed out in Davos last year, are still prominent," Xi said. Xi said that recently, the trend toward anti-globalization and protectionism had heated up, exacerbating risks and uncertainties in the world economy. The fourth industrial revolution is on the rise, but it also contains many risks and challenges, Xi added. "There are so many problems and challenges in the world," he said. "It is still necessary to respond through equal consultations and strengthened multilateral cooperation." "History has repeatedly proved that isolation can only lead to a dead-end alley, and only by opening up and cooperation can the road become wider and wider. "The big country bears important and special responsibility in opening up. As a responsible major country, China will play an active role in bringing bright, stable and promising prospects to the world and make more constructive contributions." Xi announced a series of measures to expand China's opening up, at the just-concluded annual conference of the Boao Forum for Asia (BFA). "Words must be followed by actions and actions must be taken with resolve," said Xi, noting that it was a solemn commitment to the Chinese people and the people of the world. While saying China's cooperation with the WEF had coincided with the country's reform and opening-up process, Xi suggested that it was necessary for both sides to keep pace and advance with the times, strengthen cooperation and work together in pursuit of new driving forces for global economic growth, and find out practical and feasible proposals to address global challenges. Schwab said Xi's speech at the WEF annual meeting last year was impressive and highly appreciated by the world, and that his speech at the opening ceremony of the BFA Annual Conference 2018 also drew global attention. Referring to Xi's proposals on building a community with a shared future for mankind and building an open world economy, Schwab said they "charted a course for cooperation among countries against the backdrop that economic globalization and the multilateral trading system are facing challenges." He said the WEF proposed to promote economic globalization and multilateralism, and opposed protectionism and unilateralism. "The WEF takes pride in cooperation with China over the past 40 years," Schwab said. He said the WEF was ready to improve long-term cooperation with China in promoting the Belt and Road Initiative and innovative development. He said he hoped that the two sides could make joint efforts in strengthening global governance system and seeking solutions to world problems. Flash Japanese Prime Minister Shinzo Abe and Chinese State Councilor and Foreign Minister Wang Yi on Monday agreed that both sides should work together to further improve bilateral ties and expand cooperation. Wang said that China and Japan are important neighbors and bilateral relationship has gone through some twists and turns in recent years, which affected communication and cooperation of the two sides in various areas. He said China attaches importance to the positive messages sent by Abe on improving bilateral relationship on a number of occasions since last year, and it is hoped that with joint efforts of both sides, his visit could become an important step for bilateral relationship to return to normal track. Wang said that the momentum of improvement in bilateral ties did not come by easily and should be cherished, and with a better and more stable relationship, the two sides could have closer exchanges and extended cooperation, which would be in the interests of people in both countries as well as the region. Therefore, the two sides should strictly abide by the principles established in the four important political documents between them, properly handle the sensitive issues related to the political foundation of bilateral relationship, fully implement the consensus of treating each other as a cooperative partner instead of a threat and make it a consensus of all circles of the Japanese society, Wang added. The two sides should tap potential driving forces so as to upgrade the bilateral trade and economic cooperation to a new level, Wang said. He also said that China attaches importance to the positive remarks made by Abe on the Belt and Road Initiative, and Japan joining the Belt and Road construction will open up new space for bilateral economic cooperation, and China is willing to discuss with Japan the proper and concrete ways for it to participate in the initiative. The two sides should enhance communication and coordination to oppose trade protectionism, safeguard the global free trade system centered on the World Trade Organization (WTO), and help create an open world economy, Wang said. Abe, for his part, said that Japan attaches high importance to its relationship with China. It is willing to take the opportunity of the 40th anniversary of the signing of the Japan-China Treaty of Peace and Friendship to promote comprehensive improvement of bilateral ties, to realize high-level exchanges, and to expand cooperation under the framework of strategic relationship of mutual benefit. Japan paid great attention to the new measures for expanding China's opening up announced by Chinese President Xi Jinping at the opening ceremony of the Boao Forum for Asia annual conference and believes that they will help promote bilateral economic relationship, he said. Abe said that he eagerly expects and welcomes Chinese Premier Li Keqiang to visit Japan and to attend the trilateral leaders' summit between Japan, China and South Korea, and expects that the Belt and Road construction could help the recovery and development of regional economy. Like China, Japan also attaches importance to the WTO rules and maintains that trade issues should be handled based on those rules, he added. The two sides also exchanged views on regional issues such as the Korean Peninsula situation. Wang is on a three-day visit to Japan starting Sunday. During his visit, he co-chaired the fourth high-level economic dialogue between China and Japan with Japanese Foreign Minister Taro Kono. He met with Japan's Chief Cabinet Secretary Yoshihide Suga and held a meeting with Kono. He also met with Toshihiro Nikai, secretary-general of Japan's ruling Liberal Democratic Party, and leaders of seven Japan-China friendship organizations and Keidanran (Japan Business Federation). Flash Former FBI director James Comey said in an ABC News interview on Sunday that US President Donald Trump is a dangerous, "morally unfit" leader doing "tremendous damage" to institutional norms. Comey was fired by Trump in May last year. His dismissal came as the Federal Bureau of Investigation was probing possible connections between Trump's 2016 presidential campaign and Russia's meddling in the US elections. Russia has denied interfering in the election and Trump has denied any collusion or improper activity. Comey said in the exclusive interview with ABC News' George Stephanopoulos, which aired on Sunday, that "a person ... who talks about and treats women like they're pieces of meat, who lies constantly about matters big and small and insists the American people believe it, that person's not fit to be president of the United States, on moral grounds. And that's not a policy statement". "He is morally unfit to be president," he added. "Values matter," Comey continued, adding "this president does not reflect the values of this country." He also said: "People in this country need to stand up and go to the voting booth and vote their values." Comey has a tell-all book, A Higher Loyalty: Truth, Lies and Leadership, due out on Tuesday. The book's imminent release - and the slated ABC News interview - prompted Trump to hurl a new set of insults at Comey earlier on Sunday, challenging accusations made in the book, and insisting that he never pressed Comey to be loyal to him. "Slippery James Comey, a man who always ends up badly and out of whack (he is not smart!), will go down as the WORST FBI Director in history, by far!" Trump wrote early on Sunday in one of five Twitter posts aimed directly at Comey. Reuters and other news outlets have obtained copies of Comey's book before its formal release. In it, Comey wrote that Trump, in a private meeting, pressed the then-FBI director for his loyalty. Comey told ABC News that the title of the book came from a "bizarre conversation" he had with Trump at the White House in January 2017 shortly after his inauguration. "He asked for my loyalty personally as the FBI director. My loyalty's supposed to be to the American people and to the institution," Comey said in the interview. The FBI has long tried to operate as an independent law enforcement agency. "I never asked Comey for Personal Loyalty. I hardly even knew this guy. Just another of his many lies. His "memos" are self serving and FAKE!" Trump said on Twitter. US House of Representatives Speaker Paul Ryan, interviewed on NBC's Meet the Press, expressed qualified support for Comey. Asked whether Comey was a man of integrity, the Republican speaker said: "As far as I know", but added that he did not know him well. Asked about Trump's use last week of the words "slime ball" to describe Comey, Ryan said: "I don't use words like that." Flash The yearly Arab League Summit concluded with unwavering stands for preserving regional peace and unity, especially the problems related to Jerusalem, Syria, Yemen and Iran. According to an official announcement released by Saudi Press Agency after the summit, the Palestinian-Israeli conflict is the "core issue" concerning the entire Arab world, which firmly insists that East Jerusalem is the capital of the State of Palestine. The AL strongly opposes the US administration's recognition of Jerusalem as the Israeli capital and decision to move its embassy from Tel Aviv to Jerusalem, and urged all countries not to follow the US measures to harm Arab states' sovereignty. UN resolutions shall be the only norms in negotiating the conflict, and Israel's unilateral actions could only tamper the facts and hamper the peace process, it said. Meanwhile, the summit reiterated that political solution is the only path for Syria to realize peace. Only eliminating terrorist groups and cutting off world powers' meddling could create a chance for people to build an independent Syria. The AL also denounced the use of chemical weapons and called for an international investigation in accordance with global regulations into any such case. "We stress our absolute condemnation of the use of chemical weapons against the Syrian people and we demand an independent international investigation to guarantee the application of international law against anyone proven to have used chemical weapons," it said. At the meeting, Jordanian King Abdullah II said the Syrian crisis should be resolved through political negotiation rather than any military action which could escalate regional conflicts. In this regard, the Astana talks involving Russia, Iran and Turkey, which brokered last year for a political settlement of the Syrian conflict, cannot replace the UN-backed Geneva talks which include more global parties, he added. Also at the meeting, the Kuwaiti Emir Sheikh Sabah al-Ahmad al-Jaber al-Sabah regretted that a double standard was applied in the Syrian issue, saying Kuwait will not hesitate to offer humanitarian aid to ease the agony of Syrian people. Referring to the Yemen crisis, the AL applied stern words to accuse Iran of supporting the Shiite Houthi rebels who ousted Yemen's government and frequently launched missile attacks on Saudi Arabia. It voiced support for the Saudi-led Arab coalition's operations in Yemen to preserve the country's sovereignty and integrity, and demanded opening key ports and airports for aids to enter Yemen so as to ease the world's most serious humanitarian crisis there such as famine and the outbreak of cholera. The one-day summit was held on Sunday in the eastern Saudi city of Dhahran. Tunisia is scheduled to hold the 30th AL Summit. The African Union Commission on Sunday also called on world powers to undertake international efforts to find lasting solutions to the Syrian civil war that respect the country's territorial integrity and serves the interests of Syrian people. In a statement, it said "Africa expects the United Nations Security Council members, especially those that are permanent, to put aside their differences and spare no efforts in the pursuit of global peace and humanity's common good, in line with the responsibilities conferred upon them by the United Nations Charter". "Any response" to the alleged poison gas attack "ought to be based on incontrovertible evidence gathered by a competent, independent and credible entity and comply strictly with international law, including the primacy of the UNSC for any recourse to force", it said. Flash Co-organized by the Beijing Diplomatic Service Bureau, Beijing Housing Service Corporation for Diplomatic Missions and the Palace Museum, more than 110 people including ambassadors, high-level diplomats and their family members from Spain, Cameroon, Samoa, Tajikistan, Chile, Jamaica and other countries were invited to discover the beauty and historic significance of the Palace Museum in Beijing on April 16, 2018. Museum director Shan Jixiang delivered the keynote speech, welcoming the foreign guests and sharing his stories of the museum, which has a profound history of almost 600 years. In Shan's speech, he discussed the Palace Museum's effective practices and rich experiences in terms of exhibitions, services, facilities, the development of cultural creative products, the digital Imperial Palace and environmental protection. The curator also said that to better museum work, confidence in Chinese culture should be strengthened, as cultural confidence can serve as a driving force to help museums grow and prosper and make cultural relics "come to life". Martin Mpana, Cameroonian Ambassador to China, expressed his gratitude for inviting so many diplomats to the museum. "It is really a golden opportunity for foreign friends to visit and get a deeper understanding of the renowned Imperial Palace. The speech has shown us a brand-new Palace Museum and provided a better understanding of Chinese culture." Under the guidance of Shan, foreign diplomats have toured several classic scenic spots including Jianfu Palace, Xiehe Gate, Taihe Gate, Zhonghe Gate, Baohe Gate, Cining Palace and Shoukkang Palace. They have also visited shops that sell cultural and creative products. Currently, Palace Museum has developed over 9,100 cultural products, with an annual sales volume exceeding one billion yuan ($158.4 million). "I really like those products, as they are symbols of ancient Chinese culture. I can buy lots of gifts here for my friends in my home country as the prices are not that high," said Irena Skardziuviene, Minister Counselor of the Embassy of the Republic of Lithuania. Flash Chinese State Councilor and Foreign Minister Wang Yi met with figures from Japanese economic circles Tuesday, including Sadayuki Sakakibara, current chairman of Keidanran or Japan Business Federation, and Hiroaki Nakanishi, who has been elected Keidanran's next leader. Wang said that Keidanran has been dedicated to promoting friendship between China and Japan through economic cooperation despite bumps and difficulties in bilateral relationship. Currently, the economic situation in both China and Japan and the international economic environment are undergoing significant changes, and under the circumstances, China has manifested its determination to further deepen reform and expand opening-up on the occasion of the 40th anniversary of China's reform and opening-up, he said. Chinese President Xi Jinping has announced recently the new measures for expanding China's reform and opening-up at the opening ceremony of the 2018 Boao Forum for Asia annual conference, and Chinese economy has been turning from development with high speed to development with high quality, all of which will provide important opportunities for China's cooperation with countries all over the world including Japan, he added. Wang said that under the new circumstances China is willing to promote the upgrading of its economic relationship with Japan; to welcome Japan to join the Belt and Road Initiative, which will open up new space for bilateral economic cooperation; to work with Japan to promote global free trade, safeguard World Trade Organization (WTO) rules, and develop an open world economy. It is hoped that Keidanran will continue its efforts and bring its advantages to full play to make contribution to improving China-Japan economic cooperation from a new starting point and to promoting world economic development, he said. Members of Keidanran said that they were inspired by the momentum of improvement in bilateral ties between China and Japan. Japanese economic circles paid great attention to Chinese foreign minister's visit to Japan and the high-level economic dialogue between China and Japan which was held after an eight-year hiatus, and welcomed the important messages sent by the two sides on safeguarding global free trade system, they said. Keidanran has long been dedicated to promoting friendship between China and Japan and supporting China's reform and development. It is willing to actively participate in the Belt and Road construction and continue to make efforts to promote friendly cooperation between the two countries and develop closer economic ties, they said. Flash Japanese Prime Minister Shinzo Abe on Tuesday departed for the United States to hold a two-day summit with U.S. President Donald Trump. During Abe's sixth face-to-face meeting with Trump to be held at the American leader's Florida resort, Abe said he's hoping to reinforce the Japan-U.S. alliance. "We will affirm cooperation between Japan and the United States and demonstrate the strong bond of the Japan-U.S. alliance through the summit," Abe was quoted as telling reporters prior to leaving for Haneda airport in Tokyo. Abe will also be looking to discuss issues pertaining to the Korean Peninsular, according to government sources and will likely lean on Trump regarding the importance of multilateral free trade deals as opposed to bilateral ones. Japan is cagey about a bilateral deal with the U.S. as it will likely involve heavy concessions being made on sensitive sectors here including autos and farming. China Aviation Daily | Apr. 16, 2018 The International Air Transport Association (IATA) announced that Transparency in Payments (TIP) has been implemented in the Finland, Norway and Sweden markets. TIP, which is being introduced in conjunction with NewGen ISS, is an industry initiative focused on providing airlines with increased transparency and control in the collection of their sales generated in 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. "The current landscape for payment services has changed dramatically, and new players and payment solutions are emerging, offering travel agents greater options to remit customer funds to airlines. However, up until now, airlines have lacked visibility into these newer payment methods. TIP will address this issue, creating new opportunities for airlines and travel agents," said Aleks Popovich, IATA's Senior Vice President, Financial and Distribution Services. 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 explicitly allows travel agents to use their own credit cards. IATA has worked closely with key industry stakeholders to develop TIP to ensure it provides: - Increased transparency and control for each player - An efficient framework and tools to enable agents and airlines to bilaterally agree on usage of Alternative Transfer Methods, such as agent's own credit cards and agent's virtual account numbers (VANs), for the direct remittance to airlines of agency Billing and Settlement Plan (BSP) sales - A resolution framework which is better adapted to regulatory and market conditions. Under TIP, providers of Alternative Transfer Methods wishing to participate in agency direct remittances to airlines of BSP sales will enlist with IATA, and provide relevant information about their payment products. Agents and airlines will have access to this information on a need-to-know basis. "We look forward to working with providers of Alternative Transfer Methods such as AirPlus International and Edenred Corporate Payment, who support the principles underlying TIP. We anticipate that other providers will commit to enrolling their products within the TIP framework once their technical environment is ready, to contribute to greater transparency in the airline and agency ecosystem," said Popovich. Over the coming weeks, TIP will be implemented in Iceland and Denmark (9 May), Canada (16 May), and Singapore (23 May), with rollout expected to be completed in all BSP markets by Q1 2020. Contributed by IATA China Aviation Daily | Apr. 17, 2018 The Asian Business and General Aviation Association (AsBAA), Asia's largest non-profit association for business and general aviation today co-hosts the Asian Business Aviation Convention and Exhibition, ABACE2018, which marks its fourth consecutive year of co-organising the most significant Business and General Aviation (BA/GA) airshow in Asia. At ABACE2017, announcements were made relating to public strategy that seeks to promote BA/GA development under the Chinese Government's 13th five-year plan. New provisions on domestic investment in civil aviation have now come to effect that will breathe life into the government's plan to encourage private investment into BA/GA. In March 2018, the Government Work Report delivered during the annual National People's Congress of the People's Republic of China (NPC) and the National Committee of the Chinese People's Political Consultative Conference (CPPCC) Session outlined several incentives to encourage private investment into BA/GA in Greater China. As a result, BA/GA is gaining attention at both government and private investment levels. The primary focus is on new investment opportunities that could present huge consumer uptake. In addition, public service sectors have been noted as prime opportunities for private investment. These include air medical services, short-distance air travel for commuter purposes, and low altitude tourism. Jenny Lau, AsBAA Chairperson said "Last year, the Chinese government expressed a commitment to growing general aviation and leveraging this growth as an economic driver. AsBAA has observed the overall supply structure optimising, which has resulted in positive outcomes for manufacturers, operators, management companies and service providers. The catalyst for change is commitment from the authorities, which we are now seeing. To support our members to realise these opportunities, AsBAA has enhanced the work that our Regional Chapters are doing with governments and transport ministries. In 2018-19, we will continue to help our members realise the significant opportunities that exist under the Belt and Road Initiative". The positive outcomes also extend to AsBAA's work in Southeast Asia, where the association is working closely with the aviation authorities of the Philippines, Singapore, Indonesia and Malaysia where AsBAA has recently signed an MOU at the Singapore Airshow in which it will participate and advise on the regeneration infrastructure plans at Subang Airport, Kuala Lumpur. At ABACE2018 the association also announced a new MOU which has been signed with Subic Bay International Airport. Lau said, "At our AGM last year, the new Board of Directors expressed their commitment to enhance AsBAA's local and regional capabilities; building influence with the authorities and having a clear voice to represent the needs of our members. We are encouraged to see that following these talks at a country and regional level, we have managed to push our agenda forward as the voice of the industry, which is shaping infrastructure plans around the Region. For some years this has been an effort in relationship building to establish trust and credibility. We have now reached that critical point and we are seeing visible progress in Greater China and Southeast Asia. These are encouraging signs and evidence that members working together with combined resources creates greater influence. We urge other industry stakeholders to support AsBAA's efforts, which drive positive change for the entire industry. Those industry players attending ABACE2018 that are not members, we look forward to welcoming you to AsBAA's Booth, H1402. We wish our members and the industry a successful ABACE2018." Contributed by AsBAA English readers have access to more translations of the Bible than readers of any other language. The American Bible Society estimates that there have been around 900 full and partial biblical translations into English. Naturally, that staggering number isnt readily available, but you can easily order more than 50 different translations in your favorite bookstore, and many more can be found in used bookstores and libraries. These numbers bear witness to the remarkable treasure available to English readers, a uniquely rich and multilayered resource for gaining fresh insights into the Word of God. Translations are produced with different methods and goals. Some versionsparticularly the mainstream ones such as the New International Version, the English Standard Version, the New Revised Standard Version, the Christian Standard Version, or the New American Biblewere carried out by large committees. And while they each have specific reading levels in mind, they generally try to be acceptable to all potential readers. Other translations have specific readers in mindNative Americans, British youth, literature enthusiasts, and so on. And still others have celebrity names attached to them, such as recent translations by scholars N. T. Wright and David Bentley Hart. These tend to be lesser known, but because of their unique audiences (and authors), they can bring new perspectives into particular passages. Let me introduce ten of these by showcasing the riches of John 1:15 and Luke 22:1419 in each translation. My hope is to pique your sense of adventure to seek out these or other translations and immerse yourself in them. All but one of these versions were translated by ... 1 You have reached the end of this Article Preview You have reached the end of this Article Preview To continue reading, subscribe now. Subscribers have full digital access. Have something to add about this? See something we missed? Share your feedback here. For most of American pastor Andrew Brunsons 18-month imprisonment in Turkey, the government failed to officially indict him or offer the opportunity for bail or his release. Finally, his terrorism and espionage case came to trial on Monday, but the proceedings continue to underline the strained relations between the United States and Turkey. Sam Brownback, the US State Departments new ambassador-at-large for religious freedom, traveled to Turkey this week to back the American pastor in court in Aliaga, just 38 miles from Izmir, the coastal city where Brunson had led a small Presbyterian congregation. Turkey has accused the evangelical ministerwho lived in the Muslim-majority country for 23 years before his arrest following an attempted coup in 2016of fueling unrest in the country through alleged involvement with exiled cleric Fethullah Gulen and the Kurdistan Workers Party (PKK), an insurgent group. Both movements are seen as enemies and threats to the Turkish ... 1 We're always interested in hearing about news in our community. Let us know what's going on! Go to form We attempted to send a notification to your email address but we were unable to verify that you provided a valid email address. Please click here to update your email address if you wish to receive notifications. Otherwise, you may click here to disable notifications and hide this message. According to Benavides, 2017 was a difficult year for Peruvian economy due to Coastal El Nino phenomenon and Lava Jato corruption scandal. Thus, the Inca country's economic activity merely increased 2.5% in the aforementioned year, lower than the 4% registered in 2016. "Investing in the reconstruction (process) and the Pan American Games will lead to higher growth, but above all to the private sector 's dynamism," Benavides told Andina news agency. "The country has a great opportunity to grow over 4% , and I hope we will achieve it," he added. According to the Central Reserve Bank (BCR), private investment Peruvian economy's main growth source slid 5.7% in 2016, but increased 0.3% in 2017. Plus, it is expected to expand 5.5% and 7.5% in 2018 and 2019, respectively. On the other hand, Benavides stated he has not met with the current Economy and Finance Minister David Tuesta yet. However, he has already requested a meeting with the official. Investments Moreover, he explained the Andean country can boost investments in a much faster way through the coordination between Executive and Legislative Branches. (END) MDV/JAA/MVB Termen extins: Terre des hommes Moldova este in cautarea unui /unei consultant/e sau a unei echipe de consultanti, care va elabora un program de instruire inovativ, pentru adolescenti (14 - 18 ani) in domeniul antreprenoriatului AKRON, Ohio - After weeks of discussion, Akron City Council voted Monday to raise the age for buying tobacco products in the city from 18 to 21. The new law also applies to e-cigarettes, vaping oils and paraphernalia. Voting for the legislation were council members Linda Omobien, Russel Neal, Jeff Fusco, Rich Swirsky, Zach Milkovich, Margo Sommerville, Mike Freeman and Bruce Kilby. Voting against were council members Marilyn Keith, Donnie Kammer and Bob Hoch. Council members Veronica Sims and Tara Samples abstained. The legislation was presented in March by Omobien and Akron Mayor Dan Horrigan. Known as T-21, it's based on initiatives adopted in about 270 other U.S. cities. The goal of the T-21 legislation is to keep high-school kids ages 14-18 from starting to smoke. The theory behind it is that taking legally bought cigarettes out of the hands of 18- to 20-year-olds means fewer loose cigarettes will be distributed from friend to friend in school because most high school kids don't hang around with 21-year-olds. Since the bill was introduced, council members have raised concerns over inconsistencies regarding the age young people are considered adults. Ward 8 Councilwoman Marilyn Keith, who was out with an injury for the last few weeks, read a letter outlining her concerns during Monday's Health & Public Service committee meeting. She said the legislation implies that young people ages 18 to 20 are essentially "incompetent and do not have the capacity to make this decision themselves so we must make it for them." "At the age of 18 young people can join the military, get married, drive a car, buy a home, vote, assume student loan debt and many other responsibilities," she said. "The confusion and blurring of the lines comes by stating in this legislation that people between the ages of 18 to 20 are unable to make responsible decisions and yet in the above mentioned circumstances we have defined the age of majority as 18." Ward 7 Councilman Donnie Kammer echoed those concerns. "I have a big problem with telling men and women to go fight for us and vote for us and when they're 18 register to vote so we can hear their voice at the polls," he said. "Then we're asking them to go serve, go in harm's way with a gun, and protect our freedom. And yet I want to take away their right [to buy cigarettes at 18]." Councilwoman Veronica Sims said she supports the goal of reducing smoking among young people but disagrees with this approach. She also pointed to an assertion made by the health department and Dr. Robert Crane of Tobacco 21 , who presented to the committee on Monday. According to Crane, people aged 18 to 20 supply 90 percent of the cigarettes to young people in high school, so if the age was raised to 21 it would reduce smoking by half. "Maybe there's another way to phrase that without putting the onus squarely on those folks," she said. " That just doesn't sit well with me." The industry that creates the hundreds of flavors of vaping oils that appeal to high school kids should be the target, not tobacco retailers, she said. Ward 9 Councilman Mike Freeman said he also struggles with telling a young person who could be killed in Afghanistan next week that he or she can't buy cigarettes. The U.S. military has an active tobacco reduction campaign underway, according to Summit County Public Health. "They think it affects military readiness," said Cory Kendrick, the health department's director of population health. At-large Councilman Jeff Fusco said he voted for the legislation, in part, because the tobacco industry's main concern is to "line their pockets." "I think this is reasonable," he said. "I don't think it's a bad thing for us to limit and inhibit the availability of something that's not good for us. If they want a cigarette bad enough they can go to another city and get them." Ward 1 Councilman Rich Swirsky agreed, saying Big Tobacco's advertising impacts young people more than other consumers. "To me, the tobacco industry is a great evil and it's talking each and every day to our citizens and our young people," he said. The law goes into effect immediately, but it won't target underage smokers. It targets roughly 215 Akron tobacco retailers, who over the next six months will be prepped through education and "certified" by Summit County Public Health before any fines are issued. Retailers will also be expected to have smoking cessation information available that's geared for people aged 18-21 who try to buy cigarettes. The health department also plans to launch a community marketing campaign to inform residents about the change in law, Kendrick said. Once retailers are educated and signs are hung in establishments announcing the age increase, an enforcement date will be announced, he said. Retailers will then be subject to visits by "secret shoppers" to ferret out offenders. First offenses would carry a warning. Second offenses would generate a $500 fine, with any beyond that generating $1,000 per offense. Raising the age in Akron to buy tobacco initially sprung out of efforts to reduce high infant mortality rates. Summit County's smoking rate for women aged 18-21 is 23.7 percent -- almost triple the smoking rate for pregnant women across the U.S. -- which is 8.4 percent. Those numbers correlate to the county's high infant mortality rate, which is 30 percent higher than the national average. Want more Akron news? Sign up for cleveland.com's Rubber City Daily, an email newsletter delivered at 5:30 a.m. Monday through Friday. BROADVIEW HEIGHTS, Ohio -- A Parma school for autistic children and young adults plans to open a second location in August on the City Hall Campus at Broadview and Oakes roads. STEPS Center for Excellence in Autism has signed a seven-year lease to occupy two city-owned buildings, both 6,100 square feet, on the Broadview Heights campus. The center will pay the city $30,500 a year for each building, for a total of $61,000 annually, according to the lease. "This location is ideal for our program because of the setup," Jennifer Might, owner of STEPS Center, told cleveland.com in an email. "It is away from the main streets and has a campus-like feel that is conducive to promoting that sense of community. "In addition, we love how close it is to (Cleveland) Metroparks, because exploring nature is a big part of our program," Might said. David Schroedel, Broadview Heights' director of public service and development, said the two buildings -- along with a second pair of vacant buildings, with the four arranged in a circle on the city campus -- were last occupied about three years ago by the North Royalton schools' kindergarten program. Under the lease, STEPS Center has right of first refusal for one year to use the second pair of buildings at an additional cost. In other words, the city must ask STEPS Center if it wants to lease the second pair of buildings before they are offered to another party. The lease, which started April 1 and will last through March 31, 2025, gives STEPS Center the option of five one-year extensions. STEPS Center is responsible for the cost of any renovation, but Schroedel said renovations aren't needed. "The buildings are in very good condition and the only thing we will do is paint," Might said. Schroedel said STEPS Center approached city officials about leasing the property. "I had visited these buildings years ago when the North Royalton School District was in them, and at that time was thinking it was an ideal setup for STEPS," Might said. "When I found out these buildings were vacant, I called the Broadview Heights Economic Development Department, and they were wonderful in working with us to make this happen." According to its website, STEPS Center serves autistic children and young adults ages 21/2 to 22 with the goal of improving communication and language; motor, social, play and imitation skills; and responses to small and large groups. Might said she established STEP Center in 2006 inside a one-room building on Bagley Road in Berea. She had been an independent consultant working with families affected by autism in their homes. STEPS Center eventually outgrew the Berea space and moved into a building in a Strongsville industrial park. After another growth spurt, STEPS bought its Parma building, at 4040 Tamarack Drive, in 2015. STEPS Center started with six pupils and today has grown to 104 students, all of whom have been diagnosed with autism and "related developmental differences," Might said. "The main driving force of STEPS is the presumption of intellect regardless of verbal ability," Might said. "We believe that our students have unlimited potential, and creating a community that promotes purpose and meaning can unlock this potential. "At STEPS, we believe that students thrive when the environment is positive, and the teachers and staff work daily to create a sense of belonging in all of our students." The center also operates Willow Farms in Olmsted Township, where pupils learn vocational skills, grow vegetables, ride horses and take care of animals, Might said. "The farm is very therapeutic for many of our students and has been an excellent addition to STEPS," Might said. Jared Plesec CLEVELAND, Ohio -- A Cleveland man will avoid facing the death penalty after he admitted on Tuesday to carrying out an hour-long crime spree that began with the killing of a Salvation Army worker in an unprovoked attack. William Jones, 27, hanged his head and his voice cracked as he pleaded guilty to his entire 35-count indictment including an aggravated murder charge in the December death of Jared Plesec. Cuyahoga County Common Pleas Court Judge Steve Gall accepted Jones's plea and found him guilty. Gall set sentencing for May 21. The plea means the Cuyahoga County Prosecutor's Office will not be able to seek the death penalty. The office's capital review committee, which decides when to seek the death penalty, was scheduled to review this case later this month. Members of Plesec's family who attended the hearing told cleveland.com that they believed that Plesec, a deeply religious 21-year-old whose mission was to spread gospel to every person in his apartment complex, would have forgiven Jones. "He probably killed the one person who would have objected to giving him the death penalty," Plesec's cousin, Mara Kowalski, said. Jones faces a maximum sentence of life without parole plus another 241 1/2 years and $300,000 in fines, Gall said. Prosecutors plan to ask Gall to impose the maximum prison time, Assistant Cuyahoga County Prosecutor Blaise Thomas said in court Tuesday. Jones's lawyers, Kevin Spellacy and Robert Dixon, reached out to prosecutors on Monday and said Jones may be willing to enter the plea. The same day Jones filed a motion to disqualify Spellacy from representing him, claiming that Spellacy was physically intimidating to him and that he feared for his life. Jones withdrew that motion in court Tuesday. The Dec. 2 shooting was captured by surveillance cameras inside the Euclid Beach Villa apartment complex on East 156th Street near Lakeshore Boulevard, prosecutors said. Plesec, a 21-year-old youth worker at the Salvation Army Temple Corps Community Center in Collinwood, stopped to talk to a man in the lobby as he was on his way to collect money for the charity, prosecutors said. Plesec was wearing his full Salvation Army uniform and carrying a Bible, prosecutors said. Jones walked into the lobby and, after wandering around for a few minutes, walked directly up to Plesec, pulled a pistol and shot him in the head, prosecutors said. Plesec clutched his Bible as he fell to the ground, according to Cleveland City Councilman Mike Polensek, who represents the neighborhood. Jones scampered from the building and launched a crime spree that saw him shoot at a man and carjack a woman at a Collinwood gas station, carjack a man at the East 72nd Street Marina and open fire on a group of joggers gathered at the parking area at the Emerald Necklace Marina in the Cleveland Metroparks Rocky River Reservation, prosecutors said. He then made his way to Lakewood, where he stole a truck from a construction site on Sloan Avenue and carjacked a woman at a Gold Coast apartment building on Edgewater Drive, prosecutors said. The crimes all took place within about 65 minutes, prosecutors said. Jones is on parole for a 2015 robbery conviction. He was released from prison in October 2016. To comment on this story, please visit Tuesday's crime and courts comments page. CLEVELAND, Ohio - When it comes to "The Muppets," Joe Hennes is obsessed. Hennes, the editor-in-chief of Muppets fan website ToughPigs.com, has spread his love of "The Muppets" TV series and its creator Jim Henson online for over a decade. But now, he'll be bringing his expertise to Cleveland in the form of a Muppets-based master class this upcoming week at Nighttown, 12383 Cedar Rd., Cleveland. "The Magic of the Muppets" will explore various Muppets characters and why they have remained a fixture in pop culture for decades. The master class will take place at 2 p.m. Sunday, April 22, and at 7 p.m. Monday, April 23. Tickets cost $10 for the Sunday class, and $15 for the Monday class. "What I'm hoping to accomplish with this master class is having it be one part history, and two parts reminding people what it is about the Muppets that is so great, and why the Muppets have lasted for over six decades," said Hennes. "There's something about them, at their core, that people relate to - people from all levels. Hennes is the son of Bruce Hennes, founder of Hennes Communications, a PR firm specializing in crisis communications in Cleveland. He is also the stepson of former Plain Dealer columnist Regina Brett. He was raised in Greater Cleveland, living here through high school. He left to attend Ohio University before moving to New York City. Hennes has hosted several Muppets-themed events in the Big Apple. The events proved to be popular with fans of "The Muppets," and frequently sold out. But his upcoming "The Magic of the Muppets" class is different from his previous events. The class will rely on Hennes' knowledge of Henson, who created characters for "Sesame Street" and "The Muppets." The event will run for about 90 minutes to two hours. Hennes might be one of the biggest "Muppets" experts in the world. He's run ToughPigs.com for a decade, regularly posting multiple features and pieces of "Muppets" news every day. The website gets about 20,000 unique visitors a month. "We've become this pillar in Muppet fandom, which is not the biggest fandom ever, to be honest," said Hennes. "But for our community, that's pretty much everything." Through ToughPigs.com, Hennes has been able to visit the sets for the filming of multiple "Muppets" episodes, including the 2008 Christmas special "Letters To Santa" and a 2015 episode of "The Muppets." He's interviewed iconic "Muppets" creators like Frank Oz (who voices Miss Piggy, Fozzie Bear and Animal) and Paul Williams (who wrote the music for "The Muppet Movie"). Since taking over the website in 2006, Hennes has cultivated thousands of posts all about the TV puppets. Beyond meeting celebrities and show creators, Hennes has also helped bridge a gap for many fans of "The Muppets." ToughPigs.com provides a platform for the enthusiasts in the form of a robust community forum, allowing fans to communicate and connect with one another. "It's been hugely satisfying because not only do I have an outlet to write about Muppets every single day, but we've built the website into something that's a lot larger than anyone would have expected with a lot more reach," said Hennes. And "The Muppets" will continue to persist in pop culture, Hennes thinks. "They're the sort of thing where the older we get, the more we can discover about them," he said. Find more information about The Magic of the Muppets Master Class at Nighttown here. (This story has been updated to reflect that the Sunday master class begins at 2 p.m., not 1 p.m.) CLEVELAND, Ohio -- You've paid Uncle Sam, now it's time to treat yo self. More than a dozen companies with locations in Northeast Ohio are offering a "deduction" on food, drinks and paper shredding (timely!) services on Tuesday. The best part? There are no forms to fill out. Here's a look at the notable deals. APPLEBEE'S The casual dining chain is offering a special Tax Day combo of chicken wings and Yuengling on draft for $4.17 (April 17, get it?) each. Wings come in bone-in or boneless with a choice of sauce: classic Buffalo, honey BBQ or sweet Asian chile. Remember, you can also get $1 margaritas all month long. There are Applebee's locations in Akron, Avon, Brooklyn, Brunswick, Cleveland, Cuyahoga Falls, Elyria, Fairview Park, Garfield Heights, Independence, Kent, Lorain, Lyndhurst, Macedonia, Mansfield, Medina, Mentor, Middleburg Heights, North Olmsted, Sandusky, Stow, Streetsboro, Strongsville, University Heights, Wadsworth and Willoughby. BOSTON MARKET After you mail in your 1040 form, head to what will always be called Boston Chicken to me for a half chicken combo for, you guessed it, $10.40. The meal comes with two sides, cornbread and drink. Visit the Boston Market locations in Cleveland, Brooklyn, Parma, Shaker Heights, North Olmsted, Strongsville, University Heights, Solon, Lyndhurst, Fairlawn, Mentor and Cuyahoga Falls. BRUEGGER'S BAGELS Treat the family or office to bagles with Bruegger's $10.40 Big Bagel Bundle. The deal comes with your choice of 13 bagels and two tubs of cream cheese. There are Bruegger's in Beachwood, Brecksville, Strongsville, Rocky River, Brecksville, Westlake, Cleveland Heights, Fairlawn, Hudson, Stow and at Cleveland Hopkins Airport. CHILI'S Stop in to try the bar's new Cherry Blossom Margarita for $5. Offer is good now through the end of April. There are Chili's in Cleveland, North Olmsted, Macedonia and Akron. CICIS Unlimited pizza for $4.17? You can enjoy that deal at one of Cici's pizza buffet restaurants at Ridge Park Square or in Akron. Coupon required. CHUCK E. CHEESE While the kids are playing games, chow down on the free large cheese pizza you'll get with every purchase of any large pizza. Offer is good through April 19 at the Chuck E. Cheeses in Parma, Mayfield Heights, North Olmsted, and Akron. FIREHOUSE SUBS Present this coupon for a free medium sub with purchase of a medium or large sub, chips and drink. Offer is good through April 19. Visit the Firehouse locations in Strongsville, Mentor, Mayfield Heights, Independence, North Olmsted, Rocky River, Willoughby and Fairlawn. HARDEE'S Get a free sausage biscuit before 10 a.m. at the Hardee's in Akron or Willoughby just by saying the password "Made from scratch." HUNGRY HOWIE'S Get a medium one-topping pizza for 15 cents with purchase of a large one-topping pizza at regular price. Carry-out and online purchase only purchase. Use code: TAXDAY18. Hungry Howie's is located in Westlake, Lakewood, Parma, Akron, Cuyaghoga Falls and Mogadore. OFFICE DEPOT/OFFICE MAX Tax Day means it's time to throw away all those old credit card statements and receipts. Bring in this coupon to your local Office Depot or Office Max to receive 5 pounds of free document shredding. Offer good through April 28. PIADA Would you like free giant blackberry lemonade with your meal? Get it at the Piada Italian Street Food fast-casual spots in Beachwood, South Euclid, Rocky River and Parma. P.F. CHANG'S Mmmmm. Lettuce wraps. Get 15 percent off your online order. Carry out from P.F. Chang's locations in Beachwood and at Summit Mall. POTBELLY Download the chain's app and join Potbelly's Perks loyalty program for a free sandwich. Existing members can redeem a BOGO offer in the app. Visit the Potbelly's at the airport, downtown, Uptown, or Independence. QUIZNOS Download Quizno's Toasty Points loyalty app for a free 4-inch sub. There are Quizno's in Cleveland, Lorain and Akron. SONIC DRIVE-IN Cheeseburgers are half price all day Tuesday. Visit the Sonic in Parma, Mayfield Heights, Brunswick or Streetsboro. STAPLES Office Depot's rival Staples also has a deal for free paper shredding. Present this coupon to shred up to one pound of documents. Offer is good through April 21. MAPLE HEIGHTS, Ohio - A Cleveland man is accused of drunken driving in a pursuit with State Highway Patrol that ended in a rollover crash Tuesday in Maple Heights. Antonio Smith, 30, suffered non-life-threatening injuries in the crash that happened about 2:45 a.m. on Maple Heights Boulevard at Nitra Avenue, the Highway Patrol said. A trooper chased him for approximately 30 seconds before Smith lost control at a curve. The car struck a stop sign and a fire hydrant before it rolled over and came to a stop against a tree and the front porch of a house, the Highway Patrol said. The chase began when the trooper saw the car commit several marked lanes violations on Interstate 480, the Highway Patrol said. The car nearly struck a guardrail before the trooper tried to stop it at the exit to Warrensville Heights Boulevard, the Highway Patrol said. The car sped away and turned right onto Maple Heights Boulevard. It crashed seconds later, the Highway Patrol said. The trooper reached a maximum speed of 45 mph during the chase, the Highway Patrol said. The home where the crash occurred is abandoned, and no one was inside at the time, the Highway Patrol said. Paramedics took Smith to a local hospital, where he refused a breath test and a urine test. He was issued citations accusing him of drunken driving and fleeing and eluding, the Highway Patrol said. To comment on this story, visit Tuesday's crime and courts comments page. CLEVELAND, Ohio - Cleveland State University's Main Classroom Building has been named Ronald Berkman Hall. The university announced the honor at a farewell tribute event for Berkman, who is retiring as president on May 31. Berkman also received a key to the city from Cleveland Mayor Frank Jackson. He also received proclamations from the mayor as well as from Cuyahoga County Executive Armond Budish. A portrait was unveiled and a tribute video was shown. Bernie Moreno, chairman of the board of trustees, announced the renaming of the building. Berkman arrived at CSU in 2009 and transformed a largely commuter school into a dynamic campus with strong partnerships, speakers said at the tribute. Incoming President Harlan Sands, vice dean and CFO of the Wharton School at the University of Pennsylvania, will arrive on campus May 1 and work with Berkman for a month. CLEVELAND, Ohio -- A woman found dead of a suspected homicide Tuesday inside her home in the city's Bellaire-Puritas neighborhood was a mother of five children, neighbors said. Holly Watkins, 57, was found with a gunshot wound about 11 a.m. inside her home in the 12100 block of Emery Avenue, just off West 130th Street. Police have released no additional information. Homicide detectives went in and out of the home and interviewed family members who gathered outside the home to console each other. Watkins grew up in the neighborhood, according to several neighbors who said they attended school with her from elementary school through John Marshall High School. Candy Horn, who lives across the street, said Watkins had five children, including twins and a son with developmental disabilities. Watkins also cared for her elderly mother, who lives in the neighborhood, Horn said. "She was just the nicest lady," Horn said. "She mostly kept to herself and took care of her mom and kids." Another neighbor, Celestine Williams, said Watkins worked at Malley's Chocolates and came from a big family. Williams said Watkins told her three days ago that she planned on moving out of her home, but didn't say why. Horn said Watkins had lived in the home for about four years. "I can't believe something like this happened to her," Williams said. To comment on this story, visit Tuesday's crime and courts comments page. Owen Rex CLEVELAND, Ohio -- A Cleveland man accused of running a sophisticated marijuana growing operation at a rundown warehouse on Cleveland's East Side spent five years in federal prison after he was busted by federal agents in 2009 for running a similar operation on the city's West Side. Owen Rex, 55, is jailed on $200,000 bond after his first court appearance on Monday. Fourth District narcotics detectives on Friday raided Rex's warehouse in the city's Union-Miles neighborhood and found a large-scale grow operation that investigators said likely provided marijuana across the city. Rex was released from federal prison on March 27, 2014 and is still on post-prison-release probation for the 2009 conviction. Court records from the 2009 case offer a glimpse into Rex's history. Near-death experience Rex grew up in Newark, New Jersey, the son of an abusive father. He moved to Cleveland when he was 22 years old, according to court records. In 1983, he survived a near-death experience while operating a forklift on a wooden dock that collapsed. He suffered severe facial fractures, including a detached jaw, and had multiple surgeries that saved his arm from amputation, according to court records. He received disability benefits because he suffered brain damage, according to court records. Rex also received three felony criminal conviction from 1981 to 1996 in both New Jersey and Cleveland. He began smoking marijuana in 2003 at the age of 41 and started growing about the same time, according to court records. Rex registered a company called Bell Tires with the Ohio Secretary of State and used the company to buy an industrial building at 3199 West 65th Street for $210,000, according to property records and court filings. That's where he started his first grow operation, according to authorities. He set up expensive lights and a complex system that distributed fertilized water to four different rooms with plants in various stages of growth. He stole electricity from nearby buildings and used six reverse osmosis stations to purify city water that he used for the plants to ensure a higher quality drug, according to court records. The operation went on for years and he made money hand-over-fist selling the drug in eight-ounce packages to customers. He kept the poor quality marijuana for himself and said that he gave free weed to cancer patients and an AIDS clinic, according to court records. The operation went on for about five years until the U.S. Drug Enforcement Administration and Cleveland police raided his warehouse in March 2009. Rex confessed on the spot -- making light, small talk and jokes while giving the agents a tour of his one-man operation. He told the agents that he needed the money because he was a "spending freak" and a "vulgar pig," but didn't elaborate. He also said he ran an unlicensed plumbing business called Joe's Plumbing. Rex drove a Volvo at the time and investigators eventually seized $35,000 in cash from his home and the warehouse, another $38,000 from a bank account and a Piper PA-24 Comanche airplane that he kept at Lost Nation Airport in Willoughby. Investigators also seized two shotguns and a handgun from his home. Rex pleaded guilty to the federal charges in less than two months. "I was a marijuana grower and I had a rather large operation," Rex told investigators after his guilty plea, according to court records. "And yes, I did it for money. No matter how much I disagree with the law, I sincerely regret my actions. I wanted you to know I gave away a lot of marijuana to cancer patients and to the AIDS clinic. I sold most of it but many people got relief from free marijuana." The judge was unmoved and sentenced him to five years in federal prison. He was released from prison on March 27, 2014. Four months later, he set up an limited-liability corporation called 3420 Paris. He used that company to buy the warehouse at 10001 Meech Avenue for $75,000 in March 2015, according to county property records. Recent Arrest Cleveland police detectives got a tip Thursday from another law enforcement agency about the warehouse, officials said. They would not say where the tip came from. Detectives scoped out the Meech Avenue warehouse, smelled raw marijuana and got a judge to sign a search warrant, according to court records. Investigators followed Rex from the warehouse the next day. They arrested him and brought him back to the warehouse, where they found a large-scale growing operation similar to the one Rex ran between 2004-2009, according to police officials and court records. Police found some 500 specialized lights that cost about $1,400 each, a fertilized-water distribution system and some 200 pounds of marijuana, including about 250 active plants, according to court records. If you would like to comment on this story, please visit Tuesday's crime and courts comments section. WARREN, Ohio -- One of two men who escaped Sunday from a Trumbull County correctional facility was captured Monday in Portage County, according to reports. Joshua Keenan, 25, is being transferred back to the Trumbull County Jail after being found by a Portage County deputy, WKBN Channel 27 reports. Tyler Bianca, 23, remains at-large, according to WFMJ Channel 21. Authorities say the two men escaped the Northeast Ohio Community Alternative Program's facility in Warren by climbing over a fence. Keenan was in the facility after pleading guilty to receiving stolen property while Bianca was there on a drug possession charge, WKBN reports. Both men are now facing felony escape charges. According to WFMJ, NEOCAP is a 125-bed facility for non-violent offenders. It offers structured treatment and education. "Young men making bad decisions one after another but I don't believe they pose a threat or anything to the community," Jake Jones, NEOCAP executive director, tells WFMJ. "Two young individuals that needed a lot of attention, we just won't get the opportunity to try to work them through it because now they've made a decision that's going to cost them some prison time." If you would like to comment on this story, please visit Monday's crime and courts comments section. COLUMBUS, Ohio -- Ohio lawmakers blocked cities and villages from enacting their own gun laws 12 years ago, but now they want to remove any wiggle room that could allow new restrictions and penalties in local communities. Language inserted months ago into a "stand your ground" bill is getting new attention from city leaders who want to pass gun laws in the wake of shootings in Parkland, Florida, and Las Vegas. House Bill 228 would shift the burden of proof from a defendant claiming self-defense to the state to prove beyond a reasonable doubt the individual did not use force in self-defense. But a little-discussed provision of the bill would further limit local government's ability to restrict gun ownership or possession and allow anyone or any group affected by the law to file a civil suit against the community. The local government would be on the hook for attorney fees, witness fees and other expenses if they lose in court or if they rescind the local law or restriction after the complaint is filed. Cleveland enacted several gun restrictions in 2014 and 2015. An appellate court struck most of them down as violating the state preemption law, and the Ohio Supreme Court declined to take up the city's appeal. Cincinnati council members are looking to ban bump stocks, a device that increases firing speed. Columbus Mayor Andrew Ginther has proposed several laws mirroring federal statutes, such as prohibiting guns for individuals convicted of domestic violence or subject to a civil protection order, to give local police the ability to enforce those restrictions. Specifically, the Ohio bill would preempt regulating the manufacture, taxation, keeping, and reporting of loss or theft of firearms, in addition to existing law banning regulations on the ownership, possession, purchase, transport, storage carrying, sale or transfer of guns. City Attorney Zach Klein said the bill would eliminate the narrow area of law the city was operating in. "Having the state legislature step in and continually erode our ability to make decisions for what's best for us undermines the principles of representative democracy and the goals we all seek in trying to do the right thing and legislating and protecting our communities, whether that's on the river in Southeast Ohio, here in Columbus or up near the lake in Cleveland and Toledo," Klein said during a news conference. Rep. David Leland, a Columbus Democrat, said the tighter preemption would violate the home rule provision of the Ohio Constitution. Leland said he understands the desire to not have a patchwork of local gun restrictions across the state, but communities should be able to enact policies they think will increase safety. "Every community has different needs and different issues to deal with and that's why we have local governments that are closer to the problems, closer to the people they represent so they're better able to discern the types of regulations that are best of their community," Leland said in an interview. "The same problems aren't necessarily seen in Chillicothe vs. East Cleveland." A scheduled committee vote on the bill for Tuesday was canceled. Committee Chairwoman Kristina Roegner, a Hudson Republican, said she thought the bill needed more discussion. Roegner said she plans to hold another hearing before the next House session May 16. "The argument is between local control vs. is there going to be confusion," Roegner said. "The laws changing between municipalities can cause a lot of confusion and people getting into trouble. It's worth looking at and taking our time and due diligence to look at it." WADSWORTH, Ohio -- A Wadsworth teen was arrested in connection with a 98-year-old woman's death, police said. The 17-year-old boy has not been charged in the death of Margaret M. Douglas, police said Tuesday in a news release. He was arrested Monday in Fairview Park and taken to the Medina County Juvenile Detention Center. Charges could be filed against the boy Tuesday afternoon or Wednesday morning, police said. The boy is a junior at Wadsworth High School, police said. Douglas was found dead April 9 in a a closet in her home. Clothes and other items were placed around her body to conceal it, police said. Investigators are still awaiting the results of an autopsy but believe Douglas was strangled, Wadsworth police Chief Randy Reinke said Tuesday. An out-of-town relative reported Douglas missing April 9. Douglas' friends had not heard from her since April 3, police said. Wadsworth police officers did not find any evidence of foul play during an initial search of Douglas' home. Investigators found her body when they searched the home a second time, police said. The Ohio Bureau of Criminal Investigation assisted in processing the scene. To comment on this story, visit Tuesday's crime and courts comments page. MIDDLEBURG HEIGHTS, Ohio -- At his annual State of the City address, Mayor Gary Starr focused on the positives, namely business and economic development. "Managing millions of dollars entrusted to me and City Council has resulted in balanced budgets, low taxes, high credit ratings and we've had no layoffs, no furloughs and no cuts in city services, despite the national and sometimes world recessions that we've been confronted with," Starr told the April 12 lunchtime audience inside Middleburg Heights Community Center. Business development projects currently under way represent "a record of $100 million in investments in our city," he said. Some of those projects include Fat Head's Brewery, Quadax and an expansion at United Parcel Service, which Starr said comes "with the possibility of adding 800 to 1,200 new jobs." Starr also highlighted the new Middleburg Heights Branch of the Cuyahoga Public Library System, which currently is under construction and expected to open in June. It will be the focal point for Middleburg Heights Central Park, formerly known as Middleburg Commons, on Bagley Road. A new police station someday may be located there, as well. Starr described Middleburg Heights as "by far one of the safest cities in the state of Ohio," later telling cleveland.com that he based his remark on Berea Municipal Court statistics, police chief reports and a 2016 Cleveland Magazine "Rating the Suburbs" survey. Middleburg Heights ranked 29th out of 77 local cities, subsequently achieving 14th place in 2017. No city financials or budgetary data were presented, and Starr did not address any future challenges the city may face. Starr told cleveland.com that his allotted time on the agenda precluded addressing those topics. He has talked about them, he added, at prior State of the City events. An audience member later asked him about any dedicated space planned for senior citizens. Middleburg Heights has no senior center. "We have a long list of services that we have done over the years," Starr responded. "There's a room over here (in the community center) that we're building just for older adults to accommodate them." Starr has served as Middleburg Heights mayor since January 1981. SAUK RAPIDS, Minnesota -- Three elementary school students were wounded Monday when they were attacked by second-grader with a knife, reports say. None of the students at Pleasantview Elementary School -- ages 8, 9 and 13 -- were seriously injured. They were treated and released at a hospital, the Star-Tribune reports. The 8-year-old male suspect was taken into custody by Sauk Rapids police, according to the St. Cloud Times. He was questioned and then released to the custody of his parents. The weapon was a kitchen knife from the boy's home, police say. After the attack, which occurred around 7:15 a.m., the boy walked to the school office and put the knife down, WCCO Channel 4 reports. "I don't think he had an intended target when he came to school with a knife," Sauk Rapids Police Chief Chief Perry Beise tells WCCO. "We're not sure exactly why he came to school with a knife." The incident occurred before classes had started. The Times reports the school still had classes after the stabbing. The school has just under 800 students. According to WCCO, children under the age of 10 cannot be criminally charged. Their cases are handled by social services. If you would like to comment on this story, please visit Monday's crime and courts comments section. CLEVELAND, Ohio - After initially not disclosing who paid him to give speeches in 2017, former U.S. Rep. Dennis Kucinich filed an amended ethics disclosure showing he was paid $20,000 by a group sympathetic to the Syrian government. Syria's President Bashar Assad has been accused by multiple intelligence agencies of using chemical weapons on his own people in the long-running Syrian Civil War. The revelation comes when Kucinich has been dogged by his connection to Assad, whom he met with in 2017, in the gubernatorial race. Kucinich, a longtime critic of American involvement with foreign conflict, has questioned whether Assad used chemical weapons. Kucinich's ethics filing shows a payment of $20,000 from the Association for Investment in Popular Action Committees. Paul LaRudee, treasurer for the organization, described the group as an umbrella nonprofit for other nonprofit organizations. Among those is the Syria Solidarity Movement, which LaRudee said provided funding for Kucinich to attend a conference hosted by the European Centre for the Study of Extremism in London on April 5-6, 2017. LaRudee described the group as a human rights organization, but the group's website includes multiple posts supportive of the Syrian government. "Corporate media propaganda against Syria is an avalanche that never seems to end," one of the posts reads. "Government policy and media policy are now melded into a single policy of support for 'the opposition' and unceasing hostility towards 'the regime' and all those who have come to its aid, especially Russia." The post goes on to describe "hysteria in the U.S. over alleged and completely unproven Russian interference in the U.S. elections" as a reason for U.S. involvement in the region. The London trip Kucinich took was hosted by the European Centre for the Study of Extremism. The founding director of EuroCSE is Makram Khoury-Machool, who The Telegraph described as a close friend of the last Syrian ambassador to Britain. Baroness Caroline Cox and Lord Hylton, both Assad sympathizers and members of British Parliament, spoke at the event. Cox and Hylton - like Kucinich - both visited Assad during the Syrian Civil War. Other speakers, according to a tweet from Kucinich, included Syrian Minister of Tourism Bishr Yazigi and Ali Haider, the Syrian minister for national reconciliation who is under U.S. sanctions. Kucinich has largely dodged questions about Assad during the gubernatorial campaign, instead saying he wanted to focus on Ohio. After news of the latest chemical weapons attack and the U.S. strike that followed, Kucinich put out a statement critical of President Donald Trump for launching missiles into the Middle Eastern country. "Certainly, the culprits responsible for the gas attack on Douma need to be identified and brought to justice. But last night's missile strike occurs as a violation of international law at precisely the time when international law must be enforced on behalf of the victims of Douma," Kucinich said in the statement. "It is noteworthy that those responsible for the gas attack have yet to be identified. We are not free to bomb in retaliation based on suspicion. It's a daft way to use the US military, particularly when we have troops in the region." Kucinich said in a statement the London summit was a peace conference with humanitarian activists. He said the Syria Solidarity Movement was a civil rights advocacy group. Kucinich also laid blame for the Tuesday news about his speech on the campaign of gubernatorial primary challenger Richard Cordray. "Today, the Cordray campaign unleashed a series of attacks attempting to tie me to the Kremlin's payroll, to 911 deniers, and to the murder of innocents in the Middle East," Kucinich said. "These cowardly, hysterical and outrageously untrue statements reflect Cordray's panic that he and the State Capitol power-brokers might lose control of the Ohio Democratic Party and the statehouse." A Cordray supporter filed a complaint with the ethics board Tuesday over the lack of reporting on who paid for the speeches. The complaint made several other claims, but did not mention the any of the connections to pro-Syrian government groups. The Cordray campaign declined to comment. Kucinich also released his speech he gave at the conference. In it, he criticized "an authoritarian regime" for meeting legitimate protests with resistance -- though did not name Assad. But Kucinich laid blame for the escalation of the Syrian Civil War on outside actors. "Syria had long held a tradition of pluralism, wherein Christians, Jews and Muslims of all sects, as well as various ethnicities could live, work and worship freely without fear of persecution, under the protection of the government," the speech reads. "The introduction of armed religious extremists to Syria, supported by foreign powers, shattered religious harmony and set the stage for rampant intolerance and murderous attacks." The Association for Investment in Popular Action Committees is headed up by LaRudee and Kamal Obeid. Obeid said he was a member of Architects and Engineers for 9/11 Truth. The Architects and Engineers for 9/11 Truth is a truther organization. Obeid has given talks claiming 7 World Trade Center's collapse was a controlled demolition. Obeid said he had never met Kucinich. COLUMBUS, Ohio -- Ohio ethics officials have asked former U.S. Rep. Dennis Kucinich, a Democratic candidate for governor, to provide missing information from his state financial disclosure statement about groups that paid him to speak last year. The Ohio Ethics Commission's request came Monday, the same day a separate complaint about Kucinich's filing was mailed to the Ethics Commission by a backer of Democratic rival Richard Cordray. Warren City Law Director Gregory Hicks' complaint questioned Kucinich listing "paid speeches" as a revenue source without specifying who paid him. Hicks suggested in an interview that the omissions were meant to hide Kucinich affiliations that might hurt him with voters. Kucinich's campaign said that wasn't the case. A spokesman said details about paid speeches requested by the commission would be submitted Tuesday. CLEVELAND, Ohio - Ohio Republicans are facing an uphill battle -- even before they factor in where President Donald Trump's popularity might stand this fall. Support for the party in the White House nearly always drops off during "off-year" elections like this year's, often by several percentage points, a cleveland.com analysis of election results going back to the mid-1970s confirms. But the analysis also found that the typical swing by itself won't be enough to flip control of any of Ohio's congressional districts, where Republicans hold a 12-4 advantage - or even the governor's race. On the congressional side, this is because Republicans - making use of their majorities when the districts were last redrawn in 2011 - carefully designed a map to withstand even huge swings in voter sentiment. The results of the 2016 Ohio congressional election show that the closest race was decided by 19 percentage points. Rep. Pat Tiberi retired earlier this year. The analysis found support for the party holding the White House can drop 8-10 percentage points in the midterm congressional elections in Ohio. But the closest races were decided by double that margin two years ago. The swing away from the party in power in Washington has been even greater in races for governor. But some of the larger drop-off could be due to the weakness of a particular challenger or the strength of an incumbent. Ohio congressional vote for president's party Change in vote margin statewide from 2 years ago In tallying the total votes of all Republican candidates and the total votes of all Democratic candidates for Congress statewide in each election since 1972, cleveland.com found: Support for candidates from the party holding the White House dropped noticeably in eight off-year elections, was nearly unchanged twice and increased just once. The widest swings were drops of 8 to 10 percentage points, in 1982 under Republican President Ronald Reagan, and with Democrats holding the White House in 1994 (Bill Clinton), 2010 and 2014 (Barack Obama.). The one time when the party holding the White House actually improved at the congressional level during an off-year election was in 2002, when the GOP candidates improved by 6 percentage points a year after 9/11. Ohio gubernatorial vote for president's party Change in vote margin statewide from 2 years ago In comparing votes for Ohio governor to how the state voted for president two years earlier: The same trend as in the congressional races occurred; the party holding the White House dropped noticeably in eight off-year elections, was nearly unchanged twice and increased just once. Yet there were greater swings in the gubernatorial vote to the preceding presidential vote than was the case with the congressional analysis - perhaps because of the quality of the candidates. Following Obama's two wins in Ohio, Ted Strickland did three percentage points worse for the Democrats in losing a tight race to Republican John Kasich in 2010, then Ed FitzGerald did 17 points worse in losing by a landslide to Kasich in 2014. After Clinton's 1992 election as president, the Democratic candidate for governor in 1994, Rob Burch, did 25 points worse in a failed attempt to unseat Republican Gov. George Voinovich. After President Reagan's wins 1980 and 1984, the Republicans did 16 and 20 points worse in the following gubernatorial elections, losing to Dick Celeste each time. For this analysis, cleveland.com looked at the raw number of votes for Democrats and Republicans. Third party votes are excluded from the analysis. BEACHWOOD, Ohio - In celebration of Israel turning 70, the Maltz Museum of Jewish Heritage is hosting Israeli jewelry designer Rachel Eshkol of Rachel Art Jewelry who will feature her gold, silver and precious gemstone creations during a four-day trunk show beginning on Wednesday. Her work is inspired by art and her travels and feels like a blending of so many aspects of culture and design. Rough-hewn with polish, new with an old world feel and clean lines with a unique handcrafted finish are just a few ways to describe her elegant pieces. Eshkol, 49, creates necklaces, bracelets, earrings and rings that often hint at ancient cultures as she somehow incorporates a modern vibe. Eshkol, a graduate in jewelry design from the WIZO Haifa College in Israel, creates jewelry that is sculpted with various textures creating layers of interest. Ahead of her visit to Cleveland she answered some questions about her work. How is it that you're coming to Cleveland? Is there a personal connection? Mary Ellen Saltzman who operated the gift shop at the JCC, was my first Cleveland contact. She purchased some of my work and hosted several shows of my work at the JCC. Unfortunately, she passed away. I have developed a following in Cleveland and introduced myself to Helen Fineberg at the Maltz Museum. I am excited to have this show at the Maltz Museum Store. Helen and I believe this is how I can maintain my presence in Cleveland. Where do the ideas for your designs come from? I am inspired by the ancient world, and mostly from the ocean. When did you discover your love for art and jewelry design? I come from an artistic family. My father was a master carpenter. I studied jewelry making and have been making jewelry for 20 years. Is each piece handmade by you alone, do you have a help or use a manufacturer? The initial model is made by me along with the first piece. I do have artisans who work for me. Each piece gets my final touch before it is available for sale. Among all of your designs and styles, do you have some favorites? My favorite line is one inspired by ancient history. My most recent exhibition was at the Hecht Museum in Haifa. It showcased jewels inspired by the treasures found in Pharaohs' tombs. How did you choose to design jewelry and have you designed other fashions or done other types of art? I started designing and creating at a young age. Over time, my passion grew and I started to make the jewelry. I do paint occasionally, as well. What is the best aspect of your work? My favorite is to create a custom piece for a client. I love my work so much! I find it easy to get inspired by what someone wants and to translate the ideas into their perfect piece. As for the museum store, it's a shopping treasure. Alongside jewelry, the shop carries artisan-made accessories to wear, home decor and great gift items. "People from all faiths and backgrounds shop with us year-round looking for unique American and Israeli artisan gifts. This is an exciting way to celebrate Israel, by meeting and shopping with an international artist and taking something home from Israel without having to travel there," says Helen Fineberg, Maltz Museum Store manager in a press release. TRUNK SHOW DETAILS: Where: The Maltz Museum of Jewish Heritage, 2929 Richmond Road, Beachwood. When: Wednesday, April 18 to Saturday, April 21 Hours: 5 p.m. to 9 p.m. Wednesday 11 a.m. to 5 p.m. Thursday to Saturday. Price range: $100 to $20,000. Admission: Entry to the museum store is free. Entry to the museum is $12 for adults, $10 for seniors and students over 12, $5 for children ages 5-11, children under 5 yrs. and museum members are free. Museum hours: 11 a.m. to 5 p.m. Tuesdays, Thursdays, Fridays, Saturdays and Sundays. 11 a.m. to 9 pm. Wednesdays. Closed Mondays. Links: Learn about the Maltz Museum at maltzmuseum.org and find out more about Rachel Eshkol at rachel-je.com and find Eshkol on Facebook facebook.com/OneKindArt and on Instagram instagram.com/onekindart Follow me on Twitter and Instagram @AlliArtStyle and at Allison Carey Fashion Reporter/Photographer on Facebook. UNIVERSITY HEIGHTS, Ohio -- The city now has a third department head wearing the "interim" label, as Michael Frederick took the oath of office Monday to become University Heights' interim finance director. Frederick takes over from former finance director William "Bill" Sheehan, who resigned on April 10. Mayor Michael Dylan Brennan explained that "our books were simply not being kept in an orderly way," when discussing Sheehan's departure. In his comments at the start of Monday's City Council meeting, Brennan said: "The city of University Heights maintains its books on a cash basis throughout the year. At year end, the city converts its accounts from cash basis to accrual basis. This is what is called a 'GAAP conversion.'" GAAP stands for Generally Accepted Accounting Principals, and it is the accounting standard Ohio's public entities must follow. Under cash basis accounting, a sale is recorded when an organization receives cash from a customer or some other entity, not when it issues an invoice to that customer. It later becomes necessary to change to the accrual basis to have a firm's -- or in this case a city's -- books audited. Under accrual basis accounting, expenses are matched with the related revenues and are reported when the expense occurs, not when the cash is paid. Brennan said that, under Sheehan, that switch was not made. "Right now, we have nothing to audit because there's nothing to give (to auditor James G. Zupka, CPA, Inc.) to proceed with," Brennan said. "In fairness to our departed finance director," Brennan said in his council meeting statement, "the problem began prior to his arrival here as finance director in April 2017. But it continued to be a problem through his tenure. "In my evaluation of what it will take to best remedy the situation so that the GAAP conversion and audit of 2017 may proceed," Brennan said, "it became evident that we would have to make some changes in the finance department and implement better practices. In the process of this ongoing evaluation, last week on April 10, Mr. Sheehan resigned his position as finance director of the city." Frederick, a Mentor native, had been assistant finance director and was the only other person working in the finance department. Brennan said he has confidence in Frederick, noting that he has a master's degree in accountancy in taxation and a master of business administration from Cleveland State University. Before going to work for University Heights, Frederick was an assistant auditor with the Ohio Auditor of State. Prior to that, he was a revenue auditor in the tax division of the Illinois Department of Revenue. Brennan said he would get Frederick help in the city's finance department. "In the short time Mr. Frederick has been here," Brennan said in his statement, "he has identified areas where we can implement better practices, both going forward and in looking back at 2017." Frederick, 34, said he was thankful for the opportunity to become interim finance director. "My plans are to work on GAAP conversion and work on the audit after that," he said. "I just want to make sure that our bills are paid and to keep track of the money we have." "I want to take this time to thank Mr. Frederick for undertaking this assignment and the responsibility that comes with it," Brennan said. Also serving in interim roles are Fire Chief Robert Perko, whom Brennan elevated from captain after dismissing former chief Douglas Zook, and interim Police Chief Dustin Rogers, who was a sergeant when former chief Steven Hammett retired in March. Brennan, in the case of the police and fire chief, said outside and internal candidates, including Perko and Rogers, will be looked at as candidates to become permanent chiefs. UNIVERSITY HEIGHTS, Ohio -- City Council took action Monday to increase the amount of information the University Heights Police Department will have at its disposal. Interim Police Chief Dustin Rogers said the greater bandwidth and speed afforded police department computers will help improve safety in the city, for both residents and officers. "Many components of what we do are restricted by internet space," Rogers said. "We need more bandwidth." As an example, Rogers said that there is a camera in the police department's lobby area, but what it captures can't be seen by dispatchers at the Heights-Hillcrest Communications Center, the regional dispatch center located in Cleveland Heights. The lobby could be made more safe, Rogers said, if police personnel were able to better see who is entering, with what and when. "(More bandwidth and greater speed) would also help with CAD (Computer Aided Dispatch), and with sending and receiving information from our MDT (Mobile Data Terminals) in our vehicles," Rogers said. One of CAD's benefits is that it can help an officer more quickly find the location of an address. MDTs in cars allow officers on patrol to communicate with dispatch. The ordinance calls for the city to enter into a service plan with a provider for 500 mbps (megabits per second) of internet access for the police department for five years at a cost not to exceed $1,300 per month, and to pay a non-recurring installation fee. Mayor Michael Dylan Brennan, who took office in January, has been seeking to make improvements in several areas, including services at City Hall. He has called the city's phone system outdated, and has spoken about how City Hall did not have its owner computer server when he arrived as mayor. The latter situation has been resolved. When council decides on a provider, Brennan said he would like to extend internet service to the city's pool, in addition to improving what is now served. Equipment donation University Hospitals, at Monday's City Council meeting, donated to the city's fire department a Lifepak 15 cardiac monitor and defibrillator and a Lucas chest compression system. Interim Fire Chief Robert Perko said that, a couple of years ago, the department resuscitated a resident using poorly working equipment. Perko said University Hospitals heard about the resuscitation and sought to help by donating the equipment. University Hospitals was represented by Director of EMS Dan Ellenberger and Ahuja Medical Center President Susan Juris. Chicken keeping University Heights will offer a chicken-keeping seminar at 6 p.m. May 3 at City Hall. When council passed an amendment two weeks ago that set guidelines for keeping chickens in residents' back yards, it required applicants to attend such a seminar in order to get a use permit to keep chickens. Leading the seminar will be Bethany Majeski, a naturalist at the Cleveland Metroparks' Rocky River Nature Center. Majeski also leads seminars in Lakewood in conjunction with that city's chicken-keeping ordinance. Brennan said that University Heights residents who cannot attend May 3 can attend such a seminar in another city, including Lakewood. He said he would approve certificates awarded at other cities' seminars. Councilman Mark Wiseman said that, as of Monday, the city had received one request from a resident to keep two chickens. Council will review the legislation in February 2019 to determine if any changes are required. Flooding Heavy rains that fell Saturday and Sunday caused flooding in the basement of City Hall. Six members of the fire department, three members of the service department, Clerk of Council Kelly Thomas and Brennan worked until Sunday night cleaning the basement. The blockage was created by a disc that had found its way into the storm drain. "As it is, the carpeting was ruined and (was) torn out this morning," Brennan said. "Other than that, the damage was relatively minimal." "Our social pact is, through the regional governors, with the people," he said during the second day of GORE-Executive's (Executive Branch and Regional Governors Meeting) extraordinary session held at Lima's Government Palace. Likewise, the government official highlighted the dialogue between President Martin Vizcarra and governors to boost investments On the first day of the current GORE-Executive session, more than 300 projects were reviewed, and works worth over S/5.00 billion (about US$1.55 billion) were addressed. Furthermore, Villanueva stressed that the Ministerial Cabinet he heads will visit each region on a constant basis. Additionally, the head of the PCM requested governors to act with humility "in order to remain close to the people and listen to them." He also pointed out Peru is now represented by citizens from the provinces, "and we have to prove it can be managed from the most remote corner of Peru." The GORE-Executive extraordinary session, which brought together State ministers and governors, was led by President Vizcarra. (END) CVC/CCR/JAA/MVB Prime Minister Cesar Villanueva on Tuesday stressed that the Government has engaged in a social pact with citizens, for which the Ministerial Cabinet he leads will be present in each region of the country.Published: 4/17/2018 Questo comunicato e stato pubblicato piu di 1 anno fa. Le informazioni su questa pagina potrebbero non essere attendibili. Look up web sights that tell you how to cure osteoporosis with out osrs gold rugs. Also look up info about Bonviva and Bonvia. Thanks, and God be with Us. "Bar none, one of the most interesting and intelligent people I have met," Bentall said in a release. "He taught me many valuable things and gave me the best friend I have. He died with his boots on at the age of ninety three. Rsorder is Trusted Runescape gold Site 2018 to Buy All RS products 24/7 online. It owns 9 years of experience in the gaming market and Millons of players from Europe, Asia, South America and so on.Now The new version of RSorder is live, you can buy All RS products with mobile conveniently and quickly! 5% more gold code:RSYK5 for all rs products & 10% accounts code:OSRSA10 for all rs accounts anytime! McBain said it's important that any overdose awareness initiative addresses the stigmas associated with addiction and how they impact people who use drugs and their loved ones. On the north plaza of the Vancouver Art Gallery, according to a Facebook event page for the "International Overdose Awareness Day Vigil Rally," hosted by Tabitha Montgomery. AtHyack Square, while more events are planned in Nanaimo, Kamloops, Courtenay, Powell River, Abbotsford, Fort St. They have successfully test marketed oils that can be used in aromatherapy, perfumery and personal body products.Working with all of its communities, CFN is a leader in carbon offset protocols and sales. Indeed a good portion of First Nations stewardship departments are paid for by the revenue generated through offset sales. In a carbon conscious world, there is tremendous opportunity for future sales.Our modeling indicates that between the member Nations, we need to create almost 5,000 new jobs between today and 2038. So how bad could it get if you should bomb the rest? You probably still at a C at least. That not too bad. You should feel a lot calmer already, which will help you do the best you can with the exercises that are left. "This is my life's work and I want to make sure that it stays available and in print in the best possible form that can be achieved," he said. "I'm acutely aware that I'm mortal and so I want this stuff to last and for people to avail themselves of it if they choose. It's been very encouraging over the last 10 years to see the audience growing and people getting something from the music that, for lack of a better word, is gratifying and I'm very happy about that.". "I just felt in a moment when there might be a focus on negativity that there was time to refocus on the positive aspects of diversity. All you have to do is look at the names on those T shirts and recognize these were players from every race, colour and creed who came to the league and were given an opportunity and became stars and Canadian icons. It's not at all political, it's just who we are and really worthy of celebration.". Guys!Only One Day for you to Snap Free runescape gold & rs 2007 gold from Rsorder Spring Flash Sale at 03:00 am. GMT on April 18 !by http://www.rsorder.com/ Part II:Up to 9% off Runescape Gold/osrs gold with Code SP18 on Rsorder is waitting for you Until Apr.18 ! Part III:All Kinds of rs 07 gold/rs3 gold and osrs accounts with only $1 is also waitting for you on RSorder Auction at 03:00 am. GMT each Monday and Thurday !Win fromhttps://www.rsorder.com/auction. Questo comunicato e stato pubblicato piu di 1 anno fa. Le informazioni su questa pagina potrebbero non essere attendibili. A decade ago, being a fashion designer in the UAE meant that you had a knack for jazzing up kaftans and abayas, embellishing eveningwear or creating turban-style head-wraps. Fast forward ten years, and the market is brimming with homegrown fashion brands with radically expanded repertoires. Likewise, in the past, UAE shoppers relied on shopping malls for their fashion fixes, investing in goods that obviously carried the logos of popular international brands. But since social media has taken the region by storm, and pop-ups have taken hold as an alternative retail platform, local consumers have become increasingly experimental. As a result, homegrown fashion brands are flourishing. Over the past few years, the wardrobe choices being made by women have grown to include more and more seasonal trends, fresh from international runways, but also rich with local finds, says Zayan Ghandour, co-founder of Sauce stores and designer of Zayan The Label. In parallel, the caliber and quality of local designers has exponentially matured, responding to and encouraging the appetite for the uniqueness and novelty of homegrown talent. A popular concept store for curated fashion finds, Sauce, which opened in 2004, has provided a launch pad for many homegrown designers, such as Dima Ayad and Arwa Al Banawi. Being backed by a reputable regional fashion retailer, means that doors opened to further opportunities for many of these local labels. We work closely with homegrown talent to help them hone their talents and streamline their designs in a way that maintains their individuality and strengthens their commercial edge, explains Ghandour. As the retail landscape has evolved, Sauce has opened various sister brands, dedicated to fine jewellery, beachwear and resort wear Homegrown fashion brands are creating a name for themselves within distinct and often niche offerings like Talar Nina, who specialises in bomber Jackets, Lady Fozaza, known for her structured blazers, Azra, whose covetable leather bags take the shapes of half-moons and Bil Arabi, which is renowned for bold, jewellery inspired by Arabic calligraphy. Theres an amazing spectrum of design here now. The regional design scene now encompasses everything from the coolest streetwear through to the most luxurious, couture-level bespoke pieces, notes Firras Alwahabi, CEO of Faux, a boutique agency dedicated to promoting regional fashion labels through PR, social media and distribution services. Realising that there was a pool of talented designers in the UAE, but a lack of effective representation for them, Alwahabi launched Faux in 2011. His very first client was Sheikha Madiyah Al Sharqi, whose eponymous label developed a significant regional following in its first five years, and in 2016, became available in the United States at the upscale Manhattan boutique Fivestory. Other UAE-based brands that have impressed international buyers and landed partnerships with global stockists over the past few years include All Things Mochi with Farfetch, Bambah and Zayan The Label with ModaOperandi and Huda Al Nuaimi with MatchesFashion. A consistent element that we see in the brands that really make an impact internationally is that they all have a unique visual identity, explains Alwahabi. They are blazing their own trail, with a unique look and style, and they arent mimicking the work of anyone else. International celebrities and royalty or at least their stylists have also started to take notice of the UAEs fashion talent. Dubai-based Michael Cinco has dressed countless stars, including Jennifer Lopez and Lady Gaga; trousers by Reemami were spotted on Queen Rania; a shirt-dress by Bouguessa was worn by Beyonce; robes by Madiyah Al Sharqi have been seen on Sofia Richie and Lorde; and a box-clutch by LAfshar was carried by Kendal Jenner on her birthday. Being affiliated with an A-lister is a huge achievement for an emerging fashion label, and this is sometihgn that is being facilitated by todays digital climate. Brands have the ability to connect now with anyone who owns a digital device, meaning the potential for engagement is basically limitless. Thats had a huge impact on the growth potential of brands here, explains Alwahabi. Ghandour adds that Instagram has become essential as a promotional tool. It is a great way to offer audiences a 360-degree insight into the brands world, its ethos and who the people behind the label really are. Its a fascinating time, as now more than ever before there is a direct communication channel between brand and consumer, and its really important to use that connection effectively, she says. Lisseth Villalobos, managing director of Create Consultancy, which helps place Middle Eastern designers on Hollywood red carpets and in leading ad campaigns and fashion magazines abroad, believes that designers from the region have started catering to a wider audience but have also managed to remain true to their roots. Their aesthetics have not changed, but the way they produce their collections, shoot their collections and have tailored their silhouettes to have more of international appeal has changed, she says. FMM by Fatma Al Mulla is a great example of a UAE based designer who has taken the traditional kaftan and abaya and has made it wearable streetwear for anyone, not just modest consumers. Al Mulla has also diversified her brand to include handbags, phone cases and enamel pins, which she often sells at pop-up markets. These have become a trending sales model throughout the nation, with outdoor fairs taking place during the winter, and indoor fashion exhibitions occurring during Ramadan. Opportunities like pop-ups, where brands have the chance to engage on-to-one with consumers, are an amazing way to forge personal links and to also reach people who may never have come across a brand in another context. Theyre a great way to drive sales in a very tangible way, says Alwahabi, who organises seasonal trunk shows and pop-ups for labels represented by Faux. While many UAE consumers invariably still splurge on international brands, theyre embracing homegrown labels at the same time. It isnt a matter of deciding between Lama Jouni and Louis Vuitton, or Yasmin Al Mulla and Saint Laurent, because contemporary consumers are opting to mix their brand-name buys with Arab labels.Read more at:http://www.marieprom.co.uk/formal-dresses-uk | http://www.marieprom.co.uk/cheap-prom-dresses-online We are analyzing the site. Please wait a few seconds.. Chemyunion will present its latest innovations at in-cosmetics Global. including a cold process emulsifier, a 4-in-1 male multifunctional, an antimicrobial and a hair protectant. Additionally, the company will host numerous free to attend events. Cold Process Emulsifier Powderfeel WR is an ingredient created to facilitate the formulation of multiple textures, from fluid to butter, in cold process. Powderfeel WR is an O/W emulsifier based on Pickering emulsion technology, which supports cold development and reduces environmental impact and processing costs. Its lipid crystals are finely divided and interfacially absorbed, allowing for stabilization of high oil concentration and the reduction of skin irritation. Multifunction for Men 4Man is a multifunctional solution that brings together four effects in one ingredient, designed specifically to meet the needs of male skin. It is composed of a synergetic combination of hop, licorice, red algae extract, Gallic rose, panthenol and menthol. Benefits include the stimulation of cell renewal, increased skin superficial moisture, reduction of oiliness and increased firmness. Antimicrobial Hebeatol CG is a functional ingredient acting as a broad spectrum antimicrobial agent, allowing formulators greater chances of diversification in product preservation. Combining xylitol esters and caprylyl glycol, it is compatible with several cosmetic formulations and is ideal for micellar waters, wet wipes and mascara. Hair Protectant Seriliss RA straightens and protects hair with a protein complex that promotes the preservation of cystine and permeation of sericin. Benefits include increased strength, increased cross sectional area, straighter and shinier hair after 10 washings and immediate and long lasting straightening effects. Educational Events Additionally, the company will host numerous free to attend events, including: Technical seminar: Overcoming the Challenge of Preservatives in Cosmetics April 18, 2018, 2:50 pm -3:20 pm, Technical Seminars Theatre 3 Introducing formulators to ways to increase chances of diversification in product preservation Formulation Lab: Awaken Your Senses with a Single Step Formulation for Skin Care April 18, 2018, 5:30 -6:30, Formulation Lab 1 A session centered around methods to create emulsions with fewer ingredients and smoother textures, including sprayable formulas which reduce the time to market. Guests will develop a cushion foundation formula in cold process. Live Demonstrations Awaken Your Senses with a Single Step Formulation April 17, 2018, 2:00 -2:30; April 18, 2018, 2:00 -2:30; April 19, 2018, 1:00 -3:30, Innovation Zone Guests will have the opportunity witness the formulation a detox and moisturizer coconut milk formula in a simple cold press process. Sensory Bar: One Solution For Multiple Textures April 17-19, 2018 all day, Sensory Bar areanumber 5 Guests will be able to experience different formulations featuring the companys Powderfeel WR. Powderfeel WRs Pickering emulsion technology that allows for the development of formulas ranging from sprayable to butter cold-processed with high oil concentration, ensuring stability and providing hydration and skin barrier restoration. IZ Box Seriliss RA April 17-19, 2018 all day, Innovation Zoneactive area box number18 Seriliss RA straightens and protects hair simultaneously and features a protein complex that promotes the preservation of cystine and permeation of sericin. Chemyunion will be located at booth H50 during in-cosmetics Global 2018, held April 17-19 in Amsterdam. 10:31 | Lima, Apr. 17. As he explained, CAN will not be a distant advisory body offering suggestions or recommendations that may or may not be applied but will be part of the PCM structure with its own responsibilities. "Thus, we shall be obliged to comply with its demands (...). It will be part of the State organization," he said during the second day of GORE-Executive's (Executive Branch and Regional Governors Meeting) extraordinary session held at Lima's Government Palace. According to the Head of State, this is a change of particular importance, which will be joined by the application of the National Anticorruption Plan received Monday from CAN . "We have commissioned the Prime Minister (Cesar Villanueva) to approve it by supreme decree with the consenting vote of the Council of Ministers," he pointed out. Mr. Vizcarra stressed that the plan was discussed and improved for more than a year with contributions from civil society, regional governments, the Judicial Branch, the Comptroller General's Office, and the PCM. "We have a plan, and we are going to apply it. It would be easy to say 'we are going to look through it,' but we want to take firm decisions against corruption ," he emphasized. "Today, we witness an important event. The Framework Climate Change Law enables us to view the future with optimism and face it together. We are convinced a climate-responsible country can grow and has a forward-looking approach," he said. "This is the first (framework law) in South America after the Paris Agreement entered into force in 2016 and reaffirms our commitment to sustainable development for the well-being of present and future generations," the President was quoted as saying. This way, Peru assumes a firm climate commitment and follows similar legislative initiatives in other countries. "The legislation's goal is to reduce the country's vulnerability to climate change and take advantage of growth opportunities with lower carbon emissions," he stated. Additionally, this is an opportunity for the State to gain efficiency in public spending and generate investment projects to include climate change in the national development planning process. According to the statesman, the law will promote technology and generate important research work on decision-making when preparing public investment projects. Plus, it will result in investment savings and avoid unnecessary expenses. Finally, Mr. Vizcarra called on Peruvians to be responsible for environmental protection The climate legislation was enacted within the framework of the GORE-Executive (Executive Branch and Regional Governors Meeting) held at Lima's Government Palace. (END) VVS/CCR/RMB Peruvian President Martin Vizcarra on Tuesday enacted a Framework Climate Change Law, aimed at reducing the country's vulnerability to this phenomenon caused by greenhouse gas emissions.Published: 4/17/2018 Serve the people Young Communists work among the homeless Every week theyre there. Volunteers distributing between 100 to 150 free, nutritious meals to Sydneys homeless. Clothes and information on services are available, too. Tea, coffee, fruit and bread to take away are piled onto several trestle tables. The stall at the Macquarie Street end of Martin Place is a happy place. Music plays and the homeless and the volunteers cant help breaking out into the occasional, impromptu dance. Chats strike up between volunteers, regular customers and the increasing number of new faces. Nothing exceptional in all this, you would think. Charities do this sort of thing all the time all over Australia as more and more people find themselves sleeping rough. But this group of volunteers is different. The Western Sydney Community Alliance (WSCA) is driven by a group of young progressives who, having learned from the Martin Place Street Kitchen, want to eventually launch similar programs in western Sydney. Their motto, carried on WSCAs logo, is Serve the People. The work, including the complex logistics, is unrelenting and hard. It should be wearing the group down, but they have plans to provide even more services to people spun off by an uncaring capitalist society. Rather than growing tired, they throw themselves into the task happily. They hold down demanding full-time jobs and study. CPA members see this labour of humanistic love as Party work in their community. They also do a prodigious amount of specifically Party work pasting up CPA recruitment posters and preparing for the various protests around Invasion day, Palm Sunday, solidarity with Syria and housing issues, supporting and feeding pickets, for example. Charity or political work You might wonder about the political value of this charity work. The young Marxist-Leninists involved regularly field these sorts of questions from more politically engaged onlookers. I spoke about this with several of the volunteers who all had serious Marxist politics. CPA member Jay, a mainstay of the operation, gave me his take on the politics of feeding the homeless. Communist Parties all over the world have always had a charitable element to their function. Its community outreach that lets working class people know that the Communist Party cares about them, cares about their living conditions. The charity aspect isnt all that we do, its part of what we do and it has the added advantage of drawing a lot of people who are enthusiastic to think about helping out the homeless, who care about social issues to form a good pool of potential allies who the party can talk with and find solutions together to the many political and social problems that face the Australian working class, Jay said. Hes right. Communist parties the world over have always had hands on programs to help neglected communities survive. The lower floor of the CPAs first headquarters in George Street, Sydney, was open in the 1920s to the homeless to take shelter. The Communist Party of Indonesia sourced cheap seed for starving farmers. In Italy, the once mighty PCI was a vital part of serving working class communities. The vacuum that has been left is being filled by fascist groups like Casa Pound. In Greece, the fascist Golden Dawn provides food and other services to the needy for free to Greeks only! Friedrich Engels, co-author with Karl Marx of the Communist Manifesto praised the work of the nascent Salvation Army. He said the capitalist ruling class would rue the day they allowed the formation of the army. He reasoned the work of restoring the dignity of desperately poor would allow them to re-join the organised working class and help it overthrow their oppression. The alternative was to abandon them to the ranks of the lumpen proletariat: The dangerous class, the social scum, that passively rotting mass thrown off by the lowest layers of old society, may, here and there, be swept into the movement by a proletarian revolution, its conditions of life, however, prepare it far more for the part of a bribed tool of reactionary intrigue. The Salvation Army did not live up to Engels expectations. It became a sectarian and reactionary group interested in keeping the passively rotting mass docile and fit for exploitation. Fascists and other right wingers are mobilising this dangerous class right now while the left mostly looks on. Inspiration from a hard history The volunteers are also inspired by the community programs of the Black Panther Party (BPP) active in the US during the 1960s and 70s. They organised breakfast, literacy and health care programs on a massive scale until they finally succumbed to a vicious campaign of disruption and violent repression at the hands of the FBI. Today, the scandalous techniques used against the BPP (and the CPUSA and the anti-Vietnam War movement) during the operation called COINTELPRO are in the public domain; safe now that the revolutionary potential of the times has been crushed or, taking a longer view, temporarily diverted. All these programs satisfy the deep needs of the community, but they are not solutions to our problems, Huey P Newton, co-founder and chief ideologue of the BPP said at the time. That is why we call them survival programs, meaning survival pending revolution. We say that the survival program of the Black Panther Party is like the survival kit of a sailor stranded on a raft. It helps him to sustain himself until he can get completely out of that situation. So, the survival programs are not answers or solutions, but they will help us to organise the community around a true analysis and understanding of their situation. When consciousness and understanding is raised to a high level then the community will seize the time and deliver themselves from the boot of their oppressors, Newton concluded. The volunteers of the WSCA realise they may not have the impact that the BPP had in many parts of the US, but they are doing what they can. Members are already volunteering to help struggling students at under-resourced schools. They cooperate with another community organisation in the distribution of cheap food hampers. They want to collect money for the defence of CFMEU officials being persecuted by the ABCC and the rest of the judicial system. They are challenged rather than daunted by the size of the problems facing underprivileged people. Building comradeship Jay continued with his assessment of the contribution of the CPA Youth: Its also about having a team-building activity that we can go to every week. We see people on an ongoing basis develop deep relationships, which we wouldnt really be able to do if we were simply turning up to meetings every two weeks and being alienated from each other outside of a shared collective experience that allows us to bond with each other but talk politics at the same time. On the one hand we want the public to know that Communists do think like this, Communists do care about social issues, Communists do work in the interests of those who are disadvantaged, who have been made homeless because of the capitalist system but were not only here to say that we are the replacement, that we are the solution. Were saying that the system must be replaced, ultimately. If we can promote that message at the same time as providing a useful service, then people will see the worth of having a Communist Party operating in this country as the basis of future activity and eventually a revolution in Australia, Jay concluded. The CPA has become home for the work of the volunteers. The cooking has been done at the Party building lately. The group works intensively at the food prep while maintaining a high level of political chat. They start serving at 3pm and go right through until 9pm or until the food runs out. At the end of the night, they pack up and take their kit back to the CPA!. If you are in Sydney and feeling crushed under the weight of the capitalist agenda being imposed on working people, the unemployed and homeless IRL (In Real Life) rather than online, pay a visit one Sunday and talk to the young Communists serving the people at Martin Place. Youll come away inspired to fight on! If readers are interested in helping the work of the Western Suburbs Community Alliance, contact Antonella at youth.nsw@cpa.org.au or visit the Facebook page https://www.facebook.com/westernsydneycommunityalliance * Bob Briton is General Secretary of the Communist Party of Australia. The commodification of education In India, the NDA (National Democratic Alliance) governments appointment of hack loyalists to important positions in the sphere of education has rightly raised concerns about the damage being done to the education system. But this is not the sole source of danger to the system. The era of globalisation of capital brings in its train a process of destruction of education, of which in the Indian context the intrusion of communal-fascism into the sphere of education is an important additional ingredient. This process of destruction, its how and why, has to be understood in its totality. Terry Eagleton, the British literary theorist, narrates an interesting anecdote. During a visit to South Korea where he was being shown around a university by its CEO (that is how administrative heads of universities are designated these days), after seeing the swanky gadgets and the gleaming laboratories, he wanted to see where the critical studies departments were located. The CEO looked baffled, turned to his aide for enlightenment without success, and then promised: we shall look into the matter! All over the world, the role of education for critiquing existing structures so that a more humane society can be built is being undermined. And the chief means through which this is effected is the commodification of education, and the associated processes of its privatisation and conversion into a sphere of profit-making. The sell Of course the private institutions who sell education as a commodity for profit, would claim that they are not actually profit-making entities, since their profits are ploughed back into the institution itself. But capitalist firms also plough back their profits, and this does not prevent their being called profit-making. So there is nothing particularly virtuous about ploughing back profits. Profits remain profits whether or not they are ploughed back; and institutions earning profits remain precisely that. They cannot be called non-profit-making just because they plough their profits back into themselves. One implication of the commodification of education has been well understood and much discussed, namely that it excludes those belonging to non-affluent households from getting an education. Of course, neo-liberal spokesmen advocating commodification of education suggest that even those belonging to non-affluent households can access education by taking student loans; but in a society with no guarantee of employment, education financed by student loans can be the precursor of mass student suicides caused by loan default, exactly the way that there have been mass peasant suicides over the last decade and half. And this very risk involved in taking loans, namely that the resources for paying them back may not be available when the time comes for doing so, would significantly deter potential students from non-affluent families from adopting this course. The conversion of education into a commodity sold by private profit-making institutions therefore has the effect of denying it to the vast majority of potential students in India, all those from non-affluent backgrounds. But it has two other implications as well which are no less important. One is the destruction of quality. In general, education becomes a commodity when the product of education, i.e., the person into whom education enters as an input, becomes a commodity. Now, of course, educated persons have been looking for employment in the job market for a long time; so, the educated, it may be thought, have become commodities for a long time, and there is nothing new about what is happening now. But this is not true. A commodity is characterised above all by the fact that for the seller it is not a use-value but a pure exchange value, the equivalent of a certain amount of money, or of a certain magnitude of command over other commodities. If the person into whom education enters as an input becomes a commodity, then that person too sees education not as a use-value but entirely as an exchange value, i.e., entirely as something that enables him or her to obtain a certain sum of money on the market. And this is what has been happening of late, which underlies the commodification of education. Destructive In short, when education is commodified, it ceases to play the role of making students curious, or inquisitive or excited by the exposure to the grand world of ideas. It makes them look upon education as a capsule which they must imbibe so that they can command a better value on the job market. Commodification of education destroys creativity, originality, and any desire to go beyond the given, among the students. Since going beyond the given is the hallmark of creative thought, commodification of education destroys creative thought. And interestingly, such commodification proceeds at a much faster pace, with far greater virulence in the so-called newly-emerging countries like India than even in the traditional bastions of capitalism, the metropolitan countries. This is partly because the former are characterised by a much more aggressive, socially climbing, and politically weighty urban middle class, and partly because, the slate being cleaner in the former, new characters can be written with much greater ease upon them. The other implication of commodification of education is to make its products, the educated, into socially insensitive and completely self-absorbed entities, incapable of any sympathy for the toiling masses. This characteristic in fact comes particularly easily to the educated in a society like ours, which has been marked by millennia of caste oppression and institutionalised inequality, and where looking upon the toiling masses as inferior is almost a habit acquired from birth. All these characteristics of commodification of education serve contemporary corporate capitalism well. The massive squeeze on the working people through the expropriation and displacement of peasants and petty producers, and through an increase in unemployment, underemployment, disguised unemployment, and casual employment, which also has the effect of keeping down the real wage rate of even those few, the so-called organised workers, who have not yet become victims of labour market flexibility, does not generate the massive resistance it could and should, because it does not attract the requisite support from a socially insensitive and educationally-dumbed down urban intelligentsia. (This insensitivity would doubtless change when the middle class itself is hit by the crisis, which is both inevitable and imminent; but even when this happens, the commodification of education would still act in the direction of dampening resistance). But even though commodification of education serves neo-liberal capitalism well, by generally keeping down any intellectual challenge to it, in a period of crisis, such as now, the resistance of the working people builds up nonetheless. To meet this resistance, an alliance with communal-fascism becomes necessary for the globalised corporate-financial oligarchy. Such a corporate-communal alliance is precisely what underlies the present NDA dispensation. The engineering of communal riots, and the bringing about of a communal polarisation in crucial regions of the country such as Uttar Pradesh, together of course with the massive bankrolling of its election campaign by the corporate-financial oligarchy, is what brought the NDA to power in 2014. And having come to power it is busy trying to pay back its corporate patrons through cuts in welfare expenditures on the poor, through the land grab ordinance (which has already been promulgated three times in contravention of all parliamentary procedures), and through imminent legislation enforcing labour market flexibility. As a part of this alliance, the communal-fascist forces also get the opportunity to bring their personnel and their ideology into the education system. The destruction of education in short occurs from two directions, the commodification of education, and the communalisation of education. The co-existence of these two tendencies in the sphere of education is the counterpart in the realm of education of the corporate-communal alliance that is holding sway in the sphere of the polity. And there is no contradiction between these two tendencies, of commodification and communalisation. This may appear strange at first sight. Are we not supposed to be in a knowledge economy for which a revamping of higher education is required? And surely such a revamping cannot occur if Hindutva pebbles are being put into the heads of the knowledge gatherers, if the distinction between mythology and history is being obliterated, if a contempt for the poor and the marginalised is being implicitly inculcated in them. Surely it is in the interests of corporate capital itself to rein in the Hindutva forces and arrest the process of communalisation of education. Knowledge and skills This argument however, and indeed much of the talk of a knowledge economy, misses an important distinction, namely the distinction between knowledge and skills. Knowledge in the sense of a critical engagement with the world of ideas is not what corporate capital in countries like ours wants. The absence of such knowledge may hold back fundamental research in the natural sciences, but then we can always import the products of such research from the metropolitan countries. Neither corporate capital of the country, nor imperialism, is particularly interested in the promotion of fundamental research within the country, the former because it considers such research unnecessary (it prefers to import the outcome of such research from the metropolis), and the latter because it is interested in preserving the intellectual hegemony of the metropolis (and the intellectual parasitism of countries like ours upon the metropolis). And as far as the social sciences and the humanities are concerned, knowledge, in the sense of a critical engagement with the world of ideas, is a positively dangerous thing from the perspective of the corporate-communal alliance, for it can only breed Marxist, Ambedkarite, progressive-nationalist, secular-democratic, and womens liberationist ideas, all of which appear, both to corporate capital and to the Hindutva forces, as part of a red menace. (It is interesting that the Ambedkar-Periyar Study Circle, which the Chennai IIT briefly tried to ban to placate the ministry of human resource development, was portrayed in some quarters as being a red outfit.) Corporate capital requires skills (as distinct from knowledge) which should be available cheap. International capital requires skilled personnel in countries like ours who can boost its profits by the lower wages they get, compared to similar skilled workers in the metropolitan economies. But the development of knowledge in the sense of having institutions where students engage critically with the world of ideas, is distinctly unwelcome, even though the jargon continues to be about the coming into being of a knowledge economy. It is significant that almost every document prepared by the NDA government on education emphasises the need for privatisation, and for a public-private partnership. This is precisely because privatisation of education sits well with the communalisation of education. There is a further point here. Both in the government sector, where the fiscal crunch is adduced as the reason, and in the private sector, where profit-making demands it anyway, the tendency is to have untenured, temporary, or guest faculty that is paid a pittance but is worked intensively. The tendency, in short, is to have a dualism within the faculty, with a few well-paid professors on the one side and an army of underpaid subaltern teachers on the other. This again works well for the corporate-communal alliance: the well-paid professors, thrilled with their salary and status and scared of losing them, would be circumspect about adopting any critical stance vis-a-vis the establishment; and the overworked subaltern teachers would be victims of insecurity anyway and hence easily cowed down. The erection of such a conformist, dualistic structure, however, only contributes further towards a destruction of education. Peoples Democracy Communist Party of India (Marxist) The right to strike Politics in the Pub Perth In January of this year the Rail, Tram and Bus Union (RTBU) in New South Wales called a strike in Sydney over the failure of the New South Wales government to negotiate over wages and safety. The NSW government, fearing the consequences of the industrial action which included the impact on the economy, sought to circumvent the unions right to strike by making an application in the Fair Work Commission to have the strike called off, claiming the impact would be too great on the economy and inconvenience the public attending school, hospital appointments and work. The secretary of the Australian Council of Trade Unions, Sally McManus, realised what the impact of this manoeuvre would have, not only on the RBTU in NSW but unions across Australia and stated, The right to strike is almost dead in this country. The impact of this dispute in NSW goes far beyond the boundaries of NSW and affects the fundamental ability of the organised working class through its unions to fight for the wages and conditions necessary to live a decent life. Against this backdrop the Communist Party of Australia, WA Branch, held a Politics in the Pub at 43 Below in Perth in March on the history and future of the right to strike in Australia. Right to strike sacrosanct The panel commenced with a political perspective of the right to strike from Peter Limb, activist and labour historian. Limb said that, as was demonstrated by the Sydney train drivers dispute, there was an attempt by capital and governments to curtail the ability of unions in Australia to exercise the right to strike. Limb added, The legal right to strike should be sacrosanct in Australia. The history of this country and wages and conditions of workers were only able to be advanced through the right to strike, as employers never give wage rises freely, demonstrated by examples from the Pilbara Aboriginal stock workers strike of 1946, the coal miners strike of 1949 in the coalfields of NSW, in the 1960s strikes protesting the arrest and imprisonment of unionist Clarrie OShea, and the Patrick waterfront dispute of 1998. In the 1890s it was the industrial unrest of that time which brought about the formation of the Australian Labor Party as the political arm of the union movement. While shackles on strikes are put on by conservative governments they are barely loosened, let alone removed, by Labor governments. Limb also noted the right of workers to withdraw their labour is only available in a few countries in the capitalist world, including Venezuela (a capitalist economy but a socialist-oriented government), Denmark, Italy, France, Norway and South Africa. Strikes play a crucial role for the working class, as it gives them bargaining power in the fight for better conditions and the shared experience builds solidarity amongst workers and their communities. At times, the entire union movement of a country will call a general strike as has happened in recent years in Brazil and Greece. Peter Limb emphasised that workers needed to join unions and to fully support the campaigns by the union movement led by the Australian Council of Trade Unions that oppose unjust laws (Change the Rules). Not taking action, noted Lim, can also lead to misery and more misery and, as we have seen in Australia over the last 15 years: The low rate of strikes and industrial action in general accompanies low rates of pay reflecting the diminished ability of organised labour to exercise its power. The second speaker was WA state secretary of the Construction, Forestry, Mining and Energy Union, Mick Buchan, whose union is in the direct firing line of the Liberal government of Prime Minister Malcolm Turnbull, as the union stands up to the bullying tactics of the government and employers. Buchan said the latest attacks began under the Liberal government of John Howard, which moved away from enterprise bargaining agreements when it launched its Australian Workplace Agreements under its anti-union WorkChoices laws. This was demonstrated during the construction of the Binningup Water Treatment plant near Bunbury, which began in 2011. The bullying tactics of the employer in that dispute involved it refusing to negotiate and pushing the workers into confrontation and eventually striking. Another instance is where sham contracting companies do not pay workers for weeks at a time, as happened during the construction of extensions to Perth Airport. Again, this forced workers to go on strike, which was then used as a pretext by the Fairwork Ombudsman to take the CFMEU to the Federal Court. Buchan pointed out these tactics by employers affect families and their workers where corporations try to divide and rule amongst the workers. There are severe penalties involved in taking industrial action especially against the union and its officials. Buchan said, We need to get rid of these unjust laws together as a united union movement and not just a handful of unions. Labour hire is also used as a weapon against organised workers as most labour hire workers are not unionised. Employment Minister Michaelia Cash takes her orders from the likes of Rio, Alcoa and South 32. In conclusion Buchan said it was important for workers and their communities and families to fight for permanency and the right to strike. Formal v effective right The next speaker was Tim Dimond, the principal research and industrial officer with Unions WA, who spoke about the right to strike as a formal right versus an effective right. In Australias Federal Constitution we do not have a Bill of Rights and therefore the right of workers to strike can narrowly be viewed as part of their ability to exercise their implied freedom of speech under the constitution, noted Dimond. There is a United Nations Covenant which theoretically grants workers the freedom of association to fight for just and favourable working conditions, workplace democracy and worthwhile living standards. However, added Dimond, employers have, since the 1980s, used the courts, including common law and the law-making ability of parliament, to narrow the options available to unions to defend their rights at work. Under these conditions there has been a growth in insecure work arrangements, which in turn has led to increased difficulty in organising. The consequence of decreased disputation with the boss has meant very little pressure in wages growth and stagnant household incomes. This, is despite the huge strides in worker productivity and company profits. However, internationally, the situation is not uniform, as demonstrated in 2016 when the largest strike ever occurred in India, when millions of public servants went on strike. Dimond concluded by asserting the right to strike was only effective if it was exercised, which is why Unions WA supported the ACTU Change the Rules campaign: the rules are broken because they do not serve the interests of workers. Ramon Martinez a rank and file member with the CFMEU said, although the union tried to give its members a message about their rights and the need for militancy to defend these rights, the public were often misinformed by the corporate media and society as a whole loses when this occurs. Martinez said, while we may have democracy in this country, whereby we vote for people to serve our interests, it was capitalism which mostly benefited by the way democracy operates as capitalism controls most of the resources under a liberal democratic system. The Communist Party of Australia supports the rights of workers to strike to defend their wages, conditions, safety at work and a decent life and access to society by all. Victory 20th Anniversary of Patrick dispute Friends and supporters of the Maritime Union of Australia gathered to celebrate the 20th anniversary of the dispute with Patrick stevedoring on Saturday April 7. Twenty years ago was a time when Australian unionism hung in the balance as it faced a concerted corporations-government-National Farmers Federation attack on the most militant of unions the MUA. Members of the executive of the Sydney Branch of the MUA. As one speaker said, They picked a fight and they lost! Every speech was punctuated with loud cheering at the mention of victory. The reverse happened at the mention of names such as John Howard (PM of the time), Peter Reith (Industrial Minister of the time), Chris Corrigan (head of Patrick). The gathering happened in Maroubra which we were reminded was the name of a famous Aboriginal warrior; this gathering too was attended by many warriors of the working class movement. On April 8, 1998 Patrick dismissed all its workers and thus began one of the biggest industrial disputes in recent Australian history. The mood of those gathered to celebrate the victory of the workers and the union in that dispute was one of jubilation and justified satisfaction. Paul McAleer, the Sydney Branch secretary of the MUA, was the MC and he introduced luminary after luminary from that time and now. Speakers included McAleer, followed by Paddy Crumlin, national secretary of the MUA, followed by the key person from that time, John Coombs. Sally McManus, secretary of the ACTU, spoke about the lessons she learned on the MUA picket and how it was relevant to todays battles. The event was accompanied by the music of band Urban Guerrillas and the Trade Union Choir and so many chants of MUA here to stay that we all lost count. The MUA staff had also prepared a very good historical display from that time as well. All that is left to say is: MUA here to stay! It's not that there are suddenly packs of roving grandmas mugging people in the streets -- it's that we're living longer, so there are more elderly everything. In 2015, old people accounted for 10 percent of America's prison population, a 400 percent jump compared to 1993. As long as people continue aging and doing crimes, that type of growth is unsustainable. So what can we do about it? One idea is to transfer them to special geriatric units, but that would cost a lot of money in itself. Also, many of the old prisoners are against that, because they would lose their "informal caregivers" within the prison population. Like, maybe Skull-Kicker Pete saved Dicey Carlos from getting shanked 15 years ago, and now Carlos pre-chews his food for him. Continue Reading Below Advertisement Another approach is to release prisoners who are too old and frail to be a threat to society, but the process is such a bureaucratic nightmare that inmates keep dying off before they see freedom. One inmate, a drug dealer serving a life sentence, was passed up for the "compassionate release" program, despite being in a near-vegetative state. Then you have cases like the 83-year-old sex offender who was released to a nursing home because he was deemed "too sick to hurt anyone again," only for him to go and molest a 95-year-old woman and grope a hospital worker. Des Moines Register Thus, the Head of State called on civil society to join efforts towards this objective. During the High-Level Anti-Corruption Commission session held at the Government Palace, the statesman stressed said efforts must be undertaken by all sectors. Likewise, the top official noted governance and the fight against corruption must be included in a roadmap. "I want you to give us the necessary and sufficient time to see how we go from theory to practice, from discourse to specific procedures," Mr. Vizcarra expressed. "We are convinced that we will not be able to achieve the development we are looking for, if we do not fight corruption frontally (). There can be no development with corruption ," he said. A New T-Mobile Store in Maple Village Replacing the former RadioShack by Sabine Bickford From the April, 2018 issue In late December, a new T-Mobile store quietly replaced the former RadioShack in Maple Village. Some customers didn't even notice the change. "A lot of people still come in looking for batteries," laughs salesman Wesley Rookard. "No one knows we're here!" agrees store manager Andy Palazzolo. For the first month, "we didn't even have a phone line." Though branded as T-Mobile, the store is owned by Wireless Vision, which recently bought the downtown T-Mobile store too. All but one of Ann Arbor's Verizon stores are now under authorized retailers, too--Palazzolo tells us that's the norm these days. T-Mobile, 205 N. Maple. 619-6736. Mon.-Sat. 10 a.m.-8 p.m. Closed Sun. t-mobile.com [Originally published in April, 2018.] The Good, the Bad, and the Ugly Ann Arbor through the eyes of drivers for Uber and Lyft. by Patrick Dunn From the April, 2018 issue Ride-sharing apps Uber and Lyft have become wildly popular since they debuted in Ann Arbor almost four years ago. But Uber's business practices have sparked controversy, and the folks who do the driving are often left out of the discussion. We asked five of them to tell us about their time behind the wheel: Chris Iskra says he switched from Amazing Blue Taxi to Uber in 2014 after deciding that the app was going to "take over." He continues to drive for Uber and Lyft. Jesse Miller works full-time, but drove for Uber from 2015 to 2016 to make extra cash to cover the costs of his son's day care. David Shtulman started driving for Lyft last year to keep busy after retiring as executive director of the Jewish Federation of Greater Ann Arbor. Tim VanDongen quit his job as a general manager at Panera in 2014 to drive for Uber and start a short-lived business that placed advertising displays in Uber cars. He now works for Durham School Services, the company that operates Ann Arbor's school buses, but still drives for Uber occasionally. Beth Weiler drove for Uber for ten months in 2015 and 2016 to raise money for a gap year abroad after her graduation from U-M. Though all five have ridesharing apps in common, the experiences they had and their overall appraisals of their employers vary considerably. Here are their stories: A Night in the Life A "day in the life" of an Ann Arbor Uber or Lyft driver can be a misnomer; a night in the life is far more typical. Drivers can work whenever they want to, but Thursday, Friday, and Saturday from eight p.m. to three the next morning are by far the most lucrative times. As hundreds of partiers shuttle between bars and other nightlife destinations, Uber and Lyft impose "surge pricing." The exact amount fluctuates as the two apps compete with one another, but it is often at least double the normal ...continued below... rate. Uber drivers keep 72-80 percent of their fares, and Lyft drivers 75 percent. Both apps now also let customers add tips.Miller fondly recalls one night when he drove a group home to Livonia at more than four times the normal rate. "They weren't so drunk that I was worried they were going to throw up in my car or get violent, but they were hilarious," he says. "I made as much on that ride as I would make in an entire evening."But the drivers agree that those longer trips are highly uncommon in Ann Arbor. "I can show you days where I did twenty-five runs and not one run I made over three dollars on," Iskra says. "It's just kids going a half-mile."That annoys some drivers, but others embrace it. Weiler says she regularly gave about 125 rides per night Thursdays through Saturdays, some of them "just from South U to Rick's" around the corner on Church St. "I would just drink a lot of caffeine and treat it as a mission," she says. "The short rides were fun, to see how many I could knock out in an hour."It was so easy. As soon as you're dropping someone off, you're getting dinged again. I didn't mind those. It made the time go by."Weiler is unique in embracing the South U beat. "I will never touch South U between one and three a.m.," Iskra says. "I've done that in taxi work. If you want [your car] to get puked in, go ahead." Miller says he avoided both Rick's and Scorekeepers "like the plague" at closing time. Instead, he'd stick to Main St.: "That's where the older people, the yuppies, went," he says. "They're not universally better, but they're older. They're more likely to know how much [alcohol] they can handle."Though bar runs are the most lucrative, other shifts have their advantages. Iskra switches his work hours to shake things up and sometimes drives to the Detroit suburbs, where he can often find longer rides. Shtulman preferred to drive during the day or early evening; he was happy to drive people to the bar, but not back. "Sometimes the behavior is fun," he says. "It gets a little bit like Taxicab Confessions sometimes. But I just don't like driving late at night, and I don't want people puking in my car."Having a rotating cast of strangers getting in and out of your car produces endless stories, and drivers are happy to share them. "You overhear some of the greatest things," Iskra says. "You hear about people hooking up, people on drugs--people doing Adderall all the time. That's not uncommon. There's a little coke in there."The unusual length of an airport trip creates other opportunities for positive interactions between drivers and passengers. Weiler recalls a lasting connection she made with a passenger she drove from Ann Arbor to Detroit Metro. The man was on his way to explore southeastern Asia, which she also aspired to do. The two bonded over the subject, exchanged numbers at the end of the trip, and still get together occasionally for a beer.Other substances can be more worrisome. Once, after taking someone to Henry Ford Hospital, Shtulman picked up a fare in Detroit. Two passengers got into his car, one of them finishing off a joint before he did so. After playing his stereo "so loud that the rearview mirror was shaking like it might fall off the windshield," he says, one of the passengers received a call."He says, 'Yeah, we're going to the party now. Do you have the stuff?'" Shtulman says. "Apparently the guy didn't, and he said, 'What do you mean, no? You're supposed to have five keys'"--meaning kilograms. "Then he says to me, 'we have to make another stop, a detour,' and we go to this abandoned gas station. One of them gets out, and he goes in the back, and he comes back with stuff--whatever it was, I did not ask--and we went to the party, and they got out, and everything was fine. But I was a little bit nervous about being stuck in the middle of what appeared to me to be a major drug deal."Another of the regular hazards of the job, especially on bar nights, is vomit, and most drivers have at least one story about a rider making a real mess in their back seat. Drivers generally have a laid-back attitude about those incidents, particularly because both Uber and Lyft charge riders--and pay drivers--a "cleaning fee" of up to $250 if a rider makes a mess."I can pick up some puke for 250 bucks," VanDongen says.Miller's only had one puke incident. But he's twice picked up couples where a woman was intoxicated to the point of incoherence, and the second one still troubles his conscience.The first time, the woman was so drunk Miller had to help her boyfriend carry her from the car to her home, but he felt somewhat reassured that the man, too, seemed bewildered, and thankful for the help. On a second occasion, "I didn't feel as confident about the guy," and he wasn't sure if he was taking them to her place or his. "It's funny," he says. "You live to a certain age, and you start to have lifelong regrets. It's like, 'OK, that's going to be one of them.'"Miller says Uber should do more to prepare drivers for such situations. "You say, 'How do I deal with belligerent drunks?,' and they say, 'Use your best judgment.' I always thought the subtext was, 'Don't lose money for us [by turning down a ride] unless you have to.'"Drivers agree that the apps' attitudes toward their employees are extremely hands-off, although some of them don't mind that approach. Iskra says Uber has a "frat-boy mentality," and derides former Uber CEO Travis Kalanick as "the biggest asshole on the planet." But the pros of working for the company vastly outweigh the cons for Iskra, especially compared to his past life as a taxi driver.To earn $700 to $800 a week at the cab company, he says, he'd have to put in sixty or more hours behind the wheel, including every weekend. Now, he works thirty to fifty hours a week, sets his own schedule, and estimates that he makes $700 a week--or $1,000 if he works the weekend.Iskra notes that he has to pay for gas, his car's insurance, and maintenance costs. He's set up an LLC for tax purposes and deducts all those expenses, "so by the time it kicks back to me [as income], I'm technically poor."VanDongen agrees that wear and tear on the vehicle makes the apps a lot less lucrative than they seem at first--though "sometimes it takes people an entire car" to figure that out. "They're going to put 150,000 miles on a car," he says, "it's going to die on them, and then they're going to realize: 'Wait, I have no money in the bank for another car, and this car is done with.'"Miller puts it more bluntly: "Driving for Uber is not making money so much as it is trading equity in your car for cash up front."Last summer, Iskra temporarily switched to driving for Lyft. Uber's business was "in the crapper," he says, amid the flurry of scandals that led to the ouster of CEO Travis Kalanick. Nationally, Uber's market share slipped from 90 percent to about 75 percent. But Iskra switched back after Uber did some corporate housecleaning and rolled out more driver-friendly features, including a tipping function and payment for the time they spend driving to pick up riders.Uber remains the go-to option for most drivers, because it still has far more riders. Still, Shtulman says his decision to drive for Lyft was an easy one."How many bad stories have you seen or read about Uber in the last year?" he asks. "How many have you read about Lyft? And can you think of a city that is more politically correct than Ann Arbor? That was the reason."Weiler says she "had a really good time" driving for Uber and didn't have any negative experiences. But she always carried pepper spray and a knife within easy reach, and concerns about her own safety never fully abated. "I think I got away kind of lucky," she says. "Being a female, I think about that a lot. So I probably would not do it again."Miller says his experience was "more good than bad." But he doesn't expect to go back to driving. "Uber, for me, served a purpose," he says. "I needed money in the bank to pay for child care, and I got it. And as soon as my wife and I got to a place where we didn't need the money, I quit."VanDongen feels strongly enough about the apps' value that he advocated for state legislation that took effect last year, legalizing them while also imposing some regulation. Though he drives only occasionally now, he reflects fondly on the period when he drove more frequently. But he thinks that fewer people may be willing to drive once they realize the gig isn't as lucrative as it looks. If that happens, he says, riders "might have to start paying more, or at least paying more for the slow times."Between the cab company and Uber, Iskra has been driving for five years. He says that's usually the point when drivers "get that bitter taxicab syndrome where you think everybody's an asshole and you hate the human race." But he still loves the work, partly because he changes the times and places he drives to break the monotony. And "after doing this for so long, the idea of punching a clock, getting paid by the hour, paying taxes, and having a boss tell me what to do--I don't want to do it," he says.When Shtulman started driving for Lyft, he quickly burned through his mileage limit on the two cars he was leasing at the time. He took some time off until the leases were up but found he missed the work. "There's good and bad," he says, "but mostly it's just nice people and a nice time."Shtulman's father was a cabdriver in New York City for more than thirty-five years, and he used to think his dad was "out of his mind" to stick with it that long. But now, he says, "I feel a bit like I'm channeling him. On the other hand, I'm doing the kind of stuff that's putting cabdrivers out of business. And then, in another few years, self-driving cars will put me out of business. So it's just natural evolution."Shtulman says people who knew him from the Jewish Federation have reacted with some surprise to his new occupation. "It's like, how far have I fallen?" he chuckles. However, he says that as he considered other "real work opportunities" after retirement, "there was no other job I was going to take that was going to pay me more than I was making, and there was no reason to believe I was going to like the other thing more." And Lyft lets him work as much as he wants, when he wants. That came in handy recently, as he prepared to move to Colorado to be closer to his kids and grandkids.He plans to continue driving there. "It's what I need right now, and I enjoy doing it," he says. "And I don't think I've fallen at all. I think it's very cool." [Originally published in April, 2018.] The US agrees with the OSCE / ODIHR preliminary report over the presidential elections held on April 11 in Azerbaijan, an official spokesman for the US State Department said in a statement on Monday, contact.az reported. April 17, 2018, 13:38 US State Department urges Aliyev to pay attention to OSCE/ODIHR report STEPANAKERT, APRIL 17, ARTSAKHPRESS:"The United States looks forward to working with President Aliyev and with the people of Azerbaijan on a range of important bilateral and regional issues, including promoting respect for human rights and fundamental freedoms, supporting economic reforms and prosperity, combatting terrorism, and working actively with the OSCE Minsk Group to help realize a peaceful settlement to the Nagorno-Karabakh conflict," the official said. We concur with the OSCE election observation mission"s preliminary assessment of the election in Azerbaijan. The preliminary report noted several shortcomings, including a restrictive political environment, limits on fundamental freedoms, and a lack of genuine competition. While the election administration was organized and well-resourced, ODIHR reported widespread disregard for mandatory procedures, lack of transparency, and numerous serious irregularities, such as ballot box stuffing. We encourage President Aliyev and the incoming administration to address these concerns expeditiously, the official concluded. A hushed House heard Theresa May describe alleged consequences of the Syrian regime's bombing of Douma. 'Innocent families found dead with foam in their mouths, burns to their eyes and their bodies surrounded by a chlorine-like odour. Children gasping for life as chemicals choked their lungs.' In a white jacket made possibly of leather, the Prime Minister was a distinctive figure at that despatch box surrounded by sombre dark suits. A hushed House heard Theresa May describe alleged consequences of the Syrian regime's bombing of Douma Of her decision to send in the RAF, she said without theatricality: 'I am deeply conscious of the gravity of these decisions. They affect all members of this House and me personally.' There was a growl of approval from the Chamber when she said earlier, 'it is my responsibility to make these decisions and I will make them'. Even Kenneth Clarke (Con, Rushcliffe) seemed impressed. 'It takes a real prime minister to face up' to such decisions, said the Father of the House. But he and other voices of significance (among them Hilary Benn and Sir Vince Cable) wondered if greater thought should be given to involving Parliament in decisions to use military force. Mr Clarke did admit that if the Douma incident were repeated, he hoped Mrs May would do exactly the same thing. That's called having it both ways, Ken. In a white jacket made possibly of leather, the Prime Minister was a distinctive figure at that despatch box surrounded by sombre dark suits For Jeremy Corbyn, the danger was more from his own side supporters of the Blair regime than from Tories opposite him For Jeremy Corbyn, the danger was more from his own side supporters of the Blair regime than from Tories opposite him. He got through his response to Mrs May in one piece, despite early Government-bench heckling when he accused the Prime Minister of dancing 'to the whims of the US President'. But even at that point, some Labour MPs were shaking their heads in disagreement with their leader. Things went much more wrong for Mr Corbyn later when backbenchers such as Chris Leslie (Lab, Nottingham E), Mike Gapes (Lab, Ilford S) and Barry Sheerman (Lab, Huddersfield) were given the floor. Of her decision to send in the RAF, Mrs May said without theatricality: 'I am deeply conscious of the gravity of these decisions. They affect all members of this House and me personally' Mr Leslie, who had earlier listened to Mr Corbyn with the discomfort of a man who was having his knackers gnawed by weevils, was lacerating about the Leader of the Opposition without actually naming him. 'Those who would turn a blind eye,' cried Mr Leslie, 'who would do nothing in pursuit of some moral high ground, should also be held accountable for once.' Mr Gapes, a former chairman of the foreign affairs select committee, had a triple riff about Labour's tradition of humanitarian intervention in foreign war zones. During these contributions, Mr Corbyn seemed somehow to shrivel. No matter what some say about his truculence, he is not immune to such attacks. Jess Phillips (Lab, Birmingham Yardley) said that if Mrs May had sought pre-approval from the Commons for the air strike, she would have supported it. Miss Phillips may seem a hard-boiled thing, but she betrayed a touchingly naive side when she begged the House to put aside party politics when it debated foreign conflicts. That was hardly the case when the Cameron Government was defeated by Ed Miliband's Opposition a few years ago. Talking of which, Mr Miliband (Lab, Doncaster N) was nowhere to be seen yesterday. A striking absentee. In response to Andrew Percy (Con, Brigg & Goole), Mrs May agreed that it was an 'insulting' smear on our troops to suggest that she had jumped to Washington DC's orders. A protester holds a placard as she demonstrates against the UK's military involvement in Syria, outside the Houses of Parliament in central London on Monday Laura Smith (Lab, Crewe & Nantwich) was duffed up by Mrs May when she tried to make that very suggestion ('at what point did the president instruct her?'). Ms Smith rather let herself down immediately after that question by giggling and consulting her telephone. How depressing to think that a year ago Crewe was represented by the grown-up Edward Timpson. Coo-ee everyone, Peter Kyle (Lab, Hove), suddenly like some Peter Simple brigadier, barked a demand for 'strategy'. Stephen Pound (Lab, Ealing N) asked what the endgame was and received no answer. And with pacifists in Parliament Square, Wes Streeting (Lab, Ilford N) boldly said: 'The Stop The War demonstration should be taking place outside the Russian embassy.' As the child of Caribbean immigrants who believed deeply in the values of the nation this nation into which they were born over a century ago, Ive no doubt my parents would have been bewildered and outraged by its treatment of the Windrush generation. Nor would they have been impressed by the Governments shambolic attempts once it had been forced into a corner to rectify the situation. Indeed, the desperate scramble by ministers to retrieve some semblance of credibility over the past 24 hours has, if anything, made matters worse. It is clear to me that were it not for the presence in London of dozens of Commonwealth Heads of Government, the growing anger among MPs from all parties and campaigns by this newspaper and others they would have tried to dismiss the matter as a small storm in a Caribbean teacup. Indeed, the Prime Minister had initially rejected a meeting with 12 Caribbean heads of state to discuss the immigration problems faced by tens of thousands of British citizens who have lived, worked and paid taxes here for decades but who suddenly found themselves without rights. Trevor Phillips writes: 'The desperate scramble by ministers to retrieve some semblance of credibility over the past 24 hours has, if anything, made matters worse' Confusion Problems which have led, in many cases, to impoverishment, lack of access to health care, incarceration and possibly involuntary repatriation. Home Secretary Amber Rudd made a humiliating apology and promised to charge a special Home Office task force with ensuring no more Windrush-era British citizens will be classified as illegal immigrants because they do not have documents to prove otherwise. However, confusion persists over whether or not deportations have resulted, with one minister insisting they had. Why does the Home Office not know? This casual disregard shown to people unfortunate enough to be caught up in a colonial time warp evokes the contempt that so many of their parents and grandparents experienced when they first arrived here 70 years ago. My parents would regard it as a betrayal of that most fundamental trait of the British: a desire for fair play. And if they were alive, they might turn to me and say: There but for the grace of God go you. The events of the past few days have certainly brought it home to me just how fortunate I was to be born in London. I was an accidental baby. When, on a spring day in 1953, my mother discovered that she was pregnant with her seventh child, she wailed to her best friend: What am I going to do? How am I going to tell George? [my father]. For an immigrant family living in a rat-infested slum tenement in London, having yet another mouth to feed wasnt just carelessness. It was a catastrophe. Even if my eldest sister, who had responded to the call by Health Minister Enoch Powell to come and serve the fledgling NHS, had moved into the nurses hostel at the hospital where she worked, we just werent going to fit. And back then, no one was offering council houses to coloured people. So, like many of the Windrush generation the children of Commonwealth migrants and named after the Empire Windrush, the vessel which brought the first workers here from the West Indies I was put on a boat to what was then British Guiana in the West Indies in 1955. There I was brought up, with a swarm of siblings and cousins, by my aunt and grandmother in the fishing village from which we came. I returned to London five years later to join my family, went back to the newly independent Guyana in 1967, and arrived back to study for a chemistry degree at Imperial College in 1971. Not once was my entry ever questioned, because I could wave my precious blue British passport. Had my parents accident taken place during one of their periodic visits to their native British Guiana, I doubt that I would now be lucky enough to pen this article from the comfort of my North London home. My mother would probably have stayed in Georgetown for the birth, and if Id come to London at all, I cannot imagine that I would be able to produce the documentation showing the required employment and residence qualifications ranging over a working life which includes over a dozen employers, countless different jobs, and ten different homes that is being demanded of many of my generation now. Home Secretary Amber Rudd made a humiliating apology and promised to charge a special Home Office task force with ensuring no more Windrush-era British citizens will be classified as illegal immigrants because they do not have documents to prove otherwise The calculations made by people like my parents at that time were entirely economic. For them, immigration restrictions did not exist because they had been born into the British Empire. They were all subjects of the same sovereign, they rose and slept under the same flag, they sang the same national anthem, and like my father, a wartime quartermaster-sergeant in the West India Regiment, many had worn the same uniform in the battle against the same enemy. They were not naive; they knew that some people were unenthusiastic about their presence. In our book Windrush: The Irresistible Rise of Multi-Racial Britain, my brother Michael and I traced the story of the iconic boat which brought 492 Caribbean migrants to the UK in June 1948. Despite the fact that most of the men on the boat had fought in the British armed services several were RAF veterans of the Battle of Britain the anxiety about these dark-skinned Britons was acute. But their passage was guaranteed; that dark blue passport held the magical incantation that afforded protection against all threats: His Britannic Majestys Principal Secretary of State for Foreign and Commonwealth Affairs Requests and requires in the Name of His Majesty all those whom it may concern to allow the bearer to pass freely without let or hindrance, and to afford the bearer such assistance and protection as may be necessary. Protest None of the Windrush voyagers, nor their children, could have foreseen a world in which the entitlement to this pledge could be casually be cast aside by bureaucrats in Whitehall, without so much as a peep of protest from Her Majestys ministers. Yet, until yesterday, that was the case. Under the Immigration Act of 1971, anyone who arrived here before that date was given leave to remain but many never applied for a passport or became naturalised citizens. When, under tough new rules aimed at illegal immigrants introduced in 2014, they were required to produce a passport or a wealth of documentation to work, rent a home, open a bank account or holding a driving licence, they could not. And so they were, quite outrageously, put into the category of illegal immigrant. As many as 57,000 of my fellow British citizens were, in effect, being abandoned to statelessness. People who, like most Caribbean folk, live well-ordered, hard-working lives, faced losing their livelihoods and their homes simply because they were unable to find documents that the heartless bureaucrats at the Home Office have never themselves been required to produce. To add current insult to historic injury, the naturalisation process would have cost 1,200 for people who are more natural Brits than millions of EU citizens who will get a free pass to stay in Britain post-Brexit. The Home Secretarys decision to waive the fees is better late than never. The campaign mounted by the Daily Mail and others has rattled Whitehall. But until yesterday, ministers and bureaucrats offered little more than a bored shrug of elegantly suited shoulders. Of course, this is the familiar experience of people of colour. There is never any shortage of sanctimonious twaddle about Whitehalls commitment to diversity. Yet when confronted with an opportunity to act in the interests of minorities, the machine freezes and, as we have seen, puts lives on ice. No one who has read a word Ive written or said would ever describe me as a liberal on immigration or multiculturalism. But I believe humanity must be a factor in the execution of public policy. As a former Chair of Britains Human Rights Commission, I believe that the plight of the Windrush Generation was exactly the kind of situation where the importance of human rights should have trumped the neat simplicities of immigration regulation. The Prime Minister speaks of burning injustices. Despite yesterdays clumsy efforts to right a wrong, this one should be searing a hole in her conscience. Britain's Home Secretary Amber Rudd arrives for an emergency cabinet on Thursday Broadcaster David Frost was cruelly asserted to have 'risen without a trace'. The comment contained a substantial element of truth. Frost had got to the top of his profession without doing or saying anything interesting or important. The same is being said of Amber Rudd. Plausible and media-friendly, she has had one of the most meteoric ascents in modern political history. Within five years of entering Parliament in 2010, she was in the Cabinet. Within another year, Theresa May propelled her to one of the most senior offices of state as Home Secretary. But what was Ms Rudd's political philosophy? What social issues motivated this former venture capital financier with City firm JP Morgan? More importantly, would she be a good home secretary? Now we are beginning to find out the answers to these questions. I believe they give cause for concern. Unfortunately, evidence is piling up that Amber Rudd is a serial bungler and that she lacks the basic skills to deal with the onerous demands of being Home Secretary. Among her many responsibilities are homeland security, counter-terrorism, policing, borders, immigration, citizenship, fire and rescue services, passports . . . the list goes on and on. This week, Ms Rudd has become caught in the controversy surrounding Caribbean migrants who came to Britain to work after World War II. The scandal brings shame to Britain. It has ruined the lives of people who have been declared illegal immigrants after living in this country for more than half a century. Sadly, it has cast a damaging shadow over this week's Commonwealth Conference in London, hosted by the Queen. Ms Rudd has become caught in the controversy surrounding Caribbean migrants who came to Britain to work after World War II After a hapless performance on Monday, Ms Rudd was condemned by MPs for saying the Home Office did not know if any Windrush immigrants had been wrongly deported. Eventually, she was forced into a humiliating U-turn offering help to those involved. Remarkably, too, Ms Rudd criticised her boss, Mrs May a predecessor at the Home Office saying the department back then had been 'too concerned with policy and strategy and sometimes [lost] sight of the individual'. It is true that the original problem began when Mrs May called for a 'really hostile environment' for illegal immigrants and introduced new rules to identify and expel them. However, apart from the duplicity of blaming her boss, Ms Rudd bears the bulk of the blame for failing to act when the issue was brought to her attention months ago. Now the politically tone-deaf Home Secretary is paying the price. Indeed, this is not the only egregious recent example of her ineptitude. Her failure to understand this country's history, culture and its people's sense of identity was exposed when she allowed the contract for the manufacture of the new post-Brexit British passport to go to a Franco-Dutch consortium instead of the Gateshead firm De La Rue. Her decision to let this happen proved she was blind to the fact that changing the passport back from EU burgundy to navy blue and for it to be manufactured on British soil was, to millions, a symbolic opportunity to reverse the seemingly endless leaching of powers to Brussels. As has now become her habit, Ms Rudd said the decision was nothing to do with her. Even though she personally signed off the deal, she blamed others. Likewise, this week, she blamed civil servants for mistakes with the Windrush fiasco. Shame on you, Ms Rudd! A cardinal rule of government is that ministers should never attack civil servants, because they don't make policy and cannot answer back. The Windrush and the passports affair fit a recent pattern. Last week, she insisted that a rise in knife crime was not the result of cuts to police budgets. However, a report by her own department, which she claimed she hadn't seen, suggested a link between police cuts and a surge in serious violent crime. Oh dear. Doesn't Ms Rudd know what is going on in her own department? To cap it all, we had the farce of events at Hither Green, South-East London, where a 78-year-old man, in bed with his wife who suffers from dementia, confronted armed intruders. After he stabbed the burglar to death, he was arrested on suspicion of murder (though later told no action would be taken against him). Any word from Amber Rudd? Not a whisper. Another area of the Home Secretary's responsibility offers cause for concern. With Brexit imminent and Britain regaining control of our borders at last, Ms Rudd does not inspire confidence. Ms Rudd bears the bulk of the blame for failing to act when the issue was brought to her attention months ago The truth is that she has shown inconsistency over immigration ever since she took the job of Home Secretary. For example, after proposing that companies declare how many foreign workers they employ, she was embarrassed at being unable to say how many foreign employees the Home Office had. Later, she dropped the plan. (To put it mildly, detail isn't Ms Rudd's strong point.) Perhaps her failings can be put down to the fact that, as someone with entrenched Europhile instincts, she is struggling to get her head round the post-Leave vote world. In that context, I believe that Amber Rudd belongs to that easily identifiable type of treacherous Conservative politician. Other examples include Europhiles Chris Patten, Michael Heseltine and the post-war Conservative Party chairman Rab Butler (who, in 1962, betrayed the trust of Prime Minister Macmillan by wrecking his 'Night of the Long Knives' Cabinet reshuffle). These men built up a glorious reputation for themselves by sucking up to the liberal Left- wing establishment. Always ready to trash their Right-wing colleagues (most notoriously, during the EU referendum campaign, Ms Rudd described her colleague Boris Johnson as 'not the man you want driving you home at the end of the evening'), they are often lauded by the BBC, the Financial Times and The Guardian. No wonder that the Financial Times has highlighted the Home Secretary's 'confident performances' in the media and has described her as a 'credible contender for future leader'. For its part, a breathlessly naive Radio Four profile called her rise 'unmatched by any other politician since World War II'. Ironically, the Windrush story offers a telling paradox about Amber Rudd, who loves to show off her bien-pensant views to the London liberal elite. In this case, however, her department has deeply offended their values by showing a heartless and arrogant attitude to the children of Caribbean immigrants who came to Britain, at our Government's invitation, to help rebuild the country and its industry after World War II. When the headstone is carved for Amber Rudd's political grave and it could happen very soon the words 'Windrush' and 'British passports' will feature prominently. Advertisement At a glimpse of her Instagram page, professional photographer Sara Melotti appears to be enjoying an endless global adventure filled with dreamy sunsets and enviable road trips. However, the Italian photographer said such beautiful images are a 'distorted reality' that hides the grittier side of life, and warned that influencers who tried to conceal that were having a harmful impact on young women. 'The photos I post on my Instagram are meant to be artsy travel fairytales to make people dream - they are not intended as the reflection of my real life,' she said. In 2017, Ms Melotti spoke to FEMAIL about the lengths she had gone to in the past to build up a profile on social media and the extreme steps others had taken in a bid to appear 'influential' on the platform. And now, the Behind the Quest founder has shared what was really going on behind some of her famed photographs in a bid to highlight the 'fakeness' occurring online. At a glimpse of her Instagram page, professional photographer Sara Melotti appears to be enjoying an endless global adventure filled with dreamy sunsets and enviable road trips This stunning photo was taken in the Vietnamese city of Hoi An and posted on Ms Melotti's Instagram page However, what most people didn't see was how many takes it took to get the shot, with the blogger saying: 'All the pretty pics you see on Instagram are fake, staged and constructed, they don't capture a picture-perfect moment' In November, 2017, Ms Melotti appeared in a whimsical snap shot in Old Delhi - but what she had been doing hours earlier told a very different story. In a snap shared with Daily Mail Australia that was taken earlier that day, Ms Melotti is seen posing with an Indian woman in the slums of Bhopal, India. 'I was there working with Actionaid for a project documenting violence against women, we met many women victims of violence and I was there taking their portraits and collecting their stories, to then share them on my blog and YouTube channel,' Ms Melotti told FEMAIL. 'This was part of an Actionaid campaign for the international day for the elimination of Violence against women.' In November, 2017, Ms Melotti appeared in a whimsical snap shot in Old Delhi (right) but hours before she had been spending time with an Indian woman in the slums of Bhopal while documenting violence against women as part of a project In another snap she uploaded, Ms Melotti was seen posing candidly in front of the Taj Mahal (right) but the purpose of her trip was to interview female victims of acid attacks for her project, Quest for Beauty In another snap she uploaded, Ms Melotti was seen posing candidly in front of the Taj Mahal. I'm part of the problem and I wan't to be part of the solution instead. Earlier, she had been with two Indian women who were victims of acid attacks. 'I was in Agra to interview female victims of acid attacks for my project Quest for Beauty,' she said. Before she shared a photo in Serengeti National Park, Ms Melotti had been spending time with a group of deaf students in Moshi, Tanzania while working with an NGO on documenting their project. Before she shared a photo in Serengeti National Park (right), Ms Melotti had been spending time with a group of deaf students in Moshi, Tanzania while working with an NGO on documenting their project On the left, Ms Melotti is pictured shooting in a remote village in Morocco for her project Quest for Beauty but chose to upload the beach shot of Essaouira on her Instagram page (right) In other examples Ms Melotti had been shooting in a remote Moroccan village and spending time with children from a koranic school in Bhopal before posting a more artistic snap on her social accounts. Despite having more than 40,000 followers on her personal travel account, Ms Melotti, makes a living as a professional travel and portrait photographer. Ms Melotti, who shares her projects on her website and Behind the Quest pages, wanted to take a different approach with her travel page after being swept up in the fakeness of the world when she first made an account. 'The photos I post on my Instagram are meant to be artsy travel fairytales to make people dream - they are not intended as the reflection of my real life,' she said In other examples Ms Melotti had been shooting in a remote Moroccan village and spending time with children from a koranic school in Bhopal before posting a more artistic snap on her social accounts When you open your feed you are bombarded by images of people eating lavish breakfasts poolside... THAT S**T AIN'T REAL! 'We are constantly under pressure: pressure to be cool, to be beautiful, to be popular, to be engaged, to be rich, to be happy, to be perfect and have a perfect life. But perfection is bulls**t and our pictures on Instagram are bulls**t,' she wrote in a post. 'I'm part of the problem and I want to be part of the solution instead. It is not Instagram to blame, it's the way we use it and, unfortunately, above all, it's us to blame! 'Us instagrammers, bloggers and influencers alike. We have created this and we should be the ones to make amend and fix things.' Ms Melotti said the 'unrealistic' standards being set online have become dangerous. 'We created a world where fakeness is constantly sold as real life, skewing the collective perception of reality and making incredible damages to our mind and our self esteem, sometime without us even knowing it,' she said 'The core problem is very similar to the one I'm fighting against with my project Quest for Beauty, but while there I'm dealing with unrealistic beauty standards, here we are talking about unrealistic life standards, which is a larger issue,' she said. 'We created a world where fakeness is constantly sold as real life, skewing the collective perception of reality and making incredible damages to our mind and our self esteem, sometime without us even knowing it. 'Today there are countless so-called-influencers posting beautiful glossy images of their even glossier lives. 'When you open your feed you are bombarded by images of people eating lavish breakfasts poolside, wearing their fluffy white bathrobe in luxurious hotels, always looking impeccable, always wearing fashionable clothes, always doing cool s**t THAT S**T AIN'T REAL!' 'Today there are countless so-called-influencers posting beautiful glossy images of their even glossier lives,' she said Ms Melotti said that ultimately, the photographs on Instagram are 'staged and constructed by visual professionals' Ms Melotti said that ultimately, the photographs on Instagram are 'staged and constructed by visual professionals'. 'You viewer should look at our pictures as either art, editorial content or straight on advertising sometime. Comparing yourself or your life to those of influencers is a toxic game that does nothing but harm to you,' she said. 'The images I post on my IG account, especially the ones with me in them, are simply artsy poetic painted dreams, constructed travel fairytales that should be looked at as paintings and are meant to inspire you to dream harder. 'My pictures don't reflect my real life which is actually a real mess full of constant uncertainty and struggles of all kinds - especially financial ones - brimming of ups and downs, and where tears are shed more often that you might think.' 'My pictures don't reflect my real life which is actually a real mess full of constant uncertainty and struggles of all kinds - especially financial ones,' she admitted Ms Melotti shares these thoughts in her captions to ensure her fans are aware that what they are viewing isn't a reflection of her reality and puts a 'disclaimer' on all of her images to make this clear. 'The bigger problem here is that 90 per cent of my 'colleagues' don't say the pictures are staged, and instead they write captions like 'Woke up like this' to pump up their ego instead of being truthful, and that's were the damage starts and where the old killer mechanism is triggered,' she said. Ms Melotti hopes to cure this issue with 'truth and honesty'. 'You can keep posting your glossy picture just stop making people believe that's reality, because you know damn well it isn't! Spread awareness about it, tell your followers the truth and see what happens, you might be surprised,' she said. And for those who view it? 'You can keep posting your glossy picture just stop making people believe that's reality, because you know damn well it isn't,' Ms Melotti said 'If scrolling down your feeds makes you feel bad, unfollow the people whose pics make you feel bad myself included! When something makes you feel sh*tty try to understand why and then remove it from your life,' she said. 'You have the power to choose who you follow and what kind of content you get fed, and, even more important - but much more difficult to do - you have the power to chose your thoughts.' 'The world now more than ever needs honesty and truth, it's time to start going towards that direction. 'I'm going that way, and you?' Ms Melotti shares what goes on 'behind' her Quest on her page Behind the Quest. Few people work harder than the President of the United States or at least, no one looks like they work harder, according to one cheeky picture series. Imgur user TheGhostofElizabethShue put together a handy guide called 'How to stage a photo to make it look like you're working hard,' using pictures of US presidents to demonstrate the different poses. Compiling photos of Donald Trump, Barack Obama, and George W. Bush on the job and adding some funny captions, the Imgur user shared some moderately helpful tips for making it seem like you're dedicated to the task at hand. Working hard, or hardly working? An Imgur user shared a tongue-in-cheek guide using pictures of presidents to show 'how to stage a photo to make it look like you're working hard' Yikes: Steps include 'get on the phone' and, for this photo, 'OK, so maybe try not to look at the camera like it owes you money? Lets try something else' Tip two: 'Arms out on the desk, classic power pose, youre working hard and being strong doing it' Creepy: This image was captioned 'god dammit just stop looking at me. This isnt House of Cards' Impressed: 'OK, OK, arms out yes, not looking into the lens, nice. Still on the phone little awkward but OK. Feel free to mix it up but sometimes less is more' The Imgur user's first tip, as illustrated by a photo of Obama sitting behind his desk in the Oval while talking on the phone, is: 'Number one: Get on the phone. Hard working people make calls, probably? All you've got to do is act like you're really making a call, and boom, done in one!' Obama is seen on the phone in another image, too, this time standing. 'OK, OK, arms out yes, not looking into the lens, nice. Still on the phone little awkward but OK. Feel free to mix it up but sometimes less is more,' the caption reads. In yet another image of Obama 'working hard,' the former President is leaning back in a chair while speaking to Joe Biden. 'Alright this is a little too relaxed, get your foot off the desk man youre not a rowdy teen. You brought a friend though, thats pretty good. Working hard means having meetings,' reads the caption. Bush does it: 'Number three: Look relaxed. Working hard doesnt mean you cant make it look easy. You got this' Getting the hang of it? 'OK. Hey, youre not looking at the camera. Good job' Funny: 'Alright this is a little too relaxed, get your foot off the desk man youre not a rowdy teen. You brought a friend though, thats pretty good. Working hard means having meetings' Tips: 'OK, good practice, and not looking at the camera! Alright, were getting somewhere! Youre actually gonna need a real friend though, or people might think you dont have any' Nope: 'Ohh. Er. Maybe other friends?' Hard time: 'Umm Do you know what a friend is? Someone you havent personally and professionally insulted for years, maybe?' There's also a single photo of George W. Bush, which also shows him talking on the phone in the Oval Office. 'Look relaxed,' reads the tip. 'Working hard doesn't mean you can't make it look easy. You got this.' In a single photo of JFK included in the series, number 35 is shown dramatically in black and white, his hands on the desk in front of him as he faces away from the camera. 'Arms out on the desk, classic power pose, you're working hard and being strong doing it. Nice.' Most of the images used for the series, though, are of Donald Trump who, according to the captions, seems to have a harder time pretending to work hard. In the first photo, he is seated behind his desk and talking on the phone while wearing a MAGA hat. Needs work: 'Alright, youre just gonna be alone from now on. No shame in that, everyone knows its lonely at the top. Yeah, lets go with that' Goof: 'Alright, guys if youre not gonna take this seriously' Whoops: 'Youre officially going backwards. You look like a police sketch artist working out of a Moroccan harem. Whos your decorator? Colonel Gaddafi?' Faking it: 'Woah. Alright. Feels a little sarcastic? Like is that really how you work?' 'OK, youre just taking the p*ss now. Have you ever seen anyone read in your entire life? And Im gonna say it, this is too much stuff, theres a line between busy and hoarder' 'Jesus Christ,' says the caption. 'OK, so maybe try not to look at the camera like it owes you money? Let's try something else.' The writer further pokes fun at Trump for his habit of looking at the camera in 'working hard' pictures, and applauds him for one in which he is actually looking in another direction. 'Erm. OK good practice, and not looking at the camera!' reads a caption on an image of Trump gesticulating at a desk. 'Alright we're getting somewhere! You're actually gonna need a real friend though, or people might think you don't have any.' Captioning another image, the writer joked that Trump 'looks like a police sketch artist working out of a Moroccan harem. Whos your decorator? Colonel Gaddafi? I dunno, try getting some stuff on the desk.' The writer also takes issue with how messy Trump keeps his desks, writing: 'Im gonna say it, this is too much stuff, theres a line between busy and hoarder.' Kelly* only realised she was being 'love bombed' when she was showered with gifts for her birthday. 'A $2,500 necklace was one of the items that he brought me,' she told Daily Mail Australia. 'The reason for the necklace was because an ex had bought me one that was worth $100 and he wanted to do better.' But he 'flipped' a short while later when she thanked a friend for gifting her a ring on the same day. But he 'flipped' a short while later when she thanked a friend for gifting her a ring on the same day 'He thought that meant I loved it more than the necklace I had just received. I escaped from that relationship but still get emotionally abused by this person over social media platforms,' she continued. According to psychologist Jocelyn Brewer, the art of love bombing is one that can strike when you least expect it. 'Love bombing is when someone pours love and affection on you, probably in an over-the-top kind of way and then becomes irrationally upset if you show interest in anything outside of the relationship,' she told Whimn. The signs: They'll also go out of their way to negatively talk about your ex-partners Women open up about their own warning signs Showered me with gifts, showered my family with gifts too. They tried to charm everyone in my life Isolated me from all my friends Ignored me for no reason Made me do things I didn't want to do Made me feel worthless like they were all I could have in this world Used my past to manipulate me Showed up at my workplace and home unannounced Advertisement Samantha* suffered at the hands of a 'love bomber' for a year and still feels the affects of the low self esteem he brought on. 'Before we started dating I had an intense life, running a business, an active social life and even a bit of hubris over life in general. I never saw myself as a person that could be fooled into mental abuse, which I now consider this being,' she said. 'It was very hard for me to accept that I'd let him do this to me, not leaving earlier. I'm more sensitive to what people think of me nowadays and easily get anxious about it.' Ms Brewer argues there are some clear warning signs to watch out for - namely how they demonstrate their love. 'They make big demonstrations of love in one big assault in order to get you hooked. This is followed by a stage of devaluing you and creating emotional punishments for not always being supremely devoted,' she said. Ms Brewer argues there are some clear warning signs to watch out for - namely how they demonstrate their love 'They also make too good to be true promises or declarations of love and possibilities. For example, naming your children, day dreaming about holidays.' These 'love bombers' are adept at becoming irrational over very minor issues and are highly sensitive if you show interest to anything that isn't them, whether that be friends, hobbies or even your job. They'll also go out of their way to negatively talk about your ex-partners. 'It's tragic that is so common. And it's not only in a certain "level" in society. It's everywhere,' Samantha added. *Names have been changed. If you are experiencing mental health issues or suicidal feelings contact Lifeline on 13 11 14 or Beyond Blue 1300 224 636. As the weather begins to turn wintry, one important thing you can do to protect yourself against seasonal sickness is to make sure you have a flu shot. While you might not think this is necessary, or discount the flu as little worse than a bad head cold, it's something that can kill up to 1500 Australians every year. FEMAIL spoke to general practitioner, Dr Ginni Mansberg, about why you should consider getting your yearly influenza jab and when its the best time to get it done. 'Last year there was a particularly aggressive strain of the flu which meant a lot of people got sick,' Dr Mansberg told FEMAIL. General practitioner, Dr Ginni Mansberg (pictured) flu vaccine is an effective way of halting flu in the community, 'We know the [flu] vaccine is an effective way of halting flu in the community,' The Department of Health reported nationally, the 2017 influenza season was the largest since the 2009 pandemic year. According to previous reports, Queensland was one of the worst hit states, with 56,000 cases of influenza diagnosed in the state alone. 2017 was one of the worst year's on record for the flu, according to data by the Department of Health (stocki image) Dr Mansberg said everybody should consider getting vaccinated; the age range extended from those aged six months through to the elderly and included pregnant women too. 'The reason is its pretty cheap and pretty effective. At best it can help prevent the flu, but we know it can do a lot more than that.' She explained that the flu had been found to be implicated in other diseases, especially heart attacks and that a yearly flu shot could reduce the likelihood of a heart attack (in those that were at risk). In terms of when people should get their annual shots, Dr Mansberg said this could be done now. 'The reason is its pretty cheap and pretty effective. At best it can help prevent the flu, but we know it can do a lot more than that,' said Dr Mansberg (stock image) She noted last year there were some blips with the vaccine: a particular strain of the Influenza A virus the vaccination didn't inoculate against coupled with a short-lived vaccine and a flu season that extended well into spring. Who receives the flu vaccine for free? Pregnant women Children aged six months to less than five years People 65 years and older Aboriginal individuals of all ages People six months and older with medical conditions that put them at risk of severe flu, including: heart disease, kidney disease and chronic respiratory disease Source: National Immunization Program Advertisement According to Dr Mansberg experts have said this year's vaccine should offer a full six months of protection. While her recommendation is that everyone needs to have this done, in particular, she urges parents to make sure their kids are vaccinated. She said children were not only particularly vulnerable to picking up various strains, but were also most likely to spread this to parents, grandparents, and others they came into contact with. Dr Mansberg said for just five minutes of discomfort, it was absolutely worth making the effort to get vaccinated. 'This isn't just good for you, but also for those around you, people whose immune systems are compromised and who could have complications with the flu. 'As a good citizen, getting vaccinated is one of the best things you could do. It's really easy and a way you can do something good for your community.' The information that allegedly a group of people have breached into the Embassy of Armenia in Moscow is false, Armenian foreign ministry spokesman Tigran Balayan told said. April 17, 2018, 14:19 Opposition spreads disinformation alleging Armenians have breached into embassy in Moscow STEPANAKERT, APRIL 17, ARTSAKHPRESS:This, of course, is a disinformation. No such thing has happened, he said. Earlier opposition MP Nikol Pashinyan had announced to his followers that a group of Armenians have intruded the Embassy of Armenia in Russia. There's nothing Australians love more than Vegemite on toast and now one plate of the humble breakfast dish is going viral. A cafe in Newcastle is plating it up a bit differently as their $7 toast is served on a board with a quenelle of butter and a large spoonful of Vegemite spread next to it. A quenelle is a delicate scooping technique often used when serving desserts, not butter. Newcastle local Huon Oliver ordered the toast on Monday morning and posted a photo of the dish on Instagram, which created the buzz. 'Gourmet Vegemite on toast. This is just ridiculous! Tasty but ridiculous,' he captioned the photo. A cafe in Newcastle is plating it up Vegemite a bit differently as their $7 toast is plated up on a board with a quenelle of butter and a large spoonful of Vegemite spread next to it Soon the Instagram account Brown Cardigan posted the picture to its 348,000 followers. 'Alright, which one of you f****** cafes did this?' they captioned the photo. The official Vegemite Instagram page even commented on the image saying: 'You either die a hero, or you live long enough to see yourself become the villain'. 'Guilty as charged. You should see what we can do with strawberry jam!' they said. There were a variety of differing opinions on the post, with many people sharing their outrage as well as their need to try the dish. 'This is a CRIME,' wrote one person. 'I would pay some good f****** money for this s*** to be in front of me!' said another. FEMAIL spoke to one of the employees at Core Espresso, Danny Kerr, who said that they've been laughing about it ever since they saw the viral photo FEMAIL spoke to one of the employees at Core Espresso, Danny Kerr, who said that the team have been laughing about it ever since they saw the viral photo. 'We weren't expecting this response at all to be honest. We've been serving that for a long time, we don't always serve it like that and I'd never thought about it before now,' she said. 'We tried to make it look fancy and it doesn't because it's just Vegemite. 'We're definitely not a pretentious cafe, it's just $7 toast with condiment on the side. I think it's hilarious.' One things for sure, the cafe certainly doesn't skimp out on providing their customers with the popular spread. Prince Harry has beaten his older brother William to be crowned Britain's most handsome young male royal. Scientific research pioneered by the ancient Greeks found the face of the groom-to-be to be 81.4 per cent 'accurate.' Harry's eyes, eyebrows, nose, lips, chin, jaw and facial shape came closest to the Greeks' idea of perfection under the Golden Ratio of Beauty Phi which measures physical perfection. Prince Harry has been crowned Britain's most attractive male royal thanks to his 'perfect facial symmetry' Using the ancient Greek's formula of the Golden Ratio Prince William came in second with a 80.9 per cent 'accurate' face compared to his brother's 81. 4 per cent The Duke of Cambridge, 35, was narrowly beaten into second place by 33-year-old Harry with a rating of 80.9 per cent. Peter Phillips, 40, was third with 80.4 per cent and Zara Phillips' husband, ex-England rugby star Mike Tindall, 39, was fourth with 76.7 per cent. All the younger generation of male royals were tested with the latest facial mapping techniques by Harley Street surgeon Dr Julian De Silva who uses the technology in his work. The table was compiled ahead of two royal celebrations this year - Prince Harry and Meghan's wedding is on May 19 and the Duchess of Cambridge's third baby is due in the next few weeks. Dr De Silva, who runs the Centre For Advanced Facial Cosmetic & Plastic Surgery in London, said: 'Which of Princess Diana's sons is the most handsome has been a subject of debate for a number of years. Peter Phillips comes in third with a 80.4 per cent who was marked down for his chin 'Now science has provided the answer - Prince Harry is a very narrow winner in a close contest which reveals that both men are incredibly handsome. 'Prince Harry has striking facial symmetry and gets closer than all the other royal men to having what the ancient Greeks considered the perfect face. 'Harry scored particularly highly for the shape of his chin, the near-perfect length of his face, the gap between his nose and lips and his eye spacing. 'Prince William gets a very high rating, too, and stands out for having easily the highest score for his nose and for his eye position. 'Princess Anne's son Peter Phillips also scores very highly and was only just behind in third. He got very high marks for perfectly equal gaps between his mouth, eyes and forehead. 'Mike Tindall was obviously marked down for his nose which has clearly been permanently misshaped by an old rugby injury. He scored 66.7% for his nose width, compared to Prince William's top mark of 89 per cent. In fourth is Mike Tindall, husband of Zara Tindall, whose broken nose cause him to be marked down to 76.7 per cent Meghan Markle has previously been named more attractive than the Duchess of Cambridge scoring 87.4 per cent over Kate's 86.8 'These brand new computer mapping techniques allow us to solve some of the mysteries of what it is that makes a man physically handsome, and the technology is useful when planning patients' surgery. 'The Phi ratio of 1.618 has long been thought to hold the secret of beauty, and now with the computer mapping we can calculate exactly how it applies to all the royal princes.' Prince Harry's 81.4 per cent score was a few points behind his fiancee Meghan Markle, 36, who had a rating of 87.4 per cent, narrowly ahead of the Duchess of Cambridge, 36, who scored 86.8 per cent. What is the golden ratio? The golden ratio was a mathematical equation devised by the Greeks in an attempt to measure beauty. While the ratio can by applied to anything, and was used by Leonardo Da Vinci for the the perfect human male body in his famous work the Virtruvian Man, it is also applied to the human face. The premise behind this is that the closer the ratios of a face, body or room are to the number 1.62, the more beautiful it becomes. Though it can seem complex these can be fairly simple equations to try on yourself. For example, the simplest measurement is the length of your face divided by the width of your face. Width of lips divided by length and length of nose divided by width are other calculations you can try. Twentieth-century artists and architects, including Le Corbusier and Dali, have used the golden ratio. The golden ratio also appears in some patterns in nature, including the spiral arrangement of leaves and other plant parts. Advertisement That makes Harry and Meghan the best looking royal couple. Young royal male Golden Ratio rankings Here Harley Street cosmetic surgeon Dr Julian De Silva analyses the facial features of the young royal males according to the Golden Ratio and explains why Prince Harry comes closest to the ancient Greeks' idea of perfection. 1. Prince Harry - 81.4 per cent Dr Julian De Silva said: 'Prince Harry has striking facial symmetry and gets closer than all the other royal men to having what the ancient Greeks considered the perfect face. 'Harry scored particularly highly for the shape of his chin, the near-perfect length of his face, the gap between his nose and lips and his eye spacing. 'He got his lowest score for his thin lips which, with a rating of 71 per cent, had the poorest score of the four royal males.' 2. Prince William - 80.9 per cent Dr Julian De Silva said: 'Prince William gets a very high rating, too, and stands out for having easily the highest score for his nose and for his eye position. 'He was marked down for his face length, achieving the lowest score of the four at 85 per cent. He also got the lowest score for the gap between his nose and lips and also for his chin. 3. Peter Phillips - 80.4 per cent Dr Julian De Silva said: 'Princess Anne's son is another extremely handsome royal male. He got very high marks for perfectly equal gaps between his mouth, eyes and forehead. He was marked down for his chin.' 4. Mike Tindall - 76.7 per cent Dr Julian De Silva said: 'Former England rugby star Mike Tindall was always going to get marked down for his permanently misshapen nose which, at 66.7 per cent, was miles behind Prince William's top rating of 89 per cent. He also scored very poorly for his eye position. At 83.6 per cent, his full lips got the highest score of the four royal males and his chin score of 89.8 per cent was also highest.' Prince William revealed he is a fan of Nando's after being introduced to the restaurant chain by one of his detectives. William told Robert Brozin, who co-founded the brand in South Africa 31 years ago, that he had sampled his food when he met him today at a Commonwealth Heads of Government (CHOGM) event in London. Pointing to his police protection officer, William said: 'This man here is your biggest fan, he's introduced me to Nandos. It's very good. He should buy a stake in Nandos.' William, 36, joins the ranks of high-profile fans of the chain, which is famed for its spicy Peri Peri chicken dishes, including Oprah Winfrey, Jay Z, David Beckham, Ricky Gervais and Rihanna. Prince William has revealed that he is a fan of the restaurant Nando's during a visit to the Commonwealth Youth Forum on Tuesday The royal was attending the Next Generation Impact Entrepreneurs Forum a joint session of the Commonwealth Youth and Business Forums at the QEII Centre in Westminster. Delegates included philanthropists and representatives from the Commonwealth Alliance of Young Entrepreneurs (CAYE), a network supported by the Commonwealth Youth Forum. Robert Brozin, who co-founded Nandos in Johannesburg in 1987, said: 'I'm not surprised he's eaten at Nando's. 'The beauty of Prince Harry and Prince William is that they're really accessible and they are guys that go out a lot - I'm very happy that they've tried it. 'I was certain they would have tried it because they're so accessible they're people's people, which is so nice.' The Duke of Cambridge told Robert Brozin, who co-founded the brand, that he was introduced to the chain by one of his detectives. Pictured: William shakes hands with delegates at today's forum in London The royal was attending the Next Generation Impact Entrepreneurs Forum a joint session of the Commonwealth Youth and Business Forums at the QEII Centre in Westminster William also spoke about his ambitions for the Royal Foundation, which he founded with Prince Harry and the Duchess of Cambridge in 2011 and which Meghan Markle Mr Brozin added: 'I want to share with the young Commonwealth entrepreneurs about the opportunities that are available and how to reach out.' Asked about the secret of his success he replied: 'The people that work for us and the product obviously, it's the people that make the chicken.' William also spoke about his ambitions for the Royal Foundation, which he founded with Prince Harry and the Duchess of Cambridge in 2011 and which Meghan Markle will join as fourth patron after she and Harry marry in May. He told delegates: 'We, as the Royal Foundation, can help lead, but if we can connect to some of those bigger foundations in the world and come together with one message, imagine the focus and the change. Prince William later met with Tanzania's vice president Samia Suluhu during an audience at Buckingham Palace who presented him with a stunning painting The President of Kenya, Uhuru Kenyatta also met with the prince on the sidelines of the Commonwealth Heads of Government meeting (CHOGM) 'I like the idea of a team. It's all about how we work together.' The roundtable discussion was led by Robert Pattle, Vice Chairman of Standard Chartered Private Bank, a former equerry of the Prince of Wales who also served as Master of the Household at Clarence House. Chatting to delegates before taking his seat, William joked: 'He's very organised, he's very impressive. I don't know where he's learned that from.' One of the delegates also wished William luck as he prepares to become a father of three, with wife Kate due to give birth any day now. Simon McMurtrie, of Thames Chairman and Consultancy Services, told him: 'Good luck with number three child,' to which William smiled and said 'Thanks.' THE DUKE OF CAMBRIDGE'S COMMONWEALTH SPEECH Good morning to everyone and thank you for inviting me. Just now, I was fascinated to talk some of you more detail with some of you about the business ventures you have championed - so successfully - across the Commonwealth. I heard how impact investment and philanthropy are helping to encourage social change and how many of you here in this room are empowering others to achieve the same. As I have travelled across the Commonwealth and here in the UK, I have always been impressed by the ingenuity, the drive and commitment of those I meet behind small and medium sized companies particularly. When Catherine and I visited India in 2016, we were completely blown away by the innovation on display in the Indian businesses we met from Formula E-Cars and new ways of teaching braille. I understand this is the first time the Youth and Business Forums have met together in CHOGM week. But given the importance of the issues you are discussing today from tackling youth unemployment to nurturing entrepreneurs of the future I hope that this joint session will continue at future CHOGMs as we go forward. Just as importantly, I hope today and this week will bring opportunities, many many opportunities, to build meaningful networks and valuable partnerships for you to take forward. Good luck and thank you. Advertisement In his opening remarks to the Forum, which explored what the Commonwealth can do to encourage, empower and connect entrepreneurs, the prince said: 'As I have travelled across the Commonwealth and here in the UK, I have always been impressed by the ingenuity, the drive and commitment of those I meet behind small and medium sized companies particularly. 'When Catherine and I visited India in 2016, we were completely blown away by the innovation on display in the Indian businesses we met from Formula E-Cars and new ways of teaching braille.' He added that he hoped the Youth and Business Forums would continue to team up in future, saying: 'Given the importance of the issues you are discussing today from tackling youth unemployment to nurturing entrepreneurs of the future I hope that this joint session will continue at future CHOGMs as we go forward.' Later on Tuesday Prince William welcomed the Vice President of Tanzinia and President of Kenya to Buckingham Palace. Tanzania's vice president Samia Suluhu presented him with a stunning painting of a landscape of elephants, much to the prince's delight. The President of Kenya, Uhuru Kenyatta also met with the prince on the sidelines of the Commonwealth Heads of Government meeting Senior members of the royal family are involved in the Commonwealth Heads of Government Meeting (CHOGM) in London which will see leaders from across the globe take part in a two-day summit. In the run-up to the start of the talks on Thursday forums are being staged where issues from gender politics to the environment are being discussed. The session, at the Queen Elizabeth II conference centre in central London, includes philanthropists who will talk about the role they can play in supporting new entrepreneurship, and investing in the next generation. The session will explore what the Commonwealth can do to encourage, empower and connect entrepreneurs across the network. During the day the Prince of Wales and the Duchess of Cornwall will attend the Commonwealth Big Lunch at the conference centre. Charles will also meet civil society representatives from the People's Forum and join representatives from the Commonwealth Youth Climate Change Network and selected Youth Forum delegates for a roundtable discussion on the work of young people in the Commonwealth. The Lord Mayor of the City of London, Charles Bowman, will host representatives from all 53 Commonwealth nations at a banquet at Guildhall on Tuesday evening. Chancellor Philip Hammond is among the speakers at the event which will also be attended by senior City, business and charity representatives. A mother revealed how she photographed her own labour to capture stunning images of her son's first seconds of life. Resting the camera on her stomach, Lauren Chenault, 25, a professional photographer, managed to keep clicking the shutter through the pain as she gave birth to son Kai in April 2017. The powerful photographs document the newborn's first breaths as he is held up by the doctors with the umbilical cord still attached. Mrs Chenault, from Rockville, New York, said she came up with the idea because she wanted to show how 'women really are superheroes'. First breaths: Mother Lauren Chenault, 25, managed to keep clicking the shutter through the pain as she gave birth to son Kai in April 2017. She captured his first moments of life on camera Ambitious: Lauren with her husband, daughter Kailah and one-year-old son Kai. The mother-of-two said she wanted to take the photographs to show how 'women are superheroes' She said: 'This was so important to me, I think it portrays how women really are superheroes. I couldn't believe I actually got the shot I took about 30 images but only two were usable. 'It was a total adrenaline rush when everything was happening, my mind was focusing on pushing but I had to remember to click the button.' Mrs Chenault, who has 10 years' experience as a photographer, originally hoped to document the birth of her daughter Kailah in 2015. Perspective: The mother-of-two captured doctors as they delivered her son in April last year But she conceded it was too difficult to try during her first labour as she did not know how she would be positioned, or what to expect. When she discovered she was pregnant with her second child less than a year later, Mrs Chenault set the plans in motion to photograph the birth. She enlisted the help of friends to hold her legs in a position that allowed her to rest the camera on her stomach and still have a view of the medics and the bright light of the birthing suite behind. Poignant: The photographer, 25, later captured newborn Kai in the hospital Bonding: Big sister Kailah with her newborn baby brother in the hospital in April last year 'My family was amazed I was able to capture it, but my husband wasn't surprised when I put my mind to something, I make it happen,' Mrs Chenault said. The photographer, owner of You're My Focus photography studio, released the images of social media to mark her son's first birthday. She added: 'My son is probably going to kill me when he's older, for plastering his fresh naked face all over the internet. 'Having these photos will always hold a special place for it me it speaks 10,000 times louder than words ever could.' A mother has revealed she had a special bust enhancement to allow her to breastfeed her baby. Alice Coombe, 24, from Plymouth, Devon, says she hated her small 32A bust more than ever after breastfeeding her first son Hector three years ago. Alice said she knew that she wanted more children but worried that without getting bigger boobs she would not have the confidence to breastfeed and bond with them. Before her second child Elizabeth was born she decided to put an end to her misery by getting breast augmentation in 2016. Alice Coombe had breast augmentation in 2016 after feeling a lack of confidence feeding her first child with her 32A chest and has now can up to a 34DD. Pictured with second child Elizabeth after surgery The mum-of-two said she was thrilled with the results after surgery took her from a 32A to a 34DD. She asked for her implants to be put underneath the milk glands so it does not affect breastfeeding, and had 'no complications' feeding Elizabeth. And while Alice says she fake boobs have helped boost her confidence, she would never have gone ahead with the surgery had it meant she would be unable to breastfeed. She said: 'Breastfeeding was very important for me. 'I feel it's a bonding process with your baby and I feel you're giving them the best nutrients, it's such a natural thing to do and for them it's so comforting too. Alice requested that her implants were placed underneath the milk glands so as not to effect her milk production The mother-of-two says she previously 'hated' her bust and lacked confidence when feeding her first child Hector Jr 'I hated my boobs after breastfeeding the first time. I always had little boobs. 'To me it was the best thing I ever did.' Alice breastfed both of her children, Hector, three and Elizabeth, seven months, until they were five months old. Many breastfeeding websites say that it is most likely possible to breastfeed with implants, but it depends on the kind of surgery. While most approaches are compatible with breastfeeding, a 'smile' incision around the areola increases your risk of having breastfeeding problems. Alice says that her husband Hector (seen left with son Hector Jr) was very supportive of her decision to have the surgery She says that she's very proud of her surgery which she had done in Spain costing her 3,800 Alice and her family have spent the last decade in Tenerife where she met her soon-to-be husband Hector Alice says she believes that 'everyone should feel comfortable in their own skin' Alice, a former PR worker spent the last 10 years in Tenerife, where she met fiance Hector and had her two children said she believes that 'everyone should feel comfortable in their own skin'. She added: 'We shouldn't have to hide things that we are proud of. I'm very proud of my boobs. 'I wasn't happy and there was a chance to change it, so I did. Wear what you want, if you want to show your legs or your boobs then you can. 'It's 2018, it's just a bit of cleavage.' The surgery, which she had done in Spain, cost her 3,800. She added: 'Hector was very encouraging, it's lovely to have that kind of support. My whole family are supportive.' A graduate went on national television on Tuesday to say she is selling her body to help pay off her 20,000 of student debt. She said she would rather work as a prostitute than in a petrol station on minimum wage. Known only as Louise, she said she can earn up to 900 a week. 'I'm stubbornly defiant about my right to do this kind of work without people inflicting their moral judgements on me,' she told the BBC's Victoria Derbyshire. 'I don't want people to think I'm on drugs or that I've been forced or coerced or trafficked. 'I'm just here as a normal person who wants to make money, secure a future for myself and do this kind of work because I choose to.' Scroll down for video BBC broadcaster Victoria Derbyshire was granted exclusive access to a brothel in the south-east of England where she met Louise, pictured, one of the women who works there Louise poses for a daily photo that is uploaded to the brothel's Twitter account, allowing clients to see the women who are working that day. It operates out of a two-bedroom flat Louise, who has a degree in marine biology, works from a smart two-bedroom flat in a Victorian residential block in Westminster, central London. Clients are charged 70 for each half hour 25 of which goes to the brothel. A busy day for Louise might involve nine clients. 'People can't seem to wrap their heads around the fact I want to do this job. It's my choice I enjoy this kind of work and I wouldn't be doing it if I didn't want to.' A senior police officer admitted last night that brothels were being allowed to operate as long as the prostitutes were safe. Dan Vajzovic said arrests alone had proved an 'inadequate response' and protecting those involved was his top priority. The assistant chief constable, who is responsible for the policing of sex work nationwide, said prosecutions were not always the answer. 'Officers will now consider a range of factors, including the safety of those sex workers involved, before deciding on whether prosecution is the most appropriate response to an offence,' he said. A receptionist, pictured from behind with Victoria Derbyshire, is responsible for booking in clients for 30-minute, 45-minute or hour-long 'appointments' in the diary, just seen Broadcaster Victoria Derbyshire reveals how the kitchen cupboards are stocked with supplies for the women and their clients, including nappy bags (pictured) for used condoms One brothel owner, a former policeman, revealed yesterday that his former colleagues had shown no interest in shutting him down. The father of one is responsible for three brothels in west and central London that are used by up to 20 women, including Louise. All the businesses are advertised online, and housed in rented flats. In England and Wales it is illegal to operate a brothel but it is not illegal to for individuals to buy and sell sex. The owner, known only as Karl, said he has been involved in the sex industry for 15 years and earned around 60,000 a year. The 45-year-old said he was not exploiting the women and had no problem with breaking the law because he did not agree with it. Speaking in one of the two bedrooms were clients are 'seen', Louise explains the sex is simply a 'transactional behaviour' and that it's her job, adding: 'I do it because I want money' The brothel does not allow drugs or alcohol and screens women before allowing them to work Brothel owner Karl, a father of one, pictured with Victoria Derbyshire, explained the steps he took to run a 'tight ship' and ensure the women's safety 'We don't allow drugs, no underage girls. We check everyone's passports,' he told the BBC. 'If we've got any doubts that they're not there under their own free will, we will call the police.' The businessman, who lives in a 800,000 detached home in the Home Counties and drives a Range Rover, said his brothel was operating as an escort agency with the 'full knowledge' of the authorities. 'If they close us down, I could go to prison,' he added. 'They might be thinking 'Let's police this by visiting them regularly and making sure everything is in order'.' In a statement, Mr Vajzovic, of Cambridgeshire Police, said: 'Sex workers are all too often individuals who are abused and profited from. Our priority is to keep these people safe and crack down on those who use their position to exploit the vulnerable. 'We will work with those involved in sex work to exchange information, improve safety and increase trust in the police so victims have the confidence to report crimes.' What is the UK law on brothels? Prostitution is not wholly illegal in the UK, but many activities surrounding it are deemed unlawful, including keeping or managing a brothel. According to the law, one prostitute may work from an indoor premises but if there are two or more prostitutes the place is considered a brothel and it is an offence. The owner of Louise's brothel, Karl, says he operates in full knowledge of the authorities, and claims they are willing to let him continue as long as the women are in a safe environment. It is thought that some councils will turn a blind eye to a parlour to help keep sex workers off the street. Advertisement The BBC's Victoria Derbyshire programme is on weekdays between 09:00 and 11:00 on BBC Two and the BBC News channel Crown Princess Victoria took a leap into spring on Tuesday as she stepped out in an elegant floral ensemble. The first-in-line to the Swedish throne joined her father King Carl Gustaf to welcome India's Prime Minister to Stockholm today. Mr Narendra Modi joined the father and daughter at the Royal Palace as part of his two day visit to the country under the invitation of Sweden's PM Stefan Lofven. Crown Princess Victoria of Sweden looked the picture of Spring as she stepped out in a floral number on Tuesday Victoria, 40, looked her elegant best in an elegant navy tea dress with a ruffle collar and a print of pink and green blossoms. She added a further pop of colour in the form of mint green accessories including a clutch bag and some low heeled pumps. The mother-of-two swept her brunette locks up into her signature chignon for her engagement today complemented by a pair of emerald earrings. She welcomed India's Prime Minister Mr Narendra Modi to the Royal Palace in Stockholm on his second day in Sweden Charming Victoria, who is first in line to the Swedish throne, was all smiles as she shook the PM's hand while welcoming him into her home She and the king could be seen shaking hands with their guest of honour on day two of his visit to Sweden. Modi landed Monday at Stockholm Arlanda Airport accompanied by a business delegation. He is in Europe for talks on trade, growth, global security and climate. Today he met with the prime ministers of Nordic nations for the first India-Nordic Summit. Her father King Carl Gustaf was also on hand to take care of their guest of honour After Stockholm, Modi will travel to London to attend the Commonwealth Heads of Government Meeting, where Britain hopes to bolster its trade ties around the world in anticipation of Brexit. Modi is unlikely to have bilateral talks in London with his Pakistani counterpart, Shahid Khaqan Abbasi. Relations between the two nations generally have been hostile due to a number of historical and political events. A woman revealed how she was hospitalised after a 'botched' lip procedure. Elizaveta Tkachenko, 30, from Stavropol, in southwestern Russia, was left swollen and bruised after her friend, a self-taught beauty therapist, gave her injections to make her lips look fuller. Miss Tkachenko, an accountant, told how her lips burst in two places following the seemingly straightforward procedure. Before: Elizaveta Tkachenko, 30, from Stavropol, in southwestern Russia, before the treatment After: The accountant was left swollen and bruised following the lip plumping procedure She now believes she will suffer the affects of the treatment for years to come. Miss Tkachenko said: 'I am 30 years old. Due to what happened, my health is ruined. It's unclear what the aftermath of this will be in the future. 'My lip burst in two places, serosanguinous fluid got into my lip, my head would hurt terribly. One day later I was transferred to intensive care.' Inflamed: She shared photographs showing her swollen lips after the 'botched' treatment Miss Tkachenko said her friend had told her she had studied beauty treatments in her spare time and had begun to take paying clients. The beautician claimed to only use the highest-quality products. However Miss Tkachenko did not ask for information on the specific formula and was unable to give any details when she reported the incident to police. Officers are said to have launched an investigation into the beauty therapist. Hospitalised: Other photos appeared to show Miss Tkachenko with bruising to her eye Lasting effects: She believes the procedures could 'ruin' her health for years to come Photographs of Ms Tkachenko's badly swollen face have sparked a heated debate on local internet forums. One poster' said: 'She should have used her brain before making decisions'. But another disagreed: 'I feel very bad for this woman. She was the one who created her own problems.' On 17 April Artsakh Republic President Bako Sahakyan sent a congratulatory letter to Serzh Sargsyan on the occasion of being elected prime-minister of the Republic of Armenia, Presidential Office informed ArtsakhPress. April 17, 2018, 18:20 Artsakh President congratulates Serzh Sargsyan on being elected prime-minister of Armenia STEPANAKERT, APRIL 17, ARTSAKHPRESS:The letter runs as follows: Your Excellency, On behalf of the Artsakh people, authorities and personally myself I extend my heartfelt congratulations to You on being elected to the post of the prime-minister of the Republic of Armenia. I am confident that You will do everything possible for the development and consolidation of Mother Armenia and Artsakh, strengthening our people's defense capacity, deepening the Motherland-Diaspora ties, solving issues of national significance. I am confident for You belong to the category of political and state figures with great experience and knowledge. During the crucial period for our country You devotedly served to the Armenian statehood, partook in carving of our victories and successes. I once again congratulate You wishing robust health, successes and all the best on the way of the implementation of Your responsible mission. A woman who was driven to consider suicide after being bullied about her skin condition has now fully embraced her facial scars. Sarah Fremgen, 29, was only 14 years old when she started to notice spot-shaped scars on her face, which she passed off as pimples that wouldn't go away. Over years, the scars began to harden, so the support specialist and musician, from Tennessee, consulted a dermatologist who diagnosed her with keloid disorder. The condition triggers the formation of scars made out of collagen. Scroll down for video Beauty: Sarah Fremgen, 29, was driven to consider suicide after being bullied about her skin condition but has now fully embraced her facial scars Symptoms: The support specialist and musician, from Tennessee, was only 14 years old when she started to notice spot-shaped scars on her face, which she passed off as pimples Sarah was bullied at school for her appearance, leaving her feeling embarrassed and insecure. She began to suffer from depression and body dysmorphia, and her mental health worsened. 'I definitely used to hide. I'd avoid going places. I tried to pull my hair over my face and wore lots of makeup,' Sarah said. 'The only thing I felt I had control over was my size, so I would try to lose weight to compensate. I spent a lot of time isolating and in deep depression. I contemplated suicide many times.' The keloid scars she first noticed as a teenager came from 'a bad round of cystic acne', Sarah explained, adding that puberty was 'not kind' to her. She was 16 when she was officially diagnosed with the condition. 'As a teenage girl the last thing you want is something wrong with your face, so of course I was embarrassed and confused. In our society, there is a certain expectation of what normal looks like, and I didn't meet that,' Sarah said. Putting a name on it: Sara eventually consulted a dermatologist who diagnosed her with keloid disorder. The condition triggers the formation of scars made out of collagen Struggles: Sarah was bullied at school for her appearance, leaving her feeling embarrassed and insecure. She began to suffer from depression and body dysmorphia 'But the emotional trauma didn't really settle in until I started getting bullied at school. I grew up in a small town as a teenager, so I stood out, and kids of course can be mean. 'The stares, and rude comments got so bad I suffered with depression, body dysmorphia and eating disorders.' The constant bullying Sarah endured made the process of embracing her skin very hard for her. However, over time, her realization that people appreciate authenticity over beauty motivated her to start embracing her scars with pride. In 2014, Sarah married the love of her life, and she now credits her husband Jordan along with her friends and family for her positive outlook on life. 'The hardest part was probably people saying hurtful or ignorant things about my appearance; dealing with bullies and not meeting the popular beauty standards,' she said. 'I wanted so badly just like every girl to be considered beautiful and I was so sure at the time that I would never be that because even I couldn't think outside the box back then. Painful: The bullying Sarah endured made the process of embracing her skin very hard for her Changes: However, over time, her realization that people appreciate authenticity over beauty motivated her to start embracing her scars with pride Support: In 2014, Sarah married the love of her life, and she now credits him along with her friends and family for her positive outlook on life Together: Sarah (pictured with her husband Jordan) says her family's support, along with her faith, helped her rid herself of her feelings of shame and fear 'It took time, but I honestly attribute it to my faith and love and support from family. I came to a place where I could either live in shame and fear, or see what good could from my life through this. 'I could be a source of low self-esteem and embarrassment, or I could be a source of inspiration and hope. I chose inspiration and hope. 'I can honestly say, I am so at rest with who I am. Being able to embrace your own beauty allows you to truly see and embrace others, so that brings me joy. 'I do have bad days where I wish I was normal sometimes, but those hard moments only remind me that I have the opportunity to relate to others. 'The idea that what humans truly desire is authenticity, more than just beauty really changed my outlook.' Sarah has been asked many times if she would ever consider getting her scars removed, to which she says no. Self-love: 'I can honestly say, I am so at rest with who I am. Being able to embrace your own beauty allows you to truly see and embrace others, so that brings me joy,' Sarah said Not interested: Sarah has been asked many times if she would ever consider getting her scars removed, to which she says no Message: Now, Sarah wants others to know that beauty 'shouldn't have a limit' What matters: 'The greatest beauty you will leave behind is not what people saw when they looked at you, but how you made them feel,' she added 'I don't have a deep desire for an option out. Though there are some treatment options out there, removing keloid scars is very risky because there is always a chance they could get worse,' she said. 'As comfortable as I am in my skin, I still want to take care of it. However, for some, this condition can be physically debilitating. Many are looking for a cure because they need one and that is something of course I support. 'If there is a cure that is safe and effective, then I fully support itbut would I get it myself? Right now, probably not. I like being different and three dimensional. 'In real life, real things happen; hurt happens, wounds happen, scars happen, and we shouldn't have to apologize for it, but rather embrace the beauty of an authentic story. 'I wanted to inspire others to do the same thing. Beauty shouldn't have a limit, a box, or an expiration date. 'Embrace your scars, embrace the difference. I did, and it has been difficult at times but mostly so rewarding for myself and others. Not everyone will understand, but the ones that do are the ones that matter. 'The greatest beauty you will leave behind is not what people saw when they looked at you, but how you made them feel.' An Ohio mother who was shattered by the death of her daughter, born at just 22 weeks, found a bold way to honor the lost baby when she became pregnant yet again. Samantha Gadd, 27, from North Canton, was only halfway through her pregnancy when she went into labor in 2017, giving birth to a little girl who died in the hospital. When she found out she was pregnant again months later, she felt a swell of mixed emotions. That's when her friend, a photographer, stepped in with a sweet idea: Samantha would celebrated her new baby, and honor the one she lost, with a stunning 'rainbow baby' photoshoot. Sparkle: Samantha Gadd from North Canton, Ohio posed for a stunning nude maternity shoot to honor her lost child and celebrate her 'rainbow baby' Statement: Her friend, photographer Nicole DeHoff, covered her in rainbow glitter for the shoot A 'rainbow baby' is the recently-coined term for a child born to parents who had previous lost a child, due either to death or miscarriage. In the past couple of years, several have turned to rainbow-themed maternity shoots to help them cope with the loss while honoring the new life they'd created. Samantha is one of those mothers. In 2016, she became pregnant with her third child and first daughter. She and her husband named the baby Victoria while she was still in utero and happily anticipated her arrival. But on January 31, Sam went into labor at just 22 weeks, halfway through her second trimester. So early in the pregnancy, a baby is not considered viable outside the womb. Sam gave birth to Victoria on February 1. The baby was born sleeping, with a prolapsed cord, and died soon after. Her friend, photographer Nicole DeHoff, said Sam was 'flooded with emotion' when she became pregnant with another daughter months later. Story: She gave birth to a daughter at just 22 weeks who died soon after. Months later, she became pregnant with another daughter Theme: The new baby, Abigail, also posed with rainbow knits for her newborn shoot Buzz words: A 'rainbow baby' is the recently-coined term for a child born to parents who had previous lost a child, due either to death or miscarriage 'The beginning of the pregnancy she was detached, paranoid, scared, and while she wanted to be excited that she was having a girl, she didnt want it to feel like Victoria was being replaced,' Nicole told Love What Matters. 'We began planning her maternity session, because it had to be something special. Victoria may have been born sleeping, but she left a huge impact on all of our lives and we needed to honor her in a special way.' Nicole was at a craft store when she came across the glitter section, and had the idea to honor her friend's 'rainbow baby' with rainbow glitter. 'We were going to honor Victoria with the sparkle that she left behind with all of us.' Samantha posed nude for the striking shoot, first standing in profile and then sitting on the floor, cradling her belly. Nicole used Vaseline to stick glitter to the expectant mom's skin, creating a gradient of red to purple from her shoulder to her thigh. Mixed: Samantha was flooded with emotions when she became pregnant again and wanted to celebrate her new baby without forgetting the one she lost Tribute: She also posed for this image, in which Nicole Photoshopped a shadow of the child she lost, Victoria They also set up clothed shots, with Samantha holding the hand of a Photoshopped shadow of her lost child in one and the mom-to-be wearing a gown with a long rainbow train in another. 'Losing a child is the most awful feeling youre filled with so much anger, and youre so hurt. You have questions that really cant be answered and an internal struggle that is never really resolved, Nicole reflected. 'No child can ever be replaced, no matter how many kids you have after that.' Samantha has continued to honor Victoria, celebrating her first birthday earlier this year. She also welcomed her rainbow baby, Abigail on December 14th, 2017. Abigail got a newborn shoot of her own, dressed up in a rainbow blanket by Devoted Knits. 'Shes so beautiful, so perfect and innocent. She is loved so much, and she will always have Victoria watching over her,' Nicole added. Megyn Kelly made a bold statement in a fashion-forward jumpsuit that showed off her decolletage while attending a high-profile party thrown by Vogue editor-in-chief Anna Wintour. The 47-year-old NBC host was was all smiles as she made her way into the fashion editor's New York City home on Monday evening for the event celebrating Glamour magazine's new editor-in-chief, Samantha Barry. Megyn's cleavage-baring jumpsuit featured a short cape that hit her elbows and flowed past her as she walked. Out and about: Megyn Kelly was all smiles as she made her way into Vogue editor-in-chief Anna Wintour's New York City home on Monday evening Fashion-forward look: The 47-year-old donned a cleavage-baring jumpsuit that featured a short cape that hit her elbows and flowed past her as she walked Added touches: Megyn paired the all-black jumpsuit with a silver clutch and matching silver peep-toe stilettos by Christian Louboutin The journalist paired the edgy black ensemble with a bright silver clutch and matching silver peep-toe stilettos by Christian Louboutin. She wore her shoulder-length in loose waves around her shoulders and added a pop of color to her look by sporting a pink lip. Megyn flashed a bright smile and struck a pose for the paparazzi before heading inside Anna's Greenwich Village townhouse to attend the party, which went on for about four hours. The Megyn Kelly Today star was joined by fashion's biggest faces, including model Ashley Graham, actress Sienna Miller, television personality La La Anthony, and designers Diane Von Furstenberg, Vera Wang, Michael Kors, and Zac Posen. Design details: The black jumpsuit's built-in cape was made out of sheer fabric High-profile event: The party, which lasted about four hours, was thrown in celebration of Glamour magazine's new editor-in-chief, Samantha Barry Ladies in red: Human rights lawyer Amal Clooney (L) opted for a corset featuring a lace train, while model Ashley Graham (R) donned a figure-hugging floral-print dress Inside the party: Samantha took to Instagram to share a photo of herself posed with Amal and Anna during the event Fan: The new Glamour editor-in-chief called Amal and Anna her 'two favorite women' Amal Clooney, a friend of Samantha's, also opted for a dramatic look while attending the A-list party with her mother. The 40-year-old human rights lawyer donned a striking red corset featuring lace sleeves and a long cape. She paired the lingerie-inspired top with dark jeans and black ankle boots. Samantha, 36, took to Instagram on Monday evening to share a photo of herself posed with her arms around Amal, while Anna was smiling next to them. 'A super special night hosted by two of my favorite women Amal Clooney and Anna Wintour to celebrate my new role as Editor in Chief @glamourmag,' she captioned the image. Samantha became friends with the lawyer after they met when they were both living and working in London. The editor was even one of the guests at Amal's wedding to George Clooney in 2014. Famous faces: Sienna Miller (L) paired her blue floral dress with a black leather coat and combat boots, while La La Anthony (R) looked elegant in a ladylike plaid dress A-list party: Gayle King (L) wore bright stripes while designer Diane Von Furstenberg (R) opted for a patterned skirt Keeping it casual: Designer Michael Kors wore jeans and New Balance sneakers to the party Star power: Designers Vera Wang (L) and Zac Posen (R) also made a stylish entrance She was most recently the executive producer for social and emerging media at CNN Worldwide before she was named Cindi Leive's successor at Glamour. Cindi, 50, announced in September that she was leaving the magazine after 16 years as editor-in-chief. Samantha is the magazine's eighth editor-in-chief since it debuted in 1939, and the first one with an exclusively digital background. Anna, who is also Conde Nasts artistic director, said in a statement to the New York Times that Samantha is 'fearless like so many leaders of the moment.' 'We recognized at once that Sam would be the perfect editor for a new more ambitious era of Glamours future,' she said. 'We cannot wait to see her vision unfold.' Lena Dunham has penned a personal essay about why she won't be getting the perfect Hollywood mega-watt smile anytime soon, despite being advised to by her publicist. Writing for Vogue, the 31-year-old actress explained that when she first became famous, she quickly realized that not many others in her industry had their 'own teeth'. And when she did a search of her name on Twitter, she found that there were an 'alarming number of comments about my teeth'. All smiles: Lena Dunham, 31, has penned a personal essay about why she won't be getting the perfect Hollywood mega-watt smile anytime soon, despite being advised to by her publicist Unique: Writing for Vogue, the actress explained that when she first became famous, she quickly realized that not many others in her industry had their 'own teeth' Touchy subject: However, after a former publicist broached the subject of tooth-whitening with her, Lena admitted that she started researching teeth whitening Explaining that a former publicist once asked her creative partner to broach the subject of tooth-whitening with her, Lena admitted that she started researching the process and dreamed of 'a world in which my front teeth would be so white that their gargantuan size might even be a plus.' And as she has in the past got her eyebrows tattooed on and get hair extensions, she initially felt open to reconsidering her stance on her teeth. 'As with so many women, my relationship to the trappings of beauty changes every day. And from the first time I read a tooth criticism online, I developed the habits of the suddenly self-conscious, pursing my lips at inopportune times like I'd just sucked down half a lemon,' she explained. She even spoke to Manhattan-based dentist Mojgan Fajiram who specializes in cosmetic dentistry to find out more on the subject. The Brooklyn resident then spoke to Michael Apa, 'a dental rockstar' who has practices in New York and Dubai, as well as a line of at-home teeth whitening products sold on Net-a-Porter. And while Lena had felt hesitation towards teeth whitening in the past, she made an appointment. 'Soon you'll barely recognize me. I will be the Sandra Bullock of this office!' she says she bragged to co-workers. However, when a friend warned her about how painful teeth whitening can be, she cancelled her appointment and also started to explore if pearly whites would suit her personality and personal style. Research: She spoke to two Manhattan dentists about getting her teeth whitened and decided to make an appointment to go through with the treatment Questions: However, once she decided to whiten her teeth, Lena started to question whether she was buying into a homogenized version of beauty and if she felt comfortable with that Own terms: She concluded that she was content with her teeth growing more 'dingy by the day, on my terms', pictured with Oscar winner Brie Larson 'What if the whiteness of my new teeth doesn't match the rest of my face freckled, uneven, and often makeup-free? Will it be the equivalent of a heavy-handed spray tan on someone who refuses to leave their Maui hotel room? And, perhaps most pressing, how good will this really make me feel?' she wrote. She also started to question the 'socialist' context of having a perfect smile, and asked her dentist if people were whitening their teeth to look richer. And although she cancelled her appointment twice before re-booking a third visit, when the day of her teeth whitening rolled around, a walk around her neighborhood convinced Lena that teeth whitening and buying into a homogenized version of beauty wasn't for her. 'I feel deeply that it is our differences that unite us; that it is the strange details of our faces that make us so totally human. If the mouth is a third window to the soul, then I want mine to look like someone has punched their way through it in a mad rage,' she mused in the piece. And cancelling her appointment for the third and final time, she concluded that she was content with her teeth growing more 'dingy by the day, on my terms'. 'I will continue on: beaver-toothed, yellowed, enraging the internet one post at a time with a smile only a mother could love,' she added. Prince Harry and Meghan Markle are set to attend a memorial service next week commemorating the 25th anniversary of the murder of Stephen Lawrence to celebrate his life and legacy. Next week marks 25 years since Stephen Lawrence was killed, and 20 years since the Stephen Lawrence Charitable Trust was founded. During the service at St. Martin-in-the-Fields, London on Monday, Harry will read a message of support on behalf of his father, the Prince of Wales. Stephen was 18 when he was stabbed by a five-strong gang of white youths in south-east London on April 22, 1993 yet only two have been convicted of the murder. Scroll down for video Joint engagement: Harry and Meghan will attend a memorial service next week marking the 25th anniversary of the murder of Stephen Lawrence and to celebrate his life Commemoration: This year marks 25 years since Stephen Lawrence was killed, and 20 years since the Stephen Lawrence Charitable Trust was founded Established by Baroness Lawrence in 1998 in memory of her son, for the past 20 years the Stephen Lawrence Charitable Trust has campaigned for fairness and equality in the justice system. The trust has a continuing commitment to supporting young people from disadvantaged backgrounds to create a fairer society in which everyone, regardless of their background, can flourish. Last year they supported over 2,000 young people through training, mentoring, bursaries and other activities. At the memorial service, comedian Sir Lenny Henry will interview three young beneficiaries of the Stephen Lawrence Charitable Trust. Harry and Meghan, who will marry on May 19, will meet Baroness Lawrence and her son Stuart at the entrance of the church before taking their seats. Ahead of the 25th anniversary of his son's death, Stephen's father, Neville Lawrence (pictured) publicly announced that he had forgiven his son's murderers Neville and Doreen in 1993. Their son was 18 when he was stabbed by a five-strong gang of white youths in south-east London on April 22, 1993 yet only two have been convicted The memorial service is set to be one of the couple's final engagements before they become husband and wife. It comes as Stephen's father, Neville Lawrence, publicly announced that he had forgiven his son's murderers - while his mother Doreen says she can't because they havent shown any remorse'. Neville Lawrence, 76, said the decision was the hardest he had ever made, but it was necessary as part of his Christian faith. Speaking ahead of the 25th anniversary of Stephens murder, Mr Lawrence said yesterday the killing had inflicted a life sentence on him and his family. The father of three said: I will never be the person I was before Stephens death. You can never brush this aside this is going to live with you for the rest of your life. Huma Abedin was among the big-name guests invited to a party thrown by Vogue boss Anna Wintour on Monday night. The 41-year-old enjoyed a fun night out, dressing up to attend a bash held in honor of new Glamour editor-in-chief Samantha Barry, which was held at Wintour's New York City home. Huma showed her flair for keeping up with Hollywood's style stars at the event, donning a figure-hugging emerald green dress and peep-toe pumps. Night off: Huma Abedin (center) attended a party at Anna Wintour's place on Monday night Pals: The 41-year-old Clinton aide walked in with actress Sienna Miller A blast: The two held hands as they walked down the sidewalk to Wintour's apartment Outfit: Huma wore a figure-hugging, off-the-shoulder green dress and peep-toe pumps It is possible Huma chose her bold green outfit specifically in tribute to the guest of honor; Samantha is originally from County Cork in Ireland. Hillary Clinton's aide who is currently raising her six-year-old son Jordan alone while his father, disgraced politician Anthony Weiner, serves a jail sentence for transferring obscene material to a minor had a night off from mom duty to attend the star-studded event. She was seen by paparazzi arriving at Wintour's home Monday evening, wearing an off-the-shoulder long-sleeve dress and carrying a metallic clutch. She held hands with actress Sienna Miller as she walked down the sidewalk to Wintour's front step. Huma has regularly attended fashion-industry events since Clinton's campaign loss in 2016, sitting front row at Prabal Gurung and Oscar de La Renta in early 2017 and joining Stacey Bendet for her Alice + Olivia presentation earlier this year. She's known as a bit of a fashion plate in the political world herself, frequently wearing designer dresses and coats. Mom's night: Huma seems to have found a sitter to watch her six-year-old son, Jordan Fashion crowdL She appeared to be enjoying herself as she went to the party Celebs: Later, she walked out behind lookalike Amal Clooney Twins! The two brunettes were both invited to celebrate at the Vogue boss' home Very sexy: Amal wore a red bustier top with lace sleeves For Monday night's party, she was there to honor Samantha Barry, who was announced as the new boss at Glamour in January after longtime editor Cindi Leive stepped down. Wintour who became artistic director for Vogue parent company Conde Nast in 2013 hosted the party in Barry's honor. Barry, born in Ireland, previously worked at CNN, and Wintour said in a statement that she is 'fearless like so many leaders of the moment.' 'We recognized at once that Sam would be the perfect editor for a new more ambitious era of Glamours future. We cannot wait to see her vision unfold,' she added. Quite a few other big names, many of whom are featured in Glamour and Vogue's pages, also came out to celebrate. Magazine bosses: Wintour threw the party in celebration of Samantha Barry, the new editor-in-chief of Glamour Star-studded: Also in attendance was supermodel Ashley Graham Big names: Megyn Kelly (left), Lala Anthony (center), and Gayle King (right) all turned up too Fashion elites: Designers including Diane von Furstenberg came to party Chic: Also there were Zac Posen (left), Vera Wang (center), and Michael Kors (right) Also in attendance were Ashley Graham, Lala Anthony, Megyn Kelly, and Gayle King, as well as designers Vera Wang, Michael Kors, Zac Posen, and Diane Von Furstenberg. Huma looklike Amal Clooney wore a bright red bustier with provocative ribbons and lacy sleeves, and both wore their hair in similar curls around their shoulders. Most of the guests, with the exception of Sienna Miller, turned up without coats despite New York's still-chilly temperatures. Sweden's Princess Sofia pulled out all the stops as she attended a glitzy UN reception in Stockholm tonight. The Scandi Princess, 33, donned a show-stopping black skirt featuring heavy floral embellishment, which she teamed with a figure-hugging long-sleeved tee. She was guest of honour at the United Nations Development Program (UNDP) Spring Gala, held at the at the city's Fotografiska (Photographic) museum. Sofia, who is married to Prince Carl Philip, added a pop of colour with a vibrant beaded clutch, statement earrings and a pair of teal stilettos. Scroll down for video Breakout moment: Glamorous Princess Sofia pulled out all the stops as she attended a glitzy UN reception in Stockholm on Tuesday evening The former glamour model and one-time reality TV star is now a keen humanitarian and reportedly studied the UN Convention on the Rights of the Child at Stockholm University. Since her relationship with Carl Philip became public in 2010 she has thrown herself into charity work, setting up Project Playground, which supports underprivileged children in South Africa. The mother-of-two, whose official title is the Duchess of Varmland, also launched a foundation aimed at tackling 'hatred and cyberbullying' alongside her husband. Regal glamour: The Scandi Princess, 33, donned a show-stopping black skirt featuring heavy floral embellishment, which she teamed with a figure-hugging long-sleeved tee Work life: The former glamour model and one-time reality TV star is now a keen humanitarian and reportedly studied the UN Convention on the Rights of the Child at Stockholm University. Balance: Sofia, who is married to Prince Carl Philip, added a pop of colour with a vibrant beaded clutch, statement earrings and a pair of teal stilettos Sofia and Carl Philip welcomed their second son Gabriel into the world last August, who is the sixth in line the throne. The couple recently celebrated the young prince's christening at Drottingholm Palace Chapel in the Swedish town of Drottingholm at the beginning of December. They already have one-year-old son Prince Alexander, who was born in April 2016. On April 17, Minister of Foreign Affairs of the Republic of Artsakh (Nagorno Karabakh Republic) Masis Mayilian received Personal Representative of the OSCE Chairperson-in-Office Ambassador Andrzej Kasprzyk. April 17, 2018, 19:11 Artsakh FM receives Personal Representative of OSCE Chairperson-in-Office STEPANAKERT, APRIL 17, ARTSAKHPRESS:The sides discussed the situation on the Line of Contact between the armed forces of Artsakh and Azerbaijan. In this context, the importance of maintaining stability in the zone of the conflict was stressed, Artsakh Foreign Ministry informed ArtsakhPress. During the meeting, the sides also touched upon a range of issues related to the monitoring conducted by the Office of the Personal Representative of the OSCE Chairperson-in-Office. A high-flying lawyer has told how she quit her job to launch her own food business with the help of a pickle recipe that was passed down from her ancestors. Louise Campbell, 36, who was born in Hong Kong but now lives in Worthing, West Sussex, turned her back a 14-year career as a solicitor to launch Mestiza Filipino Food. Her grandmother's recipe was passed on to her mother Marlene who then taught her how to make the spicy pickle, which is made up of papaya, shallots and chilli. Speaking to FEMAIL, Louise claims she has 'never looked back' despite leaving her 55,000 salary, and hopes to launch a Filipino restaurant and make the cuisine popular in the UK. Louise and her mother appear in the BBC Two's Top of the Shop with Tom Kerridge, in which contestants compete have the best products from seven different categories. Louise Campbell has launched a Filipino pickle brand made from her grandmother's recipe and appears on BBC Two's Top of the Shop with Tom Kerridge this week In 2015, Louise took some time out of her career to travel the world, but would never return to life as a solicitor, deciding that she wanted to make a career out of bringing Filipino food to UK foodies. She said: 'Up until a few years ago I was a solicitor and then we were offered voluntary redundancy. 'I'd gone through a few job interviews and then I thought I've always wanted to go traveling so I should just go and do it now take a few months and then I'll come back and go back to it. 'But I was sitting in a really nice cafe in Melbourne two weeks into my travels and I thought, ''I wonder what would happen if I just followed my dream?'' which is to have my own little restaurant and I've haven't looked back. I just got the idea in my head and that was it.' After leaving her high-paying job as a solicitor Louise, who supports herself by running supper clubs in Brighton, makes just enough to pay her bills, which cost around 10,000. Louise pictured with her mother Marlene previously worked as a lawyer but gave it all up in hopes of making enough money to buy a house for herself in the Philippines Louise's grandmother, who she calls her Mama Bakat (above right), passed the recipe down to Marlene, who helps her make the pickle In her last job she enjoyed private healthcare, pension and bonuses and made around 55,000 a year. Despite the change in her income, Louise says she's happier doing something she loves. Her mother Marlene was initially sceptical of her decision to start over, worrying about the instability of her daughter running her own business compared to a steady career like law. Louise continued: 'She's really happy for me but initially my giving up a career in law to do food, because it's quite different in the Philippines, you got to school and your education very much pushes you to get a proper job if you like. 'Initially she found that quite hard but she's massively supportive of me.' Louise's main product is the Mestiza pickle, which costs 3.75 a jar and is made in her kitchen. She admits that it has been a struggle to bring Filipino food to the UK, as it doesn't have a huge market in the way that other world foods do. Louise said: 'I started street food and in my first trading I had between seven and ten customers and some of them were friends. People were going ''What's Filipino food? Does it taste like Chinese food?'' Louise's mum taste tests the vinegar used to pickle the product in every batch she makes One of the show's two judges Nisha Katona encourages Louise to market the product on its family history (pictured Louise 'It's introducing something completely new but every cuisine started from nothing really so I'm just determined to keep saying come and try it or come to a pop up I'm doing and slowly, slowly getting out there.' Louise prepares the food by grating unripe green papaya on a mandoline slicer so it has a noodle-like consistency. She combines the papaya with shredded carrot, chili, shallots and ginger before pickling them in vinegar mixed with sugar and salt for 24 hours. Her family remains involved in the process, and Louise won't pickle the vegetables before her mum has tasted the vinegar. Speaking in the documentary, her mum says: 'I'm so proud of her because I know that she's proud of her roots. I'll know she'll do well.' It is made from papaya, shredded carrots, shallots and chili, and is left to pickle for 24 hours The programme will see amateur cooks compete to be the best in their category, and in the first episode we see preserves, pickles and spreads Contestants are judged on the number of the products they sold at the farm shop, as well as how the products are marketed, how viable their businesses are and of course the product's quality. Over the course of eight episodes, amateur cooks making different types of food will compete to be the best in their category to win a place in the final. In the final episode judges Nisha Katona and Alison Swan Parente will decide who has the best product from all the categories. In the beginning of the episode Louise marketed her pickle on its Filipino origins, but she was encouraged to tell the story of how it was passed through the generations. Katona says: 'It's an heirloom that has been handed down to grandmother to mother to daughter and that's the story that Lou has got to push.' Top of the Shop with Tom Kerridge airs on BBC Two this Tuesday at 8pm Drinking tea in the afternoon is a British tradition that stretches back hundreds of years. But in the last few decades, it has thankfully become a much less formal occasion, which means that many people no longer know the traditional rules of etiquette that surround this iconic activity. Now eccentric tea room owner Lady Nadine Sampson-Carr, an expert on afternoon tea, has exclusively shared with Food&Drink how to behave with propriety when sitting down for afternoon tea no matter what the situation ahead of National Tea Day on April 21. And she says it is bad manners to wipe your lips on a napkin, to clink your teaspoon on your cup, and to add milk before the hot water and tea. Lady Nadine, who runs Aunt Marthas authentic Victorian tea room in Gloucestershire where she dresses in Victorian garb, also settles the famous debate about whether to put jam or cream on a scone first - and she says it's cream before jam. 1. ALWAYS ACKNOWLEDGE AN INVITATION Lady Nadine, owner of Aunt Marthas tea room in Gloucestershire, has shared the 'rules' of drinking tea no matter what the situation Always acknowledge and respond to an invitation. This is only polite - after all, you wish to ensure that you will be expected if you are attending. 2. DON'T MOVE THE CUTLERY Upon taking your seat, do not move the china or cutlery; these are in their places for a reason. You would not expect a visitor to YOUR home to begin moving the furniture or ornaments around. 3. TAKE THE CUP TO THE POT When pouring tea, take the cup to the teapot and not the pot to the cup. Even the best teapot will drip from the spout this is the way it is done in order to prevent spillage. 4. ADD THE MILK LAST Lady Nadine says you have to add the milk last, to take the cup to the teapot, and to never let the teaspoon clink If taking milk with your tea, add the milk last and not before the tea. There are two reasons for this. Firstly, because until it is poured, you will not know how strong the tea will be. Lady Nadine is an ambassador for National Tea Day Secondly it shows that you expect the china to be of the best quality and not crack because of the heat of very hot water. 5. DON'T MAKE ANY NOISE When stirring the tea ensure that not a sound is made by the spoon. It is a sign of poor breeding if you lack the control of such a simple item as a teaspoon. 6. DON'T LET CUTLERY TOUCH YOUR NAPKIN AFTER USE Eating utensils should never touch the cloth once they are being used. They should be laid gently on the plate. Remember: the observations of others, both good and bad, travel very fast and often will be with you for life. 7. NEVER USE YOUR NAPKIN AS A HANDKERCHIEF Never, ever use your napkin as a handkerchief or to blot or wipe your lipstick how gauche it would be to leave such a stain. Remember at all times to show that you are a person of quality. Lady Nadine reveals whether to add cream or jam first to a scone The quandary is not a regional preference as is oft reported but, in actual fact, is explained by Victorian etiquette. Cream was abundant and cheap, with so many dairy farms producing it but jam and preserves were expensive due to the high cost of sugar. So how to stop guests pigging out on all the jam without appearing rude or tight-fisted? A Victorian etiquette was introduced that in order to prevent jam dribbling from the scone and staining expensive clothing, it was deemed correct to apply cream first, then make a small well in the middle in which to add a small amount of jam. Advertisement To find out more about National Tea Day and to book tickets for the Fes-Tea-Val which takes place on April 21 and 22, visit nationalteaday.co.uk, on Twitter, Facebook and Instagram @Nationalteaday or #NationalTeaDay. Victoria Beckham, Jennifer Aniston, and Miranda Kerr are among the celebrities who drink vinegar for its health benefits, but the bitter tasting liquid has gotten a whole lot sweeter now that it's being added to cocktails. According to Vogue, 'shrubs syrups made from equal parts vinegar, sugar, and fruit, flowers, vegetables, or herbs have recently become a cocktail mainstay' that will be everywhere this spring. Although it may seem counterintuitive, cocktail lovers will still get the positive health effects of vinegar even if it is being mixed with liquor. Getting crafty: Craft cocktail bars across the country are making drinks using shrubs syrups made from equal parts vinegar, sugar, and fruit, flowers, vegetables, or herbs Innovative: Luxbar in Chicago combines Siete Leguas Tequila with an earthy beet shrub, yellow chartreuse, and lemon to make its cocktail 'Lettuce, Turnip, the Beet' Bill Cromwell, head bartender at Maysville in New York, told the outlet that vinegars 'are known for being packed with enzymes and detoxifying properties that support a healthy body and metabolism'. Apple cider vinegar in particular is said to boost immunity, improve digestion, and aid weight loss. It is also a key ingredient in Maysville's cocktail 'Apple of My Rye,' which features Wild Turkey 101 rye, maple, and allspice. Gunnar Lindquist, a bar manager at Luxbar in Chicago, also touted the benefits of the shrubs, telling Vogue that 'along with vinegar providing support in regulating blood sugar, balancing pH, and killing bacteria, you also get the added benefit of vitamin intake thanks to the fruits or vegetables used to make the shrub.' Luxbar's recently turned a dessert into a cocktail with its drink 'The Cobbler,' which is a combination of Pierre Ferrand Cognac, Cherry Balsamic shrub, lemon, and vanilla. Yum! Luxbar also turned a dessert into a cocktail with its drink 'The Cobbler,' which is a combination of Pierre Ferrand Cognac, Cherry Balsamic shrub, lemon, and vanilla A-list idea: Jennifer Aniston, Victoria Beckham, and Miranda Kerr (left to right) are among the celebrities who drink apple cider vinegar for its health benefits Although the idea of drinking vinegar in a cocktail might make a few eyes roll, Dominic Carullo, a bar manager at the Philadelphia restaurant Royal Boucherie, explained to the fashion bible that a shrub is simply a 'pre-colonial method of preserving seasonal produce' that is similar to canning. However, it wasn't until more recently that shrubs have become a popular addition to cocktails. In the 2000s, Carrie Bradshaw and her friends on Sex & the City helped revive the Cosmopolitan, which ultimately led to the rise of the craft cocktail bar. The increasing competition has pushed bartenders to start experimenting with new ingredients like shrubs, and it doesn't hurt that the possibilities are endless. With all the different combinations of fruits, vegetables, sugars, and vinegars, Carullo noted that mixologists could 'mix thousands of shrubs and never repeat.' Happy hour: Sex & the City (pictured) helped revive the Cosmopolitan, which led to the rise of the craft cocktail bar Looks great: Apple cider vinegar is a key ingredient in key ingredient in Mayville's cocktail 'Apple of My Rye,' which also features Wild Turkey 101 rye, maple, and allspice Non-alcoholic: Not only do they pair well with a variety of liquors, shrubs are also being used to make mocktails (Temperance cocktails pictured at Philadelphia restaurant Royal Boucherie) Meanwhile, Lindquist noted that the vinegars used to make shrubs can range anywhere from white whine vinegar to balsamic vinegar, covering a 'wide range of intensity.' Not only do they pair well with a variety of liquors, including blended scotches, shrubs are also being used to make delicious mocktails. And they happen to be a great way for restaurants and bars to provide local and seasonal ingredients in the most economical way possible. Carullo explained that shrubs are perfect for decreasing waste, explaining a pint of fresh berries will only last a few days, but a shrub made out of those berries can last months. Children who grow up with depressed mothers are more likely to have lower IQs, new research suggests. Some 10 to 25 percent of women experience postpartum depression, which may delay their baby's development. But new research from the University of California, San Diego suggests that the impact on their their children's mental development and learning can continue through the child's teenage years, if the depression does too. As rates of depression soar ever-higher in the US, proactively combating and treating even low-grade depression in mothers may help curtail the burden of the mental illness for future generations, the study suggests. IQs among the children of mothers with depression were six percent lower than those of other children, extending from infancy to their teenage years Around one in 10 women will suffer depression at some point. Once treated as an isolated and internal mental illness, recent developments in depression research continually uncover its public health implications. We have long known that when a mother has postpartum depression, her children are at greater risks of cognitive, speech and developmental delays and even behavioral disorders like attention deficit hyperactivity disorder (ADHD). The cause behind this is unclear, however. Some suggests that mothers' hormonal changes may influence the brain development of their babies to lead this, while others suggest they may be more behavioral. As children get older, however, and their mothers' depression persists, the possible ways that a mother's depression could slow their learning are more clear. Play and interaction are key catalysts for learning and neural connections as children's brains are developing, and often their mothers are their first and most frequent playmates. But one among depression's hallmark symptoms are a sense of isolation and disinterest in otherwise enjoyable activities. So it stands to reason that a mother struggling with depression might be less apt to play with and therefore stimulate her child's mind. To test this theory, researchers surveyed around 900 healthy children and their mothers living in Santiago, Chile, at five-year intervals from the child's infancy through to the age of 16. They observed how affectionate and responsive mothers were to their children at each age period, as well as how much mothers provided age-appropriate learning materials. Children were assessed on verbal cognitive abilities using standardized IQ tests during each assessment. Mothers were tested for symptoms of depression. Dr Patricia East, a research scientist at University of California San Diego School of Medicine, said: 'We found that mothers who were highly depressed didn't invest emotionally or in providing learning materials to support their child, such as toys and books, as much as mothers who were not depressed. 'This, in turn, impacted the child's IQ at ages one, five, 10 and 16,' she said. 'The consistency and longevity of these results speak to the enduring effect that depression has on a mother's parenting and her child's development,' Dr East added. On a scale from one to 19, the average verbal IQ score for all children in the study at age 5 was 7.64. Children who had severely depressed mothers were found to have an average verbal IQ score of 7.30 compared to a score of 7.78 in children without depressed mothers. Dr East said: 'Although seemingly small, differences in IQ from 7.78 to 7.30 are highly meaningful in terms of children's verbal skills and vocabulary. 'Our study results show the long term consequences that a child can experience due to chronic maternal depression.' Throughout the study, at least half of the mothers were determined to be depressed based on a questionnaire with questions such as 'Are you sad?' and 'Do you find yourself crying?' Dr East said: 'For mothers in the study, there were many stressors in their lives. 'Most of the mothers, while literate, had only nine years of education, were not employed outside the home and often lived with extended family in small, crowded homes - factors that likely contributed to their depression. 'Many mothers suffer from depression in the first six months after childbirth, but for some, depression lingers.' Dr East said data from the study suggested about one in five mothers who are severely depressed when their child turns one remain depressed for a long time. She added: 'For health care providers, the results show that early identification, intervention and treatment of maternal depression are key. 'Providing resources to depressed mums will help them manage their symptoms in a productive way and ensure their children reach their full potential.' The findings, published in the journal Child Development, may not be fully scalable to mothers in the US, but they underscore the disproportionate ways that depression may burden not only lower-income, less-educated mothers, but their children as well. Cancer patients should be given immunotherapy as the first line of treatment following the results of 'game-changing' trials, charities say. Patients undergoing the new type of treatment which harnesses the immune system so it targets and destroys only cancer cells typically lived longer with fewer reports of the cancer returning. A study involving people with advanced stage lung cancer found it almost doubled their survival time, while another revealed that immunotherapy treatment shrank tumours before surgery. Cancer patients should be given immunotherapy as the first line of treatment following the results of 'game-changing' trials, charities say. File photo Further trials will test the methods on patients with bowel and ovarian cancer. Dr Roy Herbst, a lung cancer specialist at Yale Cancer Centre, who was not involved in the studies, said it could be the start of a fundamental change in treatment. 'I've never seen such a big paradigm shift as we're seeing with immunotherapy,' he said. The series of studies was yesterday presented at the American Association of Cancer Research in Chicago. In one, scientists at New York University conducted a study involving more than 600 patients with advanced lung cancer. Two thirds were given a combination of both immunotherapy drugs and chemotherapy while the remaining patients were given chemotherapy and a placebo. A separate study tested the immunotherapy drug, nivolumab (pictured), on 21 patients about to have surgery for non-small-cell lung cancer The estimated survival after a year was 69 per cent in those taking the immunotherapy drugs compared to 49 per cent who only had chemotherapy. A separate study by Johns Hopkins University and the Memorial Sloan Kettering Cancer Centre tested the immunotherapy drug, nivolumab, on 21 patients about to have surgery for non-small-cell lung cancer. In 45 per cent of cases, it not only started to shrink the tumour but turned it into an 'auto-vaccine', activating T cells, which circulated the body to attack cancer cells. After 18 months, recurrence-free survival was 73 per cent compared to the clinical average of around 50 per cent. Dr Sung Poblete, president of Stand Up To Cancer, which funded this research, said: 'It may be a game-changer. This notion of 'cancer interception' has the potential to stop cancer in its tracks.' Violent assaults on NHS staff have risen by 10 per cent in a year partly driven by frustration with waiting times. There were up to 200 attacks on health workers a day in 2016/17, figures suggest. Staff in hospitals with long waiting lists, A&E departments or financial problems were most likely to suffer violence, according to a report by union Unison and the health service journal HSJ. Violent assaults on NHS staff have risen by 10 per cent in a year partly driven by frustration with waiting times. File photo Campaigners warned attack rates could rise as more hospitals fail to meet waiting time targets. Unison's Sara Gorton described the figures as 'worrying', adding: 'It's no accident that trusts where the pressures seem the most extreme where there are huge financial deficits or where it's a struggle to meet growing demands on services have seen the steepest rise in the number of attacks.' Attacks on staff in hospitals with emergency departments jumped by 22 per cent, with nearly 19,000 incidents. And assaults rose by 36 per cent in hospitals where more than one in ten patients waited for at least 18 weeks for elective procedures. There were up to 200 attacks on health workers a day in 2016/17, figures suggest. File photo Attacks increased by 23 per cent in a year among hospitals in with a budget deficit of 20million or more, compared to an increase of 1.5 per cent among those with a surplus of at least 1.5million. Jon Restell, of NHS union Managers In Partnership, told HSJ: 'Staff shortages make staff vulnerable to attacks from patients, and overworked staff are less able to defuse situations.' In total, 181 of 244 trusts responded to Freedom of Information requests and provided detail on 56,435 attacks, a rise of 9.7 per cent on the previous year. Unison said if the figures were extrapolated to all trusts, the total would be around 75,000 attacks or about 200 a day. The medicine cabinet staple aspirin could be a new way to tackle impotence. In a recent study by researchers in Turkey, eight out of ten men who were given the pill daily for six weeks were able to have satisfactory sex with their partner. The drug thins the blood and is commonly prescribed to help prevent heart attacks and strokes in people at high risk it works by improving circulation, preventing clots and reducing inflammation. It is thought to help in erectile dysfunction by increasing blood flow to the penis. In a recent study by researchers in Turkey, eight out of ten men who were given the pill daily for six weeks were able to have satisfactory sex with their partner (file photo) And, similar to Viagra, aspirin may also increase levels of nitric oxide, a gas that widens blood vessels and, in turn, improves blood flow. This is thought to be the first study to assess how aspirin could help men with impotence. It is estimated that erectile dysfunction defined as the inability to have an erection that is satisfactory for sexual intercourse affects around 40 per cent of men aged 40 at some point; by 70, its 70 per cent. Although stress and other psychological and social factors can be involved, in 90 per cent of cases the cause is vascular problems, where not enough blood gets to the penis. A healthy blood supply is crucial for creating and maintaining an erection. This occurs when the arteries relax and open up to let more blood flow in and the veins close. Once blood is in the penis, pressure traps it. However, if the blood vessels in this area narrow usually due to ageing, or because they become furred up with fatty deposits it can significantly reduce blood flow in the penile tissue. The drug thins the blood and is commonly prescribed to help prevent heart attacks and strokes in people at high risk it works by improving circulation, preventing clots and reducing inflammation (file photo) Lifestyle changes, such as losing weight, exercise, not smoking and reducing alcohol consumption, can help. Medications including Viagra, Cialis or Levitra which all work by dilating the arteries that supply the penis are also an option. But these drugs can have side-effects for example, headaches and visual disturbances and are not effective for everyone. These medications are unsuitable for men with angina, for instance. Drugs such as Viagra also have to be taken well in advance of sexual intercourse to allow effective concentrations of the drug to be reached. In the new study, by Istanbul Medipol University in Turkey, doctors looked at the effects of low-dose aspirin 100mg, roughly the amount prescribed to patients at risk of heart attacks and stroke compared to a placebo. Around 200 men aged between 18 and 76 with erectile dysfunction were given either aspirin or placebo pills to take once daily for six weeks. Questionnaires were given to them before and after the trial period. Results published last month in the journal International Urology and Nephrology showed that the proportion of men who were able to sustain an erection for intercourse increased from 31 per cent to 78 per cent in the aspirin group. There was no significant change in those who took a placebo. Professor Raj Persad, a consultant urologist with Bristol Urology Associates, says: If these results are confirmed in larger trials, aspirin could be a very effective and inexpensive treatment for erectile dysfunction. However, he warns that just because aspirin is a common over-the-counter drug doesnt mean it is suitable for everyone. We should always be mindful of the fact that in some patients and the elderly, even one aspirin can cause severe gastrointestinal upset or bleeding, he says. Elsewhere, researchers are investigating a more high-tech approach to the problem. A new shockwave treatment for impotence has been found to have benefits that can last for at least two years. The therapy involves using a probe to apply low-intensity shockwaves to the penis for around 20 minutes. Men usually dont need anaesthesia or experience pain, although they might have a tingling sensation. Research in the Journal of Urology the first long-term study of this form of treatment in men with impotence shows that the initial success rate was 63.5 per cent, dropping to 53.5 per cent after two years. According to the urologists who carried out the study at the Sheba Medical Center in Israel, the success rate was highest in patients with milder forms of erectile dysfunction, where the beneficial effects were preserved for at least two years in 76 per cent of men. Many of the 150 men on the trial had failed to respond to medications such as Viagra. A patient dubbed 'the man with three faces' after becoming the first person to receive two face transplants has said he is getting used to his new identity. Jerome Hamon underwent the world's first full face transplant, including tear ducts and eyelids, in a procedure at a hospital outside Paris in July 2010. But the same year - in order to treat nothing more than a common cold - he was given an antibiotic incompatible with his immunosuppressive treatment. In 2016, he began to display signs of transplant rejection, and his new face deteriorated. By November last year, the 43-year-old's face, suffering from necrosis, had to be removed. Hamon, who suffers from a genetic mutation which causes severely disfiguring tumours, remained in hospital without a face for two months before a compatible donor was found and a successful second transplant carried out. Jerome Hamon (pictured) has been dubbed 'the man with three faces' after becoming the first person to receive two face transplants. He now says he is getting used to his new identity Hamon, who suffers from a genetic mutation which causes severely disfiguring tumours and related complications is pictured, left, before his first transplant and, right, after the 2010 procedure Still recovering in hospital three months after his latest operation, he says he has quickly accepted his new identity. His new face remains smooth and motionless, with his skull, skin and features yet to be fully aligned, a gradual process reliant on immunosuppressant drugs which, it is hoped, will prevent his body rejecting the transplanted material. 'I feel very well in myself,' he told reporters last week as he continues his recovery from the surgery which was carried out on January 15 and 16. 'I can't wait to get rid of all this,' he adds, speaking with difficulty of all the major treatment he has undergone to become the first man to have received two face transplants. This unprecedented feat was painstakingly carried out by the staff at the Georges-Pompidou European Hospital in Paris, and Laurent Lantieri, a professor of plastic surgery, who led the team through the multi-step procedure. Hamon was in hospital without a face for two months before a compatible donor was found and a successful second transplant carried out. He is pictured last week as he continues to recover from the procedure The unprecedented operation (pictured) was painstakingly carried out by the staff at the Georges-Pompidou European Hospital in Paris, and Laurent Lantieri, a professor of plastic surgery, who led the team through the multi-step procedure It was a reunion for patient and doctor as it was Lantieri who carried out the world's first full face transplant on Hamon eight years ago. Hamon suffers from neurofibromatosis type 1, a genetic mutation which causes severely disfiguring tumours and related complications. Staff at the hospital said they had been 'blown away' by Hamon's 'courage, his will, his strength of character in a tragic situation'. Bernard Cholley, an anaesthetist, said that Hamon 'never complained' while waiting for a donor and was 'even in a good mood'. Eventually, a face donor was found for his second transplant, a 22-year-old man who had died hundreds of miles from Paris. Lantieri heard the news on a Sunday in January and the massive logistical and medical operation was swiftly launched. The donor face was transported as quickly as possible by road on the Monday to the Georges-Pompidou hospital in Paris. By late morning the following day, Hamon was being wheeled back to his hospital bed following the ground-breaking surgery, with his medical team noticing encouraging signs of good colour in his new face. Staff at the hospital said they had been 'blown away' by Hamon's 'courage, his will, his strength of character in a tragic situation' The operation answers a key question for Lantieri and the rest of the medical world; 'Can we redo a facial transplant? Yes, we can re-transplant and this is what you get!' To avoid any rejection, the patient underwent three months of special blood treatment prior to the transplant, nephrologist Eric Thervet explained. Despite all the anxiety and suffering, Hamon is a happy man again. 'The first transplant I accepted immediately. I thought 'this is my new face' and this time it's the same,' he explained. 'If I hadn't accepted this new face it would have been terrible. It's a question of identity... But here we are, it's good, it's me.' There have now been around 40 face transplants throughout the world since the first was performed on Frenchwoman Isabelle Dinoire in northern France in 2005. A mother today revealed how she has completely recovered from a horrific work explosion that melted her face and left her 'looking like Freddy Krueger'. Wendy Hines, from Arkansas, was left with second and third-degree burns to her face, arms and hands. Doctors told her she was lucky to be alive. She thought her scars, which she was told would be permanent, made her look like Freddy Krueger, the burned serial killer in The Nightmare on Elm Street franchise. But Ms Hines, 44, has made a remarkable recovery from her terrifying experience and regained her beauty after her sisters gave her round-the-clock care. She has been left scar-free and no longer feels self-conscious about her face, after she hid herself indoors for eight months while she healed. Wendy Hines was told she was lucky to be alive - but would be left with permanent scars from her ordeal (pictured left in May, in hospital, after suffering the burn, and right after recovering) Speaking about her ordeal two years ago for the first time, she said: 'Although I was grateful to be alive, hearing how badly how I was hurt terrified me. 'My injuries were agonising and I worried about how I looked. My sisters Christy (40) and Brandy (42) kept telling me I looked gorgeous. 'It took me a week to look in the mirror after the explosion and when I did, I thought I looked like Freddy Krueger. 'I didn't even recognise my own reflection' Ms Hines continued: 'My face was blistered and cracked. My eyebrows, eyelashes and hair had been singed off. 'I was horrified and didn't even recognise my own reflection. I burst out crying, while my sisters hugged me. I thought I was never going to look the same way I did before. 'My vision in my left eye was blurry as a piece of metal had hit it in the explosion. I panicked I'd be left blind.' But, Ms Hines, who is a mother to 24-year-old Brittany, added: 'Almost two years on and the scars have disappeared from my face. 'I'm thankful to have healed so well, I no longer feel self-conscious about my looks. Doctors were astounded at my progress.' Her terrifying ordeal The accident happened when Ms Hines was working as an operator for a defence technology plant, which produces flares for the UK and US armed forces. She was drying explosive powders when the machine overheated and exploded, hurling her 125ft (38m) in the air. The blast scorched her face, chest and hands. Ms Hines, who was left with pieces of metal in her elbow, said: 'Pain seared through me. 'Glancing down, I saw that my hands were bright red with burns and blood poured from an orange-sized wound on my left leg.' Quick-thinking colleagues called paramedics while Ms Hines' father, Walter, 69, rushed to her side. A helicopter arrived just an hour later and flew her to the burns unit at Arkansas Children's Hospital, where she was sedated for three days. Ms Hines, from Arkansas, was left with second and third-degree burns to her face, arms and hands (pictured in 2015, before the explosion) The 44-year-old thought her scars made her look like Freddy Krueger, the burned serial killer behind The Nightmare on Elm Street franchise The blast scorched her face, chest and hands. Ms Hines, who was left with pieces of metal in her elbow, said: 'Pain seared through me' (pictured in hospital) Ms Hines, who is a mother to 24-year-old Brittany, added: 'Almost two years on and the scars have disappeared from my face' (pictured before the explosion in 2015) Ms Hines said: 'When I woke up, my body was covered in bandages head to toe, I looked like a mummy. 'I even lost all my hair from the flames, I was distraught and sobbing in the hospital.' The extent of her injuries Doctors revealed that 20 per cent of Ms Hines' face had been burnt in the blast and she was lucky to be alive. While in hospital, she underwent three surgeries on her right elbow to remove the shrapnel and 12 laser surgeries on her hands. Doctors also told her that she had lost 30 per cent of her hearing in her left ear, and 40 per cent in the other. Ms Hines was discharged from hospital after three weeks. But her extensive injuries meant she was unable to care for herself. Doctors revealed that 20 per cent of Ms Hines' face had been burnt in the blast and she was lucky to be alive While in hospital, she underwent three surgeries on her right elbow to remove the shrapnel and 12 laser surgeries on her hands (pictured, her burnt legs) Ms Hines said: 'Luckily my six sisters cared for me, they came to my house every day' (pictured with her sisters, from left-to-right: Amy, 44, Brandy, 42, and Christy, 40) She said: 'I could barely dress myself, feed myself or pick anything up. I was like a child again, learning how to pick up a pencil and how to write. 'Luckily my six sisters cared for me, they came to my house every day and practically lived with me. 'They applied creams and hot towels to my face every hour even through the night.' Living as a recluse Over the next eight months, Ms Hines was terrified of revealing her face in public and she became a recluse. She said: 'I hid myself indoors as I worried strangers would think I was ugly. When I finally ventured outside nine months later, I hid my face with a scarf and a hat.' Now, Ms Hines has made a miraculous recovery thanks to her sisters' loving care. The accident happened when Ms Hines was working as an operator for a defence technology plant, which produces flares for the UK and US armed forces Over a period of eight months, Ms Hines was terrified of revealing her face in public and she became a recluse (pictured in hospital) Incredible healing She added: 'My face is finally back to how I looked before the accident. Doctors told me that I'm blessed and I've healed incredibly. 'I am so thankful to my sisters, if it wasn't for their help, my face wouldn't look as good as it does now. 'Although my hands are still terribly burnt, I am undergoing laser surgery on them this year to reduce the scarring. 'Since the accident, my eyesight has been affected - I struggle to read properly and or see from a distance.' Ms Hines continued: 'I still suffer from nightmares and seeing a flame gives me terrible flashbacks of that day. 'But when I look at my face in the mirror, I finally feel beautiful again.' Ms Hines said: 'I am so thankful to my sisters, if it wasn't for their help, my face wouldn't look as good as it does now' (pictured in the middle of sisters, from left-to-right, Brandy and Christy) Ms Hines continued: 'I still suffer from nightmares and seeing a flame gives me terrible flashbacks of that day' (pictured in hospital with sister Christy) by Kamel Abderrahmani Whilst the Constitution provides for religious freedom, its preamble also defines Islam as an element in the countrys identity. Apostasy is not a crime but getting a Muslim to change religion is. An Algerian Christian is accused of offending Muhammad. Algiers (AsiaNews) In Algeria, is the context clear? The vast majority of Algerians are Sunni Muslims. There are a few hundred Algerian Jews. It is estimated that there are between 20,000 and 100,000 Christians, but accurate figures are unfortunately not available. Most Christians are foreigners, many from sub-Saharan Africa. But there are Catholic and Protestant communities in the country. The Catholic Church is the largest Christian entity, organised in four dioceses. There are also Evangelical communities, especially in the region of Kabylia. Some Muslims have converted to Christianity and those who have done so joined evangelical communities. From a legal point of view, the preamble of the Algerian Constitution states that Islam is a fundamental element in the country's identity.[1] Article 2 states that Islam is the religion of the state and Article 10 bans state institutions from doing anything against Islamic morality. However, the paradox lies with Articles 36 and 73. The first guarantees freedom of conscience, which includes freedom of worship within the limits of the law, although that is not explicitly stated in the text. The second says that only a Muslim can become president. Under Algerian law, apostasy is not a criminal offense. Religious offenses are covered by Article 144 bis of the Penal Code, which imposes a prison sentence of three to five years and a fine of 50,000 to 100,000 Algerian dinars (US$ 631 to 1,263) on anyone who offends the Prophet and the envoys of God, or denigrates the dogma or precepts of Islam, whether by writing, drawing, in a statement or any other means. This is a threatening article that prevents us from criticising Islam, especially from trying to come up with new Quranic interpretations. Whilst Algeria allows religious organisations to participate in humanitarian work, it punishes Christian proselytising with a fine and imprisonment of up to five years against anyone who incites, compels or uses means of seduction to convert a Muslim to another religion, or by using for this purpose educational, health, social, cultural or vocational institutions [. . .] or any financial means.[2] In 2006, President Abdelaziz Bouteflika issued Ordinance 06-03 to regulate the celebration of faiths other than Islam. Although it does not prohibit conversion as such, the ordinance prohibits any attempt to convert a Muslim to another religion or to "shake the faith of a Muslim". Recently, on 2 March, an Algerian Christian from the Wilaya (Province) of Tiaret, southwest of the capital Algiers, arrested by the security services for possession of evangelical books, appeared before a court in Frenda, in the same wilaya. He was accused with having "shaken the faith of a Muslim" and was sentenced by to six months in prison and a fine of 50,000 Algerian dinars. Freedom of worship is threatened in Algeria. The law does not protect Christians; instead, it condemns them. Constitutional articles contradict each other and are paradoxical. Christian books and textbooks are rare in the country, and Christians do not feel free to carry Christian-related materials with them. Under Ordinance 06-03, Algerians are liable to a fine of up to a million dinars and a five-year prison sentence for printing, storing or distributing equipment intended to convert Muslims. This was the case of Slimane Bouhafs, a Christian and human rights defender who was incarcerated for insulting the Prophet in certain publications and on social media. The former official with the Presidency of the Republic was sentenced by a lower court to 6 years in prison, which was upheld on appeal, causing a grassroots reaction especially in the region of Bejaia (Kabylia) even though he comes from Setif. The controversy was fuelled by the fact that he went public with his Christian faith. Ten days ago, and fortunately for his family and friends, Slimane Bouhafs, was released after two full years of arbitrary detention. In a country where Islam is the state religion, he dared to publish pictures showing the caricature of the Prophet Mohamed. In other words, it is better to be a Muslim in France than a Christian in Algeria. Islam in this country is like that of all other Muslim countries. It is a religion that has states, preachers, soldiers and funding to build together the temple of sacred ignorance. [1] Presidence de la Republique, Avant-projet de revision de la constitution, Republique algerienne democratique et populaire, http://www.constitutionnet.org/sites/default/files/algeria_french.pdf, (accessed 16 April 2018). [2] Global Legal Research Directorate and Hanibal Goitom (Foreign Legal Specialist and Coordinator), Algeria, Laws Criminalizing Apostasy, Library of Congress, May 2014, http://www.loc.gov/law/help/apostasy/#_ftn11,%20http://www.lexpressiondz.com/actualite/228266-la-loi-interdit-le-proselytisme.html,%20http://www.joradp.dz/FTP/jo-francais/2006/F2006012.pdf, (accessed 16 April 2018). Thousands of women have been forced to suffer unbearable pain because of their controversial vaginal mesh implants, an audit today confirmed. However, while campaigners today welcomed the damning decade-long review, they stressed it 'doesn't show the true scale of the disaster'. Health officials today urged the country's top medics to respond to the new report, which delved into data about mesh implants in England and revealed: The risks of complications from mesh are around the 45 per cent mark - unlike NHS assertions it is no more than three per cent Hundreds of women are undergoing surgery each year to have their vaginal mesh implants removed The risk of mesh for prolapse and incontinence are almost equal - despite health watchdogs recommending a ban on one The number of vaginal mesh operations for incontinence each year have halved since 2008 and have been slashed by 13 per cent for prolapse The All Party Parliamentary Group for Surgical Mesh demanded the audit into the implants, in the hope of creating a 'clearer' picture of the scandal. Furious experts have already dubbed the 'barbaric' procedure akin to the thalidomide scandal of the 1950s and 60s, as it has maimed thousands of women across the world. Owen Smith, MP and chairman of the group, said: 'Mesh is proving itself unsafe and ineffective in many women and the doctors are therefore stopping using it. 'That, in itself, shows that the Government, NICE and the MHRA have been wrong to repeatedly defend the use of mesh.' He added: 'These data show the campaign against mesh has been totally justified in our claim that large numbers of women have been damaged by mesh. 'Government has previously, repeatedly claimed that mesh was "safe" and that just one to three per cent of women suffer serious complications after surgery. 'However, their own statistics now shows that around 40 per cent of women treated with mesh are subsequently undergoing outpatient treatment.' Outraged victims of the 'barbaric' vaginal mesh procedure argued the statistics downplay the true risk of the scandal-hit devices (pictured: a new material revealed by experts at Sheffield University, who said it would be better than the current one used) Sling The Mesh, a campaign group that has almost quadrupled in size since the mesh issue came to light last year, Kath Sansom, its founder, who has battled tirelessly against the use of vaginal mesh, told MailOnline the audit was purposely confusing. She said: 'It seems desperately unfair that campaigners have to go through so much effort to raise awareness and are then faced with picking through audits like this. 'Every step of the way campaigners fight hard to have our voices heard and taken seriously, while juggling jobs, pain and, in many cases, children.' Commenting on the results, she said: 'The Government have selectively used figures in a bid to make mesh risk look low. '[They] have presented it in such a confusing way that to a non-experienced reader they will think mesh is not a problem. 'It has not included private patients or women going to GPs for pain medication or antibiotics to treat painful urinary infections.' Ms Sansom stressed the audit, published by NHS Digital, contained 'no information on the devastating social and psychological impact on women'. She added: 'Officials have gone through a lot of trouble to come out with this 43-page report, but it doesn't show the true scale of the disaster. MOTHER CLAIMS HER PARTNER DUMPED HER BECAUSE HER MESH IMPLANT SLICED HIS PENIS Theresa Bartram, from East Sussex, is one of thousands of women who have been tainted by the scandal-hit vaginal mesh procedure A 51-year-old mother last month claimed her partner dumped her because her controversial vaginal mesh implant sliced his penis during sex. Theresa Bartram, from East Sussex, had the scandal-hit device removed following the incident - only to end up single two months later. The former health worker battled post-traumatic stress disorder and was unable to work after undergoing the 'barbaric' procedure. She is one of thousands of women who have been tainted by vaginal mesh. Many have been on the brink of suicide or left in wheelchairs. Before the decision for the removal of the brittle plastic, which can curl, twist and cut through tissue, she also experienced unbearable pain and infections. Like hundreds of other victims, she was told the agony was all in her head and was offered anti-psychotic drugs. Her own family dismissed her concerns. Advertisement What did the audit show? The investigation, published today, showed nearly 130,000 patients had undergone a mesh procedure for incontinence or prolapse in the past decade. It dwarfs previous NHS estimates, which suggested 100,000 women had been given mesh for both procedures since it was introduced in the 1990s. Both procedures to implant mesh, which is made of brittle plastic and can curl, twist and cut through tissue, are common after childbirth. Up to 44 per cent of women fitted with tape, or mesh, for incontinence will attend an appointment with trauma and orthopaedic surgeons, the audit suggests. While this figure was even higher (46 per cent) for women fitted the vaginal mesh devices for prolapse, when organs slip out of place because of weakened muscles. The data on prolapse comes months after health watchdog, Nice, recommended a ban on inserting the controversial devices in women with the condition. Opened a 'can of worms' But, the statistics, which technically show more complications from mesh used in prolapse than continence, have 'opened a can of worms'. Ms Sansom, 49, who also happens to be a journalist, based in Cambridgeshire, said: 'The report opens up a huge can of worms. 'It shows the risks of mesh for prolapse and incontinence is roughly the same - despite a recommended ban against one type of prolapse mesh.' WHAT ARE THE RISKS OF VAGINAL MESH? Mesh, introduced 20 years ago and dubbed 'gold-standard', was promoted as a quick, cheap alternative to complex surgery for incontinence and prolapse. Because it did not require specialist training to implant, victims of the procedure have since begged for tougher regulations to conduct such surgery. Vaginal mesh has been considered a high-risk device for nearly a decade in the US, with bodies accepting up to 40 per cent of women may experience injury. Some studies, published in an array of scientific journals, have shown that pain, erosion and perforation from the surgery can strike up to 75 per cent of women. The alarming evidence prompted officials in three US states to suspend the practice and saw them call for an urgent review into its safety. Scottish officials asked for it to be suspended in Scotland in 2014 pending a similar review, but hundreds of women are still believed to be having the surgery. Leading mesh manufacturer Johnson & Johnson was forced to pay out $57 million last September to a woman fitted with the implant. Ella Ebaugh, 51, from Philadelphia, was awarded the eight-figure sum after a jury found the company to be negligent and its product defective. Advertisement The number of operations to implant vaginal mesh in women with incontinence have almost halved in the past decade, the audit revealed. While only a 13 per cent reduction was noted for mesh used in treating prolapse. The procedure is expected to take a hit next year. And, in each year since April 2008, surgeons have performed at least 500 removal operations for tape or mesh, the audit showed. Between 2008 and 2017 there were 5,374 total or partial removal procedures - but this could include any women who have been forced to undergo more than one surgery. When was the audit announced? The Department of Health and Social Care declared it would conduct an audit into vaginal mesh at the end of January. The move, welcomed by campaigners at the time, was hoped to create a 'clearer' national picture of patients who have had mesh implants. Health Minister Lord O'Shaughnessy today asked for the leading medics, NHS bodies and patient groups to report back to him 'within a month'. The APPG on surgical mesh implants demanded the audit, which was expected to be completed by the end of this month April. WHAT WAS THE THALIDOMIDE SCANDAL? Thalidomide was the medication given to pregnant women to combat morning sickness between 1958 and 1961. It was withdrawn after doctors noticed an increase in the number of deformed babies born to mothers who had been on the drug. After a long battle, the families affected received total of 28 million in compensation, paid out by the drug manufacturer during the 1970s. Advertisement Chiefs have remained adamant that only three per cent of patients will experience complications of vaginal mesh, which can curl, twist and cut through tissue. However, an array of trials into mesh - made of brittle plastic - have revealed the true rate of serious side effects is likely to be nearer the 10 per cent figure. At least 4,800 women have suffered lacerations and nerve damage from the mesh in England, but only 1,000 have reported it to the MHRA. However, campaigners stress these are just the tip of the iceberg and that actually there are thousands more - but they have been kept silent. Despite the risks, which have been widely publicised in recent months, most women experience no problem and doctors are adamant the procedure is beneficial. A recommended ban Nice's recommendation for a ban on mesh used in prolapse was announced back in December. It came after the Government released its three-year investigation into the mesh scandal last September. It rejected calls for a ban at the time. All forms of pelvic mesh were banned in New Zealand back in December, and a similar move against prolapse has been made in Australia. Vaginal mesh has been subject of various legal proceedings across the world, with figures suggesting more than 100,000 are suing manufacturers of the devices. When did the scandal come to light? The scandal came to light last April, when the NHS tried to dodge media attention over the implants that left hundreds of women in agony. Senior doctors immediately called for a public inquiry into the controversial mesh, with some claiming the scandal could be akin to thalidomide. At the time, 800 women were suing the NHS and device manufacturers. However, it is unsure how many women are now looking to take action in Britain. Thousands of travellers to China have today been told avoid traditional markets amid fears of an outbreak of bird flu spreading to the UK. 'Wet' markets, which contain hundreds of stalls that sell dead and live animals, can appeal to tourists who want to see the 'real' side of the country. However, in an alert issued today, travellers have been warned against visiting the traditional markets to lower their risk of catching bird flu. Two strains of avian flu, H5N6 and H7N4, are currently circulating the Asian country, according to the Public Health England report. Government figures show nearly 600,000 Britons make the journey, which can take upwards of 11 hours, to visit China every year. China is prone to outbreaks of the avian flu virus among humans because people buy and sell live poultry in the market (pictured, a worker unloads ducks from a truck in a market in Hefei) Officials already warn over the potential dangers of smog, freak weather, regional tension and the threat of terrorism in the country. However, the Foreign and Commonwealth Office - which offers travel advice for every country - make no mention of the risks of bird flu. The warning over bird flu have been made by the National Travel Health Network and Centre, a branch set up by the Department of Health in 2002. In a report published by PHE, the agency issued a list of nine instructions for Brits heading to China in the coming weeks: WHAT IS BIRD FLU? Also known as avian influenza, bird flu is an infectious disease of birds caused by a variant of the standard influenza A virus. Bird flu is unique in that it can be transmitted directly from birds to humans. There are 15 different strains of the virus. It is the H5N1 strain which is infecting humans and causing high death rates. Humans can catch bird flu directly through close contact with live infected birds and those who work with infected chickens are most at risk. Advertisement avoid close or direct contact with live poultry avoid visiting live bird and animal markets (including wet markets) and poultry farms avoid contact with surfaces contaminated with animal faeces avoid untreated bird feathers and other animal and bird waste do not eat or handle undercooked or raw poultry, egg or duck dishes do not pick up or touch dead or dying birds do not attempt to bring any poultry products back to the UK maintain good personal hygiene with regular hand washing with soap use alcohol-based hand rubs PHE published the guidance on H7N4 today, following the news of a 68-year-old woman catching the bug earlier this year. Officials also updated their document on H5N6 as they announced there are two different strains of bird flu circulating currently. However, PHE said the outbreak of the bird flu strain in China and South East Asia have been known to strike humans - unlike the one in Europe. In both reports, the risk of infection of was considered 'low' but urged doctors to urgently arrange tests if they suspect their patient has it. It comes amid repeated warnings of a killer flu strain that could kill millions, with many concerned the next will stem from an animal and mutate. This process is what sparked the Swine flu pandemic of 2009 - which killed nearly 300,000 people across the world after striking around 60 countries. A self-injected drug could free people from the misery of migraines by halving the number of headaches. Migraines affect around one in seven people, who are forced to try everything from lying down in a dark room for hours to being sick and taking painkillers. The condition, which causes severe thunderclap headaches, affects three times as many women as men. Now a trial has found a drug which blocks pain signals in the brain can drastically reduce the number of migraine episodes. After three months, 30 per cent of almost 250 people treated with erenumab halved the number of headaches they suffered, compared to 14 per cent of those given a dummy drug. Dr Mark Toms, chief scientific officer at Novartis UK, said: There has been no real advancement in migraine treatment for the past 20 years and we're proud to be breaking new ground. It is estimated people in the UK lose 25 million days from work or school each year due to migraines. A self-injected drug could free people from migraines, halving headache numbers (stock) The pain of migraine Migraines are caused by a complex neurological condition which can affect the whole body - causing crippling headaches, nausea, blackouts, vomiting and even paralysis. Roughly 8.5million people in Britain suffer from migraines, three quarters of them women, with attacks lasting between four and 72 hours. Sufferers experience an average of 13 attacks each year, usually in clusters or episodes of a few days. But for about half a million people - those with chronic migraines - the attacks come at least every other day. Migraines are the sixth most common cause of disability around the world, and are strongly linked to depression and work absenteeism. Current drugs include Triptans - which deal with the symptoms but not the cause - but if they are taken too often they actually increase the frequency of attacks. Other treatments which ward off attacks are all designed for other conditions - such as botox, epilepsy medicines and beta blockers for heart disease. The new drug works in a completely different way - attacking the cause of migraines by stopping a protein which causes blood vessels to swell in the brain. Advertisement Worked on patients who failed up to four treatments The drug, administered with a self-injection device similar to those used by diabetics, was tested on patients who had failed to respond to up to four other treatments. Study leader Dr Uwe Reuter, from The Charite-University Medicine Berlin in Germany, said: The people we included in our study were considered more difficult to treat, meaning that up to four other preventative treatments hadn't worked for them. Our study found that erenumab reduced the average number of monthly migraine headaches by more than 50 per cent for nearly a third of study participants. That reduction in migraine headache frequency can greatly improve a person's quality of life. Dr Toms added: There has been no real advancement in migraine treatment for the past 20 years and we're proud to be breaking new ground in neurology for the millions of people in the UK living with the painful and disruptive symptoms of migraine. Migraine days went from nine to four a month There are more than 190,000 migraine attacks a day in the UK and the condition often starts during puberty, most affecting those aged 35 to 45. The neurological disorder causes headaches that range in severity from moderate to blindingly painful, with other symptoms including nausea and light sensitivity. Attacks can last anything from four hours to three days. While most people with migraines are forced to rely on over-the-counter painkillers or drugs called triptans which narrow blood vessels in the brain, the latest study gave 246 migraine sufferers 140mg injections of erenumab or a dummy drug once a month for three months. Of the participants, 39 per cent had been treated unsuccessfully with two other medications, 38 per cent with three medications and 23 per cent with four medications. The preliminary study involved people who suffered an average of nine migraine headaches a month. This was reduced to four and a half days or less on average in 30 per cent of those on erenumab, who also spent fewer days suffering from migraines and taking drugs to stop their headaches. Migraines affect around one in seven people, who are forced to try everything from lying down in a dark room for hours to being sick and taking painkillers to relieve their agony (stock) No safety concerns Erenumab blocks pain signals by targeting a receptor in the brain, preventing a protein which transmits migraine pain from working as it should. The drug was found to be as safe as the dummy drug, with no one stopping the drug during the trial due to side effects. Erenumab is marketed by the global drug company Novartis, which helped to fund the study, and is not yet licensed for use in the UK. A newlywed mother died from a brain aneurysm just an hour after giving birth to twins. Amanda Sawyer, 37, and firefighter Nick Reeder welcomed twin girls Kelce and Kaia on April 9 in Fresno, California, five months after their wedding in November. The joyous moment quickly turned into a nightmare when Amanda began to feel ill minutes after giving birth. Her condition rapidly deteriorated and within an hour she died from what doctors later learned was a ruptured brain aneurysm. Nick is now mourning the loss of his 'rock' while adjusting to his new life as a single father to the newborn twins and the couple's other three children. Amanda Sawyer, 37, died from a ruptured brain aneurysm shortly after giving birth to twins in Fresno, California on April 9. She was the proud mother of five children Amanda's husband Nick Reeder is adjusting to life as a single father to twins Kelce and Kaia and the couple's other children Caleb, 11, Anistyn, six, and Layla, three Nick and Amanda were thrilled to learn that they would be welcoming not one but two new additions to their family during an ultrasound appointment last year. The newlyweds, who had been together for four years, were already parents to three children, two from a previous relationship, Caleb, 11, and Anistyn, six, and one that they had together, daughter Layla, three. Throughout the healthy pregnancy, Amanda developed a bond with the unborn twins. 'She knew their personalities and their names,' Nick, a fire captain, told the Sacremento Bee. 'Now that I've met them, she was spot on.' The babies were scheduled to be delivered by cesarean section earlier this month at Clovis Community Medical Center. After a smooth delivery the new mom was bonding with the newborns when she began to feel ill and suddenly passed out. The doctors did everything they could but were unable to save Amanda's life. It was later revealed that she had suffered from a brain aneurysm, which occurs when a a blood vessel in the brain weakens and swells. Amanda's aneurysm had ruptured during childbirth, causing bleeding that led to a stroke. The US has the highest rate of maternal mortality in the developed world with five to 12 percent of deaths caused by ruptured aneurysms, according to the American Journal of Obstetric Gynecology. Only 20 percent of aneurysms can be detected with scans, and pregnancy has been found to increase the risk of rupture. The couple met four years ago and got married in November, just months after learning they were expecting twin girls Amanda and Nick are pictured with daughters Anistyn and Layla at the fire station in Fresno where Nick is a captain Now the family is adjusting to life without the devoted mother. 'I can get through it. I can do it. I'm a fireman. I fix things. That's what I do. So I'm going to be able to make this happen. I'm going to make this work, but it's not going to be by myself,' Nick told ABC 7. Since her death, the community has rallied around Nick and his family, raising more than $38,000 through a Go Fund Me page and planning meals for them through the month of May. 'What should have been a beautiful moment in Nick and Amanda's life turned bittersweet in a matter of moments,' said Katherine Justice-Straps, who set up the Go Fund Me page. Nick is sharing his story in an effort to raise awareness for maternal mortality. 'This could happen to anybody,' he said. Janet Brookes wants to make her wealth stretch to cover potential care costs and to build an ample inheritance package In our series Money Pit Stop, we ask an investing expert to give our readers a free portfolio makeover. Freelance NHS radiographer Janet Brookes, 71, wants to make her accumulated wealth stretch to cover potential care costs in later life. She also hopes to leave money as well as her mortgage-free home, valued at 260,000, to her two children and four grandchildren. Janet is in good health at present. Her freelance work is through a radiography firm - which she runs as a sole trader. The company has 80,000 in savings. She works part-time, earning 10,000 a year, but she aims to retire within the next two years. Janet is also eligible for a state pension paying 150 a week, but she suspended the payments two years ago. She plans on reclaiming them once she calls time on her career. Janet's total yearly income is 25,000. This is comprised of a NHS final salary pension which pays 15,000 a year and the 10,000 from her freelance role. Her total yearly outgoings are 20,000, which includes general living costs as well as expenditure for running a car and even holidays. This leaves Janet with around 5,000 in surplus cash. This will drop once she retires but her state pension should lift her income up back up to 22,800 - leaving her with a surplus of 2,800 as well as savings and investments to fall back on. But is this enough to achieve her aims? We ask a chartered financial adviser. FIND OUT HOW TO GET YOUR FREE PORTFOLIO MAKEOVER BELOW Janet's savings and investments Risk appetite: Low to medium Savings: Janet's total cash savings amount to 99,500. This is comprised of 17,500 in an NS&I savings and investments account, 2,000 in a Post Office savings account and 80,000 in a business account. Shares, funds, trusts and ETFs: Janet has 50,000 in a HSBC stocks and shares Isa and 178 shares in Centrica which are worth around 249 (at the time of writing). The total value of her investments is 50,249. Pension: Janet has a final salary NHS pension which pays her 15,000 a year. She suspended her 150 per week state pension payments in 2016. She plans to reclaim them once she retires. Janet also has a defined contribution pot with Royal London, worth 50,000 and another with Abbey Life (which is now part of fellow life assurer the Phoenix Group) worth 18,000. She contributes 100 into the Abbey Life account each month. Property and mortgages: Janet's home is worth 260,000. There is no mortgage on the property. Martin Bamford is managing director of financial advisory firm Informed Choice. He is also a chartered financial planner and a SOLLA accredited later life adviser. Martin Bamford, adviser, Informed Choice Janet has a common financial objective which we hear from many people in retirement. However, wanting to leave your home to children or grandchildren whilst making sufficient provision for your own financial needs can be a difficult balancing act. When it comes to covering future care costs, the financial implications can be very difficult to forecast. We dont all need to move into a residential care home as we get older, or even to pay for additional care in our own homes. But when care is needed, it can be very expensive and lasts for an unpredictable length of time. Starting with the here and now, Janet is in a comfortable financial position with her income comfortably exceeding her outgoings. At the time she chooses to stop working as a part-time radiographer, she will be able to claim her deferred state pension, resulting in only a modest fall in income, with total pension income still exceeding what she spends each year. We often caution our clients when it comes to deferring state pension income. While it means you receive higher payments when you do claim, it is still difficult to recover the full amount for the period you deferred in real terms. For many people who are continuing to work in retirement, it can be better to claim the state pension when it becomes available, suffer the inevitable income tax and stash the money in savings for the future. Despite the future unknowns around care costs, there are some important steps Janet can take today. Inheritance considerations Firstly, she should get her will updated so it reflects her current wishes. WILLS AND LPAS This is Money has partnered with Key Retirement to help you plan for your future. Key's team of specialist advisers can help you put together a will and lasting power of attorney. For more information, click here. Not having a will as you get older can be problematic should you lose mental capacity, as it requires an application to the Court of Protection to create a statutory will. Secondly, Janet should put in place a lasting power of attorney, appointing an attorney (trusted friend or relative) to make important decisions on her behalf should she lose mental capacity in the future. There are two types of lasting power of attorney, both of which Janet should consider putting in place. One covers health and welfare decisions, with the other covering property and financial affairs. Once written, these legal documents are only put to use should she lose her mental capacity in the future. What Janet should avoid doing at this stage is giving away money to her children and grandchildren. Shes in good health, so any gifts would probably not be viewed by the local authority as deliberate deprivation in order to avoid paying future care fees. However, until Janet knows whether she will need care and how much this will cost, its important to keep her options option. Under current rules, people in England with eligible assets of more than 23,250 have to fully fund their own care costs Another thing to avoid is the so-called asset protection trust. These trusts are often sold by unregulated will writers who claim they allow the buyer to protect assets from local authority means testing when they need care in the future. But they are expensive to put in place and easily challenged by the local authority, which views them as an act of deliberate deprivation. Thinking ahead to paying for care costs in the future, we await the publication of a Government green paper, hopefully in the summer, which we expect to set out new proposals for means testing and a lifetime cap on care costs. However, for the moment people in England with eligible assets of more than 23,250 have to fully fund their own care costs. The exception to this rule is where care is primarily medical, rather than social care, where non-means tested NHS funding can be available. In the event that Janet needs residential care in the future, she has two main sets of assets on which to draw, in addition to her pension income. The average cost of a residential care home is 29,270 a year, rising to 39,300 a year if nursing care is required. However, these averages vary a lot depending on where you live, with care homes in London and the South East often costing two or three times as much as the average. Janet will need to use her savings, investments and potentially the value of her property to cover the shortfall between care costs and her income. There are several options for funding a care fees shortfall, ranging from simply keeping the money in cash savings and drawing it down, to buying an immediate care annuity. These products are individually underwritten based on your age, health and medical history, and guarantee an income for life which is tax-free when paid to a registered care provider. As Janet lives with her husband but he doesnt own a share of the property, its value would be disregarded from any local authority means testing if he continued to live there after she moved into residential care. This is because a property occupied by your spouse is disregarded from the means test. Such a disregard also applies where a relative who is over 60 lives in the property. If Janets husband was no longer living in the property, one option she could explore is a deferred payment agreement with her local authority. This means she would not have to sell the home immediately, with the local authority paying towards her care home costs until she dies, at which time the property is sold to recover their costs. However, she would not be eligible for a deferred payment agreement if anyone else continued living in a property once she became resident in a care home. If Janet makes it to the end of her life without needing to draw on the value of her home to cover care costs, then inheritance tax becomes a consideration. Individuals receive a nil-rate band of 325,000 on which no inheritance tax is paid. An additional nil-rate band is gradually being phased in, which applies when a residence is passed on death to a direct descendant, such as a child or grandchild. This additional nil-rate band is 125,000 in 2018/19, so when added to the 325,000 nil-rate band, Janet will be able to pass on 450,000 free of inheritance tax. This doesnt quite cover her total value of her savings, investments and property, but its close and should be fully covered by the start of the 2019/20 tax year when the additional nil-rate band rises to 150,000. Within her list of savings and investments, Janet has some assets which are likely to be free of inheritance tax when she dies. Her Royal London private pension and Abbey Life private pension can both be passed to children or grandchildren tax-free, and the accumulated profit in her limited company should be subject to business property relief. How to invest In terms of an investment portfolio, I would suggest Janet keeps her current cash holdings of 17,500 with NS&I, 2,000 in Post Office savings and 80,000 accumulated profit in her limited company. We usually recommend an emergency fund equivalent to between three and six months worth of expenditure, but for older people this cash balance should be much higher, as there are fewer opportunities to replenish this from employment earnings. The balance of her capital, which could be viewed as ringfenced to provide an inheritance if there is no unexpected care costs in later life, we would suggest along the lines of the portfolio below. Overall, Janet appears to be in a good financial position and should be able to afford care fees if they occur in the later stages of her retirement. Bamford's suggested portfolio has the greatest weighting to Fidelity's UK Index fund P Acc (18 per cent). See also the table above for the percentage split The information provided by our expert is for the purposes of this article and is not personal financial advice. If you are at all unsure of the suitability of an investment for your circumstances please seek advice. Nothing in this response constitutes regulated financial advice. Published questions are sometimes edited for brevity or other reasons. Jamie Oliver is preparing to open hundreds of restaurants in staff canteens across the country to ride out a slowdown on the High Street. Through a ten-year deal with catering firm Aramark, Oliver, 42, will open sites under his restaurant group, which includes the Jamies Italian, Jamies Diner and Jamies Deli brands. It hopes the number of restaurants will reach double digits by next year. Aramark works across the business, education, healthcare, manufacturing and defence sectors. Oliver will open sites under his restaurant group Oliver said: As a company were really committed to changing things in food in Britain and hopefully therefore the world. If were ever to have a chance to achieve this I have to change, I have to evolve, I have to grow up and this relationship is a very important part of that. The move comes at a difficult time for the industry and Olivers own business ventures. Like other mid-market chains he has been hit by a slowdown in dining out. Companies including Byron, Prezzo, and Strada have been forced to shut hundreds of sites in recent months. Earlier this year the celebrity chefs high-end steak restaurant Barbecoa was plunged into administration, leading to the loss of 80 jobs. He is also closing 12 of his 37 Jamies Italian branches after it lost 9.9million last year on sales of around 112million. But there is a push from many companies to improve the catering facilities for their staff, particularly with many encouraging their employees to work longer hours. Oliver, who is a campaigner for healthier eating, has not had total success with his attempts to bring his food into canteens. He famously tried to improve school menus by taking over dinners there. However, despite declaring war on the turkey twizzler, he admitted failure in 2015, saying he felt many people thought healthy eating was just a fad for the middle-classes. The deal could open a new horizon for Olivers businesses and takes them away from the High Street. It could also put pressures on prices and ingredients as staff often only want to spend limited amounts in employee canteens. Aramark is hoping the tie-up will allow it to use the Jamie Oliver name to expand in northern Europe. Jon Knight, chief executive of Jamie Oliver Restaurant Group, told The Caterer magazine that the deal was an opportunity to get a foothold in the sector outside the High Street. We wanted to look to diversify away from the High Street, not that its not great, but theres an audience out there that might not come to the High Street, he said. Their tastes may have changed, it gives us that opportunity to take this to a new audience. Retailers Rant Gary Grant, the boss of toy retailer The Entertainer, has accused the Government of failing to take responsibility for the tough trading conditions facing retailers, claiming that it was partly to blame for the High Streets woes. Gary Grant: boss of toy retailer The Entertainer Top dog Silicon Valley technology titan Amazon is the worlds most valuable retailer, according to a report published by WPP, which looked at the financial value of companies combined with the opinions of millions of consumers in more than 50 countries. Revenue rise Agriculture and engineering firm Carrs Group has enjoyed a 13.2 per cent boost to revenues to 200.1million in the six months to March 3. Profits jumped by 28.2 per cent to 10.6million. Women plea The 30 per cent Club, which campaigns to put more women on FTSE 100 boards, will give evidence today to MPs investigating the gender pay gap. Cleaning up Cleaning products maker Zenith Hygiene has been bought by rival Diversey and its backer Bain Capital, creating a combined 170million company with roughly 1,000 employees. Gas vow Oil titan BP is pledging to keep greenhouse gas emissions from its operations at below 2015 levels until at least 2025. Diamond haul Angola-focused Lucapa Diamonds has announced a 10 per cent increase in diamond production to 4,507 carats for the quarter ending March 31. Car ownership The number of cars owned by women in the UK has surged by more than a fifth (21 per cent) to 11.8million in a decade, compared with a 10 per cent increase in the number of men buying one in the same period. Research published by trade group the Society of Motor Manufacturers and Traders shows there are 34.7 million cars on UK roads. Heading off Dr Mathias Dopfner, 55, has stepped down as a non-executive director of the mobile phone giant Vodafone Group to focus on his role as chief executive of Axel Springer. Boss named Metals tycoon Anil Agarwals firm Vedanta Resources has named Srinivasan Venkatakrishnan, 52, as its new boss. He replaces former Rio Tinto executive Tom Albanese, who stepped down last year. Who would have thought the world of box making could be so action-packed? Smurfit Kappa is reportedly coming under pressure from major shareholders to negotiate with a US rival that it has already rejected twice. Dublin-based Smurfit knocked back International Paper Companys latest 7.8billion offer at the end of March for undervaluing Europes largest box maker. However, some of Smurfits biggest shareholders are thought to want the FTSE 100 firm to negotiate with the Memphis-based firm if it returns with a better offer. Smurfits shares ended the day up 3 per cent, or 90p, at 3072p. The FTSE 100 fell 0.91 per cent, or 66.36 points, to 7198.20 in the first day of trading since the UK, US and France bombed Syria. Dual-listed gold and silver miner Polymetal Internationals shares dropped 9.5 per cent The Kremlin has been threatened with more sanctions from the US over its support for Syria, which hit Russian firms listed in London. Evraz, the steel giant, was rooted to the bottom of the FTSE 100 after its shares fell nearly 7 per cent, or 27.4p, to 365.2p. Dual-listed gold and silver miner Polymetal Internationals shares dropped 9.5 per cent, or 64.4p, to 611.2p. Separately, Polymetal acquired an 85 per cent stake in a copper-gold deposit and increased its stake in a silver deposit. It was another miserable day for Sage, Britains largest software firm, which saw another 201million wiped off its value. Disappointing sales sliced 596million from the value of its shares on Friday. Its shares fell another 3 per cent, or 18.6p, to 598.4p as Investec cut its target price from 800p to 650p. British Airways owner International Consolidated Airlines Group (IAG) received backing as it mulls a bid for budget airline Norwegian Air Shuttle. Last week it emerged IAG had a 4.6 per cent stake in Norwegian, which offers flights from London to New York for less than 150, as it positions itself for a full takeover. Investec told investors: Norwegian is the eighth-largest airline group in Europe by passengers and would provide IAG with enhanced scale, fleet optionality and potential to increase margins in a similar way to that achieved with [past acquisitions] Iberia and Vueling. IAGs shares notched up 0.9 per cent, or 5.6p, to 614.6p. In the small caps, Moss Bros shares took a tumble as the menswear chain complained of a fragile trading environment. Last month, the firm blamed stock issues and falling consumer confidence for its second profit warning in two months. In the annual report chairman Debbie Hewitt said: Although we expect the trading environment for the business in the first half of 2018 to remain challenging, we anticipate that our stock shortage will be resolved by late spring and are confident momentum will improve as our product, service and cost initiatives take effect. Shares, down more than 48pc over the past year, fell another 6.5 per cent, or 3.6p, to 52p. Kainos rocketed as the software firm reported trading in line with market expectations for the year ending March 31. Shares jumped nearly 8 per cent, or 26p, to 353p. Aim-listed digital performance marketing firm XLMedia has bought comparison site WhichBingo.co.uk for an undisclosed amount. The site, founded in 2000, provides reviews and information about special offers for bingo sites. XLs shares dipped 2.2 per cent, or 3.5p, to 154.5p. An upbeat trading update gave a boost to shares in Draper Esprit, a venture capital firm that invests in tech companies. It has more than doubled its portfolio to 244million in the past year and says it is achieving its aim of producing 20 per cent-plus returns a year. Shares Derelict equipment at the abandoned Panguna mine on Bougainville - conflict surrounds its reopening KEITH JACKSON NOOSA After some months of heated debate on Bougainville, the autonomous provinces president, Dr John Momis, has announced an indefinite moratorium on re-opening mining at Panguna. The debate was accelerated by the bitter rivalry of two companies, Bougainville Copper Ltd (BCL) and RTG, both of which want to re-establish the mine and have been supported by different groups on Bougainville. Dr Momis told Don Wiseman of Radio New Zealand that divisions between landowners have led to a decision on mining being delayed at least until next years referendum on Bougainvilles political future. We don't want to cause a split amongst the landowners because we have a referendum coming, Dr Momis said. We want to make sure we unite our people. There is a definite divide and until the people are united we will not proceed with any mining. People who use Google to search for the best funeral plan deals are being misled A damning report has raised concerns that the elderly are being pressured into buying funeral plans that could leave their families out of pocket when they die. Every year hundreds of thousands of people fork out as much as 4,000 for plans promising to cover the cost of their funeral so their family doesn't face a big bill. But a report obtained by Money Mail has raised fears that people who use Google to search for the best deals are being misled. In the worst cases, they could be buying policies that will leave their loved ones with shortfalls of hundreds of pounds for the cost of cremation, burial, doctors and ministers. Their family members would have to then step in and cover the extra costs. A mystery shop on behalf of a major funeral plan provider examined dozens of websites that promise cheap deals. It found evidence that: Call centre staff are harassing customers who enter their details, with one agent calling ten times in four hours. Sales staff are baffling customers with exaggerated and even false claims that conceal the true costs people could face. People in their late 60s and 70s are being pressured to agree to home visits. Supposedly independent comparison sites are only offering customers access to a small number of plans and are failing to explain the pros and cons of each deal. Websites are claiming to sell plans offered by reputable companies, such as Co-operative and Dignity, when they don't. Money Mail understands that the Treasury plans to launch a consultation in the summer that could result in a crackdown on the 3.3 billion funeral plan market, which is currently unregulated. James Daley, managing director of Fairer Finance, who is meeting ministers this month to discuss how the market should be regulated, says: 'It's incredibly disappointing that there are still firms in the market misleading vulnerable customers. The sector needs to be properly regulated as a matter of urgency.' Around 200,000 people buy funeral plans each year. But independent research commissioned by funeral provider Dignity, raises concerns about the way some plans are being sold. The researchers, who work separately from Dignity, drew up a list of more than 70 websites that claim to compare the cost of funeral plans, and last month posed as customers aged between 67 and 75. Funeral plan sales staff are baffling customers with exaggerated and even false claims that conceal the true costs people could face These sites typically ask customers to enter their telephone number for a callback from one of their advisers. The website then passes the lead on to a sales adviser, who acts as a middleman. The adviser could be based in a large third-party call centre, or may work on behalf of a smaller business such as a will- writing firm or solicitor. In some cases, researchers received a callback five minutes after entering their details. When they checked the calling telephone number online, some had been recorded as previously being used by claims management firms. One of numbers had been looked up more than 800 times on the website 'who called me', which tracks nuisance callers. Many of the websites claim to compare deals from a range of providers, including major firms such as Co-operative and Dignity as well as lesser-known names such as Pride Planning and Safe Hands. Simon Cox, of Dignity, which is pushing for stronger regulation in its report, says: 'We know that many of these websites use our logo, when in fact they have no relationship with us whatsoever, and often sell the leads to whoever is willing to pay for them without any comparison whatsoever. 'Where we find these sites, we will write to them and ask them to stop suggesting that they represent us in any way.' According to the research, the websites typically pushed the same plan each time they were mystery shopped. None of the firms behind the plans that were offered had signed up to the voluntary regulator, the Funeral Planning Authority, whose members must abide by a code of practice. Some website staff claimed to have searched the market for the best deal based on the customer's age and location even though funeral plan costs do not vary like this. A number also suggested prices change all the time, when in reality they are only updated once or twice a year. One who recommended a Capital Life plan told the researchers: 'I don't want [the price] to increase. People who call back always think they should have done it sooner.' Some offered shopping vouchers as an incentive to sign up, or insisted on taking a deposit that locked the customer into the deal. Funeral costs have risen by 24 per cent in five years to an average of 4,078, according to insurer Sunlife When one researcher refused to pay a 50 deposit, an adviser tried to negotiate by reducing the deposit to 10. Some advisers insisted on a home visit. 'This is much better done face-to-face,' a researcher was told by an agent which had recommended a Pride Planning product. Funeral costs have risen by 24 per cent in five years to an average of 4,078, according to insurer Sunlife. Sales staff routinely exaggerated this. One, who recommended a Safe Hands funeral plan, said: 'They'll be 10,000 in ten years I don't want my wife worrying about it.' Another, who also tried to sell a Safe Hands deal, said: 'Many funerals are going unpaid these days.' Customers were told they could 'freeze' the cost at today's prices, with one agent, who recommended a Capital Life plan, saying that would mean 'the children won't have to get loans'. Another, who recommended a Prosperous Life plan, said: 'Freeze and cap the cost of a funeral so when you pass away, no one receives a bill.' Yet while most plans cover the cost of the funeral director in full, they typically only offer a contribution towards what are known as third-party costs, which include cremation, burial, ministers' and doctors' fees. Many agents said all plans were the same, so customers should choose the cheapest. This isn't true. Some plans, for example, will not cover the cost of a limousine for family members, or restrict when you can have a funeral service. Some 'comparison' websites had the same director as the funeral plan product they recommended to the mystery shoppers. For example, John Murtagh is listed as director for comparison site Latelifeplanning, and also for the Prosperous Life funeral plans that website recommended. One website, Gocomparefuneral plans.com, uses green lettering similar to the GoCompare.com site known for its TV adverts, even though the two are not linked. Graeme McAusland, chief executive of the Funeral Planning Authority, says: 'The poor behaviour and malpractice which is negatively impacting customers comes from a small number of providers not registered with us.' Safe Hands says it 'unreservedly and entirely condemns any high-pressure selling practices by anyone promoting its funeral plans'. A legal representative of Capital Life says: 'Our client is most concerned to ensure representatives engaged to sell its funeral plans operate within the company's guidelines. The concerns raised would fall outside those guidelines.' Pride Planning says it has no commercial relationships with any of the websites, which only 'generate leads'. A spokesman for Prosperous Life says the firm stopped selling funeral plans months ago. Gocomparefuneralplans.com took down its website after Money Mail got in touch. v.bischoff@dailymail.co.uk Hundreds of thousands of low-paid workers are being denied up to 720 of free Government pension cash a year due to a tax technicality critics are calling 'indefensible' and an 'utter scandal'. Workers auto-enrolled into pensions are told the money they pay into their retirement pots will be topped up with both employer and Government cash. But for many on a low pay-rung this is not the case. They never get the Government tax relief, because their employers - often unwittingly - sign up to one of the many 'master trust' pension schemes that don't pay it into their pots due to a little-known tax quirk. Tax technicality: Hundreds of thousands of low-paid workers are being denied up to 720 of free Government pension cash Many thousands more workers will have been caught out as pension auto enrolment has prompted more than nine million more people to save for retirement. The plight of low-paid workers, who often lose a chunk of their pension top-ups without realising, is being flagged by former Pensions Minister Ros Altmann. But she claims her pleas to fix the system have gone ignored. 'This is an utter scandal and pension providers, Government and the Pensions Regulator are disgracefully forcing the lowest earners - mostly women - to pay an extra 25 per cent for their auto-enrolment pension and what's even worse nobody is telling them or seems to care about the injustice. 'The low earners need every penny they can get and taking money from them without proper risk warnings is so wrong.' Why are some lower earners losing pension top-ups? How does auto enrolment work? Workers aged between 22 and state pension age and earning at least 10,000 a year from one job are now automatically signed up for a pension, unless they make an active move to opt out. The slice of annual earnings used to determine the amount of contributions that ends up in someone's work pension fund is currently between 6,032 and 46,350. This is the minimum, but some employers choose to be more generous. Most master trusts, which manage centralised funds for lots of employers at once, use a tax mechanism called 'net pay' that is convenient for top-paid staff but penalises lower earners. This allows higher rate taxpayers on 46,350-plus a year and additional rate taxpayers on 150,000-plus a year to avoid filling in annual tax returns to get Government pension top-ups, in the form of tax relief on their contributions. They get them automatically. But it means anyone in the workforce earning between 10,000 and 11,850 a year loses their top-ups for good, with no option available at present to claim them back. The technical snag arises for this cohort of workers because they start qualifying for employer and Government pension top-ups under auto enrolment when they earn 10,000 or more, but they don't start paying income tax until they earn 11,850 a year. Those low earners who manage to throw the maximum possible 2,880 a year into their pots under auto enrolment stand to lose 720 annually. There is an alternative tax mechanism which master trusts can use called 'relief at source' that does not disadvantage people on low wages. It gives the low-paid workers their Government pension top-ups, which they would otherwise be denied, while better paid workers still end up getting their full whack by submitting a tax return. Basic rate taxpayers are not affected either way. Net pay and relief at source Employers and their pension providers have two options when handling pension tax relief for staff. Net pay means workers contribute directly into their pension before their tax bill is calculated, so their pension tax relief is already included and there is no need to claim it from HMRC. Under relief at source the pension provider claims the income tax relief directly from HMRC and adds it to each worker's pension. This is Money's pension columnist Steve Webb explains in more detail here. The Pensions Regulator explains the difference between the two systems here. It tells employers: 'Some schemes that use net pay arrangement may have lower member charges for your staff so you will need to consider this carefully. 'If you use salary sacrifice to manage pension contributions, staff who dont pay income tax wont get tax relief whichever tax relief method your scheme uses.' Master trust providers benefit from a 'net pay' system because they get the higher rate tax relief into their scheme, which generates more fees and gives them a larger fund to manage. Under 'relief at source' only basic rate tax relief goes into it. A new investigation by pension consultant Hymans Robertson found 14 out of the 17 top players use the 'net pay' system. However, one of these, NOW:Pensions, reimburses low-paid members their lost top-ups, so they do not end up out of pocket. The three master trusts offering 'relief at source' arrangements are state-backed auto-enrolment scheme NEST, Legal & General, and The People's Pension. See the results below. Net pay vs relief at source: The 14 firms offering net pay were asked for comment and their responses can be found below (Source: Hymans Robertson) This issue affects low-paid staff in work pension schemes run by single employers as well, not just master trusts which operate a fund for many employers at once. The former tend to use 'net pay' too, although some will put such staff into one of the auto enrolment schemes, like the state-backed NEST or The Peoples Pension, that do offer 'relief at source'. What are master trusts? The Government drive to auto-enrol all workers into pensions led to the rise of dozens of master trusts, which manage centralised funds for several employers at once. It has passed legislation to protect savers using master trusts from losing their nest eggs. Will this be fixed so low earners get pension top-ups? 'I've written about this since I discovered it, have begged the regulator to sort it out, one pension provider has agreed to pay the low earners their tax relief but the vast majority just keep taking low earners' money,' says pensions campaigner Ros Altmann. 'The last thing we need is another pension scandal but, sadly, that is what this is. 'There is no mechanism to allow low earners to reclaim the tax relief they should receive and would have had in a relief at source scheme. 'I have asked the Treasury to allow this, but they say it is not possible. So unless the pension provider pays their tax relief for them, or their employer does, they simply lose the money. Lady Altmann went on: 'Anyone who pays higher rate tax will have to reclaim their higher rate relief if their employer uses a relief at source scheme. That may be a little inconvenient for them, but of course they can get the money unlike the low earners who have no way of reclaiming anything and just dont get what they should have. What does the Government say? 'We are committed to helping those saving for retirement and sustaining the success of automatic enrolment with 9.5million people now newly saving or saving more for retirement,' said a Government spokesperson. 'We recognise the differences in the way tax relief is delivered through net pay and relief at source arrangements. 'Both approaches have advantages, with relief at source arrangements being particularly appropriate for lower earners. 'NEST, which now has over 6 million members, operates a relief at source arrangement as do several other large schemes used for automatic enrolment.' 'The pension providers also benefit in a net pay scheme because the higher rate tax relief goes into the pension scheme, so the provider earns more fees and has a bigger fund to manage. With a relief at source scheme, only the basic rate tax relief goes in. 'I cannot believe that the Government, the pension providers and the Pensions Regulator simply dont recognise what an injustice this is. 'These low earners dont even know they are losing out yet, but if they become aware of it, who can they claim against? In many cases, their employer doesnt know about it either. 'I believe ultimately, the pension providers and the regulator have a clear responsibility to ensure low earners are not automatically enrolled into a net pay scheme at all, unless someone puts the extra 25 per cent in for them. 'For example, if a company has 100 workers and only 2 of them earn below 11,850, then the cost to the employer or provider of paying the equivalent of the tax relief would be relatively small and may be worth paying in order to have the other 98 higher earners contributions and the convenience of a net pay arrangement that does not require reclaiming higher rate relief. 'But this needs to be transparent, and currently it is all hidden away.' Lee Hollingworth, head of defined contribution consulting at Hymans Robertson, said the issue was a major concern as hundreds of thousands of people who are auto-enrolled are not receiving the Government tax relief they were promised. 'It's had disadvantages that are indefensible,' he said, of the low earners affected. 'Arguably they are less informed and engaged about this issue and are less likely to protest about it. The masses are not informed about it. 'The tripling of auto enrolment minimum contributions in April this year to 3 per cent, and the planned further rise to 5 per cent by 2019, although necessary, will serve to further compound this issue for an individual that is already not receiving the tax relief to which they are entitled.' See below for how contributions are rising. Source: The Pensions Advisory Service 'So, how can this issue be resolved? As our research shows a small number of providers are already able to accommodate a tax-relief at source system. For those that dont, a sizable investment is necessary to adapt their administration system. 'In the absence of any real movement here it must be now up to Government to correct this anomaly created through unintentional legislation and ensure that the impacted many receive what is rightfully theirs.' Hollingworth also suggested that The Pensions Regulator might want to look at the issue when it goes through the process of authorising master trusts under new legislation being brought in this year. Graham Vidler, director of external affairs at industry group the Pensions and Lifetime Savings Association, said: 'We agree that this is an important issue and we have raised it with Government on repeated occasions. 'So far, the Treasury has said that there is no "straightforward or proportionate" way of solving the problem. Clearly, the matter cannot be left to rest in this way. The best solution is for Government to reform the tax regime on this issue. 'The anomaly in the tax legislation means that people who earn between 10,000 and 11,850 are at risk of missing out on tax relief if they are in a "net pay" scheme. 'Fortunately, most of these people are likely to be saving in the largest automatic enrolment schemes, such as NEST, TPP and NOW that serve all employers. In the case of NEST and TPP, this problem does not arise as they are "RAS" [relief at source] schemes. 'In the case of NOW, which is a "net pay" scheme, they will make good any shortfall if the saver contacts them about it.' The PLSA has a 'Master Trust Committee', created to be the voice of master trust pension providers among its industry members. When it was announced in October 2016, the PLSA said: 'The Committee will set the PLSAs strategic direction on master trust policy, promote and support the development of the master trust market, and help savers in master trusts achieve a better income in retirement.' A number of the master trusts that offer 'net pay' sit on the committee. A list of the current committee members is below. Source: PLSA The Pensions Regulator said wider questions around tax relief were for the Treasury to address, and the question of how this related to master trust authorisation was a matter for the Department for Work and Pensions. See the box above for the Government's statement. On the Hymans report, a Pensions Regulator spokesperson said: 'It is for employers to choose a pension scheme that is suitable for their workforce and this includes giving consideration to tax relief arrangements. 'To support them we provide online information as part of our step-by-step guide to help employers to complete their automatic enrolment duties. We also provide guidance for business advisers who support employers, and to pension schemes on the importance of communicating clearly about how they manage tax relief for members.' On its web page explaining the difference between 'net pay' and 'relief at source' to employers, the Pensions Regulator lists several schemes it says offer the latter arrangement which Hymans says do not. The regulator said its list includes a variety of schemes, including but not limited to master trusts, which is why it does not correlate with the master trust schemes published by Hymans. What do master trust providers say? This is Money asked master trusts running 'net pay' systems for comment, and their responses are below. Atlas (Capita) 'Providers are required to work to the policy set out by Government and as a result its not for us to comment,' said a spokesperson. LifeSight (Willis Towers Watson) 'The fact that people earning between 10,000-11,850 cannot always claim the full tax relief they are due is a serious issue that needs to be rectified, first and foremost, by the Treasury,' said David Bird, head of proposition development at LifeSight. I don't pay tax but do contribute to a pension - can I get tax relief on my payments? This is Money columnist Steve Webb explains how some lower earners are unwittingly losing out on pension tax relief from the Government because of how their work pension scheme operates here. 'In the case of LifeSight, switching to a relief at source method for everyone would disadvantage many more members. Without Treasury guidance and intervention, there is no simple solution to this issue.' A spokesman for the firm agreed that the disadvantage was that higher and additional rate taxpayers would have to fill in a tax return, but not lose any tax relief. He said: 'Yes thats correct. But in LifeSights case we dont believe there are many, if any, members who fall into the earnings bracket that would be affected by this, so changing to relief at source is unlikely to benefit our members. 'The other point to make is that both relief at source and net pay master trusts are available and employers choose which to enrol their employees into. 'They tend to choose the master trusts that best suit their employees circumstances, which they know better than anyone else. Weve seen instances where an employer enrols most employees into a net pay master trust because its the best option for those employees but will enrol a small section of lower earning employees into a relief at source master trust to make sure they benefit from the full tax relief available.' National Pension Trust (Xafinity Punter Southall) Dave Hodges, head of National Pension Trust, commented: 'We recognise that this has been an ongoing issue and over the years have been contributing to the discussion with the PLSA and fully support the statement they have made today. 'Current legislation forces providers to choose the best approach for the majority of their members. Legislation needs to change to create a truly equitable system for tax relief where all members are treated equally, and this lays firmly with HMRC.' NOW:Pensions NOW reimburses low earners with Government tax relief they have lost, a move praised by Ros Altmann who said: 'It is good to see one company taking the moral high ground. 'Now:Pensions is a net pay scheme, but it has chosen to give the extra money to its low earning customers from its own pocket. None of the other net pay schemes has been willing to ensure low earners do not lose out.' Rob Booth, NOW: Pensions director of proposition says: 'We feel strongly that no member of the NOW: Pensions Scheme should lose out on any tax relief to which they might be entitled, which is why we have taken steps over the past two years to make up any shortfall for our lower earning members. 'Until the Government addresses the tax relief anomaly, the only way we could do this was by putting our hands into our own pockets. 'We use a multitude of channels to encourage our non-tax paying members to complete a very simple online claim form, and with their authority, we then liaise with HMRC to calculate exactly how much they have lost out. 'We then credit this amount directly into their pension pots. Its not possible to top-up members automatically, as we need to verify their individual circumstances with HMRC.' Scottish Widows A Scottish Widows spokesperson said: 'We have only just inherited the master trust from Zurich, as part of the first phase of the transfer of its workplace pensions and savings business to Scottish Widows on 3 April. 'As you would expect, we will be reviewing all the products we have acquired to ensure they continue to best meet the needs of our customers.' Smart Pension (L&G Investment Management is investor and partner) Smart Pension explained it was in the process of offering 'relief at source' and was building it into its systems so the whole process was automated and there would be no clunky 'claiming it back' arrangements that over-complicate the process meaning people often don't bother. Martin Freeman, head of Smart Pension's product development division, said: 'We have plans to introduce RAS this year. Were making sure we get it right because its easy to trip up with RAS and mistakes can be costly. 'We support the call to help people who most need it and are building the robust automation that is necessary for RAS.' Standard Life 'We offer both trust-based schemes using "net pay" and contract-based schemes using "relief at source",' said Standard Life. 'Over 90 per cent of our auto-enrolees are in contract-based schemes so receive full tax relief on their contributions.' Aon 'Be careful what you wish for,' said Kevin Wesbroom, senior partner at Aon. 'The [Hymans] report points out that most master trusts including The Aon MasterTrust operate on a net pay system, rather than relief at source. 'For anybody paying the higher rate of tax relief, this is an advantage because it means they get their full tax relief immediately and directly into their pension, rather than having to wait for the end of the tax year (and having to fill in a tax return to reclaim tax that has been overpaid). 'One "easy" way for HMRC to solve the dilemma between low earners (who are better suited to relief at source) and higher earners (better suited to net pay) is to move everybody to a relief at source basis forcing millions to complete tax returns to claim their higher rate relief, and experience delays in the investment of their pensions savings. 'The danger is that HMRC decide to simplify the RAS process by just abandoning the reclaim of higher rate relief. 'Operating a mixed system (both RAS and net pay) is not just a major administrative challenge for the master trusts but also difficult for employers in terms of their payroll systems, deciding which members should be offered which tax system.' Aviva 'The Aviva Master Trust operates on a net pay basis,' said the firm. 'The Aviva Master Trust has targeted employers with predominantly full time workers who earn more than the income tax threshold and who have previously been a member of a net pay arrangement pension scheme. 'Therefore it was appropriate for our master trust to operate a net pay arrangement. We also offer a group personal pension on a relief at source basis which employers can choose if they feel it is more appropriate for their workforce.' BlackRock BlackRock said it didnt have a statement on this. BlueSky (Evolve) Paul D Bannister, chief executive officer of Evolve, said: 'The subject of net pay is one that is dealt with by the Trustee of both Bluesky and Crystal and has been discussed at Trustee meetings and, I understand, is on the agenda at the next meeting in June. 'An assessment of the membership was undertaken last year which showed up no requirement for a change but it is re-visited often.' Fidelity No response received before publication. Mercer 'We are already in discussions with our administration providers on how to implement this functionality into their systems,' said Mercer regarding relief at source. 'Currently we make members aware of the implications through the scheme literature. 'The effective operation of Mercer Master Trusts governance and administration practices is reflected in its Master Trust Assurance accreditation.' TPT No response received before publication. Part of a castle has been closed due to the presence of a 'very angry badger'. The cellar tunnel at Craignethan Castle was shut at around midday on Thursday after staff discovered the unexpected guest. It is thought the animal may have become lost and staff have been trying to lure it out with cat food and honey. The rest of the castle, in South Lanarkshire, remains open to visitors. The cellar tunnel at Craignethan Castle in South Lanarkshire, Scotland, was shut at around midday on Thursday after staff discovered a 'very angry badger' Historic Scotland told visitors about the unusual resident in a tweet, saying: 'If you're heading to #CraignethanCastle over the next few days you might find the Cellar Tunnel closed due to the presence of a very angry badger. 'We're trying to entice it out with cat food & send it home to #chilloot.' Staff first spotted some dug-out earth on Wednesday evening, and later spotted the badger on closer inspection. The animal is said to have caused some mess, digging up through loose soil into stonework, and staff have been clearing away the rubble. The Historic Scotland property, managed by Historic Environment Scotland (HES), was built around 1530 and has a tower house, ramparts and caponier a stone-vaulted shooting gallery. The animal (file photo) is said to have caused some mess, digging up through loose soil into stonework, and staff have been clearing away the rubble. Beware the #AngryBadger! If you're heading to #CraignethanCastle over the next few days you might find the Cellar Tunnel closed due to the presence of a very angry badger. We're trying to entice it out with cat food & send it home to #chilloot https://t.co/K4C2lA84xD pic.twitter.com/nTuC9VPOuo Historic Scotland (@welovehistory) April 13, 2018 An HES spokesman said: 'We've had to temporarily close Craignethan Castle's cellar tunnel due to an unexpected guest. 'The tunnel was closed around midday on April 12 after our site staff discovered a badger had made itself at home. The castle is surrounded by woodland and we believe the badger may have become lost. 'Staff have been in contact with local wildlife authorities and have tried to lure the badger out with cat food and honey. 'The rest of the castle remains open.' Robert Durst's wife previously told her landlady she was afraid of her husband and asked if she could move into a separate apartment just a week before her disappearance - a court has heard. Speaking at a preliminary hearing in Los Angeles Superior Court Karen Minutello, testified that in 1982 she managed the New York complex where Robert and Kathleen Durst lived before her mysterious disappearance. Ms Minutello said Kathleen Durst called her about a week before her disappearance and asked to rent her own unit because she didn't want to live with her husband anymore. 'She was hesitant, she didn't just blurt out why. Then she did say she needed to get away from him,' Minutello said. 'She was afraid of him.' Scroll down for video The preliminary hearing began on April 16 to determine if Durst will stand trial for murder of Susan Berman in 2000 A tired-looking Durst appeared in Los Angeles Superior Court Airport Branch for a pretrial motions ahead of the hearing Robert Durst pictured with his wife Kathleen before her disappearance from their New York home in 1982 Kathleen Durst has been missing for over 35 years after disappearing from her home in New York in 1982. Robert Durst, 73, a multimillionaire real estate tycoon, has never been charged with a crime related to his wife's 1982 disappearance in New York. But recently uncovered evidence which links him to the death of family friend and confidant Susan Berman in 2000 could see him tried for both murders - if a judge rules in favour at a hearing in Los Angeles this week. Durst is accused of killing Berman after she allegedly threatened to expose him for his wife's murder. Prosecutors say that Berman, the daughter of a Las Vegas mobster, found out that Durst had killed his wife Kathleen - and Durst killed her in fear she would expose him. He was arrested in New Orleans in 2015 and charged with killing Berman - who had acted as an informal spokeswoman for him, fielding constant media inquiries that followed Kathleen's disappearance. At an earlier hearing in Los Angeles in February, one of his oldest friends, Nick Chavin claimed Susan Berman had told him Durst was guilty of his wife's murder. 'Susan said to me, "Bob killed Kathie,"' Chavin testified. Robert Durst is also accused of killing Susan Berman - a family friend who he allegedly feared would expose him for Kathleen Durst's murder Kathleen Durst has been missing for over 35 years - but prosecutors hope that new evidence will allow them to put Robert Durst on trial for her murder Asked why he hadn't told police of the admission earlier, Chavin said that Berman had insisted they protect Durst. In a remarkable revelation, Chavin also claimed Durst had confessed his wife's murder to him over dinner in 2014. According to Chavin, when asked about Susan's murder Durst said: 'I had to. It was her or me. I had no choice.' It was rumoured Berman had told friends over the years that Durst acknowledged killing his wife and said she helped him cover his tracks. She also told one friend who testified at an earlier hearing that if anything happened to her, Durst would be the culprit. Prosecutors are hoping to use many of those hearsay statements at trial, which defense attorneys have vigorously challenged. Robert Durst has pleaded not guilty to killing Berman at her Los Angeles house. However, Judge Mark Windham is set to rule on Tuesday over whether or not there is sufficient new evidence to take Durst to trial. Prince Charles is set to be approved as the next head of the Commonwealth this week, despite calls from Labour for him to step aside. Leaders are expected to name the Prince of Wales as his mother's successor as head of the 53-member club in the coming days, Whitehall sources said last night. Dozens of leaders are arriving in the UK this week for the Commonwealth Heads of Government summit, which culminates in a 'leaders' retreat' at Windsor Castle on Friday. Britain's Prince Charles wears a mulka string, a feather stringed headband, as he takes part in a traditional welcome ceremony during a visit to Mount Nhulun in Nhulunbuy, Australia Downing Street yesterday indicated Theresa May would make the prince's case during Friday's private meeting. The Prime Minister's spokesman said: '[Prince Charles] has been a proud supporter of the Commonwealth for more than four decades and has spoken passionately about the organisation's unique diversity.' But they added: 'Succession is a matter for the Commonwealth as a whole to determine.' Reports in recent weeks have suggested some countries harbour doubts about the suitability of Prince Charles for the role. One Commonwealth source said a number of leaders 'continue to be underwhelmed by him'. Downing Street yesterday indicated Theresa May would make the prince's case during Friday's private meeting In recent days, Jeremy Corbyn and other Labour figures have also questioned whether Prince Charles should take up the role. But a Whitehall source said: 'There have been no warning lights flashing in the run-up to the summit. It is up to the leaders on Friday, but it looks as if Prince Charles will get the nod.' Two men have been seriously injured in a three-vehicle car crash that caused chaos in Sydney's west this morning. The men were trapped inside their cars for some time before crews could free them from the mangled wreckage. A Holden ute collided with a Toyota van on Wallgrove Road in Horsley Park, near the intersection of Chandos Road around 6am. Rescue workers cut out two men trapped inside their vehicles (pictured) on Wallgrove Road in Horsley Park A third vehicle, which was travelling behind the van, was unable to avoid the crash and collided with the other two vehicles. The two male drivers of the initial crash, one in his 40s and the other in his 50s, were trapped by compression within their vehicles. They both suffered serious injuries to their lower bodies and chests. The man aged in his 40s was eventually removed by rescue crews and transported to Liverpool Hospital. He is in a serious but stable condition. The man aged in his 50s was taken from the mangled wreckage to Westmead Hospital. He is also in a serious but stable condition. The two men in the third vehicle, the white ute, were able to get themselves out of the wreckage and were treated at the scene by paramedics. Two male drivers aged in thier 40s and 50s have now been freed from the wreckage and taken to hospital for treatment The two drivers of the initial crash were taken to hospital in serious but stable conditions. Two men driving the third car, the white ute, were treated at the scene The pile-up caused chaos on peak hour traffic as lanes were closed in both directions and motorists were urged to use extra travel time or use an alternative route. Authorities were cautioning heavy conditions and expected delays for two hours after the crash. Police are investigating. A Colorado driver's captured the shocking moment a plane came crashing down less than half a mile from his car while he was waiting at a Sonic drive-thru. A six-seat plane made a crash landing in Colorado Springs Saturday and hit a guardrail before it came to rest near a creek bed. Three people were aboard the plane at the time, but only one person sustained an injury and had to be taken to the hospital for observation. Dash cam footage at the Sonic Drive-In nearby showed the moment the plane crashed to the ground before it skidded to a stop along the road. A six-seat plane came crashing down in Colorado Springs, Colorado, on Saturday Dashboard camera footage captured the moment the plane fell from the sky, narrowly missing the Sonic Drive-In and other buildings in the area The plane miraculously didn't hit any cars as it skidded along the road before it came to a rest. The pilot and other passenger were also not hurt in the hard landing. Police spokesman Lt. Howard Black told the Colorado Springs Gazette that it was 'very fortunate to report no serious injuries'. An estimated 25 gallons of fuel leaked from one of the plane's wings after the crash, but firefighters were able to prevent the liquid from reaching the water in the creek bed, Black said. The crash occurred just before 1pm Saturday, but it remains unclear if the pilot was aware of an emergency or distributed a mayday call before the incident. The plane narrowly missed hitting the Sonic Drive-In as well as a Lowes Home Improvement center and residential homes. Instead, it was able to land alongside a road between the two areas with buildings and homes. The dash cam footage is incorrectly time stamped but it is confirmed that the video shows the Saturday crash. Officials have not released where the plane took off from or where it was going. The plane hit a guardrail along the road before coming to a halt near a creek bed. Crew members went to the scene to help assist after the crash After Donald Trump dies, will he return to earth as an exclamation mark? It's by far his favourite form of punctuation. Since he started tweeting, he has produced no fewer than 9,261 exclamation marks, or 14,854, if you include his re-tweets. By any measure, that's an awful lot of exclaiming. His very first tweet, issued on May 4, 2009, closed with one. 'Be sure to tune in and watch Donald Trump on Late Night With Letterman as he presents the Top Ten List tonight!' Since then, it's been exclamations all the way, with 3,660 exclamation marks last year alone. In the past few weeks, he's gone exclamation mad. 'Not acceptable!' he tweeted yesterday about the behaviour of Russia and China. 'Mission accomplished!' he tweeted after the bombing of Syria. Since Donald Trump started tweeting, he has produced no fewer than 9,261 exclamation marks, or 14,854, if you include his re-tweets In Trump's hands, the exclamation mark, coupled with capitals, is less like someone laughing at his own joke, and more like someone bellowing in your ear like a bully The day before, just one of his tweets contained no fewer than six exclamation marks, four by themselves, and two in a row: 'DOJ just issued the McCabe report which is a total disaster. He LIED! LIED! LIED! McCabe was totally controlled by Comey McCabe is Comey!! No collusion, all made up by this den of thieves and lowlifes!' Most of his recent tweets have ended with an exclamation mark, eg 'It was my great honor to fire James Comey!' (April 13), 'AMERICAN SPIRIT is back!' (April 12), 'Lots to discuss as we continue MAKING AMERICA GREAT AGAIN!' (April 11) and 'A TOTAL WITCH HUNT!!!' (April 10). As you see, that last one, which consisted of just those four words, featured three exclamation marks in a row. That may seem excessive, but in fact he has used three in a row or more in 437 different tweets and retweets, among them: 'FRACK NOW AND FRACK FAST!!! (December 17, 2013), 'Where's Hillary? Sleeping!!!!!' (Aug 19, 2016) and 'For many years our country has been divided, angry and untrusting. Many say it will never change, the hatred is too deep. IT WILL CHANGE!!!! (January 15, 2017). In this ongoing Exclamathon, Donald Trump achieved a personal best on March 2, 2014. He was watching that year's Academy Awards. In this ongoing Exclamathon, Donald Trump achieved a personal best on March 2, 2014. He was watching that year's Academy Awards By chance it involved everything that makes him furious: it was hosted by Ellen DeGeneres; 12 Years A Slave won Best Picture; Matthew McConaughey won Best Actor for his performance as an AIDS victim in Dallas Buyers Club; and Alfonso Cuaron, a Mexican, won Best Director. 'Was President Obama in charge of this years Academy Awards they remind me of the ObamaCare website!' was one of his tweets that night. He rounded them off with an attack on the 81-year-old actress Kim Novak 'Kim should sue her plastic surgeon!' But he hit his exclamatory high-water mark at 5.19am, tweeting: 'This cannot be the Academy Awards. AWFUL!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!'. This frenzied tweet achieved no fewer than 15 exclamation marks all in a row, like a demented formation dance team in the handstand Olympics. President Trump has become increasingly fond of placing exclamation marks after each insult, which he often writes in capital letters for extra emphasis: 'AWFUL!', 'BAD! SAD!', 'TERRIBLE!', 'VERY UNFAIR!' and, inevitably, 'FAKE NEWS!'. The exclamation mark, or point, as it is known in America, has long been viewed as the most vulgar form of punctuation. Oddly enough, it wasn't even included on most American keyboards until 1970. One of America's foremost style manuals still advises that it 'should be used sparingly to be effective'. The exclamation mark, or point, as it is known in America, has long been viewed as the most vulgar form of punctuation President Trump has become increasingly fond of placing exclamation marks after each insult, which he often writes in capital letters for extra emphasis: 'AWFUL!', 'BAD! SAD!', 'TERRIBLE!', 'VERY UNFAIR!' and, inevitably, 'FAKE NEWS!' 'An exclamation point is like laughing at your own jokes,' was the opinion of F. Scott Fitzgerald. The idea of someone joshing, or signalling his own unseriousness, that makes Trump's most recent tweets about bombs particularly chilling: 'Get ready Russia, because they will be coming, nice and new and 'smart!' You shouldn't be partners with a Gas Killing Animal who kills his people and enjoys it!' In Trump's hands, the exclamation mark, coupled with capitals, is less like someone laughing at his own joke, and more like someone bellowing in your ear like a bully. The late novelist Terry Pratchett suggested that a man's sanity lies in inverse proportion to the number of exclamation marks he employs. 'All those exclamation marks, you notice?' says a character in his book Maskerade. 'A sure sign of someone who wears his underpants on his head.' Many outsiders and local elites like to describe customary land as 'idle', 'undeveloped' and 'a barrier to development', but the opposite is true. Too few people realise customary land supports an economy estimated to be worth K40 billion a year, provides jobs and incomes for three million farmers and provides housing and a sense of community for more than seven million people. Customary land is the most valuable asset available to most Papua New Guineans but its role and importance is often misunderstood or misrepresented, particularly by outsiders. PORT MORESBY One of Papua New Guineas leading activist groups has launched a new multi-media campaign, 'Celebrating and Defending Customary Land' . Customary land is the only resource on which PNG can build a sustainable future that benefits the majority of the population rather than just a tiny minority. But if we are to realise this opportunity people must be empowered to defend their customary land and must not to fall victim to the false promises of those who want to take it away from them. This is particularly important as we struggle to cope with our population explosion, which will see numbers almost double by 2050, and food security becomes even more of a pressing global issue. Already some countries are looking to acquire customary land in PNG to feed their own people while the threats from the foreign owned logging and oil palm industries are ever present. Adding to these threats are the international banks who want to use customary land as security for loans and a government which continues to push its dangerous land registration agenda and encourage incorporated land groups. ILGs give control over communal assets to a few individuals and open the door to corruption and, ultimately, alienation. It is to help address the urgent need for better information at all levels of society about customary land, its values and the threats, that Act Now! is launching its new campaign. The campaign includes a captivating television advertisement that will be broadcast on EMTV and a range of publications including reports, brochures, factsheets, infographics, videos and posters. These resources will be used by Act Now! in its lobbying, advocacy and awareness work. They are also being made available to everyone with an internet connection through websites and social media, and will be shared with communities by groups who support sustainable development and promote rural livelihoods. Campaign resources. The case against a New Jersey ex-convict found with Rosie O'Donnell's missing teenage daughter three years ago has been dismissed. Court records indicate charges of child endangerment and distributing obscenity to a minor against 28-year-old Steven Sheerer were dropped last month. Defense attorney Robert Tarver said on Monday he was unaware the case had been thrown out. He said prosecutors were pushing for a guilty plea earlier this year. Scroll down for video Case closed: The case against Steven Sheerer, 28 (left), who was found with Rosie O'Donnell's missing daughter Chelsea (pictured together, right), in August 2015 has been dismissed Chelsea was reported missing in August 2015 by her mother and later found at Sheerer's home in Barnegat, New Jersey (above) A tweet sent by The View co-host in August 2015 update her followers about her daughter The former co-host of The View reported 17-year-old Chelsea missing from her New York home four days before she was found in the attic of Sheerer's home in Barnegat, New Jersey, in August 2015. Tarver had said evidence would show his client was not guilty, reported Asbury Park Press. Chelsea previously told DailyMail.com that her adoptive mother Rosie had kicked her out of their South Nyack, New York, home before her 18th birthday and denied the comedian's claims that she was mentally ill. Chelsea was located about a week after her disappearance in New Jersey with Sheerer, then aged 25, whom she had met on Tinder. She was found hiding in the attic with her therapy dog named Bear. Past misdeeds: Sheerer (left and right) had been convicted of possessing controlled dangerous substances and child endangerment New life: Chelsea revealed that she secretly married her boyfriend, Nick Alliegro, 31, in July 2016 after she found out she was expecting her first child Sheerer had been convicted of possessing controlled dangerous substances and child endangerment after a 2013 incident in which he was arrested with heroin and marijuana while in a car with a woman and her two children, aged one and three. He pleaded guilty and was sentenced to two years' probation. Sheerer was charged with endangering the welfare of a child in Chelsea's disappearance and third-degree distribution of obscenity to a minor. The latter was the result of a nude photo Sheerer sent the teen on Tinder when she was underage. During a court hearing in September 2015, Chelsea admitted that she misrepresented her age to Sheerer on Tinder. Chelsea has been estranged from Rosie, who adopted her as a baby in 1997, for the past three years. In an exclusive interview with DailyMail.com last year, Chelsea revealed that she secretly married her boyfriend, Nick Alliegro, 31, in July 2016 after she found out she was expecting her first child, but the pregnancy ended in a miscarriage. A 25-year-old woman has been allowed to stay at her entrepreneurial mother's million dollar Bondi Beach home as she awaits trial for allegedly importing $21million worth of ice into Australia with her Mexican artist girlfriend. Rose Thomas was granted bail on March 23 under the condition she live with her mother, Jackie Maxted at the online publisher's $4.5million five-bedroom home, according to The Daily Telegraph. Ms Thomas and her girlfriend Norma Zuniga Frias, both 25, were arrested on March 1 after police intercepted the massive shipment of 24 kilograms of methamphetamines, which was allegedly on its way to a Sydney address concealed inside eight home audio speakers. Rose Thomas and her girlfriend Norma Zuniga Frias, both 25, (pictured together) were arrested on March 1 after police intercepted the massive shipment of 24 kilograms of methamphetamines Rose Thomas was granted bail on March 23 under the condition she live with her mother, Jackie Maxted at the online publisher's $4.5million five-bedroom home (pictured) Ms Maxted (pictured) is well known for her website Beauty Haven, which she sold to Bauer Media three years ago for $20million, the publication reported Ms Frias, who lived with Ms Thomas at a share home in Marrickville at the time of their arrest, has been charged with importing a commercial quantity of ice. Ms Thomas is charged with attempting to possess a commercial volume of the drug and was released on a $100,000 bond. Neither Mexican national Ms Frias or Ms Thomas have entered pleas to the charges. Ms Frias remains behind bars at Silverwater prison, while Ms Thomas is confined to her mother's home unable to leave unless she's accompanied by her mother or someone her mother has OK'd, according to the Daily Telegraph. Ms Maxted is well known for her website Beauty Haven, which she sold to Bauer Media three years ago for $20million, the publication reported. She bought the Bondi Beach home, which has a pool, the same year. Before their arrest, Ms Frias and Ms Thomas had spent the years before their arrest travelling together to Disneyland, Berlin and Tasmania. Ms Frias (right), who lived with Ms Thomas (left) at a share home in Marrickville at the time of their arrest, has been charged with importing a commercial quantity of ice They now face maximum sentences of life behind bars if found guilty of the charges of importing and possessing a commercial quantity of the drug. Pictured is the ice shipment intercepted by Australian Border Force officers Ms Frias (right) remains behind bars at Silverwater prison, while Ms Thomas (left) is confined to her mother's home unable to leave unless she's accompanied by her mother or someone her mother has OK'd They ran a handmade socks label called Chicken Sox, specialising in colourful and quirky pairs for $10 each. Meanwhile, Frias produced her artwork that mainly focuses on gay rights and sexual themes. Her portfolio is often posted to her Instagram account, revealing her drawings of naked women and bouncing breast animations. 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. They ran a handmade socks label called Chicken Sox, specialising in colourful and quirky pairs for $10 each (pictured) Frias (pictured) was preparing for her first major art exhibition but was arrested the day before its opening night during police raids of the share house, and another property in nearby Rozelle 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, which police said has an estimated street value of $20.7million. The drugs were removed from the speakers and replaced with an inert substance before the delivery went ahead. Frias moved in April last year from Guadalajara, in western Mexico, to Sydney where she was reunited with Thomas (pictured, left, right), who she has known for several years Australian Border Force officers on February 21 intercepted the shipment of ice (pictured), which police said has an estimated street value of $20.7million Ms Frias is due to reappear in court on May 9. AFP Commander Justine Gough said investigations suggest the importation was a 'highly organised' attempt at targeting Australia. 'We continue to see overseas drug networks trying to target Australia, because they know there is a high demand in our country and unfortunately, users are willing to pay the price,' Commander Gough said. 'This coordinated, multi-agency investigation has helped us to have great disruptive effect and save 240,000 hits of ice from reaching Sydney's streets.' The drugs were removed from the speakers and replaced with an inert substance before the delivery went ahead Twitter users have slammed Germaine Greer for her claims that Meghan Markle would 'bolt' from her marriage to Prince Harry out of boredom. Speaking to 60 Minutes yesterday, the Australian feminist implied the Suits actress was marrying for money and status, but had given up too much of herself for the relationship to work. But social media users have called out Ms Greer for her claims, saying that her attack was 'spiteful', and an 'unworthy' comment of someone representing the feminist movement. Others blasted the outspoken author as a 'white feminist' and questioned why Ms Greer never implied Kate Middleton or Sophie Helen Rhys-Jones were marrying for money. Scroll down for video Author Germaine Greer has been slammed for saying Meghan Markle will 'bolt' from her marriage to Prince Harry after discovering how boring and rigid life as a royal is The feminist author (pictured) said the US actress has given up too much of her own life for love, but Twitter users have branded her a 'white feminist' for her comments One individual said they would not even be watching Ms Greer's interview, describing it as a 'spiteful attack' Others called Ms Greer out for not implying the Duchess of Cambridge or Sophie, Countess of Wessex, married for money for marrying royalty During the show Ms Greer claimed that Ms Markle, who attended a private school from the age of five, was 'born in poverty'. Ms Greer said: 'Why would a girl born in poverty marry a man worth 53 million quid? I can't think of single reason.' Several Twitter users have pointed out the falseness of the claim, adding that Ms Markle's father was a successful lighting director. Ms Greer also said the monotony of royal life would likely set in, as would the rigid and demanding nature of her new life. 'She will see vistas of boredom that are unbelievable,' Ms Greer said. 'I think the pressure to escape from the firm is crushing... I think she'll bolt.' The 79-year-old said she held out some hope Ms Markle could take off from royal life with the Prince at her side. Another user said the 79-year-old's comments were 'unworthy of someone representing the feminist movement' Others questioned the accuracy of her claims, noting that Ms Markle was hardly 'born into poverty' when she was educated at private schools from the age of five She claimed the likelihood of Ms Markle's departure was increased by her first failed marriage to film producer Trevor Engelson. When the US actress decided to call it quits on the marriage in 2013, she returned Mr Engelson's rings through the post. To join the Royal Family, Ms Markle will need to relinquish her US citizenship, and will not be able to continue working as an actress. Becoming a British citizen can take years though, so the actress and lifestyle blogger will retain her US citizenship throughout the application process. Ms Markle and Prince Harry will tie the knot on May 19 at St George's Chapel at Windsor Castle. The Obama administration reportedly investigated former CIA and NSA chief Michael Hayden for leaking classified information to the press in 2012. A newly unsealed court filing, obtained by The Daily Beast, has revealed that the FBI sought a search warrant for Hayden's AOL email account. According to to the file, the FBI suspected Hayden of being a source for a New York Times article that was published on June 1, 2012. The Obama administration reportedly investigated former CIA and NSA chief Michael Hayden (left in 2007) for leaking classified information to the press in 2012 The FBI suspected Hayden of being a source for a New York Times article that was published June 2012. The article claimed that former president Barack Obama secretly ordered attacks on the computer systems that ran Irans main nuclear enrichment facilities (pictured in 2008) The article claimed that former president Barack Obama secretly ordered sophisticated attacks on the computer systems that ran Irans main nuclear enrichment facilities. Those attacks, which begun during the Bush administration in partnership with Israel, were code-named Olympic Games. The Stuxnet computer virus accidentally became public in 2010 because of a programming error that allowed it to escape Irans Natanz plant and sent it around the world on the Internet. According to the reports, the article confirmed suspicions that the US was partly responsible for the attack. The search warrant was filed in November 2012 and it was unsealed Monday. Asked over email if he'd previously known about the search warrant, Hayden wrote to the Daily Beast: 'I don't think they announce them.' He added a smiley face emoji. Though Hayden was not cited as a source on the Olympic Games revelation in the Times article, but he was quoted on the significance of the Stuxnet virus. Those attacks were code-named Olympic Games. The Stuxnet computer virus accidentally became public in 2010 because of a programming error that allowed it to escape Irans Natanz plant (pictured) and sent it around the world on the Internet Transaction records for Hayden's (pictured in 2002) AOL email account showed he'd exchanged email messages with David Sanger, who wrote the Times story. But the FBI tracked the story to retired Marine Gen James Cartwright (right) 'This is the first attack of a major nature in which a cyber attack was used to effect physical destruction,' Hayden said at the time. Hayden's name and email address are redacted from the unsealed filing, but the case is captioned with Hayden's AOL email address. It's unclear if the warrant was ever granted. According to the Daily Beast, the FBI obtained transaction records for Hayden's AOL email account that showed he'd exchanged email messages with David Sanger, who wrote the Times story, 10 times before and after the story. That information was used to obtain the entire contents of Hayden's AOL account., but the FBI found no evidence that Hayden did anything wrong. Using similar tactics, the bureau tracked the story to retired Marine Gen James Cartwright, who pleaded guilty to a single count of lying to the FBI in 2016. Obama pardoned Cartwright shortly before leaving office. Hayden served as the director of the NSA from 1999 to 2005 and later led the CIA until he retired in 2009. Vile prank callers are putting lives at risk by wasting emergency services time with up to 10 ambulances responding to fake callers. Ambulance officials said more than 100 hoax calls were made to NSW emergency operators every month, wasting ambulance resources and leaving the rest of the community vulnerable. In one particularly disrespectful call, a man told the operator: 'I dropped my M&M'. Scroll down for video Vile prank callers are putting lives at risk by wasting emergency services time with up to 10 ambulances responding to fake callers Responding to the man, the operator asked: 'You dropped your M&M? Right. Do you require an ambulance?' The prank caller continued, saying: 'Um, if an ambulance could help me pick up my M&M, then yeah'. New South Wales Ambulance Commissioner Dominic Morgan said operators needed to treat every call as if it were serious until they were certain it was not. 'Sometimes this can [mean] sending multiple ambulance resources out to hoax calls leaving the rest of the community uncovered because of the stupidity of some individuals out there,' he told Nine News. New South Wales Ambulance Commissioner Dominic Morgan said operators needed to treat every call as if it were serious until they were certain it was not Commissioner Morgan said it was hard to fathom how many people purposely wasted emergency service time and resources (operation room pictured) Commissioner Morgan said it was hard to fathom how many people purposely wasted emergency services time and resources. 'It's beyond belief that members of our community could still be out there in this day and age, wasting the time of paramedics who are only out there to try and save other people's lives,' he said. In another prank call, a child phoned Triple-0 saying: 'There was a big fire and there was a baby in there and it just died'. Another caller told the operator there was a fight outside his house and the pretend victim had been stabbed 'multiple times'. Ten ambulances responded to the fake emergency. Triple-0 operators must treat every call seriously unless they can be certain it's a hoax Ten ambulances responded to one fake emergency, leaving the rest of the community without One particularly heinous offender from Penrith, in Sydney's west, phoned Triple-0 182 times between January and April this year. People who waste emergency resources can be fined up to $30,000 and spend three years in prison. Commissioner Morgan warned anyone who abused the system would be prosecuted. 'If you are a hoax caller we will track you down and fine you,' he said. The CEO of Starbucks CEO has met with the two black men arrested without cause at a Philadelphia store. Kevin Johnson branded the incident 'reprehensible' after video went viral of two customers being confronted by cops after the store manager called the police to report they were 'loitering'. The pair were later released without charge. The footage sparked a furious backlash against Starbucks and in-store protests. On Monday, Johnson traveled to the Philadelphia store to meet the two men and apologize in person, a Starbucks spokesperson told CBS Philadelphia. Starbucks CEO Kevin Johnson, center, in Philadelphia to meet with the two black men arrested in a store after a manager called the cops He said that Starbucks wanted to add training for store managers on 'unconscious bias' after calling the incident 'reprehensible'. 'I'd like to have a dialogue with them and the opportunity to listen to them with compassion and empathy through the experience they went through,' he said ahead of the meeting. Johnson said it was 'completely inappropriate to engage the police'. The incident is a major blow to Starbucks' image, since the company has promoted its coffee shops as neighborhood hangouts where anyone is welcome. The Philadelphia Starbucks manager who called 911 on two black men last week (pictured above being arrested) no longer works with the company, a spokesperson revealed on Monday The CEO met with the men as around two dozen protesters took over the shop Monday, accusing the company of racial profiling and demanding they change their policy of calling the police. From 7.30am, protesters stood in front of the counter, chanting slogans such as 'Starbucks coffee is anti-black.' Protesters had called for the employee who called the police on Thursday to be fired over the incident. A representative for Starbucks said on Monday that the female employee, who hasn't been identified, had left the coffee chain. The two men, who had not made a purchase, were handcuffed and arrested for trespassing on Thursday after the Philadelphia store manager called 911 and reported them for refusing to leave. The incident sparked accusations of racial profiling at the coffee chain. Police later released the two men and they were not charged. The incident sparked accusations of racial profiling at the coffee chain and prompted activists to start protesting at the Philadelphia store Protestor Soren McClay, 14, demonstrates outside a Starbucks on Sunday in Philadelphia After footage of the arrests spread online, the hashtag #BoycottStarbucks trended on Twitter. About two dozen protesters took over the Philadelphia shop on Monday, chanting slogans like, 'A whole lot of racism, a whole lot of crap, Starbucks coffee is anti-black.' A Starbucks regional vice president who attempted to talk to the protesters was shouted down. Officials have said police officers were told the men had asked to use the store's restroom but were denied because they hadn't bought anything and they refused to leave. Video shows several police talking quietly with two black men seated at a table. After a few minutes, officers handcuff the men and lead them outside as other customers say they weren't doing anything wrong. A white man identified as real estate developer Andrew Yaffe arrives and tells the officers the two men were waiting for him. An officer says the men were not complying and were being arrested for trespassing. 'Why would they be asked to leave?' Yaffe says. 'Does anybody else think this is ridiculous? It's absolute discrimination.' Police officers monitor activity outside as protesters demonstrate inside the Starbucks store where the two men were arrested last Thursday Protesters filled the Starbucks store on Monday as they continued to protest the arrest of the two men last week A woman can be heard in the video saying 'they didn't do anything, I saw the entire thing.' Police haven't released the names of the men, who were later released after the district attorney's office said there was lack of evidence that a crime had been committed. Police Commissioner Richard Ross, who is black, defended the arrests in a video statement on Saturday. Ross said the officers 'did absolutely nothing wrong' and were professional in their conduct toward the individuals but 'got the opposite back.' Johnson said the company will ensure that employee guidelines on when the police should be called will be clarified. Asked if the incident was a case of racism, Johnson said: 'Starbucks was built around the concept of a third place where we create a warm and welcoming environment for all customers. What I do know is that did not happen in this instance. And that is what we're focused on.' Seattle-based Starbucks had posted a statement on Twitter over the weekend about the arrests, followed by an apology from Johnson. A Starbucks regional vice president, Camille Hymes, (center) who attempted to talk to the protesters was shouted down on Sunday Local Black Lives Matter activist Asa Khalif, left, stands inside the Starbucks on Sunday demanding that the manager be fired 'Every company makes mistakes, but great companies are the ones that learn from those mistakes and take appropriate action,' Johnson said Monday. 'And that's exactly what I intend to do. We're reviewing all aspects of this.' Criminal defense attorney Lauren Wimmer, who is representing the two men, said that race clearly played a role in the incident. 'I would love to hear the 911 call on this case,' Wimmer told NBC Nightly News on Sunday. 'Can you imagine the 911 call if it was "There's two white women sitting here. One of them asked to used the bathroom and she didn't order anything, come quick!",' she said. Wimmer declined to identify the two men. 'Two young black men, who were simply waiting to be joined by a friend, were blatantly discriminated against based on their race. Not only is this inexcusable, it's illegal,' Wimmer said in a statement. Dr Luke Ong, 31, was set to be booted out of Britain over a technicality with his visa but after public outcry he will be allowed to stay A trainee GP who faced deportation from Britain over a technicality is set to be allowed to stay after a public outcry. The Home Office announced it is abandoning legal proceedings to have Dr Luke Ong removed from the country. It follows a 270,000-signature petition from members of the public backing the 31-year-old Singaporean, along with the support of the Daily Mail, senior politicians, the British Medical Association (BMA) and Royal College of GPs. Speaking of his relief, Mr Ong said: 'I'm really grateful to the Mail for standing up for me, and the support as a whole has given me the strength to carry on. 'I love this country and I want to live and work here as a GP.' The doctor, who has lived in the UK since September 2007, started his GP training at Tameside Hospital in Greater Manchester in 2014. But he ran into trouble with immigration officials after mistakenly submitting a residency application 18 days late because of an 'honest oversight'. The Home Office said the GP's case has been reviewed 'following further representations'. The BMA added that it would have been 'absurd' for Mr Ong to be deported. The 31-year-old Singaporean said: 'I'm really grateful to the Mail for standing up for me, and the support as a whole has given me the strength to carry on. I love this country and I want to live and work here as a GP' Mr Ong's parents paid almost 100,000 to get him through medical school and since then the government has paid for his GP training. He previously said his battle to stay over the past several months had been incredibly stressful and a drain financially because he had not been able to work. In the meantime, he spent his time doing voluntary work. He insisted his failure to contact immigration officials until last July, a month before his visa was due to expire was an 'honest oversight'. He was not given an appointment until September and was then told to leave. Commenting on the moment he was delivered the news he faced deportation, Mr Ong said: 'I was flabbergasted my mouth hung open for a while. 'It's just beyond crazy. They have actually gone as far to say that it wouldn't be detrimental for me to go back to Singapore because it's not somewhere I would be persecuted nor is my life in imminent danger. I was so shocked.' Speaking about what makes him want to stay in the UK and work within the NHS, Mr Ong said: 'It's that sense of camaraderie that you find in the NHS. There is a real sense of dedication. The people who work within it do it not just for the salary, but the goodwill they have in them. That carries the system through even at a time when it's purely melting down around us.' A flesh-eating ulcer epidemic is spreading rapidly across parts of Australia, and experts have no idea what is causing the massive spike in infections or how to prevent the disease. The Buruli ulcer epidemic in Victoria is now so serious that the Medical Journal of Australia are calling for an urgent scientific response. Numbers of infected victims are on the rise in regional areas of the state, with 275 new reported cases last year and 30 already this year. A flesh-eating ulcer epidemic is spreading rapidly, and experts have no idea what is causing the massive spike in infections or how to prevent the disease (severe Mycobacterium ulcerans lesion on the knee of an 11-year-old boy) The Buruli ulcer epidemic in Victoria, Australia is now so serious the Medical Journal Of Australia is calling for an urgent scientific response (stock image) In the Bayside region confirmed infections have seen a 400 per cent spike in the last four years, News.com.au reported. Also known as as Bairnsdale ulcer or Daintree ulcer, it causes severe destructive lesions of skin and soft tissue which affects all age groups, including young children. It often results in significant morbidity, loss of limbs, long-term disability and cosmetic deformity. Infectious diseases consultant Associate Professor Daniel O'Brien from health care provider Barwon Health authored the report, and said most cases have occurred on the Mornington and Bellarine peninsulas. Native and domestic mammals including possums, dogs, cats and koalas have also developed the disease, according to Professor O'Brien. 'In Australia, cases are frequently reported from the Daintree region (95 cases between 2009 and 2015) and, less commonly, the Capricorn Coast in Queensland, and occasionally from the Northern Territory, New South Wales and Western Australia,' he wrote. 'However, most cases are reported from the temperate south-eastern state of Victoria. The risk of infection appears to be seasonal, with an increased risk in the warmer months.' Epidemic of flesh-eating Buruli ulcer : what we know WHAT IS A BURULI ULCER? * It's a skin infection caused by a bacteria known as Mycobacterium ulcerans * The organism belongs to the family of bacteria that causes tuberculosis and leprosy * It typically causes skin ulcers, otherwise known as Buruli ulcer * It is also known as Bairnsdale or Daintree ulcer * It can affect the bone and can lead to permanent disfigurement and long-term disability WHERE DOES IT OCCUR? * According to WHO, at least 33 countries, including Australia, with tropical, subtropical and temperate climates have reported Buruli ulcer, but mainly in west and central Africa WHO IS AFFECTED? * About 2000 cases are reported worldwide each year * All age groups, including young children, can be infected HOW IS IT TRANSMITTED? * The exact method remains unclear, but the disease is often associated with wetlands, especially stagnant water * Evidence indicates it can not be transmitted from person to person * Insects, such as mosquitoes, have been shown to contain the bacteria and they may play a role in transmission * Use of repellent and mosquito nets have been linked to a reduction in occurrence WHAT DOES IT LOOK LIKE? * The first sign of Buruli ulcer is usually a painless, non-tender blister-like nodule on the skin, often thought to be an insect bite * A lesion may occur anywhere on the body but is most common on the limbs * After one to two months, the nodule may begin to erode, forming a characteristic ulcer HOW IS IT TREATED? * In Australia and Japan, most lesions are detected early and diagnosed as a Category 1 * Treatment involves a combination of antibiotics, depending on the patient * Many sufferers require plastic surgery Source: AAP - Health Victoria, World Health Organisation, Medical Journal of Australia Advertisement Numbers of infected victims are on the rise in regional areas of the state, with 275 new reported cases last year and 30 already this year (stock image) Buruli ulcers are on the rise in Victoria with 30 reported cases so far in 2018 (stock image) Cases and incidence of Mycobacterium ulcerans disease in Victoria from 20042016, with cases so far and projected cases for 2017 (pictured) Professor O'Brien called on governments to inject funding into research to find out why the disease was growing in Victoria. He believes understanding risk factors is key to defining the source and transmission route of the disease. 'We are facing a rapidly worsening epidemic of a severe disease without knowing how to prevent it,' Professor O'Brien wrote. 'We therefore need an urgent response based on robust scientific knowledge acquired by a thorough and exhaustive examination of the environment, local fauna, human behaviour and characteristics, and the interactions between them. 'The time to act is now, and we advocate for local, regional and national governments to urgently commit to funding the research needed to stop Buruli ulcer.' Melbourne youngster Gus Charles started complaining of a lump on his knee not long after a family holiday in Sorrento on the Mornington Peninsula. Around 2000 Buruli ulcer cases per year are reported worldwide, most commonly from the tropical regions of West or Central Africa The family saw two GPs and visited the hospital three times before he got a correct diagnosis when a surgeon sliced into the lump and discovered a huge pus-filled abscess. Gus was unable to play sport and missed a large amount of school in the six months it took to heal. 'The issue is no one in Melbourne could diagnose it,' Gus' mother Sally told The Age. 'Had we got it earlier, it would have made a huge difference. It was horrible. He's a tough kid, but he was rocked by this.' A Department of Health and Human Services spokesman said it was monitoring the disease and that almost $800,000 had been spent on research in Victoria over the past decade. The spokesman said possum faeces from several locations in the Mornington Peninsula were currently being analysed in the hope of isolating the bacterium. Claims made by Syria overnight that its air defences had shot down nine missiles from Israel were incorrect, a pro-Assad commander has said. He said the Syrian government's missiles were launched after a false alarm attributed to a 'joint electronic attack' orchestrated by the US and Israel. The commander, who spoke to Reuters on condition of anonymity, said the attack targeting Syria's radar system has now been dealt with by Russian experts. State TV last night reported that anti-aircraft defences had shot down missiles fired at an air base in the Homs area, and a media unit run by terror group Hezbollah said missiles had also targeted an air base near Damascus. Syrian state-run TV claims that Assad's air defences have confronted a new 'aggression,' shooting down 'nine Israeli missiles' over the area of Homs in the country's centre on Tuesday. Pictured: Local social media have blamed the attack on Israel The Syrian Central Media run by the government said the missiles targeted the Shayrat air base in Homs. It did not elaborate or say who carried out the airstrikes They showed pictures of a missile that was shot in the air above the base only days after a US, British and French attack on Syrian targets in retaliation for a suspected chemical attack on the city of Douma on the outskirts of Damascus. The Syrian Central Media, run by the government, said the missiles targeted the Shayrat air base in Homs. It did not elaborate or say who carried out the airstrikes in the early hours of Tuesday morning. A military source told the Sun that at least nine missiles were shot down and local social media has blamed the attack on Israel. The American, British and French attacks on Syria were retaliation for a suspected chemical weapons attack that they blamed on the Syrian government. Syrian state television did not mention three missiles that were fired at Dumair military airport, northeast of Damascus, that pro-Iranian Hezbollah's media service reported were intercepted by Syrian air defences. Big explosions were heard near Al Shayrat Air base, southeast of the city of Homs, and in eastern Qalamoun near Damascus where two other air bases are located, the Syrian Observatory for Human rights reported. Observatory chief Rami Abdel Rahman said missiles did not hit any of the air bases. Following reports of an Israeli strike, an Israeli military spokesman said: 'I'm not aware of such an incident.' The U.S., U.K. and France ordered strikes against Assad in the Damascus area on Friday (pictured), but the bipartisan bill would not have allowed them without a vote in Congress In Washington, Pentagon spokeswoman Heather Babb said: 'There are no US or coalition operations in that area.' Shayrat air base was targeted by US Tomahawk missiles in April last year in a strike ordered by President Donald Trump in retaliation for a suspected chemical attack on the rebel-held town of Khan Sheikhun in Idlib. According to the Pentagon, US intelligence had established that the base was the launchpad for the alleged chemical attack. Earlier this month, four Iranian military personnel were killed in an airstrike on the Syrian T4 air base in Homs. Syria and its main allies Iran and Russia blamed Israel for that attack. Israel did not confirm or deny mounting the raid. A Democratic super PAC financed a television commercial criticizing U.S. Rep. Claudia Tenney for her support of a health care repeal bill last year. House Majority PAC unveiled the TV ad Tuesday. The ad will air in the Binghamton media market, according to a news release. It is part of a broadcast and digital advertising campaign in New York's 22nd Congressional District. The 30-second ad paid for by House Majority PAC criticizes Tenney, R-New Hartford, for supporting the American Health Care Act. The legislation pushed by congressional Republicans would dismantle the Affordable Care Act, a 2010 health care law commonly referred to as "ObamaCare." The ad highlights one provision of the American Health Care Act that was criticized by AARP at the time. Under the proposal, older people would pay much higher rates than younger people for health insurance coverage. ObamaCare capped how much older people could be charged for coverage, but the GOP plan would ditch that ceiling. Jeb Fain, a spokesman for House Majority PAC, referred to the provision as a "devastating 'age tax'." Two professional surfers have come to blows after a heated argument over a stolen wave spilled on to the streets. Tensions boiled over in a car park at North Point after Australia's Mikey Wright and Brazilian Jesse Mendes warmed up for the Margaret River Pro on Saturday. Wright is said to have committed surfing's cardinal sin, dropping in on his rival and claiming the Brazilian's wave as his own. Australia's Mikey Wright and Brazilian Jesse Mendes were involved in a heated confrontation after the pair warmed up for the Margaret River Pro on Saturday An irate Mendes was filmed moments after the incident, pushing Wright in the chest and whacking him with the nose of his surfboard. Wright appeared to laugh at his opponent as the enraged surfer waved his arms in disgust. After once again hitting the Australian with his surfboard, Mendes walked away and the heated exchange appeared over. But Wright followed his opponent, prompting the Brazilian to dish out another forceful shove to his chest. Mendes was filmed repeatedly shoving his rival in the chest as tensions boiled over in a carpark Wright (right) appeared to laugh at his opponent (left) as the enraged surfer waved his arms in disgust The fiery exchange was caught on camera and posted to Instagram, before it was later removed. The surfers have since spoken and cleared the air, insisting there is no bad-blood between the pair, according to Nine News. The Margaret River Pro was briefly suspended on Tuesday after two shark attacks at nearby beaches. Mendes was filmed pushing Wright in the chest and whacking him with the nose of his surfboard The federal government has issued an apology to parents who were left reeling when they were asked why their primary school-aged children can't be left home alone during an online assessment for Australia's new childcare subsidy. Last week, parents were encouraged to submit information about their incomes, jobs and what kind of childcare they require to Centrelink through their myGov account. But when guardians of children at least 10-years-old logged on, they were asked to explain why their child couldn't be left alone confusing some parents whose children are still in primary school, according to Essential Kids. 'Is there any reason [your child] cannot be left alone?' it read. An apology has been issued to parents who were asked in an online assessment for Australia's new childcare subsidy why their primary school-aged children can't be left alone at home (stock image) Sarah Collis, a mother from Sydney, told the publication she was shocked to see the question because her 11-year-old son 'is a child'. Federal Department of Human Services General Manager Hank Jongen said the question was relevant to those attending high school but said it should not have been included for primary school aged children. He blamed the error on a 'design issue'. 'To be eligible for the child care subsidy, children must be 13 or under and not attending secondary school,' Mr Jongan told Essential Kids. Last week, parents were encouraged to submit information about their incomes, jobs and what kind of childcare they require to Centrelink through their myGov account (stock image) 'As some children may be attending secondary school at 11 years of age, additional questions for families with children aged 10 were included in the online child care subsidy assessment. 'A design issue with the online child care subsidy assessment incorrectly led to a small number of people being asked to provide a statutory declaration for their primary school aged child.' He said the issue has since been resolved. The new childcare subsidy will be implemented on July 2. Advertisement A visualization reveals how much money you would've made if you invested $10,000 in the world's top companies when they launched on the stock market. The chart shows six top companies from where they started out at their initial public offering (IPO) and where they are today. The top six companies include Apple, Google, Microsoft, Amazon, Tencent and Berkshire Hataway. On the first chart, it demonstrates the climb (or fall) each company experienced in its share price over the years including after the 'dot-com bubble' and 2008 financial crisis. A chart shows six top companies and how much money someone would have made if they invested $10,000 at the launch of their IPO's. The companies include Apple, Amazon, Microsoft and Bershire Hathaway Apple, for instance, started on the market in December 1980 with an IPO of $0.51. The technology company has since increased its value by 32,459 percent with its current share price at $166.64. If someone invested $10,000 into Apple in 1980, they would now have a return of $3.2million. Another company where people would see a high return from is Microsoft Corporation. It started out in March 1986 with a market share value of $0.09. Since then, the share price has risen to $90.47. People who invested $10,000 into Microsoft at the beginning would see a return of $10.2million from their stock purchases. A $10,000 investment in Amazon after it's IPO launch in May 1997 would now be worth $5.8million. The second chart shows how these investments compare to Bitcoin. One difference between the companies is Bitcoin's rapid growth since 2010 One investment people would've made the most money on was Bershire Hathaway when it's IPO was launched in March 1980. The Warren Buffet-owned company started at a share price of $290 and is now valued at $298,620. If someone invested $10,000 in the company when it started, they would now be seeing a return of $10.3million. A second chart shows how these top companies compare to a Bitcoin investment, which is the current interest among some investors. One significant difference with Bitcoin than the other companies is how quickly its share price has jumped since it first launched in 2010. Most of the the other companies had a steady increase after the market survived the 'Dot-com bubble'. Theresa May today denied she was led by President Donald Trump into ordering this weekend's missile strikes on Syria. The Prime Minister insisted action to degrade Bashar Assad's chemical weapons capability was in the 'national interest' and justified on humanitarian grounds. In a performance welcomed by MPs on both sides of the Commons, she also flatly denied that she was dancing to the tune of Donald Trump, and dismissed criticism for failing to recall parliament to vote on the action. Pointing to the nerve agent attack in Salisbury last month, Theresa May told MPs it was vital that the use of chemical weapons does not become 'normalised' around the world Mrs May added: 'We have not done this because President Trump asked us to do so. 'We have done it because we believed it was the right thing to do.' Mrs May received support from Tories and a number of Labour MPs for the strikes - although there was clear frustration that she had chosen not to hold a vote before giving the go-ahead. Ken Clarke, Conservative, Rushcliffe, added in support: 'Once President Trump had announced to the world what he was proposing, a widespread debate was taking place everywhere, including many MPs in the media, but no debate in Parliament. In her statement to parliament today during an emergency debate on the Syrian bombing raid, the PM said chemical weapons use could not become normalised 'either within Syria, on the streets of the UK or elsewhere'. Mrs May told MPs: 'Let me be absolutely clear. We have acted because it is in our national interest to do so. 'Let me be absolutely clear. We have acted because it is in our national interest to do so,' May said Some 75 people are said to have died in the chemical attack on the rebel-held town of Douma just over a week ago 'It is in our national interest to prevent the further use of chemical weapons in Syria and to uphold and defend the global consensus that these weapons should not be used. 'For we cannot allow the use of chemical weapons to become normalised either within Syria, on the streets of the UK or elsewhere.' She added: 'The images of this suffering are utterly haunting. 'Innocent families seeking shelter in underground bunkers found dead with foam in their mouths, burns to their eyes and their bodies surrounded by a chlorine-like odour. 'Children gasping for life as chemicals choked their lungs. The fact that such an atrocity can take place in our world today is a stain on our humanity. 'And we are clear about who is responsible.' Trinity Grammar boys and parents have welcomed back Rohan Brown after he was fired for cutting a student's hair on photo day. The sacking of the deputy principal from the Melbourne school was highly criticised and later found to be 'not justified' before he was offered his job back. Trinity Grammar offered Mr Brown a return to the school from Monday April 16 after more than a month of angry protests from the school's community. Trinity Grammar students and parents have welcomed back Rohan Brown (pictured) An emotional Mr Brown stood at the school gates and was greeted by the school's community Mr Brown, nicknamed Brownie, was dismissed from his position at prestigious private boy's school Trinity Grammar in Melbourne's east An emotional Mr Brown stood at the school gates on Tuesday and was met by the school's community who turned out in droves to greet him. He said it was a 'terrific school' and joked with student's about their hair lengths and uniforms as they arrived. 'We've made mistakes and I made one,' he said. 'I accept the apology of the school and I owe the school an apology as well.' The school appointed an independent expert to review its procedures after Mr Brown was sacked for cutting a student's hair (pictured) Students protested (pictured) at the school with some wearing brown armbands in support of sacked deputy principal Rohan Brown after he was dismissed The school launched an independent review last month, which found the dismissal was 'not justified'. The review found while Mr Brown breached the school's code of conduct, and this may have justified dismissal, the school's headmaster Dr Michael Davies chose not to end Mr Brown's contract, but weeks later when the school council dismissed the deputy principal, it did not actually have the authority to do so. The school was then pushed to ask Mr Brown back to the school and was apologetic about the situation. 'We hope Rohan accepts the offer to return to Trinity Grammar as Deputy Headmaster, working with Headmaster Michael Davies as he leads our fine school into the future,' Trinity school council chairman Robert Utter said in a statement. Mr Brown has since been let go from the school over the incident, but the student never wanted it to go that far 'The attention Trinity Grammar has attracted in recent weeks has been regrettable and we hope our school community can come together to move forward with care and respect.' Mr Brown was sacked from Trinity Grammar School on March 8 after a video surfaced of him cutting a teenager's hair to meet requirements on the day of school photos. Students current and former, along with parents, loudly protested the dismissal, including pupils wearing casual dress. Natasha Schofield (pictured) jumped overboard near New Caledonia on Thursday while holidaying on a cruise ship with her husband and three children The Brisbane mother who jumped from a P&O cruise liner had 'life-changing' sessions with a hypnotherapist just weeks before her ill-fated family holiday. Mother-of-three Natasha Schofield, 47, posted a five-star review on the hypnotherapy page on February 23 claiming the service had changed her life - giving her thoughts clarity and making her calmer. 'Your sessions and audio recording have been life-changing for me. I am calmer, I have clarity in my thoughts and I am finding mindfulness so easy now,' she wrote. 'To anyone who is thinking of making an appointment, do it, she is amazing and could just be the answer you are looking for.' The hypnotherapist who saw Mrs Schofield in those sessions told Daily Mail Australia she could not comment on the matter as she is bound by confidentiality. The mother-of-three threw herself overboard at 4pm on Thursday while on the 'holiday of a life-time' with her family. Mrs Schofield posted this five-star review on a hypnotherapist's page just weeks before her ill-fated holiday The 47-year-old (pictured) is presumed dead after jumping over the edge of the P&O ship as her husband tried desperately to catch her by the legs after the 'obviously devoted and loving couple' had dinner together Her husband tried to grab her leg - but she couldn't be saved. Speaking out this week, Mrs Schofield's close friend, Damon Smith, said 'hurting her family is the last thing she would have wanted'. 'Tash would never intentionally hurt her husband or children, her family or friends - everything that has happened on that boat is the complete opposite to what she would ever want,' Mr Smith said. 'She must have arrived in a very dark and desperate place in her mind, very very quickly.' Mr Smith said he heard from Mrs Schofield's husband that her behaviour began to change in the 24 hours leading up to her suicide. '[Her husband] said she didn't seem herself for just over a day but she assured him she was fine,' he said. Mr Smith said the death of his close friend was life-altering. A terrifying photo appears to show Ms Schofield moments before she is swallowed up by the ocean. After receiving advice from marine experts, the ship called off the search for the Brisbane woman on Friday morning 'She has been there for me in various ways, starting from crashing my wedding party to caring for my children a thousand times. I trust her with my life. That generous girl I know only strives to help others and make life happier - she has made me a better person,' he said. Rescue crews were unable to find Mrs Schofield's body after she propelled herself overboard from the upper deck of the P&O owned Pacific Dawn on Thursday. Queensland Police have since confirmed Mrs Schofield took her own life. Queensland Police Inspector Rob Graham told reporters on Sunday Natasha Schofield's fall was 'no accident', and described it as a 'tragic act'. 'Her husband was standing right next to her when she went over,' Mr Graham said. 'Her husband tried to grab on to her leg... but she fell.' Ms Schofield, 47, was travelling with her husband and three children, two daughters and a son aged 12-16 when she jumped. Mr Graham said they did not believe the woman's children were in the area when she plunged 30m into the ocean from the top deck of the ship. Passengers disembarked the Pacific Dawn in Brisbane on Sunday morning (pictured) CCTV footage showed Ms Schofield walking with her husband along the deck before the tragic act took place. A spokesman for P&O told SBS the clips showed 'an obviously devoted and loving couple'. The heartbreaking incident unfolded 300km west of New Caledonia on Thursday, leaving distraught passengers with a grueling two day trip back to Brisbane. Passengers were seen disembarking the vessel on Sunday morning at the Port of Brisbane. A crew member saw the woman jump off the Pacific Dawn when it was 300km west of Pacific island New Caledonia. Pictured: A blue arrow shows where the boat turned around Many appeared tired, with forlorn looks on their faces after the dramatic end to their trip. The Pacific Dawn cruise stopped just before dusk on Thursday, as a desperate search began in the area where the woman had jumped. About 8am on Friday, as huge swell surrounded the boat and the search was called off on the advice of marine experts. Many appeared tired and distraught as they stepped back on to dry land following the tragic end to their holiday Queensland police have opened an investigation into how Ms Schofield plunged to her death (crew members onboard at time of search) The ship's captain had told all passengers a search crew was 'unable to locate our guest' on Friday 'It is with a very heavy heart that I need to let you know that we have been unable to locate our guest,' the ship's captain told his passengers. 'We are still in the area of the incident, and the weather conditions with the swell three to four metres high, as you can see outside... the strong wind made our search extremely challenging. 'As a result we have now made the extremely difficult decision to continue our journey towards Brisbane.' Initial reports had suggested a mammoth wave swept the mother of the ship when it hit the deck, but a P&O spokesman later denied the claim. At least 308 people have gone overboard from cruise ships since 2000. Lifeline: 13 11 14 Beyondblue: 1300 22 4636 Nearby vessels assisted in the search but none were close enough to find the mother-of-three. Pictured: A map showing where the boat (red) stopped on the route it took Neil Bush has revealed that his mother, Barbara Bush, is unable to walk and he has been reading to her while she takes phone calls from worried family members and friends. 'As my mom has become more and more frail she's not able to walk anymore and take her dogs out and that kind of thing we have quality time and we're sharing this quality time with other family members and friends that come by to read,' Neil told KHOU on Monday. The former first lady was reported to be seriously ill on Sunday. She no longer wants to seek medical treatment. Scroll down for video Neil Bush (pictured hugging his mother in 2005) has revealed that his mother, Barbara Bush, is unable to walk and he has been reading to her while she takes phone calls from worried family members and friends Neil (right) says that his mother (left) is still able to enjoy one of her favorite pass times: reading. The 92-year-old wife of President George H. W. Bush is being cared for at her home in Houston, Texas The 92-year-old wife of President George H. W. Bush is being cared for at her home in Houston, Texas. Neil says that she is still able to enjoy one of her favorite pass times: reading. 'When I was a kid, she would read to me and my siblings,' Neil said. 'I've had the privilege probably the last four or five years, ever since dad has been going in and out of the hospital of reading to them.' Barbara has been in and out of the hospital recently and is now in 'failing health', a family spokesman said Sunday. 'Following a recent series of hospitalizations, and after consulting her family and doctors, Mrs Bush, now age 92, has decided not to seek additional medical treatment and will instead focus on comfort care,' the statement said. Neil told KHOU that he has been re-reading his mom's memoir to her and has a new appreciation for the memories she shared. Barbara has been in and out of the hospital recently and is now in 'failing health', a family spokesman said Sunday. Pictured from l-r are former president George H. W. Bush (left), former first lady Barbara Bush, Maria Bush and Neil Bush in 2010 'And to read the story of their amazing life together has been a remarkable blessing to me personally as their son,' Bush said through tears. Neil said it's a 'reminder of just what a fabulous woman she is and what a great life they've lived and what a great life we've experienced and how much they've done for so many others, including her favorite topic, which is literacy'. The former first lady has been battling chronic obstructive pulmonary disease and congestive heart failure, a source close to the family told CNN. She has been treated for decades for Graves' disease, which is a thyroid condition. The Bushes have been married since 1945. They have been married longer than any presidential couple in American history. 'It will not surprise those who know her that Barbara Bush has been a rock in the face of her failing health, worrying not for herself - thanks to her abiding faith - but for others,' the statement read. 'She is surrounded by a family she adores, and appreciates the many kind messages and especially the prayers she is receiving.' Her husband, the 41st US president, is 93 years old. George H.W. is also struggling with an illness, vascular Parkinsonism, that has left him wheelchair bound and struggling to speak. The 92-year-old wife of President George H. W. Bush is now being care for at her Houston, Texas home. They couple are pictured above in May last year Barbara, above in 1988 with her husband, has been battling chronic obstructive pulmonary disease and congestive heart failure Bush (above in 2013) has been in and out of the hospital recently and is now in 'failing health', according to a family spokesman He was hospitalized multiple times last year with bronchitis and pneumonia. BARBARA BUSH'S HEALTH CONDITIONS: Chronic obstructive pulmonary disease Also called COPD, this condition is a group lung diseases that block airflow and make it difficult to breathe. Damage to the lungs from COPD can't be reversed and symptoms include shortness of breath, wheezing, or a chronic cough. Congestive heart failure Heart failure can occur when blood isn't being pumped around the heart as well as it should. While treatment can help, the chronic condition can't be cured. Symptoms include shortness of breath, fatigue and rapid heartbeat. Advertisement The Bushes were both hospitalized in January 2017 and were unable to make President Donald Trump's inauguration. Barbara is the mother of former President George W. Bush and former Florida Governor Jeb Bush. The couple also have four other children, 14 grandchildren and seven great-grandchildren. Bush is one of only two first ladies who was also the mother of a president. Eight years after she and her husband left the White House, Bush stood with her husband as their son George W. was sworn in as president. During her life in the public eye, Barbara was always a fierce advocate of her husband and sons in the political arena. Barbara was the second lady of the US when her husband was Vice President from 1981 to 1989. As first lady - between 1989 to 1993 - Barbara made her main focus literacy and became involved in a number of reading organizations. Barbara and George H.W. Bush married in January 1945 at the First Prsbyterian Church in Rye, New York Bush has been in and out of hospital several times in the past year. The former first couple are pictured above during the Super Bowl in Houston last year She eventually founded the non-profit Barbara Bush Foundation for Family Literacy, which is based in Florida, to help increase literacy levels nationwide. Well-wishers have been flowing in for Bush ever since news of her health deteriorating became known. Nikki Haley, United States Ambassador to the United Nations, tweeted: 'Prayers going up for a woman of great faith, great strength, and an unwavering love of country. Our country is better because of former First Lady Barbara Bush.' Meghan McCain, the daughter of Senator John McCain, tweeted: 'I am sending all my love and prayers to the entire Bush family today - Barbara Bush is a woman of great strength, patriotism and an iconic first lady of our times who has touched and inspired countless lives.' Sean Hannity faced a rebuke by one of his own guests for failing to reveal he was one of Michael Cohen's secret clients during his Monday show. The Fox News host's name was released on the order of U.S. district court Judge Kimba Wood, despite Cohen's claims it would cause the broadcaster 'embarrassment' or 'harm'. Hannity has since admitted he was getting legal advice from Cohen - the president's lawyer who paid Stormy Daniels $135,000 to silence her claims of sex with Donald Trump. But on Monday, during his first TV appearance since the startling revelation, he faced a rare challenge by one of his own guests - Yale University Professor Alan Dershowitz - over why the anchor had failed to mention his ties to Cohen. Yale University Professor Alan Dershowitz (left) challenged Sean Hannity (right, during his Monday show) over why the anchor had failed to mention his ties to Michael Cohen Dershowitz, who had been invited on the show to discuss former FBI head James Comey, interrupted the segment to challenge Hannity on his relationship with the lawyer. 'I do want to say, I really think that you should have disclosed your relationship with Cohen when you talked about him on this show,' he told the host. 'You could have said just you had asked him for advice or whatever. But I think it would have been much much better if you had disclosed that relationship.' Hannity butted in, telling the professor that if he had 'understood the nature' of the relationship, he'd see 'it was minimal.' Hannity (left) happily posed for a picture with Cohen back in 2015 and posted it on Twitter 'You should have said that and that would have been fair to say, that it was minimal,' Dershowitz fired back. 'You were in a tough position because you had to talk about Cohen and you didn't want the fact that you had spoken to him revealed, and you have the right by the way not to reveal that.' 'I have the right to privacy, I do,' Hannity responded. 'It was such a minor relationship, it was to do with real estate, nothing political.' Hannity continued to downplay his relationship with the lawyer throughout the show, saying he'd only ever asked him for legal advice on real estate. 'Here's the truth,' he announced at the very end of his show, 'Michael Cohen never represented me in any legal matter, I never retained his services, I never received an invoice, I never paid Michael Cohen for legal fees. 'I did have occasional, brief conversations with Michel about legal questions I had where I was looking for input and perspective. My discussion with Michael Cohen never rose to any level that I needed to tell anyone that I was asking him questions.' Losing day: Michael Cohen left federal court in Manhattan after losing first his attempt to keep Sean Hannity's name secret and then his application for a temporary restraining order to keep the FBI and federal prosecutors from looking at the evidence seized in raids on him last week Named: Sean Hannity is secretly represented by Michael Cohen. Cohen claimed in legal papers that Hannity wanted his name kept secret but federal Judge Kimba Wood ordered him to disclose it. Hannity posed for a selfie with (left) Michael Avenatti, who is Stormy Daniels's attorney, and Don Lemon, of CNN 'They never involved... a third party, a third group, at all. My questions were exclusively focused on real estate. I hate the stock market, I prefer real estate, Micheal knows real estate. I never asked Michael Cohen to bring this proceeding on my behalf. I have no personal interests in this legal matter, that's all there is nothing more.' The show ended with Hannity bantering with fellow Fox host Laura Ingraham who has faced her own share of controversy, after being subject to a boycott last month for mocking one of the survivors of the mass shooting at a school in Parkland, Florida. She joked that she was glad that Hannity was taking the pressure of her. 'You're like my brother,' Ingraham said. 'But I'm glad for, like a millisecond, the heat's off me and on you.' 'I appreciate that... that's like a sibling,' Hannity responded, laughing. 'I hope the heat's on you, not me. Hannity found an ally in fellow Fox host Tucker Carlson on Monday, who accused liberals of trying to sacrifice attorney-client if it meant hurting Trump. 'Sean Hannity is a talk show host, he's not under investigation by anyone for anything,' said Carlson. 'Who he hires as a lawyer and why is nobody's business. No judge has a right to violate his privacy or anybody else's.' 'The point of the Russia investigation is not to find collusion. There was no collusion. Everybody knows that and everyone's always known that. The point is and was to hurt Trump and anybody close to Trump. By the way, it's working. Now maybe you hate Trump and you're happy about that, but what are the rest of us losing in this process? Attorney-client privilege no longer means anything. Neither does privacy or public reputation or fairness.' Making a case: Assistant U.S. attorney Tom McKay (standing) told Judge Kimba Wood that Hannity should be named. He was watched behind him by Michael Cohen (second from right) and Cohen's personal attorneys Todd Harrison (right) and Stephen Ryan (to Cohen's left) while Stormy Daniels sat much further back (rear) In an earlier statement on Monday, Hannity conceded he 'may have given (Cohen) ten bucks' and that he wanted his name kept secret after a judge ordered Cohen's own attorneys to say who all his legal clients were. But he denied Cohen performed the services he offered to Trump or his other known client, the disgraced Republican fundraiser who he helped pay $1.6 million to the Playboy model lover who aborted their child. At a court hearing watched by Daniels herself, Cohen had tried to keep one of his three clients' names secret, claiming that it would cause the broadcaster 'embarrassment' or 'harm' for their association to be made public. But in Manhattan, U.S. district court Judge Kimba Wood ended that bid and ordered Hannity's name released. 'I understand he doesn't want his name out there. That's not enough under the law,' she said, ordering Cohen's attorney to make it public - prompting laughter in court as he said: 'Sean Hannity.' Shortly after his name was disclosed, Hannity said on his radio show 'we have been friends a long time' and that he 'may have given him ten bucks'. 'Michael never represented me in any matter, I never retained him in the traditional sense,' he said. He added on Twitter that he 'had brief discussions' which he called 'de minimis' - trivial - and 'almost exclusively about real estate'. Witness: Stormy Daniels, with her attorney Michael Avenatti beside her, was in court for the revelation that Michael Cohen's secret client was Sean Hannity Star turn: Stormy Daniels - real name Stephanie Clifford - arrives at federal court in southern Manhattan where Michael Cohen and other lawyers for president Trump are trying to stop prosecutors and the FBI looking at material they seized in a raid last week She's here: Stormy Daniels had two bodyguards to escort her into court in New York At the hearing, Trump's attorney Cohen was trying to stop the FBI looking at the huge amount of evidence seized in the raid because it is subject to attorney-client privilege. Lawyers for Cohen said that as well as material which was covered by attorney-client privilege with Trump, material relating to other clients was seized. Cohen made a lengthy legal submission to Judge Wood before the hearing which revealed that he had just three legal clients in the last year, the main one being Trump. He said the other named client was Elliott Broidy, who was deputy finance chair of the Republican National Committee until he quit last Friday, when it was revealed Cohen had helped arrange a $1.6 million payment to a Playboy Playmate with whom he had a two-year relationship and who he paid to abort their baby. He also disclosed that seven other clients had received non-legal 'strategy advice' from him and did not name them. None of their names were requested by the judge in court Monday. In court, Cohen's attorney Stephen Ryan said that the 'third client' was a 'publicly prominent individual' who had asked that his name not be disclosed because he did not want to be associated with the criminal proceedings. Ryan asked that the name be put under seal with assurances from the prosecutor's office that it not be released. Harrison also suggested that the release of the third client's name 'will affect people's willingness to consult an attorney' a comment which was met by a ripple of laughter in the courtroom. Michael Cohen's clients Donald Trump Allegation: Cohen paid Stormy Daniels $135,000 to silence her claims that she had sex with President Donald Trump. Daniels has said that she had sex once with Trump in 2006 and was paid to keep quiet about it. A former Playboy model, Karen McDougal, has described having a 10-month affair with Trump, which the White House has said Trump denies. McDougal said her lawyer at the time secretly negotiated with Cohen on a deal with American Media Inc, publisher of the National Enquirer, which paid her $150,000 in 2016 to keep quiet. Elliott Broidy Broidy is former deputy finance chair of the Republican National Committee Cohen helped arrange a $1.6 million payment to an unidentified Playboy Playmate with whom he had a two-year relationship and who he paid to abort their baby. Broidy acknowledged on Friday that he had a relationship with a Playboy Playmate and offered to help her financially after she told him she was pregnant. 'She alone decided that she did not want to continue with the pregnancy and I offered to help her financially during this difficult period. We have not spoken since that time,' Broidy said in the statement. Broidy said Cohen reached out to him after being contacted by the woman's attorney, Keith Davidson. Broidy said he retained Cohen because Cohen had a prior relationship with Davidson. Sean Hannity Hannity says that he had 'had brief discussions with him about legal questions about which I wanted his input and perspective'. 'Michael Cohen has never represented me in any matter. I never retained him, received an invoice, or paid legal fees... to be absolutely clear they never involved any matter between me and a third party.' Advertisement Assistant U.S. attorney Thomas McKay complained about the lack of names saying 'Mr Cohen has more attorneys than he has clients' and saying that the clients could not 'hide behind over-broad claims of privilege'. 'The only thing that makes this case unusual is one of his [Cohen's] clients is the President,' McKay said. 'In order for the public to see that fairness is upheld, Trump and Cohen should not be given any special treatment.' A lawyer for media outlets including CNN, the New York Times and the Associated Press also told the judge that there was 'intense public interest' in the name emerging. Daniels' attorney Michael Avenatti was in court and conferred with other lawyers but did not address the judge. Judge Wood then told Cohen's attorney Stephen Ryan that the name had to emerge, prompting him to say 'Sean Hannity.' Cohen did not move his head or show any apparent emotion. In a statement issued via Fox News, Hannity did not address why he had wanted his name kept secret in his statement which said: 'Michael Cohen has never represented me in any matter. I never retained him, received an invoice, or paid legal fees. 'I have occasionally had brief discussions with him about legal questions about which I wanted his input and perspective. I assumed those conversations were confidential, but to be absolutely clear they never involved any matter between me and a third party.' On his radio show, which was broadcasting at the same time as the hearing, Hannity added: 'I have eight attorneys that I use for varying things in my life, and in this particular case I like to have people I can run questions by.' During his live radio show, he seemed flustered that he was getting a steady stream of phone and email messages about it. 'I don't think this is such a big deal,' he said. 'Why do you think the media is going crazy on this?' The dramatic twist came in a court hearing which revolves around whether the material is subject to attorney-client privilege and whether Cohen - and Trump - can stop completely or restrict the FBI and federal prosecutors from looking at it. Cohen and Trump both lost the first round when the judge refused to issue a temporary restraining order stopping the federal authorities from looking at the material. Todd Harrison, who is also representing Cohen, described the FBI search and seizure of materials from Cohen as an 'unprecedented raid on the office and home of the personal attorney of a sitting president of the United States'. Harrison said he was 'not accusing the government of anything improper' but said that the FBI had swept up a 'ton of documents' in the Cohen raid that were not related to their warrant. He also called it an 'extraordinary case', saying it was subject to 'partisan attacks' and also attacked Trump's personal life. The defense counsel told the judge that 'it was important to show the public we are doing this fairly'. And Trump's new attorney, Joanna Hendon, argued that her client should be allowed to maintain his attorney-client privilege over communications with Cohen, and that the president himself should be afforded the opportunity to review those documents. 'The client of the lawyer is best placed to protect his privilege,' Hendon said, referring to Trump. She said that the U.S. Attorney wanting permission to review these documents would 'usurp' Trump of his rights and was 'government overreach'. But McKay said: 'Just because he [Cohen] has a powerful client, doesn't mean he is entitled to special treatment.' He said that the 'filter team' that they have suggested be established to protect the attorney-client privilege 'will conduct itself with integrity'. And he hit back at the president himself, telling the judge that no one from the U.S. Attorney's Office had made comment about the trial publicly unlike the 'inflammatory statements' made by President Trump and Cohen. Escort: Stormy Daniels had assistance not just from her attorney Michael Avenatti but from private security guards Dramatic day: Stormy Daniels was in court throughout the hearing as Sean Hannity's name was disclosed as one of Michael Cohen's three 'clients' - although the Fox News host claimed he had not hired Cohen 'in the traditional sense' Speaking out: Michael Avenatti did not address Judge Kimba Wood but did speak to reporters with his client Stormy Daniels after the hearing No escaping Trump: Stormy Daniels was escorted by her security detail past a member of the public wearing a Trump hat as she left court Huge interest: Stormy Daniels - real name Stephanie Clifford - was helped from the hearing to her waiting car by private security guards Departure: Michael Avenatti attracted a crowd as he left the federal court after speaking to the media Interest: Stormy Daniels's presence in court was the subject of intense interest On her way: Stormy Daniels leaves the federal courthouse in Manhattan Legal teams: Todd Harrison is representing Michael Cohen while Joanna Hendon is representing Donald Trump What are they doing here? Carter Page, the former Trump campaign adviser who has been investigated by the CIA over links to Russia was at the federal court. So too was disgraced New York governor Elliot Spitzer - who himself had been a secret client, in his case of a prostitution ring Judge Wood declined to give Trump and Cohen the restraining order they wanted which would have stopped the FBI and federal prosecutors processing what they found. 'You've miscited the law,' she told Cohen's attorneys. Currently all the material is with the 'taint team', a group of prosecutors not involved in the case who will review the seized evidence to see what is subject to attorney client privilege and what can be looked at by investigators. The volume of evidence is so large so far that it has still to be uploaded and the 'taint team' have not started their work, the court heard. The entire hearing was watched by Daniels. The porn star was sitting in the public benches in the 21st floor courtroom among dozens of reporters. She had arrived with Avenatti just before 2pm and sat at the back. After the hearing she and Avenatti appeared briefly in front of reporters. 'My attorney and I are committed to making sure that everyone finds out the truth and the facts of what happened and I give my word that we will not rest until that happens,' she said. 'For years, Mr Cohen has acted like he is above the law. He has considered himself and openly referred to himself as Mr Trump's fixer. 'He has played by a different set of rules or should we say no rules at all. He has never thought that the little man, or especially women, and even more women like me mattered. That ends now.' Trump faced reports over the weekend that he and those close to him are more worried by the seizure of Cohen's files than by any other development in the Muller probe. Cohen's lawyers deployed Trump's claims that the FBI and Department of Justice are biased against him to bolster their own case, writing that 'there is a growing public debate about whether criminal and congressional investigations by the government are being undertaken impartially, free of any political bias or partisan motivation'. Trump now has another attorney representing him in court, Joanna Hendon, who in papers submitted before the hearing argued that Trump or his legal team should be able to review all the seized material and remove privileged elements of it before the FBI can use it. She wrote in her own submission that the federal government could not be trusted to be fair to the president. Watching the proceedings was Daniels, whose attendance was announced by her attorney Michael Avenatti and who arrived escorted by two security guards to be greeted by a media scrum. Avenatti had told CNN's Jake Tapper on Sunday: 'I think Monday afternoon could prove to be very interesting.' When asked whether Daniels' attendance at the hearing is intended to provoke or 'get into the head' of Cohen, Avenatti said: 'No, not at all. It's intended to send the message that this is a very, very serious matter for her, and she wants to make sure that the American people know that she's behind efforts to bring to light as much information and documents as possible. She also wants to ensure that she is heard and that she is represented at the hearing.' He added: 'It has nothing to do with getting in his head at all.' Client number two: Cohen in court papers said that Elliott Broidy, who cheated on his wife Robin with a Playboy model and paid the Playmate $1.6 million to abort their baby, was represented by him Dramatic arrival: Former porn star Storm Daniels was dressed demurely for the court hearing in Manhattan Legal assistance: Stormy Daniels was accompanied by Michael Avenatti, her high-profile attorney Scrum: There was huge media interest in Stormy Daniels' arrival at court. The hearing itself is not televised, in line with virtually all federal cases Police interest: Uniformed US Marshals were stationed outside the court as Stormy Daniels arrived Take them off: Stormy Daniels removed her shoes as she passed through security screening at the federal court in Manhattan Decision time: Federal judge Kimba Wood, a Reagan appointee, is hearing the case in which Trump and his personal attorney are both trying to block federal authorities looking at material seized from Michael Cohen. Trump is now represented by a new attorney. Joanna Hendon TRUMP'S NEW LAWYER Trump's new attorney is a hard-charging Yale-educated former prosecutor. Joanna Hendon, 52, was educated first at the University of British Columbia in Vancouver and then at Yale Law School, graduating in 1991. From 1995 to 2001 she was an assistant district attorney in Manhattan specializing in white collar crime. Then she went into private practice and is now a partner at Spear & Imes. She has defended alleged white collar criminals and also been involved in civil litigation over alleged complex fraud. Hendon is married to Harvard-educated lawyer Reynolds Holding, 62, and the couple live on the Upper East Side of Manhattan. She was a registered Republican until election day 2016, when she changed her registration to Democrat - giving some suggestion that she might not be a Trump supporter. Advertisement The central issue in the case is whether Cohen and Trump have attorney-client privilege on all the material seized and can stop it being examined by the FBI. Trump's attorney Hendon has suggested that he and his legal team could pick through the material and decide what was 'responsive' to the FBI and not covered by privilege. Cohen's lawyers have suggested that a judge, known as a 'special master' would examine all the material and decide what is not covered by privilege. Prosecutors who seek to continue their review of seized contents have argued that Cohen barely practiced law so most of the documents aren't off limits. A brief they filed in response to Cohen's court action revealed that he'd been under investigation for months and that the FBI had searched multiple email accounts. The prosecutors' filing said none of those emails was exchanged with Trump. Trump, who in the last month has escalated his attacks on Robert Mueller's Russia investigation, said it was a 'disgrace' that the FBI 'broke into' his lawyer's office. He called Mueller's investigation 'an attack on our country.' The prosecutors' brief in this case, brought by Cohen to stop the review of seized documents, stated that the criminal probe that led FBI agents to raid Cohen's offices is focused on his 'personal business dealings.' Prosecutors blacked out a section in the document describing what crime they believe Trump attorney Michael Cohen has committed. People familiar with the federal investigation that provided the factual basis for the search warrant which resulted in the raid on Cohen told The Associated Press that part of what the search warrant sought to uncover included information on payments made to Daniels. Cohen previously admitted paying Daniels $130,000, which she said was in exchange for an agreement not to discuss an affair she claims to have had with the president; Daniels is seen here with Donald Trump, before he was elected president Judge hearing Michael Cohen's case once trained to be a Playboy Bunny US Federal Judge Kimba Wood is presiding over Michael Cohen's case, but long before passing the bar, Wood trained to be a bunny at the London Playboy Club. While strapped for cash as she studied for her Master's degree at the London School of Economics in 1966, she trained at the Playboy club for five days. A friend later said that Wood's brief stint at a bunny was just 'a way to earn money'. 'She was doing it for a joke and then decided it was stupid,' the friend said. After finishing her degree at LSE, Wood received her degree from Harvard Law School in 1969, where there were fewer than 20 women in her class. In 1987, President Ronald Reagan nominated Wood for a seat on the US District Court for the Southern District of New York. President Bill Clinton later considered nominating her for US Attorney General in 1993, but she stepped out of the race after it was revealed that she had hired an illegal immigrant as a nanny. Since then, Wood has presided over a number of cases, including the US case against ten Russians involved in the 'Illegals Program', a network of Russian sleeper agents under non-official cover. She also presided over Arista Records LLC v Lime Group LLC, which saw the music downloading site LimeWire be forcibly shut down. Wood has been married to Wall Street financier Frank E Richardson III since 1999 her third marriage since 1970. In Richardson's 1995 divorce battle with his socialite wife Nancy, Wood had been named as 'the other woman'. Advertisement Cohen previously admitted paying Daniels $130,000, which she said was payment in exchange for an agreement not to discuss an affair she claims to have had with the president. When news first broke that it was suspected Daniels and Trump had an affair around the time of the bitrh of his youngst son Barron, Daniels denied the sexual relationship. However, after Cohen spoke about paying Daniels $130,000, she claimed the agreement had been breached, setting her free to tell her story about her alleged physical encounters with the president. Trump has denied that he had an affair with Daniels, and also claims she made that he had her threatened to remain quiet about their alleged romantic relationship. But in an interview with Anderson Cooper for CBS's 60 Minutes that aired on March 25, Daniels recounted the experience. She said in the interview that she had one encounter of consensual sex with the future president. 'He knows I'm telling the truth,' she said. Hendon, an attorney for the president, also appeared on Friday and told Judge Wood that Trump has 'an acute interest in this matter.' The hearing on Cohen's petition asking the court seeking to block prosecutor's the review of the seized information was first announced late on Thursday. His team has asked to review the documents and devices first, before prosecutors may examine them, to protect information covered under attorney-client privilege and specify items they believe aren't relevant to the investigation. Though the state funding is expected to come through, Crabtree said the contracts with the DEC have not yet been approved. Once that happens, the grant funding will flow in over a three-year period. The first phase of the project will include modeling of the watershed to see what the current land use is, and what would happen to Owasco Lake's water quality should the land use change. The models will help the conservancy identify what landowners to reach out to for either acquiring property or suggesting easements to protect what's already there. Jim Howe, executive director of New York's central and western chapter, said the conservancy also received funding from the Fred L. Emerson Foundation to hire a staff person to work in both Owasco and Skaneateles lake watersheds. He hopes to have that person on board this summer to not only take on the land protection aspect, but expand the conservancy's scope of work to look at septic systems, agriculture, roadside ditches and other sources of pollution. Cayuga County Environmental Health Director Eileen O'Connor invited the conservancy to the watershed council meetings in the future to keep the group apprised. Crabtree agreed, adding that he needed local input for the projects and did not want to create another stakeholder group. Besides the Nature Conservancy, the Finger Lakes Land Trust is working on land protection around Owasco Lake. It recently acquired 74 acres on Sam Adams Lane in Niles with plans to restore wetlands for filtering runoff into the lake. Staff writer Gwendolyn Craig can be reached at (315) 282-2237 or gwendolyn.craig@lee.net. Follow her on Twitter @gwendolynnn1. Love 2 Funny 2 Wow 2 Sad 0 Angry 0 Get local news delivered to your inbox! Subscribe to our Daily Headlines newsletter. Sign up! * I understand and agree that registration on or use of this site constitutes agreement to its user agreement and privacy policy. A man has walked free from jail after serving just over a year for torturing his former partner by pouring fuel on her and threatening to light her on fire. Maroochydore man Brett Ian Turner, 34, also lifted a table and threatened to throw it at the woman's head before pouring a jerry can of fuel over her. Turner then grabbed a lighter and repeatedly struck it near her face. The lighter never sparked with a flame. Turner spent 440 days in prison for the January 31, 2017 assault at the woman's Pacific Paradise home on Queensland's Sunshine Coast. Maroochydore man Brett Ian Turner, 34, also lifted a table and threatened to throw it at the woman's head before pouring a jerry can of fuel over her The 34-year-old pleaded guilty to one count of torture and one count of common assault when he appeared at maroochydore District Court on Monday. The assault reportedly happened when the pair got into a fight over their finances, the Sunshine Coast Daily reported. Turner, who was in a five-year relationship with the woman, was living in a detached shed at the back of the house at the time. Brett Ian Turner, 34, poured fuel out of a jerry can and threatened to light his ex-partner on fire The woman, who shared two children with her attacker, phoned Triple Zero when she managed to escape the grips of Turner. When Queensland Police officers arrived at the home, they reported smelling petrol inside the home and on the female victim. With 440 days already served in custody, Turner was released on Monday. A young, successful lawyer has been accused of siphoning almost $10million from two companies to feed his gambling addiction. Brody Clarke used his role at Sydney law firm Atanaskovic Hartnell to allegedly transfer large chunks of money into his personal account from billionaire Bruce Gordon's companies Birketu and WIN Corporation, the NSW Supreme Court heard last week. The 35-year-old is now being sued by both companies, who are demanding their money back, according to the Sydney Morning Herald. Brody Clarke (pictured, a lawyer who used to work for at Sydney law firm Atanaskovic Hartnell, has been accused of siphoning almost $10million from two companies to feed his gambling addiction Mr Clarke, who reported himself to police, is also facing eight charges of obtaining financial advantage by deception for the amount of $9.75million. The lawyer is accused of depositing $570,500 from Birketu into his personal Westpac account in June 2016 and allegedly moving $360,000 to the same account in August from the Win Corporation, the publication reported. But it was the 35-year-old's alleged transfer in September 16, 2016, that has raised eyebrows. Mr Clarke's bank statements show he had just $18 left in his account after spending $10 on a meal at McDonald's. By the end of the day, he had a balance of more than $160,000, following an alleged transfer from the WIN Corporation. Soon after, the lawyer, who lived in an apartment in Woolloomooloo, allegedly paid $159,000 to Sportsbet, the publication reported. In August and September last year, Mr Clarke allegedly shifted $7 million from Birketu into his account. The 35-year-old (pictured) allegedly used his role to transfer large chunks of money into his personal account from billionaire Bruce Gordon's companies Birketu and WIN Corporation, the NSW Supreme Court heard last week The 35-year-old is now being sued by both companies, who are demanding their money back. Mr Clarke, who reported himself top police, is also facing eight charges of obtaining financial advantage by deception for the amount of $9.75million (stock image) The two companies have claimed the 35-year-old told said the money was necessary for expenditures like land tax, according to the Sydney Morning Herald. Mr Clarke was fired from the boutique law firm on September 28 after he told them that he had approached the NSW fraud squad. There is no suggestion of any wrongdoing by Atanaskovic Hartnell. The day after, the Supreme Court froze Mr Clarke's account but allowed him to withdraw $100 a day. The payments were stopped in December, prompting Mr Clarke to ask the Supreme Court on Friday to allow him access once again so he can pay for his living expenses. Justice Peter Garling reserved his judgement, according to the publication. A hunt has been launched for a cunning thief behind a five-month spree of robberies across NSW. Police have released images from CCTV footage of the man they believe can help with investigations following the first incident at Parramatta on Friday 3 November last year. Eleven other offences were committed at various locations including Bondi, Chatswood, Hurstville, Burwood, Campbelltown, Parramatta and Sydney's CBD since then. Scroll down for video Police are hunting a man (pictured) they would like to speak to in relation to a number of robberies across Sydney The first incident he is accused of took place at Parramatta in November (pictured is the man during an incident at Hurstville on February 16 February) CCTV footage was obtained from an incident at Hurstville on 16 February 2018 (pictured is the man during an incident at Hurstville on February 16 February) The most recent incident took place on Saturday 13 April at Richmond. During the incidents the man steals goods after diverting the attention of store staff and on other occasions he makes off with goods after being left unattended. CCTV footage was obtained from the incident at Hurstville on 16 February 2018. During these incidents the man steals goods after diverting the attention of staff (pictured is the man during an incident at Hurstville on February 16 February) Campbelltown City Police Area Command officers have launched an investigation into the spate of robberies and have identified a man who they will be able to assist with their inquiries. He is of Caucasian appearance, about 40-years-old with a thin build, dark balding hair and facial stubble. In the CCTV footage taken from an incident at Hurstville on February 16 February he is seen wearing a grey t-shirt, black jeans and blue shoes. North and South Korea are preparing to officially end the war when their two leaders - Dictator Kim Jong-Un and President Moon Jae-in - meet next week. The two Koreas are technically still at war as the 1950-53 Korean conflict ended with a truce, not a peace treaty. South Korean media reports that the two sides had been discussing plans for a permanent end to the war at the North-South summit, citing an unidentified Seoul official. Making friends: Kim Jong-Un and his wife Ri Sol-Ju pose with the cast after enjoying the ballet choreodrama 'Red Women Company' performed by a Chinese art troupe at the East Pyongyang Grand Theatre in Pyongyang, North Korea, in celebration of Day of the Sun Kim is scheduled to make history when he meets President Moon at a summit just inside South Korean territory on April 27. He will be the first North Korean leader to step on South Korean soil since the 1950s. The two Koreas may also discuss pulling some of their forces away from the heavily fortified demilitarized zone separating them, the newspaper said. Kim is also due to meet U.S. President Donald Trump in May or early June - if the U.S. leader is to be believed. However, White House officials are still skeptical of the anti-American dictator's sudden diplomatic efforts. All cheers: Kim, seen with wife Ri and Song Tao, head of the International Department of Communist Party of China (CPC) Central Committee, is said to be ready for a Korean peace Kim will become the first North Korean leader to set foot on South Korean soil since the 1950s when he meets President Moon at a summit just inside South Korean territory on April 27 Show must go Jong: Kim, his wife, and Mr Song watch the ballet performance on honour of the birthday of Kim's grandfather and founder of North Korea Kim Il-Sung Last week, Secretary of State nominee CIA Director Mike Pompeo said North Korea should not expect rewards from talks until it takes irreversible steps to give up its nuclear weapons. Kim meanwhile, spent the weekend celebrating 'The Day of the Sun', the birthday of his grandfather Kim Il Sung, by watching a performance by a Chinese ballet troupe along with wife Ri Sol-Ju. Unlike previous years, the annual celebrations did not include the military parades displaying ballistic missiles often associated with the dictatorship, and the festivities had a reconciliatory overtone as shown by the invitation of a Chinese dance group. Photos released by state media showed no weapons but instead a weekend of performances, fireworks, dancing and sports. Kim and his wife were seen applauding, posing with dancers, and laughing with the head of the Chinese Communist Party's international liaison department, Song Tao. Kim, in a meeting with Song on Sunday, said he was personally meeting the visiting performers out of respect for Chinese President Xi Jinping and said he wanted to launch a 'fresh phase of development' of relations between their countries. North Koreas ties with China, its sole major ally, had become strained over the past couple of years over the Norths contentious missile and nuclear tests, which China disapproves of. But in late March, Kim made a visit to Beijing, his first known journey abroad since he took power in 2011. Australia's top public servants have admitted high immigration is pushing up house prices and making traffic congestion worse. However, the Canberra bureaucrats concede population growth is needed to increase tax revenue. Treasury and the Department of Home Affairs have released a 56-page report, 'Population growth and immigration over time' which expressed concern about Sydney and Melbourne coping with the pressure of housing more people. Australia's top public servants have admitted high immigration is pushing up house prices and making traffic congestion worse 'A growing population heightens existing pressure on infrastructure, housing, transport networks and our environmentespecially in major cities,' it said. 'Australia must continue to explore and address these issues.' The report, released on Tuesday, also blamed population growth for putting pressure on roads and sewage systems. 'Without continuing action to find innovative solutions, high rates of growth may also intensify issues such as congestion and excessive waste production,' it said. Treasury and the Department of Home Affairs have released a report, which expresses concern about Sydney and Melbourne copping the pressure of housing more people However, the federal departments argued skilled immigrants were needed so more people of working age could be taxed as the population aged. 'This is because migrants are predominantly of working age,' it said. 'This makes them more likely to contribute to tax revenue and less likely to claim social services.' While immigrants were regarded as less likely to be on government welfare, they were also more likely to be jobless, with 11 per cent of work-age immigrants earning no income compared with 7 per cent of equivalent Australians. However, the federal departments argued skilled immigrants were needed so more people of working age could be taxed as the population aged Australia accepts 190,000 permanent immigrants a year, which is substantially above the 20th century average of 70,000 per annum. The report noted Australia's 1.6 per cent population growth pace was significantly higher than the OECD average but below the level of the 1960s, when it expanded by 2 per cent a year. Sydney's population is expected to hit 7.4 million by 2046, having added one million people since 2000 now making the city home to five million people. Melbourne's population is forecast to climb to 7.3 million from 4.7 million. The Starbucks manager who called the police on two black customers for trespassing has spoken out, claiming that loitering has been an ongoing issue in the store. The employee, named only as Holly, has since 'mutually parted ways' with the Philadelphia store after video went viral of the two men being arrested as they waited for their friend to arrive at the coffee shop. The incident has sparked sit-ins and protests at the store as many claim the black men were racially profiled by the manager. On Monday, interfaith clergy leaders staged a sit-in at the Center City Starbucks to demand action. Holly, who managed the 18th and Spruce Street location for a year before leaving the company, told AppleNews.com on Saturday that she'd had problems with loiterers and one had even chased her round the shop after she asked them to leave. The Philadelphia Starbucks manager who called 911 on two black men last week (pictured above being arrested) no longer works with the company, a spokesperson revealed on Monday Police officers monitor activity outside as protesters demonstrate inside the Starbucks store where the two men were arrested last Thursday The manager blamed what she claimed was a corporate policy at City Center Philadelphia locations which prohibits excessive loitering in their stores. She told the news outlet that management has the discretion to ensure the policy is enforced - even if that means calling in the cops. She also revealed that she doesn't even tell the customers when she's calling the police. Holly reportedly refused to say whether it was normal practice for managers or employees to call the police when they found customers loitering. A representative for Starbucks said on Monday that Holly had left the coffee chain 'while there is an internal review pending.' The two men, who had not made a purchase, were handcuffed and arrested for trespassing on Thursday after the Philadelphia store manager called 911 and reported them for refusing to leave. Rev. Gregory Holston, 56, (2nd R) and other Interfaith clergy leaders stage a sit-in at the Center City Starbucks Interfaith clergy leaders stage a sit-in at the Center City Starbucks, where two black men were arrested, in Philadelphia Members of POWER Interfaith movement stage a sit-in inside Starbucks in protest over the incident A protester holds up a sign which reads 'White people, we got work 2 do' on Monday Police later released the two men and they were not charged. Starbucks CEO Kevin Johnson arrived in Philadelphia this weekend after video of the arrests gained traction online and activists started protesting at the store. Johnson met with the two men on Monday to apologize to them face-to-face. He added that Starbucks wanted to add training for store managers on 'unconscious bias' after calling the incident 'reprehensible'. 'I'd like to have a dialogue with them and the opportunity to listen to them with compassion and empathy through the experience they went through,' he said. Johnson said it was 'completely inappropriate to engage the police'. The incident is a major blow to Starbucks' image, since the company has promoted its coffee shops as neighborhood hangouts where anyone is welcome. Starbucks CEO Kevin Johnson, who is currently in Philadelphia, said on Monday that he hoped to meet with the two men in the next couple of days and apologize to them face-to-face After footage of the arrests spread online, the hashtag #BoycottStarbucks trended on Twitter. About two dozen protesters took over the Philadelphia shop on Monday, chanting slogans like, 'A whole lot of racism, a whole lot of crap, Starbucks coffee is anti-black.' A Starbucks regional vice president who attempted to talk to the protesters was shouted down. Officials have said police officers were told the men had asked to use the store's restroom but were denied because they hadn't bought anything and they refused to leave. Video shows several police talking quietly with two black men seated at a table. After a few minutes, officers handcuff the men and lead them outside as other customers say they weren't doing anything wrong. A white man identified as real estate developer Andrew Yaffe arrives and tells the officers the two men were waiting for him. An officer says the men were not complying and were being arrested for trespassing. Minister Rodney Muhammad, 65, speaks on the phone after attending a protest with fellow Interfaith clergy leaders Protestors assemble outside the Center City Starbucks, where two black men were arrested, in Philadelphia Rev. Gregory Holston, 56, and other interfaith clergy leaders march from the Center City Starbucks 'Why would they be asked to leave?' Yaffe says. 'Does anybody else think this is ridiculous? It's absolute discrimination.' A woman can be heard in the video saying 'they didn't do anything, I saw the entire thing.' Police haven't released the names of the men, who were later released after the district attorney's office said there was lack of evidence that a crime had been committed. Police Commissioner Richard Ross, who is black, defended the arrests in a video statement on Saturday. Ross said the officers 'did absolutely nothing wrong' and were professional in their conduct toward the individuals but 'got the opposite back.' Johnson said the company will ensure that employee guidelines on when the police should be called will be clarified. A Starbucks regional vice president, Camille Hymes, (center) who attempted to talk to the protesters was shouted down on Sunday Local Black Lives Matter activist Asa Khalif, left, stands inside the Starbucks on Sunday demanding that the manager be fired Asked if the incident was a case of racism, Johnson said: 'Starbucks was built around the concept of a third place where we create a warm and welcoming environment for all customers. What I do know is that did not happen in this instance. And that is what we're focused on.' Seattle-based Starbucks had posted a statement on Twitter over the weekend about the arrests, followed by an apology from Johnson. 'Every company makes mistakes, but great companies are the ones that learn from those mistakes and take appropriate action,' Johnson said Monday. 'And that's exactly what I intend to do. We're reviewing all aspects of this.' Criminal defense attorney Lauren Wimmer, who is representing the two men, said that race clearly played a role in the incident. 'I would love to hear the 911 call on this case,' Wimmer told NBC Nightly News on Sunday. 'Can you imagine the 911 call if it was 'There's two white women sitting here. One of them asked to used the bathroom and she didn't order anything, come quick!',' she said. Wimmer declined to identify the two men. 'Two young black men, who were simply waiting to be joined by a friend, were blatantly discriminated against based on their race. Not only is this inexcusable, it's illegal,' Wimmer said in a statement. A university student who slapped a lecturer when he was refused extra marks said the assault came out of desperation after failing the unit four times. Ali Mohammad, an engineering student at Griffith University on the Gold Coast, pleaded guilty to assaulting the lecturer on March 7. In the Southport Magistrates Court on Tuesday, Mohammad admitted his motivation was a desire to pass the subject. When lecturer Dr Jeung-Hwan Doh refused to bump up his grade, the violent outburst began, the Gold Coast Bulletin reports. Dr Jeung-Hwan Doh (pictured) was the victim of an assault when Ali Mohammad, a student he was trying to help, slapped him after he refused to raise's grade In Southport Magistrates Court, Mohammad admitted his motivation for the crime was a desire to pass the subject - which he had failed four times before The court was told Mohammed, from Kuwait, yelled at Dr Doh and slapped him in the face with an open hand. The student then hit Dr Doh in the head with an exam paper. Security were called but by that time Mohammed had fled the university on foot. The aspiring civil engineer was sentenced to 40 hours of community service for the offence. He represented himself and pleaded guilty to one count of assault and eventually admitted the incident was a 'mistake'. 'I thought he was trying to do something bad with me,' Mohammad said. 'I was wrong and he was trying to teach me.' Mohammed yelled at the academic and slapped him in the face with an open hand and hit him in the head with an exam paper at Griffith University (pictured) Almost one hundred years ago to the day, Michael Ward was injured in the trenches of France when shrapnel pierced his left knee during a major German offensive. A member of the 28th battalion, known to his mates as Mick, he was sent to England for treatment before returning to Victoria once the war ended. The 28th battalion was involved in a number of battles throughout WWI including the Battle of Pozieres in France and the infamous Battle of Amiens in the closing months of the war. In 2016 a small suitcase containing his personal effects was purchased at auction by Museums Victoria, who are now trying to learn more about him. In 2016 a small suitcase containing the personal effects of WWI soldier Michael Ward was purchased at auction by Museums Victoria, who are now trying to learn more about him Among the more peculiar items inside the case are a small white stone and a little bottle of soil which the museum plans on testing, as well as a German epaulette and a leather-bound diary. 'We've been in the trenches for eight days and I haven't had my clothes off ... for eight days and eight nights,' an entry reads, marked with a bloodied thumbprint. There were also items belonging to other people in the case, including a wallet inscribed with the name of a soldier killed in action in October 1917, and letters from a person named Barney to a girl, Eva. It was likely they were the possessions of fallen soldiers, probably Mick's friends, researcher Deborah Tout-Smith said on Tuesday. Among the more peculiar items inside the case are a small white stone and a little bottle of soil which the museum plans on testing, as well as a German epaulette and a leather-bound diary 'It really brings home that every soldier, even if they had survived the war, had seen some really awful things and have been through really challenging experiences. 'The fact Mick would save this material for the rest of his life says something about him dealing with it ... maybe never coming to terms with it, and that's why in the 1930's we think he shut the case, tucked it away and never opened it again.' People are invited to bring their own wartime items to the museum on Saturday and Sunday, with conservation experts from Melbourne University on hand to share stories and give advice on cleaning and care. Ms Tout-Smith is hoping to meet a descendant of Mick's at the event. The 28th Battalion was a distinguished unit in WWI having been awarded battle honours in 17 campaigns across the length of the war 'Any family member that might be able to tell us what sort of person Mick was,' she said. The 28th Battalion was a distinguished unit in WWI having been awarded battle honours in 17 campaigns across the length of the war. Some of those honours were for the battalion's role in Gallipoli , Flanders and Amiens. The battalion was raised in Western Australia in August of 1915, after the outbreak of war, as part of the battalion Michael Ward would have been sent to Egypt to train prior to being sent to the front. The battalion's first taste of combat came at Gallipoli when they reinforced Australian and New Zealand soldiers holding the line. They also participated in one of the most brutal campaigns in the entire war in the Somme Valley, which resulted in 57,000 casualties on the British side. A week after the FBI raided the home and office of Michael Cohen, one of Donald Trump's attorneys, Washington is gripped with a stunning question: Will he flip? For a president whose personal life has been ruled for decades by loyalty, the notion of Cohen striking a deal with prosecutors seems remote: He's a self-described legal fixer who helped make bad stories go away and was a vice president in Trump's real estate empire. Cohen tweeted on April 8 that he 'will always protect our @POTUS,' quoting novelist Joyce Maynard's semi-famous pledge that '[a] person who deserves my loyalty receives it.' But his life was turned upside down 24 hours later, and Cohen hasn't promised since then that his fierce fidelity to his former boss at the Trump Organization will hold even in the face of potential criminal charges. Those would come from the U.S. Attorney for the Southern District of New York, which took over the matter from the Justice Department. That means even if Special Counsel Robert Mueller's probe were to end, prosecutors could keep Cohen's nightmare going. Donald Trump attorney Michael Cohen's legal predicament following last week's FBI raid on his home and office is beginning to put pressure on the president's inner circle as they fear he'll turn on his longtime boss As a storm of controversy swirls around him, Trump is said to be brooding on how even his most loyal lieutenant is now the subject of speculation about 'flipping' The president and his allies have hit a new level of anxiety as they fear deeper exposure for Trump, his inner circle and his adult children and more than concerned that they don't know exactly what is in the records and electronic devices the FBI seized last week. Michael Avenatti, the flashy attorney who has turned the Stormy Daniels case into an international phenomenon, told MSNBC's 'Morning Joe' program on Tuesday that he believes Cohen will soon face a legal reckoning. 'From what I've heard, from what I've seen, there's no question that Michael Cohen is going to be charged,' Avenatti said. 'It's only a question of when. And I think it's going to happen within the next 90 days.' And the media-savvy Trump antagonist said 'the likelihood of him not rolling over is very, very slim.' 'I can't imagine he's going to go to trial or potentially face 10, 15, 20, 25 years in a federal penitentiary for anybody let alone a guy, Donald Trump, who left him behind when he went to Washington, D.C.,' he said. Attorney Mark Geragos, too, sees a potentially history-altering decision on the horizon for Cohen. Famed attorney Mark Geragos says Trump should be nervous at the prospect of Cohen turning on him One news outlet is suggesting that Cohen knows things about the president that even Ivanka Trump doesn't know because she doesn't want to 'I have seen the most loyal lieutenants to clients flip when they get into this situation,' he said Tuesday on CNN's 'New Day' program. 'I mean, this is fraught with danger.' 'When youre faced with the prospect of somebody who's just executed search warrants at your home and office, and you're not so sure that a president could pardon your way out of this, somebodys going to make some calculation: "Do I do what's best for me or do I do whats best for him?"' he suggested. 'And I think, in this case, the president should be nervous.' As Trump's moods behind the scenes darken, underlings and hangers-on alike are coming to terms with what might lie ahead. 'The guys that know Trump best are the most worried,' a former Trump campaign official told the Axios news website. 'People are very, very worried. Because its Michael [effing] Cohen. Who knows what hes done?' 'People at the Trump Organization dont even really know everything he does. It's all side deals and off-the-books stuff. Trump doesn't even fully know; he knows some but not everything.' Cohen himself is better-briefed on some parts of the president's life than anyone else including his plugged-in daughter Ivanka, Axios reports, 'because some stuff, Ivanka doesn't want to know.' Adult film actress Stormy Daniels, left, and her lawyer Michael Avenatti (right) have driven much of the public angst over Cohen, since he brokered her hush-money agreement over a claimed sexual affair with the president In this photo President Trump is seen making his way to board Air Force One at Joint Base Andrews in Maryland on Monday Cohen tweeted this reassuring message to the president on April 8, but the FBI knocked on his door just one day later Joseph Cammarata, the lawyer who represented Paula Jones in her sexual harassment suit against President Bill Clinton, told the Associated Press that the Cohen case is 'a huge minefield for Donald Trump and the Trump Organization. I think this is on its own track and this train is coming down the track with brute force.' The wild legal show continued to play out Monday, at a court hearing in New York before a federal judge who is considering what to do with the material that the FBI seized from Cohen. The scene was punctuated by dramatic entrances and revelations. Daniels the porn actress who alleged she had a sexual affair with the president made an appearance, stumbling on her high heels as she was swarmed by press. Cohen was forced to reveal that another one of his clients is Fox News host Sean Hannity, a high-profile confidant of the president. Trump left the White House for Florida, for a two-day summit with Japanese Prime Minister Shinzo Abe at the president's Mar-a-Lago estate. Advisers are hoping the meeting will draw attention from the legal tempest in Washington and New York. On the trip south, White House spokeswoman Sarah Huckabee Sanders sought to put distance between Trump and Cohen, saying: 'I believe they've still got some ongoing things, but the president has a large number of attorneys, as you know.' The federal raid, carried out a week ago in New York City, sought bank records, information on Cohen's dealing in the taxi industry, Cohen's communications with the Trump campaign and information on payments he made in 2016 to former Playboy model Karen McDougal and to Daniels, both of whom allege relationships with Trump. The court proceedings Monday dealt with who gets to look at Cohen's seized documents and devices before they are turned over to prosecutors. Though Cohen once said he 'would take a bullet' for Trump, he is aware of the possible outcome including potential prison time and has expressed worry about his family, said a person who has spoken to the lawyer in recent days but is not authorized to discuss private conversations. Cohen has not been charged with anything. Trump's moods have grown more dour in recent days, as he lashes out at the 'overreach' of the raid. Further angering the president is that the raid was triggered in part by a referral from special counsel Robert Mueller, who is looking into Russian interference in the 2016 U.S. presidential election. The raid was authorized by the U.S. Attorney for the Southern District of New York. On Twitter Sunday, Trump said that all lawyers are now 'deflated and concerned' by the FBI raid on Cohen, adding that 'Attorney Client privilege is now a thing of the past.' Trump has also taken to downplaying Cohen's role. The president also inveighed further against former FBI Director James Comey, who said Monday morning that Trump was morally unfit to be president. That was a few hours after Comey said the same and worse in a highly promoted ABC interview. Many in the White House view the aftershocks of the Cohen raid as potentially more threatening than Mueller's Russia probe, fearful of what skeletons may be in the lawyer's closets, according to five officials and outside allies who all spoke on the condition of anonymity to discuss private conversations. 'I agree with the consensus forming that it's very dangerous for the president, probably the most serious thing yet,' said Sol Wisenberg, a defense attorney who was a deputy independent counsel during the Starr special counsel investigation into Clinton. 'Even if you shut Mueller down some way, how do you shut down the Southern District [federal court]?' Trump's anger at the probe has intensified, with him musing publicly about firing Mueller and the man who authorized the probe, Deputy Attorney General Rod Rosenstein. Those around Trump have hoped that this week's visit to Mar-a-Lago, where he is generally happier, along with the tightly scheduled summit with Abe, would somewhat distract him from Cohen and from Comey's ongoing publicity tour. Michael Cohen, President Donald Trump's personal attorney, center, leaves federal court following a hearing on Monday But White House aides have also expressed worry that they can control Trump less at his palatial Florida estate, where he is known to seek out counsel from club members and get revved up by their at-times provocative advice. One recent presidential dinner guest was Hannity, a longtime Trump ally whose connection to Cohen shed more light on the attorney who was more than just a lawyer for Trump. Cohen has long been a key power center in the Trump Organization and a fixture along the edges of Trump's nascent political life. In Cohen's own estimation, he is Trump's Ray Donovan, the bruising television character who takes whatever steps are needed to fix problems for the tycoon he serves. He has regularly threatened lawsuits against those who pose a challenge to Trump. He has berated reporters for writing unflattering words about his boss. He has worked with tabloids, including the National Enquirer, to kill unfavorable stories about Trump. He has said he used a home-equity loan to finance a $130,000 payment to Daniels in the final days of the 2016 campaign and did so without Trump's knowledge. The president has consistently denied a relationship with Daniels, who claims the two had sex not long after first lady Melania Trump gave birth to the couple's son Barron. He has also pushed back against other claims from women. A recent Trump fundraising email praised Mrs. Trump, with the president calling her 'my rock and foundation.' A woman who successfully fought for a huge slice of her estranged father's estate blew every last cent within nine months, including $150,000 on drugs. Brodie Bond, from Morwell in Victoria's Latrobe Valley, became the beneficiary of $220,000 after contesting her father's will, who left her nothing when he died. 'Out of that money, probably $150,000 went to ice, in less than a year,' she told Channel Nine's A Current Affair. Scroll down for video Brodie Bond, who successfully fought for a huge slice of her estranged father's estate, blew every last cent within nine months, including $150,000 on drugs Ms Bond became the beneficiary of $220,000 after contesting her father's will, who left her nothing when he died 'Out of that money, probably $150,000 went to ice, in less than a year,' Ms Bond said (stock) The 28-year-old said the remaining $70,000 was spent on alcohol, clothes and a car - which she later crashed. Ms Bond admitted she and her father were estranged, but argued she was entitled to a large chunk of his estate. 'Even though he hadn't been in my life, he was still my dad, and the grief I was going through at the time, I should've benefited from that,' she said. When the money hit her account in June 2016, Ms Bond says she celebrated with a slab of Jack Daniel's and vodka shots during a drug bender with a friend. 'Why not? It's not everyday you get that much money,' she said. Ms Bond's story airs on Channel Nine on Tuesday night. Ms Bond admitted she and her father were estranged, but argued she was she still entitled to a large chunk of his estate Police arrested Roque in a dorm room after a manhunt lasting several hours A 20-year-old university student has pleaded not guilty to murder after a freshman was stabbed to death at Binghamton University on Sunday. Michael Roque faces charges of second degree murder over the death of Joao Souza, 19, originally from Brazil. Souza, an engineering student, was found with stab wounds inside the Windham Hall residence suite at about 10.30 p.m. Sunday. He later died at a local hospital. Following the attack, police and the university released photos of a person they believed to be Michael Roque in a public appeal to help track him down. Scroll down for video The victim Joao Souza was a native of Brazil who had moved to New York as a teenager with his parents Police released photos of the suspect following the brutal killing on Sunday night at the university After a lengthy manhunt, cops managed to locate him in one of the college's dorm rooms and arrested him on the spot. The university's President Harvey Stenger said in a statement on their official Facebook page he had been 'deeply saddened' by the incident. 'Dear Binghamton University Community, I am deeply saddened to write to you regarding last nights stabbing that led to the death of one of our students, Joao Souza, a 19-year-old freshman engineering student,' he said. 'The entire campus mourns for him. Our sympathies go out to his friends and family, as well as to his classmates and peers. 'A suspect is in custody. I thank our Binghamton University Police, New York State Police and the Broome County District Attorneys office for their quick work in apprehending the individual as quickly as possible.' The school cancelled all classes on Monday in a show of solidarity with the victim. The university worked alongside the police to try and track down Rogue - who was eventually detained on Monday evening The university cancelled all classes on Monday and said it had been 'deeply saddened' by the student's death 'We feel incredible pain and sorrow, we can't even imagine their despair,' BU Student Affairs Vice President Brian Rose said. 'The family has requested privacy for Joao, and I ask you to respect their wishes.' University police chief Timothy Faughnan says investigators believe the suspect targeted Souza, but wouldn't give any other details about the case. A public defender representing Michael Roque entered a not guilty plea on his behalf Monday at the Broome County Central Arraignment facility. Roque was then taken to the Broome County Jail following the arraignment. Wetter weather expected in north and far south east of Australia and in Tasmania But forecasters warn winter will be warmer than average overall across the south Melbourne to drop to 8C on Wednesday and Canberra 6C as winter finally hits Temperatures are set to plummet to single figures as cooler weather finally arrives as forecasters warn it will be a wetter winter than usual. Melbourne will drop to as low as eight degrees on Wednesday and Canberra six degrees. The lower temperatures are set to stay with Queensland expected to have a colder winter than normal. Temperatures are set to plummet to single figures as cooler weather finally arrives as forecasters warn it will be a wetter winter than usual But forecasters have warned the winter months in 2018 will be warmer than average overall across south Australia. Wetter weather is expected in the far south east of Australia and in Tasmania. Experts from the Bureau of Meteorology (BoM) say there is strong likelihood temperatures on average will be higher during the winter across the south. The maximum on average in Sydney is not expected to be higher than 15C is not expected to be warmer than the average winter low of 6C. Melbourne will drop to as low as eight degrees on Wednesday and Canberra six degrees The picture is similar in Melbourne where warmer days and nights are expected seeing the average high temperature exceed the usual 12C mark. Adelaide is also set for higher than average temperatures. There is an extremely high chance (75%) of the average low temperature being higher than 6C - the point it usually reaches during the winter. Autumn truly arrived in Sydney on Sunday after an unseasonably hot start to April which brought bush fires devastating 3,000 hectares around Holsworthy in the west. The city was hammered with 60km/h winds with gusts blowing at up to 80km/h. Queensland is expected to be colder than normal with temperatures highly likely to drop below the average low But Queensland is expected to remain much cooler than usual with the average high reaching 24 in the central and southern coast areas much less likely. It is expected the average low temperatures are going to be much lower than normal. Brisbane's average low spells are expected to dip below the usual 9C while further north in central parts of the state, the colder temperatures are much more likely to be lower than the average 12C. Forecasters are also warning the average rainfall in the far south east of Australia and Tasmania will be high than usual. Much of southern Australia is going to be warmer than usual with weather experts predicting the high likelihood of exceeding the average high temperature Western areas of Tasmania already cop around 800mm in the three months between May and July but is 60% more likely to exceed that amount this year. Hobart is set for more than its average 100mm of winter rainfall over the coming months. There is also expected to be above average rainfall in the far northern areas of Australia across the Northern Territory and north east Western Australia. Weather conditions in the Pacific are currently neutral so extreme wet or dry temperatures are expected. But sea temperatures are warmer around the Tasman Sea and in waters around New Zealand leading to low pressure and higher rainfall in the south east and Tasmania. Dr Lynette Bettio, senior climatologist at the BoM, said: 'We're coming to the dry season across the north so we don't need large rainfall totals to exceed the median. 'There is a swing towards above average rainfall in the far south east. 'Days and nights are forecast to be warmer than average across the south and cooler than average across the north, especially Queensland.' A hilarious image captured a naughty dog who was put behind the bars of a police car after he ran away and attacked a deer Emme Thompson, 21, posted a picture of her dog Finn after he was captured by police when he ran away. The mixed-breed rescued dog went on a walk with Thompson's dad and girlfriend Saturday on a trail in their hometown of Kenora, Ontario, when he was let off his leash, Buzzfeed News reported. Thompson said the dog can normally handle himself off the leash, but this time he caught the smell of a deer which sent him running. Emme Thompson, 21, tweeted a picture of her dog Finn after he was captured by police. The dog ran away when he caught the scent of deer nearby Thompson said the police let Finn off with a warning, but told the family to keep the dog on a leash in the future. Her post on Twitter has since been shared more than 180,000 times 'I guess he caught the scent of a deer because he took off into the bush, not responding to their calls or whistles,' Thompson told Buzzfeed. The Ontario Provincial Police Department called the Thompson family after they found Finn causing a ruckus while chasing a deer along a road. The hilarious picture of Finn in the back of the police car was snapped after Thompson's father went to bail the naughty dog out. The 21-year-old posted the photo on Twitter and said: 'Someone called the police on my dog because he ran away and attacked a deer and I know this is serious but the sight of him in the cop car.' The viral picture has since been shared more than 180,000 as of Tuesday morning. People immediately took to Twitter to implore the police to free the poor dog One user joked that the family could probably hire a lawyer to handle Finn's case 'pro-bone-o' Another user shared a hilarious picture of her own dog from the back of a police car. She was captured after she ran away Many social media users took to Twitter to implore that the police 'free' the dog after his crime spree through Kenora. One user said: 'I'm sure you could get a lawyer to handle this pro-bone-o.' Another user, Jessica Knopf, shared a picture of her dog in the back of a police car after she ran away. 'My dog ran away and made it to a main road, a fire truck on a way to a call called 911 to have her picked up,' Knopf said. 'I was laughing so hard when they brought her back I started crying.' Thompson updated her post hours later to inform people that Finn was released from police, but the family could potentially receive a fine for letting him off his leash. A day later, police let the family know that they would not be fined for the incident but needed to keep Finn on a leash in the future. A young woman who almost died in a skydiving accident in Switzerland has opened up about the terrifying ordeal. Emma Carey took the dive she'd always wanted to do while in the country in 2013. 'When we jumped out I remember it was the most incredible feeling ... the free fall is so peaceful, you are just so present in the moment,' the 25-year-old told news.com.au. Almost five years ago Emma Carey (pictured), 25, nearly died in a skydiving accident in Switzerland. She has opened up about her ordeal Ms Carey was in hospital for four months after the accident and has overcome a spinal cord injury. She also fractured her pelvis and shattered her teeth But her feeling of euphoria didn't last long. Ms Carey she was unsure what to expect as it was her first jump. 'I felt us slow down a little bit but the chute wasn't above us where it should be and my instructor wasn't answering me. The closer we got to the ground, I realised something was really wrong.' The chute had gotten tangled and choked her instructor, who passed out. On her website, Ms Carey explained what happened next: 'The next minute, I'm lying face down on the ground with an unconscious man strapped to my back. When I went to roll him off me, I had the most brutal and heartbreaking realisation of my entire life. I couldn't move my legs. At all. Ms Carey will walk the Wings for Life World Run, a run dedicated for those with spinal injuries who can't, on May 6 which she participated in last year in a wheelchair 'To this day, I have never been able to put the weight of this feeling into words and I honestly I don't think I ever will. The next few minutes are the only minutes in my life I genuinely wish I could forget. 'All of the thoughts running through my mind were so completely opposite and surreal to the thoughts I was having just one hour earlier when I was a 20-year-old carefree girl, naively enjoying her holiday.' Ms Carey was in hospital for four months after the accident and had to overcome a spinal cord injury. She also fractured her pelvis and shattered her teeth. Ms Carey still has complications from the fall. But a few weeks Ms Carey will walk the Wings for Life World Run dedicated for those with spinal injuries which she participated in last year in a wheelchair. Ms Carey has shared her ordeal through her blog an Instagram. Her most recent post details her fears that while she may be able to walk now, doctors tell her when she is older she may have to use a wheelchair again. While Ms Carey has defied the odds she still has fears that one day she may end up back in a wheelchair She wrote on Instagram: 'I'm not guaranteed these legs forever. I learnt four years ago, last year and again this year with my injuries, that I have absolutely no idea when I'll be walking and when I won't be' She wrote: 'I've had a lot of reports written by doctors, all which say the same thing... I'll be back in a wheelchair when I'm older. I'm not saying I believe that, but I'm also very aware of the fact that even if it's not the case, I'm not guaranteed these legs forever. I learnt four years ago, last year and again this year with my injuries, that I have absolutely no idea when I'll be walking and when I won't be. 'I always feel a pang of guilt whenever I talk about this because I know there's people reading this who are in wheelchairs themselves.' She wants those who can walk to cherish it. The Turnbull Government's Health Minister has described marijuana as a gateway drug to ice as the Greens called for a people's vote to held on legalising the mind-altering substance. Greg Hunt accused the Greens of proposing an idea that 'risks the health of Australians'. 'Marijuanas a gateway drug. The risk of graduating to ice or to heroin from extended marijuana use is real and documented,' he told reporters on Tuesday. Scroll down for video The Turnbull Government's Health Minister has described marijuana as a gateway drug to ice as the Greens call for a people's vote to held on legalising the mind-altering substance Greg Hunt accused the Greens of proposing an idea that 'risks the health of Australians' Greens leader Richard Di Natale said a binding plebiscite vote should be held on legalising marijuana. 'Id be very confident of success. I believe wed win, absolutely,' he told News Corp Australia. The Victorian senator made the call a day after calling for marijuana to be sold in plain packaging like cigarettes are. Jarryd Bartle, a sessional lecturer in criminal law at Melbourne's RMIT, said Australia should adopt a proposal, now before the Canadian parliament, for marijuana to be sold in plain packaging at specialty stores. Greens leader Richard Di Natale said a plebiscite should be held on legalising marijuana 'It is my view that cannabis should be sold within an age-restricted retail environment, separate from the sale of alcohol or cigarettes,' he told Daily Mail Australia on Tuesday. Mr Bartle, who also works as policy adviser for the Eros Association adult store lobby, said the Canadian approach would destroy the illegal drugs market. 'I'm excited by the approach of the Trudeau Government as there is a strong emphasis on keeping initial prices of legal cannabis down to collapse illicit markets,' he said. 'Moreover, the policy regimes reflects a "keep drugs boring" approach but limiting packaging and advertising.' A teenager claims he found a mouse dropping in his meal while he was in a South Australian hospital. Trae Gauci, who is in hospital for a leg injury, told 7 News he found the 'mouse poo' in his soup earlier this week. 'I seen (sic) a black thing floating so I pulled that out on the lid ... me and mum both thought it looked like mouse poos,' he said. Scroll down for video A teenager claims he found a mouse dropping (pictured) in his meal while he was in a South Australian hospital earlier this week Trae Gauci (pictured), who is in Royal Adelaide Hospital for a leg injury, told 7 News he found the 'mouse poo' which was 'floating' in his soup The 16-year-old reportedly notified catering staff but a Central Adelaide Local Health Network spokesperson told Daily Mail Australia there was 'no official complaint raised to the hospital' The 16-year-old told Daily Mail Australia he found the object 'disgusting and revolting' and reportedly notified Royal Adelaide Hospital catering staff. The Central Adelaide Local Health Network spokesperson however said there was no 'official complaint raised to the hospital' in regards to the foreign object. 'Catering staff have met with the patient to discuss their concerns,' the spokesperson said. 'There is no evidence to suggest what was found in a patient's meal was rodent droppings. The Royal Adelaide Hospital claimed to also undergo 'internal and external' food safety audits of their kitchens and suppliers. The hospital spokesperson said they regularly conducted pest inspections with the most recent inspection on Monday where they found no trace of rodents. The spokesperson said there was 'no evidence to suggest' the item in the Royal Adelaide Hospital meal was a 'rodent dropping' (pictured on the lid) The fragility of racial transcendence To understand Winfreys transcendence and its fragility, we used Harris Polls measure of how Winfrey ranked relative to other television personalities regularly during a large span of her talk show, from 1993 to 2011. In the years leading up to her Obama endorsement 2002 to 2006 she was the nations favorite television personality. But immediately following her endorsement, her favorability dropped to No. 4. Over the next five years until her show ended in 2011, Oprahs average ranking was No. 3. Before her endorsement of Obama, individuals were favorable toward Winfrey at relatively equal levels between 73 and 82 percent regardless of their race and gender. After the endorsement, a gap opened up. Black women rated her 86.2 percent favorable. Black men still maintain the second highest favorability, but we see a drop from 81 percent to 72 percent. Similarly, the percentage of white women who hold favorable ratings of Winfrey drops from 73.4 percent pre-endorsement to 67.8 percent after. Advertisement Windsor town centre is today getting a fresh lick of paint and a spring clean ahead of Prince Harry and Meghan Markle's wedding next month. Workers took to the streets this morning with pressure hoses to give the pavement outside Windsor Castle a new look before the royal wedding on May 19. The Tower Brasserie - directly opposite the castle grounds - was also getting a makeoever with workmen painting its exterior a new shade of grey. It comes after royal fans blasted a ban on camping along the wedding route when the pair tie the knot in the Berkshire town. Thousands of well-wishers are expected to arrive a few days before the event. But Thames Valley Police are enforcing a no tent rule for security reasons, forcing many to sleep in the open air or on fold up chairs. The ban comes after Windsor Council leader Simon Dudley called for the officers to remove homeless people from the streets because they would show the borough in an 'unfavourable light'. Other workmen were spotted using industrial hoses to clean the pavement directly outside the castle as the town prepares for the big day Workmen were spotted giving The Tower Brasserie - which is directly opposite the castle grounds - a fresh lick of paint on Tuesday morning The workers used large brooms to scrub the ground almost a month before thousands of royal fans are expected to travel to the town Royal fans are a fixture at weddings and funerals, and hundreds will arrive to an event days earlier and camp in tents to secure a prime viewing spot Carl Martin, of Felixstowe, Suffolk (left) called the ban on tents 'really sad' and said he hoped Meghan and Harry will intervene to allow him and other fans (right) the stay in tents The council considered introducing fines of up to 1,000 for rough sleepers but scrapped the plans following public outcry. Royalists are now a fixture at wedding and funerals, with hundreds trying to bag key spots along procession routes days in advance. But Carl Martin, 33, of Felixstowe, Suffolk, said the ban was 'really sad'. He said he received an email from the council telling him that 'camping will not be allowed...but folding chairs and some form of cover will be allowed. Mr Martin, a retail manager, told The Sun: 'A royal wedding brings the country together. People want to go and celebrate it. Hundreds of pop up tents, like the one above, lined the route of Prince William and Kate's wedding in 2011 Royalist John Loughrey waited for days outside the Lindo Wing at St Mary's Hospital in London before the Duchess of Cambridge gave birth to Prince George in 2013 Prince Harry and Meghan are set to tie the knot at St George's Chapel in Windsor Castle on May 19 'That we're being blocked is awful. We hope that Meghan and Harry will intervene.' Carl attended Princess Diana's funeral, the Queen Mother's 100th birthday pageant and her funeral, and both Charles and Camilla and William and Kate's weddings. He and friend Amanda Fish, 44, take her nephew Sampson Ellis, 12, to as many royal events as they can. Council leader Mr Dudley sparked outrage earlier this year when he called for a ban on homeless people. A huge security operation is in place as thousands of well-wishers are expected to arrive a few days before the special occasion He said: 'There is a growing concern amongst residents, businesses and visitors regarding the number of people occupying the streets of Windsor, who are begging during the day and in some cases taking occupancy throughout the night. Windsor Council leader Simon Dudley sparked outrage when he called for homeless people to be banned from the Berkshire town 'In the Royal Borough, we believe homelessness is completely unacceptable in a caring, compassionate community such as ours. 'Obviously, the level of tourist interest is set to multiply with the Royal Wedding in May 2018, and there are increased concerns from our residents about their safety. The whole situation also presents a beautiful town in a sadly unfavourable light.' Thames Valley Police are enforcing tough security measures, including making people go through full body scanners. More than 100,000 people are expected to arrive in the town for the big day. Police said large items deemed a 'security risk' would be banned in the town, including tents. The 'extensive' measures are part of the policing plan to 'deliver a safe, secure and happy event for everyone'. Thames Valley Police said automatic number plate recognition technology, CCTV and 'hostile vehicle mitigation barriers' were being put in place. Shops and buildings will be searched in the days leading up to the wedding and plans are in place to stop trains from calling at Windsor station if the numbers of people in the town causes a 'public safety risk'. A number of other forces, including British Transport Police, the Met and Surrey Police, will also be involved in the operation as well as the Army. Jay Murdoch (pictured), originally from Glasgow, would take ketamine to 'switch off' following a long day at work A senior nurse died after he started taking Ketamine to cope with the stress of working long hours at an NHS hospital, an inquest heard. Jay Murdoch, 34, had been signed off work for up to six months because of anxiety and depression but was asked to come back to work early due to staff shortages. He worked an extra five hours each shift and would take the powerful horse tranquiliser at home to 'switch off' after a long day. Mr Murdoch, from Manchester, told his partner: 'You would all be better off without me' after attending a wedding reception and was later found unresponsive on his sofa. He had suffered a cardiac arrest and was taken to his place of work at Manchester Royal Infirmary but died six days later despite efforts to revive him. Police investigated whether the tragedy was a 'deliberate or accidental overdose' but toxicology tests were unable to establish whether the drugs caused his death. Mr Murdoch - originally from Glasgow - had been assigned to the 62 bed Emergency Surgical Trauma Unit at the hospital where he said he was 'proud to be a nurse'. He would post updates on his Twitter page about staff success stories and advances in medical treatment. But his partner Gareth Chapman, a company manager, told the Manchester hearing: 'Jay spent a lot of hours working and in late 2016 he was off for four to six months with stress, depression and anxiety. 'He got a return to work date but the hospital were short staffed so asked him to come back earlier. Jay Murdoch (pictured right, with his partner Gareth Chapman) was supposed to be 'phased' back in to work Mr Murdoch (left, with Mr Chapman) had been to a wedding reception when he said: 'You would all be better off without me' 'They agreed a phased return but he was still working an extra five hours each shift, He was still very stressed and was asking for support all the time but never received any. 'On the 24th of March I had been working and was due to finish at 8.30pm and Jay was waiting outside my work for me which was unusual for him. I could see that he had taken something and he was acting very strange. 'I was still managing a team and told him to go and wait outside. I quickly finished and we got a taxi back home. 'I asked him about what he had taken but he wouldn't tell me. Once we got back home he was pretty much normal again. 'On the Saturday evening we went to a wedding reception and had a lovely evening before going on to a party. Recreational drugs were consumed in the form of two bumps of cocaine and we had a two gram bag of Ketamine but that wasn't finished. 'I wasn't aware of Jay taking anything else and he would have taken his medication before we left for the wedding. Jay would take Ketamine as a coping mechanism to switch off from work quickly. Gareth Chapman (right) told the Manchester hearing: 'Jay spent a lot of hours working and in late 2016 he was off for four to six months with stress, depression and anxiety' Mr Murdoch (right, with his mother and partner) worked an extra five hours each shift 'We got home about 8am on the Sunday - the taxi driver had to help me get Jay into the taxi because he was in a similar state to how he had been outside my work. 'This was unusual for Jay as he had quite a high tolerance. I asked him if he had taken anything else but he didn't respond. Just after I booked the taxi he went to the toilet and when he returned he was in a state. 'We were having a discussion about his work situation and Jay said: "You would all be better off without me". 'This was unusual for Jay and I told him if his job was upsetting him so much that he needed to look for a different one. 'We watched TV and I cooked for him and he took his prescription medication. During Sunday night he came into the bedroom and almost fell on me. He was snoring very heavily and I nudged him and he went back to lay back on the sofa. 'On the Monday morning I had Jay's bleeper going off. I got up properly around 11.30am and I was unable to wake Jay. Jay Murdoch a dedicated senior nurse (middle with partner Gareth Chapman and mother Jan Murdoch) died aged 34 'I ran to my neighbour who is a nurse who came round and I phoned for an ambulance. Jay was always against suicide. 'A couple of months before we stopped someone jumping from a bridge and we knew a few people who had made attempts - he didn't believe in it at all.' His mother, Janet Murdoch, said: 'I had last spoken to Jay on the Sunday which was the day after they had been to the wedding. It was Mother's Day and Jay had sent me flowers and chocolates. I phoned him and we had a normal conversation. 'He seemed fine he just said he was tired. He had been working near enough till 9pm everyday so he was tired. 'Jay was a fantastic son and very confident young man. In the last couple of years he wasn't as chatty as he normally had been. His position meant that he had taken on a lot of responsibility but he absolutely loved being a nurse, that was his life. 'He did have problems with anxiety and found it difficult to switch off but it wasn't something I was overly concerned about at the time. 'It took a long time to get him to see a GP because he didn't like the stigma that came with it. He was taking medication and had been offered counselling but I don't think he took this up.' Director of nursing at the Manchester Hospitals Foundation Trust, Susanne Langley said: 'Jay returned to work on the 27th of January on a phased return and I would liaise with the head of nursing at the time to check things were in place. 'A ward was being re-opened after an infection broke out. 'I went to check if things were okay and she raised concerns it wasn't going as well as expected. I spoke to Jay who was very agitated and it was difficult to have a conversation so I asked if he would continue talking in my office. The inquest heard Mr Murdoch (pictured) suffered a cardiac arrest and as a result suffered a severe brain injury Mr Murdoch (left, with his partner) would regularly post updates on his Twitter page about staff success stories and advances in medical treatment 'During the conversation Jay said he had been working really hard - this was during his phased return which we wouldn't expect of anybody. There was some difficulties with Jay being asked to leave work but was staying. 'I had a conversation with the director of nursing because we were concerned he was showing the same behaviour he had been before he went on leave so we referred him to occupational health.' Dr Julie Evans, a toxicologist, said tests were carried out on blood samples taken from Mr Murdoch two days after his admission to hospital and whilst there was no ketamine or cocaine in his system, there were traces of the painkillers Temazepam, Diazepam and the sedative Chlordiazepoxide. She added: 'I cannot determine whether the level of drugs were excessive due to the time delay and therefore cannot provide a medical cause of death.' Recording an open conclusion, Coroner Zak Golombeck said: 'The deceased died on the 2nd of April 2017 at Manchester Royal Infirmary. 'He had suffered a cardiac arrest on the 27th of March and as a result suffered a severe brain injury. He had taken prescription medication and illicit drugs however, the cause of the cardiac arrest is unknown.' An eight-year-old girl has been found raped and murdered after being kidnapped from a wedding by a teenager in Etah, in India's Uttar Pradesh state. The child had been attending the festivities with her parents, when 18-year-old Sonu Jatav lured her away to a nearby building, where he sexually abused her and strangled her, police said. The horrific crime has further shaken India, which is still reeling from the shocking gang-rape and murder of another eight-year-old who was kidnapped and brutalised in a temple. Shocking: Relatives of the eight-year-old girl who was kidnapped from a wedding, raped and murdered, mourn over the body, draped in a white sheet, as police officers watch on Jatav had been hired to help out at the wedding and is thought to have been familiar to the girl as they were from the same village. He allegedly lured her away from the party at around 1.30am, and took her to an under-construction building nearby. Her parents and others in the wedding party started looking for the girl shortly after and soon found Jatav, drunk and asleep, next to the child's body, NDTV reports. 'The body of the girl was found in an under-construction house in the vicinity of the marriage venue.,' Superintendent of Police Akhilesh Chaurasia told FreePress Journal. 'A rope was found tied around the neck of the girl.' Local television channels showed the girl's relatives crying as her dead body was carried from the scene, covered in a white sheet. A lawyer has been threatened with rape and death for fighting for justice for Asifa Bano - an eight-year-old Muslim girl who was raped and murdered in India One of the eight on trial for Asifa's brutal rape and murder is temple custodian Sanji Ram, pictured arriving in court yesterday, who is accused of inciting his nephew to abduct the child One of the eight men on trial for the brutal gang rape and murder is Deepak Khajuria, pictured outside court on Monday, a special police officer One of the men accused of involvement in the case is escorted by police at the District and Sessions court in Kathua on Monday The incident took place just days after the mutilated body of rape victim Asifa Bano was found in Kathua, Jammu and Kashmir state. Little Asifa was kidnapped by a Hindu gang trying to drive the Muslim nomadic herders - to which she belonged - away from Jammu and Kashmir. Police say the gang took her to a Hindu temple, where they kept her for three days, subjecting her to repeated sexual abuse, before killing her. Teenage rape victim claims her attackers bribed her parents A 16-year-old girl in Delhi has claimed her parents tried to force her to take back her statement accusing two men of raping her. The teenager alleges that she was kidnapped in August last year, and held captive by two men for a week while they raped her. According to the teen, the families of the two accused have paid her parents 5,000 rupees (53) in exchange for her taking back her statement. She says that when she refused to change her story, her parents beat her, NDTV reports. Her mother has been arrested and police are searching for her parents. Advertisement One of the men involved ordered another attacker to delay her murder so he could rape her one last time, police say. Eight men, including four police officers and a Hindu temple custodian, appeared in court yesterday, pleading not guilty to rape and murder. The temple custodian, retired public servant Sanji Ram, is accused of conspiring with four police officers, a friend, his son and a juvenile nephew to kill the girl and destroy crucial evidence. Disgust over the horrific crime led to protests in cities across India over the past few days, with anger fuelled by support for the accused initially shown by ministers from Prime Minister Narendra Modi's Bharatiya Janata Party. The protests have also focused on another rape incident allegedly involving a BJP lawmaker in the crime-ridden, most populous, poor northern state of Uttar Pradesh. More rallies demanding action against rapists and violence against women were expected on Monday in the capital and Ahmedabad, the state capital of Modi's home state of Gujarat. The national outrage over the Kathua case has drawn parallels with the massive protests that followed the gang rape and murder of a girl on a Delhi bus in 2012, which forced the then Congress-led government to enact tough new rape laws including the death penalty. Activsits have staged various protests to bring attention to rape cases and violence against women in India in recent days Kashmiri lawyers hold placards during a protest calling for justice over the horrifying rape But activists say crimes of violence against women are often inadequately investigated, and in some cases accused with political connections have been protected. More incidents of child rape, including one in Surat in Gujurat, were reported over the weekend. On Friday, Modi assured the country that the guilty would not be shielded, but he has been criticised for failing to speak out sooner. Before leaving for an official visit to Europe this week, Modi received a letter from 50 former civil servants upbraiding the country's political leadership over its weak response. 'The bestiality and the barbarity involved in the rape and murder of an eight year old child shows the depths of depravity that we have sunk into,' the letter said. 'In post-Independence India, this is our darkest hour and we find the response of our government, the leaders of our political parties inadequate and feeble.' This is the shocking moment a wedding reception turned into a nightmare when a fire broke out with 300 guests inside. The blaze, which started in a ceiling display and went on to engulf the entire hall, put an abrupt stop to the newlyweds' first dance and forced the couple and their guests to flee the burning building. The bride and groom had been embracing so closely that only the screams of their guests alerted them to the danger, in a fire which destroyed the hall. The footage was captured by a guest at the wedding, held at the Hacienda Benazuza hotel in Zapopan, Mexico. As the newly married couple were dancing their guests turned their attention away from the dance floor and towards the fire breaking out on the ceiling While guests panic the camera reveals the blaze which was caused by a 'pyrotechnic fault' At the start of the clip the newlyweds are embracing and singing along to the music with the dance floor to themselves. Some of the guests, standing in a circle around them, were recording the first dance on their phones. But the guests quickly turn their attention to the ceiling, pointing at the blaze in horror even as the oblivious bride and groom continue to dance. As the couple finally realise what is happening, the camera pans and reveals a bright orange blaze on one of the displays. Guests take pictures of the wreckage and flee the scene as the fire destroys the entire hall The video then cuts to a later scene, by which time the fire has spread across the hall. Guests are seen taking pictures of the wreckage and getting away. According to local media, the fire was started by a 'pyrotechnic fault' that set alight part of the ceiling display. There were no reported injuries but the wedding hall was completely gutted. Firefighters promptly arrived on the scene to tackle the raging fire. A preliminary investigation said that the fire was started by fireworks. Around 300 guests were present at the time. Local authorities have launched an investigation into the building blaze. Google's bid to set up a new headquarters in Sydney has been rejected by the State Government. The company's undisclosed bid to buy 12 hectares of land owned by Transport for New South Wales near Redfern Railway station in Eveleigh was deemed too low. Google hoped to partner with property development firm Mirvac to knock down disused buildings for its lavish offices. The company's undisclosed bid to buy 12 hectares of land (pictured) owned by Transport for New South Wales near Redfern Railway station in Eveleigh was deemed too low Google hoped to partner with property development firm Mirvac to knock down disused buildings (pictured) for its lavish offices But the government believes it can get a better price as several companies compete for the land, sources told 9News. Google's proposal was rejected by the NSW Cabinet Infrastructure Committee (CIC) last Tuesday. The AU$930billion company wants to relocate from its current office in Jones Bay, Pyrmont as it plans to expand its Sydney workforce to 10,000. New South Wales Premier Gladys Berejiklian said the government owed it to the taxpayer to get the best price for the land. The government believes it can get a better price as several companies compete for the land (pictured) Google previously tried to buy land on White Bay Power Station (picutred) at Rozelle but walked away from a deal when it was told there were no plans to improve public transport in the area for its workforce Google previously tried to buy land on White Bay Power Station at Rozelle but walked away from a deal when it was told there were no plans to improve public transport in the area for its workforce. Victorian Minister for Innovation Philip Dalidakis has flown to Sydney to persuade the giant to expand in Melbourne. 'The Victorian Government will leave no stone unturned to give them every possible site available to them in Melbourne,' Mr Dalidakis said. A Google spokesman said: 'We are assessing a number of options.' A court in France has told a couple they cannot name their baby Jihad as that would have an adverse effect on the boys life. The case first came to court last summer when authorities in the Toulouse suburb of Leguevin were immediately alerted after the child was given the name. Now a court in the south-western French city has ordered that it be removed from the boys birth certificate and a new one issued giving his first name as 'Jahid', the local.fr reported. The authorities were first alerted when the baby's parents tried to register his name French parents are free to name their children as they wish, so long as the child - or any third party - is not harmed by it. In the past the name police have banned a series of names that have fallen foul of those rules including Nutella and Fraise. The word 'jihad' translates as 'struggle' and has various meanings. It can mean struggling against oneself in an attempt at moral improvement, struggling peacefully to better one's society, or - most commonly - struggling in a military sense. A court in the city of Toulouse (pictured) has now ordered that the boy's name be changed Historically, it was understood as an armed struggle against non-Muslims, but more modern scholars have associated it with defensive warfare. France has been on heightened alert after a series of terror attacks by homegrown Islamists in recent years, making the authorities sensitive to parents naming their child 'jihad'. A similar case took place two years ago in the northern town of Roubaix. In that instance, when the parents there were told they couldnt name their boy Jihad, they themselves came up with the idea of swapping the vowels to make it Jahid. In 2013, French mother Bouchra Bagour sent her son - named Jihad - to school wearing a jumper featuring the words 'I am a bomb' on the front. On the back were the words: 'Born on September 11'. She was given a suspended jail sentence. An 'headless and bloodied body' prompted a major emergency services operation in southern Germany, before police officers discovered that it was just a doll. Police say a passer-by spotted what appeared to be a headless corpse covered in blood lying by a stream in the Remstal valley, near Weinstadt, Stuttgart, late Monday. Officers cordoned off the suspected crime scene and firefighters were called to retrieve the body. Panic: This headless doll found near Weinstadt, southern Germany, triggered a larger rescue operation since first officers on spot assumed they discovered a human body Some 20 firefighters on four trucks arrived to gain access to the 'body' which was reported to be located down a crevice. When the firefighters finally got to the 'body' they discovered that it was a doll dressed in human clothes and covered in fake blood. 'It looked just like a human corpse,' a Baden-Wurttemberg police spokesman later said in the force's defence. It is thought that the doll may have been placed by the stream deliberately as a joke. A 19-year-old man who planned a failed terror attack in Germany where a 12-year-old boy was meant to have blown himself up at a Christmas market has been jailed for nine years in Austria. The teenager was also found guilty of plotting to use his 17-year-old wife as a suicide bomber to attack United States' Ramstein Air Base in southwestern Germany. The defendant was convicted at the Vienna state court of two counts of attempted incitement to murder as a terrorist crime, as well as membership in a terrorist organization and other offenses. Bomb plan: The 19-year-old Austrian coerced the then-12-year-old German boy to blow himself up at a Christmas market in Ludwigshafen, pictured, n 2016, but the belt failed to detonate During his trial, he denied giving any orders and said that, while he had considered targeting Ramstein, he had dropped the idea. He was arrested in Vienna in January 2017 following tips from German authorities. During the trial, the defendant, who is of Albanian descent, called the youngster who he coerced into the Ludwigshafen plot to testify on his behalf. The child, who has dual German-Iraqi citizenship, tried but failed to detonate an explosive belt at the market in the town 50 miles south of Frankfurt in 2016. The boy, now 14, told judges; 'The idea was mine,' and went on to say that he had considered beheading a priest, attacking a crowded city bus and blowing up a local hospital. US target: The teenager had also been plotting to use his 17-year-old wife as a suicide bomber to attack United States' Ramstein Air Base in southwestern Germany, pictured The 19-year-old admitted that he had become an ISIS supporter following a previous jail term for robbery. After he was sentenced to nine years in jail, he became aggressive and shouted out in court; 'I don't give a s**t.' Defense lawyer Wolfgang Blaschitz asked for time to consider whether to appeal and argued that a nine-year sentence is 'way too much.' He added that 'the deradicalization process is underway concerning his membership in IS.' Theresa May will face more questions today about her decision to order airstrikes in Syria. The Prime Minister was praised for her response to the latest chemical attack in the rebel-held town of Douma in the Eastern Ghouta region on April 7. More than 40 people were killed in the atrocity and some 500 others were treated for exposure to a chemical agent. But now Mrs May will face MPs in the House of Commons for a second time after Labour leader Jeremy Corbyn blasted her decision as 'legally questionable'. The Mail Online will be bringing you all the latest updates on the story. MORAVIA James Chapman, 71, of Teds Way, Moravia, died Friday, April 13, 2018 at Cayuga Medical Center, Ithaca. Born in Syracuse on Feb. 15, 1947, Jim was the son of the late Lester and Mildred Chapman. He served his country with the US Army National Guard and retired from Cargill of Lansing. Jim is survived by his two sisters, Brenda Brown and Deborah Loper, both of Cortland, and two brothers, Raymond Chapman, of Locke and Leslie Chapman, of Moravia and nieces and nephews. Mr. Chapman was predeceased by his sister Elaine Miles and two brothers, Robert and Jay Chapman Jr. Calling hours will be held today (Tuesday) from 5 to 7 p.m. at White Chapel Funeral Home, 197 South St., Auburn, with services to immediately follow at 7 p.m. A father-of-two died after being given a blood-thinning drug usually given to stroke victims a week after suffering a heart attack, an inquest heard today. Tim Hancock died at Leeds General Infirmary on November 25, 2016 at the age of 48. He had been admitted to the West Yorkshire hospital following a heart attack before having a stent fitted and being administered with the drug Alteplase. Tim Hancock died at Leeds General Infirmary on November 25, 2016 at the age of 48 after being given an experimental drug without his consent, an inquest heard today But hours later the kitchen fitter and tiler suffered a brain haemorrhage and, following a second bleed on the brain days later, he died. Today his wife Karen Hancock gave evidence at his inquest. She demanded the family be told whether a trial blood-thinning drug her husband had been given without his full consent may have contributed to his death. Karen Hancock (pictured) gave evidence today, explaining how doctors diagnosed Tim with endocarditis She raised the issue after it previously emerged doctors failed to diagnose Tim with a dangerous heart infection. Mrs Hancock, outside the hearing, said she was worried the use of the drug may have caused the fatal brain haemorrhage. The inquest at Wakefield Coroner's Court heard how Tim had seen his GP in November 2016 after feeling continually run down for over a year. In her evidence, Karen said that despite many trips to the GP and Pinderfields Hospital, West Yorkshire, with various health complaints, doctors failed to diagnose what was wrong with Tim until after his heart attack. Karen explained how doctors then diagnosed Tim with endocarditis - a rare and potentially fatal infection of the inner lining of the heart. Karen said: 'Tim had always been a well man, so when he started complaining of flu-like symptoms I knew something wasn't right. 'He works self-employed as a builder and has never taken a day off work in his life so when he started having to take days off work I knew it wasn't just the flu.' On November 17, Tim was rushed to hospital following a heart attack whilst he was working at a client's house. The family of Tim Hancock (pictured with his two children) are demanding answers following his death at Leeds General Infirmary on November 25 2016 at the age of 48. Leeds General Infirmary told the family they would not have given Tim Alteplase because they had failed to diagnose him with endocarditis - a rare heart condition Following the heart attack, doctors inserted a stent into Tim's coronary artery to prevent clots and reduce the chance of another heart attack. Whilst they inserted the stent doctors Karen said that doctors also injected trial blood thinning drug Alteplase - without her knowledge or Tim giving consent. Altepase is a blood thinning medicine used to destroy clots and has been commonly given to stroke victims. Common stroke drug is given to tens of thousands of people a year - but one in 20 can get brain bleeds One in nine stroke patients are given the drug clot-busting drug. But more than 16,000 stroke patients a year are being given too high a dose, research suggests. Reducing the dose of alteplase would slash brain bleeds by two thirds and death rates by a sixth, according to an international study led by Leicester University released in 2016. Alteplase is given to sufferers of acute ischaemic stroke, the most common type, and works by breaking up clots that block blood flow to the brain. But it can cause serious bleeding in the brain in about one in 20 cases, with some proving fatal. An investigation last year concluded that the benefits outweighed the risk. Advertisement But it has proved controversial because it can cause serious bleeding in the brain in about one in 20 cases, with some proving fatal. After Tim's death, Leeds General Infirmary told the family they would not have given him Alterplase because they had failed to diagnose him with endocarditis. Karen said: 'By the time I'd rushed from work they had already fitted the stent and told me about a potential study. 'It was not known to me at this stage that they had already administered the drug. 'I just thought it was a study and they would be monitoring him, not actually giving him the drug. 'I fail to see how a vulnerable man who has just suffered from a heart attack can be in a permission to give consent for an experimental drug, I wasn't informed until afterwards. 'They hadn't even got his signature on the consent form just his printed name.' Tim died nine days later after suffering a major brain haemorrhage. Giving evidence today Dr Fernandez, Tim's GP and a family friend, said he was 'stunned' following Tim's death. However, he added there was many 'red herrings' when it came to Tim's ill health. He said: 'As soon as it seemed like we were getting answers it turned out not to be right.' Rebecca Haigh, the solicitor and medical law expert at Irwin Mitchell's Leeds office who is acting for the family, said: 'His loved ones remain understandably devastated and desperate for answers regarding the circumstances regarding his death. 'We are hopeful that the forthcoming inquest will go some way towards clarifying whether Tim's medical treatment was appropriate and help his loved ones get answers to the many questions they have.' The inquest continues. Another black Starbucks customer claims he was denied entry to the bathroom - moments before a white man was let in without buying anything. Brandon Ward filmed himself in one of the coffee chain's outlets in Torrance, Los Angeles, after he claimed to have been denied the bathroom code. A young white man with glasses named Weston was seen emerging from the bathroom before Mr Ward approached him in the video shot on January 23. Brandon Ward filmed himself waiting outside the Starbucks bathroom (left) until Weston (right) came out and he asked him if he bought anything before going in Mr Ward (pictured) claims he was denied entry to the Starbucks bathroom - moments before a white man was let in without buying anything The 26-year-old asked if Weston bought anything, and was told he hadn't but was just about to go to the counter and get food. 'Before you made a purchase they let you use the restroom, right?' Mr Ward asked. 'I just typed in the code,' Weston replied, to which the other man said 'they gave you the code before you made a purchase?' The pair then walked over to the counter and Mr Ward confronted the store manager wanting to know why a white man was allowed into the bathroom but not him. The pair then walked over to the counter and Mr Ward confronted the store manager (left) wanting to know why Weston (right), a white man, was allowed into the bathroom but not him A security guard very quickly arrived and tried to get him to calm down and leave the store The video was shot on January 23 at this Starbucks outlet in Torrance, Los Angeles The manager denied giving Weston the bathroom code and told Mr Ward to stop recording and leave the store. 'Is it my skin colour?' he asked as Weston, clearly not comfortable with what he'd gotten himself into, put up his hands saying 'I don't know'. 'I can't use the bathroom but Weston could? I think it may be my skin color,' Mr Ward repeated. A security guard very quickly arrived and tried to get him to calm down and leave the store, but Mr Ward talked over him. The video emerged as Starbucks was embrollied in a PR nightmare after two black men were arrested for refusing to leave a store in Philadelphia 'This is going to be on social media!' he declared before the video ended. Mr Ward later said police arrived after he was escorted outside and had already walked down the street. Torrance police confirmed they were called in. He said he was in the Starbucks to wait for a friend and saw a sign with the bathroom policy. He asked if he could go then buy something after but was told no. The video emerged as Starbucks was embrollied in a PR nightmare after two black men were arrested for refusing to leave a store in Philadelphia. The pair, like Mr Ward, were denied use of the bathroom in the Center City outlet and the store manager called police when they refused to leave. Starbucks chief executive Kevin Johnson has since apologised, calling the incident 'reprehensible', and the store manager named Holly left the company. The incident sparked sit-ins and protests at the store as many claim the black men were racially profiled by the manager Rev. Gregory Holston, 56, (2nd R) and other Interfaith clergy leaders stage a sit-in at the Center City Starbucks The incident sparked sit-ins and protests at the store as many claim the black men were racially profiled by the manager. On Monday, interfaith clergy leaders staged a sit-in at the Center City Starbucks to demand action. Mr Johnson met with the two men on Monday to apologize to them face-to-face. He added that Starbucks wanted to add training for store managers on 'unconscious bias' and said it was 'completely inappropriate to engage the police'. 'I'd like to have a dialogue with them and the opportunity to listen to them with compassion and empathy through the experience they went through,' he said. Starbucks CEO Kevin Johnson, who is currently in Philadelphia, said on Monday that he hoped to meet with the two men in the next couple of days and apologize to them face-to-face Officials said police officers were told the men had asked to use the store's restroom but were denied because they hadn't bought anything and they refused to leave. Video shows several police talking quietly with two black men seated at a table. After a few minutes, officers handcuff the men and lead them outside as other customers say they weren't doing anything wrong. The pair were not charged after Starbucks declined to proceed with trespassing charges and they were quickly released. Holly claimed to TechBook that the store had regular problems with excessive loitering and Starbucks corporate has a policy against it at the specific store. She said managers had the discretion to call police to enforce the policy, and didn't even warn people that they were doing so. Stop the War activists defended Bashar Assad as a 'good man' on Parliament Square last night with one woman insisting he would not kill civilians because he is a doctor. President Assad has been blamed by the West for the devastating chlorine assault on civilians in Douma earlier this which killed at least 75 people. His regime has been proven responsible by the UN for more than 30 chemical attacks during the past five years. The Stop the War claims came as Chris Williamson, a close ally of Jeremy Corbyn, told last night's rally coalition strikes on Saturday were an attempt to destroy evidence. The rally was called to coincide with debates inside Parliament about Britain joining coalition air strikes against the Assad regime in the early hours of Saturday. A Stop the War activist (pictured) defended Bashar Assad as a 'good man' on Parliament Square last night, insisting he would not kill civilians because he is a doctor Protesters descended on Parliament Square last night as MPs inside debated Theresa May's decision to join air strikes against the Assad regime Stop the War have protested repeatedly in Westminster this week but have yet to stage a demonstration outside the Russian embassy Theresa May easily won a stunt vote in the Commons late last night after the SNP tried to secure a symbolic gesture against her decision to order the RAF into action without calling a Commons vote in advance. Why do Stop the War activists say Assad is a doctor? Bashar Assad (pictured left as a medical student) was described as 'the geeky IT guy' by those who knew him in the British capital and showed no interest in politics at the time Syrian President Bashar Assad is a doctor who graduated in Damascus and worked in the Syrian Army. He qualified as a specialist ophthalmologist after graduating from Damascus University in 1988 and worked for a stint at a local military hospital. He later moved to London where he trained for four years at the Western Eye Hospital in London. The future dictator was described as 'the geeky IT guy' by those who knew him in the British capital and showed no interest in politics at the time. He was a fan of Phil Collins and Whitney Houston, and lived a quiet life in his rented flat in London. But in 1994 he received an unexpected call recalling him back to Syria to re-join the family business ruling the country in 1994 after his older brother Bassel died in a car crash. South African-born Edmund Schulenburg, who trained Dr Bashar, as he was known, said: When he left in 1994 after two years, I remember thinking that he was really better suited to being an eye surgeon than a leading politician. I thought he was not strong enough. I dont think he is a strong leader. Back in Syria, Assad joined the military and took charge of the country's operations in Lebanon. But his links to Britain continued as he married Asma Akhras, who was born and raised in London. She went to a Church of England primary school in Ealing, where she was known as Emma. His father-in-law is Dr Fawaz Akhras - a Harley Street doctor who leads a privileged life in leafy Acton. Dr Akhras, who also works at the Cromwell Hospital in Earls Court, has repeatedly refused to criticise his son-in-law when approached by journalists. Advertisement The woman interviewed by ITV at the Parliament Square rally was asked if Assad was a 'good man'. She said: 'Yes, he is a good person. He's a very good man. 'He's a doctor, for heaven's sake! Do you think he goes around killing Syrian people?' Questioned on whether she believed Assad over the Prime Minister, she agreed and added: 'He's not a murderer, he's the president of a country for god's sake!' Following ITV's broadcast, Stop the War tweeted to insist the views 'in no way reflect those of Stop the War UK.' Speaking from the podium at the rally, Mr WIlliamson told protesters: 'Why would the Assad regime at this stage of the appalling conflict in Syria, where he's virtually won the battle for Eastern Ghouta, launch a chemical weapons attack when it would be bound to bring on the wrath of the West?' He added: 'The motive is questionable, the evidence where is the evidence? It just isn't there. 'And it's no coincidence, it seems to me, that on the day before the OPCW inspectors were due to start their inspection, these air strikes took place. What is going on? 'There are very serious questions, it seems to me, that need to be answered.' Protestor Lisa Marsden, 36, condemned the Government's actions as illegal, and accused Theresa May of 'blindly following' US President Donald Trump. She told Express.co.uk: 'It's absolutely disgraceful. I bet none of them have given a thought to the people stuck there.' James Chappell, 54, also condemned Mrs May's actions. He said: 'It's not right Theresa May didn't have a vote. She didn't have one because she thought she'd lose it. Bruce Kent, from the Campaign for Nuclear Disarmament, said Saturday's strikes were 'absolutely illegal'. Labour leader Jeremy Corbyn has been repeatedly criticised for appearing to equivocate over who was to blame the for the Douma attack. He has been lashed by his own side for refusing to endorse Saturday's strikes to punish the Assad regime. Labour MPs led by Mike Gapes have accused Mr Corbyn of disavowing the party's proud tradition of humanitarian intervention to save lives. And in the Commons yesterday Mr Corbyn faced shouts of 'shame' as he told MPs the Government was wrong to join air strikes without a vote. Chris Williamson, a close ally of Jeremy Corbyn, told last night's rally coalition strikes on Saturday were an attempt to destroy evidence Labour leader Jeremy Corbyn has been repeatedly criticised for appearing to equivocate over who was to blame the for the Douma attack He said that it was now 'vitally important' that OPCW inspectors were allowed to investigate and report their findings. Who is Chris Williamson and why is he controversial? Chris Williamson is one of Jeremy Corbyn's closest political allies and among the loudest supporters of his leadership. The Derby North MP has been described as the 'most pro Corbyn' MP in the Commons. But he has also got his close friend into trouble repeatedly. He played down the anti-Semitism scandal engulfing Labour as a 'really dirty, low down trick' and a 'proxy war' launched by moderate MPs. Williamson resigned from the front bench after advocating doubling council tax on the most valuable homes, forcing Corbyn to disavow him. He was also condemned by female MPs for suggesting a solution to sexual assault on public transport was for women to travel in their own carriages. In his latest controversial remarks, he claimed coalition air strikes against Syria could be covering up evidence of who was to blame for a gas attack. Addressing a Stop the War rally in Parliament Square last night, Mr Williamson echoed Kremlin attack lines by claiming the timing of raids was 'questionable'. Advertisement He went on to say: 'We have the grotesque spectacle of a wider geopolitical battle being waged by proxy, with the Syrian people used as pawns on all sides.' The Labour leader has repeatedly caused anger by making clear he does not accept that the strikes on Bashar Assad's chemical weapons capability by the US, UK and France were legally justified on humanitarian grounds. In a renewed attack on the Labour leader at the end of the debate, Theresa May outlined the UN resolutions on Syria vetoed by the Kremlin in recent months. She warned Corbyn that relying solely on the UN Security Council was tantamount to agreeing not to act. It comes after Mrs May told MPs today she is 'haunted' by victims of Assad's poison attack as she delivered a passionate defence of the Syria strikes. The Prime Minister insisted action to degrade Bashar Assad's chemical weapons capability was in the 'national interest' and justified on humanitarian grounds. In a performance welcomed by MPs on both sides of the Commons, she also flatly denied that she was dancing to the tune of Donald Trump. And she dismissed criticism for failing to recall parliament to vote on the action. Pointing to the nerve agent attack in Salisbury last month, she said it was vital that the use of such banned substances did not become 'normalised' around the world. The Assad family (pictured in the early 1990s) had been close to Britain. The current Syrian president (back row second left) trained for four years in the UK to become an eye surgeon And she said that the US, UK and France 'could not wait' while further atrocities took place. Mrs May told the Commons it was obvious that diplomacy alone would not protect civilians - and lashed out at Jeremy Corbyn for saying military action should never be considered without UN security council approval. Does May need to call a Commons vote on striking Syria? Theresa May was constitutionally entitled to order British forces into action in Syria without a Commons vote. The Prime Minister has the power to deploy troops under the Royal Prerogative. There are no hard and fast rules obliging the government to involve rank-and-file MPs in the decision. But a vote on prolonged deployment of UK forces would be almost impossible to avoid. Commons divisions have been held on almost all military action by British forces since the Iraq War in 2003, establishing what many see as a firm convention. Advertisement 'Lets be clear, that would mean giving Russia a veto,' she said. The government appears determined to avoid calling a meaningful division in the House on the issue - even though it would likely win with Tories and the DUP rallying behind Mrs May and support from significant number of Labour MPs. In her statement to parliament, the PM said chemical weapons use could not become normalised 'either within Syria, on the streets of the UK or elsewhere'. Mrs May told MPs: 'Let me be absolutely clear. We have acted because it is in our national interest to do so. 'It is in our national interest to prevent the further use of chemical weapons in Syria and to uphold and defend the global consensus that these weapons should not be used. 'For we cannot allow the use of chemical weapons to become normalised either within Syria, on the streets of the UK or elsewhere.' Pointing to the nerve agent attack in Salisbury last month, Theresa May told MPs it was vital that the use of chemical weapons does not become 'normalised' around the world A Russian journalist who wrote about his country's 'shadow army' in Syria has died after falling from the balcony of his fifth-floor flat. Maksim Borodin fell from his apartment in Yekaterinburg, a major city in the Urals, on Thursday and died from his injuries in hospital on Sunday, news agencies reported. Investigators said yesterday that they were not treating the death as suspicious, but Russia has a long history of reporters being murdered and media have called for a proper investigation. Maksim Borodin fell from his apartment in Yekaterinburg, a major city in the Urals, on Thursday and died from his injuries in hospital on Sunday, news agencies reported Borodin worked for the news service Noviy Den (New Day) and recently wrote on the deaths of employees of the so-called 'Wagner Group', the private army Moscow is using in Syria. Thousands of mercenaries have reportedly been deployed to Syria by a shadowy contracting company believed to be bankrolled by Yevgeny Prigozhin. Prigozhin was indicted by the US in February on charges that he funded the 'troll factory' alleged to have tried to influence the 2016 presidential election. 'There are no grounds for launching a case,' the local investigative committee told the TASS news agency yesterday. 'Several versions are being considered, including that this was an unfortunate accident, but there is no sign a crime has been committed,' it said. The Investigative Committee, Russia's main investigative agency, said there was no reason to believe a crime had been committed. But Polina Rumyantseva, the editor of Noviy Den, said there was also no reason to class the death as suicide. In 2006, the esteemed journalist Anna Politkovskaya was murdered in Moscow He said: 'We were able to visit the apartment of Maxim together with the police and forensic experts on Friday. 'The intermediate conclusion is that Maxim fell out of the balcony of his apartment where he probably was smoking. She added: 'As Maxim had big plans for his personal life and career, there is nothing to support a verdict of suicide.' Meanwhile his friend, Vyacheslav Bashkov, wrote that Borodin had called him on Wednesday morning to say his building was surrounded by masked men working for the security forces. Russian news reports cited police as saying the apartment was locked from the inside. The local committee told AFP it would not comment on the incident to foreign media. But Harlem Desir, the representative for freedom of the media at the Organization for Security and Co-operation in Europe, said Borodin's death was 'of serious concern'. 'I call on the authorities for a swift and thorough investigation,' he said on Twitter Monday. Russia has a disturbing record of attacks on reporters, with 58 killed since 1992, according to the Committee to Protect Journalists. In 2006, esteemed journalist Anna Politkovskaya - who frequently attacked Putin and exposed Russian atrocities during the Second Chechen War - was murdered in Moscow. Advertisement Britain is set to bask in sizzling temperatures for the next two weeks as the 'African blowtorch' brings highs of 80F (26C) across parts of the UK. A 1,500-mile wide front of hot air branded as the 'blowtorch' will reportedly see the hottest April day in a decade before heating up later on in the week. Temperatures are to rise 55F (13C) above the average for this time of year - and the Met Office has confirmed that tomorrow's 70F (21C) will make it the warmest day of 2018 so far. Experts predict these warm conditions are likely to last for the rest of the month, with changeable conditions continuing in the northwest, while the southeast still has some decent dry and bright spells. Bring on the heat: People enjoy the start of a warm spell of Spring weather in Greenwich Park, South London Temperatures are to rise 55F (13C) above the average for this time of year - and the Met Office has confirmed that tomorrow's 70F (21C) will make it the warmest day of 2018 so far. Pictured: Friends Peter and Rajmund, both 32, enjoying the sun in Greenwich Park Enjoying the sun in London's Greenwich Park: Temperatures are to rise 55F (13C) above the average for this time of year - and the Met Office has confirmed that tomorrow's 70F (21C) will make it the warmest day of 2018 so far. The Met Office has confirmed that tomorrow's 70F (21C) will make it the warmest day of 2018 so far - with temperatures reaching a high of 77F (25C) on Thursday in some areas A 1,500-mile wide front of hot air branded as the 'blowtorch' will reportedly see the hottest April day in a decade before heating up later on in the week One sun worshipper catches some rays while catching up on her messages in Greenwich Park in South East London Toasty temperatures will even be higher than those in Malibu, Athens and Rome. The start of the week should see warm weather in the south and the east, but the north and west have a high risk of rain and wind. The southeast can expect the best conditions in the country with the northwest seeing the bleakest. The African plume differs to the Spanish plume the UK experienced last summer which brought with it temperatures of 77F (25C). A Spanish plume is caused by cool Atlantic air being pushed towards Spain, which in turn pushes warm Spanish air towards the UK, bringing with it hot humid weather. Huge waves crash over the seafront at Porthleven in Cornwall (pictured) during what is hoped a final bout of poor weather A yellow weather warning for flooding in some parts of the country such as Cornwall expired today however some rain can still be expected RSPB Arne on a sunny morning in Dorset marked the start of a week of fine weather People in Guilford Castle grounds enjoy the Daffodils after the rainfall in Surrey According to experts at the Met Office, south England will see temperatures of 77F (25C) on Thursday, cooling to a pleasant 73F (23C) on Friday, 66F (19C) on Saturday and 68F (20C) on Sunday. Rain and windy weather will start off the week in north England, but temperatures will get better as the days go on. Thursday will be an improvement, with temperatures rising and plenty of sunshine - expect highs of 70F (21C). For May, the forecast is uncertain but experts expect to see a combination of dry and rainy days, with average temperatures. A little boy plays among the flowers at Greenwich Park in London on Tuesday afternoon People enjoy the warm weather in Greenwich Park on Tuesday morning, sporting shades to block out the sun A man dozes off while basking in the sunlight and warm weather conditions at Greenwich Park on Tuesday Sunshine vibes in Greenwich Park, South London today as Britain prepares for a heatwave Meanwhile it will be wet and windy across Scotland and Wales at first but by Thursday there will be highs of 64F (18C) and 60F (20C) respectively. In Northern Ireland, Thursday is expected to be the best day with top temperatures of 63 (17C) and clear skies. And although those in Cardiff won't have the warmest weather from the blowtorch, they will have five days of cloud free skies. Royal Navy vessels visit sunny Weymouth harbour, displaying Union Jack flags as is customary for British ships when in a harbour People walk their dogs on Weymouth's sunny beach on a fine Spring morning on Monday People enjoy a beautiful Spring day in sunny Weymouth on Monday A yacht visits Weymouth harbour on a sunny and crisp Spring day on Monday Oli Claydon, a spokesman for the Met Office said: 'A yellow weather warning for flooding in some parts of the country expired at 11am today however dribs and drabs of rain can still be expected. 'There will also be heavy showers today in Northern Ireland and Scotland with periods of brightness later in the afternoon. 'Tomorrow there will be warmer conditions with highs of 75F (24C) in South East England and 63F (17C) in Glasgow - also expect bright conditions and some showers in north Scotland.' Rain and windy weather will start off the week in north England, but temperatures will get better as the days go on (RSPB Arne in Dorset pictured) A map shows flood alerts earlier today, however things are starting to look up for the rest of the week with highs of 79F (26C) in some parts of the country Those living by the coast should still expect a chilly breeze as sea surface temperatures are still below average (Round Island on a sunny morning in Dorset) Friday will be a bright sunny day and things will start to cool down by Saturday and Sunday (RSPB Arne in Dorset pictured) People enjoy the start of a warm spell of Spring weather in Herne Bay, Kent on Tuesday He continued: 'Thursday will be one of the hottest days with highs of 79F (26C) in some areas. 'However, those living by the coast should still expect a chilly breeze as sea surface temperatures are still below average. 'Friday will be a bright sunny day and things will start to cool down by Saturday and Sunday.' Alfie Evans' parents have called on supporters to stop protesting outside the hospital where he is being treated as police investigate alleged threats against staff. Tom Evans, 21, and Kate James, 20, have been fighting a legal battle to move their 23-month-old son, who suffers from a degenerative neurological condition, to a hospital in Rome for treatment. Hundreds of people have gathered outside Alder Hey Children's Hospital in Liverpool to show support, but police are investigating reports of 'verbal abuse and intimidation'. Mr Evans has now called on supporters to stand down the protests to minimise disruption to the hospital. Alfie Evans' father Tom, 21, gave an emotional speech outside the hospital yesterday. He said: 'Alfie, the family, and all of our supporters are stronger than ever and we will keep fighting all the way. We will never give up on you Alfie' After his speech (left), Tom shared a photo of Alfie with his eyes open (right). He wrote: He's fighting not dying, he's undiagnosed not terminal, HE HAS NOT GOT MITOCHONDRIAL!!!!!' He wrote on Facebook: 'Can I ask that after tonight I would really appreciate if everyone has a break from the protesting please? 'Me and Kate are so so so grateful for all your time you have put into it and support. We can not thank you enough. 'I will update you on where we go from here and if we get permission then that would be a good reason to demonstrate peacefully. 'Me and Kate need to focus on spending precious time with Alfie and focus on the next legal step, keeping the relationship with the staff at ease and peace and make sure no parents are being affected any more. 'Thank you all so, so much. Please, please share this so everyone gets the message.' The parents apologised over the reported threats yesterday. Mr Evans said in a statement yesterday: 'Deepest apologies from me and Kate James to the parents and staff effected by the protest/demonstration, it wasn't mine Kate's or anyone else intention to harm or cause conflict or upset. 'We just wanted to take our son to give him the chance he deserves.' The family lost their latest legal fight at the Court of Appeal where they were asking judges to rule Alfie should be allowed to travel to a foreign hospital. Despite the decision, Mr Evans gave a defiant speech saying they are 'stronger than ever' and will never give up on the 23-month-old boy. He said: 'We want to know they can't break us and we're never gonna back down. Alfie, the family, and all of our supporters are stronger than ever and we will keep fighting all the way. We will never give up on you Alfie.' A bouncy castle and a gazebo were put up yesterday as protests entered a fourth day After his speech, Mr Evans posted the photo on Facebook with the caption: 'He's fighting not dying, he's undiagnosed not terminal, HE HAS NOT GOT MITOCHONDRIAL!!!!!' Chief Inspector Chris Gibson said officers 'recognise the sensitivities involved in this very difficult and sad situation'. 'Whilst many people have gathered to protest in a peaceful way, Merseyside Police is now investigating a small number of reports, some of which originate from social media, as well as instances of verbal abuse and acts of intimidation from those outside the hospital,' he added. 'This is extremely unhelpful for all concerned and we are investigating further to establish the full circumstances. 'We would like to remind the public that this is a hospital for sick children and it should not be forgotten that many families are going through extremely challenging and emotional times. 'We would ask protesters to respect families and staff, including the poorly children in the wards and to ensure that access to the hospital is not restricted at any time, so that services including the blood and ambulance service can run as efficiently as possible.' Alfie's parents Tom Evans and Kate James (pictured with their son) have apologised on Facebook after the police announced they were investigating reports of intimidation and verbal abuse outside Alder Hey Children's Hospital in Liverpool The court heard yesterday that the protest outside the hospital has caused road blockages which stopped NHS staff and the family of other sick children from accessing the hospital. Lord Justice Moylan said: 'We are told that some members of hospital of staff could not get to the hospital because of road blockage and that some staff and family members in the hospital could not gain entry. 'They said that some of the supporters had entered the paediatric intensive care ward.' The couple have already lost fights in the High Court, Court of Appeal, Supreme Court and European Court of Human Rights but may ask the Supreme Court to consider the case for a second time. In February, Mr Justice Hayden ruled that doctors at Alder Hey Children's Hospital in Liverpool could stop treating Alfie against the wishes of his parents following hearings in the Family Division of the High Court in London and Liverpool. Specialists at Alder Hey said life-support treatment should stop and Mr Justice Hayden said he accepted medical evidence which showed that further treatment was futile. Alfie's parents say 'the state' is wrongly interfering with their parental choice. They want to move Alfie to a hospital in Rome. The 23-month-old's parents have also shared this image on Facebook of the toddler in hospital Mr Justice Hayden said flying Alfie to a foreign hospital would be wrong and pointless and the Court of Appeal judges upheld his decisions. Supreme Court justices and European Court of Human Rights judges refused to intervene. What's next for Alfie Evans? Supreme Court justices might be asked to consider the case for a second time because his parents are using a piece of ancient English common law during the latest stage of their fight for treatment. The couple say Italian doctors are willing to treat the little boy and an air ambulance is available. They are now arguing that Alfie is being wrongly 'detained' at Alder Hey and have made a habeas corpus application. A writ of habeas corpus - Latin for 'you may have the body' - is a legal manoeuvre which requires a court to examine the legality of a detention. It is a piece of common law which probably dates back to Anglo-Saxon times. Advertisement Last week, Mr Justice Hayden endorsed a detailed plan put forward by Alder Hey doctors for withdrawing life-support treatment, after considering a number of issues at a follow-up High Court hearing. Barrister Paul Diamond, who represented Alfie's parents, on Monday asked the three appeal judges to overturn decisions made by Mr Justice Hayden last week. Alfie's parents say their son has improved in recent weeks and had asked Mr Justice Hayden to allow a new assessment. Mr Hayden refused that request. He said medical experts' unanimous view was that Alfie's brain had been eroded by disease and further assessment was pointless. They also suggested that Alfie was being unlawfully detained at Alder Hey. The judge also dismissed that suggestion. Appeal court officials said an appeal court judge had decided that Alfie should continue to receive treatment pending the outcome of Monday's Court of Appeal hearing. Judges have heard that Alfie, born on May 9 2016, is in a 'semi-vegetative state' and has a degenerative neurological condition. As news from the court filtered through to Alfie's supporters at the hospital, tears mixed with anger and police officers fanned out around the crowd, who began a chant of 'Save Alfie Evans!'. Alfie's Army has urged people to be 'respectful at all times' or face being sent away Alfie's doctors are unanimous that any treatment is 'futile' as the hospital caring for him urged protesters not to disturb other patients after a bouncy castle went up outside. Alfie's parents have also urged supporters to be 'respectful' after people visiting Alder Hey in Liverpool complained about the noise. Men on scrambler bikes have performed noisy wheelies outside the children's hospital where Alfie has been since December 2016, while there were also reports of protesters singing through a karaoke machine and even drinking alcohol. Yesterday the Pope intervened in the case of the British boy, appealing for his life to be shown 'respect' as his Vatican children's hospital offered to treat him. Pope Francis prayed for Alfie Evans during his Sunday address in in St Peter's Square in Rome Lord Justice Davis, who is heading the three-strong panel of appeal judges, told lawyers that at the start of the hearing that doctors had agreed that there was 'no hope'. He said: 'We cannot have a kind of legal 'Groundhog Day' where you come back again and again and again on the same point.' A second appeal judge, Lady Justice King, said doctors' unanimous opinion was that Alfie 'could not be saved'. Alfie's parents were not at the appeal court hearing, which is expected to end in the next few hours. Alder Hey bosses have pleaded with Alfie Evans protesters not to disturb staff and patients with noisy demonstrations. The children's hospital urged campaigners backing Alfie's battle for survival to limit their noise due to the impact it was having on recovering patients. About 100 people were involved in a demonstration outside Alder Hey last night, with supporters chanting in support of the 23-month-old. Candles were lit in tribute and campaigners lined East Prescot Road as honking cars passed the gathered crowd. At one point they were addressed by Tom Evans from the roof of a nearby bus shelter. But photographs also show supporters brought a bouncy castle and gazebos Alder Hey issued a statement in which it urged protesters to keep noise 'to a minimum'. It read: 'We would like to make people aware of the impact the current protests are having on our patients, staff and services. 'Noise from recent protests has unfortunately affected our patients, so we would ask that noise levels outside the hospital are kept to a minimum. 'Loud and constant noise such as from car horns affects sleep and raises anxiety levels for our patients especially when recovering from procedures, so please bear them in mind. Boys on scrambler bikes have been tearing up the road outside the hospital as part of at times noisy protests to save Alfie 'For visitors, we have been advised to put additional measures in place so our patients and families are able to access vital services without limitation by others. 'For example tomorrow, visitors may see more security in the hospital and a more controlled approach to access to certain areas. 'This will help us maintain a flow to vital services, so please be patient. 'However, Alder Hey remains fully operational with A&E open for urgent and emergency care'. The latest demonstration comes on the eve of a court hearing over Alfie's future. The case is set to be heard in the Court of Appeal this morning after an emergency order was signed by a judge on Thursday night. Just days earlier, a date and time for the withdrawal of Alfie's medical support had been set. Pope Francis used his traditional Sunday blessing in St Peter's Square to say he's praying for British brain damaged toddler Alfie Evans. The pontiff said the situation is 'very painful and complex' as he spoke on Alfie and others who are terminally ill. He expressed hope that they're always respected in their dignity and cared for in a way suitable to their conditions, with the agreement of family members, doctors and health workers.' Monsignor Vincenzo Paglia, head of the Pontifical Academy of Life, a Vatican bioethics think tank, said yesterday that Alfie's parents and hospital officials should work together so his life isn't 'reduced to a legal dispute.' Francis' comments mark the second time in less than a year that he has intervened in the case of a terminally ill British child. Around 50 people were filmed standing outside Alder Hey hospital last night in protest at a judges ruling in favour of switching off the child's life support. In the footage the group sing Hero by Mariah Carey as cars and vans sound their horns in support of the tiny tot. Protesters including Alfie's mother and father gathered outside Alder Hey hospital The protest continues outside Alder Hey. Motorbikes rode up and down the road and campaigners held signs in support Last July he spoke out on behalf of Charlie Gard, who died of a rare genetic disease after a vicious court battle in which his parents sought treatment first in the United States and then Italy. Alfie's parents are preparing for a hearing Monday at Britain's Court of Appeal during which they will try to overturn earlier rulings that have blocked further treatment. The High Court, Court of Appeal, Supreme Court and European Court of Human Rights have previously accepted the opinion of doctors, who say Alfie's condition is irreversible. The pontiffsaid the situation is 'very painful and complex' as he spoke on Alfie and others who are terminally ill Protesters gathered outside Alder Hey Children's Hospital in Liverpool to campaign against the ruling Alfie, now 23 months old, is in a 'semi-vegetative state' at Alder Hey Children's Hospital in Liverpool as the result of a degenerative neurological condition that doctors have been unable to definitively identify. Protesters gathered outside the hospital last week after a judge endorsed a plan for doctors at Alder Hey to withdraw life support. Motorbikes rode up and down the road and campaigners held signs in support of the brain damaged youngster outside of the hospital. Speaking outside the hospital on Friday, Alfie's father Tom Evans, 21, said he had chartered a jet to take the child to Italy but had been stopped by the hospital. 'If he stays here and dies, he dies,' Evans said. 'If he goes and he dies at least he has died a hero trying.' The hospital said that it would not help Alfie to subject him to further tests. 'Alfie's clinical condition is truly heart-rending, but at each stage of the legal process, which has to be followed in such cases, the courts have agreed with the treating team and the independent expert advisers instructed by the trust and the family that Alfie's condition is irreversible and untreatable,' the hospital said in a statement. A jealous Mayfair art gallery boss who flew 10,000 miles to Australia to stalk his former lover and bombarded her with messages including pictures of him wearing her clothes has been given an indefinite restraining order. Jan Navratil, 35, must also wear an electronic ankle tag and cannot leave his south-west London house at night for three months to keep him away from Sophie Davis. The shipping and bond manager at the Halcyon Gallery in London, admits he could not cope after the split with Miss Davis, a Cheam veterinary nurse who he met online and dated for six months. He followed her to Australia and claimed a meeting on a Sydney beach was a coincidence and also trailed her on her bus to work and once stole her passport, his victim said. On one occasion she attended a medical appointment close to Buckingham Palace and minutes later received a photo from Navratil of the outside of the message: 'I feel close to you.' Jan Navratil, 35, cannot contact Sophie Davis and must also wear an electronic ankle tag or leave his house at night for three months to keep him away from his terrified ex-girlfriend Miss Davis was left with severe anxiety and was unable to sleep for long periods because of his unwanted attention. Navratil was sentenced at Wimbledon Magistrates Court (pictured outside) for his campaign of stalking that included following his victim Down Under Navratil, a Czech-born university graduate, of Colliers Wood, received a four-month community order, which includes a three-month tagged home curfew between 9pm and 6am when he appeared at Wimbledon Magistrates Court. He was also made subject to an indefinite restraining order prohibiting any contact with Sophie and was also ordered to pay 85 costs and an 85 victim surcharge after pleading guilty to stalking Sophie between February 7 and April 3. 'This is serious and we have all heard her personal statement and the effect your behaviour had on her,' District Judge Barbara Barnes told Navratil. 'If you repeat this sort of behaviour you put yourself at risk of a custodial sentence.' Australian-born Sophie moved in with Navratil while recovering from an operation, but reported him to the police for taking her passport and moved into Wimbledon's Antoinette Hotel. 'Four hours later she started receiving messages that he was going to kill himself and received a picture of the hotel from the defendant saying he wanted to be close to her,' explained prosecutor Miss Dami Eniola. 'She received multiple messages throughout the night and he later sent a picture of himself wearing her clothing.' Navratil says this was simply a unisex t-shirt and was an item of clothing they shared when living together. 'When she attended a medical appointment near Buckingham Palace she received a picture of the building and a message from the defendant saying: 'I feel close to you.' 'She said she felt he was following her that day and later when travelling to Australia he was waiting for her, wearing a backpack, when she left the ladies toilet at the airport.' Miss Davis, from Cheam, was left with severe anxiety and was unable to sleep for long periods because of his unwanted attention The couple had booked the Australia trip - travelling a week apart - when they were together, but Sophie had split with Navratil by now and even if he decided to fly Down Under his flight was to Melbourne. 'On the second of March she went to the beach in Sydney and saw the defendant waking along the path towards her. She confronted him, but he pretended he did not see her,' added Miss Eniola. She was hospitalised while in Australia, where she was also communicating with another man, and received Facebook messages from Navratil. 'He had accessed her account and wrote: 'It's Jan. You care more about this Sam.' 'Back in the UK she received multiple messages that he wanted to be with her and on the third of April he boarded her 93 bus as she travelled to work. 'He tried to sit next to her and she shouted at him to get off the bus and he followed her downstairs and tried to sit next to her again.' When she arrived at work Sophie called the police and Navratil was arrested. 'He said he was distressed and could not sleep and got pills from his doctor. 'He said he missed her and was angry that she left him. He said he had seen her in Australia, but that was accidental and they spoke for thirty minutes and she gave him a hug even thought at first she was not pleased to see him. 'He said he only wanted to giver her hairdryer back on the bus and apologise, but she did not take it well. He admitted taking the passport as an excuse to see her again. 'He went into her Facebook daily to read her messages and said he was very embarrassed he did that. He said he did not want to scare her and would not contact her again.' Sophie told police: 'He took it very hard. When I was in intensive care I think he thought this shared experience brought us together. 'I tried to end the relationship in December, but felt responsible for his mental instability. 'When taking my suitcase outside he secretly took my passport to have a bargaining tool to later meet up. He repeatedly threatened his life and said I had destroyed his. 'My sadness turned to concern for myself, I have been anxious and have not been able to sleep properly. 'I feel it has put me back in a dark place and it has sadly impacted my life. I'd love to move forward and not have to look over my shoulder. 'I'm sad it has come to this, but it is necessary.' Navratil's lawyer Miss Danielle Burns told the court: 'He wants to express his remorse and apologise to Miss Davis. 'When she went to Australia he thought he was not going to see her again and it was too tempting not to check up on what she was doing in Australia.' LONGBOAT KEY, Fla. On Friday, April 13, Nancy Wasileski gazed at the ocean and then took her last breathes, surrounded by her adoring family, while on vacation in her beloved Longboat Key, Florida. For four long years, Nancy valiantly battled, with grit and grace, a degenerative condition, and now her spirit is finally set free from her broken body to join her loving parents, sister, husband and her God for a majestic eternity in Heaven. Nancy Loretta Von Scheidt was born on Aug. 5 in Hoboken, N.J., to Julius, Executive Vice President of the Hackensack Water Company, Loretta, a caring homemaker, and Carol, her doting older sister. Nancy's idyllic childhood was spent in Bergenfield, N.J., where she graduated from Bergenfield High School, an active member of her class, marching in color guard, singing in choir and being crowned prom queen her senior year. After graduation, Nancy proudly received her degree as a registered nurse at Columbia University School of Nursing and immediately began working at St. Luke's Hospital, an affiliation of Columbia. While riding home on the bus one day, Nancy met a handsome dental student, Joseph Wasileski, who captured her heart. Nancy later married Joe and moved upstate, first to Rochester and then to Auburn where they made a life together. Like a scene from a horror film, a street in China has recently been taken over by thousands of toads. Stomach-churning footage has emerged which shows thousands of amphibians hopping on the pavement after spring showers last week. Local city's earthquake administration bureau has ruled out residents' concern that the unusual phenomenon was a possible warning of impending natural disasters. Mobile phone footage shows thousands of toads sitting and hopping on the street in China The scene was captured in near Dengguan bridge in Zigong in Sichuan Province on April 13. Li Yifan, chairman of Zigong Bird Watching Association, told the Cover News that the toads were Asiatic Toads, a type of amphibians that is commonly seen in China. He explained that the appearance of the toads were related to the weather. 'The weather dropped after the shower on April 13. The toads will normally get to the shore when the humidity reaches certain level,' said Mr Li. Footage posted on Pear Video, shows thousands of warty-skinned toads on the bricks, stairs and roads around Dengguan bridge. One woman can be heard saying: 'Oh, there's a lot! Is there an earthquake coming?' Local residents worried that the large appearing of toads was a sign of impending earthquake The asiatic toads often go ashore after rain when the air is humid and the temperature is low However, a lot of the asiatic toads were stamped to death on the day by local residents An officer from the local earthquake monitoring bureau told Pear Video that 'it's normal that the toads came up ashore due to the high humidity in the air'. 'This is related to climate change, it has nothing to do with earthquake,' the officer added. A lot of the toads were stamped to death on the day, a local resident told the Cover News. The reporter visited the site the next day and found very few toads 'crawling'o on the ground. Two 'slaves' have won more than 26,000 compensation from a family of travellers who kidnapped them and forced them to work for them for 26 years. Patrick Joseph Connors, 61, headed the violent family who forced the two homeless men to live and work in 'atrocious conditions' for just 10 a day. Connors, his son Patrick Dean Connors, 41, and nephew William Connors, 38, were jailed for a total of 24 years after being convicted of forced labour crimes two years ago. Cardiff Crown Court heard victim Michael Hughes, 48, will receive a total of 16,300 while the second victim - known only as 'Mr K', 43 - will receive 10,000. Patrick Joseph Connors, left, and son Patrick Dean, right, were both jailed for the forced slavery of Michael Hughes and 'Mr K'. Their family has now been ordered to pay the victims more than 26,000 in compensation Both men were put to work as 'modern day slaves' by laying asphalt and doing general building labour - and threatened with violence if they tried to escape. Mr Hughes said he was just 19 when he was taken in by the Connors gang - and was only freed after 26 years a slave. He told Connors' trial in May 2016: 'I feel like not only did they strip me from my early adult life but also moulded me into a unhappy man that felt worthless. 'They made me feel like I had nothing to live for. Every time I felt some sort of happiness they tried to crush it.' Second victim 'Mr K' said he was kept for six years, during which time he suffered a collapsed vertebrae and osteoporosis which was attributed to malnutrition. The court heard the second victim, who cannot be identified for legal reasons, tried to escape on his own four times only to be tracked down and kidnapped again. Nephew William Connors, pictured, was also jailed over the crime Mr K told the trial: 'I kept things bottled up inside and resorted to cannabis and alcohol to block everything out. 'I was angry at the authorities who did nothing and at myself for getting sucked into this situation. 'I would describe Paddy (Patrick Joseph) as an animal. I wish I could make him feel remorse.' The pair both managed to escape the Connors' gang on one occasion - but were hunted down and beaten as punishment at the family's properties in and around Cardiff. Prosecutor John Hipkin said at the Connors' trial the two 'slaves' were regularly beaten and threatened, and made to work from dawn until 11pm. He said: 'The work would be heavy work - paving, tarmacking, slabbing. If they became ill or injured they were forced to work. 'They were treated like objects to be abused.' At the previous court case more than 150 travellers staged a protest against the verdicts, brandishing signs and wearing 'not guilty' t-shirts. They sang and chanted, while children rode on horses and in carts, and protest songs blared from a speaker system set up on the steps. Some even compared the treatment of the trio to that of Nelson Mandela in South Africa. The trial in 2016 saw more than 150 travellers and family members protest the verdict Patrick Snr, left, was jailed for 14 years while his son was jailed for six-and-a-half years Patrick Joseph Connors was jailed for 14 years, after being found guilty of forced labour. He was also found guilty of eight counts of assault occasioning actual bodily harm, four counts of kidnap and one of conspiracy to kidnap. Son Patrick Dean Connors was jailed for six and a half years after being found guilty of kidnap and forced labour. Williams Connors was jailed for four years after being found guilty of forced labour. Their Proceeds of Crime Act hearing was told both Patrick Joseph and Patrick Dean must also pay 16,500 each towards prosecution costs. Another hearing will be scheduled to determine how much William Connors must pay towards the prosecution. Cinco de Mayo, often mistaken as a celebration for Mexican independence, is now commonly observed in the United States with mariachi music, margaritas and Mexican food. The day actually marks a failed French invasion after the country defaulted on debt to European governments, grew in popularity in the 1960s among the Hispanic population in the US. However, in 2017 after Donald Trumps election as US President, those of Mexican heritage were fearful of marking the holiday because of the strengthened immigration enforcement. But when is Cinco de Mayo? Cinco de Mayo is now commonly observed with mariachi music, margaritas and Mexican food Cinco de Mayo history Cinco de Mayo is observed in order to mark the Battle of Puebla and Mexicos victory over French occupation in 1862 after the Reform War, that bankrupted the Mexican Treasury. Because of this, President Benito Juarez issued a moratorium and all foreign debt payments were suspended for two years. Britain, France and Spain sent naval forces to demand reimbursement and although the other countries withdrew, France, ruled by Napoleon III, established an empire to favour the French and was part of the plan for Latin America. The Battle of Puebla saw the Mexicans defeat the French army on May 5, 1862 in a day long battle, with the Mexico losing 100 soldiers, but France losing over 500. A year later, the French recaptured Mexico City and ruled over the country for three years around the same time as the American Civil War. Hes already ready for Cinco de Mayo pic.twitter.com/bhLna7l3yO Caitlyn Lobb (@caitlyn_lobb) April 15, 2018 When is Cinco de Mayo? On May 9, 1862, after becoming the new Mexican President, Benito Juarez declared that the anniversary of the Battle of Puebla would be marked as a national holiday, known as the Battle of Puebla Day or Battle of Cinco de Mayo. This is why Cinco de Mayo is celebrated on May 5 every year. Today, although the day is not observed as a national holiday across the country, all schools are closed and it is an official event in the State of Puebla and neighbouring Veracruz. In the US, the day was first marked in California in the 1860s as a response to French rule in Mexico and to celebrate the resistance. After the 1940s during the Chicano Movement, the day gained popularity across the United States with beer companies cashed in on the celebrations and began to promote it. How to celebrate Cinco de Mayo In Puebla, Cinco de Mayo is celebrated with historical reenactments, parades and meals with loved ones. The city also hosts the Festival Internacional de Puebla which sees musical artists and dancers take to the stage. In other countries, Mexican culture is celebrated with an emphasis on food, drink and music. A schizophrenic father heard voices ordering him to attack his family before he suffocated his wife and drowned his two children, a court has heard. Sami Salem is on trial after his wife Arena Saeed, 30, their daughter Shadia Salem, seven, and son Rami Saeed, four, were found dead at their flat in Liverpool, which was once the home of John Lennon. Salem is said to have held his hand over his wife's mouth and drowned his two young children in the bath, before dousing their flat in petrol and taking an overdose. Sami Salem is accused of murdering his wife Arena Saeed and their children Shadia and Rami A jury has been told Salem had reported seeing a 'black entity' and 'tall chimpanzees' due to his mental illness. The former Parcel Force driver has pleaded guilty to manslaughter, but denies murder on the grounds of diminished responsibility. Forensic psychiatrist Dr Mohammad Rahman told Liverpool Crown Court that he believes Salem was suffering from schizophrenia at the time of the killings. A court heard he had schizophrenia and hallucinated 'tall chimpanzees' In a report, Dr Rahman stated: '(Salem) heard voices saying don't go into his house because something bad was going to happen. He heard voices instructing him to hurt people. 'He says one time when he was driving it said, "don't push the brakes, you can do this" which he managed to resist.' Salem told Dr Rahman he had never been in love with his wife but denied claims he banned her from using her mobile phone or travelling.' Earlier in the trial, prosecutor Gordon Cole, QC, prosecuting, told the jury mental illness may not have been the main cause of the killings. Ms Saeed told her friend, Asrar Alshabi, that her husband 'locked her in the house', the jury heard. The killings are understood to have taken place in 36 Falkner Street, Liverpool, which was once owned by Beatles manager Brian Epstein, who allowed John Lennon to live there. The trial continues. The nerve agent used to poison a former Russian spy and his daughter was delivered 'in a liquid form', it was revealed today. Sergei Skripal, 66, and his daughter Yulia, 33, were both poisoned in Salisbury and were left in a critical condition in hospital. They had been attacked with Novichok on March 4 and traces were found on the former double agent's front door. The Department for Environment today confirmed the nerve agent was a liquid and added that nine sites in the area are still potentially contaminated. Sergei Skripal, 66, and his daughter Yulia, 33, (pictured together) were both poisoned in Salisbury and were left in a critical condition in hospital Defra today announced that there are nine sites which remain cordoned off following the nerve agent attack The pair had been in the Zizzi restaurant in Salisbury (pictured) which was closed off to the public after the incident The home of Sergei Skripal (pictured) remains cordoned off after traces of the nerve agent were found on his front door Experts warned that because the nerve agent was in liquid form it can be easily transferred 'like ink on someone's fingers'. It doesn't evaporate and therefore the areas the Skripals visited must be assessed and carefully cleaned at a cost running into millions of pounds. The sites - three of which are in the city centre - still require 'specialist cleaning' but the government added that the risk to the public is still 'low'. The work will be carried out by 190 specialist military personnel is expected to last 'months' and is being overseen by Defra based on 'expert advice'. The sites include The Maltings shopping centre, Zizzi, and the Ashley Wood compound in the Wiltshire city. Other buildings include The Mill pub, Bourne Hill police station in Salisbury, ambulance stations in Amesbury and Salisbury. Nine sites are STILL potentially contaminated 1. Zizzi 2. The Maltings shopping centre 3. Ashley Wood Compound 4. The Mill pub 5. Bourne Hill police station 6. Salisbury ambulance station 7. Amesbury ambulance station 8. The home of police officer Nick Bailey 9. The home of Sergei Skripal Advertisement Meanwhile, the homes of Skripal and police officer Nick Bailey, who was first on the scene when the pair were found slumped on a bench, could also be contaminated. The sites must be cleaned and will only be reopened once tests have been carried out and they have been declared safe. The cemetery where Mr Skripal's wife is buried was also cordoned off but it reopened today after tests were carried out. A Defra spokesman said: 'Clean-up work is beginning in Salisbury after the appalling nerve agent attack, to bring a small number of potentially contaminated sites back into safe use for the people of the city and its visitors. 'This follows the continuing handover of sites from the police investigation to recovery operations, including The Maltings, the cemetery, Zizzi and the Ashley Wood compound. 'In total nine sites, three of which are in the city centre, have been identified as requiring some level of specialist cleaning. 'Today a small cordoned area of London Road cemetery was the first area to be reopened to the public after extensive investigations and testing established that it was not contaminated. 'All remaining potentially contaminated sites will remain secured and the current scientific assessment is that the remainder of Salisbury is safe for residents and visitors. 'Public Health England have reaffirmed that the risk to the general public is low.' The Defra spokesman also said that the sites 'will not be released back into use' until the tests results have been reviewed and 'approved by the government's decontamination science assurance group. Their statement also said that the items will be removed amid fears they have been contaminated and they require chemical cleaning and retesting. It added: 'The work, which is expected to take a number of months, is being planned and overseen by Defra based on expert advice from Defence Science and Technology Laboratory (Dstl), Public Health England, Department for Health and Social Care, Home Office, and Ministry of Defence (MOD). Army officers remove the bench, where Sergei Skripal and his daughter were found in Salisbury Police officers stand by the cordon outside The Mill pub as investigations continue into the poisoning of Sergei Skripal 'The clean-up operation will be carried out in partnership with Wiltshire Council with support from the MOD, who are providing specialist teams to carry out work on the sites. Around 190 specialist military personnel from the Army and RAF will support the operation.' Defras Chief Scientific Adviser Ian Boyd, who is chair of the decontamination science assurance group overseeing the work, said: 'Our approach is based on the best scientific evidence and advice to ensure decontamination is carried out in a thorough and careful way. 'Our number one priority is making these sites safe for the public, so they can be returned to use for the people of Salisbury. 'Thanks to detailed information gathered during the polices investigation, and our scientific understanding of how the agent works and is spread, we have been able to categorise the likely level of contamination at each site and are drawing up tailored plans. 'Meticulous work is required and we expect it will be a number of months before all sites are fully reopened. Defra today said that the home of Nick Bailey (pictured) could still be contaminated 'The public will begin to see more activity in the city as the work gets underway. In the coming days residents can expect to see current cordons around the most public sites replaced with secure fencing, backed by police patrols and security guards. 'At certain points during decontamination, some cordons will be temporarily expanded to allow workers access to the sites with specialist equipment and ensure public safety as work is underway. Wherever possible this sort of disruption will be kept to a minimum. 'As work in the city moves from site to site the local authority will keep businesses and the community informed. 'The clean-up work goes hand in hand with the 2.5m already announced to support businesses, boost tourism and meet unexpected costs in recognition of the exceptional response and recovery effort in Salisbury. Baroness Jane Scott, the Leader of Wiltshire Council, said: 'We are pleased that work will be starting to decontaminate the sites affected by the shocking attack in our city. Working together with local and national agencies we are doing all we can to help Salisbury return to normal. 'Our main concern is to ensure that Salisbury is safe for residents, businesses and visitors and that the city can focus on the future, its recovery and that it will go from strength to strength.' A vegan meal served up for $22 in an Australian Japanese restaurant has been described as 'prison-like'. Make-up artist Loren Murnane, 28, was not happy with the meal she ordered at a the local Japanese restaurant, and posted to social media expressing her disgust. 'The menu mentioned a medley of vegetables, so I thought I couldn't go wrong,' she said. A vegan meal (pictured) served for $22 in a New South Wales Japanese restaurant has been described as 'prison-like'. 'It's shocking they would serve that for $22. It was basically just a ball of rice garnished with vegetables. 'I would be embarrassed to serve that. Anywhere else they serve it overflowing with vegetables.' Her post, which went viral, received widespread attention, including one person who commented: 'That's a prison meal!' Loren Murnane, 28 (pictured) was disappointed to be served 'minimalist meals' given veganism is now more common Ms Murnane said she was disappointed to be served such an average meal given veganism is now more common. 'This happens all the time, but vegans are not that uncommon anymore,' she said. 'I'm pretty non-confrontational, so I didn't complain or anything. But I won't be returning anytime soon.' The Newcastle restaurant reportedly refused to comment. Shanghai (Gasgoo)- BAIC Group is likely to forgo its old logo. According to the released information from the Trademark Office of the State Administration for Industry &Commerce, BAIC Group had applied a capitalized letter B-shaped logo, which will be utilized on cars and electric vehicles. Local media acquired information from BAIC insiders that BAIC Senour will launch all-new models bearing the new logo at Auto China 2018. BAIC's attempt to change logo may bear relevance to the performance of its self-owned vehicle brands. In 2017, BAIC gained revenue of RMB 134.158 billion, while net profit nosedived 64.62% year on year to RMB 2.253 billion. Among BAIC Group's four businesses, BJ brand and Beijing Hyundai suffered striking sales drop while the group was mainly supported by Beijing Mercedes-Benz and Fujian Mercedes-Benz. It is urgent that BAIC Group needs to make a difference in both brand image and products. Whether the new logo will be favorable or not remains unknown. However, to some extent, changing logo also demonstrates BAIC's determination of making a revolution. Moreover, what corporate idea the B-shaped new logo represents may be revealed at Auto China 2018 soon. This is the shocking moment a mouse invades a hotpot restaurant and jumps into boiling soup in front of terrified diners. Mr Lin and three of his friends were left screaming when they saw a mouse running down to their table. Local government inspectors downgraded the restaurant's level of hygiene and requested the owner to give a full refund to Mr Lin. Mr Lin and his friends are having hotpot dinner at a restaurant in southeast China (left). A big mouse suddenly goes down towards Mr Lin's table, as video shows (right) According to Guangdong Public Channels, Mr Lin and his friends visited an 'all you can eat' hot pot restaurant in Shajing of Shenzhen city on April 3. Security camera footage shows a large mouse walking along a wooden wall decoration before jumping into the hotpot soup. Diners were scared and left the table immediately. The mouse then leaps to the chair and runs away through the shocked guests. Mr Lin requested a full refund but was rejected by Mr Chen, the restaurant owner. 'We have put pests to kill rats regularly. The rats could come from small holes somewhere, we can't be sure,' Mr Chen told the reporter. The mouse jumps into the boiling soup and leaps out to the chair (left). Shocked diners stood far away from the table before the mouse fled away the scene (right) Mr Lin requested a full refund of 34 but was initially rejected by Mr Chen, the restaurateur Local inspector downgraded the restaurant as it failed to reach food safety standard Shenzhen Markets and Quality Supervision Commission received complaints from the diners and launched an investigation at Mr Chen's restaurant. According to Inspector Lin, they found a faulty freezer and an opened tin covered in a thick layer of mould. 'We have decided to downgrade Mr Chen's restaurant from grade B to grade C,' said Inspector Lin. Mr Chen will receive a notice of required amendments later to improve the restaurant's overall hygiene. The restaurateur apologised to Mr Chen and agreed to give a full refund of 307 yuan (34) to Mr Lin and his friends. A businessman accused of defrauding the Russian military has been raped and tortured to death inside his jail cell while awaiting trial. Valery Pshenichny, 56, was accused of embezzling 100 million rubles (1.3 million) while carrying out work on the construction and repair of submarines. The entrepreneur, who has been compared to Elon Musk, was found hanging inside a St. Petersburg jail cell in February three weeks after his arrest. Valery Pshenichny was raped before he died, a postmortem examination has revealed Pshenichny developed a unique modeling technology for construction and repair of Russia's Kilo - class submarines. File picture of Kilo - class submarine Rostov-on-Don According to the Novaya Gazeta newspaper, a post mortem examination has now revealed that Pshenichny died from neck trauma and asphyxiation, and had been raped before his death 'Electric shock burns from a hot-water boiler cord were found in his mouth. Lacerations and stab wounds on his body. A broken spine. Simply put, he was tortured,' the newspaper listed expert findings as saying. It added that Pshenichny, who had been in custody for several months, did not take his own life and a criminal case into incitement to suicide has been opened. He had developed a unique modeling technology for construction and repair of the improved Kilo-class submarine, known as Project 636 Varshavyanka in Russia. Pshenichny was found dead in St. Petersburg jail cell while awaiting trial Pshenichny initially suspected his business partner Andrei Petrov of theft in 2016. But Petrov testified that Pshenichny and another associate had conspired to inflate the cost of the contract. 'My husband and I were together for 40 years. I've never met such a smart, bright, strong, positive person,' Novaya Gazeta quoted his wife, Natalya, as saying. 'He was confident in himself, in his position, he knew that he was innocent and was not afraid of anything,' The director of the Agora international human rights organization Pavel Chikov said Pshenichny's last words were: 'Everyone betrayed me.' A mother who kept her daughter as a sex slave has been jailed after forcing the girl into sex more than 1,000 times. Kasmeer Lata's teenage daughter was forced to sell her body to men over an almost two-year period, starting from her 15th birthday in 2014. The 36-year-old was today sentenced in Auckland's High Court to six years and 11 months behind bars. Kasmeer Lata, an Auckland mother who kept her daughter as a sex slave has been jailed, after forcing the girl into sex more than 1,000 times (picture posed by model) However, she could be eligible for release after just three years and five months . Lata was earlier found guilty for dealing in slaves and receiving earnings from commercial sexual services from an underage person. She is just the third person to be found guilty of slave trading in the country's history. The New Zealand Herald reports the girl fled her mother's home in late 2016 and sought help from police. It followed 18 months of abuse where she forced into sex as many as five times a day. Lata and her children arrived in New Zealand from Fiji in 2014 on visas which later expired. It followed 18 months of abuse where she forced into sex as many as five times a day. She was forced to charge $200 an hour and working out of various motels around south Auckland (picture posed by model) In a bid to keep immigration authorities at bay, the Herald reports the girl was unable to enroll in school and the family soon ran out of money. Shortly afterwards, Lata took up sex work and forced her daughter into the industry. The teen's first experience was with her first client, a man in his fifties, on her 15th birthday. At one point the teenager was being forced to charge $200 an hour and working out of various motels around south Auckland. It is thought in ads offering her services her underage status was not disclosed. A suspicious substance has been found at the office of immigration minister Caroline Nokes amid the Windrush fiasco. Her office in Church Street, Romsey, has been cordoned off by police while forensic detectives examine the scene. The office, which is in the Conservative Club, has been shut off from just before midday. Police, fire and a hazardous area response team are currently on scene. Miss Nokes was pictured arriving at Downing Street ahead of a meeting with British Prime Minister Theresa May. The government is under intense pressure to end the 'inhumane' betrayal of migrants who came to Britain with their parents after the Second World War and never became naturalised British citizens. Miss Nokes was pictured today arriving at Downing Street ahead of a meeting with British Prime Minister Theresa May The emergency services at the scene. A street in Romsey has been cordoned off by emergency services after a suspicious substance was found The office of Romsey and Southampton North MP Caroline Nokes has been cordoned off by police Immigration minister Caroline Nokes said she had been 'appalled' by the cases - but said she did not know how many had been ejected in error A spokesman for Hampshire Police said: 'We have been called to Market Place, Romsey, following the discovery of a suspicious substance. 'Officers are currently at the scene with colleagues from Hampshire Fire and Rescue Service and South Central Ambulance Service to deal with this incident. 'An address has been evacuated as a precaution.' Romsey Town Council tweeted: 'Due to an ongoing incident in the Market Place #Romsey involving all blue light services there are roads obstructed by emergency service vehicles please avoid area for the time being.' Miss Nokes said she had been 'appalled' by the cases - but said she did not know how many had been ejected in error. Tens of thousands who arrived as children from the Caribbean are said to have been 'treated like criminals'. Mrs May and Amber Rudd admitted they did not know whether Caribbean migrants who came to Britain in good faith after the Second World War had been wrongly removed. A spokesman for Hampshire Police said: 'We have been called to Market Place, Romsey, following the discovery of a suspicious substance' Her office in Church Street, Romsey, has been cordoned off by police while forensic detectives examine the scene In farcical scenes in Parliament yesterday, ministers at first appeared to admit some had been 'horrendously' kicked out, then insisted they hadn't, and then said that they didn't know. Miss Rudd faced a call to resign and was summoned to the Commons to apologise for the fiasco. Labour's David Lammy told fellow MPs it was a 'day of national shame'. Campaigners insisted that at least one person had already been wrongly sent back to Jamaica. It emerged at the weekend that Government officials had refused to meet Caribbean envoys to discuss the cases of those who came from the late 1940s to the 1970s to help rebuild post-war Britain. Miss Rudd faced a call to resign and was summoned to the Commons to apologise for the fiasco. Labour's David Lammy told fellow MPs it was a 'day of national shame' Despite living here for decades, many have now mistakenly been told they are illegals under a Home Office crackdown on immigration paperwork. Some have lost their right to work, rent property, receive pensions, access bank accounts and have NHS care. Others have been told they risk detention and deportation. The row turned toxic yesterday when immigration minister Caroline Nokes suggested there had been deportations. As ministers were branded 'inhumane and cruel': - Miss Rudd said the Home Office was 'too concerned with policy and strategy, and sometimes lost sight of the individual'; - Commonwealth countries will be contacted to check whether anyone had been wrongly removed; - A taskforce will speed up the regularisation of immigration status for tens of thousands of citizens; - Cases will be resolved in two weeks and the 229 fee will be waived; - Theresa May performed a U-turn by agreeing to meet Caribbean leaders who have been raising concerns; - A cross-party group of 140 MPs wrote to the Prime Minister demanding 'immediate and effective' action. Miss Nokes made her comments in an interview with Channel 4 News. She said: 'Potentially they have been deported and I'm conscious that it's very much in error and that's an error I want to put right.' Then she told ITV News that some people had been booted out of the UK 'horrendously', adding: 'I don't know the numbers, but what I am determined to do going forward is to say we will have no more of this.' In the aftermath of her interviews, officials insisted no one had been deported in the immigration crackdown. But then in the Commons, Miss Rudd said she was not aware of any cases but was investigating and conceded some members of the 'Windrush generation' may have been wrongly sent back to the Caribbean. Leaders from Caribbean countries who wanted to discuss with Theresa May the plight of those who have lost their everyday rights as Britons have been told there will be no formal meeting with the Prime Ministers (pictured: the SS Empire Windrush which brought the first generation of workers to Britain from the West Indies in 1948) New rules require documentary evidence of the right to be here, which many Windrush children do not have as anyone who arrived in the UK from a Commonwealth country before 1971 was given indefinite leave to remain, meaning many did not apply for a British passport Communities Secretary Sajid Javid took to Twitter to voice 'deep concern' about the situation She added: 'That is why I have asked the high commissioners if they know of any, that they should bring it to me.' Last night, the Joint Council for the Welfare of Immigrants said at least one person had wrongly been sent back to Jamaica. Satbir Singh, who is the charity's chief executive, said: 'It is true, but it is very difficult to know how many people have been removed. What's shocking is that the Government admits that it has no record of the numbers.' Downing Street said Mrs May wanted to ensure that 'no one with the right to be here will be made to leave'. Former FBI director James Comey fired back at Donald Trump on Tuesday after the president tweeted that he should be behind bars for allegedly leaking classified information and lying to Congress. But instead of defending his own actions in a 'Good Morning America' interview, he jabbed Trump for appointing himself judge, jury and executioner. 'The president doesn't get to decide who goes to jail,' Comey protested. 'That is not normal. That is not okay,' he said. 'First of all, he's just making stuff up. But more importantly, the President of the United States is calling for the imprisonment of a private citizen, as he's done for a whole lot of people who have criticized him. That is not acceptable in this country.' James Comey pushed back against Donald Trump's criticisms on Tuesday, saying it's unacceptable for the president to call for 'a private citizen' to be imprisoned without a trial Trump has tweeted that Comey's leaks of classified material to reporters should land him in jail Trump tweeted Monday that Comey and his former deputy Andrew McCabe both fired from their jobs 'committed many crimes' during their tenures. And on Sunday, he asserted that '[t]he big questions in Comeys badly reviewed book arent answered like, how come he gave up Classified Information (jail), why did he lie to Congress (jail), why did the DNC refuse to give Server to the FBI (why didnt they TAKE it), why the phony memos, McCabes $700,000 & more?' The former FBI chief admitted last year in congressional testimony that he gave a friend copies of private memos describing his recollections of meetings with Trump, telling him to leak them to reporters in the hope that the exercise would trigger the appointment of a special counsel to investigate the president. He also had to revise testimony from that day, after mistakenly saying that a laptop belonging to disgraced former congressman Anthony Weiner the estranged husband of longtime Hillary Clinton aide Huma Abedin contained 'hundreds of thousands' of classified emails belonging to the former Democratic presidential candidate. Tuesday morning's book interview is already Comey's second with former Democratic operative George Stephanopoulos The president's tweets about Comey, whom he fired last year from his job as FBI chief, have been merciless since the weekend Comey, in the midst of promoting his memoir that hit bookstore shelves just hours earlier, said he worries that Americans have come to accept Trump's bluster as the new normal. 'I think that's a danger, that we're numb to it,' he said. 'We wake up in the morning and see the President of the United States is accusing people of crimes without evidence, and pronouncing them guilty, and saying they should be in jail.' 'That should wake all of us up with a start, but there's so much of it that we're a little bit numb. And that's dangerous.' Comey's interview with ABC's George Stephanopoulos, a former Democratic Party operative and White House communications director under Bill Clinton, was his second in the span of a week. In the first sit-down, which aired Sunday, Comey claimed Trump is 'morally unfit' to sit in the Oval Office. On Tuesday he also blasted the commander-in-chief for complaining about last week's FBI raid on the home and office of Michael Cohen, his longtime personal lawyer. Comey's book, 'A Higher Loyalty,' is a top best-seller Comey called Trump 'morally unfit' to be president in his first Stephanopoulos interview, and protesters have already begun to project those words on the facade of Trump's hotel in Washington, D.C. The president claimed last week that agents 'broke into' Cohen's Manhattan office, although the FBI acted under legally authorized search warrants. Cohen himself praised the federal agents for being 'professional, courteous and respectful.' Comey, visibly perplexed, showed Trump the back of his hand. 'It shows me he either doesn't know or doesn't care what the rule of law looks like,' he said. 'Nobody broke into anybody's office. It doesn't happen. The FBI gets a search warrant from a federal judge and conducts itself professionally, completely and politely, by the accounts of the people involved. So it's a total distortion of the way things work.' Mark and Stephanie Whight face a huge legal bill after they were taken to court over a party at their home on the May Bank Holiday A married couple say a Bank Holiday get-together at their home has turned into 'Britain's most expensive barbecue' after they were taken to court following complaints about noise. Mark and Stephanie Whight held a party at their 300,000 home in Rownhams, on the outskirts of Southampton, on the May Bank Holiday weekend last year. But they were deemed to be in breach of a noise abatement notice imposed on them two months earlier and now face a huge legal bill following prosecution by their local council. Mechanic Mr Whight insists his elderly neighbours complain too easily and the court action against him was heavy-handed. He said: 'The neighbours complain about everything, as soon as they hear the dog bark that's it. 'I threw a barbecue for friends and family - there were around 12 people there, if that. It wasn't even a full flowing party, it was an afternoon barbecue and they had all left by about 12. A row over noise at an afternoon barbecue in this Hampshire cul-de-sac led to a couple being taken to court and fined thousands He added: 'Who doesn't have a barbecue on a May bank holiday when the weather is nice? Anyway, some people obviously complained and the council came for us. 'Apparently the noise was causing a health issue but not one doctor's note was submitted. 'It's cost us 14,000 with my legal fees - drug dealers are dealt with less harshly. '14,000 for a barbecue, how am I going to pay that? It's ridiculous. I don't have that sort of money, it's putting me in debt. 'Now I can't have people round, I can't have my family or friends over, I'm always on edge as I don't know what I'm doing right or what I'm doing wrong. 'My boy wants to have a party for his 18th birthday - that shouldn't be a problem but now it is. It seems I've thrown Britain's most expensive barbecue.' The couple say their neighbours complain too easily and the party only involved a few friends The couple were each fined 1,900, ordered to pay a 120 victim surcharge each, and between them they were ordered to pay the 5,074 costs given to the council. The couple's legal fees brought their total costs up to around 14,000. Mr Whight and his management accountant wife, who are both originally from Zimbabwe, have three children and have lived on the cul-de-sac for 15 years but say they have 'no relationship' with their neighbours. The couple, both 47, were initially given a noise abatement notice in March last year by Test Valley Borough Council. Local councillor Phil Bundy backed the authority's action, insisting it was a 'last resort' They were brought before Southampton Magistrates' Court after neighbours complained about the music and conversation volume at the party two months later. Mr Whight said: 'Our household is a normal working household and we try to be good neighbours. 'I've been here 15 years and have tried to invite [the neighbours] over for drinks in the past but the relationship is non-existent. 'By their own admission we are not the people they want on their street. It makes me feel a little victimised.' He also criticised the council, saying: 'Not once have they been round here to help with what we can and can't do, they've offered no help.' Test Valley Borough Council housing and environment boss, councillor Phil Bundy, insisted: 'This is a last resort. The last thing the council wants to do is take people to court. 'We will always give people the opportunity to resolve the problem themselves in the first instance but if the issues persist then we will take action. 'We certainly don't want to stop people having fun but when they are consistently impacting their neighbours - and in this case the parties were so loud this was not just their immediate neighbours - then something has to be done. 'I am pleased that we have been successful in this prosecution and I am grateful to the council officers for all their hard work in this case. I firmly believe that this is the right outcome.' Former FBI Director James Comey says he wasn't trying to make fun of President Trump when he described him in great detail in 'A Higher Loyalty.' In the book, which comes out today, Comey references Trump's hands, his hair, and also the white circles under his eyes, which the former FBI Director believes are a product of those mini tanning goggles. 'When I talk about President Obama, I talk about how skinny he struck me, as I'm not trying to make fun of President Obama,' Comey pointed out during an interview with National Public Radio. Scroll down for video Former FBI Director James Comey says he wasn't trying to make fun of President Trump when he described his hands, his hair and the white sacks under his eyes, that Comey speculated were due to tiny tanning goggles Former FBI Director James Comey (second from right), says he wasn't making fun of President Trump with his description of him, pointing out that fact that he described President Obama (second from left) as being 'skinny' In an interview with NPR, James Comey (right) says he included a description of President Trump's hands (left) because he was thinking about them, and characterized them as being 'above average' in size NPR's Carrie Johnson asked Comey whether his 'name-calling of the president and making fun of his appearance' had diminished some of the higher-minded points the ex-FBI chief was trying to make in his book, which talks at great length about leadership. Interviewers have been asking former FBI Director James Comey if his descriptions of people, including of President Trump, have diminished the grander points he's trying to make in his new book, 'A Higher Loyalty' 'They should read the book,' Comey said of his detractors. 'Because I'm not making fun of the president. I'm trying to be an author, which I've never been before in m life.' Comey swatted down the suggestion that an editor asked him to describe Trump's hands, which briefly became a debate topic during the GOP primaries. Trump's hands were 'on my mind,' Comey admitted. 'And by the way, not that this matters, but I found his hands to be above average in size, and so I'm not making fun of the man, I'm trying to tell the reader what's in my head.' The former FBI head again instructed people to read the whole book. 'I hope you will see that richness of detail when I talk about the hospital scene, when I talk about terrible tragedy when my wife and I lost our son Collin,' Comey said. 'I am trying to show the reader this is how I was experiencing the world, and bring them into those rooms with me.' Of those who've complained about those details, Comey commented, 'And so I really do think the folks who are picking up on that, it's just a sign they haven't read the book.' When Comey appeared Tuesday morning on ABC's Good Morning America he was forced to answer the question again, this time from anchor George Stephanopoulos, who conducted the first primetime interview with the ex-FBI official, which aired Sunday night. Stephanopoulos called some of the details Comey included 'petty,' including his comment about Trump's supposed tanning goggles. 'If you read the whole book you'll see I'm trying to be an author and bring the readers with me into a room, so I describe all kinds of people in great detail to try and create a vivid image,' Comey said. 'I'm not trying to make fun of President Trump, I'm not trying to make fun of anybody, but if you read the whole book you'll see I'm trying to give you that picture,' the former FBI head said. A mother faces bankruptcy after running up a huge court bill because her solicitor husband refused to pay a parking fine. Immigration lawyer Tiki Emezie fought the ticket from Camden Council after it was issued in 2010. And when their car was clamped, wife Diana Loson took legal action against the bailiffs responsible. But both their efforts ended in failure and Ms Loson is now facing legal bills of almost 30,000, compared to the maximum parking fine of 120. Mr Emezie has been involved in a number of high profile cases and previously represented far-right Dutch MP Geert Wilders when he won an appeal at an Asylum and Immigration tribunal to allow him to enter the UK. Diana Loson is facing bankruptcy after losing a Court of Appeal case launched after her lawyer husband Tiki Emezie refused to pay a parking fine, leaving her with 30,000 legal fees The Court of Appeal heard the mother, who works part-time as a L'Oreal sales assistant at Selfridge's, has just 67 a month to live on after paying her bills. And she tried to persuade Appeal Court judges that she should be allowed to pay off the debt by instalments of 50-a-month. But she is now on teetering 'on the verge of bankruptcy' after Lord Justice Patten said that would not even cover interest on the debt. The judge said: 'I have considerable sympathy for Ms Loson. The predicament in which she finds herself seems to be largely, if not entirely, down to the failure of her husband to pay a parking fine for which he was responsible. 'As a result of his failed attempts to resist payment, Ms Loson finds herself on the verge of bankruptcy.' The legal saga began in May 2010 when Mr Emezie was issued with a parking ticket by the London Borough of Camden. He challenged the bill unsuccessfully through the courts but failed to pay up even after that. Camden issued a warrant for possession of the car and, in November 2011, bailiffs swooped on the vehicle. 'Ms Loson returned from shopping to find that her car had been clamped,' said the judge. Her response was to sue bailiff, Brett Stack, and debt recovery specialists, Newlyn PLC, claiming she had been given no fair opportunity to pay up. She sought an order stopping them from selling the car and damages for not being able to use it while it was in the pound for four or five days. But a judge threw out her case in 2013, saying that the delay in getting the car back 'was entirely due to the unjustified refusal by Mr Emezie to pay the parking fine.' The judge rejected claims that Ms Loson had 'behaved aggressively or unreasonably' towards Mr Stack, but said the 'legal reality' was that the bailiffs had been entitled to seize the car. Her challenge to the judge's ruling was rejected by the Court of Appeal in 2014 and Ms Loson was left facing 8,000 in legal costs bills. Caring for a young child and then studying Business Human Resources at Birkbeck College, she had very little to live on. Her income from her Selfridge's job and benefits came to 1,925 a month but, after essential bills, she had only 67 of that left over. The fine was issued by Camden Council in 2010 (headquarters pictured) but Ms Loson then sued a bailiff firm after they clamped the vehicle in 2011, but lost the case She argued she could only afford to pay 50 a month, but Newlyn PLC said that wasn't good enough and petitioned to make her bankrupt. At that rate, even leaving interest out of account, the company said it would take Ms Loson about 13 years to pay off what she owed. Dismissing her appeal today, Lord Justice Patten said she had rightly been refused permission to pay off the debt by instalments. He accepted that Ms Loson's tight finances mean she has 'no realistic prospect' of paying off the debt within a reasonable time. But allowing her to pay just 50 a month would 'not even keep pace with interest' due on the debt, he said. The judge, sitting with Lord Justice Floyd, dismissed Ms Loson's appeal - and added another 20,045 to her legal costs bills. The gym at Western Sydney University closed suddenly on Tuesday after a student was found dead on campus. The Bankstown university announced the tragic discovery on Tuesday afternoon, saying 'sadly we now know this to be a student'. A short time after the announcement, the gym on campus announced it would be closed for the night. Western Sydney University Bankstown Gym closed suddenly on Tuesday after a student was found dead on campus 'Due to unforeseen events the gym is closed for the rest of the evening,' Western Sydney University Bankstown Gym said on Facebook 'Due to unforeseen events the gym is closed for the rest of the evening,' Western Sydney University Bankstown Gym said on Facebook. 'The gym will be up and running tomorrow morning as per usual from 7am.' Western Sydney University said the New South Wales police were investigating, and there was no threat to other students or staff. The university said counsellors were on site for any students who needed help. 'Please reach out for help if you need it,' a spokesperson said. Speaking to Daily Mail Australia on Tuesday, a NSW Police spokesman said the death was deemed not suspicious. Investigations continue. Western Sydney University announced the tragic discovery on Tuesday afternoon Macron warned Europe not to retreat into nationalism but to build the EU as a bulwark for liberalism against a disorderly and dangerous world French President Emmanuel Macron has warned that the European Union is in a period of 'civil war' between liberal democracies and illiberal democracies. He warned Europe not to retreat into nationalism but to build the EU as a bulwark for liberalism against a disorderly and dangerous world. Addressing the European Parliament in Strasbourg, the 40-year-old won a standing ovation from most MEPs after condemning the rise of 'illiberal democracies' within even the EU. 'We have a context of division and indeed doubt within Europe,' he said. 'There seems to be a sort of European civil war where selfish interests sometimes appear more important than what unites Europe.' Nationalist MEPs from France, Britain and elsewhere sat in silence, however. 'In the face of authoritarianism, the response is not authoritarian democracy but the authority of democracy,' Macron said, in a clear reference to the newly re-elected Hungarian Prime Minister Viktor Orban and to Poland's ruling party. But it was an illusion, he argued, to say a return to national sovereignty at the expense of shared EU powers would provide the reassurance voters wanted in a world of mass migration, authoritarian powers - referring to nations such as Russia and China - and powerful multinational corporations. European Commission President Jean-Claude Juncker, speaking after Macron, cautioned against too great a focus on the Franco-German partnership or 'motor' that lies at the heart of the EU project. Pictured: Juncker and Macron shaking hands after the speech During Macron's speech, some European lawmakers raised placards reading 'Stop the war in Syria' and 'Hands off Syria' 'We need a sovereignty stronger than our own,' he said. Far-right lawmaker Florian Philippot, a former National Front member, accused Macron of humiliating France's historic statehood by playing to an audience of unrepresentative European elites. Macron accused nationalist leaders of offering a 'game of fools' in responding to voters' concerns about the globalised economy by offering an illusion of a return to national power. 'We must hear the anger of Europe's peoples today,' he said. 'They need a new project. Those who trade on that anger are risking nationalisms tearing Europe apart.' Calling for fellow EU leaders to follow his example in launching a public dialogue on Europe's future, Macron said the EU required reform to strengthen what he called 'European sovereignty' in the world. He volunteered that France was ready to pay more into the EU budget as Britain leaves - on condition that the Union reforms in ways that France wants. With a little over a year until the next elections to the European Parliament, he lamented the fact that fewer than half of EU citizens bothered to vote in previous ballots. Macron ran through his wish list for deeper EU integration as long sceptical Britain prepares to leave next March. French President Emmanuel Macron, left, listens to European Parliament president Antonio Tajani at the European Parliament in Strasbourg Macron was speaking at the invitation of the European Parliament, which has asked leaders of all the member states to give their views on the EU's future following Brexit This included new taxation of digital businesses, more support for refugees, closer cooperation in defence and a stronger common approach to running the EU's single currency. On the euro, he faces an uphill struggle in convincing his key allies in Germany, where conservative supporters of German Chancellor Angela Merkel are pushing back against giving Brussels more power that could cost German taxpayers' money. Macron was speaking at the invitation of the European Parliament, which has asked leaders of all the member states to give their views on the EU's future following Brexit. Yesterday Macron met with Canadian prime minister Justin Trudeau, who was visiting France European Commission President Jean-Claude Juncker, speaking after Macron, cautioned against too great a focus on the Franco-German partnership or 'motor' that lies at the heart of the EU project. The former Luxembourg premier noted that, once Britain leaves, there will still be 27 member states in the Union. However, he won loud applause in declaring his enthusiasm for the way Macron, after his surprise election a year ago, has put strengthening the EU at the heart of French policy after years in which Paris appeared to struggle for influence. 'The real France is back,' Juncker declared. 'Tomorrow's history is being written today.' Replying to other criticisms from members of the parliament, Macron delivered an emotional justification of France's role with Britain and the United States in bombing Syria following a suspected chemical attack on a rebel-held area. During Macron's speech, some European lawmakers raised placards reading 'Stop the war in Syria' and 'Hands off Syria'. Suggestions the strikes defied international law would not, he said, prevent France from acting to protect those on the ground facing banned weaponry. Shanghai (Gasgoo)- China will remove foreign ownership restrictions of auto JVs for specialty vehicles and NEVs in 2018, according to the official website of China's National Development and Reform Commission. Besides, China will abolish foreign limits for commercial vehicle (CV) JVs in 2020. In 2022, the world's largest auto market will eliminate foreign ownership of passenger vehicle (PV) JVs and also remove the JV number limits of no more than two. With a five-year transition period, all the restrictions on foreign ownership of auto JVs will be entirely abolished. Apart from auto industry, China will also remove the restrictions on shipbuilding industry, including designing, manufacturing and maintenance. The nation will also abolish foreign limits for the aircraft manufacturing industry in areas such as planes, helicopters and drones. Tesla will build its wholly-owned plant in China in 2018, according to a report released on Apr. 13. In the wake of China's removal of ownership caps on NEVs, the American EV giant may accelerate its pace of establishing wholly-owned factories in China. Cui Dongshu, secretary-general of the China Passenger Car Association believed that the removal of auto JV ownership caps will help develop China's auto technologies, adding that the phasing out of restrictions on JVs will be accelerated in an orderly manner. In the long run, China's removal of foreign limits for auto JVs will facilitate a fairer competitive auto market. An idyllic British beach is being blighted by a constant deluge of perfectly-preserved plastic litter dating back to the 1960s washing up on its shore. Former primary school teacher Gwenllian Hughes has documented a shocking array of rubbish she's collected over the past two years, including a perfectly intact Woolworths bag from the 1980s and more than 200 Smarties lids. The 45-year-old has also been horrified to find a KP salted peanuts packet with a best before date of February 23, 1985, a Pennybrix toy from the 1960s and a nailbrush from around 1970 on the beach near her home in Llangoed, Anglesey, Wales. Ms Hughes became so appalled by the detritus while walking on the beach that she started photographing and documenting each piece on social media to show the environmental impact of single-use plastics. Ms Hughes, who lives with her partner and son on the Welsh island, said: 'I find a lot of old plastic and sometimes there's a best before date or other clues that can be looked up online. This Woolworths bag must be at least nine years old - the High Street chain went bust in 2009 Another Woolies bag is among the many items found by ex-teacher Gwenllian Hughes A nail brush from the 1970s or earlier was found by former primary school teacher Ms Hughes Ms Hughes became so appalled by the detritus while walking on the beach that she started photographing and documenting each piece on social media, such as this plastic bag 'These are items that are endangering wildlife now and will go on to do so for many years to come. 'It's hard to know which bit of plastic I've found is the oldest but there's even been a Pennybrix toy from the '60s and a nail brush from 1970 or earlier. 'Both look as good as new and as I was born in 1972 both pieces are older than me! 'However, sadly nothing plastic that I find surprises me anymore. I doubt that anyone will get excited about finding these things in the future.' Ms Hughes picks up so much plastic from the beach that once, when she stumbled upon a washed-up Portuguese man o' war jellyfish, she at first thought it was a plastic bottle. Since she began recording her findings two years ago, Ms Hughes has collected 200 plastic lids from Smarties tubes, stumbled across a Tango can with a best before date of 1986 and butter lids from a ferry service that ceased in 1984. She also has a selection of washed-up toy soldiers, which she collects and calls her 'flotsam army', but she also recycles the large amount of plastic bottles that wash up on the shore. She said: 'Smarties stopped using plastic lids in 2005. Remember this? Sealink butter lids from the UK ferry company which ran from 1970 to 1984 The 45-year-old has also been horrified to find a KP salted peanuts packet with a best before date of February 23, 1985 'I've found 200 Smartie lids on the beaches of Anglesey in the last two years. 'The lids can be given an approximate date by the brand name on them, for example, a Smarties lid that has the word 'Smarties' on it, is from between 1988 and 2005 after Nestle bought the brand, whereas a lid that has Rowntrees on it, dates from before 1988. 'Of the 200 I've found, about 170 of those are Rowntree lids and were thrown away as litter at least 30 years ago. A recent Rowntree Smartie lid one of 200 Ms Hughes found on the beaches of Anglesey in the last two years Ms Hughes also has a selection of washed-up toy soldiers, which she collects and calls her 'flotsam army' A Bryn Dairy lid showing an old form of telephone number 'Even with 200 lids I still don't have every letter of the alphabet yet!' 'While I enjoy finding these items, the majority of what I pick up at the beach are unnecessary recent single use plastics. 'The strangest thing I've found on the beach was the Portuguese man o' war - it looked like a plastic bottle from across the beach. 'It's easy to see how marine creatures can confuse plastic bottles, bags and balloons as food.' This empty Tango can has seen better days - its best before date is May 1986, 32 years ago The can was just one of many items which are decades old found washed up by Gwenllian This Pennybrix toy washed up ashore dates back to the 1960s According to the Marine Conservation Society, eight tonnes of plastic are currently dumped into the sea worldwide every minute. The UK organisation hosts an annual 'Great British Beach Clean' and last year reported a 10 per cent rise in beach litter from 2016. Ms Hughes added: 'I keep some items to send to artists that I've discovered on Instagram who use beach clean rubbish in their art to help educate people on the problem of plastic in the sea. 'I started my Instagram account, @hen-ysgol, two years ago as I enjoyed taking photos but never did anything with them. An old yogurt pot which was taken out of circulation in 1984 These look a bit off: Old KP salted peanuts were found washed up on the Welsh beach A free toy whistle from a Rice Krispies cereal packet dated from 1999 'The best thing about Instagram has been discovering the hashtag #2minutebeachclean. 'It's great to know I'm not the only one picking up rubbish on the beaches. 'The hashtag allows people from all over the world picking up in their area to connect with each other, which I find very interesting and inspiring. 'It's also lovely to get messages from people who have seen my photos and as a result picked up rubbish when they've visited the beach.' The once-idyllic beach near Ms Hughes' home in Llangoed, Anglesey, north Wales An Australian paedophile on the run from police fathered three Brazillian foster children until his fake identity unravelled after a car crash. Christopher Gott, 63, was hit by a black Hyundai on January 18 in Rio de Janeiro and has remained in a coma since with severe head injuries. While his passport named him Daniel Marcos Philips, from Melbourne, Gott's true identity became known after the Rio crash. Now his foster children are dealing with shock at learning his secret past and they told Brazil's Rede Globo TV program, Fantastico, they were distressed. An Australian paedophile on the run from police made a new life in Brazil, fathering three foster children until his fake identity unravelled after a serious car crash. His passport (pictured) named him Daniel Marcos Philips, from Melbourne 'Who's not upset about this kind of accusation?' his foster son, Daniel, told the program. 'That's why it's a very difficult thing for us - it's complicated.' Gott, a former school teacher, left the Northern Territory in 1996 after being convicted of child sex crimes in Darwin. After being released from jail he left the NT as part of his parole conditions and was due to arrive in Victoria by bus, but fled during a stop in Adelaide. Christopher John Gott is lying in a coma in a Brazilian hospital after being hit by a car (pictured) during a night out He is also sought for questioning by Victoria Police over an indecent assault at a Fitzroy Primary school in Melbourne in 1983. While his passport named him Daniel Marcos Philips, from Melbourne, Gott's true identity became known in January when he was seriously injured in the Rio crash, police officer Claudio Otero Ascoli told Fantastico. Gott was one of 18 people hit by a car on the Copacabana sidewalk, in a crash that killed an eight-month-baby. Fingerprints led Australian authorities to properly identify him. Foster son Daniel told the program he lived with Gott for six years and considered him a father who helped raise him and two other young men and paid for his education. None were formally adopted. 'He was a fundamental person in my development, he helped me a lot, until I turned 21,' he said. 'I learned perfect English with him, Daniel (Gott), who was always a nice person.' Gott served two years in jail after pleading guilty in Darwin to 17 abuse charges involving five boys. He was described by the sentencing judge as a 'mature, well educated man.. in a fantasy world and in love with a 14-year-old'. He was released on parole conditions banning him having unsupervised contact with boys under 16. Daniel reported he did not know when or how his 'father' entered Brazil and revealed he asked him to put some accounts in his name. Gott served two years in jail after pleading guilty in Darwin to 17 abuse charges involving five boys. The car he was hit by on January 18 in Rio de Janeiro is pictured While the three foster children were never abused by him, Daniel told the program he is determined to find out if Gott committed abuse in Brazil. Authorities are also still trying to work out what happened to a woman who was reportedly with Gott and claimed to be his wife when he arrived in Brazil, according to Fantastico. The program, produced in conjunction with Sydney journalist Andre Rosa, reported the fugitive did not lay low in his adopted city and was considered a friendly guy who taught English on the Copacabana sidewalk and went to the beach and drank caipirinhas daily. NT Police, already investigating Gott for breaching parole, are exploring the possibility of an extradition if his condition improves. Five former fraternity brothers have pleaded guilty in the case of a pledge who died in an alleged hazing ritual. The Tallahassee Democrat reported that Kyle Bauer, Brett Birmingham, Christopher Hamlin, Conner Ravelo and John Ray, all who were members of the Pi Kappa Phi fraternity, pleaded guilty to two counts of misdemeanor hazing on Monday. Andrew, Coffey, a junior at Florida State University, was found unresponsive at the frat house in November. He had died from poisoning after drinking an entire bottle of 101-proof bourbon at the coercion of older fraternity members, according to a lawsuit filed. Five former fraternity brothers have pleaded guilty to two counts of misdemeanor hazing on Monday after a 20-year-old died in November in an alleged hazing ritual. Pictured, left to right, are Kyle Bauer, Brett Birmingham and Christopher Hamlin In addition to jail time, the men will be on probation for the next two years, will be required to speak publicly about hazing when asked to and will have to write a letter of apology to the Coffey family. Pictured are Conner Ravelo (left) and John Ray (right) The university temporarily suspended alcohol and social functions at fraternities and sororities following the incident. Coffey's mother, Sandra, reportedly said in her victim impact statement that her son's loved ones 'are heartbroken and sickened by what happened to him at Pi Kappa Phi's Big Brother night'. 'We talk about Andrew every single day but now we talk about what could have been and what should have been. We cannot believe that he is no longer with us.' The 20-year-old had dreams of joining the Navy after school and had been an athlete in high school. 'Great kid,' Sandra said. 'You could count on him.' 'Handsome as the day is long and a smile that'll light up a room, you know,' Tom described. Andrew Coffey (pictured) died from poisoning after drinking an entire bottle of 101-proof bourbon at the coercion of older fraternity members, according to a lawsuit filed The student had been adamant on joining Pi Kappa Phi, even before enrolling at the university. 'His friends belonged and he'd joined with them at some of the fraternity functions and everything else and wanted to belong,' his father, Tom, told CBS News. 'We just said...grades suffer because of partying or something like that, then, you know, you're out. And he agreed to that.' In their lawsuit, the Coffeys claim that the fraternity 'had been hazing and having pledges abuse alcohol for years.' When he died, Coffey had been taking part in what is known as 'the family bottle' ritual. But local authorities weren't called until the next morning. 'His lips are purple, his body is extremely stiff and...I can't wake him up and I honestly don't feel a pulse,' the person calling the 911 dispatcher said. Sandra still doesn't understand why the fraternity waited so long to act, adding that it 'wakes us up in the middle of the night.' According to Coffey's father: 'There were estimated 100 people at that party.' 'And 99 of them didn't help my son...Andrew died in a room full of people that just didn't care. And he died alone,' he added. Florida State University temporarily suspended alcohol and social functions at fraternities and sororities following the incident In their lawsuit, the Coffeys claim that the fraternity 'had been hazing and having pledges abuse alcohol for years.' When he died, Coffey had been taking part in what is known as 'the family bottle' ritual Coffey (left and right) had dreams of joining the Navy after school and had been an athlete in high school. The 20-year-old been adamant on joining Pi Kappa Phi, even before enrolling at the university Bauer, Birmingham, Hamlin and Ray will spend spend 60 days in jail. Ravelo has already served 20 days in the Leon County jail and will spend an additional 30 days there. The men will also be on probation for the next two years, will be required to speak about hazing when asked, and will have to write an apology letter to the Coffey family, according to the Tallahassee Democrat. Four other defendants - Luke Kluttz, Clayton Muehlstein, Anthony Petagine, and Anthony Oppenheimer - are scheduled for trial in June on third-degree felony hazing charges. The mother of a three-year-old Kansas boy found encased in concrete after enduring months of torture has testified that her boyfriend killed him. Evan Brewer was forced to stand naked in the basement of his home with his hands behind his back and a belt around his neck, and was taunted and slapped while he screamed and cried, video and audio recordings played on Monday in court revealed. The recordings were presented by prosecutors in a preliminary hearing for Stephen Bodine, who is charged with first-degree felony murder in Evan's death. The boy's body was found in September encased in concrete in the laundry room of a Wichita rental home where he lived with his mother and Bodine, who was his mother's boyfriend. The body of Evan Brewer, 3, was found in September encased in concrete at a home in Kansas where he lived with his mother Miranda Miller and her boyfriend Stephen Bodine The boy's mother, Miranda Miller, testified on Monday (above) that Bodine killed the boy at the home while she was there. They are both charged with first-degree murder Miranda Miller, who is also charged with first-degree murder in her son's death, testified on Monday that Bodine killed the boy at the home while she was there. Earlier on Monday, Miller waived her preliminary hearing and pleaded not guilty. She acknowledged on the witness stand that she shared responsibility for Evan's death. Miller testified that Evan died sometime between May 18 and May 22 or 23. She said on the day he died, Evan was being punished for not eating and Bodine hit the boy so hard he became unresponsive. She said Bodine took Evan into the bathroom and she tried CPR on the boy for 45 minutes. She said the next thing she remembered was waking up and asking about her son. She said Bodine told her that Evan had gone away because they couldn't take care of him anymore. Miller said that a few days later in the laundry room, Bodine mixed up several bags of concrete and buried Evan's body in it. Miranda Miller and her boyfriend Stephen Bodine are both charged with first-degree felony murder in Evan's death. They each remain jailed on $500,000 bond Videos played in court on Monday showed that Evan was forced to stand naked in the basement of his home with his hands behind his back and a belt around his neck 'Stephen wanted to hurry up and take care of Evan before he started to smell,' she told the court. She said she spanked her son sometimes but Bodine 'would take over' if he 'didn't feel like I was being hard enough on Evan.' An autopsy didn't reveal a specific cause of death because the boy's body was too significantly decomposed when it was found, a forensic pathologist testified. Prosecutors showed three clips from a surveillance system set up in several locations at the couple's home, with old cellphones that started recording when they detected motion. In one recording, a man's voice, which Wichita police Detective Christian Cory testified matches Bodine's, can be heard taunting the boy: 'That attitude, Evan? It's done. And if it's not going to be done, you're going to be done.' The video coincides with photos prosecutors entered into evidence on Monday that show Evan standing naked next to a basement wall with his hands behind his back and a belt tightened around his neck. Miller testified that she put the belt around Evan's neck because Bodine told her that 'children need to be treated like dogs.' The boy's body was found in September encased in concrete in the laundry room of a Wichita rental home (pictured above) where he lived with his mother and her boyfriend An autopsy didn't reveal a specific cause of death because the Evan's body was too significantly decomposed when it was found A police affidavit previously released by the court showed that the family of Evan's father, Carlo Brewer, tried repeatedly to get the Kansas Department for Children and Families, Wichita police and judges to intervene for the boy. Family spokeswoman Shayla Johnston said in December that the child protection system failed the boy, who was the grandson of former Wichita Mayor Carl Brewer, a Democratic candidate for Kansas governor. Also, records that DCF released to The Wichita Eagle in March showed that for more than a year, people reported to the state that Evan was suffering in a home of chronic methamphetamine users. The records also said Bodine abused Miller and bragged about choking her and the boy until they were unconscious. 'Simply put, the system is broken,' Carl Brewer said Monday in a statement. 'And our children, the ones we should be protecting the most, are suffering.' Bodine and Miller each remain jailed on $500,000 bond. Bodine's preliminary hearing was expected to continue Tuesday. Eric Hunter Jones, 23, is behind bars after he allegedly told police he was attacked by two black men after accidentally shooting himself A Virginia man who told police he was attacked by two black men had actually accidentally shot his own leg, it has been revealed. Eric Hunter Jones, 23, was found with a gunshot wound to his lower leg on Saturday night. Police responded to a shooting around 11.40pm at the Econo Lodge in Fredericksburg. Jones, a convicted felon, told police that two black men had approached him outside of the motel before one of them shot him. Investigators interviewed witnesses following the shooting to try and find a suspect. That's when they discovered that Jones had actually shot himself, according to NBC Washington. Jones, a convicted felon, told police that two black men had approached him outside of the Econo Lodge motel (pictured) in Fredericksburg, Virginia before one of them shot him Authorities then searched Jones' hotel room and found a stolen gun. Jones was charged with possession of a firearm by a felon, felony receiving stolen property, reckless handling of a firearm, and filing a false police report. He was first taken to a local hospital and then released into police custody. Jones is now being held at the Rappahannock Regional Jail without bond. Philosophy professor Kerry Cronin first gave her dating assignment 12-years-ago at Boston College and became known as the dating professor A professor from Boston College - known as the 'dating professor' - is continuing her long-standing tradition of offering extra credit to students who ask someone on a date and go without sexual contact, while sober. Philosophy professor Kerry Cronin first gave her dating assignment 12-years-ago and shared that while students could talk the good game, they hardly followed through. 'I realized at that point that the social script of dating was really long gone,' she told the Washington Post, adding that dating has turned into 'a weirdly counter-cultural thing to do.' Cronin now offers the once mandatory assignment as extra credit and has become such a online phenomenon, the professor has a documentary about her showing in theaters on Tuesday. The professor acknowledged how dating today seems a lot more intimate than hooking up which might explain why it's become so taboo. Cronin posits two points when explaining the new trend surrounding dating culture. She begins by calling forth that the median age for first marriage in the US is 27.4 for women and 29.5 for men. 'I realized at that point that the social script of dating was really long gone,' she said, adding that dating has turned into 'a weirdly countercultural thing to do' But the educator also feels that students tend to focus on securing a career or job due to the high cost of higher education. The average graduate finishes school with over $37,000 in student loans. 'Even students' parents are telling them: "Don't get caught up in a relationship now; you need to get your career set and on track before you even really start thinking about that,'" Cronin added. Today, she explained, people exist in 'hypersexualized' cultures that focus more on getting laid than 'the foibles and the hard work and the joys and the despair of just casual dating.' Today, she explained, people exist in 'hypersexualized' cultures that focus more on getting laid than 'the foibles and the hard work and the joys and the despair of just casual dating' (stock) In the world of social media and dating apps, people have become much more disposable. The social cues on dating rules surrounding who pays and the frequency of changing plans have also attributed to a change in relationships. Because of this, Cronin's assignment comes with some set guidelines: Students must ask the person in person as 'texting is the devil; stop it,' and if the person replies with being busy and to come back later, on to the next one. 'Thats a great skill to build, so that you can have a thicker skin,' the professor explained. The person who asks for the date, must pay no more than $10, and the date should last longer than 90 minutes. The person who asks for the date, must pay no more than $10, and the date should last longer than 90 minutes Cronin added: 'Nobodys interesting after three hours.' Cronin's class themes as questions such as: 'How should I live my life? What kinds of relationships help me to become the kind of person I want to be?' She cites the Freudian term 'ego strength' to explain how people seek validation from others and feel personally afflicted when they experience rejection. The emphasis is also on building tools that you don't have to build later on in life, which could be more difficult. And while she has experience criticism from the likes of super-Catholics to ultra-feminist, Cronin stresses that 'everybody's called to relationships - that what it means to be human.' Erika Pena took Cronin's class in 2008 and asked her friend Jared on a date at an ice cream shop near Campus. They got married a few years later 'This is mostly not about meeting your soul mate; its mostly about social courage and challenging yourself to be a little countercultural, to do something you know you want to do,' she states And to just be okay with being a little awkward, a little vulnerable and asking a little bit of yourself.' But Cronin has played matchmaker, as was the case for Erika Pena who took the professor's class in 2008. She asked a guy-friend, named Jared, to go eat ice cream with her near campus. While they had mutual friends and had seen each other throughout the year, they didn't have any one-on-one time together until the assignment. 'It leapfrogged us into having an actual conversation that didnt revolve around a Jager Bomb,' said Pena, who had never asked a guy out on a date. The two continued dating, even though Pena had a job out in New York City. The couple would eventually get engaged at the very ice cream shop they had their first date. In 2014, the got married, and Cronin was in attendance. The couple now has a 15-month-old son named Adrian. 'At graduation, we probably would have gone our separate ways,' Pena added. President Donald Trump lashed out at California Gov. Jerry Brown on Tuesday, complaining on Twitter that the Democrat is forbidding his state's National Guard troops from helping to secure the U.S.-Mexico border. Brown offered last week to send 400 troops, but insisted that they couldn't perform any duty that was part of border-control enforcement a list that includes vehicle maintenance, radio communications, buying gasoline, handling payroll and clerical work. '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,' the president tweeted Tuesday. 'The high crime rate will only get higher. Much wanted Wall in San Diego already started!' President Donald Trump targeted California's Democratic governor on Tuesday, blasting him for refusing to let his state's National Guard troops participate in border-control activities Trump had praised Jerry Brown, but that was before the governor set limits that would prohibit his Guard detachment from filling gas tanks and doing payroll anything tied to border control Soldiers from the Texas Army National Guard keep watch on the banks of the Rio Grande, where some of them will be armed where necessary Talks between U.S. and California officials about the duties the California troops would perform soured Friday and over the weekend after state authorities told federal officials that they would not participate in the jobs outlined for California, Arizona, New Mexico and Texas border control. The other border-state governors all Republicans have openly embraced Trump's plans. Brown hasn't explicitly outlined how he would distinguish between immigration-related work and going after criminal gangs and drug and gun smugglers. He had originally elicited rare and effusive praise from the president last week after he said he would participate in the Guard's third large-scale border mission since 2006. At the time, the decision allowed Trump to boast support from all four border-state governors and helped put the president above the lower end of his threshold of marshaling 2,000 to 4,000 troops that he wants as a border security mission to fight illegal immigration and drug trafficking. So far about 960 have arrived. Texas has seen the biggest deployment, with 650 sent to the border, while Arizona has dispatched 250, and New Mexico about 60. Trump believes that Brown wants a 'porous' border, but he will have National Guard troops from three other states helping to secure it while his long-promised wall is built A National Guard troop watches over Rio Grande River on the border in Roma, Texas on Wednesday. The deployment of National Guard members to the U.S.-Mexico border at President Donald Trump's request was underway last Tuesday with a gradual ramp-up of troops under orders to help curb illegal immigration California National Guard spokesman Lt. Col. Thomas Keegan said Monday that the state was awaiting a formal response from the administration and had no additional details beyond the governor's proposed agreement released last week that includes a ban on immigration enforcement. Evan Westrup, a spokesman for the governor, did not immediately answer detailed question about California's rejection of specific guard duties. Ron Vitiello, the acting deputy commissioner of US Customs and Border Protection, said Brown had declined the initial roles put forward for Guardsmen. 'The governor has determined that what we have asked for so far is unsupportable,' Vitiello told reporters. 'We've made this refined request, it's gone through the process and then we've got a signal from the governor that he is not participating.' Deputy Assistant Defense Secretary Bob Salesses said the initial request envisioned sending 237 Guardsmen to two main crossing areas in Southern California, where they would have conducted maintenance, clerical assistance and helped with heavy equipment operations, among other tasks. 'The California National Guard has indicated that they will not perform those missions as we know them to be right now,' Salesses said, though he noted that conversations were ongoing. Vitiello, too, suggested that the state's Guard might ultimately be used in other roles, including possibly cargo inspection. 'We will have other iterations,' Vitiello said. Trump this month said he would send thousands of National Guard troops to the southern border, where they could remain until a border wall is constructed. Vitiello said Guardsmen would most likely not be armed, but individual states might allow the carrying of a weapon in certain missions. California is at the forefront of what opponents call a 'resistance' to Trump's administration, with the heavily Democratic state suing the federal government over numerous issues, including the rollback of environmental regulations. Several cities including Los Angeles are 'sanctuary cities' that require local law enforcement agencies not to tell federal agents about residents' legal status. Attorney General Jeff Sessions has sued the state over three statutes that support cities and counties that refuse to hand over illegal immigrants to federal immigration authorities for prosecution or deportation. Luis Velasquez-Ortiz, 42, has been charged in the hit-and-run death of a motorcyclist in Omaha, Nebraska last Wednesday An illegal immigrant has been charged in the hit-and-run death of a motorcyclist in Nebraska. Luis Velasquez-Ortiz, 42, faced court on Monday in Omaha where a judge set his bond at $2 million after deeming him to be a flight risk. Officials said Velasquez-Ortiz has lived in Omaha for 15 years but he is in the US illegally from Guatemala. He worked at Nebraska Beef. He is accused of fleeing the crash scene at 32nd and Q Streets last Wednesday after his Ford Explorer collided with the motorcycle. Police said he failed to stop at a stop sign and pulled into the intersection. Juan J. Moreno-Tamayo, the 31-year-old motorcyclist, ended up stuck under the Ford Explorer. Velasquez-Ortiz is accused of then accelerating and running over the father of four as he fled the scene. Velasquez-Ortiz faced court on Monday in Omaha where a judge set his bond at $2 million after deeming him to be a flight risk Courtesy of WOWT Moreno-Tamayo, who was wearing a DOT approved helmet, died at the scene. Juan J. Moreno-Tamayo, the 31-year-old motorcyclist, ended up stuck under the Ford Explorer and died at the scene Velasquez-Ortiz was arrested the following day at his home after witnesses recorded his license plates. During a search of his home, police and immigration officers found fraudulent state, federal and international identification documents. He was charged with failure to stop and render aid. Velasquez-Ortiz has prior convictions, including a DUI and possession of a controlled substance. The vice president of the company where Velasquez-Ortiz worked told 3NewsNow that he wasn't aware of the employee's status. He said they have checked the employment eligibility of all employees since 2001. He added that he would be going through files with their HR department to determine the specific information related to Velasquez-Ortiz. A missing German submarine said to have taken the defeated Nazi leadership to South America has been discovered after nearly 73 years. The U-3523 was one of Hitler's Type XXI submarines a new and highly advanced design which came too late to stop the allied victory. It was the first class of U-boats designed to sail submerged for a prolonged period of time and had a range which allowed it to sail non-stop to South America. The U-3523 was thought to have been sunk by a British B24 Liberator attack on May 6, 1945, but the inability to locate the wreck fuelled rumours that it had escaped. Pictured is U-3008 another Type XXI submarine and sister vessel of the U-3523. The submarines were new and highly advanced design but came too late to stop the allied victory in WWII The U-3523 was located by Denmark's Sea War Museum, whose director said it was on its way to Norway Images from the museum showing the submarine's position at the bottom of the sea A German U-3008 submarine off Portsmouth in August 1946 - towards the end of the war Germany was developing U-boats designed to sail submerged for a prolonged period of time and with a big enough range to sail non-stop to South America The submarine was found 73 years after it was sunk by a British bomber at the end of WWII The submarine's specifications at the end of the war were ahead of their time Now the wreck has been located ten nautical miles north of Skagen Denmark's northernmost town and nine miles west of the position reported by the British bomber. Denmark's Sea War Museum, which found the submarine, said there was no evidence that it was escaping with Nazi leaders or loot. After the war, there were many rumors about top Nazis who fled in U-boats and brought Nazi gold to safety, and the U-3523 fed the rumors. The Type XXI was the first genuine submarine that could sail submerged for a prolonged time, and the U-3523 had a range that would have allowed it to sail non-stop all the way to South America. The U-3523 sits with it bow lodged in the sea bed. Its position is nine miles west of where an RAF bomber reported sinking it All 58 crewmen died at when the submarine sank in May 1945, in the final days of the war But nobody knows, if this was the U-boats destination, and nobody knows, if the U-boat had valuables or passengers aboard in addition to the 58 crew, all of whom perished. Gert Normann Andersen, the museum's director, said: 'Rumour has it that the submarine had great valuables from Germany because it was heading away from Germany even though the war ended. 'I think the rumour developed because U-3523 was a very modern, long-distance U-boat and some Nazis tried to escape with valuables in the last days. 'But the submarine was going to Norway, and not to South America with Nazis and valuables.' Declassified documents from US intelligence have fuelled claims that the Nazi leadership, including Hitler himself, escaped to South America in the final days of the war. A photo allegedly shows former SS trooper Phillip Citroen, left, with Hitler, right, in Colombia in 1954. Citroen's claims surfaced in a CIA file One CIA file dated October 3, 1955, carried allegations from a former SS trooper named Phillip Citroen that Hitler had been hiding in Colombia and later Argentina. The trooper even had a photo taken in 1954 in the Colombian city of Tunja, allegedly showing him with Hitler. The document stated: 'According to Citroen, the Germans residing in Tunja followed this alleged Adolf Hitler with an idolatry of the Nazi past, addressing him as 'der Fuhrer' and affording him the Nazi salute and storm-trooper adulation.' Meanwhile a file from the FBI archives, dated September 21, 1945, detailed eyewitness claims that Hitler had arrived in Argentina via submarine two-and-a-half weeks after the fall of Berlin. It said: 'By pre-arranged plan with six top Argentine officials, pack horses were waiting for the group and by daylight all supplies were loaded on the horses and an all-day trip inland toward the foothills of the southern Andes was started. 'At dusk the party arrived at the ranch where Hitler and his party, according to [redacted], are now in hiding.' Auschwitz doctor and war criminal Josef Mengele was among those who fled Germany after the collapse of the Third Reich Several prominent Nazis are also known to have fled to South America, including Adolf Eichmann a leading architect of the Holocaust, and the notorious Auschwitz doctor Josef Mengele. However the new discovery proves that U-3523 never made the trip and sank with all 58 crewmen. Mr Andersen also has a copy of the last telegram sent by the submarine, dated May 5, 1945, which makes no mention of any precious cargo or high-ranking passengers. Nazi Germany would sign the first instrument of unconditional surrender just two days later on May 7, 1945. Scans of the seabed reveal the U-boat now lies in 123 metres of water, making it very difficult to access. Unusually, the whole fore of the ship lies buried in the sand, while the stern stands 20 metres above the bottom. Nazi Germany built 118 Type XXI U-boats but due to poor quality control only four were fit for combat before World War 2 ended and just two were deployed, neither sinking any allied ships. Their design was later copied by Britain, the US, France and the Soviet Union with Soviet models subsequently inspiring Chinese submarines. Only one original Type XXI U-boat survives, the Wilhelm Bauer - formerly U-2540 - which is now part of the German Maritime Museum in Bremerhaven. Alex Skeel (pictured) has bravely told how he was tortured by his girlfriend Jordan Worth A battered boyfriend made to suffer at the hands of his 'controlling' girlfriend has spoken for the first time about the torment he suffered as she was jailed for seven and a half years. Bravely waiving his anonymity, Alex Skeel told MailOnline he was speaking out because he wanted to campaign against domestic abuse. Mr Skeel, 22, fought back tears as he told MailOnline: 'I thought my limbs might have to be amputated. I had open burns. I lost three stones in weight. I went from 10 stones down to seven. It was awful. It was three years of mental abuse and then it turned physical.' His girlfriend Jordan Worth, 22, made his life a misery by inflicting a catalogue of injuries on him in violent attacks. She stabbed him with a knife, scalded him with boiling water, banned him from their bed and decided what clothes he should wear. Worth, who lived with Mr Skeel in the village of Stewartby, Bedfordshire, also isolated him from his friends and took over his Facebook account. Jordan Worth (pictured), 22, was jailed for seven and a half years for her campaign of abuse against her boyfriend Mr Skeel in which she stabbed him and starved him The couple, pictured in happier times, lived together in Stewartby, Bedfordshire, before Worth, who wanted to be a teacher, was jailed for torturing him during their relationship Mr Skeel said: 'I was infected from the burns pretty much all over my body. Luckily they managed to treat it. 'The physical violence happened for about nine months and for four years before that it was mental abuse.' Mr Skeel said he was 16 when he met her in 2012 when they became friends while they both went to drama college at Bedford and he was in the lower sixth form. 'She was probably only girl I ever felt was interested in me. I never had that before. But she clearly used my history to her advantage to go on and do what she did. Worth made her partner Mr Skeel's life a misery before she was jailed for cruelty He continued: 'She would constantly say that this was the way to do things. And because I was wooed by her, flattered, I believed her. But it wasn't normal. She wanted to basically change who I was.' 'My family said that they knew the mental abuse was going on, but didn't know about the physical violence. She kept me away from them for two years. I have a very loving family and loving parents and she wouldn't allow me to talk to them. She would hit me and threw a boiling water on me and stab me in the arms and say that I've been speaking to my family, but I hadn't.' Aspiring teacher Worth had a degree from the University of Hertfordshire, had come from a loving and supportive family, and had raised money for children in Africa. But Luton Crown Court heard she cruelly controlled every aspect of Mr Skeel's life. Prosecutor Maryam Syed said a relationship began and later they moved in together but from an early stage she was exercising control over him deciding what he could wear. But the prosecutor said worse was to come as she became violent towards the man, who the court heard suffered from hydrocephalus which is caused by a buildup of fluid inside the skull which made him vulnerable. She used blunt objects to strike him, wounded him with a knife and didn't help him get to hospital for treatment. For nine months he couldn't sleep in the same bed as her, the court was told. Mr Skeel told how his weight plummeted as he was starved and stabbed during their tumultuous relationship in which Worth banned him from her bed and controlled his Facebook Mr Skeel, who suffered years of abuse, told MailOnline: 'I thought my limbs might have to be amputated. I had open burns. I lost three stones in weight' Now Mr Skeel (pictured kissing Worth during a brief happy moment) says he just wants to move on with his life after suffering the trauma of her abuse Worth pleaded guilty to controlling or coercive behaviour in an intimate relationship, wounding with intent and causing grievous bodily harm with intent between April 2016 to June last year. Neighbours of the couple often heard them arguing said Miss Syed and the sounds of things being thrown in the house. She said the victim was heard by his neighbours shouting at Worth: 'Get off me, you are hurting me.' He was seen on occasions with black eyes and to be limping and with his arm in sling. Worth after receiving her degree in Fine Art from the University of Hertfordshire, cruelly controlled every aspect of her partner's life Once Worth was seen at a window by a neighbour 'armed' with a screwdriver or hammer, the court was told. Another neighbour heard him shouting: 'Get off me. Get off my head. Don't keep doing that to my head.' She saw burn marks on his arms which he explained away as self-inflicted. Mr Skeel added: 'My family never thought it would be physical. But it just got worse and worse. 'It started off with little things with her just hitting me, and punching me and then It got to her having a bottle in her hand. 'And every time I removed a weapon, she would go onto the next one and it led to being hit with hammers, getting stabbed with knives and having boiling water thrown over me.' Mr Skeel said he wants to set up a refuge for battered men. He attends a group for domestic violence victims and would like to help others. He said he had been told by the police that there had been a spike in the number of male victims in recent years. The court heard it was in June of last year that neighbours called police to the couple's home in the village in the early hours after hearing shouting. The ambulance crew noted injuries to his hand, burns to arms and legs which were being self treated with cling film. There was cling film round his ankles, and a hand wound that was bleeding. He was taken to Bedford Hospital's acute clinical unit and then to Addenbrookes Hospital. Asked by MailOnline if he could have got away, he said: 'You can't. When I in hospital after she stabbed my wrist and my tendons in my hand, she walked out of the building because they were going to operate on me. The senior consultant rubbed my eyes with his thumb and said, 'Are you sure you are safe to go home?' Worth pleaded guilty to controlling or coercive behaviour in an intimate relationship, wounding with intent and causing grievous bodily harm with intent Despite her sentence, Worth appears to be in a new relationship with James Clarke (pictured), according to his Facebook profile 'He knew that [what was going on]. And he flagged it with the police. But they have to go on what I say and, at the time, I was scared of the consequences of going against the person abusing me. 'If I did anything out of turn that she didn't want it just got worse. I never spoke to my mum and dad for two years. She didn't allow it. And if I did, there would've been massive repercussions. She said to me 'I want to take you away from your family and ruin your life.' 'I remember one time she hit me on the head with a laptop plug and I was bleeding and I said, 'Please help me'. I had my head down and blood was pouring out of it. She walked up the stairs and I said again 'Please help me' and she said, 'Go and die!' She just walked laughing up the stairs. Thats when I thought that it couldnt get any worse. But then she started throwing boiling water over me. It happened twice in two different hotels. I was asleep she poured boiling water all over my back. 'It was an alarm call of boiling water hitting my skin. I sometimes wake up in the middle of the night for no reason at all other than that happened. In the second hotel, she kept filling up jugs of boiling water and throwing them all over me.' On June 6 he was examined at the Lister Hospital in Stevenage and found to have burns on his legs as well as stab wounds about his body and limbs. Days later Worth was arrested. The court heard the couple are no longer together and Worth, who is in a new relationship with James Clarke, has been living at an address in Ingoldisthorpe, Norfolk. Jailing Worth judge Nic Madge told the court: 'She accepts that she has in the past, on a number of occasions, used blunt objects and implements to strike him and that he suffered injuries as a result of her doing so. 'She accepts using boiling or hot water to cause injury to him. She accepts that she has in the past used a knife to cause injury to her partner.' Worth was also made the subject of a restraining order which prevents her from contacting Mr Skeel for an indefinite period. A beauty queen turned dentist who killed her cheating husband by running him over in 2002 is to be released from prison next month after serving 15 years behind bars. Clara Harris, now 60, was sentenced to 20 years imprisonment in 2003 for the death of her husband David. She was a 45-year-old dentist at the time and had discovered her husband's affair with receptionist Gail Bridges. After confronting the pair in a hotel in Friendswood, Texas, Harris ran her husband over three times in the parking lot while 17-year-old teenage stepdaughter Lindsay was in the passenger seat. She was convicted of murder and has been at the Crain Unit in Gainesville, Texas, ever since. Clara Harris (seen left in a 2017 prison photo and right in 2003) will be released from prison next month after 15 years behind bars. The 60-year-old ran her husband David over three times in a hotel parking lot after discovering him inside with his mistress Last year, she was finally granted parole after being turned down twice before. She is expected to be released next month. The terms of her parole are not known. Harris murdered her orthodontist husband David, 44 Harris, who was born in Colombia and was once crowned Miss Colombia Houston, had two children with her husband. He had another daughter from a previous relationship. By the time she killed him, she had already hired a private investigator to follow her husband because she suspected the affair. Bridges worked as a receptionist in the orthodontist practice where David worked. On the night of his murder, she and him had met at the Nassau Bay Hilton hotel. It was where he and Clara got married. After following them there, Clara confronted the pair in the lobby. Bridges testified that she attacked them, punching her and screaming before retreating to the parking lot where she got in her silver Mercedes. Bridges was walking back to her own car when she saw Clara suddenly charge at them. She was hit in the leg but David's injuries were more serious and he died at the scene. The couple ran a string of successful dentist and orthodontist offices in Friendswood, Texas, and had four-year-old twin boys. They are pictured on their wedding day On July 24, Clara followed her husband and his mistress to the Nassau Bay Hilton and confronted them in the lobby. She then got back into her silver Mercedes in the parking lot (shown right) and charged at him. A private investigator she had hired to follow her husband was also in the parking lot with a camera and he inadvertently filmed the murder The beams from Clara's silver Mercedes are shown above in the video taken by the private investigator. It was used against her at trial According to Bridges' trial testimony, his final words to her were: 'I'm sorry.' Harris claimed it was an accident and that she never meant to hit the pair. Part of the evidence used against her was a video of her running them over which had been filmed by the private investigator she'd hired. They remained in their vehicle on the night in question and caught the murder on tape. At trial, Clara (pictured weeping during one January 2003 session) claimed it was an accident and that she never meant to hit her husband Prosecutors also used testimony from David's daughter, Clara's stepdaughter, against her. After being sentenced, she was hit with two wrongful death lawsuits. One was filed by her stepdaughter and the other was filed by her husband's parents. The stepdaughter was given $2million from her father's estate, the same amount as her two twin half-brothers received. The boys were just four at the time of their father's death. David Harris's parents were awarded $3.75million. At the time of her husband's death, Clara was reported to have $1.2million in assets of her own. It is not clear how much of that she still has. A bold 13-year-old Meghan Markle surprised her first kiss by making a 'beeline' toward him at the end of theater class, her childhood summer camp crush revealed in an exclusive interview with DailyMailTV. Comedian Joshua Silverstein was 13 when the pair struck up a relationship at theater-themed summer camp in Santa Monica, California, in 1993. According to the 36-year-old father-of-two, he and Meghan hit it off immediately but he says he was still taken by surprise when she made a beeline toward him with a kiss in the lobby after class one day. 'It was the end of a workshop and we were kind of leaving and walking out,' Silverstein, who is telling the full story of the smooch for the first time, said. Meghan Markle (pictured as a teen), who will marry Prince Harry on May 19, has said that her first kiss was with a boy named Joshua Silverstein when she was 13 years old at a drama-themed summer camp in Santa Monica, California Silverstein, pictured as a teen, said that Meghan made the first move and kissed him after a theater workshop 'I noticed her making a beeline toward me with a lot of intention and there was a kiss,' he said. 'At the end of the class. It did catch me off guard.' He added: 'She kissed me. She made the move. And I think I was like, OK we're at that phase of our relationship right now, we're kissing. That was what happened. 'There were other kisses after that moment. She definitely made the first move and initiated the first act of affection in that way.' Silverstein, who still lives in Los Angeles, said the duo had previously hugged and held hands but had never gone further until the actress, now 36, took matters into her own hands. Meghan later recounted the moment during a 2013 interview with Larry King, telling the veteran host: 'I was 13, it was a summer camp and I kissed him!' Silverstein added: 'We had already become a couple. We had held hands prior - I've always been affectionate, so we'd already hugged. But the kiss was definitely her, her initiative absolutely.' The teenage romance began after the pair met at a drama-focused summer camp organized by the Agape International Spiritual Center. Silverstein has grown up to be a star in the US as he is an actor, comedian and rapper who appears on The Late, Late Show. He is now a married father-of-two young children still living in Los Angeles, but he still remembers his romance with Meghan Meghan and Silverstein met at a drama summer camp at their local Agape Spiritual Church. Adherents, who include Meghan's mother Doria, 61, and talk show host Oprah Winfrey, believe that God is everywhere, that sickness starts in the mind and that positive thinking has a healing effect Founded in 1986, adherents, who include Meghan's mother Doria, 61, and talk show host Oprah Winfrey, believe that God is everywhere, that sickness starts in the mind and that positive thinking has a healing effect. As a result, Silverstein says, participants in the camp were encouraged to take part in meditation sessions as well as in acting and dance workshops the latter much loved by budding actress Meghan. He says the pair initially bonded over their mixed race heritage, telling DailyMailTV that they found themselves thrown together because of their 'intimate' class of 15. Silverstein said that he believes Meghan will continue her activism work once she marries Prince Harry. Meghan is pictured above outside Buckingham Palace as a teenager Silverstein describes the 13-year-old Meghan as being 'very sweet', charming and 'quirky' but already displaying the determined streak that took her to success in Suits and a glamorous royal life in London after she weds Prince Harry next month. 'Meghan as a 13-year-old was very kind, very sweet, very talented, very interested in the theater camp it was then that we saw how impressive she was on stage,' he said. 'She was charming and quirky. She wasn't a stereotypical 13-year-old girl; she wasn't decked out in pink every single day, she wasn't flaunting make-up or anything. 'She was her own person, very authentic to who she was at the time. She was curious, I think she was serious about her craft.' In true teen fashion, the pair realized they liked each other after telling friends about their respective crushes. 'I found out from our friends that she liked me and I liked her and I just think we decided it would be a good idea to become boyfriend and girlfriend,' Silverstein said. The relationship wasn't his first: he had previously kissed girls at kindergarten and had a 'girlfriend' in first grade. Meghan (pictured center as a teenager) was a pupil at Immaculate Heart Girls' School in Los Feliz when she attended at a drama summer camp at their local Agape Spiritual Church After their summer fling fizzled out, Silverstein saw Meghan at their local church and he remained in touch with her mother, Doria. Now Josh is happily married to Cynthia Guillen (pictured) And it certainly wasn't to be his last: the pair splitting up at the end of the summer before starting high school because neither wanted to let it put a 'dampener' on their interactions with others. After that, Silverstein says, he saw Meghan only 'three or four more times' all during their high school years and always at church. The pair then lost touch, although he says he was kept up-to-date on her exploits via her mother Doria until four years ago, when he stopped attending services at the Agape church. 'After high school, I hadn't seen her,' Silverstein said. 'But her mom still went to Agape so I saw her mom often and I was friendly with her mom. 'Her mom would always fill me in 'oh Meghan's overseas modeling or Meghan's acting now'. I think the last check in I had with Meghan's mom was Meghan was getting married [to ex-husband Trevor Engleson]. 'Or it might have been Meghan's on a show I can't remember the show details. But I think that there was always a sense of pride from Meghan's mom whatever Meghan was doing, she's proud of Meg. Proud and happy for her.' Silverstein says he now expects his former love to go on to be 'an activist princess' who will champion the cause of mixed race people and work to help the disadvantaged. He says he believes Meghan has changed little in terms of her values since he knew her and says Doria will take being mother-in-law to a British prince in her stride. Silverstein says he believes Meghan has changed little in terms of her values since he knew her and says Doria will take being mother-in-law to a British prince in her stride. Pictured above, Meghan and Prince Harry earlier this year But although King concluded the 2013 interview with the actress by joking about Silverstein 'missing out' on Meghan, he says he doesn't feel like he's missed out on anything. Now happily married to photographer Cynthia, 36, and father to two daughters, Ami, 10, and Laila, five, he said: 'Meghan's wonderful and I think she's a fantastic person and a very strong person but I'm very happy with my wife, who I think is perfect for me.' He would still love an invitation to the wedding next month ('I love a wedding!') and cheekily suggests he would be more than enough to balance out the phalanx of ex-girlfriends Harry, 33, is said to be inviting. But the main thing, he says, is that Meghan gets to be happy. 'I think Meghan will be a very empathetic princess,' said Silverstein. 'I think she'll be a compassionate princess and I think she'll be one who pays attention. 'I think this is very the stars lining up, that's how it feels, which is pretty cool. 'But as far as someone that I've dated, from my past, meeting someone and falling in love with them, I don't think it matters that he's a prince I think it matters that they're happy and in love together.' Jokingly, beatbox artist Silverstein, who regularly appears on The Late Late Show with James Corden, added: 'Meghan, if you're watching this, call me!' Stephen Lawrence (pictured) was murdered in south-east London in 1993 The identity of a police mole who infiltrated a campaign group which backed the fight for justice for Stephen Lawrence has been revealed for the first time. The man was known as 'David Hagan' and his identity was today revealed on the Undercover Policing Inquiry website after he infiltrated groups including Movement for Justice. It is believed that this is first time Stephen's father, Neville Lawrence, has been told the name used by the officer, who was also referred to as HN81. Neither he nor Stephen's mother, Doreen, commented on the publication. The officer joined the group in the late 1990s, around the time that the public inquiry began into the events surrounding Stephen's death in Eltham, south-east London, in April 1993. He was a member of the group for two or three years before he disappeared. During the inquiry, he controversially met with then acting detective inspector Richard Walton, who was working on Scotland Yard's final submissions to the probe, and passed on information including that Stephen's parents had separated. In 2014 a damning report on undercover policing by barrister Mark Ellison QC alleged that Mr Walton 'obtained information pertaining to the Lawrence family and their supporters, potentially undermining the inquiry and public confidence'. Watchdog the Independent Office for Police Conduct found that Mr Walton would have faced disciplinary proceedings over the meeting had he not been allowed to retire in 2016. Neville Lawrence (pictured) has not commented on the publication which has revealed the identity of the police mole Mr Lawrence launched a legal battle to stop him leaving the force but this was unsuccessful. He has previously said how he has forgiven his son's killers, adding that the decision was the hardest he had ever made, but it was necessary as part of his Christian faith. Speaking ahead of the 25th anniversary of Stephen's murder, Mr Lawrence said the killing had inflicted 'a life sentence' on him and his family. The father of three said: 'I will never be the person I was before Stephen's death. You can never brush this aside this is going to live with you for the rest of your life. Mr Lawrence's marriage to Stephen's mother Doreen (pictured together) now Baroness Lawrence collapsed in the aftermath of the murder and they are now divorced 'This is a life sentence that you can't finish. The only time my life sentence will be finished is when I'm in the ground.' Stephen was 18 when he was stabbed by a five-strong gang of white youths on April 22, 1993. The gang shouted racist abuse as they began the unprovoked attack on the A-level student. Only two have been convicted of the murder. Mr Lawrence named the five men, saying: 'The people who were said to be involved in the murder of my son were Neil Acourt, Luke Knight, Gary Dobson, David Norris and Jamie Acourt. 'To be a Christian you have to forgive people for what they have done... So in order to be a Christian, I decided I am going to forgive all those people who were involved in my son's murder. '[It] is one of the hardest decisions I have ever made, and I think it will be the hardest I will ever make in my lifetime.' Mr Lawrence's marriage to Stephen's mother Doreen - now Baroness Lawrence - collapsed in the aftermath of the murder and they are now divorced. A new BBC One documentary about the incident, called Stephen: the Murder That Changed a Nation, will be aired at 9pm this evening. A teenager has been accused of sexually assaulting a woman in an alcohol-fuelled remote town where a two-year-old was allegedly raped. An 18-year-old man has been charged after the alleged assault in the Northern Territory town of Tennant Creek. He allegedly broke into a home and assaulted the woman on Sunday night. A teenager has been accused of sexually assaulting a woman in a troubled alcohol-fuelled town where a two-year-old was allegedly raped He is said to have entered other homes around the same time and stolen property. The teenager will face Alice Springs Local Court on Wednesday on multiple charges, including attempted sexual intercourse and five counts of unlawful entry. In February a two-year-old girl was allegedly raped by a 24-year-old man in the same town. The toddler was flown to the Alice Springs Hospital before being rushed to the Women's and Children's Hospital in Adelaide, where she was placed in an induced coma because of the severity of her injuries. The alleged rapist has since been arrested and charged with sexual assault and was denied bail. He is due to appear in the Alice Springs Local Court via video link from jail on April 19. In the wake of the alleged crime, the Northern Territory Director General of Licensing ramped up alcohol restrictions across the town (pictured) which is said to be 'drowning in drink.' In the wake of the alleged crime Northern Territory Director General of Licensing ramped up alcohol restrictions across the town which is said to be 'drowning in drink.' They 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 a local youth centre needed to feed each evening dropped from 70 to 50. Deborah Lowe, 54, (pictured right) was told she could leave the dock and was free to go following a seven-day trial at Minshull Street Crown Court, Manchester, which she had been attending with her son (left) A former air hostess turned high school teacher broke down in tears after a jury cleared her of having sex with a teenage pupil. The court heard how Deborah Lowe, 54, and the boy had 'rough' sex sessions where he pulled her hair and she bit and scratched his back until it bled. And the teenager told jurors it was 'every lad's fantasy' to have sex with a teacher but admitted later feeling 'creeped out' because of the age gap. Mother-of-two Lowe from Poynton, Cheshire was told she could leave the dock and was free to go by the judge, following a seven-day trial at Minshull Street Crown Court, Manchester. The divorcee admitted that she had not had sex for nine years and told the court that she was flattered by the attention she had received. However Lowe said she was now 'deeply ashamed' and had been suffering from 'a mid-life crisis' when they began a relationship. The jury, who were out for two hours and seven minutes deliberating, found Lowe not guilty of five counts of sexual activity with a child by a person in a position of trust. She had stood, hands clasped in front of her, swaying slightly and breathing deeply as the jury foreman returned the verdicts. Deborah Lowe arriving at Manchester Minshull Street Crown Court this week, where she was accused of sleeping with a pupil Lowe said at the time she had become interested in meditation and yoga, visited Bali, sold her flat in suburban Cheshire and given up her job as head of pastoral care at a high school to go travelling in India to 'explore her faith'. But she maintained the relationship with the boy, 35 years her junior, only became sexual after he had left school and he was aged 17. The prosecution had alleged that sex began when the boy was 16 and although old enough to legally consent, Lowe broke the law by having sex with him when being a person in a position of trust his teacher. Earlier, the court heard that in a jokey WhatsApp message to a friend Lowe told her she was not having sex with the boy and described herself as a 'mother' figure. But she added: 'if not in the too distant future he wants to discuss the merits of an older woman I will be there for him' followed by emojis of a bottle of baby oil and a pair of handcuffs. The teenager had told the jury after 'flirting' at school they swapped phone numbers and first engaged in phone sex before sexual encounters in her home, car and caravan. 'I NOW WISH TO PUT THIS CASE BEHIND ME' Lowe left court hurriedly, and her solicitor told waiting reporters she did not wish to speak to the press, but read a statement on her behalf. It said: 'The last nine months have been extremely difficult for me and my family. 'I would like to take this opportunity to thank them for their love and care. 'I'm grateful for the support from former colleagues, friends and past pupils who sent messages of support. 'Although incredibly stressful and upsetting at times I'm extremely pleased I have had the opportunity to clear my name and I'm delighted the jury acquitted me of all counts. 'I'm very grateful to my legal team, Jared McNally and Neil Usher, who from the start identified the flaws in the case against me and robustly challenged the prosecution case. 'I now wish to put this case behind me as best I can and spend some time with my family and friends.' Advertisement A former air hostess who has worked in education for 14 years, Lowe told the jury sex first took place after he contacted her around December 2016 three months after he left school, and she took him to her flat in the Stockport area of Greater Manchester. They kissed and had sex and later on also had sex at his home while his mother, who Lowe knew, was out of the house. The relationship continued into 2017 with more secret liaisons in the caravan where she lived. She sent him a card signing off with, 'the slut' a name they used during the 'rough' sex sessions. Police were called in last summer after his mother found the card Lowe sent to him. Lowe, who has a daughter, aged 28 and a son, 20, said later she felt, 'mortified and embarrassed' over her 'foolish infatuation' and denied being 'sexually obsessed' with the youngster. Neil Usher, defending Lowe, described the complainant as an 'attention-seeking fantasist' who had claimed sex began when he was aged 15 so he could sell his story to tabloid newspapers. A single allegation of having sex with a child, when the complainant was aged 15, was withdrawn by the prosecution during the trial and the judge instructed the jury to return a not guilty verdict on that charge, after the boy gave evidence which suggested he was 16, not 15, when he first had sexual contact with Ms Lowe. Lowe denied she had slept with the boy when the messages were sent in October 2016 The divorced teacher admitted they had sex for the first time at her flat, when the boy was aged 17 The defendant, of Elm Beds Caravan Park, Poynton, Cheshire, had denied five counts of sexual activity with a child by a person in a position of trust said to have taken place between September 14, 2015 and June 30, 2016. Deborah Lowe, 54, of Poynton, Cheshire was cleared of having sex with her teenage pupil Cleared, she left court hurriedly, and her solicitor told waiting reporters she did not wish to speak to the press, but read a statement on her behalf. It said: 'The last nine months have been extremely difficult for me and my family. 'I would like to take this opportunity to thank them for their love and care. 'I'm grateful for the support from former colleagues, friends and past pupils who sent messages of support. 'Although incredibly stressful and upsetting at times I'm extremely pleased I have had the opportunity to clear my name and I'm delighted the jury acquitted me of all counts. 'I'm very grateful to my legal team, Jared McNally and Neil Usher, who from the start identified the flaws in the case against me and robustly challenged the prosecution case. 'I now wish to put this case behind me as best I can and spend some time with my family and friends.' Ms Lowe, 54, is a resident of the Elm Beds caravan park in Poynton, Cheshire, pictured The White House is actively trying to put together an Arab fighting force that could replace American troops in Syria, allowing President Trump to make good on his promise that U.S. soldiers deployed there would be coming home soon. Not only does President Trump want Saudi Arabia, Qatar and the United Arab Emirates to donate billions of dollars to the war effort, the Wall Street Journal is reporting, he's asking them to commit troops to the war-torn Middle East country, too. According to WSJ, the president's new national security advisor, John Bolton, asked Egypt's acting intelligence chief officer, Abbas Kamel, if Cairo would be willing to put boots on the ground in Syria. The White House is actively trying to put together an Arab fighting force that could replace American troops in Syria, like the ones seen here in March of 2017 in Aleppo Trump has asked Arab nations for billions of dollars for the war effort. Now, he wants them to send in troops, too A U.S. fighter stands near a military vehicle, north of Raqqa city, Syria in November of 2016. The U.S. has roughly 2,000 troops in Syria at present A U.S. official also told the publication that 'Saudi Arabia, Qatar and the U.A.E. have all been approached with respect to financial support and more broadly to contribute.' An Arab fighting force would be chalked full of complications. Saudi Arabia and Qatar are locked in an intense regional dispute. The UAE, Bahrain and Egypt joined Saudi Arabia in cutting ties with Qatar last summer over the Gulf state's alleged support for extremists. At an end-of-March event, Trump suggested that a plan was nearly in place when he said, 'Were knocking the hell out of ISIS. Well be coming out of Syria, like, very soon. 'Let the other people take care of it now,' he added. But that was before Syrian dictator Bashar al-Assad carried out a deadly chemical weapons attack on the rebel-held town of Douma. On Friday, in conjunction with the U.K. and France, Trump ordered targeted strikes against Assad's forces. In a national address Trump argued that the airstrikes were vital to the national security interests of the United States. 'We are prepared to sustain this response until the Syrian regime stops its use of prohibited chemical agents,' he pledged. But Trump also said the United States' friends in the Middle East needed to assist in the long-term effort to stabilize Syria. 'We have asked our partners to take greater responsibility for securing their home region, including contributing large amounts of money for the resources, equipment, and all of the anti-ISIS effort,' he said. 'Increased engagement from our friends, including Saudi Arabia, the United Arab Emirates, Qatar, Egypt, and others can ensure that Iran does not profit from the eradication of ISIS.' President Trump has met with or has plans to meet with heads of state from each of the countries, with the exception of Egypt, in recent weeks as he considers what to do when a deadline to extricate the United States from the Iran nuclear deal arrives next month. European officials are begging the U.S. not to back out of the 2015 deal that gave Iran sanctions relief so it would halt its nuclear weapons program. However, Iran's illicit ballistic missile development, terror financing and support for Assad in Syria have tempted Trump to follow through on a campaign promise to tear it up. Next week Trump will host French President Emmanuel Macron at the White House for the first state dinner of his 14-month presidency. The Iran deal is likely to come up as the two leaders discuss the quagmire in Syria. Yesterday, Trump's spokeswoman pushed back on a boast from Macron that he had persuaded President Trump to keep U.S. troops in Syria. Sarah Sanders reaffirmed that the United States' policy has not changed, and it would still like to pull American soldiers deployed in Syria out as soon as feasible. 'We've talked about this for a while, but our policy hasn't changed. We still have troops on the ground,' she said. 'But the President wants to bring those people home, and that hasn't shifted.' At a National Security Council meeting Trump is said to have requested that the troops come home in the next six months. Sanders wouldn't confirm that timeline to reporters on Monday. 'We don't have a timeframe on it,' she said. 'It's not based on an arbitrary timeline, but on defeating ISIS and also getting the Gulf partners in the region to step up and do more both militarily and financially.' A young Texas deputy is undergoing surgery for 'serious injuries' after he was shot several times in the lower extremities while responding to a disturbance call early Tuesday. The officer has been identified as Christopher Gaines, 25, with the Harris County Constable Precinct 4. Gaines was alongside a group of deputies when he responded to a call around 2am at the 12400 block of Saratoga Woods Lane in Atascocita. An armed male walked outside of the home when the officers arrived, Constable Mark Herman said in a press conference. Deputy Christopher Gaines, 25, was wounded after being shot early on Tuesday. He is pictured above lying in a hospital bed while gripping onto a person's hand Gaines, far left, was said to be suffering the most serious injuries of all of the officers involved 'Upon deputies arriving, they had a male come out of one of the houses with a rifle and began shooting. Our deputies quickly returned fire,' Herman said. 'The suspect was struck multiple times. I think we had a total of three to four deputies who discharged their weapons.' While speaking of Gaines, Herman said he is undergoing surgery at the Memorial Hermann Hospital. 'That's all I can tell you. We have the scene secured out there (and) the suspect has been transported to Ben Taub and police investigation will continue.' Gaines was alongside a group of deputies when he responded to a call around 2am at the 12400 block of Saratoga Woods Lane in Atascocita He said others deputies were transported to a local hospital after they were wounded during the shootout, but the injuries were less severe than Gaines'. 'The guy was shooting a shot gun with buckshots and multiple deputies have been transported. 'Again, that's all I can really tell you, and my main goal right now is to check on my guy that has been severely struck in the lower extremities.' Herman issued an update to his Twitter page Tuesday morning, confirming Gaines is now in stable condition at the hospital. He shared a photo showing the deputy lying in the hospital bed while gripping onto a person's hand standing next to him. Two women Labour MPs put Jeremy Corbyn to shame last night as they detailed vile abuse at the hands of his supporters. On a devastating day for the Labour leader, Jewish MPs Luciana Berger and Ruth Smeeth read out examples of the shocking abuse they have received from activists for highlighting the party's anti-Semitism crisis. In an emotionally charged debate on anti-Semitism, which shredded Mr Corbyn's remaining authority, MPs on all sides broke with convention to give the pair standing ovations in the Commons. Some MPs were reduced to tears by their harrowing stories. Ruth Smeeth was given a standing ovation as she read out examples of the shocking abuse she had received for highlighting Labour's anti-Semitism crisis Fellow MPs were so moved by Ruth Smeeth's speech against anti-Semitism that they defied parliamentary rules to stand up and applaud her words for some time before the Speaker intervened to ask them to sit down (pictured) Luciana Berger, a Labour MP for Liverpool Wavertree (pictured in during the debate) told how she has been inundated with anti--Semitic abuse - and that it is 'on the rise' in the party saying 'it is more conspicuous and it is more abrasive'. Ian Austin (pictured in Parliament today) said the former London Mayor should be 'booted out' of the party for saying Hitler supported Zionism. Miss Smeeth said she had received thousands of abusive messages on social media, many of them from people claiming to be supporters of the Labour leader. One read: 'The first job for Jeremy Corbyn tomorrow: expel the Zionist b**** Ruth Smeeth from the party.' Another said: 'Hang yourself you vile treacherous Zionist Tory filth, you're a cancer of humanity.' She said: 'I've been the target of abuse from people who say I have no place in the party I have been in for 20 years.' Miss Berger also said she had received abuse at the hands of people using the hashtag JC4PM (Jeremy Corbyn for prime minister). She said: 'It is anti-Semitism of the worst kind; suggesting that I'm a traitor to our country, they have called me 'Judas', a 'Zio-Nazi', an 'absolute parasite', telling me to 'get out of this country and to go back to Israel'. 'My party urgently needs to address this issue publicly and consistently. We have a duty to the next generation. Denial is not an option. The time for action is now. Enough really is enough.' The Labour leader shook his head with his arms crossed as he Communities Secretary Sajid Javid attacked him for failing to confront the racism. In an extraordinary demonstration of the growing schism in Labour, the party's deputy leader Tom Watson abandoned his seat on the front bench alongside Mr Corbyn to sit in solidarity with Miss Berger and Miss Smeeth. The three-hour debate saw a string of Labour MPs stand up to condemn Mr Corbyn's failure to tackle a problem Miss Smeeth said was 'engulfing' sections of the party. Many called for Mr Corbyn's ally Ken Livingstone to be 'booted out' of the party for claiming Hitler was a Zionist. John Mann, chairman of the all-party group on anti-Semitism, said Jewish people were 'scared' to be in the party and revealed his wife had been sent a dead bird through the post, and that she had been threatened with rape. 'I didn't expect when I took on this voluntary cross-party role for my wife to be sent by a Labour Marxist anti-Semite a dead bird through the post,' he said. Hundreds gathered at the 'enough is enough' protest called by Jewish leaders outside parliament last month (pictured) - but Labour MPs who attended it were later deluged with hate mail and deselection threats by Corbynistas. What did Labour MPs say about anti-Semitism and Labour's failure to tackle it In extraordinary scenes in the Commons last night, Labour MPs condemned their leadership's failure to root out anti-Semitism. And many told of the abuse they received for daring to speak out. Here is some of what they said: John Mann, Labour MP for Bassetlaw and chairman of the all party group against anti-Semitism: 'I didn't expect my son after an Islamist death threat to open the door in the house on his own as a schoolboy to the bomb squad. 'I didn't expect my wife, in the last few weeks from a leftist anti-Semite in response to the demonstration, to be threatened with rape. 'I didn't expect my daughter similarly, and have to be rung up in the last few weeks by special branch to check out her movements in this country.' Luciana Berger, Labour MP for Liverpool Wavertree, said: 'My party urgently needs to address this issue, publicly and consistently and we need to expel those people from our ranks who hold these views - including Ken Livingstone.' Ruth Smeeth, Labour MP for Stoke-on-Trent North 'I stand here today to say that we will not be bullied out of political engagement, we are going nowhere and we stand and will keep fighting until the evils of anti-Semitism have been removed from our society.' Ian Austin, Labour MP for Dudley North: 'Let's be really clear about it: Ken Livingstone comparing, claiming, that Hitler was a Zionist - this is anti-Semitism pure and simple, happened more than two years ago, there has been ample time to deal with it. Advertisement Labour grandee Dame Margaret Hodge said she had 'never felt as nervous and frightened as I do today' about being Jewish. Mr Corbyn has come under extreme pressure to tackle anti-Semitism and will meet representatives of Jewish groups next week. A BMG poll for the Independent last night found 61 per cent of people think Labour has an anti-Semitism problem, with more than half saying Mr Corbyn is handling it 'badly'. The Labour leader did not speak during yesterday's debate. But as Communities Secretary Sajid Javid opened yesterday's debate he could be seen muttering angrily under his breath. Several Labour MPs directly criticised Mr Corbyn's handling of the crisis, with Ian Austin saying he needed to 'take this much more seriously'. Mr Austin said he was 'deeply ashamed' of the situation. He said Mr Corbyn had a track record of defending anti-Semitic groups like Hamas and had opposed the removal of a 'grotesque' anti-Jewish mural. He urged him to eject Mr Livingstone from the party, saying it was 'a disgrace' the former London mayor had not yet been 'booted out' of the party. Many of the most powerful interventions came from female MPs, some of whom have needed police protection after receiving death threats. Dame Margaret described how she had seen a battered suitcase with her uncle's initials on it when she visited Auschwitz as she warned against forgetting the lessons of the past. 'Anti-Semitism is making me an outsider in my Labour party. Enough is enough.' Mr Javid said Mr Corbyn had 'too many accidental associations' with anti-Semitism to list. He also warned that there has been a spike in 'dinner party anti-Semites' respectable middle-class professionals who secretly harbour a hatred of Jews. 'We cannot and must not ignore the particular concern with elements within the Labour party,' he said. Mr Corbyn leader faced criticism after walking out of the debate, missing the speeches by Miss Smeeth and Mr Mann, although he later returned. Sajid Javid Jeremy Corbyn today accused Jeremy Corbyn of a 'deeply worrying' failure to tackle anti-Semitism A convoy of three billboard advertising vans with an anti-Semitism message for Jeremy Corbyn and the Labour party were driven central London today ahead of the debate Porn star Stormy Daniels unveiled the sketch of the man she says threatened her in a Las Vegas parking lot in 2011, after she tried to publicize her story about an alleged affair with Donald Trump. Rehashing the story to the women on The View Tuesday, Daniels told the panel that the man approached her as she was getting her infant daughter out of the car to attend a mommy-and-me exercise class. 'I noticed him because he was sort of well-dressed and nothing about him alarmed me,' she told the women in her first live television interview since the hush money payment given to Daniels by President Trump's lawyer Michael Cohen was unveiled. 'I really thought he was somebody's husband not wanting to be in whatever his wife was doing.' When she noticed his reflection in her car's window she expected him to ask for directions. Instead the man threatened the adult film actress and her daughter, telling her to 'forget about this story, leave Mr. Trump alone.' Upon unveiling the sketch, Daniels' attorney Michael Avenatti said they would pay a $100,000 reward for the identity of the man, and asked for tips to be sent to IDTheThug@gmail.com. 'We want to get to the bottom of who this is, and we think we know who this is, but we want to confirm it,' Avenatti told The View's audience. Avenatti divulged more details about the mystery man during a Tuesday afternoon appearance with CNN's Jake Tapper. The lawyer explained that Daniels had looked at photos of a number of individuals 'we believe indirectly' worked for Trump and Cohen, Avenatti said. 'She has reviewed, Jake, a number of photographs over the last few weeks, copule weeks, actually and we've narrowed it down,' the lawyer said. Scroll down for video Porn star Stormy Daniels revealed the sketch that was made of the man she says threatened her in a Las Vegas parking lot in 2011, after she went to the press with her story of having sexual relations with then-businessman Donald Trump Porn star Stormy Daniels participated in her first live television interview on Tuesday talking to the women of The View The sketch of the man Stormy Daniels (center) said threatened her in a Las Vegas parking lot is shown behind the co-hosts of The View Meghan McCain (right) asked porn star Stormy Daniels (left) if she appeared at court Monday as a publicity stunt The women of The View peppered porn star Stormy Daniels (center) and her lawyer Michael Avenatti (third from right) with questions on Tuesday in New York Porn star Stormy Daniels is photographed entering the studios for The View, as she gives her first live television interview Stormy Daniels smiles as she walks alongside her lawyer Michael Avenatti (left) Tuesday in New York In New York on Tuesday, Stormy Daniels enters the studios of The View, where she gave her first live television interview since news of her alleged affair with President Trump came out Stormy Daniels was set to reveal a sketch of the man she says threatened her in 2011 in Las Vegas. A threat made to keep her story about then-businessman Donald Trump under wraps He didn't mention whether the drawing was made before or after Daniels saw the photos. Tapper asked why Avenatti and Daniels wanted the public's help if they already narrowed it down. 'What we're hoping for is someone saw something or heard something. Ideally one of these individuals would have bragged about it to a member of the public,' Avenatti said. He also told Tapper that since the drawing was unveiled on The View Tuesday before lunchtime, more than 400 tips have come in. While many aspects of Daniel's liaison with the now-president had already come out in the press thanks, in part, to the 2011 interview she did with In Touch Weekly, which the magazine didn't publish until this January it was details about this threat that became the headline out of her 60 Minutes interview last month. 'I was in a parking lot, going to a fitness class with my infant daughter,' she explained. 'And a guy walked up to me and said to me, "Leave Trump alone. Forget the story."' 'And then he leaned around and looked at my daughter and said, "That's a beautiful little girl, it'd be a shame if something happened to her mom." And then he was gone,' Daniels said. Avenatti clarified on Tapper's show that the threat to Daniels was made after she had talked to In Touch Weekly. To 60 Minutes, Daniels said she did not report the encounter to police at the time because she was scared. She reiterated that point to The View's co-host Meghan McCain on Tuesday. 'I was scared, it was expressly what he told me not to do,' Daniels said of taking the threat to authorities. She also pointed out that if she had gone to the police a public record would have been produced and she likely would have had to explain that she had a previous alleged sexual encounter with Trump, which is why the threat took place. Promos for Tuesday's episode of The View showed Stormy Daniels (right) sitting down with forensic artist Lois Gibson (left), who created the sketch Stormy Daniels (left) sat down with forensic artist Lois Gibson (right) earlier this month and described the man she says threatened her in a Las Vegas parking lot in 2011 'Honestly one of the main reasons I didn't say anything is I didn't tell my husband at the time,' she said of her one night stand with Trump. 'To go home and say, "I had this guy attack me, oh and by the way he did this because of this." I didn't want him to think I was a bad mom and I put our daughter in danger.' McCain asked why Daniels had never detailed the threat until the 60 Minutes interview, as the porn star had spoken off-the-record to news outlets, including ABC News, about her encounter with Trump, then running for president, in the weeks before the election. The adult film actress replied that she didn't want to be asked the question McCain had just asked why not call the cops? 'I did tell quite a few people actually from back then,' Daniels then volunteered. 'I told family members and two friends and people that I worked with.' At that point Avenatti jumped in to say that there was no way his client could 'fabricate' the man's face. 'This is a very detailed sketch,' he said. He explained how the sketch had been made by a woman named Lois Gibson who often works with the FBI. 'She found Stormy to be very credible,' Avenatti added. Co-host Joy Behar pointed out that the man 'looks like an actor, sort of.' 'That's what stood out to me because I thought, honestly, that he was, you know, sort of handsome,' Daniels said. Avenatti had planned to release the drawing publicly last week, but the raid of Trump attorney Michael Cohen's office and hotel room delayed the unveiling. 'Due to the FBI raids of Mr. Cohens office/home and a subsequent request we received this morning to delay the release of the forensic sketch of the thug that threatened Ms. Clifford to "leave Trump alone", we will not be releasing the sketch or reward details today. Timing TBD,' Avenatti tweeted last week after the Monday morning raid. Cohen was responsible for giving Daniels $130,000 in hush money in October 2016 in exchange for her signing a non-disclosure agreement that barred her from talking about her alleged sexual encounter with Trump. Avenatti has made a number of legal maneuvers to prevent Daniels from having to pay damages for violating the NDA, which the lawyer had argued is invalid since Trump never signed on as a party. Cohen, for his part, has said he paid Daniels personally, and Trump has backed that account up. 'Let me just say, I work in the adult business and I'm a better actress than he is,' Daniels replied to a clip The View played showing Trump denying he knew about the hush money payment. The longtime Trump fixer was in federal court Monday trying to prevent prosecutors from examining the content seized from the FBI's raid on Cohen's properties a week before. Daniels and Avenatti showed up at the hearing and then spoke to press waiting outside. 'For years Mr. Cohen has acted like he is above the law, he has considered himself and openly referred to himself as Mr. Trump's fixer. He has played by a different set of rules , or should we say, no rules at all,' Daniels told the crowd. 'He has never thought that the little man, or especially women, even more women like me mattered.' 'That ends now,' the porn star said. 'My attorney and me are committed to making sure that everyone finds out the truth and the facts of what happens, and I give my word that we will not rest until that happens,' Daniels said. Pointing to Daniels' appearance outside the courtroom today, McCain said she thought it looked like a publicity stunt, mentioning how Daniels seemed to be benefiting financially from the headlines, as she's embarked on a 'Make America Horny Again' strip club tour. 'Can I say, first of all, I did not name the tour,' she said, calling the name 'awful' and explaining how a strip club owner in the Carolinas dubbed her appearance there after the Trump campaign slogan. 'I'm making more money, but I'm spending so much more. My daughter, we have to hire a tutor now. And I have like bodyguards. You don't even want to know their food bill, because I have to feed them three times a day, and they are big,' Daniels said to laughs. 'Yes, I am dancing more, yes, I am making more money, but I am spending more money.' Daniels said that her ambition was not to move out of the adult film industry using the money from her scandal, but instead had wanted to keep growing as a director. 'I had a passion project of mine in the works for the last several years to direct a horror movie and those people that were my investors completely abandoned me,' Daniels said. Without a beat, Behar asked, 'Will Trump be in the movie?' McCain also asked what the end game was for the porn star. 'On a selfish note, it is my chance to defend myself and make people realize how and why this happens, so I can tell my side,' Daniels replied. 'That is my selfish reason, not going to lie about that part.' Avenatti chimed in too saying, 'We want the truth, the whole truth and nothing but the truth.' 'You should not be afraid or bullied,' Daniels added. A Chinese boy was freed after getting his head stuck between walls at five feet above ground in central China. Firefighters had to expand the gap between two houses carefully before pulling the boy out. The 11-year-old was trapped when he was attempting to take a shortcut through a seven-inches-wide gap, according to reports. An 11-year-old boy is left dangling after having his head stuck in a gap between two walls in China (left). His family brings a basket to let the boy stand while waiting for rescue (right) Rescue footage emerged showing two adults lifting the boy's body using a basket while waiting for local firefighters. The incident took place at Caishan village in Huanggang, Hubei Province on April 15, stated Chutian Metropolitan Daily. The boy was left dangling in mid-air roughly 1.6 metres high (5.3ft) as he tried to go through a tiny gap between the exterior walls of two houses and got his head stuck. The gap between two houses measures about 18 centimetres wide (7 inches). Firefighters and policemen first obtained permissions from the two house owners before using any electric rescue tools. Firefighters decided to put a hydraulic spreader above the boy and expanded the space between the walls. As the gap gets wider, the boy's family gently pulls him out. Rescuers observed the situation to decide an effective way to free the boy from the gap Firefighters used an electric hydraulic spreader to expand the gap between the walls slowly Within 30 seconds, the boy was freed and paramedics found no injuries on his body The rescue took approximately 30 seconds, stated the report. Paramedics inspected on the 11-year-old at the scene and found him to have no injuries. Local police reminded parents to watch their children and warn them not to go near any places with potential life-threatening danger. Abdul Samad was the victim of two moped robbers who prowled the streets of London stabbing their victims, a court has heard Two moped muggers stabbed a charity worker to death during a four-hour robbery spree driven by 'bloodlust,' a court has heard. Nathan Gilmaney, 18, and a 17 year-old who cannot be named 'robbed and maimed' their way around west London on the night of 16 October last year, a jury were told. They were both armed with knives and took it turns to threaten victims while the other rode the moped, the Old Bailey heard. Prosecutor Oliver Glasgow QC described the pair as 'highway men of the 21st century.' He told the court: 'They thought they had the right to threaten and to rob whoever they found. [They] attacked their targets in a brazen and shocking manner, and stabbed their victims often for no other reason than simple aggression and bloodlust. 'By the end of their four hour spree of violence, they had committed nine knife point robberies, they had gratuitously stabbed four of their defenceless victims. 'They had killed Abdul Samad, a 28-year-old man whose job as a charity worker had seen him devote his time to helping the very sort of young men who took his life,' the prosecutor said. Mr Samad was one of four innocent victims stabbed during the 'bloodlust' robbery spree Mr Samad was confronted in Little Venice, seconds after the pair stabbed another man in the stomach for his jewellery and money. The charity worker was seen handing belongings including his iPhone over to the robbers before the scooter doubled back and the pair shouted at him. 'He handed something to them but as he did so, Nathan Gilmaney got off the rear of the moped and stabbed Mr Samad in the chest,' said Mr Glasgow. 'Nathan Gilmaney then got back on the moped and the two defendants sped off. 'The wound to Mr Samad's chest was devastating; it cut through the cartilage of the fifth rib and then passed through the right ventricle of his heart. 'Mr Samad managed to stagger the short distance to where his family lived but he collapsed outside the door. 'His parents, who heard his cries, found him bleeding to death outside their home.' Moped 'killer' took off helmet during police chase so they would abandon the pursuit One of the teenage moped robbers took off his helmet during a police chase so they would abandon the pursuit, a court heard. Police tracked down the pair on the moped shorty after 2am on the night of the attacks and chased them, the court heard. Prosecutor Mr Glasgow said: 'As the moped accelerated away from the police, weaving about and hitting the speed bumps at speeds of between 40 and 45mph, Gilmaney removed his crash helmet, no doubt hoping to persuade the police to abandon the pursuit.' But it was decided the need to arrest them justified the risks in continuing the pursuit, jurors heard. The moped eventually turned into a dead end and they jumped off, and Gilmaney was tackled to the ground. The younger teen was spotted by a police helicopter as he tried to hide beneath a 4x4 car. Advertisement Jurors heard Gilmaney has already admitted his involvement in the nine robberies and four non-fatal stabbings but denies murdering Mr Samad. The unnamed youth has admitted his part in the robberies but denies playing any role in the violence that led to four people being stabbed and Mr Samad being killed. The spree began at around 10.30pm in Maida Vale, where they tried to rob Nazmul Chowdhury. Mr Chowdhury fled after spotting a knife and was stabbed in the back by Gilmaney as he boarded a bus to escape. About an hour later, the duo attacked Venezuelan Ehimer Fierro-Berbesi and his aunt Ana as they sat outside their home having a cigarette. Despite pocketing jewellery and cash, they then stabbed Mr Fierro-Berbesi in the stomach. Seconds later they came across Mr Samad and again viciously knifed him even after depriving him of his valuables. 'Whilst the emergency services rushed to Mr Samad's aid and tried to comfort his traumatised family, [the youth] and Nathan Gilmaney, completely unmoved by what they had just done, prowled the streets looking for another target,' Mr Glasgow said. Minutes later they happened across Joseph Denby as he walked in Ladbroke Grove, but he fortunately escaped with his wallet and 'old Nokia'. The prosecutor told the court many of those stabbed had already handed over their valuables Juan Perez Buendia was confronted shortly after having stepped off a bus on Ladbroke Grove. He threw his bag at the robbers' feet and ran off, also discarding his phone as the pair gave chase on the scooter. 'By this stage, the two defendants were now carrying the proceeds of five armed robberies and decided to try to sell some of what they had just stolen,' Mr Glasgow said. Pictures from the night of his death show the 28-year-old being helped by paramedics Shortly after 1am, they visited a block of flats off the Harrow Road, and sold some of the items including Mr Samad's iPhone and foreign currency which had been in Mr Perez Buendia's bag. Twenty minutes after leaving, Graipich Vudto was stabbed in the stomach by Gilmaney after refusing to hand over his phone. Less than five minutes after speeding off, Silverio Pina was stabbed in the arm by Gilmaney before both again fled. At around 1.15am the pair snatched Natevan Casinova's mobile straight out of his hand as they roared past him at the junction of Portobello Road and Pembridge Road. They later punched a young girl after she ran away from them. They then stabbed Nelson Aparicio in the stomach after demanding his phone. Mr Glasgow told the court: 'The two of them are jointly responsible for what they did since it is the Crown's case that they had agreed to work together to rob and maim their way round west London.' Gilmaney, Maida Vale, west London, denies murder. The 17-year-old boy, also of Maida Vale, denies murder and four counts of wounding with intent. The trial continues. Ant McPartlin's wife Lisa Armstrong has broken her social media silence after his drink-drive guilty plea by liking a supportive message on Twitter. The 42-year-old TV presenter was fined 86,000 and banned from the road for 20 months after he was caught more than twice the legal limit following a crash in Richmond, west London. He pleaded guilty to driving with 75 micrograms of alcohol in 100ml of breath. The legal limit is 35 micrograms. As he faced the music in court, his estranged wife sent a subtle message by liking a tweet from a fan. TV presenter Ant McPartlin said he has let himself and his family down and is 'truly sorry' for smashing into two family cars while twice the legal alcohol limit. He was banned from the road and fined 86,000 after he admitted drink driving Ant McPartlin's wife Lisa Armstrong (left, in 2007, and right, at the BAFTAs in 2015) has broken her social media silence after his drink-drive guilty plea by liking a supportive message on Twitter Anthony McPartlin, Lisa Armstrong, Declan Donnelly and Ali Astall arrive for the House of Fraser British Academy of Television Awards at the Theatre Royal, Drury Lane in London, in 2015 A court sketch of Ant behind the glass-fronted dock at Wimbledon Magistrates Court. He spoke only to confirm his details and plead guilty to drink driving. His lawyer told the court he was struggling with 'alcohol and emotional issues' at the time One fan said: 'Thinking of you today.' Another added: 'Sending you lots of love & hugs. Thinking that you could probably do with them today. #Staystrong xxxx.' Speaking outside Wimbledon Magistrates' Court, McPartlin said he was 'ashamed and mortified' for crashing while drink driving with his mother in the passenger seat. McPartlin was arrested after losing control of his black Mini and smashing into two other cars, a Mini and a BMW, while driving in Richmond, west London on March 18. The court heard how the crash left a nine-year-old passenger in the BMW screaming: 'I'm dying, mummy!' Anthony McPartlin and Lisa Armstrong in 2013 (left) and at their wedding at St.Nicolas Church in Taplow, Buckinghamshire in 2006 (right) Lisa Armstrong, Anthony McPartlin, Declan Donnelly and Ali Astall attend The Prince's Countryside Fund Raceday at Ascot Racecourse on March 29, 2015 Ant was shielded by police as he made his way back past cameras following his court appearance yesterday afternoon Seven uniformed police officers were at the door of the court to shield the star from cameras as he arrived yesterday The I'm a Celebrity host gave a brief statement outside court, saying he was 'truly sorry' to those caught up in the crash The boy's mother, Dr Audrey Ng, also said she'd been unable to return to work since the accident. Faheem Vanoo, the driver of the Mini, said afterwards that he and his family thought they would die in the collision. District Judge Barbara Barnes told McPartlin: 'You were struggling with personal problems and issues with alcohol and that had been going on for some months. 'Your level of driving was unacceptable that day. You recognise you have let down so many people, your friends, family and colleagues.' The stepfather of three children whose adoptive family drove them off a cliff in Northern California has spoken out. Nathaniel Davis is married to Sherry Hurd, the biological mother of Devonte, 15; Jeremiah, 14; and Sierra, 12; and believes they would be alive today if they'd been allowed to stay with their family. In 2006, Davis and Hurd had the children taken by Child Protective Services because of her cocaine addiction, and they were adopted in 2009 by Jennifer and Sarah Hart. 'They were wrong. The way they took those kids was wrong,' Davis told Click 2 Houston on Monday. Nathaniel Davis, the stepfather of three children whose adoptive family drove them off a cliff in Northern California, said he believes they might be alive today if they'd been allowed to stay with their family Davis said he and his wife were told the tragic news by the children's biological aunt Priscilla Celestine, who was informed about the deaths by an attorney, three weeks after the crash Davis is married to Sherry Hurd, the biological mother of Devonte, 15; Jeremiah, 14; and Sierra, 12; (circled) three of six children adopted by Jennifer and Sarah Hart In 2006, Davis and Hurd had the children taken by Child Protective Services because of her cocaine addiction, and they were adopted in 2009 by the Harts Police believe Jennifer and Sarah Hart, both 39, intentionally drove their SUV off a cliff on March 26 after authorities began looking into child abuse allegations. Jennifer and Sarah are thought to have fled their home the same day a case worker visited them over abuse claims. It has recently emerged that authorities were beginning an investigation into the couple over allegations they starved and whipped their children. Davis and Hurd were told the tragic news by the children's biological aunt Priscilla Celestine, who was informed about the deaths by an attorney. Celestine originally obtained custody of the three children and took care of them in their native Houston but was unable to adopt them after she violated an order barring their biological mother from seeing the children. Davis attended a vigil in Houston held by the Coalition for the Preservation of the Black Family in honor of the children's memory on Monday and shared childhood photos of them. Davis (pictured, with Sierra) told the news station that his wife was a good mother despite suffering from drug abuse Davis said he was shocked when he learned about the crash - not knowing how the kids were doing for a decade (Pictured, one of the children, unknown) 'It's hurting me because I know we had more to offer them than those people did. They would have had a better life. I sure believe it,' Davis (with one of the children, unknown) said Davis told the news station that his wife was a good mother despite suffering from drug abuse. 'She never did let those kids do without. She would do without before them kids,' he told Click 2 Houston. Davis said he was shocked when he learned about the crash - not knowing how the kids were doing for a decade. 'It's hurting me because I know we had more to offer them than those people did. They would have had a better life. I sure believe it,' he said. Police believe Jennifer and Sarah Hart, both 39, intentionally drove their SUV off a cliff on March 26 after authorities began looking into child abuse allegations Authorities said on Friday that Jennifer Hart was drunk when she plunged her family off the cliff and toxicology tests also found that her Sarah Hart and two of their children had 'a significant amount' of an ingredient commonly found in the allergy drug Benadryl Authorities said on Friday that Jennifer Hart was drunk when she plunged her family off the cliff last month. Preliminary toxicology tests found she had an alcohol level of 0.102, said California Patrol Capt. Bruce Carpenter. California drivers are considered drunk with a level of 0.08 or higher. Toxicology tests also found that her Sarah Hart and two of their children had 'a significant amount' of an ingredient commonly found in the allergy drug Benadryl, which can make people sleepy. Toxicology results for a third child killed are still pending, Carpenter said. Carpenter added that none of the car's occupants were wearing seat belts. A nurse mother-of-two and her male colleague have been shot dead by her estranged husband who then killed himself in a suspected double murder suicide. Brandon Sevrey, 34, shot his estranged wife Brittany, 28, and Tommy Davis, 29, outside the L.C. Walker Arena in Muskegon, Michigan, on April 13 and 9.30pm. He then went home and shot himself in the woods behind his house, police say. Brandon Sevrey, 34, (left with his wife Brittany) shot her and her friend Tommy Davis (right) then killed himself. He and Brittany were in the process of getting a divorce The Sevreys were still living together but Brittany, who worked as a nurse, filed for divorce in January. They had come to an agreement regarding the custody of their two children. It is not clear if Brittany and Davis were romantically involved or if they are just friends. A spokesman for Muskegon Police Department told DailyMail.com on Tuesday they do not yet know what the nature of their relationship was but that they worked together in some way. It is not known if Brandon Sevrey knew the man or how many times he shot the pair. A spokesman for Muskegon Police Department said Brittany and Davis knew each other through work Brittany and Tommy were outside the L.C. Walker Arena in Muskegon, Michigan, when her estranged husband attacked them Brittany died at the scene and Tommy was taken to hospital where he was later pronounced dead. The former couple have two children together, a six-year-old boy and nine-year-old daughter. The mother worked as a nurse at Affinia Health Network and also taught nursing classes at Muskegon College. It is not clear what Davis did for a living but he had a real estate broker's license. Justice Neil Gorsuch sided with the Supreme Court's liberal wing on Tuesday for the first time, casting the tie-breaking vote in a 5-4 decision that invalidates one portion of a federal immigration law. President Donald Trump responded without mentioning the jurist whose 'superb intellect' he praised when nominating him in February 2017. But he demanded quick action from Congress to 'close loopholes' that Tuesday's ruling opened for criminals who were born abroad and want to remain in the United States. 'Todays Court decision means that Congress must close loopholes that block the removal of dangerous criminal aliens, including aggravated felons,' Trump tweeted. 'This is a public safety crisis that can only be fixed by Congress House and Senate must quickly pass a legislative fix to ensure violent criminal aliens can be removed from our society. Keep America Safe! The high court ruled that the law's provision making it easier to deport immigrants who have been convicted of violent crimes is too vague to be enforced. The majority focused on the catchall definition of what makes a crime 'violent' and attracted Gorsuch's support, suggesting that he won't be a rubber-stamp for the president's wishes. President Donald Trump voiced his displeasure on Tuesday with a Supreme Court ruling that makes it harder for authorities to deport some criminal immigrants but he did it without blaming Neil Gorsuch, his own nominee who voted against him Trump steered clear of blasting Gorsuch or the entire Supreme Court, but demanded quick action from Congress Liberal alliance: Gorsuch voted with reliable liberals including Ruth Bader Ginsburg (bottom left) and Sonia Sotomayor (top, second right) in a ruling written by Justice Elena Kagan (top left) The Supreme Court decision will not interfere with the government's ability to deport people who are convicted of clearly violent crimes, including murder and rape, as well as drug trafficking and other serious offenses. But it does cloud the disposition of immigrants who commit a category of crimes that carry a prison term of more than a year, but do not otherwise comfortably fit in a long list of 'aggravated felonies' that can lead to deportation. Gorsuch seemed to be in agreement with the final position of the court when oral arguments were presented. At the time, only eight justices were there, because of the late Antonin Scalia's death and Senate Republicans' unwillingness to vote on Barack Obama's lame-duck choice of Merrick Garland to fill his seat. The court re-heard arguments in October with Gorsuch in attendance, following a tie vote. Conviction for a crime of violence makes deportation 'a virtual certainty' for an immigrant, no matter how long he has lived in the United States, Justice Elena Kagan wrote in her opinion for the court. The decision is a loss for President Donald Trump's administration, which has emphasized stricter enforcement of immigration law. Neil Gorsuch was nominated by President Trump, who has boasted of putting a conservative on the bench, but his swing vote makes it more difficult to deport immigrants who commit felonies that aren't necessarily violent like burglary In this case, President Barack Obama's administration took the same position in the Supreme Court in defense of the challenged provision. With the four other conservative justices in dissent, it was the vote of the Trump appointee that was decisive in striking down the provision. Gorsuch did not join all of Kagan's opinion, but he agreed with her that the law could not be left in place. Gorsuch wrote that 'no one should be surprised that the Constitution looks unkindly on any law so vague that reasonable people cannot understand its terms and judges do not know where to begin in applying it.' Trump's Department of Homeland Security was not please with Tuesday's split decision. 'Today's ruling significantly undermines DHS's efforts to remove aliens convicted of certain violent crimes, including sexual assault, kidnapping, and burglary, from the United States,' Press Secretary Tyler Houlton said. 'By preventing the federal government from removing known criminal aliens, it allows our nation to be a safe haven for criminals and makes us more vulnerable as a result.' The case turned on a decision from 2015 that struck down a similarly worded part of another federal law that imposes longer prison sentences on repeat criminals. The majority opinion in that case was one of the last written by Justice Antonin Scalia, who died in 2016 and whose seat Gorsuch filled. The 2015 decision 'tells us how to resolve this case,' Kagan wrote. Tuesday's decision involves James Dimaya, a native of the Philippines who came to the United States legally as a 13-year-old in 1992. After he pleaded no contest to two charges of burglary in California, the government began deportation proceedings against him. The government argued among other things that he could be removed from the country because his convictions qualified as crimes of violence that allowed his removal under immigration law. Immigration officials relied on a section of immigration law that lists crimes that make people eligible for deportation. The category in which Dimaya's convictions fell is a crime 'that, by its very nature, involves a substantial risk that physical force...may be used in the course of committing the offense.' Immigration judges would have allowed Dimaya to be deported, but the federal appeals court in San Francisco struck down the provision as unconstitutionally vague. The Supreme Court affirmed that ruling Tuesday. The Department of Homeland Security said in a statement after the ruling that it 'significantly undermines' its 'efforts to remove aliens convicted of certain violent crimes.' The case was initially argued in January 2017 by a court that was short a member because of Scalia's death and the refusal of Senate Republicans to act on Obama's nomination of Judge Merrick Garland. Deadlocked 4-4, the justices scheduled a new round of arguments once Gorsuch joined the court. The parents of two children killed in the Sandy Hook shooting have filed defamation lawsuits against Infowars host Alex Jones who has long claimed the massacre was a hoax. The two lawsuits filed on Monday accuse the right-wing conspiracy theorist of spreading lies about the 2012 shooting that have resulted in the families receiving death threats. One of the lawsuits was filed by Neil Heslin - the father of six-year-old Jesse Heslin who was killed at Sandy Hook. The other suit was filed by Leonard Pozner and his ex-wife Veronique De La Rosa who also their six-year-old son Noah in the shooting. The two lawsuits filed on Monday accuse Infowars host Alex Jones of spreading lies about the 2012 shooting at Sandy Hook that have resulted in the families receiving death threats Jesse Heslin (right) and Noah Pozner (left), both six, were among the 20 first graders gunned down in the Connecticut school shooting in 2012 Each lawsuit is seeking more than $1 million in damages from Jones and his Infowars website. Heslin's suit also names Inforwars reporter Owen Shroyer. Both suits, which were filed in Texas where Jones and Infowars are based, draw on accusations Jones has made in the past 12 months regarding the shooting. Heslin filed his defamation suit in relation to claims made by Infowars last June that the father was lying about whether he actually held his son's body after the shooting. Heslin was interviewed by NBC host Megyn Kelly last year for a profile piece on Jones. Kelly had asked Heslin what he thought of the conspiracy theorist's previous claims that the shooting was a 'giant hoax'. 'I lost my son. I buried my son. I held my son with a bullet hole through his head,' Heslin told Kelly at the time. One of the lawsuits was filed by Neil Heslin - the father of six-year-old Jesse Heslin who was killed at Sandy Hook. Heslin is pictured above testifying before the Senate in 2013 The other suit was filed by Leonard Pozner (above with his son Noah) and his ex-wife Veronique De La Rosa who also their six-year-old son Noah in the shooting Soon after the segment, Infowars reporter Owen Shroyer told viewers that the father's claim wasn't possible because the coroner identified victims through photos and not in person. 'You would remember if you held your dead kid in your hands with a bullet hole. That's not something you would just misspeak on,' Shroyer said. 'Will there be a clarification from Heslin or Megyn Kelly? I wouldn't hold your breath.' Jones replayed part of Shroyer's video on his program the following month. 'The stuff I found was they never let them see their bodies,' Jones said. 'That's kind of what's weird about this. But maybe they did.' Heslin's suit also names Inforwars reporter Owen Shroyer (above) who alleged in June 2017 that the father had been lying about holding his son's dead body after the shooting The lawsuit calls Shroyer's report 'manifestly false' because the bodies of the victims were eventually released to the parents for the funerals. In a segment from April last year on Jones' radio show, which was called 'Sandy Hook Vampires Exposed', he claimed an interview De La Rosa gave to CNNs Anderson Cooper after the shooting was fake. Jones claimed De La Rosa was an actor and that the interview took place with a green screen instead of at the Edmond Town Hall in Newtown, Connecticut. The Infowars host has long claimed that the shooting at Sandy Hook was fake. Jesse and Noah were among the 20 first-grade students gunned down inside the school in Connecticut on December 14, 2012. Six educators were also killed. The parents of the two boys are being represented by Houston lawyer Mark Bankston of Farrar & Ball. The attorney is also behind a similar defamation case against Infowars after they falsely identified a man as the Parkland school shooter in February. A popular Vietnamese restaurant in Brisbane's trendy West-End has been accused of disregarding food safety laws after it was searched by health inspectors. It come after eight diners were left with a bad taste in their mouth after claiming a visit to the restaurant gave them food poisoning. Health inspectors have filed a complaint against the previous owner of Trang Restaurant being Binh Quoc Duong. A popular Vietnamese restaurant in Brisbane's trendy West-End has been accused of disregarding food safety laws after it was searched by health inspectors Health inspectors have filed a complaint against the previous owner of Trang Restaurant being Binh Quoc Duong The allegations come as council health inspectors filed a complaint in the Brisbane's Magistrate's Court accusing the eatery of skimping on food safety laws. The allegations come as council health inspectors filed a complaint in the Brisbane's Magistrate's Court accusing the eatery of skimping on food safety laws. Eight diners allegedly suffered salmonella poisoning after eating at the restaurant ate there on February 24, 28 and March 1, 2017. Defrosting raw chicken found among dirty dishes underneath a kitchen sink was allegedly among discoveries made by inspectors during a visit to the premises. The Courier Mail also reports complaint filed in late February included sightings of infected food, which was found throughout the restaurant. Other apparent revelations from the inspectors' visit included a pigeon found under a preparation bench and cooking stock store in slime-ridden buckets. The restaurant has now been taken over by new owners. This is the bizarre moment a protester jumps on to the bonnet of a government official's car - and rides on it for more than two miles when the driver refuses to stop. Braj Lal, 34, is seen clinging to the car as it weaves through traffic, hanging onto a windscreen wiper with one hand and making a call on his mobile phone with the other. Lal was reportedly unhappy about a lack of funds for public toilets when he launched the protest in Ramnagar, a town in Uttar Pradesh, India. This is the bizarre moment a protester jumps on to the bonnet of a government official's car - and rides on it for more than two miles when the driver refuses to stop Local police are investigating both Lal and government offical Pankaj Kumar Gautam, who was driving the car. Lal told police he and a group of friends were trying to talk to the official about missing funds for public loos when he suddenly drove at them. But Gautam claims that Lal was part of a drunken mob and he feared for his safety. Lal told officers: 'I had to jump on to the bonnet to avoid getting hit by the vehicle. I held on to its windscreen wipers with one hand and tried calling police with the other.' Braj Lal (pictured) told police he and a group of friends were trying to talk to the official, Pankaj Kumar Gautam, about missing funds for public loos when he suddenly drove at them But Gautam claims that Lal (pictured) was part of a drunken mob and he feared for his safety But in his police complaint, Gautam said: 'Lal and his aides were drunk and tore official documents. 'They surrounded me near Mauchandrapur, attacked and passed caste-ist remarks. Lal later jumped on to the bonnet of my vehicle.' The footage shows La was unable to get off the SUV until it was stopped by a traffic jam. Now police say they are investigating official Guatam for attempted murder and Lal for intimidating a public official from carrying out his duty. Local government leaders say they have formed a panel to discover where the missing loo fund has gone. Israel is preparing for a revenge attack from Iran after the bombing of an air base in Syria last week, which killed seven Iranian soldiers. Israel has officially neither confirmed nor denied the attack, but an Israeli Defence Force source told the New York Times they were responsible for the raid on April 9. Now, Israel is bracing itself for an attack directly from Iran, launched by the country's Revolutionary Guard Corps, to avenge the seven dead soldiers. Tension: Israeli soldiers stand on top of their armored personnel carrier (APC) in the Golan Heights, near the Israeli Syrian border last week The IDF reportedly believe an attack by the Iranian army will be launched from one of the bases they control in allied Syria - and have warned Tehran against any action. 'Israel will react strongly to any Iranian action from inside Syria,' senior IDF source told Sky News according to JPost. Israel, which has often struck Syrian army locations during its neighbour's seven-year civil war, has neither confirmed nor denied mounting the raid. But Israeli officials said the Tiyas air base was being used by troops from Iran and that Israel would not accept such a presence in Syria of its arch foe. Iran's Tansim news agency said seven Iranian military personnel had been killed in the attack, which contributed to a sharp escalation of tensions between the West and Russia. Armed and ready: An Israeli Iron dome system is seen near the Israeli Syrian border a day after the air raid on the airbase in Syria which killed seven Iranian soldiers Missile strikes on a Syrian air base have left 14 dead hours after Donald Trump warned 'animal' dictator Bashar al-Assad there would be a 'big price to pay' for a horrifying chemical attack that killed dozens of children '(The Tiyas strike) was the first time we attacked live Iranian targets - both facilities and people,' New York Times columnist Thomas Friedman quoted the Israeli military source as saying. Friedman described the seven Iranians killed as members of the Qods Force, a branch of the Iranian Revolutionary Guards Corps that oversees operations abroad, and one of them as a commander of a drone unit. Asked about the claim of Israeli responsibility cited in the New York Times article, which was published on Sunday, an Israeli military spokeswoman said: 'There is no comment at this time.' While acknowledging that it has carried out scores of strikes in Syria against suspect Iranian deployments or arms transfers to Lebanese Hezbollah guerrillas, Israel generally does not comment on specific missions. The attack on Tiyas came days before the United States, Britain and France launched 105 missiles targeting what Washington said were three chemical weapons facilities in Syria in retaliation for the suspected poison gas attack. Assad has denied using chemical weapons. Despite the Israeli source's comment to the New York Times that the killing of Iranians at Tiyas was unprecedented for Israeli missions in Syria, a 2015 air strike there that Hezbollah blamed on Israel killed an Iranian general along with several of the Lebanese guerrillas. There has been another surge in Chinese students moving to Australia for university. New figures show 173,000 Chinese students enrolled in Australian universities, colleges and schools in the first two months this year - up from 2017. The international student business is booming for Australian universities with numbers now at record levels. International student numbers jumped 12 per cent compared to the same period last year, according to data released last week that showed in the year to February more than half a million pupils had enrolled in Australian university courses from abroad. Education Minister Simon Birmingham ( file photo) spruiked data released last week that showed in February the total number of international students was at more than half a million International student numbers jumped 12 per cent compared to the same period last year According to Sydney Morning Herald, Education Minister Simon Birmingham said the international student business was 'going from strength to strength.' This is only likely going to increase with the Senator suggesting we are in a unique position to capitalise on the growing market. While the number of permanent immigrants has remained the same, despite calls to reduce the quota, the amount of temporary students and visitors has skyrocketed. Treasurer Scott Morrison defended the permanent immigration numbers against calls for cuts from Tony Abbot and Peter Dutton. His stance has been vindicated on a financial basis this week by a Government briefing paper that argued the damage to the growth of Australia's economy if the immigration number is not maintained would be significant. Morrison also singled out temporary, not permanent, migrants are reason public transport seemed to be more packed. 'If you are sitting on a bus, tram or train, the reason there is more people sitting on it has more to do with people studying, people visiting,' he told ABC radio. The country with the highest number of visiting students is China with 160,000. However, what may be a surprise is that there is a currently a large influx of Nepalese students at more than 22,000, a huge leap from just one year ago. An official report has been unable to rule out a cover-up in the case of two severely disabled men whose legs were broken at a care home. Hospital staff raised concerns Matthew Bates and Gary Lewis, residents of Beech Lodge care home in Horsham, West Sussex, may have had been hurt deliberately when they were both admitted with broken legs on April 1 2015, a Safeguarding Adult Review published on Tuesday said. Mr Lewis, who was 64 at the time, and Mr Bates, who was then 30, both have cerebral palsy and have been unable to walk or talk since birth. Mark Bates with his son Matthew (left) - a Beech Lodge resident - who was injured in 2015 along with resident Gary Lewis. A report into their injuries has not ruled out a cover up Martyn Lewis, Gary's brother, and Matthew's father Mark said they have fought for three years for answers on how the injuries occurred. Beech Lodge is one of nine run by Sussex Health Care (SHC) which are now being investigated after the deaths of 13 people amid claims 43 were neglected. However, the injuries of Mr Bates and Mr Lewis do not form part of that probe. The 71-page report, written by retired Surrey Police Detective Superintendent Brian Boxall and commissioned by the West Sussex Safeguarding Adults Board (WSSAB), said relatives' families raised concerns there has been 'collusion'. In his conclusion, Mr Boxall said families should have been 'confident' of receiving an explanation as to how and why the injuries occurred, but original inquiries were not conclusive. Mark Bates and Martyn Lewis read the report published into failings at the home following an investigation, which makes mention of potential 'collusion' The report was written by Surrey Police Detective Superintendent Brian Boxall. Pictured: Tylden House, headquarters of Sussex Health Care near Horsham, West Sussex He said: 'This has led them to believe that there has been some form of collusion between agencies to suppress the truth. This belief is difficult, if not impossible, to rebut.' The report also raised concerns about the 'significant' 15-hour delay in waiting to call an ambulance for Mr Lewis, and the 'disturbing' revelation that a man believed to be an agency staff member, who tended to Mr Lewis around the time of the injuries, could not be identified. The report said an 'individual' thought to be an agency care worker had been in the room but when interviewed by police 'denied being at the home'. It added: 'Beech Lodge staff were unable to identify him to confirm that he had been working. 'It is not clear if the individual interviewed was working and lied, or someone was using his identity to work illegally in his place. 'This raises a number of concerns: why would he lie? What has he to hide? And if he is not lying, an unknown individual purporting to be someone else was working with vulnerable adults. 'Whilst there is no evidence to indicate that this individual was responsible for any injuries, the fact that the home or the police were unable to confirm who was working is very disturbing and must raise concerns about how Sussex Health Care employ their agency staff.' Mr Boxall made 19 recommendations to improve standards, including ensuring SHC seek immediate medical assistance including calling 999 when a vulnerable adult sustains a serious injury, to have a process in place to confirm the identity of agency staff, and for staff to recognise the need to report 'serious unexplained and potentially deliberate injuries' to the police without delay. An eight-year-old Minnesota boy will not be allowed to return to his elementary school after attacking three students with a kitchen knife. The boy took the knife from home and hid it in his backpack before stabbing three students - aged eight, nine, and 13 - at Pleasantview Elementary in Sauk Rapids. He struck his peers around 7.15am on Monday morning before going to the school office on his own and laying down the knife. The incident lasted around five minutes before it was stopped by 'adult intervention', according to Interim Superintendent Bruce Watkins. An eight-year-old Minnesota boy will not be allowed to return to Pleasantview Elementary School after attacking three students aged eight, nine, and 13 with a kitchen knife Two of the students had 'superficial wounds to the back of their heads' and were sent to the hospital to receive stitches after the attack on Monday. The other student was treated by the school nurse and released to their parents. Authorities said none of the three students were seriously injured and all are now recovering at home. The student chose his victims 'randomly', Sauk Rapids Police Chief Perry Beise told KARE 11. 'I don't think he thought it was a joke,' Beise said. 'I don't think he had an intended target when he came to school with a knife.' 'We're not sure exactly why he came to school with a knife.' It remains unknown if the boy had been bullied or had mental health issues. The second grader was taken into custody and released to his parents due to his age. Two of the students had 'superficial wounds to the back of their heads' and were sent to the hospital to receive stitches after the attack on Monday Beise explained police 'don't charge children this young with crimes' and that they forwarded the report to the Benton County Attorney's Office for possible charges. 'You try to get them treatment and help them be successful,' he told The Bellingham Herald. 'It's also possible that human services will become involved in some way.' The boy will not be allowed to return to the school. The student chose his victims 'randomly', according to Sauk Rapids Police Chief Perry Beise Classes went on as scheduled because the attack happened before school began. The 13-year-old victim was waiting for a transfer bus to the middle school when they were attacked. Watkins informed parents of the incident, calling it 'unfortunate'. 'We are working with school support staff to identify and provide support to staff and students that may have been impacted by this incident,' he wrote in a letter. 'Mental health professionals are available on site at Pleasantview Elementary.' 'Please know in situations like this the Districts discipline policy is applied and aggressive students are not allowed in the building(s).' Fox News is to defy calls for Sean Hannity to be suspended in the wake of the bombshell revelation that he was secretly a client of Donald Trump's attorney Michael Cohen, the network said Tuesday. The network issued a statement saying its biggest star had its 'full support' - even though he had never told them about the relationship, while repeatedly attacking the FBI raid on Cohen on his show. 'While FOX News was unaware of Sean Hannity's informal relationship with Michael Cohen and was surprised by the announcement in court yesterday, we have reviewed the matter and spoken to Sean and he continues to have our full support,' the statement said. The statement, first reported by Fox News media commentator Howard Kurtz, came after mounting criticism of Hannity and his bosses. Meet the Press anchor Chuck Todd became the highest-profile journalist to question Hannity's integrity and that of the network as he tweeted: 'No serious news org would allow someone this conflicted to cover this story.' And Democrats including Media Matters for America, the liberal campaign group which has focused its efforts on attacking Fox News, called for Fox to suspend Hannity, accusing him of an ethical breach. Backing: The Fox News statement was revealed by its media commentator Howard Kurtz Friends: Sean Hannity happily posed for a picture with Cohen back in 2015 and posted it on Twitter after the attorney appeared on his syndicated radio show High-profile intervention: Meet the Press anchor Chuck Todd is the most prominent journalist to speak out about Sean Hannity But they stopped short of calls for a boycott against him, which they had campaigned for this month against Laura Ingraham, the 10pm Fox News host who mocked Parkland shooting survivor and anti-gun campaign David Hogg. Hannity was also mocked on MSNBC by Morning Joe's co-anchors Joe Scarborough and Mike Brzezniski, who compared him to the Simpsons' news anchor Kent Brockman for his double standards. Hannity had spoken out on his Fox News show last week repeatedly about the raid on Cohen's home, office, hotel room and safe deposit box by FBI agents. On the day of the raid he said: 'Cohen was never part of the Trump administration or the Trump campaign. 'This is now officially an all-hands-on-deck effort to totally malign and, if possible, impeach the president of the United States. Now, Mueller and Rosenstein have declared what is a legal war on the president.' And the following night he described the raid on Cohen as 'an unprecedented abuse of power' 'The president and his legal team should be preparing to take this all the way to the United States Supreme Court. Thats where we are tonight,' he said. But he never told his viewers he had turned to Cohen for legal advice. His name was only revealed when Cohen's own lawyers lost a bid to cover up the name of a mystery third client and disclosed it was Hannity. Court documents said that Hannity had asked for his name to be kept secret and if necessary, an appeal launched to keep it that way - a request which federal Judge Kimba Wood dismissed as not in line with the law. Michael Cohen's clients Donald Trump Allegation: Cohen paid Stormy Daniels $135,000 to silence her claims that she had sex with President Donald Trump. Daniels has said that she had sex once with Trump in 2006 and was paid to keep quiet about it. A former Playboy model, Karen McDougal, has described having a 10-month affair with Trump, which the White House has said Trump denies. McDougal said her lawyer at the time secretly negotiated with Cohen on a deal with American Media Inc, publisher of the National Enquirer, which paid her $150,000 in 2016 to keep quiet. Elliott Broidy Broidy is former deputy finance chair of the Republican National Committee Cohen helped arrange a $1.6 million payment to an unidentified Playboy Playmate with whom he had a two-year relationship and who he paid to abort their baby. Broidy acknowledged on Friday that he had a relationship with a Playboy Playmate and offered to help her financially after she told him she was pregnant. 'She alone decided that she did not want to continue with the pregnancy and I offered to help her financially during this difficult period. We have not spoken since that time,' Broidy said in the statement. Broidy said Cohen reached out to him after being contacted by the woman's attorney, Keith Davidson. Broidy said he retained Cohen because Cohen had a prior relationship with Davidson. Sean Hannity Hannity says that he had 'had brief discussions with him about legal questions about which I wanted his input and perspective'. 'Michael Cohen has never represented me in any matter. I never retained him, received an invoice, or paid legal fees... to be absolutely clear they never involved any matter between me and a third party.' Advertisement Hannity's attackers on Tuesday included Scorborough and Brzezinksi, who have made no secret of their own bitter fallout with Trump. They showed a clip of Kent Brockman, the news anchor on Fox's The Simpsons saying on air that the word SOB 'has no place on or off TV - and that's my two cents' before turning to the studio and saying 'that otta hold those SOBs', then realizing he was still on air. Brzezinski said: 'Its completely staggeringly dishonest with his viewers. 'I mean, look, how you can cover the story and not say youre a part of it? 'I would fire someone who did that on my network.' Liberal critics, sending an opportunity to castigate the president's most reliable media booster, also criticized Hannity. 'That is a serious breach of journalistic ethics that, in any normal newsroom, would lead to a suspension or even firing,' it said in a blog post. Democratic Congresswoman Jackie Speier tweeted: 'Hannity needs to be put on leave immediately. How can a network claim to be "fair and balanced" when their top anchor has a relationship with Cohen Trumps enforcer and main conduit for info and shady deals?' Fox News calls Hannity a host, not an anchor, and says that opinion shows in the evening are broadcast to different standards from news ones during the day. The broadcaster himself has shifted position repeatedly on whether he considers himself a journalist. He is in regular contact with Trump, who has hosted him at the White House for dinner. Journalism ethicists said Hannity was wrong not to have told his viewers about his dealings with Cohen. Samuel Freedman, a Columbia Journalism professor, told CNBC: 'It's clearly an ethical violation. I don't think they'll do it, but I think they should fire him.' Indira Lakshmanan, journalism ethics chair at the Poynter Institute, told Politico: 'If you want to maintain credibility with an audience, and be honest with them, you have to disclose all facts.' Kathleen Bartzen Culver, director of the Center for Journalism Ethics at the University of Wisconsin, said: 'Were talking about one of the most important news stories of this time and he did not disclose his connection to it while commenting on it.' Fox News had covered the disclosure on Monday afternoon, and Hannity himself was on his syndicated radio show when his name was revealed. But any threat to its 9pm show host will be taken seriously by the network which lost Bill O'Reilly, its biggest star, because of revelations of massive payoffs to women who accused him of sexual harassment. He and MSNBC's ultra-liberal 9pm host Rachel Maddow have been neck and neck in recent months in the race to take the top ratings slot in the 'demographic', the 25t o 54-year-old viewers who are the key to commercial success. Hannity has been consistently ahead in overall ratings. Hannity, 56, was unrepentant on his own show and used his website on Tuesday morning to repeat his assertions that his relationship with Cohen did not involve the lawyer acting for him with a third party. The host was even upbraided on his own show by Alan Dershowitz, the Harvard law professor who has himself become a Trump confidant, over why the anchor had failed to mention his ties to Cohen. Dershowitz, who had been invited on the show to discuss former FBI head James Comey, interrupted the segment to challenge Hannity on his relationship with the lawyer. 'I do want to say, I really think that you should have disclosed your relationship with Cohen when you talked about him on this show,' he told the host. 'You could have said just you had asked him for advice or whatever. But I think it would have been much much better if you had disclosed that relationship.' Hannity butted in, telling the professor that if he had 'understood the nature' of the relationship, he'd see 'it was minimal.' Comparison: MSNBC's Morning Joe showed a clip of The Simpsons news anchor Kent Brockman being caught having double standards Fire him: Mika Brzezinski said that if it was her decision, Hannity would have been booted off the air Yale University Professor Alan Dershowitz (left) challenged Sean Hannity (right, during his Monday show) over why the anchor had failed to mention his ties to Michael Cohen Losing day: Michael Cohen left federal court in Manhattan after losing first his attempt to keep Sean Hannity's name secret and then his application for a temporary restraining order to keep the FBI and federal prosecutors from looking at the evidence seized in raids on him last week 'You should have said that and that would have been fair to say, that it was minimal,' Dershowitz fired back. 'You were in a tough position because you had to talk about Cohen and you didn't want the fact that you had spoken to him revealed, and you have the right by the way not to reveal that.' 'I have the right to privacy, I do,' Hannity responded. 'It was such a minor relationship, it was to do with real estate, nothing political.' Hannity continued to downplay his relationship with the lawyer throughout the show, saying he'd only ever asked him for legal advice on real estate. 'Here's the truth,' he announced at the very end of his show, 'Michael Cohen never represented me in any legal matter, I never retained his services, I never received an invoice, I never paid Michael Cohen for legal fees. 'I did have occasional, brief conversations with Michel about legal questions I had where I was looking for input and perspective. My discussion with Michael Cohen never rose to any level that I needed to tell anyone that I was asking him questions.' 'They never involved... a third party, a third group, at all. My questions were exclusively focused on real estate. I hate the stock market, I prefer real estate, Micheal knows real estate. I never asked Michael Cohen to bring this proceeding on my behalf. I have no personal interests in this legal matter, that's all there is nothing more.' The show ended with Hannity bantering with fellow Fox host Laura Ingraham who has faced her own share of controversy, after being subject to a boycott last month for mocking one of the survivors of the mass shooting at a school in Parkland, Florida. She joked that she was glad that Hannity was taking the pressure of her. 'You're like my brother,' Ingraham said. 'But I'm glad for, like a millisecond, the heat's off me and on you.' 'I appreciate that... that's like a sibling,' Hannity responded, laughing. 'I hope the heat's on you, not me. Hannity found an ally in fellow Fox host Tucker Carlson on Monday, who accused liberals of trying to sacrifice attorney-client if it meant hurting Trump. 'Sean Hannity is a talk show host, he's not under investigation by anyone for anything,' said Carlson. 'Who he hires as a lawyer and why is nobody's business. No judge has a right to violate his privacy or anybody else's.' 'The point of the Russia investigation is not to find collusion. There was no collusion. Everybody knows that and everyone's always known that. The point is and was to hurt Trump and anybody close to Trump. By the way, it's working. Now maybe you hate Trump and you're happy about that, but what are the rest of us losing in this process? Attorney-client privilege no longer means anything. Neither does privacy or public reputation or fairness.' This is Hannity's fightback: The Fox News star claimed the 'media' were omitting to report the close ties some members of the Obama White House had to news outlets. None of the links were secrets ordered into the open by a judge. Hannity also used his website to claim that the 'media' had ignored how members of the Obama administration had close links to news organization, although none were dragged into the open on the orders of a judge, and none involved an attorney. George Fay (pictured) raped a woman as she slept in a luxury New York apartment The son of a prominent British barrister was sentenced to 10 years in jail in New York on Tuesday for raping a university student as she slept. George Fay, 23, stared straight ahead as Judge Melissa Jackson told him he carried out the attack in a 'coldly calculating manner'. In a statement to the court Fay said the case had been his 'worst nightmare' and described his actions as 'heinous crimes'. Private school-educated Fay attacked the 20-year-old woman after she had a drunken tryst with his childhood friend Jack Slye and was sleeping next to him. Fay, who was born in London, denied three charges of rape, sex abuse and committing a criminal sexual act while the woman was 'physically incapable' of giving consent. But following a two-week trial, a jury at New York Supreme Court found him guilty on all counts after just three hours of deliberation. Fay, who was once a star lacrosse player at his American boarding school, had been remanded in custody and put on suicide watch until his sentencing. He appeared before the court wearing a prison issue light brown t-shirt and trousers. During the 25 minute hearing, Judge Jackson said that she had never seen so many letters submitted on behalf of a defendant in their support - Fay's family and friends provided around 40 to the court. Judge Jackson said she commended Fay's parents for standing by him 'throughout this painful experience that you have put them through'. But she described them as 'collateral damage' and that Fay had chosen to carry out what she called 'terrible crimes'. Rapist George Fay (pictured) stands in the corridors of New York's Supreme Court during his trial in February Judge Jackson said: 'There is also direct damage you have done and that is what you did to the victim and that damage, although not a physical injury, is a very significant emotional injury. It's called trauma and it will last for for the rest of her life'. Judge Jackson told Fay that 'I believe that you did it in a coldly calculating manner' and that he went into the bedroom 'knowing full well' what he was about to do. She told him: 'For that you have to take the consequences'. After the case Manhattan District Attorney Cyrus Vance said in a statement: 'George Fay preyed upon the vulnerability of a sleeping woman who thought she was safe inside an apartment with a friend. 'Instead, she awoke to find she was being raped by a complete stranger. I would like to thank the survivor in this case who bravely testified about this vile assault, as well as the prosecutors who secured this conviction'. Fay, who had three lawyers representing him throughout the trial, is the eldest son of British barrister Michael Fay and his public relations executive wife Sofia. The couple sat looking stony faced at his sentencing and did not comment afterwards. Their son addressed the court in a faltering voice in which he apologised to his friends and family 'for what I put them through', adding that his mother and father 'did not deserve this'. He apologised to the victim for her 'suffering and sadness' and said that the crimes are 'not who I am and not who I try to be'. Fay begged Judge Jackson for a 'second chance at life' and said that he always tried to be a 'positive influence on those around me'. George Fay, center in dark jacket, flanked by his parents Sofia (left) and Michael (right in brown jacket and green tie) In addition to the 10 year sentence Fay will be on supervised release for five years and will become a registered sex offender in the US. The court heard that his parents have applied for him to serve his sentence on the British Virgin Islands but Judge Jackson said it was not her decision to make. Fay was living in Manhattan's wealthy Upper East Side while doing a summer internship at the city's Parks and Recreation Department when the attack happened in July 2016. At the sentencing assistant District Attorney Sara Sullivan said that Fay was 'looking for sex' on the night in question and tried nine times to call prostitutes minutes before the rape. She dismissed the claim by the defence that Fay had made a mistake and said: 'Rape is not a mistake..he must be punished for it'. Miss Sullivan said that Fay's evidence was 'riddled with untruths' and that he was just trying to 'talk his way out of what he did'. The case showed a very different side to Fay then the outwardly respectable family into which he was born He was educated at boarding schools in the US including the $58,900-a-year Avon Old Farms in Connecticut, though he later dropped out of university. His wealthy parents maintain homes in the Channel Islands and Massachusetts and his father is an honourary member of London's Radcliffe Chambers. George Fay, right with his father Michael, who happens to be a top lawyer But the court heard on the night of the rape he had been out drinking and smoking marijuana with friends before returning to his apartment around 4am. In her evidence the student broke down in tears as she described the moment she realized that Fay was having sex with her. She said she thought she was 'dreaming' when she felt something in her mouth - it was Fay's penis - and woke up to find him putting it inside her vagina. On Tuesday, Fay's lead lawyer Daniel Bibb told the court that the crimes were 'completely out of character' for him. Mr Bibb said that he was 'begging the court to exercise its power of mercy' and not jail Fay for the maximum 25 year sentence. Fay's parents have been in court every day and have taken an active role in their son's defence. Immediately after his son's arrest Fay's father, a QC who sits as a deputy high court judge in the Caribbean, dispatched a private investigator to interview witnesses and called the police officer at the station in New York where his son was being interviewed. Fay on a tourist visa to the US during his internship -- was granted bail and travelled to Boston, where he flew back to Britain and lived with his grandparents for a while. Fay later went to to his parents' estate in the British Virgin Islands, where he grew up, to help with repair work after last September's hurricanes Irma and Maria. The jury was not told that prosecutors spent months trying to get Fay to return to the US to face prosecution. The jury also did not hear that his lawyers tried to get the entire case dismissed because he had left the country. Many pre-trial motions remain sealed but publicly available court documents reveal prosecutors 'endeavoured' to bring him back. At the same time immigration officers raided his Manhattan apartment with the aim of deporting him for overstaying his visa. Mr Bibb, Fay's attorney, complained about the April 1 2017 raid, saying it was 'no April fool's joke' when six agents and police 'loudly' awoke the current occupants of the flat. Mr Bibb wrote in a court filing: 'It would seem that while one agency of the Department of Homeland Security was trying to get the defendant back into the country, another agency of the DHS was trying to kick him out of the country'. Mr Bibb claimed Fay's right to testify before a grand jury convened weeks after his arrest to assess evidence had been 'violated' and that prosecutors had 'forgotten' about his travel plans. The judge dismissed the motion after prosecutors argued Bibb had been 'evasive' about Fay's travel and whether he even intended to testify. Former FBI Director James Comey pens four different passages in his new book about prostitutes as he reveals awkward conversations where President Trump vigorously disputed the idea he would ever consort with Russian sex workers. The fired FBI director recounts each time he claims the topic came up during briefings, phone calls, and meetings with Trump. For easy reference, the topic is listed in the index for 'A Higher Loyalty' right above passages about 'Putin' and 'Russian election interference' and not far from the listing for passages about the 'Steel dossier' and 'sexual assault.' The index of James Comey's new book, 'A Higher Loyalty,' contains four references to prostitutes Comey describes the first time he briefed the president-elect about the contents of an unverified dossier compiled by ex British intelligence officer Christopher Steele. 'I then began to summarize the allegation in the dossier that he had been with prostitutes in a Moscow hotel in 2013 and hat the Russians had filmed the episode,' he writes. Comey said Trump was 'eager' to protest that the allegations 'weren't true.' Later in the conversation, Trump 'strongly denied the allegations, asking rhetorically, I assumed whether he seemed like a guy who needed the services of prostitutes.' The president then began discussing cases 'where women had accused him of sexual assault, a subject I had not raised,' according to Comey. When it was over, he writes that he returned to work and walked around the Manhattan FBI field office to thank agents for their hard work. 'After the uncomfortable conversation I'd just had, it was like taking a shower,' he said. Comey describes the first time he briefed the president-elect about the contents of an unverified dossier compiled by ex British intelligence officer Christopher Steele The Steele dossier includes unverified allegations about Trump's alleged conduct with prostitutes in a Moscow hotel room in 2013. Here Trump poses next to Miss Venezuela and Miss Universe 2013 Gabriela Isler after the 2013 Miss Universe competition in Moscow on November 9, 2013 He also quotes the Buzzfeed article where the dossier first got published, where it is described as including 'potentially unverifiable allegations of contact between Trump aides and Russian operatives, and graphic claims of sexual acts documented by the Russians.' Comey notes that Trump tweeted it was 'FAKE NEWS A TOTAL POLITICAL WITCH HUNT!' Comey left out one key detail of the infamous 'golden showers' dossier during his first meeting with Trump. DEWEY NEED A FEW MORE? The index to Comey's book lists references to prostitutes, Putin, sexual assault, and Russian election interference 'I didn't mention one particular allegation in the dossier that he was having prostitutes urinate on each other on the very bed President Obama and the First Lady had once slept in as a way of soiling the bed,' Comey writes. He said the detail was 'not necessary' in order to put him on notice about the material. Comey's references to: Germaphobe: 227 'Golden showers thing': 240 Leaking of dossier: 226 Pee (peeing): 227, 241 Prostitutes: page 224, 235, 240 - 241, 258 Russian hookers: page 235 Shower (taking a): 225 Urinate, urinating: page 224, 241 Advertisement But it all affected Comey. 'As I spoke, I felt a strange out-of-body experience, as if I were watching myself speak to the new president about prostitutes in Russia.' Trump interrupted to tell him the allegations weren't true. ' Then, Comey recounts a phone conversation he had with Trump, who was in New York while Comey was in Washington. Trump said he was 'very concerned about the "leaking" of the Russian "dossier,"' according to Comey. Comey writes that Trump told him he had been talking to people who had gone with him on his 2013 trip to Moscow for the Miss Universe pageant, where Trump told him he had not even stayed over night. 'And then he surprised me by bringing up the one allegation I had specifically tried not to discuss with him,' Comey writes. Comey recounts multiple times he claims he spoke to President Trump about allegations concerning prostitutes. He says he took contemporaneous notes and made two copies Comey briefed Trump about the dossier at Trump Tower In this file photo taken on Sunday, Nov. 10, 2013, Russian businessman Aras Agalarov, left, Miss Universe 2013 Gabriela Isler, from Venezuela, center, and pageant owner Donald Trump, of the United States attend the final of the 2013 Miss Universe pageant in Moscow, Russia Sizing up: The 6-foot-8 Comey describes Trump as shorter than he expected with a 'too long' tie and 'bright white half-moons' under his eyes that he suggests came from tanning goggles Another reason you know this isn't true: I'm a germaphobe. There's no way I would let people pee on each other around me. No way.' - President Donald Trump, according to James Comey 'Another reason you know this isn't true: I'm a germaphobe. There's no way I would let people pee on each other around me. No way,' he quotes Trump as saying. Prostitutes clouded the moment as Comey planned for a meeting with Trump once the president was sworn in. 'I was deeply uncomfortable, and not just because I did not love the idea of a third discussion of Russian hookers,' he writes about his state of mine before a dinner with Trump in the Green Room of the White House. Comey describes Trump as bringing up what he called the 'golden showers thing' unprompted during dinner, saying it bothered him if here was 'even a one per cent chance' Melania Trump thought it was true. 'I immediately began wondering why his wife would think there was any chance, even a small one, that he had been with prostitutes urinating on each other in Moscow,' Comey writes. He writes there was zero per cent chance his own wife Patrice 'would credit an allegation that I was with hookers peeing on each other in Moscow.' Comey writes that Trump considered having him investigate it to 'prove it was a lie.' Advertisement A Wells Fargo exec was killed after she was almost sucked out of her Southwest Airlines flight window following a midair explosion. Jennifer Riordan, 43, a mother-of-two from Albuquerque, was returning from a business trip aboard the New York to Dallas flight when the plane's left engine exploded sending shrapnel flying into a window next to her seat. The banking executive was left hanging half outside the shattered window as fellow passengers desperately scrambled to drag her back inside the aircraft, which was carrying 149 people. She was rushed to hospital immediately after hero pilot Tammie Jo Shults took the plane into a sharp descent and made an emergency landing at Philadelphia International Airport at 11.27am. Authorities confirm that she later died while seven other people were injured. Shults, a former Navy fighter pilot and one of the first women to fly an F-18, quickly brought Flight 1380 to land having calmly told Air Traffic Control: 'So we have a part of the aircraft missing.' Asked if the plane was on fire, she said: 'No, it's not on fire but part of it's missing. They said there is a hole and someone went out.' She added that 'we have injured passengers' as she requested medical staff to meet them on landing. Passengers say that after landing the plane, the pilot took the time to speak to all those aboard personally. Those on board said they heard a loud 'boom' and the Boeing 737-700 immediately dropped, they said, by what felt like 100ft. Oxygen masks dropped from the ceiling and passengers said their prayers and braced for impact. The National Transportation Safety Board has said a preliminary examination of the blown jet engine shows evidence of 'metal fatigue.' Jennifer Riordan, a mother-of-two from Albuquerque, was on a business trip when the plane's left engine exploded sending shrapnel flying into a window next to her seat Riordan (pictured with her husband) was rushed to hospital immediately after the flight from New York to Dallas made an emergency landing at Philadelphia International Airport at 11.27am, but authorities confirmed she later died Riordan was sitting next to the smashed window and others next to her described holding her down for 12 minutes until the plane landed. Passenger Alfred Tumlinson, of Corpus Christi, Texas, said he saw a man in a cowboy hat rush forward a few rows 'to grab that lady to pull her back in. She was out of the plane. He couldn't do it by himself, so another gentleman came over and helped to get her back in the plane, and they got her'. Another passenger, Eric Zilbert, an administrator with the California Education Department, said: 'From her waist above, she was outside of the plane.' Passengers struggled to somehow plug the hole while giving the badly injured woman CPR. Those on board did 'some pretty amazing things under some pretty difficult circumstances', Philadelphia Fire Commissioner Adam Thiel said. Amanda Bourman, of New York, said she was asleep near the back when she heard a loud noise and oxygen masks dropped. 'Everybody was crying and upset,' she said. 'You had a few passengers that were very strong, and they kept yelling to people, you know, 'It's OK! We're going to do this!'' 'I just remember holding my husband's hand, and we just prayed and prayed and prayed. And the thoughts that were going through my head of course were about my daughters, just wanting to see them again and give them a big hug so they wouldn't grow up without parents.' Annunciation Catholic School, where her two children attend school, identified Riordan as the victim on Tuesday afternoon. 'She was en route from New York when her plane experience (sic) trouble,' assistant principal Amy McCarty wrote in an email to parents, according to ABQJournal.com. 'At this point, the family needs all the prayers we can offer.' Riordan, the wife of former City of Albuquerque Chief Operations Officer Michael, was the vice president of community relations for Wells Fargo bank, New Mexico, and had been on a business trip for the bank at the time of the explosion. Investigators examining the damaged engine of Southwest Airlines flight 1380 after it exploded in flight sending shrapnel into the fuselage, breaking a window and causing the plane to make an emergency landing A U.S. NTSB investigator is on scene examining damage to the engine of the Southwest Airlines plane in this image released from Philadelphia, Pennsylvania Hero pilot Tammie Jo Shults (pictured) brought the plane down quickly but safely after the crash, saving the lives of the others on board The 43-year-old, a graduate from the University of New Mexico, was heavily involved with her local community and volunteering. Riordan managed Wells Fargo's community projects and its annual United Way Community Support Campaign.The devastated family of Riordan have released a statement paying tribute to her. 'Jennifer's vibrancy, passion and love infused our community and reached across our country. Her impact on everything and everyone she touched can never be fully measured. But foremost, she is the bedrock of our family. She and Mike wrote a love story unlike any other. Her beauty and love is evident though her children. 'We are so appreciate of the outpouring of support from family, friends and our community. We do ask that those who seek to express their condolences and prayers as well as the media outlets respect our privacy at this time. Our family and friends need this time to both grieve and celebrate Jennifer's impact on us all. 'In her memory, please remember to always be kind, loving, caring and sharing.' Mayor of Albuquerque Tim Keller added: 'Today, Albuquerque lost a thoughtful leader who has long been part of the fabric of our community. We are asking that everyone respects the privacy of the family at this time. 'This is a tremendous and tragic loss for Jenifer's family and many others throughout our city. Her leadership and philanthropic efforts made this a better place every day and she will be terribly missed. This is the window which was shattered by a piece of shrapnel from an exploding engine on a Southwest Airlines flight on Tuesday morning. Witnesses said the female passenger sitting next to it was partially sucked out of the aircraft through the whole and had to be held down This was the row of seats where the window was shattered. According to witnesses, passengers had to pull the woman back into the aircraft when she was sucked towards the window and some of her body was drawn through it This was the view from on board the Southwest Airlines flight of the blown-out engine after the plane made an emergency landing at Philadelphia International Airport. A piece of shrapnel from it flew backwards and shattered the window The window that was shattered was behind the engine that exploded. A piece of shrapnel flew backwards and pierced it, depressurizing the cabin and almost sucking the woman in the seat through it 'We are holding Jennifer and her family in our thoughts.' Family friend John Benavidez tweeted: 'My heart is broken with the news of my good friend Jennifer Riordan's passing. She left a lasting mark on Albuquerque, NM and UNM with her many contributions. If there was ever an angel on Earth, it was Jennifer. Our prayers go out to her family.' Before the NTSB's announcement that there was one fatality involved, the Philadelphia Fire Commissioner said she was taken to hospital in a critical condition. 'One passenger, a woman, was partially drawn out towards the out of the plane, she was pulled back in by other passengers,' Todd Bauer, the father of another passenger on board, told NBC 10. 'So we have a part of the aircraft missing': How hero ex-Navy fighter pilot with 'nerves of steel' saved more than 100 passengers The heroic pilot who calmly landed the Southwest Airlines flight has been identified as a former ex-Navy fighter pilot. Tammie Jo Shults, one of the first women to fly an F-18, quickly brought the Dallas-bound Southwest Flight 1380 to land at Philadelphia International at 11.30am after the explosion at 32,000ft. Despite the crisis on board, Schults was calm as she told Air Traffic Control: 'So we have a part of the aircraft missing.' Asked if the plane was on fire, she said: 'No, it's not on fire but part of it's missing. They said there is a hole and someone went out.' She added that 'we have injured passengers' as she requested medical staff to meet them on landing. Passengers say that after landing the plane, the pilot took the time to speak to all those aboard personally. Tammie Jo Shults (pictured left, and right on the aircraft with the rest of the crew), a former Navy fighter pilot and the first woman to fly an F-18, quickly brought the Dallas-bound Southwest Flight 1380 to land at Philadelphia International at 11.30am after the explosion at 32,000ft. 'Tammie Jo Schults, the pilot came back to speak to each of us personally,' Diana McBride Self wrote. 'This is a true American Hero. A huge thank you for her knowledge, guidance and bravery in a traumatic situation. God bless her and all the crew.' Schults was one of the first female fighter pilots in the US Navy and first to fly an F-18. She later became an instructor, as the Navy did not allow women to fly in combat, and she finally resigned in 1993 when she joined Southwest Airlines. A mother-of-two, originally from New Mexico, Schults now lives with her husband Dean, a fellow pilot, in Fair Oaks Ranch, Texas. 'She has nerves of steel. That lady, I applaud her,' said Alfred Tumlinson, of Corpus Christi, Texas. 'I'm going to send her a Christmas card, I'm going to tell you that, with a gift certificate for getting me on the ground. She was awesome.' Advertisement Terrified passengers shared videos and photos from on board before the plane landed as they descended at 3,000ft per minute until they leveled out at 10,000ft. One passenger filmed himself as he fitted his oxygen mask. 'Something is wrong with our plane! It appears we are going down! 'Emergency landing!! Southwest flight from NYC to Dallas!!' Marty Martinez said as he broadcast live from the plane on Facebook. He paid $8 to connect to WiFi as the plane was going down, he said, in order to say his goodbyes. He is the passenger who later told CBS the woman's injuries left 'blood everywhere.' There were confused reports from other passengers that someone on board suffered a heart attack. Martinez added that the plane 'smelled like ash' once the window was open. He said flight attendants rushed over in shock and pleaded with passengers to cover up the hole. Riordan, a married mother-of-two from Albuquerque (pictured with her family) was rushed to hospital after the explosion but died a short time later Riordan, the wife of former City of Albuquerque Chief Operations Officer Michael (pictured with her) was the vice president of community relations for Wells Fargo bank, New Mexico The first sign of trouble was a loud noise which happened when the engine exploded. Timothy Bourman, 37, was sitting at the back of the plane when he said he heard a loud 'boom'. 'All the sudden, it felt like we dropped 100 feet. Everybody knew something's going on. SOUTHWEST AIRLINES STATEMENT We are deeply saddened to confirm that there is one fatality resulting from this accident. The entire Southwest Airlines Family is devastated and extends its deepest, heartfelt sympathy to the Customers, Employees, Family Members, and loved ones affected by this tragic event. We have activated our emergency response team and are deploying every resource to support those affected by this tragedy. Advertisement 'This is bad, like really bad.' A lot of people started panicking and yelling, just real scared. 'We were kind of out of control for a while. It seemed like the pilot was having a hard time controlling the plane. Honestly I think we just all thought we were going down,' he told Philly.com. Bourman, who was traveling with his wife, said they thought they were about to die until the pilot managed to gain control of the aircraft. 'We're just all really thankful to be alive right now. Thankful to God, thankful to that pilot,' he added. Matt Tranchin was sitting three rows behind the window that smashed. He described the chaos and said even the flight attendants were crying in fear. 'Flight attendants rushed up. There was momentary chaos. Everyone kind of descended on where this hole was. As passengers we weren't sure if they were trying to cover up the hole, but the plane smelled like smoke. 'There was ash coming through the ventilation system. We started dropping,' he told ABC News. 'As kind of an indication of how terrifying it was, some of the crew couldn't hold back their horror. 'And some were crying as they looked out through the open window onto the engine,' he added. Passenger Marty Martinez shared photographs and videos of himself on Facebook as the plane made its descent. He and other passengers are shown terrified as they hold their oxygen masks to their faces. He later said there was 'blood everywhere' as a result of the woman's injuries Firefighters rushed onto the aircraft after it made its emergency landing at 11.30am on Tuesday As the plane made its descent towards Philadelphia, the crew warned passengers to brace for impact. When the shrapnel pierced the window, it depressurized the cabin and triggered the oxygen masks. Despite the chaos in the air, others said the emergency landing was fairly calm and smooth. One passenger told CNN: 'It was a stable landing. We started descending, made the turn back to Philadelphia. 'We were with one engine for maybe 10 minutes. Some of the crew couldn't hold back their horror... some were crying as they looked through the open window and onto the engine 'We decreased altitude from 8,000 to 5,000 and then when we finally landed it was relatively smooth, kind of a typical landing so the crew and the pilots did a fantastic job.' Passengers were taken from buses to the airport. It is not the first time the malfunction has occurred on a Southwest-operated Boeing 737-700. In August last year, a different flight from New Orleans to Orlando was forced to make an emergency landing at Pensacola Airport in Florida after the casing surrounding one of its engines tore away at a similar altitude. On Tuesday, the airline manufacturer said it was aware of the accident and was prepared to cooperate with investigations. 'Boeing is aware of an incident with Southwest Airlines flight #1380. 'We are gathering more information and stand ready to provide technical assistance,' it tweeted. The engine which exploded is a CFM56 turbofan engine which costs $10million and has a fan diameter of 68 inches. One of the plane's engines exploded not long after it had left LaGuardia Airport in New York City on Tuesday morning. The damaged engine is visible above after the plane had landed All of the other passengers on board were evacuated after the injured woman was taken away by paramedics 'Heroes': Passengers thanked the five crew members on board for saving their lives. According to witnesses, the female pilot told them to brace for impact before she made the 'smooth' emergency landing The plane was on its way from LaGuardia Airport in New York City to Dallas when it diverted in the air and turned back on itself to go to Philadelphia. It was flying over western Pennsylvania at around 32,500ft at the time The faulty engine was almost entirely exposed after the plane had landed The last time a passenger died in an accident on a U.S. airliner was 2009 when 49 people on board and one on the ground were killed when a Continental Express plane crashed on a house near Buffalo, New York. Southwest has about 700 planes, all of them 737s, including more than 500 737-700s like the one in Tuesday's accident. It is the world's largest operator of the 737. The 737 is the best-selling jetliner in the world and has a good safety record. The National Transportation Safety Board says a preliminary examination of the blown jet engine shows evidence of 'metal fatigue.' In a late night news conference, NTSB Chairman Robert Sumwalt said one of the engine's fan blades was separated and missing. Sumwalt says the blade was separated at the point where it would come into the hub and there was evidence of metal fatigue. He said part of the engine covering was found in Bernville, Pennsylvania, about 70 miles west of Philadelphia. Southwest CEO Gary Kelly said in Dallas that there were no problems with the plane or its engine when it was inspected Sunday. The jet's CFM56-7B engines were made by CFM International, jointly owned by General Electric and Safran Aircraft Engines of France. CFM said in a statement that the CFM56-7B has had 'an outstanding safety and reliability record' since its debut in 1997, powering more than 6,700 aircraft worldwide. Last year, the engine maker and the Federal Aviation Administration instructed airlines to make ultrasonic inspections of the fan blades of engines like those on the Southwest jet. The FAA said the move was prompted by a report of a fan blade failing and hurling debris. But it was unclear whether the particular engine that failed on Tuesday was covered by the directives. 'There's a ring around the engine that's meant to contain the engine pieces when this happens,' said John Goglia, a former NTSB member. 'In this case it didn't. That's going to be a big focal point for the NTSB - why didn't (the ring) do its job?' In 2016, a Southwest Boeing 737-700 blew an engine as it flew from New Orleans to Orlando, Florida, and shrapnel tore a 5-by-16-inch hole just above the wing. The plane landed safely. The NTSB said a fan blade had broken off, apparently because of metal fatigue The male (pictured) attacked three women in five hours in east London this morning A serial sex fiend attacked three women within four hours on London's Central Line. The suspect - caught on CCTV wearing a puffer jacket and black flat cap - is being hunted by police after he grabbed his first victim from behind during morning rush hour in east London. Later he would sexually assault two others, according to British Transport Police (BTP) detectives. They say he grabbed his first victim from behind at 7.35am at Gants Hill tube station on the Central Line as she walked through the ticket barriers. Two hours later he sexually assaulted another woman on a bridge at Snaresbrook station - also on the Central line - before targeting a third victim at the same station shortly after midday. Police hunting the pervert released an image of the man wearing jeans and trainers. A BTP spokesman said: 'We'd like to speak to him in connection with a number of sexual assaults in London - all on the same day. 'At around 7.35am on October 4 last year, a man walked behind a woman going through the ticket barriers at Gants Hill station. He grabbed her from behind. 'At 9.30am on the same day, a man sexually assaulted a woman on the overbridge at Snaresbrook station. 'Then, at 12.15pm on the same day, a woman was grabbed and sexually assaulted in the same place. 'Officers would like to speak to the man in these images as it is believed they may have information which could help the investigation.' Weve already had Earth Hour 2018 and Earth Day. And the next environmentally-friendly day is International Mother Earth Day. Starting nearly ten years ago, International Mother Earth Day is a reaffirmation of the United Nation's effort to promote its Harmony with Nature initiative and improve mankinds effect on our planet. Here is all the information on International Mother Earth Day including when it is, what is it and how it started. International Mother Earth Day seeks to raise awareness about the planet's ecosystem When is International Mother Earth Day 2018? International Mother Earth Day is held every year on April 22. International Mother Earth Day 2018 therefore falls on a Sunday. What is International Mother Earth Day? According to the UN, International Mother Earth Day is celebrated to remind each of us that the Earth and its ecosystems provide us with life and sustenance. The Day calls for the recognition of our collective responsibility to promote harmony with nature and the Earth to achieve a just balance among the economic, social and environmental needs of the present and future generations of humanity. Harmony with Nature is the UN's initiative to get people and societies to reconsider their relationship with the Earth and the natural world to improve 'the ethical basis of the relationship between humankind' and our planet. International Mother Earth Day coincides with another event raising awareness, Earth Day The UN says the Day should be treated as an opportunity for people to raise public awareness about the challenges surrounding the well-being of the planet and all the life it sustains. In the UN resolution recognising the day, it says member states should acknowledge that the Earth and its ecosystems are our home, and convinced that in order to achieve a just balance among the economic, social, and environmental needs of present and future generations, it is necessary to promote harmony with nature and the Earth. Last year's theme was 'Environmental Climate Literacy' - whose aim was to establish a global citizenry that was 'fluent in the concepts of climate change and aware of its unprecedented threat to our planet'. Why is it called International Mother Earth Day? The day is named so because Mother Earth, as it says in the resolution, is a common expression for planet earth in a number of countries and regions, which reflects the interdependence that exists among human beings, other living species and the planet we all inhabit. How did International Mother Earth Day start? The Day was created in 2009, when the General Assembly wanted to add another dimension to, and way of achieving the balance between economic, social and environmental needs of current and future generations. Recognising that Earth Day was already celebrated in many countries on the same day, the UN decided to assign April 22 to International Mother Earth Day through resolution A/RES/63/278. A bravery medal awarded at the behest of Winston Churchill to a train driver who tried to save the future Prime Minister from being captured during the Boer War has come to light. A young Churchill roused wounded driver Charles Wagner and engine firemen Alexander Stewart into action after their armoured train was attacked and derailed by enemy soldiers. Churchill, then a newspaper war correspondent, talked Wagner out of fleeing the scene and remain in his engine cab in order to clear the blocked line. Winston Churchill, pictured on a horse during the Boer War, promised a train driver he would guarantee his bravery was honoured if he managed to take his train carrying British troops to safety despite being under attack Churchill, who was a journalist during the war urged engine fireman Alexander Stewart, right, and engine driver Charles Wagner to keep their locomotive running while under attack The incident happened as Boers derailed an armoured train in Chieveley in 1899. Churchill was captured by the Boers, but 60 of the 100 British troops escaped on the train Under heavy fire, he and Stewart spent 50 minutes keeping the engine running so it could heave and shove overturned carriages out of the way. The train steamed away with about 60 of the 100 British troops on board. Unfortunately Churchill was not one of them as he had been shot at and then captured by a Boer soldier on horseback in the attack. Six weeks later the 25-year-old escaped captivity by climbing over a latrine wall. He stowed away on a freight train and hid in a mine to avoid re-capture. His escape was celebrated back in Britain, helping him to later move into politics. Ten years after the hair-raising ordeal while Churchill was Home Secretary, he made good on a promise he had made to the two men at the height of the attack and saw they were each awarded the Albert Medal. Stewart's decoration was sold by his family over 20 years ago and has now been put up for sale in London for 20,000. A spokesman for auctioneers Dix Noonan Webb said: 'Churchill's reputation for daring was established by the ambush of the armoured train and his subsequent escape from captivity. 'He became a nationally-known figure and he acknowledged that the episode smoothed his path to becoming a Member of Parliament. 'So it was appropriate that as Home Secretary a decade later Churchill ensured that Alexander Stewart and Charles Wagner, the train's locomotive crew, received what was then the highest award for gallantry open to civilians. 'Not only did he honour his promise to them but he also acknowledged their part in making him famous.' Churchill promised both men that their bravery would be recongised by the British government and after becoming Home Secretary a decade after the attack, he ensured that the men both received bravery medals Alexander Stewart, left, received the medal, right, which outlines his gallantry in detail In November 1899 Churchill was travelling with the Durham Light Infantry on an armoured train on a patrol when it came under mortar fire by Boer soldiers at Chieveley, near Durban, South Africa. Three carriages had overturned and blocked the rest of the train from retreating. The British troops returned fire while Churchill ran to the engine to find Wagner, bleeding heavily from a head wound, running away. Churchill told Stewart that 'no man is hit twice on the same day' and that a 'wounded man who continued to do his duty was always rewarded for distinguished gallantry'. Churchill spent the next hour running up and down the outside of the train giving orders to the engine crew while they shunted the wreckage out of the way. Eventually the Boers infiltrated the track and Churchill found himself confronted by two of them with their rifles aimed at him from 100 yards. He ran in the opposite direction while being shot at as he did, with bullets missing him by inches. He planted himself into the grass bank and again was fired at before he scrambled up and over the ridge. As he made a dash towards a river one of the Boers on horseback galloped up to him and held him at gunpoint. After his escape Churchill made a point of visiting Stewart at his railway yard to thank him in person. His Albert Medal is being sold in London on May 9. Robert L James, 63, was facing trial over charges including producing child porn A retired maths teacher charged with producing child pornography has been found dead from a self-inflicted gunshot wound. Robert L James skipped a February 15 court hearing in Chicago and disappeared, forcing his April 9 trial to be cancelled and an arrest warrant issued. The 63-year-old's body was discovered at about 1.30pm on Saturday in a field near the Fox River in Aurora in the city's western outskirts. Police found a gun nearby, which was believed to have been stolen from an acquaintance, which he used to kill himself. Detectives didn't know how long his body lay in the field about 3.5 miles from his home on Garfield Avenue in West Aurora, but his body wasn't decomposed. James pleaded not guilty in 2016 to 10 child sex charges, including producing child pornography over a span of about four years. Other charges included exposing himself to a child while soliciting sex, and possessing child exploitation images of children under 13, including a girl he knew. A former student also accused him of having a sexual relationship with her when she was underage in the 1990s, according to court documents seen by the Aurora Beacon-News. The 63-year-old's body was discovered about 1.30pm on Saturday in a field near the Fox River in Aurora in the city's western outskirts The woman alleged he picked her as his senior aide and groomed her to begin a sexual relationship with him soon after her father died. She said they often went jogging together and started having sex when she was 17 in 1994. James was never charged over the alleged relationship. James retired in June 2015 after nearly 30 years as a West Aurora High School maths teacher and student council adviser. Barbara Bush, former US First Lady, has become the latest death hoax victim after a news website claiming to be CNN reported that the wife of former President George H. W. Bush had died amid news of her serious illness. The website that hosted the Barbara Bush death article, which can be viewed here, stated that she died peacefully in her sleep on Sunday, April 15 2018, according to a spokesman for the Bush family, apparently hours after it was announced that she would not be seeking further medical care. A Barbara Bush death hoax has emerged after a website claiming to be CNN said she had died Barbara is currently in Texas spending time with her family. She is known for her support in the political campaigns of her husband, George H. W. Bush and her sons George W. and Jeb Bush. She took on literacy as her cause while she was First Lady because of her grandsons difficulty with it. Neil Bush reently revealed that his mother is unable to walk. He said: As my mom has become more and more frail she's not able to walk anymore and take her dogs out and that kind of thing we have quality time and we're sharing this quality time with other family members and friends that come by to read, he said. CBS also temporarily published Barbara Bushs obituary but had to quickly delete the article, which read 'Do not publish'. But who is Barbara Bush? Who is Barbara Bush? Born Barbara Pierce on June 8, 1925 in Manhattan, New York, she grew up in Rye before studying at the Ashley Hall school in Charleston, South Carolina. She met George Herbert Walker Bush at the age of 16 and the couple were married in 1945, while he was on leave as a Naval officer during World War II. Barbara and George H.W. Bush married in January 1945 at the First Presbyterian Church in Rye George and Barbara have six children together and the family moved to Midland, Texas where her husband entered politics. She is the second woman in history to be both a wife and a mother of a US President after her son George W. Bush was elected as the 43rd President. In the 1950s, Barbaras hair began to turn from brown to white while her daughter Pauline, known as Robin, struggled through treatment for leukemia at the age of three, but sadly died in October 1953. She became known as everybodys grandmother and her husband referred to her as The Silver Fox. After wearing a triple-strand false pearl necklace to her husbands presidential inauguration in 1989, she sparked a trend and the piece of jewellery became associated with the First Lady. She later admitted that she had chosen them to hide her neck wrinkles and a version was made available for $125 at Texas A&M University. Following her run as First Lady, she went on to support her eldest son George W. after he announced he would be running for President in 1999. Though she said at one stage that other families should have the opportunity of running and that weve had enough Bushes, she later appeared in a campaign advert for Jeb in 2016. George and Barbara Bush have six children together and the family moved to Midland, Texas Is Barbara Bush dead? As of publishing time, 2.23pm ET on April 17, 2018, Barbara Bush was not dead. On Monday, April 16, 2018, a website called breaknews-cnn.com published a story claiming that Barbara Bush had passed away which resulted in a social media storm with many offering their condolences to the Bush family. CNNs Sam Feist was forced to take to Twitter to confirm that the news story was a hoax and on the same day, granddaughter Jenna Bush-Hager provided an update on Barbara on Today. Barbara and I talked to her last night. Shes in great spirits, and shes a fighter. Shes an enforcer. She reminded me not to believe everything you read, so were grateful for her, for everybodys prayers and thoughts, and just know the world is better because shes in it. We are grateful for her. She is the best grandma anybody could have ever had - or have, Jenna said. Barbara Bush health Barbara is currently suffering from Chronic Obstructive Pulmonary Disease (COPD), Congestive Heart Failure (CHF) and Graves disease. In April 2018, the Bush family announced that the former First Lady had decided to not seek further medical treatment and had chosen comfort care. Comfort care, or palliative care, is a different approach to medical care for people with life-limiting illnesses and aims to relieve pain or stress by improving the quality of life for the individual and their family. After the news of her failing health, the Barbara Bush Foundation for Family Literacy have created a page where fans can leave their well wishes for the Bush family. Nikki Haley, Donald Trump's ambassador to the United Nations, hit back at his economic advisor Larry Kudlow Tuesday after he claimed she had announced new sanctions on Russia because of 'momentary confusion'. Kudlow made the claim amid mounting questions over whether Trump had personally halted the sanctions that would have punished Vladimir Putin's government for its alliance with Syria. He told reporters during a Palm Beach briefing that Haley 'got ahead of the curve' and added: 'It might have been some momentary confusion about that.' But later in the afternoon Fox News anchor Dana Perino read a statement from Haley that said, 'With all due respect, I don't get confused.' Kudlow told a reporter for the New York Times shortly after that he apologized to Haley and admitted he was 'totally wrong' to insult her. 'The policy was changed and she wasn't told about it, so she was in a box,' he said. U.S. ambassador to the United Nations Nikki Haley said on Sunday Russia will be sanctioned over an alleged chemical attack in Syria last week Kudlow told reporters during a Palm Beach briefing that Haley has 'done a great job' and is 'very effective' at the United Nations Kudlow's slap at Haley opened up new scrutiny of the internal flip-flop over how to handle the perennially politically toxic issue of Russia. She had been adamant on Sunday that there would be new sanctions, only for the White House to say on Monday that they were not going ahead with them. The Washington Post said Trump had put a stop to the plan for additional economic sanctions on Russia in a Monday report. White House Press Secretary Sarah Sanders flat-out denied that Trump had called off new punishing actions in a conversation with DailyMail.com on Tuesday afternoon in Florida, where President Trump was meeting with the Japanese prime minister. She said that there never were finalized sanctions to announce, although a punishment for Russia is still under consideration. Kudlow, head of the National Economic Council, had said minutes before that Haley was wrong and Treasury Secretary Steve Mnuchin would back him up. 'He will tell you the same thing. They're in charge of this,' he said of Treasury. 'We have had sanctions. Additional sanctions are under consideration but not implemented.' A senior administration official who deals with the issue had told Reuters on Monday, 'The ambassador got out ahead of things this time.' The Post's report said that Trump is unlikely to approve additional sanctions on Russia unless Moscow carries out a new cyber attack or some other provocation. An official said Trump was concerned that immediately imposing more sanctions, on the heels of last weekend's U.S.-led strike against Russian-backed Assad, would interfere with his efforts to negotiate agreements with Russian President Vladimir Putin on combating Islamic extremism, policing the internet and other issues. The U.S., U.K. and France ordered strikes against Assad in the Damascus area on Friday Sanders said in a statement prior to the Post's report, 'We are considering additional sanctions on Russia and a decision will be made in the near future.' On Sunday morning, Haley confirmed the U.S. would sanction Russia in retaliation for the chemical weapons attack a week ago in Syria. She previewed the move without any prodding. Haley said that Mnuchin, the Treasury secretary, would hand down additional sanctions on Monday, if he had not already. '[T]hey will be going directly to any sort of companies that were dealing with equipment related to Assad and chemical weapons use,' Haley said. Her comments echoed a line in 'White House talking points on Syrian airstrikes' DailyMail.com received a day before. 'We also intend to impose specific additional sanctions against Russia to respond to Moscow's ongoing support for the Assad regime, which has enabled the regime's atrocities against the Syrian people,' the document that the Republican National Committee distributed said. The Treasury Department would not confirm the sanctions on Sunday afternoon, telling DailyMail.com it 'does not comment on prospective actions.' And Sanders told reporters Monday, 'We're evaluating, but nothing to announce right now.' Trump's spokeswoman also pushed back on a boast from French President Emmanuel Macron that he had persuaded President Trump to keep U.S. troops in Syria. Sanders said the United States' policy has not changed, and it would still like to pull the 2,000 American soldiers deployed in Syria out as soon as feasible. 'We've talked about this for a while, but our policy hasn't changed. We still have troops on the ground,' she said. 'But the President wants to bring those people home, and that hasn't shifted.' At a National Security Council meeting Trump is said to have requested that the troops come home in the next six months. Publicly he's said he wants it to happen 'very soon,' although he made those comments prior to coalition airstrikes last Friday on Syria. 'We don't have a timeframe on it,' Sanders said. 'It's not based on an arbitrary timeline, but on defeating ISIS and also getting the Gulf partners in the region to step up and do more both militarily and financially.' Sanders knocked down a different Washington Post report then that claimed Trump was angry that Treasury expelled 60 Russian diplomats the administration says were spies in response to an assassination attempt in March on a retired double agent living in Britain. According to the Post, Trump only wanted to go as far as the United States' European partners. Instead, the U.S. wound up taking the lead as Germany and France expelled just four Russian diplomats each. 'The President is the one that gave the directive. The President has been clear that he's going to be tough on Russia,' she contended. 'But at the same time, he'd still like to have a good relationship with them. But that's going to be determined by whether or not Russia decides if they want to be a better actor in this process or not.' Sanders said that has not been the case so far, and so Trump 'is going to continue to be tough on them.' 'And that's why we're continuing to evaluate a number of sanctions,' she added. On Monday, it was clear that a breakdown in communication on sanctions between the White House and the president's political arm and the White House and Trump's U.N. ambassador had occurred. Russia's RIA news agency quoted Deputy Foreign Minister Sergei Ryabkov as saying that morning that that the Kremlin 'will not delay in adopting legislation against U.S. sanctions' if the Trump administration moves forward with the anticipated sanctions. Trump promised last week that Russia would pay a 'big price' if it was found to have been complicit in Assad's gas attack. The U.S. president said his treat threat extended to Russian President Vladimir Putin. On Friday, in conjunction with the U.K. and France, Trump ordered targeted strikes against Assad's forces. He called out Putin by name in his address for failing to keep a promise in 2013 to eliminate Assad's chemical weapons stockpile Syria. 'Russia must decide if it will continue down this dark path, or if it will join with civilized nations as a force for stability and peace,' Trump said. 'Hopefully, someday we'll get along with Russia, and maybe even Iran but maybe not.' Putin has not backed down from his support for Assad, despite international pressure to abandon the dictator accused of brutalizing his people. Russia says the U.S.-led strikes were a violation of international law. The Russian president on Sunday that the strikes were an 'act of aggression' and that continued force against Assad would provoke 'chaos' in the international relations. Haley meanwhile said that the U.S. and its allies could hit Assad's regime with airstrikes again if the Syrian dictators deploys more chemical weapons. 'The time for talk ended last night,' Haley told an emergency meeting of the Security Council called by Russia. 'We are prepared to sustain this pressure, if the Syrian regime is foolish enough to test our will.' Putin has not backed down on his support for dictator Assad despite international pressure. they are pictured in Moscow in 2015 Assad spoke on Sunday to a group of visiting Russian politicians. The dictator has said the airstrikes against Syria came with a campaign of 'lies' and misinformation in the U.N. Haley warned, 'When our president draws a red line, our president enforces a red line.' She said, 'The United States is locked and loaded.' Assad seemed un-phased as he went about his business on Sunday, speaking to a group of visiting Russian politicians. Some 70 people, including children, are said to have died when the Syrian regime unleashed chlorine gas and sarin, a nerve agent, on the rebel-held town of Douma a week ago from Saturday. Both the Russian and Syrian government have denied involvement in the attack that preceded grusome photos and videos of children vomiting and gasping for air. The United States and its partners dropped more than 100 bombs on three targets associated with the chemical weapons program in Syria in response to the posion attack early Saturday morning local time. Trump delivered a national address as the raid was occurring. 'We are prepared to sustain this response until the Syrian regime stops its use of prohibited chemical agents,' he said in the broadcast. 'To Iran, and to Russia, I ask: What kind of a nation wants to be associated with the mass murder of innocent men, women, and children?' Trump implored. He warned the Assad friends, 'The nations of the world can be judged by the friends they keep. No nation can succeed in the long run by promoting rogue states, brutal tyrants, and murderous dictators.' Both the Russian and Syrian government have denied involvement in the attack that left children vomiting and gasping for air, as shown in poignant photos Danielle Foernsler, 34, has been charged with manslaughter after her 16-year-old son overdosed on Xanax laced with fentayl A California mother has been arrested after she allegedly did nothing while her 16-year-old son overdosed on Xanax laced with fentanyl. The boy, whose name has not been released, was pronounced dead at 5.09am on Monday morning. Danielle Foernsler, 34, was charged with manslaughter, child endangerment, and being under the influence of narcotics. Her friend Robert Harrison, 39, was charged with child endangerment, possession of a loaded firearm while possessing narcotics, and being under the influence of narcotics. It was Harrison's roommate who called police at 4.17am on Monday morning to report that the boy appeared to be having a seizure at their house, according to SFGate. The roommate told authorities that 'his roommate and another friend were trying to put the victim in a car', according to the Petaluma Police Department. The boy was unconscious when police arrived at the scene and died less than an hour later at a local hospital. Foernsler's friend's roommate called police at 4.17am on Monday morning to report that the boy appeared to be having a seizure at their home in Petluma, California (pictured is the block where the boy overdosed) Authorities found a loaded firearm and a loaded syringe, which they said belonged to Harrison. Her friend Robert Harrison, 39, was charged with child endangerment, possession of a loaded firearm while possessing narcotics, and being under the influence of narcotics Investigators said Foernsler first gave police a fake name and told them she was the boy's cousin. Foernsler eventually admitted she was the boy's mother and said she lied because she had two outstanding robbery warrants for her arrest, according to KTVU. She also told authorities that her son had been in possession of Xanax that contained fentanyl, a highly addictive opiate often used in pain medication. Neither she or Harrison called 911 when her son began to overdose. Investigators said both Foernsler and Harrison appeared to be under the influence of drugs during their interviews. They were arrested and booked into Sonoma County Jail, where Foernsler was still being held without bail on Tuesday. Counterfeit Xanax tablets have led to a a number of overdoses, some fatal, among San Francisco residents in recent years, according to CBS. The tablets often feature the exact same pharmaceutical markings as the mild anxiety drug, but are cut with the synthetic opioid. Ahmedeltigani Alsyed, 20, planned to go to Syria to fight with ISIS but was too scared to get hit with a paintball while training in Surrey A wannabe ISIS fighter who plotted to wage jihad in the Middle East has told a court an afternoon's paintballing in Surrey left him 'terrified'. Ahmedeltigani Alsyed, 20, conspired in a secret communication channel to fight alongside terror groups in Syria, while building his strength at a gym and attending the team shooting event as training, prosecutors claim. However, the Sudan-born extremist, who said 'I just want to do martyrdom operations' in a Telegram message chat, told Woolwich Crown Court that the afternoon out frightened him. The defendant, from Hounslow, west London, pleaded guilty in January to engaging in conduct in preparation of terrorist acts between November 25 2016 and February 20 2017. He was also convicted of disseminating terrorist material, including execution videos and bomb-making guides, and possessing information likely to be useful to a person committing or planning acts of terrorism. His brother Yousif Alsyed, 18, pleaded guilty to preparing terrorist acts and disseminating a terrorist publication, but will face sentencing at a later date. Prosecutor Eleanor Darlow QC told his sentencing hearing in her opening: 'The brothers had a shared aspiration to travel to Syria to join and fight with fundamentalist jihadi groups and, ultimately, to die fighting in the belief that in death they would achieve martyrdom.' Judge Andrew Lees said he would sentence Ahmedeltigani on Wednesday. Earlier, Ms Darlow QC said the brothers had joined their cousins for a paintballing session at Blind Fire paintball facility in Surrey on September 3 2016. Yousif Alsyed had earlier pleaded guilty to preparing terror acts. The two brothers had been part of a secret Telegram group called 'Peace', involving Muhammad Ali, 18, right, who was jailed in January along with a 17-year-old boy for attempting to join ISIS The prosecution said the paintballing event formed part of the defendant's training. A short video of the day out was played to the court, showing the older brother playing up to the camera. Dressed entirely in camouflage, he raises one finger - mimicking a pose struck by ISIS fighters - and says: 'This is a message to everyone; if we do not come back safe and sound, look after our families, that's all.' Challenged about the video during a Newton Hearing on the paintballing incident, the defendant said: 'I was joking. 'Obviously there were men holding big guns and the night before we watched videos of people screaming and crying (during paintballing) and I was terrified.' He added: 'I was terrified - I was hiding the whole match as well, I didn't want to be hit.' Ms Darlow asked: 'We know you were watching very, very, very violent imagery - men being murdered, men having their heads cut off, men being blow in two by bombs - when you tell his honour you were frightened by big guns in paintballing, are you being truthful?' He insisted he was and that he had also found the videos of beheadings and bombings frightening, too. Asked why he watched them, the defendant said: 'I don't know, to be honest.' John Cooper, defending, said during mitigation that Ahmedeltigan had 'low intelligence' with an IQ of 70, was 'susceptible and impressionable' and, according to a psychiatric assessment, was 'thrill-seeking' when he toyed with travelling to Syria. 'He expresses remorse for his offending behaviour and doesn't consider himself a terrorist,' he added. Their plan was foiled when the younger brother was referred to police by his school in 2016 and further action was taken by Prevent. They had been part of a secret Telegram chat group called Peace with two teenagers, Mohammed Ali, 18, and another 17-year-old who were both jailed in January for attempting to join ISIS in Syria. A search warrant was executed on the Alsyed brothers' address and their phones were seized, with the pair both arrested in a further raid six days later. A trove of incriminating evidence was found on the devices, including contact on Yousif's phone with a facilitator for ISIS in Yemen. One message sent by Ahmedeltigani said: 'I want to be istshadi (a martyr) I want every bit in my body to be destroyed.' France is to begin the process of stripping Syrian President Bashar al-Assad of his Legion of Honor award, the Elysee Palace has told ABC News. It has announced that a 'disciplinary procedure' has begun which will culminate in the award being revoked. The Legion of Honor, which is Frances highest distinction, was awarded to Assad by former French President Jacques Chirac in 2001. President Bashar a-Assad of Syria was awarded the Legion of Honour (right) in 2001 France wants to reduce the number of Legion of Honour medals it hands out to no more than 2,000 annually - only 100 were handed out to mark Bastille Day last July, when usually there are about 500-600 recipients File photo taken on June 27, 2001 of Syrian president Bashar al-Assad being awarded the French Legion of Honour medal by French president Jacques Chirac at the Elysee Palace, during the Syrian leader's State Visit to Paris French President Emmanuel Macron is determined to reform the French honours system French President Jacques Chirac (right) is greeted by his Syrian counterpart Bashar al-Assad upon his arrival Damascus airport on 20 October 2002. Chirac arrived in the Syrian capital from the 9th Francophone summit in Beirut The Syrian President was treated as a distinguished guest during his state 2001 state visit to France The decision to withdraw the honour can only be made by a French President - but it is well known that Emmanuel Macron is eager to reform the country's most prestigious - but often controversial - award. The move comes less than a week after France participated in missile and air strikes against Syrian targets in response to President Assad's alleged use of chemical weapons. Preside Assad's award was given to him during a state visit to Paris - but news of him receiving it was not made public until eight years later. It is not the first time since his election last May that Macron has decided to revoke the Legion of Honor award. In October 2017 he declared that he has started the process of stripping the award bestowed to Harvey Weinstein following allegations of sexual harassment and rape, which he has denied. Each year about 3,000 people receive the honour, which was created by Napoleon Bonaparte in 1802 to reward distinguished citizens and military valour. President Macron has said that it is imperative to return the award to its 'original spirit' by restricting the number handed out and by ensuring that they are based on merit. Former US cyclist Lance Armstrong lost his Legion of Honor award in 2014 after admitting that he he had taken drugs during his seven Tour de France wins between 1999 and 2005. Sir Paul McCartney, Barbara Streisand and Liza Minnelli have all received the top French honour. The mother of the Deputy Commons Speaker's daughter has hit out at 'gaslighting' after her daughter killed herself while involved in a 'toxic relationship'. Miriam Lewis found Natalie Lewis-Hoyle hanged at their home in Heybridge, Essex, shortly before Christmas last year. Now she has decided to launch a website to raise awareness about gaslighting, a type of abuse that involves manipulating someone into believing they are insane, reports Essex Live. The term originated from the 1938 play and 1944 film Gas Light which features a husband who systematically torments his wife. In the film, the husband convinces his wife that her belief that the gaslights are dimming and brightening for no reason is all in her head, leading to her being convinced she is going insane. Natalie Lewis-Hoyle (pictured) committed suicide at her home in Heybridge, Essex, shortly before Christmas last year while in a 'toxic relationship' Mrs Lewis (pictured with her daughter) has decided to launch a website to raise awareness about gaslighting, a type of abuse that involves manipulating someone into believing they are insane During the inquest Mrs Lewis had said that her daughter was in 'psychological torment' from her relationship. She told Essex Live: 'This relationship went on for two and a half years and it affected the whole family. 'She was a really feisty character and you wouldnt think it would get to her but quite often the people that are controlled in relationships are women and are in fact, intelligent women, because they overthink and try to rationalise it. 'The people that are in these relationships often dont realise it is happening and it is made up of actions that seem insignificant at the time. 'The problem now with social media is that you cant escape it. Even just having a dig or changing your status to single on Facebook can seem insignificant but it is just another way to make you feel off-balanced.' The night before she died Miss Lewis-Hoyle spent the evening on the phone. During the inquest Mrs Lewis had said that her daughter was in 'psychological torment' from her relationship Mrs Lewis said: 'We were just shocked when it happened because she was full of life 'You could actually physically see a change in her, sometimes she would be so happy and then something would happen and she would leave the table and go outside and you would see her face drop. It was awful to watch. 'She was troubled. Everything else was on the up but for the relationship.' At the inquest, senior coroner Caroline Beasley-Murray recorded an open conclusion after ruling out both accident and suicide. Mrs Lewis said: 'It has given me comfort that somebody as balanced as a coroner had exactly the same difficulty categorising it as a suicide, it just didnt make sense. 'But it did help me. Its never going to bring her back but it was comforting knowing it wasnt just me because I started to doubt myself. 'We knew that suicide was not in her mind, something happened that had altered her frame of mind. I think she would have got so frustrated and when you are in that moment, you want it to stop. Now her mother, Miriam Lewis, is launching a website called Chat with Nat to raise awareness about 'gaslighting' - a type of abuse that involves manipulating someone into believing they are insane 'This is not somebody who was going to commit suicide, she had very precise plans.' Mrs Lewis has now set up the website 'Chat with Nat' and is working with her daughter's former school to direct people to the site. She said: 'People do not talk about it so I decided quite quickly that I didnt want her death to be in vain. 'She was my only child. When she died, it took my life, it took my future. I will never have grandchildren. 'Natalie has defined who I am for such a long time. Im Nats mum, I dont actually know who I am now, Ive lost my sense pf purpose.' She added: 'If you cant talk to your parents or your friends or your siblings, then maybe you can talk to Nat. 'We have got to start talking about the impact toxic relationships can have. I didnt know who to speak to, I didnt know where to go. 'If I had known everything I do now after all the research, I might have done something different. But I do know I can do something now to teach people that this is not a normal situation.' For confidential support in the UK, call the Samaritans on 116123 or visit a local Samaritans branch. Click here for details. The two servicewomen who were the victims of a racist and sexist attack last week have been identified. Capt. Treasure Sharpe, 27, and Capt. Stephanie Mitchell, 34, were parking at a Cheddar's in Macon, Georgia on April 14 when a man identified as Robbie Tucker yelled at them to 'learn how to park!' Inside the restaurant, Robbie came up to them again and called them 'gay black b******'. His mother added: 'You were getting in our way while we tried to park.' The two servicewomen who were victims in a racist and sexist attack last week have been identified. They are 34-year-old Stephanie Mitchell, right, and 27-year-old Capt. Treasure Sharpe, center Video shows Judy Tucker, 71 (in red), lunge at and hit Sharpe, who is pregnant, when the woman took out her phone to record the situation All the while, Mitchell, left, tries to deescalate the situation, to no avail Robbie, Tucker's son, was allegedly calling the two soldiers 'gay black b******' When Sharpe got out her phone to record the verbal abuse, Tucker's mother Judy, 71, lunged at her and hit her in the face, according to video shot by another patron of the restaurant. According to the police report, Tucker came at Sharpe with 'rage and force...swinging at [her] and striking her in the face'. Sharpe is heard in the video yelling at Tucker that she is pregnant, while Tucker's son responds 'Oh really? By her?' Officers responded to the scene and after reviewing the witness videos, they determined that Judy Tucker was the 'primary aggressor' and arrested her on charges of battery. She was released after posting $650 bond. Additional footage taken outside the establishment shows Tucker crying as she gets arrested, left. Tucker was released from jail after posting $650 bond (right in her mugshot) The arresting officer wrote in his police report that Tucker tried to blame the incident on the other two women, saying the fight 'started because she was white and it was a race issue'. She admitted to hitting one of the women but only because 'they hurt her hand' - referring to Mitchell trying to hold her back from Sharpe. The arresting officer said he found no evidence that Sharpe or Mitchell did anything wrong, however. 'With all of the lunging and slapping happening, it was never shown through cell phone video that Mrs. Mitchell or Mrs. Sharpe did anything wrong,' the police report reads. 'In fact, Mrs. Mitchell tried, without fail, to stop the attack on Mrs. Sharpe.' Because Sharpe was in her Army uniform at the time, she has not been able to comment publicly on the incident. DailyMail.com has reached out to both women. The United States Army Reserve Command's media relations office said in a statement that Mitchell has served since 2001 and Sharpe has served since 2008. they are both captains in the reserve. Tucker has an art restoration business and the Facebook page for it has been inundated with comments from people who are appalled by her actions before her arrest After being taken to Bibb County Jail in tears for assault, Tucker was released on bail 'We are aware of an incident that occurred over the weekend involving two of our Soldiers in Macon, GA. Army Reserve Soldiers, families and civilians are our most valuable resource. Health, welfare, and safety is always at the forefront of our minds with all we do. This incident is the subject of an ongoing police investigation and it is improper for us to comment on the outcome. We will continue to review the information related to this case as it becomes available,' Media relations' deputy chief Captain Chad Nixon said in a statement to the Daily Dot. One of Sharpe's sorority sisters also told the Daily Dot that Sharpe is planning to press charges against Tucker and her two children. Darden Restaurants, which owns the Cheddar's chain, issued a statement saying the incident 'flies in the face of our values and those individuals are no longer welcome in our restaurant.' It has since been revealed that Tucker is an artist who used to each art classes at several Macon area colleges, including Mercer University. Mercer University spokesman Kyle Sears told The Telegraph that Tucker is not currently employed by the school, and after the incident, 'will not be teaching at Mercer in the future'. The Bibb County Sheriff's Office continues to investigate the incident. MPN News, by Whitney Webb. Excerpt, read on here. While gaining control of key resources for partitioning Syria and destabilizing the government in Damascus, the U.S. main goal in occupying the oil and water rich northeastern Syria is aimed not at Syria but at Iran. A U.S. soldier walks on a newly installed position in Manbij, north Syria, April 4, 2018. (AP/Hussein Malla) DAMASCUS, SYRIA After the U.S. launched limited airstrikes on Friday against Syria, U.S. Ambassador to the United Nations Nikki Haley announced that the U.S. will maintain its illegal presence in Syria until U.S. goals in the area are fulfilled, opening the door for the U.S. occupation to continue indefinitely. While the U.S. military presence in Syria has been ongoing since 2015 justified as a means of countering Daesh (ISIS) U.S. troops have since turned into an occupying force with their failure to pull out following Daeshs defeat in northeastern Syria. Currently, the U.S. occupies nearly a third of Syrian territory around 30 percent including much of the area east of the Euphrates River, encompassing large swaths of the Deir Ezzor, Al-Hasakah and Raqqa regions. Though the U.S. currently has between 2,000 to 4,000 troops stationed in Syria, it announced the training of a 30,000-person-strong border force composed of U.S.-allied Kurds and Arabs in the area, which would be used to prevent northeastern Syria from coming under the control of Syrias legitimate government. Though it backtracked somewhat after backlash from Turkey, the U.S. has continuedto train local forces in the area. Russian military sources have asserted that former members of Daesh who were allowed to leave cities attacked by the U.S. and their proxies, as was the case in battle for Raqqa are to be included among the forces ranks. This, along with the U.S. governments insistence on maintaining the occupation until Syrian President Bashar al-Assad is removed from power, shows that the U.S. government has no intention of permitting the reunification of Syria and will continue to occupy the region over the long term. The illegal U.S. occupation of Syria has been widely noted in independent and corporate media, but little media attention has focused on identifying the wider implications of this occupation and the U.S. main objectives in keeping northeastern Syria from coming under the control of the legitimate, democratically elected Syrian government. As is often the case in U.S. occupations, both historical and present, it is an effort born out of two goals: resource acquisition for U.S. corporations and the destabilization of a government targeted for U.S.-backed regime change. Control of fossil fuel deposits and flow Northeastern Syria is an important region owing to its rich natural resources, particularly fossil fuels in the form of natural gas and oil. Indeed, this area contains 95 percent of all Syrian oil and gas potential including al-Omar, the countrys largest oil field. Prior to the war, these resources produced some 387,000 barrels of oil per day and 7.8 billion cubic meters of natural gas annually, and were of great economic importance to the Syrian government. However, more significantly, nearly all the existing Syrian oil reserves estimated at around 2.5 billion barrels are located in the area currently occupied by the U.S. government. In addition to Syrias largest oil field, the U.S. and its proxies in northeast Syria also control the Conoco gas plant, the countrys largest. The plant, which can produce nearly 50 million cubic feet of gas per day, was originally built by U.S. oil and gas giant ConocoPhillips, which operated the plant until 2005, after which Bush-era sanctions made it difficult to operate in Syria. Other foreign oil companies, like Shell, also left Syria as a result of the sanctions. With the U.S. now occupying the area, the oil and gas produced in this region are already benefiting U.S. energy corporations to which Trump and his administration have numerous ties. According to Yeni Safak, the U.S. along with the Saudis, Egypt, and Kurdish officials held meetings where decisions were made to extract, process and market the fossil fuels harvested in the region, with the Kurds being given a handsome share of the profits. As of 2015, the Kurds were said to be earning in excess of $10 million every month. Syrias Kurdistan exports its oil to Iraqs Kurdistan, with which it conveniently shares a border, and it is then refined and sold to Turkey. Though no corporations are publicly involved, the deal between Syrian and Iraqi Kurds was brokered by unnamed oil experts and oil investors. The Kurds in Syria and Iraq did not even sign the agreement in person. They were subsequently informed of the agreement by the United States and instructed to supervise the operation. President Donald Trump won't be handing over his tax documents to the IRS today. White House Press Secretary Sarah Sanders says, 'The President filed an extension for his 2017 tax return, as do many Americans with complex returns.' 'He will file his tax return by the extension deadline of October 15, 2018,' the Trump spokeswoman said. The president meanwhile celebrated the fact that today is the 'last time the American people will file taxes under a complicated & outdated tax system' because of the GOP tax cuts that ended most deductions. President Donald Trump won't be handing over his tax documents to the IRS today The president meanwhile celebrated the fact that today is the 'last time the American people will file taxes under a complicated & outdated tax system' because of the GOP tax cuts that ended most deductions Trump's administration says that most Americans will be able to file their taxes on a large postcard come next 'Tax Day' in the United States. Changes to the tax code that Republicans in Congress approved late last year do not apply to 2017 paperwork. The cuts themselves began to kick in until February of 2018. 'So many people are seeing the benefits of the Tax Cut Bill. Everyone is talking, really nice to see!' the president this morning tweeted. The GOP is counting on the extra padding in Americans' pocketbooks to boost its candidates' performance in November. Trump has been doing his part to bring attention to tax benefit at roundtables across the country, including one in Florida on Monday. As he awaited the arrival of Japanese prime minister Shinzo Abe in Florida this afternoon he also retweeted a message from Vice President Mike Pence that claimed their cut was the largest in history -- an assertion that's been widely debunked. 'Thanks to the historic TRUMP TAX CUTS, today marks the last time the American people will file taxes under a complicated & outdated tax system,' Pence said. 'Our Tax Cuts the largest in American history will save YOU money, increase opportunity & create more JOBS for American workers #TaxDay' The administration's tax slash for corporations is the largest ever. However the overall tax cut, analysts have determined, is not 'bigger than the Reagan tax cut' as Trump claimed yesterday in Hialeah, or 'bigger than any tax cut' ever. Looking at the cut as a percentage of GDP, The Committee for a Responsible Budget says Trump's cut will be the eight largest in history. The tax cut's effect on the president's own taxes has been hard to ascertain. Trump has not released his tax returns. He maintains that the returns are under audit. This was a starter question Alexa appeared she couldn't be bothered tackling as she failed to spell out 'hors d'oeuvres'. Sarah Holloway, from Havelock in North Carolina, couldn't remember how to spell the French term for starters, 'hors d'oeuvres', when she was texting a friend. With her mind blank, not even her phone's auto correct function could guess what she was trying to spell. Sarah Holloway, from Havelock in North Carolina, couldn't remember how to spell the French term for starters, 'hors d'oeuvres', when she was texting a friend So the stay-at-home mum turned to Alexa on her Amazon Echo Dot to ask her how to spell it. But Alexa wouldn't, instead simply replying: 'Hors d'oeuvres is spelled hors d'oeuvres'. Keen to share the sassy gadget with her friends, amused Sarah filmed herself asking Alexa again, and got the same response. Keen to share the sassy gadget with her friends, amused Sarah filmed herself asking Alexa again, and got the same response Sarah, 40, said: 'I bought my Alexa in July of 2017, it was the deal of the day and $15 off. At first I was delighted, it seemed like it was really going to be a huge benefit to my life. 'Being able to find out the weather, listening to the news and my podcasts on demand, while working on other things around the house was great 'Funnily enough, I was actually texting a friend and trying to spell hors d'oeuvres. I was hoping that autocorrect would help me, but it didn't pick up on what I was trying to spell. After trying Alexa's spelling once again the next day, Sarah found she was willing to spell hors d'oeuvres out to her as normal 'I guess technology failed me on two fronts that day. 'When Alexa just said the word back to me, I thought it must have been a glitch. I asked her three times before I made the video. I was just shocked and amused.' After trying Alexa's spelling once again the next day, Sarah found she was willing to spell hors d'oeuvres out to her as normal. Amazon US has been contacted for comment. A Nashville window washer who became locally known for dressing up as Spider-Man while working at a childrens hospital has been sentenced to more than a century in prison for producing and distributing child pornography. Jarratt Turner, 36, previously pleaded guilty to multiple counts of producing and transporting child pornography involving a toddler boy and an infant girl. On Monday, he was sentenced to 105 years in federal prison and ordered to pay $31,104 in restitution to the victims. According to court documents, Turner befriended two families with young children that he offered to babysit. He's no hero: Jarratt Turner (left), 36, who made headline in 2014 by dressing up as Spider-Man while washing windows at a Nashville childrens hospital (right), has been sentenced to 105 years in federal prison for making child pornography Pervert: Photos and videos produced by Turner between 2014-2015 showed him molesting his friends' two children, who were between the ages of 12 and 31 months old Between October 2014 and May 2015, the window washer took sexually explicit images and videos of the toddler girl on ten different occasions and of the infant boy on six different occasions while in his basement apartment in Nashville. The photos and recordings showed Turner molesting the two children, who were between the ages of 12 and 31 months old at the time. Turner later disseminated the pornographic videos and photos via the Internet to others, writing at one point, I looooove [sic] little ones. I love little one's the most and hope you love them too. In an attempt to avoid detection by law enforcement, he only used public Wi-Fi networks. According to the complaint, Turner emailed two images to an undercover police officer in Australia, which allowed US Department of Homeland Security officials to track the IP address of the sender to Sip Cafe on Gallatin Pike in Nashville. Spider's web: The US Attorneys Office for the Middle District of Tennessee wrote that Turner dressed as the Marvel Comics superhero in an attempt to access other vulnerable children Investigators said Turner would go to the establishment every day and use its Wi-Fi network to send out X-rated photos and videos of children over a cup of coffee and two scoops of ice cream. With the help of the manager of the cafe, law enforcement officers were able to identify the suspect and arrest him. Children of this community are a little safer today with this sexual predator behind bars,' said Assistant Special Agent in Charge Robert Hammer, who oversees Homeland Security Investigations operations in Tennessee. The fact he would film, and then upload to the Internet, videos of himself molesting an infant and toddler, then take elaborate steps to conceal his activities, represents the extreme danger he posed to the community, said Assistant Special Agent in Charge Robert Hammer. Officials say Turner would sit ever day at Sip Cafe in Nashville (pictured) and send child pornography to others using the eatery's public Wi-Fi Back in 2013 and 2014, Turner made headlines in Tennessee when he was filmed washing windows at Vanderbilt Childrens Hospital while dressed in a full Spider-Man costume. These kids are pretty sick and anything we can do to make their day a little bit better, I'm all for it, he said in an interview with the station Fox 17. It makes it even better if I can do my job and help some people out at the same time. The US Attorneys Office for the Middle District of Tennessee wrote that Turner dressed as the Marvel Comics superhero in an attempt to access other vulnerable children, reported Charlotte Observer. The sentence imposed by the Court should insure that this defendant will never have another opportunity to inflict his perverted sexual desires upon another innocent child, said US Attorney Don Cochran for the Middle District of Tennessee. Antigua and Barbuda will allow the use of medical cannabis, Prime Minister Gaston Browne has announced, in addition to decriminalising the possession of small amounts of the drug In explaining the move Mr Browne said that that the prohibition of cannabis was not prompted by the health or well-being of users, but to serve the 'racist, political and economic interests of the global powers at that time'. The Prime Minister said his government's plans to legalise cannabis for medicinal and 'other' uses. Antigua and Barbuda Prime Minister Gaston Browne (left) said that the relaxing of cannabis laws was long overdue, especially for his country's Rastafarian community Mr Browne emphasised that his government was not that advocating the widespread use of smoked cannabis Mr Browne went on to apologise to the Rastafarian community for the 'demonisation and brutalisation' that has been inflicted upon them by police and other government authorities because of prohibition. In the Caribbean, the Rastafari Community has championed the many uses of Cannabis, and have asserted that the herb is utilized as a sacrament in their rituals, in their celebrations and worship, a press release from the Prime Minister said. 'The prohibition and demonization have led to Rastafari being brutalized and castigated by Police and other Government authorities, because of the utilization of the plant Cannabis Sativa. 'It is in this context, and now that my Government has liberalized the legislation regarding cannabis, and is moving towards the medicinal and other uses of this natural substance, that I have issued a "genuine" apology to the Rastafarian Community,' the statement said. 'We have asserted that Rastafari sacramental or spiritual use be acknowledged, and that Rastafari be given a stake in production and benefits to be derived from the medicinal and other uses going forward. 'Let us regard this as reparations for Rastafari, for the wrongs inflicted on this significant minority group in our countries, through the so called "war on drugs" which evidently was prompted by pernicious prohibition.' The PM is in the UK this week attending the Commonwealth Heads of Government Meeting in London. The use of cannabis is a key part of Rastafarian culture and the PM said they had been persecuted by tough laws that banned the drug Mr Browne said that he wanted an immediate end to laws that prohibit the use of medicinal cannabis The Antigua and Barbuda government has said that cannabis should be grown under certain conditions and eventually turned into useful pharmaceuticals In February, Antigua and Barbuda made moves to decriminalize cannabis, making it legal to possess up to 15 grams for personal use, and allowing a household to grow up to four plants, Telesurtv.net reported. 'The use of marijuana is now socially acceptable,' Mr Browne said at the time. 'It is, in essence, a part of the culture of the country. I want to make it abundantly clear that my government is not advocating the use of cannabis; we are against anything that is smoked. 'Now the Government is going one step further, arranging for this agricultural product to be grown under certain conditions and eventually turned into useful pharmaceuticals.' Commenting on the Prime Minister's announcement, Ben Campbell from Transform Getting Drugs Under Control group said it was 'very welcome news' which made Antigua and Barbuda the first Caribbean nation to legalise and regulate cannabis. 'What is even more remarkable is the fact that Mr Browne acknowledges the damage to the Rastafarian community caused by prohibition, and goes as far as issuing an official apology. 'He also recognises that prohibition does not look after peoples' health, but instead accuses prohibition of serving the racist and self serving needs of global powers something Transform wholeheartedly agrees with. 'We would strongly encourage other Commonwealth Heads of Government to follow the lead of Antigua and Barbuda and Canada which are both placing people's health before politics and profit by legalising and regulating the drug market.' Video shows the moment a woman was caught in the act of abandoning her four dogs at a vacant lot in San Antonio, Texas last week. A resident saw the woman releasing the dogs on April 13, so she grabbed her cellphone and headed outside to confront the woman. 'I was getting ready for work when I spotted a car at a dead end road removing collars from within the car. I put my shoes on quickly and ran out to the road and started recording the act. 'I am tired of people doing this continuously in the area. I recorded to [educate] and advise them to do the right thing,' the resident told ViralHog. Video shows the moment a woman was caught abandoning her four dogs at a vacant lot in San Antonio, Texas last week The resident who filmed the video tries to convince the woman to take the dogs to Animal Care Services, where she can drop the dogs off for free The woman decides not to, forcing out the last dog and then getting back in the car As the car drives off, a passenger in the back of the car flips off the resident the four dogs are then seen jogging off into the wooded area behind the neighborhood In the video, the resident is heard trying to convince the woman to take her dogs to Animal Care Services, saying she can drop her dogs off for free there instead of illegally abandoning them, a crime that carries a $500 penalty per dog. 'I'm tired of people dropping off abandoned dogs. I fostered for Animal Care Services and I'm the one that has to take time away from my children to help people who don't want to be responsible for their pets,' the resident says. The woman asks for directions to ACS, but then forces the last dog out of the car and then gets in the passenger seat as her driver backs out of the lot. The woman in the video later turned herself into authorities, after going back and finding one of the dogs and bringing it to ACS. The above three were caught first and put up for adoption 'Really?' the resident says as the car speeds out of the neighborhood, a passenger in the back seat flipping her off. ACS spokesman Lisa Norwood told KSAT that the woman in the video later turned herself into authorities. After the incident, authorities were able to find three of the dogs, but the fourth was missing. The woman allegedly went back to the lot where she abandoned the dogs, found the fourth dog, and brought it into ACS, where she surrendered. Norwood says she could faces charges for each of the four dogs she abandoned. The women in the video is the only suspect in the case, Norwood said. Abandoning dogs is a class A misdemeanor and against both state and local laws. Two of the four dogs have already been adopted. The other two are up for adoption and in need of temporary foster homes. ACS officials thanked the woman who took the video, writing on Facebook 'We would not have been able to respond as quickly as we did if the good Samaritan had not contacted 311 first. Always contact 311 and provide them with as much information as possible when you see any form of animal ordinance violation.' Those interested in fostering can email ACS at acsrescue-foster@sanantonio.gov and those interested in adopting can call 210-207-6666 or email acsadoptions@sanantonio.gov. Margaret Douglas, 98, was found dead in her Wadsworth, Ohio home on April 9 A 17-year-old boy in Ohio has been arrested for the alleged strangling his elderly neighbor to death. The teen was taken into custody Monday, a week after police found the body of 98-year-old Margaret Douglas stuffed into a closet at her Wadsworth home. Police Chief Randy Reinke said the suspect, who has not been identified, was found in a Cleveland-area location when he was arrested. Police were tipped off to the teen's involvement because of break-ins and other crimes committed in the area. Reinke said the teen lived near the victim's home and most likely acted alone. Police also said Douglas' wallet was allegedly found at the teen's home on Monday. I believe he did know she lived alone and so she was an easy target, vulnerable, but I cant tell you what was in his mind, Reinke told New5 Cleveland. Authorities found Douglas dead inside her home on April 9 while performing a welfare check. Relatives had reported the widow missing telling police she was last seen on April 5. According to WKYC 3, the body was hidden in a closet beneath various items of clothing. Police arrested a 17-year-old boy in connection to the woman's murder after her body was discovered in a closet at her home The Cuyahoga County medical examiner's office has indicated Douglas was strangled. The city prosecutor is expected to seek charges against the teen in Medina County Juvenile Court. The teen, who is said to be a student at Wadsworth High School, was transferred to Medina County Juvenile Detention Center on charges of murder and abuse of a corpse. Starbucks will close nearly 8,000 of its US stores May 29, to train 175,000 employees on preventing racial discrimination after two incidents involving black men being disallowed use of the restroom. The announcement from world's biggest coffee company comes as it tries to cool tensions after the arrest of two black men at one of its Philadelphia cafes last week sparked accusations of racial profiling at the chain. Protesters have called for a boycott of the company, in what has become the biggest test yet for Chief Executive Kevin Johnson, who took the helm about a year ago. Police officers monitor activity outside as protesters demonstrate inside a Starbucks, where two black men were arrested, in Philadelphia. Starbucks will be closing 8,000 US stores in the afternoon of May 29 to train 175,000 employees to prevent racial discrimination Interfaith clergy leaders stage a sit-in at the Center City Starbucks, where two black men were arrested, in Philadelphia Police were called to a Philadelphia Starbucks after two black men wanted to use the restroom while waiting for their friend- the manager called the police. The incident sparked outrage 'While this is not limited to Starbucks, we're committed to being a part of the solution,' said Johnson, who has apologized for the 'reprehensible' arrests of the two men and taken responsibility for the incident. The pair were later released without charge. The footage sparked a furious backlash against Starbucks and in-store protests. Attorneys for the company said Johnson and the two men involved have 'engaged in constructive discussions about this issue as well as what is happening in communities across the country.' While Starbucks has deftly navigated thorny issues such as gay marriage, gun control and Congressional gridlock, US race relations have proven more challenging. Its 2015 'Race Together' campaign to foster a conversation on the topic following the high-profile police shootings of several unarmed black men stirred an intense social media backlash. Meanwhile in Los Angeles, Brandon Ward filmed himself in one of the coffee chain's outlets in Torrance, after he claimed to have been denied the bathroom code. A young white man with glasses named Weston was seen emerging from the bathroom before Mr Ward approached him in the video shot on January 23. The 26-year-old asked if Weston bought anything, and was told he hadn't but was just about to go to the counter and get food. Starbucks CEO Kevin Johnson, center, in Philadelphia to meet with the two black men arrested in a store after a manager called the cops Brandon Ward filmed himself waiting outside the Starbucks bathroom (left) until Weston (right) came out and he asked him if he bought anything before going in 'Before you made a purchase they let you use the restroom, right?' Mr Ward asked. 'I just typed in the code,' Weston replied, to which the other man said 'they gave you the code before you made a purchase?' The pair then walked over to the counter and Mr Ward confronted the store manager wanting to know why a white man was allowed into the bathroom but not him. An Ohio babysitter is accused of beating a three-year-old girl to death because she dumped ketchup in the toilet. Lindsay Partin, 35, was charged with murder last month after Hannah Wesche, the toddler she had been looking after, was declared brain dead in a Cincinnati hospital. Partin allegedly hit the little girl to discipline her for putting ketchup in her toilet, according to court documents filed on Monday. Three-year-old Hannah Wesche was declared brain dead in Ohio last month after being allegedly beaten by her babysitter Lindsay Partin because she put ketchup in the toilet Hannah was found with bruises on her face, ear, chest and neck when she was rushed to hospital on March 8. Babysitter Lindsay Partin, 35, was charged with murder last month after Hannah was declared brain dead She was put on life support but was declared brain dead three days later. Partin had called 911 and reported that Hannah had collapsed shortly after her father, Jason Wesche, had dropped her off at her home on the morning of March 8. Police said Wesche rushed back to Partin's home and tried to get his daughter to breathe normally for 15 minutes. He said she was gasping for air as she laid on her back on Partin's couch. First responders found the little girl unresponsive and bruising over her head and face. Partin later admitted to striking Hannah but said she had fallen and hit her head on the floor the previous day. Hannah's family said doctors had to remove a portion of her skull to try and relieve the swelling on her brain. Hannah was found with bruises on her face, ear, chest and neck when she was rushed to hospital on March 8. She was put on life support but was declared brain dead three days later Hannah's family said doctors had to remove a portion of her skull to try and relieve the swelling on her brain Hannah's father had been taking the toddler to Partin's home for months in the lead up to her death. The father-of-three said he knew Partin through a friend and she had all the necessary credentials to look after his youngest daughter. Partin was initially charged with felonious assault and felony child endangering, but that was upgraded to involuntary manslaughter when Hannah died of her injuries. She is now charged with one count each of murder and involuntary manslaughter in addition to three counts of endangering children. Advertisement Microsoft billionaire Bill Gates joined Commonwealth leaders at the Guildhall in London for a black tie dinner hours after Prime Minister Theresa May was forced to make a grovelling apology for Britain's treatment of Windrush immigrants. The Lord Mayor of the City of London, Charles Bowman, will host the black-tie event with representatives from all 53 Commonwealth nations. Chancellor Philip Hammond will speak at the event which will also feature senior City, business and charity representatives. Billionaire philanthropist Bill Gates, left, attended a dinner in the Guildhall tonight for the Commonwealth Heads of Government hosted by the Lord Mayor of the City of London Chancellor Philip Hammond, pictured, is due to speak at tonight's black tie event in the Guildhall in London The banquet is being hosted by the Lord Mayor of the City of London, Charles Bowman, left, and will feature representatives of all Commonwealth countries Earlier today, PM Theresa May personally apologised to Caribbean leaders following her government's threat to deport hundreds of thousands of people who emigrated to Britain from the region in the 1950s and 1960s. Mrs May hosted representatives of the 12 Caribbean members of the Commonwealth at Downing Street today. She said: 'I want to apologise to you today. Because we are genuinely sorry for any anxiety that has been caused.' She added: 'I want to dispel any impression that my government is in some sense clamping down on Commonwealth citizens, particularly those from the Caribbean.' The government has faced outrage for its treatment of people who came to Britain between 1948 - when the ship Empire Windrush brought over the first group of West Indian immigrants - and the early 1970s. They and their parents were invited to help rebuild Britain after World War II and with many of them legally British - they were born while their home countries were still colonies - they were given indefinite leave to remain. But those who failed to get their papers in order are now being treated as illegal, which limits their access to work and healthcare and puts them at risk of deportation if they cannot provide evidence of their life in Britain. South African President Cyril Ramaphosa, pictured, was among the Commonwealth leaders attending tonight's banquet Liam Fox, pictured, was among the guests at tonight's banquet which has been dogged by controversy over the Government's handling of the Windrush scandal The row, which one MP called a 'national shame', has been hugely embarrassing as it coincides with this week's meeting of the 53 Commonwealth heads of government in London. More than 50,000 people could be affected by the government's immigration crackdown. Timothy Harris, prime minister of Saint Kitts and Nevis, expressed hope that Britain would 'do the right thing and make good any injustice', including through compensation. Jamaican Prime Minister Andrew Holness, who earlier had a meeting with May, said he wanted a 'speedy' response. The now elderly people involved 'have significantly contributed to the building and enrichment of the country', he said. The scandal has also sparked concern about London's ability to deal with millions of European citizens currently living in Britain who want to stay after Britain leaves the European Union next year. Ministers have agreed they will be given indefinite leave to remain, but they must apply for a new status. Guy Verhofstadt, the European Parliament's Brexit coordinator, was quoted by The Independent newspaper as saying: 'This will be deeply worrying for millions of EU citizens in the UK who will now fear similar treatment after Brexit.' Pakalitha Mosisili, Prime Minister of Lesotho, left, and Rick Houenipwela, Prime Minister of the Solomon Islands, right, were both guests at the black tie event at the Guildhall A Texas deputy started weeping as he described the heinous details surrounding a child-abuse case that saw a toddler being tethered to a door like animal and a boy he thought was near death. Bexar County Deputy Louis Estrada gave emotional testimony on Monday for the trial of Deandre Jerome Dorch, who was charged with two counts of injury to a child-serious bodily injury. Local authorities responded to calls on April 28, 2016, about the two children crying. One was said to have been crying for at least seven hours before officers were contacted. Bexar County Deputy Louis Estrada gave emotional testimony on Monday for the trial of Deandre Jerome Dorch Dorch, then 36, was charged with two counts of injury to a child-serious bodily injury Estrada choked up as he described how the two children were found crying in the backyard of the home in the North East side of San Antonio. He stated that the children were tied so tight that they could hardly move. The officers then decided to break protocol and take pictures of the three-year-old girl and four-year-old boy. 'This was something I knew was not right, was not normal,' said Estrada, Chron.com reports Estrada detailed that the two kids were bound by their ankles and wrists and lay in their own feces. It was believed the kids had been left outside for several days. With the help of another deputy, Estrada kicked the door in to get access to the back because he saw the little girl's wrist tied so tightly above her head that she couldn't sit or stand. Estrada choked up as he described how the two children were found crying in the backyard of the home in the North East side of San Antonio As soon as he freed the girl, Estrada said that she latched onto him and never let go. 'She just put her arms around me and her head on my chest,' he said while crying. 'I could tell she was relieved and comforted.' As soon as he freed the girl, Estrada said that she latched onto him and never let go Estrada soon saw the girl's brother lying motionless on the ground and chained at the ankle to a dog spike that was attached to the ground. 'I thought he was dead,' Estrada stated. Inside the house, Deputy Calvin Anderson shared that there were clothes and bedding strewn throughout the house. Only a couch and a TV were also found inside. Trash, toys, a teddy bear, and feces were also shown to be outside. The pictures showing the scene continued to make the officer weep, especially one showing the three-year-old girl bound by her wrist. 'There's certain things in law enforcement you expect to come across. However, there's things you don't expect to see and really don't expect will happen. It takes you back a bit,' he added. At the time 36, Dorch and 36-year-old Porucha Phillips shared that they were watching the kids for friend Cheryl Reed. All three knew each other from California and had moved to San Antonio. Reed shared that the kids were in Phillips' care. At the time 36, Dorch and 36-year-old Porucha Phillips shared that they were watching the kids for friend Cheryl Reed All three knew each other from California and had moved to San Antonio. Reed (left) shared that the kids were in Phillips' (right) care When deputies free the two children, they found six others who were inside and had no adult supervisors. All the children ranged from ten months to 11 years. Three of the children were found to live with Dorch and Phillips. Dorch was said to have had to work during most of the time of the alleged abuse so his participation was drawn into question. Now 38, he is the first of the three to go to trial for the case. In October, he pleaded guilty to two counts of injury to a child-serious bodily injury and was sentenced to 50 years in prison on each count. Both sentences will run at the same time. Reed is currently in jail waiting trial. Embattled EPA chief Scott Pruitt upgraded his government ride to a hulking Chevy Suburban equipped with bullet-proof seat-covers, in the latest example of his taxpayer-funded security spending. Pruitt upgraded to the suburban from the Chevy Tahoe, the model used by his predecessor, EPA administrator Gina McCarthy. He made the upgrade in June, with a lease of $10,200 per year, the Washington Post reported. A former EPA official told the paper Pruitt wanted the bigger ride because it was in line with what other cabinet secretaries have. Other upgrades included in the lease at a cost of an additional $300 per month included a leather interior, second row bucket seats, plus WiFi and GPS navigation. SECURE LOCATION: The Environmental Protection Agency violated the law when it approved a $43,000 soundproof phone booth last year for the office of embattled Administrator Scott Pruitt, a congressional watchdog unit said on Monday It's the kind of leg-room and comfort that is ideally suited for cruising threw Washington, D.C.'s bumpy streets even when in a hurry something Pruitt is also accused of doing in a report that says he told his security detail to use sirens to get him to appointments. According to a CBS report, the head of his detail told Pruitt the sirens were reserved for emergencies. That agent, Eric Weese, was subsequently replaced by Pasquale "Nino" Perotta. Perotta has come under fire for pushing a series of security upgrades for Pruitt including a soundproof booth that has come under criticism in a government audit. The Environmental Protection Agency violated the law when it approved a $43,000 soundproof phone booth last year for the office of embattled Administrator Scott Pruitt, a congressional watchdog unit said on Monday. Pruitt upgraded to a large Suburban vehicle, according to a lease agreement The Capitol Dome is reflected in a car window on the Capitol Plaza on July 27, 2017 in Washington, DC The Government Accountability Office said the EPA violated the Financial Services and General Government Appropriations Act. The law prohibits an agency from obligating more than $5,000 in federal funds to furnish, redecorate or make improvements in the office of a presidential appointee without first notifying appropriations committees in the U.S. Senate and House of Representatives. The EPA also violated the Antideficiency Act, which prohibits federal agencies from incurring expenses in excess of funds available in appropriations, the GAO said. Liz Bowman, an EPA spokeswoman, said the agency was "addressing GAO's concern, with regard to Congressional notification about this expense, and will be sending Congress the necessary information this week." The privacy booth, which Pruitt had told lawmakers in a hearing was needed to conduct agency business, was built in a spot of a former storage closet in the administrator's office. WHO'S BUGGING YOU? Scott Pruitt, administrator of the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA), center, listens during a cabinet meeting with U.S. President Donald Trump, not pictured, at the White House in Washington, D.C., U.S., on Monday, April 9, 2018. The EPA spent $43,000 on a soundproof booth The GAO had been asked to investigate the matter by Democratic lawmakers including U.S. Senators Tom Carper and Tom Udall. Senator John Barrasso, a Republican and the head of the Senate environment committee, earlier this month had rejected a request by Carper and others for a hearing looking into allegations that Pruitt had spent wastefully. But Barrasso said in a statement after the GAO's decision that Pruitt's agency must give a "full public accounting" on the spending on the booth and explain why the agency thinks it was complying with the law. Pruitt has taken head and is under investigation for assembling a 20-person security force, costs of $3 million, getting a $43,000 soundproof booth, and asking his detail to use sirens to ferry him to appointments in Washington Pruitt has been under fire from Republican and Democratic lawmakers for expensive travel and other expenses. Last week, Democratic lawmakers asked him to provide documents about ethics issues they said were revealed to them by a former agency official, including spending on bulletproof vests, guns and a contract with an Italian security service. Also last week, fellow Republican Trey Gowdy, head of the oversight committee of the U.S. House of Representatives, asked Pruitt for more documents for his probe into the administrator's first-class air travel and leasing of a room in a Washington condo for $50 a night for nights he was there. The White House did not immediately respond to a request for comment on the GAO decision. PAY RAISES The EPA's Office of Inspector General also released documents on Monday showing the agency's chief of staff, Ryan Jackson, signed off on controversial pay raises for three of Pruitt's staff, including a raise of $29,000 to above $114,000 for his scheduling director, Millan Hupp. Pruitt had originally recommended the raises but was denied by the White House. Jackson approved them using the authority granted under an obscure provision in a clean water law, the documents said. Pruitt said in an interview with Fox News this month that he had no knowledge of the raises. "It shouldn't have been done," he said. "There will be some accountability." EPA head Scott Pruitt's security costs have been encouraged by his head of security, former Secret Service Pasquale 'Nino' Perrotta EPA spokesman Jahan Wilcox did not respond to a request for comment on the hires. Republican President Donald Trump has said he supports Pruitt, who has carried out his policy goals of slashing regulations on the oil, natural gas and coal industries, but will look into allegations about ethics lapses. (Reporting by Timothy Gardner; additional reporting by Richard Valdmanis, editing by Dan Grebler, David Gregorio and Jonathan Oatis) Said Barasso: 'It is critical that EPA and all federal agencies comply with notification requirements to Congress before spending taxpayer dollars. EPA must give a full public accounting of this expenditure and explain why the agency thinks it was complying with the law.' FILE - In this April 3, 2018, file photo, Environmental Protection Agency Administrator Scott Pruitt speaks at a news conference in Washington. An internal government watchdog says the EPA violated federal spending laws when purchasing a $43,000 soundproof privacy booth for Pruitt to make private phone calls in his office. (AP Photo/Andrew Harnik) House Oversight chair Rep. Trey Gowdy of South Carolina told Fox News on Sunday, speaking of Pruitt: '"You need to go into another line of work if you don't want people to be mean to you. Like maybe a monk, where you don't come in contact with anyone." Pruitt also has been under fire for the ordering of a bulletproof desk, his 20-member security detail, his first class travel, and security costs totaling $3 million. He also spent $9,000 on a security sweep of his office, the Associated Press reported. Pruitt's security costs have been encouraged by his head of security, a former Secret Service agent who spent time working in Italy and Eastern Europe and who helped investigate mobsters in New York. Pasquale 'Nino' Perrotta helped probe John 'Junior' Gotti in the 1990s, according the online bio posted with his security firm. After a tour in the Bronx District Attorney's office, he landed with the Secret Service's New York Field Office. During a stint in Italy, he 'conducted numerous protective security advances for both the President and Former Presidents of the United States. But he is also described as an implementor of Pruitt's spiraling security costs, which have put the EPA administrator's job in danger. Career EPA official Ron Slotkin told Politico, which profiled Perrotta, that the former agent encouraged the security spending. 'They would object to anything when we said, 'No, you can't do that' or 'That would be wrong,' Slotkin told the publication. 'We'd say, 'It's not a matter of legality, it's ethics, it's the way things look,' he added. President Donald Trump admitted Monday that he made mistakes when he originally put together his Cabinet. Trump said at an event that 'not all of my choices were good' as he complimented two Cabinet secretaries who were traveling with him. The remark at a tax roundtable drew laughter. Trump also joked at the event about firing his newly-appointed National Security Advisor John Bolton, who was also in the room and received a standing ovation after the president lauded him. Trump said he was 'a little jealous' of Bolton's popularity and jokingly told attendees of the Florida roundtable, 'That means the end of this job.' Trump took turns praising his favored advisors at the event, name-checking Secretary of Labor Alexander Acosta and Treasury Secretary Steve Mnuchin first. 'Great choices,' Trump said. 'Not all of my choices were good, but they were great ones.' He didn't say which choices he was referring to. The Home Office was accused of 'systemic incompetence' over the Windrush scandal on Tuesday night after officials admitted destroying thousands of vital documents. The beleaguered department said landing cards that recorded when migrants arrived in Britain had been shredded. The documents could have helped resolve the status of those wrongly threatened with deportation. As the crisis intensified, it emerged that at least 49 callers have already used a helpline set up to try to get the situation under control. The Home Office was accused of 'systemic incompetence' over the Windrush scandal on Tuesday night after officials admitted to destroying thousands of vital documents. Pictured: Theresa May and Jamaican prime minister Andrew Holness However ministers were forced to admit again on Tuesday that they still do not know whether anyone has been kicked out of the country in error. They also had to intervene to halt the removal of the son of a 74-year-old Windrush citizen who was stricken with cancer. And Theresa May issued a grovelling apology to Caribbean leaders. The row has completely overshadowed the Commonwealth summit in London this week. There is growing fury that many of those who came to Britain decades ago as children are now being wrongly identified as illegal immigrants because of a Home Office crackdown. Some have lost their right to work, rent property, receive pensions, access bank accounts or have NHS care. Others have been told they risk detention and deportation. As the scandal widened: Foreign leaders said Mrs May had been unable to tell them how many people had been wrongly deported; Jamaica's PM warned 'hundreds' of Windrush citizens had been affected; Officials began trawling through Home Office files to establish whether anyone had been deported by mistake; A Cabinet minister said: 'It's clear it's been badly handled.' The man given a deportation reprieve was Mozi Haynes, 35, whose mother Ruth Williams, 74, left the Caribbean after the Second World War (pictured together) Under the 1971 Immigration Act, all Commonwealth citizens already living in the UK were given indefinite leave to remain. However, the Home Office did not keep a record of those granted permission to stay or issue any documents confirming it. Many individuals never applied for passports or became naturalised meaning it is now difficult for them to prove they are in the UK legally. Changes to immigration law introduced under Labour in 2006, then toughened by the Coalition in 2014 to weed out visa over-stayers and others made documentation necessary to access services. But it emerged that thousands of landing card slips recording the arrival of migrants, including those of the Windrush generation, were destroyed in 2010. A former Home Office employee told the Guardian the decision was taken despite warnings the cards might prove important in establishing citizenship. The source said: 'Because it was no longer possible to search in the archive of landing cards, people would be sent a standard letter that would state: 'We have searched our records, we can find no trace of you in our files'.' David Lammy, who chairs the all-party parliamentary group on race and community, said: 'This reveals that the problems being faced by the Windrush generation are not down to one-off bureaucratic errors but as a direct result of systemic incompetence, callousness and cruelty.' During talks with West Indian leaders at No 10, Mrs May said she was 'genuinely sorry'. Jamaican prime minister Andrew Holness said Mrs May had been unable to say how many people had been deported. The Home Office said the Border Agency decided to destroy the landing cards on data protection grounds. A spokesman said the slips did not provide any reliable evidence relating to ongoing residence in the UK or immigration status. Asked if Mrs May had been aware of the disposal when she was home secretary, he responded: 'My belief, at this moment, is that it was an operational decision taken by the Border Agency.' Cabinet Office minister David Lidington told Sky News: 'It's clear it's been badly handled. This should not have happened.' The man given a deportation reprieve was Mozi Haynes, 35, whose mother Ruth Williams, 74, left the Caribbean after the Second World War. He applied to regularise his status in 2016 but was rejected, leaving his mother, who lives in Slough, heartbroken. He is here illegally because he was born in the West Indies and had been using a succession of student visas. A mother who kept her teenage daughter as a sex slave, pimping her out more than 1000 times, has been jailed for less than four years. Kasmeer Lata, 36, forced her daughter to sell her body to men in Auckland over an 18-month period beginning on the girl's 15th birthday in 2014. In the High Court on Tuesday Lata was sentenced to six years and 11 months behind bars, with a minimum imprisonment period of just three years and five months. Scroll down for video A mother (pictured) who kept her teenage daughter as a sex slave, pimping her out more than 1000 times, has been jailed for less than four years Lata was earlier found guilty for dealing in slaves and receiving earnings from commercial sexual services from an underage person. She is just the third person to be found guilty of slave dealing in the country's history,The NZ Herald reported. 'Ms Lata has come to the realisation that she may well be the most despised woman in New Zealand, that will be her burden,' defence counsel Karl Trotter said during the sentencing hearing. Justice Matthew Muir said Lata 'effectively pimped her [daughter] out' and said her offending has caused 'long-lasting, if not irreparable damage to her daughter'. Kasmeer Lata (pictured), 36, forced her daughter to sell her body to men in Auckland over an 18-month period beginning on the girl's 15th birthday in 2014 Lata and her children arrived in New Zealand from Fiji in 2014 on visas which later expired. In a bid to keep immigration authorities at bay, the girl was unable to enroll in school and the family soon ran out of money. Shortly afterwards, Lata - who has been a prostitute herself - took up sex work and tried to forced her daughter into the industry while she was aged just 14. The teenage daughter's victim statement: I have to make up lies about four years of my life and why I live on my own without my parents' support. I see men differently now, I think they always want something from me and that is why they are talking to me. I always wanted my mum to be a normal person ... I wonder what I did to deserve my mum? All I wanted was your love as a child, teenager, and your girl. Source: The NZ Herald Advertisement The teen was then sold to her first client, a man in his fifties, on her 15th birthday, and then imprisoned inside a Papatoetoe home for the next year and a half. Now 18-years-old, the victim was also forced to work out of various motels around Auckland, with her mother charging $200 per appointment. Her mother lied about her age in advertisements on Craigslist and The NZ Herald, and arranged for her to be photographed for an online escort agency, New Zealand Girls. Lata made an estimated $100,000 from selling her daughter for sex, keeping about half, and using proceeds to pay rent and bills. The teenager, who has permanent name suppression, became pregnant in mid-2015 and was forced to continue working and have an abortion. Her ordeal continued until she was able to escape in November 2016 and tell police, but still suffers from regular pain and mental health issues as a result of her trauma. Lata's partner, Avneensh Sehgal, pleaded guilty to to dealing in underage people for sexual exploitation and receiving earnings from underage sexual exploitation. Sehgal, who mad the guilty plea just minutes after Lata was sentenced, was due to go on trial next week, but will now be sentenced in May. The president of Uganda has said he wants to ban the nation's citizens from practicing oral sex because 'the mouth is for eating'. President Yoweri Museveni blamed 'outsiders' for trying to convince Ugandans to perform oral sex on one another - and said he was issuing a public 'warning' about it. He told press: 'Let me take this opportunity to warn our people publicly about the wrong practices indulged in and promoted by some of the outsiders. President Yoweri Museveni (pictured) said he wants to ban Ugandans from performing oral sex 'One of them is what they call oral sex. The mouth is for eating, not for sex. 'We know the address of sex, we know where sex is.' Museveni signed the Anti-Homosexuality Act in 2014, making it illegal to be gay in Uganda. Ugandans risk life imprisonment if they are found to be having regular gay sex. The act also made it a criminal offence not to report someone for being gay. In 2014, after introducing the law, Museveni said oral sex could cause worms. 'You push the mouth there, you can come back with worms and they enter your stomach because that is a wrong address,' he said. In January he said he regretted his decision to halt the country's practice of executing criminals. An alleged Islamic State commander who is accused by authorities of conspiring with his Sydney-based brothers to blow up a plane last year has been arrested in Iraq with an alleged Australian IS fighter. Tarek Khayat and his relative Ahmed Merhi were caught earlier in the year after reportedly moving from Syria, according to the ABC. Mr Khayat allegedly hatched a plot with his brothers, Khaled and Mahmoud Khayat, to blow up Etihad Airways flight EY451 from Sydney to Abu Dhabi with 400 passengers and crew members on board last July. Alleged Islamic State commander Tarek Khayat, who is accused of conspiring with his Sydney-based brothers to blow up a plane last year, and his Australian relative Ahmed Merhi (pictured), have been arrested in Iraq Australian authorities have accused the commander of connecting Khaled and Mahmoud to a IS controller to teach them how to make the bombs one in a meat grinder and the other in a Barbie doll. The trio of brothers allegedly planned to sneak the bomb on to the plane by placing it in the carry-on luggage of an unwitting fourth brother who was travelling to Abu Dhabi to visit family, but the plot was foiled when he was told his bag was too heavy. The men were allegedly relying on insider information at Sydney Airport to successfully bring the bombs past security check points. Court documents prepared by a Lebanese military prosecutor claim Mr Khayat helped plan the attack in Raqqa, Syria, as revenge for the death of his two teen sons, who died in the war earlier last year. Mr Khayat allegedly hatched a plot with his brothers, Khaled (pictured) and Mahmoud Khayat, to blow up Etihad Airways flight EY451 from Sydney to Abu Dhabi with 400 passengers and crew members on board last July Khaled and Mahmoud were arrested in Sydney on July 29 and have been charged with two counts of planning a terrorist act Khaled and Mahmoud were arrested in Sydney on July 29 and have been charged with two counts of planning a terrorist act. The pair were seized during police raids at four properties just days after Australian authorities were alerted to the foiled plan by Israel's military intelligence. Members of Ahmed Merhi's family were also arrested during the raids but were later released without charge. It's believed they're related to the Khayat family through marriage. Ahmed, who is in his 20s, moved to Syria from Sydney in 2014 and is allegedly connected to those responsible for the murder of police accountant Curtis Cheng in 2015, according to ABC. Mr Khayat was reportedly a senior IS commander in Tripoli before relocating his wife and five children to Syria in 2014, the publication reported. One week into a stressful new job and a leisurely Sunday pub lunch seemed the perfect way to unwind. There was red wine in my glass and roast beef on my plate. The only problem? I couldnt open my mouth without a searing pain shooting through my jaw. Soon after, the neck aches and stiff shoulders began. Then came migraines. I saw a physiotherapist, took up yoga and adjusted my desk and my posture. But nothing stopped me waking up in pain. It was only during one of my many physio sessions that the penny dropped: Do you grind your teeth? she asked. Emily Masons grinding was so severe she destroyed one tooth entirely and had to endure a root canal treatment According to my boyfriend, who had to contend with me making an awful gnashing noise in my sleep, I did. But could that simple habit really be turning my life into such a headache? It turns out it could. Bruxism the medical term for the involuntary clenching and grinding of the teeth, usually during sleep is soaring. According to the NHS, as many as six million suffer, and the majority are women aged 25 to 44, like me. While it may sound like a minor irritation, it can do an awful lot of damage. The jaw is the strongest muscle in the body. Normal chewing puts between 20lb and 40lb of pressure on your teeth, but grinding or clenching can exert a force equivalent to an astonishing 300lb. Its enough pressure to crack a walnut shell and teeth-grinders can be doing it for as much as 40 minutes of every hour theyre asleep. According to my boyfriend, who had to contend with me making an awful gnashing noise in my sleep, I did. But could that simple habit really be turning my life into such a headache? (pictured: Lara King) No wonder it can take its toll on teeth, wearing them down and causing them to crack, break or become more sensitive. Its also not uncommon for problems to surface in the neck, shoulders and back as the jaw muscles become so tight that pain is referred to other parts of the body. Teeth-grinding can even be behind a range of symptoms as varied as vertigo and hearing loss, by triggering inflammation in the inner-ear muscles. It can ruin your looks, too. If someone grinds a lot you can sometimes see it in their face, because the muscles increase in size from overwork, says Dr Uchenna Okoye, aesthetic dentist and director at London Smiling Dental Group. Its like building up your biceps with weights. You end up with more muscle mass in the face and jaw. The result can be a square face, bulging hamster cheeks or lantern jaw a long, thin jaw with a prominent chin. Dr Shivani Patel, of Elleven Dental in London, tells me theres a strong genetic element (thanks for that, Mum) but that stress is usually the trigger A British Medical Journal study also found that a loss of lower facial height due to teeth wearing down can make you appear as much as 20 years older. With all of that to worry about, its a wonder we ever sleep at all. So what causes teeth-grinding? The experts are agreed: stress. Dr Shivani Patel, of Elleven Dental in London, tells me theres a strong genetic element (thanks for that, Mum) but that stress is usually the trigger. Dr Patels practice has seen cases of bruxism rocket by 30 per cent in five years as our lives become increasingly high-pressured. Most of her patients are women, but Dr Patel has also started treating children as young as 11. She says: When some people are stressed they break out in spots, or get rashes or stomach upsets. Others grind their teeth. If you think a glass of wine before bed will relax you, think again. Not only does alcohol reduce deep sleep, making grinding more likely, but Andrew Eder, a professor at the UCL Eastman Dental Institute, says that acidic drinks such as prosecco and white wine soften enamel so its more easily worn away through grinding. For me, two-and-a-half years after that rather painful lunch, teeth-grinding is a nightly battle that has left me with a fissure in one tooth, a clicky jaw and bouts of neck stiffness, headaches and jaw pain. And while the experts say that a spell of stress is likely to have triggered my grinding in the first place, they also warn that once it starts, it can become habitual. When I visit Dr Patel, she tells me that its left a line of dentine (hard, dense, bony tissue) visible on the edges of my top and bottom teeth showing that Ive worn away the enamel. Enamel cant be replaced, and losing it raises the risk of cavities, decay and infection. I take good care of my teeth and pride myself on having no fillings, so its infuriating that something Im doing when Im sound asleep is damaging them. Still, it seems Im one of the luckier ones. Emily Masons grinding was so severe she destroyed one tooth entirely and had to endure a root canal treatment. Emily, a 37-year-old communications consultant from Wokingham in Berkshire discovered she was grinding her teeth three years ago. I had a lot of pain in what seemed to be every single one of my teeth, she says. My entire mouth was aching constantly. I felt like I was going mad, because I just couldnt get to the bottom of what was causing it. Her husband Chris, 36, hadnt noticed Emily was grinding her teeth, but her dentist eventually spotted the signs. In an attempt to stop it, Emily had three of her molars filed down, as her dentist suggested it would make her bite more even and let all of her teeth take the force of the grinding, rather than just one or two. But it wasnt enough. Things came to a head last year when I had to have a root canal. I had clamped my teeth so hard together on such a regular basis that I had stopped the blood supply to a tooth. I was mortified that Id allowed the situation to get to that point. Emily admits shes a natural worrier, but says: Im not sure what triggered it. I work full-time and have two young sons Archie, seven, and four-year-old Rufus and I dont live near my family, which means the school run, helping at Beaver Scout group and generally being a taxi service all falls to me. But thats nothing out of the ordinary for most mums. In an attempt to break the cycle, she is now having her teeth straightened at a cost of 3,500. My dentist told me many of his patients who have done this notice theyre clenching less, she explains. If the alignment isnt perfect, people may grind and clench their teeth trying to find a comfortable way for the upper and lower teeth to sit together. Her Invisalign braces clear plastic aligners that sit snugly over the teeth will also offer her some protection. They will create a barrier and stop my teeth from hitting one another when I do grind, says Emily. Mouthguards worn at night are most dentists first course of action but they can do more harm than good. Experts warn that the soft plastic variety that can be bought over the counter actually encourage grinding by inducing a chewing response. Dr Okoye recommends patients have a hard splint mouthguard custom-made at a cost of up to 1,000. But even at that price, it wont last for ever. The hardest substance in the human body is enamel, and if thats ground away theres no manmade thing I can replace it with that you wont chomp away at, too, admits Dr Okoye. And while guards shield the teeth from damage, they cant stop the grinding action, so a guard wont necessarily alleviate the other symptoms. In desperation, more and more women are turning to radical treatments including Botox. Tracey Jones, 49, a personal assistant, has spent at least 3,000 over the past five years on chiropractors and physiotherapists to try to relieve agonising pain in her back, neck and shoulders. Two years ago, her dentist diagnosed bruxism and said it was likely shed been grinding for over a decade. He gave Tracey, from Cheshire, a mouthguard, but she says it didnt stop the muscles clenching. Tracey, who is married with two grown-up daughters, is now trying Botox. More commonly used to smooth away wrinkles, the chemical is injected into the skin where it partially paralyses muscles. The theory is that injecting it into the muscles in the jaw reduces their activity. I had the treatment in September, Tracey says. It took just five minutes and the effects last up to six months although it takes ten days to start working. Each session costs 550, but today I estimate that Im 85 per cent better than I was before. Im sleeping through the night without interruption and when I wake up Im no longer in pain. Fortunately it hasnt affected my ability to chew or eat as it affects a different set of muscles. But experts are divided on the safety of Botox for teeth-grinding, pointing to evidence that it may eat away at the jawbone. Our bones constantly regenerate, and rely on impact and muscle movement to produce new bone cells. When the jaw muscles activity is reduced by Botox, it cant push and pull the jaw as powerfully, hampering the process. One study suggests a single treatment could trigger a loss of bone density of as much as 40 per cent, increasing the risk of teeth becoming loose or even falling out. So how can you tell if youre grinding? Professor Eder says to ask your dentist to look for the tell-tale signs: Youll normally see a white horizontal line inside the cheeks, just adjacent to where the teeth meet, in people who are actively grinding. You may also see indentations on either side of the tongue. Eventually, worn teeth can become more sensitive, get sharp at the edges, chip and become shorter. Ultimately, the question remains: How do we stop something that were doing while were asleep? Perhaps part of the answer is not worrying about it too much. Dr Okoye says: We used to try to cure people of teeth-grinding, but we now realise we cant. Its para-sympathetic, meaning its unconscious and involuntary like breathing, or your heart beating. Instead, what we can do is protect the teeth with a mouthguard and give people tools to change their behaviour by learning to manage their stress. These can be as simple as sticking Post-It notes around your house saying relax. Many patients wont realise how tense they are until they see that sign and consciously loosen up. Everyone wants some sexy, difficult treatment. But it really is just a case of stress management and creating an awareness of how important it is to relax. As for me, Ive decided to see if a mouthguard can help put an end to my waking nightmare and to try not to let the daily grind wear me (and my teeth) down any longer. Advertisement The heroic pilot who calmly landed a Southwest Airlines flight after a midair explosion caused a woman to be nearly sucked out of the aircraft, leaving one dead, has been identified. Tammie Jo Shults, a former Navy fighter pilot and one of the first women to fly an F-18, quickly brought the Dallas-bound Southwest Flight 1380 to land at Philadelphia International at 11.30am after the explosion at 32,000ft. National Transport Safety Bureau Chairman Robert Sumwalt confirmed on Tuesday morning that one person died on the flight. She has since been identified as Jennifer Riordan, a mother-of-two from Albuquerque, who was killed after she was nearly drawn out of the window when it smashed in a midair explosion, and had to be pulled back into her seat by other passengers. Despite the crisis on board, Shults was calm as she told Air Traffic Control: 'So we have a part of the aircraft missing.' Tammie Jo Shults (pictured left, and right on the aircraft with the rest of the crew), a former Navy fighter pilot and the first woman to fly an F-18, quickly brought the Dallas-bound Southwest Flight 1380 to land at Philadelphia International at 11.30am after the explosion at 32,000ft. Asked if the plane was on fire, she said: 'No, it's not on fire but part of it's missing. They said there is a hole and someone went out.' She added that 'we have injured passengers' as she requested medical staff to meet them on landing. Passengers say that after landing the plane, the pilot took the time to speak to all those aboard personally. 'Tammie Jo Shults, the pilot came back to speak to each of us personally,' Diana McBride Self wrote. 'This is a true American Hero. A huge thank you for her knowledge, guidance and bravery in a traumatic situation. God bless her and all the crew.' Shults was one of the first female fighter pilots in the US Navy and first to fly an F-18. She later became an instructor, as the Navy did not allow women to fly in combat, and she finally resigned in 1993 when she joined Southwest Airlines. A mother-of-two, originally from New Mexico, Shults now lives with her husband Dean, a fellow pilot, in Fair Oaks Ranch, Texas. 'She has nerves of steel. That lady, I applaud her,' said Alfred Tumlinson, of Corpus Christi, Texas. 'I'm going to send her a Christmas card, I'm going to tell you that, with a gift certificate for getting me on the ground. She was awesome.' Twelve people were injured in the midair explosion, with seven treated at the scene for minor injuries, while the woman who was sucked out the plane, was immediately taken to hospital The Boeing 737-700, which took off from New York's La Guardia Airport for Dallas was traveling at 32,500ft when the engine on the left side of the plane exploded. Passengers said they heard a loud 'boom' and the plane immediately dropped, they said, by what felt like 100ft. Riordan was sitting next to the smashed window was drawn towards it and others next to her held her down for 12 minutes until the plane landed. Investigators examining the damaged engine of Southwest Airlines flight 1380 after it exploded in flight sending shrapnel into the fuselage, breaking a window and causing the plane to make an emergency landing A U.S. NTSB investigator is on scene examining damage to the engine of the Southwest Airlines plane in this image released from Philadelphia, Pennsylvania This was the row of seats where the window was shattered. According to witnesses, passengers had to pull the woman back into the aircraft when she was sucked towards the window and some of her body was drawn through it This is the window which was shattered by a piece of shrapnel from an exploding engine on a Southwest Airlines flight on Tuesday morning. Witnesses said the female passenger sitting next to it was partially sucked out of the aircraft through the whole and had to be held down This was the view from on board the Southwest Airlines flight of the blown-out engine after the plane made an emergency landing at Philadelphia International Airport. A piece of shrapnel from it flew backwards and shattered the window Riordan (pictured with her husband) was rushed to hospital immediately after the flight from New York to Dallas made an emergency landing at Philadelphia International Airport at 11.27am, but authorities confirmed she later died Before the NTSB's announcement that there was one fatality involved, the Philadelphia Fire Commissioner said she was taken to hospital in a critical condition. 'One passenger, a woman, was partially drawn out towards the out of the plane, she was pulled back in by other passengers,' Todd Bauer, the father of another passenger on board, told NBC 10. Terrified passengers shared videos and photos from on board before the plane landed as they descended at 3,000ft per minute until they leveled out at 10,000ft. One passenger filmed himself as he fitted his oxygen mask. 'Something is wrong with our plane! It appears we are going down! 'Emergency landing!! Southwest flight from NYC to Dallas!!' Marty Martinez said as he broadcast live from the plane on Facebook. He paid $8 to connect to WiFi as the plane was going down, he said, in order to say his goodbyes. Passenger Marty Martinez shared photographs and videos of himself on Facebook as the plane made its descent. He and other passengers are shown terrified as they hold their oxygen masks to their faces. He later said there was 'blood everywhere' as a result of the woman's injuries The window that was shattered was behind the engine that exploded. A piece of shrapnel flew backwards and pierced it, depressurizing the cabin and almost sucking the woman in the seat through it He is the passenger who later told CBS the woman's injuries left 'blood everywhere.' There were confused reports from other passengers that someone on board suffered a heart attack. SOUTHWEST AIRLINES STATEMENT We are deeply saddened to confirm that there is one fatality resulting from this accident. The entire Southwest Airlines Family is devastated and extends its deepest, heartfelt sympathy to the Customers, Employees, Family Members, and loved ones affected by this tragic event. We have activated our emergency response team and are deploying every resource to support those affected by this tragedy. Advertisement Martinez added that the plane 'smelled like ash' once the window was open. He said flight attendants rushed over in shock and pleaded with passengers to cover up the hole. The first sign of trouble was a loud noise which happened when the engine exploded. Timothy Bourman, 37, was sitting at the back of the plane when he said he heard a loud 'boom'. 'All the sudden, it felt like we dropped 100 feet. Everybody knew something's going on. 'This is bad, like really bad.' A lot of people started panicking and yelling, just real scared. 'We were kind of out of control for a while. It seemed like the pilot was having a hard time controlling the plane. Honestly I think we just all thought we were going down,' he told Philly.com. Bourman, who was traveling with his wife, said they thought they were about to die until the pilot managed to gain control of the aircraft. 'We're just all really thankful to be alive right now. Thankful to God, thankful to that pilot,' he added. Firefighters rushed onto the aircraft after it made its emergency landing at 11.30am on Tuesday Matt Tranchin was sitting three rows behind the window that smashed. He described the chaos and said even the flight attendants were crying in fear. 'Flight attendants rushed up. There was momentary chaos. Everyone kind of descended on where this hole was. As passengers we weren't sure if they were trying to cover up the hole, but the plane smelled like smoke. Some of the crew couldn't hold back their horror... some were crying as they looked through the open window and onto the engine 'There was ash coming through the ventilation system. We started dropping,' he told ABC News. 'As kind of an indication of how terrifying it was, some of the crew couldn't hold back their horror. 'And some were crying as they looked out through the open window onto the engine,' he added. As the plane made its descent towards Philadelphia, the crew warned passengers to brace for impact. Southwest Airlines has not acknowledged the woman's injuries. In a statement it put out on Twitter, the airline said: 'Southwest Airlines flight 1380, which departed LaGuardia for Dallas Love Field , diverted to PHL because of an operational event. 'The plane landed safely. No slides were deployed.' It has given no further comment on the injured woman or what caused the engine to explode. When the shrapnel pierced the window, it depressurized the cabin and triggered the oxygen masks. Despite the chaos in the air, others said the emergency landing was fairly calm and smooth. One of the plane's engines exploded not long after it had left LaGuardia Airport in New York City on Tuesday morning. The damaged engine is visible above after the plane had landed All of the other passengers on board were evacuated after the injured woman was taken away by paramedics The plane was on its way from LaGuardia Airport in New York City to Dallas when it diverted in the air and turned back on itself to go to Philadelphia. It was flying over western Pennsylvania at around 32,500ft at the time The faulty engine was almost entirely exposed after the plane had landed One passenger told CNN: 'It was a stable landing. We started descending, made the turn back to Philadelphia. 'We were with one engine for maybe 10 minutes. 'We decreased altitude from 8,000 to 5,000 and then when we finally landed it was relatively smooth, kind of a typical landing so the crew and the pilots did a fantastic job.' Passengers were taken from buses to the airport. It is not the first time the malfunction has occurred on a Southwest-operated Boeing 737-700. In August last year, a different flight from New Orleans to Orlando was forced to make an emergency landing at Pensacola Airport in Florida after the casing surrounding one of its engines tore away at a similar altitude. On Tuesday, the airline manufacturer said it was aware of the accident and was prepared to cooperate with investigations. 'Boeing is aware of an incident with Southwest Airlines flight #1380. 'We are gathering more information and stand ready to provide technical assistance,' it tweeted. The engine which exploded is a CFM56 turbofan engine which costs $10million and has a fan diameter of 68 inches. Late Paramount CEO Brad Grey's widow Cassandra was spotted strolling the streets of Los Angeles alongside her girlfriend Samantha Ronson on Monday. The lesbian lovers, who revealed their relationship through social media posts back in February, were seen heading to a casual dinner date together. English DJ Ronson sported a jacket, jeans and beanie while she flashed a mutual smile to Grey, who was seen wearing even simpler attire in pink sweatpants, a gray sweatshirt and overcoat. The pair gazed into each other's eyes during the outing in one of several they have been sighted out on in recent months. Samantha Ronson (left) is spotted out to dinner Monday with rumored girlfriend Cassandra Grey in Los Angeles English DJ Ronson sported a jacket, jeans and beanie while she flashed a smile to Grey, who was seen wearing even simpler attire in pink sweatpants, a gray sweatshirt and overcoat The lesbian lovers revealed their relationship through social media posts back in February The women have been seen out and about together on various occasions in recent months Cassandra, the second wife to producer Brad Grey, took her thoughts and feelings about Ronson to social media. The Violet Grey beauty entrepreneur shared a hot and heavy love message to her Instagram page on Valentine's Day - while posting the same floral bouquet and balloons as her counterpart Ronson. 'This feeling is swallowing whole every word, like my breath I neglect as I hold it in, bite my tongue keep it still, focus on focus on, but I can't,' Grey's post read, as seen in a handwritten note. Late Paramount CEO Brad Grey's widow Cassandra (left) is said to be in a relationship with English DJ Ronson (right) The Violet Grey beauty entrepreneur shared a hot and heavy message to her Instagram page on Valentine's Day 'Happy Valentine's Day from our family to yours!,' Grey posted on Wednesday Ronson also posted the same balloons, writing 'Love is...' to her page 'Still I can't find the ones... the right ones in the noise; in the mess that is love. This is love. 2.14.18,' she added. The entrepreneur's late hubby passed away last May after losing his battle to cancer. His death came just a few months after he stepped down from a longtime role as CEO of the film corporation. The entrepreneur's late hubby, Brad passed away last May after losing his battle to cancer (pair are shown together in January 2017 in Hollywood, California) Just days before his passing, wife Cassandra posted a series of cryptic Instagram posts. She wrote in a black and white picture containing multiple black shirts: 'Mood. Leave me alone.' The makeup mogul later shared a moody selfie with the caption: 'Don't talk to me #nophotos.' She wrote in a black and white picture containing multiple black shirts: 'Mood. Leave me alone' She also posted a selfie with the caption: 'Don't talk to me #nophotos' just days before her husband's death But Grey seems to be in better spirits after finding love again. She was captured on video dancing wildly and looking happy with Ronson while the pair were out grocery shopping earlier this year in California. Ronson is also the former flame to Lindsay Lohan. The pair parted ways back in 2009 after roughly a year of dating. Lohan described the relationship to be 'toxic', however, the pair remained friends for years following. This is the moment a young backpacker's euphoria turned to pure terror as she came centimetres from death when her parachute failed to open during her first skydive. Emma Carey, 25, took the dive she'd always wanted to while in Switzerland in 2013. 'When we jumped out I remember it was the most incredible feeling ... the free fall is so peaceful, you are just so present in the moment,' the Australian told news.com.au. This is the moment a young backpacker came centimetres from death as her parachute failed to open during a skydive in Switzerland Emma Carey (pictured), 25, nearly died in a skydiving accident in Switzerland Ms Carey was in hospital for four months after the accident and has overcome a spinal cord injury. Left: She sticks her thumbs up just moments before making the fateful jump. She wrote: 'So this was taken about 10 seconds before I jumped out of the helicopter... Meaning I'm about 1 minute away from paraplegia' Ms Carey said she was unsure what to expect as it was her first jump. 'I felt us slow down a little bit but the chute wasn't above us where it should be and my instructor wasn't answering me. The closer we got to the ground, I realised something was really wrong.' The chute had gotten tangled and choked her instructor, who passed out. They were hurtling towards the ground with their chute only partially opened. On her website, Ms Carey explained what happened then: 'The next minute, I'm lying face down on the ground with an unconscious man strapped to my back. 'When I went to roll him off me, I had the most brutal and heartbreaking realisation of my entire life. I couldn't move my legs. At all. 'To this day, I have never been able to put the weight of this feeling into words and I honestly I don't think I ever will. 'The next few minutes are the only minutes in my life I genuinely wish I could forget. 'All of the thoughts running through my mind were so completely opposite and surreal to the thoughts I was having just one hour earlier when I was a 20-year-old carefree girl, naively enjoying her holiday.' Last year, she wrote on Instagram that her first panicked thought was: 'Why isn't the parachute above us?' She added: 'Holy s***. I'm about to die. I'm actually going to die. I wonder what being dead feels like.' Ms Carey was in hospital for four months after the accident and had to overcome a spinal cord injury. She also fractured her pelvis and shattered her teeth. She also broke her instructor's fall to a certain extent, who survived despite suffering serious injuries. Now she still suffers from complications from the fall, but she is determined to walk the Wings for Life World Run dedicated for those with spinal injuries. The photograph taken just seconds before she landed on her stomach with her instructor on top of her - and she suffered a broken spike, shattered pelvis and spinal cord crushed Ms Carey will walk the Wings for Life World Run, a run dedicated for those with spinal injuries who can't, on May 6 which she participated in last year in a wheelchair Ms Carey has shared her ordeal through her blog an Instagram. Her most recent post details her fears that while she may be able to walk now, doctors tell her when she is older she may have to use a wheelchair again. She wrote: 'I've had a lot of reports written by doctors, all which say the same thing... I'll be back in a wheelchair when I'm older. 'I'm not saying I believe that, but I'm also very aware of the fact that even if it's not the case, I'm not guaranteed these legs forever. I learnt four years ago, last year and again this year with my injuries, that I have absolutely no idea when I'll be walking and when I won't be. 'I always feel a pang of guilt whenever I talk about this because I know there's people reading this who are in wheelchairs themselves.' While Ms Carey has defied the odds she still has fears that one day she may end up back in a wheelchair Having documented her recovery and journey to walking again late in 2013, she has built up followers all over the world who find her story one of inspiration, hope and defying the odds: She previously told Daily Mail Australia: 'Ever since I first began sharing my story and gaining a following on social media, I made a promise to myself to always be open and honest and always share both the good and bad.' She has also spoken frankly of her recovery, including suffering from chronic pain and constant bladder leakage. The self-confessed adrenaline junkie explained to her followers that her spinal cord injury means she can hold hold around 100ml of liquid. She suffers from 'neurogenic bladder', a little known after effect of her affliction which interrupts communication between the nerves in the spinal cord that control bladder function. 'That's less than half a cup of liquid, so as you can probably imagine this means I am peeing myself literally non-stop,' Emma wrote on Instagram. Karen Ristevski's (pictured) body was discovered in bushland in 2017 The husband of slain Melbourne woman Karen Ristevski is due to face a court hearing charged with murdering his wife. Borce Ristevski is accused of killing his 47-year-old wife on June 29, 2016, the morning she went missing from the couple's Avondale Heights home. Ms Ristevski's remains were discovered in bushland in the Mount Macedon Regional Park almost eight months later in February 2017. Ristevski has been in custody since he was charged with murder in December and he is due to face a mention in the Melbourne Magistrates Court on Wednesday. Borce Ristevski (left with wife) is accused of killing 47-year-old Karen (far left and right) on June 29, 2016, the morning she went missing from the couple's Avondale Heights home Karen Ristevski's body was found wedged between these logs in Mt Macedon, near Melbourne His lawyer previously told the court that Ristevski would plead not guilty. Ristevski has maintained his innocence since the charges were laid. Ristevski was one of the pallbearers at a private funeral service for his wife at Essendon's St John's Uniting Church. A female law professor described a horrifying Uber ride to the airport in Denver during which the driver allegedly locked the doors and pulled the car off the highway after telling her he wanted to 'take her to a hotel.' Nancy Leong, who teaches constitutional law at the University of Denver, posted a thread on Twitter in which she details the harrowing moments in which she was allegedly held captive in an Uber vehicle. 'Hey @Uber your driver was taking me to the airport. He said he was going to 'take me to a hotel' and got off the highway. We got to a stop light. I started yelling "let me out of the fing car" and he wouldn't unlock the doors,' she tweeted. A female law professor described a horrifying Uber ride to the airport in Denver during which the driver allegedly locked the doors and pulled the car off the highway after telling her he wanted to 'take her to a hotel' Nancy Leong, who teaches constitutional law at the University of Denver, posted a thread on Twitter in which she details the harrowing moments in which she was allegedly held captive in an Uber vehicle Leong claims she started pounding on the windows and demanded that the driver let her out The driver finally agreed when he noticed construction workers nearby watching them from the side of the road Leong claims she started pounding on the windows and demanded that the driver let her out. The driver finally agreed when he noticed construction workers nearby watching them from the side of the road. When Leong got out of the car, she says she went to the back of the car to retrieve her luggage, which was in the trunk. When she noticed the trunk was locked and the driver refused to open it, she started pounding on the back window. 'Then he got out of the car and started coming toward me,' she wrote. 'Remember we are at a stop light at the bottom of a highway off ramp. There's nothing around. Thank god there were construction workers there.' Leong says that the car then started to roll toward the center of the intersection, where it nearly collided with another vehicle. After she retrieved her luggage, she hailed another Uber which proceeded to bring her to the airport. Uber responded to Leong on Twitter, writing: 'Hi, Nancy. Our team will be reaching out to you personally. 'We greatly appreciate your patience while we work to resolve this matter. 'Rest assured, we take this matter seriously.' The company has banned the driver from its service, according to the New York Post. 'What Nancy described is awful and unacceptable,' said a company spokesman. 'This driver has been blocked from the app and we are investigating.' The Armed Forces have a shortfall of 8,200 regular troops in the largest gap in a decade, Whitehalls spending watchdog says. The military was so understaffed in critical areas such as intelligence that operations could not be carried out without cancelling leave or training. There was a 26 per cent shortfall in intelligence analysts last year, according to the National Audit Office (NAO) even as the Ministry of Defence tries to bolster its cyber capabilities. The National Audit Office said Britain's armed forces were 'woefully below complement' The report said this was because of increasing demand for analysts and difficulties persuading troops to stay in the military. It comes as alarm grows over cyber attacks from foreign states most notably Russia and the spread of Islamist extremism. Labour MP Meg Hillier, chairman of the Commons public accounts committee, said: In these uncertain times, it is more critical than ever that Britain has a well-staffed Armed Forces with the technical know-how to handle threats to national security. But the NAO report shows that the Armed Forces are woefully below complement, especially in crucial areas like intelligence and engineering. As of January, the full-time military was operating at 5.7 per cent below the target, the NAO said, pointing out that there were much larger shortfalls in critical skills. The watchdog said there were 102 areas that did not have enough trained regulars to carry out operational tasks without cancelling leave or training. Watchdogs have warned the Army has a shortfall of almost 4,500 personnel, file photo According to the NAO, most of these so-called pinch points were in engineering, intelligence, logistics, pilots, communications and medical. As the impact has become more severe over the past year, just six of the 102 are expected to be resolved over the next five years with 23 getting even worse. In critical areas, the Navy has a shortfall of 1,226 personnel, the Army 4,485 and the RAF 2,032. This includes a lack of some 2,400 engineers with the largest among Navy weapons specialists as well as a shortfall of 700 intelligence analysts and the need for 800 pilots. Now hackers target the Army Foreign intelligence services are actively targeting the Ministry of Defence with cyber attacks more than ever before, troops have been warned. Soldiers have been told foreign spies could compromise the military network. Advice in Army barracks in recent weeks said: The MoD and its people are very prominent targets for cyber attackers. Almost every piece of technology you use has vulnerabilities that leave it open to compromise. They were warned hackers could activate cameras and microphones on their devices. The MoD said it constantly reviewed security arrangements. Advertisement The NAO said the increasing risk of cyber and electronic attacks will change the capabilities and skills that the Armed Forces will need in future. The new demands will add to the pressure to increase capability in some trades that already have shortfalls, the report added. The number of regulars leaving the military voluntarily has increased from 3.8 per cent a year in March 2010 to 5.6 per cent last December. The MoD spent more than 664million on these areas in the past five years but Miss Hillier said it needs to take a long, hard look at its current approach. NAO chief Sir Amyas Morse said ensuring the Armed Forces had the right number of skilled personnel was not a new challenge facing the MoD. But he said: Given the complexity and development of new, modern-world threats, it is a challenge that will only continue to grow. The MoD said recruiting and retaining talent was a top priority and there was a range of schemes used to attract and keep skilled personnel, with 13,000 recruits in the past year. The military has enough personnel to meet all its operational requirements, including being active on 25 operations in 30 countries throughout the world, a spokesman said. As it tries to encourage civilians to join the Armed Forces and persuade current troops to stay the military faces competition from a healthy civilian jobs market. In January, an Army recruitment campaign which told soldiers it was okay to cry, be gay and pray was criticised for failing to target traditional potential recruits. The 1.6million campaign, which included new radio, TV and online adverts, tried to address concerns would-be soldiers might have about religion or sexuality. Jean Claude Junker, pictured, was accused of 'parachuting' his chief of staff into a powerful EU position Jean-Claude Juncker has been ordered to re-run the shadowy process which led to his notorious chief of staff appointed as the EUs top bureaucrat. The European Commission president was accused of effectively parachuting Martin Selmayr, whom he calls the monster, into the job. A report by MEPs described the appointment as the EU executives secretary-general, which took only minutes, as a coup that potentially overstretched the limits of the law. Mr Selmayr, 47, a German lawyer, is known for his aggressive approach and has been accused of orchestrating damaging leaks against Theresa May. His sudden appointment in February triggered concerns that the move was a power grab. The fall-out led to an urgent investigation by the European Parliaments budget control committee. On Monday, it passed a resolution questioning the transparency of his appointment. Yesterday MEPs claimed the findings as a victory and accused Mr Juncker of trying to blackmail them by exerting political pressure over the inquiry. Mr Juncker is said to have threatened to quit if his loyal aide is pressured to leave his post. In its resolution, the committee said the application process should be reopened to more candidates. It called on the European Commission to reassess the appointment of the new secretary-general to give other possible candidatesthe possibility to apply. MEPs on the committee said transparency rules needed to be strengthened. MEPs have objected to Martin Selmayr's appointment as the EU's top bureaucrat The furore was triggered after Mr Selmayr was initially appointed as deputy secretary-general on February 21 during a meeting of EU commissioners. Mr Juncker then announced that sitting secretary-general Alexander Italianer was retiring. Despite being deputy for mere minutes, Mr Selmayr was then presented by Mr Juncker to commissioners as the replacement. XX The MEPs resolution said: The two-steps nomination of the secretary-general could be seen as a coup-like action which stretched and possibly even overstretched the limits of the law. Green MEP MEP Sven Giegold said: This is a big blow for the Commission. The Parliament calls to organize all appointments in an open and transparent manner. All the blackmail by Juncker has not stopped the Parliament to adopt a highly critical report and call for tough consequences. Brussels spin doctors have insisted that rules were followed religiously. Mr Selmayr will not immediately receive a boost to his 195,000 salary but he will be in line for a potential boost of 17,000 in the near future. The resolution, passed by 22 to three, will be voted on by all MEPs today. The FBI has extradited a British company director from Morocco over allegations he was running a 25 million Bitcoin scam. Renwick Haddow, 49, could face up to 40 years in federal prison after being charged with two counts of wire fraud. Haddow was arrested in Morocco in July 2017 before his extradition to the US. Renwick Haddow, 49, pictured, is facing 40 years in federal prison having been extradited to the United States from Morocco on suspicion of two counts of wire fraud Federal investigators claim a previous scam involving the businessman had saw UK investors lose 500,000 and saw him banned from being a company director for eight years. According to the 35-page indictment, Haddow 'had been previously disqualified from serving as a company director in the UK and had been sued by a UK regulator for misleading investors in an unrelated investment scheme'. The complaint, which has been filed at the United States District Court Southern District of New York, claimed Haddow was involved in the alleged scam between November 2014 and June 2017. The indictment claims Haddow 'solicited investments in start-up companies he created and controlled' - including Bitcoin store - for buying and selling the virtual currency. He also used a company, Bar Works, which supposedly converted bars and restaurants into 'co-working spaces'. Federal investigators claim Haddow tried to hide his involvement in Bar Works by using an alias 'Jonathan Black'. Investigators also believe he encouraged investors to support another of his companies InCrowd, which supported start-up companies. The FBI had been working along with the Securities and Exchange Commission as well as the UK Financial Conduct Authority. According to the indictment, Haddow first created a company 'In Crowd' as a broker-dealer. He used the funds generated to put into his companies Bitcoin Store and Bar Works. In total, Haddow and his fellow defendants raised more than $37,797,220.94 'from the fraudulent Bitcoin Store and Bar Works offerings'. Some $1.55million of this cash was used to buy real estate property in San Francisco. According to federal court documents, Haddow is a UK citizen who resides in New York and has 'asserted his Fifth Amenment privilege against self incrimination'. Haddow, according to federal investigators, came to the attention of UK authorities in November 2008 when he was disqualified from acting as a director of a company for eight years. His involvement with a company 'Branded Leisuire plc' cost investors 500,000. On December 10, 2008, the UK Insolvency Agency issued a warning about Haddow's conduct claiming he 'caused and / or allowed [Branded Leisure] to make inaccurate and misleading announcements... as to the progress of the company's building work, sales performance of the company, and the financial performance of the company... which caused investors lose 500,000. The UK Financial Conduct Authority announced another probe into Haddow in July 2013 accusing him of operating a 'collective investment scheme'. Federal investigators claim Haddow began operating his new companies in New York after losing several appeals at the High Court in London. A 'distinct human species' could have lived on the island of Sulawesi- the gateway to the vast zone of islands between continental Asia and Australia - 50,000 years ago. A mystical ancient population of Ice Age hunter-gatherers got to the Indonesian island much earlier than previously thought, according to new evidence found in a rock shelter. Previously experts thought modern humans reached the area between 25,000 and 34,000 years ago. However, these strange early inhabitants could be a new species of now-extinct 'archaic human', with a totally different culture from modern humans. Scroll down for video In 1975 artefacts (pictured) recovered at Leang Burung cave were believed to be evidence that modern humans reached Indonesia between 25,000 and 34,000 years ago. Researchers returned to the site to reassess their dates and found they could have been used by people living there 50,000 years ago The island of Sulawesi is generally believed to be a stepping-stone along early human dispersal routes. The limestone rock shelter at Leang Burung 2 in the Maros karsts of Sulawesi has long been significant in our understanding of early human dispersal into 'Wallacea' - the vast zone of oceanic islands between continental Asia and Australia. Artefacts recovered at Leang Burung cave in 1975 were believed to be evidence that modern humans reached the area between 25,000 and 34,000 years ago. In new research at the rock shelter, Australian researchers dug nearly three metres deeper for more ancient materials, according to the paper, published in PLOS ONE. In the newly-excavated lower levels of the deposit, they discovered and dated archaic cobble-based cores and flakes. Analysis of the finds revealed evidence of ancient tools and animals remains left in the cave at least 50,000 years ago, according to the researchers. The rock shelter at Leang Burung 2 (pictured) in the Maros karsts of Sulawesi has long been significant in our understanding of early human dispersal into 'Wallacea' - the vast zone of oceanic islands between continental Asia and Australia 'We have uncovered archaeological evidence for an ancient population of "Ice Age" hunter-gatherers that inhabited Leang Burung 2 rock-shelter around 50,000 years ago', Dr Adam Brumm from Griffith University's Australian Research Centre for Human Evolution said. Dr Brumm said this early 'culture' is distinct from the early modern human foragers who were creating sophisticated cave art in nearby sites by 40,000 years ago. This could suggest 'the first inhabitants of this site may not only have been members of a different culture but also a distinct human species', he added. 'Our findings support recent suggestions - based on work conducted elsewhere in Indonesia - that classic Ice Age sites in the region may harbour deeper and older evidence for occupation', he told MailOnline. A mystical ancient population of 'Ice Age' hunter-gatherers got to the Indonesian island much earlier than previously thought, according to evidence found in a rock shelter. Pictured is excavation at the site The researchers believe Sulawesi could have first been inhabited by an archaic species of human that long preceded the arrival of the Ice Age cave art culture. However, the identity of the earliest human inhabitants of this cave still remains a mystery. 'The island of Sulawesi is located near the edge of the Asian continent, with its ancient population of Homo erectus, and north of Flores, home to the famous Hobbit (Homo floresiensis)', Dr Brumm told MailOnline. 'It is also thought that the so-named "Denisovan" hominins, close relatives of the Neanderthals, were present somewhere in Wallacea and that they interbred with early ancestors of present-day Aboriginal Australian and Melanesian peoples. 'Based on findings in the wider region, therefore, it is possible that the first inhabitants of Leang Burung 2 were a now-extinct group that was later replaced by our species', he said. These new artefacts provide key insights into the history of human occupation across the Indonesian region. These recent excavations do not yet reach the lowest layers of the deposit. Pictured is the area near the site They believe Sulawesi could have first been inhabited by an archaic species of human that long preceded the arrival of the Ice Age cave art culture. However, the identity of the earliest human inhabitants of this cave still remains a mystery These new artefacts provide key insights into the history of human occupation across the Indonesian region. These recent excavations do not yet reach the lowest layers of the deposit. Further exploration at nearby sites may recover even older remains of human occupation, researchers say. In the newly-excavated lower levels of the deposit, researchers discovered and dated archaic cobble-based cores and flakes. Pictured is Sulawesi (stock image) Although it could be another species of human, researchers do not know for sure. Another theory is that the remains belong to modern humans who could have gone via Sulawesi on their was to Australia Although it could be another species of human, researchers do not know for sure. 'It is now known that Homo Sapiens evolved in Africa at least 300,000 years ago and that an early population of our species had spread out of Africa (into Israel) by 200,000 years ago, and possibly even made it much further east', said Dr Brumm. They even could have been the same early modern humans that produced 40,000-year-old cave art found in neighbouring caves. These caves, called Leang Bulu Bettue, were also on the Wallacean island of Sulawesi. Researchers discovered stunning pieces of jewellery and art that date back 30,000 years to the last ice age. Artefacts include beads made from babirusa ('pig deer') tooth, and a pendant made from the bone of a bear that is only found in that area (pictured) Artefacts included beads made from babirusa ('pig deer') tooth, and a pendant made from the bone of a bear that is only found in that area. The findings suggest that the people who lived there at that time adapted their spiritual beliefs based on the animals they met on the journey from Asia to Australia. Dr Brumm said at the time: 'Scientists have long been curious about the cultural lives of the first Homo sapiens to inhabit the lands to the immediate north of Australia sometime prior to 50,000 years ago - part of the great movement of our species out of Africa. Last year researchers found early examples of art and jewellery on Sulawesi. They said they imply that the spiritual beliefs of modern humans may have transformed as they encountered new animals on the journey from Asia to Australia Read The discovery of ornaments manufactured from the bones and teeth of two of Sulawesi's flagship endemics - babirusas and bear cuscuses (pictured) - shows that humans were drawn to these dramatically new faunal species, according to the researchers 'Some have argued that Pleistocene human culture declined in sophistication as Homo sapiens ventured beyond India into the Southeast Asian tropics and the island chains east of continental Eurasia, known as Wallacea. 'However, the onset of new research programs in Wallacea is steadily dismantling this view.' The art is some of the world's oldest, and is a unique assemblage of previously unknown symbolic objects. The researchers also discovered 'portable' art objects, including stones incised with geometric patterns, although the meaning remains unknown. Extensive evidence of rock art production was also found at the site, including discarded ochre pieces, ochre stains on tools, and a bone tube that may have been a 'blow-pipe' for creating hand stencil motifs. As the capabilities of robots and AI continue to grow, many are worried machines will soon take the jobs of millions of workers. But according to electric car firm Tesla, automation has held back production of its latest vehicle. Chief executive Elon Musk said humans are 'underrated' and that he regrets using so many robots to build the Tesla Model 3. The company had struggled to meet production targets for the 25,000 ($35,000) vehicle, hailed as Tesla's first lower-cost, high-volume car, and according to Musk humans rather than machines were the answer. Scroll down for video As the capabilities of robots and AI continue to grow, many are worried machines will soon take the jobs of millions of workers. But according to Tesla CEO Elon Musk, automation has held back production of the firm's latest vehicle 'Excessive automation at Tesla was a mistake. To be precise, my mistake. Humans are underrated,' the 46-year-old wrote on Twitter last week. Asked during a tour of Tesla's California factory whether robots had slowed down, rather than sped up, production, Musk told the US broadcaster CBS: 'Yes, they did ... we had this crazy, complex network of conveyor belts ... and it was not working, so we got rid of that whole thing.' Caught in what Musk has called 'manufacturing hell', Tesla has failed to hit its weekly production target of 2,500 Model 3 vehicles per week in the first quarter of 2018. Current estimations predict the company will fall well short of its 5,000-a-week second quarter target. The deficit has delayed crucial deliveries of the car, which has reportedly been pre-ordered by 500,000 people since it was announced in July 2017. Musk said he was forced to take control of Tesla's production line this month and resorted to working all night to help meet its targets. Musk tweeted that humans are 'underrated' and that he regrets using so many robots to build the Tesla Model 3 Caught in what Musk has called 'manufacturing hell', Tesla has failed to hit its weekly production target of 2,500 Model 3 vehicles (artist's impression) per week in the first quarter of 2018 WHAT IF TESLA MISSES ITS MODEL 3 PRODUCTION GOAL? Tesla's released its new Model 3 electric car in July 2017 with a batch of 30 vehicles sold exclusively to members of staff. The affordable 27,000 ($35,000) five-seat vehicle travels 215 miles (346km) on a single charge and accelerates from zero to 60mph (0-100kmh) in under six seconds. Although the eco-friendly car is one of Tesla's more affordable models, those looking to buy the vehicle may be waiting months before they can get behind the wheel. Tesla had struggled to meet the impressive demand for its vehicle, with a reported 500,000 pre-orders put in so far. Tesla has repeatedly missed production goals for Model 3, meaning those who have put down a 712 ($1,000) deposit for one of the vehicles may still have to wait until the end of 2018 to get their hands on it. Tesla missed its production goal for 2017's third quarter, producing only 260 vehicles compared to an earlier estimate of 1,500. As a result, the company's shares fell 5.4 per cent in after hours trading on November 1. Tesla said it delivered 26,150 vehicles total in the third quarter, a 4.5 per cent rise on the same period of 2016. But the company added that 'production bottlenecks' had left it behind on its planned ramp-up for the Model 3. In November 2017, it said it hoped to achieve a production rate of 5,000 per month by the end of the first quarter of 2018, pushing back what was originally a target for the end of 2017. In June 2018, Elon Musk said it is 'extremely likely' Tesla will hit a weekly Model 3 production rate of 5,000 cars. He added said the electric car maker will soon produce more batteries at its Nevada Gigafactory than all other electric vehicle companies combined, including those in China. Advertisement 'We were able to unlock some of the critical things that were holding us back from reaching 2,000 cars a week,' he said. 'But since then, we've continued to do 2,000 cars a week.' Production woes mean many customers who placed down a 712 ($1,000) deposit for a Model 3 will be waiting until the end of 2018 before they get behind the wheel. In a tweet earlier this month, Musk said he is now sleeping on the company's factory floor, adding that the car business 'is hell'. Musk was hitting back at a recent report from The Information alleging Tesla's struggles to keep up with Model 3 demands had driven the billionaire to take direct control of the division in charge of producing the vehicles. In a tweet earlier this month, Musk said he is now sleeping on the company's factory floor, adding that the car business 'is hell' In his tweet, Musk claimed he had not wrestled oversight of Model 3 production from Tesla Vice President of Engineering Doug Field, adding that changes to the company's hierarchy were an attempt to 'divide and conquer'. Musk wrote: 'My job as CEO is to focus on what's most critical, which is currently Model 3 production. 'Doug, who I regard as one of the world's most talented engineering execs, is focused on vehicle engineering. Tesla shares plunged 5 per cent on Monday as investors awaited production numbers for the closely watched Model 3 (pictured above), which are expected to be released this week 'About a year ago, I asked Doug to manage both engineering & production. He agreed that Tesla needed eng & prod better aligned, so we don't design cars that are crazy hard to build. 'Right now, tho, better to divide & conquer, so I'm back to sleeping at factory. Car biz is hell '. Tesla shares plunged 5 percent on April 2 as investors awaited production numbers for the closely watched Model 3, a cheaper vehicle that analysts see as crucial to the luxury electric automaker's long-term profitability. A deadly crash last month involving Tesla's autopilot technology and concerns about the company's ability to raise new capital also took a toll on stocks. A meteorite that crashed to Earth a decade ago was part of a long lost planet that formed in the early solar system, just a few million years after the birth of the sun. The Almahata Sitta meteorite, which contains microscopic diamonds, come from a mysterious embryonic planet that once circled the sun 4.5 billion years ago, experts say. The celestial body, which was slightly larger than Mercury, was destroyed in an epic cosmic collision. As well as being extremely valuable, the rare diamonds provide scientists with a tantalising window into the formation of planets. Tens of these budding worlds, which were generally between the size of the moon and Mars, smashed into each other to form the rocky planets we see today. Scroll down for video Diamonds found in the Almahata Sitta meteorite (fragment, pictured) come from a mysterious 'proto-planet' that was around 4.5 billion years ago, just a few million years after the birth of the sun As well as being extremely valuable, the tiny diamonds (pictured on the top left, lighter part of this image) provide scientists with a tantalising window into the formation of planets. Tens of these budding worlds crashed into each other to form the rocky planets The Almahitta Sitta is named after the location in Sudan above which the space rock exploded in 2008. Witnesses at the town of Wadi Halfa and at a railway stop in the Nubian desert, known as 'Station Six' or Almahata Sitta in Arabic, reported they had seen a 'rocket-like fireball' in the sky. This extremely rare type of meteorite, known as an ureilite, is one of the main families of meteorites and range from few grams up to few kilograms. The diamonds in the meteorite have tiny crystals inside them that would have required great pressure to form The parent planetary body from which they formed is believed to have been catastrophically disrupted by an impact during the first 10 million years of the solar system. 'There are over 480 meteorites that are classified as ureilites,' lead researcher Dr Farhang Nabiei from the Swiss Federal Institute of Technology in Lausanne, told MailOnline. 'There are many meteorites coming from Mars or the moon. However, this specific proto-planet has been destroyed in the early solar system and that is unique so far.' The Almahitta Sitta - named after the place in Sudan where witnesses saw it explode in the sky. It is an extremely rare type of meteorite (stock image) known as an ureilite that is thought to be a potential remnant of these proto-planets WHAT IS THE ALMAHITTA SITTA? The asteroid - first labelled 2008 TC3 and later named Almahata Sitta after the place in Sudan where witnesses saw it explode above the Earth - was first spotted on October 6 at 3pm GMT. It was just 20 hours away from earthstrike - though with a diameter estimated at just 16 feet it was bound to break up in the atmosphere and posed no threat. The 83-tonne asteroid was tracked travelling at an estimated 27,739mph until it disappeared in to the planet's shadow and then observed as it exploded in a fireball as bright as a full moon. The explosion 23 miles above Sudan at 2.45am GMT on October 7 - exactly where and when scientists had predicted - was seen by the crew of a KLM airliner as flashes over the horizon and was also spotted by various satellites. Witnesses at the town of Wadi Halfa and at a railway stop in the Nubian desert - 'Station Six' or Almahata Sitta in Arabic - reported they had seen a 'rocket-like fireball'. Advertisement 'Planetary formation simulations suggest that they were tens of planetary embryos in the size range between that of moon and that of Mars in the early solar system.' The Swiss led team behind the find used a powerful scanning technique, called transmission electron microscopy. They examined tiny crystals embedded within diamonds in the meteorite, to make the discovery. The study showed the diamonds must have formed at pressures above 20 gigapascals, or 197,385 times the pressure of Earth's atmosphere at sea level. This is equivalent to billions of tonnes of rock pushing down from above, crushing forces so high they must have happened on a Mercury to Mars-sized proto-planet. Pictured is an electron micrograph and compositional maps of diamond inclusions in ureilite. The study, published in the journal Nature Communications, showed the diamonds must have formed at pressures above 20 gigapascals Pictured is the diamond under an electron micrograph. Nearly 50 fragments of the 83 tonne asteroid were collected from the desert in northern Sudan where it fell in October 2008 Dr Nabiei added: 'Planetary formation models show terrestrial planets are formed by the accretion of tens of Moon- to Mars-sized planetary embryos through energetic giant impacts. 'However, relics of these large proto-planets are yet to be found.' Nearly 50 fragments of the 83 tonne asteroid were collected from the desert in northern Sudan where it fell in October 2008. The bus sized lump of rock was first detected by astronomers in the US and made headlines as it was tracked by telescopes around the world. It eventually disintegrated in the atmosphere above the Nubian desert, posing no threat to human life. Researchers studied a section of the Almahata Sitta ureilite where large diamonds were formed at high pressure inside their parent planet. The bus sized lump of rock was first detected by astronomers in the US and made headlines as it was tracked by telescopes around the world. Volunteers from the University of Khartoum line up to search for the meteorite fragments in the Nubian deser It eventually disintegrated in the atmosphere above the Nubian desert, posing no threat to human life. This graphic shows how Almahata Sitta was tracked to its end Pictured is the graphite in red and diamond in blue 'We discovered chromite, phosphate, and sulfide inclusions embedded in the diamond', said Dr Nabiei. 'The composition and morphology of the inclusions can only be explained if the formation pressure was higher than 20 gigapascals. 'Such pressures suggest that the ureilite parent body was a Mercury- to Mars-sized planetary embryo.' The researchers said these types of meteorites are the last remaining remnants of this lost planet. An extensive ground search turned up 47 meteorite fragments for analysis. The historic event - the first time such an object has been followed in this way - will boost our chances of avoiding a future catastrophe like the asteroid strike that wiped out the dinosaurs. Almahitta Sitta was travelling at an estimated 27,739mph (44,642kph) until it disappeared in to the planet's shadow and was then observed as it exploded in a fireball as bright as a full moon. Dr Nabiei said: 'Although this is the first compelling evidence for such a large body that has since disappeared, their existence in the early solar system has been predicted by planetary formation models. 'This study provides convincing evidence the ureilite parent body was one such large 'lost' planet before it was destroyed by collisions.' The full findings were published in the journal Nature Communications. Users of an Ikea-owned app are being warned to change their passwords after a 'cybersecurity incident breached its security. TaskRabbit, which lets users hire people to help them move, clean up the house or assemble furniture, was the target of a suspected hack. The breach in the software, which has now been taken offline, could mean that usernames, passwords and other details are now in the hands of criminals. Customers of the Uber-style service have been advised to amend their login details on other websites if they match their TaskRabbit account. Scroll down for video Users of an Ikea-owned app are being warned to change their passwords, after a hack attack breached its security. TaskRabbit, which lets users hire people to help them move, clean up the house or assemble furniture, was the target of the 'cybersecurity incident' (stock image) The software firm, based in San Francisco, says it is working with a specialist computer security firm and law enforcement to determine what happened. This suggests that data has been breached, although its not exactly clear what. In the meantime, the app and website have been taken offline while their team investigates further. 'TaskRabbit is currently investigating a cybersecurity incident,' said a company spokesman in a written statement on the firm's website. 'We understand how important your personal information is and are working with an outside cybersecurity firm and law enforcement to determine the specifics. 'The app and the website are offline while our team works on this.' As the app is offline, affected users can't currently change their passwords for the site. Once it is back up, they will be able to change them and TaskRabbit has said it will update affected individuals as more information becomes available. The breach in the software, which has now been taken offline, could mean that usernames, passwords and other details are now in the hands of criminals. Users of Uber-style service are advised to amend their login details on other websites if they match their TaskRabbit account The firm has also advised its users to alter their passwords on other sites, which suggests that email addresses and security phrases may be affected. Any users who missed out on scheduled tasks will be compensated, it says. A spokesman added: 'We will be back in contact with you with more information once we have it. 'As an immediate precaution, if you used the same password on other sites or apps as you did for TaskRabbit, we recommend you change those now. HOW CAN YOU PROTECT YOUR INFORMATION ONLINE? Because hackers are becoming more creative, security experts are warning that consumers need to take all possible measures to protect their identities (file photo) Make your authentication process two-pronged whenever possible . You should choose this option on websites that offer it because when an identity-specific action is required on top of entering your password and username, it becomes significantly harder for fraudsters to access your information. Secure your phone . Avoiding public Wifi and installing a screen lock are simple steps that can hinder hackers. Some fraudsters have begun to immediately discount secure phones altogether. Installing anti-malware can also be beneficial. Subscribe to alerts . A number of institutions that provide financial services, credit card issuers included, offer customers the chance to be notified when they detect suspicious activity. Turn those notifications on to stay informed about credit card activity linked to your account. Be careful when issuing transactions online . Again, some institutions offer notifications to help with this, which will alert you when your card is used online. It might also be helpful to institute limits on amounts that can be spent with your card online. Advertisement 'Thank you for your patience while we investigate the issue and for being such an important part of our community.' In September 2017, it emerged Ikea was making moves so its customers no longer had to assemble sofas or bookcase themselves. The furniture seller announced that it was buying on-demand services platform TaskRabbit. Much of Ikea's furniture requires customers to screw together table legs, bedframes and dining room chairs. Ikea said it tested TaskRabbit in its stores in London in 2016. Before the TaskRabbit deal, certain Ikea stores already provided some independent workers to assemble goods. The Twitter website and app went down in a shock outage this afternoon, according to reports from around the world. Users attempting to access the platform were shown an error message that read 'something is technically wrong'. Since Twitter's services returned to normal, users have posted a series of hilarious tweets, with one writing: 'I actually [sic] got work done. Never been so scared in my life.' Issues began around since 3:00pm BST (11:00am ET) but just over half an hour later all services were restored. Scroll down for video Users across the UK, especially over London and the South East, were affected by the outage. US Twitter users, mainly on the Eastern Seaboard around New York, are also suffering without the service Since Twitter's services returned to normal, users have posted a series of hilarious tweets, with one writing: 'I actual [sic] got work done. Never been so scared in my life' More than 5,000 people reported issues with the service to the site DownDetector, which tracks internet service outages, with problems mostly affecting users in the UK, Japan and the US east coast. The error message read: 'Something is technically wrong. Thanks for noticing we're going to fix it up and have things back to normal soon.' Data on the outage suggested a range of different devices were affected, including the Android app, the desktop website, and the Apple iPad app. Strangely Twitter's official website TweetDeck, which allows users to control several accounts at once, ran normally throughout the outage. In response to the issues, Twitter released a statement via its official account, but stopped short of revealing what triggered the problems. The statement read: 'Some users may have experienced problems sending and viewing Tweets earlier today. This issue is now resolved.' The vicious circle associated with Twitter going down meant people were not satisfied until they could moan about Twitter going down , on Twitter After going back live, the site has exploded with a series of hilarious responses to the half-hour outage Twitter was filled with an influx of ironic and humorous comments following the outage, with one claiming his child had reached the age of seven, unbeknown to him Now that Twitter's app and website are pack up, users have flooded back to the platform to bemoan the outage. @Kolology wrote: 'Twitter was down for an hour. It was awful. I got actual work done. Never been so scared in my life.' One user tweeted: '#TwitterDown WE'RE BACK TO THE STONE AGE!' as frequent users of the site struggled to load any posts. Another remarked that without the site, he was able to check on his children. Twitter user@DadInTheRaw said: 'I took advantage to check up on my children. To my surprise my oldest is now 7!! Where did the time ago?' Without Twitter, some people believe that the world went 'back to the stone age' as the ever-reliable social media site crashed in various locations around the world Twitter users were greeted with a message telling them that the app is down and 'Something is technically wrong' Data on the outage suggested a range of different devices were affected, including the Android app, iPhone app (pictured), the desktop website, and the Apple iPad app Users took to various social media sites to complain about the outage. More than 5,000 people reported issues with the service to the site DownDetector, which tracks internet outages When Twitter goes down for for more than 10 seconds pic.twitter.com/UMqRrfQ8JE Conor the Mick (@TheNJMick) April 17, 2018 Since the website and app have returned to full function users have taken to the social media site to joke about their experiences As well as the UK and the US, hundreds of reports flooded in of Twitter being down in Japan With the site that most people go to in order to complain down, users used photo-sharing app Instagram to bemoan the Twitter outage The service experienced similar issues last May when the website's search function and hashtag features went down for almost six hours. Problems started at around 6.18am BST (1.18am ET) but most were sorted by around 1pm BST (8am ET). Some reported that the website and app went out completely, while those who could access the services posted about their frustrations. Without an explanation as to what caused the Twitter downfall, users were left to speculate as to the cause of the crash on Facebook Reddit users posted and discussed the outage of one of the world's most popular social media sites, Twitter Confusion reigned as Twitter users struggled to load the app, as unknown issues plague the social media platform Get out your telescopes because it's just about time to celebrate Astronomy Day! The biannual awareness day is meant for celestial experts and novices alike to interact and enjoy the wonders of our vast universe. You can celebrate at home on your own or head out to an astronomical society, planetarium or museum for an event organized to celebrate the day. Astronomy Day has been observed biennially since 1973 when Doug Berger founded it as a way to get people more interested in the natural science Are you crazy about the cosmos? Here's what you need to know about Astronomy Day 2018. What is Astronomy Day? Astronomy Day is an awareness date observed the world over. It occurs twice a year once in the spring and again in the fall. The date is determined by the first quarter moon of each respective season. Astronomy Day was started by Doug Berger in 1973. At the time, he was the Astronomical Association of Northern California president. He intended to set up telescopes in busy locations so that passersby might stop to take a look and appreciate the views. In the years since, Astronomy Day has expended and is more widely observed. When is Astronomy Day 2018? Astronomy Day is observed biannually. The first occurrence of it will come on April 21, 2018. The second will happen on October 13, 2018. Astronomy Day events near me There are dozens of Astronomy Day events occurring around the United States. They range from parties at local observatories to gatherings around high-powered telescopes. City of Wildomar Astronomy Night Astronomy enthusiasts in Wildomar, California, are invited to enjoy presentations on basic principals of astronomy, raffles, and other fun happenings at Marna O'Brien Park. The event is sponsored by a local astronomy club. National Astronomy Day at miSci New Yorkers can celebrate Astronomy Day with an event at the Museum of Innovation and Science (miSci) in Schenectady, New York. The event kicks off at 11am ET with a meteorite show and tell, and continues with family-friendly fun all day. From 8pm ET to 9pm ET attendees can enjoy a night sky observation hosted by the Rising Star Interns. The event costs $10.50 for adults, $7.50 for kids between the ages of three and 12 and $9 for people aged 65 or older. It's free for museum members. City Wide Star Party Wannabe astronomers in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania, can gather in various locations for a stargazing party organized by local astronomy clubs and Franklin Institute volunteers. For locations, times and other information, click here. Interstellar Saturday Interstellar Saturday in Macon, Georgia, will kick off at 1pm ET with a telescope clinic and continue until 4:45pm ET. Other events include planetarium presentations at 2pm ET and 4pm ET. More information here. Don't see your city listed? Find a full list of Astronomy Day events here. What is astronomy? Astronomy is a natural science that studies celestial occurrences, space and the universe. NASA astronomy picture of the day NASA's astronomy picture of the day can be found here. It changes daily, as suggested in the title. You'll find an explanation for each photo at the bottom as well as information about the following day's image. China is in the midst of a 'toilet revolution'. The effort, which began in 2015 and is spearheaded by President Xi Jinping, brings a slew of cutting edge technologies to public restrooms across the country, including turbo toilets, Wi-Fi, television screens and ATMs. In some cases, bathrooms are even being outfitted with facial recognition systems to prevent greedy patrons from nabbing extra toilet paper. Scroll down for video President Xi Jinping is spearheading an effort to bring a slew of technologies to public restrooms across the country, including turbo toilets, Wi-Fi, television screens and ATMs Two cities in China have installed the technology, which gives a person between 40cm and 80cm of toilet paper after they scan their face, according to the South Morning China Post. If a user needs more toilet paper than the allotted amount, they have to wait as long as nine minutes. The idea is that it will prevent people from taking too much paper and stop others from stealing free supplies like soap, toilet paper and paper towels. Many restrooms no longer provide toilet paper because of rampant theft. Facial recognition systems were placed in Changsha in China's Hunan province, as well as in southwest China's Chongqing, where users scan a code on a machine with their phone to receive toilet paper. President Xi Jinping has said he plans to install the devices in rural villages and urban areas, after initially rolling them out at tourist areas, the South China Morning Post noted. The 'toilet revolution' began in 2015 and has since expanded to bring facial recognition technology to bathrooms. The systems will dispense a set amount of toilet paper to people Facial recognition systems were placed in Changsha, as well as Chongqing, where users scan a code on a machine with their phone to receive toilet paper (pictured) 'Toilet issues are not petty matters but an important aspect of improving infrastructure in urban and rural areas,' Jinping said. Other technologies are meant to improve the quality and efficiency of public restrooms. Some stalls are equipped with sensors that alert bathroom attendants if someone has been inside for more than 10 minutes, as well as a button that can be pushed in case in of an emergency. The bathrooms also offer some conveniences, such as free Wi-Fi, phone chargers, vending machines and systems that allow users to pay utility bills. In Fangshan, a new public facility named 'The Fifth Space,' has turbo-flushing powers in the toilets, along with wireless internet and TV screens in the stalls. The windows are lined with aloe vera plants, and a cello soundtrack plays in the background The bathrooms also offer some conveniences, such as free Wi-Fi, phone chargers, vending machines and systems that allow users to pay utility bills Many stalls and urinals are also outfitted with television screens. As of last year, over 68,000 public toilets had been refurbished, which is 20% higher than the country had hoped, the South China Morning Post explained. For many years, China has suffered from sanitary issues in its public bathrooms. In poorer communities, 14 million people must defecate in the open. Old public toilets in China were quite crude, featuring a row of pits or a communal trench with no doors or privacy and without soap or toilet paper, the South China Morning Post said. Many worried that it would begin to affect the nation's robust tourism industry. As of last year, over 68,000 public toilets had been refurbished, which is 20% higher than the country had hoped. The updated restrooms are expected to come to rural and urban areas HOW DOES FACIAL RECOGNITION TECHNOLOGY WORK? Facial recognition is increasingly used as way to access your money and your devices. When it comes to policing, it could soon mean the difference between freedom and imprisonment. Faces can be scanned at a distance, generating a code as unique as your fingerprints. This is created by measuring the distance between various points, like the width of a person's nose, distance between the eyes and length of the jawline. Facial recognition systems check more than 80 points of comparison, known as 'nodal points', combining them to build a person's faceprint. These faceprints can then be used to search through a database, matching a suspect to known offenders. Facial recognition is increasingly used as way to access your money and your devices. When it comes to policing, it could soon mean the difference between freedom and imprisonment (stock) Facial scanning systems used on personal electronic devices function slightly differently, and vary from gadget to gadget. The iPhone X, for example, uses Face ID via a 7MP front-facing camera on the handset which has multiple components. One of these is a Dot Projector that projects more than 30,000 invisible dots onto your face to map its structure. The dot map is then read by an infrared camera and the structure of your face is relayed to the A11 Bionic chip in the iPhone X, where it is turned into a mathematical model. The A11 chip then compares your facial structure to the facial scan stored in the iPhone X during the setup process. Security cameras use artificial intelligence powered systems that can scan for faces, re-orient, skew and stretch them, before converting them to black-and-white to make facial features easier for computer algorithms to recognise. Error rates with facial recognition can be as low as 0.8 per cent. While this sounds low, in the real world that means eight in every 1,000 scans could falsely identify an innocent party.. One such case, reported in The Intercept, details how Steven Talley was falsely matched to security footage of a bank robber. Advertisement So far, residents seem to be divided over whether or not they approve of the renovations. The facial recognition systems, which cost about $720 each, angered some who said it didn't dispense enough toilet paper in each portion. 'It's just a toilet,' Lei Junying, a 74-year-old retired farmer, told the New York Times when the 'toilet revolution' first began. 'Why do they have to make it such a nice one?' 'The government puts out its hands and asks people to pay taxes. Why don't they donate that money to poor neighbourhoods instead?' The foundations of a typical Lisbon breakfast are pastries and pingado, the latter a coffee made by adding a shot of milk to an espresso. While this combo is served in bakeries and cafes all over the city, its not the only option as far as the first meal of the day is concerned. How about a bowl of ice cream-topped cereal or Lisbons take on the full English instead? Here are a few of the top places to break the fast. A view of Lisbon in the daytime Pop Cereal Cafe More than 100 different boxes of cereal are stacked on the shelves of Pop Cereal Cafe. Youll find everything from British Kelloggs Rice Krispies to American Captain Crunch on offer. Dont worry if you cant decide. You can order a mixed bowl and tuck into it as you take in the pop art murals and posters that cover the counter and walls. If youre feeling really indulgent, order your bowl with a blob of ice cream or a serving of cookies on top. Bus: Largo Trindade Coelho Open daily 09002400 There's more than 100 different boxes of cereal are stacked on the shelves of Pop Cereal Cafe . Pastelaria Versailles If you want to make an occasion out of breakfast, head to Pastelaria Versailles. Outside its all gilding, columns and balustrades and inside, waiters wear bow ties and waistcoats, and crockery is adorned with insignias. In terms of breakfast options, theres a runway long counter filled with freshly made pastries. You dont have to have a sweet tooth to eat here, though, as the cafe also serves things like cod croquettes in the mornings. Metro: Saldanha Open daily 07302345 A traditional Portuguese meal Brunch Cafe Youll get as close as youll come to a full English at Brunch Cafe in Lisbon. The brunch menu, which is served all day, includes a hot option with fried eggs, bacon, mushrooms, baked beans and Spanish sausages. But this fry-up isnt all thats on offer. The menu includes everything from pancakes and bagels to a brunch ice-cream sundae. Metro: Terreiro do Paco Open daily 09001700 Quase Cafe Theres an element of the eccentric about the dinky Quase Cafe, with its vintage stand-up hair salon hairdryer and empty antique bird cages. The menu, however, is much less quirky. You can count on smoothies of the day served alongside a croissant and coffee, or full continental-style brunches with meats, cheeses, breads, granola and yoghurt. Bus: Sao Tome Many restaurants and cafes in Lisbon have great views of the city Open MondaySaturday 09301830 Tease If you suddenly have the urge to eat your breakfast on a red lip-shaped sofa in the light of five vintage chandeliers, then Tease is the one. This kooky old-town cafe is great for the sweet-toothed, with its menu of croissants, waffles, fruit salads and fruity muffins, but there are also options like salmon sandwiches. If youve had a great time here, pop a tip in the bright yellow pineapple tip jar on your way out. Metro: Praca das Flores Open daily 09002100 There are so many cuisines to choose from in Lisbon Brooklyn As the name suggests Brooklyn takes its inspiration from America. Step inside and youll find American number plates and American maps on the walls alongside posters and photos of famous American stars. The breakfast menu isnt limited to USA-style food, though, Yes, you can tuck into the likes of eggs served sunny side up and NYC-style bagels, but you can also order continental platters and croissants. If youve got a sweet tooth, chase your breakfast up with a slice of the raved-about Brooklyn Blackout chocolate cake. Bus: Av da Liberdade Open MondaySaturday 09002100 Brooklyn embodies everything American in the best way Sama Sama Sama Sama means same same, and it refers to the phrase same same, but different. This little crepe and juice bar certainly does things its own way. The menu is completely vegan and vegetarian and breakfasts include crepes with guacamole, mixed nuts and kale, or sweet things such as crepes with bananas and peanut butter. The juices are freshly blended and served in jam jars. Bus: Corpo Santo Open TuesdaySunday 09001800 Traditional Portuguese pastry Pasteis de Belem The ultimate do-as-the-locals-do experience in Lisbon is to have a traditional pastel de nata, or egg tart, for breakfast. Pasteis de Belem, not far from the Belem Tower, claims that its tarts are made to an original secret recipe developed by monks from the nearby Mosteiro dos Jeronimos in the early 19th century. Of course, you dont have to have pastel de nata for breakfast when you visit here. The sit-down menu is almost the size of the national flag and it features line after line of cake and pastries. Metro: Mosteiro dos Jeronimos Open daily 08002300 The Scottish National Portrait Gallery is where you can gaze upon the faces of Scottish heroes and heroines through history, as well as portraits from around the world. The building itself is worth the visit alone. To make the most of your visit, heres our guide to exploring this fascinating gallery. An insider's guide of everything you need to know before you go... Face to face with the history of art The Scottish National Portrait Gallery is a majestic sandstone neo-gothic building on Queen Street. It was the first purpose-built portrait gallery in the world when it opened in the late 19th century, and its collection of paintings, murals, friezes and photographs tells the story of Scotland through the faces of the artists, sportspeople, scientists, engineers and other historical figures. A highlight of any visit to the Scottish National Portrait Gallery is to spend some time in the magnificent Great Hall, where the frieze beneath the first floor balcony depicts famous people from Scottish history, including Mary Queen of Scots and Robert Burns. Getting there and in The Scottish National Gallery is located on The Mound, right in the heart of Edinburgh, close to Waverley station and between the Old and New Towns of the city. On foot it is a short walk from the station, Edinburgh Castle and the Royal Mile, and if you are coming to the gallery by tram from elsewhere in the city, the closest stop is Princes Street. The Scottish National Gallery is open daily 10001700 and on Thursday 10001900. Admission is free, with a charge for some events and special exhibitions. Exploring the Scottish National Portrait Gallery Weekday mornings are the quietest time to visit the Scottish National Portrait Gallery, while peak times tend to be in the early afternoon and on weekends. Once youve admired the friezes in the Great Hall there are a plenty of other must-see artworks. Seek out the portrait of Robert Burns by Alexander Nasmyth, Sir Walter Scott by Sir Henry Raeburn and the striking painting of Dir Winifred Rushforth, a celebrated psychoanalyst, by Victoria Crowe. As well as paintings, there are some fine examples of photographic art and portraiture in the gallery, including New Newhaven fishwives by David Octavius Hill and Robert Adamson, and photographs of Glasgow life by Thomas Annan. Special exhibitions and events As well as the permanent collection, both the Scottish National Gallery and the Royal Scottish Academy host special exhibitions. Unlike the main collections, these shows often have an admission cost. Check the National Galleries website for whats on now and whats coming up. Past exhibitions have included Inspiring Impressionism: Daubigny, Monet, Van Gogh, The Young Vermeer and Van Gogh to Kandinsky: Symbolist Landscape in Europe 1880-1910. All the Scottish National Galleries also host regular events, from talks and special tours to art workshops and childrens events. You can see whats coming up on the events page of the website. There are always events on so check the gallery's website ahead of your visit Cafe Portrait and shop When you want a break from all that art, stop at the Portrait Cafe for a snack, a meal or a decadent afternoon tea. Theres a menu of soups, salads, main dishes, cakes and more, using locally sourced, organic and seasonal ingredients. The gallery also has a shop, with prints and postcards, books and stationery, local crafts and design and other fine souvenirs of your visit to Edinburgh and the gallery itself. The Cafe Portrait is open daily, 10001630 and Thursday, 10001800. More national galleries to explore The Portrait Gallery is one of the three national galleries of Scotland in Edinburgh, and theyre all worth a visit. The Scottish National Gallery houses a fine collection of Scottish and international masterpieces from the Renaissance to the early 20th century, including paintings by Van Gogh, Vermeer, Rembrandt and Turner. To the north of the city centre is the Scottish National Gallery of Modern Art, which takes up the art history baton with a collection of 20th century works, featuring Monet and Matisse, a Dada and Surrealist collection and an open-air sculpture park. Admission to all the galleries is free, although there can be a charge for special exhibitions. If you want to do more than one of them in a day theres the handy donation-based Gallery Bus that runs between them every hour. Advertisement Ever been to the 'District of Wild Plums' or the 'River of January'? It turns out that you have if you've visited Bangkok or Rio de Janeiro, because the aforementioned descriptions are the literal translations of the modern-day names, as revealed in a series of fascinating maps. They show the original names of cities around the globe, revealing hidden meanings and historic references. A map of Europe, showing the literal translation of some of the major cities including Lisbon, which means 'safe harbour' and Bucharest, which translates as 'city of joy' The literal translations for major cities in Asia, including Bangkok, which means 'district of wild plums' and Seoul, which simply translates as 'capital' The new set of maps show how early settlers to these places decided to leave their mark. Some of the original names are fairly obvious. For example Los Angeles translates to 'angels' and Bridgetown, Barbados, means 'bridge of the town.' The map, which has been compiled by On The Go Tours, also breaks cities down into different categories, depending on the translation, which includes people, nature, feelings and animals. In North America, the translation of Los Angeles is obvious, while Bridgetown in Barbados literally means 'town of the bridge' Some of the more bizarre translations in South America are Rio de Janeiro, meaning 'River of January' and Bogota, which means 'enclosure outside of the farmlands' It shows that nature seemed to have inspired early settlers the most with 67 cities named after things in the natural world. Among them is Berlin, which literally translates as 'swamp', while Reykjavik, Iceland, means 'smoky bay.' The next most popular theme is 'man made' with 50 cities falling into this category. A map showing the literal translations of cities in Africa including Bloemfontein - 'Fountain of Flowers' and Bamaoko - 'Crocodile River' As the map of Oceania shows, Australian capital Canberra means 'Meeting Place' while Lautoka in Fiji translates as 'Bull's Eye' This includes Lisbon, in Portugal, which means 'safe harbour', Kuwait City, which translate as 'fortress by the sea' and Australian capital Canberra, which means 'meeting place'. There are only 11 places on the map that are named after animals, which include Bern, Switzerland, which translates as 'bear' while Kampala, Uganda, means 'gazelle'. The remaining cities are named after people (29 cities), feelings (17 cities) and other things (16 cities). On The Go Tours said: 'There are around 7,106 living languages currently spoken in the world today, so its no wonder that words get jumbled up and sometimes even a little lost in translation.' Advertisement Theres no doubt that its a luxury apartment but for many, the decor might be hard to stomach. A 2,000-a-night luxury London rental is adorned with huge murals of dictators Joseph Stalin and Mao Zedong, who between them were responsible for the deaths of up to 60million people. The five-bed property is listed as Brompton Square V on Booking.com and comes with all the mod cons, as well as the controversial interior design features. A 2,000-a-night luxury London rental is adorned with huge murals of dictators Joseph Stalin and Mao Zedong, who between them were responsible for the deaths of up to 60million people The five-bed property is listed as Brompton Square V on Booking.com and comes with all the mod cons, as well as the controversial interior design features Booking.com says: The kitchen is fitted with a dishwasher, an oven and a microwave, as well as a coffee machine and a kettle. A TV is available. Harrods is 400 yards from Brompton Square V, and South Kensington Metro Station is 650 yards away. London City Airport is 9 miles from the property. This is our guests' favorite part of London, according to independent reviews. In this area you can shop 'til you drop for popular brands like Gucci, Ralph Lauren, Burberry. A painting featuring tyrant Joseph Stalin adorns the walls of the striking dining room There are 22 images in the booking.com gallery for the property, which reveal that the owners have a bold sense of style. There are two giant murals of Chairman Mao, a painting of Karl Marx, Lenin and Stalin and a standalone painting of Lenin in a very swish kitchen. Other features include a stuffed zebra head, a room whose walls and ceiling are formed from blackboards and a claw-foot bathtub. There are 22 images in the booking.com gallery for the property, which reveal that the owners have a bold sense of style A painting of revolutionary leader and political theorist Vladimir Lenin can be found in the very swish kitchen Nearby attractions include the Victoria & Albert Museum, Harrods, the Science Museum and the Natural History Museum According to Booking.com, the propert, which is listed as an 'alternative stay', has been available to rent since March 2 this year and is ideally suited for two travellers. Nearby attractions include the Victoria & Albert Museum, Harrods, the Science Museum and the Natural History Museum. The property has not had enough reviews for a review score yet, according to Booking.com. Chairman Mao was known to have dissenters tortured and led China into a famine between 1958 and 1962 that killed up to 40million. Joseph Stalin, meanwhile, who ruled the Soviet Union between 1922 and 1953, was responsible for the deaths of up to 20-25million, many of whom died through executions and in labour camps. She is tipped for stardom when she appears in the upcoming Amazon remake Picnic At Hanging Rock opposite Natalie Dormer. And Madeleine Madden looked every inch the leading lady as she dazzled in a chic autumnal-themed photoshoot for JONES magazine, ahead of the show's debut. The up-and-coming actress, 21, exuded elegance as she posed in a fur-trim aviator jacket before slipping into a stylish white trench coat. 'Rejection is something you learn along the way': Picnic At Hanging Rock star Madeleine Madden discusses past disappointments as she dazzles in autumnal-themed photoshoot Nailing the cosy layered look, the Indigenous Australian activist also rocked a pale pink frill hem midi dress. She injected a dose of androgyny to the look with some chunky socks and heavy-duty lace-up boots as well as a long-line wool cardigan. Styling her raven tresses in romantic tendrils, the rising star framed her striking features with minimal make-up in the shoot for the David Jones fashion quarterly. Madeleine is the granddaughter of indigenous activist Charles Perkins, daughter of art curator Hetti Perkins and niece of filmmaker Rachel Perkins. Explaining her rising status, she told the magazine that her diverse background helped her to deal with setbacks in the acting industry. '[The rejection] is something you learn along the way,' she said. Famous roots: Madeleine is the granddaughter of indigenous activist Charles Perkins, daughter of art curator Hetti Perkins and niece of filmmaker Rachel Perkins 'But my family are all in the arts, so they understand the competitive nature of it, the big wins and big losses. But it is really important in this industry to have good people in your life.' She burst onto the scene at 13 as the face of Kevin Rudd's Generation One campaign, promoting positive perceptions of indigenous Australians. She has gone on to star in several dramas, and is set to hit the big time with period drama Picnic at Hanging Rock, which has been picked up by Amazon. Madden recently revealed the challenges of filming the six-part series, admitting she came out with 'bruises and welts' from the restrictive costumes. Privileged: She said: 'But my family are all in the arts, so they understand the competitive nature of it, the big wins and big losses' She's proud of her involvement in the six-part series but says filming a period drama wasn't without its challenges. 'I had to wear a corset for 14 hours on set. I came out with bruises and welts. I was very restricted and couldn't move much,' she told the Weekly Review. 'It was incredible to see how the period costumes transformed us back to that time and place. 'But I loved being part of a film told through a feminist gaze. For me it's a triumph knowing I've been involved in something so powerful.' Married At First Sight's Nasser Sultan has vehemently denied 'staging' paparazzi photos with Sydney's most notorious celebrity snapper. Taking to Instagram on Monday, Jayden Seyfarth shared a pair of screenshots of what appeared to be a recent text message exchange with Nasser. In the private chat, Nasser supposedly tells the photographer he has 'the perfect story' and wants to take advantage of his 15 minutes of fame. But speaking to Daily Mail Australia on Tuesday, Nasser claimed that the messages were either sent by a fake account or he had been maliciously hacked. 'If I run into him again, I will grab him!' Married At First Sight's Nasser Sultan has vehemently denied 'staging' paparazzi photos as he slams notorious celebrity snapper Jayden Seyfarth Jayden's motivation for sharing the conversation is unclear, however he captioned the screenshots 'RIP' and 'Another one bites the dust'. In the text messages, a person with Nasser's MAFS publicity shot as their profile picture writes: 'Can we make $... Let's do it while I am the biggest c**t'. Jayden responds: 'Good idea!' 'The perfect story': Taking to Instagram on Monday, Jayden Seyfarth shared a pair of screenshots (pictured) of what appeared to be a recent text message exchange with Nasser 'F**k yes yes let's do it,' reads the reply. 'I have the perfect story.' When Jayden asks for details, the individual claiming to be Nasser tells him: 'We need to meet. This will make headlines about why I left.' In the final messages, Jayden writes: 'Sound(s) good bro! Interesting. Today or tom(orrow)?' Exposed! Jayden (left, with Crystal Hefner) has previously made headlines for exposing MAFS star Cheryl Maitland and Big Brother's Skye Wheatley for staging paparazzi photos Speaking to Daily Mail Australia, Nasser strongly denied any suggestion he stages paparazzi photos, insisting: 'I don't need the money'. He added: 'If I run into him again, I will grab him. The account was hacked or someone made another account.' Jayden has previously made headlines for exposing Married At First Sight star Cheryl Maitland and Big Brother's Skye Wheatley for staging paparazzi photos. It is well-known that celebrities have working relationships with paparazzi, who take flattering or newsworthy photos of them and share the profits when they are sold. She has effortlessly chic taste. But the fashionable Sarah Jessica Parker, 53, had her hands full on Sunday as she pushed a cart stacked with three large bags through JFK airport. Not one to skimp on style, The Sex And The City star donned grey booted heels for her travels. Pushing the limits: Sarah Jessica Parker looked effortlessly chic as she lugged three large bags through JFK airport on Sunday She paired the polished look with a knee-length black coat and faded denim that she cuffed at her calves. The mother-of-three kept a pair of large black sunglasses over her eyes and let her long blonde locks flow in relaxed waves. The starlet returned home to NYC after a quick trip to London, which she was sure to share snaps of on her social media. Honey I'm home: The starlet paired the polished look with a knee-length black coat and faded denim that she cuffed at her calves 'London, England. My local tube station. X, sj,' wrote the designer in one picture. Just last week, SJP donned a very different outfit as she was the guest of honor at the Dolce & Gabbana Alta Giorella Exhibition at the New York Public Library. The 53-year-old fashion icon arrived looking regal in a floral print cape and a green beaded headdress. Quick getaway: The actress returned from a trip to London and made sure to share plenty of snaps on social media She paired her ensemble with green pumps that matched the turban atop her head. Dangling from her ears were large emerald colored gems that matched the jewelry around her neck and wrist. The fasion designer, whose pop-up is currently going strong in the Big Apple, auctioned off her entire ensemble for charity for a whopping $280,000. Last week: SJP donned a very different outfit as she was the guest of honor at the Dolce & Gabbana Alta Giorella Exhibition at the New York Public Library The entrepreneur was not seen with her husband Matthew Broderick, who was likely at home with their three kids - James ,15, and Tabitha and Marion, eight. The Divorce star opened up in an interview with Sophia Amoruso on Girlboss Radio earlier this year about the ups and downs of parenting. She shared: 'You're in a constant state of worrying about your children ... It's very painful and it's exhilarating. 'It's a really interesting way of living in the world. I read books differently, or I look at parents and children on the subway differently.' The fashionista continued: 'I hear music differently or when I see something, I think, "I wish Tabitha and Loretta were with me now and they could see this." That's the good part.' Finn Wolfhard after scoring a pay raise for Stranger Things has landed a nice movie paycheck. The 15-year-old Canadian actor will earn a base salary of $65,000 for his co-starring role in The Goldfinch, according to an article on Monday by TMZ. Finn also can earn up to an additional $50,000 if the film based on the Pulitzer Prize-winning novel of the same name is a blockbuster. Movie star: Finn Wolfhard, shown in January in Los Angeles, has landed a movie role paying a base salary of $65,000 The actor's overtime rate if filming exceeds planned dates is $4,333 per day, according to the contract that must be filed in court since he's age 15. The contract also states that Stranger Things has top priority if The Goldfinch filming runs into production of the Netflix series. Finn will play Young Boris Pavlikovsky in the film directed by Irish director John Crowley, 48. The Goldfinch by Donna Tart won the 2014 Pulitzer Prize for Fiction. Netflix hit: The 15-year-old Canadian actor is shown in a still from season two of Stranger Things Finn and his Stranger Things co-stars recently received pay increases of $250,000 per episode of season three. Millie Bobby Brown, 14, reportedly will make $350,000 per episode. Finn plays Mike Wheeler in the Netflix series that enjoyed breakout success with its first season. Season three: Finn, shown in November in Hollywood, received a raise of $250,000 per episode for season three of Stranger Things The series also stars young actors Gaten Matarazzo, Caleb McLaughlin and Noah Schnapp and adult stars David Harbour and Winona Ryder. Finn also had a starring role in the 2017 supernatural horror film It based on the 1986 Stephen King novel. He also can be seen later this year in the drama Dog Days that follows a group of people in Los Angeles interconnected by their canine companions. Dog Days also starring Nina Dobrev, Vanessa Hudgens and Eva Longoria is scheduled for release on August 10. Scandal's Kerry Washington and the LEGO Ninjago Movie's Olivia Munn glammed up for their pregnant gal pal Eva Longoria Baston's Hollywood Walk Of Fame Ceremony luncheon in Beverly Hills on Monday. The African-American 41-year-old and the half-Chinese 37-year-old have never acted together, but they posed for a selfie at the fiesta alongside Oscar winner Reese Witherspoon. The Bronx-born beauty was luminous as always in a houndstooth-patterned Oscar de la Renta dress and white Louboutin pumps selected by her stylist Joseph Cassell Falconer. Scroll down for video Ladies who lunch! Scandal's Kerry Washington (L) and the LEGO Ninjago Movie's Olivia Munn (R) glammed up for their pregnant gal pal Eva Longoria Baston's Hollywood Walk Of Fame Ceremony luncheon in Beverly Hills on Monday Smile! The African-American 41-year-old and the half-Chinese 37-year-old have never acted together, but they posed for a selfie at the fiesta alongside Oscar winner Reese Witherspoon Kerry accessorized her tweed creation with a matching Kate Spade clutch and jewelry from Sara Weinstock, Dana Rebecca, and Movado. Washington wore her raven locks in a slicked-back, partial afro and she sported white cat-eye sunglasses on the red carpet. The two-time Golden Globe nominee's glowing complexion was accentuated with cat eye-liner and a glossy pink pout. The Neutrogena collaborator concludes her role as presidential chief of staff Olivia Pope this Thursday in the ABC Beltway melodrama's seventh season finale titled 'Over a Cliff.' Luminous: The Bronx-born beauty donned a houndstooth-patterned Oscar de la Renta dress and white Louboutin pumps selected by her stylist Joseph Cassell Falconer Lovely: Kerry accessorized her tweed creation with a matching Kate Spade clutch and jewelry from Sara Weinstock, Dana Rebecca, and Movado Daytime glam: Washington wore her raven locks in a slicked-back, partial afro and she sported white cat-eye sunglasses on the red carpet Just launched her own cosmetics collection: The two-time Golden Globe nominee's glowing complexion was accentuated with cat eye- liner and a glossy pink pout The George Washington University grad also has two children - daughter Isabelle, nearly 4; and son Caleb, 18 months - with her husband, Crown Heights star Nnamdi Asomugha. Meanwhile, Munn - who's dating Spanish actor Alex Gonzalez - dressed her slim 5ft4in figure in a green floral number beneath a matching blazer with a pleated peplum selected by stylist Jessica Paster. Olivia (born Lisa) finished off her leggy daytime ensemble with cute strappy peep-toe heels. The Brett Ratner accuser wore her blown-out chestnut locks down and sported minimal make-up for the star-studded celebration. 'By your side. Over a cliff': The Neutrogena collaborator concludes her role as presidential chief of staff Olivia Pope this Thursday in the ABC Beltway melodrama's seventh season finale Elusive couple: The George Washington University grad also has two children - daughter Isabelle, nearly 4; and son Caleb, 18 months - with her husband, Crown Heights star Nnamdi Asomugha (pictured in 2016) The University of Oklahoma grad will next play a high-level CIA operations officer called Gina Cline in the 10-episode second season of Navy SEAL drama Six, which premieres May 28 on History. The Walk of Fame honor was a 'dream come true' for 43-year-old Eva where all honorees pay the Chamber of Commerce a '$40K sponsorship fee.' 'What a dream come true today!' the expecting 'Texican' actress-producer-director gushed to her 17.7M social media followers. Dating Spanish actor Alex Gonzalez: Munn dressed her slim 5ft4in figure in a green floral number beneath a matching blazer with a pleated peplum selected by stylist Jessica Paster Cha cha cha: Olivia (born Lisa) finished off her leggy daytime ensemble with cute strappy peep-toe heels Great skin: The Brett Ratner accuser wore her blown-out chestnut locks down and sported minimal make-up for the star-studded celebration Hanging out: Later on she was spotted walking alongside American Crime Story star Edgar Ramirez 'Memorial Day!' The University of Oklahoma grad will next play a high-level CIA operations officer called Gina Cline in the 10-episode second season of Navy SEAL drama Six, which premieres May 28 on History 'Receiving my star on the Walk of Fame is an honor I can't even believe I'm going to experience! Can't wait to join all the legends and even more so, can't wait for all of y'all to go and visit it!' Felicity Huffman, Anna Faris, Ricky Martin, Melanie Griffith, and Victoria Beckham were among the celebrity speakers honoring Longoria's nearly 20-year career. The Golden Globe nominee was seen kissing her third husband Jose 'Pepe' Baston, with whom she'll welcome her first child (and his fourth) - a son - next month. 'Can't wait for all of y'all to go and visit it!' The Walk of Fame honor was a 'dream come true' for 43-year-old Eva where all honorees pay the Chamber of Commerce a '$40K sponsorship fee' Celeb pals: Felicity Huffman (L), Anna Faris (2-R), Ricky Martin (R), Melanie Griffith, and Victoria Beckham were among the speakers honoring Longoria's nearly 20-year career John Cena's lukewarm attitude toward marriage spurred Nikki Bella to call off their engagement, and the couple sometimes spent months without seeing one another. The 34-year-old beauty was put off by Cena's clear reluctance to tie the knot with her, an insider told People Monday, despite their six-year relationship. 'He was making it abundantly clear that he was going into this gritting his teeth the whole way,' the insider said. 'Nikki is an amazing, talented, strong, one-of-a-kind woman. Scroll below for video Backstory: John Cena, 40, had a lukewarm attitude toward marriage, spurring Nikki Bella, 34, to call off their engagement, a source told People Monday. The couple was snapped at the LA Blockers premiere earlier this month 'Anyone would be lucky to have her in their life - yet John acted more and more like he was doing her a favor by somehow conceding to go ahead and marry her.' The WWE diva 'doesnt need a pity proposal, a pity wedding,' or 'a pity husband,' the source told the magazine, describing Nikki as 'a phenomenal, tremendous woman.' The Tampa, Florida native and Cena, 40 - who were slated to exchange vows May 5 - got engaged in grand fashion a year ago when Cena proposed to her in front of a WrestleMania 33 crowd of more than 75,000 people at Florida's Orlando Citrus Bowl. 'Its hard for anyone not to wonder why he did it, and did it in this hugely public way, in the literal arena where he is most popular,' the insider told People. 'He knew exactly what sort of response he would get by doing that.' Busy lives: Cena said last month that he and Nikki would go months at a time without seeing one another due to their schedules Prior to the proposal, Cena had made clear he was reluctant to get married or have kids, the insider said. The Dancing With The Stars alum, whose full name is Stephanie Nicole Garcia-Colace, was put off by Cena's remarks about their relationship while on his media tour in promotion of his latest movie, Blockers. 'All the subtle and not so subtle ways he kept referencing what hard work it was to be in a relationship, all the ways he never wanted to change, how they didnt need to see each other than often, etc. - it was just so hurtful,' the source told People. Shocking conclusion: The engagement was called off less than a month before they planned to marry Cena, speaking to US last month, said that a complication in their relationship was 'being able to mesh two lives' amid their busy schedules. 'Sometimes we dont see each other for months at a time,' he said, 'but when we do see each other, its our time together.' Bella said on her Instagram page Sunday, 'While this decision was a difficult one, we continue to have a great deal of love and respect for one another. We ask that you respect our privacy during this time in our lives.' The gorgeous grappler can be seen on E!'s Total Bellas, which returns to the air May 20 at 9/8c. Married At First Sight's Telv Williams appeared to confirm his new relationship on Sunday when he was spotted kissing a stunning blonde. And invested MAFS fans are eager to learn more about Telv's girlfriend following his split with TV wife Sarah Roza - so just who is she? Soon after they were first pictured together, the 'mystery blonde' was identified as Melbourne-based Maddie Carolan, who is a sales manager for haircare brand GHD. REVEALED: Meet former grid girl and busty blonde Maddie Carolan who is now dating Married At First Sight star Telv Williams... just weeks after he announced his split with Sarah Roza Look away now, Sarah! Telv (right) appeared to confirm his new relationship on Sunday when he was spotted kissing stunning blonde Maddie (left) at a Bondi Sands event in Melbourne Maddie's Instagram - which boasts more than 7,500 followers - features glamorous selfies, busty bikini shots and travel snaps, and offers a glimpse into her nightlife. She appears to enjoy tanning at the beach, and often shares photos of herself wearing skimpy two-pieces. In one racy selfie, she poses in front of a bathroom mirror while seductively pulling at her skimpy bikini bottoms. Social butterfly: Maddie's Instagram - which boasts more than 7,500 followers - features glamorous selfies, busty bikini shots and travel snaps, and offers a glimpse into her nightlife Incredible physique: Maddie appears to enjoy tanning at the beach, and often shares photos of herself wearing skimpy two-pieces. Pictured in 2016 No wonder he's smitten! In one racy selfie, Maddie poses in front of a bathroom mirror while seductively pulling at her skimpy bikini bottoms Maddie, who has worked in sales for several years, was once a grid girl. In photos from her days trackside, she poses in an array of cleavage-baring outfits with fellow promotional models. A quick glance at Maddie's social media accounts reveals she is quite the social butterfly and enjoys nights out with her gal pals. She recently spent New Year's in NYC, where she was pictured with American rapper Lil Jon at a nightclub. Trackside: Maddie, who has worked in sales for several years, was once a grid girl Famous friends? Maddie recently spent New Year's in NYC, where she was pictured with American rapper Lil Jon at a nightclub There appears to be no evidence on her account of a previous romantic relationship. Maddie appears to have been welcomed into the MAFS community, as she follows Telv's former co-stars Ryan, Troy, Dean, Patrick, Sean and Carly on Instagram. However, neither Maddie or Telv are following Sarah Roza. Sounds pretty official! Telv has referred to Maddie as his 'wifey' on Instagram Telv and Maddie have been inseparable in the past few weeks. Their relationship was all but confirmed on Sunday, when they were seen canoodling at a Bondi Sands event in Melbourne. Telv has also referred to Maddie as his 'wifey' on Instagram. 'Ex-wife': It comes after Telv's split with Sarah Roza was confirmed three weeks ago It comes after Telv's split with Sarah Roza was confirmed three weeks ago. Earlier this month, Sarah took a swipe at her 'ex-husband' in a scathing social media comment, accusing him of 'hook(ing) up with insignificant randoms'. Applications are now open for Married At First Sight season six They began their time as a group in the early 2000s, before producing solo projects as recently as 2016. And Sugarland's Jennifer Nettles, 43, and Kristian Bush, 48, are set to release their first single after reuniting last year. The upcoming track, Babe, was written by none other than pal Taylor Swift. New music: Sugarland's Jennifer Nettles, 43, and Kristian Bush, 48, are set to release their first single, Babe, after reuniting last year. They are seen on Sunday in Las Vegas 'She was gracious enough to reach out to us when she heard we were coming back together and doing a record,' Kristian told ET on Sunday. 'She said, "I have a song, would you like to do it?"' And we said, "Uh, yeah!" I was a little anxious. I didn't want to mess it up!' Jennifer said that Taylor, 28, 'loved' the song and really wanted to include the duo. She then let them know of the track, and they requested to have it sent to them. Sharing is caring: Jennifer said that Taylor 'loved' the song and really wanted to include the duo. She then let them know of the track, and they requested to have it sent to them. Taylor, 28, is seen in December of last year The duo's friendship with the pop star goes back to at least 2005. Taylor's debut album released that year, as Sugarland became a duo after the exit of former band mate, Kristen Hall. 'When she started out, we were just starting out,' said Jennifer. 'Like, she has our EP that we did before we were even signed. This little EP that we signed for her. Its a nice full circle, for sure. Shes a fantastic songwriter. One of the best.' Growing together: 'When she started out, we were just starting out,' said Jennifer Sugarland's new single is set to release later this week. The track, called Babe, will be the first off of the duo's upcoming record. The album, Bigger, will make it's debut on June 8. Alycia Galbraith has confirmed she is enjoying life as a singleton after her appearance on Married At First Sight. 'I'm still very open to finding love, but concentrating on myself and my business at the moment,' the 29-year-old told Daily Mail Australia on Tuesday. Responding to a magazine report she was involved with co-star Patrick Miller, she clarified: 'Patrick and I are definitely not together, I am very single.' 'I'm still open to finding love': Married At First Sight's Alycia Galbraith is 'concentrating on herself and her business' as she denies claims of a secret fling with co-star Patrick Miller It comes after Woman's Day quoted an insider as saying Alycia had secretly found love with Patrick, 35, after filming the show. The publication alleged on Monday that the pair had even met each other's families. 'Alycia fell too hard, too quickly,' the source said, before claiming the 'relationship' had gone sour. Magazine report: It comes after Woman's Day quoted an insider as saying Alycia had secretly found love with Patrick Miller (pictured) after filming the show Alycia reportedly blocked Patrick on social media - however the anonymous source claimed to Woman's Day that she still keeps in contact with his mother. Daily Mail Australia has contacted Patrick Miller for comment. Earlier this month, a MAFS fan called into The Kyle And Jackie O show alleging she saw Patrick looking cosy with Alycia in her hometown of Adelaide. Splitsville: Patrick was paired with Charlene Perera (left) on Married At First Sight but their relationship never moved beyond friendship 'Alycia and Patrick were totally on a date!' the caller claimed. Radio host Jackie 'O' Henderson asked if she 'saw them there on the date' to which the woman responded: 'They put it on Snapchat, yeah.' Alycia was 'married' to Matty Lockett on season five of MAFS, but their relationship fell apart early into the social experiment. Oscar-nominated actress Melanie Griffith gave one of her longtime besties, Eva Longoria Baston, a congratulatory embrace during her Hollywood Walk Of Fame induction ceremony on Monday. 'With Eva on her star day!' the 60-year-old mother-of-three later gushed to her 491K social media followers. 'My dearest friend @evalongoria received her star today!! Bravo Eva!! You are the most beautiful!' Scroll down for video 'With Eva on her star day!' Oscar-nominated actress Melanie Griffith (R) gave one of her longtime besties, Eva Longoria Baston (L), a congratulatory embrace during her Hollywood Walk Of Fame induction ceremony on Monday The Working Girl alum looked leggy in a black blazer over a matching turtleneck, mini-skirt, and thigh-high leather boots. Melanie is said to maintain her enviable 5ft9in figure by working out four times a week with a trainer as well as frequent hot yoga sessions. Griffith wore her signature fringed blonde bob in a piecy updo and she accessorized her all-black ensemble with a purse, crucifix, diamond stud earrings, and cat-eye shades. The scar on the nose of the Pirates of Somalia star was still visible after she allegedly had basal cell carcinoma removed from her face in September. Democratic duo: The 60-year-old mother-of-three later gushed, 'My dearest friend @evalongoria received her star today!! Bravo Eva!! You are the most beautiful!' Sexy after 60! The Working Girl alum looked leggy in a black blazer over a matching turtleneck, mini-skirt, and thigh-high leather boots Fit: Melanie is said to maintain her enviable 5ft9in figure by working out four times a week with a trainer as well as frequent hot yoga sessions Leggy lady: Griffith wore her signature fringed blonde bob in a piecy updo and she accessorized her all-black outfit with a purse, crucifix, diamond earrings, and cat-eye shades On the mend: The scar on the nose of the Pirates of Somalia star was still visible after she allegedly had basal cell carcinoma removed from her face in September New beau? Melanie left Eva's celebration arm-in-arm with a mystery man According to her interview with Porter Magazine, the actress isn't currently dating. 'I'm shy with men now. I haven't met anyone in the almost two years [Antonio and I] have been divorced,' she shared. 'No, I don't go on dates, nobody has asked me on a date' Ricky Martin, Victoria Beckham, Kerry Washington, Anna Faris, Felicity Huffman, William H. Macy, and Olivia Munn were among the other celebrity supporters honoring Longoria's nearly 20-year career. The Walk of Fame honor was a 'dream come true' for the expecting 43-year-old where all honorees pay the Chamber of Commerce a '$40K sponsorship fee.' 'What a dream come true today!' the 'Texican' actress-producer-director gushed to her 17.7M social media followers. 'Receiving my star on the Walk of Fame is an honor I can't even believe I'm going to experience! Can't wait to join all the legends and even more so, can't wait for all of y'all to go and visit it!' Congrats! Ricky Martin (L), Victoria Beckham (2-R), Kerry Washington, Anna Faris, Felicity Huffman, William H. Macy, and Olivia Munn were among the other celebrity supporters honoring Longoria's nearly 20-year career 'Can't wait for all of y'all to go and visit it!' The Walk of Fame honor was a 'dream come true' for the expecting 43-year-old where all honorees pay the Chamber of Commerce a '$40K sponsorship fee' Year of blessings: The Golden Globe nominee was seen kissing her third husband Jose 'Pepe' Baston, with whom she'll welcome her first child (and his fourth) - a son - next month The Golden Globe nominee was seen kissing her third husband Jose 'Pepe' Baston, with whom she'll welcome her first child (and his fourth) - a son - next month. On Sunday, the Disaster Artist actress shared an epic snap of Sophia Loren squeezing her eight-year-old cheeks while on the set of Charlie Chaplin's 1967 flick A Countess from Hong Kong co-starring her mother Tippi Hedren and Marlon Brando. Melanie has three children - Alexander, 32; Dakota, 28; and Stella, 21 - from her three marriages to Steven Bauer, Don Johnson, and Antonio Banderas. 'I got to call her Tante Sophia. I LOVED her!' On Sunday, the Disaster Artist actress shared a snap of Sophia Loren squeezing her eight-year-old cheeks while on the set of Charlie Chaplin's 1967 flick A Countess from Hong Kong co-starring her mother Tippi Hedren and Marlon Brando Three generations of actresses: Melanie has three children - Alexander, 32; Dakota, 28; and Stella, 21 - from her three marriages to Steven Bauer, Don Johnson, and Antonio Banderas 'So sad to end!' Careerwise, the former Broadway thespian recently returned to the stage as the seductive Mrs. Robinson for a Laguna Playhouse production of The Graduate, which ran from February 21-March 18 in Laguna Beach 'I was a totally functioning mom,' the thrice-rehabbed recovering alcoholic revealed to Porter magazine this month. 'I wasn't like a drunk-on-the-floor, out-of-it person. I didn't do some things I probably should have done, but, mostly, I was there for my kids. They had a sort of privileged gypsy life.' Careerwise, the former Broadway thespian recently returned to the stage as the seductive Mrs. Robinson for a Laguna Playhouse production of The Graduate, which ran from February 21-March 18 in Laguna Beach. It's one of the highest-anticipated debuts on TV this spring. The stars of Westworld were out and about for the show's season two premiere at the Cinerama Dome in Hollywood, California Monday, as the highly-anticipated show returns to the air this week following a first season that was successful both critically and commercially. The women atop the HBO western sci-fi drama, Thandie Newton and Evan Rachel Wood, both amazed in stunning outfits at the glitzy event. Scroll below for video Leading ladies: Evan Rachel Wood, 30, and Thandie Newton, 45, posed for photographers during entrances for the Westworld season two premiere in Hollywood, California on Monday Wood, 30, wore a pinstriped tan three-piece suit with large brown buttons and black shoes. She had her shoulder-length auburn locks parted to the side and a touch of blush on her fair complexion as she posed for photographers. Newton, 46, dazzled in a magenta Osman brocade-print jumpsuit with orange metallic Rupert Sanderson open toe heels and large, dangling earrings. The beautiful actress, who plays liberated saloon madame Maeve Millay, had her hair pulled back into a ponytail, with minimal makeup to highlight her natural beauty. Angela Sarafyan, the gorgeous actress who plays Maeve's protege Clementine Pennyfeather, dropped jaws in a white gown with a top that plunged just above her navel. The 34-year-old beauty had her brown locks parted in the middle and accessorized with long earrings. Other cast members in attendance on Monday included Jeffrey Wright, James Marsden, Ingrid Bols Berdal, Shannon Woodward, Simon Quarterman, Leonardo Nam, Steven Ogg, Clifton Collins Jr. and Luke Hemsworth, who brought his younger brother Liam to the proceedings. Crisp: Wood arrived in a pinstriped tan ensemble to the debut of the show's sophomore season Mr. Roboto: The outspoken actress posed in front of statue of an android featured on the program, which is based on a western-themed amusement park where guests can do what they please with the lifelike robots abound, referred to as 'hosts' Reunited: Wood had a big smile for actor James Marsden, who plays her sometimes-love interest Teddy on the show Starry night: Newton looked amazing in an Osman brocade-print jumpsuit as she made her way down the red carpet Good girl gone bad: Newton's character Maeve is expected to be one of the leaders of the robotic rebellion Elegant: Actress Angela Sarafyan turned heads in a sparkly white gown with a plunging top New cast members for season two on hand included Tao Okamoto, Katja Herbers, Kiki Sukezane and Julia Jones. The program - developed by Jonathan Nolan and Lisa Joy, based off the 1973 film - debuted in the fall of 2016, rumbling to become HBO's most-watched inaugural season of any program with an average of 12 million viewers on all platforms. It was subsequently nominated for 22 Emmys last year, capturing four of them. It garnered strong social media buzz and endless Reddit speculation with an engaging storyline, ensemble cast and a unique soundtrack by composer Ramin Djawadi setting contemporary song set to player piano music. Beaming: Wood, Newton and Sarafyan, who all play robots on the show, posed for a group shot Party time: Thandie posed away with Rodrigo Santoro (R) and Simon Quarterman (L) On it: Westworld's technical geniuses are played by Shannon Woodward (L) and Jeffrey Wright VIP: Acclaimed filmmaker J.J. Abrams, one of the producers on the show, donned a casual ensemble to the premiere Oh brother! Liam Hemsworth was in good spirits as he accompanied his brother Luke (R), who plays the park's security chief, to the debut Bright eyes: Ingrid Bolso Berdal donned a crocodile green shoulder-less gown to the debut It's stayed on the zeitgeist with elaborate immersive showcases at events such as San Diego Comic-Con and SXSW, where fans visited saloons on western sets similar to the ones seen on the show. The second season premiere should get off to a big start after the show's initial season ended on a massive cliffhanger, with the beginning of a robot rebellion at the futuristic amusement park. The show's sophomore season, slated for 10 episodes, begins on HBO Sunday at 9/8c. Chatter: Cast members Steven Ogg (L) and Clifton Collins Jr. reconnected at the premiere Fun time: Actor Leonardo Nam was in good spirits outside of the venue Hear her roar: Superstar singer Katy Perry showed up to support her pal Woodward at the premiere Happy: Katy looked thrilled to be at the event Loving it: She continued to pose with a thumbs up sign as she posed with Shannon Woodward and Jimmi Simpson Here come the boys! Steven Ogg and Clifton Collins Jr. (L) and Jeffrey Wright and Jimmi Simpson (R) all cut a dapper figure Looking good: Ben Barnes and Angela Sarafyan put on a stylish display Hunk: Luke Hemsworth cut a dapper figure in a slick blue suit Sexy: Jeffrey Wright posed with Shannon Woodward, who stunned in a glamorous black cut-out dress Richard! Silicon Valley's Thomas Middleditch arrived with his wife Mollie Gates Hottie: Liam Hemsworth flashed a peace sign He may be a self-proclaimed reality TV 'super villain', but Dean Wells isn't afraid to poke fun at himself. The Married At First Sight star took to Instagram on Tuesday to share photos of himself from his first wedding. The Manly-based hip hop artist, 40, looked hardly recognisable in the throwback snaps, which were taken around 1999. Dean Wells' awkward past revealed: Married At First Sight star is hardly recognisable with outdated shaggy hair in a throwback snap from his first wedding (left). Pictured right on MAFS Dean was sporting a very dated hairstyle in the pictures, perhaps inspired by The Beatles or Shaggy from Scooby-Doo. While he is known to MAFS fans for his stubble and comb over, the Visionz rapper was noticeably clean shaven for the occasion. Posing for a solo photo, Dean smiled absent-mindedly while leaning against a tree and gazing into the distance. Throwback: In a second photo, Dean posed alongside his brother and his sister In a second photo, Dean posed alongside his brother and his sister. Dean captioned his post: 'Here's how I looked at my first wedding! Haha. I'm thinking of going back to this hairstyle. It will be 3rd time lucky?!?' Fans weren't afraid to tell him what they really thought of his late '90s look, with one writing: 'Oh my word... you look 13.' 'Please dont EVER do this again,' a follower commented, before another jokingly asked: 'Were you in a cult?' Poking fun: Dean's friend and MAFS co-star Ryan Gallagher had everyone chuckling with his comment: 'Where Scooby and the mystery machine, Shaggy?' Meanwhile, Dean's friend and MAFS co-star Ryan Gallagher had everyone chuckling with his comment: 'Where Scooby and the mystery machine, Shaggy?' Dean previously spoke to The Fix about his first marriage, saying that he and his American bride met while she was studying in Australia and tied the knot when he was just 21-years-old. 'We were together until I was 30, and we had a great time. We had an amazing marriage for those years, but in the end, it just didn't really work out,' he said. He stars as Spanish artist Pablo Picasso in the TV series, Genius: Picasso. And on Monday, Antonio Banderas, 57, stepped out with girlfriend Nicole Kimpel, 37, to attend the show's Los Angeles premiere at LACMA. Like a work of art, the couple coordinated perfectly in spring time pastels. His big night: On Monday, Antonio Banderas, 57, stepped out with girlfriend Nicole Kimpel, 37, to attend the Los Angeles premiere of Genius: Picasso. Antonio paired an orange top underneath his dapper, gray suit. The handsome actor completed his look with black dress shoes and trendy, matching shades. Nicole looked lovely in a classic, powder blue peplum top and knee-length, white skirt. She completed her ensemble with a set of nude platform heels. Looking sharp! The actor paired an orange top underneath his dapper, gray suit Cheeky: The father-of-one stood on his toes to stand next to co-star Poppy Delevingne, 31 Co-workers: The duo were joined by actress Samantha Colley, 28 Their roles: Poppy plays Marie-Therese Walter, while Samantha stars as Mileva Mirac Antonio portrays Spanish artist Pablo Picasso in the TV series. Directing the first episode is Ron Howard, 64 Also out for the event was Antonio's Picasso co-stars, Poppy Delevingne, 31, and Samantha Colley, 28. Poppy plays Marie-Therese Walter, one of the mistresses and mother of one of his four children. Samantha stars as Mileva Mirac, the wife of Albert Einstein. Directing the first episode is Ron Howard, 64. That's him! The Spanish actor shared a National Geographic magazine cover and a leaflet featuring himself as Pablo Taking the mic: The Mask of Zorro star gave a speech during the premiere Celebrating together: Antonio was joined by actor Matthew Modine (center), 59, and two additional guests Handsome: The duo were both striking in their chosen suits During the premiere luncheon, Antonio, who shaved his head and eyebrows for the role, revealed how he initially turned down any opportunity to play the famous artist. 'They offered me this character in my 20s and in my 30s but I always said, 'No, I don't want to play him yet. I admire him too much. He was my idol since I was a little kid,'he said, according to The Hollywood Reporter. Antonio, who is deemed the second 'hero' after Picasso by executive producer Ken Biller, convinced the show's creators to shoot in the painter's Spanish hometown, which also happens to be his as well. 'Malaga was not in the plans for the shooting. I said, "You have to come to Malaga." The first 10 years of a person's life are very important.' Work pals: Poppy, Samantha and Ron hung out with Genius executive producer Kenneth Biller Date night for Frasier! Also at the event was Kelsey Grammer, 63, and Kayte Walsh, 36. Julia Milner, wife of entrepreneur Yuri Milner, also attendeed She exited Bachelor In Paradise with her new squeeze Luke McLeod, only to break up with him months later amid cheating allegations. And Lisa Hyde has come out swinging against her ex-flame in an interview with Mamamia, claiming that there was a side to Luke that Bachelor In Paradise viewers didn't get to see. 'I'm not about to do cryptic messages to keep everyone intrigued,' she told the publication on Tuesday. Speaking out: Lisa Hyde has claimed fans didn't see the real Luke McLeod on Bachelor In Paradise 'I'm not going to be fake about it and say 'Oh, I wonder if Luke gives me a rose?' when a couple of months down the road he cheats on me.' Lisa found it especially difficult watching Luke craft a 'nice guy image' using social media after the alleged cheating incident, Mamamia reported. 'The hardest part was everyone messaging me saying, 'What a lovely person with a kind soul', and you know, that's one part of him but.. yeah,' she told the publication. 'The hardest part was everyone messaging me saying, 'What a lovely person with a kind soul': Lisa found it especially difficult watching Luke craft a 'nice guy image' using social media after the alleged cheating incident, Mamamia reported Earlier on Tuesday, Luke issued a grovelling apology to his fans on Instagram, but did not explicitly state that he had been unfaithful. 'I don't want to get into a debate around he said, she said and all the different reasons that probably lead to how things broke down,' he said in a video shared to Instagram Stories. 'Just out of respect for her, I just think it's best to say that I stuffed up and I'm sorry.' 'I feel like I've let a lot of people down': Earlier on Tuesday, Luke issued a grovelling apology to his fans on Instagram, but did not explicitly state he had been unfaithful 'I feel like I've let a lot of people down, my friends and family, obviously all you guys, and obviously Lisa,' he added. Luke also spoke to News Corp about the incident, but declined to reveal specific details about the reason behind the split. 'I'd prefer not to disclose that... I think there are two sides to the story,' he told the paper, before adding that he 'didn't date someone else' but that 'there was trust broken'. Meanwhile, The Daily Telegraph quoted a friend of the former couple on Tuesday, claiming the 33-year-old hunk cheated on Lisa during a rowdy boys' night, 'hooking up with a 19-year-old girl'. Invitation to a lunchtime Public History Talk on Wednesday 2 May convened by the Ministry for Culture and Heritage and the National Library of New Zealand Jazzy Nerves, Aching Feet, and Foxtrots: New Zealands Jazz Age Join us to hear 2017 Douglas Lilburn Research Fellow, Dr Aleisha Ward as she explores some of the many facets of jazz in New Zealands Jazz Age. The image of 1920s New Zealand is frequently one of a quiet, staid society that closed at 5. Contrary to belief however, New Zealand had a flourishing, vibrant, urban landscape and a burgeoning jazz scene. About the speaker: Dr Aleisha Ward is the 2017 Douglas Lilburn Research Fellow and a recipient of a 2018 Ministry for Culture and Heritage New Zealand History Research Trust Fund award investigating the Jazz Age in New Zealand. Aleisha is an award-winning writer, freelance editor, and lecturer in music history. She writes about jazz in New Zealand for a number of publications including audioculture.co.nz and New Zealand Musician and on her own blog NZ Jazz. Amal Clooney has taken Manhattan like a model takes a catwalk. The wife of Hollywood star George Clooney once again stepped out Monday in an eye-catching ensemble as she spends time in the Big Apple. The 40-year-old opted for a bright red dress paired with chunky lace-up heeled boots on the rainy day. Clotheshorse: Amal Clooney, 40, once again stepped out Monday in an eye-catching ensemble as she spends time in New York City She was accompanied to her waiting car as she left her rented townhouse by a male assistant who shielded her from the rain with an umbrella. She carried a large tote and chose not to wear a coat. Her brows were heavily penciled in and arched and her lip color matched her dress. Funky: She opted for a red dress paired with chunky lace-up heeled boots on the rainy day and was shielded from the rain by a male assistant with an umbrella as she made her way to her car The Lebanese-British legal eagle is mother to 10-month-old twins Ella and Alexander but is back focusing on her career right now. There's been no sighting of her children with her in New York as she serves as a visiting lecturer at Columbia. However, husband George has put in an appearance, taking his wife out on a date on April 6. She was also seen heading out for a girls night out this past weekend in an on trend ensemble. Celebrities: Amal is a visiting lecturer at Columbia and while there's been no sighting of her young twins with her in NYC, husband George put in an appearance, taking his wife out on a date on April 6 Headline-grabbing: She was also seen last week heading for a girls night out in a trendy ensemble Amal recently gave a rare insight into life with her A-Lister husband to Vogue - revealing how they first got together and discussing life as a mother of twins. She explained she had first met George, 56, at a party at his house on Lake Como, Italy, and the pair began to exchange emails soon after. Amal admitted she already 'really liked him' before their first date at a top London restaurant - which came when she was close to giving up on the idea of love and motherhood. She said: 'I was 35 when I met him. It wasnt obvious that it was going to happen for me. And I wasnt willing or excited about the idea of getting married or having a family in the absence of that.' The pair went on to tie the knot in 2014. She has been active on the promotional train for her show, GLOW. And on Monday, Alison Brie prepped for a flight out of LAX, clad in a camel-colored Chanel trench coat. The beauty was headed to Italy, according to her Instagram Stories. Looking sharp! On Monday, Alison Brie, 35, prepped for a flight out of LAX, clad in a camel-colored trench coat The 35-year-old layered a black top and skinny jeans underneath her outerwear. The wife of Dave Franco added a pair of classic Chelsea boots to her look. Alison kept her accessories simple, choosing only her wedding ring, a purse, and a pair of shades. European chic: The actress layered a black top and skinny jeans underneath her outerwear Minimalist: Alison kept her accessories simple, choosing only her wedding ring, a purse, and a pair of shades Alison took to Instagram to share a selfie from her travels. 'Rome bound,' wrote the star. The Los Angeles native displayed her natural beauty in minimal make-up. 'Rome bound': Alison took to Instagram to share a selfie from her travels. Alison recently celebrated her one year anniversary on March 13. The Netflix star is married to Dave Franco, the younger brother of James and Tom Franco. The duo began dating in 2012, after having met the year prior in New Orleans. The bubbly and bright truffle farmers from Tasmania were under pressure on Tuesday night as they fought to stay in the MKR competition. And Henry and Anna were overjoyed when a family recipe was heavily praised by celebrity chef and judge Manu Feildel. Presenting a lemon tart with blueberry compote, Manu gave an impressive 10 out of 10 for the delectable dish. 'Perfection on a plate!' MKR judge Manu Feildel gives 'a bit fat 10' for Henry and Anna's delectable dessert after a heated feud erupts at table between Jess and Hadil He worried the sibling duo at first, asking, 'who's recipe is this?', before complimenting Anna on her efforts. 'Perfection on a plate! This was the most perfect lemon tart you could ask for,' the judge gleamed, adding he was scoring them 'a big fat 10 out of 10.' Anna couldn't contain her excitement at the review, stating: 'Perfection from Manu? Get out of town. So happy!' Henry and Anna pleased judges and rival teams, who placed them above their rivals Jess and Emma by scoring them a combined total of 86 out of a potential 130. 'This was the most perfect lemon tart you could ask for!' MKR judge Manu gleamed after eating his sweet treat, adding he was scoring them 'a big fat 10 out of 10' Anna couldn't contain her excitement at the review, stating: 'Perfection from Manu? Get out of town. So happy!' Meanwhile, the dinner table conversation before Henry and Anna emerged with their desserts was far from sweet. A war of words erupted between NSW teams Jess and Emma, and Hadil and Sonya, erupted, with the judges asking them to stop and to have 'respect'. The ladies bickered back and forth, cursed, pointed fingers and hurled abuse at each other in a feud that has been tipped as the precursor to Wednesday night's shock early elimination of one team. Who will be excused from the table? The fiery duo due to be booted from the popular season will be either NSW besties Sonya and Hadil (left) or NSW sisters Jess and Emma (right) Fans of the cooking series are eagerly awaiting to see which team will be sent packing for excessive 'bullying' towards other teams on the show, as an early exit has been heavily promoted the past week in trailers. The fiery duo due to be booted from the popular season will be either NSW besties Sonya, 34, and Hadil, 30, or NSW sisters, Jess, 31, and Emma, 38. In promotional clips for an upcoming episode, Manu can be heard asking one team to excuse themselves from the table and remove themselves from the competition. My Kitchen Rules returns on Wednesday night at 7.30pm, with Suong and Kim hoping to impress with their Super Dinner Party instant restaurant She proved her dedication to her tan by going topless to soak up the sun earlier this week. And Hofit Golan showcased her toned curves once again as she hit the beach at the at Raffles Resort in the Seychelles with her friend Natalie Lefevre. The TV presenter, 32, slipped into a pink and cream two-piece as they ladies took some time out from filming their nature documentary, before whipping off their tops once again and cooling off in the sea. Taking a dip: Hofit Golan goes topless AGAIN as she splashes in the surf with a female companion on holiday in the Seychelles Skinny dip: Hofit was seen hurrying to the shore to enjoy a topless dip with her pal Completely undisturbed on a deserted beach, the 32-year-old felt free enough to hurry down to the shore to enjoy a topless dip with her pal. Save for her sunglasses, Hofit was only dressed in hot pink bikini bottoms. She'd discarded her beige and pink top in favour of running free. Her German TV host friend Natalie sported a khaki green two-piece, which she was soon to turn into a one-piece for the topless swim. Babe watch: The model looked confident in little more than a pair of bikini bottoms In private: The pals were seen checking something out online On the rocks: The ladies took to the rocks to get a better view at their beautiful surroundings Giggle: The ladies enjoyed a laugh in the water as they swam topless The socialite is seemingly always on holiday, yet this trip seems to be for professional purposes while she shoots her latest TV project - which Natalie is thought to also be working on. The pair still managed to make plenty of time for enjoying all the resort had to offer. They were seen spending time, just the pair of them, at the swimming pool, reclining on the deck and taking to the water in inflatable sun loungers. They wore matching teal one-pieces for these sun-bathing sessions, before throwing off flowing sun dresses to take a stroll around the grounds and relax in a hammock for two. Hofit is a regular face at some of the world's most glamorous celebrity events. Wading in: Hofit sauntered into the surf in her hot pink ensemble Stunning backdrop: Hofit is currently staying at the Raffles Resort in the Seychelles Action gals: The bombshells were seen getting adventurous In 2015, she spoke to Femail about her experiences of the social circuit, saying it can be exhausting. She explained: After Cannes and Fashion Week, I cant wear earrings and my feet wont fit into a single pair of heels. My body rejects glamour. 'I dont brush my hair for ten days and I go on a beauty strike. Hanging out: Hofit is currently away with TV host Natalie Lefevre Lolz: The girls were sure to act natural for the camera Queen: She was clearly in awe of her surroundings Chit chat: The duo spent time catching up Snappy: The pair were sure to document their trip with selfies a-plenty Found a friend? The two were seen petting and feeding a giant tortoise On the beach: Hofit has been making the most of her time in the sun Luxuriating: While away, Hofit hasn't missed the opportunity to top up her tan Catching some rays: The five-star resort was the perfect setting for some relaxation Unwind: It seems like life is one long vacation for model and TV star Hofit Paradise: The pool area was completely deserted, allowing Hofit some relaxation time without disturbance Constant vacay: The socialite is seemingly always on holiday, yet this trip seems to be for professional purposes while she shoots her latest TV project - which Natalie is thought to also be working on Out and a-pout: The pair still managed to make plenty of time for enjoying all the resort had to offer All alone: They were seen spending time, just the pair of them, at the swimming pool Solitary: The were seen reclining on the deck and taking to the water in inflatable sun loungers She brought out a workout DVD aimed at 'blitzing' your bum in three minutes. But Charlotte Crosby's 'flat pancake bum' is no more, as she proved when she shared a peachy bikini picture from the Maldives on Monday. The brunette looked perky in a thong two-piece as she took a dip during her romantic break with boyfriend Joshua Ritchie. Time of her life: Charlotte Crosby shared yet more pictures from the Maldives on Tuesday, as she continues her break with Joshua Ritchie The former Geodie Shore star displayed a perfect curvy figure as she was pictured from behind. Charlotte's 3-Minute Bum Blitz was the follow-up to her best-selling DVD 3-minute Belly Blitz. She worked on the booty-boosting regime after being trolled for having a flat bum and pancake a**e. Peachy: She shared a picture of her perky bottom in a thong two-piece as she took a dip Making a splash: She was clearly having the time of her life And even though Charlotte has not escaped the wrath of nasty social media trolls, just yet, she has found a humorous way to deal with them. While on holiday in the Maldives, Charlotte has found herself in a debate she's calling 'nostril-gate'. 'Just checking my nostrils are still there,' she wrote as she posted a video crinkling up her nose. 'Lots of worried people on my last post.' Joker: Bizarrely, Charlotte has been hounded by fans about the absence of her nostrils No nostrils? Commenters on Charlotte's recent post wondered where her nostrils had gone Nostril-gate: Charlotte responded to fans in a video proving that she does indeed, have nostrils Charlotte was talking about a selfie shared on her Instagram page following a snorkelling session. 'Dive back in you lost you're nostrils in there,' one fan humorously wrote on the picture. Another said: 'Who needs a scuba mask when you don't even have nostrils.' 'Does no one notice her lack of nostrils,' wrote another, while one other said: 'Where are her nostrils tho?' and 'Wheres her nostrils gone lol' Commanding attention: Charlotte, 27, continued to command her social media followers' attention in a saucy one-shouldered swimsuit Sexy selfie: Charlotte sizzled in a sizzling snap with beau Joshua earlier this week Sultry: Charlotte left little to the imagination as she posted a very racy snap while holidaying with her beau Joshua via Instagram on Saturday She has been proudly flaunting her incredible post baby body, most recently wowing in a skimpy bikini during a Marbella getaway. And Ferne McCann's weight loss was praised by pal Danielle Armstrong, who took to her Instagram platform with a before and after snap of the former TOWIE star. Ferne proved to be the best advertisement for Danielle's 30 day health and fitness plan as it showed the beauty sporting a much more honed figure compared to before. Post-baby body: Ferne McCann's weight loss was praised by pal Danielle Armstrong, who took to her Instagram platform with an impressive before and after snap of the former TOWIE star The left picture of the collage showed Ferne in a tiny blue bikini as she soaked up the sun during a beachy getaway. And while she looked amazing, the right snap from her recent time abroad saw Ferne's wowing as she flaunted her envy-inducing toned physique in a purple two-piece. 'Some Monday Motivation For You Ladies. Both myself and Fern have completely transformed our bodies and with the summer approaching we want to help you girls to. 'Direct Message now @dannisbodygoals and I can tell you exactly what we have been doing,' Danielle captioned the snap along with a series of body postivity hashtags. Impressive: The former TOWIE star has been proudly flaunting her incredible post baby body It works! Danielle also couldn't resist showcasing her very own before and after collage And Danielle also couldn't resist showcasing her very own before and after collage. Donning a bikini in both, Danielle proved to be much more toned in her skimpy blue bikini compared to the pink two-piece. Meanwhile, Ferne's second series of her hit ITVBe show First Time Mum will arrive on screens next month. And the reality series was filmed during an emotional time in Ferne's life, as she's seen admitting in a newly-released trailer that she would have fallen into depression if it wasn't for her daughter Sunday. The reality has had a turbulent year, seeing her ex boyfriend, and Sunday's father, Arthur Collins jailed after he sprayed acid over party-goers last April. Reality show: Meanwhile, Ferne's second series of her hit ITVBe show First Time Mum will arrive on screens next month Candid: The series was filmed during an emotional time in Ferne's life, as she's seen admitting in a trailer that she would have fallen into depression if it wasn't for her daughter Sunday Collins, 25, was convicted of GBH and ABH against 14 people after he sprayed party-goers with acid following an argument at the Mangle E8 nightclub in east London during the Easter weekend last April. Speaking to Fabulous last year, she admitted the situation surrounding her pregnancy had been 'completely out of her control' - and that she is already concerned about how she will tell her little girl of the attack in the future. Looking back at the horrific incident, she said: 'It's been the most difficult chapter of my life to date and the hardest thing I hope I'll ever have to face. 'It was all completely out of my control. The only thing I can control now is how I raise my daughter.' They're both trans-Pacific models, frequently jetting back and forth from Australia to the USA. And Jessica Gomes and Nicole Trunfio were reunited in Los Angeles on Monday, as the pair joined forces for a double photo shoot. Taking to her Insta Stories, Jessica, 33, uploaded a boomerang with Nicole, 32, in which the duo posed and danced around in sun dresses on set. Double trouble: Jessica Gomes united with her 'Bestie Westie' Nicole Trunfio in Los Angeles for a joint photo shoot as pair posed in daring summer dresses Jessica referred to Nicole as her 'Bestie Westie' and tagged the brand of the items of clothing and jewelry they were each wearing. Jessica wore a deeply plunging green dress, teasing her bust, with puffy sleeves and a jazzy pattern to it. Nicole wore crisp white, showcasing her figure in a cute dress with cut-outs here and there, showing off her smooth complexion below. The former Make Me A Supermodel presenter jigged along with Jessica, pouting to the camera and holding up their hands in a peace sign. Pals: They're both trans-Pacific models, frequently jetting back and forth from Australia to the USA Cute: Jessica joked over the weekend that she was 'chuffed' with her date for the wedding, uploading a snap holding hands with little Zion and tagging his mum, Nicole, in the caption Nicole and Jessica were both at a mutual friend's wedding over the weekend. Nicole looked sensational, having only given birth to her second child four months ago. She is married to American musician Gary Clark Jr with whom she shares son Zion, three, and daughter Gia, who was born in January. Jessica joked over the weekend that she was 'chuffed' with her date for the wedding, uploading a snap holding hands with little Zion and tagging his mum, Nicole, in the caption. She was in the US to see their fashionista pals Alyssa Miller and Cameron Avery tie the knot. Her wedding to Tim Robards is a mere weeks away. And after celebrtating her hens party this past weekend, Anna Heinrich was ready to wind down. And it seemed to be much needed, given the raucous two-day event, which saw her and her and her bridesmaids indulge in a boat cruise around Sydney Harbour, a retro-inspired exercise session and a 'La Dolce Vita' themed Italian feast. #stillrecovering! Anna Heinrich heads straight to the spa to wind down after her wild two day Hens party ahead of her wedding to Tim Robards Criminal lawyer Anna uploaded a shot of her in a toweled robe, fluffy slippers, hair down and making the peace sign as she snapped a shot in front of the mirror in the changing room of the spa. She still looked fabulous, displaying a face of make-up and loose blonde tresses. She captioned the Insta Story: 'Exactly what I needed after that WEEKEND! #stillrecovering.' Bikinis, boats, a retro-inspired exercise class and plenty of rose! Anna's epic two day Hens party was a raucous affair The party kicked off with an exercise session at 'Retro Sweat', an authentic 1980s freestyle aerobic workout by Shannon Dooley. The ladies all dressed in theme, showing off their fabulous figures in an array of high-cut neon leotards teamed with tights. Taking to Instagram, the group posted hilarious snaps and videos, with friends and fans praising Anna's bridesmaids on their very original idea. Nearest and dearest: Anna's party was organised by her bridesmaids, including her two sisters Charlotte and Andrea During the weekend, the group also enjoyed a 'La Dolce Vita' themed meal, a nod to Anna's Italian wedding destination. Throughout the day, the blonde beauty had not one, but two glamorous outfit changes. Dressed by stylist to the stars Lana Wilkinson, Anna looked incredible in an Elle Zeitoune pink lace corset dress, as well as a Rebecca Vallance yellow two-piece ensemble. Retro! The party kicked off with an exercise session at 'Retro Sweat', an authentic 1980s freestyle aerobic workout by Shannon Dooley Cute: Anna donned a neon pink leotard and silver leggings Is that you? She also looked unrecognisable in a curly red wig Dining at upscale Lucio's restaurant in Paddington, the group enjoyed Aperol Spritz and authentic Italian dishes. The bridesmaids also organised incredible goodie bags for all attendees, with the lucky guests receiving a wicker bag, a glamorous silk scarf, on-trend heart-shaped sunglasses and makeup from MAC. Things became a little more wild when the group went on a boozy boat cruise. With a bottle of rose in her hand, Anna showed off her incredible pre-wedding figure in a black bikini in several snaps from the day. La Dolce Vita! During the weekend, the group also enjoyed a 'La Dolce Vita' themed meal, a nod to Anna's Italian wedding destination So pretty in pink: Dressed by stylist to the stars Lana Wilkinson, she looked incredible in an Elle Zeitoune pink lace corset dress During the voyage, the group of women enjoyed wine and cocktails and danced into the sunset. Anna's weekend bash took place at the same time as her groom-to-be's bucks party in the Hunter Valley. Taking to Instagram, the Sydney chiropractor swapped shirtless selfies for a quirky tuxedo morphsuit and floral blazer at a winery. Pretty in prints: All the girls wore colourful printed dresses to the lunch In bloom: The tables were decorated with gorgeous blooms from a local Sydney florist Lucky girls! The bridesmaids also organised incredible goodie bags for all attendees, with the lucky guests receiving a wicker bag, a glamorous silk scarf and on-trend heart-shaped sunglasses Tim and his friends first hit the Go-karts before visiting a number of picturesque wineries in the region. Enjoying a slower pace, Tim shared snaps of himself looking at a sunset and enjoying an outdoor meal with 15 friends. 'Love you boys,' the ripped chiropractor captioned one of the snaps, before adding: 'Thanks for letting me take my morph suit off.' And there's more: The bag also included makeup from MAC and a candle No more Bachelor! The bash took place at the same time as her groom-to-be Tim's bucks party in the Hunter Valley Having gotten engaged in May of 2017, Anna and Tim recently revealed they will marry in an idyllic ceremony in Italy. Earlier this month, a source spoke exclusively with Daily Mail Australia, saying the TV lovebirds are likely to 'tie the knot sometime in June this year.' The insider could not provide specific details about the Italian wedding/reception venue, but claims the pair are in full planning mode for the destination wedding. What a view! Tim seemed happy with his weekend getaway for his bucks party In the past, it was reported Tim would also enjoy a 'Las Vegas do' in early May, but it's not known if the ripped reality star will go ahead with those plans. Beating out more than 20 other women to win Tim's heart on reality dating show, The Bachelor, the genetically-blessed couple's love story hasn't been without it's hiccups. Shredding for the wedding? Tim's morphsuit was a change from his usual shirtless selfies In November last year, former criminal lawyer Anna lost the her 173,000 diamond engagement ring, which sent her into a panic. At the time, Anna took to her Instagram Story in a panic in order to find the expensive sparkler, showing footage of her frantically searching her luxury car. Luckily for Anna she soon found the engagement bling, updating her fans of her immense relief almost immediately. 'Found it! Oh my god, my hand is red. I got it, woo!' she exclaimed as she retrieved the ring from within the vehicle. 'Found it + some food for later #winning' she comically captioned the clip, as she showed off the ring covered in crumbs. Hiccup! The pair have had their hiccups, with Anna accidentally losing her $173,000 engagement ring in November She's an iconic supermodel, fashion icon and mother of three. And Claudia Schiffer showed off her sartorial prowess as she stepped out with her daughter Clementine, 13, in Westbourne Grove on Tuesday. The German supermodel, 47, looked glamorously chic in an all grey ensemble for the family shopping trip to Daylesford Organic, in London. Stylish: Claudia Schiffer looked casually chic in a grey tweed jacket as she enjoyed a family outing with daughter Clementine in London on Tuesday Claudia lived up to her fashionista status in a grey tweed jacket, which she slipped on over a light grey knit jumper. The 5 ft 11 catwalk queen highlighted her lithe frame with a pair of loose-fitting mom jeans, and she offset her dark ensemble with a pair of light brown boots. Keeping a low profile, the blonde beauty wore a pair of tortoiseshell shades as she let her luscious locks fall in front of her face to frame her petite features. Like mother, like daughter: Clementine looked trendy in a graphic print sweater and wide leg grey trousers, which she teamed with a pair of white Velcro strap trainers Relying on her naturally striking features, Claudia cut a youthful figure with a simple slick of make-up. Clementine looked trendy in a graphic print sweater and wide leg grey trousers, which she teamed with a pair of white Velcro strap trainers. As well as Clementine, Claudia has daughter Cosima, 7, and son Caspar, 15, with her husband of 16 years, film director Matthew Vaughn, 47. The blonde beauty rose to fame in the 1990s, but had first been spotted at just 17 years of age while in a nightclub in Dusseldorf and was signed to Metropolitan Model Agency, before joining Elite Model Management. Statuesque: The 5 ft 11 in catwalk queen highlighted her lithe frame with a pair of loose-fitting mom jeans, and she offset her dark ensemble with a pair of light brown boots A star is born: Claudia graced the cover of ELLE magazine shortly after finishing high school and went on to model designs for major fashion houses, including Chanel and Versace Claudia graced the cover of ELLE magazine shortly after finishing high school and went on to model designs for a number of major fashion houses, including Chanel, Versace, Christian Dior, Dolce & Gabanna and L'Oreal. Despite her incredible success, Claudia confessed she 'never thought' she would make it as a catwalk star, insisting that for an entire year after first being discovered she had convinced herself that her agents had made a 'mistake'. In an interview with online publication The EDIT in November 2017, the fashionista claimed: 'I must have some kind of guardian angel because I never thought I could be a model.' The beauty continued: 'Even when I was discovered, I literally thought, "No, they mean my girlfriend, not me." For a year I thought they would realise [their] mistake and send me home.' He's become one of Australia's best known comedians. But it turns out Dave Hughes once tried his hand at acting, after appearing on Neighbours. On Tuesday's Hughesy: We Have A Problem, the comedian shared a clip from 1998. Is that really you? Stand-up comic Dave Hughes shared a throwback clip of himself on long-running soap Neighbours, from 1998 Interviewing actor Ian Smith, who has played veteran character Harold on the show, the funnyman surprised his live audience with the clip. The scene started with longtime characters of the show, Susan Kennedy, played by Jackie Woodburne, getting out of a convertible. 'Excuse me,' she says, flagging down a stranger and about to ask for directions. You were kinda cute! Dave, who would have been about 27-years-old at the time, looking different than today. In the snap pictured with fellow comedian Nathan Valvo The scene then cuts to a very young-looking Dave Hughes, who appears with ruffled brown thick hair and youthful looking skin, with him being about 27 at the time. The Channel Ten live audience then roaring with laughter at the sight of the 47-year-old TV and radio personality. Dave, who is wearing a flannelette shirt and a Driza-Bone jacket, then starts to give the TV couple directions to a mobile phone tower. He starts: 'See that little road down there, you go along that about five mile and you come to an old silo, ignore that, keep going about three and a half mile.' We've both starred on the show! During Tuesday night's episode, the long-time radio and TV personality spoke with Ian Smith about his retirement from the soap The scene finishing with Karl Kennedy, who is played by Alan Fletcher, appearing frustrated while thanking him for his help. Posting the short clip to his Facebook account, a number of his fans gushed over a young Dave: 'you were kinda cute,' one wrote. while another added: 'Something's [sic] u should not share and this is one.' The guests appearing on the show radio hosts Dave Thorton and Kate Langbroek. Kate, who has worked as a writer for Neighbours, saying: 'That was the precursor to Wolf Creek.' Dave, then finishing the segment by speaking about Ian Smith's retirement from the show, he served as a series regular until 2009. She's been through her fair share of drama this season after finding herself in a love triangle with on-off beau Dan Edgar and new girl Clelia Theodorou. And Amber Turner ensured all eyes were on her once again as she shot TOWIE scenes on the beach in Brighton, East Sussex, on Tuesday afternoon. The blonde beauty, 24, slipped into a white lingerie-style bodice as she posed up a storm on the coast with co-star Georgia Kousoulou, 26. Little Miss Sunshine: Amber Turner ensured all eyes were on her once again as she shot TOWIE scenes on the beach in Brighton, East Sussex, on Tuesday afternoon Glamour girls: The blonde beauty, 24, slipped into a white lingerie-style bodice as she posed up a storm on the coast with co-star Georgia Kousoulou, 26 The reality star dressed to impress in a lemon yellow denim jacket and matching mini-skirt, which put her toned and tanned pins on full display. Amber elongated her statuesque frame with a pair of glamorous studded nude sandals, which perfectly matched her shoulder bag. The TOWIE beauty's sun-kissed tan glowed while her glossy platinum blonde locks fell into a soft curl. The reality TV queen amplified her ensemble with a nude make-up palette as she let her chic ensemble do all the legwork. Sun-kissed: The reality star dressed to impress in a lemon yellow denim jacket and matching mini-skirt, which put her toned and tanned pins on full display Dream team: Amber elongated her statuesque frame with a pair of glamorous studded nude sandals as she posed alongside gal pal Georgia The starlet appeared in good spirits for the sun-drenched beach trip, but made sure to be there for her friend Yazmin Oukhellou, who became emotional as they filmed the hit ITVBe show. Amber's outing comes after she made a thinly-veiled dig at ex Dan Edgar, sharing the quote 'You broke me' with her 445,000 Instagram followers. The star, who had been dating the hunk on and off for more than a year, was left heartbroken when he decided to pursue his romance with Clelia Theodorou. Last week, Dan decided to ditch Clelia, who claimed he had slept with Amber just hours before. Catwalk moment: The TOWIE beauty's sun-kissed tan glowed while her glossy platinum blonde locks fell into a soft curl Giggles: The reality TV queen amplified her ensemble with a nude make-up palette as she let her chic ensemble do all the legwork Clelia insisted Amber had 'broken girl code' when she slept with Dan while they were dating. She said: 'She kept telling me shes a girls girl when actually sleeping with someone when you know theyre dating another girl.' Speaking to The Sun she said: 'Amber knew full well him and I were seeing each other so the fact she went round his house and whether they definitely slept with each other or not shes broken girl code. 'Its shocking that she would do that she feels that if she had him once she can have him again, well she can just have him. He reassured me up until the very last day that nothing was going on between him and Amber.' Supportive: The starlet appeared in good spirits for the sun-drenched beach trip, but made sure to be there for her friend Yazmin Oukhellou, who became emotional as they filmed Tough times: Yazmin grew tearful as the girls stopped for a drink, perhaps due to another row with her co-star boyfriend James Lock Eye-catching: Georgia wore her own scene-stealing ensemble as she showed off her eye-popping cleavage in a red striped Bardot crop top Georgia wore her own scene-stealing ensemble as she showed off her eye-popping cleavage in a red striped bardot crop top. The reality star put her taut stomach on full display in the number as she poured her curves into a pair of high waisted blue jeans for the beach outing. Bringing the glamour of Essex to the shores of Brighton, Georgia opted for a pair of perspex heels for the trip as she carried her possessions in a chic black Gucci bag. Letting her enviable figure do all the legwork, the TV beauty wore a simple gold chain and chandelier earrings. On the move: The reality star put her taut stomach on full display in the skimpy number as she poured her curves into a pair of high waisted blue jeans for the beach outing Georgia shielded her eyes in retro black shades while her blonde tresses fell past her shoulders in a delicate wave. Nude make-up accentuated Georgia's cosmetically enhanced features as she joined Amber for a quick stroll around the seaside town. Georgia revealed she had a nose job done at the end of last year, and was forced to battle cruel trolls who criticised her as she told them the procedure was 'her choice'. The reality TV personality admitted in an interview with this week's OK! Magazine that she didn't even recognise herself when she first took her cast off. Gang's all here! Despite their differences, the cast all got together to pose for a beach snap Stunner: Letting her enviable figure do all the legwork, the TV beauty wore a simple gold chain and chandelier earrings Speaking candidly about going under the knife, the blonde beauty explained how weird the experience was, as she said: 'Imagine looking at yourself in the mirror and not recognising yourself. 'I never regretted it but when you come out of an operation and youre swollen, you do think to yourself, have I done the right thing?' But even though she had some trepidation before her cast was removed, the reality star admitted that it was the right decision: As time is going on, Im starting to get back to what I used to look like. I just feel like a proper version of myself. I am definitely so much more happy and confident now.' Beach babe: Bringing the glamour of Essex to the shores of Brighton, Georgia opted for a pair of perspex heels for the trip as she carried her possessions in a chic black Gucci bag The criticism didn't go unnoticed by Georgia's boyfriend Tommy Mallett, 25, who blamed the harsh criticisms for sparking Georgia's decision to have the surgery in the first place. The Essex star wrote: 'Comments like that are the reason people in Georgia's positions change themselves. 'Every time she had a argument on the show she had people pointing out insecurities that she already had so she changed it.' Georgia and her beau have been together for three years since meeting each other on the hit show, meaning they are the couple with the longest-running relationship of the series. The countdown is on for the wedding of Emily Simms and Pierre Ghougassian. And while the pair were seen celebrating at their engagement party over the weekend, tucking into a table-size grazing platter and a two-tier cake, it's back to the grind for Emily. The already svelte former star of The Bachelor was at her local gym on Tuesday, as documented by her Insta Stories. Shedding for the wedding! Emily Simms hits the gym in skintight leggings ahead of nuptials to fiance Pierre Ghougassian In the black and white shot, she is seen performing crunches in a crop top and a pair of extremely skin-tight leggings, working off those celebratory calories. But the foodie was seen enjoying a romantic dinner with her beau that evening, clearly rewarding herself for a good work out that afternoon. The engagement party took place in Toorak, Melbourne on Sunday and was well-documented by Emily. The first photo she shared with her legions of fans showed the designer-clad duo posing in front of a light bulb 'love' sign. Back to it: The foodie was seen enjoying a romantic dinner with her beau that evening, clearly rewarding herself for a good work out that afternoon Beautiful blooms, tantalising table size grazing platter, two-tier cake and light bulb love sign! Former Bachelor star Emily Simms reveals her lush engagement party before she weds fiance Pierre Ghougassian The bride-to-be stunned in an off-the-shoulder floral frock by Australian designer, Nicola Finetti. Meanwhile her real estate agent beau cut a dapper figure in a pair of black jeans and a white button-up shirt. The former Bachelor 2015 'villain' sported a particularly glowing complexion, which she put down to her 'oxygen facial'. 'Thanks Clinica Lase for the oxygen facial that has made my skin so clear and plump! I love it!' she wrote on Instagram. Earlier in the post, Emily gushed about her husband-to-be and described him as the 'man of her dreams'. Designer-clad duo: Emily stunned in an off-the-shoulder floral frock by Australia designer, Nicola Finetti. Meanwhile her real estate agent beau cut a dapper figure in a pair of black jeans and a white button-up shirt The former reality TV star gave fans a look-see at the tantalising table size grazing platter filled with large slabs of cheese, cured meats, dips, bread, pastries, fruit, nuts and hot savoury snacks '4 months til I marry the man of my dreams! Never been so happy and excited about the future than I have been since I met you Pierre Ghougassian,' she wrote alongside the couple shot. 'You light up my life in ways I never knew possible! I cant wait to be your wifey,' Emily added in the post. Next, the former reality TV star gave fans a look-see at the tantalising table size grazing platter filled with large slabs of cheese, cured meats, dips, bread, pastries, fruit, nuts and hot savoury snacks. Swish affair: Furthermore she added a touch of vintage glamour to the party my featuring glass bowls full of white hydrangeas In the background of the antipasto platter sat towering vases of succulent green and brown foliage. Furthermore she added a touch of vintage glamour to the engagement soiree by featuring glass bowls full of white hydrangeas. Shortly after the leggy brunette gave fans a glimpse at the lemon-coloured two-tier cake, decorated with cream roses. Wedding-worthy cake: The leggy brunette gave fans a glimpse at the lemon-coloured two-tier cake adorned with cream roses In February, the former reality TV star took to Instagram to announce she got engaged to Pierre on Valentine's Day. 'He put a ring on it! Were engaged!,' Emily wrote in the caption. She knows how to handle the haters. Ariel Winter shut down a troll who called her 'thirsty' on Instagram on Monday. The Modern Family star was posing with her co-stars at an FYC event in Hollywood, and as usual was confidently rocking a sexy ensemble. Handle the haters: Ariel Winter shut down a troll who called her 'thirsty' on Instagram on Monday But when on-screen sister Sarah Hyland posted a happy group shot, one of her 5.6million followers couldn't help throwing a slight. 'Why does Ariel look so thirsty all the time?' the follower asked, likely not expecting a personal response... but got one from Ariel nonetheless. 'Im SO thirsty!!! Havent had water in hours. God I cant believe you can tell Im dehydrated from this pic :/ :/' she quipped. Her comment received thousands of likes, while the comments section was flooded with fans rushing to her defence. 'Why does Ariel look so thirsty all the time?' When on-screen sister Sarah Hyland posted a happy group shot, one of her 5.6million followers couldn't help throwing a slight As the vast majority of people agreed, Ariel epitomized chic in a little black dress. The Speed Racer actress showed off her shapely pins in the thigh-skimming number that sported spaghetti straps and a bow around the waist. Winter added inches to her diminutive 5ft1 frame with a pair of black heels. The Kiss Kiss Bang Bang star's wavy raven tresses cascaded down the screen beauty's shoulders. Called it: 'Im SO thirsty!!! Havent had water in hours. God I cant believe you can tell Im dehydrated from this pic :/ :/' she quipped Gorgeous: As the vast majority of people agreed, Ariel epitomized chic in a little black dress Co star Hyland meanwhile looked radiant in a strapless gray dress with rose gold patterning. The 27-year-old Dirty Dancing actress slipped into a pair of pink heels for the event and carried a white purse. Hyland's brunette tresses were pinned up and she sported bangs for the evening. Beauty: Co star Hyland, 27, looked radiant in a strapless gray dress with rose gold patterning Back in black: Julie Bowen was all class in peep toe shoes and skintight black pants Grizzly Adams: Ty Burrell rocked the grizzled look with fashionable stubble Last fall, Ariel was attempting to strike a balance between shooting Modern Family and attending UCLA. She started attending the university in September of 2017, however, the star later chose to put school on hold to focus on her career. 'I do love UCLA, but at the moment I'm taking a break from it so I can continue to pursue my career and also try to have a little bit more of a life because I've been so busy,' the LA native began, in an interview with ET. 'That's really it at the moment. But I think education's really important. I love being there. I love learning,' Winter said. 'I will continue to keep learning.' Suits you! Jesse Tyler Ferguson looked dapper in a navy suit Blazin': Eric Stonestreet wore a handsome blazer to the event Hell for leather: Nolan Gould dons a brown leather jacket Specs appeal: Hyland slipped on a cute pair of glasses for the Q&A session Sister sister: The on-screen siblings share a few stories This big: Gould gets expressive at the FYC event One star of the hit ABC show notable by her absence was Sofia Vergara. The 45-year-old actress shared a vacation snap to Instagram on Monday, of herself wearing a frilly white gown with a plunging neckline that showed off plenty of the Columbian beauty's eye-popping cleavage. The Hot Pursuit starlet had captioned the post 'Island look'. She recently admitted that she'd like to start trying for a baby with her partner on Sunday night's episode, but he seemed reluctant to share her enthusiasm. But Gemma Collins, 37, and James Argent, 30, appear to have forgotten all about their relationship woes as they packed on the PDA while filming TOWIE on Tuesday. The pair looked sweet as they shared a passionate kiss on the pebbled beach in Brighton, and they appeared to be blissfully unaware of their cast mates as they shared the intimate moment. Smitten: TOWIE's Gemma Collins and James Argent packed on the PDA while filming in Brighton on Tuesday...after she revealed she wants to start a family with him Gemma and James looked happy to be spending time together, as the former could be seen doting on her man and even fixed his collar before shooting began. The blonde beauty was sure to turn heads in her daring outfit of the day, as her black semi-sheer jumpsuit gave a generous glimpse at her ample cleavage. GC offset her ensemble with a fuchsia pink cardigan, which she tied at the front so that it could elegantly cascade down behind her. Stunning: The blonde beauty was sure to turn heads in her daring outfit of the day, as her black semi-sheer jumpsuit gave a generous glimpse of her ample cleavage Sweet couple: Gemma and James seemed happy to be spending time together, as the former could be seen doting on her man and even fixed his collar before shooting began What a man: Ever the gentleman, James helped his girlfriend on her way down to the beach by holding onto her carefully as she jumped down from a wall The reality star's blonde locks fell past her shoulders, as she protected her eyes with a pair of chic black sunglasses. With a glamorous palette of make-up brushed onto her face, Gemma completed her look with a Louis Vuitton clutch bag and a pair of flip flops. James cut a dapper figure in a long-sleeved red shirt, which he paired with black shorts and matching slip-on shoes. No care in the world: The couple seemed not to mind if their cast members were around them as they leaned in for a kiss Beautiful: Gemma brushed on a glamorous palette of make-up for the day Cheese! Gemma and James had time to take a quick snap with Pete Wicks He kept his brunette locks pushed back with a pair of sunglasses, and, as a finishing touch, wore a silver chained necklace. Ever the gentleman, James helped his girlfriend on her way down to the beach by holding onto her carefully as she jumped down from a wall. During a brief break from filming, James couldn't help but put on a show for the public, and his fellow cast mates, as he stepped up onto a karaoke style platform to sing a few tunes on Brighton Pier. Sing-a-long: During a break from filming, James couldn't help but put on a show for the public, and his fellow cast mates, as he stepped up onto a karaoke style platform on Brighton Pier Blossoming romance: Despite their turbulent relationship, Gemma and James looked sweet as they held on tightly to each other In a video shared by Georgia Kousoulou, 26, James jumped right in with a rendition of Fly Me To The Moon by Frank Sinatra. Showcasing his powerful vocals, the reality star engaged with the audience and gave the public an all-round good time as his fellow TOWIE cast filmed him. While James was busy singing his heart out, Gemma could be seen enjoying a sweet treat with her pal Chloe Sims, 36. As she was digging into the fluffy candy floss, Chloe seemed to prefer a more savoury dish as she held a box of fish and chips in her hands. Down-time: While James was busy singing his heart out, Gemma could be seen enjoying a sweet treat with her pal Chloe Sims, 36 (pictured) All together now: Gemma, James and the rest of the cast posed for a celebratory photo Standing out: GC offset her ensemble with a fuchsia pink cardigan, which she tied at the front so that it could elegantly cascade down behind her The TOWIE cast's appearance in Brighton comes just days after Gemma opened up about planning to have a baby, in a conversation with her co-stars Chloe and Georgia. Chloe didn't hide her thoughts on her pal's decision, as she questioned Arg on whether he believes he's father material. Getting straight to the point, the mother-of-one cast doubt on the couple's decision to jump into trying for a baby, stressing how drastically their lives will change if the pair go ahead with the parenthood plans. Supportive friend: Chloe helped to console Gemma as she discussed her desire to have a family with James in an episode earlier this week Having fun: Showcasing his powerful vocals, the reality star engaged with the audience and gave the public an all-round good time as his fellow TOWIE cast filmed him Happy days: Despite the drama in recent episodes, Gemma seemed to be in the best of moods Feeling unsettled, the Full Monty star gave Gemma the cold shoulder after feeling put off by the idea of becoming a dad. Gemma, who has been a weight loss mission in order to help her chances of conceiving, was left in tears during a chat with Chloe and her best friend Bobby Norris, with the two giving her some tough love over whether James is the right man for her. Their heart-to-heart comes after Arg spoke about his tumultuous romance on last week's episode. Sweet treat: As Gemma was digging in to the fluffy candy floss, Chloe seemed to prefer a more savoury dish as she held a box of fish and chips in her hand Doting: James looked lovingly at his other half as they stood on the pebbled beach The Jump star said: 'She puts about six scrambled eggs on my plate and then a big, big, chunk of smoked salmon.' 'I said, "Gem this is lovely, but f*** me, how much smoked salmon do you want to put on my plate?" She comes over to my plate, picks up the smoked salmon, opens the window and chucks it out shes an absolute nutcase.' 'I love her to bits, but well have a row and shell go and get the locks changed.' After years of to and fro, the pair confirmed they were back on in the show's season premiere last month - revealing they had bought a house together in Spain. Advertisement Amal Clooney flaunted her post-baby body in a superhero inspired corset while arriving at a party at Anna Wintour's New York City home, just 10 months after giving birth to Ella and Alexander, her twins with husband George Clooney. The stunning 40-year-old human rights lawyer wowed in the bold red top with a cape detail while attending a party celebrating Glamour magazine's new editor-in-chief, Samantha Barry. Amal, who is friends with Samantha, co-hosted the high-profile event held at Anna's Greenwich Village townhouse on Monday evening. Scroll down for video Wow: Amal Clooney flaunted her post-baby body in a superhero-inspired corset for a bash at Anna Wintour's home in New York City Flawless: The stunning 40-year-old human rights lawyer wowed in the bold during her Monday outing Amal stood out in her lingerie-inspired top, which featured lace sleeves and a matching train that flowed down to her ankles. The corset highlighted the natural beauty's slim waist, flashing a hint of her midriff and her cleavage. She paired the sultry number with black skintight jeans and topped off her look with ankle booties and a black satin clutch featuring a gold clasp. The mother of two painted her pout a red hue, adding shimmery eye shadow and a touch of blush beneath her defined brows. Opting for a deep side part, she wore her long brunette tresses in loose waves that flowed past her shoulders. Amal was joined by fashion's biggest faces, including model Ashley Graham, actress Sienna Miller, television personality La La Anthony, and designers Diane Von Furstenberg, Vera Wang, Michael Kors, and Zac Posen. Gorgeous arrival: The corset highlighted the natural beauty's slim waist, flashing a hint of her midriff and her cleavage Chic: Amal stood out in her lingerie-inspired top, which featured lace sleeves and a matching train that flowed down to her ankles What a lady: She paired the sultry number with black skintight jeans, adding booties and a black clutch Ashley, 30, poured her curves into a one-shouldered floral dress, which had a deep thigh slit. The form-fitting frock had a red, black and gray flower pattern, and she topped off the look with stiletto sandals. She slicked her brown locks back into a bun and added a swipe of pink gloss to her full lips. Meanwhile, Sienna, 36, went for a more springtime look, opting for a blue, red, yellow and black floral dress. The mother of one added an edgy touch to her look by topping off her frock with a black leather duster coat and her lace up boots. She clutched a structured handbag while making her way into the party. During the gathering, Samantha, 36, took to Instagram to share a photo of herself posed with her arms around Amal, while Anna was smiling next to them. Good times: Amal's statement piece featured double straps on each side with long-sleeved lace sleeves and a cape detail, grazing her legs. She is seen with Sienna Miller (r) and Bel Powley (c) Turning heads: The mother of two painted her pout a red hue, adding shimmery eye shadow and a touch of blush beneath her defined brows, She is pictured with Sienna Miller (r) and Bel Happy: The party, hosted by Amal and Anna, was thrown to celebrate Samantha Barry's new role as editor-in-chief for Glamour magazine Fancy: Model Ashley Graham was also part of the guest list, and the cat walker poured her curves into a form fitting one-shouldered floral dress Beaming: The 30-year-old cover girl chose a red, black and gray flower patterned gown, which had a deep thigh slit In bloom: Actress Sienna Miller, 36, went for a more springtime look, opting for a blue, red, yellow and black floral dress 'A super special night hosted by two of my favorite women Amal Clooney and Anna Wintour to celebrate my new role as Editor in Chief @glamourmag,' she captioned the image. Samantha was most recently the executive producer for social and emerging media at CNN Worldwide before she was named Cindi Leive's successor at Glamour. Cindi, 50, announced in September that she was leaving the magazine after 16 years as editor-in-chief. Samantha is the magazine's eighth editor-in-chief since it debuted in 1939, and the first one with an exclusively digital background. Star studded: Designers Diane Von Furstenberg (l) and Zac Posen (r) were also attendees Pretty in pattern: Lala chose a plaid mid-calf dress, adding pink lipstick and cobalt blue heels Heading inside: Designer Michael Kors (l) and TV personality Gayle King (c) were on hand, as well as Amal's mother, Baria (r) Bundled up: Designer Vera Wang, 68, covered up in a fur coat with black trousers and a coordinating blouse Grinning ear to ear: Megyn Kelly went for an off-the-shoulder black jumpsuit, adding silver heels and a coordinating clutch Having a blast: Huma Abedin (c) and Sienna were seen leaving together, with fellow friend Bel in tow Pals: Sienna clutched a structured handbag as she and Huma left Anna's home after the party All dressed up: Huma chose an emerald green off-the-shoulder frock with red lipstick. She is pictured with Sienna (r) and Bel Anna, who is also Conde Nasts artistic director, said in a statement to the New York Times that Samantha is 'fearless like so many leaders of the moment.' 'We recognized at once that Sam would be the perfect editor for a new more ambitious era of Glamours future,' she said. 'We cannot wait to see her vision unfold.' Samantha met Amal when they were both living and working in London, and they got so close that she was invited to her wedding to George Clooney. Amal and George, 56, got engaged on April 28, 2014 and tied the knot five months later during a destination wedding in Venice, Italy. The Lebanon-British barrister and the movie star welcomed twins - a daughter, Ella, and son, Alexander - on June 6, 2017. It has been confirmed after much speculation, that villains Sonya and Hadil are the team who have been kicked off this season's My Kitchen Rules. Judge Manu Feildel revealed to The Daily Telegraph this week the dramatic aftermath of the pair being booted off. The Frenchman, 44, revealed the pair tried to apologise to him after being given the flick, but he has no regrets in sending them home. Scroll down for video 'I got a message on Facebook from them apologising': MKR's Manu Feildel (L, pictured with judge Pete Evans) reveals the dramatic aftermath after Sonya and Hadil were kicked off the show and says he has no regrets 'I got a message on Facebook from one of the people apologising for this and that,' Manu told the publication. 'But it's their life and their reputation and it's not going to affect me the rest of my life.' He added: 'I really don't care what their excuse was because there's no excuse for this type of behaviour.' It's them! It has been confirmed after much speculation, that villains Sonya (L) and Hadil (R) are the team who have been kicked off this season's My Kitchen Rules He's not mincing his words! He added: 'I really don't care what their excuse was because there's no excuse for this type of behaviour' Manu added that he and judge Pete Evans 'want cooks' and not a 'cat fight,' and hope future contestants understand this. Jess and Emma - who had a showdown with Sonya and Hadil before they were booted off the show - said they are looking forward to seeing the episode, as many people thought they were the team being sent home. On Tuesday's episode of the show, a war of words erupted between Jess and Emma, and Sonya and Hadil. During Henry and Anna's instant restaurant, the ladies bickered back and forth, cursed, pointed fingers and yelled insults before the judges stepped in to ask for some 'respect.' The last laugh: Jess and Emma (pictured) - who had a showdown with Sonya and Hadil before they were booted off the show - said they are looking forward to seeing the episode Fiery: On Tuesday's episode of the show, a war of words erupted between Jess and Emma, and Sonya and Hadil Jess and Emma attempted to offer advice to Suong and Kim, who would be cooking next, but it was quickly interjected by rivals Sonya and Hadil. 'We'll be alright, because we just work harder,' Hadil said with a confident smirk. 'I would hold your tongue darling before you get in that kitchen,' Jess responded, while sister Emma claimed: 'I take offence to that. Why do you think we don't work hard?' 'Well, when you can actually cook as good as us, talk,' Hadil said with a wine glass in her hand. Jess burst into laughter, as she hit back: 'I'm yet to try any nice food from you!' 'Put your tail between your legs, where it belongs, love,' Hadil said, as she then sent jaws dropping around the table when she labelled Emma a 'honey blowfish'. 'Don't be a smart a***,' Emma said, as Hadil quickly retorted: 'Who the f*** do you think you are!' Vince Colosimo has spoken out for the first time since he was convicted and fined for driving with a suspended licence and under the influence of ice in 2017. The 51-year-old Underbelly star told The Courier Mail on Wednesday that he is 'enjoying work and life'. Vince said that he found shooting his latest film The Second a 'distraction' from everything that was going on in his personal life last year. Scroll down for video 'I'm enjoying work and life': Vince Colosimo has spoken out for the first time since he was convicted and fined for driving with a suspended licence and under the influence of ice in 2017 'It was great to have that distraction and just come out here and do what I like doing,' Vince said, having shot The Second in Dalby, Queensland last June. He added: 'We were pretty much living it, going back to a little motel at night and starting again in the morning. 'We drank there, we slept there, we partied there, we had long conversations there and we did a little bit of acting.' Making headlines: In November, Vince had been convicted and fined for driving through Melbourne's CBD while suspended and under the influence of the illegal drug ice. Pictured at court in Melbourne on November 3rd In November, Vince had been convicted and fined for driving through Melbourne's CBD while suspended and under the influence of the illegal drug ice. He pleaded guilty in Melbourne Magistrates' Court after being charged with driving on a suspended licence with the drug in his system, when stopped and tested on March 5th 2017. He said nothing in court, except to acknowledge that he understood the penalty. Copping it: He said nothing in court, except to acknowledge that he understood the penalty Magistrate David Starvaggi convicted and fined him $3,500. He also cancelled his licence for five months. It was the third time that Vince had been caught driving on a suspended license, The Age previously reported. The magistrate said that even a child in kindergarten could understand the issue of driving under the influence. 'You're building a nice little history for yourself here,' he said. 'You're risking a jail term... if you're back here for a fourth time it won't be pretty.' Vince had to pay some court costs, as well as the fine and five-month license suspension. She caused waves in the fashion industry after gracing the cover of Edward Enniful's first British Vogue edition. And Adwoa Aboah took a break from her hectic schedule as she enjoyed a relaxing holiday at the luxury 5-star Coco Bodu Hithi resort in the Maldives, which she was quick to document on her Instagram account. The model, 25 - who was on holiday with her sister - proved why she was hot commodity in the industry as she flaunted her underboob in a skimpy lime green bikini while soaking up the sun on the beach. Sizzling: Adwoa Aboah, 25, enjoyed a relaxing holiday at the luxury 5-star Coco Bodu Hithi resort in the Maldives, which she documented on Instagram Adwoa proved to be a vision in the barely-there two-piece which served to accentuate her impossibly flat stomach and cleavage. Lookin Like a Right Swipe On Tinder. #cocoboduhithi #cocomoments,' she cheekily captioned one snap. In another similar flirty snap, she giggled up a storm as she held on to her sunnies. Adwoa was joined by her sister as they enjoyed a scenic sunset on a yacht. Beach babe: The model proved why she was hot commodity in the industry as she flaunted her underboob in a skimpy lime green bikini while soaking up the sun on the beach 'Perfect evening': Adwoa was joined by her sister as they enjoyed a scenic sunset on a yacht 'A filter wasnt really needed because it really was just the most perfect evening at the end of an amazing holiday with my bestest friend in the whole wide world. #cocoboduhithi,' she captioned the sweet sibling snap. Her getaway comes after reports that she is suing her former management company, claiming they are holding $190,000 of her earnings. According to TMZ, the catwalk queen has launched a lawsuit because she believes The Lions Management are holding the money as ransom because she left the New York agency. Lawsuit: Her getaway comes after reports that she is suing her former management company, claiming they are holding $190,000 of her earnings The publication reports the British beauty earned approximately $670,000 between January 2015 to July 2017, and that her managers kept nearly a third of her earnings. Adwoa is said to have put in the lawsuit: 'Fashion models are not indentured servants.' The model reportedly had a bitter relationship with her former management after she left them last year and signed up to DNA Management. At the time, Lions Management reportedly accused Adwoa of leaving her three-year contract with the firm prematurely, with WWD claiming they launched a lawsuit in September of last year seeking unspecified damages due to her early departure. According to TMZ: The disgruntled model has launched a lawsuit because she believes The Lions Management are holding the money as ransom because she left the company MailOnline has contacted Lions Management for comment. Adwoa's alleged lawsuit comes after she talked about her insecurities and struggles with addiction in Allure. She said: 'I was insecure. 'I don't think I was confident enough, and I don't think there was a space within the industry for somebody who looked like me.' She added: 'I worked; I did odd jobs. There were times I had money and times I didn't, it was up and down.' Disgruntled: The publication reports the British beauty earned approximately $670,000 between January 2015 to July 2017, and that her managers kept nearly a third of her earnings The supermodel's whole life has been a series of highs and lows. Back in 2015, Aboah attempted suicide after battling drug addiction. In the same year she started down the path to recovery and also managed to land the cover of Italian Vogue. Those trials and triumphs led her to found Gurls Talka network for women that encourages conversation surrounding sex, anxiety, antidepressants, and more. Speaking about the charity, she added: 'If I had somewhere I felt safe enough to talk about the things going on in my life, whether they be small or big, I don't think I would have bottled up everything so much and had it fall to pieces.' It's just a matter of weeks until they become parents for the first time. Heavily pregnant Kirsten Dunst and fiance Jesse Plemons were spotted running errands in Los Angeles on Monday and stopped off at Fedex to do some printing. The Spider-Man star, 35, kept comfy in a loose black midi sweater dress which skimmed over her baby bump. Mom-to-be: Pregnant Kirsten Dunst was spotted out in Los Angeles on Monday running errands with fiance Jesse Plemons She teamed the frock with simple flip flops and a tan cross-body bag. Going make-up free, the actress covered her eyes with some nude framed sunglasses. Her husband-to-be, 30, wore jeans, a shirt and sweater with red chucks and colorful cap. Kirsten later threw on a smart black blazer and tied her blonde locks back in a loose up-do as she continued her day of running errands. Keeping comfy: The 35-year-old actress cradled her baby bump as the couple went to Fedex together to do some printing Casual outing: The Spider-Man star wore a loose black midi sweater dress and flip-flops Kirsten met Jesse on the set of FX series Fargo in 2015 and they got engaged in 2017. 'I wasnt one of those "I need a baby!" people until my goddaughter was born,' she explained in an interview for the July issue of Marie Claire UK. 'I love her so much. That love is just like you cant experience that unless you have a kid,' she said. 'I put her to bed last night and she woke up this morning and said to her mom, 'Wheres Kiki?' I just love that love. Thats what I want.' Chic: Kirsten later threw on a smart black blazer and tied her blonde locks back in a loose up-do as she continued her day of running errands Radiant: The actress looked happy and relaxed as she strolled through the streets As for tying the knot: 'I'm very relaxed when it comes to those things. I'm going to get married at some point,' she told People the same month. The Beguiled star said she became good friends with Jesse when working on Fargo season two back in 2015, though their relationship was purely platonic until a year later. The couple play married high school sweethearts Peggy and local butcher Ed in the FX show. She is a rising star who rarely puts a foot wrong when it comes to fashion. And Maya Jama, 23, looked sensational as she flaunted her slim physique in a sleek and colourful outfit that was sure to make heads turn on Tuesday. Stepping out in support of the event which aims to end extreme poverty by 2030, Maya seemed more than happy to act as an MC at the Global Citizen Live concert in Brixton, London, which was headlined by Emeli Sande and Professor Green. Stunning: Maya Jama looked sensational in a red satin crop top and lilac trousers as she hosted the Global Citizen Live concert in Brixton on Tuesday Maya teamed a red satin crop top with pink flared trousers, which were made of the same material and highlighted her toned abs and hourglass figure. The 4Music presenter kept warm with a striking green bomber jacket, and she was sure to stand out thanks to its unique collar which was encrusted jewels. Maya - who is dating rapper Stormzy - styled her dark locks straight so that they fell past her shoulders, and she also debuted a new fringe especially for the event. Striking: The 4Music presenter kept warm with a striking green bomber jacket, and she was sure to stand out thanks to its unique collar which was encrusted with jewels Fun times: Maya and Adwoa had a great time hosting as they posed with comical outfits Accessorising with a number of gold necklaces and hooped earrings, the star brushed on natural make-up to highlight her pretty features. Maya completed her look with a pair of white heels which added a glamorous finish to her outfit of the night. While at the event Maya was spotted in her element as she hosted the free live show, getting the crowd warmed-up and excited before the main acts hit the stage. Host with the most: While at the event, Maya was spotted in her element as she hosted the free live show, getting the crowd warmed-up and excited before the main acts hit the stage Joining in: Vogue model Adwoa Aboah acted as a host for the star-studded affair alongside Maya, and she was spotted arriving at the party in a glamorous gold velvet coat by Emory Bee And pose! Ade Adepitan (L), Adwoa, Henrique Wooding, Maya Jama and Professor Green posed backstage for a fun photo Vogue model Adwoa Aboah acted as a host for the star-studded affair alongside Maya, and she was spotted arriving at the party in a glamorous gold velvet coat. The beauty wore light touches of make-up so that she relied on her natural beauty and chiselled features, and she accessorised with a number of glitzy gold jewellery. Adwoa added a casual flair to her ensemble with a pair of black Converse shoes, which offset her bright outfit well. Punk chic: Adwoa added a casual flair to her ensemble with a pair of black Converse canvas shoes, which offset her bright outfit well Beautiful: Stepping out in support of the event which aims to end extreme poverty by 2030, Maya looked sensational as she flaunted her slim physique in the sleek and colourful outfit Dapper: British rapper Professor Green opted for a more relaced look for his headline performance, as he stepped out in a camouflage ensemble British rapper Professor Green opted for a more relaced look for his headline performance, as he stepped out in a camouflage ensemble. Wearing a military print jacket over a black top and green cargo pants, the singer looked dapper as he stepped out onto the red carpet ahead of his appearance. The star beamed as he posed alongside the rest of the guests and hosts of the event, and he stood out thanks to his bleached blonde hair. Ready to go: The stars looked like they were having a lot of fun together as they prepared for the concert and waited behind the stage Casual chic: Wearing a military print jacket over a black top and green cargo pants, the singer looked dapper as he stepped out onto the red carpet ahead of his appearance Also making an appearance at the concert was musician Kojo Funds, who was part of the exciting line-up that were performing that evening. Dressed in a yellow Tommy Hilfiger jacket, the rapper was hard to miss as he arrived on the red carpet. He wore a white top with matching tracksuit pants to finish off his look, and he looked handsome as he posed stoically for the cameras. Ready to perform: Also making an appearance at the concert was musician Kojo Funds, who was part of the exciting line-up that were performing that evening Say cheese! The hosts and guests posed with a number of funny faces while behind the scenes It was recently reported that Maya could waltz her way onto the Strictly Come Dancing ballroom for the next series of the show set to air later this year. Despite her jam-packed schedule, the series could be on the cards for the rising star as insiders claim she doesn't want to 'slow down'. A television insider told The Sun: 'Maya would be a great contestant on the show she looks incredible, loves music and is already a big fan of the series.' 'Shes had a busy start to the year after presenting at The Brits and landing a presenting slot at Radio One and she doesnt want to slow down.' Gemma Collins commanded attention with her eye-catching ensemble as she arrived in Brighton to film further scenes for TOWIE on Wednesday. The reality star, 37, made a colourful statement in a bold floral coral as she enjoyed the sunshine at an amusement part with co-star Bobby Norris. Proving to be in her element, Gemma lapped up the attention in the eccentric look which proved to be of a loose fit. Eyes on her! Gemma Collins, 37, commanded attention with her eye-catching ensemble as she arrived in Brighton to film further scenes for TOWIE on Wednesday Always one to take risks with her fashion choices, Gemma didn't disappoint in the tunic style top which featured cold-shouldered slits on her arms. The expansive floral detailing featured hues of white, turquoise, purple and pink - no doubt, drawing attention to her look as she stopped to take selfies. Clearly a fan of the print, she opted for a pair of matching loose-fitting bottoms. Attention grabbing: The reality star made a colourful statement in a bold floral coral as she enjoyed the sunshine at an amusement part with co-star Bobby Norris Colourful: Always one to take risks with her fashion choices, Gemma didn't disappoint in the tunic style top which featured cold-shouldered slits on her arms Bright: The expansive floral detailing featured hues of white, turquoise, purple and pink - no doubt, drawing attention to her look as she stopped to take selfies Matching: Clearly a fan of the print, she opted for a pair of matching loose-fitting bottoms Strolling along in a pair of bedazzled pink flip flops, Gemma looked to be loving the much awaited British sunshine. Proving that she had already topped up her tan, the TV personality already seemed to sport a bronzed glow. Gemma's glamorous look didn't end there as she sported her signature blowdry and shielded her features with a pair of quirky pink-rimmed shades. The star proved engrossed in a conversation on the phone as she arrived to the amusement park. Soaking up the sun: Strolling along in a pair of bedazzled pink flip flops, Gemma looked to be loving her the much awaited British sunshine Radiant: Proving that she had already topped up her tan, the TV personality already seemed to sport a bronzed glow Primped and preened: Gemma's glamorous look didn't end there as she sported her signature blowdry and shielded her features with a pair of quirky pink-rimmed shades Having a chat: The star proved engrossed in a conversation on the phone as she arrived to the amusement park Joining Gemma on the fun day out in the sun was Bobby who put on a trendy display. The Essex favourite opted for a hot pink top, which he teamed with a leather jacket and skinny jeans. After Gemma was done with her phone call, she decided to enjoy a ride on the carousel. She looked slightly apprehensive as she hopped on board the ride before easing into a few seconds later. Pals: Joining Gemma on the fun day out in the sun was Bobby who put on a trendy display Fun: After Gemma was done with her phone call, she decided to enjoy a ride on the carousel Loving it: She looked slightly apprehensive as she hopped on board the ride before easing into a few seconds later Love: After years of to and fro, Gemma and James 'Arg' Argent confirmed they were back on in the show's season premiere last month Taking the next step: Gemma also revealed that she has bought a house with James Meanwhile, after years of to and fro, Gemma and James 'Arg' Argent confirmed they were back on in the show's season premiere last month - and revealed they had bought a house together in Spain. Proving their romance to be the real deal, Gemma even recently admitted she was planning on having a baby with Arg, now they had found happiness. However, discussing her decision on TOWIE, the blonde was left in tears as her pals voiced concerns over whether Arg was the right man to start a family with. Support: Gemma required a helping hand as she made her way off the carousel Dressed to impress: Gemma later swapped her colourful attire for a white wraparound blazer She made a rare public outing with beau Ryan Gosling last week. And just a few days later, Eva Mendes was spotted out solo and looking lovely as ever as she chatted to a handsome male companion in Los Angeles. The 44-year-old beauty appeared to have had a business meeting as she spent several hours inside a building before leaving escorted by the buff gent. Solo outing: Eva Mendes was all smiles in Los Angeles over the weekend as she chatted to a handsome mystery man Eva wore a long black dress with lace-up boots and a green cardigan and wore her brunette locks in a messy bun. Eva - who hails from Miami but grew up in Los Angeles - has not had a film release since 2015. The most recent acting credit on her IMDb page is her role as Cat in the mystery film Lost River, which was written and directed by Ryan, 37. Eva and Ryan have been a couple since 2011, and have two daughters together - three-year-old Esmeralda and one-year-old Amada. Late last year, the mother-of-two dished to People Chica about integrating her own Cuban background into her little girls' upbringing. Natural beauty: The 44-year-old beauty wore a black maxi dress and green cardigan as she smiled at the buff gent Movie star: The actress reportedly spent several hours inside a building, perhaps having a business meeting, before emerging 'Esmeralda mostly speaks Spanglish right now. Its really cute. Shes definitely bilingual, and its really important for us to make sure that shes not only just familiar with the language, but also with the culture,' said Eva. 'My mom, who lives 15 minutes away, makes it is easy because she speaks to the girls in Spanish and cooks them Cuban food. And were always listening to Cuban music. It really is a big part of our way of life. I wouldn't have it any other way.' Eva continued: 'My dad, who has been here for 45 years and still doesnt speak English, is a real asset. 'It's so cool because now that Im trying to make sure that my girls speak Spanish, its like "Ok, Dad, take them," because I know that all theyre going to speak with him is Spanish.' As the host of Fashion Police, Giuliana Rancic decides the do's and don'ts of the red carpet. And the Daytime Emmy winner proved her sartorial sense was sharp as can be as she arrived at The View's NYC studio on Tuesday. The E! News favorite, 43, charmed onlookers in a lush floral frock by Karen Miller. Scroll down for video In full bloom! Giuliana Rancic proved her sartorial sense was sharp as can be as she arrived at The View's NYC studio in a lush floral frock by Karen Miller on Tuesday Giuliana who was born in Naples, Italy and moved to the US at seven paraded her slim, tan stems in the thigh-skimming dress with bishop sleeves and a studded belt. The Going Off Script authoress accented her outfit with silver bangles and baby pink velvet stilettos that looked fit for a Prima Ballerina's Saturday night. Her honey blonde was styled in perfectly tousled waves that looked as effortless as they were elegant. Not missing an opportunity to capture her A-plus look, Giuliana played with some Snapchat filters while also giving a shout-out to makeup artist Daniel DeLeno and hairstylist Rosibel Rose. Legs get going! The Italian-American talent paraded her slim, tan stems in the thigh-skimming dress with bishop sleeves and a studded belt Best tressed! Her honey blonde was styled in perfectly tousled waves that looked as effortless as they were elegant Tiny dancer! The Going Off Script authoress accented her outfit with silver bangles and baby pink velvet stilettos that looked fit for a Prima Ballerina's Saturday night Earlier that day the breast cancer survivor gushed about husband of 11 years Bill Rancic at Living Beyond Breast Cancer and Genentechs Not One Type breast cancer awareness pop-up in New York City. 'I truly cannot imagine life without Bill,' she told People, 'When I look at him I still see that gorgeous, smart, driven man that I fell in love with. I still get butterflies in my stomach thinking about him. 'Hes so much more than my husband,' continued the TV presenter, 'Bills my absolute best friend in life. Hes my other half. I feel like were connected. We just have an incredible respect for each other and love for each other.' Study buddy! Not missing an opportunity to capture her A-plus look, Giuliana played with some Snapchat filters Glam squad! She also gave a shout-out to makeup artist Daniel DeLeno and hairstylist Rosibel Rose Though the Miss USA pageant hostess and her real estate developer love just put their Chicago home on the market, they haven't decided where they're heading next. 'Were just taking it one day at a time right now,' explained the star. 'My husband has created really, really beautiful homes and beautiful projects in Chicago and beyond, so maybe itll be the next great Bill Rancic production we move into. 'He really is so good at what he does and really has created beautiful homes for us this was like our 10th home! so Im sure wherever we move will be yet anther beautiful home built by him.' She is known for her comedy on the big screen and stage. But Amy Schumer got serious regarding her latest project. The 36-year-old actress opened up about the backlash centered around the trailer for her latest flick I Feel Pretty. Scroll down for video Taking a stand: Amy Schumer opened up about the backlash centered around the trailer for her latest flick I Feel Pretty in an interview with Vulture on Tuesday, as she is pictured in New York last week As many people took to social media to bash the project after the clip was released, Schumer talked to Vulture on Tuesday in an attempt to clear the air. She said: 'There was a backlash to the trailer, and that was kind of disappointing. 'Even then, though, I understood it, and knew that the film wasnt about what they thought it was about. I just wished they could see it.' In the flick the star plays an insecure woman named Renee Bennett who believes a head injury made her more beautiful, however, it only really changed her confidence. Ouch: Many people took to social media to bash the project after the trailer was released Amy believes that those who criticized the trailer were misunderstanding the premise and that they had made unfair assumptions on what it was actually about. She explained: 'Theres been a lot of projection. I heard a lot of, "She doesnt have a right to feel bad about herself because she looks however she looks." 'But first off, its not about an ugly troll becoming beautiful, its about a woman who has low self-esteem finding some.' Premise: In the flick the star plays an insecure woman named Renee Bennett who believes a head injury made her more beautiful, however, it only really changed her confidence The Trainwreck star goes on to say that everybody struggles with self esteem including herself. She continues: 'But this projection, yeah: I heard the comment, "Why does she have to think of herself as skinny?" a lot. But you never see how I see myself! Thats a guess, that Renee thinks of herself as skinny. ' As soon as the trailer was released many users on Twitter criticized it as they said Schumer shouldn't have been potraying someone people don't find attractive. 'There's been a lot of projection': Amy believes that those who criticized the trailer were misunderstanding the premise and that they had made unfair assumptions on what it was actually about Amy goes on to explain that after her characters head injury many would assume that the person she sees in the mirror is skinny however that may not be the case as she explained: 'Im just seeing my same self and perceiving my body as beautiful. 'She doesnt say, "Im so thin!" She just says that shes amazed by her jawline, and her boobs, and her ass. If anything, that sounds like a more voluptuous woman to me.' The film has a star studded cast including Emily Ratajkowski, Michelle Williams, Naomi Campbell, Busy Philipps, Aidy Bryant, Tom Hopper, and Rory Scovel. I Feel Pretty - directed and written by Schumer and Marc Silverstein - hits theaters on Friday in the US with a 4 May release in the UK. She has got her phenomenal figure back thanks to her work outs. And Rosie Huntington-Whiteley kept up with her routine when she hit the gym once again in Beverly Hills, California on Tuesday. The 30-year-old model was sexier than ever before as she put her amazing abs well and truly on display in her semi-sheer crop top. Hot to trot: Rosie Huntington-Whiteley showed off her amazing abs and bust in semi-sheer crop top on way to gym, in Beverly Hills, California on Tuesday Golden-haired Rosie ensured all eyes were drawn to her incredibly toned waistline thanks to her Gucci crotch bag. The mother-of-one also teased a glimpse of her cleavage thanks to the semi-sheer design of her microscopic crop top. Despite her sexy arrival, the model kept a low profile by sheltering her eyes with huge sunglasses. She's looking good: The model also teased a glimpse of her cleavage thanks to the semi-sheer design of her microscopic crop top It has almost been a year since the mother-of-one welcomed her first child into the world back in June 2017. Rosie lives happily at home with her 50-year-old fiance Jason and their young son Jack Oscar. The Rosie and Jason love story goes back to when they first started dating seven years ago. How to accessorise: Golden-haired Rosie ensured all eyes were drawn to her incredibly toned waistline thanks to her Gucci crotch bag Although they have been engaged for two years since Jason proposed in January 2016, the couple firmly denied rumours they got married in secret in recent months. Since then, the stunning model has snapped back into shape with ease as she juggles mummy duties with staying trim at the gym. The gym guru divulged how she keeps her slender model-honed figure by eating good food and exercising. She told Female First in October 2014: 'My parents always encouraged sport and exercise. I work out like crazy so I can enjoy myself and eat good food.' It's love: Rosie lives happily at home with her 50-year-old fiance Jason (pictured together in New York City, May 2016) and their young son Jack Oscar Being sporty certainly runs in the Huntington-Whiteley family, with Rosie's personal trainer younger brother Toby, 28, teaching 50-minute, high-intensity boxing classes in KOBOXs Fight Club Meets Nightclub studio in London's Chelsea. The trainer and model gave fans a taste of his cheeky personality in a new video for KOBOXs The Gloves Are Off YouTube series, joking about who would win in a fight between him and brother-in-law Jason Statham. Asked how scared he is of the action hero on a scale of one to 10, he said: 'Oh one. I'm not scared of him at all.' Toby was than asked who would win in a fight between the pair, to which he replied: 'I would, easy. I'd hold him at hand's reach.' Sporty family: Rosie's personal trainer younger brother Toby, 28, teaches 50-minute, high-intensity boxing classes in KOBOXs Fight Club Meets Nightclub studio in London's Chelsea She is known for her chic sense of style almost as much as her award-winning acting ability. And Naomie Harris put on yet another sartorial display on Tuesday night, as she arrived at the Marriott International Loyalty Programme Launch in London. The actress, 41, turned heads in a striking mustard yellow trouser suit by ROSKANDA as she joined a number of high-profile guests at the bash, held at the St Pancras Renaissance Hotel. Cutting the mustard: Naomie Harris put on a sartorial display in a bold yellow suit on Tuesday night, as she arrived at the Marriott International Loyalty Programme Launch in London Naomie turned heads at the event with her bright yellow suit, formed of a classically tailored blazer and cigarette trousers. Making the look all the more striking however, the actress opted to sport nothing underneath - therefore teasing at her braless cleavage beneath the jacket's lapels. Proving her chic sense of style, the Moonlight star contrasted her yellow look with a cobalt clutch and matching heels, both embelished with glittering diamonds. Suits you! Naomie turned heads at the event with her bright yellow suit, formed of a classically tailored blazer and cigarette trousers by ROSKANDA Saucy: Making the look all the more striking however, the actress opted to sport nothing underneath - therefore teasing at her braless cleavage beneath the jacket's lapels Leaving her hair sleek and straight, Naomie drew attention to her enviably radiant complexion as she posed - accentuated with a soft smoky eye and nude lip. The actress' outing comes after she praised the positive change in attitude towards race and gender in movies. Speaking on an episode of ITV's Lorraine, the former Bond Girl suggested it was all about 'character qualities' in film nowadays, and that she is delighted filmmakers have started to take on 'colourblind casting'. Stunning: Leaving her hair sleek and straight, Naomie drew attention to her enviably radiant complexion as she posed - accentuated with a soft smoky eye and nude lip She said of the industry's progression: 'There are more opportunities now. A lot of time its colourblind casting... what you want from a character is their qualities. 'It doesnt matter what race or gender they are. A lot of roles are written for men and are then changed for females. Its a lot more of an open environment, which I'm loving. Naomie cut a relaxed figure at the bash - which featured an exclusive performance from Rag'n'Bone Man - as she took a break from the promotional trail for her new movie Rampage. Here come the girls: Naomie took a break from promoting her new movie Rampage at the bash (pictured with Alexandra Burke, Joanna Froggatt, Natalie Dormer and Dominique Tipper) Pals: Naomie stars alongside Dwayne 'The Rock' Johnson in the film, which follows the story of primatologist Davis Okoye (Dwayne) and his relationship with an intelligent gorilla, George The Oscar nominee stars alongside Dwayne 'The Rock' Johnson in the film, which follows the story of primatologist Davis Okoye (Dwayne) and his relationship with an intelligent gorilla, George. However, the once gentle creature begins to cause chaos in North America after a genetic experiment goes wrong and Davis takes it upon himself to save the monkey he loves. Starring as Davis' genetic engineer sidekick Kate Caldwell, Naomie couldn't help but sing the praises of her co-star Dwayne, and praise his on-set attitude. 'Hes just incredible and so charismatic,' she said. 'Youre working with green screen, I was completely lost yet he showed me how it all worked and was so helpful.' Slender: Natalie Dormer also attended the event in a berry-coloured ROSKANDA dress, which clung to her slender waist and slim frame all the way to its demure knee-length hem Stunning: Following the colour pop trend like Naomie, the Game of Thrones star tied her look together with vibrant blue Rupert Sanderson heels, as she posed for cameras Work it: Natalie flashed a killer pout at cameras once inside Party people: Joanna Froggatt (L) and Aisling Bea cosied up for the cameras in their colourful print dresses Naomie joined a number of other guests at the bash, including Natalie Dormer, Ashley James, Alexandra Burke and Vanessa White. Natalie slipped her slender frame into a berry-coloured dress, which clung to her slender waist and slim frame all the way to its demure knee-length hem. Following the colour pop trend like Naomie, the Game of Thrones star tied her look together with vibrant blue heels, as she posed for cameras. Vibrant: The Saturdays star Vanessa White added another pop of colour to the carpet in a green silk floral kimono, made more striking by its accompaniment of plain black jeans Turning heads: Adding barely-there black sandals and styling her hair into loose waves, the singer let her statement oriental garment steal the show as she arrived at the event The Saturdays star Vanessa added another pop of colour to the carpet in a green silk floral kimono, made more striking by its accompaniment of plain black jeans. Adding barely-there black sandals and styling her hair into loose waves, the singer let her statement oriental garment steal the show as she arrived at the event. Also present was reality star Ashley James, clad in a bright red silk midi dress, and singer Alexandra Burke, who kept things more casual in white blouse and jeans. Chic: Also present was reality star Ashley James, clad in a bright red silk midi dress Co-ordinated: Ashley teamed her red and white silk slip with matching patent boots Finishing touches: She accessorised with drop fringe earrings as she mingled with guests VIPs: Also in attendance were Alexandra Burke (L) and Jasmine Hemsley (R) Summer chic: Ophelia Lovibond looked gorgeous in her gingham maxi dress Party time: Toby Huntington-Whiteley showed off his smouldering good looks Jennifer Garner turned 46-years-old on Tuesday. And the Alias vet kicked off the special day with her usual routine: grabbing coffee with a female friend in Los Angeles after an early morning workout. The only thing that looked different on this day was the large, handmade knit scarf in pink, blue and turquoise the estranged wife of Ben Affleck had on. Good vibes: Jennifer Garner turned 46-years-old on Tuesday. And the Alias vet kicked off the special day with her usual routine: grabbing coffee with a female friend in Los Angeles BFF: The Catch And Release star was with a pretty blonde friend who wore a black track suit and purple sneakers with green laces Under the scarf was a grey T-shirt and black workout leggings with beige stars on the sides. Green, turquoise and red sneakers slightly matched her scarf, which was likely made by her eldest daughter Violet, 12. She also has Seraphina, nine, and Samuel, six. The Catch And Release star was with a pretty blonde friend who wore a black track suit and purple sneakers with green laces. Le look: Green, turquoise and red sneakers slightly matched her scarf, which was likely made by her eldest daughter Violet, 12. She also has Seraphina, nine, and Samuel, six No ex: There was no sign of Affleck, who has been shooting a film in Hawaii as he squeezes in dates with New York based girlfriend Lindsay Shookus Later she was seen with a white water bottle dangling from her pinkie finger. There was no sign of Affleck, who has been shooting a film in Hawaii as he squeezes in dates with New York based girlfriend Lindsay Shookus. Jennifer and Ben filed for divorce a year ago and there still seems to be no final settlement. Staying healthy: Later she was seen with a white water bottle dangling from her pinkie finger Birthday girl: Jennifer kicked off her birthday with a workout session A source told People Jennifer already celebrated her birthday on Sunday with a party. 'It was a low-key family celebration with kids,' said the insider. Radar Online added they had a bash in 'the backyard was decorated with a lot of balloons and the guests had fun making pizza.' Busy mom: The mother of three was later spotted running errands in Santa Monica in a striped sweater and skinny blue jeans Holding hands: The Hollywood star also picked up her daughter Seraphina from school Jennifer rented a pizza oven from Olive Wood Pizza. Molly Sims and her family were there, but ex Affleck was absent. 'Ben was back in LA this weekend; the whole family went to church on Sunday before Jens party. 'Ben is getting his new house ready, but hasnt moved in yet.' The Argo director bought a $19.2 million home near where Garner lives in Los Angeles. The City alum Olivia Palermo took another stylish stroll Tuesday on the streets of Manhattan alongside her handsome husband Johannes Huebl. As usual, the 32-year-old fashion maven donned eye-catching attire including bright yellow patterned pants, patent leather combat boots, a purple purse, and a speckled blazer featuring black faux fur detail. And the German 40-year-old model strut his fit 6ft2in form in a green furry winter coat over a black sweater, blue pants, and light green sneakers. Peacocking pair: The City alum Olivia Palermo took another stylish stroll Tuesday on the streets of Manhattan alongside her handsome husband Johannes Huebl Olivia and Johannes will celebrate their fourth wedding anniversary on June 29, but they've been dating for over a decade. The Brooklyn-based couple have yet to start a family, but they regularly attend fashion events and dote on their dog Mr. Butler. Palermo might style herself - but she regularly visits trainer Tracy Anderson (six times a week), dermatologist Dr. Dennis Gross (once a month), and facialist Joanna Vargas (once a week). Eye-catching attire: The 32-year-old fashion maven stood out in bright yellow patterned pants, patent leather combat boots, a purple purse, and a speckled blazer Blue steel: And the German 40-year-old model strut his fit 6ft2in form in a green furry winter coat over a black sweater, blue pants, and light green sneakers Still going strong! Olivia and Johannes will celebrate their fourth wedding anniversary on June 29, but they've been dating for over a decade 'I drink a lot of water, and I have berries every single day - something I've also picked up from my mother for antioxidants so that definitely helps,' the Connecticut-born socialite told InStyle in January. 'Also just making sure that you're relatively healthy - everything in moderation, but that also affects your skin as well.' The social media influencer pens a lifestyle blog for her combined 6.6M following as well as collaborating with brands like Pretty Ballerinas and Bobbi Brown Cosmetics. Australia is demanding overseas contractors and aid agencies actively work to stop child sex abuse after revelations United Nations staff abused people during humanitarian disasters. International Development Minister Concetta Fierravanti-Wells says the "shocking abuse of power" from UN workers and contractors must be investigated and stopped. "This behaviour is not only appalling, but completely undermines public confidence in UN institutions," Senator Fierravanti-Wells said in a speech in London on Monday, local time. She says Australia is seeking assurances from UN agencies and contractors after reports that food packages were traded for sex in Syria and peacekeepers did the same in the Central African Republic. Senator Fierravanti-Wells also promises to push the case for overseas aid because she said many Australians didn't understand it was an investment, not a handout. She says overseas aid helped to build economies and institutions that benefit Australia, especially in the area of national security. "(Overseas development aid is) a powerful tool to support a stable, secure and prosperous neighbourhood," she said. Senator Fierravanti-Wells also called on the UK to continue funding development in the Pacific region once Brexit is finalised. She said while the UK's infrastructure development funding had been focused on projects in Africa and Asia, Australia believes the time is right to send more of that money to the Pacific. The head of the prime minister's department is considering his response in the wake of a police investigation into the loss of cabinet documents. Martin Parkinson has now received both the AFP report into how top-secret files ended up in a filing cabinet at a Canberra second-hand shop before being reported by the ABC, as well as a separate review into his department's security practices. "I am considering carefully both reports and in the coming weeks I will provide a detailed statement in response to the findings," Mr Parkinson said in a statement on Tuesday. Queensland's education department says it won't move to stop a Brisbane high school using a gender education resource which encourages students to think of gender as a spectrum rather than a strictly defined binary. Mitchelton State High School has been using the "Genderbread Person" resource as part of its health studies curriculum, leading to some parents complaining, according to The Courier-Mail. A department spokesperson said they give individual schools leeway to decide what resources are used to teach students about gender identity, and Mitchelton High parents were given the choice to opt their children out of studying that curriculum at the start of term. They arrived at Sydney's Taronga Wildlife Hospital with all sorts of woes, but it's now time for five little penguins to return to the ocean. The penguins will be released into Manly's Shelly Beach on Tuesday morning after being treated for conditions including dehydration, a fishing hook injury and a broken foot. The flightless birds were delivered to the zoo over the past two months from as far as Newcastle, Maroubra and Bondi, and are part of 1500 native animals cared for by Taronga veterinarians each year. Australia has admonished Russia after confirming Kremlin-backed hackers were responsible for cyber attacks on hundreds of Australian companies. Cyber Security Minister Angus Taylor said while a "significant number" of organisations were affected by the 2017 attacks, there was no indication Australian information had been compromised. "Commercially available routers were used as a point of entry, demonstrating that every connected device is vulnerable to malicious activity," Mr Taylor said on Tuesday. "This attempt by Russia is a sharp reminder that Australian businesses and individuals are constantly targeted by malicious state and non-state actors, and we must maintain rigorous cyber security practices." Mr Taylor, who is in the United States meeting government officials to discuss cyber security, said it was crucial Canberra worked with Washington to build defences against attacks. Australian businesses will soon get a clear idea of how to get a slice of the $200 billion being spent on defence projects over the next decade. Defence Industry Minister Christopher Pyne said the government's Defence Industrial Capability Plan will be released soon. "We put the money aside, $200 billion, to build up the capability of our military over the next 10 years, and now it's really over to industry to take all the opportunities that we are giving industry to make the most of it," Mr Pyne said at an event in Kuala Lumpur. Almost one hundred years ago to the day, Michael Ward was injured in the trenches of France when shrapnel pierced his left knee during a major German offensive. A member of the 28th battalion, known to his mates as Mick, he was sent to England for treatment before returning to Victoria once the war ended. He died in 1962. In 2016 a small suitcase containing his personal effects was purchased at auction by Museums Victoria, who are now trying to learn more about him. Among the more peculiar items inside the case are a small white stone and a little bottle of soil which the museum plans on testing, as well as a German epaulette and a leather-bound diary. "We've been in the trenches for eight days and I haven't had my clothes off ... for eight days and eight nights," an entry reads, marked with a bloodied thumbprint. There were also items belonging to other people in the case, including a wallet inscribed with the name of a soldier killed in action in October 1917, and letters from a person named Barney to a girl, Eva. It was likely they were the possessions of fallen soldiers, probably Mick's friends, researcher Deborah Tout-Smith said on Tuesday. "It really brings home that every soldier, even if they had survived the war, had seen some really awful things and have been through really challenging experiences. "The fact Mick would save this material for the rest of his life says something about him dealing with it ... maybe never coming to terms with it, and that's why in the 1930's we think he shut the case, tucked it away and never opened it again." People are invited to bring their own wartime items to the museum on Saturday and Sunday, with conservation experts from Melbourne University on hand to share stories and give advice on cleaning and care. Ms Tout-Smith is hoping to meet a descendant of Mick's at the event. "Any family member that might be able to tell us what sort of person Mick was," she said. Friends of an Australian nun detained in the Philippines say they're shocked Rodrigo Duterte's government has arrested her, saying the "gentle soul" has been "hit with a sledgehammer". Sister Patricia Fox was taken from her house to the immigration bureau in Manila on Monday where she was detained for "illegal political activities," secretary-general of the leftist Bayan (Nation) movement Renato Reyes has revealed. Sr Fox has been involved with human rights missions in Mindanao looking into the plight of indigenous people and farmers, leftwing lawmakers have said, almost a year after President Rodrigo Duterte imposed martial law on the southern island. International Coalition for Human Rights chair Peter Murphy, who has known the 71-year-old for years and has travelled with her in the Philippines, is shocked by her arrest. "She's a very gentle soul ... a really quiet and unassuming character," Mr Murphy, speaking in Sydney, told AAP on Tuesday. "It's pretty outstanding they have decided to hit her with a sledgehammer." Sr Fox's detention came a day after Giacomo Filibeck, a Socialist Party official from the European Union who had criticised Mr Duterte's brutal anti-drugs crackdown, was deported. "Pat is a small fry in comparison," Mr Murphy said. "She's not a prominent person in terms of public denunciations of the government." Mr Murphy, who most recently travelled to the Philippines in February, says the detention centre where Sr Fox is being held is "a cage jammed full of people." "It's a horrific location," he said. Australia's foreign affairs department "is aware an Australian woman was arrested in the Philippines", a spokeswoman said. Bill Morrow's father died when he was very young, and his mother worked to pack cauliflowers in the day and served at a cafe at night. The now-outgoing NBN chief executive's seven older sisters helped raise him in a family with very little income. "I suppose if you have to divide the world into the haves and the have-nots, we lay squarely in the have-nots," he told the National Press Club on Tuesday. For Mr Morrow, it was his four years of military service in exchange for taxpayer-funded education that helped pull him out of the have-not category. "But for Australians, maybe the NBN could be that neutraliser." Mr Morrow shared his story as he talked up research commissioned by the company showing the network is delivering economic benefits in the billions. The findings from AlphaBeta show the NBN generated an additional $1.2 billion of economic activity in 2017, through helping create new jobs and businesses, as well as boosting productivity. Mr Morrow's address on Tuesday is expected to be his last after he announced he would be stepping down at the end of the year after nearly five at the helm. His tenure has not been without criticism, with ongoing concerns about the rollout and technology choices. The latest Telecommunications Industry Ombudsman report shows complaints about NBN services grew by more than 200 per cent in the last six months of 2017, compared to the same time in 2016. Migrants and their families may fall into destitution and poverty if they are forced to wait longer for welfare payments, a Senate inquiry has been warned. Legislation before federal parliament aims to make new residents wait three years before they can access various payments including family tax benefits, paid parental leave and carers allowance. Leanne Ho, from the National Social Security Rights Network, says the bill is based on the flawed assumptions that newly-arrived migrants choose not to work, and removing income support will encourage self-sufficiency. "Migrants actually have a very strong desire to work and only look to income support when they are unable to work and are in financial hardship," Ms Ho told senators in Melbourne on Tuesday. "It can often be difficult for migrants to secure employment in Australia, even where there is a match between the skills and experiences of a migrant and the advertised skills shortage." Ms Ho told the public hearing that employers were often to blame for migrants struggling to find work, with nagging perceptions about their lack of Australian experience or language skills. The network, which represents community legal centres helping migrants navigate access to welfare payments, is concerned migrants and their families will either plunge into poverty or fall prey to exploitation. "Exploitation of migrant workers is well documented, where they will accept any substandard work conditions in order to survive, and extending the waiting period will only exacerbate their vulnerability," Ms Ho said. "Any costs saved from extending the waiting period may well end up being costs spent in dealing with the fallout from the destitution." Roughly 50,000 new migrant families including 110,000 children are expected to be hit by three-year wait periods for family tax benefits. Another 30,000 individuals will be shunted onto waiting lists for other welfare payments. Under the changes, which are expected to save $1.3 billion, the wait for Newstart and Youth Allowance will be extended from two to three years. The National Social Security Rights Network is particularly opposed to the introduction of waiting periods for "special benefits" payments, which are designed for people experiencing severe financial hardship. Ms Ho said the payments were already incredibly difficult to access, with migrants finding it especially hard to prove the requisite substantial changes to their circumstances. WHAT THE NBN IS TRYING TO SELL * The network generated an additional $1.2 billion of economic activity in 2017. * By the end of the rollout, that should have multiplied to $10.4 billion a year. * It predicts up to 52,200 additional Australian women will be self-employed by the end of the rollout. * In NBN regions, the number of new businesses has accelerated at more than twice the annual pace of the national average since 2011. * Those connected to the NBN are twice as likely to enrol in online courses. * People with the NBN are 1.3 times more likely to use internet-connected devices to improve their health and wellbeing. WHAT AUSTRALIANS ARE SAYING * Nearly 23,000 Australians complained to the Telecommunications Industry Ombudsman about NBN services in the last six months of 2017. * More than 14,000 complaints were recorded about service quality. * 8757 were regarding delays in establishing a connection. WHAT THE GOVERNMENT BELIEVES * Communications Minister Mitch Fifield says the rate of complaints for services delivered over the NBN actually decreased by 16 per cent in 2017. * Over the six month period recorded, there was a 39 per cent increase in NBN premises activated. * Senator Fifield has ordered a review of consumer safeguards in the telecommunications sector, admitting telcos need to lift their game. (Sources: AlphaBeta study, TIO six-monthly report) A second man has been arrested and charged over an alleged pedophile ring that terrorised vulnerable children at a western Sydney school four decades ago. After the first arrest in March, police from Strikeforce Eckersley said they were circling dozens of offenders after victims came forward with harrowing tales of genital mutilation and sadistic punishments at the government-run Daruk Training School. Police arrested a 73-year-old man on the Gold Coast on Tuesday, and he was charged with multiple counts of assault and buggery. NSW Police will apply for his extradition when he faces court on Tuesday. The abuse, which allegedly took place between 1965 and 1985, involved staff and adults linked to the Penrith school, which looked after young offenders and troubled teens. The first man arrested over the school, 67-year-old Brian Peckover, faces multiple counts of assault and buggery. He was granted bail and is expected to appear before Penrith Local Court on May 25. Australia's former top cop has slammed governments for waging a war on drugs insisting it's failed "abysmally". Former Australian Federal Police commissioner Mick Palmer has backed a Greens proposal to legalise cannabis use by adults, saying the current policy "makes no sense at all". Under the proposed reforms cannabis would be redefined as a legal substance with licences issued for its production and sale. "There's no question the current policy has failed abysmally," Mr Palmer told reporters in Sydney on Tuesday. Australian Greens leader Richard Di Natale wants a national agency established to issue production and sale licences and oversee regulations. Federal Health Minister Greg Hunt on Tuesday rejected the push, stating marijuana was a "gateway drug" which could lead users to take up other, harder, drugs such as heroin or ice. But Mr Palmer says that's already happening now. He acknowledged that wouldn't change under the Greens' proposal but argues weed would be better regulated. "There will always be some people for who one drug is not enough and will transition to another but this is much more likely to be controlled," he said. "I don't see it in any sense being worse than it is now." Under the Greens' plan, the plain-packaged cannabis would clearly identify the ingredients to ensure users knew what they were buying. "When you buy from the black market you have no idea what you're getting and it leads to a higher likelihood that people are going to have cravings for stronger drugs," the ex-AFP boss said speaking alongside Senator Di Natale. "I'd love to see a situation where nobody takes drugs but the reality is this is what's occurring in a world of prohibition and it's not likely to stop." The Greens leader says legalising cannabis would raise hundreds of millions of dollars in revenue, helping fund treatment, education and other harm-reduction programs. If Labor backs the National Energy Guarantee with the intention of increasing emissions targets afterwards, they'll be supporting a scheme that's worse than doing nothing, the Greens say. The states and territories are currently considering the federal government's plan for the future of Australia's energy sector, ahead of a meeting in Melbourne on Friday. It includes a 26 per cent target for reducing electricity emissions that a federal government document, obtained by AAP, reveals would be cemented in legislation until 2030. There are suggestions federal Labor could retain the energy policy if it wins the next election but seek to legislate a higher emissions target.. Opposition energy spokesman Mark Butler has indicated Labor would legislate a higher 45 per cent emissions reduction target, in line with a recommendation from the Climate Change Authority. But federal Greens MP Adam Bandt says if the ALP don't win the election they'll have helped lock in the scheme. "The current design of the NEG is significantly worse than doing nothing," Mr Bandt said. "It will create a massive protection racket for coal and obliterate investment in renewables, as per the request from Tony Abbott and the back bench." Mr Abbott's so-called Monash Group of a handful of Liberal and National MPs has lobbied the government for ongoing investment in coal-fired power. A Sydney council planning boss was told he might be sacked because two controlling councillors felt he wasn't being helpful when they asked for certain things to be done, a corruption inquiry has heard. Canterbury City Council's general manager Jim Montague warned Marcelo Occhiuzzi in 2014 that he needed to "turn things around" amid growing dissatisfaction from the "junta" - referring to councillors Michael Hawatt and Pierre Azzi. Mr Hawatt, Mr Azzi and Mr Montague are at the centre of an investigation by the NSW Independent Commission Against Corruption. According to diary notes tendered to the inquiry on Tuesday, Mr Montague told Mr Occhiuzzi he "had no choice" but to consider not renewing his contract. "He said that the political environment had changed dramatically in the last 12 months. He said that the 'junta' were in control and that the mayor was a passenger," the notes said. "The GM said that I needed to turn things around. "I said that my integrity was very important to me and if not bending sufficiently cost me my job, then so be it." Mr Occhiuzzi told the hearing he felt pressured and his recommendations were constantly being questioned and undermined. He eventually resigned in late 2014. His replacement as director of planning, Spiro Stavis, is also being investigated by the ICAC. Recruiter Judith Carpenter told the inquiry she was "disgusted" by the recruitment process, including the "unusual" interview process with the mayor, Mr Montague, Mr Hawatt and Mr Azzi. "It was probably one of the more dysfunctional interview processes I've ever been through," Ms Carpenter said. The two councillors were "aggressive" and "adversarial" towards other candidates, and were only interested in whether they would do what the general manager said, the hearing was told. After finding out Mr Stavis got the job, against her warnings, Ms Carpenter said she felt "crushed" and rang Mr Montague - whom she'd known for a decade. "He said basically 'I've done a deal'," she told the hearing, adding that she didn't know what the deal was. On Monday, the inquiry heard that Mr Hawatt allegedly received $300,000 from associates of his son-in-law, Tala El Badar, which he used to buy a unit in Queensland. Counsel assisting the inquiry, David Buchanan SC, said the payment was purported to be an option fee or deposit for a property he owned in Kingswood. Mr El Badar and the others later withdrew from the purchase. The subsequent buyers paid a $30,000 option fee. The inquiry continues. Russia's ability to block investigations into chemical weapons attacks in Syria shows the United Nations needs reform, Australia's foreign minister says. Julie Bishop has been talking to other UN countries about how to reform the security council, which gives each of the five permanent members a veto on decisions. "In an example like this, the resolution was for an independent investigation into the use of chemical weapons against civilians," Ms Bishop told reporters in London on Tuesday. "To have that blocked by a permanent member of the security council raises obvious concerns." Russia, the United Kingdom, China, France and the United States can all veto each others' decisions in the security council. "Australia has been part of discussions with a number of UN countries to reform the United Nations more generally, but also to look at this issue of the UN Security Council veto," Ms Bishop said. The US, UK and France launched airstrikes in Syria in retaliation over the deadly suspected poison gas attack in the Damascus suburb of Douma last weekend. Inspectors from the Organisation for the Prohibition of Chemical Weapons entered Douma on Tuesday having been blocked by Syrian and Russian authorities the previous day. "It's self evident that the three permanent members who voted for an independent investigation, carried out by the UN into the use of chemical weapons, were those that took action to send a very clear message that this won't be tolerated," Ms Bishop said. Australia has backed the mission, with Prime Minister Malcolm Turnbull calling it "a calibrated, proportionate and targeted response". But Ms Bishop said Australia is not expecting to be asked to do more in Syria. Russia has also blocked other investigations into previous suspected chemical weapons attacks in Syria. The Foreign Minister is at the Commonwealth Heads of Government Meeting in London, where she also held meetings about cyber security, again involving Russia. "We stand in solidarity with the United Kingdom and others in what appears to be a malicious cyber attack emanating from Russia," she said. Ms Bishop said Australia had not been targeted. Australia wants Britain to spend more aid money in the Pacific as the region's island nations battle climate change. Foreign Minister Julie Bishop is at the Commonwealth Heads of Government Meeting in London, where she is urging the United Kingdom to move its aid money post-Brexit to islands in the Pacific. "My point is that the United Kingdom, separate from the EU, will have an opportunity," she told reporters on Tuesday. "The United Kingdom is already talking about expanding its diplomatic footprint in the Pacific." Ms Bishop said in a meeting with leaders from Pacific nations they raised the issue of climate change and rising oceans, and Australia had pledged to work with them. International Development Minister Concetta Fierravanti-Wells said on Monday that polling showed Australians were opposed to foreign aid, and more needed to be done to tell them about its benefits. "As far as Australia is concerned, we deliver an aid budget that is affordable and is targeted," Ms Bishop said. "And the majority of our aid is invested in the Pacific now and will continue to be so while ever I'm the foreign minister." When asked if Australia would lift its own aid funding, Ms Bishop said to wait until this year's federal budget. A new ambulance coordination centre at Brisbane's Princess Alexandra Hospital will help to meet demand over the upcoming flu season, the Queensland government says. The Patient Access Coordination Hub was officially opened on Tuesday to service the Metro South health district. Hospital officials say it has already led to shorter wait times for ambulances and a decrease in cases whereby they must wait outside the facility with patients inside until beds become available. State Health Minister Steven Miles said previous flu seasons had put intense pressure on hospitals, but centres like PACH could help to ease pressure by re-routing ambulances. "Last year Queensland experienced one of the worst flu seasons on record, which put extra pressure on our busy paramedics and health professionals," Mr Miles said. "This certainly makes it much easier to manage those kinds of pressures." The centre cost $1.2 million and features existing and new Queensland Ambulance and Queensland Health staff. Authorities say it could be days before they can piece together how a Brisbane home became engulfed in flames, killing three people. A dramatic rescue attempt was launched at the Everton Hills home at dawn on Tuesday after an explosion and fire tore through the property. Police were yet to identify the dead by the Tuesday afternoon and said the damage caused to the house had slowed down their investigation. They expect to remain at the crime scene for a number of days to piece together what cause the fatal blaze. "There's been one or two signs that have indicated and aroused our suspicions," Detective Acting Inspector Joey Zitny told reporters on Tuesday. Police have urged witnesses to come forward and for those driving in the area at the time to handover dash camera footage after vehicles were heard speeding away at the time of the incident, he added. Det Acting Insp Zitny said it remained unclear if the explosion sparked the fire, or if it was the other way around. Environmental groups have vowed to continue to oppose fracking in the Northern Territory after the lifting of a ban on the controversial process to exploit onshore gas reserves. The Territory government says fracking can be done safely with any risks acceptably reduced by following the recommendations of a recent scientific report. Chief Minister Michael Gunner says his government will protect groundwater supplies and traditional owners will continue to have a veto over fracking on their land with the new industry to provide a major boost to the regional economy through gas royalties. But environment groups, some tourist operators and traditional owners have slammed the decision, saying it will increase carbon emissions and threaten the pristine environment. "We will not take this decision lying down," said Lauren Mellor, spokeswoman for Frack Free NT. "Communities, landholders and businesses right across the NT have pledged to redouble our efforts until a territory-wide fracking ban is in place." Greenpeace said giving the green light to frack the Territory was grossly irresponsible and completely incompatible with Australia's international commitments to reduce carbon pollution. "Fracking has proven to be an ecological disaster all over the world," energy campaigner Nikola Casule said. However, gas producer Santos said the decision to lift the ban would reinvigorate the local economy, generating jobs and business opportunities. "As soon we can get back to work, we will employ local people, engage local companies and resume royalty payments to host traditional owners," chief executive Kevin Gallagher said. "Santos does not want to let them down and we will be ready to go in the 2019 dry season." Labor has seized on Treasurer Scott Morrison playing down Acting Prime Minister Michael McCormack's suggestion he will be Santa at budget time. Mr Morrison dismissed the Nationals leader's description of him as "Scott 'Santa Claus' Morrison" who would deliver goodies in the May budget. While Mr McCormack says he doesn't regret his enthusiasm, he didn't repeat the festive analogy after the treasurer knocked the characterisation on the head. Opposition Leader Bill Shorten said it was amazing the pair were disagreeing so soon after Prime Minister Malcolm Turnbull jetted off to Europe. "It doesn't show a lot of respect for the Australian people when politicians cynically describe the taxpayer money they use as presents from Santa," Mr Shorten said. The Labor leader said the government had an obligation to spend money in the national interest, rather than as a method to boost popularity. "The money that you spend in the budget is taxpayer money. You are not Santa Claus or any other mythical person," Mr Shorten said. Acting Prime Minister Michael McCormack also appeared to say the federal government will pay off its massive debt by 2021. "(Mr Morrison's) looking forward, as he says, to producing a fiscally responsible budget. He's looking forward to getting this nation back on track, so that by 2021 we've paid down Labor's debt," he told reporters in Mildura. Debt stands at $523 billion. The government has targeted 2021 for turning the budget deficit into a surplus. That prompted shadow treasurer Chris Bowen to attack Mr McCormack's "torrid" start as acting prime minister. "Firstly he and Scott Morrison couldn't agree on who was Santa and when Christmas was," Mr Bowen said. "Then in Mildura today we've seen the acting prime minister, in the finest traditions of the Country and National Parties, demonstrate how little knowledge he has on how budgets operate." Mr Turnbull is in the UK for a Commonwealth Heads of Government Meeting. The federal government will be able to take on 100 per cent of the debt risk of major projects as part of an overhaul of the Northern Australia Infrastructure Facility. Minister for Northern Australia Matt Canavan is expected to announce changes on Thursday following a review of the $5 billion program. It will include removing the cap on 50 per cent on the amount of debt the Commonwealth can fund for projects, which Senator Canavan described as "slightly arbitrary". He said the NAIF board would be directed to ensure that doing so didn't leave the Commonwealth as the major risk taker. Only one project has been approved, 17 are going through a due diligence process and 90 are being considered across Western Australia, the Northern Territory and Queensland. Senator Canavan suggested some could be accelerated or financed under the changes, but couldn't say how many. Police investigating the murder of a man ambushed in a Melbourne driveway last August have released images of a car similar to one that could be linked to the execution. Ferntree Gully man Zabi Ezedyar, 26, was found with several gunshot wounds when emergency crews were called to a Narre Warren home on about 7.40pm on August 16. Detectives on Wednesday released CCTV footage and images of a Honda CRV, similar to one seen driving in the area shortly before the murder. It shows the car travelling behind the victim's car, shortly before he arrived at the property where he was shot, and it's believed the vehicle was last seen heading south along Kurrajong Road. Police are also looking at whether a white Toyota Corolla, possibly a 2014-15 model, is linked to the shooting. "There are people out there who know who is responsible for this murder and I'm asking them to come forward with information," homicide squad Detective Inspector Tim Day said in a statement. A guard at the entrance to the Lee Correctional Institution in Bishopville, South Carolina, where seven inmates were killed and 17 injured in clashes Seven inmates were killed and 17 injured in clashes between rival gangs over "contraband and territory" at a maximum security prison in South Carolina, in the deadliest outbreak of prison violence in the United States in a quarter century. South Carolina Governor Henry McMaster described the overnight bloodshed at Lee Correctional Institution in Bishopville, South Carolina, as "unfortunate" but said "these are dangerous people." "We cannot expect them to give up their violent ways just because they're in prison," McMaster told a press conference on Monday. Bryan Stirling, head of the South Carolina Department of Corrections (SCDC), said fighting broke out shortly after 7:00 pm on Sunday in a prison dormitory and spread to two others before it was put down nearly eight hours later. A guard tower at the Lee Correctional Institution in Bishopville, South Carolina Stirling said a preliminary investigation had found that it was "gangs fighting over territory." "This was all about territory," he said. "This was about contraband. This was about cellphones. "These folks are fighting about real money and real territory while they're incarcerated." Stirling and the governor both appealed to the Federal Communications Commission (FCC) to allow them to block cellphone signals to prisons to prevent inmates from communicating with people on the outside world. "Jamming those cellphone signals will do a lot," McMaster said. "It's not just a South Carolina problem. It's a national problem." - No resistance - Stirling said 44 guards were on duty at the prison which houses some 1,600 inmates when the violence erupted. US prison riot He said a response team entered the first dormitory at 11:30 pm, the second one at 12:30 am and the third one at 2:00 am. "There was no resistance when we went in to take the dorms back," Stirling said. Prison officials said order was restored by 3:00 am and inmates locked down in their cells. They said the clashes left seven prisoners dead and 17 "requiring medical attention." All prison guards and law enforcement authorities who responded were "safe and accounted for." Lee Correctional Institution is a "Level III" maximum security facility built in 1993 to house violent offenders and prisoners with behavioral problems. Deadly prison riots have been relatively rare in the United States, despite some notable exceptions. South Carolina's prisons are notoriously violent, however, and suffer from chronic understaffing. According to The State newspaper, the number of inmates killed in South Carolina's prisons more than doubled in 2017 from the previous year. It said 12 inmates were killed by other prisoners last year, up from five in 2016. The deaths included four inmates who were strangled to death by two fellow prisoners in April 2017 at Kirkland Correctional Institution, another maximum security prison. - 'Unacceptable' - Representative Todd Rutherford, the leader of the Democratic minority in the state House of Representatives, condemned the violence. "A mass casualty incident inside a correctional facility is simply unacceptable," Rutherford tweeted. "Safety -- for inmates, SCDC employees, and the public -- must be a priority. "Rioting like this is a symptom our criminal justice system is broken and needs reform now," he said. The United States has the highest rate of incarceration in the world with around 450 prisoners per 100,000 residents, according to Bureau of Justice Statistics (BJS). There were 1.5 million inmates in state and federal prisons in the United States at the end of 2016, according to the BJS. The gang clashes at Lee Correctional Institution in Bishopville, South Carolina, were the deadliest outbreak of prison violence in the United States in a quarter century The overnight violence at Lee Correctional Institution was one of the deadliest at a US prison in decades. In 1993, nine inmates and a corrections officer were killed at the Southern Ohio Correctional Facility, a maximum security prison in Lucasville, Ohio. A two-day riot and hostage-taking at the New Mexico State Prison in 1980 left 33 inmates dead and 200 injured, one of the worst in modern US history. Probably the most famous was the 1971 rebellion at New York's Attica prison. After a four day standoff with inmates holding 42 hostages, New York state police moved in to retake the prison on orders of governor Nelson Rockefeller. By the time it was over 43 people were dead, including 10 guards and prison employees and 33 inmates. Israeli Defence Minister Avigdor Lieberman arrives for the inauguration of an underground military operation centre in the Israeli settlement of Katzrin in the Golan Heights on April 10, 2018 Israel will not accept limitations on its "actions" in Syria from Russia or any other country, Defence Minister Avigdor Lieberman said Monday, a week after a deadly raid attributed to the Jewish state. "We will maintain total freedom of action. We will not accept any limitation when it comes to the defence of our security interests," Lieberman said in a video interview with the Walla news site in response to a question on Russia's criticism of the recent strike. "But we do not want to provoke the Russians. We have an open line of communication at the level of senior officers. The Russians understand us and the fact is that for years we have managed to avoid friction with them" in Syria. Lieberman again accused Israel's main enemy Iran of seeking to entrench itself militarily in neighbouring Syria and threaten his country. "We will not tolerate a significant Iranian military force in Syria in the form of military ports and airports or the deployment of sophisticated weaponry," Lieberman said. On April 9, seven Iranian personnel were among 14 people killed in an early-morning strike on the T-4 airbase in Syria, with regime allies Iran and Russia blaming Israel for the attack. Russian President Vladimir Putin later called on Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu not to take any action that could further destabilise the situation in Syria. Israel has neither confirmed nor denied responsibility, but has said repeatedly that it cannot accept Iran establishing itself militarily in Syria. Israel has sought to avoid direct involvement in Syria's civil war, but acknowledges carrying out dozens of air strikes there to stop what it says are advanced arms deliveries to Lebanese Shiite group Hezbollah, another of its enemies. Hezbollah, like Iran and Russia, is backing Syrian President Bashar al-Assad in the war. Iran also supports Hezbollah. Netanyahu has also voiced "total support" for US-led strikes over the weekend against Syria over its alleged use of chemical weapons. Eva Longoria poses on her just-unveiled star on Hollywood's Walk of Fame Eva Longoria, best known for her role in the TV series "Desperate Housewives," got a star on Hollywood's Walk of Fame on Monday, in an event hailed by the Latino community. "Representation matters. So every time there's another Latino on this Walk of Fame, it's another win for a whole community," the 43-year-old actress from a Texas family tracing its roots to Mexico told AFP. Longoria received the honor in the presence of her husband, former Televisa chairman Jose Baston. They are expecting their first child in May. Celebrities such as Ricky Martin, Victoria Beckham and actresses Felicity Huffman and Anna Faris also attended the ceremony. "It's really important for me to be here, for people to come and see the star, and know that you can do it with a lot of hard work," said Longoria. In the romantic comedy "Overboard," set for release next month, Longoria plays the best friend of a single mother struggling to make ends meet. A gunner checks his sights at a Syrian government artillery position between Talbiseh and Rastan in the northern countryside of Homs Syrian air defence shot down missiles over the central province of Homs, the state news agency said Tuesday, with the strikes reportedly targeting regime air bases. The news agency did not give further details and it was unclear who was behind the attack, which Syrian state television branded as an "aggression". Big explosions were heard near Al Shayrat Air base, southeast of the city of Homs, and in eastern Qalamoun near Damascus where two other air bases are located, the Syrian Observatory for Human rights reported. Observatory chief Rami Abdel Rahman said missiles did not hit any of the air bases. Following reports of an Israeli strike, an Israeli military spokesman said: "I'm not aware of such an incident." In Washington, Pentagon spokeswoman Heather Babb said: "There are no US or coalition operations in that area." Shayrat air base was targeted by US Tomahawk missiles in April last year in a strike ordered by President Donald Trump in retaliation for a suspected chemical attack on the rebel-held town of Khan Sheikhun in Idlib. According to the Pentagon, US intelligence had established that the base was the launchpad for the alleged chemical attack. Israel occupied mainly Palestinian east Jerusalem and the surrounding region in the 1967 Six-Day War and later annexed it, declaring the city its capital Arab leaders at a summit in Saudi Arabia have slammed Washington's decision to recognise Jerusalem as Israel's capital and move its embassy there, but analysts say their words are unlikely to lead to action. The shift by US President Donald Trump has sparked deep anger across the Arab world, particularly among Palestinians, who see East Jerusalem as the capital of their future state. But it seemed clear at the Arab League summit, held in the eastern city of Dhahran on Sunday, that regional rulers, particularly in the Gulf, are unwilling to jeopardise close ties with Trump as they seek to counter Iran. "Generally, Arab League summits produce more rhetoric than action," said Denis Bauchard, an expert from the French Institute on International Relations. "I don't think this will go beyond declarations." For Riyadh, he said, "what is essential is the relationship with Washington". Israel occupied mainly Palestinian east Jerusalem and the surrounding region in the 1967 Six-Day War and later annexed it, declaring the city its capital. Neither move was recognised by the international community -- but the United States is now set to shift its embassy from Tel Aviv to Jerusalem in May. That breaks with decades of US policy and international consensus that the status of the city should be settled in negotiations. Nour Odeh, a Palestinian political analyst, said Palestinians had low expectations for any Arab response. "Ordinary people and politicians alike understand the dismal state of Arab affairs, and no Arab government is going to confront Trump," she said. Saudi King Salman dubbed the Dhahran conference the "Jerusalem summit" and used his opening speech to denounce Washington's decision and announce a $150 million donation for the maintenance of Islamic heritage in the eastern part of the holy city. Other leaders queued up to add their criticism, and the summit's final statement also slammed Trump's move. But an Arab diplomat, who asked not to be named, said that "even Washington's allies (Riyadh, Abu Dhabi and Cairo) know very well that they don't have many diplomatic options". "Their aim is to improve the situation of the Palestinians as much as possible, but they won't go as far as confronting" the Trump administration, the diplomat said. Ghassan Khatib, a Palestinian academic and former minister, said they were "not capable" of doing so, "especially with all the problems in the Arab world". He said Arab governments were "not willing to risk their relationships with the United States." - 'Concerned with Iran' - The American decision on Jerusalem comes as ties warm between the US and key allies in the region -- Saudi Arabia, Egypt and the United Arab Emirates. That follows years of tension under former president Barack Obama as Washington improved ties with Iran, culminating in a historic 2015 deal to lift sanctions in exchange for curbs on Tehran's nuclear programme. Saudi Arabia and Iran have spent years fighting proxy wars across the region, from Syria to Yemen. Saudi King Salman used his opening speech to denounce Washington's decision to move its embassy Trump has openly sided with Riyadh and threatened to back out of the Iran nuclear accord -- possibly also in May. "Saudi Arabia and the UAE... have felt since the nuclear deal with Iran that Washington was not taking into account their concerns about Iran's strong presence in the region," said Khalil Harb, editor of Journal, an Arabic-language website focusing on Gulf affairs. The two countries are now trying "to push the Trump administration... to review the American position on the nuclear deal. At a political moment like this, Riyadh doesn't want to embarrass or anger America," he said. Karim Bitar, from the Paris-based Institute of International and Strategic Affairs, said those states are "so concerned with the Iranian threat that they realise that they might have to coordinate the anti-Iranian effort with the US and Israel." - Peace with Israel? - Amid the controversy surrounding Trump's decision on Jerusalem, observers have said the move could spark renewed violence in the region. But there have been growing signs of a diplomatic opening between Saudi Arabia and Israel. Saudi Arabia's powerful Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman, the 32-year-old son of the king and heir to the region's most powerful throne, said during a US tour days before the summit that Israel also had a right to its own land. Saudi Arabia's Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman (L) said during a US tour that Israel also had a right to its own land King Salman called Trump hours later to reaffirm the kingdom's support for "the legitimate rights of the Palestinian people to establish their own independent state with its capital in Jerusalem". Shortly before the summit, Saudi daily newspaper Al-Riyadh published an editorial entitled "Dhahran summit: peace with Israel and confrontation with Iran". It argued that "the Arabs must realise that Iran is more dangerous to them than Israel." In an unprecedented statement for Saudi newspaper, it said: "The Arabs have no other option than reconciliation with Israel, signing a comprehensive peace agreement and freeing themselves up to tackle the Iranian project in the region." mah-sy-ras-jod/par/del Choi Eun-hee was the South's most famous actress for decades before being abducted by North Korean spies in Hong Kong in 1978 A South Korean actress who was once kidnapped by the North's agents on the orders of leader Kim Jong Un's late father and forced to make movies for the regime has died aged 91, her family said. Choi Eun-hee was the South's most famous actress for decades before being brazenly abducted by North Korean spies in Hong Kong in 1978 at the request of the North's then leader-in-waiting Kim Jong Il, an avid film fan. During her visit to Hong Kong to meet a potential investor in her arts school, she was reportedly lured onto a boat by her guide before being transferred against her will to a cargo ship destined for North Korea. Her husband Shin Sang-ok, a top director, was taken to the North soon after, although circumstances over his alleged abduction remain unclear. Choi remained trapped in the North for eight years, where the two made more than 10 films together under the instruction of Kim Jong Il. In a 2011 interview, Choi said Kim "respected us as artists and fully supported us," but that she could never forgive him for the "outrageous and unforgivable" kidnapping. They were allowed to make "films with artistic values, instead of just propaganda films extolling the regime," Choi said, but always longed for their freedom. During their ordeal, the couple travelled overseas extensively for movie production missions and to attend film festivals -- always under heavy surveillance by the North's agents. Choi even won the best actress award at the Moscow International Film Festival in 1985 for her role in "Salt" -- a film about Korean guerrillas fighting against the 1910-45 Japanese colonial rule. The couple -- who had divorced in 1976, before their abductions -- remarried during a trip to Hungary at Kim's urging. But they finally staged a daring escape to the US embassy in Vienna after attending the Berlinale film festival in 1986, and sought asylum in the US due to fear for their personal security. The couple returned to the South in 1999 after spending more than a decade in the US. They remained married until Shin's death in 2006. Their dramatic life inspired several books and movies. Choi, who made her cinematic debut in 1942, had risen to stardom in the wake of the 1950-53 Korean War that sealed the division between the communist North and the capitalist South. She was called the "queen" of South Korean cinema from the 1950s to the 1970s while appearing in more than 100 movies -- many made by Shin. North Korea abducted hundreds of South Koreans under a state-sanctioned policy in the decades following the Korean War. Choi's funeral will be held in Seoul on Thursday. Vashukevich arrives with an unidentified fellow detainee at a holding cell to face trial in Pattaya A Belarusian model detained in Thailand changed tack and hurled accusations at the United States on Tuesday, the latest twist in a case that first grabbed headlines after she made cryptic offers to reveal secrets about alleged Russian meddling in the 2016 US election. Anastasia Vashukevich, known by her pen name Nastya Rybka, has been held in Thailand since she and nine other foreigners were arrested in February by police who raided their "sex training course" in the seaside city of Pattaya. They were initially charged with lacking work permits but some are now facing additional charges of soliciting prostitution and criminal association, according to Apichai Krobpetch, Pattaya's police chief. Reporters were barred from observing a plea hearing over the work permit charge on Tuesday and court officials refused to comment on the proceedings. But in brief remarks to reporters as she and other defendants were escorted back into a police van after the hearing, Vashukevich said she was "wrong" for initially thinking the Russian government was behind the prosecution. "It is not the Russian state which is trying to get us jailed, it is the Americans," she said. "Why are they trying to prevent us from disclosing the information we have here in Thailand to the Americans?" she added. Vashukevich, who is embroiled in a political scandal back in Russia, first made international headlines after she addressed American journalists in a desperate video posted on Instagram after her arrest in February. "I am ready to tell you about all those missing puzzle pieces that you lacked... regarding a link between our esteemed lawmakers and (Paul) Manafort, Trump and all this brouhaha, the US elections," she said in the video. - Seduce an oligarch - The model, who has written a book about seducing oligarchs, has not substantiated her claims but does have links to Russia's elite. She and her associate Alex Kirillov, a self-styled Russian sex guru who was among those detained and brought to court on Tuesday, are facing a lawsuit back in Russia filed by billionaire tycoon Oleg Deripaska. Deripaska, one of several Russian oligarchs sanctioned by the US this month, sued the pair over footage Vashukevich filmed purporting to show him treating an influential deputy prime minister, Sergei Prikhodko, to lavish hospitality on his yacht. The video went viral after it was published by top Kremlin critic Alexei Navalny in February. Deripaska, who Washington has accused of operating for the Russian government, denied any wrongdoing. Vashukevich and Kirillov have expressed fear of being deported back to Russia and previously called on the US for help. The US embassy in Bangkok has repeatedly declined to comment on the case. Deripaska, an aluminium tycoon, was once an associate of US President Donald Trump's ex-campaign manager Paul Manafort. Manafort has been indicted on money-laundering and tax-related charges as part of the special counsel's investigation into Russian interference in the 2016 US election. In November Myanmar agreed to take back around 750,000 Rohingya from Bangladesh -- which hosts around one million of the Muslim minority driven out by waves of state violence stretching back to 1978 Bungling, distortion and diplomatic doublespeak have hollowed out the deal to repatriate Rohingya from Bangladesh to Myanmar, with refugees refusing to return to a homeland that remains perilously insecure. "We will have to stay here for a long period, maybe generations," Ali, a Rohingya refugee and father-of-six, told AFP from the Kutupalong mega-camp on Bangladesh's side of the border. In November Myanmar agreed to take back around 750,000 Rohingya from Bangladesh -- which hosts around one million of the Muslim minority driven out by waves of state violence stretching back to 1978. Yet so far, Myanmar has signed off just 675 names from a Bangladeshi list of 8,000 refugees, citing discrepancies in the verification forms proving their residency in Rakhine state. Months have elapsed, but no one has crossed back under the deal. A family of five was "repatriated" over the weekend from a wedge of no-man's land between the neighbours. Rohingya Muslim minority Their return was swiftly pilloried as a PR stunt by rights groups and labelled "not meaningful" by Bangladesh's home minister. "Whatever we say, they (Myanmar) agree," Asaduzzaman Khan told AFP. "But they have not been able to create grounds for trust that they will take back these people." Myanmar does not want its Rohingya, denying them citizenship and classifying the minority as "Bengalis" who have seeped over the border illegally. It forced around 750,000 out in two major army operations in October 2016 and August 2017. The UN describes the August crackdown, ostensibly a kickback against Rohingya militant attacks, as "ethnic cleansing". Under pressure, Myanmar agreed to take back those who can prove prior residence. Bangladesh wants swift, large-scale returns to ease pressure on the teeming camps in its Cox's Bazar district -- and salve domestic disquiet that one of Asia's poorest countries is saddled with a huge refugee crisis. Yet the refugees listed by Dhaka do not even know they have been volunteered to return to a country where they allege widespread atrocities. "We did not try to ascertain approval from them," a senior Bangladesh official told AFP on condition of anonymity. Dhaka has also muddied its side of the bargain. Under the repatriation agreement, the head of each Rohingya family must list the address of his or her father, mother and spouse in Myanmar. But those details were inexplicably omitted from the forms submitted to Myanmar, the official told AFP. With no new names planned for scrutiny, the process is at a standstill. - Reluctant hosts - For the Rohingya, return is the ultimate aim but only on condition of guaranteed safety and -- crucially -- citizenship, a red line to Myanmar authorities who stripped them of that status in 1982. A family of five was "repatriated" by Myanmar from a wedge of no-man's land between Myanmar and Bangladesh, but it was pilloried as a PR stunt by rights groups and labelled "not meaningful" by Bangladesh's home minister With the monsoon looming they are bedding in for the long haul. The makeshift Kutupalong mega-camp is taking on permanent features as hulking drainage pipes are dug into hillsides and bamboo shacks are upgraded with concrete. But Bangladesh does not publicly air long-term settlement in its camps as an option. Dhaka has drawn an outcry by threatening to move up to 100,000 people to a flood-prone island in the Bay of Bengal. It says its biometric register of a million refugees should clear the way for large-scale returns, if the urgency is matched by the other side. But Myanmar's sincerity is in shreds. On a first visit to the camps last week, a Myanmar official implored Rohingya to return to a "changed" country, where destroyed villages are being rebuilt and work awaits. "Please come back first... and taste it. Then, if you all feel satisfied, more can return," Social Welfare Minister Win Myat Aye told Rohingya leaders. Myanmar does not want its Rohingya, denying them citizenship and classifying the minority as "Bengalis" who have seeped over the border illegally But with villages razed, choking controls on movement in place and communal hatred still sharp, the UN says conditions inside Rakhine "are not conducive" for repatriation. Refugees are also well versed in the machinations of Myanmar's bureaucracy, after generations trapped on a carousel of forced exile and short-lived return. "We won't go back without citizenship and security... there's no point, they will force us out again," said Mohammad Sadek, 24, a resident of Kutupalong. Over decades Myanmar's army has rehashed history, rubbing out the Rohingya's legal status and spewing Islamaphobic rhetoric across the overwhelmingly Buddhist country. The identity card offered to returning Rohingya calls them "Bengalis" -- in effect making holders complicit in renouncing their own ancestral claims in Rakhine. Myanmar will likely allow "a token number" to return, says Francis Wade author of "Myanmar's Enemy Within". But "the vast majority of Rohingya in the camps will likely live out their days there... as will their children". - 'Camps here, camps there' - In the impasse, Myanmar's army has been busy. Bulldozers have levelled the remains of hundreds of Rohingya villages, while transit centres and "temporary" camps for returnees have sprung up. The army has added new bases while Rakhine Buddhists are being lured to the far north to rebalance the state's demography. Independent access to Rakhine remains impossible. Somewhere between 400,000-500,000 Rohingya are left in Myanmar. Of those, around a quarter languish in IDP camps from previous rounds of violence. "We won't go back to live in camps there," said Rohingya refugee Mohammad Ihaya, 23. "It's better to be in camps here." Choi Eun-hee was the South's most famous actress for decades before being abducted by North Korean spies in Hong Kong in 1978 A South Korean actress who was once kidnapped by the North's agents on the orders of late leader Kim Jong-Il in a Cold War-style intrigue and forced to make movies for the regime has died aged 91, her family says. Choi Eun-hee was the South's most famous actress for decades before being brazenly abducted by North Korean spies in Hong Kong in 1978 at the request of the North's then leader-in-waiting Kim Jong Il, an avid film fan. During her visit to Hong Kong to meet a potential investor in her arts school, she was reportedly lured onto a boat by her guide before being transferred against her will to a cargo ship destined for North Korea. She was forcibly sedated with a needle and then kept drugged and without food for eight days before arriving in the North. Her husband Shin Sang-ok, a top film director, was taken to the North soon after, although circumstances over his abduction remain unclear. Kim Jong Il, who ruled the isolated country from 1994 until his death in 2011, was bent on using his captives to make films that could compete on the international stage. Choi remained trapped in the North for eight years, where she and Shin made more than 10 films together under Kim's watch. Choi would later describe a complex relationship with a captor who "respected us as artists and fully supported us", but whom she could never forgive for the "outrageous and unforgivable" kidnapping, according to a 2011 interview. They were allowed to make "films with artistic values, instead of just propaganda films extolling the regime," Choi said, but always longed for their freedom. Kim spared no expense when it came to making their movies. For one action sequence involving a train crash he provided a real locomotive loaded with dynamite, while for another film requiring windy conditions he ordered a helicopter to hover overhead. Choi Eun-hee poses with her husband, director Shin Sang-ok, in France in 1999. The pair were married until his death in 2006 In another interview, Choi described how Kim had attempted to lift her spirits at a dinner shortly after her arrival in the North. "I was in utter despair back then, and he tried to cheer me up, saying, 'Look at me Ms Choi. Don't I look like a short fat dwarf?'" she told Dong-A Ilbo, a major newspaper in Seoul. "I couldn't help laughing at that moment." Kim had a personal film archive containing 15,000 movies from around the world, according to Shin's memoir. His collection included "300 South Korean movies with detailed descriptions on the production year, stars and names of all production staff", Shin wrote. - Daring escape - During their ordeal, the couple travelled overseas extensively for movie production and to attend film festivals -- always under heavy surveillance by the North's agents. Choi even won the best actress award at the Moscow International Film Festival in 1985 for her role in "Salt" -- a film about Korean guerrillas fighting the 1910-45 Japanese colonial rule. The couple -- who had divorced in 1976, before their abductions -- remarried during a trip to Hungary at Kim's urging. But Choi later recounted how, during her time in the North, she cried every night at the thought that "none of this would have happened if I was not an actress." This picture taken on May 23, 1989 and released by Dong-A Ilbo on April 17, The couple, seen here in South Korea in 1989, finally staged a daring escape to the US embassy in Vienna after attending the Berlinale film festival in 1986 "Kim Jong Il offered me all kinds of generosity and royal treatment, but I could not erase the resentment towards him," she wrote in her 2007 memoir. They finally staged a daring escape to the US embassy in Vienna after attending the Berlinale film festival in 1986. Choi later recounted how a Japanese reporter smuggled them by taxi to outside the embassy gates, before they made a dash for safety. "I still have nightmares of being chased after by North Korean agents," she said in a 2015 interview. "When I arrived at the US embassy in Austria and was told 'welcome to the West,' I burst into tears. I couldn't stop crying." The couple sought asylum in the US due to fears for their personal security, before returning to the South in 1999 after more than a decade in the US. They remained married until Shin's death in 2006. Their dramatic life inspired several books and movies. Choi, who made her cinematic debut in 1942, rose to stardom in the wake of the 1950-53 Korean War that sealed the division between the communist North and the capitalist South. She was called the "queen" of South Korean cinema from the 1950s to the 1970s while appearing in more than 100 movies -- many made by Shin. North Korea abducted hundreds of South Koreans under a state-sanctioned policy in the decades following the Korean War, including soldiers and intellectuals as well as poor fishermen. More than 500 South Korean abductees remain in the North, along with a dozen from Japan, according to the Seoul-based Asan Institute of Policy Studies. Choi's funeral will be held in Seoul on Thursday. Taiwan's president Tsai Ing-wen reassures residents that the island is secure ahead of China holding live-fire drills in the narrow strait that separates the two Taiwan's president Tsai Ing-wen reassured residents that the island was secure Tuesday, a day before China is set to hold live-fire drills in the narrow strait that separates the two. Tsai spoke to reporters as she left for Swaziland, one of Taiwan's few remaining international allies that has not been wooed away by an ascendant Beijing as cross-strait relations deteriorate. Chinese officials have suggested Wednesday's military exercise is a warning to pro-independence advocates in Taiwan as Beijing steps up its rhetoric against any challenges to its sovereignty. China sees self-ruling Taiwan as part of its territory to be brought back into the fold and has not ruled out reunification by force. Tsai said Monday she had told national security officials to closely monitor the "surrounding situation". "Please rest assured that we have the confidence and determination to safeguard the country's security," she said at Taoyuan International Airport. Tsai added that maintaining a peaceful "status quo" across the strait was her government's mission. Although a fully fledged democracy, Taiwan has never formally announced independence from the mainland and Beijing has warned of military action if it ever did. Tsai's Democratic Progressive Party (DPP) is traditionally pro-independence and her newly appointed premier William Lai is a long-standing independence advocate. When asked if the upcoming military exercise was directed at Lai, China's Taiwan Affairs Office director Liu Jieyi said on Monday it was "an action to safeguard the sovereignty and territorial integrity of our motherland". Beijing has stepped up military patrols around the island and used diplomatic pressure to isolate Taiwan internationally since Tsai took office in May 2016, as she refuses to accept both sides are part of "one China". China has chipped away at Taiwan's dwindling number of allies, with Swaziland one of the few not to have been convinced to give up official recognition of the island as a country. On her four-day trip to Africa, Tsai will take part in celebrations marking the 50th anniversary of Swaziland's independence and the establishment of diplomatic ties with Taiwan. Observers say Wednesday's planned drills also serve as a signal to Washington, which sent aircraft carrier USS Theodore Roosevelt through the disputed South China Sea last week. The region has become a potential flashpoint, with the United States saying China's aggressive activities in the area pose a threat to freedom of navigation. Washington is also Taiwan's most powerful -- thought unofficial -- ally and its biggest arms supplier. Relations have warmed between Washington and Taipei in recent months, including the passage of a bill last month that promotes visits by officials at all levels. Pell, a top adviser to Pope Francis, is accused of multiple offences relating to incidents that allegedly occurred years ago Vatican finance chief Cardinal George Pell will find out next month if he will stand trial on sexual offence charges, as his lawyer argued Tuesday the cleric was being targeted to punish the Catholic Church. Pell, a top adviser to Pope Francis, is accused of multiple historic offences relating to incidents that allegedly occurred years ago. He took leave to return to Australia to fight the allegations being heard in the Melbourne Magistrates Court. The court said magistrate Belinda Wallington would deliver her decision on whether the case should proceed to trial on May 1. It followed a weeks-long committal hearing involving witness statements and cross-examinations by Pell's lawyers. He was not present for Tuesday's final hearing. His barrister Robert Richter told the court the case should be thrown out as the complainants were unreliable and not credible, Melbourne's Herald Sun reported. He added that the allegations were "the product of fantasy or mental health problems... or pure invention in order to punish the representative of the Catholic Church in this country for not stopping child abuse by others of children". "Cardinal Pell has been seen as the face of that responsibility," he said. Prosecutor Mark Gibson said while there were conflicts in the testimony of witnesses, they were for a jury to decide on, adding that nothing Richter referred to "amounts to a defect in the evidence", Melbourne's The Age reported. Pell, 76, a former Sydney and Melbourne archbishop, is the most senior Catholic cleric to be charged with criminal offences linked to the Church's long-running sexual abuse scandal. The exact details and nature of the allegations have not been made public, other than they involve "multiple complainants". Scientists are developing a test that detects cancers from patient urine samples. The engineering company Hitachi, which developed the technology two years ago, will analyse 250 urine samples for breast, colon and childhood forms of the disease alongside Nagoya University in central Japan. Company spokesman Chiharu Odaira said: If this method is put to practical use, it will be a lot easier for people to get a cancer test, as there will be no need to go to a medical organisation for a blood test. He added small children will particularly benefit from the diagnosis method, which may be available in 2020, due to them often being afraid of needles. The technology works by detecting waste materials in urine samples that act as biomarkers for forms of the disease, according to a Hitachi statement. It aims to improve early cancer detection, save lives, and reduce the medical and social costs of treatment, according to Mr Odaira. Experiments assessing the accuracy of the method are due to start later this month and end in September. Scientists are developing a test that detects cancers from patient urine samples (stock) WHAT ARE TUMOURS? Tumours can be benign or cancerous (malignant). Benign tumours usually grow quite slowly, do not spread and have a covering made up of normal cells. Such growths only cause problems if: They become become very large Are painful or uncomfortable Are unpleasant to look at Press on the body's organs Take up space within the skull Release hormones that affect how the body works Malignant tumours typically: Are made up of cancer cells Grow faster Spread to surrounding tissue Enter other parts of the body via the bloodstream or lymph nodes Tumours get bigger as cells continue to divide, which stimulates the development of blood vessels to 'feed' it oxygen and nutrients. Such growths may move into new areas by putting pressure on surrounding regions, using enzymes to break down cells or entering via tissues. Source: Cancer Research UK Advertisement We aim to put the technology in use in the 2020s Speaking of when the diagnosis method may be available, Odaira said: We aim to put the technology in use in the 2020s, although this depends on various things such as getting approval from the authorities. This comes after research published earlier this year suggested a new blood test detects eight different kinds of tumours before they spread elsewhere in the body. Breast-cancer diagnoses typically involve a mammogram followed by a biopsy if a risk is detected, while colon-cancer screenings generally involve a stool test and then a colonoscopy, if necessary. Controversial plans to grow human organs inside animals are set to go ahead in Japan This comes after news released yesterday suggested controversial plans to grow human organs inside animals have moved one step closer to going ahead in Japan. Government officials in the Asian country are expected to overturn the ban on the practice by the autumn, according to local reports. An expert panel, commissioned by Japanese ministers, concluded that such experiments could lead to major scientific breakthroughs. The practice, which has prompted furious backlash from animal-rights campaigners in recent years, is already allowed for research purposes in the UK and US. Certain biologists have left Japan to pursue such experiments, which critics consider 'gruesome', across the Pacific Ocean. Some believe creating human organs in animals, such as pigs, could stem the growing transplant shortage. On average, 20 people die every day while waiting for an organ transplant, according to the United Network for Organ Sharing. Animal-welfare campaigners warn such experiments echo the fictional thriller 'Never Let Me Go'. In the novel, adapted for the hit 2010 movie, a group of English children are cloned so that, as young adults, their organs can be used for transplants. Japan has strict immigration laws and accepts very few asylum seekers, granting refugee status to just 20 people out of nearly 20,000 applicants last year More than 40 people at a Japanese immigration detention centre are on hunger strike after an Indian detainee committed suicide there last week, officials and local media said Tuesday. The protest began on Sunday, two days after an Indian national in his thirties, who has not been publicly identified, was found hanged in a shower stall at the centre in Ibaraki, northeast of Tokyo. The man was reportedly depressed about how long it was taking for his status to be adjudicated by authorities. "We presume that they (the strikers) have refused food to push for provisional release," said Daisuke Akinaga, an official at the immigration centre. "We also presume that the suicide set off the hunger strike," Akinaga told AFP. He declined to comment on the nationality of the strikers or how many people were refusing food, but Kyodo News said more than 40 detainees were involved. About 330 people are being held at the immigration centre, according to the officials there. Japan has strict immigration laws and accepts very few asylum seekers, granting refugee status to just 20 people out of nearly 20,000 applicants last year. The government says most applicants are economic migrants, but activists and the UN say Japan imposes onerous evidence requirements that can be impossible to meet, even for those in real danger. Activists, lawyers and migrants in Japan have complained for years about harsh treatment by some immigration officials and dire conditions at detention centres. They have also urged the country to review its policy on detaining people at immigration centres for lengthy periods of time. "Detention periods are abnormally long in Japan," said Hiromitsu Masuda, of rights group Provisional Release Association in Japan. "Such protests are likely to be repeated unless Japan changes the policy," Masuda told AFP. Activists say asylum seekers wait an average of three years for a decision on their status, and that even for those granted permission to stay, integration can be difficult. Cho Hyun-min, a marketing executive at the South Korean flag carrier Korean Air, is the latest scion of its founding family to spark controversy through her hot-tempered behaviour A Korean Air heiress accused of assault has been suspended by her father's company as police Tuesday launched a criminal investigation into claims she threw water into a man's face in a business meeting. Cho Hyun-min, a marketing executive at the South Korean flag carrier, is the latest scion of its founding family to spark controversy through her hot-tempered behaviour. Four years ago her older sister Cho Hyun-ah made global headlines for angrily kicking a cabin crew member off a plane after being served macadamia nuts in a bag rather than a bowl -- an incident quickly dubbed "nut rage". The row over the younger Cho, 36, emerged after reports that she flew into a rage during a meeting with an advertising agency manager last month. She allegedly threw water into the man's face because she did not like one of the his responses. Seoul police, which earlier opened a preliminary inquiry to see if Cho had broken any laws, said Tuesday they were launching a formal probe based on testimony of the participants in the meeting. Following the incident Cho sent a wide-ranging apology by email to "every single person at the advertising agency and Korean Air employee that I have worked with." "I was so absorbed by my passion for work that I could not restrain my reckless remarks and actions, leaving many people deeply disappointed and hurt," she wrote. But her apology has failed to placate many in South Korea, where hugely powerful family-run conglomerates have long been dogged by criticism of their founding families' brash behaviour. A Korean Air labour union expressed "indescribable regret" over Cho's behaviour. "Because of the latest controversy ... some 20,000 workers who have worked so tirelessly for the firm have become targets of public criticism," it said. "Why should the Korean Air employees feel so ashamed?" The head of South Korea's ruling Democratic Party urged the ouster of Cho -- a granddaughter of Korean Air's late founder and daughter of the current chairman Cho Yang-ho. "We should no longer see these unqualified, unethical scions (of the founding families) getting a free ride into the top management," Choo Mi-ae said Monday. Korean Air has partially disputed media reports, saying Cho "only threw a cup with water onto the floor" but on Monday suspended Cho from her duties. Throwing water into someone's face can amount to assault in the South where a housewife was fined about $650 in 2015 for hurling water at a real estate broker during a heated argument. The 2014 "nut rage" incident saw Cho Hyun-ah, then the firm's vice president, forcing two flight attendants to kneel and beg for forgiveness on a Seoul-bound flight from New York before ejecting one of them out of the plane before takeoff. About 6,600 Japanese police officers are now engaged in a manhunt for 27-year-old Tatsuma Hirao, who escaped an open prison where he was serving time for multiple thefts A Japanese minister apologised Tuesday over the escape of a "model" inmate who fled an open prison more than a week ago, as the number of police hunting him passed 6,000. About 6,600 police officers are now engaged in a fruitless manhunt for 27-year-old Tatsuma Hirao, who was serving time for multiple thefts, according to officials. The case is making headline news in Japan with TV channels picking over the manhunt in minute detail. Hirao gave guards the slip on April 8, vanishing from the facility, an "open institution" where inmates can walk around freely. Police have detected the fugitive's fingerprints and several thefts have been reported since his escape but he remains on the lam. The stolen items include socks, a mobile phone, a wallet, a pair of sandals and a car key, whose owner found a polite note -- apparently from the fugitive -- saying: "I'm borrowing your car but I'll never damage it." The country's justice minister felt the need to apologise for the difficulties in recapturing the criminal, saying: "I heard the incident has caused anxiety among local residents, especially since there are many elderly people living alone... I feel truly sorry." The minister, Yoko Kawakami, added that 96 prison officers had been assigned around the clock to protect schools on Mukaishima island in southwestern Japan, where the fugitive is believed to be hiding. Slowing the search is the fact that there are about 1,000 vacant houses on the island, but police need permission from owners each time they search inside, according to the Mainichi Shimbun. The hilly landscape also prevents officers from spotting the convict from a helicopter, the paper said. The island is about 22 square kilometers in area with a population of around 22,000. "Terror and anxiety on a peaceful island," headlined Fuji TV, presenting a panel discussion about the case. A total of 21 inmates have escaped since the opening of the prison in 1961. Japan enjoys one of the lowest crime rates in the developed world but has a relatively high re-offending rate. President Win Myint has announced an amnesty for more than 8,500 prisoners Myanmar's president on Tuesday announced pardons for more than 8,500 prisoners, including three dozen jailed in political cases, as part of an annual amnesty marking the country's traditional new year. President Win Myint, who took office last month after his predecessor suddenly resigned, said the pardons were granted on humanitarian grounds during the Buddhist new year festival known as Thingyan. The amnesty was extended mostly to drug offenders, as well as more than 50 foreigners and 36 political prisoners, according to a breakdown posted on Facebook by government spokesman Zaw Htay. Among those released were two Baptist church leaders jailed last year on charges of supporting ethnic minority rebels in the war-torn northeast in a case criticised by rights groups. The ethnic Kachin men were detained by soldiers in December 2016 after giving journalists information about a church allegedly hit by military airstrikes in Shan state. "Now we are free and we feel happy... I hope our land will be peaceful in the future so this kind of thing would not happen again," Langjaw Gam Seng, the church youth leader who was sentenced to two years and three months, told AFP after his release from prison in the town of Lashio in the state. An NGO that helps political prisoners welcomed the overall amnesty but called for the release of at least eight more prisoners of conscience who remain in jail. Around 200 others in Myanmar are also facing trials linked to political activities, said spokesman Aung Myo Kyaw from the Assistance Association for Political Prisoners. "The government can help them by cancelling the cases from the courts," he told AFP. Myanmar has freed thousands from its jails since a military junta ceded power in 2011 after five decades of brutal repression. Hundreds of political prisoners were released shortly after the civilian government of former democracy activist Aung San Suu Kyi took office in 2016 following a sweeping election victory. But hopes of a new era of free expression have been dampened by a surge in prosecutions under a online defamation law in recent years. The arrest of two Myanmar journalists working for Reuters has raised global alarm over worsening media freedoms in the fledgling democracy. The reporters, Wa Lone and Kyaw Soe Oo, face up to 14 years in prison under the Official Secrets Act, which bars the possession of classified documents. They were arrested in December while reporting on Myanmar security officers' role in the extrajudicial killings of 10 Rohingya men in Rakhine state, where troops are accused of waging an ethnic cleansing campaign against the Muslim minority. Sister Fox, escorted by immigration officers (L, R), is greeted by supporters during her release from detention at the Immigration headquarters Philippine authorities detained an elderly Australian Catholic nun overnight in what civil rights groups alleged Tuesday was a crackdown on foreign critics of President Rodrigo Duterte's human rights record. Sister Patricia Fox, 71, was held overnight at the nation's immigration bureau on Monday but was later released without charge, the government agency said, the day after it deported a European Union politician who has criticised Duterte's deadly drug war. Fox, a Manila resident, was taken into custody for allegedly violating the conditions of her stay by engaging in "political activities and anti-government demonstrations", the bureau said in a statement. "The allegation that she engaged in partisan activities is not true. She has been in the Philippines for almost 27 years doing advocacy work for farmers," Fox's lawyer Jobert Pahilga told AFP. Fox, a missionary of the Sisters of Our Lady of Sion, joined an international fact-finding mission in the southern Philippines this month to look into reported violations of the rights of farmers and indigenous people, Pahilga added. Rights groups criticised Fox's detention as a warrantless arrest. The Philippines on Sunday deported Italian Giacomo Filibeck, deputy secretary general of the Party of European Socialists, who had condemned "extra-judicial killings" in Duterte's anti-drug crackdown. Like Fox, the immigration bureau had accused Filibeck of violating laws barring foreigners from engaging in political activities. Duterte, 73, has launched an unprecedented campaign against illegal drugs that has left thousands dead. He has lashed out at foreign critics of his drug war, threatening last week to arrest the International Criminal Court's chief prosecutor, who has begun a preliminary examination of whether the campaign amounted to state-sanctioned mass murder. Rights groups said the incidents involving Fox and Filibeck were part of a crackdown on foreign activists. "This shows the international community that the democratic space in the Philippines is shrinking. We are not just concerned and alarmed but we view these actions as despicable," Amnesty International Philippines human rights officer Wilnor Papa told AFP. "If the government is threatened by a 71-year-old nun, there is something really wrong with the government." Manila Catholic Bishop Broderick Pabillo also condemned the detention. "They don't even mind if they are nuns or if they are old. There is no humanity here. People should realise the government has a tendency of being dictatorial," Pabillo said. North Korea this week celebrated the 106th anniversary of late leader Kim Il Sung's birth A day after US, French and British missiles slammed into suspected chemical weapons sites in Syria, authorities in North Korea -- its longstanding friend -- held dances in the street to celebrate founder Kim Il Sung's birthday. The North's state media made no comment until Tuesday, three days after the strikes, when a line tucked away on the back page of the Rodong Sinmun newspaper merely chided the US for using the cause of "'anti-terrorism' as an excuse" for its actions. The token response is a notable contrast to last year, when it condemned a Syria missile attack ordered by President Donald Trump as an "intolerable act of aggression" that proved "a million times over" that its own nuclear weapons programme was the right choice. At the time tensions were soaring on the back of a series of North Korean missile launches and the military operation was widely seen as a warning to Pyongyang. But now the isolated country is on a charm offensive and looking to avoid controversy in the throes of a diplomatic rapprochement on the peninsula, analysts say, with leader Kim Jong Un due to hold a summit with the South's President Moon Jae-in next week, ahead of talks with Trump. For more than a month, the North's KCNA news agency has barely mentioned the country's nuclear capabilities, while its condemnations of actions by the US or the South have been couched in terms of "chilling the atmosphere for dialogue". Youth and students attended a dance party to celebrate the anniversary of late North Korean leader Kim Il-Sung in Pyongyang It has not issued its habitual vociferous denunciations of annual US-South Korea joint military exercises. Questions about North Korean relations with the US and South are off limits for visiting correspondents, as are the country's weapons programmes -- usually a safe topic as a source of national pride. "North Korea will not want to issue any statement that provokes the United States at this point," said Kim Hyun-wook, a professor at Korea National Diplomatic Academy in the South. The North aims "to make it difficult for the US to retreat from dialogue and go back to its hardline stance of military options and sanctions", he added, and a diplomatic row over Syria could complicate talks between officials from both sides to set a venue, date and agenda for the summit. The North's own domestic audience is another factor, according to Andrei Lankov of the Korea Risk Group. "Pyongyang is going to make some concessions to the US in the near future," he told AFP. "It will be more difficult to justify those concessions if North Koreans are constantly reminded of the evil nature of the US imperialists." - 'Common struggle' - Ties between Pyongyang and Damascus go back a long way. Both diplomatic outcasts condemned by Western governments, they have consistently offered each other friendship and support. Earlier this month the ruling Workers' Party sent its Syrian counterpart a congratulatory message saying it was "very pleased" that under Bashar al-Assad's leadership, "the Syrian army and people have achieved great successes in the struggle to protect the sovereignty, dignity and territorial integrity of the country". They waged a "common struggle for independence against imperialism", it added, according to the North's official KCNA news agency. For his part, Assad was one of only two foreign heads of state to send floral tributes to the current Kimilsungia flower show in Pyongyang, part of the North's celebrations for the anniversary of the birth of its founder. Syria and the North both stand accused by the West of using chemical weapons -- in the case of Pyongyang, in the assassination of leader Kim Jong Un's half-brother at a Malaysian airport last year. They have longstanding arms trade ties, and a UN panel of experts has found evidence of military cooperation by North Korea to develop Syria's chemical weapons programmes. But despite the mild response to Saturday's strikes on Syria, analysts say they will reinforce the North's belief that it needs nuclear weapons to defend itself from the US. Pyongyang regularly cites the fates of Saddam Hussein in Iraq -- with which it was included in George W. Bush's "Axis of Evil" -- and Libya's Moamer Kadhafi, who voluntarily gave up his nuclear programme, as evidence in its favour. A US-led coalition invaded Iraq the year after Bush coined the term, and Saddam was later hanged, while Kadhafi was ousted and killed in a NATO-backed uprising. "In North Korea's view, even if Pyongyang denuclearised the US could still launch a strike if it wasn't happy about something," said Koh Yu-hwan, professor of North Korean Studies at Dongguk University. "It provides more reason for North Korea to oppose 'denuclearisation-first'." Real estate tycoon Robert Durst, seen here in 2017, remained expressionless throughout court proceedings on Monday A real estate tycoon and accused murderer whose life story inspired an HBO documentary series appeared in a Los Angeles court at a hearing that will decide whether he will stand trial. Flashing autopsy photos and calling witnesses and experts to the stand, prosecutors argued that Robert Durst, 75, murdered his friend Susan Berman in 2000 because she was set to be questioned by New York police over the disappearance of his wife Kathleen in 1982. Durst remained expressionless through the proceedings on Monday as Karen Minutello, a prosecution witness who managed a building Durst lived in with his late wife, testified Kathleen "was afraid of him" and wanted to move out. The prosecution also presented testimony from Mark Fajardo, a former Los Angeles County coroner, who said he reviewed Berman's autopsy and believed she was shot in the back of the head from no more than an inch away, despite the original report stating the distance could not be determined. Nathan Chavin, a long-time friend of both Durst and Berman, testified in February 2017 that he discussed the latter's death at a 2014 dinner with Durst. Durst invited Chavin to eat because, according to Chavin, he wanted to discuss Berman as well as the fate of his first wife. Durst said he "had no choice" but to kill Berman, Chavin told Los Angeles Superior Court Judge Mark Windham. "'I had to. It was her or me. I had no choice,'" Chavin told the judge, quoting Durst. Durst was arrested in March 2015 in a New Orleans hotel room hours before the final episode of the six-part HBO documentary "The Jinx: The life and Deaths of Robert Durst." The series delved into the disappearance of his wife as well as the killing of Berman and the 2001 death of a neighbor in Texas who was found dismembered. At the time, Durst was living under an assumed name in Texas and pretended to be a mute woman, prosecutors said. He claimed self-defense and was acquitted after a high-profile trial. In the HBO documentary's explosive finale, Durst is heard muttering to himself, "What the hell did I do? Killed them all, of course," apparently unaware that a wireless microphone remained switched on while he used the bathroom. "You're caught," he said at another point. "What a disaster." Durst's preliminary hearing is set to resume Tuesday. Protesters take part in a candlelight vigil in Ahmedabad in support of rape victims The body of a seven-year-old girl who had been raped and strangled was found in India Tuesday, compounding outrage over a series of horrific sexual attacks on women or girls. Nationwide protests have been held in the past week over the gang-rape and murder of an eight-year-old Muslim girl in Jammu and Kashmir state. In the latest case, the child's body was found on a building site early Tuesday, hours after she went missing from a wedding in the Etah district of Uttar Pradesh state. Police said a neighbour who was putting up tents for the wedding had been detained on suspicion of luring the girl to the secluded building. Etah superintendent of police Akhilesh Chaurasia told AFP the man fled but was arrested within hours. "We have charged him with the rape and murder of the child. We are awaiting the post-mortem reports but prima facie it looks she was strangled to death," Chaurasia said. The authorities and police face mounting pressure over a series of sexual assaults, including the Jammu and Kashmir case. That killing was in January but outrage has mounted as details of the rape emerged. Police say she was drugged and raped for days at a Hindu temple before being beaten to death Eight men, all Hindus, have been arrested for the crime. Police said the accused targeted the girl because they wanted to drive her nomadic Muslim tribe out of the Hindu-dominated region. Two Jammu and Kashmir state ministers from Prime Minister Narendra Modi's Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) resigned after they attended rallies organised to defend the accused. Some activists have accused the party of siding with Hindu groups demanding the release of the arrested men. The BJP government has also faced criticism after one of its legislators in Uttar Pradesh state was arrested last week for the alleged rape of a 17-year-old woman. The woman's father died in police custody as he agitated for the authorities to take up the case. A 2014 UN report said one in three rape victims in India was a minor. Nearly 11,000 cases of child rape were reported in India in 2015, according to the National Crime Records Bureau's latest figures. ZTE has been banned from purchasing sensitive technology from the US over its illegal sales to Iran and North Korea Chinese telecom giant ZTE halted trading of its shares in Hong Kong and Shenzhen Tuesday following a US ban on its purchase of sensitive technology, which drew a pledge by China to "safeguard" its companies if necessary. Washington said ZTE had failed to follow through on pledges to punish staff responsible for illegal exports to Iran and North Korea. But China's commerce ministry said the firm had created tens of thousands of American jobs. The chairman of the Shenzhen-based firm, Yin Yimin, said ZTE had established a crisis team and was ready to "go to all lengths to face the crisis head-on". "We are in a complicated international situation," Yin said in an open letter circulated online, warning that the company faces "twists and turns" abroad. Following an investigation into the illegal sale of goods to Iran and North Korea, ZTE pleaded guilty in March 2017 to unlawful exports and was hit with $1.2 billion in fines, the largest criminal penalty in US history in an export control case. But US Commerce Department investigators said it made additional false statements multiple times about having taken action against the employees responsible, when it had not. In a statement on its website, the Chinese Ministry of Commerce said "China has always asked Chinese enterprises to abide by the host country's laws and policies and operate legally and properly in the process of overseas operation." "ZTE has launched extensive trade and investment cooperation with hundreds of American businesses, and contributing tens of thousands of jobs to the United States," it added, saying that it was "ready to take necessary measures to safeguard the legitimate rights and interests of Chinese enterprises." The five-year US government investigation into ZTE's actions was first revealed in March 2016. From January 2010 to March 2016, the company shipped $32 million of US cellular network equipment to Iran, and made 283 shipments of cellphones to North Korea, with the full knowledge of the highest levels of management, officials said. ZTE used third-party companies to hide the export of US components to the sanctioned countries, and then hid the information by "sanitising databases" with information on the sales. The firm deleted emails of employees involved in the scrubbing of records, and required employees with information about the illegal exports to sign non-disclosure agreements. It also covered up the fact that ZTE paid full bonuses to employees who had engaged in illegal conduct, and failed to issue letters of reprimand. Britain's National Cyber Security Centre (NCSC) also advised British telecommunication companies about the "potential risks" of using ZTE equipment. "NCSC assess that the national security risks arising from the use of ZTE equipment or services within the context of the existing UK telecommunications infrastructure cannot be mitigated," said Ian Levy, its technical director, in a statement. But a NCSC spokesman told AFP that the advice was not compulsory and that, legally speaking, British operators still have the right to use such equipment. Malaysian shaman Ibrahim Mat Zin says he plans to stand as a candidate in next month's elections A Malaysian shaman who drew widespread ridicule by trying to locate flight MH370 using coconuts and a "magic" carpet announced Tuesday he will run in elections next month. Ibrahim Mat Zin -- known by his nickname "Raja Bomoh", which translates as "King of Shamans" -- will contest a parliamentary seat in northern Perak state as an independent candidate. After Malaysia Airlines flight MH370 disappeared in 2014 with 239 people aboard, Ibrahim launched a bizarre attempt to find the jet at Kuala Lumpur International Airport, from where it had set out. He conducted a series of rituals, one involving bamboo binoculars and another using two coconuts and what he described as a magic carpet, which he claimed could weaken the "spirits" that were holding the missing plane. Despite his best efforts -- and a major multinational search in the Indian Ocean, that was the most expensive in aviation history -- the Boeing jet remains missing. Announcing his candidacy in the city of Ipoh, the 68-year-old recounted how he "just held up two coconuts and became an instant global star. "I am contesting for the sake of the people. I will help the people with financial support from my salary if I win." But he is likely to find as little success in politics as he did in his ill-fated hunt for MH370 -- he is running against Deputy Prime Minister Zahid Hamidi, one of the most powerful figures in government. Following the assassination of North Korean leader Kim Jong Un's brother at Kuala Lumpur airport last year, Ibrahim conducted a ritual on a beach, supposedly to protect Malaysia from any attack launched by Pyongyang. Authorities were disturbed enough by his antics to briefly detain him. The May 9 poll will be a tough test for Prime Minister Najib Razak's coalition, which has governed Malaysia for six decades. Najib has been battling allegations huge sums were looted from state fund 1MDB, and also faces a tough challenge from veteran ex-leader Mahathir Mohamad, 92, who is the opposition's prime ministerial candidate. Najib and 1MDB deny any wrongdoing. Two elephants have died in Thailand's Chonburi province after reportedly touching an electrified fence Thai police are looking for a pineapple farm worker suspected of setting up an electric fence that has killed two wild elephants in the past month, authorities said Tuesday. Cops are searching for the man after the second elephant was found dead over the weekend, lying on its side outside a pineapple farm in Chonburi province that edges up against a national park. The four-tonne animal lay around 100 metres away from where a female elephant fell dead last month. A plantation worker, Samin Jansamut, was charged after the first elephant death with poaching but had since been released on bail, police said. "The suspect used live wire to make a fence and then connected it to electricity...at night," said Phadet Laithong, a regional park official. "There were signs of burning on (the second elephant's) trunk and his side, so it's likely that he was electrocuted," he added. Police are now looking for him again following the second elephant death. Conservationists estimate Thailand is home to more than 3,000 wild elephants. But deforestation and habitat loss in recent decades have brought herds in closer contact with villages, igniting conflicts -- and sometimes human deaths -- when the animals trample on plantations or steal farmers' produce. Soraida Salwala, the founder of the NGO 'Friends of the Asian Elephant', said she was "devastated" by the Chonburi elephant's apparent electrocution. "Electrocution should not be carried out against any animals," she told AFP. "I have called for an emergency fund to compensate to farmers in case their produce is eaten by elephants," she added. Thailand also hosts Asia's biggest elephant tourism industry, with some 2,000 pachyderms employed to take tourists on rides or perform in circuses. Animal rights groups have long criticised the lucrative industry as inhumane, with many elephants relegated to lives on the end of a chain. Morocco's King Mohammed VI arrives for a meeting with French President Emmanuel Macron on April 10, 2018 at the Elysee Palace in Paris King Mohammed VI has returned to Morocco after an absence of several weeks during which he underwent a heart operation in a Paris clinic, sources close to the palace said Tuesday. Media reports said Mohammed's private plane landed on Monday night in Casablanca, the economic capital of Morocco, and he was expected Tuesday in the northern city of Fez for official functions. The 54-year-old king has not been in Morocco at least since February 26 when he underwent the operation to normalise his heart beat. Mohammed, who has ruled since his father Hassan's death in July 1999, would resume his normal activities after a period of rest prescribed by his doctors, according to an official statement issued at the time. The king's lengthy absence stirred rumours on social media and also raised questions in diplomatic and business circles. A frequent visitor to France, Mohammed's first official function since the operation was an April 10 meeting with French President Emmanuel Macron. He did not, however, attend the Arab summit held Sunday in the Saudi city of Dhahran. Britain's Prime Minister Theresa May meets Commonwealth Caribbean leaders to dicusss their concerns over treatment of their migrants in Britain Prime Minister Theresa May on Tuesday personally apologised to Caribbean leaders after her government threatened to deport people who emigrated to Britain in the 1950s and 1960s. At a meeting in Downing Street, May told representatives of the 12 Caribbean members of the Commonwealth that she took the treatment of the so-called Windrush generation "very seriously". "I want to apologise to you today. Because we are genuinely sorry for any anxiety that has been caused," she told the hastily-convened gathering. She added: "I want to dispel any impression that my government is in some sense clamping down on Commonwealth citizens, particularly those from the Caribbean." The government has prompted anger in Caribbean countries and at home for a clampdown on people who came to Britain between 1948, when the ship Windrush brought over the first group of West Indian immigrants, and the early 1970s. They and their parents were invited to help rebuild Britain after World War II and -- with many of them legally British, as they were born while their countries were still colonies -- they were given indefinite leave to remain. But those who failed to get their papers in order are now being treated as illegal, and at risk of deportation if they cannot provide evidence of every year they have been in Britain. The row has been hugely embarrassing for the government, coinciding with a meeting of the 53 Commonwealth heads of government in London this week. Jamaican Prime Minister Andrew Holness, who earlier had a bilateral meeting with May, said he wanted a "speedy" response. Those involved "have significantly contributed to the building and enrichment of the country. Now these persons are not able to claim their place as citizens", he said. Britain has written to each of the governments involved setting out how it intends to rectify the situation, notably by helping anyone affected to find the necessary paperwork to regularise their immigration status. Holness said to May: "Prime minister, we welcome your response and we look forward to a speedy implementation of your proposed solution. "It will lead to security, certainly for those who have been affected... It is time for the inclusive prosperity for which we stand as Commonwealth people." As he arrived for the meeting at Downing Street, Barbados ambassador Guy Hewitt said: "We are now in a discussion mode. The government has heard us." Antigua and Barbuda Prime Minister Gaston Browne earlier said an apology from May "would be welcome" but he was "pleased" the government had stepped in. "Many of these individuals do not have any connection with the country of their birth, would have lived in the UK their entire lives and worked very hard towards the advancement of the UK," he said. The issue has come to light following a clampdown on illegal immigration in recent years, requiring people to have documentation to work, rent a property or access benefits including healthcare. French national Djamila Boutoutaou stands trial in a Baghdad court on April 17, 2018 Iraq on Tuesday sentenced a French woman to life in prison for belonging to the Islamic State group, raising to more than 180 the number of such convictions of foreign women since the country's defeat of IS. Djamila Boutoutaou, a 29-year-old of Algerian origin, told a Baghdad court that she left France with her husband, a rapper. She said she thought they were going on holiday but "when I arrived in Turkey I discovered that my husband was a jihadist". She said she was forced by her husband to join IS and live in the "caliphate" that the jihadists proclaimed in 2014 straddling Syria and Iraq. Boutoutaou, who appeared in court wearing a brown headscarf, said she and her two children had been forced to live in a "cave". Her husband was killed near the former jihadist stronghold of Mosul, northern Iraq, and her son died in bombardment, Boutoutaou said, before she and the wife of a neighbour fled and surrendered to Kurdish peshmerga fighters. Two women from Russia, both holding children in their arms, were also sentenced to life in prison at the same hearing, while five from Azerbaijan were condemned to death along with a woman from Trinidad. Iraq declared victory in December against IS, which at one point controlled a third of the country. The Iraqi anti-terrorism law empowers courts to convict people who are believed to have helped IS even if they are not accused of violence. In January, an Iraqi court condemned a German woman to death after finding her guilty of belonging to IS. A court the following month sentenced another French woman to seven months in jail for entering Iraq illegally but ordered her release on time already served. Under Iraqi anti-terrorism laws, a total of 97 foreign women have now been condemned to death since January and 185 others to life imprisonment by courts in Baghdad, a judicial source told AFP. Most of the women were from Turkey and republics of the former Soviet Union. Iraqi authorities have not announced any of the sentences being carried out. Mothers of the missing Chibok schoolgirls pray for their release Nigeria is facing calls to establish how many of the missing Chibok schoolgirls are still alive, after claims that nearly 100 of them may have lost their lives in captivity. Parents of the missing girls and supporters gathered in the small town in remote northeast Nigeria on Saturday to mark the fourth anniversary of the kidnapping that sparked world outrage. But soon after the end of their vigil and prayers, a Nigerian journalist who has been involved in negotiations with the Islamist group said only a "handful" of the girls survive. Ahmad Salkida wrote in a lengthy thread on Twitter that "only 15" of the 112 girls still being held were alive. "Many of the girls have died as a result of cross fires and bombardments of the security forces that no doubt were intent on rescuing them," he added. The Nigerian government in response neither confirmed nor denied the claim. President Muhammadu Buhari's spokesman, Garba Shehu, said only that Salkida's claim was "not known" to them or anyone working on their behalf. "The facts as known to our officials and the international contacts assisting this process are that the remaining Chibok girls are there," he added. "We are not relenting on getting their release." - Grief and alarm - A total of 276 girls were seized from the Government Girls Secondary School in Chibok on April 14, 2014 and 57 managed to escape in the immediate aftermath. Some of the released girls said air strikes had claimed the lives of several hostages Since then, 107 have either been found or released as part of a government deal with the jihadists. Claims that some have died or been killed are not new. In August 2016, Boko Haram released a video purporting to show about 50 of the students. "Some of them have died as a result of aerial bombardment," a masked gunman tells the camera. One of the girls then gives details about an air strike by Nigerian armed forces. Ayuba Alamson Chibok, a community leader in the town whose cousin is among the missing, said parents and relatives were all aware of those claims. "After the 82 girls were released (in May 2017) I spoke with some of them and they confirmed that some girls were killed in military strike on the camp they were being held," he told AFP. "The released girls confirmed to me that 11 of their colleagues died in that air strike and many others were injured." There was "no way of knowing" if more had been killed in similar action since then, said Alamson, calling on Boko Haram to release a "proof of life" video for the remaining hostages. The latest numbers quoted were alarming -- and the authorities in Abuja should work towards finding out the situation as soon as possible, he said. "This claim has added to the grief of parents. The government should act fast. The longer it takes to resolve this issue, the more the future of these girls is destroyed," he added. - Human shields - Nigeria's military still strictly controls movements in the northeast, where the Islamist insurgency has killed at least 20,000 and made more than 2.6 million homeless since 2009. That makes access to information difficult but two security sources with close knowledge of operations against Boko Haram said there may be some truth in the claims. Both declined to give their names, as they were not authorised to speak to the media. Nigerian journalist Ahmad Salkida wrote that only 15 of the 112 girls still being held are alive One said it was "indisputable... that some of them perished in air strikes against Boko Haram positions on at least three occasions" between February 2015 and February this year. The air strikes targeted a Boko Haram base on the Cameroon side of the border with Nigeria; a militant camp on an island on Lake Chad; and the Sambisa Forest area of Nigeria's Borno state. "In all these cases Boko Haram used the girls and other hostages as human shields," the source said. The second source agreed with Salkida's claim the remaining girls were now married to senior commanders in the group, which would make negotiations for their return more challenging. In a video released on January 15, one Chibok girl indicated as much. "We are the Chibok girls that you cry for us to return to you. By the grace of Allah we will not return to you," she said. Buses carrying Jaish al-Islam fighters and their families from the former rebel bastion of Douma arrive at a checkpoint in Aleppo province on April 14, 2018 Syrian state media reported Tuesday that rebels from the Jaish al-Islam faction would quit another town east of Damascus, just days after evacuating their main bastion outside the capital. State news agency SANA said a new deal had been inked for the rebels to exit the town of Dumayr, around 50 kilometres (30 miles) east of Damascus. Jaish al-Islam had maintained control over the town since 2016 under a "reconciliation" agreement with regime forces, whereby they would not fire at each other. But the new deal, SANA reported, "provides for the departure of around 1,000 terrorists from Jaish al-Islam to Jarabulus," a rebel-controlled northern town. Rebels had already begun handing over heavy weapons as part of the agreement, it said. Jaish al-Islam has not commented on the deal. It comes three days after Jaish al-Islam evacuated the last opposition-held town in the onetime rebel bastion of Eastern Ghouta. Their departure paved the way for the Syrian army to declare its full control over Ghouta, after a ferocious two-month military assault on the enclave. The offensive ended with a trio of evacuation deals that saw tens of thousands of rebels and civilians bussed up to northern Syria. The Syrian Observatory for Human Rights, a Britain-based war monitor, said Tuesday that government forces were keen to clear out the armed opposition from any territory near Damascus. "Regime forces, after taking all of Eastern Ghouta, want to finish off the rest of the rebel fighters around the capital so they can secure it," said Observatory head Rami Abdel Rahman. "This is why they're replacing the reconciliation deals with evacuation agreements," he told AFP. Similar rebel departures were being negotiated for other nearby towns and for areas south of Damascus including Yalda, Beit Saham, and Babila, the Observatory said. Meanwhile, government forces were preparing an assault on neighbourhoods in southern Damascus held by the Islamic State group. The Observatory said Tuesday that regime forces had fired dozens of shells and rockets onto the areas overnight and that IS had retaliated with shelling on Damascus that left one child dead. Russia has denied trying to obstruct the investigation and said the inspectors from the Organisation for the Prohibition of Chemical Weapons (OPCW), who arrived in Damascus on Saturday, are due to visit Douma on Wednesday The French government said Tuesday that it was "highly likely" evidence would "disappear" from the site of a suspected chemical attack in Syria before weapons experts arrive in the area. Accusing Russia and Syria of denying access to the experts dispatched to probe the alleged April 7 poison gas attack in Douma, the French foreign ministry said: "It is highly likely that evidence and essential elements will disappear from the site, which is completely controlled by the Russian and Syrian armies." Russia has denied trying to obstruct the investigation and said the inspectors from the Organisation for the Prohibition of Chemical Weapons (OPCW), who arrived in Damascus on Saturday, are due to visit Douma on Wednesday. In a statement, the French foreign ministry said it was "essential that Syria give full, immediate and unimpeded access to all the OPCW's requests, whether relating to sites to visit, people to interview or documents to consult." The warning came as the US ambassador to the OPCW, Ken Ward, voiced fears that Moscow might already have "tampered with" evidence at the site. Russian Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov rejected the allegation, telling the BBC: "I can guarantee that Russia has not tampered with the site." Lavrov charged that it was the United States, France and Britain who were "standing in the way" of the investigation by ordering air strikes "in the blink of an eye" before the OPCW team had a chance to do their work. The three Western powers fired around 100 missiles at three suspected chemical facilities in Syria on Saturday, saying they had proof that the government of President Bashar al-Assad was behind the Douma attack. Addressing the European Parliament in Strasbourg on Tuesday, French President Emmanuel Macron said the strikes aimed to defend "the honour of the international community" in the face of Syria's suspected violation of the UN Chemical Weapons Convention. "These strikes don't necessarily resolve anything but I think they were important," he said. Civilians in the former rebel Syrian town of Douma on the outskirts of Damascus on April 17, 2018 after the Syrian army declared that all anti-regime forces have left Eastern Ghouta International investigators on Tuesday were awaiting the green light from a UN security team to begin work in a Syrian town hit by an alleged chemical attack, after delays and warnings by Western powers that crucial evidence had likely been removed. The suspected April 7 gas attack on Douma, near Damascus, reportedly left more than 40 people dead and was blamed by Western powers on the regime of Syrian President Bashar al-Assad. In response, the United States, France and Britain conducted missile strikes on Syrian military installations, but Paris admitted on Tuesday they were a matter of "honour" that had solved nothing. Syrian Ambassador Bashar Jaafari told a meeting of the UN Security Council that the team of experts would begin work on Wednesday once they receive the all-clear from the security detail. "If this United Nations security team decides that the situation is sound in Douma then the fact-finding mission will begin its work in Douma tomorrow," Jaafari told the council in New York. The Syrian state news agency SANA earlier reported that the international experts from the Organisation for the Prohibition of Chemical Weapons (OPCW) had entered Douma to begin their investigation of whether chemical agents were used as a weapon. Jaafari stressed that the "Syrian government did all that it can do to facilitate the work of this mission" but that it was up to the United Nations and the OPCW to decide whether to deploy, based on security considerations. - Lost evidence ? - The inspectors arrived in Damascus on the day of the Western strikes but had not been allowed to enter Douma. France and the United States appeared to question the purpose of such a mission. "It is highly likely that evidence and essential elements disappear from the site, which is completely controlled by the Russian and Syrian armies," the French foreign ministry said. Russian foreign ministry spokeswoman Maria Zakharova hit back, calling the accusation "very surprising" and saying that Russia had supported the inspection. Several experts have said any investigation at this stage was likely to be inconclusive. "As with any crime scene, it is crucial to get there as soon as possible," said Olivier Lepick, a fellow at the Paris-based Foundation for Scientific Research. "If the Russians and Syrians have nothing to hide, it's strange that they would wait 36 to 72 hours," he said. "It's probably to give themselves the time to finish cleaning up." - France strips Assad award - In an impassioned defence to the European Parliament on Tuesday, France's President Emmanuel Macron said Saturday's strikes had been "for the honour of the international community". This combination of pictures created with satellite images shows the Scientific Studies and Research Centre (SSRC) compound in the Barzeh district, north of Damascus, before and after it was struck in Western air raids on Saturday "These strikes don't necessarily resolve anything but I think they were important," Macron added. The French leader was also set to strip Syrian President Bashar al-Assad of the prestigious Legion d'Honneur (Legion of Honour) award he was granted by former president Jacques Chirac in 2001. The war of words continued to spiral between the Russian-backed Syrian regime and the West but a military escalation looked to have been averted. A report on SANA that Syrian air defences had shot down missiles over Homs province overnight raised fears, but the agency later retracted the report. The Britain-based Syrian Observatory for Human Rights reported explosions were heard near Shayrat air base, southeast of Homs city, and near Damascus where two other air bases are located. After Saturday's strikes, which destroyed mostly empty buildings, the trio of Western powers trying to reassert influence on the seven-year-old war have appeared to favour diplomatic action. The three allies have put forward a Security Council draft resolution in a bid to relaunch talks aimed at ending a war that has left more than 350,000 people dead and displaced more than half of the Syrian population. Analysts have said however that it would take more for the West to mount a meaningful challenge to Russia's weight as a broker. "For a new diplomatic initiative to work, the balance on the ground must be changed," said Nabeel Khoury, a former US diplomat who is now a fellow at the Atlantic Council think-tank. Syrians cycle along a damaged street in Douma on the outskirts of Damascus on April 16, 2018 during an organised media tour after the Syrian army declared that all anti-regime forces have left Eastern Ghouta "As it is, even with this latest bombing, the West does not have a seat at the table," he said. Russia appeared in no mood to extend a hand to the West on Syria however and its ambassador to the UN, Vassily Nebenzia, called the diplomatic push "untimely". "If the goal is to force a Syrian president, under a hail of bombs, to sit at the table of negotiations... this goal is simply unrealistic," Nebenzia told the Security Council. The latest round of diplomatic maneuvring comes as US-backed Kurdish forces fighting the Islamic State group face a Turkish assault in northern Syria. That has prompted many fighters to quit the battle against IS in order head for the Kurdish enclave of Afrin. The US military, which heads a coalition against the Islamic State group in Iraq and Syria, said Tuesday it had seen the jihadists "resurge" in some parts of Syria under government control. Indonesian officials prepare to board the luxury yacht 'Equanimity' in late February A luxury yacht linked to allegations that $4.5 billion was looted from Malaysia's state investment fund 1MDB must be returned to its wealthy owner, an Indonesian court ruled Tuesday, citing missteps by police in seizing the vessel. The decision comes about six weeks after Indonesian authorities, acting on a request from the FBI, seized the Cayman Islands-registered Equanimity, reportedly worth some $250 million, which was moored off the Indonesian tourist island of Bali. Its three dozen crew remain on the impounded ship. The US Justice Department alleges in civil lawsuits that huge sums of money were 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 purchased by Jho Low, a former unofficial adviser to 1MDB. Low, whose exact whereabouts are unknown, challenged the seizure in court. It sided with the Malaysian financier on Tuesday, calling the police actions "invalid" and "unlawful". Indonesian authorities did not follow proper procedures concerning confiscation of assets sought by foreign authorities, it said. "The Indonesian police acted beyond their power," said presiding judge Ratmoho, who like many Indonesians goes by one name. "(The court) annuls the seizure." Police spokesman Setyo Wasisto said authorities would abide by the decision, but could not say when the boat would be returned to Low. "we need to study the ruling first," he added. Last month a spokesman for Low lashed out at the seizure, saying the US Department of Justice (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." Gaza City residents protest on April 17, 2018 in support of Palestinian prisoners held in Israeli jails Several thousand people protested in the occupied West Bank and Gaza Strip on Tuesday to mark an annual day in support of Palestinians jailed by Israel. A few thousand gathered in the Gaza Strip, while there were smaller demonstrations across the West Bank as Palestinians marked Prisoners' Day. Around 6,500 Palestinians are currently in Israeli prisons for a range of offences and alleged crimes, according to the Palestinian Prisoners' Club. Of those, around 500 are detained under so-called administrative detention laws, it says. Administrative detention allows Israel to detain people without charge or trial for renewable six-month periods. The prisoners' club also says around one million Palestinians have been detained by Israel since the country was founded in 1948. Dozens of girls carrying photographs of women prisoners demonstrated on Tuesday outside the headquarters of the International Committee of the Red Cross, west of Gaza City. In Nablus in the northern West Bank, around 1,000 people gathered, while a few hundred demonstrated in Bethlehem and Ramallah. There were no reports of major clashes. Russian UN Ambassador Vassily Nebenzia said it was "untimely" to establish a new chemical weapons investigation in Syria and re-energize peace efforts Russia's UN ambassador on Tuesday dismissed as "untimely" a push by the United States, France and Britain at the United Nations to establish a new chemical weapons investigation in Syria and re-energize peace efforts. The three allies on Saturday presented a draft Security Council resolution just hours after carrying out military strikes on three targets they said were linked to Syria's chemical weapons program. Asked about the proposed resolution, Russian Ambassador Vassily Nebenzia told AFP that it was "untimely," indicating Moscow was not ready to engage with the West on Syria after the military strikes. "First they have to undo what they did a few days ago," Nebenzia said, referring to the military action. The draft resolution would set up a new inquiry to identify perpetrators of chemical attacks in Syria, push for the full dismantling of Syria's chemical stockpiles, call for a ceasefire and demand that Syria engage in peace talks. During a Security Council meeting called by Russia to discuss the situation in Raqa, Nebenzia said the West's military action on Saturday had set back efforts to advance political talks. "It's hard to imagine that after everything that has occurred, the Syrian authorities feel any enthusiasm about discussing the political solution in their country at the request of the Western troika," he said. "If the goal is to force a Syrian president, under a hail of bombs, to sit at the table of negotiations... this goal is simply unrealistic," he added. A first round of negotiations on the draft resolution was held on Monday, but diplomats said Russia did not engage in discussions and no date has been set for a vote on the measure. - 'Going to take time' - Western diplomats said they were ready to allow time for negotiations to make every effort to bring Russia on board. "The resolution is being discussed but we are not looking for quick progress on this," British Ambassador Karen Pierce told reporters. "We need to chart a path back to the political process and I think we all know this is going to take time." Russia has used its veto 12 times at the Security Council to block action targeting its Syrian ally. International investigators of the Organisation for the Prohibition of Chemical Weapons (OPCW) were on Tuesday on the ground in the Syrian town of Douma, where dozens were killed in a suspected chemical weapons attack on April 7. The OPCW team can determine whether chemical agents were used as a weapon but it does not have a mandate to identify the perpetrators of chemical attacks. The Security Council in 2015 set up such a mechanism for attribution, but Russia in November killed off the panel, known as the Joint Investigative Mechanism (JIM), when it vetoed the renewal of its mandate. The JIM had determined that Syrian forces were responsible for the use of sarin in an attack in April last year in Khan Sheikhun. Addressing the council, the Russian ambassador said re-establishing a panel "no longer makes sense when Washington and its allies have already determined who is guilty." The war in Syria entered its eighth year last month, with diplomacy deadlocked over the way forward to end the conflict that has killed more than 350,000 people and forced millions to flee. Local media in India have reported cash shortages at some ATMs India's finance minister tried to allay fears Tuesday after media reports of shortages at ATMs across several states sparked memories of the chaotic scenes two years ago sparked by the government's shock demonetisation move. Local media reported from a string of central, eastern and southern states showing people queuing up at empty ATMs or complaining about a lack of notes. "Have reviewed the currency situation in the country. Over all there is more than adequate currency in circulation and also available with the banks," finance minister Arun Jaitley said on Twitter. "The temporary shortage caused by 'sudden and unusual increase' in some areas is being tackled quickly," he added, without elaborating on what might have caused the sudden increase in demand for notes. The reports of cash shortages come at a sensitive time for the government of Prime Minister Narendra Modi with the annual harvest season and a crunch local election in southern Karnataka state coming up. The country last saw such shortages in wake of Modi's shock decision to withdraw almost 86 percent of the cash in circulation with a single order in November 2016. The move was a bid to clamp down on corruption and wipe out illicit or untaxed wealth, a move that had significant popular support. But Indians were also forced to queue for hours to exchange their suddenly worthless bills with the poor struggling to buy daily essentials. Many economists later linked job losses across many sectors to this decision. Modi's opponents have latched on to the latest reports of cash shortages, questioning his government's handling of the economy. "Seeing reports of ATMs running out of cash in several states. Big notes missing. Reminder of Demonetisation days," Mamata Banerjee, the firebrand chief minister of eastern West Bengal state said on Twitter. "Is there a financial emergency going on in the country? #cashcrunch #cashlessATMs," she added. India's finance ministry said that it had "adequate reserves" to meet the "extraordinary demand" of currency notes. "The government would also like to assure that it would be supplying adequate currency notes to meet even higher levels of demand if such demand were to continue in the coming days/months," it said in a statement. The Wall Street Journal reported Monday that US President Donald Trump's administration was seeking to assemble an Arab force, including troops from Saudi Arabia and the United Arab Emirates, to replace a US military contingent in Syria Saudi Foreign Minister Adel al-Jubeir reaffirmed on Tuesday the kingdom's willingness to deploy troops to Syria as part of US-led efforts to stabilise the conflict-torn country. "We are in discussions with the US and have been since the beginning of the Syrian crisis (in 2011) about sending forces into Syria," Jubeir said at a press conference in Riyadh with UN chief Antonio Guterres. The comments were in response to a Wall Street Journal report on Monday that US President Donald Trump's administration was seeking to assemble an Arab force, including troops from Saudi Arabia and the United Arab Emirates, to replace a US military contingent in Syria. The report follows weekend strikes by the United States, Britain and France against Syrian leader Bashar al-Assad's government that hit targets they said were linked to a state chemical weapons programme. Jubeir emphasised that the proposal to send its troops as part of a broader international coalition was "not new". "We made a proposal to the (previous US) Obama administration that if the US were to send forces... then Saudi Arabia would consider along with other countries sending forces as part of this contingent," he said. Before the weekend's Western strikes, Saudi Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman had indicated that the kingdom would back an international military action in Syria. Guterres, who also met Saudi King Salman on Tuesday, emphasised the need for a political solution in Syria, free of foreign interference. Syria's war, the most tangled of the region's conflicts, is a key point of contention pitting Riyadh and its allies, who mainly back Sunni Muslim rebels, against regime backer Iran and its Lebanese ally Hezbollah. Riyadh and Shiite rival Tehran also back opposing sides in other hotspots across the mainly Sunni Middle East, including Lebanon, Iraq and Saudi Arabia's southern neighbour, Yemen. Congolese soldiers guard Patrice Lumumba (r) upon his arrest in November 1960 Belgium is set to name a square in Brussels after late Congolese independence hero Patrice Lumumba, the first public place in the former colonial power to honour him, an official said Tuesday. Brussels mayor Philippe Close said that the local council would vote next Monday on his proposal for the tribute to Lumumba, who was assassinated in 1961. The socialist mayor told RTBF radio he was "extremely proud" to end what he called a "taboo" in Belgium after years of efforts by the Congolese community for some kind of memorial to Lumumba. "On June 30, Brussels, for the first time, while have a Patrice Lumumba Square, that will happen at the local council and we are extremely proud to acknowledge that," he said. A square in the Matonge area, the heart of Brussels's vibrant Congolese community, will be named after Lumuba and a plaque erected there in his honour, Close said. "This is an area everyone knows, which has a very deep symbolism for our community. It's a great victory," Lydia Mutyebele, a local socialist councillor who led the project, told AFP. Mutyebele, now 39, was born in the Congo but came to Belgium at the age of six. She said Lumumba was an "emblematic figure" for the whole African continent. Lumumba embodies for many young people "an attachment to an Africa that know very little about, because they were born here," she said. The gesture comes on the 60th anniversary of the 1958 Brussels Expo, which included a "Congolese village" -- effectively a human zoo -- that was meant to show Belgium's colonial power. Lumumba became the first democratically-elected prime minister of the former Belgian Congo after it won independence in 1960 Popular at home, he was considered too pro-Soviet by the Americans and was assassinated on January 17, 1961, at the age of 35, with the alleged complicity of the CIA, Britain's MI6, and Belgian intelligence. Lumumba was killed after a coup led by Joseph-Desire Mobutu. Mobutu renamed the country Zaire. It is now known as the Democratic Republic of Congo. Emma Coronel, wife of the founder of the former Guadalajara Cartel Joaquin "El Chapo" Guzman, outside federal court in New York The young wife of accused Mexican drug kingpin Joaquin "El Chapo" Guzman on Tuesday spoke publicly for the first time since her husband was extradited to the United States last year, voicing concern for his health in solitary confinement. Emma Coronel, a 28-year-old former beauty queen and mother of the couple's twin girls, complained after his latest pre-trial hearing in a Brooklyn federal court about being barred from visiting her husband in jail or talking to him by telephone. Guzman, 61, accused of running the Sinaloa crime syndicate, one of the world's biggest drug empires, is scheduled to go on trial on September 5. "I have not seen him in 15 months. I see him in court. I do not have any communication with him, no visits or calls. Only the girls and the lawyers can see him," she said in Spanish, dressed in tight black pants, a white blouse, high heels and mirrored aviators. "My concern is your health because I know that you are very bad psychologically... because of what the lawyers have told me, and that's what worries me. How are you going to reach a good judgment if you are in poor health," added his wife of 11 years. Guzman's defense lawyers have complained repeatedly about the harsh conditions of his detention in solitary confinement since he was handed over to the United States on January 19, 2017, after twice escaping prison in Mexico. He has been held in solitary confinement in New York, cooped up in a cell 23 hours a day, and has complained repeatedly about his health and conditions of confinement. Accused of running the Sinaloa Cartel, a powerful criminal syndicate, Guzman is facing 17 charges. If convicted he is likely to spend the rest of his life in a maximum security US prison. El Chapo's lawyer, Eduardo Balarezo, refused to let Coronel take questions from the press, and said his client will undergo a new psychological evaluation in the next two weeks. Guzman can speak to his lawyers only through a glass panel. He greeted his wife with a wave at the beginning and end of Tuesday's hearing, which heard arguments from the defense and prosecution on whether Guzman's partial payment of legal fees should be admitted as evidence at trial of drug trafficking. Judge Brian Cogan deferred a ruling and set the next hearing for May 30. Between 800 and 1,000 people will be earmarked as potential jurors for what is expected to be a three- to four-month trial. Each of them will have to fill out a questionnaire that will include questions, for example, on their television drama viewing about drug cartels. From that, the pool will be whittled down to 40, from which the final 12 jurors and six alternates will be selected on the first day of the trial. An Iranian girl walks across the dried-out Zayandeh Rud river in Isfahan on April 11, 2018 An Iranian lawmaker on Tuesday criticised a recent crackdown on environmental activists and officials, saying it risked "bad consequences for the country", the semi-official ISNA news agency reported. Parliament's environmental and transparency committees held a closed-door session in which they discussed the arrest on espionage charges of several NGO workers earlier this year. One detainee later died in custody. "Some... have accused these individuals of spying, but the expert views of the Intelligence Ministry are almost exactly contrary to them," said Mohammad Reza Tabesh, head of parliament's environment committee, according to ISNA. He was relaying information provided by the head of the government's Environment Protection Agency (EPA), Isa Kalantari. Iran has multiple and competing intelligence agencies. One is under the moderate government of President Hassan Rouhani and another under the Revolutionary Guards, who have opposed his efforts to rebuild ties with the West. The lawmakers discussed Kaveh Madani, a young water expert who took leave from his post at London's Imperial College last year to become deputy head of the EPA. It was revealed on Monday that Madani, who had faced weeks of pressure from hardline opponents of the government, had abruptly resigned while travelling outside the country. Kalantari told the lawmakers that Madani had wished to carry on his work "despite the pressures exerted," according to the account given by Tabesh. "But he resigned because his parents were not happy." Madani released a cryptic message on Twitter on Tuesday. "Yes, the accused has escaped from a land in which online ignorance has rejected science, knowledge and expertise," he wrote. "They have realised that finding a guilty person, enemy and spy is much easier than accountability and participation in resolving problems." Madani's appointment had been seen as a test of Rouhani's efforts to attract expat Iranians back home. But Madani he was briefly detained in February in mysterious circumstances, then vilified by hardliners after photos were released purporting to show him dancing and drinking on holiday. Among the environmentalists arrested in recent months were seven members of the Persian Wildlife Heritage Organisation. Its head, renowned environmentalist Kaveh Seyed Emami, died in Tehran's Evin prison in February after being accused of spying for the United States and Israel. Iranian authorities said he committed suicide in his cell, but this has been disputed by the family. Iran is suffering from a range of extreme environmental problems, including world-beating levels of air pollution and years of drought that have devastated swathes of its agricultural land. Workers remove the statue of Dr. James Marion Sims, whose medical advances were achieved through practice of surgical techniques on enslaved Black women New York on Tuesday removed from Central Park the statue of a 19th century gynecologist who experimented on enslaved black women without anesthesia, as the United States increasingly confronts racism in its history. A commission recommended in January that the statue of J. Marion Sims be relocated from Central Park to a Brooklyn cemetery, where Sims is buried, and steps be taken to explain the legacy of a man considered the father of modern gynecology. "It's about time!" shouted an African American woman, one of around two dozen people who attended the removal on Tuesday. "Sims is not our hero," shouted the others. For Bernadith Russell, a doctor at New York-Presbyterian Hospital, it's not "important to say he didn't make contributions, but it's important to acknowledge that these contributions really came at the expense of women who weren't able to consent." "I recognize his contributions but it's sort of if Josef Mengele had contributions to the field of medicine, we wouldn't put a statue to him because of how he got that information," she said. Mengele was a German Nazi physician who carried out experiments on prisoners at concentration camps during the Holocaust. But it was the only one of four statues on public land that New York Mayor Bill de Blasio agreed to relocate following the review, as the United States debates tributes to figures whose legacies are increasingly scrutinized. The Democrat ordered the 90-day review after deadly violence at a neo-Nazi rally in Virginia last August built nationwide momentum to remove symbols of the pro-slavery Civil War-era South. New York is keeping in place statues of Christopher Columbus and former US president Theodore Roosevelt, as well as a plaque dedicated to Philippe Petain -- a World War I hero who later collaborated with the Nazis -- albeit with additional signs to provide context. A monument to indigenous people will also be erected near the Columbus statue at the gateway to Central Park. Columbus, the so-called man who "discovered America," has been increasingly denounced as embodying the genocide of indigenous Americans. Critics complain that the Roosevelt monument is an image of racial hierarchy, depicting a triumphant Roosevelt on horseback looming over Native American and African men. "Our approach will focus on adding detail and nuance to -- instead of removing entirely -- the representations of these histories," de Blasio said in January. The spate of cyberattacks in the past years has prompted major tech firms to sign a pact to work together, and to agree not to help governments launch offensive measures against innocent parties Thirty-four global technology companies and organizations signed a pact Tuesday calling for a stronger defense against cyberattacks in any form and pledging to refrain from helping governments attack "innocent" civilians or enterprises. "The devastating attacks from the past year demonstrate that cybersecurity is not just about what any single company can do but also about what we can all do together," said Brad Smith, president of Microsoft, in a statement endorsed by US firms including Facebook, Oracle and global giants including Telefonica, Nokia and BT. "This tech sector accord will help us take a principled path towards more effective steps to work together and defend customers around the world." The companies made a commitment to mount a stronger defense against cyberattacks, "recognizing that everyone deserves protection ... regardless of the motivation for attacks online," the statement said. The announcement comes after a year marked by devastating attacks including ransomware and news of Russian-led efforts to infiltrate systems controlling critical infrastructure. Just Monday, US and British officials warned that Russian state-sponsored actors are using compromised routers for attacks to support espionage, extract intellectual property, maintain persistent access to victim networks and potentially lay a foundation for future offensive operations. "The real world consequences of cyber threats have been repeatedly proven. As an industry, we must band together to fight cybercriminals and stop future attacks from causing even more damage," said Kevin Simzer, chief operating officer at the security firm Trend Micro. According to the statement, economic losses expected from cyberattacks are likely to reach $8 trillion by 2022, impacting services ranging from small businesses to hospitals. Companies that signed the accord plan to hold their first meeting during the security-focused RSA Conference this week in San Francisco. The signatories included ABB, Arm Holdings, Avast, Bitdefender. CA Technologies, Cisco, Cloudflare, Datastax, Dell, Docusign, Fastly, FireEye, F-Secure, Github, Guardtime, HP, HPE, Intuit, Juniper Networks, LinkedIn, Nielsen, RSA, SAP, Stripe, Symantec, Tenable and VMware. Starbucks says it is closing its US stores May 29, 2018 to conduct "racial-bias education" after an incident in a Philadelphia shop Starbucks will close stores and corporate offices across the United States on May 29 to conduct "racial-bias education," the company announced Tuesday, following outrage over the arrest of two black men in one of its cafes. It was the latest bid by the behemoth coffee chain to recover from last Thursday's incident in Philadelphia, which was captured on video and went viral, viewed millions of times. The video posted on Twitter by a Starbucks client shows uniformed police questioning and then handcuffing the two men, who offer no resistance, as a white client repeatedly asks an officer, "What'd they do? What'd they do?" Starbucks said more than 8,000 stores would be closed on the afternoon of May 29 and training provided to nearly 175,000 employees, and incorporated going forward. CEO Kevin Johnson, who has also apologized, said the company was "committed to being a part of the solution" and that he had been in Philadelphia "listening to the community, learning what we did wrong and the steps we need to take to fix it." "Closing our stores for racial bias training is just one step in a journey that requires dedication from every level of our company and partnerships in our local communities," he said. The curriculum will be designed "to address implicit bias, promote conscious inclusion, prevent discrimination and ensure everyone inside a Starbucks store feels safe and welcome," the company said in a statement. Protestors demonstrate outside a Starbucks on April 15, 2018 in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania Philadelphia police said they received a 911 call from a Starbucks worker who said the men were trespassing, after refusing to buy anything. Police said officers had "politely" asked the two to leave before finally arresting them. They reportedly asked first to use the bathroom, but were told it was only for paying customers. The two men's lawyer Lauren Wimmer told a CBS affiliate in Philadelphia that they had been waiting for a third man to arrive for a business meeting. - Indignities, suspicion - Starbucks declined to prosecute and the men were released. Ex US president Barack Obama's former attorney general Eric Holder and Bryan Stevenson, a civil rights lawyer who has exonerated innocent prisoners on death row, will be among those experts consulted on the curriculum, Starbucks said. "Being treated with respect and dignity at a place of public accommodation is an essential aspect of full citizenship," tweeted NAACP Legal Defense Fund, which fights for racial justice and which is also being consulted. "The reality is that most black Americans regularly face the indignities of being treated with suspicion," it added. "This is a crucial next step in fighting implicit bias," tweeted Jonathan Greenblatt, CEO of the Anti-Defamation League, another expert consulted. The woman who posted the video, Melissa DePino, said a Starbucks employee called police because the men had not ordered anything, while they waited for a friend. "All the other white (people) are wondering why it's never happened to us when we do the same thing," she tweeted. "The men were sitting there peacefully quietly and they were put in handcuffs and they were walked out of the store, humiliated, embarrassed and put in a patrol car," DePino subsequently told MSNBC television. The video drew widespread attention. Drummer Questlove of the group Roots tweeted a question: "Waiting in a Starbucks while black is a crime?" Starbucks has also launched a review of training and practices to make reforms where necessary, and once completed, this will be made available to other companies, including their licensee partners, it said. The company has more than 25,000 coffee shops around the world. An Israeli soldier salutes after placing the national flag on the grave of a fallen soldier at the Mount Herzl military cemetery in Jerusalem on April 16, 2018, ahead of a national day of remembrance Israel came to a halt for one minute on Tuesday as sirens sounded throughout the country to commemorate fallen soldiers and civilian victims of violence. In this year's annual day of remembrance, the country paid tribute to 23,645 members of its security forces and 3,134 civilians killed since 1860. That was the year Israel says its conflict with the Palestinians began after Jews settled in a district near the walls of Jerusalem's Old City. Israel gained recognition as a state in 1948. Israeli scouts light torches on April 17, 2018 during a ceremony at the Mount Herzel military cemetery in Jerusalem, at the start of a day-long commemoration of fallen soldiers Officially known as "Memorial Day for the Fallen Soldiers of Israel and Victims of Terrorism", the commemoration will last until Wednesday evening, when Independence Day celebrations begin at nightfall. "For 70 years we have held a shield and a sword in our hands while building the state of Israel," Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu said during a commemorative ceremony on Tuesday. "We bow down to those whose blood has spilt in the homeland to heroically repel enemy attacks." An Israeli soldier holds national flags behind her back before placing them on the graves of fallen soldiers on April 16, 2018 at the Mount Herzl military cemetery in Jerusalem ahead of a national day of remembrance Solemn gatherings will be held Wednesday morning at cemeteries and war memorials across the country, giving way in the evening to 24 hours of street celebrations to mark the state's 70th anniversary. Israel reveals its new population statistics each year on the same date. According to the Central Bureau of Statistics, it now has 8.8 million residents -- three-quarters of them Jews and a fifth Arab Israelis, the descendants of Palestinians who remained on their land throughout the war marking Israel's creation. Israel counts among its population approximately 300,000 Palestinians in East Jerusalem, occupied and annexed by Israel, who do not hold Israeli citizenship. Missouri Governor Eric Greitens, pictured in 2017, may have committed a felony by using a charity's donor list without permission to raise funds for his 2016 campaign Missouri's Republican governor, Eric Greitens, faced new legal challenges Tuesday as he fights calls for his resignation over a sex scandal involving a former mistress. The state's attorney general alleged that Greitens may have committed a felony by using a charity's donor list without permission to raise funds for his 2016 campaign. "If proven, these acts could amount to the unauthorized taking and use of property, in this case, electronic property," Attorney General Josh Hawley said at a news conference. "Under Missouri law, this is known as computer tampering. And given the value of the list in question, it is a felony," he said. The charity at the center of the allegation is The Mission Continues, which helps US military veterans adjust to civilian life. Greitens, a military veteran himself, started the charity in 2007 and left it in 2014. The governor called the allegations "ridiculous." Greitens is already facing calls for his resignation or possible impeachment stemming from an extramarital affair and accusations that he tried to blackmail his mistress with a nude photograph he took of her. He is scheduled to go on trial next month on a felony invasion of privacy charge arising from the alleged blackmail attempt. An investigative report released last week by the Republican-controlled state legislature accused Greitens of abusive behavior toward his mistress. The report was considered the first step towards possible impeachment. The governor has denied the allegations and said he had engaged in a consensual affair that was a private mistake but did not amount to any official wrongdoing. Humanitarian groups say violence has forced around 300,000 people from their homes A first group of around 600 people who fled deadly violence in the Democratic Republic of Congo in early February returned to their homes in the northeast on Tuesday, authorities said. They returned voluntarily, said Laurent Chelo, secretary general of the social affairs ministry. "No one was forced to return, there is an enthusiasm to go back," he said. The internally displaced people had been sheltering at a camp set up at the main hospital of Bunia, the capital of northeastern Ituri province. Congolese authorities transported the group in trucks to the village of Katoto, around 20 kilometres (12 miles) away. The troubled province is caught in a cycle of violence between the Hema and Lendu communities, cattle herders and farmers who have long fought over land -- a conflict that has recently intensified. At least 120 people have been killed in the region since February, according to an AFP tally, and humanitarian groups say violence has forced around 300,000 more from their homes. Some of those who escaped to Bunia have been living with host families, while around 2,000 had been living in tents at the hospital camp. Katoto was at the centre of the killings. Some of the escapees said they do not believe it is safe enough to go home. "The attackers have not been disarmed and all of a sudden we are asked to return," said Helen, a mother of eight children from Katsi, about 50km from Bunia. Those willing to return were given kits containing plastic sheeting, mattresses, cooking utensils, food and nets for fishermen, Chelo said. The government aims to repatriate more than 950 households, or some 5,000 internally displaced people, to several other villages in Ituri. US President Donald Trump appeared to confirm that North and South Korean talks on April 27 will touch on a possible peace treaty US President Donald Trump gave his blessing to talks aimed at formally ending the war on the Korean peninsula Tuesday, setting the stage for a major diplomatic breakthrough at a series of upcoming summits. With a rare inter-Korean meeting 10 days away, and Trump's own landmark sit-down with Kim Jong Un still eyed by early June, the US president opened the door to a peace treaty that has eluded diplomats for more than half a century. "North Korea is coming along," Trump said confidently as he hosted Japanese Prime Minister Shinzo Abe at his Mar-a-Lago resort in Florida. "South Korea is meeting and has plans to meet to see if they can end the war and they have my blessing on that," said Trump. "People don't realize the Korean War has not ended. It's going on right now. And they are discussing an end to the war." Trump appeared to confirm that North and South Korean talks on April 27 will touch on a possible peace treaty -- a deeply symbolic replacement to the more ad-hoc armistice signed in 1953. "Subject to a deal they have my blessing and they do have my blessing to discuss that," he said. The US-led United Nations command, China and North Korea are signatories to the half century old accord, but most experts agree South Korea would likely have to be a signatory to any successor agreement. Turning to his summit with Kim, Trump revealed "five locations" were being considered. "That will be taking place probably in early June or before that assuming things go well," he said. "It's possible things won't go well and we won't have the meetings and we'll just continue to go on this very strong path we have taken," Trump added. Officials say that no decision has yet been made, but China, North Korea, South Korea, and Panmunjom in the Demilitarized Zone between the two countries are seen as possible locations. Panmunjom was the site of the signing of the Korean Armistice Agreement in 1953 and will be the location of the April 27 summit between Kim and South's President Moon Jae-in. Families of the victims of ex-Gambia president Yahya Jammeh's regime demonstrated on Tuesday to demand the "truth" about their deaths and disappearances. They accuse Jammeh, who ruled the West African country for 22 years, of rampant corruption and human rights abuses including forced disappearances and extrajudicial executions. "We want justice now," around 30 protesters shouted as they marched in Banjul, an AFP journalist said. Last year, authorities announced that the remains of Gambians killed while fighting for the end of the Jammeh regime had been exhumed. "A year later, families and friends have no information about the whereabouts or fate of the deceased," said Zainab Lowe, sister of a member of the presidential guard who disappeared in 2006. "This time the waiting is over. The truth must be told and we need justice," she added, on behalf of the families of the victims. Jammeh was defeated by Adam Barrow in a December 2016 presidential election, a result which he fought for weeks until the threat of a regional military intervention. He is currently in exile in Equatorial Guinea. A Southwest Airlines jet sits on the runway at Philadelphia International Airport after it was forced to land due to engine failure in an ordeal that left one passenger dead Catastrophic engine failure on a Southwest Airlines flight from New York to Dallas killed a mother-of-two and forced an emergency landing Tuesday, the first fatal incident in US commercial aviation for nearly a decade. The Boeing 737-700 took off without incident but minutes into the flight, passengers heard an explosion in the left engine, which sent shrapnel flying through the window, shattering the glass and leading oxygen masks to drop, witnesses said. "We believe there were parts coming out of this engine," Robert Sumwalt, chairman of the National Transportation Safety Board, told a news conference, confirming engine failure but no fire. "There is one fatality," Sumwalt said. The person killed was later revealed to be Jennifer Riordan, a 43-year-old bank executive and mother-of-two from Albuquerque, New Mexico, according to officials from her hometown and state as well as local media. US media reported seven people were slightly injured. "We are saying this is an engine failure," Sumwalt said. Southwest Airlines said flight 1380 had been en route from New York's LaGuardia domestic airport to Dallas Love Field with 144 passengers and five crew members onboard. It landed at Philadelphia International Airport at 11:20 am (1520 GMT) after the crew reported damage to one of the engines, the fuselage and at least one window, the Federal Aviation Administration said. - Community leader - "We are deeply saddened to confirm that there is one fatality resulting from this accident. The entire Southwest Airlines family is devastated and extends its deepest, heartfelt sympathy to the customers, employees, family members, and loved ones affected by this tragic event," the company said in a statement. Riordan, who was a vice president of community relations for Wells Fargo bank according to her LinkedIn profile, was described by local officials and media as a well-known community leader and philanthropist with two school-age children, whose husband Michael was their city's former chief operations officer. "Today, Albuquerque lost a thoughtful leader who has long been part of the fabric of our community... this is a tremendous and tragic loss for Jennifer's family and many others throughout our city," tweeted Albuquerque Mayor Tim Keller. "Her leadership and philanthropic efforts made this a better place every day and she will be terribly missed." Tributes also came from New Mexico Senator Tom Udall and Governor Susana Martinez. - Dramatic recording - NBC News meanwhile released a recording of what it identified as communications between air traffic control in Philadelphia and the pilot, giving dramatic insight into what witnesses called a terrifying flight. "We have a part of the aircraft missing, so we're going to need to slow down a bit," said a woman, who appeared to be the pilot. "Use caution for the downtown area," replies air traffic control. "Could you have the medical meet us there on the runway as well? We've got injured passengers," says the voice from the plane. "Is your airplane physically on fire?" asks air traffic control. "No, it's not on fire but part of it's missing. They said there is a hole and someone went out," the pilot replies. "Something is wrong with our plane! It appears we are going down!" wrote passenger Marty Martinez on a Facebook live-stream that showed him looking panicked and breathing through oxygen mask. "Engine exploded in the air and blew open window 3 seats away from me. Explosion critically injured woman sitting in the seat next to the window," he added. US television footage showed the jet on the tarmac at Philadelphia as officials swarmed around the fuselage examining the stricken engine, manufactured by CFM, a joint venture between French company Safran and America's General Electric. - 'Free fall' - "All of a sudden we heard an explosion," Martinez told CBS. "There was a boom and within five seconds the oxygen masks dropped." "I thought I was cataloging the last moments of my existence," he said of his Facebook transmission. "It was absolutely terrifying." Passengers tried in vain to plug the hole in the window as the plane started to plummet and tilt in turbulence with flight attendants crying and passengers instructed to brace for landing, Martinez said. "It just felt like a free fall," he said. "It was the scariest experience." It was the first fatal incident in US commercial aviation since the crash of Colgan Air Flight 3407 in February 2009, a Bombardier Dash-8 on a scheduled flight from Newark, New Jersey to Buffalo, New York. Fifty people were killed. Aviation experts drew comparisons on US television to another engine failure on a Southwest Airlines 737 flight from New Orleans to Orlando in 2016, which precipitated an emergency landing in Pensacola, Florida. "We want to look at this particular event and see what the factors are related to this. Maybe they're related to the previous event or maybe not. But we need to understand what's going on here," said the NTSB chairman. US Secretary of State nominee Mike Pompeo has taken the rare step of courting Democrats who do not sit on the Foreign Relations Committee to seek their support for confirming him in the job US Republicans are pushing for a confirmation vote next week on Mike Pompeo becoming secretary of state, even though his nomination may not receive majority support in the Senate Foreign Relations Committee. Some key Republicans say Pompeo, who currently heads the Central Intelligence Agency, is likely to be confirmed by the full Senate, as he made the rare move of privately courting Democrats who do not serve on the committee but whose support he might need for his confirmation. Senator John Thune, the chamber's number three Republican, told AFP that the goal was to press forward with a floor vote, and that "yes, I do" believe Pompeo would be confirmed. The United States has been without a full-fledged secretary of state since March 22, when the fired Rex Tillerson's duties were passed to a deputy. Senator Bob Corker, who chairs the powerful foreign relations panel, has signalled a likely committee vote on Pompeo early next week, and he said the Trump administration was hoping for confirmation before a one-week Senate recess begins April 28. "It's possible" that the Senate will force a vote on Pompeo even if he fails to clear the committee with a majority, Corker told reporters. Such a move would be quite rare, especially since the Senate historian's office has said no secretary of state nominee has received an unfavorable committee vote since 1925. "But again the first step is to get through the committee, and we'll see how that ends up." That vote is looking increasingly tough. The committee is made up of 11 Republicans and 10 Democrats. Republican Senator Rand Paul has already announced his opposition, while no Democrats have publicly declared their support. A handful of Democrats on the panel have said they will oppose Pompeo, whose nomination has come to be seen by some as a broader vote on President Donald Trump's foreign policy positions. Senator Tim Kaine voted to confirm Pompeo to the CIA post last year, but said he will oppose him for the State Department. "I believe that Mike Pompeo would exacerbate President Trump's weaknesses rather than uphold our diplomatic legacy," Kaine said in a statement. Pompeo would need 51 votes in the 100-member chamber. Republicans hold 51 seats, but with Paul opposed and Senator John McCain away from Washington indefinitely as he battles brain cancer, at least some Democratic support would be needed to cross the finish line. Pompeo met with foreign relations members in recent weeks, but has begun to reach out to other Democrats as well. Moderate Democratic Senator Doug Jones said he could meet soon with Pompeo and had "an open mind" about him. The focus is expected to turn to a handful of Democrats who face re-election this November in states that Trump won in 2016, such as Senator Joe Manchin of West Virginia and Heidi Heitkamp of North Dakota. Anthony Borges, 15, was shot in both legs and the back by Nikolas Cruz, who opened fire on Marjory Stoneman Douglas High School on February 14, 2018 A young survivor of the February 14 school massacre in Florida who was repeatedly shot while protecting fellow students filed the first civil lawsuit Tuesday against the shooter. Anthony Borges, 15, is suing gunman Nikolas Cruz, 19, for the attack at the Marjory Stoneman Douglas High School in Parkland. Seventeen people were killed in Cruz's rampage, and 17 others wounded. Borges, praised in the media as a "hero" and nicknamed "Iron Man" by his fellow students, was shot in both legs and the back by Cruz. Despite the injuries, he managed to shut a door, preventing the shooter from entering the room where around 20 students were hiding. In doing so, he was shot twice more. Borges was released from the hospital on April 4 and still recovering after nine surgeries and seven weeks in hospital. He is still not well enough to speak. The lawsuit names James and Kimberly Snead -- the couple that housed Cruz when the shooter's adoptive mother Lynda died in November 2017 -- as well as the estate of Lynda Cruz and three Florida mental health institutions that treated Cruz at different times. The lawsuit, filed in Broward County Circuit Court, charges Cruz with assault and battery, and is seeking damages, medical expenses and compensation for the loss of past and future wages. The health institutions are being sued for negligence, since they "knew or should have known" that Cruz "suffered from mental illness and was a threat to others," the lawsuit reads. Borges family attorney Alex Arreaza earlier said that the family will sue the Broward County school board and the county sheriff's office for failing to protect the students from Cruz, an ex-student who had shown mental instability as well as violent tendencies. In Florida, state institutions are entitled to six months notice before lawsuits are filed. Borges was rolled in on a wheelchair at a press conference two days after he was released from the hospital. Still weak, he remained silent while attorney Arreaza read a statement. "I don't know why I survived," the statement read, "but I will tell you that my family and I will dedicate the rest of our lives to seeing that something like this never happens again." The Borges family left Venezuela more than 15 years ago over political instability and fears over rampant crime. Anthony Borges was born in the United States. Robert Winnicki, Polish member of parliament and leader of the right-wing nationalist Ruch Narodowy political party, speaks during a rally supporting a controversial new bill regarding the Holocaust and the definition of Nazi death camps Polish nationalist movement Ruch Narodowy (RN) said Tuesday it had filed a complaint with prosecutors against Israel's president under Poland's controversial new Holocaust law for having attributed responsibility to Poland for Nazi German crimes. It follows a press statement released by Israeli President Reuven Rivlin's office last week after his meeting with Polish counterpart Andrzej Duda in Poland's southern city of Krakow on the occasion of the annual March of the Living at the site of the former Nazi German death camp Auschwitz-Birkenau. According to the statement, Rivlin had said during the talks, "There is no doubt that there were many Poles who fought the Nazi regime, but we cannot deny that Poland and Poles had a hand in the extermination." The RN movement said Rivlin "had attributed responsibility for Nazi crimes to the Polish state," which is forbidden under the new Holocaust law. The legislation, which came into effect last month penalises such statements with fines or a jail term of up to three years. The Israeli statement "requires quick and effective judicial proceedings and a serious penalty, both in terms of general prevention measures and public expectations," the RN wrote on its website. "The author acted with the goal of consciously and intentionally committing a forbidden act." The RN said it lodged the complaint with the IPN Institute of National Remembrance, with is charged with prosecuting Nazi and communist-era crimes. Poland's Holocaust law was meant to protect the country from false accusations of complicity in the Holocaust. But it has drawn strong criticism from Israel and Jewish organisations, which accused Warsaw of denying the participation of certain Poles in the genocide of Jews. Israel also expressed deep concern that the law could open the door to prosecuting Holocaust survivors for their testimony. During World War II, Poland was invaded by Nazi Germany and ceased to exist as a state. Six million Poles, half of them Jews, were killed during this period. DOUMA, Syria (AP) - Syrian and Russian authorities prevented independent investigators from going to the scene of a suspected chemical attack, the head of the chemical watchdog group said Monday, blocking international efforts to establish what happened and who was to blame. The U.S. and France say they have evidence that poison gas was used in the April 7 attack in the opposition-held town of Douma, killing dozens of people, and that Syrian President Bashar Assad's military was behind it. But they have made none of that evidence public, even after they, along with Britain, bombarded sites they said were linked to Syria's chemical weapons program. A man rides past destruction in the town of Douma, the site of a suspected chemical weapons attack, near Damascus, Syria, Monday, April 16, 2018. Faisal Mekdad, Syria's deputy foreign minister, said on Monday that his country is "fully ready" to cooperate with the fact-finding mission from the Organization for the Prohibition of Chemical Weapons that's in Syria to investigate the alleged chemical attack that triggered U.S.-led airstrikes. (AP Photo/Hassan Ammar) Syria and its ally Russia deny any chemical attack took place, and Russian officials went even further, accusing Britain of staging a "fake" chemical attack. British Prime Minister Theresa May accused the two countries - whose forces now control the town east of Damascus - of trying to cover up evidence. The lack of access to Douma by inspectors from the watchdog group, the Organization for the Prohibition of Chemical Weapons, has left unanswered questions about the attack. OPCW Director-General Ahmet Uzumcu said Syrian and Russian officials cited "pending security issues" in keeping its inspectors from reaching Douma. "The team has not yet deployed to Douma," Uzumcu told an executive council meeting of the OPCW in The Hague. Instead, Syrian authorities offered them 22 people to interview as witnesses, he said, adding that he hoped "all necessary arrangements will be made ... to allow the team to deploy to Douma as soon as possible." Russian military police were ready to help protect the OPCW experts on their visit to Douma, said Maj. Gen. Yuri Yevtushenko of the Russian military's Reconciliation Center in Syria. Igor Kirillov, a Russian chemical weapons protection expert in The Hague, said the team is set to visit the site Wednesday. Earlier Monday, Russian Deputy Foreign Minister Sergei Ryabkov said the inspectors could not go to the site because they needed approval from the U.N. Department for Safety and Security. He denied that Russia was hampering the mission and suggested the approval was held up because of the Western airstrikes. "As far as I understand, what is hampering a speedy resolution of this problem is the consequences of the illegal, unlawful military action that Great Britain and other countries conducted on Saturday," he said. However, U.N. spokesman Stephane Dujarric said the United Nations has "provided the necessary clearances for the OPCW team to go about its work in Douma. We have not denied the team any request for it to go to Douma." At least 40 people are believed to have died April 7 in Douma, which until Saturday was the last rebel-held town near the capital and the target of a government offensive in February and March that killed hundreds and displaced tens of thousands. Hours after the alleged chemical attack, the rebel faction that controlled the town, the Army of Islam, relented and was evacuated along with thousands of residents. The Associated Press, during a government-organized visit Monday to Douma, spoke to survivors and witnesses who described being hit by gas. Several said a strange smell started spreading and people screamed, "It's chlorine! It's chlorine!" The AP visited a two-room underground shelter where Khaled Mahmoud Nuseir said 47 people were killed, including his pregnant wife and two daughters, 18-month-old Qamar and 2 1/2-year-old Nour. A strange smell lingered, nine days after the attack. Nuseir, 25, said he ran from the shelter to a nearby clinic and fainted. After he was revived, he returned to the shelter and found his wife and daughters dead, with foam coming from their mouths. He and two other residents accused the rebel Army of Islam of carrying out the attack. As they spoke, government troops were not far away but out of earshot. Nuseir said a gas cylinder was found leaking the poison gas, adding that he didn't think it was dropped from the air because it still looked intact. Separately, the AP spoke to a medic who was among those who later were evacuated to northern Syria. Ahmed Abed al-Nafaa said helicopters were flying before the attack and when he reached the site, people were screaming "chlorine." He said he tried to enter the shelter but was overcome by a strong smell of chlorine and his comrades pulled him out. The accounts contradict what the Syrian government and Russia have reported: that there was no gas attack in Douma. On Sunday, Syria's state-run Al-Ikhbariya TV broadcast interviews with nearly a dozen doctors and medics who said they found no trace of poison gas in Douma. One medic said he heard someone scream "Chemical!" but saw no patients with symptoms. Others said that dust can seep into underground shelters, causing choking and other symptoms associated with chemical attacks. The Russian military said last week its officers in Douma found no evidence to support reports of a gas attack. The Russian military taskforce in Syria said it visited the hospital in Douma and talked to staff who said they did not confirm reports of such an assault. Both Russia and the Syrian government have welcomed the OPCW mission. The team arrived in Syria on Saturday. The OPCW team does not have a mandate to assign blame for the attack. Syria's Deputy Foreign Minister Faisal Mekdad has said his country is "fully ready" to cooperate with the OPCW mission. He said government officials met with the delegation several times to discuss cooperation. Government forces and Russian troops have been deployed in Douma, which is now controlled by the Syrian government. Opposition activists have said the troops might have removed any evidence of chemical weapons' use. Russian Foreign Minister Sergey Lavrov denied that Russia interfered with any evidence. "I can guarantee that Russia has not tampered with the site," Lavrov told the BBC on Monday. Alexander Shulgin, the Russian envoy at the OPCW in The Hague, said allegations that Russia might destroy evidence reflected Washington's effort to justify Saturday's strikes. "It's a clumsy effort to find an explanation if the claim of the chemical weapons use in Syria fails to get confirmation," Shulgin said at a briefing. "Our American partners are clearly getting nervous. They are frantically looking for some justification if their claims that served as the reason for the strike don't receive confirmation." In London, British Prime Minister Theresa May accused Syria and Russia of trying to cover up evidence. She said Syrian officials have been searching evacuees from Douma to ensure samples are not smuggled out. "A wider operation to conceal the facts of the attack is underway, supported by the Russians," she told lawmakers. The weekend's airstrikes have increased international tension, as the U.S. and Russia exchanged threats of retaliation. Russian President Vladimir Putin on Sunday warned that if the strikes continue, "it will inevitably entail chaos in international relations." NATO Secretary General Jens Stoltenberg said the strikes were a "clear message" to Assad, Russia and Iran that chemical weapons use is not acceptable and that the allies would not stand idle. He spoke in an interview with Turkey's NTV television. ___ Associated Press writers Nataliya Vasilyeva in Moscow, Albert Aji in Damascus, Sarah El Deeb in Beirut, Edith M. Lederer at the United Nations and Raf Casert in Luxembourg contributed. Russian military police officers check weapons left behind by members of the Army of Islam group in a factory produced weapons, in the town of Douma, the site of a suspected chemical weapons attack, near Damascus, Syria, Monday, April 16, 2018. Faisal Mekdad, Syria's deputy foreign minister, said on Monday that his country is "fully ready" to cooperate with the fact-finding mission from the Organization for the Prohibition of Chemical Weapons that's in Syria to investigate the alleged chemical attack that triggered U.S.-led airstrikes. (AP Photo/Hassan Ammar) Russian military police officers check a weapons factory left behind by members of the Army of Islam group, in the town of Douma, the site of a suspected chemical weapons attack, near Damascus, Syria, Monday, April 16, 2018. Faisal Mekdad, Syria's deputy foreign minister, said on Monday that his country is "fully ready" to cooperate with the fact-finding mission from the Organization for the Prohibition of Chemical Weapons that's in Syria to investigate the alleged chemical attack that triggered U.S.-led airstrikes. (AP Photo/Hassan Ammar) People stand in front of damaged buildings, in the town of Douma, the site of a suspected chemical weapons attack, near Damascus, Syria, Monday, April 16, 2018. Faisal Mekdad, Syria's deputy foreign minister, said on Monday that his country is "fully ready" to cooperate with the fact-finding mission from the Organization for the Prohibition of Chemical Weapons that's in Syria to investigate the alleged chemical attack that triggered U.S.-led airstrikes. (AP Photo/Hassan Ammar) In this photo released by the Syrian official news agency SANA, protesters wave flags and portraits of President Bashar Assad, as they march during a demonstration to show solidarity with the Syrian armed forces, at Omayyad Square, in Damascus, Syria, Monday, April 16, 2018. Hundreds of Syrians have gathered in support of their armed forces, which they say succeeded in confronting the unprecedented joint airstrikes by the West over the weekend. (SANA via AP) In this photo released by the Syrian official news agency SANA, protesters wave flags and portraits of President Bashar Assad during a demonstration to show solidarity with the Syrian armed forces, at Omayyad Square, in Damascus, Syria, Monday, April 16, 2018. Hundreds of Syrians have gathered in a landmark square in the capital of Damascus in support of their armed forces, which they say succeeded in confronting the unprecedented joint airstrikes by the West over the weekend. (SANA via AP) Policemen and civilians stand in front of damaged buildings in the town of Douma, the site of a suspected chemical weapons attack, near Damascus, Syria, Monday, April 16, 2018. Faisal Mekdad, Syria's deputy foreign minister, said on Monday that his country is "fully ready" to cooperate with the fact-finding mission from the Organization for the Prohibition of Chemical Weapons that's in Syria to investigate the alleged chemical attack that triggered U.S.-led airstrikes. (AP Photo/Hassan Ammar) In this photo released by the Syrian official news agency SANA, protesters wave flags and a portrait of President Bashar Assad, as they march during a demonstration to show solidarity with the Syrian armed forces, at Omayyad Square, in Damascus, Syria, Monday, April 16, 2018. Hundreds of Syrians have gathered in a landmark square in the capital of Damascus in support of their armed forces, which they say succeeded in confronting the unprecedented joint airstrikes by the West over the weekend. (SANA via AP) Men load a carpet and mattress on to a bicycle in front of damaged buildings in the town of Douma, the site of a suspected chemical weapons attack, near Damascus, Syria, Monday, April 16, 2018. Faisal Mekdad, Syria's deputy foreign minister, said on Monday that his country is "fully ready" to cooperate with the fact-finding mission from the Organization for the Prohibition of Chemical Weapons that's in Syria to investigate the alleged chemical attack that triggered U.S.-led airstrikes. (AP Photo/Hassan Ammar) In this photo released by the Syrian official news agency SANA, Syrian protesters hold their national flags and portraits of their president Bashar Assad, as they march during a demonstration to show their solidarity with the Syrian armed forces, at Omayyad Square, in Damascus, Syria, Monday, April 16, 2018. Hundreds of Syrians have gathered in a landmark square in the capital of Damascus in support of their armed forces, which they say succeeded in confronting the unprecedented joint airstrikes by the West over the weekend. (SANA via AP) MOSCOW (AP) - Russia's communications watchdog said Monday it has begun enforcing a nationwide ban for the popular messaging app Telegram. Telecommunications providers have been instructed to block Telegram in Russia after a court last week sided with authorities who demanded that the app be kept of the country until it hands over the keys to its data encryption. Russian authorities alleged that Telegram, which was developed by Russian entrepreneur Pavel Durov, has been used by violent extremists. The company argues that Russia's FSB intelligence service is violating consumer rights. Activists bring a sack with about 2,000 paper airplanes symbolising the logo of the messaging app Telegram to the door of St. Petersburg's department of Roskomnadzor, the state communications oversight agency, to protest against blocking the messenger app in St. Petersburg, Russia, Friday, April 13, 2018. A Russian court has ordered the blocking of a popular messaging app following a demand by authorities that it share encryption data with them. (AP Photo/Dmitri Lovetsky) Telegram was briefly unavailable to users early Monday afternoon, but was back online later in the day. Durov said last week the latest version would have "built-in" features that would be able to circumvent the ban. "We consider the decision to block the app to be unconstitutional and we will continue," he said in a statement posted on social media Monday. Privacy features have made Telegram the messaging app of choice for many Russian officials. The Kremlin has used it for arranging conference calls with reporters. The Russian president's press office said Monday it would now be using a different app. LAS VEGAS (AP) - Police were searching Monday for a man accused of opening fire on a picnic for a group of employees of a Las Vegas Strip casino-resort, killing a woman and critically injuring a man this weekend in what investigators called workplace violence. Authorities say Anthony Wrobel walked up to a table in the gazebo area of a park Sunday evening and shot an executive and a fellow employee of The Venetian at close range. Police said Wrobel, 42, has been described as a disgruntled employee of the casino-resort, where he has worked for 14 years. A woman in her 50s was killed, and a man, also in his 50s, was being treated for critical wounds. It wasn't immediately clear which victim was the executive. This undated photo provided by the Las Vegas Metropolitan Police Department shows Anthony Wrobel. Wrobel is accused of opening fire on a picnic for a group of employees of a Las Vegas Strip casino-resort, killing a woman and critically injuring a man on Sunday, April 15, in what investigators called workplace violence. (AP Photo/Las Vegas Metropolitan Police Dept.) "This appears to be an isolated event of workplace violence and detectives believe the victims were specifically targeted," police said in a statement. A motive for the shooting is unclear. Employees of one department at the casino-resort had gathered at the park near McCarran International Airport. Police said Wrobel fled after the shooting and his vehicle was found a short time later in the parking garage at the airport. Police are asking people with information about Wrobel's whereabouts to contact authorities. No attorney or publicly listed phone number was immediately available for Wrobel. Las Vegas Sands Corp. operates the luxury casino-resort on the Strip. Spokesman Ron Reese said the company is cooperating with authorities and not commenting further because of the ongoing investigation. In this Sunday, April 15, 2018 photo, Las Vegas police investigate the scene of a shooting at a company picnic in Sunset Park, Las Vegas. Police are searching for 42-year-old Anthony Wrobel, accused of opening fire on a Strip resort's company picnic Sunday, killing a woman and critically injuring a man in what investigators are calling workplace violence. (Blake Apgar/Las Vegas Review-Journal via AP) This undated photo provided by the Las Vegas Metropolitan Police Department shows Anthony Wrobel. Wrobel is accused of opening fire on a picnic for a group of employees of a Las Vegas Strip casino-resort, killing a woman and critically injuring a man on Sunday, April 15, in what investigators called workplace violence. (AP Photo/Las Vegas Metropolitan Police Dept.) PHILADELPHIA (AP) - Rapper Meek Mill's drug and gun convictions should be thrown out and he should be granted a new trial, prosecutors said in court Monday in an announcement that led his supporters outside to break into an impromptu dance party. Judge Genece Brinkley refused to free him on bail Monday after the announcement from the Philadelphia District Attorney's office during a hearing. She scheduled another hearing in June. Philadelphia-born Mill was sentenced in November to two to four years in prison for violating probation on a roughly decade-old gun and drug case. Attorney Brian McMonagle said they will reach out to a higher court to get their client released. Rapper Meek Mill's son Papi holds a sign as protesters demonstrate in front of a courthouse during a hearing for Meek Mill, Monday April 16, 2018 in Philadelphia. The city's district attorney says Mill's convictions should be vacated and he should have a new trial. The announcement came during a hearing on Monday, but a judge is still refusing to release Mill on bail. Philadelphia-born Mill was sentenced in November 2017 to two to four years in prison for violating probation on a roughly decade-old gun and drug case.(AP Photo/Jacqueline Larma) Spokesman Ben Waxman said the prosecutor's office agreed to the granting of a new trial "due to questions of credibility of the arresting officer." The officer is among the police officers the prosecutor's office has sought to keep off the stand in cases across the city because of credibility questions. "The district attorney's office has shown a lot of integrity in granting our request for a new trial," McMonagle said. "They obviously have recognized and determined the criminal behavior of the arresting officer, which dates back prior to Meek's arrest." A police spokesman said the department had no comment on the arresting officer allegations. Mill's incarceration has become a major cause celebre, with celebrities offering their support and recent prison visits from New England Patriots owner Robert Kraft, Philadelphia 76ers co-owner Michael Rubin and Philadelphia Mayor Jim Kenney. Meek Mill's mother, grandmother and 6-year-old son, Papi, were on hand at the rally outside the courthouse, which erupted into cheers after the district attorney's announcement. "I miss my dad very much," Papi said. "He picks me up from school." Brinkley has been the subject of harsh criticism from Mill's attorneys. They have unsuccessfully appealed the sentence multiple times and have called for Brinkley to recuse herself. The judge defended herself earlier this month, saying the court has "has impartially and without prejudice presided over numerous proceedings in this matter since 2008." She added that "none of the allegations by (the) defendant constitute evidence that this court is unable to act impartially and without personal bias or prejudice with respect to this matter." She said Mill has raised "unmeritorious claims of impropriety in an attempt to unfairly judge shop." Rapper Meek Mill's son Papi holds a sign as protesters demonstrate in front of a courthouse during a hearing for the rapper, Monday April 16, 2018, in Philadelphia. The city's district attorney says Mill's convictions should be vacated and he should have a new trial. The announcement came during a hearing on Monday, but a judge is still refusing to release him on bail. Philadelphia-born Mill was sentenced in November 2017 to two to four years in prison for violating probation on a roughly decade-old gun and drug case. (AP Photo/Jacqueline Larma) Protesters uses their phones and listen to a speaker in front of a courthouse during a hearing for rapper Meek Mill, Monday April 16, 2018 in Philadelphia. The city's district attorney says Mill's convictions should be vacated and he should have a new trial. The announcement came during a hearing on Monday, but a judge is still refusing to release Mill on bail. Philadelphia-born Mill was sentenced in November 2017 to two to four years in prison for violating probation on a roughly decade-old gun and drug case.(AP Photo/Jacqueline Larma) Protesters demonstrate in front of a courthouse during a hearing for rapper Meek Mill, Monday April 16, 2018 in Philadelphia. The city's district attorney says Mill's convictions should be vacated and he should have a new trial. The announcement came during a hearing on Monday, but a judge is still refusing to release Mill on bail. Philadelphia-born Mill was sentenced in November 2017 to two to four years in prison for violating probation on a roughly decade-old gun and drug case.(AP Photo/Jacqueline Larma) NEW YORK (AP) - Homebuilder confidence slid for the fourth consecutive month with steadily rising mortgage rates and sky-high home prices putting ownership out of reach for more and more Americans. The National Association of Home Builders/Wells Fargo builder sentiment index for April, released Monday, fell one point to 69. Any reading above 50 indicates more builders see sales conditions as good rather than poor, but it's the most extended decline since the run-up to the housing bust. The index has been above 60 since September 2016 and it hit a record high in December. April's reading is the lowest since November. FILE- In this Feb. 26, 2018, photo, construction workers work on a new townhouse in Wood-Ridge, N.J. On Monday, April 16, the National Association of Home Builders/Wells Fargo releases its March index of builder sentiment. (AP Photo/Seth Wenig, File) Builders' view of current sales conditions fell two points to 75, the outlook for sales over the next six months fell one point, to 77. A measure of buyer traffic held steady at 51. The National Association of Homebuilders cited higher building material costs and a lack of land to build on as key reasons for the nick in confidence readings. The group said winter weather slowed building in some areas. Also being shaken are investors, which have been selling off holdings in the nation's largest homebuilders. D.R. Horton Inc., Lennar Corp., PulteGroup Inc., Toll Brothers Inc., Beazer Homes USA Inc. and Hovnanian Enterprises Inc. have all fallen 11 percent or more since the start of the year. The S&P 500 is positive for the year even after a number of major sell-offs. The average rate on 30-year, fixed-rate mortgages edged up to 4.42 percent, mortgage buyer Freddie Mac reported Thursday. Rates have ticked steadily higher ahead of the traditional spring home buying season which is just now beginning to ramp up. While the National Association of Realtors reported a 3.1 percent jump in pending sales for February, that followed a 5 percent tumble in January and the index is still down 4.1 percent compared with last year. Sales of new homes fell for the third straight month in February, according to the Commerce Department. Sales of existing homes rose in February following two months of decline The U.S. releases April data on new and existing home sales next week. WASHINGTON (AP) - The White House scrambled Monday to walk back U.N. Ambassador Nikki Haley's weekend announcement that new economic sanctions against Russia are imminent, but stressed the penalties are still being considered. Haley created a firestorm Sunday when she said the new sanctions would be imposed by the Treasury Department on Monday, when, in fact, no such announcement was planned, according to two officials familiar with the matter. In a statement, White House press secretary Sarah Huckabee Sanders tried to clarify the situation, but her explanation created more confusion and led to suggestions that President Donald Trump had personally intervened to halt the sanctions from taking effect Monday. This image provided by the Department of Defense was presented as part of a briefing slide at the Pentagon briefing on Saturday, April 14, 2018, and shows a photo of a preliminary damage assessment from the Him Shinshar Chemical Weapons Storage Site in Syria that was struck by missiles from the U.S.-led coalition in response to Syria's use of chemical weapons on April 7. (Department of Defense via AP) "We are considering additional sanctions on Russia and a decision will be made in the near future," Sanders said in a statement. The two officials, who were not authorized to discuss private administration deliberations publicly and spoke on condition of anonymity, said Haley had misspoken when she said on CBS' "Face the Nation" that Treasury Secretary Steven Mnuchin would announce the sanctions Monday "if he hasn't already." Haley said the sanctions would target those who are enabling Syrian leader Bashar Assad's government to continue using chemical weapons. The two officials said the administration had no plans to announce Syria-related sanctions on Russia this week, although they noted that two entities were hit with such penalties last month in a largely overlooked portion of a sanctions package that dealt mainly with Russian interference in the 2016 presidential election and hacking. After Haley's comments, some in the administration suggested the sanctions now being considered could be rolled out Monday. But others said it would be wiser and more effective to wait for a period longer than three days after the U.S., British and French infuriated Russia with their missile strikes on Syria on Friday. The officials could not say when the new sanctions would be announced. Meanwhile, President Donald Trump continued to hail the missile attack as perfectly carried out. Trump tweeted "Mission Accomplished" on Saturday after U.S., French and British warplanes and ships launched more than 100 missiles nearly unopposed by Syrian air defenses. While he declared success, the Pentagon said the pummeling of three chemical-related facilities left enough others intact to enable the Assad government to use banned weapons against civilians if it chooses. Trump's choice of words recalled a similar claim associated with President George W. Bush following the U.S.-led invasion of Iraq. Bush addressed sailors aboard a Navy ship in May 2003 alongside a "Mission Accomplished" banner, just weeks before it became apparent that Iraqis had organized an insurgency that would tie down U.S. forces for years. Later Sunday, Trump sent a letter to congressional leaders informing them in writing of his decision to order the strike. Under the War Powers Resolution, the president must keep Congress informed of such actions. The nighttime assault on Syria was carefully limited to minimize civilian casualties and avoid direct conflict with Russia, but confusion arose over the extent to which Washington warned Moscow it was coming. The Pentagon said it gave no explicit warning. The U.S. ambassador in Moscow, Jon Huntsman, said in a video, "Before we took action, the United States communicated with" Russia to "reduce the danger of any Russian or civilian casualties." ____ Associated Press writers Matthew Lee and Zeke Miller contributed to this report. American Ambassador to the United Nations Nikki Haley listens as Syrian Ambassador to the United Nations Bashar Ja'afari speaks after a vote on a resolution during a Security Council meeting on the situation in Syria, Saturday, April 14, 2018 at United Nations headquarters. (AP Photo/Mary Altaffer) In this image released by the Department of Defense, a U.S. Air Force B-1 Bomber separates from the boom pod after receiving fuel from an Air Force KC-135 Stratotanker on April 13, 2018, en route to strike chemical weapons targets in Syria. President Donald Trump declared "Mission Accomplished" for a U.S.-led allied missile attack on Syria's chemical weapons program, but the Pentagon said the pummeling of three chemical-related facilities left enough others intact to enable the Assad government to use banned weapons against civilians if it chooses. (Department of Defense via AP) In this image provided by the U.S. Navy, the guided-missile cruiser USS Monterey (CG 61) fires a Tomahawk land attack missile early Saturday, April 14, 2018, as part of the military response to Syria's use of chemical weapons on April 7. The United States, France and Britain launched military strikes in Syria to punish President Bashar Assad for an apparent chemical attack against civilians and to deter him from doing it again. (Lt. j.g. Matthew Daniels/U.S. Navy via AP) This image provided by the Department of Defense was presented as part of a briefing slide at the Pentagon briefing on Saturday, April 14, 2018, and shows a photo of a preliminary damage assessment from the Him Shinshar Chemical Weapons Bunker in Syria that was struck by missiles from the U.S.-led coalition in response to Syria's use of chemical weapons on April 7. (Department of Defense via AP) TAMPA, Fla. (AP) - Her friends say the last they saw of her was when commandos intercepted their sailboat in the Arabian Sea and dragged her away, kicking and screaming. A daughter of Dubai's ruler, she had been trying to escape her homeland, saying she was being abused. Since then, the whereabouts of Sheikha Latifa bint Mohammed Al Maktoum are unknown, though she was likely brought back to the United Arab Emirates after the commando raid last month, said Herve Jaubert, a French ex-spy who told The Associated Press that he helped organize her escape attempt. Dubai's government and Emirati officials did not respond to AP requests for comment. This undated image from video provided by Detained in Dubai, a London-based for-hire advocacy group long critical of the United Arab Emirates, shows Sheikha Latifa bint Mohammed Al Maktoum, a daughter of Dubai's ruler, in a 40-minute video in which she says she's planning on fleeing the country in Dubai, UAE. The former spy Herve Jaubert said he tried to help her flee the country in a cloak-and-dagger escape by sea in March 2018, but was thwarted when commandos intercepted their sailboat in the Arabian Sea. (Detained in Dubai via AP) "I know it sounds incredible," Jaubert told the AP, but "it's just the facts." The allegations of a dramatic would-be sea escape intrude into the carefully controlled image maintained by the family of Sheikh Mohammed bin Rashid Al Maktoum, who not only rules Dubai but is the Emirates' prime minister and vice president. He is believed to have several dozen children from multiple wives. Some of his sons and daughters figure prominently in local media and online, but others are rarely seen. Sheikh Mohammed has multiple daughters named Latifa. In recent weeks, one of those Latifas has suddenly appeared frequently in media. The appearances could be an attempt to muddy the picture as local media now make no mention of the Latifa who allegedly tried to leave. Matters have since grown only murkier. A London-based for-hire advocacy group long critical of the UAE, called Detained in Dubai, has been promoting the case and says it has targeted by threats. All this takes place against the backdrop of a Gulf-wide misinformation war linked to a diplomatic dispute between typically clubby Arab nations and Qatar. The UAE and its allies Saudi Arabia, Bahrain and Egypt have boycotted Qatar since June. Each side has spread critical - or false - reports about the other; millions of dollars have been spent by all involved on public relations campaigns and lobbyists. That, coupled with Jaubert's own flair for the dramatic, makes discerning what happened that much more complicated. Jaubert himself fled the UAE years earlier because of a financial dispute in a cloak-and-dagger escape that he said involved disguising himself as a woman and scuba diving to escape to international waters. "It's Herve, that's the problem. He tells you what he wants to tell you to get you to do what he wants you to do," said Kathryn Heathcock, a lawyer based in Stuart, Florida, who had Jaubert as a client. "That's your training when you're an agent. That's what they do." Jaubert, a former agent of the French DGSE spy agency, first came to the UAE in 2004 as part of a plan to build submarines for the wealthy in a project by Dubai World, a government-owned conglomerate. It was one of a number of luxury projects during a period of feverish development in Dubai. Dubai World collapsed in the emirates' 2009 financial crisis, which saw a number of foreigners flee unpaid debts in a nation where debtors face prison time. Facing financial problems and what he described as threats from authorities, Jaubert said he escaped by wearing a woman's all-enveloping burqa over scuba gear to reach a raft, then met a waiting sailboat in international waters. The 2010 book he wrote, "Escape from Dubai," prompted Sheikha Latifa to contact him, he said. "She said who she was and I was extremely careful," Jaubert said. "I was looking for a trap." He said he confirmed her identity through "surveillance," without elaborating. It took eight years for Sheikha Latifa to decide to flee, he said. Both Jaubert and the sheikha made calls and sent emails at the start of March, seeking political asylum for her in the U.S., said Heathcock, an immigration lawyer. Another Florida lawyer, Linda Braswell, also said she was aware of Jaubert's efforts on the sheikha's behalf. Sheikha Latifa, who is in her early 30s, appears in a 40-minute video in which she says she's making the testimony just before the escape attempt to be released in case it fails. In it, she says that on orders of her father she was imprisoned off and on for several years and abused after trying to leave the Emirates. She says that she was later released but kept under heavy restrictions on her movement. She gave Jaubert and lawyers the video, as well as pictures of an Emirati passport and an Emirati ID card identifying her as a member of the Dubai ruling family. Detained in Dubai later received the video to release if the escape went wrong. In the video, Sheikha Latifa talks of her skydiving hobby. Kristen Cotten, a 33-year-old skydive instructor and friend of Sheikha Latifa, told the AP the woman in the video and the identification documents is indeed her friend. "I think a lot of people think it's fake just because it sounds so crazy," said Cotten, who was an instructor in Dubai between 2012 and 2016 and now lives in Minnesota. "If I hadn't worked with her and known her and seen her every day I'd probably feel the same way. But that's the same girl I saw every day at the drop zone." Sheikha Latifa also was shown and identified in pictures from 2016 and 2017 on an Instagram account connected to her skydiving club. Past articles in state-linked media also confirm she is a daughter of the ruler. Aided by friend Tiina Jauhiainen, the sheikha made it into neighboring Oman and then took a small boat out to meet Jaubert and his crew aboard his U.S.-flagged sailboat, the Nostromo, the former spy said. The Nostromo sailed for the Indian coast, but three Indian and two Emirati warships intercepted it on March 4, Jaubert said. A team of commandos boarded the boat in the Arabian Sea some 380 kilometers (235 miles) southwest of Mumbai, according to Jaubert and Detained in Dubai. Jaubert said the Indian commandos beat him and his crew. "If you do anything, they are going to vaporize you," he said. Indian officials told the AP they had no information about the incident Jaubert described. Jauhiainen, speaking at a news conference Thursday in London, said Sheikha Latifa kept repeating during the raid: "I am seeking political asylum." "At that time I was told to keep my eyes shut, with a threat to be shot if I didn't comply," she said. "Then I heard someone speaking Arabic and Latifa said: 'Shoot me here, just don't take me back to the UAE.'" "She was taken away kicking and screaming." The Emirati forces took the Nostromo back to a naval base in Fujairah, one of the UAE's seven emirates, Jaubert said. The Nostromo's Maritime Mobile Service Identity number, a nine-digit code broadcast by radio that identifies a ship at sea, showed the vessel in Fujairah on March 20, said Georgios Hatzimanolis, a spokesman for the ship-tracking website MarineTraffic.com. Detained in Dubai released Sheikha Latifa's video and began a social media campaign calling for their release. Jaubert credited that for leading the Emiratis, who fed and treated him well but refused him access to a lawyer or consular official, to release him and Jauhiainen. Both say they last saw Latifa being forced off the Nostromo onto one of the warships. But it remains unclear what has happened to her since. Messages sent by the AP to emails and telephone numbers associated with her have gone unanswered. This Thursday, April 12, 2018 image from video, shows Herve Jaubert, right, a former agent of the French DGSE spy agency, speaking during a press conference with Radha Stirling, the founder and CEO of Detained in Dubai and others, at the Conrad Hotel in London, England. Jaubert said he tried to help Sheikha Latifa bint Mohammed Al Maktoum, a daughter of Dubai's ruler Sheikh Mohammed bin Rashid Al Maktoum, flee the country in a cloak-and-dagger escape by sea in March 2018, but was thwarted when commandos intercepted her on a sailboat in the Arabian Sea. (AP Photo) This Thursday, April 12, 2018 image from video, shows Radha Stirling, the founder and CEO of Detained in Dubai, speaking in a press conference at the Conrad Hotel in London, England. Detained in Dubai, a London-based for-hire advocacy group long critical of the United Arab Emirates, is publicizing the case of Sheikha Latifa bint Mohammed Al Maktoum, a daughter of Sheikh Mohammed bin Rashid Al Maktoum, Dubai's ruler, who fled the UAE in a cloak-and-dagger escape by sea in March 2018, but was thwarted when commandos intercepted her on a sailboat in the Arabian Sea. (AP Photo) This Thursday, April 12, 2018 image from video, shows Tiina Jauhiainen, a friend of Sheikha Latifa bint Mohammed Al Maktoum, speaking in a press conference at the Conrad Hotel in London, England. Jauhiainen said she was with Sheikha Latifa, a daughter of Sheikh Mohammed bin Rashid Al Maktoum, Dubai's ruler, when she fled the United Arab Emirates in a cloak-and-dagger escape by sea in March 2018, but they were thwarted when commandos intercepted their sailboat in the Arabian Sea. Since then, the whereabouts of Sheikha Latifa are unknown, said Herve Jaubert, a French ex-spy who told The Associated Press that he helped organize her escape attempt. (AP Photo) This Thursday, April 12, 2018 image from video, shows Herve Jaubert, right a former French spy, speaking during a press conference with Radha Stirling, the founder and CEO of Detained in Dubai, second right and others, at the Conrad Hotel in London, England. Jaubert said he tried to help Sheikha Latifa bint Mohammed Al Maktoum, a daughter of Sheikh Mohammed bin Rashid Al Maktoum, Dubai's ruler and the Emirates' prime minister and vice president, flee the country in a cloak-and-dagger escape by sea in March 2018, but was thwarted when commandos intercepted her on a sailboat in the Arabian Sea. (AP Photo) This undated image from video provided by Detained in Dubai, a London-based for-hire advocacy group long critical of the United Arab Emirates, shows Sheikha Latifa bint Mohammed Al Maktoum, a daughter of Dubai's ruler, in a 40-minute video in which she says she's planning on fleeing the country, in Dubai, UAE. The former spy Herve Jaubert said he tried to help her flee the country in a cloak-and-dagger escape by sea in March 2018, but was thwarted when commandos intercepted their sailboat in the Arabian Sea. (Detained in Dubai via AP) This undated image from video provided by Detained in Dubai, a London-based for-hire advocacy group long critical of the United Arab Emirates, shows Sheikha Latifa bint Mohammed Al Maktoum, a daughter of Dubai's ruler, in a 40-minute video in which she says she's planning on fleeing the country, in Dubai, UAE. The former French spy Herve Jaubert said he tried to help her in a cloak-and-dagger escape by sea in March 2018, but was thwarted when commandos intercepted their sailboat in the Arabian Sea. (Detained in Dubai via AP) TUCSON, Ariz. (AP) - A U.S. Border Patrol agent was fed up with rock throwers when he fired across the border and killed a teenager who had been lobbing stones from Mexico, prosecutors told jurors Monday during closing arguments in the agent's murder trial. Defense attorneys countered that agent Lonnie Swartz was justified to use lethal force and fired to protect himself, other border agents and police officers on the U.S. side in Nogales, Arizona. Swartz had pleaded not guilty to second-degree murder in the 2012 killing of 16-year-old Jose Antonio Elena Rodriguez. FILE - In this Dec. 4, 2017, file photo, a portrait of 16-year-old Mexican youth Jose Antonio Elena Rodriguez, who was shot and killed in Nogales, Sonora, Mexico, is displayed on the Nogales street where he was killed that runs parallel with the U.S. border. Closing arguments are expected in Tucson, Ariz., this week in the trial of U.S. Border Patrol agent Lonnie Swartz, charged in the 2012 fatal shooting 16-year-old Jose Antonio Elena Rodriguez across the Mexican border. (AP Photo/Anita Snow, file) During the monthlong trial, prosecutors have acknowledged that the teen was throwing rocks from Nogales, in the Mexican state of Sonora, across the border during a drug smuggling attempt. But they have said Swartz used an unreasonable amount of force. Swartz "was fed up with being rocked," said Assistant U.S. Attorney Wallace Heath Kleindienst, who noted the agent had been targeted in at least six or seven other rock-throwing attacks. "He was angry with those people who had been throwing rocks against the fence," he said. Defense attorney Sean Chapman argued there was "not a scintilla of evidence that he was angry, that he was fed up." He said that Swartz shot because "he was trying to protect himself and his fellow agents during the course of a drug operation." Jurors were set to begin deliberations Tuesday after receiving instructions late Monday from District Judge Raner Collins. An autopsy showed the unarmed teen was shot 10 times, eight times in the back part of his body and twice in the head. The trial in U.S. District Court in Tucson comes as President Donald Trump wants National Guard troops sent to the Mexican border to free up Border Patrol agents to concentrate on stopping drugs and people from illegally entering the United States. The killing was felt deeply in the twin communities of Nogales, where about 20,000 people live on the Arizona side and about 300,000 in Mexico. The communities are linked by family members, trade and culture and have long been referred to locally as "Ambos Nogales" - "Both Nogales" in Spanish. Swartz fired 16 shots late on Oct. 10, 2012, through a 20-foot (6-meter) fence that sits on an embankment above Mexico's Calle Internacional, a street lined with homes and small businesses. During the trial, jurors visited the border area at night to get a better idea of what Swartz was facing. The agent, who is on administrative leave pending the trial's outcome, testified that he remembered little of what happened. Swartz pleaded not guilty after being indicted by a federal grand jury in 2015 and is free on his own recognizance. The Border Patrol has not said if he is receiving his salary. Lee Gelernt, a New York-based lawyer with the American Civil Liberties Union, said he believes Swartz is the first border agent prosecuted by the Justice Department in a fatal shooting across the border. Gelernt is handling a parallel civil case, now before the 9th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals in San Francisco, which the teen's mother filed against Swartz seeking monetary damages. HALIFAX, Nova Scotia (AP) - A prosecutor recommended Monday a sentence of 20 years for an American woman who pleaded guilty last year to conspiracy to commit murder in a plot that envisioned her and two online friends pulling out their guns at a Canadian mall. Lindsay Souvannarath of Geneva, Illinois, who attended the hearing, pleaded guilty last April for her role in the 2015 plot. Court documents released say online conversations between Souvannarath, now 26, and a Canadian friend quickly devolved into a shared admiration for the Columbine killers, mass shootings and a murderous conspiracy to go on a Valentine's Day shooting rampage at a Halifax mall. Her lawyer said the sentence should be 12 to 14 years, with credit for time served. Nova Scotia Supreme Court Justice Peter Rosinski reserved his decision until Friday. Souvannarath's co-conspirator, 19-year-old James Gamble, killed himself as police tried to arrest him at his Halifax-area home a day before the planned attack. Randall Steven Shepherd, a Halifax man described in court as the "cheerleader" of the shooting plot, was sentenced to a decade in prison in 2016. The 1,205 pages of messages between Souvannarath and Gamble were obtained by the Kane County Court in Illinois, which ordered Facebook to produce the chat logs. During their lengthy online conversation, Souvannarath and Gamble discovered they both admired the 1999 Columbine High School massacre in Colorado in which teenagers Eric Harris and Dylan Klebold killed 13 people and themselves. Souvannarath confessed to the plot, a senior police official told The Associated Press in 2015. The senior police official, who spoke on the condition of anonymity because he was not authorized to speak publicly, said that Souvannarath confessed after she was arrested at the Halifax airport and that she had prepared a number of pronouncements to be posted on Twitter after her death. Shepherd also was arrested at the airport as he waited for his friend's arrival. Police acted quickly after receiving information from the Crime Stoppers tip line. The official said police worked with Canadian border officials to find the female suspect on her flight to Halifax from Chicago. Both Souvannarath and Gamble were unemployed and lived with their parents. ___ Associated Press writer Rob Gillies in Toronto contributed to this report. ANCHORAGE, Alaska (AP) - ConocoPhillips say its 2018 winter exploration and appraisal program on Alaska's western North Slope produced promising results. The Houston-based company Monday announced it had concluded 2018 winter program and that three appraisal wells supported a previously announced estimate of at least 300 million barrels of oil at its Willow Discovery leasing area within the National Petroleum Reserve-Alaska. Company executive vice president Matt Fox calls the results "promising." The company says it originally planned to drill five wells, including two appraisal wells at Willow. Drilling efficiencies allowed the drilling of a third appraisal well plus three exploration wells. The company says all six wells reached oil and verified potential. The exploration wells represent new discoveries and the company will assess results in anticipation of additional appraisal next winter. LOS ANGELES (AP) - Just steps from City Hall's main door, a homeless woman sprawls on a cardboard box spread across the lawn, her belongings stuffed into a battered shopping cart beside her. Within a short walk, rows of tents line the streets, creating makeshift encampments edged by piles of trash. The smell of urine is unmistakable. Homelessness is an unavoidable reality in Los Angeles, a long neglected problem that has spread from downtown streets into suburban enclaves. Mayor Eric Garcetti announced Monday that the city would spend $430 million in the year beginning July 1 on housing and other services to ease what he called a humanitarian crisis. Los Angeles Mayor Eric Garcetti, center, delivers his State of the City address in Los Angeles, Monday, April 16, 2018. (AP Photo/Damian Dovarganes) "Accepting things the way they are is unacceptable," the mayor said. Homelessness has been increasing across the U.S. West. The surge in people living on the streets has put public health at risk, led several cities to declare states of emergency and forced local governments to spend millions on services. The Los Angeles mayor's announcement came in his annual address to the City Council, a largely sunny speech that highlighted job growth and efforts to build more rail lines but also acknowledged the desperate need for housing for those on the streets. Most of the new funding, more than double the amount from this year, will come from borrowing that voters authorized in 2016 to address homelessness. Garcetti, a Democrat who appears to be exploring a presidential bid in 2020, laced his speech with barely veiled jabs at the Trump administration, lines that are likely to resurface as tests of his appeal in other states. In Washington, they "define themselves by how they can divide us, and what they can take away from us," said Garcetti, who spent Friday and Saturday visiting voters in Iowa. Homelessness has spread across Los Angeles despite a healthy economy and low unemployment. Though estimates of the homeless population vary, one report last year said there were more than 34,000 people living on city streets. The mayor's plan, to be included in his proposed budget, includes investing millions of dollars in trailers and other temporary housing, along with more funding for sanitation crews to clean up the mess. But where the emergency housing will go is likely to cause conflict, given concerns about bringing homeless services into neighborhoods. "Homelessness can't be swept away. We must give people a place to stay," Garcetti said. "We're not going to wash down sidewalks only to see an encampment return a few days later." Los Angeles Mayor Eric Garcetti delivers his State of the City address in Los Angeles, Monday, April 16, 2018. (AP Photo/Damian Dovarganes) FILE - This Sept. 22, 2015 file photo shows tents used by the homeless lining a downtown Los Angeles street. Los Angeles Mayor Eric Garcetti plans to outline his strategy Monday, April 16, 2018, to contend with the spread of encampments across the city, including investing millions of dollars in trailers and other temporary housing, along with more funding for sanitation crews. (AP Photo/Damian Dovarganes, File) FILE - In this Sept. 19, 2017, file photo, a homeless man sleeps curled up on the steps of a police station in Los Angeles' Skid Row area, home to the nation's largest concentration of homeless people. Mayor Eric Garcetti plans to outline his strategy Monday, April 16, 2018, to contend with the spread of encampments across the city, including investing millions of dollars in trailers and other temporary housing, along with more funding for sanitation crews. (AP Photo/Jae C. Hong, File) FILE - In this Friday, Sept. 1, 2017, file photo, a man walks past a mural of angel wings titled "Africa Wings" by artist Colette Miller in Los Angeles' Skid Row area, home to the nation's largest concentration of homeless people. Mayor Eric Garcetti plans to outline his strategy Monday, April 16, 2018, to contend with the spread of encampments across the city, including investing millions of dollars in trailers and other temporary housing, along with more funding for sanitation crews. (AP Photo/Jae C. Hong, File) FILE - In this Oct. 28, 2017, file photo, a homeless man takes food from a trash can in Los Angeles' Skid Row area, home to the nation's largest concentration of homeless people in Los Angeles. Mayor Eric Garcetti plans to outline his strategy Monday, April 16, 2018, to contend with the spread of encampments across the city, including investing millions of dollars in trailers and other temporary housing, along with more funding for sanitation crews. (AP Photo/Jae C. Hong, File) Los Angeles Mayor Eric Garcetti delivers his State of the City address in Los Angeles, Monday, April 16, 2018. Garcetti outlined his strategy Monday to contend with the spread of encampments across the city, including investing millions of dollars in trailers and other temporary housing, along with more funding for sanitation crews. (AP Photo/Damian Dovarganes) Trump lawyer forced to reveal another client: Sean Hannity NEW YORK (AP) - A legal fight over what should happen to records the FBI seized from President Donald Trump's personal attorney took a surprise twist Monday when the lawyer, Michael Cohen, was forced to reveal a secret - that he had also done legal work for Fox News host Sean Hannity. The disclosure came as a New York judge disappointed a lawyer for Trump by letting prosecutors proceed with the cataloguing of evidence including multiple electronic devices that were seized in raids while a system is set up to ensure that records protected by attorney-client privilege aren't disclosed to investigators. Lawyers for Cohen and prosecutors both had reason to claim success after three hours of arguments before U.S. District Judge Kimba Wood, who said she may appoint a special master, a neutral lawyer, to help decide which materials should stay confidential. Wood denied a request by Trump's lawyer, Joanna Hendon, that the president and Cohen get the first crack at designating which documents should be off-limits to investigators. Hannity's name emerged after the judge pressed Cohen to divulge the names of the clients he's worked with since the 2016 election, whose privileged communications might be contained within his files. ___ What's in those seized records? Trump's biggest new worry WASHINGTON (AP) - President Donald Trump and his allies have hit a new level of anxiety after the raid on his personal attorney's office, fearful of deeper exposure for Trump, his inner circle and his adult children - and more than concerned that they don't know exactly what is in those records and electronic devices seized last week. There is also some worry that Michael Cohen, the self-described legal fixer who helped make bad stories go away and took a leading role in Trump Organization projects in foreign outposts, may strike a deal with prosecutors out of concern about his own prospects. "I think it's a huge minefield for Donald Trump and the Trump Organization," said trial attorney Joseph Cammarata, who represented Paula Jones in her sexual harassment suit against President Bill Clinton. "I think this is on its own track and this train is coming down the track with brute force." The wild legal show continued to play out Monday, at a court hearing in New York before a federal judge who is considering what to do with the material that the FBI seized from Cohen. The scene was punctuated by dramatic entrances and revelations. Stormy Daniels - the porn actress who alleged she had a sexual affair with the president - made an appearance, stumbling on her high heels as she was swarmed by press. Cohen was forced to reveal that another one of his clients is Fox News host Sean Hannity, a high-profile confidant of the president. Trump left the White House for Florida, for a two-day summit with Japanese Prime Minister Shinzo Abe at the president's Mar-a-Lago estate. Advisers are hoping the meeting will draw attention from the legal tempest in Washington and New York. ___ 10 Things to Know for Tuesday Your daily look at late-breaking news, upcoming events and the stories that will be talked about Tuesday: 1. 'IT'S A HUGE MINEFIELD' Trump and his allies reach a new level of anxiety after the raid on his personal attorney's office, since they don't know exactly what was in the records and electronic devices seized last week. 2. WHICH RAPPER HAS CAUSE TO CELEBRATE Kendrick Lamar wins the Pulitzer Prize for music, making history as the first non-classical or jazz artist to win the prestigious prize. ___ Chemical weapons team in Syria kept from alleged attack site DOUMA, Syria (AP) - Syrian and Russian authorities prevented independent investigators from going to the scene of a suspected chemical attack, the head of the chemical watchdog group said Monday, blocking international efforts to establish what happened and who was to blame. The U.S. and France say they have evidence that poison gas was used in the April 7 attack in the opposition-held town of Douma, killing dozens of people, and that Syrian President Bashar Assad's military was behind it. But they have made none of that evidence public, even after they, along with Britain, bombarded sites they said were linked to Syria's chemical weapons program. Syria and its ally Russia deny any chemical attack took place, and Russian officials went even further, accusing Britain of staging a "fake" chemical attack. British Prime Minister Theresa May accused the two countries - whose forces now control the town east of Damascus - of trying to cover up evidence. The lack of access to Douma by inspectors from the watchdog group, the Organization for the Prohibition of Chemical Weapons, has left unanswered questions about the attack. ___ US, UK say Russia targets internet hardware for espionage Washington and London on Monday jointly accused the Russian government of maliciously targeting global internet equipment for political and economic espionage. The two governments said the Russian operations, which allegedly involve planting malware on internet routers and other equipment, could also lay the foundation for future offensive cyberattacks. A joint statement by the U.S. Department of Homeland Security, the FBI and the U.K.'s National Cyber Security Centre said the main targets include "government and private-sector organizations," as well as providers of "critical infrastructure" and internet service providers. "Victims were identified through a coordinated series of actions between U.S. and international partners," according to a companion technical alert issued by the U.S. Computer Emergency Response Team (US-CERT). Both nations have "high confidence" in the finding of Russian-sponsored cyber-meddling, which the alert said has been reported by multiple sources since 2015. Routers are devices that direct data traffic across the internet. US-CERT said the compromised routers can be exploited for "man-in-the-middle" spoofing attacks, in which communications are intercepted by a seemingly trusted device that has actually been infiltrated by an attacker. ___ Times, New Yorker win Pulitzer for Weinstein scandal NEW YORK (AP) - The New York Times and The New Yorker won the Pulitzer Prize for public service Monday for breaking the Harvey Weinstein scandal with reporting that galvanized the #MeToo movement and set off a worldwide reckoning over sexual misconduct in the workplace. The Times and The Washington Post took the award in the national reporting category for their coverage of Russian meddling in the 2016 U.S. presidential election and contacts between President Donald Trump's campaign and Russian officials. The Press Democrat of Santa Rosa, California, received the breaking news reporting award for coverage of the wildfires that swept through California wine country last fall, killing 44 people and destroying thousands of homes. The Washington Post also won the investigative reporting prize for revealing decades-old allegations of sexual misconduct against Senate candidate Roy Moore of Alabama. The Republican former judge denied the accusations, but they figured heavily in Doug Jones' victory as the first Democrat elected to the Senate from the state in decades. One of the biggest surprises of the day came in the non-journalism categories when rap star Kendrick Lamar was awarded the Pulitzer for music, becoming the first non-classical or non-jazz artist to win the prize. ___ White House says Russia sanctions still under consideration WASHINGTON (AP) - The White House scrambled Monday to walk back U.N. Ambassador Nikki Haley's weekend announcement that new economic sanctions against Russia are imminent, but stressed the penalties are still being considered. Haley created a firestorm Sunday when she said the new sanctions would be imposed by the Treasury Department on Monday, when, in fact, no such announcement was planned, according to two officials familiar with the matter. In a statement, White House press secretary Sarah Huckabee Sanders tried to clarify the situation, but her explanation created more confusion and led to suggestions that President Donald Trump had personally intervened to halt the sanctions from taking effect Monday. "We are considering additional sanctions on Russia and a decision will be made in the near future," Sanders said in a statement. The two officials, who were not authorized to discuss private administration deliberations publicly and spoke on condition of anonymity, said Haley had misspoken when she said on CBS' "Face the Nation" that Treasury Secretary Steven Mnuchin would announce the sanctions Monday "if he hasn't already." Haley said the sanctions would target those who are enabling Syrian leader Bashar Assad's government to continue using chemical weapons. ___ Destruction, traumatized residents in Syrian town of Douma DOUMA, Syria (AP) - Two days after Syrian troops declared this town near the capital, Damascus, liberated from rebel fighters and 10 days since a suspected chemical attack, a tour on Monday revealed widespread destruction and traumatized residents who recalled months spent cowering in crowded underground shelters infested with lice, with barely any food or water. Except for the Russian and Syrian troops patrolling the streets, few people could be seen in Douma, the majority of its residents now displaced to rebel-held areas to the north. The main hospital, courthouse and municipal buildings were largely reduced to rubble, while the nearby Grand Mosque, famed for its towering arches, white dome and majestic palm trees was riddled with bullet and shell holes - testimony to the intense government assault the town was subjected to since being seized by the rebels six years ago. Douma was one of the first areas to rise up against President Bashar Assad's government and until a few weeks ago it was a major threat to his seat of power in Damascus, as rebels pelted it with shells, disrupting normal life. On Saturday, Syrian government forces entered Douma for the first time since 2012, marking the biggest victory for Assad's forces since the conflict began in 2011. On Monday, the few remaining residents were able to move around safely for the first time in months following the crushing government offensive and a yearslong siege, tightened even further last year, that had starved the town, once the bread basket of the capital, of food, medical supplies and other essentials. ___ Starbucks to train workers on 'unconscious bias,' CEO says PHILADELPHIA (AP) - Starbucks wants to add training for store managers on "unconscious bias," CEO Kevin Johnson said Monday, as activists held more protests at a Philadelphia store where two black men were arrested after employees said they were trespassing. Johnson, who has called the arrests "reprehensible," arrived in Philadelphia this weekend after video of the incident gained traction online. He said he hopes to meet with the two men in the next couple of days and apologize face to face. "I'd like to have a dialogue with them and the opportunity to listen to them with compassion and empathy through the experience they went through," said Johnson, who has been CEO for about a year. Stewart Cohen, the lawyer for the two men, said he hopes "something productive for the community" can come out of such a meeting. The incident is a major blow to Starbucks' image, since the company has promoted its coffee shops as neighborhood hangouts where anyone is welcome. After a video of the arrests spread online, the hashtag #BoycottStarbucks trended on Twitter. And on Monday morning, about two dozen protesters took over the Philadelphia shop, chanting slogans like, "A whole lot of racism, a whole lot of crap, Starbucks coffee is anti-black." A Starbucks regional vice president who attempted to talk to the protesters was shouted down. ___ 7 inmates killed as prisoners fight over money, territory COLUMBIA, S.C. (AP) - Inmates armed with homemade knives fought each other for about seven hours over territory and money, leaving seven of them dead in the worst U.S. prison riot in a quarter-century, officials said Monday. An inmate who witnessed the violence told The Associated Press that bodies were "literally stacked on top of each other." At least 17 prisoners were seriously injured at Lee Correctional Institution, South Carolina prisons chief Bryan Stirling said. The first fight started in a dorm about 7:15 p.m. Sunday and appeared to be contained before suddenly starting in two other dorms. Cellphones helped stir up the trouble, and state officials urged the federal government to change a law and allow them to block the signals from prisoners' phones. "These folks are fighting over real money and real territory while they're incarcerated," Stirling said at a news conference. No prison guards were hurt. Stirling said they followed protocol by backing out and asking for support. It took several hours to restore order, but once a special SWAT team entered, the inmates gave up peacefully, he said. The prisoner who saw the riot exchanged messages with AP on the condition of anonymity because he is not allowed to have a cellphone and fears retribution from other inmates. PHOENIX (AP) - A co-founder of the classified advertising site Backpage.com who has been jailed for the last 10 days on charges of facilitating prostitution was released on a $1 million bond Monday as he awaits trial. At a brief hearing at a federal courthouse in Phoenix, James Larkin was ordered by Magistrate Judge John Boyle to put up two properties as surety on the bond. Larkin also was ordered to wear an electronic monitoring device. Larkin, co-founder Michael Lacey and five Backpage.com employees were arrested earlier this month on federal charges. Larkin was the last of the seven to be released from custody. Lacey was released on Friday after posting a $1 million bond. An indictment alleges Backpage.com ignored warnings to stop running advertisements promoting prostitution, sometimes involving children, because the site has brought in $500 million on prostitution-related revenues since its inception in 2004. Authorities say Backpage.com portrays itself as trying to prevent such ads, but investigators have determined the site's operators have declined to confront the problem. Employees are accused of helping customers edit their ads to say within legal limits while still encouraging commercial sex. The indictment alleges Backpage.com started to launder money earned from ad sales a few years ago after banks raised concerns that they were being used for illegal purposes. Authorities also seized Backpage.com and its affiliated websites as a part of the criminal case. The site founders and four employees have pleaded not guilty in the federal case in Arizona. Authorities revealed last week that Backpage.com CEO Carl Ferrer pleaded guilty to a federal conspiracy charge in Arizona and state money laundering charges in California. In addition, the company pleaded guilty to human trafficking in Texas and in a federal money laundering conspiracy case in Arizona. Ferrer has agreed to testify against others. BEIJING (AP) - China's government says it is ready to protect its "legitimate rights" after U.S. authorities penalized a Chinese telecoms equipment maker over a case involving exports to Iran and North Korea. The Commerce Ministry said Tuesday it hoped Washington would treat ZTE Corp. fairly after U.S. authorities concluded it paid bonuses to employees involved in a scheme to ship equipment to North Korea and Iran instead of disciplining them as it promised in 2017. The U.S. Commerce Department on Monday barred ZTE, one of China's most prominent technology companies, for seven years from importing American components. FILE- In this Feb. 26, 2014, file photo, a sign for the ZTE booth is seen at the Mobile World Congress, the world's largest mobile phone trade show in Barcelona, Spain. The U.S. Commerce Department is blocking Chinese telecommunications giant ZTE Corp. from importing American components for seven years, accusing the company of misleading U.S. regulators after it settled charges of violating sanctions against North Korea and Iran. (AP Photo/Manu Fernandez, File) The Commerce Ministry said Beijing will "stand ready to take necessary measures to safeguard the legitimate rights and interests of Chinese companies." BEIJING (AP) - China's economic growth held steady in the quarter ending in March amid a worsening trade dispute with U.S. President Donald Trump, buoyed by strong e-commerce and factory output. The world's second-largest economy expanded by 6.8 percent over a year earlier, in line with the quarter ending in December and down slightly from 2017's full-year expansion of 6.9 percent, data showed Tuesday. It was above the official 2018 target of "around 6.5 percent," which would be among the world's strongest if achieved. A government spokesman expressed confidence China's $12 trillion-a-year economy can withstand Trump's threatened tariff hikes on up to $150 billion of Chinese goods in a dispute over technology policy. In this Monday, April 16, 2018 photo, a vendor sells vegetable along a street of Beijing, China's economic growth held steady at 6.8 percent over a year earlier in the quarter ending in March, buoyed by retail sales and investment, data released Tuesday, April 17, 2018. (AP Photo/Ng Han Guan) China has "room to maneuver" following efforts to develop more self-sustaining growth based on domestic consumption and reduce reliance on trade, said Xing Zhihong, spokesman for the National Bureau of Statistics. "China is fully capable of responding to Sino-U.S. trade frictions, responding to challenges and maintaining sustained and healthy economic development," Xing said at a news conference. Forecasters expect Chinese growth to cool this year as Beijing tries to rein in rising debt seen as the biggest threat to economic stability by tightening controls to cool a boom in real estate sales and bank lending. Last year's expansion was unexpectedly strong but activity began to weaken in March. "China's economy entered 2018 with solid growth momentum," Louis Kuijs of Oxford Economics said in a report. "But momentum slowed in March, compared to the first two months, pointing to slower growth ahead." Also Tuesday, the Chinese central bank freed up more money for lending by cutting the amount of reserves commercial lenders are required to hold in reserve by 1 percentage point, effect April 25. The step is meant to "boost small businesses and shore up financial stability," the People's Bank of China said on its website. The statistics bureau said that compared with the previous quarter, the standard used by other major economies, growth slowed to 1.4 percent from 1.6 percent in the final three months of 2017. Beijing has begun to report such quarter-on-quarter figures in recent years but its headline number is measured against a year earlier, which makes Chinese growth seem smoother than that of other economies. Europe and other trading partners also complain China is flooding global markets with unfairly low-priced steel, aluminum and other goods, threatening jobs abroad. "We worry about the long-term implications but view a trade war with substantial short-term growth impact as unlikely," Kuijs said. The ruling Communist Party is trying to steer China to slower, more sustainable growth based on domestic consumption instead of trade and investment. But Beijing has repeatedly set that back by relying on infusions of bank lending to shore up the economy since the 2008 crisis, adding to rising debt. In a positive sign for efforts to encourage consumer spending, retail sales rose 9.8 percent, accelerating from December's 9.4 percent growth, according to the statistics bureau. E-commerce sales surged 35.4 percent, up 3.3 percentage points from the previous quarter. Factory output rose 6.8 percent over a year earlier. "While we don't think China's economy is expanding as rapidly as the official figures claim, there is broader evidence to suggest that a recovery in industry did prevent growth from slipping too much last quarter," said Julian Evans-Pritchard of Capital Economics in a report. Investment in factories, real estate and other fixed assets rose 7.5 percent, up from 2017's 7.2 percent growth. "Outside of industry, activity looks to have cooled recently," Evans-Pritchard said. "Construction growth is slowing as local governments pare back infrastructure spending in order to control debt levels." China's trade balance swung to a rare deficit in March as exports shrank 2.7 percent over a year earlier. Trade accounts for less of China's economic activity than in earlier years but still supports millions of jobs. In a speech last week, President Xi Jinping promised to open China's markets wider, cut import duties on autos and ease restrictions on foreign ownership in the auto and finance industries. He gave no details and didn't directly address Trump's complaint that Beijing improperly pressures foreign companies to hand over technology. The ruling party's annual development plan, announced last month, calls for further cuts in the bloated state-owned steel industry and a bigger role for market forces and entrepreneurs. ___ National Bureau of Statistics (in Chinese): www.stats.gov.cn In this Friday, April 13, 2018, photo, workers moor a container ship at the port in Qingdao in eastern China's Shandong province. China's economic growth held steady at 6.8 percent over a year earlier in the quarter ending in March, buoyed by retail sales and investment, data released Tuesday, April 17, 2018. (Chinatopix Via AP) In this Friday, April 13, 2018, photo, a China Shipping container ship is seen at the port in Qingdao in eastern China's Shandong province. China's economic growth held steady at 6.8 percent over a year earlier in the quarter ending in March, buoyed by retail sales and investment, data released Tuesday, April 17, 2018. (Chinatopix Via AP) As the hours dragged on during a riot at a South Carolina prison, bodies piled up on the sidewalk. An inmate inside watched in dismay as several fellow prisoners, two he knew well, lay dead and dying, their bodies leaving trails of blood leading back inside the prison walls. One bloodied man tried to get up before he 'started into that "death rattle" people often hear about, but never experience firsthand,' the inmate told The Associated Press after the attack. Moments later, the dying man was silent, another casualty of the night's events. The inmate sent messages to AP as events unfolded overnight Sunday into Monday morning at Lee Correctional Institution. At the end of the seven-hour ordeal, seven inmates lay dead, with 17 others sent to hospitals for treatment. Scroll down for video An inmate who witnessed Sunday's South Carolina prison riot spoke with the Associated Press on Monday. Above, video that was taken inside the prison after the riot The prisoner, who wished to remain anonymous, said the prison guards failed to intervene when the fights broke out around 7pm on Sunday With many cell door locks broken at Lee, a maximum-security prison, the inmate told AP he freely went outside, where he said he saw bodies 'literally stacked on top of each other, like some macabre woodpile.' State officials Monday blamed the carnage on a turf war between gangs over territory, money and contraband items like cellphones. For seven hours, Corrections Director Bryan Stirling said, inmates armed with handmade knives fought each other, leaving seven dead in the worst U.S. prison riot in a quarter-century. Most of the slain were stabbed or slashed; the remainder appeared to have been beaten, Lee County Coroner Larry Logan said. The first fight started in a dorm about 7:15pm Sunday and appeared to be contained before suddenly starting in two other dorms. No prison guards were hurt. Stirling said they followed protocol by backing out and asking for support. It took several hours to restore order, but once a special SWAT team entered, the inmates gave up peacefully, he said. Pictured above are the seven inmates who were killed in the riot. Top row, left to right: Corey Scott, Eddie Casey Gaskins, Raymond Angelo Scott and Damonte Rivera. Bottom row, left to right: Michael Milledge, Cornelius McClary and Joshua Jenkins The prisoner who saw the riot exchanged messages with AP on the condition of anonymity because he is not allowed to have a cellphone and fears retribution from other inmates. He said he saw several attackers taunt a rival gang member who was badly injured. 'The man died laying on a sidewalk with some of the people who helped kill him laughing at him and taunting him,' the inmate told AP. The inmate said he and other prisoners roamed around freely at the prison in Bishopville, about 40 miles east of Columbia. Hours after the violence started, no corrections officers or medical personnel attended to the dead or dying, he said. 'The COs (corrections officers) never even attempted to render aid, nor quell the disturbance,' he said. 'They just sat in the control bubble, called the issue in, then sat on their collective a**es.' South Carolina Department of Corrections Director Bryan Stirling addresses the media during a press conference following the riot on Monday Stirling said the response teams entered as fast as they could. 'We gathered as many people as we could, as quickly as we could and went in as soon as we thought it was safe for our staff,' he said. The slain were serving anywhere from 10 years to life in prison, and their crimes ranged from murder to trafficking crack cocaine. The youngest was 24 years old; the oldest was 44. According to Stirling, the injured inmates required medical attention outside the prison, which made restoring order more difficult for authorities. The coroner described a chaotic scene upon his arrival, with inmates still fighting. The maximum-security facility in Bishopville houses about 1,500 inmates and 44 guards were there when the first fight started. The riot was the latest violence in the South Carolina prisons system, where at least 13 other inmates have been killed by fellow prisoners since the start of 2017. It was the most inmates slain in a single riot in the U.S. since nine prisoners and a guard died in 1993 at the Southern Ohio Correctional Facility, said Steve Martin, a consultant who helps the federal government monitor prison systems. Officials say the riot was started by a gang dispute. Above, a 1999 aerial image of the prison The Lee Correctional Institution houses some of the most violent offenders in the state. It is pictured above on Monday The seven inmates who died were in prison for a range of violent crimes, from domestic violence to murder. The prison pictured above on Monday Seventeen other inmates were injured. No prison staff members were injured or killed. The prison pictured above on Monday Officials says they would like technology to jam cellphone signals at the prison. Above, the prison on Monday Cellphones helped stir up the trouble, according to Stirling, who urged the federal government to change a law and allow state institutions like his to block prisoners' cell signals. Gov. Henry McMaster told reporters that jamming signals from contraband cellphones - already banned in prison but smuggled in by the thousands via visitors, errant guards, even delivered by drone - would 'go a long way' in preventing future violence in prison. When pressed on proposing a solution other than jamming, McMaster offered no specifics. 'We do the best we can,' he said. State Sen. Gerald Malloy, a Democrat whose district includes Lee Correctional, summed up the day more bluntly. 'It's an incredibly bad day in South Carolina,' he told AP. 'We failed. That's it.' SANTA CLARA, Cuba (AP) - Raul Castro travels in motorcades of gleaming imported sedans. Rings of grim-faced bodyguards protect him, pistols under crisp guayabera shirts. The 86-year-old president of Cuba arrives at official events moments before they begin, and the audience rises to applaud. A different style was on display March 11 as a crowd of reporters, voters and nervous provincial apparatchiks waited outside a voting station in the central city of Santa Clara for Miguel Mario Diaz-Canel Bermudez, the Communist Party official widely expected to take Castro's place as Cuba's next president this week. An hour passed, then another. Suddenly, the crowd stirred. A half block away, a tall, bulky figure in an untucked white button-down shirt walked with his wife and a few bodyguards down the street toward the polling station. Shaking hands and hugging voters, Diaz-Canel took his place in line. FILE - In this July 6, 2013 file photo, Cuba's President Raul Castro, left, and Vice President Miguel Diaz-Canel Bermudez attend the opening of a two-day, twice-annual legislative sessions, at the National Assembly in Havana, Cuba. Diaz-Canel, 57, is widely expected to take Castro's place as Cuba's next president on April 19. (AP Photo/Ismael Francisco, Cubadebate, File) "We're building a relationship between the government and the people here," he said after voting for members of Cuba's next National Assembly. "The lives of those who will be elected have to be focused on relating to the people, listening to the people, investigating their problems and encouraging debate." Then Diaz-Canel left for Havana, ending an unusual bit of political theater neatly scripted to send a single message: A new type of Cuban president is coming. Castro has pledged to step down Thursday and hand the presidency to a successor most Cubans believe will be the man Castro named in 2013 as his first vice president. Diaz-Canel, who turns 58 on Friday, would be the first non-Castro to hold Cuba's top government office since the 1959 revolution led by Fidel Castro and his younger brother Raul. The new president will confront a stagnant economy, decaying infrastructure, a hostile U.S. administration and widespread disenchantment with a centrally planned system that can't provide state employees with a living wage, but forbids most forms of private enterprise. Raul Castro will remain first secretary of the Communist Party, a potentially more powerful position. And since power in Communist Cuba has long flowed from personalities more than institutions, how much influence Diaz-Canel will actually wield is an open question that has many observers looking at his past for clues. Most Cubans know their first vice president as an unremarkable speaker who initially assumed a public profile so low it was virtually nonexistent. Until March, Diaz-Canel had said nothing to the Cuban people about the type of president he would be. The white-haired, unsmiling Diaz-Canel had been seen at greatest length in a leaked video of a Communist Party meeting where he somberly pledged to shutter some independent media and labeled some European embassies as outposts of foreign subversion. That image has begun to change slightly this year as Diaz-Canel stepped into the moderate limelight offered by Cuba's Soviet-style state media. With his public comments in March, many Cubans got a glimpse of him as a flesh-pressing local politician, an image familiar to residents of the central province where he was born and spent nine years in a role akin to a governor. Raised and educated in the city of Santa Clara, Diaz-Canel graduated from the local university in 1982 and performed three years of obligatory military service. In 1987 he joined the Young Communists' Union. He also went on to work as a professor of engineering at the University of Santa Clara and traveled to Nicaragua as part of a government-run mission to support that country's socialist revolution. Santa Clara residents remember him wearing his hair long and openly admiring the Beatles, who were frowned on by ardent communists who considered the group as representative of the decadent culture of Cuba's capitalist enemies. Nonetheless, the young professor was named first party secretary in Villa Clara province in 1994 and gained a reputation as a hard-working public servant with a conspicuously modest lifestyle. Residents told The Associated Press this month that Diaz-Canel was the first official they remembered who didn't move to a new government-provided home after accepting the position of first secretary. "He didn't even fix up his house to live more comfortably," said neighbor Roberto Suarez Tagle, 78. "He always found out about the real problems that people had." Diaz-Canel traveled the city on a bicycle during the economic crisis spawned when the fall of the Soviet Union cut off subsidies for Cuba, and he accepted visits at all hours at his home and office from residents with complaints or suggestions. When he finished work, residents said, he would start his shifts with the local Committee for the Defense of the Revolution, a mix of a neighborhood watch committee and local militia. "Some comrades didn't want to put him on watch because he would be overwhelmed with work, but he would say, 'I'm a citizen of this country and I'll stand watch like anyone else,'" said Liliana Perez, whose house faces the red-and-yellow-painted home where Diaz-Canel lived with his wife and two children. In 1996, he began appearing on a local radio program during which he would take two hours of live phone calls from people complaining about problems ranging from bad state restaurants to pothole-rutted side streets, radio journalist Xiomara Rodriguez said. "He undertook an intense effort to communicate with the people," Rodriguez recalled. In a country where the state controls most daily activities, Diaz-Canel also made surprise visits to government-run establishments such as the local funeral parlor to check on the quality of services. "He focused on creating a culture of attention to detail," Rodriguez said. Diaz-Canel also became known for pushing back against the intolerant tendencies of the Communist Party, an organization with strains of deep social conservatism and conformity. As first secretary of Villa Clara, he was an active supporter of El Menjunje, a cultural center that hosted rock 'n' roll shows and became a focus of activities by lesbian, gay, bisexual and transgender Cubans, including some of the country's first drag shows. Diaz-Canel was known for bringing his children to the club, an unusual assertion of support in a society with deeply rooted antipathy toward homosexuals. Two of Diaz-Canel's children have gone on to play in Polaroid, a well-known Cuban rock band. "Diaz-Canel listens and takes note of others' opinions," said Ramon Silverio Gomez, the longtime director of El Menjunje. "The people respect him and know that he's understanding them." In 2003, Diaz-Canel was named first secretary of the eastern province of Holguin, where he ran into complaints. Some say he focused too much of his six years in office on beautifying the city center while neglecting the needs of poor and working people. "In my opinion you can't spend so much on boulevards and parks when there are people in marginal neighborhoods living hand-to-mouth," said Anahi Tamayo, a waitress at a private snack bar. In 2003, Diaz-Canel was also named to the Communist Party's Politburo, one of its highest-ranking bodies. Six years later, he was named minister of higher education and was praised for modernizing curricula and introducing computer technology to many university programs. He was also known as one of the first high-ranking officials to bring a laptop to government meetings. In 2012, conservative Communist Party officials shut down "Young Cuba," a blog run by young academics at the University of Matanzas who supported Cuba's socialist system but who criticized corruption, inefficiency and resistance to change. Diaz-Canel called a meeting between the university rector and the blog's founders and pointedly asked them, "What do you need to keep running 'Young Cuba?'" recalled founder Harold Cardenas, a young professor of Marxist studies. The blog was unblocked and remains an important forum for debate among Cuban intellectuals calling for gradual reform. "I talk to Diaz-Canel like he was an uncle of mine," Cardenas said. "He's much more communicative than he seems." Diaz-Canel also intervened when a government official denied a travel permit to the U.S. for Humberto Rios Labrada, a sustainable agriculture expert who won the U.S-based Goldman Environmental Prize, said Gregory Biniowski, a Cuba-based Canadian lawyer who nominated Rios Labrada for the honor. As first vice president he has mostly stayed out of view, but many observers see that as a wise strategy for survival in a system run by aging revolutionaries who have ended the careers of many young politicians who rose to prominence early in their careers. Outside a few bases of support, however, Diaz-Canel has also been left without a deep pool of good will to draw on in times of difficulty or conflict. "It will no longer be enough to read from the documents written and approved by the party. He'll need to express ideas," said Jose Raul Viera Linares, a former first deputy minister of foreign affairs. "It's not enough to be an administrator anymore. Inevitably he must evolve to become a leader." ___ Andrea Rodriguez on Twitter: www.twitter.com/ARodriguezAP Michael Weissenstein on Twitter: www.twitter.com/mweissenstein FILE - In this March 11, 2018 file photo, Cuba's Vice President Miguel Diaz-Canel, center, holding hands with his wife Lis Cuesta Peraza, speaks with a woman as he waits in line with voters at a polling station during elections for national and provincial representatives for the National Assembly in Santa Clara, Cuba. Raul Castro has pledged to step down on April 19, 2018, and hand the presidency to Diaz-Canel, who will confront a stagnant economy, decaying infrastructure, a hostile U.S. administration and widespread disenchantment with a centrally planned system that can't provide state employees with a living wage, but forbids most forms of private enterprise. (AP Photo/Ramon Espinosa, File) In this April 1, 2018 photo, men repair a motorcycle in the Vigia neighborhood of Santa Clara, Cuba. The man who is expected to be Cuba's next president, Miguel Mario Diaz-Canel Bermudez, was born and raised in Santa Clara where he spent nine years in a role akin to a governor. (AP Photo/Desmond Boylan) In this April 1, 2018 photo, Roberto Suarez Tagle speaks from his home in Santa Clara, Cuba. "He didn't even fix up his house to live more comfortably," said the 78-year-old neighbor of Miguel Mario Diaz-Canel Bermudez, who is expected to become Cuba's next president. "He always found out about the real problems that people had," said Suarez. (AP Photo/Desmond Boylan) In this April 3, 2018 photo, people walk along the main boulevard in Holguin, Cuba. The man expected to be Cuba's next president, Miguel Mario Diaz-Canel Bermudez, was raised and educated in Santa Clara, graduated from the local university in 1982, performed three years of obligatory military service and went on to work as a professor of engineering at the University of Santa Clara. (AP Photo/Desmond Boylan) In this April 2, 2018 photo, radio journalist Normando Hernandez Castro, 70, shows pictures with himself with Miguel Mario Diaz-Canel Bermudez in Santa Clara, Cuba. Cuba's President Raul Castro has pledged to step down on Thursday, April 19, and hand the presidency to Diaz-Canel, the man he named in 2013 as his first vice president. (AP Photo/Desmond Boylan) In this April 1, 2018 photo, children ride a goat-pulled-cart around the main square of Santa Clara, Cuba. The man who is expected to be Cuba's next president, Miguel Mario Diaz-Canel Bermudez, was raised in Santa Clara, where he gained a reputation as a hard-working public servant with a conspicuously modest lifestyle. (AP Photo/Desmond Boylan) In this April 3, 2018 photo, Anahi Tamayo, a 30-year-old waitress at a private snack bar, gives an interview in Holguin, Cuba. "In my opinion you can't spend so much on boulevards and parks when there are people in marginal neighborhoods living hand-to-mouth," Tamayo said in reference to Miguel Mario Diaz-Canel Bermudez, former first secretary of Holguin province who is expected to become Cuba's next president. (AP Photo/Desmond Boylan) In this April 1, 2018 photo, three people share a bicycle along San Miguel Street where Miguel Mario Diaz-Canel Bermudez lived in Santa Clara, Cuba. Diaz-Canel, the man who is expected to be Cuba's next president, was raised in Santa Clara, where residents said he was the first official they remembered who didn't move to a new government-provided home after accepting the position of first secretary. (AP Photo/Desmond Boylan) In this April 1, 2018 photo, Edelio Jimenez Santana smokes a cigar in the Vigia neighborhood of Santa Clara, Cuba. The man who is expected to be Cuba's next president, Miguel Mario Diaz-Canel Bermudez, was born and raised in Santa Clara where he spent nine years in a role akin to a governor. (AP Photo/Desmond Boylan) In this April 1, 2018 photo, Ramon Silverio Gomez, director of El Menjunje, a LGBT club and cultural center, gives an interview in Santa Clara, Cuba. "Diaz-Canel listens and takes note of others' opinions," said Silverio of the man who is expected to be Cuba's next president, Miguel Mario Diaz-Canel Bermudez. Diaz-Canel was known for bringing his children to the club, an unusual assertion of support in a society with deeply rooted homophobia. (AP Photo/Desmond Boylan) In this April 3, 2018 photo, street cleaners take a break as they work on the main boulevard in Holguin, Cuba. In 2003, Miguel Mario Diaz-Canel Bermudez was named first secretary of the eastern province of Holguin, and is expected to become Cuba's next president after Raul Castro steps down in 2018. (AP Photo/Desmond Boylan) TOKYO (AP) - Domestic political scandals and sinking approval ratings are weighing on Japanese Prime Minister Shinzo Abe as he heads to President Donald Trump's Mar-a-Lago resort for two days of talks starting Tuesday. Before boarding his flight from Tokyo, Abe took the unusual step of pledging to clean up the mess in government when he gets back. "As head of the government, I'm committed to deal with every single problem responsibly to uncover the truth and squeeze out the pus," he said. Abe's meetings with Trump may provide a brief respite from his problems at home and could even stem the slide in his popularity. The two leaders plan to golf, as at their two previous summits. Japanese Prime Minister Shinzo Abe waves with his wife Akie Abe while boarding his plane before departure for the U.S. at Haneda international airport in Tokyo Tuesday, April 17, 2018. Abe is heading to U.S. President Donald Trump's Mar-a-Lago resort for two days of talks, hoping to keep Japan's interests on the table in a possible U.S.-North Korea summit as well as stem a slide in his voter support ratings. (Kenzaburo Fukuhara/Kyodo News via AP) But this round of talks may prove more challenging than the first two. Abe will have to overcome policy divisions on trade and potentially North Korea that have emerged in Trump's second year in office. A poor summit showing could further undermine Abe's position at home. The Japanese leader's approval ratings have declined to below 30 percent in some polls as Abe has been hit by accusations of cronyism and the mishandling of official documents by several ministries. That contrasts with the 50 percent approval rating he enjoyed at the time of his Tokyo summit with Trump in November, soon after leading his ruling party to a landslide election victory. A school land deal scandal linked to Abe's wife re-erupted in March after a newspaper revealed that Finance Ministry officials had altered documents related to the school's purchase of state land at a huge discount. Abe has denied that he or his wife intervened in the sale. Then, a second allegation of favoritism resurfaced, in which a friend of Abe got permission to establish a new veterinary school in western Japan. Abe weathered both scandals last year, but the discovery of new evidence has reignited the charges. Separately, the Defense Ministry has acknowledged mishandling documents related to a former peacekeeping mission in South Sudan, and a top Finance Ministry official has been accused of sexual harassment. The mounting scandals have called into question Abe's chances of securing a third term as party leader this September, which seemed assured earlier this year, and could even force him to step down before the leadership race. Other party leaders with an eye on the premiership are ready to pounce should Abe fall, though he has bounced back from setbacks before. Abe's aides hope that the meeting with Trump will showcase the leaders' close personal relationship, as the two summits last year did. "While playing golf, they can take time and exchange views on a range of issues while deepening their relationship of trust," Chief Cabinet Secretary Yoshihide Suga said at a regular briefing Tuesday. Trump surprised Abe, and much of the world, when he announced that he would meet North Korean leader Kim Jong Un. That summit is expected in May or early June. Abe will want to make sure Trump doesn't cut a deal with North Korea that leaves Japan exposed to shorter-range missiles that do not threaten the U.S. mainland. He also is expected to ask Trump to raise with Kim the issue of Japanese abducted by North Korea in the 1970s and 1980s. Yu Uchiyama, a political science professor at the University of Tokyo, said Abe will try to make sure the two leaders are on the same page on North Korea. "Mr. Abe wants to confirm their cooperation and eliminate the image that Japan is left out of the loop," he said. "He is also seeking to achieve a diplomatic result in hopes of turning around his public support." But Trump is unpredictable, Uchiyama said, and an unfavorable outcome could damage Abe further. Abe also will likely seek a reversal of the decision not to exclude Japan from new steel and aluminum tariffs, while resisting Trump's attempts to pull Japan into bilateral trade negotiations. Japanese officials said Abe and Trump might also discuss the Trans-Pacific Partnership, after Trump indicated last week that the U.S. might be interested in rejoining what is now an 11-country trade agreement. Trump pulled the U.S. out of TPP shortly after his inauguration in early 2017. ___ Follow Mari Yamaguchi on Twitter at www.twitter.com/mariyamaguchi Find her work at https://www.apnews.com/search/mari%20yamaguchi FILE - In this Feb. 10, 2017, file photo, Japanese Prime Minister Shinzo Abe, left, walks with U.S. President Donald Trump for a news conference at the White House in Washington. Abe is heading to Trump's Mar-a-Lago resort Tuesday, April 17, 2018 for two days of talks, hoping to keep Japan's interests on the table in a possible U.S.-North Korea summit as well as stem a slide in his voter support ratings. (AP Photo/Evan Vucci, File) DERRY, N.H. (AP) - Ivanka Trump says Tax Day is nothing to celebrate, but most Americans will be much happier the next time the filing day rolls around. Trump has been traveling the country to promote the sweeping rewrite of the U.S. tax code her father, President Donald Trump, signed last year. She and Treasury Secretary Steven Mnuchin (mih-NOO'-shin) were in New Hampshire on Tuesday, the deadline to file federal income taxes. Mnuchin declined to comment on the president filing for a tax return extension but said in general, individuals and businesses have that option and the IRS just wants people to pay and follow the law. Ivanka Trump, daughter and advisor to President Donald Trump, speaks at an event on Tax Day, Tuesday, April 17, 2018, in Derry, N.H., to promote the recently passed tax cut package. (AP Photo/Elise Amendola) The IRS website to make payments was down Tuesday but Mnuchin said officials would make sure taxpayers get extensions and are able to file once the system comes back up. Ivanka Trump, daughter and advisor to President Donald Trump, second from right, greets people at an event on Tax Day, Tuesday, April 17, 2018, in Derry, N.H. to promote the recently passed tax cut package. (AP Photo/Elise Amendola) Ivanka Trump, daughter and advisor to President Donald Trump, center, greets people at an event on Tax Day, Tuesday, April 17, 2018, in Derry, N.H. to promote the recently passed tax cut package. (AP Photo/Elise Amendola) Ivanka Trump, daughter and advisor to President Donald Trump, and Treasury Secretary Steven Mnuchin, center, participate at an event on Tax Day, Tuesday, April 17, 2018, in Derry, N.H., to promote the recently passed tax cut package. (AP Photo/Elise Amendola) Ivanka Trump, daughter and advisor to President Donald Trump, speaks as Treasury Secretary Steven Mnuchin listens at an event on Tax Day, Tuesday, April 17, 2018, in Derry, N.H., to promote the recently passed tax cut package. (AP Photo/Elise Amendola) Treasury Secretary Steven Mnuchin, right, smiles and applauds as small business owner Marga Coulp of Dover, N.H. and former Gov. John Sununu, far left, speak at an event on Tax Day, Tuesday, April 17, 2018, in Derry, N.H., to promote the recently passed tax cut package. (AP Photo/Elise Amendola) JEFFERSON CITY, Mo. (AP) - Missouri lawmakers considering whether to impeach Republican Gov. Eric Greitens may first have to wrestle with an unprecedented question: Does it matter that the alleged actions occurred before he was in office? There is no definitive answer to that question because only one Missouri executive official has ever been ousted from office following impeachment and her offense was directly related to her job. Greitens, 44, faces a felony invasion-of-privacy indictment in St. Louis for allegedly taking and transmitting a nonconsensual photo of a partially nude woman with whom Greitens says he had a consensual affair in 2015, a year before he won election. On Tuesday, Attorney General Josh Hawley suggested the St. Louis prosecutor could charge Greitens with another felony for allegedly taking a database of donors from a veterans' charity he founded and using it for his campaign. In this Jan. 10, 2018, photo, Missouri Gov. Eric Greitens delivers the annual State of the State address to a joint session of the House and Senate in Jefferson City, Mo. Facing mounting calls to resign following sexual misconduct allegations, Missouri Gov. Eric Greitens appears to be taking a cue from President Donald Trump as he fights for his political survival amid a #MeToo movement that has felled dozens of other prominent politicians and public figures. (AP Photo/Jeff Roberson) Separately, a special legislative committee is to recommend in the coming weeks whether to pursue Greitens' impeachment. The committee released a report last week that included testimony from a woman who said Greitens restrained, slapped, shoved and threatened her during a series of sexual encounters that at times left her crying and afraid. The Missouri Constitution says executive officials can be impeached "for crimes, misconduct, habitual drunkenness, willful neglect of duty, corruption in office, incompetency, or any offense involving moral turpitude or oppression in office." "This provision can be read a couple of different ways, kind of depending upon how you construct that sentence, which I think is going to lead to a legal argument about whether or not this is an impeachable offense under the constitution," said Steve Gaw, an attorney and former Missouri House speaker who served on the state's last impeachment panel. "It's a question that hasn't been answered by the Missouri courts," he added. Gaw, a Democrat, was one of five lawmakers on a bipartisan committee that recommended the impeachment of Democratic Secretary of State Judi Moriarty in 1994 for the backdating of her son's candidacy filing paperwork for a state House seat. Election paperwork is a core function of the secretary of state's office, and the House impeached Moriarty on three misconduct counts. The Missouri Supreme Court, which conducted the subsequent trial, convicted her of all three and ousted her from office. Greitens has asserted that his affair was "a private mistake that has nothing to do with governing." Most of the constitution's list of impeachable offenses - such as "corruption in office" or "willful neglect of duty" - relate to the officeholder's job. Some have suggested Greitens could be impeached for "moral turpitude." But because of the sentence structure - with an "or" at the start of the last phrase and no intervening comma - it's likely that the final words "in office" are meant to apply to the impeachable offenses of both "oppression" and "moral turpitude," said several legal experts interviewed by The Associated Press. Yet the fact that corruption "in office" is specifically cited in the middle of the sentence likely indicates that other impeachable actions could occur outside of elected office, the legal experts said. Misconduct, for example, contains no specific limitation on occurring in office. "That can be subject to a lot of interpretation," said Connie Murray, a Republican and retired attorney who served on the 1994 legislative impeachment panel. But "to say that he committed misconduct at some point in time that qualified for impeachment, that seems like a high bar to meet." Attorney James Layton, a former state solicitor general who also taught state constitutional law at the University of Missouri, agreed that it would be difficult to impeach someone for misconduct that occurred before that person held office. But, he added, "I think there's a very good argument that misconduct in the process of gaining office would be grounds for impeachment." The special House committee is to release a report in the coming weeks about allegations that Greitens wrongly obtained and used a donor list from The Mission Continues to raise money for his gubernatorial campaign in 2015. Greitens' campaign agreed to pay a small fine to the Missouri Ethics Commission last year for not originally reporting the receipt of the charity donor list. Hawley said Tuesday that both the donor list and sex-related allegations "appear to be impeachable offenses." He cited the grounds of "crimes" and additionally referred to the sexual allegations as "serious misconduct." Legal analysts interviewed by the AP, including former Missouri Chief Justice Michael Wolff, all agreed that the impeachable offense of "crimes" likely is not limited to events occurring while in office. Greitens has repeatedly proclaimed that he expects to be acquitted during his trial on the invasion-of-privacy charge, scheduled to start May 14. But that wouldn't necessarily prevent him from being impeached for similar allegations, and an impeachment conviction doesn't require the same high standard of proof as a criminal trial. "It is really left to the General Assembly, rather than the courts, to define what 'crimes' means for the purposes of impeachment," Layton said. ___ Follow David A. Lieb at: http://twitter.com/DavidALieb BATON ROUGE, La. (AP) - Scientists working on new ways to battle the erosion that threatens Louisiana's coastline have a dramatic new tool: a massive replica of the lower Mississippi River. The Louisiana State University's Center for River Studies is home to the newly opened Lower Mississippi River Physical Model, a 10,000-square-foot (930-square-meter) reproduction of nearly 200 miles (320 kilometers) of the lower Mississippi from the town of Donaldsonville northwest of New Orleans to the Gulf of Mexico. The model will help experts study one of the most important rivers in North America and how sediment from it can be used to fight coastal erosion. "Not only can we model the flows and the water stages of the water levels in the Mississippi River, we can also model or simulate the transport or the movement of the Mississippi River sand down the river, and we can do all that in roughly one hour to replicate one year on the river," said Clint Willson, the LSU professor who heads the Center for River Studies. This combo of photos shows the opening of the Bonnet Carre spillway, above, a river diversion structure which diverts water from the rising Mississippi River to Lake Pontchartrain on March 8, 2018, top, and the same section on a replica of a portion of the Mississippi River, in Baton Rouge, La., on March 29, 2018, bottom. (AP Photos/Gerald Herbert) Louisiana is in a race to protect and rebuild its fragile coastline from decades of erosion while also facing rising seas from climate change. It's estimated to have lost 2,000 square miles (5,180 square kilometers) of coastline since the 1930s, according to Rudy Simoneaux of the state's Coastal Protection and Restoration Authority. That's about the size of Delaware. To fight back, Louisiana developed a plan that relies in part on slicing channels or diversions at various locations into the levees that keep the Mississippi River in its course and letting some of the sediment in the river into the rapidly eroding wetlands to rebuild land. The idea, said Simoneaux, is to "put the river back to work to rebuild what it once built on its own." The Delta region of southeastern Louisiana was built over centuries on sediment that washed down the river. But levees built along the river to prevent flooding mean the sediment basically washes into the Gulf. As part of its efforts to study the sediment diversions, the CPRA created the $18 million model and Center for River Studies, replacing an older, smaller river model that was decommissioned in 2009. The new model, housed just a stone's throw from the actual Mississippi River, is designed to help researchers answer such questions as: How does opening one diversion affect the river's flow? How do the diversions affect the dredging done by the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers? How do multiple diversions along the river affect each other? "What you do in one place has an impact on another, and so the idea of looking at larger-scale impacts or larger-scale processes is critical to looking at what the potential impacts are or the unintended consequences of projects, and so a model of this scale allows you to do that," said Willson. The model was made of high density foam panels strong enough for people to walk on. Data about the dimensions and shape of the Mississippi River and surrounding topography were put into a computer and then used to cut the panels. The panels, combined with the steel cables and jacks underneath, weigh about as much as one of the 737 jets flown by Southwest Airlines, Simoneaux said. When visitors walk into the second floor to look down onto the model, they can feel the moisture coming from the roughly 6,000 gallons (33,710 liters) of water floating on the model that replicate the river, the Gulf of Mexico and the various lakes and bayous along the coast. Tiny particles of plastic injected into the water mimic the sediment coursing through the Mississippi River. And they can raise the water level to replicate rising seas. Officials are hopeful that lessons learned at the center can be shared with other countries and regions struggling with similar problems as Louisiana. "An image like this model tells the story in a way that is way more powerful than a slide show, than a numerical modeling," said Justin R. Ehrenwerth, who heads the Water Institute of the Gulf , a Baton Rouge-based research organization that studies and helps coastal areas affected by problems like rising seas and subsidence. ___ Follow Santana on Twitter @ruskygal. ___ Associated Press reporter Stacey Plaisance contributed to this report. In this March 29, 2018, photo, Rudy Simoneaux, engineer manager for the Louisiana Coastal Protection and Restoration Authority, shows one of the many ultrasonic water level gauges on a portion of a replica of the lower Mississippi River in Baton Rouge, La. The model will help experts study one of the most important rivers in North America and how sediment can be used from it to fight coastal erosion. (AP Photo/Gerald Herbert) This March 29, 201,8 photo shows a replica of the lower Mississippi River in Baton Rouge, La. The newly opened Lower Mississippi River Physical Model, a reproduction of the river from the town of Donaldsonville northwest of New Orleans to the Gulf of Mexico, is designed to help scientists study one of the most important rivers in North America and specifically how they might be able to use sediment or sand from the river to battle coastal erosion.(AP Photo/Gerald Herbert) In this March 29, 2018 photo, Rudy Simoneaux, right, engineer manager for the Louisiana Coastal Protection and Restoration Authority, and Joseph McClatchy, coastal resources program specialist, walk on a replica of the lower Mississippi River in Baton Rouge, La. The model will help experts study one of the most important rivers in North America and how sediment can be used from it to fight coastal erosion. (AP Photo/Gerald Herbert) In this March 29, 2018 photo, Rudy Simoneaux, above, engineer manager for the Louisiana Coastal Protection and Restoration Authority, and Joseph McClatchy, coastal resources program specialist, walk on a replica of the lower Mississippi River in Baton Rouge, La. The model will help experts study the river and how sediment can be used from it to fight coastal erosion. (AP Photo/Gerald Herbert) In this March 29, 2018 photo, Rudy Simoneaux, left, engineer manager for the Louisiana Coastal Protection and Restoration Authority, and Joseph McClatchy, coastal resources program specialist, walk on a portion of a replica of the lower Mississippi River in Baton Rouge, La. The model will help experts study one of the most important rivers in North America and how sediment can be used from it to fight coastal erosion. (AP Photo/Gerald Herbert) In this March 29, 2018 photo, Rudy Simoneaux, right, engineer manager for the Louisiana Coastal Protection and Restoration Authority, and Joseph McClatchy, coastal resources program specialist, look over a replica of the lower Mississippi River, with satellite images projected onto it from above, in Baton Rouge, La. (AP Photo/Gerald Herbert) SALT LAKE CITY (AP) - The push for legalized marijuana has moved into Utah and Oklahoma, two of the most conservative states in the country, further underscoring how quickly feelings about marijuana are changing in the United States. If the two measures pass, Utah and Oklahoma will join 30 other states that have legalized some form of medical marijuana, according to the pro-pot National Organization for the Reform of Marijuana laws. Nine of those states and Washington, D.C. also have broad legalization where adults 21 and older can use pot for any reason. Michigan could become the 10th state with its ballot initiative this year. Utah and Oklahoma already are among 16 states that allow use of an oil called cannabidiol, or CBD, a compound from cannabis that doesn't get users high but can treat a range of health concerns. Rebecca Frodsham points to her husband's surgical scars, at their home Monday, April 16, 2018, in Murray, Utah. Nathan Frodsham suffers from cervical arthritis and disc disease. Voters in Utah this November will consider a ballot initiative that would legalize medical marijuana for people with certain chronic conditions. (AP Photo/Rick Bowmer) Justin Strekal, political director for NORML, is confident the Utah and Oklahoma measures will pass. "America's appetite for cannabis is not going away," Strekal said. "We are in the death rattles of prohibition." Marijuana legalization efforts have faced some pushback from religions before - including in 2016 in Arizona and Nevada from the Mormon church, and the same year from the Catholic Church in Massachusetts. But not to the scale they could face this year in Utah, where Mormons account for about two-third of the population, said Matthew Schweich, executive director of the pro-legalization Marijuana Policy Project. Mormons have long frowned upon marijuana use because of a key church health code called the "Word of Wisdom," which prohibits the use of alcohol, tobacco and illegal drugs. The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints came out against the proposal this month, saying in a statement drugs designed to ease suffering should be tested and approved by government officials first. The church said it respects the "wise counsel" of doctors, and commended the Utah Medical Association for opposing it. The association has accused organizers of trying to disguise their intention of simply paving the way for legalizing recreational marijuana. Utah Gov. Gary Herbert told middle school students in January that he thinks medical marijuana will someday be legalized in the state but in March he announced his opposition to the ballot question, which he argues lacks safeguards for the growing and distribution of marijuana. Advocates remain confident that they've crafted a medical marijuana measure that respects the Mormon church and culture while providing much-needed relief for people with chronic pain, Schweich said. His Washington, D.C.-based organization helped draft the measure. Unlike other medical marijuana states, Utah's proposal would not allow pot smoking or for residents to grow their own except under limited circumstances, Schweich said. It would create a state-regulated growing and dispensing operation to allow people with certain medical conditions to get a card and use the drug in edible forms like candy, in topical forms like lotions or balms, as an oil or in electronic cigarettes. Proponents turned in the signatures Monday to get the measure on the ballot in November. "It's a question of compassion," Schweich said. Oklahoma will vote in June on its proposal that would allow doctors to recommend that patients receive a medical marijuana license allowing them to legally possess up to three ounces of the drug, six mature plants and six seedlings. Ted Lyon, a 78-year-old Mormon, is a supporter because he saw in the past decade how medical marijuana helped two of his neighbors in Provo - one with multiple sclerosis and another who has seizures. He said he wouldn't support the drug's legalization for recreational use. Lyon, a retired professor at Mormon-owned Brigham Young University, said he's afraid the church's opposition will have a chilling effect on members of the faith but said he remains hopeful there are enough progressive-leaning Mormons who will see the benefits. "In 10 years, the church may say something different," Lyon said. "This is not an eternal banishment of medical marijuana. My father was a good historian, and he used to say, 'If you don't like something in the church, just wait a while because it will change.'" Nathan Frodsham, a 45-year-old married Mormon father of three, is hoping the measure passes so he can get off opioids and back to using the vaporized form of marijuana that he used when he lived in Seattle after his doctor recommended trying for his painful osteoarthritis in his neck. Frodsham wasn't discouraged by the Mormon church statement, which he notes doesn't go as far in opposition as when the church explicitly asked members to vote against full marijuana legalization in Arizona and Nevada. He said marijuana is a natural plant and that the religion's health code doesn't single out cannabis as being prohibited. "I think there's some room for interpretation on this," said Frodsham. The 4,500-member Utah Medical Association isn't against the idea of legalized medical marijuana but has numerous concerns with an initiative it thinks is too broad and doesn't include necessary regulatory measures, said Michelle McOmber, the group's CEO. "We want to be very careful about what we bring into our state," McOmber said. "This is an addictive drug." ____ Associated Press writer Adam Kealoha Causey in Oklahoma City contributed to this report. ____ This story has been updated to clarify that the Utah proposal would allow for some people to grow marijuana under limited circumstances. ____ Find complete AP marijuana coverage here: https://apnews.com/tag/LegalMarijuana Nathan Frodsham, who suffers from cervical arthritis and disc disease, poses for a photograph at his home, Monday, April 16, 2018, in Murray, Utah. Voters in Utah this November will consider a ballot initiative that would legalize medical marijuana for people with certain chronic conditions. (AP Photo/Rick Bowmer) FILE - In this June 6, 2017, file photo, Utah resident Doug Rice administers the CBD oil Haleigh's Hope, a cannabis compound used by his daughter Ashley at their home in West Jordan, Utah. Voters in the deep red states of Utah and Oklahoma will have a chance to legalize medical marijuana through ballot initiatives that offer the latest illustration of how quickly the United States is leaving behind taboos about the drug. (AP Photo/Rick Bowmer, File) Nathan Frodsham, who suffers from cervical arthritis and disc disease, poses for a photograph at his home, Monday, April 16, 2018, in Murray, Utah. Voters in Utah this November will consider a ballot initiative that would legalize medical marijuana for people with certain chronic conditions. (AP Photo/Rick Bowmer) FILE - In this June 26, 2017, file photo, Davis Cromar, center, holds his son Holden, 10, who suffers from epilepsy, while standing with other patients, caregivers and supporters during the Utah Patients Coalition news conference, in Salt Lake City. Voters in the deep red states of Utah and Oklahoma will have a chance to legalize medical marijuana through ballot initiatives that offer the latest illustration of how quickly the United States is leaving behind taboos about the drug. (AP Photo/Rick Bowmer, File) Nathan Frodsham, who suffers from cervical arthritis and disc disease, poses for a photograph at his home, Monday, April 16, 2018, in Murray, Utah. Voters in Utah this November will consider a ballot initiative that would legalize medical marijuana for people with certain chronic conditions. (AP Photo/Rick Bowmer) Nathan Frodsham, who suffers from cervical arthritis and disc disease, poses for a photograph at his home, Monday, April 16, 2018, in Murray, Utah. Voters in Utah this November will consider a ballot initiative that would legalize medical marijuana for people with certain chronic conditions. (AP Photo/Rick Bowmer) FILE - In this Jan. 25, 2016, file photo, members of the House of Representatives look on as House Speaker Greg Hughes speaks, in Salt Lake City. Voters in the deep red states of Utah and Oklahoma will have a chance to legalize medical marijuana through ballot initiatives that offer the latest illustration of how quickly the United States is leaving behind taboos about the drug. (AP Photo/Rick Bowmer, File) FILE - In this June 26, 2017, file photo, Desiree Hennessy, center, attends to her adopted son Hestevan, who has Cerebral Palsy and suffers from chronic nerve pain, seizure disorder, while standing with other patients, caregivers and supporters during the Utah Patients Coalition news conference, in Salt Lake City. The push for legalized marijuana has moved into Utah and Oklahoma, two of the most conservative states in the country, further underscoring how quickly feelings about marijuana are changing in the United States. (AP Photo/Rick Bowmer, File) SAN DIEGO (AP) - Leaders of California's second-largest county voted Tuesday to officially support the Trump administration's lawsuit against the state's so-called sanctuary law that limits police cooperation with federal immigration agents. The decision by San Diego County's all-Republican Board of Supervisors comes amid a growing conservative backlash in California against the Democratic governor's stance on immigration enforcement. The region of 3 million residents that borders Mexico joins neighboring Orange County and at least nine other Orange County cities that have passed anti-sanctuary resolutions or voted to support the lawsuit filed last month by President Donald Trump's administration. FILE - In this March 27, 2018, file photo, a group of sanctuary state supporters gather outside the Orange County Board of Supervisors meeting in Santa Ana, Calif., as they prepare to discuss joining a DOJ lawsuit against the state of California. Leaders of California's second-largest county voted Tuesday, April 17, 2018, to officially support the Trump administration's lawsuit against the state's so-called sanctuary law that limits police cooperation with federal immigration agents. (Jeff Gritchen/The Orange County Register via AP, File) The board voted 3-1, with one member absent. It pledged to file an amicus brief supporting the federal lawsuit at the first available opportunity, chairwoman Kristin Gaspar said. She expects the Trump administration to win and California to appeal, at which point the county would be allowed to file its brief. The board made the decision in closed session after hearing 45 minutes of public comment. Most of the more than two dozen speakers urged the supervisors not to support the lawsuit. Supervisor Greg Cox, who cast the only dissenting vote, said in a statement afterward that "the board's vote is a largely symbolic move that will create fear and divisiveness in our region, waste taxpayer funds and create distrust of law enforcement and local government within many communities." Gaspar held up a stack of printed emails and letters more than a foot high that she said the board had received from residents who wanted the county to stand up against the state policy. She held up a second stack of only a few inches that she said was correspondence from those opposed to supporting the lawsuit. Gaspar is among a crowded field of candidates seeking to replace retiring Republican U.S. Rep. Darrell Issa. Citing the San Diego County Sheriff's Department, Gaspar said the sanctuary law has allowed 284 criminal suspects to be released instead of handed over to immigration authorities since January. Before the law, San Diego had a close relationship with police, she said. "San Diego was really a model of excellence before," said Gaspar said. "We were safer before SB54." California Gov. Jerry Brown said Tuesday that opponents like to overstate the law's restrictions. He said nothing prevents local officials from notifying federal immigration officials that suspects are about to be released. "If you look at the law, it allows reasonable collaboration at all levels between state officials and federal officials," Brown told reporters at the National Press Club in Washington. "We'll find out when the court rules, there's less there than meets the eye." The governor said Washington's tough stance against immigrants in the country illegally is "just an inflammatory football that very low-life politicians like to exploit." If President Donald Trump "wants to round them up like some totalitarian government and ship them out, say that," Brown said. "But he doesn't say that because the American people would repudiate him and his party." California's all-Democratic leadership has positioned the state as a national leader in battling the Trump administration, especially on immigration issues. Government leaders at the state level and in big cities have condemned mass raids and deportation efforts, the president's call for a border wall with Mexico and Attorney General Jeff Sessions' "zero tolerance" order to prosecute people caught illegally entering the United States for the first time. Brown elicited rare praise from Trump last week for pledging to contribute 400 troops to the National Guard's deployment to the Mexican border. But Brown was clear that California troops will help go after drugs, guns and criminal gangs - not immigrants. San Diego County heard from both sides Tuesday. Margaret Baker, who lives near the U.S.-Mexico border in San Diego County, told officials that backing the lawsuit will "be a stain on your legacy." She said it will discourage immigrants from reporting crime. "We see this lawsuit as an attack on our safety and the well-being of our community," she said. Luis Reyes said the state law is unconstitutional, and California must do something about illegal immigration before it's too late. "We're looking at something like what is happening in Europe coming this way," he said. The board voted a day after the small town of Los Alamitos in neighboring Orange County declared itself legally exempt from the state policy. The City Council approved the first ordinance of its kind late Monday in a 4-1 vote, which was followed by a peaceful but noisy confrontation with demonstrators on both sides of the issue. Like San Diego County, the city of 12,000 argues that the federal government - not the state - has authority over immigration, the same argument made by the Trump administration. ___ Associated Press writer Kathleen Ronayne in Sacramento contributed to this report. BEIRUT (AP) - The latest on developments in Syria (all times local): 5:35 a.m. Russia is clashing again with the United States and its Western allies, saying airstrikes on suspected chemical sites in Syria have set back any political negotiations to end the seven-year conflict. U.N. Deputy Ambassador from U.S. Kelley Currie address the United Nations Security Council meeting on Syria, Tuesday April 17, 2018 at U.N. headquarters. (AP Photo/Bebeto Matthews) The U.S., France and Britain insist that recent events are an opportunity to get the political process back on track. The exchange came Tuesday during the sixth meeting that the U.N. Security Council has held on Syria in nine days. Russia called the council meeting to discuss the humanitarian situation in Raqqa, which was the de facto capital of the Islamic State extremist group's "caliphate" until its ouster in October. Also on the agenda was Rukban, a town on the Jordan-Syria border where some 50,000 displaced Syrians have been left stranded. Deputy U.S. Ambassador Kelley Currie she said it was part of Russia's "messaging campaign to try to distract from the atrocities committed by the Assad regime." ___ 4 a.m. Russia's U.N. ambassador is rejecting a draft U.N. resolution on Syria proposed by the United States, Britain and France, calling it "untimely" and "unnecessary." Vassily Nebenzia dismissed the attempt by the three Western allies who attacked alleged Syrian chemical sites to push for Security Council approval of a resolution calling for a political solution to Syria's seven-year conflict, for a new body to assess blame for chemical attacks and for humanitarian access. Nebenzia said Tuesday there is no need for a new independent body to determine responsibility for chemical attacks because "they attributed the guilt, and they already punished the culprits." He says Russian envoys were present when Security Council experts discussed the Western draft Monday "just to hear, but we said really this effort now is untimely." ___ 3:10 a.m. Syria's U.N. ambassador says a U.N. security team has visited the Damascus suburb of Douma to decide whether investigators from the international chemical weapons watchdog can visit the site of a suspected chemical weapons attack. Bashar Ja'afari told the U.N. Security Council on Tuesday that the team arrived in Douma about 3 p.m. Damascus time. He said if the team decides "the situation is sound," the fact-finding mission from the Organization for the Prohibition of Chemical Weapons will start work there Wednesday. Earlier, Syrian state TV had said the OPCW inspectors had reached the site. Ja'afari says Syria's government has done "all that it can do to facilitate the work of this mission" and it's up to the U.N. security team and the OPCW to give a green light for the investigators to enter Douma. Ja'afari says the OPCW mission has been working in Damascus, including listening to statements from some witnesses about the alleged incident. ___ 10:30 p.m. Russia says it strongly supports international inspectors' visit to the site of a suspected chemical attack in Syria. The Foreign Ministry's spokeswoman, Maria Zakharova, dismissed allegations that Russia was trying to hamper the mission by experts from the Organization for the Prohibition of Chemical Weapons. Syrian activists say more than 40 people were killed in the April 7 chemical attack in Douma, which they blamed on government forces. The attack prompted the U.S., Britain and France to launch Saturday's missile strikes on Syria. Syria and its ally Russia have denied any chemical attack took place, and Moscow accused Syrian rebels of fabricating the attack with British assistance, a claim Britain has rejected. The Russian military claimed Tuesday it found rebel chemical weapons stockpiles in Douma, including chlorine and mustard gas precursors. Syrian state TV says the OPCW team entered Douma on Tuesday, after days of delays by Syrian and Russian authorities. ___ 7:10 p.m. Saudi Arabia's foreign minister says the kingdom is in talks with the Trump administration about sending forces into Syria, and that this proposal has been under discussion since the Obama administration. Adel al-Jubeir told reporters Tuesday: "We are in discussions with the U.S. and have been since the beginning of this crisis about sending forces into Syria." He says Saudi Arabia has also offered to send forces from a mostly Sunni bloc of Muslim nations established by the kingdom to fight terrorism. He says the Obama administration did not take them up on either offer. The kingdom has backed and helped arm Sunni rebel groups fighting Syrian President Bashar Assad's forces, which are backed by Shiite-majority Iran. Saudi Arabia is also a member of the U.S.-led coalition battling the Islamic State group. ___ 6:50 p.m. Premier Paolo Gentiloni has told Italy's new parliament that Italy stands firmly by the United States, France and Britain in the decision to launch strikes against Syria aimed at disabling the use of chemical weapons. Gentiloni told lawmakers in Rome on Tuesday that "Italy is not a neutral country that choses each time which side to take between the Atlantic alliance and Russia. It is a coherent ally of the United States, and not of this or that American administration." Italy's role in any military action has been especially politically sensitive given the impasse in forming a new government after last month's elections ended with a hung parliament. The leader of the center-right coalition, Matteo Salvini, has come out against the strikes. Gentiloni specified that Italy gave logistical support to the operation from the joint air base in Aviano on the condition that "no actions aimed at striking Syria would depart from our territory. And so it was." ___ 6:20 p.m. U.N. Secretary-General Antonio Guterres has called on the Syrian government to ensure international chemical weapons inspectors are able to work without restrictions. Earlier Tuesday, Syria's state news agency said inspectors from the Organization for the Prohibition of Chemical Weapons had reached the town of Douma to investigate a suspected April 7 gas attack. Guterres said "it's the obligation of the Syrian government to provide all the conditions for them to work without any restrictions." He stopped short of confirming whether the inspectors were able to reach Douma, telling reporters in Saudi Arabia on Tuesday that the U.N. has done "everything possible to make sure that the OPCW experts will be able to get to Douma sooner rather than later." ___ 5:55 p.m. The Russian military says that it has found rebel chemical weapons stockpiles in the Syrian town hit by a suspected chemical attack. Alexander Rodionov of the military's chemical weapons protection unit said Tuesday its experts found chlorine and components for producing mustard gas at a rebel laboratory in Douma. Syrian activists blamed the Syrian government for the April 7 chemical attack in Douma, which they said killed over 40 people. Rodionov said the canister with chlorine was similar to the one shown in images released by activists. The attack prompted the U.S., Britain and France to launch Saturday's strike on Syria. Syria and its ally Russia denied any chemical attack took place, and Moscow has accused rebels of feigning a chemical attack with British assistance, a claim Britain has rejected. ___ 5:30 p.m. Turkish officials say Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan has called for a scaling down of tensions over the chemical weapons issue in Syria during a call with Iran's President Hassan Rouhani. The officials said Erdogan and Rouhani held a telephone conversation on Tuesday during which the Turkish leaders said actions increasing tensions should be avoided. The two also agreed that Turkey, Iran and Russia should continue to work together for a political solution to the conflict in Syria. The officials provided the information on condition of anonymity, in line with government regulations. Turkey has backed the weekend's strikes on Syria by the United States, France and Britain. - Suzan Fraser in Ankara. ___ 4:40 p.m. Syria's state news agency says inspectors from the Organization for the Prohibition of Chemical Weapons have reached the town of Douma to investigate reports of a suspected April 7 gas attack. The inspectors entered Douma on Tuesday after arriving in Syria on Saturday. The United States, Britain, and France say the Syrian government was behind the attack, and launched a wave of missiles targeting Syrian military installations on Saturday as punishment. Syria and its ally Russia deny any chemical attack took place, and Russian officials have gone even further, accusing Britain of staging a "fake" chemical attack. Douma was the last town held by rebels in the eastern Ghouta region outside Damascus, until they surrendered the day after the alleged gas attack. ___ 2:30 p.m. The Kremlin says Russian President Vladimir Putin has told German Chancellor Angela Merkel that the United States, Great Britain and France have violated international law and hurt the peace process in Syria by launching airstrikes at targets in Damascus. Russia has condemned the allied strikes on Sunday but refrained from responding to the attack on its ally, Syrian President Bashar Assad. The Kremlin said on Tuesday in a read-out of the phone call between Putin and Merkel that the prospect for peace talks for Syria were damaged by the airstrikes, which were carried out in retaliation for the reported poison gas attack on a rebel-controlled suburb of Damascus. A fact-finding mission from the Organization for the Prohibition of Chemical Weapons is due to visit the site of the suspected gas attack. The Kremlin said on Tuesday both Putin and Merkel support the OPCW mission and hope for a thorough probe. ___ 2:20 p.m. French President Emmanuel Macron has vigorously defended his decision to launch airstrikes on Syria, responding to criticism on the joint operation by France, Britain and the United States. He spoke at the European parliament on Tuesday, showing signs of anger and sometimes almost shouting. Macron cited all those "who are outraged each time by images we've seen of children, women who died of a chlorine attack." He asked: "Do we sit back, do we defend (human) rights by saying: rights are for us, principles are for us, and realities are for other? No, no!" He says the U.S., France and Britain intervened in a "legitimate, multilateral framework" and stressed airstrikes specifically targeted three chemical weapon facilities "without any human life loss." Some European lawmakers expressed criticism at France's action in Syria, raising placards reading "Stop the war in Syria" and "Hands off Syria" during Macron's speech. ___ 12:45 p.m. Syria's state run television says a false alarm - and not an outside aggression and incoming airstrikes - had set off Syrian air defenses early this morning. The TV quotes an unnamed military official as saying on Tuesday that air defenses fired a number of missiles because of a false alarm, without providing more information. Hours earlier, Syrian government-run media said the country's air defenses confronted a new "aggression," shooting down missiles over the central region of Homs and a suburb of Damascus. The reports did not say who carried out the pre-dawn strikes, which were reported by Syrian state TV and the government-run Syrian Central Media. The reports came just a few days after the United States, Britain and France conducted airstrikes targeting alleged chemical weapons facilities in Syria, in retaliation for a suspected poisonous gas attack. ___ 10:40 a.m. The Group of Seven leading industrialized nations has issued a joint statement endorsing the U.S.-led air strikes in Syria. The leaders of Canada, France, Germany, Italy, Japan, Britain, the United States and European Union said in a joint statement early Tuesday that they condemn the April 7 chemical attack in eastern Ghouta in Syria. The G-7 say they "fully support all efforts made by the United States, the United Kingdom and France to degrade the (Bashar) Assad regime's ability to use chemical weapons and to deter any future use" with the strikes. The say the airstrikes last Saturday by the three nations were "limited, proportionate and necessary" and followed "only after exhausting every possible diplomatic option to uphold the international norm against the use of chemical weapons." The G-7 members say they "remain committed to a diplomatic solution to the conflict in Syria." ___ 8:30 a.m. Syrian state-run television has reported that the country's defenses have confronted a new "aggression," shooting down missiles over the central Homs region. It didn't say who carried out the early Tuesday airstrikes. The Syrian Central Media said the missiles targeted Shayrat air base in Homs. Another strike earlier this month in Homs was blamed on Israel. The report comes a few days after the U.S., Britain and France conducted airstrikes targeting alleged chemical weapons facilities in Syria, in retaliation for a suspected chemical weapons attack that they blamed on the Syrian government. Experts from the international chemical weapons watchdog are in Syria and are now expected to visit that site in the town of Douma Wednesday. That's after Syrian and Russian authorities prevented them from going to the scene Monday. U.N. Ambassador from Russia Vasily Nebenzya address the United Nations Security Council meeting on Syria, Tuesday April 17, 2018 at U.N. headquarters. (AP Photo/Bebeto Matthews) Syria's Ambassador to the United Nations Bashar Ja'afari listens during a United Nations Security Council meeting on Syria, Tuesday April 17, 2018 at U.N. headquarters. (AP Photo/Bebeto Matthews) Syrians walk through destruction in the town of Douma, the site of a suspected chemical weapons attack, near Damascus, Syria, Monday, April 16, 2018. Faisal Mekdad, Syria's deputy foreign minister, said on Monday that his country is "fully ready" to cooperate with the fact-finding mission from the Organization for the Prohibition of Chemical Weapons that's in Syria to investigate the alleged chemical attack that triggered U.S.-led airstrikes. (AP Photo/Hassan Ammar) Syrian police units wave and give the victory sign as they patrol in the town of Douma, the site of a suspected chemical weapons attack, near Damascus, Syria, Monday, April 16, 2018. Faisal Mekdad, Syria's deputy foreign minister, said on Monday that his country is "fully ready" to cooperate with the fact-finding mission from the Organization for the Prohibition of Chemical Weapons that's in Syria to investigate the alleged chemical attack that triggered U.S.-led airstrikes. (AP Photo/Hassan Ammar) Syrians walk through the destruction in the town of Douma, the site of a suspected chemical weapons attack, near Damascus, Syria, Monday, April 16, 2018. Faisal Mekdad, Syria's deputy foreign minister, said on Monday that his country is "fully ready" to cooperate with the fact-finding mission from the Organization for the Prohibition of Chemical Weapons that's in Syria to investigate the alleged chemical attack that triggered U.S.-led airstrikes. (AP Photo/Hassan Ammar) BEIJING (AP) - China on Tuesday ordered importers of U.S. sorghum to pay deposits for possible higher tariffs in an anti-dumping investigation, adding to growing trade conflict with Washington. A preliminary ruling by the Commerce Ministry said U.S. sorghum was being sold at improperly low prices, hurting Chinese farmers. It said importers must post bonds of 178.6 percent of the value of their goods to cover possible anti-dumping duties while the probe is completed. Beijing launched the sorghum investigation on Feb. 4 in what some businesspeople saw as a warning shot as President Donald Trump hiked tariffs on Chinese-made washing machines and solar modules. Since then, Trump has threatened to raise duties on up to $150 billion of Chinese goods in a dispute over technology policy. Beijing has responded with its own list of U.S. goods for possible retaliation. The measures on sorghum, a grain used in animal feed and for making the fiery traditional Chinese liquor baijiu, target farm areas that voted for Trump in 2016. China is one of the biggest foreign markets for U.S. sorghum growers. Investigators concluded dumping of U.S. sorghum "substantially damaged" Chinese competitors, the Commerce Ministry said. It said prices of U.S. sorghum fell 13 percent from 2013 to 2017, while shipments increased 14-fold. STRASBOURG, France (AP) - French President Emmanuel Macron on Tuesday urged the European Union to reform itself to offer better protection for its citizens in a world troubled by wars and authoritarian regimes. The 40-year-old leader, who wants to play a key role in the EU, outlined his vision for Europe's future in a speech at the Strasbourg-based European Parliament. Macron said democracy is the "best chance" for the EU to fight rising nationalism on the continent. French President Emmanuel Macron delivers his speech at the European Parliament in Strasbourg, eastern France, Tuesday, April 17, 2018. Macron is expected to outline his vision for the future of Europe to push for deep reforms of the 19-nation eurozone and will launch a drive to seek European citizens' opinions on the European Union's future. (AP Photo/ Jean Francois Badias) "Faced with authoritarianism, the answer is not democratic authoritarianism but the authority of democracy," he said. Macron called for an energetic campaign for the European Parliament election in May 2019 as the EU also deals with the challenges of Britain's departure. He told EU lawmakers that it's important "to have a democratic, critical debate on what Europe is about." Macron said citizens "want a new project" for the EU that addresses their concerns and fears in a world in which allies such as the U.S. are turning their backs on multilateral trade and climate change pacts. All EU countries, except Britain and Hungary, have agreed to seek the opinions of their citizens on the EU's future through debates and online consultations by summer. Macron will attend a debate on Europe in the eastern French town of Epinal later Tuesday. The pro-European leader ruled out any enlargement of the EU until the 28-nation bloc is more deeply integrated and has undergone thorough reform. He said now isn't the time to allow Western Balkans countries to join. Speaking after Macron, European Commission President Jean-Claude Juncker warned that the EU isn't just a club led by France and Germany. Juncker said Macron's arrival in power in France has "given new hope" to the world's biggest trading bloc. But he recalled that "Europe is an ensemble," even with Britain set to leave the EU next year. Macron will meet with German Chancellor Angela Merkel in Berlin on Thursday, as France and Germany aim to agree on proposals for EU reforms by June. During Macron's speech, some European lawmakers raised placards reading "Stop the war in Syria" and "Hands off Syria" to protest joint airstrikes Saturday by U.S., Britain and France on chemical weapons facilities in Syria. Hitting back those who criticized the absence of a U.N. mandate for the airstrikes, Macron showed signs of anger. "(We) are outraged each time by images we've seen of children, women who died of a chlorine attack," he said, almost shouting. "Do we sit back? Do we defend rights by saying: rights are for us, principles are for us, and realities are for other? No! No!" He said the U.S., France and Britain intervened in a "legitimate, multilateral framework" and stressed that the airstrikes specifically targeted three Syrian chemical weapon facilities "without any human life loss." ___ Sylvie Corbet reported from Paris. Lorne Cook contributed from Brussels. French President Emmanuel Macron, right, shakes hands with European Commission President Jean-Claude Juncker at the European Parliament in Strasbourg, eastern France, Tuesday, April 17, 2018. Macron is expected to outline his vision for the future of Europe to push for deep reforms of the 19-nation eurozone and will launch a drive to seek European citizens' opinions on the European Union's future. (AP Photo/ Jean Francois Badias) European lawmakers raise placards reading "Stop the War in Syria" in protest against airstrikes launched by the U.S., Britain and France in Syria last week criticizing the legitimacy of the operation, as French President Emmanuel Macron delivers his speech at the European Parliament in Strasbourg, eastern France, Tuesday, April 17, 2018. Macron is expected to outline his vision for the future of Europe to push for deep reforms of the 19-nation eurozone and will launch a drive to seek European citizens' opinions on the European Union's future. (AP Photo/ Jean Francois Badias) French President Emmanuel Macron, left, listens to European Parliament president Antonio Tajani at the European Parliament in Strasbourg, eastern France, Tuesday, April 17, 2018. Macron is expected to outline his vision for the future of Europe to push for deep reforms of the 19-nation eurozone and will launch a drive to seek European citizens' opinions on the European Union's future. (AP Photo/ Jean Francois Badias) ISLAMABAD (AP) - A Pakistani high court has convicted a former judge and his wife of torturing a 10-year-old child working as a servant at their home and sentenced them to a year in prison. Justice Aamer Farooq of the Islamabad High Court on Tuesday also fined the couple - former deputy district judge Raja Khurram and his wife Maheen - the sum of 100,000 Pakistani rupees, about $900. The case of the girl, Tayyaba, first made headlines when police rescued her in 2016 from the judge's residence in Islamabad, following complaints from neighbors. FILE - In this Jan. 6, 2017 file photo, the wife, center, of a judge is escorted from the Supreme Court by her brother in Islamabad, Pakistan. A Pakistani high court on Tuesday, April 17, 2018 has convicted a former judge and his wife of torturing a 10-year-old child working as a servant at their home and sentenced them to a year in prison. (AP Photo/B.K. Bangash, File) Initially her parents struck a deal to pardon the couple but the Supreme Court, which also acts as a supervisory tribunal, ordered a retrial. Prosecutor Tariq Jahangiri said the verdict was reached after a retrial that lasted one year. STRASBOURG, France (AP) - The Latest on French President Emmanuel Macron's speech to the European Parliament (all times local): 2:50 p.m. German Chancellor Angela Merkel is setting her sights on a meeting with French President Emmanuel Macron later this week as "another building block" toward finding common solutions regarding reforms needed within the European Union. French President Emmanuel Macron listens to speeches at the European Parliament in Strasbourg, eastern France, Tuesday, April 17, 2018 as European lawmakers raise placards reading "Stop the War in Syria" in protest against airstrikes launched by the U.S., Britain and France in Syria last week criticizing the legitimacy of the operation. Macron is expected to outline his vision for the future of Europe to push for deep reforms of the 19-nation eurozone and will launch a drive to seek European citizens' opinions on the European Union's future. (AP Photo/ Jean Francois Badias) Merkel told reporters Tuesday that "more speed is needed" regarding EU reforms on the economy and the eurozone, and also on talks regarding a common asylum policy, cooperation in foreign and defense politics as well as scientific cooperation. Merkel says, "we will find joint solutions with France by (an EU summit in) June ... I'm not worried that we won't be able to put together a solid package." Macron is planning to meet with Merkel on Thursday. The chancellor said there will also be a meeting of French and German ministers soon. ___ 1:50 p.m. Denmark's Prime Minister Lars Loekke Rasmussen has welcomed the speech by French President Emmanuel Macron to the European Parliament, saying it was "good to hear" him "calling for consulting citizens on EU's future." Loekke Rasmussen wrote on Twitter on Tuesday that "we need Europe to work for the citizens - not the other way around." He added "I always believed the #EU should be as close as possible to the citizens," and the European Union "needs to be big on big things and small on small things." Loekke Rasmussen said "rather than a bigger budget, the EU can do more by focusing resources on areas with high EU added value." ___ 12:35 p.m. French President Emmanuel Macron says the European Union shouldn't accept any new member countries until the 28-nation bloc is more deeply integrated and has undergone thorough reform. Macron has told EU lawmakers that he wants to anchor countries of the Western Balkans to the European project, but that now isn't the time to allow any to join. He said: "I will only support an enlargement when there is first a deepening and a reform of our Europe." Macron added: "I don't want a Balkans that turns toward Turkey or Russia, but I don't want a Europe that, functioning with difficulty at 28 and tomorrow as 27, would decide that we can continue to gallop off, to be tomorrow 30 or 32, with the same rules." EU and Balkans leaders meet next month to discuss the volatile region's future, but the 28-nation bloc is unlikely to invite any country in the region to join. ___ 11:40 a.m. French President Emmanuel Macron is proposing creating a new tax on the digital economy to help finance the European Union budget. In a speech in Strasbourg-based EU parliament, Macron called for a reform of the budget of the European Union to take into account Britain's departure. He didn't offer details of his digital proposal, but has called previously for taxing internet giants. He said Tuesday France is ready to increase its own contribution to the EU budget and insisted European countries should work on more closely harmonizing fiscal systems and tax levels. He said he will push for an EU carbon tax in a move to fight against climate change and protect companies taking action to reduce their climate impact. ___ 11.10 a.m. European Commission President Jean-Claude Juncker says the European Union is not just a club led by France and Germany, addressing amid concerns that the EU's traditional driving countries dominate the bloc. Juncker told French President Emmanuel Macron and EU lawmakers Tuesday that "Europe is not only Franco-German. We are 28" member nations. Juncker said Macron's arrival in power in France has "given new hope" to the world's biggest trading bloc. But he recalled that "Europe is an ensemble," even with Britain set to leave the EU next year. ___ 11:00 a.m. French President Emmanuel Macron is calling for an energetic campaign for European Union elections next year as the bloc deals with the challenges of Britain's departure and rising nationalism. Macron told EU lawmakers Tuesday that it's important "to have a democratic, critical debate on what Europe is about" ahead of the election for the European Parliament in May 2019. Macron said citizens "want a new project" for the EU which addresses their concerns and fears in a world where allies such as the U.S. are turning their back on multilateral trade and climate change pacts. ___ 10:50 a.m. French President Emmanuel Macron says democracy is the "best chance" for the European Union to fight against rising nationalism on the continent. Speaking to the EU Parliament in Strasbourg, France, Macron said Tuesday that Europe's democratic model is "unique in the world" and must be preserved amid divisions among EU countries. He said: "Faced with authoritarianism, the answer is not democratic authoritarianism but the authority of democracy." He called on EU countries to defend values of liberty, equality and diversity. ____ 10:00 a.m. French President Emmanuel Macron is expected to outline his vision for the future of Europe as he addresses the European Parliament. In his speech to European lawmakers Tuesday in Strasbourg, France, Macron will launch a drive to seek European citizens' opinions on the European Union's future. Macron said in a television interview Sunday: "It's now that Europe's fate is being decided." Macron wants the EU to "move forward with those who want to move forward, and those who will not follow will have to accept to stay on the margins of Europe." He is also expected to push for deep reforms of the 19-nation eurozone. France and Germany aim to agree on proposals for EU reforms by June. Macron will meet with German Chancellor Angela Merkel in Berlin on Thursday. French President Emmanuel Macron, poses as he is welcomed by European Parliament president Antonio Tajani upon his arrival at the European Parliament in Strasbourg, eastern France, Tuesday, April 17, 2018. In his speech to European lawmakers Tuesday in Strasbourg, France, Macron will launch a drive to seek European citizens' opinions on the European Union's future. (AP Photo/ Jean Francois Badias) ANKARA, Turkey (AP) - Turkey's deputy prime minister says the ruling party will evaluate a call for early presidential and parliamentary elections. Bekir Bozdag's statement on Tuesday came shortly after the leader of Turkey's nationalist party, an ally of President Recep Tayyip Erdogan, said the elections scheduled for November 2019 should be brought forward. Nationalist leader Devlet Bahceli suggested Aug. 26, 2018 as a possible date and said that "there is no point in prolonging this any longer." Erdogan has moved to tighten his grip on politics since a failed coup attempt in 2016. Following a referendum last year, Turkey is switching from a parliamentary system to a presidential system that consolidates most power in the hands of the president. The changes will come into effect with the next elections. THESSALONIKI, Greece (AP) - Greek authorities say hundreds of refugees and other migrants have crossed the land border with Turkey in the past two days, with illegal crossings in the area increasing significantly following Turkey's military operation in northern Syria. Police said Tuesday they detained 370 people the previous day who had crossed the Evros River, which forms a natural border between Greece and Turkey, and another 140 people on Sunday. The land route from Turkey into northeastern Greece has become increasingly popular as conditions deteriorate on Greek islands, long the preferred route, where strict controls are now imposed on movement and camps are overcrowded. Authorities have noted a surge in arrivals across the Evros, with 1,658 people detained in March compared to 586 in February and 262 in March 2017. Your daily look at late-breaking news, upcoming events and the stories that will be talked about today: 1. DEFENDING TRUMP HARDLY A DREAM JOB Lawyers who have been asked to help represent the president have spurned the assignment at least partly out of concerns he wouldn't pay his bills and doesn't listen to legal advice. Michael Cohen, President Donald Trump's personal attorney, center, leaves federal court following a hearing Monday, April 16, 2018, in New York. (AP Photo/Craig Ruttle) 2. STRAINED BACKDROP OVER TRUMP-ABE MEETING The U.S. president's planned meeting with Kim Jong Un and Trump's push for new tariffs is creating unease ahead of a Florida visit from Japan's leader. 3. WHAT SET OFF SYRIAN AIR DEFENSE Underscoring the chaotic dynamic of multiple actors in the war, state TV says it was a false alarm and not an outside aggression and incoming airstrikes. 4. CUBA'S PRESUMPTIVE NEXT LEADER NOT TIPPING HAND Miguel Diaz-Canel has largely stayed out of the limelight and not given Cubans a clear picture of what to expect from his leadership. 5. STARBUCKS FACES IMAGE CRISIS AFTER ARREST OF 2 BLACK MEN The episode at one of its stores in Philadelphia highlights the risks involved for large corporations that tie their brands so closely to social messaging. 6. ISRAELI DOCUMENTARY EXPOSES RAW WOUNDS A new series on the problematic integration of Middle Eastern Jews by Israel's European founders in the 1950s reopens old wounds of an ethnic divide within Judaism. 7. WHERE THE PUSH FOR LEGALIZED POT IS HEADING Utah and Oklahoma, two of the most conservative states in the country, further underscoring how quickly feelings about marijuana are changing in America. 8. SCIENTISTS USE MODEL IN LAND LOSS FIGHT A massive replica of the lower Mississippi River will help experts study the river and how sediment can be used from it to fight coastal erosion. 9. ABC MAKES UNUSUAL DECISION TO RELEASE ALL OF COMEY INTERVIEW The network released a full transcript of its nearly five-hour talk with the former FBI director, including all the material that was not included in the broadcast. 10. VINTAGE PERFORMANCE BY D-WADE LIFTS HEAT Dwyane Wade turns back the clock by scoring 28 points to spoil the 76ers' 17-game winning streak and lead Miami to a 113-103 Game 2 win over Philadelphia. A man rides past destruction in the town of Douma, the site of a suspected chemical weapons attack, near Damascus, Syria, Monday, April 16, 2018. Faisal Mekdad, Syria's deputy foreign minister, said on Monday that his country is "fully ready" to cooperate with the fact-finding mission from the Organization for the Prohibition of Chemical Weapons that's in Syria to investigate the alleged chemical attack that triggered U.S.-led airstrikes. (AP Photo/Hassan Ammar) JAKARTA, Indonesia (AP) - The Indonesian police's seizure of a luxury yacht at the request of the FBI was unlawful, a Jakarta court said Tuesday, in a blow to the U.S. probe into an alleged multibillion-dollar theft of funds from a Malaysian state investment company. At the South Jakarta District Court, Judge Ratmoho, who uses one name, ordered the return of the yacht to its owner. Indonesian police seized the $250 million Equanimity off Bali on Feb. 28 in cooperation with the FBI but were prevented from handing it over to the U.S. after a legal challenge from the yacht's Cayman Islands-registered holding company. Indonesian Equanimity lawyer Andi F. Simangunsong, center, walks after verdict trial at South Jakarta District Court in Jakarta, Indonesia, Tuesday, April 17, 2018. A Jakarta court has ruled against the Indonesian police's seizure of a luxury yacht wanted as part of a U.S. probe into alleged multibillion-dollar theft and laundering of funds from a Malaysian state investment company. The South Jakarta District Court sided Tuesday with lawyers for the yacht's owner, who argued the seizure was not carried out in accordance with Indonesian law.(AP Photo/Tatan Syuflana) The Equanimity is among assets the U.S. Department of Justice alleges were bought by Malaysian national Jho Low using money stolen from 1MDB, the Malaysian fund, and laundered through Singapore, Switzerland, Luxembourg and the U.S. Malaysian Prime Minister Najib Razak was embroiled in the scandal when it emerged that some $700 million had passed through his personal bank accounts. He denied any wrongdoing and said the money was a political donation from the Saudi royal family that was later returned. Ratmoho said the U.S. request for cooperation should have been through Indonesia's Ministry of Law under a 2006 law governing mutual legal assistance. Police should have advised the FBI to follow that process, he said. "Police should only conduct joint operations after mutual legal assistance is agreed by the Ministry of Law and Human Rights," he said. The Department of Justice filed a civil case in June seeking recovery of assets worth several hundred million dollars it says were bought with laundered 1MDB money, including Equanimity. Overall, it says more than $4.5 billion was stolen between 2009 and 2014 from 1MDB, which was set up by Najib to promote economic development. Low, an associate of Najib, had no formal role at the fund but considerable influence over it, according to the U.S. court documents. Andi Simangunsong, a lawyer for Equanimity's holding company, welcomed the ruling and said the court had provided clear guidance to police on dealing with foreign requests for legal cooperation. "There are procedures to be followed under the mutual legal assistance law," he said. "We hope our law enforcers will pay attention to these procedures." Lawyers for police declined to comment. National Police deputy director of economic crimes Daniel Silitonga, who headed the seizure operation, said police would review the court ruling to determine their next steps. "We are now closely coordinating with the FBI to respond to it." Equanimity's lavish amenities include a helicopter landing pad, plunge pool, gymnasium and a cinema. It was built in 2014 by Netherlands yacht manufacturer Oceano, which received detailed instructions from Low about its outfitting, according to the U.S. civil case documents. ___ This story has been corrected to show acronym of Malaysian fund, 1MDB, not 1MBD. DOUMA, Syria (AP) - Two days after Syrian troops declared Douma liberated from rebel fighters and 10 days since a suspected chemical attack, a tour of the town just east of Damascus on Monday revealed widespread destruction and traumatized residents who recalled months spent cowering in crowded underground shelters infested with lice, with barely any food or water. Except for the Russian and Syrian troops patrolling the streets, few people could be seen in Douma, the majority of its residents now displaced to rebel-held areas to the north. The main hospital, courthouse and municipal buildings were largely reduced to rubble, while the nearby Grand Mosque, famed for its towering arches, white dome and majestic palm trees was riddled with bullet and shell holes - testimony to the intense government assault the town was subjected to since being seized by the rebels six years ago. Syrian authorities distribute bread, vegetables and pasta to Douma residents, in the town of Douma, the site of a suspected chemical weapons attack, near Damascus, Syria, Monday, April 16, 2018. Two days after Syrian troops declared Douma, near the capital, Damascus, liberated from rebel fighters and 10 days since a suspected chemical attack, a tour on Monday revealed widespread destruction and traumatized residents who recalled months spent cowering in crowded underground shelters infested with lice, with barely any food or water. (AP Photo/Hassan Ammar) Douma was one of the first areas to rise up against President Bashar Assad's government and until a few weeks ago it was a major threat to his seat of power in Damascus, as rebels pelted it with shells, disrupting normal life. On Saturday, Syrian government forces entered Douma for the first time since 2012, marking the biggest victory for Assad's forces since the conflict began in 2011. On Monday, the few remaining residents were able to move around safely for the first time in months following the crushing government offensive and a yearslong siege, tightened even further last year, that had starved the town, once the bread basket of the capital, of food, medical supplies and other essentials. On an Associated Press tour of the town, organized by the Assad government, hundreds of men, women and children could be seen standing in long lines waiting their turn to get pasta, vegetables and loaves of bread piled on government trucks and handed out for free. "This is the first time I will eat wheat bread in years," said Naim Saqour, an 18-year-old, after receiving a pack of nine Arab loaves from the government employees. Saqour said that he and his family had survived for months on olives and small amounts of barley bread. "Our happiness is double now. We are eating wheat bread and we sleep without fear," said tailor Alaa Khobiyeh. "Most importantly, we sleep above ground not underground." Many residents blamed the greed of some local businessmen and the main rebel group in Douma, the Saudi-backed Army of Islam, for much of their misery, by raising food prices to make more money and hiding the scant food supplies from people in need. After the Army of Islam left town, they said, they discovered the militants had stored large amounts of rice, flour, wheat, canned goods and other food - enough, they said to feed residents for months. Residents also spoke of several local families who used to buy large amounts of food and hoard it to sell later at a far higher price, making most food products out of reach for most people. Wafaa al-Seikh, 60, spoke wistfully of a time, years ago, when she used to cook a different dish for her family of six children and have a shower every day. For the past year, she said she could not afford to pay for staples like sugar, which shot up to 18,000 Syrian pounds ($40) a kilogram (2.2 pounds), from its normal price of 500 Syrian pounds (about $1.10). "A month could pass without having a shower," said the woman, who had rice for the first time in years on Sunday. She described the past two months during the army's offensive to capture Douma as terrifying, with time passing slowly in shelters with little food and lice spreading among residents. Douma was the scene of a suspected chemical weapons attack on April 7 that killed more than 40 people and hastened the rebels' surrender to government forces. During a government-organized trip Monday, survivors spoke to the AP of the horror they witnessed from a chlorine-like substance that killed their neighbors, but they blamed the rebels for the attack, without providing any evidence. The Assad government was working on winning the hearts and minds of Douma residents, handing out the free food Monday and pledging to restore services in a timely fashion. At a meeting on Monday attended by Syrian Finance Minister Maamoun Hamdan, several local bankers and a number of Douma dignitaries, Hamdan promised that services would start improving in coming weeks and mobile bakeries would be deployed in neighborhoods to sell bread, the country's main staple, at cost. Hamdan said that initial funding of 5 billion Syrian pounds ($10.8 million) had been set aside "for different domains, and if it is not enough then we are ready to fund more." Maj. Gen. Issam Shehadeh Al-Hallaj, the chief police commander in the region, said that security forces were manning 15 checkpoints set up outside town to secure public properties and maintain order. He said 60,000 residents remained in the town after tens of thousands of rebels and their families left for rebel-held areas in northern Syria over the past two weeks. "We have deployed patrolling forces in all the squares to save the citizens and to spread security," he said. A Syrian man holds bread as Syrian authorities distributed bread, vegetables and pasta to Douma residents, in the town of Douma, the site of a suspected chemical weapons attack, near Damascus, Syria, Monday, April 16, 2018. Two days after Syrian troops declared Douma liberated from opposition fighters, a tour in the city showed the widespread destruction it has suffered since falling under rebel control six years ago. (AP Photo/Hassan Ammar) Syrian authorities distribute bread, vegetables and pasta to residents in the town of Douma, the site of a suspected chemical weapons attack, near Damascus, Syria, Monday, April 16, 2018. Two days after Syrian troops declared Douma liberated from opposition fighters, a tour in the city showed the widespread destruction it has suffered since falling under rebel control six years ago. (AP Photo/Hassan Ammar) People stand in front of damaged buildings, in the town of Douma, the site of a suspected chemical weapons attack, near Damascus, Syria, Monday, April 16, 2018. Two days after Syrian troops declared Douma liberated from opposition fighters, a tour in the city showed the widespread destruction it has suffered since falling under rebel control six years ago. (AP Photo/Hassan Ammar) A Syrian youth hides breads inside his jacket as authorities distributed bread, vegetables and pasta to Douma residents, in the town of Douma, the site of a suspected chemical weapons attack, near Damascus, Syria, Monday, April 16, 2018. Two days after Syrian troops declared Douma liberated from opposition fighters, a tour in the city showed the widespread destruction it has suffered since falling under rebel control six years ago. (AP Photo/Hassan Ammar) Syrians have their breakfast at a restaurant called Douma gate in the town of Douma, the site of a suspected chemical weapons attack, near Damascus, Syria, Monday, April 16, 2018. Two days after Syrian troops declared Douma liberated from opposition fighters, a tour in the city showed the widespread destruction it has suffered since falling under rebel control six years ago. (AP Photo/Hassan Ammar) A Syrian man walks by damaged buildings in the town of Douma, the site of a suspected chemical weapons attack, near Damascus, Syria, Monday, April 16, 2018. Two days after Syrian troops declared Douma liberated from opposition fighters, a tour in the city showed the widespread destruction it has suffered since falling under rebel control six years ago. (AP Photo/Hassan Ammar) Syrian soldiers ride on a motorcycle in front the grand mosque in the town of Douma, the site of a suspected chemical weapons attack, near Damascus, Syria, Monday, April 16, 2018. Two days after Syrian troops declared Douma liberated from opposition fighters, a tour in the city showed the widespread destruction it has suffered since falling under rebel control six years ago.(AP Photo/Hassan Ammar) Syrian authorities distribute bread, vegetables and pasta to Douma residents in the town of Douma, the site of a suspected chemical weapons attack, near Damascus, Syria, Monday, April 16, 2018. Two days after Syrian troops declared Douma liberated from opposition fighters, a tour in the city showed the widespread destruction it has suffered since falling under rebel control six years ago. (AP Photo/Hassan Ammar) People walk among damaged buildings in the town of Douma, the site of a suspected chemical weapons attack, near Damascus, Syria, Monday, April 16, 2018. Two days after Syrian troops declared Douma liberated from opposition fighters, a tour in the city showed the wide destruction it has suffered since falling under rebel control six years ago. (AP Photo/Hassan Ammar) WASHINGTON (AP) - Former FBI Director James Comey says it's "not OK" or "not normal" for the president to call for private citizens to be jailed. President Donald Trump suggested earlier this week that Comey should be put behind bars and accused him of leaking classified information and lying to Congress. "That is not normal," Comey responded Tuesday during a live interview on ABC's "Good Morning America." ''That is not OK. First of all, he's just making stuff up. But, most importantly, the president of the United States is calling for the imprisonment of a private citizen, as he's done for a whole lot of people who criticize him. That is not acceptable in this country." In this image released by ABC News, former FBI director James Comey appears at an interview with George Stephanopoulos that will air during a primetime "20/20" special on Sunday, April 15, 2018 on the ABC Television Network. Comey's book, "A Higher Loyalty: Truth, Lies, and Leadership," will be released on Tuesday. (Ralph Alswang/ABC via AP) "The president doesn't get to decide who goes to jail," he said. Trump fired Comey in May 2017 amid the FBI's investigation into Russian interference in the 2016 presidential election. The move led the Justice Department to appoint Robert Mueller as special counsel to oversee the investigation, which Trump has denounced as a "witch hunt." Comey, who is promoting his book, "A Higher Loyalty," said in a separate ABC News interview broadcast Sunday that Trump is "morally unfit" to hold office. Trump's campaign issued a fundraising appeal Tuesday that branded Comey as a "grandstanding liar who put his own interests above America's." Comey also commented Tuesday on recent allegations involving his former deputy Andrew McCabe. A Justice Department watchdog recently concluded that McCabe had misled Comey and investigators about a news media disclosure - shortly before the 2016 presidential election - related to the bureau's investigation of Democrat Hillary Clinton's email practices as secretary of state. Comey said the Justice Department process worked well, but was "tainted" by Trump's public calls for McCabe to be fired. Comey said Trump's actions "tainted an institution that pursues the truth." Attorney General Jeff Sessions fired McCabe last month, two days before his retirement was to take effect. This combination photo shows President Donald Trump speaking during a roundtable discussion on tax policy in White Sulphur Springs, W.Va., on April 5, 2018, left, and former FBI director James Comey speaking during a Senate Intelligence Committee hearing on Capitol Hill in Washington on June 8, 2017. Trump fired off a series of tweets ahead of Comey's first interview on his book, "A Higher Loyalty: Truth, Lies, and Leadership," which offers his version of the events surrounding his firing as FBI director by Trump. The interview will air Sunday night on ABC. (AP Photo/Evan Vucci, left, and Andrew Harnik) WASHINGTON (AP) - The Latest on former FBI Director James Comey (all times local): 8:30 a.m. Former FBI Director James Comey says the process that led a Justice Department watchdog to conclude that Comey's former deputy had misled him and investigators about his actions in the Hillary Clinton email investigation worked well. This combination photo shows President Donald Trump speaking during a roundtable discussion on tax policy in White Sulphur Springs, W.Va., on April 5, 2018, left, and former FBI director James Comey speaking during a Senate Intelligence Committee hearing on Capitol Hill in Washington on June 8, 2017. Trump fired off a series of tweets ahead of Comey's first interview on his book, "A Higher Loyalty: Truth, Lies, and Leadership," which offers his version of the events surrounding his firing as FBI director by Trump. The interview will air Sunday night on ABC. (AP Photo/Evan Vucci, left, and Andrew Harnik) But Comey says the process was "tainted" by President Donald Trump publicly calling for the firing FBI deputy director Andrew McCabe. Comey says Trump's actions "tainted an institution that pursues the truth." McCabe was fired two days before his scheduled retirement last month. He has denied the report's allegations that he misled investigators and Comey about a news media disclosure about Clinton days before the 2016 presidential election. Trump fired Comey last year amid the FBI's investigation into Russian election interference. Comey commented Tuesday while promoting his new book on ABC's "Good Morning America." ___ 8:20 a.m. Former FBI Director James Comey says it's "not OK" or "not normal" for the president to call for the jailing of private citizens. President Donald Trump suggested earlier this week that Comey should be jailed and accused him of leaking classified information and lying to Congress. Comey said during a live interview Tuesday on ABC's "Good Morning America" that Trump is "just making stuff up." Comey says Trump calling for him and other perceived enemies to be jailed "is not acceptable in this country" and that "the president doesn't get to decide who goes to jail." Trump fired Comey last year amid the FBI's investigation into Russian interference in the 2016 presidential election. Comey is promoting his book, "A Higher Loyalty." A copy of former FBI Director James Comey's new book, "A Higher Loyalty: Truth, Lies and Leadership," is on display, Friday, April 13, 2018, in New York. In the book, Comey compares U.S. President Donald Trump to a mob boss demanding loyalty, suggests he's unfit to lead and mocks the president's appearance. (AP Photo/Bebeto Matthews) HONG KONG (AP) - A massive Chinese infrastructure program that Beijing says is aimed at promoting global trade and economic growth is actually intended to expand the country's political influence and military presence, according to a report issued Tuesday. The report by the U.S.-based research group C4ADS questions China's portrayal of the trillion-dollar program, called the "Belt and Road Initiative," as strictly meant to promote economic development. President Xi Jinping's signature foreign policy program, it is working to reinforce China's links to Southeast Asia, Europe and Africa through networks of roads, ports, railways, power plants and other infrastructure projects. FILE - In this May 14, 2017, file photo, Chinese President Xi Jinping speaking at the opening of the Belt and Road Forum is displayed on a big screen near decorations depicting Chinese Admiral Zheng He who commanded expeditionary voyages across Asia and East Africa in the 15th century and a modern high speed train in Beijing, China. A new study says the massive Chinese infrastructure program called the "Belt and Road Initiative" that Beijing says is aimed at promoting global trade and economic growth is actually intended to expand the country's political influence and military presence. (AP Photo/Ng Han Guan, File) C4ADS, a nonprofit research institute that specializes in data analysis and security, examined official Chinese policy documents and unofficial reports by Chinese analysts to analyze the intentions of Beijing's ambitious economic development program, which seeks to connect 65 percent of the world's population in more than 60 countries. Chinese officials say the initiative, also known as a modern "Silk Road" harkening back to maritime and land-based trade routes of centuries past, is driven by commercial considerations. They have rejected assertions that it is also meant to expand Beijing's global influence. The report analyzed 15 Chinese-funded port projects in Bangladesh, Sri Lanka, Cambodia, Australia, Oman, Malaysia, Bangladesh, Indonesia, Djibouti and elsewhere in the Indo-Pacific region. It concluded that projects aren't driven by "win-win" economic development for the individual host countries, as Beijing claims. "Rather, the investments appear to generate political influence, stealthily expand China's military presence and create an advantageous strategic environment in the region," it said. China's Foreign Ministry rejected the findings, saying in a statement that Belt and Road is "essentially an economic cooperation initiative" promoting common development through infrastructure. "China is not playing a geopolitical game," it said. While there's no official policy document linking Belt and Road to China's national security interests, Chinese analysts have written that developing the program and pursuing Chinese security are "intimately linked," the report said. The analysts don't represent official thinking but the authors believe what they say could influence decision-makers promoting the Belt and Road Initiative. "Many of these observers recognize that a network of maritime logistics hubs throughout the Indo-Pacific, including ports, has the potential to change the region's strategic landscape, and several explicitly describe the role of infrastructure investment in Chinese grand strategy," the report said. The projects shared characteristics that, taken together, pointed to China's security intent, the report said. These include being in strategic locations such as entrances to the contested South China Sea, in an apparent effort by Beijing to ease its worries about energy imports and potential blockades. The port projects involve dual civilian-military use, Communist Party influence through the involvement of Chinese state-owned companies and control through equity stakes or long-term leases and a lack of transparency and expected profitability, it said. Peter Cai, a fellow at Australia's Lowy Institute think tank who has studied Belt and Road, said he was somewhat skeptical about claims China was using port projects to advance military goals, given the difficulty of coordinating so many different investments, some of which might involve "independent actors." However, he said it's clear China's political influence would expand over countries it connects with. The new links will increase economic activity, which means "you're going to have economic influence and we all know that economic influence easily translates into political leverage and power," Cai said. One of the most controversial projects is in Sri Lanka, where the government signed a 99-year lease agreement for the unprofitable Hambantota Port, located along a busy Indian Ocean shipping lane, along with land to develop a free-trade zone, to a Chinese-controlled company, in a deal opposed by neighboring residents and monks. "China appears to have established financial leverage over Sri Lanka through investment in alleged vanity projects" worth billions of dollars signed as Beijing courted the country's previous president, Mahinda Rajapaksa, the report said. Debt levels for those projects prevented his successor from extricating the country from the deals and pivoting Sri Lanka away from China's influence, it said. FILE - In this Nov. 13, 2016, file photo, a Pakistan Navy soldier stands guard while a loaded Chinese ship prepares to depart, at Gwadar port, about 700 kilometers (435 miles) west of Karachi. Pakistan. A new study says the massive Chinese infrastructure program called the "Belt and Road Initiative" that Beijing says is aimed at promoting global trade and economic growth is actually intended to expand the country's political influence and military presence. (AP Photo/Muhammad Yousuf, File) ST. PETERSBURG, Fla. (AP) - When you think of Florida, the colored stone walls of the Grand Canyon don't come to mind. Neither do cowboys, wolves or Native American silver-and-turquoise jewelry. In downtown St. Petersburg, all of those icons of the American West are on display in a new museum. It's called the James Museum of Western & Wildlife Art, and it opened this month. The 80,000-square-foot (7,400-square-meter) space is two blocks from the glittering blue waters of Tampa Bay. But at the museum's front door, visitors are transported west. For vacationers in the Gulf Coast city, it will be a fascinating cultural respite from sun, sand and palm trees. This April 11, 2018 photo shows visitors looking at an installation inside the James Museum of Western & Wildlife Art in St. Petersburg, Fla. When you think of Florida, the Grand Canyon's colored stone walls don't come to mind. Neither do cowboys, wolves or Native American silver-and-turquoise jewelry. In downtown St. Petersburg, all of those icons of the American West are on display in the new museum. (AP Photo/Tamara Lush) THE BUILDING The entrance is through a sandstone sculptural exterior evoking mesas of the American Southwest. That aesthetic - of cliffs and cave dwellings and vertical forms - runs throughout the museum. A two-story black granite waterfall is the centerpiece of the entrance. A high ceiling and cubist angles frame a bank of windows at the entrance, allowing Florida's sun to shine through. Through the gift shop, a massive wooden bar that looks like something out of a Nevada saloon is the centerpiece for the cafe. It's a 19th century antique in itself, from a hotel in San Francisco. THE ART There are 400 pieces on display, from large sculptures of Native Americans on horseback to pop-art conceptual paintings of the pioneer spirit. It's unusually earthy and rustic fare, especially for a state that's known for beaches, alligators and sanitized theme parks. Even the gallery walls are painted in earthy, Southwestern colors. All of the art was collected over decades by billionaire Thomas James, chairman emeritus of the Raymond James financial services company, and his wife Mary. Much of the art once decorated the corporate offices of the company, which is based in St. Petersburg. "The collection is inspired by Tom's fascination with cowboy lore," museum director Bernice Chu said. Many Western-themed collections in other parts of the country showcase works from the 19th and early 20th centuries, like Frederic Remington's famous depictions of the Old West. What's different about this collection is that nearly all the artists featured are still alive. The collection is organized in six themes. Native American life includes artwork that tells the story of the complicated and often brutal history of how Native Americans were treated. A room called "The Jewel Box" in the Native American artists area displays contemporary Native American jewelry owned by Mary James, who has "free rein" to dip into the collection and take out "anything she wants" to wear, Chu said. A wildlife exhibition is the only one that's not dedicated to the West. That display includes paintings and sculptures of animals from around the globe, which will delight younger visitors. ST. PETE, ARTS HUB The Museum of Western & Wildlife Art is the latest museum in a city that's increasingly becoming known as an arts hub. One of the museum's architects, Jann Weymouth, created another unique local institution: the nearby Dali museum, which is devoted to works of Spanish artist Salvador Dali. In 2019, the Museum of the American Arts and Crafts Movement is expected to open, housing businessman Rudy Ciccarello's collection of furniture, pottery, tile, metalwork, lighting, photography and other decorative arts from the late 19th and early 20th centuries. IF YOU GO ... JAMES MUSEUM OF WESTERN & WILDLIFE ART: 150 Central Ave., St. Petersburg, Florida; https://thejamesmuseum.org . Open daily, 10 a.m.-5 p.m., and on Tuesdays until 8 p.m. Adults, $20. Students, military, seniors $15; children ages 7-18, $10; kids 6 and under free. ___ Follow Tamara Lush on Twitter at http://twitter.com/tamaralush ___ This story has corrected the name of the Raymond James company. This April 11, 2018 photo shows an installation view inside the James Museum of Western & Wildlife Art in St. Petersburg, Fla. When you think of Florida, the Grand Canyon's colored stone walls don't come to mind. Neither do cowboys, wolves or Native American silver-and-turquoise jewelry. In downtown St. Petersburg, all of those icons of the American West are on display in the new museum. (AP Photo/Tamara Lush) BINGHAMTON, N.Y. (AP) - A Binghamton University student accused of fatally stabbing a 19-year-old freshman in a dormitory has pleaded not guilty. A public defender representing 20-year-old Michael Roque of Massapequa, New York, entered the plea on his behalf late Monday. Roque faces a second-degree murder charge in the killing of Joao Souza on Sunday night in a residence suite on the New York state campus near the Pennsylvania state line. Roque was found Monday at his dormitory. The university says Souza had attended high school in New York and was a native of Brazil. University officials say investigators believe the suspect targeted Souza. Police and the district attorney would not provide a possible motive. University president Harvey Stenger said in a statement that police are working with the community to keep the campus safe. BUCHAREST, Romania (AP) - Romanian prosecutors on Tuesday formally indicted former President Ion Iliescu for crimes against humanity over his role in deaths that occurred during the anti-communist revolution. Iliescu, 88, appeared at the general prosecutor's office to hear the charges against him. He didn't comment. Iliescu came to power during the 1989 revolt in which Communist leader Nicolae Ceausescu was toppled and executed. FILE - In this Thursday, May 17, 2007 file photo, former Romanian President Ion Iliescu gestures during a meeting with foreign media in Bucharest, Romania. Romania's president has approved a request to prosecute a former president and prime minister on charges of crimes against humanity for their roles in the country's bloody anti-communist revolution. President Klaus Iohannis says Friday, April 13, 2018 former President Ion Iliescu, former Premier Petre Roman, and an ex-deputy prime minister can be prosecuted. (AP Photo/Vadim Ghirda, File) Prosecutors said Tuesday that Iliescu, who gained control of the military during the uprising, had failed to prevent "numerous situations" where people were needlessly killed. President Klaus Iohannis last week approved a request to allow the prosecution of Iliescu, a former premier and another former high-ranking official. More than 1,100 people died during the uprising, the vast majority after Ceausescu's ouster when Iliescu had taken power. Iliescu recently defended his role during the revolt, and called moves to prosecute him "a farce, insulting the sacrifice and memory of those who fought for freedom and democracy." Investigation into the revolution has been halted and reopened several times. Only two generals have been convicted for the revolution deaths and doubts remain whether the uprising was a true revolution or a military coup. Military investigators who last reopened the file in 2016 said the "new political and military leadership" which took control after Ceausescu's ouster caused the deaths of many people in their bid to maintain power. Prosecutors say that state media broadcast fake news creating a state of panic and some of the evidence relating to the uprising has been destroyed. SAN DIEGO (AP) - President Donald Trump on Tuesday slammed California Gov. Jerry Brown's posture on sending National Guard troops to the Mexican border even as Brown said he was nearing agreement on joining the president's mission. The volley of words came a day after federal officials said Brown rejected a proposal for the California Guard's specific border duties, a characterization that state officials disputed. "Looks like Jerry Brown and California are not looking for safety and security along their very porous Border," Trump said in an early-morning tweet. "He cannot come to terms for the National Guard to patrol and protect the Border." FILE - In this June 21, 2006 file photo, members of the California National Guard work next to the U.S.-Mexico border fence near the San Ysidro Port of Entry in San Diego. President Donald Trump slammed California Gov. Jerry Brown's posture on sending National Guard troops to the Mexican border Tuesday, April 17, 2018, even as Brown said he was nearing agreement on joining the president's mission and that his troops were "chomping at the bit ready to go." (AP Photo/Denis Poroy, File) Brown's office responded with a tweet reiterating its public stance that nothing has changed since the governor pledged 400 troops last week and that the state was waiting on a response to proposed contract that would include a ban on any activities related to immigration enforcement. The Democratic governor said California was "pretty close" to an agreement with the administration to join the nation's three other Mexican border states - Arizona, New Mexico and Texas - for the Guard's third large-scale border deployment since 2006. Brown expressed strong interest in work against drug and gun smuggling and human trafficking, noting that the California Guard already had about 50 troops near the border on such efforts. "It is a very logical next step to add a couple hundred more, or more than that, and the Guard is chomping at the bit ready to go and so, I think we'll get there," Brown told reporters at the National Press Club in Washington. The Republican governors of Arizona, New Mexico and Texas have openly embraced the administration's plans and specific jobs for their troops, along with Trump's premise to fight illegal immigration and drugs. Troops from Texas are already doing aerial and ground surveillance to assist the Border Patrol. The Arizona National Guard said last week that its troops will provide air and ground support. Brown has conditioned his contribution of 400 troops on avoiding any immigration work, even in a supporting role. Talks with the federal government on what specific jobs that would entail are ongoing. It is unclear how troops would distinguish work related on immigration from drug smuggling and other crimes. Ronald Vitiello, U.S. Customs and Border Protection's acting deputy commissioner, said Monday that Brown rejected terms of an initial troop rollout that was similar to plans for Arizona, New Mexico and Texas. But Vitiello emphasized that California may contribute in other ways must still be worked out. Robert Salesses, the Defense Department's deputy assistant secretary for homeland defense integration, said the initial phase had called for 237 California troops. According to two U.S. officials, the federal government's initial rollout of National Guard member border duties includes fixing and maintaining vehicles, using remote-control surveillance cameras to report suspicious activity to U.S. Border Patrol agents, operating radios and providing "mission support," which can include clerical work, buying gas and handling payrolls. The officials spoke to The Associated Press on condition of anonymity because they were not authorized to discuss the matter. Brown elicited rare and effusive praise from Trump last week when he pledged 400 troops, which helped put the president above the lower end of his threshold of marshaling 2,000 to 4,000 troops for his border mission. The governor cast his decision as a welcome infusion of support paid for by the U.S. government to fight transnational criminal gangs and drug and firearms smugglers. The Guard had about 900 troops working on the border mission Monday, a number that changes daily, said Lt. General Daniel R. Hokanson, the National Guard Bureau's vice chief. Nearly 250 were in Arizona, more than 60 in New Mexico and about 650 in Texas. ___ Associated Press writers Kathleen Ronanye in Sacramento, California, and Darlene Superville in Washington contributed to this report. This Oct. 16, 2017, photo shows the California National Guard deployed near Santa Rosa, Calif. President Donald Trump slammed California Gov. Jerry Brown's posture on sending National Guard troops to the Mexican border Tuesday, April 17, 2018, even as Brown said he was nearing agreement on joining the president's mission and that his troops were "chomping at the bit ready to go." (Kent Porter/The Press Democrat via AP) FILE - In this Jan. 25, 2018 file photo, California Gov. Jerry Brown delivers his annual State of the State address before a joint session of the Legislature in Sacramento, Calif. President Donald Trump slammed Brown's posture on sending National Guard troops to the Mexican border Tuesday, April 17, 2018, even as Brown said he was nearing agreement on joining the president's mission and that his troops were "chomping at the bit ready to go." (AP Photo/Rich Pedroncelli, File) FILE - In this March 13, 2018 file photo, President Donald Trump speaks during a tour as he reviews border wall prototypes in San Diego. Trump slammed California Gov. Jerry Brown's posture on sending National Guard troops to the Mexican border Tuesday, April 17, 2018, even as Brown said he was nearing agreement on joining the president's mission and that his troops were "chomping at the bit ready to go." (AP Photo/Evan Vucci, File) DUBAI, United Arab Emirates (AP) - Britain's famed Queen Elizabeth 2 cruise ship will finally open as a floating luxury hotel moored off Dubai, nearly a decade after completing its last ocean voyage. It's been another long trip for the ship known as the QE2 to even open to the public, as Dubai's financial meltdown and years of slow growth nearly sank the project and left the ship languishing at port. After initially planning to gut the vessel, Dubai's government ultimately decided to restore the ship at a cost of over $100 million, down to replicating its 1960s carpeting, with work still underway. "It's like walking into a time capsule - this is the ship in 1969. It's a hotel and a museum," said Hamza Mustafa, the CEO of Dubai's Ports, Customs and Free Zone Corp.'s investment arm. "We've put in 2.7 million man hours working on her ... making sure that she can really shine." Hamza Mustafa, the CEO of Dubai's Ports, Customs and Free Zone Corp.'s investment arm, passes slot machines that will remain turned off as gambling is illegal, aboard the Queen Elizabeth 2, moored off the Mideast city-state of Dubai, United Arab Emirates, Tuesday, April 17, 2018. Britain's famed luxury cruise ship finally will have a soft opening Wednesday as a floating luxury hotel nearly a decade after arriving here following her last ocean voyage. (AP Photo/Kamran Jebreili) "She's going to live on for many more years now in her final home in Dubai," he added. The QE2, built by Cunard and put to sea in 1969, is the second ship the company named after the wife of King George VI, not the current British monarch - hence the number rather than the Roman numeral. The luxury ship traveled some 6 million miles in decades of service even as airlines came to dominate trans-Atlantic travel. It carried 2.5 million passengers and crossed the Atlantic more than 800 times. Britain requisitioned the ship as a troop carrier for the Falklands War against Argentina in 1982. In 2007, Cunard sold the QE2 to an arm of the state-run conglomerate Dubai World for 50 million pounds ($100 million). She arrived to Dubai's Port Rashid the following year as part of a glitzy armada led by a mega-yacht owned by Dubai's ruler, Sheikh Mohammed bin Rashid Al Maktoum, at the height of the former British protectorate's real-estate bubble. An economic crash left the QE2's owners in debt for billions of dollars. Rumors circulated for years after that the ship could be sold. All the while, she sat mothballed at Port Rashid near Dubai's historic downtown creek, a 149,000-ton reminder of the crash. Three years ago, the Dubai government's Ports, Customs and Free Zone Corp. took over the project. It marks the first foray into hotels for the corporation, said Mustafa, who previously served as a managing director at the government-owned developer Nakheel and at the investment arm of Dubai World. He said the corporation planned to open other hotels in the future. The ship has been hooked up to Dubai's power grid, but still floats in the Persian Gulf. An Associated Press team that visited the ship Tuesday could feel her list slightly while walking through portions of her completed passageways. "She lists. She's supposed to that, she's a ship," Mustafa said. Today, around seven of the QE2's 13 decks are under operation, with 224 cabins available, Mustafa said. Prices will range from $150 a night in the simplest berthing to $15,000 a night for the Queen Elizabeth and Queen Mary suites, he said. A green-hued British pub and other restaurants will serve alcohol, a common practice across Dubai's hotels. However, its nickel, quarter and dollar slot machines will remain turned off as gambling is illegal. The ship also will feature shops run by Dubai Duty Free, the government-run conglomerate that had $1.93 billion of sales in 2017, with 9.7 million cans of beer and 7.4 million bottles of liquor and wine sold. Workers hurried across the ship Tuesday to finish up work ahead of the hotel's soft opening Wednesday. By October, Mustafa said the hotel hopes to have a grand opening with "600 to 800 rooms" ready. "If you want to come and have a sense of how it was during the ocean liner era but at the same time being a doorstep away from Dubai, this is the place you want to be," he said. "We're not a theme. We're not a concept. This is what this ship was." ___ Online: Queen Elizabeth 2 hotel: www.qe2.com ___ Follow Jon Gambrell on Twitter at www.twitter.com/jongambrellap . His work can be found at http://apne.ws/2galNpz . The Queen Elizabeth 2 is moored off the Mideast city-state of Dubai, United Arab Emirates, Tuesday, April 17, 2018. Britain's famed luxury cruise ship finally will have a soft opening Wednesday as a floating luxury hotel nearly a decade after arriving here following her last ocean voyage. (AP Photo/Kamran Jebreili) The Queen Elizabeth is moored off the Mideast city-state of Dubai, United Arab Emirates, Tuesday, April 17, 2018. Britain's famed luxury cruise ship finally will have a soft opening Wednesday as a floating luxury hotel nearly a decade after arriving here following her last ocean voyage. (AP Photo/Kamran Jebreili) The Queen Elizabeth 2 is moored at the Rashid Port off the Mideast city-state of Dubai, United Arab Emirates, Tuesday, April 17, 2018. Britain's famed luxury cruise ship finally will have a soft opening Wednesday as a floating luxury hotel nearly a decade after arriving here following her last ocean voyage. (AP Photo/Kamran Jebreili) The refurbished bar is ready to receive guests aboard the Queen Elizabeth 2, moored off the Mideast city-state of Dubai, United Arab Emirates, Tuesday, April 17, 2018. Britain's famed luxury cruise ship finally will have a soft opening Wednesday as a floating luxury hotel nearly a decade after arriving here following her last ocean voyage. (AP Photo/Kamran Jebreili) WARSAW, Poland (AP) - A Polish nationalist group asked prosecutors Tuesday to investigate whether Israel's president broke a law that criminalizes falsely blaming Poland for the Holocaust crimes of Nazi Germany. The National Movement said it thinks Israeli President Reuven Rivlin might have violated the new Holocaust speech law during a visit to Auschwitz last week. At issue in the group's complaint are comments in which Rivlin reportedly told Polish President Andrzej Duda that Poland allowed the implementation of Germany's genocide, National Movement Vice President Krzysztof Bosak said. Poland's President Andrzej Duda, left, and Israel's President Reuven Rivlin, center, walk in the March of the Living, a yearly Holocaust remembrance march between the former death camps of Auschwitz and Birkenau, in Oswiecim, Poland, on Thursday, April 12, 2018. (AP Photo/Czarek Sokolowski) The alleged comments during commemorations at Auschwitz last Thursday were carried in Israeli media and were not part of Rivlin's public remarks. Bosak said it would be unacceptable if Rivlin asserted that Poland bears any responsibility for the Holocaust. While the National Movement understands that diplomatic immunity protects the Israeli president from prosecution, it wants the nature of the president's remarks to be clarified, he said. "We are interested in the truth of what he said," Bosak said. "It is important for us." He also said his group was seeking to test the law, which is not being enforced in practice after sparking a dispute with Israel. The law, which formally took effect in March, criminalizes blaming Poland for crimes committed by Nazi German forces during their wartime occupation. The Polish government says its aim is to prevent Poland from unfairly being blamed for crimes that Germany committed on occupied Polish soil. Israel, however, fears the true intent is to whitewash Polish crimes by repressing discussion about those Poles who helped the Germans kill Jews during the wartime occupation. BRUSSELS (AP) - The Latest on the political situation in the Balkans (all times local): 9:20 p.m. Macedonia's prime minister has promised to press ahead with reforms in the justice system, public administration and anti-corruption arena to bolster the country's bid to join the European Union. European Union foreign policy chief Federica Mogherini speaks with the media as she arrives for a meeting of EU foreign ministers at the EU Council building in Luxembourg on Monday, April 16, 2018. (AP Photo/Virginia Mayo) Prime Minister Zoran Zaev made the pledge on Tuesday while warmly welcoming the European Commission's recommendation to start membership talks with Macedonia and Albania. Macedonia was granted EU-candidate status in 2005. An ongoing name dispute with neighbor Greece over the former Yugoslav republic's name delayed its progress toward joining the bloc. Zaev's government has launched negotiations with Greece aimed at resolving the longstanding dispute. The small Balkan country also is seeking membership of NATO, despite strong objections from Russia. ___ 7 p.m. Kosovo's president has called on the European Union to offer clearer prospects and treat it equally on its path to membership in the bloc. Hashim Thaci says that Kosovo remains committed and with "the proper will to intensify its steps toward integration into the EU." EU foreign policy chief Federica Mogherini urged Kosovo to continue reforms and talks with Serbia, "including on the achievement of a legally binding agreement." Thaci urged Brussels to lift the visa regime for Kosovars after it approved last month a long-pending border demarcation deal with Montenegro set as a precondition from Brussels for Kosovo's citizens to travel without visas in Europe's Schengen travel zone, the last among former Eastern European countries. In 2008, Kosovo declared independence from Serbia, which Belgrade still rejects. ___ 6:20 p.m. Albania is hailing the European Commission's recommendation to launch membership talks while acknowledging the country faces a rough path to join the bloc. Prime Minister Edi Rama said the commission's backing Tuesday shows the tiny Western Balkan country has "at last come out of a crossroad between the past and the future." Rama said during a news conference that launching membership negotiations would mean "entering into a new stage, more difficult, of the reforms and further escalation of the fight against crime and corruption." Albanian Foreign Affairs Minister Ditmir Bushati called it a "great day for Albania," but also "a day to roll up sleeves and carry on the hard work." Albania was granted EU candidate status in 2014. ___ 4:10 p.m. The European Commission is recommending that the EU launch membership talks with Albania and Macedonia, even as enthusiasm for enlargement of the 28-nation bloc wanes. The EU's executive arm, which monitors reform progress among countries hoping to join, said Tuesday that the two are on the right path. EU foreign policy chief Federica Mogherini said the recommendations "are based on firm, strict assessment of progress made." She added that "this decision to recommend opening negotiations is an encouragement to these countries to continue on the path of reforms." Macedonia's membership prospects have been held up by a dispute with Greece over the tiny Balkan country's name. EU member states must endorse the European Commission's proposal before talks can start. ___ 11:30 a.m. European Commission President Jean-Claude Juncker is warning that the volatile Balkans could face a return to war if countries in the region have no hope of joining the European Union. Juncker told EU lawmakers Tuesday: "I don't want a return to war in the Western Balkans." He said: "If we remove from these countries, in this extremely complicated region, I should say tragically, a European perspective, we are going to live what we already went through in the 1990s." EU and Balkan leaders meet in Bulgaria next month, but the EU is unlikely to invite any country to join soon. The prospect of EU membership has proved a driving force for reform in the Balkans, which was torn apart by war as former Yugoslavia broke up. BRATISLAVA, Slovakia (AP) - Slovakia's national police chief will resign following street protests against him as the nation struggles with a political crisis triggered by the slayings of an investigative journalist and his fiancee. Prime Minister Peter Pellegrini says Tibor Gaspar will step down May 31 to calm tensions in the small European Union nation. The Feb. 21 shooting deaths of reporter Jan Kuciak and Martina Kusnirova sparked large street protests that forced former Prime Minister Robert Fico's three-party coalition government to step down. Slovakian Prime Minister and interim Interior Minister Peter Pellegrini, left, shakes hands with Police Corps President Tibor Gaspar during the press conference in Bratislava, Slovakia, Tuesday, April 17, 2018. Gaspar will step down from his post at the end of May, according to a statement by Pellegrini, and Pellegrini will step into the role as interim Interior Minister, following the resignation of Tomas Drucker. (Pavel Neubauer /TASR via AP) Kuciak was investigating possible widespread government corruption and ties with Italian mobsters. A new government was appointed but it was made up of same three parties and the street protests continued. The protesters, backed by President Andrej Kiska, have demanded an independent investigation into the slayings and Gaspar's dismissal. BERLIN (AP) - Fragments of a meteorite that fell to Earth about a decade ago provide compelling evidence of a lost planet that once roamed our solar system, according to a study published Tuesday. Researchers from Switzerland, France and Germany examined diamonds found inside the Almahata Sitta meteorite and concluded they were most likely formed by a proto-planet at least 4.55 billion years ago. The diamonds in the meteorite, which crashed in Sudan's Nubian Desert in October 2008, have tiny crystals inside them that would have required great pressure to form, said one of the study's co-authors, Philippe Gillet. Photo provided by Hillary Sanctuary of EPFL shows a thin slice of the meteorite sample from a meteorite that fell to Earth more than a decade ago providing compelling evidence of a lost planet that once roamed our solar system, according to a study published Tuesday. (Hillary Sanctuary/EPFL via AP) "We demonstrate that these large diamonds cannot be the result of a shock but rather of growth that has taken place within a planet," he told The Associated Press in a telephone interview from Switzerland. Gillet, a planetary scientist at the Federal Institute of Technology in Lausanne, said researchers calculated a pressure of 200,000 bar (2.9 million psi) would be needed to form such diamonds, suggesting the mystery planet was as least as big as Mercury, possibly even Mars. Scientists have long theorized that the early solar system once contained many more planets - some of which were likely little more than a mass of molten magma. One of these embryo planets - dubbed Theia - is believed to have slammed into a young Earth, ejecting a large amount of debris that later formed the moon. "What we're claiming here," said Gillet, "is that we have in our hands a remnant of this first generation of planets that are missing today because they were destroyed or incorporated in a bigger planet." Addi Bischoff, a meteorite expert at the University of Muenster, Germany, said the methods used for the study were sound and the conclusion was plausible. But further evidence of sustained high pressure would be expected to be found in the minerals surrounding the diamonds, he said. Bischoff wasn't involved in the study, which was published in the journal Nature Communications. ___ This story has been corrected to show that the meteorite fragments fell to Earth about a decade ago, not more than a decade ago. NIAMEY, Niger (AP) - Niger's military has detained a suspect who it believes could be the militant leader who was being pursued when an ambush left four American soldiers dead in October, the American ambassador said Tuesday. U.S. Ambassador Eric P. Whitaker told The Associated Press he does not know the identity of the detained suspect but that the head of Niger's special forces is hopeful it's a known extremist leader. At the time of the October ambush that also left five Nigeriens dead, U.S. forces and their counterparts from the Niger military were pursuing Doundou Chefou, a militant suspected of being involved in the kidnapping of an American aid worker. Authorities on Tuesday were awaiting identification of whether the man in custody is Chefou. "Detentions by Nigerien forces are ongoing," Whitaker said. A U.S. investigation into the October ambush, which was claimed by fighters linked to the Islamic State group, has not yet been released. "Regrettably, they were ambushed by ISIS Greater Sahara forces," said Whitaker. U.S. officials familiar with the military investigation into the Niger ambush said last month that it concluded the team didn't get required senior command approval for their risky mission to capture Chefou. As a result, commanders couldn't accurately assess the mission's risk, according to the officials who spoke on condition of anonymity to discuss the results of the not-yet-released investigation. The investigation finds no single point of failure leading to the attack, which occurred after the soldiers learned Chefou had left the area. It also draws no conclusion about whether villagers in Tongo Tongo, where the U.S. team stopped for water and supplies, alerted IS militants to American forces in the area. Still, questions remain about whether higher-level commanders - if given the chance - would have approved the mission, or provided additional resources for it. Before October, there had not been any major incursion like that into Niger before, said the commander of Special Operations Command Africa, Maj. Gen. Marcus Hicks, who warned that the extremist threat has been marching south in the Sahel at an unprecedented level. Threats in the region include al-Qaida-linked fighters in Mali and Burkina Faso, Islamic State group-affiliated fighters in Niger, Mali and Nigeria and the Nigeria-based Boko Haram. All take advantage of the vast region's widespread poverty and poorly equipped security forces. U.S. special operations forces have been advising local troops on the continent for years, just under 1,000 across Africa. Even before the October attack, the U.S. began to shift away from assisting tactical units on the front lines toward training, advising and assisting farther up the chain of command at the battalion level, Hicks said. ___ Lolita C. Baldor contributed to this story from Washington. ___ Follow Carley Petesch at https://twitter.com/carleypetesch Today is Tax Day, the day when individual income tax returns are due to the federal government. Here are five facts you should know about income taxes and Tax Day: 1. The first national income tax in the United States was in 1861 soon after the outbreak of the Civil War. Congress approved a national income tax, signed into law by President Lincoln on August 5, 1861, which provided for a flat tax of three percent on annual income above the personal exemption of $800.50 (equivalent to $22,183.98 in 2017 dollars). Because so little money was collected that first year, Congress passed the Internal Revenue Act of 1862, which created the Internal Revenue Service. The tax expired soon after the war ended. 2. In 1894, the Wilson-Gorman Tariff Act revived the income tax once again, imposing a two percent tax on incomes over $4,000 ($115,011.25 in 2017 dollars). The next year the Supreme Court ruled in Pollock v. Farmers Loan and Trust Company that the income tax provision of the Act was a direct tax, and thus violated Article I of the Constitution, which stated taxes had to be levied in proportion to a states population. 3. In the 1890s the federal government depended primarily on tariff duties and excise taxes as its chief sources of revenue. These types of taxes are regressive (i.e., take a larger percentage of a poor persons income) so many Americans were in favor of replacing them with a progressive income tax, which would put more of the tax burden on the wealthy. Because of the ruling in Pollock, a constitutional amendment was needed to reinstitute a national income tax. The proposed 16th Amendment was approved by the Senate (77-0) and the House (318-14) and ratified by 42 states by 1913. 4. In 1913 Tax Day was set for March 1. It was moved to March 15 in 1918 and to April 15 in 1955. If April 15th falls on weekend, the deadline is moved to Monday. Tax Day sometimes conflicts with two local holidays: Emancipation Day, a holiday in Washington, D.C. commemorating the emancipation in April 1862 of African slaves, and Patriots Day, a holiday in Maine and Massachusetts that celebrates the Battles of Lexington and Concord on April 19, 1776, that initiated the American Revolutionary War. In such cases where there is a conflict with those local holidays, the deadline is moved for the entire nation. 5. Based on research by the American Action Forum (AAF), the IRS currently imposes 8.1 billion hours of paperwork and generates more than 1,000 different types of tax forms. AAF calculates that this amounts to 25 hours per person in the U.S. or 54 hours per taxpayer. In other words, the average working American spends more than the equivalent of one work-week sifting through paperwork and preparing to file income taxes. WASHINGTON (AP) - The Latest on President Donald Trump and adult film star Stormy Daniels (all times local): 11:35 a.m. The porn actress alleging a sexual affair with President Donald Trump has released a composite sketch of the man she says threatened her in a Las Vegas parking lot to stay quiet about the relationship. This image released by ABC shows co-host Joy Behar, from left, adult film actress Stormy Daniels, and attorney Michael Avenatti during an appearance on the daytime talk show "The View," Tuesday, April 17, 2018, in New York. Daniels released a composite sketch Tuesday of the man she says threatened her in a Las Vegas parking lot to stay quiet about her past sexual tryst with President Donald Trump. Avenatti says they are offering $100,000 for information leading to the man's identification. (Heidi Gutman/ABC via AP) Stormy Daniels unveiled the picture on ABC's "The View" Tuesday. She says she was threatened to keep quiet about her tryst with Trump by an unidentified man in a Las Vegas parking lot in 2011. Daniels, whose legal name is Stephanie Clifford, says she didn't report the alleged threat at the time because she was scared. Her attorney says they are offering $100,000 for information leading to the man's identification. Daniels says she had sex with Trump in 2006 and that Trump's personal attorney, Michael Cohen, paid her $130,000 days before the 2016 election for her silence. ___ 11:25 a.m. The porn actress alleging a sexual affair with President Donald Trump says she is "done being bullied." Stormy Daniels appeared on ABC's "The View" Tuesday. She said she is speaking out because she is tired of being threatened. She also said this relationship isn't what she wants to be known for. Daniels, whose legal name is Stephanie Clifford, says she had sex with Trump in 2006 and that Trump's personal attorney Michael Cohen paid her $130,000 days before the 2016 election for her silence. In a recent CBS interview, she said she was threatened to keep quiet by an unidentified man in a Las Vegas parking lot in 2011. JEFFERSON CITY, Mo. (AP) - The Latest on allegations against Missouri Gov. Eric Greitens (all times local): 7:40 p.m. Missouri's Republican legislative leadership is calling for fellow GOP Gov. Eric Greitens to resign, but the governor says he won't quit. In this Jan. 10, 2018, photo, Missouri Gov. Eric Greitens delivers the annual State of the State address to a joint session of the House and Senate in Jefferson City, Mo. Facing mounting calls to resign following sexual misconduct allegations, Missouri Gov. Eric Greitens appears to be taking a cue from President Donald Trump as he fights for his political survival amid a #MeToo movement that has felled dozens of other prominent politicians and public figures. (AP Photo/Jeff Roberson) Senate President Pro Tem Ron Richard, House Speaker Todd Richardson and other House leaders called on Greitens to step down Tuesday after the state's attorney general found evidence that Greitens may have committed a felony in his use of a charity donor list for political purposes. Richard also called for impeachment proceedings to begin immediately. Greitens issued a statement Tuesday saying he won't resign. Greitens already faces a felony invasion-of-privacy charge in St. Louis for allegedly taking and transmitting a nonconsensual photo of a partially nude woman with whom Greitens said he had an extramarital affair. ___ 1:30 p.m. A spokeswoman for The Mission Continues says Gov. Eric Greitens had access to its donor list as CEO of the charity but did not have permission to later use the list for political purposes. The Mission Continues says it's been cooperating with an investigation by Missouri Attorney General Josh Hawley, who announced Tuesday that he had referred Grietens for potential criminal prosecution. Hawley says there is probable cause to believe Greitens took a computer list of top donors to the charity he founded and used it to raise money for his gubernatorial campaign in 2015. He says it's up to the St. Louis prosecutor to decide whether to charge Greitens. Greitens said allegations that he potentially the broke law by using the donor list for his campaign are "ridiculous." ___ 12:30 p.m. Missouri Gov. Eric Greitens says allegations that he potentially broke the law by using a donor list from a charity he founded are "ridiculous." Greitens in a Tuesday statement said he'll get rid of what he described as "false allegations." Fellow Republican Attorney General Josh Hawley announced Tuesday that his investigation into a veterans charity founded by Greitens found evidence that Greitens may have committed a felony in his use of its donor list for political purposes. Hawley says it's up to the St. Louis circuit attorney to decide whether to charge Greitens with a crime. Greitens in response ripped into both Hawley, who is running for U.S. Senate this year, and St. Louis Circuit Attorney Kim Gardner. Greitens says Hawley is "better at press conferences than the law." He called Gardner a liberal prosecutor. ___ 12:15 p.m. The leader of the Missouri House Democrats is renewing her call for Gov. Eric Greitens to step down or be impeached in response to an announcement from the state attorney general that evidence shows Greitens' use of a charity donor list potentially broke the law. House Minority Leader Gail McCann Beatty on Tuesday said Greitens should spare Missouri residents the ordeal of impeachment and instead resign. If he doesn't step down, she says the House should immediately act to remove him. Attorney General Josh Hawley says his investigation into a veterans charity founded by Greitens found evidence that Greitens may have committed a felony in his use of its donor list for political purposes. Hawley says he's turned evidence over to St. Louis prosecutors to decide whether to file charges. Greitens already faces a felony invasion-of-privacy charge in St. Louis for allegedly taking and transmitting a nonconsensual photo of a partially nude woman with whom Greitens said he had an extramarital affair. ___ 11:50 a.m. St. Louis prosecutors say they're reviewing evidence provided by the Missouri attorney general's office to determine whether another felony charge should be filed against Gov. Eric Greitens. Attorney General Josh Hawley announced Tuesday that his investigation into a veterans charity founded by Greitens found evidence that Greitens may have committed a felony in his use of its donor list for political purposes. Hawley says it's up to the St. Louis circuit attorney to decide whether to charge Greitens with a crime. A spokeswoman for Circuit Attorney Kim Gardner says St. Louis prosecutors met with officials from the attorney general's office on Monday, and are reviewing evidence. Spokeswoman Susan Ryan declined further comment. Greitens already faces a felony invasion-of-privacy indictment in St. Louis for allegedly taking and transmitting a nonconsensual photo of a partially nude woman with whom Greitens said he had an affair in 2015, before he was elected. ___ 11:40 a.m. Missouri Attorney General Josh Hawley says he believes there's enough evidence to bring a criminal charge and pursue impeachment of Gov. Eric Greitens for allegedly using a charity donor list for political purposes. Hawley said Tuesday that his investigation found probable cause to believe Grietens took a donor list from The Mission Continues without the permission of the veterans charity he founded, and used that list for his gubernatorial campaign in 2015. He said he referred the case to the St. Louis prosecutor for a potential felony charge of tampering with computer data. He also referred the matter to a House committee that will be recommending whether to impeach Greitens. The Associated Press first reported in October 2016 that Greitens' campaign had obtained a list of top donors to The Mission Continues and raised nearly $2 million for his campaign from donors on that list. ___ 11 a.m. Missouri Attorney General Josh Hawley says his investigation into a veterans charity founded by Gov. Eric Greitens revealed evidence that Greitens' use of the charity's donor list broke the law. Hawley said Tuesday that it's up to the St. Louis prosecutor to decide whether to charge Greitens with a crime. The Associated Press first reported in October 2016 that Greitens' campaign had obtained a list of top donors to The Mission Continues. The AP found that Greitens' campaign had raised nearly $2 million from donors who previously gave significant amounts to The Mission Continues. Hawley says his office found evidence that Greitens transmitted that list without permission in violation of the law. Greitens already faces a felony invasion-of-privacy charge in St. Louis for allegedly taking and transmitting a nonconsensual photo of a partially nude woman with whom Greitens said he had an affair. Separately, a special House investigatory committee is to recommend whether to pursue impeachment proceedings against Greitens. ___ 9:20 a.m. A spokeswoman says a request for the Missouri attorney general's office to recuse itself from investigating a charity founded by Republican Gov. Eric Greitens is "frivolous." Greitens' attorney Edward L. Dowd Jr. has raised concerns over Republican Attorney General Josh Hawley's call last week for the governor to resign. Dowd argued that the attorney general's investigation of veterans charity The Mission Continues is compromised because of that. Hawley called for Greitens to step down after allegations of sexual misconduct outlined in a House investigatory report. Attorney general spokeswoman Mary Compton says that's not related to Hawley's investigation into the charity's possible violations of the state's consumer protection and charitable registration and reporting laws. A growing number of Missouri elected officials have called on Greitens to step down over allegations of unwanted sexual aggression against a woman with whom he has said he had a consensual extramarital affair in 2015. ___ 11:40 p.m. Missouri lawmakers are returning to work at the Capitol amid turmoil in Republican Gov. Eric Greitens' office. A growing number of Missouri elected officials have called on Greitens to step down over allegations of unwanted sexual aggression against a woman with whom he has said he had a consensual extramarital affair in 2015. Greitens faces a felony invasion-of-privacy charge for allegedly taking a nonconsensual photograph of the woman while she was partially nude. Greitens' troubles threaten to distract from Republicans' agenda. Senate Democrats proposed blocking all bills from going to Greitens' desk in protest of claims against him. But Republican legislative leaders insist they won't let strife in the governor's office derail work to pass a budget and enact other policy changes. MADISON, Wis. (AP) - Gov. Scott Walker expanded an election year $137 million tax cut Tuesday, using his partial veto powers to lengthen a sales tax holiday from two to five days in August and ensure that a $100 per-child rebate will go to any family with dependent children. The bill Walker signed into law puts the tax rebate and sales tax holiday in place this year only. "This rebate and sales tax holiday will help Wisconsin families with the costs of raising children," Walker said in a statement after signing the bill in the children's clothing department at Blain's Farm and Fleet in Waukesha. "A couple hundred dollars more in the family budget could really make a difference, particularly when getting ready for the next school year." Families who apply for the $100 per-child rebate will receive the payment by Sept. 1, timing Democrats have assailed as amounting to an election bribe. The primary is Aug. 14 and the general election, where Walker is seeking a third term, is Nov. 6. "Instead of one-time campaign gimmicks and massive tax giveaways to the wealthy, we should be investing in long-term child care relief, expanding access to affordable health care and supporting strong community schools," said Democratic Senate Minority Leader Jennifer Shilling. Families must apply online for the child tax rebate starting on May 15. Walker said more details about how to apply through the Department of Revenue website will be announced later. The deadline for applying will be July 2 and payments will be made either through direct deposit or a mailed check. To qualify, a child must have been under age 18 for all of 2017, be a resident of Wisconsin as of Dec. 31 and be a U.S. citizen. Walker used his veto to ensure the tax rebate would be available to any family that claims a child under age 18 as a dependent, not just parents of the children. The veto will not increase the $122 million cost of the rebate because it sticks with the original intent of the Legislature, Walker said. The bill as passed originally also included just a two-day sales tax holiday over the first weekend in August. But Walker said that wasn't long enough to give "hardworking taxpayers" the chance to take advantage. So he used his veto to extend the holiday by three more days, from Wednesday Aug. 1 through Sunday Aug. 5. That will increase the cost of the sales tax holiday - measured in lost sales tax revenue to the state - from $11.8 million to $14.8 million, Walker said. The sales tax will be waived on pieces of clothing costing less than $75, a computer costing less than $750, computer supplies costing less than $250 and school supplies costing no more than $75 per item. Critics of sales tax holidays, particularly retailers, argue they are costly and difficult to administer. Sixteen states had some type of sales tax holiday in 2017, according to the Federation of Tax Administrators. ___ Follow Scott Bauer on Twitter at https://twitter.com/sbauerAP LEBANON, Ohio (AP) - Defense attorneys are asking a judge to lift house arrest for a teen facing trial on charges she killed and buried her newborn baby near her family's southwestern Ohio home. Attorneys for 19-year-old Brooke Skylar Richardson filed a motion Monday in Warren County after a judge postponed her murder trial while a state appeals court rules on a dispute between her attorneys and prosecutors over medical testimony. The motion says Richardson hasn't committed any infractions since being placed on house arrest last summer. Prosecutors indicated they will oppose the motion. Brooke Skylar Richardson appears during a pretrial hearing Thursday, April 12, 2018, at the Warren County Courthouse in Lebanon, Ohio. Richardson is charged with aggravated murder and other charges. Richardson is accused of killing her newborn baby and burying her in the backyard. (Cara Owsley/The Cincinnati Enquirer via AP) Richardson is accused of burying her full-term baby last July shortly after giving birth in Carlisle, a village of some 5,000 people 40 miles (64 kilometers) north of Cincinnati. Defense attorneys argue the baby was stillborn. Brooke Skylar Richardson appears during a pretrial hearing Thursday, April 12, 2018, at the Warren County Courthouse in Lebanon, Ohio. Richardson is charged with aggravated murder and other charges. Richardson is accused of killing her newborn baby and burying her in the backyard. (Cara Owsley/The Cincinnati Enquirer via AP) NORRISTOWN, Pa. (AP) - The Latest on the Bill Cosby's sexual-assault retrial (all times local): 4:30 p.m. Jurors are getting a sense of Bill Cosby's view of consent from lurid deposition testimony in which the comedian described reaching an area "somewhere between permission and rejection" during what he claims was a prior sexual encounter with his chief accuser. Bill Cosby, center, arrives for his sexual assault trial, Tuesday, April 17, 2018, at the Montgomery County Courthouse in Norristown, Pa. (AP Photo/Matt Slocum) Cosby testified a dozen years ago as part of a civil lawsuit that Andrea Constand filed against him. A prosecutor and detective are reading excerpts from Cosby's 2005 testimony at his sexual assault retrial Tuesday. In the deposition, Cosby graphically described a sexual encounter he says he and Constand once had. Constand has testified she rejected Cosby's previous advances. The former Temple University women's basketball administrator accused Cosby of drugging and molesting her at his suburban Philadelphia home in 2004. The jury at Cosby's first trial deadlocked on the charges. The Associated Press doesn't typically identify people who say they're victims of sexual assault unless they grant permission, which Constand has done. ___ 12:25 p.m. Jurors are hearing from a police interview in which Bill Cosby acknowledged fondling his chief accuser's breasts and genitals after giving her pills at his suburban Philadelphia home. Authorities are reading a transcript of the January 26, 2005, interview to the jury Tuesday. The interview was conducted about two weeks after Andrea Constand went to police. The 80-year-old "Cosby Show" star says he gave Constand 1 tablets of the cold and allergy medicine Benadryl to help her relax. He says she showed no ill effects from the pills and did not object when he touched her. Cosby told investigators he had a social and romantic relationship with Constand. Constand says Cosby knocked her out with the pills and then sexually assaulted her. Cosby's first trial ended without a verdict. The Associated Press doesn't typically identify people who say they're victims of sexual assault unless they grant permission, which Constand has done. ___ 12:05 p.m. A police sergeant has told jurors that a suburban Philadelphia prosecutor abruptly shut down an initial investigation into allegations that Bill Cosby sexually assaulted a woman. Cheltenham Township Police Sgt. Richard Schaffer testified Tuesday that then-Montgomery County District Attorney Bruce Castor announced he was closing the 2005 probe just hours after investigators met to discuss leads that needed to be followed up. Castor ended the investigation into Cosby four weeks after Andrea Constand told police the comedian had drugged and molested her about a year earlier. The prosecutor has said the evidence showed both parties "could be held in less than a flattering light." His successors reopened the criminal case in 2015 after Cosby's testimony from Constand's civil suit was unsealed. Cosby says his encounter with Constand was consensual. The Associated Press doesn't typically identify people who say they're victims of sexual assault unless they grant permission, which Constand has done. ___ 9:30 a.m. The judge in Bill Cosby's sexual assault retrial says jurors can hear the comedian's prior testimony about giving quaaludes to women before sex. Judge Steven O'Neill ruled Tuesday that prosecutors can read the testimony into the record at Cosby's retrial on charges he drugged and molested Andrea Constand at his suburban Philadelphia mansion in 2004. Cosby testified at a deposition related to Constand's lawsuit against him that he had gotten quaaludes from his doctor in Los Angeles in the 1970s. He said he was given seven prescriptions for the now-banned sedative, ostensibly for a sore back. Cosby said he never took the drug, instead giving it to women he wanted to have sex with. Cosby's lawyers argued the testimony is irrelevant to his retrial because there's no evidence he gave Constand the drug. The Associated Press doesn't typically identify people who say they're victims of sexual assault unless they grant permission, which Constand has done. ___ 8:30 a.m. Bill Cosby has arrived for his sexual assault retrial, where prosecutors are building to a close in their case. A spokeswoman for the 80-year-old comedian blasted his chief accuser and her mother as they arrived at a suburban Philadelphia courthouse Tuesday morning. Ebonee Benson says that Andrea and her mother Gianna Constand's testimony "seemed to be more colorful and more embellished" than during last year's trial that ended with a hung jury. Constand on Monday denied making up her story to set up a big pay day, and her mother testified that Cosby apologized. Cosby is on trial over charges he drugged and molested Constand in 2004. He says the encounter was consensual. Investigators and a pharmaceutical expert are expected to take the stand on the seventh day of the proceedings. The Associated Press doesn't typically identify people who say they're victims of sexual assault unless they grant permission, which Constand has done. ___ 12:30 a.m. Prosecutors are building to the conclusion of their case against comedian Bill Cosby in his sexual assault retrial. Investigators and a pharmaceutical expert are expected to take the stand beginning Tuesday. Prosecutors on Monday delivered a one-two punch as chief accuser Andrea Constand rejected defense allegations that she concocted her story to score a big payday, and her mother testified that Cosby apologized. Andrea and Gianna Constand's testimony followed that of five additional accusers who told jurors that Cosby had drugged and assaulted them two decades earlier. Andrea Constand has accused Cosby of drugging and molesting her at his suburban Philadelphia home in 2004. Cosby has denied the allegations. The Associated Press doesn't typically identify people who say they're victims of sexual assault unless they grant permission, which Constand has done. Bill Cosby arrives for his sexual assault trial, Tuesday, April 17, 2018, at the Montgomery County Courthouse in Norristown, Pa. (AP Photo/Matt Slocum) Gianna Constand, left, the mother of Andrea Constand, leaves the courtroom after after testifying in Bill Cosby's sexual assault retrial at the Montgomery County Courthouse in Norristown, Pa., Monday, April 16, 2018. (Dominick Reuter/Pool Photo via AP) Andrea Constand, left, returns to the courtroom after a lunch break during Bill Cosby's sexual assault retrial at the Montgomery County Courthouse in Norristown, Pa., Monday, April 16, 2018. (Dominick Reuter/Pool Photo via AP) Attorney Gloria Allred walks outside the Montgomery County Courthouse during a break in Bill Cosby's sexual assault retrial, Monday, April 16, 2018, in Norristown, Pa. (AP Photo/Matt Slocum) Attorney Gloria Allred speaks to the media outside the Montgomery County Courthouse during a break in Bill Cosby's sexual assault retrial, Monday, April 16, 2018, in Norristown, Pa. (AP Photo/Matt Slocum) Bill Cosby's spokesman Andrew Wyatt speaks to the media outside the Montgomery County Courthouse during a break in Cosby's sexual assault retrial, Monday, April 16, 2018, in Norristown, Pa. (AP Photo/Matt Slocum) Andrea Constand arrives to resume her testimony during Bill Cosby's sexual assault retrial at the Montgomery County Courthouse in Norristown, Pa., Monday, April 16, 2018. (Dominick Reuter/Pool Photo via AP) Bill Cosby, right, arrives for his sexual assault trial, Tuesday, April 17, 2018, at the Montgomery County Courthouse in Norristown, Pa. (AP Photo/Matt Slocum) Bill Cosby, center, arrives for his sexual assault trial, Tuesday, April 17, 2018, at the Montgomery County Courthouse in Norristown, Pa. (AP Photo/Matt Slocum) PHILADELPHIA (AP) - A Southwest Airlines jet with a damaged engine and broken window made an emergency landing at Philadelphia's airport Tuesday, and one passenger was critically injured. A former federal investigator theorized the plane blew an engine and the shrapnel hit the aircraft. Seven other people aboard the Boeing 737 that was headed from New York's LaGuardia Airport to Dallas' Love Field were treated for minor injuries, according to Philadelphia Fire Commissioner Adam Thiel. He said there was a fuel leak in one of the engines when firefighters arrived and a small fire was quickly brought under control. Southwest said there were 143 passengers and five crew members on board the plane and most walked onto the tarmac after landing around 11:20 a.m. The engine on a Southwest Airlines plane is inspected as it sits on the runway at the Philadelphia International Airport after it made an emergency landing in Philadelphia, Tuesday, April 17, 2018. (Amanda Bourman via AP) "I just remember holding my husband's hand and we just prayed and prayed and prayed," said passenger Amanda Bourman, of New York. "And the thoughts that were going through my head of course were about my daughters, just wanting to see them again and give them a big hug so they wouldn't grow up without parents." The Federal Aviation Administration said that the plane landed after the crew reported damage to one of the engines, along with the fuselage and at least one window. They didn't immediately explain what went wrong. The National Transportation Safety Board sent investigators to the airport. Bourman said she was seated near the back and was asleep when she heard a loud noise and oxygen masks dropped from the ceiling. She said the plane was fairly quiet because everyone was wearing a mask, while some passengers were in tears and others shouted words of encouragement. "Everybody was crying and upset," she said. "You had a few passengers that were very strong and they kept yelling to people, you know, 'It's OK, we're going to do this.'" Passenger Marty Martinez did a brief Facebook Live posting while wearing an oxygen mask. He posted, "Something is wrong with our plane! It appears we are going down! Emergency landing!! Southwest flight from NYC to Dallas!!" After the plane landed, he posted photos of a damaged window near the engine. Bourman said that everyone started yelling to brace for impact when the plane started to land. Everyone clapped and praised the pilot after he set the aircraft down. Bourman said she saw emergency medical workers using a defibrillator to help a woman who was taken off the plane. Thiel declined to release any other details about the woman's condition. Bourman said that she saw a man in a cowboy hat rush to cover the broken window and that the man had a bandage around his arm after the plane landed. Passengers did "some pretty amazing things under some pretty difficult circumstances," Thiel said. Tracking data from FlightAware.com shows Flight 1380 was heading west over New York's southern tier at about 32,200 feet (10 km) traveling 500 mph (800 kph) when it abruptly turned toward Philadelphia. Southwest has about 700 planes, all of them 737s, including more than 500 737-700s like the one involved in Tuesday's emergency landing. It is the world's largest operator of the 737. The Boeing 737 is the best-selling jetliner in the world and has a good safety record. John Goglia, a former NTSB member, said investigators will take the Southwest engine apart to understand what happened and will look at maintenance records for the engine. "There's a ring around the engine that's meant to contain the engine pieces when this happens," Goglia said. "In this case it didn't. That's going to be a big focal point for the NTSB - why didn't (the ring) do its job?" Goglia said the Boeing 737 is a safe plane but engine failures occur from time to time. "We're pushing the engines to produce as much power as possible," he said. "We're right on the edge. Sometimes they fail, and that's why the containment ring is there." The engine failure was reminiscent of a similar event on a Southwest Boeing 737-700 jet in August 2016 as it flew from New Orleans to Orlando, Florida. Shrapnel from the engine left a 5-by-16-inch hole just above the wing. Passenger oxygen masks dropped from the ceiling. Pilots landed the plane safely in Pensacola, Florida. Investigators with the National Transportation Safety Board said one of the engine's fan blades broke off from the hub during the flight. The broken edge of the blade showed crack lines consistent with metal fatigue. ___ Koenig reported from Dallas. Associated Press writers Kristen de Groot and Claudia Lauer in Philadelphia contributed to this story. A Southwest Airlines plane sits on the runway at the Philadelphia International Airport after it made an emergency landing in Philadelphia, on Tuesday, April 17, 2018. (David Maialetti /The Philadelphia Inquirer via AP) A Southwest Airlines plane sits on the runway at the Philadelphia International Airport after it made an emergency landing in Philadelphia, on Tuesday, April 17, 2018. (David Maialetti /The Philadelphia Inquirer via AP) A Southwest Airlines plane sits on the runway at the Philadelphia International Airport after it made an emergency landing in Philadelphia, on Tuesday, April 17, 2018. (David Maialetti/The Philadelphia Inquirer via AP) A Southwest Airlines plane sits on the runway at the Philadelphia International Airport after it made an emergency landing in Philadelphia, on Tuesday, April 17, 2018. (David Maialetti /The Philadelphia Inquirer via AP) National Transportation Safety Board Chairman Robert Sumwalt briefs reporters at National Airport in Arlington, Va., Tuesday, April 17, 2018, about the Southwest Airlines plane incident in Philadelphia. (AP Photo/Susan Walsh) National Transportation Safety Board Chairman Robert Sumwalt briefs reporters at National Airport in in Arlington, Va., Tuesday, April 17, 2018, on the Southwest Airlines plane incident in Philadelphia. (AP Photo/Susan Walsh) A Southwest Airlines plane sits on the runway at the Philadelphia International Airport after it made an emergency landing in Philadelphia, on Tuesday, April 17, 2018. The Federal Aviation Administration says the flight from New York to Dallas made an emergency landing after the crew reported damage to one of the engines, as well as the fuselage and at least one window. (AP Photo/Corey Perrine) A Southwest Airlines plane sits on the runway at the Philadelphia International Airport after it made an emergency landing in Philadelphia, on Tuesday, April 17, 2018. The Federal Aviation Administration says the flight from New York to Dallas made an emergency landing after the crew reported damage to one of the engines, as well as the fuselage and at least one window. (AP Photo/Corey Perrine) In this 2017 photo, Jennifer Riordan, of Albuquerque, N.M., poses for a photo in Albuquerque. Family, friends and community leaders are mourning the death of Riordan, a bank executive on a Southwest Airlines jet that blew an engine as she was flying home from a business trip to New York. (Marla Brose/The Albuquerque Journal via AP) BOSTON (AP) - Massachusetts' highest court ruled Tuesday that the state's ban on civilian possession of stun guns violates the U.S. Constitution's right to bear arms. The decision is a reversal for the court, which reached an opposite conclusion in a different case in 2015. The U.S. Supreme Court, however, set aside that earlier ruling, saying the Massachusetts court failed to properly explain its decision. The Supreme Judicial Court said it would leave the 2004 ban in place for 60 days to give the Legislature time to rewrite the law to regulate the ownership of stun guns, without banning them entirely. "We conclude that the absolute prohibition against civilian possession of stun guns ... is in violation of the Second Amendment, and we order that the count of the complaint charging the defendant with such possession be dismissed with prejudice," the justices wrote. The defendant, Jorge Ramirez, was charged with illegal possession of a stun gun after a traffic stop in Revere in 2015. He also was later charged with possession of other firearms without the proper licenses. Ramirez's bid to throw out the stun gun charge on constitutional grounds was turned down by a lower court judge, but later referred to the Supreme Judicial Court. The law prohibits individuals from ownership of any "portable device or weapon from which an electrical current, impulse, wave or beam may be directed," and in a manner intended to "incapacitate temporarily, injure or kill." The law exempts law enforcement officers. In Tuesday's ruling, the court chose not to make a legal distinction between stun guns, which requires direct contact with a target, and Tasers, which are more typically used by police and can deliver an electroshock from up to 30 feet away. Massachusetts is among a handful of U.S. states, including New York, Hawaii and Rhode Island, which ban outright the civilian ownership of stun guns. Many other states have restrictions on sale and possession of the devices. The earlier ruling in Massachusetts involved the arrest of a woman who told police she carried a stun gun as protection against a former boyfriend. In that case, the Supreme Judicial Court upheld the woman's conviction, but the U.S. Supreme Court vacated the ruling. The charge against the woman was later dismissed by mutual agreement but without a further determination of the constitutional questions. Under Tuesday's ruling, the current law remains in effect for 60 days to give state lawmakers the chance to write a new law that could make stun guns subject to the same or similar licensing requirements as other types of firearms. "We're glad that the SJC has finally recognized that this is a legitimate self-defense tool," said Jim Wallace, executive director of the Massachusetts Gun Owners Action League. But Wallace took exception to language the justices used describing stun guns as being dangerous or lethal. He argued that might encourage lawmakers to impose overly stringent regulations. A spokeswoman for House Speaker Robert DeLeo said the Democrat was reviewing options and would file legislation within 60 days. Democratic Senate President Harriette Chandler said her office also was studying options for amending the law. Chelsea Police Chief Brian Kyes, president of the Massachusetts Major Cities Chiefs of Police Association, said his group was not surprised by the SJC ruling and had previously discussed alternatives to a total ban. He said he'd favor adding stun guns to the list of firearms, including handguns, for which residents must obtain a license to carry from their local police chiefs. PHILADELPHIA (AP) - The Latest on a plane making an emergency landing in Philadelphia (all times local): 10:05 p.m. Southwest Airlines says it's speeding up inspections of engines like the one that failed and sent debris smashing into a plane window, leading to the death of a passenger. The engine on a Southwest Airlines plane is inspected as it sits on the runway at the Philadelphia International Airport after it made an emergency landing in Philadelphia, Tuesday, April 17, 2018. (Amanda Bourman via AP) Southwest said Tuesday it expects to finish inspections of the CFM56 engines over the next 30 days. It says it's making the move out of caution. The engines are made by CFM International, a joint venture of General Electric Co. and France's Safran SA. Southwest and CFM are both promising to assist federal officials in the investigation. One person was killed and seven others were injured after the twin-engine 737 blew an engine at 30,000 feet and got hit by shrapnel that smashed a window. The plane from New York to Dallas landed in Philadelphia. ___ 9:55 p.m. The National Transportation Safety Board says a preliminary examination of the blown jet engine of the Southwest Airlines plane that made an emergency landing in Philadelphia shows evidence of "metal fatigue." In a late night news conference, NTSB Chairman Robert Sumwalt said one of the engine's fan blades was separated and missing. Sumwalt says the blade was separated at the point where it would come into the hub and there was evidence of metal fatigue. One person was killed and seven others were injured after the twin-engine 737 blew an engine at 30,000 feet and got hit by shrapnel that smashed a window. The plane from New York to Dallas landed in Philadelphia. Sumwalt says part of the engine covering was found in Bernville, Pennsylvania, about 70 miles (112 kilometers) west of Philadelphia. ___ 7 p.m. A bank executive and mother of two from New Mexico has been identified as the woman who died after a Southwest Airlines jet plane blew an engine and got hit by shrapnel that smashed a window. News of Jennifer Riordan's death was first shared by the assistant principal of the Albuquerque Catholic school attended by her two children. In an email to parents, assistant principal Amy McCarty wrote that "the family needs all the prayers we can offer." Riordan was a vice president of community relations for Wells Fargo bank. She was the wife of Michael Riordan, who served until recently as the chief operating officer for the city of Albuquerque. The New Mexico Broadcasters Association on social media said Riordan was a graduate of the University of New Mexico and former board member. ___ 6:20 p.m. The head of Southwest Airlines says that there were no problems with a plane involved in a fatal emergency landing when it was inspected two days ago. Chief executive Gary Kelly said at a news conference in Dallas Tuesday that there were no problems with the plane or its engine when it was inspected Sunday. One person was killed and seven injured after the twin-engine 737 apparently blew an engine at 30,000 feet and got hit by shrapnel that smashed a window. The plane from New York to Dallas landed in Philadelphia. Kelly says the plane has gone through 40,000 takeoffs and landings since it was delivered in July 2000. That includes 10,000 since its last overhaul. He declined to identify the crew or the name of the dead passenger. ___ 5:45 p.m. The US transportation secretary is praising the pilots, crew and passengers for helping to prevent a far worse tragedy on a Southwest flight that made an emergency landing in Philadelphia. One person was killed and seven injured after the twin-engine 737 apparently blew an engine at 30,000 feet and got hit by shrapnel that smashed a window. The plane was headed from New York to Dallas with 149 people aboard when it detoured to Philadelphia. Secretary Elaine Chao said her department is working with the National Transportation Safety Board to determine the cause and ensure the safety of the traveling public. ___ 5 p.m. A crew member on a plane that made an emergency landing in Philadelphia reported to air traffic controllers that a piece of the plane was missing and "someone went out." In the audio recording of the exchange, the crew member says the plane needed to slow down. Photos posted by passengers showed a heavily damaged window near the damaged engine. Passengers reported seeing a woman being given medical attention on the plane. National Transportation Safety Board Chairman Robert Sumwalt says that one person died in the accident. No details have been released on how the passenger died. Seven others were injured. ___ 4:35 p.m. The company that made the engine that blew apart on a Southwest Airlines jet says it is helping investigators figure out what went wrong. CFM International said in a statement Tuesday that it sent technical experts to help the National Transportation Safety Board officials. A passenger died after the left-side engine on a Southwest jet blew apart over Pennsylvania on Tuesday. The pilots made an emergency landing in Philadelphia. CFM is a joint venture of General Electric and France's Safran. The company says the type of engine on the Southwest plane is installed on more than 6,700 planes and has flown more than 350 million hours since its introduction in 1997. The company says the engine has an outstanding safety and reliability record. ___ 3:15 p.m. A federal investigator says one person has been killed after a plane with engine failure made an emergency landing in Philadelphia. National Transportation Safety Board Chairman Robert Sumwalt said Tuesday that the engine will be shipped for a detailed examination. The Federal Aviation Administration says the flight from New York to Dallas made an emergency landing after the crew reported damage to one of the engines, as well as the fuselage and at least one window. Philadelphia's fire chief says that one person was taken to the hospital in critical condition and seven were treated for minor injuries. ___ 2:35 p.m. Philadelphia's fire chief says that one person was taken to the hospital in critical condition after a Southwest Airlines plane made an emergency landing. Philadelphia Fire Department Commissioner Adam Thiel (TEAL') declined to release any additional details on the victim or their condition. He says that seven other passengers were treated for minor injuries, but none had to be taken to the hospital. The Federal Aviation Administration says the flight from New York to Dallas made an emergency landing after the crew reported damage to one of the engines, as well as the fuselage and at least one window. Thiel says that there was a fuel leak and a small fire when firefighters arrived. He didn't release any additional details on the landing. ___ 2 p.m. A passenger aboard a Southwest Airlines plane that made an emergency landing in Philadelphia says at least one woman was taken to the hospital. Amanda Bourman, of New York, said that the woman was taken off the plane by emergency medical workers Tuesday after the emergency landing around 11:20 a.m. The Federal Aviation Administration says a flight from New York to Dallas made an emergency landing after the crew reported damage to one of the engines, as well as the fuselage and at least one window. Passenger Marty Martinez says a window exploded mid-air and posted photo of a damaged window and emergency oxygen masks dangling down. It wasn't clear if anyone else was injured. ___ 1:50 p.m. The Federal Aviation Administration says a flight from New York to Dallas made an emergency landing at Philadelphia's airport after the crew reported damage to one of the engines, as well as the fuselage and at least one window. Passenger Marty Martinez says a window exploded mid-air and posted photo of a damaged window and emergency oxygen masks dangling down. The National Transportation Safety Board says it is taking over the investigation. ___ 12:45 p.m. A passenger on a Southwest Airlines plane says a window was damaged after a problem with its left engine and the plane made an emergency landing in Philadelphia. Southwest Airlines says there were 143 passengers and five crewmembers on board the flight Tuesday en route from New York's La Guardia Airport to Dallas. The airline says something went awry and they landed at Philadelphia's airport. Passenger Marty Martinez says a window exploded mid-air and posted photo of a damaged window and emergency oxygen masks dangling down. Passengers were seen walking off the plane on the tarmac at the airport and the left engine of the plane is damaged. It wasn't immediately clear if anyone was hurt. Messages seeking comment from the Federal Aviation Administration weren't immediately returned. ___ 12:20 p.m. Southwest Airlines says that one of its planes heading from New York's LaGuardia Airport to Dallas' Love Field landed safely in Philadelphia. Tracking data from FlightAware.com shows the flight was heading west over New York's southern tier when it abruptly turned toward Philadelphia. Passengers were seen walking off the plane on the tarmac at the airport and the left engine of the plane is damaged. It wasn't immediately clear if anyone was hurt. Messages seeking comment from the Federal Aviation Administration weren't immediately returned. ____ 12:15 p.m. A Southwest Airlines plane has made an emergency landing at Philadelphia's airport with what appears to be a damaged engine. Passengers were seen walking off the plane on the tarmac at the airport. Passengers on board posted on social media that the plane was en route from New York City to Dallas when something happened. Messages seeking comment from the Federal Aviation Administration weren't immediately returned. Firefighters are on the scene but a spokeswoman couldn't provide any details. A Southwest Airlines plane sits on the runway at the Philadelphia International Airport after it made an emergency landing in Philadelphia, on Tuesday, April 17, 2018. (David Maialetti /The Philadelphia Inquirer via AP) A Southwest Airlines plane sits on the runway at the Philadelphia International Airport after it made an emergency landing in Philadelphia, on Tuesday, April 17, 2018. (David Maialetti /The Philadelphia Inquirer via AP) WASHINGTON (AP) - President Donald Trump's pick to be Veterans Affairs secretary is promising not to privatize the agency, a key Democratic senator said Tuesday, taking a stance on a politically charged issue that his predecessor says led to his firing. The confirmation hearing of Ronny Jackson, Trump's White House doctor and a Navy rear admiral chosen to speed up improvements to the VA, is scheduled for next week. On Tuesday, he met privately with Sen. Jon Tester of Montana, the top Democrat on the Senate Veterans Affairs Committee, as a part of visits this week to assure lawmakers he could effectively lead the government's second-largest department. Tester said after the meeting that Jackson had committed to the same stance against privatization as David Shulkin, who pledged before his confirmation as VA secretary last year to continue strong investment in core VA programs and facilities while expanding access to private doctors. U.S. Navy Rear Adm. Ronny Jackson, M.D., left, sits with Sen. Johnny Isakson, R-Ga., chairman of the Veteran's Affairs Committee, before their meeting on Capitol Hill, Monday, April 16, 2018 in Washington. Jackson is President Donald Trump's nominee to be the next Secretary of Veterans Affairs. (AP Photo/Alex Brandon) Shulkin was fired last month. "We talked extensively about why Shulkin got fired with the issues revolving around privatization and capacity building," Tester said. He "seems to be somebody who doesn't want to privatize the VA." Asked if Jackson had pledged not to privatize VA, Tester said "yes." "He said basically the same thing Shulkin said--that he wanted to build capacity at the VA," Tester said. According to Tester, Jackson had not yet informed Trump of his views but would be doing so. Both Tester and Sen. Johnny Isakson, the Republican chairman of the veterans committee who met with Jackson Monday, have declined to endorse Jackson in advance of his confirmation hearing on April 25, saying they need to hear more about his plans to fix VA. Jackson is "certainly not an expert on VA," Tester said. Sen. Patty Murray, D-Wash., a Senate committee member who also met Tuesday with Jackson, said she needed more assurances that Jackson would resist undue White House pressure to aggressively expand private care. Major veterans groups view VA medical centers as best suited to treat complex battlefield injuries, such as traumatic brain injury. "In our meeting today, I appreciated how strongly Dr. Jackson spoke against privatizing the VA, but I still need to know more about how he will stand up to ideological opponents of VA and remain fully committed to putting the needs of veterans first," Murray said. The issue of privatizing VA has been a political hot button since the 2016 campaign, when Trump pledged to aggressively expand veterans' access to private doctors outside the government-run VA system at taxpayers' expense via the Veterans Choice program. Trump's comments came in the wake of a 2014 scandal at the Phoenix VA medical center in which some veterans died while waiting months for medical appointments. After he was fired as VA secretary, Shulkin blamed "political forces" in the Trump administration that he says are bent on privatizing the agency and prioritizing "companies with profits" over the care of veterans. On Tuesday, the White House reiterated that there were "no discussions" about privatizing VA. "This administration has taken several unprecedented steps to transform and modernize the VA," White House spokesman Raj Shah said in a statement. "We look forward to continuing our work with Congress to reform and strengthen the VA Choice program to provide our veterans with more choice in their health care." Several Democratic senators, including Bernie Sanders of Vermont, a member of the Senate Veterans Affairs Committee, have vowed to oppose Jackson's nomination if it leads to greater privatization at the agency. Before he was confirmed last year as VA secretary, Shulkin, a holdover from the Obama administration, declared in advance that he wouldn't "privatize" VA. "VA is a unique national resource that is worth saving, and I am committed to doing just that," Shulkin said in February 2017. "There will be far greater accountability, dramatically improved access, responsiveness and expanded care options, but the Department of Veterans Affairs will not be privatized under my watch." ___ Follow Hope Yen on Twitter at https://twitter.com/hopeyen1 U.S. Navy Rear Adm. Ronny Jackson, M.D., left, sits with Sen. Johnny Isakson, R-Ga., chairman of the Veteran's Affairs Committee, before their meeting on Capitol Hill, Monday, April 16, 2018 in Washington. Jackson is President Donald Trump's nominee to be the next Secretary of Veterans Affairs. (AP Photo/Alex Brandon) AP and Times of Israel Correct, Haaretz Retains "Explosive Bullets" Charge | Main | The Presbyterian Church USA Is Obsessed With Israel April 17, 2018 Haaretz Editorial Repeats Inaccuracy About East Jerusalem Arabs Despite the fact that just last month Haaretz corrected a news story which erred on the status of east Jerusalem Arabs, an April 10 editorial again misrepresents about the rights of this population, stating: Palestinians in Jerusalem, comprising almost 40 percent of its population, are not citizens of the country. . . In fact, as last month's correction indicated, some seven percent of east Jerusalem Arabs hold citizenship. The Independent also corrected the identical error last month. The Independent's March 11 article originally stated that "Arabs living in [Jerusalem] do not have citizenship." Following communication from CAMERA's UK Media Watch, The Independent corrected its story, which now accurately reports that "most Arabs" in the city don't have citizenship. In March 2015, CAMERA prompted a New York Times correction which made clear that those Jerusalem Arabs with Israeli citizenship may vote for Knesset election. As of this writing, Haaretz has failed to amend its editorial. Posted by TS at April 17, 2018 03:57 AM What else can one expect from "al-Balad?" Posted by: David Janov at April 19, 2018 02:25 PM Guidelines for posting This is a moderated blog. We will not post comments that include racism, bigotry, threats, or factually inaccurate material. Post a comment LONDON (AP) - British Prime Minister Theresa May has rejected opposition calls for a law requiring Parliament's approval to commit U.K. forces to military action. Britain, along with the United States and France, launched airstrikes on Saturday against targets in Syria over a reported chemical weapons attack. Labour Party leader Jeremy Corbyn accused May of showing a "flagrant disregard" for Parliament by not seeking lawmakers' approval first. Labour leader Jeremy Corbyn speaking after Britain's Prime Minister Theresa May's statement to MPs in the House of Commons in London, Monday April 16, 2018 over her decision to launch air strikes against Syria. British Prime Minister Theresa May told restive lawmakers on Monday that military airstrikes against Syria were right both legally and morally, and accused Syria and its ally Russia of attempting to cover-up evidence of a deadly chemical weapons attack. (PA via AP) But May said Corbyn's demand for a War Powers Act to prevent the government from acting alone "would seriously compromise our national security, our national interests, and the lives of British citizens at home and abroad" by making rapid, small-scale strikes like those taken in Syria impossible. Corbyn secured an emergency debate on the Syria strikes Tuesday, but it didn't include a significant vote on the issue. GULFPORT, Miss. (AP) - Attorneys for funeral homes suing a Mississippi coroner said in court Monday that he has acknowledged that he can't remember ever sending a white person's body to one of the county's six black-owned funeral homes. The federal lawsuit by the black-owned funeral homes accusing Harrison County and Coroner Gary Hargrove of illegally discriminating against them in favor of two white-owned competitors began Monday in Gulfport with jury selection and opening arguments. Harrison County attorney Tim Holleman argues that relatives of the deceased usually decide where bodies go, and that bodies needing autopsies are sent to homes with enough cold storage to hold bodies for longer periods. Some black-owned funeral homes say they also have cold storage. The Sun Herald reports a lawyer for the black funeral homes told the jury that Harrison County would argue the deceased's relatives usually choose where bodies go, with whites preferring white funeral homes and blacks selecting black funeral homes. "People have a right to make their own choices," Rob McDuff said. "That's not what we're talking about. We're talking about a government official who is spending public money based on race." U.S. District Judge Keith Starrett has indicated the key question will be proving that Hargrove decided where to direct bodies in each instance. Holleman said that in most cases Hargrove doesn't decide where a body will go. Even when he has jurisdiction over a body, state law gives next of kin and even guardians the right to choose the funeral home to which a body will be sent. Of $160,000 the county spent with funeral homes from 2011-16, McDuff said, only $4,000 went to the six black-owned funeral homes suing Hargrove and the county. Hargrove is white. Of Harrison County's roughly 200,000 residents, about 69 percent identify as white and about 24 percent identify as black, according to the most recent Census Bureau estimate. Holleman said autopsies were done at a white-owned funeral home because that was the preferred location of a now-deceased pathologist. Since his death, autopsies have been done at the state Crime Lab near Jackson. Holleman said only one black-owned funeral home had cooler space during the period in question and evidence will show it was inadequate. A second black-owned funeral home added a cooler more recently. Unclaimed bodies also are sent to the white-owned funeral homes for cold storage, Holleman said, because the coroner rarely knows how long the body will be stored until next of kin is located. Hargrove maintains he sends business to funeral homes on a rotating basis. But McDuff said evidence will show no rotation. Plaintiffs argue that each funeral home should have gotten one-eighth of the business. The six black funeral homes say they're owed $870,000 in lost profits from county business and associated funerals from 2012 to 2016. ___ Information from: The Sun Herald, http://www.sunherald.com CEDAR RAPIDS, Iowa (AP) - Iowa Secretary of State Paul Pate did not disclose his role in a new corporation that has recently spent around $2 million to open a storage rental business and purchase a strip mall. In an ethics filing last week, Pate affirmed that the only outside business in which he engaged during 2017 was the eastern Iowa asphalt paving company he has long owned. But business and government records reviewed by The Associated Press show Pate formed a company days before the 2016 presidential election, PRG Group LLC, and it worked throughout 2017 to open a new mini-storage business in Cedar Rapids. In a February filing, Pate called himself its "managing partner." An aide said Tuesday that Pate was "preparing a response" to questions about the matter. NEW YORK (AP) - The decision to award rapper Kendrick Lamar the Pulitzer Prize for music represents a historic moment not just for hip-hop and American music but also for the usually stuffy Pulitzer process itself, says one of the music jurors who picked the album "DAMN." as a finalist. "It's big for hip-hop. I think it's big for our country. It's big for music. But it's big for the Pulitzers, too. Institutions are not stuck in time, either. Institutions can change," said Farah Jasmine Griffin, a Columbia professor. Lamar's win on Monday made history as the first non-classical or non-jazz artist to win the prestigious prize since the Pulitzers included music in 1943. Just having a rapper nominated for the prize is considered a stunning development for awards that usually honor musicians of European classical background. FILE - In this July 7, 2017, file photo, Kendrick Lamar performs during the Festival d'ete de Quebec in Quebec City, Canada.On Monday, April 16, 2018, Lamar won the Pulitzer Prize for music for his album "Damn." (Photo by Amy Harris/Invision/AP, File) "I knew that there would be some anger and some resentment and some people who wouldn't like the idea, but surprisingly enough, I haven't heard a lot of that," Griffin said. The decision was hailed as a turning point in music history by Jetro Da Silva, a professor at the prestigious Berklee College of Music who teaches a class on hip-hop writing and production. "We are at a time in history here perhaps there is a new way to analyze what is considered a contribution to music. Critical thinkers are asking what it really means to be a composer and what is a composition," he said. "The sky's the limit." In addition to Griffin, the music jury this year included music critic David Hajdu, violinist Regina Carter, Paul Cremo from the Metropolitan Opera and the composer David Lang. The five-member music jury listened to about 180 pieces of music and after deliberating for a few days then submitted to the final board three works - Lamar's album along with Michael Gilbertson's "Quartet" and Ted Hearne's "Sound from the Bench." Adding "DAMN." was a unanimous decision by all five. "Everyone expects that there would have been some form of resistance. There was none," said Griffin. "It was just welcomed by everyone as an opportunity to have a serious conversation about the art, about Mr. Lamar's work, but also about what constitutes what kind of music that should be eligible for this." The final decision was made by the Pulitzer board, which hailed Lamar's CD as "a virtuosic song collection unified by its vernacular authenticity and rhythmic dynamism that offers affecting vignettes capturing the complexity of modern African-American life." The Pulitzers have been accused of past mistakes when it comes to African-American contributions to music. In 1965, jurors recommended awarding a special citation to Duke Ellington, but were rejected. And it was not until 1997 that the Pulitzer for music even went to a jazz work. "All of us sitting at that table were fully aware of Duke Ellington in 1965 being passed over for the Pulitzer and a jazz artist not winning for some time," said Griffin. "We all brought a history to the table and thought, 'Why not?' and 'Why not now?'" The Pulitzers have lately expanded their inclusion of popular music, including honoring Bob Dylan's lyrics with the prize for literature and giving Lin-Manuel Miranda's hip-hop-inspired score for "Hamilton" the Pulitzer for drama. The Lamar news stunned many and was cheered by the rappers' fans, including celebrities like Ellen DeGeneres and Anthony Bourdain, who wrote: "The album was brilliant and deserves every accolade." Leon W. Russell, chairman of the NAACP, wrote on Twitter that the win conferred a literary legitimacy but that Lamar had already gotten "street credibility and artistic authority." TV personality Charlamagne Tha God noted that Lamar joined African-American luminaries such as playwright August Wilson, writers Alex Haley and Toni Morrison, and musician John Coltrane as Pulitzer winners. "Congrats to that brother! I'm inspired!" he wrote. Griffin, a professor of English and African-American studies who has written about Billie Holiday, Miles Davis and John Coltrane, was a rookie on the Pulitzer jury this year. "I will cherish that experience, of going through that process," she said. "On so many levels, I felt like this was major - both the music that we put forward but also what happened in those deliberations." ___ Mark Kennedy is at http://twitter.com/KennedyTwits SAN DIEGO (AP) - The Latest on President Donald Trump's mission to deploy National Guard troops on the Mexican border to combat illegal immigration and drug trafficking (all times local): 10:30 a.m. California Gov. Jerry Brown says he is "pretty close" to an agreement with the Trump administration on sending National Guard troops to the Mexican border. FILE - In this June 22, 2016 file photo, Border Patrol agent Eduardo Olmos walks near the secondary fence separating Tijuana, Mexico, background, and San Diego in San Diego. California Gov. Jerry Brown agreed Wednesday, April 11, 2018, to deploy 400 National Guard troops at President Donald Trump's request, but not all will head to the U.S.-Mexico border as Trump wants and none will enforce federal immigration enforcement. (AP Photo/Gregory Bull, File) Brown said told reporters in Washington that his troops were "chomping at the bit ready to go" to help combat drug and gun smuggling and human trafficking. His comments came a day after federal officials said California rejected some proposed duties for the Guard. On Tuesday, Trump criticized said Brown's actions, saying they will worsen crime in California. Last week, Brown pledged 400 troops but conditioned support on them having nothing to do with immigration enforcement. __ 3:30 a.m. President Donald Trump is criticizing the California governor for rejecting proposed border duties for the National Guard. The Trump administration said Monday that Democratic Gov. Jerry Brown rejected terms of the guard's initial deployment to the Mexican border; a state official said nothing was decided. Trump wants thousands of guard troops to help with immigration enforcement until his promised U.S.-Mexico border wall is built. The Republican president claimed Tuesday that crime in California will worsen because of Brown's actions. Trump tweeted: "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. The high crime rate will only get higher. Much wanted Wall in San Diego already started!" FILE - In this April 10, 2000, file photo, a marker embedded in the pavement marks the border between the United States and Mexico at the San Ysidro border checkpoint between San Diego, Calif., and Tijuana, Mexico. California has rejected the federal government's initial plans for National Guard troops to the border because the work is considered too closely tied to immigration enforcement. (AP Photo/Damian Dovarganes, File) VICTORVILLE, Calif. (AP) - High winds raking Southern California left one community buried in tumbleweeds. Residents of Victorville in the high desert northeast of Los Angeles had to call the city for help when tumbleweeds piled up Monday. Victorville spokeswoman Sue Jones tells the Daily Press that as many as 150 homes were affected in a neighborhood that faces open desert. A member of the Victorville public works team clears tumbleweeds from homes in Victorville, Calif., Monday, April 16, 2018. The residential neighborhood sits at the corner of the open desert and was pounded with the weeds as high winds persisted throughout the day. (James Quigg/The Daily Press via AP) Some homes had tumbleweeds piled as high as the second story. The city and San Bernardino County Fire Department sent crews to rake up the weeds and load them into trash trucks. The gusts trailing a departing storm system are decreasing Tuesday. ___ Information from: Daily Press, http://www.vvdailypress.com NEW YORK (AP) - Fox News Channel said Tuesday that it was as surprised as anyone to learn that Sean Hannity shared a lawyer with President Donald Trump but that its popular prime-time host "continues to have our full support." Hannity is a hot topic for journalism ethics experts and comedians alike after his relationship with attorney Michael Cohen was reluctantly revealed in a court hearing Monday on material seized from Cohen as part of the probe on Trump's Russian contacts. Fox said Tuesday that it had reviewed Hannity's "informal relationship" with Cohen and talked with Hannity about it. Hannity has described his personal dealings with Cohen as centered on real estate advice, and said that it "never rose to any level that I needed to tell anyone that I was asking him questions." FILE - In this April 12, 2018 file photo, Fox News personality Sean Hannity attends The Hollywood Reporter's annual 35 Most Powerful People in Media event in New York. Hannity is President Donald Trump's most vocal defender on television, and a week ago he was on the air criticizing the FBI raid on the president's personal attorney Michael Cohen as evidence that Special Counsel Robert Mueller's "witch hunt" against the president has become a runaway train. It was revealed in a court hearing Monday, April 16, that Cohen also represented Hannity. (Photo by Evan Agostini/Invision/AP, File) The prime-time host is both Trump's biggest defender in the media and Fox's most popular personality. Usually, either Hannity or MSNBC's Rachel Maddow has the biggest audience in cable news. For a traditional journalist, having a professional relationship with a figure he or she frequently reports on is considered unethical, even more so when that relationship is not disclosed to viewers or readers. For that figure not to inform bosses about it is often considered a firing offense. Fox frequently makes a distinction between news programming during its daytime hours and opinion shows at night. "I don't think it's enough to say that Sean Hannity was not a journalist," said Indira Lakshmanan, a journalism ethics expert for the Poynter Institute. "He describes himself as a journalist when it suits him, and a commentator at other times. If you're an opinion journalist, you're still a journalist." The issue plays to his credibility, said Aly Colon, an ethics expert at Washington & Lee University. Hannity frequently draws connections on his show between different people to suggest something nefarious is afoot - like a "deep state" plot against President Trump - so it's particularly damaging when he is revealed to have secret connections of his own to figures he supports, he said. The whole situation put Fox in a bind, said television news consultant Andrew Tyndall. Firing Hannity would make Fox "seem craven to its ideological base of viewers in capitulating to professional norms and politically correct procedures," he said. "The second option, namely to not punish Hannity, would strip away the last vestiges of its claims to be a news channel operating in the journalistic mainstream, leaving it with no defense whatsoever against charges that it is running a propaganda operation." History indicates that Fox takes action against its stars when its bottom line is threatened, Lakshmanan said. For example, settlements were reached on sexual misconduct accusations against Bill O'Reilly without it affecting his job. But after they became publicly known and an advertiser boycott against him quickly caught momentum, O'Reilly was fired. Attempts by critics to foment an advertiser boycott against Hannity in the past have failed, and there's yet to be any indication that this latest news is starting a new one. "I'm not sure it matters to his fans, but it should matter to a network that claims to be a legitimate news network," Lakshmanan said. Before it became clear that Hannity had not revealed his connection to Cohen to his superiors, two people on Fox News - "The Five" co-host Juan Williams and Hannity interview guest Alan Dershowitz - both suggested on the air he faced questions for not doing it. But on the "Fox & Friends" morning show on Tuesday, the hosts compared the relationship to a friendship where you would informally ask someone for advice. "Apparently Sean regarded their relationship as something like that," said Steve Doocy, one of the show's co-hosts. In addition to dismissing the revelation as nothing serious, Hannity on his show Tuesday blamed the "absolutely insane" media for attacking him. Rival news personalities were quick to go after Hannity ("This is crazy town in the news business," said MSNBC's Mika Brzezinski on Tuesday), and so did comedians. Ironically, one of the more subdued was ABC's Jimmy Kimmel talking about "my pal"; he engaged in a bitter dispute with Hannity just a week ago over a Kimmel joke about Melania Trump. "Jon Stewart, after the show, I'm going to come over and we're just going to spoon," Stephen Colbert said. The funniest line may have come from CNN's Jake Tapper in a tweet. "Go home 2018," he wrote. "You're drunk." The characters in the new film "Kodachrome ," a good-natured if by-the-numbers road trip and relationship drama with Jason Sudeikis, Elizabeth Olsen and Ed Harris, are enchanted by the analog. Music is to be listened to on vinyl. Maps are to be read, and not by Siri, to get to a destination. Photographs are best on film. And face time is better than FaceTime when it comes to making amends for decades of bad behavior. It's a little funny, then, that Netflix is ultimately the reason that audiences will be able to see "Kodachrome." The company acquired the indie at the Toronto International Film Festival last fall and is releasing it to streaming customers on Friday. While it'll certainly mean the biggest possible audience for "Kodachrome," there's also some irony in a movie about the death of a type of film being released on a service that more than a few are worried will be the death of another kind of film. Harris, who plays a famous photojournalist rushing against the clock to get some forgotten rolls developed, even has a heartfelt monologue about how "nothing beats the real thing" and how digital photographs are basically just "electronic dust." His character doesn't get into the topic of digital movies and streaming services, but, it's so on the nose, it can't help but trigger the thought. This image released by Netflix shows Ed Harris, left, and Jason Sudeikis in a scene from "Kodachrome." (Christos Kalohoridis/Netflix via AP) Not that the look of the movie is even all that classical or "analog" anyway. The images are smooth and pretty, but sanitized and, well, digital. But the intentions are sweet. It's based on a 2010 New York Times article by A.G. Sulzberger about the closing of the last processor of Kodachrome, Dwayne's Photo in Parsons, Kansas, that inspired amateur and professional photographers to make a journey to the shop to develop their last rolls. The film, directed by Mark Raso ("Copenhagen") and written by Jonathan Tropper ("This is Where I Leave You") adds some stakes and drama to this, and even riffs on the fact that Kodachrome was also the title of a Paul Simon song by making the lead, Matt (Sudeikis), a music producer. Matt is having a lousy day when we meet him, losing a big client and getting an ultimatum from his boss that he's got to evolve and sign someone. It only gets worse when a woman he's never met before, Zoe (Elizabeth Olsen), shows up to tell him that his father, Ben (Harris), is dying and would like to see him. Matt and Ben haven't spoken for a decade, and their relationship was already strained and sour before then with the death of Matt's mother and Ben's general absence. But now, with death knocking, Ben would like Matt to accompany him (and Zoe, who is his caretaker, but we'll get to that later), on a road trip from New York to Kansas to get Ben's film developed before the shop closes and he dies. Despite a lot of protesting, they make a deal with Matt and he takes off in a red convertible with Ben and Zoe. If you've ever seen a movie before, you can probably guess where this is going: Ups and downs and fights and reconciliation and a burgeoning romance all bubble up on their drive to the Midwest. This is a road that has been traveled before, many, many times. And while this makes much of the journey predictable, not to mention the fact that the presence of Zoe, who doesn't do all that much caretaking, is an offensively contrived and obvious plot device, the talented actors elevate the thin premise and make it worth watching - especially the end. Sudeikis, in particular, shines in this unusually dramatic role and exhibits a depth he touched on in films like "Sleeping with Other People" and "Colossal" but that he really gets to live in here. "Kodachrome" was never going rock the industry or disrupt where things are going, but maybe the fact that Netflix is making it available to more eyes than would have ever seen it five years ago is its own kind of silver lining for small character dramas that always seem to be on verge of going to way of Kodachrome. "Kodachrome," a Netflix release, is Not Rated by the Motion Picture Association of America. Running time: 105 minutes. Two and a half stars out of four. ___ Follow AP Film Writer Lindsey Bahr on Twitter: www.twitter.com/ldbahr This image released by Netflix shows Ed Harris, from left, Elizabeth Olsen and Jason Sudeikis in a scene from "Kodachrome." (Christos Kalohoridis/Netflix via AP) BOGOTA, Colombia (AP) - U.S. prosecutors have apparently won the cooperation of a key witness in the case of a top rebel ideologue arrested last week on charges of trying to import 10 metric tons of cocaine into the U.S. An official from Colombia's chief prosecutor's office said Marlon Marin was flown Monday to New York after agreeing to testify against co-defendant Seuxis Hernandez, better known by his alias Jesus Santrich. The official spoke on condition of anonymity because he wasn't authorized to discuss the politically charged case, which has upended the already stumbling peace process with the Revolutionary Armed Forces of Colombia. Marin is the nephew of Luciano Marin, better known as alias Ivan Marquez, who with Santrich's help led the FARC in peace talks that concluded in 2016 with an agreement to end a half century of fighting. FILE - In this Dec. 6, 2016 file photo, Revolutionary Armed Forces of Colombia, FARC, rebel commander Jesus Santrich flashes a victory hand signal at the end of a press conference in Bogota, Colombia. An official with Colombia's chief prosecutor's office said Marlon Marin, the nephew of the former chief peace negotiator, was flown Monday, April 16, 2018, to New York after agreeing to testify against co-defendant Seuxis Hernandez, better known by his alias Jesus Santrich. Both were arrested last week on U.S. charges of conspiring to import 10 metric tons of cocaine into the U.S. (AP Photo/Fernando Vergara, File) Both were arrested in Colombia last week on U.S. charges. Audio recordings secretly obtained by U.S. investigators and released by Colombia's chief prosecutor last week purportedly showed Marin arranging meeting between members of the Mexico-based Sinaloa Cartel and Santrich. In one of the recordings Marin is also heard allegedly negotiating the payment of a large cocaine shipment with an alleged Mexican cartel member. Authorities also seized from a Bogota apartment a drawing Santrich allegedly made for Rafael Caro Quintero, one of Mexico's most-notorious narcos, who last week was added to the FBI's 10 most-wanted list of fugitives. The drawing is dedicated to "Don Rafa Caro" from Santrich "with hopes of peace." Prosecutors for the southern district of New York did not return emails seeking comment. The FARC has strongly defended Santrich, accusing Colombian and U.S. authorities of laying a trap to sabotage the peace deal. But the ex-rebels also made clear that the embarrassing arrest would not reverse their decision to turn over their weapons and form a political movement. Santrich was one of 10 former rebels set to take up seats in congress guaranteed the FARC as a result of the peace deal. Santrich, who says he is on a hunger strike from jail, said that he would rather die of starvation than be extradited. In an interview Tuesday with Colombia's W Radio, the blind former rebel ideologue confirmed that he had conversations with Mexicans over the phone, but thought at the time that they were businessmen interested in investing in post-conflict projects in Colombia. "It's more likely that cocaine passed through the nose of the chief prosecutor of the nation than through my hands," he said. Under terms of the peace accord, rebels who lay down their weapons and confess their war crimes are to be spared jail time and extradition. But they aren't protected for crimes committed after the December 2016 signing. A special tribunal set up by the accord will rule on whether Santrich's alleged past crimes are covered by the agreement in what experts say is a major test for the peace process' credibility. Marlon Marin, in his Facebook page, can be seen posing in aviator-style sunglasses and polyester suits next to yachts and vintage cars, and is seen vacationing in the Colombian city of Cartagena as well as Havana, where peace talks between the FARC and government took place. Friends jokingly nicknamed him "patron," Spanish for the boss. Though the 39-year-old was not a member of the FARC, the official said Marin was close to the group's leadership and often showed up at their meetings. He had no previous criminal record, but had been the target of an investigation by Colombian authorities for allegedly taking bribes from businessmen to secure contracts for post-conflict projects managed by the FARC and the Colombian government. When asked in a press conference about his relationship with his nephew, Marquez only referred to him as a "gentleman" whose "conduct will have to be investigated." He then changed the topic back to Santrich, the supposed ringleader of the group trying to export cocaine to the U.S. "How can they blame a blind man for organizing cocaine shipments?" Marquez said. SEATTLE (AP) - Immigration officials forced by a court order to reinstate a Mexican man's participation in a program designed to protect those brought to the United States illegally as children are again trying to revoke it. Daniel Ramirez Medina, 25, drew international attention last year when he was placed in deportation proceedings despite his participation in the Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals program. He was one of the first people in the program arrested after President Donald Trump took office, despite having committed no crime, and signaled an erosion of protections under the DACA program instituted by President Barack Obama in 2012. U.S. Citizenship and Immigration Services reinstated his DACA status and work permission in response to a February ruling in a federal class-action lawsuit in California. That ruling said that authorities could not strip participants of their protections without giving them a chance to contest the decision. FILE - In this March 29, 2017 file photo, Daniel Ramirez Medina, center, who is a participant in the Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals Program, walks out of the Northwest Detention Center in Tacoma, Wash., with his attorney, Luis Cortes, right, and his brother, left, who has not been identified by name, after Ramirez was released from federal custody. Court papers filed Tuesday, April 12, 2018, say that immigration officials, who under court order reinstated Ramirez's DACA status, are now trying once again to revoke it. (AP Photo/Ted S. Warren, File) Another federal court in California has ordered the government to maintain the DACA program; nearly 700,000 people are enrolled nationally. Early this month, however, the agency notified Ramirez that it intended to revoke his status again. It cited the same rationale it used to detain him before: that he had admitted to having gang ties. His lawyers say the government invented that assertion, and an immigration judge has called it unfounded. "It's an incredibly cruel approach to this case," said one of Ramirez's lawyers, Ethan Dettmer. "What's unlawful about it is that they've for over a year now had the opportunity to substantiate their claim Daniel's a gang member. They have not done it." Through a spokesman, Jonathan Withington, Citizenship and Immigration Services declined to comment. Ramirez came to the U.S. when he was 7. Now the father of a young son who is an American citizen, he has no criminal record - though he was once cited for possessing a small amount of marijuana in Oregon. He twice passed background checks to participate in DACA, providing the government with biometric and other personal information in exchange for being allowed to stay and work in the U.S. But in February 2017, he was detained when immigration agents showed up at his apartment in suburban Seattle. They were there to arrest his father, a previously deported felon, but they took Ramirez into custody too. Immigration agents said he acknowledged having gang affiliation and noted a "gang tattoo" on his forearm. Ramirez repeatedly denied having made any such statement - at most, he says, he told them he knew people in the orange fields of California who had been in gangs. According to his lawyers, that's a far cry from the standard the government would need to prove to strip his status: that he poses an "egregious public safety concern." Further, they say, Ramirez's tattoo - "La Paz BCS" - is merely a tribute to the city of La Paz in the Mexican state of Baja California Sur, where he was born. Ramirez spent six weeks in custody before a judge ordered him released on bail. In January, another immigration judge, Brett Parchert, ordered him deported due to his illegal status, despite finding that he "was not in a gang, nor associated with one." Ramirez has appealed Parchert's decision in immigration court while also challenging his arrest itself in U.S. District Court in Seattle as a violation of his constitutional rights. His lawyers hope to see his status restored to what it was before he was arrested. Last week, Ramirez's attorneys asked U.S. District Judge Ricardo S. Martinez to expedite his case, given that he only had one month to respond to the government's latest efforts to revoke his DACA enrollment. The judge said Monday that wouldn't be necessary, and he scheduled oral arguments for May 1. Ramirez's current two-year DACA status expires May 4. Since being released from custody early last year, Ramirez has been splitting his time between Washington state and Lindsay, California. "I have been spending as much time as I can with my family," he wrote in a declaration filed in February. "It is an impossible situation for me and my son, and I am trying to be the best father I can be, and trying to provide for him both emotionally and financially. If I am deported I won't be able to do either of these things." ___ Follow Gene Johnson at https://twitter.com/GeneAPseattle MINNEAPOLIS (AP) - The U.S. Marshals Service is offering a reward of up to $5,000 for information leading to the arrest of a fugitive suspected of killing her husband in Minnesota and a woman in Florida. Fifty-six-year-old Lois Riess has been on the run since her husband, 54-year-old David Riess, was found dead of multiple gunshot wounds at their home in Blooming Prairie, Minnesota, on March 23. Dodge County sheriff's officials say second-degree murder charges in his death are expected in the next few days. Officials believe she used the same gun to kill 59-year-old Pamela Hutchinson, of Bradenton, Florida. She was found dead on April 9. Authorities say the two women talked at a bar and that Riess killed Hutchinson to assume her identity. Southwest Florida Crime Stoppers is also offering a reward of up to $1,000. WASHINGTON (AP) - The Republican chairman of a Senate oversight committee is pressing the head of the Environmental Protection Agency to provide details about his use of multiple government email addresses. Senate Environment and Public Works Chairman John Barrasso issued a letter asking EPA Administrator Scott Pruitt to disclose all his email addresses and affirm that all were being searched in response to Freedom of Information Act requests. EPA spokesman Jahan Wilcox said Tuesday that the agency maintains two email addresses for Pruitt that are used by his staff for public correspondence and maintaining his calendar. A third is used by Pruitt himself. A fourth account was also created for Pruitt, but Wilcox said it had never been used. In this April 3, 2018, photo, Environmental Protection Agency Administrator Scott Pruitt speaks at a news conference at the Environmental Protection Agency in Washington. The Republican chairman of a Senate committee is pressing Pruitt to explain his use of multiple government email addresses. Senate Environment and Public Works Chairman John Barrasso asked Pruitt to disclose all his email addresses and affirm that all were being searched in response to Freedom of Information Act requests.(AP Photo/Andrew Harnik) "When we receive a FOIA request all accounts are searched before we respond," Wilcox said. Barrasso's letter followed one sent last week by Democratic Sens. Jeff Merkey of Oregon and Tom Carper of Delaware asking EPA's inspector general to review the issue. The two Democrats, both members of the Senate environment committee, expressed concern that the agency's searches for public records may not cover all of the EPA administrator's accounts. In his letter, Barrasso recounted that during confirmation hearings last year Pruitt had assured the senators he would not take any actions that would make it more difficult or impossible to access his official written communications under FOIA. Pruitt has been under intense scrutiny since it was first reveled last month that he had stayed last year in a bargain-priced Capitol Hill condo tied to a fossil-fuels lobbyist. The embattled EPA administrator and those around him are the subject of multiple investigations launched by government watchdogs and congressional committees looking into luxury travel expenses, outsized security spending and massive raises awarded to political appointees. EPA's inspector general has at least five ongoing Pruitt-related probes, while the House oversight panel on Friday demanded interviews with five of his closest aides. The National Archives and Records Administration ruled in 2013 that federal officials could use undisclosed government email accounts to conduct official business as long as the messages are safely preserved and turned over under FOIA. The action came in response to reporting by The Associated Press that revealed several high-ranking Obama administration appointees, including then-EPA Administrator Lisa Jackson, had been using secret email accounts. At the time, congressional Republicans accused Jackson of using a government email account under the name "Richard Windsor" to sidestep disclosure rules. Pruitt has also previously faced questions about transparency with his emails. An Oklahoma judge ruled last year that Pruitt, the state's former attorney general, had violated public records laws by improperly withholding his correspondence for at least two years. Thousands of emails were eventually released under court order, but only after Pruitt had already won Senate confirmation for his current job. The AP reported last year that those Oklahoma emails showed ties between Pruitt and his state's oil and gas industry, including close coordination on lawsuits challenging EPA environmental regulations. When a summer thunderstorm knocked out power to Scott Pruitt's home in 2013, for example, the then-attorney general directed his executive assistant to coordinate with a lobbyist for American Electric Power to get the lights back on quickly. Records also showed Pruitt occasionally used a private email account to communicate with state staff, despite assurances he made during his Senate confirmation process that he had always used a state email account for government business. Democrats later accused Pruitt of being untruthful in his sworn testimony before the committee. On Tuesday, Wilcox said Pruitt had not used private email to conduct public business while at EPA. ___ Follow Associated Press environmental reporter Michael Biesecker at http://twitter.com/mbieseck TUCSON, Ariz. (AP) - Jurors in Arizona deliberated Tuesday without reaching a verdict in the trial of a U.S. Border Patrol agent charged with second-degree murder in the cross-border shooting of a teenager who was throwing rocks at authorities during a drug-smuggling attempt. The deliberations began earlier in the day in federal court in Tucson, Arizona, in the case against agent Lonnie Swartz, who fired 16 shots in 2012 through a 20-foot (6-meter) fence that sits on an embankment above Mexico's Calle Internacional, a Nogales street lined with homes and small businesses. Deliberations are set to resume Wednesday after the month-long trial. FILE - In this March 21, 2018, file photo, Border Patrol agent Lonnie Swartz, left, makes his way to the U.S. District Court building in downtown Tucson, Ariz., where opening arguments were scheduled to begin in his murder trial. Closing arguments are expected in Tucson, Ariz., this week in the trial of Swartz, charged in the 2012 fatal shooting 16-year-old Jose Antonio Elena Rodriguez across the Mexican border. (Ron Medvescek/Arizona Daily Star via AP, File) The case marks the rare prosecution of an on-duty federal officer in a fatal shooting from the U.S. into Mexico. Prosecutors acknowledged during the trial that 16-year-old Jose Antonio Elena Rodriguez was throwing rocks across the border into the U.S. but say Swartz responded with an unreasonable amount of force. During closing arguments Monday, Assistant U.S. Attorney Wallace Heath Kleindienst said Swartz "was fed up with being rocked" after being targeted in at least six other attacks. "He was angry with those people who had been throwing rocks against the fence," Kleindienst said. "It was not about eliminating a threat, because there was no threat," he said. "It was about eliminating a human being." Jurors temporarily left the deliberation room Tuesday to sit in the courtroom as a clerk read back the agent's testimony about being targeted in at least six rock-throwing incidents. The Border Patrol came under close scrutiny during the Obama administration for allegations involving excessive use of force. Customs and Border Protection, its parent agency, reported 55 incidents in which employees used firearms from Oct. 1, 2011, to Sept. 30, 2012. The number of incidents fell to 17 for the same period five years later. Defense attorney Sean Chapman said in his closing argument that there was "not a scintilla of evidence" that Swartz was angry or fed up. He said Swartz shot because he was trying to protect himself and his fellow agents during a drug operation. "From his first day in the Border Patrol, it had been ingrained in him that rocks were dangerous," Chapman said. District Judge Raner Collins has told the jury it can downgrade the charge against Swartz to voluntary or involuntary manslaughter during its deliberations. The trial played out as President Donald Trump called for National Guard troops to be sent to the Mexican border to free Border Patrol agents to concentrate on stopping drugs and people from illegally entering the United States. The killing of Elena Rodriguez was felt deeply in the twin communities of Nogales, where about 20,000 people live on the Arizona side and about 300,000 in Mexico. The communities are linked by family members, trade and culture and have long been referred to locally as "Ambos Nogales" - "Both Nogales" in Spanish. Swartz pleaded not guilty after being indicted by a federal grand jury in 2015 and has been free on his own recognizance. The Border Patrol has not said if he was still receiving his salary. The agent, who has been on administrative leave pending the trial's outcome, testified that he remembered little of what happened. TULSA, Okla. (AP) - An Oklahoma judge has ruled that the governor's office and a public safety agency violated the state Open Records Act when they didn't respond to a newspaper's request for records in a timely manner. The case involves requests filed by the Tulsa World and a former editor with Gov. Mary Fallin's office and the Oklahoma Department of Public Safety days after the 2014 botched lethal injection of Clayton Lockett. The lawsuit also sought records related to the execution of Charles Warner. Oklahoma's Open Records Act requires public bodies to provide "prompt, reasonable access" to its records. The law also says that public bodies "may establish reasonable procedures which protect the integrity and organization of its records and to prevent excessive disruptions of its essential functions." Judge Lisa Tipping Davis ruled Friday that the process resulting in delays in excess of 17 months wasn't "prompt or reasonable." She said the newspaper's request wasn't formally denied, but it's still "uncontroverted that no documents were produced prior to the lawsuit being filed." Tulsa World Executive Editor Susan Ellerbach said she was proud of the newspaper's persistence and perseverance. "It's been a very long and arduous process for all involved," Ellerbach said. "But the question was whether or not our government officials responded correctly to our Open Records request and the fact is they did not." Michael McNutt, communications director for the governor's office, said Fallin hasn't decided whether she will appeal the ruling. "The governor's office believes that the amount of time it took to respond to the open records request in light of the 45,000 pages of response, the sensitive subject matter, and the amount of staff available to deal with the request was reasonable," McNutt said. ___ Information from: Tulsa World, http://www.tulsaworld.com BUDAPEST, Hungary (AP) - Police arrested the former head of Hungary's swimming federation after questioning him Tuesday in connection with the 1998 slaying of a business rival. Authorities identified the man only as T. Gyarfas, saying he is suspected of ordering the killing of media mogul Janos Fenyo, who was fatally shot while his car was stopped at a Budapest traffic light. Hungarian media said the suspect is 69-year-old Tamas Gyarfas, who led the Hungarian Swimming Federation in 1993-2006 while also holding top positions in European and international swimming organizations and Hungary's Olympic committee. He also was a key media figure after Hungary's return to democracy in 1990. FILE - In a Sept. 27, 2006 file photo, General Secretary of the Dutch Soccer Federation and head of the delegation Harry Been, left, and head of the Hungarian organizing committee Tamas Gyarfas, center, share a smile as Chairman of the Hungarian Soccer Federation Istvan Kisteleki, right, looks on at the airport of Debrecen, 226 kms east of Budapest, Hungary. Hungarian police have questioned and taken into custody Gyarfas, the former head of Hungary's swimming federation in the February 1998 murder case of a business rival. Police said Tuesday, April 17, 2018 that a suspect they identified as T. Gyarfas is suspected of ordering the murder of media mogul Janos Fenyo, who was fatally shot while his car was stopped at a Budapest traffic light. (AP Photo/MTI, Tibor Olah, File) Fenyo, who worked for years as a press photographer, launched a successful chain of video rental stores shortly after returning in 1987 from a stay in the United States. Later, he began building a media company that grew to include popular magazines and newspapers as well as a cable TV channel. He had a well-known rivalry with Gyarfas, who was the producer and occasional interviewer of "Napkelte" (Sunrise), state television's widely watched morning program. In the late afternoon of Feb. 11, 1998, Fenyo was shot numerous times with a Croatian-made submachine gun, which later was recovered by police. The assassination shocked the country and speculation about its motive immediately centered on Fenyo's legal and allegedly illegal business dealings. A Slovak man, Jozef Rohac, was sentenced to life in prison last year for Fenyo's murder, but the person who hired the gunman had not previously been identified. Police said that last month they met with a prison inmate identified only as T. Portik, who is currently serving a 13-year term for ordering an underworld killing, to question him about suspected involvement in Fenyo's slaying. Gyarfas resigned as head of Hungary's swimming federation in November 2016, just months before the country hosted the 2017 world championships, the largest sporting event ever held in the country. A campaign for his ouster was led by three-time Olympic champion Katinka Hosszu, who called him a "most harmful factor" for Hungarian swimming. LAS VEGAS (AP) - A suspect in the fatal shooting of one casino executive and the wounding of another at a picnic held for a group of employees of a Las Vegas casino-resort had been a card dealer at the luxury property for 15 years, authorities said Tuesday. Anthony Wrobel remained at large after being accused of walking up to a table at a Las Vegas park Sunday evening and shooting the two executives of The Venetian at close range. The casino-resort identified the executives as vice president of casino operations Mia Banks and Hector Rodriguez, executive director of table games. This undated photo provided by The Venetian resort and casino shows vice president of casino operations Mia Banks, vice president of casino operations at the casino. Banks was killed Sunday, April 15, 2018, at a picnic held for a group of employees from the Las Vegas casino-resort. (The Venetian via AP) Banks, 54, died at a hospital after what authorities are considering a planned and targeted attack, police Capt. Robert Plummer said. The coroner's office said she was shot in the chest and head. Rodriguez, who police said was critically injured, is in stable condition at a hospital. Plummer said Wrobel asked fellow employees where the casino executives were seated at the park and was directed to a gazebo area. Once there and "without warning or provocation," Wrobel pulled out a handgun, shot one victim at point-blank range then turned and shot the other victim, Plummer said. "At this point, what we believe is he is a disgruntled employee," Plummer said. "It's a prime case of workplace violence where someone was not happy with his conditions and resulted in violence to deal with that issue that he was personally having." Las Vegas Sands Corp., which operates The Venetian, said Banks had worked there since it opened in 1999 and along with Rodriguez was considered a founding team member. The company is offering a $50,000 reward for information that leads to the arrest of Wrobel. "Our hearts are with both families, and everyone who has been affected by this senseless act of violence," the company said in a statement. The shooting happened at a park near McCarran International Airport. Plummer said Wrobel's car was found at an airport parking garage. Plummer said police do not believe Wrobel, 42, got on a flight at the airport, but they have not ruled out the possibility. FBI supervisory special agent Joe Perez said investigators are considering obtaining a federal arrest warrant in the event that he fled Nevada. This undated photo provided by the Las Vegas Metropolitan Police Department shows Anthony Wrobel. Police were searching for Wrobel on Monday, April 16, 2018. He is accused of opening fire on a picnic for a group of employees of a Las Vegas Strip casino-resort, killing a woman and critically injuring a man on Sunday, April 15, in what investigators called workplace violence. (Las Vegas Metropolitan Police Department/Las Vegas Review-Journal via AP) This undated photo provided by the Las Vegas Metropolitan Police Department shows Anthony Wrobel. Wrobel is accused of opening fire on a picnic for a group of employees of a Las Vegas Strip casino-resort, killing a woman and critically injuring a man on Sunday, April 15, in what investigators called workplace violence. (AP Photo/Las Vegas Metropolitan Police Dept.) COLUMBIA, S.C. (AP) - Twenty South Carolina prisoners have been killed at the hands of fellow inmates in the past 16 months. The staggering amount of violence, which includes the gang-fueled bloodshed that left seven prisoners dead and 22 injured this week at Lee Correctional Institution, has some legislators calling for more oversight and transparency at the state Department of Corrections. At a news conference, Corrections Director Bryan Stirling said officers stormed in and took the first of three dorms back from rioting prisoners about four hours after the melee began. He said the officers were assembled at the rural prison as quickly as possible and went in only when it was safe to do so. After the institution was back under control, it then took more time to get injured inmates to hospitals. The prison is located 40 miles east of Columbia. South Carolina Department of Corrections Director Bryan Stirling addresses the media during a press conference following a prison riot at the Lee Correctional Institution Monday, April 16, 2018, in Columbia, S.C. (AP Photo/Sean Rayford) "It shouldn't take five hours to get in there and put some water on these fires," said state Rep. Justin Bamberg, a Democrat and lawyer whose clients include the families of several inmates who were attacked in previous instances. Contraband cellphones and staffing shortages are often blamed for many of the department's woes. Stirling, who oversees 21 prisons and more than 19,000 inmates, has said he's hired some of the 500 corrections officers he needs, but stresses the need for funding more officers. Sen. Gerald Malloy, whose district includes Lee Correctional, said the government has a responsibility to keep the prison population safe and thinks lawmakers need to look at whether cost savings in corrections has been efficient. "The burden comes back to the General Assembly, what are you going to do?" he said. Stirling - who served as then-Gov. Nikki Haley's chief of staff before she appointed him to lead the prisons in 2013 - said his No. 1 security threat is cellphones, which gives inmates unfettered communication allowing them to commit crimes inside and outside of prison. He said the riot started Sunday night as a gang war over territory, money and illegal items such as cellphones. Stirling has urged the Federal Communications Commission to allow the prison to block or jam cellphone signals to prevent inmates from using them. Violence at Lee and other institutions throughout South Carolina is not surprising, Republican Gov. Henry McMaster noted at the news conference. McMaster echoed Stirling's call for the ability to jam cellphones in prison but didn't propose any other substantive alternatives. "We do the best we can," the governor said. From 2001 to 2014, an average of 60 inmates died annually in state prisons across the country, according to the U.S. Bureau of Justice Statistics. In 2017, a dozen South Carolina inmates were killed by other inmates. "That's staggeringly out of proportion," said John Pfaff, a Fordham law professor who tracks prison data. "It makes a prison that is supposed to be a secure facility - a place with no weapons, a place where you can't leave - as dangerous as living in the most dangerous city in America." In February, an inmate killed a fellow prisoner at Lee, where this week's attack took place among inmates armed with homemade knives used to slash and stab rival gang members. An inmate stabbed two officers in 2015. At McCormick, another maximum-security prison, two inmates killed four prisoners last year in under an hour. For the past few months, The Associated Press has been communicating with a Lee prisoner who used a contraband cellphone to offer insight into life behind bars. He said inmates there roam freely, have easy access to cellphones and drugs, and are often left to police themselves. The inmate spoke to AP on the condition of anonymity because his cellphone is illegal and he fears retribution from other prisoners. He described a facility run by gangs, and guards who take a hands-off approach because they fear for their own safety. In the most recent incident, he told AP that officers stayed in a control booth for hours Sunday night, waiting for backup as inmates lay dying in pools of blood. That echoes earlier anecdotes he shared about what happens whenever gang fights break out. "The Crips and Bloods had a confrontation just a few feet from my cell door and, when the knives, machetes, axes, pipes and body armor came out, the cops were nowhere to be found," he wrote in February. To get away from the fighting, the inmate said he stays in his cell. But the door lock has been broken for months, so he said he and others jam materials into the lock to try to keep others from coming in. "ALL of the doors to the cells are broken," the inmate wrote. "At any time, I can let myself out of my cell, to do whatever it is that I would want to do." ___ Associated Press writers Jeffrey Collins and Christina Myers in Columbia contributed to this report. ___ Kinnard can be reached at http://twitter.com/MegKinnardAP . Read more of her work at https://apnews.com/search/meg%20kinnard . These undated photos provided by the South Carolina Department of Corrections shows, from top row from left, Corey Scott, Eddie Casey Gaskins, Raymond Angelo Scott and Damonte Rivera; bottom row from left, Michael Milledge, Cornelius McClary and Joshua Jenkins. The seven inmates were killed, and at least 17 prisoners wounded, in a riot at the Lee Correctional Institution on early Monday, April 16, 2018, in Bishopville, S.C. (South Carolina Department of Corrections via AP) A police vehicle sits outside the Lee Correctional Institution on Monday, April 16, 2018, in Bishopville, S.C. Multiple inmates were killed and others seriously injured amid fighting between prisoners inside the maximum security prison in South Carolina. (AP Photo/Sean Rayford) A fence surrounds the Lee Correctional Institution on Monday, April 16, 2018, in Bishopville, S.C. Multiple inmates were killed and others seriously injured amid fighting between prisoners inside the maximum security prison in South Carolina. (AP Photo/Sean Rayford) FILE - In this Feb. 9, 2016, file photo, razor wire protects a perimeter of the Lee Correctional Institution in Bishopville, S.C. A South Carolina prisons spokesman says several inmates are dead and others required outside medical attention after hours of fighting inside the maximum security prison. (AP Photo/Sean Rayford, File) This shows the Lee Correctional Institution on Monday, April 16, 2018, in Bishopville, S.C. Multiple inmates were killed and others seriously injured amid fighting between prisoners inside the maximum security prison in South Carolina. (AP Photo/Sean Rayford) This shows the Lee Correctional Institution on Monday, April 16, 2018, in Bishopville, S.C. Multiple inmates were killed and others seriously injured amid fighting between prisoners inside the maximum security prison in South Carolina. (AP Photo/Sean Rayford) South Carolina Law Enforcement Division Chief Mark Keel, left, addresses the media during a press conference following a prison riot at the Lee Correctional Institution Monday, April 16, 2018, in Columbia, S.C. (AP Photo/Sean Rayford) South Carolina Gov. Henry McMaster, left, address the media during a press conference following a prison riot at the Lee Correctional Institution Monday, April 16, 2018, in Columbia, S.C. (AP Photo/Sean Rayford) South Carolina Gov. Henry McMaster, left, and South Carolina Department of Corrections Director Bryan Stirling address the media at a press conference Monday, April 16, 2018, in Columbia, S.C., regarding a deadly prison riot at the Lee Correctional Institution. (AP Photo/Sean Rayford) WASHINGTON (AP) - For the second straight year, President Donald Trump is holding a rally instead of attending the White House Correspondents Dinner. The president's campaign announced Tuesday that Trump will hold a rally on April 28 in Michigan. The event in the town of Washington, which is outside Detroit, is slated to begin around the same time as the glitzy gala in the far more well-known Washington, D.C. President Donald Trump speaks during a meeting with Japanese Prime Minister Shinzo Abe sat Trump's private Mar-a-Lago club, Tuesday, April 17, 2018, in Palm Beach, Fla. (AP Photo/Pablo Martinez Monsivais) Trump has skipped the dinner both years he has been in office. But this year, unlike in 2017, he has encouraged aides to attend. Some, however, will be needed to staff the just-announced rally. Last year, he held a rally in Harrisburg, Pennsylvania, and spent much of the evening bashing the press, saying he was "with much, much better people" at the rally. WASHINGTON (AP) - President Donald Trump has formally notified Congress that deputy CIA director Gina Haspel is his pick to lead the agency. Trump tweeted last month that he had selected Haspel to replace Mike Pompeo, who is being considered to be secretary of state. But the president did not send the formal paperwork to Capitol Hill until Tuesday. Critics had begun speculating that the delay signaled the White House was having second thoughts about the nomination. Some lawmakers and human rights groups oppose her nomination because of her role in the CIA's detention and harsh interrogation of terror suspects after 9/11. The Senate intelligence committee is expected to have a confirmation hearing for Haspel in coming weeks. CHICAGO (AP) - The Art Institute of Chicago has received two donations totaling $70 million, including a $50 million gift that amounts to the largest monetary donation in the museum's history. The museum announced the donations Tuesday. The $50 million unrestricted gift comes from museum trustee Janet Duchossois and her husband. Another $20 million came from board chairman Robert Levy and his wife to be used for operations and acquisitions. The Chicago Tribune reports that Art Institute President James Rondeau says there are no specific, immediate plans for the new money. Rondeau says the "gifts are allowing us to now start to conceive what our future might look like, rather than specifically funding an existing plan." Before Tuesday, the museum's largest cash gift was a $35 million donation in 2015 from late Massachusetts collector Dorothy Braude Edinburg. ___ Information from: Chicago Tribune, http://www.chicagotribune.com Newscaster Carl Kasell, a signature voice of NPR who brought his gravitas to 'Morning Edition' and later his wit to 'Wait, Wait ... Don't Tell Me!' has died Newscaster Carl Kasell, a signature voice of NPR who brought his gravitas to 'Morning Edition' and later his wit to 'Wait, Wait ... Don't Tell Me!' has died. He was 84. NPR said Kasell died Tuesday from complications from Alzheimer's disease in Potomac, Maryland. He retired in 2014. Kasell's radio career spanned half a century, starting as a morning DJ and newscaster at WGBR-AM in Goldsboro, North Carolina. He spent a decade at radio station WAVA in Arlington, Virginia, going from morning anchor to news director. He was a newscaster for 30 years on 'Morning Edition' until 2009. Kasell then became the official judge and scorekeeper of the Chicago-based show 'Wait, Wait ... Don't Tell Me!' in 1998. He left his voice on hundreds of answering machines as part of that show's prize. 'He was, and remains, the heart and soul of our show,' Peter Sagal, the host of 'Wait, Wait,' tweeted Tuesday. NPR's Melissa Block said of Kasell: 'A beloved voice. A radio man through and through. And the kindest colleague you could hope to find.' Kasell joined NPR as a part-time employee in 1975 for 'Weekend All Things Considered' and then announced the news on the first broadcast of 'Morning Edition' in 1979 alongside host Bob Edwards. 'I look out the window in the morning sometimes, and the sun is rising, and the people are going to work,' Kasell told NPR on his retirement. 'I look at Washington as being that big, sleeping giant, just stretching and waking up, and going about its business. And to know that I'm working in the capital of the most powerful nation in the world - I feel good about that.' He loved radio from an early age, saying he would play his grandmother's records on a wind-up record player and take commercial breaks. He majored in English at the University of North Carolina, Chapel Hill and helped inaugurate a news program at the university's WUNC station. PITTSBURGH (AP) - Dick's Sporting Goods is destroying all the guns and accessories that it stopped selling earlier this year after the school shooting in Parkland, Florida. The retailer said Tuesday that it is in the process of destroying all the firearms it pulled from its shelves, rather than trying to return them to their manufacturers. Dicks made headlines in February when, in the aftermath of the massacre at Marjory Stoneman Douglas High School, it banned the sale of assault-style rifles and the sale of all guns to anyone under 21. Other retailers followed suit, including Walmart, which also raised its minimum-age rules for firearms. Dick's is based in the Pittsburgh area. The company's decision to destroy the guns was first reported by the Pittsburgh Post-Gazette. ITHACA, N.Y. (AP) - A white Cornell University student has admitted using a racial slur during an attack on a black student and has pleaded guilty to disorderly conduct. Police initially charged 20-year-old John Greenwood, of Toronto, with assault as a hate crime after a black student said he was attacked by several people who hurled racial epithets outside his residence near the Cornell campus in Ithaca, New York, in September. Tompkins County District Attorney Matthew Van Houten said Tuesday that Greenwood admitted using racial slurs but that it doesn't appear the brawl was racially motivated. He notes "alcohol was a significant factor." He says the victim and his family agreed with the reduced charge. Greenwood has apologized and said he used "unacceptable" language. The court ordered Greenwood to perform 75 hours of community service and pay restitution. CARACAS, Venezuela (AP) - Venezuela's opposition-controlled but essentially powerless congress gave a group of self-exiled judges permission Tuesday to put President Nicolas Maduro on trial for allegedly seeking bribes from Odebrecht, the Brazilian construction giant at the center of a regional corruption scandal. Maduro's trial will only be symbolic, as the jurists who are overseeing the case are not recognized by Venezuela's law enforcement institutions. The proceedings against Maduro started earlier this month in Bogota, Colombia, where a group of judges known as Venezuela's "Supreme Court in Exile" met to review claims that Maduro illegally sought $50 million from Odebrecht for his 2013 presidential campaign. At the highly publicized hearing, Venezuela's deposed chief prosecutor, Luisa Ortega, claimed that Maduro sought $50 million from the Brazilian construction company for his 2013 presidential campaign and in exchange offered to help Odebrecht secure new contracts. Ortega asked for Maduro to be tried for corruption and money laundering and handed the judges a CD with evidence of his alleged crimes. On Tuesday, the National Assembly, which was largely superseded by a pro-government constituent assembly installed last summer, voted overwhelmingly to approve a request by the jurists to proceed to a trial. Officials of Maduro's socialist government have called the jurists' proceedings "silly" and "illegal." A webcast set up by the National Assembly showed representatives cheering and chanting "liberty" as voting results were announced. Local media were not allowed to broadcast the assembly's proceedings, and journalists were stopped from entering the chamber by Venezuela's National Guard, which has a long history of censoring the local press. The "Supreme Court in Exile" is made up of thirty jurists who were appointed to Venezuela's highest court by the National Assembly last year. They fled the country after Maduro threatened to imprison them, accusing them of trying to illegally replace Venezuela's government-stacked supreme court. Opponents of Maduro hope the symbolic trial will raise awareness about the president's alleged crimes. "This man's corruption is drowning us," said Juan Guaido, one of the congressmen who voted to hold the trial. Guaido argued that Maduro has to be tried outside Venezuela because the country is governed by "a dictatorship." Tarek William Saab, Venezuela's current chief prosecutor who is a staunch ally of the government, said Monday that the National Assembly's proceedings against Maduro were illegal and irrelevant. COLORADO SPRINGS, Colo. (AP) - The Latest on a fire that damaged the terminal at Colorado Springs Airport (all times local): 4 p.m. Colorado Springs Airport is set to reopen early Wednesday morning as crews repair damage caused by a fire in the terminal roof. All flights were canceled at the Colorado Springs Airport in Colorado Springs, Colo., after a late night fire Monday, April 16, 2018. The United check-in area received heavy damage from water and falling ceiling tiles. Crews were working hard to fix damaged areas of the terminal on Tuesday, in hopes the terminal could reopen as soon as possible. (Jerilee Bennett/The Gazette via AP) Flights in and out of the airport were canceled after the fire started in the insulation of the roof late Monday night. It took firefighters four hours to put it out. Airport officials say the terminal was evacuated safely and there were no reported injuries. Incoming passengers were forced to wait on their planes on the tarmac. Airport spokeswoman Aidan Ryan says 26 arriving flights and 30 departures were canceled. The airport is set to reopen at 3:30 a.m. Wednesday. ___ 11 a.m. Flights into and out of Colorado Springs Airport are canceled Tuesday because of a fire that damaged the terminal. The fire started in the insulation of the roof at around 11:30 p.m. Monday. It took firefighters four hours to put it out. The airport says the terminal was evacuated safely and there were no reported injuries. Incoming passengers were forced to wait on their planes on the tarmac Airport spokeswoman Aidan Ryan says that 26 arriving flights and 30 departures were canceled. The airport will announce later Tuesday whether Wednesday flights will be impacted. All flights were canceled at the Colorado Springs Airport in Colorado Springs, Colo., after a late night fire Monday, April 16, 2018. Fire damage can be seen from the exterior upper levels of the structure. Crews were working hard to fix damaged areas of the terminal on Tuesday in hopes the terminal could reopen as soon as possible. (Jerilee Bennett/The Gazette via AP) In a story sent April 16 about sexual misconduct by doctors, The Associated Press misspelled the name of a health services researcher with nonprofit advocacy organization Public Citizen. Her name is Azza AbuDagga, not Azza Abbudagga. A corrected version of the story is below: BC-US--Sexual Misconduct-Doctors AP investigation: Doctors keep licenses despite sex abuse By JEFF HORWITZ and JULIET LINDERMAN Associated Press The first time that Dr. Anthony Bianchi came onto a patient, California's medical board alleged, the gynecologist placed a chair against the exam room door, put his fingers into the woman's vagina and exposed his erect penis. The second time, the board claimed, he told a patient that he couldn't stop staring at her breasts and recounted a dream in which he performed oral sex on her in the office. The third time, the board charged, he told a pregnant patient suffering from vaginal bleeding that she shouldn't shave her pubic hair before her next visit, as he was getting too excited. These episodes led to disciplinary actions by the state's medical board in 2012 and in 2016. Bianchi agreed not contest the charges, and he held onto his medical license. Under a settlement with California's medical board, he agreed to seek therapy and refrain from treating women during five years of probation. Bianchi did not respond to telephone messages from The Associated Press left for him at the workers' compensation clinic in Fresno, California, where he now evaluates occupational health claims. In recent months, Hollywood moguls, elite journalists and top politicians have been pushed out of their jobs or resigned their posts in the wake allegations of sexual misconduct. In contrast, the world of medicine is often more forgiving, according to an AP investigation. When the doctors are disciplined, the punishment often consists of a short suspension paired with mandatory therapy that treats sexually abusive behavior as a symptom of an illness or addiction, the AP found. Decades of complaints that the physician disciplinary system is too lenient on sex-abusing doctors have produced little change in the practices of state medical boards. And the #MeToo campaign and the rapid push in recent months to increase accountability for sexual misconduct in American workplaces do not appear to have sparked a movement toward changing how medical boards deal with physicians who act out sexually against patients or staffers. The sentencing of Larry Nassar, a former doctor for the U.S. Olympic gymnastics program convicted of abusing more than 150 women and girls, has put a high-profile case of physician misconduct in the spotlight. But across the country, most doctors accused of sexual misconduct avoid a medical license review entirely. A study last year found that two-thirds of doctors who were sanctioned by their employers or paid a settlement as the result of sex misconduct claims never faced medical board discipline. "There's been a failure of the medical community to take a stand against the issue," said Azza AbuDagga, a health services researcher with nonprofit advocacy organization Public Citizen. She published a report recently detailing sexual misconduct among physicians. Its findings showed that of the 253 doctors reported to the National Practitioner Data Bank for having been sanctioned by their respective hospitals or health care organizations for sexual misconduct, or paid a settlement that stemmed from such an allegation, 170 of them were not disciplined by state medical boards, even though all boards have access to the reports filed with the data bank. "They could tell the public that they will investigate every single case. There are many things that can be done, even just having a policy of zero tolerance," she said. "If every single hospital would just take a stand and issue a statement saying clearly that any sexual misconduct with patients won't be tolerated and that there will be consequences including permanently revoking the medical license of every doctor found guilty." Current guidelines from the Federation of State Physician Health Programs, which represents doctor rehab programs in 47 states, are largely silent on handling sexual misconduct treatment and describe sexual harassment as a "cause of impairment" in a doctor. Programs to treat doctor impairment are inherently supposed to be "nondisciplinary," per the federation's guidelines. Linda Bresnahan, who heads the federation, said its guidelines are being rewritten and, despite their language, should not be applied to sexual misbehavior. A statement provided by the federation says only about half of doctor rehab programs nationwide accept doctors accused of sexual misconduct, a choice the group considers to be "a local issue beyond the purview of national guidance." The harm committed by sexually abusive doctors is aggravated by the personal nature of the doctor-patient relationship, according to experts and doctors' victims. When Marissa White came to Dr. Gunwant Dhaliwal in 2007 for neck pain after a car accident, he reached under her shirt and into her bra, grabbing her breasts. A jury convicted him of misdemeanor battery in the case, and Florida's medical board concluded that his crime demonstrated his "lack of good moral character" and "lack of worthiness" to practice medicine. But despite that finding - and at least six other similar allegations made by women patients and employees, both before and after the incident with White, according to court cases and police complaints - Dhaliwal can still be found practicing at his Tampa-area urgent care clinics. "I had to sit there in front of him, look him in the eye, they made their guilty verdict and that's it, nothing came of it," White told the AP of her experience at trial. She still lives in Florida, but won't even go to the neighborhood where Dhaliwal practices medicine. "He should have lost his license a long time ago. He should have lost it the first time it happened." But his office manager told the AP that, while the Florida board referred him to the state's impaired physician network for evaluation, nothing came of it. "They did an evaluation and did not find anything wrong," the woman told the AP. "They don't do any treatment." The office manager, who refused to provide the AP with her full name, noted that Dhaliwal had not had any new complaints brought against him since his settlement with the medical board. When the AP asked to speak with Dhaliwal, she said that he was declining on the advice of his lawyers. Dhaliwal did not respond to requests for comment left with his clinic's staff or a voicemail left with his lawyer. Examples of problematic behavior are easy to find in states across the country. In Arkansas, Dr. Robert Rook was allowed to keep his family practice open, so long as he's chaperoned, despite facing multiple criminal charges for rape. Prosecutors subsequently downgraded the charges to more than 20 counts of sexual assault in the second- and third-degree, charges for which Rook says he is innocent. Rook did not return phone messages left with a secretary at his Conway office. He is set to face trial later this year. The Idaho State Board of Medicine in May reinstated the license of Richard Pines, a child and adolescent psychiatrist who lost his license in 2013 after the board accused him of having sexual relationships with four former patients, including taking nude photos of a 14-year-old and convincing the boys that he needed to practice giving naked massages to keep his medical license. The state's highest court in 2015 ruled that Pines had engaged in sexual misconduct, but determined that two of the four alleged victims were not former patients. The court remanded Pines' case to a lower court and vacated his punishment, instead ordering the board to re-evaluate the scope of disciplinary action based on the charges the court upheld. The court's order also blasted the board for being impartial, accusing its members of "passionately railing" against Pines in its decision. The AP reached out to Pines' former employers and contacted his most recent attorneys, but was unable to reach him. The AP also left a message for a biller at Sage Health Care, where Pines still processes invoices. The receptionist said Pines bills through the office but was unable to provide more details about his current practice. State-authorized programs that attempt to oversee the rehabilitation of doctors who have committed sexual misconduct aren't always forthcoming about their methods. In Florida, the Professional's Resource Network, which the state medical board assigned to evaluate Gunwant Dhaliwal after his battery conviction, asked the AP to provide detailed questions and a list of sources before it would answer questions. After the AP provided the head of the program, Alexis Polles, with basic questions about the program's approach to clearing doctors for return to work after instances of sexual abuse, she declined to answer any of them. The lenience of penalties for sexually abusive doctors sometimes a source of frustration even for members of the medical board who administer the discipline, according to Jason Rosenberg, a former chairman of the Florida medical board. "This is incredibly inappropriate," Rosenberg said during one 2013 meeting when Florida's medical board allowed James Yelton-Rossello, a psychiatrist alleged to have molested jailed psychiatric patients, to keep his license. The settlement with the Florida board of medicine did not require Yelton-Rossello to admit guilt. "You can't do this and serve french fries," Rosenberg said at that meeting, citing fast food restaurants' policies against hiring sex offenders. "I'm ashamed of what's going on here." Yelton-Rossello's lawyer did not respond to telephone messages or an email request for comment. Some medical boards blame administrative law judges for tying their hands from seeking harsher punishments. In an interview last year, Rosenberg said he responded to an administrative law judge's refusal to uphold a different license revocation by attempting to compel that doctor to display a sign stating "I molest patients" in his office. Rosenberg's effort failed, though some doctors have been required to post signs in their office stating that they must be chaperoned in the presence of female patients. Bob Cohen, the chief judge in Florida's division of administrative hearings, rejected the idea that administrative law judges are responsible for watering down the punishments of sexually abusive doctors. He said the board of medicine could seek to override administrative law decisions they disagree with, something the Florida board acknowledged in a statement to the AP. "One of the reasons they don't always appeal is they have a lot of cases," Cohen said of state health officials. He acknowledged, however, that "consistency" was a goal in punishments, and that past leniency shown to doctors sets a precedent for weaker punishments in the present day. The question of doctor punishments is part of a larger problem in the medical field. Numerous factors, including hospitals' disinclination to report abusive doctors, to shortfalls in a private, interstate system meant to flag them to future employers, and patients' simple reluctance to challenge a medical professional, skew the field in doctors' favor, according to a 2016 investigation by the Atlanta Journal-Constitution . Some doctors who are reported to medical boards for sexual misconduct receive reprimands instead of suspensions. G. Eric Nielson, a medical malpractice attorney in Utah, says that's because doctors tend to try to protect other doctors as much as possible. "There's an institutional bias on the part of the medical review board," he said. "They're generally doctors, they work very hard to get their medical degrees and they're very, very disinclined to yank the license of another doctor. The primary focus is: Let's take care of the doctor and help him get through this problem." A medical board in California in 2009 revoked the license of Dr. Kamron Hakhamimi after it ruled that his conduct constituted abuse, neglect and exploitation when he prescribed powerful drugs to a woman he met online and then had sex with her; he had previously pleaded no contest to a pair of misdemeanor charges stemming from the incident. But the board stayed the revocation in favor of seven years' probation and a requirement that he complete an ethics class and a course on professional boundaries, though the California Department of Health Care Services barred Hakhamimi from participating in any federally funded programs for 12 years. When contacted for comment, Hakhamimi said, "Nothing happened in the clinic. No medical malpractice, no suspension." When asked whether the courses were effective, he said, "they're mandatory for a reason: It's a business," and then hung up. Sexually abusive physicians are not generally required to apologize or even acknowledge having acted inappropriately in order to keep their license. Three years after his misdemeanor battery conviction, for example, Florida doctor Dhaliwal was acquitted of molesting another patient. He took the opportunity to issue a news release calling the women who have accused him of misconduct liars motivated by greed. In email statement, Florida Medical Board spokesman Brad Dalton said the doctor disciplinary boards "do not have the legal authority to force a physician to speak or place a gag order on them to prevent them from doing so." In practice, even some lawyers who represent doctors find the physician health programs to be problematic. David Spicer, who has represented doctors facing medical board discipline in Florida, says the state's doctor rehabilitation program isn't well designed to evaluate or treat sexual misbehavior. The program's key component, he said, is a "one-size-fits-all" requirement that doctors engage in therapy sessions and not get into trouble for a specified period, generally five years. Spicer said Florida's program, run by an independent organization called the Physician Research Network, does a better job dealing with doctors' who abuse alcohol or drug, but it hasn't been effective at evaluating or treating doctors with sexual problems. Experts in the treatment of sexual misbehavior question whether the treatments mandated for doctors who molest patients are even appropriate for such misconduct. "It's insufficient," said Rory Reid, a UCLA psychology professor who studies addiction and hypersexual behavior. While some types of sexual behavior, such as the compulsive viewing of pornography, might best be addressed through addiction treatment therapy, rehabilitation programs for sex offenders typically focus on restitution and empathy for a person's victims. "We have clinical trials for everything underneath the sun," Reid said. "But there's not one clinical trial that I'm aware of on the efficacy of treatment for doctors who have engaged in sexual misconduct." CEDAR RAPIDS, Iowa (AP) - The Latest on a business that wasn't listed on a disclosure form submitted by Iowa Secretary of State Paul Pate: 5:25 p.m. Iowa Secretary of State Paul Pate is defending his decision not to disclose his role in a new corporation that recently spent around $2 million to open a storage rental business and purchase a strip mall. In this April 13, 2018, photo, vehicles drive through the parking lot at the City Center strip mall in Hiawatha, Iowa. Iowa Secretary of State Paul Pate and his wife recently purchased the property for $1.4 million using the PRG Group LLC, a corporation that he did not list in his annual ethics disclosure. (AP Photo/Ryan J. Foley) Pate said in a statement Tuesday evening that his disclosure form is accurate because he reported receiving rental income from unspecified commercial and residential properties. He says he's spoken with the Iowa Ethics and Campaign Disclosure Board about the matter. The Associated Press reported earlier Tuesday that Pate formed the PRG Group LLC days before the 2016 presidential election. Pate didn't list the corporation on an annual ethics filing he submitted last week that asked him to name outside businesses in which he was involved. In a February filing, he called himself the "managing partner" of the corporation. __ 12:05 p.m. Iowa Secretary of State Paul Pate did not disclose his role in a new corporation that has recently spent around $2 million to open a storage rental business and purchase a strip mall. In an ethics filing last week, Pate affirmed that the only outside business in which he engaged during 2017 was the eastern Iowa asphalt paving company he has long owned. But business and government records reviewed by The Associated Press show Pate formed a company days before the 2016 presidential election, PRG Group LLC, and it worked throughout 2017 to open a new mini-storage business in Cedar Rapids. In a February filing, Pate called himself its "managing partner." An aide said Tuesday that Pate was "preparing a response" to questions about the matter. Turkey has warned Greece to refrain from provocations after a Greek flag was hoisted on a disputed, uninhabited islet in the Aegean Sea off the Turkish coast. Prime minister Binali Yildirim told reporters that Turkish coast guards had removed the flag from the island off the coast of the Aegean resort of Didim. Mr Yildirim said the incident was similar to one in 1996 when the two Nato allies went to war over uninhabited islets known as Imia in Greek and Kardak in Turkish which both Turkey and Greece claim. The uninhabited islet was the scene of a dispute between the two countries in 1996 (Adam Davy/PA) Our advice to Greece would be to stay away from provocations and agitations, Mr Yildirim said, adding that Turkey was determined to give the necessary response to such acts. Despite two decades of efforts to improve relations, Greece and Turkey have seen a spike in tensions in recent weeks over disputed Aegean boundaries and oil-and-gas drilling rights off the divided island of Cyprus. Asked about the incident during a joint news conference with visiting the Nato chief, Turkish foreign minister Mevlut Cavusoglu accused Greeces defence minister, Panos Kammenos the outspoken leader of Greeces nationalist party of raising tensions in the Aegean Sea. His brattiness shouldnt reach a level where itll damage relations between the two countries, Mr Cavusoglu said. In Athens, Greek government spokesman Dimitris Tzannakopoulos said the government had no knowledge of the incident and described the remarks by Mr Yildirim as provocative and reprehensible. I think Mr Yildirim should be more careful, Mr Tzannakopoulos said. We call on Turkey to return to a path of respect for international law They should take an initiative to de-escalate the tension. The CEO of Starbucks has arrived in Philadelphia, hoping to meet two black men who were arrested when the coffee chains employees told police they were trespassing. Calling their arrest reprehensible, Kevin Johnson told ABCs Good Morning America: I would like to have a dialogue with them to make sure we have the opportunity to really understand the situation and they can join me in finding constructive way to solve this issue. Meanwhile, about two dozen chanting protesters took over the Starbucks location in Philadelphia on Monday to protest against the arrests. We regret that our practices and training led to the reprehensible outcome at our Philadelphia store. Were taking immediate action to learn from this and be better. A statement from ceo Kevin Johnson: https://t.co/kPav8bEeOX Starbucks Coffee (@Starbucks) April 15, 2018 We dont want this Starbucks to make any money today. Thats our goal, said Abdul-Aliy Muhammad, one of the protests organisers and co-founder of the Black and Brown Workers Collective. Just before 7.30am (12.15pm BST), the protesters moved inside and stood in front of the counter, some holding banners reading: End Stop and Frisk, chanting slogans like: A whole lot of racism, a whole lot of crap, Starbucks coffee is anti-black. Starbucks regional vice president Camille Hymes attempted to talk to the protesters, but was shouted down. Over the weekend, demonstrators called for the sacking of the employee who contacted police, leading to the men being arrested on Thursday. Officials have said police officers were told the men had asked to use the shops toilet, but were denied because they had not bought anything. They then allegedly refused to leave. Protests took place outside the Philadelphia shop over the weekend (AP) Police have not released the names of the men, who were later released after the district attorneys office said there was no evidence a crime had been committed. Over the weekend, Mr Johnson issued a statement saying the company is investigating its practices, working on training and will reach out to outside experts to make any needed changes that would help prevent such an occurrence from happening again. Creating an environment that is both safe and welcoming for everyone is paramount for every store, he said in the statement. Regretfully, our practices and training led to a bad outcome the basis for the call to the Philadelphia police department was wrong. Our store manager never intended for these men to be arrested and this should never have escalated as it did. Evans Cycles has ditched its chief executive Andy King after less than two years in the saddle. Mr King, who joined Evans Cycles in November 2016 amid a slump in profits, has now been ousted and will be replaced by Alan Fort as interim chief executive. Mr King was hired to improve the pace of growth at Evans Cycles. However, the Press Association understands he has now been let go after failing to meet business targets. A restructuring specialist has taken the helm at Evans Cycles (PA) The company said: After leading Evans Cycles for the last 17 months, the decision has been made that Andy King will step down as CEO of the business. But it added that the firm will continue to make good progress as its seeks a new chief executive under the stewardship of chairman Mike Tomkins. Mr Kings predecessor Nick Wilkinson was similarly dumped after presiding over a 45% fall in operating profit less than two years ago. Accounts filed at Companies House show that operating profit fell to 2.2 million in the year ended October 29 2016, down from 4 million the year before. Evans Cycles is owned by private equity firm ECI Partners, which bought the chain for 80 million in 2015. In Evans Cycles 2016 accounts, finance chief Steve Trowbridge wrote that Mr King would bring strong leadership experience to the business. However, the business is now looking for a new boss after just 17 months. Evans Cycles said in a statement: The board and the business main shareholder, ECI Partners, remain excited by the many opportunities that exist for the business to further consolidate its unique position as the leading independent specialist bike retailer and are focused on further enhancing Evans multi-channel proposition to cyclists across the UK. Mr Fort has substantial experience in retail restructuring, having worked as chief restructuring officer for Jessops for four years before moving to take on a similar job at bed retailer Dreams. Evans Cycles is hoping to pick up sales in the coming months, after a spate of bad weather in the first quarter of the year. The period before summer is also the peak trading season for bike retailers. The Burmese New Year falls in the second week of the Burmese month of Tagu (April). It is an auspicious time for Burmese people, who each year determine to make the New Year a happier, healthier and more successful one. The New Year is ushered in with the Thingyan water festival, which starts on 13 April and lasts for four days, after which comes New Year's Day itself. The word Thingyan is derived from the Sanskrit word Samkranti, which means literally a passing on, and the exact date and the precise time of the commencement and termination of Thingyan and New Years Day are fixed through astrological calculations. The first day of the festival is called Thingyan a-kyo nei (welcoming day), the second day is Thingyan a-kya nei (falling day) and the third day is Thingyan a-kyat nei (tight day). Certain years may contain one or two extra a-kyat days, and then the last day of the festival is Thingyan a-tet nei (rising day). The following day, 17 April, is celebrated as the Burmese New Year's Day. Sankran tvak nann ca (Calculation the Thingyan), ca. 1880. British Library, Mss. Burmese 116 Shown above is a half-length Burmese palm leaf manuscript of Thingyan sa, which gives explanations of Thingyan with calculations. Thingyan sa are traditionally written annually at the time of the Thingyan festival, based on astrological calculations, and purport to predict the great events of the coming year. The Tagu Thingyan festival, depicted in a Burmese manuscript, 19th century. British Library, Or.15021, ff. 1-3 The above illustration portrays royal people in a procession to celebrate Thingyan and New Year, attended by musicians. Some carry small water pots with flowers on their shoulders, some carry long fans and some wear masks resembling mythical animals. According to traditional beliefs, Sakka, king of the Tavatimsa heaven, descends to the earth from his celestial abode on a-kya day. People place a small pot with seven different kinds of flowers representing seven days of the week in front of their house to welcome Sakka. He remains upon earth for three days. During the festival people, regardless of age, gender or religion, wear colourful dresses and sing and dance together, sprinkling scented water on one another, in the belief that the Thingyan festival water will make them healthy. For fun, some people enjoy playing with water hoses at their temporary pavilions. A depiction of an alms-giving ceremony, 19th century. British Library, Or.13293 , f. 1 The above illustration shows an alms-giving ceremony. The practice of offering food to monks is the most common ritual practised in in Burma, and is a peaceful and spiritual ceremony. Indeed, the true spirit in which the New Year should be celebrated is by fasting, giving alms, doing meritorious deeds and observing the Buddhas teachings (Dhamma) on New Years Day. Kadaw (Homage) day is held in this season. On this day, people pay their respects to their parents, teachers and superiors, and novitiation ceremonies are held in towns, cities and villages. This painted scene depicts the ruler receiving homage from his ministers and court officials on Kadaw or Homage day. The king is seated in a pavilion and traditional offerings of coconuts and bananas are set before him. The bottom yellow border of the painting is inscribed in Burmese characters, Receiving homage. British Library, Or.14963, f. 7 Paying homage to the king on the New Year Day. British Library, Or.6779, f.2 In the scene above, the king is shown receiving homage from his ministers and members of the royal family. The ceremony features folk music troupes and processions of elephants and horses. During the days of royal rule, the New Year celebration included the state-sponsored feeding of monks for three continuous days, the watering of the sacred banyan trees and the cleansing of Buddha statues, and a three-gun salute was fired to usher in the New Year. Further reading: Khin Myo Chit. Flowers and festivals round the Myanmar Year. Yangon: Sarpaylawka, 2002. San San May, Curator for Burmese Home Secretary Amber Rudd has offered an apology in the House of Commons to members of the so-called Windrush generation who have been subjected to what she described as appalling treatment by the Government. Ms Rudd announced the creation of a new task force in the Home Office to speed up the regularisation of the immigration status of people who arrived in the UK as long ago as the 1940s. Her announcement came after Downing Street said Prime Minister Theresa May wanted to ensure that no-one with the right to be here will be made to leave. Jamaican immigrants welcomed by RAF officials from the Colonial Office after the ex-troopship HMT Empire Windrush landed them at Tilbury (PA) And Communities Secretary Sajid Javid said he was deeply concerned at challenges to the immigration status of people who were long-standing pillars of our community. Immigration minister Caroline Nokes appeared to suggest that some individuals may already have been deported in error. But Ms Rudd told the House of Commons that she would not know whether this had happened until she meets high commissioners from Caribbean nations later this week. BREAKING: Immigration minister Caroline Nokes appears to admit to @itvnews @pennymitv that some Windrush immigrants have indeed been deported, but she can't give numbers. pic.twitter.com/9N5uyuzgKG Paul Brand (@PaulBrandITV) April 16, 2018 Mrs May is to meet her counterparts from Caribbean states in the margins of the Commonwealth summit in London on Tuesday amid growing anger about individuals facing the threat of deportation and being denied access to healthcare due to UK paperwork issues. Ms Rudd was challenged in the Commons over an interview in which Ms Nokes appeared to confirm that some Windrush migrants had been wrongly deported. There have been some horrendous situations which as a minister have appalled me, the immigration minister told ITV News in response to a question about deportations. I dont know the numbers, but what I am determined to do going forward is to say we will have no more of this. The Home Secretary said high commissioners would have an opportunity to raise any such cases with her at their meeting later this week. And she said: I do not want any of the Commonwealth citizens who are here legally to be impacted in the way they have. Frankly, some of the ways they have been treated has been wrong, has been appalling and I am sorry. Thats why I am setting up a new area in my department to ensure that we have a completely new approach to how their situation is regularised. Ms Rudd said that fees for sorting out the paperwork of those affected would be waived so that they can have their status confirmed free of charge. It's disgraceful that the rights of the Windrush Generation have been brought into question by this Government and that some have been wrongfully deported.@Theresa_May must give them the rights they deserve and answer serious questions about how this has happened on her watch. https://t.co/CYbZBuzSv3 Jeremy Corbyn (@jeremycorbyn) April 16, 2018 Mrs Mays official spokesman said the Prime Minister deeply values the contribution made by Commonwealth citizens in the UK, and was clear that no-one with the right to be here will be made to leave. The announcement came after a cross-party group of 140 MPs wrote to Mrs May calling for an immediate and effective response to problems faced by members of the Windrush generation. The letter to the PM was co-ordinated by David Lammy, chairman of the Race and Community All Party Parliamentary Group, and has the backing of Labour leader Jeremy Corbyn and Conservative MPs such as Sarah Wollaston. Thread: Today I have led 140 MPs from 6 parties urging @theresa_may to take immediate action to address the #Windrush crisis. What is going on is grotesque, immoral and inhumane. It is a stain on our nations conscience and the PM must act urgently to right this historic wrong. pic.twitter.com/3XM6PXyYGF David Lammy (@DavidLammy) April 16, 2018 It called for action over the immigration anomalies, stating: All too often these routine bureaucratic errors bring about the separation of families and irreparable damage to lives in addition to undue stress, anxiety and suffering. The impact has been felt in the cases of individuals losing the right to work, to rent property, to receive pensions, to access their bank accounts or even to access vital healthcare a particularly cruel twist of fate as so many of those affected have spent their lives in the service of our National Health Service. TV presenter Ant McPartlin dominates the headlines on Tuesday after pleading guilty to drink-driving. Pictures of the ashen-faced star arriving at court grace the front pages of most of the papers, after he was slapped with an 86,000 fine. The Sun runs with the headline: Sorry I Let You Down, after McPartlin said he was ashamed and mortified by the incident. What the papers say - April 17 Tomorrow's front page: Ant McPartlin fined a record 86,000 for drink-driving - and said he was "ashamed and mortified" https://t.co/TcBLA0GLOg pic.twitter.com/S9tOI26lka The Sun (@TheSun) April 16, 2018 His apology also features on the front of the Daily Express, while the Daily Star reports that the fine was a record for any drink-driver. The Daily Mirror also features McPartlin on the front, but leads on a series of stories it describes as shameful and a national disgrace, including Theresa Mays decision to launch air strikes in Syria without an MPs vote and an exodus of nurses it blames on Tory cuts. An admission by Amber Rudd about members of the Windrush generation also features prominently on several front pages. The Daily Mail brands it the fiasco that shames Britain as the Home Secretary admitted Caribbean migrants who came to the UK in good faith after the Second World War may have been kicked out of the country by mistake. The Guardian describes it as an unprecedented apology, reporting that Ms Rudd had announced the creation of a new Home Office team to ensure Commonwealth-born long-term UK citizens no longer find themselves classed as illegal immigrants. The Guardian front page, Tuesday 17 April 2018 | Rudd tells MPs: we were wrong over Windrush citizens pic.twitter.com/UBNM5cl4wp The Guardian (@guardian) April 16, 2018 The i describes it as the Windrush scandal, while the Daily Telegraph reports the growing crisis over the issue threatened to overshadow the Commonwealth Heads of Government Meeting. The front page of tomorrow's Daily Telegraph: 'Windrush migrants granted apology' #TomorrowsPapersToday pic.twitter.com/wTAOzBsOFK The Telegraph (@Telegraph) April 16, 2018 The Prime Ministers grilling in Parliament over the Syrian air strikes also makes the front pages, with the Metro reporting that Mrs May denied attacking Syria at the whim of Donald Trump. The Times reports that Britain and the US have issued an unprecedented warning that Russia has hacked into millions of computers to lay the foundations for an attack on infrastructure. Tomorrow's front page: Russia has hacked into millions of computers #tomorrowspapertoday pic.twitter.com/Bt5AcGVORp The Times (@thetimes) April 16, 2018 Elsewhere, the Financial Times leads on the US and UK blocking one of Chinas biggest telecoms equipment makers, ZTE Corp, on national security grounds. Coronation Streets Jennie McAlpine has said her second baby may end up having a name inspired by the ITV soap. The actress, who announced at the weekend that she is expecting again, has a son named Albert. Jennie McAlpine attending the British Soap Awards 2017 (Matt Crossick/PA Wire) Asked about naming her new addition, she told ITVs Lorraine: Probably named after a Coronation Street character, like Albert was. Not on purpose, but all the gorgeous names, theyve all been in Coronation Street. So probably that. She revealed the baby is due in October. Weve got a bit of news. Pur baby boy is going to be a big brother later this year. We cant wait to meet you precious one x Jennie McAlpine (@jenniemcalpine) April 15, 2018 Thanks for all your lovely messages. Obviously my baby brain is in full force again. Our baby boy. Not pur. Sorry to people who got confused it was about the cat x Jennie McAlpine (@jenniemcalpine) April 15, 2018 The 34-year-old tweeted her announcement on Sunday, writing: Weve got a bit of news. Pur (sic) baby boy is going to be a big brother later this year. We cant wait to meet you precious one x. She explained: Although on Twitter when I said it, a few people were confused because I did a little typo because I have baby brain I still have baby brain from the last one who is three-and-a-half. I still blame everything I do wrong on saying I just had a baby I said pur little boy instead of our little boy, so people thought the cat was having a baby, but its me. McAlpine, who plays Fiz Stape in Corrie, also said the soap is likely to hide her pregnancy on screen. She said: Basket of laundry I do a lot of that anyway. And then, after a bit, the directors think I dont know what to do with this now. Were going to have to do that big coats. Unless Fiz gets pregnant. Who knows? I dont know, Ive just sprung it on them. I think theyre frantically thinking about what to do now. Theres a bit more of those teary scenes in the next few months anyway, so we could just have a few more of those. Pamela Anderson has shared her fears over the health of WikiLeaks founder Julian Assange, who she said is being subjected to a form of torture. Mr Assange, who has been living in the Ecuadorian embassy in London since 2012, recently had his internet access cut off and has been banned from receiving visitors. Anderson, a close friend of Mr Assange, told ITVs Good Morning Britain that she is very concerned about his health. Pamela Anderson is a close friend of WikiLeaks founder Julian Assange (Jonathan Brady/PA) She said: I think this is a form of torture, I think theyre slowly killing him. Im very, very, very concerned, deeply concerned for him. Hes one of the most important people on the planet right now. Hes exposing all these war crimes and truths; we really need him at this moment. Its not a coincidence hes being investigated at this time. She said she wouldnt be surprised if her own relationship with Mr Assange was being investigated. Theresa May needs to do something, she added. The UK is being so stupid. They have to make a decision, they keep on passing the buck, no-one wants to take responsibility. Hes a political prisoner. Hes a hero - Pamela Anderson speaks on her close friend Julian Assange, whos in the Ecuadorian embassy in London pic.twitter.com/6DLFk2xYgl Good Morning Britain (@GMB) April 17, 2018 They want to extradite him to the US, 100%, and that would be life in prison or worse. Before something happens to him someone needs to confirm that theyre not going to extradite him to the US, thats all he cares about. Its really important. Theres so much going on in the world right now, I want to know what hes thinking, I want to know what hes thinking about all this and hes being silenced. She said that his current living conditions, with no sunlight, being in a small space for so long and now being cut off from everybody, is just inhumane, its a human rights situation, hes being abused. Hes not the culprit, hes just the messenger. The Ecuadorian government decided to stop Mr Assange using the internet or social media from its embassy in London in March. Mr Assange has been living there for almost six years, believing he will be extradited to the United States for questioning over the activities of WikiLeaks if he leaves. Canadian model and actress Anderson was among those urging Ecuadorian president Lenin Moreno to reverse the ban on internet access and visitors, signing a letter along with the likes of musician Brian Eno and fashion designer Dame Vivienne Westwood. Senior politicians may not have been invited to the wedding of Prince Harry and Meghan Markle but a Scottish councillor has made the list. Robert Moran, former provost of Inverclyde, was nominated by the Lord Lieutenant of Renfrewshire for his community work and for helping to organise a visit by the Queen to Greenock in 2012. The Labour councillor and his partner Margaret will be among 1,200 members of the public invited into the grounds of Windsor Castle to watch the arrivals of the bride and groom and their guests at St Georges Chapel, and see the newlyweds start their carriage procession through Windsor. Robert Moran, right, was nominated for a royal wedding invite by Lord-Lieutenant of Renfrewshire Guy Clark, left (Paul Ward/PA) Kensington Palace said it had been decided that an official list of political leaders both UK and international was not required for the wedding. Mr Moran said: Im very humbled and surprised, and in fact I got such a shock I called one of my colleagues to see if he had received a letter as well. He said no and hadnt heard about anyone else, so I got it checked out in case someone was winding me up. I checked with the chief executives secretary who said it was genuine and they phoned Guy to confirm it was a genuine letter. By that point I was mystified but he said it was because of the work I did when Her Majesty came in 2012. That in itself was a fantastic honour to welcome her here and this just tops it off really. The Queen and Duke of Edinburgh visited Greenock in 2012 as part of her diamond jubilee and helped open a refurbished contact centre at Inverclyde Council head quarters. The Queen visited Greenock in 2012 as part of her Diamond Jubilee celebrations (Inverclyde Council/PA) Lord Lieutenant Guy Clark nominated Mr Moran for his work as provost for five years and his role in the royal visit. He said: Robert was incredibly supportive when Her Majesty the Queen came to Greenock as part of a visit for her diamond jubilee in 2012. Its my way of thanking him for the support he gave myself and the people of Greenock on that auspicious day. Im not going to Windsor myself but Im delighted others are. I shall be watching, I think with many others, on the television and Im looking forward to it hugely. Mr Moran was Inverclyde provost for five years until 2017 during which time he worked with community groups and veterans organisations as his brother served in the Army. He said meeting the Queen during her 2012 visit was a major highlight of his term. Mr Moran said: I was a bit nervous beforehand but once you actually meet the Queen and the Duke of Edinburgh the nerves leave you because theyre such nice people. Im very much looking forward to going to Windsor. If we werent going Im sure we would be watching on TV, so it will be a great trip. Home Office officials are searching their records to establish if any members of the so-called Windrush generation of Britons have been wrongly deported, Cabinet Office minister David Lidington has said. Mr Lidington said that while they were not aware of any who had been removed from the country, staff were going through the files to establish whether anything had gone appallingly wrong in that way. His comments came amid confusion on Monday, after immigration minister Caroline Nokes appeared to suggest that some individuals may already have been deported in error. BREAKING: Immigration minister Caroline Nokes appears to admit to @itvnews @pennymitv that some Windrush immigrants have indeed been deported, but she can't give numbers. pic.twitter.com/9N5uyuzgKG Paul Brand (@PaulBrandITV) April 16, 2018 Home Secretary Amber Rudd later told MPs she was not aware of any specific cases. Mr Lidington told BBC Radio 4s Today: I talked to the Home Secretary about this last night and the position is that we have no information. We dont know of any cases where someone has been deported from this category. David Lidington said he didnt know if any of the Windrush generation had been deported (David Mirzoeff/PA) He added that Home Office staff were searching records to see if anything had gone appallingly wrong in that way. Mrs May was meeting on Tuesday with Caribbean leaders in the margins of the Commonwealth Heads of Government Meeting (Chogm) in London in an attempt to reassure them that anyone entitled to be in the UK would not be deported. The talks come after Ms Rudd apologised for the appalling treatment of people who came to Britain decades ago as schoolchildren and were now being denied access to healthcare and facing warnings they could be deported. She told MPs on Monday that she was setting up a new taskforce to speed up the regularisation of the immigration status of people who arrived in the UK as long ago as the 1940s. New dedicated team to help former-Commonwealth citizens who dont have the correct UK immigration documents: https://t.co/tsYRUUkc41 #Windrush #WindrushGeneration pic.twitter.com/UXLcdP5d25 Home Office (@ukhomeoffice) April 17, 2018 She said the Home Office had become too concerned with policy and strategy at the expense of the individual. I do not want any of the Commonwealth citizens who are here legally to be impacted in the way they have, she told MPs. Frankly, some of the ways they have been treated has been wrong, has been appalling and I am sorry. Speaking ahead of Mrs Mays talks with the Caribbean leaders, Jamaican prime minister Andrew Holness said he hoped Chogm would be an opportunity to strengthen and possibly reset the relationship between his country and UK. Sometimes, these ties though they bind us together sometimes they wane. Sometimes they dont get the attention, so I see this as a great opportunity for us to rebuild the relationship to strengthen, he said. Manchester City have been cleared of wrongdoing over the controversial signing of teenager Benjamin Garre from Argentinian club Velez Sarsfield, Press Association Sport understands. The newly crowned Premier League champions could have faced a transfer ban had a ruling by the Court of Arbitration for Sport gone against them. Velez claimed City broke world governing body FIFAs regulations on international transfers when they signed Garre, then 16, in July 2016. Benjamin Garre joined Manchester City at the age of 16 in July 2016 (Martin Rickett/Empics) Velez argued FIFA rules only allow players under the age of 18 to move between clubs in European Union countries. City countered that Garre held an Italian passport and was therefore entitled to move after his 16th birthday. FIFA ruled in Citys favour over the matter but Velez took their complaint to Lausanne-based CAS, where the case was heard last summer. Now, following a lengthy delay, a verdict could be imminent. It is understood City have already been informed that the court has upheld FIFAs original ruling. City could have been banned from signing players for up to two transfer windows had the ruling not gone in their favour. Barcelona, Real Madrid and Atletico Madrid have been subjected to bans for breaching rules around the signing of international players under the age of 18 in recent years. Burmas president Win Myint has granted amnesty to more than 8,500 prisoners. At least three dozen political prisoners are believed to be among those being released to coincide with the countrys traditional New Year. It was granted to 8,490 Burmese citizens and 51 foreigners and a statement from presidential spokesman Zaw Thay said those released included the aged, people in ill health and drug offenders. None was individually named. The releases were to take place at prisons nationwide. A prisoner walks out of the gate at Insein prison (Thein Zaw/AP) Relatives and friends of those held waited Tuesday outside the gates at Insein Prison, in the northern outskirts of Rangoon, where it was expected that more than 300 prisoners, including eight political detainees, would be released. As they came through the gate, the released prisoners looked excited, though many were reluctant to be interviewed. One of those freed was Saw War Lay, a member of the Karen ethnic minority who was arrested in 2006 and is serving a life sentence for his connection with the Karen National Union ethnic rebel group. I really would like to say many thanks to the president. And I wish he will be successful in his peace process, he said, referring to government efforts to reach an agreement with all the ethnic minorities to end decades of conflict. But I am so sad for those prisoners who (are) still inside. Two Christian pastors from the Kachin minority were freed from a prison in Lashio, in northern Burma, in a more recent and high-profile case. Last year, Pastor Dumdaw Nawng Lat, 65, was sentenced to four years and three months in prison and Baptist youth leader Langjaw Gam Seng, 35, was sentenced to two years and three months for allegedly providing support to an ethnic armed group and defaming the military. In the aftermath of a government offensive in northern Burma, they had helped journalists report on a Catholic church that was destroyed in an airstrike in November 2016. A prisoner, centre, is welcomed by his relatives and colleagues after he was released (Thein Zaw/AP) Combat in the area still continues. We are here with both of them and the whole Baptist community is very happy to have them back, lawyer Brang Di said by phone. Everyone is praying for them and encouraging them. Although called an amnesty, the action appeared to actually be a mass pardon, meaning it would cover only prisoners who had already been convicted of crimes. Two Reuters reporters, Wa Lone and Kyaw Soe Oo, facing a high-profile freedom of the press trial for possessing secret official documents would not be covered under the action. One of the journalists lawyers, Khin Maung Zaw, said his understanding was that the president was only pardoning convicted criminals. Burmas president Win Myint (Aung Shine Oo/AP) Win Myint became president last month, after his predecessor, Htin Kyaw, stepped down because of illness. The release of political prisoners was a priority of Aung San Suu Kyis National League for Democracy party when it took over power from a pro-military government in March 2016. Ms Suu Kyi is the countrys de facto leader, holding the specially created post of State Counsellor. Constitutional rules prohibit her from serving as president because her two children are British, as was her late husband. When Ms Suu Kyis government took power in 2016, it made it a priority to release political prisoners detained during military rule, freeing almost 200 within a month. However, critics of Ms Suu Kyis government say it also has pursued politically motivated prosecutions, citing cases against land rights activists and journalists. A charity youth worker was stabbed to death by moped-riding teenagers acting like 20th Century highwaymen, a court heard. Abdul Samad, 28, was killed for his iPhone and little more than aggression and blood lust as the two youths swept across west London on the evening of October 16 last year, jurors were told. Nathan Gilmaney, 18, and his 17-year-old friend allegedly wanted to rob as many people as possible, leaving a trail of destruction in their wake. The Old Bailey in central London. Prosecutor Oliver Glasgow QC said they were highwaymen of the 21st Century who thought they had the right to threaten and rob whoever they found, who attacked their targets in a brazen and shocking manner and who stabbed their victims often for no reason other than simple aggression and blood lust. He said the pair had both armed themselves with a knife and set out on Gilmaneys moped. They hoped to steal wallets and valuables from their victims and, where possible, they intended to take their victims mobile phones, which they knew they could quickly sell for cash. By the end of their four-hour spree of violence they had committed nine knifepoint robberies, they had gratuitously stabbed four of their defenceless victims and they had killed Abdul Samad, a 28-year-old man whose job as a charity youth worker had seen him devote his time to helping the very sort of young men who took his life. As the number of casualties mounted, police were quickly alerted and scoured the area for the culprits. Mr Glasgow said the defendants tried to escape but were arrested after a police chase. Their pockets were stuffed with stolen valuables and CCTV captured them in the act of riding around and attacking helpless strangers, the Old Bailey heard. The 17-year-old has admitted robbing the victims but does not accept responsibility for the violence. Gilmaney has also pleaded guilty to the robberies and violence but both defendants have denied murder. Mr Glasgow told jurors that Mr Samad had been confronted by the teenagers in St Marys Terrace, in Paddington, and handed them something from his pocket. At first the pair rode off but turned around and shouted at him, jurors heard. He gave them something else but Gilmaney allegedly got off the moped and stabbed him in the chest. Mr Glasgow said: Mr Samad managed to stagger the short distance back to where his family lived but he collapsed at the door. His parents, who heard his cries, found him bleeding to death outside their home. He died later in hospital having suffered a devastating wound to the heart. The court heard the defendants were unmoved by the plight of their victim and his traumatised family and prowled the streets to identity their next target minutes later. Mr Glasgow said the teenagers had acted as a team and Gilmaney, from Maida Vale, had admitted manslaughter, but claims he did not intend really serious harm. Mr Samads mobile phone was among stolen items sold on the same night but recovered during a police search of a flat off Harrow Road, the court heard. The India Office Private Papers recently acquired the diaries of an officer who served in the Royal Indian Army Service Corps during the Second World War. Royal Indian Army Service Corps troops unload an American C-47 cargo plane at an airstrip in the Pinwe area, 21 November 1944 IWM (SE 588) Geoffrey Herbert Blake was born in Peterborough on 30 September 1923. On leaving school, he began training to become an accountant, but his studies were interrupted by the outbreak of war. In June 1943, he joined the Royal Indian Army Service Corps, which was responsible for vital supply and transport services for the Indian Army. He spent the next four years in India, and recorded his experiences in his diaries. British Library, Mss Eur F717 The diaries begin with an introduction on 5 March 1943 in which Blake stated his reasons for keeping the diary: 'I hope that it may record in some detail the most interesting journey of my life, and that it will give me something to talk about in my old age (if I even qualify for this status in life)'. He then described the process of embarking on the long journey to India. He left Liverpool on 14 March aboard the MV Britannic, a White Star liner which had been converted to carry troops for the duration of the War. The Britannic joined a large convoy for the voyage south, with Blake commenting that 'As far as we could see, troop transports were in line', with destroyers protecting them. The convoy stopped at Freetown, in Sierra Leone, for two days, before resuming the journey to Cape Town in South Africa. Blake would spend about six weeks camped near Cape Town, before continuing on to Bombay, arriving on 11 June 1943. British Library, Mss Eur F717 On arriving in India, Blake travelled to Bangalore, where he would spend six months at the Officers Training School, before taking up his duties in Air Despatch. His diaries give a daily account of his life in India as an officer in the Indian Army during the tumultuous years of the Second World War. He left Bombay aboard the SS Empress of Scotland on 22 January 1947 for the voyage to Liverpool. Expressing sadness at leaving a country he had grown fond of, he wrote philosophically: 'It looks as if my Indian journey is drawing to an end, but what will the next journey be?' British Library, Mss Eur F717 The catalogue of the papers can be found online. John OBrien India Office Records Further reading: Papers of Major Geoffrey Herbert Blake (1923-2017), Royal Indian Army Service Corps (RIASC) 1943-1947 [Reference Mss Eur F717] Theresa May has apologised to Caribbean leaders over the treatment of members of the so-called Windrush generation who have been threatened with deportation after decades living in the UK. At talks in No 10, the Prime Minister said she was genuinely sorry for the anxiety that had been caused and that she wanted to dispel the idea that the Government was seeking to clamp down on citizens from the region. But even as the meeting was taking place, Labour MP David Lammy disclosed that he had been contacted by a woman who came to Britain as part of the Windrush generation who said her son was facing deportation on Wednesday. Mr Lammy said Ruth Williams, who is in her 70s, had told him that her son Mozi Haynes, 35, was due to be removed from the country after two failed applications to remain. Ms Ruth Williams, 75 years old Windrush citizen and mother of a son facing deportation: I feel betrayed and a second class citizen in my own country. This makes me so sad and the Home Office must show some compassion. David Lammy (@DavidLammy) April 17, 2018 This is a national disgrace. What is going on in the Home Office makes me ashamed of our great country. The Prime Minister must act urgently to halt this deportation and all other Windrush deportations, Mr Lammy said. Heads must roll over this and the Home Secretary and Immigration Minister must consider their positions. (PA Graphics) The row threatened to undermine Mrs Mays efforts to draw a line under the issue following Home Secretary Amber Rudds apology in the Commons of Monday for the appalling way some people had been treated. Ms Rudd announced she was setting up a taskforce to help people many of whom came to Britain as schoolchildren as long ago as the 1940s to regularise their immigration status following warnings they could be deported unless they could prove they were entitled to be in the UK. Amid rising anger, Mrs May met leaders of 12 Caribbean countries who were attending the Commonwealth Heads of Government Meeting in London for talks in No 10 on Tuesday. The Prime Minister said the Government accepted those who arrived from the Caribbean before 1973 when new rules came in and who had been living in the UK without significant time away were entitled to remain, as were the vast majority who arrived subsequently. This morning PM @theresa_may hosted @AndrewHolnessJM Prime Minister of Jamaica at 10 Downing Street as part of #CHOGM2018 https://t.co/ausN3xMlxr pic.twitter.com/4qDWtA1ojX UK Prime Minister (@10DowningStreet) April 17, 2018 I want to dispel any impression that my Government is in some sense clamping down on Commonwealth citizens, particularly those from the Caribbean, she said. I take this issue very seriously. The Home Secretary apologised in the House of Commons yesterday for any anxiety caused. And I want to apologise to you today. Because we are genuinely sorry for any anxiety that has been caused. I dont want anybody to be in any doubt about their right to remain here in the United Kingdom. Earlier Cabinet Office Minister David Lidington said officials were now trawling through the Home Office records to establish whether any of those affected had already been wrongly deported. While he said they were not aware of any who had been removed from the country, staff were going through the files to establish whether anything had gone appallingly wrong in that way. New dedicated team to help former-Commonwealth citizens who dont have the correct UK immigration documents: https://t.co/tsYRUUkc41 #Windrush #WindrushGeneration pic.twitter.com/UXLcdP5d25 Home Office (@ukhomeoffice) April 17, 2018 His comments came amid confusion on Monday, after immigration minister Caroline Nokes appeared to suggest that some individuals may already have been deported in error. Ms Rudd later told MPs she was not aware of any specific cases. Mr Lidington told BBC Radio 4s Today: I talked to the Home Secretary about this last night and the position is that we have no information. We dont know of any cases where someone has been deported from this category. Mr Lammy said that Ms Williams had told him her sons treatment made her feel betrayed and a second-class citizen in my own country. He said that she told him: This makes me so sad and the Home Office must show some compassion. I am unwell and almost 75, I live on my own and I need my son to stay here. I need my family around me and I cant face being alone. British lives would be compromised if it became illegal for governments to launch military action without the backing of MPs, Theresa May has warned, as she was accused of showing a flagrant disregard for Parliament. The Prime Minister said Jeremy Corbyns calls for the introduction of a War Powers Act would seriously compromise national security, national interests, and the lives of citizens at home and abroad. But the Labour leader, opening the second emergency debate in as many days on Britains role in missile strikes on Syrias chemical warfare facilities, said Mrs Mays predecessor, David Cameron, had sought authority for military action on several occasions. I am sorry to say the Prime Ministers decision not to recall Parliament and engage in further military action in Syria last week showed a flagrant disregard for this convention, Mr Corbyn said. Mrs May defended her decision to take action without seeking Parliaments approval, saying that coming to the Commons beforehand would have compromised the effectiveness of our operations and safety of British servicemen and women. Labour leader Jeremy Corbyn during the second debate on the Syrian air strikes in the Commons (PA) And she said a War Powers Act would mean smaller-scale and targeted military action such as that over the weekend in Syria would become unviable. Making it unlawful for Her Majestys Government to undertake any such military intervention without a vote would seriously compromise our national security, our national interests, and the lives of British citizens at home and abroad, Mrs May said. And for as long as Im Prime Minister, that will never be allowed to happen. Mr Corbyn, who faced a bad-tempered atmosphere in the Commons with Tory MPs consistently looking to intervene, said such an Act could specify at what point in decision-making processes MPs should be involved, as well as retaining the right of ministers to act in an emergency or in the countrys self-defence. Tory MP Andrew Bridgen drew laughs in the Chamber with a sideswipe at Mr Corbyn, suggesting the Labour leader would not authorise military action even if the Isle of Wight were invaded. And Mrs May attracted cheers from the Tory benches with her response to a question from Labour MP Karen Lee, who suggested US President Donald Trump had more say over UK foreign policy than MPs. Concluding her speech, the Prime Minister said a clear majority of the Commons believe the Government did the right thing. I realise that for some in this House, and especially for those who have not had to do what I have to, the attractive purity of a democratic principle that Parliament should always decide may still appeal more than the practice of how to ensure an effective military operation that delivers our national interest. But she said she hoped MPs could agree on her commitment as Prime Minister to being held to account by this House for the decisions that Ive taken. PM: The mood of the House was unquestionable, we do have the support of the House - a clear majority of this House believe we did the right thing #WarPowers Simple Politics (@easypoliticsUK) April 17, 2018 SNP Westminster leader Ian Blackford criticised the failure of the Government to recall Parliament, adding that it was to be deeply regretted that the only people that havent had a voice were MPs. He said: The timeline of events last week showed our Prime Minister chasing the presidents timetable rather than planning her recall. Parliament should authorise military action, it is a disgrace that the Prime Minister appeared beholden to the US president instead of to the UK Parliament. He added: Nobody is talking about compromising operational activity, its about the principle of Parliament giving its consent to military action. Mr Blackford argued the time has come for a War Powers Act, adding: A long-standing policy of the SNP, we believe it will stop situations as we saw last week where Parliament is completely bypassed in a reckless fashion. On Monday, Mrs May accused Moscow of preventing inspectors for the Organisation for the Prohibition of Chemical Weapons (OPCW) reaching Douma. Russian officials at OPCW headquarters in the Hague later said arrangements were being made for the inspectors to travel to the site on Wednesday. Theresa May said a `clear majority of the Commons believe the Government `did the right thing (PA) However there are fears in Western capitals that more than a week on much of the evidence of what happened on April 7 will no longer be there. Russian foreign minister Sergey Lavrov flatly denied that Russia had tampered with the evidence and insisted there was no proof that chemical weapons had even been used in Douma. In the wake of the furious row over the poisoning of former double agent Sergei Skripal and his daughter, Yulia, in Salisbury he said East-West relations were now worse than they were at the time of the Cold War. Meanwhile, the UK and US have issued an unprecedented joint alert on the threat of malicious cyber activity by the Russian state. Britains National Cyber Security Centre (NCSC) combined with the FBI and the US Department of Homeland Security to say Kremlin actions threaten our respective safety, security and economic well-being. Officials said millions of computers worldwide had been targeted in operations designed to support espionage and potentially lay a foundation for future offensive operations. Manchester City have been cleared of wrongdoing over the signing of teenager Benjamin Garre from Argentinian club Velez Sarsfield, the Court of Arbitration for Sport has announced. The newly-crowned Premier League champions could have faced a transfer ban had they been found guilty of breaching international transfer regulations when they signed Garre, then 16, in 2016. After claiming City acted unethically by approaching Garre when he was still only 15, Velez then alleged rules were broken when he was signed after his 16th birthday. Benjamin Garre joined Manchester City at the age of 16 in July 2016 (Martin Rickett/Empics) World governing body FIFA forbids international transfers for under-18s but it is permitted by law within the European Union. City successfully argued that Garre, because he has an Italian passport, was entitled to move. FIFA therefore rejected Velezs initial complaint but the club took their case to Lausanne-based CAS, where a hearing took place last year. After a significant delay, a ruling has now been delivered that backs City and supports FIFAs original decision. A statement from CAS read: The appeal filed on 12 December 2016 by Club Atletico Velez Sarsfield against the decision issued on 24 August 2016 by the single judge of the sub-committee of the FIFA players status committee (the challenged decision) is dismissed and, accordingly, the challenged decision is confirmed. Further details are due to be published on Friday. City could have been banned from signing players for up to two transfer windows had the ruling not gone in their favour. Barcelona, Real Madrid and Atletico Madrid have been subjected to bans for breaching rules around the signing of international players under the age of 18 in recent years. Missile strikes on Syria at the weekend were an act of aggression which risk causing the outbreak of a wider conflict, a Russian diplomat has said. Britain joined the US and France in mounting strikes on Syrias chemical warfare facilities after 75 people were thought to have died in a suspected chemical attack on the rebel-held town of Douma. The ambassador of the Russian Federation to Ireland warned that Russia the Syrian regimes principal backer is losing the last bit of trust it had with the west, describing this as a very dangerous development. Speaking at a press conference in Dublin, Yury Filatov said the suggestion that Russia or Syria tampered with evidence to cover up the Douma attack was absolutely ridiculous. Russian ambassador to Ireland Yury Filatov (Niall Carson/PA) Mr Filatov told reporters: We have to state that the situation around Syria has deteriorated significantly. Obviously that is the result of the reckless actions by Washington, London and Paris. What is going right now is they are making every effort possible to look for the face-saving exit of the situation they themselves created. They are trying to whitewash their action. There is pretty much smoke around the whole thing. We have to call things for what they really are. The fact remains that on April 14 the United States supported by the UK and France launched an air strike against military and civilian targets in Syria. That was an act of aggression against a sovereign state. It was done without mandate from the United Nations Security Council and in clear violation of the UN charter or any other conceivable international law. We certainly condemn that in most resolute terms. Mr Filatov spoke at the Embassy of the Russian Federation in Dublin (Niall Carson/PA) Mr Filatov added: The attack we have witnessed (air strikes) certainly brought the whole situation to the brink of a wider conflict which is in nobodys interests. Russian foreign minister Sergey Lavrov has flatly denied that Russia had tampered with the evidence and insisted there was no proof that chemical weapons had even been used in Douma. Mr Filatov suggested the strikes were intended to impede the investigation so nobody would know the truth, adding that experts have not yet found any traces of chlorine or any other toxic agents. As far as we can see there was no attack, he said, adding: Not a single local resident was able to confirm that a chemical attack had actually taken place. Mr Filatov said the suspected chemical attack had definitely been staged, and said images had been fabricated. He denied that Russia was behind cyber attacks, saying that people try to depict Russia as being the source of all evil something he described as a really ridiculous concept. His comments came as the UK and US issued an unprecedented joint alert on the threat of malicious cyber activity by the Russian state. Meanwhile, Prime Minister Theresa May has accused Moscow of preventing inspectors for the Organisation for the Prohibition of Chemical Weapons (OPCW) reaching Douma. Russian officials at OPCW headquarters in The Hague later said arrangements were being made for the inspectors to travel to the site on Wednesday. A youth worker was stabbed to death after being taunted by teenagers he confronted when he suspected they were dealing drugs outside his home, a court has heard. Omid Saidy chased two males from outside his house near Parsons Green, south-west London, but was knifed in the neck, the Old Bailey heard. The 20-year-old had gone after the suspected dealers with his friend Oluwafemi Omotosho, known as Femi, who was on a moped. Omid Saidy (Metropolitan Police/PA) Shafiq Smith, 19, and a 17-year-old, who cannot be named because of his age, are charged with Mr Saidys murder. Smith is also charged with the attempted murder of Mr Omotosho. Prosecutor Timothy Cray told the jury the police investigation suggested the victims as well as the defendants were carrying knives. He said: Should they have chased the defendants? Absolutely not. Dealing with drug dealers is the work of the police and the events show how quickly violence can spread if individuals try and take the law into their own hands. But did Omid need to die for the mistakes he made, and did Femi need to be stabbed in the chest when he was lying on the ground? Those are the sort of very specific questions youll need to focus on as you approach the evidence and reach your decisions. Mr Cray told the court: Omid was angry that people were dealing drugs near (his) address. He said the group had been asked to move on earlier in the day on October 16 but returned that evening with their faces masked or wearing hoods. After an initial chase by Mr Saidy and his father Majid, who had come outside with the family dog to ask the group to go away, the defendants produced knives, the court heard. Majid Saidy, giving evidence on the first day of the trial, said: They were across the road taunting Omid with the knives. He said he had tried to tell his son to let it go but heard him say: Im not having this, they cant be waving knives at me like that. Majid Saidy said his son, who he described as a youth worker, ran after the people he believed had been outside the house. He described seeing a confrontation and someone arrive on a moped but said he was not close enough to see what was happening. Mr Cray asked him: By the time you catch up you realise that Omids been stabbed? He answered: Yes. I could just see a pair of trainers on the floor and he is on the ground. I still dont know its Omid. CCTV footage played to the court showed Omid Saidy initially walking after the defendants as Mr Omotosho rode on his moped. A fight involving Mr Saidy, Mr Omotosho and the defendants took place under a railway bridge not covered by CCTV on Parsons Green Lane near the Tube station, Mr Cray said. Mr Saidy was stabbed in the neck and pronounced dead at 8.30pm, the jury was told. Mr Omotosho was stabbed while lying on the ground after falling off his moped but survived, the court heard. The defendants, sitting outside the dock, were 18 and 16 at the time of the killing last year, the jury was told. Smith, of Laitwood Road in Wandsworth, and the 17-year-old, of Shildon in Durham, deny all the charges. An elderly woman who came to Britain as part of the Windrush generation has begged MPs for help after revealing her son is due to be deported on Wednesday. Ruth Williams contacted Tottenham MP David Lammy saying her son, 35-year-old Mozi Haynes, was due to be removed from the country after two failed applications to stay. Mr Lammy, who chairs the Race and Community All Party Parliamentary Group, said heads must roll over the national disgrace, which has seen the Prime Minister apologise to Caribbean leaders. Ms Williams, 74, said: I feel betrayed and a second class citizen in my own country. This makes me so sad and the Home Office must show some compassion. Tottenham MP David Lammy said he had passed Mr Haynes case on to Dominic Grieve, the Conservative MP for Beaconsfield (Yui Mok/PA) I am unwell and almost 75, I live on my own and I need my son to stay here. I need my family around me and I cant face being alone. He has applied to the Home Office and been refused twice. Mr Lammy said he had passed the case on to Dominic Grieve, the Conservative MP for Beaconsfield. He said: This is a national disgrace. What is going on in the Home Office makes me ashamed of our great country. The Prime Minister must act urgently to halt this deportation and all other Windrush deportations. Heads must roll over this and the Home Secretary and immigration minister must consider their positions. Speaking to LBC Ms Williams said she came to the UK in 1959 and returned to Saint Vincent and the Grenadines in 1980 for a break, later giving birth to her son there. She told the show she came back to England with her son, but that she sent him back home to Saint Vincent because she was having difficulties. When he was 18 he came over, he went to college as a student, we paid for him as a student to go to school he left the country after his visa expired, she said. In 2010 he went back to the West Indies and somebody he was going out with for a while, (they) got married, she was European, they came back to England, had a lot of difficulties and the marriage broke up. Mr Haynes revealed during the interview that his mother has cancer and described how he dropped everything to look after her following her diagnosis. Mr Haynes said the Caribbean is a place that he `doesnt really know much any more (Yui Mok/PA) Describing the situation, he said: Every knock on the door, you think theyre coming to get you. Every car that pulls up outside you think it is them. I couldnt deal with that on top of everything. Mr Haynes said the Caribbean is a place that he doesnt really know much anymore and that leaving would mean his mother is in Britain suffering by herself. I love Britain, it has been my home for so long I dont really know anything else you know, but it is hostile and I dont know if they mean for it to be this way, but thats just the way it is, he added. Mr Haynes said issues arose after he did not tell the Home Office that his marriage had broken down. Describing the effect on them both, Ms Williams told LBC: We have been stressed, it has made my situation worse, he has been depressed. We really, really have been suffering for the past couple of years, the Home Office have made us feel less than human beings. Ms Williams said the family have purchased a ticket for Mr Haynes to return to Saint Vincent because they would feel so ashamed if he was deported. Anti-Semitism has become more commonplace, conspicuous and corrosive within the Labour Party, one of the partys Jewish MPs has said in an impassioned speech urging change. Luciana Berger (Liverpool Wavertree), was applauded by MPs from all sides after she spoke of the anti-Semitic abuse she has faced, including from those appearing to support Labour leader Jeremy Corbyn. She and other MPs backed calls to expel Ken Livingstone from the Labour Party, with former minister Ian Austin saying the ex-London mayor had been comparing, claiming that Hitler was a Zionist labelling this as anti-Semitism pure and simple. Labour MP Luciana Berger (Gareth Fuller/PA) Labours deputy leader @tomwatson has chosen not to sit on the front bench with #Corbyn #antisemitism debate in Parliament. Instead hes chosen to sit between @lucianaberger @RuthSmeeth Anna Soubry (@Anna_Soubry) April 17, 2018 Mr Corbyn was in the Commons to hear Ms Berger and Mr Austins remarks, with Communities Secretary Sajid Javid also accusing the Opposition leader of a deeply worrying lack of leadership and moral clarity on anti-Semitism. Shadow communities secretary Andrew Gwynne said much more work needs to be done on anti-Semitism, adding: No political party has the monopoly on vice or virtue but we will put our house in order. Truly stunning speech from @lucianaberger on the horror of the antisemitism she confronts every day. Very proud to be able to call her my friend. Lord Walney (@LordWalney) April 17, 2018 Speaking during a debate in the Commons, Ms Berger said she received her first piece of hate mail aged 19. She said it described her as a dirty Zionist pig, adding: Here starts my 18-year experience of contending with anti-Semitism. Ms Berger said she has been attacked by the far-right and far-left, later saying anti-racism is a central Labour value and there was a time not long ago when the left actively confronted anti-Semitism. She added: One anti-Semitic member of the Labour Party is one member too many. And yes, as Ive said outside this place in Parliament Square, and it pains me to say this proudly as the chair of the Jewish Labour Movement, in 2018 within the Labour Party anti-Semitism is more commonplace, is more conspicuous and is more corrosive. Thats why I have no words for the people who purport to be both members and supporters of our party, who use that hashtag JC4PM, who attacked me in recent weeks for my comments, they attacked me for speaking at the rally against anti-Semitism, theyve questioned my comments where I questioned comments endorsing that anti-Semitic mural, who say I should be deselected or called it a smear. Sustained applause across Commons for brilliant, brave & moving speech by @lucianaberger in #Antisemitism debate. Liz Kendall (@leicesterliz) April 17, 2018 Ms Berger said people have accused her of being a paid-up Israeli operative, a traitor, an absolute parasite, and told her to get out of the country and go back to Israel. She said the hurt and anguish of the Jewish community must be understood and taken seriously, adding the Government must conclude its work on how to better protect everyone online. Ms Berger also said: My party urgently needs to address this issue publicly and consistently. We need to expel those people from our ranks that hold these views including Ken Livingstone. We have a duty to the next generation. Denial is not an option. Prevarication is not an option. Being a bystander who turns the other way is not an option. The time for action is now. Enough really is enough. Listening to #antisemitism debate in House of Commons. Heart-broken hearing what @lucianaberger and @RuthSmeeth have had to tolerate. They are outstanding, true Labour MPs, serving the people they represent. I am proud to be their colleague and friend. Sending love and respect x Thangam Debbonaire (@ThangamMP) April 17, 2018 Following Ms Bergers speech, Labour MP Ruth Smeeth (Stoke-on-Trent North), could be seen crying and was comforted by her party colleague Wes Streeting (Ilford North). Ms Smeeth also received a standing ovation during the debate after sharing the anti-Semitic abuse she had faced. Unprecedented standing ovation for @RuthSmeeth s immensely powerful speech in #Antisemitism debate Lucy Powell MP (@LucyMPowell) April 17, 2018 Ms Smeeth, reading a small sample of the abuse she had received, said: My fan base has shown scant regard for appropriate parliamentary language so I apologise in advance, hang yourself you vile treacherous Zionist Tory filth, youre a cancer of humanity, Ruth Smeeth is a Zionist she has no shame and trades on the murder of Jews by Hitler who the Zionists betrayed, Ruth Smeeth must surely be travelling first class to Tel Aviv with all that slush, after all shes complicit in trying to bring Corbyn down. The Stoke-on-Trent North MP went on to tell colleagues it was truly heartbreaking that she had to stand in Parliament Square to protest against the anti-Semitism that was engulfing parts of her party. A beautician from County Durham has drawn global attention after she turned a customers baby scan into a nail design. Sarah Clarke of Sarenity Hair and Beauty, Stockton-on-Tees, painted Stacey Donaldsons nail by copying an ultrasound image of her unborn child. Since posting a picture of the nail to Facebook, the 34-year-olds unique design has gone viral, being shared tens of thousands of times. It just went mental, Sarah told the Press Association. Im totally shocked at the reaction. Sarahs salon now has a host of bookings from next month for baby scan nails, including many customers who lost their child during pregnancy. (Sarah Clarke) Sarahs beauty salon in Stockton-on-Tees (Sarah Clarke) Sarah said she had the idea four months ago when Stacey was in the middle of her pregnancy, telling her she would prepare them for when she went into hospital. There was no sentiment around doing it I just like trying new things, said Sarah. I told her it would be popular in hospital because its a nice touch, but obviously theyll probably know about it before she even gets there now. Ive had a lot of requests from people who have lost their babies too, so thats nice for them to have a memory. Ive had some wanting to get it done for their wedding, with the one they lost on their ring finger. Sarah and Ben Clarke (Sarah Clarke) The nails cost 40 for a set, with one of the nails being adorned with the baby scan design. Sarah, who has worked in beauty for seven years, applies an acrylic nail before painting the baby scan image by hand with a fine brush. I think other shops are getting requests for it now too, she added. It is definitely becoming a trend because Im getting messages from all over the world, so its not going to stop here in Stockton. I just had a message from a journalist in Indonesia and the Americans are going crazy. Starbucks plans to close more than 8,000 US stores for several hours next month to conduct racial-bias training for nearly 175,000 workers. The announcement comes after the arrests of two black men at a Philadelphia store sparked protests and calls for a boycott on social media. A video showed police talking with two black men seated at a table. After a few minutes, officers handcuff the men and lead them outside as other customers say they werent doing anything wrong. Starbucks president Kevin Johnson (Richard Drew/AP) Philadelphia-area media said the two were waiting for a friend. We regret that our practices and training led to the reprehensible outcome at our Philadelphia store. Were taking immediate action to learn from this and be better. A statement from ceo Kevin Johnson: https://t.co/kPav8bEeOX Starbucks Coffee (@Starbucks) April 15, 2018 The company reacted from a high level: Starbucks CEO Kevin Johnson called the arrests reprehensible and said he wanted to apologise to the two men face-to-face. The company and a lawyer for the two men said they did meet, and Mr Johnson delivered the apology. Starbucks also said the employee who called police no longer works at the store, but declined to give details. Mr Johnson had also promised to revamp store management training to include the unconscious-bias training. Starbucks said that the company-owned stores and corporate offices will be closed on the afternoon of May 29 for the training. The company said the training is designed to address implicit bias, promote conscious inclusion, prevent discrimination and ensure everyone inside a Starbucks store feels safe and welcome. Washington The U.S. Supreme Court appeared divided on Tuesday on whether to overrule a 26-year-old precedent that limits when states, school districts, and other jurisdictions may collect sales tax on out-of-state purchases by their residents. There are billions of dollars in potential new revenues at stake in South Dakota v. Wayfair Inc. (Case No. 17-494), in which the justices are considering whether to maintain a rule that bars the states from levying tax on out-of-state sales unless the seller has a physical presence in the state, such as a store or warehouse. That rule came from the courts 1992 decision in Quill Corp. v. North Dakota . There are two very significant consequences brought about by Quill, Marty J. Jackley, the attorney general of South Dakota, told the court during oral arguments. First, our states are losing massive sales tax revenues that we need for education, health care, and infrastructure. Second, our small businesses on Main Street are being harmed because of the unlevel playing field created by Quill, where out-of-state remote sellers are given a price advantage. The state in 2016 enacted a law designed to challenge the Supreme Court precedents that established the physical-presence rule, including Quill. That decision was rooted in an era of mail-order catalogue sales. Since then, Internet retailing has exploded, and states say they are missing out on at least $8 billion and as much as $34 billion annually in sales taxes from remote sellers. South Dakota is joined by a friend-of-the-court brief signed by 41 other states (45 states and the District of Columbia have sales taxes). Several education groups have joined a similar brief filed on South Dakotas side by the National Governors Association . South Dakota, however, ran into immediate concerns from several justices about the impact of overruling the physical-presence rule. Justice Sonia Sotomayor asked about the possibility that some states would seek millions of dollars in retroactive sales tax from out-of-state sellers. She also expressed concern about the costs of tax-compliance software, which South Dakota and its allies contend make it much easier for sellers to comply with tax obligations from some 12,000 taxing jurisdictions nationwide. There are lots of costs inherent in purchasing such software and keeping it updated, Sotomayor said. Justice Elena Kagan noted that Congress had not moved to overturn Quill in the 26 years since it was decided. Even though the courts rulings were constitutional ones under the commerce clause, the courts jurisprudence in this area would allow lawmakers to come up with an alternative to the physical-presence rule. This is a very prominent issue which Congress has been aware of for a very long time and has chosen not to do something about that, Kagan said, which should give the court pause about disturbing it. Deputy U.S. Solicitor General Malcolm S. Stewart, arguing in support of South Dakota, said the court in Quill was not saying anything one way or the other about the role of a pervasive Internet presence in establishing sufficient contacts with the state to allow for the collection duty. George S. Isaacson, a Lewiston, Maine, lawyer representing three web retailers who argue for keeping the physical-presence rule, said small- and mid-size companies will be deterred from entering the market if the court overrules the requirement from Quill. Some justices appeared more sympathetic to South Dakotas position. Justice Neil M. Gorsuch said the retailers concerns seem a little antiquated today. Why should this court favor a particular business model? Gorsuch asked Isaacson. The retailers lawyer said that state borders and sovereignty were important. Justice Anthony M. Kennedy, who voted for the Quill decision but essentially invited the challenge to it in a 2015 concurrence in another tax case, asked few questions, but he did refer to the changes wrought by the Cyber Age. Justice Stephen G. Breyer said he found strong arguments on each side, and to help himself decide which was right, he wondered, what does it cost for a mandolin seller who sells mandolins on the Internet to sell them in 50 states? How much does it cost him to enter that market? And while some of his colleagues bandied about the names of web retailers such as Amazon and Etsy, Breyer wondered about how much it had cost Sears, Roebuck to enter the national market. Breyer seemed to discount the recent struggles of the classic American catalogue and department store retailer. You know, thats an ancient name, but they did all right, he said. A decision in the case is expected by late June. Actor John Michie has been announced as the new ambassador for a charity that supports grieving parents, less than a year after the death of his daughter. The Holby City stars daughter Louella was found dead in a wooded area on the edge of the Bestival music festival site at Lulworth Castle, Dorset, in September, at the age of 25. Michies partnership with The Good Grief Project, an organisation that helps families who are dealing with the death of a loved one particularly a child will see him support a new documentary film on bereavement. He will attend the UK premiere of A Love That Never Dies, created in association with the charity and directed by husband and wife team Jane Harris and Jimmy Edmonds, who have coped with the loss of a child themselves. Harris and Edmonds film is described as a love letter to their son Josh, who died in a road accident in Vietnam seven years ago. Michie will join the filmmakers at the London premiere, and will also take part in a Q and A after the screening. He said: When your child dies it is devastating for the family, and in many cases affects people for the rest of their lives. It is for this reason I am honoured to become an ambassador for this vital and worthy charity and take part in the Q and A at the London premiere of A Love That Never Dies. Edmonds, who acted as director, cinematographer and editor on the film, said: As a filmmaker, A Love That Never Dies has been the hardest project Ive ever worked on. As a bereaved dad, it has probably saved my life. Harris, who directed and produced, added: Its about not shying away from grief, of not letting go but of continuing the bond with the deceased and finding rewards where we expected none. Jane Harris and Jimmy Edmonds (Handout) The event will be chaired by Maria Ahern, chair of peer support group The Compassionate Friends, an organisation of bereaved parents, siblings and grandparents which supports and cares for others who are grieving. She said: As well as providing a glimpse into bereavement, the film offers an insight for those who support bereaved parents: family, friends, colleagues, and the wider community. When a parent loses their child, all their relationships are affected. Understanding this, and how important it is to maintain a relationship with that child, is key to being able to provide that support. The premiere for A Love That Never Dies will take place at the Prince Charles Cinema in London on May 18, at 8.30pm, during Dying Matters Awareness Week, which runs from May 14-20. A Love That Never Dies is in UK cinemas from May 18. Some people continue to defend trickle-down theories which assume that economic growth, encouraged by a free market, will inevitably succeed in bringing about greater justice and inclusiveness in the world. This opinion, which has never been confirmed by the facts, expresses a crude and naive trust in the goodness of those wielding economic power and in the sacralized workings of the prevailing economic system - Pope Francis To say that the constitutional reform process set in motion by the good governance regime has been side-tracked is an understatement; in fact the whole process has met with sudden death with the political turmoil the country is going through at present. As such, many salutary proposals of the Public Representations Committee seem destined to an embryonic death. Among such casualties is the constitutinalising of economic, social and collective rights making them justiciable i.e. enforceable by way of fundamental rights jurisdiction. Although the 2nd Republican Constitution introduced Fundamental Rights for the first time into the Sri Lankan constitutional milieu, those rights enshrined in Chapter 3, remain skeletal, recognizing only those first generation civil and political rights, such as those which protect citizens from torture and degrading treatment, arbitrary arrest, discrimination, etc., the types promoted by the International Covenant on Civil and Political Rights (ICCPR). A laissez-faire attitude The socio-economic structure the Constitution sought to underpin was a laissez-faire, free market open economy and it was hardly surprising that the authors were wary of opening up litigation based on economic and social rights, which under normal circumstances would be the real substance that gives meaning to first generation civil and political rights. The duty of the State, specially in a context where social democracy underpinned norms of governance since independence, to uphold social economic and cultural welfare, is of paramount importance in the face of unequal distribution of wealth, increasing income gap, scant opportunities for good employment, education, etc. Although the Directive Principles of State Policy requires the State to endeavour to promote an environment that ensures the citizenry good living standards, housing, employment, education, etc. they remain non-justiciable. In the context of conservative and deferential judicial attitudes, state policy principles have not been made to hold the State bound to those lofty notions enshrined in Chapter 6 of our Constitution. Need for constitutinal reforms The recent visit to Sri Lanka of Virginia Bras Gomes, Chairperson of the UN Committee on Social Economic and Cultural rights, was an opportunity for our policy makers to be reminded, and if not enlightened, on the need to proceed in earnest in making these rights justiciable. One of the main concerns expressed by Mrs. Gomes was the uncertainty that has arisen with regard to constitutional reforms including constitutionalising of Socioeconomic and Cultural rights. In countries with dualist legal systems such as ours, mere ratification of international instruments such as the International Covenant on Economic, Social and Cultural Rights (ICESCR) does not entail such obligations becoming part and parcel of the domestic law. Hence, Sri Lankas ratification of the ICESCR is no guarantee that social, economic and cultural rights promoted therein are part of our legal system or that they are justiciable. In other words it does not entitle a citizen to invoke the Fundamental Rights Jurisdiction of the Supreme Court in terms of Article 126 of the Constitution or any other legal remedy. As much as successive governments have attempted to uplift the socioeconomic level of their subjects, non-justiciability of such rights creates a lacunae without a doubt and Directive Principles remain a State prerogative and not a citizens right. Sri Lankas ratification of the ICESCR is no guarantee that social, economic and cultural rights promoted therein are part of our legal system or that they are justiciable Obligations of the State The ICESCR imposes obligations on a State party on three levels. First, it is not to act against the spirit of the rights promoted and protected by the Covenant. In that sense, the obligation is akin to Civil Political rights, where the State is required only to refrain from doing acts which violate those rights. The second level of obligation is to ensure that such rights are not violated by third parties; the rub lies here as under civil and political rights, there is no obligation on the State with regard to violent acts by third parties. Thirdly, the State party is compelled to take positive measures, legislative as well as executive, to ensure that social and economic rights of citizens are protected, promoted and upheld. It is disappointing indeed that Sri Lanka has not been able to constitutionally recognise social and political rights despite being a representative democracy for more than 80 years. Although there exists a plethora of statutes and legislative provisions which guarantee social security, secured and safe employment, standards of education, etc., more often than not, they remain at the individual level and not as collective rights. Even in countries where these rights are not constitutionally recognized, progressive, bold and benevolent judicial attitude has expanded the notions of social justice contained in State policy imperatives by interpreting them to be binding on the State and thus vindicating citizen grievances from a constitutional and legal view-point. But it is not to be misunderstood that there is universal support for this endeavour to uphold second and third generation rights, from a legal perspective in general and by constitutional justiciability in particular. In Sri Lanka, the proposals for justiciable socioeconomic rights before the Public Representations Committee has been met with objections by certain quarters such as entrepreneurs, employers, investors, jurists, etc. Although time and space does not allow an in-depth evaluation of the merits of such apprehensions expressed, suffice it to say that those objections are real and substantial. The fact that Sri Lanka has been able to reach a lower middle income status in terms of per capita income is not an excuse to dodge constitutionalising socioeconomic rights. Many countries which are even considered developed and 1st World have proceeded to do that. Neither should it be a valid ground to say that it would put the State in a precarious situation where it is unable to meet these rights, demands once justiciable in terms of resources which are at the disposal of a government. Bold and progressive recognition of these rights by countries such as South Africa, Brazil, Nepal and Kenya shows that economic resources alone is not the criteria on this account in making policy. In jurisdictions with little transparency and participatory opportunities for the citizen, a comprehensive fundamental rights jurisdiction remains a major component of their right to be represented in governance and to be placed in a position to be able to enjoy the fruits of national economic growth. Discontentment with neo-liberalism Continuous and never-ending indignation, protest and dissatisfaction with neo-liberal economic policies should serve as a reminder that our society still expects State intervention on behalf of those segments of society in need of special care. While modern-day realities of profit-driven competitive market economy should not be lost sight of, it also warrants policy makers to be mindful of the large sections of society clamouring for their social and economic rights to be ensured by the State. In this era when we appear to be on the verge of a cyber war if not a direct battle with Russia on one side, the United States and its Western allies on the other and with hundreds of diplomats being expelled from each others countries, most analysts believe poverty alleviation or the gap between the rich and the poor is one of the root causes of this possible catastrophe. Reports on Monday said Russia had launched a full-scale and malicious cyber war against Western targets including nuclear sites, power stations, vital State institutions and other strategic areas apparently in retaliation against the attack on the Syrian regimes, chemical sites and laboratories. In such an apocalyptic scenario with the predictably unpredictable US President Donald Trump having no clear-cut foreign or economic policy, other world leaders need to take urgent steps to address the crisis of widespread poverty. According to the Bloomberg media company, the gap between the rich and the poor may be reaching its peak. It says the gap between the rich and the poor may fall if equity prices are curtailed, but millennials face perfect storm that most wont overcome. In a recent report on global wealth, Credit Suisse Group AG noted a shift away from equities and other securities to physical assets like property. That may be a harbinger of a return to the broad-based wealth creation that characterized the years before the 2008 financial crisis, when most levels of the society benefitted from economic growth, analysts at the Swiss Banks Research Institute said. In recent years, wealth inequality has trended upwards, propelled in part by the rising share of financial assets and a strengthening US dollar. These factors may be waning, but the impact on wealth inequality is unclear at present, the study said. Income inequality has become a hot-button issue since the crisis, with economists warning that it is polarizing society and stoking discontent. The value of financial assets, especially company securities, is probably a key factor because wealthier individuals hold a disproportionate share of their assets in this form. Wealth inequality can be expected to level off and perhaps fall if equity prices are curtailed in the years ahead, the analysts said. The report says, disparities increased in the 12 months to mid-2017 even as the world became richer overall. Global wealth grew at a faster pace to $280 trillion, the highest since the bank began tracking it in 2000. The US accounted for more than half the increase. The growth was fuelled not only by widespread gains in equity markets but also substantial increases in non-financial assets, the report said. Average global wealth grew 4.9 per cent to a record $56,540 per adult, with the richest 1 per cent owning about half of all household wealth. Millennials are doing less well than their parents at the same age after the capital losses of the crisis. Rising student debt in developed countries, tighter mortgage rules after 2008, higher house prices and less access to pensions are creating a perfect storm that is holding back wealth accumulation, the report says. We expect only a minority of high achievers and those in high-demand sectors such as technology or finance to effectively overcome the millennial disadvantage, Credit Suisse Chairman Urs Rohner said in the report. Global wealth rose 6.4 per cent, or by $16.7 trillion, faster than the 3.9 per cent growth rate of the previous 12-month period. In addition to the US, China, India and the euro currency countries also made major contributions. Switzerland, Australia and the US continue to occupy the top three positions in the ranking of wealth per adult, while Britain and Singapore dropped two notches to eighth and ninth place. North America and Europe together account for 64 per cent of the total household wealth, but just 17 per cent of the adult population. Median wealth fell in Africa, the Asia-Pacific and Latin America. Our projections for 2022 suggest more pessimistic scenarios for the immediate years ahead, the report said. According to an Asian Development Bank report, in Sri Lanka, 6.7% of the population lived below the national poverty line in 2012. In Sri Lanka, the proportion of employed population below $1.90 purchasing power parity a day in 2013 is 4.2%. For every 1,000 babies born in Sri Lanka in 2015, 8 die before their first birthday. In this situation, it is necessary for our national leaders -- political, religious or social -- to avoid wasteful expenditure, luxury and extravagance. They need to set an example to the people by turning back to Alpechchathawaya or a simple and humble lifestyle so that they could save more and share more with those who are caught in a poverty trap manipulated by a self-centred and wicked society. Provincial Councils and Local Government Minister Faizer Mustapha said the government would never hold elections to the provincial councils under the old system or the much criticized PR system, but was ready to introduce amendments to the Provincial Councils Elections Act of 1988. Commenting on various media reports that he had agreed with party leaders to hold the PC polls under the old system, the minister said neither he nor the President had agreed to this proposal. The minister said the government was not ready to hold PC polls under the old system because it was a pledge given by President Maithripala Sirisena at the 2015 presidential polls. I met party leaders before the New Year to discuss the holding of elections to the Sabaragamuwa, North-Central and Eastern Provincial Councils. There were suggestions to hold the election under the old system but there was no agreement on it. Although certain minority parties and the JVP did not attend the discussion, those present agreed to introduce amendments to the 1988 Act. The government will hold elections to the three PCs under the mixed First-Past-the-Post and Proportional Voting systems which was introduced to the local government electoral system, the Minister said. However, the elections to the three PCs that are under the purview of the respective governors are not possible, as long as the delimitation report tabled in Parliament is not debated. Although the Delimitation Committee report for elections to the PCs tabled by the minister on February 19, had to be debated and passed within a month after tabling in Parliament, but party leaders had failed to decide on a date for the debate further delaying the elections. With the enactment of the Provincial Council Elections (Amendment) Act No. 17 of 2017, a new mixed voting system was introduced for provincial councils, where 50 per cent of the representatives would be elected by a simple majority system and another 50% would be selected according to the district level proportional representation method (the additional list). (Sandun A. Jayasekera) Prime Minister Ranil Wickremesinghe is to meet the Asigiriya Chapter Mahanayake the Most Ven. Warakagoda Gnanaratana Thera and Malwatte Chapter Maha Nayaka the Most Ven.Thibbatuwawe Sri Siddhartha Sumangala Thera tomorrow, sources from the PM's office said. Informed sources said he was expected to discuss the current political situation at the meetings and would brief the most Preletes on the new steps to be undertaken by the United National Party (UNP) and a section of the Sri Lanka Freedom Party (SLFP). On April 12, the Prime Minister said there would be a new government structure with the UNP and a section of the SLFP working together. (Yohan Perera) President Maithripala Sirisena, who arrived in London on Sunday night to attend Commonwealth Heads of Government Meeting (CHOGM) 2018, is scheduled to address the Commonwealth Business Forum tomorrow. Sirisena has also been invited to deliver the keynote address at the forum regarding achieving the Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs), his officials said. The Commonwealth Business Forum is an integral part of the CHOGM and brings together the businesses critical to trade and investment leadership with government to debate the issues facing their countries in 2018 and beyond. Meanwhile, Sirisena is scheduled to meet British Prime Minister Theresa May and also to hold discussions with several key officials who will be participating in the CHOGM, they said. The theme of this years CHOGM is Towards a Common Future and special attention will be given to areas such as prosperity, security, fairness and sustainability to achieve the goals of the Commonwealth countries. During his stay, Sirisena will also attend the special celebration of the 92nd birthday of Queen Elizabeth.(Sunil Jayasiri in London) State and local governments, including school districts, are watching with great interest as the U.S. Supreme Court on Tuesday takes up a case that could result in adding billions of dollars in tax revenue to their coffers. In South Dakota v. Wayfair Inc. (Case No. 17-494), the justices will weigh whether to overrule or distinguish two precedents that bar a state from forcing out-of-state sellers to collect sales taxes on purchases from residents unless the sellers have a nexus, or a physical presence, in that state. A decision for South Dakota, which seeks to impose its sales tax on remote sellers who reach certain thresholds for sales or the number of transactions, could add $50 million to its treasury, the state estimates. For the 45 states and the District of Columbia that have sales taxes, the estimates for revenue lost annually to the physical-presence rule ranges from $8 billion to as much as $34 billion. The physical nexus requirement results in a loss of crucial revenue from owed taxes that state and local governments depend on to fund basic government functions, including education, says a friend-of-the-court brief filed on South Dakotas side by the National Governors Association and joined by four education groupsthe National School Boards Association, AASA, the School Superintendents Association, the National Association of Elementary School Principals, and the Association of School Business Officials International. South Dakota, in its brief , argues that as Internet sales by out-of-state sellers have risen, state revenues have decreased, leading to serious shortfalls. In 2016, the legislature felt compelled to raise the sales-tax rate to help increase teacher salaries, the state says. That same year, South Dakota passed a law that challenges the two U.S. Supreme Court decisions establishing the physical-presence rule for taxing out-of-state sales. The 1967 precedent was National Bellas Hess Inc. v. Department of Revenue of Illinois , in which the court held that under its commerce clause jurisprudence, states could not collect sales or use taxes from out-of-state retailers unless the retailer had a physical presence such as facilities or sales representatives. A quarter-century later, in its 1992 decision in Quill Corp. v. North Dakota , the court somewhat reluctantly upheld the rule from Bellas Hess as a matter of stare decisis. In 2015, in a case related to state sales and use taxes, Justice Anthony M. Kennedy called for the court to reexamine the two precedents. Because of Quill and Bellas Hess, states have been unable to collect many of the taxes due on Internet purchases, Kennedy wrote. States education systems, health-care services, and infrastructure are weakened as a result. The 2016 South Dakota law says that a retailers economic presence in the state, such as through the minimum $100,000 in sales or 200 transactions, is enough to establish a nexus that would require the retailer to collect sales taxes. The states supreme court ruled against the law, saying that the physical-presence rule of Bellas Hess and Quill still prevailed. In the Supreme Court, three retailers sued by South DakotaWayfair Inc., Overstock.com Inc., and Newegg Inc.are defending the physical-presence requirement. The retailers argue , among other things, that complying with the state and local sales tax requirements of some 12,000 taxing jurisdictions remains complex. For example, specific back-to-school tax holidays are authorized in several states, the retailers argue in their brief. Some cover clothing but exclude clothing accessories; some include footwear, while others do not; some include school supplies, but define the covered products differently; many set caps on the maximum exempt amount of purchases of particular products. The variations are nearly endless. The retailers say the sales-tax issue should be determined by Congress. A decision is expected by late June. President Maithripala Sirisena is scheduled to meet UK Prime Minister Theresa May later today, the government said. During the meeting, the two sides are to discuss issues that are mutually important to both countries. President Maithripala Sirisena arrived in the UK on Monday to attend the CHOGM-2018. The President is also scheduled to take part in a special ceremony hosted by the Acting High commissioner of Sri Lanka in Britain. He will deliver the keynote address at the Commonwealth Business Forum tomorrow. Professor Rohan Samarajiva, the former Director General of the Telecommunications Regulatory Commission (TRC) had assumed duties as the Chairman of Information and Communication Technology Agency (ICTA), the Agency said in a media release. Prof. Samarajiva is former Director General of the Telecommunications Regulatory Commission (TRCSL), who contributed to the design of the e-Sri Lanka initiative that the ICTA implemented from 2003. He served on the ICTA Board during the organizations formative period. Professionals with knowledge and expertise in the software and business process outsourcing sectors, telecommunications, cyber security, Government and verticals that are major users of ICTs have been appointed to the new Board, ICTA said. Professor Samarajiva in the statement said that within a week of receiving the letters of appointment, the Board got to work in earnest, conducting a broad review of the activities of the Agency. It is developing a plan to focus and consolidate the many ongoing projects and restore momentum to ICTAs important role in working across multiple government departments, agencies and coordinating with private and civil-society stakeholders to ensure that digital initiatives contribute to efficient government, a dynamic economy and an inclusive society. The Chairman expressed confidence that with the leadership of the Board of Directors and the commitment of the staff, ICTA would again become a trusted partner to all who wish to leverage the exciting potential of ICTs for the betterment of our country. Controversial Water Creatures Beach Guest Restaurant & Surf Bar in Mirissa, where a group of Dutch tourists were brutally assaulted, has been shut down following an order from the Sri Lanka Tourism Development Authority (SLTDA) a short while ago. Six suspects were earlier arrested by Weligama Police in connection with the incident and remanded until April 19 after the Daily Mirror exposed the incident. (Thilanka Kanakarathna) Days after the Oklahoma teacher walkout concluded , demonstrations began among teachers in a nearby state: Colorado. On Monday, hundreds of teachers rallied at the state capitol for better pay, more school funding, and a stronger retirement fund, forcing at least one district to close. Colorado teachers salaries rank near the bottom nationally, according to the National Education Association: In 2016, the average teacher salary was $46,155 in Colorado, compared to the national average of $58,353. The state also currently underfunds its schools by $822 million annually, the Associated Press reports. And Colorado is near the bottom of the country in per-pupil fundingspending $2,700 less per student than the national average. Still, legislators have already included a boost to public schools in next years budget, the AP reported. Lawmakers plan to buy down the annual amount owed to schools by $150 million, and increase per-pupil spending by 6 percent. As a lifelong educatorI was in education for 40 yearsI can see what the concerns are, but quite frankly this year theyre totally unfounded, state Rep. Jim Wilson, a Republican, told the AP. I find it kind of ironic that we have the stirring up of the [Colorado Education Association] troops and bringing them to the capitol today when were considering a school finance bill this year which has the biggest increase since 2008. About 400 teachers participated in the rally at the capitol, the teachers union estimatedmostly from the Denver school district and the suburban Englewood district, which canceled classes on Monday. They were calling for more pay and protesting potential cuts to the retirement system. Legislators are currently hammering out a deal to shore up the state pension fund, which has massive amounts of debt. Its unclear if yesterdays protest was a bellwether for more teacher activism in the state. Teacher demonstrations have taken place in Oklahoma, West Virginia, Kentucky, and Arizona over the last couple of months. An analysis by the Brown Center on Education Policy at the Brookings Institution looked at the four economic factors possibly behind the teacher unrest: low teacher salaries, reductions in teacher pay since the Great Recession, reductions in per-pupil spending since the economic downturn, and state-determined salary schedules. Based on those factors, the analysis concluded, Mississippi and North Carolina are the states most at risk for teacher strikes and protests. Meanwhile, Arizona teachers are currently voting on whether they will strike over pay and school fundingdespite the fact that the governor has said he will urge the legislature to pass a 20 percent teacher pay raise by 2020. For the most part, teachers in states of unrest have experienced public support. My colleague Andrew Ujifusa rounded up recent surveys to see how exactly the general public has said it feels about teachers and their salaries . Image: Elizabeth Garlick, a teacher at North Mor Elementary School in Northglenn, Colo., waves a placard during a rally outside the state capitol on April 16 in Denver. David Zalubowski/AP Cameroonian joins Union first team after previously signing with Bethlehem Steel FC CHESTER, Pa. (April 17, 2018) - Philadelphia Union today announced that the club has signed defender Olivier Mbaizo. Mbaizo (pronounced: O-LIV-ee-ay BYE-zoh) joins the Union first team after having signed with Bethlehem Steel FC ahead of the 2018 season. He will occupy an international roster spot for Philadelphia. 'Olivier trained with the Union first team throughout our preseason, and it became clear that he has the potential to immediately contribute at the MLS level,' said Union Sporting Director Earnie Stewart. 'He has earned this quick ascension to our first team through his play in preseason, and we look forward to further integrating him and assisting with his development.' Mbaizo signed in the United States with Steel FC on January 22, 2018 from his native Cameroon, where he played for Rainbow FC and Union Douala. Last season with Rainbow FC, Mbaizo made 10 appearances as a defender and registered four assists. Prior to joining the club, the 20-year-old played with Union Douala of the MTN Elite One League in Cameroon. While with Douala, he started in two matches of the 2016 CAF Champions League, where the club fell on aggregate to Egyptian Premier League side Zamalek SC. Mbaizo helped the club to 12 shutouts during the 34-match regular season and guided them to a fourth-place finish in the table. Mbaizo has worked his way up the Cameroonian national team ladder, starting with the Under-17s in 2014, and he has most recently earned a call-up for training with the senior team. Last year, he appeared with Cameroon's U-20's for the 2017 Africa U-20 Cup of Nations. He started all three matches and played every minute of the team's Group Stage. Mbaizo scored a goal in their second match of the tournament, a 4-1 victory over Sudan on March 2, 2017. TRANSACTION: Philadelphia Union signs defender Olivier Mbaizo on April 17, 2018. He will occupy an international roster spot for Philadelphia Name: Olivier Mbaizo (pronounced: O-LIV-ee-ay BYE-zoh) Position: Defender Height: 5'10' Weight: 155 Born: August 15, 1997 in Douala, Cameroon Hometown: Douala, Cameroon Citizenship: Cameroon Acquired: Philadelphia Union signed defender Olivier Mbaizo on April 17, 2018 Previous Experience: Bethlehem Steel FC (2018), Rainbow FC (2017), Union Douala (2016) Posted 4/6/18 Retirement planning involves more than just investing in a 401(k) or IRA. Individuals who hope to live comfortably in retirement must account for various expenses, including those associated with Posted 4/17/18 The Tax Cuts and Jobs Act is fueling record-level economic optimism across America, and Missouri is no exception. I recently visited two small businesses, one in Owensville and one in Montgomery The Bryan College Enactus team presented a live, multi-media summary of the entrepreneurial-based projects they developed and implemented throughout the year at the Enactus United States Chicago Regional Competition. They were judged by a panel of business leaders on how successful they were at using business concepts, which empower people to transform opportunities into real, sustainable progress for themselves and their communities. Competition encourages creativity, motivates excellence and rewards results, says Alex Perwich, president, Enactus United States. Enactus students are transforming lives and enabling real human progress through entrepreneurial action, while developing key business and leadership skills that will differentiate them from their peers. Bryan Colleges Enactus presentation team was named Regional Champions and will compete in the National Exposition in Kansas City in May. The team was led by Abigail Brown, a senior management major from Adams, Tn. and Logan Parsons, a senior marketing major from Crossville, Tn., Tomas Aleman, a freshman Management major from Seville, Spain, and Maebry McNeese, a senior marketing major from Nashville. The presentation team included Abigail Brown, Shania Rogers, a senior Management and Marketing major from Halls, Tn., Daniel Vonthin, a senior Marketing major from Wetzlar, Germany, Cooper Ferguson, a senior Film major from Cleveland, and Peter Urban, a freshman Management major from Fillmore, In. Michaela Thomas, a senior Leadership major from La Follette, Tn. provided audio-visual support. Benton Jones, assistant professor of business, served as the advisor for the Bryan College Enactus team. Mr. Jones said I am very proud of this student-led group for developing meaningful, impactful projects which benefit residents of Rhea County, students at Bryan College, and citizens of Haiti. Seeing them showcase these projects in such an esteemed venue was quite an experience. Being recognized for their excellence in community impact, project management, and presentation skill reinforces their desire to serve their communities. Bryan Colleges Enactus team (formerly known as Students Incorporated for Free Enterprise, SIFE) has been a source of community organization and entrepreneurial project at Bryan College for over a decade. Several McCallie students posted top scores for Chattanooga at the annual Statewide High School Mathematics Contest sponsored by the Tennessee Mathematics Teachers Association. The TMTA testing is broken down into six math subjects Algebra I, Geometry, Algebra II, Statistics, Precalculus and Calculus and McCallie had 23 students place in the Top 10 of these categories. Daniel Jeong (Algebra II), John Arrowsmith (Precalculus), Jackson Vandergriff (Calculus) and Hanson Zhang (Statistics) each finished with the citys high score in their category. The Top 10 TMTA test scores for Chattanooga by McCallie students are: Geometry 2nd Amaar Memon 7th Jack Harris 10th Andrew Negus Algebra II 1st Daniel Jeong 2nd Timothy Brock 3rd Caleb Aslinger 5th Henry Xu 7th Brian Trowbridge Precalculus 1st John Arrowsmith 2nd Shrihari Subramaniam 5th (tie) Riley Parker 5th (tie) Charles Smith 7th Bill Gu 9th Jiayi Li 10th Keshav Eldurkar Calculus 1st Jackson Vandergriff 3rd Jaden Long 4th Benjamin McDonough 6th Sawyer Lyons 10th Harrison Stuart Statistics 1st Hanson Zhang 2nd Adam Wang 3rd James Leung 4th Max Che The TMTA state math test began in 1957 to combine several regional math tests in the state with the major purposes to stimulate interest in mathematics by encouraging more students to include mathematics in their programs of study and, thereby, to raise the level of mathematics competence in Tennessee; and to honor those students who are outstanding in their knowledge of mathematics through appropriate public recognition in their schools and their communities. Posted Thursday, April 19, 2018 1:00 pm Tina M. Vinson, 37, Independence, was arrested March 28 on a failure to appear warrant with an original charge of failure to register motor vehicle. Bond was set at $200. Kayla B. Penfield, 27, 1225 N.W. 201st Road, Chilhowee, was arrested March 29 on a failure to appear warrant with an original charge of speeding. Bond was set at $250 with a court date of April 26. Desiree N. Lee, 36, 511 W. Young St., was arrested March 30 on a failure to appear warrant with an original charge of unlawful use of drug paraphernalia and on felony charges of two counts of possession of controlled substance. Bond was set at $2,500. Elizabeth D. Slankard, 22, Pleasant Hill, was arrested on a failure to appear warrant with an original charge of driving while revoked/suspended. Bond was set at $300. Stephenie M. N. Curtis, 21, Independence, was arrested March 29 on two failure to appear warrants with original charges of failure to maintain financial responsibility and speeding. Total bond was set at $500 with a court date of April 26. Evan R. Lanigan, 23, 600 Park Place, was arrested on two failure to appear warrants with original charges of driving without a valid license, assault/attempted assault physical contact, property damage and two counts of resisting/interfering with arrest, detention or stop. Total bond was set at $4,000. Sonya Christopher, 41, Pleasant Hill, was arrested April 1 on a failure to appear warrant with an original charge of passing bad check. Bond was set at $300 with a court date of May 4. Jakob L. Rohn, 17, 604 S. Vine St., Holden, was arrested on three failure to appear warrants with original charges of stealing and two counts of assault. Total bond was set at $450. Jessica R. Brasel, 28, Lone Jack, was arrested on a failure to appear warrant with an original charge of animal abuse. She was also arrested on a probation violation warrant for a felony charge of possession of controlled substance and a charge of driving while intoxicated. Total bond was set at $25,300. Robert B. Williams, 47, Blue Springs, was arrested March 28 on a warrant with a felony charge of deceptive business practice. Bond was set at $15,000. Sheldon A. Payne, 19, 312 N. Ridgeview, was arrested on a warrant with a felony charge of domestic assault. Bond was set at $10,000. Ryan P. Hornbeck, 39, Peculiar, was arrested March 30 on a warrant with a felony charge of fugitive from out of state. Bond was set at $10,000. Darrin R. Akers, 26, Independence, was arrested on a warrant with felony charges of burglary and two counts of stealing. Bond was set at $5,000. Nicholas H. Dunn, 28, 373 S.W. 1200th Road, Chilhowee, was arrested March 30 on a warrant with felony charges of possession of controlled substance, unlawful possession of firearm; and charges of possession of marijuana, unlawful possession of drug paraphernalia and driving while revoked/suspended. Bond was set at $5,000. Kevin G. Cooke, Jr., 26, 593 S.E. 110th Road, was arrested on a warrant with a charge of stealing and a felony charge of burglary. Bond was set at $5,000. Ronal R. Jester, Jr., 48, Sedalia, was arrested April 3 on a warrant with a felony charge of driving while intoxicated; and charges of driving while revoked/suspended, careless and imprudent driving causing an accident, failure to register motor vehicle and failure to maintain financial responsibility. Bond was set at $20,000. Christopher M. Neumann, 41, 329 S.E. 501st Road, was arrested on a warrant with a felony charge of possession of controlled substance. Bond was set at $4,500. Joshua R. Graham, 24, Grant City, was arrested on a warrant with a felony charge of domestic assault. Bond was set at $2,500 with a court date of April 11. Paul Beam, 49, Pevely, was arrested April 4 on two failure to appear warrants with original charges of unlawful possession of drug paraphernalia, passing bad check and a felony charge of possession of controlled substance. Total bond was set at $7,800. The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints (LDS) will host a free self-reliance conference this Saturday, from 10 a.m.noon at 3067 Ooltewah Ringgold Road, Ooltewah. All are invited. Topics include how to start a business, how to better your education and learn techniques for success, how to develop interview skills, and how to improve your finances both spiritually and temporally. Why self-reliance? As explained at lds.org, There are great needs among us. Many lack the ability to provide the spiritual and temporal necessities of life for self and family. Our modern-day prophets have counseled: Self-reliance is a product of our work and undergirds all other welfare practices. And so, we are encouraged to work for what we need to be self-reliant and independent. What is self-reliance? Self-reliance is the ability, commitment, and effort to provide the spiritual and temporal necessities of life for self and family (LDS Handbook). Part of self-reliance includes assessing your needs, choosing a path, joining a group to develop spiritual habits and practical skills, and continuing to act, to keep working to become self-reliant. As also stated, To receive the blessings of self-reliance, we must accept and live the principles of self-reliance, which include the following: 1. Exercise faith in Jesus Christ; 2., Use time wisely; 3. Be obedient; 4. Manage money; 5. Work: Take responsibility; 6. Solve problems; 7. Become one, Work together; 8. Communicate: Petition and listen; 9. Persevere; 10. Show integrity; 11. Seek learning and education; and 12. Stay on task, Receive ordinances. The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints, both locally and globally, invites all people everywhere to diligently study and apply these principles so that your life will be blessed. In so doing, You will learn how to act on your path toward greater self-reliance. A Starbucks will be going in at the new North Shore Apartments by Renaissance Park. The location is on Cherokee Boulevard by Manufacturers Road. Officials of Vision Hospitality said they plan to build a 1,080-square-foot patio outside the Starbucks. It will have electrical outlets where members of the public may recharge their phones, it was stated. There will be chairs on the patio, though they will be taken up each night to prevent theft. The patio will extend into the public right of way, but the city agreed to allow the intrusion. By Emily Baumgaertner 13 April 2018 (The New York Times) The first known epidemic of extensively drug-resistant typhoid is spreading through Pakistan, infecting at least 850 people in 14 districts since 2016, according to the National Institute of Health Islamabad. The typhoid strain, resistant to five types of antibiotics, is expected to disseminate globally, replacing weaker strains where they are endemic. Experts have identified only one remaining oral antibiotic azithromycin to combat it; one more genetic mutation could make typhoid untreatable in some areas. Researchers consider the epidemic an international clarion call for comprehensive prevention efforts. If vaccination campaigns and modern sanitation systems dont outpace the pathogen, they anticipate a return to the pre-antibiotic era when mortality rates soared. This isnt just about typhoid, said Dr. Rumina Hasan, a pathology professor at the Aga Khan University in Pakistan. Antibiotic resistance is a threat to all of modern medicine and the scary part is, were out of options. Typhoid fever, caused by the Salmonella Typhi bacteria, is a highly infectious disease transmitted by contaminated food or water. It causes high fevers, headaches and vomiting. About 21 million people suffer from typhoid each year, and about 161,000 die, according to the World Health Organization.Typhoid is endemic to Pakistan, where poor infrastructure, low vaccination rates and overpopulated city dwellings persist. Doctors in the Sindh province were not surprised by an outbreak in November 2016 until cases proved unresponsive to ceftriaxone, used to treat multidrug-resistant, or MDR, strains of typhoid. Only four isolated cases of extensively drug-resistant, or XDR, typhoid had previously been reported worldwide, according to Dr. Elizabeth Klemm, an infectious disease geneticist at the Wellcome Sanger Institute in England. The outbreaks origins were clear: Early case mapping revealed large clusters of victims around sewage lines in the city of Hyderabad. Dr. Hasans colleagues visited the region and found water sources that could be contaminated by leaking sewage pipes. []There are multiple worst-case scenarios, said Dr. Klemm. One is that this strain spreads to other regions through migration. But the other is that it pops up elsewhere on its own plasmids with drug resistance are everywhere. []Once we arent able to treat this effectively, were going back to the pre-antibiotic era. That would mean a lot of fatalities in our future, Dr. Klemm said. [more] The Professional Actor Training Program at Chattanooga State presents Maids of Honor opening Friday at 7:30 p.m. The show runs for three performances only. Friday and Saturday at 7:30 p.m. and Sunday at 2:30 p.m. Performances take place in the Humanities Theatre at Chattanooga State, 4501 Amnicola Hwy. Admission is free. Reservations are not needed. Written by Joan Casademont, Maids of Honor tells the story of three Bowlin sisters, Monica, Annie and Isabelle. The cast includes graduating students Hope Endriss, Shania Davis and Johanna Fredrickson as the three Bowlin sisters with Tyler Kirby, Toby Lindstrom, Alex Clay, and guest artist Jennifer Arbogast Wilson rounding out the cast. Maids of Honor is directed by Sherry Landrum and stage managed by Maggie Williams. Maids of Honor is for mature audiences. Adult language and adult themes. Not suitable for children. About the show: Monica, a local TV talk show host, is getting married to a man who has neglected to tell her that he is being indicted for insider trading. Monica also has kept information from him. Shes pregnant. Her sister Isabelle, who wants to be an investigative reporter, uncovers the secrets and, with sister Annie, tries to convince Monica not to go through with the marriage. Meanwhile, the sisters try to convince Annie that she should marry Harry Hobson, her old flame and caterer for Monicas wedding. The Bowlin women's difficulties with men, which result from a childhood with an alcoholic father and an abused mother, are revealed in this delightful, warm-hearted play. Maids of Honor is the culmination of two years of intensive work on acting, improvisation, voice, movement, and stagecraft. Save my User ID and Password Some subscribers prefer to save their log-in information so they do not have to enter their User ID and Password each time they visit the site. To activate this function, check the 'Save my User ID and Password' box in the log-in section. This will save the password on the computer you're using to access the site. Note: If you choose to use the log-out feature, you will lose your saved information. This means you will be required to log-in the next time you visit our site. Subscriber content preview Farmers are using AI to help track cows Connecterra makes sensors and artificial intelligence systems that help farmers monitor when a cow is ill, has become less productive, or is ready to breed. By RYAN NAKASHIMA AP Technology Writer SAN FRANCISCO Is the world ready for cows armed with artificial intelligence? No time to ruminate on that because the moment has arrived, thanks to a Dutch company that has married two technologies motion sensors and AI with the aim of bringing the barnyard into the 21st century. . . . login or purchase a To read this story in fullor purchase a subscription. Subscriber content preview SEATTLE A warehouse/office property at 7100 Roosevelt Way N.E. has sold for $2.3 million, according to King County records. The seller was Overturf LLC, which acquired the property in 1993 for $705,000. The buyer was 7100 Roosevelt LLC, which is associated with A&A Enterprises, which owns the site of an apartment project being developed immediately to the north. . . . I have often been helped by a man hiding in a cave. Lest you think I've lost my marbles, it is Davids scared prayer (Psalm 142) to which I refer. A prayer he gasps like a drowning man as he trembles in unwanted exile in the dank darkness of a cavity in a mountains edge. Hes being hunted. Hes hankers for sanctuary. And incarcerated in a makeshift refuge while an unhinged King Saul tracks him in an ancient pre-cursor of the Hunger Games. Of course, David knows that neither the stone-walls in the crease of a mountain nor the camouflaging darkness of his out of the way abode would ever prove to be the haven enough. For that, something stronger than a mountain was required. Or Someone. So he whimpers for God to do something. And doesnt let himself be afflicted by wondering if his love for God is pure enough to have sanction to pester him in the middle of his soul-emaciating terror. He knows that Kierkegaard was right to insist: Woe to the presumptuous who would dare to love God without needing him!... You are not to presume to love God for Gods sake. You are humbly to understand that your own welfare eternally depends on this need. (Christian Discourses, 188) Well, David has aptly discovered both his eternal AND his present welfare depends entirely on his need for God. A clamoring requirement for Gods intervention at least as great as his lungs demand for oxygen. And near the end, this prayerful poetry is squeezed from the most frightened and blighted neighborhoods of his heart: "Set me free from my prison, that I may praise your name." I have plagiarized David in my own scared prayers. His rationale and request for release intrigues me for its desperate but strangely reassuring insistence that our adoration of God is always going to depend on his prior action for us. Each morning circumstance comes crashing through our walls like a train and taunts us with a never-ceasing dependence on God which is loudly demanded of us but strenuously resisted by us. In such trying and undoing conditions, it has seemed fitting for me to learn to make this phrase from David's cave prayer my own. Perhaps youll see its allure in a minute as well? Set me free from my prison that I may praise your name. This petitionary demand winds up being a skeleton key to unlock all sorts of crushing cells of trouble in which we find ourselves incarcerated. See how it might work: Lord, set me free from the prison of my pre-occupation with what other people think of me or I'll never be able to think most of you. Lord, set me free from the prison bars of my present which presents to my vision only gigantic fears of what might happen to my children and those whom I adore. If you don't, there's no way I'll be able to present to my children or to anyone else, the enormous reliability of the God who cares for them more comprehensively than my atrophied imagination can picture. It also aids me in liberating confession of my claustrophobic corruptions (from discontentment to acidic bitterness), which swing wide a door of divine reassurance for my locked up life: Lord, I am incarcerated by my appetites which are such a rip-tide in my soul that they threaten to drown all the good parts of my life. They convince me that this one thing I think I must have is something I cannot live without. Convince me, by setting me free from this deceptive but real imprisonment that you alone are the one I cannot live without. Lord, I am locked up in a snowstorm of flurrying frustration, in a downpour of perennial discontent, so that all I seem able to do is complain and lash out. Set me free from my prison that I may lead my own heart and those of others to bask in the warm, healing rays of your sun of refreshing warmth. Lord, I am jailed by my constant jealousy, and entrenched by my envy so that it's nearly impossible for me to be happy for the happiness of others and in fact, it appears my only possibility for happiness comes at the expense of the misery of my friends, I'm ashamed to say. Set me free to have such an enlarged heart that I can join my laughter with the laughter of others and mingle my tears with theirs too. Lord, I'm handcuffed by my hatred of what he did to me, and bound by my bitterness of what she said--I'm in a penitentiary of my own guilt over things I know I should never have done and over things which I'm sure I should have done but didn't have the courage--from all these imprisonments and more, set me free with all the wealth and wonder of your strenuous care so I may be a walking alleluia from head to toe! And it even gives me words when the darkening gloom settles, squeezing out the remembrance of hope: Lord, I am held in detention by a cruel warden of depression and know that my suffocating soul will never be able to sing of your new mercies each morning when they arrive afresh unless you pry this sinewy stranglehold of sadness off my neck. Maybe Davids desperate diction can assist us in the exiled places weve been plopped, often against our own choosing. And of course, expected answers to our pleas are implied and should be counted upon with the result being we become so liberated from our various incarcerations that we cannot help but herald with happiness the alarming goodness of our Redeemer who rescues us from all sorts of caves of trouble in which we find ourselves frozen. No wonder Charles Spurgeon once insisted, The caves have heard the best prayers. This implies of course, it may just take being stuck in some cave or another, of loneliness, sickness, worrisomeness, aggravation, or desperate despair for us to discover how reassuringly valuable our Lord is to us. May we not despise the places we'd rather not be, but instead use them to force us into the arms of the Only One who emancipates us. Perhaps thats why Walker Percy once insisted that men do their best work in prison or exile. Locked in lonely places creates the hungry conditions for any clamoring soul to insistently demand for a divine break-out. For it was this same cave-cramped and shivering David, who could elsewhere, prison-broken for good, give the thrilling report for which we all crave: He brought me into a spacious place; he rescued me, because he delighted in me. This is the relieved discovery of many who start out calling from caves. ------ Contact Eric Youngblood, pastor of Rock Creek Fellowship on Lookout Mountain, at eric@rockcreekfellowship.org Customer obsession and innovation are very much on a continuum, Russ Grandinetti Amazons Senior Vice President, International Consumer told the audience at Amazon Innovation Day in Sydney, last week. Grandinetti, who was amongst Amazons first 2000 hires and sits inside its top 40 employees in terms of tenure, spoke of the need for innovation to start with what matters for customers. Relevantly, he said a crucial part of Amazons innovation process has been working backwards from what customers demand (as opposed to starting by saying what can I do with the skills I have?) and delighting customers in ways they dont yet know how to articulate. He explained, customers are always beautifully, wonderfully dissatisfied even when they dont know it, they want something better. Noting the importance of staying close to customers as a source of innovation and defect elimination, Grandinetti drew attention to Jeff Bezos anxiety-inducing Question Mark Method, where the Amazon CEO and his leadership team forward customer complaints, in the form of a question, directly to team leaders. We send these [emails] around the business and teams scramble to figure out how what we thought was happening and what customers are experiencing are not the same thing, Grandinetti said. I probably get three or four question mark emails every day about some experience a customer [found] unsatisfying summed up over many days, months and years, [this] is the big force that allows us to move the customer experience as fast as we have. Grandinettis belief that customers are the essence of innovation was a sentiment shared by this weeks lineup of Lets Talk commentators. We asked nearly two dozen thought leaders, including entrepreneurs and executives, to identify the biggest drivers of innovation in their companies. In the words of one commentator, Innovation must be single-mindedly driven by your goal and the core problem you are solving for your customers. Another advised readers, customers are leading partners in cutting-edge business advancements engage and involve them to drive your innovation. A strong survival instinct and employees with creative freedom were also considered key drivers of innovation. Read on for further insights from this weeks lineup Vu Tran, Co-founder of GO1.com: Problem solving and creativity form part of our DNA at GO1.com and very much underpin our companys core values and beliefs. Through the practice of growing a strong culture focussed on these key ingredients, people form the key driver for innovation at our company. I have the opportunity to work with some of the greatest problem solvers and creative thinkers I will ever have the privilege to meet. Through our team and the values that form the foundations of our culture, we have been able to create a mentality where the question we ask when encountering a problem is not can we do this? No, its how do we do this? This mentality allows us to apply our collective creativity to not only solve problems that others find impossible to solve but solve them in ways that others might never have been considered. Noah Abelson-Gertler, CEO of ShareRoot: Dreams thats where the magic happens! The more sleep, the more genius ideas come to mind. I aim for a minimum of 18 hours of sleep a day kidding everyone, just keeping you on your toes! The biggest driver of innovation is undoubtedly the team members. As a CEO/founder, you need to empower your team to gain knowledge and share that knowledge effectively with the rest of the team. When ShareRoot pivoted three and a half years ago, it made sense from a statistical standpoint that the route forward would not come from either of the two co-founders, but from one of our team members. And we were right. Never underestimate the impact your people will have on the core business, rather equip them with the right tools and attitudes to encourage and guide innovation and push boundaries. Michael Caggiano, CCO, OnTheGo: At OTG, the biggest driver of innovation for our business is our customers. They challenge us every single day to be better, faster, smarter, more efficient, and more transparent. Our whole business is built around customers whether it is driving us to innovate our internal practices or procedures, or genuinely forcing us to look at things differently to how it has traditionally been done. We have built our business around our customers and innovation is the pursuit of doing something differently which is something we strive for on their behalf every day. Damien Vasta, Managing Director of Sniip: The biggest driver of innovation in our business is our customers. Our customers are consumers and we ourselves are consumers. We are therefore always striving to innovate to deliver a superior consumer payments product by asking what our customers need us to deliver in order to achieve that objective. We see innovation as simply the principle of using technology to solve a problem if it doesnt solve a problem, it doesnt matter how sophisticated your technology is. Until now, consumers havent been able to make payments easily on a mobile device. This is a massive problem, given our mobile-centric culture. So, we will continually strive to use the technology at our disposal to create a more convenient payment experience delivered via mobile, solving this problem for our customers. Dr. Gero Decker, CEO of Signavio: The customer has always been king but for the first time they actually want to be treated that way. The urge for better customer experience has been a major driver for many of our customers as part of their business transformation and operational excellence initiatives. This forced us to rethink our products, which now help organisations translate customer journeys into operational reality. Sabri Suby, Founder, King Kong: When you have a relentless desire to achieve the best results, you will find yourself becoming frustrated by limitations and challenges that require innovation to overcome. My team and I are always wanting to do bigger and better, and that sees us needing to innovate so we can solve problems and exceed expectations that our competitors are happy to live with. This could be in efficiencies, the way you achieve outcomes, or how results are measured. If like us, its in your DNA to push boundaries and to be the best, then the only way you can do that is to create new ways of doing things by innovating. Emma Lo Russo, CEO of Digivizer: The increasing power of the digital customer drives the opportunities that we strive to deliver solutions for. The customer is changing, voting with thumbs and wallets fast, so helping companies understand and engage in meaningful and valuable ways drives our innovation. Innovation is only of value when it has purpose and drives value for someone else. Perhaps the best definition of that over-used word innovation is making a difference to the customer in a new or novel way in other words, putting the emphasis firmly on serving the customer. I get nervous when I hear companies talking about innovation on their terms. Jonny Wilkinson, Co-Founder, Equitise: Being a company that works to secure funding for disruptive early stage businesses, our clients are some of our biggest drivers for innovation. Theyre often in the tech space and have a concept which is not only backed by innovation and technology but by a team which is completely passionate about their idea. Seeing this every day allows us to learn and integrate through our own innovation in our marketing, customer service and the technology behind our platform. Another major driver is our team. Equitise has 10 employees who are all enthusiastic and committed, with a wide range of backgrounds and skills. They believe in what we are doing and take reward when investors get to own a piece of a company they are passionate about. To keep momentum going within the team, we hold brainstorming sessions on how we can continuously improve so we always have something to strive for. This creates a very innovative culture for the team, which is furthered fostered by our innovative co-working space, Tank Stream Labs. Anthony Quinn, Founder of Arctic Intelligence and AML Accelerate: At Arctic Intelligence and AML Accelerate, regulatory technology innovation is at the centre of what we do and at the core of how we differentiate ourselves in the markets that we operate in. The biggest driver for innovation in our businesses is our belief that regulated entities regardless of their size, sector or geographic location, should have access to accessible and affordable technology to manage their audit, risk and compliance obligations. We have worked hard to bring together several new innovative regulatory technology platforms to help businesses to identify, assess, mitigate and manage their financial crime risk exposures, as well as, helping them to assess the design and operational effectiveness of their compliance programs. Our approach to innovation is agile, customer outcome-focused and fast we experiment, make mistakes, make progress and deliver high-value outcomes to our clients and business partners. Matt Butterworth, Co-Founder and CEO of Easy Weddings: Yearly surveys with customers, suppliers NPS or suggestions to our R&D team and data analysis push us to think outside the box. And with the rapid growth of other tech products such as new phones or browsers were thinking outside the box with the new features that are available to us. We hold quarterly it would be cool to build sessions to hear from staff where they want to see the business going. We devote a decent amount of our development budget towards new features while also making sure we have an agile approach when it comes to getting the ball rolling and launching things as soon as possible. But at the end of the day its not business that drive innovation, its the people. We have a great network of innovative people across our staff, clients and customers. People are naturally competitive, and we love competition here and overseas. It compels us to keep improving to stay in the number one position. Andrew Joyce, Co-founder of Found Careers: At Found, a driver of innovation is our constant focus on solving problems. After all, if you can solve a big enough problem for enough people, then youll have a great business on your hands. On a day-to-day basis, this means constantly talking to customers and users, seeing where we can improve our existing product, and what else theyre frustrated or struggling with in our space. Richard Watson, Regional Director at Twilio: At Twilio we want to unleash the creativity of developers and enable them to innovate at speed. Twilios platform is purpose-built to encourage experimentation and iteration, and we believe that when you give developers the power to try new things, thats where the biggest innovation takes place. With over two million developers on our platform globally, we are constantly learning from the innovation they are creating and thats what drives key business decisions such as launching in new markets, what products to develop or delivering on new CX. The developer community is at the core of everything we do at Twilio and I absolutely love that! Tim Moylan, COO of Shootsta: The biggest driver for innovation at Shootsta is giving people the freedom to focus on the outcome of a project. We run a quarterly Shack-a-thon that unites co-workers from different teams to work on a solution together. We want them to embrace an idea, make a decision on how to solve it, and move forward to develop a plan. The presentations at the end always make for an engaging afternoon, and the clap-o-meter usually tells us how well an idea is received. The driver comes from putting them to work together to reach a goal. The freedom to do this comes from cutting away the red-tape, throwing out the corporate rule book, and empowering them to focus on 1 single outcome. People dont wake up in the morning wanting to comply with the companies systems and processes, so let people think outside the box, and some of the best ideas could come from the most unlikely employees. David Collien, CTO of OpenLearning: Innovation at OpenLearning is driven by a philosophy of fostering a supportive and socially interactive learning environment, a focus on cross-disciplinary thinking, and a sense of playfulness. Conventional teaching which authoritatively assigns work and corrects responses, leaves little room for divergent thinking and creativity. Our practice of creating personalised, constructive, learner-centred, and peer supported environments is not only a way of differentiating the value we provide in the education sector but is also core to our workplace culture to give our team freedom of expression, to explore and create. Ed-tech innovation requires an in-depth understanding of educational theory and practice, paired with technical know-how on the practical possibilities. As our team shares a wealth of knowledge across both disciplines, our everyday lunch conversations explore new cross-disciplinary ideas. This all comes with a healthy side of light-hearted fun, as its easiest to have new ideas when even the silliest are encouraged. John Heaton, CTO of Moneycatcha: For the longest time, building a better mouse trap (cost reduction & efficiencies) was a big driver for innovation. Today, however, I think the biggest driver for innovation is survival, responding to the demand to do things differently. Becoming or being more digital is forcing organisations not only to revamp or replace their technology but also completely redefine their business model. Technologies such as serverless computing, container-based development and delivery, software defined networks and blockchain are challenging the status quo and facilitating this change but demand is driving it. While some would say this is building a better mouse trap I would disagree and say with the recent trends of organisations divesting (Woolworths into mobiles and insurance, Qantas into healthcare) from their core competencies and being successful this is not just an improved mouse trap but an entirely new mouse trap. Jonathan Jeffries, Co-founder of Think & Grow: Nothing is more critical to the success of a business than its people. When it comes to innovation its important to provide an open channel for your people to collaborate and contribute ideas. Having a culture thats open to feedback without repercussions is essential to fostering an innovation-led organisation. Anneke van den Broek, Pet Care Expert and founder and CEO of Rufus & Coco: Having won several awards for innovation in product design, every new product we introduce to market needs to offer a better solution to the everyday issues and niggles that pet owners face. Rufus & Coco are something of a David and Goliath story, as a small Australian brand that entered the market against some very big players. Our success has been largely due to our ability to truly understand our market, and innovate to solve unmet needs. We understand the small changes that can make a massive difference. Our Elasticised Litter Tray Liners are the only product in the Australian market with elastic edges to keep them securely in place despite scratching. Ideas like this have allowed us to set ourselves apart in Australias $3 billion+ pet care market. Weve introduced new, innovative products to supermarkets every year since 2009. If your business isnt innovating, it wont survive. Tony Ward, Country Manager at Dropbox: Collaboration and knowledge sharing are the key pillars upon which great ideas and businesses are built, so in that sense collaboration is a key driver of innovation. Collaboration enables diverse and cross-functional teams internal, external, local and global to come together to find new, creative ways to solve complex challenges in real time. Instead of working in silos detached from each other, businesses can leverage technology to break down barriers creating opportunities to not only drive efficiency and productivity but to create collisions of ideas this is when creativity happens. Businesses are also using collaboration as a way to increase the speed and quality of decision making. Speed is the new currency of business and organisations that can iterate and innovate quickly will be more successful. Brett Shanley, Co-founder and CEO of Study Loans: The biggest driver of innovation at Study Loans is our pursuit of finance for education and our dedication to empowering institutional providers to give more Australians access to learning and professional qualifications. We believe education is completely different to gaining finance for other tangible items such as a car, a house or a business and therefore needs a specialist product and specialist credit engine. Study Loans collects and uses historical data points on a range of financial and educational criteria for each individual to ascertain how likely someone is to complete a course or gain an outcome. Our platform also has the power to calculate vacancy rates in an individuals exact area or career field at the point of completion. In essence, Study Loans is a data driven business, which specialises in the education space. Our aim is to provide more credit for people taking critical steps in securing their future through education by providing them with the necessary finance to undertaken the education in an intelligent and comprehensive manner where the product is made for purpose. Michael Stelzer, VP (ANZ) at Verint: As the Customer Engagement Company, Verint has the customer at the core of our innovation. Weve made a name for ourselves simplifying and modernising customer engagement with powerful technology solutions that are developed with a key focus on how businesses need to drive deeper customer loyalty and trust. Verints product design, implementation and support is driven by our own customers requirements and feedback. Our ongoing research and development also enables us to develop advanced innovation that address our customers changing business requirements, and their customers changing business requirements. Your customers are leading partners in cutting-edge business advancements engage and involve them to drive your innovation. Ben Pfisterer, Country Manager (Australia) with Square: The biggest driver of innovation at Square is our commitment to helping our businesses start, run and grow. We still think there is a lot that can be done to build products and services that better empower more business owners to run their operations more effectively. In this world of rapid technology change, no company can rest on their laurels and be satisfied that a product or service is the best it can possibly be. In any industry, there is constant competition and an ever-present need to evolve. Its our job to innovate on behalf of the businesses that use our platform so they can focus on what they do best growing their business and providing for their customers. Steve Hughes, Managing Director of Mood Media Australia: Innovation must be single-mindedly driven by your goal and the core problem you are solving for your customers. Then you have the freedom to innovate how you deliver that. For example, our goal is to elevate the in-store customer experience and we are the founders of retail music in Australia. Innovation has led us to evolve background music from CDs, into a music solution that is on-demand and scientifically curated. And because our innovation is true to our purpose, we didnt simply apply new technology to our solution. We could have used algorithms to curate playlists, but instead we use a team of (human) music specialists to hand-pick music and use unique technology to deliver it. Weve also innovated our business to include marketing that targets other senses sight, scent and touch. If you want to innovate well, then dont look for new, shiny things. Instead ask how you can better fulfill your business purpose. The result always innovation. Dan Taylor, General Manager of Innovation with TAL: We live in an age of unrelenting change, with rising consumer expectations and emerging technologies creating an imperative to innovate. Our goal is to deliver meaningful new products and services to our customers that lead the industry through this change. Innovation plays a critical role in enabling organisations to meet ever-growing consumer expectations, and were focused on embracing emerging technology to help address this. Losing sight of the relationship with consumers and the need to understand, anticipate and respond to their rising expectations is what sees organisations left behind. At TAL, as evidenced by our dedicated innovation function and the pipeline of products and services we are launching, we have a deliberate strategy to lead the industry through these challenges, constantly seeking ways to reinvent before others can do so. We are focused on practical innovation that will make a real difference to customers, so that our customers understand and value their cover and have confidence that well be there when they need us most. One such technology where we see real customer benefit is Artificial Intelligence, where we have been at the leading edge of applications to streamline our processes, such as underwriting, and develop better experiences for customers. For example, TALs new support service for claimants uses an independent messaging tool to help customers return to health by creating a network for them to share and exchange experiences, insights and advice with former claimants. Fadi Geha, CEO of Simble: We know SMBs are feeling the ever-increasing pain of escalating energy costs. They not only eat into a companys profits, but limit the ability to reinvest cash flow into technology and innovation, which in turn slows productivity and overall company progress. Were committed to helping our SMB customers thrive by providing intelligent tools to ensure the most efficient use of their resources. Our real-time energy visualisation and analytics platform, SimbleSense, helps identify energy savings opportunities, therefore helping businesses reduce their energy costs, consumption and carbon footprint. Being a small business ourselves, our people are the real drivers of our innovation and we have demonstrated our ability to move quickly and evolve our IP with future innovation. This puts our customers on the front foot when confronting the energy bill shock dilemma. We enable our customers to stay ahead of the curve, giving them the power to drive costs out and allow innovation in. Jonathon Miller, MD of Bit Trade: The biggest driver for innovation in the Bit Trade business is always learning from everything we do to solve problems for other companies, and to continue to make its business leaner and more progressive. An example of this is the work were doing under Bit Trades affiliate company, Bit Trade Labs. It is a hub for innovation, working with leading financial institutions and start-ups to develop blockchain solutions. Its doing some really progressive work to solve problems within businesses across a range of sectors. It has recently completed a couple of significant projects; it has developed a self-sovereign identity solution in collaboration with an international consortium to solve problems with identity fraud. It has also created the worlds fastest and most secure blockchain based voting platform with secure.vote. About Lets Talk This exciting new, weekly initiative provides entrepreneurs and industry experts with a forum to share rapid-fire views on a range of issues that matter to start-ups and SMEs. Every Wednesday, we pose a themed question to a line-up of knowledgable industry figures, with a view to picking their brains for valuable insights to share with you, our readers. CHI Memorials Rees Skillern Cancer Institute offers a free seven-week Freedom From Smoking program. The program helps participants learn how to beat tobacco addiction, lifestyle changes that make quitting easier, stress management, how to avoid weight gain and how to stay smoke-free for good. "The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention estimates more than 16 million Americans live with a disease caused by smoking. It is the leading cause of preventable death, according to the American Lung Association," officials said. "Freedom From Smoking is an American Lung Association program that has helped more than one million Americans overcome an addiction to nicotine during the past 30 years." Two sessions will start in May. On Tuesday, May 1, the program begins at CHI Memorial Family Practice Associates Ringgold, CHI Memorial Pkwy., 4700 Battlefield Parkway, Suite 200. The class is offered every Tuesday for seven weeks from 4-5:30 p.m.On Thursday, May 3, the program begins at CHI Memorial Family Practice Associates Ooltewah, 6401 Mountain View Road, Suite 109. The class is offered every Thursday for seven weeks from 4-5:30 p.m.The program is designed for a small group setting. Anyone who has a desire to stop smoking should call 423-495-7778 to register for a class at a location convenient to you. There is no charge for the program. Walker County wants to grow the number of storm spotters in north Georgia. The county's Emergency Management Agency will join forces with its counterpart in Dade County and the National Weather Service (NWS) to host a free SKYWARN Storm Spotter training class on May 1. The class is open to anyone in the public with an interest in weather. Amateur radio operators, boaters, public utility workers and police, fire and EMS personnel are also encouraged to attend. Training topics include basic radar interpretation, identifying storm features and how to report storm information. These and other skills help ensure the community receives timely and accurate severe weather announcements. The NWS recently recognized Walker County as a StormReady County, acknowledging local efforts to reach a high level of severe weather preparedness. A strong base of volunteer storm spotters provides forecasters with an important tool used to fill in gaps undetected by technology. SKYWARN training will take place at the Walker County Civic Center at 10052 Highway 27 in Rock Spring at 6 p.m. on Tuesday, May 1. Since this event is open to the public, registration is not necessary. Fervent Records artist Big Daddy Weave is hitting the road for the Jesus I Believe Tour with special guest Brandon Heath and will stop in Chattanooga on Wednesday, May 9, at Bayside Baptist Church. Presented by World Vision, the tour kicked off in Camp Hill, Pa. and is slated to play 55 U.S. cities before wrapping on May 20. It comes on the release of Big Daddy Weaves newest radio single Jesus I Believe and follows their successful Fall 2017 Set Free tour, which hit 50+ cities across 24 states. The tour will feature Christian music artist Brandon Heath, a five-time GRAMMY-nominated singer/songwriter. Heath is debuting his sixth studio album titled Faith Hope Love Repeat, featuring the hit single Whole Heart. The Jesus I Believe Tour comes from times in all of our lives when the answers we prayed for werent always the ones we got, said Big Daddy Weave vocalist Mike Weaver. In those times, weve learned to turn ourselves toward Jesus regardless, to trust and believe that He is Lord and the perfect author of all. In that posture, hes so often revealed to us things that we never even expected. Mr. Weaver adds, Were so thankful to have the amazing talents of Brandon Heath be a part of these nights declaring our trust and expectation in the Lord. I think it will be different than anything weve ever done before. We cant wait to experience it together with all of our friends around the country. Big Daddy Weave events are known for the transparency shown by the band that freely share their own challenges, including the serious illness and subsequent amputation of both feet of Big Daddy Weave member Jay Weaver two years ago. In addition to general admission tickets and other levels of seating, a special Ministry Partner ticket is available for all dates. The Ministry Partner ticket includes a post-show photo opportunity with the band, a premium guest pass tour laminate, early access into the venue, and most importantly, pays for an additional ticket that is given to someone in need. For the latest information, please visit: bigdaddyweave.com/tour. The Bayside Baptist Church is at 6100 Highway 58 North, in Harrison. Tickets may be purchased at www.ticketfly.com, the Music Office at Bayside Baptist Church after April 23, and at the door the night of the concert. Southern Adventist University invites the public to enjoy a performance by organist Nathan Laube on Sunday at 7:30 p.m. in the Collegedale Church of Seventh-day Adventists. Mr. Laube is an assistant professor of organ at Eastman School of Music in New York, as well as an international consultant in organ studies at the Royal Birmingham Conservatoire in the United Kingdom. His recital career includes major venues spanning four continents, such as the Berlin Cathedral, the Washington National Cathedral, the Vienna Konzerthaus, and the Sejong Center. Additionally, Mr. Laube has been a featured performer for the National Convention of the Organ Historical Society and the American Guild of Organists. This event is free and open to the public. The Collegedale Church of Seventh-Day Adventists is at 4829 College Dr. East. The Nursing and Allied Health Division at Chattanooga State offers monthly information sessions for students interested in the health care professions. The sessions are held at the main campus; some sessions are required for program admittance while others are strongly encouraged. Please visit the Nursing and Allied Health website at http://www.chattanoogastate.edu/nursing-allied-health for important details about program specifics, information sessions and admission requirements. Program directors will explain the process for applying, what to expect once admitted, discuss job opportunities, and answer questions. The following program sessions are scheduled during May: May 7: Dental Assisting, HSC-1038, 8 a.m. May 8: Nursing, HSC-1087, Choice of 9 a.m. or 5 p.m. May 8: Nuclear Medicine, CBIH-109, 10 a.m. May 9: Emergency Medical Services, CBIH-109, 10 a.m. May 15: Pharmacy Technician, HSC-2118, 10 a.m. May 21: Occupational Therapy Assistant, HSC-2088, 10 a.m. May 23: Emergency Medical Services, CBIH-109, 10 a.m. Considered to be the Ten Best UFO Photos Ever Taken I am sure that we could add more pictures to this list but these are considered ten o... Senators Lamar Alexander and Patty Murray (D-Wa.), leaders of the Senate health committee, today introduced bipartisan legislation to address the urgent opioid crisis and said the committee will markup the legislation on Tuesday, April 24. The Opioid Crisis Response Act of 2018 (S. 2680) will improve the ability of the Departments of Education, Labor, and Health and Human Services, including the Food and Drug Administration (FDA), the National Institutes of Health (NIH), the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC), the Health Resources and Service Administration (HRSA), and the Substance Abuse and Mental Health Services Administration (SAMHSA) to address the crisis, including the ripple effects of the crisis on children, families, and communities, and improve data sharing between states. The legislation which is composed of 40 different proposals, mostly from Republican and Democratic members of the Senate health committee, is the result of seven bipartisan hearings over several months, and feedback from the public. Senate Health Committee Chairman Lamar Alexander said, Our goal is to move urgently, effectively, and in a bipartisan way. This is a broad-based set of 40 different proposals to address the opioid crisis. The bill could help states and communities begin to bring an end to the opioid crisis by reducing the number of prescription opioids, stopping illegal drugs at the border, and accelerating research on non-addictive pain medicines. We will consider and seek to approve this bill next Tuesday, so we can get it to the Majority Leader and to the Senate for prompt consideration, along with other important proposals that may be coming from other committees. Senate health committee ranking member Patty Murray said, Im grateful to members on both sides of the aisle for their strong work on the policies in our bill, which will offer families and communities much-needed tools and resources as they continue working to stop this epidemic and rebuild. The work isnt over, and I look forward to more bipartisan progress in support of those weve heard from over the last several months, who are on the frontlines of the opioid crisis and are looking to Congress for support. The Senate Health Committee has held a series of hearings this Congress to hear input on ways the federal government can be a better partner for states and communities on the front lines of the opioid crisis. On Oct. 5, the Senate Health 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 Jan. 9, 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 focused on listening to the needs of children and families affected by the opioid crisis. On Feb. 27, the committee held a hearing on the role technology and data play in responding to the crisis. On March 8, the committee heard from some of the nations governors about how they are coming up with innovative solutions and leading the fight against the unique problems their states face in the midst of the opioid crisis. On April 10, the committee held a hearing to examine the discussion draft of the Opioids Crisis Response Act. The Opioid Crisis Response Act of 2018 will: Reauthorize and improve grants to states and Indian Tribes for prevention, response, and treatment of the opioid crisis, authorized in 21 st Century Cures, for three more years. Spur development and research on of non-addictive painkillers, and other strategies to prevent, treat, and manage pain and substance use disorders through additional flexibility for the NIH. Clarify FDAs regulatory pathways for medical product manufacturers through guidance for new non-addictive pain and addiction products. Encourage responsible prescribing behavior by clarifying FDA authority to require packaging and disposal options for certain drugs, such as opioids to allow a set treatment durationfor example blister packs, for patients who may only need a 3 or 7 day supply of opioidsand give patients safe disposal options. Improve detection and seizure of illegal drugs, such as fentanyl, through stronger FDA and Customer Border Protection coordination. Clarify FDAs post-market authorities for drugs, such as opioids, which may have reduced efficacy over time, by modifying the definition of an adverse drug experience to include such situations. Provide support for states to improve their Prescription Drug Monitoring Programs (PDMPs) and encourage data sharing between states so doctors and pharmacies can know if patients have a history of substance misuse. Strengthen the health care workforce to increase access to mental health services in schools and community-based settings and to substance use disorder services in underserved areas. Authorize CDCs work to combat the opioid crisis, including providing grants for states, localities, and tribes to collect data and implement key prevention strategies. Address the effects of the opioids crisis on infants, children, and families, including by helping states improve plans of safe care for infants born with neonatal abstinence syndrome and helping to address child and youth trauma. Authorize the Department of Labor to address the economic and workforce impacts for communities affected by the opioid crisis, through grants targeted at workforce shortages for the substance use and mental health treatment workforce, and to align job training and treatment services. Improves treatment access to patients by requiring the Drug Enforcement Administration to issue regulations on how qualified providers can prescribe controlled substances in limited circumstances via telemedicine. Allow hospice programs to safely and properly dispose of unneeded controlled substances to help reduce the risk of diversion and misuse. Click here for the text of the legislation, and here for a detailed summary of the legislation. The 123rd China Import and Export Fair, also known as the Canton Fair, opened at its permanent host city of Guangzhou, the capital of South China's Guangdong province, on April 15. The fair, running until May 5, has attracted 25,171 exhibitors from both home and abroad, occupying a total of 60,475 exhibition booths and an exhibition area of 1.19 million square meters. The Guangzhou Baiyun International Airport witnessed a significant increase of foreign passengers over the past few days, with the peak passenger volume approaching 50,000 people per day. The 123rd China Import and Export Fair, also known as the Canton Fair, opens at its permanent host city of Guangzhou, capital of South China's Guangdong province, on April 15. [Photo/Xinhua] Growing global competitiveness "Nowadays Chinese products have become increasingly advanced and innovative; we have great confidence in the future market." Zhang Xuemei, an executive of a water-pump exporter, Guangzhou Bedford Electrical Equipment Company, told Yangcheng Evening News. According to Zhang, although some emerging economies have relatively lower labor costs, Chinese products boast complete industrial chains and high reliability. Moreover, Chinese manufactures are faster at innovating products: it takes them a couple of months to design a new product and then mass produce it and put it on the market, while Western manufacturers might require years to achieve the same result. Many companies felt that the recent trade conflict between the United States and China should not only be seen as added pressure but also as a motivating factor for their businesses. Chen Xiaoli, from Topray Solar Co, a photovoltaic products exporter, said, the trade protectionist policy adopted by the US government would not have a significant impact on the market, because Chinese photovoltaic products have a wide range of clients. The demands in emerging economies like Southeast Asia, the Middle East, Africa, and South America are growing rapidly. Additionally, Chinese enterprises are making technological breakthroughs in the industrial chain; in material, silicon wafers, photovoltaic glass, components, appliances, and consumer goods, with global competitiveness growing as time goes by. The permanent host site of the Canton Fair, the China Import and Export Fair Complex, is the world's largest exhibition center. [Photo/Xinhua] Self-designed high-quality products Exporters at the Canton Fair have gradually reached a consensus on the importance of promoting high- quality products in the world. "We are selective in our choice of clients and would rather abandon the clients that value nothing but low prices," said Lu Qianjinfrom Zhuhai Ceiec. Lu believed it is short-sighted to grab market share through cutting prices while ignoring product quality. Relying on high-quality products and tailor-made services, his company has been obtaining plenty of orders from education, catering, and banking sectors in foreign markets. "We have begun to strongly promote our self-designed brands in the world and have added particular value to international e-commerce. And our strategies have started to take effect," Lu added. The 123rd Canton Fair has optimized the industrial structure of the exhibits, showcasing products with better quality and higher added values. Some of the exhibitors arranged their exhibits very carefully, 80 percent of which are with recently introduced products. Foreign merchants are inquiring about building materials at the Canton Fair on April 15. [Photo/Xinhua] Intelligent home appliances At the section exhibiting home electronics, a shoe-washing machine made by Haier captured the attention of many visitors. This rarely-seen shoe-washing machine takes up little space via drawer-type designs and utilizes high-pressure liquid to deeply clean material fibers. Another eye-catching home appliance is a smart bathroom. It has a user-friendly temperature controller and can measure user's health indicators. Intelligent home appliances could meet the demand of high-end consumers' needs in Europe, a European merchant commented on site. Zhuhai JPE Electric Appliance Company presented a smart LED television set at the fair. Users could write words by hand and erase them again on the screen with great ease, making the set perfect for conferences. The advanced techniques represented by the TV set attracted numerous European visitors. Lots of Chinese exhibitors stated that the international market demands saw a steady rise in recent months and that they are very optimistic about future foreign trade. By Washington Times , April 16, 2018 Special counsel Robert Muellers office is warning that many news articles on the Trump-Russia probe have been wrong. The statement from a spokesperson did not single out particular stories. But the warning did come after media inquiries about a McClatchy News story on Friday that said Mr. Mueller has evidence that President Trumps personal attorney, Michael Cohen, did in fact travel to Prague in 2016 as alleged by the Christopher Steele dossier. Read More: Join us - become an Elderado today at: LarryElder.com Follow Larry Elder on Follow Larry Elder on Twitter "Like" Larry Elder on Facebook China will phase out share-holding limits for foreign investors in the automobile sector, the country's top economic planner said Tuesday. Chevrolet Equinox SUVs are being assembled on the assembly line at an auto plant of SAIC-GM, a joint venture between SAIC Motor and General Motors, in Wuhan city, central Chinas Hubei province, 7 April 2017.[Photo:IC] Share-holding limits for special-purpose vehicles and new energy vehicles will be scrapped for foreign investors in 2018, while those for commercial vehicles and passenger vehicles will be lifted in 2020 and 2022 respectively, according to the National Development and Reform Commission. China will also scrap share-holding limits in the shipbuilding and airplane manufacturing sectors for foreign investors this year. The limits will be lifted on shipbuilding processes including design, manufacturing and repair, and on production of airplanes including trunk and regional airliners, general-purpose airplanes, helicopters, drones and aerostats. Search All categories Advertising General Aerospace General Agriculture General Airlines General America - Post 9/11 General Apparel General Apple Products General Architectural General Architecture Architecture Art & Entertainments Books Celebrities Country Music Dance Magazines Movies Museums Music Music Downloads News & Talk Shows Performing Arts Photography Television Web Sites Arts/Culture General Auction General Automotive Aftermarket Classic Autos Consumer Publications General Motorcycle & Bike Racing Recreational Vehicle Repair & Service Trade Publications Blogging & Social Media Blogging & Social Media Business Advertising / Marketing Books Consumer Research Direct Marketing e-Commerce Entrepreneurs Finance Franchise Human Resources Insurance Investment Management Markets Network Marketing Online Marketing / SEO Payday Loans Public Relations Publications Real Estate Retail Stocks Supermarkets Women in Business Careers/HR General Chemical General Coaching / Mentoring Coaching / Mentoring Computers Apple Products Databases Games & Entertainment General Hosting Instruction Linux / GNU "Open Source" Macintosh Microsoft Windows PC Operating Systems Programming Security Software Tablet PCs Utilities Construction General Consumer Gifts and Collectibles Hobbies Web sites / Internet Design Graphic Design Industrial Web E-Cigarette General eCommerce General Economy General Education College / University General Home Schooling K-12 Post Graduate Technical Electronics General Email Marketing General EmailWire Press Releases Press Release Tips Employment/Careers General Engineering General Entertainment General Environment General Events / Trade Shows General Finance General Food General Franchise General Fraud / Identity Theft General Gaming General Government General Judicial Law Enforcement Legislative Local National Public Services Security State Transportation Healthcare General Home and Family Banking / Personal Finance Bereavement / Loss Home Furnishings / Interiors Landscaping & Gardening Marriage / Relationships Money Parenting Payday Loans Pets Taxes Wedding / Bridal Home Schooling General Hotels/Resorts General Household General Industry Aerospace / Defense Agriculture Apparel / Textiles Broadcast Construction / Building Electrical Food Funeral Healthcare Leisure / Hospitality Logistics / Shipping Manufacturing / Production Mining / Metals Oil / Energy Paper / Forest Products Plumbing, Heating & AC Print Media Printing Publishing Radio Restaurants Tobacco Toy Insurance General Internet/Online General Legal General Leisure General Lifestyle Beauty Dating / Singles Diet / Weight Loss Fashion Food / Beverage Health & Fitness Hotel / Resorts Pastimes Restaurants Retirement Travel & Tourism Machinery General Maritime General Medical Addiction Allergies Alternative Medicine Asthma Cancer Cardiology Chiropractic Dental Dermatology Diabetes Emergency Family Medicine General General Geriatrics Hospitals Infectious Diseases Internal Medicine Managed Care / HMO Medical Products Mental Health Neurology Nursing Nutrition OB / GYN Pediatrics Pharmaceuticals Physical Therapy Plastic Surgery Psychology Radiology / Imaging Research Sports Medicine Surgery Vision Military General Mining/Metals General Miscellaneous General Nanotechnology Nanotechnology Non-profit General Occupational Safety Occupational Safety Oil/Energy General Opinion / Editorial Opinion / Editorial Paper Products General Paper/Forest General Pharmaceuticals General Podcasting Announce Tools and Services Politics Politics Print Media General Public Utilities Public Utilities Publishing General Radio General Real Estate General Religion Christian General Islam Jewish Other Restaurants General Retail General RSS & Content Syndication RSS & Content Syndication Science and Research Science and Research Self-Help / Personal Growth Self-Help / Personal Growth Shipbuilding General Society African American Interests Asian Interests Childrens Issues Disabled Issues / Disabilities Gay / Lesbian Hispanic Mens Interests Native American Senior Citizens Social Services Teen Issues/Interests Womens Interest Software General Sports Baseball Basketball Bicycling Boating / Maritime Bowling Boxing Fishing Football Golf Hockey Hunting Martial Arts Outdoors Rugby Soccer Tennis Water Winter/Snow Sports/Fitness General Stocks General Supermarkets General Technology Biotechnology Computer Electronics Enterprise Software Games Graphics/Printing/CAD Hardware / Peripherals Industrial Information Internet Multimedia Networking Public Sector/Government Robotics Semiconductor Software Telecommunications Webmasters Telecom General Wireless Television General Tobacco General Trade General Transportation General Travel General Utilities General Volunteer Volunteer Weather Weather 96-year-old Yang Zhenning, also known as Chen-Ning Yang, Nobel Prize winning Chinese-American physicist and mathematician, has been appointed the honorary chair of Westlake University's board of trustees at its first meeting Monday. 51-year-old Shi Yigong, biology professor and former vice-President of Tsinghua University, has been elected President of the newly established institute. Newly elected President of Westlake University, Shi Yigong, speaks after his inauguration following the first meeting of the institution's board of trustees, April 16, 2018. [Photo: Wechat/Capital News] Donors of the university, such as Ma Huateng, chair of Tencent Holdings and Wang Jianlin, founder Dalian Wanda Group, are also included on the board. Westlake University is a Hangzhou-based research-oriented institute funded by the private sector. Located in the West Lake area of Zhejiang's capital, Westlake University has a mandate to focus on both basic academic research as well as cutting-edge disciplines, with the goal of training top-level talent in China. An artist's impression of Westlake University's main campus. [File Photo: whb.cn] Tsipras visited Meis Island to threaten Turkey Greek Prime Minister Aleksis Tsipras visited the island of Kastellorizo (Meis) to send a signal to Ankara. Speaking at inauguration of a desalination plant, Alexis Tsipras said he had a message of cooperation for Turkey. Our neighbors do not always behave in a manner befitting good neighbors Tsipras said at the inauguration of two desalination units on the island. Many times we find ourselves, it is true, in troubled times, faced with the unjustifiable behavior, a provocative stance and an aggressive stance by our neighbors. Tsipras said. And it is true that these days we are experiencing one such period of instability, which is not in line with the principles of good neighborliness or with the rules of international law. stated Tsipras. I want to send a message of cooperation and peaceful coexistence, but also of determination, the prime minister added. Greece is not threatening anyone but is not afraid of anyone either. Greece can defend its sovereign rights, its borders are determined by international agreements and we will not cede an inch of territory. Eva Longoria arrived in Tinseltown two decades ago and she's come a long way since all the way to the Hollywood Walk of Fame. The Desperate Housewives alum received her Hollywood Walk of Fame star on Monday, April 16 in front of a supportive crowd consisting of her closest friends in the industry. Longoria Gets Emotional Longoria, 43, was moved to tears as she took the podium for her speech during the Walk of Fame ceremony. After all, she explains, the honor means even more to her as a Latina. "It's just been a surreal journey," she tells the crowd, according to a report from Los Angeles Times. "I feel like I'm still a little girl from Corpus Christi, Texas, who had a really big dream and big hair. As a woman and as a Latina, I represent a lot of communities and I want to tell all those communities that this isn't my star, this is our star." The actress got the 2,634th star on the Walk of Fame. Hollywood Turns Up In Support Ricky Martin, who gave Longoria one of her first shots in Hollywood, takes the podium to honor his longtime friend. "Everybody knows what you've done and what you're made of and I just want to say that I'm so proud and so moved by the love that surrounds you because that's what you give," Martin says. "Wonder Woman, get out of the way, it's Eva Longoria here." Anna Faris calls her "a force of nature" saying that the awardee is an inspiration for her success in her various pursuits. Meanwhile, Longoria's Desperate Housewives costar Felicity Hoffman praised the actress for being kind and hopeful about the world. "Eva has drive and ambition, but it's not to build a tower for herself, it's to build a castle for everyone," Huffman says. "The best way to light yourself up is to be close to someone who is on fire." Some of the other Hollywood stars who turned up to support Longoria include Reese Witherspoon, Kerry Washington, Melanie Griffith, Victoria Beckham, Marc Cherry, and Mario Lopez. Longoria Expecting A Baby The Walk of Fame star is an amazing accomplishment, but it's not Longoria's only good news as of late. The actress has announced that she's expecting a baby boy with her husband, media mogul Jose "Pepe" Antonio Baston. The couple's son will be the actress's first child and she tells People she can't wait. "[I'm] excited but nervous," Longoria says. "Nervous, excited, emotional." Longoria is due to give birth in May. The hotline of direct dialogue between the leaders of South Korea and the Democratic People's Republic of Korea is likely to be set up later this week, a senior Blue House official said Tuesday. A photo combination of South Korean President Moon Jae-in and top DPRK leader Kim Jong Un [Photo: China Plus] Im Jong-seok, chief of staff for South Korean President Moon Jae-in, told a press briefing that the hotline between Moon and top DPRK leader Kim Jong Un is forecast to be installed around Friday as working-level talks were already held twice on that issue. Im said the first Moon-Kim conversation via the telephone line is expected to be made possible around Friday, but he noted that the exact date had yet to be decided. Moon and Kim agreed to hold their first face-to-face meeting on April 27 at the border village of Panmunjom. They decided to establish a direct hotline between them and have the first telephone talks before the summit is held. If necessary, Im said, the possibility is always open for Chung Eui-yong, chief of the National Security Office of the Blue House, or Suh Hoon, head of the National Intelligence Service (NIS), to visit Pyongyang before the inter-Korean summit. As special emissaries for President Moon, Chung and Suh met with the DPRK leader in Pyongyang in early March when the two Koreas agreed to hold the third-ever inter-Korean summit in late April. Im said communication channels with the DPRK through the NIS, South Korea's intelligence agency, has been always open smoothly. He added many issues would be discussed between the two sides during the second round of working-level talks for security, protocol and media coverage for the Moon-Kim summit. The working-level dialogue is set to be held Wednesday in Panmunjom. Matthew Mellon, an early backer of the global settlement network Ripple, passed away. Mellon became a billionaire due to his cryptocurrency investments. A Very Painful Time Mellon's first wife was Jimmy Choo's co-founder, Tamara Mellon. After the breakup with Tamara, he got married to Nicole Hanley, a designer. Mellon and Hanley decided to put an end to their marriage after a failed attempt at reconciliation. Mellon died suddenly at a Mexican rehab facility, where he was undergoing treatment for drug addiction. A representative for the Mellon family released a statement to the press, detailing the circumstances of his death. "Billionaire Matthew Mellon, 53, died suddenly in Cancun, Mexico, where he was attending a drug rehabilitation facility. Mellon made his fortune in cryptocurrency, turning a $2 million investment into $1 billion. He is survived by his three children, Force, Olympia, and Minty. The family asks that their privacy be respected at this very painful time," it read. A Lifelong Battle The billionaire banker, who was the former chair of the New York Republican Party's finance committee, battled addiction for much of his life. In a 2016 interview with the New York Post, Mellon spoke frankly about his struggles. "OxyContin is like legal heroin. And it needs to be addressed," he said at the time. Mellon was at a Malibu treatment center, attempting to kick a drug habit that was costing him $100,00 a month. He was taking around 80 pills a day. "The doctors kept writing prescriptions like they were Smarties. It's very irresponsible," Mellon said. His addiction reportedly began after he took the prescription for an injury. Despite the billionaire's struggle with his addiction, there was hope that he would recover. In 2013, Tamara Mellon said that her then-husband just kept fighting and coming back. A Cryptocurrency Expert Mellon appeared in the February 2018 issue of Forbes due to his investments in Ripple. The billionaire saw Ripple as a viable investment, and his knack proved to be right. After being one of the cryptocurrency's early investors, he earned about $1 billion. Mellon argued that, unlike Bitcoin, Ripple was among the few cryptocurrencies that work with the banking system. "It's $1 billion virtually for free. I actually have earned it because I was the only person who was willing to raise his hand. My family thought I was insane when I knew it was a home run," he said. Mellon is survived by three children. He had one daughter, Araminta, with his first wife and two kids, Force and Olympia, with his second wife. Although NATO stated that Europes security wasnt linked to the stability of its neighboring countries, the Allied leaders made it clear that the opposite was the case that the security of the organization was indeed connected closely to the stability in its vicinity. This was not just an aspiration but also a conclusion drawn in light of the most recent developments in NATOs neighborhood. The experience in Ukraine, Iraq and Syria has shown that whats going on in the Alliances neighborhood has profound implications for the security of NATOs own citizens. In response to this acknowledgment came a commitment to do something about it. At the latest NATO summit in Warsaw, the Allies signed for an agenda called Project Stability that outlines measures for the Alliance to address the instability in its neighborhood. The document is seen as a comprehensive tool to run partnerships with the key states, support capacity building and boost crisis management. By committing themselves to projecting stability, NATO emphasized that despite the worsening security conditions, the Alliance is not shying away from its holistic view on security. There is also a push for the Alliance to evolve so that NATO has a long-term and sustainable approach to projecting stability with adequate and sustainable resources and structures, making best use of existing funding mechanisms. Overall, there is an increasing emphasis on the southern neighborhood, somewhat in contrast to the traditional focus on NATOs eastern neighborhood, namely Central and Eastern Europe, the Western Balkans and the former Soviet Union. Yet, since the Arab Spring, the Alliance has seen a piecemeal but steady increase in work with its Middle East and North Africa allies, complementing its work with the Eastern partners. In specific cases, NATO has focused on its partnerships with the South, especially on building institutions and defense capabilities. The Warsaw summit further advanced these efforts by launching a new training and capacity building center in Iraq. Moving forward, NATO will need to work further on projecting stability. Three strategies, in particular, should be focused on: exploiting and developing networks; partnering with the European Union; and deepening the use of voluntary financial contributions. First, NATOs partnerships demonstrate that networks can be leveraged in many ways. Many of NATOs programs attract a wide range of voluntary donations that multiply what NATOs common budget invests. Moreover, NATO staff is able to draw on expertise, network and experience to conduct mentoring, advice and training. Second, the potential for deeper partnership with the Alliances key strategic partners mainly the European Union should be leveraged. The two organizations share common ground, a common commitment to the resilience and work together on the core areas of deeper cooperation identified in Warsaw. Utilizing this expertise and financial resources would be a significant way to boost a networked approach to projected stability. Finally, both NATO and the EU need to make sure that the current financing arrangement is ready to deal with the potentially higher support in the future. Currently, the funds generate more funds than what is available on annual basis so it is essential that this tool is able to absorb more resources down the line. As the Alliance is getting ready for the 2018 summit, it needs to ensure that it is ready to face the challenge of actually making Projecting Stability happen. However, NATO can build on the significant progress made since Warsaw, particularly when it comes to defining the role of partnerships and capacity building. Projecting Stability: An Agenda for Action Analysis by Ruben Diaz-Plaja NATO Review Magazine. (The Analysis can be downloaded here) This Page Is Under Construction - Coming Soon! Why am I seeing this 'Under Construction' page? Hi Bev. Thanks for the reply. Good points. I think in the future I will need to have a good level pavement outside my house as I have mobility issues and may need a wheelchair eventually (worst case scenario) so a quiet area would be fine as long as I can walk into town. My level of French is reasonably good [Diploma in Languages (French)] and I have already noted that I would need to ensure I have the vocabulary and some stock phrases/sentences relevant to my personal health condition - and just as importantly, that my partner has these too. I would carry a medi-bracelet with all this info too. I noticed that La Rochelle has two 'centres hospitalliers' and St.Jean d'Angely, Saintes, Rochefort and Royan each have one, so I assume they could deal with an emergency. I wouldn't mind travelling elsewhere if specialist care was needed, just as long as an emergency could be dealt with locally. I'm hoping someone who lives there might have some insights into life in these towns, how easy it is to get around, the general ambience etc. or any other observation that they think worth mentioning. Thanks again. Hi, Does anyone know how the PUMA system would work for a family planning to move to France and live off of capital/investment income prior to taking a pension? I read somewhere that the charge is 8% of investment income + 8% on half of partner's investment income. Consider the following hypothetical example: I have an investment income of 20,000. My partner has 0 investment income. My charge would be 8% of 20,000. My partner would have to pay 8% of half of 20,000, so 8% of 10,000. Does this sound right? We are not yet eligible to access SIPPs or state pension. At age 55 if one of us accessed a SIPP would this change things? Or would it be a matter of waiting for state pension age? Also, regarding capital gains taxes on the sale of a UK home. Is there anything to watch out for, eg should we sell our home prior to becoming tax resident? Are there certain dates to be aware of. thanks I'm not sure if a PACS partner is required to go through the same OFII procedure as that of the spouse of a French national - but I wouldn't be surprised to find that to be the case. If so, the medical examination is part of the OFII process - as is the establishment of a "contract of integration" where you have to attend a couple of classes on French life and civics, have your French evaluated, meet with Pole Emploi and maybe a few other things. You'll need the certificates of completion from those obligations to change your residence permit status. What has the prefecture asked you to provide at your upcoming RDV? That might indicate what they're going to require to make the actual change in status. Cheers, Bev The Office of the U.S. Trade Representative (USTR) yesterday accepted a petition from the National Milk Producers Federation (NMPF) and the U.S. Dairy Export Council (USDEC) to examine India's failure to follow through on its obligations to provide "equitable and reasonable access to its market" for dairy products. In addition, Indonesia, which has also been pursuing dairy trade distorting policies, will be included in USTR's review to assess that country's compliance with its market access obligations. India has for many years maintained unjustified market access barriers to U.S. dairy products, despite receiving preferential access to the U.S. market under a special duty-free trade arrangement called the Generalized System of Preferences (GSP). India abruptly began denying dairy exports in 2003, citing safety concerns and demanding revised government-issued health certificates. The U.S. industry and U.S. government have worked in good faith over the last 15 years to remove this intractable barrier, but have been met with a shifting litany of demands not founded on sound science. Meanwhile, since last year Indonesia has been advancing a policy aimed at mandating that importers and manufacturers in its country purchase local milk or contribute monetarily to support the local dairy industry, even though this runs counter to its WTO commitments. GSP benefits come with the expectation that the trading partners using the program comply with a baseline level of requirements, including those related to reasonable market access terms. USTR has rightfully determined that a thorough examination of these countries' adherence to these terms of the deal is necessary. Industry officials praised USTR's decision to review India's and Indonesia's GSP status, and are hopeful that the move will force the countries to halt unfair trading practices that harm U.S. farmers. "Dairy farmers across the country applaud the White House and USTR for taking this step and holding these countries accountable for their unlawful actions," said NMPF President and CEO Jim Mulhern. "We've been wrongly blocked from the Indian market for more than a decade, and Indonesia has recently been heading down a similar route. If these nations refuse to embrace free and fair trade, there must be consequences." "We export dairy products to more than 100 countries and our products are universally recognized as safe," explained Tom Vilsack, USDEC president and CEO and former U.S. Secretary of Agriculture. "Exports are essential to rural America's future, and our government must prioritize the removal of trade impediments like this to foster an open and healthy market." Click here to see more... FEDERAL Communications Minister Mitch Fifield has visited regional Western Australia to gather first-hand farmer and community feedback about the social and economic importance of enhancing digital connectivity beyond the city limits. Mr Fifield attended a roundtable instigated by Farming Champions chairwoman Mary Nenke last Friday, which was held on her Cambinata Yabbies property at Kukerin. It was a follow up to a telecommunications summit held at the same location last year and attended by about 80 people from varying stakeholder groups who vented their concerns about inadequate services. A session on that day chaired by WA Liberal senator Linda Reynolds led to her making a pledge to try to secure Mr Fifields presence at a future event a promise she kept but was personally unable to attend last weeks roundtable meeting in person. However, OConnor Liberal MP Rick Wilson helped organise the event with Ms Nenke which saw 23 people selected to attend representing farming, business, tourism, local government, medical, regional development and telecommunications providers. A recent research report by Rural Research and Development Corporation said better support for digital agriculture could unlock opportunities for production growth to the value of $20.3 billon; a 25pc increase on 2014/15 values. But the study also highlights policy areas where Australia is lagging behind international competitors to utilise data and digital advancements. Research project leader and consultant Dr Rohan Rainbow said everyone was conscious of the size and complexity of the task ahead and the need for cross-industry co-operation, to enhance digital connectivity to boost farmer returns. Connectivity remains a major barrier to adopting digital agriculture and as weve seen in countries like America, its often the technology providers who will have the most influence over addressing these problems, Dr Rainbow said. Here in Australia, were currently suffering from a significant lack of collaboration across different agriculture sectors, to combine our spending power and attract market solutions. Thats got to change if we want to get private business, particularly technology suppliers, to the table and we will also need better collaboration between industries to enable optimum data sharing for making smarter and more profitable decisions about all aspects of production, from inputs to pricing. Ms Nenke said much ground was covered at last Fridays roundtable meeting, including looking at opportunities and failures in delivery, with the Federal minister. She said Mr Fifield responded to the talks with with sincerity but offered no promises and explained the governments current investment agenda which included addressing black spots in telecommunications coverage. But he appears to be hoping for private investment solutions in the provision of high speed internet in much of rural, regional and remote WA, she said. Ms Nenke said Mr Fifield also raised the question of whether the Federal government should continue the universal service obligation (USO) of fixed lines, as an obligation, in future. Before Mitch left I impressed upon him that the government needs to recognise and promote the fact that high capacity broadband in the regions will directly and indirectly benefit of all Australians, she said. Because they either live here, do business with or provide services to the regions, travel in the regions for business or pleasure and, as Australians, receive economic gain from the export income generated by the regions. And lastly but not least all Australians eat the food we produce daily. Mr Fifield said he joined Mr Wilson in hearing from a wide range of their experiences with telecommunications in regional communities. I acknowledged the value of farming communities such as Kukerin in providing agricultural products to the country and around the world, Mr Fifield said. Most of this work cannot be done without reliable broadband and mobile coverage. Hearing from many of the stakeholders, I talked about the significant measures that the government has already taken to ameliorate connectivity problems in the bush. Just last Thursday, Regional Communications Minister Bridget McKenzie announced a total funding pool of $82.8 million for the third round of the Mobile Blackspot Program funding. This brings the governments total investment in mobile communications to $220m to address mobile black spots across Australia and will see 867 locations receive new and upgraded mobile coverage. Mr Fifield said across all three rounds, the program had generated more than $680m in total investment which would address more than 4500 of the 10,000 black spots nominated by members of the public in regional and remote Australia. He said nearly 25pc of all mobile towers under the program were being built in WA. The NBN rollout in OConnor is 95pc complete, he said, which means the vast majority of residents in the electorate can order an NBN service, including residents in small communities like Kukerin. Mobile carriers claim to provide coverage to 99pc of Australias population but its estimated that around 70pc of Australias land mass has no mobile coverage. Belmont Park Poll sells to $11,000 top "The sale was well supported by long-standing clients and also a couple of new ones throughout and it was also pleasing to see that there was again stud interest in the sale as that means the stud is making progress." John Deere is working with a satellite imagery company to locate and organise a farms imagery files. THE predictions have been a long time coming. But historians will probably record the next five years of Australian broadacre agriculture as the period of wider adoption of precision ag technology. Industry pundits first mooted a dynamic change in the industry when GPS correctional guidance was introduced in the late 1990s. And that became the basis for a plethora of predictions about how farming would be done in the future. This writer remembers speaking with a Case IH precision ag specialist in Burr Ridge, Illinois, United States in 2005 about robotic farming and being shown a video of a cab-less red header in action. In 2008 AGCO talked about real-time data transfer, known as telematics. It was all exciting stuff but it quickly receded because a key element was missing a reliable communications network. And another important ingredient was that machinery dealers lacked specialist staff to support and service clients. Today it feels like the industry has performed a reboot on itself and emerged in good working order. And, as always, time has changed along with the predictable generational shift in farm management. Ag Implements group data manager Andries DeKlerk, Merredin, (call me AJ) agrees. Younger farmers are more aware of changing technology and they can appreciate the economic and productive benefits, Mr DeKlerk said. Our job right now is to tailor the technology to suit each customers needs. Mostly that starts with providing them with pathways to record useable data. Throughout the areas our dealerships serve, we have installed 32 RTK towers linked to three John Deere satellites with the ability to capture radio signals from a wider array of satellites, he said. These signals are relayed to GPS receivers mounted on the roof of a tractor, header or boomsprayer. According to Ag Implements precision ag group manager Matt Harrod, the company is serving a broad client base that is engaged with entry-level guidance through to variable rate product applications. There are an increasing number of guys now setting up or using local weather stations as added information in setting up prescription maps, Mr Harrod said. And theres more interest in products such as rate controllers for sprayers and airseeders and using our data management services. Mr DeKlerk said he had seen a big growth in customers wanting to engage in so-called useable data. More prescription maps are being done these days but there remains a lot of fence sitters, he said. I think with the younger farmers, its a peer influence that is seeing more adoption of precision technology and our role is to help them understand what is beneficial to their farm business. The most common question I get relates to USBs which have data stored on them but the next step hasnt been taken in analysing that data. Not everybody is jumping into data transfer yet and maybe thats a cost factor or theyre not ready to make the move. But John Deere provides a 12-month free trial of its JDLink access + RDA which can be used by most owners of GreenStar 2630 and Generation 4 displays who have compatible equipment. Its just a matter of talking with us about the steps to take to use the data that has been stored on a computer or USB. Usually if youve got about five years worth of recorded data, youre in a good position to start making prescription maps for variable rate applications, etc. But that is only one aspect. Ag Implements is now associated with farm management platform Granular which provides software for more detailed data analysis relating to cost benefits, third party collaborations, advising staff and contractors of farm tasks (along with GPS coordinates) and the mandatory record keeping. It brings a whole new paradigm to farm management. And if you think all of the above is pretty cool, the future is mind blowing. Through John Deeres AMS (Agricultural Management Solutions), the dealer-customer interface will be changed through what Deere calls it Operations Centre. Based at the companys Brisbane headquarters, the Operations Centre is a web-based portal to enable farmers to easily access information. But it doesnt stop there. Theres the ability to customise your own cloud to upload and store data. John Deere said an example of this customising was the work being done with a satellite imagery company which will use field boundaries located within the farmers Operations Centre cloud to locate and organise imagery files. In the not too distant future, your local AMS specialist, with permission, can access this data and interpret the data to structure prescription maps. John Deere said to get the most out of the Operations Centre and associated mobile apps and software, it offered JDLink Connect, which seamlessly connects a farmers machine to the Operations Centre and takes the burden of data collection and transmission off the grower. In addition to agronomic data, it collects machine data to give the full picture of what is happening on the farm. JDLink also connects those machines directly to the dealer who can monitor the machines performance and alert the owner to potential problems. In the case of a misfire in loading data to the cloud, a farmer can send the data card or USB to the dealer, who will usually have a more reliable internet speed to accomplish the task. This is an often overlooked part of data transfer. Whether you have a signal or not is irrelevant to data capturing because data is continuously being recorded by your controller or iPad. Realistically, you dont need the real-time data transfer capability of telematics but everybody will have it if its reliable. The thing to remember is that once you transfer data to your cloud its retrievable. But perhaps the biggest safety net for farmers is the fact they are not alone. There will always be teething problems with any kind of new technology but it seems companies like John Deere and dealers like Ag Implements are committed to ensuring they dont drop the ball assimilating this technology to farmers. THE world is waking up to sheep. Meat & Livestock Australias (MLA) Australian sheep industry projections 2018 report showed international demand for live and boxed sheep continues to grow, with the Australian sheep industry described as set to enjoy a robust future. In 2017, Australian sheepmeat exports had their biggest year since 2014, with lamb recording a new high of 251,000 tonnes shipped weight (swt), while mutton reversed two years of decline, recording growth on the back of significant increases in the domestic supply, reaching 147,000t swt. The report stated that despite the increase in pricing across both lamb and sheep in 2017, international demand remains robust, resulting in a 20 per cent rise in the export value of lamb and 45pc increase in value for mutton both at new record levels. While supplies of lamb remain, tight which is placing pressure on price for overseas customers, the long-term fundamentals remain positive for the Australian sheepmeat industry, according to the report. Australian lamb exports in 2018 are expected to be down slightly year-on-year to 241,000t swt, though this is 4pc above the five year average and shipment volumes are expected to build back to new highs for 2019 as production and demand grows. Mutton exports will likely be lower in 2018 as a fall in slaughter flows through to reduced production. The export market accounts for more than 95pc of mutton production and this is only expected to increase in the future with the main export destinations continuing to be China, Malaysia and Saudi Arabia, which together account for more than 40pc of Australias mutton exports. The two key markets for Australian sheepmeat and live sheep and lamb exports are China and the United States, with the US remaining Australias largest destination for lamb on the back of its sixth consecutive year of growth in 2017. The report showed lamb exports to the US jumped from 39,000t swt in 2013 to 55,000t swt in 2017. After three years of decline, China is back to recording significant growth in Australian sheepmeat exports, climbing 40pc to 83,000t swt. Values were also up substantially by 90pc in the year to November which the report attributed in part to lamb, which recorded its biggest year of exports to China, with a 26pc increase in breast and flap shipments. The report also noted the vast opening for opportunity to increase demand for a wider variety of cuts into that market. In the Middle East, sheepmeat exports in 2017 tracked in line with the previous year, reaching 108,000t swt, while Korea was a notable market for Australian sheepmeat exports, with lamb (both chilled and frozen) growing at 42pc to 13,000t swt. In the live export market for sheep and lambs, exports lifted 3pc year-on-year in 2017 to 1.89 million head. Demand from Qatar and Oman drove the overall increase according to the report, while exports to Kuwait, Jordan and the United Arab Emirates were lower. The report also noted the positive news of recommencement of live shipments into Turkey, with 198,000 head travelling there in 2017 and there is also potential for Saudi Arabia and Iran markets opening to Australian live exporters. Overall, the report expects live sheep exports to be flat in 2018 at 1.9 million head despite strong international demand and new market potential because of the on-going flock rebuild and high prices in Australia. A Transparency International-Russia report published in January assessed the efficacy of the anti-corruption programs of over 200 Russian companies, who together generate more than 70 percent of Russias national income. While the report mainly calls for the majority of the companies named to implement remedial measures, it is worth noting and commending the highest-scoring companies, who provide exemplary models for their counterparts in the anti-corruption space. The report identifies a number of best practices of the highest scoring anti-corruption programs, recommending that the lower-scoring companies emulate or adopt them. To that end, the report praises Russian companies that have disclosed the names, ownership interests, registration countries, and countries of operation for their subsidiaries. These types of voluntary disclosures, the report contends, are a powerful signal of a companys commitment to anti-corruption compliance. Indeed, Russian regulations obligate many of Russias non-governmental publicly traded companies to release comprehensive lists of their subsidiaries and the countries in which their subsidiaries operate. (See Federal Law on Joint Stock Companies No. 208-FZ of December 16, 1995; Federal Law on Securities Market; Regulations of the Bank of Russia No. 454-P of December 30, 2014 on Information Disclosure by the Issuer of Issue-Grade Securities.) In addition, for Russian entities that do business in the United States either directly or through subsidiaries, FCPA liability can extend to parent companies if any of their subsidiaries act in furtherance of a corrupt payment. A subsidiary can easily trigger FCPA liability by a mere phone call, email, or text message that happens to be routed through U.S. servers, even if the subsidiary is not located in the United States. Despite the risk of liability both at home and abroad, less than 10 percent of the companies named in the TI-Russia regularly conduct anti-corruption training for their employees and upper-level executives. In contrast, the highest-scoring companies not only provide anti-corruption training for their employees and executives, they also provide anti-corruption training for the employees and upper-level executives of their subsidiaries. Russian companies looking to shield themselves from corruption-related penalties and convictions, or even the mere perception of corruption, should consider the example of the highest-scoring companies in the TI-Russia report. That means implementing strategic disclosure initiatives and comprehensive anti-corruption training programs for their employees and managers, at both the parent company and its subsidiaries. _____ Alec Puig, pictured above, is a Miami attorney in Holland & Knights Litigation and Dispute Resolution Practice. Hes also a member of the firms Global Compliance and Investigations Team. During law school, he served as a review editor for the Harvard Latino Law Review and as a training director for the Harvard Prison Legal Assistance Project. He can be contacted here. On a regular, busy day in a bus station in Vitoria, Spain, an older, kind-looking gentleman strolled through the crowd. The people sitting on benches, at vending machines, at ticket counters and bustling around the vast station turned to look at the sign hanging from his neck. Pablo Ibar juicio justo. Fair trial for Pablo Ibar. Two young women came forward from the crowd and began dancing. Then more young people. Then more. They were singing in Spanish to the tune of We Will Rock You. As more dancers joined, a guitar started playing. Then a trumpet, and the voices grew louder. Its a flash mob with dozens of participants. This huge crowd in Spain was raising money to pay for the legal defense of the man accused of the 1994 murders of Butch Casey, Sharon Anderson and Marie Rogers thousands of miles away in Florida. Here in Spain, hes become something of a local celebrity. Speak Up Have a question or comment? The Felonious Florida team wants to hear from you. Email us at feedback@feloniousflorida.com or leave us a voice message at 954-283-7531. Sign up for our newsletter to get updates on upcoming episodes and bonuses. And be sure to follow us on Facebook. Like Us Like us on Facebook The Trials of Seth Penalver The legal fight that led to last years flash mob in the home country of Pablo Ibars father has spanned more than two decades. The first trial of Ibar and his co-defendant, Seth Penalver, had ended with a hung jury 3 years after the Caseys Nickelodeon Murders. The cases were separated, and Ibar and Penalver were tried again separately. In Penalvers first retrial in 1999, he was convicted of the murders and sentenced to death. But Penalver and his lawyers appealed all the way to the Florida Supreme Court. The case, they argued, was thin. There was no physical evidence, fingerprints, hairs or fibers. And certainly no DNA. All prosecutors had were witnesses like John Klimezcko, who claimed he had seen Penalver and Ibar with a semi-automatic gun the morning of the murders and driving a luxury black car similar to Butch Caseys Mercedes. The states high court agreed and overturned the jurys conviction. Penalver went back on trial in 2012, and his lawyers brought a new strategy. Defense attorney Hilliard Moldoff argued that it was Pablo Ibar who killed Butch Casey, Sharon Anderson and Marie Rogers in 1994 along with the help of two other men. The accusation set off a feud between Ibar and Penalver. Essentially, Ibar accused his one-time friend and co-defendant of throwing him under the bus even though he disagreed with his own lawyers strategies. The feud between the two suspects over Moldoffs strategy played out in a letter that Ibar sent to Penalver in October 2012, as Seths final trial was getting under way. Please stop tryin me like a fool, Ibar wrote. Stop tryin my wife like a fool!! View the full letter from Pablo Ibar to Seth Penalver here: Penalvers lawyers had some new evidence to present at his trial and they credit Penalver himself with finding it. New Evidence For the six years Penalver was awaiting a new trial after winning his appeal, he combed through tens of thousands of pages of documents from the murder investigation. In the pages, he discovered that police had once considered Alex Hernandez a suspect. But police had never said so, maintaining that Ibar and Penalver were the only two suspects. Had they discounted other potential suspects too quickly? Then, buried in the documents, he discovered a confounding sheet of paper that had never been revealed before. Its called a lead sheet. It was a long paragraph typed up by someone at the Broward Sheriff's Office, known as BSO. It described a man named Johnny McGill, who walked in on Wednesday, June 29, 1994, looking for Deputy Christopher Schaub. Schuab was the officer who discovered the three bodies at Butch Caseys house just two days earlier. McGill said he got Schaub's name from the newspapers, and had urgent information about the case. Deputy Schaub was off that day. So another deputy recorded the stunning information. On the lead sheet, he called it a confession. Johnny McGill said HE was the one who had driven Butch Casey's Mercedes Benz convertible 70 miles to Palm Beach County and set it on fire. He said he did it on orders from his boss. But who was his boss? The note didnt say. Then inexplicably, Johnny McGill walked out of the Broward Sheriff's Office without providing any more information. He was probably told that Deputy Schaub would get back to him. That never happened. Johnny McGill was shot to death the next day, during an altercation outside a Miami strip club. And motorcycle deputy Schaub was killed in 2012 when he turned his bike into the path of an oncoming Mercedes Benz in Pompano Beach. Penalver discovered even more, including evidence that a Crimestoppers reward had been paid to a tipster who called to say a man named Seth Pentlover was the man in a ball cap and sunglasses captured on video killing Casey, Anderson and Rogers. The states key witness, John Klimezcko, was the only one to ever call Seth Penalver Seth Pentlover, suggesting Klimezcko was the one who received the reward. The credibility of Klimezcko and the detective who had linked Seth Penalver to the case had been broken. In 2012, Penalver was acquitted and set free. New evidence against Ibar Ibars lawyers hope to use some of the same tactics that got Penalver acquitted. But the case against Ibar has always been more solid. Prosecutors have the most damaging and credible witness Butch Caseys neighbor, Gary Foy, who identified Ibar as one of two men he saw driving Caseys Mercedes on East Shore Road in Miramar, Florida, around the time of the murders. And at Ibars upcoming trial in August, the state says it plans to produce new evidence. Investigators put a T-shirt found on the ground outside the front door of Butch Caseys house through a new round of DNA testing last year. It is believed to be the T-shirt one of the killers used to cover his face during the murders. It had Butch Caseys blood on it, but despite repeated testing over the years, no DNA from Ibar or Penalver had ever been found. Until now. Prosecutors say new technology called touch DNA allowed them to test the T-shirt for DNA using microscopic skin cells found in the fabric. And they will say that the DNA belonged to Ibar. His supporters scoff at the test, saying that after years of tests, its suspicious that prosecutors finally got the result they wanted. Tanya Ibar Tanya Ibar, who married Pablo after he was sentenced to death, has always maintained her support and believed him to be innocent. Shes also his alibi. Tanya Ibar and several members of her family testified in Pablos second trial that she was in bed with him at her house at the exact time of the triple murders. Tanya says that she and Pablo reconciled in the early hours of the morning of the murders. He stayed with her until the afternoon and he was seen by Tanyas younger sister and a cousin who was staying with them. Ibar will be represented this time around by a new lawyer. Kayo Morgan, who represented Ibar during his 2000 trial, supported an appeal of the conviction on the grounds that he was sick and did not adequately represent Ibar. Morgan died in 2014. So this time around, Ibar will have a new defense team. Four lawyers, in fact, that will mount an aggressive defense. And it will be an expensive one as much as $1.2 million. Itll be largely funded by the Spanish group that organized the flashmob in May of 2017, as well as with a little help from the government of Spain. Spain The organization in Spain that is mounting the support and fundraising for Ibar is Asociacion contra la Pena de Muerte Pablo Ibar the Association Against the Death Penalty for Pablo Ibar. The leader of the group, Andres Krakenberger, is a veteran of Amnesty International and hes already raised nearly 75 percent of the expected cost of Ibars trial. Krakenberger says he firmly believes Ibar is innocent, and that most people in Spain agree. Ibar has become a cause celebre in his fathers home country. Major developments in the Ibar case are front-page news in Spain. Ibars family also stands by his innocence. They say he is not the monster seen in the video of the Caseys Nickelodeon Murder brutally killing Butch Casey, Sharon Anderson and Marie Rogers. Victims families The support shown to Pablo Ibar infuriates the family left behind by Casey, Anderson and Rogers. Deb Bowie, Andersons sister, said she has no doubts that its Pablo Ibar and Seth Penalver seen on the video tape terrorizing, then shooting Sharon and the others. No matter how grainy the video is, she says she can see the faces on the tape clear enough. The fourth, and probably final, trial for Pablo Ibar is currently scheduled to begin in August of 2018. No outcome is certain. Few questions have been answered. Nearly 24 years after the murders of Butch Casey, Sharon Anderson and Marie Rogers after four trials, two convictions, two death sentences and one mans appeal no one stands convicted of the ruthless killings. The Caseys Nickelodeon Murders remain as unresolved today as they were when the bodies were discovered. In secret, behind locked gates, our Nation's Oldest City dumped a landfill in a lake (Old City Reservoir), while emitting sewage in our rivers and salt marsh. Organized citizens exposed and defeated pollution, racism and cronyism. We elected a new Mayor. We're transforming our City -- advanced citizenship. Ask questions. Make disclosures. Demand answers. Be involved. Expect democracy. Report and expose corruption. Smile! Help enact a St. Augustine National Park and Seashore. We shall overcome! Police have blamed missing marijuana on mischievous mice. Mice Eight police officers in Pilar, Argentina have been taken to court after telling officials that the creatures had consumed a half-ton of the seized drug when it went missing from a police warehouse. However, experts have shot down this theory and claimed rodents wouldn't mistake marijuana with food and would have died from the drug. A spokesperson for the judge on the court case said: ''Buenos Aires University experts have explained that mice wouldn't mistake the drug for food, and that if a large group of mice had eaten it, a lot of corpses would have been found in the warehouse.'' According to The Guardian, 13,000 pounds of bud were supposed to be in storage, but a recent inspection revealed 1,000 pounds were missing. All eight officers were dismissed from their jobs, and will testify in front of the judge on May 4. Thandie Newton is thrilled to have become the "first woman of colour to have a prominent role in the 'Star Wars' legacy". Thandie Newton The 45-year-old actress plays the part of Val in the eagerly-awaited 'Solo: A Star Wars Story', which is due out next month, and Thandie is proud to have secured the role, describing it as a "big deal". She said: "I'm the first woman of colour to have a prominent role in the 'Star Wars' legacy. "There have been others with one line and Lupita Nyong'o was a computer-generated character [in 'The Force Awakens' and 'The Last Jedi'], but you didn't get to see the colour of her skin. I'm the first. "I'm going to have a toy and everything." The London-born actress is delighted to have been chosen for the coveted role. But she also admitted that, at this stage, there's not much she's allowed to say about her on-screen character. Speaking to the Radio Times, Thandie explained: "t's exciting, but that's all I can say. It is a big deal." Earlier this month, Hollywood legend Samuel L Jackson doubted whether the success of 'Black Panther' will lead to long-term changes within the movie business. The 69-year-old actor - who previously appeared in the 'Star Wars' prequel trilogy - doesn't think the acclaimed movie - which features a predominantly black cast - will ultimately have the impact some fans have suggested. He said: "I'm not positive that 'Black Panther' is going to change the dynamic of black stories being told in Hollywood and being accepted all over the world. "It's an action-adventure story and a lot of people like those, and they'll work all over the world forever because everybody loves a hero. "But not everybody loves a drama about somebody's life experience - that's why awards have a separate category for foreign films; they are perceived as being different. "Once we stop perceiving them as different and just see them as good films and they get recognised in the same category, we'll be laying markers." Ben Hardy could barely use the toilet while working on 'The Woman in White'. Ben Hardy The former 'EastEnders' actor donned Victorian-era attire for his role in the new BBC period drama, but the 27-year-old star struggled with his costume throughout his time on set. Ben - who played Peter Beale in the long-running soap - told The Sun newspaper: "Going to the bathroom can definitely be tricky. "I rarely wear anything other than trackies so wearing Victorian costume every day for three months was definitely a change of style. "It gives you an appreciation for the effort the Victorians had to go through every morning. "But, fortunately, I wasn't the one having to wear corsets - so I can't complain too much." Ben's new project - which also stars the likes of Jessie Buckley, Charles Dance and Dougray Scott - is a psychological thriller that focuses on a Victorian mental institution. Since walking away from 'EastEnders' in 2015, Ben has secured a number of coveted roles, including a part in the 2016 superhero film 'X-Men: Apocalypse' and the upcoming Queen biopic 'Bohemian Rhapsody'. But the actor has also previously admitted he'd be open to reprising the role of Peter - who is currently said to be in New Zealand - in the soap. He said: "I would be down for that but it's difficult as it's trying to get away from that perception of me as Peter Beale. "But you know if that didn't matter, I'd go back for an episode or a day, because I'm attached to that storyline." 'Geordie Shore' will hit Australia's Gold Coast next month. Geordie Shore series 17 cast The popular MTV reality series is usually shot in Newcastle, north east England, but returning favourites and new cast members will be heading Down Under for season 17, which airs on May 15 at 10pm. Among the newbie's are Geordie hunks Grant Malloy and Adam Guthrie. Grant, 20 - who is nicknamed 'The Daddy' - is a ladies' man but has admitted he follows a strict "no cheating rule". Adam, who is originally from Sunderland, has claimed he's never been in a serious relationship before and admitted he is a troublemaker who is able to "sweet talk" his way out of anything. They'll be joined by Alex Macpherson and Nick Murdoch from the Gold Coast, who will be welcoming the Geordies to town. Dee Nguyen and 'Ex on the Beach' babe Chrysten Zenoni will also be looking for love Down Under. However, her fellow cast mates should be weary, as Chrysten previously waged a war between Gaz Beadle and his ex Lillie Lexie Gregg by claiming she had slept with the former star of the reality show when they were an item. Chloe Ferry and Sam Gowland have been dating since last October, and their relationship will no doubt be tested as they head to Australia. And if that's not enough, original 'Geordie Shore' star Holly Hagan has been confirmed to make a surprise visit. The 25-year-old busty blonde started on 'Geordie Shore' in 2011, but she left after series 12 in 2016. She'll no doubt be looking for love after her break up from ex-boyfriend Kyle Christie. But Holly will be hoping her massive tattoo of Kyle's face will have been removed entirely from the back of her neck after underwent removal surgery. Abbie Holborn, Nathan Henry, Sophie Kasaei complete the line-up for the 17th series. The number of foreign visitors to Turkey is expected to see a record-high in 2018, according to experts and politicians. While the country hosted 36.8 million foreigners in 2014 and 36.3 million in 2015, the figure decreased sharply to 25.3 million in 2016 but rose again to 32.4 million last year, according to data from the Turkish Statistical Institute (TUIK). Turkey will see 40 million foreign visitors and its income will climb over $30 billion by the end of 2018, Association of Turkish Travel Agencies (TURSAB) President Firuz Baglkaya told Anadolu Agency on April 14. Baglkaya said the number of foreign visitors, which increased by 34.91 percent year-on-year in the first two months, indicates the target of 40 million tourists would be achieved this year. So far in 2018 Turkey welcomed three million foreign visitors in the first two months of 2018 during its winter period, according to the Culture and Tourism Ministry. Reservation demand for 2018 summer period was also positive, he said. Demands from Germany and Russia, which are Turkeys main tourism market, are very positive. Germanys demands have increased by 60 percent and Russia by 30 percent, said the TURSAB president. Turkey also expects the number of visitors from the United Kingdom and the Netherlands to rise in 2018, Baglkaya said. Turkeys southern province Antalya and Aegean region are the leading tourist destinations in the country, he added. Previously, Deputy Culture and Tourism Minister Huseyin Yayman said Turkey had entered a period of stagnation in the tourism sector after the coup attempt in 2016, but the sector improved in 2017. Turkeys 2018 target is 40 million foreign tourists, Yayman said. Etem Hakan Duran, president of the Professional Hotel Managers Association of Turkey, also said reservations had increased in 2018 compared with last year. Turkeys Europe tourism market will rise 15-20 percent and the country will host 38 million guests in this year, said Duran. Culture and Tourism Minister Numan Kurtulmus had said Turkeys 2023 targets for the tourism sector are 50 million tourists and $50 billion in revenue. Source: Hurriyet Daily News Category Select Category Apparel/Garments Textiles Fashion Technical Textiles Information Technology E-commerce Retail Corporate Association Press Release SubCategory Select Sub-Category "Russia severely condemns the attack on Syria where Russian military are helping the lawful government in the fight with terrorism", the Kremlin said in a statement, its first reaction to the strikes. "Senate Armed Service Committee Chairman John McCain is applauding the airstrikes but says "they alone will not achieve USA objectives in the Middle East". "Again, we are being threatened". Foreign ministry spokeswoman Maria Zakharova wrote on Facebook: "Those behind all this claim moral leadership in the world and declare they are exceptional. If we do not want our soldiers and officers to die, if we do not want, say, some large-scale wars with the loss of civilians, everything is very simple: the S-300 system", he added. Russian Federation may consider supplying S-300 missile systems to Syria and other countries, Colonel-General Sergei Rudskoi said on Saturday after US, French and British air strikes on Syria. The action followed a week of threats of retaliation for a suspected chemical weapons attack on civilians in Douma, outside Damascus, where Syrian forces have always been battling rebels. Russian President Vladimir Putin called the missile strikes an "act of aggression against a sovereign state" and said they were against the United Nations charter. "You need to be really exceptional to shell Syria's capital at the moment when it had gained a chance of a peaceful future". A highly placed Russian politician is likening President Donald Trump to Adolf Hitler after the launch of airstrikes against Syria, and says he regards the action as a move against Russia. 'We can not allow the use of chemical weapons to become normalised - within Syria, on the streets of the United Kingdom, or anywhere else in our world. DGAP-Ad-hoc: Airbus SE / Key word(s): Share Buyback Airbus SE: Airbus discloses share buyback transactions 9-10 April 2018 16-Apr-2018 / 19:19 CET/CEST Disclosure of an inside information acc. to Article 17 MAR of the Regulation (EU) No 596/2014, transmitted by DGAP - a service of EQS Group AG. The issuer is solely responsible for the content of this announcement. *Ad-hoc release, 16 April 2018* *Airbus discloses share buyback transactions **9-10 April 2018* Airbus SE reports the following share buyback transactions from 9 April 2018 to 10 April 2018 under Regulation (EU) No 596/2014 of the European Parliament and of the Council of 16 April 2014 on market abuse ("EU Market Abuse Regulation"). The transactions are part of the share buyback programme that started on 28 February 2018 for the sole purpose of covering Airbus' long-term incentive plan in shares. The repurchased shares will be redistributed to the beneficiaries of long-term incentive plans according to the relevant plan rules. The share buyback programme was completed on 10 April 2018. The share buyback is undertaken pursuant to the general authority conferred on the Airbus SE Board of Directors by the 13th resolution to repurchase up to 10% of Airbus SE's issued share capital by the Annual General Meeting of shareholders of Airbus SE on 12 April 2017. *Aggregate presentation (per day and market)* *Issuer's *Issuer's *Transaction *Identifying *Total *Daily *Market name* identifying code* date* code of daily weighte (MIC financial volume d code)* instrument* (in average number purchas of e price shares of )* shares* Airbus SE MINO79WLOO247M1IL051 2018.04.09 NL0000235190 19,400 94.6984 XPAR Airbus SE MINO79WLOO247M1IL051 2018.04.10 NL0000235190 14,880 94.4059 XPAR TOTAL 34,280 94.5714 Detailed reporting of share buyback transactions is available on the Airbus website at: http://company.airbus.com/investors/Share-information.htmlchapter-0 [1]2 This update on share buybacks contains inside information within the meaning of the EU Market Abuse Regulation. *About Airbus* Airbus is a global leader in aeronautics, space and related services. In 2017 it generated revenues of EUR 67 billion - or EUR 59 billion restated for IFRS 15 - and employed a workforce of around 129,000. Airbus offers the most comprehensive range of passenger airliners from 100 to more than 600 seats. Airbus is also a European leader providing tanker, combat, transport and mission aircraft, as well as one of the world's leading space companies. In helicopters, Airbus provides the most efficient civil and military rotorcraft solutions worldwide. *Contacts for the media* Martin Aguera +49 (0) 175 227 martin.aguera@airbus.com 4369 Rod Stone +33 (0) 6 3052 rod.stone@airbus.com 1993 16-Apr-2018 CET/CEST The DGAP Distribution Services include Regulatory Announcements, Financial/Corporate News and Press Releases. Archive at www.dgap.de Language: English Company: Airbus SE P.O. Box 32008 2303 DA Leiden Netherlands Phone: 00 800 00 02 2002 Fax: +49 (0)89 607 - 26481 Internet: www.airbusgroup.com ISIN: NL0000235190 WKN: 938914 Indices: MDAX Listed: Regulated Market in Frankfurt (Prime Standard); Regulated Unofficial Market in Berlin, Dusseldorf, Hamburg, Hanover, Munich, Stuttgart, Tradegate Exchange End of Announcement DGAP News Service 675051 16-Apr-2018 CET/CEST 1: http://public-cockpit.eqs.com/cgi-bin/fncls.ssp?fn=redirect&url=bf59e993e8094666d469eb83ccb9c4ed&application_id=675051&site_id=vwd&application_name=news (END) Dow Jones Newswires April 16, 2018 13:23 ET (17:23 GMT) New software offering full mobility speeds up document creation process Speech Processing Solutions, the world number one in professional dictation, announced their latest speech-to-text software Philips SpeechExec Enterprise. The new sophisticated workflow management softwareallows busy healthcare, legal and business professionals to streamline their document creation process and significantly reduce their workload. This press release features multimedia. View the full release here: https://www.businesswire.com/news/home/20180417005035/en/ Philips SpeechExec Enterprise Smarter communication and convenient central administration The dictation and transcription software facilitates communication by linking authors and transcriptionists. Whether the user works in a hospital, or a legal practice, the software is ideal for turning their voice into text quicker, and more efficiently than ever before. Dr. Thomas Brauner, CEO of Speech Processing Solutions explains: "Philips SpeechExec Enterprise is perfect for larger organizations with multiple authors and transcriptionists, as it can easily be centrally administrated and maintained." All workflow settings, as well as the hardware input devices, can be centrally administrated and configured. The solution is also Microsoft Remote Desktop Services (RDS), Citrix and VMware ready, making the installation process easier and more convenient for both users and IT administrators. Full mobility for increased productivity The new version of Philips' SpeechExec Enterprise offers full mobility, meaning recordings can created anywhere and sent for transcription immediately. Even if the user is out of the office, they can download the brand-new Philips Voice Recorder App to their smartphone and send their recordings directly to their assigned transcriptionists. Geared for on the go speech recognition The software now even works seamlessly with Philips SpeechLive transcription and speech recognition service, allowing users to receive their transcribed files directly to their smartphone or Philips SpeechAir Voice Recorder. Another new mobility enhancing feature is that dictations can now even be accessed through a web browser. This can be particularly useful when an individual wants to use their solution on a business trip, without access to their standard computer. Secure file transfer Real-time file encryption (256 bit), password protection and secure file transfer grant only authorized individuals to access documents. The optional automatic backup function protects data against accidental loss. Dr. Brauner explains: "We know exactly how important security is to our customers working with sensitive data, such as patient records or legal cases. This is why our software adheres to the highest of security standards and we now even offer support for your private cloud environment". To find out more about the new software, visit: www.philips.com/dictation Download the Philips Voice Recorder App now: https://www.dictation.philips.com/products/mobile-dictation/voice-recorder-app-lfh7400/ About Speech Processing Solutions Speech Processing Solutions is the global number one in professional dictation solutions. Founded in Austria in 1954 as part of Philips, the company has been the driving force behind innovative speech-to-text solutions for over 60 years. The company has developed ground-breaking products, such as the mobile Philips SpeechAir device, the Philips PocketMemo voice recorder, the Philips SpeechMike Premium USB dictation microphone and the Philips voice recorder app for smartphones, thus delivering its promise of excellence and outstanding quality. Thanks to the latest innovation, Philips SpeechLive, designed as a cloud-based workflow solution, recording dictations is quicker and easier than ever. The tailored range of products and services offered by Speech Processing Solutions helps professional users to save time and resources and to work at maximum efficiency. Follow Speech Processing Solutions: Facebook: http://www.facebook.com/philipsvoicetracer Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/philips_dictation/ Twitter @speech_com:http://www.twitter.com/speech_com YouTube: http://www.youtube.com/philipsdictation LinkedIn: http://www.linkedin.com/company/speech-processing-solutions View source version on businesswire.com: https://www.businesswire.com/news/home/20180417005035/en/ Contacts: Speech Processing Solutions Lea Pachta lea.pachta@speech.com Tel: +43 160529-1744 www.philips.com/dictation New Findings from Sterling Talent Solutions Uncover a Worrying Gap Between the Number of Organisations Hiring International or Foreign-Born Employees and Those Conducting Global Background Screenings NEW YORK, April 17, 2018 /PRNewswire/ --Organisations in the UK believe background screening is a critical, valuable business component and is more than just a commodity, according to the "Background Checks 2018: UK Trends & Best Practices Report" from Sterling Talent Solutions (Sterling), the world's largest background screening company. The report, which surveyed more than 300 UK employers from 33 industries, examined the background screening landscape in the UK, gleaning insight into pre-employment screening trends, challenges and best practices. The report provided some encouraging statistics, notably that organisations are further recognizing the importance of pre-employment screening, with nearly eight out of 10 (78 percent) businesses currently carrying out checks, up from six out of 10 in 2016. Additionally, UK businesses are optimistic about growth, with more than half (56 percent) expecting staff levels to rise over the next year. "From increased globalization and uncertainty around Brexit to the complexity of GDPR, the need for UK employers to hire with confidence is becoming ever more crucial," said Steve Smith, Vice President at Sterling Talent Solutions. "Our research found that background screening plays an increasingly vital role in successful recruitment programmes and indicated that more employers are recognizing the importance of meeting compliance needs and standards." The Growth of Global Hiring Despite the impact of Brexit, the number of EU citizens working in the UK is at a record high, with 79 percent of UK companies stating that they employ foreign-born workers. That said, the report uncovered a worrying gap in that 40 percent of organisations are not screening these international employees. As regulations differ between countries, it can often dissuade organisations from conducting these global screenings. Implementing a robust global screening policy or working with a third-party provider can mitigate risk and ensure compliance with a variety of regional compliance standards. The Importance of Screening All Workers in the Gig Economy As the gig economy continues to grow both globally and in the UK specifically, only 60 percent of contractors and contingent or temporary workers are screened, compared to 89 percent of full-time employees. While this is an increase compared to last year's number (53 percent), the 40 percent of organisations not screening this portion of the workforce are putting themselves at significant risk to employee issues such as fraud, theft or hiring migrant workers who might not be legally able to work in the UK. As the contingent workforce continues to grow, it is important for businesses to have documented policies in place to screen both temporary and permanent employees. Unexplained Gaps in Employment are Most Concerning to Employers Of the common discrepancies found during pre-hire screenings, approximately 40 percent of UK companies stated that unexplained gaps in employment or education history are most concerning to them. Following this top concern are, criminal convictions (16 percent), unfavourable references (15 percent) and discrepancies in dates or falsification of education (seven percent). The report notes that screening candidates can uncover these discrepancies in advance and can ensure accurate information is provided on the person's experience and qualifications. Additionally, uncovering this information through an advanced screening provides the candidate with an opportunity to potentially explain the situation before a final hiring decision is made. The Evolution and Importance of Social Media Screening The report found that the majority (60 percent) of companies do not conduct any social media screening, yet more than half of UK HR professionals admit that a candidate's online reputation can influence hiring decisions. As the popularity and usage of social media platforms continue to skyrocket, the report recommends working with a third party to develop a clear, documented policy around social media screening. Despite its importance, only eight percent of organisations plan to add this element to their screening programme in the next year. A free version of Sterling's "Background Checks 2018: UK Trends & Best Practices Report" is now available for download. About Sterling Talent Solutions Sterling Talent Solutions, the world's largest background screening provider, provides hiring peace of mind by delivering a simpler, smarter background screening experience for organisations worldwide. Our comprehensive suite of background screening solutions deliver accurate, reliable results and tools to maintain compliance throughout the hiring cycle. Visit us at www.sterlingtalentsolutions.co.uk. Media Contact Jonathan Fleming Sterling Talent Solutions 646-435-2236 Jonathan.Fleming@Sterlingts.com Logo - https://mma.prnewswire.com/media/391492/Sterling_Talent_Solutions_Logo.jpg Vancouver, British Columbia--(Newsfile Corp. - April 17, 2018) - Spearmint Resources Inc. (TSXV: SRJ) (OTC Pink: SPMTF) (FSE: A2AHL5) ("SRJ" or the "Company") is pleased to announce that the first phase of exploration drilling has been completed on its Clayton Valley Lithium Prospect and has intersected lithium as high as 1,670 ppm Li. The three holes drilled into the clay formation all intersected lithium. Hole 1 had a range of 1670-396 ppm Li over 270 feet averaging 835 ppm Li, including 35 feet averaging 1,140 ppm Li. Hole 2 had a range of 1570-250 ppm Li averaging 642 ppm Li over 220 feet including 20 feet of 925 ppm Li. Hole 3 had a range of 1280-429 ppm Li averaging 772 ppm Li over 195 feet including 998 ppm Li over 20 feet. Clayton Valley Ownership Map To view an enhanced version of this image, please visit: http://orders.newsfilecorp.com/files/4360/34063_a1523910217681_25.jpg James Nelson, President of Spearmint states, "We are very pleased to have achieved strong lithium numbers on our first drill program. We are now planning a follow up work program to build on this project and to try and step out to build on the potential resource. This project is located in the Clayton Valley, home of the largest Lithium production in the USA and bordering Pure Energy Minerals Ltd who have a lithium supply agreement with Tesla. Lithium demand is extremely strong right now on the backs of the global explosion in the Electric Vehicle industry. We are very optimistic about what this project could mean to the future of Spearmint and eagerly look forward to what will transpire." Spearmint's current projects include a portfolio of lithium prospects. The 'Clayton Valley Lithium Prospects' in Nevada comprise of two claim blocks totalling 800-acres bordering Pure Energy Minerals & Cypress Development Corp. Spearmint also has two lithium projects in Quebec, including the 4,485-acre 'Pressiac Lithium Prospect' and the 2,636-acre 'Whabouchi Lakes West Lithium Prospect' in the vicinity of Nemaska Lithium Inc. & Critical Elements Corp. Spearmint's 'Chibougamau Vanadium Prospects' comprise of four separate claim blocks totalling 9,735-acres bordering, or in the direct vicinity of, the vanadium deposit of BlackRock Metal's (private) Ilmenite vanadium project, Vanadiumcorp Resource Inc. and Vanadium One Energy Corp. Spearmint's current projects also include three areas of focus on gold in British Columbia; the 'Golden Triangle Gold Prospects' comprising of four separate claim blocks totaling 4,095-acres bordering GT Gold Corp, the 'Gold Mountain Prospects' comprising of three separate claim blocks totaling 1,245-acres bordering Barkerville Gold Mines, and the 3,052 acre 'Neba Prospect' bordering Aben Resources Ltd. Spearmint's 8,482 acre 'EL North' Nickel-Copper Prospect is a contiguous land package that includes the 'EL North, EL North 2 and the BUDDY claims' in the Eskay Creek Camp bordering Garibaldi Resources Corp. Spearmint's 1,500 acre 'WHY WEST' Magnesium project near Rossland, BC directly borders West High Yield Resources. Frank Bain, PGeo and qualified technical person has reviewed this news release and approved the content. If you would like to be added to Spearmint's news distribution list, please send your email address to info@spearmintresources.ca. Contact Information Tel: 1604646-6903 www.spearmintresources.ca "James Nelson" President Spearmint Resources Inc. Neither the TSX Venture Exchange Inc. nor its Regulation Service Provider (as that term is defined in the policies of the TSX Venture Exchange Inc.) accepts responsibility for the adequacy or accuracy of this press release. This year, Illinois has reason to celebrate: The state bordering Lake Michigan celebrates its bicentennial and honors four former Presidents who call the Land of Lincoln their home, most notably Abraham Lincoln who gave Illinois its state slogan. FRANKFURT, Germany, April 17, 2018 /PRNewswire/ --While the official celebration is not until December 3rd, there will be numerous events and festivities leading up to the big anniversary which you should include in your trip to Illinois. Today, we have two suggestions for those of you interested in history and politics. Illinois visitors who want to follow in the tracks of Abraham Lincoln have a lot of choices. The Abraham Lincoln Presidential Library and Museum in Springfield provides an entertaining way to learn about the famous President. It features a memorable exhibition of the life of the 16th President. Visitors enter the house where he was born, learn about his time in Springfield, see him engaged in political debate, and follow him through his presidency up to his assassination. As part of the Prairie State's bicentennial, the exhibit "From Illinois to the White House: Lincoln, Grant, Reagan, Obama" honors these four U.S. Presidents and their First Ladies and tells the story of how they shaped their country and their hardships along the way. Exhibits include historical documents and unique pieces such as Ronald Reagan's high-school yearbook from Dixon, the table where Ulysses Grant and General Robert Lee discussed civil war strategies, an original sample from Barack Obama's speech to mark the 50th anniversary of the Selma to Montgomery marches of the American civil rights movement, and Abraham Lincoln's very own Presidential pocketbook. All of the artifacts are on loan from private collectors and institutes, including the U.S. Grant State Historic Site, the Ronald Reagan Presidential Library, the Barack Obama Presidential Library, the National Portrait Gallery and the Chicago History Museum. The exhibit at the Abraham Lincoln Presidential Library and Museum runs through the end of 2018 and is well worth a visit. Museum director Alan Lowe notes that, "Illinois greatly shaped these four leaders, and vice versa: Without them, Illinois and the whole country would not be the same." The museum features interactive media exhibits and is open daily from 9am to 5pm. The exhibit "From Illinois to the White House" runs through December 30. http://www.alplm.org Deborah Theis, Christine Hobler Illinois Tourism Bureau c/o Wiechmann Tourism Service GmbH Scheidswaldstrasse 73 60385 Frankfurt Tel: (069) 25538-280 Fax: (069) 25538-100 E-mail: illinois@wiechmann.de Web: www.enjoyillinois.de LONDON, April 17, 2018 /PRNewswire/ -- 3/4 believe that some of the National Insurance payments should be redirected towards improving wellbeing 70% do not believe the NHS has enough budget for wellbeing services 6 in 10 think the Government could do more to promote wellbeing 8 in 10 think their employer could do more to support the physical and mental wellbeing of employees With workplace-related stress, illnesses and mental health issues becoming a bigger concern than ever, is it time for employers to be taking the burden from the NHS? More than half of working adults believe that UK businesses are not doing enough to support the physical and mental wellbeing of their employees, according to a new study released today. (Photo: https://mma.prnewswire.com/media/678019/Workplace_Mental_and_Physical_Health.jpg ) (Photo: https://mma.prnewswire.com/media/678020/Workplace_wellbeing_Infographic.jpg ) The vast majority (86%) believe that firms are specifically not doing enough to help employees deal with work-related stress, anxiety and other mental health issues. And with seven out of 10 of those surveyed by Westfield Health saying that the NHS does not have the budget to provide wellbeing services, such as health check-ups and cognitive behavioural therapy. Almost three quarters agreed it would be a good idea for a portion of their National Insurance contributions to be redirected towards employee wellbeing programmes. Currently 12% of the average salary (157-866 per week) goes towards National Insurance. Commercial Director of Westfield Health, David Capper, said: "With the financial pressures of a growing and ageing population, alongside rising public expectations of the level of care they receive, the NHS is under greater strain than ever. And, with the cost of presenteeism being so vast for UK businesses, doesn't it make sense for employers to relieve some of the pressure though wellbeing initiatives?" A government-backed auto-enrolment scheme for wellbeing programmes - funded by employers and by a portion of employees' National Insurance contributions - is just one of the ideas that could form part of a revamped funding plan for the NHS to address its long-term financial needs. In addition, a recent Deloitte report* found that presenteeism is costing businesses an estimated up to three times more than absenteeism, approximately 16.8bn - 26.4bn per year. Capper, continued: "As business leaders, we need to create a culture where our people's health and wellbeing is prioritised to drive confidence, capability, inspiration and ultimately prosperity." Dr Anouska Carter, Principal Researcher at AWRC (Advanced Wellbeing Research Centre) at Sheffield Hallam University, said: "The prevention of chronic disease and maintenance of good health, require complex lifestyle behaviour change interventions that are based on sound scientific principles." "The right working environment to help employees lead a healthy lifestyle can benefit not only the employees and the businesses that they work for, but will also relieve pressure on the NHS." For more information about workplace health and wellbeing, please call 03331 227343 or visit http://www.westfieldhealth.com/business . Notes to Editor Research conducted by Westfield Health in April 2018, surveying 2,025 UK employees. *Source - Deloitte UK Mental Health Monitor, October 2017 About Westfield Health Westfield Health is an award winning not-for-profit health and wellbeing provider, committed to improving people's quality of life by inspiring them to make healthier choices at work and at home. Find out more at http://www.westfieldhealth.com LONDON, April 17, 2018 /PRNewswire/ -- Ashley Cook, Customer Relations Director, Three Ireland,will offer his Strategic Vision: A 3-5 Year Transformational Customer Strategy Plan at the12thAnnual Customer Contact Europe: A Frost & Sullivan Executive MindXchange,takingplace at Clontarf Castle Hotel, Dublin, from 11th to 13th June 2018. His opening keynote will draw from his experiences at Three Ireland, one of the country's leading mobile networks, serving over two million customers. Cook will shine a light on how his organisation came to understand the customer experience through their customer's journeys and how they leveraged the data gathered to driveimprovement and change across the organisation. He will share a first-hand story of initiative and applying lessons learned to develop an integrated digital customer service and self-service strategy...while also reducing operating costs. Cook previously held a number of senior roles at Carphone Warehouse in the UK, including Director of Customer Operations and Director of Business Operators. Prior to joining Carphone Warehouse, he was Director of Sales Operations with Tesco in the Czech Republic where he was responsible for 83 stores and more than 6,000 people. Jean-Marc Codsi, General Manager Europe, Wargaming.net, will present a Case History: Smart Technology and Successful Customer Service Agendas. Codsi will explain how the customer service world is full of opportunities for improvement and ways to do so, including people, technology and processes. He will explore why the balance between cost management and delivering an excellent customer experience can be hard to achieve, and offer insights to help organisations implement more "quick wins", identify their blind spots and jump their learning curves! In his currentrole at Wargaming,net, Codsi leads a team of publishing experts for popular AAA video games in Europe. Previously, he was Executive Director, BUX Partners and Vice President Global Customer Experience, eBay, Europe. The 12thAnnual Customer Contact Europe: A Frost & Sullivan Executive MindXchange,will offer contact centre and customer experience executives the opportunity to benefit from: Truly innovative case studies and best practices Dynamic collaboration zones fostering disruptive and transformational thinking Networking opportunities with customer contact industry peers Don't miss out on the opportunity to leverage the latest customer service thinking for competitive advantage. For additional information, please email events.us@frost.com or contact Alan Bowman at +44 1865 398 644. About Frost & Sullivan Frost & Sullivan, the Growth Partnership Company, works in collaboration with clients to leverage visionary innovation that addresses the global challenges and related growth opportunities that will make or break today's market participants. For more than 50 years, we have been developing growth strategies for the global 1000, emerging businesses, the public sector and the investment community. Contact us: Start the discussion Contact: Kristina Menzefricke Corporate Communications - Europe P: +44 (0) 208 996 8589 E: kristina.menzefricke@frost.com www.frost.com BARCELONA, Spain, April 17, 2018 /PRNewswire/ -- For years, Institut Marques, centre of international standing in Gynaecology and Assisted Reproduction, has been carrying out cutting-edge research into the effects of music on the beginning of life, during embryonic and foetal development. (Photo: https://mma.prnewswire.com/media/676280/Babypod.jpg ) (Photo: https://mma.prnewswire.com/media/676281/Ig_Nobel_ceremony.jpg ) Last September its Director, Dr. Marisa Lopez-Teijon, received the Ig Nobel Prize for Medicine in the field of Obstetrics at Harvard University for the discovery of foetal hearing. The objective of the Ig Nobel is for prestigious scientists from all over the world to present their research to the public in a fun and entertaining way. As part of the European Ig Nobel Tour, Dr. Lopez-Teijon and Dr. Alex Garcia-Faura, Scientific Director of the Institut Marques, presented their work at universities in Sweden and Denmark, refuting one of the most widely accepted myths among pregnant women: "Thanks to the creation of a vaginal loudspeaker, Babypod, we have shown that foetuses can hear from the 16th week onwards when they measure 11 centimetres -- only if the sound reaches them directly from the vagina," explained Dr. Marisa Lopez-Teijon. "Foetuses can barely hear the noise from outside. So we can say that the myth of talking to babies through pregnant women's bellies is a thing of the past." Chief researcher of the study, Dra. Lopez-Teijon explained: "We also have improved in vitro fertilization by applying musical vibrations in the incubators of our assisted reproduction clinics." One of the most popular events in the Ig Nobel Tour this year took place in the Aarhus University of Copenhagen, with near 800 people attending in the auditorium. Hundredsof other people followed itby streaming from one of the 50 points enabled for the connection. Communication with the foetus is one of the aspects that aroused most interest: "By inserting a loudspeaker into the vagina of thousands of patients, for the first time we have managed to communicate with the foetus. Babypod has allowed us to discover that the foetus responds in the same way as a baby, with speech and movement. Thousands of women are already using it to communicate with their babies during pregnancy," said the Scientific Director of the Institut Marques in his speech. Institut Marques Babypod/p> https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ZjkTA9deri0&feature=youtu.be Manila (CNN Philippines Life) After over a year of being spat at, sleeping on the floor next to a washing machine in a storeroom, not getting paid for more than four months straight, and eating leftover food (if there is leftover food), Jenna Baldapan attempted to escape from her employers house in Kuwait. Pero hindi natuloy [yung pagtakas] kasi yung bag ko sa bintana imbis na kunin ko, hindi ko makuha kaya bumalik na lang ako, she says. Hinayaan ko na lang. The panic while trying to get her bag was compounded by the fear of getting caught while trying to escape. She knew that running away from an employer is considered a crime in Kuwait, and that she might have to face imprisonment once caught, so she stayed. A single mother from Bukidnon, Baldapan left for Kuwait in 2008 to work as a domestic worker immediately after her son turned a year old. If she did get paid, she would get 120 dinars or approximately 20,000 every month all of which she sends back to the Philippines. The maltreatment stopped only when she was sold to another employer. She says she was sold because after a year and five months of enduring inhumane hardships, she just refused to work as a sign of protest. She doesnt know how much she was sold for, but says that mahal kaya ang katulong, not realizing that she identified herself and the entirety of domestic workers as if they were commodities. A single mother from Bukidnon, Jenna Baldapan left for Kuwait in 2008 to work as a domestic worker immediately after her son turned a year old. If she did get paid, she would get 120 dinars or approximately 20,000 every month all of which she sends back to the Philippines. Photo by PORTIA LADRIDO In 2015, another domestic helper, Melirose Balagosa, was caught on tape falling from the fourth floor of her employers house in Kuwait. She survived the fall, but fell into a coma for 15 days and had multiple fractures. Many speculated that she was pushed by her employer, but when she was able to talk, she said she fell on her own after trying to escape. She is also a single mother like Baldapan and had decided to work abroad to provide for her child. On February 2018, the Philippines received yet again another extreme case of domestic worker abuse: the murder of 29-year-old Joanna Demafelis, whose body was found in a freezer in Kuwait a year after she was reported to be missing. Why the age-old tale of domestic worker abuses? Baldapan, Balagosa, and Demafelis are only a few of the over two million domestic workers listed to have worked in the Gulf countries (namely, Bahrain, Iraq, Iran, Kuwait, Oman, Qatar, Saudi Arabia, and United Arab Emirates). According to Migrant Rights, 90 percent of all Kuwaiti households employ foreign domestic workers, 99.6 percent of domestic workers and personal assistants in Saudi Arabia are migrant workers, and 96 percent of families in the UAE hire domestic workers to take care of their children. There have been varying degrees of abuses perpetrated on domestic helpers, but these abuses have largely been tied to the Kafala system, a visa-sponsorship system implemented by Lebanon, Bahrain, Iraq, Jordan, Kuwait, Oman, Qatar, Saudi Arabia, and the UAE, where workers are essentially beholden to the demands of their employers. The employer or the sponsor is required to assume full economic and legal responsibility and has complete control over when the worker can leave and where the worker goes. Migrante International, a global alliance for overseas Filipino workers, have long called for the abolishment of the system. Yan yung system na nagpapatuloy sa enslavement sa ating mga domestic workers, says Arman Hernando, spokesperson of the organization. Kahit sa mula ng panahon na nag-deploy tayo ng mga domestic workers diyan sa Middle East, naka-place na yang Kafala system at simula't sapul patuloy at pareho ang itsura ng mga rights violations sa mga domestic helpers. Dr. Jean Franco, an assistant professor at the University of the Philippines, researches on the politics of gender and labor-out migration. Photo by JL JAVIER While the Kafala system also applies to other migrant workers such as those working in construction, in hospitals, or in engineering, Dr. Jean Franco, an assistant professor at the University of the Philippines whose research focuses on the politics of gender and labor-out migration, says that the abuses carried by the Kafala are gravely felt by domestic helpers because they are not within the public sphere. [Abuses] keep happening because the private sphere is not regulated, she says. Unlike other job categories, say, in hospital, in construction where you are out there in the public and the industry itself is regulated, there's some sort of a freedom, and you're with other people People living inside the house who hire domestic workers can practically do anything they want. In Jordan, recruitment agencies that facilitate the deployment of domestic workers would run ads with taglines like delivery in 30 days, discounts on maids, and enjoy a month of discount on maids among many others. A study by the Centre for Labour and Mobility states that its also hard to monitor the plight of domestic workers because the laws of the Gulf Cooperation Council (GCC), the economic union of the Arab states of the Persian Gulf, do not allow labor inspectors into the employers homes, making it difficult to evaluate their day-to-day living conditions. In 2013, because of the increasing volume of abuses, Karl Anderson, an American music producer, created a Facebook page called Filipino Domestic Workers Abuse in Saudi Arabia. He started it after helping his friend escape an abusive employer, and later found that many other Filipino domestic workers were under the same hapless circumstances. Anderson, who is based in Los Angeles, says that the concerns of the workers would range from simple queries like the contact number of the Philippine embassy to more weighted reports on cases of rape and attempted homicide. He says that since opening up the page, the abuses have been fairly similar. Rape is very common. Sexual and physical abuse is a common one. Nonpayment is a big issue. Some people are starved and they dont have enough food, or are locked in the house, he says. It's pretty much very similar but I would say they're rescued a little faster now. These abuses have widely been covered by the media and in reports of non-government organizations, but Franco stresses that there is also a substantial number of migrant workers who have made a living and have had a good relationship with their employers. The Facebook page called Filipino Domestic Workers Abuse in Saudi Arabia was created by American music producer Karl Anderson in 2013 to help domestic helpers who want to get rescued from abusive employers. They've sent their children to school because of their jobs as domestic workers, she says. Baldapan also says that the employer she was sold to was kinder and better than her first employer. While she still worked seven days a week, she says that at least she was fed well, paid on time, and not at all abused in any way. She worked for her second employer for eight years before coming back to the Philippines. Anderson, however, thinks that there is a much larger majority of abused domestic workers than people realize. I think what the common thing I hear from the worker is a lot of workers, they feel shamed. So if they're abused or sexually abused, sometimes they don't want their family members to know, he says. He also says that not getting a day off, not being fed regularly, or experiencing delays in pay have also been the standard working condition that for as long as they are not extremely abused, these are realities domestic workers have known to accept. Pag nag-abroad ka, dapat matapang ka talaga kasi ganoon talaga, says Baldapan. The root cause of the problem Besides these abuses that have plagued workers abroad, there has also been a latent effect on the family, especially the children, whom they leave in the Philippines. Laurence Ligier, the founder of Cameleon, an organization that helps sexually abused girls in Panay and Negros, has seen that the absence of the mother affects the children in unfortunate ways, citing incestuous rape as a common occurrence. Children are left alone, especially the girls, in the hand of their father, stepfather, uncle, and brother and without their mother protecting them for many years, then sexual abuse can happen, she says. Ligier highlights that the age of consent in the Philippines is 12 years old, and so the lack of guidance and support during the girls formative years are crucial factors that contribute to their vulnerability. It was also through her work with Cameleon that she was in touch with Balagosa, the domestic worker who fell from her employers building in Kuwait, as Balagosas sister is a beneficiary of the organization. In 2015, another past beneficiary of Cameleon, a young girl who was a victim of incest rape also went to Lebanon to work as a domestic worker, but left abruptly after her employer hit her and threatened to kill her. Ligier says that they usually urge their beneficiaries not to work as a domestic helper abroad. Through the organization, they aim to help the girls finish college so they would be able to find jobs here. Dr. Jean Franco says that the Philippine government likes to magnify these abuses because they want to project the image that they're not labor exporters but rather they're "protecting" their migrants, specifically women migrants. But in places like Bukidnon, where Baldapan is from, she says that jobs are scarce, and the salaries here didnt offer enough money to send her son to good schools. Siyempre iniisip ko kailangan ko mag-hanapbuhay talaga na sarili kong sikap kaya nagpursigi akong mag-apply mag-abroad, she explains. Franco says that if one is to think deeply about the abuses, it can be traced back to the fact that there may not be any kind of abuse if only there were jobs in the Philippines for women like Baldapan, Demafelis, and Balagosa. Children are left alone, especially the girls, in the hand of their father, stepfather, uncle, and brother and without their mother protecting them for many years, then sexual abuse can happen, says Laurence Ligier, the founder of Cameleon, an organization that helps sexually abused girls in Panay and Negros. Ligier highlights that the age of consent in the Philippines is 12 years old, and so the lack of guidance and support during the girls formative years are crucial factors that contribute to their vulnerability. Photo by JL JAVIER I've talked to a lot of domestic workers and they would say that if they would just have a salary that you know would approximate 15,000 to 20,000 [pesos], they would not leave the country, she explains. Franco also says that the Philippine government likes to magnify these abuses because they want to project the image that they're not labor exporters but rather they're "protecting" their migrants, specifically women migrants. Highlighting these abuses and highlighting the fact that the government tries to immediately make some moves to prevent these abuses by way of let's say, deployment ban, makes people believe that the cause of the abuses is the employer or the recruiter, but not the state, she adds. She explains how the government would institutionalize suffering and sacrifice by labelling migrant workers as bagong bayani, which elevates the OFWs but also makes it acceptable to suffer and sacrifice when theyre abroad. Franco also adds that no government would identify themselves as labor exporters because no government, she explains, will accept the fact that citizens are abroad to find jobs that are precarious because the government could not manage to address or to create an environment where decent work can thrive in their own country. They would like to believe that they facilitate, they manage overseas employment, but the government will never admit that they are into labor export, she says. Because you only export products, not people. The notion that domestic workers are treated like commodities is not unfounded. In Jordan, recruitment agencies that facilitate the deployment of domestic workers would run ads with taglines like delivery in 30 days, discounts on maids, and enjoy a month of discount on maids among many others. Baldapan, over the course of the interview, would also repeatedly refer to herself by how much she costs and how much the employer had to pay another employer to set her free. Yung deployment ban hindi namin nakita na nakatulong sa OFWs mula noong inimplement siya at hanggang sa ngayon kasi una, walang kasabay na pagpapabuti ng monitoring, proteksyon, at intervention program yung gobyerno, says Arman Hernando, spokesperson of Migrante International, a global alliance for OFWs. Photo courtesy of ARMAN HERNANDO Migrantes Hernando says that if the government cant assert the rights of the Filipinos in the Gulf, especially when we are mere foreigners, the Philippine government would have to look on other ways of supporting Filipinos. Kung hindi pa kayang i-guarantee yung protection ng ating mga OFWs at katulad pa rin yung working condition, dapat hindi pa tayo nag-de-deploy ng domestic workers, he says, at instead ay lumikha dito ng trabaho sa sarili nating bansa para hindi na mag-abroad yung ating mga kababayan. Could the deployment ban help? Given the reality that job creation has not kept pace with an expanding population in the Philippines, the governments deployment ban in Kuwait seems to be a solution to the continuous wave of abuses that domestic workers face. However, when the ban was announced, the Philippine Overseas Employment Administration (POEA) said that around 54,000 jobs would be at stake. Humahanap talaga yan ng ibang mga channels at pamamaraan kahit illegal para umalis. At doon, mas nagiging vulnerable sila sa human traffickers at mga illegal recruiters. Arman Hernando, Migrante International Anderson agrees that a ban is necessary because he believes the Gulf countries would never abolish the Kafala system, especially when, he says, it is inherently part of their culture. But Franco thinks that the deployment ban was a reactive and palliative move, and that it will just breed more irregular migrants. Hernando further explains that even with a ban, Filipinos will find ways to get out of the country, making them more vulnerable to human trafficking. Humahanap talaga yan ng ibang mga channels at pamamaraan kahit illegal para umalis. At doon, mas nagiging vulnerable sila sa human traffickers at mga illegal recruiters, he says. Pangalawa, yung deployment ban hindi namin nakita na nakatulong sa OFWs mula noong inimplement siya at hanggang sa ngayon kasi una, walang kasabay na pagpapabuti ng monitoring, proteksyon, at intervention program yung gobyerno. On the other hand, the ban has pushed POEA to consider more ways to better support domestic workers, particularly in Kuwait. They are now considering housing domestic workers outside of their employers homes to lessen the risk of physical or sexual abuse. After 10 years of working in Kuwait, Baldapan came back to the Philippines to attend her fathers funeral late last year. Her passport expired while being here, and so she had to wait to get a new one while also looking for other opportunities abroad. At the time of the interview, she has just finished submitting her requirements at the POEA satellite office in Ortigas, and is waiting to be approved for domestic work in Hong Kong. Hindi na pwede mag-apply ulit [sa Kuwait] kasi dapat two years na maghintay din pag bumalik ka dito, she says. Kaya apply ulit sa iba. ETOY, Switzerland, April 17, 2018 /PRNewswire/ -- Since 2003, the oral care foundation recognises the best research papers about the relationship between oral and general health The 1st Perio Link Award aims to spread the scientific innovations in this area not only to professionals but all the population To participate every paper had to be explained in a one-minute engaging video to get more views and votes The Sunstar Foundation has celebrated the 1st Perio Link Award to bring scientific innovations in the relationship between oral and general health closer to the general population. Since 2003, the Sunstar Foundation recognises the best research papers about this relationship in distinguished awards such as the World Perio Research Award. This new prize, however, is a step forward to increase awareness among the population about how oral health is related to all the body. (Photo: https://mma.prnewswire.com/media/677286/1st_Perio_Link_Award_Infographic.jpg ) As Dr Marzia Massignani explains, Scientific Affairs Manager of Sunstar, "most of the times scientific news are exclusive to the technical community due to the network where they are naturally shared. However, we strongly believe that news impacting general health should be shared with all the population, which can directly benefit by being informed about how to improve their wellbeing. Therefore, the1st Perio Link Award aims to share technic news from the field of oral and general health with non-science audience more simply and engagingly ". The Sunstar Foundation Scientific Committee chaired by Prof. Robert J. Genco selected twenty-three papers based on impact in the field of oral and general health in the last three years. Every first author explained in a one-minute video the main objectives and findings of his paper. Finally, the viewers voted online for the best video to win the 1st Sunstar Perio Link Award. And the winner is the paper: Resolvin E1 Reverses Experimental Periodontitis and Dysbiosis, published in October 2016 by the Journal of Immunology and written by Lee CT et al. The paper, in detail, shows how we can improve the treatment of periodontal disease by having a pharmacological control of inflammation with natural molecules and, at the same time, reverse the periodontal process. The first author will be awarded during the Perio Link Night organised by the Sunstar Foundation on June 22 in Amsterdam. BRUSSELS/FRANKFURT/PARIS (dpa-AFX) - French stocks were modestly higher on Tuesday amid easing Syria tensions as investors bet that last week's U.S.-led missile strikes on the country would not lead to a broader escalation in the conflict. Traders also remained optimistic about the earnings season. The benchmark CAC 40 was up 18 points or 0.35 percent at 5,331 in opening deals after closing little changed with a positive bias the previous day. Air France KLM advanced 0.8 percent after announcing a final wage offer to unions in a bid to end an ongoing strike action. Bouygues shares were marginally higher. The company has denied speculation that it was considering a joint bid to acquire debt-laden Altice's French unit. Lagardere added 0.6 percent. The media group said it was selling some eastern European radio assets to Czech Media Invest. Retailer Casino Group gained 0.4 percent after its first-quarter sales increased 3.1 percent in organic terms and 1.8 percent on a comparable basis. 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. Intu Properties hailed a "strong" first quarter on Tuesday, with a record level of retailer demand, but it made no mention of its deal with Hammerson, which could be at risk. In a trading update for the period from 1 January to 17 April, the company said it agreed 60 long-term leases for 10m of annual rent, which is 5% higher than the previous passing rent. In addition, it sustained high occupancy of 91.6%, while footfall increased year-to-date by 1.5%, excluding the period of snow, as it ... 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. ZURICH, April 17, 2018 /PRNewswire/ -- Chain IQ Group is developing very well - the company has expanded its global customer base to 30 renowned major customers. Furthermore, Stefano Aversa and Douglas D. Haynes, two international distinguished top experts, were elected to the Board of Directors at the General Assembly of April 16, 2018. Since its inception in May 2014, Chain IQ has made significant achievements within a very short period of time accompanied by steady growth. Based on the spend volume the enterprise is meanwhile ranked as one of the top procurement companies globally, serving more than 30 international, well-known clients across a multiple of industries in more than 20 countries. At the Annual General Meeting of April 16, two new members were elected to the Board of Directors of Chain IQ Group. Stefano Aversa (London based) is currently serving as Managing Director, Chair of Europe, Middle East & Africa and Vice-Chair Revenue of AlixPartners, LLP. A talented and highly skilled turnaround expert with more than 30 years of experience, Mr. Aversa works with investors, Boards, and managements of industrial companies, developing business plans, driving financial and operational turnarounds, and implementing large-scale performance improvement programs. Stefano Aversa joined AlixPartners from A.T. Kearney, where he was global leader of the automotive and aerospace practice. Mr. Aversa has assisted several global industrial companies through strategic and operational transformations in Europe, North America, and Asia and led more than 100 engagements, including some of the most complex and largest international turnarounds and transformations. Stefano Aversa is a member of the World Economic Forum, the Clinton Global Initiative, and he is the Chairman of Andrea Bocelli Foundation. Douglas D. Haynes (New York based) last served as President of Point72. Prior to joining Point72, Mr. Haynes was a Director at McKinsey & Company for more than 20 years. Mr. Haynes is boasting an outstanding leadership and an impressive track record. While his engagement as Director for McKinsey he led the client service to multiple of the world's largest and most valuable enterprises ranking in the Fortune 50, he led the US Northeast region, with P&L responsibility for 1200 total staff and 120 partners and he co-led the practices for Operations (globally) and US High Tech hardware and services. Mr. Haynes delivered strategic, performance improvement, and business building projects for industry leaders in High Tech, Industrials and Financial Services. Moreover, he served on the review and promotion committees for electing Principals and Directors and served as global Dean of Engagement Manager professional development program. Previously, Douglas D. Haynes worked for the Central Intelligence Agency (CIA) and for GE's advanced materials business. He is an active community member and serves for several Boards. Claudio Cisullo, Founder and Executive Chairman of Chain IQ Group: "I am delighted Stefano Aversa and Douglas D. Haynes are joining the Chain IQ Group Board of Directors. They both are outstanding personalities with a comprehensive strategic expertise and an impressive track record. Their tremendous experience and skills will support to further strengthen and expand Chain IQ and to raise the company to its next level." Picture is available at AP Images (http://www.apimages.com ) This media release is also available at chainiq.com/media-releases Chain IQ is an independent, global service company providing strategic, tactical and operational procurement for its clients. Chain IQ operates from its main centers - Zurich (headquarters), New York, London, Singapore, Mumbai and Bucharest - and is currently servicing more than 20 countries (including China, Hong Kong, Japan and Australia). Information/Contact: Elisabeth Ehrsam, Head of Public Relations and Public Affairs to the Chairman, Chain IQ Group, elisabeth.ehrsam@chainiq.com Advanced self-propelled self-elevating support vessels provider Gulf Marine Services announced a new long-term contract award for one of its mid-size class vessels on Tuesday. The London-listed company said the new charter was for two years, including options, and was scheduled to begin "shortly". It said the vessel would be supporting well intervention activities for an unnamed national oil company in the Middle East-North Africa (MENA) region. "As we recently reported, we are seeing increasing ... 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. 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. - April 17, 2018) - Lupaka Gold Corp. (TSXV: LPK) (FSE: LQP) ("Lupaka Gold" or the "Company") is pleased to provide a development update on the Company's 100% owned Invicta Gold Development Project ("Invicta Project" or "Invicta"). Highlights: Main access road construction is 65% advanced, completion expected in May 2018 Operations team substantially in place, rehabilitation of the 3400 Level approximately 50% complete 3430 Level cross-cut completed, continuity and consistency of hanging wall split and footwall zones confirmed between 3400 and 3430 Levels 8,000 tonnes of mineralized development material to be toll processed in May Project remains on track and on budget, commercial production at 350 tonnes per day ("tpd") expected to be reached in the third-quarter of 2018 ("Q3/18") Fully financed for the development of Invicta (refer to February 13, 2018 news release) "With our operational team now substantially in place, the development and rehabilitation of Invicta has rapidly advanced and the Company is well positioned to reach commercial production, at 350 tonnes per day, during the third quarter of 2018. While continuing to rehabilitate and develop the Invicta mine, 8,000 tonnes of mineralized development material will be sent for processing and evaluation at regional toll milling facilities in May, the proceeds of which will offset development costs.The 3430 Level cross-cut has been completed and the continuity and consistency of the hanging wall and footwall veins has been confirmed from the 3400 Level up to the 3430 Level. Sublevel preparation for mining of the footwall vein between the 3400 and 3430 Levels is progressing well.We are pleased to report that overall, the project remains on time and on budget." Will Ansley, President and CEO of Lupaka Gold Road Construction Progress Upgrades to the 28 kilometre main access road, from the paved highway to the Invicta Project, are approximately 65% advanced. The upgrade work includes widening the road from four meters to approximately six meters, construction of four by-passes to circumvent communities and difficult portions of the road where numerous switchbacks occurred, the development of borrow pits to obtain road surfacing materials, improving the road surface to allow 30 tonne haulage trucks and heavy machinery to travel, and the installation of berms and drainage ditches. Along with the reduction of traffic within the communities and increasing the efficiency of hauling, one of the main and most important benefits of these improvements is increasing safety conditions. Heavy rainfall, thick fog, and a delay in obtaining the explosives licence initially impeded road upgrade productivity; approximately 20% of the length of the road requires blasting prior to removal with excavators. During December and January the advance rate of road construction was approximately 150 meters per day, however, the current rate is in the range of 300 meters per day. Depending on precipitation levels, the Company is targeting completion of the road project in May 2018. Invicta Development and Rehabilitation Update Development and rehabilitation work at Invicta is progressing well and the Company anticipates it will commence production from the 3400 Level at a rate of 350 tpd in Q3/18. Recruitment of the key operations team personnel was completed in Q1/18 which included the Director of Operations, Mine Manager, Chief Geologist, Superintendent of Production & Mine Planning, and other related technical personnel. The operations team is overseeing and directing the mining and road contractors, as well as preparing the mine development and production plans. During the second quarter of 2018, the Invicta camp facilities will be expanded from 65 people to allow for up to 130 persons. Figure 1 - Invicta Development Plan (3D - Oblique Long Section) To view an enhanced version of Figure 1, please visit: https://orders.newsfilecorp.com/files/2640/34075_a1523940316441_91.jpg Several enhancements have been made to the initial mine plan as outlined in the March 2018 Preliminary Economic Assessment ("PEA"). As illustrated in Figure 1 above, two vertical material transport raises originally contemplated in the PEA have been eliminated, resulting in a savings of approximately US$250,000, through the use of draw points on the 3400 Level. The 3400 Level will be the main haulage level for mineralized material and a decision has been made to increase the dimension of 120 metres of the 3400 Level from 3.5 metres ('m') wide x 3.0 m high to 4.5 m wide x 4.0 m high in order to allow access of 30 tonne haulage trucks, which can then haul directly to the processing plant. Small mineralized material storage chambers will be constructed underground to ensure a continuous flow of mineralized material from the mine to the plant. Mineralized material will be loaded into the waiting trucks from the underground stations on 3400 Level and travel directly to the process plant, thereby eliminating the need to construct and operate a reloading platform 26 kilometres from the mine. The investment in widening the 3400 Level is budgeted to be approximately US$500,000, however, direct haulage (avoiding the use of a reload station) will lower future operating costs and payback on the investment is estimated to be approximately one year. Furthermore, increasing the dimensions and haulage capacity of the 3400 Level allows Lupaka to more easily increase the mines output in future years above the current plan of 350 tpd. Other efforts on the 3400 Level includes replacing and enhancing the existing ground support systems, installation of services, refuge and vehicle bypasses, and a ventilation system that includes two raises (2.0 m x 2.0 m) which will provide a continuous flow of fresh air to the 3400, 3430 and future sublevels, as well as providing secondary egress points. Approximately 90 meters of the required 180 metres has been rehabilitated on the 3400 Level, and development of the first ventilation raise has commenced. The 3430 Level cross-cut was completed advancing a total of 149 m, intersecting the hanging wall split at 133 m and the footwall zone at 142 m. Mineralization in both zones is visually consistent containing coarse grains of chalcopyrite, sphalerite, and galena, with the mineralization 30 metres below on the 3400 Level. To view an enhanced version of this graphic, please visit: https://orders.newsfilecorp.com/files/2640/34075_lupaka2.jpg Evaluation of Toll Milling Facilities Approximately 8,000 tonnes of mineralized development material will be sent to regional toll milling facilities for processing in May, at different throughput levels, in order to assess the suitability and optimal recoveries available from the plants. Approximately 2,000 tonnes of mineralized development material is currently stockpiled on surface. Josnitoro Project The Josnitoro joint venture agreement ("JV") with Hochschild Mining plc required the Company to obtain a community agreement for exploration by March 2018. Lupaka was unable to obtain a community agreement and requests for an extension with Hochschild were unsuccessful, resulting in termination of the JV. As the focus for the Company continues to be the advancement of Invicta into production, no significant activities were performed on the JV, and there were no carrying costs associated with the property. Neither the TSX Venture Exchange nor its Regulation Service Provider (as the term is defined in the policies of the TSX Venture Exchange) accepts responsibility for the adequacy of this news release. About Lupaka Gold Lupaka is an active Canadian-based company focused on creating shareholder value through discoveries and strategic development of its assets in some of the most prolific mining regions of Peru. Invicta Gold Development Project - 100% owned, the Company's flagship project is an advanced stage gold-copper polymetallic underground deposit located approximately 120 kilometres north of Lima. Over $12 million of capital has been spent by previous owners on development and infrastructure at Invicta, and management expects to commence potential production in the second half of 2018 by using third-party mining contractors and utilizing the existing adit and workings. The Invicta project is fully permitted and community agreements are in place. The potential underground operation will be focused on underground extraction of Indicated Mineral Resources and Inferred Mineral Resources from the Atenea vein within close proximity to the existing 3400 Level adit (up to 130 metres above the 3400 Level). Invicta's approved EIA allows for mine production of up to 1,000 tpd, although the current mining plan is targeting 350 tpd. Cautionary Note Regarding the Invicta Production Decision The decision to commence potential production at the Invicta Gold Project and the Company's plans for a mining operation as referenced herein (the "Production Decision and Plans") are based on economic models prepared by the Company in conjunction with management's knowledge of the property and the existing estimate of Indicated and Inferred Mineral Resources on the property, supplemented by the 2018 PEA. The Production Decision and Plans were not based on a preliminary economic assessment, a pre-feasibility study or a feasibility study of mineral reserves demonstrating economic and technical viability. Accordingly, there is increased uncertainty and economic and technical risks of failure associated with the Production Decision and Plans, in particular the risk that mineral grades will be lower than expected, the risk that construction or ongoing mining operations are more difficult or more expensive than expected, the risk that the Company will not be able to transport or sell the mineralized material it produces to local custom toll mills on the terms it expects, or at all; production and economic variables may vary considerably, due to the absence of a detailed economic and technical analysis according to and in accordance with NI 43-101. FOR FURTHER INFORMATION PLEASE CONTACT: Will Ansley, President & C.E.O. wansley@lupakagold.com Tel: (416) 862-5257 or visit the Company's profile at www.sedar.com or its website at www.lupakagold.com Qualified Person The technical information in this document has been reviewed and approved by Dan Kivari, PEng., Director of Operations of the Company, and a Qualified Person as defined by National Instrument 43-101. Mr. Kivari has verified the scientific and technical information, including sampling, analytical and operational data underlying the information or opinions contained in this news release. Cautionary Statements Regarding Forward Looking Information All statements, trend analysis and other information contained in this press release relative to anticipated future events or results constitute forward-looking statements. All statements, other than statements of historical fact, included herein, including, without limitation, statements relating to improvements in the road to the Invicta Project and its anticipated benefits and the timing of completion of the improvements, the timing of the commencement of potential production from the Invicta Project and the generation of cash therefrom, the anticipated methods of production, the receipt of and anticipated use of proceeds of the PLI Financing, the Company's plans and intentions for Invicta, mineral resource estimates, are forward-looking statements. Forward-looking statements are based on assumptions, estimates and opinions of management at the date the statements are made that the Company believes are reasonable, including: that the repayment of the PLI Financing is consummated on the anticipated terms, that the supplies, equipment, personnel, permits, and local community approvals required to conduct the Company's planned pre-production and development activities will be available on reasonable terms, that the Company will be able to comply with the delivery and other obligations in the PLI Financing Agreement, that results of exploration activities will be consistent with management's expectations and that the Company will not experience any material accident, labour dispute, or failure of equipment and with respect to the planned mining operations at Invicta; that pre-production mine development can be completed in the time and for the cost projected; that the Company will be able to obtain funding for planned production expenses; that mineralization at Invicta will be of the grades and in the locations expected; that the Company will be able to extract and transport mineralized rock efficiently and sell the mineralized rock at the prices and in the manner and quantities expected; that permits will be received on the terms and timeline expected and that other regulatory or permitting issues will not arise; that mining methods can be employed in the manner and at the costs expected and that such methods yield the results the Company expects them to. However, forward-looking information 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 the forward-looking information. Such risks, uncertainties and other factors include, among others: all of the risks described in this news release; failure of the PLI Financing to complete on the proposed terms or at all, including due to the Company's inability to complete the conditions precedent, the risk that actual results of exploration and development activities will be different than anticipated; that the Company will not be able to comply with the delivery or other obligations in the PLI Financing Agreement and the risk that PLI will enforce its security over the Company's assets, including its mineral properties; that cost of labour, equipment or materials will increase more than expected; that the future price of gold will decline; that the Canadian dollar will strengthen against the U.S. dollar; that mineral resources are not as estimated; unexpected variations in mineral resources, grade or recovery rates; risks related to shipping mineralized rock; the risk that local mills cannot or will not buy or process mineralized rock from the planned production for the prices expected or at all; risk of accidents, labour disputes and other risks generally associated with mineral exploration; unanticipated delays in obtaining or failure to obtain community, governmental or regulatory approvals or financing; and all of the risks generally associated with the development of mining facilities and the operation of a producing mine, as well as the risks described in the Company's annual information form, which is available on SEDAR at www.sedar.com. Although the Company has attempted to identify important factors that could cause actual actions, events or results to differ materially from those described in forward-looking information, there may be other factors that cause actions, events or results to not be as anticipated, estimated or intended. There can be no assurance that forward-looking information will prove to be accurate, as actual results and future events could differ materially from those anticipated in such statements. Readers are cautioned not to place undue reliance on forward-looking information due to the inherent uncertainty thereof. Lupaka Gold does not undertake any obligation to update forward-looking statements except as required by applicable securities laws. Investors should not place undue reliance on forward-looking statements. DDoS attacks can cost enterprises $50,000 (35,000) per attack but lost revenue is still only considered to be the fourth most damaging consequence of this type of cyber-attack, according to research published today by Corero Network Security(LSE: CNS), a leading provider of real-time DDoS defense solutions. The Corero research surveyed over 300 security professionals from a range of industries including financial services, cloud, government, online gaming and media sectors. An overwhelming number of respondents (91%) said that individual DDoS attacks can cost their organisations up to $50,000 in terms of lost business, the cost of mitigating attacks and lost productivity. In addition, 69% indicated that their organisation experiences between 20-50 DDoS attack attempts per month equivalent to roughly one attack per day. But despite this high figure, the vast majority of respondents (78%) cited the loss of customer trust and confidence as the single most damaging effect on business of DDoS attacks. The second most ranked threat was the risk of intellectual property theft, followed by the threat of malware infection associated with a DDoS attack. Lost revenue was only considered to be the fourth most damaging consequence. Ashley Stephenson, CEO at Corero Network Security, explains: "DDoS attacks can have an immediate and damaging impact on a company's bottom line, both in terms of lost revenue and the costs incurred in terms of manpower required to mitigate attacks. Not all DDoS attacks will cost an organisation $50,000, but having your website taken offline can damage customer trust and confidence. It will also impact the ability of sales teams to acquire new customers in increasingly competitive markets. These attacks cause lasting damage to a company's reputation and could have negative consequences for customer loyalty, churn and corporate profits." The research also highlights the growing complexity of DDoS attacks, and their capacity to act as a distraction for more serious network incursions. The great majority of those surveyed (85%) believe that DDoS attacks are used by attackers as a precursor or smokescreen for data breach activity. In addition, 71% reported that their organisation has experienced a ransom-driven DDoS attack. Ashley Stephenson continues: "A DDoS attack can often be a sign that an organisation's data is also being targeted by cyber criminals. As demonstrated by the infamous Carphone Warehouse attack, DDoS attacks can be used as a smokescreen for non-DDoS hacking attempts on the network. Hackers will gladly take advantage of distracted IT teams and degraded network security defences to exploit other vulnerabilities for financial gain. Considering the huge liability that organisations can face in the event of a data breach, IT teams must be proactive in defending against the DDoS threat, and monitor closely for malicious activity on their networks." Participants also viewed DDoS attacks as more of a concern in 2018 than in the past. The clear majority (83%) cited the proliferation of unsecured Internet of Things (IoT) devices as the top reason for this concern, closely followed by the association between DDoS and data breach activity. DDoS attacks are also becoming more complex to mitigate, with more than 15 employees typically involved in diffusing the threat when an attack strikes, according to two-thirds of respondents (66%). Ashley Stephenson continues: "In recent months we've witnessed new records set for the size of DDoS attacks, as criminals exploited the Memcached amplification attack vector to headline grabbing effect. This has written a new chapter in the DDoS record books and made Terabit-scale attacks a reality. The Memcached vulnerability also exposed additional breach and data corruption risks, as attackers can also exploit these poorly secured servers to steal or temporarily modify customer data." Editors' Note The Corero research surveyed a total of 327 security professionals worldwide from a range of industries including financial services, cloud, government, online gaming and media sectors. The research was conducted online between January and March 2018. About Corero Network Security Corero Network Security is the leader in real-time, high-performance DDoS defense solutions. Service providers, hosting providers and digital enterprises rely on Corero's award winning technology to eliminate the DDoS threat to their environment through automatic attack detection and mitigation, coupled with complete network visibility, analytics and reporting. This industry leading technology provides cost effective, scalable protection capabilities against DDoS attacks in the most complex environments while enabling a more cost effective economic model than previously available. For more information, visit www.corero.com. View source version on businesswire.com: https://www.businesswire.com/news/home/20180417005097/en/ Contacts: Corero Network Security US: Jan Wiedrick-Kozlowski, 585-474-6466 or Maureen MacGregor, 978-473-1016 jan@eskenzipr.com / Maureen@eskenzipr.com UK: Eskenzi PR (for Corero) Julia Langsman, 020 7183 2838 julia@eskenzipr.com Commenting on the markets, Evy Hambro and Olivia Markham, representing the Investment Manager noted: Performance The Company's NAV decreased by 5.1% in March, outperforming its benchmark, the Euromoney Global Mining Index, which decreased by 5.4%. At a macroeconomic level, the US reported a large increase in monthly jobs growth and the US Federal Reserve raised rates as expected and signalled two further increases for 2018. The US Administration announced personnel changes that were perceived as increasing market risk, due to the high levels of turnover in the Administration. President Trump replaced Rex Tillerson with Mike Pompeo as Secretary of State, and John Bolton was appointed as National Security Advisor. The US announced proposals for further tariffs that targeted Chinese exports and China responded with proposed tariffs on US goods. Whilst the outlook for global economic growth remains positive, these events created significant market volatility and the mining sector came under pressure as the broader stock market fell over the month, with the global MSCI World Index falling by 2.2% and giving back some of the strong gains of 2017. Within the mining sector, bulk commodity prices fell, with coking coal prices down approximately 17% and iron ore down 19% over the month. Chinese steel inventories have built more than expected over the winter shutdown period, although we are now seeing these draw down. Headline demand for steel appears to have reduced, seen through falling steel margins and softness in Chinese house prices. Base metal prices also weakened and the copper price fell by 3%. Within precious metals, gold rose 0.3% and silver fell by 0.7% as both displayed resilience and outperformed other metals. Elsewhere in sector news, during the month, Oz Minerals announced a take-over offer for all the shares of Avanco. This valued Avanco Resources at a total of A$418million on the 26 March 2018, representing approximately 16% of Oz Minerals market capitalisation. Strategy and Outlook Despite recent market volatility, we remain positive on the outlook for global economic growth. After two strong years, investors that have not been exposed to mining may now be questioning if they have missed the opportunity. We are, however, still a long way below the peak in 2011 and the sector continues to trade at a valuation discount to broader equity markets. Meanwhile, the miners are trading on very attractive cash flow multiples with Glencore, BHP Billiton and Rio Tinto all currently trading at forward free cash flow yields of around 10%, for example. For the mined commodities, in most cases, we believe they look reasonably fairly priced and so our base case is that they remain relatively range-bound at current levels which sees healthy profitability for the sector. Crucially, however, mining equities are still pricing in commodity prices well below current spot prices and, as such, we are constructive on the shares but neutral the commodities themselves. Many still distrust the miners, expecting them to make the same mistakes of the past in terms of poor capital discipline. Our view though is that the pain of the recent down-cycle is still too fresh in the minds of management teams for this to become a widespread issue in the near-term. We have begun to see moderate increases in sustaining capex announced but we believe for the most part these have been necessary increases rather than indicative of a widespread return to poor capital discipline. All data points are in US dollar terms unless stated otherwise. 17 April 2018 ENDS MOUNTAIN VIEW, California, April 17, 2018 /PRNewswire/ -- Intermedia, a leading cloud communications and collaboration provider to SMBs and the partners that serve them, today announced that Gerhard Bette, Senior Partner Emeritus at global consulting firm McKinsey & Company, has been appointed to Intermedia's Board. For more than 28 years, Bette worked with leading global institutions. His particular focus was on building and advising senior teams within technology-based companies, covering the telecom, IT and healthcare industries. Bette was a co-founder of McKinsey's global telecommunication, media and technology practice and led the telecommunication group for its North American region. "We are very fortunate to have Gerhard join our Board," said Michael Gold, CEO of Intermedia. "His breadth of telecom expertise, and work with fast-growing, private equity-funded organizations, will be extremely valuable to Intermedia as we continue to deliver and invest in the UCaaS products that businesses need tobe more collaborative and productive." Since his retirement from McKinsey's Chicago office at the end of 2010, Bette has been an active advisor to several private equity and alternative investment firms on due diligence, portfolio company management and business building topics. He is a member of Madison Dearborn Partners' Telecom Media and Technology Roundtable. Bette has served and continues to serve on the boards of several private equity portfolio companies for Madison Dearborn Partners (Intermedia's lead investor) and other private equity firms. For more than a decade, Bette has also been an Adjunct Lecturer at the Department of Management and Organization at the Kellogg School of Management of Northwestern University where he has taught classes on professional service firms, problem solving and business building. Bette holds an MBA from the Harvard Business School and a Doctorate in Mathematics from the University of Duisburg, Germany. He also studied Mathematics at the Universite Pierre et Marie Curie, Paris with post-graduate scholarships from the French and German governments. "Intermedia has made a significant impact on the Unified Communication as a Service space in a relatively short period of time," said Bette. "I'm pleased to be joining their Board as Intermedia further transforms the business communication and collaboration experience, with an emphasis on greater productivity, reliability, security, and ease-of-use." This appointment increases the size of the Board to six members. Other Board members include Michael Gold, CEO; Zaid Alsikafi, James Perry Jr. and Brendan Barrett of Madison Dearborn Partners; and Phil Koen, special advisor to Intermedia and the company's former CEO and Chairman. About Intermedia Intermedia is a Unified Communications as a Service (UCaaS) and business cloud email provider hyper-focused on delivering easy-to-use and secure communication and collaboration solutions to SMBs and the partners that serve them. More than 110,000 business customers and 6,500 active partners rely on Intermedia for greater reliability and productivity. Intermedia's broad yet tightly integrated suite of cloud applications is managed through one intuitive point of control, and Intermedia services are backed by a 99.999% uptime service level agreement (SLA). Offerings include cloud voice, web/video/content sharing and conferencing, chat, presence, file backup, sync and share, business email, identity and access management, security, archiving, and more. Intermedia's 360 approach to partner success makes it easy for channel partners to sell, set up, manage, and support the cloud while achieving strong margins and creating attractive new revenue streams through both branded and private label programs. Intermedia is the only business cloud application provider to have twice been certified by J.D. Power for its superior 24/7 technical support in 2016 and 2017. For more information, visit Our Website, or connect with us on LinkedIn, Twitter,or Facebook. Contacts Melanie Lombardi Intermedia 650.285.5857 PR@intermedia.net Katie Halloran LEWIS for Intermedia 619.308.5222 IntermediaUS@teamlewis.com Logo - https://mma.prnewswire.com/media/605446/intermedia_Logo.jpg Metro Manila (CNN Philippines, April 17) The Department of Environment and Natural Resources (DENR) has asked 14 establishments to voluntarily remove structures on easement zones along beaches of Puerto Galera in Oriental Mindoro. Vicente Tuddao, Assistant Regional Director of DENR MIMAROPA (Mindoro, Marinduque, Romblon, Palawan) and chair of Task Force Galera, personally served the notices to vacate last Friday. The establishments were given 30 days to comply. "We hope they will be responsible enough to remove the structures they have built on easement zones within that period. The sooner we can start the rehabilitation of Sabang and White Beach, the better," Tuddao said. The establishments were Tina's Sunset Cottages, Restaurant & Dive Center, Ocean Dream Lodge, Paradise Dive Zone Resort, Corp., Pink & Black Lodging House, Montani Beach Resort, Sabang Inn, Sabang Divers, Mangosteen Restaurant , Dive Dojo, Mermaid Resort Charletan, Inc., Modem Development Company Inc., Captn Gregg, Eddie's Place Bar & Restaurant, Marginor Diner & Snack, and I Dive at Casa Mia. They were situated at the three-meter easement zones along Sabang and White Beach in Puerto Galera. The town is known for its beaches and leisure activities, such as scuba diving and snorkeling. "The absence of proper wastewater disposal facility, aggravated by overcrowding of structures along the beaches, is seen as a major source of coliform contamination of Sabang and White Beach. Water quality tests in five sampling stations in Puerto Galera from 2009 to 2017 show high fecal coliform levels," the DENR said in a statement. It added Task Force Galera also inspected establishments for compliance to regulations, such as securing discharge permit, environmental compliance certificate, permit to operate, hazardous waste registration, compliance to solid waste segregation, and having a Pollution Control Officer. DENR MIMAROPA Regional Director Natividad Bernardino said notices of violations shall also be served in the coming days to establishments found violating environmental rules. Bernardino added that DENR is trying to rehabilitate Puerto Galera not only for tourism, but also for scientific researches. This comes amid the rehabilitation of Boracay island. Tourism Assistant Secretary Ricky Alegre had earlier said the government will focus next on the conditions of other destinations in its bid to address environmental concerns. "Puerto Galera is going to be visited next by the inter-agency task force. We have received reports of the conditions there, and we want again to help rehabilitate," Alegre said. Alegre added they will also look into El Nido and Coron in Palawan, Siargao island in Surigao del Norte, and Bohol. SAN FRANCISCO, April 17, 2018 /PRNewswire/ -- Digital economy skills training provider Simplilearn today announced that the company has been awarded a General Service Administration (GSA) contract for online training, to offer a range of professional certification courses to employees of federal agencies. (Logo: http://mma.prnewswire.com/media/535442/Simplilearn_Logo.jpg ) Granted the GSA IT 70 Schedule contract for a period of five years, Simplilearn now offers U.S. federal, state and local government agencies and employees the opportunity to purchase courses for workforce training at a significant discount. Simplilearn's GSA schedule contract includes workforce training programs in digital technologies such as Big Data and Analytics, Data Science, Artificial Intelligence (AI) and Machine Learning, Project Management, Digital Marketing, Cyber Security, Cloud Computing, DevOps, Agile and Scrum, IT Service and Architecture, Salesforce["], Software Development and Quality Management. "This GSA contract enables Simplilearn to help federal employees acquire skills in digital disciplines that can ultimately improve the capabilities and efficiency of government agencies.", said Krishna Kumar, Founder & CEO, Simplilearn. "It is our honor to simplify the process of up-skilling federal, state and local government employees with the training they need to keep pace with advanced and emerging technologies such as AI, Big Data and Cloud Computing." All of Simplilearn's courses are regularly updated by industry experts and are aligned to leading certification organizations. The content is available through a blend of online self-paced courses and instructor-led live virtual classroom training. Both agencies and government employees with the GSA SmartPay card can enjoy the benefits of Simplilearn courses at GSA-approved pricing directly through the GSA Advantage!self-purchasing portal or even GSA's eBuy electronic request for quote (RFQ) system. GSA IT Schedule 70 is one of the largest government contract vehicles used by federal, state and local agencies to purchase technology products and services. The GSA Schedule simplifies the federal contracting process because terms and pricing are negotiated up front, enabling government employees to access products or services easily, shortening procurement cycles and saving costs without having to handle complex, individual contracting issues. Simplilearn has been serving veterans and government agencies already by providing training programs in partnership with esteemed associations such as the The U.S. Chamber of Commerce Foundation's Hiring Our Heroes Corporate Fellowship Program, the National Military Family Association (NMFA), VETTED, and the Simplilearn Scholarship for Veterans. For more information, visit https://www.simplilearn.com/gsa-advantage-training-courses-for-government-employees . About Simplilearn Simplilearn enables professionals and enterprises to succeed in the fast-changing digital economy. The company provides outcome based online training across digital technologies and applications such as Big Data, Machine Learning, AI, Cloud Computing, Cyber Security, Digital Marketing and other emerging technologies. Based in San Francisco, CA, Raleigh, NC and Bangalore, India; Simplilearn has helped more than 500,000 professionals and 1000+ companies across 150+ countries get trained, acquire certifications and reach their business and career goals. The company's high-engagement curriculum blends self-paced online learning, instructor-led live virtual classrooms, hands-on projects, student collaboration, and 24/7 global teaching assistants. Simplilearn is recognized by Training Industry as a Top 20 IT Training Company for 2017. For more information, visit https://www.simplilearn.com/ Media Contact Logan Halliwell Academic Partnerships & Military Program Manager +1-415-604-3106 lhalliwell@simplilearn.net CenturyLink tracked 104 million unique botnet targets per day in 2017 MONROE, Louisiana, April 17, 2018 /PRNewswire/ --Businesses, governments and consumers should pay more attention to the risk posed by botnets, according to a new threat report released by CenturyLink, Inc. (NYSE: CTL). Experience the interactive Multichannel News Release here: https://www.multivu.com/players/English/8085056-centurylink-2018-threat-report/ In 2017, CenturyLink Threat Research Labs tracked an average of 195,000 threats per day impacting, on average, 104 million unique targets - from servers and computers to handheld or other internet-connected devices - due to the work of botnets. "Botnets are one of the foundational tools bad actors rely on to steal sensitive data and launch DDoS attacks," said Mike Benjamin, head of CenturyLink's Threat Research Labs. "By analyzing global botnet attack trends and methods, we're better able to anticipate and respond to emerging threats in defense of our own network and those of our customers." Read the CenturyLink 2018 Threat Report: http://lookbook.centurylink.com/threat-report. Key Observations Geographies with strong or rapidly growing IT networks and infrastructure continue to be the primary source for cybercriminal activity. The top five European countries by volume of global malicious internet traffic in 2017 were Russia , Ukraine , Germany , the Netherlands and France . , , , and . The top five European countries hosting the most command and control servers (C2s), which amass and direct botnets, were Russia , Ukraine , Germany , the Netherlands and France . , , , and . While countries and regions with robust communication infrastructure unknowingly supplied bandwidth for IoT DDoS attacks, they also represented some of the largest victims based on attack command volume. The top five target countries of bot attack traffic were the United States , China , Germany , Russia and the United Kingdom . , , , and the . The top five European countries by volume of compromised hosts or bots were the United Kingdom , Germany , Russia , France and Italy . , , , and . Mirai and its variants have been the focus of consistent news coverage, but in 2017, CenturyLink Threat Research Labs witnessed Gafgyt attacks affecting more victims and with noticeably longer attack durations. Key Facts CenturyLink collects 114 billion NetFlow records each day, capturing over 1.3 billion security events daily and monitoring 5,000 known C2 servers on an ongoing basis. CenturyLink responds to and mitigates roughly 120 DDoS attacks per day and removes nearly 40 C2 networks per month. The scope and depth of CenturyLink's threat awareness is derived from its global IP backbone, one of the world's largest. This critical infrastructure supports CenturyLink's global operations and informs its comprehensive suite of security solutions, including threat detection, secure log monitoring, DDoS mitigation and network-based security solutions. Additional Resources Hear Mike Benjamin's key takeaways from the CenturyLink 2018 Threat Report: https://youtu.be/3U1aIJqejjs key takeaways from the CenturyLink 2018 Threat Report: https://youtu.be/3U1aIJqejjs Learn how CenturyLink takes cyber intelligence to the next level with expanded view of threatscape: http://news.centurylink.com/2018-04-03-CenturyLink-takes-cyber-intelligence-to-the-next-level-with-expanded-view-of-threatscape Explore IDC's report: Securing the Connected Enterprise Using Network-Based Security: http://idcdocserv.com/US43638618 About CenturyLink CenturyLink (NYSE: CTL) is the second largest U.S. communications provider to global enterprise customers. With customers in more than 60 countries and an intense focus on the customer experience, CenturyLink strives to be the world's best networking company by solving customers' increased demand for reliable and secure connections. The company also serves as its customers' trusted partner, helping them manage increased network and IT complexity and providing managed network and cyber security solutions that help protect their business. Media Contact: Stephanie Walkenshaw +1 720-888-3084 stephanie.walkenshaw@centurylink.com Logo - http://mma.prnewswire.com/media/325657/centurylink_logo.jpg Inhibition of CD44v6 Prevents Crucial Transformation of Cells Leading to Formation of Metastasis amcure, a biopharmaceutical company developing first-in-class cancer therapeutics, today published pre-clinical results of its lead drug candidate, AMC303. The data showed the strong anti-tumor and anti-metastatic effects in various epithelial tumor cells by binding of AMC303 to the extracellular domain of CD44v6. The research was presented at the American Association for Cancer Research (AACR) Annual Meeting 2018 in a poster entitled 'The allosteric inhibitor of CD44v6 AMC303 blocks c-MET, Ron and VEGFR-2 dependent signaling and cellular processes'. "The results presented in this study emphasize the importance of CD44v6 inhibition in cancer and the potential of this approach to improve the chances against this disease," said Klaus Dembowsky, MD, PhD, CEO of amcure. "Not only did we show strong anti-cancer effects for AMC303, but we gained new mechanistic insights into the role of AMC303 in inhibition of one of the key drivers of metastasis, Epithelial-Mesenchymal-Transition (EMT). We look forward to substantiating the strong preclinical data sets for AMC303 with results from our current and future clinical trials." The CD44 family of transmembrane glycoproteins comprises several variants that are involved in many cellular processes. The isoform CD44v6 has been shown to play a major role in tumor growth and metastasis. In this study, the amcure research team has shown that blocking CD44v6, an essential co-receptor for the receptor tyrosine kinases VEGFR-2, c-MET and RON by AMC303, interferes with several key steps in tumor progression and metastasis including EMT, cell migration and invasion. This novel mode of action results in strong anti-tumor and anti-metastatic effects of AMC303. About AMC303 amcure's lead compound, AMC303, is being developed as a potential treatment for patients with advanced and metastatic epithelial tumors, e.g. pancreatic cancer, head and neck cancer, gastric cancer, colorectal cancer, breast cancer and lung cancer. AMC303 has a high specificity for inhibiting CD44v6, a co-receptor required for signaling through multiple cellular pathways (c-Met, VEGFR-2, RON) involved in tumor growth, angiogenesis and the development and regression of metastases. AMC303 has demonstrated strong effects in various in vitro and in vivo assays. About amcure amcure GmbH is a spin-off from the Karlsruhe Institute of Technology established in 2012. The company develops peptide-based compounds for the treatment of highly metastatic forms of cancer. amcure's most advanced development candidate, AMC303, has entered clinical development and has demonstrated in in vivo animal proof-of-concept studies a high efficacy against different types of epithelial cancers. amcure is supported by a grant from the German Federal Ministry of Education and Research. View source version on businesswire.com: https://www.businesswire.com/news/home/20180417005819/en/ Contacts: amcure GmbH Dr. Klaus Dembowsky Phone: +49 (0) 7247 934249-4 or +49 (0) 171 7930077 Fax: +49 (0) 7247 934249-9 E-Mail: info@amcure.com Internet: https://www.amcure.com/ or Media requests: MacDougall Biomedical Communications Mario Brkulj or Shai Biran Phone: +49 89 2420 9345 or +1 781-235-3060 E-Mail: amcure@macbicom.com STEM-based Volunteer Work helps Drive Sustainable Innovation for the Real-World Throughout the US, Wolters Kluwer employees volunteer hundreds of hours each year to support a variety of charities. As a global company focused on delivering deep impact to clients and society, Wolters Kluwer Tax Accounting is proud of its employees and their volunteerism. Below are some highlights of STEM (science, technology, engineering, mathematics)-based Wolters Kluwer Tax Accounting employee volunteer work. Mentoring College Students : Anthony Bonta delivered a TechTalk to students on the importance of a testing culture during HackUTD, which Wolters Kluwer has sponsored since 2015 providing mentorship during the 24-hour University of Texas coding competition : Anthony Bonta delivered a TechTalk to students on the importance of a testing culture during HackUTD, which Wolters Kluwer has sponsored since 2015 providing mentorship during the 24-hour University of Texas coding competition Encouraging Girls to Pursue STEM Careers : Inspired by his two daughters, Bernie Hirsch works to coordinate local events between the Girls of Technology (@GirlsofTech) high school club and Wolters Kluwer STEM professionals to promote its many career paths : Inspired by his two daughters, Bernie Hirsch works to coordinate local events between the Girls of Technology (@GirlsofTech) high school club and Wolters Kluwer STEM professionals to promote its many career paths Motivating High School Students: Employees in Wichita brought software development and coding learning sessions to local high schools in 2017 to motivate students to think about STEM Employees in Wichita brought software development and coding learning sessions to local high schools in 2017 to motivate students to think about STEM Teaching Kids to Code : Since 2016, Sriniasu Maradana has partnered with STEMPACT2020 to coordinate employee volunteers to teach children to write code at local community events like the Society of Women Engineers Expo : Since 2016, Sriniasu Maradana has partnered with STEMPACT2020 to coordinate employee volunteers to teach children to write code at local community events like the Society of Women Engineers Expo Showing Pride in our Work: As part of the 2017 Bring Your Daughters and Sons to Work Day, Tampa-based employees and their children participate in a group stomp rocket STEM activity to encourage innovative thinking "Employee volunteerism is one way that companies can contribute to society at large, which is an important value pillar for Wolters Kluwer," said Jason Marx, CEO Wolters Kluwer Tax Accounting, North America. "It is inspiring to witness the generous spirit our employees exhibit, every day. Their acts are a true display of community leadership, which makes me proud to be a part of this team." National Volunteer Week is an opportunity for Wolters Kluwer Tax Accounting to recognize its US employees, as well as those around the world. In Spain, employees have participated in Trailwalker raising funds to improve access to drinking water for people around the world, and in Australia teams organized a 'Selfie For Wishes' initiative that benefited Make-A-Wish. Employee volunteerism extends throughout our global offices and beyond STEM-based causes. About Wolters Kluwer Wolters Kluwer is a global leader in professional information, software solutions, and services for the health, tax accounting, finance, risk & compliance, 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 2017 annual revenues of 4.4 billion. The group serves customers in over 180 countries, maintains operations in over 40 countries, and employs approximately 19,000 people worldwide. The company is headquartered in Alphen aan den Rijn, the Netherlands. Wolters Kluwer shares are listed on Euronext Amsterdam (WKL) and are included in the AEX and Euronext 100 indices. Wolters Kluwer has a sponsored Level 1 American Depositary Receipt (ADR) program. The ADRs are traded on the over-the-counter market in the U.S. (WTKWY). For more information about our solutions and organization, visit www.wolterskluwer.com, follow us on Twitter, Facebook, LinkedIn, and YouTube. View source version on businesswire.com: https://www.businesswire.com/news/home/20180417005671/en/ Contacts: Wolters Kluwer Tax Accounting NICOLE YOUNG 347-931-1055 N.Young@wolterskluwer.com WASHINGTON (dpa-AFX) - USG Corp. (USG) announced the company will host its 10th Annual Diversity & Inclusion Champions Recognition Ceremony on April 17 to celebrate employees and select partners and customers who go above and beyond to be inclusive in the workplace. The company said, to affirm its focus on diversity & inclusion growth, Ms. Scanlon signed the CEO Action for Diversity & Inclusion pledge - the largest CEO-driven business commitment to advance diversity & inclusion in the workforce. USG said it has identified initiatives across the business, which will help accelerate the company's ongoing commitment to promoting workplace diversity. 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, April 17, 2018 /PRNewswire/ -- MYM Nutraceuticals Inc., (OTC:MYMMF) (CSE: MYM) (CSE: MYM.CN) (MYM.CN) (the "Company" or "MYM") is pleased to announce the launch of its Cannabis Awareness Campaign - "It all unfolds this summer", focusing on topics surrounding the impending legalization of recreational cannabis. The campaign will run for six months from April 1 to October 1, 2018, beginning in the province of Quebec followed by locations across Canada. The campaign will use billboard advertising with an accompanying online campaign both directing users to the website http://www.cannafacts.ca. The website will aim to create a dialogue on the impending legalization of recreational cannabis slated to occur this summer. Topics include: job creation, economic concerns, health risks, and production quality. The website will encourage users to participate in a nationwide discussion on issues surrounding the legalization of recreational cannabis that matter to them. "Canadians have a lot of questions regarding the impending legalization of recreational cannabis. There is a lot of confusion about how legalization will impact our families and our communities. Our goal is to create a forum for the country to discuss issues that matter to them, to help clear the air surrounding legalization", said Rob Gietl, CEO of MYM. "The cannafacts.ca website will encourage users to ask questions and express their concerns. Based on this feedback, MYM will create a newsletter that will continue the conversation using fact-based discussion and expert opinion". MYM engaged Vancouver based Signals - an award winning creative studio that develops creative and campaigns for local, national, and international clients. About MYM Nutraceuticals Inc. MYM Nutraceuticals Inc. is an innovative company focused on acquiring Health Canada licenses to produce and sell high-end organic medicinal cannabis supplements and topical products. MYM has two production projects in Quebec that when completed will have over 1.5 million sf of production space. MYM is also a partner in a 1.2 million sf production project (Northern Rivers Project) in New South Wales, Australia. Australia is an exciting new market that has recently legalized medicinal cannabis. To ensure a strong presence and growth potential within the industry, MYM is actively looking to acquire complementary businesses and assets in the technology, nutraceuticals and CBD sectors. MYM shares trade in Canada, Germany and the USA under the following symbols: (CSE: MYM) (OTC:MYMMF) (FRA:0MY) (DEU:0MY) (MUN:0MY) (STU:0MY). http://www.mymarijuana.ca/snapshot-lp-0415-a/ ON BEHALF OF THE BOARD Rob Gietl, CEO MYM Nutraceuticals Inc. http://www.mymarijuana.ca Investor Relations Terry Brown +1-855-696-2261 terry@mymarijuana.ca Keep up to date with MYM on our social media channels: Twitter: @MYM_Nutra Facebook: @mymcanada Instagram: @MYM_Nutra This news release may contain forward-looking statements based on assumptions and judgments of management regarding future events or results. Such statements are subject to a variety of risks and uncertainties which could cause actual events or results to differ materially from those reflected in the forward-looking statements. The company disclaims any intention or obligation to revise or update such statements. For a description of the risks and uncertainties facing the Company and its business and affairs, readers should refer to the Company's Management's Discussion and Analysis and other disclosure filings with Canadian securities regulators, which are posted on http://www.sedar.com. This news release does not constitute an offer to sell or solicitation of an offer to buy any of the securities described herein and accordingly undue reliance should not be put on such. Neither the Canadian Securities Exchange (CSE or CNSX Markets), nor its Regulation Services Provider (as that term is defined in policies of the CSE), accepts responsibility for the adequacy or accuracy of this release. This news release does not constitute an offer to sell or a solicitation of an offer to buy any of the securities described herein in the United States. The securities described herein have not been registered under the United States Securities Act of 1933, as amended (the "U.S. Securities Act"), or any state securities law and may not be offered or sold in the "United States", as such term is defined in Regulation S promulgated under the U.S. Securities Act, unless registered under the U.S. Securities Act and applicable state securities laws or an exemption from such registration requirements is available. Investor Relations Terry Brown +1-855-696-2261 terry@mymarijuana.ca Recent News Regarding Unprecedented Political Support from President Trump Seen as a Significant Advancement DENVER, CO / ACCESSWIRE / April 17, 2018 / AmeriCann, Inc. (OTCQB: ACAN), an Agricultural-Technology company that is developing the next generation of sustainable, state-of-the-art cannabis cultivation properties, commented on the recent news of new political support for cannabis from President Donald Trump. According to Senator Cory Gardner (R-CO) President Trump provided him with a commitment to protect states' rights with respect to cannabis policies as well as assurances that the President would back a permanent legislative solution. "Since the campaign, President Trump has consistently supported states' rights to decide for themselves how best to approach marijuana," said Gardner. "Late Wednesday, I received a commitment from the President that the Department of Justice's rescission of the Cole memo will not impact Colorado's legal marijuana industry. Furthermore, President Trump has assured me that he will support a federalism-based legislative solution to fix this states' rights issue once and for all." White House legislative affairs director Marc Short confirmed Senator Gardner's reports on Friday. "We are encouraged by these assurances from President Trump and the bipartisan efforts of Senator Gardner and others," stated AmeriCann President and CEO Tim Keogh. "We have believed that it is not a question of if, but when the prohibition of marijuana would be repealed at the federal level. The multi-billion dollar cannabis industry is poised to expand significantly should federal obstacles be removed." National support for cannabis has reached record levels. Examples of this includes the following: A Gallup poll released in October showed that 64% of Americans support making marijuana legal for adults. This was also the first time in this annual poll that a majority of Republicans polled supported legalization. A CBS News poll released in April 2017 showed that 71% do not think the federal government should interfere in state marijuana laws. Twenty-nine states, the District of Columbia, and the U.S. territories of Guam and Puerto Rico have enacted effective medical marijuana laws. Marijuana is legal and regulated for adults in eight states. More than 20 states are expected to consider bills to regulate marijuana this year. AmeriCann is developing the Massachusetts Medical Cannabis Center (MMCC), a state-of-the-art cannabis cultivation and processing development in the midst of the rapidly growing Massachusetts medical cannabis market. The MMCC project is approved for 1 million square feet, which will be developed in phases and is expected to be one of the most technologically advanced cultivation facilities in the nation. About AmeriCann AmeriCann (OTCQX: ACAN) is a publicly traded Agricultural Technology (Ag-Tech) company that is developing a new generation of sustainable, state-of-the-art medical cannabis cultivation and processing properties. AmeriCann, Inc. is a Certified B Corp, an acknowledgment of the company's commitment to social and environmental ethics, transparency and accountability. AmeriCann became the first public cannabis company to earn this respected accreditation. More information about the Company is available at: www.americann.co , or follow AmeriCann on Twitter@ACANinfo. About Massachusetts Medical Cannabis Center (MMCC) The Massachusetts Medical Cannabis Center is approved for nearly 1,000,000 square feet of medical cannabis cultivation and processing in Freetown, Massachusetts. The state-of-the-art, sustainable, greenhouse project will consist of multiple planned phases for tenants in the Massachusetts medical marijuana market. Voters in Massachusetts approved legalizing the adult use of recreational marijuana in November of 2016. The state is on track to open the first cannabis storefronts for Adult-Use by July 1, 2018, making Massachusetts the first state in the Northeast to legalize cannabis. AmeriCann's Cannopy System uniquely combines expertise from traditional horticulture, lean manufacturing, regulatory compliance and cannabis cultivation to create superior facilities and procedures. The company is planning to replicate the Canopy platform in additional states. The first phase of the project consists of 30,000 sq. ft. of cultivation and processing infrastructure. AmeriCann can expand the first phase to approximately 600,000 sq. ft., based on patient demand. About Solanna AmeriCann has developed and owns "Solanna", a new comprehensive line of nutraceutical-grade cannabis infused products. AmeriCann has created the brand, packaging concepts and invested significantly in Standard Operating Procedures and Good Manufacturing Practices to ensure safety, consistency and efficacy across the product offering. The intellectual property for Solanna will be licensed by AmeriCann to regulated cannabis businesses and will initially focus on providing healthier alternatives to smoking that include: Capsules Topical lotions and balms Sublingual tinctures Oral dissolving film Trans-dermal applications The Company plans to expand the product line to include edible products, health drinks, and branded concentrates. The products are designed to allow consumers to manage dosage through micro-dosing and to improve efficacy by incorporating blends of other plants, essential oils and other supplements that enhance and compliment the benefits of cannabis. The Solanna line of products will be offered exclusively through AmeriCann's Preferred Partners. Forward-Looking Statements This press 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 (the "Exchange Act") (which Sections were adopted as part of the Private Securities Litigation Reform Act of 1995). Statements preceded by, followed by or that otherwise include the words "believe," "anticipate," "estimate," "expect," "intend," "plan," "project," "prospects," "outlook," and similar words or expressions, or future or conditional verbs such as "will," "should," "would," "may," and "could" are generally forward-looking in nature and not historical facts. These forward-looking statements involve known and unknown risks, uncertainties and other factors which may cause the Company's actual results, performance or achievements to be materially different from any anticipated results, performance or achievements. The Company disclaims any intention to, and undertakes no obligation to, revise any forward-looking statements, whether as a result of new information, a future event, or otherwise. For additional uncertainties that could impact the Company's forward-looking statements, please see the Company's recently filed Registration Statement on Form S-1, which the Company has filed with the SEC and which may be viewed at www.sec.gov. Contact Information: Corporate: AmeriCann, Inc. 3200 Brighton Blvd. Unit 114 Denver, CO 80216 (303) 862-9000 info@americann.co www.americann.co @ACANinfo on Twitter Investors: Hayden IR hart@haydenir.com (917) 658-7878 SOURCE: AmeriCann, Inc. NEW YORK, April 17, 2018 /PRNewswire/ -- NetworkNewsWire Editorial Coverage A January report from Zion Market Research projects the global lithium-ion battery market, worth around $31 billion in 2016 and dominated by Asia-Pacific producers such as China, is on track to grow at a CAGR of 13.7 percent through 2022, ballooning to over $67.6 billion (http://nnw.fm/9gEz3). Australia, Chile, Argentina and China are responsible for the lion's share of global lithium production (around 93 percent) - about half of which is currently consumed by battery production. Prices per ton for the two main types of lithium (hydroxide and carbonate) have jumped from around $6,500 in 2015 to recent highs of more than $20,000. UBS Securities also recently projected that lithium demand will continue to stay high through 2024 (http://nnw.fm/GCfv9), citing primary drivers such as the burgeoning EV (electric vehicle) market, which is projected to grow at a whopping 28.3 percent through 2026 (http://nnw.fm/T80kH). All of this is extremely bullish news for lithium producers, whether we are talking relatively small up-and-comers such as British Columbia-based QMC Quantum Minerals Corp. (TSX-V: QMC) (FSE: 3LQ) (OTC: QMCQF) (QMC profile) and Nemaska Lithium, Inc. (TSX: NMX) (OTC: NMKEF), or sector heavyweights such as Chile's Sociedad Quimica y Minera de Chile S.A. (NYSE: SQM), Albemarle Corporation(NYSE: ALB) and FMC Corporation (NYSE: FMC). Cleaner Cars Require Much More Lithium Bloomberg New Energy Finance analysis of the EV market shows production will increase more than thirtyfold by 2030 and relays Deutsche Bank estimates that there are enough lithium reserves in the ground to last us another 185 years (http://nnw.fm/rm7qC). With developments on the horizon such as lithium-ion batteries that could store a third more energy using a lithium metal electrode instead of graphite, the race to develop lithium resources is officially on for a world increasingly concerned about the cleanliness of the energy it consumes. Recent flap from Morgan Stanley about a potential oversupply of lithium fails to accurately account for both the insatiable demand and the rate of supply throughput to end markets (http://nnw.fm/alG3C). SQM cited a 17 percent jump last year in demand and estimated a 20 percent uptick this year in its annual report. More importantly, not all lithium projects with a suitable grade are necessarily economical, and an oversupply of mined product is not the same thing as having an abundance of high-quality processed lithium that is ready to be used in batteries. Producers that can systematically increase output are in a prime position to make the most of this historic opportunity, especially as increasingly cheap-to-produce batteries eat up more and more of the market, eventually representing some 90 percent of all lithium consumption by the mid 2020s. That trend has put internal combustion engine vehicles on notice, with estimates that by 2022 EVs will actually become cheaper than gas guzzlers (http://nnw.fm/v8Ndw) and even outsell them by 2040 (http://nnw.fm/hfYA2). Unprecedented Lithium Demand Drives Expansion Underlying demand fundamentals are an important factor for QMC Quantum Minerals Corp. (TSX-V: QMC) (FSE: 3LQ) (OTC: QMCQF) which recently expanded its 100 percent-owned Irgon Lithium Mine Project in Manitoba by nearly fourfold to some 6,538 acres in the heart of this mining-friendly province (http://nnw.fm/otSf2). Manitoba is currently well on its way to becoming Canada's most improved province and was ranked the second most attractive global jurisdiction for mining investment in 2016 by Fraser Institute (http://nnw.fm/qfQz4). The Irgon Lithium Mine Project site benefits from superb access and the well-developed mining infrastructure that Manitoba has to offer. Quantum Minerals subsequently followed up on its channel sampling program of late last year (http://nnw.fm/yU7Gb) and the considerable acreage expansion at Irgon with some impressive exploration finds. These finds included a number of newly identified pegmatite dikes that kicked up some tantalizing trends via initial field evaluation by onsite geological teams, including one trend running approximately 410 feet along strike, with an exposed surface width ranging from 6.5 to 16.4 feet (http://nnw.fm/WHp6y; http://nnw.fm/M5H8w). Subsequent grab sample assay results confirmed that the dikes, located south of the main Irgon dike, do, indeed, bear considerable lithium mineralization, with one return coming back at an impressive 2.6 percent Li2O (lithium oxide). Quantum a Near-Term Producer with 'Good Dirt' Having been cleared by Manitoba's Sustainable Development Office with a drill permit in March, Quantum Minerals may be well-situated for its 2018 field season. Plans are in the offing for a 6,561-foot drilling program designed to validate the historic resource estimate from the 1950s, which showed 1.2 million tons of Li2O at 1.51 percent over 1,198 feet to a depth of 700 feet. The 2018 field program will also test for extension(s) to the main dike below 700 feet. Quantum Minerals will be bucking hard this year to update markets with a thorough, NI 43-101-compliant resource estimate for the project, which historically yielded an 87 percent recovery rate averaging 5.9 percent Li2O concentrate during the historical 1950s-era work program. That same work program also saw installation of a complete 500 tons per day mining plant and the sinking of a 243-foot, three-compartment shaft, including 1,200 feet of lateral extensions from which six crosscuts transected the main dike. Full results of the late 2017 program that yielded 144 channel samples across the width of the main dike comfortably exceed historic estimates. One interval even showed 1.43 percent Li2O over 59 feet, including a sweet spot of 1.73 percent over 46 feet. Numerous grades from 3.05 to 4.31 percent Li2O over 3.28-foot intervals were also reported, and 41.1 percent of pegmatite assays exhibited returned over 1 percent Li2O. There were also significant grades identified of tantalum (310 ppm), niobium (275 ppm), rubidium (2,961 ppm), cesium (567 ppm) and beryllium (325 ppm), further enhancing the Irgon project's overall economics. Big Aces Up Quantum's Sleeve Previous lithogeochemical survey work at Irgon - looking for tantalum and tin that was done on the dikes south of Cat Lake by Tantalum Mining Corporation of Canada ("TANCO") in the late 1970s - has given Quantum Minerals one particularly choice data point to follow up on during the company's 2018 field program. A 3,609-foot anomaly, which is 328 feet wide on the east end and nearly 1,150 feet wide on the west end, was never assayed by TANCO for lithium due to a lack of demand for the metal at that time, even though the exploration report indicated it was a good idea to check it out (http://nnw.fm/Zu94n). This massive anomaly could be a big win for QMC Quantum Minerals, adding considerable value to an already impressive project, and the company looks eager to sink its teeth into what may be a heavily mineralized region. In addition to the extremely promising Irgon Lithium Mine Project, Quantum Minerals has roughly 57,000 acres, known as the Namew Lake District property, up in northwestern Manitoba's world-class Flin Flon/Snow Lake VMS (volcanic massive sulfide) district. A 43-101 report released in 2013 - after the company's 2012 drilling program and VTEM (versatile time domain electromagnetic) survey, which yielded 41 targets - recommended a work and exploration program to further delineate the 100 percent-owned project's properties as an economic mineral resource. This project is proximal to Hudbay's currently producing copper, zinc, gold and silver bearing 777 Mine and is only 6.8 miles southwest of the Namew Lake mine that previously produced 2.57 million tonnes of copper, nickel, gold, silver, palladium and platinum. The Namew Lake District property has the potential to host several distinct VMS bodies and represents a potential ace in the hole for Quantum Minerals that investors should be aware of. Proposed Tariffs Could Be a Boon for North American Producers Recently proposed tariffs on lithium primary cells and batteries from China will most likely not impact the EV supply chain (http://nnw.fm/gT5NM). However, this turn of events will no doubt significantly boost the overall North American lithium market, lighting a fire under companies throughout the industry. Companies that either import or manufacture lithium-ion batteries, such as Johnson Controls, Exide Technologies and A123Systems, will have to start thinking about solutions closer to home. This is good news for North American lithium producers, who already have trouble maintaining production rates that keep up with skyrocketing demand. And while Morgan Stanley recently cited massive Chilean production expansions as potentially driving the price of lithium down 45 percent by 2021, the Trump administration's move toward protectionism could substantially change market conditions, especially for companies such as Tesla, which uses 10,000 times more lithium for one Model S than there is in the average smartphone battery and which is currently in talks with Chile's SQM to secure a steady supply of the white metal. China alone has set massive goals for plug-in hybrids and EVs, with quotas to this end coming online next year and plans to have such green vehicles make up one-fifth of all the country's auto sales by 2025. Top Players Expanding Production Footprints Nemaska Lithium, Inc. (TSX: NMX) (OTCQX: NMKEF) is a good example of a company just north of the border with solid production capability on the table and plans for increased production. A recent feasibility study for Nemaska's development-stage Whabouchi hard-rock lithium deposit in Quebec targets a 20 percent increase in capacity to 16,000 tonnes annually. The hybrid open-pit and underground mine will have a 33-year mine life based on proven and probable reserves of 24 million tonnes at 1.53 percent Li2O. Nemaska President and CEO Guy Bourassa seemed extremely bullish during a January conference call, during which he indicated the production expansion plans were a response to the company's understanding of both the underlying demand fundamentals and extensive discussions with lithium-hungry customers around the globe (http://nnw.fm/b0e0V). Sociedad Quimica y Minera de Chile S.A (NYSE: SQM), a fertilizer giant, a veritable Chilean institution, and one of the world's biggest producers of lithium, recently announced a key agreement with the Chilean Economic Development Agency (Corfo) (http://nnw.fm/UQth3). The agreement ends a yearslong fight over SQM royalties and sets up the company, which is the lowest-cost producer of lithium from Chile's sprawling Salar de Atacama salt flat, to more than double its lithium production by next year (http://nnw.fm/8Exb5). While SQM has said it will gauge further production expansion based on prevailing market conditions - likely due to the company's share price drop after the Morgan Stanley report - 100,000 tonnes is less than half of what the world consumed annually two years ago. Furthermore, lithium demand is projected to grow substantially well into the 2020s, and the company's share price has rebounded nicely since the Morgan Stanley selloff that impacted lithium producers earlier this year, retracing to well above SQM's 52-week median. Albemarle Corporation (NYSE: ALB), a U.S.-based specialty chemicals company, is the world's other top producer of lithium, after the company's acquisition of Rockwood Holdings in 2014. The company amended its lithium production rights agreement with Corfo last year to expand production in Chile to 80,000 metric tons per year. Albemarle subsequently announced the development of a new technology that will allow the company to increase that figure to 125,000 metric tons per year without the need for additional brine pumping at the Salar de Atacama, triggering a new demand to Corfo for an additional lithium quota increase. FMC Corporation (NYSE: FMC) is the third-largest lithium producer behind SQM and ALB. The company announced earlier this year that it will expand production in Argentina over the next few years to more than 40,000 metric tons via a $300 million investment - a deal that further illustrates the current land race taking place among producers to lock in the best production sites around the globe. North and South America Are Development Hotspots North American lithium production represents some of the lowest jurisdictional risk to be found anywhere on earth and typically has well-developed infrastructure and site access. Nevertheless, an increasingly insatiable global demand for the so-called "white petroleum" has sent producers scrambling for acreage in Chile, Argentina and Bolivia, where there is an abundance of salt flat mineralization. Chile even recently announced plans to substantially revise mining codes and make the country even more competitive as an investment target. North or south, the story is the same: Smart producers can read the handwriting on the wall as the trend is to shift away from hydrocarbons toward lithium and other energy sources; these same producers are planting their flags on key acreage and ramping up production volume. For more information about Quantum Minerals, please visit QMC QMC Quantum Minerals Corp. (TSX-V: QMC) (FSE: 3LQ) (OTC: QMCQF) About NetworkNewsWire NetworkNewsWire (NNW) is a financial news and content distribution company that provides (1) access to a network of wire services via NetworkWireto 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 DISCLAIMER: NetworkNewsWire (NNW) is the source of the Article and content set forth above. References to any issuer other than the profiled issuer are intended solely to identify industry participants and do not constitute an endorsement of any issuer and do not constitute a comparison to the profiled issuer. FN Media Group (FNM) is a third-party publisher and news dissemination service provider, which disseminates electronic information through multiple online media channels. FNM is NOT affiliated with NNW or any company mentioned herein. The commentary, views and opinions expressed in this release by NNW are solely those of NNW and are not shared by and do not reflect in any manner the views or opinions of FNM. Readers of this Article and content agree that they cannot and will not seek to hold liable NNW and FNM for any investment decisions by their readers or subscribers. NNW and FNM and their respective affiliated companies are a news dissemination and financial marketing solutions provider and are NOT registered broker-dealers/analysts/investment advisers, hold no investment licenses and may NOT sell, offer to sell or offer to buy any security. The Article and content related to the profiled company represent the personal and subjective views of the Author, and are subject to change at any time without notice. The information provided in the Article and the content has been obtained from sources which the Author believes to be reliable. However, the Author has not independently verified or otherwise investigated all such information. None of the Author, NNW, FNM, or any of their respective affiliates, guarantee the accuracy or completeness of any such information. This Article and content are not, and should not be regarded as investment advice or as a recommendation regarding any particular security or course of action; readers are strongly urged to speak with their own investment advisor and review all of the profiled issuer's filings made with the Securities and Exchange Commission before making any investment decisions and should understand the risks associated with an investment in the profiled issuer's securities, including, but not limited to, the complete loss of your investment. NNW & FNM 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 NNW and FNM undertake no obligation to update such statements. NetworkNewsWire (NNW) is affiliated with the Investor Brand Network (IBN). About IBN Over the past 10+ years we have consistently introduced new network brands, each specifically designed to fulfil the unique needs of our growing client base and services. Today, we continue to expand our branded network of highly influential properties, leveraging the knowledge and energy of specialized teams of experts to serve our increasingly diversified list of clients. Please feel free to visit the Investor Brand Network (IBN) http://www.InvestorBrandNetwork.com Corporate Communications Contact: NetworkNewsWire (NNW) New York, New York +212-418-1217 Office Editor@NetworkNewsWire.com Media Contact: FN Media Group, LLC NNW@FinancialNewsMedia.com +1-(954)345-0611 http://www.NetworkNewsWire.com NEW YORK, April 17, 2018 /PRNewswire/ -- CannabisNewsWire Editorial Coverage In a world where legal cannabis is rapidly becoming more mainstream, a vexing financial issue continues to haunt the businesses and consumers taking part in this multibillion-dollar industry; namely, what to do with all that cash when federally chartered banks can't accept it and credit card companies won't touch it. Marijuana is still a federally prohibited substance, after all, which makes businesses that handle the highly regulated plant outcasts when it comes to traditional banking methods. This aversion to risk, as defined by the banking sector, is actually a welcome opportunity for companies that cater to "high-risk" industries, such as the rapidly expanding and lucrative legal cannabis market. Among the top players enabling marginalized cannabis-related businesses and other high-risk industries to thrive are Global Payout, Inc. (OTC: GOHE) (GOHE profile), Medical Cannabis Payment Solutions (OTC: REFG), CannaRoyalty Corp. (OTC: CNNRF), SinglePoint, Inc. (OTC: SING), and MassRoots, Inc. (OTC: MSRT). Billions Upon Billions While the legal cannabis industry may just be getting started in the United States, it is expected to generate nearly $57 billion in worldwide sales by 2027, according to a Forbes article quoting Arcview Market Research (http://nnw.fm/dMt4w). The adult use market for recreational cannabis will get the lion's share of that spending - 67 percent - while medicinal cannabis gets the remaining 33 percent. And that's just the beginning, according to Arcview's analysis, with the largest group of those cannabis spenders coming from North America. These folks are expected to shell out $9.2 billion in 2017 and more than $47 billion a decade later. That, as Carl Sagan would say, is "billions upon billions" of big bucks. Is Cash Really King? Lack of access to traditional banking services means legal cannabis businesses and their customers are usually dealing solely in cash. Some cannabis dispensaries can conceivably do $1 million a month in business, attorney James Smith says (http://nnw.fm/QgY20). "You don't want that to be cash," said Smith, a founding partner at Smith, Costello and Crawford, a firm which represents cannabis companies. "The state doesn't want it, the industry doesn't want it, even the federal government doesn't want it." Keeping large amounts of cash onsite raises the risk of theft or embezzlement and increases the cost of security measures. MoneyTrac Technology, Inc. ("MTRAC"), a partner ofGlobal Payout, Inc. (OTC: GOHE), is taking aim at solving this industry-wide concern with a full-service banking solution powered by GreenBox blockchain technology. MTRAC's payment solution offers cashless methods to process payments for consumers and gives business owners the ability to remit payments to vendors, employees and other business affiliates. Key to Cashless' Unbanked cash presents a host of problems for business owners and the states in which they are licensed to do business. Even Canada, which is poised to legalize recreational cannabis for adult use by the end of the summer, is struggling with the issue since many of its largest banks steer clear of the cannabis industry. That may change in Canada once full legalization takes place, according to an article in Marijuana Business Daily (http://nnw.fm/s97Bi). But why wait for traditional financial institutions to solve a problem when several companies have been working hard to provide a solution? Global Payout's MoneyTrac Technology specifically offers alternative fintech banking solutions to these high-risk industries in the United States, Canada and Mexico. "The goal of MTRAC from the beginning has been to leverage the different technologies available to us to remove the use of cash as the primary form of payment throughout the cannabis industry," said MTRAC CEO Vanessa Luna in a news release (http://nnw.fm/Nk79b). "While other companies have struggled to find supportive financial solutions, MTRAC opted to take a different approach, and one that has relied heavily on the use of blockchain technology to address this problem for a massive and growing industry." Inside the Box MTRAC's revolutionary payment process for businesses operating across a wide array of alternative high-cost and high-risk industries utilizes closed-loop blockchain technology. Simply put, merchants and consumers are assured that currency moved into MTRAC's system, either in the form of cash or through a debit/credit card via MTRAC Kiosk or a customer/merchant e-wallet, is converted to a digital representation of the currency's value using secure, encrypted digital keys. The MTRAC Kiosk, powered by the forward-thinking blockchain technology solutions offered by GreenBox, can be placed in any business that wishes to go cashless, making it simple and easy for merchants and customers alike to complete financial transactions. The concept is already generating buzz as MTRAC and GreenBox share their innovative payment solution with industry leaders in fields such as energy, water-tech, IoT, mobile and electronic payments, and security technologies (http://nnw.fm/d5J6H). Looking Back Several years ago, the Federal Deposit Insurance Corporation (FDIC) issued a Financial Institution Letter aimed at encouraging depository institutions to serve their communities by taking a risk-based approach when considering customer relationships instead of declining to provide banking services to an entire category of customers. That was in 2015, and, to date, little has changed when it comes to whether banks and credit unions are interested in welcoming the cannabis industry with open arms. Out of more than 16,000 FDIC and NCUA depository institutions registered in the United States, a 2017 federal report on marijuana banking noted only 400 of the institutions currently work with marijuana-related businesses (http://nnw.fm/14ROd). Catering to these "unbankable" businesses is exactly what Global Payout planned to do in 2015 when MoneyTrac Technology Inc. was brought under the company's banner. The goal, then and now, is to focus on the development of financial technologies that specifically address many of the challenges that enterprises in a variety of alternative and high-risk market sectors face in processing financial transactions. MTRAC may be one of the most configurable and intuitive financial technology platforms available to alternative and high-risk enterprises, providing solutions that effectively manage everything from pin debit and virtual currency to compliance and cash flow logistics. Playing a Pivotal Role MTRAC's commitment to working with the burgeoning cannabis industry is illustrated by the company's recent announcement that it has joined the National Cannabis Industry Association at its highest membership level. The NCIA connects organizations, builds networks and serves as an advocate for the cannabis industry nationwide. Advocacy is encouraged as the cannabis industry continues its push for legitimacy and legalization, the NCIA states on its website (https://thecannabisindustry.org/). "NCIA truly represents one of the most important and valuable associations in our industry," Luna said in a new release published on CannabisNewsWire (http://cnw.fm/bCD0N). "Their hard work and advocacy over the past 17 years has played a pivotal role in helping to pave the way for the growth and continued legitimacy of this industry as well as in being a crucial resource to the thousands of businesses, such as MoneyTrac, who are committed to conducting business the right way, in an industry that remains highly scrutinized." The Home Stretch Canada's push to legalize recreational cannabis for adult use is being carefully watched on many fronts. Canadian lawmakers are still in the process of fine-tuning and adjusting the legislation that many expect to be in full force by September. Canadians are being assured that the government is planning "orderly implementation nationwide" with an overriding policy goal of keeping cannabis out of the hands of children (http://nnw.fm/4zjZQ). Even if select Canadian banks decide to finance cannabis operations or purchases, many are concerned about jeopardizing their operations based in the United States, where cannabis remains illegal at the federal level (http://nnw.fm/B7W0x). Opportunity Beckons The launch of MTRAC's full-service banking solution, powered by GreenBox blockchain technology, offers the cannabis industry and other high-risk sectors cashless payment options they desperately need, Luna said ( http://nnw.fm/H8Uva ) . Joining the effort to provide cannabis dispensaries and related businesses with payment solutions is Medical Cannabis Payment Solutions (OTC: REFG). After working with targeted participants in the state-sanctioned cannabis industry, Medical Cannabis Payment Solutions has rolled out its payment system to serve the global medical cannabis and banking industry. "This fully concludes our transition from development stage and government relations to revenue stage," said Jeremy Roberts, CEO of Medical Cannabis Payment Solutions. "We're excited to bring our services to the industry and to bring increased value to our shareholders." Medical Cannabis Payment Solutions was developed to solve a major problem in state-sanctioned marijuana: banking and cashless payments.The company's cutting-edge payment solution allows consumers to buy items using U.S. currency and will soon allow Bitcoin, Roberts said in a news release (http://nnw.fm/CWt9N). Building and supporting a diverse portfolio of businesses ready to grow in high-value areas of the cannabis sector is the aim of Ontario-based CannaRoyalty Corp. (OTCQX: CNNRF). These areas include research and brand development, devices and intellectual property. In 2017, CannaRoyalty co-launched Trichome Yield Corp. ("Trichome") to be a preferred asset-backed lending partner to emerging and established Canadian and global cannabis companies. CannaRoyalty also recently announced its acquisition of three California cannabis-related businesses: RVR, a large-scale distributor of both medical and recreational cannabis brands; Alta Supply, a smaller distributor of medical marijuana; and Kaya Management, a maker of edibles and vaporizers (http://nnw.fm/zXrR6). Providing full-service mobile technology solutions keeps SinglePoint, Inc. (OTCQB: SING) in the spotlight as the company capitalizes on two high-performing market sectors: legal cannabis and cryptocurrencies. In a March 7, 2018, shareholder update, SinglePoint announced the soft launch of its SingleSeed Bitcoin payments solution. SingleSeed stands to address the lack of viable payment options for the cannabis industry by providing a user-friendly, easy-to-track transactional platform that enables merchants to accept non-cash payments ( http://nnw.fm/T8fpU ) . SinglePoint also recently announced the official launch of SingleSeed's newly updated website, which is focused on selling cannabidiol ("CBD") based products direct-to-consumer (http://nnw.fm/9HL5o). MassRoots, Inc. (OTCQB: MSRT) has developed a technology platform for the cannabis industry and its users. The company's technology platform enables cannabis consumers to join a social network, which is accessible through several portals and mobile apps. Cannabis enthusiasts can post reviews, follow their favorite dispensaries and stay connected with the cannabis legalization movement (https://www.massroots.com/). MassRoots recently formed a subsidiary focused on utilizing blockchain in the cannabis industry, which pairs well with the company's marketing strategy of building technology platforms for the regulated cannabis industry. The company's mobile apps have more than 1 million registered users. Economic Impact The ongoing regulatory uncertainty that surrounds legalized cannabis in the Unites States. can be a divisive conversation among lawmakers, the cannabis industry and members of the public. It is a topic not likely to go away as more states consider measures to legalize cannabis in some form or another. One thing all parties can agree on, however, is businesses that work mainly in cash invite a myriad of problems. Reducing that risk by providing alternative cashless payment solutions offers safeguards traditional banking isn't able or willing to give at this time. For more information on Global Payout, Inc., please visit: Global Payout, Inc. (OTC: GOHE) . About CannabisNewsWire CannabisNewsWire (CNW) is an information service that provides (1) access to our news aggregation and syndication servers, (2) CannabisNewsBreaks that summarize corporate news and information, (3) enhanced press release services, (4) social media distribution and optimization services, and (5) a full array of corporate communication solutions. As a multifaceted financial news and content distribution company with an extensive team of contributing journalists and writers, CNW 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. CNW has an ever-growing distribution network of more than 5,000 key syndication outlets across the country. By cutting through the overload of information in today's market, CNW brings its clients unparalleled visibility, recognition and brand awareness. CNW is where news, content and information converge. Receive Text Alerts from CannabisNewsWire: Text "Cannabis" to 21000 For more information please visithttps://www.CannabisNewsWire.com and orhttps://CannabisNewsWire.News Please see full terms of use and disclaimers on the CannabisNewsWire website applicable to all content provided by CNW, wherever published or re-published:http://CNW.fm/Disclaimer DISCLAIMER: CannabisNewsWire (CNW) is the source of the Article and content set forth above. References to any issuer other than the profiled issuer are intended solely to identify industry participants and do not constitute an endorsement of any issuer and do not constitute a comparison to the profiled issuer. FN Media Group (FNM) is a third-party publisher and news dissemination service provider, which disseminates electronic information through multiple online media channels. FNM is NOT affiliated with CNW or any company mentioned herein. The commentary, views and opinions expressed in this release by CNW are solely those of CNW and are not shared by and do not reflect in any manner the views or opinions of FNM. Readers of this Article and content agree that they cannot and will not seek to hold liable CNW and FNM for any investment decisions by their readers or subscribers. CNW and FNM and their respective affiliated companies are a news dissemination and financial marketing solutions provider and are NOT registered broker-dealers/analysts/investment advisers, hold no investment licenses and may NOT sell, offer to sell or offer to buy any security. The Article and content related to the profiled company represent the personal and subjective views of the Author, and are subject to change at any time without notice. The information provided in the Article and the content has been obtained from sources which the Author believes to be reliable. However, the Author has not independently verified or otherwise investigated all such information. None of the Author, CNW, FNM, or any of their respective affiliates, guarantee the accuracy or completeness of any such information. This Article and content are not, and should not be regarded as investment advice or as a recommendation regarding any particular security or course of action; readers are strongly urged to speak with their own investment advisor and review all of the profiled issuer's filings made with the Securities and Exchange Commission before making any investment decisions and should understand the risks associated with an investment in the profiled issuer's securities, including, but not limited to, the complete loss of your investment. CNW & FNM 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 CNW and FNM undertake no obligation to update such statements. CannabisNewsWire (CNW) & NetworkNewsWire (NNW) are proud to be affiliated partners of the Investor Brand Network (IBN) About IBN Over the past 10+ years we have consistently introduced new network brands, each specifically designed to fulfil the unique needs of our growing client base and services. Today, we continue to expand our branded network of highly influential properties, leveraging the knowledge and energy of specialized teams of experts to serve our increasingly diversified list of clients. Please feel free to visit the Investor Brand Network (IBN) http://www.InvestorBrandNetwork.com Corporate Communications Contact: CannabisNewsWire (CNW) Denver, Colorado www.CannabisNewsWire.com +1-303-498-7722 Office Editor@CannabisNewsWire.net Media Contact: FN Media Group, LLC NNW@FinancialNewsMedia.com +1-(954)345-0611 DETROIT, April 17, 2018 /PRNewswire/ -- Stratview Research announces the launch of a new market research report on Aircraft Airframe Fuel Systems Market by Aircraft Type (Commercial Aircraft, Military Aircraft, and UAV), by Engine Type (Jet Engine, Turboprop Engine, Helicopter Engine, and UAV Engine), by Component Type (Piping, Inerting Systems, Fuel Pumps, Fuel Valves, Fuel Gauging and Management System, Fuel Tanks, and Others), by Technology Type (Fuel Injection, Pump Feed Technology, and Gravity Feed Technology), and by Region (North America, Europe, Asia-Pacific, and Rest of the World), Forecast, Competitive Analysis, and Growth Opportunity: 2018-2023. (Logo: https://mma.prnewswire.com/media/660595/Stratview_Research_Logo.jpg ) This market report, from Stratview Research, studies the aircraft airframe fuel systems market over the trend period of 2012 to 2017 and forecast period of 2018 to 2023. The research report provides detailed insights on the market dynamics to enable informed business decision making and growth strategy formulation based on the opportunities present in the market. Airframe Fuel Systems Market in the Global AircraftIndustry: Highlights The coming five years for the airframe fuel systems market in the aircraft industry are going to be vigorous with a myriad of opportunities in the entire ecosystem of the market. Most of the players are developing innovative solutions to meet the changing requirements of aircraft OEMs and airlines. It is expected that the industry stakeholders will introduce more innovative solutions in the coming years with respect to enhancing the overall aircraft's fuel efficiency and to upsurge the reliability and veracity of fuel transmission from fuel tanks to engines. Fuel systems play a vital role in the aircraft industry as they deliver, manage, and control the flow of fuel and its rate from fuel tanks, generally located at the wings or aircraft belly or both, to the engines.Aircraft manufacturers are increasingly incorporating advanced lightweight materials in both structural and semi-structural components to reduce the weight of the aircraft.Airframe fuel systems are also not untouched by such dynamics and is experiencing a greater usage of advanced lightweight materials. The global aircraft airframe fuel systems market is projected to reach an estimated value of US$ 4,743.1 million in 2023. There are a host of factors burgeoning the demand for airframe fuel systems in the aircraft industry. Among all the drivers, the biggest one is an organic growth of aircraft demand. Another major driver is an increased demand for unmanned aerial vehicles. All the major countries, especially the USA, have incessantly been shielding their defense by developing more UAVs to protect themselves in urgency. Mini-UAVs, HALE (High-Altitude Long Endurance), and TUAVs (Tactical Unmanned Aerial Vehicle) are likely to gain more shares in the coming years. North America is likely to remain the largest market over the next five years, whereas Asia-Pacific and Europe are likely to be the new growth engines of the segment's market over the next five years. Commercial aircraft is expected to remain the largest segment of the aircraft airframe fuel systems market during the forecast period. Increasing commercial aircraft deliveries, higher demand for fuel-efficient aircraft, and rising aircraft fleet size are key growth drivers of the market. A320 family, B737, B787, and A350XWB would remain the growth engines of the segment's market in the foreseeable future. The UAV segment is projected to witness the highest growth over the next five years, propelled by a rising demand for UAVs across regions. Register Here and Ask for a Free Sample on the Report As per the study, North America is projected to remain the largest aircraft airframe fuel systems market during the forecast period, driven the USA. The region is the manufacturing capital of the aerospace industry with the presence of large- to small-sized aircraft manufacturers, MRO players, tier players, and raw material suppliers.Asia-Pacific is the fastest-growing market for aircraft airframe fuel systems during the same period, driven by high commercial aircraft fleet, indigenous production of commercial and regional aircraft, opening of assembly plants in China by both major commercial aircraft OEMs (Boeing and Airbus), and increasing defense budget. Eaton Corporation Plc, Parker Hannifin Corporation, United Technologies Corporation, Triumph Group, Zodiac Aerospace., GKN Plc, Honeywell International, Inc. and Meggitt Plc are the key players in the aircraft airframe fuel Systems market. Formation of long-term contracts, the development of lightweight components, and collaboration with customers are the key strategies adopted by major players to gain a competitive edge in the market throughout the globe. Report Features This report provides market intelligence in the most comprehensive way. The report structure has been kept such that it offers maximum business value. It provides critical insights on the market dynamics and will enable strategic decision making for the existing market players as well as those willing to enter the market. The following are the key features of the report: Market structure: Overview, industry life cycle analysis, supply chain analysis. Market environment analysis: Growth drivers and constraints, Porter's five forces analysis, SWOT analysis. Market trend and forecast analysis. Market segment trend and forecast. Competitive landscape and dynamics: Market share, product portfolio, product launches, etc. Attractive market segments and associated growth opportunities. Emerging trends. Strategic growth opportunities for the existing and new players. Key success factors This report studies the airframe fuel systems market in the global aircraft industry and has segmented the market in five ways, keeping in mind the interest of all the stakeholders across the value chain. The following are the five ways in which the market is segmented: Global Aircraft Airframe Fuel Systems Market by Aircraft Type: Commercial Aircraft (Regional Analysis: North America , Europe , Asia-Pacific , and Rest of the World) Military Aircraft (Regional Analysis: North America , Europe , Asia-Pacific , and Rest of the World) Unmanned Aerial Vehicle (UAV)(Regional Analysis: North America , Europe , Asia-Pacific , and Rest of the World) Global Aircraft Airframe Fuel Systems Market by Engine Type: Jet Engine (Regional Analysis: North America , Europe , Asia-Pacific , and Rest of the World) Turboprop Engine (Regional Analysis: North America , Europe , Asia-Pacific , and Rest of the World) Helicopter Engine (Regional Analysis: North America , Europe , Asia-Pacific , and Rest of the World) UAV Engine(Regional Analysis: North America , Europe , Asia-Pacific , and Rest of the World) Global Aircraft Airframe Fuel Systems Market by Component Type: Piping (Regional Analysis: North America , Europe , Asia-Pacific , and Rest of the World) Fuel Tank Inerting Systems (Regional Analysis: North America , Europe , Asia-Pacific , and Rest of the World) Fuel Pumps (Regional Analysis: North America , Europe , Asia-Pacific , and Rest of the World) Fuel Valves (Regional Analysis: North America , Europe , Asia-Pacific , and Rest of the World) Fuel Gauging and Management Systems (Regional Analysis: North America , Europe , Asia-Pacific , and Rest of the World) Fuel Tanks (Regional Analysis: North America , Europe , Asia-Pacific , and Rest of the World) Others(Regional Analysis: North America , Europe , Asia-Pacific , and Rest of the World) Global Aircraft Airframe Fuel Systems Market by Technology Type: Fuel Injection (Regional Analysis: North America , Europe , Asia-Pacific , and Rest of the World) Pump Feed Technology (Regional Analysis: North America , Europe , Asia-Pacific , and Rest of the World) Gravity Feed Technology(Regional Analysis: North America , Europe , Asia-Pacific , and Rest of the World) Global Aircraft Airframe Fuel Systems Marketby Region: North America (Country Analysis: the USA , Canada , and Mexico ) Europe (Country Analysis: Germany , France , the UK, Spain , Russia , and Rest of Europe ) Asia-Pacific (Country Analysis: China , Japan , India , and Rest of Asia-Pacific ) Rest of the world(Country Analysis: Middle East , Latin America , and Others) Stratview Research has number of high value market reports in the global aerospace & defense industry. Please refer to the following link to browse through our reports: Click Here for Other Reports from Stratview Research in the Aerospace & Defense Industry Some of our other premium market reports in the aerospace & defense industry: Global Aircraft Fuel Systems Market by Aircraft Type, by Engine Type, by Component Type, by Technology Type, and by Region, Forecast, Competitive Analysis, and Growth Opportunity: 2017-2022 Global Aircraft Nacelle Components Market by Aircraft Type, by Component Type, by Material Type, by Process Type and by Region, Trend, Forecast, Competitive Analysis, and Growth Opportunity: 2017-2022 About Stratview Research Stratview Research is a global market intelligence firm providing wide range of services including syndicated market reports, custom research and sourcing intelligence across industries, such as Advanced Materials, Aerospace & Defense, Automotive & Mass Transportation, Consumer Goods, Construction & Equipment, Electronics and Semiconductors, Energy & Utility, Healthcare & Life Sciences, and Oil & Gas. We have a strong team of industry veterans and analysts with an extensive experience in executing custom research projects for mid-sized to Fortune 500 companies, in the areas of Market Assessment, Opportunity Screening, Competitive Intelligence, Due Diligence, Target Screening, Market Entry Strategy, Go to Market Strategy, and Voice of Customer studies. Stratview Research is a trusted brand globally, providing high quality research and strategic insights that help companies worldwide in effective decision making. For enquiries, Contact: Stratview Research E-mail:sales@stratviewresearch.com Direct: +1-313-307-4176 VANCOUVER, BC / ACCESSWIRE / April 17, 2018 / Margaret Lake Diamonds Inc. (TSX.V: DIA / FSE: M85) ("Margaret Lake" or the "Company") announces that further to its news release dated April 6, 2018, that it has closed the first tranche of its a non-brokered flow-through private placement (the "FT Offering") issuing 470,000 units (each a "FT Unit") at a price of $0.13 per FT Unit, for gross proceeds of $61,100 and a concurrent non flow-through private placement (the "NFT Offering") issuing 3,619,999 units (each a "NFT Unit") at a price of $0.12 per NFT Unit for gross proceeds of an additional $434,400. The aggregate gross proceeds raised by the Company upon completion of the first tranche of this financing is $495,500. Each FT Unit consists of one flow-through common share of the Company (a "FT Common Share") and one transferable non-flow-through common share purchase warrant (each a "Warrant"), with each Warrant entitling the holder thereof to acquire one additional Common Share at a price of $0.20 for a period of 36 months following closing of the FT Offering. Each NFT Unit consists of one non-flow-through common share of the Company (a "NFT Common Share") and Warrant. The Warrants contain an acceleration provision under which the Company can accelerate the term of the Warrants to 30 days following notice by the Company to the Warrant holders, which notice may be given if the closing price of the Company's common shares is greater than $0.30 per share for 10 trading days on a VWAP basis. The Company will pay the cash portion of its finder's fees upon the closing of the next tranche of this financing, in accordance with applicable securities laws and the policies of the TSX Venture Exchange (the "Exchange"). The Company also announces that further to its news release dated April 6, 2018, that the finder's warrants payable to registered finders has been increased from 8% to 10% of the FT Offering and NFT Offering. The finder's warrants have the same terms as the Warrants but are non-transferable. Upon completion of the first tranche of this financing, the Company issued an aggregate of 300,666 finder's warrants. All of the securities issued are subject to a hold period expiring August 17, 2018. The proceeds from the FT Offering will be used for the Company's planned upcoming drill program on the Margaret Lake Property and for geophysical and geotechnical work on the Diagras Property, and the proceeds of the NFT Offering will be used for additional exploration and ongoing general and administrative expenses. As a result of this first closing the company now has the financial capability to move forward with the proposed drill testing of the Margaret Lake property for its diamond potential. Margaret Lake Diamonds Inc. is now finalizing the necessary details and logistics to initiate the diamond drill program on up to six targets on the Margaret Lake property as detailed in the news release dated April 4, 2018. The program is expected to commence later this month. The initial objective of the drill program will be to determine if these geophysical targets represent kimberlite, the host rock for diamonds. If successful a sufficient sample will be obtained for micro-diamond analysis and indicator mineral chemistry. The drill program will be managed by Aurora Geosciences of Yellowknife. Since 2000, AURORA has contributed to discoveries and resource definitions at Diavik, Ekati and Kennady Diamonds and are currently conducting the ongoing work programs on the Kennady North property, which adjoins the Margaret Lake property. A quote from Business Elite Canada February 2018 attributable to Dr. Rory Moore President of Kennady Diamonds---"The Aurora Geosciences Team deserve the lion's share of credit for the successes that Kennady has enjoyed to date. Their innovative dedicated approach to a technically challenging project has resulted in new and unique discoveries and earned Aurora the respect of its peers in the industry." This same team will be overseeing the current drill program for Margaret Lake Diamonds Inc. Qualified Person The technical data in this news release has been reviewed and approved by Mark Fields, P.Geo., a Qualified Person under the provisions of National Instrument 43-101. About Margaret Lake Diamonds Inc. Margaret Lake Diamonds Inc. is a diamond exploration company focused on the Northwest Territories in proximity to Gahcho Kue, the newest Canadian diamond mine owned by De Beers and Mountain Province Diamonds, and adjacent to the ongoing advanced exploration by Kennady Diamonds. The Company also has a 60/40 joint venture with Arctic Star Exploration Corp. to explore the Diagras property, which comprises 23 claims totaling 18,699 hectares located in the prolific Lac de Gras diamond field. The Board of MLD is comprised of persons with combined involvement of over 50 years in the Canadian diamond sector. ON BEHALF OF THE BOARD OF DIRECTORS "Paul Brockington" Paul Brockington, President and Chief Executive Officer For further information, please contact: Margaret Lake Diamonds Inc. Paul Brockington President and CEO Phone: 1.604.630.2810 Web: www.margaretdiamonds.com Forward-Looking Statements This news release contains forward-looking information that involve various risks and uncertainties regarding future events. Such forward-looking information can include without limitation statements based on current expectations involving a number of risks and uncertainties and are not guarantees of future performance of the Company. Actual results and future events could differ materially from anticipated in such information. These and all subsequent written and oral forward-looking information are based on estimates and opinions of management on the dates they are made and expressed qualified in their 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: Margaret Lake Diamonds Inc. The Acquisition of Irie, a Formulator of CBD Products, Adds Another Level of Integration to Our Already Vertically-Integrated Business Model Las Vegas, Nevada--(Newsfile Corp. - April 17, 2018) - Freedom Leaf Inc. (OTCQB: FRLF), a group of diversified, international, vertically-integrated hemp business and cannabis media companies, consummated its previously-announced acquisition of the Irie CBD Product Line, including virtually all: assets, trademarks, formulating equipment, formulas and products. Irie is a California-based CBD, "Cannabidiol", product line that, and has been operating since 2015, it 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 2017and net profits in excess of $200,000. Irie also leases a full manufacturing and processing facility in Oakland, California. In addition to the Irie CBD line and associated assets and trademarks, the acquisition also includes: the product lines, websites and other assets of: Earth Born, Inc., a California corporation; Earth Born, Inc., a Delaware corporation; Irie Living, a California nonprofit mutual benefit corporation, and Genesis Media Works, LLC, a Utah limited liability company doing business as "Terra's Way", "Irie Hemp Company", and "Earth Born Botanicals". Clifford Perry, CEO and Co-Founder of Freedom Leaf, commented: "The acquisition of the Irie CBD product lines adds another level of integration to our already vertically-integrated business model - increasing our revenues and margins. Freedom Leaf already has commenced providing Irie CBD with the raw material from our Leafceuticals extractions. Going forward we will produce our exclusive Hempology full spectrum hemp CBD line utilizing Irie's existing processing facilities." Perry explained further: "In addition to the revenue generation and processing capabilities resulting from this acquisition, Freedom Leaf hopes to be able to utilize the established name of Irie CBD to market the Hempology CBD." Freedom Leaf paid $356,080 in cash and approximately 8,118,886 shares of the Company's common stock (valued at $1.844 million). The transaction provided for possible purchase price reductions based on the acquisition achieving targeted post-closing monthly revenue targets. Richard Groberg, Chief Financial Officer for Freedom Leaf, also explained: "Completing the Irie CBD acquisition is directly in line with Freedom Leaf's goal of creating a more financially stable corporation in the cannabis/hemp space. Freedom Leaf expects to see a direct growth in sales for the target's existing product lines as well as providing various cost-saving and revenue-enhancing aspects to Freedom Leaf's existing businesses." Groberg went on to say: "While we plan to retain the targets key executives, at least through a transition period, the application of the years of experience of Freedom Leaf's team to the Irie CBD team should be invaluable in growing their revenues." The acquisition of Irie CBD adds to Freedom Leaf's current portfolio of cannabis/hemp media and processing companies, including: their flagship publication Freedom Leaf Magazine; one of the largest Spanish-speaking web portal in the world LaMarihuana.com; the exclusive high-quality Hempology CBD product line; its extraction and distribution division Leafceuticals Inc, and its European hemp cultivation and production company Green Market Europe. The acquired assets include the following web sites: www.iriecbd.com, www.iriejournal.com, www.iriemedicinals.com, www.irieliving.org, www.iriehemp.com, www.earthbornbotanicals,com, www.terrasway.com, www.pranahemp.com and www.nirvanahemp.com. About Freedom Leaf Inc. Freedom Leaf Inc., The Marijuana Legalization Company, is a group of diversified, international, vertically-integrated hemp businesses and cannabis media companies. Freedom Leaf Inc. is a fully-reporting and audited publicly-traded company under the symbol (OTCQB: FRLF). Freedom Leaf Inc. has been working since 2014 to build a diverse portfolio of related cannabis and hemp businesses through strategic mergers and acquisitions across the industry. FRLF's large portfolio of acquisitions includes: our recently acquired hemp CBD product line Irie CBD; our wholly-owned hemp extraction division Leafceuticals, Inc.; our exclusive health and wellness CBD brand Hempology; our 60,000 acres of hemp greenhouse cultivation with the acquisition of Green Market Europe; our hemp-based rolling paper company Plants to Paper; two of the largest Spanish-speaking cannabis web portals in the world LaMarihuana.com and Marihuana-Medicinal.com, and, of course, our flagship publication, Freedom Leaf Magazine. Utilizing these mergers and acquisitions, Freedom Leaf Inc. is continually building a solid foundation for our vertically-integrated cannabis/hemp company to maximize both revenue growth and shareholder value. Our cultivation and extraction divisions allow FRLF to grow and source our own hemp CBD, which allows dramatically lower production costs for our wholly-owned CBD product lines, thereby generating more revenue for each product sold. In addition, our extensive domestic and international media companies ensure we can continuously direct organic traffic to our many eCommerce sites and retail locations. 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 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, that are intended to be covered by the "safe harbor" created by those sections. Forward-looking statements, which are based on certain assumptions and describe our future plans, strategies and expectations, can generally be identified by the use of forward-looking terms such as "believe," "expect," "may," "will," "should," "could," "seek," "intend," "plan," "goal," "estimate," "anticipate" or other comparable terms. All statements other than statements of historical facts included in this news release regarding our strategies, prospects, financial condition, operations, costs, plans and objectives are forward-looking statements. Forward-looking statements are neither historical facts nor assurances of future performance. Instead, they are based only on our current beliefs, expectations and assumptions regarding the future of our business, future plans and strategies, projections, anticipated events and trends, the economy and other future conditions. Because forward-looking statements relate to the future, they are subject to inherent uncertainties, risks and changes in circumstances that are difficult to predict and many of which are outside of our control. Our actual results and financial condition may differ materially from those indicated in the forward-looking statements. Therefore, you should not rely on any of these forward-looking statements. Important factors that could cause our actual results and financial condition to differ materially from those indicated in the forward-looking statements include, among others, the following: our ability to successfully market our products and services; the acceptance of our products and services by customers; our continued ability to pay operating costs and ability to meet demand for our products and services; the amount and nature of competition from other media and cannabis/hemp-related products and services; the effects of changes in laws governing the cannabis and hemp industries; our ability to successfully develop and sell new products and services; our success establishing and maintaining industry relationships, licensing and supplier arrangements; our ability to comply with applicable regulations; and the other risks and uncertainties described in our prior filings with the Securities and Exchange Commission. We undertake no obligation to publicly update any forward-looking statement, whether written or oral, that may be made from time to time, whether as a result of new information, future developments or otherwise. Contact: Raymond Medeiros PR and Business Development Director Phone: 415-601-1974 ray@freedomleaf.com Freedom Leaf, Inc. Point Pleasant Beach, New Jersey--(Newsfile Corp. - April 17, 2018) - Hammer Fiber Optic Investments Ltd., a wholly owned subsidiary of Hammer Fiber Optic Holdings Corp. (OTCQB: HMMR), announced today it will be changing its DBA name from Hammer Fiber to Hammer Communications. This change comes with new visual brand improvements, a new website and new internal organization. The new website can be found at www.hammercomm.com. Remaining as a business unit of Hammer Communications, Hammer Fiber will be responsible for managing and offering carrier and wholesale services across Hammer Communications' network, which spans New York, New Jersey and Pennsylvania, as well as service for enterprise businesses. Hammer Communications will assume control of the company's residential access network, small and medium business offerings delivered through both terrestrial fiber optics and its proprietary fixed wireless technology, as well as its VoIP services. The last business unit operating under the new DBA will be the upcoming Hammer Sphere, which will be responsible for Hammer Communications' rapidly growing hosting and cloud services platform. "We are excited about this evolution for Hammer. Hammer is quick to respond to the market's needs and ensure the best quality of service for our customers," said Mark Stogdill, CEO of Hammer Communications. "This move will help us to better communicate the services we offer and commit our resources where they can best serve the customer experience as we continue to grow and expand our service offerings." About Hammer Communications Hammer Fiber Optic Holdings Corp. (OTCQB: HMMR) is a telecommunications company investing in the future of wireless technology whose holdings include Hammer Fiber Optic Investments, Ltd. D/B/A Hammer Communications, a New Jersey-based Internet Service Provider (ISP) that offers internet, voice, video and data services in New Jersey, as well as carrier services in Philadelphia and New York. Hammer Fiber serves residential and small business markets with high capacity broadband, voice and video through both direct fiber as well as its wireless fiber platform, Hammer Wireless AIR technology. For more information visit www.hammercomm.com or contact Frank Pena at fpena@hammerfiber.com. Forward Looking Statements This press release contains projections and other forward-looking statements regarding future events or our future financial performance. All statements other than present and historical facts and conditions contained in this release, including any statements regarding our future results of operations and financial positions, business strategy, plans and our objectives for future operations, are forward-looking statements (within the meaning of the Private Securities Litigation Reform Act of 1995, Section 27A of the Securities Act of 1933, as amended, and Section 21E of the Securities Exchange Act of 1934, as amended). These statements are only predictions and reflect our current beliefs and expectations with respect to future events and are based on assumptions and subject to risk and uncertainties and subject to change at any time. We operate in a very competitive and rapidly changing environment. New risks emerge from time to time. Given these risks and uncertainties, you should not place undue reliance on these forward-looking statements. Actual events or results may differ materially from those contained in the projections or forward-looking statements. Forward-looking statements in this release are made pursuant to the safe harbor provisions contained in the Private Securities Litigation Reform Act of 1995. Corporate Communications Contact: NetworkNewsWire (NNW) New York, New York www.NetworkNewsWire.com 212.418.1217 Office Editor@NetworkNewsWire.com Toronto, Ontario--(Newsfile Corp. - April 17, 2018) - Golden Share Resources Corporation ("Golden Share" or the "Company") (TSXV: GSH) announces its intention to spin out its energy storage business into a new public entity, with the Company retaining its mineral exploration business. In conjunction with its legal and tax advisors, Golden Share is reviewing various options for structuring and implementing such a transaction. While the Company intends to proceed expeditiously, it is not yet in a position to determine when any such spin out might be completed and will keep the market informed by way of subsequent announcements if and when further developments warrant. Any such transaction will be subject to the approval of the TSX Venture Exchange. As previously announced, Golden Share's energy storage business currently consists of a series of agreements as follows: The Strategic Partnership Agreement between Northwest Mining & Exploration Group and Golden Share (announced on May 24, 2016). The License Agreement with the Battelle Memorial Institute, the operator of the Pacific Northwest National Laboratory ("PNNL") for the U.S. Department of Energy (announced on October 18, 2016). The Agreement for Commercializing Technology with PNNL (announced on January 30, 2018). The Letter of Intent with Hunan Vanadium Valley New Energy Technology (announced on February 12, 2018). About Golden Share Golden Share Resources Corporation is a junior natural resource company focusing on mineral exploration in the province of Ontario, Canada, a mineral rich and politically stable jurisdiction. WARNING: Certain statements in this press release may be forward-looking, including those with respect to the Company's intention to spin out its energy storage business. Although the Company believes the expectations reflected in such statements are based on reasonable assumptions, it can give no assurances that its expectations will be achieved. Such assumptions, which may prove incorrect, include that the Company will be able to identify a viable mechanism for spinning out that business in a manner that is feasible from a legal, tax and commercial perspective, as well as the ongoing viability of that business until the spinout is complete. Factors that could cause actual results to differ materially from expectations include legal, tax or commercial issues that make such a transaction impractical, and PNNL's inability to develop the battery on time, within budget or at all due to technical, personnel or other obstacles. A description of other risks affecting the Company's business and activities appears under the heading "Risks" on page 15 of its 2016 annual management's discussion and analysis, which is available on SEDAR at www.sedar.com. No assurance can be given that any events anticipated by the forward-looking information in this press release will transpire or occur, or if any of them do so, what benefits the Company will derive therefrom. The Company disclaims any intention or obligation to update or revise any forward-looking statements in order to account for any new information or any other event, except as required under applicable law. The reader is warned against undue reliance on these forward-looking statements. 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. For more information, please visit www.goldenshare.ca or contact: Golden Share Resources Corporation Nick Zeng, President & CEO Tel: (905) 968-1199 E-mail: info@goldenshare.ca Update for 2018 Exploration Plans on High-Grade Critical Rare Earth Element Alces Lake Property Toronto, Ontario--(Newsfile Corp. - April 17, 2018) - Appia Energy Corp. (CSE: API) (OTCQB: APAAF) (FSE: A0I) (FSE: A0I.F) (FSE: A0I.MU) (FSE: A0I.BE) (the "Company" or "Appia) would like to invite the general public to join a live public webcast of its presentation on Thursday April 19, 2018, from 1:15 pm - 1:45 pm Toronto time, as part of the Murdock Capital Partners symposium; "The Color of Money: How to Profit by "Going Green" with the Clean Energy Economy". The symposium will be held at 3 West 51st Club, New York NY, USA, from 8 am until 3 pm. The presentation can be accessed via the link below: https://totalwebcasting.com/view/?func=VOFF&id=twclient&date=2018-04-19&seq=1 Alces Lake 2018 Exploration Update The Company is actively planning follow-up exploration programs on the Alces Lake rare earth element ("REE") property. The programs are scheduled to start in May of this year with initial surface exploration including overburden stripping and trenching in the Wilson and Ivan zones, followed-up with diamond drilling. The Company anticipates producing an NI 43-101 compliant inferred mineral resource estimate by the 2018 year end. The Alces Lake property hosts some of the highest-grade total and critical REE occurrences in the world, hosted within five broad surface showings that remain open in all directions (see Appia news release dated October 31, 2017). Permits for the proposed exploration programs are in-hand. The actual start date will depend on lake ice break-up, to allow float plane accessibility. About Appia Appia is a Canadian publicly-traded company in the uranium and rare earth element sectors. The Company is currently focusing on delineating high-grade critical rare earth elements ("REE") and uranium on the Alces Lake property, as well as discovering high-grade uranium in the prolific Athabasca Basin on its Loranger, North Wollaston, Eastside, and Otherside properties. The company now holds the surface rights to exploration for about 73,033 hectares (180,467 acres) in Saskatchewan. The company also has NI 43-101 compliant resources of 8.0 M lbs U 3 O 8 and 47.7 M lbs Total REE Indicated and 20.1 M lbs U 3 O 8 and 133.2 M lbs Total REE Inferred in the Teasdale Zone plus 27.6 M lbs U 3 O 8 Inferred in the Banana Lake Zone in the historic mining camp of Elliot Lake in Ontario (previously reported in the Company's news release dated August 14, 2013). The resources are largely unconstrained along strike and down dip. Appia's technical team is directed by James Sykes, who has had direct and indirect involvement with over 450 M lbs. U 3 O 8 being discovered in five deposits in the Athabasca Basin. Appia currently has 52.3 million common shares outstanding, 65.3 million shares fully diluted. The technical content in this news release was reviewed and approved by Thomas Skimming, P.Eng, a Director of Appia, and a Qualified Person as defined by National Instrument 43-101. Cautionary Note Regarding Forward-Looking Statements: This News Release contains forward-looking statements which are typically preceded by, followed by or including the words "believes", "expects", "anticipates", "estimates", "intends", "plans" or similar expressions. Forward-looking statements are not guarantees of future performance as they involve risks, uncertainties and assumptions. We do not intend and do not assume any obligation to update these forward- looking statements and shareholders are cautioned not to put undue reliance on such statements. Neither the Canadian Securities Exchange nor its Market Regulator (as that term is defined in the policies of the CSE) accepts responsibility for the adequacy or accuracy of this release. For further information, please contact: Tom Drivas, President, CEO and Director: (tel) 416-546-2707, (fax) 416-218-9772 or (email) appia@appiaenergy.ca James Sykes, VP Exploration & Development, (tel) 306-221-8717, (fax) 416-218-9772 or (email) jsykes@uraniumgeologist.com Frank van de Water, Chief Financial Officer and Director, (tel) 416-546-2707, (fax) 416-218-9772 or (email) fvandewater@rogers.com WASHINGTON (dpa-AFX) - Gold futures were lower Tuesday morning as rising U.S. stocks dented the precious metal's safe haven appeal. Gold slipped $6 to $1344 an ounce as traders weighed the latest housing data from the U.S. Housing starts were reported at 1.32 million seasonally adjusted annual rate in March, as per figures from the Commerce Department. February's numbers were revised up. The Federal Reserve's Industrial Production report for March will be released at 9.15 am ET. The Production is projected to be up 0.4 percent, compared to 1.1 percent increase in the prior month. San Francisco Federal Reserve Bank President John Williams will speak at the NABE-Bank of Spain Event in Madrid, with media Q&A at 9.15 am ET. Federal Reserve Vice Chairman for Supervision Governor Randal Quarles to give semi-annual testimony before the House Financial Services Committee in Washington at 10.00 am ET. Philadelphia Federal Reserve Bank President Patrick Harker will speak at Saint Joseph's University in Philadelphia, with audience Q&A at 11.00 am ET. Chicago Federal Reserve Bank President Charles Evans will speak about current economic conditions or monetary policy at a Chicago Rotary Club Luncheon event in Chicago, with audience and media Q&A at 1.40 pm ET. Traders are also looking ahead to tommorrow's release of the Federal Reserve's Beige Book, a collection of anecdotal responses from business leaders about the health of the economy. 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. BEIJING (dpa-AFX) - China's central bank lowered the reserve requirement ratio for most commercial banks on Tuesday, to free up funds for lending and improve liquidity as the economy sustained growth momentum in the first quarter. In a statement, the People's Bank of China said it reduced the ratio of cash that banks should hold as reserves, by 100 basis points, with effect from April 25. The rate is currently at 17 percent and 15 percent. The central bank said banks could utilize the funds released due to the RRR cut to repay borrowing from the PBoC. The central bank also required financial institutions to provide loans to small and micro businesses and to lower funding costs. In order to prevent financial risks, the bank noted that it is necessary to maintain a relatively high reserve requirement ratio. The stable and neutral monetary policy will remain unchanged, the bank added. Data released earlier in the day showed that the economy expanded at a steady pace of 6.8 percent in the first quarter of 2018, helped by consumer spending amid moderation in industrial output and fixed asset investment growth. However, the government targets slower growth of about 6.5 percent for the whole year as it intends to bring stability in the financial system and curb corporate debt and combat pollution. 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. NOTTINGHAM, England, April 17, 2018 /PRNewswire/ -- Sponsors Women in Technology Luncheon and CEO to deliver speech on business opportunities of disruptive technologies At a glance: Summit EMEA takes place 24-26 April in The Convention Centre, Dublin with Columbus as a headline Gold Dynamics, Data & BI sponsor Showcases new disruptive B2B and B2C eCommerce solution on Stand G2 Columbus, the global digital business services provider, today announced that as Gold sponsor it will be taking a lead role in delivering key sessions and presentations at the upcoming Summit EMEA Microsoft Dynamics conference in Dublin from 24-26 April. Highlights of the event will include the speech delivered by Thomas Honore, CEO & President of Columbus and author of Disrupt or Die, on the emerging business opportunities created by digital disruption. Mary Hunter, Managing Director of Columbus UK, will contribute to a panel discussion for leading Dynamics partners and the Columbus-sponsored Women in Technology Luncheon on 26 April. At the conference, which is hosted by the world's largest Microsoft Dynamics user community, five Columbus executives and technical experts will lead sessions and deliver presentations on topics spanning ERP system realignment, Dynamics 365 customer case studies and business process mapping to support business goals. On 24 April, Kevin Bull, Product Strategy Director will showcase a presentation on capturing the full emerging potential of Dynamics 365 for Finance and Operations and Craig Hamer, Dynamics 365 Solutions Architect is hosting a breakout session on using the evolving client-side extensibility of Dynamics 365 to enhance the customer experience. Columbus will demonstrate a full range of products and services, including its recently launched eCommerce solution on Azure, which enables rapid deployment of a highly scalable retail B2B and B2C web solution. The Columbus team will be on hand to discuss and demonstrate a full Microsoft Dynamics solutions portfolio and digital technologies throughout the three-day conference. Mary Hunter, Managing Director, Columbus UK "Summit EMEA represents a unique opportunity to share both expertise and insights from the Columbus team, and network with and learn from other leading figures in the Dynamics community. The Women in Technology Luncheon offers a dedicated platform to discuss tackling bias and empowering women in tech, and it is important for the Columbus team to participate in this through our sponsorship. "As a Gold sponsor, Columbus will be playing a key role throughout the conference driving discussions and engagement on the latest developments to the Microsoft Dynamics product lines and how technology can support your business goals. We are committed to being at the forefront of driving business benefits from the latest Microsoft technologies, including Business Intelligence and advanced data analytics, reflected by our sponsorship of the concurrent Data & BI Summit. Columbus offers expertise in harnessing the full capabilities of the entire range of Dynamics 365 business apps - the new Columbus eCommerce solution represents just the latest addition to our portfolio to help organisations seamlessly manage digital disruption and improve customer experience." About Columbus Columbus is an international IT services company serving customers worldwide. We are experts in developing and providing digital business applications that help our customers in the digital transformation of their business. We are specialist within the industries retail, distribution, food and manufacturing. We've proved this through more than 28 years of experience with more than 8,000 successful business cases. Columbus has offices and partners all around the world. http://www.columbusglobal.com The event features globally renowned lung cancer experts Physicians' Education Resource (PER), the leader in hematology and oncology continuing medical education, presents the second annual European Symposium on Lung Cancers to be held May 4-5 at the Hilton Barcelona in Barcelona, Spain. The program will be co-chaired by Benjamin Besse, M.D., Ph.D.,head of thoracic tumor board, department of medicine, Gustave Roussy, Villejuif, France, and Prof. Dr. med. Martin Reck,head of the thoracic oncology and clinical trial departments, Lung Clinic Grosshansdorf in Grosshansdorf, Germany. "Given the rapid developments in the treatment of lung cancers the past several years, we are proud to host this meeting focusing on therapeutic innovations that are changing the treatment paradigms," said Phil Talamo, president of PER. PER's first European meeting of the year that delves into the latest developments in the field of lung cancer. Discussion topics include state-of-the-art application of immunotherapy in metastatic non-small cell lung cancer (NSCLC), liquid biopsies in treatment selection and therapeutic advances in small-cell lung cancer and mesothelioma. The program agenda also encompasses informative case-based discussions. The symposium also serves as a networking platform for attendees. Designed for medical oncologists, radiation oncologists, thoracic surgeons and pulmonologists, the second annual European Symposium on Lung Cancers offers insight on best strategies for clinicians to incorporate new approaches including personalized medicine, targeted agents and immunotherapy. Attendees will gain insight on assessing methods to identify predictive and prognostic tumor characteristics in advanced lung cancer, emerging targeted approaches in oncogenic drivers in NSCLC and optimizing personalized treatment sequencing for patients with advanced NSCLC. For more information and to register, visit http://www.gotoper.com/conferences/ecl/meetings/2nd-annual-european-congress-on-lung-cancer. About PER Since 1995, Physicians' Education Resource, LLC (PER), has been the leading provider of live and online continuing medical education activities on oncology and hematology by providing high-quality, evidence-based activities featuring leading experts who focus on the application of practice-changing advances. In 2018, PER will develop and implement 20 historic annual legacy conferences in the United States and Europe, along with many world-renowned online learning formats, such as Medical Crossfire. PER is accredited by both the Accreditation Council for Continuing Medical Education and the California Board of Registered Nursing. PER is part of the Cranbury, New Jersey-based MJH Associates, Inc. family of businesses. Learn more at http://www.gotoper.com and http://www.mjhassoc.com. View source version on businesswire.com: https://www.businesswire.com/news/home/20180417006034/en/ Contacts: PER Media Contacts: Theresa Burek, 609-325-4811 tburek@mjhassoc.com or Surabhi Verma, 609-716-7777 sverma@mjhassoc.com PORTLAND, Oregon and PUNE, India, April 17, 2018 /PRNewswire/ -- According to a new report published by Allied Market Research, titled,"Web Application Firewall Market by Deployment, Organization Size, and End-Use Industry - Global Opportunity Analysis and Industry Forecast, 2016-2023,"the global web application firewall market was valued at $426 million in 2016, and is projected to reach $1,425 million by 2023, growing at a CAGR of 19.2% from 2017 to 2023. The aerospace & defense segment is anticipated to grow at the highest rate during the forecast period. (Logo: https://mma.prnewswire.com/media/636519/Allied_Market_Research_Logo.jpg ) North America generated the highest revenue in 2016 due to adequate infrastructural development for the adoption of web application firewall. The Asia-Pacific web application firewall market is expected to grow at the highest rate during the forecast period, owing to the remarkable economic growth in Southeast Asia, India, & other economies and growth in trend of cloud-based solutions. Request Sample Report at:https://www.alliedmarketresearch.com/request-sample/2759 The BFSI business segment contributed the highest share in 2016. This segment accounted for $93 million in 2016, and is projected to grow at the CAGR of 17.6% during the forecast period. However, the web application firewall market for aerospace & defense segment is projected to grow at the highest rate of 21.9%. The cloud segment accounted for the highest revenue share in 2016, while the on-premise segment is anticipated to grow at the highest rate of 21.2%. Technological innovation in product offerings, rise in adoption for cloud-based solutions, increase in application areas among end-use industries, and heavy venture capital investments in R&D activities to develop solutions with enhanced capabilities drive the market. In addition, government organizations and companies enhance their data security infrastructure due to rise in number of security breaches and government regulations related to IT security. This in turn boosts the market growth. The report features a competitive scenario of the global web application firewall industry and provides a comprehensive analysis of key growth strategies adopted by the major players. The key players profiled in the study are Akamai Technologies, Inc., Barracuda Networks, Inc., Citrix Systems, Inc., F5 Networks, Inc., Imperva, Inc., Fortinet, Inc., Applicure Technologies Ltd., Qualys, Inc., Cloudflare, Inc., and Radware Ltd. These players adopt competitive strategies, such as geographical expansions, mergers & acquisitions, new product launches, and partnerships & collaborations, to augment the growth of the web application firewall market. For Purchase Enquiry:https://www.alliedmarketresearch.com/purchase-enquiry/2759 Key Findings of the Web Application Firewall Market: The large enterprises segment accounted for the highest share of the global web application firewall industry in 2016, growing at a CAGR of 19.9% from 2017 to 2023. The BFSI sector of the web application firewall market generated the highest revenue share in 2016, and is projected to grow at a rate of 17.6%. The North America web application firewall market generated the highest share, valued at $181 million , in terms of revenue in 2016. web application firewall market generated the highest share, valued at , in terms of revenue in 2016. The web application firewall market for aerospace & defense segment is expected to witness the highest growth rate during the forecast period. 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. Contact: Shriram Dighe 5933 NE Win Sivers Drive #205, Portland, OR 97220 United States Toll Free: +1-800-792-5285 UK: +44-845-528-1300 Hong Kong: +852-301-84916 India (Pune): +91-20-66346060 Fax: +1aY855aY550-5975 help@alliedmarketresearch.com Web: https://www.alliedmarketresearch.com Metro Manila (CNN Philippines, April 17) Cabinet Secretary Leoncio "Jun" Evasco has been removed from the policy-making body of the National Food Authority (NFA), Presidential Spokesperson Harry Roque said Tuesday. Roque read Evasco's statement in a press briefing in Boracay Tuesday--wherein the former NFA Council Chairman thanked President Rodrigo Duterte for his trust and maintained that that he has never been corrupt. "I can never break the trust given to me by our President Rodrigo Roa Duterte especially when he appointed me to the position I am in now," Evasco said in his statement. He said it's a position he did not ask for but wholeheartedly accepted to help Duterte and to make government responsive to the needs of the people. "In my more than 20 years in government and public service, including three terms as Mayor of the Municipality of Maribojoc in Bohol, I have never been charged with malfeasance, misfeasance or nonfeasance," Evasco said. The Cabinet Secretary then called on the new NFA Council head to continue the transformation of the NFA. Evasco's removal from the council comes after a strained relationship between him and NFA administrator Jason Aquino. The two have been at odds since their disagreements in public statements regarding the country's low supply of cheap rice. Agriculture Secretary Emmanuel Pinol also posted a photo of the "reorganised" NFA Council on his Facebook page, after a meeting with President Rodrigo Duterte Monday night. Evasco, the Council Chair, was not in the photo. According to Roque, among the decisions made during that meeting was the return of NFA and two other agencies under the Department of Agriculture. Pinol, in an interview on CNN Philippines' The Source last week, said the council may be reorganized by Monday. READ: Pinol: NFA Council may be reorganized WASHINGTON (dpa-AFX) - The New York Times and New Yorker magazine have been jointly awarded Pulitzer Prize for their reporting on sexual harassment allegations in Hollywood. The New York Times' October 5 report exposing Harvey Weinstein's predatory behavior over decades had triggered a series of allegations by his victims, which eventually brought down the film mogul. Dozens of women, including several celebrity actresses, have accused Weinstein of sexual misconduct, including rape, groping and harassment, but the producer has 'unequivocally denied' any allegations of non-consensual relationships. It sparked a national conversation on sexual harassment in the United States, which witnessed campaigns such as Me Too, a number of protest rallies, and new media exposure of sexual predators. The 2018 Pulitzer Prize winners in 14 journalism and seven letters, drama and music categories were announced on Monday. Pulitzers are the most prestigious honor in journalism. The New York Times, for reporting led by Jodi Kantor and Megan Twohey, and The New Yorker, for reporting by Ronan Farrow, were awarded for Public Service in Journalism category. The Pulitzer Prize Board said the two American media outlets were honored 'For explosive, impactful journalism that exposed powerful and wealthy sexual predators, including allegations against one of Hollywood's most influential producers, bringing them to account for long-suppressed allegations of coercion, brutality and victim silencing, thus spurring a worldwide reckoning about sexual abuse of women'. The Washington Post won the investigative reporting prize for revealing decades-old allegations of sexual harassment of teenage girls against Senate candidate Roy Moore of Alabama. Its 'purposeful and relentless reporting' changed the course of the Senate race in Alabama, and also revealed subsequent efforts to undermine the journalism that exposed it, the Pulitzer Board noted. Reuters journalists won the award in International Reporting category for 'relentless reporting that exposed the brutal killing campaign behind Philippines President Rodrigo Duterte's war on drugs'. Staff of The Press-Democrat were selected for Breaking News Reporting award 'For lucid and tenacious coverage' of historic wildfires that ravaged the city of Santa Rosa and Sonoma County. Breaking News Photography award went to Ryan Kelly of The Daily Progress for a chilling image of a car attack during a racially charged protest in Charlottesville, Va. Copyright RTT News/dpa-AFX Kostenloser Wertpapierhandel auf Smartbroker.de The latest market research report by Technavio on the global cloud GIS marketpredicts a CAGR of above 11% during the period 2018-2022. This press release features multimedia. View the full release here: https://www.businesswire.com/news/home/20180417006119/en/ Technavio has published a new market research report on the global cloud GIS market from 2018-2022. (Graphic: Business Wire) The report segments the global cloud GIS market by end-user, including government, public safety, transportation, business, natural resources, utilities, and telecommunication, and by geography, including the Americas, EMEA, and APAC. It provides a detailed illustration of the major factors influencing the market, including drivers, opportunities, trends, and industry-specific challenges. Here are some key findings of the global cloud GIS market, according to Technavio ICT researchers: Rising popularity of cloud GIS due to ease in data accessibility: a major market driver Integration of cloud GIS with data analytics: emerging market trend The Americas dominated the global cloud GIS market with 43% share in 2017 In 2017, the government segment held a market share of nearly 15% This report is available at a USD 1,000 discount for a limited time only: View market snapshot before purchasing Save more with Technavio. Buy2 reports and get the third for FREEView all Technavio's current offers Rising popularity of cloud GIS due to ease in data accessibility: a major market driver Leading players have developed cloud GIS solutions to meet the growing demand for cloud integration. Cloud-based GIS provides media-enriched location information from any place at any time in the world, with a fast and reliable internet connection. Cloud-based GIS data retrieval saves time and cost because it is faster and easier to obtain data when compared with traditional GIS systems. It consumes less time to analyze, share, and publish data, and it is easy to update and review previous data. When compared with traditional GIS, it is user-friendly, as decision-making and workflow are made efficient by providing accurate information. Easy data access, ease of distribution, and real-time data capturing are the major advantages of implementing cloud-based GIS. Looking for more information on this market? Request a free sample report Technavio's sample reports are free of charge and contain multiple sections of the report including the market size and forecast, drivers, challenges, trends, and more. Integration of cloud GIS with data analytics: emerging market trend A new way of analyzing massive volumes of cluttered data to meaningful and useful one is possible due to the combination of cloud-based GIS data with data analytics. To perform the analysis to make the decision, all the data can be easily overlaid upon a map. GIS providers like ESRI have built GIS tools for Hadoop, which lets the user visualize and analyze the maps. According to a senior analyst at Technavio for research on enterprise application, "To become more consumer-friendly, GIS is being evolved endlessly, and the data from mobile devices is liberating professionals and consumers who have been accessing GIS services online. With the creation of feature-rich suites for iPhones or Android devices, GIS users are using these apps to collect geospatial data or explore it visually, anywhere and at any time. Professionals in the field are using these apps for data collection or observational data, which can be directly shared with the enterprise services environment on the cloud." Global market opportunities In terms of regional dominance, the Americas led the global cloud GIS market, followed by EMEA and APAC in 2017. Emerging economies like India, China, Thailand, Brazil, and Mexico are expected to become the most significant market for the cloud-based GIS market globally. Factors such as rising demand for operational requirements, cloud-based services, positive user experience, and real-time tracking is expected to drive the cloud GIS market during the forecast period. Technavio's best deals of the month! Technavio supports Health for All campaign on this World Health Day with 20% savings on all reports in the Health and Wellness category for the entire month. OR Celebrate International Astronomy Day by indulging in a whopping 30% savings on all reports in the Space category. Offer valid from 16th April for a limited period. About Technavio Technaviois a leading global technology research and advisory company. Their research and analysis focuses on emerging market trends and provides actionable insights to help businesses identify market opportunities and develop effective strategies to optimize their market positions. With over 500 specialized analysts, Technavio's report library consists of more than 10,000 reports and counting, covering 800 technologies, spanning across 50 countries. Their client base consists of enterprises of all sizes, including more than 100 Fortune 500 companies. This growing client base relies on Technavio's comprehensive coverage, extensive research, and actionable market insights to identify opportunities in existing and potential markets and assess their competitive positions within changing market scenarios. If you are interested in more information, please contact our media team at media@technavio.com View source version on businesswire.com: https://www.businesswire.com/news/home/20180417006119/en/ Contacts: Technavio Research Jesse Maida Media Marketing Executive US: +1 844 364 1100 UK: +44 203 893 3200 www.technavio.com WASHINGTON (dpa-AFX) - James Comey replied to President Donald Trump's call to jail him for his actions as FBI Director, saying that it could erode the rule of law, and argued that the American people are becoming dangerously numb to the President undermining the key tenets of the United States. The former FBI director was highly critical of Trump in two interviews broadcast Tuesday morning. Both of them have been engaged in a war of words since the weekend. While Comey said Trump is morally unfit to be president, Trump called the former FBI director 'a liar and leaker,' suggesting he be sent to jail. 'That is not normal that is not OK,' Comey said in his 'Good Morning America' interview. 'First of all, he's just making stuff up. Most importantly, the President of the United States is calling for the imprisonment of a private citizen as he's done for a whole lot of people who criticize him. That is not acceptable in this country,' Comey told ABC News' George Stephanopoulos. 'This is not some tin-pot dictatorship where the leader of the country gets to say 'the people I don't like go to jail,' he told NPR in an interview that was also broadcast Tuesday morning. 'Our Lady Justice wears a blindfold. And the reason all those statues all over the country have a blindfold is, that's the way it has to be,' Comey told NPR. 'Lady Justice can't be peeking under the blindfold to see if Donald Trump wants her to convict so-and-so and not convict so-and-so. If we lose that, we've lost the rule of law, and so there's great danger in the president of the United States saying 'you should be in jail.' To a question if he will run for office some day, Comey replied in the negative, but said he plans to teach at the university level and give speeches on ethics and leadership. 'I hope people read the book and see why the rule of law is such an important value in this country. And key to that is that the President doesn't get to decide who goes to jail,' Comey said referring to his memoir that was scheduled to release on Tuesday. Comey was also critical of Trump's decision last week to pardon Scooter Libby, a former chief of staff to former Vice President Dick Cheney. Copyright RTT News/dpa-AFX Kostenloser Wertpapierhandel auf Smartbroker.de Titan IC today announced that they have licensed their 40Gb/s Helios RXPF Regular Expression Processor to Silicom Ltd to further enhance their new FPGA SmartNIC platform. In today's market there is a clear need for hardware acceleration to process the increasing volumes of data at speed and FPGA technology is a key player in this space. Silicom, industry leaders in connectivity solutions, have developed a portfolio of easy-to-use FPGA hardware, software and IP modules to reduce time-to-market for their customers. Titan IC's Regular expression processing (RXP) technology has been chosen as Silicom's pattern and string matching solution which will be rolled out on multiple FPGA platforms. "Over the last few years FPGA technology has been evolving rapidly, with the use of FPGA by leaders in Network Security, Virtualization and other market segments, strengthening its position as a highly competitive acceleration contender", said Henrik Lilja, President, Silicom Denmark. "Silicom believes that Titan IC's regular expression acceleration technology is a key IP block on our FPGA portfolio, enabling security companies to benefit from hardware-accelerated pattern and complex string matching at line speeds." The Helios RegEx processor is proficient in analysing data at full network throughput rates reaching 100 Gb/s in FPGA technology and can scan up to 1 million complex regular expressions in parallel. "We are delighted to have signed this new license agreement with Silicom and we welcome them into the Titan IC RegEx ecosystem. We have enjoyed working closely with Henrik and his team to embed our technology onto their platform. We congratulate them for successfully completing the design which will be extremely useful for the FPGA developer community and for the advancement of network security processing." said Noel McKenna, CEO, Titan IC. Visit Titan IC at RSA 2018 Titan IC is exhibiting their latest Helios RegEx processor and partner products on the Titan IC booth N3121 at RSA Conference 2018 at the Moscone Center in San Francisco from 16th to 20th April 2018. To book a demonstration or to meet with one of the Titan IC team at the exhibition, please email sales@titan-ic.com. About Silicom Silicom Ltd. is an industry-leading provider of high-performance networking and data infrastructure solutions. Designed primarily to improve performance and efficiency in Cloud and Data Center environments, Silicom's solutions increase throughput, decrease latency and boost the performance of servers and networking appliances, the infrastructure backbone that enables advanced Cloud architectures and leading technologies like NFV, SD-WAN and Cyber Security. The company's innovative solutions for high-density networking, high-speed fabric switching, offloading and acceleration, which utilize a range of cutting-edge silicon technologies as well as FPGA-based solutions, are ideal for scaling-up and scaling-out cloud infrastructures. Silicom products are used by major Cloud players, service providers, Telco's and OEMs as components of their infrastructure offerings, including both add-on adapters in the Data Center and stand-alone virtualized/universal CPE devices at the edge. Silicom's long-term, trusted relationships with more than 150 customers throughout the world, its more than 400 active Design Wins and more than 300 product SKUs have made Silicom a "go-to" connectivity/performance partner of choice for technology leaders around the globe. About Titan IC Headquartered in Belfast Northern Ireland, Titan IC is a spin out company from the Centre for Secure Information Technology (CSIT) at Queens University Belfast, Northern Ireland. Titan IC is a world leader in the development of hardware engines for content and network processing. The solutions offered include regular expression (RegEx) acceleration for use in all aspects of network security including: Intrusion Detection/Prevention, Application Detection, Anti-Virus, Content/URL filtering. These solutions are available as PCIe cards for inclusion in Network servers, as cloud-based services on AWS F1, as licensable Intellectual property for use on Field Programmable Gate Arrays (FPGA) and as Silicon Intellectual Property (SIP) for custom Application Specific Integrated Circuit (ASIC). www.titan-ic.com. --- ENDS --- View source version on businesswire.com: https://www.businesswire.com/news/home/20180417006319/en/ Contacts: Titan IC Grainne McKeever g.mckeever@titan-ic.com Mobile: +44 (0) 7753496263 Leading global water technology company, Xylem (NYSE:XYL), was named the Water Technology Company of the Year at the 2018 Global Water Awards. The accolade is presented to the company that made the most significant contribution to the field of water technology in 2017. Established in 2006 by Global Water Intelligence (GWI), the Global Water Awards are presented annually at the Global Water Summit and recognize the most important achievements in the international water industry. The awards are voted on by subscribers of Global Water Intelligence and Water Desalination Report Xylem was recognized for "its unparalleled vision to offer end-to-end solutions for the digital utility of the 21st century." Through strategic acquisitions and cutting-edge innovations centred on energy management and process optimization, Xylem has established itself as a leading provider of intelligent solutions that address the water industry's most persistent challenges. Xylem was identified as the company that "moved the needle in the water technology sector in 2017to become an outright leader in the rapidly growing market for smart water solutions." "We are honoured to be recognized as Water Technology Company of the Year," said Patrick Decker, Xylem President and Chief Executive Officer. "This award is an important acknowledgement of the efforts of our nearly 17,000 Xylem colleagues who are committed to tackling the most complex water management challenges facing communities today. We remain focused on collaborating with our customers and partners to bring the right technology solutions to the market to increase the productivity of water and wastewater operations, and to help utilities address the issue of water affordability." Xylem's recent acquisitions of Pure Technologies, EmNet and Valor Water Analytics were each noted for strengthening the Company's suite of solutions to address non-revenue water, as well as smart water and wastewater network assessment and management. Other achievements highlighted include the installation of Xylem's Concertor intelligent wastewater pumping system in Washington, D.C., and the launch of Xylem's latest smart dewatering pump. Also acknowledged were Xylem's continued efforts to develop potable reuse solutions with the installation of the world's first large-scale ultraviolet /chlorine process to treat wastewater to drinking water standards at the Terminal Island Water Reclamation Plant in Los Angeles in 2017. The Global Water Awards were presented at the Global Water Summit in Paris, France. About Xylem Xylem (XYL) is a leading global water technology company committed to developing innovative technology solutions to the world's water challenges. The Company's products and services move, treat, analyze, monitor and return water to the environment in public utility, industrial, residential and commercial building services settings. Xylem also provides a leading portfolio of smart metering, network technologies and advanced infrastructure analytics solutions for water, electric and gas utilities. The Company's more than 16,500 employees bring broad applications expertise with a strong focus on identifying comprehensive, sustainable solutions. Headquartered in Rye Brook, New York with 2017 revenue of $4.7 billion, Xylem does business in more than 150 countries through a number of market-leading product brands. The name Xylem is derived from classical Greek and is the tissue that transports water in plants, highlighting the engineering efficiency of our water-centric business by linking it with the best water transportation of all that which occurs in nature. For more information, please visit us at www.xylem.com. View source version on businesswire.com: https://www.businesswire.com/news/home/20180417006348/en/ Contacts: Deirdre Connolly for Xylem deirdre.connolly@edelman.com Tel: +353 85 244 9804 SUNNYVALE, CALIFORNIA (ots) - To accelerate new technologies and partnership access, Yanfeng Automotive Interiors (YFAI) recently joined the Plug and Play Mobility ecosystem. Plug and Play is the largest global innovation platform that brings together startups, investors, and corporations. They are experts in facilitating meaningful introductions, investing in startups, and bringing together key stakeholders into one world-changing network."Yanfeng Automotive Interiors brings a fresh perspective to our ecosystem. They redefine how drivers interact with the inside of their vehicles and by working with startups, they will be able to further impact the user experience," said Saeed Amidi, Founder and CEO of Plug and Play. "We look forward to introducing them to new technology that supports their mission."As a Plug and Play ecosystem member, YFAI will engage and benefit in several ways, including proof of concept tests, pilot projects and deal flow sessions with startups."This is an unprecedented time in the automotive industry. We believe the interior is where the mobility revolution will have the most significant impact," said Han Hendriks, Chief Technology Officer for Yanfeng Automotive Interiors. "Working with Plug and Play and their platform partners is critical to give us further access to disruptive technology and startups globally to accelerate the pace."About Plug and PlayPlug and Play is a global innovation platform. Headquartered in Silicon Valley, we have built accelerator programs, corporate innovation services, and an in-house VC to make technological advancement progress faster than ever before. Since inception in 2006, our programs have expanded worldwide to include a presence in 21 locations globally giving startups the necessary resources to succeed in Silicon Valley and beyond. With over 6,000 startups and 220 official corporate partners, we have created the ultimate startup ecosystem in many industries. We provide active investments with 200 leading Silicon Valley VCs, and host more than 700 networking events per year. Companies in our community have raised over $7 billion in funding, with successful portfolio exits including Danger, Dropbox, LendingClub, PayPal, SoundHound, and Zoosk. For more information, visit www.plugandplaytechcenter.com.About Yanfeng Automotive Interiors:Yanfeng Automotive Interiors (YFAI) is the global leader in automotive interiors. YFAI is redefining how people relax, work and play in their vehicle interiors today and decades from now. Headquartered in Shanghai, the company has approximately 110 manufacturing plants and technical centers in 20 countries and more than 33,000 employees globally. They design, develop and manufacture interior components for all automakers. Established in 2015, Yanfeng Automotive Interiors is a joint venture between Yanfeng, one of the largest automotive suppliers in China and Adient, the global leader in automotive seating. For more information, please visit www.YFAI.com.Originaltext: Yanfeng Automotive Interiors digital press kits: http://www.presseportal.de/nr/117551 press kits via RSS: http://www.presseportal.de/rss/pm_117551.rss2Contact: For more information please contact: Yanfeng Automotive Interiors Jagenbergstrae 1 41468 Neuss Germany Astrid Schafmeister Tel.: +49 2131 609-3028 E-Mail: astrid.schafmeister@yfai.com Metro Manila (CNN Philippines, April 17) -- Reuters' Filipino correspondent Manuel Mogato, along with his colleagues Clare Baldwin and Andrew R.C. Marshall, won the 2018 Pulitzer award for International Reporting on Monday for their coverage of President Rodrigo Duterte's war on drugs. The Pulitzer awards recognize achievements in newspaper, magazine, and online journalism, literature, and music composition in the United States since 1917. Their award for International Reporting honors journalists who have shown excellence in covering international affairs. The Reuters' team was cited "for relentless reporting that exposed the brutal killing campaign behind Philippines President Rodrigo Duterte's war on drugs." In 2017, Reuters published an investigative series entitled "Duterte's War" covering various stories on drug-related killings in the Philippines. Their articles include "Dead on Arrival" an investigative research on the number of apprehended suspects declared dead on arrival in the hospitals. In November that year, the international news agency released CCTV footage that contradicted police accounts on the death of three men in an anti-drug operation in Tondo, Manila. A police report on the incident said the three men shot during the raid were rushed to hospital, where they were pronounced dead on arrival. But security footage obtained by Reuters showed it took police at least 25 minutes to haul away the men they shot, carrying them by their arms and legs and loading their limp bodies onto pedicabs to bring them to the hospital. The report prompted the government to open an investigation. READ: Police kill three in Tondo raid a day after drug war removed from PNP Among those nominated were the staff of Buzzfeed News and the staff of Associated Press. Buzzfeed was nominated for their reporting on a targeted killing campaign by operatives with ties to Vladimir Putin, while the Associated Press' series featuring the United States-led defeat of the northern Iraqi city of Mosul, was also a contender. The Philippine war on drugs is a contested project in President Duterte's administration by the Human Rights Watch and the United Nations. The government has claimed that deaths in the war has reached over 4,000 while human rights groups estimated 13,000. READ: Duterte: ICC has no jurisdiction over me in drug war probe Vancouver, British Columbia--(Newsfile Corp. - April 17, 2018) - Stina Resources Ltd. (CSE: SQA) (OTCQB: STNUF) (the "Company") is pleased to announce that it has closed a third tranche of its fully subscribed non-brokered private placement for gross proceeds of $1,1701,901 through the issuance of 5,673,006 units ("Units") of the Company at a price of $0.30 per Unit (the "Offering"). Each Unit consists of one common share (a "Common Share") of the Company and one-half of one Common Share purchase warrant (each whole warrant, a "Warrant"). Each Warrant entitles the holder thereof to purchase a Common Share at an exercise price of $0.60 for a period of three (3) years following the closing of the Offering. Eligible persons (the "Finders") were paid a cash commission equal to 6% of the proceeds raised from subscribers introduced to the Company by such Finders and Broker Warrants equal to 6% of the Units issued pursuant to the Offering. Closing of the Offering is subject to receipt of all necessary corporate and regulatory approvals, including completion of the requisite filings with the Canadian Securities Exchange. All securities issued in connection with the Offering are subject to a hold period of four months plus a day from the date of issuance and the resale rules of applicable securities legislation. Proceeds of the Offering will be used for general working capital purposes. A director of the Company (the "Related Party") participated in the Offering, which participation constitutes a "related party transaction" as defined under Multilateral Instrument 61-101 - Protection of Minority Security Holders in Special Transactions ("MI 61-101"). Such a related party transaction is exempt from the formal valuation and minority shareholder approval requirements of MI 61-101 as neither the Company nor, to the knowledge of the Company after reasonable inquiry, the Related Party has knowledge of any material information concerning the Company or its securities that has not been generally disclosed. The participants in the Offering and the extent of such participation were not finalized until shortly prior to the completion of the Offering. Accordingly, it was not possible to publicly disclose details of the nature and extent of related party participation in the Offering pursuant to a material change report filed at least 21 days prior to the completion of the Offering The Company also wishes to correct its press release dated April 6, 2018, the press release should have indicated that the Company closed its second tranche of $2,687,999 thorough the issuance of 8,959,998 Units as opposed to 4,479,998 Units. For further information, please contact: Brian Stecyk President Telephone: 780-953-0111 The Canadian Securities Exchange has not reviewed this press release and does not accept responsibility for the adequacy or accuracy of this news release. 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, 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 statements. Not for distribution to U.S. news wire services or dissemination in the United States. In a bid to stave off increasingly stiff competition from the United States, Europe has introduced pan-EU licenses for financial technology companies. Good news then, for international private equity firms like Finstar Financial Group, who are eying up the billion euro fintech sector, with chairman and founder Oleg Boyko at the helm. The new license will allow companies like Adyen to bypass the banks and process cross-border payments directly to its merchant customers. One of the primary barriers to entry in the fintech banking space is the necessity to acquire an official license to conduct business directly with customers. The European Central Bank can now decide whether a bank can operate as an acquiring bank regardless of whether they intend on becoming a full-service outfit. The meteoric evolution of fintech has left traditional banks in a malaise. The old players in the banking industry are scratching their heads reminiscing about the days when banking was an immovable object, resistant to change and greater market forces. The financial crisis gave us the first inclination that banks were perhaps just as vulnerable as other businesses. We are now in a situation where technology is driving rapid change, and banks that fail to respond to the new banking environment will fall and fall faster than anyone can expect. Indeed, it is customers that have the power in banking after centuries where bankers were our overlords. Now, with new entrants to the market propelled by progressive European regulation, more established banks can no longer rest on their laurels. Modern banking customers expectlike in other areas of their livestheir needs to be met instantly. A delayed service is no longer acceptable. And, as the bigger banks are aware, many of their processes are cumbersome, resulting in a slower than acceptable service speed for their customers. In an era where retails products can be purchased and received on the same day, people expect financial transactions to occur in real time. Expecting a customer to wait three days, for example, to send money overseas is naive, given the plethora of alternative banking options. According to a KPMG Top of Mind Survey in 2017, 29 percent of respondents answered that increasing personalisation is likely to be the most disruptive consumer behaviour trend over the next couple of years. And, its important to realise that fintech companies or companies that operate with the latest fintech technology, stand to overtake any competition that is reluctant to adapt. Fresh Capital Fuels Fintech Growth According to a recent article in Fortune, venture capital investments in financial services startups are showing a geographical split. While funding for fintech companies in the United States is cooling, Europe is sizzling with new money. In contrast to the United States, innovation in Europe is on an upward trajectory, with new startups shaking up the market. The number of fintech deals in Europe jumped 74% from the previous quarter to 73, and the average deal size clicked northwards. The European Union has spotted the potential in the fintech market, and with an increase in digital banks, regulations that encourage startups, and the popularity of online payments, Europe will be primed to take pole position. Venture capitalists in the United States are retreating. That is in tune with a general startup investment pullback, as investors are less inclined to accept the risk involved in backing a young business in a nascent market. In contrast, European investment houses have taken a different path, pouring record-breaking capital into fintech companies. Germany has established its credentials in the global fintech space, and for analysts, the country will soon overtake the UK. Capital Investment in German fintech startups soared to US$421 million in 2016, a tick up to 118% from 2015s US$193 million, illuminating the seismic growth of the industry. Companies like N26, a German direct bank allows its customers to bank via their smartphones. Headquartered in the countrys capital, Berlin, N26 offers services throughout the Eurozone. N26 has raised over US$52 million in funding from the Axel Springer Plug and Play Accelerator, Early Bird Venture Capital, and Horizons Ventures. Spotting a gap in the market, online banks can compete on price, service, and user experience, in a way that older banks struggle to manage. That being said, established banks are in a scramble to modernise in the face of new competition. International private equity firms like Finstar Financial Group, founded by well-known investor Oleg Boyko, identify fintech as a core component of their five-year investment plan. They have earmarked US$150 million to put towards the fintech space in a bid to provide funds to broaden their international presence in mobile-first consumer finance. Oleg Boyko aims to fortify the Groups holdings in innovative consumer technologies and to spread its portfolio exposure to fast-growing emerging markets across Europe, Asia-Pacific and Latin America. A year before the announcement, Mr. Boyko made investments in several European fintech enterprises. In 2016, Finstar collaborated with Holtzbrinck Ventures on a EUR 31.5 million investment in Spotcap, a German service that specializes in lending for small and medium-sized businesses. Finstar also invested in a P2P online-lending platform, Viventor and online marketing services provided by Rocket10. When the chairman of Finstar Financial Group, Oleg Boyko, was asked what areas he sees the capital going to, he revealed that Finstar will focus on transformational financial services platforms and businesses. And, the group will focus on fintech and insurtech, along with fintech-enabling models in AI, data science, adtech, and martech. Martech combines the terms marketing and technology. Any social media marketing, or indeed, any marketing that takes place digitally, is an example of martechand its a high-growth area at the moment. So what do private equity firms actually do and do startups really need them? The main idea is that of a strategically valuable partnership. Finstar, for instance, provides expert advice helping their portfolio companies to gain the benefit of a strong network and synergies from collaboration with other businesses in their portfolio. Finstars philosophy of partnership brings strategic value and insight to growth investments, allowing its companies to succeed in complex developing markets. They nurture the businesses they invest in, providing them with expert advice of the highest calibre. They also offer fintech companies the freedom to continue innovating and to grow at a pace that they dictate themselves. They have highly developed expertise at the HQ level, which allows it to serve as a centre of excellence. LawGeex, a Tel Aviv, Israel-based provider of a Contract Review Automation platform for businesses, closed a $12m funding round. The round, which brings total funding to date to $21.5m, was led by venture capital firm Aleph, with participation from previous investors Lool Ventures. In conjunction with the funding, Aleph partner, Eden Shochat, will be joining the companys board. The company intends to use the funds to deepen its product offering, and expand its US presence following the opening of its New York office earlier this year. Founded in 2014 by Noory Bechor and leading AI expert Ilan Admon, LawGeex provides a SaaS platform that uses AI to allow in-house legal teams to automate the review and approval of everyday contracts. The company has customers in over 15 countries, including eBay, Farmers Insurance, Natixis and Lifetime Fitness. FinSMEs 17/04/2018 Tax Guard, a Boulder, Colorado-based provider of data and services for lenders to accurately assess tax-related credit risk associated with potential borrowers, received an investment from Falfurrias Capital Partners. The amount of the deal was not disclosed. The investment will enable the company to scale the business. Co-founded in 2009 by CEO Hansen Rada, Tax Guard provides proprietary data and services for lenders to accurately assess tax-related credit risk associated with potential borrowers. Lenders throughout the U.S. use Tax Guards proprietary due diligence and monitoring reports both prior to financing and throughout the course of their lending relationships. In conjunction with the investment, Chris Marshall, co-founder and former CFO of Capital Bank, an early Falfurrias Capital Partners portfolio investment, will join Tax Guard as executive chairman. Marc Oken, former CFO of Bank of America, and Joe Price, also a former Bank of America CFO and Head of Consumer and Small Business Banking, will be joining the board along with Geordie Pierson, a principal in Falfurrias Capital Partners. FinSMEs 17/04/2018 . " . , . . SMS, . , ... Metro Manila (CNN Philippines, April 17) Two House panels approved the proposed Bangsamoro Basic Law (BBL), which seeks to create a political entity that would replace the Autonomous Region of Muslim Mindanao (ARMM). House Deputy Speaker Bai Sandra Sema raised the motion to pass House Bill (HB) 6475 in an executive session on Monday. The House committee on Muslim affairs and the special committee on peace, unity and reconciliation carried the motion with 5-3 and 6-4 votes, respectively. However, the committee on local government rejected the motion with a vote of 1-9. A bill requires a majority vote to reach the Senate. HB 6475 seeks to establish a basic structure of government for the Moro people, who were the "natives or original inhabitants of Mindanao and the Sulu archipelago and its adjacent islands including Palawan." House Speaker Pantaleon Alvarez authored the measure, which was among four versions filed at the House. The other three proposals were filed by Sema, Pampanga Representative Gloria Macapagal-Arroyo, and Lanao del Norte Reppresentative Mohamad Khalid Dimaporo. READ: Peace adviser: Proposed Bangsamoro Basic Law to be certified urgent by June Under the bill, the Bangsamoro shall remain a territory of the Philippines under the protection of the Central Government. The Central Government shall establish a Bangsamoro Military Command of the Armed Forces of the Philippines for the Bangsamoro, and a Bangsamoro Police. The Bangsamoro territory encompasses the following areas: - The Municipalities of Baloi, Munai, Nunungan, Pantar, Tagolan and Tangkal in the province of Lanao Del Norte and barangays in the Municipalities of Kabacan, Carmen, Aleosan, Pigkawayan, Pikit, and Midsayap that voted for inclusion in the ARMM during the 2001 plebiscite - The cities of Cotabato and Isabela - All other contiguous areas where there is resolution of the local government unit or a petition of at least 10 percent of the registered voters in the area asking for their inclusion at least two months prior to the conduct of the ratification of the Basic Law and the process of delimitation of the Bangsamoro. According to the House of Representatives Press and Public Affairs Bureau, they will conduct a popular ratification among the Moro people, "to ensure the widest acceptability of the BBL." On March 28, President Rodrigo Duterte said he wanted the BBL to be passed within the year to fulfill his promise of bringing peace in the south. READ: Duterte: I want BBL before the end of the year Nokias Health Division is up for sale yet again. The health division mostly consists of the assets of Withings which it acquired in 2016. Nest is one of the potential bidders according to the sources. Nest is Alphabets smart home subsidiary which was merged back in Google back in February. Apart from Nest, two French companies and one other non-European company are also said to be in the running according to reports. With Facebooks Cambridge Analytica scandal where the political data firm accessed private information of up to 87 million Facebook users, the French Govt is said to be concerned that a sale to Google in the current climate could be received badly. Furthermore, French Govt with its latest initiative to boost the countrys efforts in AI, it is said to be pushing Nokia to sell to a French bidder in the hope that it will help boost its initiative. The new General Data Protection Regulation (GDPR), which comes into effect across the EU on 25 May will allow people in Europe more control over their personal data. On the other hand, Google is expanding its presence in France with a new AI research center and larger workforce in the country. Another ideal outcome would be for Google to instead invest in the French companies that are currently bidding for Nokia Health, instead of buying it directly. However, it is unclear if Google would completely let go of its health division or withhold it like the B2B segment. End of the day, the final bidder is expected to be finalized within the month, so we should know more details moving forward. Source Last week, Deadliest Catch returned for its 200th episode and 14th season fishing crab on the great Bering Sea. With one of the most competitive and unique seasons behind them, two of the fleets youngest captains are opening up about what fans can expect from season 14, what its like having their real lives on TV. Josh Harris and Jake Anderson had a lot riding on them this season, with the former returning after an 18-month break and the latter captaining his first vessel after dumping nearly $750,000 into its repairs. As fans of the show know, these captains not only engage in one of the most dangerous professions, but they do it under the ever-watchful eye of the American public. Both captains have experienced highs and lows, including the loss of family members, all while on TV. Every day you get reminded of the worst experiences of your life, but its helped somebody out, so you have to look at it as different things, Harris told Fox News. For a third of our adult life, weve been on TV and what you see is what you get. They see their time on the show as less of a burden and more of a motivational poster for the American public. Youve watched two guys accomplish the American dream. You've watched it unfold and its funny when you read the comments on social media and its like, 'you need to do this, you need to do that,' and I say, Youre missing the point. Im handing you the American dream, the map, just watch it and youll see what youll go through climbing the ladder,'" Anderson told Fox News. "Youre going to kick; youre going to cry; youre going to scream; youre going to bleed; youre going to moan and youre going to do whatever it takes to climb to the top." Andersons earlier life was marred by drug addiction, which he overcame before finally earning a captains position and engaging in the highly lucrative world of king crab fishing. Twelve years ago I was a bum on the street, Anderson said. Now I run a multi-million dollar company You can do that in America, but I think its getting lost." The duo are no strangers to working hard to make their living, and this season on the Berings Sea was no exception. Thanks to a super moon, the two told Fox News that this year they saw some large tides, which made the fishing season more dangerous than ever. However, given the necessity and pressure for them to make money, they steered their ships and crew right where they needed to be. Its like the seventh seal of hell out there this year. Because weve never experienced this before and no one ever has in recording anything having to do with the seas ever has seen anything like this, Harris said. I dont think it was fit for man or beast out there, but we were still there and thats what makes it entertaining. Anderson said it take a lot of courage to keep going. It comes to a point where, if youre not going to make money, you might as well go on land. You have to just muster up everything youve got and trust in your guys and trust you taught them well. Youre going to have to put them in harm's way... every day for 54 days. As season 14 continues on Tuesday, the guys teased higher stakes than ever as well as fiery drama between captains and crew. Harris was tasked with winning over a new crew along with his co-captain. I think I snapped one time pretty good this season, he teased. But nobody got fired, nobody quit and I think all my guys have all ten fingers and toes. Meanwhile, with everyone assuming Anderson is desperate to prove himself as a new captain, he teased that his guiding star was not respect, but money. I think as a captain Im not interested in proving anything to me or anybody. I just want that money in the bank, Anderson said. If Ive got to do it on my own, Ill do it on my own. Metro Manila (CNN Philippines, April 17) Australian nun Patricia Fox walked free Tuesday after a day in detention. The 71-year-old nun was released from the Bureau of Immigration (BI) headquarters in Intramuros, Manila at around 3:30 p.m., with a throng of photographers and television crew crowding around her as she emerged from the building and walked to a waiting vehicle. She denied joining anti-government rallies as alleged by the BI. "As a religious (person) I have been joining pro-human rights rallies for the farmers, for their land rights, to release political prisoners. When you call it political, I call it part of our duties as religious," Fox told reporters shortfly after being released. Fox's lawyer, Jobert Pahilga, said that in the photos obtained by the BI, the nun was not joining a rally but was about to visit farmers in prison as part of her mission. Fox was apprehended at a mission house in Quezon City Monday afternoon. The BI accused her of violating the conditions of her stay in the country when she supposedly attended protest rallies and engaged in political activities. Next: Preliminary investigation The BI's legal division on Tuesday said, "Although the BI agents managed to present evidence that the respondent wrongfully engaged in political activity in (Davao City) on 07 April 2018, she was no longer doing the same at the time of her arrest on 16 April 2018." Had Fox been arrested while joining a protest, she would remain detained for inquest proceedings, the BI said. But since this is not the case, Fox was released but will undergo preliminary investigation to determine whether deportation charges should be filed against her. The BI also noted that Fox failed to present immigration documents on Monday, but it decided to let Fox go on Tuesday "after it was established that the Australian nun holds a valid missionary visa and, thus she is a properly documented alien." It said Fox was issued a missionary visa on October 15 last year, which is valid until September 9 this year. Gov't to foreigners: Don't participate in rallies The bureau has said the basis of Fox's arrest was a provision of the Philippine Immigration Law of 1940, which says "any alien who remains in the Philippines in violation of any limitation or condition under which he was admitted as a nonimmigrant" can be arrested or deported by the bureau. One of the conditions that we impose on all foreigners is that they desist from participating in any form of political activities," Presidential Spokesperson Harry Roque said in a press briefing on Tuesday.*** In 2013, the BI deported a Canadian student and Dutch national for participating in an anti-government protest during then President Benigno Aquino III's State of the Nation Address. 'How can a 71-year old nun be a threat?' Various groups staged a protest Tuesday, condemning Fox's arrest and calling for her immediate release. They said her arrest was part of the government's crackdown against critics and human rights defenders. Senator Nancy Binay said Fox's arrest was a mistake and accused the BI of abusing its authority. "How can a 71-year old nun be a threat to society?" Binay said in a statement. The Catholic Bishops Conference of the Philippines (CBCP) said Fox recently joined the International Fact-Finding and Solidarity Mission in Mindanao. In 2013, she was also detained for joining protests in Hacienda Luisita but was released without charges. Justice Secretary Menardo Guevarra earlier said Fox's case "has nothing to do with her being a nun, nor with her personal advocacies." "But like any other foreigner enjoying the privilege of staying in our country, she has to obey and comply with our laws," he added. The BI is an agency under the Department of Justice. CNN Philippines' Anjo Alimario and Ver Marcelo contributed to this report. Arizona has recorded its first death involving an overdose of Carfentanil, a synthetic opioid thats 5,000 times more potent than heroin, and 100 times more powerful than fentanyl. The DEA announced the death on Monday, and said it occurred in 2017 and involved a 21-year-old male who was found dead in a car outside a Phoenix restaurant. While the report did not divulge any further information about the mans identity, it did say the Maricopa County Medical Examiners report confirmed the presence of carfentail, Fox 10 Phoenix reported. The DEA said the source of the drug remains unknown. ORGANS FROM OVERDOSE VICTIMS MAY SAVE THOUSANDS ON TRANSPLANT WAITING LIST Carfentanil is an extremely an extremely dangerous drug and its presence in Arizona should be incredibly alarming for all of us, including the DEA and our law enforcement partners who continue to combat the opioid epidemic in this state, Special Ageny Doug Coleman said, in a released statement. THE OPIOID EPIDEMIC'S FORGOTTEN VICTIMS: PETS Carfentanil is typically used to tranquilize elephants, and is deadly to humans at just 0.02 milligrams. A DEA official previously told Fox News that the drug is so powerful, that it poses a danger simply by coming into contact with a persons skin. An Arizona woman who donated a kidney to a complete stranger said it was the most gratifying thing she has ever done, even though shes never met the recipient. Beth Ramirez, who felt a calling to help someone in need after her own daughter was diagnosed with an illness two years ago, went under the knife in February. While she couldnt help her child through organ donation, she had read an article on living donors and felt compelled to do something. I felt a tap on my shoulder that said, This is what Ive been preparing you for, Ramirez told Fox 10 Phoenix. I had people say to me, Why would you do this? Why would you do this? What if your daughter needs a kidney? or What if your loved ones needs a kidney? ORGANS FROM OVERDOSE VICTIMS MAY SAVE THOUSANDS ON TRANSPLANT WAITING LIST But Ramirez said after working with the Banner University Medical Center, the only thought in her mind was, why would you not? While her recipient has remained anonymous, Ramirez said there is a chance they may meet for the first time in the coming weeks. Ramirez returned to work after a three-week recovery and also said she would do it again in a heartbeat if she could. The only thing that you need is a willing heart and a little bit of time, she told Fox 10 Phoenix. next Image 1 of 2 prev Image 2 of 2 After laying in a hospital for two months without a face, Jerome Hamon is getting used to his new look. The 43-year-old, who suffers from a genetic mutation which causes disfiguring tumors and complications, underwent his second face transplant nearly four months ago at a hospital in Paris. While he was waiting he never complained, he was even in a good mood, Bernard Cholley, an anesthetist at Georges-Pompidou European Hospital, where Hamon remains hospitalized, told the Telegraph. ORGANS FROM OVERDOSE VICTIMS JMAY SAVE THOUSANDS ON TRANSPLANT WAITING LIST He first underwent a face transplant to treat the tumors caused by neurofibromatosis type 1 in 2010, but in 2016 his body started rejecting it and his face deteriorated, according to the Telegraph. Doctors were forced to remove the face in November 2017, leaving him without a face for two months. While he waited for news of a compatible donor, he was unable to hear, speak or see, BBC News reported. In January, news of a 22-year-old donor reached the hospital, setting up the possibility of a second transplant for Hamon. Dr. Laurent Lantieri, who performed the first transplant surgery, also conducted the second. Hamon was given three months of blood treatment prior to the surgery to help reduce any risk of rejection, the Telegraph reported. The first transplant I accepted immediately, Hamon told the news outlet. I thought this is my new face and this time, its the same. If I hadnt accepted this new face it would have been terrible. Its a question of identity But here we are, its good, its me. The opioid crisis ravaging many parts of the country is impacting a group usually untouched by the drug wars pets. The ongoing battle to regulate opioids has left veterinarians scrambling to find medicine and pain killers for their small, furry patients. The government has tried to reduce opioid addiction by reining in the amount of drugs that are produced and distributed. That means nationwide there is an unprecedented shortage in the injectable versions of morphine, hydromorphone, and fentanyl staples of surgical sedation in small animals, like cats and dogs. Hospitals treating people obviously get first priority in receiving the drugs. That means that shortage is more acute in animal clinics. The shortage is making it challenging to provide adequate anesthesia for all of our patients, said Dr. Giacomo Gianotti, head of anesthesia at the Veterinary Hospital of the University of Pennsylvania. We anesthetize roughly 20 to 30 cases a day. We are one of the largest clinics in the nation and worry will there enough opioids? Veterinarians like Dr. Jennifer Jones, owner of Animedic and One Love Veterinary Clinics in Philadelphia, said animal doctors are forced to administer second-choice drugs, which are pricier, or deliver standard drugs differently. Its frustrating, Jones said, We use establish protocol put forth by the American Animal Hospital Association, so when we have to deviate from those [guidelines] I dont want to have to second guess the drugs effects. Kimara Martinez said she had to bring in her rescue cat, Ursula, to Animedic to be spayed but was worried about the procedure because of the pain medicine shortage. Doctors use opioids to sedate animals during surgery and to minimize pain afterward. I love her, Martinez said of her cat. She is like a part of my family and I would want the same care for her as I would anyone else in my family. Without the opioids or insufficient amounts of the drug, doctors like Jones are either unable to treat cases like Ursula or must resort to using a less potent drug that may leave the patient in pain. This is especially prominent in emergency cases, where hydromorphone is needed to sedate an animal that has been involved in some sort of accident and needs surgical reconstruction. In dire instances, veterinarians will postpone routine surgeries in order to manage emergency or life-threatening procedures. Veterinarians say the hardest thing about managing animal care is that they cannot tell you how much pain they are experiencing, or if the drugs are effective. "Veterinarian medicine is often a forgotten victim of this shortage, but these pets, like humans, are not getting the medicine they need," said Jones. Gianotti said pet owners are being forced to make hard decisions regarding diagnostic testing simply because the cost to sedate the animal is rising. Diagnostic tests can often serve as a preventative measure, identifying cancers or illnesses before spreading. Shortages are common in this field, but this is different, Jones said. They are not saying we dont have the drugs, they are saying we can only give X amount of the drug. In a Feb. 27 letter to the U.S. Drug Enforcement Administration, a coalition of professional medical groups including the American Hospital Association, the American Society of Clinical Oncology and the American Society of Health-System Pharmacists said the shortages increase the risk of medical errors and are potentially life-threatening. We use the same drugs as humans, and order from the same companies, Gianotti said. The DEA has severely limited the quotas for morphine, hydromorphone, and fentanyl in an attempt to reduce the misuse of opioid painkillers. The DEA called for a 25 percent reduction of all opioid manufacturing last year, and an additional 20 percent this year. We are trying to meet the legitimate medical need while balancing the amount of material manufactured because the excess material can ultimately lead to diversion, said DEA spokeswoman Katie Laughery. But, Laughery noted, government limits should not be causing the shortage. Some blame the shortage on manufacturing setbacks. Jones said when she received the memo regarding the shortage earlier this year, she didnt realize it was a national scarcity that would likely be permanent. "We didn't have time to prepare," Jones said. Now, all she can do is wait. A group of everyday Minnesota heroes are now being praised as the heroes of a local school's prom. On April 14, an unexpected and ferocious winter storm left students at Forest Lake Area High School without a venue to take photos for the highly anticipated spring dance. But just hours before prom was scheduled to begin, the Forest Lake Fire Department came to the rescue. PROM FAMILIES. Forest Lake Fire station will be opening their doors at 3 p.m. today for prom-goers to gather and take photos. Doors will be open from 3-6 today, the department wrote on Facebook. Be safe and make the most of this memorable day. BURGER KING TRAINED GUIDE DOG TO SNIFF OUT WHOPPERS The department's thoughtful gesture is being credited to Alyssa Thomas, the quick-thinking wife of firefighter Sean Thomas. She thought it would be pretty cool if we opened up the venue to take photos, Fire Chief Alan Newman told TwinCities.com. My initial thought was: Whos going to want to take a prom picture next to a fire truck? I was wrong. MAN CLAIMS HE LOST 20 POUNDS ON CHIPOTLE DIET I called a couple of guys, and we quick tidied up the station," Newman recalls. "At 3 oclock, I came and looked out the window that looks out at the parking lot, and there were 50 cars out there, and I went Uh-oh, I got back on the phone and ended up calling some more guys and said, Hey, can you get up here? The teens, embracing the odd opportunity, happily posed in their glitzy gowns and tuxedos while wearing fire hats, holding fire extinguishers, and hanging off fire trucks in photos that they they'll fondly be looking back at for years to come. It was cool to be part of their special day and parents were happy. They really looked like they had a lot of fun as well, he added. FOLLOW US ON FACEBOOK FOR MORE FOX LIFESTYLE NEWS For better or worse, the prom was ultimately canceled because weather conditions became so severe. Forest Lake High School Principal Jim Caldwell told KSTP that school leaders met April 16, and plans are already in motion to reschedule the big dance. According to AccuWeather, the day of the thundersnow- and sleet-ridden #BlizzardProm was the second-snowiest April day on record for Minneapolis, from which Forest Lake is about 30 minutes away. The Forest Lake High School students werent alone, either, as the storm forced the Minnesota Twins to postpone the three-day series against the Chicago White Sox that weekend. NEW You can now listen to Fox News articles! In light of recent school shootings, walk-outs to protest the handling of sexual harassment, and an upcoming lawsuit by a student who was drugged and gang-raped and then asked by officials to leave school until talk of the rape blew over you might think that Californias government has enough on its hands, just trying to keep kids in our public schools safe. But youd be wrong. Or, at least, youd be mistaken to assume busy-body California Assembly legislators would see it that way. The recently introduced Assembly Bills 2756 and 2926 are cases in point. This first, AB 2756, requires fire marshals to perform in-home inspections of home-schoolers every year, implying that somehow home-educators are less fire-safe than other individuals. This is, of course, egregiously discriminatory on its face. But wait. The second one is even worse! With AB 2926, Assembly Member Susan Eggman proposes forming an appointed committee to investigate homeschooling. The instruction committee would subsequently share its findings so that the California legislature might consider how best to regulate those families. Because there isnt anything a bureaucrat loves more than a new regulation! And these particular bureaucrats are already doing such a fine job of regulating our public schools that roughly half of California public school students surveyed reported experiencing bullying. With the current anti-religious climate, perhaps the bureaucrats would insist all religious items, including Bibles, be removed from private homes. Would they make all homes gun-free zones? Maybe your family eats too much sugar, so the government would impose candy restrictions in your home. But sure, Assembly members, appoint a new committee to study the tiny demographic of California home educators while ignoring the existing, disgraceful challenges in our public schools. Its always preferably to point out the splinter in someone elses eye than to address the log in your own. According to 2016 Census data, California now ranks 44th in the union for pre-K through 12th grade education. Thats out of fifty states. In contrast, home educated students typically score 15 to 30 percentile points better than their public school peers. This result is completely independent of whether the home-schooling parent is a certified teacher, and unrelated to the degree of state control and regulation. Of course, this annoys teachers unions, so they likely are quite happy about the new legislation. The NEA, said in their 2014-15 Resolutions, The National Education Association believes that home schooling programs based on parental choice cannot provide the student with a comprehensive education experience. Note they seem to stand entirely against parental choice because what other types of home education are there? This may be a more telling position than wed like to admit, frankly. Why would they fear home educators? As Kevin D. Williamson wrote in the National Review, Home-schoolers represent the only authentically radical social movement in the United States (Occupy Wall Street was a fashion statement) and so they must be suppressed Its time for parents across California and the U.S. to take seriously the threats of governmental overreaches, like AB 2926 and others. Parents, even if you dont home school, sending officials into the homes of those who do is a waste of your money and of their energies. And think about where this may end. We already have mandatory vaccines in California. With the current anti-religious climate, perhaps the bureaucrats would insist all religious items, including Bibles, be removed from private homes. Would they make all homes gun-free zones? Maybe your family eats too much sugar, so the government would impose candy restrictions in your home. Now is the right time for you to get involved and send the message to Sacramento that government encroachment must end, especially when government ineptitude is fully evident! And for those readers in other states, take notice, for as California goes, so goes the nation. Youre next, and your own nosy big-government-wolves are pacing outside, threatening to blow down your doors. In a nation that honors freedom, the government does not belong in our private affairs, and home education is one such environment. California AB 2926 represents the government at its worst, grabbing for any shred of power over the citizen, with absolutely no reason to do so and every argument to invest its time and resources otherwise. Let Californias government fix all thats wrong in our public schools the poor scholastic performance, sexual abuse problems, and safety issues before trying to micro-manage private citizens who are successfully overseeing their childrens education outside of government and union control. NEW You can now listen to Fox News articles! For former Californians like me, our days consist of at least two head shakes whenever news of our former home state crawls across the transom. Almost every day, theres a report out of that beautiful state that generates pity and bemusement at the latest outlandish event. Last week we learned a billionaire venture capitalist finally accomplished a dream by getting enough signatures to put a measure on the ballot asking voters if they want to divide California into three states. Tim Draper, the iconoclast behind the plan, understands the state is a disaster, but only Californians would think that the solution lies in making more Californias. After all, thats like thinking youll help your crazy uncle, who keeps trying to set the house on fire, by cloning him instead of getting him to the doctor. We all love California, and want it to be saved. Yes, to rescue our own memories but also to bring back the freedom and possibilities a state like California offers to the American people. Draper explained to Fox News Tucker Carlson that the current California government is failing our kids, its not safe here, a lot of homeless people, a lot of big problems, the education system is just about the worst in all 50 states so it needs a revamp and a restart. Hes right, but his litany of problems was brought on by liberal policies, not because the state is too big. California isn't circling the drain because its too big to govern. The state is a basket case because ruling Democrats have an unquenchable thirst for emptying the prisons, enabling an exploding homeless population and jacking up every imaginable tax, said Johnny Phillips, a columnist with the Orange County Register and host at KABC Radio in Southern California. Since the 1990s the state and its voters have drifted far to the left, Phillips added. I fear that splitting the state into three would just give Democrats two more states to wreck and four more U.S. Senate seats that they would use to inflict more damage on the rest of the country. In his interview with Tucker Carlson, Draper confirmed Phillips concern. When asked why the rest of the country would allow the creation of a bunch more Californias, Draper explained: The rest of the country will want to do whats right for California. It takes up the same landmass as 15 states on the east coast, the population is the equivalent, an average of six or seven states. Its appropriate to have California represented by at least three states. Theres the confession California should have six senators because its big. And that is exactly the argument the Founders knew to thwart if our union was to survive. Equal representation matters especially when there is a disparity in size and power. You know, just in case a state got big, went crazy, and became a volcano of horrible ideas that could ruin paradise while banishing people with opposing viewpoints. More people might be persuaded if we could name the new states California, Bride of California, and Califormageddon. All in the name of transparency, of course. Draper is clearly more of an idealist than a realist. He told Carlson: I think these three new states are going to empower people, to realize whats possible in government, and then all these governments will realize they can do a better job. Then they could compete with one another down the road for citizens. To be a venture capitalist one needs to be a visionary but also an optimist. Draper is a registered Republican, a supporter of school vouchers and was an early investor in Skype and Tesla. He, like your humble columnist, was also involved in the election of Arnold Schwarzenegger during his first run for governor of California. That, too, was a visionary leap of faith, ultimately betrayed by someone who was thinking more of his housekeeper than he was of his responsibilities to his family and constituents. We all love California, and want it to be saved. Yes, to rescue our own memories but also to bring back the freedom and possibilities a state like California offers to the American people. The only way thats going to happen is when her people decide they deserve better and kick the bums out of Sacramento who are ruining that great state with awful policies. But theyll need a champion like Draper to help them do it. Instead of trying to divide California into three states, Draper should be working to unite the state and improve the lives of its people. He can do that by working to elect officials at the state and federal level who will replace far-left Big Government policies with sensible government that respects individual freedom, reduces the huge tax burden on Californians, and -- if I may borrow a phrase -- will Make California Great Again. NEW You can now listen to Fox News articles! In recent days, The New Yorker has made some downright scurrilous accusations about Chick-fil-A, the unofficial chicken of our Lord. The magazine warned that the beloved fast food restaurant was waging a guerrilla insurgency upon Gothams citizenry plotting to evangelize the city by luring the masses with plump, juicy chicken breasts tucked between hot, buttered buns. Click here to join Todds Twitter page! The brands arrival here feels like an infiltration, in no small part because of its pervasive Christian traditionalism, lamented Dan Piepenbring in an essay titled Chick-fil-As Creepy Infiltration of New York City. Piepenbring seemed terribly disturbed by the news that a fourth outpost of the family-owned chain had recently opened as if the Chick-fil-A Cows were about to stampede through the East Village. Its headquarters, in Atlanta, are adorned with Bible verses and a statue of Jesus washing a disciples feet, he wrote. Its stores close on Sundays. And like any progressive journalist, he offered up the obligatory Chick-fil-A is anti-gay smear. Untrue, of course, but whatever. The restaurants corporate purpose still begins with the words to glorify God, and that proselytism thrums below the surface of the Fulton Street restaurant, which has the ersatz homespun ambiance of a megachurch, he wrote. And he was especially wary of the famed Chick-fil-A Cows. If the restaurant is a megachurch, the Cows are its ultimate evangelists, Piepenbring declared. Well, praise the Lord and drink some sweet tea! Its politics, its decor, and its commercial-evangelical messaging are infected with this suburban piety, he wrote. Well, America the time has come for you to know the truth. The New Yorker caught us red-handed. The jig is up. The truth is months ago a covert team of specially trained Southern Christians crossed the Mason-Dixon Line along with a herd of grammatically-challenged bovines. Our mission was to convert the Yankee heathens with gracious Southern hospitality and delicious chicken sandwiches. And our plan wouldve worked had it not been for those meddling members of the Mainstream Media. After about a week of eating fried chicken and drinking sweet tea, New Yorkers had become so much more pleasant and docile. Brooklynites had even started waving at tourists with all five fingers instead of one. Now, that is the power of the Gospel Bird. So let not your heart be troubled, America because glory, glory hallelujah the War of Poultry Aggression rages on. Metro Manila (CNN Philippines, April 17) Vice President Leni Robredo on Tuesday apologized for posing for a photograph with Liberal Party solons at a memorial for genocide victims in Berlin, Germany. In a press release, Robredo issued an apology "for offending the sensitivities of others." "There's no excuse. While there was no malice in it, I take full responsibility, kaya I would like to apologize for whatever offense to the sensitivities of the people it caused," she said. Netizens earlier slammed the photo, which surfaced on Ifugao Rep. Teddy Baguilat's Twitter account, where the Vice President was seen at the Holocaust memorial with some Liberal Party lawmakers. Robredo posed with LP president and Senator Francis Pangilinan, as well as LP lawmakers Quezon City Rep. Kit Belmonte, Marikina Rep. Miro Quimbo, at the Holocaust Memorial. Former Budget Chief Butch Abad and Dinagat Islands Rep. Kaka Bag-ao from Akbayan were also with the group. Robredo and other party-mates took the photo in the middle of a study tour for poverty alleviation in Berlin, Germany last week. She had earlier said that Friedrich Neumann Foundation Philippines paid the expenses for their trip, and that no government money was used. Baguilat has since taken down his post, and has apologized for the "lapse." "We posed at the Holocaust Memorial not to demean the place. But I took down the tweet immediately so as not to hurt sensibilities," Baguilat said in a series of tweets. Baguilat added that as human rights advocates, they understand the plight of Jews who died in Nazi Germany during World War II, and that they "would be the last to disrespect their memory." The photo which circulated in social media drew flak from netizens, who called out the Vice President and the lawmakers. But while the Ifugao solon accepts the criticisms, he said he hopes this would enlighten the critics on the spate of extrajudicial killings in the country. "I hope this will make others express their outrage over the EJKs. The blood stains on the streets are their memorial," he said. NEW You can now listen to Fox News articles! The media and Democratic politicians are painting President Trump and his administration as lapdogs for Russian President Vladimir Putin. In fact, nothing could be further from the truth. Senate Minority Leader Chuck Schumer, D-N.Y., recently lambasted President Trumps supposedly soft stance on Russia, claiming: President Trump seems more intent on undermining the rule of law in this country than standing up to Putin. Such fact-free assertions are nothing more than partisan political attacks. When comparing President Trumps actions against Russia to those of President Obama, it is immediately clear that Trump has taken a more responsible approach. President Trump is the Russia hawk, not President Obama. Calling the current president soft on Russia is both dishonest and unscrupulous. Attacks by Democrats on President Trumps Russia policy are an attempt to hide the fact that the current administration has been much tougher on Russia than that of President Obama. The reason for these attacks is to deflect from President Obamas foreign policy failings, and to preserve the rapidly collapsing Russian collusion narrative. Democrats seem to have erased the former presidents legacy on Russia from their memories, such as the time during the presidential debates when Mitt Romney called Russia Americas number one geopolitical foe. President Obamas response was both mocking and dismissive as he said: The 1980s are now calling to ask for their foreign policy back, because the Cold Wars been over for 20 years. Consistent with President Obamas naivete, U.S. policy towards Russia was largely defined by appeasement and utopian wishes. Officials in the Obama State Department put their fingers in their ears and their hands over their eyes, steadfastly refusing to acknowledge Russias machinations and Putins ever-increasing global ambitions. Unsurprisingly, Russian militarism went unchecked as President Obamas administration handed Putin a big red reset button. Putin is not the evil maniacal ruler that some make him out to be. Like any savvy autocrat, hes an opportunist who seeks to advance his agenda wherever and whenever possible. Thanks to President Obamas hands-off mantra, Putin was given a unique opportunity to exploit Americas retreat in key spheres of influence. Nowhere is this better illustrated than President Obamas inaction during the Russian annexation of Crimea, seizing it from Ukraine. Likely feeling emboldened by American passivity in Syria, Putin decided to up the ante in his quest to make Russia once again a global powerhouse. After watching as his Ukrainian ally Viktor Yanukovych was ousted as leader of that nation, Putin decided to go all in on Crimea. Little green men flooded across the Russian border into sovereign Ukraine effectively controlling the region by March 2014. The United States and its European allies still playing by the old rulebook and not expecting territorial annexation to happen in 21st century Europe reacted only weakly. President Obama imposed minor sanctions, which did little more than bruise Russian defense firms and banks. What he did not do is more notable: he refused to provide lethal aid to Ukraine, despite repeated requests from the embattled government. Ukraine wouldnt be the end of Russias ongoing adventurism. Seeking to build upon its existing sphere of influence in the Middle East, Putin decided to dramatically increase Russias presence in the Syrian civil war. After failing to enforce his own red line, Obama called upon Moscow to broker an agreement with Damascus to remove chemical weapons from the conflict. Putin was more than happy to negotiate an agreement that let Assad maintain his stockpiles of chemical weapons, which are still utilized, brutally and cruelly, to this day. Obama passively watched as Putin worked with Assad to commit atrocities against the Syrian people. Munitions, arms, and soldiers steadily flowed from Moscow to the Assad regime with no scrutiny. Putins forces helped conduct countless airstrikes on civilian areas. Thanks to the Obama administrations naivete and foolish trust in Putin, Russia received a free pass for its complicity and barbarism. In contrast to the Obama administrations misguided and soft approach, President Trump has been tough on Russia. He reversed the previous administrations decision to not send weapons to support the Ukrainian government. Russia has continued to incite an armed uprising in Ukraines Donbass region hoping to potentially annex that region as well. But thanks to the Trump administration, much-needed weapons, including Javelin missiles, have been sent to Ukraine to help quell the Russian-backed rebellion. The president has taken the gloves off against Putin and his puppet, Syrian dictator Bashar Assad. Unlike Obama, Trump backed up American tough talk when Assad used chemical weapons against his own people in the Syrian city of Khan Shaykhun last year. U.S. forces launched a total of 59 Tomahawk missiles at Shayrat Airbase in Syria in response to the attack, destroying approximately 20 percent of the Assad regimes airpower in the process. And Assad wasnt let off for his recent use of chemical weapons in the Syrian city of Douma. In a coordinated effort with Britain and France, the United States launched strikes on three Syrian regime sites early Saturday. The Pentagon praised the attack for being Precise, effective, and overwhelming. Additionally, the Trump administration offered no apologies or condolences after a deadly recent clash with Russian mercenaries. In a major escalation, United States military forces, backed by AC-130s and Apache attack helicopters, obliterated more than 300 Kremlin guns-for-hire near the Syrian city of Dier al-Zor in the most lethal encounter between American and Russian forces since the Cold War. President Trump hasnt been afraid to target Putins Kremlin foot soldiers and political cronies as well. After it came to light that Russia had poisoned one of its ex-spies in Britain, President Trump worked in tandem with Britain and our European allies. The president kicked 60 Russian intelligence officers out of the U.S. and closed the Russian Consulate in Seattle. This was the largest purge of Russian spies in American history. President Trump also recently imposed far-reaching sanctions on seven Russian business tycoons, including Putins former son-in-law and other Moscow-backed entities. John Bolton, President Trumps new national security adviser, solidifies the administrations hardline stance on Russia. Moscow certainly needs no introduction to Bolton, who has been a hawkish critic of Putin and the Russian regime. Bolton has advocated for the United States to retaliate against Russia through intensive cyber-warfare, and has signaled that America should go further in providing more aid to the Ukrainian government. Throughout his presidency, President Trump has taken a more aggressive posture against Moscow than Obama. Dont expect the administration to let up. Unlike President Obama, President Trump has learned that only bold and decisive actions, not meaningless red lines, will deter Russian aggression. Alex Titus is a fellow at America First Policies, a nonprofit organization supporting policy initiatives that will put America first. NEW You can now listen to Fox News articles! The U.S.-British alliance a bond forged in blood in two world wars, is the so-called special relationship most people fawn over. However, there might be one other special bond forged after World War II, turning bitter enemies into the closest of allies that is even more important today: the one between America and Japan. Japanese Prime Minister Shinzo Abe began two days of meetings with President Trump at the presidents Mar-a-Lago estate in Florida Tuesday. Just looking over the amount of issues these two world leaders will need to discuss, their special relationship will be tested in a historic manner. At the start of their meeting, President Trump announced, with Abe at his side, that North and South Korean leaders who are holding their own summit April 27 will seek to finally reach an agreement to formally end the Korean War, which was halted with an armistice in 1953. Weve also started talking to North Korea directly, President Trump said. We have had direct talks at very high levels, extremely high levels, with North Korea. And I really believe this allows good will, that good things are happening. The issue of what to do about North Korea is center stage for the Trump-Abe meeting, and is the most likely reason Japans prime minister crossed the Pacific to meet with President Trump in short order. The timing of this visit is clearly critical. When President Trump recently agreed to a summit with North Korean dictator Kim Jong Un, Japan was surely taken by surprise. Now Abe must be worried that America could be going too far, too fast, in trying to achieve some sort of agreement with the North. And when one factors in South Koreas recent peace overtures to North Korea since January, there is a sense in Tokyo that Japans own security interests are slowly being forgotten. Over the last several weeks, I have spoken to several Japanese government officials who have been very clear in voicing some frustration. As one official explained: We dont want to be left behind when it comes North Korea. The official continued: It was Japan that had two (North Korean) missiles overfly our country a threat that really has awoken the Japanese public to the dangers presented by North Korea. If one of these missiles had any sort of guidance problem or malfunctioned and crashed into our territory it would have been Japanese citizens who paid the price with their lives. We want to make sure we are consulted, that we know Americas intent, as well as South Koreas. We dont demand a seat at the table we just want to know what is going on at the table. White House and other U.S. government officials I have spoken to were very clear that they have excellent communication with their Japanese counterparts and have heard their concerns. Japans unique security situation being so close geographically to North Korea is always part of Washingtons strategic calculus, whatever happens with the Kim regime, officials told me. One State Department official was very candid with me: Japan should rest easy. We would never, ever, conclude any major agreement with North Korea of major importance without consulting our allies and that means Japan, South Korea and others. Our allies in Asia, and the bigger Indo-Pacific region, are of the prime importance to us. We would never harm those relationships by concluding any agreements that could change the regional dynamics dramatically without knowing where they stand. But North Korea is not the only security issue America and Japan share, and, of over the long term, a much bigger challenge has arrived: a rising China. Indeed, Washington and Japan, always considered Beijing the biggest joint challenge the alliance faced until North Korea began heavy testing of missiles and a nuclear weapon last year. Both the U.S. and Japan need to make sure they can resist Chinas aggressive and bullying tendencies whether in the East China or South China Seas. And America and Japan must make sure allied defensive capabilities are able to negate and deter Beijings rising military might in any domain and across the wide expanses of the Indo-Pacific region. Then there is the complex issue of trade. President Trump has called out Japan and its trade practices. He has labeled these practices unfair because they take jobs away from Americans. With Washington leaving the Trans-Pacific Partnership (TPP) trade agreement, there seems to be some daylight in the alliance on this critical issue. However, with President Trump possibly open to rejoining TPP and knowing that Prime Minister Abe has been pressing the administration hard to rejoin the agreement there is a possibility of a breakthrough on this core issue during their meetings. It seems clear Trump and Abe have much to discuss, with a changing security and economic landscape in Asia that will test this alliance time and time again in the months and years to come. But as someone who has traveled to Japan extensively and worked with many Japanese colleagues in the realm of security issues and publishing over the years, I can honestly say that Tokyo could be no better partner or friend to Washington. Perhaps a Pentagon official I know well summed it up best: We have no better ally than Japan. In peacetime they are our most valued partner and friend. And in a crisis, I know we can count on them to stand with us. There is no nation I trust more. NEW You can now listen to Fox News articles! Tuesday is the due date for 2017 federal income tax returns your deadline for tallying up how much of the money that you worked hard to earn all year goes to Uncle Sam to fund all sorts of important and worthwhile projects like supporting the families of terrorist murderers. Yes, you read that right. U.S. economic aid to the Palestinian Authority paid for by your tax dollars averages $400 million a year. The Palestinian Authoritys 2018 budget includes approximately $360 million to support imprisoned terrorists and the families of dead terrorists including murderers of Israelis and Americans. These payments make about as much sense as having American taxpayers send monthly support checks to the families of the Sept. 11, 2001 terrorists or the family of the Las Vegas gunman who murdered 58 people last year. You might think the Palestinian Authority would be interested in spending more money on schools, housing, medical care, job creation and other things to improve the lives of Palestinians. Youd be wrong. In fact, the so-called moderate Palestinian Authority says in its laws that any Palestinian who attacks Israel is an integral part of the weave of Arab Palestinian society. Palestinian law goes on to say that any Palestinian jailed for conducting such an attack and the families of those who die as suicide bombers or when killed during an attack is entitled to receive a monthly stipend, health insurance and tuition assistance. Faced with the possibility of U.S. congressional action to withhold aid, Palestinian Authority President Mahmoud Abbas not only placed it openly in the 2018 budget he defiantly thumbed his nose in the face of the American taxpayer. The U.S. funds do not go directly to the Palestinian terrorists and their families. But your tax dollars pay for other projects that enable the Palestinian Authority to divert $360 million for its terrorist support program. The average Palestinian makes about $300 a month. A Palestinian terrorist in prison is paid between $368 a month for those sentenced to less than three years, rising to $3,400 month for those serving at least 30 years and for the families of dead terrorists. This creates a perverse financial incentive to commit murder. While in normal society someone might worry that going to prison or becoming a suicide bomber would create financial hardship for his family, in Palestinian society the family benefits financially from terrorism. One has to question a culture that makes it more profitable for its people, including its youth, to die while killing civilians than to live. Some would call that philosophy self-inflicted genocide. And it turns morality on its head glorifying murder as a virtuous act of martyrdom. In recent years, the Palestinian Authority hid its line item budget for terrorist payments. This year, however, when faced with the possibility of U.S. congressional action to withhold aid, Palestinian Authority President Mahmoud Abbas not only placed it openly in the 2018 budget he defiantly thumbed his nose in the face of the American taxpayer. Abbas stated in January: "There is something that the Americans are telling us to stop the salaries of the martyrs and the martyrs' families. Of course we categorically reject this. We will not under any circumstances allow anyone to harm the families of prisoners, the wounded, and the martyrs. They are our children and they are our families. They honor us, and we will continue to pay them before the living." President Trump signed the Taylor Force Act into law March 23. It is named after a U.S. citizen killed by a Palestinian terrorist during a March 2016 attack in Jaffa. Taylor Force was a former U.S. Army officer and West Point graduate who had served honorably in Afghanistan and Iraq, heroically risking his life in defense of America. Force was a student at Vanderbilt Universitys graduate school of management at the time he was brutally murdered by Bashar Masalha, a Palestinian terrorist from Qalqilya in the West Bank. Israeli police killed Masalha and Palestinians literally danced in the street celebrating his martyrdom. To think that the Masalha family will now be financially rewarded for this heinous act is insulting to the Force familys memory of their son. To think that U.S. taxpayers that means just about everyone reading these words are indirectly footing the bill for these payment is outrageous and disgusting. The Taylor Force Act directs the State Department to certify that the Palestinian Authority has ceased payments to terrorists and their families and to report to Congress any violations. Congress is then legally required to withhold funds until the egregious violations are corrected. Has the State Department initiated an investigation into whether the Masalha family received any funds or financial benefits from the Palestinian Authority? If payments were made, that would be a clear violation of the law. In light of the Palestinian Authoritys 2018 budget and the comments by its leaders, the United States needs to take immediate action to cut the purse strings and turn off the spigot of funds that emboldens and incentivizes terrorists to continue to murder innocent men, women and children. Failure to enforce the law renders it meaningless. Taylor Force deserves better than that. So do all the other victims of Palestinian terrorists who indirectly have received payments from American taxpayers. If the Palestinian Authority is determined to pay blood money for the murders of innocents we cant stop it. But it is both illegal and immoral for U.S. taxpayers to foot the bill for support payments that incentivize and reward Palestinian terrorism. I urge every American to contact President Trump and contact your members of Congress to demand that the Taylor Force Act be enforced, so that your tax dollars stop going to the Palestinian Authority until it ends payments to terrorists and their families. Lawmakers on the Senate Foreign Relations Committee introduced new Authorization for the Use of Military Force legislation to replace current war authorizations from 2001 and 2002 that have not been revised since they were passed. "There have been a number of efforts over the years to update these authorities, and while there is still work ahead, I am pleased that we have reached an agreement on a product for the committee to consider and that I hope will ultimately strike an appropriate balance of ensuring the administration has the flexibility necessary to win this fight while strengthening the rightful and necessary role of Congress, Sen. Bob Corker, R-Tenn., the committee's chairman, said in a statement Monday. "I thank my colleagues for their leadership on this important issue and look forward to a healthy debate and amendment process in our committee next week," he added. The measure allows the president to use necessary force to combat Al Qaeda, the Taliban, ISIS, and other designated associated forces. However, it does not permit the president to take military action against a nation state. The president must inform Congress of military action, Congress then has a 60-day window to try to remove the presidents authority of military force if necessary. Additionally, the legislation also requires Congress to review the AUMF every four years. It requires the president to issue a plan to Congress to either repeal, modify, or keep the current AUMF. Should Congress fail to pass a new AUMF, the existing authority will continue. Click for more from the Washington Examiner. The Trump administration said Monday that it was "considering additional sanctions on Russia," a day after U.S. Ambassador to the United Nations Nikki Haley stated emphatically that such penalties were imminent. Haley told CBS' "Face the Nation" that Treasury Secretary Steven Mnuchin would announce the new sanctions "on Monday if he hasn't [done so] already." The Treasury Department declined to comment Sunday night, but two officials told the Associated Press that no such announcement by Mnuchin had been planned. In a statement, White House press secretary Sarah Sanders tried to clarify the situation, but her explanation created more confusion and led to suggestions that President Donald Trump had personally intervened to halt the sanctions from taking effect Monday. US TO HIT RUSSIA WITH NEW SANCTIONS AFTER SYRIA AIRSTRIKE, HALEY SAYS "We are considering additional sanctions on Russia and a decision will be made in the near future," Sanders said in a statement. In her CBS interview, Haley said the sanctions would target "any sort of companies that were dealing with equipment related to [Syrian leader Bashar] Assad and chemical weapons use." The officials noted to AP that two entities were hit with such penalties last month in a largely overlooked portion of a sanctions package that dealt mainly with Russian interference in the 2016 presidential election and hacking. After Haley's comments, some in the administration suggested the sanctions now being considered could be rolled out Monday. But others said it would be wiser and more effective to wait for a period longer than three days after the U.S., British and French infuriated Russia with their missile strikes on Syria on Friday. The officials could not say when the new sanctions would be announced. Meanwhile, President Donald Trump continued to hail the missile attack as perfectly carried out. Trump tweeted "Mission Accomplished" on Saturday after U.S., French and British warplanes and ships launched more than 100 missiles nearly unopposed by Syrian air defenses. While he declared success, the Pentagon said the pummeling of three chemical-related facilities left enough others intact to enable the Assad government to use banned weapons against civilians if it chooses. Trump's choice of words recalled a similar claim associated with President George W. Bush following the U.S.-led invasion of Iraq. Bush addressed sailors aboard a Navy ship in May 2003 alongside a "Mission Accomplished" banner, just weeks before it became apparent that Iraqis had organized an insurgency that would tie down U.S. forces for years. Later Sunday, Trump sent a letter to congressional leaders informing them in writing of his decision to order the strike. Under the War Powers Resolution, the president must keep Congress informed of such actions. The nighttime assault on Syria was carefully limited to minimize civilian casualties and avoid direct conflict with Russia, but confusion arose over the extent to which Washington warned Moscow it was coming. The Pentagon said it gave no explicit warning. The U.S. ambassador in Moscow, Jon Huntsman, said in a video, "Before we took action, the United States communicated with" Russia to "reduce the danger of any Russian or civilian casualties." The Associated Press contributed to this report. The Trump administration said Monday that California Gov. Jerry Brown rejected terms of the National Guards initial deployment to the Mexican border, but a state official said nothing was decided. The governor determined that what we asked for is unsupportable, but we will have other iterations, Ronald Vitiello, U.S. Customs and Border Protections acting deputy commissioner, told reporters in Washington. Brown elicited rare and effusive praise from President Donald Trump last week for pledging 400 troops to the Guards third large-scale border mission since 2006. But the Democratic governor conditioned his commitment on his states troops having nothing to do with immigration enforcement, even in a supporting role. Browns announcement last week did not address what specific jobs the California Guard would and would not do, nor answer the thorny question of how state officials would distinguish work related to immigration from other duties. Vitiello said the governor decided California will not accept terms of an initial troop rollout for the state that was similar to plans for the other three border states, Arizona, New Mexico and Texas. According to two U.S. officials, the initial jobs for those troops include fixing and maintaining vehicles, using remote-control surveillance cameras to report suspicious activity to U.S. Border Patrol agents, operating radios and providing mission support, which can include clerical work, buying gas and handling payrolls. The officials spoke to The Associated Press on condition of anonymity because they were not authorized to discuss the matter. California National Guard spokesman Lt. Col. Thomas Keegan said state officials have not rejected anything since Brown proposed a formal agreement Wednesday with the Homeland Security and Defense Departments that prohibits any involvement in immigration. The federal government has not yet responded, Keegan said in an emailed statement. Homeland Security Department spokesman Tyler Houlton said the federal government was committed to working with Brown and that the California leader shares interest in a secure border with Mexico. Deputy Assistant Secretary of Defense for Homeland Defense Integration Robert G. Salesses said the administration wanted 237 troops for work in two parts of the state that California has indicated they will not perform. Vitiello emphasized that California may participate in other ways that must still be worked out. We are anticipating additional requirements, and we got a signal from California that they are interested in improving border security, Vitiello said. So, at some point that might come together. Brown was clear last week that California troops will help go after drugs, guns and criminal gangs, but not immigrants. Drawing that line will likely prove difficult because the Border Patrol combats illegal immigration but also drug smuggling and other crimes. Browns pledge of 400 troops allowed Trump to boast support from all four border-state governors and helped put the president above the lower end of his threshold of marshaling 2,000 to 4,000 troops that he wants to fight illegal immigration and drug trafficking. The Democratic governor cast his decision as a welcome infusion of support paid for by the U.S. government to fight transnational criminal gangs and drug and firearms smugglers. Republican governors from Arizona, New Mexico and Texas have openly embraced the Trump administrations plans and specific jobs for their troops, as California did in previous Guard deployments. Texas National Guard members are already doing aerial and ground surveillance. The Arizona National Guard said last week that its troops will provide air and ground support. The Guard had about 900 troops working on the border mission Monday, a number that changes daily, said Lt. General Daniel R. Hokanson, the National Guard Bureaus vice chief. Nearly 250 were in Arizona, more than 60 in New Mexico and about 650 in Texas. The release Tuesday of James Comeys highly anticipated memoir has rekindled the simmering feud with top Clinton family advisers, who still blame the fired FBI director for President Trumps 2016 election victory. Longtime Hillary Clinton spokesman Nick Merrill delivered an unsparing Twitter diatribe against Comey ahead of the release of A Higher Loyalty. Merrill blasted Comey for allegedly dancing around dozens of questions in Sundays ABC interview by answering with maybe, accusing him of hubris and again faulting him for the election of Trump whom he called the most self-involved, destructive leader the U.S. has ever known. Merrill zeroed in on Comeys two most controversial actions during the Clinton email probe: His July 2016 public announcement recommending no criminal charges while calling Clinton extremely careless and his October 2016 announcement that the bureau was revisiting the case after the discovery of potentially relevant emails on former Rep. Anthony Weiners laptop. He made a public spectacle of the conclusion of the email investigation, breaking with Department norms, calling into question the integrity of the process, Merrill said of the July announcement. It did nothing to quiet the Trump campaign from accusing the FBI of bias & did everything to make Americans feel uneasy. As for the campaign-rocking October announcement, Merrill said: [W]hy did he sit on the information for so long, until right before the election? He accused Comey of laying the groundwork for a politicized leak by notifying GOP members of Congress of that development. Merrill wrote: None of this adds up. And writing about it now is going to do no favors for the FBI & DOJ, currently in the fight of their lives trying to repair the damage to their reputation. Merrill, who worked for Hillary Clintons campaign and State Department, was hardly alone in scorching Comey. Lanny Davis, a former special counsel to former President Bill Clinton, slammed Comey as a liar in an Op-Ed for The Hill. It is time -- accurately -- to call Comey a liar for this crucial, self-serving rationalization for his action that made Donald Trump president, Davis wrote. Davis urged Comey to admit the truth about his Oct. 28, 2016, letter that reopened an inquiry into Hillary Clintons personal email server. You wrote the letter not because you had to in order to fulfill a promise to Congress, but because you wanted to protect your political rear end from anti-Clinton Republican partisans. Period, Davis wrote. He also said Sunday on Fox & Friends that Comey is lying by saying he was obligated to write the October 2016 letter to Congress. Hes now lying on all his television interviews when he says he was obligated to do so because he promised Congress, he said. Top Hillary Clinton spokesman Brian Fallon also took a few shots at Comey on Twitter. Accepting dinner invitations. Promising 'honest loyalty.' Assuring Trump he wasn't being investigated. Comey has a lot of tough words for Trump now, but while in the job, he sure did his best to avoid getting on Trump's bad side, he wrote. Comey has repeatedly said he wrestled with how to handle the October 2016 notification, and has defended his actions. Knowing full well the scorn being heaped on him from Clinton allies, Comey said in a USA Today interview that he hopes she recognizes him at least as an honest idiot after reading the book. I pray no FBI director ever has to deal with this again, because it was just a series of no-win decisions, Comey said. And, my hope is, I even hope Hillary Clinton at least reads those parts of the book, because I think she will walk away saying, you know what, I still think that guys an idiot, but hes kind of an honest idiot, and hes trying to do the right thing here.' Comey is being hit from both sides, facing near-daily attacks from President Trump and his allies, as well. But hes showing no signs of trying to win back the presidents affection, saying Sunday that Trump is morally unfit to lead. Fox News' Brian Flood contributed to this report. The Justice Department missed a Monday deadline to provide GOP congressmen copies of memos written by former FBI Director James Comey about his conversations with President Trump but is seeking a brief extension while officials review the request. Three House Republican committee chairmen made the request in a letter to Deputy Attorney General Rod Rosenstein, saying Comey relied on the memos to write parts of his new book. "Now that at least the excerpts of the book are out, and it appears like there is much in the book that comes from the memos," House Intelligence Committee Chairman Devin Nunes told Fox News' Martha MacCallum Friday on "The Story." But as Comeys book hits the shelves and Comey himself discusses memo contents in interviews, Rosenstein wrote a letter to the three GOP lawmakers on Monday saying officials need to consult further, citing an ongoing investigation and concerns about classified material. Department officials are consulting with the relevant parties one or more of the memos may relate to an ongoing investigation, may contained classified information, and may report confidential Presidential communications, so we have a legal duty to evaluate the consequences of providing access to them, he wrote. But he said they are proceeding as quickly as we can and hope to have a response by mid-week. Nunes on Friday also cited Comey's admission in congressional testimony in June 2017 that he had given his friend, Columbia University Professor Daniel Richman, his memos about discussions with Trump in order to have his notes leaked to The New York Times. The scheme, which Comey suggested was an effort to ensure the appointment of a special counsel to investigate Russian meddling in the 2016 presidential campaign, undercuts any claim that the documents need to remain secret, Nunes argued. "So, they were already leaked to The New York Times," Nunes added. "They should be made available, not just to all the key congressional committees, but they also should be made available to the public. ... I think they will get them to us." "I think they will get them to us." House Intelligence Committee Chairman Devin Nunes 'A MAN WITHOUT COURAGE': DERSHOWITZ SLAMS COMEY FOR LEAKING MEMOS In February, a judge ruled that Comey's Trump memos need to remain hidden from public view to preserve the integrity of the ongoing Russia probe. House Judiciary Committee Chairman Robert Goodlatte and House Oversight and Government Reform Committee Chairman Trey Gowdy joined Nunes in requesting that unredacted copies of the memos be made available immediately, but no later than the close of business on April 16. The three chairmen wrote that there is "no legal basis for withholding these materials from Congress." They noted that the FBI has made the memos available only on a highly limited "read and review" basis for select congressmen and staff. House Republicans have repeatedly threatened to hold Justice Department officials in contempt as they have sought more than a million pages in documents related to Hillary Clinton and the beginning of the department's Russia investigation. Goodlatte told Fox News' Maria Bartiromo on "Sunday Morning Futures" that the GOP has a variety of options if the Justice Department fails to produce the memos. "We have shown a willingness to issue subpoenas and to take our case to the Attorney General of the United States and to take our case to the American people," Goodlatte said. WATCH: SEBASTIAN GORKA DISCUSSES DOJ'S FAILURE TO TURN OVER COMEY MEMOS Asked whether holding DOJ officials in contempt of Congress or even instituting impeachment proceedings were possibilities, Goodlatte said that "all of those tools are on the table." In January, Iowa Republican Sen. Chuck Grassley sent a letter to Rosenstein inquiring whether Comey had improperly leaked classified memos to Richman. "According to press reports, Professor Daniel Richman of Columbia Law School stated that Mr. Comey provided him four of the seven memoranda and encouraged him to detail [Comeys] memos to the press,'" Grassley wrote. "If its true that Professor Richman had four of the seven memos, then in light of the fact that four of the seven memos the Committee reviewed are classified, it would appear that at least one memo the former FBI director gave Professor Richman contained classified information," the letter continued. Fox News' Catherine Herridge and The Associated Press contributed to this report. The city of Albuquerque passed measures on Monday that curb federal officials authority to deport illegal immigrants. Albuquerques council, controlled by Democrats, voted 6-3 in support of a measure preventing federal immigration officials from entering the city-operated areas without a warrant, Reuters reported. The move came just a week after a federal judge blocked a Trump administration effort to withhold funds from sanctuary cities. The council also prohibited city workers, including police officers, from collecting information on residents immigration status and banned the city from spending on federal immigration law enforcement, the outlet reported. The council meeting brought a number of speakers from the public, with some supporting the councils intention to enact measures protecting illegal immigrants, while others said the initiatives will put people in danger. This is not an issue of racism, one city resident told councilors, according to The Albuquerque Journal. Every one of you took an oath when you took office to protect the laws and the Constitution. This is not a matter of being cool. This is a matter of doing whats right. Officials said the initiatives were designed to make New Mexicos largest city immigrant friendly, as nearly half of the population in the state is Hispanic or Latino the highest level in any U.S. state according to the U.S. Census. New Mexico is also reportedly among the states with the largest population of illegal immigrants. The council approved a resolution claiming that Albuquerque is a safe place for immigrants from all countries, as well as for war refugees, people of color, Muslims, Jews, LGBTQ people and people with disabilities. President Donald Trump has repeatedly pushed to crackdown on states that have enacted measures aimed to protect illegal immigrants and curb the federal governments powers to enforce immigration laws. Online shoppers may find their purchases will cost more if the Supreme Court does away with a decades-old ruling limiting the ability of states to collect sales taxes on out-of-state internet purchases. But several justices, in an intense hour of oral arguments on Tuesday, expressed concern about overturning its precedent, despite the fact it was decided before the digital age. Some on the bench said Congress' refusal over the years to act on its own was a sign the status quo should be preserved. A coalition of small business owners, including many who offer their online goods from home offices, say their profits would evaporate if forced to comply with complex tax rules in all 50 states. But a majority of states say they are losing billions in revenue, and they are supported by many large so-called brick-and-mortar retailers like Wal-Mart that do pay sales taxes, regardless of whether their sales are done in stores or online. The stakes could be huge, since consumers now make about 10 percent of their purchases online "E-commerce is expanding, and companies like Amazon account for a large part of that. But they're already collecting in all 50 states. And that's the problem. It's not that e-commerce is expanding," said Chief Justice John Roberts, questioning the states' arguments. "The problem you have to address is that the coverage in terms of collecting the taxes is expanding as well." "It's not that e-commerce is expanding. The problem you have to address is that the coverage in terms of collecting the taxes is expanding as well." Chief Justice John Roberts Some on the bench suggested leveling the playing field for all retailers. "The assertion is that asking an out-of-state seller to collect tax on goods shipped in-state discriminates against interstate commerce," said Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg. "But, as I see it, why isn't it, far from discriminating, equalizing sellers; that is, anyone who wants to sell in-state, whether an in-state shop, an out-of-state shop, everybody is treated to the same tax collection obligation." State Dakota is leading the legal charge, passing a law requiring the collection of sales tax on internet vendors with at least 200 yearly transactions or $100,000 in sales to its residents. Forty-one states back the effort, saying the problem is growing worse as e-commerce continues to grow nationwide. They argue tax collection software makes it easier for retailers big and small to comply with their tax obligations, which vary widely from state to state, and product to product. But many online sellers, such as Etsy or EBay, that serve as a third party portal for thousands of small homegrown businesses that do not pay sales taxes, point to confusing tax rules that could expose them to costly audits for any revenue shortfall. As an example, lawyers for the online retailers point out that in Illinois, a Snickers bar costs more in taxes than a Twix bar, since food items containing flour are not treated as candy for tax purposes. Customers in most cases are supposed to pay the tax themselves, but both sides of the debate admit few actually do. Amazon, by far the nation's largest online seller, is not a party to the case, since it now has a physical presence in many states, with warehouses, and pay the taxes. The high court for more than 50 years in various rulings has said states cannot collect taxes from sellers without a "physical presence" in those states. That precedent was preserved in a key 1992 ruling. Congress two decades ago exempted most online sellers. But as the e-commerce platform has evolved, more of the larger online retailers have begun paying sales taxes-- about 90 percent of the revenue owed. In arguments, the justices struggled to reach any consensus. Unusual coalitions seemed to develop between justices typically on either end of the ideological spectrum. "What happens when the tax program breaks down, as it already has for the states who are using it, and merchants can't keep track of who they've sold to? All of these are questions that are wrought with difficulties," said Justice Sonia Sotomayor, who seemed to have the backing of Roberts. "So you're introducing now a whole new set of difficulties to put behind something that's been in place for 30 years now?" Sotomayor wore a sling on the bench for the public argument session, after breaking her left shoulder in a fall at home on Monday. A court spokeswoman said the 63-year-old Sotomayor would begin physical therapy and was not expected to miss any work. Justice Neil Gorsuch reiterated Ginsburg's comments that interstate commerce might be threatened by tax exemptions sought by many small retailers. "Brick-and-mortar retailers, if they choose to operate in any given [tax] jurisdiction, have to comply with that jurisdiction. There are a lot of retailers that have to comply with lots of different jurisdictions' rules," he said. "Why should we favor, this Court favor, a particular business model that relies not on brick and mortar but on mail order?" He said those views governing a physical presence in order to collect taxes "seem a little antiquated today." After arguments, South Dakota's Attorney General Marty Jackley argued for a level playing field for states. "Main Street businesses are at a pricing disadvantage," he said outside the court. "That's not fair, that's not right, and that should not be constitutionally sanctioned. But one small retailer complained many states were engaging in "bullying tactics" with their tax requirements. Kathy Terrill, who sells women's clothing and Broadway memorabilia, said the financial burdens could put her out of business. "What will happen is sales tax becomes weaponized against small online sellers like myself. It is in effect taxation without representation," she said. The case is South Dakota v. Wayfair (17-494). A ruling is expected by late June. Metro Manila (CNN Philippines, April 17) Three government agencies including the National Food Authority are now back under the Department of Agriculture (DA), according to Presidential Spokesperson Harry Roque. In an interview on CNN Philippines' Balitaan, Roque said the NFA, the Philippine Coconut Authority (PCA), and the Fertilizer and Pesticides Authority (FPA) will be DA's attached agencies. All three were once under the Office of the President. The decisions were made during President Rodrigo Duterte's meeting with the NFA Council on Monday evening. Roque also clarified in a statement that the NFA will not be abolished. He said later Tuesday that Cabinet Secretary Leoncio "Jun" Evasco has been removed as head of the NFA Council. READ: Evasco out of NFA Council Evasco led the Council after an Executive Order issued in June 2016 gave him the power to supervise 12 government agencies, including the NFA. But Evasco has been at odds with NFA Administrator Jason Aquino, who wanted to import 250,000 metric tons of rice from private traders as early as October to address a shortage in NFA rice. The Council was created under Presidential Decree No. 1770. It is the policy-making body that deals with food and rice security, including the supply of affordable rice in the country. Roque added the President has given the go-signal to import 250,000 metric tons of rice through government-to-government procurement to replenish the country's supply. The imported rice is set to arrive "soon," he added. "Subsequent importation is to be done by G2P (government to private sector) or auction and importation will be implemented / supervised by the Executive Council Committee headed by the Office of the President," Roque explained. The two other transferred agencies, the PCA and the FPA, were placed under the Office of the President by then President Benigno Aquino through Executive Order 165. Justice Neil Gorsuch provided the decisive vote Tuesday in a Supreme Court ruling striking down a key provision that made it easier to deport immigrants convicted of violent crimes, in a blow to the Trump administration. President Trump's Supreme Court pick has largely sided with the conservative members of the bench since his appointment, but sided with the liberal wing on Tuesday. "Todays Court decision means that Congress must close loopholes that block the removal of dangerous criminal aliens, including aggravated felons. This is a public safety crisis that can only be fixed by Congress House and Senate must quickly pass a legislative fix to ensure violent criminal aliens can be removed from our society. Keep America Safe!" Trump tweeted in response Tuesday evening. The court said the part of the law in question was too vague to be enforced. The court's 5-4 decision concerned a provision of federal immigration law that defines a "crime of violence." Conviction for a crime of violence subjects an immigrant to deportation and usually speeds up the process. A federal appeals court in San Francisco previously struck down the provision as too vague, and on Monday the Supreme Court agreed. The appeals court based its ruling on a 2015 Supreme Court decision that struck down a similarly worded part of another federal law that imposes longer prison sentences on repeat criminals. Justice Elena Kagan wrote that the 2015 decision "tells us how to resolve this case." The decision is a loss for Trump's administration which, like President Barack Obama's administration before it, had defended the provision at issue before the Supreme Court. And it comes amid an ongoing focus on immigration by Trump. The case the high court ruled in involves James Dimaya, a native of the Philippines who came to the United States legally as a 13-year-old in 1992. After he pleaded no contest to two charges of burglary in California, the government began deportation proceedings against him. The government argued among other things that he could be removed from the country because his convictions qualified as crimes of violence that allowed his removal under immigration law. The case was initially argued in January of 2017 by a court that was short a member because the late Justice Antonin Scalia's seat had not yet been filled. An eight member court didn't decide the issue, presumably because the justices were deadlocked 4-4. After Gorsuch joined the court, the justices heard the case re-argued. Gorsuch joined the court's more liberal justices in finding the clause too vague. The case is Sessions v. Dimaya, 15-1498. The Associated Press contributed to this report. The U.S. Justice Department sued California over its alleged interference with federal immigration policies and its gotten some support from the states own municipalities. Multiple local city or county councils have voted to join the Trump administrations lawsuit or fight the state's policies in some way. Californias so-called sanctuary laws limit police cooperation with federal immigration authorities a move passed by the nations largest state to resist increased efforts to deport people living in the country illegally and to stop President Trumps plan to build a wall along the U.S.-Mexico border. The sanctuary policy, pushed by Gov. Jerry Brown and the states Democratic-controlled legislature, has received some backlash at the local level. Read on for a look at some of the cities and counties that have joined the Trump administrations efforts to deem Californias law unconstitutional. Los Alamitos The Los Alamitos City Council voted 4-1 in March to opt out of Californias sanctuary law. It voted again in April to opt out as the city's law requires the council to have a second reading of the measure before approving it. The adopted ordinance said state laws may be in direct conflict with federal laws and the Constitution. It said it finds that it is impossible to honor our oath to support and defend the Constitution of the United States if it did not opt out of the policy. Mayor Troy Edgar, a Republican, told Fox News the policy is a huge overreach. Los Alamitos is able to opt out of the law because it is a charter city. Hesperia With a 3-1 vote, the Hesperia city council voted in March to join an amicus brief with the Trump administrations lawsuit against California, the Desert Dispatch reported. We are not anti-immigrant there is no one on this Council thats anti-immigrant, Councilman Paul Russ said, according to the newspaper. But for immigrants, wed like to see it done legally. I can also say without a doubt that we are anti-criminal. Its not about the immigrants, its about the criminals in the community. Orange County With a unanimous vote of 3-0, the Orange County Board of Supervisors voted in March to join the Justice Departments lawsuit against California. This legislation prevents law enforcement from removing criminals from our community and is a threat to public safety, Supervisor Shawn Nelson said. The county previously made efforts to further comply with federal immigration authorities by publishing the release dates of inmates online. Mission Viejo In March, the Mission Viejo City Council voted to support the Los Alamitos City Councils decision to opt out of the states sanctuary policies and join an amicus brief in support of the federal governments lawsuit against the state. Of the sanctuary laws, the city council said it believes this legislation is a threat to both local control of businesses in the state and the individual liberty and public safety because it prevents law enforcement from performing their duties as necessitated by local circumstances. Huntington Beach Huntington Beach City Council voted 6-1 in April to file its own lawsuit against the state of California over its sanctuary laws, calling the policies a constitutional overreach. Mayor Mike Posey said his could become the first city to sue the state itself. Escondido After a heated meeting, the Escondido City Council voted 4-1 in April to support the Justice Departments lawsuit with a legal brief. This is the right thing to do. I was elected mayor to keep the Constitution, uphold the Constitution and keep our community safe," Escondido mayor Sam Abed told Fox News. I am committed to do that and that is what the council did today. The county Board of Supervisors will vote on a similar brief later in April, according to KSWB-TV. Fountain Valley After an assist from U.S. Rep. Dana Rohrabacher, R-Calif., the Fountain Valley City Council voted 3-1, with one abstention, to file an amicus brief in support of the Trump administrations challenge to Californias law, the Orange County Register reported. The council voted to support a legal brief after Rohrabacher offered to raise or provide the funds to do so. Aliso Viejo The Aliso Viejo City Council voted 4-1 on April 4 to join a lawsuit against the state of California over its sanctuary laws, KCBS-TV reported. We had a robust discussion and Im proud of my colleagues for their stamina and attention through 6.5 hours of testimony, Aliso Viejo Mayor Dave Harrington said in a statement. We did the right thing. Orange After a heated meeting, the Orange City Council voted in April not to comply with the states sanctuary laws, KCBS-TV reported. Newport Beach In a unanimous vote, the Newport Beach City Council decided to join the Trump administrations lawsuit. The vote, held in a closed session, allows the city to support the lawsuit, including, but not limited to an amicus brief, said Deputy City Manager Tara Finnigan, KCBS-TV reported. Councilman Scott Peotter told Fox News the vote wasnt about immigration but illegal alien criminals. Westminster In April, the Westminster City Council voted 3-1 to join the Trump administrations lawsuit against the state, KABC-TV reported. San Juan Capistrano The San Juan Capistrano City Council voted 4-1 to condemn California's sanctuary laws, the Orange County Register reported. Mayor Sergio Farias, who voted against it, said that he is the "mayor of everyone who calls San Juan Capistrano home, regardless of their legal status." San Diego County The all-Republican San Diego County Board of Supervisors voted in April to support the Trump administration's lawsuit against California, 3-1. The county is expected to file an amicus brief soon. It is the biggest county thus far to back the lawsuit. Santa Clarita After debating until 1 a.m., the Santa Clarita City Council voted in May to join the Trump administration's legal fight against the state's sanctuary policies. All five of the city council members voted to create a brief in support of the federal government, KHTS radio station reported. Carlsbad In a 4-1 vote, Carlsbad's City Council voted in May to support the Trump administration's lawsuit. Our laws are becoming more difficult to enforce, said Mayor Matt Hall. It takes many agencies working together to keep us safe. Fox News Paulina Dedaj, Lukas Mikelionis and The Associated Press contributed to this report. President Trump has filed for an extension to submit his complex 2017 tax returns, the White House confirmed Tuesday. The President filed an extension for his 2017 tax return, as do many Americans with complex returns, White House Press Secretary Sarah Sanders said. He will file his tax return by the extension deadline of October 15, 2018. Tuesday was the deadline for Americans who didn't file for extensions to have their 2017 tax returns submitted. SPEAKER PAUL RYAN: TAX DAY ISNT USUALLY A DAY TO CELEBRATE. THIS YEAR IS DIFFERENT During Trumps campaign for the Oval Office, the then-candidate faced a swath of criticism for not releasing copies of his tax returns. The former businessman refrained from making his filings public, saying they were under audit by the Internal Revenue Service (IRS), and said hed release them once the review was complete. Even after winning the White House, Trump continued to face pressure to release his returns, including from protesters across the nation on Tax Day in 2017. Meanwhile, Americans hoping to file their income taxes electronically on Tuesday hit a bit of a snag, as some of the services on the IRS website were not working throughout the day. IRS SITE CRASHES AS TAX DEADLINE LOOMS The agency acknowledged the issue, saying it was experiencing technical difficulties. Currently, certain IRS systems are experiencing technical difficulties, a statement from the IRS said. Taxpayers should continue filing their tax returns as they normally would. However, U.S. Treasury Secretary Steve Mnuchin, who oversees the IRS, told reporters in New Hampshire that those affected will be given extensions. "We'll make sure taxpayers have extensions once the system comes up to make sure they can use it and it in no way impacts people paying their taxes," Mnuchin said. "It was just a technical issue we're working through. A high volume technical issue that impacted the system." Fox News Serafin Gomez, Constance McDonough and The Associated Press contributed to this report. The federal judge presiding over the Michael Cohen case finds herself at the center of one of the toughest legal brawls of the Trump era -- but District Judge Kimba Wood is no stranger to the spotlight. She has a colorful and potentially controversial past that could arise as the case involving President Trump's personal attorney moves forward. Trump allies were quick to note that Wood once was considered for attorney general by then-President Bill Clinton -- and she even officiated the wedding of left-wing billionaire George Soros. Former Trump adviser and current Fox News contributor Sebastian Gorka said Wood should recuse herself. Now she has power over the lawyer who works for the man who beat Bills wife in the 2016 election, he tweeted. WHERES THE THE RECUSAL? At the same time, the judge has a tough reputation and may end up a fitting addition to a courtroom cast that involves some of New York's most outspoken figures. New York Times reporter and Trump-watcher Maggie Haberman mused that Woods colorful personal history is sort of perfect for a Trump associate trial. In 2013, Wood presided over the marriage of Soros to his third wife Tamiko Bolton in Bedford, N.Y. The Hungarian-American billionaire is known for his promotion and enormous funding of left-wing causes worldwide. According to Open Secrets, Soros pumped $10 million into Hillary Clintons 2016 campaign -- making him one of her top donors. Politico reported that his total funding of left-wing and Democratic causes during the 2016 cycle was $25 million. Predictably, Soros is no fan of Trump, calling him a danger to the world at the World Economic Forum earlier this year. SOROS CALLS TRUMP ADMINISTRATION A 'DANGER TO THE WORLD' But Soros isnt Woods only liberal connection. While she was nominated to the U.S. District Court by Republican President Ronald Reagan, she was thrust in the national spotlight in 1993 when she was chosen by Democratic President Bill Clinton to be attorney general. The Clinton White House informed reporters that they expected to announce Wood, only for her to withdraw from consideration amid a public firestorm over revelations she had hired an illegal immigrant as a nanny. Wood was the second Clinton pick for attorney general to be taken down by the controversy that became known as Nannygate. Woods name was floated only after Clintons first pick, Zoe Baird, had withdrawn after it was revealed she too hired illegal immigrants for household work. According to a contemporaneous New York Times report, the Clinton White House was furious about Woods revelation as officials said they had asked specifically about her household help after the Baird fiasco, but Wood said she did not mislead the White House. She had also raised eyebrows at the time over revelations that she had briefly trained as a Playboy bunny in the '60s, something White House officials feared could lead to some mockery. The Times account of Woods withdrawal from consideration reports that the White House had been limited for picks after the president, pressed by then-first lady Hillary Clinton, demanded the post be filled by a woman. Wood, although a respected jurist, was seen as lacking law-enforcement and managerial credentials. Consequently, when the Nannygate controversy arose, Democrats on the Senate Judiciary Committee including then-Delaware Senator Joe Biden were not keen to fight for the nomination. Janet Reno was eventually nominated and confirmed for the post. According to The New York Daily News, she has a reputation for being a tough judge, particularly over her sentencing of "junk bond king" Michael Milken to 10 years in prison. The Daily News also reported that in 1995 she was branded the Love Judge when the wife of multimillionaire Frank Richardson found his diary, filled with entries about his relationship with Wood. Cohen is under criminal investigation as part of a grand jury probe into his personal conduct and business dealings, including a $130,000 payment made to adult film actress Stormy Daniels in exchange for her silence about an alleged sexual encounter with the married Trump in 2006. On Monday, Wood denied a request from Cohen to review the documents seized at his home and office last week before prosecutors see them. Wood said that she had faith in the Justice Department's so-called "taint team" to isolate materials protected by attorney-client privilege, but added that she would consider allowing a neutral third party requested by Cohen to weigh in. JUDGE WON'T LET TRUMP ATTORNEY COHEN REVIEW SEIZED FILES BEFORE THE FEDS, AS STORMY DANIELS SPEAKS OUT It was also revealed on Monday that Fox News host Sean Hannity was the third individual who received Cohen's legal help. Hannity has since clarified that while he had brief discussions about legal questions, they never involved any matter between him and a third party. Fox News said in a statement on Tuesday, "While FOX News was unaware of Sean Hannity's informal relationship with Michael Cohen and was surprised by the announcement in court yesterday, we have reviewed the matter and spoken to Sean and he continues to have our full support." Fox News Brooke Singman contributed to this report. James Comey, whose public persona is based on the image of an upright G-man, has tarnished his own halo. Most of the mainstream media have been happy to cast the former FBI director in the role of moralizing truth-teller as he takes his battle against President Trump into the book-tour arena. But with his petty criticisms and over-the-top language, Comey is coming off as just another partisan. ABC's George Stephanopoulos gave Comey a pretty sympathetic forum in which to express regrets about his handling of the Hillary case and paint the man who beat her as unfit for the presidency. And that is likely to be the tenor of most of his interviews. John Heilemann made a telling observation on MSNBC, that because Comey has infuriated both Democrats and Republicans since the 2016 campaign, he is now a man without a country. In peddling "A Higher Loyalty," Comey is picking sidesas a leader of the anti-Trump forcesand emphasizing that his wife and daughter were both Hillary supporters. Perhaps it's no accident that he picked Stephanopoulos, who of course worked with Hillary in the Clinton White House, to kick off his television tour. He'll also get a warm reception on "The View." But his Fox News interview comes toward the end of the two-week kickoff. The president, of course, has not been an idle bystander. He has matched Comey's extreme rhetoric (comparing Trump to a Mafia boss) with equally tough tweets (calling the fired director an "untruthful slime ball"). Just yesterday, Trump tweeted: "Comey drafted the Crooked Hillary exoneration long before he talked to her (lied in Congress to Senator G), then based his decisions on her poll numbers. Disgruntled, he, McCabe, and the others, committed many crimes!" (The DOJ inspector general said Andrew McCabe, Comeys former deputy who was recently fired, repeatedly lied about his own leaking.) Stephanopoulos did ask a few hard questions, such as one about Comey's leaks to the press. (Comey's answer -- that he used an intermediary to pass documents to The New York Times because he didn't want to alienate all the other reporters -- was disingenuous.) But for most of the interview, Stephanopoulos either pressed his guest over his handling of the Hillary probe or encouraged him to unload on Trump: Why did you hold a news conference and criticize Clinton rather than just issuing a one-sentence release declining prosecution? Why did you go public with reopening the investigation just before the election? Your critics say thats a clear, clear double standard. And: Did you think Trump was a liar? Why did you compare him to a Mafia boss? Do you think he's unfit to be president? The mainstream media have done a series of backflips on Comey: He was the upright, judicious figure who declined to prosecute Clinton. Then he was the reckless egomaniac who intervened in October and handed the presidency to Trump. Now he's back to being the moralistic figure who stood up to Trump and is bravely holding the president accountable. Partisan commentators on the left and right are also giving me vertigo with the way theyve swung back and forth on Comey. My other big beef with the author is the way he keeps broadcasting about what the media now call the "pee tape". Comey readily acknowledges that he has no idea whether the unverified allegation from the unsubstantiated dossier about Trump and Moscow prostitutes is true. But he keeps repeating what journalists used to refer to as unspecified sexual allegations, despite the fact that it may be pure fiction. The timing of the book is also troubling, since it comes in the midst of the Mueller investigation, with Comey destined to be a key witness. But Comey knows the market is ripe for an anti-Trump book. One book critic, the Washington Posts Carlos Lozada, writes: "When Comey cops to petty misdeeds, however, the self-criticism and self-regard is almost comical ... But when the stakes rise, self-examination diminishes." The media are generally treating Jim Comey as a truth-teller. But in going for the big payday, he is confirming the critics' view that he is in love with his own righteousness. A photographer in San Diego, Calif., searching for blue whales came across a pod of killer whales instead. On Saturday morning, Domenic Biagini and his friend visiting from Chicago were on Biaginis boat just off Mission Bay. The two were hoping to spot a blue whale, as blue whale watching season in the state is just starting. At first, the duo wasnt having any luck. I was starting to get pretty dejected, Biagini, 26, told Fox News on Tuesday. "[But then], I saw dorsal fins on the horizon." As the two got closer, Biagini noticed a pod of six killer whales swimming in the crystal clear water. The pod included five females and a sixth that was too young to tell its gender, he said. I was beside myself -- I was like a kid on Christmas," said Biagini, adding that he was in utter amazement after spotting the pod. It was really a thrill; you dont see killer whales in Southern California very often, he said. If you see them once a year, youre lucky. The 26-year-old works as a drone photographer for a whale watch company roughly 50 miles north of San Diego. The moment was especially remarkable for him because very rarely do you get an orca to yourself; its usually a circus, he said, referring to other rare times a pod has been spotted off the state's southern coast. I was on my 20-foot boat in the middle of the ocean. Im never going to forget it, he added. This is the second time Biagini has spotted this pod -- the first time was in October of last year. The photographer immediately recognized the pod because of its leader, a matriarch known by whale watchers as Jagged because of her distinct dorsal fin. Its unclear what the pod was doing so far south. Biagini noted that most killer whales in the California region typically stick to areas such as Monterey Bay, which is farther north. After speaking to local marine biologists, however, he believes the pod may have just been exploring." It was a total thrill, Biagini added. From above, Greenland's ice sheet looks like a vast field of brilliant white for the most part. In the summer months, the western margin is shaded by a dark zone that seems to have gotten darker in recent years, threatening to speed up the rate of melting. A new study offers an explanation for the phenomenon, putting the blame on impurities like carbon and ice-dwelling algae. "What we show is that the dark zone is covered in a finely distributed layer of dust and black carbon, which provide nutrition for dark-colored algae," study co-author Alun Hubbard, a professor at Norway's Centre for Arctic Gas Hydrate, Environment and Climate, said in a statement. [Photos: Under the Greenland Ice Sheet] The ice sheet covers more than 80 percent of Greenland's landmass about 656,000 square miles (1.7 million square kilometers), an area three times the size of Texas, according to the National Snow and Ice Data Center. The ice is more than a mile thick on average, and it holds 8 percent of the world's fresh water. If it melts completely, global sea levels would rise about 23 feet (7 meters), according to NASA. Because of that disastrous prospect, scientists have been trying to understand why the shrinking of Greenland's ice sheet has been accelerating over the past few decades. Blindingly white snow and ice have high reflectivity, or albedo, meaning they reflect more of the sun's energy than they absorb. Dark patches and meltwater, however, absorb more energy and can induce a positive feedback that leads to even more melting in an ice sheet. So, the dark zone in Greenland has become a focus of some recent research. "The fact that a large portion of the western flank of the Greenland ice sheet has become dark means that the melt is up to five times as much as if it was a brilliant snow surface," Hubbard said. Hubbard and his colleagues went to Greenland in August 2014 and used a hand-launched drone to capture high-resolution images of a section of the dark zone. While crevasses and pools of meltwater explained some of the dark spots, the researchers observed that the majority of the shadowy surfaces had a uniform coating of impurities. These impurities include trapped dust and soot that have accumulated over the years from faraway fires and factories, as well as dark-colored algal blooms from microbes that, scientists recently discovered, can thrive in Greenland's harsh environment. The findings were published in the journal Nature Communications last month. The scientists wrote that the nature and drivers of the impurities in the ice sheet are not yet fully understood. But some recent research has suggested that there could be another complex feedback effect in the dark zone: algal blooms fueled by some of the impurities that get trapped in the ice. "The algae need nutrients and food, essentially dust, organic carbon and water," Hubbard explained in the statement. "In summer, these are plentiful, and the algal bloom takes off. Because algae are dark in color, they reinforce the dark zone. Thereby you get a positive feedback effect where the ice sheet absorbs even more solar radiation, producing yet more melt." Original article on Live Science. STANFORD, Calif. Venus shouldn't be dismissed as a possible abode for life, some scientists stress. Sure, the planet's surface is famously inhospitable today bone-dry and hot enough to melt lead, with an atmospheric pressure 90 times greater than that of Earth at sea level. To feel that same amount of squeeze on our planet, you'd have to descend about 3,000 feet (900 meters) into the oceans. But Venus was a temperate world long ago, with seas that persisted for eons perhaps 2 billion years or more, according to recent modeling research. [Photos of Venus, the Mysterious Planet Next Door] Venus may therefore have been a habitable planet "for much of solar system history," astrobiologist David Grinspoon, a senior scientist at the Planetary Science Institute in Tucson, Arizona, said Thursday (April 12) during a talk at the Breakthrough Discuss conference here at Stanford University. And Earth's so-called sister planet could potentially support life to this day, at least in places. Though Venus' surface has gone hellish hothouse, the environment a few dozen miles high in the skies is pretty benign, Grinspoon and others have stressed. Temperatures and pressures up there are close to those of Earth's surface, so it's possible that Venusian life if it ever existed didn't die out with the dramatic climate shift long ago but rather retreated into the clouds. Those clouds are made mostly of sulfuric acid, which would seem to argue against the Venus-life idea. But over the last few decades, biologists have found all manner of hardy microbes here on Earth capable of tolerating similarly extreme conditions. And these same acidic Venus clouds could potentially provide chemical energy to any microbes that may be floating around up there, researchers have said. Intriguingly, Venus' upper atmosphere also abounds with a mysterious compound that absorbs ultraviolet (UV) radiation, the high-energy light that causes sunburns here on Earth. Nobody knows what this stuff is or where it comes from, but some scientists have speculated that it could be a biological pigment perhaps a sulfur-based sunblock of some sort. And life didn't necessarily have to arise on Venus to thrive there, Grinspoon added: The planet has gobbled up many tons of Earth rocks that were blasted into space by violent impacts over the past 4.5 billion years, some of which may have sheltered unwittingly voyaging microbes. (Venus material has also made its way to Earth, so it's also possible that our planet was colonized long ago by native Venusians.) Grinspoon isn't claiming that life exists on Venus, just that it's a possibility scientists should consider more seriously. And some of his colleagues agree. For example, during a separate panel discussion here Thursday, the participating scientists were asked which solar system body they would visit first to search for alien life. Mars, the Jupiter moon Europa and the Saturn satellites Titan and Enceladus all got votes. But one of the Europa proponents Cynthia Phillips, a planetary geologist at NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory in Pasadena, California also gave a shout-out to the second rock from the sun. "I think we should really take another look at Venus," Phillips said. Originally published on Space.com. More than 95 percent of the worlds population is breathing polluted, unsafe air and the hardest hit areas are in Africa and Asia, a major study of global air pollution has found. Urban areas, which are home to a greater percentage of the worlds population than ever before, are exposing hundreds of millions to air that is filled with pollution from automobiles and factories. In many rural areas, the burning of solid fuels like wood, charcoal and coal, is also a threat. The report, known as the State of Global Air and produced by the Health Effects Institute, analyzed satellite data and other air-quality monitors to figure out what percentage of the world is exposed to air polluted above levels that the World Health Organization deems as safe. FLOOD OF GARBAGE HITS BEACH IN LEBANON, SPARKS OUTRAGE According to the report, indoor and outdoor forms of air pollution contributed to an estimated 6 million deaths worldwide in 2016accounting for an increased risk of stroke, heart attack and lung cancer. Regions with the highest concentration of pollution include countries in North and West Africa, as well as South Asia. The report found that China, which has instituted some measures to improve its notoriously foul air after widespread protests, has seen its air pollution exposures stabilize and even begin to slightly decline. There are reasons for optimism, though there is a long way to go, Bob OKeefe, vice-president of the institute, told The Guardian. China seems to be now moving pretty aggressively, for instance, in cutting coal and on stronger controls. India has really begun to step up on indoor air pollution through the provision of LPG [liquefied petroleum gas] as a cooking fuel, and through electrification. The report joins a growing list of studies that have detailed the negative effects of air pollution on overall health and well-being. A recent study found that contaminated air, water and land led to 6 million premature deaths worldwide in 2015, while a separate report found that many Americans are breathing contaminated air despite existing limits on air particle pollution. Satellites circling Earth have mapped an elusive, invisible force in unprecedented detail: the magnetic field created by the currents in the planet's salty oceans, according to new research. Most people are familiar with the powerful magnetic field produced by Earth's molten iron core, but less is known about the field generated by its oceans. To learn more, the European Space Agency (ESA) directed three identical spacecraft, which the agency launched in 2013 and collectively calls Swarm, to map the mysterious magnetic field emanating from the oceans' tides. [Earth from Above: 101 Stunning Images from Orbit] The new research, as well as the digital 3D map it helped create, is providing new insight into how the protective, cocoon-like magnetic shield is generated, as well as how it behaves and changes over time. The magnetic field that is produced by the oceans, the molten core and rocks in the crust and upper mantle protects the planet from streams of charged particles known as the solar wind. If these charged particles weren't deflected by the magnetic field, they could jumble the navigation of satellites and aircraft and even interfere with electrical power grids, University of Leeds geophysicists Phil Livermore and Jon Mound wrote in an article for The Conversation. Not to mention, the radiation could wreak havoc on human health. To get a better handle on the forces contributing to this field, the researchers had Swarm map the oceans' contributions to it with remarkable precision. The researchers chose to focus on the oceans because they make a tiny, but important contribution to the Earth's overall magnetic field. The salt within seawater can conduct electricity. And oceans don't remain still; rather, they move in cycles, up and down. As the tides cycle through the world's oceans, that salty water essentially tugs on the magnetic field above our planet. "We have used Swarm to measure the magnetic signals of tides from the ocean surface to the seabed, which gives us a truly global picture of how the ocean flows at all depths and this is new," Nils Olsen, the head of geomagnetism at the Technical University of Denmark, said in a statement. The magnetic field generated by the oceans is quite small. "It's about 2 [to] 2.5 nanotesla at satellite altitude, which is about 20,000 times weaker than the Earth's global magnetic field," Olsen told BBC News. The newly analyzed data will give researchers a more nuanced view of how the oceans are affected by climate change, Olsen noted. "Since oceans absorb heat from the air, tracking how this heat is being distributed and stored, particularly at depth, is important for understanding our changing climate," Olsen said in the statement. Moreover, the tidal magnetic signal, in turn, induces a weak magnetic response from deep under the seabed, he said. The research is the latest discovery Swarm has gathered with respect to Earth's magnetic field. Last year, researchers announced that the spacecraft had helped map magnetic signals emitted by Earth's outer shell, known as the lithosphere, Live Science previously reported. The new research, which has yet to be published in a peer-reviewed journal, was presented yesterday (April 10) at the 2018 European Geosciences Union meeting in Vienna. Original article on Live Science. Metro Manila (CNN Philippines, April 17) The Supreme Court unanimously voted to nullify the Department of Justice's power to stop a person from travelling. The Supreme Court En Banc on Tuesday said DOJ's Department Circular No. 41 violates the right to travel stipulated under the Constitution. It said there's no legal basis for the circular issued by DOJ in May 2010 because there is no law authorizing the Justice Secretary to issue Hold Departure Orders (HDO), Watch List Orders (WLO), or Allow Departure Orders (ADO). "As a consequence, all issuances released pursuant to said DOJ Department Circular are null and void," the high court said in a statement. The Supreme Court acted on the petition of former President Gloria Macapagal Arroyo and former First Gentleman Mike Arroyo. Then Justice Secretary Leila de Lima issued Watch List Orders against them in 2011 amid allegations of election fraud in the 2007 polls. The Supreme Court in 2011 issued a temporary restraining order on the implementation of the DOJ department circular, but de Lima still ordered authorities to stop the Arroyos from leaving the country. Here's a brainteaser: Do the 520-million-year-old fossils of an ancient, bug-like creature actually show a silhouette of its brains? Or are these blobby shapes in its head merely fossilized bacteria? According to a new study, the fossilized structures in the Cambrian-period creature's head aren't brainy remains, but rather fossilized bacterial mats, called biofilms. However, not everyone is on board with this interpretation. The researchers who originally discovered the brains are standing by their results, and other paleontologists Live Science interviewed agree with them. [Fabulous Fossils: Gallery of Earliest Animal Organs] The creature in question, Fuxianhuia protensa, is an early arthropod, a group that includes modern-day insects, spiders and crabs. The roughly 3-inch-long (7.6 centimeters) segmented critter lived in what is now southern China during the Cambrian, a period that lasted from about 542 million to 488 million years ago. F. protensa fossils are fairly common, and researchers pored over more than 1,000 of them before finding 10 with outlines of brains, said Nicholas Strausfeld, a professor of neuroscience at the University of Arizona. Strausfeld first reported on the brain-like features with colleagues in a 2012 study published in the journal Nature, a 2014 study in the journal Nature Communications and a 2015 study in the journal Current Biology. But researchers in China and Germany had their doubts. They decided to check if they, too, could find fossilized F. protensa brains. After examining about 800 fossilized specimens, the researchers noticed that 10 percent had blobby structures in the head region. But these blobs weren't uniform in shape, and this made them "question whether the 'brains' in the original studies were really being interpreted correctly," said the new study's lead researcher, Jianni Liu, a professor at the Early Life Institute in the Department of Geology at Northwest University, in Xi'an, China. Liu and her colleagues presented an alternate hypothesis in a study published online yesterday (April 11) in the journal Proceedings of the Royal Society B: Biological Sciences. Liu's team suspected that, instead of brains, these odd cranial structures were fossilized bacteria. That's because, after arthropods die, the bacteria in their gut creates biofilms, "which can rupture out of the gut wall and form structures which might superficially resemble brains, nerves or other internal organs," she said. Liu and her colleagues also read studies detailing how modern arthropods decay after death. These studies showed that "the brain and nervous system actually decays very quickly," meaning it often doesn't have a chance to fossilize, Liu told Live Science. (Strausfeld disputes this notion. He and his colleagues showed that neural tissue can be preserved if the arthropod is quickly buried in a slurry of mud and seawater and then subjected to sustained pressure, comparable to conditions of entombment, he said.) Liu and her team, however, did acknowledge that it is possible to discover fossilized brains in Cambrian-period arthropods. For instance, another 520-million-year-old early arthropod, known as Chengjiangocaris, has "more pristine tissue preservation that have convincingly been interpreted as ventral nerve cords," the researchers wrote in the study. Differing opinions Other paleontologists told Live Science they weren't swayed by the new results. For one thing, Liu's team did not examine the fossils described in the previous studies, said Peter Van Roy, a paleobiologist at Ghent University in Belgium who wasn't involved with any of the studies. [In Images: Fossilized Dinosaur Brain Tissue] "They did not look at the actual specimen that supposedly shows the brain," Van Roy told Live Science. "That is quite a major shortcoming." Moreover, the brains in the previous studies were perfectly symmetrical, just like the brains of modern arthropods are today. "We can even resolve axon [nerve] bundles in the fossilized optic lobes, as well as evidence of fiber tracts across the brain," Strausfeld told Live Science. In contrast, the blobs Liu and her colleagues found were asymmetrical and obviously not brains, Strausfeld said. Jakob Vinther, a United Kingdom-based paleontologist who wasn't involved in the studies but has studied other fossilized Cambrian brains, said he was "highly skeptical" of the new study's conclusions. "Fuxianhuia was the first Cambrian fossil to have been argued to preserve nervous system [material]," and other fossilized brains have been found since then, Vinther told Live Science. "Criticizing the initial study that made the foundations for the paradigm while not rejecting the subsequent studies is problematic, and hence, for that reason alone, the study fails to make a solid claim," Vinther said. Moreover, just because fossilized brains are rare doesn't mean they don't exist, Vinther said. For instance, "most dinosaurs don't preserve feathers, but that doesn't mean that we think that they are artifacts [fabrications]." Even so, the new study does bring up an important point, Van Roy said: It may push paleontologists even further than before to show that so-called fossilized brains are, in fact, neural remains, he said. Original article on Live Science. Freak floods drown buildings, bone-chilling air flash-freezes pedestrians and ice encases the Statue of Liberty. It sounds like a disaster movie, and well, it is: In 2004's "The Day After Tomorrow," the collapse of an ocean current in the North Atlantic sends the world into a whirlwind climate doomsday. And while that ocean current has not actually collapsed, scientists reporting in two new studies have found that it's weakening, by a lot. In fact, the current hasn't been this sluggish in 1,500 years a finding that could carry serious (although not disaster-movie serious) repercussions for weather and sea-level rise in locations around the world. In the Atlantic Ocean, the current known as the Atlantic Meridional Overturning Circulation (AMOC) ferries warm surface waters northward where the heat is released into the atmosphere and carries cold water south in the deeper ocean layers, according to the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration. Its circulation transports heat around the globe like a conveyor belt, and if its movement were to stop, that heat would not get distributed, and weather havoc could ensue. [Doomsday: 9 Real Ways Earth Could End] But the AMOC has been getting weaker, and cold, freshwater infusions by the runaway melting of glaciers, sea ice and permafrost are to blame, and the AMOC may weaken even further if temperatures on Earth continue to rise and ice reserves continue to melt, scientists reported in the two studies. Written in sand In one study, published yesterday (April 11) in the journal Nature, researchers analyzed ocean sediments in a core sampled off the eastern coast of the U.S., from depths where most of the water originated in the North Atlantic's Labrador Sea. They examined positions of different-size sand grains in the geologic record, to reconstruct how the flow of the currents that carried the grains may have changed over time, said study co-author Delia Oppo, a senior scientist in the geology and geophysics department at the Woods Hole Oceanographic Institution. The researchers traced the start of the current's weakening to the mid-19th century at the end of the Little Ice Age, a centuries-long period of extreme cold that froze northern Europe. When temperatures began warming up, freshwater from melting ice that flowed into the Nordic Seas would have diluted salty seawater near the surface. This weakened the current and prevented it from carrying bigger grains of sand as far as it used to, which told the scientists about differences in the current's strength, Oppo told Live Science. Then, beginning in the 1950s, another stage of warming and ice melt began in the Northern Hemisphere this time, likely driven by human-induced climate change infusing the sea with more chilly fresh water and further weakening the ocean circulation system, study lead author David Thornalley, a senior lecturer at University College London, told Live Science in an email. "Theory and models show the AMOC weakens when there is warming and increased input of freshwater, and these are both things being observed as part of global warming," Thornalley said. The research team estimated that, since the current began to lose strength in the mid-1800s, it has weakened by about 15 to 20 percent. Finding the "fingerprint" Another study, also published today in Nature, arrived at the same conclusions about a weakened AMOC this time, by reviewing sea-surface temperature data going back to the late 19th century. In this study, the researchers' temperature analysis confirmed computer models' predictions of AMOC behavior and suggested a decline of about 15 percent in current circulation strength, beginning in the 1950s. "The evidence we're now able to provide is the most robust to date," study co-author and oceanographer Stefan Rahmstorf, a professor of physics of the oceans at the Potsdam Institute for Climate Impact Research in Germany, said in a statement. The researchers detected an ocean temperature pattern that was a "fingerprint" for an AMOC slowdown: anomalous warming in the Gulf Stream and cooler waters near Greenland, suggesting that warm water was not being transported north as effectively as it once was, according to the study. "The specific trend pattern we found in measurements looks exactly like what is predicted by computer simulations as a result of a slowdown in the Gulf Stream system," Rahmstorf said. "And I see no other plausible explanation for it." Though these two research teams used different methods, they arrived at a similar conclusion: that a crucial part of the climate system on our dynamic planet is not performing as it once did. "What's happening now is that the evidence is converging from different sources," Oppo told Live Science. "So, we're becoming more and more confident, as we see several studies starting to show similar things using different approaches." [7 Ways the Earth Changes in the Blink of an Eye] An uncertain future While the complete disintegration of the AMOC is extremely unlikely, the ocean circulation system will probably continue to weaken, and that prospect is far from reassuring, Oppo told Live Science. Prior research has suggested that a feeble AMOC brings more dryness to the Sahel, a region of Africa bordering the Sahara Desert; spurs sea-level rise in U.S. coastal cities; encourages patterns of increasingly cold winters in Europe and the northeastern U.S.; and prompts warmer summers across Europe. However, more research is needed to confirm a persistent connection, Oppo said. But a weakened AMOC does make the ocean less effective at absorbing atmospheric carbon dioxide, Oppo noted. If the ocean current continues to weaken, it will likely take up even less CO2, leading to higher quantities of the greenhouse gas in the atmosphere and potentially worsening the effects of global warming, she said. "More research into the potential weather impacts of an AMOC slowdown and the associate sea surface temperature pattern is needed, given the results of the two new studies suggesting a weak AMOC that is likely to weaken further," Thornalley told Live Science. Editor's Note: This article was updated to clarify some statements from Delia Oppo. Original article on Live Science. During a terrifying Southwest flight that suffered a midair engine explosion Tuesday, a passenger was partially sucked out of the airplanes window after a piece of shrapnel reportedly broke through, leaving one person dead and seven others injured. While movies often depict exaggerated scenes of passengers being sucked out of planes, in reality it doesnt usually happen so dramatically. But as the recent Southwest incident proves, it is possible. In fact, this isnt the first time something like this has occurred. SOUTHWEST FLIGHT WITH WOMAN 'PARTIALLY SUCKED OUT' MARKS SECOND HORRIFIC TRIP FOR CARRIER THIS WEEK In 2016, a passenger was sucked out of a gaping hole after a possible bomb attack on a Daallo Airlines flight over Somalia, the New York Post reported. In 1988, an 18-foot section of an Aloha Airlines cabin roof ripped off and a flight attendant was ejected from the plane, according to Slate. These instances occur due to an explosive decompression, when the pressurized air inside an aircraft leaves the cabin at a fast rate, according to Decoded Science. But not every instance of explosive decompression will lead to people being sucked out of the plane. While large-scale structural failures can cause dangerous rapid decompression, a small hole in the planes fuselage wont necessarily have the same disastrous results, Patrick Smith, an airline pilot and author of Cockpit Confidential, told Business Insider. Jonathan Franklin, a commercial pilot with KLM Royal Dutch Airlines, said the air pressure difference inside and outside the plane at cruising altitude isnt typically enough to go full vacuum cleaner whenever a hole punctures the cabin. Initially there will be a rush of air, enough to blow loose papers and items of clothing around. About one second later, the pressure inside and outside equalizes, and youre just left with air rushing past the hole in the fuselage, Franklin wrote in a blog post for the airline. It will be noisy, it will be cold (thermodynamics, lower air pressures create lower temperatures), and your oxygen mask will drop, but it wont be those images of bodies being sucked into oblivion as 007 grips onto the gold-frilled curtains for dear life, he wrote. FOLLOW US ON FACEBOOK FOR MORE FOX LIFESTYLE NEWS Southwest Airlines is still working with the National Transportation Safety Board (NTSB) and the Federal Aviation Administration (FAA) after Tuesdays tragedy and said in a statement they are in the process of gathering additional information" regarding the flight to figure out what caused the deadly event. Protesters in Pennsylvania marched to various Starbucks locations in Philadelphia's Center City on Monday to continue protesting the controversial arrests of two black men at one of the chain's locations last week. Activists held a sit-in at the Starbucks coffee shop on 18th and Spruce streets near Rittenhouse Square the location of the arrests which were called "reprehensible" by the company's CEO, Kevin Johnson, and a "needless" and "unfortunate outcome" by Philadelphia Mayor Jim Kenney. Q&A: STARBUCKS CEO ON WHAT THE COMPANY WILL DO AFTER ARRESTS Two black men, whose names have not been released, were arrested at the store on Thursday after the shop's manager, who has reportedly since left the company, called 911 to report the two for "trespassing." The two men were reportedly sitting inside the store while waiting to meet someone, but had not purchased anything and refused to leave. At least six Philadelphia police officers arrived, asked the men to leave, and later arrested them. The two men were held for almost nine hours before being released. No charges were filed against them. Roughly two dozen protesters early Morning took over the store, chanting slogans like, "A whole lot of racism, a whole lot of crap, Starbucks coffee is anti-black." Abdul-Aliy Muhammad, one of the protest's organizers and co-founder of the Black and Brown Workers Collective, told The Associated Press: "We don't want this Starbucks to make any money today. That's our goal." Activists then made their way to the Starbucks at 15th and Latimer streets, according to WCAU, where they shouted, "no justice, no peace," before marching to the Starbucks at The Bellevue Hotel on Broad Street. Protesters outside that location faced police who tried to prevent them from entering, The Philadelphia Inquirer reported. Some found that the Starbucks' doors were locked. I want to know why these doors are locked," one protester reportedly shouted. "I want to know whose city this is! The protests came as Johnson, and other Starbucks executives, visited Philadelphia on Monday to meet with city officials. Mayor Kenney said he was pleased they traveled to the city to discuss what happened and "were very contrite." The Democratic mayor said they're going to make sure "this doesn't happen again." Johnson said he appreciated "the transparency and the spirit with which" Starbucks and the city of Philadelphia are "working together." A Starbucks spokesperson told NBC News the two men who were arrested have agreed to a meeting, which the CEO said was an "opportunity to listen to them with compassion and empathy through the experience they went through." Johnson said Starbucks wants managers to be trained on "unconcious bias" following the incident, after saying the company "stands firmly against discrimination or racial profiling." Fox News' Paulina Dedaj and Ryan Gaydos, along with The Associated Press, contributed to this report. A group of baboons that escaped a Texas research facility over the weekend propped up a barrel near a wall, climbed it and then fled their open-air enclosure, officials said Monday. The four animals escaped the Southwest National Primate Research Center at around 3:15 p.m. Saturday, according to News 4 San Antonio. The baboons usually play with the 55-gallon enrichment barrels inside their six-acre pen to mimic foraging behavior, the research center said in a news release. "This was truly a unique incident," Lisa Cruz, the assistant vice president for communications, told the San Antonio Express-News. "We have been caring for research baboons for more than 50 years. We have nearly 1,100 baboons on the property that date back eight generations." Video footage showed the animals gallivanting down roads a few miles from the research center before a highly trained team was able to re-capture them, officials said. It took 30 minutes for the team to secure the baboons. The research institute is home to more than 2,500 animals. Researchers said baboons are critical to the medical research process because of how similar their body structure is to humans. "Baboons are critical to metabolic research, cardiovascular research, neurological research, vaccine studies. I mean, they're really key to those advances in biomedical research." Dr. John Bernal told News 4 San Antonio. The man who police said stabbed a fellow Binghamton University student to death on Sunday has been identified by police and charged with second degree murder. Michael M. Roque, 20, has been charged in the killing of 19-year-old Joao Souza, a freshman, authorities said. Roque has pleaded not guilty. Souza, an engineering student, was attacked at about 10:30 p.m. Sunday in a residence suite on the campus near the Pennsylvania state line. Souza had previously attended high school in New York and was a native of Brazil, where family was notified, according to the university. "Law enforcement believes the attack was not a random act and that the victim was targeted," university vice president Brian Rose said. Earlier in the afternoon, university police released surveillance photos of the suspect wearing dark pants and a dark, hooded sweatshirt as they asked for the public's help. Police searching for the suspect were being aided by forest rangers in wooded areas. The school, one of the four university centers in New York's sprawling state university system, canceled classes Monday due to the "tragic event." Counseling was being offered to students and staff. This was the second slaying of a student in the last two months. On March 9, the body of Haley Anderson, of Westbury on Long Island, was found in the off-campus apartment of a fellow student she had briefly dated. She had been strangled. "For the second time this semester we've struggled to absorb the news that one of our students has been killed," Rose said. The Associated Press contributed to this report The Cambridge Police Department on Saturday said it launched an internal probe after video appears to show officers tackle and and punch a black Harvard student who was naked as they arrested him on Friday night. Police claim that the use of force was warranted to arrest Selorm Ohene, 21, who they say was aggressive and high on drugs at the time, The New York Times reported. GRAPHIC VIDEO WARNING The student reportedly remains in a hospital under police watch. He was charged with indecent exposure, disorderly conduct, assault, resisting arrest and assault and battery on ambulance personnel. A video of the incident was released Sunday amid outcry regarding the officers conduct. Witnesses accuse the police of acting without provocation. The footage appears to show several police officers standing in circle around Ohene. An officer appears to grab the students legs from behind, prompting both of them to fall. Ohene is reportedly heard crying and one officer is seen punching the man. Police said one of the officers punched Ohene five times in the stomach. We demand that the officers who assaulted this man while he was naked, fully subdued and bleeding on the ground be investigated and held accountable." The Harvard Black Law Students Association The Harvard Black Law Students Association said police assaulted the naked man and demand full transparency. We demand that the officers who assaulted this man while he was naked, fully subdued and bleeding on the ground be investigated and held accountable, the group said in a statement, according to the Times. Drew Faust, the president of the university, said that although she does not yet know all the facts, the incident is profoundly disturbing. Cambridge Mayor Marc C. McGovern called the incident disturbing and said in a statement Sunday that that the horrific treatment of black Americans at the hands of law enforcement has no place in Cambridge. Branville G. Bard Jr., the Cambridge police commissioner, said Monday hes standing behind the officers conduct. You have to judge their actions within the context of a rapidly evolving situation and not within an ideal construct, Bard continued. We operate in a practical world. A Boston College philosophy professorknown as the dating professoroffers extra credit to her students who (while sober) ask someone out on a date, go out on that said date and have no physical contact. The Washington Post reported on Monday that Professor Kerry Cronin said she came up with the idea to combat hookup culture that has gotten popular on campuses due--in part-- to our hypersexualized culture. She also said that she learned that many of her seniors had never been on a date. Perhaps campus life lends itself to fewer meaningful relationships. Cronin points out that most students may not want to commit. The article points out that the median age men and women get married in the U.S. are 29.5 and 27.4, respectively. Many students, she said, focus on career goals. She said our culture focuses on sex, not necessarily the foibles and the hard work and the joys and the despair of just casual dating. The rules of the assignment include asking the person out in person. Heres a key part: the recipient has to know its a date. Cronin tells her students not to worry about rejection, just move on. She said that leads to thicker skin. This is mostly not about meeting your soul mate; its mostly about social courage and challenging yourself to be a little countercultural, to do something you know you want to do, she told the paper. And to just be okay with being a little awkward, a little vulnerable and asking a little bit of yourself. A former Georgia teacher found herself under arrest after a video showed her and her son getting into a spat with two black female service members over a parking spot outside a Georgia restaurant. Judy James Tucker, 71, told the Bibb County Sheriff's Office deputies that the argument Saturday began over race. Stephanie Mitchell, 34, told police that Tucker and her son, Robbie, used obscene, sexist language as he told her and Treasure Sharpe, 27, to "learn how to park," according to authorities Police said the Tuckers followed the two uniformed women inside Cheddar's Scratch Kitchen in Macon, where Robbie Tucker called them "black lesbian b------." Sharpe started recording Tucker, her son and her daughter inside the restaurant following Robbie Tucker's comment. The video captured Tucker's daughter attempting to lunge at Sharpe in order to block the phone's camera. Other people inside the restaurant also started recording the incident. "Are you aware that you assaulted my mother?" Tucker's daughter asked Sharpe. "Are you aware? My mother is bleeding." GEORGIA WOMAN WONT FACE DEATH PENALTY FOR ATTACK ON FAMILY Tucker told the women, "You were getting in our way while we tried to park." Footage appeared to show Tucker striking Sharpe in the face while trying to stop her from recording as well. At one point, Sharpe says, "I'm pregnant," and Robbie Tucker says, "Oh really, by her?" Im pregnant! Look at me, Im pregnant! Youre pushing a pregnant lady! Sharpe is heard saying in the video. Tucker is heard replying, "Well, my husband is handicapped!" Police said deputies showed up at the restaurant and spoke to witnesses since the eatery's surveillance cameras were down due to technical issues. Deputies reviewed cellphone video and determined that Tucker was the primary aggressor, and there was no evidence the other women did anything wrong. Tucker was arrested and charged with battery. She was released on $650 bond. The Macon Telegraph reported the woman could face more charges as the investigation continues. MAN CONVICTED IN 1996 KILLING IN GEORGIA SET TO BE EXECUTED Cheddar's released a statement condemning the behavior of the "individuals who confronted the two female service members," saying it "flies in the face of our values and those individuals are no longer welcome in our restaurant." Tucker, an artist, has taught at a few colleges in Macon. A Mercer University spokesman told the Macon Telegraph that she taught there in the past but was not employed by the college. "She has occasionally taught an art class in the past, but will not be teaching at Mercer in the future," spokesman Kyle Sears said. The Associated Press contributed to this report. Jacksonvilles mayor mowed down a controversy Monday after a local business was served with a citation for flying military flags in violation of the city code. Mayor Lenny Curry directed city staff that military flags should be treated the same as the U.S. flag, the Florida Times-Union reported. Let them fly, Curry tweeted Monday. His tweet came hours after a city code enforcement officer issued the warning citation to Jaguar Power Sports, threatening to fine the business if it didnt take down the flags from atop its building within 24 hours, Fox 30 Jacksonville reported. Military signillegal sign in any district, the citation said, according to the station. In response, Jaguar Powers store manager went on Facebook to rant about getting the citation and to accuse the code enforcement officer of insulting a customer, a wounded veteran, as she was serving it. He said she told the vet you did nothing for our country. Theres one thing Im not going to tolerate and that is disrespect for our military in a military town, he says in the video. We should not get cited or ticketed for flying flags representing our country. As of Tuesday afternoon, the video had been viewed more than 6.2 million times. Fox 30 aired surveillance video from Jaguar Power that appears to show the city worker wagging her finger at the veteran who said he questioned her about the citation. She turned around at the door and said to me, in a very loud voice that what I did for this country did not matter, said the veteran who told the station that he wanted to remain anonymous. I was mad. I dont take a lot of things personal. I really dont, but that strikes a chord with me. Her alleged comments were under review, the station reported. Early Tuesday, Fox 30 reported that the code enforcement officer had posted a statement on her Facebook page, apologizing to the veteran. Tempers on all sides flaired (sic) I should never have been unprofessional and disrespectful period, the post said. On its Facebook page Tuesday, Jaguar Power thanked Curry for reaching out personally and resolving the matter in the best possible way. Click for more from Fox 30 Jacksonville. An Indiana man was collared for the theft of a skateboarding English bulldog but authorities were still searching for the beloved stunt dog. Police in Carmel announced Monday that Reid Allen Albrecht, 22, was arrested last week on two counts of theft for stealing the pooch, named Gus, from Hazel Forest Drive in an Indianapolis suburb last fall. The dog whose owners were offering a $4,000 reward for his safe return disappeared on Oct. 6. Albrecht, of Carmel, was later linked to the theft of the bulldog and, while he was already in custody at the Hamilton County Jail, was charged, police said. But Gus distraught owners say they are no closer to their missing dog. While we are encouraged that an arrest was made, unfortunately we are uncertain where Gus is, a message posted Monday on a Facebook page dedicated to finding the dog. As we have more information that we can share we will do so. The Facebook page also features videos of Gus skateboarding and recent local newscasts of the familys frantic hunt to get him back. Jeremy Kiger, whose family owned the dog, said hes grateful for all the help from the community. Read more on the New York Post. A Massachusetts lawmaker is reportedly pushing the state to bring back the death penalty in response to the recent killing of a police officer gunned down while serving a warrant. State Rep Shaunna L. OConnell, a Republican, said the state has a reputation of being soft on crime and that puts the public in danger. We need to send a message to criminals that you kill law enforcement officers, you are going to get the death penalty, she said, according to Fox25Boston. Yarmouth K-9 Officer Sean Gannon was shot and killed last Thursday while he and other officers were serving an arrest warrant at a home in Barnstable on Cape Cod. Gannon, who was married, was an 8-year veteran of the department. Gannon's dog, Nero, also was shot but underwent surgery and is recovering. Thomas Latanowich, 29, was charged in the killing. Latanowich hung his head throughout his brief arraignment in Barnstable District Court last week, speaking only to answer yes when the judge asked if he understood the proceedings. Latanowich has been arrested numerous times, according to police and court records, though many of the charges were later dismissed. Authorities said the last prison time Latanowich served was a four- to five-year sentence on gun charges. The prosecutor expressed frustration that prior charges had not resulted in more lengthy sentences. Gov. Charlie Baker, a Republican, said in a statement that he supports the death penalty when a police officer is killed. The Associated Press contributed to this report Federal prosecutors will try four men on a weapons charge in Illinois before three of the defendants stand trial in a mosque bombing case in Minnesota. The (Champaign) News-Gazette reports a federal judge ruled Monday. Forty-seven-year-old Michael Hari, 29-year-old Michael McWhorter, 22-year-old Joe Morris and 18-year-old Ellis Mack face charges in Illinois of possession of a machine gun. Hari, McWorter and Morris, all of Clarence, Illinois, are also charged in Minnesota with bombing the Dar al Farooq Islamic Center in Bloomington last August. The explosion caused fire damage, but no injuries. Attorneys requested a 60-day delay in the Minnesota case, in which an indictment needed to be filed by April 25. The judge's order means prosecutors now have until June 22. The Illinois trial is scheduled to begin June 5. ___ Information from: The News-Gazette, http://www.news-gazette.com A New York minister who reportedly was heard crying out for help before being discovered tied up inside his home in an affluent neighborhood last month has now died of his injuries -- and police are offering a $10,000 reward for information leading to an arrest. Reverend Canon Paul Wancura, an 87-year-old from Shelter Island, was pronounced dead Monday by police and the Episcopal Diocese of Long Island following an incident that has shaken residents of the summer destination town. I feel like I lost a beloved uncle, Rev. Charles McCarron of the St. Marys Episcopal Church on Shelter Island told Newsday. McCarron found Wancura seriously injured inside his home on the eastern tip of Long Island on March 19 after he had failed to show up for Sunday services at the Church of the Messiah in Central Islip the day before, the Diocese said. McCarron told the Shelter Island Reporter that he discovered Wancura with his hands bound and lying between a bed and a wall. McCarron entered the home through an open garage door and had heard noises coming from inside, according to Acting Suffolk County Police Commissioner Stuart Cameron. "Shelter Island is an extremely safe area, that's one of the reasons that this is so shocking," Cameron told reporters in March. "But again, we don't believe this is a random attack and we don't believe it is affecting the safety of the other residents of Shelter Island." Wancura was then airlifted to a local hospital and had one of his hands amputated, but eventually died from infections, McCarron said. In a separate interview with Newsday, the minister revealed that Wancuras cries of help me! led him to the shocking scene. Wancura apparently lived alone in the home, which sits near the end of a one-lane road on one of the islands many peninsulas, after his wife passed away nearly two decades ago. A friend told Newsday that Wancura worked as an Army counterintelligence officer during the Korean War and studied theology when he returned home to the U.S. He was said to have met his wife at a Shelter Island church and moved into her familys home there. He was so human, said Kevin Lockerbie, who visited Wancura at a hospital the day before he died. He understood peoples trials Even though he had no children his parish was his life he was very connected to the common man because he had been one. Lockerbie added that Wancura was set to undergo plastic surgeries this week to address his wounds and that he didnt know the person who did this and was trying to figure it all out. Shelter Island Police Department Chief Jim Read told the Shelter Island Reporter that the case, which originally was being looked at as a home invasion and burglary, is now a homicide investigation. Read added that police also are looking into whether the incident is connected to another burglary in the neighborhood that was reported on March 4 after homeowners returned from being away to find their property broken into. The Diocese said Wancura was a longtime priest and former archdeacon of Suffolk County. We give thanks for his life and ministry in this diocese, it said Monday afternoon in a statement expressing its profound sadness over his death. Wancura's funeral is still being arranged. Hes somebody that you could really talk to, another friend who identified himself as Kirk, told CBS 2 last month. When you have a problem you can go to come and talk to him. You have no issues. Hes real nice. The station reported that Shelter Island which is only accessible by ferry -- has around 2,400 residents in the offseason. A $10,000 reward is being offered for information leading to an arrest in the case and the public is urged to call Crime Stoppers at 1-800-220-TIPS. The families of two children slain in the Sandy Hook Elementary School massacre have filed lawsuits against InfoWars host Alex Jones for claiming the Connecticut shooting was a hoax. Neil Heslin, the father of Jesse Lewis, and Leonard Pozner and Veronique De La Rosa, the parents of Noah Pozner, filed separate defamation lawsuits seeking more than $1 million in damages. The suits were filed late Monday in Travis County, Texas, where Jones' media company, InfoWars, is based. Mark Bankston, an attorney for the plaintiffs, called the accusations ghoulish. Even after these folks had to experience this trauma, for the accusations next five years they were tormented by Alex Jones with vicious lies about them, Bankston told the Huffington Post. And these lies were meant to convince his audience that the Sandy Hook parents are frauds and have perpetrated a sinister lie on the American people. Jesse and Noah were among the 20 first-grade students and six educators gunned down inside the school in Newtown on Dec. 14, 2012. The gunman, Adam Lanza, fatally shot his mother before driving to the school to carry out the massacre and then killed himself. The lawsuits allege that Jones' insistence that the shooting was staged encouraged others to make death threats against the victims' families. "So, if children were lost at Sandy Hook, my heart goes out to each and every one of those parents. And the people who say they're parents that I see on the news. The only problem is, I've watched a lot of soap operas. And I've seen actors before. And I know when I'm watching a movie and when I'm watching something real," Jones has been quoted as saying. Neither Jones nor InfoWars immediately responded Tuesday to requests for comment from Fox News. Bankston, according to The Post, also represents a Massachusetts man who is suing Jones, alleging the host falsely identified him as the gunman in the Parkland, Fla., school shooting in February of this year. There were 17 casualties in that massacre. The Associated Press contributed to this report. A South Carolina sheriff accused of raping a female assistant more than a year ago has been indicted on charges of obstruction of justice and misconduct in office, according to court records. Greenville County Sheriff Will Lewis was also suspended from office Tuesday following an executive order signed by Republican Gov. Henry McMaster, who has called on the sheriff to resign. He appointed Greenville County Sheriff Johnny Mack Brown to hold the position until Lewis "is acquitted, convicted, the indictment is otherwise disposed of, or until a sheriff is elected and qualifies in the next general election for county sheriffs," according to a news release. The State Law Enforcement Division (SLED) opened an investigation into Lewis after his former assistant, Savannah Nabors, publicly accused Lewis of sexual misconduct in a since-deleted August 2017 blog post. In the post, she allegedly said she quit her job out of fear for my life, accusing Lewis of sexual, emotional and mental abuse, assault, manipulation and stalking. I couldnt call 9-1-1, Nabors reportedly wrote in the post. He was 9-1-1. Nabors claimed Lewis sexually assaulted her during a business trip in Charlotte in May 2017, according to a civil suit she later filed. In the suit, she acknowledged she had several alcoholic drinks throughout an evening with the sheriff and others at at business meeting. But later, when Lewis came by her room to retrieve a bottle of liquor, she said Lewis "forcibly kissed" her, and she began to lose consciousness. Nabors alleges she awoke to Lewis having sex on top of her. Lewis admitted to having an affair but denied the claims of rape, harassment and stalking. The indictment says Lewis, "willfully and dishonestly failed to properly and faithfully discharge his lawful duties as the Greenville County Sheriff through a series of improper acts," the Greenville News reported. "Our client is aware of the charges, although at this time we dont know any of the specifics as they are simply vague allegations of misconduct in office and obstruction of justice," Lewis' lawyers said in a statement to WHNS-TV. "Sheriff Lewis adamantly denies any wrongdoing or misconduct in office and certainly did not interfere with an investigation he personally requested. We look forward to receiving the SLED report and the purported basis for the allegations and have no further comment until we do." The indictment against Lewis was filed on April 17, according to records reviewed by Fox News. One person was killed and seven others were injured Tuesday after a Southwest Airlines plane engine apparently exploded midair, officials said. Flight 1380, which was headed from LaGuardia Airport in New York City to Dallas' Love Field, made an emergency landing at Philadelphia International Airport around 11:20 a.m. The jet had 144 passengers and five crew members aboard. National Transportation Safety Board (NTSB) Chairman Robert Sumwalt confirmed the death at a news conference Tuesday. It was the first passenger fatality on a U.S. airline since 2009, according to the NTSB. Seven others were treated for minor injuries, Philadelphia Fire Commissioner Adam Thiel said, adding that one of the engines experienced a fuel leak when firefighters arrived on scene, and a small fire was quickly brought under control. The plane made an emergency landing after the crew reported damage to one of the engines, the fuselage and at least one window, the Federal Aviation Administration (FAA) said. A female passenger, according to WCAU, was "partially sucked out" of the Boeing 373's window when the engine exploded and shrapnel from the engine smashed a window. One passenger, a woman, was partiallywas drawn out towards the outside of the planewas pulled back in by other passengers," Todd Bauer, the father-in-law of one of the passengers, told the news station. It was not immediately clear if the passenger who was killed was the woman who was reportedly "sucked out" of the window. The pilot, identified as Tammie Jo Shults, asked an air traffic control operator via radio for emergency services to be on the scene for the injured passengers when the aircraft landed. When the pilot was asked if the plane was on fire they replied, "No, it's not on fire but part of it's missing. They said there is a hole and someone went out." Marty Martinez, a passenger on the flight, posted a video on his personal Facebook page stating he was "recording his last moments." Martinez told CBS News there was "blood everywhere" on the aircraft. "We were probably going down for 10 to 15 minutes," Martinez said. "And of course everyone is freaking out, everyone is crying. It was the scariest experience." Another passenger, Amanda Bourman, told The Associated Press that as the incident unfolded, she remembered, "holding my husband's hand, and we just prayed and prayed and prayed." "And the thoughts that were going through my head of course were about my daughters, just wanting to see them again and give them a big hug so they wouldn't grow up without parents," Bourman added. SOUTHWEST PASSENGERS 'CRYING,' 'SCREAMING,' PREPARING 'TO DIE' IN ATTEMPTED LANDING DURING STORM Southwest said in a statement that the company is "deeply saddened" at the passenger's death. "The entire Southwest Airlines Family is devastated and extends its deepest, heartfelt sympathy to the Customers, employees, family members and loved ones affected by this tragic event," the statement read. "We have activated our emergency response team and are deploying every resource to support those affected by this tragedy." The Federal Aviation Administration released a statement saying it was "investigating the incident and the National Transportation Board has been notified." "Southwest Airlines Flight 1380 landed at Philadelphia International Airport this morning after the crew reported damage to one of the aircraft's engines, as well as fuselage and at least one window," the statement read. The NTSB is sending a go-team to Philadelphia to investigate the incident. Boeing Airplanes tweeted the company was aware of the incident and was "gathering more information" "to provide [with] technical assistance." Southwest Airlines CEO Gary Kelly said at a news conference late Tuesday that the crew "handled the situation magnificently" and "did their jobs superbly." He didn't identify any of the five crewmembers, Kelly said the captain was "very experienced" and started at the airline in 1994. Schults was confirmed to Fox News as the flight's pilot by her alma mater, MidAmerica Nazarene University in Kansas. The school wrote on Facebook in 2017 that Schults, was one of the first female fight pilots for the U.S. Navy. Texas Attorney General Ken Paxton thanked Shults and the crew "who managed to land ... and prevent further injuries." He added they "are heroes." It was the first death stemming from an in-flight accident on a U.S. airliner since 2009, when 49 people on board and one on the ground were killed in the crash of a Continental Express plane near Buffalo, New York. Southwest has about 700 planes, all of them 737s, including more than 500 737-700s like the one involved in Tuesday's emergency landing. It is the world's largest operator of the 737, which is the best-selling jetliner in the world and has a good safety record. Fox News' Raymond Bogan and The Associated Press contributed to this report. A Wyoming school district in an area where the U.S. education secretary suggested last year that teachers might need to carry guns to protect children from grizzly bears is due to vote whether to let the teachers carry firearms. The Park County School District No. 6 board in the town of Cody votes Tuesday on the measure that proponents say would protect students from armed intruders. The school district covers a wide area near Yellowstone National Park, where grizzlies roam. Cody has one of the biggest firearms museums in the U.S. and many residents like guns, though some parents oppose arming teachers. Education Secretary Betsy DeVos' family owns property in the area. She said last year teachers in one school might need guns to protect against the bears. U.S., European, Russian and Arab analysts at a conference in Rome, while pondering the best security architecture for the Middle East, admitted or at least some of them did that talk of the necessity for a political, as opposed to military, solution for Syria is somewhat flawed given facts already on the ground. Gumer Isaev, head of the Center for Contemporary Middle East Studies, in Saint Petersburg, Russia, pointed out that: Assad is solving his problems with weapons. And that, he added, does point to a weak position among Western countries. Syrian President Bashar al-Assad, many say, essentially has won the war. Those who want a different outcome may not have much leverage at this point. Naturally, an immediate end to hostilities and an effective dialogue to stop the civil war in Syria are what the West, and undoubtedly a significant segment of the Syrian population, would like to see. However seven years in, and many conferences later that appears to be an increasingly elusive scenario. The conference Monday in Rome was put on by the Euro-Gulf Information Centre, the Center for American Studies and the NATO Defense College. Panelists took a look at who should be in, who should be out, and what different countries can be doing to help resolve a host of problems in the region and primarily the Syrian dilemma. Vincenzo Amendola, Italys undersecretary of State for Foreign Affairs and International Cooperation, said that the United States needs to stay engaged to find a way out of the Syrian crisis and that resolution requires a more rigorous global platform of nations working together to ensure that further atrocities are not committed. David Campbell Bannerman, member of the European Parliament, lashed out at Iran for the regions unrest saying that every stone you overturn in the Middle East has Iran crawling under it. He described the Islamic Republic as a septic octopus, and said that referring to President Hassan Rouhani as a moderate is a cynical phrase. A diplomat representing an Iranian Foreign Ministry research institute made an intervention at the conference, and defended his countrys involvement in Syria as an existential fight against terrorism. In terms of how the coalition airstrikes on chemical weapons facilities in Syria early Saturday changes the greater equation, Isaev posited that the action may have been contained not to involve Russian assets because some sort of secret deal between Russia and the West may have been discussed in the days leading up to the attack. Isaev said Russia wasnt truly shamed by the attack on the Syrian facilities, and does not believe Russia will retaliate for it. He told Fox News, Maybe there is already an agreement on the future of Syria, because as I know, there are some ideas in the West to change the situation in Syria. Maybe a transition of power. Maybe to organize elections. But that remains in the realm of speculation. Isaev said that Russia, having lost other allies in the Middle East over the years, has clung to the Damascus regime as its last friend in the region. Russians, he said, are wary of wars in the Middle East, but they are impressed when their country projects military might. How long Russia with ISIS all but gone from Syria might continue supporting Assad militarily, remains anybodys guess. And how long Moscow and Russians can endure the costs is another question. In the meantime, the West and many in the international community, would like to see Russia change its behavior, especially if it turns out Moscow was well aware and complicit in the alleged chemical weapons attack on Douma last Saturday. Isaev was dubious that additional sanctions on Russia would change Moscows maneuvers in Syria. In general, of course, sanctions are making the economic situation in Russia worse. We have problems with the ruble. We have some problems with the future of our financial abilities, but in general now, I dont think Russia will change its politics only because of sanctions. What will change Moscows calculus in Syria is the million-dollar question. Syrian state TV acknowledged early Tuesday that the reported attack on a Syrian air base outside Homs was a false alarm, not outside aggression. The Pentagon on Monday denied any involvement in an attack in an area not far from where U.S., U.K. and French missiles struck early Saturday morning, There are no US or Coalition operations in that area [Homs]. We dont have anything additional to provide, Marine Maj. Adrian Rankine-Galloway, a Pentagon spokesman, said in an email to Fox News. The Shayrat Air Base was hit by 59 U.S. Tomahawk cruise missiles last year. Syrian state-run television reported early Tuesday that Syrian air defenses have confronted a new "aggression" over Homs, but did not say who carried out the airstrikes. But it later admitted that it was a false alarm, not outside aggression, that triggered Syrian air defenses. The U.S., along with the U.K. and France, conducted airstrikes on Saturday in Syria to punish the Assad regime for an apparent chemical weapons attack against civilians. Defense Secretary Mattis said at the time that no follow-up attacks were planned and that the Pentagon was careful to ensure the safety of Russian troops and Syrian civilians in the area. Fox News' Lucas Tomlinson, Kathleen Joyce, Nicole Darrah and Lukas Mikelionis, along with The Associated Press, contributed to this report. Officials in Syria and Russia allegedly blocked investigators from entering the scene of a suspected chemical attack, a watchdog group said Monday. The Organization for the Prohibition of Chemical Weapons (OPCW) said that officials from both countries have cited pending security issues for preventing the independent watchdog from entering Douma, the Syrian city where U.S. and French authorities believe a poison gas attack occurred on April 7. US MISSILE ATTACK ON SYRIA CAPTURED IN STUNNING PENTAGON VIDEO Instead of inviting them to enter the city, Syrian officials have offered them the chance to interview 22 people as witnesses, Ahmet Uzumcu, Director-General of OPCW, told an executive council meeting of the group on Monday. He added that he hoped "all necessary arrangements will be made ... to allow the team to deploy to Douma as soon as possible." The U.S. and France, along with Syrian activists, rescuers and medics, have said the poison gas attack in Douma, led by the regime of Syrian President Bashar al-Assad, killed at least 40 people and injured more than 500, a rebel-held town located roughly 6 miles northeast of the Syrian capital of Damascus. President Trump labeled Assads actions, which resumed amid an offensive by Syrian government forces after the collapse of a truce, are not the actions of a man, but are the crimes of a monster instead. The Syrian government and its Russian backers have strongly rejected allegations of a chemical attack, questioning whether a chemical weapons attack even took place and even claiming that purported evidence of a chemical weapons attack was fabricated. PUTIN WARNS 'CHAOS' WILL ENSUE IF WEST STRIKES SYRIA AGAIN In response to the attack, U.S., U.K. and French forces launched precision military strikes in Syria, targeting three locations which the Pentagon said made up the heart of Assads programs to develop and produce chemical weapons. Russian Deputy Foreign Minister Sergei Ryabkov suggested Monday that OPCW inspectors couldnt get quick approval to visit the site of the alleged attack because of airstrikes from the West. "As far as I understand, what is hampering a speedy resolution of this problem is the consequences of the illegal, unlawful military action that Great Britain and other countries conducted on Saturday," Ryabkov said. However, United Nations spokesman Stephane Dujarric said the U.N. has "provided the necessary clearances for the OPCW team to go about its work in Douma. We have not denied the team any request for it to go to Douma, and U.N. Secretary-General Antonio Guterres last week reaffirmed his support for an OPCW investigation. Government forces and Russian troops have been deployed in Douma, which is now controlled by the Syrian government. Opposition activists have said the troops might have removed any evidence of chemical weapons' use, a claim Russian Foreign Minister Sergey Lavrov has called false. Discussions over the suspected site of the chemical attack come after Syrian state-run television reported that Syrian air defenses were confronting a new aggression over Homs, where the Shayrat Air Base is located, but did not say who carried out the alleged airstrikes. But Pentagon spokesman Marine Maj. Adrian Rankine-Galloway told Fox News on Monday that There are no US or Coalition operations in that area [Homs], adding: We dont have anything additional to provide. Fox News Lucas Tomlinson, Kathleen Joyce, along with The Associated Press, contributed to this report. European Commission President Jean-Claude Juncker is warning that the volatile Balkans could face a return to war if countries in the region have no hope of joining the European Union. Juncker told EU lawmakers Tuesday: "I don't want a return to war in the Western Balkans." He said: "If we remove from these countries, in this extremely complicated region, I should say tragically, a European perspective, we are going to live what we already went through in the 1990s." EU and Balkan leaders meet in Bulgaria next month, but the EU is unlikely to invite any country to join soon. The prospect of EU membership has proved a driving force for reform in the Balkans, which was torn apart by war as former Yugoslavia broke up. The German Foreign Ministry says a German-Turkish dual national has apparently been arrested in Istanbul, an incident that comes as relations between the two countries have been strained by previous arrests of German citizens. The Spiegel Online news website reported Tuesday that Adil Demirci was arrested during a visit with his mother there. It said police last week stormed the Istanbul apartment of relatives he was visiting. The Foreign Ministry said it believes that Demirci was arrested but "confirmation from the Turkish authorities is still pending." Spiegel Online wrote that Demirci is a social worker in Cologne and on the side writes for the left-wing Turkish ETHA news agency. The Foreign Ministry said it cannot at present confirm that Demirci is a journalist. Satellite images released Tuesday by Israeli Defense Forces show the scope of the military relationship between Iran and Syria. The satellite images show several Syrian military bases that are used by the Iranian Revolutionary Guards forces, which the IDF's said helps illustrate the threats imposed by the Iranian ability to send weapons to Syria from Tehran. The Guard's air force presence is located in five airports in Syria: T4, Aleppo, Deir ez-Zor, Damascus International Airport and an additional airfield south east of Damascus, according to the IDF. The intelligence was released after an eventful night in Syria during which Syrian air defense missile systems went off for reasons which are still unclear. Rumors of an Israeli attack eventually gave way to officials saying the threat was a false alarm. Tension on Israel's northern borders remains very high in light of the American attack against the Assad chemical weapons facilities last Friday and the expectation of Iranian retaliation for a separate strike attributed to Israel. RUSSIA, SYRIA BLOCK INSPECTORS FROM CHEMICAL WEAPONS ATTACK SITE, WATCHDOG SAYS On Monday, The New York Times columnist Thomas Friedman quoted a senior IDF official as admitting Israeli responsibility for the attack last week, a step that Israel has officially refrained from taking so far. As of Tuesday morning, several Israeli websites received details of wide-ranging information about the Iranian Revolutionary Guards' aerial systems in Syria, whose officers and advisers were killed in the recent attack. One of the photos shows the Syria military base in Deir ez-Zor located in eastern Syria. One of the photographs appears to show Ilyushin planes transporting weapons from Iran to Syria, according to the IDF. The photos released Tuesday illustrate how Tehran is capable of delivering surface-to-surface missiles (SSM) and unarmed aerial vehicles (UAV) to Syria, Israeli military sources told Fox News. "Israel will react strongly to any Iranian action from inside Syria," a senior IDF source said, adding that Iran plans to attack Israel from Syria and gain control of the Arab state though its air force. SYRIAN STATE TV: REPORTS ON NEW AIR BASE BOMBINGS A FALSE ALARM Israeli officials tell Fox News that Qasem Soleimani, the head of the Al-Quds force, The Iranian elite team, is already planning an attack against Israel. "Soleimani does whatever he feels like in Syria, an Israeli official told Fox news. British officials say the nerve agent used to poison former Russian spy Sergei Skripal and his daughter was delivered in liquid form, and it will take months to remove all traces of the toxin. The Environment Department says nine sites need "specialist cleaning," including a restaurant visited by the Skripals on March 4, the day they were found unconscious on a park bench. The department said Tuesday that 190 specially trained troops are assisting environmental, health and defense officials with the clean-up in the English city of Salisbury. RUSSIA TESTED NERVE AGENT ON DOOR HANDLES, MONITORED EX-SPY BEFORE POISONING, UK INTELLIGENCE DOSSIER CLAIMS British officials say the Skripals were poisoned with a military-grade nerve agent made in Russia, which was put on a door handle at Sergei Skripal's house. Yulia Skripal has been released from Salisbury District Hospital, where her father continues to be treated. South Korean movie star Choi Eun-hee, who was kidnapped by North Korean agents in the 1970s and forced to make propaganda flicks before a daring escape, died Monday, her family said. She was 92. Choi was suffering from a chronic disease before her death, Yonhap News Agency reported. "My mother passed away when she went to hospital for kidney dialysis [Monday] afternoon," the actress son, director Shin Jeong-gyun, told the South Korean news site. Choi began her acting career in 1947 and was regarded as one of the three most-celebrated stars in South Korea in the 1960s and 1970s. She gained such huge popularity among movie fanatics that it caught the attention of Kim Jong Il, whose father Kim Il Sung was the North Korean dictator at the time. Kim Jong Il, a huge film fan who loved Hollywood movies, then ordered his agents to kidnap the star. Choi was in Hong Kong in 1978 when North Korean agents abducted her and took her to the Hermit Kingdom. Shin Sang-ok, Chois husband who she had recently divorced, was also kidnapped about a year later while searching for the actress. The couple were forced to make 17 movies during their eight-year captivity, Chosun Ilbo reported. One movie, Sault, even earned Choi a best actress award at the Moscow Film Festival. One film was based on a stage play by then-leader Kim Il Sung. Another was a North Korean version of "Godzilla." The duo even attempted to trick Kim Jong Il to admitting he kidnapped them in a recording, South China Morning Post reported. The estranged couple eventually earned the future despots trust to travel to Vienna, Austria in 1986, according to the BBC. They managed to escape while promoting their films and sought political asylum at the U.S. embassy. They lived in exile for a decade until finally returning to South Korea. North Korea has repeatedly denied kidnapping Choi and Shin and claimed the couple sought sanctuary in Pyongyang. Choi and Shins tale was told in the 2016 documentary The Lovers and the Despot. Choi also published a biography titled Confessions. next Image 1 of 2 prev Image 2 of 2 Syrian state-run television has reported that the country's defenses have confronted a new "aggression," shooting down missiles over the central Homs region. It didn't say who carried out the early Tuesday airstrikes. The Syrian Central Media said the missiles targeted Shayrat air base in Homs. Another strike earlier this month in Homs was blamed on Israel. The report comes a few days after the U.S., Britain and France conducted airstrikes targeting alleged chemical weapons facilities in Syria, in retaliation for a suspected chemical weapons attack that they blamed on the Syrian government. Experts from the international chemical weapons watchdog are in Syria and are now expected to visit that site in the town of Douma Wednesday. That's after Syrian and Russian authorities prevented them from going to the scene Monday. President Donald Trump announced Tuesday that North Korea and South Korea will be meeting to end their decades-long war -- and both countries have his blessing. The president also noted that the U.S. has started to engage at very high levels with North Korea, ahead of a much-anticipated meeting between Trump and dictator Kim Jong Un set for later this year. South Korea is meeting and has plans to meet with North Korea to see if they can end the war, Trump said at his Florida home at Mar-a-Lago, with Japanese Prime Minister Shinzo Abe by his side. They have my blessing on that. The war began in 1950. Without ever signing a peace treaty, North and South Korea are technically still at war. South Korean President Moon Jae-in and North Korean dictator Kim Jong Un are set to hold a summit on April 27 in a village on the border, South Korean media and Reuters reported. South Korean presidential chief of staff Im Jong-seok told reporters Tuesday that his country would hold working-level talks on Wednesday and that they may be sending officials to North Korea before next weeks summit for planning purposes. He also said that the meeting between the two leaders will confirm the denuclearization of North Korea. We expect the summit will confirm the denuclearization will (of North Korea), and hope to have a comprehensive agreement with the North on the matter, he said. An early report also seemed to confirm that at the summit the two sides may announce an official end to the military standoff on the Korean peninsula, Bloomberg reported. Citing an unidentified South Korean official, the report said neighboring countries may issue a joint statement announcing a relief in military tension and a plan to end confrontation. President Trump took credit for the open dialogue saying that without us, without me in particular, I guess you would have to say that they wouldnt be discussing anything. He also talked about meetings between himself and Kim Jong Un, saying it most likely would take place in early June. We will be having meetings with Kim Jong Un very soon, he said before adding, assuming things go well. He also said, Its possible things wont go well and we wont have the meeting and well just continue to go along this very strong path that weve taken. After a tense back and forth between the United States and North Korea over its continued use of its continued use of its weapons program and nuclear testing, Trump announced last month that he would be meeting with Kim later this year. Turkey's deputy prime minister says the ruling party will evaluate a call for early presidential and parliamentary elections. Bekir Bozdag's statement on Tuesday came shortly after the leader of Turkey's nationalist party, an ally of President Recep Tayyip Erdogan, said the elections scheduled for November 2019 should be brought forward. Nationalist leader Devlet Bahceli suggested Aug. 26, 2018 as a possible date and said that "there is no point in prolonging this any longer." Erdogan has moved to tighten his grip on politics since a failed coup attempt in 2016. Following a referendum last year, Turkey is switching from a parliamentary system to a presidential system that consolidates most power in the hands of the president. The changes will come into effect with the next elections. next Image 1 of 2 prev Image 2 of 2 British Prime Minister Theresa May has rejected opposition calls for a law requiring Parliament's approval to commit U.K. forces to military action. Britain, along with the United States and France, launched airstrikes on Saturday against targets in Syria over a reported chemical weapons attack. Labour Party leader Jeremy Corbyn accused May of showing a "flagrant disregard" for Parliament by not seeking lawmakers' approval first. But May said Corbyn's demand for a War Powers Act to prevent the government from acting alone "would seriously compromise our national security, our national interests, and the lives of British citizens at home and abroad" by making rapid, small-scale strikes like those taken in Syria impossible. Corbyn secured an emergency debate on the Syria strikes Tuesday, but it didn't include a significant vote on the issue. The young soldiers of the U.S.-backed, Kurdish-led Syrian Democratic Forces (SDF) were scattered around the makeshift checkpoint, often sitting alone, veiled only by a ripped sheet. They're positioned just about a half-mile outside the village of Hajin, in Eastern Syria, one of the few remaining areas that a beaten-back Islamic State (ISIS) force still controls. They still attack us every day, any time of the day, said 21-year-old Hassan, the senior SDF soldier at the post. Sometimes mortar, sometimes rockets. Always lots of bullets. Though ISIS has been defeated in more than 90 percent of the territory it once controlled in Iraq and Syria, removing this final pocket along the Iraqi-Syrian border -- including Hajin, on the eastern side of the Euphrates River, north of Abu Kamal; and Dashisha, west of Deir ez-Zor -- is proving to be a frustratingly slow process. This is their last territory, and thousands of them came here after Mosul and Raqqa, Hassan said. They are digging tunnels and planting mines all over. The push against ISIS came to a sudden halt in January, when Turkey launched its own operation, Operation Olive Branch, on the primarily Kurdish city of Afrin, near its border some 250 miles northwest. We didnt want to fight here and lose Afrin, said fellow SDF fighter Mihdi Khalil, 25. The coalition wanted us to stay here, but Afrin was just as important to us to fight for; we decided to send many of our troops from here to there. The mission to defeat ISIS subsequently slowed, and gave rise to a diplomatic quagmire for the United States. While the U.S. has backed the SDF as the primary and most trustworthy ground force against ISIS, NATO-ally Turkey views the group as an extension of the outlawed Kurdistan Workers Party (PKK), which has for more than 30 years waged a campaign specifically against the Turkish state. U.S. officials stepped back from being dragged into the Afrin battle, which disappointed the SDF. Turkish forces as well as their fighting partners, the Free Syrian Army (FSA), went on to seize Afrin from SDF control in March, dealing a blow to the SDF and pushing the "other" fight -- against ISIS -- into a state of limbo. U.S. officials admit the Afrin campaign cost valuable SDF forces in the fight against ISIS, with as many as 1,700 troops being sent off by the SDF to fight the Turks. Since that departure, the SDF have been limited," Col. Ryan Dillon, spokesman for Operation Inherent Resolve (OIR), the name given to the U.S.-led coalition against ISIS, told Fox News. "When SDF was constantly putting pressure on ISIS in the two remaining locations, they were achieving success through ground forces/attacks. Dillon added that the U.S.-led coalition had launched airstrikes against ISIS forces, but relied largely on the SDF to provide the ground pressure. Example: SDF attacks, we see ISIS react/move, we strike. With fewer SDF forces in action, Dillon said, U.S. military planners couldn't effectively target ISIS as they had before Afrin. But new efforts are underway to get the mission back on track. Assets have been reallocated to gather more information on ISIS targets, and the pace of coalition strikes has quickened. This has allowed for the coalition to deliberately plan targets -- targets that can take days to weeks to develop -- before actually conducting the strikes, said Dillon. ISIS remains an adaptive and savvy enemy that still poses a threat, Dillon said. They are largely in hiding, attempting to reconsolidate, and are planning what to do next: Either fight, surrender, or try to flee. ISIS has actually increased attacks in other areas of Syria, Dillon said, and it has even retaken some neighborhoods south of Damascus. And for civilians still struggling to survive under the repressive rule of the Islamic State more than four years on, the waiting game -- and the suffering -- drags on. They are frightening the people, they behead people, explode bombs in markets, said Mustafa Bali, an SDF spokesman. They still create an atmosphere where it is impossible for people to escape from them. Those who try to escape ISIS-controlled territory face a potentially deadly challenge. An SDF medic on hand at the closest emergency clinic, 35-year-old Akif, told Fox News the slowing of the offensive has meant few military casualties -- but almost two dozen civilians injured by mines. On Sunday, a 6-year-old girl lost a leg to a land mine, he said, and a few days earlier a young woman had her left foot blown off. Half of Hajin is under ISIS and the other half SDF, Akif explained. So ISIS plants a line of mines to protect themselves, and even if people just want to go to visit family or friends on the other side, it could be deadly. The SDF recognizes that Syrian government forces, distracted elsewhere, aren't doing much to help clear out ISIS. The Syrian regime all these years has been too busy fighting people in Ghouta, they havent bothered with ISIS, Akif said. The burden has been a heavy one for the roughly 100,000-force SDF. Exhaustion is etched on young, sun-creased faces as the fighters shuffle between the front and the nearby Tanak oil fields. Some troops stay half a day on the firing line, others days on end. Almost all positioned there say they are no older than 21. Akifs clinic is in the mangled Tanak oil facility, which was once one of the most prominent in Syria, and was a significant funding center for ISIS operations until they were run out in November. But Tanak, along with several other prominent oil refineries clustered in the area was decimated last year by Syrian and Russian regime warplanes. Only one well currently works, SDF soldiers said. And the ISIS danger still lurks. Suicide bombers still intermittently hit the area, and concerns over sleeper cells has meant the immediate area has a curfew of 3 p.m. The surrounding stretch, reaching to the village of Shadadi, around 75 miles away, has a cutoff of around 7 p.m. Any cars moving through after that, one soldier said, we shoot. Hassan insisted the SDF is very well equipped for the much-anticipated final takedown against ISIS -- with U.S.-supplied rifles, rocket-propelled grenades, and Russian machine guns and missiles at the ready. We are waiting our orders, Hassan added. When they tell us to move in, we will destroy them. Researchers are s-till trying to understand why the virus causes no or only mild symptoms in most people but is linked to cancer in others. Age of infection, genetic susceptibility, environmental factors and interactions with other pathogens are all potentially part of the mix, said Dr. Edus H. Hootie Warren, head of Fred Hutch Global Oncology. The program has a research partnership with the Uganda Cancer Institute and research ties in China. In Uganda, almost all children are infected with EBV before they are 2 years old, but the most common (though still rare) cancer linked to the virus, endemic Burkitt lymphoma, also seems to be associated with malaria, said Warren, who was not involved in McGuires research. In China, EBV infection occurs in older children and in the U.S., in adolescents and teenagers. EBV causes the most cancer cases and cancer deaths in southern China and Southeast Asia, Warren said. About 10 percent of gastric cancers and almost 100 percent of nasopharyngeal carcinomas a type of head and neck cancer are linked to EBV. Sun Yat-Sen University Cancer Center in Guangzhou, China, for example, sees almost 5,000 cases of nasopharyngeal carcinoma a year. Treating the tumors, which grow deep inside the nasopharynx (the upper part of the throat, behind the nose) requires intensive radiation and often chemotherapy. The question out there is could we prevent these cancers with universal EBV vaccinations? said Warren. Its definitely something that would make sense in China because EBV causes a lot of morbidity and mortality there. In China, a vaccine would make an enormous difference. Building on advances from HIV research Previously, scientists had identified a small number of antibodies to EBV, but they all came from EBV-infected mice, not humans. The mouse antibody that best blocks infection targets a molecule on the surface of EBV called glycoprotein 350, or gp350, which helps the virus attach to B cells, a type of immune cell that is infected by EBV. Although the only human clinical trial of an experimental gp350-targeted EBV vaccine conducted to date showed a clinical benefit fewer people developed infectious mononucleosis the vaccine did not prevent EBV infection itself. Drawing on what has been learned from research on the immune response in people infected with HIV, McGuire and his team searched for and found antibodies to EBV in the blood serum of infected humans. Of five antibodies isolated, one named AMM01 completely blocked infection in cells in the lab and did so at a different site of vulnerability than the mouse experiments found, an EBV protein called gH/gL. Moreover, it blocked infection in both of the two different cells that EBV infects B cells and epithelial cells rather than just in B cells. Because this antibody binds to a different viral protein and we show that it can neutralize both cell types, you could argue that that will make a better vaccine or complement the gp350 one thats been tested and showed some efficacy, McGuire said. McGuire just started his own lab last July, after moving from postdoc to an assistant faculty appointment, but he began this work under a VIDD Faculty Initiative Grant awarded in 2015. He and his colleagues isolated the antibodies the following year and, working with UWs Dr. David Veesler and Hutch researcher Dr. Marie Pancera who recently co-authored a paper on a new malaria antibody and its target they were able to describe the structure of the binding site soon afterward. The next step will be testing the antibody in an animal model; McGuire is applying for funding for that project now. Besides holding out promise for a vaccine, which would work by teaching the body to make such an antibody, another potential use of these results would be to directly administer the antibody intravenously, as is now being tested for an antibody against HIV in a global clinical trial called the AMP Study, short for "antibody-mediated protection." With an EBV antibody, such an approach could be used to protect patients undergoing stem cell or organ transplants who may be EBV-negative with an EBV-positive donor or whose own latent EBV infection may reactivate when their immune system is depressed. And down the road, there is the possibility that lessons learned from finding antibodies for HIV, malaria and now EBV could be applied to additional viruses. This approach made such a huge impact on the HIV-vaccine field that more and more people are starting to do this with other pathogens now, McGuire said. Fred Hutchs Vaccine and Infectious Disease Division, the National Institutes of Health, a Pew Biomedical Scholars Award, the Netherlands Organization for Scientific Research and the European Molecular Biology Organisation funded the study. Join the conversation about EBV on our Facebook page. Scottish First Milk producers have been left shell-shocked after the processor announced its intention to sell its Arran and Campbeltown creameries following a strategic review of the business. The processor is seeking buyers for the two sites which supply the Isle of Arran and Mull of Kintyre brands respectively, but it is understood there will be no immediate changes for First Milk suppliers. See also: UK dairy has highest processing investment in EU Last month First Milk harmonised its four milk pools into a single price, so Scottish members would not see prices change disproportionately to members in England and Wales. However, Farmers Weekly understands a prospective deal for the creameries could include producers supplying the creameries in the future. Strategic review Following a strategic review, we have determined our branded consumer-facing businesses in Campbeltown and on Arran are not a strategic fit for First Milk moving forward, said First Milk CEO, Shelagh Hancock. Ms Hancock added the review did identify markets for the premium Mull of Kintyre and Isle of Arran brands, but First Milk was not prepared to deliver the significant investment necessary to capture these opportunities. However, we are confident with the right focus and investment under new ownership the businesses would prosper, she added. A sale would enable us to continue with our focus on developing our major creameries in Haverfordwest and the Lake District, creating value through broadening and strengthening our strategic partnerships and delivering best value for our members investment. The two creameries would continue to run as normal during this sale process First Milk said they would work closely with buyers to ensure a smooth transition. We appreciate this decision will affect some of our colleagues, but we hope that under new ownership the sites will thrive, offering good employment prospects for the future, said Ms Hancock. felicilin at 16-04-2018 04:23 PM (3 years ago) (f) A man in Swaziland has demanded from his in-laws his 24-cow bride price back after reportedly discovering that his wife was not a virgin at the time they got married. A man in Swaziland has demanded from his in-laws his 24-cow bride price back after reportedly discovering that his wife was not a virgin at the time they got married. According to Gossip Mill Nigeria, Swazrtz Manyeva Dlamini has taken the family of his ex-wife, Ruth Thembisile Sibiya, to court to have his cattle back. Dlamini contends that Sibiya lied about being a virgin. However, Sibiya denies ever making such a claim. She also insists that Dlamini knew that she was not a virgin and that she was already three months pregnant on their wedding day. Court papers reportedly indicate that Dlamini, who is a teacher, began his relationship with Sibiya while she was still his student in high school. Sibiya reportedly writes: After I completed school in 1995, Dlamini, who was far older than me, insisted that we get married but I refused to marry him since I wanted to pursue my studies. She also states that she met and fell in love with a man named Themba Thwala in 1998 prior to marrying Dlamini. According to Gossip Mill Nigeria, Swazrtz Manyeva Dlamini has taken the family of his ex-wife, Ruth Thembisile Sibiya, to court to have his cattle back. Dlamini contends that Sibiya lied about being a virgin.However, Sibiya denies ever making such a claim. She also insists that Dlamini knew that she was not a virgin and that she was already three months pregnant on their wedding day. Court papers reportedly indicate that Dlamini, who is a teacher, began his relationship with Sibiya while she was still his student in high school.Sibiya reportedly writes:She also states that she met and fell in love with a man named Themba Thwala in 1998 prior to marrying Dlamini. Post Reply Posted: at 16-04-2018 04:23 PM (3 years ago) | Hero The content you are looking for has either been removed or requires you to login to view Please login below or register for an account With Naijapals.com Man Earning N850k A Month Still Prefers To Relocate To Canada With His Family To Struggle Afresh felicilin at 17-04-2018 12:33 PM (3 years ago) (f) Yesterday some Nigerians on twitter were expressing worries at the number of Nigerian professionals with very good paying jobs, some with N600k salary, relocating to European countries like Canada and others. The comments were quite interesting with some Nigerians sharing their reasons on why they are relocating. A lady with N950k per month sai she is also relocating. Yesterday some Nigerians on twitter were expressing worries at the number of Nigerian professionals with very good paying jobs, some with N600k salary, relocating to European countries like Canada and others.The comments were quite interesting with some Nigerians sharing their reasons on why they are relocating. A lady with N950k per month sai she is also relocating. One of the commenters shared the sad story of how his 49-year-old former boss with N850k per month job who relocated with his wife and children and couldn't get a professional job because his Nigerian certificates were not recognised. See some comments from some Nigerians on the post below One of the commenters shared the sad story of how his 49-year-old former boss with N850k per month job who relocated with his wife and children and couldn't get a professional job because his Nigerian certificates were not recognised.See some comments from some Nigerians on the post below Post Reply Posted: at 17-04-2018 12:33 PM (3 years ago) | Hero Wazubia at 17-04-2018 12:59 PM (3 years ago) (m) AS UNA DON DESTROY NAIJA COME DEY RUN SCATTERED TO OVERSEA. NO WONDER THERES SO MANY CHURCHES AND MOSQUE NOW EVERYWHERE IN NAIJA. THE REMAINING ONCE WANT TO GO HAVEN, NO ONE NEED NAIJA ANYMORE. IT IS WELL. Posted: at 17-04-2018 12:59 PM (3 years ago) | Gistmaniac AS UNA DON DESTROY NAIJA COME DEY RUN SCATTERED TO OVERSEA.NO WONDER THERES SO MANY CHURCHES AND MOSQUE NOW EVERYWHERE IN NAIJA.THE REMAINING ONCE WANT TO GO HAVEN, NO ONE NEED NAIJA ANYMORE.IT IS WELL. Reply crocatum at 17-04-2018 01:12 PM (3 years ago) (m) Posted: at 17-04-2018 01:12 PM (3 years ago) | Gistmaniac Reply chukkychukky at 17-04-2018 01:23 PM (3 years ago) (m) na true, d tin wey pain me pass na ordinary electricity no kukuma dey naija, wat a shame Joramentity aka chukkychukky Posted: at 17-04-2018 01:23 PM (3 years ago) | Gistmaniac na true, d tin wey pain me pass na ordinary electricity no kukuma dey naija, wat a shame Reply ruthie at 17-04-2018 01:25 PM (3 years ago) (f) when you leave in a shit-hole like Nigeria....any other place is an Eldorado! Posted: at 17-04-2018 01:25 PM (3 years ago) | Hero when you leave in a shit-hole like Nigeria....any other place is an Eldorado! Reply fineboy77 at 17-04-2018 01:37 PM (3 years ago) (m) felicilin,so you no know where canada dey?which one be European country like Canada? What is the color beneath your skin? Posted: at 17-04-2018 01:37 PM (3 years ago) | Hero felicilin,so you no know where canada dey?which one be European country like Canada? Reply EDDYPRINCE at 17-04-2018 01:39 PM (3 years ago) (m) Naija is discouraging I swear Posted: at 17-04-2018 01:39 PM (3 years ago) | Addicted Hero Naija is discouraging I swear Reply crocatum at 17-04-2018 01:48 PM (3 years ago) (m) Canada is not an European Country, i think you made a typo error. Posted: at 17-04-2018 01:48 PM (3 years ago) | Gistmaniac Canada is not an European Country, i think you made a typo error. Reply crocatum at 17-04-2018 01:49 PM (3 years ago) (m) Quote from: chukkychukky on 17-04-2018 01:23 PM na true, d tin wey pain me pass na ordinary electricity no kukuma dey naija, wat a shame yes We need electricity, people want to do business but have that challenge. Posted: at 17-04-2018 01:49 PM (3 years ago) | Gistmaniac yes We need electricity, people want to do business but have that challenge. Reply EDDYPRINCE at 17-04-2018 02:00 PM (3 years ago) (m) Naija na phyukup I swear Posted: at 17-04-2018 02:00 PM (3 years ago) | Addicted Hero Naija na phyukup I swear Reply proly at 17-04-2018 02:11 PM (3 years ago) (f) Ok oooooo Posted: at 17-04-2018 02:11 PM (3 years ago) | Hero Ok oooooo Reply osarobo62 at 17-04-2018 02:24 PM (3 years ago) (m) he should have kept his job and relocate only his family until he passes his exams. With his pay ,he can afford to visit them at least twice a year. Posted: at 17-04-2018 02:24 PM (3 years ago) | Hero Reply Patode at 17-04-2018 02:43 PM (3 years ago) (m) "I freed a thousand slaves, I could have freed a thousand more if only they knew they were slaves." - Harriet Tubman? A few will probably make better life in these foreign countries, a lot are wishing they never left but pride will not let then cut their loses and return home. Posted: at 17-04-2018 02:43 PM (3 years ago) | Upcoming "I freed a thousand slaves, I could have freed a thousand more if only they knew they were slaves." - Harriet Tubman?A few will probably make better life in these foreign countries, a lot are wishing they never left but pride will not let then cut their loses and return home. Reply cypanyahucha at 17-04-2018 03:59 PM (3 years ago) (m) I see Posted: at 17-04-2018 03:59 PM (3 years ago) | Gistmaniac I see Reply slimber at 17-04-2018 06:16 PM (3 years ago) (f) Okooo no worry who no go no no Posted: at 17-04-2018 06:16 PM (3 years ago) | Hero Okooo no worry who no go no no Reply ngfineface at 17-04-2018 07:00 PM (3 years ago) (f) Poster so I should clap for you for copying and pasting Linda Ikeji's report without acknowledging her abi? Posted: at 17-04-2018 07:00 PM (3 years ago) | Hero Poster so I should clap for you for copying and pasting Linda Ikeji's report without acknowledging her abi? Reply gogoman at 17-04-2018 09:07 PM (3 years ago) (m) WELL NA HIM CHOICE!! WE CAN'T ALL LIVE IN the SAME PLACE Posted: at 17-04-2018 09:07 PM (3 years ago) | Addicted Hero WELL NA HIM CHOICE!! WE CAN'T ALL LIVE IN the SAME PLACE Reply willyking at 18-04-2018 05:05 AM (3 years ago) (m) That what u get when a man who cant even manage is own family is ruling a whole country, second term will RIP to nigeria, 5 years ago people where planing to relocate back to nigeria.. Posted: at 18-04-2018 05:05 AM (3 years ago) | Gistmaniac That what u get when a man who cant even manage is own family is ruling a whole country, second term will RIP to nigeria, 5 years ago people where planing to relocate back to nigeria.. Reply LOBATAN! Nigerian UK Visa Applicant Arrested For Lying About His Marital Status felicilin at 17-04-2018 04:37 PM (3 years ago) (f) An Ikeja Special Offences Court on Tuesday sentenced a UK visa applicant, Kolawole Viyon, to three years imprisonment for giving false information about his marital status. An Ikeja Special Offences Court on Tuesday sentenced a UK visa applicant, Kolawole Viyon, to three years imprisonment for giving false information about his marital status. The Independent Corrupt Practices and Other Related Offences Commission (ICPC) had arraigned Mr Viyon for allegedly lying about his marital status. Justice Mojisola Dada, who gave the ruling, said the accused was guilty as charged. Following a plea bargain entered into with the prosecution, the judge, however, gave Mr Viyon an option of N300,000 fine Following the defendants guilty plea, he is hereby convicted accordingly. The terms of the plea bargain agreement are hereby adopted as the sentence of this court and the judgment thereof. He is hereby sentenced to three years imprisonment or the fine imposed, the judge said. The judge, however, noted that if the fine was not paid within 24 hours, Mr Viyon will have to mandatorily serve his prison term. But the convicts counsel, Hannah Adeyemi, told the court that he was ready with the N300,000 cash to effect the courts judgment. ICPC through its counsel, Gogodoye West, told the court that the defendant with another, Olaronke Akerele, committed the offence on December 13, 2016, at the ICPC Lagos Zonal Office Mr West said officials of the British High Commission had in 2016 handed over Mr Viyon and his accomplice, now at large, to the ICPC, for giving false information in their visa application forms. He told the court that The Independent Corrupt Practices and Other Related Offences Commission (ICPC) had arraigned Mr Viyon for allegedly lying about his marital status.Justice Mojisola Dada, who gave the ruling, said the accused was guilty as charged.Following a plea bargain entered into with the prosecution, the judge, however, gave Mr Viyon an option of N300,000 fineFollowing the defendants guilty plea, he is hereby convicted accordingly. The terms of the plea bargain agreement are hereby adopted as the sentence of this court and the judgment thereof.the judge said.The judge, however, noted that if the fine was not paid within 24 hours,But the convicts counsel, Hannah Adeyemi, told the court that he was ready with the N300,000 cash to effect the courts judgment.ICPC through its counsel, Gogodoye West, told the court that the defendant with another, Olaronke Akerele, committed the offence on December 13, 2016, at the ICPC Lagos Zonal OfficeMr West said officials of the British High Commission had in 2016 handed over Mr Viyon and his accomplice, now at large, to the ICPC, for giving false information in their visa application forms.He told the court that Quote in his extra-judicial statement volunteered under caution before Nkem Ezenwa, an investigating officer with the ICPC, made a false statement that Olaronke Akerele is his third and legally married wife. Viyon informed Ezenwa and Mr Kenneth Agba, another investigating officer of the ICPC, that the marriage ceremony between himself and Akerele was conducted by an Imam under Islamic law The defendant said the marriage was evidenced by a certificate of marriage with number JUN/LB/0000064 which is dated January 9, 2016 and issued by the Jama-at-ul-Islamiyya of Nigeria Viyon also lied that he had signed the certificate of marriage and that the ceremony was conducted at No. 108, Tokunboh St., Lagos Island, Lagos, the prosecutor said. Mr West, however, told the court that investigation revealed that there was neither marriage contracted between Mr Viyon and Miss Akerele nor a certificate of marriage issued by the Jama-at-ul-Islamiyya of Nigeria to that effect. At the resumed hearing of the case on Tuesday, Mr Viyon had pleaded guilty to an amended three-count charge bordering on knowingly making statements which are false. But prior to his plea bargain, the prosecution applied to the court for the withdrawal of the charge against Akelere, who had since absconded The application for withdrawal has become necessary since she has been on the run and we have been unable to apprehend her. The offences violated Section (1) (b) and 25 (1), (a) of the Corrupt Practices and Other Related Offences Act 2000. the prosecutor said.Mr West, however, told the court that investigation revealed that there was neither marriage contracted between Mr Viyon and Miss Akerele nor a certificate of marriage issued by the Jama-at-ul-Islamiyya of Nigeria to that effect.At the resumed hearing of the case on Tuesday, Mr Viyon had pleaded guilty to an amended three-count charge bordering on knowingly making statements which are false.But prior to his plea bargain, the prosecution applied to the court for the withdrawal of the charge against Akelere, who had since abscondedThe application for withdrawal has become necessary since she has been on the run and we have been unable to apprehend her.The offences violated Section (1) (b) and 25 (1), (a) of the Corrupt Practices and Other Related Offences Act 2000. Post Reply Posted: at 17-04-2018 04:37 PM (3 years ago) | Hero EDDYPRINCE at 17-04-2018 04:47 PM (3 years ago) (m) Hmmmmmm UK embassy make una take time oh Posted: at 17-04-2018 04:47 PM (3 years ago) | Addicted Hero Hmmmmmm UK embassy make una take time oh Reply fineboy77 at 17-04-2018 04:54 PM (3 years ago) (m) na wa for the guy What is the color beneath your skin? Posted: at 17-04-2018 04:54 PM (3 years ago) | Hero na wa for the guy Reply chukkychukky at 17-04-2018 05:00 PM (3 years ago) (m) omo see gbese, the money wey u wan use travel u go use am bail ur self Joramentity aka chukkychukky Posted: at 17-04-2018 05:00 PM (3 years ago) | Gistmaniac omo see gbese, the money wey u wan use travel u go use am bail ur self Reply Chiefadifala at 17-04-2018 05:27 PM (3 years ago) (m) HELLO, MY NAME IS IFAWALE AM A BABA ADIFALA SON...HAVE YOU HEAR ABOUT BABA ADIFALA AWOGBEMI Traditional Medicine Herbal Home & Native Doctor CHIEF ADIFALA AKOGUN is a high voodoo priest master. he is a spell caster, native doctor, spiritual herbalist, powerful sickle cell healer, spiritual Astrologer, psychic reader, multi guru, witch doctor, priest of africa wealth secret.call OR WHATUP chief ADIFALA AWOGBEMI on +2348064864944....08064864944 have you been to native doctor without any solution to your problems? have you been to place to place in view of a powerful native doctor that can solve all your predicament, you most understand that there is a native doctor that supersede all native doctor amongst all native doctor, if you are in search of a powerful native doctor with great spiritual powers, then you must be in search of a native doctor that derives power from the marine world. that is the spirituality of the greatest africa native doctor CHIEF ADIFALA AWOGBEMI. call OR WHATUP chief ADIFALA AWOGBEMI on +2348064864944....08064864944 CHIEF ADIFALA AWOGBEMI is recongnised all over the world of marine kingdom, As one of the top fortunate and most powerful native doctor of charms casts from the beginning of his ancestors ship until now CHIEF ADIFALA AWOGBEMI lives strong among all other native doctors, there have never been any form of impossibility beyond the control of CHIEF ADIFALA AWOGBEMI. it doesnt matter the distance of the person with the problems or situation, all you have to do is believe in the native doctor CHIEF ADIFALA AWOGBEMI charms cast that works, he always warns never to get his charms cast if you do not believe or unable to follow his instruction.call OR WHATUP chief +2348064864944....08064864944 it is the assignment of the native doctor CHIEF ADIFALA AKOGUN to offer services to those in need of spiritual assistance not minding the gravity of your sitiuations or distance as long as water, sea, ocean, lake, river, sand, etc. are near you, then your problems of life would be controlled under your foot.call OR WHATUP chief ADIFALA AWOGBEMI on +2348064864944....08064864944 if you need any spiritual help on any of these:call OR WHATUP chief ADIFALA AWOGBEMI..+2348064864944....08064864944 Get Your Love Back Fruit Of The Womb Fibroid Business Boom Financial Breakthough Get Rich Without Ritual Do As I Say Bad Dream Promise And Fail Epilepsy Land/Court Case Mental Disorder Political Appointment Visa Aproval Cancer Examination Success Spend And Get Back Good Luck Natural Nealth Hypertension Stroke Sickle cell Impotency Win Court Case Promotion At Work Commanding Tone Protection Ring Marriage Success Love Ring Favour Ring Recover Lost Glory Spiritual Power For Men Of God Travel Success Ring Job Success Lotto/Pool Win And Many More make haste to call OR WHATUP chief AKOGUN on (+2348064864944....08064864944) for spiritual problem today and you will surely get solution to all your predicament Posted: at 17-04-2018 05:27 PM (3 years ago) | Newbie HELLO, MY NAME IS IFAWALE AM A BABA ADIFALA SON...HAVE YOU HEAR ABOUT BABA ADIFALA AWOGBEMI Traditional Medicine Herbal Home & Native DoctorCHIEF ADIFALA AKOGUN is a high voodoo priest master. he is a spell caster, native doctor, spiritual herbalist, powerful sickle cell healer, spiritual Astrologer, psychic reader, multi guru, witch doctor, priest of africa wealth secret.call OR WHATUP chief ADIFALA AWOGBEMI on +2348064864944....08064864944have you been to native doctor without any solution to your problems? have you been to place to place in view of a powerful native doctor that can solve all your predicament, you most understand that there is a native doctor that supersede all native doctor amongst all native doctor, if you are in search of a powerful native doctor with great spiritual powers, then you must be in search of a native doctor that derives power from the marine world. that is the spirituality of the greatest africa native doctor CHIEF ADIFALA AWOGBEMI. call OR WHATUP chief ADIFALA AWOGBEMI on +2348064864944....08064864944CHIEF ADIFALA AWOGBEMI is recongnised all over the world of marine kingdom, As one of the top fortunate and most powerful native doctor of charms casts from the beginning of his ancestors ship until now CHIEF ADIFALA AWOGBEMI lives strong among all other native doctors, there have never been any form of impossibility beyond the control of CHIEF ADIFALA AWOGBEMI. it doesnt matter the distance of the person with the problems or situation, all you have to do is believe in the native doctor CHIEF ADIFALA AWOGBEMI charms cast that works, he always warns never to get his charms cast if you do not believe or unable to follow his instruction.call OR WHATUP chief +2348064864944....08064864944it is the assignment of the native doctor CHIEF ADIFALA AKOGUN to offer services to those in need of spiritual assistance not minding the gravity of your sitiuations or distance as long as water, sea, ocean, lake, river, sand, etc. are near you, then your problems of life would be controlled under your foot.call OR WHATUP chief ADIFALA AWOGBEMI on +2348064864944....08064864944if you need any spiritual help on any of these:call OR WHATUP chief ADIFALA AWOGBEMI..+2348064864944....08064864944Get Your Love BackFruit Of The WombFibroidBusiness BoomFinancial BreakthoughGet Rich Without RitualDo As I SayBad DreamPromise And FailEpilepsyLand/Court CaseMental DisorderPolitical AppointmentVisa AprovalCancerExamination SuccessSpend And Get BackGood LuckNatural NealthHypertensionStrokeSickle cellImpotencyWin Court CasePromotion At WorkCommanding ToneProtection RingMarriage SuccessLove RingFavour RingRecover Lost GlorySpiritual Power For Men Of GodTravel Success RingJob SuccessLotto/Pool WinAnd Many Moremake haste to call OR WHATUP chief AKOGUN on (+2348064864944....08064864944) for spiritual problem today and you will surely get solution to all your predicament Reply slimber at 17-04-2018 05:57 PM (3 years ago) (f) Hmmm.mm those using oluwole be warned and be very careful. Posted: at 17-04-2018 05:57 PM (3 years ago) | Hero Hmmm.mm those using oluwole be warned and be very careful. Reply crocatum at 17-04-2018 06:01 PM (3 years ago) (m) Why people would waist their brain and use magic spells is beyond my comprehension Posted: at 17-04-2018 06:01 PM (3 years ago) | Gistmaniac Why people would waist their brain and use magic spells is beyond my comprehension Reply gogoman at 17-04-2018 08:35 PM (3 years ago) (m) he won dey enter London like Buhari Posted: at 17-04-2018 08:35 PM (3 years ago) | Addicted Hero he won dey enter London like Buhari Reply SOGaiya at 17-04-2018 08:55 PM (3 years ago) (m) just like dat wasted dis big money Posted: at 17-04-2018 08:55 PM (3 years ago) | Gistmaniac just like dat wasted dis big money Reply EDDYPRINCE at 17-04-2018 11:55 PM (3 years ago) (m) Hmmmmm it's a pity Posted: at 17-04-2018 11:55 PM (3 years ago) | Addicted Hero Hmmmmm it's a pity Reply ruthie at 18-04-2018 08:07 AM (3 years ago) (f) next time, he will be very careful Posted: at 18-04-2018 08:07 AM (3 years ago) | Hero next time, he will be very careful Reply HSINCHU, Taiwan, April 17, 2018 (GLOBE NEWSWIRE) -- The Industrial Technology Research Institute (ITRI) and the world-renowned intellectual property (IP) business media platform Intellectual Asset Management (IAM) co-hosted IPBC Taiwan 2018 in Taipei, Taiwan today (April 17). Over 240 IP strategists and R&D chief technology officers along with representatives from the public sector gathered to share practical experiences in the commercialization of IP. The event is expected to provide valuable insights for enterprises in enhancing the value of their patents. At IPBC Taiwan 2018, Steven Liu, Director of MediaTeks IP Division, Marcus Woo, Vice President and General Counsel of HTC Corp., and other experts shared cases involving risk management of new patents and elaborated on how to strengthen the risk management abilities of Taiwans enterprises. These discussions were aimed at helping local firms seize AI- and IoT-related business opportunities and reduce possible losses associated with the management of IP risks derived from new technologies. Changhae Park, NXP Semiconductors Vice President of IP monetization, and Spencer Yu, AU Optronics Corp.s Director of Intellectual Property, also shared their expertise on how best to use AI technology and big data to identify valuable patents, which will improve the quality of IP and create greater value for enterprises. Cheng-Wei Liao, Deputy Director General of Taiwans Intellectual Property Office (TIPO), stated that ITRI, a world-class R&D institution that Taiwan is proud of, has long been committed to using multi-disciplinary technology R&D to drive industrial upgrading and create economic value. It seeks to maximize the value of innovative technology and cultivate startups to underpin the development of emerging industries. Mr. Liao commented that the fact that ITRI was named a Top 100 Global Innovator in both 2014 and 2017 has proved its capacities in innovation-driven R&D and its international influence on patent portfolios. He further indicated that a key mission of TIPO is to create a comprehensive protection system in Taiwan. TIPO, he said, is assisting in promoting the National Guidelines for Intellectual Property Strategy. The aim is to enable Taiwan to become a power in the Asia-Pacific in the creation and use of IP by deploying forward-looking IP, maximizing the value of IP, enhancing IP protection, and developing comprehensive IP infrastructures. Mr. Liao also mentioned that Taiwan is actively introducing international patent search resources to realize IP protection mechanisms and ensure that the legal framework here is in sync with that of the international community. ITRI Executive Vice President Pei-Zen Chang stated that ITRI is a world-leading technology R&D institution aiming to innovate a better future for society. It has also played a vital role in creating valuable IP. Until today, ITRI has accumulated over 28,000 patents, 98% of which are invention patents. It has been active in licensing its technologies to industry and delivering high-quality patent portfolios that involve cross-disciplinary technology innovation. Peng-Yu Wang, General Director of ITRIs Technology Transfer and Law Center, commented that Taiwans industrial community needs to strengthen its strategic use of patents and IP. While IP can serve as a defense in litigation, it can also be used as a market instrument. Actively using stockpiles of patents enables patents to become important assets of a company. For example, patents can be used in cross licensing with other firms, in commercial negotiations, as a means to enter the international supply chain, and even as a fiscal tool that yield tax benefits and investment incentives, which consequently foster greater commercial value and a stable source of revenue for companies. This, he said, is in fact how the term intellectual property came about. Mr. Wang stressed that given the trend toward multi-disciplinary technology, top quality patent portfolios have become more important. This is particularly the case in rapidly growing sectors such as AI, IoT, and autonomous vehicles, which rely on a broad spectrum of innovative technologies, including information technology, machineries, materials, and chemicals. Analyses of patent portfolios systematically examine the strengths and weaknesses of each technical field, thereby avoiding the duplication and waste of resources. The patents in these portfolios are thus complementary and help to maximize the strengths of companies, he said. The core themes of IPBC Taiwan 2018 focused on enhancing the commercial value of IP and corporate IP development strategies, as well as utilizing advanced technology to optimize patent portfolios and managing risks related to emerging technologies and IoT. Specific topics included: Corporate IP best practice. Discussions focused on the developmental strategies in building IP portfolios; Global IP risk management. Speakers discussed how the nature of litigation risks is changing throughout the world in light of the rapid development of AI and IoT; Optimizing your portfolio. Discussions centered on harnessing AI and big data to identify value patents and help generate corporate value; The changing shape of licensing. Speakers explored the impact of and response to changes in patent licensing. Media Contact Chloe Chen Office of Marketing Communications, ITRI +886-(0)3-5918167 Chloechen@itri.org.tw Photos accompanying this announcement are available at http://resource.globenewswire.com/Resource/Download/e58122e3-5683-4a19-8b9c-18deb8fa6de5 http://resource.globenewswire.com/Resource/Download/131c918e-fcfb-454f-b3ef-882c76e09348 English French Rueil Malmaison, 17 April 2018 Shareholders' General Meeting of 17 April 2018 Approval of all resolutions Dividend: payment in cash of final dividend of 1.76 per share on 26 April 2018 VINCI's Combined Shareholders' General Meeting, chaired by Xavier Huillard, the Group's Chairman and Chief Executive Officer, was held on 17 April 2018 at the Salle Pleyel in Paris. The quorum was 58.99% and the shareholders' meeting approved all the resolutions submitted. The shareholders' meeting approved the parent company and consolidated financial accounts for the fiscal year ended 31 December 2017 and decided to pay a dividend of 2.45 per share in respect of that year. Since an interim dividend of 0.69 was paid in November 2017, the final dividend is 1.76. The share will be quoted ex-dividend on 24 April 2018. The final dividend will be paid in cash on 26 April 2018. The shareholders' meeting also approved the renewal of the terms of office Mr Xavier Huillard, Mr Yves-Thibault de Silguy, Mrs Marie-Christine Lombard and Qatar Holding LLC as directors, as well as the appointment of Mr Rene Medori as director. Upcoming events - 26 April 2018: Quarterly information at 31 March 2018 - 27 July 2018: First half 2018 results The results of the votes and a video of the Shareholders' General Meeting are available on the Group's website at www.vinci.com. About VINCI VINCI is a global player in concessions and contracting, employing over 190,000 people in some 100 countries. We design, finance, build and operate infrastructure and facilities that help improve daily life and mobility for all. Because we believe in all-round performance, above and beyond economic and financial results, we are committed to operating in an environmentally and socially responsible manner. And because our projects are in the public interest, we consider that reaching out to all our stakeholders and engaging in dialogue with them is essential in the conduct of our business activities. Our goal is to build long-term value in this way for our customers, shareholders, employees and partners, and for society at large. www.vinci.com Notes to editors Xavier Huillard is a graduate of the Ecole Polytechnique and the Ecole Nationale des Ponts et Chaussees. He has spent most of his working life in the construction industry in France and abroad. Mr Huillard joined Sogea in December 1996 as Deputy Chief Executive Officer in charge of international activities and specific projects, and then became its Chairman and Chief Executive Officer in 1998. He was appointed Deputy General Manager of VINCI in March 1998 and was Chairman of VINCI Construction from 2000 to 2002. He was appointed Co-Chief Operating Officer of VINCI and was Chairman and Chief Executive Officer of VINCI Energies from 2002 to 2004, then Chairman of VINCI Energies from 2004 to 2005. Mr Huillard became Director and Chief Executive Officer of VINCI in 2006 and was appointed Chairman of the Board of Directors and Chief Executive Officer of VINCI on 6 May 2010. He served as Chairman of the Institut de l'Entreprise from January 2011 until January 2017. He was appointed Chairman of VINCI Concessions SAS on 20 June 2016. M. Yves-Thibault de Silguy has a degree in law from the Universite de Rennes, a Masters degree in public law, and is a graduate of the Institut d'Etudes Politiques de Paris, public service section, and the Ecole Nationale d'Administration. From 1976 to 1981, he worked at the French Ministry of Foreign Affairs and for the European Commission from 1981 to 1985. He then worked at the French Embassy in Washington as a Counsellor (economic affairs) from 1985 to 1986. From 1986 to 1988, Mr de Silguy was an adviser in the Prime Minister's office with responsibility for European affairs and international economic and financial affairs. From 1988 to 1993, he headed the international affairs department of the Usinor Sacilor Group, before being named its Director for International Affairs. From 1993 to 1995, he was Secretary-General of the Interdepartmental Committee for Questions of Economic Cooperation in Europe and at the same time, adviser for European affairs and vice-sherpa in the Prime Minister's office, assisting in the preparation of summits of the industrialised nations. From 1995 to 1999, Mr de Silguy was European Commissioner responsible for economic, monetary and financial affairs. From 2000 to 2005, he was Chairman of Medef's European Policy Committee. In January 2000, he became a member of the Executive Board of Suez Lyonnaise des Eaux, then served as Chief Executive Officer of Suez from 2001 to 2003. He was then Executive Vice-President of Suez from 2003 until June 2006. Mr de Silguy was appointed Chairman of the Board of Directors of VINCI on 1 June 2006 and resigned from all his appointments at Suez. Since 6 May 2010, he has been Vice-Chairman of VINCI and Lead Director of the Board. A graduate of the Essec business school, Marie-Christine Lombard held various positions in the banking sector early in her career, notably with Chemical Bank and Paribas, based successively in New York, Paris and Lyon. She subsequently moved to the express services sector, joining the French company Jet Services as Chief Financial Officer in 1993, before being appointed Chief Executive Officer in 1997, a position she held until TNT Express acquired the company in 1999. Mrs Lombard then became Chairman of TNT Express France, which she soon made one of TNT's most successful business units. In 2004, she was named Group Managing Director of TNT Express. When TNT Express became an independent listed company in May 2011, Mrs Lombard was named Chief Executive Officer. In October 2012, she joined Geodis, first as Chief Executive Officer, before being named Chairman of the Executive Board on 17 December 2013. Mrs Lombard is also a Director of BPCE and a member of the Board of Directors of Ecole Polytechnique. Qatar Holding LLC Qatar Holding LLC is a company based in Doha, Qatar, founded in April 2006 and wholly owned by the Qatar Investment Authority ("QIA"), for which it represents the main direct investment subsidiary. QIA was founded in 2005 by Emiri Decision, as a governmental entity of the State of Qatar to develop, invest and manage the reserve funds of the State of Qatar and other assets assigned to it. QIA's objective is to preserve and grow the value of its invested assets for the benefit of future generations. The Chairman of the Board of Directors of QIA is H.H. Sheikh Abdullah Bin Hamad Bin Khalifa Al Thani, Deputy Emir of the State of Qatar. The CEO of QIA is H.E. Sheikh Abdulla Bin Mohammed Bin Saud Al Thani. On 11 February 2015, Qatar Holding LLC acquired the 31,499,000 VINCI shares initially held (directly or indirectly) by the Qatari Diar Real Estate Investment Company ("Qatari Diar"), which is wholly owned by QIA, and acquired the balance of 1,000 shares from Qatari Diar on 15 April 2015. Following the sale of 7,875,000 shares in 2015 and 1,250,000 shares in 2017, Qatar Holding LLC held 22,375,000 VINCI shares as at 31 December 2017. Following the approval of Qatar Holding LLC by the Board of Directors of VINCI on 14 April 2015 in replacement of Qatari Diar, Qatar Holding LLC nominated Mr Nasser Hassan Faraj Al Ansari as its representative to the Board of Directors of VINCI. Rene Medori has doctorate in management and a postgraduate degree in organisational science from Paris Dauphine University. He also completed the Financial Management Programme at Stanford University. After four years as a consultant at Andersen Worldwide SC, he worked for Schlumberger from 1986 to 1987 as a financial controller in the gas meter division. In 1988, he joined BOC and remained there until 2005. He occupied a number of posts in the United Kingdom, United States and France, including that of Group Finance Director. He was a member of the Board of Directors of BOC from 2000 to 2005. From 2005 to 2017, he was Finance Director and member of the Board of Directors of Anglo American plc. Following the trial of U.S. evangelical pastor Andrew Brunson in Izmir, Turkey, on Monday, the U.S. State Department said it is convinced the Turkish government does not have any "credible evidence" to convict the pastor of terrorism charges. "The entire U.S. government is following Mr. Brunson's case closely. We have seen no credible evidence that Mr. Brunson is guilty of a crime and are convinced that he is innocent," a statement released by the federal agency on Monday night reads. "We believe that Turkey is a state bound by the rule of law, and we have faith in the Turkish people's commitment to justice. We hope that the judicial system in Turkey will resolve his case in a timely, fair, and transparent manner." Brunson, 50, a Presbyterian minister who lived in Turkey for 23 years and ran a small church in the southwestern city of Izmir, has been in custody since October 2016. He is being accused by the government of seeking to convert Kurdish people to Christianity in order to establish a Kurdish state, which violates Turkish policy. The pastor finally received his day in court on Monday; however, he was remanded back to prison. Another hearing is scheduled for May 7. "I want the whole truth to be revealed. I reject all the accusations in the indictment. I haven't been involved in any illegal activity," Brunson told the court, according to Turkish newspaper The Hurriyet Daily News. "I haven't done anything against Turkey. On the contrary, I love Turkey. I have been praying for Turkey for 25 years," the pastor added. Prosecutors accused Brunson of using missionary activities as a cover to work with the Kurdistan Workers Party, or PKK, and with the organization of Fethullah Gulen, a U.S.-based Turkish cleric who Turkey says orchestrated a 2016 coup attempt. The indictment against Brunson is largely based on anonymous witnesses, some of whom testified on Monday. If found guilty, the pastor faces 35 years behind bars. Brunson denied the accusation that he was involved in Gulen's movement, which is Islamic, calling it an "insult" to his religion. "I am a Christian. I would not join an Islamic movement," Brunson said, adding that the 18 months he has spent in a maximum security prison has left his "psychology broken." Sen. Thom Tillis, from Brunson's home state of North Carolina, attended the hearing in Izmir, as did Sam Brownback, the U.S. ambassador-at-large for international religious freedom. "The United States cares deeply about our relationship with Turkey," Brownback told reporters. "That relationship is going to have difficulty moving forward as long as Andrew Brunson is incarcerated." Despite Monday's verdict, Brunson told NBC that relatives were happy the case was moving forward but concerned it could drag on further. "Everyone in the family is holding their breath," said Jacqueline Furnari, Brunson's daughter, who was raised in Turkey but moved back to the U.S. several years ago. "Of course I have hope; I want to get a call saying my father is coming home." She called the charges against him "absolutely absurd," adding: "They want to put him in prison for 35 years on charges of terror and espionage, and he is already 50 years old, so that means he would spend the rest of his life in jail. My dad is a loving, caring, Christian pastor. He never worked on behalf of any terror organization." A federal appeals court ruled Friday that a Maryland law passed last year to stop sharp increases in the price of generic medicines is unconstitutional, a setback to new efforts by states to keep down the cost of drugs.In a 2-1 ruling, the 4th Circuit Court of Appeals found that the law regulates trade that happens beyond Maryland's borders, and so is prohibited by the so-called dormant commerce clause. Judge Stephanie D. Thacker wrote an opinion ordering a lower-level federal judge to bar the law from going into effect."Maryland cannot, even in an effort to protect its consumers from skyrocketing prescription drug costs, impose its preferences in this manner," Thacker wrote.The ruling is a blow for Maryland Attorney General Brian Frosh, who championed the measure and helped get it through the General Assembly in 2017. Frosh, a Democrat, said in a statement that he was disappointed."We remain committed to pursuing efforts to eliminate price gouging and to safeguarding Marylanders' access to prescription drugs," he said.Frosh's office said it was still assessing how to respond to the ruling. The state's lawyers could seek another review by all the judges in the 4th Circuit or take the case to the Supreme Court.Maryland passed the legislation after reports of steep price increases for generic drugs _ those no longer covered by a patent _ especially those where a small number of companies controlled the market for medicines doctors deem essential. The law gave authorities new power to monitor price changes and seek fines or court orders reversing increases.But the Association for Accessible Medicines, a drug industry trade group, sued the state over the law, saying it was unconstitutional. The organization has argued that the measure could hurt competition by scaring companies out of the business of making generic drugs and actually drive up prices.Chip Davis Jr., the group's president, said Friday's ruling would be good for patients."As AAM has always maintained, this law, and any others modeled from it, would harm patients because the law would reduce generic drug competition and choice, thus resulting in an overall increase in drug costs due to increased reliance upon more-costly branded medications," Davis said in a statement.Republican Gov. Larry Hogan wrote last year that he shared the drug industry's concerns about the law and let it go into effect without signing it.The law required health officials to share with the attorney general's office price information about generic drugs. If the state's lawyers could show that prices were being raised too steeply, they could step in and seek to order prices down or have fines issued.In ruling against Maryland's law, Thacker wrote that the court was not saying the state was wrong to try to protect patients from price increases."To be clear, we in no way mean to suggest that Maryland and other states cannot enact legislation meant to secure lower prescription drug prices for their citizens," she wrote. "Although we sympathize with the consumers affected by the prescription drug manufacturers' conduct and with Maryland's efforts to curtail prescription drug price gouging, we are constrained to apply the dormant commerce clause."The Maryland law was the first of its kind in the nation, but other states have been considering similar measures. The judges said that if several states did follow Maryland's lead, drug makers could face a difficult time complying with a patchwork of rules.Judge James A. Wynn dissented from the majority opinion, saying the other judges had interpreted the commerce clause too broadly. Wynn wrote that their ruling would stop "Maryland from protecting its citizens against unconscionable pricing practices by out-of-state generic drug manufacturers."Patient advocates in Maryland continued to seek new laws to bring down drug prices in the General Assembly this year. They proposed a commission to look at drugs still covered by patents. That idea didn't succeed, but lawmakers passed a measure to allow pharmacists to advise patients if a drug is cheaper to buy with cash rather than using insurance. Hogan has not said whether he'll sign the law.Vincent DeMarco, president of the Maryland Citizens' Health Initiative, commended Frosh's office for its support of the price gouging law."It's a good law that helps the people of Maryland," DeMarco said. New Jersey on Tuesday became the 12th state, plus the District of Columbia, to enact an automatic voter registration law, which is intended to increase participation in elections.While automatic voter registration (AVR) is itself a new trend -- first adopted in Oregon in 2015 -- New Jersey's law represents a new twist: It allows the practice to extend beyond the DMV.Automatic voter registration typically happens when people apply for or renew a driver's license. But four of the last five laws of this kind either require or open the door for people to be automatically registered to vote when they interact with government in other ways.At its core, its a voting rights question, says Maryland Del. Eric Luedtke, who sponsored the legislation in his state, which became law earlier this month . The registration process is a barrier to people exercising their right to vote so were trying to make it easier.In Maryland, people will soon be automatically registered to vote -- unless they opt out -- when they interact with any local social services agency, the state health benefits exchange or the Mobility Certification Office, which provides paratransit benefits for people with disabilities.Not everybody has a drivers license," says Luedtke. "If you only register voters at the MVA [Motor Vehicle Administration], youre missing a lot of people.Illinois is the only other state that requires AVR at agencies besides the DMV. New Jersey and Rhode Island, meanwhile, have allowed for its expansion to other agencies but left the decision up to election officials to decide if it's feasible.The ability to implement this at a DMV is often much more doable right off the bat," says Sean Morales-Doyle, an attorney for the Brennan Center for Justice at NYU School of Law. "I think its smart for a state like New Jersey to require an assessment of their other agencies before they decide whether or not they can implement it there."Maryland is unusual in that it already had a law requiring agencies to collect citizen information electronically. Other states, however, may find that agencies outside the DMV still collect handwritten information and can't switch quickly to an automatic voter registration system.Automatic voter registration is expected to expand voter rolls. In Maryland, 400,000 people are estimated to registerbecause of the new law, according to Maryland Working Families, a nonprofit that advocated for it.According to a study of Oregons experience published by the liberal Center for American Progress, voters who registered through AVR tended to be younger, more suburban than urban, likelier to live in low- and middle-income areas, more likely to live in lower-education areas and more likely to live in racially diverse areas.Some, however, are skeptical that bigger voter rolls will lead to more voter turnout.The challenge is not getting voters registered, it's getting them to turn out, especially for noncompetitive primary and off-year elections, and presidential races with candidates who do not inspire enthusiasm, Eric L. Davis, an emeritus professor of political science at Middlebury College in Vermont, told Governing last year. While the expansion of automatic voter registration to reach disenfranchised groups is new, federal law already required a broad range of agencies to help register people to vote for much the same reason. In 1993, Congress passed the National Voter Registration Act, commonly referred to as the "Motor Voter" law because it requires motor vehicle offices to offer voter registration services. Congress also included a provision to ensure that low-income people who were less likely to get driver's licenses still had voter registration opportunities. In recent years, voting rights groups have sometimes sued states on the grounds that public assistance agencies were not informing citizens about their voter registration rights.The other states that have either implemented or are in the process of implementing automatic voter registration are: Alaska, California, Colorado, Georgia, Vermont, Washington and West Virginia.This year, 20 states have introduced bills to implement or expand automatic voter registration, and another eight states had bills carry over from last year, according to the Brennan Center. In Nevada, voters will decide whether to adopt automatic voter registration in November. The U.S. Supreme Court rejected a request for a new trial for former state Rep. Peter Beck of Mason who served 16 months in prison after being convicted in 2015 on charges of defrauding investors in a computer software company.By doing so, the justices Monday appear to have brought the case to a conclusion for Beck, a Republican who resigned his seat in 2014 after being indicted on 16 felony charges.A state court convicted him of 13 counts and sentenced him to four years in prison, but a state appeals court in 2016 overturned 10 of those charges.The court approved three counts of theft. A state judge then ordered Beck released at the end of 2016.Richard Kerger, a Toledo attorney who filed the appeal to the Supreme Court on behalf of Beck, said Beck could still pursue a post-conviction appeal in federal court but "that possibility has not yet been determined."The justices issued the ruling without any comment. Like many law enforcement agencies, the Utah Highway Patrol has lots of vacancies to fill as officers leave for higher-paying jobs. It also has a lot of competition. Salt Lake City recently announced plans to hire 50 additional officers for its police force. This prompted the city council in nearby Ogden to approve pay raises and extra bonuses for many of its officers as a preemptive measure to thwart departures to the larger department in Salt Lake.Highway Patrol Col. Mike Rapich has observed what he calls a wage war among agencies competing for personnel. Were in a really aggressive recruiting effort, he says, probably more so than Ive seen in the 25 years Ive been with the agency.Law enforcement officials across the country say theyre struggling to fill vacancies, largely due to retirements and moves to the private sector. A national survey by the Center for State and Local Government Excellence found last year that governments are having more trouble hiring police than any other category of personnel. Agencies are scrambling to attract and retain talent, often by boosting compensation packages or ramping up recruitment.When police departments were hiring decades ago, they were often flooded with several hundred or even a thousand applicants for relatively few openings. Now, police chiefs report, applicant pools can be a quarter of what they once were.One driving factor is the stronger economy. Rapich says about half of his departing state police officers moved to the private sector or chose to pursue other opportunities outside of law enforcement, such as going back to school. Thats led the agency not only to bolster its recruiting efforts, but also to seek funding help from the legislature.Another factor is the uptick in retirements among baby boomers. Some law enforcement officials also blame negative public perceptions of police for part of their recruiting woes. The national narrative of the last couple of years is pretty condemning of policing, says Richard Myers, executive director of the Major Cities Chiefs Association. It has had a strong adverse effect on recruiting people from the very communities we most need to hire. In all, Myers estimates about 80 percent of large city departments are struggling to attract enough job applicants.Some of those departments are getting creative in their recruitment efforts. The Fort Worth Police Department produced a series of Star Wars-themed recruiting videos on YouTube that officials say generated a lot of interest. San Jose, Calif., police hired a professional advertising and marketing firm to help attract job candidates. Off-duty satellite recruiters are deployed to community events in San Jose and assist with mentoring and coaching applicants through the hiring process.The San Jose Police Department also has expanded its reach with more out-of-state recruiting trips. A trip to a job fair in New York City last year yielded more than 150 applicants. Hearing it from an officer is so much more powerful than reading it in a flyer or advertisement, says Heather Randol, who heads the recruitment effort. There are fewer applicants than there were 10 or 15 years ago, but theyre out there. Were figuring out a way to find them, and we know other agencies are doing the same.With fewer applicants, some law enforcement agencies have revised hiring requirements to accommodate more prospective officers, such as lowering education requirements or removing restrictions prohibiting those with prior minor offenses from qualifying.Perhaps the most pervasive consequence of all the competition is the effect on compensation packages. San Diego gave its officers pay increases of 25 to 30 percent last year, after staffing dropped well below authorized levels. Along with wage hikes and enhanced benefits, some departments are offering new hires additional signing bonuses. Salt Lake City police recruiters actively target officers from other cities, attracting lateral hires by allowing them to count their years of experience toward their salaries in the new position. The department reports it may soon make enough lateral hires to fill an entire police academy class. Its also one of several agencies offering employees incentives to refer experienced officers in other agencies for job openings. Salt Lake City awards up to $600, while San Jose officers may receive up to $6,500.Increasingly, the competition for officers is pitting localities against their states, as it has done in Utah. Georgia awarded its state law enforcement officers 20 percent raises early last year. The move frustrated local police chiefs, who contend their cops deserve a similar raise. State and local elected officials are exploring proposals to help close the gap.All of this has serious consequences for agencies that are struggling to keep up. Ogden reports it has lost 16 officers over the past two-and-a-half years to Salt Lake, which is more than twice as large. In January, Ogden city officials approved pay raises and bonuses for employees meeting education requirements in an effort to stem further attrition. Police officers with a good record and good experience are a highly marketable commodity, says Randy Watt, the police chief in Ogden. Its not as much increased demand as competition between the agencies.For smaller departments with thinner budgets, competing for candidates can be particularly challenging. They dont have the resources to recruit the way Salt Lake or San Jose can afford to do. Payroll data reported in the Census Bureaus Annual Survey of Public Employment and Payroll suggests that larger agencies tend to pay more, with particularly big disparities between localities with more than 1,000 officers and other departments. The stress on the smaller agencies is great, Watt says. Were losing our people to state agencies and Salt Lake City because their tax base is so high.The police department in Clearfield, Utah, which has about 30,000 people, conducts regular wage comparison studies in an effort to remain competitive. Kelly Bennett, Clearfields assistant chief of police, says his department of 31 officers is typically able to retain those who dont have a desire to work for a large municipality. Those without that small-town preference, however, are the ones likely to leave over differences in pay. Were seeing compensation plans weve never seen here in Utah, Bennett says. Everyone is trying to get creative to have that perfect compensation plan to attract officers from other departments. South Carolina Gov. Henry McMaster said Monday that violence, while unfortunate, is to be expected sometimes in prisons, where violent people are locked up."It's not a surprise when we have violent events take place inside the prison _ any prison in the country," McMaster said Monday, during an 18-minute-long briefing for reporters about a riot at Lee Correctional Institution in Bishopville late Sunday that left seven inmates dead.However, some South Carolina lawmakers sounded alarms, saying state prisons need more money for increased staffing and security.McMaster has pushed legislators to include more money in the state budget to recruit and retain corrections officers at the prisons agency, which is dealing with high turnover among its staff and large numbers of job vacancies that it is unable to fill.But some of McMaster's challengers in this year's race for governor and other state officials seized on the riot at Lee to call for more reforms.Catherine Templeton, one of four Republicans challenging McMaster in June's primary for governor, issued a statement saying prisoners have been "jumping fences, rioting and putting our correctional officers in danger time and time again" under McMaster's watch.House Minority Leader Todd Rutherford said inmates being killed in the state's prisons "is simply unacceptable.""Rioting like this is a symptom (that) our criminal justice system is broken and needs reform now," said the Richland Democrat.The deadly fights, which spanned across three separate Lee Correctional dorms, likely were gang related and involved factors outside the prison, state Corrections Department Director Bryan Stirling said during Monday afternoon's news conference."These folks are fighting over real money and real territory while they're incarcerated," Stirling said, adding officials suspect cellphones were used to inform inmates in the second and third dorms that a fight had broken out in the first.Stirling and McMaster have called on Congress to change a law that prohibits the use of technology to jam cellphone signals.Stirling, on Monday, again called for the Federal Communications Commission and cellphone companies to help the agency come up with a way to block cellphone use by prisoners, something he said could help prevent inmates from continuing to operate illegal enterprises while jailed and curb outbreaks of violence."Jamming those cellphone signals will do a lot," McMaster said. "It's an absolute outrage that that is the law ... and we're doing our best to see that FCC law is changed and changed as quick as possible."McMaster and state legislators expressed confidence Monday in Stirling.However, the deaths of seven inmates at the Lee County prison _ the most deaths at any state prison in recent history _ put yet another spotlight on the rough and sometimes violent conditions that South Carolina prison guards and prisoners face daily, officials said.Because of staffing shortages, South Carolina prisons sometimes have a single corrections officer charged with overseeing dozens of inmates.During the riot that started Sunday night, there were 12 corrections officers manning the three dorms where fights broke out. Each of the dorms housed from 250 to 260 inmates, Stirling said, adding most officers work 12-hour shifts plus overtime to cover staffing needs.Asked whether he will recommend any other changes at the state's prisons, McMaster said an investigation is underway that may produce ideas for reforms."We have rules and regulations, we have protocols, we have training, and there's an enormous effort made to be sure that these kinds of things do not happen or are kept at a minimum," the Columbia Republican said. "It's unfortunate when they do happen, but this is one of the instances when they did."Some lawmakers said the state must do more to reduce the state's prison population, using sentencing reform to ensure nonviolent offenders are not sent to prison."We have way too many people in prison," Rep. Rutherford said. "When you have 30 inmates and 10 are the most violent and need supervision, (and) the rest are drug offenders, that corrections officer still has to oversee 30 people."Legislators already are including more money for prisons in their budget proposals for the state's fiscal year that starts July 1 _ $3.7 million more in the House's spending plan and $5 million more in the Senate's budget draft. That money would go to give raises to corrections officers, part of an effort to help the prison system retain and recruit prison guards.But some legislators say the state needs to do more."Corrections needs more resources, especially in its most dangerous facilities," said state Sen. Shane Martin, the Spartanburg Republican who chairs the Senate's prisons committee. "The current budget proposal addresses the need, to an extent, but we have to keep the commitment to public safety and do more next year."State Rep. Mike Pitts, R-Laurens, said raises will help the prisons agency retain staff. But, he added, the Legislature must assess the agency's other needs, including better security and spreading out the "worst of the worst" inmates, now concentrated in maximum-security units."I hate that tragedy is always the spark to get the fire of change going _ whether it's Walter Scott, Mother Emanuel, or whether it was a school bus wreck or a train derailment," said state Rep. Justin Bamberg, D-Bamberg. "When are we going to say, as a state, that our people deserve better, that people don't have to die? ... Let's fix it." "The Russian government engages in a range of malign activity around the globe, including continuing to occupy Crimea and instigate violence in eastern Ukraine, supplying the Assad regime with material and weaponry as they bomb their own civilians, attempting to subvert Western democracies, and malicious cyber activities. Russian oligarchs and elites who profit from this corrupt system will no longer be insulated from the consequences of their government's destabilizing activities." Wow. It appears to me that a US-Saudi Arabia-Israel alliance is strengthening in opposition to a Russia-Iran-Syria alliance. The Bible prophesies a big battle in the region. Things are shaping up. Here, from SecTreas Mnuchin:Seems the Russian "hooker" who posted incriminating video on Facebook just might have been on to something, re:For the time being, she's out of sight....Bunch more: https://www.npr.org/sections/thetwo-way/2018/04/06/600083466/u-s-hits-russian-oligarchs-and-officials-with-sanctions-over-election-interferen Description GIS 17 April, 2018: The School Feeding Project for Social Register of Mauritius (SRM) beneficiaries of the Grand Port district was launched yesterday, on a pilot basis, at the Mahebourg Social Welfare Centre. The project is a joint initiative of the National Empowerment Foundation (NEF), the Omnicane Foundation and the Mauritius Union Foundation. The School Feeding Project for Social Register of Mauritius (SRM) beneficiaries of the Grand Port district was launched yesterday, on a pilot basis, at the Mahebourg Social Welfare Centre. The project is a joint initiative of the National Empowerment Foundation (NEF), the Omnicane Foundation and the Mauritius Union Foundation. The objective of the project is to provide students who are SRM beneficiaries, with a hot meal on a daily basis to reduce short-term hunger and cases of malnutrition that may otherwise impair their academic performance. A total of 85 children, from pre-primary school and Grade one, from the region of Mahebourg and Rose-Belle will benefit from this programme, up to the end of the academic year. In his address on the occasion, the Chief Administrator of the NEF, Mr Clive Auffray highlighted that the project forms part of the numerous strategies of the Community Working Group (CWG), in line with the Marshall Plan, to mobilise resources, conceptualise projects and coordinate efforts of various actors to tackle poverty at grassroot levels. The School Feeding project, he said, is designed to alleviate the hunger, improve nutrition and cognition of disadvantaged children. He underlined that serving an appropriate meal to malnourished children will certainly contribute to positive outcomes in terms of their physical and psychosocial health as well as academic performance and hence, reduce the level of absenteeism at school. Mr Auffray further observed that education is an important catalyst in the combat against poverty and that it can help the vulnerable group to overcome intergenerational poverty that affects their life chances. Subsequently, he urged parents to encourage their wards to follow an appropriate academic path so that they acquire the key asset to forge their way out of poverty. Furthermore, he reiterated Governments priorities of uplifting vulnerable groups from the cycle of poverty and support and empower them to integrate the mainstream society to live in dignity. He emphasised that these goals will be attained more efficiently and easily with the conjoint efforts of the private sector and NGOs as demonstrated by the initiatives of the CWG. Kansas residents are now able to renew vehicle registration with their mobile phones thanks to iKan, a digital services platform launched by the state last month.While early functionality is mostly oriented toward services provided by the Division of Vehicles, the platform is built to allow users to interact with multiple state services in a centralized location, one they can access through smartphones, tablets and computers. Rachel Whitten, director of public relations for the Kansas Department of Revenue, said work is already underway to add more services.This app is not just for vehicle registrations it is right now but in the future there are going to be many services people are able to use or get access to via this iKan app, Whitten said. Were working on providing access to vital records and other things that are coming down the pipe.This marks some of the most tangible public-facing tech progress for Kansas in some time, and Whitten said that was no coincidence, noting that when Gov. Jeff Colyer took office earlier this year, he brought with him an increased focus on improving the states gov tech. Whitten said a little-known fact about Kansas is that it was the first state to adopt a digital government platform more than 25 years ago, and Gov. Colyers intention is to return to pushing better utilization of technology across the state.The iKan platform also puts Kansas among a growing number of states that are working to consolidate the disparate services provided by many public agencies into a single online platform. The end goal for these states is for users to have a quick, focused experience akin to what they get from private online companies like Amazon . Providing such service also has the added benefit of freeing up government workers to focus more on other tasks, or on helping the Kansans who still prefer to come to government buildings and do their business in person.John Thompson, founder and CEO of the Kansas City, Mo., company PayIt , which helped create the iKan platform, said it was designed to provide a more personalized interaction with government services, one that aimed to channel users to the services they need most. The platform can also send alerts to residents when they are approaching renewal deadlines. Thompson said the vital records component will likely be rolled out in May.Some users of the new Kansas platform have pointed out that it can be used to enter random PINs to access license plate information. Officials said there is no information available through doing this that isnt already open record. Whitten said the state conducted an internal review to ensure that iKan is as secure as it can be. (TNS) PROVIDENCE, R.I. The Raimondo administration has extended until next spring the state's contract with Deloitte Consulting, the company that designed and delivered the $492 million, trouble-plagued, eligibility-verification computer system known as UHIP for a wide array of public-assistance programs for the poor from food stamps to cash assistance to Medicaid.In response to Journal inquiries, spokeswoman Ashley O'Shea confirmed that the state on Monday signed paperwork that extended the contract from June 30, when it is set to expire, until March 31, 2019.Asked why the state chose to stick with the company at the center of the so-called UHIP debacle, O'Shea said: "We don't want to pay for work twice which would happen if we shifted to another vendor." She called the extension "an opportunity for Deloitte to bring the project to completion."Added Health & Human Services Secretary Eric Beane, referring to UHIP by its alternate name within state government circles ("RI Bridges"): "The State continues to hold Deloitte accountable to fixing RI Bridges and is extending its contract with the vendor through March 2019."Deloitte, at its own expense, has committed to ensuring RI Bridge works and is the best technology it can be for Rhode Island,'' he said. Meanwhile, "Planning continues for a long term partner to run RI Bridges after March 2019."While the extension was not unexpected, it comes a week after the General Assembly's Auditor General Dennis Hoyle released a report detailing the many problems the state has faced since launching the Deloitte-designed Unified Health Infrastructure Project, known as UHIP, in September 2016 to "streamline" eligibility verification for food stamps, Medicaid, subsidized child care and cash assistance.Underpayments. Overpayments. Long lines at field offices. And application-processing backlogs for food stamps so high that at one point, the ACLU of Rhode Island sued, a court-appointed special master is overseeing the progress.Last Thursday, representatives of Deloitte Consulting came to the State House to apologize."On behalf of Deloitte, we want to apologize to you and to the people of Rhode Island," said Deborah Sills, the national managing principal for the public-sector arm of Deloitte's business, told the House Oversight Committee."We are very sorry for the impact that our system issues have had on your constituents, on state workers and on service providers,'' she told the Oversight Committee. "While the technology is working much better than it was, we still have work to do. We know there are still some people having difficulty accessing benefits, processing cases or receiving timely payments."We will not let up until we have made things right,'' she said. By her estimate, Deloitte has been paid close to $240 million for its work on the two-phase project, credited some of that back and agreed not to bill the state close to $87 million overall.O'Shea said about $37 million of that credit remains, but the administration's no-pay stance does not apply to the hardware, software or hosting services provided by other companies.The contract amendment itself was not immediately available for public view, and the administration has not yet made public the letters seeking approval that it sent to the two federal agencies with oversight and a huge financial stake in having Deloitte fix the broken computer system. But in response to Journal inquiries, the state made public the letters that arrived over the past two weeks.One of the two federal agencies the Centers for Medicare & Medicaid Services effectively approved the contract extension, with the caveat that the state "not expend any further funds on Deloitte'' until it has "exhausted" the $37 million or more in credits the company gave the state, while it continues to fix the problems that remain.In its March 30 letter, the CMS acknowledged "the state team's hard work,'' but it also said: "We continue to have significant concerns about the state's progress toward system completion/stabilization ... operation effectiveness and the precision of the described cost allocations."The separate Food and Nutrition Service which runs the food stamp program (the Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program, known as SNAP) said the proposed contract amendment "seeks to extend the agreement and to provide maintenance and operations services from Oct. 1, 2017 through March 31, 2019. This amendment includes fixed price and fixed capacity services, hourly services, hardware software, hosting and related items at a total cost of $49,601,432."It is unclear who is paying for what. (TNS) Columbus City Council has approved a $2.5 million contract with Pillar Technology Group to develop an operating system for the Smart Columbus project that will analyze and share data on innovative transportation projects.The Columbus-based information technology company will develop a computer operating system that will support the long-term Smart Cities strategy, said Brandi Braun, Columbus' deputy innovation officer. It will be the citywide data management platform for information collected during the Smart Cities Challenge's transportation projects."It is the cornerstone of our Smart Cities portfolio of projects," Braun said."We want universities and nonprofits to share data with the community through this project," she said. Mike Stevens, the city's chief innovation officer, said it will be an "open-data portal" for the entire region.Smart Columbus is a partnership of businesses, local governments and research groups that oversees the city's work on the federal Smart Cities initiative that will explore new transportation technologies. The city won the $50 million Smart Cities challenge in 2016. The program will use public and private money to back transportation initiatives.Braun said she hopes Pillar will be on board by June.In other business, the council approved accepting a $3.3 million grant from Ohio's Medicaid program to help fund CelebrateOne, the Columbus-based coalition working to reduce infant mortality.The program supports the expansion of pregnancy services offered by the city-funded PrimaryOne Health Centers and the hiring of community health workers. Columbus Public Health and Nationwide Children's Hospital are also expanding home visiting services. In Franklin County, 150 infants die each year. African-American babies die at twice the rate of white babies.The council also renewed a contract with the Neighborhood Design Center for $75,000 to work on a community master plan for the Linden neighborhood. In 2017, the council approved an initial $250,000 with the design center for master plans for Linden and the Hilltop area.Councilwoman Elizabeth Brown did not attend Monday's council meeting, having given birth to her second child, Russell Brown Katzenmeyer, on Friday. She also has a daughter, Carolyn. Copyright Erica Aitken Photography Erica Aitken Photography These days, smart city stories are ubiquitous. But few are talking about the way smart city technology can affect public health.As current transportation and infrastructure-focused smart city initiatives find success, many researchers now are studying how those same technologies can help address systemic challenges in health and the environment in major cities around the world. In fact, organizations such as the National Science Foundation and the Rockefeller Foundation are providing grants to cities to specifically focus on the issues of resiliency, sustainability and public health using technology.A key to the recent focus on public health initiatives is the increase in affordability of sensors. High-quality sensors were once too expensive for most cities, but rising demand and improving technology have resulted in the availability of more affordable sensors that are able to collect the detailed data needed to make a public health or sustainability-focused project successful. In fact, according to a r ecent report from IDTechEx Research , the market for environment sensors is expected to be worth more than $3 billion by 2027.Additionally, cities and states are becoming more creative when it comes to financing larger-scale smart city projects such as a network of sensors to measure environmental data. Public-private partnerships and alternative financing models, such as social impact-type bonds, cost and revenue share contracts, and pay-for-performance agreements are allowing local governments to tackle more ambitious projects. These innovative models could provide cities and states the ability to more invest in the types of sensors needed for an environment-focused initiative.These sensors deliver a treasure trove of data that can be shared and mined to help solve challenges and improve quality of life. According to the World Health Organization, more than 5.5 million people die every year as a result of air pollution, so increased visibility into pollution levels can create timelier and more accurate warnings that can help save lives. Smart and connected systems are also helpful to address health concerns for populations that suffer from asthma. On a smaller scale, data can also be used in more daily city decision-making. For example, data on noise levels might lead to a decision on where to build a school.Many cities around the world are already beginning to use sensors to collect environmental data and take action to help improve public health. Barcelona, a global leader in smart cities, installed streetlights that have embedded air quality monitors as part of their Lighting Masterplan. The U.S. Environmental Protection Agency is working with cities in Central America, where air pollution levels are extremely high, to use sensors to implement systems for air quality warnings, which can help people suffering from asthma and other respiratory illnesses adjust their exposure.In Chicago, a network of interactive sensors installed around the city as part of the Array of Things project collects real-time environmental data including humidity, cloud cover, noise levels and air quality. The data can be used by the city to develop recommendations that improve sustainability and public health outcomes.Washington, D.C., has been using underground sensors to tackle wastewater and runoff challenges. A new smart wastewater pumping system can change its performance in real time based on conditions detected by the sensors to provide more sustainable outcomes. The sensors also provide feedback to pumping station operators that allows for better, more holistic decision-making and outcomes.Some cities are taking their sensors mobile. Dublin, Ireland, and Oslo, Norway, have both equipped buses and bikes with sensors that allow for a robust mapping of the citys air quality with fewer sensors than traditional fixed networks.As these cities show, just as technology is transforming our cities transportation and infrastructure systems, so too can it make an impact in the areas of public health and the environment. The hope is that more cities begin follow their lead. (TNS) The recent devastating North Bay fires highlighted the importance of early-warning systems, and Marins state senator has authored a bill aimed at improving alert systems statewide.Sen. Mike McGuires SB 833 would require every county in California to adopt the Wireless Emergency Alert (WEA) system.The size and scope of wildland fire events in California are only getting worse, said McGuire, D-Healdsburg, in a statement. Its clear there are significant shortcomings in our emergency alert system and residents deserve timely notifications and up-to-date information.McGuire, whose district includes Marin and the northern coastal counties, says that in the October 2017 firestorm thousands of residents in the path of the fires received no emergency alerts. The fires leveled more than 6,000 homes, burned more than 170,000 acres, caused billions of dollars in damage and resulted in the death of 40 people.The WEA system, a partnership between the Federal Communications Commission and all the major U.S. wireless carriers, broadcasts from cellular towers in the designated alert area to any WEA-enabled mobile device. Customers of participating wireless carriers with WEA-capable phones do not have to sign up to receive the alerts although they can opt out.Not all cellphones on the market are capable of receiving WEA alerts, but it is anticipated that most commercially available phones will be WEA-capable in the near future.In addition to requiring every county to adopt the WEA system, McGuires bill includes additional mandates. It would require every county to have operators trained to implement an evacuation order using WEA. It would establish standards for when counties should use the system, require annual training for emergency managers on how to best use the system, and require that alerts be sent out via land line telephones and mobile phones along with other communication mediums including radio, television and electronic highway billboards.It will be very similar to AMBER alerts, McGuire said.McGuire said Sonoma County had access to the WEA system during the North Bay fires but it was never used because an emergency services employee wasnt adequately trained in how to deploy it.He said mandating that WEA broadcast over a wide range of media is vital since during the North Bay fire thousands of cellphone towers were knocked out, as well as internet and cable service. In some communities, the only medium by which people were receiving information was radio.Chris Reilly, emergency services manager in the Marin County Sheriffs Office of Emergency Services, said WEA is just one of several systems Marin County already has in place to notify residents in case of a wildfire, flood or other emergency.With the multitude of systems that we have, I think were ahead of the curve in terms of our ability to send out notifications, Reilly said.In addition to WEA, Marin County has a system known as Alert Marin, which can send alerts to cellphones, or voice-over-internet phones, by call, text, email or smartphone application.Reilly said Alert Marin can send messages to the precise geographic area affected by the emergency while WEA alerts often go beyond the target area due to the nature of cell tower technology. Alert Marins biggest drawback is that users must pre-register to receive notifications via the system.Reilly said he is talking with Marin County supervisors about the possibility of allocating $15,000 for advertising to get more Marin residents registered. Marin County also uses Nixle, a community information service that the public may register with by texting their zip code to 888777.Marin County fire Chief Jason Weber said the number of cell towers lost and the overtaxing of the 911 system during the North Bay fires demonstrated the limits of technology during a disaster.This isnt something were going to be able to fix with one piece of legislation, Weber said. Neighbors need to know each other.Weber said in the case of a disaster like the North Bay fires in Marin first responders will need the help of residents in notifying and evacuating the elderly and disabled.We only have so many fire trucks, Weber said.Supervisor Judy Arnold, who serves with Supervisor Dennis Rodoni on a subcommittee reviewing Marins emergency preparedness, said there have been discussions about hiring a full-time county employee to coordinate preparedness at the neighborhood level.On Tuesday, the state Senates Governmental Organization Committee passed McGuires bill on a 12-0 vote to the Senates Appropriations Committee.But Marin County Sheriff Robert Doyle, who heads the California State Sheriffs Associations legislative committee, said both his association and the California Emergency Services Association would like to see some changes in the bill.Where the rub comes is it is a state-mandated program that is unfunded, and one size doesnt fit all, Doyle said. My association is working with him to see if we can get some modifications.McGuire acknowledged that discussions with the sheriffs association are underway and said the bill might be amended.McGuire said the way the bill is written would require some counties to purchase the WEA software. McGuire said Lake Countys annual bill for WEA ranges from $2,500 to $5,000.He said, Its a small investment that has a big positive impact. (TNS) In the five months since the Topeka Police Department began using automatic license plate readers, the devices have scanned license plates more than 721,500 times.The readers take a photo of license plates and alert officers if a plate is associated with a stolen vehicle, stolen plate or an Amber or Silver Alert. The plate numbers can be run through databases maintained by the Kansas Bureau of Investigation or the National Crime Information Center.The devices are beneficial to the community and the department, Topeka police Lt. Andrew Beightel said. Civil liberty advocates contend the scanners threaten privacy.The department has five readers that are permanently mounted on separate patrol cars.The system cost $92,875 and was purchased through asset forfeiture funds, Beightel said, so there was no cost to Topeka residents.Of the 721,743 scans collected since November 15, 966 have registered an alert. Less than 1 percent of those 270 were valid hits. The rest, about 700, were rejected. Beightel said in those cases, the plate's numbers and letters matched a hit in NCIC, but the issuing state may have been different.The police department retains all the license plate scans for 180 days.The American Civil Liberties Union of Kansas believes license plate readers pose a serious threat to privacy and civil liberties."While it is legitimate to use license plate readers to identify those who are alleged to have committed crimes, the overwhelming majority of people whose movements are monitored and recorded by these machines are innocent," executive director Micah Kubic said in a statement. "Ordinary people going about their daily lives have every right to expect that their movements will not be logged into massive government databases and kept there for months."Kubic said law enforcement agencies should pursue other public safety avenues that don't impose serious privacy invasions.In a report published by the ACLU, the organization recommends law enforcement agencies using the devices store data about innocent people for days or weeks, not months or years. It also says that authorities should refrain from using license plate reader data to generate reasonable suspicion. The report suggests that the public have access to see if their plate data has been collected and that agencies report their usage publicly on an annual basis.TPD's license plate readers are one tool the department's technical investigative unit utilizes. The unit officially began April 7 and was re-melded from past positions to streamline computer forensics, Beightel said.The department also has a drone, an in-house forensic cell phone lab and a diagnostic computer lab."With today's fast paced and ever-evolving digital age, computer forensics investigations are becoming much more needed," Beightel said.Investigators can access digitally encrypted information and uncover other evidence using this form of forensic science, he said.In addition to cyber offenses like computer hacking and child pornography, computer forensics have also helped solve crimes like murder, terrorism, organized crime, tax evasion and robbery, Beightel said. (TNS) A couple of months after implementing software updates, Michigan's Ottawa County Central Dispatch officials say they are close to working out all of the bugs.A joint meeting between the authority's policy board and technical advisory committee was Thursday, April 12, and some discussion touched on the software updates.Ottawa County Central Dispatch's Mobile Computer Terminal software was updated on Jan. 30. In addition, new hardware was installed in police vehicles across Ottawa County beginning last fall.Most of the new hardware was installed before Christmas with some installation finishing up in January, said Joe Lalonde IT manager for Ottawa County Central Dispatch.The Central Dispatch Authority is a separate entity from any law-enforcement agency and provides communication devices such as the MCTs and radios to all police and fire departments in the county, allowing for better coordination between departments.After deciding between types of computer models, the authority ultimately choose Dell computers to use for the MCT system.These new software and hardware systems allow officers to create electronic reports, search records, map locations and access addresses while on the go."Right now, the old MCTs don't have enough horsepower," Ottawa County Sheriff Steve Kempker told The Sentinel in July. "They're about eight years old. This new software will streamline our reporting process."The new hardware and software are significant upgrades for officers from the old system, Kempker said.However, as it expected, implementation did come with some issues."We had a few bugs with the communications on the mobile side of things," Lalonde said. "It primarily impacted the officers in the cars. Field reporting from the vehicles became an issue when they tried to merge the reports into the record system."Lalonde said the authority has worked with the software provider diligently to have everything with the new system almost all shored up at this point.Ottawa County Undersheriff Valerie Weiss said the new software has caused some glitches in her department's system and created some communication issues."As we are moving forward, we are making progress and figuring out the issues and getting used to the new software," Weiss said. "With any new system, software there are frustrations and we are working through them."The authority will not implement another software update until after Ottawa County's tourist season and everything should be "status quo" for the next couple months, Lalonde said. FOCUS ON DEFENSE CAPABILITY DEVELOPMENT IN SOUTHEAST ASIA AND OCEANIA Fernando Alonso has admitted that McLaren's lack of performance in 2018 makes him "sad". The Spaniard has been upbeat about the British team's chances in the wake of the Honda split, but although improved, McLaren is still struggling now with Renault power. It has left some people wondering if Alonso does not now look with envious eyes at Toro Rosso, who took on the works Honda collaboration for 2018. "Talking about a team after one good qualifying or race does not work," Alonso told Speed Week. "After every win, every podium, I am asked if I regret leaving Ferrari. And now that Mercedes won everything for four years, you no longer ask about Ferrari, you ask about Toro Rosso," he added. Nonetheless, he admits that McLaren is not yet ready to win, "and that leaves us sad". "We cannot give the McLaren people the results we all want," Alonso is quoted by El Pais newspaper. "I try to do the best job possible but we must try to improve." (GMM) Charlie Whiting has denied the FIA has time to consider whether safety car deployments favour certain competitors over others. Comments made after China, in particular by Ferrari's Sebastian Vettel, cast doubt on the decision to deploy the safety car, which because of the timing favoured Red Bull. F1 race director Whiting is quoted by Italy's Autosprint: "If we decide to use the safety car, it's for safety reasons. "So at that moment I'm not looking to see who's going to be advantaged and who's not. "All we do is wait for a certain gap in traffic on the track," he added. "The debris was spread over a large area, so I wanted to wait for all the cars to be behind the safety car before sending the marshals out." Whiting said he is surprised about the controversy regarding the timing of the safety car deployment for the Toro Rosso crash in China. "We've had the VSC since 2015 and the SC for twenty years, so it should be understood by now that every time there will be winners and losers," he insisted. (GMM) The global energy storage project pipeline grew to 10.4 GW at the end of the first quarter of 2018, according to the IHS Markit Energy Storage Intelligence Service. More than 3 GW of battery energy storage is forecast to be deployed in 2018, however uncertainty over supply constraintsand potential cost increases for Li-ion batteriesmay create unexpected challenges, the market research company said. The Asia-Pacific region exhibited the strongest growth for deployment of grid-connected battery energy storage in 2017, led by South Korea, Japan and Australia. The three largest markets in 2017, accounting for more than half of all installations globally, were South Korea, the United States and Japan. Following are the four major battery energy storage pipeline global trends to watch in the coming year, according to IHS Markit: Solar-plus-storage co-location projects currently account for more than 40% of the total utility-side-of-meter pipeline, highlighting the future potential of this market. The behind-the-meter segment will comprise more than half of annual installations, from 2023 onward. South Korea and Canada emerged as new key markets for commercial and industrial storage systems in 2017. Battery energy storage is challenging gas-fired peaker plants to meet Californias capacity needs, leading to a significant increase in the outlook for large-scale energy storage in that state. New energy storage deployment targets, and the inclusion of storage in integrated resource planning across the United States, will drive future market growth across multiple states. The IHS Markit Energy Storage Intelligence Service provides a detailed and accurate view of the market for energy storage systems across all key segments of the industry, including small- and large-scale renewable integration, grid support and behind-the-meter storage. Researchers at Jilin University in China report in a papaer in the journal Fuel that coolant temperature in a gasoline direct-injection (GDI) engine under idle has a critical effect on particulate number (PN) emissions and that optimizing other operating parameters will further reduce PN emissions. PN concentration with coolant temperatures coupled with excess air ratios, the ignition timing is 20 CAD BTDC, injection pressure is 3 MPa and injection timing is 90 CAD BTDC. Sun et al. Click to enlarge. Compared to port-fuel injection (PFI) engines, gasoline direct injection (GDI) engines show a significant (515%) improvement in fuel economy, especially because of higher volumetric efficiency and higher knock resistance. Furthermore, the fuel injection control of GDI is more accurate than PFI, resulting in improved potential for higher thermal efficiency and fuel economy. GDI engines provide higher specific power output relative to PFI. However, GDI engines tend to emit higher particulate number (PN) than PFI engines and even the diesel engines equipped with diesel particulate filter (DPF). Because of the high residual gas fraction, low combustion temperature and weak charge flow in the cylinder, SI engines always consume more fuel and expel more toxic emissions at idle stage. Moreover, traffic congestion is very common in modern cities which make vehicles idle for rather long time. For example, vehicles idle time accounts for about 30% of total running time in Hong Kong, and about 38% of that in Shanghai during peak hours. Thus, improving engine idle performance becomes a valuable issue to enhance engine overall performance. Due to the increased residual gas fraction and inhomogeneity of the air-fuel mixture, idle emissions also increase, especially for particulate emissions. Previous studies indicated that the majority of particle emissions were found in the first three minutes of the driving cycle at cold start, and this part is mainly idle stage. This paper focused on PN emission under idle stage which only has limited investigations. Besides, the influences of each parameter under different coolant temperatures are novel and useful in future studies.Sun et al. The Jilin team conducted two sets of experiments to analyze the effects of different parameters associated with PN emissions under different coolant temperatures. The first set analyzed ignition timing and excess air ratio characteristics; the second one mainly investigated injection strategies. Coolant temperature was adjusted from 40C to 80 C for both sets to represent the cold-start process. PN concentration with coolant temperatures coupled with injection pressures, the excess air ratio is 1, ignition timings is 20 CAD BTDC and injection timing is 80 CAD BTDC. Sun et al. Click to enlarge. The test engine was a second-generation 1.8-liter GDI engine (118 kW, 250 Nm) which belongs to charge-guided type; mixture condition was close to homogeneous charge. The original engine head has a centrally mounted spark plug with the injector situated between the intake valves. Among the major findings of the study: Total PN emissions declined with increasing coolant temperature in each group of experiments. The decreasing amplitude is limited in low coolant temperature range. When coolant temperature exceeded 70 C, PN significantly decreased. 522 nm PN emissions increase and 2250 nm PN emissions decrease with higher . A richer mixture has higher 50150 nm PN than leaner ones. To enhance three-way catalyst (TWC) efficiency, an equivalent mixture is suitable without resulting in an obvious PN increase. Advancing ignition timing will decrease total PN under idle stage and the decrease is mainly from 5 to 22 nm. Particles belong to 2250 nm and 50150 nm are insensitive to ignition timings. Properly advanced ignition timing will make combustion phase shifting forward and significantly decrease PN. Total PN was minimized at 5 MPa injection pressure. Too low an injection pressure will deteriorate fuel evaporation, while too high an injection pressure will aggravate the particle nucleation process. An adequate injection pressure should be adopted which can fulfill fuel evaporation and restrict nucleation. Total PN minimized at 80 CAD BTDC injection timing and the value is only 14% for the minimum value in 140 CAD BTDC. Optimal injection timing for PN is significant under idle stage which should avoid fuel impingement both on piston head and the cylinder line. In summary, coolant temperature is critical for particulate emissions under idle stage, so shortening the warm-up stage is important to reduce the PN emissions. Specifically, fixing excess air ratio at 1, properly advancing ignition timing, adopting 5 MPa injection pressure and injecting fuel at 80 CAD BTDC are optimal parameters for reducing particulate number emissions under idle stage in this experimental situation. Sun et al. This work is supported by the National Natural Science Foundation of China. Resources Researchers at SLAC and their colleagues at Northwestern University and NIST have combined machine learning (ML) and high-throughput (HiTp) experiments to find a new system of metallic glasses in the Co-V-Zr ternary. In their approach, described in an open-access paper in Science Advances, the team trained a machine learning (ML) model on previously reported observations, parameters from physiochemical theories, and made it synthesis methoddependent. In the work, they first constructed a paper begins by constructing an ML model based on known discoveries and predicted high likelihood of finding MG in the Co-V-Zr ternary; they subsequently validated this by HiTp experimentation. The results of HiTp experimentation then were used to train a greatly improved second-generation ML model. In the paper, they demonstrate that this refined ML/HiTp model successfully predicts glass-forming ability (GFA) in three new ternary composition spaces, where no experimental observations exist. The paper illustrates how ML and HiTp experimentation can be used in an iterative/feedback loop to easily accelerate discoveries of new MG systems by more than two orders of magnitude as compared to traditional search approaches relied upon for the last 50 years. Schematic depiction of a paradigm for rapid and guided discovery of materials through iterative combination of ML with HiTp experimentation. Ren et al. Click to enlarge. Some technologically important materials are kinetically stabilized. One such metastable class of materials is amorphous alloys of metals, namely, metallic glasses (MGs). The lack of crystalline order in MG significantly alters the properties of these materials, thus enabling novel and improved functionalities. For example, the absence of deformation pathways based on gliding dislocations leads to exceptional yield strength and wear resistance. Some MGs have enhanced corrosion resistance because of their ability to rapidly form protective films on the surface. MGs are therefore very promising candidates for structural applications, especially for high-cycle use in chemically harsh environments. Other MGs, such as the well-known Metglas system of alloys, exhibit high magnetic permeability, making them attractive for electromagnetic shielding. Recent reports estimate upward of several million MGs, with a large fraction of them occurring in the multi-elemental composition space. However, less than a few thousand have been discovered in the last 50 years. The search for new MGs is challenging because they often contain three or more elements, and the nonequilibrium nature of the system implies that processing parameters (most commonly cooling rates, but in some cases enhanced surface diffusion) strongly influence formability. The vastness of the combined composition-processing space makes searches based on serial trial-and-error experimentation difficult and expensive; even rapid parallel synthesis combined with high-throughput characterization (HiTp experimentation) can stall without additional guidance. For instance, even an aggressive rate of synthesizing and fully characterizing one ternary per day would take more than 10 years of HiTp experimentations to search just the ternary combinatorial space encompassed by 30 common elements for MGs. Here, we demonstrate an alternate strategy that overcomes these limitations. We use machine learning (ML) iteratively with HiTp experiments to guide the search for new MGs. ML approaches are well suited to this problem because they can (i) begin with a heterogeneous and sparse data set, (ii) operate with less than perfect understanding of the underlying physics but still take physiochemical parameters to accelerate learning, and (iii) progressively improve by simply adding more observations to the training set. In particular, the ability of ML to find patterns in observed data makes it possible to model relationships that are as yet unexplained by physiochemical theories (PCTs) (for example, the relationship between synthesis method and GFA, as will be shown below). This paper highlights an emerging paradigm of data-driven discoveries for rapid and guided discovery of materials, whose functionality depends not only on chemical composition but also on synthesis. Ren et al. It typically takes a decade or two to get a material from discovery to commercial use. This is a big step in trying to squeeze that time down. You could start out with nothing more than a list of properties you want in a material and, using AI, quickly narrow the huge field of potential materials to a few good candidates. Northwestern Professor Chris Wolverton, an early pioneer in using computation and AI to predict new materials and a co-author of the paper The ultimate goal, Wolverton said, is to get to the point where a scientist could scan hundreds of sample materials, get almost immediate feedback from machine learning models and have another set of samples ready to test the next dayor even within the hour. Over the past half century, scientists have investigated about 6,000 combinations of ingredients that form metallic glass, added paper co-author Apurva Mehta, a staff scientist at SLACs Stanford Synchrotron Radiation Lightsource (SSRL): We were able to make and screen 20,000 in a single year. While other groups have used machine learning to come up with predictions about where different kinds of metallic glass can be found, Mehta said, The unique thing we have done is to rapidly verify our predictions with experimental measurements and then repeatedly cycle the results back into the next round of machine learning and experiments. Theres plenty of room to make the process even speedier, he added, and eventually automate it to take people out of the loop altogether so scientists can concentrate on other aspects of their work that require human intuition and creativity. This will have an impact not just on synchrotron users, but on the whole materials science and chemistry community, Mehta said. The team said the method will be useful in all kinds of experiments, especially in searches for materials such as metallic glass and catalysts whose performance is strongly influenced by the way theyre manufactured, and those where scientists dont have theories to guide their search. With machine learning, no previous understanding is needed. The algorithms make connections and draw conclusions on their own, and this can steer research in unexpected directions. One of the more exciting aspects of this is that we can make predictions so quickly and turn experiments around so rapidly that we can afford to investigate materials that dont follow our normal rules of thumb about whether a material will form a glass or not. AI is going to shift the landscape of how materials science is done, and this is the first step. paper co-author Jason Hattrick-Simpers, a materials research engineer at NIST The paper is the first scientific result associated with a DOE-funded pilot project in which SLAC is working with Citrine Informatics to transform the way new materials are discovered and make the tools for doing that available to scientists everywhere. Founded by former graduate students from Northwestern and Stanford University, Citrine has created a materials science data platform where data that had been locked away in published papers, spreadsheets and lab notebooks is stored in a consistent format so it can be analyzed with AI specifically designed for materials. Until recently, thinking up, making and assessing new materials was painfully slow. For example, the authors of the metallic glass paper calculated that even if you could cook up and examine five potential types of metallic glass a day, every day of the year, it would take more than a thousand years to plow through every possible combination of metals. When they do discover a metallic glass, researchers struggle to overcome problems that hold these materials back. Some have toxic or expensive ingredients, and all of them share glasss brittle, shatter-prone nature. Over the past decade, scientists at SSRL and elsewhere have developed ways to automate experiments so they can create and study more novel materials in less time. Today, some SSRL users can get a preliminary analysis of their data almost as soon as it comes out with AI software developed by SSRL in conjunction with Citrine and the CAMERA (Center for Advanced Mathematics for Energy Research Applications) project at DOEs Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory. In the metallic glass study, the research team investigated thousands of alloys that each contain three cheap, nontoxic metals. They started with a trove of materials data dating back more than 50 years, including the results of 6,000 experiments that searched for metallic glass. The team combed through the data with advanced machine learning algorithms developed by Wolverton and graduate student Logan Ward at Northwestern. Based on what the algorithms learned in this first round, the scientists crafted two sets of sample alloys using two different methods, allowing them to test how manufacturing methods affect whether an alloy morphs into a glass. Both sets of alloys were scanned by an SSRL X-ray beam, the data fed into the Citrine database, and new machine learning results generated, which were used to prepare new samples that underwent another round of scanning and machine learning. By the experiments third and final round, said co-author Apurva Mehta, a staff scientist at SSRL, the groups success rate for finding metallic glass had increased from one out of 300 or 400 samples tested to one out of two or three samples tested. The metallic glass samples they identified represented three different combinations of ingredients, two of which had never been used to make metallic glass before. we show that iterative application of ML modeling and HiTp experimentation is a very powerful paradigm to find new MGs. We used it here to discover three new ternaries with large GFRs. We further show that even when the first-generation ML predictions are not significantly more accurate than predictions of PCTs, they rapidly surpass them with additional observations and can capture nuances that are harder to predict otherwise. We believe that this paradigm of data-driven discovery can be easily extended to accelerate the search for a wide range of technologically important materials, from high-entropy alloys to catalysts. It is particularly attractive for materials for which fully predictive PCTs have yet to be developed, and synthesis methods and other complex parameters (such as morphology, microstructure, and substrate interaction) play a large role in determining their properties and performance. Ren et al. SSRL is a DOE Office of Science user facility. In addition to SLAC, NIST and Northwestern, scientists contributing to this study came from the University of Chicagos Computation Institute, the University of South Carolina and the University of New South Wales in Australia. The SLAC pilot project with Citrine is funded by the Advanced Manufacturing Office of DOEs Office of Energy Efficiency and Renewable Energy, and includes collaborating scientists from NIST, DOEs National Renewable Energy Laboratory and the Colorado School of Mines. The CAMERA project at Berkeley Lab is supported by the DOE Office of Science. Resources UK-based ULEMCo will demonstrate a Volvo FH16 heavy-duty truck converted to run on hydrogen. The ULEMCo truck uses hydrogen to power the vehicle using a combustion engine rather than via fuel cells and an electric motor. However, in common with fuel cell versions, there will be none of the usual emissions from hydrocarbons that impact on air quality such as unburnt fuel, particulates, carbon monoxide etc., and the NO x levels will be immeasurably low. ULEMCo believes that using conventional engines and existing truck designs, rather than the full transformation needed for electrification, the time frame to the target of zero carbon emissions can be shortened significantly, at the same time reducing the cost of the change for customers. ULEMCo has converted many vehicles from diesel to hydrogen dual-fuel, and these are in current active service around the UK. The demonstration vehicle will be the first all-hydrogen example, will have at least 300HP, and with 17kg of hydrogen on board, a range of just less than 300 km (186 miles) unloaded is expected. As hydrogen storage is the only additional hardware, a smaller reduction in payload is experienced than with other low emission approaches, ULEMCo said. The demonstrator is co-funded by the UKs innovation agency, Innovate UK. Getting theatrical at Bar Freud. Photo: Melissa Hom Over-the-top garnishes, theatrical presentations, elaborate and fanciful tasting menus: In more ways than one, New Yorks cocktail scene has entered its baroque period. If neo-speakeasies studious embrace of rye Old Fashioneds and stiff Martinis was analogous to the no-nonsense gray suits and crisp styling of Mad Men, this new era of presentation and experimentation might be closer to the comic-book excess of Legion. That is to say: Bars right now are just more fun, and because the bartenders feel freer to experiment, the drinks they serve are more unexpected. Here are a dozen new drinks to try to wrap your head around sooner rather than later. Saffron Sazerac Where: Bar Freud How Much: $14 Albert Trummer has never shied from theatrics; hes lit his bar on fire and served drinks in syringes. If you order the Saffron Sazerac at Bar Freud, the bartender flambes sugarcane extract with housemade absinthe, pulling the flaming booze between glasses like they do with tea in Malaysia. Once the fires died down, a saffron elixir and house bitters are added to the glass. Currents & Coils Where: Patent Pending How Much: $16 Banana is, somewhat justifiably, generally regarded as an ingredient that spells disaster in cocktails, yet its showing up in lots of drinks at trendy bars. Theres this oddball concoction of malted milk, a basket of fruit (coconut, banana, pineapple, and lime), coffee, and Venezuelan and Guyanese rum. For Nitecaps Frozen Bamboozle, Natasha David says her secret weapon is Bacardi Banana. At Decoy, the banana-bread daiquiri is made with both banana booze and banana-bread syrup. The most common ingredient in the banana brigade is Giffard Banane du Bresil, used in Mother of Pearls Blue Collar Bird, Diamond Reefs Tough Pony, and Dantes Unlikely Negroni. The last is a how-does-it-work drink also made with pineapple drinking vinegar, coconut liqueur, and Thai chili tincture. Filthy Dirty Martini Where: Grand Republic Cocktail Club How Much: $13 The briny, salty, big Dirty Martini is the steakhouse drink of the 20th century, and its recently cropped up on trendy menus, like at Diamond Reef when it opened and later at Greenpoints Grand Republic Cocktail Club. Marsala & Cognac Where: Banzarbar How Much: part of a $95 tasting menu The fortified wine Marsala, of all things, has popped up on menus around town, including on the tasting menu at Banzarbar. Its mixed, to great effect, with cognac for a smooth drink that finishes the two-hour experience. Banzarbars cocktail tasting menu includes a Marsala and cognac drink. Photo: Melissa Hom Strawberry Daiquiri Where: Diamond Reef How Much: $12 There might be no neater timeline for this bar evolution than Diamond Reefs frozen strawberry daiquiris. Diamond Reef being a bar owned by proteges of the late daiquiri-loving Sasha Petraske; the fruity variation being the drink that confused people into thinking that daiquiris were a sickly sweet mess. Here, its amped up with fino sherry and a floater of extra rum. Mojito Where: Tokyo Record Bar How Much: $14 The mojito is breezy and easy; at Tokyo Record Bar, its given a total makeover. Rum and lime are out, sake and yuzu are in. Mint is replaced by peppery shisho, and wasabi gives it more bite. Cocktail Omakase Where: Straylight How Much: $60 The five drinks served during Jukus two-hour cocktail omakase are bartenders choice, but they include a seemingly simple concoction of rye, Bonal (a gentian-root-and-cinchona-infused aperitif), and grapefruit bitters. The theatrics come in the form of a very over-the-top garnish of an entire torched orange peel thats presented in the glass like a whirlpool. Amaretto Sour Where: Nitecap How Much: $15 The Amaretto Sour is a deep-cut from the grandparents drinks vault. Nitecaps version subs out amaretto for Creme de Noyaux (its lesser-known cousin also made from apricot kernels), lemon juice, egg white, orange-flower water, Lustau Amontillado Sherry, Apricot Eau de Vie, and Reposado Tequila. Fennel Pollen Where: Mace How Much: $15 The fennel pollen in the Fennel Pollen is deployed via mist, for a drink that could also be called Apple Five Ways: Its made with the apple brandy Calvados, cider, and rectified Granny-apple juice, along with the more unusual inclusions of apple-cider vinegar and apple butter. The George Washington Bars Smoke and Melons cocktail. Photo: Melissa Hom Smoke and Melons Where: the George Washington Bar How Much: $16 A play on the ubiquitous passed dish of prosciutto and melon, this cocktail is made with a base of Cavaillon melonflavored vodka thats infused with the cured meat. The melon-ness is amplified by cantaloupe (a sunny globe rests in the drink, speared by a couple of toothpicks), and Manzanilla sherry rounds it out, but the drink is really refreshing, and the prosciutto is more of a backbeat. Wake and Bake Where: the Aviary How Much: $24 Leave it to the Aviary to make a cocktail out of the everything bagel: The Wake and Bake arrives in a branded, poofed-up bag that looks like the pillow-shaped bag fresh off of your friends vaporizer. Scented with coffee and a toasted everything bagel, its a play on the Manhattan made with rye and orange. Light My Fire Where: the Woodstock How Much: $10 (or $15 or $20 with higher-end liquor) Its as much whats in this retro bars cocktails as how theyre presented in flashy glassware and designed to be photographed. The Light My Fire is a candy-purple concoction of tequila, curacao, lemon, blueberry, and habanero served in a light bulb served on a bed of ice thats lit by a blue light. Romanian wine sales soar at Waitrose By Lisa Riley Waitrose has reported a surge in the popularity of Romanian wine. The retailer said volume sales of wines from the country were up 17% year-on-year, boosted by a particular impressive performance from its own label Blueprint Romanian Pinot Noir up 60% compared to the previous year, it said. The booming sales reflected savvy shoppers exploring wines from further afield, said Victoria Mason, wine buyer, Waitrose. Romanian wine is a real success story and word is definitely getting around about how delicious it is," she said, adding the country produced some super wines that are exceptionally good value. Romania is the sixth largest wine-producing region in Europe and is one of the fastest growing Eastern European countries at Waitrose. The country, which uses modern methods and well-known grape varieties to produce easy-drinking value wines in a similar manner to Hungary, can chart a long history of winemaking dating back several thousand years. In January this year, Romanian producer Cramele Recas revealed plans to expand its winery to produce an additional four million litres, taking its total capacity to 30 million, this year on the back of soaring exports. The winery, which claims to be Romanias biggest, said exports during 2017 to Germany were up 124%, by 58% to the Netherlands and 18% for the UK, with overall exports having doubled since 2014 to eight million bottles. We're a family of seven living in Georgia where Andrew's working as a professor at GSU. You can read more about us here The proposal is not only unfair for young people, it is also unlikely to promote employment in Finland, views Palola. Antti Palola, the chairperson of the Finnish Confederation of Salaried Employees (STTK), has expressed its disapproval with a government decision to allow employers to hire under 30-year-old job seekers who have been unemployed for at least three months on fixed-term contracts without having to provide justification for the fixed term. The only consequence will be an increase in short-term jobs, and that will cause growing uncertainty, insecurity and outright fear of the working life among young people. The decision's effects on daily life will include later family formation. This, in turn, will be a problem in a country with a low birth rate, as well as for the dependency ratio, he says. STTK also reminds that both the constitution and equality act stipulate that no one should be placed in a different position because of their age without sufficient grounds. Palola believes the labour market position of young people should contrastively be strengthened. We have proposed, for instance, that working life information be part of the curriculum already in primary schools. This would improve the capacity of young people to transition to the working life and would also be in the best interests of employers, he tells. The Finnish government has also come under criticism for its decision to make it easier for businesses with fewer than 20 staff to make redundancies. STTK is of the opinion that the governments attitude is a sign of arrogance, slams Palola. It is because of the poor quality of recruitment and management if the earlier decisions to lengthen the trial period and shorten the re-employment obligation have not made it easier to hire employees. Revising the provisions on unilateral termination could also erode the growth aspirations of businesses and employee commitment to small businesses, warns STTK. Creating a culture of fear to rule is an old-fashioned approach that belongs to a bygone world. It is not a means to improve employment and competitiveness in Finland, summarises Palola. Service Union United (PAM) on Sunday announced two of its district organisations are considering organising a political strike in protest of the outcomes of what was the final framework session of the government of Prime Minister Juha Sipila (Centre). Aleksi Teivainen HT Photo: Jussi Nukari Lehtikuva Source: Uusi Suomi The use of chemical weapons is an abhorrent crime and prohibited in all circumstances. The perpetrators must be held accountable, Timo Soini (BR), the Minister for Foreign Affairs, stated in a press release . Finland on Monday announced it has joined an international initiative to hold accountable those responsible for the use of chemical weapons. Soini added that the international community cannot turn a blind out to an alarming upward trend in the use of chemical weapons. Finland, he stressed, must participate in combating the threat with all means possible. The Ministry for Foreign Affairs reminds in its press release that the use of chemical weapons is prohibited under both customary international law and the Chemical Weapons Convention (CWC), a convention adopted by 192 countries prohibiting the production, stockpiling and use of chemical weapons. This absolute prohibition has been challenged in an unprecedented manner most recently in Syria, the press release reads. Yet, the international community currently has no common mechanism for identifying the parties responsible for the use of chemical weapons, nor has there been progress in establishing such a mechanism in the UN Security Council. The International Partnership against Impunity for the Use of Chemical Weapons was established in Paris in 2017 with a view to collecting and sharing information to help to bring those responsible for chemical weapons use to justice, to support the adoption of sanctions in response to chemical weapons use, and to serve as a forum for formulating common positions on the issue. Finlands participation in the partnership is consistent with its long-standing support for the CWC and the Organisation for the Prohibition of Chemical Weapons (OPCW), according to the Ministry for Foreign Affairs. Over two dozen countries from all continents have already joined the global initiative. Aleksi Teivainen HT Photo: Vesa Moilanen Lehtikuva Source: Uusi Suomi Once we have the regional councils at the start of next year, theyll give the final go-ahead, tells Anu Vehvilainen (Centre), the Minister of Local Government and Public Reform. The Finnish government has begun preparing for the transfer of roughly 220,000 employees onto the payrolls of the counties and the permit and supervisory authority to be established in the social, health care and regional government reform. Over 90 per cent of the employees are nurses, physicians and social workers. The remaining roughly 20,000, meanwhile, will move to the counties and the permit and supervisory authority from the offices and district offices of a total of 238 administrative branches. The new organisations will take on the employees at the beginning of 2020. Vehvilainen says the employees will transfer to the new organisation under their current terms and conditions of employment but will not be afforded the five-year protection against unilateral termination that was afforded to employees transferred as part of the latest round of municipal consolidations. She stresses that the government is by no means seeking to create lay-offs, but acknowledges that the reform provides the new organisations an opportunity to examine whether certain duties could be re-organised. Thousands of employees, she adds, will leave the social and health care sector through natural attrition alone in the years to come. Roughly a third of the current staff will retire by 2026 when it comes to social and health care tasks. Thats quite a high number, 6070,000 people, tells Vehvilainen. She also assured that only a small number of employees would have to relocate due to the reform as the counties will retain offices in several municipalities and be obliged to provide certain services all over Finland. Aleksi Teivainen HT Photo: Martti Kainulainen Lehtikuva Source: Uusi Suomi A DEMONSTRATION calling for a public vote on the terms of Britains withdrawal from the European Union was held in Henley. About two dozen people took part in the event in Market Place on Saturday, which was organised by Shiplake resident Will Stevens as part of the nationwide Open Britain campaign. The protesters placed the flags of the EU and other member countries in planters or carried them in backpacks while waving placards with slogans about their cause. They also set up a stall and distributed badges, stickers and leaflets called Brexits Breaking Britain. Members of the group, who came from across South Oxfordshire and Buckinghamshire, also set up a Brexitometer using a magnetic whiteboard allowing passers-by to vote on whether they still supported Britains departure. Thirty out of 152 respondents, or just under one-fifth, were in favour of pulling out while the remainder opposed it. Mr Stevens, 71, came up with the idea after discovering Open Britain had been launched in Thame. The organisation, which was founded shortly after the referendum in June 2016, wants Britain to remain part of the European single market. The Henley action day was one of about 200 taking place across the country to promote the launch of Open Britains Peoples Vote campaign. Mr Stevens said: We dont just want another referendum, although we would like to offer the option of remaining. Its about whether the terms being offered are acceptable whether we should leave the single market, the customs union, the European Courts of Justice and all the agencies were closely linked with and will have to run ourselves if we leave. Its important to ask whether people still think Brexit is a good idea because the Prime Minister doesnt appear to. Were already starting to see the damage with things like the job cuts at Jaguar Land Rover, so were getting a lot of pain with no evidence that any benefits are coming. We had a lot of interest, especially from Europeans worried about their status. Many people said theyd changed their minds about Brexit since 2016. THE new director of the River & Rowing Museum in Henley says she is delighted to be joining the venue during its 20th anniversary year. Dr Sarah Posey will take up her post in June, having been head of collections, interpretation and learning at the Royal Pavilion and Museums in Brighton and Hove. She replaces Ludo Keston who stood down at the end of last year after a summer in which the museum attracted a record 15,000 visitors. Dr Posey has a long and well-established career in the museums and heritage sector, having worked at the British Museum for more than 17 years before completing 12 years in Brighton and Hove. During her time on the south coast, she has been responsible for delivering major exhibitions, including Biba and Beyond: Barbara Hulanicki, at the Brighton Museum and Art Gallery, new galleries such as World Stories and a pioneering collaborative partnership with Brighton Festival. Dr Posey said: I am delighted to be taking up the post of director at the River & Rowing Museum. It is a special place a striking building with distinctive collections and dynamic programmes, including outstanding work with schools. I am very excited to be joining the museum as it celebrates its 20th anniversary and leading it in its next phase of development. I look forward to working with the trustees and museum team to build on its success and ensure that even more people can enjoy this jewel on the banks of the Thames. David Worthington, the museums chairman of trustees, said: Im thoroughly looking forward to Sarah joining us. She brings a wealth of knowledge on how museums engage with audiences of all ages and interests and in the short time that Ive known her, Ive really enjoyed listening to her thoughts on how we move the museum forward. I feel very confident that we have a bright future. I would also like to thank Molly Jackson who has guided the museum through the recent interim period. Mr Keston, who lives in Stratford-upon-Avon, arrived in January 2014 and announced his departure in September last year. At the time, he said: This has not been an easy decision for me to make as I have been immensely proud of all the museum has achieved in the last four years. However, I have been commuting daily from home and have concluded that I just cant be the person to help the trustees with their ambitions for the next decade of the museums life. After four years, its time for the M40 and I to have rather less of each others company. The museum, designed by architect David Chipperfield, opened in 1998 and has more than 114,000 visitors a year. In the year ending on March 31, the number of visitors increased by more than 35 per cent on the previous year, largely thanks to the Peter Rabbit exhibition last summer, the Barbara Hepworth exhibition, which is still showing, and the ongoing popularity of the John Piper gallery. DWT readers who pay attention-- even a little attention-- are aware that Alan Grayson is running for Congress again. For one thing, Blue America endorsed him and has been FloridaPolitics.com did some sleuthing and announced that he definitely is running and raised $192,000 in the first quarter. They even quote Grayson: "I am running for the U.S. House of Representatives." readers who pay attention-- even a little attention-- are aware that Alan Grayson is running for Congress again. For one thing, Blue America endorsed him and has been raising money for his campaign . So far 77 Blue America members have contributed. I hope more start doing so when Alan makes his official announcement in a couple of weeks. Yesterday, though,did some sleuthing and announced that he definitely is running and raised $192,000 in the first quarter. They even quote Grayson: "I am running for the U.S. House of Representatives." Grayson, who served one term representing Floridas 10th Congressional District and two representing Floridas 9th Congressional District in Central Florida, is officially filed to run in Floridas 11th Congressional District this time. However, he has insisted for more than a year that is just a holding spot for his paperwork, so that he can raise money while assessing his options. In the latest reports, Graysons committee raised $192,018, including $71,358 in contributions so small that they need not be itemized. The committee also spent $53,567, and entered April with $694,967 in the bank. The progressive Democratic hardliner pointed out that, thanks in part to redistricting, he has represented constituents now scattered about six different congressional districts, including CD 11, CD 10, and CD 9, as well as Floridas 6th, 7th, and 8th Congressional Districts. His last two terms were in CD 9, which now covers south Orange County, Osceola County and eastern Polk County, and now is represented by Democratic U.S. Rep. Darren Soto. Sotos campaign has been bracing for him to put up a primary challenge there. Graysons first term was in CD 10, now covering western Orange County and now represented by Democratic U.S. Rep. Val Demings. CD 6, now stretching from south of Jacksonville through Volusia County and into Lake County, is likely to be an open seat as Republican U.S. Rep. Ron DeSantis is running for governor. CD 8, mostly in Brevard County with a sliver of eastern Orange County is represented by Republican U.S. Rep. Bill Posey. CD 7, covering Seminole and north and central Orange counties, is now represented by Democratic U.S. Rep. Stephanie Murphy. CD 11, where Grayson is currently filed, covers north-western Lake County and west-central Florida stretching to The Villages and Spring Hill, and is represented by Republican U.S. Dan Webster, who beat Grayson in the 2010 election. You may recall that it was Grayson who put together the bipartisan coalition that prevented Obama from bombing Syria. That when he was in Congress. Now that he's running, this is what he had to say about Trump going ahead and doing it in a pique of rage about the Putin-Gate investigations-- and without congressional approval. After repeated warnings that he would huff and puff and blow Assads house down, President Angry McDunce lobbed a 70-minute volley of missiles at Syria, at empty targets, from a safe distance. The military fired around half a billion dollars of Patriot missiles at three Syrian locations. Raytheon makes the Patriot missile, and the value of Raytheons stock jumped by... half a billion dollars. Just a coincidence, Im sure. Whoa. That seems newsworthy, but it somehow didnt make the news. But... the deeper problem is not what has happened in the last 48 hours. Thats just the tip of the tip of the top of the iceberg. Actually, the cat is out of the bag, and the cards are on the table, and the horses have left the barn. President Eisenhowers warning about the military-industrial complex has come true, we are engaged in military action and occupation all over the world, and no one pays any attention until President Bully ODimwit makes a speech about it at the dinner hour. Wikipedia says that the U.S. military has 6350 troops in Syria, and that theyve been there for almost four years. When did Congress authorize that? Did I miss the memo? Are we really going to gnash our teeth and rend our itchy hair shirts over a missile attack on three empty targets? Maybe we should have said something when Syria was added to the Lengthy List of Countries Voluntarily or Involuntarily Hosting Thousands of U.S. Combat Troops, As If It Makes a Difference to Our Leaders Which. For that matter, why did four U.S. combat troops die a few months ago in Niger, a place that POTUS doesnt even know is a country? (He probably thinks that its a chic French restaurant in Soho.) Niger? Seriously, Niger? No one goes there except to see the giraffes. CNN once broadcast a map of Niger, calling it Nigeria. (This is true; Agence France-Presse once made a similar mistake, even though the place was a French colony for more than half a century.) If our esteemed news media cant even find Niger on the globe, then why are there U.S. troops dying there? (And while we are on this subject, Im pretty sure that dying a horrible death is Niger, of all places, is not what Sgt. La David Johnson knew what he was signing up for, to use Trumps crass term.) Now that the CIA is running the drone program, you have to have access to classified information even to know on which countries we are dropping bombs. At least in the case of Syria, they had the courtesy to tell us. And it costs us $2,000,000,000.00 each day for this. The system is completely broken. It was broken long before President Adolt Dreckfresser drew his red line in the desert sand, and then relieved himself over it. Its time-- way past time-- that we started talking about it. Please support our campaign for justice, equality and PEACE. See that thermometer on the right? You can use it to help Grayson get back into Congress. And then read this latest e-mail Grayson sent his supporters about the Syrian crisis: In the first hours of the Tet Offensive, Wayne Slagel earned the second star to his Combat Medical Badge one of Americas rarest military awards. At the age of 45, Wayne Slagel had been around. In 1968 he was in yet an- other combat zone, in yet another war, and now, in the first hours of the first day of February, he found himself in the middle of the most intense enemy onslaught of the Vietnam War: February 1, 1968. It was about 1 a.m., and this would be the first day of Tet in our area. All hell broke loose and we took about 30 or more rounds of mortar fire in our part of the base camp. Tents and latrines were blown to shreds. At the time, I was using the drainage ditch next to the Punji Pit, our NCO club, with a few other men when the rounds came in. Everyone started yelling for all of us to get out of our tents and into bunkers and bomb shelters. Medic! Medic! was heard, and I was treating a few of the wounded and having a litter bearer take them to the dispensary and then later to the base hospital. I got a few pieces of shrapnel in my hands and legs, which got me a Purple Heart within the first few minutes of Tet in the Cu Chi area. So wrote Wayne Slagel years later, reflecting on his time as a combat medic in Vietnam. Having already served in battle in World War II and Korea, the action at Cu Chi would earn Slagel his third Combat Medical Badge, making him one of only two soldiers known to have received the award in three different wars. Behind that silver badge with two stars are countless lives that Slagel touched during his 25 years in the military, on the far-flung battlefields where he treated and saved many who went on to recover, and comforted many others as they took their final breaths. Only a couple of days earlier, it had seemed like business as usual: January 30, 1968. Our troops came in from the field for a few days rest at the division base camp at Cu Chi. Everyone got some well-deserved sleep and relaxation. At night, we went to our small NCO club, where we sat together and exchanged war stories. They always laughed at me for carrying around this big demolition bag of medical supplies instead of the smaller regular issued bag. I carried the bag to the latrine, shower, mess hall, movies, and everywhere else I went. As I found out in World War II and Korea, that one large bag was a must when everyone else is out of bandages, morphine, splints. As the battalions oldest NCO, Slagel took his comrades barbs in stride, knowing that being always prepared for the unexpected, as during the Tet attack at Cu Chi, would be the difference between life and death. Born in 1922 to young parents unable to care for him, Wayne Slagel was raised by his maternal grandmother in Taylorville, Ill. She was unsure of his middle name or the proper spelling of his last name, so it came as a bit of shock to 45-year-old Wayne Rupert Slagle when he finally saw his birth certificate in 1967 and discovered his name was actually Wayne Eugene Slagel. While growing up in poverty during the Great Depression, Slagel always dreamed of leaving his hometown to see the world. At the outset of World War II, the 18-year-old decided to join the Navy, a branch of the service he soon found he was especially unsuited for because of acute motion sickness. After being honorably discharged in June 1941, Slagel enlisted in the Army. The remarkable trajectory of Slagels 25-year Army career was set into motion in 1942 at basic training when his destiny was determined by a simple random act: They stood us all up in a line and they said from here to here, you will all be truck drivers. From here to here, these men will all be medics. After completing his medical training, Slagel deployed to the South Pacific in June 1943, landing in Port Moresby, New Guinea. From there he went on to the 62nd Station Hospital in Oro Bay, serving as a surgical and emergency room technician through October 1944. But he wasnt satisfied and desperately wanted to get out into the field, where he knew he was needed most. After some medics from the 124th Infantry in Morotai, Dutch East Indies, visited the hospital where he was serving, Slagel requested a transfer to their regiment. He was sent to the 124th Infantry Regiment, 31st Infantry Division, in Morotai, but was almost sent back because the regimental surgeon there had too many corporals. Slagel wouldnt be deterred, and for the chance to stay until he could be assigned to a field unit, he voluntarily took a reduction in rank back to private. He ultimately served in three campaigns in New Guinea and the Philippines during World War II. During this time, Slagel went beyond treating his comrades and often provided medical care to sick and wounded civilians in remote locations, on his own initiative and with limited protection. He would replicate this humanitarian characteristic during his service to come in other theaters of war. On May 1, 1945, while in Kibawe, Mindanao, Philippines, Slagel was awarded his first Bronze Star Medal for heroism while attached to a rifle company. The citation read: Private First Class Slagel voluntarily and with complete disregard for his own safety moved forward under the heavy enemy machine gun and mortar fire to administer aid to the wounded and remove them to safety. He also earned his first award of the Combat Medical Badge there. At the end of World War II, Slagel was still stationed in the Philippines, where he befriended the local people. His humanitarian efforts brought him awards and recognition, such as being named honorary captain of the Manila Police Force, Native Son of Cebu and honorary lieutenant of the Angelese Police Force. He also worked to open a library in Alcantara, which was named after him. On December 21, 1945, Slagel was discharged from the Army. Within a month he had reenlisted, returning to active duty on January 19, 1946. He then spent eight months in Chonju, Korea, with the 6th Medical Battalion, 6th Infantry Division. In 1947 Slagel returned to the United States for seven months, serving as an instructor at the Medical Field Service School at Fort Sam Houston, Texas. On what was supposed to be his return to Korea in September 1947, he was taken off his plane at Hawaii and reassigned on the spot to the 26th Station Hospital at Schofield Barracks. He spent the next nine months as the noncommissioned officer-in-charge (NCOIC) of the hospitals dispensary and emergency room. In June 1948, he was assigned as a medic to the 30th Topographical Battalion, which was surveying Bougainville and Buka Island in the North Solomons, as well as Rabaul, Papua New Guinea. When Slagel got back to Hawaii from the survey mission six months later in January 1949, he was assigned to Tripler Army Hospital and later Schofield Barracks Hawaiian Infantry Training Center. In March 1952, Slagel finally returned to a Korea deeply embroiled in war. He was initially assigned to a hospital near Pusan at the southern tip of the peninsula, but he asked for field duty again so he was sent as an aid man for Company K, 3rd Battalion, 27th Infantry (Wolfhounds), 25th Infantry Division. Through January 1953, he was in three campaigns, including actions at Heartbreak Ridge and the Punchbowl. These earned him his second Combat Medical Badge and a second Bronze Star Medal. Most of Slagels military career was spent in the Far East, where he developed especially close bonds with the people of the region. In 1961 he was made an honorary captain and lifetime member of the Reserve Officers Legion of the Philippines, an honor bestowed upon him by the Secretary of National Defense, General Alejo Santos. When retired General Douglas MacArthur arrived for a final return visit to the Philippines, Slagel attended the welcoming ceremony and several other functions in MacArthurs honor. An autographed picture of General MacArthur was one of Slagels most cherished military mementos. After Korea, Slagel was stationed at Tripler General Hospital in Honolulu during most of the next eight years. In October 1961, he was assigned to a medical dispensary with the 1st Cavalry Division in the Philippines, and from there he returned to Korea. He retired from the Army in November 1963, deciding to remain in Seoul with his Korean wife and their family. There, as a contractor to the U.S. Army, he worked on a rodent control program with American and Korean military engineers. Realizing that the Army was short of seasoned combat medics in the expanding war in Vietnam, Wayne Slagel didnt stay retired long. He reenlisted in June 1967 and was shipped to Vietnam, where he was once again assigned to the Wolfhounds of the 27th Infantry, initially training medical personnel as the NCOIC of a battalion aid station. So it was that he found himself in Cu Chi when the NVA and Viet Cong launched the Tet Offensive: Late February 1968. We had lots of gunships out at dawn after Tet started. They shot up everything that moved around the base camp but our troops stayed put and didnt move from the Cu Chi area for a few days. The first thing Civil Affairs wanted us medics to do was send out MedCaps [Medical Civil Action Program] to treat the Vietnamese civilians. In the area of our operations, we could see and hear what was happening to them and get a little intelligence information on Charlie and where and what he was doing. It was a little scary at first. I headed the first team with one of my medics. We had infantrymen to guard us along with one tank, a half-ton truck of medical supplies and two machine gun Jeeps. The Vietnamese civilians sure were happy to see us as they were in bad shape. Some had arms, legs and eyes missing. Many were dead or dying. It was very sad to see the little wounded children suffering and crying over their wounded or dead mothers, fathers and siblings. We did the best we could to relieve them of their pain and suffering. Many of our men were really touched and saddened by the destruction of human life and would try to play games with the children. Some would give the children candy, clothing, soap and toys. Many of us cried alongside the children as their parents died from their wounds. I put myself in their place. How would my children react if they saw their father die from wounds right in front of their eyes? Or for that matter, how would I take it seeing the same thing happen to my children? I thought of my father and mother and even my grandmother and wondered how I could take it if I saw my home blown away or burned to the ground with all my possessions destroyed and my loved ones killed. It made me always aware of the innocent victims of war. In 1968 Slagel earned his third and fourth Bronze Star Medals, in addition to his Purple Heart and third Combat Medical Badge. In total, he saw action in five campaigns in Vietnam. During his last three months there, he served in the III Corps Tactical Zone as a medical adviser with Mobile Advisory Team 111-80. Slagels long combat experience gave him a unique perspective on the Vietnam War: At 45, I was the oldest non-com in the battalion. Our sergeant major was the next in age at about 40. He was a rough, tough, no-nonsense type of professional soldier. We became good friends as we talked about the Korean War. He was also a Wolfhound with the 27th Infantry Regiment. We couldnt get over the good food we were eating in Vietnam. It was nothing like in World War II where we ate K rations or in the Korean War where our food was ice cold by the time we ate it. Our new type C rations in Vietnam included candy, cigarettes (I didnt smoke) and double edge sword razor blades that were made in England. I used the blades once. Wow, what a waste, but I was still very happy to have all the supplies we needed or wanted. It seemed like every day was at least 100 degrees. The heat and humidity together were like my days in World War II in New Guinea, the East Indies and the Philippines. I couldnt help to compare these places in weather, including their monsoons. These places in the tropics feel as though you can wring water out of every cloud. Our clothes were always wet with perspiration. You could wring the salt water from your body out of them and crystals would form again on your clothes before noon. If you didnt bathe or wash up each day, youd end up with a rash or jungle rot, and that was miserable. As the NCO in charge of Headquarters Companys medical aid station, it was part of my job to see that we had plenty of supplies for our aid inspections in the field as well as at base camp. Our combat medical aid men were high-caliber types of soldiers with lots of guts and determination. After Vietnam, Slagel returned to Korea, assigned to the 548th General Dispensary in early 1969. In September 1970, he retired from the Army for the second and last time, as a sergeant first class. Even though he had spent almost all his adult life overseas, Slagel always planned to settle down in his Illinois home- town. In 1976 he returned to Taylorville after a 35-year absence. He worked for the Taylorville water department until he retired in March 1987 to spend many happy years with his wife and children. But his military career had been impressive enough to bring him frequent attention from the media. In February 1993 Slagel received a phone call from an Army historian at Fort Sam Houston. Retired Sgt. Maj. Ronald Still of the Office of the Army Medical Department (AMEDD) Regiment told Slagel he had been searching for him. Still had heard of a soldier who had received the Combat Medical Badge in three different wars, and at the time Slagel was believed to be the only soldier with that record. Still invited Slagel to visit the AMEDD facilities at Fort Sam Houston to speak to instructors and students in training. The visit also gave AMEDD an opportunity to record an interview with Slagel about his medic experiences in three wars, intended to be shown to all future medical recruits. In the interview, Still asked him what a Combat Medical Badge meant to him personally. When I look at my badgeall I can think of is the wounded and the dying, the dead, Slagel replied. You try your best; sometimes it works and sometimes it doesnt. I realize that, and I always considered myself as being very strong. Nothing ever bothered me and I never cried in Vietnam. But, this brings it all back. Thats what the badge does to me. Directing his comments to young soldier medics, Slagel said: Its an honor to be a medic because youre helping people. In November 1996, Slagel represented the Army Medical Department when it received the American Medical Association Lifetime Achievement Award. Slagel died of cancer on April 15, 1998. The following November, a mess hall at Fort Sam Houston was named the Wayne Slagel Dining Facility. It was Slagels unshakeable faith in God and an afterlife that made him the person he was. Although he treated so many soldiers, it was always the memories of the ones he couldnt save that meant the most to him. They were comforted by his words and compassion. He said that sometimes a dying soldier would lie in his arms and say, Doc, am I going to be OK? Am I going to make it? Half of the soldiers body might be missing and all you could say was, Son, youre going to be fine, as he slipped away. To be the last person to communicate with a dying soldier is a great burden, and he did not take it lightly. He could make anyone instantly feel like a lifelong friend. It was truly a gift. He posessed an inner peace and believed that we all have a destiny to fulfill. When asked why he would voluntarily take a reduction in rank or come out of retirement to serve in another war, he said it was his calling. It was because he knew that he could be of service to others that he made the choices he did. Shortly before his death, Slagel told one of his children about a dream he had just had in which he stood on a hilltop and as far as he could see stretched a line of people trudging toward the distant horizon. Some were soldiers, others civilians. As they passed him, they paused to shake his hand, said Thank you and moved on. Princess Slagel-Bucshon, Wayne Slagels youngest child, lives near St. Louis. For additional reading, see: Borrowed Time: A Medics View of the Vietnam War, by Charles M. Kinney and Pamela Gillis Watson; and Combat MedicVietnam, by Craig Roberts. Originally published in the February 2009 issue of Vietnam Magazine. To subscribe, click here. Data shows that American fighter planes performed poorly vs. the enemy early in the waror does it? In the early years of the Vietnam War, the performance of American fighter pilots in dogfights appeared to lag far behind their counterparts in the Korean War. In Korea, F-86 Sabre pilots swept the skies and ran up amazing kill ratios, ending the war with about 10 victories for every F-86 lost. In contrast, kill ratios in the first half of the Vietnam War barely exceeded a humiliating 2-1. It seemed that American fighter pilots had lost all knowledge of air-to-air combat in the decade between the Korean and Vietnam wars, according to the conventional wisdom. The U.S. Navy, however, was able to rack up better scores after creating the Topgun Fighter Weapons School in March 1969, the theory goes, while the U.S. Air Force eschewed that route and was thoroughly shamed by wily North Vietnamese pilots. That is the view put forward in blockbuster movies such as Tom Cruises 1986 Top Gun, History Channel TV programs, and countless books, but is it an accurate account of what happened? The answer is no, not even close. Triple Ace. Capt. Joseph McConnell shot down 16 MiG-15s over Korea in 1953 making him the top American Ace of the War. (U.S. Air Force) Triple Ace. Capt. Joseph McConnell shot down 16 MiG-15s over Korea in 1953 making him the top American Ace of the War. (U.S. Air Force) The contrast between the Korean Wars kill ratios and those of Vietnam are unfair comparisons for a number of reasons. First and foremost, the Korean War kill ratio was drawn from nearly 900 decisive combats (those resulting in an aircraft loss), a large number that seemed to provide statistical validity to conclusions drawn from that data. The Vietnam kill ratios are compiled from a much smaller data set, which puts conclusions about kill ratios on tenuous ground, especially for the Navys air combat. There were a total a 269 American and enemy aircraft shot down in air-to-air combat over Vietnam during the entire war201 in fights between the U.S. Air Force and North Vietnamese air force and just 68 in the U.S. Navys air battles with the North Vietnamese. In those fights, the U.S. Air Force lost 64 aircraft and the Navy lost 12. Second, because of the different methods used to calculate kill ratios in the two wars, any attempt to place those ratios side by side is an invalid apples to oranges comparison. The Vietnam War kill ratios were calculated using the total number of U.S. aircraft lost in air-to-air combat, regardless of whether or not they were fighter planes. That meant the count of downed aircraft includes the unarmed RF-101, a reconnaissance jet; the A-1E Skyraider, a piston-engine plane; the EB-66, a bomber converted into a recon plane; the RC-47, a cargo plane converted into recon plane; and that terror of the skies, the HH-53 rescue helicopter. The North Vietnamese air force even gave full victory credits to pilots who shot down unarmed American reconnaissance drones. In contrast, the Korean War kill ratio considers only the victories of our best fighter, the F-86, whose pilots were almost exclusively flying aggressive, offensive airsuperiority missions. The Vietnam War equivalent is the MiGCAP missionMiG combat air patrols of F-4 Phantom II fighters, which protected bomb carriers from MiG attacks during strikes on targets in North Vietnam. A fair comparison with Korea would be limited to the Vietnam Wars MiGCAP missions. Geography of the Battlespace Any comparison between Air Force and Navy kill ratios should consider each services flight routes, because geography had a significant impact on tactics and outcomes. Unlike Navy aircraft launched from carriers in the Gulf of Tonkin, the great majority of Air Force aircraft on bombing runs took off from bases in Thailand and approached their targets in North Vietnam from the landward side. Enemy radar picked them up while they were still in Thai airspace, and MiGs could maneuver into advantageous positions up to 100 miles from Hanoi. Leading the Target. The MiG-17, left, posed a real threat to strike aircraft like the F-105D Thunderchief, right. (National Archives) Leading the Target. The MiG-17, left, posed a real threat to strike aircraft like the F-105D Thunderchief, right. (National Archives) While the North Vietnamese air force had excellent ground-controlled intercept radar to direct its planes, U.S. Air Force radar coverage ranged from spotty to nonexistent over assigned strike routes. Aircrews operated with little more than their eyes to guide them. Fighters escorting the bomb-carrying aircraft never knew where the threat would come from and therefore normally stayed close to the planes they were protecting so they wouldnt be caught out of position during an attack. As a result, U.S. Air Force aircraft usually entered engagements from a defensive and reactive posture. On the other hand, the Navy used its carrier-based operations to maximum advantage. North Vietnamese fighters had less warning time to react to the U.S. strikes and far less opportunity to maneuver behind Navy fighters, whose backs were protected by ships in the Gulf of Tonkin. Additionally, naval air operations over North Vietnam were completely covered by radar-equipped ships operating in the Gulf under the code name Red Crown. Navy pilots were mainly assigned targets in coastal areas where they had good radar warning and control from ships patrolling just offshore. Navy fighters were therefore able to take a more aggressive posture than their Air Force counterparts, flying offensively oriented combat sorties instead of defensive close-escort missions. After-action reports found that 65 percent of Air Force losses were suffered by aircraft fighting from a defensive posture, which required a fighter under attack to reverse positions to get a kill, a very difficult maneuver to make. In contrast, only 20 percent of Navy and Marine Corps losses were aircraft in a defensive posture. The air war over North Vietnam can be divided into six distinct periods over the two major bombing campaigns, Operations Rolling Thunder (March 1965-November 1968) and Linebacker I and II (May 1972-January 1973): the buildup of the North Vietnamese air force (1964-1966); going head to head (January-July 1967); ambush tactics (August 1967-October 1968); going head to head again (January-May 1972); back to ambush tactics (June-July 1972); and the Teaball era (August 1972 until American operations in Vietnam ceased in January 1973). The North Vietnamese Buildup During this period, the North Vietnamese air force was building an extensive ground radar network while its pilots slowly acquired experience with their new MiG-17s. Acting cautiously, Hanoi refused to commit its fighters to combat unless the odds were stacked in their favor. Only 28 North Vietnamese planes were lost in combat with U.S. aircraft during the 1964-66 period. The U.S. Air Forces first kills of the war occurred on July 7, 1965, when two MiG-17s attacked a pair of F-4C Phantom II fighter-bombers, which used their superior speed and rate of climb to reverse position on the MiGs, a tactic incorporated into the Navys Topgun program four years later. At the end of this period, the North Vietnamese began flying the improved MiG-21, setting up the next phase of the air war. Going Head to Head By early 1967, North Vietnamese pilots felt confident they could go head-to-head with U.S. airmen in a straight-up fight. They were gravely mistaken. The year started with Operation Bolo, where Col. Robin Olds 8th Tactical Fighter Wing, equipped with F-4 Phantoms, set up an ambush by imitating the routes, call signs and even radar-jamming pods that F-105D Thunderchiefs used on their way to bomb targets in North Vietnam. When the North Vietnamese MiG-21s came up to intercept the Thunderchiefs, they were surprised to meet Phantoms equipped with missiles for air-to-air combat, instead of the bomb-laden F-105Ds they were expecting. In that engagement, on Jan. 2, Olds crews claimed seven MiG-21 kills without a loss. Legendary Leader. Col. Robin Olds and his 8th Tactical Fighter Wing used new tactics to turn the tables on the North Vietnamese. (U.S. Air Force) Legendary Leader. Col. Robin Olds and his 8th Tactical Fighter Wing used new tactics to turn the tables on the North Vietnamese. (U.S. Air Force) After licking their wounds, North Vietnamese pilots again began challenging American aviators in late April, but as the fighting intensified in May, it became apparent that they would not succeed. Between January and July, U.S. Air Force fighters flying air-to-air missions shot down 29 MiGs while losing just two of their owna 14.5-1 kill ratio. It is little wonder that Air Force brass failed to see a problem in the training program for their fighter force. With its air supremacy fully established, the U.S. Air Force implemented an economy of force measure, using Phantoms that could be deployed for both bomb strikes and combat air patrols. These STRIKE/CAP aircraft were sent primarily on missions to drop bombs but could jettison their air-to-ground ordnance and become air-to-air fighters if necessary. While that approach made sense at the time, it proved to be a major mistake. Ambush Tactics The North Vietnamese air force, having lost half of its combat planes in a matter of a few weeks between March and June of 1967, went into a period of self-examination, training and reconstitution. Because the North Vietnamese could not possibly gain control of the skies by directly challenging American aviators, they adopted a different tactic that created headaches for the U.S. Air Force until the end of the war. On Aug. 23, 1967, North Vietnamese ground radar guided a MiG-21 to a position astern of four bomb-laden F-4 Phantoms in close formation to maximize their radar-jamming measures against surface-to-air missiles, called SAMs. The MiG made a supersonic hit-and-run pass, launched a Soviet AA-2/Atoll air-to-air missile that shot down Phantom No. 4 and blew past the formation to safety. That incident was grim news to U.S. Air Force tacticians. The high differential in airspeed between the attacking MiGs and the STRIKE/CAP F-4s made it virtually impossible for the F-4s to accelerate fast enough to offer any serious threat to the MiG-21s, stated the Air Forces Red Baron study, which was written immediately after the war and examined air combat performance in Southeast Asia. Because the MiG-21s engaged only when directed by radarwhich provided them with both surprise and positional advantagethere was no opportunity for the friendly forces to achieve a lethal firing position on the attacking MiGs. As long as the MiG-21s maintained the high-speed, one-pass tactic and refused all other engagements, the STRIKE/CAP flights could afford no real protection. The Air Force initially reinstituted its tactic of sending dedicated escort fighters to accompany the bomb carriers, but this also proved ineffective. To be effective against the hit-and-run tactics of the MiG-21s, MIGCAP flights had to depart the strike force and intercept the attacking MiG-21s before they were able to initiate their high-speed runs, according to the Red Baron report. Yet, with no effective radar support to properly position the combat planes between the MiGs and bomb carriers that tactic was fraught with risk. Facing both the SAM threat and supersonic MiGs, the Air Force began building larger groups of aircraft for bombing missions. Strike packages contained 40 or more aircraft, including bomb carriers, Wild Weasels (two-seater F-105F and G Thunderchiefs outfitted with equipment to detect and destroy SAM sites), reconnaissance and radar-jamming aircraft, F-4 Phantom fighter escorts close to the bomb carriers and the MiGCAP F-4s, which were free to make sweeps away from the pack and aggressively go after MiGs. The new formations provided relatively good protection for the bomb carriers at the heart of the formation but left aircraft on the periphery vulnerable. As more U.S. aircraft were downed and kill ratios worsened, frustration among Air Force crews grew. During the final months of Operation Rolling Thunder in late-1968, the enemy shot down 22 Air Force aircraft at a cost of 20 MiGs. In every case, the MiGs victories were initiated from astern of an unaware target. This was a dismal turn of events, with the U.S. Air Forces overall kill ratio dropping from 4.1-1 to 2.3-1. The only bright spot in that period was that MiGCAP aircraft maintained a respectable 3.5-1 kill ratio, despite the North Vietnamese air forces advantages. However, if the American Air Force could not solve the problem of surprise attacks, the success of future operations would be at risk. Going Head to Head, Again When U.S. forces resumed widespread operations over North Vietnam in spring 1972, the North Vietnamese decided once again to challenge the American strikes head-on. Between February and early March, the U.S. Air Force ran up eight kills without loss. Then on May 10, the Air Force traded the North Vietnamese three for two during the first major battle of Operation Linebacker. The Navy, with several graduates of the new Topgun course in the air, countered the bulk of the North Vietnamese action that day and famously shot down seven MiG-17s and a MiG-21 with no losses. It was the worst single day of the war for the North Vietnamese air force, on par with the shock of Operation Bolo more than five years earlier. Hanois reaction was swift, radical and appropriate. The MiG-17s, now proved obsolete, were largely withdrawn from combat. They would be involved in only seven more decisive battles for the rest of the war. The North Vietnamese air force reverted to its successful supersonic ambush tactics with the MiG-21. Those tactics were extremely difficult to deploy against carrier-based aircraft, however, and consequently the Navys role in air-to-air combat over North Vietnam diminished considerably. The Navy tallied just 11 victories and three losses for the balance of the war. (The Navy had only 22 decisive battles with MiG-21s over the course of the entire war.) After May 10, the air-to-air war effectively became an Air Force show. Back to Ambush Tactics North Vietnams change in tactics worked. For a brief moment in June 1972, MiG-21s gained ascendancy, shooting down five Air Force Phantoms on air-to-air missions for a loss of only two. Four out of the five losses were the result of supersonic MiG-21s attacking unaware targets from behind, while one of the U.S. victories was made in a reversal over an attacking MiG. The losses were troubling enough to cause the Air Force to re-evaluate its tactics. July proved only marginally better, with Air Force fighters trading six victories for five losses. The MiGCAP force, with its focus on offensive operations, showed its advantages, however, getting four of those six victories with no losses. Once more, all five American losses came from supersonic stern attacks on aircraft unaware they were in the enemys sights. But things were about to turn around. The Teaball Era In August 1972, the Air Force finally got its technical answer to the attack warning problem: a control center called Teaball. The center, at Nakhon Phanom Royal Thai Air Base, fused information from available intelligence sources and provided MiG warnings in real time over a complicated set of radio networks. Air Force crews got the situational awareness they had been lackingand Navy crews had enjoyedsince the beginning of the war. Teaball essentially solved the ambush problem. Only six Air Force planes of all types were lost to MiGs after Teaball went on the air, at least half of which were shot down during a Teaball communications interruption. During that same period, the Air Force shot down 26 MiGs23 of them during air-to-air missions with a loss of three American planes (aircrews on other missions, such as gunners on B-52 bombers, got the other MiG shootdowns). The Air Forces 26 MiG kills between August 1972 and the withdrawal of all U.S. forces in January 1973 are slightly more than the number of victories the Navy achieved in all of 1972 (25 kills) and nearly half as many as the Navy record over the entire war (56 kills). The Air Force had a Vietnam War total of 137 kills. Air Force planes of all types on air-to-air missions had an overall 3.8-1 kill ratio for the entire war. In an apples-to-apples comparison with the F-86s in Korea, the Air Forces MiGCAP F-4s in Vietnam had 5.5-1 kill ratio, with a very strong upward trend toward 15-1 during the the final five months of the war, greatly exceeding the Korean War results of 10-1. The Navys kill ratiosinvolving a much smaller number of engagementswere 4.7-1 for aircraft of all types during the entire war, 6.4-1 for MiGCAP missions during the entire war and 8.7-1 for MiGCAPs in the Topgun era. Freed up by Teaball to be more aggressive without fear of ambush, the MiGCAP force did spectacularly well, shooting down 15 and losing only one. In short, when the Air Force was afforded conditions similar to those that helped the Navy, the results of the two services were very similar. The Wars Air Power Legacy Postwar analysis showed that 81 percent of all U.S. aircraft lost in combat were either unaware of an attack or became aware too late to defend themselves. The primary reason for the unsatisfactory kill ratios was clear: Excellent North Vietnamese tactics exploited the Air Forces lack of radar warning. While more and better training is always desirable, it is difficult to understand how it would have overcome that disadvantage. Lessons Learned. Experiences in Vietnam spurred the creation of the Navy Fighter Weapons School (Topgun). (U.S. Navy) Lessons Learned. Experiences in Vietnam spurred the creation of the Navy Fighter Weapons School (Topgun). (U.S. Navy) Four years after the air war over North Vietnam ended, the Air Force got its true solution to the problem of surprise: the E-3 Sentry with Airborne Warning and Control System radar, called AWACS, which can collect information on the position of enemy aircraft and relay it directly to the fighters. Since then, only one U.S. aircraft has been lost in air-to-air combatLt. Cmdr. Scott Speichers F-18 Hornet, shot down on Jan. 17, 1991, by an Iraqi MiG-25 on the first night of Operation Desert Storm. Today, the F-35 Lightning II carries an onboard sensor suite with the potential to give its pilot situational awareness without off-board assistance like the AWACS provides. The Lightning II integrates the information it has gathered and shares it with other aircraft, compiling a gods-eye view of the battle space that all but eliminates the danger of being caught unaware by an enemy fighter. How different would the war over Vietnam have looked if the U.S. had fielded aircraft that not only were almost impossible to surprise but also could stealthily turn the tables on the enemy attackers? Surely the North Vietnamese would have opted for force preservation and withheld their fighters from combat, just as Americas enemies learned to do three decades later. William A. Sayers received an Air Force commission after graduating from Texas Tech in 1981. He has masters degrees in military studies and strategic studies from Marine Corps University. He spent 28 years as a military analyst at the Defense Intelligence Agency, National Counterterrorism Center and CIA. This feature originally appeared in the June 2018 issue of Vietnam Magazine. Subscribe today! How Confusion Crept Onto the Maps The letter from Daniel R. Arant (August 2008) about map names reminded me of an old problem we had in Vietnam. In January 1966, I was tasked to create an intelligence unit for Maj. Gen. Joseph A. McChristian. As the unit added capabilities, we had to have the coordinates of every map from 1/10,000 to 1/250,000 so that overlays would exactly match the maps in the field. The number of maps was over 700 and, at that time, we did not have all of them covering Vietnam, Cambodia, Laos, Eastern Thailand and Burma and South China. An urgent order was sent to the Defense Intelligence Agency (DIA), but in the meantime I scoured all of the allied intelligence activities in and out of country for the missing maps. Most of the maps I found were produced by the French military, and local governments. When the maps arrived from DIA, I compared them to our nonU.S. maps to confirm that the coordinates matched. In the process, I saw that most, if not all, of the names of the towns, villages, hamlets, mountains, etc., differed from our maps! What was going on here? The new governments, which took over after the French, had created new names for almost every location and natural feature, and continued to do so throughout the war. But, with few exceptions, the French kept the original names on their mapsand, more important, so did our enemy. When a captured enemy document contained a plan to attack a village by name, without accompanying coordinates, most new intelligence analysts could not use the document because the exact location was unknown to them! Those who were in-country and the region for many years learned the differences and recorded the names used by the enemy. But if newbies saw a document with an unknown name, they tossed it aside. Howard A. Daniel III Master Sergeant, U.S. Army (Ret.) Dunn Loring, Va. Army and Navy Team Up on the Mekong In the June 2008 issues Fighting Forces, Christopher Miskimon writes about the difficulty the 3-34th Artillery had in providing accurate artillery support for the 9th Infantry Division. He mentions that Mike 8 LCMs (landing crafts, medium) were used to tow, push and pull barges equipped with two 105mm howitzers all over the Mekong Delta. Those landing craft were not Navy, they were Army: the 1097th Medium Boat Company, headquartered in Dong Tam and very much a part of the 9th Infantry Division and the Mobile Riverine Force. I was a boat coxswain with the 1097th Medium Boat Company, where we used the Mike 8 as a tugboat all over the Mekong Delta. It was exciting being with the 3-34 Artillery and the Navys River Assault Flotilla 1. When we were under way, we had at least six Navy gunboats with us. Because we made such a great target, ambushes were frequent. Top speed was 8-10 knots, and canals, such as the Mo Cai and Ben Tre, were very tight. The Navy was great at keeping Charlies head down from the gunboats with .50-caliber, 20mm, flame throwersyou name it. I was very proud to serve with the 1097th. Douglas Brown Marshfield, Mass. My Tet Deja Vu I am the Marine sitting against the wall in the picture on the back page of last years Tet issue (February 2008). It stirred up a lot of memories to see myself there. I remember that day and how tired I was from fighting. I felt as if I wasnt going to make itbut I survived, while many of my friends did not. I served with 1st Platoon, Hotel Company, 2/5th Marines. My company commander Captain Ron Christmas and platoon commander Lieutenant Leo Meyers were wounded during Operation Hue City. I was wounded twice during the same operation and medevaced out on April 1, 1968. After being honorably discharged in September 1968, I went to college and received a commission into the U.S. Air Force in July 1973; I retired as a lieutenant colonel in 1993, after my last assignment as a squadron commander at Okinawa AFB, Japan. Thank you for helping me retrieve this legacy for my children and grandchildren. John L. Washington Jr. Waikoloa, Hawaii Many Doctors and Nurses Gave All Regarding Marc Smilens letter (December 2008) about a French doctor, Christiane Granger, who died in Vietnam, I served in the intelligence section of 2-19th Artillery of the 1st Cavalry Division. In reality, Dr. Granger is just the tip of the iceberg. In the book We Came to Help, authors Monika Schwinn and Bernhard Diehl talk about the nurses George Bartsh, Marie-Luise Kerber and Hendrika Kortmann from the Aid Service of Malta, who were captured in April 1969. All three died in captivity. At least four other foreign medical personnel were killed in the same area of operations that I covered during my 1966-67 tour. There were doctors and nurses in Vietnam from many countries, including Canada, Sweden, Switzerland, Germany, Spain and France. I would expect the deaths of foreign nurses and doctors to top 50. Glenn Sheathelm Muskegon, Mich. Fortunate Not to be Among The Few! In my letter, Any More Volunteers? in the August 2008 issue. Please note the correction: I felt fortunate not to be among those volunteered into the Marines. Bud Forti Worcester, Mass. Originally published in the February 2009 issue of Vietnam Magazine. To subscribe, click here. Vietnam Experience Exhibit Unveiled at U.S. Army Heritage and Education Center Specialist 4 Bill Beck and Specialist 4 Russell Adams were among 450 soldiers of the 1st Battalion, 7th Cavalry Regiment, who were greatly outnumbered on Nov. 14, 1965, when they were airlifted into enemy territory at Landing Zone X-Ray near the Cambodian border. As General Hal Moore has written, When his time came to perform for America and the men around him, Beck did the jobMen like Russell Adams and Bill Beck win our wars for us. Exactly 43 years from that unforgettable day in the Ia Drang Valley, a compelling outdoor exhibit illustrating the Vietnam Experience was unveiled in November at the Army Heritage and Education Center in Carlisle, Pa. The exhibits interpretive panels describe the experiences of soldiers during events such as the battle at LZ X-Ray, who were able to fend off NVA assaults with support from artillery fire, B-52 bombers dropping tons of high explosives and fighter-bombers dropping napalm. Speaking at the unveiling of the Vietnam Experience was noted Vietnam reporter and historian Joe Galloway, who survived the Battle of Ia Drang. The exhibit includes a restored Huey and a model of a fire support base, both of which represent significant developments in warfare that emerged from the Vietnam conflict. Also featured in the exhibit is Captain Joe Newsome, whose mission was to defeat the enemy by pioneering a new concept of warfare that used helicopters to fly over enemy positions or rough terrain and insert troops directly into the conflict area. This permanent display is open to the public and forms the newest part of the Army Heritage Trail at the Army Heritage and Education Center. www.usahec.org. Traumatic Brain Injury Survival Chances Much Higher in Iraq War Than in Vietnam The chances of soldiers surviving a traumatic brain injury (TBI), whether penetrating or concussive, are much higher today than during the Vietnam era, according to the New England Journal of Medicine and Textbooks of Military Medicine. Mortality due to TBI was around 75 percent during the Vietnam War. In Iraq and Afghanistan, Kevlar helmets and body armor have significantly reduced the chances of dyingbut a tragic byproduct of an improvised explosive device (IED) blast or shrapnel wound may be a brain injury severe enough to alter the lives of those who are wounded. Among surviving soldiers wounded in Iraq and Afghanistan, TBI appears to account for a larger proportion of casualties than it has in other recent U.S. wars. According to the Joint Theater Trauma Registry, compiled by the U.S. Army Institute of Surgical Research, 22 percent of the wounded from Iraq and Afghanistan who have passed through Landstuhl Regional Medical Center in Germany had injuries to the head, face or neck. According to Deborah L. Warden, a neurologist and director of the Defense and Veterans Brain Injury Center, this percentage is a rough estimate of the fraction who have TBI. She said the true proportion is probably higher, since some cases of closed brain injury are not diagnosed promptly. In the Vietnam War, by contrast, 12 to 14 percent of all combat casualties had a brain injury, and an additional 2 to 4 percent had a brain injury plus a lethal wound to the chest or abdomen, according to Ronald Bellamy, former editor of the Textbooks of Military Medicine. Bellamy said that because mortality from brain injuries among U.S. combatants in Vietnam was 75 percent or greater, soldiers with brain injuries made up only a small fraction of the casualties treated in hospitals. United States and Vietnam Talk Military Cooperation and Agent Orange Cleanup Meeting in Hanoi last fall, American and Vietnamese representatives discussed a variety of defense and security issues, including possible U.S. sales of spare parts for American-made helicopters left in Vietnam after the war. Possible arms deals and the inclusion of Vietnamese soldiers in United Nations peacekeeping operations were also on the agenda of Vietnamese Deputy Foreign Minister Pham Binh Minh, U.S. Deputy Assistant Secretary of Defense James Clad and Assistant Secretary of State Mark Kimmitt. Clad noted that Washington cooperates militarily with other countries in the region and that because of its growth, Vietnam is more and more coming into that world. By collaborating on political, defense and security issues, says Clad, the U.S. hopes both to balance rising Chinese power and to help Vietnam and China maintain good relations, in order to promote regional stability. Vietnam and the United States have scheduled a follow-up meeting for next fall in Washington. U.S. and Vietnam representatives also held their third round of talks in September on ways to limit the environmental effects of Agent Orange. Officials from both countries convened and visited the former U.S. air base at Bien Hoa, one of several Agent Orange hotspots, where the defoliant was mixed and stored before loading it onto planes during the war. Congress set aside $3 million in 2007 for the cleanup of dioxin, a highly toxic element of Agent Orange, which was sprayed on large areas of Vietnam to deprive Vietnamese troops of jungle canopy. In October the two countries launched three new programs to help provide job training and health care to disabled people in Da Nang, with $1 million to support a network of local health centers, provide surgery and physical therapy to children, and help disabled people find work. Vietnams claim that as many as 4 million people have suffered serious health problems associated with Agent Orange is challenged by the United States, which says further scientific study is needed to understand the link between Agent Orange and health. Californias Bill Opens Doors for Would-Be Veteran Entrepreneurs Thanks to a new law, veterans in California will have better opportunities to open their own businesses. Last September, Governor Arnold Schwarzenegger signed Bill 1952, authored by Assemblywoman Patty Berg, which enables any honorably discharged veteran who is a resident of California to obtain a license to distribute circulars and sell any goods, other than alcoholic beverages, without payment of any business license fees. Despite legislative attempts to do the same thing during World War II, the state ended up with two laws that contradicted each otherone for counties, the other for cities within themcreating decades of confusion. Carl Young, a Vietnam War veteran and veterans advocate, ran into that discrepancy while applying for a business license. He approached Berg about finding a remedy to the 60-year snafu. Purple Hearts for 17,000 Ex-POWs? The Defense Department announced a new policy in October that could provide Purple Hearts to about 17,000 deceased U.S. prisoners of war. The Purple Heart, awarded to military personnel of all service branches who are wounded by enemy action, has in the past been denied to POWs who died in captivity unless it could be proven that they were wounded or killed by the enemy. Under the new policy, the burden of proof is reversed: Such deaths are presumed to be the result of enemy action unless there is compelling evidence to the contrary. The new policy is retroactive to December 7, 1941the day Japanese aircraft attacked Pearl Harbor. Each branch of the military will determine the process by which family members or representatives of deceased service members can apply for the awards. Righting a Wrong: Medals at Last Nearly 40 years after her husband died in the Vietnam War, Kathleen Cardona of Vernon, Conn., finally saw him recognized for his service. On Oct. 19, 2008, U.S. Rep. Joseph D. Courtney presented Cardona with Vietnam-era service medals in honor of her late husband Ronald Cardona. Kathleen wed Ronald, a U.S. Army Airborne Ranger, in 1968 just before he went to Vietnam. He was killed in action six months later, and his military records were never updated to reflect his marriage. Kathleen therefore never received Ronalds medals or the survivor benefits she was entitled to, as the Defense Department refused to correct its recordsuntil last August. Family Gets Belated Reminder of a Loved One Lost in Vietnam War Herb Schaffner made a discovery at his Chinese wifes family village near the North Vietnam border in September. Her relatives had found a U.S. Air Force Academy class of 1963 ring that belonged to Major Patrick Edward Wynne, who was shot down over North Vietnam on Aug. 8, 1966, while on an armed reconnaissance mission. His remains were found and returned to the United States in 1977. Schaffner contacted Major Wynnes brother, Michael Wynne, who was Secretary of the Air Force from 2005 to June 2008. Schaffner told Wynne, Im not sure I have the right Mike Wynne, but did you have a brother, Patrick, who was an Air Force pilot who was lost in Vietnam? Schaffner said that when Wynne confirmed that he did, I said Sit down, and I continued to tell the story from there. In October, Schaffner and officials of his company, Consortium Companies, presented Wynne with the ring on a bed of blue velvet. Remains of Missing U.S. Pilots Recovered from Laos and North Vietnam U.S. Air Force Captain Gomer D. Reese III of Scarsdale, N.Y., was flying a secret mission over Laos on April 24, 1970, when he was shot down. Reese was part of a covert CIA group called the Ravens attempting to interrupt the transport of weapons down the Ho Chi Minh Trail. With the help of Laotian citizens who said they had witnessed the crash, military investigators gathered crash-related objects over a period of several years, and human remains last spring of Reese and another pilot, James E. Cross of Warren, Ohio. Air Force Captain Lorenza Conner of Cartersville, Ga., and his co-pilot were flying over North Vietnam on Oct. 27, 1967, when their F-4D Phantom II was hit by antiaircraft fire. The co-pilot ejected safely, but Conner went down with his aircraft. His ID tags were found in 1992 but it was not until 2007 that the wrecked aircraft was found. Conners remains were turned over to his family last October. General Bernard W. Rogers, 1st Infantry Assistant Division Commander, 66-67 A veteran of the Korean and Vietnam wars, General Bernard Rogers died at age 87 in October. After his promotion to brigadier general, Rogers served in Vietnam as assistant division commander of the 1st Infantry Division from 1966 to 1967. He distinguished himself in numerous combat actions, earning the Distinguished Service Cross, Silver Star, Distinguished Flying Cross, Bronze Star of Valor and the Air Medal with Valor Device. Rogers served as Army chief of staff from 1976 to 1979 and supreme allied commander, Europe/commander in chief, United States European Command, from 1979 to 1987. Francoise Demulder, Award-Winning French War Photographer Francoise Demulder, who launched her career in the Vietnam War, was among those who helped break ground for women in photo journalism. She covered the war along with fellow Frenchwoman Catherine Leroy, who died in 2006. Following her work in Vietnam, Demulder continued to work in war zones in Cambodia and Lebanon, becoming the first woman to win the World Press Photo of the Year award in 1976 for a photograph of Palestinian refugees in Beirut. She died in September in Paris, at the age of 61. Ike Pappas, Former CBS Newsman, Covered the Vietnam War and Kent State When the Ohio National Guard shot four students in May 1970 during an antiwar protest at Kent State, Ike Pappas and his CBS News cameramen were the only network crew on the scene. That was just one instance of Pappas famous reporting during his 23-year career with CBS; he was also presentand attempting to ask JFK assassin Lee Harvey Oswald a questionjust before Jack Ruby shot Oswald in the Dallas police station basement on Nov. 24, 1963. Pappas was also an acclaimed reporter of the Vietnam War. He died on August 31 of congestive heart failure in Arlington County, Va., at age 75. Originally published in the February 2009 issue of Vietnam Magazine. To subscribe, click here. In Hot Press, a fortnight ago, we asked a series of questions of Facebook CEO, Mark Zuckerberg. Since then, things have unravelled even further for the Social Media Monopoly. So heres another one: how can the anti-competitive status, free of any form of regulation, which has been claimed by Facebook, possibly be justified when advertising lies flourish there? At last, people are beginning to waken up to the profound threat which Facebook represents to democracy. That this statement involves no exaggeration whatsoever has become increasingly clear over the past two months. The reality is that it has been this way for a long time. Our politicians and our regulators were just awfully, shamefully slow to see or acknowledge it. Hot Press first raised this issue specifically in relation to the upcoming referendum on Repealing the 8th Amendment to the Constitution of Ireland, back in November 2017. That was when we first asked Facebook what it intended to do to guarantee that the platform would not be used to poison, and potentially to fatally undermine, the legitimate, democratic, political process here. All we got in response were delaying tactics. Since then, the extent to which Facebook was used to precisely that effect in the Brexit referendum in the UK has become much clearer, with the revelations in the Observer newspaper about the links between Cambridge Analytica, AggregateIQ, Vote Leave and Facebook. As a result, over the past fortnight, it has at last been admitted by Facebook that it facilitated the mining of the data of a cool 87 million users of the platform by Cambridge Analytica. Most of these individuals live in the US, and their data was used or abused to target voters on behalf of the campaign to elect Donald Trump. A million were in the UK, and their data was used to help drag the UK out of Europe. Some of them are in Ireland. That much alone should set alarm bells ringing among our regulators and legislators. Advertisement Lying and Deceitful Cambridge Analytica used a specific app to gather mountains of information on Facebook users. But there is no reason to assume that they were alone in carrying out an exercise of this kind. Data mining of Facebook users is ongoing. Indeed Facebook exploits its own ability to mine vast oceans of private data to sell advertising. As a Surveillance Capitalist Monolith, that is its business model. It is its reason for being. Cambridge Analytica were merely scraping around to see how much they could gather independently of Facebook-command. As it turns out, they got a hell of a lot rather easily. Who is to say that there arent others who have similarly, surreptitiously, pilfered data? The assumption we have to make is that there are. And some of them may well be a lot closer to home. Would Facebook not tell us? The answer to that seems to be: not until they have absolutely no other option. They first knew about the fact that data had been filched, by AggregateIQ on Cambridge Analyticas behalf, as far back as December 2015. For a long time, Facebook brazenly denied this, as did Cambridge Analytica until the brains behind the process, Christopher Wylie, stepped forward. He had the documents to demonstrate exactly what had happened. And among his revelations is one that should render or rather that does render the result of the Brexit vote fundamentally flawed, if not invalid. As the man who figured out how the app would work, Wylie was at the heart of the Brexit action. It is very clear from his confessions to date that the Vote Leave campaign, fronted by Boris Johnson (now the UK Foreign Secretary) and Michael Gove, knowingly attempted to circumvent electoral rules in the UK to ensure that they could throw vast wads of money well over the allowed spend threshold at those voters who were most likely to be spooked into supporting the Leave campaign. Because they exist below the radar and are not subject to the usual advertising standards regime, characteristically, campaigns of this kind are knowingly lying and deceitful. Certainly, the Leave campaign in the UK was. Advertisement What is quite clear too is that, if all of this had not been forced into the public domain, as a result of the diligent reporting of Carole Cadwalladr of The Observer, then a similar sordid, heavily (and possibly illegally) funded, push would have been made in that black hole of disinformation, in the Abortion Referendum in Ireland. Indeed, that clandestine push is almost certainly already underway. We know that the anti-choice mob have hired the services of Kanto, a company run by the former Brexit strategist Thomas Borwick. His brief was, and doubtless remains, to use Facebook data to target the more suggestible people with extreme advertising. And there is evidence already, collected by the Transparent Referendum Initiative, that the weight of money poured into Facebook ads is far higher on the anti-choice side. As ever, Facebook is the real winner, playing the role of a confederacy of profiteers, sucking up every euro they can out of the erosion of Irish democracy. Sinister Unaccountable Forces Regular readers of Hot Press will be aware of how deeply destabilising this kind of advertising can be. That, after all, is what was intended by the likes of Steve Bannon architect of Trumps victory via his Cambridge Analytica links and, more recently, advocate for a push to the far right in Europe. It doesnt take a genius to know that the very existence of this shadowy arena facilitates the campaigners most capable of utterly unscrupulous, dishonest, scare-mongering propaganda. We have pointed out here, on the basis of experience, that at least some elements of the self-styled pro-life movement the anti-choice movement will say and do anything to achieve their ends. They have a history of threatening those who oppose their views: in the past, they have directly intimidated pro-Repeal politicians, journalists and activists; and they are experts in hate mail and in stirring up fear. They have, even in the public aspect of the current campaign, deliberately used emotive distortions that spit in the face of current scientific knowledge. So what are they capable of saying and doing in Facebook ads which they assume will never be seen except by the people towards whom they are targeted? There is no reason to doubt that they are capable of publishing virtually anything, of whatever vileness, or deceitfulness, they deem most likely to be effective. Advertisement Is it not astonishing that the authorities here, as elsewhere, have allowed this grotesque netherworld to take on a life of its own? Is it not bizarre that, even now, the Irish government are mute and uncomprehending, as if they have no role to play in defending the democratic process in Ireland? Is it that they have bowed the knee to the Worlds Most Powerful Wealthy Tinpot Dictator, in the shape of Facebook boss, Mark Answerable To Nobody Zuckerberg? The dismal failure of our politicians to react notwithstanding, the media has started to become restive. Since Hot Press was published a fortnight ago, asking a series of questions in an open letter to Mark Zuckerberg, the Irish Times has published an editorial insisting that Facebook must be made accountable. RTE has also been following the story with far greater purpose. Facebook has not, at the time of writing, answered our questions. They have instead tried, in their US HQ, to begin a process of papering over the cracks. We didnt focus enough on preventing abuse, Mark Zuckerberg admitted in interviews in the US. That goes for fake news, foreign interference in elections, hate speech, in addition to developers and data privacy. These were among the issues raised by Hot Press. Zuckerberg has also outlined some tweaks that Facebook intends to put into effect, which will make it just a little bit harder for developers to harvest data from unwitting users; and which will also give more control to users over their privacy settings. This is all very well, but it is a mere daub of paint applied to the great wall of China. In particular, it does absolutely nothing now, when every hour counts to guarantee that the Irish referendum will not be turned into another playground for forces of an essentially anti-democratic, lying, propagandist modus operandi, that are determined to undermine the electoral process. As we have already said in Hot Press, Facebook can and should refuse all advertising of a political nature that is directed at Facebook users in Ireland, at least until the amendment to Repeal the 8th has taken place. And it must be absolutely clear and firm in its resolve in relation to this. Because, when you think about it, there is no other way for Facebook to ensure that it will not (any longer) provide the means for sinister, unaccountable forces to bend the Irish democratic process to their twisted intent. Advertisement Clearly Anti-Competitive In Hot Press, we have also challenged the safe harbour status which has been accorded to social media platforms, which allows them to remain unaccountable for what they publish including false and misleading advertising. They are media businesses. They are publishers. Thy live off advertising. They cannot, we believe, be allowed to operate without the responsibilities which attach to that role. Europe must act now to make this the law. On a related issue, I want to ask another question of the European Competition Authority. But it is one which the Irish government, and in particular the Department of Communications, also have to answer. All Irish media companies are required to operate under stringent advertising standards. At times, this makes advertising far less attractive. So heres the question: is it not clearly anti-competitive that social media companies and search engines currently estimated to gobble up 45% of all advertising spend in Ireland are allowed to operate, within their jurisdiction, as advertising sales houses and publishers that are completely untrammelled by the restrictions which apply to other media, in relation to the content and presentation of ads. The best example is in the political sphere: the kind of lies peddled on Facebook political ads could never be allowed on the likes of RTE. But it is pervasive: in advertising terms, right now, social media is the equivalent of the wild west. People can say almost anything to target different groups. And they make a fortune as a result. This blatantly discriminatory, anti-competitive advantage is a major factor in sucking advertising away from traditional media. And so, Hot Press is asking the European Competition Authority why nothing has been done about it. We are asking the Department of Communications the same question. And we are asking Mark Zuckerberg: how he can justify occupying what is a bizarrely privileged position, where he can take the bad money and run? We await answers from all three organisations. But we wont be holding our breath... The American rapper and songwriter has made history by becoming the first non-classical or jazz musician to be honoured with this prestigious award. Lamar won for his 2017 album DAMN. He is now being described by the mainstream press as the first ever "popstar" to win the Pulitzer Prize For Music. The time was right, said Dana Canedy, the administrator of the prizes. We are very proud of this selection. It means that the jury and the board judging system worked as its supposed to the best work was awarded a Pulitzer Prize. She added: It shines a light on hip-hop in a completely different way. This is a big moment for hip-hop music and a big moment for the Pulitzers. Lamar has yet to officially comment or even tweet yet about his historic win, which is being hailed as a "big moment for Hip-Hop" by the New York Times. Fifteen-year-old Malala Yousafzai was shot in the head in October 2012 by a Taliban gang as she walked home from school in Mingora in the Swat valley in Pakistan. A week later, at deaths door, she was flown to England and admitted to Birminghams Queen Elizabeth Hospital. Malala made a brilliant recovery and was discharged in January 2013. Bright as a button after her ordeal, she launched into a series of interviews, pledging to continue to campaign for Pakistani girls right to education. It had been her public advocacy of this cause which prompted the murderous misogynists to try to kill her. Her testimony boiled blood and melted hearts all over the world. Former British Prime Minister, Gordon Brown, initiated a petition, #I am Malala. The UN Educational, Scientific and Cultural Organisation (UNESCO) launched #StandUpForMalala, aimed at empowering women through literacy and secondary education. Evil Spirits the latest leg on the voyage of The Damned. While being one of the earliest bands to exemplify the first-wave of Punk in 76, they didnt so much jump on the bandwagon as hijack it. Stealing the march on the Sex Pistols by being the first to release a single, they were never quite the iconoclasts that some of their contemporaries aspired to be. Their form of anarchy was more akin to that of an unruly group of school-kids on a day trip. Despite the Punk poster-boy credentials, they always had a healthy love and respect for their musical forbears. The latest album bears the marks of these influences, with dollops of psychedelia, rockabilly, blue-eyed soul, and plain honest-to-goodness rock. The temporary return of bass wiz Paul Gray makes for a perfect foil to Dave Vanians assured tenor and Captain Sensibles underrated guitar chops. And not forgetting, of course, stalwarts Monty Oxymoron (keyboards) and Pinch (drums). It was all recorded over nine days in a determinedly old-school manner, Aided and abetted by the legendary and I dont use that term lightly producer Tony Visconti. Not a property related site but an excellent website nonethless in the crusade against rip off Britain. It gives alternative numbers to 0870 ones and you can search by company. As an existing print subscriber it is easy to get FREE access to all our online content. When you click get started below it will walk you through creating an online account to attach your print subscription number to. After your account is created it will ask you to either add a subscription for online access or click on the print subscriber button. Click the print subscriber button header and it will open a dropdown, now click on get started. The page will reload and you will be prompted to enter an account number and a zip code. IT IS VERY IMPORTANT TO USE THE NUMBER OFF OF THE MOST RECENT ISSUE OR ANYTHING AFTER JANUARY 28, 2019 TO GAIN ACCESS! OLD ACCOUNT NUMBERS WILL NOT WORK The account number and zip code are easily available on your most recent issue of the High Plains Journal or Midwest Ag Journal in the address fields as is shown here. Sometimes the account number has extra zero's in front of it, just ignore those. Subscribing to our services is a three step process. First you have to create an account and then you have to pick if you want to subscribe to digital and or print. Some people only want to be a digital subscriber to get access online and others want to also receive the print edition. If you are already a print subscriber and want online access, it is free, you simply have to create an online account and then attach your print subscription account number to the online account you create. The 20-episode Bloody bet thriller to be broadcast on Ucom's Armenia Premium TV channel Statement by the Co-Chairs of the OSCE Minsk Group UCOM offers affordable gadgets at bigger discount Foreign Minister of Armenia Ararat Mirzoyan will pay a working visit to New York Governments preventing publication of Haykakan Zhamanak newspaper during state of emergency UCOM prolongs the unlimited internet offer for the level up 4700 and level up 5500 subscribers Ucom employees received recognition for their services to the homeland Karen Vardanyan has allocated 105 million AMD to rescue the Yerevan Botanical Garden. "The Power of One Dram" to overcome childhood cancer Generation A 13 your chance to be the change President of the Artsakh Republic Arayik Harutyunyan met with Russian Co-Chair of the OSCE Minsk Group Igor Khovayev "uDays" special offer at Ucom: discounts for all smartphones and accessories for 2 days only For more than 3 hours, 50 or more Azerbaijani servicemen have blocked the interstate road Call on the international community for an adequate response against azerbaijani aggresssion Transformation and trust are important for success in modern banking. Artak Hanesyan UCOMS LEVEL UP 1700 REGIONAL TARIFF PLAN USERS TO RECEIVE MORE THAN THOSE IN YEREVAN Google Ad Joint statement Statement by the Co-Chairs of the OSCE Minsk Group Covid-19: 163 new cases in Armenia Armenia: Remarks by Commissioner Oliver Varhelyi at the press point with Acting Deputy Prime Minister Mher Grigoryan The United States Welcomes Azerbaijans Release of Armenian Detainees and Armenias Actions to Facilitate Demining The Coronavirus-Related Situation in Armenia International aviation: Council greenlights signing of major agreements with four countries With UCOMs level up tariff plans subscribers have unlimited access to Netflix, Duolingo and Zoom Armenia: Statement by the Spokesperson on the early parliamentary elections Armenias Parliamentary Elections PRESS STATEMENT COVID19:77 new cases Armenias early parliamentary elections were competitive and well run, but polarized and marred by aggressive rhetoric, international observers say International election observers to Armenias early parliamentary elections held press conference Today, the Florida Constitution Revision Commission approved Proposal 6012, paving the way for voters to decide a ballot measure intended to phase out greyhound racing in the state by 2020. The Humane Society of the United States applauds the action as a significant step forward in protecting countless greyhounds from inhumane treatment. The commission convenes every 20 years with the power to advance amendments to the Florida constitution and place them directly before the electorate. Florida is home to 12 of the remaining 18 greyhound racing tracks in the United States, and live greyhound racing is illegal in 40 states. Todays vote gives Florida residents an opportunity to end this cruel industry through a direct vote on the ballot in November, said Kate MacFall, the Florida state director for The HSUS. This effort would not have been possible without the tireless work of former Senate President Tom Lee, former Senate President Don Gaetz, Commissioner Brecht Heuchan, Attorney General Pam Bondi, Governor Rick Scott and Congressman Matt Gaetz. We thank them for leading the way on this important issue. A&R Meets AI: Why Your Next Label Rep Could Be A Robot While record label talent scouting may have seemed like one bastion of the industry that was safe from artificial intelligence, Warner Music Group clearly feels differently, having recently acquired Sodatone, a startup which uses technology to identify unsigned talent. ________________________________ Guest post by Bobby Owsinski of Music 3.0 Automation is taking over so many aspects of the workplace these days, but the last place youd ever think it would happen would be in record label talent scouting. Having a feel for new music and artists that may resonate with large segments of the population is a talent in itself, and one thats been rewarded with industry accolades and large salaries. Thats why it seems a little far-fetched to think that the traditional label A&R person could be replaced by a machine learning algorithm. But is the thought really that implausible? Warner Music Group doesnt think so. The company recently announced that it acquired Sodatone, a Toronto-based startup that claims to have established a reputation as the worlds premier A&R insight tool. Sodatone, which launched in 2016, claims it has developed technology that combines streaming, social and touring data with machine learning to help identify the new unsigned talent that it thinks may have some future success. Among the data that it measures is the loyalty and engagement level of an artists online fans, as well as the potential virality of a track to help make its determination. The company claims that its algorithm has been used with great success by a number of top label and publishing executives, although no specific names are offered. Every company in the music business is looking for an edge, so in the end its no surprise that at least the talent scouting portion of A&R is becoming automated. If a company has a single taste in music, its easier to have one algorithm search for new talent rather than have multiple humans (all with different tastes) doing the same thing. Good talent, especially in this area, has always been hard to find. Still, you have to wonder just how effective an automated A&R bot will be in spotting the next new underground trend that will change the face of music. After all, it happens regularly every decade or so. On the other hand, maybe it will be successful in finding one sooner (and the sooner the better!). We can only hope. Share on: Canadian Music Industry Confirms (Again) Enough Is Never Enough For Copyright Companies Since its inception, copyright has consistently grown to become longer, broader and stronger; writes Glyn Moody, as most recently evidenced by a 30 page reform proposal from the Canadian Music Policy Coalition. ____________________________ Guest post by Glyn Moody of Techdirt One of the striking features of copyright is how over three centuries, it always seems to become longer, broader and stronger. Just as a matter of probabilities, you might expect copyright to become a little shorter once in a while, but strangely that doesn't appear to happen. One consequence of the copyright ratchet is that the public is often cheated. Copyright is based on a bargain: that a time-limited, government-backed intellectual monopoly will be granted to creators in return for allowing the work to enter the public domain at the end of that limited period. Instead, what has happened repeatedly is that the copyright term has been extended before works enter the public domain, thus denying society its promised payback. If anything deserves to be called "copyright theft", it is this. The copyright ratchet is on display once more in a new op-ed Michael Geist has written for The Globe and Mail. He reports on some documents obtained under Freedom of Information laws, including a 30-page reform proposal from the Canadian Music Policy Coalition, an umbrella group representing 17 music associations. It's a submission to the Canadian government regarding a copyright review that is currently underway in that country. According to Geist, the document calls for: radical changes that would spark significant new consumer fees and Internet regulation. The plan features new levies on smartphones and tablets, Internet service provider tracking of subscribers and content blocking, longer copyright terms, and even the industry's ability to cancel commercial agreements with Internet companies if the benefits from the deal become "disproportionate." You can read the full details of how the Canadian music industry wants to ratchet copyright up a notch or two in Geist's post. With remarkable honesty, the report is entitled "Sounding Like a Broken Record", and the familiar demands to make copyright longer, broader and stronger are indeed tiresomely repetitive and anachronistic. But what makes those one-sided proposals to demand more money from the public, while depriving them of basic rights like privacy and freedom of speech, even more outrageous is the fact that the Canadian music industry is thrivingunder the current legal framework: The Canadian music market is growing much faster than the world average, with Canada jumping past Australia last year to become the sixth largest music market in the world. Music collective SOCAN, a coalition member, has seen Internet streaming revenues balloon from [Canadian] $3.4 million in 2013 to a record-setting $49.3 million in 2017. Moreover, data confirms that music piracy has diminished dramatically in Canada. Music Canada reports that Canada is below global averages for "stream ripping", the process of downloading streamed versions of songs from services such as YouTube. Last month Sandvine reported that file sharing technology BitTorrent is responsible for only 1.6 per cent of Canadian Internet traffic, down from as much as 15 per cent in 2014. Since shrinking markets and increasing levels of unauthorized downloads are routinely used to justify a strengthening of copyright legislation, it seems only fair that the public should be allowed to argue that copyright law in Canada can be dialed back now that the reverse is taking place. But the music, film and publishing industries and their lobbyists would scream in horrified outrage if such a thing were even whispered. After all, everyone knows that when it comes to copyright, enough is never enough. Follow Glyn @glynmoody on Twitter or identi.ca, and +glynmoody on Google+ Share on: State Rep. Paul Mark is looking to make an array of amendments to the budget. State Representative Mark Preps For State Budget Debate DALTON, Mass. State Rep. Paul Mark is looking to create a Berkshire County opioid task force in the budget. Mark has filed an amendment for $250,000 to start the task force with the Berkshire County sheriff's office, the Berkshire Opioid Abuse Prevention Coalition, and a number of other organizations tackling the issue. "This isn't meant to replace any of those but work with them and enhance what they're doing and try to collaborate better," the Peru Democrat said. The task force would focus on things such as prevention, education, ending the stigma, and getting into schools with prevention programs -- and not to be confused with the enforcement aspect of what was formerly known as the Berkshire County Drug Task Force. In the sheriff's department, part of the money will be focused on providing treatment and other programs to help the inmates beat the addiction when they leave jail. "It is important for the sheriff to think forward mindedly and have the services to help them get back on their feet," Mark said. The concept isn't new for Mark. About four years ago, he sponsored legislation to create the same type of force in Franklin County, parts of which are in his 2nd Berkshire District. "It has been a really great program. It was successful. It expanded. Last year when they released some of their drug overdose numbers Franklin County was one of the only land-based counties where opioid actually decreased. I think what we are doing is working. The good news for Berkshire County is that for the first time I'm filing something similar going through the Berkshire County sheriff's office to create an official opioid task force in the Berkshires as well," Mark said. Mark will also be continuing his effort to revive the Massachusetts Office of Employee Involvement and Ownership. Mark has been working on that for going on eight years. The office is eyed to provide expertise for those looking to create or change to an employee-owned model. Last year, on his seventh try, Mark secured $150,000 to reopen it. "The way revenue came in the governor, in spite of overrides, held back a lot of funding and so now we are finally at the point where myself and Sen. Julien Cyr are going to meet with Secretary Jay Ash who is going to at least host the program in his department. We're hoping it will be located at a college," Mark said. He hopes to have that office in place soon and will be taking a request for the budget for next year to continue that office with another $150,000. He is also prioritizing school transportation. The governor and the House Ways and Means budget both call for increases in Chapter 70 school aid. But, Mark said there is still more to do for the rural schools in his district. "The one item we can all agree on is let's increase the Chapter 70, the per-pupil amount. And that's what ends up happening. That's the highest dollar amount in history. That's good. That's progress," Mark said. "But now we have to look at it for this region, what do we need to supplement it to make it more fair for our schools. We look for increases in regional school transportation." He said rural transportation is one of the biggest cost drivers and he'd be sponsoring an amendment to raise that level of state support. He said he is also hearing from districts the need to increase funding for the special education circuit breaker, which is essentially a reserve account to handle any unanticipated special education costs that crop up during the year. Another amendment Mark is making is to continue funding children's advocacy centers, such as Berkshire County Kid's Place. Mark said in recent years he's taken on the lead to bring support for the organizations across the entire state. "That's a program to help kids in need when there is abuse, things people don't want to talk about. This is funding The Kid's Place and other children's advocacy centers can draw from. Obviously, it is a program you wish didn't have to exist but is really important," Mark said. The state allocated $750,000 for those programs last year and Mark said he's seeking the same level of funding for the upcoming year. The House of Representatives members filed a wide range of amendments and throughout the upcoming weeks will be crafting their version of the budget. The Senate will then take a stab at it. And finally, a conference committee will craft a final copy for voting on. Mark said the revenue numbers are looking strong, to the tune of $800 million in the positive, which could help smooth out the budgeting process. "My first four budgets, revenue was really tight. It was really difficult to even to get local stuff. Revenue came in ahead of expectations at this point in the current fiscal year and so the expectations are that things will continue to improve and we'd have a little more money to fund important programs. So, I'm hoping it won't be as contentious. I'm not hearing any hot-button issues," Mark said. However, outside of those figures, there is also a lot in flux. Mark said he is watching what happens in Washington D.C. where the federal government has been looking at slashes to programs. Mark said if the federal government's support to the state is slashed, then the state legislature will have to adjust. "If they start cutting funds or programs that are being sent to the state, we are going to have to change our priorities very quickly to try to respond," Mark said. Further, there are two ballot questions coming that could influence revenues. The fair share amendment, which is an additional tax on incomes over $1 million a year, could increase revenues if passed. A ballot question to lower the sales tax to 5 percent could decrease revenues if passed. "If either of both of those pass, it could change revenue upward or downward $1 billion in either direction. It is a lot of money and a lot to watch. We have to be cautious," Mark said. Nial DeMena gives a rundown of state regulations, benefits of cannabis and preliminary plans for Valley Green Grow in North Adams. Proposed site plan for the South State Street site. This single-family home would be demolished to make way for a dispensary. PreviousNext Marijuana Company Sees North Adams Ripe for Growth Dr. Jeffrey Goldstein envisions a large-scale industry in cannabis that will provide good jobs and benefits. He's looking to locate his first cultivation center in North Adams. NORTH ADAMS, Mass. Dr. Jeffrey Goldstein had the perfect building ready and waiting to begin cultivating cannabis. The former Lucent Technologies manufacturing plant had lain idle for years but offered more than 1 million square feet of growing space, up-to-date electrical systems and access to plenty of water. It would have been one of the largest indoor growing facilities in the world. It was a "world-class factory," he said, and he and his wife owned it. But opposition mobilized at a special town meeting in January placed a moratorium on all cannabis activities in North Andover, putting an end to Goldstein's efforts. "So we were done, it was done," Goldstein said Friday evening at a community meeting for Valley Green Grow held at Greylock Works. The radiation oncologist was ready to go back to science, back to research, back to Israel, where he's director of cannabis research at Sheba Medical Center. But the day after the vote, he was getting calls and emails asking him to consider alternative locations. "The 31st, I check my email and had half a dozen town managers and mayors call me ... come to us, we want the economic development, we want the jobs, we want the tax revenue." One of those who reached out was Nial DeMena of Manna Molecular Science, who had applied for a medical dispensary license with the former Manna Wellness. DeMena, who's in Pittsfield, had pointed to North Adams as a good place for dispensary and maybe, now, for a cultivation site. Operating as Valley Green Grow Inc., the company has filed with the state to operate a dispensary and a cultivation and processing location. The dispensary would be located at 1499 South State St., a small brick house that's found itself surrounded by commercial properties, with Cumberland Farms to its north and Hardman Industrial Park to the south. The house would be leveled and a new building in line with state regulations constructed. It's estimated that it would serve an average of 30 to 50 customers a day who would make their purchases and then leave. The second option is a large cultivation center, for which 1499 South State is acting as a placeholder. Goldstein said the company has found a suitable site in the city but it has been slow coming to terms with the owner. But he's also looking for multiple sites to prepare for when marijuana goes national. It's estimated that the dispensary would create five to 10 full-time jobs, with half those going to North Adams residents. The cultivation sites, on the scale that Goldstein's considering, could bring dozens of good full-time jobs with benefits. "The types of jobs we're creating are basically skilled labor," he said. "They're people you want to keep." Right now the industry is labor intensive but even when it inevitably moves to automation, it will still require trained technicians to operate the machines. "I don't want to develop an industry that's not sustainable," he said. "Economic sustainability for this industry is very important." Beyond being used as a recreational drug, marijuana appears to have numerous medical applications from painkillers to treating to post-traumatic stress disorders to alleviating the opioid crisis. "We think it's going to be an enormous boon for everybody," said DeMena, who gave a short presentation on the recent history of legalization, the state's requirements and the potential uses and development of cannabis plants. Even if there are people opposed to its use and production, now that it's out in the open it's easier regulate, easier to talk about, he said. "We think that there could be a very beneficial effect ... expanded economics, taxes, jobs, tourism," he said. "This is the fastest growing industry in the world ... we think for all these reasons, these are going to create a great benefit." The immediate benefits for the city is a 3 percent local tax on marijuana products and a host community agreement that Mayor Thomas Bernard, who attended Friday's meeting, is negotiating with the Valley Green Grow. Bernard said the agreement is not completed so is not yet public. In North Andover, the company had offered $5 million a year for 20 years , based on approval of the 1.1 million-square-foot facility, and $1 million for philanthropic efforts. Only two people showed up for Friday's community meeting but the group plans at least two more in the future. Applications for marijuana facilities were accepted by the state at the beginning of the month and licenses are expected to be granted beginning July 1. The city passed its marijuana zoning and enforcement ordinances, and its adoption of the local tax, last month. "We could not be happier to be in North Adams, just the response we've gotten from the community and Mayor Bernard and his administration has been very welcoming and very accepting," Goldstein said. Parliament elects Serzh Sargsyan as Prime Minister (video) 12.42 During his speech at the NA special session today in the discussion of the issue of Serzh Sargsyan being election as Prime Minister, he first thanked the ruling coalition for nominating his candidacy. He also mentioned thatit was the first time that Armenia elected Prime Minister, so, it had no objective experience. "I have never run away from my personal responsibility. Didn't I predict this day when I said that I did not claim for the post of Prime Minister? I will not talk about the political substance of my statement now. Here is standing neither an individual politician, nor the third President of Armenia, but the speaker of the RPA, which members are the majority of the Parliament. I really have parliamentary support and I am ready to serve for the country's development. I will not submit program details." 12.07 Special session of the National Assembly kicked off. Parliament discusses Serzh Sargsyan's election as Prime Minister. Serzh Sargsyan is in the session hall. Ninety MPs have registered, there is quorum. The NA Speaker Ara Babloyan announced that the session will continue before the exhaustion of the agenda and only with a half hour interval. Head of the RPA faction Vahram Baghdasaryan began presenting the achievements of Serzh Sargsyan during his tenure. Only Artak Zeynalyan is present from the Yelk faction. Live. Tense situation in different parts of city (video) 16.05 My boy is not the one who becomes miserable at the police station After an hour of rest, Nikol Pashinyan joined the demonstrators. Before that, his bandage had been changed. She is aware that the son, who had been taken to police detention, was released. According to the demonstrators, it was a method of humiliating Nikol Pashinyan. Nikol Pashinyan considers it funny that they wanted to influence him in such a way. As for the boy, he said that the boy is not the one who becomes miserable at the police station. Grigor Lusavorich Street remains closed 15.36 Traffic stopped at Grigor Lusavorich Street in Yerevan at this time. A group of demonstrators from Italy street joined the crowd gathered on Lusavorich Street. The latter blocked the intersection of the Lusavorich-Italy street with trash cans. In front of the municipality, people with red berets tried to detain a young demonstrator, but under the pressure of the citizens they released him again. The tense situation on the Haghtanak (Victory) bridge 15.22 The demonstrators closed the Haghtanak bridge just a few minutes ago. The traffic was stopped. The police demanded to open the road. The road was opened, the policemen stand in front of the demonstrators. People with red berets arrived. The demonstrators are shouting "Policeman, join," "Policeman, do not be a slave!" Under the "Shame, shame" exclamation, police special detachments ran away from the scene. 15.13 The demonstrators closed the Haghtanak bridge. The police try to remove them by force. Nikol Pashinyan once again stressed that there has been a revolutionary situation in Armenia. According to him, people come to Yerevan with marches. Thousands people in Gyumri has gone out to the streets for the demonstration, dozens of Armenians in Moscow have entered the Armenian embassy in Moscow and started a strike. It is a strike in Ijevan, Metsamor. Nikol Pashinyan intends to bring this revolutionary situation to the victorious end, he also hopes that today's rally at 18:30 in Republic Square will be the largest in the history of the 3rd Republic of Armenia Imperial Valley News Center Vice President Pence at the 34th Space Symposium Colorado Springs, Colorado - Remarks by Vice President Pence at the 34th Space Symposium: THE VICE PRESIDENT: Well, thank you all. And, General Shelton, thank you for that kind introduction. And more importantly, thank you for a lifetime of leadership and service to our country. Would all of you join me in thanking this 38-year veteran of the United States Air Force, and the Chairman of the Space Foundation, General Willie Shelton. (Applause.) To Secretary Wilbur Ross, Secretary Heather Wilson, Administrator Robert Lightfoot, Congressman Jim Bridenstine, Congressman Doug Lamborn, leaders of Americas armed forces, members of the Space Foundation, members of the National Space Councils user group, and honored guests from all across this country and all across the world, it is my great honor, as Vice President of the United States, to address this extraordinary gathering of leaders, innovators, and pioneers who are forging our future in space. It is an honor to be at the 34th Annual Space Symposium. And I thank you for the invitation. (Applause.) And to get started, I bring greetings to all of you from a great champion of Americas leadership in space and space exploration, a man who is committed to building American leadership here on Earth and in the boundless expanse of space. I bring greetings from the 45th President of the United States of America, President Donald Trump. (Applause.) Before I begin, as you are all well aware, last Friday night, at President Trumps direction, the United States, together with our allies France and the United Kingdom, launched precision strikes against the chemical weapons program of Syrian dictator Bashar al-Assad. We acted in response to Assads horrific use of chemical weapons on his own citizens a little more than a week ago. It was an attack that horrified and shocked the conscience of the world. The Armed Forces of the United States conducted what President Trump called a perfectly executed strike, crippling the chemical weapons program of the Assad regime. But standing here, Im mindful that many of the great American companies that helped develop the missile technology employed by our courageous armed forces are represented here today. And I would be remiss not to express the great admiration and gratitude of the Commander-in-Chief and the American people for all of the men and women whose creativity and ingenuity made these resources available to our armed forces. President Trump and I could not be more proud of the efforts of our armed forces and our allies this weekend. And let me say to all of you here: We could not be more grateful to all of you who work every day to provide for the common defense for the United States of America. (Applause.) It really is a great honor to be here at this 34th Annual Space Symposium. You know, since day one of our administration, President Trump has been working to keep his promise to restore Americas proud legacy of leadership in space, because the President knows that space exploration is essential to our national security, its essential to our nations prosperity. But the President and I also understand it is essential to the very character of America. The work each of you do in the skies and in space supports our armed forces, spurs scientific discovery, drives innovation, helps Americas farmers feed the world, creates the jobs of the future, and fills the rising generation with wonder and pride. The companies represented here today, and the thousands of American companies that form your supply chains, employ men and women in all 50 states men and women who helped build the most advanced rockets, spaceships, and satellites in the world. You know, Ive seen the importance of this work firsthand, as Ive traveled across the country on the Presidents behalf to meet with the men and women who are forging Americas future in space. In Huntsville, Alabama, I met the workers who are building the worlds most powerful rocket NASAs Space Launch System. At Californias Mojave Spaceport, I saw the vessel that will carry the first generation of space tourists to the edge of the Earths atmosphere, and the massive plane that will launch satellites while soaring at high altitudes. Here in Colorado, at Waterton Canyon, I met the engineers and technicians who are building the Mars Insight Lander and the next generation of GPS satellites. At the Redstone Arsenal in Alabama and at Colorados own Schriever Air Force Base, I spoke with the members of our armed forces who operate the space systems that provide the eyes and ears of Americas warfighters as they defend our freedom across the world. And in Houston and Cape Canaveral, I met with the men and women of NASA the permanent symbol of Americas unfailing commitment to space exploration, and an administration that will celebrate its 60th anniversary later this year. And I was most inspired, perhaps, to meet the newest class of astronauts - men and women who embody the courage and pioneering spirits that have always defined America and continues to spur our people to break old barriers, set new records, and carry our nation to even greater heights. All across this nation, leaders from every field are advancing American interests in space, and that includes an accomplished leader whos actually here with us today. An American patriot who has served his country with distinction during his 30-year career at NASA, and his leadership will be missed when he retires at the end of this month. Would you all join me in thanking NASA Administrator Robert Lightfoot for his long service to this nation and to its space program. (Applause.) And were hopeful, very soon, that those big shoes will be filled and that the Senate will confirm a man who also joins us here today, a great champion of the men and women at NASA and a great champion of the Presidents vision for NASA and for American leadership in space. Would you join me in thanking Congressman Jim Bridenstine for stepping forward to serve our nation at such a time as this. Thank you, Jim. (Applause.) With our vision of renewed American leadership in space and the action already taken by the National Space Council, the record is clear: Under President Donald Trump, America is leading in space once again. (Applause.) Last year, after laying dormant for nearly a quarter-century, President Trump relaunched the National Space Council to coordinate our nations space activities across the administration, and bring the full force of our national interest to bear to secure American leadership in space. Its my great honor, as Vice President, to serve as the Councils Chairman. And one of the core missions of the National Space Council is to foster the cooperation and sharing of information across the public and private sectors, because President Trump knows that many of the best ideas to secure Americas leadership in space will come from well outside the halls of government. Thats why weve assembled a Users Advisory Group that brings together some of the brightest and most accomplished people in America to accelerate innovation across our space enterprise. In fact, today, were pleased to announce that the new chair of the Users Advisory Group, and a widely respected leader will be participating in the Space Summit Space Symposium a little bit later this week, will be former commander of the United States Strategic Command, a 39-year veteran of the United States Navy. Would you join me in thanking Admiral Jim Ellis for stepping forward to lead the Users Advisory Group. (Applause.) You know, as President Trump said the day he revived the National Space Council, The human soul yearns for discovery. And at the Presidents direction, the National Space Council has been working tirelessly to reorient Americas space program toward human exploration. In December, the President signed the first set of the National Space Councils recommendations. Space Policy Directive-1 instructs NASA to send American astronauts back to the moon, where we will establish the capacity, with international and commercial partners, to send Americans to Mars. (Applause.) In recent months, weve also developed regulatory reform proposals designed to transform the licensing regimes that oversee launch, re-entry, and new commercial operations in space proposals that President Trump will sign in the near future. Under these reforms, Commerce Secretary Wilbur Ross and Transportation Secretary Elaine Chao will continue leading their departments to modernize and streamline outdated regulatory systems so that we can empower Americas burgeoning commercial launch industry and innovative space companies to unlock new opportunities, new technologies, and new sources of prosperity, without the present barriers imposed by cumbersome and duplicative regulatory structures. And today, were pleased to announce that the National Space Council will be sending President Trump a third set of recommendations to address the challenges posed by our increasingly congested space environment. At this very moment, as many in this room understand, there are tens of thousands of man-made objects orbiting the Earth, including more than 1,500 active satellites and thousands of inactive satellites and spacecraft fragments. And as commercial companies continue to send even more satellites into orbit, the volume of space traffic will only increase in the years ahead. In low-Earth orbit, objects travel as fast as 4.3 miles per second, which means that collisions can scatter thousands of spacecraft remnants across the orbital environment. We actually saw this in 2009 when an accidental collision between an American satellite and an inactive Russian spacecraft sent nearly 3,000 pieces of debris into orbit, putting at risk our satellites and those of us here on Earth who depend on them. President Trump knows that a stable and orderly space environment is critical to the strength of our economy and the resilience of our national security systems. And thats why the National Space Council has developed the first comprehensive space traffic management policy, which we will soon be sending to the Presidents desk for his approval. (Applause.) This new policy directs the Department of Commerce to provide a basic level of space situational awareness for public and private use, based on the space catalog compiled by the Department of Defense, so that our military leaders can focus on protecting and defending our national security assets in space. The policy will also encourage the commercial space industry to partner with the government to develop data-sharing systems, technical guidelines, and safety standards to apply domestically and be promoted internationally that will help minimize debris, avoid satellite collisions during launch and while in orbit. Under this new policy, we will preserve the integrity of our critical space assets and foster an orbital environment where Americas space companies can propel our nation to new heights and greatness for generations to come. In addition to the efforts of the National Space Council, last month President Trump announced a new National Space Strategy, which you may have read about. And it calls for a unified and coordinated approach within the government and alongside commercial and international partners to ensure that the United States retains our rightful role as the worlds leading spacefaring nation. To meet the security challenges in space, President Trump has also recognized that, in his words, space is a warfighting domain, just like the land, air, and sea. And to deter and defeat the threats posed by Russia and Chinas aggressive pursuit of anti-satellite capabilities, our President directed the Department of Defense to strengthen the resilience of our nations space systems so America remains as dominant in space for security as we are here on Earth. (Applause.) And finally, just a few weeks ago, the President signed into law nearly $21 billion for NASA over Fiscal Year 2018 that focuses on human space exploration, and paves the way for a growing commercial presence in low-Earth orbit. As President Trump has said, we are, in his words, a nation of pioneers. And as these actions I trust make clear, under this administration, we are proudly carrying on the American tradition of exploration and discovery into the infinite frontier of space. But for all that weve accomplished, Im here to tell you that the most important work and the greatest triumphs for Americas space enterprise we know still lie ahead. Today, we stand at the dawn of a new era of human activity in space; a turning point that will bring new opportunities and new challenges. For the past 45 years, since the last Apollo astronauts lifted off from the moons surface, weve made extraordinary progress in learning how to survive and thrive in space. Weve learned about the effects of microgravity on the human body, allowing our astronauts to travel further than ever before. Weve assembled the worlds largest constellation of satellites that gives our nation a strategic advantage in the way we communicate, travel, farm, trade, and of course, defend our nation and our allies. Weve strengthened our international partnerships. Weve forged scientific and medical breakthroughs and pioneered new technologies, including life-support systems and in-space manufacturing that continue to redefine what we can do and how far we can go in space. And weve witnessed the meteoric rise of Americas commercial space sector, as entrepreneurs, investors, and innovators build new businesses and entire industries from satellite servicing and asteroid mining to space tourism and cargo delivery. But low-Earth orbit is merely the gateway and training ground for the infinite frontier of space. And after we spent nearly half-a-century learning how to live and work in space, President Donald Trump believes the time has come, once again, to push onward and upward to new horizons and new destinations in the outer reaches of space. (Applause.) You know, from the earliest days of our nation, the United States government and the American people have played a unique role in blazing new trails into uncharted territory. From the $2,500 that Congress appropriated to finance Lewis and Clarks expedition into the wilderness an expedition that actually began in the state of Indiana (laughter and applause) to the land grants and Homestead Act that fueled Americas western expansion, to the investments that created and sustained NASA at the dawn of the space age the tradition of public support for exploration, I can assure you, continues under this administration. The budget that President Trump signed into law last month reflects our administrations confidence that NASA will lead the nation as we embark on new journeys to far-off places. And with the help of groundbreaking technologies advanced by Americas private enterprise, we know we will go faster and at a lower cost to taxpayer than ever before. Under the Presidents leadership, NASA will lead the way back to the moon, starting with the construction of a Lunar Orbital Platform the Gateway which will provide a scientific outpost, supply center and eventually a fuel depot, and will give our nation a strategic presence in the lunar domain. From this orbiting platform, and with our international and commercial partners, American astronauts will return to the moon to explore its surface and learn how to harness its resources to launch expeditions to Mars. And as we push human exploration deeper into space, we will unleash the boundless potential of Americas pioneering commercial space companies in low-Earth orbit, beginning with the largest orbiting laboratory in history, the International Space Station. You know, when the space station program was first established, no one foresaw the extraordinary advances in space technology and commerce that we all take for granted today. And the skyrocketing demand for affordable access to space has already transformed the promise of low-Earth orbit beyond our wildest dreams from 30 years ago, proving that the old government-run operating model wont last forever, and it wont have to. Thats why, with the direct government funding deadline for the International Space Station just seven years away, our administration is investing in the science and technology capabilities that commercial space companies will use to build the orbital platforms of the future - where the government will be a tenant and a customer, and not the landlord. As President Trump has said, It is Americas destiny to bethe leader among nations on our adventure into the great unknown. And were going to write the next chapter of that adventure with American industry and with American ingenuity in a full partnership with the American people. (Applause.) Now, the task before us will not be easy. It will involve hardship and hazard, and it will require sacrifice and determination. But as we prepare to mark the 50th anniversary of the first moon landing next year, we do well to pause to remember the giants on whose shoulders we stand and draw renewed inspiration from their courage and their example. Heroes like Alan Shepard and John Glenn who led a generation of pioneers into the void as the first Americans in space and in orbit. Or Ed White, the first American to leave behind the safety of his spacecraft and venture into the emptiness of space. Or Gene Cernan, who survived a grueling two-hour spacewalk after losing upwards of 10 pounds in sweat - through sheer grit. Or, of course, Neil Armstrong and Buzz Aldrin, whose fearless first steps on the face of the Moon proved that America can, and will again, accomplish anything we set our minds to. (Applause.) These were remarkable Americans. And they chose to do something extraordinary in their time - and so must we. It would be easier and, some may conclude, safer just to stay put, let someone else go. But like all of you here, those who went before chose to lead in space, not just to propel our economy and ensure our national security, but above all because they knew that the rules and the values of space - like every great frontier - will be written by those who have the courage to get there first and the commitment to stay. And today, President Trump and our entire administration believe it is our duty to ensure that our most cherished values and ideals are at the foundation of the future of the boundless expanse of space. (Applause.) So lets do as Americans have done throughout our history. With the courage to dream bigger, the determination to work harder, the confidence to push farther than the trailblazers who showed us the way, lets go meet the future that awaits. And as we renew our commitment to lead, lets go with confidence and lets go with faith - the faith that we do not go alone. For as millions of Americans have believed throughout the long and storied history of this nation of pioneers, I believe, as well, there is nowhere we can go from His spirit; that if we rise on the wings of the dawn, settle on the far side of the sea, even if we go up to the heavens, even there His hand will guide us, and His right hand will hold us fast. Its an honor to be with you today. I leave here today with renewed confidence that with your support, with the efforts of the National Space Council, with the hard work of all who labor across the nation to forge Americas future in space, with the strong leadership of President Donald Trump, the courage of a new generation of explorers, and with Gods help, I know America will once again astonish the world with the heights that we reach and the wonders we achieve, and we will lead the world into space once again. Thank you. God bless you. And God bless the United States of America. UC Davis Students Breed Beans for Organic Farming Davis, California - Graduate students at the University of California, Davis, have begun field tests on very rare commodities: high-yield, disease-resistant bean varieties that can thrive on organic farms. Most crops about 95 percent have been bred for conventional farming and can be difficult to grow in organic systems, said Travis Parker, a Ph.D. student in plant biology who is leading the project. These new bean varieties could make a big difference in performance and profitability of organic legumes like pinto, black and kidney beans, as well as heirloom-like varieties with high culinary quality. Parker is working with a team of student breeders under the guidance of Professor Paul Gepts, a bean geneticist with the UC Davis Department of Plant Sciences. The bean project is part of a larger plant-breeding effort at UC Davis to develop new varieties of tomatoes, peppers, beans and other vegetable crops that can flourish in both organic and conventional systems. Why breeding matters To create a winning variety, breeders cross plants with desired traits and select the best offspring over multiple generations. It takes several years of plot testing to give birth to a variety good enough to name and sell. With each new generation of crops, breeders pick plants that perform well in the system in which they are being raised. Thats usually conventional farming, which is the most common system. Conventional agriculture uses some applications that organic farmers dont use, such as synthetic pesticides and fertilizers. As a result, those crops can be tricky for organic farmers to grow because they are not especially well suited to organic production. Parkers team recently received a $25,000 grant from Western Sustainable Agriculture Research and Education, a U.S. Department of Agriculture program that funds innovative projects in agriculture. The grant will support the teams ongoing efforts to identify the genetic basis of important traits, develop tools to accelerate the time it takes to measure traits as plants grow in the field and ultimately release new varieties specifically bred for high performance on organic farms. We have begun trials on virus-resistant lines in fields on campus and on farms in California, Parker said. We hope to have varieties available for commercial production soon after 2020. The beauty (and challenge) of beans Legumes are nutritious and especially important to sustainable agriculture. They contain symbiotic bacteria in their roots that produce nitrogen compounds, which feed the crop and enrich the soil even after harvest. Thats why beans are so useful in rotation with other crops, Parker said. Plus, dry beans have a long shelf life so farmers can store them and sell them according to market conditions. But conventionally bred beans can present a challenge for organic farmers. With limited use of herbicides, organic farmers have a tough time controlling the weeds that battle young crops for water, sun and food. To address that, Parker and his team are breeding fast-growing plants that can outcompete weeds. The new varieties will grow tall enough to shade out weeds without tipping over to make it easier for farmers to use tractors to mechanically control weeds. More crops in the works The bean project is part of a larger effort UC Davis launches in 2015. Funded by a $1 million grant from the U.S. Department of Agriculture, the UC Davis Plant Breeding Center is working with the Organic Seed Alliance and organic growers in California to set priorities and develop new crop varieties. Students are leading the project as part of the centers innovative efforts to train a new generation of plant breeders. We want to give our plant-breeding students experience with real cultivar development that results in products that growers and seed producers want, said Professor Charlie Brummer, director of the UC Davis Plant Breeding Center. This project lets us put those pieces together in a very meaningful and exciting way. FTC Commissioner Terrell McSweeny to Resign Washington, DC - Terrell McSweeny, who has served as a Commissioner of the Federal Trade Commission since April 2014, has issued a statement announcing her resignation later this month. Commissioner McSweeny has been a steadfast advocate for consumers and competition at the Federal Trade Commission, Acting FTC Chairman Maureen K. Ohlhausen said. Her expertise and enthusiasm have been important assets to the agency. She has been an exemplary Commissioner and we wish her well in the future. McSweeny has served as an FTC Commissioner since April 28, 2014, following her appointment by President Barack Obama. Her last day at the Commission will be April 27. Prior to joining the FTC, Commissioner McSweeny served as Chief Counsel for Competition Policy and Intergovernmental Relations for the U.S. Department of Justice Antitrust Division. She joined the Antitrust Division after serving as Deputy Assistant to the President and Domestic Policy Advisor to the Vice President from January 2009 until February 2012, advising President Obama and Vice President Biden on policy in a variety of areas, including health care, innovation, intellectual property, energy, education, womens rights, criminal justice and domestic violence. McSweenys government service also includes her work as Senator Joe Bidens Deputy Chief of Staff and Policy Director in the U.S. Senate, where she managed domestic and economic policy development and legislative initiatives, and as Counsel on the Senate Judiciary Committee, where she worked on issues such as criminal justice, innovation, women's rights, domestic violence, judicial nominations and immigration and civil rights. She also worked as an attorney at O'Melveny & Myers LLP. Marukyan to Ashotayn: Are you something to love? Edmon Marukyan, a member of the Yelk faction, in his speech addressed to RPA MP Armen Ashotyan at today's NA special session: "You say, 'Let's love one another,' are you something to love? Tell me, why do not we ever be able to fly to Europe in the daytime? You talk about Pericles, talk about yourselves; there is a person among you who has called his village's square by his own name. At age 31, I won your favorite Victor Dallakyan in my polls, who was supported by the whole state and statehood. Well, where is he now? Are you talking about Vanadzor's cafes? Did not you have been at Massiv's cafes? Are yours just Marriott's cafes and so on? Mr. Sargsyan, why do you not close the Government sessions? Do you like the program Haylur? Did it show something about the actions in the downtown of the capital. We would like to ruin your event. You say, we are strong, but Armenia is going out of hand. I do not understand, do the people from Masiv not emigrate? I do not want our other hearings to be about the next victims and wounded. You are responsible, with Serzh Azatich, for what is happening in the streets of the capital. We have come to say we will vote against!" Vice-Speaker of the National Assembly Mikayel Melkumyan stated in his speech that everyone in their faction would vote for his conscience and idea. "That is, we are going to vote freely." FTC Approves Final Consent Settling Charges that Bollman Hat Company Made Deceptive Made in USA and Certification Claims Washington, DC - Following a public comment period, the Federal Trade Commission has approved a final consent order settling charges that Pennsylvania-based Bollman Hat Company has agreed to stop deceptive use of its American Made Matters certification and marketing materials. First announced in January 2018, the FTCs complaint against Bollman Hat Company and its wholly-owned subsidiary, SaveAnAmericanJob, LLC, alleges that Bollman and its subsidiary deceived consumers with Made in USA claims for Bollman hats and third-party products. According to the complaint, Bollman and its subsidiary marketed hats with claims such as American Made Matters, Choose American, and Made in USA since 1868. In fact, more than 70 percent of their hat styles are wholly imported as finished products. Of the remaining styles, many contain significant imported content, according to the complaint. The FTC also alleges that Bollman and its subsidiary made deceptive claims through a U.S.-origin seal they introduced in 2010, known as American Made Matters. In addition to using the American Made Matters seal to market their own products, Bollman and its subsidiary licensed the seal to any company claiming to have a U.S.-based manufacturing factory or one product with a U.S.-origin label, and meeting several membership requirements, including self-certifying that at least 50% of the cost of at least one of their products was incurred in the United States, with final assembly or transformation in the U.S., and paying an annual licensing fee of $99, according to the complaint. The Commission has an Enforcement Policy Statement on U.S. Origin Claims, and other business guidance on how companies can comply with the Made in the USA standard. The FTCs Made in the USA page features cases, instructive closing letters, and the brochure Complying with the Made in USA Standard, which answers many of the questions companies ask. The Commission vote to approve the final order in this case was 2-0. (FTC File No. 172 3197; the staff contact is Julia Solomon Ensor, Bureau of Consumer Protection, 202-326-2377.) Sandeep Thottapilly (center), his wife Soumya and their two children, Siddhant and Saachi, are shown on a family vacation in Oregon, days before they were reported missing. The Thottapillys vehicle plunged from a steep embankment into the rain-swollen Eel River near Leggett, California, as the family was driving back to their home in Southern California. (twitter photo) Women activists of the Left Front stage a demonstration against incidents of rape in Unnao, Uttar Pradesh, and Kathua, Jammu and Kashmir, in Kolkata April 17. In Delhi, a mentally challenged 12-year-old girl was raped by a neighbor, while his friends filmed the incident. (Kuntal Chakrabarty/IANS photo) S. Sargsyan twice thanks Ed. Marukyan (video) NA Speaker Ara Babloyan, in his speech addressing the actions organized by Nikol Pashinyan, stated at the National Assembly today: "Unfortunately, people have chosen the path of clashes instead of expressing their dissatisfaction in civilized way and, unfortunately, we have sufferers." Serzh Sargsyan stated in his final speech that he did not agree with many stated ideas. "Sometimes my partner's speeches contain formulas that could be more modest. And there were allegations from the opposition deputies that I do not agree with, and [I] do not address them separately, as their best judge is the time," said Sargsyan and added, "It was strange for me, what do you say for the 3rd and not the 4th term, as I was prime minister before being president?" Addressing the Yelk (Way out) faction Aram Sargsyan, he urged not to exploit Vazgen Sargsyan's words. And to Edmon Marukyan, he said: "You have proved very convincing that the constitutional amendments were needed. And, thank God, there is no picture here because there is no longer picture power, but there is political power. Also, I am grateful for the goodwill and in order to live in bright Armenia, in the prosperous Armenia, it is necessary that the volatile volcanoes do not start suddenly, and for this, there should not be people who meddle." Serzh Sargsyan's candidacy for the post of Prime Minister was put to the vote, but secretary of the Yelk faction Gevorg Gorgisyan demanded a 20-minute break. Envoy To OPCW Says Russia Found Participants of Staged 'Chemical Attack' Video in Syria By TASS April 16, 2018 " Information Clearing House " - THE HAGUE, April 16. /TASS/. Russian specialists who probed into the rumored use of chemical weapons in Syrias Douma have found some participants in the faked video footage presented as evidence of an alleged chemical attack, Russias representative at the Organization for the Prohibition of Chemical Weapons, Aleksandr Shulgin, said at the 58th meeting of the OPCW Executive Council on Monday. "Not a single witness or affected patient in hospital has been found. Nor any traces of chemical ammunition have been identified. Instead, we managed to find those who participated in filming the faked video, which was eventually presented as proof of the chemical attack," Shulgin said. "They showed us the scenes in which they took part in the staged video. Both have medical education. They work for Doumas ambulance service," he added. Shulgin described the released video as a provocation and pointed to "pseudo-humanitarian NGOs, including the White Helmets" as its "makers." Are You Tired Of The Lies And Non-Stop Propaganda? Get Your FREE Daily Newsletter "We said before and we are saying once again that these organizations are on the payroll of the governments of the United States, Britain and some other countries," he said. "They are paid agents, actors, who perform the role of backstage extras when they are asked to. For the Western countries money they make various faked videos and spread photographs with the most favored type of scenes - poor children - victims of Assads bloody regime." Shulgin showed to the participants in the Executive Councils meeting pictures of participants in such photo sessions proving well enough "the engaged actors all of a sudden rise from the dead and look alive and healthy." "That children are used in such fakes is particularly disgusting," he said. A number of NGOs including the White Helmets have been claiming that chemical weapons were used in Syrias Douma on April 7. The US, Britain and France dealt a missile strike last weekend against Syrias military and civilian infrastructures ostensibly in retaliation for the alleged chemical attack by Syrian government forces. Staffers of the Russian center for the reconciliation of conflicting parties in Syria explored Douma on April 9 to find no traces of chemical weapons. Experts from the Organization for the Prohibition of Chemical Weapons arrived in Damascus on April 14 with the aim to proceed with the investigation. This article was originally published by "TASS " - ===== Fact or fiction? Syria 'chemical attack': Family seen in hospital video speak Join the Discussion It is not necessary for ICH readers to register before placing a comment. We ask that you treat others with respect. Take a moment to read the following - Comment Policy - What Or Who is Information Clearing House and Purpose and Intent of this website: It is unacceptable to slander, smear or engage in personal attacks on authors of articles posted on ICH. Those engaging in that behavior will be banned from the comment section. April 16, 2018 " Information Clearing House " - TEHRAN, April 16 (Xinhua) -- Iranian President Hassan Rouhani said the U.S.-led attacks on Syria violated international law and if they go unanswered by international bodies, more of such chaos in the world will be conceivable, Tasnim news agency reported on Monday. The U.S.-led strikes on Syria proves that Washington has direct ties with terrorists, Rouhani said, stressing "The Americans showed such a reaction when they felt the terrorists were dislodged from an important region like Eastern Ghouta," Rouhani said in a phone call with Russian President Vladimir Putin. Are You Tired Of The Lies And Non-Stop Propaganda? Get Your FREE Daily Newsletter Putin said further Western missile strikes on Syria would lead to chaos in international relations, Tehran Times reported. "Vladimir Putin, in particular, stressed that if such actions in violation of the UN Charter continue, then it will inevitably lead to chaos in international relations." Earlier Saturday morning, the United States, in cooperation with Britain and France, attacked Syrian military facilities allegedly related to Syria's chemical weapons capabilities. The move was to retaliate for the alleged use of chemical weapons by Syrian troops early the month in an attack on the rebel-held town of Douma near the Syrian capital Damascus. The Syrian government has strongly denied the allegations. Iranian political and military officials on Saturday strongly condemned the U.S.-led strike on Syria's military facilities. Alas, This Is Far From Over! By The Saker April 16, 2018 " Information Clearing House " - Lets begin by a short summary of events. About a month ago Nikki Haley announces to the UNSC that the USA is ready to violate the rules of this very self-same UNSC should a chemical attack happen in Syria Then the Russians announced that they have evidence that a chemical false flag is being prepared in Syria Then a chemical attack (supposedly) takes place (in a location surrounded and, basically, controlled by government forces!) The OPWC sends investigators (in spite of western powers loudly proclaiming that no investigation was needed) The AngloZionists then bomb Syria Next, the UNSC refuses to condemn the violation of its own rules and decisions Finally, the US Americans speak of a perfect strike Now tell me do you get a sense that this is over? If you tell me that 32/103 is hardly perfect, I will reply that you are missing the point. In fact, if anything, 32/103 is further incentive to bomb again! Are You Tired Of The Lies And Non-Stop Propaganda? Get Your FREE Daily Newsletter Lets look at the differently for a second and ask this: what has the AngloZionist attack actually demonstrated? The western general public is so terminally zombified that false flag attacks can now be announced 4 weeks in advance The Europeans now live by the motto my honor is called solidarity (a variation of the SS motto my honor is loyalty) Lead by the USA, western countries have no objections to wars started in violation of their own national laws The UN Security Council has no objections to wars started in violation of the UN Charter and International Law The PRC leaders, in their infinite wisdom, act as if they have nothing personal at stake and act like bystanders The Israelis, via the UN Neocons, are now in total control of the Empire and use it to clean house next door Oh, I hear the objections. They go something like this: But the attack was a dismal failure! So what? the Empire did not pay any price for executing it. But the US Americans did blink! The attacked from Jordanian airspace and from the Red Sea! They avoided the Russians completely! They are afraid of them! So what? They still bombed a Russian ally with total impunity. But, surely you are not suggesting that the Russians should have started a war against the USA over a strike which did not even kill a single person? No, of course not, but by not taking any action the Russians also failed to deter any future attacks. But what could the Russians have done? Now *that* is the right question! Lets look at it a little closer. Roughly speaking, the Russians have a choice of 3 types of retaliatory measures: political, economic and military. However, each one of them has a specific set of prerequisites which are currently problematic to say the least: Measures Political Economic Military Prerequisites Assumes a minimal amount of decency, integrity and respect for the rule of law by the rest of the planet. Assumes that other countries, especially China, would be willing and able to support such measures. Assumes that Russia has the military capability to defeat the AngloZionist coalition. Current reality Russia can moan, bitch, complain, protest, appeal to higher values, logic or facts nobody gives a damn. The Chinese and the rest of them are not willing to do anything at this time to support Russia. Russia can militarily defeat the AngloZionists, but only by risking the future of our planet. This really can be summarized a simple sentence: the AngloZionist Hegemony is a threat for the entire planet, but nobody besides Russia and Iran is willing to take it on. Aint that an irony! The so-called Christian West has become a willing host for its Zionist parasite and the only ones with the courage and moral integrity to take it on are Orthodox Christians and Muslims! Sic transit gloria mundi indeed But what is even more important is this: while it is true that the US Neocons did not succeed in delivering the kind of massive attack they would have wanted to, and while it is true that the US attack was just about as lame as can be, you need to completely forget about these facts. Facts simply dont matter. And neither does logic. All that matters are perceptions! And the perception is that we (the AngloZionist rulers and their serfs) kicked Assads ass and that we will do it again if we feel like it. That is all that matters in the Empire of Illusions which the AngloZionist Hegemony has become. As soon as you understand that, you also will have to agree that Trump was right: it was a perfect strike (again, not in reality, but in the world of illusions created around it). So now we come full circle. The AngloZionist Hegemony demands that the entire planet bows down and worships it. Except for Russia and Iran, everybody meekly goes down on their knees or, at most, meekly looks away. In their own delusional reality, the Mericans feel empowered to smack down Russia or Iran at anytime. There is nothing Iran can do to stop them, and while Russia can, she can only do that at the risk of the future of our entire planet. Now you tell me do you really think this is over? This article was originally published by "The Saker " - ===== Russian WARSHIPS on way to Syria as part of MILITARY buildup amid World War 3 fears Join the Discussion It is not necessary for ICH readers to register before placing a comment. We ask that you treat others with respect. Take a moment to read the following - Comment Policy - What Or Who is Information Clearing House and Purpose and Intent of this website: It is unacceptable to slander, smear or engage in personal attacks on authors of articles posted on ICH. Those engaging in that behavior will be banned from the comment section. Home Search ICH Attempting the Unachievable Why have plans to pull US troops out of Syria been shelved? By Abdel Bari Atwan April 16, 2018 " Information Clearing House " - Nikki Haley, the US ambassador to the United Nations and one of the Trump administrations hawks, announced on Sunday that it had decided to shelve plans to pull US troops out of Syria. This means that it is changing current American policy, which had tacitly conceded defeat in Syria, and planning a new stage of escalation which could focus on overthrowing the regime. US forces in Syria number some 2,000 personnel deployed east of the Euphrates in support of Kurdish Syrian Democratic Party (SDP) forces. The new plan may entail increasing the size of these forces, strengthening the US alliance with the Kurds, and pressing ahead with the promised establishment of an independent Kurdish entity in northeastern Syria, stretching from al-Hasaka and Qamishli to Ain al-Arab, al-Bab and Jarablus and possibly including Afrin. Are You Tired Of The Lies And Non-Stop Propaganda? Get Your FREE Daily Newsletter Over the past seven years the US has spent tens of billions of dollars trying to get the regime overthrown without success, especially after the balance of power on the ground shifted to the advantage of its allies. What chance would a fresh attempt stand of succeeding now, given the Russian and Iranian presence in support of the regime? These are signs of confusion and delusion, a futile attempt to achieve unattainable goals. But that does not make it any less alarming, given the scale of the death and destruction that could be inflicted on Syria in the process, especially with the cold war between the two superpowers heating up and the US poised to scrap the Iranian nuclear deal. The US sent more than 170,000 troops to Iraq not including the contractors, i.e. the mercenaries employed by companies such as Blackwater but did not manage to prevail or withstand the human and material losses inflicted by resistance operations: some 5,000 killed and 30,000 injured, and costs amounting to trillions of dollars. So how can the 2,000 troops in Syria be expected to fare against the new resistance that is rapidly being formed to confront them? The situation on the ground is continuing to turn fast in favour of the Syrian-Iranian-Russian-Lebanese (Hezbollah) axis. It has nothing to lose, and has acquired enormous combat experience of all types. The coming few months are likely to prove very difficult for the Americans, and very costly, not just in Syria but also in Iraq. It would not be surprising if Israel and the various lobbies that support were behind this American strategic volte-face. For Israel is in a state of panic as a result of the collapse of its special relationship with Russia following its raid on the T-4 airbase and of the growing Iranian presence on the ground in Syria. Which raises the question of who will be cover the costs of this American move? There are no prizes for guessing the answer: it has already been spelled out. This article was originally published by " Raialyoum " - ===== Join the Discussion It is not necessary for ICH readers to register before placing a comment. We ask that you treat others with respect. Take a moment to read the following - Comment Policy - What Or Who is Information Clearing House and Purpose and Intent of this website: It is unacceptable to slander, smear or engage in personal attacks on authors of articles posted on ICH. Those engaging in that behavior will be banned from the comment section. Search Information Clearing House === Click Here To Support Information Clearing House Your support has kept ICH free on the Web since 2002. Click for Spanish , German , Dutch , Danish , French , translation- Note- Translation may take a moment to load. Army officials understand that the choice of targets was carefully made for their connection to the presence of chemical weapons in Syria rather than in an effort to strike at the regime of President Bashar Assad himself or attempts by Iran to establish a presence in the country. April 16, 2018 " Information Clearing House " - Israeli defense officials are refraining to the extent that they can from commenting on the attack in Syria carried out by the United States, Britain and France early Saturday, but they are preparing to address the consequences of the strike and its significance for the militarys operational policies in the region. The assessment of defense officials is that Israel has been left on its own when it comes to the Iranian presence in Syria, and there is concern that the Russian, Iranian and Syrian response to Saturdays attack will primarily result in a change in the Israeli armys freedom of action in the region. Even before the strike, the expectation among Israeli army officials was that an American strike on Syria would not prompt military retaliation against Israel. The major concern has been that the Russian and Iranian response would be a change in their military approach in the region, making it more difficult for Israel to operate relatively freely in the airspace over Lebanon and Syria. This would occur if Russia decides to provide Syria with advanced missiles in response to the attack by Western powers, or permit the deployment of advanced anti-aircraft that would even threaten Israel Air Force planes flying over Lebanon. The Israeli army was aware of plans for the attack before it was carried out and the military was on alert in the north but refrained from issuing civil defense instructions to the public. The army has tried to strike a balance between preparedness in the event of a deterioration of the situation and conveying a sense of ordinary routine to the public. Army officials make a distinction between the attack by the Western countries, which was thought unlikely to prompt a response against Israel, and an earlier attack on the T-4 base in Syria that killed senior Iranian air force personnel who were involved in an Iranian drone project in Syria, and which reports have attributed to Israel. In this instance, the Israel Defense Forces is still on high alert on the Lebanese and Syrian borders as a result of concern over an Iranian response through Hezbollah or militias in Syria. Attacking Syria: Thumbing Noses at Constitution and Law It was a sad spectacle to see U.S. brass rubbishing the Constitution and trying to silence critics of the U.S. strike on Syria, says Ray McGovern in this commentary. By Ray McGovern April 16, 2018 " Information Clearing House " - The U.S. Constitution and international law suffered a stinging blow last night at the hands of an odd coalition that might be called Goldilocks and two moral dwarfs posing as Marine generals, together with a Right Dishonorable harridan and a young French poodle. As was the case 15 years ago when the U.S. and UK launched a war of aggression against Iraq, the pretext was so-called weapons of mass destruction (WMD) this time the claimed use on April 7 of chlorine (and maybe the nerve agent sarin who knows?) in Duma a suburb of Damascus. And this time French President Emmanuel Macron was allowed to join, as junior partner, the gang that cant lie straight. The attacks by the Gang of Three came hours before specialists from the UN Organization for the Prohibition of Chemical Weapons were to arrive in Syria to study soil and other samples in Duma. The question leaps out: Why could the Gang not wait until the OPCW had a chance to find out whether there was such an attack and, if so, what chemical(s) were used? Are You Tired Of The Lies And Non-Stop Propaganda? Get Your FREE Daily Newsletter Sentence First, Verdict Later U.S. Defense Secretary James Mattis could only say that he believes there was a chemical attack and that perhaps sarin, in addition to chlorine, was involved. Serving until now as the only available evidence are highly dubious reports from agenda-laden social media. What is clear is that the U.S./UK/French Gang wanted to strike before the OPCW investigators had a chance to ascertain what happened. Hmm. All the earmarks of Sentence first; verdict afterwards. Former Secretary of State John Kerry made a habit of advertising how extraordinarily useful social media can be. He got that right. Of the main alleged chemical attacks by Syria on August 21, 2013; April 4,2017; and April 7, 2018 the primary, if not exclusive source of information was the extraordinarily useful, but notoriously unreliable, social media. Marine Martinets Briefing the media last night, after Goldilocks had set the stage announcing retaliation for the (unproven) use of chemicals by the Syrian government, were two four-star Marine generals, one of them (Mattis) retired, who seem to have mistakenly thought that the Marine motto had been changed to Semper Lie. It was a very sad spectacle. In 1961, when I was commissioned a 2nd Lieutenant in the U.S. Army, I took a solemn oath to support and defend the Constitution of the United States against all enemies foreign and domestic. Also drummed into the heads of us newly minted officers was the obligation to tell the truth always. I had assumed apparently naively that Marines took the same oath and obligation. The attack on Iraq 15 years ago destroyed that assumption. I will cite just two examples that scandalized me. Hear No Evil, Speak No Truth, Get Rich Quick Marine Gen. Zinni was receiving an award at the Veterans for Foreign War convention on August 26, 2002, and decided to play Brer Rabbit as he listened to the main speaker, Vice President Dick Cheney, set the meretricious terms of reference for war with Iraq. three and a half years later. (Emphasis mine.) Zinni had been commander of CENTCOM and had retired two years before, but his continued role as fully cleared consultant had enabled him to stay up to date on key intelligence findings for Iraq. Zinni later said he was shocked to hear Cheneys depiction of intelligence (Iraq has WMD and is amassing them to use against us) that did not square with what he knew the accurate intelligence to be. There was no solid proof that Saddam had WMD. I heard a case being made to go to war, Zinni told Meet the Press(Emphasis mine.) Earlier, Zinni enjoyed a reputation as a relatively straight shooter with a good bit of courage. And so, the question lingers: why did he not go public when he first heard Cheneys lie? THAT might have stopped the war. What seems operative here, I fear, is an all-too-familiar conundrum at senior levels where people have been conditioned not to rock the boat, not to risk their standing within the Washington Establishment or their prospects for lucrative spots on the corporate boards of arms manufacturers. Semper Fraud Without the full cooperation of former Marine, Senator Pat Roberts (R, Kansas), who was Chairman of the Senate Intelligence Committee before, during, and after the attack on Iraq, Bush and Cheney would have had far more difficulty perpetrating that crime. Because of Robertss participation in what easily qualifies as a criminal conspiracy, Bush and Cheney were able to run amok until, finally, the Senate changed hands in 2006. On June 5, 2008 Robertss successor, Sen. Jay Rockefeller announced the completion of a five-year Senate Intelligence Committee investigation a study that had been continually sidetracked by Roberts. Rockefeller introduced the studys bipartisan findings with these words: In making the case for war, the Administration repeatedly presented intelligence as fact when in reality it was unsubstantiated, contradicted, or even non-existent. Fellow Marine and UN weapons inspector Scott Ritter found Robertss behavior shameful. Ritter was unable to resist writing: Semper Fraud, Senator Roberts. Against that background, it was particularly painful last evening to watch two Marine four-star generals peddling at the Pentagon a bogus casus belli for another unprovoked armed attack this time on Syria. Media people favored with a Pentagon pass were too timid to ask pointed questions about the evidence that Syrian President Bashar al-Assad, for some strange reason known only to him, picked a time of near victory to use chemical weapons against his own people on April 7. No one asked why the rush to judgment; why the gang of three (the U.S., its aging British cousin, and its young French poodle) could not have waited just a day or two for UN inspectors to arrive and discover whether the so-called chemical attack amounted to a true casus belli, or a casus belly-laugh. Following Orders Defense Secretary James Mattis and Joint Chiefs of Staff Chairman Joseph Dunford remind me of the generals of the Third Reich in just following orders, lying through their teeth about the pretext for attacking Poland er, I mean Syria as though the solemn oath they took was to the Fuehrer er, I mean President not the Constitution. It seemed, at first, that President George W. Bushs dictum still reigned at the Pentagon; i. e., The Constitution is just a goddamned piece of paper.But President Donald Trump and Secretary Mattis did not go as far as Bush. No doubt under White House orders, Mattis dutifully recited the key tenet of constitutional scholar Dick Cheneys dubious unitary executive theory; that is, that the President is somehow not bound by Article I (Section 8) of the Constitution. That Article I section may have been in mothballs since the attack on Pearl Harbor, but remains a very important part of the Constitution. And the U.S. has gotten into a peck of trouble by those administrations and members of congress, alike who have chosen to circumvent this key provision, which reserves to Congress the power to declare war. Our Founders wanted this to apply, if a King er, I mean President got it into his head to attack another country. Syria, for example. At the beginning of his speech, Mattis employed this dubious variant, without the slightest demurral from those wishing to retain their Pentagon passes: As our commander in chief, our President has the authority under Article II of the Constitution to use military force overseas to defend important U.S. national interests. Those interested should re-read Article II. They will look in vain for anything like the Cheney/Mattis variant. All that part of Article II says is: The President shall be Commander in Chief of the Army and Navy of the United States. A Common Error With Budding Officers Too An experience I had teaching a class at the Naval Academy in Annapolis 12 years ago suggests that students at U.S. military academies are led to think that Article II supersedes Article I. Lecturing to a third-year class of about 50 students about political/military events, I referred innocently to the solemn oath required of military personnel and asked what that oath was all about. Well, it is an oath to the President, of course, said the first student who threw up his hand, with several others nodding assent. I said that was quite wrong. And it turned out to be like pulling teeth to find one student who knew that the oath was to defend the Constitution. Last evening I found myself wondering what Attorney General Jeff Sessions thought of Mattiss messing with Article I, Section 8. For, not too long ago, there was one shining moment when Sen. Jeff Sessions did his best to challenge then-Defense Secretary Leon Panetta, who pretended to be unfamiliar with the bedrock fact that the Constitution reserved to Congress the right to declare war. Libya: Precedent for Syria ex post facto at the unauthorized nature of the war in Libya, Sessions asked repeatedly what legal basis would the Obama administration rely on to do in Syria what it did in Libya. At a hearing of the Senate Armed Services Committee on March 7, 2012, then-Sen. Jeff Sessions, R-Alabama, pursued this key issue with Panetta. Chafingat the unauthorized nature of the war in Libya, Sessions asked repeatedly what legal basis would the Obama administration rely on to do in Syria what it did in Libya. Watching that part of the testimony, it seemed to me that Sessions, a conservative Southern lawyer, was not at all faking when he pronounced himself almost breathless, as Panetta stonewalled time after time. Panetta made it explicitly clear that the administration does not believe it needs to seek congressional approval for wars like Libya. At times he seemed to be quoting verses from the Book of Cheney. Sessions: I am really baffled The only legal authority thats required to deploy the U.S. military [in combat] is the Congress and the President and the law and the Constitution. Panetta: Let me just for the record be clear again, Senator, so there is no misunderstanding. When it comes to national defense, the President has the authority under the Constitution to act to defend this country, and we will, Sir. If you readers care about the Constitution and the rule of law, I strongly recommend that you view the entire 7-minute video clip. Constitutionally, the craven Congress is a huge part of the problem. Only a few members of the House and Senate seem to care very much when presidents act like kings and send off troops drawn largely by a poverty draft to wars not authorized (or simply rubber-stamped) by Congress. A Chill on the First Amendment Secretary Mattis devoted his last minute last evening to a careful reading of the following warning: tomorrow morning we are anticipating at about 9:00 in this same location.A warning not so sotto voce: Criticize the craven behavior of Mattis, Dunford, or the Gang of Three, and you will be aligning yourself with the Assad regime. Based on recent experience, we fully expect a significant disinformation campaign over the coming days by those who have aligned themselves with the Assad regime. And, in an effort to maintain transparency and accuracy, my assistant for public affairs, Ms. Dana White, and Lt. Gen. McKenzie, Director General of the Joint Staff here in Washington, will provide a brief of known detailsmorning we are anticipating at aboutin this same location.A warning not so: Criticize the craven behavior of Mattis, Dunford, or the Gang of Three, and you will be aligning yourself with the Assad regime. Ray McGovern works with Tell the Word, a publishing arm of the ecumenical Church of the Saviour in inner-city Washington. He was an Army Infantry/Intelligence officer and then a CIA analyst for a total of 30 years. http://raymcgovern.com/ This article was originally published by " Consortiumnews " - ===== Join the Discussion It is not necessary for ICH readers to register before placing a comment. We ask that you treat others with respect. Take a moment to read the following - Comment Policy - What Or Who is Information Clearing House and Purpose and Intent of this website: It is unacceptable to slander, smear or engage in personal attacks on authors of articles posted on ICH. Those engaging in that behavior will be banned from the comment section. Robert Fisk Reports Head of Douma Clinic Denies Chemical Weapons Attack By Craig Murry Robert Fisk is one of the very few excellent investigative journalists still employed in the UK. He is twice winner of the British Press Awards Journalist of the Year prize, and seven time winner of the British Press Awards Foreign Correspondent of the Year. He is extremely smart and knows the Middle East very well. He has just made his way not accompanied by Russian or Syrian government officials to Douma and this is what he reports. If you care to search for Robert Fisk on twitter, the attacks on his reputation and integrity at this very moment from achieve nothing neo-con trolls and media lackeys are astonishing. He is in Douma they are at their desks. It also says a great deal about our media that one of the greatest living British journalists is employed only by The Independent, a newspaper which has become extremely marginal, while other genuine greats like Jon Pilger, with a fantastic pedigree, do not have access to UK mainstream media at all. 60,000 people on average are reading my journalism here every day, but no mainstream outlet will carry it. Craig Murray is an author, broadcaster and human rights activist. He was British Ambassador to Uzbekistan from August 2002 to October 2004 and Rector of the University of Dundee from 2007 to 2010. https://www.craigmurray.org.uk Are You Tired Of The Lies And Non-Stop Propaganda? Get Your FREE Daily Newsletter The Search for Truth in the Rubble of Douma and one Doctors Doubts Over the Chemical Attack Exclusive: Robert Fisk visits the Syria clinic at the centre of a global crisis By Robert Fisk This is the story of a town called Douma, a ravaged, stinking place of smashed apartment blocks and of an underground clinic whose images of suffering allowed three of the Western worlds most powerful nations to bomb Syria last week. Theres even a friendly doctor in a green coat who, when I track him down in the very same clinic, cheerfully tells me that the gas videotape which horrified the world despite all the doubters is perfectly genuine. War stories, however, have a habit of growing darker. For the same 58-year old senior Syrian doctor then adds something profoundly uncomfortable: the patients, he says, were overcome not by gas but by oxygen starvation in the rubbish-filled tunnels and basements in which they lived, on a night of wind and heavy shelling that stirred up a dust storm. As Dr Assim Rahaibani announces this extraordinary conclusion, it is worth observing that he is by his own admission not an eyewitness himself and, as he speaks good English, he refers twice to the jihadi gunmen of Jaish el-Islam [the Army of Islam] in Douma as terrorists the regimes word for their enemies, and a term used by many people across Syria. Am I hearing this right? Which version of events are we to believe? By bad luck, too, the doctors who were on duty that night on 7 April were all in Damascus giving evidence to a chemical weapons enquiry, which will be attempting to provide a definitive answer to that question in the coming weeks. France, meanwhile, has said it has proof chemical weapons were used, and US media have quoted sources saying urine and blood tests showed this too. The WHO has said its partners on the ground treated 500 patients exhibiting signs and symptoms consistent with exposure to toxic chemicals. At the same time, inspectors from the Organisation for the Prohibition of Chemical Weapons (OPCW) are currently blocked from coming here to the site of the alleged gas attack themselves, ostensibly because they lacked the correct UN permits. Before we go any further, readers should be aware that this is not the only story in Douma. There are the many people I talked to amid the ruins of the town who said they had never believed in gas stories which were usually put about, they claimed, by the armed Islamist groups. These particular jihadis survived under a blizzard of shellfire by living in others peoples homes and in vast, wide tunnels with underground roads carved through the living rock by prisoners with pick-axes on three levels beneath the town. I walked through three of them yesterday, vast corridors of living rock which still contained Russian yes, Russian rockets and burned-out cars. So the story of Douma is thus not just a story of gas or no gas, as the case may be. Its about thousands of people who did not opt for evacuation from Douma on buses that left last week, alongside the gunmen with whom they had to live like troglodytes for months in order to survive. I walked across this town quite freely yesterday without soldier, policeman or minder to haunt my footsteps, just two Syrian friends, a camera and a notebook. I sometimes had to clamber across 20-foot-high ramparts, up and down almost sheer walls of earth. Happy to see foreigners among them, happier still that the siege is finally over, they are mostly smiling; those whose faces you can see, of course, because a surprising number of Doumas women wear full-length black hijab. I first drove into Douma as part of an escorted convoy of journalists. But once a boring general had announced outside a wrecked council house I have no information that most helpful rubbish-dump of Arab officialdom I just walked away. Several other reporters, mostly Syrian, did the same. Even a group of Russian journalists all in military attire drifted off. It was a short walk to Dr Rahaibani. From the door of his subterranean clinic Point 200, it is called, in the weird geology of this partly-underground city is a corridor leading downhill where he showed me his lowly hospital and the few beds where a small girl was crying as nurses treated a cut above her eye. I was with my family in the basement of my home three hundred metres from here on the night but all the doctors know what happened. There was a lot of shelling [by government forces] and aircraft were always over Douma at night but on this night, there was wind and huge dust clouds began to come into the basements and cellars where people lived. People began to arrive here suffering from hypoxia, oxygen loss. Then someone at the door, a White Helmet, shouted Gas!, and a panic began. People started throwing water over each other. Yes, the video was filmed here, it is genuine, but what you see are people suffering from hypoxia not gas poisoning. Oddly, after chatting to more than 20 people, I couldnt find one who showed the slightest interest in Doumas role in bringing about the Western air attacks. Two actually told me they didnt know about the connection. But it was a strange world I walked into. Two men, Hussam and Nazir Abu Aishe, said they were unaware how many people had been killed in Douma, although the latter admitted he had a cousin executed by Jaish el-Islam [the Army of Islam] for allegedly being close to the regime. They shrugged when I asked about the 43 people said to have died in the infamous Douma attack. The White Helmets the medical first responders already legendary in the West but with some interesting corners to their own story played a familiar role during the battles. They are partly funded by the Foreign Office and most of the local offices were staffed by Douma men. I found their wrecked offices not far from Dr Rahaibanis clinic. A gas mask had been left outside a food container with one eye-piece pierced and a pile of dirty military camouflage uniforms lay inside one room. Planted, I asked myself? I doubt it. The place was heaped with capsules, broken medical equipment and files, bedding and mattresses. Of course we must hear their side of the story, but it will not happen here: a woman told us that every member of the White Helmets in Douma abandoned their main headquarters and chose to take the government-organised and Russian-protected buses to the rebel province of Idlib with the armed groups when the final truce was agreed. There were food stalls open and a patrol of Russian military policemen a now optional extra for every Syrian ceasefire and no-one had even bothered to storm into the forbidding Islamist prison near Martyrs Square where victims were supposedly beheaded in the basements. The towns complement of Syrian interior ministry civilian police who eerily wear military clothes are watched over by the Russians who may or may not be watched by the civilians. Again, my earnest questions about gas were met with what seemed genuine perplexity. How could it be that Douma refugees who had reached camps in Turkey were already describing a gas attack which no-one in Douma today seemed to recall? It did occur to me, once I was walking for more than a mile through these wretched prisoner-groined tunnels, that the citizens of Douma lived so isolated from each other for so long that news in our sense of the word simply had no meaning to them. Syria doesnt cut it as Jeffersonian democracy as I cynically like to tell my Arab colleagues and it is indeed a ruthless dictatorship, but that couldnt cow these people, happy to see foreigners among them, from reacting with a few words of truth. So what were they telling me? They talked about the Islamists under whom they had lived. They talked about how the armed groups had stolen civilian homes to avoid the Syrian government and Russian bombing. The Jaish el-Islam had burned their offices before they left, but the massive buildings inside the security zones they created had almost all been sandwiched to the ground by air strikes. A Syrian colonel I came across behind one of these buildings asked if I wanted to see how deep the tunnels were. I stopped after well over a mile when he cryptically observed that this tunnel might reach as far as Britain. Ah yes, Ms May, I remembered, whose air strikes had been so intimately connected to this place of tunnels and dust. And gas? This article was originally published by " The Independent " - Join the Discussion April 16, 2018 " Information Clearing House " - After 70 years of force and more force, we are informed by former Mossad head Efraim Halevy that a confrontation with Russia is inevitable. At the moment a nascent conflict is unfolding with a regional power, Iran, Russias ally, which is threatening to respond to an Israeli attack on any of its bases in Syria. Halevy wants to act to prevent this scenario from playing out, but if it does take place, he wants Israel to have the upper hand. And if it does take place and Israel emerges victorious, what condition will the country be in for its citizens, Jewish and Arab? Weve already seen how Israel has emerged from confrontations with organizations that are far less than countries, and that was with the upper hand, as we know. Moreover, after Israel emerges with the upper hand, what kind of threat will it face then? The thought should cause Israelis to lose sleep. Are You Tired Of The Lies And Non-Stop Propaganda? Get Your FREE Daily Newsletter Is there no other doctrine than the doctrine of force thats being used by the government here? What about the doctrine of common interest, for example? Or the doctrine of negotiation, rather than confrontation? After the October 1973 war, a department was set up in Military Intelligence called Ipkha Mistabra (Aramaic for on the contrary), whose job was to put forward and explore ideas and directions that contradicted widely held assumptions. Where is the Jewish mind thats supposed to be so smart and creative? Does it only work in minor matters, while on fateful ones it is paralyzed by fear of the messianic right? For example, why not just talk to Iran, Hezbollah and Hamas? But the leadership here is stuck on the doctrine of force. If it doesnt want to talk to Mahmoud Abbas, it it going to talk with Hamas Ismail Haniyeh? As we know, there is an organized choir opposing such ideas, which whines that we dont talk to people with blood on their hands, as if in Israel everyones hands are dipped in French perfume. For example, instead of sending army Maj. Avichay Adraee to explain to the residents of Gaza what a decent woman is according to Islam, it would have been better to turn to Haniyehs adviser, Dr. Ahmed Yousef, as Haaretzs Nir Gontarz did last month. Yousef said, Youve suffered a lot as Jews around the world, and there were issues of suffering and agony in Spain and Europe. Yousef is a spokesman for Hamas and not a representative of Abbas, but in Israel, who cares? For most Israelis, every Palestinian is a terrorist, even if he would sing Hatikva on key. When faced with grave danger, as a rule, first you make sure your house and your relationships with your neighbors are in order. Israel will get no sympathy from its neighbors or from the world until it solves the Palestinian issue, which is centered on establishing a state and a solution to the refugee problem. Thats where it starts. I say all these things as an Arab citizen who cares about the well-being of his family and of his Jewish neighbors. When disaster strikes, it will strike all of us. When Moshe Sharett found himself trapped between two hawks, Moshe Dayan and Pinchas Lavon, who were bitter rivals but united in their extremism and adventurism sort of like Benjamin Netanyahu and Naftali Bennett today he said sadly, God, I thought, how complex your world is and how stubborn your creatures. Are we really worse than every other nation? Or have we just not yet learned how to live with one another and we are prepared to smash the state we have merited to pieces, the way a naive child smashes an expensive toy? Nevertheless, I will try to give reassurance by saying that Jews are like other nations, but when both nationalist and religious messianism prevails, they, like other nations, will smash what exists to smithereens. Thats whats happening in the Arab world, for example. Breaking: Syrian Military Confirms Israeli Missiles Targeted Airbase in Eastern Homs By Leith Aboufadel Updated April 17, 2018 Syrian military officials denied reports of an attack, but say defense systems triggered by electronic attack on radars. April 16, 2018 " Information Clearing House " - BEIRUT, LEBANON (1:15 A.M.) The Syrian military announced at approximately 1:10 A.M. (Damascus Time), the Israeli Air Force fired several missiles towards the Shayrat Airbase and its surrounding area in the Homs Governorate. According to the statement, the Syrian Air Defense managed to intercept several of the missiles, but there was no mention as to whether or not the Israelis scored any direct hits. This attack by Israel tonight marks the second time in seven days that they have targeted the eastern countryside of the Homs Governorate. No further details have been released. This article was originally published by " Al Masdar News " - Are You Tired Of The Lies And Non-Stop Propaganda? Get Your FREE Daily Newsletter ==See Also== Syria AIRSTRIKE Military responding to 'ISRAELI ATTACK' in Damascus and Homs : Syria state television has confirmed its air defences are repelling attacks in the countrys Homs region Join the Discussion A teacher at Handmads International Catholic School, Aguda, Lagos, and her blood sister have been arrested for threatening to kill the schools head-teacher, a Reverend Sister. The suspects have confessed that they wanted to teach Sister Mary Okolo, a bitter lesson for her highhandedness. The suspects are Ngozi Nnabude, 46, and Uchenna Agagwaonye, 40. The Commissioner of Police, Imohimi Edgal, said investigation into the case revealed Agagwaonye, was frustrated by what she termed highhandedness of Okolo and decided to make life miserable for her. They conspired to put her under constant fear of imminent danger. When the threat to maim, kidnap, kill and expose her unfounded secret sex life was continuous, Okolo reported the matter to the police. Investigation revealed that Agagwaonyes job was to monitor Okolo and pass information gathered to her sister, Ngozi, who now called the Rev. Sister to tell her movement. She used to tell the nun such threat messages like: I can see you, you are putting on this and type of clothes and shoe, you are in so and so place, you cant hide from us and you will be killed soon. However, Agagwaonye said: I have been teaching in that school for over 18 years. But Rev. Sister Okolo just joined us recently. I run a part time programme with University of Lagos. Before I went for leave, I went through the normal application process, but when I resumed, she deducted N12,000 from my salary. Six months later, we had an argument and I was given a letter of suspension. All these didnt make me happy. She further alleged that Okolo angrily sacked a security guard who caught her having sex with a Rev. Father. Okolo also allegedly sacked some other teachers. I dont want to kidnap or kill her. I sent the messages to her so that she would calm down on her wickedness. I dont even have any sex tape, but the laptop repairer whom she gave her laptop to fix, has video clips of her nudity, she added. Source GossipMill Armen Sarkissian comments on protest rallies Armen Sarkissian said in an exclusive commentary for ARMENPRESS that the opinion of every citizen of Armenia is important for the country, however violence, illegal actions and the restriction of rights of others should be ruled out during freedom of expression. Under the Constitution, parliamentary forces are entitled with nominating a candidate for Prime Minister of Armenia. The opposition can oppose the candidate of the parliamentary majority through its votes. It is also the right of any political force or citizen to freely express their opinion, approval or disapproval over a given political development, within the circle of their Constitutional rights be it through a rally, demonstration or other peaceful means. The right to freedom of speech and free expression of will is one of the most important values of democracy. The opinion of every citizen of the Republic of Armenia is important for the country. At the same time, violence, illegal actions and restriction of the rights of others must be ruled out during free expression of will. The security of our country and national solidarity should be a primary and undisputed necessity for all of us. And, of course, I would like to once again emphasize that the health and life of every citizen of Armenia, from students, protesters to police officers, is valuable for us, Sarkissian said in his first commentary to ARMENPRESS news agency as President. Details are available here. According to report by twitter user @hadiyy, women who attended a naming ceremony were ask to present their bags after money was stolen at the event. Shockingly almost all the women had codeine in their bags. He wrote: MONEY was stolen in a house at KANO during a naming ceremony so all d WOMEN(married/single) were ordered 2 present their hand bags 4 searching. Surprisingly CODEINE was found in almost 90% of d bags searched. what a PityKuma matan aure sun yawa. Allah ya shirya. About a week ago, a lecturer at the Faculty of Communication, Bayero University Kano, Dr. Bala Muhammad, has accused Igbo drug merchants of allegedly supplying codeine syrups into the north, Daily Nigerian reports. Muhammad made the accusation while presenting a paper at the Kano Youth Summit on Peace Advocacy and Development, organised by Hamisu Magaji Foundation, at Mambayya House, on Monday. Dr. Mohammed also blamed court judges for compromise to secure the release of the suspects without trial, noting that it was the reason the problem was deteriorating. It has been reported that a man identified as Danlynton Remedy has been made to suffer serious pains after a costly medical error. The man reportedly had his intestines cut by mistake by a doctor who was treating him after an accident. Local reports show that the young man was involved in a motorcycle accident recently which left him with a wound on his stomach. When he was rushed to the hospital in Okigwe, Imo state, the doctor mistakenly cut his small intestine during the surgery. This has led to serious medical complications. He was later referred to the Federal Medical Center FMC in Umuahia, Abia state for serious medical attention and further surgery. Lagos state police arrest primary school dropout The Lagos state police command Monday, paraded a primary school dropout, Abdulrahman Mohammed, who has practiced as a medical doctor for four years in the state. Parading the suspect before newsmen, the state police commissioner, CP Edgal Imohimi, stated that Mohammed operated a clinic at Idi-Araba area in Mushin, where he administered intravenous injections to patients and also collected blood and urine samples for diagnosis. Detectives from the Area D Command, Mushin, arrested one Abdulrahman Mohammed, a native of Ran Village in Gamboru Ngala local government area of Borno State for operating as a medical doctor at 3, Bamishile Street, Idi -Araba, whereas his education stopped at primary school level. Further investigation into the activities of Abdulrahman Mohammed, who has been impersonating as a medical doctor for the past four years revealed that he had been administrating intravenous injections, conducting medical test on his patients and taking urine and blood samples from his patients. He is cooperating with the police and we are working with him to ensure all unregistered drug stores are clamped down. he said However, Mohammed has denied practising as a medical doctor. According to him, he only operates a chemist where he sells drugs to people living in his area. I was a hawker. I was hawking drugs before I decided to open a pharmacy. I did not finish my primary school and I was not taught to sell the drugs. My pharmacy was not licensed. I do not treat people. I do not collect blood or urine samples. I only sell the kits and people come to buy it. For the thermometer, people used to come and check their temperature and other things by themselves. If someone comes and complained of headache and fever, I give them Panadol or Boscopan and blood tonic. he said Leave a Comment comments Man demands bride price Manyeva Dlamini has taken the family of his ex-wife, Ruth Thembisile Sibiya, to court to have his cattle back. Dlamini contends that Sibiya lied about being a virgin. A man in Swaziland has demanded from his in-laws his 24-cow bride price back after reportedly discovering that his wife was not a virgin at the time they got married. However, Sibiya denies ever making such a claim. She also insists that Dlamini knew that she was not a virgin and that she was already three months pregnant on their wedding day. Court papers reportedly indicate that Dlamini, who is a teacher, began his relationship with Sibiya while she was still his student in high school. She said: After I completed school in 1995, Dlamini, who was far older than me, insisted that we get married but I refused to marry him since I wanted to pursue my studies. She also states that she met and fell in love with a man named Themba Thwala in 1998 prior to marrying Dlamini. Leave a Comment comments Twitter user, @babyyygucci has taken to the platform to share chats with her worried partner over her big tummy caused by taking beer. From their conversation and pictures, it was obvious that the young lady was a gorgeous and beautiful one with flat tummy, before the massive transformation to her tummy, which usually turn her boyfriend down. She said: Im 120 pounds. I have been for about 5 months.My partner said this to me. Am I overreacting for feeling hurt by this? Im at a loss and just cant even comprehend how someone who claims to love me can say this. According to another tweet by her, she had ended the relationship due to emotional trauma she got. She wrote yesterday: People really think I dumped my bf just because of those comments about my weight. Not that its anyones business but he gaslighted me during every fight, I wasnt allowed to hangout with my best guy friend, plus so much more. My idea to end things has been an option for weeks. Alizee killer husband The Nigeria police force has explained why they have not paraded the husband and murderer of the late fast rising Nigerian songstress, Alizee and her daughter. According to them, they are following the due process all because the man is not a Nigerian. Police Commissioner Imohimi Edgal yesterday suggested that there were attempts by the suspect to cover up his crime, which forensic experts traced with the use of special chemical reagents. He said: The autopsy revealed that Mrs Zaynab Nielsen suffered trauma as a result of the impact on her head. Secondly, forensic experts revealed that there were blood stains from the couples bedroom to the kitchen. Though it was cleverly wiped from the floor, the experts were still able to detect it with the application of special chemical reagents. In addition, blood stains were also discovered on the wash hand basins and on the hand towel the suspect used in wiping his hands after the commission of the offence. Although it was cleverly cleaned up as well, the experts were able to discover that too. He also expressed that the Danish embassy was cooperating with them and they have provided legal representation for the suspect. I spoke personally with the ambassador apart from the official correspondence. They also arranged for counsel for their citizen so they are following the process very closely. We did not parade the suspect for obvious reasons. Do not forget hes not a Nigerian and so, there are diplomatic connotations. This is a man being accused of first degree murder. So, it would have been wrong for the police who are going to prosecute him, to also begin to parade him before such prosecution. However, he was charged to an open court. We are concerned with ensuring that he is diligently prosecuted and justice is done. Leave a Comment comments 30 detainees released 30 civilians, who were detained at the Arabkir police, are released. Artur Sukiasyan, one of the detainees, mentioned in a conversation with A1 +, that he was detained 6-7 hours before appearance. They did not specify why they had been arrested. In the department, they were informed that they had been detained for committing an administrative offense. The activists have said that they have been kept under a pretext for different actions. Those gathered in front of the police building started shouting: "Thank you!" Asked why they shouted it, they clarified: "We are grateful that they have stopped the lawlessness and released our citizens." According to the released ones, they were released because prime minister's election is ended. At the moment, the demonstrators go to Republic Square, where the rally is going to take place. This content is from: Premium Third Point, Citadel, and other hedge funds are gearing up for this biopharma IPO less than a month after investing in the companys latest financing round. Paris - April 17, 2018 (Investorideas.com Newswire) "The 2017 Annual Report: Foreign investment in France The international development of the French economy" released today provides confirmation of the renewed confidence foreign investors have in France as a business location. The figures were revealed at a press conference held at the headquarters of Cisco in Issy les Moulineaux, near Paris, by the Minister for the Economy and Finance, Mr. Bruno Le Maire, and the CEO of Business France, Mr. Christophe Lecourtier. A total of 1,298 investment decisions in 2017 up 16% year-on-year, at an average of 25 decisions per week created or maintained 33,489 jobs (compared with 1,117 decisions and 30,108 jobs in 2016). No fewer than 412 new companies decided to expand their business by investing in France, making up 32% of all investment projects recorded. Fifty percent of decisions led to investments at new sites (up 14% from 2016), while 42% involved expanding operations at existing locations (up 22% from 2016). "The growing numbers of investment decisions in France, and the jobs they generate, highlight the renewed confidence that decision-makers now have in a country on the move. France's business image is improving markedly: according to a survey conducted by Kantar Public on behalf of Business France, 84% of foreign investors now consider the French economy to be attractive, up 10 percentage points from 2016," said Christophe Lecourtier, CEO of Business France. Foreign companies invested primarily in production/manufacturing operations, with 343 investment decisions in 2017, creating 16,123 jobs, amounting to 26% of all foreign investments in France, up 23% from 2016. Decisions made by companies from Germany (the leading foreign investor in French industry), the United States, Italy and Belgium amounted to nearly half of all foreign production/manufacturing investments. R&D, engineering and design projects accounted for 10% of all foreign investments, with 125 decisions recorded, up 9% year-on-year. France's standing as one of the most innovative countries in the world can be seen in various international rankings, including the 2017 Deloitte Technology Fast 500 EMEA, where France once again came out on top. The 2017 Kantar Public survey also highlights France's prowess, with 81% of foreign investors seeing innovation as one of France's competitive advantages. European countries remained the leading sources of foreign investment, with 58% of all investment decisions in France, followed by North America (23%) and then Asia (13%), whose share remained stable, except for India, which recorded the biggest rise among emerging economies (+73%). The United States regained the top spot it had conceded to Germany in 2016, with 230 projects generating 7,047 jobs and accounting for 18% of all investments in France, while Germany (208 projects) was second. Companies from the United States also accounted for more than one-quarter of all inward R&D investments throughout the year. Many countries posted higher project numbers than the previous year, with the largest increases in investment decisions involving companies from the United States (+26%), Switzerland (+40%), Canada (+37%), the Netherlands (+47%) and Sweden (+76%). The diversity of France's regions continues to drive their attractiveness to investors. Auvergne-Rhone-Alpes, Grand Est, Hauts de France and Occitanie were attractive destinations for production/manufacturing operations in 2017, while 45% of all jobs generated by foreign investment in logistics activities were in Ile de France (Paris region), and investments in R&D operations were particularly buoyant in Auvergne-Rhone-Alpes, Bourgogne-Franche-Comte, Bretagne (Brittany) and Hauts de France. "Innovation and manufacturing stand out in these results, in addition to France's established structural advantages. In recent months, a new image of the country has emerged, attracting foreign investors here to pursue their projects in Europe. Everyone at Business France works day in day out to convince these investors that France is an attractive destination. Their support and guidance, provided in conjunction with our regional partners, helped secure 677 investment decisions in France in 2017, or nearly half of all projects attracted to the country," said Christophe Lecourtier, CEO of 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 VIE international internship program. Business France has 1,500 personnel, both in France and in 64 countries throughout the world, who work with a network of public- and private-sector partners. For further information, please visit: www.businessfrance.fr Media contacts: Caroline.Winter@businessfrance.fr More Info: This news is published on the Investorideas.com Newswire - a global digital news source for investors and business leaders Disclaimer/Disclosure: Investorideas.com is a digital publisher of third party sourced news, articles and equity research as well as creates original content, including video, interviews and articles. Original content created by investorideas is protected by copyright laws other than syndication rights. Our site does not make recommendations for purchases or sale of stocks, services or products. Nothing on our sites should be construed as an offer or solicitation to buy or sell products or securities. All investing involves risk and possible losses. This site is currently compensated for news publication and distribution, social media and marketing, content creation and more. Disclosure is posted for each compensated news release, content published /created if required but otherwise the news was not compensated for and was published for the sole interest of our readers and followers. Contact management and IR of each company directly regarding specific questions. More disclaimer info: https://www.investorideas.com/About/Disclaimer.asp Learn more about publishing your news release and our other news services on the Investorideas.com newswire https://www.investorideas.com/News-Upload/ and tickertagstocknews.com Global investors must adhere to regulations of each country. Please read Investorideas.com privacy policy: https://www.investorideas.com/About/Private_Policy.asp April 17, 2018 (Investorideas.com Newswire) Global Water Intelligence (GWI) today announced the winners of the 2018 Global Water Awards, which were presented on Monday 16 April at the Pavillon d'Armenonville in Paris, France, as part of the Global Water Summit 2018. The coveted awards ceremony recognises the industry's greatest feats over the previous year, rewarding the initiatives and companies in the water, wastewater and desalination sectors that are moving the industry forward through improved operating performance, innovative technology adoption and sustainable financial models. The master of ceremony, Claire McCollum, reflected on the development of the water sector in 2017 during her opening address: "It is an exciting time for the international water industry, with some of the most significant opportunities the water sector has seen in a decade presented on the agenda for this year's conference. It heralds a new paradigm for the water industry as the arrival of new technologies, businesses and sources of finance are empowering the water industry to rethink the way it does business." The Global Water Summit 2018 opened with the theme of Transcending Boundaries and this theme was ever-present during the awards ceremony, celebrating the pioneers who have been pushing the industry to greater heights over the last year. The winners of the 2018 Global Water Awards are: Water Company of the Year Winner: Evoqua Water Technologies Distinction: Aqualia Desalination Company of the Year Winner: Suez Distinction: Metito Smart Water Company of the Year Winner: Dubai Electricity and Water Authority Distinction: Schneider Electric Breakthrough Water Technology Company of the Year Winner: Voltea Distinction: Moleaer Water/Wastewater Project of the Year Winner: Ulu Pandan wastewater treatment pilot Distinction: El Paso zero discharge plant Industrial Water Project of the Year Winner: Arla Foods Milky Water Reuse Distinction: ABF Ovaltine Effluent Treatment Plant Municipal Desalination Plant of the Year Winner: Mirfa IWPP Distinction: Umm Al Houl IWPP Industrial Desalination Plant of the Year Winner: Jazan IGCC desalination plant Distinction: Sarlux desalination plant Water Deal of the Year Winner: Kigali Bulk Water Supply project financing Distinction: Hamilton biosolids financing Water Leaders Award Winner: Bangalore Water Supply and Sewerage Board Distinction: Agua y Saneamientos Argentinos SA Smart Water Project of the Year Winner: Mecca Smart Operations Project Distinction: Christchurch Pressurised Sewer Project Water Technology Company of the Year Winner: Xylem Distinction: LG Water Solutions Water Technology Idol Winner: CosmosID Distinction: Via Separations People's Choice: Via Separations Trophies were also presented to new members of the Leading Utilities of the World network. Membership in this network is a recognition that a utility is among the best in the world, based on relative improvement as much as absolute achievement. The six new members were accepted into the network in a meeting held at The Global Water Summit on 16th April where each presented their achievements to the network's advisory board all of whom also represent utilities that have an unimpeachable record of innovation and performance. The Leading Utilities of the World Network is supported by Jacobs CH2M, the network's Foundation Partner. New Leading Utilities of the World members: Jean Spencer, Executive Director, Anglian Water Joke Cuperus, Managing Director, PWN, The Netherlands Adel H. Hagekhalil, Assistant Director, LA Sanitation, USA Stefano Venier, CEO, Hera Group, Italy David L. Johnson, Deputy General Manager, Southern Nevada Water Authority / Las Vegas ValleyWater District, USA Mohammad Juma Rashid Bin Jarsh Al Falasi, Undersecretary, Department of Energy, Abu Dhabi Emirate, UAE The Global Water Awards are voted for by subscribers to GWI magazine and Water Desalination Report. In addition, delegates who registered for the Early Bird Discount were also eligible to vote. Global Water Intelligence also extended its thanks to Evoqua Water Technologies for their continued support of the ceremony as The Official Global Water Awards Sponsor. The table sponsors include: Acciona, Almar Water Solutions, Jacobs Ch2m, Amane Advisors, Stantec, Gradiant, Aqualia, Suez, Veolia, Endress+Hauser, Orascom, Royal Haskoning, Besix. More information on the Global Water Awards can be found at: www.globalwaterawards.com Follow developments on Twitter @watermeetsmoney #GWS2018 Global Water Intelligence (GWI) researches and publishes business data and information about the water markets worldwide. Based in Oxford, UK it also has offices in Singapore and USA (Austin, Texas) and has researchers and office staff in many other countries. It publishes three subscription titles and a free weekly GWI Briefing email (http://www.globalwaterintel.com/accounts/mailinglist/) and around four individual reports per year on particular water sectors/geographic regions. It also organises two major financial conferences for the water industry each year: the American Water Summit in Autumn and the Global Water Summit in Spring. GWI was awarded the Queen's Award for Enterprise in 2011. Winners and Distinctions will shortly be able to download publicity materials from www.globalwaterawards.com, or contact ewheal@globalwaterintel.com for further information. Press contact: ashuttleworth@globalwaterintel.com, Media Analytics Ltd, Suite C, Kingsmead House, Oxpens Road, Oxford OX1 1XX, UK. Tel: +44 1865 204208 www.globalwaterintel.com Water-Stocks.com: investing ideas in water stocks Like Water Stocks? View our Water Stocks Directory More Info: This news is published on the Investorideas.com Newswire - a global digital news source for investors and business leaders Disclaimer/Disclosure: Investorideas.com is a digital publisher of third party sourced news, articles and equity research as well as creates original content, including video, interviews and articles. Original content created by investorideas is protected by copyright laws other than syndication rights. Our site does not make recommendations for purchases or sale of stocks, services or products. Nothing on our sites should be construed as an offer or solicitation to buy or sell products or securities. All investing involves risk and possible losses. This site is currently compensated for news publication and distribution, social media and marketing, content creation and more. Disclosure is posted for each compensated news release, content published /created if required but otherwise the news was not compensated for and was published for the sole interest of our readers and followers. Contact management and IR of each company directly regarding specific questions. More disclaimer info: https://www.investorideas.com/About/Disclaimer.asp Learn more about publishing your news release and our other news services on the Investorideas.com newswire https://www.investorideas.com/News-Upload/ and tickertagstocknews.com Global investors must adhere to regulations of each country. Please read Investorideas.com privacy policy: https://www.investorideas.com/About/Private_Policy.asp Speaking with the his Turkish counterpart Recep Tayyip Erdogan on Tuesday, President Hassan Rouhani called for developing relations between Tehran and Ankara and emphasised that accelerating the implementation of agreements between the two countries can further boost ties. (AhlulBayt News Agency) - President Rouhani stressed that Turkey is a Muslim and friend neighbouring country of the Islamic Republic of Iran and has a very special position, and expressed satisfaction over very good and growing relations between the two countries. Speaking with the his Turkish counterpart Recep Tayyip Erdogan on Tuesday, President Hassan Rouhani called for developing relations between Tehran and Ankara and emphasised that accelerating the implementation of agreements between the two countries can further boost ties. Dr Rouhani also stressed that consultation and cooperation between Iran and Turkey aimed at advancing peaceful goals in the region, and referred to the recent developments in Syria, adding: "The two countries should promote their cooperation and do not let tensions escalate in this country". He also went on to appreciate Erdogan for perfectly hosting the tripartite summit of Iran, Russia and Turkey, saying: "Combatting terrorism and ending the war in Syria, as well as establishing security in the region are among the common goals of the three countries and I believe that this cooperation on the Syrian issue and the continuation of the Astana process will provide better conditions for field developments in Syria and achieving peace, which must be guarded". Pointing out that "some major Western powers think that they have to intervene in Syria in any way," the President described the recent US, British and French missile strikes on Syria as an act of aggression, saying: "It is a very ugly shift in state of affairs of international relations that some powerful and bullying countries attack a country whenever they wish. Dr Rouhani also referred to the double standard of these powers in relation with the issue of chemical weapons, adding: "Saddam Hussein's repeated chemical attacks on Iran and the silence of these powers have proved to us well that these countries have no sensitivity towards chemical weapons". The president called the Iranian government and nation the biggest victims of chemical weapons, and emphasised: "This has made the Iranian government and people very sensitive to the use of these weapons in the world and to strongly condemn the use of these weapons by any country". "Everyone should be sensitive to issues that are some kind of unlawful interference in the region," he said, adding: "When nothing has yet been verified and the inspectors of the Organisation for the Prohibition of Chemical Weapons (OPCW) have not announced the results of their investigations, no country or countries must be allowed to take military action". Referring to the interventions of the US and the Zionist Regime in the region, the president underscored: "If the attacking countries were really looking for the perpetrators of the chemical attack, why did they not allow the inspectors of OPCW to investigate the situation?" Dr Rouhani said: "All these developments reflect the importance of Iran, Turkey and Russia cooperation. In the current situation, de-escalation of tensions in Syria, and Western countries' not interfering can be considered as two key points for us. The three countries have begun a very hard and important job and it is imperative to work together to achieve the ultimate goal, which is restoring peace to Syria and the region". Turkish President, Recep Tayyip Erdogan, said in the telephone call that Turkey welcomed development and deepening of Tehran-Ankara relations in all fields. He expressed hope that the visit of his country's Minister of Economy to Tehran and the finalisation of a series of agreements would accelerate the process of increasing the volume of trade between the two countries. Erdogan also continued to refer to the situation in Syria and emphasised that cooperation with Iran and Russia to reduce tensions in the field and advance the political process in Syria as a priority, saying: "Protecting territorial integrity of Syria and the search for political solutions to end the current situation is possible through joint efforts, and recent developments have shown that it is important to accelerate the joint efforts of Iran, Russia and Turkey". He also denounced any use of chemical weapons, saying: "OPCW inspectors should begin their work as soon as possible and all parties should help them find the truth". "As we stressed at the tripartite summit in Ankara, we will not let some known circles divide Syria and interfere in its affairs," he added. /257 April has been a busy month for Apples mobile payment option, Apple Pay, adding banks and credit unions across the United States and internationally, and even launching in a brand new market. And its not quieting down in the middle of the month, either. Apple Pay has just gained support from a variety of different banks and credit unions, and not just in the United States. As noted today by 9to5Mac, support has also broadened in Canada, Italy, Russia, Spain, and in mainland China. Here is the list of the new additions: United States 5 Star Community Credit Union AlaTrust Credit Union Apple River State Bank Bank of Weston Community Bank of Elmhurst Farmers & Merchants Savings Bank Farmers and Merchants Bank of South Carolina First Bank of Coastal Georgia First Citizens Federal Credit Union First National Bank of Gillette Killbuck Savings Bank Lighthouse Bank Merchants Bank (both AL and MN now) Morton Credit Union MutualBank One Credit Union SeaComm Federal Credit Union Security First Bank of North Dakota Ukrainain Federal Credit Union Unico Bank United Fidelity Bank Wayne Westland Federal Credit Union Canada Assiniboine Credit Union Cambrian Credit Union Limited Steinbach Credit Union Vancity Mainland China Bank of Baoding Xiamen Bank Yinzhou Bank Yunnan HongTa Bank Yunnan Rural Credit Cooperatives Zhejiang Chouzhou Commercial Bank Zhejiang Rural Cooperatives ZhongYuan Bank Spain Caja Rural (Visa debit and credit cards) EVO Banco (Visa debit and credit cards) Openbank (previously Mastercard cards only) Italy Buddybank CARTA BCC (banca credito cooperativo) Cassa Centrale, Casse Rurari Trentine (credit cards) Credit Agricole (cariparma, friuladria, Carispezia) (credit and debit cards) Russia Credit Bank of Moscow Credit Ural Bank (Visa debit and credit cards) How often do you use Apple Pay? [via 9to5Mac 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. remaining of Thank you for reading! On your next view you will be asked to log in to your subscriber account or create an account and subscribepurchase a subscription to continue reading. JURIST Guest Columnist Louis Rene Beres of Purdue University, discusses the recent US bombing in Syria Nullum crimen sine poena, No crime without a punishment. (Ancient principle of law reaffirmed at the Nuremberg Trials) For the most part, a military response to the recent Syrian chemical attacks at Douma was obligatory under the authoritative international law. The system of world law as originally established under the Peace of Westphalia (1648) is largely based on self-help. This system of self-help requires major world powers to accept pertinent enforcement responsibilities. Ideally, the major world powers would have resolved the Syrian conflict within the treaty-shaped boundaries of the UN Security Council. Unfortunately, that was a not an option and the military action launched by the United States, France, and United Kingdom was fundamentally necessary and proper. In part, at least, this residual permissibility stemmed from Russias expected further use of the veto at the United Nations. Russia had recently vetoed a markedly reasonable Security Council resolution condemning Syrian war crimes and crimes against humanity. Although the very recent use of force against Syrian chemical weapons-related sites by three allied powers was presumptively just and lawful, this military response still needed to conform to all ordinary expectations of the law of war, aka humanitarian international law. Appropriately, in this connection, it does appear that the forceful response was verifiably discriminate, proportionate and within both codified and customary parameters of military necessity. To offer a somewhat narrower legal observation, the allied right to act against Bashar al-Assads relevant military assets in Syria stemmed, inter alia, from assorted basic obligations defined at the UN Charter ; the Genocide Convention; and multiple other human rights conventions. Going ahead, the key challenge for Mr. Trump and his allies remains what it was before the coordinated strikes that is, meeting all proper military and legal objectives without simultaneously being caught up in a prospectively nuclear confrontation with Russia. The core dangers are still real and potentially existential. In this regard, it is plausible that Mr. Putin will soon deploy additional Russian soldiers to some of those areas most likely to be targeted by any future allied attacks. In the expressly technical language of nuclear deterrence theory, any such deployment would then be characterized as a trip wire. Accordingly, the real purpose of these additional Russian troops would not be to fight against the Americans (there could never be any strategic or tactical advantage from such a fight), but rather to trip certain further escalations with the United States. Its not that Putin would welcome any such escalations per se, but that he would expect this particular sort of deployment to further strengthen his overall (and still plausibly indispensable) deterrence posture in the volatile region. For Mr. Putin, all of this would represent a substantial gamble, one that could quickly escalate out of control toward either an inadvertent or (especially during the later stages of any protracted conflict) deliberate nuclear war. Pursuant to what is generally known about determining probabilities in unprecedented circumstances that is, that such probabilities are simply not ascertainable for unique events there would be available no reliable ways to calculate just how it would all end. Presently, in addition to variously relevant jurisprudential considerations, this sobering inconclusiveness should be viewed as a red flag by both Mr. Putin and Mr. Trump. Under no circumstances should the American president conclude from his one-shot encounter with Syria that all pre-existing dangers have already passed. The Russian soldiers deployed in Syria will only have a real function in a direct encounter with American forces. In essence, that function will be to die. They could and would serve absolutely no other military function. Even if Mr. Putin should not expressly augment such a tripwire Russian force, his previously dispersed S-400 advanced surface-to-air missile systems could elicit the very same perilous consequences in any future encounters with allied bombs and missiles. Because the Americans could easily decide to strike these important air-defense targets first in any such future encounters, Russian military personnel could then be among the first recognizable casualties of superpower military engagement in Syria. Then what? At that perilous stage, we must now already inquire, how should President Trump and his allies most effectively proceed? President Trumps residual policy options here could unwittingly lead to a direct and potentially irreversible US-Russian military encounter. To prevent this altogether, or at least to blunt the likelihood, the presidents most capable strategic thinkers (not his tactical military planners) would then need to work very quickly (among other things) through the unimaginably complex dialectics of virtually all possible nuclear conflict scenarios and outcomes. At that stage, could these vital thinkers possibly manage such staggering calculations in the total absence of historical experience or precedent, and in such sorely compressed time-urgent circumstances? In sum, what will be needed here will be exceptional intellectual skills, not in lieu of the usual military operational talents, but in addition to them. Above all, these complementary intellectual expectations would need to be satisfied suitably prior to any actual US-Russian engagements, and not be anterior to them. Can Mr. Trump and his counselors expectedly succeed at this very demanding level of analytic reflection? And can they succeed while simultaneously managing to support various peremptory (jus cogens) norms of binding international law? To be sure, it would be dreadfully ironic if an American presidents alleged commitment to international law enforcement led this country into a superpower nuclear war. Prima facie, in such intolerable but still foreseeable circumstances, any allegedly successful commitment to law enforcement would clearly have become utterly moot. Louis Rene Beres (Ph.D., Princeton, 1971) is the author of twelve books and several hundred articles dealing with international law. He was born in Zurich, Switzerland, at the end of World War II, the only son of Austrian Holocaust refugees. Suggested citation: Louis Rene Beres, Allied Strikes in Syria, Russia, and International Law, JURIST Academic Commentary, Apr. 16, 2018, http://jurist.org/forum/2018/04/louis-beres-allied-syria-strikes.php. This article was prepared for publication by Zachary Uram, a JURIST Staff Editor. Please direct any questions or comments to him at commentary@jurist.org The Albuquerque City Council [official website] in New Mexico passed an immigrant-friendly proposal [text] Monday, upholding and reinforcing the citys commitment to treat all persons with respect and dignity, regardless of their immigration status. The resolution prohibits city officials from inquiring about individuals citizenship, immigration status, place of birth, religion, or national origin. It also sets forth limited circumstances in which the city may inquire about an individuals social security number, including eligibility for state benefit programs and city employment. The council passed the resolution with a 6-3 vote and will now go before the mayor. The Resolution would then go into effect within 30 days. Immigration policy continues to be at the forefront of government action. In March Secretary of Commerce Wilbur Ross announced [text, PDF] that the 2020 census will include a citizenship question [JURIST report] to better aid enforcement of the Voting Rights Act. Hours after the announcement, California Attorney General Xavier Becerra filed a lawsuit [complaint, PDF] challenging the decision, saying the question would discourage non-citizens from participating in the census, which would disproportionately affect California over other states. Since Californias lawsuit, more than 17 states and at least seven cities have filed lawsuits [JURIST report] challenging the decision. Iraqi women and children are being denied access to humanitarian aid and are not allowed to return to their homes because of their alleged association with the Islamic State (IS), according to a report [text, PDF] published Tuesday by Amnesty International. The displaced Iraqi women live in eight camps in two provinces north of Baghdad. Amnesty researchers based their findings in The Condemned: Women and Children Isolated, Trapped, and Exploited in Iraq, on 92 interviews that were conducted [press release] with women living in camps for internally displaced people. In addition to being prohibited from receiving funds, health care and food by the Iraqi government, Amnesty claims women are continuously barred from receiving identity cards and other important documents necessary to work, move freely and send their children to school. In exchange for these basic needs, women in the camps have reportedly been sexually exploited by armed guards. According to the report: If the Iraqi authorities and the international community fail to address the collective punishment of families with perceived IS ties, their treatment could create the conditions for the next cycle of violence in Iraq. With the territorial battle with IS finally having reached its conclusion, there is no better time to put an end to the marginalization and mistreatment that has led to such a terrible legacy of suffering. The human rights group argues that improvement of the conditions of Iraqi women with ties to IS is crucial for reconciliation and peace in Iraq. The US Supreme Court [official website] held 5-4 [opinion, PDF] Tuesday that the term aggravated felony in the Immigration and Nationality Act (INA) [text], as it relates to 16(b) of the federal criminal code [text], is unconstitutionally void for vagueness under the Fifth Amendments [GPO backgrounder] Due Process Clause. Section 1227(a)(2)(A)(3) of the INA provides: Any alien (including an alien crewman) in and admitted to the United States shall, upon the order of the Attorney General, be removed if the alien [has been] convicted of an aggravated felony at any time after admission. The phrase aggravated felony is used twice more in the INA in 1229b(a)(3) and 1229b(b)(1)(C). Section 1101 further defines aggravated felony as including a crime of violence as defined in 16(b) of the federal criminal code for which the term of imprisonment is at least one year. The case in question here involved James Dimaya, a lawful permanent resident, with two convictions for first-degree burglary under California law. Following a second offense, the federal government moved to deport Dimaya as an aggravated felon. An Immigration Judge and the Board of Immigration Appeals held that California first-degree burglary is a crime of violence under 16(b) of the federal criminal code. While Dimayas appeal was pending in the US Court of Appeals for the Ninth Circuit, the Supreme Court provided its judgment in Johnson v. United States [JURIST report] that involved a similar residual clause in the Armed Career Criminal Act (ACCA), which defined violent felony as any felony that otherwise involves conduct that presents a serious potential risk of physical injury to another. There, the court held ACCAs residual clause created grave uncertainty about how to estimate the risk posed by a crime because it tie[d] the judicial assessment of risk to a speculative hypothesis about the crimes ordinary case,' providing no guidance on the determination of what that ordinary case was. Noting the indeterminacy about how to measure risk and what it takes for a crime to qualify as a violent felony, the court held that the clause created more unpredictability and arbitrariness than the Due Process Clause tolerates. Using that cases holding as a premise, Justice Elena Kagan wrote for the majority: Section 16s residual clause violates that promise in just the same way. To begin where Johnson did, 16(b) also calls for a court to identify a crimes ordinary case in order to measure the crimes risk. The Government explicitly acknowledges that point here. Nothing in 16(b) helps courts to perform that task, just as nothing in ACCA did. We can as well repeat here what we asked in Johnson: How does one go about divining the conduct entailed in a crimes ordinary case? Statistical analyses? Surveys? Experts? Google? Gut instinct? 16(b) also possesses the second fatal feature of ACCAs residual clause: uncertainty about the level of risk that makes a crime violent. In sum, 16(b) has the same [t]wo features that conspire[d] to make [ACCAs residual clause] unconstitutionally vague. It too requires a court to picture the kind of conduct that the crime involves in the ordinary case, and to judge whether that abstraction presents some not-well-specified-yet-sufficiently-large degree of risk. The result is that 16(b) produces, just as ACCAs residual clause did, more unpredictability and arbitrariness than the Due Process Clause tolerates. Justice Neil Gorsuch, providing the fifth vote for the majority, wrote a separate concurring opinion pointing to the vagueness of the residual clause in 16(b) of the federal criminal code and the term aggravated felony as inviting so capacious a construction as the crime of treason in English law where the mere expression of disfavored opinions could invite transportation or death. Chief Justice John Roberts dissented, stating that 16(b) does not present the same ambiguities as those present in the Johnson case. Justices Anthony Kennedy, Clarence Thomas and Samuel Alito joined in Roberts dissent. [JURIST] The US Supreme Court [official website] began its last oral argument session on Monday with two cases. At issue [SCOTUSblog materials] in the first case, Wisconsin Central Ltd. v. United States [transcript, PDF] is whether stocks given to employees by a railroad is taxable as money under the federal Railroad Retirement Tax Act. The attorney for the petitioner, Wisconsin Central Ltd., argued that stock is not money under a generally accepted definition of money as a generally accepted medium of exchange. Most of the questions concerned the definition of medium of exchange. The attorney for the respondent argued that the statue covers more than just cash and cited several examples of non-cash benefits that are taxed. In the second case, WesternGeco LLC v. ION Geophysical Corp. [transcript, PDF] the court will decide [SCOTUSblog materials] whether a patent-holder is entitled to lost profits when an infringer transports and assembles parts of a product in a way that violates a patent. The attorney for the petitioner argued that the lost profits are the reasonably foreseeable result of domestic infringement. When the attorney for the respondent spoke, most of the questions concerned the presumption of territoriality, or the idea that US laws do not have reach outside of US jurisdiction unless otherwise stated. By BASSEM MROUE and PHILIP ISSA , Associated Press DAMASCUS, Syria (AP) International chemical weapons inspectors Tuesday entered Douma, the Syrian town that was the site of a suspected poison gas attack that led to Western airstrikes against the Syrian government, state media reported. The team from the Organization for the Prohibition of Chemical Weapons arrived in the suburb east of the capital, 10 days after the alleged attack, raising concerns that any evidence the inspectors find could be useless. On Monday, OPCW Director-General Ahmet Uzumcu said Syrian and Russian authorities had blocked its inspectors from going to Douma and instead offered them 22 people to interview as witnesses. The team arrived in the Syrian capital of Damascus on Saturday. Journalists in Damascus were prevented by government minders from contacting the OPCW inspectors, and The Hague-based organization refused to comment on "operational details regarding the Douma deployment." U.N. Secretary-General Antonio Guterres said it was the "obligation of the Syrian government to provide all the conditions for (OPCW inspectors) to work without any restrictions." British Prime Minister Theresa May accused the Syrian government and its ally Russia of trying to cover up evidence and obstruct the investigation. The OPCW is investigating reports that government forces gassed sites in Douma on April 7, when the town was still held by rebels and home to tens of thousands of people residents and others who were displaced by fighting elsewhere. Syrian activists said more than 40 people were killed in the alleged attack. Less than two days later, the Army of Islam rebels surrendered the town, which was the last stronghold in the once rebellious eastern Ghouta region at the doorstep of Damascus. The U.S. and France say they have evidence that Syrian President Bashar Assad's military was behind the poison gas attack, but they have made none of that evidence public. On Saturday, the U.S., France and Britain bombarded sites they said were linked to Syria's chemical weapons program. Journalists were allowed access to Douma on Monday. The Associated Press spoke to survivors and witnesses who described being hit by gas, fainting, and discovering their relatives had died, with foam bubbling around their mouths. The Syrian government and Russia have denied using chemical weapons and accused rebels, with Western backing, of using such weapons or faking such an attack. Russian Foreign Ministry spokeswoman Maria Zakharova dismissed allegations that Russia was trying to hamper the OPCW inspectors, saying Moscow strongly supports their mission to Douma. Alexander Rodionov of the Russian military's chemical weapons protection unit said its experts found chlorine and components for producing mustard gas at a rebel laboratory in Douma. He said the canister with chlorine was similar to one shown in images released by activists in the days after April 7. Russian President Vladimir Putin told German Chancellor Angela Merkel that the Western strikes had violated international law and set back the peace process, the Kremlin said. But French President Emmanual Macron defended the military action in an impassioned and at times angry speech to the European parliament. He spoke of the "outrage by images we've seen of children, women who died of a chlorine attack." "Do we sit back, do we defend (human) rights by saying, 'Rights are for us, principles are for us, and realities are for others?' No, no!" the French leader said. "Three countries have intervened, and let me be quite frank: this is for the honor of the international community." The alleged attack and subsequent military response underscored the challenge that the seven-year conflict in Syria poses for the West. President Donald Trump wants to remove U.S. troops from Syria, where it has been fighting the Islamic State militants. A new strategy appeared to be crystalizing to let the U.S. leave Syria without relinquishing its interests to Assad government or his allies, Iran and Russia. Saudi Arabian Foreign Minister Adel al-Jubeir said the U.S.-aligned kingdom could deploy forces from a bloc of mostly Sunni Muslim nations that was established to fight terrorism. He said the Obama administration did not agree to such an offer. The kingdom has supported Sunni rebel groups fighting Assad's forces, which are backed by Shiite-majority Iran. Saudi Arabia is also a member of the U.S.-led coalition battling IS militants. The OPCW visit to Douma came hours after Syrian media reported airstrikes Tuesday on government military installations in the central Homs region and the suburbs of Damascus, but the military later said a false alarm had set off air defense systems. Explosions were heard in the areas of the two bases, according to the Britain-based Syrian Observatory for Human Rights, which monitors the conflict via a network of sources in the country. But it said no missiles landed inside the bases. Earlier this month, four Iranian military personnel were killed in an airstrike on Syria's T4 air base, also in Homs. Syria, Iran and Russia blamed Israel for that attack. Israel did not confirm or deny it. ___ Issa reported from Beirut. Associated Press writers Zeina Karam in Beirut, Aya Batrawy in Riyadh, Saudi Arabia, Michael Corder in Amsterdam and Vladimir Isachenkov in Moscow contributed. EUGENE, Ore. (AP) - A proposal would allow electric bicycles on Oregon beaches as soon as this summer. Katie Gauthier, legislative and policy coordinator of Oregon State Parks, says rule changes would permit e-bikes on the sand between the low-tide waterline and vegetation line along portions of the coast. Gauthier says Current State Parks rules allow bicycles, but not e-bikes, on about 130 miles of trails and roads on state parks around Oregon The agency allows bikes, but not e-bikes, on many of Oregon's beaches. Oregon State Parks is taking public comment on its plan to allow electric bicycles on beaches along the coast and on trails. The deadline is 5 p.m. on May 18. The Oregon State Parks and Recreation Commission, which sets policy for Oregon State Parks, likely will vote on the proposal at its June meeting. MEDFORD, Ore. As primary elections loom in Southern Oregon, the Jackson County Clerk has released a handful of statements regarding important dates and details on the upcoming votes. Below you'll find a timeline of important events for Oregon voters: April 18-20 - Voters' Pamphlet Delivery Pamphlets will be delivered to all local postal addresses. Receiving a voters' pamphlet does not mean you are registered to vote. According to the Jackson County Clerk, an online version of the voters' pamphlet will be available at the Secretary of State's page during the week of May 16. April 24 - Voter Registration Deadline In order to vote in the May 15 Primary, you must be registered in Oregon by April 24. Registration and updates can be completed online here, or automatically at the DMV when updating your Driver's License or I.D. Card. April 24 - Political Party Affiliation Deadline The May 15 Primary is a "closed party primary" for registered Democrats and Republicans. Only registered members of those parties will be able to vote for candidates of their party. The Independent Party has opened their primary to non-affiliated voters who request an Independent ballot. Non-affiliated voters will otherwise only be able to vote on nonpartisan offices and measures. To request an Independent ballot, go online here and complete the form. It must be sent via email, mail, fax, or in person to the county elections office as soon as possibleno later than 5 p.m. on April 24. April 28 - Vote by Mail Ballots Delivered Ballots will be delivered to registered mailing addresses on April 28. If you are a registered voter and do not receive a ballot by Friday, May 4, contact your local elections office. April 30 - Drop Site Locations Open The following are 24-hour drop locations in Jackson County: - Central Point Library, 116 S 3rd St., Central Point, OR 97502 - Eagle Point Library, 239 W Main St., Eagle Point, OR 97524 - Ashland Library, 410 Siskiyou Blvd., Ashland, OR 97520 - Rogue River Library, 412 E Main St., Rogue River, OR 97537 - Phoenix Library, 510 W 1st St., Phoenix, OR 97535 - Jackson County Elections, 1101 W Main St., Medford, OR 97501 (starts April 27, drive-up) May 15 - Ballots Due Ballots must be received at the elections office or in an official ballot drop box by no later than 8:00 p.m. on Tuesday, May 15 in order to be counted. General Secretary of the Communist Party of Vietnam Central Committee Nguyen Phu Trong and Speaker of the Parliament of Iran Ali Ardeshir Larijani. (Photo: VNA) Holding a reception in Hanoi on April 16th for Speaker of the Parliament of Iran Ali Ardeshir Larijani, who is on a four-day official visit to Vietnam, Party leader Trong affirmed Vietnams consistent foreign policy of independence, self-reliance, diversification and multilateralisation of relations on the basis of international principals, equality and mutual benefits. The Party chief took the occasion to congratulate the southwest Asian country on its successes in political stabilization, socio-economic development and increasing position in the international arena. He expressed his delight at the fruitful relations between Vietnam and Iran, which has been incessantly consolidated. He recommended that the two countries strengthen coordination at regional and international forums while promoting the exchange of delegations at all levels as well as exchange activities in the fields of culture, sports, education-training and tourism. The moves will bring practical benefits to both sides, for interests of their people and for regional and global peace and development, he stressed. Ali Ardeshir Larijani, for his part, lauded Vietnams achievements and roles in the regional and international arenas, believing that under the leadership of the Communist Party of Vietnam, the Vietnamese people will reap more resounding successes in the national construction, protection and development. He asserted his determination to further the friendship and cooperation between the legislative bodies, States and people of Vietnam and Iran. Iran stands ready to join hands with Vietnam in such areas as petrochemistry, mining, tourism, aviation, pharmaceuticals, security, defence and banking, among others, he noted. He invited Party General Secretary Trong to pay visit to Iran in a proper time and the later accepted the invitation with pleasure./. NDP MP Sheila Malcolmson speaks with the media in Ottawa on Thursday, November 30, 2017. The New Democrats say that if the Liberals were serious about ensuring men and women get equal pay for work of equal value, they would be moving faster on introducing legislation - and attaching a dollar amount.THE CANADIAN PRESS/Adrian Wyld Prime Minister Nguyen Xuan Phuc and Indonesian Foreign Minister Retno Marsudi (Source: VNA) At a reception for Indonesian Foreign Minister Retno Marsudi in Hanoi on April 17th, the leader stressed that Vietnam and Indonesia are major trade partners of each other. He noted with pleasure the positive growth of the two-way trade over the past time, at 6.5 percent during 2012-2016 and 16 percent in 2017 to hit USD6.5 billion. Highlighting rosy signs of the bilateral investment ties, PM Phuc said Vietnam wants to cooperate with Indonesia in various realms. He told his guest that Vietnam is pushing the improvement of the domestic business environment, urging Indonesian investors to expand their operation in the country. For her part, Minister Retno Marsudi briefed her host on outcomes of the third meeting of the Vietnam-Indonesia Bilateral Cooperation Committee, which took place in Hanoi the same day. She called on the two countries leaders to maintain the exchange of visits in order to step up bilateral cooperation across fields, and the Governments to create the best possible conditions for businesses of both sides to cooperate with each other. Host and guest shared the view that the fruitful collaboration between Vietnam and Indonesia will contribute to consolidating and promoting cooperation and solidarity within the Association of Southeast Asian Nations (ASEAN) to which both countries are members./. Halifax Police Supt. Jim Perrin speaks to reporters in Halifax on Saturday, Dec. 9, 2017. Internet law experts are questioning the arrest of a 19-year-old Halifax man last week for alleged breaches of a provincial website after the youth came forward to say he believed he was downloading public information. THE CANADIAN PRESS/Adina Bresge Saskatchewan Premier Scott Moe discusses the province's 2018 budget at the Legislative Building in Regina on April 10, 2018. Saskatchewan will soon be joining Alberta by introducing its own legislation in the fight against B.C. over the Trans Mountain pipeline expansion. Premier Scott Moe has announced on Twitter that in the coming days Saskatchewan will bring in a bill that could result in reducing oil exports to B.C. THE CANADIAN PRESS/Mark Taylor Senator Kim Pate stands with advocates and family members of Colten Boushie as she speaks during a press conference on Parliament Hill in Ottawa on Wednesday, Feb. 14, 2018. From left: Eleanore Sunchild, Sheldon Wuttunee, Debbie Baptiste, mother of Colten Boushie, Alvin Baptiste, uncle of Colten Boushie, Senator Kim Pate, lawyer Chris Murphy, and Jade Tootoosis, cousin of Colten Boushie. THE CANADIAN PRESS/Justin Tang In this image released by ABC News, former FBI director James Comey appears at an interview with George Stephanopoulos that will air during a primetime "20/20" special on Sunday, April 15, 2018 on the ABC Television Network. Comey's book, "A Higher Loyalty: Truth, Lies, and Leadership," will be released on Tuesday. (Ralph Alswang/ABC via AP) File - This photo released April 12, 2018, by The Mendocino County Sheriff's Office shows the Eel River in Northern California. Authorities searching for a family whose SUV plunged into a rain-swollen Northern California river found the vehicle and the body of a man and a girl inside it. The Mendocino County Sheriff's Office said Monday, April 16, 2018, that searchers located the car Sunday and recovered the bodies of Sandeep Thottapilly and Saachi Thottapilly. (Lt. Shannon Barney/Mendocino County Sheriff's Office via AP, File) The Renault works team and the manufacturer's customers will likely benefit from a power unit upgrade scheduled for the Canadian Grand Prix in June. While Renault has improved its engine in the past months, both in terms of reliability and output, the unit still lags its Mercedes and Ferrari counterparts. Reports from Spain's AS suggest that a step forward is planned for Montreal but a single unit may be made available to teams as early as next month's Monaco Grand Prix. "According to informed sources, the improvement will be about 30bhp, and on a track like Canada, it would be about three tenths per lap," said the report. AS believes the boost would bring Renault up to about 950bhp, while it is known that Mercedes and Ferrari have reached the 1000bhp milestone. Renault's Cyril Abiteboul recently revealed that the manufacturer's engine development plans were evolving favourably. After meeting its stringent reliability targets, Renault has been gradually turning up the power to extract more performance from its engine. "If we follow our plan, it will be a while until the second power unit arrives but there will be an evolution of the ICE and also the fuel," said Abiteboul. AS also reported that Honda has an upgrade of its own in the works, worth a potential increase of 40 bhp, and expected to be introduced either in Canada or France. "According to rumours, Red Bull have told Honda that the condition of using their power unit next season is that it is equal to the Renault," wrote AS. Gallery: The beautiful wives and girlfriends of F1 drivers Keep up to date with all the F1 news via Facebook and Twitter Chinese State Councilor and Foreign Minister Wang Yi attends the high-level economic dialogue between China and Japan in Tokyo, Japan, on April 16, 2018. Wang Yi on Monday co-chaired the fourth high-level economic dialogue between China and Japan with Japanese Foreign Minister Taro Kono here. (Xinhua/Ma Ping) TOKYO, April 16 (Xinhua) -- Chinese State Councilor and Foreign Minister Wang Yi on Monday co-chaired the fourth high-level economic dialogue between China and Japan with Japanese Foreign Minister Taro Kono here. Wang said that the dialogue was restarted after an eight-year hiatus amid improvement in bilateral relationship. Currently bilateral economic cooperation is at a new starting point, facing new historical conditions and macro environment, and the two sides should deepen communication from both strategic and pragmatic perspectives so as to boost mutual understanding, accumulate mutual trust, promote coordination and enhance cooperation, Wang said. Wang pointed out that as this year marks the 40th anniversary of China's reform and opening-up, under the new circumstances, China is to launch a new journey of reform and opening-up in the new era and will seek development with higher quality, continue to expand opening up and improve business environment, and speed up the Belt and Road development. He said that while economic and trade cooperation between China and Japan is faced with new historical opportunities, the two sides should cherish the momentum of improvement in bilateral ties which did not come by easily, safeguard the political foundation of bilateral relationship, stick to mutually beneficial and win-win results and joint development, and be dedicated to improving quality of and upgrading bilateral economic cooperation, particularly cooperation in areas such as energy-conservation and environment-protection, science and technology innovation, high-end manufacturing, finance and banking, sharing economy, medical care and elderly care industries. The two sides should jointly push for outcomes of cooperation under the framework of the Belt and Road Initiative, and make them new highlights of bilateral cooperation; jointly promote the economic integration of East Asia, speed up negotiations on China-Japan-South Korea free trade agreement and the Regional Comprehensive Economic Partnership, and make continued efforts towards the goal of the Free Trade Area of the Asia-Pacific at an early date; jointly oppose trade protectionism, safeguard multilateral trade system, and promote development of an open world economy. Kono said that economic cooperation is an important foundation and driving force for Japan-China relations. He said that as this year marks the 40th anniversary of the signing of the Treaty of Peace and Friendship between Japan and China, bilateral relationship is faced with opportunities for improvement in all areas and stable development. Facing new changes in economic situation of the two countries and the world, Japan is willing to work with China to plan and expand economic and trade cooperation from a new perspective, he said. Japan attaches high importance to the important messages sent by Chinese President Xi Jinping at the opening ceremony of the Boao Forum for Asia Annual Conference 2018, and in face of rising protectionism, the free trade system centered on the World Trade Organization (WTO) should be safeguarded and trade issues should be handled based on WTO rules, he added. During the dialogue, senior officials of foreign affairs, economic and finance ministries of both countries exchanged views and achieved a series of consensus on issues such as macroeconomic policies, bilateral economic cooperation and exchanges, cooperation with third parties, economic integration of East Asia, and multilateral cooperation. 2 1 [ Editor: Zhang Zhou ] Berikut beberapa tips bermain togel singapore.. Jika Anda adalah pemain lotre pertama yang menemukan trik untuk melakukan lotre di Singapura, berikut adalah beberapa trik paling populer. Karena ada bandar taruhan online, bermain game lotere jauh lebih berpengalaman. Taruhan taruhan online adalah layanan perjudian virtual. Bermain permainan togel melalui layanan taruhan online memiliki banyak fitur. Ini dimulai dengan mudah, nyaman, mudah, nyaman, dan nyaman. Jadi, pemain Indonesia sekarang bermain lotere secara online. Anda dapat mendengar suara bermain lotere dengan kontrak online. Yang harus Anda lakukan adalah mendaftar dan setoran Anda akan dimulai. Tentu saja, dalam proses yang sederhana dan mengganggu, Anda dapat langsung menggandakan dana Anda dalam taruhan lotere dengan taruhan online. Dengan sistem taruhan online. Kenyamanan berarti dalam hal ini, tetapi tidak ada hubungannya dengan kenyamanan. Meskipun demikian, gamer dapat melakukan hal-hal lain seperti lelucon untuk ditangani. Trik bertaruh Togel Singapura menggunakan teknik diversifikasi taruhan Tentunya, inilah impian setiap pemain lotere di dunia. Untuk menggunakan permainan lotere online ini, Anda harus mahir dalam lotere. Salah satu teknik yang dapat digunakan adalah penggunaan teknik diversifikasi taruhan. Diversifikasi taruhan berarti Anda telah terdaftar untuk berbagai jenis taruhan. Alasan menelepon adalah karena jenis perjudian ini memengaruhi peluang Anda untuk menang. Apakah ada peluang kehilangan semua modal Anda saat bermain lotere dengan bandar taruhan online? Trik lotere Singapura untuk menunda diversifikasi taruhan juga sangat sederhana. Misalnya, Anda sudah menjadi anggota taruhan online dan Anda memiliki saldo 100.000 di akun perjudian online Anda. Dengan modal yang Anda pegang, Anda bisa membaginya menjadi beberapa jenis taruhan. Pada musim gugur, dia bermain di pasar lotere Singapura. Musim gugur ini, permainan lotere online menawarkan satu atau dua suguhan steak besar. Misalnya, saya pernah mendengar taruhan dalam kategori umum, yang menempati urutan kedua di pasar lotere Singapura. Saya tidak mengelola semua ibu kota dalam 2d musim gugur ini. Karena ini adalah taruhan utama, Anda bisa kehilangan setengah dari jumlah taruhan Anda di Jenis Taruhan 2d Lotere Singapura. Bandar judi lotere online memungkinkan Anda untuk memasang taruhan yang sama pada jenis taruhan yang berbeda. Maksimalkan keuntungan Anda dengan memilih taruhan yang tepat Anda dapat mendengar tentang taruhan tertentu melalui Trik Lotere Singapura di atas. Bahkan jika Anda tidak beruntung, kemungkinan kehilangan semua modal Anda dijual. Jadi teknik ini bekerja dengan sangat baik saat bermain game online. Teknik ini juga harus digunakan oleh bandar taruhan online yang baik. Bahkan jika Anda bermain lotere online di Singapura, pastikan Anda mendapatkan layanan taruhan terbaik. Jangan tertipu oleh bandar judi lotere online atau bandar judi lotere online yang tidak memenuhi syarat. Ini termasuk dealer lotere online yang menawarkan hubungan dan kesepakatan terbaik. Tentunya hal tersebut menjamin kenyamanan dalam hal pelayanan yang terbaik. Anda pasti bisa melihat lebih banyak dan bermain dengan lebih tenang. Bagaimana Anda bisa lebih tertarik dengan pengangguran? Penawaran langsung dalam bentuk bonus atau diskon dari partisipasi dealer lotere online. Ketika datang ke taruhan online, berbagai hak alami telah muncul. Karena bonus adalah salah satu pengaturan publik saat bermain. Sebagian, topik diskon kurang menguntungkan. Semakin banyak diskon yang Anda perhatikan, semakin banyak prinsip yang ada daripada Anda. Anda dapat melakukan trik, bermain, bermain, dan berdagang lotere di Singapura. People fly Kongming lanterns to pray for good fortune and celebrate the Water-Sprinkling Festival of the Dai and some other minority nationalities in Jinghong City, southwest Chinas Yunnan Province, April 14, 2018. (Photo by Li Ming/ Guangming Picture) 5 1 [ Editor: Zhang Zhou ] Source: | 2018-04-17 14:17:07|Editor: Liangyu TOKYO, April 17 (Xinhua) -- Chinese State Councilor and Foreign Minister Wang Yi met with figures from Japanese economic circles here Tuesday, including Sadayuki Sakakibara, current chairman of Keidanran or Japan Business Federation, and Hiroaki Nakanishi, who has been elected Keidanran's next leader. Wang said that Keidanran has been dedicated to promoting friendship between China and Japan through economic cooperation despite bumps and difficulties in bilateral relationship. Currently, the economic situation in both China and Japan and the international economic environment are undergoing significant changes, and under the circumstances, China has manifested its determination to further deepen reform and expand opening-up on the occasion of the 40th anniversary of China's reform and opening-up, he said. Chinese President Xi Jinping has announced recently the new measures for expanding China's reform and opening-up at the opening ceremony of the 2018 Boao Forum for Asia annual conference, and Chinese economy has been turning from development with high speed to development with high quality, all of which will provide important opportunities for China's cooperation with countries all over the world including Japan, he added. Wang said that under the new circumstances China is willing to promote the upgrading of its economic relationship with Japan; to welcome Japan to join the Belt and Road Initiative, which will open up new space for bilateral economic cooperation; to work with Japan to promote global free trade, safeguard World Trade Organization (WTO) rules, and develop an open world economy. It is hoped that Keidanran will continue its efforts and bring its advantages to full play to make contribution to improving China-Japan economic cooperation from a new starting point and to promoting world economic development, he said. Members of Keidanran said that they were inspired by the momentum of improvement in bilateral ties between China and Japan. Japanese economic circles paid great attention to Chinese foreign minister's visit to Japan and the high-level economic dialogue between China and Japan which was held after an eight-year hiatus, and welcomed the important messages sent by the two sides on safeguarding global free trade system, they said. Keidanran has long been dedicated to promoting friendship between China and Japan and supporting China's reform and development. It is willing to actively participate in the Belt and Road construction and continue to make efforts to promote friendly cooperation between the two countries and develop closer economic ties, they said. [ Editor: WPY ] CEDAR RAPIDS, Iowa A Mason City man is now facing federal drug charges. Joseph Angel Luna, 28, has been indicted for conspiracy to distribute a controlled substance and distribution of a controlled substance. The U.S. Attorneys Office for the Northern District of Iowa says Luna worked with Brenda Ruehlow to distribute methamphetamine in September 2009. Ruehlow is charged with conspiracy, possession with intent to distribute, and distribution of meth. Luna was one of three people arrested after the search of a Forest City home on December 17, 2017. He was charged with a controlled substance violation and accused of delivering meth to a cooperating informant for the North Central Iowa Narcotics Task Force in April 2017. That state charge has now been dismissed to make way for his federal prosecution. The other two arrested with Luna, Valerie and Audrey ODell of Forest City, are still scheduled to stand trial in Winnebago County on May 9 on drug and child endangerment charges. KIMT NEWS 3 - As the nationwide search for Lois Riess continues, Blooming Prairie community members are speaking out about their thoughts on a familiar face being on the run. This comes amid the Lee County Sheriff's Office releasing surveillance video Monday that showed Riess talking to the woman she's suspected of murdering in Florida. Dave Klug lives in Blooming Prairies and said he's one of many who don't want Riess back in the community. A Minnesota grandmother accused of murder in two states is the focus of a nationwide search this morning. Police believe 56-year-old Lois Riess killed her husband, David, & then killed a woman who looked like her to steal the woman's identity. @tonydokoupil reports: pic.twitter.com/gEkcXcVRNV CBS This Morning (@CBSThisMorning) April 17, 2018 "I just hope they catch her," Klug said, "because you know, I don't doubt that she won't come back here, but everybody just wonders what happened to her. She used to do daycare in this town and a lot of people here knew her and thought she was a good person, and then this happened." Undersheriff Carmine Marceno with the Lee County Sheriff's Office in Florida is working to make sure everyone knows what Riess is capable of. "She looks like anyone's mother or grandmother," Marceno said. "She will smile, she's calculated, and she's a killer on the loose." "We can tell you as her resources go away that she will become more desperate," Merceno said, "and God forbid, strike again." Klug said he never thought something like this could happen in his small town, and he just wants justice. "I hope they catch her and she didn't make it to some other country," Klug said, "and she's gotta pay for what she did." Investigators said Riess likes to gamble, is armed and dangerous, and could be anywhere at this time. NORA SPRINGS, Iowa - While it may be because they don't have to shovel, first-graders at Central Springs Elementary aren't too upset knowing snow is once again on its way. You can play outside in the summer, Braden Espinasa said. Kind of happy because I like snow, you can play on the snow hill that's outside, Jackie Shook said. Espinasa admits he's heard his parents complaining about this weather. "Have you heard your parents complain about it?" KIMT News 3 asked. "Yeah, Espinasa replied. "What do you say to them?" We asked. "I say spring is coming, Espinasa replied. While Shook is excited to keep playing on her favorite snow hill, she's also aware of what season its supposed to be looking like outside. It's supposed to be spring, and when it's springtime you're not supposed to have all this snow you're supposed to have good green grass, Shook said. For Central Springs Schools, while they were supposed to get out of school May 24th, that's now been moved to May 30th and that too may change depending on Wednesdays weather. MASON CITY, Iowa Stealing from a string of vehicles results in probation for a North Iowa man. Taylor James Wigant, 25 of Clear Lake, was sentenced Monday to two years of probation in Cerro Gordo County District Court. He pleaded guilty to four counts of 3rd degree burglary of a motor vehicle. Wigant was accused of taking cash, a laptop computer, sunglasses, and other personal items from several vehicles on January 21. Wigant was given two year prison sentences on each count of burglary, to be served consecutively, but they were all suspended in favor of probation. He has also been ordered to pay restitution to his victims. EYOTA TOWNSHIP, Minn. - Ice is being blamed for a Tuesday morning auto accident in Olmsted County. Karina Jean Baltes, 22 of Rochester, was driving north on U.S. Highway 52 when the Minnesota State Patrol says she hit a patch of ice, lost control, and went into the ditch. Baltes suffered what is being described as a non-life threatening injury and was taken to St. Mary's Hospital. Baltes was wearing her seat belt during this crash, which happened around 7:30 am. Chatfield Fire Department and Eyota Amublance assisted at the scene. The Vietnamese PM made the request while attending a conference on April 16 where he said the Government will issue a directive on the development of Vietnams logistics sector. He said improvements have been made but the cost of logistics services in Vietnam remains prohibitive, making the economy less competitive than its regional peers. According to a World Bank estimate, Vietnams logistics costs currently account for 20.9% of GDP, higher than Chinas 19%, Thailands 18%, Japans 11%, and the EUs 10%. The Government leader stated that high logistics costs are one of the hurdles facing the competitiveness of the economy, quoting Benjamin Franklins saying that little expenses are like a small leak that can sink a great ship. PM Phuc said that by 2025 the costs of logistics must be cut to 16-20% of GDP while its contribution to GDP should be raised to 8-10%, to place Vietnam among the top 50 economies in the Logistics Performance Index. Pledging to create equal opportunities for all economic sectors in developing the logistics market, the Government leader expects Vietnam to be an important regional logistics centre by tapping into the countrys strategic location. He said that efforts to lower logistics costs need adequate attention, in addition to efforts to reform administrative procedures and enhance the business climate, as Vietnam is intensifying its international integration and participation in major free trade agreements. ROCHESTER, Minn.- The snow fall we experienced over the weekend left many flights cancelled or delayed. The old saying April showers bring may flowers is taking a new meaning in Rochester. KIMT News 3s Jeremiah Wilcox spoke to people at the Rochester International Airport to talk to people on their way to warmer weather. Karen Herrera is on her way to Florida, she says she was suppose to leave over the weekend but the weather kept her grounded. It got canceled we got on another flight and that was delayed and kept getting delayed and finally ended up at a hotel for the night. The snow storm caused airline cancellations through out the state of Minnesota. Don Cottrell is from Ohio and drove from Wisconsin to Minneapolis when his flight was cancelled then drove to Rochester to catch a last minute flight home. I'm so over the cold weather bring on spring...please He has traveled to Minnesota for ten years but says it's never been this bad. This is the worst I have seen in about the ten years i've been going up there. We haven't seen this much snowfall in the month of April since the 1980s, when Minnesota was hit with 16 inches of snow. GARNER, Iowa - A trial has been set in the case of a traffic stop that turned into a drug arrest. Dakota William Linn, 18 of Humboldt, is pleading not guilty to use of a minor in the drug trade, possession of marijuana with intent to deliver, and failure to affix a drug tax stamp. He was arrested after a vehicle was stopped near the intersection of Highway 69 and 325th Street on March 16. Authorities say Linn was a passenger and the driver was a minor. Court documents state a large amount of marijuana and a firearm were found in the vehicle. Linn's trial is scheduled to start on May 30. (Kitco News) - Thieves in France got away with the priceless 16th-century gold case that once contained the heart of Queen Anne de Bretagne the only woman who was crowned queen of France twice. The disappearance of the gold case has really angered the local population, who say that the historical value of the piece is immeasurable. The case even survived not being melted down during the turbulence following the French Revolution in 1789. The thieves attacked our common heritage and stole an item of inestimable value. Much more than merely a symbol, Anne de Bretagnes heart belongs to our shared history. Queen Anne, Duchess of Brittany, had wished that her heart be buried with her parents, said Philippe Grosvalet, the president of the Loire-Atlantique department. The item was stolen from the Thomas-Dobree museum located in the city of Nantes in western France, which owned the item since 1886. The suspects broke into the museum over the weekend and walked away with the 6-inch oval gold case even after triggering the alarm. Local authorities spoke out, pleading with the robbers not to melt down the gold case for its precious metal value. If by any chance the thieves were motivated by the fact that it is shiny and made of gold, they should understand that its historical and symbolic value far outweighs its 100 grams of gold, said Catherine Touchefeu, Loire-Atlantiques departmental councilor. Anne de Bretagne was first married to Charles VIII of France in 1491. Following his death, she was then married to Louis XII in 1499. Anne de Bretagne was raised in Nantes and after her death in 1514, one of her requests was that her heart remain in the city, while her body was buried in Paris. STRASBOURG (Reuters) - French President Emmanuel Macron urged Europeans on Tuesday to halt a retreat into national antagonisms and rebuild the European Union as a bulwark for liberal democracy against a disorderly and dangerous world. Addressing the European Parliament, he won applause from lawmakers after condemning the rise of illiberal democracies even within the EU and portraying a Europe that protects people. Dozens of nationalist MEPs sat in silence, however. Macron noted he was too young to have known the wars that preceded the EU but his family and northern French home region had seen every blood letting. Echoing the language of historians about Europes slide into war a century ago, he said he would not belong to another generation of sleepwalkers and let the EU wither in what he called an atmosphere of civil war. Selfish nationalism was gaining ground, Macron warned. But it was a game of fools to halt or reverse sharing sovereignty among EU states in the face of challenges ranging from climate change and mass migration to the growing power of multinational corporations and authoritarian states a reference to China and Russia, among others. Europes ally the United States was, he lamented, also being tempted by unilateralism. We need a sovereignty that is stronger than just our own, which complements but does not replace it, Macron said in Strasbourg, a French frontier city which has become a symbol of Franco-German reconciliation after centuries as a prize of war. The pro-EU rhetoric of his first year in office has stirred enthusiasm from some. The real France is back, declared Jean-Claude Juncker, the EU chief executive, after Macron spoke. But the French leader faces a struggle to persuade German Chancellor Angela Merkel, and especially her more conservative supporters, to throw their weight behind grand European designs from Paris. NO TO NATIONALISM Macron tackled critics among his National Front opponents at home and European leaders such as newly re-elected Hungarian Prime Minister Viktor Orban, rejecting visions of illiberal democracy, hostile to immigration and intolerant of criticism. In the face of authoritarianism, the response is not authoritarian democracy but the authority of democracy, Macron said. He went on to describe nationalism as a dead end. We must hear the anger of Europes peoples today, he said. They need a new project. Those who trade on that anger are risking nationalisms tearing Europe apart. Far-right lawmaker Florian Philippot, a former National Front member, accused Macron of humiliating Frances historic statehood by playing to an audience of unrepresentative European elites. Left-wingers criticised the president for supporting free markets, including labour reforms which have triggered a weekly round of paralysing rail strikes in France. Calling for fellow EU leaders to follow his example in holding a public dialogue on Europes future, Macron noted that he was launching the process later that day in eastern France. With a little over a year until elections to the European Parliament, he lamented the fact that fewer than half of EU citizens bothered to turn out for previous such votes. He volunteered that France was ready to pay more into the EU budget currently being negotiated as Britain leaves on condition that the Union reforms in ways that France wants. Macron ran through his wish list for deeper EU integration as Britain prepares to leave next March. This included new taxation of digital businesses, more support for refugees, closer cooperation in defence and a stronger common approach to running the EUs single currency. Macron was speaking at the invitation of the European Parliament, which has asked leaders of all the member states to give their views on the EUs future following Brexit. Responding to a call from a British lawmaker to maintain close ties, Macron took a dig at Brexit, saying that the best way to have close relations with the EU was to be a member. MOSCOW (Reuters) - Russias drive to build a large power-generating turbine to lessen its dependence on Western technology has suffered a major set-back after a prototype broke beyond repair, two sources familiar with the project told Reuters. In the past few years Russia has imported the large-capacity gas turbines required to run modern power stations from firms such as Siemens (SIEGn.DE), GE (GE.N) and Alstom (ALSO.PA). After Western sanctions were imposed on Russia over the conflict with Ukraine four years ago, Russian President Vladimir Putin urged officials to replace imported technology with home-grown substitutes in energy, software, aerospace and medicine. The mishap with the 110 Megawatt turbine, a capacity large enough to power a sizeable town, underlines the technical challenges. Testing was underway on a prototype 110 MW turbine at the Saturn engineering plant in Rybinsk, central Russia, in December last year according to one of the two sources, who are both in the energy sector and familiar with the results of the tests. The turbine fell apart, said the first source, who spoke on condition of anonymity because of the sensitivity of the subject. They tried to repair it in time for March, but they did not manage it. March was the target date for completion of tests on the turbine. Putin, in power since 1999, won a second consecutive term in an election on March 18. The first source, and a second source, both said it was not possible to rebuild the prototype turbine and the project would have to start again with new equipment. The turbine broke up, said the second source, who requested anonymity because he is not authorized to speak to the media. Theres no turbine, thats it. NOT FATAL Without any home-grown equivalents, Russia should in most cases still be able to buy turbines from Western suppliers, but U.S. and European Union sanctions have made it harder to import Western power technology under certain circumstances. Last year Russia clandestinely delivered turbines made by Siemens to a power station in Crimea, which is subject to sanctions, and the European Union retaliated by imposing extra sanctions on officials and companies involved in the operation. Set-backs to the domestic turbine program could hamper the modernization of power generation if growing tensions with Western states result in tighter sanctions since Russias modernization plan is focused on using gas turbines. The technical hitch also carries a potential political cost: Putin has publicly trumpeted progress in replacing Western technology imports, so any failures will jar with the picture of success he has painted. The new turbine is being developed by a consortium of ODK, a unit of state-owned conglomerate Rostec that owns the Saturn factory where the testing was being conducted, Russian state technology firm RUSNANO, and state energy firm InterRAO. In a statement, ODK said one of the mechanisms of the prototype turbine had malfunctioned. It said that would delay work on the project, but could be fixed. It is not fatal for the project. It said set-backs were to be expected since this was a pioneering project for Russia. RUSNANO acknowledged there had been an accident but gave no details. It said it remained committed to the turbine project and expects it will be completed. InterRAO declined to comment. Russias Trade and Industry Ministry, which oversees the machine-building sector, declined to comment and referred questions to Rostec. WESTERN SANCTIONS Large capacity gas turbines have been in use around the world for years but their construction is tricky to perfect. Because they operate at extremely high speeds and high temperatures, they need to be engineered to very precise standards and they use sophisticated electronic control systems to make sure that they operate efficiently. For many years Russia made no major investment in developing the technology because it was able to import the turbines or the know-how to produce them. A scheme started in the 1990s to develop a large-capacity turbine produced prototypes but they did not go into production. At a meeting in Russias second city of Saint Petersburg in May last year, chaired by Prime Minister Dmitry Medvedev, Energy Minister Alexander Novak said a 110 MW turbine had been developed and testing should be completed by March 2018. This is the first Russian produced powerful machine with 100-percent domestic manufacture and it will, of course, help us to completely substitute purchases of foreign equipment of this capacity, Novak told the meeting. His ministry did not respond to questions on Tuesday about the set-back. RIYADH (Reuters) - Saudi Arabia would be prepared to send troops into Syria as part of the U.S.-led coalition if a decision was taken to widen it, Foreign Minister Adel al-Jubeir said on Tuesday. We are in discussion with the U.S. and have been since the beginning of the Syrian crisis about sending forces into Syria, Jubeir told a news conference in Riyadh with U.N. Secretary-General Antonio Guterres. He said Riyadh had expressed its readiness while Barack Obama was U.S. President to send ground forces into Syria if the United States were to add an on-the-ground component to the U.S.-led coalition fighting Islamic State insurgents. Jubeir was responding to a question about a Wall Street Journal report that the administration of U.S. President Donald Trump is seeking to assemble an Arab force to replace the U.S. military contingent in Syria. There are discussions regarding ... what kind of force needs to remain in eastern Syria and where that force would come from, and those discussions are ongoing, Jubeir said. Trump wants to bring U.S. troops home from Syria but has not set a timeline, White House spokeswoman Sarah Sanders said on Monday, two days after Western allies bombed Syrian targets over a suspected chemical weapons attack. One U.S. official told Reuters the United States is looking at what forces might be able to follow on in areas of Syria formerly under Islamic State control, should the United States leave or reduce its force dramatically. But no decisions have been made to do this. Before the Western military strikes took place, Saudi Arabias Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman had said that the kingdom, a key U.S. ally, could take part in military action in Syria. While some commentators have assumed that Saudi Arabia is fully preoccupied with a three-year-old war in Yemen, Riyadh has suggested it could help counter-terrorism operations in some other theatres of conflict as part of a wider Muslim alliance. For example, a Saudi-backed Islamic military coalition will provide logistical, intelligence and training to a new West African counter-terrorism force, Jubeir said in December. About 40 Muslim-majority nations met in Riyadh at the end of November to flesh out details of an alliance first conceived two years ago by Prince Mohammed that is widely seen as a vehicle for countering the growing influence of Riyadhs rival Iran. The following statements were posted to the verified Twitter accounts of U.S. President Donald Trump, @realDonaldTrump and @POTUS. The opinions expressed are his own. Reuters has not edited the statements or confirmed their accuracy. @realDonaldTrump : - Employment is up, Taxes are DOWN. Enjoy! [0824 EDT] - I am in Florida and looking forward to my meeting with Prime Minister Abe of Japan. Working on Trade and Military Security [0824 EDT] - 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. The high crime rate will only get higher. Much wanted Wall in San Diego already started! [0824 EDT] - So many people are seeing the benefits of the Tax Cut Bill. Everyone is talking, really nice to see! [0824 EDT] -- Source link: (bit.ly/2jBh4LU) (bit.ly/2jpEXYR) LONDON/NEW YORK/HONG KONG (Reuters) - The United States has banned American firms from selling parts and software to Chinas ZTE Corp for seven years, potentially devastating for the telecoms equipment maker and exacerbating tensions between the worlds two largest economies. The move, first reported by Reuters, comes at a time when the two countries have threatened each other with tens of billions of dollars in tariffs in recent weeks, fanning worries of a full blown trade war that threatens global supply chains as well as business investment plans. The U.S. Commerce Department imposed the ban following ZTEs violation of an agreement on punishing employees that was reached after it was caught illegally shipping U.S. goods to Iran. China responded swiftly, warning it is prepared to take action to protect the interests of Chinese firms and saying it hopes the United States can deal with the issue in accordance with the law. The U.S. action could be catastrophic for ZTE since American companies are estimated to provide 25 percent to 30 percent of the components used in ZTEs equipment, which includes smartphones and gear to build telecommunications networks. If the issue cannot be solved smoothly and immediately, we think that ZTE will face tremendous disaster and would be forced to scale back on its smartphone business, not only in the U.S., but also in other markets, said Strategy Analytics analyst Woody Oh. ZTE, whose Hong Kong and Shenzhen shares were suspended from trade on Tuesday, said in a statement it was assessing the implications of the U.S. decision and was communicating with relevant parties. The company has set up a crisis management group in response to the ban, said a ZTE source, declining to be identified as the information was confidential. Particularly damaging, Googles mobile services including the Google Play App Store are likely to be covered by the ban even though the Android operating system is free, said Richard Windsor, an independent analyst at Radio Free Mobile. I think that there is a risk that ZTE loses all of its non-Chinese Android business, he said. In almost every region outside of China, it is almost impossible to sell an Android handset that does not have Google Play installed. Google declined to comment. ZTE is Chinas No. 2 telecom equipment maker after Huawei Technologies Co Ltd [HWT.UL], the No. 4 seller of smartphones in the United States, and was worth some $20 billion as of Mondays close. In 2017, it derived 59 percent of revenue from its network business and 32 percent from its consumer business. If the company is not able to resolve it, they may very well be put out of business by this. Many banks and companies even outside the U.S. are not going to want to deal with them, said Eric Hirschhorn, a former U.S. undersecretary of commerce who was heavily involved in the case. The Chinese company paid $890 million in fines and penalties after it pleaded guilty last year to conspiring to violate U.S. sanctions by illegally shipping U.S. goods to Iran. As part of the agreement, Shenzhen-based ZTE promised to dismiss four senior employees and discipline 35 others by either reducing their bonuses or reprimanding them, senior U.S. officials told Reuters. But the Chinese company admitted in March that while it had fired the four senior employees, it had not disciplined or reduced bonuses to the 35 others. FLASHPOINT SECTOR Saying ZTE was likely to miss shipments and lose orders, brokerage Jefferies downgraded its rating on the firm to underperform from buy and slashed its price target to HK$15.72, nearly 40 percent below the firms closing price prior to Tuesdays trading halt. But Jefferies also said it expected ZTE would be able to settle with U.S. authorities in three to five months. Under terms of the ban, U.S. companies cannot export prohibited goods, such as chip sets, directly to ZTE or via another country, beginning immediately. As U.S. concerns about safeguarding its chip technology and cutting its trade deficit grow, the tech sector has become a flashpoint in the broader battle about trade and economic policy, with U.S. President Donald Trump accusing Chinese firms of intellectual property theft for years. Washington has also deepened its scrutiny of Chinese investment in the U.S., with the Committee on Foreign Investment in the United States (CFIUS), blocking many proposed acquisitions of U.S. assets by Chinese companies. Piling further pressure on ZTE, Britains main cyber security agency said on Monday it has written to organizations in the UKs telecommunications sector warning about using services or equipment from ZTE. The ban on supplying ZTE comes two months after two Republican senators introduced legislation to block the U.S. government from buying or leasing telecommunications equipment from ZTE or Huawei, citing concern the companies would use their access to spy on U.S. officials. China does not play by our rules, and we must be vigilant against Chinese threats to both our economic security and national security, said Republican Representative Robert Pittenger after the Commerce announcement. Pittenger is sponsoring legislation that would strengthen the U.S. national security review process for foreign investments. U.S. firms are also likely to get caught in the crossfire, with the fallout set to hit Qualcomm Inc, which provides the lions share of chips inside ZTE smartphones. Qualcomm was not immediately available to comment. Shares in optical networking equipment maker Acacia Communications Inc, which gained just under a third of its total 2017 revenue from ZTE, tumbled 35 percent. Acacia said it was suspending affected transactions and assessing the impact. Other optical component companies also slid, with Lumentum Holdings Inc falling 8.9 percent and Finisar Corp dropping 4 percent. Oclaro Inc, which got 18 percent of its fiscal 2017 revenue from ZTE, lost 14 percent. ZTE has sold handset devices to U.S. mobile carriers AT&T Inc, T-Mobile US Inc and Sprint Corp. It has relied on U.S. companies including Qualcomm Inc, Microsoft Corp and Intel Corp for some components. In the first quarter of 2018, Vietnam's export turnover continued to advance with a total export value of US$54.31 billion, an increase of 22% over the same period last year, which was also higher than the rate of 21.1% for the whole of 2017 and nearly double the rate of only 12.8% in the first quarter of 2017. The export growth rate of the domestic economic sector also recovered, posting an increase of 18.9% over the same quarter of 2017, while the export growth rate of the foreign direct investment (FDI) sector went up strongly by 23.2% over the same period in 2017. However, the domestic sector remained sunk in a trade deficit of approximately US$6.3 billion in the first quarter of this year. Thanks to a huge trade surplus of US$7.6 billion from the FDI sector, Vietnam enjoyed an overall trade surplus of US$1.3 billion in the first quarter of this year, while the country suffered a trade deficit of US$1.9 billion in the corresponding period of 2017. While the trade deficit in the first quarter of 2017 reduced the overall economic growth by 4.42 percentage points, the trade surplus in first quarter of this year contributed 1.19 percentage points to the overall economic growth. The structure of key export goods has been established and continued to be maintained and consolidated in the first quarter of 2018. The export turnover of the group of telephone and components reached US$12.3 billion, accounting for 22.6% of the total export turnover in the first quarter, which also soared 58.8% over the same period in 2017. The group of textiles and garments firmly secured the second position despite its export turnover being equivalent to just half of the leading group and its growth rate was just 12.9%. The export revenue of the group of electronics, computers and components surged by 13.2% in the first quarter, much lower than the record high rate of 42.3% in the same period last year but equivalent to the revenue of US$6.3 billion in the textiles and garments group. In addition, the structure of Vietnam's key export markets has changed as the EU has surpassed the US in becoming the largest export market of Vietnam in terms of export revenue in the first quarter of this year. Vietnam's exports to the EU increased sharply by 19.7% over the same period last year to US$9.8 billion, while exports to the US rose 11.6% to US$9.6 billion. In particular, Vietnam's export revenue to China jumped 46% to US$9 billion in the first quarter, even higher than the rate of 43.3% in the same period in 2017. Of which, the export revenue of telephones and components increased dramatically by 674.4% in the first quarter of this year (the export revenue in the first quarter of 2017 also increased by 115.5%). The upward trend of exports to China demonstrates that this market will probably occupy the top position ahead the US and the EU in the near future. The ASEAN market did not see any significant changes as it remained the fourth largest export market of Vietnam, accounting for 10.3% of Vietnam's total export revenue. The Republic of Korea (RoK) and Japanese markets contributed almost the same to Vietnam's export revenue with export revenues of US$4.3 billion and US$4.2 billion respectively. Exports have helped to create a driving force for the first quarter of 2018 and have contributed positively to the economic growth while boosting exports for the whole of 2018. Export prospects will depend on the Governments efforts to boost trade, commodities and market restructuring amid more risks and challenges facing global trade. Shenandoah, IA (51601) Today Cloudy. A stray shower or thunderstorm is possible. High around 75F. Winds SW at 5 to 10 mph.. Tonight Some clouds. Slight chance of a rain shower. Low 58F. Winds light and variable. Governor of Kaluga Oblast Anatoly Artamonov made the statement during a working session with representatives from the Vietnamese Embassy in Russia on April 16. Artamonov, head of the Russian region that has the largest cooperation project with Vietnam in a dairy factory invested by TH True Milk, informed Vietnamese Ambassador Ngo Duc Manh about the progress of the project. The two sides exchanged views on the progress of the project and discussed measures to remove difficulties for enterprises. Artamonov said the region has provided favourable conditions for Vietnamese firms, but issues related to procedures for Vietnamese labourers to work in the plant must be solved at the government level. For his part, Ambassador Manh thanked Kalugas officials for their aid for Vietnamese enterprises and labourers, affirming that the embassy will help Vietnamese businesses expand in Russia. Artamonov welcomed Manhs idea of establishing a cooperative relationship between Kaluga and a Vietnamese locality. The Russian expressed his belief that when investing in Russia and in Kaluga in particular, TH True Milk is capable of supplying dairy products not only to the Russian market but also other markets. Kaluga has preferential policies to make it easy for Vietnamese enterprises to invest in Kaluga, he affirmed. PM Phuc made the statement at an annual meeting to review the partnership between the Government and the VFF over the past year, in Hanoi, on April 17, under the chair of PM Phuc and VFF President Tran Thanh Man. The programmes jointly held by the two sides have helped to consolidate the peoples trust in the Government and create a consensus in society, thus facilitating national socio-economic development, he said. The Government leader stressed that both the Government and VFF pay special attention to the poor, disadvantaged groups, families of policy beneficiaries, and people in natural disaster-hit areas. The two sides have also worked closely in deploying patriotic emulation movements, and fundraising events for the poor, as well as movements on raising public responsibilities in safeguarding national territory, sovereignty and border security, he added. He called for strengthening the cooperation in popularising the Partys guidelines and policies and the States laws to people, consolidating national unity, and designing campaigns targeting pressing issues such as environment protection, and food and traffic safety. VFF President Tran Thanh Man highly appreciated the Governments strong support for VFFs operations, as well as the enthusiastic participation of cabinet members in VFF-launched social campaigns. He also hoped for further and more practical cooperation between the two sides in the future. Samsung Securities CEO Koo Sung-hoon, front row second from left, writes a letter of apology along with the company's 200 workers for the brokerage's "fat finger" scandal, at a Korea Banking Institute building in Seoul, Saturday. / Courtesy of Samsung Securities By Jhoo Dong-chan Writing a letter of apology is a traditional disciplinary method often used in kindergarten or elementary school-level education. Even middle or high school students do not write letters of apology for their misbehavior these days. Samsung Securities CEO Koo Sung-hoon, however, seems to believe such a childish approach is the best solution in salvaging the troubled brokerage's tarnished image following the infamous "fat finger" scandal. The brokerage held an in-house event for self-examination where about 200 workers wrote a letter of apology for the scandal last week, seemingly blaming the moral laxity of certain workers who sold their shares immediately after mistakenly receiving them from the company as dividends. The event demonstrates the firm has yet to understand the very heart of the matter because it was rather the lack of the company's safety system that should be blamed for failing to double-check its transactions. Financial authorities indirectly demanded Koo's resignation shortly after the incident, but his sole response was the written apology, more befitting an elementary school student writing under a teacher's scoldings. "The in-house event is just showing off," said an industry insider who asked not to be named. "The idea is just too immature. It won't reshape the company's tarnished image anytime soon. I believe financial authorities' inspection will be a decisive factor for the future of Samsung Securities, and it's not helpful to blame its workers. If the firm persists with this stance, it will take even more time to win back the market trust." Samsung Securities mistakenly gave 2.8 billion shares in dividends instead of 2.8 billion won ($2.62 million) to its employees who own company stock earlier this month. Of them, the brokerage admitted 16 workers sold about 5 million shares, escalating the unprecedented mishap. Samsung Securities shares opened at 35,550 won ($33.04) on Tuesday. The firm's shares were once traded nearly at 40,000 won before the incident, but have yet to hit the bottom. Koo may believe his absence could make the situation even worse so he needs to take a firm stance dealing with the incident, which is why he is forcing the 200 brokerage workers to write a letter of apology. An old saying goes, "A good captain goes down with the ship." Instead of staying with the sinking ship as captain, Koo is now punishing his crew without taking any responsibility. Such a stance will drive Samsung Securities into a deeper corner in its mission to regain the market's trust. Samsung Electronics had enjoyed a series of record-high performances without Vice Chairman Lee Jae-yong who was in prison for nearly a year after being convicted on bribery charges. Samsung Securities may as well do just the same without a CEO. It's time for Koo to take responsibility as the firm's head, instead of hiding behind his employees' written apologies. By Kim Rahn Seoul is seeking to broadcast the upcoming inter-Korean summit as well as a joint press conference between President Moon Jae-in and North Korean leader Kim Jong-un live, a top presidential aide said Tuesday. A hotline between the two leaders is likely to be set up around Friday, and they may be able to have their first phone call early next week, he said. Presidential chief of staff Im Jong-seok, who is leading the government's inter-Korean summit preparation committee, said officials from the North and the South would discuss the broadcasting issue at a working-level meeting on protocol, security and media coverage, today. "We want to broadcast the historic moment live," Im said in a media briefing 10 days before the summit scheduled for April 27. "We also hope to have a joint press conference after the summit, but we may have to discuss it with the North Koreans up until the last moment." One of the top issues will be how Kim will cross the military demarcation line (MDL), because of the symbolic meaning, as it will be the first time for a North Korean leader to set foot in South Korea since the 1950-53 Korean War. By Choi Ha-young Kim Dong-suk Storm's recent mural shows Mandarin ducks in the Hongdae area. / photo Storm Images SFactory in Seongsu-dong. / photo Storm Images By Kim Hyun-bin The Presidential Committee on National Education held a press conference at the Seoul Government Complex, Tuesday, and announced that it will establish a special subcommittee, "the public opinion committee. The new subcommittee will be in charge of gathering public opinion regarding the new entrance examination system proposal, which is expected to drastically change the current college admission procedures. "We will collect and implement diverse public opinions and requests, so that the new college entrance proposal will be simple and fair," said Shin In-ryung, head of the presidential committee. It will make a final proposal on the entrance system based on public sentiment and hand it over to the Ministry of Education (MOE), which is in charge of overseeing the project, early August. Once the presidential committee selects a final proposal, the MOE plans to enforce it. Many see the MOE as tossing its policy responsibility to the presidential office as any decision on the proposal is expected to meet a strong backlash from the public. Critics have already criticized the move for allowing just three months for a decision on a critical issue. "Parents are split on the issue and there is an even larger division in suburbs and rural households," said Ahn Sun-hee, professor at Joongbu University. "Even though the government is trying to gather public opinion, it will result in nothing more than a power fight." The presidential committee is left with sorting out and making a decision from a combination of at least 108 different proposals. However, it seems to have avoided making that decision, by establishing the seven-person public opinion subcommittee, which will be in charge of selecting five to six proposals that will be up for public debate. "There is a low possibility a teacher will be included on the special subcommittee, and it's unclear if school teachers' opinions will be included in its decision," said Kim Jae-chul, spokesman for the Korean Federation of Teachers' Association. "To reduce errors in the entrance examination system there needs to be teachers involved in the decision making process, and there needs to be a system that makes their involvement mandatory," said the Korean Teachers and Educational Workers' Union. Tossed responsibility Many critics are slamming both the MOE and the presidential committee, which seems to have tossed their decision-making responsibility to the special subcommittee. The presidential committee also established a separate 13-person subcommittee to revise the College Scholastic Ability Test (CSAT). This subcommittee will consist of scholars, education experts and journalists, which is expected to be established by next week. The government has wanted to strengthen the CSAT, to put more weight on regular admissions. Non-scheduled admissions make up roughly 80 percent of enrolling freshman classes and many of these students are accepted by universities before taking the national exam, inevitably reducing the importance of the test. Many parents and experts are against non-scheduled admissions as it is perceived to benefit monetarily stable parents as their children have the luxury of enrolling at numerous afterschool private institutes. The ministry tried to revise the CSAT last August, but the move was delayed a year, after meeting strong criticism from the public. By Kim Hyun-bin The government plans to strengthen fine dust standards to maintain cleaner air quality at daycare centers. "We are currently doing research to strengthen indoor fine dust standards for daycare centers," said the Ministry of Environment in a press statement. "We are looking into surveys and research data to improve the standards within this year." Last month, the Ministry of Education (MOE) released a report called "High Concentration Fine Dust Measure in Schools," which makes it mandatory for schools to go through an annual inspection and to maintain a fine dust level below 35 micrograms per cubic meters. Daycare centers have been excluded from the recent MOE fine dust measurements as the Ministry of Health and Welfare (MOHW) has jurisdiction over them. Kindergartens through high schools abide by the MOE's school health regulations. However, daycare centers follow the indoor air quality management rules. Currently, daycare centers' fine dust standard stands at 70 micrograms per cubic meters _ double that of kindergartens. Since last September, the Ministry of Environment has been working to enhance indoor air quality at these centers. However, the indoor air quality management rules do not apply to centers that are smaller than 430 square meters. There are 500 centers in that category. The ministry plans to provide free inspection and consulting for small-sized daycare centers. "We will provide a guideline for daycare centers on how to improve and manage indoor air quality. The plan supports them so they can better manage their facilities," said an official from the Ministry of Environment. Public concern has been on the rise as the level of fine dust has been getting worse throughout the years. More fine dust warnings have been issued so far this year than the same period last year, according to provincial government data. Forty-two fine dust warnings have been issued in Gyeonggi Province as of March, up from 36 warnings from the same period last year. By Lee Suh-yoon Kim Pan-ho, a Chinese restaurant owner in Namdaemun, said he feels increasingly uneasy having to rely on digital delivery platforms. Without them, his restaurant would not be able to attract young consumers. The burden, however, is growing, as the platforms charge high sales commissions, eating into his restaurant's margins. "Every day, 30 out of 80 delivery orders now come through apps," Kim said. "The platforms such as Yogiyo and Baedaltong barely leave any profit for restaurant owners. But I am too scared to complain because they could easily put me at a disadvantage in their search engine." An office worker uses the Yogiyo app to look for restaurants. / Korea Times photo by Lee Suh-yoon By Kim Bo-eun A website updating the public on the upcoming inter-Korean summit is up and running. The portal koreasummit.kr will offer news, photos and broadcasts of the summit between South Korean President Moon Jae-in and North Korean leader Kim Jong-un to be held April 27 at the truce village of Panmunjeom. Content will be accessible in nine languages _ Korean, English, Arabic, Spanish, Russian, French, German, Japanese and Vietnamese. By Lee Kyung-min The top court ruled Tuesday that fraud is committed if a construction consortium received payment from a state transit body and then failed to fully implement a mutually agreed upon building method under the contract The Supreme Court asked the Seoul High Court to review an earlier ruling, recommending that the appellate court recognize 16.8 billion won ($16.6 million) as the total amount illicitly received by the consortium and to increase the sentences of those involved accordingly. This will initiate a new court proceeding under a different judge at the high court to review the earlier ruling that sentenced a chief field officer, surnamed Ham, at a consortium led by Doosan Engineering & Construction (E&C) to four years in prison for defrauding the Korea Rail Network Authority (KRNA) which oversaw construction of the Super Rapid Train (SRT), a high-speed train. The review will also include eight related officials who were sentenced to up to two years in prison and fined up to 500 million won for bribery and fraud. The nine officials of the consortium were indicted for receiving 16.8 billion won from KRNA despite their failure to use an "expensive but safer and quieter" method for the construction, clearly stipulated in the terms of the contract. They were under contract to build 3.2 kilometers of track connecting Suseo and Pyeongtaek in Gyeonggi Province between January and October 2015. The top court said the appellate court should have recognized the full amount as part of illicit gains, dismissing its determination that no accurate amount could be calculated due to a lack of records available over how much each method accounted for the whole construction. "It constitutes fraud if one party to a contract received money from another, which expected and believed the work would be faithfully carried out in accordance with the mutually drafted contract," the court said. "The promised method was used initially for only a fraction of the entire construction, with most of the construction fee spent using another method that caused noise and vibration that greatly disturbed residents. The degree of defrauding the KRNA exceeded what is considered socially acceptable and tolerable," it added. The SRT departs from Suseo Station and runs on both the Gyeongbu High Speed Line and Honam High Speed Line, which connects Seoul and Busan, and Seoul and Mokpo, respectively. Politburo member Binh, who is also Secretary of the CPV Central Committee and Head of the CPV Central Committees Commission for Economic Affairs, made the statement while meeting with Chinese Vice President Wang Qishan in Beijing, China, on April 17. He suggested that both sides continue carrying out the important common perceptions of the senior leaders of the two Parties and nations, as well as maintaining and increasing high-level meetings, and improving the efficiency of their practical cooperation in various fields. On this occasion, Politburo member Binh congratulated China on successfully organising the first session of the 13th National Peoples Congress and the 13th National Committee of the Chinese Peoples Political Consultative Conference. He expressed his hope that under the leadership of the Communist Party of China (CPC), the Chinese people would realise the targets set by the 19th National Congress of the CPC. The Vietnamese Party official also congratulated Wang on his election as Vice President of China. For his part, Wang affirmed that the Party, Government and people of China always treasure their ties with Vietnam and stand ready to join hands with the Party, State and people of Vietnam to develop the bilateral relations. He wished that the two sides would continue to exchange high-level delegations, consolidate political trust, and promote strategic connections, as well as effectively controlling their differences in an effort to develop the relations between the two Parties and nations in a stable and healthy manner in the future. During his stay in Beijing, Politburo member Binh had meetings with officials of the Central Policy Research Office, Development Research Centre of the State Council and State-owned Assets Supervision and Administration Commission. At these meetings, the two sides shared measures to boost reform, innovation, global integration and socio-economic development in each country. North Korean leader Kim Jong-un and his wife Ri Sol-ju greet Chinese dancers after watching their performance in Pyongyang, Monday. Yonhap By Kim Bo-eun North Korean leader Kim Jong-un and his wife Ri Sol-ju on Monday attended a ballet performance by a Chinese troupe visiting Pyongyang, the state news agency reported Tuesday. The visit by the Chinese troupe and the couple's attendance of the performance appears to be a move to consolidate ties between the states ahead of Pyongyang's summits with Seoul and Washington. "The visit by the Chinese troupe to Pyongyang will serve as a meaningful opportunity to continue the traditions of the friendship between North Korea and China and consolidate and develop it further," Kim said after the performance, according to the Korean Central News Agency (KCNA). Song Tao, the Communist Party of China's international liaison department head, was among the Chinese officials present at the event. A captured image from the Cheong Wa Dae's petition website By Park Ji-won The National Assembly is facing calls to look into sponsored overseas trips by lawmakers and how they have used political funds following a National Election Commission (NEC) decision, Monday. Financial Supervisory Service (FSS) chief Kim Ki-sik resigned from his post after the election supervisor concluded that his overseas business trips and donations during his days as a lawmaker were illegal. On Tuesday, citizens posted a petition on the Cheong Wa Dae website to call for a full-fledged investigation into all lawmakers, saying Kim's case could only be the tip the iceberg. Over 150,000 people have already signed the petition. The presidential office should respond to all petitions that gather more than 200,000 signatures within a one-month period. The message of the petition was clear. It asked for a thorough investigation of all former and incumbent lawmakers on whether they violated the law of political funding. Also, it asked to impose criminal punishment for lawmakers who violated the law as well as confiscating the money they used illegally. In Kim's Facebook post, the former FSS chief said he "politically accepted" the decision, but added it was still questionable. Kim apologized for not meeting citizen's expectations, but emphasized that it was hard for him to accept the NEC's decision as he considered the commission approved his nomination by not asking him to turn in additional documents when reviewing whether his activities were illegal. During his lawmaker days from 2012 to 2016, he went on overseas business trips sponsored by financial organizations subject to supervision by a National Assembly committee that he was a member of. Kim also used his remaining political funds to donate 50 million won to the Korea Institute for the Future, which he headed. However, if the decision of the NEC becomes the basic guidelines for nominating lawmakers or equivalent senior government officials, it will likely stir up trouble for the parties as such sponsored trips and political funds have been "customary" among lawmakers. Last week, Cheong Wa Dae announced that lawmakers of the Democratic Party of Korea and the Liberty Party of Korea (LKP) went on business trips 65 times and 94 times, respectively, sponsored by organizations subject to oversight by the Assembly during the 19th and 20th Assemblies. The opposition parties demanded Moon apologize over the controversy, as Cheong Wa Dae has claimed Kim's past wrongdoings were not serious enough to fire him. They also urged senior presidential secretary for civil affairs Cho Kuk, who was in charge of screening Kim, to resign to take responsibility for his misjudgment. Liberty Party of Korea floor leader Kim Sung-tae and party members have a meeting under their protest tents at the National Assembly, Tuesday. The protest is part of a move to criticize President Moon Jae-in's administration following Kim Ki-sik's resignation, and an opinion rigging case involving members of the ruling Democratic Party of Korea. / Yonhap The city government of Uijeongbu, north of Seoul, has demanded the defense ministry conduct an examination into soil contamination at a former U.S. military base site in the city, officials said Tuesday. The Uijeongbu city government bought the former Camp Sears site from the defense ministry in 2012 after the land was returned to the ministry in 2007 under a base consolidation and relocation plan, known as the Land Partnership Program (LPP). Nine oil tanks had existed on the base to supply oil to other American bases north of Seoul. When the site was returned, most of the land was contaminated, with total petroleum hydrocarbon (TPH) levels up to 73 times the maximum permissible levels. The ministry commissioned the Korea Environment Corporation to clean up the site from 2009 and 2012 before the Uijeongbu city government purchased the land as part of a project to establish an administrative complex housing public and government agencies. Last month, the city broke ground at the site to build a fire department headquarters. But the construction was halted recently as oil residue was found at the site. Tests were conducted on samples taken from four locations at the site, and two of them had TPH levels of 836 mg per kilogram and 585 mg/kg, which is higher than the permissible 500 mg/kg, officials said. Officials said construction can resume only after the site is cleaned up. It could take at least four months to examine and clean up the site, they said. "We demanded the defense ministry, which is responsible for clean-up, conduct a detailed examination and report its results by May 31," a Uijeongbu city government official said. "We will hold discussions with the defense ministry so as to resume the construction at an early date." The defense ministry rejected the contention that it is solely responsible for the cleanup. "As contaminated soil was found six years after the ownership was transferred to the city of Uijeongbu, we have to jointly find out the source of contamination to clearly determine who is responsible for the cleanup," a ministry official said. "Then the responsible side should clean it up," the official said, adding that the ministry plans to render active cooperation for the project to build the fire department headquarters at the site. (Yonhap) For a second time, President Donald Trump ordered a limited military strike to punish Syria for using chemical weapons against civilians, and to deter further atrocities. It didn't happen after the first strike in April 2017, but it must this time _ Trump must go to Congress with an actual strategy to end Syria's seven-year civil war, and Congress must pass a new authorization for military action in the Middle East. California lawmakers _ including top House Democrat Nancy Pelosi of San Francisco, House Majority Leader Kevin McCarthy of Bakersfield and House Foreign Affairs Chairman Ed Royce of Orange County _ must be assertive. In the attack Friday night, Britain and France joined U.S. forces to hit three targets instead of last year's one and with 105 missiles, nearly double the number last year. A multilateral military action to enforce a United Nations resolution is far more defensible under international law. Still, it's riskier this time. Russia is deeply tied to Syrian dictator Bashar Assad, and there's more danger of retaliation and a wider war that the American public has absolutely no interest in waging. Saturday, Russian President Vladimir Putin called the attack "an act of aggression." While Russia has pledged to ensure the Assad regime dismantles its chemical weapons program, it has accused Britain of staging the suspected chemical attack on April 7 in a Damascus suburb that killed more than 40 civilians. And the timing of the strike is far more suspicious. Trump's presidency is in crisis. As the missiles were launched Friday night, he was raging against former FBI Director James Comey, whose unflattering portrayal of Trump in a new memoir has him seething, and wrestling with a federal criminal investigation of his personal lawyer Michael Cohen, which could be more threatening than even special counsel Robert Mueller's probe. Invoking "Wag the Dog" is probably taking it too far; this crisis wasn't completely manufactured. Defense Secretary James Mattis gave Trump some cover by telling reporters that the confirmation of the use of chlorine didn't come until Thursday. Still, Americans' doubts are justified _ and that's Trump's fault. When a president lies routinely, in big and small ways, he forfeits the nation's full trust, even among those who may agree with him. In his nationally televised speech Friday night, Trump told Americans that the U.S. had to respond. "The evil and the despicable attack left mothers and fathers, infants and children, thrashing in pain and gasping for air," he said. "These are not the actions of a man; they are crimes of a monster instead." The use of chemical weapons is an atrocity. But Trump's concern for the Syrian people would be far more believable if he hadn't banned nearly all Syrian refugees from coming to America. Key Democrats and Republicans alike are calling on Trump to lay out a more comprehensive strategy. That's extremely difficult when he changes his mind daily. As recently as April 3, he said he wanted to bring home the 2,000 U.S. troops in Iraq. With such an unstable and inconsistent commander-in-chief, it's even more important for Congress to reassert its constitutional authority to declare war, and for Republican leaders to find their backbone. Trump acted Friday under a war authorization passed by Congress after the Sept. 11, 2001 terrorist attacks. An entire new generation of U.S. troops is deployed now in Afghanistan as well as Syria. It's way past time for lawmakers to pass a new authorization for military action against terrorist groups; later this month, the Senate Foreign Relations Committee plans to begin debate on a new one. The Pentagon reported Saturday that it destroyed "the heart" of Syria's chemical weapons program, but conceded it could still launch more chemical attacks. Trump, being Trump, took to Twitter to crow "Mission Accomplished!" If he had any appreciation of history, he would know that no U.S. president should ever say that about any war in the Middle East. The above editorial appeared in the Sacramento Bee (Sacramento, Calif.). It was distributed by Tribune Content Agency, LLC. Tycoons should bar unqualified children from management In 2014, Hanjin Group Chairman Cho Yang-ho made a public apology for the "nut rage" scandal involving his daughter, Cho Hyun-ah. "I apologize to the people for having failed to bring up my children properly," the elder Cho said. It seems as if the tycoon, who owns Korean Air, was right. On Monday, the flag carrier said it temporarily suspended Senior Vice President Cho Hyun-min, Hyun-ah's younger sister, from her duties following a police investigation into her alleged abusive behavior to determine whether it was an assault. Law enforcement authorities launched a preliminary inquiry into Cho last week after local media reported that she yelled and threw a water-filled cup at a manager of an advertising agency during a meeting last month. Responses to the company's disciplinary steps against Cho's second daughter were cynical, however. "She will also make a comeback, after a few years," a union member at Korean Air said. Just days before the recent scandal broke out, the family-controlled conglomerate appointed Hyun-ah as the president of one of its subsidiaries, KAL Hotel Network. This was four years after the elder daughter was relieved from her post as Korean Air vice president. She stirred a social controversy at the time by ordering a plane full of passengers back to the boarding gate in New York because she was upset about the way her nuts were served. The sisters' behavior reveals the consciousness of chaebol families accustomed to abusing their underlings and suppliers as feudal lords did. It is doubtful how the corporate behemoths can survive increasingly fierce global competition, handing over corporate control to owners' children and grandchildren who have neither management acumen nor even basic human understanding and decency. Chairman Cho's apology for the educational failure of his children may be necessary, but the problem lies deeper in the distorted ownership and management structure of chaebol. Few can speak against the chaebol scions inheriting their fathers' wealth. However, managing the large business groups is an entirely different thing, a sin for the nation with people forced to fly the flag carrier to grow it into a global airline _ if in size only. By Kang Aa-young A flight attendant of Air Busan, a low-cost carrier, apologized Tuesday for disrespectful comments and photos posted by one of its flight attendants on Instagram. The flight attendant, on a Busan-Jeju flight on Saturday, took photos of the passengers from behind and posted them with comments such as "looking all the same" and "broccoli farm." It was an obvious reference to the hairstyle of the middle-aged married women or "ajumma" in the photo. One of her colleagues commented, "The plane heading to China." After the post went viral, the attendant, "I sincerely apologize to the people who may have felt hurt." The supervisor of the Air Busan flight promised no repeat of such inappropriate behavior by its employees. Jin Air Vice President Cho Hyun-min demonstrates the low-cost carrier's cabin crew service inside an airplane in 2012. She is the younger sister of Heather Cho, Korean Air's infamous "nut rage heiress." / Yonhap By Jhoo Dong-chan The authorities have begun an investigation into Jin Air for illegally appointing the second daughter of Korean Air chairman Cho Yang-ho a board member of the firm. Jin Air is the low-cost unit of Korean Air. The government is also looking into whether she has involved in the budget carrier's decision-making process while she was serving as an executive of Korean Air The Ministry of Land, Infrastructure and Transport said Tuesday it sent an official letter requesting to check whether Cho illegally served as a member of the low-cost carrier's board. Under related laws, non-Korean citizens are not allowed to be appointed as a board member of the nation's carriers, and Cho is a U.S. citizen. The Data Analysis, Retrieval and Transfer System (DART) says, however, that Cho was a member of Jin Air's board under the name Cho Emily Lee between March 26 2010, and March 28 2016. DART is a corporate disclosure system under the Financial Supervisory Service. Jin Air admitted the allegation. Participants from South and North Korea plant trees during a 2007 event sponsored by Yuhan Kimberly in Kosong County, Kangwon Province, North Korea. Kosong County lies across the two border of the two Koreas, with the lower half called Goseong County in the South. / Courtesy of Yuhan Kimberly By Nam Hyun-woo Yuhan-Kimberly has been donating its Kleenex masks to vulnerable people and those who are working in environments exposed to fine dust. The company said Tuesday it has teamed up with the Seoul Metropolitan Government, Seoul Council on Social Welfare and Together with Kakao, a fundraising platform for social donations, to provide its masks to low-income families, financially troubled senior citizens and other socially neglected people. During the campaign, Yuhan-Kimberly said it will match every 1,000 won donated by people joining the fund raising platform with the goal of accumulating 40 million won. The company will also give 30,000 masks for those in need. The campaign has been running since April 3 and will last until May 31. The company said concern over find dust has been escalating recently and it decided to launch the campaign in order to raise air pollution awareness as well as helping those who are vulnerable to air pollution. Yuhan-Kimberly said it has been making efforts to improve air quality, especially through planting trees. The company has been encouraging people to pay more attention to air pollution through its "Keep Korea Green" campaign. Through the campaign, launched in 1984, the company has planted 52 million trees so far. The company said its program has been contributing to raising public awareness on protecting forests and the environment. Yuhan-Kimberly is also working to create green sites on local school campuses, to prevent desertification in Northeast Asia and to increase the number of urban forests in Seoul and other large cities here. The company offers a wide range of education programs, which empower teachers and students to make schools greener. The effort is not only limited as a domestic corporate social responsibility program. Since 2003, Yuhan-Kimberly has been funding a project to restore forests in Mongolia's Tujin Nars area. "A 1-hectare forest absorbs 168 kilograms of air pollutants in a year," a Yuhan-Kimberly official said. "Planting trees and protecting forests is the most honest measure to combat fine dust and a very valuable investment in the future." The company has been also engaging in reforestation projects in North Korea. According to the Korea Forest Service, forests accounted for 70 percent of the Korean Peninsula in 1910, but decreased to 52 percent in 2015, especially due to desertification in the North, where many still resort to wood for fuel and heating. "Along with various efforts to restore forests in North Korea, Yuhan-Kimberly also has been sending 13 million saplings and seedlings to the North," the official said. In 2009, the company established a saplings nursery in Gangwon Province and 150,000 pine trees will roll out this year as its first production. The company said it is seeking opportunities to send some of these trees to the North. Reviewing the action programme for 2014-2018, they lauded the two countries ministries, agencies and localities for the effective and practical development of bilateral strategic partnership, with growing political ties with high trust. The two sides maintained regular high-level visits and exchanges, particularly Indonesias visit by General Secretary of the Communist Party of Vietnam Nguyen Phu Trong in August 2017 that opened up a new chapter in bilateral ties. They agreed to facilitate high-level visits and meetings on the sidelines of international forums via the Party, Government, State, National Assembly channels and people-to-people exchange. Bilateral economic collaboration has seen gigantic development, with two-way trade hitting US$6.5 billion last year, up 16% from 2016. The two sides promised to soon sign the Memorandum of Understanding on economic and trade defence. In particular, Indonesia vowed to recognise more labs and food safety quarantine offices of Vietnam and soon expand imports of Vietnamese fresh fruits such as dragon fruit, litchi, longan, star apple and grape fruit. They committed to effectively implementing the Declaration on Joint Vision on Defence Cooperation for 2017-2022 and a letter of intent on cooperation between Vietnamese and Indonesian coast guards. Host and guest pledged to soon establish the defence deputy ministerial-level policy dialogue mechanism, increase collaboration in peace maintenance, joint training for search and rescue at sea, extend coordination to logistics-technology, defence industry and crime prevention, while promoting consultation and mutual support in regional defence-security cooperation mechanisms such as ASEAN Defence Ministerial Meeting and ASEAN Regional Forum. Progresses were also seen in collaboration in energy, aviation, culture, education-training and tourism. Indonesia promised to continue working closely with Vietnam to build a new cooperation mechanism to deal with fishermen issue in humanitarian spirit. Discussing regional and global issues of shared concern, they reaffirmed mutual support for their bids to run for non-permanent members of the United Nations Security Council and agreed to co-chair each others initiatives in fields of interest at APEC. The Indonesia side will continue partnering with Vietnam and other ASEAN member states to push forward the implementation of the ASEAN Community Vision 2025 and enhance ASEANs central role. On the East Sea issue, they discussed ways to maintain peace, stability, maritime and aviation security and safety, settle disputes in the East Sea by peaceful means, and fully respect diplomatic and legal processes in line with international law, including the 1982 United Nations Convention on the Law of the Sea (UNCLOS). The two sides underscored the need to fully and effectively implement the Declaration on the Conduct of Parties in the East Sea, and soon reach a practical, effective and legally-binding Code of Conduct in the East Sea. The fourth meeting of the committee is scheduled to take place in Indonesia in 2020. You have permission to edit this article. Edit Close Speaking at the signing ceremony, Director of K Hospital, Prof., Dr. Tran Van Thuan said that the Ministry of Healths facility and the NCC would coordinate their research on cancer, organise symposiums and scientific activities, and promote cooperation for the training of doctors and health workers in the field. The agreement focuses on training related to the most advanced techniques in cancer prevention and treatment, such as proton beam and heavy ion radiotherapies, to prepare for the implementation of these methods at K Hospital in the near future. The two sides also agreed on the exchange of patients between Vietnam and Japan to improve the effectiveness of cancer treatment. Specialists from both sides will conduct online consultations on special cases, exchange experience on treatment methods, and facilitate the transfer of patients needing proton and ion therapies for treatment at both the NCC and the Vietnamese hospital. According to Dr. Thuan, Japan has an advanced medical sector with prestigious hospitals in the field of prevention, diagnosis, early detection, and treatment of cancer. The NCC, founded in 1962, is the first hospital in Japan and the second in the world to be equipped with a proton therapy system. The centre is recognised as a leader in the field of hi-tech cancer treatment in Japan and throughout the region. (CHILLAN, Chile) A group of four Northwest Missourians from area Rotary clubs is currently on a 3-week goodwill trip to Chile in South America. The group includes KQ2's Alan Van Zandt, who took his camera along with him. On the ambassadorial trip, the group is meeting with other Rotary clubs to develop service programs the two nations can work on together. Keep with KQ2 news for Van Zandt adventures in Chile. The celebrations were hosted by the Dak Lak provincial Union of Friendship Associations, the Vietnam Laos Friendship Associations chapter in Dak Lak and the Buon Don district authorities. During the two-day event, people splashed water on one another, an act of praying for a New Year full of favourable weather conditions, prosperity and good luck. The Lao people also took part in a Buddha bathing ceremony, tying thread on their wrists, and the Lamvong dance to share their joy and happiness. Over the past few years, the New Year celebrations for Lao people have been held annually by the Dak Lak provincial authorities to help the Lao residents in the province to practice their traditional culture, while promoting solidarity between the peoples of the two countries. People splashing water on one another, an act of praying for a New Year full of favourable weather condition, prosperity and good luck. Monks tying thread on participants wrists Monks releasing lanterns into water Join this train to Spring, as it rides through a sea awash with flowers and blossoming trees. Its Line S2, a Beijing suburban railway, that can take you on a tour of the Great Wall while you enjoy the sights of Spring along the way. It runs from Huangtudian in Changping District to Badaling in Yanqing District, the most visited section of the Great Wall of China. It follows the old Beijing-Zhangjiakou Railway, combining history with a beautiful journey. The train passes a zigzag section of railway, designed and engineered in 1905 by Zhan Tianyou, theFather of Chinas Railroad. He created this to help passing trains overcome steep gradients in the rugged mountain areas near the Great Wall. Statue of Zhan Tianyou, theFather of Chinas Railroad Next time you come to the Great Wall, why not try the train option! File photo shows a J-10C fighter jet in a training. China's new multi-role fighter jet J-10C began combat duty Monday, the People's Liberation Army (PLA) air force announced. It is China's third-generation supersonic fighter and made its debut when the PLA marked its 90th anniversary in July 2017 at Zhurihe military training base in Inner Mongolia Autonomous Region. Equipped with an advanced avionics system and various airborne weapons, the domestically-developed fighter has airstrike capabilities within medium and close range and is capable of precisely striking land and maritime targets. (Xinhua/Xi Bobo) BEIJING, April 16 (Xinhua) -- China's new multi-role fighter jet J-10C began combat duty Monday, the People's Liberation Army (PLA) air force announced. Equipped with an advanced avionics system and various airborne weapons, the domestically-developed fighter has airstrike capabilities within medium and close range and is capable of precisely striking land and maritime targets, the air force said in a statement. It is China's third-generation supersonic fighter and made its debut when the PLA marked its 90th anniversary in July 2017 at Zhurihe military training base in Inner Mongolia Autonomous Region. The fighter will enrich the air force's offensive and defensive system and improve its capability to fulfill duties and missions, according to the statement. Shen Jinke, a spokesperson for the PLA air force, said that the air force will advance training and war readiness, and sharpen its striking, defensive, and air delivery capabilities. It will also firmly safeguard China's airspace security and national strategic interests in the new era, Shen said. The new jet is modified from the J-10 fighter jet and will help improve the air force's fighting and war-readiness capabilities, said Wang Mingzhi, a military expert. The air force is gradually building a combat system adapted to the need of informationized air warfare, comprised of heavy air superiority fighters such as J-11 series, multi-role fighters such as J-10 series and J-16, new-generation stealth fighters such as J-20, and medium and long-range bombers such as H-6K, Wang said. File photo shows a J-10C fighter jet in a training. China's new multi-role fighter jet J-10C began combat duty Monday, the People's Liberation Army (PLA) air force announced. It is China's third-generation supersonic fighter and made its debut when the PLA marked its 90th anniversary in July 2017 at Zhurihe military training base in Inner Mongolia Autonomous Region. Equipped with an advanced avionics system and various airborne weapons, the domestically-developed fighter has airstrike capabilities within medium and close range and is capable of precisely striking land and maritime targets. (Xinhua/Xi Bobo) File photo shows a J-10C fighter jet in a training. China's new multi-role fighter jet J-10C began combat duty Monday, the People's Liberation Army (PLA) air force announced. It is China's third-generation supersonic fighter and made its debut when the PLA marked its 90th anniversary in July 2017 at Zhurihe military training base in Inner Mongolia Autonomous Region. Equipped with an advanced avionics system and various airborne weapons, the domestically-developed fighter has airstrike capabilities within medium and close range and is capable of precisely striking land and maritime targets. (Xinhua/Xi Bobo) President Xi Jinping and Klaus Schwab, founder and chief executive of the World Economic Forum, meet at the Great Hall of the People in Beijing on Monday. LI TAO / XINHUA Founder of Davos forum praises president's role in global affairs China will fulfill its commitment made at the just-concluded Boao Forum for Asia to boost opening-up through powerful measures, President Xi Jinping said on Monday. Xi made the remark while meeting with Klaus Schwab, founder and chief executive of the World Economic Forum, at the Great Hall of the People in Beijing. As a responsible major country, China will make joint efforts with the international community to enhance cooperation, boost opening-up and pursue win-win results to bring a bright, stable and prosperous future to the world, Xi said. Xi said there are some positive signs for the global economy, but the three fundamental contradictions he mentioned last year during the World Economic Forum meeting in Davos, Switzerland, still exist. They are the lack of a driving force for global economic growth, lagging global economic governance and unbalanced global development. Xi said that an anti-globalization and trade protectionism trend is rising and it has added risks and uncertainties to the global economy. Facing so many problems and challenges, the whole world should enhance coordination among equals and resort to multilateral cooperation, Xi said. History has repeatedly proved that only by openness and cooperation will the path become ever wider, Xi said, adding that major countries shoulder important and special responsibilities for those issues. Xi expressed gratitude for the arrangement that Schwab made for his speech at the Davos forum in January 2017. The World Economic Forum has upheld the spirit of innovation and exercised special influence over global affairs, Xi said, adding that China is expanding cooperation with the forum. Schwab said Xi's speech last January at Davos was impressive. "You cannot imagine how much it is referred to in discussions again and again among our members and participants," Schwab told Xi. Schwab said he was "particularly interested in" Xi's proposal of building a community of a shared future for mankind, which has been mentioned by Xi on many occasions, including at the Communist Party of China's 19th National Congress, the recent session of the National People's Congress and the just-concluded Boao annual conference. Schwab spoke highly of Xi's efforts to "keep our global system open and to keep it collaborative". The World Economic Forum supports economic globalization and multilateralism and it opposes trade protectionism and unilateralism, he said. Schwab said that he was proud of the cooperation between the forum and China in the past four decades, and he would like to enhance cooperation with China in such areas as advancing the building of the Belt and Road and boosting innovative development. Rho-Pero, April 17 - Outgoing Premier Paolo Gentiloni said Tuesday that the credit for Italy's economic recovery went to its households and businesses. "When things recover, when you start to get going again, albeit with differences from sector to sector, and you see the economy start to pull ahead, it is always primarily thanks to families, companies and the community," Gentiloni said at the inauguration of the Milan International Furniture Fair. "Governments can help these dynamics, but they are not created from high, from this measure or that other measure". Rome, April 17 - New wiretaps could lead to the reopening of the case of the murders in the Somalia capital Mogadishu on March 20 1994 of TG3 reporter Ilaria Alpi and her cameraman Miran Hrovatin, judicial sources said Tuesday. The wiretaps are said to have been made in 2012 between Somali individuals talking in Italy about the deaths of Alpi and Hovratin, sources said. The wiretaps were made in a Florence probe into the trafficking of trucks decommissioned by the Italian army from Italy to Somalia, judicial sources said. Some 15 people have been placed under investigation in the probe and the indictment of four of them, all Somalis, has been requested, sources said. The transcripts were sent from Florence prosecutors to Rome prosecutor Maria Rosaria Guglielmi and filed by her Tuesday with a preliminary investigations judge for a hearing set to determine whether to shelve the case as requested by Rome prosecutors last June. Judge Andrea Fanelli, in light of the new wiretaps and documents field by Alpi's family, adjourned the hearings until June 8. Rome prosecutors will work on the transcripts sent by Florence colleagues over the coming weeks. Alpi's mother Luciana said she "took note" of the new evidence but said "i don't want to get my hopes up". A Somali man who spent nearly 17 years behind bars for the killings but was subsequently cleared, Hashi Omar Hassan, said "Ilaria's family must have justice". On March 30 Hassan got over three million euros in compensation for his wrongful conviction and time in jail. In October 2016 a Perugia court reversed Hassan's conviction. Prosecutor Dario Razzi told the court Hassan "did not commit" the crime. He was the only person convicted of the murders. Alpi, 32, and Hrovatin, 45, were ambushed and shot in their jeep in Mogadishu by a seven-man commando on March 20, 1994. Initially, it was thought that the journalist was murdered in revenge for clashes which had broken out between the militias of Somalia's warlords and Italian peacekeepers. But a 1999 book by Alpi's parents called The Execution alleged that Alpi and Hrovatin were killed to stop them revealing what they knew about an international arms and toxic-waste ring implicating high-level political, military and economic figures in both countries. The book accuses the Italian secret services of playing a major role in this ring. In 2015 Ahmed Ali Rage, who was also known as Gelle and who was a key witness for the prosecution in the trial that led to the conviction, said that Hassan was "innocent". Rage told a new trial that he "never told anyone" Hassan was part of the murder commando. Hassan was released into the custody of social services in 2015 with 10 years to go on his 26-year sentence. "Thank God it's over," said Hassan at the time. Alpi's mother Luciana, who backed Hassan's battle against the miscarriage of justice, said that she was "happy" Hassan had been cleared, but added that she was "bitter and depressed" that the real culprits had not been brought to justice. "It's as if she and Miran Hrovatin died of the heat in Mogadishu," Luciana Alpi told ANSA. "We don't have the truth and I don't think we ever will". Photos taken of the dead body of Alpi, who worked for public broadcaster RAI's third channel, and a medical report on the deaths, along with other key evidence including Alpi's notes, camera and video cassettes, mysteriously went missing on the journey back from Africa to Italy, fuelling suspicions of a cover-up. Speaking to RAI Channel 3, Rage in February 2015 claimed that he was asked to testify against Hassan. "I did not see who fired the shots," he reportedly told RAI 3. According to the Italian diplomat who investigated the case in Somalia, former ambassador Giuseppe Cassini, the driver who acted as a key witness for the prosecution was "an unreliable individual who would do anything to survive". Hassan, who travelled to Italy in 1998 to give evidence in a probe into brutality by Italian soldiers, was acquitted of involvement in the two murders at the end of a first trial in July 1999. But he was found guilty by an appeals court in 2000 and sentenced to life in prison. Italy's supreme Cassation Court upheld the guilty verdict in October 2001 but reduced the sentence from life to 26 years because it said the crimes were not premeditated. Hassan's lawyers said he was not in Mogadishu at the time of the killing and was tricked into coming to Italy. Japanese Prime Minister Shinzo Abe and Chinese State Councilor and Foreign Minister Wang Yi on Monday agreed that both sides should work together to further improve bilateral ties and expand cooperation. Chinese State Councilor and Foreign Minister Wang Yi met with Japanese Prime Minister Shinzo Abe in Tokyo on Apr. 16th, 2018. [Photo: fmprc.gov.cn] Wang said that China and Japan are important neighbors and bilateral relationship has gone through some twists and turns in recent years, which affected communication and cooperation of the two sides in various areas. He said China attaches importance to the positive messages sent by Abe on improving bilateral relationship on a number of occasions since last year, and it is hoped that with joint efforts of both sides, his visit could become an important step for bilateral relationship to return to normal track. Wang said that the momentum of improvement in bilateral ties did not come by easily and should be cherished, and with a better and more stable relationship, the two sides could have closer exchanges and extended cooperation, which would be in the interests of people in both countries as well as the region. Therefore, the two sides should strictly abide by the principles established in the four important political documents between them, properly handle the sensitive issues related to the political foundation of bilateral relationship, fully implement the consensus of treating each other as a cooperative partner instead of a threat and make it a consensus of all circles of the Japanese society, Wang added. The two sides should tap potential driving forces so as to upgrade the bilateral trade and economic cooperation to a new level, Wang said. He also said that China attaches importance to the positive remarks made by Abe on the Belt and Road Initiative, and Japan joining the Belt and Road construction will open up new space for bilateral economic cooperation, and China is willing to discuss with Japan the proper and concrete ways for it to participate in the initiative. The two sides should enhance communication and coordination to oppose trade protectionism, safeguard the global free trade system centered on the World Trade Organization (WTO), and help create an open world economy, Wang said. Chinese State Councilor and Foreign Minister Wang Yi met with Japanese Prime Minister Shinzo Abe in Tokyo on Apr. 16th, 2018. [Photo: fmprc.gov.cn] Abe, for his part, said that Japan attaches high importance to its relationship with China. It is willing to take the opportunity of the 40th anniversary of the signing of the Japan-China Treaty of Peace and Friendship to promote comprehensive improvement of bilateral ties, to realize high-level exchanges, and to expand cooperation under the framework of strategic relationship of mutual benefit. Japan paid great attention to the new measures for expanding China's opening up announced by Chinese President Xi Jinping at the opening ceremony of the Boao Forum for Asia annual conference and believes that they will help promote bilateral economic relationship, he said. Abe said that he eagerly expects and welcomes Chinese Premier Li Keqiang to visit Japan and to attend the trilateral leaders' summit between Japan, China and South Korea, and expects that the Belt and Road construction could help the recovery and development of regional economy. Like China, Japan also attaches importance to the WTO rules and maintains that trade issues should be handled based on those rules, he added. The two sides also exchanged views on regional issues such as the Korean Peninsula situation. Wang is on a three-day visit to Japan starting Sunday. During his visit, he co-chaired the fourth high-level economic dialogue between China and Japan with Japanese Foreign Minister Taro Kono. He met with Japan's Chief Cabinet Secretary Yoshihide Suga and held a meeting with Kono. He also met with Toshihiro Nikai, secretary-general of Japan's ruling Liberal Democratic Party, and leaders of seven Japan-China friendship organizations and Keidanran (Japan Business Federation). The contentious legal fight over a planned Broadway adaptation of Harper Lees To Kill a Mockingbird took another dramatic turn Monday. The plays producers countersued Lees estate, asking a judge to let the adaptation, which originally had gotten an OK from the author, proceed. Lees estate, represented by attorney Tonja B. Carter, sued the plays producers in March, claiming that the script, written by Aaron Sorkin, was not faithful enough to Lees famous novel. Lee, who died in 2016 at age 89, published To Kill a Mockingbird in 1960. It has sold more than 40 million copies and was adapted into a film in 1962, winning three Academy Awards. The Guardian reports this week that Rudinplay, producer Scott Rudins company, sued Lees estate for $10 million and is seeking to have the estates original suit against the production company dismissed. In seeking to block the adaptation, Lees estate objected to the script, claiming that it added two new characters and did not present a fair depiction of 1930s small-town Alabama. Advertisement Lee signed off on a stage adaptation of her novel before she died. The producers of the play claim that Lee did not have approval rights over the plays script, and maintain that the agreement certainly did not give such rights to Ms. Carter, who is not an author, editor, literary agent or critic, and has no known expertise whatsoever in theatre or writing. The New York Times reports that Rudin offered to stage the play in front of the federal judge hearing the case to prove that it doesnt deviate too wildly from Lees novel. A play and a book are two different things, Rudin told the newspaper. A book is meant to be read; a play is meant to be performed. Carter responded to the countersuit in a statement, saying, As the personal representative of the Estate of Nelle Harper Lee, I must protect the integrity of her beloved American classic, and therefore had no choice but to file a lawsuit against Rudinplay for failing to honor its contract with Ms. Lee. Rudins countersuit seeks $10 million in damages from the estate, claiming that the estates lawsuit has made it difficult for the play to attract investors, who are not willing to invest millions of dollars when a cloud exists. The Broadway adaptation of Mockingbird was first announced in 2016. At the time, Sorkin noted that the play would have scenes and dialogue that didnt appear in the novel. In February, the producers of the play announced that the lead role of Atticus Finch would be played by Jeff Daniels, who had worked with Sorkin on the television show The Newsroom. Advertisement The legal wrangling over the adaptation has threatened the future of the play, Rudin claimed, saying it is now impossible for the play to open in December, as was originally planned. "[U]nless this dispute is resolved in the immediate future, the play will be canceled, Rudin said in the lawsuit. Fox News host Sean Hannity is under fire over the courtroom revelation Monday that he is a client of President Trumps personal attorney Michael Cohen, a relationship never made known to viewers of his nightly program or his bosses. The failure to make such a disclosure while covering or commenting on such a story would ordinarily be a major breach at any journalism organization. But Hannity will not suffer any immediate consequences beyond the shaming by other commentators and journalists. Fox News said Tuesday that it supported Hannity, despite having just learned that Cohen considered him a legal client. While Fox News was unaware of Sean Hannitys informal relationship with Michael Cohen and was surprised by the announcement in court yesterday, we have reviewed the matter and spoken to Sean and he continues to have our full support, Fox News said in a statement. Advertisement Hannity defended himself on social media, his nationally syndicated radio program and his top-rated cable news show Monday night. Michael Cohen never represented me in any legal matter, Hannity said at the end of his program. I never retained his services, I never received an invoice, I never paid Michael Cohen for legal fees. I did have occasional brief conversations with Michael Cohen hes a great attorney about legal questions I had where I was looking for input and perspective. My discussions with Michael Cohen never rose to any level that I needed to tell anyone that I was asking him questions, and, to be absolutely clear, they never involved any matter, any... to disappoint so many matter between me, a third party, a third group at all. My questions exclusively almost focused on real estate. Hannity is the strongest television advocate of Trump an avid viewer of Fox News who has praised the news personality and was highly critical of the FBIs raid on Cohens office on April 9. Cohen has appeared on Hannitys prime-time program numerous times to speak on behalf of Trump. But it was only revealed Monday at a federal court hearing on the evidence seized by the FBI in Cohens office, home and hotel room that Hannity is a client of the presidents longtime lawyer and fixer. That presents a major conflict of interest for the host, who typically draws 3 million viewers nightly. Hannitys name surfaced during the hearing in which U.S. District Judge Kimba Wood rejected a request from Trumps lawyer to issue a restraining order that would have kept federal prosecutors from reading the files seized from Cohen. Hannitys rationale that he only discussed real estate with Cohen has drawn criticism, even from a friendly guest on his show. Attorney Alan Dershowitz, who has been advising Trump, chastised Hannity on Monday. I really think you should have disclosed your relationship with Cohen when you talked about him on this show, Dershowitz said. You could have said just you asked him for advice or whatever but I think it would have been much, much better had you disclosed that relationship. The hosts ethics have been questioned on other cable news programs and network morning shows, and mocked by late night hosts. Advertisement But Hannity is likely to power through the negative reaction. He has largely operated by his own set of rules at Fox News as a commentator who is not bound by journalistic objectivity. Jonathan Klein, a former president of CNN, said there will likely be no impact on Hannitys audience, the largest in cable news on many nights, as many viewers tune in looking for robust support of President Trump. Many Fox News viewers might be delighted that one of its hosts is so tightly tied in to Trumps inner circle and wont mind that he had not disclosed this before, Klein said. The Fox viewers are eager to cut President Trump a break, and they will be just as willing to cut Sean Hannity a break. Hannity is not only a cheerleader for Trump, but he has leveled nightly attacks on special counsel Robert S. Mueller III, who is investigating Russian meddling in the 2016 election and whether the president or his aides broke any laws before, during or since the campaign. Advertisement Hannity has presented an alternative narrative to the Russia investigation, claiming Mueller and his team are corrupt and out to derail the Trump presidency. Cohen is being investigated over possible violations of banking and campaign finance laws related to his $130,000 payment to adult film actress Stormy Daniels, who is alleged to have had a sexual relationship with Trump. The case stemmed from a referral from Mueller, but is under the public integrity section of the office of the U.S. attorney for Southern District of New York. Although Hannity has said numerous times that he is not a journalist, he has bristled when others at Fox News have suggested his show is not news. Fox News anchor Shepard Smith said in an interview with Time magazine that some of the networks opinion shows are there strictly to be entertaining, which led Hannity to call Smith clueless about the reporting done on his program. Advertisement Hannity becomes the second Fox News prime time host to be shrouded in controversy in recent weeks. Laura Ingraham is still feeling the effects of major advertiser defections that began after she mocked Florida school shooting survivor David Hogg on social media for being rejected by several colleges. Ace Hardware recently announced it has returned to The Ingraham Angle. But nearly all other major advertisers on Fox News have stayed away, even though the hosts ratings have remained strong. stephen.battaglio@latimes.com Twitter: @SteveBattaglio The Southern California News Group, which includes the Orange County Register and Los Angeles Daily News, is pushing back against its owner, Digital First Media, calling for public support in the face of steep cuts that have hollowed out its newsrooms. A series of opinion articles published in print Sunday across the local chain urged readers to pay for professional journalism and pondered a nonprofit ownership model that plows proceeds back into smart local reporting and civic engagement. In 10 articles that went online Friday, editors and current and former reporters didnt mention Digital First or its controlling owner, Alden Global Capital, by name eschewing the approach taken by the Denver Post, another DFM paper, which referred to Alden as vulture capitalists in its own editorial published earlier this month. But SCNG Executive Editor Frank Pine wrote that the loss of journalists keeping a watchful eye on communities is a threat to democracy and that if the Fourth Estate as we know it is to survive, it will require ownership that is invested in its long-term success and a strategy that prizes purpose over profit. Advertisement Were not giving up, he wrote. We do, however, need your support. The message to readers comes amid sagging fortunes for the nations newspapers, which are struggling with declining circulation and advertising revenue as readers shift toward free, online news. Journalists, facing repeated job cuts, are lashing out against investors that they say have strip-mined still-profitable enterprises and pocketed the money. In addition to immediate financial pressures, journalists see their calling to report the truth under attack from purposely inaccurate articles that are amplified on social media. President Trump frequently lambastes mainstream reporting and has called major news organizations the enemy of the American people. The dual threat to jobs and quality journalism has spurred union drives at papers across the country, including one at the Los Angeles Times, in which journalists this year overwhelming voted to join the NewsGuild-Communications Workers of America. The articles from SCNG come amid a larger rebellion against owner Digital First Media, which publishes nearly 100 newspapers. The company, in various forms over the years, scooped up many of the papers in Northern and Southern California and became known for aggressive cuts and sharing reporters across publications. Two years ago, it purchased the Orange County Register and Riverside Press-Enterprise, beating out the parent company of the L.A. Times. SCNG now has more than 20 weekly papers and 11 dailies, including the Long Beach Press-Telegram, the Riverside Press-Enterprise and the Daily Breeze in Torrance. In a lawsuit filed in March, a minority shareholder in Digital First alleged Alden has used the publishers money to make investments that would benefit Alden and are unrelated to journalism. On April 6, the Denver Post published its series of articles, calling on Alden to sell the paper if it couldnt support good journalism. A few days later, Neil Chase, executive editor of Digital Firsts Bay Area News Group, which includes the San Jose Mercury News and the East Bay Times, referred to that push for a sale in his own article: The union that represents our employees has been saying the same thing for months. Theyre right. Digital First did not respond to an email seeking comment and Alden did not return a voice message seeking comment. An attorney representing Digital First also did not return a message seeking comment on the lawsuit. Advertisement In Southern California, Pine wrote that SCNG newsrooms have seen their staff cut by nearly half in just the past two years. SCNG had 315 newsroom employees before a recent round of more than 65 layoffs. In its editorial, the Denver Post editorial board wrote that in recent years its staff has been slashed to less than 100 from more than 250 and thats before a layoff of 30, which is supposed to be completed by July. At its peak size in the 1990s, the Mercury News had a newsroom staff of 440, according to the Pacific Media Workers Guild. The newsroom as of January had only a staff of 39 represented by the Guild, with some additional non-union staff. In an interview, Pine said the articles were meant to explain to readers why subscription prices have gone up while page counts have gone down, as well as the effect of having fewer professional watchdogs in their communities. With fewer reporters, we provide less local reporting, he said. Communities that used to get three or four stories a week may now only get one. A shift to nonprofit status could be an option to preserve robust, local journalism, he wrote. Pine said that hes unaware of any formal effort to turn the papers into a nonprofit. Nonprofit ownership provides some stability for media properties but isnt by itself a recipe for success as newspapers strive to adapt to the decline of print and print advertising revenue and the shift to digital platforms, some industry executives and analysts said. Advertisement It doesnt make a great deal of difference in this climate whether you have a nonprofit owner or a for-profit owner, media analyst Ken Doctor said. In his article, Pine also noted billionaires professing a passion for journalism have recently stepped up to buy major newspapers. That includes the Los Angeles Times and the San Diego Union-Tribune; billionaire Dr. Patrick Soon-Shiong has agreed to purchase the papers from Chicago-based Tronc in a $500-million deal that is still pending. Soon-Shiong told The Times that before he agreed to purchase the paper, Tronc planned to lay off up to 20% of The Times staff and close its Washington, D.C., bureau. Pine declined to comment on whether Digital First should sell. He did say the old business model for journalism doesnt work anymore and if we are going to be successful long term, we need to develop a new business model that supports the journalism. Advertisement Times staff writer James Peltz contributed to this report. andrew.khouri@latimes.com Follow me @khouriandrew on Twitter China will let foreign automakers from Volkswagen AG to Ford Motor Co. own more than 50% of local ventures, removing a two-decade restriction and giving a boost to global companies seeking to capture a greater share of the worlds largest car market. Electric-car makers such as Tesla Inc. will see the swiftest benefit, with ownership limitation for such businesses lifting as soon as this year. The cap for commercial vehicles will be eliminated in 2020 and for passenger vehicles in 2022, the agency that oversees industries said Tuesday. The move may help diffuse tensions between China and the U.S. after President Trumps intensified rhetoric risked an all-out trade war. Companies including Daimler AG, BMW AG, General Motors Co. and Toyota Motor Corp. are set to find it easier to manufacture and do business in China, while local makers will be under increased pressure to speed up the building of their own brands. Chinas announcement comes on the heels of a similar move for the financial industry last week. Advertisement In a decade, foreign carmakers will gradually become all independent, and Chinese companies will lose the cash flows from the joint ventures, said Yale Zhang, an analyst with Automotive Foresight Co. in Shanghai. Foreign carmakers will be happy as they wont have to share 50% of the profits with their Chinese partners. Stocks gain Shares of German carmakers all rose on the news, reversing earlier losses. China accounts for about half of Volkswagens namesake brand sales, and the worlds biggest car market is also the most significant buyer of luxury Mercedes, VWs Audi unit and BMW vehicles. Volkswagen rose as much as 1.2%, and BMW and Mercedes-maker Daimler rose about 0.5%. German and U.S. carmakers were quick to welcome the news, while assuring that they wont abandon local partners. Volkswagen said it will analyze whether Chinas move leads to new options, saying its existing joint ventures wont be affected. General Motors said that its growth in China is a result of working with its partners and that it would keep doing so. Tesla declined to comment. Tesla boon Elon Musk-led Tesla in particular is in a position to benefit from the relaxed ownership rules. Musk hasnt been able to secure a deal to open an assembly plant in China, after negotiating with Shanghais government for more than a year. The sides have disagreed on the ownership structure, people with knowledge of the situation said in February. The risk of higher import taxes spurred by Chinese trade friction with the United States may be allayed if Tesla clinches a local manufacturing agreement. Those losing out include local new-energy vehicle makers such as BAIC Motor Corp. and BYD Co., with BYD in particular set to face tougher competition from any lower-priced Teslas, said Dan Zhuang, an analyst at Rhb Osk Securities Hong Kong Ltd. The pace of the open-up is much faster than the market had thought, Zhuang said. If Tesla produces from China, BYD may face the pressure to lower price and thus a weaker margin. 50:50 rule China has moved toward eliminating the caps in recent years with promises of their eventual removal. It has required foreign automakers to enter into ventures with domestic partners to operate in the country since 1994, with the overseas company holding no more than 50%. For years, the 50:50 rule was a sacred cow for the auto industry, seen as necessary to buy local carmakers time to gain the technology and build their brands before giving overseas carmakers unfettered access to the market. The removal of the cap signals Chinese officials now have more confidence in their home-grown contenders. Advertisement The move is a good stimulus to urge Chinese companies to strengthen their own brands at a faster pace rather than relying on the joint ventures to feed them, Automotive Foresights Zhang said. Foreign car brands, meanwhile, now have years of experience from operating in China and believe they can go solo without a local partner guiding them, the analyst said. In their eyes, Chinese have little contribution to the brands and products, Zhang said. A computer glitch hit the Internal Revenue Services tax-filing system Tuesday, the official deadline to file federal and California personal income tax returns. But procrastinators need not fret: The IRS has announced a penalty-free one-day extension due to the filing issues that many taxpayers encountered. The agency said Tuesday afternoon that its systems were back up. Individuals and businesses that were originally due to file Tuesday will now have until Wednesday night. For those who need even more time, you can get a lengthy extension. When dealing with the IRS, you have to request that extension by filing IRS Form 4868. Technically, that form is due by midnight, although Treasury Secretary Steven T. Mnuchin told reporters that there would be some flexibility for taxpayers affected by the IRS system outage. Advertisement If you need an extension from the state, you can just have one: California doesnt require a form. Be advised, this extends the due date for your tax returns until Oct. 15, but any federal and California tax money you owe is still due by the normal deadline. If youve already paid enough or if youve overpaid and need a refund you dont have to worry now about payment. If you owe tax money and dont pay by Tuesday, you could be subject to penalties and interest payments. If you need to pay California income tax, you can do that online or with Form FTB 3519. IRS systems are down A wrinkle: The IRS electronic system that enables Americans to submit their tax returns online partly failed Tuesday, complicating filing for the millions of taxpayers attempting to meet the midnight deadline. IRS Acting Commissioner David Kautter said the IRS is also was struggling to accept returns from widely used software programs such as TurboTax and Intuit as well as from H&R Block, the massive tax preparation company. Kautter said that people could continue to use those systems to file their taxes, but that some returns were not immediately going through to the IRS. The problem appears to be a hardware issue, the IRS said. It advised taxpayers to continue filing their tax returns as they normally would and said the returns will be processed when feasible. Extensions will be granted to those affected by the problem, Mnuchin said. Well make sure taxpayers have extensions once the system comes up to make sure they can use it and it in no way impacts people paying their taxes, he told reporters. Advertisement California state taxes are still due Tuesday. Automatic extensions The IRS is automatically giving extensions both for filing tax returns and for paying any federal taxes due under the following circumstances: Victims of wildfires, flooding, mudflows and debris flows in certain parts of Southern California have until April 30. Victims of Hurricane Maria in Puerto Rico and the Virgin Islands have until June 29. Advertisement Members of the military and certain support personnel serving in designated combat zones have at least 180 days after leaving the combat zone. These IRS extensions do not change Californias due date for state taxes. Taxpayers who live and work outside the United States have until June 15 to file federal tax returns, but they will have to pay interest on any amount received by the IRS after April 17. By the way Tax filing day was bumped to Tuesday because April 15 landed on a Sunday and because Emancipation Day, observed in Washington, was Monday. Advertisement From the IRS, here are a few facts and figures on the filing season through April 6. Total returns received: 103.7 million Number filed electronically: 95.9 million Number filed by tax professionals: 54.3 million Advertisement Number of refunds: 79.1 million Average refund: $2,864 Total amount refunded: $226.5 billion. Martin writes for the Erie Times-News/McClatchy. Los Angeles Times staff writer Lauren Raab, the Associated Press and the Washington Post contributed to this report. Advertisement UPDATES: 4:50 p.m. This article was updated with news of a one-day tax filing extension. 3:20 p.m.: This article was updated with comments from the IRS and Treasury Secretary Steven T. Mnuchin. This article was originally published at 10:20 a.m. If the stakes werent so high, it would be incredibly fun watching financial firms and their Republican allies repeatedly make the case that the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau is a rogue agency determined to undermine capitalism, democracy and the American way of life. My absolute favorite such attack came last September when the U.S. Chamber of Commerce, the Financial Services Roundtable and other business groups expressed shock and outrage that the CFPB had decided consumers should have a right to sue businesses, rather than be forced to arbitrate. The business groups, arguing that arbitration is way better than litigation, sued the agency. Thats a tough act to follow. But Mick Mulvaney gave it a good go. Advertisement Hes serving as interim director of the CFPB while simultaneously working full time as President Trumps budget director. Thus, hes the White House official most responsible for a spending plan the Congressional Budget Office says will result in a deficit of $1 trillion by 2020 and a national debt of $33 trillion by 2028. #GoodJob. Mulvaney appeared before Congress last week to make a legally required report to lawmakers on how the CFPB is doing. Short answer: Not so good. Apparently the agency has been overly concerned with consumer protection and has been unfairly preventing businesses from absconding with peoples cash. The CFPB needs to recognize free markets, Mulvaney said, and it needs to take a humble approach to enforcing the law. Because if theres anything banks and payday lenders respect in government regulators, its humility. Mulvaney laid out a four-point plan for Congress to improve the CFPB by making it less effective and less independent. Advertisement Funding: Mulvaney wants the bureau funded by Congress rather than its current funding source, the Federal Reserve. This might sound like a modest change, but its not. If Congress is handling appropriations, that will give industry lobbyists far more influence over how much money the CFPB receives and what it can be used for. It will allow the industrys deep pockets to win over key lawmakers and sway important decisions. This is precisely what using the Fed, an independent body, as the bureaus funding source was intended to avoid. Presidential control: Mulvaney wants the CFPB director to report to the president, which is a roundabout way of saying he wants the president to be able to fire the agency director at will. As things currently stand, the director only can be sacked if found guilty of inefficiency, neglect of duty or malfeasance in office. Advertisement As with the funding mechanism, this deliberate distance from the Oval Office was intended to maintain the independence and integrity of the agency, and to prevent a president from interfering with the CFPB for political reasons. In other words, to avoid whats happening right now. New oversight: Mulvaney wants a newly created inspector general to monitor the CFPBs activities. At present, that job is fulfilled by the Federal Reserves inspector general, who is appointed by the Fed chairman. Mulvaney didnt spell out how a new inspector general would change things, but the implication is that this new overseer would be appointed by the president and would give even more control to the White House. Advertisement Legislative approval: Mulvaney wants Congress to have final say over any major rules enacted by the CFPB, such as that one I mentioned earlier about arbitration. Think of this as congressional veto power. If lawmakers or their corporate sponsors dont like a rule, theyd be able to overturn it. No need for messy lawsuits. Mulvaney said these changes would make for a fairer, more accountable government agency, better equipped to serve the peoples interests. By structuring the bureau the way it has, Congress established an agency primed to ignore due process and abandon the rule of law in favor of bureaucratic fiat and administrative absolutism, he said. Advertisement It goes without saying that Mulvaney is heavy into hooey. Hes trying to defang and defund the bureau so future directors cant carry out its mission, said Mike Litt, consumer campaign director for the U.S. Public Interest Research Group. Lisa Donner, executive director of Americans for Financial Reform, said Mulvaney has spent four months doing the bidding of big banks and financial companies, notably the payday lenders, instead of policing them on behalf of the public. For all their howling about regulatory overreach and an agency run amok, critics of the CFPB cant cite a single action by the bureau that went against the interests of consumers. Not one. Advertisement Nor has the agency hindered banks ability to rake in piles of cash. On Monday, Bank of America announced its biggest quarterly profit ever nearly $7 billion pocketed during the first three months of the year. Meanwhile, the CFPB has provided consumers with about $12 billion in refunds and debt relief from financial firms that overstepped ethical or legal boundaries. It has introduced new transparency to the mortgage market and new regulations for payday lenders. Lisa Gilbert, vice president of legislative affairs for Public Citizen, called Mulvaneys proposed changes a knife through the heart of the CFPBs mandate to protect consumers from financial industry abuses. She said his goal is clearly to block, defund and politicize consumer safeguards put in place after banks and other financial firms nearly collapsed the U.S. economy through their reckless behavior and ushered in the Great Recession. Advertisement Mulvaney made clear his high regard for public service when he told lawmakers last week that he could just sit here and twiddle my thumbs while you all ask questions and still meet his statutory requirement to account for the CFPBs actions. He also said his critics were being unduly harsh about his brief tenure running the consumer agency because I have not burned the place down, which sets the regulatory bar about as low as you can go. The reality, which neither Mulvaney nor the Republican lawmakers who egged him on seem to understand, is that real people are being harmed by unscrupulous financial practices. For example, Citibank misled borrowers into thinking they werent eligible for tax breaks on interest paid on student loans, and wrongly charged people late fees and higher interest. The CFPB wrangled $3.75 million in compensation and slapped Citi with a $2.75-million fine. Advertisement That enforcement action was listed on the bureaus website on Nov. 21. Three days later, Trump named Mulvaney interim director. There hasnt been a single crackdown since. David Lazarus column runs Tuesdays and Fridays. He also can be seen daily on KTLA-TV Channel 5 and followed on Twitter @Davidlaz. Send your tips or feedback to david.lazarus@latimes.com. MOSCOW, April 16 (Xinhua) -- The real targets of the U.S.-British-French missile strikes on Saturday were Syrian military facilities, including airfields, in addition to three targets announced by the United States and its allies, the Russian Defense Ministry said Monday. U.S. Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff Joseph Dunford said on Saturday that the attack had three targets in Syria -- a scientific research center in the greater Damascus area, a chemical weapon storage facility west of Holmes and a facility near the second one. Radar detected 103 missiles fired by the Western coalition, meaning that an average of more than 30 missiles were aimed at each of the three targets, the Russian Defense Ministry's spokesman Igor Konashenkov said in a press release. But by any calculation methods, 10 missiles would be sufficient to destroy each of the targets, he said. "This was what really happened. The true targets of the strike by the United States, Britain and France on April 14 were not only facilities in Barzeh and Jaramana but also Syrian military targets, including airfields," he said. Syrian forces used Soviet-era air defense systems and fired 112 surface-to-air missiles to repel the U.S.-led strike, destroying 71 out of the total 103 missiles launched by the coalition, Konashenkov said. The United States, Britain and France hit Syria with a wave of missiles on Saturday, saying it was in response to an alleged chemical weapon attack by Syrian government forces in the rebel-held district of Douma near capital Damascus on April 7. The Syrian government has categorically denied the accusation and Russia said its military experts found no traces of toxic substances in Douma. San Francisco has long been a place where tech companies roll out their services first and seek permission later. City officials, however, are losing patience with such strategies. Members of San Franciscos Board of Supervisors on Monday admonished Bird, LimeBike and Spin for blanketing the streets with electric scooters before the citys transportation agency finished crafting rules to regulate their use and storage. When you enter the arena with that level of hubris and arrogance, you dont create trust, said Supervisor Aaron Peskin, a member of the boards land use and transportation committee. Advertisement Legislators criticized the companies decision to launch knowing that regulation including a permitting process was on the way. It was a familiar argument in a city where firms such as Uber, Lyft and Airbnb all became wildly popular by taking advantage of the fact that there were no explicit laws regulating their practices in their early days. Separately on Monday, San Francisco City Atty. Dennis Herrera sent cease and desist letters to the firms saying they ignored previous warnings and continue to operate an unpermitted motorized scooter rental program that is creating a public nuisance on the citys streets and sidewalks and endangering public health and safety. LimeBike did not immediately respond to a request for comment. Bird spokesman Kenneth Baer said the company is taking the city attorneys concerns and recommendations for improving Bird in San Francisco very seriously. We are working to ensure that we comply with any of the outlined recommendations we dont already have in place, a Spin spokeswoman said. While dozens of customers praised the companies Monday for offering an affordable and convenient transportation solution, many San Francisco residents described the dockless scooters which, as their name suggests, can be parked anywhere as a hazard that endangers pedestrians and obstructs sidewalks. In Santa Monica, home to e-scooter company Bird, the city attorneys office in December filed a criminal complaint against Bird and its founder alleging the company began operating without approval and ignored required licensing and orders to remove the scooters from sidewalks. Bird pleaded no contest and agreed to pay more than $300,000 in fines and secure proper licenses. Advertisement The scooter companies must submit reports to the city attorneys office on how they have addressed complaints by April 30. tracey.lien@latimes.com Twitter: @traceylien The sun could come out tomorrow for a Los Angeles County child now that director Michael Arden has announced that hes taking video submissions for potential cast members in a Los Angeles Philharmonic production of Annie, the summer musical at the Hollywood Bowl. Children ages 6 to 13 are invited to send YouTube video links of themselves singing Tomorrow or Its the Hard Knock Life. The former will be used to cast the musicals title role of the heroic red-headed orphan, while the latter will help to cast six other orphans. Annie, which is among the longest-running musicals in Broadway history, will be staged at the Hollywood Bowl during the last week of July. Advertisement In a video posted on YouTube, Arden encouraged all types of children to audition, regardless of skin, hair or eye color. The press release stipulates girls, but Arden doesnt specify that in his video. Could the next Annie be a boy? (You might recall the fabulous young Elsa who turned out for the first performance of Frozen on Broadway.) If you like dogs, youre in the running, says Arden, nominated for a 2016 best director Tony Award for Spring Awakening. The winner will spend a lot of time with a dog named Sandy. The deadline to submit a video is Sunday. All videos must be uploaded to YouTube and the links sent to anniebowlcasting@gmail.com. Links in Ardens YouTube video lead to sheet music for both songs. jessica.gelt@latimes.com @jessicagelt ALSO: Say I do to Significant Other David Bowie, the ballet Advertisement Why Broadways hottest theater just might be on the West Coast Through the Eye of a Needle, Jami Brandlis new play at the Road on Lankershim, is not perfect by any means. Needle contains overly familiar tropes and characters who flirt with stereotype. Despite its faults, Brandlis old-school drama is so heartfelt and in director Ann Hearn Tobolowskys emotionally acute staging, so well performed that we forgive its shortcomings. Keep a couple of hankies handy, because the play will likely soften the flintiest hearts in the audience. The action is set on Christmas Eve 2011 at the middle-class Keen familys New Jersey home, meticulously evoked by scenic designer Pete Hickok. Its a sad holiday for the Keens: Their daughter Dana (Kara Hume), a Navy corpsman, was killed in Iraq six months before. Father Larry (David Gianopoulos), a state transit supervisor, has retreated into the bottle, unable to utter his dead daughters name. Mother Barbara (Meeghan Holaway) seeks comfort in her church and has invited pastor Bill (Chet Grissom) and his medication-addled wife (Stephanie Erb) to an ill-fated holiday dinner. Advertisement Kaitlin Huwe, Meeghan Holoway, Erica Mathlin, Stephanie Erb and Chet Grissom star in the Road Theatre Companys production of Jami Brandlis Through the Eye of a Needle. (Brian M. Cole ) Meanwhile, daughter Samantha (Kaitlin Huwe), neglected by her grief-stricken mother, has channeled her shattering loss into political activism by planning a midnight peace rally on the George Washington Bridge. A blizzard is bearing down on the area. But its the arrival of the mysterious Nasser (Erica Mathlin), an Iraqi refugee who may hold the secret as to why Danas body was found so far away from base, who might be the real gale force that tears the family apart. Under Tobolowskys guidance, the actors plumb the depths of their characters. Holaways stoic homemaker soon shows the yawning cracks under her Stepford cheerfulness. As the two daughters, Huwe captures the childlike anguish of Samanthas heroic brashness, while Hume conveys depth and sensitivity in a somewhat peripheral role. Grissom balances well-meaning bonhomie with repugnant cluelessness, and Erb milks ample humor from her ditsy, downtrodden pastors wife the worm about to turn. Mathlin is well-cast in a role that may challenge audience expectations. But it is Gianopoulos who is most shattering as the family patriarch who must abandon his notions of masculinity if he ever hopes to confront his crushing loss and move forward. His wrenching portrayal will floor you. Through the Eye of a Needle Where: Road Theatre on Lankershim, 5108 Lankershim Blvd., North Hollywood Advertisement When: 8 p.m. Fridays-Saturdays, 2 p.m. Sundays; ends May 13 Tickets: $34 Information: (818) 761-8838 or www.roadtheatre.org Running time: 1 hour, 40 minutes Advertisement See all of our latest arts news and reviews at latimes.com/arts. MORE THEATER: At South Coast Rep, glimmers of light in Little Black Shadows Open call for the summer Hollywood Bowl production of Annie Advertisement Say I do to Significant Other at the Geffen Playhouse Weekly picks from L.A.s small-theater scene Actor and comic Harry Anderson, who portrayed the eccentric judge Harry T. Stone on the NBC comedy series Night Court, died on Monday at age 65. Below is a Los Angeles Times story, originally published on Nov. 28, 2005, in which Anderson discusses how he traded Hollywood for a new club of his own in the French Quarter and his role in the effort to revive New Orleans after Hurricane Katrina. He and his wife left New Orleans in 2006 and moved to Asheville, N.C.. Harry Anderson, former star of the sitcoms Night Court and Daves World, rubbed the bags under his eyes, stubbed out an unfiltered Camel and climbed onto the small stage of his French Quarter nightclub. Hi, he said. Im Ed Begley Jr. To get the joke, you have to know that Anderson is an entertainer, that Begley is an entertainer and that they look alike. Then you have to digest the irony of one reasonably famous person introducing himself as another reasonably famous person. Then you have to find that funny. Advertisement Thats a lot of hoops for a one-liner, and in a crowd of 80, one man chuckled quietly. But thats OK. With decades of magic and comedy behind him, Anderson, 53, isnt trying to win over a crowd, not these days. Hes trying to help save New Orleans. He has opened his club, which was closed for weeks by Hurricane Katrina, to community meetings attended by a motley collection of advocates wearing tattoos, nose rings and plumed houndstooth hats. Founded on frustration over the plodding pace of recovery and the perception that government promises to rebuild are disingenuous, it is a legislature of the strange and the dispossessed, and Anderson is the presiding officer. The group meets once a week at Oswalds Speakeasy. Yes, its named after Lee Harvey, with a drink called the Grassy Knoll and a periodic feature called the Zapruder Film Festival. Some fanciful ideas have been proposed behind these doors in the last six weeks, including a plan to legalize prostitution as a way to renew tourism. But the merchants and residents are serious about many issues, peppering officials with questions about whether out-of-town police supplementing the locals will be savvy enough during Mardi Gras to distinguish between benign debauchery and actions that constitute genuine unlawfulness. The group has been, at times, surprisingly influential. It was instrumental in persuading the city to ease the post-storm curfew in an effort to increase bar business. In the meantime, Anderson has become a high priest of sorts among his fellow Quarter Rats the faithful denizens of the district who see no need to travel outside its 78 square blocks. Through it all, hes trying to discern the future of a business empire that would only fly in New Orleans his club, his variety show and his two shops, the one with a statue of a guy in a lobster suit and the other decorated with the framed skeletal remains of a cat named Fluffy. Advertisement Andersons charisma and an unusual skill set -- magic and comedy, along with picking pockets, piercing his arm with long needles and playing Beethoven on a recorder through his nostril -- helped give him a serendipitous career. Playing variations of the same character Harry the Hat, kindly con man he worked the streets and the comedy clubs of Los Angeles. That led the way to a successful run on television, including Cheers, Night Court and Daves World. Along the way, it became clear that things happen to Anderson that dont happen to other people. (He once toured with a pet monkey, and a physician named Dick Chopp performed his vasectomy.) So it surprised no one when, in 1997, after 400 episodes of television, he quit. Anderson had never been enamored with the L.A. scene. In all his travels, there had been only one city he had ever loved: New Orleans, where he had lived for two years, doing his shtick and, at one point, spending the weekend in Orleans Parish Jail when he got caught running a con on the street. Advertisement He took a scouting trip to make sure he wasnt romanticizing the city. What he found was the anti-L.A. Cramped quarters were a great equalizer; no one has room to build a pool. And youd look pretty stupid driving around the French Quarter in a Porsche, he said. Everyone he met hippies, artists, junkies, bikers was in exile from someplace. Living in the French Quarter is the closest you can come to expatriating without leaving the country, he said. He moved here in 1999 and began to pursue what he had come to realize was his dream all along, to run a one-man variety act at his own club. He bought a building on a corner of the Quarter and opened in July. Five nights a week, surrounded by 88 seats, a totem pole and a sign for Spade & Archer, the name of the detective agency in The Maltese Falcon, he performed a 90-minute show called Wise Guy. Advertisement He did a bit called the Middle Aged Straight Jacket Trick, which entailed freeing one hand, reaching into his pocket for a $20 bill and paying an audience member to get him out. There were math and memorization stunts and dramatic stories told from the perspective of a carnival owner. He opened to so many standing ovations, he said, I felt like Wayne Newton. He and his wife, Elizabeth, opened side-by-side shops that they tended by day. His was a magic shop where he shaved cards and made double-headed quarters. Hers was called Sideshow, and featured tarot cards and two-headed ducks made by a local taxidermist. Life was good, Anderson said. Katrina came two months later. Advertisement It broke my heart, he said. We wound up with more businesses than there are tourists. Im not sure thats an exaggeration. The facade of the comic, the wisecracker always good for an easy laugh, fell away as Anderson walked through the Quarter, past the wharves that line the Mississippi, past a store selling prints from James Deans Boulevard of Broken Dreams. New Orleans will never be the same, he said. But what will it look like? Will the pockets where much of the culture was created the poor and largely black neighborhoods that shouldered the brunt of the storm be rebuilt? Will New Orleans remain real, or will it become a city that is no more organic than the Disneyland attraction Pirates of the Caribbean? Its teetered on that for a long time, he said. But it was always saved by individuals and iconoclasts. Now many of those people are gone. If youve lost the character of the place, whats the product? Whats the place? Advertisement He passed a few National Guard trucks, now a part of the scenery as much as the Quarters wrought-iron balconies. Flies feasted on rotting trash. How is business supposed to come back here? he asked. You cant even use the name Convention Center anymore, not after what happened. Its like how people dont name their kid Adolf anymore. Everywhere he goes in the Quarter, locals shout his name or greet him with a smile and a handshake; hes been one of the districts more visible residents since he arrived. Some say hes using the meetings as a springboard for public office, which he scoffs at. One night, he opened the heavy doors of the club, and more than 100 people filed in. Anderson, who plays dueling roles as instigator and moderator, typically opens with a review of the latest events. For instance, Mayor C. Ray Nagin had decided to hold a New Orleans town hall meeting in Baton Rouge: Apparently, there are more people who live in New Orleans who are now living in Baton Rouge than are living in New Orleans, he explained with a sigh. Advertisement As the meetings have grown in size and stature, politicians and government officials have started showing up. Jimmy Fahrenholtz, a member of the much-criticized Orleans Parish School Board, arrived to talk about the transition to charter schools. He approached the microphone to chants of School Board sucks! It does, he conceded. Dont make me sorry I opened the bar, Anderson cautioned the crowd. A brave soul from the equally criticized Federal Emergency Management Agency, individual assistance officer David Hart, also came. Advertisement Hart addressed questions that have frustrated residents. For example: Do people who receive cash assistance from the Red Cross have to pay taxes on the check? (No, he told them.) He also faced questions about why people who were displaced in precisely the same manner sometimes from the same block have been granted different levels of government assistance. Hart assured the crowd that people who submitted the same information to the federal government would receive the same benefits. No! the crowd shouted. Wrong! A gay man held up his hand, and Anderson walked the microphone over. The man and his partner had applied separately for emergency cash stipends from FEMA, designed to help storm victims pay for essential needs such as food, shelter and clothing. Their applications were denied as fraudulent because FEMAs computers identified them as a couple; each couple can only apply for one stipend. Why is it that the government wont let us get married, but FEMA considers us married when it comes to handing out money? the man asked. Advertisement Hart said hed work on it. Anderson chuckled into the microphone. Gay-bashing was the only insult that FEMA hadnt been accused of. Now weve got them all, he said. The meetings have resulted in community service, including a ride-sharing program for Quarter residents who dont have cars and need to get to FEMA assistance centers. There have been brainstorming sessions about the police force. One woman, a bartender at a Quarter club, pointed out that newly hired officers needed to understand that musicians frequently smoked marijuana while on break. They have to learn, she said, to spot the difference between a musician who is lighting up in an alley a situation that typically receives a pass and a civilian. Advertisement At times, ideas generated at the meetings sound outlandish, but they might reflect the kind of imagination that New Orleans needs now. One mans proposal to shut down Louisiana ports until Congress pays for a stronger levee system thereby holding a chunk of the nations goods hostage drew an enormous ovation. How long is it going to be before we get off our knees in this city and start moving forward? That is why we do this -- to get some answers, said Jim Monaghan, a friend of Andersons, an organizer and the owner of Mollys at the Market, a French Quarter institution that stayed open through Katrina. Anderson is going to try to stick it out in New Orleans. He plans to start his show again in January, which will require some Katrina material. Hes brushing up on his ventriloquism, which he hasnt done for a while, so he can talk to a new character an old, angry coot from Plaquemines Parish, the devastated coastal stretch south of New Orleans. But he finds himself going over real estate listings at night, from Montreal and San Francisco. Advertisement Ill give it a shot. But I dont know that a year from now Im going to be here. Nobody does, he said. There are going to be some changes, and whatever happens, this city is never going to be what it was. In the meantime, if you dont get involved, it will all be swept out from under you. So Im doing what I can. Director Milos Forman was shaped by European sensibilities but his films were shrewd and intimate portraits of the yearnings, transgressions, politics, sexual fascinations, rebelliousness and complicated conformities that soothed, rattled and challenged the American spirit. Born in the former Czechoslovakia, Forman, who died Friday in Connecticut, looked at America, notably in films like One Flew Over the Cuckoos Nest, The People vs. Larry Flynt and Hair with an eye that was at once empathetic, detached and fiercely curious. He led us through the hallways of our insane asylums, the passions and duplicities of our courtrooms, and into the blur of flying hair, free love, tie-dye and peace signs that marked our 1960s antiwar protests. Like the work of other foreign-born directors, including Billy Wilder, Frank Capra and Ang Lee, Formans movies were often quintessentially American, parsing our contradictions and sins and celebrating the humanism and myths that soften our brash and misguided impulses. In the People vs. Larry Flynt, Forman held the crude and carnival-like nature of the porn industry up to the prism of one of our deepest convictions: free speech. The film, in essence, was a raucous civics lesson led by a foul-mouthed millionaire. Larry Flynt is a devil with angels wings, Forman said of the Kentucky sharecroppers son (played by Woody Harrelson) who founded Hustler magazine. Half the man is just sleaze and smut, but the other half is very noble and admirable. Advertisement His films navigated the American soul, much like Wilder, an Austrian emigre whose Sunset Boulevard veered into the obsession with fame by a fallen movie star, and Capra, born in Italy, whose Mr. Smith Goes to Washington told of an everyman senator with a subversive agenda to clean up political corruption. The Taiwanese-born Lee fearlessly dove into Americas sexual and class conflicts, whether through the lives of gay cowboys in Brokeback Mountain or the sordid affairs of upper-class Connecticut couples in the 1970s in The Ice Storm. More recently, Mexican director Guillermo del Toros Oscar-winning The Shape of Water paid homage to the Hollywood B-horror film in its meditation on good and evil through the eyes of a persecuted half-man/half-fish creature in Cold War-era Baltimore. Lifes perplexing dualities and its absurdities and ironies suited Formans inclinations. His rebel aesthetic was an affront to a Czechoslovakia that in 1968 was invaded by Soviet troops, ending the brief Prague Spring. The directors The Firemens Ball (1967), which Czech authorities banned, examined small-town misadventure and bureaucracy in a comical satire on the East European communist state. It fit the barbed intellectualism of his compatriots, including playwright Vaclav Havel and novelist Milan Kundera, and marked him a dissident. Jack Nicholson is shown in a scene from One Flew Over the Cuckoos Nest, directed by Milos Forman. (Associated Press ) I became an emigrant, he once said. It wasnt scary at all [starting a new life in America]. You are young and arrogant. You think you can do anything, and then you slowly learn how wrong you are. After wrestling with depression and camping at the Chelsea Hotel in New York, Forman ended up in Hollywood, where One Flew Over the Cuckoos Nest (1975), starring Jack Nicholson and introducing moviegoers to the infamous Nurse Ratched (Louise Fletcher), won the Academy Award for best picture. Nicholson, Fletcher and Forman also won Oscars. Nicholsons character, Randle McMurphy, a habitual criminal sentenced to a mental institution, is, like Larry Flynt, the consummate antihero. They are flawed men who force reckonings, outsiders with a penchant to rouse and inspire. Similar insurgent traits and narratives echoed through the hippie movement in Hair (1979), the antics of comedian Andy Kaufman (Jim Carrey) in Man on the Moon (1999), and in the misfortunes of black pianist Coalhouse Walker Jr., set amid the chicanery and oppression of the early 1900s in Ragtime (1981). It was as if he were gathering outcasts and iconoclasts to hold a mirror up to his adopted country. Critic Roger Ebert wrote that Forman had an unusually keen eye for American society. He added that the directors perceptiveness in Ragtime resulted in a film about black pride and rage and, not only white racism, which we sort of expect, but also white liberalism. Advertisement Forman embodied the American work ethic and its persistent need for success. His musings at times sounded as if they would fit neatly into a 1950s Hollywood epic about unsated desire: Everything I did in my life I did because I wanted to win, he said. The will to win belongs to my essential motivational powers. However, winning is quite exhausting so the next thing, which always comes to my mind, is this: Fine, I have won, but thats not it. Next time its going to be even harder. Formans rebel leanings and exquisite cinematography by Miroslav Ondricek imbued Amadeus (1984), the adaption of Peter Shaffers play about the jealousy composer Antonio Salieri held for Wolfgang Mozart. Like other Forman characters, Mozart has little regard for convention and is out to challenge the aristocracy and musical tastes of Europe. The film, which won eight Academy Awards, including for best picture and director, is a moving study of one mans genius and anothers mediocrity. Amadeus may be set in 18th-century Europe but its tale of the individual fighting the establishment speaks to American sensibilities. It is a testament to Formans fascination with the foibles and sublimities of the human spirit, and how cunning and tenderness, along with enduring passion, play out against our cruelties and better angels. In its most profound passages, the film reveals Salieris wonder at Mozarts talent, and in the same moment, shows his inability, despite all his efforts, to create something as beautiful. jeffrey.fleishman@latimes.com Advertisement ALSO Voices of the City: Experimental vocalist Carmina Escobar uses her voice to explore herself and others How images sometimes manipulated and altered are shaping the seething world of our politics Kendrick Lamars achievement as the first rapper to win a Pulitzer Prize for music is an epochal achievement in hip-hop, and in Pulitzer history for acknowledging the genres importance in American cultural life. But there is some precedent and narrative behind this particular award. Its not the first time a recent Pulitzer music winner has made waves in rap, and Lamars own work has frequently drawn from Pulitzer winners in other genres, from free jazz to literature. Sonically, hes in a shared space with avant-garde classical winners. Lamar has always had his eye on work thats been previously lauded by the committee. Lamars popular single King Kunta, featured on To Pimp a Butterfly, directly references Pulitzer winner Alex Haleys Roots, a landmark novel (and adapted TV event) thats been a frequent reference point in hip-hop. Missy Elliott, Ludacris, Jay-Z, Ice Cube and West have all used Kunta Kinte allusions in their lyrics. Lamar follows another non-classical Pulitzer winner, Ornette Coleman, the experimental jazz pioneer who won in 2007 for Sound Grammar. Lamars albums have been frequently cited as spearheading a jazz revival in Los Angeles, elevating players like Kamasi Washington, Terrace Martin and Robert Glasper to almost-pop stars, or at least crossover figures with wide, young audiences outside the traditional jazz market. Advertisement Lamar has also collaborated with Herbie Hancock, who previously said, I could not play what I play were it not for Ornette Coleman. John Coltrane and Thelonious Monk, each foundational jazz figures and artists who have received what the Pulitzers call special awards and citations, have DNA in Lamars arrangements Lamar is a frequent collaborator with Coltranes relatives Steven Ellison, better known as Flying Lotus, and Ravi Coltrane. The Pulitzers themselves have even nodded albeit slightly to Lamars universe. In 2013, the composer Caroline Shaw won the prize for her vocal composition Partita for Eight Voices, which she wrote for her Grammy-winning group Roomful of Teeth. At 30 she was the youngest winner in the music prizes history (now tied with Lamar for that distinction), and the award was lauded for acknowledging a progressive new voice in the avant-garde. But she wasnt just noticed in contemporary classical circles. Kanye West became smitten with her off-kilter stacks of vocal harmonies, flirtations with dissonance and wild swings in tone. West soon brought her into the fold as a favored collaborator, remixing his single Say You Will to highlight her voice, and performed live versions of his song Power with her taking some lead vocal duties. Shes all over his album The Life of Pablo, with her eerie vocals appearing on Wolves and Father Stretch My Hands Pt. 2. Lamar appeared on the LPs No More Parties in L.A., so he has already shared album credits with a music Pulitzer winner. Lamars Damn may seem like a contrarian pick, but the albums players, roots and themes share in a long Pulitzer pedigree. Advertisement Many will champion the Pulitzer committees overdue embrace of hip-hop. Yet the award is a testament to the breadth of Lamars vision, and much of the work hes long been doing has always maintained direct ties to the best that American culture has to offer. For breaking music news, follow @augustbrown on Twitter. From a new food hall in Orange County to a Middle Eastern restaurant in downtown L.A., heres whats happening in the food and drink world: Round two: Bestia chef-owner Ori Menashe started a new Italian movement when he opened his Arts District restaurant in 2012. With his house-made charcuterie, almost al dente pastas and roasted marrow bones (all of which now have their own cult following), the restaurant is still one of the toughest reservations in the city. But as much as hes known for his take on Italian food, Menashe has also been talking about opening a Middle Eastern restaurant in downtown L.A. since 2013. Fast forward five years later, and Menashe and his wife, pastry chef and Bestia co-owner Genevieve Gergis, will open Bavel maybe the most anticipated restaurant opening of the year on Friday. The Middle Eastern restaurant is located in the Arts District, less than a mile from Bestia. The name is a reference to the story of Babel in the Old Testament, and the idea of the Middle East as one. The restaurant pulls from both Menashes and Gergis family backgrounds in Israel, Turkey, Egypt and Morocco. And the menu is a mix of flat breads and spreads, cured meats, small plates that feature salads and vegetables and larger meat and fish dishes. Bavel, designed by Studio UNLTD and Gergis, is housed in a brick warehouse with skylights on the roof, planters hanging from those skylights and clerestory windows. The restaurant will start with dinner service and plans to add lunch eventually. 500 Mateo St., Los Angeles, (213) 232-4966, www.baveldtla.com. Lunchtime: Orange County is known for its beach cities, Disneyland, endless strip malls and, in the last five years, food halls. There is an actual artisanal food hall scene in the area, with dedicated restaurant hubs in Costa Mesa, Anaheim, Irvine, Santa Ana and now, Tustin. Mess Hall Market, a new 12,000-square-foot food hall, is scheduled to open at FLIGHT, a 38-acre creative office space complex, in Tustin. Created by the Lincoln Property Co., the food hall will be home to nine food vendors, including projects from Andrew Gruel of Slapfish, Aaron J. Perez of Vaka Burger and Danny Godinez of Anepalco. The market will serve breakfast, lunch and dinner. Also look for a location of the Lost Bean, which serves coffee, tea and juice. Laguna Beach-based restaurant Another Kind Cafe will serve Vietnamese food at one stall, while the Little Greek will offer Greek street food at another. There will also be a shop called the Sandwich Society, with sandwiches, salads and soups.1705 Flight Way, Tustin, flight-tustin.com. Get stuffed: Dumplings west of the San Gabriel Valley? Yes, but at Stuffd, a new dumpling shop on Melrose Avenue, theyre of the Eastern European variety. Stuffd opened a little more than a week ago in the former AMMO space. This is where chef Missy Kim (former executive chef at Cafe Stella) is making Siberian dumplings stuffed with beef and pork in a sour cream sauce; Kalua pig and cabbage dumplings with a spicy soy vinaigrette; and chicken and vegetable dumplings in a Thai curry sauce. In addition to the dumplings, Kim is also making miso black cod; and strawberry rhubarb dumplings with vanilla bean ice cream for dessert. The restaurant was designed by Project M+. 6909 Melrose Ave., Los Angeles, (323) 424-7148, www.stuffdco.com. Advertisement All-star dinner: A group of this citys best chefs are throwing a dinner party to celebrate the 70th anniversary of Factors Famous Deli. On May 15, the Mozzaplexs Nancy Silverton, Josiah Citrin of Melisse, Bruce Kalman of Union, Adam Perry Lang of the soon-to-open APL Restaurant and Micah Wexler and Michael Kassar of Wexlers Deli will cook dinner alongside Jonathan Waxman of Barbuto in New York City and Hedy Goldsmith of Sweet Hedy at the Mark for Events event space on Pico Boulevard. The dinner will be hosted by culinary MC Billy Harris, and proceeds from a live auction will benefit the Simon Wiesenthal Center. Tickets are $218 and include a hosted cocktail hour, passed appetizers and a multi-course dinner. VIP tables of 10 guests (including a chef-meet-and-greet, photos, 10 signed cookbooks, 10 William Sonoma gift bags etc.) are also available for $4018). 9320 W. Pico Blvd., Los Angeles, www.eventbrite.com. Biscuit shuffle: Chef Kris Tominaga has replaced Wes Whitsell as executive chef at Manuela restaurant, located in the courtyard of the Hauser & Wirth Gallery of the downtown L.A. Arts District. Tominaga was previously the group executive chef of Pali Group, and was also behind the short-lived French restaurant Cadet in Santa Monica. Known for his take on Southern food at Hart & the Hunter, the restaurant inside the Palihotel on Melrose Avenue, Tominaga will put his own spin on Manuelas menu, which also slants Southern. And he may be known best for his biscuits, which this papers restaurant critic Jonathan Gold described as pretty extraordinary in a review. Will he bring those biscuits to his new downtown kitchen? We can only hope. 907 E 3rd St., Los Angeles, (323) 849-0480, manuela-la.com. Jenn.Harris@latimes.com @Jenn_Harris_ Former FBI director says Trump "morally unfit to be president" WASHINGTON, April 15 (Xinhua) -- Former Director of the Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI) James Comey said U.S. President Donald Trump is "morally unfit" to dominate the White House, in a televised interview with ABC broadcast late Sunday. Trump "talks about and treats women like they're pieces of meat" and "lies constantly about matters big and small and insists the American people believe it," the former official said in his first interview since being fired in May 2017. "Values matter," Comey said, adding "this president does not reflect the values of this country." He also said, "People in this country need to stand up and go to the voting booth and vote their values." The former prosecutor also said that serving in the Trump administration poses a serious ethical dilemma. The interview aired just before Comey is set to release his new book on Tuesday, which is highly critical of the president, according to U.S. media. Before the broadcast of the interview, Trump tweeted Sunday "slippery James Comey, a man who always ends up badly and out of whack ... will go down as the worst FBI director in history, by far." "I hardly knew this guy (Comey). Just another of his many lies," Trump said in another piece of tweet. The new home of the Los Angeles Times will be at 2300 E. Imperial Highway in El Segundo. A spokesman for Dr. Patrick Soon-Shiong, soon to be the newspapers new owner, said The Times would relocate to that address permanently sometime before the end of June, when the lease at its longtime headquarters in downtown Los Angeles expires. Employees will move into a 120,000-square-foot building already on the site, at the intersection of Imperial Highway and North Douglas Street. The building is currently being reconfigured to house a newsroom spread across multiple floors as well as a cafeteria, a museum gallery, a retail shop, multimedia studios and event spaces, Soon-Shiong said Friday during an interview. Advertisement The 4.5-acre property also has room for a second building to be built from the ground up as needed, he said. The Times has been at its current location in downtown L.A. since 1935. But it became a lessee in 2014 after Tribune Co., a previous owner, spun off its newspapers without their real estate into a separate business unit. Then, two years later, Tribune Media Co. sold the iconic Art Deco building to Canadian developer Onni Group. Soon-Shiong said Onni has demanded a $1-million-a-month rent increase to keep the papers staff at the 750,000-square-foot complex across from City Hall, money that could be better spent on resources for the newsroom. Because he owns the El Segundo building, the paper will have more flexibility and control, he said. In announcing the move to El Segundo to The Times staff Friday, Soon-Shiong said he envisioned a campus with a modern newsroom that is there for the next 100 years. In February the billionaire former surgeon struck a $500-million deal with media company Tronc to buy The Times, the San Diego Union-Tribune, Spanish-language publication Hoy and several small Southern California community papers, including the Glendale News-Press and the Daily Pilot in Costa Mesa. The sale is expected to close this month. Formerly known as Times Mirror Square, The Times current Civic Center headquarters is a mix of five interconnected structures that fill an entire city block, bounded by Broadway and Spring and 1st and 2nd streets. Shortly after Onni bought the property for more than $100 million in 2016, the developer filed plans with the city to demolish part of the complex and build a pair of high-rise residential towers and several retail stores and restaurants. Advertisement UPDATES: 10:40 a.m. This article was updated with additional details on the current Times building, its lease and future development plans at the site. This article was originally published at 6 p.m. on Monday, April 16. The American flags, cumbia music and empty pizza boxes in front of Los Alamitos City Hall earlier this week might have suggested a rowdy festival. But the scene was miles away from anything feel-good. Inside and outside of the council chambers, protesters accused each other of harassment and hurled slurs at each other. They used megaphones and signs and words dripping with anger to tear each other apart in a small Orange County city that started a movement against Californias sanctuary state law. Advertisement Late Monday, just before midnight and after five hours of public comment, the Los Alamitos City Council voted to give final approval to an ordinance to exempt the city from the states laws designed to protect immigrants in the country illegally. Los Alamitos made national headlines last month when leaders approved an ordinance that exempts the Orange County municipality from Senate Bill 54, a law that took effect Jan. 1 and limits local law enforcements cooperation with federal immigration authorities. The move sparked an anti-sanctuary movement, prompting at least nine other Orange County cities and the Board of Supervisors to voice similar grievances and pass similar resolutions. Some of the more than 200 people who showed up at Los Alamitos City Hall were residents but many others were part of outside activist groups. Gerri Mejia, a former Los Alamitos mayor, encouraged the council to stay on course with its anti-sanctuary measure. Stand strong. I think that you have done what you are called to do and protect this community, she said. Know that we are here and behind you. Leonor Ferris, left, and Genevieve Peters celebrate Los Alamitos opposition of Californias sanctuary state law. (Francine Orr / Los Angeles Times ) Councilman Mark A. Chirco was the sole dissenter on the eventual vote, criticizing the ordinance as divisive, ineffective, flawed and risky. He said it eventually could bankrupt the city. Advertisement Whats the long-term plan with this ordinance? How far will we go to defend it? How many millions of dollars are we willing to spend? said Chirco, a practicing attorney for more than 13 years. Chirco asked Los Alamitos Police Chief Eric Nunez when the last time Immigration and Customs Enforcement officials had conducted a raid in the city. They had not in at least 10 years, the chief replied. Chirco pointed out that neither Nunez, the city attorney, or any other city staff had been consulted by the council before putting it on the council agenda. Mayor Troy Edgar said that the council should follow through with its ordinance despite the risks. You cant just keep polishing the cannonball. You got to shoot it, he said. Advertisement His comment was met with a strong reaction by some of the protesters outside, who chanted: Shame, shame, shame! Councilman Richard D. Murphy unsuccessfully tried to table the item until it could be further studied by staff. Ultimately, he voted for the measure. Erik Garcia, center, and Jose Servin, right, protest the Los Alamitos City Councils vote to opt out of the states sanctuary law. (Francine Orr / Los Angeles Times ) Mayor Pro Tem Warren Kusumoto, who proposed the initiative that thrust the city into the center of a rebellion against Californias sanctuary policies, remained silent. In earlier interviews and meetings, Kusumoto said he was compelled to introduce the measure because he said he believed the states sanctuary laws are in violation of the U.S. Constitution. Advertisement In an interview with The Times, Kusumoto said that he didnt consult with the city attorney, city manager, police chief or any other member of his staff before introducing the ordinance. Kusumoto and other Los Alamitos city leaders take issue with SB 54, which Gov. Jerry Brown signed after the Legislature passed it last year. It prohibits state and local police agencies from notifying federal officials in many cases when immigrants who potentially are subject to deportation are about to be released from custody. The initiative is in addition to sanctuary city laws passed by numerous communities and other state laws that protect those without legal residency, including one that makes it a crime for business owners who have been notified of a workplace audit to voluntarily help federal agents find and detain unauthorized workers without having given employees prior notification. The Trump administration has gone to federal court to invalidate the state laws, claiming they blatantly obstruct federal immigration law and violate the Constitutions supremacy clause, which gives federal law precedence over state measures. That case is pending. Los Alamitos leaders also voted to file an amicus brief to the Justice Departments lawsuit. Advertisement Some Orange County cities have filed an amicus brief in support of the federal lawsuit against the states sanctuary laws. Orange County voted to join as a plaintiff in the suit. Among those who showed up Monday to address the Los Alamitos City Council was Jessica Riegert, who teaches at Los Alamitos High School. Riegert said last months vote by the council has directly impacted her students, emboldening some to target their peers who are legal immigrants and others who are here without legal status. Im here to speak for my students who are too afraid to be here today, she said. This vote has allowed for the most heinous people to say the most heinous things toward them, in their classroom, at lunch, at their churches. They are afraid they are no longer welcome, and they are being met with hatred. That, as a teacher, breaks my heart. Police keep a close eye on protesters outside the Los Alamitos City Council meeting. (Francine Orr / Los Angeles Times ) Advertisement The sanctuary issue has drawn groups favoring tough enforcement against illegal immigration to show up in force at city council and county supervisor meetings throughout the state. Some residents have complained about these groups, stating that they make disrespectful and racially-charged remarks at the meetings. Before opening the meeting to the public, council members met in closed session to discuss litigation threatened by the American Civil Liberties Union of Southern California. The organization has said it will launch a lawsuit against the city if Los Alamitos went forward with anti-sanctuary ordinance. cindy.carcamo@latimes.com Advertisement Follow Cindy Carcamo on Twitter @thecindycarcamo UPDATES: 1:50 p.m.: This story was updated with additional comments and details from the council meeting. Advertisement This story was originally published at 9:40 a.m. 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. But with the choice looming, board members last week received documents from the districts general counsel David Holmquist, notifying them that the charity Beutner founded, Vision to Learn, could lose its contract with the L.A. Unified School District. The nonprofit, according to the documents, has fallen far short in its commitment to provide vision screenings and glasses to thousands of low-income students this school year. Advertisement The Times was alerted to the Vision to Learn documents by sources who requested anonymity because they were not authorized to discuss the matter. The leaks appear to represent a last-gasp effort to thwart Beutners appointment, reflecting some insiders concerns about his qualifications and about the direction in which he might take L.A. Unified. Reached Monday, Beutner declined to comment on the superintendent search and referred questions about the nonprofit to its administrative staff, which is in charge of day-to-day operations. Vision to Learn quickly challenged the accuracy of the district findings, saying it has served more students than recorded in district tallies and that the school system caused early delays. The school board received documents about that contract as Beutner, a former Los Angeles Times publisher, appeared to emerge as one of four finalists for the job of superintendent. He is scheduled to be interviewed a second time on Tuesday, sources said. Interim Supt. Vivian Ekchian, who has been managing the district since King left on medical leave last fall, also made it to the second round, according to insiders. The other two apparent finalists are more difficult to confirm, but several sources have named Indianapolis Supt. Lewis Ferebee and former Baltimore Supt. Andres Alonso, who teaches at the Harvard Graduate School of Education. The nations second-largest school district faces long-term budget problems because of rising pension costs, vastly underfunded retiree health benefits and declining enrollment. Despite incremental progress, most district students perform below the California average on state test scores, a challenge L.A. Unified has in common with other large urban school systems. Politically, L.A. Unified is governed by an elected board split by ideological differences and sometimes pulled in conflicting directions by influential outside groups. The most prominent combatants are the teachers union and charter-school supporters, who typically back opposing slates for the school board. Charter schools, which are independently operated, are a major factor in the steep enrollment drop at many district-operated schools. Most charters are non-union. In recent months, the task force Beutner has helped lead has delivered numerous proposals about how to improve the district. It has looked at student attendance, real estate holdings and oversight of district operations. Its far from clear whether the information regarding Vision to Learn has eroded Beutners support on the board. Advertisement A key document among those delivered to board members was a letter from the district to Vision to Learn dated April 11, stating that the nonprofit had provided exams and glasses for only about 5% of this school years target of 30,000 students. Unless a plan is put in place to correct the problem by early May, LAUSD may terminate the agreement for default, wrote Bruce Trenbeth, contract administration manager for L.A. Unified. Vision to Learns executive director, Ann Hollister, said L.A. Unifieds numbers are out of date. The district, she said, seems to be counting only the students for whom the nonprofit has so far been paid. The actual number of students screened, she said, is about 55% of the target, while about 18% received eye exams and 15% received glasses. We have an electronic medical record for every child we examined and screened, Hollister said. Advertisement But even the nonprofits figures put Vision to Learn well behind its projected schedule, with less than two months left in the school year. The districts letter to Vision to Learn said numerous schools (with returned consent forms) dating as far back as Fall 2017 [requesting] services have not been contacted, had their calls returned, or been scheduled for a visit, and that because of VTLs delays in scheduling, students who have failed the vision screening and will be matriculating to another school ... may not receive exams or glasses. District staff, to document the issues, assembled about 100 pages of email threads from schools having problems with the screening effort. Hollister responded that the school district mainly is responsible for delays and other issues, and submitted a timeline and other records in support of her case. Advertisement The frustration reflected in the emails seem to be efforts by school staff to understand a program the district has not properly informed them about, Hollister wrote L.A. Unified officials in a letter dated April 16. Beutner chairs the board of Vision to Learn, which provides eyeglasses to needy students in 10 states. L.A. Unified greatly expanded its connection with the nonprofit in May 2017, when the school board authorized the two-year contract. Under the contract, the Los Angeles Clippers Foundation has agreed to provide half the funding for the effort. The other half $3 million is to be taxpayer-funded, from the district. Vision to Learn gets paid for services at a school after students there receive glasses. Vision to Learn has been an integral part of credentials that backers assert make Beutner well equipped to lead L.A. Unified. Advertisement An investment banker, Beutner, 58, joined the public sector in 2010 as first deputy mayor under Antonio Villaraigosa, overseeing business and job development. He was part of the Villaraigosa administration for about a year, also filling in as interim director of the Department of Water and Power. Beutner vied to become mayor in 2012 when Villaraigosa termed out, but his campaign never caught fire and he dropped out early. In 2014 Beutner co-chaired the 2020 Commission, which made recommendations for the future of Los Angeles. He then became publisher and chief executive of The Times, but was fired after a year over disagreements about the newspapers direction. Beutners backers, including some of the citys power brokers, expect the core of his school board support to come from a four-member majority elected with major financial support from pro-charter donors. Advertisement Charter supporters consider him an ally, though as a member of the task force he has given no such indication. A vote from outside the majority bloc would strengthen Beutners hold on the job and would most likely come from Richard Vladovic, with whom he has had a long-standing cordial relationship. The retired school district administrator has avoided total allegiance to any faction. A fifth vote would lessen the importance of Ref Rodriguez, who is part of the majority bloc but is under criminal indictment on charges of political money laundering. Rodriguez also faces separate conflict-of-interest allegations from the charter-school organization he co-founded and ran before being elected to the school board. Although Rodriguez has denied any wrongdoing, his future on the board could prove tenuous. Advertisement Probable votes against Beutner would be George McKenna and Scott Schmerelson, retired school administrators and career educators thought to be most skeptical of a non-educator as schools chief. howard.blume@latimes.com Twitter: @howardblume Four fatal traffic collisions in a week in South Los Angeles, three of which were hit-and-run crashes, have drawn frustration and criticism from residents and advocates who say city officials should do more to protect pedestrians and cyclists. Since April 10, residents of four neighborhoods have witnessed brutal reminders of how dangerous L.A.s streets can be. The traffic crashes, which occurred within three miles of one another near the 110 Freeway, killed two cyclists, a pedestrian and a man crossing the street in his wheelchair. The wave of fatal crashes sparked an angry response from the Los Angeles County Bicycle Coalition, which said this week that city officials initial determination to reduce traffic deaths through the Vision Zero initiative had dwindled into inaction. Our streets are not safe or healthy, and they will not be until people walking and biking are given the same rights as people in vehicles, the coalition said. Hit and runs are a public health crisis, and should treated as such, instead of legitimized as acceptable tragedies. Advertisement Mayor Eric Garcetti, who created L.A.s Vision Zero program in 2015, said Tuesday that he is committed to the program, and will recommend $91 million in funding for Vision Zero in next years budget, more than triple the amount allotted this fiscal year. Beverly Owens, left, reacts at press conference, where officials announced a reward of $50,000 for information leading to the arrest of the person who struck and killed Frederick Frazier. (Luis Sinco / Los Angeles Times ) Were saying here right now to every activist, we are with you on this, Garcetti said. He said the city has made more than 1,000 changes to streets some of which have seen a high number of fatal crashes and severe injuries that include higher-visibility crosswalks and signs that tell drivers their speed. He also urged drivers to put away their cell phones. Garcettis Vision Zero initiative called for a 20% reduction in traffic deaths on city streets by 2017. Last year, the number of people killed in L.A. traffic crashes fell 3% far short of the 20% goal. The number of pedestrians killed has spiked 82% since 2015. The victims of the fatal crashes in the last week include 22-year-old cyclist Frederick Frazier, who was struck on the afternoon of April 10 in Manchester Square by a driver in a white Porsche Cayenne SUV. A bicyclist in his 60s was killed after being hit by two cars while traveling in a marked crosswalk at Century and Avalon boulevards, police said. (Los Angeles Times ) The force of the impact snapped Fraziers bicycle in half. Advertisement The driver fled into a nearby neighborhood. Police have made no arrests and have not identified the vehicle, which officials said will have damage to the undercarriage and bumper. #LAPD Det's are seeking the publics help in identifying the person responsible for todays fatal hit & run involving a bicyclist in the 1300 block of W. Manchester. Susp driving a white Porsche Cayenne SUV. Any info, call @LAPDSouthTraff Det's at 323-421-2500. :@CaptainJonTom pic.twitter.com/2lXwaThwy1 LAPD HQ (@LAPDHQ) April 10, 2018 On Friday evening, a driver in a dark-colored SUV fled after fatally striking Alfredo Ortiz, 52, who was walking through a crosswalk at West Imperial Highway and South Figueroa Street. On Sunday morning, 57-year-old Gregory Moore was crossing the intersection of Century Boulevard and Main Street in his wheelchair when he was struck and killed by a possibly drunk driver, police said. Advertisement Please be careful out there. Dont drink and drive. We had a fatal tc involving a possible dui driver hitting a man in a wheel chair at Century and Main in Southeast division early this morning. Call a friend, taxi or ride share service to save lives pic.twitter.com/glhDMy3mIj Jonathan Tom (@CaptainJonTom) April 15, 2018 Just after midnight Monday, two drivers struck and killed a bicyclist in his 60s as he rode through a crosswalk at Century and Avalon boulevards. Both fled the scene. The mans name has not been released by county coroners officials. Detectives are also investigating a fourth hit-and-run that left a man severely injured. Last Wednesday, after a group of cyclists rode through Manchester and Normandie avenues to hold a vigil for Frazier, a driver in a gold Toyota Avalon ran a red light, barreled through the intersection and struck a man crossing the street, sending him flying into the air. He is still hospitalized. Advertisement An anonymous tip to the Compton Police Department led police to the Toyota, which had been left on a residential street in the city, Los Angeles Police Department Detective Ryan Moreno said. The suspected driver is not the cars owner, he said. A review of video footage of the collision will lead to a closure of this case and an arrest, Moreno said. He described the driver, who is being sought by police, as a young African American woman with a nose ring and a tattoo on the left side of her abdomen. At a news conference Tuesday in Manchester Square, LAPD officials announced a $50,000 reward in the Frazier case for information that leads to the Porsche drivers arrest and conviction. Advertisement As police officers arrived with a photo of Frazier, his mother, Beverly Owens, began to cry. She wrapped a blue blanket around herself and wailed, My baby, my baby. Why didnt they stop? Why didnt they stop? Frazier, her only son, had Type 1 diabetes and rode his bicycle to manage his weight, Owens said. Most streets in Manchester Square dont have bicycle lanes, she said, and he often pedaled close to the curb, where he was struck last week. During the news conference, one Manchester Square resident questioned whether his death would lead to any bicycle lanes in the area, as it had in other areas of the county. The LAPD now sends a supervisor to the scene of every crash that kills a bicyclist to evaluate what changes such as bike lanes, or an additional traffic signal could help prevent future deaths, said LAPD commanding officer Jonathan Tom. He said the LAPD would recommend installing bicycle lanes on Manchester and other arterials. Advertisement Friends and family asked for help paying for Fraziers funeral expenses. His death will leave a hole in the family, said cousin William Baptiste, because he brought love and positivity to every gathering. The pain of losing a loved one, he said, is compounded by the fact that traffic deaths just dont stop. When the smoke clears, when the cameras leave, when everybody leaves, Im all alone at home with my baby gone, Owens said. All I had of value to this dirty, low-down, disgusting Earth you took him away. javier.panzar@latimes.com Advertisement Twitter: @jpanzar laura.nelson@latimes.com Twitter: @laura_nelson dakota.smith@latimes.com Advertisement Twitter: @dakotacdsmith UPDATES: 6:50 p.m.: This article was updated with additional reaction and background. Advertisement This article was originally published at 11:30 a.m. Detectives are investigating whether three decomposing bodies found in an SUV parked on a secluded street in Burbank are those of three men missing from the Bakersfield area, authorities said. The grim discovery came just after 7 a.m. Tuesday by a parking officer responding to a neighbors complaint about a Jeep Patriot that hadnt been moved for a while in the 1300 block of South Varney Street. The officer noticed an odor coming from the vehicle, then saw someone inside who appeared to be dead. Paramedics arrived and determined three bodies were in the car. Although investigators did not see any obvious signs of trauma, authorities said the deaths are being investigated as homicides. Its highly suspicious based on the location of the vehicle, and that nobody else was around, said Burbank police Sgt. Derek Green. Advertisement The statement makes reference to this missing persons poster of two men from Bakersfield who reportedly disappeared on their way to Riverside. pic.twitter.com/fSScLexzEv Andy Nguyen (@Andy_Truc) April 17, 2018 Its unclear when the victims died, but Green said investigators believe the car had been there for at least a day. Lisa Alvarez, who works around the corner from where the bodies were found, said she noticed the Jeep parked in a no-parking zone on an industrial and generally quiet street about noon Monday. It caught my attention because it wasnt supposed to be parked there, but it didnt look suspicious. I thought, Oh that car is going to get a ticket, Alvarez said. Its terrible. I am so sorry. Investigators spent Tuesday interviewing people and canvassing the area for surveillance cameras that could provide clues as to when the car arrived, and who was driving it. The car which had Tennessee license plates matched the description of the vehicle in a missing persons flier circulating on social media. The flier says three men heading to Riverside in a Jeep Patriot with Tennessee plates went missing. One post said the men disappeared April 13. My understanding is that the vehicle in the picture was very likely the vehicle we had here in Burbank, Green said. He would not disclose the registered owner or address. Bakersfield police did not immediately return a request for comment. Advertisement Los Angeles County coroners officials are working to identify the bodies and determine the causes of death. The bodies are decomposed, they will not be identified Tuesday, Lt. Larry Dietz said. Its unclear how the bodies were positioned in the vehicle, though Green said no one was in the drivers seat. Because the area is secluded and close to the freeway, Green said the bodies may have been moved to Burbank. If its, in fact, a body dump, were going to have a jurisdictional issue to determine who will investigate theres a lot of work that needs to be done, he said. Advertisement A statement from @BurbankPD PIO Sgt. Derek Green on the homicide investigation in Burbank pic.twitter.com/zNIsxk0Fgb Andy Nguyen (@Andy_Truc) April 17, 2018 andy.nguyen@latimes.com Twitter: @Andy_Truc javier.panzar@latimes.com Advertisement Twitter: @jpanzar alene.tchekmedyian@latimes.com Twitter: @AleneTchek Advertisement UPDATES: 10:30 p.m.: This article was updated with additional details about the investigation. 1:55 p.m.: This article was updated with additional comments from Sgt. Derek Green of the Burbank Police Department. 1:05 p.m.: This article was updated with additional comments from Sgt. Derek Green of the Burbank Police Department. Advertisement 12:45 p.m.: This article was updated with comments from Lisa Alvarez, who works near the scene of the discovery. This article was originally published at 12:30 p.m. For 12 agonizing days, search crews have combed the murky waters off Northern California in search of three missing children who were believed to be in an SUV that was driven off a cliff by one of their mothers. None of the searchers was sure they would ever find them. Investigators had pulled five bodies from the wreckage, but could not locate three of the adopted siblings. Were they in the car when 38-year-old Jennifer Hart steered their GMC Yukon toward the ocean, or were the three missing children somewhere else and alive, authorities wondered. Faced with that latter possibility, the FBI issued missing persons posters for the unaccounted Hart siblings Tuesday. There was one for 16-year-old Hannah Jean Hart. Her lips pursed together into a tight smile in both pictures, hiding her teeth. There was another for 15-year-old Devonte Jordan Hart, his signature fedora perched atop his head and a megawatt smile lighting up his face. A different photo, one of tears streaking his face as he hugged a police officer during a Black Lives Matter protest, went viral in 2014. And there was a cropped picture of 12-year-old Ciera Maija Hart, her hair plaited in individual braids with barrettes at the ends. Her name on the poster is misspelled Sierra, as it was first reported. Advertisement The missing children could currently be traveling together, the FBI statement read. Meanwhile, the search continued above and below the crash site with a team of divers and pilots braving, at times, strong currents and frigid temperatures. Then on April 7, they made a sad discovery. What appeared to be an African American female body was pulled from the water. On Tuesday, authorities identified the body as belonging to Ciera Hart. The revelation confirmed what many feared at least one of the missing children was involved in the fatal crash. Very sad news, a woman posted on the Mendocino Sheriff Departments Facebook page. Rest In Peace, Ciera. The discovery of Cieras body still leaves many unanswered questions about the fatal March 26 crash. Jennifer Hart was legally drunk when she drove a sport utility vehicle 100 feet into the Pacific Ocean off a remote stretch of Highway 1 in Mendocino County, killing her, her wife and three of their six children. The fatal plunge appears to have been intentional. There are no skid marks and the vehicle was at a full stop before accelerating off the cliff, authorities said. Based on preliminary reports, it appears the SUV had stopped about 70 feet from the cliffs edge, then sped off it, authorities said. The speedometer was pinned at 90 mph, California Highway Patrol Capt. Bruce Carpenter said. Advertisement Carpenter said Friday that no one in the vehicle was wearing a seat belt. This case is baffling, he said. Toxicology tests also showed that Jennifer Harts wife, Sarah Hart, had a significant amount of an ingredient primarily used in Benadryl in her system, Carpenter said. Two of the children also were determined to have Benadryl-type substances in their system, he said. The two women were found dead inside the car March 26, and three children were found outside the vehicle, officials said. Advertisement In the days leading up to the crash, neighbors in Woodland, Wash., reported the parents to social workers with allegations of possible child neglect. Authorities said they will continue their search for Devonte and Hannah. When asked if the discovery of Cieras body places all the children in the SUV, FBI spokeswoman Cameron Rogers Polan said not necessarily. For more California breaking news, follow @AngelJennings. She can also be reached at angel.jennings@latimes.com. As detectives investigated the deadly blaze that ripped through a Studio City recording studio Saturday morning, they made a chilling discovery. Security video from the studio and other nearby businesses showed a man purchasing gasoline at a Chevron station across the street, police said. The man then walked to the studio. The one-story building later went up in flames, killing two people and badly burning two others, including a 15-year-old girl. Twelve hours after the fire broke out, police detained the man from the video, alleging he purposefully set the blaze. Efrem Demery, 28, was arrested and booked on suspicion of murder with special circumstances, Los Angeles police said. He was scheduled to be arraigned Tuesday. Advertisement (Jon Schleuss / Los Angeles Times ) Investigators believe Demery used the gasoline to set the fire after getting into an argument with two of the victims the night before, Capt. William Hayes, head of the Los Angeles Police Departments elite Robbery-Homicide Division, said at a news conference Monday. Detectives allege Demery poured the gasoline in a hallway near a room occupied by the two victims who died identified by police as Devaughn Carter, 28, and Michael Pollard, 30, Hayes said. Detectives believe he then lit the fire and ran out a back door, the captain added. LAPD Deputy Chief Justin Eisenberg described the killings as a senseless and horrific crime. It appeared Carter and Pollard were the intended targets, Hayes said. Arson is a brutal crime and a terrible way to die, he added. The fire ripped through the Cahuenga Boulevard studio, Top Notch Recordings, about 7 a.m. Saturday. The building has about a dozen recording studios, which can be rented around the clock, police said. About 15 people were inside at the time. Witnesses described a chaotic scene as they fled from the dark, soundproof studios. L.A. Pryce, a songwriter and artist, said he had fallen asleep after working all night in one of the studios. Then a friend woke him up. Advertisement My boy was like, Yo, wake up, wake up. Smell that? So I opened the door. Its just blacked-out smoke. And then I see flames, Pryce said. I broke for the door. When firefighters found signs that an accelerant was used, Eisenberg said, the arson-turned-homicide investigation began. After that investigation is complete, authorities said, fire officials will examine whether the building was up to code and whether any materials inside including blankets used to soundproof the rooms contributed to the spread of the flames. The primary focus is the homicide investigation, Hayes said. Advertisement Carter and Pollard were both L.A. residents. Hayes said it appeared they knew Demery, though police are still piecing together a motive. After police identified Demery as their suspect and alerted other law enforcement agencies, a California Highway Patrol officer detained him after a motor vehicle violation in Willowbrook, Eisenberg said. It was not clear that Demery had any other connection to the studio, Hayes said. Court records show he had prior convictions for buying or receiving stolen property, and maliciously disturbing others with loud noise. Eisenberg said he had a prior record for burglary and selling counterfeit goods. Two people remained hospitalized in critical condition Monday after being burned in the fire, authorities said: a man in his 20s and the teenage girl. Police did not release their names. Advertisement Times staff photographer Irfan Khan contributed to this report. kate.mather@latimes.com @katemather sonali.kohli@latimes.com Advertisement @Sonali_Kohli Grisly autopsy photos flashed on the screen in the Los Angeles courtroom. One focused on the spot where a bullet tore through the back of Susan Bermans scalp, another showed red splotches on her backside places where blood settled after she was shot inside her Benedict Canyon home in 2000. At the defense table, Robert Durst, who is accused of killing his close friend, stared at the photographs without expression. The New York real estate tycoon appeared in court Monday for a preliminary hearing a crucial step in the murder case prosecutors have built against him. At the end of the hearing, a judge will decide if theres enough evidence for the eccentric multimillionaire to stand trial in the slaying of Berman, a crime writer and the daughter of a Las Vegas mobster. Prosecutors argue that Durst, who has pleaded not guilty, killed to cover his tracks he was afraid Berman would tell investigators what she knew about the 1982 disappearance of Dursts wife, Kathleen, whose body has never been found. Advertisement Los Angeles prosecutors and Kathleens family believe Durst killed his wife but managed to evade justice. Dursts defense team says New York police conducted a thorough missing person investigation years ago and argue their client wasnt charged because hes innocent. In court Monday, former L.A. County Medical Examiner-Coroner Mark Fajardo testified that although he didnt conduct Bermans autopsy, hed reviewed the coroners case file, including photographs of her remains. The star-shaped entrance wound on the back of her head, Fajardo said, was a telltale sign that she was shot at very close range. The muzzle, Fajardo said, was either directly on the skin or probably within an inch. Under cross-examination, he acknowledged the autopsy found the range of fire to be indeterminate but said he disagreed with that conclusion. At times during Fajardos testimony, Durst, 75, closed his eyes and appeared to nod off. Another witness, Karen Minutello, testified that in 1982 she managed the New York complex where Robert and Kathleen Durst lived in a 15th-floor apartment. She occasionally saw the couple in the hallway and sometimes made small talk with Kathleen, Minutello said, adding that one specific conversation a phone call from Kathleen not long before she disappeared has stayed with her through the years. Kathleen called to ask if there were any vacant apartments in the building, the witness said, adding that despite an initial hesitance to open up, Kathleen told her that she no longer wanted to live with her husband. A prosecutor asked Minutello if Kathleen told her why she needed to get away from her husband. She was afraid of him, the witness responded. Advertisement Minutello also testified that in 1982 she went to the buildings basement and found a porter pulling clothing, books, makeup and other personal items from a clogged trash compactor. One of the books, the witness said, had Kathleen Dursts name on it. The incident struck her as significant, she said, because it came days after Kathleen went missing. Who does that? Minutello said. Whose loved one is missing and you throw out their stuff? The witness testified that she recalled getting a letter from Durst on Feb. 4, 1982 the day before he reported Kathleen missing to police asking if he could sublease the apartment. Minutello also told the court that she didnt notify police at the time because the man she would eventually marry a former NYPD officer told her the cops would come to her if they needed her. Advertisement Key elements of the prosecutions case had already emerged during pretrial hearings. A bombshell came last year when Dursts longtime friend Nick Chavin testified that Durst had once confessed to killing Berman, their mutual friend. I had to. It was her or me, Durst said, according to Chavins testimony. I had no choice. The multimillionaire was arrested at a New Orleans hotel in connection with Bermans slaying on March 14, 2015 a day before the finale of The Jinx, a six-part HBO documentary about Durst. In the final episode, Durst is captured on a hot microphone muttering, What the hell did I do? Killed them all, of course. Some have interpreted the mumbled comment to be a confession to three killings those of Berman and his wife, as well as the fatal shooting of Morris Black, a neighbor in Texas. Advertisement Durst was charged in the Texas case, but was acquitted in 2003 after arguing that the gun fired while he was defending himself during a struggle. He also admitted to dismembering the body and dumping the parts in Galveston Bay. Dursts defense team contend there is no evidence that Kathleen Durst was murdered. Any suggestion to the contrary by the people, the lawyers argued in a court filing, is simply not supported by the record or evidence. His attorneys also argue that the sensation surrounding the HBO documentary rather than facts led to his arrest. Advertisement Dursts preliminary hearing will resume Tuesday. marisa.gerber@latimes.com For more news from the Los Angeles County courts, follow me on Twitter: @marisagerber Academic comments should be respected: group China's doctors association on Monday said it will offer legal assistance to a Guangzhou-based doctor, who faces prosecution after calling a popular Chinese medicinal liquor "poison," which has sparked controversy in China over the alleged abuses of local officials. "It does no good for society if an article aimed at spreading knowledge is not tolerated," Deng Liqiang, director of the legal department of the Chinese Medical Doctor Association (CMDA), told the Global Times. The doctor, Tan Qindong, 39, wrote an article in December 2017, saying "Hongmao medicinal liquor is poison." Tan has been detained since January 2018 by the public security bureau in Liangcheng county in North China's Inner Mongolia Autonomous Region, where the medicinal liquor company is based, Beijing Youth Daily reported on Sunday. A team from CMDA will meet with Tan's wife Liu Xuan on Tuesday and will sign an agreement to provide further legal assistance, Deng said. Authorities should treat diverse academic arguments and remarks with caution and avoid criminalizing civil disputes, the association said in a Monday statement. Deng's article said that Hongmao medicinal liquor exaggerates its efficiency in advertisements, and said he doubts whether the company can prove the liquor is capable of curing multiple diseases, such as arteriosclerosis and myocardial infarction as it claims, Beijing Youth Daily reported Monday. In 2003, China's food and drug regulator considered the alcohol an OTC drug. The China Food and Drug Administration (CFDA) ordered on Monday the company to explain its false advertising during the past five years and the safety and effectiveness of the medicine. The CFDA's system has recorded 137 cases of adverse reactions of the liquor from 2004 to 2017, including dizziness, itching, rashes, vomiting and abdominal pain, it said in a statement. The medicinal liquor ad was banned in February by the Shaanxi Food and Drug Administration during a campaign to stamp out fraud and false advertising. "It is not proper to say that it can cure diseases since it is categorized as a food or health care product, and not sold as medicine in our hospital," Cui Yongqiang, an associate professor at Guang'anmen Hospital, told the Global Times on Monday. The liquor company claims to have lost business from two companies over Tan's article, which led to losses of over 1.37 million yuan ($218,000), said the Beijing Youth Daily report, citing a testimony of the public security bureau in Liangcheng county where Tan was detained. "We are not clear about the process of the testimony and we do not recognize the figure. They cannot prove that the companies returned the liquor because they read Tan's article," Beijing Youth Daily reported, citing Hu Dingfeng, Tan's defense lawyer. "Due to Tan's article, Tan could be convicted if the liquor is not proven to be poisonous," Yan Yiming, a Shanghai-based lawyer told the Global Times on Monday. "However, cases also exist where corporations with a strong influence in local areas interfere in law enforcement, which should be strictly forbidden," Yan said. Brick-and-mortar businesses in Los Angeles would get a chance to oppose vendors planning to set up shop on adjacent sidewalks but would not be able to turn them down outright under a revised proposal for new regulations approved Tuesday at City Hall. As L.A. crafts rules to legalize and regulate the vendors who hawk ice cream, hot dogs and other food and goods on its sidewalks, business groups have pushed for property owners to be able to decide whether vending can happen outside their doors. Shopkeepers have argued that sidewalk vendors can undercut their business and that they have blocked and sullied nearby walkways. Street vendors and their advocates countered that it would be unfair to give shops that kind of veto power over other entrepreneurs. The ACLU of Southern California, the National Immigration Law Center and other groups said in a letter that the idea raised grave legal and constitutional concerns and could ramp up the risk of extortion. Advertisement The revised proposal, unveiled at a council committee meeting Monday, was an attempt at a compromise. Shops would not be able to simply prohibit vending on the adjacent sidewalks, but property owners would be alerted when sidewalk sellers seek permits to do business outside their doors. They would then have a chance to lodge an appeal. The exact details of the process still have to be worked out by city staffers, but Councilman Curren Price proposed something similar to the city system for permitting sidewalk dining. At a Monday committee meeting, lawmakers also loosened some of the proposed rules surrounding where sidewalk vendors can set up on each block, which vendors had criticized as too complicated and restrictive. After a debate punctuated by cheers and boos from the crowd, a divided City Council voted Tuesday to back the revised set of proposed rules and ask city lawyers to start drafting the new ordinance. The proposed law still has to come back to lawmakers for final approval. Councilman Bob Blumenfield unsuccessfully pushed to keep the idea of an opt out for neighboring property owners on the table, arguing that lawmakers should have an opportunity to decide between two versions of the proposed ordinance one with the veto and one without. He suggested asking city attorneys to draft both of them. Several other council members backed that idea, voicing concerns about whether businesses were aware of the new proposal and whether lawmakers had gotten enough time to review it. But the council ultimately voted 11 to 4 to advance just one version of the proposed law. Price urged the council to press forward with his preferred version of the plan, arguing that it would protect vendors from extortion. Blumenfield voted against it, along with Councilmen Mike Bonin, Mitchell Englander and Paul Koretz. Advertisement Price said he wanted to have a new ordinance in place by July. Legalizing vending has been a longtime dream of sidewalk sellers who have staged protests and packed hearings at City Hall. More than four years have passed since local lawmakers first proposed permitting and regulating the throngs of vendors who do business across the city. Last year, the city eliminated criminal charges for vending under the Municipal Code, but vendors can still get administrative fines. As the city has tarried in passing new rules to legalize sidewalk vending, many complain that the lack of legal approval has left them vulnerable to harassment and abuse. Business owners, in turn, lament that unregulated vending has run rampant in some areas. The Hollywood Chamber of Commerce said that the delay in passing new rules, along with dropping criminal penalties, had created a chaotic free-for-all on Hollywood Boulevard and left it dangerously congested. Advertisement Under the proposed rules, vendors would be prohibited within 500 feet of crowded venues such as Dodger Stadium, the Hollywood Bowl, Staples Center, the Coliseum, Universal Studios and the Hollywood Walk of Fame. Sidewalk sales could also be banned or restricted based on health and safety concerns in additional areas that will be picked out by council members in consultation with city attorneys and other staff. The draft rules would allow only two carts per block on each side of the street in commercial and industrial zones. In addition, mobile vendors who sell food could do business in residential areas as long as each sale does not last more than seven minutes. emily.alpert@latimes.com Advertisement Twitter: @AlpertReyes UPDATES: April 17, 5:45 p.m.: This article was updated with Tuesdays council vote. This article was originally published at 3:45 p.m. on April 16, 2018. Inspectors from an international agency sent to collect air, water and ground samples from the site of a suspected poison gas attack in Syria this month were blocked Monday by Russian and Syrian forces for security reasons, the watchdog groups director said. The delay in obtaining independent confirmation of suspected chemical weapons use came as the White House postponed plans to add sanctions on Russia for what the Trump administration said was its support of Syrian President Bashar Assads poison gas program. Nikki Haley, the U.S. ambassador to the United Nations, had said Sunday that new sanctions would be announced Monday, but the White House pulled back. We are considering additional sanctions on Russia, and a decision will be made in the near future, White House Press Secretary Sarah Huckabee Sanders told reporters. She did not say if Haley had misspoken or if President Trump had changed his mind to avoid worsening relations with Moscow. The Trump administration has taken an increasingly tough line on Russia even as the president has been reluctant to criticize President Vladimir Putin for his governments meddling in the 2016 U.S. election and other actions. Advertisement The confusion emerged as nine inspectors from the Organization for the Prohibition of Chemical Weapons waited in Damascus for permission to visit Duma, a suburb east of the Syrian capital that was attacked on April 7. U.S. officials say Assads forces killed more than 40 people, including children, with chlorine gas and possibly sarin, a banned nerve agent. But U.S. intelligence has been unable to collect ironclad evidence of which chemical agents were used. U.S. and British officials have accused Russian units in Duma of trying to hide or tamper with evidence of the chemical attack, a claim Moscow denies. Stephane Dujarric, spokesman for United Nations Secretary-General Antonio Guterres, said in New York that the OPCW team had all necessary clearances to collect samples in Duma. But Ahmet Uzumcu, director general of the OPCW, which is based in The Hague, said in a report to member states that Syrian and Russian officials had contended there were still pending security issues to be worked out before any deployment could take place. Uzumcu expressed hope the inspectors could visit Duma as soon as possible. U.S., French and British forces fired more than 100 missiles at three targets in Syria early Saturday in retaliation for the Duma attack. The three facilities developed, produced or stored chlorine or sarin, Pentagon officials said, and all appeared heavily damaged. Syria has denied stockpiling or using chemical weapons, which are illegal under international law. Russia, which backs Assad, also has denied that a chemical attack occurred, and noted that it initially invited the weapons inspectors to Duma. Advertisement Russian Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov on Monday repeated his governments assertions that no chemical attack took place and said photographs and videos that showed people choking to death and other symptoms of chemical poisoning were staged. Speaking to the BBC, Lavrov angrily condemned Washingtons attempts to blame and punish Russia, saying relations between the two countries were worse than during the Cold War. The latest evidence came with a joint warning Monday from the Department of Homeland Security, the FBI and the British government. They said a new wave of Russian cyberespionage and aggression had targeted governments and private companies through digital attacks on cyberinfrastructure like routers and firewalls. A British government spokesman said the joint warning sent a clear message to Russia: We know what you are doing and you will not succeed. Advertisement tracy.wilkinson@latimes.com For more on international affairs, follow @TracyKWilkinson on Twitter States that have passed laws legalizing recreational marijuana in recent years appear to have found some new, unexpected supporters: Republican politicians. Since voters began to pass recreational marijuana measures in 2012, the pro-pot movement has seen swift support from many Democrats, with Republicans often pushing back against legalization. Those expressing concern or opposition have cited, among other things, the potential for pot to be a gateway drug, and they have regularly sided with law enforcement, which has established a unified front against recreational marijuana. But a recent mix of public opinion, an influx in tax revenue and questions surrounding states rights has in part led to a shift in rhetoric and legislative proposals. RELATED: See more cannabis coverage Advertisement President Trump last week spurned a threat by his Justice Department to crack down on recreational marijuana in states where it is legal, easing concerns about the possibility of raids and prosecution. Trumps directive Friday came in response to concerns from Sen. Cory Gardner (R-Colo.). Since January, Gardner has criticized an announcement by Atty. Gen. Jeff Sessions that he would rescind an Obama-era policy that directed federal prosecutors not to target marijuana businesses that operate legally under state law. Gardner had responded to the announcement by blocking Justice Department nominees. Gardner had opposed recreational marijuana before Colorado passed its legalization measure in 2012, but has become one of the laws staunchest defenders. For him, the issue centers on states rights. Shortly after Sessions announcement, Gardner tweeted that it trampled on the will of the voters in CO and other states. To date, nine states Colorado, California and Nevada among them have legalized marijuana for recreational use, allowing people 21 and older to purchase and possess up to an ounce of marijuana. Many states that have legalized recreational use have seen a boom in tax revenue. In 2016, Colorado generated about $250 million in tax revenue from recreational pot. Washington state raked in even more, about $256 million. Most of the money goes toward public school systems, according to state agencies that are tasked with overseeing legal marijuana. The cost of legal marijuana varies based on taxes imposed in states and cities. In Denver, for example, marijuana costs an estimated $163 an ounce, according to MarijuanaRates.com, which tracks cannabis pricing. In Los Angeles, an ounce costs an average of about $250. Neal Levine, chairman of the New Federalism Fund, a nonpartisan group that aims to maintain state and local authority over cannabis laws and has worked on policy with Republicans, said that over the years his organization has seen support grow in the GOP. Siding with state governments over federal regulation is an important principle of federalism and consistent with conservative values, Levine said. The president himself has been a consistent proponent of states rights and letting the federal government get out of the states way on this issue. We expect our Republican champions on Capitol Hill will continue to lead on this issue and for those numbers to grow. Advertisement He cited the work of, among others, Rep. Dana Rohrabacher (R-Costa Mesa), who is the lead sponsor of the Respect State Marijuana Laws Act. The measure, which has more than a dozen Republican cosponsors, aims to prevent the federal government from criminally prosecuting individuals and businesses that are engaging in state-sanctioned activities specific to the possession, use, production and distribution of pot. Other Republicans who have worked on marijuana legislation include Rep. Tom Garrett of Virginia, who last year introduced the Ending Federal Marijuana Prohibition Act of 2017. If passed, the bill would take marijuana off the federal controlled substances list joining other substances such as alcohol and tobacco. In addition, several other Republicans have crafted legislation to protect medical marijuana laws, which have been passed in more than two dozen states. Even so, these measures have stalled in the Republican-controlled Congress. Lawmakers have not made the issue a focal point, instead concentrating on such issues as tax reform. Advertisement Levine said its only a matter of time before more Republican members of Congress change their tune and make the issue a legislative priority. RELATED: Trump administration abandons crackdown on legal marijuana Last week, former GOP House Speaker John A. Boehner announced that he was joining the advisory board of Acreage Holdings, a company with cannabis operations in several states, and that his position on legal marijuana had changed based on public opinion. For years, Boehner had opposed legal marijuana, in part because he believed it was a gateway drug. As public opinion shifts, members opinions on this are going to shift Im a prime example, Boehner told Bloomberg. Over these last 10 years, my attitude has changed pretty dramatically on this. Advertisement In October, a Gallup poll found 64% of respondents supported the legalization of recreational use of marijuana in the United States. For the first time, the poll found, a majority of Republicans surveyed 51% favored legalization. That number was up from 42% a year before. Meanwhile, 67% of independents supported legalization in the October poll, compared with 72% of Democrats. Other surveys have shown similar results. Mason Tvert, vice president of communications for VS Strategies, a public affairs firm based in Denver that specializes in cannabis policy, said he expects the numbers will continue to trend upward. And thats going to force politicians especially Republicans who have been somewhat reluctant to continue to support the end of marijuana prohibition, Tvert said. In recent years, some Republican governors have implemented legalization efforts at the behest of voters. Advertisement Two years ago, Nevadans overwhelmingly passed a measure allowing the sale and possession of up to an ounce of marijuana for anyone older than 21. Republican Gov. Brian Sandoval opposed the ballot measure but softened his language and worked to implement the law after voters passed the measure by a nearly 10-percentage-point margin. And in January, Vermont Republican Gov. Phil Scott signed a bill that legalized recreational marijuana. In Vermont, legalization has been debated for years, with most polls showing widespread support for it. Among voters there, 57% supported allowing adults to possess and grow limited amounts of marijuana, according to a survey conducted last year by Public Policy Polling. Thirty-nine percent opposed. I personally believe that what adults do behind closed doors and on private property is their choice, Scott said when he signed the legislation. So long as it does not negatively impact the health and safety of others. kurtis.lee@latimes.com Advertisement Twitter: @kurtisalee Inmates armed with makeshift knives led the deadliest prison riot in the United States in a quarter-century, killing seven inmates and injuring 17 others at a South Carolina maximum-security prison with a long record of violence. Fighting broke out late Sunday in a dormitory at Lee Correctional Institution in Bishopville, about 40 miles east of Columbia, the state capital, in what officials said was probably a dispute over money, territory and contraband. Inmates soon became embroiled in altercations in two other dorms, and it took authorities seven hours to regain control of the prison. Most of the slain inmates were stabbed or slashed with homemade knives, Lee County Coroner Larry Logan said Monday. They used whatever they had, the same thing that you find at any jail shanks and whatever they can, Logan said. They can take anything and make a weapon out of it and do very, very bad harm to people. Advertisement No correctional staff members or law enforcement officers were harmed. Prisoners killed in the South Carolina riot. Top row, from left: Corey Scott, Eddie Casey Gaskins, Raymond Angelo Scott and Damonte Rivera. Bottom row, from left: Michael Milledge, Cornelius McClary and Joshua Jenkins. (Associated Press ) Opened in 1993, Lee Correctional houses more than 1,500 inmates many convicted of violent crimes and is one of the largest of nine maximum-security prisons in the state. In the last decade it has become notorious for deadly fights, riots and hostage situations. Its a tinder box, said J. Edward Bell, an attorney in Georgetown, S.C., who represents about 300 clients who claim to have been injured or threatened in South Carolina prisons. We have a hugely overpopulated prison and an understaffed prison system. Gov. Henry McMaster said the incident was tragic but unsurprising. We know that prisons are places where people who have misbehaved on the outside go for rehabilitation and also to take them from the general population, he said. Its not a surprise when we have violent events take place inside the prisons, in any prison in the country. Inmates coordinated the fights by using contraband cellphones, said state Department of Corrections Director Bryan Stirling, who urged the federal government to change the law so that officials can block cellphone signals. These folks are fighting over real money and real territory while theyre incarcerated, and thats why weve been asking the [Federal Communications Commission] to allow us to block the signal, he said. Until thats done, the folks that are incarcerated are going to continue their criminal ways from behind bars. Advertisement Critics, however, say the proliferation of contraband cellphones is just a symptom of broader problems of understaffing and an uptick in violent gang activity in jails across South Carolina. The ironic thing is everybody knows most of the cellphones are being brought in by correctional officers, said John Blume, a law professor at Cornell University and former executive director of the South Carolina Death Penalty Resource Center. Theyre selling them to make money because they are paid so little. The riot at Lee Correctional was the most deadly since nine prisoners and a corrections officer died in 1993 when hundreds of prisoners took over the Southern Ohio Correctional Facility south of Columbus, said Steve J. Martin, a corrections consultant and attorney who works with the federal government to monitor prisons. The Ohio standoff 25 years ago lasted 11 days as prisoners took guards hostage. Advertisement Clearly, its a significant disturbance, Martin said of the South Carolina riot. If no hostages are being taken, I would question why it took that long to intervene. Stirling pushed back against criticism that officers were slow to help the injured. Only two guards were posted to each dorm unit, which contain about 250 inmates, he said. When fights broke out, the guards followed their training: back out and call for support. Were not just going to send one or two officers in there, he said. Were going to gather a force that is safe for all our officers and were going to go in and were going to take that dorm back with force. Lee Correctional Institution early Monday in Bishopville, S.C. (Sean Rayford / Associated Press ) Advertisement After summoning a tactical response team from around the state, officers entered the first dorm at 11:30 p.m., more than three hours after the violence broke out. An hour later they regained control of the second dorm, and by 2 a.m. they entered the last dorm. By 2:55 a.m., they had gained control of the entire prison. According to inmates at Lee Correctional, Bell said, the violence was sparked by members of the Bloods, the street gang founded in the 1970s in Los Angeles. In recent years, Bell said his law firm had noticed a dramatic increase in the number of inmates complaining they had been assaulted, threatened or ordered to pay protection money to stay safe in prisons. Whats happened is that the prison gangs, they actually run our prisons, he said. Theyre not run by our guards. I predicted about a year ago were going to have huge riots and lots of deaths if the governor and if the director of prisons doesnt do anything. Advertisement After inmates took over sections of the prison twice in 2012, overpowering outnumbered correctional officers and using cellphones to coordinate their attacks, then-South Carolina Gov. Nikki Haley called Lee Correctional one of our most dangerous prisons, housing the worst of the worst of our convicts. Haley invited Warden Mike McCall, who then ran Lee Correctional, to her 2013 State of the State address as she urged legislators to increase funding to help correctional officers do their jobs. Lee Correctional has no towers, no wands and few cameras, Haley said. Warden McCall will tell you that if we give money to his facility its not going to the prisoners, its going to the guards. And that for them, its a matter of life or death. Stirling defended the staffing numbers at Lee Correctional, noting that 44 officers were on duty at the time the fights broke out. Though the department lost about 150 officers a year from 2011 to 2016, Stirling said, it was up 100 officers last year and pay for top-level officers had gone up by nearly 25%. Advertisement Over the last year, at least three inmates at Lee Correctional have been killed in fights with other prisoners. Last month, inmates overpowered an officer and took control of one side of a dorm, holding the officer hostage for more than an hour, according to the state Department of Corrections. Across South Carolina, there were 250 instances of assault in state prisons in the last two years that required taking inmates to hospitals, more than double the previous two years, according to public records from the Department of Corrections obtained by Steve Bailey, a contributing columnist for the Post and Courier in Charleston. The question, of course: Does anyone care? Bailey wrote in a column last month, noting that many of the inmates are poor, uneducated males and 61% are black. We should care because more than 85% of current inmates will be back in our communities in less than five years. These people arent going away. Jarvie is a special correspondent Advertisement UPDATES: 6:45 p.m.: The story was updated throughout with new information. 9:39 a.m.: The story was updated with staff reporting. Advertisement 4:56 a.m.: The story was updated with additional details and reaction. The story was originally published at 4:10 a.m. President Trump was right to punish Syrian President Bashar Assad with air strikes on Friday. Some have said that the bombing campaign didnt go far enough, and Im sympathetic to that argument. Empty buildings in the middle of the night are useful targets if you want to demonstrate symbolic disapproval, but the strikes did not do lasting damage to the Assad regime. That was the goal to make a point: Dont do that again. I am also sympathetic to those who were concerned that the strikes could cause a precipitous escalation, drawing in Iran and, more importantly, Russia. By all accounts, Secretary of Defense James N. Mattis and his Pentagon comrades won the internal arguments in the administration for erring on the side of symbolism. Ideally we would have destroyed the aircraft and the personnel that carried out the suspected chemical warfare, but its hard for me to second-guess someone who has seen so much war and knows the region as well as anybody alive. Im willing to defer to the generals on this one. Advertisement I am less deferential when it comes to the arguments used to defend the strikes. Over and over again, we hear that this was a humanitarian effort. We havent told Assad that if he kills his own people by dropping barrel bombs on hospitals or by firing squads we will punish the regime. Trump has expressed justifiable horror in response to the use of chemical weapons. In announcing the bombings, he laid out the rationale for the attacks: To deter the use and proliferation of chemical weapons, and to avert a worsening of the regions current humanitarian catastrophe. The British government was more explicit, stating that the intervention was directed exclusively to averting a humanitarian catastrophe. But what catastrophe did they avert? The chemical attack, as far as we know, had already happened. Chemical weapons are a moral horror, and enforcing the near century-old ban on them can be justified on humanitarian grounds. But when you talk to experts about why we should enforce the ban, the argument quickly turns to realpolitik: We dont want chemical weapons used on our troops or civilians. This very easily could happen in the United States if were not smart, and if were not conscious of whats happening, U.S. Ambassador to the United Nations Nikki Haley said on Fox News Sunday. (Full disclosure: My wife works for Haley.) That is wholly legitimate. Its the same logic we use for preventing rogue regimes from developing nuclear weapons. We dont do much of anything to prevent North Korea or Iran from brutalizing their own people, but we dont want them to have the ability to threaten our people or our allies. But that argument has little to do with humanitarianism. We havent told Assad that if he kills his own people by dropping barrel bombs on hospitals, by firing squads, or by blocking humanitarian aid we will punish the regime. Weve said only that if he uses chemical weapons, he will pay a price. Advertisement Even here, our message is more muddled than it seems. If the National Security Council is to be believed, the Assad regime has used chemical weapons on its own people some 50 times since the Syrian civil war began in 2011. Weve punished the regime twice. Why those two times? Because there was video. After the 2017 chemical attack that elicited our first attack, Trump told the New York Times: I think its a disgrace. I think its an affront to humanity. Inconceivable that somebody could do that. He added: Those kids were so beautiful. To look at those scenes of those beautiful children being carried out. It was a disgrace. But so is all the ongoing slaughter in Syria, including the alleged 48 other times the regime used chemical weapons away from the cameras. Advertisement The U.S. was right to penalize Assad, but it is not obvious to me that we are sending the Syrian president and his Russian patrons a coherent message. They know they can get away with mass murder if they use conventional weapons, and they know they can get away with using chemical weapons as long as the images never appear on Fox & Friends. jgoldberg@latimescolumnists.com Advertisement Follow the Opinion section on Twitter @latimesopinion or Facebook Late last month, Gov. Jerry Brown introduced a deputy first dog named Cali Brown. A brief video clip posted on the Twitter feed of actual first dog Colusa Brown showed the 2-month old puppy running through the governors office; the tweet drew more than 750 likes. This raises a number of issues, not least why a dog, even a governors dog, should have a Twitter feed, but thats the world we live in now. More important, I find it disappointing that the governor should have chosen to name his new bordoodle Cali, the unpretty and decidedly dismissive nickname for the state. What is it about California that we are always trying to reduce it? Why do we fall back on the stereotype that we are not quite serious? Just consider some other nicknames for the whole state and its communities: Left Coast, Lotus Land, Berzerkeley, La La Land. Since 1968, we have suffered the official puffery of the Golden State Bear Flag State would be a much better official nickname and the more vernacular choices descend into self-ridicule. Im declaring a moratorium on Cali, and Id like to retire every other nickname too. Advertisement Im reminded of Frank Lloyd Wrights put-down of Southern California: Tip the world over on its side and everything loose will land in Los Angeles. Its not that Wright is incorrect, exactly, but that he gets the emphasis the wrong. The looseness he derides, the influx of the adventurous and unsatisfied, is what has always made California vibrant, complicated and rich. Im declaring a moratorium on Cali, and Id like to retire every other nickname too. Lets call ourselves California and be done with it. The word California first appeared in the 1510 Spanish romance The Adventures of Esplandian by Garci Rodriguez de Montalvo; it refers to a mythic island presided over by a black warrior queen called Califia, inhabited entirely by women ( in the manner of Amazons) and guarded by native griffins. Thirty years later, explorers applied the name to Baja California, which was mistakenly believed to be an island into the 17th century. Thats a telling origin story, not least because even after they knew better, the Spaniards kept the myth. Like a Woody Allen character, or the creators of Saturday Night Lives The Californians, they preferred to stick to their preconceptions rather than engaging the place on its own terms. Farther north, another mythmaker, Sir Francis Drake, more prosaically claimed Nova Albion Albion is Britains origin name for queen and country in 1579. Somehow, New England on the West Coast seems as fantastical as Queen Califias realm. (The best guess is that Drake planted his flag, so to speak, at Point Reyes, possibly having missed the Golden Gate in the fog.) California isnt improved when its defined by legend a Terrestrial Paradise, to borrow Rodriguez de Montalvos phrase or preconceived otherness. Were better understood as solid ground, attached to the rest of North America, where people live and work and struggle, where we are not exotic but real. In his 2004 documentary Los Angeles Plays Itself, the filmmaker Thom Andersen made a similar case in regard to the city and the way it is characterized, arguing against calling Los Angeles by the familiar L.A. (Only a city with an inferiority complex would allow it, his narrator intones.) I agree with Anderson. No Sacto for Sacramento, no Frisco for San Francisco, and no Cali for California. Such names shrink the lens, narrow the focus, make us less than we are. Advertisement Not long after I arrived in California, a friend and I were discussing the divided nature of the state. We werent thinking about secession, Jefferson or any other split-the-state fantasy (the latest, called CAL 3, may make the November ballot). What we agreed on is this: There is more that binds Californians to one another than divides us, that north and south, inland and coast, the state is unified, in some paradoxical manner, by its lack of unity, its sprawling de-centeredness. At some point, we turned to the terms NorCal and SoCal, two more unlovely abbreviations that signify a kind of tribalism. Why not adjust the names to illustrate an affinity other than map placement? What about NoCal and LoCal instead? It was an obvious joke, and more than a little silly, although it still makes me laugh. But at its center is some sort of truth. Just as there is barely any difference between NoCal and LoCal, so too are the differences between us exaggerated. Whatever else we are, we fit together here in California a state with a history and a present as complicated as its name. David L. Ulin is a contributing writer to Opinion. Advertisement Follow the Opinion section on Twitter @latimesopinionand Facebook To the editor: Op-ed article author Bill McKibben is a climate champion. Hes like a physician telling his patient, I know you feel pretty good right now, but unless we treat the malignancy soon. (Jerry Browns work to seal his climate legacy is only half done, Opinion, April 11) The sound of one hand clapping? Depends on the other hand. Unless we are that other hand itself, using all our strength, we will let the malignancy floods, droughts, fires, heat waves, sea level rise, scrambled ecologies, pollution and its millions of premature deaths grow catastrophically for the entire civilization. Five fingers, five approaches: Cap and trade, corporate fuel economy regulations strengthened, a national price on carbon, personal low-carbon choices, and limiting fossil fuel production are all necessary remedies to treat the slowly growing, easily ignored cancer of climate change. We can choose the politicians who choose health over donors wealth in the next election. As McKibben says, If we win too slowly, we lose. Advertisement Jan Freed, Santa Monica .. To the editor: McKibben extols Gov. Jerry Browns plan to summon the world to his last-chance Global Climate Action Summit in San Francisco in September. How are the attendees from South America, Europe, Asia and Africa supposed to get to California? Battery powered canoes, perhaps? The 2015 Paris Climate Conference attendees burned massive amounts of fuel to fly there. Wouldnt teleconferencing suffice for the September summit and almost all future environmental conferences? Richard Stegemeier, Anaheim .. To the editor: Thanks for printing McKibbens cogent nudge to our governor to take a step further in his protection of our planet. Advertisement McKibben suggests that Brown halt the granting of new state permits for oil and gas extraction and fossil fuel infrastructure in poor communities, which have suffered the most from the high levels of pollution. Now research out of the the University of Massachusetts, Amherst, finds that whites living near those same communities also suffer increased exposure to pollution. Clearly, we all have reason to support the movement for environmental justice as it gathers strength in Los Angeles. Kathy Seal, Santa Monica Follow the Opinion section on Twitter @latimesopinion and Facebook To the editor: Steve Lopez writes about the sad, serious demise of newspapers, citing his experience with a number of small daily newspapers that are disappearing. Far more dramatic is the demise of large daily metropolitan newspapers in Los Angeles. (The staggering body count as California newspapers founder, and democracy loses, April 14) When I entered the workforce in 1952 as a public information professional with the county of Los Angeles, this city had five daily newspapers: the Los Angeles Times and the Los Angeles Examiner in the morning, and the Los Angeles Daily News, the Los Angeles Herald and the Los Angeles Mirror in the afternoon. Not only were all of these newspapers looking to keep the city, the county, the state and business interests in general in the spotlight, they were competing among themselves to be the first to uncover wrongdoing. Now we are down to one daily newspaper covering the whole region, the Los Angeles Times. We put our trust in soon-to-be owner Dr. Patrick Soon-Shiong to guide The Times as it endeavors to do the job of five strong dailies. Oh how we pray for his success. Advertisement Martin A. Brower, Corona del Mar .. To the editor: Lopez is to be congratulated for having the knowledge to understand what is happening to our newspaper reporting staffs generally and the courage to point out what is happening to the news staff of our beloved Los Angeles Times. It should be emphasized that a large, independent and active news staff, continually investigating and reporting on the functions of our government and its citizens, is a vital part of our democracy. Let us hope that the new owner of The Times understands and appreciates this vital function and serves the citizens of Los Angeles rather than slowly destroying these important functions for his own personal profit. Michael Hachigian, Canoga Park .. To the editor: Lopezs article on the lack of depth and comprehensiveness of local reporting reminded me that I was ruminating on the lack of reporting on a critical race in our upcoming primary election. Advertisement As a former school board member, I am very aware of the role the state superintendent of public instruction plays in setting policy and overseeing the direction of public education in California. There are five candidates for this important office, and I have yet to see any solid reporting or analysis on the race. Now that the California State Board of Education has submitted a plan to meet the federal standards set by the Every Student Succeeds Act, it is vital that we have solid information to make an informed choice for the person who will oversee the implementation. Where else will we get this information except from comprehensive reporting and thoughtful analysis from The Times? Julia Springer, Santa Barbara Follow the Opinion section on Twitter @latimesopinion and Facebook 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 Twitter Show more sharing options Share Close extra sharing options Facebook Twitter LinkedIn Email Copy Link URL Copied! Print 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 Twitter Show more sharing options Share Close extra sharing options Facebook Twitter LinkedIn Email Copy Link URL Copied! Print 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 Twitter Show more sharing options Share Close extra sharing options Facebook Twitter LinkedIn Email Copy Link URL Copied! Print 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 Twitter Show more sharing options Share Close extra sharing options Facebook Twitter LinkedIn Email Copy Link URL Copied! Print Advertisement 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 Twitter Show more sharing options Share Close extra sharing options Facebook Twitter LinkedIn Email Copy Link URL Copied! Print 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 Twitter Show more sharing options Share Close extra sharing options Facebook Twitter LinkedIn Email Copy Link URL Copied! Print 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 Twitter Show more sharing options Share Close extra sharing options Facebook Twitter LinkedIn Email Copy Link URL Copied! Print 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 Twitter Show more sharing options Share Close extra sharing options Facebook Twitter LinkedIn Email Copy Link URL Copied! Print Advertisement 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 Twitter Show more sharing options Share Close extra sharing options Facebook Twitter LinkedIn Email Copy Link URL Copied! Print 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 Twitter Show more sharing options Share Close extra sharing options Facebook Twitter LinkedIn Email Copy Link URL Copied! Print 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 Twitter Show more sharing options Share Close extra sharing options Facebook Twitter LinkedIn Email Copy Link URL Copied! Print Advertisement 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 Twitter Show more sharing options Share Close extra sharing options Facebook Twitter LinkedIn Email Copy Link URL Copied! Print 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 Twitter Show more sharing options Share Close extra sharing options Facebook Twitter LinkedIn Email Copy Link URL Copied! Print 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 Twitter Show more sharing options Share Close extra sharing options Facebook Twitter LinkedIn Email Copy Link URL Copied! Print Advertisement 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 Twitter Show more sharing options Share Close extra sharing options Facebook Twitter LinkedIn Email Copy Link URL Copied! Print 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 Twitter Show more sharing options Share Close extra sharing options Facebook Twitter LinkedIn Email Copy Link URL Copied! Print 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 Twitter Show more sharing options Share Close extra sharing options Facebook Twitter LinkedIn Email Copy Link URL Copied! Print 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 Twitter Show more sharing options Share Close extra sharing options Facebook Twitter LinkedIn Email Copy Link URL Copied! Print Advertisement 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 Twitter Show more sharing options Share Close extra sharing options Facebook Twitter LinkedIn Email Copy Link URL Copied! Print 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 Twitter Show more sharing options Share Close extra sharing options Facebook Twitter LinkedIn Email Copy Link URL Copied! Print 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 Twitter Show more sharing options Share Close extra sharing options Facebook Twitter LinkedIn Email Copy Link URL Copied! Print 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 Twitter Show more sharing options Share Close extra sharing options Facebook Twitter LinkedIn Email Copy Link URL Copied! Print Advertisement 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 Twitter Show more sharing options Share Close extra sharing options Facebook Twitter LinkedIn Email Copy Link URL Copied! Print 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 Twitter Show more sharing options Share Close extra sharing options Facebook Twitter LinkedIn Email Copy Link URL Copied! Print 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 Twitter Show more sharing options Share Close extra sharing options Facebook Twitter LinkedIn Email Copy Link URL Copied! Print Advertisement 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 Twitter Show more sharing options Share Close extra sharing options Facebook Twitter LinkedIn Email Copy Link URL Copied! Print 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 Twitter Show more sharing options Share Close extra sharing options Facebook Twitter LinkedIn Email Copy Link URL Copied! Print Advertisement 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 Twitter Show more sharing options Share Close extra sharing options Facebook Twitter LinkedIn Email Copy Link URL Copied! Print 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 Twitter Show more sharing options Share Close extra sharing options Facebook Twitter LinkedIn Email Copy Link URL Copied! Print 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 Twitter Show more sharing options Share Close extra sharing options Facebook Twitter LinkedIn Email Copy Link URL Copied! Print Advertisement 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 Twitter Show more sharing options Share Close extra sharing options Facebook Twitter LinkedIn Email Copy Link URL Copied! Print 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 Twitter Show more sharing options Share Close extra sharing options Facebook Twitter LinkedIn Email Copy Link URL Copied! Print 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 Twitter Show more sharing options Share Close extra sharing options Facebook Twitter LinkedIn Email Copy Link URL Copied! Print 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 Twitter Show more sharing options Share Close extra sharing options Facebook Twitter LinkedIn Email Copy Link URL Copied! Print Advertisement 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 Twitter Show more sharing options Share Close extra sharing options Facebook Twitter LinkedIn Email Copy Link URL Copied! Print 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 Twitter Show more sharing options Share Close extra sharing options Facebook Twitter LinkedIn Email Copy Link URL Copied! Print 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 Twitter Show more sharing options Share Close extra sharing options Facebook Twitter LinkedIn Email Copy Link URL Copied! Print Advertisement 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 Twitter Show more sharing options Share Close extra sharing options Facebook Twitter LinkedIn Email Copy Link URL Copied! Print 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 Twitter Show more sharing options Share Close extra sharing options Facebook Twitter LinkedIn Email Copy Link URL Copied! Print 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 Twitter Show more sharing options Share Close extra sharing options Facebook Twitter LinkedIn Email Copy Link URL Copied! Print 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 Twitter Show more sharing options Share Close extra sharing options Facebook Twitter LinkedIn Email Copy Link URL Copied! Print Advertisement 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 Twitter Show more sharing options Share Close extra sharing options Facebook Twitter LinkedIn Email Copy Link URL Copied! Print 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 Twitter Show more sharing options Share Close extra sharing options Facebook Twitter LinkedIn Email Copy Link URL Copied! Print 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 Twitter Show more sharing options Share Close extra sharing options Facebook Twitter LinkedIn Email Copy Link URL Copied! Print Advertisement 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 Twitter Show more sharing options Share Close extra sharing options Facebook Twitter LinkedIn Email Copy Link URL Copied! Print 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 Twitter Show more sharing options Share Close extra sharing options Facebook Twitter LinkedIn Email Copy Link URL Copied! Print 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 Twitter Show more sharing options Share Close extra sharing options Facebook Twitter LinkedIn Email Copy Link URL Copied! Print Advertisement 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 Twitter Show more sharing options Share Close extra sharing options Facebook Twitter LinkedIn Email Copy Link URL Copied! Print 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 Twitter Show more sharing options Share Close extra sharing options Facebook Twitter LinkedIn Email Copy Link URL Copied! Print 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 Twitter Show more sharing options Share Close extra sharing options Facebook Twitter LinkedIn Email Copy Link URL Copied! Print Advertisement 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 Targeting relies on satellite network, early warning technology: experts China and Russia are developing their own precision air strike capabilities as the US, UK and France attacked Syria over the weekend, military experts said on Monday. "Precision strike capacity is a key of modern war, Song Zhongping, a military expert and TV commentator, told the Global Times on Monday. "It controls the scale of battles and avoids secondary victimization." The US leads the world in precision strikes with years of real-battle testing and a comprehensive choice of weaponry, Song asserted. "However, the true effect of the 105 missiles has not been proved despite the report from the US," Song said. "Though the three countries represent the global trend of precision strikes, their capabilities need to be observed further." A Beijing-based military expert who requested anonymity told the Global Times that such strikes boost the efficiency of attack as the war zone becomes more transparent and connected through real-time technologies. "The US has the most advanced precision strike technologies, and the UK and France, as allies of the US, can share US resources," he said. The three allies struck military targets in response to the Bashar al-Assad government's alleged use of chemical weapons in Douma, the last rebel-held town in Eastern Ghouta near the Syrian capital, the Xinhua News Agency reported. US Joint Staff Director General Kenneth McKenzie said the three deployed 105 weapons on Syrian targets and all the Western nations' aircraft safely returned to their bases. Chinese military experts indicated that China and Russia have also been developing a precision strike capacity. "With precision strikes, Russia has first-mover advantage compared with China. The Soviet Union, having experienced the Cold War, has a military heritage of precision strike weapons with advanced technologies," Song said. "Russia can upgrade its precision strike weaponry on this basis." China has also been developing strike weapons, Song noted. "The precision strike capabilities that the US owns are also possessed by China," Song said. "Some Chinese capabilities could even equal those of the US." But China's capability in this area lacks real battle testing. Once China has experienced an "exam" in a real battleground, then its capability will see a step change, Song said. Precision strikes call for military capabilities in global reconnaissance and early warning, directing and controlling targeting and navigation of attack, the anonymous expert noted. "Whether a country can build a whole system is a big test for modern information-based wars," he said. Currently only powerful countries can realize the whole system, he said. "China's BeiDou Navigation System could be used in this area," he said. U.S. Rep. Charlie Dent (R-Pa.) will leave office in May, he announced Tuesday morning, hastening his planned departure from Congress. Dent, regularly sought out by national media outlets as one of Congress leading centrist voices and a frequent critic of President Trump, had already said he was not seeking reelection this year. A busy primary was already underway to replace him in his Allentown-based district. But his departure next month will open up a congressional seat and remove his voice from the daily fray even sooner. The vacancy could also trigger another special election though its unclear whether it would occur before Novembers general election. MORE: Track the California races that could flip the U.S. House Advertisement By law, Pennsylvania Gov. Tom Wolf must decide within 10 days of Dents departure when to hold a special election. It would have to be at least 60 days after Dents departure. That would mean any vote to fill the seat would happen well after Pennsylvanias May primary, and in July at the earliest. At that point, there would be less than six months left in the term, with Congress planning to be in recess for much of that time. One option that would spare the state added expense but leave the district without a representative would be to hold the special election concurrently with Novembers general election. Thats what happened in Philadelphia after Rep. Chaka Fattah was convicted on corruption charges in 2016. Once Gov. Wolf receives an official resignation notice with an exact date, he will make a formal decision regarding scheduling the date of a special election, the governors office said in a statement. Dent, who is serving his seventh term in Congress, did not announce his next step. After discussions with my family and careful reflection, I have decided to leave Congress in the coming weeks, Dent said in a statement. Actively engaging in the legislative and political process presents many challenges, and in so doing, I believe I have had a positive impact on peoples lives and made a difference in Congress. I am especially proud of the work I have done to give voice to the sensible center in our country that is often overlooked or ignored. It is my intention to continue to aggressively advocate for responsible governance and pragmatic solutions in the coming years. The Supreme Court took up a huge sales tax case on Tuesday with the expectation it was ready to bring online shopping under the same rules that apply to ordinary retailers. But that outcome was less certain after Tuesdays argument. The justices were clearly divided, but in unusual coalitions of conservatives and liberals. One side said Congress, not the courts, should set the rules for taxing interstate commerce. At issue is a 1992 ruling involving mail-order catalogs when the justices found that states may not require out-of-state mailers to collect sales taxes on behalf of their residents. Advertisement Now, in the era of online shopping, that decision in Quill vs. North Dakota is said to cost states and municipalities between $8 billion and $13 billion a year in lost tax revenue. Chief Justice John G. Roberts Jr. and Justices Samuel A. Alito Jr. and Elena Kagan said Congress is better suited to devise a new system. Roberts worried that requiring people who run their own websites to collect sales taxes for an estimated 12,000 taxing jurisdictions across the nation would be overly burdensome. There needs to be a minimum threshold, he said. Kagan added, Congress can craft a compromise in a way that we cannot. Justice Sonia Sotomayor said she is worried that overturning precedents will create a massive amount of lawsuits. But Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg said it should not be left to Congress to grapple with the courts previous decision. If time and changing conditions have rendered [the Quill decision] obsolete, why should the court say: Well, well let Congress fix it? Justice Anthony Kennedy agreed that the Quill ruling was incorrect and should be overruled. And Justice Neil M. Gorsuch said it was unfair to traditional retailers who must collect sales taxes. Why should this court favor a particular business model that relies not on brick and mortar but on mail order? he asked. Justice Stephen G. Breyer, who could hold the deciding vote, asked questions about the costs and burdens of collecting sales taxes, but he did not signal he was leaning one way or the other. The case, South Dakota vs. Wayfair, began when the state passed a law requiring retailers who do more than $100,000 worth of business there to collect its 4.5% sales tax, even if they were located in other states. Predictably, the law was struck down as unconstitutional based on the Quill decision. Advertisement But the high court then voted to hear the states argument that the Quill decision should be overruled. For online shoppers across the U.S., the courts decision could mean higher prices, although many large internet sellers, including Amazon, have already been collecting sales taxes in recent years. Traditional brick-and-mortar retailers believe the case is about fairness. They have had to collect taxes on all of their sales, while shoppers knew they could often pay less by buying the same products online. State and local governments see online sales as a source of needed revenue. Last year, the Government Accountability Office estimated these governments were losing $13 billion a year in uncollected sales taxes. A group called the Marketplace Fairness Coalition said the loss was much higher and could be as much as $33 billion a year. Advertisement In 1992, the justices ruled the Constitution bars a state from requiring a catalog seller in, say, Maine from collecting the sales taxes owed by a shopper in California. This rule was based in part on the notion that if the catalog company in Maine had no physical presence in California, it did not use the states roads and resources, and had no obligation to support it. But South Dakota and 41 other states, including California, are urging the court to overturn the physical presence rule. Their lawyers argued the rule is outdated and unfair in an era of internet shopping. They were joined by a lawyer for the Trump administration who said Quill should be overruled. Defenders of the current system say small merchants, like a craft shop or a bookstore, would face an unfair burden if they are required to collect sales taxes for not just states, but for more than 10,000 cities, counties and other taxing jurisdictions across the nation. The California state sales tax is 7.25%, and cities and counties may add to that. Los Angeles County adds 2.25%, for a total of 9.5%. Advertisement South Dakotas lawyers also say that better software has made it easy to calculate the correct sales tax for an online consumer. The latest from Washington More stories from David G. Savage david.savage@latimes.com Advertisement Twitter: DavidGSavage UPDATES: 12:15 p.m.: The story was updated after the arguments. The story was originally published at 3 a.m. 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 Twitter Show more sharing options Share Close extra sharing options Facebook Twitter LinkedIn Email Copy Link URL Copied! Print 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 Twitter Show more sharing options Share Close extra sharing options Facebook Twitter LinkedIn Email Copy Link URL Copied! Print Watch Live: White House holds surprise news briefing amid government shutdown Facebook Twitter Show more sharing options Share Close extra sharing options Facebook Twitter LinkedIn Email Copy Link URL Copied! Print Advertisement 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 Twitter Show more sharing options Share Close extra sharing options Facebook Twitter LinkedIn Email Copy Link URL Copied! Print 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 Twitter Show more sharing options Share Close extra sharing options Facebook Twitter LinkedIn Email Copy Link URL Copied! Print 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 Twitter Show more sharing options Share Close extra sharing options Facebook Twitter LinkedIn Email Copy Link URL Copied! Print 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 Twitter Show more sharing options Share Close extra sharing options Facebook Twitter LinkedIn Email Copy Link URL Copied! Print Advertisement 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 Twitter Show more sharing options Share Close extra sharing options Facebook Twitter LinkedIn Email Copy Link URL Copied! Print 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 Twitter Show more sharing options Share Close extra sharing options Facebook Twitter LinkedIn Email Copy Link URL Copied! Print 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 Twitter Show more sharing options Share Close extra sharing options Facebook Twitter LinkedIn Email Copy Link URL Copied! Print 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 Twitter Show more sharing options Share Close extra sharing options Facebook Twitter LinkedIn Email Copy Link URL Copied! Print Advertisement 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 Twitter Show more sharing options Share Close extra sharing options Facebook Twitter LinkedIn Email Copy Link URL Copied! Print 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 Twitter Show more sharing options Share Close extra sharing options Facebook Twitter LinkedIn Email Copy Link URL Copied! Print 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 Twitter Show more sharing options Share Close extra sharing options Facebook Twitter LinkedIn Email Copy Link URL Copied! Print Advertisement 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 Twitter Show more sharing options Share Close extra sharing options Facebook Twitter LinkedIn Email Copy Link URL Copied! Print 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 Twitter Show more sharing options Share Close extra sharing options Facebook Twitter LinkedIn Email Copy Link URL Copied! Print 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 Twitter Show more sharing options Share Close extra sharing options Facebook Twitter LinkedIn Email Copy Link URL Copied! Print 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 Twitter Show more sharing options Share Close extra sharing options Facebook Twitter LinkedIn Email Copy Link URL Copied! Print Advertisement 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 Twitter Show more sharing options Share Close extra sharing options Facebook Twitter LinkedIn Email Copy Link URL Copied! Print Watch live: Vice President Pence and lawmakers honor George H.W. Bush at the U.S. Capitol before he lies in state Facebook Twitter Show more sharing options Share Close extra sharing options Facebook Twitter LinkedIn Email Copy Link URL Copied! Print 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 Twitter Show more sharing options Share Close extra sharing options Facebook Twitter LinkedIn Email Copy Link URL Copied! Print Advertisement 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 Twitter Show more sharing options Share Close extra sharing options Facebook Twitter LinkedIn Email Copy Link URL Copied! Print 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 Twitter Show more sharing options Share Close extra sharing options Facebook Twitter LinkedIn Email Copy Link URL Copied! Print 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 Twitter Show more sharing options Share Close extra sharing options Facebook Twitter LinkedIn Email Copy Link URL Copied! Print 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 Twitter Show more sharing options Share Close extra sharing options Facebook Twitter LinkedIn Email Copy Link URL Copied! Print Advertisement 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 Twitter Show more sharing options Share Close extra sharing options Facebook Twitter LinkedIn Email Copy Link URL Copied! Print 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 Twitter Show more sharing options Share Close extra sharing options Facebook Twitter LinkedIn Email Copy Link URL Copied! Print 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 Twitter Show more sharing options Share Close extra sharing options Facebook Twitter LinkedIn Email Copy Link URL Copied! Print Watch live: White House Press Secretary Sarah Huckabee Sanders holds a media briefing amid tensions at the border By Los Angeles Times Staff Facebook Twitter Show more sharing options Share Close extra sharing options Facebook Twitter LinkedIn Email Copy Link URL Copied! Print Advertisement 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 Twitter Show more sharing options Share Close extra sharing options Facebook Twitter LinkedIn Email Copy Link URL Copied! Print 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 Twitter Show more sharing options Share Close extra sharing options Facebook Twitter LinkedIn Email Copy Link URL Copied! Print 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 Twitter Show more sharing options Share Close extra sharing options Facebook Twitter LinkedIn Email Copy Link URL Copied! Print Advertisement 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 Twitter Show more sharing options Share Close extra sharing options Facebook Twitter LinkedIn Email Copy Link URL Copied! Print 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 Twitter Show more sharing options Share Close extra sharing options Facebook Twitter LinkedIn Email Copy Link URL Copied! Print 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 Twitter Show more sharing options Share Close extra sharing options Facebook Twitter LinkedIn Email Copy Link URL Copied! Print Advertisement 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 Twitter Show more sharing options Share Close extra sharing options Facebook Twitter LinkedIn Email Copy Link URL Copied! Print 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 Twitter Show more sharing options Share Close extra sharing options Facebook Twitter LinkedIn Email Copy Link URL Copied! Print 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 Twitter Show more sharing options Share Close extra sharing options Facebook Twitter LinkedIn Email Copy Link URL Copied! Print Advertisement 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 Twitter Show more sharing options Share Close extra sharing options Facebook Twitter LinkedIn Email Copy Link URL Copied! Print 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 Twitter Show more sharing options Share Close extra sharing options Facebook Twitter LinkedIn Email Copy Link URL Copied! Print 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 Twitter Show more sharing options Share Close extra sharing options Facebook Twitter LinkedIn Email Copy Link URL Copied! Print 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 Twitter Show more sharing options Share Close extra sharing options Facebook Twitter LinkedIn Email Copy Link URL Copied! Print Advertisement 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 Twitter Show more sharing options Share Close extra sharing options Facebook Twitter LinkedIn Email Copy Link URL Copied! Print 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 Twitter Show more sharing options Share Close extra sharing options Facebook Twitter LinkedIn Email Copy Link URL Copied! Print 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 Twitter Show more sharing options Share Close extra sharing options Facebook Twitter LinkedIn Email Copy Link URL Copied! Print 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 Twitter Show more sharing options Share Close extra sharing options Facebook Twitter LinkedIn Email Copy Link URL Copied! Print Advertisement 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 Twitter Show more sharing options Share Close extra sharing options Facebook Twitter LinkedIn Email Copy Link URL Copied! Print 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 Twitter Show more sharing options Share Close extra sharing options Facebook Twitter LinkedIn Email Copy Link URL Copied! Print 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 Twitter Show more sharing options Share Close extra sharing options Facebook Twitter LinkedIn Email Copy Link URL Copied! Print 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 Twitter Show more sharing options Share Close extra sharing options Facebook Twitter LinkedIn Email Copy Link URL Copied! Print Advertisement 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 Twitter Show more sharing options Share Close extra sharing options Facebook Twitter LinkedIn Email Copy Link URL Copied! Print 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 Twitter Show more sharing options Share Close extra sharing options Facebook Twitter LinkedIn Email Copy Link URL Copied! Print 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 Twitter Show more sharing options Share Close extra sharing options Facebook Twitter LinkedIn Email Copy Link URL Copied! Print Advertisement 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 Twitter Show more sharing options Share Close extra sharing options Facebook Twitter LinkedIn Email Copy Link URL Copied! Print 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 Twitter Show more sharing options Share Close extra sharing options Facebook Twitter LinkedIn Email Copy Link URL Copied! Print 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 Twitter Show more sharing options Share Close extra sharing options Facebook Twitter LinkedIn Email Copy Link URL Copied! Print Advertisement 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 Twitter Show more sharing options Share Close extra sharing options Facebook Twitter LinkedIn Email Copy Link URL Copied! Print 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 Twitter Show more sharing options Share Close extra sharing options Facebook Twitter LinkedIn Email Copy Link URL Copied! Print 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 Twitter Show more sharing options Share Close extra sharing options Facebook Twitter LinkedIn Email Copy Link URL Copied! Print 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 Twitter Show more sharing options Share Close extra sharing options Facebook Twitter LinkedIn Email Copy Link URL Copied! Print Advertisement 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 Twitter Show more sharing options Share Close extra sharing options Facebook Twitter LinkedIn Email Copy Link URL Copied! Print 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 Twitter Show more sharing options Share Close extra sharing options Facebook Twitter LinkedIn Email Copy Link URL Copied! Print Advertisement 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 In what Chinese experts called a milestone for online identity security and privacy, China's first batch of 50,000 electronic identity chips for smartphones were issued by a small city government in East China's Jiangxi Province, a local newspaper reported on Sunday. In cooperation with the Third Research Institute of the Ministry of Public Security, the city of Gongqingcheng held a ceremony for a chip less than 0.19 millimeters thick that attaches to the phone user's SIM card, New Legal Report reported on Sunday. The SIM eID represented a milestone for the development of online identity, the Jiangxi-based newspaper reported. When conducting transactions with a SIM eID, the user need not provide personal information - name, address, phone number and identity card number - as the relevant online platform would instantly verify the eID instead, said the report. A secure online identity is embedded in the smart security chip, said Qin An, head of the Institute of China Cyberspace Strategy. The eID offered greater convenience for daily life, lowered the risk of identity theft and protected privacy, online transactions and virtual property, he said. "People's daily life relies heavily on the internet as we have entered the internet era," Qin said. "Online transactions are normal, which makes the security of personal information an important issue." Personal information leakage has become a serious problem in the internet era. According to incomplete statistics, some 6.5 billion pieces of Chinese residents' personal information were leaked in 2016, the People's Daily reported. The embedded eID must be authorized by the ministry and relies on smart security chip and encryption technology, New Legal Report quoted Leng Lu from the ministry research institute as saying. The eID could also be used in regulating the migrant population, Ye Guobing, Communist Party chief of Jiangxi's provincial police college, who attended the ceremony on Sunday, was quoted as saying by New Legal Report. The eID "lays the foundation of management of internet society," Ye said, and could "help regulate the population in cyberspace." Gov. Jerry Brown said Tuesday that California wont accept scaled-back federal fuel-economy standards, and he vowed to keep any such attempt tied up in court until long after President Trump is out of the White House. The idea that were going to roll back the auto standards is absurd. Were not going to do that, Brown told reporters at the National Press Club in Washington, D.C. The Trump administration announced this month that it plans to weaken federal rules championed by California that require cars and SUVs to average 55 miles per gallon by 2025. It also said it would seek to revoke Californias power, granted under the Clean Air Act, to set its own standard, separate from whatever the Environmental Protection Agency adopts. I believe we have the legal horsepower to block the immediate legal moves by the Trump administration, Brown said. The attempts to do this are going to be bogged down in litigation long after we have a new president. Advertisement Brown, a Democrat, has become one of Trumps most effective foils on the national stage, pushing back against the president on immigration, environment and legalized marijuana. He spoke Tuesday about ways the liberal state is challenging Trump. Its not the first time Brown has warned the administration that California plans to keep its policies tied up in court for years. The state has filed more than 30 lawsuits already, and Brown quipped Tuesday that we have so many lawsuits now that a few more doesnt make any difference. He downplayed the confrontation with Trump over deploying the California National Guard to the Mexican border, even as the president accused the governor of blocking the effort. Last week, Brown agreed to send 400 members of the Guard to help along the border, but he set specific terms on what the troops would be allowed to do, stipulating that they would not help with immigration enforcement or building a wall along the border. Administration officials indicated Monday that they dont believe Brown is fully committing to the administrations request to send the National Guard to the border. The Republican governors of Texas, New Mexico and Arizona all pledged assistance without such restrictions early last week. In a tweet Tuesday, Trump blamed Brown for failing to reach an agreement with the administration, saying Brown and the state are not looking for safety and security along their very porous border, and that crime would increase. Brown said he didnt see the presidents tweet, which was posted shortly before the governor spoke. But Brown said he still expects the California National Guard to reach a compromise with the federal government that also adheres to the limitations outlined in his letter. The number, it could be two or four hundred, thats being worked out. Theres very good communication between Californias National Guard and the National Guard headquarters, Brown said. I think were pretty close to an agreement. Advertisement But Brown didnt back away from his restrictions on what the Guard would be allowed to do. Trying to stop drug smuggling, human trafficking and guns going to Mexico to the cartels, that sounds to me like fighting crime, Brown said. Trying to catch some desperate mothers and children, unaccompanied minors coming from Central America? That sounds like something else. Brown also vowed to continue the court fight over California laws that vastly limit whom state and local law enforcement agencies can hold, question and transfer at the request of federal immigration authorities. The three so-called sanctuary laws were passed in response to the Trump administrations increased immigration enforcement efforts. Advertisement A handful of states and the Trump administration have filed a lawsuit arguing the laws interfere with or block federal immigration enforcement efforts in order to protect people in the U.S. illegally, and violate the Constitutions supremacy clause, which makes state law subordinate to federal law. Several Orange County cities have passed resolutions opposing the laws in recent weeks and are weighing joining the lawsuit. Brown acknowledged the different opinions on the laws and said he aimed for a measured response to the increased enforcement. Well see what the judges say and if the cities want to come in [to the legal fight], thats fine. But look, lets be honest, theres a lot of politics in this, on all sides. I tried to carve a path down the middle to respect our immigrants, to respect our borders and to respect our laws, he said. Advertisement The sanctuary laws put California even more squarely in the administrations cross hairs, and immigration officials have increased raids at farms and businesses across the state. Brown said the increased enforcement is affecting the states economy, with millions of people fearing to go to work. Theyve become integrated into our economy and theyre doing important work picking food, working in restaurants, working construction so to scare the hell out of them, put them on the run as it were, that is very disruptive to the economy, Brown said. This is not human, its not decent and its completely unproductive. The latest from Washington More stories from Sarah D. Wire Advertisement sarah.wire@latimes.com Follow @sarahdwire on Twitter Read more about the 55 members of Californias delegation UPDATES: Advertisement 1:25 p.m.: The story was updated with Browns comments about fuel-economy rules. The story was originally published at 10:15 a.m. At least three bodies were found in a vehicle parked along a secluded Burbank street Tuesday morning in what police are investigating as a homicide. The bodies were discovered in the 1300 block of South Varney Street just after 7 a.m. when a neighbor complained of a vehicle that had not been moved for some time. Sgt. Derek Green, a spokesman for the Burbank Police Department, said the parking control officer responding to the complaint noticed an odor emitting from the vehicle and saw one person inside who appeared deceased. A statement from @BurbankPD PIO Sgt. Derek Green on the homicide investigation in Burbank pic.twitter.com/zNIsxk0Fgb Andy Nguyen (@Andy_Truc) April 17, 2018 When paramedics arrived, they discovered that as many as three people were in the car and all had died. While it could not be determined initially if there were any signs of trauma, Green said the deaths are being investigated as homicides. Its highly suspicious based on the location of the vehicle, and that nobody else was around, he said. Green said the car was a maroon or burgundy Jeep Patriot with Tennessee license plates. Lis Alvarez, who works around the corner from where the bodies were found, told the Los Angeles Times that she first noticed the vehicle parked in a no-parking zone around noon Monday. It caught my attention because it wasnt supposed to be parked there, but it didnt look suspicious. I thought, Oh, that car is going to get a ticket, Alvarez said. Its terrible. I am so sorry. Police investigators examine the scene on South Varney Street near Linden Court in Burbank where three bodies were found inside a Jeep Patriot. (Tim Berger / Staff Photographer ) Its unknown exactly how long the car had been parked on the street. The area where the bodies were found is an industrial park adjacent to the 5 Freeway and is rather desolate and secluded, especially after business hours, according to Green. Theres pretty much nothing going on back here, and no reason for people to drive through, he said. Because of the areas proximity to the freeway and relative seclusion, Green said the bodies may have been moved to Burbank. If its, in fact, a body dump, were going to have a jurisdictional issue to determine who will investigate theres a lot of work that needs to be done, he said. The neighborhood remained cordoned off to traffic for several hours while investigators examined the scene and interviewed witnesses. In the wake of the discovery, a missing persons flier began circulating on social media of three men from the Bakersfield-area who were last seen in a Jeep Patriot with Tennessee license plates. Green said the department was aware of the flier but, as of early Tuesday evening, no positive identification had been made of the three bodies. The statement makes reference to this missing persons poster of two men from Bakersfield who reportedly disappeared on their way to Riverside. pic.twitter.com/fSScLexzEv Andy Nguyen (@Andy_Truc) April 17, 2018 Carlos Lopez was also with the guys pic.twitter.com/eMuFaQTiA1 Daniela Chavez (@LalaChavez84) April 17, 2018 andy.nguyen@latimes.com Twitter: @Andy_Truc UPDATES: 6:20 p.m.: This article was updated with additional comments from Sgt. Derek Green. This article was originally published at 2:30 p.m. The state agency that manages the Fairview Developmental Center in Costa Mesa says theres no evidence that personal information of the centers residents or employees was breached by a February break-in at a state building in Sacramento. Unidentified intruders forced their way into legal and audit offices of the Department of Developmental Services and ransacked the offices, damaged and stole property and started a fire, setting off sprinklers that drenched documents and workstations, the department said this month. The agency, through which the state provides services and support to people with developmental disabilities, said the burglary may have exposed confidential information of about 582,000 people who receive DDS services, as well as roughly 15,000 other people, including service providers, employees of regional centers, job seekers and parents of minors enrolled in department programs. Though the department has no evidence that personal and health information was compromised due to the incident, spokeswoman Nancy Lungren wrote in an email Monday, out of an abundance of caution, it notified clients and the public about the break-in and followed federal requirements regarding potential breaches. Records of a current Fairview resident may have been in the offices only if the resident was involved in a legal matter, such as placement proceedings or conservatorship matters, she wrote. Fairview employee records generally are not present at this location, and we have no evidence that employee records were compromised. The break-in remains under investigation, she added. Fairview opened in 1959 and currently provides services and housing to 128 people with intellectual and developmental disabilities, according to the state. It and similar facilities around California are scheduled to close in coming years as part of an effort to transition people out of institutional-style centers and into smaller accommodations that are more integrated into communities. The Associated Press contributed to this report. luke.money@latimes.com Twitter @LukeMMoney Huntington Beach officials Monday night began brainstorming what theyd like to see in the first comprehensive public art program intended to promote Surf City as an art destination. The City Council voted unanimously to direct staff to research public art master plans created by neighboring cities and prepare a proposal with the Allied Arts Board, a city panel that promotes cultural activities and events, that may best suit Huntington Beach. For the record: The original version of this article quoted Councilwoman Lyn Semeta as saying, Six hundred million [dollars] a year comes into our community from tourism right into our general fund.City spokeswoman Julie Toledo clarified in an email Wednesday that direct expenditures by Huntington Beachs nearly 4 million non-O.C. resident visitors total nearly $600 million a year, generating nearly $18 million in revenue in sales tax, occupancy taxes and other fees to the citys general fund. The plan would help provide a strategy for art in public places or on public property. It also would outline procedures for management, funding, public engagement and site selection. It has been a goal of mine to do more for the public art program in our city, said Councilwoman Lyn Semeta, an artist who proposed the concept. In a presentation, Semeta showcased iconic art pieces worldwide and listed ways that art could provide economic, tourism and beautification benefits for Surf City. The plan wouldnt focus only on murals or exhibits, Semeta said, but on public art pieces that are functional or inspire interactive play, such as Cloud Gate, a donor-funded public sculpture in Chicago that often is referred to as The Bean. Its becoming more and more competitive out there for destinations, Semeta said. Iconic public art landmarks are a draw. I think it makes a lot of sense to up our game. Several residents spoke in favor of Semetas proposal, including Kelly Miller, president and chief executive of Visit Huntington Beach, who said implementing a robust, goal-oriented public art plan could help the city stay competitive. Mayor Pro Tem Erik Peterson said he supports the proposal because it places an emphasis on collaborating with local artists who understand the H.B. vibe. Barbara Simone of Huntington Beach said public art could have neighborhood themes and showcase the citys history with help from an untapped well of talented artists. But Kim Kramer, co-founder of the Huntington Beach Public Art Alliance, which put on the first Dumpsters on Parade in the citys downtown area last year, voiced concerns that the art master plan could be government overreach. One issue raised by several council members was whether rules and regulations imposed by the plan would create obstacles to art. Think about Hector Valdez, the artwork where he made the shark, Councilman Patrick Brenden said, referring to a mural of a great white shark painted earlier this year on a construction wall along Main Street. It was a phenomenal piece of art. Would he have done it if there was an extensive process? Mayor Mike Posey added that the city doesnt need an art czar. Peterson said the city has only begun the process and that such concerns were getting into the weeds before staff could return with more information. More live city broadcasting? In other business Monday, the City Council unanimously approved looking into ways to broadcast public meetings, local events and other programming besides using public cable television. The city manager will return to the council within 90 days with a report assessing other available resources. Semeta and Brenden proposed reviewing alternative broadcasting methods as many residents have shifted to the internet for news and shows. We dont do anything live except for council or Planning Commission meetings, Brenden said. It would be a lot more valuable if we did more live broadcasting. The city has been part of the Public Cable Television Authority since 1990 and entered a formal joint powers agreement in 2004. The agreement helps municipalities provide content for local residents. 10-year lease extension for youth shelter operator The council also unanimously approved a 10-year lease and management agreement for Waymakers to continue operating the Huntington Beach Youth Shelter at 7291 Talbert Ave. Waymakers, formerly known as Community Service Programs, has helped more than 1,200 children from Huntington Beach and surrounding communities since it began operating the 12-bed shelter for homeless and at-risk youths, according to a city staff report. Priscella.Vega@latimes.com Twitter: @vegapriscella A former Illinois police officer and his sister-in-law were sentenced Monday to jail time and ordered to complete an alcohol treatment program in connection with a 2016 brawl in Huntington Beach. Orange County Superior Court Judge Richard King sentenced Arthur Edward Roman, 30, of Tinley Park, Ill., to a year in jail. Jessica Monique Roman, 30, of Lake Forest in south Orange County was sentenced to 90 days in jail. In addition to the alcohol treatment program, both were placed on three years probation, according to court records. An Orange County jury last month found Arthur Roman guilty of felony assault with force likely to produce great bodily injury, plus misdemeanor battery. Also last month, a jury acquitted Jessica Roman of a felony assault charge but found her guilty of misdemeanor assault and battery. Arthur Roman was a police officer in Oak Forest, Ill., from October 2014 to May 2016, officials said. He was placed on administrative leave after his arrest. Martin Mario Roman, 28, Arthur Romans brother and Jessica Romans husband, pleaded guilty last year to felony assault with force likely to produce great bodily injury, misdemeanor battery and a sentencing enhancement for personally using a deadly weapon. He was sentenced in August to three years probation. Authorities said the three were sitting in a parked car at a 24 Hour Fitness at 303 Third St. in Huntington Beach on Feb. 28, 2016, when Arthur Roman shouted at Karam Aljarrah, then 17, and his brother-in-law Aseem Dghem. The confrontation escalated to a fight, during which Jessica Roman pushed Aljarrah to the ground and kicked him in the head and Martin Roman stabbed him in the buttocks, prosecutors said. Aljarrah and Dghem claimed in a civil lawsuit filed against the Romans in February that the fight was racially motivated. According to the complaint, Aljarrah and Dghem were speaking in Arabic and the Romans overheard them. Aljarrah and Dghem are requesting an unspecified amount of money for general damages, lost wages, emotional distress and attorney fees. hannah.fry@latimes.com Twitter: @HannahFryTCN UPDATES: 12:35 p.m. April 17: This article was updated with Arthur Romans time as a police officer in Oak Forest. This article was originally published at 5:45 p.m. April 16. Spend your vacation learning the Spanish language, then Zen out with yoga. The classes, which are limited to 10 participants, are held in a restored 1920s Spanish Revival mansion in the heart of Mexico Citys Polanco District. The six-day immersion program combines group and intense one-on-one sessions, assessments and yoga sessions. The program also includes art tours, dinner at a well-known restaurant and cultural activities that encourage participants to converse with native speakers. Dates: April 29, May 6, June 17 and 24 Advertisement Price: From $5,220 per person, double occupancy; $5,620 for single occupancy. Includes all instruction, seven nights accommodation, all daytime meals, a dinner, private art visits, speakers, yoga and airport transfers. International airfare not included. Info: Fluenz Immersion, (877) 358-3695 travel@latimes.com Twitter: @latimestravel Mohamed Nasheed, the former president of the Indian Ocean archipelago of the Maldives, is intent on ending his exile and going home. But when he considers the practicalities, his thoughts turn to another politician who staged a defiant return to his country. They shot him on the tarmac, Nasheed said of Philippine opposition leader Benigno Aquino, killed in 1983 as he arrived in Manila to challenge dictator Ferdinand Marcos. Nasheed is not known for subtlety. As president, he once donned scuba gear and held a Cabinet meeting underwater to illustrate how climate change and rising sea levels threatened to swallow the low-lying Maldives. He announced plans to purchase land in another country Sri Lanka, or perhaps Australia in case encroaching waters made his half-million compatriots homeless. Still, it is not easy to dismiss Nasheeds bleak assessment of the risks he would face in the Maldives, Asias smallest country, where a constitutional crisis holds strategic implications for the rest of the continent. Advertisement A necklace of 1,200 coral islands 300 miles from the southern tip of India, the Maldives is famed for pristine beaches and luxury resorts. But its politics are ugly and turbulent. Abdulla Yameen Abdul Gayoom, the current president, has thrown hundreds of political opponents and activists in jail and is accused of widespread human rights abuses in his consolidation of power. (Los Angeles Times ) In 2015, a court convicted Nasheed the presidents main rival under anti-terrorism laws of having ordered the arrest of a judge while in office, a case that the United Nations and human rights groups said was politically motivated. He was barred from running for office and began serving a 13-year prison sentence. In 2016, after being released on a temporary basis to receive medical care in Britain, he was granted political asylum there and stayed. In February, the Supreme Court in the Maldives annulled his conviction, along with those of eight other dissidents, ruling their trials had been unfair. Yameen responded by having two justices imprisoned and the convictions reinstated. Then Yameen imposed a 45-day state of emergency and sent troops to block opposition lawmakers from entering the parliament building when it looked like they might start impeachment proceedings against him. The moves were aimed at clearing Yameens path to victory in elections scheduled for September. Yameen has shrugged off condemnations from the United States and Europe with the help of diplomatic support and massive loans from China, whose growing reach in South Asia poses a direct test to India, the regional power. Nasheed, who leads the main opposition party from exile, said he plans to challenge Yameen, and that if hes allowed to run, hands down, we can win it. On Monday, the United Nations human rights committee concluded that Nasheeds conviction was arbitrary and the Maldives must restore his right to stand for office. Advertisement But first he must go home and face down the threat of arrest or worse. I would advise him against going back right now, said Ahmed Shaheed, who served as Nasheeds foreign minister. As a politician he understands the importance of returning. But I think certain things have to be in place before someone puts his or her life on the line. A supporter of Mohamed Nasheed shouts slogans during a protest in Colombo, Sri Lanka, in March 2018. (Ishara S. Kodikara / AFP/Getty Images ) Advertisement The 50-year-old Nasheed, a former journalist known in the Maldives as Anni, became a hero to many by leading the fight against the 30-year dictatorship of Maumoon Abdul Gayoom. He was arrested more than a dozen times, tortured twice, missed the births of his two daughters while incarcerated and confined for 18 months to a shed the size of an outhouse before winning the countrys first multi-party elections in 2008. He gained international stature at a 2009 climate summit in Copenhagen, where he championed the cause of small, vulnerable island nations demanding that major polluters like the United States, China and India commit to reducing their carbon emissions. A 2012 documentary, The Island President, captures a diminutive Nasheed badgering officials from bigger nations with the earnest tenacity of a college debate captain. Back home he pledged to make the Maldives carbon-neutral within a decade, emancipated state-controlled media and promoted low-impact ecotourism, allowing more Maldivians a share of the countrys tourism revenue. In 2009, Maldivian President Mohamed Nasheed held a Cabinet meeting under water to draw attention to the threat posed by rising sea levels. (Mohammed Seeneen / Associated Press ) Advertisement But he faced mounting street protests and obstruction from Gayoom loyalists. Then, one morning in 2012, barely three years into his term, a group of army officers held him at gunpoint, he said, and forced him to resign. (A national commission concluded that Nasheed left office voluntarily, although his supporters argued the panel ignored crucial evidence.) In 2013, Nasheed ran for president again, narrowly losing to Yameen, the former dictators half-brother, in an election marred by delays and irregularities. Two years later came his conviction and imprisonment. His wife and two children joined him in exile in Britain. With his younger daughter due to finish high school in June, he began plotting to return to the Maldives in time for elections this fall. He now spends much of his time in Colombo, the Sri Lankan capital and longtime hub of the Maldivian opposition. In an interview here last month, Nasheed said he was counting on pressure from the U.S. and other countries to force Yameen to allow a free election with international observers. Its difficult now to see a free and fair election happening but things can change very rapidly, Nasheed said at a spacious house that serves as his de facto headquarters, looking as trim and youthful as in his activist days except for the gray hair at his temples. Advertisement Friends said he maintained hope even with most of his allies jailed or in exile. His success in life and politics has been his determination to stay on course, Mohamed Aslam, who served as climate coordinator in Nasheeds government, said by phone from the Maldivian capital, Male, where he was marooned because authorities had confiscated his passport. Hes very determined and I think a lot of us do find courage from his optimism. Its at times like this that we cannot simply start thinking it is impossible. Mohamed Nasheed is taken away by police after he was arrested at his home in Male, Maldives, in 2013. (Abdulla Jawid / Associated Press ) Advertisement Nasheed was eventually vindicated in the fight against climate change, with once intransigent polluters like India having recently made ambitious commitments to renewable energy. The issue that animates him now is more proximate: growing indebtedness to China. Under Chinese President Xi Jinpings Belt and Road Initiative a sprawling network of infrastructure projects in more than 60 countries aimed at projecting Chinese influence across the world Beijing has financed the rebuilding of the Maldives airport, construction of a mile-long bridge and other massive projects under loan terms that Yameens government has not disclosed. South Asia badly needs investment in roads, ports and railways. But the Maldives is among eight countries that are at severe risk of insolvency because of Belt-and-Road related debts, according to the Center for Global Development, a Washington think tank. Nasheed said that by 2020 the Maldives would owe China $675 million more than two-thirds of government revenue that year. Government officials insist they can repay the loans. Advertisement Yameens government has also leased at least seven islands to China to develop resorts and other projects. Accusing Beijing of a land-grab, Nasheed has said the real number is as high as 17, alarming environmental activists who say construction will destroy the archipelagos delicate reefs. Indian analysts worry that Beijing could build security outposts at New Delhis doorstep. Maldives President Abdulla Yameen Abdul Gayoom, seen in 2015, has jailed opponents and dismantled the Supreme Court ahead of elections scheduled for September. (AFP/Getty Images ) Nasheed said that Chinese support has eroded Indian influence and given Yameen political cover, just as it has with Cambodia, Myanmar and other regional allies of Beijing that are facing allegations of human rights abuses. China has a long-standing policy of non-interference in other countries internal affairs. If you look at all these countries, whats happening to democracy and elections, youll see a pattern where we are losing it because China is so heavily engaged and also because the United States is not focused on it, he said. Advertisement U.S. officials say its not clear that China has nefarious objectives. Even some of Nasheeds allies question whether it would be better for him to cultivate ties with Beijing, arguing its support for Yameen isnt ironclad. China needs a stable, reliable friend in the Indian Ocean they dont need a madman, Shaheed said. Nasheed also accused Yameen of fanning Islamic fundamentalism in the Maldives, where Sunni Islam is the only authorized religion. More than 200 Maldivians have left the islands to join Islamic State, according to terrorism analysts. Last year, a blogger who had criticized extremists was found stabbed in Male, a killing that remains unsolved. In Male in 2013, Mohamed Nasheed waves to supporters outside the election office. (Ishara S. Kodikara / AFP/Getty Images ) Advertisement Nasheeds detractors have portrayed him as anti-Islamic and mocked his relations with Western leaders like former British Prime Minister David Cameron, who once called him my new best friend. His international stature could protect him if he returned to the Maldives, but he might not be safe even in Colombo. Last year, a Maldivian diplomat in Sri Lanka described Nasheed as a fugitive and threatened to arrest him personally, a move that Nasheeds lawyers said would be illegal. A few months later, Nasheed canceled an event with supporters in Colombo after receiving death threats. He said the long struggle has weighed on his family, especially his wife, Laila, who never wanted him to go into politics. It really hasnt been easy for her, Nasheed said. But one track leads to another, and Ive been gradually pushed into this position step by step. I must keep going. I dont think I have the freedom, or the nicety, to keep quiet. Advertisement shashank.bengali@latimes.com Shashank Bengali is South Asia correspondent for The Times. Follow him on Twitter at @SBengali British Prime Minister Theresa May on Monday vehemently defended her decision to authorize airstrikes against the Syrian government, saying the action was both morally and legally justified to deter the use of chemical weapons. Speaking during a heated, lengthy debate in Parliament, she shot down accusations by opposition leader Jeremy Corbyn that the strikes took place at the behest of President Trump. We have not done this because President Trump asked us to do so, she said. We have done it because we believed it was the right thing to do. And we are not alone. Outside Parliament in Westminster, protesters held placards that read: Dont Bomb Syria. Advertisement The military strikes Saturday were carried out in conjunction with France and the U.S., hitting three targets in the Damascus area and near the city of Homs. They were in response to the suspected chemical attack April 7 by the Syrian government in the town of Duma, where local medics said that dozens of people were killed and hundreds left gasping for breath. Corbyn called the airstrikes legally questionable and said inspectors from the Organization for the Prohibition of Chemical Weapons should be allowed to do their work to categorically establish who was behind the attack. The Scottish National Partys Ian Blackford accused May of once again dragging Parliament into military action with little regard for the humanitarian [situation] on the ground and no long-term strategic plan, a reference to Britains controversial involvement in the protracted Iraq war that began in 2003. The British government does not legally have to get approval for military action, but it has been customary to do so since the Iraq invasion, and lawmakers from across the political spectrum said they were angry the matter has not been put before Parliament. Some have accused May of acting without Parliaments approval because she feared that it was a vote she could not win. In 2013, her predecessor, David Cameron, lost a vote in Parliament that would have seen Britain take part in the U.S.-led strikes on the Syrian government in retaliation for its use of chemical weapons. But May said that her government was forced to act quickly and that recalling lawmakers back to the House of Commons from their Easter break was not a viable option. I am absolutely clear, Mr. Speaker, that it is Parliaments responsibility to hold me to account for such decisions and Parliament will do so, she said. But it is my responsibility as prime minister to make these decisions. She also said Monday that Parliament would have been unable to see much of the intelligence that was used to justify the strikes, and stressed that the action was unequivocally in the national interest. Advertisement She described utterly haunting images in Duma of families found dead in underground bunkers with foam in their mouths and burns to their eyes. All the evidence including the use of helicopters and barrel bombs pointed toward the government of Syrian President Bashar Assad, May said, adding that Russia is assisting in a coverup operation, with evacuees being searched as they leave the contaminated area to ensure evidence is not being removed from the site. Syria has denied using chemical weapons, and Russia, which supports Assad, has expressed profound anger at the U.S.-led airstrikes. The precision strikes were aimed at avoiding Russian bases in Syria as diplomatic relations between Britain and Russia are at their lowest point since the breakup of the Soviet Union. Advertisement There has been a tit-for-tat expulsion of diplomats in response to a chemical attack last month on a former Russian spy and his daughter in the British town of Salisbury. May said that allowing chemical weapons attacks to take place with impunity risked jeopardizing the norms and rules that keep the world safe. We cannot go back to a world where the use of chemical weapons becomes normalized, she said. Several lawmakers expressed their solidarity with May on Monday, including veteran Conservative Party politician Ken Clarke, who said it took a real prime minister to make this decision. Advertisement Labor Party lawmaker Chris Leslie also spoke in the House of Commons to support the military intervention. A policy of inaction also would have severe consequences, he said. Those who would turn a blind eye, who would do nothing in pursuit of some moral high ground, should also be held accountable. His speech broke ranks with party leader Corbyn, who argued that all diplomatic channels should have been exhausted before the military option was even discussed. Corbyn called for an emergency debate in Parliament to reaffirm the convention that lawmakers approval should be required for military intervention. It was scheduled for Tuesday. Advertisement There is no more serious issue than the life-and-death matters of military action, he said. It is right that Parliament has the power to support or stop the government from taking planned military action. Boyle is a special correspondent. China's ambassador to the United States is calling on Washington to make the right choice, saying the two countries are "at the crossroads of history for bilateral relations." Chinese Ambassador to the United States Cui Tiankai addresses the 2018 Penn Wharton China Summit in Philadelphia, US, on Sunday, April 15, 2018. [Photo: China Plus] Cui Tiankai has used a speech to the Penn Wharton China Summit, the elite business school where Donald Trump studied, to address issues in bilateral relations under the US President's administration. The ambassador says Beijing expects both sides to build a strong, healthy and sustainable relationship. He notes China and the US officially established diplomatic relations close on the heels of China's launch of the reform and opening-up process four decades ago. As part of his speech, Cui Tiankai has noted that opening up has been key to China's development the past 40 years. But noting the potential of a trade war brought on by Trump administration actions, Cui Tiankai suggests the US side should reflect on the progress that has been made in China-US relations, suggesting the relationship is at a "crossroads of history." "I hope US politicians and so-called strategists make the right choice at the crossroads of history for bilateral relations. As long as we prioritize the interests of the two countries' people, the right choice is apparent and the decision is not difficult to make." Cui Tiankai has also suggested the root cause of the trade imbalance between the two countries is the US economic structure, rather than China. "China does not pursue trade surplus with the US. It also hopes to see balance. The huge US trade deficit to China is caused by many factors, including issues in industrial chain, economic structure, low savings rate, and polices of the US. US government intends to restrict high-tech product export to China in private sector we want to buy, they don't want to sell. This also fuels the deficit." China and US economic and trade ties have experienced almost continual growth since the establishment of diplomatic relations. Trade volumes last year exceeded 580 billion US dollars, due in-part to bilateral investment. In 2017, US aircraft maker Boeing's deliveries to China accounted for 26-percent of its total global deliveries. US soybean exports to China accounted for over 60-percent of the US total last year. As such, Cui Tiankai says its been unfair for US politicians and the President to suggest that "China is stealing jobs from American people." "I think both Chines and American workers have the rights to ideal jobs and better life. Their wishes deserve fulfillment. But this is not the sole drive for Chinese workers to come to the US. They come to the US mainly as a result of the US companies that expand their resource allocation and production across the globe in order to maximize their profit. This greatly benefits US economy. Its GDP almost doubled from 2001 to 2017." A prisoner in Iceland suspected of masterminding the theft of about 600 computers that were being used to mine bitcoin and other virtual currencies escaped custody and fled Tuesday on a passenger plane that a witness said also carried the remote North Atlantic nations prime minister. Police said surveillance video showed a suspect they identified as Sindri Thor Stefansson boarding a flight to Sweden at Icelands international airport in Keflavik. They said he traveled under a passport in someone elses name. He had an accomplice, Police Chief Gunnar Schram told Visir, an online news outlet. We are sure of that. Investigators think Stefansson left the low-security prison where he recently had been transferred through a window early Tuesday. Guards did not report him missing until after the flight to Sweden had taken off. Advertisement Stefansson was among 11 people arrested this year for allegedly stealing the powerful computers in one of Icelands biggest thefts. The stolen equipment, which still is missing, has been valued at almost $2 million. Icelandic media have dubbed the case the Big Bitcoin Heist. If the equipment is used for its original purpose to create new bitcoins the thieves could turn a massive profit in an untraceable currency without ever selling the items. The escapee was being held at the Sogn prison in rural southern Iceland, about 59 miles from the airport. The prison is unfenced and inmates there have telephone and internet access. Stefansson had been in custody since February. He was moved to the open prison 10 days ago, police said. A passenger on the flight that the escaped inmate allegedly caught to Sweden told national broadcaster RUV that Icelands prime minister, Katrin Jakobsdottir, was also on the plane. Jakobsdottir was among five Nordic prime ministers who met with Indias prime minister Tuesday in Stockholm, The prime ministers presence, the witness said, was the only unusual thing about that flight. The escape is yet another twist in a criminal case without parallel on the peaceful island nation with a population of 340,000 and one of the worlds lowest crime rates. Police commissioner Olafur Helgi Kjartansson said in March that it was a grand theft on a scale unseen before. Police have arrested 22 people altogether, including a security guard, without solving the burglaries. Advertisement Blessed with an abundance of renewable energy, Iceland has emerged as a popular base for large virtual currency companies that use massive amounts of electricity running the computers that create bitcoins. Owners of the stolen computers have, in a rare public outreach, promised a $60,000 reward to anyone who can lead detectives to the stolen computers. Helgi Gunnlaugsson, a sociology professor at the University of Iceland, said keeping a high-profile prisoner in such low-security surroundings was unusual but more so was his organized escape. Prison breaks in Iceland usually mean someone just fled to get drunk, he said. The underworlds are tiny, and it is extremely difficult to hide, let alone flee the country. In South Koreas hierarchical society, theres a phrase used to describe the myriad ways underlings suffer verbal and even physical abuse by their superiors, especially in the workplace. The term gapjil is prominent in the national conversation here this week after revelations in recent days that Cho Hyun-min, an heiress to the family-run Korean Air empire, berated a business associate during a corporate meeting last month. The matter, which might involve assault and is under preliminary review by the police, comes a few years after Chos sister sparked international headlines by diverting a taxiing Korean Air jet back to a New York terminal because her macadamia nuts in first class were served in a bag, not on a dish. This latest scandal involving the younger Cho, 35, a senior marketing official at the airline and the daughter of the parent companys chairman, comes as the nation is already grappling with trying to reform its societys dependence on large conglomerates, such as Samsung and Hyundai, which were linked to a major recent scandal involving disgraced former President Park Geun-hye. Advertisement The outrage is evidence of the publics growing distaste for such incidents involving the families who control the nations largest corporate firms, which in three generations have helped propelled South Korea from a largely agrarian society ravaged by war to an exporting power the worlds 11th-largest economy. Theres been a lot of pent-up frustration, said Hannah Jun, an assistant professor of international business at Ewha womens university in Seoul. Its starting to come out. The airline this week suspended Cho, a USC graduate who sometimes uses the English name Emily. She has apologized, in Korean, on social media and in an email to the companys employees: I will assume all legal responsibility and accept all social criticism, she wrote. But a collection of the companys unions issued a joint statement this week saying the statement wasnt enough, calling for her ouster. About 75,000 people, meanwhile, have signed a petition filed with the office of President Moon Jae-in calling on the company to drop Korean from the national airlines name. The allegations at issue are murky, and perhaps even exaggerated, but they have sparked a flood of media reports about Chos workplace behavior. The media narrative thats emerged involves Cho growing unusually angry during a March 16 meeting about advertising that included an outside executive at Korean Air headquarters in Seoul. Cho reportedly yelled at the man, possibly even threw water in his direction and then forced him out of the room. Her lawyer, Im Sang-hyuk, said Cho pushed a cup of water to the ground, not at people in the meeting. There are allegations that a beverage was thrown at people, but rather than rebutting all of these, we think it right to talk first to investigators, he told reporters. Advertisement In addition to the questions about the meeting, an audiotape has surfaced purportedly of Cho screaming at times in a frantic, almost animalistic tone at someone. Its unclear whether the recording is related to the advertising meeting or another incident. The controversy has prompted anonymous chatter on the companys message boards and prompted its unions to issue a statement demanding Chos resignation amid a scandal affecting the companys large workforce. The lives of their 60,000 family members are being shaken by the roots due to this scandal, it reads. The ordeal has also brought back memories of the infamous 2014 nut rage incident involving Chos elder sister, Cho Hyun-ah. In addition to diverting the plane, initially considered a criminal act in South Korea, Cho also allegedly forced flight attendants to bow and apologize. Advertisement The elder Cho spent months in jail over the incident, though a higher court found that she hadnt violated a law against altering an airliners course. She has since made it back to corporate life, rejoining the family-controlled conglomerate in a hotel-related subsidiary. Sangin Park, an economics professor at Seoul National University who has studied the conglomerates, known here as chaebol, said the media reports indicate a lack of control by Cho and could reflect a broader and habitual pattern of abuse, or gapjil, by the companys family executives. Park also questions the sincerity of the apologies issued in both Cho scandals. It was all an excuse to avoid any public blame or attention, he said. That is why people are so upset. They get all the benefit from using the Korean name, but they dont have any responsibility. Advertisement Both women are daughters of Cho Yang-ho, the airlines chief executive and chairman of one of South Koreas largest conglomerates, Hanjin Group. He is the son of Cho Choong Hoon, the late founder of the group, which has numerous transportation-related subsidiaries. The younger Cho has also been an executive at Jin Air, a Korean Air subsidiary and a key player in the nations competitive low-cost carrier business. She had done several public interviews, in unaccented English, about the smaller airlines focus on growth and safety. The swirling controversy has also raised questions in local reports about whether Cho is an American citizen, a fact that some speculate might have complicated her status as an executive in a Korean company. Cho spent her youth in South Korea and received a masters degree from Seoul National University after her time at USC, according to her LinkedIn account. Her citizenship status wasnt clear Tuesday, though local media have reported she was born in Hawaii in 1983. Advertisement The incident has sparked further conversation about the nations complicated relationship with the chaebol, which have enormous influence over the South Korean economy. Many young people seek their employment, undergoing rigorous applications, but others have grown frustrated by their influence and the wealth acquired by their elites. They still are a source of national pride, said Jun, the Ewha professor. But, at the same time, theres also resentment that chaebol elites have benefited and continue to benefit at the expense of the broader society. Stiles is a special correspondent. A team of international chemical weapons specialists entered the Syrian city of Duma on Tuesday, state media said, in a bid to inspect the former rebel bastion hit this month with a suspected poison gas attack by the government. The inspectors with the Organization for the Prohibition of Chemical Weapons, whose arrival in Duma was not immediately confirmed by U.S. officials, are tasked with collecting samples from the site and speaking to witnesses. The organizations mandate with the United Nations means it can only determine if a chemical attack occurred, not assign blame. The April 7 attack, which activists say killed more than 40 people, ratcheted up tension between Western nations and Damascus, spurring the U.S., Britain and France to launch airstrikes on what were said to be the manufacturing sites of Syrias chemical arsenal. Officials in Damascus and Russia, a key ally of Syrian President Bashar Assad, deny responsibility for the Duma attack and have accused others of staging it. OPCW Director-General Ahmet Uzumcu said Monday that nine inspectors had assembled in Beirut, the Lebanese capital, before making their way to Damascus, Syrias capital. Advertisement But, he said, the fact-finding mission could not deploy to Duma, less than eight miles northeast of the capital, until what Syrian and Russian authorities called pending security issues could be worked out. Russian and Syrian troops as well as journalists had already made their way into the area in the days after the governments takeover of Duma on Saturday. The delay kicked up a flurry of accusations from Western powers, including Kenneth Ward, the U.S. ambassador to the OPCW, who accused Russia of interfering with the Hague-based organizations attempt to conduct an effective investigation. State Department spokeswoman Heather Nauert said Tuesday that U.S. officials could not independently confirm that the OPCW inspectors had arrived at the attack site. A delay would further degrade evidence, she said. The Syrians and the Russians, their goal is to cover up, Nauert said. The French Foreign Ministry said in a statement Tuesday that it was very likely that proof and essential elements are disappearing from this site. But Russian Foreign Ministry spokeswoman Maria Zakharova on Tuesday called on Western countries that staged the illegitimate strike on Syria to stop manipulating public opinion and meddling with the work of international organizations, according to the Russian state news agency Tass. I dont see why the French Foreign Ministry is speaking for the OPCW and its inspectors, she said. Advertisement Russian officials earlier claimed that the Duma attack in the Ghouta region had been staged by Britain, a charge the nations OPCW envoy Peter Wilson denied as ludicrous. Russias military said it had found a rebel chemical laboratory and warehouse in Duma, according to Tass. Opposition-aligned medics and rescue workers contend than Syrian loyalist troops deployed barrel bombs filled with chemical weapons on April 7 in Duma, the largest city in the onetime rebel-held enclave of east Ghouta. The munitions, normally filled with explosives and metal detritus and dropped from helicopters, struck buildings where residents had taken shelter, killing 43 people and leaving some 500 others with symptoms including breathing difficulties, skin discoloration, eye irritation and foaming at the mouth. Advertisement After the attack, opposition factions accepted an evacuation deal out of Duma that gave the government control of east Ghouta after a bloody, six-year stalemate. Western nations insisted after what was said to be analysis of open-source evidence, including videos uploaded by opposition activists, that chemical weapons had been deployed and that Syrian government troops were to blame. Last week, they launched a barrage of missiles on a number of sites, including research centers and primary airfields, around Damascus and the central Syrian province of Homs. The strikes, though described by U.S. Defense Secretary James N. Mattis as a one-off, have nevertheless put nerves at a breaking point in the area. Advertisement Syrian air defenses were activated early Wednesday in what turned out to be a false alarm, according to the official Syrian Arab News Agency, or SANA. An unnamed military official told SANA the country was not targeted by any foreign aggression. Bulos is a special correspondent. Twitter: @nabihbulos Times staff writer Tracy Wilkinson in Washington contributed to this report. Exhibitors and buyers discuss orders at the 123rd China Import and Export Fair in Guangzhou on April 15, 2018. [Photo/VCG] China will never stop opening up and will continue to stick to free trade and investment, as creating a stable, fair, transparent and clear-cut business environment under the rule of law is the top task in the country's efforts to attract foreign investment. These remarks were made by Huang Yong, director of the International Cooperation Center of the National Development and Reform Commission, in an article on Monday. He said that foreign enterprises have always been a crucial component in China's economy over the past 40 years of reform and opening-up, promoting efficient resources allocation, upgrading economic structure, invigorating domestic market and pushing market-oriented reform. The article comes after President Xi Jinping's keynote speech at the opening ceremony of the Boao Forum for Asia annual conference concluded last week in the southern island province of Hainan, which said that China relied mainly on providing favorable policies for foreign investors in the past, but now it will have to rely more on improving the investment environment. In 2017, 35,652 foreign invested companies were established, up 27.8 percent year-on-year, and actual use of foreign capital reached 877.56 billion yuan, increasing by 7.9 percent from a year earlier, according to the Ministry of Commerce. The ministry said that foreign invested companies accounted for less than 3 percent of the country's total, but created nearly half of the foreign trade, more than one fourth of the profits of the industrial enterprises above the designated size and one fifth of the tax revenue. They played an important role in promoting the development of domestic real economy and the supply-side structural reform, it noted. Huang cited a survey issued by the American Chamber of Commerce in China in January that said that 64 percent of 411 American companies doing businesses in China saw their revenues grow in 2017 - the rate continued to rise for the third consecutive year and was more than 58 percent in 2016 and 55 percent in 2015. To keep up the momentum, China will improve laws and regulations involved with intellectual property protection, credit-system building and market supervision, while enhancing alignment with international economic and trading rules, encouraging competition and opposing monopoly. Financial area will take more measures to further open up, including raising foreign equity caps in the banking, securities and insurance industries, accelerating the opening-up of the insurance industry, easing restrictions on the establishment of foreign financial institutions in China and expanding their business scope, and opening up more areas of cooperation between Chinese and foreign financial markets. At the same time, China will implement across the board the management system based on pre-establishment national treatment and negative list, expand openness in areas like telecom, healthcare, education and new energy vehicles, and aim to absorb more foreign capital in the country's central, western, and northeastern cities. DAMASCUS, April 17 (Xinhua) -- Syrian air defenses responded to a missile strike, believed to be carried out by Israel, that targeted two airbases in Syria after midnight Tuesday, according to the War Media, the media wing of the Syrian army. Six missiles targeted the Shayrat airbase in the central province of Homs and the Syrian air defenses intercepted most of them, said the report, adding that three other missiles targeted the Dumair airbase in the Dumair area in the eastern Qalamoun region north of Damascus and were all intercepted before reaching their targets. Meanwhile, the state news agency SANA reported the overnight attack in Homs, spelling no further details but added that the source of the missile strike is not yet known amid speculations that Israel is more likely to be behind the attack after the Pentagon denied carrying out operations on the aforementioned airbases. The Shayrat airbase was hit by a U.S. missile strike in April of 2017 over allegations of chemical weapons' use by the Syrian army in Idlib province in the same year. Pan Arab al-Mayadeen TV said the targeting of the Dumair airbase comes a day before a deal was to be reached for the evacuation of rebels from that area. The fresh attack comes as the U.S., France, and Britain launched a missile strike on Syrian military positions in the capital Damascus and in Homs last Saturday over the same allegations of chemical weapons' use by the Syrian government forces. Also, the Israeli warplanes fired missiles on the T-4 airbase in the eastern countryside of Homs on April 9, killing 14 soldiers, including Iranian fighters, according to the Syrian Observatory for Human Rights. Meanwhile, the Syrian state TV aired still image of what it said was the air defenses intercepting the missiles. No country has yet claimed the attack after midnight but U.S. officials recently said that Washington wasn't planning another strike after the missile strike on Saturday. A 13-year-old Lehigh Valley Academy Regional Charter School student used online gaming to threaten to shoot two other students at school, Colonial Regional police report. The threats via Playstation were made Sunday and were reported soon after to the Hanover Township, Northampton County, school's administration by a student who heard them, police said. Prior to school beginning Monday, authorities were notified and the boy was arrested at home after an investigation, police said. A charge of terroristic threats was approved by the Northampton County District Attorney's Office, police said. The boy is being held in the Northampton County Juvenile Justice Center in Easton, police said. Due to his age, police did not reveal his name. The two students who were named in the threats were notified, as were their families, police said. "No other students or staff are in any danger and the school is fully cooperating with the investigation," police said. The school day unfolded as normal, police said. School CEO Susan Mauser said police "ensured that the student in question was not on school grounds." "Throughout the day on Monday, LVA administrators worked with (the) Colonial Regional Police Department in gathering information and participating in the investigation," she said in an email. "Any student that was involved in this matter had an administrator contact home and speak to their parents. "As always, school safety is of the utmost priority here at Lehigh Valley Academy. At no time were students or staff in danger. "In the past two months, administrators and teachers have been educating students on if they hear or see something they need to say something. We are very proud of the students who came forward and assisted in ensuring that LVA remains a safe school." Tony Rhodin may be reached at arhodin@lehighvalleylive.com. Follow him on Twitter @TonyRhodin. Find lehighvalleylive.com on Facebook. Didi Chuxing, a major ride-sharing company from China that provides transportation services for hundreds of millions of users, on Monday was used to illustrate what is the "sharing economy" during a UN event in Geneva. Photo taken on Aug. 1, 2016 shows Apps of Didi and Uber on a cellphone of a citizen in Hangzhou, capital of east China's Zhejiang Province. [File photo: Xinhua] "Didi is so well known in China. In 2017, Didi completed 7.4 billion rides. It has 450 million users in China and in only five years Didi has become a huge platform," said Jianhua Li, Chief Development Officer of Didi Chuxing, at an event titled "Development Dimensions of the Sharing Economy -- Learnings from China". "We started as a taxi-connecting platform. In China, you can make a reservation through the Didi app," he said. "Development Dimensions of Digital Platforms," is the theme of the fourth E-Commerce Week organized by the United Nations Conference on Trade and Development (UNCTAD) which started Monday. It explores the growing role of digital platforms and concrete steps to harnessing these evolving technologies for sustainable development. UNCTAD said that it has been estimated that the so-called "sharing economy" will surge from 14 billion U.S. dollars in 2014 to 335 billion U.S. dollars by 2025, and the interest in its implications for development is also surging. "Most services relating to the 'sharing economy' use digital platforms to achieve a more efficient utilization ('sharing') of physical assets (e.g. house, car, physical space, machinery, clothes) or time," says UNCTAD in a statement. It can be applied to cooking, cleaning, or running errands, as well as knowledge and know-how. Often, sharing economy activities involve an exchange of money as well as the creation of some employment. "At Didi, we don't have cars, we connect people," said Li, noting that development is key to the company. "We have about 10,000 employed in the company who are engineers," said Li. "We think what we are doing is consistent with the goals of the United Nations and with the Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs)." "Some people are surprised that this platform has provided 21 million jobs opportunities," said Li. "We pay people weekly... so we can help reduce poverty and have a positive impact on the general economic environment." The sharing economy can meet "people's increasing demand for a better life" as well as the requirement for "a coordinated development among economy, society and nature," and thus can become a key force in China's economic growth and social development, according to an official from China Cyberspace Administration at the event. By Sara K. Satullo | For lehighvalleylive.com Talking parking in Bethlehem almost riles people up as much as talking garbage collection. The Bethlehem Parking Authority saw this firsthand in 2016 when its plans for a 626-space parking deck on New Street in South Bethlehem were met with backlash from some residents. Critics questioned the need for a new garage when there was an underutilized one blocks away and some felt it was a giveaway to the developer of an adjacent building. All of this sparked the authority to hire parking consultant Desman Design Management to conduct a comprehensive study of the parking demand in the city's two business districts. The report is meant to be a living document that evolves along with the city's two downtowns. After ten months of work, the authority released the draft study Thursday evening to a crowd of about 50 people in Bethlehem's Town Hall. Attendees were given a chance to hear a presentation of the full report and then weigh in on the draft recommendations. And it turns out people's reactions to the report were often colored by where they lived and where they were most often trying to find a parking spot. Don't Edit Possible parking shortage looming Desman solicited community input via an online survey, through meetings with business owners and developers as well as two public meetings. The firm also conducted real-time parking counts to study peak demand in both the North and South Side business districts. Currently, Bethlehem doesn't have a parking shortage, but looming development could put major stressors on available spaces and lead to one. Desman outlines the steps the authority should take to prevent that from happening. Two of the top recommendations are developing a plan for the decaying Walnut Street parking garage and raising on-street parking meter rates to turn over those spots quicker. The parking surveys found plenty of space available in city garages at peak times, but there's no incentive now to park in a garage and potentially walk further when the rates are both $1 an hour, said Tim Tracy, of Desman. Don't Edit lehighvalleylive.com file photo What about Walnut Street? The 777-space Walnut Street garage is more than 40-years-old and the parking authority will need to keep pumping money into it to keep it safe and open. Desman estimates it will cost $9 million to $11.5 million over the next 20 years to repair and maintain the deck and $20 million to tear it down and replace it. While demolishing Walnut Street and starting anew would put major short-term parking pressure on the historic district, it gives the city a shot at reimagining the concrete and brick monstrosity. A mixed-use redevelopment of the site could offer a continuation of Main Street's shopping and restaurants, Tracy said. It is very unusual today to ever dedicate an entire block in a city core to a parking deck, he said Don't Edit lehighvalleylive.com file photo Downtown Bethlehem Association President Neville Gardner said he would love to see the Walnut Street site reimagined into a mix of parking, offices, condos and even public restrooms. Gardner is owner of the adjacent Donegal Square and McCarthy's Red Stag Pub and Whisky Bar. The authority is at least five years out from taking any major action on Walnut Street, said Kevin Livingston, authority executive director. The authority is in the early stages of exploring whether it should repair or replace the garage, Livingston said. The next step is to conduct a site feasibility study to see how many spaces are needed and what can be done with Walnut Street, which spans the block from Guetter to New streets, he said. A major consideration will be where do Walnut Street's current 700-permit parkers go during construction, Tracy said. Don't Edit A call to raise parking rates While there's a perception that parking rates are too high, Desman is suggesting the authority up its on-street parking rates and fines. Currently, the authority charges $1 an hour for metered parking and $1 an hour to park in a garage. There is no incentive for someone to park in a deck and potentially walk further, even though there are many more spots in the garages, Tracy explained. And the authority's expired meter tickets only carry a $10 fine, which may lead someone parking all day decide to roll the dice and not pay for parking, Tracy said. A fine of $20 would be a bigger incentive to pay meter rates, he said. Raising the street parking rates will increase the turnover of those spots, something that is good for downtown businesses, he said. The authority doubled its meter rates from 50 cents an hour to a dollar back in 2012, but in 2016 it hiked garage rates to $1 as well. Any parking rate increases require the approval of Bethlehem City Council. The report recommends committing to a policy of regular rate increases to fund ongoing obligations and debt service. Desman compared Bethlehem with 13 similar municipalities and found that Bethlehem's parking rates are generally lower than the average rates in those municipalities. Don't Edit Don't Edit There's plenty of parking Desman completed parking counts in South Bethlehem and in Center City in both May and September to gauge usage. Parking demand on the South Side peaked in the morning with an overall demand of 36 percent, which jumps to 46 percent if the Ruins lots, owned by the Sands casino, are taken out of the equation. On-street parking was more highly sought in the neighborhood than off-street spaces. In Center City, demand was highest in the afternoon with 70 percent in use. While there were pockets of parking shortages at several areas of on-street metered spots, there typically was a spot available within one or two blocks. The online survey found that 68 percent of respondents preferred to park on the street, but almost 75 percent were willing to walk at least two blocks from their car to their destination. "People want to park fairly close to their destination," Tracy said. That reinforces the assumptions Desman made when studying the demand for the New Street garage. In its analysis, Desman found the Riverport parking garage was too far for many to walk. About 81 percent of respondents said they'd had difficulty finding parking at one time, which Tracy said was likely in those isolated areas of congestion. Don't Edit How to read the study yourself Here is the draft study Here is the presentation Don't Edit Rendering Courtesy Spillman Farm But this parking surplus could change. A Walnut Street replacement paired with the planned expansion of Hotel Bethlehem, which is building its own new 460-space, on-site parking garage, will be major stressors on the north side parking, the draft report states. On the other side of the Lehigh, the 626-space New Street garage and other authority lots can handle any parking demand new development creates for the west side of town. But on the east end of South Bethlehem planned developments are going to create a parking crunch. Don't Edit $37M Hotel Bethlehem expansion gets new life Don't Edit Courtesy USA Architects Development on the South Side Four projects on the horizon for the east side of South Bethlehem are expected to generate a peak weekday demand of 374 spaces, while there are only 80 public parking spaces available. One of Mayor Bob Donchez's top priorities is getting the Sands casino to sell or donate a parking lot at the corner of East Third and Polk streets. The authority wants to build a 585-space parking garage on the site to support the continued redevelopment of that end of Third Street. The first-phase of Greenway Commons, which includes 95 apartments, is expected to wrap up later this year. The full build-out of the project relies on the anticipated deck and Northampton Community College already has committed to 225-spaces. NCC is feeling a parking crunch because Greenway Commons is being built on former surface lots it used for student and staff parking. Around the corner, the former Pennsylvania Metallurgical building at 315 Columbia Street is being transformed into a high-tech pilot production plant, safety lab and design/consumer research studio for small but growing beverage and food companies. The for-profit business incubator is expected to eventually employ up to 50 workers. It's being led by the former CEO of Meow Mix and FreshPet Richard Thompson. Don't Edit Don't Edit Major question mark as plans move ahead for Bethlehem garage Don't Edit The report also notes the potential redevelopment of former St. Luke's space at East Third and Polk streets into 43 residential units and a parking lot at 404 E. Third Street into a restaurant. Both projects have an anticipated completion of 2019. Don't Edit What about all that free parking at SteelStacks? All of those free spots in the lots surrounding the SteelStacks campus are actually owned by the Sands casino and its partners and controlled by the Bethlehem Redevelopment Authority, the report states. When Desman did its parking counts, there were a max of 275 cars parking in the so-called Ruins lots. With an impending sale of the casino to the Alabama-based Wind Creek Hospitality, the future of those lots remains in limbo. Desman recommends the authority try to obtain control of those lots and potentially charge for parking there, something that some residents Thursday objected to. Don't Edit lehighvalleylive.com file photo Turn surface lots into new projects The report backs the idea of using authority-owned surface lots for urban infill development. A top contender is a 55-space lot on Broad Street, one of the largest developable parcels still available in the north side downtown. The city got three bids from interested developers back in 2014, but the authority ended up rejecting them because none were financially viable. Plans back in 2014 called for a mixed-use development with parking that could handle some Walnut Street overflow. In South Bethlehem, surface lots at Mechanic Street and Fourth and Buchanan streets offer prime opportunities for development. Don't Edit Sell more parking permits The authority should further oversell its off-street permit parking because they are underutilized. Desman suggests conducting peak surveys of those garages and lots to decide which ones can handle more monthly permit parkers. In that same vein, the report suggests adjusting the mix of transient and monthly spaces in off-street garages and lots. South Side study participants want the Mechanic Street lots to allow short-term metered parking. Don't Edit Don't Edit lehighvalleylive.com file photo Make parking less confusing Desman recommends that the city streamline the parking limits associated with its South Side meters to make it less confusing for customers. And it suggests offering 10-hour meters on West Broad Street, west of Fourth Avenue, to support businesses in the area. It also suggests extending some of its South Side meters because many people take advantage of the free parking in close proximity to the metered spaces. This recommendation was not enthusiastically received by some residents attending Thursday's meeting. Don't Edit Start saving The parking authority should start designating money in its annual budget for capital repairs, starting with $200,000. Don't Edit Improve customer service The report recommends the authority take several steps to improve its customer service. Some business owners reported feeling that the authority has done a bad job keeping them informed in the past, so the report outlines ways to keep them and the public in the loop. Some stakeholders Desman met with complained about the cleanliness of garages and the lack of consistent signage to parking facilities. The authority is already in the midst of selecting new wayfinding signs for its parking lots and garages and the report suggests more frequent cleaning of decks. Don't Edit What's next? Following Thursday's meeting, Desman is going to make adjustments to the draft parking study and then present it to the authority board. The input from stakeholders Thursday was a very important step in finalizing the recommendations, Tracy said. The authority board will vote to accept the report and then select recommendations it wishes to implement and vote on them as well. There is no timeline for this to take place, Livingston said Thursday. "The biggest thing is we want to do it right," Livingston said. "We want a fully-vetted final product." On Tuesday, Livingston said that the authority board is scheduled to review the study at its May 23 meeting, which begins at 4 p.m. in the authority's office. Members of the public are welcome to attend, he said. Don't Edit Parking by the numbers North side downtown Total: 2,431 public parking spots Metered spots on-street: 444 Three parking garages and Broad Street lot: 1,805 Don't Edit Don't Edit Sara K. Satullo | For lehighvalleylive.com South Side Total: 2,667 spaces 1,464 are owned/controlled by the authority 1,158 are owned by the Sands and in the ruins lots by SteelStacks. 45 are in Lehigh University's Farrington Square Garage. Metered spots on-street: 791 1,679 spaces in 14 surface lots Two garages: 197 spaces Note that these figures do not include the 626-space New Street garage, which opened after the parking analysis was completed. Don't Edit Sara K. Satullo may be reached at ssatullo@lehighvalleylive.com. Follow her on Twitter @sarasatullo and Facebook. Find lehighvalleylive.com on Facebook. U.S. Rep. Charlie Dent announced Tuesday morning he is resigning. The moderate Republican representing Lehigh Valley residents in Pennsylvania's 15th Congressional District said he will be stepping down "in the coming weeks," well before his term expires at year's end. He plans to leave before the end of May, a spokesman said. Dent had announced last October he would not seek re-election to an eighth two-year term. A special election will be scheduled once Gov. Tom Wolf gets an official resignation notice with a date, Wolf said in a news release. Political parties will nominate candidates to finish the rest of Dent's term. The 15th District covers Lehigh and part of Northampton counties. The 17th District covers the rest of Northampton County and is represented by U.S. Rep. Matt Cartwright, a Democrat. The Pennsylvania Supreme Court this year redrew district boundaries, putting all of Lehigh and Northampton counties into a new 7th Congressional District. Six Democrats and two Republicans are on the May 15 primary election ballot for the 7th District seat. Dent opened his latest term saying he was willing to work with President Donald Trump, a fellow Republican, when he thought the president was right but would criticize him when necessary. He didn't vote for Trump, backing instead former CIA officer Evan McMullin. Dent criticized Trump's use of Twitter to announce policies, including the president's announcement last July of a ban on transgender people in the military. He also denounced the president's alleged vulgar reference to developing countries in January. Dent broke with his party, as well, voting last May against a failed attempt to dismantle Obamacare. On Friday, Dent helped to introduce bipartisan legislation aimed at protecting the ongoing investigation by Special Counsel Robert Mueller into Russian influence in the 2016 presidential election and any involvement on the part of the Trump campaign. "The American government was designed to engender temperance and withstand the headwinds of caprice," Dent said in a statement. "I'm proud to lead this bipartisan effort in the House of Representatives that will ensure the Special Counsel can complete his work and that faith in our most fundamental democratic processes is not further eroded." Born and raised in Allentown, Dent was first elected to the U.S. House of Representatives in 2004. He succeeded now-U.S. Sen. Pat Toomey, a Republican who challenged then-incumbent U.S. Sen. Arlen Specter rather than seek re-election to the House. Dent previously served as a state senator. Wolf, a Democrat, thanked Dent for his service. "Charlie Dent is a voice of reason and civility that breaks through the chaos and partisanship of Washington and he will be missed," Wolf said in a statement. "While we do not agree on everything, Charlie has always been approachable, and he has always put his constituents above partisan politics. I am proud to have worked with Representative Dent to make improvements in the Lehigh Valley and advance our constituents' shared interests in Washington." Here is Dent's entire statement Tuesday on his impending departure from Congress: "After discussions with my family and careful reflection, I have decided to leave Congress in the coming weeks. Serving the people of the 15th Congressional district has been a tremendous responsibility and the privilege of a lifetime, and I am honored by the trust that so many of my constituents placed in me to represent them in Washington. Actively engaging in the legislative and political process presents many challenges, and in so doing, I believe I have had a positive impact on people's lives and made a difference in Congress. "I am especially proud of the work I have done to give voice to the sensible center in our country that is often overlooked or ignored. It is my intention to continue to aggressively advocate for responsible governance and pragmatic solutions in the coming years." Kurt Bresswein may be reached at kbresswein@lehighvalleylive.com. Follow him on Twitter @KurtBresswein and Facebook. Find lehighvalleylive.com on Facebook. One person was killed Tuesday when a Southwest Airlines flight that took off from New York's LaGuardia Airport made an emergency landing in Philadelphia with substantial damage to one of its engines, according to officials and reports. "We do have information there was one fatality," NTSB Chairman Robert Sumwalt said. No further details on the death were provided. Passenger Marty Martinez shared photos on Facebook that shows a giant hole torn in one of the engines and passengers with oxygen masks covering their faces. Several photos show a window that Martinez said was blown open. Seven other people were treated at the scene for minor injuries, Philadelphia police said. Video from 6abc.com showed flight 1380 parked in a remote part of a runway with liquid trailing the plane. Multiple fire trucks and other emergency vehicles were also on the scene. Passenger Amanda Bourman of New York said she saw emergency medical workers using a defibrillator to help a woman who was taken off the plane after it landed. Bourman said she was seated near the back of the plane and was asleep when she heard a loud noise. She said the plane was fairly quiet because everyone was wearing an oxygen mask, while some passengers were in tears and others shouted words of encouragement. The FAA said that the plane landed after the crew reported damage to one of the engines, along with the fuselage and at least one window. A Southwest Airlines plane sits on the runway at the Philadelphia International Airport after it made an emergency landing in Philadelphia, on Tuesday, April 17, 2018. In an emailed statement, Southwest said the 143 passengers and five crew members aboard the Boeing 737 were being brought to to the terminal. Passengers walked off the plane on the tarmac at the airport. The flight left LaGuardia at 10:27 a.m. and touched down in Philadelphia at 11:23 a.m. It was scheduled to arrive at Love Field in Dallas at 1:45 p.m. Central Daylight Time. Tracking data from FlightAware.com shows the flight was heading west over New York's southern tier when it abruptly turned toward Philadelphia. A ground stop issued at the airport was lifted at 1:45 p.m. If this ends up being the opening scene to Final Destination 13, I'm going to be really salty. #Flight1380 pic.twitter.com/feK7cPZS70 Matt Tranchin (@mtranchin) April 17, 2018 The Associated Press contributed to this report. Jeff Goldman may be reached at jeff_goldman@njadvancemedia.com. Follow him on Twitter @JeffSGoldman. Find NJ.com on Facebook. Let's get these points out of the way: Yes, we make some money from legal advertisements such as meeting notices that the Town of Phillipsburg is required by law to publish in a newspaper of record. And yes, we like making money because we're a business. And yes, our argument that Phillipsburg is wrong in deciding to not advertise with us appears inherently self-serving. That said, is this really the level of petulance to which a local governing body will sink? Town council has placed a resolution on Tuesday night's meeting agenda that would strip The Express-Times from being the newspaper of record for the town. The reason: We don't attend their meetings and, as one council member explained, "it seems appropriate to move all our announcements to a paper capable of keeping up with the progress we are making." We write about everything that matters in town and like a lot of papers around the country we no longer have the resources to send a reporter to every council meeting. But when there's news, we're in town. If the resolution passes, the town will instead advertise about vital government activity in The Morning Call in Allentown and The Star-Gazette in Hackettstown, which is owned by the same company that owns The Express-Times. Both are fine publications, to be sure. We're not criticizing them. The Express-Times wouldn't really have a case other than our own financial interest if either of these publications actually had a footprint in Phillipsburg or actually were "capable of keeping up with the progress" Phillipsburg is apparently making. They don't have a footprint, and they are either incapable or disinterested. That's the problem. Residents in and around Allentown read The Morning Call. Residents in and around Hackettstown read The Star-Gazette. Phillipsburg is neither in nor around either town. The Express-Times -- contrary to what's said in the shoddy council resolution - is the paper of record in Phillipsburg. The latest circulation figures show 2,783 daily subscribers to The Express-Times in Phillipsburg compared to 156 who subscribe to The Morning Call. As for The Star-Gazette, it has nine subscribers in Phillipsburg. That's not a typo. There are more Easton Red Rovers fans in Phillipsburg than subscribers to what will become the town's papers of record. The real reason behind the move is that council doesn't like what we write about them so they're going to stick it to us at the expense of keeping their constituents informed of government business. The latest story that apparently caused these Stateliners to draw the line was a report on how council allegedly retaliated against the town's recreation director, Kelly Post-Sheedy. She posted a Facebook comment defending her friend against attacks last year from a Republican slate of council candidates. The friend was Democratic Mayor Stephen Ellis' confidential aide. The attack, fair game as far as we're concerned, was that the aide got an 18-percent raise for political reasons. But when those same candidates went on to win the election and later take their seats on council this year, they didn't forget Post-Sheedy's Facebook comment and cut her own salary from $67,000 to $50,000, according to a lawsuit Post-Sheedy filed two weeks after she quit her job. The defendants - the town, Council President Robert Fulper, Councilwoman Danielle DeGerolamo and Councilman Frank McVey - say the suit is baseless. They, of course, would never practice political retaliation. That's now become harder to believe given that they're about to ax legal advertising and the posting of public notices in The Express-Times. Phillipsburg residents read The Express-Times. Some love it and many hate it, but The Express-Times is their paper. Stripping legal ads out of it does all town residents a disservice and will allow a council that has obvious problems owning up to its actions to further insulate themselves from much-needed scrutiny. The Phillipsburg government is considering removing official notices of its actions from The Express-Times, the most-circulated newspaper in town, according to a resolution up for a vote Tuesday. Officials say it is because they are unhappy with news coverage of the town, or rather their perceived lack of it. But their solution is to publish notices in newspapers with far fewer subscribers in town. Every local government in the state is required to print public notices of ordinances, meetings, budgets and other activity in a designated newspaper of record, which historically has been The Express-Times, an affiliate of lehighvalleylive.com. The resolution before the Phillipsburg Town Council would designate the weekly Hackettstown Star-Gazette and The Morning Call of Allentown as the town's papers of record, with notices forwarded to The Express-Times and WFMZ-TV. There are 11,561 households in Phillipsburg, according to Express-Times circulation data. The Express-Times daily circulation is 2,783, and 3,095 on Sundays. For comparison: The Morning Call's daily Phillipsburg circulation is 156, and 165 on Sundays. The Star-Gazette's circulation? Nine. Richard Vezza, an executive with The Express-Times parent company, said the company will be exploring legal options. "All I can say is that there are very strict legal guidelines as to what paper must be used to avoid just this situation," he said. "We will be consulting our attorneys. No matter what the outcome we will not be intimidated." Council President Robert Fulper criticized the coverage of Phillipsburg when asked about the resolution, asking why more council activities don't make headlines and why a reporter doesn't attend council meetings. "If The Express-Times does not possess the staff to provide the appropriate coverage to the town of Phillipsburg, why wouldn't we consider a change?" he said in a text message. When asked to clarify his reasoning, he denied that it was coverage-based and said to say so would be "spin," "unprofessional" and "untruthful." (MORE: Phillipsburg-area news) Fulper's colleague in the Republican council majority and 2017 running mate, Danielle DeGerolomo, said it is based on news reporting, or a perceived lack of it. "It seems appropriate to move all our announcements and notifications to a paper capable of keeping up with the progress we are making," she said in a message on Twitter. "If other media outlets are willing to cover Phillipsburg, why wouldn't we try to do provide that all in one place for our community?" she said. Josh Davis, a Democrat on the council minority, said he was surprised to see the resolution on Tuesday's agenda. "I don't understand why" the town is considering this, he said. After looking at circulation numbers, he said it "makes more sense to stick with" The Express-Times. The Morning Call is a competitor with The Express-Times. When asked about the Call's coverage of the town, Fulper said another councilman, Frank McVey, is "in active discussion" with the newspaper. McVey did not return a message on Twitter seeking comment. The Star-Gazette is a weekly and part of New Jersey Advance Media, along with The Express-Times, lehighvalleylive.com and nj.com. Public notices published in that paper would still appear on both websites, though not in The Express-Times. Steve Novak may be reached at snovak@lehighvalleylive.com. Follow him on Twitter @type2supernovak and Facebook. Find lehighvalleylive.com on Facebook. The leader of a white supremacist group whose Phillipsburg apartment was raided by government agents one year ago will plead guilty to one charge in the drug- and gun-running case, according to a plea agreement filed in federal court. Joshua Steever, founder of the Aryan Strikeforce, was among five men charged last year -- three of them from the Lehigh Valley -- after federal agents infiltrated the group, which allegedly sought to amass weapons and training for a race war. The investigation concluded in April 2017, when FBI agents stormed Steever's apartment in the 400 block of South Main Street in Phillipsburg. Josh "Hatchet" Steever, who lived in a South Main Street apartment in Phillipsburg, founded the Aryan Strikeforce. (Facebook screenshot) Arrested were Steever, strike force President Henry Lambert Baird, 49, of Allentown; Sergeant-at-arms Connor Drew Dykes, 20, of Silver Spring, Maryland; Jacob Mark "Boots" Robards, 40, of Bethlehem; and Justin Daniel "Rocko" Lough, 26, of Waynesboro, Virginia. They were indicted on charges of conspiracy to defraud the U.S., racketeering, money laundering, dealing with unregistered interstate commerce, transfer of machine gun parts and firearms by convicted felons, and two counts of conspiracy to distribute a controlled substance. Under the plea agreement dated March 30, Steever will admit to conspiracy to distribute 500 grams or more of methamphetamine. The crime carries a minimum sentence of 10 years in prison, and a maximum possible sentence of life. Steever's plea hearing is scheduled for April 24 at the federal courthouse in Williamsport. Dykes, the Aryan Strikeforce's sergeant-at-arms from Maryland, took the same plea, according to a PennLive.com report. Lough, of Virginia, seeks dismissal of the case, accusing the government of setting them up to commit crimes. The mission of the Aryan Strikeforce -- according to a screed on its now-defunct website -- involved "the preservation of our race, heritage, and our way of life." The Southern Poverty Law Center has tracked their activity for at least two years through online postings, and said the strike force strived to be a unifying force among white supremacist factions. Agents posed as suppliers of drugs and firearms starting in late 2016. On at least four occasions, the Aryan Strikeforce allegedly participated in drug- and gun-running operations with the undercover agents. The strike force was told they could make money for their own weapons purchases if they helped with logistics and served as "muscle" -- or security -- during the transport of contraband that included up to 16 pounds of meth and parts for AR-15 rifles. One agent allegedly gave them 16 pounds of simulated meth in a Jan. 17, 2017, meeting in Tannersville, where they also got $4,000 in cash that they exchanged in a Stroudsburg Target store for Visa gift cards. Another 16 pounds of meth was allegedly delivered by an undercover officer March 12, for which they got $3,000 in a meeting in Hagerstown, Md. They met at least twice in the prior two months in Harrisburg and received weapons parts, according to the indictment. The group is also accused of plotting to bomb a 2016 white supremacist rally in Harrisburg with the intent to kill counter-protesters. One strike force member had a life-threatening illness and was willing to blow himself up with an explosive that could be concealed in an oxygen bottle he carried, the government said in a brief this year, citing cooperating witnesses. The rally did happen, but there was no explosion. In December 2016, Steever and Baird, the strike force president, allegedly got into a brawl outside Spanky's East, a strip club in Wilson Borough. Federal prosecutors say Steever was thrown out after allegedly calling a group of black men at the bar a racial epithet, then pulled a knife on the men as they exited. Steever, who was wearing a strike force jacket, was bludgeoned with a rock. No charges were filed in that incident. Steve Novak may be reached at snovak@lehighvalleylive.com. Follow him on Twitter @type2supernovak and Facebook. Find lehighvalleylive.com on Facebook. Stock Market News ABF first-half little changed as sugar decline offsets Primark growth 17-04-2018 07:04 Stock News headlines are gathered from financial news sources around the web. Views and opinions on each item are from their respective authors and website. They are not opinions of LiveCharts.co.uk Stock Market News Advent to buy Sanofi's European generics business for 1.9bn 17-04-2018 10:10 Stock News headlines are gathered from financial news sources around the web. Views and opinions on each item are from their respective authors and website. They are not opinions of LiveCharts.co.uk Stock Market News Europe open: Stocks move higher despite losses in Asian trading 17-04-2018 10:59 Stock News headlines are gathered from financial news sources around the web. Views and opinions on each item are from their respective authors and website. They are not opinions of LiveCharts.co.uk China hopes the United States will create a fair, just, and stable legal and policy environment for Chinese companies, said a statement published by the Chinese Ministry of Commerce on their official website. View of ZTE Corporate Center (Shanghai) in Shanghai [File Photo: IC] The statement is in response to a US ban on leading Chinese smartphone maker ZTE. A spokesperson said in the statement that the Chinese government always asks Chinese companies to abide by local laws and regulations at the overseas investment destination. ZTE has launched cooperation with hundreds of American companies and offered tens of thousands of jobs to local residents. The Ministry of Commerce will closely follow the latest development and is ready to take necessary measures to protect the legal rights of Chinese companies. ZTE responded on Tuesday morning that the company is assessing the full range of potential implications that this event has on the company and is communicating with relevant parties proactively in order to respond accordingly. The US Department of Commerce on Monday banned US companies from selling components to ZTE for seven years, which violated the terms of a deal made after the U.S. alleged that ZTE skirted sanctions against North Korea and Iran. Last year the Commerce Department added ZTE on the Entity List under the Export Administration Regulations, making it difficult for ZTE to acquire U.S. products such as chips and software. As of 2017, ZTE has 14 offices and six research centers in the United States, with 80 percent of the 350 staff at these facilities being Americans. In 1978, the 11th Central Committee of the Communist Party of China (CPC) convened its 3rd Plenary Session, launching a new journey of Chinas reform and opening up to outside world. Forty years on, China has transformed from a planned economy to a market economy, from a big rice pot system to a family contract responsibility system, from the initial 4 Special Economic Zones to 14 coastal cities testing the reform and opening policies, and to today 11 Free-Trade Zones as piloted by Shanghai, from crossing the river by feeling the stones to comprehensive economic, political, cultural and social reform, China has trail-blazed an unprecedented path of socialism with Chinese characteristics which has brought common prosperity to over 1.3 billion Chinese people. Chinas reform and opening up has created a development miracle. After four decades of relentless efforts, the CPC has led the Chinese people to embark upon a path of national development, transforming China from what was once ridiculed as the "sick man of East Asia" to the world's second largest economy, the largest industrial producer, the largest trader of goods, and the largest holder of foreign exchange reserve.From 1978 to 2017, Chinas GDP has averaged 9.5% annual growth rate in comparable prices and Chinas total and per capita GDP has soared from 216.8 billion US dollars and 227 dollars to 12.7 trillion dollars and nearly 9,000 dollars respectively. In 2010, it was the first time in modern history that China surpassed Japan in total GDP and became the second largest economy in the world. By 2014, Chinas GDP doubled Japans, and it is currently over 2.5 times of the Japanese economy. The city of Shenzhen, once a small fishing village, has surpassed Taiwan, China in GDP, which was once known as one of the Four Asian Tigers. Over the past 40 years, the Chinese people have moved from subsistence to affluence, and from poverty to moderate prosperity. More than 700 million poor Chinese population have been lifted out of poverty, contributing to over 70% of global poverty reduction efforts. Today, Chinas internet users have reached 772 million, cellphone users have exceeded 1.3 billion. Life expectancy of over 1.3 billion Chinese population has exceeded 76 years. Chinas reform and opening up has been benefiting the whole world. Since the 2008 international financial crisis, China has been one of the main engines to drive the global economy by contributing an average of over 30% to world economic growth. Over the past 40 years, Chinas foreign trade, in US dollars, has registered an annual growth rate of 14.5%. Today, China is the No.1 trading partner with over 100 countries worldwide, including the United States, Russia, Japan, South Africa and most of the European countries. Since 2014, China has maintained an annual FDI of over 100 billion dollars, and has registered over 120 million person times of overseas trips each year, becoming the most important sources of FDI and international tourists. Chinese tourists have become the major consumptive power. In the next 5 years, China will import 8 trillion dollars of goods, invest over 750 billion dollars abroad, and is expected to have over 650 million tourists out of China. A more open, prosperous, stable and fast growing China will make greater contributions to and create more opportunities for common prosperity of the world China used to be a victim of closing doors and false pride. During the Tang, Song and Ming dynasties, which span across a millennium from 600-1600 A.D., China had maintained an economy half of the size of the whole world. But as the later Qing dynasty moved down the path of self-complacency and seclusion, China went into steep decline and eventually fell into semi-colony by the West with their naval fleet and cannons, which ironically relied on the ancient Chinese inventions of compass and gunpowder. After untold sufferings and barbaric economic looting from the two Opium Wars of 1840 and 1856, the Sino-Japanese War of 1894, and Japanese Aggression War during the World War II, China was left in an extremely weak and dire state with its sovereignty gravely encroached, and peoples lives in complete ruin. In 1949, the Peoples Republic of China was founded. But the West, preoccupied by their geopolitical stakes and the Cold War mentality, instituted a complete political, economic and military blockade against the new China, forcing China to once again close its doors and seek development on its own strength. After nearly 30 years of hard work, Chinas per capita GDP has only increased to merely 227 dollars from less than 100 dollars. It was so fortunate for the Chinese people that China in 1978, under the leadership of the CPC with Comrade Deng Xiaoping at its core, seized the major historical opportunity of global industrial structural adjustment. Through constant reform and opening up, China has successfully shaken off poverty and realized sustained rapid development. At the very beginning, the CPC, the government and the people of China had serious concerns and fierce ideological conflicts on whether such a poor China, being not familiar with the rules of the market economy written by the West, should open its market to strong capitalist powers such as the United States, Europe and Japan for free trade and fair competition. Nevertheless, the CPC led by Comrade Deng Xiaoping did not let the fear hold them back, but have stepped up with extraordinary wisdom, resolute courage, and strong political commitment to pursue reform and opening up. China started with 4 pilot Special Economic Zones to get ourselves used to the international market, and then gradually expanded its reform and opening up to 14 coastal cities. In 2000, China took a further bold step to join the WTO, opening up the whole country and fully embracing the economic globalization. Indeed, China has paid very high price to learn, but get developed and stronger. Over the past 25 years, China has maintained No.1 in developing countries in terms of inbound foreign investment. In the past 5 years, the average annual inbound foreign investment has exceeded 120 billion dollars. In the past 40 years, China has attracted 522,700 investors from foreign countries and regions, with registered capitalization of 3.65 trillion dollars. Of course, foreign investors have earned huge profit thanks to Chinas huge market and tremendous development achievements. And China is indeed thankful for those international investors as well, because they have brought to China advanced economic development knowledge, capital, management expertise, and helped train millions of management and professional experts and large numbers of skilled workers, and directly transferred to China technologies and know-how. They have indeed made indelible contributions to Chinas economic and social development. Today, foreign businesses account for nearly 50% of Chinas total import and export. They are contributing to 25% of Chinas national industrial output, 20% of national tax payment, and 10% of jobs creation. That said, Chinas sustained and rapid development has also benefited foreign investors through win-win cooperation for common development. China has learned a lot from its reform and opening up. And the following four revelations and inspirations are particularly important. First, China has always remained committed to the leadership of the CPC. Second, China has always remained committed to socialism with Chinese characteristics. Third, China has always remained committed to economic development as its central task. Fourth, China has always remained committed to peaceful development. Remaining committed to the leadership of the CPC is the natural choice of the Chinese history and people. The CPC with 90 million members always upholds a people-centered approach and is committed to building the Party for the public, exercising power for the people, and serving the people whole-heartedly. The CPC focuses on meeting the aspiration of the people for a better life and has ensured strong political support and long-term social stability for Chinas pursuit of rapid development. Remaining committed to socialism with Chinese characteristics is the inevitable path to Chinas success. The fundamental difference between socialism and capitalism is whether development achievements are shared by all or by just a few. The CPC and the Chinese people have chosen to share all the achievements by all. Socialism with Chinese characteristics is a path that best suits Chinas national conditions, history and culture. China did not copy the development model of other countries, but fully mobilized the strength and creativity of the Chinese people to become both the contributors and beneficiary of Chinas national development for common prosperity. Remaining committed to economic development as our central task is the core essence of Chinas success. It is our strong belief that poverty is the only enemy in China and the world. Our paramount historical mission is to develop the economy, improve peoples livelihood and bring a better life to all the people. Over the past 40 years, the CPC has always upheld development as the number one priority of governance, and has fully concentrated on development, accomplishing a miracle in the world history of poverty reduction. Remaining committed to peaceful development is the important precondition to Chinas success. China attaches great importance to peace and harmony, and has always earnestly pursued peaceful development and an independent foreign policy of peace. Chinas firm commitment to domestic stability and world peace has enabled a favorable environment for Chinas development. In October 2017, the CPC convened its 19th National Congress. This historic Congress mapped out a new blueprint for the realization of the Chinese Dream of the great rejuvenation of the Chinese nation. The Congress declared that socialism with Chinese characteristics has entered a new era, and resolved that: by 2020, China will fully achieve moderate prosperity in all respects across its entire 1.4 billion population and completely eradicate poverty; by 2035, China will basically achieve socialist modernization with per capita GDP reaching 30,000 dollars; by mid-21st century, China will fully develop into a great modern socialist country that is prosperous, strong, democratic, culturally advanced, harmonious, and beautiful. Forty years of practice has proven that, to uphold socialism with Chinese characteristics has been the right choice to achieve success. Chinas experience has also offered inspiration and more choice for other developing countries to explore development path suitable to their national conditions for self-sustainable development. Looking forward, China is full of confidence for its future. China will take further steps to comprehensively deepen reform and opening up. Domestically, China will continue to uphold the Five Development Concepts, namely innovation, coordination, green, openness and sharing, and will remain committed to peaceful and high quality development. Internationally, China will continue to firmly hold high the banner of peace, development, cooperation and win-win, follow the principle of planning together, building together and sharing together, join the efforts of the global community to promote the Belt and Road constructions, and work together to pursue a new type of international relations featuring mutual respect, fairness, justice, and win-win cooperation and build a community with shared future for mankind, making new and greater contributions to a more fair and just international order and a more prosperous, stable and beautiful world. The author is Ambassador of China to South Africa People find it ironic that an ardent defender of free and open markets would threaten to close the door of opportunity for millions of Americans who want to tap into the massive Chinese consumer market. In an opinion piece in The Wall Street Journal last week, Jack Ma, founder and chairman of Alibaba, wrote that he is struggling to understand why waging a trade war with China would be a good thing for the American economy, particularly at a time when China is shifting its economy from the worlds largest exporter to the worlds largest consumer. With average urban income growing at almost double digits and an emerging middle class of 300 million, Chinese consumers are already driving massive demand for imports from all over the world, Ma said, who then added that the country plans to import $8 trillion of goods over the next five years, citing the Chinese governments prediction. As Ma pointed out, the China-U.S. relationship has, on the whole, been very good to both sides, and as many others have said, waging a trade war with China goes against reason. It is therefore ironic that the U.S. administration is waging a trade war, Ma said. Users on Chinese social media were quick to praise the Chinese businessman for standing up to the U.S. administrations protectionism. This is how a Chinese entrepreneur should act! said one popular comment on Chinese social media, which received over 10.3 thousand likes at the time of writing. But the big question remains: Is America going to forfeit the opportunity called China? Unfortunately, the answer to that question could be yes. There are far too many Americans who believe the us versus them narrative that puts America at the center of the world, and blame China for the problems of America. The ugly truth is that many Americans understanding of China is biased and limited, made worse by an effort to try to demonize China and create fear and paranoia about Chinas risea fact acknowledged even by Michael Swaine, a senior associate at the Washington-based think tank Carnegie Endowment for International Peace, who warned about an unbalanced demonization effort underway against China that spans agencies, news organizations, and belief tanks. For example, a local newspaper in the U.S. recently published a letter to the editor that attempted to defend free speech by urging the city of Newton in the Greater Boston area to firmly reject communist propaganda after it was discovered that a stand of newspapers included Peoples Daily, which, the author claimed, is one hundred percent communist propaganda, citing Wikipedia, before parroting the same old sound bites that Chinas growing influence is a threat. Actually, Peoples Daily, the official newspaper of the Central Committee of the Communist Party of China, has transformed a lot since its founding 70 years ago, having developed into a media group consisting of 29 publications in addition to the newspaper that started in 1948. Reaching 700 million people on a daily basis, Peoples Daily is one of the worlds largest media groups. And contrary to popular belief, its global reach is not intended to spread communist propaganda, but to help connect China and the world and help people better understand China, a country that presents enormous opportunities for the world. The level of prejudice and ignorance among some Americans about Chinathe second largest economy and the biggest trader in the world, is alarming to say the least. Too many Americans have a dangerously out-of-date view of China and their understanding of China and its evolving role in the world needs to advance with the times. This is not to say that the bilateral relationship is perfect. Both sides acknowledge problems in trade that need to be resolved, and the two sides should work together to enhance the bilateral relationship rather than engage in a mutually destructive trade war. But misunderstanding and miscalculation can lead to disaster. Americans should not let outdated bias cloud the view and, in the end, block them from enjoying the benefits of cooperation with China. >>>Read More: Letter to the Editor: The consequences of US-China trade war Interview with Bright Owusu-Amofah, CEO of Appolonia City What is the concept of mixed-use development? What are the challenges that mixed-use development faces in Africa? In a number of African countries, there is a lack of planning, especially in the capital cities, from Accra to Nairobi to Lagos, and this causes heavy traffic. People migrate from the living areas to the working areas in the mornings and the same thing happens after working hours. Mixed-use is a concept where you have a live, work, and play environment that connects and enhances all those facets. It works very well in Africa simply because of the lack of planning and the distance that people need to travel. We need to start looking at how we plan our developments so that people can walk or cycle to work or shopping. It is quite new and makes our development quite unique. We came into a market where there were a lot of residential developers. Sometimes, we even find that it is a bit difficult to explain what exactly we do because they are comparing what makes us different from other residential developers. Most of what these other developers do is just build residential projects and they are not really tackling the use or the need or the wider problem in the market. If you build a nice residential community, people still have to leave it and take their cars to go and buy bread or travel two or three hours to get to their office. In Accra for example, most people leave their homes at 5 am to get to their office by 8 or 9 am. For us, this is not the right way of doing things, nor is it sustainable. We have planned 2,325 acres of land into a satellite city which will have various uses. There will be social infrastructure such as schools, clinics, and hospitals within the same vicinity, a business park, industrial park, and both residential and commercial areas. The commercial areas in Appolonia will become the next Airport City. Why is mixed-use development not booming all over Africa? What are the challenges in Africa to create more developments of this kind? We have very good planning, investment, and infrastructure, and most importantly, urban planning and enforcement which will be one of our hallmarks to make sure that we maintain a certain standard. Your traditional African developers tend to be quite small. Most developers are doing on the average ten units a year with land banks of 20 to 50 acres. There are very few that are doing the level of development and scale that we at Rendeavour have. In other markets, like South Africa and Europe, you tend to see redevelopment of the existing CBD areas, but these tend to be a bit difficult in existing cities in sub-Saharan Africa. You need skill, a large piece of contiguous land, and you need capital to develop. All of these factors, if you know Africa quite well, mean that large-scale projects are not necessarily the easiest to take on here. The current system does not make it easy to acquire land. The macroeconomic and financing regime does not make it easy to obtain cheap financing. Finally, there is the market itself. Not many businesses are going into this area, which frankly, we need to start considering. Another way to potentially address this is to start having PPPs with the government, where the government can provide the land and provide developers with a commitment to put in the infrastructure. They do the planning and developers can just come in to partner with government and develop top structures. In the absence of that, private companies like Rendeavour are the ones who need to step in and support the process. As Africa continues to develop there is an increasing need to provide these kinds of models. What is the social impact of these mixed-use projects in Africa? There is a significant social impact. In a project such as ours, each project requires typically about $250 million investment in the infrastructure alone. Comparing this to other sectors such as oil and gas and other extractive industries, traditionally, these investments are geared towards exporting African commodities. In oil and gas, you are taking oil out of the ground. With gold or diamonds, you are taking something out of the ground. Whereas with this type of development, you are actually putting infrastructure on the ground. Roads you cannot take away. Putting electricity in Appolonia, we have built a substation to distribute power, which you cannot take away. Putting in water, which is a basic requirement, you cannot take that way. And putting in housing, which is addressing the social need, cannot be taken away. These projects typically create a lot of jobs. Our developments easily catalyse a further 1 to 2 billion dollars in investment. In Kenya, for example, we have a development called Tatu City where we have attracted the likes of Unilever. Unilever is now about to build its largest operations and distribution center in Kenya and they will potentially spend millions of dollars. Appolonia has attracted the Total company and they will fill our service stations which will each cost not less than 3 or 4 million dollars. By providing them with the land, they are spending about 5 million dollars in FDI, job creation, while creating a service to fulfill an ever present need. Because of the nature of our development, we always form a very strong partnership with the surrounding communities and original land owners. One of the key things that we make sure we instill in all of our contracts is local content. All of the first jobs created go back to the surrounding community. The value that the projects bring to the uplift immediately translates to all the surrounding land. Communities around us have seen their lands appreciate in excess of 100%. The communities benefit through job creation and more disposable income that they have to invest in more social infrastructure. We develop schools, hospitals, clinics, all these aggregate in order to enhance social needs in the communities as a whole. Can you describe the group itself? Which countries are you present in? What differentiates you from other groups and what are your competitive advantages? I am the CEO of Appolonia Development Company. Our parent company is Rendeavour, which is the largest urban land developer in Sub-Saharan Africa. We have a portfolio of seven projects across five jurisdictions, Ghana, Nigeria, DRC, Kenya, and Zambia. We have in excess of 30,000 acres of land that have been acquired and re-zoned into mixed-use developments. We are unique in that we have yet to see any company in Sub-Saharan Africa that is doing what we are doing on the scale with which we do it. We are helping to address and solve a situation that exists in a number of African countries, which is lack of planning and urban infrastructure. Across most of our jurisdictions, we saw this and we realised the opportunity. As much as there is a commercial element to it, our shareholders are the sort of people who are very committed to Africa and want to see that whatever investment or dollar they are spending will translate into addressing the social needs of the countries in which we operate.. We are trying to help plan these cities in partnership with the jurisdictions and governments we operate in. We also hope this model can be replicated in other parts of the countries where we are present. What stage is Appolonia in today in 2018? What is available to the public? The project itself started with the acquisition process, going through extensive due diligence in 2012. By mid-2014, we completed the planning process, got all the necessary approvals, and fulfilled the conditions precedent to be able to draw down on funding, the key one being land title. So, we now have title on the entire piece of land. Since then, we have invested heavily in our urban infrastructure. Today, we have brought power from 18 km via high tension cables, and have built a substation for distribution. We have connected the site to water, which we bought underground from 14 km away which will be distributed to our residents. Currently, we are rolling out all the internal infrastructure. Two years ago, we started coming up with products for the market. For instance, we have a development called Nova Ridge, which is a gated community concept. These are quite popular in Africa because they provide a sense of security, living in an environment with likeminded neighbours, and a good level of development and planning control. You will not wake up one day and see a church right next to you with shouting and drumming and dancing 24 hours a day. We are also selling plots of land from 350 m to 1,000 m. It is actually our most popular product to date, and we have sold over 350 plots. We also have homes for middle income customers which retail from about $80,000 to $150,000. Today, there are 70 units under various levels of completion. Last year, we attracted a British investor who bought about 30 of these units. We have sufficient interest this year from foreign investors that are looking to invest in housing. We have been able to attract key tenants that are coming into the park, such as a major Greek company called Alusynco that manufactures aluminum products like windows, balustrades and doors, We have Total, Puma Energy, another local player called Crown House, and many more. The development is beginning to take on a life of its own. We are in the advanced stages of discussions with Association of Ghana Industries (AGI), which is the largest and major body for industry in the country. We partnered with them on the industrial park to attract their members as well and we have signed an MOU with them to move this forward. On the social side, there is a school already under construction and it is expected to open its doors to the public in September this year. We have transactions with churches looking to come in as well. We have recently started significant discussions with retailers. Since the residential side is now beginning to reach critical mass, retailers are also showing interest in coming in. In the next 12 months, there could potentially be a shopping center under construction. In two to three years time, what will Appolonia City be? In another two to three years, I see Appolonia City becoming the next East Legon. East Legon is a well thriving community for mainly middle to high income Ghanaians north of Accra. It developed very quickly and became an attractive area that was able to attract most of the affluent and high net worth individuals in Accra. The sad thing about East Legon, is that it was not planned out. Today, you see property worth millions right next to a kiosk or shop. Most of the major streets are now becoming an eyesore. We have learnt from examples such as this and Appolonia City will be done properly. We have very good planning, investment, and infrastructure, and most importantly, urban planning and enforcement which will be one of our hallmarks to make sure that we maintain a certain standard. To do this, we are working closely with the government to ensure that Appolonia City becomes a truly mixed-use community. On the back of jobs created as well as potential jobs to be created in the area by attracting more companies and FDI, we have been working with government to designate Appolonia City as a Special Economic Zone. Within the site, we have control and investment to realise the infrastructure, but we also need assistance from the government to ensure that surrounding infrastructure coming to the site is improved and we are currently in discussions concerning this. Once we have all these milestones achieved in the next two to three years, I would imagine that Appolonia City will be a better version of East Legon that Ghanaians can be very proud of. FAIR USE POLICY This material (including media content) may not be published, broadcasted, rewritten, or redistributed. However, linking directly to the page (including the source, i.e. Marcopolis.net) is permitted and encouraged. Experts: US trade deficit with China can be reduced by expanding cooperation in infrastructure and energy Experts believe that the US-China trade deficit can be reduced by expanding infrastructure and boosting large transactions of coal power, electricity and gas. Heads of enterprises believe this is due to the two countries both having widespread needs in these sectors. The Chinese infrastructure sector is now more open to the world than ever, thanks to the Belt and Road Initiative. At the same time, the US government has released plans to allocate one trillion US dollars to fund the infrastructure sector. This could signify a broader prospect of cooperation, experts said at Harvard China Forum, the annual conference in Boston that focuses on China-US relationship. In information construction for infrastructure, China has caught up with the world and even passed the US in some sectors, said Tan Xu, president of China Telecom Americas. Tan believes that China Telecom and mainstream US operators are partners rather than competitors. He disclosed that US technology companies are working with China Telecom on a number of new projects. Initiatives such as the New Cross Pacific, which is about to begin, and Hong Kong America, a sea cable project linking China and the US, show a partnership between the two nations. Furthermore, the US should seize the opportunity brought by Chinas energy transformation. They should see China as an opportunity for partnership instead of a rival, according to professor Qingyun Sun with US West Virginia University. As Chinas national policy to replace coal with natural gas is pushed forward, a shortage of gas in the country means a market for the US. Li Shaolin, president of PetroChina International (America) Inc, says that after technology reform the price of a barrel of US natural gas is $42. However, the same barrel of gas is sold in China for $57, meaning the US has the price advantage between the two. Li suggests that the US strengthen energy cooperation with China. By increasing bulky transactions in the sector, the US can help deduce a trade deficit with China. In 2017, China imported 420 million tons of crude oil, replacing the US as the worlds largest crude oil importer for the first time. Li also disclosed that Chinas ethylene imports from the US will reach 10 million tons worth $40 billion. He expects that the US exports to China will reach around $120 billion, more than the USs goal to reduce $100 billion China-US trade deficit. Details Jorge Martin 05 May 2020 A number of mercenaries had been killed and others arrested in La Guaira on 3 May while trying to disembark in Venezuela as part of a plot against the Maduro government. On 4 May, another eight mercenaries were arrested in the... Across the country, workers are mobilising for a mass general strike on 25 April. Although all sectors of the economy are likely to be affected, the strike is expected to hit municipal services, transport, manufacturing, mining, construction and the public sector particularly hard. The governments determination to continue with the legislative process on proposed changes to the labour law is preparing the ground for a confrontation with the unions. After four years of relative quiet on the industrial front the decision to forge ahead with the labour amendment bills currently before parliament could see the workers move back to the streets in full force to fight back against blatant attacks on their living standards and to protect basic trade union rights. The right to strike There are currently three bills before parliament. All three represent a direct attack on the working class. Two bills relate to amendments to the Labour Relations Act and the Basic Conditions of Employment Act and one bill is on the proposed national minimum wage. The Minimum Wage Bill, which will have the effect of legalising slave wages of 20 rand per hour, were supposed to become law on 1 May but due to the mass resistance, the government has suspended its implementation, claiming insufficient consultation. This is already a partial victory but the task is still to push ahead so the bill could be changed to carry the demands of the workers for a living wage. The dominant demand from the workers (arising from Marikana) is a wage of 12,500 rand. Two of the other proposed changes to the labour law relate to the right to strike. One of the amendments would require unions to hold secret ballots when workers are deciding whether to strike or not. Again, this is a direct attack on trade unions. The strength of the workers their collective power. Individualising the strike through the introduction of secret ballots will undermine the inherent collective nature of strikes. It will give employers a pretext to intervene in the process on procedural and technical matters. For instance, a strike may not be protected (lawful) if all members has not voted. This is a procedural matter the employers could use to interdict a strike even if a huge majority has voted in favour of it. This is a blatant attack on trade union democracy. A second proposal is to amend the Labour Relations Act to introduce an advisory arbitration panel to decide on any strike. This mechanism could be requested by any employer and will give them a way to deal with the strike without negotiating with the union directly. The changes could also see strikes and pickets go through a commissioner who would determine picketing rules! Collectively these are some of the greatest attacks on South African workers since the days of the Apartheid regime. Mass anger These attacks come at the same time as the government is already implementing a brutal austerity budget, which on its own represents a frontal attack on the working class. These new measures, which have been implemented since 1 April, include a raise of 1 percent in Value Added Tax, the implementation of a sugar tax and an increase in the fuel levy. This is already a source of anger among workers. Anyone who thought that Cyril Ramaphosa coming to power would change the course of South African politics is bound to be surprised. Ramaphosa is a billionaire businessman and he represents the traditional wing of the South African big bourgeoisie. His programme is to carry out the attacks on the working class that the Zuma administration could not, for various reasons. In the conditions a the deepening economic crisis, the South African capitalists can no longer afford the meagre concessions won by the workers over decades of struggle. To maintain its position, the ruling class is determined to attack the workers. Of course, the workers are not going to take this lying down. Cyril Ramaphosa is a representative of the traditional bourgeoisie. His programme is to carry out attacks on workers / Image: Erfan Kouchari All of this is happening at the same time that the 50 biggest corporations alone are sitting on more than 1.4 trillion rand in cash, which they are not investing in the economy due to the crisis of overproduction. Instead of taking action against this blatant hoarding of cash by expropriating the rich, the government is taxing the poor! Additionally, the average pay for top executives in the top 100 companies has now reached an eye-watering 18 million rand! These are the same executives in Nedlac that are demanding that the unions should agree to lower wages for their workers. This shows whose class interests the government is serving. To dig itself out of the economic hole that the ruling class has created, and in order to please the credit ratings agencies, the government is now putting the entire burden of the economic crisis on the shoulders of the workers, the poor, and the most vulnerable sections of society. This is fueling fresh anger among big sections of the working class. The pressures from below have already forced trade union leaders to call for mass action. On 20 March, the radical mineworkers union AMCU, which came to prominence after the Marikana massacre in 2012, held a number of pickets and marches across the country to protest against job losses in the mining industry. AMCU is now the dominant union on the platinum belt and one of the fastest growing unions in the country. Now the new labour federation, SAFTU, has announced that it will embark on a general strike on 25 April. This will be the first full-blown general strike by the federation since it was formed almost exactly one year ago. It has also made a direct appeal to the the rank-and-file workers of other federations, COSATU and Fedusa, to support the strike. The leadership of these two federations has been collaborating in the Nedlac social partnership forum with the government. The capitalists and have agreed to the bill on the minimum wage behind the backs of the workers and they have also put very mild resistance (in words) against the attack on the right to strike. SAFTU has made a direct appeal to the the rank-and-file workers of South Africa's largest trade union federation, COSATU, to support the general strike / Image: Discott SAFTU is South Africa's second largest union federation after COSATU, representing 30 unions, including the National Union of Metalworkers of South Africa. It was launched in April 2017 and represents over 800,000 workers. Already workers of the federation are staging a series of activities in the buildup to the general strike. On 12 April workers in the Western Cape marched on parliament in Cape Town. The mood was very radical with speakers threatening to make the country ungovernable if the government pushes ahead with the counter-reforms. General secretary of SAFTU, Vavi received a huge cheer when he rejected the proposed minimum wage and took aim at president Ramaphosa: We are saying to Cyril Ramaphosa, take that 20 rand you can find a space behind the beds of your buffalos and you can put that 20 rand there! Western Cape SAFTU deputy chairperson Nyaniso Siyana promised the federation will be back on 25 April to receive an answer on the memorandum. We will shut the economy of this country down so they can listen. This economy is built on our own sweat and blood. These words are a reflection of the pressures coming from below which are pushing the trade union leaders to take a more militant stance. Worker-activists are also embarking on flying pickets to mobilise for the strike. SAFTU also took up local demands of Cape Town, particularly the management of the water crisis in the Western Cape. The federation rejected the use of water management devices, saying that they essentially commodifying water. We accept we are in a drought...however, the bad management of the resource has led to this crisis. The City was aware of the crisis way back in 2003 and failed to take adequate steps to ameliorate the effects of the drought, SAFTU said. A major confrontation In the context of the mass anger among the workers, the general strike could usher in a period of heated class struggle which could even reverberate during next years elections This depends on the approach of the union after 25 April. SAFTU is a new federation and the call for a one-day general strike will allow it test its ability to bring out the workers in great numbers. It will also allow us to accurately measure the real mood of the workers and give the workers a sense of their collective power. A one-day general strike can give the government a serious warning but by itself is not likely to force it to back down. To achieve this, a serious and sustained campaign is necessary. A strong lead from SAFTU has the potential to win over large sections of the working class and the middle class and could change the landscape in the trade union movement. This depends on the leadership. A decisive lead can fundamentally transform the whole situation. The new development comes at a time general mood of anger beneath the surface of South African society. The pressures of decades of frustration is building up. This pressure needs an outlet and will find it one way or the other. However, if this is limited to a single day of action, or even a series of one-day strikes, it could lead to a demorialsation of the workers. It will be just an occasion where the workers could blow off some steam and then return to work the following day without achieving any of their demands. Such a scenario has the potential to cause a serious crisis in SAFTU. However in such a case the anger of the workers will flow to other outlets. In this context we could see a return to the wildcat strikes we saw in 2012. From the political front to the industrial front Between 2009 and 2013 there was a massive explosion of strikes that battered the political landscape. The ANC, which for decades was the political home of the masses, was thrown into turmoil. The rightward drift of the ANC leaders and their reluctance to break with the capitalist system put them in the opposite camp of the masses. The most glaring example of this was the Marikana massacre, where state forces murdered dozens of defenceless miners who were striking for better wages. Since then, the degeneration of the ANC has only picked up speed. The top echelons of the party has been completely dominated by big capitalists who control different sectors of the economy. In the eyes of the masses, the party has little resemblance with the mass force it was during the revolutionary overthrow of the Apartheid regime. On this basis, the movement began to fragment along class lines with big sections of the youth and layers of the advanced workers moving sharply to the left. The two most prominent manifestations of this were the political developments in the ANC Youth League and the developments in the unions. The Youth League began to agitate for the nationalisation of mines at the time. This led to a confrontation between the pro-capitalist leaders of the ANC and the Youth League. It is out of this battle that the Economic Freedom Fighters were born after the expulsion of the youth leaders headed by Julius Malema. The other big manifestation of the upsurge in the class struggle was the split in the trade union movement. This led to NUMSA being expelled from COSATU. It was this expulsion which led to the formation the new federation, SAFTU. The EFF made skillful use of parliament to expose the corruption and looting of state resources under Jacob Zuma, but his expulsion put them in a weaker position / Image: Flickr, GovernmentZA These developments had a big impact on the class struggle. After four years of brutal and bloody battles on the industrial front, workers moved over to the political plane. The EFFs entrance into parliament in 2014 managed to galvanise some of the most radical layers around it, especially from the youth. The political arena, especially parliament, became a focal point for the masses. The EFF made skillful use of parliament to expose the corruption and looting of state resources under Jacob Zuma. This had a big impact. Its militant rhetoric also had a big impact on the radicalisation of the youth. Their influence on the #FeesMustFall student movement is a clear example of this. However. it is also true that it still had not made a significant impact on the organised working class. Part of the reason for this is the role which some trade union leaders who have kept a distance from the the party. But the biggest reason is that the EFF did not actively incorporate the clear, working-class demands of jobs, a living wage, decent housing, a ban on labour brokers, decent working conditions, an end to retrenchments and so on into their campaigns. The EFF has also not used its parliamentary profile to denounce these blatant attacks on the rights of workers. By putting its sole focus on Zumas corruption, the party has essentially undermined its own position, as the bourgeoisie has removed Zuma from the head of the ANC. Of course, Zuma was a corrupt and rotten politician, but he was essentially not different from the rest of the capitalist political class. He represents the rotten capitalist system and as we can see today, removing him has not improved matters for the masses. Zuma was a corrupt and rotten politician, but he was essentially the same as the rest of the capitalist political class / Image: 2009 EFA The EFF has also put much emphasis on the land question. This is an important issue that reveals the limitations of capitalism in South Africa. Yet it is not a key question for the majority most people, in particular the working class, which is the only class that can lead South African society out of its impasse. Thus the EFF has not yet managed to win over significant layers of the working class, which still remains without a clear, organised, political expression. NUMSA at one point did address this problem. In the organisations countless resolutions, the limitations of capitalism and the need for a mass revolutionary party are clearly stated. When the union first made the call for such a party it was received with great enthusiasm by workers across the country. But unfortunately there seems to be a dichotomy between words and deeds. Four years later there is still no sign of a party. NUMSA has subsequently held another congress where it formally adopted a resolution on the establishment of a workers party. This delay has placed big obstacles in the path of the workers movement. As the establishment of the EFF showed at the time, the conditions are very favourable for such a party. Had NUMSA followed through, the political situation in the country could have been radically different. A workers party, backed by big unions such as NUMSA would immediately have challenged the ANCs dominance on the political arena. Instead the mass anger is channelled through trade union activity, such as rallies and limited strikes, which are very good and important, but which do not address the real problem. NUMSA admits this itself, acknowledging the limitations of the capitalist system. These shortcomings have placed obsticlases on the political field and caused disorientation amongst the masses. The revolutionary mood has to a certain degree ebbed from the highs of a few years ago. Had there been a genuine Marxist leadership the political situation could have been very different. Yet this ebb is not to be taken as a defeat. The general strike is a sign of things to come. The anger that had been present among all layers of the working class between 2009 and 2013 never went away. During this time, the struggles of the workers changed things on the political landscape. Of course, after four years of continuous struggle, a certain weariness crept in. In the past period, the workers looked to parliament for signs of change, but with NUMSA eternally procrastinating and the EFF not giving a clear lead there has been a mood of confusion. This added to the general disorientation. But while there might be signs of slight fatigue, the working class is still very vibrant and confident. It has not lost a single major battle for decades. But now, under the impact of the increasing provocations and attacks by the ruling class, the class struggle is set to take off again. A Winning Combo of Performance and Design A Winning Combo of... The brand presents a host of hot new timepieces, including the latest generation Aquaracers, a new Chronograph Tourbillon, and three... The brand presents a host of hot new... SPRINGFIELD -- The company behind the equipment that monitored Neil Armstrong's vital signs when he walked on the moon has donated $722,000 in state-of-the-art gear to the nursing lab at the University of Massachusetts Springfield Center in Tower Square. And what Spacelabs Healthcare President Sujit Kumar wanted to talk about during Tuesday's celebration of the gift is the next step in his Washington-based medical equipment company's relationship with UMass. "We have been looking for an academic partner for a long time and we are thrilled to have found one with the quality of UMass," Kumar said. UMass can help Spacelabs develop its technology and improve patient outcomes, he said. From the podium, he asked UMass nursing students in attendance to let Spacelabs know if a process can be improved or if technology is clunky or awkward. "Be critical with us," Kumar said. UMass Amherst Chancellor Kumble R. Subbaswamy said he, too, is excited to see where the partnership takes both the company and the university. He specifically thanked Deepak Chopra, CEO of Spacelabs parent company, OSI Systems. Chopra is a UMass Amherst alumnus who earned a master's degree there in semiconductor electronics. Spacelabs' name dates to its work for the early space program, including equipment used during the moonwalk. At UMass Springfield, the donated Spacelabs equipment lets students simulate bedside monitoring of patients. Equipment designed for maternity wards lets students practice monitoring new mothers and of newborn infants. Students can see all the vital signs, and the simulators respond to treatments. The monitors can even talk with you, said student Ralph Crossen of Sandwich. Student Rhodalyn Macquaye of Pittsfield said the equipment will ease the transitions new nurses will soon make from classroom to hospital ward. "When we get to a care setting, this won't be something we have never seen before," she said. UMass has 80 nursing students in its Springfield program right now, said Stephen J. Cavanagh, dean and professor in the College of Nursing at the University of Massachusetts Amherst. The incoming class will be bigger -- about 90 students -- meaning there will be a new total of 160 to 170 nursing students at UMass in Springfield next year. The accelerated nursing program, which moved to Springfield in August 2017, squeezes four semesters into 17 months of study and leads to a bachelor's degree in nursing, Cavanagh said. The accelerated program is designed for those who have already earned a degree of some sort and are looking to continue their education. UMass Amherst has four-year bachelor's degree nursing programs aimed at students right from high school. "We have had a tremendous response to the program here in Springfield," Cavanagh said. "The accelerated format fits with student's goals and gets them out into the workforce. It's convenient for students to get here. And it lets us work with health care providers like Baystate." Applications also have nearly doubled from about 250 a year to around 450 for the most recent class. Cavanagh said the Spacelabs equipment is part of about $1 million in renovations and expansion work UMass completed at the Tower Square center for the nursing program. The UMass Center at Springfield has just under 1,000 student enrollments and plans to keep growing. Springfield Mayor Domenic J. Sarno told nursing students how important their future work will be in providing care and comfort at hospital bedsides. Harvard President Drew Faust called the video of Cambridge Police forcibly arresting a 21-year-old student "profoundly disturbing." "A Harvard student was in obvious distress, and we need to understand how that came to be and whether we could have interceded earlier and more effectively. We have been witness to the use of force against a member of our community, which, regardless of circumstances, is upsetting and compels the search for a deeper understanding," Faust wrote in the email to students and faculty. She added: "The arrest occurred against the backdrop of increasingly urgent questions about race and policing in the United States, and about racial differentials in health care, raising for members of our community appropriate anxieties -- about their own safety and place in our society, about that of their friends and colleagues, and about the world outside our gates." On Friday night at about 10 p.m. Cambridge police responded to the corner of Massachusetts Avenue and Waterhouse Street after receiving calls about a naked man standing in the street. Three officers found and spoke with Selorm Ohene, a black Harvard University student, according to a police report. Two young women, who declined to identify themselves, told police that Ohene possibly took LSD or "morning glory," according to the police report. "Ohene was found completely nude in the middle of Mass Ave. acting completely irrational," Officer Steven Burke wrote in an incident report. "As many as 30 onlookers had stopped to observe the nude male on Mass Ave. Vehicles also slowed to witness this obscene display." Burke writes that Ohene clenched his fists toward an officer "in an aggressive manner." After trying to talk to Ohene, Burke writes that he knocked the student to the ground and punched him five times in the stomach in an attempt to subdue him. When that did not work, officers used a baton to move Ohene's hands behind his back. He was handcuffed, shackled, and arrested on charges of indecent exposure, disorderly conduct, assault, resisting arrest, and assault and battery on ambulance personnel. His arraignment has not yet been scheduled. At a news conference at Cambridge Police Headquarters on Monday Cambridge Police Commissioner Branville G. Bard defended the officer's use of force. Ohene remains in the hospital undergoing a mental health evaluation. Boston police seized 44 pounds of marijuana, two firearms and more than $26,000 in cash after a month-long investigation into an alleged Mattapan drug dealer, police said. Howard Robinson, 48, was arrested Saturday. He was driving around Mattapan allegedly selling marijuana from his car, police said in a statement. Officers stopped Robinson on Armandine Street and searched the vehicle. Investigators said they found 4 pounds of marijuana, a .45 caliber handgun and more than $7,000 in cash in the car. A search warrant was executed near 52 Selden St., and investigators found another 40 pounds of marijuana, a second handgun, 158 rounds of ammunition, more than $19,500 in currency and drug paraphernalia, police said. Robinson was charged with unlawful possession of a firearm; unlawful possession of a firearm, subsequent offense; unlawful possession of ammunition; unlawfully carrying a loaded firearm; operating a motor vehicle with a suspended license; distribution of a Class D substance; and possession with the intent to distribute a Class D substance. Officers will seek additional firearms and drug offenses charges at a later date, police said. More than 1,000 law enforcement officers gather to honor fallen Yarmouth Police Officer Sean Gannon 27 Gallery: More than 1,000 law enforcement officers gather to honor fallen Yarmouth Police Officer Sean Gannon Thousands of police officers are expected to pay their respects to Yarmouth Police Officer Sean Gannon, who was shot and killed while serving a warrant on Thursday. Gannon's wake is scheduled for 4-8 p.m. at St. Pius X Church on Barbara Street in Yarmouth on Tuesday. A Mass will be said Wednesday at 11 a.m., state police said in a statement. Yarmouth Deputy Police Chief Steven G. Xiarhos told The Boston Globe that thousands of police officers from Texas, California, and Illinois, are traveling to Yarmouth for the services. Gannon, 32, was shot and killed while serving an arrest warrant to Thomas Latanowich, a career criminal with more than 100 prior offenses on his record. Gannon's K-9 partner Nero was shot in the face but has survived emergency surgery and is healing. On Facebook, the Yarmouth police wrote they planned for a "full law enforcement" escort when Gannon's body is moved from the Doane Beal, & Ames Funeral Home to the church. "Sean leaves a legacy of high moral integrity, infectious humor, and collaborative work with colleagues," reads an obituary posted to the funeral home's website. "He enjoyed travel, working with his hands, donating his time to Big Brother/Big Sister and being outside. He loved spending time with his family and friends. Sean was deeply intuitive and inspired others to be their best selves." There has been an outpouring of support for the Yarmouth police and Gannon's family. Gov. Charlie Baker ordered flags to be lowered to half-staff, and numerous police departments have offered their sympathies. Police families in Yarmouth made ribbons to decorate Gannon's procession. The New York Yankees sent flowers to the department, offering their condolences. Related Video: George Heath spent his last moments at the Bertucci's in Taunton's Silver City Galleria, where Arthur DaRosa stabbed him during a violent rampage on May 10, 2016. That restaurant, where Heath was a regular, is no more, following Bertucci's bankruptcy filing and its closure of six locations in Massachusetts. But a part of its legacy will live on. The restaurant's district manager agreed to give's Heath's usual barstool to his wife Rosemary, who was with him at the restaurant when he attempted to stop DaRosa from stabbing a pregnant waitress and was killed, the Taunton Gazette reported. "He died a hero. And our last amazing team effort was in that restaurant," Rosemary Heath told the Gazette. On May 10, 2016, DaRosa, a 28-year-old man who had recently been released from psychiatric hospitalization, fatally stabbed an 80-year-old woman, stole a car and crashed it into Macy's at the Silver City Galleria Mall. He assaulted multiple people before entering the Bertuccis and stabbing waitress Sheenah Savoy. George and Rosemary Heath rushed to help her, and George was stabbed before an off-duty law enforcement officer shot and killed DaRosa. Savoy survived, but Heath did not. The restaurant was already a meaningful place for the Heaths -- a place they patronized often enough for George to have a usual chair. After his death, it became a memorial, according to the Taunton Gazette. Management affixed a plaque to the seat in Heath's honor, and Rosemary celebrated what would have been George's 57th birthday at the restaurant with their loved ones. Heath told NECN she intends to keep the barstool in her kitchen. "This is now going to be a place I can't come back to and see the people I grew close to," Heath told NECN. "But now it's about moving on, it's closing this chapter and moving on and keeping the promise I made to George to keep moving forward." SPRINGFIELD - Defense lawyer Joe A. Smith III said Tuesday a search warrant for a car parked outside of a West Springfield hotel in November "is ripe for suppression." He said in the case against his client, Stalin Marte-Castillo, all the drugs were found in his rented vehicle outside the Westside Inn of Riverdale Street. No drugs were found in the room in which Marte-Castillo was staying at the motel, Smith said. There was no evidence Marte-Castillo was dealing from his car so the search warrant for the motel room should not have been extended for a search of the car, he said. Smith was in front of Hampden Superior Court Judge Mark D. Mason asking to have bail reduced in that case to $2,500 from $5,000. Mason reduced the bail to $3,500 cash or $35,000 surety. Marte-Castillo, 29, of Holyoke, has a bail amount of $5,000 in a separate drug case which he would have to also post in order to be released awaiting the trials. Marte-Castillo is charged with possession of heroin with intent to distribute in this case. Assistant District Attorney Christopher F. Bourbeau asked for the bail in this case to stay at $5,000, which was set at the Springfield District Court arraignment. He said West Springfield police had been investigating heroin sales from a room at the motel, with the target being Marte-Castillo. A person cooperating with police made several heroin buys inside the motel room in the days leading up to the Nov. 3 raid. Bourbeau said 700 bags of heroin - labelled Shark Tank - were found in the vehicle which had Florida license plates. In the motel room were cell phones and Marte-Castillo's personal papers, he said. At the time he was arrested for drug sales at the motel Marte-Castillo was out on $5,000 bail on a Holyoke heroin trafficking case, Bourbeau said. When he was arrested for the motel drug sales case, his bail was revoked on the Holyoke case for 90 days. But that time period ended and the $5,000 bail amount was reinstated on that. In April 2017 Marte-Castillo was arrested on heroin trafficking charges in Holyoke as part of a multi-agency crackdown on drug dealing in the city. AMHERST -- Bertucci's closed here Monday, following news that Chez Albert is closing as well. And while several other restaurants -- including Fratelli's and the Lumber Yard -- have also closed within the last year, the executive director of the Amherst Business Improvement District said there's no reason to panic. "It looks scary on the surface; it's the typical nature of commercial activity," Sarah la Cour said. Geoff Kravitz, the town's economic development director, agrees. "I think it's still a strong restaurant scene," he said, adding that he still sees Amherst as "a dining destination." But, he said, "It's lot of things hitting at the same time" Bertucci's closing came after the parent company filed for Chapter 11 bankruptcy protection. The Amherst restaurant is one of 15 the Northborough-based company closed. Chez Albert, a downtown eatery for 13 years, announced that it would close next month, as business has been declining. Share Coffee, however, will move into that space from its Boltwood Walk location, and Kravitz believes something else will relocate into Share's current space soon. La Cour said another restaurant is moving into the Fratelli's space off Main Street, but she could not say what it was. Kravitz believes the Berkshire Gas moratorium, which delayed the Italian restaurant's opening, ultimate hurt that business. The restaurant had bills to pay during that time and wasn't able recoup those costs. He said he has heard prospective tenants have been looking at the Lumber Yard space on Main Street. The owners closed that eatery to focus on their Nantucket-based Sconset Cafe. He said he will reach out to the Bertucci's property owner, Central Amherst Realty, to talk about potential uses, including redevelopment. La Cour believes someone will snatch that space up soon. "That's a great space," she said. "It's got parking. I don't see that sitting for long." The property is located next to Kendrick Place, home to 36 apartments and MassMutual's Data Lab, and a short distance from the retail and 184-apartment complex One East Pleasant, slated to open later this year. Other available downtown restaurant space includes the former Metacomet Cafe -- once home to Chez Albert -- which La Cour described as an outlier. The owners continued to pay rent, although the cafe only opened briefly after years in the making. The BID, meanwhile, is also trying to make Amherst "a music town," La cour said. It recently sponsored the first Jamherst -- three nights of music at various locations, including Share and the Black Sheep. "It was really well attended," she said. "It's getting people right into businesses." She said they are hoping to offer a festival like that twice a year, adding that she hopes restaurants will book some of the local acts. Kravitz said the town is in the process of conducting an economic development survey and is holding the first of three community meetings next week with the goal of helping to create such a strategy. The forum is scheduled for April 25 at 6 p.m. in Town Hall. In an email, Peter Vickery, president of the Amherst Area Chamber of Commerce, said the Bertucci's closing is "a shame, particularly in the context of Chez Albert closing." "In the meantime, Amherst continues to enjoy a spectacular range of first-rate restaurants, e.g. Bistro 63, Taste, Paradise of India, and Judie's, to name just a few," he wrote. "There is no shortage of great dining opportunities in Amherst!" GREENFIELD -- A downtown medical marijuana dispensary has been pre-registering patients, and soon plans to open a retail shop featuring "modern design with a focus on comfort and convenience," Patriot Care states on its website. The activity comes nearly three years after the firm gained local permission to build and operate a retail dispensary at the old American Legion building on Wells Street. Patriot Care -- with its dispensaries in Boston and Lowell, where the cannabis is grown -- won a special permit from the Greenfield Zoning Board of Appeals in May of 2015. Patriot Care CEO Bob Mayerson said the lengthy delay in opening was due to the condition of the building, reports the Greenfield Recorder. The American Legion Hall in Greenfield as seen in 2015 The dispensary's host agreement included $10,000 to the Greenfield Education Foundation and $25,000 a year in lieu of taxes. Patriot Care in 2015 agreed to let veterans' groups use part of the building for no charge for up to ten years, and to contribute 15 percent of its operating profits to local charities such as food pantries, drug treatment programs, veterans' services, and low-income housing. "We are a proud participant of all the communities we participate in," Mayerson recently told the state's Cannabis Control Commission. Patriot Care in 2015 described security measures it would deploy at its building, which is located behind the Franklin Community Coop Green Fields Market. Mayerson previously said he graduated from Hampshire College in the 1970s and later attended business school at UMass Amherst. Holyoke narcotics detectives, along with FBI, DEA and ATF agents, raided a South Summer Street apartment Monday afternoon, arresting three people. Authorities also seized 2,850 bags of heroin, 78 bags of cocaine, a 9 mm handgun and more than $3,500 in cash, police said in a release. Holyoke Police Lt. James Albert said narcotics detectives had been investigating the suspects and the apartment for what appeared to an active drug distribution operation. Officers and federal agents executed a search warrant at about 4:15 p.m. Monday afternoon on the second-floor right apartment at 588 South Summer St. There they arrested Abimael Rivera, 24, of Stockman Street in Springfield Rivera is being charged with trafficking in heroin between 36 and 100 grams, trafficking in cocaine between 36 and 100 grams, possession of ammunition without an FID card, carrying a loaded firearm, use of a firearm in the commission of a felony, improper storage of a firearm and receiving stolen property. Albert said the semi-automatic handgun found at the scene was reported stolen in Statesville, North Carolina in January of 2015. Also arrested was Adiel Velez, 25, of 565 South Canal St. in Holyoke and 27-year-old Justine Walter of 588 South Summer St. Both were taken into custody on outstanding warrants. Holyoke police received assistance from the FBI's Western Massachusetts Gang Task Force, agents from the Drug Enforcement Agency and the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives. All three suspects will be arraigned in Holyoke District Court Tuesday morning. SPRINGFIELD - A man and woman charged with sex trafficking and money laundering at two Springfield massage parlors are expected to be arraigned in Hampden Superior Court on April 30. Liu Yang, 61, of Springfield, and Steven C. Forsley, 65, of Bernardston, were indicted on April 2 on charges of trafficking of persons for sexual servitude, money laundering, deriving support from prostitution, conspiracy to traffic persons for sexual servitude and keeping house of ill fame. The indictments, issued by a statewide grand jury, came nine weeks after the pair were arrested for allegedly running a prostitution and money laundering operation at the Day Spa at 78 Maple St. and the Health and Relaxation Spa at 803 Belmont Ave. in Springfield. The massage parlors reaped about $100,000 in profits during the six months they were under scrutiny, investigators allege. Two sex trafficking victims, a large amount of cash, and two vehicles were confiscated when police raided the two businesses and the suspects' homes on Jan. 23, according to court documents. Yang and Forsley were held on $20,000 cash bail following their arraignment in Springfield District Court. Upon release, they were ordered to submit to GPS monitoring, surrender their passports, and have no contact with each other or witnesses in the case. Forsley remained in custody until posting bail on Jan. 29. Yang was released after posting bail on Feb. 2, records show. The defendants face a minimum of five years in prison if convicted on human trafficking charges, Assistant Attorney General Amy Karangekis said during their bail hearings. Yang owns both spas, and frequently transported Asian women from Flushing, New York, to Springfield to work in her businesses. The women often slept at the Belmont Avenue spa and "rarely, if ever" were seen leaving the spa without Yang, the prosecutor said. Male clients would usually visit the spas for 30 to 60 minutes, and allegedly paid $100 for massages. Only young Asian women worked there, according to Karangekis, who said ads for both spas were placed on Backpage.com. Federal authorities shut down the website earlier this month, alleging it facilitated prostitution and sex trafficking of minors across the country. At a pretrial hearing last week in district court, a prosecutor told Judge Robert Murphy that the defendants have been indicted by a state grand jury and are scheduled for arraigned in Hampden Superior Court on April 30. Yang, a native of China, appeared at the hearing with defense lawyer Bernard O'Connor. A Mandarin interpreter was also present, at Yang's request. At Favre-Leuba, the mechanical functions of each watch are developed in pursuit of an ambitious goal: conquering the extremes of nature. These time pieces scale the worlds highest peaks and dive to the oceans deepest depths, never content unless they are aiming to achieve the impossible. In 1968, Favre-Leubas Bathy was the first wristwatch with a membrane and a central hand that made it possible to measure depth more accurately. The original Bathy was a milestone in mechanical instrument watches and is a much sought-after collectors piece today. The year 2018 marks the 50th anniversary of the Bathy and Favre-Leuba unveils the new Raider Bathy 120 MemoDepth. Its retrofuturistic design is a deliberate nod to the original 1968 Bathy. From a technical standpoint, however, the Raider Bathy 120 MemoDepth is an entirely new creation. Its functionality and materials have not merely been improved upon they have set a new standard. The case design is a homage to its popular predecessor and is complemented by bold, functional colors and striking, easy-to-read hands. Bathy 120 MemoDepth Favre-Leuba The Raider Bathy 120 MemoDepth is inspired by the principle of form following function, with a clear and timeless design that perfectly combines the traditional with the contemporary. The case is crafted from titanium and, with its 48 mm diameter, guarantees perfect readability. The depth gauge combines ideas taken from the 1968 Bathy with the results of constant modernization and technical development. What is truly fascinating about the depth gauge is the way it works, as it turns one of the established rules of watchmaking completely on its head. Never let water get inside of a watch ? Quite the opposite. The new Bathy features apertures in the case back that actually invite water inside. These openings are part of the depth gauge, which is hermetically separated from the movement. The concept is based on the compression of a specially designed membrane that is integrated into the case back. Water enters a separate chamber in the case back through the apertures, causing the membrane to compress as the pressure increases. A mechanical contact sensor inside the watch reacts to this compression and conveys the information via the hand of the depth gauge, which shows the dive depth on a nonlinear display via a central hand on the dial. Dive depths up to 120 m can be measured extremely precisely. The scale for the first 30 m is finer, with two red marks at 5 and 10, where decompression stops may be necessary. The Raider Bathy 120 MemoDepth also features a mechanical depth memory (MemoDepth), which stores the maximum depth reached during a dive. The depth gauge at 3 oclock displays the value until it is reset via the screw-in pusher at 4 oclock a feature that typically appears on professional dive watches. Favre-Leuba The Raider Bathy 120 MemoDepth is water-resistant up to 200 m. Its optimal range of measurement is 120 m, more than double that of the original Bathy from 1968 (50 m). A built-in mechanical limiter ensures that neither the pressure membrane nor the depth gauge are damaged if the wearer dives deeper than the optimal range. One extremely important safety aspect comes into play on every dive: Every professional dive watch is fitted with either an internal ring or external unidirectional bezel. The diver aligns the triangular marker at 60 with the minute hand right before beginning the dive. The time that has elapsed since the beginning of the dive is then shown on the bezel in minutes. The external dive bezel of the Raider Bathy 120 MemoDepth operates in the same way, turning only counterclockwise and allowing the wearer to track their remaining dive time. The Favre-Leuba Raider Bathy 120 MemoDepth is powered by the FL 321 hand-wound movement. It is based on the EMC 3903M caliber, which has been completely reengineered by Favre-Leuba. It features a 65-hour power reserve and a power-reserve indicator displayed at 12 oclock. The Second Amendment protects civilians possessing stun guns and tasers, the highest court in Massachusetts said Tuesday. The ruling from the Massachusetts Supreme Judicial Court stated that the prohibition in Massachusetts state law is a violation of the Second Amendment. The law allowed for law enforcement to possess the weapons. The ruling came in a case in which a defendant was charged with possession. The court ruled that the complaint against him be dismissed and that the state law is struck down. The court is giving the Massachusetts legislature 60 days to revise the statute behind the prohibition so it meets constitutional muster. "Therefore, under the Second Amendment, the possession of stun guns may be regulated, but not absolutely banned," said the Supreme Judicial Court ruling issued Tuesday. "Restrictions may be placed on the categories of persons who may possess them, licenses may be required for their possession, and those licensed to possess them may be barred from carrying them in sensitive places, such as schools and government buildings." The court's ruling was a reversal after the US Supreme Court provided some guidance: In a 2015 case, the Supreme Judicial Court ruled that the Second Amendment did not cover stun guns. The leaders of the Massachusetts House and Senate, Speaker Robert DeLeo and President Harriette Chandler, said they were reviewing the latest court decision. "We are currently reviewing the decision and legislative options," a spokeswoman for DeLeo's office said. "The Speaker intends to file legislation within 60 days." This post was updated with statements from Speaker DeLeo and President Chandler. HOLYOKE -- Municipal employees would receive training to spot and avoid computer scams under proposals the City Council will consider Tuesday. "We have many City Hall employees with varying degrees of familiarity with cyber threats and we should have a training to help them better identify and avoid such security compromises," said Councilor at Large Rebecca Lisi, who filed the orders. "There seem to be common forms such as 'phishing' and 'spoofing' that could be easily identified with training, she said in an email Monday. Phishing is when a scammer uses fraudulent emails or texts, or copycat websites to get people to share information like account numbers or passwords, which they then use to steal money or identity, according to the Federal Trace Commission (FTC). Spoofing is when a scammer pretends by email to be someone known to the recipient in order to steal money. Spoofing is what happened to City Treasurer Sandra A. Smith in June when someone impersonated a Holyoke Gas and Electric Department official and got Smith to wire-transfer $9,997. Police in Long Island, New York arrested a Brentwood, New York man Dec. 9 in connection with the Holyoke case, officials said. The Council meeting is at 7 p.m. at City Hall. Lisi filed these orders: "the mayor coordinate with the HGE and the Holyoke Police Department to provide a training to all municipal employees for how to identify and deal with cyber threats." "the HGE alongside the HPD develop a protocol for identifying, reporting and alerting City Hall employees of possible cyber threats and how to avoid them." It would be helpful to train employees to where they can alert the city's information technology (IT) department about a scam, Lisi said. "Then IT would be able to send out an email blast alerting all of City Hall of a threatening email that is circulating and should be avoided," she said. BUCKLAND -- A new coalition devoted to "strengthening the 170 rural towns in Massachusetts" has established its headquarters in Shelburne Falls and is inviting the public to a May 1 open house. Rural Commonwealth was launched about 10 months ago, and will now be located at Building 6 of the former Lamson cutlery factory. Known as "The Mill," the rambling complex is located at 49 Conway St. along the Deerfield River. Rural Commonwealth grew from a series of "small town summits." At the gatherings, local officials discussed broadband internet, tax revenue when so much forest land is owned by the state, ambulance and health services, utility infrastructure, regional school transportation funding, rural business development, and more. The coalition, founded by Charlemont residents Beth Bandy and Toby Gould, now has a board of directors, an economic development advisor, and volunteers. Rural Commonwealth conducts research, and recently published a business report that highlights the economic conditions of rural communities around Massachusetts. The group provides programs for rural entrepreneurs, supports access to high-paying jobs, and advocates for legislation that will benefit rural Massachusetts. In February Rural Commonwealth hosted a day-long conference where U.S. Rep. James McGovern (D-Worcester) talked about the federal farm bill, and state Rep. Anne Gobi (D-Spencer) discussed agriculture on the state level, including how the marijuana industry could benefit local farmers. If you go: What: Rural Commonwealth Open House Where: Building 6, 49 Conway St., Shelburne Falls When: May 1, 5-7 p.m. The man to whom Yarmouth Police are referring to only as 125 -- for the number of prior criminal charges he has on his Board of Probation criminal record in Massachusetts -- turns into a "whole different person" when he gets angry. That is according to Marie Piotte, who spoke to the Boston Herald last weekend on her past relationship with murder suspect Thomas Latanowich, the man officials say fatally shot Yarmouth Police Officer Sean Gannon. Latanowich, 29, was arraigned on a murder charge Friday and held without bail. Many, including the Yarmouth Police Department, are calling for an "overhaul" of the judicial system after learning of Latanowich's extensive criminal history. Piotte told the Herald she and Latanowich had a short relationship, though in that small amount of time she knew him to be an unstable, violent person who would sometimes grab her and choke her. She reportedly filed several restraining orders a decade ago in which she described some of her ex's violent attacks. The two also had a daughter together 11 years ago, the Herald reports, when Piotte moved away from Latanowich and the Cape. She said she had an inkling that Latanowich was tied to Gannon's shooting last week. Gannon, 29, and his K9 dog Nero were shot Thursday while serving a warrant with other officers at a home on Blueberry Lane in Yarmouth. It is there authorities say Latanowich opened fire, shooting Gannon in the face and Nero in the face and neck. Nero has since had surgery and is recovering. Gannon's funeral services will be held on Wednesday. A team of physicians at UMass Memorial Medical Center treat abused children every day. As children arrive at the hospital, sometimes battered and bruised, a team of doctors act as investigators, trying to determine if there is a good medical explanation for the child's injuries. When the pieces of the puzzle don't match up, the Child Protection Program at UMass Memorial Children's Medical Center turns to the help of the state Department of Children and Families. Not every story about traumatized children makes headlines. But some do, like the case of a 6-year-old girl who died in Fitchburg last week. Fitchburg police discovered the non-responsive girl and her injured 9-year-old brother at the family home at 139 Stoneybrook Road on April 10 after their father called 911 to report that his daughter wasn't breathing. The children were whisked off to a nearby hospital, where the girl was pronounced dead. Her brother was transferred to a Worcester hospital for further treatment. His injuries were not life-threatening. Shana Pedroso and Marvin Brito, the parents of the boy and girl, are facing charges. In the last six months, the number of reported violent acts toward children appears to be rising. Dr. Heather Forkey, the chief of the Child Protection Program at UMass Memorial Children's Medical Center and the director of the Foster Children Evaluation Service Clinic, said the program from Oct. 1, 2017, to now has seen just as many inpatient evaluations for children with serious injuries as they had from Oct. 1, 2016, to Oct. 1, 2017. The number of children testing positive for drugs that should not be in their system has also increased, Forkey said. In December 2017 alone, five children tested positive for cocaine. "We were shocked," Forkey said. "We've all been taken aback." While the devastating details of some of these cases become public knowledge, many do not know what steps are taken to protect these children once they reach the hospital. Treating physical injuries "Our job is, really, to come in, meet with the family and talk to the child if they are verbal," Forkey explained. Often times, there is a good medical explanation for a child's injuries, Forkey said. But when there isn't, doctors get to work and perform a series of tests. When the Child Protection Program sees a patient who is 2 years old or younger, doctors will perform a skeletal survey and administer X-rays to see if there is evidence of new or healing fractures. For children younger than 6 months old, a head CT scan is done to make sure there is no injury to the brain, Forkey said. Doctors may also draw blood to make sure there isn't anything happening on the inside that can't be seen with the naked eye. With the recent increase in the number of children testing positive for drugs - something that can be picked up when children touch household items and put their hands in their mouth, among other ways - doctors are performing more toxicology screens. Rape kit exams are done in the case of sexual abuse. Doctors may work hand-in-hand with investigators from the Department of Children to share information. If a parent explains the way a child fell out of a crib, for example, the department investigator can check the home and confirm how the crib was set up, which can help the doctor verify if the injury really happened that way, Forkey said. Children who are victims of abuse typically do not have the same pride in themselves that other kids do, Forkey said. So, doctors speak to children in terms they can understand to reassure them. "We make sure that they know how safe they are and their bodies are working just the way they're supposed to," she said. If Forkey begins to examine a child and sees bruising on the child's back, she may ask a question. "Honey, how's it going at school?" If the child talks about getting kicked out of class for fighting or for disruptive behavior, or perhaps talks about never being able to sleep, Forkey tries to reassure them. "I will say, honey, you know what, that's a part of your body trying to keep you safe." In cases where children are in abusive homes, as they grow and their brains develop, they adapt to the experiences around them. If a caregiver gets drunk and abusive every night, or if a depressed parent is withdrawn and does not offer necessary attention, the child can be in a near constant state of fight or flight, trying to protect themselves. The pumping of adrenaline never seems to stop. In some cases, this can lead to a diagnosis and labels from school teachers, Forkey said. "We have to stop saying 'what's wrong with you' and start saying 'what happened to you,'" Forkey said. Treating children through therapy Trauma to a child can exhibit itself in more than just a physical way. Once a child has been treated in the hospital, it's imperative to get a child into treatment and seeing a therapist as soon as possible, according to Dr. Jessica Griffin, the executive director of the Child Trauma Training Center and an associate professor of Psychiatry and Pediatrics at UMass Medical School. Run out of UMass Medical School, the Child Trauma Training Center focuses on improving the standard of care for traumatized youth across Massachusetts through grant funding. The center offers training in evidence-based treatment to clinicians and access to treatment for youth and families. "What we do in treatment is we first focus on youth safety," Griffin said. "Do children feel safe where they are now, and can children feel safer." Then children receive more information on trauma related to their experience, whether that was surviving a house fire, coping with grief or a violent crime. Sharing such information helps the child know that he or she isn't the only person who has experienced this kind of trauma, Griffin said. The child learns that he or she is not alone. The impact of trauma is diverse. Some children become withdrawn and depressed while others may become prone to outbursts or become disruptive in the classroom. Symptoms vary widely and can include sleep deprivation, nightmares, anger and a decline in academic performance. But symptoms can be physical, too, like stomach aches or headaches. If a child has gone through sexual trauma, he or she may start to exhibit sexual behavior. Therapists offer a set of tools, including things like deep breathing, mindfulness or meditation, to help the child cope with his or her symptoms. "We're never going to erase the bad things that happened, but we can give them tools," Griffin said. Certain anniversaries can bring flashbacks and an onset of symptoms. The tools are necessary for making sure a child knows how to handle those days. For example, Griffin once treated a boy who was in a car accident with his mother. His mother did not survive. "He had a really hard time, as you can imagine, on Mother's Day, so we had to come up with a plan," she said. "You're never going to be able to undo an anniversary reaction or memories. But you can help them have mastery over that." The key, Griffin said, is to get the child to a place where he or she can openly talk about what happened. "We help them tell their story whatever way they want to, whether that's in a chapter book, a rap song or a puppet show for the little guys," she said. Once a child gets past that step and becomes bored with therapy, wanting to return to other hobbies or interests, is when therapists see a huge decrease in symptoms, Griffin said. Through the Child Trauma Training Center, Griffin has developed the Link Kid program, which creates a large database of providers across the state and tracks waitlists, creating a streamlined process for children in need of evidence-based trauma treatment and mental health providers who have been trained in such treatment. This way, if a parent or caregiver finds out a child has been a victim of a traumatic event, they will not have to call various agencies or centers looking for an opening with a therapist. Link Kid tracks that for them. All parents or caregivers have to do is call the toll-free number 1-855-link-kid and take part in a trauma screening over the phone. Link Kid can make referrals for children up to age 22. Griffin stressed that children are resilient. Having a supportive parent or caregiver Iis the most important factor in recovery, Griffin said. "Just one person is all it takes," she said. Until David Buckel decided to kill himself by setting himself on fire, I had never heard of him. I didn't know that he and I agreed on the long-term damage of climate change. But however much Buckel intended for his own death to call attention to the issue, it will likely go down as a step backward to the cause, and not one that advances it. That's because Buckel failed to accept that it's not the people who agree with him that he needed to reach. It's those who think climate-change protesters are abnormal wackos and libnuts who are out of touch with reality. I hope there are ways to defeat this tragically flawed stereotype, because I believe the danger is very real. Taking your own life and in a particularly grisly way, though, is not the way to persuade skeptical people your judgment and reasoning were on sound footing to which they could relate. Predictably and admirably, Buckel is being remembered as a fighter for worthy causes by people who agreed with those causes. An attorney best known for exhaustive work fighting for gay rights, he was the lead attorney in the case of Brandon Teena, a transgender man who was gang-raped and murdered in Nebraska in 1993. Later in life, Buckel trained his attention to the environment. Before committing suicide, he decided to leave a final note about the perils of climate change, which he sent to several news outlets before immolating himself in New York's Prospect Park. "Pollution ravages our planet ... Most humans on the planet now breathe air made unhealthy by fossil fuels, and many die early deaths as a result -- my early death by fossil fuel reflects what we are doing to ourselves," Buckel wrote. Among people who admired Buckel, his suicide will likely be recalled with a sense of martyrdom. But outside of those communities, he will be forgotten very quickly by most and regarded by others as a man plagued by whatever emotional instability can drive a 60-year-old man to kill himself, just to make a statement. The movement that meant so much to him has lost an important and prominent voice. Sadder still is that actions like Buckel's won't solve any part of what bothered him most. Corporations won't change policies because he died. The Trump Administration will not take his death as a wakeup call. The people who foolishly mock climate change will use his drastic action as evidence that environmental warnings are being advanced by radicals who cannot be trusted by normal, rational people. Look at this guy, Mr. and Mrs. Middle American voter, and tell us he's not part of the extremist crowd we're warning you about. Was David Buckel's ultimate sacrifice noble? In one sense, yes, but his cause would have been served better not by dying for it, but by living for it and fighting on with a voice that will no longer be heard. What made Buckel's 60 years of life noble was that it was lived with purpose. He hoped his death would motivate others to become involved, for as he wrote, "honorable purpose in life invites honorable purpose in death." His suicide revealed a deep sense of frustration and inadequacy toward making a difference, but those who knew him said he did. As one example, his work was central to Iowa's 2009 decision to become the third state to legalize same-sex marriage. Before dying, Buckel compared his decision to protests by Tibetan monks against Chinese occupation. "This is not new, as many have (chosen) to give a life based on the view that no other action can most meaningfully address the harm they see," he wrote. But t's hard to see a positive impact coming out of this. At its worst, it may be a step backward because it will resonate only with those who already agreed with him. Environmental opponents will use his suicide, and how he accomplished it, as evidence of a lack of rationale or emotional grounding. They also won't have to listen to him anymore. As someone who agreed with his cause, I'd have rather seen David Buckel stay in the fight and force those people to keep hearing his message, until enough of them began to see his point. The Massachusetts Legislature has two months to exhibit true lawmaking leadership. The state Supreme Judicial Court struck down a prohibition on civilian ownership or stun guns and Taser weapons, but gave the Legislature 60 days to create a new law that passes a constitutional test. That won't be easy. The SJC said the current law violated the Second Amendment, which in its view did not exempt stun guns from the right to bear arms. The law allowed ownership by law enforcement officers but not civilians. When the Second Amendment was written, that distinction was one many Americans feared and sought to avoid. Police-only weapons possession was not universally accepted as a guarantee of protection; to much of the early American public, police-only weapons posed its own danger to private citizens that the amendment was designed to mitigate. In a society far different than in the 1780s, gun regulation advocates today justly question the need for civilians to own stun guns or Taser equipment. It's important that the SJC ruling came with a challenge to the Legislature to pass a law that will stand up to a court test. "Under the Second Amendment, the possession of stun guns may be regulated, but not absolutely banned. Restrictions may be placed on the categories of persons who may possess them, licenses may be required for their possession, and those licensed to possess them may be barred from carrying them in sensitive places, such as schools and government buildings," the ruling read. That gives the Legislature some guidelines. The rest is up to them and the clock is ticking - though it's unclear why a constitutionally sound bill that passes after the 60-day time period would be any less lawful or acceptable than one that made the deadline. The court ruling is a temporary victory for gun advocates, but it also offers the recognition that, written carefully and with Second Amendment principles in mind, gun regulations do not automatically conflict with the right to bear arms. That is an important distinction; in fact, it drives to the heart of the debate between advocates of gun ownership and gun regulation. The Legislature has its directive. Regulating stun guns is the right course of action. It's up to Beacon Hill to do it in a way that will allow the high court to say yes. Responding to a disturbing lack of knowledge by students in civics, government and history, the Massachusetts Legislature is reviewing a dramatically expanded high school civics requirement. It is the right approach, but it needs fine-tuning if the goal is to broaden awareness in one social studies discipline without weakening others. Improving civics education enjoys bipartisan support and is "on the fast track," according to one legislator. It's aimed at reversing neglect of civics that explains why so many young Americans (and for that matter, older ones) are ignorant about not just American history but in how they are represented in government, how a bill is passed, responsibilities of citizens and so on. To say the proposal is comprehensive is an understatement. The bill would require every public school to provide education in constitutions of the U.S. and Massachusetts, the Bill of Rights, the Declaration of Independence, the U.S. flag, local history and government and the importance of participation in the electoral process. Schools would have to teach about U.S. and Massachusetts history, the composition of the branches of government, the electoral process, the roles and responsibilities of citizens and media literacy. The curriculum would include community diversity, how civic participation has been restricted through history and "opportunities to identify and debate issues relative to power, economic status and the common good in democracy." Every student would have to participate in at least two student-led civics projects as a requirement for graduation. A new Civics Project Trust Fund, funded from the state budget process, would pay for professional development and curriculum development. All of this is valid. It's also a lot - a yeoman, multi-pronged effort at reversing years and even decades of neglect on civics with one piece of legislation. Revising a curriculum involves the Board of Education and other educators, as well as the Legislature. As this moves forward, it will be important to provide guidelines on how schools will be expected to incorporate this long "to-do" list into existing programs. Expecting them to simply blend civics into existing history and social studies programs would almost certainly come at the cost of subtracting from the existing courses. This is especially true if the new requirements will not include a new, standardized test, which is not part of the bill and which teachers' unions would likely oppose. Even without a test, adding new civics requirements would mean cost, not only in developing curriculum but in maintaining it. None of this should deter the mission of reconnecting our young citizens to the democracy they live in, and are about to inherit. It is the state's best hope of reversing plummeting voting turnout, emotional debate devoid of factual knowledge and unawareness of how to confront serious, ongoing issues such as the current gun-law debate. But its far-reaching goals must also be implemented with care. Reversing decades of civics atrophy is not easy if the goal is to do it without diminishing from either established history programs or other courses. The fast track is the right track for better civics education. That this must be advanced is indisputable. The next important set of steps will be how. SPRINGFIELD -- Manuel and Patricia Oliver, whose son, Joaquin, was killed when a gunman opened fire at Marjory Stoneman Douglas High School in Parkland, Florida in February, will join local March for Our Lives activists this week for a community conversation on gun violence. The Olivers, former Springfield City Councilor Amaad Rivera and local March for Our Lives student organizers Trevaughn Smith and Sarah Reyes will speak about gun violence and school safety-related issues during the Friday night community forum at the South Congregational Church on Maple Street. The Olivers, who founded non-profit organization Change the Ref to ensure their son's life is not forgotten and to empower future leaders to prevent other such tragedies, will give keynote remarks at the 6 p.m. public event. Student activists, local leaders and members of the community will also be invited to engage "in a productive discussion" with the speakers on ways to keep Springfield and its schools safe from gun violence, organizers said. Rivera, who most recently served as the state policy director for U.S. Sen. Edward Markey, D-Massachusetts, will moderate the discussion. The community conversation will follow an art installation called "Walls of Demand," which Manuel Oliver created to demand action on gun violence at the local, state and federal level, according to organizers. Manuel Oliver has previously brought his "Walls of Demand" nationwide art project to Miami and Los Angeles. The community discussion and art installation will come nearly one month after hundreds of Western Massachusetts students, activists and others took to the streets of downtown Springfield for a "March for Our Lives" protest to bring attention to gun violence and urge national leaders to take action to reduce firearms-related deaths. Reyes, a Longmeadow High School sophomore, and Smith, a senior at Sabis International Charter School of Springfield, helped organize the Springfield March for Our Lives rally which coincided with similar events across the country. The March for Our Lives effort began in response to the Feb. 14 shooting at Marjory Stoneman Douglas High School that left 17 people dead. It seeks to bring attention to gun violence -- particularly mass shootings in schools -- and to demand that lawmakers take action to prevent such deaths. Mass Alternative Care received preliminary approval to open three medical marijuana dispensaries in Western Massachusetts in 2016. Those dispensaries still have not opened. But this month, the state's Cannabis Control Commission approved Mass Alternative Care for "priority certification," which gives the company a leg up in applying for a recreational marijuana license. Michael Schneider, an attorney who works with Mass Alternative Care, declined to speak to a reporter about the company's plans. Mass Alternative Care is not unique. All 20 registered marijuana dispensaries that were given priority review status for the recreational industry have yet to open their medical dispensaries. Patient advocates are raising concerns that the companies will go straight into the recreational market and will not serve patients. They say awarding priority to unopened dispensaries violates Massachusetts' marijuana law. "This is how they're going to kill the medical program," said Michael Latulippe, development director of the Massachusetts Patient Advocacy Alliance, which advocates for medical marijuana patients. But state regulators interpret the law differently. And advocates for the marijuana industry say they hope - and anticipate - that dispensaries will sell to patients even if they also sell to the general public. James Smith, an attorney and founding partner at Smith, Costello and Crawford who represents cannabis companies, said medical marijuana likely will make up around 25 percent of a business that sells both medical and recreational products. "Given that you spent a fortune to build a store and cultivation, why would you not want to carry a complete supply of products?" Smith said. "It would be like a beer and wine store that decides to not carry red wine." While any adult can buy marijuana from a recreational store, a patient can get the benefits of the medical marijuana program -- tax-free marijuana, a financial hardship discount, access to certain doses, a record accessible by their physician -- only at a dispensary connected to the state's medical marijuana computer system. Stores that sell medical and recreational marijuana are also required to set aside a portion of inventory for patients. Massachusetts law authorizes "priority certification," which lets registered medical marijuana dispensaries and "economic empowerment" applicants, who work in areas disproportionately affected by marijuana enforcement, apply beginning Tuesday for a license to open a recreational marijuana business. Other businesses have to wait until May 1 or June 1. Most of the companies given priority certification obtained their provisional certificate, a step partway through the medical marijuana approval process, in 2016 or 2017. The other Western Massachusetts company to get priority certification is GTI-Massachusetts NP Corp., which received permission in 2016 to build dispensaries in Amherst and Holyoke. A message left for GTI through its attorney was not returned. Today, there are 24 dispensaries approved to sell medical marijuana, and another approximately 100 with provisional certificates. While dispensaries have to put an expected opening date on their application, there is nothing compelling them to open then. There are many reasons a company with a provisional certificate might not have opened. The company might be building its facility and working through the inspections process. It might have run out of cash. Or it might be waiting for the recreational market to become legal. The latter option worries Latulippe's group. "There's nothing in regulations that forces those applicants to commit to registered qualified patients in their community," said Nichole Snow, executive director of the Massachusetts Patient Advocacy Alliance. Latulippe said patients advocated to city and town officials on behalf of medical marijuana dispensaries. "If they think they're not going to serve patients, I'll have the same patients come out and speak against their facilities," Latulippe said. The Massachusetts Patient Advocacy Alliance wants the Cannabis Control Commission to require applicants to provide a time frame in which they will open for medical patients. Latulippe said he believes the commission is disregarding the law, although his group does not have money to sue. State law authorizes priority certification for dispensaries with "provisional or final certificates of registration in good standing ... that are operational and dispensing to qualifying patients." That language is ambiguous because dispensaries with provisional certificates are not allowed to dispense. The Cannabis Control Commission interpreted it to allow dispensaries with provisional certificates to get priority certification. Gov. Charlie Baker introduced a provision in a supplemental budget bill that would remove the language of "operational and dispensing." The bill has not yet passed. Jim Borghesani, a spokesman for the Yes on 4 group that supported legalization, said the spirit of the law was to grant anyone with a provisional certificate priority, since they are already vetted. "I certainly hope that if anybody decides to change their business plan and not include medical marijuana, they should be very aware of the pushback they're going to get from the town," Borghesani said. "It would not be a good idea to start your host community agreement while being accused of a bait and switch." Some experts say they do not see patients' fears coming true. Smith said just because a medical dispensary applied for priority certification does not mean it is prepared to open. Smith advised clients to apply even if they were not ready to open, so when they were ready, they would be prioritized. It is also possible that a dispensary that ran out of money and wants to sell its license will apply for certification to increase the license value. Smith said the first businesses to open will be those with an existing store in a place zoned for recreational marijuana. Medical sales will be as lucrative as recreational sales, so there is no reason a dispensary would forego that, Smith said. Adam Fine, a Massachusetts attorney for Vicente Sederberg who specializes in marijuana law, said it costs $81,500 to get a provisional certificate and $50,000 annually to maintain it. He thinks few businesses would want to hold a license to wait for the recreational market because of the cost. Most have probably been delayed by building, raising money, litigation, changing staff or other hurdles. "I don't think a lot of people are sitting on licenses with the intent of applying for recreational," Fine said. Like Smith, Fine said businesses have a financial incentive to sell to patients, because it increases the size of the market. But Maggie Kinsella, a spokeswoman for the pro-marijuana group MassCann/NORML, said other states have seen medical marijuana programs disappear after legalization. She worries that the licensing decision is a step in that direction. "I feel like this is abandoning the program," Kinsella said. Egypt seeks full and transparent investigation into allegations of chemical-weapons use in Syria's Douma, said FM Sameh Shoukry Egypt's Minister of Foreign Affairs Sameh Shoukry spoke with US Secretary of State John Sullivan by telephone on Monday, discussing the latest developments in Syria, including US-led airstrikes on Syrian government targets, the Egyptian foreign ministry has announced. According a ministry statement, Shoukry presented Egypt's evaluation of the military latest escalation in Syria, which saw the US, France and Britain launch missiles at Syrian government targets last Saturday in response to alleged chemical weapons use in Syria. In his telephone call, Shourky said it was necessary to boost efforts to achieve a political resolution to the Syrian crisis in accordance with international law under the guidance of the UN. He said that Egypt completely rejects the use by any party of internationally prohibited weapons on Syrian territory, demanding a transparent investigation into alleged chemical-weapons use in Syria. The two men agreed to continue coordination and consultation on seeking a political solution, encouraging all parties to be positively involved in the talks, said the ministry statement. Egypt has maintained its support for a peaceful solution to the Syrian crisis, while affirming its support for the unity of the Syrian state and its territory. On Saturday, Damascus witnessed a string of powerful blasts, the result of large-scale missile strikes by the US, France and Britain. The attacks on Syrian government targets came one week after a suspected deadly gas attack in Douma, a suburb of Damascus. Western nations have said the Syrian government is responsible for the alleged gas attacks, while Damascus and Moscow claim the events were staged by Al-Qaeda-linked jihadists under the direction of foreign intelligence agencies. Search Keywords: Short link: BOSTON -- Massachusetts' highest court is urging state lawmakers to change the law surrounding home cultivation of medical marijuana. "Statutory and regulatory clarification would be most beneficial," wrote Justice Scott Kafker in a decision issued Thursday in the case Commonwealth vs. Richardson. Joshua Richardson is a medical marijuana patient who was arrested after the police found 22 marijuana plants growing in his basement. Massachusetts' medical marijuana law lets patients grow enough marijuana to yield a 60-day supply for the person's personal, medical use. A 60-day supply is defined as enough to provide 10 ounces of usable marijuana. Prosecutors said Richardson was growing more than the limit and intended to sell the drug. Richardson argued that the limit is unconstitutionally vague. The Supreme Judicial Court did not actually rule on whether the limit is too vague, since the court made other rulings that made a decision on that issue unnecessary. But the justices cautioned state lawmakers that the current law is problematic. The SJC suggested that a plant-based limit would be clearer than the current limit, which allows someone to grow up to a 60-day supply. Of 15 states that allow home cultivation for medical marijuana, Massachusetts is the only state that defines a limit in terms of supply per period -- i.e. a 60-day supply. Every other state uses a plant-based limit. Washington initially had a limit based on supply period, but lawmakers changed it to a plant-based limit after criticism that the rule created uncertainty. Massachusetts' recreational law also has a plant-based limit on how much marijuana someone can legally grow at home. The justices wrote that the Richardson case showed that the amount of usable marijuana yielded by each plant depends on numerous factors, including the grower's skill. "The ten-ounce rule provides some additional flexibility for patients who may be inept growers, unable to yield much even from a large number of plants but, by the same token, it makes enforcement of the cultivation limit all the more difficult," Kafker wrote. Kafker wrote that for start-up home cultivation operations like Richardson's, the law is vague enough to make it hard to determine whether a grower intentionally exceeded the legal limits. The Richardson case involved several other arguments relating to probable cause for a search warrant, improper jury instructions and whether there was sufficient evidence. The court upheld Richardson's conviction for possession of marijuana with intent to distribute. It overturned his conviction for unlawful cultivation of marijuana due to erroneous jury instructions and insufficient evidence that Richardson intentionally grew more than a 60-day supply. Egypt's Education Minister Tarek Shawky said on Monday that paper exams at national high schools (Thanaweya Amma) will be replaced by electronic tests this year in an effort to improve the system and student evaluations, Al-Ahram Arabic news website reported. The minister said that the tests will be administered similar to the English-language Toefl exams, adding that high schools will be sent the exams shortly before test dates to avoid leaks of exam questions. Every year, nearly 600,000 Thanaweya Amma students must take highly competitive exams in a number of subjects at the end of their final year of high school. The grades determine what universities and faculties students may attend. Education reform plans have long been announced by the education ministry, yet no real measures have been taken so far, especially for Thanaweya Amma. E-Tests Shawky said in a parliament meeting that education reform will involve a shift from the current system of focusing on memorisation to ensuring that students understand the curricula. The minister said that students will be tested on computers and/or tablets, and their answers will be sent to two professionals for correction, where an average of the two grades to determine the final marks. All tests will be corrected anonymously. The new system should also help prevent a repetition of exam question leaks that took place in previous years. In 2016, Thanaweya Amma test questions were leaked online through a Facebook page called Chao Ming. After the leak, the education ministry decreed that students must sit in for new exams, which led to a number of student protests. The minister also said that the new correction process will be fair, and that the grievance filing system will be abolished. Every year, a high number of students file grievances, after paying a fee, if they feel their exams were graded unfairly. The students do not get to see how their tests were graded, but instead get a report about whether their exams were graded fairly, as well as a possible correction of the grade if needed. Shawky said that Egyptian President Abdel-Fattah El-Sisi has ordered that all tablets used in exams are to be manufactured in Egypt in cooperation with ministries of military production and communication and information Technology. Funding for education reform On Saturday, the World Bank said it will be providing $500 million to Egypt for a five-year education reform plan. In a presser late on Monday attended by Shawky, education ministry spokesperson Ahmed Khairy said that the ministry welcomes the World Bank decision and is looking forward to receiving the funds to begin implementing the reforms starting September 2018. The deal with the World Bank will be signed on 20 April in Washington, says Shawky. The World Bank said the investment will support increasing access to quality kindergarten education, improving the quality of learning and adopting technology as a vehicle to achieving the reform objectives. The education reform programme is in line with Egypts 2030 Vision sustainable development strategy, which puts a strong emphasis on the critical role of education sector reform in the country's social transformation. Shawky said during the presser that the funds will not be under the control of the Egyptian ministry, but they will be sent as instalments for separate projects. The education reform plan is estimated to cost a total of around $2 billion, of which the World Bank will provide $500 million and Egypt will bear the remaining costs, Shawky said. Search Keywords: Short link: Related American actor Danny Glover visits Aswan Heart Center on his fifth trip to Egypt Famed American actor Danny Glover paid a visit to the Heart Centre at the Magdi Yacoub Heart Foundation (MYF) during a visit to Egypt's Aswan on Sunday. Following his tour of the center, Glover praised the center's role in saving the lives of many patients, including children. The visit is the actor's fifth to Egypt in recent years. The Magdy Yacoub Foundation was created in 2008 by renowned Egyptian surgeon Professor Sir Magdi Yacoub with the mission of establishing an international medical center of excellence that offers state-of-the-art basic health services to the less privileged free of charge. As part of the MYF, the Aswan Heart Centre provides world-class cardiac healthcare free of charge to the local community and the region. Search Keywords: Short link: Burundi will always stand by Egypt in its efforts to preserve its water security, Burundi's President of National Assembly Pascal Nyabenda told Egyptian Foreign Minister Sameh Shoukry during a Tuesday meeting in the Burundian capital Bujumbura. In an official statement, Egypt's foreign ministry spokesman Ahmed Abu Zeid said that Nyabenda stressed his country's full understanding of Egypt's water needs and the extent to which the country depends on Nile water. The two officials discussed converging viewpoints between Nile Basin countries, developments in the Ethiopian Grand Renaissance Dam (GERD) negotiations, parliamentary cooperation between the two countries, and efforts to accomplish domestic peace in Burundi. The meeting come as Egypt anticipates a 20 April meeting in Cairo with Ethiopian and Sudanese water and foreign affairs ministers for talks on the GERD, nearly two weeks after a meeting in Khartoum in the beginning of April was deemed fruitless. Shoukry, in his first visit to Burundi, stressed Egypts keenness to boost relations with Nile Basin countries in general and with Burundi in particulate in light of the special historical relations between the two countries. Shoukry said that Egypt is still committed to providing political and economic support to Burundi, which was presented clearly in Egypt's stances supporting Burundi in international and regional meetings, especially during its membership in the UN Security Council in 2016 and 2017. Shoukry also met with his Burundian counterpart Alain Aime Nyamitwe, where they discussed GERD negotiations. Shoukry stressed to Nyamitwe that Egypt engages in the talks with Ethiopia and Sudan with seriousness and flexibility, affirming that it has not at any stage wished that the construction of the dam be stalled. He added that Egypt acknowledges that the dam accomplishes developmental interests for the ''Ethiopian brothers," yet it still wants to guarantee that its share of Nile water is not affected. The Egyptian foreign minister is also set meet Burundi's President Pierre Nkurunziza, as well as inaugurate a number of development projects by Egypt in the African country under the framework of the Egyptian Agency of Partnership for Development. Burundi is among other Nile basin countries, including Ethiopia, which have previously said that they want to re-negotiate all treaties related to the Nile, including the 1929 Nile Water Agreement, which gives Egypt the right to veto Nile development projects that might threaten its water share. Burundi is one of the basin countries expected to pass the Cooperation Framework Agreement on the Nile, which will "promote integrated management, sustainable development, and harmonious utilisation of the water resources of the basin, as well as its conservation and protection for the benefit of present and future generations," according to the text of the agreement. Search Keywords: Short link: Northwestern University launches Local News Initiative University expertise to help develop new approaches to local news in U.S. April 17, 2018 Northwestern University is launching this month an innovative, two-year research and development project aimed at providing greater understanding of how digital audiences engage with local news and finding new approaches to bolster local news business models. The Northwestern Local News Initiative, led by the Universitys Medill School of Journalism, Media, Integrated Marketing Communications, is intended to spur experimentation of new approaches to local newsthrough deeper audience insights that could give rise to more reader engagement, improved trust and, ultimately, more sustainable business models. Local news is critical to our self-governed democracy, said Tim Franklin, senior associate dean at Medill and leader of the Local News Initiative. And, local news coverage across America is shrinking. Without robust local news, citizens will not have the information they need for their everyday lives about their communitys government institutions, schools, businesses and neighbors. Northwestern and Medill are uniquely positioned for this project because of our nationally recognized, leading-edge data mining, research and development expertise. The Local News Initiative is being supported by a $300,000 grant from Lilly Endowment Inc., and significant contributions from private donors concerned about the future of local news. The business model that has supported local news reporting in cities across the United States has been greatly disrupted. Steep revenue losses have led to cuts that hinder local news outlets ability to provide information about local government, civic institutions, businesses, schools and residents. Three local news organizationsthe Chicago Tribune, San Francisco Chronicle and The Indianapolis Starhave partnered with Northwestern to become Learning Labs for the Local News Initiative. Medill will chronicle ideas, successes and setbacks from the Learning Labs on a new web channel, so that leaders of all news media organizations, journalists, technologists, scholars and students from around the nation can learn from the projects findings and experimentation. Medills Spiegel Research Center (SRC), a leader in consumer and audience-based research that drives financial outcomes, will analyze anonymous data about readers and their engagement with news content and media services at the three Learning Labs. For example, faculty and student researchers from SRC will help identify which behaviorsreading particular types of articles, purchasing a digital subscription, clicking on an advertisement, or calling a customer service centerlead to certain financial outcomes for the media outlets. They also will study behavior across different devices and media platforms. The Northwestern Knight Lab, a leader in developing digital storytelling tools and platforms, will conduct additional human-centered design research through interviewing residents in the local markets about their news needs and expectations. The Knight Lab faculty and students also will research news consumption data of all local news outlets in the Chicago, San Francisco and Indianapolis markets. Using the research conducted this year by SRC and Knight Lab, the product development and experimentation phase will begin in early 2019. The Knight Lab team will work with the Learning Lab partners to create new products, tools and approaches that are designed to improve reader engagement, bolster financial sustainability and better inform citizensall based on the research findings. We at The Chronicle are thrilled to be working with Medill on this project, said Audrey Cooper, editor in chief of the San Francisco Chronicle. Getting better insight into what readers need to know and how they want to learn about vital topics of the day is a key part of what will help us continue to serve the people of Northern California for generations to come, and Im confident this project will go a long way in helping us reach those goals. The Indianapolis Star Executive Editor Ronnie Ramos added, We are excited to partner with Medill and learn more about our readers and how they consume our content. This is an exciting project, and my hope is that it will help improve our journalism and strengthen our business in the future. The Indianapolis-based Lilly Endowment provided the largest single contribution to the project. Several individuals also have given substantial gifts to support this initiative, including Medill alumnus John Mutz (BSJ57, MSJ58), former lieutenant governor of Indiana and president of PSI, Indianas largest utility company. Another major donor was Myrta Pulliam, a Pulitzer Prize-winning journalist and philanthropist whose family once owned The Indianapolis Star and The Arizona Republic. One of the most revered schools of journalism, Medill, is the ideal place to study a sustainable business model for gathering local news, Mutz said. Our democratic society depends on having a credible and reliable source of this news. To learn more about the Northwestern Local News Initiative or how to get involved, contact Tim Franklin. An Alexandria Misdemeanour Court handed 10 year prison terms to five defendants on Tuesday over a deadly 2017 train accident near the coastal city that left 41 passengers dead. Among those sentenced included the train's conductor, his aide, and others to ten years in prison. It also sentenced the railway station manager to five years in prison, as well as three-year dismissal from office. The defendants were charged with manslaughter and negligence and have been ordered to pay a fine of EGP 1 million (approximately $56,520). The sentences can still be appealed. In August 2017, a deadly collision near Alexandria left 41 dead and 179 injured after a train en route from Cairo crashed into the back of the train from Port Said. The latter train was stationary at Khorshid station in Alexandria's eastern suburbs at the time. Egypt's President Abdel-Fattah El-Sisi ordered the formation of investigative teams in order to identify the reasons behind the accident and hold those responsible to account. Egypt's railway system is notorious for its poor safety record, mostly blamed on lack of maintenance and poor management. Successive governments have failed to enforce basic safety measures for the network. Following the crash, President El-Sisi highlighted the need to upgrade the railway network to prevent deadly accidents, stating that the system needs EGP 180 billion (about $10 billion) to be modernised. On April 9, Egypt's Transportation Minister Hisham Arafat announced a project to revamp the national railway network, announcing EGP 55 billion in investments thru 2022. Search Keywords: Short link: Egypt will discuss with Russia the resumption of Russian charter flights to the Egyptian tourist resorts of Sharm El-Sheikh and Hurghada, nearly one week after both countries resumed flights between their capitals. The recent flight resumption came after a 30-month ban by Moscow of flights between the two countries after a Russian airliner crashed in Sinai in 2015. In press statements reported on the sidelines of the Aviation Africa 2018 Conference in Cairo, Egypt's Civil Aviation Minister Sherif Fathy said on Tuesday that Egyptian officials will hold a meeting with their Russian counterparts in mid-May, which will include an assessment of the situation following the recent resumption of Moscow-Cairo flights. Fathy said the two parties will discuss a future roadmap for the return of the Russian flights to Egyptian holiday getaways. "We respect the decisions of our Russian counterparts. When the Russian side sees a suitable timeline for the return of their flights to Sharm El-Sheikh and Hurghada, they will be resumed in coordination with us," he told reporters. The statements by the Egyptian civil aviation minister come nearly two weeks after the head of Russia's Federal Air Transport Agency Alexander Neradko said that the resumption of charter flights to Egypt's holiday destinations will only be discussed after Russian and Egyptian aviation security experts strike an agreement on an interaction scheme at Cairo Airport. "To ensure our air passengers safety, a special group of (Russian - TASS) aviation security specialists will be in Cairo to assist their Egyptian counterparts in maintaining security at Cairo airport. We need to polish [our] interaction skills, and only then will we consider the resumption of flights to resort areas, namely, Sharm El-Sheikh and Hurghada," he said in statements reported by Russian news agency TASS. In late 2015, Moscow grounded all commercial passenger flights to Egypt over security concerns after a Russian A321 airbus crashed over Sinai shortly after taking off from Sharm El-Sheikh, killing all 224 people on board. Russian travellers had comprised the largest single tourist group in Egypt, contributing to about a fifth of foreign vacationers in the country as of 2015, according to official data. The crash of the Russian flight dealt a blow to Egypt's tourism industry, a major source of hard currency for the country, with the number of foreign tourists visiting Egypt dropping from 9.3 million in 2015 to 5.4 million in 2016. Last week, Cairo International Airport received its first Russian flight, operated by Aeroflot, and Egyptian national carrier EgyptAir sent its first flight from Cairo to Moscow. The resumption of flights came a few months after Russian President Vladimir Putin issued a decree in December 2017 during his visit to Cairo to resume commercial air traffic between the two countries' capitals. Search Keywords: Short link: Turkish deputy prime minister said the ruling AK Party would discuss a suggestion by the nationalist MHP party to hold the presidential election in August this year, more than a year before the November 2019 scheduled date. MHP leader Devlet Bahceli suggested on Tuesday bringing forward the presidential election, saying it was difficult for the country to "stand current circumstances" until November 2019. "The party's official institutions will make an evaluation and a statement will be made afterwards," Deputy Prime Minister Bekir Bozdag told reporters. President Tayyip Erdogan said he would meet Bahceli on Wednesday. Turkey's lira weakened to 4.1103 by 0941 GMT, from 4.0865 before Bahceli's comments. The Borsa Istanbul main stock exchange index fell more than 2 percent. Turkey held a referendum a year ago which introduced a presidential system and granted Erdogan much greater powers. Search Keywords: Short link: The United Nations' Yemen mediator Martin Griffiths said on Tuesday he plans to present a plan for negotiations within two months to end the conflict, but warned that any new military offensives could "take peace off the table." A proxy war is playing out in Yemen between Iran and Saudi Arabia. A Saudi-led military coalition intervened in Yemen in 2015, backing government forces fighting Iran-allied Houthi rebels. Iran has denied supplying weapons to the Houthis. Griffiths, a former British diplomat who replaced Mauritania's Ould Cheikh Ahmed as the UN Special Envoy last month, briefed the UN Security Council for the first time on Tuesday. "My plan is to put to the (Security) Council within the next two months a framework for negotiations," Griffiths said. He warned, however, there were unconfirmed reports that movements of forces in Yemen are on the increase and the prospect of intense military operations around the Houthi-held port city of Hodeidah "may soon be forthcoming." "Our concern is that any of these developments may in a stroke, take peace off the table," he said. "We all need urgently and creatively to find ways to diminish the chances of these game-changing events, upsetting and derailing the hopes of the great majority of Yemenis." Yemen's UN Ambassador Khaled Hussein Mohamed Alyemany told reporters: "We don't have the intention to advance on Hodeidah." Coalition and Yemeni forces have made modest territorial gains in recent months against the group in an armed push moving northward from the Bab al-Mandab strait toward Hodeidah on the Red Sea, where 80 percent of Yemen's crucial food imports arrive. The war has killed more than 10,000 people, displaced more than 2 million and driven the country to the verge of famine. The Houthis have repeatedly fired missiles at Saudi Arabia, which the United States and UN experts say were of Iranian origin. Tehran denies the charge. US Ambassador to the United Nations Nikki Haley said on Tuesday she would continue to push the Security Council for accountability. "To achieve enduring peace in Yemen, Iran must stop its interference and its violations of the arms embargo this Council imposed," Haley told the council. The Saudi-led coalition has conducted thousands of air strikes targeting Houthi fighters and has often hit civilian areas, although it denies ever doing so intentionally. "We have called on all parties to take appropriate measures to mitigate the risk of civilian casualties," Haley said. "The United States is working to offer support to the Saudi-led Coalition, while minimizing civilian casualties." Search Keywords: Short link: Saudi Arabia would be prepared to send troops into Syria as part of the U.S.-led coalition if a decision was taken to widen it, Foreign Minister Adel al-Jubeir said on Tuesday. "We are in discussion with the U.S. and have been since the beginning of the Syrian crisis about sending forces into Syria," Jubeir told a news conference in Riyadh with U.N. Secretary-General Antonio Guterres. He said Riyadh had expressed its readiness while Barack Obama was U.S. President to send ground forces into Syria if the United States were to add an on-the-ground component to the U.S.-led coalition fighting Islamic State insurgents. Jubeir was responding to a question about a Wall Street Journal report that the administration of U.S. President Donald Trump is seeking to assemble an Arab force to replace the U.S. military contingent in Syria. "There are discussions regarding ... what kind of force needs to remain in eastern Syria and where that force would come from, and those discussions are ongoing," Jubeir said. Trump wants to bring U.S. troops home from Syria but has not set a timeline, White House spokeswoman Sarah Sanders said on Monday, two days after Western allies bombed Syrian targets over a suspected chemical weapons attack. One U.S. official told Reuters the United States is looking at what forces might be able to follow on in areas of Syria formerly under Islamic State control, should the United States leave or reduce its force dramatically. But no decisions have been made to do this. Before the Western military strikes took place, Saudi Arabia's Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman had said that the kingdom, a key U.S. ally, could take part in military action in Syria. While some commentators have assumed that Saudi Arabia is fully preoccupied with a three-year-old war in Yemen, Riyadh has suggested it could help counter-terrorism operations in some other theatres of conflict as part of a wider Muslim alliance. For example, a Saudi-backed Islamic military coalition will provide logistical, intelligence and training to a new West African counter-terrorism force, Jubeir said in December. About 40 Muslim-majority nations met in Riyadh at the end of November to flesh out details of an alliance first conceived two years ago by Prince Mohammed that is widely seen as a vehicle for countering the growing influence of Riyadhs rival Iran. Search Keywords: Short link: Israel released details on Tuesday about what it described as an Iranian "air force" deployed in neighbouring Syria, including civilian planes suspected of transferring arms, a signal that these could be attacked should tensions with Tehran escalate. Iran, along with Damascus and its big-power backer Russia, blamed Israel for an April 9 air strike on a Syrian air base, T-4, that killed seven Iranian Revolutionary Guards Corps (IRGC) members. Iranian officials have promised unspecified reprisals. Israeli media ran satellite images and a map of five Syrian air bases allegedly used to field Iranian drones or cargo aircraft, as well as the names of three senior IRGC officers suspected of commanding related projects, such as missile units. The information came from the Israeli military, according to a wide range of television and radio stations and news websites. Israel's military spokesman declined to comment. However, an Israeli security official seemed to acknowledge the leak was sanctioned, telling Reuters that it provided details about "the IRGC air force (which) the Israeli defence establishment sees as the entity that will try to attack Israel, based on Iranian threats to respond to the strike on T-4." The official, who requested anonymity, would not elaborate. Israels Army Radio reported that, given tensions with Iran over Syria, the Israeli air force cancelled plans to send F-15 fighter jets to take part in the US-hosted exercise Red Flag, which begins on April 30. "Exposed" Roni Daniel, military editor for Israeli TV station Mako, said the disclosure was a signal to Iran that its deployments in Syria "are totally exposed to us, and if you take action against us to avenge (the T-4 strike) these targets will be very severely harmed". According to Daniel, Israel was bracing for a possible Iranian missile salvo or armed drone assault from Syria. There was no immediate response from the IRGC or Syria. The Iranian death toll in T-4 was unusually high. "It was the first time we attacked live Iranian targets - both facilities and people," the New York Times on Sunday quoted an Israeli military source as saying. Iran, Israel's arch-foe, has cast its military personnel in Syria as reinforcements helping President Bashar al-Assad battle a seven-year-old insurgency. The Iranians have also described their cargo flights to Syria as carrying humanitarian aid only. An Israeli-Iranian showdown over Syria has loomed since Feb. 10, when Israel said an armed drone launched from T-4 penetrated its air space. Israel blew up the drone and carried out a raid on Syrian air defences in which one of its F-16 jets was downed. "Israel is headed for escalation," Yaacov Amidror, former national security adviser to Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, told Tel Aviv radio station 103 FM. "There could be a very big belligerent incident with Iran and Hezbollah." While not claiming responsibility for the T-4 strike, Israel has restated a policy of preventing Iran setting up a Syrian garrison. Scores of previous such raids went unanswered but Israel worries that changing conditions may now embolden Iran. Russia, which long turned a blind eye to Israeli actions in Syria while serving as a brake on retaliation by Iran or its Lebanese Hezbollah guerrilla allies, is now at loggerheads with Western powers over accusations, denied by Syria's government, that it has used chemical weaponry in fighting. Search Keywords: Short link: The presidents of Turkey and Iran on Tuesday vowed to press on with their alliance alongside Russia over Syria, the Turkish presidency said, after Ankara backed strikes by the US and its allies against the regime of President Bashar al-Assad. Russia and Iran are the key allies of Assad and their military intervention in Syria is widely seen as helping him stay in power and tipping the balance in the civil war. But Moscow and Tehran have over the last months worked increasingly closely with Ankara -- which has throughout the seven-year war called for Assad's ouster -- in seeking to find a solution to the conflict. In an interview with French television, French President Emmanuel Macron suggested that the weekend air strikes against Syrian government targets had succeeded in engineering a split in the Russia-Turkey alliance. But a Turkish presidential source said, following telephone talks between Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan and Iranian counterpart Hassan Rouhani, that the two sides had vowed the alliance must continue. "The two leaders emphasised the importance of continuing the joint efforts of Turkey, Iran and Russia... to protect Syrian territorial integrity and find a lasting, peaceful solution to the crisis," said the source. Erdogan on Saturday had welcomed the air strikes -- carried out by the US, Britain and France -- which he described as "appropriate" following an alleged chemical attack that the West blames on Assad but Moscow contends was staged. In his talks with Rouhani, Erdogan said that Turkey's opposition to the use of chemical weapons was "more than clear" and warned against opening the way to an "escalation of tensions". Ankara has been a NATO member since 1952 and its allies have become wary of the flourishing friendship between Ankara and Moscow. Earlier this month, Erdogan hosted a summit on Syria with Iran and Russia in Ankara, the second such meeting after trilateral talks in November in the Russian Black Sea resort of Sochi. Another such summit is planned in Tehran at a date yet to be confirmed. Turkey's Western allies are closely watching its deal to buy S-400 air defence systems from Russia which some officials have warned may not be compatible with Western technology. Search Keywords: Short link: Seven inmates were killed and 17 others injured in a riot at a maximum security prison in South Carolina overnight, one of the deadliest outbreaks of prison violence in the United States in decades, authorities said Monday. Fights among inmates erupted Sunday evening at the Lee Correctional Institution in Bishopville, South Carolina, and were brought under control at 2:55 am on Monday. "The incident at Lee CI resulted in 17 inmates requiring outside medical attention and seven inmates were killed," the South Carolina Department of Corrections (SCDC) said on its Twitter account. All prison guards and law enforcement authorities who responded were "safe and accounted for," it said. The department had initially described the riot as an "ongoing incident," only revealing the scope of the problem hours after its start at 7:15 pm Sunday. "The incident involved multiple inmate on inmate altercations in three housing units," it said. Lee Correctional Institution, which holds nearly 1,600 inmates, is a "Level III" maximum security facility built in 1993 to house violent offenders and prisoners with behavioral problems. Deadly prison riots have been relatively rare in the United States, despite some notable exceptions. South Carolina's prisons are notoriously violent, however, and suffer from chronic understaffing. According to The State newspaper, the number of inmates killed in South Carolina's prisons more than doubled in 2017 from the previous year. It said 12 inmates were killed by other prisoners last year, up from five in 2016. The deaths included four inmates who were strangled to death by two fellow prisoners in April 2017 at Kirkland Correctional Institution, another maximum security prison. Representative Todd Rutherford, the leader of the Democratic minority in the state House of Representatives, condemned the violence. "A mass casualty incident inside a correctional facility is simply unacceptable," Rutherford tweeted. "Safety -- for inmates, SCDC employees, and the public -- must be a priority. "Rioting like this is a symptom our criminal justice system is broken and needs reform now," he said. The United States has the highest rate of incarceration in the world with around 450 prisoners per 100,000 residents, according to Bureau of Justice Statistics (BJS). There were 1.5 million inmates in state and federal prisons in the United States at the end of 2016, according to the BJS. The overnight violence at Lee Correctional Institution was the deadliest at a US prison in 25 years. In 1993, nine inmates and a corrections officer were killed at the Southern Ohio Correctional Facility, a maximum security prison in Lucasville, Ohio. A two-day riot and hostage-taking at the New Mexico State Prison in 1980 left 33 inmates dead and 200 injured, one of the worst in modern US history. Probably the most famous was the 1971 rebellion at New York's Attica prison. After a four day standoff with inmates holding 42 hostages, New York state police moved in to retake the prison on orders of governor Nelson Rockefeller. By the time it was over 43 people were dead, including 10 guards and prison employees and 33 inmates. Search Keywords: Short link: BLUEBERRY AMBASSADOR MOMENTS Carman Ainsworth Baker Career Academy, coordinator Gabriella Bryant Sarah Palmer The first Blueberry Moment I did was give my friend some money. He wanted a pop out of the vending machine, but didn't have enough for it. I gave him what he needed left and he got one. It made me feel good because someone else had done that for me earlier in that week. My second Blueberry Moment was when I was on a bus going to Columbus, Ohio. It was a very small bus for a large group of people. There were a few people that didn't want to share a one-person seat. Another girl and I sat together so the others could be comfortable. I know I would want someone else to do the same for me. My church is doing a program called Operation Christmas Child. It sends shoeboxes full of gifts to other countries as Christmas gifts. It can range from a tooth brushes to stuffed animals and more. I've been working almost every day making things such as bracelets and key chains, and it makes me feel good that other kids with have them. Ollie Strouse Blueberry Moment 15507 During March, some students needed to save up for their senior trip. I gave them $10 before I left the school. I felt good for helping them. The rest of the night I was proud of myself that I did something good for others. It may seem like a small amount of money compared to what they needed in total, but giving at least a little can go a long way. Blueberry Moment 15505 In January, my very close friend needed help with her Spanish project. I stayed up as long as I could to help her. It took a while, but I helped her the best that I could. We both struggle with Spanish. By working together, she received a good grade on the project! Blueberry Moment 15506 In November, a friend of mine lost her pencil bag. She started to worry as it contained all her stuff, so I stayed after school with her. I looked through her things while she searched around the school. Thankfully we ended up finding it! I made me feel good knowing that I was able to bring relief to a friend simply by giving up a bit of my time. Ian McArthur My mom and I were in the car and were driving down the road. Wesaw a homeless man sitting on the side of the road. My mom was looking around the console for spare change or a few dollars. I got out my wallet and grabbed out all the cash I had on me at the time, which was about $15 and handed it to my mom to give it to him. His face was super happy and surprised. It felt nice to do it. During the winter, we had no school for about five Mondays in a row because of the snow. One of those days, I shoveled my neighbor's driveway. He's an older man, and I had nothing else to do at the time. I started shoveling and he walked outside and said to me that it wasn't necessary, but I insisted, telling him I was happy to do it. He went back inside and had a shoveled driveway that night. DeEsmond Lewis At my school, I wanted to do a Fun Day fundraiser. The purpose of this fundraiser is to give students a day to unwind from all of the school work they do. I thought of this fundraiser because my school is an accelerated-paced curriculum where students move through the curriculum twice as fast as a normal high school. In this fundraiser, the students have a choice to sign-up for a room. There are three rooms they can go to: the gym, the computer lab, and the movie room. We also give the students the option to buy a $5 combo deal. This combo consists of: two slices of pizza, a breadstick, chips, and a drink. Most students paid for the combo deal; however, there were some students who could not. Of those students, one of them said he could not pay because he did not have money to buy it at the time. This particular student is gentle-spirited, soft-spoken, and kind. I felt bad that he could not get the combo, so I paid for it without telling him. When it was time for the students to each, I told him that I paid for his food so he could eat. He gave me a smile and said, "Thank you!" I gave him a smile back and nodded my head. On the inside, I felt content with what I did. I could not stop smiling. A friend of mine left my school last year. However, she decided to transfer back to my school the final three weeks of the marking period. She was in the hospital for about three months and was falling behind in her classes. She was one of my closest friends who I did not want to see fail because of an illness, so I told her that I will dedicate the rest of my time to helping her catch up in her grades before final exams. We sat together during class making a checklist of all the assignments she needs to do before the end of the quarter. I told her if she needed my help with anything, text me on my cell phone and I will help her to the best of my ability. The next day, I would check on her progress and revised the checklist. She was stressed from all the work she has do while continuing with current work in school. I responded by giving words of encouragement and told her that she will get through this. I kept working with her until the end of the quarter. When I asked her for her final grade, she said that she passed both of her classes. The compassion I showed for my friend and my dedication to helping her pass her classes really made me feel warm-hearted. Doing this random act of kindness reflected who I am as a person: I am someone who loves to dedicate my time to helping others achieve their goal. I have been working at the Flint Public Library for a couple of months. During my time, I have encountered so many people who needed help with certain tasks such as printing, finding books, and scanning files. On this one particular day, I was sitting at my computer, and I saw a woman with her daughter, who was carrying a pink poster board, walking to a computer. The mother and I exchanged glances. From that moment, I knew that she wanted help. I walked over to them and gave a friendly greeting. The mother greeted back. Next, she asked if I could help her daughter with a Black History project that was due tomorrow. Her daughter's project covered objects that were invented by African Americans. Her daughter procrastinated until the last day she could work on it. After the mother explained the situation, I decided to help her daughter with the project. I spent the next two hours giving the daughter ideas on what she could do, helping her gather information, and posting pictures and information on the poster board. While working on the project, I told them that if they wanted to print off pictures and information, they would need money because printing costs. However, the mother claimed that she did not bring any money to print off pages, so I decided to use some of my leftover change to print off everything that the daughter needed. Finally, we finished the project. Both the mother and daughter show great gratitude towards me. The mother said I was the kindest person she has meet and shook my hand. When the family left, I walked by the front desk and my co-worker said to me, "You are the nicest person; I would not have done that for them." "This is just who I am," I replied back with a smile, "I love to help others." CD DeBoer First Baptist Church of Fenton held a Saturday workday, and I took that as a chance to be a Blueberry Ambassador. Several other people and I renovated the youth room by rearranging it, repainting the doors, and putting up more decor. I also helped by cleaning up cobwebs in the entry way and by scrubbing down and sanitizing the welcome center. It felt very good to know I was helping others and my church community by helping to keep the building tidy. I'm a fairly popular student, so I've never really been short of friends or lunchtime companions. But just because I have no issues in that area doesn't mean that others don't have it. Several weeks into the school year, I realized that a popular clique had abandoned one of its own and she was sitting by herself. Since then, I've been occasionally inviting her over to sit with us. While she doesn't always accept--she's made it clear that she enjoys solitude, and I respect that--whenever she sits with us, we do our best to welcome her without making her uncomfortable, and when she chooses not to join us, we try to be kind in other ways. Recently, a friend contacted me and admitted she hadn't been doing very well. She'd had a few conflicts with her siblings as well as a lot of homework, and she was struggling to keep her grades up. I messaged back and forth with her for several hours, trying to encourage her and help her with her assignment, as well as find out exactly what was going wrong and figure out what I could do to help. I helped her develop several strategies for de-escalation when she and her brother were about to fight, as well as a new system of keeping track of assignments. So far, everything has been going much better, and we message several times a week to keep tabs on one another. She knows she can talk to me anytime about anything, and I feel very good about being able to help her. Deanna Palmer One of the things that I did was shovel my neighbor's driveway. They are an older couple and usually they have one of their kids do it, but when I went outside, I saw that no one had done it yet. I wanted to help others out and I did. After I was done I went home and a few hours later they thanked my Dad and when he told them that it was not him, they were so very grateful. This made me even happier, and I was glad I helped out. The second act of kindness I did was at the store when I was standing in line. I saw an older lady walking out. She was struggling to carry her stuff that she bought. I went over, helped her open the door, and asked to help her take her stuff to her car. She said yes, so I helped her and she was very happy. The last act was when I assisted my school and walked students across Baker campus. I am honored that they trust me to help out in this way. One of the times I did this was when a girl had a tutoring appointment, but she did not know where to go. It was after school hours and I was leaving to go home and I heard that she didn't know where to go. I took that chance and walked her over and showed her where to go. I loved that I could help out my community in this way. Chamari Lamar I was at the store in line going to pay for my things and leave. There was a little boy buying some candy and things I knew were for his household since he had laundry detergent. The cashier had rung up his items, and he was a dollar and some cents short. I decided to pay the remaining amount because I didn't know his situation or anything. I just wanted to help out. I felt good when I did it because the little boy was very grateful that he and his parents or guardians had gotten what they needed. I also felt good because I knew my money had gone to a good cause. I had a lot of old clothing that was taking up space, and I didn't really want them anymore. Most of them didn't fit, and others weren't really my style. I decided to give them to the Salvation Army, because I didn't want to throw them in the garbage. That would be just a waste. I know there are people who really need them. It's getting cold outside, and the unfortunate might not have the layers they need. It made me feel good because I know that the clothes are getting put into use instead of just sitting in my closet. I had a lot of old books that I didn't read, and they were taking up space. I decided to take them to the Salvation Army, because I wanted to give the less fortunate the chance to get enjoyment from the books I read. It made me feel good because I got rid of something that I know is getting put into good use. ANN ARBOR, MI - Ann Arbor officials are still considering their legal options for the downtown property known as the Y Lot, and two new settlement offers are on the table. Tom Wieder, the attorney representing property owner Dennis Dahlmann in his lawsuit against the city, confirmed Dahlmann put forward two alternate settlement offers last week. Under one, Dahlmann would give $1.5 million to the city's affordable housing fund in exchange for the city allowing Dahlmann to keep the property free of any restrictions beyond normal regulations. That would remove the city's requirement for an underground parking connection, among other stipulations about what must be built. Wieder has said Dahlmann could immediately go forward with developing a productive use of the property. Under the other new offer, Dahlmann would drop his lawsuit and sell the property back to the city for $5.7 million, instead of the $4.2 million the city believes it can pay to regain possession. The Y Lot is the vacant lot next to the Blake Transit Center along William Street. The city sold the lot to Dahlmann four years ago for $5.25 million and is now considering exercising what the city believes is its right to buy it back for $4.2 million because Dahlmann didn't develop it. Dahlmann blames the city for the lack of a project happening by now. If the city really thinks it's worth nearly $10 million, as city officials have suggested, Dahlmann is giving the city an option to buy it for $5.7 million and avoid litigation that could drag on for years. Wieder argues the city does not actually have the legal right to repurchase the property for $4.2 million at this point. The warranty deed that conveyed the city property to Dahlmann for $5.25 million was dated April 2, 2014. The deal stipulated that Dahlmann had four years to build a mixed-use project as he described and get a certificate of occupancy or else the "right of reversion" would kick in, with the property reverting to the city for the lesser of $4.2 million or the appraised value. Since the city didn't pay by April 2, Wieder argues, the city lost its "reverter" rights. Wieder argues the city has known for years that no project would get a certificate of occupancy by April 2, largely due to the lack of a required underground parking connection that he argues made it impossible to meet the city's conditions, so the city should have been ready to pay the $4.2 million. Since the city missed that deadline, he argues, it's too late now and it's a pointless exercise for the City Council to continue to debate paying the $4.2 million. After four hours of deliberations on other matters, the City Council went into a closed session with the city's legal counsel shortly before 11 p.m. Monday night, April 16, to discuss the pending litigation. After roughly an hour and 45 minutes behind closed doors, the council reconvened in open session at 12:37 a.m. Tuesday and voted in favor of holding another special meeting and closed session at 7 p.m. next Monday, April 23, to further consider the issue. Council members shared some of their latest thoughts before the meeting adjourned at 1 a.m. There was at least one tense exchange that highlighted the ongoing division on council over the issue, with City Attorney Stephen Postema intervening to suggest the dialogue wasn't productive. Council Member Anne Bannister, D-1st Ward, asked Mayor Christopher Taylor and other council members to follow the city's code of ethics and refrain from using social media or other platforms to attack, bully or intimidate council members who have a different view on the issue. Taylor responded by saying he doesn't think he has done either of those things. "I believe I could cite an example or two on your social media," Bannister told the mayor. Taylor acknowledged he used social media to say the recent votes against repurchasing the property were irresponsible. He said calling a vote irresponsible is not bullying or improper. "Excuse me, mayor and council," Postema interjected, cutting the conversation short. "I would just encourage you, we have direction to go forward. It's close to 1 o'clock, we have work to do, and I'm not sure the continued discussion of that is productive for our mission." The 11-member council has been divided on a resolution to repurchase the property for $4.2 million, which the city believes is its right under the agreement between Dahlmann and the city. But that requires eight votes and it still appears to have only seven at most. Council Member Jane Lumm, an independent from the 2nd Ward, was absent when the council was split 7-3 on the issue two weeks ago. She could be the swing vote deciding what happens next if the resolution comes up for a vote again next week. She reiterated Tuesday morning she's still in favor of negotiating with Dahlmann and wants to see a development happen on the site consistent with what was previously envisioned. She said she doesn't want to prolong the litigation or see the property sit vacant. When buying the property four years ago, Dahlmann agreed to redevelop the site within four years and build a new mixed-use building rising at least five stories, with ground-floor retail/restaurant space, and office space and apartments above. The project also was to include a landscaped open space, including a grand fountain that Dahlmann described in his plans. Bannister, Jack Eaton and Sumi Kailasapathy are the three council members who voted against repurchasing the property two weeks ago, blocking it from having the eight votes needed. Lumm said the reason for Tuesday morning's postponement was to continue negotiations with Dahlmann. She expressed interest in bringing forward a resolution at the next meeting to lay out milestones and expectations for making a development happen on the site in cooperation with Dahlmann, setting deadlines for site plan submission and review. Lumm said it's imperative that the city understands what it would take to proceed with a project and have Dahlmann withdraw the lawsuit. Council Member Zachary Ackerman, D-3rd Ward, also hinted at bringing forward a resolution at the next meeting, one that would be a companion resolution to the resolution approving the repurchase and dictate a vision for what the city would do with the property. Lumm said there are some misrepresentations and inaccuracies about the Y Lot issue that she wanted to clear up. Based on an appraisal, a majority of council members believe the property is worth about $9.8 million now, assuming it could be resold for a development with a floor-area ratio of 700 percent. Lumm expressed doubt the city could buy the property for $4.2 million, quickly flip it to a new developer and double the city's money. She said the city would have to go through another time-consuming process of seeking and considering proposals, and there would be ongoing litigation between the city and Dahlmann to slow things. She also questioned the appraisal for the Y Lot, comparing it to the price the city got by offering the Library Lot across the street for sale. The City Council last year approved a $10 million sale of the Library Lot, which is the lot above the Library Lane underground garage, where a Chicago-based developer plans a mixed-use high-rise project. "The Library Lot building is 100,000 square feet or 45 percent larger than this building would be, even at 700 percent FAR," Lumm said. If the Y Lot is worth nearly $10 million, then the city got a bad price on the Library Lot, Lumm said. But she doesn't think that's the case. Realistically, Lumm said, the Y Lot is probably worth $6 million to $7 million, assuming there's a developer who wants to deal with the site and the likely conditions the city would place on it. She also made note of the public transit buses idling on all sides of the lot, something Dahlmann has cited as an obstacle to redeveloping the site. If there's another developer interested in buying the Y Lot and market conditions remain strong, Lumm said, the city could realize a gain on the resale. But after deducting broker fees, legal costs for litigation and the carrying costs, including lost taxes, she said, the net gain would be much smaller than the numbers some are throwing around. Dahlmann points to an August 2017 appraisal of the Y Lot by Gerald Alcock Company LLC, indicating a market value of $6.1 million. Responding to claims that it was a mistake for the city to ever purchase the Y Lot for $3.5 million in 2003, Council Member Chuck Warpehoski, D-5th Ward, noted the city was able to put $1.4 million into the city's affordable housing fund after selling it to Dahlmann in 2014. Even though the site is still sitting vacant, Warpehoski said, the city has been able to put that money to good use, improving and expanding the supply of affordable housing in the city. Responding to comments about the vision for the site, Council Member Kirk Westphal, D-2nd Ward, noted several years ago there was a downtown planning process called Connecting William Street that looked at the Y Lot and other city-owned lots. "If you go to A2DDA.org, or the Ann Arbor Downtown Development Authority's website, and type in the search box 'Connecting William Street,' you'll see site-level recommendations for the city-owned surface lots along or near William Street," he said. "Some folks might find it illuminating, and I guess I'll just leave it at that." Dahlmann and his associates in the past have collectively contributed thousands of dollars to the political campaigns of some council members, including Eaton, Kailasapathy and Lumm. All three maintain those past donations don't influence their votes, and Lumm reiterated that Tuesday morning. Lumm said it's "incorrect and wholly inappropriate" to suggest council members would make decisions based on campaign contributions instead of what they believe is in the best interest of the city. "It's tantamount to saying essentially your colleagues have zero integrity, and that's pretty insulting," she said, adding she understands why Bannister is bothered by what some are saying. Ackerman, who is in favor of repurchasing the Y Lot, has encouraged residents to look at the campaign contributions. It also came up as a topic of discussion at a candidate forum last week. "This just adds to the divisiveness and doesn't bring us together," Lumm said Tuesday morning. "And so I'm making a plea for us to not widen these divisions." Lumm noted the city is doing another appraisal of the Y Lot, one that can be shared publicly. The city on April 13 denied a Freedom of Information Act request from The Ann Arbor News for a copy of the appraisal upon which the city is relying at the moment. The city maintains it is exempt from disclosure because it's a privileged document and appraisals of property yet to be acquired are exempt until there's a deal or until three years have passed. ANN ARBOR, MI - Charles Gelman, a noted philanthropist, innovator and founder of Gelman Sciences Inc., the company responsible for a toxic plume of pollution that's plagued the Ann Arbor area's groundwater for decades, has died. Known by many as Chuck, Gelman passed away on Friday, April 13, at the age of 86. Funeral services were planned for 11 a.m. Tuesday, April 17, at the Beth Israel Congregation in Ann Arbor, with interment at the Arborcrest Cemetery in Ann Arbor. Gelman, born in 1931 in New York, was a celebrated businessman who achieved much success and shared his wealth. At the same time, he gained notoriety as a result of his company heavily polluting the Ann Arbor area's groundwater with the toxic chemical 1,4-dioxane between the 1960s and 1980s. The Gelman dioxane plume remains an ongoing and evolving environmental and public health concern that local, state and federal officials are still trying to address decades later, and it's expected to be a problem requiring attention for many years to come. Gelman Sciences, while responding to court orders and spending millions doing pump-and-treat remediation over the years to remove large amounts of the chemical from the ground, is still fighting litigation over the pollution in court as the plume continues to spread. Gelman Sciences merged in 1997 with Pall Corp., which was acquired in 2015 by Danaher Corp. On paper, Gelman Sciences still exists as the legal entity responsible for the plume that now covers an area more than three miles long and a mile wide, though Charles Gelman hasn't been involved with the company for years. The Ann Arbor News archives are filled with many stories chronicling the rise of Gelman's company in the 1960s and 1970s, followed by controversy over the dioxane discovery in the 1980s and litigation in the 1990s. After the merger with Pall Corp. in 1997, Gelman was no longer CEO and stepped out of the spotlight. Gelman Sciences used dioxane as a solvent while manufacturing medical-grade filter devices at its plant, which is no longer operational, near the sister lakes off Wagner Road on the border between Ann Arbor and Scio Township, north of Liberty Road. It's estimated the company used 850,000 pounds of the toxic chemical between 1966 and 1986, with most being discharged to soil, surface water and groundwater through seepage lagoons, land spray irrigation, and direct discharges at the site. Gelman maintained he believed it was non-toxic and the pollution was not intentional. After many years of litigation and court-ordered mitigation strategies, the company is continuing to try to manage the risk of human exposure under the oversight of the Michigan Department of Environmental Quality -- and under the watchful eyes of many local officials and citizen activists who are still calling for a better cleanup and more monitoring at the polluter's expense. Gelman started his company, initially called the Gelman Instrument Co., as a hobby in his basement in Chelsea, while he was a graduate student at the University of Michigan. He earned his master's degree in public health from UM in 1958 and had a growing business on his hands by the time he graduated. A research chemist, he earned a bachelor's degree at Syracuse University in 1953 before going to work as a chemist for the U.S. Army's Chemical Corps. from 1953 to 1956, and then an air pollution chemist for the U.S. Public Health Service from 1956 to 1957. "His early efforts in air pollution detection work resulted in patents on several systems for detection of chemical warfare gases and led to creation of an air sampling device which in turn was the basis for starting Gelman Instrument in 1958," The News reported in 1963. In 1956, Gelman was the principal chemist for an air pollution study in Louisville, Kentucky, in charge of analytical procedures and testing methods for a project sponsored by the U.S. Public Health Service, the state of Kentucky and city of Louisville. Part of his job there was to collect gas samples to be analyzed for signs of air pollutants, which he designed a device to do. After he came to Michigan for graduate school, where he tinkered with reproducing the device, his former boss called to see whether he could build more and put in an order. With that, Gelman was in business. In 1963, known as the Gelman Instrument Co., Gelman's company began moving equipment into a new $250,000 facility at 600 S. Wagner Road in Scio Township. Gelman predicted future growth for his company, which employed 41 people at the time. "Gelman Instrument markets special filtration equipment for aerospace industries' 'clean rooms' and provides instruments to sample such rooms' cleansed air to make certain of high purity," The News reported in 1963, noting Gelman's company also provided chemical laboratory and process filtration equipment, medical sampling and analysis equipment, plus radiation detection equipment. The firm produced devices that could detect dust pollution, bacterial pollution, and pollution caused by gases and vapors. "Overall, good progress has been made, but with growth of the country, expansion of industry, and the number of automobiles -- all adding to pollution -- we're not keeping pace," Gelman was quoted saying of the need to address air pollution in 1963. "The trend toward pollution is running faster than the solutions for control." In the coming years, Gelman's plant underwent multiple expansions as the company continued to grow, but methods of disposing of the company's wastewater was a concern. The News published a story in November 1969, saying a classic illustration of the conflict between the needs of a growing industry and the state's efforts to control water and air pollution had become visible just west of Ann Arbor at the Gelman property. At the time, there already were rumors that waste from the Gelman plant might be seeping into Third Sister Lake in the adjacent Saginaw Forest, which Gelman officials denied, and there were concerns about odor coming from wastewater lagoons on the Gelman site. "Chemical wastes and bacteria in this lagoon system have brought the State Water Resources Commission's lowest rating of 'E' to Gelman Instrument Co of Ann Arbor, an innovator and manufacturer of devices for measuring and controlling air and water pollution," read the caption of a photo of Gelman's lagoon system in 1969. "The aerator at the center of the nearest lagoon has proven inadequate." As for the lagoons, Gelman commented at the time that they were dug at the urging of the Water Resources Commission. He also said he believed the solvents in the company's wastewater were non-toxic and could go directly into Honey Creek, a tributary of the Huron River above Ann Arbor. By the mid-1970s, Gelman's company had grown from a tiny operation with two employees to a global, multimillion-dollar business with 230 employees and an 85,000-square-foot plant on Wagner Road, in addition to plants in England and Italy, a manufacturing subsidiary in Australia, a sales subsidiary in France, and reps in other countries. In 1975, Gelman was said to be the world's largest manufacturer of electrophoresis equipment used to analyze blood and detect antibodies, supplying international markets with a broad line of membrane filters for cleaning air, detecting pollution and biological filtering, and other biomedical products. By 1979, the company had changed its name to Gelman Sciences to reflect its rapid growth. That's the same year Gelman, manufacturing micro-filtration devices and biomedical apparatuses, was in the midst of another major facilities expansion to meet growing demands. Gelman announced the construction of a 21,000-square-foot facility for the company's medical device division to be built next to its headquarters. At the time, Gelman said he expected his firm to reach sales of $35 million for 1979. The company was composed of a medical device division, a filtration division and a laboratory diagnostic division, making microporous filters and micro-filtration devices for research and clinical laboratories, hospitals and industrial processes. The company also made a consumer-oriented faucet filter. "We're innovators in our field in both new products and new applications," Gelman said in 1979, adding he considered government regulations great because they created demand for his filters. In April 1986, The News described Gelman's rise as a rags-to-riches story, going from the slums of New York and a Jewish orphanage to the head of a company that paid him $250,000 a year. The same story recounted what's referred to as "the King Charles incident." "At a company meeting several years ago, Charles Gelman wrapped himself in a robe, wore a crown and sat on a throne," The News reported. "One of his male employees, dressed in a red, sequined devil costume, playfully attempted to encourage others to kiss Gelman's ring and receive an expensive Cuban cigar from the 'king.'" Gelman said he was just trying to liven up a "pretty-boring, three-day planning meeting" and take advantage of the medieval atmosphere he had created for the event, but not everyone was amused. Following the discovery of dioxane in the groundwater around the Gelman Sciences plant in the mid-1980s, and in the well water of many nearby homes and businesses, controversy erupted. The state sued Gelman in 1988, and the state's case was heard during a bench trial before Judge Patrick Conlin in 1990. In 1991, Conlin dismissed most of the state's claims on the basis that the discharges were permitted, except for overflows from one of the treatment ponds on the Gelman property. In 1992, the state and Gelman entered into a consent judgment, the objective of which was to remove and treat the contaminated groundwater. That consent judgement has been amended multiple times over the years, most recently in 2011, and it continues to guide ongoing pump-and-treat remediation efforts. Around the time the state lawsuit was pending, The News reported in 1990 that Gelman employed about 600 people locally and about 900 worldwide, with annual sales totaling $73 million. Gelman faced multiple lawsuits from neighbors into the early 1990s as talks of how to best address the pollution continued. In November 1990, The News reported that a jury trial was set to begin with 12 homeowners who lived just east of the Gelman plant in the Westover Hills subdivision suing the company for polluting their drinking water wells. The homeowners were told to stop drinking their water or doing laundry and showering with it after dioxane turned up in their wells in the spring of 1986. For months, they had to take their laundry out and drink bottled water, their attorney said at the time. By the end of 1986, homes on Westover, Rhea, Porter and Ferry streets had been connected to city water mains at Gelman's expense, but the homeowners had to pay for sewer connections required by the city and began paying higher property taxes. In the case with the 12 homeowners, Gelman admitted responsibility for causing the groundwater contamination, though the company still had a suit pending against dioxane manufacturers and distributers in attempt to get them to share liability. The News reported in December 1990 that the 12 homeowners who sued Gelman for polluting their wells collectively were awarded $119,700 by a jury, but they still felt like they lost with individual awards for the loss of enjoyment of their property ranging from $5,375 to $14,850 and no compensation for lost property values. The 12 homeowners who took their case to trial were awarded less than the settlements received by 15 other homeowners who reached an agreement with Gelman before the case went to court. They blamed the low award on a pre-trial decision by Conlin, who decided they could not seek damages for fears of future health problems. In November 1991, The News reported that the homeowners had continued fighting Gelman but should have quit while they were ahead, as acting Washtenaw County Circuit Judge Thomas Roumell ordered the homeowners to pay most of Gelman's legal defense costs and expert witness costs, amounting to $87,500, or $25,000 more than they were awarded by the jury a year earlier. Gelman was quoted saying at the time that his company was trying to be a good neighbor. "The whole (pollution) problem was accidental -- it was not intentional," Gelman said in November 1991. "The people across the street have been pursuing this almost like a criminal matter, as if we intentionally caused the problem." Homeowners angrily said they wanted to see Gelman pay for what happened, while Gelman maintained "it is not Gelman Sciences that has been the hard-necked party in this." The News reported in April 1992 that the state and Gelman were still working out details of a settlement under which the company would clean up the contaminated groundwater in the area around its headquarters, with the cleanup expected to cost millions. At the time, it was expected the "purge and treat" operation might continue for a decade or more, until dioxane concentrations in the ground were down to 2 parts per billion or less. The News reported in June 1992 that a second neighborhood group was suing Gelman over the pollution. This time, 46 homeowners in the Evergreen subdivision, where dioxane was detected in dozens of drinking water wells, sought damages. In a column in July 1994, Gelman argued his company wasn't the only source of dioxane in Ann Arbor. He argued it also was coming from a mixture of detergents and feces, with dioxane routinely being discharged by the city's wastewater treatment plant in concentrations as high as 13 parts per billion. He calculated about 800 to 1,000 pounds of dioxane were going into the Huron River each year. As for addressing the Gelman plume, Gelman argued those who believed mitigation of dioxane "to zero" was technologically and economically sound didn't have facts to support their argument. "The state Department of Natural Resources has carefully studied the proposed remediation and concluded that the present plan meets best available technology and protection of health," he wrote in 1994. "It is time to close this issue and for ecologists to focus on real community health issues." At the end of 1996, Gelman Sciences employed 556 workers in Ann Arbor and 883 employees worldwide, The News reported, indicating Gelman Sciences had become a $112 million business. When it merged with New York-based Pall Corp. in 1997, Gelman stepped down as CEO and chairman, though The News reported that he was expected to continue to work on research and development projects for Pall, setting up an office in the former First National Bank Building on Main Street. The News also reported that he held a 17 percent stake in Gelman Sciences and stood to get a chunk of Pall stock valued at about $40 million. "After 38 years, it's a bit traumatic to leave (a business) behind and go on to something totally different," Gelman said at the time. "My wife is giving me a lot of encouragement. I think she is both thrilled and a little bit apprehensive that I might keep her too busy." After selling his company, Gelman turned his attention to philanthropic endeavors, helping out his alma mater, the Jewish community and others, along with his wife Rita, whom he married in 1956. Together, they supported the Jewish Community Center of Greater Ann Arbor, Beth Israel Congregation, Ann Arbor Jewish Federation, Ann Arbor Community Center, Peace Neighborhood Center, Michigan Theater Foundation and many other organizations. He also worked to help build a new Ann Arbor YMCA building and served on the board of directors for 16 years. The University of Michigan's Risk Science Center, which was established in 2003, announced a $5 million charitable donation in 2008 from Gelman and his wife, both UM graduates, saying the gift would position the center to become the nation's premier comprehensive resource for assessing, quantifying and communicating risks to public health. "Their donation is influenced by personal experience," UM stated in announcing the gift. "In the 1980s, Charles Gelman's company, Gelman Sciences, disagreed with a cleanup protocol ordered by the Michigan Department of Natural Resources after 1,4-dioxane was discovered in groundwater near the company's site, but eventually the parties agreed to a groundwater cleanup. Gelman, no longer involved with the company, believes settlement would have come far earlier if a neutral entity such as the U-M Risk Science Center had existed." In the UM press release in 2008, Gelman said chemical and other risks to human health are important and complicated issues and he and his wife's vision was to help inform industry, government and the public about how to properly assess the benefits and hazards posed by technology, and chemicals in particular, in society. "We're in a position to assist, and we felt that supporting this center was critical at this time. This gift and this center, we hope, will make a difference," Gelman said in the press release. At the time, UM said the Gelmans had been supporters of the university for more than 30 years, donating to the School of Public Health, School of Social Work, Cardiovascular Center, Ophthalmology, University Musical Society, WUOM, Museum of Art and the UM-Dearborn Mardigian Library's holocaust collection. "Through the Gelman Educational Foundation, they support a variety of community and educational programs in Ann Arbor and throughout Michigan," UM stated. "They were recently awarded a Great Influence Award from the Michigan Council of Social Studies for their work in providing the Emmy Award-winning biographical film 'The Power of Good' to schools throughout Michigan." Gelman's obituary published in The News on Sunday, April 15, stated he was the son of immigrants from Ukraine. "Diagnosed with rheumatic fever at age 12, Charles spent months in Vanderbilt Hospital, where his scientific curiosity blossomed after the hospital lab invited him to help measure blood clotting rates," it reads. "When the doctor advised his mother to find housing for Charles without the five-story walk-up, he moved to The Hebrew National Orphan Home (aka Homecrest), a residence for boys in Yonkers. Charles felt as if he'd been sent to the 'Rockefeller Estate.' The opportunities at Homecrest changed the course of Charles' life." He then enrolled in Roosevelt Public High School, where he devoured literature and philosophy, ranked third for the New York Regents exam in Westchester County and accepted a full scholarship to Syracuse, his obituary states, noting he moved to Baltimore after college and worked at the Army Chemical Center in Edgewood, Maryland. Gelman conducted air sampling studies and devised an innovative test to show the presence of nerve gas using cholinesterase, an enzyme found in cockroaches, the obituary states, also noting his work in Louisville inspired his invention of an automated air sampler and resulted in the discovery of unreported nightly emissions from a creosote manufacturing plant. "Charles was a rare combination of inventor and businessman as he found new markets for his products," his obituary states. "Gelman filters were used in the pharmaceutical, electronic, chemical, and beverage industries worldwide. Gelman Sciences eventually became one of the largest publicly-traded companies in Michigan. "By the 1990's the company was developing and manufacturing more membranes in more types of devices than any other company in the world. Always giving credit to Rita for raising their four children, Charles poured every ounce of energy into his work." Gelman was named Outstanding Man of the Year by the Ann Arbor Junior Chamber of Commerce in 1967, and his company won various awards over the years, including the Trailblazer Award from the Detroit Science Center. In 1986, Gelman Sciences was named one of 101 Best Performing Companies in America. At the time of its sale to Pall Corp., Gelman Sciences employed roughly 900 people around the world, with subsidiaries in Australia, Britain, Canada, Germany, Ireland, France, Italy and Japan, and manufacturing facilities in Pensacola, Florida, and Pleasanton, California, in addition to Scio Township. In 2017, after almost 20 years on the UM School of Public Health Advisory Board, Gelman and his wife funded the UM Gelman Global Scholars program, supporting student internships and research with an emphasis on Israel. While visiting Theresienstadt concentration camp, they learned about Nicholas Winton, a young British stockbroker who saved 669 Czech Jewish children from the Nazi regime. "Impressed with Winton's story, the Gelman Educational Foundation funded production of a documentary film, The Power of Good, which aired to over one million people worldwide and won an international Emmy Award in 2002," Gelman's obituary states. "At Charles's 85th birthday party, guests spoke to the couple's continual generosity, kindness, and mentoring that brought people to their current accomplishments. Gelman's life was the achievement of the American dream. He used persistence and compassion to push beyond limiting circumstances to better himself and the world around him. He will always be remembered as a champion of the underdog who shared generously from his own success to help those in need." ANN ARBOR, MI - About 145,000 DTE Energy customers remained without power on the morning of Tuesday, April 17 following the weekend ice storm. Power restoration is expected by the end of the day for the majority of the 390,000 customers impacted by the weekend ice storm - an estimated 90 percent, according to the company. That includes most impacted schools, according to the company. As of 5:30 a.m., power had been restored to more than 245,000 customers. DTE planned to have 1,000 workers involved in the restoration effort along with an expected 600 workers from five other states - Illinois, Indiana, Ohio, Pennsylvania and Tennessee. In the interim, the company asked community members to check on their neighbors and loved ones - especially seniors and those with disabilities or medical concerns. Those with medical needs are asked to call United Way's 211 crisis hotline to find local services. ANN ARBOR, MI - The Iron Belle Trail that would cover more than 2,000 miles across Michigan's Lower and Upper Peninsulas once complete has received an $11 million boost in private donations. Gov. Rick Snyder announced the new contributions Tuesday, April 17, at Gallup Park in Ann Arbor, overlooking the Border-to-Border Trail that is part of the Iron Belle Trail system. Snyder in 2012 first proposed the concept of the Iron Belle Trail, which includes hiking and biking routes between Belle Isle Park in Detroit and Ironwood in the UP. Since then, communities across the state have contributed funding and planning to connect existing trails and build the Iron Belle Trail. It would be the longest designated state trail in the country, and it's currently about 68 percent complete. "We had people outpouring support from every corner of Michigan, just saying they wanted to participate in this," Snyder said. "Isn't that exciting when you look at it? That's the way I view this trail - this is not about the state of Michigan having a trail. This is about Michiganders all doing this trail together." Fifty-five miles of Iron Belle Trail will run through Washtenaw County, including a stretch of the Border-to-Border Trail along the Huron River in Ann Arbor. Work on a new 22-mile stretch of the trail that will run from Ann Arbor to Dexter, Chelsea and out to the Washtenaw County line began March 5, and it should be completed in 48 months, said Jeff Hardcastle, chair of nonprofit Huron Waterloo Pathways Initiative, which has been raising money to expand the Border-to-Border Trail that will be part of the Iron Belle Trail. Private donations for the trail announced Tuesday include: $5 million from Ann Arbor-area entrepreneur Michael Levine; $3.25 million from the Ralph C. Wilson Jr. Foundation to be used in Washtenaw County, which brings the foundation's total contributions to the trail to more than $5.5 million; and $2.8 million from the Huron Waterloo Pathways initiative, which includes a campaign called "Karen's Trail" spearheaded by Ann Arbor attorney Lew Kidder, in memory of his wife Karen McKeachie, a world champion triathlete who was "For (McKeachie), the opportunity of everyone to participate, to feel like she did with that competitive urge - that was for her, a driving force. This trail would have been perfect," Kidder said. Washtenaw County residents will contribute $6 million over four years to the trail project through revenue from a road millage voters passed in 2016. Prior to these contributions, a total of $68 million had been dedicated to the Iron Belle Trail project, including more than $40 million in federal grants, $25 million in state grants and more than $3 million in local funds. The Iron Belle Trail Fund Campaign is still aiming to raise another $155 million to complete the project. Nearly 50 miles of new trail development is underway, and a total of 238 miles of new trails should be completed within the next few years, said Keith Creagh, director of the Department of Natural Resources. "You want to understand what makes up the fabric of a community, just look to its parks and trails," said Dave Egner, president and CEO of the Ralph C. Wilson Jr. Foundation. "That's where people intermingle. That's where you see people of all ages and colors and creeds and income levels together. That's how you see community joined, and we're so pleased to be a part of this bold plan for the Iron Belle Trail." ANN ARBOR, MI - Residential solar panels are not common enough to be exempt from taxation. That was the central point in Michigan Tax Tribunal Judge Steven Lasher's final opinion filed March 12 in a case involving Ann Arbor residents Mark Clevey and Nancy Fenton, who do not think the city should raise their property taxes as a result of the solar energy system they installed at their house in May 2016. Lasher's opinion confirmed the city's ability to increase the taxable value of a property based on the installation of a solar energy system. Clevey's attorney, Samuel Field, filed a motion asking the Tax Tribunal to reconsider its opinion, and that motion was denied Friday, April 13. Clevey said he plans to appeal the decision to the Michigan Court of Appeals. "We're going to take this all the way to the Supreme Court if that's what it requires," Clevey said. "If this is the only way solar people can get taxation with representation is by going to the Supreme Court, then so be it." Solar energy advocates say the higher tax rate creates a disincentive for more people to install alternative energy systems. The topic has been of interest statewide as state agencies have released conflicting information on how to tax residential solar systems. Other communities, including Ypsilanti, do not tax residential solar energy systems. Ann Arbor says it is obligated by state law to tax the solar systems. The taxable value of Clevey and Fenton's house - located south of Ann Arbor's Burns Park neighborhood - increased by $5,686 from 2016 to 2017, according to tax records submitted to the Michigan Tax Tribunal. From 2014 to 2015, the taxable value of their property increased by $1,895. After unsuccessfully asking the city's board of review to adjust the taxable value of the house, Clevey petitioned the Michigan Tax Tribunal for a ruling on the tax dispute in May 2017. Judge Robin Schleh issued a proposed opinion in the case in December 2017, upholding the city's right to tax the solar panels. For property tax purposes, fixtures "owned and used by a householder" are generally exempt from taxation, she said Michigan law allows personal property like furniture, clothing, fuel and certain kinds of equipment to generally be exempt from property taxes, but there are some exceptions. Property that is used to produce income, is held for speculative investment or constitutes an inventory of goods for sale can be taxed. Schleh found that solar panels are "used to produce income" - by reducing the amount of energy the homeowner needs to purchase from DTE Energy - meaning the property should be taxed. Field argued that the idea that solar panels produce income is incorrect. The economic purpose of the solar energy system is to reduce the annual expense of electricity, but the homeowner does not sell power back to the utility company or make a profit, he argued. Lasher's final opinion said the preliminary finding erred in using the income-producing property clause as the deciding factor in support of taxing residential solar panels. However, he said, the whole point is moot. "Instead, the Tribunal finds that it need not consider whether the panels are income-producing property ... because they do not qualify for exemption under that subsection regardless of their income-producing potential," Lasher found. In the final opinion, Lasher focused on whether solar panels fit the definition of "customary furniture, fixtures, provisions, fuel, and other similar equipment" - which are types of personal property exempt from taxation. While installing solar panels on a house is "not exceedingly rare," it also is not as usual as a "more customary affixture such as a light fixture or bookcase," states the Tax Tribunal's final opinion. Therefore, solar panels should not be considered customary fixtures that are exempt from taxation. Field said this is the only instance he knows of where a court used the word "customary" to determine whether an item is tax exempt. In his request for the Tax Tribunal to reconsider the final opinion, Field pointed out there were 2,331 solar energy system installations in Michigan as of the end of 2016, according to a report from the Michigan Public Service Commission. He also listed other examples of personal property fixtures - like wine coolers and standby generators - that are more rare than residential solar systems. "So I guess, this is the solar panels exception," Field said. "This is not the end of the case." Retiring City Assessor Dave Petrak could not immediately be reached to comment on the Tax Tribunal's decision. ANN ARBOR, MI - A University of Michigan student was knocked to the ground during an unarmed robbery on campus, police say. Police were called about 9:30 p.m. Monday, April 16 to the 400 block of Church Street near Dana Boulevard for the incident, according to a crime alert from the University if Michigan Division of Public Safety and Security. A student told police he was walking near East University Plaza when a group of three or four men surrounded him, police said. One of the men struck the student in the face, knocking him the ground, police said. A member of the group then took his knit cap and the group fled toward South University Avenue. Further information on the incident was not immediately available, Those with additional information on the incident are asked to contact University of Michigan police at 734-763-1131. YPSILANTI, MI - The mayor of Ypsilanti is responding to a censure resolution on the agenda for a Tuesday city council meeting. If approved, Mayor Amanda Edmonds would be censured for her involvement in a trip to China that public officials later discovered was funded by a developer interested in the city's Water Street property. Edmonds said in an emailed document Tuesday, April 17 that the resolution calling for her censure is "uncalled for," and based on a report by Plato Law Firm that does not suggest any wrongdoing on her part related to a 12-day trip taken by several city officials last fall. A censure is a formal act of disapproval that can be adopted by a majority vote in parliamentary procedure. The trip to China was described as a fact-finding mission by city officials related to the $150 million to $300 million proposed development in Ypsilanti called International Village, a project that proposed financing through foreign investors. Edmonds, Mayor Pro Tem Nicole Brown, Police Chief Tony DeGiusti and Economic and Development director Beth Ernat traveled to China from Sept. 21 to Oct. 3 in 2017. City council voted Oct. 11 to investigate the trip after hearing hours of testimony from the officials involved, and questions arose about how the trip was financed. Ernat's contract was not renewed as a result of the report, said City Manager Darwin McClary. Edmonds argues that she believed the trip was being funded by scholarships from the Wayne State University Chinese Students and Scholar Association, and that Ernat and her staff were coordinating details of the trip such as acquiring visas. She also said she voted in favor of a purchase agreement for International Village on Sept. 18, before going to China as part of the fact-finding trip with other city officials. Edmonds said she asked to have the vote delayed, but the developer requested it be approved ahead of time to continue negotiations. "I understood that Council would have multiple other changes to approve or disapprove of the project moving forward, including before the end of 2017 through a Development Agreement. If no Development Agreement was put in place, the project would end," Edmonds wrote in response to the resolution. Edmonds said concerns about the funding of the trip only arose after council members Peter Murdock and Brian Robb issued a FOIA request after the group left for China. "If that suggests that they had reason to suspect or knowledge of something amiss with the source of funding, and did not bring it up to council or staff, then I have serious concerns about their behavior," Edmonds said. The Plato report recommended the investigation be referred to the Washtenaw County Prosecuting Attorney's Office for review. According to Steven Hiller, chief assistant prosecuting attorney for Washtenaw County, no charges had been filed in connection with the report's recommendation. The Ypsilanti city council meeting starts at 7 p.m. Tuesday, April 17 at 1 S. Huron St. BAY CITY, MI -- Bay City seems to be paving the way for a new blaze of marijuana-related business opportunities. Two applications for marijuana provisioning centers were on the agenda for Monday night's Bay City Commission meeting held on April 16. One application was approved, while the other was sent back to city staff for further investigation. The approved application was for a provisioning center located at 710 Livingston St. The building, a former Long John Silver's restaurant, will be the first of the 25 provisioning centers the ordinance allows in the city. In December 2017, the city commissioners approved an ordinance to allow medical marijuana facilities to operate within the city limits of Bay City. As of Monday, April 16, Bay County has received 13 applications for provisioning centers and one application for a grow/process facility, according to the county clerk. Paula Givens, a cannabis compliance and licensing attorney, is representing GS Bay City, a group of Michigan business owners who are describing their approved provisioning center at the Livingston Street location as a "high-end retail medical cannabis business." "Our proposed location will be a more pharmaceutical style to honor the medicine, and we hope to source our contacts within the cannabis industry here and with our other licenses to bring high-quality cannabis," Givens said. Scottie Denha, one of the four businessmen who own the building, said the 3,000 square foot facility is expected to bring 15-20 jobs. Denha and his business partners are based in Royal Oak. He said they were drawn to start their business in Bay City because it was one of the first cities in the state to opt in to the Medical Marijuana Act. The businessman said the group is investing $500,000 into the business and plan to completely overhaul the building and make the place brand new. "We want it to look like a high-end pharmacy," Denha said. He said the longtime goal is to build a brand around their business and open up multiple stores across the state. Denha said he realizes there's a stigma with this type of business. One of the short-term goals the group plans to work toward is to get involved in the community and educate people. Tracy Teich, a resident of Bay City, who lives down the street from the building said she wasn't "terribly concerned" about the new business and added as long as they followed the rules she didn't see a problem. A neighbor of Teich's on the opposite side of the neighborhood mentioned that she and her family were "hoping for a new restaurant," instead. The final step in the medical marijuana licensing process is obtaining a state license. Denha said that application has already been submitted. He said Bay City's first provisioning center could be in operation before the end of the year. The other application was for a provisioning center located at 1313 N. Johnson St. Commissioner Ed Clements, 8th Ward, said that application wasn't approved because the building was listed for sale on a website called Michigan Cannabis Brokers of Michigan. "To see it for sale was a big red flag, so we wanted to look into what that was all about," Clements said. He said there were several properties listed on the website for sale in areas such as Bay City, Bangor Township and Kawkawlin. Clements said as of Tuesday, April 17, the properties in Bay City were no longer listed. "Something doesn't add up," Clements said. BAY CITY, MI -- Investigators with the FBI believe a group of men burglarized more than a dozen Michigan pharmacies, including one in Bay City that resulted in the theft of drugs with a five-figure value. In a request for a search warrant, FBI Special Agent Barry A. Rumble wrote that his agency's Mid-Michigan Safe Streets Task Force (MMSSTF) began investigating the series of burglaries on Jan. 21. At about 2:19 a.m. that day, Bay City police responded to a burglary alarm at the Allen Medical Building at 200 S. Wenona Ave. on the city's West Side. They found a forced entry had taken place at the McLaren Bay Region Hospital Pharmacy, located within the building. Task force investigators reviewed surveillance camera footage, which revealed a dark vehicle pulling up to the building's doors at about 2:10 a.m. Four people wearing masks and gloves exited the vehicle and gained entry by using two pry bars, Rumble wrote. "Once inside the MBR Pharmacy, three subjects could be seen running to the back of the business," Rumble wrote. The fourth subject grabbed a drink from a drink cooler and returned to the vehicle's driver's seat. A few minutes later, the other three left the pharmacy carrying a garbage bag full of what investigators learned were prescription drugs. The pharmacy later submitted a report to the Drug Enforcement Administration detailing what substances were stolen. The list included morphine sulfate, oxycodone, oxymorphone, hydrocodone, methadone, Oxycontin and alprazolam, with a combined value of $28,022, Rumble wrote. The investigative team learned there were 17 similar burglaries reported since July, occurring predominantly around suburban Detroit. Some were as far south as Temperance, near the Michigan-Ohio border, with Bay City being the northernmost site. Most of the burglaries occurred in November and December, with each month experiencing six. Then, at about 2:20 a.m. on Feb. 1, a Michigan State Police trooper spotted a gray Ford Explorer passing through the parking lot of the Sanford Family Pharmacy, 28 W. Saginaw Road in Sanford. The trooper pulled over the vehicle as its license plate was covered in plastic that was caked in mud. The vehicle contained four men who all provided the trooper with Michigan IDs. One of the passengers, Timothy A. Smith Jr., had an active arrest warrant out of Jackson for felony burglary. At the time, Smith was wearing clothing consistent that worn by one of the subjects in the Bay City break-in, Rumble wrote. The trooper determined the Explorer was a rental and had been rented to another of its passengers. This passenger declined to consent to the vehicle being searched, though the trooper spotted multiple crowbars in plain view on the rear passenger floorboard, Rumble wrote. Considering this to be probable cause, the trooper searched the Explorer and found four crowbars, five masks, five pairs of gloves, a pair of bolt-cutters, and a New York license plate registered to a different Ford Explorer owned by a rental corporation. "Based on my training and experience, I am aware that rental vehicles are routinely used during the commission of crimes in which the subjects want to avoid detection or possible identification through a vehicle registration," Rumble wrote. Troopers confiscated the items and allowed the three other subjects to leave in the Explorer, but arrested Smith on his outstanding warrant. Troopers then returned to the Sanford pharmacy and found multiple pry marks on two doors, according to Rumble. Smith's warrant stems from a break-in of a Jackson Walgreens on July 8. A recovered glove fingertip contained Smith's DNA and Jackson police indicated they believe Smith is part of a ring that has burglarized pharmacies in Indiana and Ohio as well, Rumble wrote. When police arrested Smith, he was in possession of two cellphones. Rumble wrote his search warrant request with the goal of obtaining authorization to inspect those two phones. The other three men Smith was with in the traffic stop have criminal histories involving convictions of armed robbery, bank fraud, and drug offenses, Rumble wrote. A federal grand jury on March 14 indicted the 31-year-old Smith on single counts of burglary involving controlled substances and conspiracy to commit that crime. As of April 17, none of the other three men Smith was with during the traffic stop have been charged. Smith has a lengthy criminal record dating back to at least 2003. His rap sheet includes numerous convictions of breaking and entering with intent to commit a larceny, possessing burglary tools, and attempted unlawfully driving away a motor vehicle, and safe breaking. His convictions occurred in Wayne, Oakland, and Macomb counties. The Michigan Department of Corrections discharged him on Dec. 17, 2016. Smith's trial before U.S. District Judge Thomas L. Ludington is set for the morning of Tuesday, Aug. 21. China will slap hefty anti-dumping deposits on imports of US sorghum from Wednesday, the government said on Tuesday, a higher-than-expected charge on the grain used in livestock feed and the spirits industry, as trade tensions escalate between the world's top two economies. CHS Inc and other US companies will have to put a 178.6 percent deposit on the value of sorghum shipments to the country in what Beijing called a temporary measure, as the government continues to probe imports of the grain. Traders said the deposit was high enough to bring US imports to a halt and inflate prices of alternatives, such as barley. Sorghum is used in livestock feed and the fiery Chinese liquor baijiu. "De facto, it stops all the trade," said Mike ODea, a US trader for broker INTL FCStone. The deposit on sorghum comes after Beijing had already threatened a tariff on that grain along with US soybeans. China purchased $12 billion worth of US soybeans last year, making it the most valuable US agricultural export to China. The United States shipped 4.76 million tonnes of sorghum to China in 2017, worth around $1.1 billion and making up the bulk of China's roughly 5 million tonnes of imports of the grain last year, according to Chinese customs data. Just last week, about 116,000 tonnes of US sorghum was shipped from Texas, US Department of Agriculture data showed on Monday. The National Sorghum Producers, which represents US farmers, maintained that the crop is not being dumped in China. "Todays decision in China reflects a broader trade fight in which US sorghum farmers are the victim, not the cause," the group said. China's move comes out of an anti-dumping investigation launched two months ago in retaliation for aggressive trade actions by Washington, including steep tariffs on solar panels and washing machines. Beijing said it found the domestic industry was "substantially damaged" by US sorghum imports being dumped into the country. It said it will issue a final ruling at a later date, but did not give a timeline. Other companies likely to be affected by the deposits are Archer Daniels Midland, a top seller of US sorghum into China, Cargill and Louis Dreyfus. ADM and Cargill could not immediately be reached for comment. CHS had no immediate comment. Dreyfus declined comment. Soaring Feed Prices Prices of soymeal and rapeseed meal used in animal feed jumped on the sorghum deposit news as traders worried China had penalties in store for other US agricultural products. Curbing imports of grains is considered one of the most powerful weapons Beijing can use in the trade row. Midwestern US farmers are a core of Trump's political base, and a surplus on the global grain market has growers worldwide struggling to find profitable markets. US farm income has dropped by more than half since 2013, as years of massive harvests have depressed prices for staple crops. China's deposit would devastate Kansas, the top US sorghum-producing state which supported Trump in the presidential election, Governor Jeff Colyer said in a statement. "Instead of targeting fairly traded US exports, China should immediately stop its unfair trading practices," he said. Trade experts and farmers said Beijing's decision to limit imports of feed ingredients could boost costs for China's own vast livestock sector and might also inflate retail pork prices in the world's top consumer of the meat. The scale of China's deposit devastated traders who had rushed to increase imports prior to the ruling. A trader with an international firm estimated more than 2 million of tonnes of sorghum were on the water heading for China. A source at another international trading house said the sector had expected a lower deposit, close to 35 percent. Imports are usually high in April and May, and cargos en route are likely to get diverted to other points in Asia, traders said. Japan could buy some sorghum that had been destined for China, said Ken Morrison, a US trader who worked for Cargill and now publishes a commodity newsletter. Sales of sorghum to China that have not yet been shipped will likely be canceled, he said. Morrison said he could not imagine any companies paying China's sizable deposit. "You're putting a lot of money at risk without any knowledge of what the end game will be," he said. Search Keywords: Short link: The Northville Downs racetrack is set to be sold to a developer looking to build high-end apartments on the site, the buyer announced Tuesday. Luxury homebuilder Hunter Pasteur Homes is under contract to purchase the downtown Northville site and adjacent parcels for a mixed-use development, the company announced. The homebuilder will own 48 acres in downtown Northville with plans to build 500 to 600 high-end rental apartments, for-sale townhomes and single-family homes, along with commercial developments. Plans for the site will require approvals from the city. "This project is in the preliminary stages, and we're eager to continue working with the city of Northville and our partners to iron out the numerous details that come with a project of this scale," said Randy Wertheimer, CEO of Hunter Pasteur Homes, in a news release. "We expect to have all entitlements in place in 2019. As more details become available, we will share them with the community." The homebuilder will buy the site from the Carlo family and Northville Driving Club. The Carlo family runs the 1944-built track. Mike Carlo, operations manager, took over the track in the 90s with his brother. Northville Downs says it will continue to operate until construction begins, and will look to continue horse racing and wagering operations at a nearby location, according to a news release. Live horse racing has been taking place in Northville for more than 100 years. It's the second Detroit-area horse racing facility this month to announce plans to sell. After operating for nearly 70 years, Hazel Park Raceway announced its closure in early April. The sale of that track was expected to be finalized this month. "Over the past 25 years, the gaming industry has dramatically changed throughout the country," Hazel Park Raceway previously announced. "Clearly, this has had a significant impact on the proud tradition of horseracing throughout Michigan." A $3,000 reward is being offered for information that helps prosecute those responsible for repeatedly burning a dog rescued by Dearborn police Friday. The dog was discovered by a resident, who alerted police. Police transferred the dog to the Friends for Animals of Metro Detroit rescue organization to treat the injured animal. "This dog is very sweet and in spite of the horrific nature of the injuries, very trusting of people," said Elaine Greene, director of the rescue. "It appears as if she may have been burned numerous times over a period of time. "She was treated today and will recuperate at the shelter." This is hideous and atrocious. We are heartbroken. Someone on the east side of Dearborn intentionally burned this poor... Posted by Friends for Animals of Metro Detroit on Saturday, April 14, 2018 Anyone with information about what led to the dog's injuries is asked to call 313-943-2607. As of Monday evening, no suspects had been identified. The dog has been renamed Phoenix, "because we want to see her rise again," Greene said. The shelter accepts donations for surgery and care through their website. A global technology and service provider for commercial vehicles is building its North American headquarters in Auburn Hills. Belgium-based WABCO Holdings, Inc. is building a 102,000-square-foot facility with plans to add 87 new jobs in the next three years, the company announced. The facility would house about 200 employees in total. "WABCO's expansion in Michigan rather than another state means good jobs for Michigan residents and underscores the strength of the talent in the state's mobility and technology sectors," said Jeff Mason, CEO of Michigan Economic Development Corporation. The facility is expected to open later this year at 1220 Pacific Dr. WABCO is planning to consolidate its Troy operations and a portion of its Rochester Hills facility to the Auburn Hills location, investing more than $19.7 million in the development. Auburn Hills is offering a 50 percent property tax abatement in support of the project. In addition to two floors of office space, the building will feature a Customer Experience Center, a vehicle test lab, training center and other amenities. "WABCO's investment in a new Americas headquarters reflects our leadership in technologies that advance the safety, efficiency and connectivity of commercial vehicles in this region," said Jon Morrison, president of WABCO, Americas. "We are driving dynamic growth and expansion in North America, and this new headquarters will enable our team to anticipate and respond to customer needs even better. In addition, the new office will now co-locate our talented teams, fostering seamless collaboration as we advance innovations to enable autonomous driving in the commercial vehicle industry." WABCO's workforce contains more than 1,800 team members at 11 locations, 10 of which are in the U.S. The company develops wheel-end solutions and advanced driver assistance systems like collision mitigation, electronic stability and active steering control systems. "This level of advanced engineering is the type of job creation and investment that fits perfectly with Oakland County's Emerging Sectors initiative," Oakland County Executive L. Brooks Patterson said. "Oakland County has the third highest number of technical workers in the nation and more than 70 percent of Southeast Michigan's top original equipment manufacturers." Amy McMillan Courtesy photo GENESEE COUNTY, MI -- The search for a new Genesee County parks director will soon begin for the first time in nearly 20 years. Amy McMillan informed commissioners at their April 12 meeting that her last day in the position would be April 29. She is leaving to become the Huron-Clinton Metroparks director. "I feel like we've made really great accomplishments over the last two decades," she said Monday, April 16. "I'm really deliberate in saying 'we.' Nothing of the things that happened in Genesee County parks could work with just one person." McMillan extended thanks to the Mott Foundation, residents for approving millage requests for the parks, the local business community and the city of Flint for support of the Flint River restoration project and neighborhood parks. The Midland native began her works in the parks field at 14 years old as part of a special needs day that her cousin attended. She interned with the Huron-Clinton Metroparks system in 1988 and called it a "dream job." "I really fell in love with parks and recreation," McMillan said, thinking back to the interview process for the position that included touring the parks in the system. "I can remember parts of that day very clearly and just the vision that I had for the Genesee County parks." The plan included creating programming and acting "deliberately and equitable" in spreading resources out over the parks," she said, with millions of dollars coming in through state and federal grants along with the local philanthropic community. Joe Krapohl, the Genesee County Parks Commission president, said McMillan has put the county's park system on the map on a state- and nation-wide scale, including receiving awards in 2014 for community service, fishing and travel education programs. He said McMillan has succeeded in making the park's family-friendly and accessible to all residents with projects for handicap accessibility at Linden County Park, Bluebell Beach and an extended ramp for the treehouse at For-Mar Nature Center in Burton. "She's leaving the parks in a tremendous improvement from what they are from when she first started," Krapohl said. "We're definitely going to miss her." Barry June, the deputy parks director, will assume the task of day-to-day operations as acting director until the commission finishes their search and provides a recommendation to the Genesee County Board of Commissioners to fill the post on a full-time basis. McMillan expressed her confidence that the county parks team in place "is going to do an extraordinary job long after I've left." "It's an extraordinary system with an extraordinary group of people," she said of the park system. "I'm leaving one tremendous place and going to another. I'm just incredibly lucky." Her final official duty will come at 2 p.m. Sunday, April 29, at the grand opening ceremony for Atlas County Park off Hegel Road in Atlas Township. The Poulos family, owners of the White Horse Tavern in Flint, agreed to sell the land sitting along the Kearsley Creek for $700,000 to Genesee County Parks & Recreation in January. Seventy-five percent of the cost is being paid for by way of a Michigan Natural Resources Trust Fund grant awarded in December 2016. FLINT, MI -- It's not only bottled water that's driven a wedge between Gov. Rick Snyder and Mayor Karen Weaver. The two officials are also wrestling over control of a $6.1-million reserve water crisis fund -- money appropriated by the Michigan Legislature for Flint but unspent so far. Both Weaver and Snyder said the reserve fund was discussed when the two met Monday, April 16, shortly before the meeting ended after about 35 minutes. The Governor's Office says Snyder told the mayor that $4.1 million from the fund could be used to settle a lawsuit against the state, Genesee Intermediate School District, and Flint Community Schools. The lawsuit was filed by the American Civil Liberties Union and others, and representatives for the plaintiffs last week announced they had reached the settlement with the state, which had agreed to pay part of the cost of a registry for Flint children affected by the water crisis. Weaver made headlines Monday when she threatened to file a lawsuit against the state after it stopped paying the bill for bottled water distribution in Flint this month. But the mayor said the governor also "backed up off of (his) word" when he told her of plans to use the reserve fund to pay off the legal settlement. "This is money that's been set aside for the city of Flint, and we had other plans as to how we might want to use that money to benefit the people," Weaver said. "But he told us ... that money was going to be used for something different ... At that point, the meeting ended." The mayor and governor emerged from their Monday meeting in Lansing with different impressions of what transpired and within hours, Weaver threatened to sue the state. The next day, the Governor's Office canceled a meeting of the Flint Water Interagency Coordinating Committee that he created two years ago to address water issues here. Anna Heaton, Snyder's press secretary, called Monday's meeting a "candid and open discussion about continuing to move Flint forward now that the water quality has been fully restored and confirmed by independent testing." Heaton said Weaver "asked for the $6.1 million (reserve fund) to be handed over to the city" during the meeting. "The governor said it was already possibly being used for the $4.1 (million) for Flint schools, and that she could ask the Legislature how they plan to use it, since it is up to them," Heaton said in an email to MLive-The Flint Journal. Kristin Moore, a spokeswoman for Weaver, said the governor never specified what the $4.1 million would be used for -- just that it was going to the state Department of Education. The Flint City Council meanwhile has scheduled a special meeting for Wednesday, April 18, to discuss a resolution to recommend the governor and the State Budget Office recommend a legislative transfer that would allow the full $6.1-million be used to provide a credit for residential water and sewer bills in Flint. State Senate Minority Leader Jim Ananich, D-Flint, said the state should find another source to pay off its settlement debt and use the $6.1 million for city residents. State taxpayers funded the reserve fund for Flint in 2016, a supplemental appropriation to which there have been additional deposits and withdrawals since, according to Heaton. Money from the reserve fund has been used for bottled water and pipe replacement, but the purpose was designed to flexible and available for unexpected expenses related to the water crisis, she said. The ACLU lawsuit was filed in 2016 and is based on a claim that school officials failed to provide service for Flint children and parents. It alleged violations of federal civil rights laws in relation to the water crisis. Money from the $4.1 million settlement will be used to boost the Flint Registry, a program that's also funded by a four-year, $14.4-million federal grant. FLINT, MI -- A state-sponsored Flint water advisory group's meeting has been canceled after Mayor Karen Weaver threatened to sue the state one day earlier. "Given the announcement yesterday by Mayor Karen Weaver of the city of Flint's intention to consider filing a lawsuit against the state of Michigan, the state's legal counsel has advised against proceeding with the (Flint Water Interagency Coordinating Committee) meeting until the city's intentions have been established," Ari Adler, communications director for Gov. Rick Snyder said in an email to MLive-The Flint Journal. "At that time, we will seek to provide clarification around meeting protocols and whether legal counsel would need to be present for FWICC to continue its work," Adler's statement said. Weaver said Monday, April 17, that the city intends to file a lawsuit against the state following a meeting with Snyder on the future of state-funded bottled water and other issues. Although Snyder's office called the meeting a "candid and open discussion," Weaver described the governor's comments as callous and said he told her the city needs to "get over it," in reference to his decision to end state payments for bottled water for Flint. Snyder created FWICC through an executive order in 2016. The state has described the group as a "wide range of experts to work on long-term solutions to the Flint water situation and ongoing public health concerns affecting residents." FWICC was scheduled to meet Friday, April 20. The group's membership includes the mayor, water experts from state government, representatives of Genesee County and others. Weaver issued a statement to The Journal, saying neither she "nor my chief public health adviser, (both FWICC members) received official/direct notification of the meeting cancellation, until now." "This is unfortunate. It appears that state officials are trying to stop productive measures in place to help Flint, because I spoke out and expressed my disappointment with the outcome of what I hoped would be a productive meeting with the governor," Weaver's statement says. On Monday, the mayor threatened to take the state to court because of issues related to the water crisis after her meeting with Snyder. FLINT, MI -- Flint-area state representatives are calling on Attorney General Bill Schuette to take immediate legal action against Gov. Rick Snyder for his decision to end state-funded bottled water in Flint. In a letter sent on April 12, state representatives Phil Phelps, D-Flushing, and Sheldon Neeley, D-Flint, urged Schuette to stand by his beliefs that the residents of Flint should be able to access free bottled water until all lead lines have been replaced. "You were quoted through your spokeswoman as disagreeing with the decision," the letter states. "We urge you to take immediate legal action, utilizing every available remedy against Gov. Snyder, the Michigan Department of Environmental Quality, and any and all other parties necessary to ensure the continued operation of these essential water points of distribution for the people of Flint." Schuette's office said the letter is still being reviewed. The MDEQ announced Friday, April 6, it was ending the free water program after testing showed Flint's water quality was below federal action levels for lead for nearly two years. The four remaining water point of distribution sites, or PODS, were closed on April 10. In response to the state's decision, Schuette was quoted through his spokeswoman stating "bottled water distribution in Flint should continue until lead pipes have been replaced and trust in government has been restored." The governor's abrupt announcement to close the distribution sites has left churches, the United Way of Genesee County and the Eastern Michigan Food Bank trying to provide bottled water for the community. Phelps said the decision is severing an existing distrust the people of Flint have with the state. "This is not the first time the Snyder administration has turned its back on the people of Flint, and they cannot be blamed for distrusting what their government tells them about the water coming out of their taps," Phelps said. "That is why these water distribution sites were so critical for ensuring the city not only had access to this necessary resource but could have the peace of mind knowing that they finally had clean water." That piece of mind, according to the letter, will not happen until every lead line is replaced. Until then, both state representatives are urging the state continue to provide bottled water for residents by any means necessary. "While pipe replacement moves forward, the crisis in confidence still remains," Neeley said. "The water distribution from the state was a vital resource for the community, especially for residents who are homebound. We hope the attorney general will do right by the people of Flint and take legal action against the state for this irresponsible and heartless move." Snyder cited his trust in the state's testing of Flint's water as the reasoning behind his decision and doesn't want to continue discussing the issue, according to Flint Mayor Weaver following an unsuccessful meeting she had with him on April 16. In the letter issued to Schuette, state representatives stated that numerous samples from homes and school across Flint continue to show the "presence of lead above the federal action level." GRAND RAPIDS, MI - A group of Grand Rapids Public Schools special education parents and teachers, upset about the leadership and direction of the program, are now calling for Superintendent Teresa Weatherall Neal's removal, not just the program director. On Monday, April 16, the group again showed up at the school board meeting expressing their concerns and seeking change. They have come to meetings consistently since a February press conference with union leaders, alleging special education students are being betrayed, neglected and denied a proper education. As of 11:15 a.m. Tuesday, a change.org petition urging the school board to remove Neal for her failure to oust Laura LaMore, executive director for special education and early intervention services, had 292 of the 500 signatures sought. In February, the school board and administration received a petition with the signatures 847 teachers and staff and over 1,200 parents and community members, calling for the removal of LaMore. Teresa Weatherall Neal Neal has repeatedly said LaMore, hired 2014, won't be removed and that she is implementing the changes that she ordered because they are in the best interest of its 4,000 special education students. She insists the district needs to be in full compliance with state and federal law and implementing best practice initiatives. "Superintendent Teresa Weatherall Neal's dismissal of the vote of no confidence by the 847 GRPS teachers and staff in the Special Education Director Laura LaMore makes it necessary to demand here removal as superintendent,'' according to the petition started by Concerned Citizens of Greater Grand Rapids. "Neal's refusal acts as a statement that she does not care about the overwhelming no confidence vote, the low staff morale, the toxic work environment, the culture of fear and retaliation, and the dismantling of Special Education under Director Laura LaMore.'' The board has no intentions of terminating Neal. "As it relates to the specific request for the board to remove the superintendent, we stand united in our support of Superintendent Weatherall Neal and her most recent evaluation (March 19) where she received a 'highly effective' rating,'' according to a school board statement Monday. The board said the 21 parents, teachers and community members who made public comment at its March 5 meeting were contacted and offered an opportunity to meet individually to learn more about their issues and concerns and have a chance to discuss potential solutions. However, leaders say most of those contacted refused to schedule individual meetings, rather asked for a group meeting. But the district believes it is most prudent to speak individually. "We want to emphasize that this board and this administration care deeply about all students, parents, staff, and our community. We want to reiterate that we take any and all comments, allegations, and complaints very seriously and, within the role of the board we have taken action to gather information to questions and concerns.'' Following Neal's evaluation, Bret Laubaugh, the MEA representative assigned to GRPS, said the union is connected with advocates. He said they are willing to work with district parents to help them navigate the system to file complaints about the alleged program violations at the state and federal level. The school board has said previously it won't step in as the group has lobbied regarding Lamore. The board said its role is not to assess and evaluate leadership beyond the superintendent. At the February press conference, hosted by Lily Schulting, a district special education parent who founded Disability A-TEAM of West Michigan; Mary Bouwense, the president of the district's teachers union; and Mike Stephens, local Michigan Education Association representative, serious allegations were raised including: Allegations that some staff have altered an IEP or Individualized Education Program. An IEP is an agreement between the school and parent that outlines the special education and related services to be delivered to a child found eligible for services under the Individuals with Disabilities Education Act (IDEA). Relocated young adults from Kent Vocational Options to Straight Elementary, which has not yet been fully renovated to support needs of special needs adults. Reevaluating special education students such as those with autism in order to move them into classes that don't require certified staff. The referral process for special education services was described as being at a standstill, contributing to the rise in violent students in the classroom. Neal and Sharron Pitts, assistant superintendent for human resources and general counsel at GRPS, say they have asked the union and parents who have made allegations to provide them with details, so they can investigate and address in wrongdoing or staff training issues. In a Monday statement, the board outlined the steps it has taken to understand concerns, including a recent work session with Jeff Butler, of LaPointe & Butler, P.C., a law firm considered experts in all aspects of special education issues and disputes. The district has been implementing recommendations from Butler, hired two years ago by Neal. The board said the review he conducted will be on the GRPS website once portions are redacted for the confidentiality of individuals who participated. There are seven recommendations from Butler that are in the process of being implemented, including K-12 supervisor alignment for the purpose of increasing accountability and communication to the system, and reviewing policies and procedures for the implementation of Personal Curriculum for students with IEPs. In February, Kent ISD Superintendent Ron Caniff said the district has the full confidence of the ISD and the other 19 superintendents because of how well students are served. Approximately 1,200 of the district's 4,000 special education students are in Center Based Programs, comprised of students across Kent County. Outside of the allegations of health and safety risks, the frustration of special education parents has been growing over the last few years with program changes. Last spring, those with students at Lincoln campus unsuccessfully lobbied the board to continue to allow all students to receive Extended School Year (ESY) services over the summer. The district has been allowing an IEP team to decide who receives the summer service. Neal said change is difficult and the district needed to apply Extended School Year standards approved by the State Board of Education in 2008. The teachers union is in the process of planning a May workshop with a special education advocate for parents and teachers. GRAND RAPIDS, MI -- A HopCat restuarant will open in downtown Holland by early 2019. The 6,200-square-foot restaurant at 84 West 8th Street will be part of a large-scale downtown mixed use development project at West Eighth being developed by Geenen DeKock Properties, BarFly Ventures announced Tuesday, April 16. The development will include a 11-screen cinema, retail shops, apartments, condominiums and a new parking deck providing 380 spaces. HopCat will seat 250 people, with an outdoor dining area that can accommodate another 70 people. The new HopCat will feature 80 taps and a unique interior and exterior design that continues HopCat's tradition of no two HopCat locations looking the same. "We've considered a Holland location for years but didn't find the right opportunity until this project came forward," said Mark Gray, CEO of HopCat parent company BarFly Ventures, in a press release announcing the new location. "With many HopCat fans - and even some of our employees - living in the Holland area, this new location will also make it more convenient for people living in and visiting Holland to pay us a visit." HopCat operates as far south as Port St. Lucie, Fla., and as far west as Lincoln, Neb. HopCat's 16th and 17th locations are expected to open in St. Louis and Grand Rapids later this year. The restaurant's menu is known for its stuffed burgers, signature sandwiches, Detroit-style pizza, Killer Mac & Cheese, Pretzel Nuggz and award-winning Crack Fries, named among the nation's 10 best French fries by Food Network Magazine. ST. IGNACE, MI -- Enbridge Energy's Line 5 oil and gas pipeline is once again operating after bad weather in the Straits of Mackinac caused a daylong shutdown. The company restarted the flow of oil and natural gas liquids at 3:15 p.m. Monday, April 16, Enbridge spokesperson Ryan Duffy said in a statement. "We continue to monitor the weather conditions in the Straits and provide updates to the state, Coast Guard and PHMSA," Duffy said. "Enbridge is committed to protecting the waters of the Great Lakes while ensuring families, manufacturers and other businesses safely receive the energy transported through Line 5." The twin pipelines were shut down Sunday in the wake of calls from U.S. Sens. Gary Peters, D-Bloomfield Township, and Debbie Stabenow, D-Lansing, for state and federal authorities to suspend operations until a visual inspection of recent damage to the pipes can be completed. Peters also cited the weather, including forecasts calling for waves as high as 12 feet. Enbridge is required to suspend operation of Line 5 whenever waves exceed 8 feet as part of a temporary agreement the company signed with the state late last year. In a statement issued Sunday, Enbridge cited the hazardous weather and a power outage impacting their pumping facility in Superior, Wisconsin, as its reasons for the temporary shutdown. The damage to Line 5, described by Enbridge as three "dents," are believed to be caused by whatever damaged two high-voltage underwater power cables operated by utility American Transmission Company (ATC). An estimated 600 gallons of toxic dielectric fluid leaked from the ATC lines in the water of Lake Michigan earlier this month. Though none of the leaked fluid was recovered, efforts are ongoing to pump the remaining fluid from the deactivated lines. Though described as an "anchor strike" in a press release from Lt. Gov. Brian Calley, the U.S. Coast Guard has not confirmed that detail, and says vessel activity remains under investigation as a potential cause of the damage to both the ATC power lines and Enbridge's pipelines. Contractors brought in by ATC were preparing on Monday to launch a remotely operated underwater vehicle (ROV) to provide the first images of the damage, according to a Sunday evening press release from the U.S. Coast Guard's unified command responding to the spill. The group, which consists of state and federal officials and representatives from the companies involved and local Native American tribes, will use those images to help determine next steps in dealing with the damaged power cables. Enbridge also hopes to use the underwater vehicle this week to assess the damage to its pipeline. Despite the lack of a visual inspection, company statements have maintained the dents pose no serious threat to the pipeline's structural integrity. Previous inspections of Line 5 have revealed bends and deformations of the pipe, and numerous gaps in its protective coating. The Coast Guard has reported no signs of an oil change or other pollution in the straits during its spill response and monitoring efforts. Some have pointed to the dielectric fluid spill as a warning of what could be a much more catastrophic ecological disaster if Line 5 were to rupture and begin spewing oil into the Straits of Mackinac. A number of environmental groups and others, including the Sault Ste. Marie Tribe of Chippewa Indians, have called for a permanent shutdown and decommissioning of the entire length of Line 5 in Michigan -- not just its Straits of Mackinac crossing. The 645-mile Line 5 pipeline, built in 1953, runs from Superior, Wisc., to Sarnia, Canada, and transports up to 540,000 barrels of light crude oil and natural gas liquids per day. It crosses the Straits of Mackinac west of the Mackinac Bridge, as does the ATC power cables and the twin natural gas pipelines operated by TransCanada. Royal Dutch Shell said it will resume deep-water exploration for oil and gas off Egypts Mediterranean coast, Executive Vice President Sami Iskander told a news conference on Tuesday. Egypt is looking to production from recently discovered fields to halt energy imports by 2019. A petroleum ministry official said last month that new production at Shells West Nile Delta field 9B is expected to reach 350-400 million cubic feet per day by 2019. Separately, production from the first 3 wells in the field is set to begin in the 2018-2019 fiscal year. The field is owned by Egypts General Petroleum Corporation (EGPC), Malaysias Petronas and Shell. Search Keywords: Short link: GRAND RAPIDS, MI -- A Kalamazoo man accused of peering over a stall at the Meijer store in Grandville while a young woman was using the restroom last fall has entered a plea. Robert James Bell, 56, pleaded guilty Tuesday, April 17, to surveilling an unclothed person as a second offense in Kent County Circuit Court. As part of the deal, additional charges were dropped. Bell admitted to Circuit Judge Dennis Leiber that he looked over a stall in a woman's bathroom on Sept. 8 to view an unclothed woman. It was the second time he was convicted of this charge -- upping his maximum punishment to five years in prison. He'll be sentenced May 24. Bell was dubbed the "Grandville Potty Peeper" by Silent Observer as police released a surveillance photo of him in an attempt to determine his identity in September. Tipsters led police to Bell, who was arrested on a probation violation. He remains in the Kent County Jail on a $50,000 bond. Bell's criminal history includes a September 2011 surveilling an unclothed person conviction from an incident at Kohl's on South Westnedge Avenue in Kalamazoo County, court records show. He was sentenced to 37 days in jail, but was locked up for a year for violating probation. He also served prison time in Alabama, and had three misdemeanor convictions in April 2011 after he followed women into restrooms at Kalamazoo Valley Community College. Police also believe he followed women into a locker room at the Kalamazoo YMCA and restrooms at the downtown Kalamazoo Radisson Plaza Hotel & Suites, but he was not charged in those incidents. IONIA COUNTY, MI - An Ionia woman is hospitalized after her car struck a semi-truck on I-96 near the Portland Road exit, one of many crashes that led to the expressway being shut down several hours. The crash occurred around 4:45 a.m. Tuesday, April 17, in Portland Township. The driver of the car, a 53-year-old Ionia woman, was taken to Sparrow Hospital in Lansing, where she was in stable condition. The driver of the Herbruck Poultry Ranch semi-truck, a 54-year-old Portland man, was not hurt, state police said. Preliminary investigation shows that the semi-truck was headed east on I-96 when the driver started to slow for slowing traffic. He lost control of the truck, which left the road and overturned. The other driver then lost control of her vehicle, and struck the truck's elevated trailer, severely damaging the top of her vehicle. She suffered head injuries, police said. State police said slippery roads and excessive speed are believed to be factors in the crash, as well as others in the area that led to a four-hour shutdown. Assisting state police at the scene were Ionia County Sheriff's Department, Berlin-Orange Fire Department, Portland Fire Department, Portland EMS, Ionia County Road Commission, and Reed and Hoppes Towing. LANSING, MI - Democratic candidate for governor Abdul El-Sayed wants the Court of Claims to rule on whether he's eligible for the ballot, but the Secretary of State in new filings Tuesday said that request was premature. At issue is El-Sayed's residency. The constitution requires a candidate for governor to "have been a registered elector in this state for four years next preceding his election." El-Sayed, according to voting records obtained in a Bridge investigation, lived in New York and was registered to vote in New York as late as in 2015. He re-registered to vote in Michigan in 2016. The Michigan Democratic Party asked El-Sayed to get a ruling on his eligibility in order to avoid a potentially lengthy and costly residency challenge later on in the cycle. El-Sayed did so in March, filing against Secretary of State Ruth Johnson in Wayne County Circuit Court and claiming he had been a continuous resident of Michigan, despite having worked in New York. The case has since been transferred to the Court of Claims. Attorneys for the Secretary of State said in a legal filing Tuesday his lawsuit was premature and asked the court to issue a summary judgement in Johnson's favor. It's premature, attorneys for the Secretary of State argue, because "Neither Secretary Johnson nor anyone else within the Department of State has taken any action, or even hinted at taking any action, adverse to Plaintiff's candidacy." The department has processed El-Sayed's petition signatures, required for him to get on the ballot, as normal. Nobody has yet filed a challenge to his eligibility and thus no "actual controversy" exists, the Secretary of State argued. Anybody could file a challenge to El-Sayed's eligibility, noted the Secretary of State, and the deadline to do so is May 1. The department argued that if such a challenge materializes and the Board of State Canvassers decides on it, El-Sayed could seek judicial input at that time. Adam Joseph, a spokesman for El-Sayed, said in a statement the Secretary of State's filing confirmed El-Sayed's position that he was eligible to run for governor. "In their move to dismiss the case, they have asserted, clearly, that this is a manufactured controversy - vindicating what we have been saying all along," Joseph said in a statement. The MDP also framed the development as being positive. "This is a positive step forward that allows all of our great candidates to stay focused on the issues that really matter to the people of Michigan and keeps the Democratic Party concentrated on winning in November," said Chairman Brandon Dillon in a statement. The court has not yet made any decision on the case. The Associated Press contributed to this report. This story has been updated with additional comment. Michigan State University's Faculty Senate put its support behind a proposal Tuesday that seeks to give students and faculty a say over the university's operations. The proposal - pushed by the group Reclaim MSU, a coalition of students and faculty that has emerged in the wake of the Larry Nassar sex-abuse scandal - asks the university's Board of Trustees to change its bylaws to create a new entity, known as the University Board. The University Board would largely have the same powers as the current Board of Trustees, except it would include two students and two faculty members. Supporters say the change is needed because of the current board's failure to effectively respond to the Nassar scandal. "There's a lack of trust in them to make the right decision on behalf of their constituent groups," said Isaiah Hawkins, a junior from Auburn Hills who attended the meeting in support of the proposal. "This proposal is a way to get those constituent groups in the room for those decision-making conversations." While the Faculty Senate voted 29-18 in support of the proposal, Tuesday's action only carries symbolic significance. That's because only the Board of Trustees can vote to change its bylaws. Despite that, supporters say gaining the endorsement of the Faculty Senate is important because it puts pressure on the board to change. "The current way that governance is happening is not sustainable," said Anna Pegler-Gordon, a professor in James Maddison College who crafted the policy. "It has to change." Members of the Faculty Senate who opposed the measure said it was highly unlikely the board will act on the proposal. Others unsuccessfully pushed to table the vote, saying they needed more time to study the matter. James Dulebohn, a professor in the school of Human Resources and Labor Relations, voted against the proposal, saying Tuesday's meeting was the first time he had seen the measure. He also questioned whether the proposal had been properly vetted. "Like another faculty person said, this is a really heavy lift," he said. Brian Breslin, who chairs the MSU Board of Trustees, could not immediately be reached for comment Tuesday evening. The Reclaim MSU proposal also includes a recommendation to change a section of Michigan's constitution covering the three universities - MSU, University of Michigan and Wayne State - where board members are publicly elected as opposed to being appointed by the governor. The proposal requests that the length of publicly elected trustees' terms be shortened from eight years to four years, and that each university's board must include two faculty members and two students. Pegler-Gordon said the hope is that members of the Michigan Legislature will consider the request, and that students have been reaching out to lawmakers about the proposal. "It is a heavy lift, it is a big ask," she said. "This is a significant change. But we need a significant change right now." Prior to Tuesday's vote, Deborah Moriarty, a professor in the College of Music, requested that the proposal be sent to another faculty committee for further study. "I'm concerned about pushing something through without having spent enough time on it," she said. "This doesn't just affect us. This constitutional amendment would affect the University of Michigan, it would affect Wayne State University. It would have a huge effect on a lot of things." According to the proposal, one difference between the University Board and the current Board of Trustees is that the faculty and student members would not have a final vote on the president and setting faculty salaries. The Michigan constitution states that university governing boards have the duty of selecting a president. JACKSON, MI - Think ArtPrize - but for food. Jackson Mayor Derek Dobies and other community leaders want to create a large food competition in the city - with the winner being awarded a temporary space to open a new restaurant downtown. This "competition kitchen" is one of the main components of an incubator hub city officials hope to develop at 135 W. Cortland St., the former site of Vermeulen's Furniture. The city received this building and the Masonic Temple next door - which will become the Jackson School of the Arts - for $100 in 2017. With roughly 16,000 square feet of space in the nearly century-old Vermeulen's building, the city plans to develop the three-story space in the next year. "I envision it as food on the first floor, work on the second floor and play on the third floor," Dobies said. "People have the ability to come in and get food, hang out in the restaurant, see what people are working on, grab some snacks and head up to get some work done." Here's a floor-by-floor look at the city's plans for the space. First floor: A pair of kitchens and a market In addition to the competition kitchen, city officials plan to build a public commercial kitchen on the first floor for budding businesses. This incubator allows people working out of their home kitchen to scale up their food business. "The kitchen incubator is for people who are like, 'I've got a great salsa recipe, I want to sell salsa. But I don't want to make a gallon of it at a time and pour it into cups on my own stove at my house,'" Dobies said. Detroit's Eastern Market has a similar initiative, called Detroit Kitchen Connect. City officials have had conversations with leaders from college culinary programs, catering businesses and other food-industry minds to brainstorm a commercial kitchen that accommodates the most businesses. The commercial kitchen will sit next to the competition kitchen - which faces Cortland Street. The city food competition likely won't start until 2019, Dobies said. Groups are forming to design what the event would look like, he added. The winner receives the kitchen expense-free for a year, with the hope of saving enough capital to eventually open its own space downtown, Dobies said. Other first floor space would be used for either a year-round farmers market or an urban grocery store, Dobies said. Space to snack will also be present on the floor for consumers. Second floor: A shared workspace The second floor will be similar to the Consumers Energy Innovation Center, 165 W. Michigan Ave. The plan is to provide a public space where people can work, Dobies said. It will feature an open-floor concept with tables, chairs, conference rooms and work stations, he added. The Downtown Development Authority could also move into the space. Before nailing down specifics, Dobies said the city plans to have community conversations with business and nonprofit employees to tailor the space for their use. Third floor: A social space A bowling lane won't work on the third floor - Dobies has already measured it. But the space may include amenities like couches and pool tables. There's also an outdoor patio space proposed for the area. Dobies wants the third floor to be somewhat reminiscent of the upstairs space at Jackson Coffee Company and be a potential meeting space for community groups. Details are still fuzzy, but Dobies said the plan is to make the third floor an adaptable, laid-back area for people to hang out. Paying the bill Altogether, the project is expected to cost more than $1 million. Nearly $150,000 has already been spent on the space by City Council for roof replacement and other construction work. Some funds will come from the general fund, other funds are through Community Development Block Grant money, Dobies said. Consumers Energy is putting $300,000 toward the competition kitchen - and Dobies hopes to find other partnerships to finance the vision. "It's such a creative space that I think a lot of people, businesses and people within the nonprofit foundation space are really excited about," Dobies said. Work is already in progress, with the goal of replacing windows by June, finishing the kitchens by winter, making internal improvements by late winter and finishing the project by next spring, per city officials. Once open, some rental fees will help finance upkeep, but likely won't cover building costs, Dobies said. "It's not going to be something that provides an immediate return on investment," Dobies said. But the goal of the project isn't to make a quick buck, he said. Ultimately, this is about building back the population and tax base of the city. "If we can't invest in the things that sell cities - rich, vibrant, downtown urban cores - then we're not going to be able to attract the new businesses and new residents we need to be successful," Dobies said. "Part of the pain people are feeling is trying to sustain the city services and the city infrastructure that is built for a population that is now 60 percent of what it was." Once the tax base grows again, Dobies said funding of roads and other infrastructure will be easier. He added the city still plans on tackling the crumbling roads head on, in the meantime. "We don't have the money right now to fix all (the infrastructure)," Dobies said. "Our plan is to do the creative investments like this that can, long term, provide that sort of pathway to having a local economy here that's actually going to be able to pay for the services we all want to see." JACKSON, MI - As the #MeToo and Time's Up movements have sparked an international conversation about sexual assault, a Jackson-based nonprofit is working to bring that conversation to the local level. Jackson's AWARE, Inc. has a number of events and initiatives planned for the month of April, which is Sexual Assault Awareness Month. AWARE is hosting its 8th annual Sexual Assault Awareness Month Volunteer Recognition Luncheon at noon on Thursday, April 19, at the Commonwealth Commerce Center Ballroom, 209 E. Washington Ave. The event is open to the public. Tickets cost $25 per person and can be purchased online or at the door. Kalimah Johnson, founder of the Sexual Assault Services for Holistic Healing and Awareness Center in Detroit, will give a keynote address during the luncheon. The luncheon is designed to not only thank AWARE's individual volunteers and business supporters, but also initiate a dialogue of sexual assault prevention in the Jackson community, said Angelita Velasco Gunn, executive director of AWARE. "(Johnson) is going to come and give us a perspective on these high-profile cases we've heard in the news and what we can learn from them and what may be happening here in Jackson," Velasco Gunn said. "How we as a community can mobilize and do something so we don't have victims who are suffering in silence and not being believed." On April 25, Jackson-area schools and businesses will recognize international "Denim Day." Students and professionals will wear denim jeans to recognize the international day, which was established in 1997. It was created after an 18-year-old woman in Rome was sexually assaulted by her driving instructor. However, the instructor's case was overturned by the Italian Supreme Court because one judge said the victim wore "very, very tight jeans," and would have had to help the instructor remove them. Area restaurants such as Crazy Cowboy and The Oak Tree will have "Embrace Your Voice" coasters throughout the month of April to support AWARE's mission. With sexual assault cases against Harvey Weinstein, Bill Cosby and Larry Nassar - in addition to dozens of others - making national headlines in the past year, Velasco Gunn said this year's luncheon is especially relevant. "It offers us an opportunity as a community to look at that and say 'We don't want that in our community. We don't want that in our backyard,'" she said. "We want safety for all of our residents and we can address what we can do as a community to support victims and hold perpetrators accountable." AWARE's mission is to eliminate domestic and sexual violence while promoting social change and empowering survivors by offering shelter and services. It has been operating in Jackson for 40 years. To learn more about AWARE and what it offers, click here. KALAMAZOO, MI -- A digital version of Bronson Park's Fountain of the Pioneers could serve as a historic record of the complex after it is removed from the park. Though the 78-year-old fountain is scheduled to be disassembled and put into storage next month while a new home is found, the city's Historic Preservation Commission is taking steps to preserve a permanent digital record. Work to remove the fountain starts next week. The city contracted Wightman & Associates to take photos and scan the fountain in March. City Manager Jim Ritsema said these photos will be stored in archives kept by the city, the Kalamazoo Public Library and Western Michigan University. Historic Preservation Coordinator Sharon Ferraro said the group is considering sending a record of the fountain and the reflecting pools to the Library of Congress. Digital scans of Bronson Park's Fountain of the Pioneers were taken by by Wightman & Associates to maintain a record of the statue before its removal. (Photo provided to MLive.com by Sharon Ferraro) Ferraro said more than one billion data points were recorded with sensors that recorded pulsed laser light bounced off the fountain. Differences in laser return times and wavelengths were used to make a nearly identical digital 3D model. The entire fountain complex fits on a 22 GB file. Ferraro said the files could create exact replicas if loaded into a 3D printer. The idea is to send the scans to Washington D.C. to be preserved by the Historic American Buildings Survey and the Historic American Engineering Record, Ferraro said. These collections are among the largest and most heavily used in the Library of Congress, documenting achievements in architecture, engineering, and landscape design. "If we're going to going to tear it down let's give it a heck of an obituary first," Ferraro said. Ferraro wants the structure to be completely recorded before it's taken apart. It could take months to determine how to submit the files to the Library of Congress. "Once it's gone, it's gone," Ferraro said. "If we save it we have a lot more choices of what to do." The original blueprints still exist. Construction starts next week Ritsema said construction fences will go around the fountain pools this week. The city will move the upper three sections of the sculpture into storage, including the figures of a Native American and westward European settler. The two reflecting pools and fountain components in Bronson Park will be removed and replaced with lawn panels. According to a Freedom of Information Act request provided to MLive.com, the work is expected to cost $225,000. The fountain was placed on the National Register of Historic Places in 2016. It will not be automatically removed from the register, but could be delisted in the future. It's still unclear where the artistic elements of the fountain will go. The county's Public Art Commission is helping the city find a new home. Ritsema said "outside agencies" expressed interest in storing the fountain, but the city wants to find a local partner first. The Kalamazoo Institute of Arts and the Kalamazoo Valley Museum both indicated they do not have the required space to hold it. Ferraro said she would prefer to keep the fountain where it is, but that decision has already been made. She feared someone would deface the statue if it was placed in an outdoor location. Last week, city crews placed the bronze "When Justice and Mercy Prevail, Children May Safely Play" sculptures into storage. The bronze children will return to the park next year in an area south of the center lawn panel. Commitment to racial healing Commissioner Jack Urban expressed a multitude of concerns about the fountain's removal, stressing the need to protect he delicate structure. He also pushed the commission to move forward initiatives for healing and racial reconciliation. "What seems to have happened here for the first time in recent memeory the white privelege community of this city didnt get all it expected to get," Urban said. "A lot of folks are growing and learning and we have the opportunity to do even more of that." Mayor Bobby Hopewell and other commissioners have previously said this was their main consideration in removing the fountain. Measures to educate the public about the history of indigenous people in Kalamazoo were developed by the community and the Gun Lake Tribal Council during the park's last master plan. This includes markers at historic boundaries of formerly indigenous land, an educational app, programs in Kalamazoo Public Schools and other things. The master plan has obviously changed, but the Tribal Council wasn't formally contacted by the city as of Monday. Educational components of the plan will not change. Commissioners voted to continue involving the Gun Lake Tribe in future discussions about Bronson Park. The controversial monument has been a source of debate about since Alfonso Iannelli finished it in 1940. Historians, including Ferraro, believe the statue has great intellectual and artistic value. Kalamazoo leaders said the harm caused to indigenous people outweighs those considerations, and decided to remove the fountain in the name of racial healing. Some residents felt the City Commission was influenced by a small group of people from outside Kalamazoo. The National Coalition Against Censorship publicly opposed Kalamazoo's decision in a statement released days after the vote. The coalition cautioned residents not to confuse works of art with monuments that were historically intended to send a clear racist message. The Fountain of the Pioneers allows for multiple interpretations, the coalition said, unlike Confederate monuments, which celebrate the values of the Old South and white supremacy. Removing Iannelli's fountain complex changes a $2.8 million master plan for Bronson Park which was set in motion two years ago. Donors since contributed funds for a wide range of park improvements, including repairs to the concrete fountain, but fundraising was put on hold last fall. Fifty-two donors requested to cancel $246,000 in pledges as of March 31, according to the city. They will be refunded. KALAMAZOO, MI -- Kalamazoo city and county governments are joining five communities nationally chosen to participate in a program focused on reducing the overuse of jails and the negative effects that jail overuse has on communities. The initiative seeks to reduce situations where young adults who aren't a threat to public safety or flight risks languish in jail while awaiting trial for low-level, non-violent offenses. Jurisdictions selected through the competitive process will receive financial and technical support to rethink justice systems and implement data-driven strategies to safely reduce jail populations. Titled "Intergovernmental Policy Academy: Young Adults and the Justice System," the initiative comes from the John D. and Catherine T. MacArthur Foundation, supported by national organizations for counties, cities and state legislatures. Kalamazoo is the first Michigan jurisdiction to join the initiative. The foundation believes jailing non-violent youth on low-level charges inefficiently uses scarce resources and poorly deals with mental health and substance abuse issues in developing young adults ages 18-24. According to a Friday press release, local officials hope develop strategies to reduce the use of jails for young adults, especially those of color, and learn from national experts. The program is expected to help gather new strategies for integrating various county-wide efforts and develop best practices in collecting and analyzing data. "While all populations are important, in my opinion, our young adults have the best opportunity to turn their lives around - turn the tide - at an early, critical stage," said County Commissioner Julie Rogers. Main areas of interest include early intervention, mental health and substance abuse screening and assessment, job training and workforce integration, post-incarceration reentry, and cross-agency coordination. Rogers and Chief District Court Judge Christopher Haenicke, Kalamazoo Mayor Bobby Hopewell and Assistant Chief of Public Safety David Boysen will lead community partners in the year-long program. Additional team members named in the application are Prosecutor Jeff Getting, Sheriff Richard Fuller, Director of Michigan Works! Southwest Ben Damerow, and Jeff Patton, CEO of Kalamazoo Community Mental Health and Substance Abuse Services. The program consists of two, two-day intensive conferences and a year of technical, policy, and other assistance tailored to achieve the program's goals. Each selected team of city, county and state officials will identify a goal for aligning policies across all levels of government, such as: re-examining current procedures that perpetuate poverty, including fines and fees, and improving services that support employment among young adults among many others possible goals. According to the release, Kalamazoo's application was chosen because local governments have demonstrated commitment to reduce recidivism and youth incarceration. In April, the County Board of Commissioners approved a resolution recognizing the impact of trauma on its constituents and pledging to build a resilient and healthy county. Last spring, the Kalamazoo City Commission and Kalamazoo County Board of Commissioners adopted resolutions supporting the creation of the Kalamazoo Prisoner Re-entry Coalition. The coalition seeks to cut the number of people who return to state prisons in half. According to the resolution, the number of people confined to prison is growing at an "alarming rate that cannot be sustained." The criminalization of youth behavior and the school-to-prison pipeline continue to feed juveniles into the criminal justice system, it reads. Local officials agreed that recidivism rates can be reduced by investing in research-driven, evidence-based programs and community engagement. Meanwhile, the number of Michigan offenders who are re-incarcerated within three years of their release reached its lowest recorded level this year. The Michigan Department of Corrections announced Tuesday, Feb. 13 that the state's recidivism rate dropped to 28.1 percent, placing Michigan among the 10 states with lowest recidivism rates. KALAMAZOO, MI -- Bronson Healthcare and area police want the unused pills, capsules and medicine patches you have on your shelf. Unused prescriptions tend to get misused, stolen or lost, according to Bronson Community Health. So the health system, along with law enforcement agencies in Kalamazoo, Calhoun and Van Buren counties, will take part in National Prescription Drug Take Back Day on Saturday, April 28. "This event is an effort to prevent unused drugs from being lost, stolen or misused," Bronson officials stated in a press release. "Community members are encouraged to clean out their medicine cabinets, drawers and cupboards, and take any unneeded or outdated medications to one of the Take Back Day sites." Law enforcement officers will be on hand to make sure the medications are placed in a secured receptacle until they can be properly destroyed. While most unused and outdated prescription medications will be accepted, the event is focused on collecting unneeded opioids. An estimated 12.5 million people in the United States -- ages 12 and older -- are estimated to have misused opioids during the past year. Approximately 17,500 opioid pills were collected statewide during last year's Take Back Day, according to the Michigan Opioid Prescribing Engagement Network. Bronson is hosting events on April 28 in collaboration with the Kalamazoo Department of Public Safety, the Calhoun County Sheriff's Office, the Van Buren County Sheriff's Office, the Van Buren County Substance Abuse Task Force, the Drug Enforcement Administration and the Michigan Opioid Prescribing Engagement Network. Collection sites will be open from 10 a.m. to 2 p.m. on Saturday, April 28. They are: -Bronson Methodist Hospital -- The main lobby of the hospital at 601 John St. in Kalamazoo. It can be accessed via the hospital's main entrance and is on the west side of building near the gift shop. -Bronson Battle Creek Hospital -- The main lobby of the hospital at 300 North Ave. in Battle Creek will be the collection place. -Bronson Wellness Center -- at 950 Bailey Ave. in South Haven. -Antwerp Township Activity Center -- at 24821 Front Ave. in Mattawan. The location will be staffed by the Van Buren County Substance Abuse Task Force. The organizations will not accept needles, syringes, lancets or liquids. They will accept pills, capsules and patches. Acceptable items include: -Pain Medications -Hydrocodone (Norco, Vicodin) -Oxycodone (OxyContin, Percocet) -Tramadol (Ultram) -Codeine, Fentanyl, Morphine -Sedatives/Sleep Medications: Xanax, Valium, Ambien and Klonopin -Antidepressants, ADHD Medications -Muscle Relaxants, Pet/Veterinary Medicines More information about Take Back Day events is available at the above locations or by contacting Joyce Griffith, of Bronson Community Health, at 269-341-8355. Brittany Sevrey MUSKEGON, MI - A man and woman who were fatally shot in downtown Muskegon Friday night were sitting inside his vehicle when the shooter, the woman's husband, approached and shot them, according to a police spokesman. The investigation into the deaths of Tommy Davis, 30, and Brittany Sevrey, 28, is continuing by Muskegon Police with assistance from Muskegon Township Police, the Michigan State Police and the Muskegon County Sheriff's Office, the spokesman said. The incident is considered a double murder-suicide, with the shooter, Brandon Sevrey, killing himself outside a home in Muskegon Township, the spokesman said. The home on Ricky Drive was where the Sevreys, who were going through a divorce, lived with their two young children, court records show. "There were no obvious red flags with this couple," the spokesman said, saying he was unaware of any previous violence in their relationship. Police are still working to determine where Davis and Brittany Sevrey had been before they were killed, the spokesman said. Davis was in the driver's seat and Brittany Sevrey in the passenger seat of his car, which was parked in a lot at the corner of Western Avenue and Fifth Street. The shooter walked up to the vehicle and shot both victims in the head before fleeing in his vehicle, the spokesman said. Brittany Sevrey was pronounced dead at the scene. Davis, who died later at a local hospital, "was struggling to hold onto life when we arrived at the scene" and was unable to speak to investigators, the spokesman said. Police are still trying to determine how Brandon Sevrey knew where Davis and Brittany Sevrey were, he said. Investigators "very quickly" developed Brandon Sevrey as a suspect and sped to his home after the downtown shootings, he said. He declined to say why Brandon Sevrey was their suspect. Police reported earlier that tracking dogs helped investigators locate Brandon Sevrey's body around midnight in woods behind his home. The Muskegon Police Department is heading the investigation and the spokesman said he had not yet seen reports of what happened at the Sevreys' home that night. He said it was his understanding that the Sevrey children were inside the home. The children, a girl and a boy, are ages 9 and 6. Brittany Sevrey worked as a registered nurse for Affinia Health Network at Mercy Health's Hackley Campus in Muskegon. Her funeral will be 3:30 p.m. Wednesday at Sytsema Funeral Home's Lee Chapel, 6291 S. Harvey St. Visitation is 5-8 p.m. today. Davis worked as a senior financial analyst for Mercy Health at the Muskegon Community Health Project, according to his obituary. He also was the chairman of the finance committee for Habitat for Humanity of Muskegon. He was a 2006 graduate of Mona Shores High School. Survivors include his parents, Sherri and Tom Davis; brother Eric; and grandparents Dave and Linda Raulin. His funeral will be 1 p.m. Friday at the Lee Chapel. Visitation will be 5-8 p.m. Thursday. Funeral arrangements for Brandon Sevrey have not been released. The Chinese-Africa Forum for cooperation in economic zones opened in Cairo on Tuesday, attended by representatives from China and six African countries on establishing economic zones, Ahrams Arabic news website reported. Organised by the Chinese embassy and the Suez Canal Economic Zone Authority, the forum aims at strengthening cooperation and sharing expertise. President Abdel-Fattah El-Sisi and his Chinese counterpart will inaugurate an investment conference in September this year in Egypt, Suez Canal Zone Authority chairman Mohab Mamish announced. China is one of the largest investors in the Suez Canal Economic Zone, with China's TEDA corporation, one of the largest industrial developers in the Suez Canal Zone, developing a 7.23 sq km industrial zone in Ain Sokhna. Mamish has invited international investors and companies to invest in Egypt, especially in the zone. He said Chinese companies will invest in the automotive and textile sectors in the zone, Mamish said. Chinese ambassador Song Aigu said China will increase its investments in Egypt, adding that developments in the region will not change Chinas interest in investing in Egypt. The ambassador highlighted Egypts strategic location, which allows it to make success stories in the investment zones it aims to establish, especially the Suez Canal Zone. Egypt's location makes it Chinas gateway to Africa, which is strategic for the Belt and Road Initiative, the ambassador also said. Egypt supports Chinas Belt and Road initiative, which aims at developing trade and transport networks through land and sea routes to connect Asia with Africa and Europe. President Abdel-Fattah El Sisi visited China in September 2017, where he participated in the BRICS Summit. Chinas foreign direct investments in Egypt grew by 75 percent in the first half of 2017, trade and economic attache with the Chinese Embassy Han Peng said in December, with investments mainly in the TEDA industrial zone in Ain Sokhna. In November, Chinas COSCO Shipping signed a $30 million agreement with the Suez Canal Zone to build a 130,000-square-meter logistics park in the TEDA Industrial Zone. SAGINAW, MI -- One of Michigan's juvenile lifers had learned that he could see freedom again before he turns 60. In 2000, James Washington was given a life sentence for the June 27, 1999, murder of 38-year-old Joseph Kinville II. Then-Chief Circuit Judge Leopold Borrello handed down the mandatory sentence to Washington, who proclaimed his innocence at his sentencing but admitted his guilt in a 2011 interview with The Saginaw News. Washington said he was "drunk and high" when he shot Kinville in the backyard of his home at 1822 Stone between Union and Congress on Saginaw's West Side. Then 17, Washington was a few months from his 18th birthday. In a 6-3 decision, the nation's highest court said that its 2012 ruling in Miller v. Alabama invalidated mandatory life sentences for juveniles as a form of cruel and unusual punishment applies retroactively. The Michigan Supreme Court on May 2, 2016, vacated Washington's life sentence, giving him a chance to prove to a Saginaw circuit judge that he is not beyond rehabilitation. On Tuesday, April 17, Washington appeared before Saginaw County Circuit Court Judge Darnell Jackson and received a sentence of 40-60 years. Washington also received credit for nearly 19 years as well as almost two years of credit for a felony firearm charge. Washington is one of 21 men who were given life sentences without parole for murders they committed as juveniles in Saginaw County. TAWAS POINT, MI - Checking his phone, Jason Bojczyk, a birder from Ann Arbor, noted he had been at Tawas Point State Park for 12 hours, recorded 60 species of birds and witnessed an elusive owl he had only seen five other times in his life. In his 13 years of serious bird watching, Bojczyk has traveled to Texas, Pennsylvania and Maine conducting research on local and migratory bird populations. "I guess you could say I'm kind of migratory myself," Bojczyk said. From August to November, Bojczyk worked at Acadia National Park in Maine counting hawks. With the money saved from that work, he is able to fund his own independent research on migratory bird populations in Tawas Point State Park. "It's like a bottleneck for hundreds of species," Bojczyk said. "There's 101 species recorded in the park so far, I've seen 60 today." According to the Trevor Edmonds, director of conservation for the Saginaw Basin Land Conservancy (SBLC), Tawas Point is not the only spot for great birding in the area. "Early to mid-May is going to be the best time to go birding," Edmonds said. "Anywhere along the trail within Saginaw, Bay, Tuscola, and Arenac counties are going to be great spots." The trail Edmonds refers to is one created by the SBLC. With amenities, buildings, and observation decks set up along it, Edmonds said it's set up to provide ample opportunity for birding. "Birders can catch not only all the species that stay for the summer, but those passing through," he said. "Birding is a good gateway hobby to get interested in nature and see places they wouldn't have normally gone." Maps for the Saginaw Bay Birding Trail, photos of recent sightings submitted by birders, and other resources for birding in the area can be found at the Saginaw Bay Birding website. Elusive owl A long-eared owl, as shown in Tawas Point State Park, Michigan, on Monday, April 9, 2018. (Courtesy Jason Bojczyk) A black figure swooped through the trees against the dusk sky, maybe 30 meters ahead of Bojczyk. He pointed, ecstatic at the long-eared owl perched on a tree in front of him. "This is crazy, this is so exciting," Bojczyk said. "The sighting of this species has drawn birders from across the state." Shortly after he brought up his binoculars the owl flew away, and Bojczyk followed where it flew off to. Bojczyk pointed out the sudden sound of blue jays from a group of trees ahead. Blue jays will often start calling and flying around a long-eared owl, making the owls location a dead giveaway. A green Jeep Wrangler drove past the grove of trees, Bojczyk noted it was his friend, also here to see the owl. "If he had his windows down, he would have heard them and seen (the owl)," Bojczyk said. After slowly scoping the tree line, Bojczyk ran into his friend in the Jeep. He had not had his windows down or seen the owl, but was optimistic he could. In the fall and spring, Tawas Point is a very important area for migratory birds. Over 200 species travel through in the Spring alone. Bojczyk would like to turn his research on the vital area into a project later down the line, but for that, he would need more than saved-up money from seasonal jobs. He says he has plans to start a crowd-funded campaign sometime in the future. BRIDGEPORT TWP., MI -- Bridgeport Township's main offices will remain closed until further notice as more testing shows elevated levels of methane in the groundwater beneath the building and in the indoor air. Once the full range of test results is completed, a state toxicologist will review it and determine if using the building is hazardous to human health, according Chris Klawuhn, Saginaw County Department of Public Health environmental health services director. The Bridgeport Charter Township Governmental Center, 6206 Dixie Highway, was closed April 6 after three workers in the main office developed headaches and reported feeling nauseous and lightheaded, authorities previously said. The symptoms were associated with a suspicious odor that has appeared before. Methane gas is nontoxic, but it is an asphyxiant, meaning it can displace oxygen supply in high concentrations, according to the U.S. National Library of Medicine. Oxygen deprivation can lead to headaches, nausea, dizziness, vomiting and loss of concentration -- symptoms the office workers suffered, Klawuhn said. "From talking with the township and reading reports from news services, the reported symptoms are matching up with methane exposure," he said. Among other sources, methane gas can come from decomposition of organic materials in landfills. The township offices were built atop a landfill in 1980, the township manager previously said. According to the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency, landfill gas is about 50 percent methane, 50 percent carbon dioxide and a "a small amount of non-methane organic compounds." Bridgeport Township Fire Chief Patrick Nelson said to his knowledge, preliminary tests have not shown elevated levels of carbon dioxide, which also is an asphyxiant. The township-owned landfill was opened in 1958 and closed in late 1972 or early 1973 after it was determined to be within the Cass River's 100-year floodplain, Klawuhn said. It was used as a dumping site for household waste and construction debris. Nelson and Klawuhn were not sure how the landfill site was capped before the township offices were built, which officials say happened in 1980. The Michigan Department of Environmental Quality did not return calls for comment. The building's foundation has settled twice in recent history, with the suspected cause being decaying materials in the landfill beneath, Nelson said. In the early '90s, a concrete injection was conducted to prevent further settling on the building's eastern side. The most recent settling, which Nelson discovered about a year ago after seeing a "significant crack in the wall" in a room on the building's west side, hasn't been addressed yet. Business is continuing in a limited fashion at the township, with workers temporarily relocated to the nearby Department of Public Works building and the Fire Department. "We're making do, but it's not obviously the best conditions," the chief said. AKT Peerless Environmental Services, which is conducting the testing, is expected to have results completed Wednesday, Klawuhn said. We, the G7 Leaders of Canada, France, Germany, Italy, Japan, the United Kingdom, the United States of America and the European Union, are united in condemning, in the strongest possible terms, the use of chemical weapons in the April 7 attack in Eastern Ghouta, Syria. We fully support all efforts made by the United States, the United Kingdom and France to degrade the Assad regimes ability to use chemical weapons and to deter any future use, demonstrated by their action taken on April 13. This response was limited, proportionate and necessary - and taken only after exhausting every possible diplomatic option to uphold the international norm against the use of chemical weapons. Use of chemical weapons is a breach of the Chemical Weapons Convention and constitutes a threat to international peace and security. The repeated and morally reprehensible use of chemical weapons by the Assad regime in the past has been confirmed by independent international investigators. We condemn this deliberate strategy of terrorizing local populations and forcing them into submission. Syrias possession of chemical weapons and their means of delivery are illegal under UN Security Council Resolution 2118 and the Chemical Weapons Convention. We stand together against impunity for those who develop or use these weapons, anywhere, anytime, under any circumstances. We remain committed to a diplomatic solution to the conflict in Syria. We commend and support UN Special Envoy de Misturas efforts towards an inclusive and credible political transition in accordance with UN Security Council Resolution 2254 and the Geneva Communique. Education Montgomery County Community College will present the spring installment of the interview/talk show program Issues and Insights April 20 from 12:30 to 2 p.m. in Science Center room 214, 340 DeKalb Pike, Blue Bell. The programs will be simulcast to the Colleges West Campus in South Hall room 216, 101 College Drive, Pottstown. Dr. Kolsky will offer a humorous presentation, Carrots, Sticks and Politics: A State of the Nation and the World Message. In this speech, he will provide his interpretation of domestic and international politics and then welcome questions from the audience for discussion. Issues and Insights, is free and open to the public. For information, contact Dr. Thomas Kolsky, professor of political science, at 215-641-6380 or tkolsky@mc3.edu. Montgomery County Community Colleges STEM Scholars Program will host a STEM Jam! open house April 25 from 10 a.m. to 7 p.m. in the Advanced Technology Center at the Colleges Central Campus, 340 DeKalb Pike, Blue Bell. The drop-in event is designed for students interested in learning more about careers in science, technology, engineering and mathematics. Activities will include STEM program information and career advising, STEM speakers throughout the day from industry and academia, micro-helicopter and robotics competitive obstacle courses and demonstrations and static models of STEM student and faculty work. For more information about STEM Jam! or STEM programs at MCCC, contact William Brownlowe at wbrownlowe@mc3.edu or 215-641-6644, or Robin Zuhlke at 215-619-7440 or rzuhlke@mc3.edu. Temple Ambler, located at 580 Meetinghouse Road, presents the following events: International Club Global Bazaar April 15 from 5 to 8 p.m. The Ambler Campus International Club invites all students, faculty, staff and the community to celebrate a multitude of diverse cultures, which will be showcased at the organizations Global Bazaar. This family friendly event will highlight cultural traditions and celebrations in Asia, Europe, the Middle East, South American, North America and Africa through music, entertainment, food and informative displays developed and presented by students at the Ambler Campus. Young visitors will be provided with passports, which they may get stamped at each country they visit. Prizes will be awarded to world travelers who talk to cultural representatives, answer questions about the countries theyve visited and take part in fun-filled activities designed to help them learn about the rich diversity of cultures found throughout the world. Refreshments will be served. The event is free. For more information, call 267-468-8108 or e-mail tuc36466@temple.edu. EarthFest 2011 April 29 from 9:30 a.m. to 2 p.m. More than 75 exhibitors, including the Philadelphia Zoo, The Franklin Institute, the Academy of Natural Sciences, the Elmwood Park Zoo and the Insectarium, will take part in EarthFest 2011. School students of all ages are invited to attend and develop displays of their own. EarthFest partner the Pennsylvania Horticultural Society also offers its Kids Grow Expo, featuring the Junior Flower Show, as part of the event. For more information, call 267-468-8108 or e-mail duffyj@temple.edu. Annual Spring Plant Sale May 7 from 10 a.m. to 3 p.m. The plant sale an Ambler Campus tradition dating back to the early 1900s will feature woody plants and perennials in portable sizes, hardy trees, shrubs, and vines, native plants that are attractive to wildlife, herbs, and hanging baskets. There will also be numerous special plants for sale to highlight Amblers special anniversary year. Garden books and garden tools will also be available for sale. Students, staff, and volunteers from the Department of Landscape Architecture and Horticulture and the Ambler Arboretum Advisory Committee will be available to answer questions. All proceeds from the Spring Plant Sale will support the Ambler Arboretum Fund and the Pi Alpha Xi National Honor Society. Information: 267-468-8001 or judy.shatz@temple.edu. Learn more at www.ambler.temple.edu/anniversary. June Homecoming/Louise Bush-Brown Garden Dedication June 5 from 12:30 to 2 p.m. (June Homecoming), Bright Hall Lounge; 2 p.m. (Garden Dedication), Ambler Campus Formal Perennial Gardens. Tickets June Homecoming: Participant $18 per person; Sustainer $25 per person; Benefactor $40 per person. The 2011 June Homecoming, sponsored by the School of Environmental Design Alumni Association, will include the Alumni Association annual meeting and luncheon. June Homecoming will be followed by the formal dedication of Temple University Amblers Formal Perennial Gardens as the Louise Bush-Brown Formal Gardens. During this 100th anniversary of the campus, Temple University Ambler and the Ambler Arboretum of the Temple University is honoring Louise Bush-Browns many contributions to the history of the campus by formally dedicating the gardens in her honor. During the program, campus Executive William Parshall will welcome guests, Ambler Arboretum Director Jenny Rose Carey will speak about the Bush-Browns and the history of the garden, and an official ribbon cutting will be held for the Louise Bush-Brown Formal Garden. Following the ribbon cutting, guests are invited to take a tour of the gardens, which will wend their way to the Campus Greenhouse for the School of Environmental Designs annual Plant Auction. Information (Garden Dedication): 267-468-8001 or judy.shatz@temple.edu. Information (June Homecoming): 215-482-0722. Learn more at www.ambler.temple.edu/anniversary. Northview Garden Tour and Fundraiser for the Ambler Arboretum June 12 from noon to 5 p.m. Call for reservations. Tickets: $15 per person or $20 at the door. In addition to the gardens of the Ambler Arboretum of Temple University, Arboretum Director Jenny Rose Carey has a garden oasis all her own right in Ambler Northview. Visitors will have the opportunity to take self-guided tours throughout the many gardens, where garden experts will be available to answer questions about the various designs. The Ambler Keystone Chapter of the Womans National Farm and Garden Association will also provide tea and refreshments. All proceeds from the tours will support the Ambler Arboretum of Temple University. Information or to register: 267-468-8001 or judy.shatz@temple.edu. Learn more at www.ambler.temple.edu/anniversary. The Senior Adult Activities Center of Montgomery County, 536 George Street, Norristown, will hold the following events: SAAC Adult Day Care, an alternative to Nursing Home Care is available for information call 610-275-1960 Volunteers are needed for Meals on Wheels Program (call the number above) SAACs Fifth Avenue Boutique opens Monday through Friday from 10 a.m.-1:30 p.m. Exercise with Theresa will be held every Monday, Wednesday and Friday at 1 p.m. Dance class is held every Monday at 10 a.m. Tai Chi is held every Monday at 10 a.m. Yoga is held every Tuesday at 10:30 a.m. Line Dancing is held every Thursday at 10:30 a.m. Dancing with Joan is held every Wednesday at 10:30 a.m. Sculpture Class is held Wednesdays from 2 to 3:30 p.m. Why Should I Learn Spanish? will be held Wednesdays at 10:30 a.m. Generations On-Line computer classes for seniors will be held Monday through Friday from 8 a.m. 4 p.m. computers are available during those hours. Health Living will be held every Tuesday at 1 p.m. Boomer U will hold the following events. Boomer U is located at 45 Forest Avenue, Ambler. Registration & payment is required for all events: 215-619-8863. Pilates Class is held Wednesdays and Fridays at 9:30 a.m. First class is free; please bring a mat. For information call 610-291-5376. Blue Bell School of Dance, 921 Penllyn Blue Bell Pike, Blue Bell, hosts Argentine Tango Classes and a Milonga dance party every Friday evening. Lessons start at 8:30 p.m. followed by dancing at 9:30 p.m. Andrew Conway, master Argentine Tango dancer, instructor and performer and his partner Linda Chase will instruct. All levels welcome and no partner is needed. Refreshments will be served. Fee is $12 per person and includes lesson and dancing. Information: 215-634-1101 or www.amoretango.com. The Montgomery Hospital Medical Center will offer the following classes: Childbirth Education Class- all parents are invited to participate, including those who are delivering at other hospitals. For more information on maternity services or classes, call 610-270-2020. CPR and First Aid Courses are offered for beginners to experiences health care providers. Call 610-270-2313. The Ambler SAAC (Senior Adult Activities Center), located at 45 Forest Ave in Ambler will hold the following events: Tai Chi every Monday and Thursday at 11 a.m. Yoga is every Tuesday at 1 p.m. and Friday at 10:30 a.m. Strength and balance training every Wednesday at 10 a.m. Armchair Aerobics is held every Monday at 10 a.m. Gourmet Weight Wise every Thursday at 12:30. Fitness Center and Pool Room open daily 8 a.m.-4 p.m. The Diabetes Education Center will offer day and evening classes each month. Health insurance pays for diabetes education classes. Preregistration is required. Call 610-270-2301. For Kids & Families The Ambler Kiwanis Club will host its annual Easter Egg Hunt April 26 at 10 a.m. in Ambler Borough Park, located just off of the intersection of Hendricks Street and Valley Brook Road. Members of the Wissahickon Key Club will assist Kiwanians in hiding thousands of wrapped chocolate eggs in a designated area of the park. Also hidden will be plastic colored eggs, which are redeemed for prizes. Elementary school children are separated by age. Upper Dublin Parks & Recreation will hold its 21st annual Storybook Egg-Stravaganza April 15 fom 6 to 7:30 p.m. at the Upper Dublin Township Building. Toddlers and preschoolers love this annual event where photo opportunities with favorite friends abound! Treasures are collected from UDP&Rs assortment of lifesize cutouts of favorite cartoon characters from Disney, Sesame Street, Nickelodeon and other well-known animation. Children can have their picture taken with Bugsy OHare; bring your own camera. And dont forget a basket for goodies! $7 for UD residents; $12 for non-residents. Pre-register at 215-643-1600 ext. 3443. Splash Week is a free week-long program that teaches children and families basic swimming skills and water safety practices. All YMCA branches will host multiple classes each day from April 11 to 15. For more information, contact the Ambler Area YMCA at 215-628-9950. Healthy Kids Day is April 16 from 10 a.m. to 2 p.m. The day is filled with fun, engaging and artistic activities that cultivate healthy living as part of the YMCAs larger efforts to help more kids and families become physically active. All activities are free and open to the community. For more information, contact the Ambler YMCA at 215-628-9950. No reservation is required. The Ambler Area YMCA has added several new programs for area youngsters. Classes are held late afternoons or evenings on various weekdays. For more information, visit philaymca.org or call 215-628-9950. Basic Beading: Ages: 10+. Wednesdays 7 to 7:45 p.m. This class will teach you the fundamentals of wiring and stringing along with how color can be used to create unique and vibrant beadwork design. You will create various jewelry including earrings, bracelets, charm pendants and much more! Supplies will be provided. Bringing your own jewelry pliers or tools would be a plus. Messin with the Masters: Ages: 8-12. Thursdays 7 to 7:45 p.m. Learn about some of the worlds greatest artists. You will be inspired to create your own Starry Night with oil pastels and tempera paints, a tissue paper painted Monet garden, a Picasso head using scraps of paper, a Georgia OKeeffe clay flower bowl and a Rousseau jungle collage. Super Scientist: Ages: 5-7. Mondays 4:30 to 5:15 p.m. Well be concocting chemistry experiments such as making slime, mixing potions and having fun with magnet magic. Your budding little scientist will enhance his/her creative thinking and motor skills and to top it off will learn that science can be serious fun. Wacky Junk Art: Ages: 8-12. Thursdays 6 to 6:45 p.m. Why throw it away! Instead join us to make household junk into aliens from outer space, wacky specs, crazy hats, body masks or a recycled train. Globe Trotters: Ages: 4-6. Tuesdays 4:30 to 5:15 p.m. Youre never too young to start thinking globally. Each week, we explore a new country through crafts, games, music, stories and even some taste-testing. A perfect introduction to our great big world! Crazy about Crafts: Ages: 5-7, Thursdays 4:30 to 5:15 p.m. Let your childs creative juices flow with our fun arts and crafts projects each week. Fine motor skills and creative thinking skills will be enhanced with this crafty class. Come out and join the Ambler Area YMCAs Teen and Junior Leaders Club. Participants are given the freedom to plan community service projects year round and truly make a difference in the lives of people in need. Those in Teen and Junior Leaders also attend leadership retreats all along the East Coast three times a year and meet other leaders who are doing the same great work in their respective areas. Dont miss out on this inspiring opportunity. Teen Leaders, ages 13-17, meet every Wednesday from 6 to 7:30 p.m. Junior Leaders, ages 10-12, will begin in the spring and will meet every Monday. For more information, contact Mike Miles, Teen Director, 215- 628-9950 x 1540 or mmiles@philaymca.org. Did you know that the new Ambler Area YMCA holds childrens birthday parties at its site for members and non members as well. The Ambler Y does all the work from start to finish and birthday parties include a personalized cake, ice cream, beverage and paper products. Parties are held on Saturday and Sunday afternoons and include two party hosts to lead activities, set-up, clean-up and assist with serving. You can have a Splash Party for children ages six to 12 in the new zero depth entry pool with water slide and spray fountains. Up to 25 children have exclusive use of the pool area with 30 minutes in the party room. Sports Parties are offered for kids ages four to 12 with age appropriate activities and games, and sports such as floor hockey, soccer, basketball or dodge ball. Children ages three to five years of age will enjoy parties in the Family Active Center with use of the Moon Bounce and organized activities, such as parachute play and songs. For information, 215-628-9950 ext. 1583. Community Events at the Ambler Y: -YAchievers YMCA Achievers is a developmentally based, extracurricular, educational and team mentoring program designed to help students in grades five through 12 prepare for fulfilled livelihoods in college and beyond. Participation is free and all students in this program receive a free YMCA membership. Registration for the 2009 program begins now. You do not need to be a YMCA member to utilize these special services. Call 215-628-9950 to register. Greater Norristown Art Leagues Childrens Weeklong Summer Art Camps will be held at 800 West Germantown Pike in East Norriton, 10 a.m. to 2 p.m. Monday through Friday throughout the summer. The cost per session is $125 per student for ages 6 and up. Jo Ann Cooksey Bono teaches an introduction to basic drawing skills and techniques from 10 a.m. until the lunch break each day. In the afternoon sessions, Mary Vogel Lozinak involves the students in hands on projects such as collage, papermaking, T-shirt printing, 3D design and sculpy clay. Fridays Graduation Day includes an art show, awards ceremony and reception for parents, siblings, grandparents and friends. All supplies are included. Students provide their own lunch. A refrigerator is available and the building is air-conditioned. This is the 15th year to run this successful program. Both instructors are professional artists with State Police and Child Abuse Clearances. To register, call Jo Ann at 610-279-1008, or register on-line at www.gnal.org. Health Dresher Physical Therapy is hosting an interactive seminar discussing its Golf Assessment Progam April 30 from 10 a.m. to noon at Dresher Physical Therapy, 1075 Virginia Drive, Suite 200, Fort Washington. Physical therapist Chris Miller, certified through the Titleist Performance Institute, will discuss why your body may be the most important piece of golf equipment you invest in and how this can drastically improve your game. $10 in advance; $15 at the door. Call 215-619-4545 to reserve your spot. The Chestnut Hill Center for Enrichment, Center on the Hill and Chestnut Hill Hospital will host a Senior Health and Resource Fair April 14 from 10 a.m. to 2 p.m. at Chestnut Hill Presbyterian Church, 8855 Germantown Ave. The event is free. For more information, call 215-248-0180 or e-mail chseniors@cavtel.net. The Ambler Senior Adult Activities Center is hosting Help Yourself to Health, a new six-week workshop for older adults with ongoing health conditions such as arthritis, diabetes, high blood pressure, anxiety, heart disease and others. The free workshop will take place at the Ambler Senior Adult Activities Center, 45 Forest Ave. on six Thursdays, May 12 through June 16 from 9:30 a.m. to noon. Although there is no charge to participate, registration is required. To register, call 215-619-8863. The Ambler Senior Adult Activities Center is sponsoring an eight-week program called A Matter of Balance: Managing Concerns About Falls. Presented by the Montgomery County Health Department, this workshop will be held on Tuesdays, May 3 to June 21 from 10 a.m. to noon at the Ambler Center, 45 Forest Ave. If you pre-register by April 27, the fee is only $5! Registration at the first class is $10. (Checks should be payable to SAAC and will benefit our Meals on Wheels program that serves homebound seniors.) A workbook will be provided and refreshments will be served. Call 215-619-8863 to register or for more information. Fort Washington Wellness Center classes are ongoing. There are several offered during lunch or right after work, for your convenience: Boot Camp from noon to 1 p.m. on Monday; Zumba is MWF from 11 a.m. to noon and Friday at 4 p.m.; there are 25 cycling classes; Ashtanga and Vinyasana Yoga and Pilates; and a group Womens Strength Training class M-F from 10 to 11 a.m. Questions, call Cathy DeMarco at 215-641-1245. Following the success of other local area programs, Impact Sports and Upper Dublin Parks and Recreation are delighted to team up again to offer a spring program for the 2011 season! Upper Dublin area children ages 3-5 years old can attend a Sports Program featuring their favorite sports games; soccer, rugby, hockey, track and field, basketball, and more. The program will start on April 27 and run through June 1. Cost for the program is $85 for the six weeks. The classes will be running 12- 1 p.m.; 1- 2 p.m.; 2- 3 p.m. For more info or to register, call Upper Dublin Township on 215 643 1600 or visit their website a http://www.upperdublin.net. Spring Aquatic Programs UDHS Pool: -Summer is just around the corner Community Aquatic Programs at the UDHS Pool can help get you into shape! Programs begin in March; preregistration is required. Shallow Water Aerobics Two 5-week programs, Wednesday nights, 8-8:45 p.m., $40R/$50NR. Adult Swim Instructions Two 5-week programs, Wednesday nights, 7-8 p.m., $50R/$60NR -Open Rec Swims are fun for the whole family! Come out on Fridays from 7-9 p.m. or Saturdays from 1-4 p.m. and enjoy use of the pool and diving area. Fridays are offered through June 17; Saturdays are offered March 12-May 21. -Join a growing group of adult lap swimmers and water walkers. Lanes are set aside evenings and weekends for use; lanes are shared. Monday Thursday from 7:30-9:30 p.m.; Fridays from 7-9 p.m. and Saturdays (March 12-May 21) from 1-4 p.m. -Private Swimming & Diving Lessons for ages 3-adult are offered at the UDHS Pool through a partnership with the Upper Dublin Aquatic Club (UDAC). Visit the UDAC website for more information, www.udac.us, and click the link to UDHS Private Lessons. -Looking for local programs for US Masters Swimming (adults) or Water Polo (all ages)? UDAC and UDSD are working together to develop programs that will be offered at the UDHS Pool. Add your name to Interest Lists by emailing slohoefer@upperdublin.net. emails will be sent about clinics and program start dates. Questions about Community Aquatic Programs at the UDHS Pool, group use of the pool or pool rental? Contact Susan Lohoefer, Facility & Community Affairs Manager at slohoefer@upperdublin.net or call 215-643-8800 x8994. SilverSneakers Fitness Program. The Healthyways SilverSneakers Fitness Program is a result-oriented program that enables older adults to take charge of their health. The program is an innovative blend of physical activity, healthy lifestyle and socially oriented programing. Members of the program are eligible for a free YMCA membership, with use of the pool and exercise equipment, along with customized classes designed for older adults who want to improve their strength, flexibility, balance and endurance. If you are a subscriber to Independence Blue Cross (Personal Choice 65 PPO) or Keystone 65 HMO, Bravo Health, or Health Options Programs (HOP), call the Ambler Area YMCA, 215-628-9950 or Hatboro Area YMCA, 215-674-4545. You can also visit www.silversneakers.com. Zumba Fitness offers Zumba dance/fitness classes at Academy of Dance and Music/BBAD Studio located at 1524 DeKalb Pike in Blue Bell (behind Sherwin Williams). Classes are offered three times a week: Tuesdays at 6 p.m., Thursdays at 6:30 p.m. and Saturdays at 8 a.m. For a free trial pass for your first class, email us at info@danceandmusic.biz or call 610-277-2557. For more info, visit our site at www.academyofdanceandmusic.org. Chestnut Hill Health Systems presents the following Health Education Programs: FITNESS CLASSES Golden Yoga: A Breathing, Stretching and Relaxation Class. Fridays, 2:30-3:30 p.m. Lea Auditorium, Chestnut Hill Hospital, 8835 Germantown Ave. Registration for four classes at a time required. Golden Yoga is Classical Yoga, adapted by the SKY Foundation, to accommodate those who have difficulty getting up and down from the floor. The program includes postures, breathing, relaxation and meditation techniques, all performed while sitting in a chair and standing. Registration required. Call 215-247-3029. Cost: $20 for 4 classes per month. Tai Chi: Tuesdays & Thursdays, 8:30 9:30 a.m. Springfield Residence, 8601 Stenton Ave. Classes, for the novice or beginner/intermediate student, are designed to improve balance, power, posture, coordination, flexibility and mental focus. Slow, gentle movements are modified to most everyones abilities. For more information or to sign up for a free introductory class, call 215-882-2804. Cost: $8 per class/paid monthly. SUPPORT GROUPS Weight Loss Surgery Support Group: Fourth Wednesday of the month, 7-8 p.m. Williams Conference Room, Chestnut Hill Hospital, 8835 Germantown Ave., Philadelphia. Join us for a monthly get-together where well share information for those interested in weight loss surgery, learn from guest speakers discussing current news on issues including lifestyle modification, nutrition and exercise and provide ongoing support for those who have completed surgery. Registration required. Call 215-753-2000. Breast Cancer Networking Group: Fourth Tuesday of the month 5:30 7 p.m. Williams Conference Room, Chestnut Hill Hospital, 8835 Germantown Ave., Philadelphia. A free, confidential support group for women living with a diagnosis of breast cancer designed to provide a forum for sharing information, feelings and concerns associated with breast cancer. Facilitated by Tish Wakefield, LCSW, Oncology Social Worker. Registration required. To register or for more information, call 215-248-8047. New Moms Support Groups Tuesdays 10:30 a.m. 12 p.m.; contact Jeanine ORourke, MSW or 2:30 4 p.m.; contact Susan Schack, Ph.D Volunteer Conference Room, Chestnut Hill Hospital, 8835 Germantown Ave. The Center for Postpartum Depression at Chestnut Hill Hospital is pleased to offer two new support groups to support new moms. Both groups will be run by experienced mental health professionals who really get it when it comes to new motherhood and juggling relationships, extended family, work/family balance and self-care. If you are experiencing new mom challenges that often heighten anxiety and involve hormonally driven depression, join us for an informative and supportive forum to connect with other moms. Infants are welcome. $30 per session (flexible based on need). Registration is required. Call Dr. Schack, 646-265-2484, or Ms. ORourke, 215-206-2931. Man to Man Prostate Cancer Support Group Third Thursday of the month 8-9 a.m. Williams Conference Room, Chestnut Hill Hospital, 8835 Germantown Ave. A networking group for men diagnosed with prostate cancer designed to provide education, support and encouragement. Spouses and partners welcome. Harry M. Baer, MD, Chief, Urology Division, will host Ask the Doctor. Registration required. Call 215-248-8325. Contact the Senior Center by phone 215-248-0180 or email (chseniors@cavtel.net) with your questions about these programs or any of our on-going activities and classes. Holy Redeemer HomeCare and Hospice seeks compassionate and emotionally mature volunteers to provide support to local hospice patients and their families in Bucks, Montgomery and Philadelphia counties. Volunteers may also assist with pet therapy and administrative work within the hospice department and are requested to have daytime availability. Hospice patient care volunteers visit with patients in their homes or nursing facilities once a week for two to three hours. They provide emotional support and companionship to patients and family members, assist with errands or provide respite for caregivers. Bereavement volunteers support the families of hospice patients following the loss of a loved one, while administrative volunteers assist with typing, mailings and/or filing. Hospice care workers provide a great service to families and loved ones of hospice patients. Many volunteers also report a great deal of personal satisfaction as a result of their services. Patient care and bereavement volunteers complete an application and attend an 18-hour volunteer training program that covers the medical, psychological and spiritual aspects of hospice volunteering. Day and evening training programs are offered. To sign up for volunteer opportunities in Pennsylvania, contact Holy Redeemer Volunteer Coordinator Jean Francis at 215-698-3737 or email jfrancis@holyredeemer.com. Librarytalk Upper Dublin Public Library, 805 Loch Alsh Avenue, Ft. Washington, 215-628-8744 www.upperdublinlibrary.org APRIL CHILDRENS PROGRAMS: Storytimes: Please register in the library. o Wee Ones: 0 to 23 months Thursdays and Fridays 10:30 to 10:50 a.m. o Tiny Tots: age 2. Wednesdays 10:30 to 10:50 a.m. and Fridays 11 to 11:20 a.m. o Jr. Book Lovers: ages 3 to 6. Tuesdays 10:30 to 11 a.m. o Bedtime Storytimes: 7 to 7:30 p.m. April 20 and 27. Wear your jammies, bring your teddy & hear Miss Barbara read bedtime stories! For ages 3 to 6. APRIL TEEN PROGRAMS: North Hills Library Teens April 28 from 4 to 6 p.m. Movie Matinee APRIL UDPL ADULT PROGRAMS: NEW! ESL Conversation Group. Tuesdays from 7 to 8 p.m. Interested in practicing your English in a safe and caring environment? Come to our conversation group and improve your skills! Please register with Kay Klocko at 215-628-8744 or kklocko@mclinc.org. One-on-One Computer Mentoring. Get personalized assistance from experienced computer volunteers! Sign-up for a one-hour session. Limit one session per month. Please register contact info above. Book Groups Please register with Kay Klocko 215-628-8744. o Daytimers: April 21 at 1:30 p.m. Tired of book groups where you all read the same book? Read any fiction or non-fiction book on this months theme: Explorers. Please register. Meetings: Annual Meeting of the Friends of UDPL: April 14 at 1 p.m. Board of Directors: April 20 at 7 p.m. Blue Bell Library www.wvpl.org Upcoming Events: The Wissahickon Valley Public Library, 650 Skippack Pike (Route 73) in Blue Bell, is diagonally across from the Blue Bell Inn. Call 215-643-1320 or visit their website at www.wvpl.org. For children and teens at Blue Bell: * Story times with guitar music by Miss Michelle, the singing librarian. * Mondays at 10:30 a.m. for all ages. * Wednesdays at 4:30 p.m. for all ages. * Fridays at 10:30 a.m. for all ages. * Family Movies, new releases, second Saturdays of the month at 1:30 p.m. * May 14 Despicable Me * June 11 Alpha and Omega * Special Events * April watch for date of spring/Easter events * April 14 at 4:30 p.m. Junior Lego Club for children ages 3 through 5. Parents and caregivers need to stay with children. * April 14 at 7 p.m. Jeopardy for ages 11 to 18. Test your book and library knowledge for prizes. Sign up to be a contestant. No sign up to be in the audience. Snacks provided. * April 16 at 1 p.m. Adult Mystery Book Group discussing The Beekeepers Apprentice by Laurie King. * April 16 at 1:30 p.m. Childrens event for One Book, Every Young Child celebration. Story and craft for book Whose Shoes? * April 19 at 7 p.m. and April 26 at 1:30 p.m.- Adult book group discusses The Professor and the Madman by Simon Winchester. Group led by Adam Button. * April 30 through May 3 Friends book sale with about 10,000 items for sale for children, teens and adults. * May sign up for Science in the Summer * June sign up for Enrichment Programs for Elementary-Age children * June sign up for Summer Reading, all ages For adults at Blue Bell: * Daytime Book Discussion Group fourth Tuesday, Jan April at 1:30 p.m. * April 26 The Professor and the Madman by Simon Winchester * Night-time Book Discussion Group third Tuesday of each month at 7 p.m. o April 19 The Professor and the Madman by Simon Winchester * Art Series with Dr. Sheldon Weintraub, docent at The Barnes and speaker at local colleges o April 27 at 2 p.m. The Art of Looking at Art-Is She Nude or Is She Naked? *Mystery Book Discussion Group, third Saturday of the month at 1 p.m.; new mystery theme each month; www.wvpl.org/programs * Yoga on Mondays at 1:30 p.m. $20 for eight classes; $5 per drop-in class. * Tai Chi on Mondays at 3 p.m. with Dr. Kurt Findeisen. $20 for eight classes; $5 per drop in class. * Philadelphia Museum of Art presents class on their Marc Chagall exhibit, April 13 at 2 p.m. * Giant Book Sale, April 29 May 3 o Starts with almost 10,000 items for children and adults! o Held during library hours. o Preview for members of the Friends of the Library, April 28 at 7 p.m. o Join the Friends and attend the preview sale. Modest fee to join. * Blooms at Blue Bell Gardening Series o May 11 at 1 p.m. Summer Bulbs by PA Horticultural Society * Knitting group Mondays and Wednesdays at 10 a.m. Work on your project or observe and learn. The groups continue year-round in the community room. * Socrates Cafe discussion group every Monday at 7 p.m. You pick the topic to discuss each week. No sign-up, nothing to read. * Bridge every Friday at 12:30 p.m. New players welcome. * Mah Jong every Wednesday at 1 p.m. New players welcome. *Chess every Wednesday at 7p.m. for adults and teens 14 and older. * Movie Matinee showing recent releases every Thursday at 2 p.m. April 14: Maos Last Dancer; April 21: Welcome to the Rileys; April 28: Conviction; May 5: Inception; May 12: Inside Job; May 19 The Kings Speech; May 26 The Fighter; June 2 Rabbit Hole; June 9 Black Swan; June 16 127 Hours * Ongoing like-new, year-round book sale for adults & children during library hours * Library opening at 10 a.m. Monday through Saturday! Ambler Library, a branch of the Wissahickon Valley Public Library, 209 Race St., 215-646-1072. www.wvpl.org. All the following events occur at the Ambler Library. * Story times with guitar music by Miss Michelle, the singing librarian. * Tuesdays at 10:30 a.m. for all ages. * Thursdays at 4:30 p.m. for all ages. * For adults: * Beading Group meets the first and third Monday of every month at 1 p.m. Work on your own projects or come to watch and learn. * Free Family History Lookup with Connie Briggs. Email Connie for an appointment at the Ambler Library. conniebriggs@comcast.net * Special Events: * April 14 at 1:30 p.m. Book Group discusses Skeletons at the Feast by Chris Bohjalian. * April 19 at 7 p.m. Travel to Paris with world traveler Harry Balin. Tea and scones at 6:30 p.m. * April 21 at 7 p.m. Art with Sara for children in fourth through seventh grades. *May 2 at 6:30 p.m. Discuss the movie Lone Star with Temple Professor Lisa Hawkins. Watch the movie ahead of time. *May 10 Robert Capucci discusses Art into Fashion. Tea and scones served at 6:30 p.m. Program at 7 p.m. *May 12 at 1:30p.m. Book Group discusses The Imperfectionists by Tom Rachman. *May 17 Tour the gardens of Devon and Southwest England with Lois McMullen. Tea and Scones at 6:30 p.m. Program at 7 p.m. *June 13 at 6:30 p.m. Discuss the movie Blade Runner with Temple Professor Lisa Hawkins. Watch the movie ahead of time. Meetings and Lectures The Unisys Blue Bell Retiree Group will meet in the Church on the Mall in the Plymouth Meeting Mall April 14 at 1:30 p.m. Kathy Sacket Young, director/trainer with the North Penn YMCA, will speak on Keeping Fit in Retirement. For more information, contact Membership Committee Chairperson Jerry Feldscher at 610-275-3538 or President Al Rollin at 215-368-4833. The next FWBA meeting will be April 28 at the Hilton Garden Inn Fort Washington. Networking begins at 11:30 a.m.; meeting from noon to 1 p.m. Leon Singletary, Principal, First Contact HR and FWBA Executive Board, will present: Social Media: How to Use It To Get More Business. Lunch is provided courtesy of the Hilton Garden Inn Fort Washington. Members are welcome to bring a guest. An RSVP is requested by return email or 215-628-0313. Big Brothers Big Sisters Southeastern PA is hosting a information sessions over the next few weeks on how to become a Big Brother. The information sessions will take place: April 16 at noon, April 19 at 8 a.m. and April 28 at 6 p.m. All sessions will be held at the groups Norristown Office,t 530 DeKalb St., Norristown. For more information, call 610-277-2200. The North Penn Chapter of the Institute of Management Accountants (IMA) normally meets on the third Tuesday of each month from now until May. Meetings are held at the William Penn Inn on Route 202 and Sumneytown Pike, Upper Gwynedd, PA. Social hour starts at 5:30 p.m., dinner is served at 6:30 p.m., and the technical program begins at 7 p.m. Cost with reservation is $28 for members. Members without reservations and guests pay $30. Students with reservations pay $15. Reservations may be made by noon on the Monday preceding the meeting by phoning 215-371-1854 or emailing the reservation to northpennima@yahoo.com northpennima@yahoo.com. Information about the North Penn Chapter is available at http://northpenn.imanet.org/. LeTip, a professional organization of men and women who are dedicated to the highest standards of competence and service meets every Tuesday at Cedar Brook Country Club, 180 Penllyn Pike, Blue Bell at 7 a.m. -meeting officially starts at 7:16 a.m. and ends at 8:31 a.m. Our purpose is the exchange of business tips, leads, and referrals. Each business category is represented by one member and conflicts of interest are disallowed. Guests are welcome to visit any of our breakfast meetings. Every third Thursday of month, Sunrise Assisted Living of Blue Bell (795 Penllyn Pike, Blue Bell, PA 19422, 215-619-2777) serves as a satellite site to 148th Legislative district PA congressman Mike Gerber from 10 a.m. to noon. Stop by for help needed with things such as disability placards and license plates, vehicle registration, utilities issues, birth/death certificates,property tax/rent rebates, etc. Notary services arranged by appointment. The Eastern Montgomery County Chamber of Commerce is an action-oriented organization dedicated to promoting its members and the economic health of eastern Montgomery county. The Chamber is committed to serving as a catalyst by uniting business, community agencies, government and education to make our county a great place to live and work. For information, call 215-887-5122 or visit www.emccc.org. Do you have a fear of public speaking? Blue Bell Toastmasters Club can help. We meet from 7 to 9 p.m., on the second and fourth Tuesday at the Marriott Courtyard, located on Route 202, directly across from the Montgomeryville Mall. Learn how to improve communication and leadership skills in a friendly and supportive environment. Guests are welcome. Admission fee: $5. For more info, visit www.bbtoast.org. The PennSuburban Chamber of Commerce will hold the following meetings (for reservations to any of the following, email info@PennSuburban.org) -Breakfast News Network, 7:30-8:45 a.m. at Normandy Farm Hotel (1401 Morris Road, Blue Bell, PA 19422) $15 members, includes full buffet breakfast. Join us for a networking program at Normandy Farm Hotel every Thursday morning for breakfast, business news, informative speakers, and plenty of networking. The cost includes a full breakfast buffet. Copies of the business cards will be made available to those who would like them. The BNI, Fort Washington Chapter meets every Monday at The Hilton Garden Inn, 520 Pennsylvania Ave., Fort Washington for a networking meeting. Meetings are from 11:30 a.m. until 1 p.m. Visitors are welcome. The only cost to attend is the cost of your meal. For information or a reservation to attend, please call Luanne Cram at 215-947-7784, or visit our Internet site at: http://www.BNIDVR.Com and click on the menu item Find a Chapter. For the past seven years, people have enjoyed participating in WVWAs Adopt-a-Tree program. Individuals can support the Association in its reforestation efforts by purchasing native trees to be planted. Supporters can plant their adopted tree or have WVWA volunteers will plant it. Trees cost $30 each. If you would like to volunteer or purchase a tree(s), please contact: Bob Adams at Bob@wvwa.org or call: 215-646-8866 for more information. Check www.WVWA.org for directions and maps. Sustainable Upper Dublin, http://sustainableupperdublin.org, meets the first Thursday of each month at 6:30 p.m., at the Upper Dublin Township Building, 801 Loch Alsh Avenue, Fort Washington, PA 19034. Please send any questions to suec@sustainableupperdublin.org or call 610-996-6316. To learn more about Sustainable Upper Dublin, view or join the discussion at http://googlegroups.com/group/sustainableupperdublin. Special Events The Mattie N. Dixon Community Cupboard will hold its first nutrition class April 19 at 10 a.m. at the Community Cupboard, 150 N. Main St., Ambler. Lynne Sinclair, a nutritionist from Abington Memorial Hospital specializing in diabetic nutrition, will conduct the class. Topics will include healthy eating, beneficial foods, recipes, making meals with every day foods, and how to use unfamiliar produce. A healthy snack will be provided.The class is is open to all residents in Montgomery County. The Historical Society of Fort Washington presents The History of Conshohocken April 19 at 8 p.m. at the Clifton House, 473 Bethlehem Pike, Fort Washington. Jack Coll will present an illustrated program on the history of the Borough of Conshohocken. Coll is a longtime resident of Conshohocken and a member of the Conshohocken Historical Society. He is co-author with his son, Brian, of the Arcadia Then and Now Series book Conshohocken. He has also done books Conshohocken and West Conshohocken Sports and Our Lady of Mt. Carmel Italian Feast. He has taken many photos for the Conshohocken Record and the Norristown Times Herald. This program is free. Refreshments will be served. For additional information, call 215-646-6065. Taste of the White House Soiree featuring former White House Chef Walter Scheib will take place April 29 at 6 p.m. at Manufacturers Golf & Country Club in Fort Washington to celebrate HealthLinks 10th anniversary and honor its founders, the Eugene Jackson Family. The evening will heat up with a Chef Meet & Greet, followed by a specially selected presidential menu. Gala tickets are $150 per person. Proceeds benefit HealthLink, a free clinic providing compassionate, quality medical and dental care to uninsured, working adults in Bucks and Montgomery counties who fall in between the health care cracks. Go to http://tasteofthewhitehouse.charityhappenings.org to make reservations online or lend support through sponsorship. For event information, call 267-699-0124 or email jmarushak@healthlinkmedical.org. The Wissahickon Valley Watershed Association will hold an open house at the Evans-Mumbower Mill April 17 from 1 to 4 p.m. The Mill is at the corner of Swedesford and Township Line Roads in Upper Gwynedd. The open house is free but donations are welcome. For more information, call 215-646-8866 o email info@wvwa.org. The Eastern Montgomery County Chamber of Commerce will host Breakfast With Your County Commissioners and State Representatives April 21 from 8 to 9:30 a.m. at the Holiday Inn Fort Washington, 432 W. Pennasylvania Ave. Commissioners: James R. Matthews (Chairman), Joseph M. Hoeffel (Vice Chair), State Representatives: Todd Stephens (District 151) and Josh Shapiro (District 153). Register onlineat www.emccc.org. $10 for EMCCC member; $20 for non-members. Upper Dublins Districtwide Allied Art Show will be held April 27 from 5:30 to 9 p.m. in the Upper Dublin High School Athletic Complex. The Rev. Alfred Muli, chaplain at Fort Washington Estates, will be the featured speaker at the Kiwanis sponsored breakfast observing the National Day of Prayer May 5 at 7 a.m. at the William Penn Inn. The breakfast is open to the public ($15). Reservations can be made by calling 215-646-4356 or by emailing georgesaurman@Juno.com. The Upper Dublin Shade Tree Commission invites people to participate in its spring bare root planting events, sponsored in part by Upper Dublin Parks & Recreation and Friends of Robbins Park. On April 9, zix trees will be planted at the Evelyn B. Wright Park & Community Pool, 401 Logan Ave., North Hills, at 9 a.m., followed by the planting of 10 trees at Sheeleigh Park, Loch Alsh Avenue and Douglas Street, Ambler, at 10:15 a.m. On April 29, students from Upper Dublin High School will join the Pennsylvania Horticultural Society to plant 16 trees in Robbins Park, Butler Pike and Meetinghouse Road, Ambler, to help launch the societys Million Trees campaign. This event will occur in conjunction with Temple Amblers EarthFest. Experienced tree-tenders are sought to assist the students. For more information,contact Ron Ayres at 215-653-0421 or 215-483-4348. The Friends of the Wissahickon and the Wissahickon Valley Watershed Association are teaming up once again to clean the Wissahickon Creek from top to bottom April 30 from 9 a.m. to noon. This spring marks the 41st anniversary of Wissahickon Valley Watershed Associations annual Creek Clean Up, and the second year that FOW has teamed up with WVWA. Volunteers of all ages will clean the creek, the surrounding trails and the many tributaries of the Wissahickon Creek. Armed with bags, volunteers will be assigned to sections of the creek. Following the clean up, all volunteers are invited to WVWAs Talkin Trash picnic in Fort Washington State Park, with food provided by Whole Foods Market of North Wales. The pavilion is located on Mill Road in Flourtown. To help out in Montgomery County, all volunteers must be pre-assigned a section of the Wissahickon Creek to clean. Please contact Bob Adams, WVWA director of stewardship, at 215-646-8866 ext. 14 or bob@wvwa.org. To work with the Friends of the Wissahickon in Philadelphia, meet at the pavilion along Forbidden Drive, a short distance south of the intersection of Forbidden Drive and Northwestern Avenue. Limited parking is available along Northwestern Avenue and other nearby streets. Volunteers are encouraged to bike or carpool to the event. To participate, register at www.fow.org. Contact Kevin Groves with questions at 215-247-0417 ext. 105 or groves@fow.org. Montgomery County Community Colleges International Club invites the community to the second annual International Festival April 20 from 5 to 9 p.m. at the Central Campus, 340 DeKalb Pike, Blue Bell. The rain date is April 26. The International Club will transform the outside quad area into multicultural celebration with various performances by dancers, singers and musicians. Artists will share their artwork at various display tables. Activities include games, raffles, Easter egg decorating and henna tattoos. Students will have samples of international cuisine at tables representing different countries and will serve food from various local ethnic restaurants. Throughout the evening, volunteers will accept donations and will raffle gift baskets and prizes to raise funds for Habitat for Humanity. Donations of food, international clothes and prizes are needed. Volunteers, including artists and performers, are welcome. For more information or to sponsor an activity, contact Gillian Nel, International Club president, at gnel9277@students.mc3.edu or 267-974-0163. The Arts and Humanities Division at Montgomery County Community College is partnering with the Philadelphia Writers Conference to host Memoirs Matter: How Life Stories (Including Yours) Can Transform Your Relationship to Literature April 23 from 1 to 3 p.m. in Advanced Technology Center room 101, 340 DeKalb Pike, Blue Bell. The event is free and open to the public. In the first part of this two-hour seminar, professor and author Robert Waxler will explain how writing his two memoirs affected his life as well as his relationship to literature. In the second part, blogger and workshop leader Jerry Waxler will present a sequence of steps to help writers find their own story. For information, contact Dana Resente at dresente@mc3.edu. The Maple Glen Garden Club will hold its fourth annual Plant Sale on May 7 from 8 to 11 a.m. Perennials, shrubs, vegetables and native plants grown by the club members will be sold. The club uses the plant sale proceeds to fund community projects, a college scholarship and community plantings. The sale will be held in the 500 block of Coach Road, Horsham, as part of a neighborhood garage sale. Plants will be sold at bargain prices. For more information, email MapleGlenGardenClub@gmail.com. The Relay for Life Craft Show is looking for local crafters to participate in show, which will be May 21 from 11:30 a.m. to 3 p.m. on the Wissahickon High School track, 521 Houston Road, Ambler. There is a $10 entry fee, and 20 percent of sales are donated to the American Cancer Society. Participants will receive a 6-foot table under a tent. For information, contact Joanne at joannescoles@comcast.net or Mindy at mcamsilver@comcast.net. Spring House Estates is hosting its annual book fair on April 18 from 4 to 7 p.m. and April 9 from 8:30 a.m. to 1 p.m. Included will be hardback and paperback used books. Spring House Estates is located at 728 Norristown Road, Lower Gwynedd. The PennSuburban Chamber of Commerce will present the Penn Suburban/Hatfield Joint Business Card Exchange April 20 from 5 to 7 p.m. at Univest Bank Lansdale Area Financial Service Center, 120 Forty Foot Road, Hatfield. The event is free. To make reservations, visit PennSuburban.org/Events. Join Univest National Bank and Trust Co. for a spring-inspired Business Card Exchange at its newest office in the Hatfield Pointe Shopping Center. Come out and meet members of Univests executive management team while enjoying fine food and beverages. 13th Annual Community Reading Day Kick-off Breakfast Get Together April 26 from 8 to 9:30 a.m. at the North Wales Area Library, 233 Swartley St., North Wales. The event is free. To make reservations, visit PennSuburban.org/Events. For more information, contact the chamber office at 215-362-9200 or info@pennsuburban.org. Join presenting sponsor Verizon, chamber staff and fellow members for the Community Reading Day volunteer get together. The Community Reading Day program allows volunteers to read a designated book to second-grade students throughout 38 area public and private schools and present the book as a gift to each class. Even if you are not a volunteer, you are cordially invited to stop by to network, enjoy coffee and pastries. Ambler Mennonite Church is hosting a Spring Craft Show and Flea Market May 21 from 9 a.m. to 2 p.m. Rain date will be May 28. The community is invited to shop the great craft booths, find some gifts and deals, as well as enjoy home baked goods and tasty lunch specials. Childrens activities are planned. All vendors are encouraged to contact the church at 215-643-4876 or AmblerMennonite@verizon.net. Advertising, signage, customer parking and a shuttle to auxiliary parking at nearby lots for vendors will be provided. 10 foot by 10 foot spaces can be rented for $5 each and tables for an additional $5 each. All proceeds from space and table rentals go toward school kits for children around the world. The church is located at the corner of East Mt. Pleasant Avenue and North Spring Garden Street, Ambler. The Wissahickon Valley Watershed Association presents The Life & Times of Aquatic Insects in the Wissahickon Creek April 16 from 1 to 3 p.m. Join WVWA for a hands-on program. RSVP required: www.wvwa.org or 215-646-8866. WVWA member fee: $5 per person / $15 per family. Non-WVWA member fee: $10 per person / $20 per family. The photography exhibition Natures Palette by photo-artist Judy Miller will run March 18 to May 19 at the Art in the Storefront gallery, 41 E. Butler Pike, Ambler. JPRN Networking For People in Transition & People Who Can Help Them Unemployment remains high. JPRN, the Jarrettown Professional Relationship Network can help. Are you trying to network your way to a new job? Do you have expertise or contacts that can help people in transition? Is your company or organization looking for people in the area? This is a free outreach program to support those seeking work, involve people with contacts and networking know how, and involve local companies. Meetings held monthly at Jarrettown United Methodist Church, Limekiln Pike. Pennsylvanias Low-Income Home Energy Assistance (LIHEAP) grant program is now open for the 2010-11 heating season. Grants are based on income, family size, type of heating fuel and region. Additional information, such as specific income limits, and applications for LIHEAP grants are available online via the Commonwealth of Pennsylvania Access to Social Services (COMPASS) website at www.compass.state.pa.us. Applications are available at most public officals district offices, county assistance offices, local utility companies and community service agencies, such as Area Agencies on Aging or community action agencies. Begin your holiday shopping at Upper Dublin Parks & Recreation! Entertainment books for 2011, Philadelphia North, are now on sale at $30 each. Regal/United Artists movie tickets are on sale for just $7.50 each, and tickets to the Adventure Aquarium, Baltimore Aquarium, and the Philadelphia Zoo are also available. Discounted ski vouchers to area mountains will be arriving in December; call 215-643-1600 x3443 for more information. Upper Dublin Parks & Recreation office hours are Monday through Friday, 9 a.m. to 5 p.m. RSVP of Montgomery County and the Wissahickon Valley Public Library have partnered again to offer the public their popular free mock interview sessions. The mock interviews are conducted by RSVP volunteers who are retired professionals, some of whom were in hiring positions themselves. Packets of information which include a sample employment application and interviewing tips with mock interview questions are available at the library to pick up prior to a scheduled mock interview or will be sent via email once the interview is scheduled. To schedule your interview, please contact Janis Glusman at RSVP 610-834-1040, ext. 16. The library is also offering a free resume review service. Bring in your current resume and the professional reference staff will assist you with hints and tips on capturing your work history accurately. Registration for Upper Dublin Parks & Recreation summer playgrounds, Camp B.I.G. and Small Folks, X-Zone, and sports camps has began. Register online at www.upperdublin.net/store, or at the UDP&R office, 801 Loch Alsh Avenue, Fort Washington. Call 215-643-1600 x3443 for more information. Upper Dublin Parks & Recreation and Danielles Espresso Cafe presents Mornings at Mondaug Bark Park April 16 and May 21 from 8:30 to 10:30 a.m. Meet fellow dog lovers. These events include complimentary coffee, treats for people and pups and raffles/giveaways. Upper Dublins Annual Spring Flea Market will be held June 4 from 8 a.m. to 1 p.m. Reserve a table, or come and shop. Tables are $15 for UD residents, $20 for non-residents. This successful event occurs rain or shine. Refreshments available. Call 215-643-1600 ext. 3443 to register for a table. Regal movie tickets available for purchase at Upper Dublin Township Parks & Recreation. Reduced rate: $7.50 per ticket. Some restrictions apply. Call 215-643-1600 x3443. Whitpain Township Parks & Recreation movie tickets $7.50 Regal Cinemas, United Artist & Edwards Cinemas on sale throughout the year Monday Friday from 9 a.m. 4 p.m. Whitpain Township Parks & Recreation Camp Sign-ups for Stony Creek Day Camp Stony Creek Tracers and Park n Tots. Register on-line at www.whitpaintownship.org OrCome to Township Building with check or Visa MasterCard Monday Friday from 9 a.m. 4 p.m. For additional information call 610.277-2400 ext. 374 Upper Dublin Parks & Recreation offers exciting new programs for the fall: -Returning favorites include UK Elite Petite Soccer, Tiny Dancers, Kiddie Tennis, Fun-nastics, Messy Playtime, Little Chefs, and more. Babysitters Training will be offered in November and December. Continuing Adult Fitness Classes include Cardio Circuit, Core & More, Yoga, Boxing, and Adult G.Y.M. For more information call 215-643-1600 x3443. Register for programs online at www.upperdublin.net/store. Music and Theater The community is invited to a Cantors Concert April 16 at 8 p.m. Congregation Beth Or, 239 Welsh Road, Maple Glen. Listen and hum-along to the Yiddish, pop tunes and classical music performed by Congregation Beth Ors own Cantor David Green and his special guest, Cantor Irvin Bell, from Temple Beth Israel in Deerfield Beach, Fla. The cantors will be accompanied by Mark Sobol and his Klezmer musicians. Tickets are $18 in advance and $25 at the door. RSVP with payment to Barb Murtha, 239 Welsh Road, Maple Glen, PA 19002, or call 215-646-5806 ext. 220. Gwynedd Friends Coffeehouse will host the Jameson Sisters May 14. Doors open at 7:30 pm, performance at 8:00 pm. Gwynedd Friends Coffeehouse is located at the corner of Rte. 202 & Sumneytown Pike, Gwynedd. $5 suggested donation. Light refreshment available at a modest cost. For further information, call 215-393-9576 or visit gwyneddmeeting.org/coffeehouse.html. Celebrate patriotism through song with Gwynedd-Mercy Colleges choir, the Voices of Gwynedd, as it presents Hear America Singing April 15 at 8 p.m. The choir will perform song selections from all over the country, including Georgia on My Mind, New York State of Mind, and a medley including Philadelphia Freedom and Allentown. The performance will end with When the Saints Go Marching In to acknowledge the choirs upcoming tour in New Orleans. Hear America Singing will take place in the Julia Ball Auditorium, located in St. Bernard Hall. Parking is available in lots A, C and D. Admission is free. The Choristers will present Anton Dvoraks Stabat Mater April 16 at 7:30 p.m. at Upper Dublin Lutheran Church in Ambler. The choir will be accompanied by a 41-piece orchestra. Tickets are $20 for adults, $15 for senior citizens, $10 for students and children are free. Tickets will be sold in advance or at the door. For more information, call 215-542-7871 or visit TheChoristers.org Religious News The Staircase Gallery at Or Hadash: A Reconstructionist Congregation in Fort Washington will feature the work of Emily Ennuat-Lustine. The artist will be showing paintings and graphics inspired by her own personal spiritual journey and quest for meaning. Some of the works to be shown have been inspired by Biblical Psalms and writings. Her work has been shown at Abington Art Center, Cheltenham Arts Center and Old City Gallery of Jewish Art among others. The exhibition is open Friday evenings starting Feb. 18 after Shabbat services. Gallery hours are: Mondays through Thursdays 10-4:30, Fridays 10-3 and following Shabbat Services and Sundays 10-1. The synagogue is located at 190 Camp Hill Road in Fort Washington. For additional information contact the synagogue office at 215-283-0276. Reunions St. Matthews High School Conshohocken Class of 1961 is looking for classmates. For details, contact Greg Marincola at 215-646-2239, 215-740-1296 or gregcola@comcast.net. Olney High School Class of 1971 is Lloking for classmates for a 40th reunion Oct. 28. For details, contact Judy at ohsclassof71@yahoo.com or 215-870-7572. Abington High School Class of 1961 is seeking classmates for a 50-year reunion to be held Oct. 14-15, 2011.Visit the website, www.abington61.com, for details or call 215-947-1779. Overbrook High School class of January 1956 is having a 55 year reunion on May 22, 2011 at the Bala Golf Club in Philadelphia. For information please contact overbrookreunion56@comcast.net Germantown High School Class Of January 1961 is looking for classmates for 50th year reunion to take place in May of 2011. Please contact: 215-362-9148, 856-577-0659 or samdelcomo@comcast.net The June 1961 class of Germantown High School is holding their 50th reunion on May 15, which will be a brunch. For further details please contact Linda Dorfman Alten at lindaalten@yahoo.com or call 215-441-8411. Support New Life Presbyterian Church in Dresher, will host GriefShare, a special seminar and support group which will run on Monday evenings from 7 to 9 p.m., from March 7 through June 6. At each meeting there will be a DVD about the grief process, discussion and reference to a grief workbook. Preregistration is required to secure a place in the group and to purchase a GriefShare notebook (for a one-time fee of $15). The notebook goes along with the 13-week schedule covering such topics as: living with grief, the effects of grief, and stuck in grief. For more information or to register, call: Sandy Elder at 215-884-5149. PUPS (People Understanding Parkinsons) A self-help group for those adjusting to a new diagnosis or dealing with the early stages of Parkinsons Disease. Meets fourth Tuesday of the month from 1 to 2:30 p.m., at Abington Health Center, Schilling Campus, Willowood Building, 2510 Maryland Road, Suite 251, Willow Grove. For more information or to RSVP, contact Lorna at 215-542-2931. The North Penn Visiting Nurse Associations Meals on Wheels program is looking for volunteers to pack or deliver meals to the elderly and infirmed. Meals are packed and delivered mornings, Monday through Friday. You can volunteer for as many days per week or month as you would like. Packaging meals requires approximately 2-1/2 hours of your time each day and involves making sandwiches, packaging food into individual serving containers and packing coolers with the meals. Delivering meals requires approximately 1-1/2 hours of your time each day and involves loading coolers into your car and delivering a route of approximately 10 to 15 stops. The Meals on Wheels program is also in need of emergency, winter-weather volunteers to pack and deliver meals in bad weather. North Penn VNA is located at 51 Medical Campus Drive in Lansdale and delivers meals in the Lansdale, North Wales and Blue Bell areas. For more information or to volunteer, please call Bridget, North Penn VNA Meals on Wheels coordinator at 215-855-8296. Elkins Park Area CHADD (Children and Adults with Attention Deficit/Hyperactivity Disorder) meets the first Tuesday of every month, 7- 8:30 p.m., at Einstein at Elkins Park Hospital in Elkins Park. For information on CHADD or ADHD, please see our website www.chadd.net/249 or call Claire Noyes at: 215-779-6656. Center for Loss and Bereavement, 3847 Skippack Pike, Skippack (610-222-4110) www.bereavementcenter.org Offers professional counseling for individuals, couples, children and families dealing with issues of loss and bereavement. Six-week adult support groups: Newly forming young adult grief support group every other Wednesday, 7 8:15 p.m. (free of charge); Monthly loss of child support second Mondays, 7-8:15 p.m.; Six-week young loss of spouse/partner Thursdays, 10-11:15 a.m.; Other groups scheduled as interest is shown for suicide loss support, adult loss of parent, motherless daughters, adult loss of sibling, coping with chronic illness and disability and mens loss of spouse. Nellos Corner Family Bereavement program offers peer grief support groups for ages 4 through teen and their caregivers Every other Tuesday or Wednesday (free of charge) Local chapter of Parents of Murdered Children also meets at the Center. Registration required. Call for further information. CHADD is a national organization for children & adults with Attention-Deficit/ Hyperactivity Disorder, providing education, advocacy and support for individuals and their families with AD/HD. Einstein at Elkins Park Hospital, 60 Township Line Road, Elkins Park, PA 19027, will host children & adults with Attention-Deficit/ Hyperactivity Disorder on the First Tuesday of each month 7 8:30 p.m. Free, no childcare provided. The Jewish Federation of Greater Philadelphias Kehillah of Old York Road is sponsoring a free Caregiver Support Group for individuals who care for an elderly person with cognitive and/or physical impairments. The group meets at SarahCare Adult Day Care Center, 101 Washington Lane, Suite G-6, Jenkintown, Pa., on the first Wednesday of each month. Patty Rich, Volunteers help clean up in Perkasie following flooding April 16, 2018 Syria - Pentagon Hides Attack Failure - 70+ Cruise Missiles Shot Down The U.S. military seems to hide that its attack on Syria last Saturday largely failed. We checked the numbers and sources and said so in our weekly review published yesterday. This post is extending yesterday's analysis. The U.S. attack on Saturday was launched as revenge for an alleged 'chemical attack' by the Syrian government forces against the then 'rebel' held Damascus suburb Douma. The alleged 'chemical attack' never happened but was theater staged by the 'rebels' and their supporters after some people suffocated in a collapsed building. There is a very large discrepancy between the Russian Ministry of Defense report of the strike as well as other sources and the description in the Pentagon briefing on the strike. According to the Pentagon only three places related to a nonexistent Syrian chemical weapon program were targeted: This combined military strike was directed against three distinct Syrian chemical weapons program targets. ... We are confident that all of our missiles reached their targets. ... In summary, in a powerful show of allied unity, we deployed 105 weapons against three targets. One hundred and five weapons against three targets would be a remarkable overkill. Just consider that the U.S. Tomahawk and JASSM cruise missiles and the British Skalp EG cruise missiles used in these attacks carry 450 kilogram (~1,000 pounds) of high explosives each. Did the U.S. military really plan to use 15 metric tons of high explosives against each target. That would be enough to blow up a whole town. The U.S. claims it sent 76 cruise missiles against the non-hardened, non-defended Barzeh research center. This was a small two story building complex and had just recently been declared free of chemical weapons and weapon research by the OPCW. Barzeh Research center before and after - bigger Sure, the facility is destroyed. But by 34 tons of high explosives? Or by maybe 2 tons? The Barzeh center was a civilian facility next to a densely populated suburb of Damascus. It was concerned with agricultural and medical research, not with chemical weapons. The U.S. certainly knew that from the recent OPCW report. The U.S. claim that it was a chemical weapons facility is ridiculous as it would (hopefully) never consider attacking a real chemical weapons facility in the middle of a civilian population center. That would be mass murder and a serious war crime. The Pentagon also claims it hit two undefended military storage facilities near the Lebanese border. It says that those three were the only targets of its attack. But on April 12, two days before the strikes, CNBC reported that the Pentagon planned to attack eight targets: [A] source, who spoke on the condition of anonymity, told CNBC the U.S. was considering striking eight potential targets. Those targets include two Syrian airfields, a research center and a chemical weapons facility. The strikes commenced on April 14 between about 1:00 and 2:30 UTC, 4.00am to 5:30am local time in Damascus. At 7:00am local time (4:00 UTC) journalist Danny Makki reported from Damascus: Danny Makki @Dannymakkisyria - 4:06 UTC - 14 Apr 2018 Thread: Heres how the U.S led strikes on #Syria developed from here in the Capital #Damascus in the early hours of this morning At around 4.30 Damascus time I awoke to initial large sounds of over 10 rocket attacks, it immediately was clear from the types of missile being heard that it was a Western Attack conducted by the #U.S #France & #U.K The strikes were heard clearly in all parts of the Capital and continued on and off for a duration of 50 minutes, Syrian state media reported the strikes but didnt provide information as to the locations All In all over 50 different strikes were heard or reported in different locations around #Damascus The strikes had targeted a number of military sites across Damascus and further north in #Syria reportedly in #Hama & #Homs Barzeh research facility which sits on the Eastern stretch of #Damascus was hit by numerous missiles #Jamraya was reportedly hit as well, from my current location which is quite close to the site its clear something big was hit in Western #Damascus , the last barrage shook the neighborhood im In to the core Mezzeh Military airport was reportedly struck as well (...) A research facility in #Masyaf was reportedly attacked as well Also, a number of sources in #Homs have reported strikes with additional information that Russia air defenses participated in countering the strikes in #Homs A string of other locations have been cited as being targeted by U.S led strikes, its not clear at the moment, but it seems this attack was limited to a number of locations ... It seems clear that Mr. Makki refers to more than three attacked sites. Another source, Wael al Russi, also reported some eight targets including the coordinates of some. The Syrian opposition outlet SOHR in Britain, which works from local sources, reports a multitude of targets: [T]he Trio Coalition the USA, Britain and France, .. targeted .. the scientific research centers in Jamraya north of Damascus, and Barzeh in the north-west of the capital Damascus, arsenals of the 4th Division and the Republic Guards in the area of Al-Mazza Military Airbase, the arsenals of Al-Kiswah area in the southern countryside of the capital, and the scientific research center in the outskirts of Homs city, where the missiles fired on the latter position, fell away from the target, also violent explosions heard in the Eastern Qalamoun, while no missiles fell on Al-Dumayr and Al-Naseriyah Military Airbases. Those are 8 targeted places or installations. SOHR also reports that more than 65 of the 105 missiles failed to hit their targets: The Syrian Observatory for Human Rights managed to monitored interception by the regime forces to tens of missiles which targeted their positions and military bases in the Syrian territory, where several intersected sources confirmed to the Syrian Observatory, that the number missiles that were downed, exceeded 65 missiles, of the total number of missiles fired by the Trio Coalition, while the air and rocket strikes, caused great material damage, while no information about casualties was reported yet. The report of the Russian Ministry of Defense quoted below is consistent with the multitude of independent sources quoted above. The Russian briefing (video with English subtitles) was held at noon Damascus time, hours before the Pentagon issued its report. It mentions 103 cruise missiles against eight targets: Target map from the Russian briefing - bigger In total, 71 cruise missiles have been intercepted. ... Four missiles targeted the Damascus International Airport; 12 missiles the Al-Dumayr airdrome, all the missiles have been shot down. 18 missiles targeted the Blai airdrome, all the missiles shot down. 12 missiles targeted the Shayrat air base, all the missiles shot down. Air bases were not affected by the strike. Five out of nine missiles were shot down targeting the unoccupied Mazzeh airdrome. Thirteen out of sixteen missiles were shot down targeting the Homs airdrome. There are no heavy destructions. In total 30 missiles targeted facilities near Barzah and Jaramana. Seven of them have been shot down. Another Russian military briefing (Ru) (added: English transcript) given today claims the following success numbers for each type of air-defense systems the Syrian army used. It lists the numbers of cruise missiles shot down by each versus the number targeted: Pantsir - 23 hits with 25 engagements, Buk-M2 - 24 of 29, Osa - 5 of 13, S-125 - 5 of 13, Strela-10 - 3 of 5, Kvadrat - 11 of 21, S-200 - 0 hits with 8 launched missiles. Pantsir and Buk-M2 are new systems, the Osa, S-125, Strela, Kvadrat and S-200 are Soviet era systems, some of which might have been partially upgraded. Some 'expert' claims that the high number of hits the Russians assert are impossible as the systems would be overwhelmed with such a large attack. The 'expert' obviously didn't consider the relevant facts: Eight geographically distinct places were targeted. The research lab had no short-range point-defense but was only covered by the older medium-range area-defense systems S-125 and S-200. The attacked storage areas had no point-defense. The military airports all had point-defense systems especially the impressive new Pantsir-1S (video) of which Syria recently received 40 units. At least two Pansir-1S are stationed near each Syrian military airport. Each Pantsir has 12 missiles ready to fire and two machine cannons with 700 shots each. Cruise missiles, developed from the German V-1 (vid) used in World War II, are small compared to fighter planes. But they fly relatively straight, slow and low. They are easy targets for any newer point-defense systems. Therefore the number of eliminated cruise missiles the Russians and others claim have been downed is completely plausible. Had the Russian air-defense area around its bases in Latakia been attacked, the excellent electronic warfare systems of the Russian military would have provided an additional layer of defense. These systems can divert cruise missiles from their path by messing up their electronic systems. The Syrian army has, to my best knowledge, no such capabilities. The Pentagon had planned to hit eight targets in Syria two of which were research labs. Six airports or storage areas were targeted according to the Russian and other reports. The Pentagon reports no strike on Syrian airports but claims to have launched a way too high number of cruise missiles for each of the claimed three targets it hit. Its claim that 76 missiles were used against Barzeh alone is ridiculous. The generals just added up all the failed and downed cruise missiles targeted at the well defended airfields and attributed them to Barzeh. At least three other sources confirm the Russian version of events. The Pentagon is lying. The attack was a U.S. attempt to disable the Syrian air force by destroying its airports. It failed miserably and the Pentagon is hiding this failure by claiming that all its cruise missiles hit the undefended targets some of its missiles reached. The Russian briefing today (Ru) (added: English transcript) puts the finger into that wound. Will any of U.S. media follow up on it? --- Previous Moon of Alabama posts on the 'chemical attack' in Douma and its consequences. Posted by b on April 16, 2018 at 19:36 UTC | Permalink Comments next page New York Attorney General Eric Schneiderman recently announced that 13 fund companies had voluntarily agreed to disclose a measure called "active share" to retail investors. In a press release heralding the agreement, Schneiderman stated, "These new disclosures will give Main Street investors access to critical information before making investment decisions for themselves and their families." That invites an obvious question: Is active share really critical to investment decisions? The short answer is that while it can be useful, it's probably not a must-have, as further explained below. Bonds were quite a bit weaker in the overnight session. According to the average media report, this was in response to Syria-related developments. The "logic" was that because the US had launched missiles into Syria WITHOUT sparking military escalation with Russia, that the whole Syria situation would just calm down from here. Again, you're being asked to believe that the announcement of a US air strike in Syria implies deescalation of conflict in Syria. If you're not quite on board with that, don't worry, you're not alone. I'm right there with you, and while I would admit that Syria-related headlines have had some effects over the past week, there are certainly other things on the minds of bond traders. Overnight, the focus was on Europe at the open (European open at 3am). A spike in German Bunds led US Treasury yields quickly higher. That accounted for a bit more than half of the overnight weakness. We can assume there had been some preemptive selling associated with today's big corporate bond launches as well. The 8:30am econ data (slightly stronger Retail Sales in this case) didn't have a big initial impact, but was arguable net-positive for bonds due to the weaker core reading. Bigger moves followed the 9:30am NYSE open, which has been a common occurrence in the past few sessions. Further improvements came after the end of the European session--not a huge surprise considering Europe was a net-negative for bonds in the overnight session. By the end of the day, 10yr Treasuries had nearly broken even and Fannie 3.5 MBS were up 1/32nd of a point. LOS ANGELES (AP) A black-and-white photo displayed on a courtroom wall Monday provided a stark reminder of how much had changed in Robert Durst's life over nearly four decades. The photo dating to at least the early 1980s showed the New York real estate heir's best friend, Susan Berman, beaming, flanked by a bearded Durst wearing a smirk and his wife, Kathleen, with an electric smile. Today, Berman is long dead and Kathleen Durst has been missing for more than 35 years and is presumed deceased. Durst, an old, frail man with a shaved head, wore a scowl in a courtroom where he is accused of killing both women. Prosecutors began presenting evidence in Los Angeles Superior Court to link Durst to the killings in the first day of a hearing to determine if he will be tried on a murder charge in the point-blank shooting of Berman. Prosecutors say Durst killed his college friend, the daughter of a Las Vegas mobster, because he believed she was going to tell police what she knew about Kathleen Durst's death. Robert Durst, 75, an eccentric multimillionaire, has never been charged with a crime related to his wife's 1982 disappearance in New York. He has pleaded not guilty to Berman's 2000 death at her Los Angeles house. The first day of the hearing revealed little that was not previously disclosed in an HBO documentary series, court filings and other proceedings, but it made the connection between Berman's death and the mystery around Kathleen Durst's disappearance, which prosecutors want to show as the foundation for the motive for Berman's slaying. Karen Minutello, manager of the Manhattan building where the Dursts lived in a penthouse apartment, said Kathleen Durst called her about a week before her disappearance and asked to rent her own unit because she didn't want to live with her husband anymore. "She was hesitant, she didn't just blurt out why. Then she did say she needed to get away from him," Minutello said. "She was afraid of him." Days after Kathleen Durst vanished, Minutello said she was alerted to a broken trash compactor that she found jammed with the missing woman's possessions, including notebooks with her name, dresses, makeup and a hair dryer. She made notes about the finding because it seemed significant. "Who does that?" Minutello said. "Whose loved one is missing and they throw out their stuff?" Minutello also revealed that doormen at the building said tenants suspected Robert Durst of stealing their bicycles occasionally from a communal storage room. She said it happened about five times, but no tenant ever filed a complaint. After the disappearance, Berman served as Robert Durst's unofficial spokeswoman. But prosecutors and witnesses in a series of earlier hearings said she did much more. Berman told friends over the years that Durst acknowledged killing his wife and said she helped him cover his tracks. Prosecutors are hoping to use many of those hearsay statements at trial, which defense attorneys have vigorously challenged. Berman told one friend who testified at an earlier hearing that if anything happened to her, Durst would be the culprit. Judge Mark Windham threw both sides a curve when he said he was inclined to allow the testimony because he didn't think it was hearsay. He said they could be characterized as statements Susan Berman would have made as a witness if she had been alive. After several minutes of arguments by defense and prosecution, Windham put off a ruling until the hearing resumes Tuesday. Durst, dressed in a light blue sport coat and khakis, appeared to be intently listening at times through headphones that enhanced the volume, while dozing at other moments. He perked up during testimony from the former Los Angeles medical examiner-coroner, who reviewed the autopsy in 2015, to view another photo of Berman. It was an image from Berman's autopsy. Her right eye was blackened, and her tongue was between her lips. A subsequent photo showed what killed her: a single jagged bullet wound in the back of her head was exposed where a patch of her jet-black hair had been shaved. Dr. Mark Fajardo, now chief forensic pathologist in Riverside County, said Berman was shot by a gun within an inch of her head. The evidence indicated the shooter was behind her, Fajardo said. The bullet was found in her brain and the shot would have rendered her unconscious immediately, he said. Copyright 2018 The Associated Press. All rights reserved. This material may not be published, broadcast, rewritten or redistributed. SAN DIEGO (AP) Leaders of California's second-largest county voted Tuesday to officially support the Trump administration's lawsuit against the state's so-called sanctuary law that limits police cooperation with federal immigration agents. The decision by San Diego County's all-Republican Board of Supervisors comes amid a growing conservative backlash in California against the Democratic governor's stance on immigration enforcement. The region of 3 million residents that borders Mexico joins neighboring Orange County and at least nine other Orange County cities that have passed anti-sanctuary resolutions or voted to support the lawsuit filed last month by President Donald Trump's administration. The board voted 3-1, with one member absent. It pledged to file an amicus brief supporting the federal lawsuit at the first available opportunity, chairwoman Kristin Gaspar said. She expects the Trump administration to win and California to appeal, at which point the county would be allowed to file its brief. The board made the decision in closed session after hearing 45 minutes of public comment. Most of the more than two dozen speakers urged the supervisors not to support the lawsuit. Supervisor Greg Cox, who cast the only dissenting vote, said in a statement afterward that "the board's vote is a largely symbolic move that will create fear and divisiveness in our region, waste taxpayer funds and create distrust of law enforcement and local government within many communities." Gaspar held up a stack of printed emails and letters more than a foot high that she said the board had received from residents who wanted the county to stand up against the state policy. She held up a second stack of only a few inches that she said was correspondence from those opposed to supporting the lawsuit. Gaspar is among a crowded field of candidates seeking to replace retiring Republican U.S. Rep. Darrell Issa. Citing the San Diego County Sheriff's Department, Gaspar said the sanctuary law has allowed 284 criminal suspects to be released instead of handed over to immigration authorities since January. Before the law, San Diego had a close relationship with police, she said. "San Diego was really a model of excellence before," said Gaspar said. "We were safer before SB54." California Gov. Jerry Brown said Tuesday that opponents like to overstate the law's restrictions. He said nothing prevents local officials from notifying federal immigration officials that suspects are about to be released. "If you look at the law, it allows reasonable collaboration at all levels between state officials and federal officials," Brown told reporters at the National Press Club in Washington. "We'll find out when the court rules, there's less there than meets the eye." The governor said Washington's tough stance against immigrants in the country illegally is "just an inflammatory football that very low-life politicians like to exploit." If President Donald Trump "wants to round them up like some totalitarian government and ship them out, say that," Brown said. "But he doesn't say that because the American people would repudiate him and his party." California's all-Democratic leadership has positioned the state as a national leader in battling the Trump administration, especially on immigration issues. Government leaders at the state level and in big cities have condemned mass raids and deportation efforts, the president's call for a border wall with Mexico and Attorney General Jeff Sessions' "zero tolerance" order to prosecute people caught illegally entering the United States for the first time. Brown elicited rare praise from Trump last week for pledging to contribute 400 troops to the National Guard's deployment to the Mexican border. But Brown was clear that California troops will help go after drugs, guns and criminal gangs not immigrants. San Diego County heard from both sides Tuesday. Margaret Baker, who lives near the U.S.-Mexico border in San Diego County, told officials that backing the lawsuit will "be a stain on your legacy." She said it will discourage immigrants from reporting crime. "We see this lawsuit as an attack on our safety and the well-being of our community," she said. Luis Reyes said the state law is unconstitutional, and California must do something about illegal immigration before it's too late. "We're looking at something like what is happening in Europe coming this way," he said. The board voted a day after the small town of Los Alamitos in neighboring Orange County declared itself legally exempt from the state policy. The City Council approved the first ordinance of its kind late Monday in a 4-1 vote, which was followed by a peaceful but noisy confrontation with demonstrators on both sides of the issue. Like San Diego County, the city of 12,000 argues that the federal government not the state has authority over immigration, the same argument made by the Trump administration. ___ Associated Press writer Kathleen Ronayne in Sacramento contributed to this report. Copyright 2018 The Associated Press. All rights reserved. This material may not be published, broadcast, rewritten or redistributed. BRUSSELS (AP) French President Emmanuel Macron on Tuesday ruled out any expansion of the European Union until the bloc is reformed, as a top EU official warned that the volatile Balkans could face a return to war if countries in the region have no hope of joining. Macron's insistence on a freeze came as the EU's executive arm, the European Commission, recommended that the world's biggest trade bloc launch membership talks with Albania and Macedonia. The Balkans spiraled into conflict in the 1990s as former Yugoslavia broke apart, but ethnic and nationalist tensions continue to simmer more than 20 years on. The 28 EU member states must agree unanimously for any country to become a member. Accession to the bloc has been a powerful driver of political and democratic reform in countries like Albania, Bosnia and Herzegovina, Macedonia, Montenegro which recently joined NATO Serbia and its former territory of Kosovo. But with Britain set to become the first country to leave the bloc next year, Macron told EU lawmakers in Strasbourg, France that "I will only support an enlargement when there is first a deepening and a reform of our Europe." "I don't want a Balkans that turns toward Turkey or Russia, but I don't want a Europe that, functioning with difficulty at 28 and tomorrow as 27, would decide that we can continue to gallop off, to be tomorrow 30 or 32, with the same rules," he said. But European Commission President Jean-Claude Juncker, whose institution recommends whether countries should be allowed in, insisted that Europe's door must remain open. "If we remove from these countries, in this extremely complicated region, I should say tragically, a European perspective, we are going to live what we already went through in the 1990s," Juncker said. "I don't want a return to war in the Western Balkans." When he took over at the European Commission four years ago, Juncker vowed that there would be no EU enlargement during his term. EU and Balkans leaders will meet in Bulgaria on May 17, but no country in the region will be invited to join, even though some are involved in membership negotiations. Announcing the European Commission's proposal for Albania and Macedonia to begin membership talks, EU foreign policy chief Federica Mogherini said the move "is an encouragement to these countries to continue on the path of reforms." Macedonia's hopes have been on hold because of a dispute with Greece over the tiny Balkan country's name, although recent talks between both sides to end the stand-off have been progressing well. Turkey is also a candidate for membership and has been promised fast-track accession negotiations in exchange for ensuring that tens of thousands of migrants many of them Syrian refugees don't enter Europe from its territory. However, the talks are at a virtual standstill. Countries like France, Germany and Austria would prefer some kind of "privileged partnership" with Turkey to letting it join. Copyright 2018 The Associated Press. All rights reserved. This material may not be published, broadcast, rewritten or redistributed. OKLAHOMA CITY (AP) Forecasters warned of dangerous, life-threatening wildfire conditions in parts of the Southwest and Southern Plains on Tuesday, as a forestry official warned firefighters battling a terrifying deadly blaze in Oklahoma that it would be a "historically critical day." Gusty winds and low humidity in drought-stricken areas will create dangerous fire conditions in parts of Colorado, Kansas, New Mexico, Oklahoma and Texas, according to the Storm Prediction Center in Norman, Oklahoma. National Weather Service meteorologist Doug Speheger said such conditions haven't been seen in at least a decade. By early afternoon Tuesday, temperatures that were projected to reach the mid-90s had reached 88 degrees (31 Celsius) with humidity at 6 percent. Wind gusts forecast to hit 40 mph (64 kph) were at 24 mph (39 kph). The forecast includes northwestern Texas and the Texas Panhandle where firefighting aircraft are stationed in Amarillo, Abilene and surrounding areas. "With these conditions, wildfires can spread rapidly, present control issues for firefighters and pose a real threat to public safety," said Texas A&M Forest Service Fire Chief Mark Stanford. Deb Beard, a commander of the Southern Area Incident Management team sent by the U.S. Forest Service, described the conditions as terrifying. "If you looked at that fire weather forecast ... it should scare the hell out of you," Deb Beard said during a briefing Tuesday posted on the Oklahoma Forestry Service's Facebook page. "I hope that you realize that today is a historically critical day here," Beard said of the fire near Woodward that has burned about 105 square miles (272 sq. kilometers). "So do not let your guard down." In Oklahoma, two people have died in the fires and nine others have been taken to hospitals for smoke inhalation or heat-related injuries, emergency management officials reported. Oklahoma Forestry Services reported Tuesday that the largest of the Oklahoma fires has burned more than 388 square miles (1,005 sq. kilometers) near Leedey, about 110 miles (180 kilometers) northwest of Oklahoma City, and was about 3 percent contained. The fire near Woodward, about 20 miles (32 kilometers) north of Leedey, is about 45 percent contained, according to the forestry service. At the fire near Woodward, spokesman John Nichols said firefighters worked Monday to strengthen fire lines in preparation for the gusty weather Tuesday. "The winds are coming, but wet weather is supposed to be coming too, and we're hoping the wet weather will arrive," Nichols said. The weather service said rain and thunderstorm chances will increase Thursday night and Friday with strong to severe storms possible in southwestern Oklahoma and western north Texas on Friday. Copyright 2018 The Associated Press. All rights reserved. This material may not be published, broadcast, rewritten or redistributed. STRASBOURG, France (AP) French President Emmanuel Macron compared political divisions in Europe to a new type of civil war as he warned Tuesday of the need to counter growing nationalism. In a speech to European Union lawmakers, Macron urged the EU to better protect its citizens from the wars and authoritarian regimes that could divide the continent. The French leader, who wants to help lead the EU, invoked the specter of a Europe "where some kind of civil war emerges, where our differences, our national egoisms, sometimes seem more important than what's uniting us." Democracy has the "best chance" of fighting nationalism, he told members of the Strasbourg-based European Parliament. "Faced with authoritarianism, the answer is not democratic authoritarianism, but the authority of democracy." European Commission President Jean-Claude Juncker said Macron's rise to power in France has "given new hope" to the European Union. But Juncker stressed that the world's biggest trading bloc isn't a club led by France and Germany. "Europe is an ensemble," even with Britain set to leave the EU next year, he said. During Macron's speech, some European lawmakers raised placards reading "Stop the war in Syria" and "Hands off Syria" to protest joint airstrikes Saturday by U.S., Britain and France on chemical weapons facilities in Syria. Countering critics of the airstrikes, Macron showed signs of anger. "(We) are outraged each time by images we've seen of children, women who died of a chlorine attack," he said, almost shouting. "Do we sit back? Do we defend rights by saying: rights are for us, principles are for us, and realities are for other? No! No!" He said the U.S., France and Britain intervened in a "legitimate, multilateral framework" and stressed that the airstrikes specifically targeted three Syrian chemical weapon facilities "without any human life loss." On the topic of the EU itself, he told the lawmakers that it's important "to have a democratic, critical debate on what Europe is about." Macron said citizens "want a new project" for the EU that addresses their concerns and fears at a time when allies such as the U.S. are turning their backs on multilateral trade and climate change pacts. All EU countries, except Britain and Hungary, have agreed to seek the opinions of their citizens on the EU's future through debates and online consultations by summer. Macron called for an energetic campaign for the European Parliament election in May 2019, two months after Britain's scheduled departure from the EU. However, he ruled out enlarging the EU until the existing members are more deeply integrated and the bloc has undergone reforms. He said now wasn't the time to allow Western Balkans countries to join. Macron will meet with German Chancellor Angela Merkel in Berlin on Thursday, as France and Germany aim to agree on proposals for EU reforms by June. Macron will attend a debate on Europe in the eastern French town of Epinal later Tuesday. ___ Sylvie Corbet reported from Paris. Lorne Cook contributed from Brussels. Copyright 2018 The Associated Press. All rights reserved. This material may not be published, broadcast, rewritten or redistributed. "Our Little Secret: a Novel" (St. Martin's Press), by Roz Nay Ten years ago, in the little town of Cove, Vermont, a quiet girl named Angela Petitjean fell in love with the dashing captain of the high school swim team. Now, Angela stews in the local police station, stonewalling a series of grim detectives who want to know if she can explain why her first love's wife, Saskia, has gone missing. Their questions suggest they have a list of preconceptions they are trying to check off. This, Angela is certain, is no way to get at the truth. Finally, when Detective Novak takes a turn, Angela asks: "Do you really want to know what happened?" He does, so over the next 255 pages, she tells him everything. "Our Little Secret," a debut novel by Roz Nay, superficially resembles Paula Hawkins' "The Girl on a Train" and similar psychological thrillers that have stormed the best-seller lists in the last decade. But Nay's work transcends the subgenre. The plot is more textured and heartbreaking, and her prose contains startling turns of phrase that reveal the soul of a poet. As Angela speaks, it becomes apparent that she is odd. Perhaps haunted. The reader can't help but wonder how much of her tale is true. She begins when her family moves to town, settling in a house "that was sad and gray and looked hunched, like it was coughing." Her parents, whose ambitions had gone unrealized, were living vicariously through her. Her father's good intentions, she says, "held all of his own life's ruin." Shutting them out, she finds friendship, and then her "soul mate," in the swim team captain. They talk of marriage, but after graduation, she spends a year studying at Oxford. When she returns, Saskia has taken her place. Angela has never been able to let it go. As she prattles on, Novak grows impatient, interrupting with questions. Is Saskia alive? Did Angela harm her? In the end, she provides the answers but only in the final sentence of this remarkable novel. ___ Bruce DeSilva, winner of the Mystery Writers of America's Edgar Award, is the author of the Mulligan crime novels including "The Dread Line." ___ Online: https://roznay.com/ http://brucedesilva.com/ Copyright 2018 The Associated Press. All rights reserved. This material may not be published, broadcast, rewritten or redistributed. Sign up to receive the First Reading newsletter, your guide to the world of Canadian politics. First Reading is your guide to the world of Canadian politics. Sign up now> By Sponsored Post Business Wire India (L-R) Dr. Latoundji Mohamed Chakirou, President of GIRAF, Republic of Benin, Prof. Oladapo Ashoru, President of the Africa Fertility Society, Nigeria, Hon. Zuliatu Cooper, Minister of Health & Sanitation, Republic of Sierra Leone, Hon. Dr. Chitalu Chilufya, Minister of Health, Republic of Zambia, Hon. Margaret Mensah-Williams, Chairperson of the National Council, Republic of Namibia, Dr. Rasha Kelej, CEO Merck Foundation, Hon. Sarah Achieng Opendi, Minister of State of Health, Republic of Uganda, and Dr. Joe-Leigh Simpson, Professor of Human and Molecular Genetics/ Professor of Obstetrics and Gynecology at Florida International University Dr Rasha Kelej CEO of Merck Foundation with Hon. Margaret Mensah-Williams, Chairperson of the National Council, Hon. Sarah Achieng Opendi, Minister of State of Health, and Hon. Zuliatu Cooper, Minister of Health & Sanitation, Republic of Sierra Leone Hon. Zuliatu Cooper, Minister of Health & Sanitation, Republic of Sierra Leone, Hon. Margaret Mensah-Williams, Chairperson of the National Council, Republic of Namibia, Dr. Rasha Kelej, CEO Merck Foundation, Hon. Sarah Achieng Opendi, Minister of State of Health, Republic of Uganda and Hon. Dr. Chitalu Chilufya, Minister of Health, Republic of Zambia Merck Foundation engages policymakers to define interventions to improve access to regulated and cost-effective Fertility Care in Africa and Developing Countries Merck Foundation, the philanthropic arm of Merck KGaA, Germany, in partnership with the International Federation of Gynecology and Obstetrics (FIGO), conducted Merck More Than a Mother panel at their Regional conference 2018, in Dubai. Dr. Rasha Kelej, CEO of Merck Foundation stated during the panel discussion, Through Merck More than a Mother, we want to bring the healthcare providers, policy makers, academia, women leaders, media, and artists together to define the interventions to break the infertility stigma around women and to build fertility care capacity in Africa and developing countries. She further emphasized, Merck Foundation is dedicated to empowering women who suffer discrimination and violence due to their inability to bring children, by creating the cultural shift to break the infertility stigma at all levels, not only in Africa, but in Asia, Latin America and everywhere it is needed. The high-level panel discussion included; Hon. Sarah Opendi, Minister of state of Health, Uganda, Hon. Zuliatu Cooper, Minister of Health and Sanitation, Sierra Leone, Hon. Margret Mensah-Williams, Chairman of National Council of Namibia, Hon. Dr. Chitalu Chilugya, Minister of Health, Zambia, and the CEO OF Merck Foundation, Dr. Rasha Kelej. Hon. Dr. Chitalu Chilugya, Minister of Health of Zambia, emphasized, Infertility is one of the major health problems in Zambia, and it is not only affecting the physical health but also the mental well-being and social status, of childless women. These women often become invisible to the society, and many time they do not want to come in open to seek help because of the social stigma associated with infertility. Together with Merck Foundation, we want to remove the stigma associated with it by creating a cultural shift and building cost-effective fertility care in Zambia. During the panel discussion Hon. Margret Mensah-Williams, Chairman of National Council of Namibia, stressed, Infertility is profoundly prevalent in sub-Saharan Africa, which is said to have an infertility belt wrapped around its center, the infertility rate is much higher in southern Africa. Particularly in Namibia infertility prevalence rates for some ethnic groups is as high as 32 percent[1], or one-third of all couples attempting to conceive, which is why initiatives like Merck More than a Mother are significant for Namibia and we are glad to partner with Merck Foundation for this initiative. Hon Zuliatu Cooper, Minister of Health of Sierra Leone emphasized, Merck Foundation is making history my country, they have trained the first two fertility specialists in Sierra Leone. For the first time, the infertile couple will be treated in their home land. We still need to build the first IVF center to be able to manage complicated cases though. Hon. Sarah Opendi, Minister of State of Health, Uganda said, The journey that Merck Foundation has started is a very special journey that has touched the lives of women who have been forgotten in the communities. It has touched not only women but also the lives of men who have been mistreating their women thinking that infertility is an issue of women, not know that 50% infertility is due to the malefactor. I want to thank Merck Foundation for thinking about these women. About Merck More Than a Mother campaign In many Cultures, childless women suffer discrimination, stigma, and ostracism. Their inability to have children results in great isolation, disinheritance, and assaults. 'Merck More Than a Mother' empowers such women through the access to information, health, change of mindsets and economic empowerment. Merck Foundation provided for more than 50 candidates, three months to six months clinical and practical training for fertility specialists and embryologists in more than 17 countries across Africa and Asia. Merck Foundation is making history in many African countries where they never had fertility specialists or specialized clinics before Merck More Than a Mother intervention, to train the first fertility specialists such as; in Sierra Leone, Liberia, The Gambia, Niger, Chad, and Guinea. Merck Foundation plan supported the establishment of the first public IVF in Ethiopia through providing the clinical and practical training necessary for their staff. Merck Foundation also plans to support the establishment of the first public IVF in Tanzania soon. Over 1,200 infertile women in Kenya, Uganda, Nigeria, Ghana, Tanzania, CAR, Ethiopia, Liberia, Tanzania, Niger, The Gambia and Cote DIvoire who can no longer be treated have been empowered socially and economically to lead independent and happier lives through Empowering Berna. [1] https://marciainhorn.com/wp-content/uploads/docs/inhorn-article-soc-science-and-med.pdf Join the conversation on our social media platforms below and let your voice be heard Join Merck Foundation healthcare & research online community to exchange experience and information with other healthcare providers, researchers, students, policy makers and community members in Africa and beyond. www.merck-foundation.com free registration About Merck Foundation The Merck Foundation, established in 2017, is the philanthropic arm of Merck KGaA Germany, aims to improve the health and wellbeing of people and advance their lives through science and technology. Our efforts are primarily focused on improving access to innovative healthcare solutions in underserved communities, building healthcare and scientific research capacity and empowering people in STEM (Science, Technology, Engineering, and Mathematics) with a special focus on women and youth. All Merck Foundation press releases are distributed by e-mail at the same time they become available on the Merck Foundation Website. Please go to www.merck-foundation.com to read more and/or register online to interact and exchange experience with our registered members. About Merck Merck is a leading science and technology company in healthcare, life science and performance materials. Around 50,000 employees work to further develop technologies that improve and enhance life from biopharmaceutical therapies to treat cancer or multiple sclerosis, cutting-edge systems for scientific research and production, to liquid crystals for smartphones and LCD televisions. In 2017, Merck generated sales of 15.3 billion in 66 countries. Founded in 1668, Merck is the world's oldest pharmaceutical and chemical company. The founding family remains the majority owner of the publicly listed corporate group. Merck holds the global rights to the Merck name and brand. The only exceptions are the United States and Canada, where the company operates as EMD Serono, MilliporeSigma and EMD Performance Materials. This is unedited, unformatted feed from Business wire india. By Express News Service HYDERABAD: Eleven years after a powerful bomb blast ripped through the historic Mecca Masjid in Hyderabad, the Special Court for National Investigation Agency (NIA) cases on Monday acquitted all the five accused citing lack of evidence, triggering a political slugfest what with the BJP and Congress trading barbs against each other while the MIM alleged ''biased investigation'' on the part of NIA. An improvised Explosive device (IED) went off in the 'wazukhana' of the mosque which left nine dead and 56 injured. Five more persons died in the police firing soon after the bomb blast. While Monday's verdict raised several questions about the credibility of the NIA -- which came under sharp attack from all opposition parties, the agency appeared to have relied mostly only on the confessional statements of the prime accused Nabakumar Sarkar alias Swamy Aseemanand and others, which ended up in the Court acquitting them citing lack of evidence. READ | Hyderabad Mecca Masjid Blast: Twists, Turns and A dead end Delivering its verdict in the case amid tight security both inside and outside the Nampally Criminal Courts Complex, the fourth additional metropolitan sessions-cum-special court for NIA cases acquitted all the five accused. A total of 10 persons were named in the NIA charge sheet but only five of them faced trial. The judge, in just two minute judgment, said, "After carefully examining all the documents and materials placed before the court, it was found that all the allegations could not be proved on any of the accused. All the accused stand acquitted." JP Sharma, counsel for Swamy Aseemanand, who was named as A1 (accused no 1) by the NIA, said "Prosecution questioned 226 persons in the case.'' Police sources associated with the investigation said that though it is a fact that they relied mostly on confessional statement of the accused, it was tough for any probe agency to get more solid evidence. File photo of Mecca Masjid blast accused Aseemanand who was acquitted by a special NIA cour in Hyderabad on Monday. | PTI Earlier, Aseemanand had confessed that he along with others triggered blasts in Mecca Masjid, Samjhautha Express, Malegoan and Ajmer Shareef. However, months later, he retracted his statement and said that he was pressurised by the agencies to confess. "They (NIA) tortured Aseemanand and held him in their custody, and did not allow him to get legal aid,'' said Aseemanand's counsel Sharma. When he got the legal aid in Hyderabad finally, he was taken to Ajmer, Malegaon and all other places where blasts had taken place. ''He was taken to Delhi to please their political bosses and took his confessional statement. This statement did not match with any of the evidence, and it is not admissible by the court. After receiving the full judgment copy, we will get to know more,'' Sharma said adding that ''saffron terror'' never existed. With regard to another accused Bharath Mohanlal Rateshwar alias Bharath Bhai's role, the defence counsel said "For six years he was not framed in the case. When he did not cooperate with the police in Panchkula case, they have booked him in two other cases. People who face NIA had only two options. Either be an accused or be a witness. They (Investigators) forcibly took the confessions of the witnesses." He further said "Prosecution alleges that the witnesses turned hostile, but they were telling truth, and the court believed them acquitting all the persons. The prosecution tried to get as much as documents and evidence against the alleged accused, but the court did not rely on them." Meanwhile, NIA IG Alok Mittal said "The NIA will examine the judgment after we get a copy of the same and decide future course of action." B Rajvardhan Reddy, the defence counsel alleged that the then chief investigating officer from the CBI T Raja Balaji had abruptly dropped the charges against 26 persons, who were suspected to be having links with terror outfit Harkat-Ul-Jihad Al Islami (HUJI) . ''Four of them even confessed to the blasts.'' The counsel said that four of the suspects picked up by the city police soon after registering cases at Hussaini Alam police station, were taken to Bengaluru for Narco analysis test and they confessed of executing the bomb blast. "The investigating officer had told the court that he found them innocent to his satisfaction, but not to the court's satisfaction. He did not even mention anything about the first-spell of investigation done by the Andhra Pradesh police in the charge sheet," the defense counsel said. ''From November 26 to December 6, 2010, Aseemanand was taken into custody by the CBI, but they could not elicit any information. Again they took his custody from December 10 to December 18. Though the agency had three days time to bring him to Hyderabad from Delhi, he was forced to give a statement in the Delhi court," alleged Rajvardhan Reddy. JP Sharma, counsel of Aseemananda, said "Saffron terror never existed and will never happen." JS Rana, another defence counsel said "During the initial probe it was detected that 10 kg RDX was brought to Hyderabad from Bangladesh and four persons admitted to placing the bombs in the masjid. Even after the admission of guilt, they were told as innocent to the court." Soon after the investigators told the court that Swamy confessed to having committed the offence, the investigators linked him to Malegaon blasts of 2006 and 2008, Samjahuta Express blast, Ajmer blasts, alleged Rana. "Just with the confession statement of Aseemananda, the word 'saffron terror' was coined and the concept was brought in," said Rana. 'No proof against accused' "One of the reasons which the court observed to acquit the accused was that prosecution failed to provide evidence against the five accused who faced trial. The investigators had been focussing on the confession of Swamy Aseemanand, but they did not have any proofs and links that showed the conspiracy theory showed by them," said the defence counsel. Replying to a query, counsel B Rajvardhan Reddy said "The investigation agency told the court that Rajendar Chowdary and Tejaram Parmar (both accused) planted the bombs in the masjid. But, they do not have even a single evidence. The agency did not file charge sheet against Tejaram, because they knew that they do not have evidence against him. "As they claimed in the charge sheet, the investigators had no evidence about the meetings in which the accused participated or about the SIM cards and not even about planting the bombs. They did not even charge sheet the person whom they claimed to have panted two bombs in the Mecca Masjid. The investigators did not have clarity of the travel of the accused," the defense counsel said. By PTI NEW DELHI: Several parts of Andhra Pradesh, Telangana, Madhya Pradesh, Bihar and poll-bound Karnataka have reported a shortage of currency and ATMs running down, which the government today attributed to unusual spurt in demand in last three months. Finance Minister Arun Jaitley said the "temporary shortage" in certain states is being "tackled quickly" and that there is "more than adequate" currency in circulation. Jaitley, who has been away from office since April 2 due to a kidney ailment, said he has reviewed the currency situation in the country. The issue which started yesterday has escalated with more cities reporting the same. Vadodara: People complain of inconvenience due to lack of currency in ATMs; say, 'most of the ATMs were out of service, could only withdraw Rs 10,000 from one working ATM that also after spending a lot of time in the queue' #Gujarat pic.twitter.com/ZkbGCc4j4f ANI (@ANI) April 17, 2018 "Overall there is more than adequate currency in circulation and also available with the Banks. The temporary shortage caused by 'sudden and unusual increase' (in demand) in some areas is being tackled quickly," he said in a tweet. The government is checking with banks and the Reserve Bank of India to ensure the adequate supply of currency. We've cash currency of Rs1,25,000 cr right now. There is one problem that some states have less currency&others have more.Govt has formed state-wise committee & RBI also formed committee to transfer currency from one state to other. It'll be done in 3 days: SP Shukla, Mos Finance pic.twitter.com/Xm4b4NhMqu ANI (@ANI) April 17, 2018 #MadhyaPradesh: People in Bhopal say 'We are facing a cash crunch. ATMs are not dispensing cash. The situation has been the same since 15 days. We have visited several ATMs today as well, to no avail.' pic.twitter.com/VwtR3s7flL ANI (@ANI) April 17, 2018 A statement by the finance ministry confirmed reports of cash shortages and some ATMs running dry of cash or becoming non-functional in some parts of the country. "There has been unusual spurt in currency demand in the country in last three months," it said. While currency supply increased by Rs 45,000 crore in the first 13 days of April, "unusual spurt in demand" was seen more in some parts of Andhra Pradesh, Telangana, Karnataka, Madhya Pradesh and Bihar, it said. Minister of State for Finance Shiv Pratap Shukla said the government has formed a committee to address the problem of currency shortage in certain states and the issue would be resolved in next 2-3 days. "The Government has set up state-wise committee and RBI has also formed a committee to transfer currency from one state to other because for money transfer you need the permission of the RBI. It (the shortage) will be solved in 2-3 days," he said. However, the Opposition criticised the government over the entire matter. Congress president Rahul Gandhi slammed Prime Minister Narendra Modi for what he described as destroying India's banking system by ushering in "acchhe din" for fugitive jewellers Nirav Modi and Mehul Choksi. "Modiji destroyed the banking system. Nirav Modi fled with Rs 30,000 crore and the Prime Minister didn't utter a word," the Congress scion said. West Bengal Chief Minister and Trinamool Congress supremo Mamata Banerjee said the matter reminds her of the demonetisation days. She also asked whether a "financial emergency" was going on in the country. "Seeing reports of ATMs running out of cash in several states. Big notes missing. Reminder of #DeMonetisation days. Is there a Financial Emergency going on in the country? #CashCrunch #CashlessATMs," Banerjee tweeted. RBI report shows that the currency in circulation in the country has reached the pre-demonetisation level of about Rs 17 lakh crore. "The Government of India with the Reserve Bank of India have taken all steps to meet this unusual demand. We had adequate reserves of currency notes which have been used to meet fully the extraordinary demand generated so far," the finance ministry statement said. "We continue to have in stock adequate currency notes of all denominations, including of Rs 500, Rs 200 and Rs 100 to meet any demand," it added. The government said there has been an adequate supply of currency notes to meet entire demand. "The government would also like to assure that it would be supplying adequate currency notes to meet even higher levels of demand if such demand were to continue in the coming days/months." "Also, steps are being taken to ensure that ATMs are supplied with cash and non-functional ATMs normalised at the earliest." SBI Chairman Rajnish Kumar said it would not be correct to state that there is a currency shortage in the country. There has been an "imbalance" due to the crop procurement season when demand for currency goes up. He said Punjab, Madhya Pradesh and Uttar Pradesh are seeing heightened demand due to procurement season. By UNI LUCKNOW: The Central Bureau of Investigation (CBI) has registered fourth case in connection with the Unnao rape case involving Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) MLA Kuldeep Singh Sengar. The agency is also slated to take the legislator's brother Atul Singh, who is presently in jail, under police custody for further interrogation. In the new case, one Shubham Singh, son of Shashi Singh who was accused of taking the alleged victim to the spot of the crime, has been included as an accused. On Monday, Shashi Singh, who is believed to be a close aide of Kuldeep Singh Sengar, was sent to four-day police custody. ALSO READ | Kathua and Unnao rape cases: 'We demand justice' cries Hyderabad Notably, Shashi Singh had claimed last week that the alleged survivor in the Unnao rape case had nine months back framed her son Shubham in a false rape case for which he even had to serve a jail term. "She often frames people putting false allegations on them. Earlier it was my son, and now she is framing the MLA," Shashi had said. On June 20, 2017, on the complaint of the victim, Subham along with Naresh Tiwari and Brajesh Yadav were arrested under section 363 and 366 of the IPC. The victim had charged gangrape on her in her complaint. The Makhi police had already submitted the charge-sheet in the court in connection with the case. The fresh case was registered by the CBI on the direction of the Allahabad High court which had asked the agency to investigate the June 20, 2017 case. The CBI on Tuesday slated to take Sengar and his accomplice Shashi Singh to the spot where the crime was allegedly committed in Unnao. It was also reported that they might be brought face to face with the alleged victim. Last week, Sengar was taken into seven-day police custody after a 17-hour interrogation session. It came after the Allahabad High Court rapped the police for its inaction against the BJP lawmaker who was influencing the "law-and-order machinery". The other accused, Shashi Singh, had allegedly taken the victim to MLA Sengar on the day of crime, and stood guard outside the door as the heinous crime was allegedly committed inside by the BJP leader and others. Meanwhile the CBI has started the investigation on the death of the victim's father and is slated to take Atul Sengar, the younger brother of the MLA along with four of his accomplices, who are accused in the murder in police custody for interrogation. Sources here on Tuesday said that the agency is slated to seek custody of Atul along with Babu, Vinit, Shailu and Sonu Singh, all lodged in the Unnao jail. Namita Bajpai By Express News Service LUCKNOW: While the nationwide outrage continues over Unnao and Kathua cases, a series incidents of crime against girls rocked Uttar Pradesh on Tuesday. While two sisters, one minor, were found murdered in Etawah, a seven-year-old girl was allegedly raped and murdered in Etah district on Tuesday morning. The 7-year-old was believably raped at a wedding ceremony by a youth who was hired to set up the tent on the occasion. According to Etawah police, the bodies of both the girls, who were sisters, were recovered from the field just 500 metres away from their village Kailamau after being allegedly shot by unidentified assailants under Basrehar police station area of Etawah district. While the senior police officials including IG Zone Alok Singh and SSP Etawah Ashok Kumar Tripathi reached the spot and supervised the investigations, the post-mortem report ruled out sexual assault on the victims. ALSO READ | Gangrape victim says parents forced her to change statement in court The autopsy was conducted by a panel of doctors at the district hospital and the police lodged a case against unidentified assailants under sections 302 of IPC. It is believed that both siblings -- Sandhya (18) and Shalu (15) -- daughters of Ram Kishore Shakya, a farmer of Kailamau village, had gone to attend natures call on Monday evening but did not return. However, when they did not return, the elders launched a hunt and informed the local police. "We recovered the bullet-riddled bodies of the girls from the field. Also, bullet shells, slippers, water containers and a battery torch were found lying close to the bodies of the victims, said station house officer, Basrehar, Vinay Diwakar. He added that assailants had used country-made weapon to shoot the girls dead. While the family members were being quizzed, devastated by the murder of both his daughters and flummoxed over the motive, the father of the victims was grappling to establish the reason while claiming that he did not have enmity with anyone in the village. I don't know why anybody would kill my daughters," said the howling father. The police have registered a case under various relevant sections including 302 of IPC (Indian Penal Code) against unidentified persons on the complaint of the girls' father. Meanwhile, just 100 km from Etawah, another minor, 7, was brutalised in the darkness of night at a wedding by a tent man in Etah on the wee hours on Tuesday. The incident took place in Sitalpur village, two km away from Kotwali Nagar police station area. The case came to light when the family of the victim spotted her body in an abandoned under-construction home, close to the venue of wedding in which she had come with her parents. The accused identified at Sonu Jatav who had fled, but was later apprehended by the police. According to sources, the victim went missing during the wedding ceremony even as her parents kept searching for her whereabouts. Later at around 1:30 am, the unconscious girl was found in a semi-naked condition, with strangulation marks on her neck. Her abdomen also had blood stains, the source said. When the victim was rushed to Etah government hospital, she was brought dead upon arrival. SP, Etah, Akhilesh Chaurasia, said that the victims body was sent for post-mortem examination, while the accused was arrested and booked under IPC Section 302 (murder), 376 (rape) and POCSO Act. By Express News Service THIRUVANANTHAPURAM: Ending four days of uncertainty in the public health sector, the Kerala Government Medical Officers' Association (KGMOA) called off its strike on Monday night. It followed the association's three-hour conciliatory talks with Health Minister K K Shylaja. Seven key decisions, including the KGMOA's promise to cooperate with evening outpatient duty at family health centres (FHC) and extending its wholehearted support to the Aardram Mission, were taken at the meeting. READ | Kerala government doctors' strike leaves patients 'sore' at Ernakulam General Hospital Meanwhile, taking a strong stance against lightning strike call by doctors, the Health Minister warned if such protests were repeated, the government would initiate strong action against those concerned. With the KGMOA raising various issues related to the implementation of Aardram Mission, the Health Minister said a committee headed by the Health Secretary will be constituted to hold talks with the association representatives. After that, a minister-level meeting will be held in the first week of May. "It will be ensured the FHCs have three doctors in its rolls. Alternative arrangements will be ensured in instances where a doctor has to abstain from duty due to various reasons. For that, a reserve team to be managed by the respective District Medical Officers and District Programme Managers will be constituted," said Shylaja. M K Raghavan MP visiting a patient at the Government General Hospital in Thiruvananthapuram on Monday during the strike by govt doctors | B P Deepu According to the Minister, the department will consider the aspect of redeploying staff from centres where staff strength is relatively high to centres which have high patient turnout. Meanwhile, in the case of the doctor at Kumaramputhur FHC in Palakkad who was suspended for not appearing for duty, the Minister said if the doctor is ready to provide an explanation, the department might reconsider the disciplinary action taken against him. Sources said the conciliatory talks gained speed as the Health Minister has to leave the state on Tuesday for attending the CPI(M) Party Congress, which will get underway at Hyderabad from Wednesday. While the KGMOA did not want to drag the issue further, the Minister is also said to have reconsidered her stance after considering the fact that the doctors' strike might be used as a political weapon by the Opposition, especially in the backdrop of the strong stance taken by the State Human Rights Commission and the growing disapproval among the public. By Associated Press OKLAHOMA: Wildfires that have killed two people in western Oklahoma are nearing conditions not seen in at least a decade because of the mixture of high temperatures, low humidity and heavy winds, the National Weather Service said today. Weather service meteorologist Doug Speheger said tomorrow's forecast represents the most potential for the spread of wildfires in the past 10 years of a database that considers a variety of factors. Temperatures are projected to reach the mid-90s with humidity below 10 per cent and winds gusting to 64 kph. ALSO READ: Wildfires burn homes, force evacuations in Oklahoma The forecast includes northwestern Texas and the Texas Panhandle where firefighting aircraft is stationed in Amarillo, Childress, Abilene and Fort Stockton. "With these conditions wildfires can spread rapidly, present control issues for firefighters and pose a real threat to public safety," said Texas A&M Forest Service Fire Chief Mark Stanford. The area also is in extreme to exceptional drought, the two most severe designations. Firefighters sent by the US Forest Service's Southern Area Coordination Centre are fighting one fire that's burned more than 245,000 acres near Leedey, about 180 kilometres northwest of Oklahoma City and another blaze that's burned nearly 68,000 acres near Woodward, about 32 kilometres north of Leedey. "We're out there strengthening fire lines widening lines to make sure they're in real good shape with the wind that is on the horizon," said spokesman Todd Schroeder at the scene of what's known as the Rhea Fire near Leedey. "The winds that we may have tomorrow may make this really stand up and run again." At the 34 Complex fire near Woodward, spokesman John Nichols said firefighters are doing much the same thing. "The winds are coming, but wet weather is supposed to be coming too, and we're hoping the wet weather will arrive," Nichols said. The weather service says rain and thunderstorm chances will increase on Thursday night and Friday with strong to severe storms possible in southwestern Oklahoma and western north Texas on Friday. By Online Desk The winners of the Pulitzer Prizes in journalism and the arts were announced Monday at New York's Columbia University. The Pulitzer Prizes recognize the best journalism of 2017 in newspapers, magazines and websites. There are 14 categories for reporting, photography, criticism and commentary. In the arts, prizes are awarded in seven categories, including fiction, drama and music. IN PHOTOS | All the winners of the Pulitzers 2018 The first journalism prizes were awarded in 1917, including one to the New York Tribune for an editorial on the first anniversary of the sinking of the Lusitania. That year, two daughters of abolitionist Julia Ward Howe won for a biography of their mother at a time when women couldn't vote and the literary world was dominated by men. This is the 102nd year of the contest, established by newspaper publisher Joseph Pulitzer. Winners of the public service award receive a gold medal; the other awards carry a prize of $15,000 each. Here is the full list of winners: Public Service: The New York Times, for reporting led by Jodi Kantor and Megan Twohey, and The New Yorker, for reporting by Ronan Farrow For explosive reporting that brought down Hollywood mogul Harvey Weinstein and spawned a cultural watershed #MeToo on the issue of sexual harassment. Investigative Reporting: Staff of The Washington Post For exposing decades-old allegations of sexual harassment of teenage girls against Senate candidate Roy Moore of Alabama. The Republican former judge, endorsed by President Donald Trump a week before the election, denied the accusations, but affected his chances in the special election that Democrat Doug Jones went on to win, becoming the first Democrat since 1992 to get a U.S. Senate seat in Alabama. National Reporting: Staffs of The New York Times and The Washington Post For their extensive coverage of Russian interference in the 2016 US presidential election and its ties to the Trump campaign. The investigation led to Special Counsel Robert Mueller's probe into Russian efforts to tip the election in Trump's favour. Breaking News Reporting: Staff of The Press Democrat, Santa Rosa, California For coverage of the wildfires that swept through California's wine country last fall using photography, video and social media platforms. Explanatory Reporting: Staffs of The Arizona Republic and USA Today Network For in-depth reporting on President Trump's proposed wall along the US-Mexico border, using video, podcasts and virtual reality. Local Reporting: The Cincinnati Enquirer Staff For a text-cum-video narrative documenting seven days of greater Cincinnati's heroin epidemic. International Reporting: Clare Baldwin, Andrew R.C. Marshall and Manuel Mogato of Reuters For reporting on Philippines President Rodrigo Dutertes brutal crackdown on drugs. Police say they have killed nearly 4,100 drug suspects as part of the campaign, while rights groups claim the toll is around three times the numbers given by authorities. Feature Writing: Rachel Kaadzi Ghansah, freelance reporter, GQ For an 'intimate portrait' of murderer Dylann Roof, the white supremacist who shot dead 9 people in Emanuel African Methodist Episcopal Church, Charleston, South Carolina on June 17, 2015. Commentary: John Archibald of Alabama Media Group, Birmingham, Alabama For 'lyrical and courageous commentary' on Alabama's politics, particularly the special election between Roy Moore and Doug Jones, after the former's sexual misconduct allegations were brought to light. Criticism, Editorial Writing, Editorial Cartooning Jerry Saltz of New York magazine won the Pulitzer for criticism Andie Dominick of The Des Moines Register won the Pulitzer for editorial writing. The Pulitzer for Editorial cartooning was awarded to Jake Halpern, freelance writer, and Michael Sloan, freelance cartoonist, The New York Times Music: DAMN., by Kendrick Lamar The 30-year-old made history when he won the prize for "DAMN.," his raw and powerful Grammy-winning rap album, described by the Board as "a virtuosic song collection unified by its vernacular authenticity and rhythmic dynamism that offers affecting vignettes capturing the complexity of modern African-American life." He will win $15,000. The win marked a sharp departure from the classical and jazz works the body have consistently favoured. Breaking News Photography: Ryan Kelly of The Daily Progress, Charlottesville, Virginia He captured the moment a car struck several people protesting against a white nationalist rally in Charlottesville on his last day of work for a Virginia newspaper. The Board called it "a chilling image that reflected the photographers reflexes and concentration." Feature Photography: Photography Staff of Reuters For photographs depicting the violence inflicted on the Rohingya refugees fleeing from Myanmar. Fiction, Drama, History, Biography, Poetry, General non-fiction Less, by Andrew Sean Greer won the Pulitzer Prize for Fiction: A tale about the comic adventures of a middle-aged novelist, widely praised as poignant and funny and was ranked among the year's best by The Washington Post, which called it an "elegantly" told story of a man who "loses everything: his lover, his suitcase, his beard, his dignity. Cost of Living, by Martyna Majok won the Pulitzer Prize for Drama The Gulf: The Making of an American Sea, by Jack E. Davis won the Pulitzer Prize for History Prairie Fires: The American Dreams of Laura Ingalls Wilder, by Caroline Fraser won the Pulitzer Prize for Biography Half-light: Collected Poems 1965-2016, by Frank Bidart won the Pulitzer Prize for Poetry Locking Up Our Own: Crime and Punishment in Black America, by James Forman Jr. won the Pulitzer Prize for General Non-fiction By AFP TEHRAN: Three "terrorists" and three members of the Iranian security forces were killed during night-time clashes along Iran's border with Pakistan, state news agency IRNA reported today. "At 0130 this morning (2100 GMT Monday], a terrorist group from Pakistan attacked" a police post in the border area of Mirjaveh, around 75 kilometres southeast of Zahedan, the capital of Sistan-Baluchistan province, IRNA said. Three of the attackers were killed along with a police officer and two members of the Revolutionary Guards, it added. ALSO READ: Illegal border crossing: Two Pakistani men killed in firing by Iran security forces Iran has criticised Pakistan in the past for supporting the Jaish al-Adl jihadist group, which it accuses of ties to Al-Qaeda and carrying out numerous attacks in Sistan-Baluchistan. The restive province is poor and home to a population that is predominantly Sunni and ethnic Baluchi, in a country where 90 percent are Shiite and two-thirds are Persian. From 2005 to 2010, Sistan-Baluchistan suffered a prolonged insurgency by the Balochi-Sunni jihadist group Jundallah, meaning "soldiers of Allah", although violence was largely curbed after the killing of its leader in mid-2010. By PTI WASHINGTON: An inter-agency search and rescue team has recovered two more bodies of an Indian American family who were feared drowned in a California river some 10 days ago, US officials said today. The bodies have been identified of that of Sandeep Thottapilly, 41, and his daughter Saachi, nine, who along with his wife, Soumya, 38, and son Siddhant, 12, went missing 10 days ago. They were driving from Portland, Oregon to San Jose in Southern California. ALSO READ: Four Indians missing in US; father seeks Sushma Swaraj's help The bodies of Sandeep and Saachi were recovered yesterday inside the vehicle, a Honda Pilot, which was recovered from about 4-6 feet of river water, the police said. Last week, the rescue team had found the body of a woman, later identified to be that of Soumya, and remains of the vehicle and the belongings of the Thottapilly family. "At approximately 11:30 AM a boating team noticed a gasoline smell emitting from the water approximately 1/2 mile north of the reported crash site (downstream). The searchers began to probe the water and located a vehicle submerged approximately 4-6 feet beneath the water," California's Mendocino County Sheriff's Office said in a statement. The bodies of Sandeep and Saachi were recovered yesterday inside the vehicle, a Honda Pilot (File Photo | AP) Soon thereafter, search divers entered the water and were able to feel what they believed to be a person inside of the vehicle. READ MORE: US: Rescuers searching for missing Indian family find woman's body Visibility was extremely poor and divers noted the vehicle was encased in a large amount of sediment from the river current, a media release said. Recovery efforts continued for several hours and at approximately 6:30 PM the vehicle was partially removed from the Eel River by use of a tow truck. This provided searchers the ability to conduct a visual inspection of the inside of the vehicle. "Searchers subsequently recovered the bodies of Sandeep Thottapilly and Saachi Thottapilly from inside the vehicle," the Sheriff Office said adding that the autopsies are expected to be performed this week as part of the coroner's investigation into the incident. ALSO READ: Trying to locate missing Indian family in US: MEA spokesperson Another search operation is being conducted around the Eel River in an attempt to locate Siddhant Thottapilly who still remains missing. According to the San Jose Police Department, the Thottapilly family was supposed to have arrived to visit a friend in the San Jose area on April 6 but did not make it as scheduled. The family was last heard from in the town of Klamath, Del Norte County, on April 5. The family was officially reported as missing to the San Jose Police Department on April 8. Sandeep grew up in Surat city in Gujarat and settled down in the US over 15 years ago. 'Its quite impressive': Expensive cars, Leno highlight Audrain event From restored antiques to pristine luxury sports cars, attendees at The Gathering observed dozens of expensive cars at Rough Point on Friday. Champaign, IL (61820) Today Partly cloudy skies this evening. Increasing clouds with periods of showers late. Low 64F. Winds SSE at 10 to 15 mph. Chance of rain 50%.. Tonight Partly cloudy skies this evening. Increasing clouds with periods of showers late. Low 64F. Winds SSE at 10 to 15 mph. Chance of rain 50%. Parliament is turning up the heat on beleaguered Transport minister Joram Gumbo, demanding that he provides convincing answers on all aspects of the controversial new airline, Zimbabwe Airways said to have links with former president Robert Mugabes family. This comes as the purchase price of four wide-bodied aircraft from Malaysia Airlines to be used by Zim Airways has set tongues wagging amid damaging allegations that this had been inflated by more than $100 million, from $70 million to a staggering $180 million. At the centre of the controversy is a secretive company, the Zimbabwe Aviation Leasing Company (ZALC) which all along was said to be fronted by Zimbabweans living in the Diaspora, but is now said to belong to the government. ZALC owns Zim Airways, and despite the fact that its new airline is close to taking to the skies, its documentation is still not publicly available including at the offices of the Registrar of Companies. Now, Parliament is asking the under-fire Gumbo to provide a comprehensive statement on ZALCs shareholding and how it came to purchase its aircraft, amid the damaging claims of malpractices and corruption. Seeing that there is a lot of talk about Zimbabwe Airways and the dualisation of the Harare-Beitbridge road and there are a lot of things that have been said pertaining to that road, including the cancellation of tenders and tenders being awarded to people that have not submitted bids in the first place I thought I would want him to favour this House with a ministerial statement on basically those two issues. On Zimbabwe Airways, he (Gumbo) should tell the nation issues like who owns it, how the aeroplanes were bought and the shareholding of that company. So, I submit and hope that the minister will favour us with that ministerial statement, Mabvuku-Tafara legislator James Maridadi said in Parliament on Thursday in a motion that apparently enjoys wide, cross-party support. Zim Airways inked its deal with Malaysia Airlines for the acquisition of the four Boeing 777 planes last year, in the process making an upfront payment for two of the aircraft to the tune of $36 million. Gumbo and Mugabes son-in-law Simba Chikore, who was briefly chief operating officer at struggling flag-carrier Air Zimbabwe, were reported at the time to have been intimately involved in the formation of Zim Airways, as well as the purchase of the aircraft. Last week, the government took delivery of one of the four planes as part of the opaque deal that will see a total of four wide-bodied planes eventually being sourced from Malaysia. Meanwhile, fiery Norton legislator Temba Mliswa alleged in Parliament last week that a Singaporean company was involved with Zim Airways, further challenging Gumbo to furnish the august House with full details about the controversial airline and its aircraft purchases. I just want to add something there must be the shareholding structure because I am told that the statement made by (Finance minister Patrick) Chinamasa (last week) is not true that there is a company. What I am trying to say is that Zimbabwe Airways is a company that is going to lease from another company. That company is registered in Singapore and the Zimbabwean government owns the planes. Hence, we need to know who that company is because it appears to be a very sophisticated structure. That is why I am spending time saying Zimbabwe Airways shareholders as well as shareholders of the company that leases from the government must also be known. Therefore, your statement must be clear so that there will be no more grey areas in that regard, Mliswa thundered. But Gumbo insisted that the Zim Airways deal was above board, promising MPs that he would bring all the necessary evidence. I am ready to give a ministerial statement containing all details, including commas and full-stops thereof ... I have no problem I will give you everything ... Do not worry. However, let me just preliminarily explain for the sake of the media. The company he is referring to, for your information, is not registered in Singapore. It is registered in Zimbabwe. Wait for the issuance of the statement and then ask your questions. I assure you that you will be very happy at the end of the day, he said. Gumbo was also forced to respond to a question from Binga North MP Prince Dubeko Sibanda who alleged that Zim Airways offices were housed at the ministers nieces house. The issue about a house that is said to have been rented and is alleged to be my daughters house ... with all due respect, it is not my daughters. All Gumbos cannot be my children, but they can also be relatives to me and there is no problem about that. After you mentioned it, I investigated and only discovered that the house being rented by the Zimbabwe Airways was identified through an estate agent and it was not actually because there was a Mr Gumbo as a minister. It was identified from an estate agent. So, you can be assured that I had no role to play (there) ... I am as white as snow regarding issues like that, Gumbo told Parliament. The minister, who has consistently said ZALC was owned by Zimbabweans living in the Diaspora, was last week embarrassed by Chinamasa who said the company belonged to the government. Speaking at a function at Robert Mugabe International Airport last Wednesday where he was receiving the first Zim Airways plane, Chinamasa stunned journalists when he said ZALC was a government company which it had used to acquire the planes from Malaysia as a strategy to overcome sanctions. I am here to categorically state that the aeroplane standing outside is the property and an asset of the government of Zimbabwe. I know speculation has been rife that the airline belonged to the former first family. That is false. They have no interest of any kind in this aircraft. I am also here to make it clear that Simba Chikore has no shareholding at all, directly or indirectly, he added. We kept the deal under wraps to avoid the trap of sanctions. As you know, we are under sanctions and with the hostility that we have received, it was difficult to do business. Each time we said we were going to one country for business, lots of emails would be sent there and we would not get any favour from the hosts. So, we decided that it was best to keep our heads cool and remain focused until the deal was done, Chinamasa also claimed. He revealed that ZALC would lease the new planes to Zim Airways adding that the company was formed after realising that there was no future for the debt-ridden flag carrier, Air Zimbabwe. However, this raised even more questions regarding the whole deal, as well as the governments preparedness to flying and servicing the new aircraft. An aviation expert also told the Daily News last week that the deal to purchase the Malaysian planes was way too costly. Firstly, no one wanted those old planes and so they should have cost much, much less. Secondly, Zim Airways has no capacity to operate those aircraft, as they have no trained pilots and engineers for them. This means that they will need to hire expatriates to fly the planes, and the going rate for a B777 captain is at least $20 000 per month, which is unaffordable in this market, where you dont even have the passengers to justify the investment. You require at least three sets of pilots per aircraft, although you can even go up to five if you have 15-hour flights and above, the expert added. The Boeing 777 which arrived in the country last week was being flown by a set of five Malaysian pilots. Chikore disembarked from the aircraft in a full captains gear, despite being just a first officer which is a berth below a pilot. Daily News No One Can Catch Those Zebras on the Loose in Maryland (Newser) Tammy Duckworth made history when she became the first US Senator to give birth while in office and now the Illinois Democrat wants to make history again. This time, it could change age-old Senate rules. According to Politico, Duckworth has submitted a resolution that would allow children under a year old to be on the Senate floor during votes, something that longstanding rules forbid. But Duckworth said that needs to change, chiefly because she wants to take her maternity leave without missing important votes. The Senate Rules Committee reportedly may move on the measure as soon as this week, and Politico says the rule change is expected to pass. At age 50, Duckworth made history April 9 when she gave birth to Maile Pearl Bowlsbey, who was named in honor of her father's great-aunt Pearl, an Army nurse who served in WWII. (Read more Tammy Duckworth stories.) (Newser) Harry Anderson, the magician and former street hustler who starred as wacky judge Harry Stone on NBC sitcom Night Court, has been found dead in his home in Asheville, NC. He was 65. Police say officers were called to the home early Monday and no foul play is suspected, WSPA reports. Anderson, who grew up moving around the country with a mother he described as a "hustler" who "did a lot of things," began performing in southern California magic clubs while still in high school, NBC reports. A recurring guest role as grifter "Harry the Hat" on Cheers led to the role on Night Court, which ran for nine seasons. He was nominated for Emmys in three consecutive years, from 1985 to 1987. story continues below "I am devastated. I'll talk about you later, Harry, but for now, I'm devastated," tweeted Night Court co-star Markie Post. After the NBC sitcom ended in 1992, Anderson starred in CBS comedy Dave's World for four seasons. With his wife, Elizabeth, he opened a nightclub and magic store in New Orleans in 2000, but they moved to North Carolina in 2006 after the businesses struggled in the wake of Hurricane Katrina. Anderson, who cited mid-20th century magician Harry Blackstone as his inspiration, saw himself as a magician and illusionist, not an actor, the New York Times reports. "I was never really an actor," he once said. "I was a magician who fell into a part on Cheers." (Read more obituary stories.) (Newser) A group from the US and Japan is trekking to a remote Pacific island jungle to document what is considered one of the most important wreck sites of World War II: where American fighters shot down a Japanese bomber carrying the mastermind of the Pearl Harbor attack. Three members of a New York-based WWII research organization and a Japanese aviation expert plan to visit the crash site on Bougainville, part of Papua New Guinea, on Wednesday, the 75th anniversary of Admiral Isoroku Yamamoto's death, the AP reports. Yamamoto had spent several years in the US earlier in his military career, studying at Harvard University and admiring America's industrial might. In the aftermath of Pearl Harbor, he was quite possibly the most hated man in America. story continues below "As long as he lived, the Japanese navy was a threat," says author Donald A. Davis, who told the story of "Operation Vengeance" in a 2005 book. "He was feared in the Pacific." After Navy code breakers discovered in April 1943 that Yamamoto planned to tour bases in areas of the Solomon Islands still held by Japanese forces, a squadron of Army P-38 Lightnings shot down the bomber carrying him. Japanese troops recovered his body, but the wreckage of the Mitsubishi G4M "Betty" bomber remains in the jungle. Justin Taylan, founder of New York-based Pacific Wrecks, says the purpose of visiting the Yamamoto site is to "document the wreckage and perform digital preservation of what remains for posterity." (This history buff believes he may have found Yamamoto's gold tooth.) (Newser) Matthew Mellon, the banking heir whose cryptocurrency investment paid off big-time, has died in Cancun, Mexico. He was 54. A family rep issued the following statement to Page Six: "Mellon made his fortune in cryptocurrency, turning a $2 million investment into $1 billion. He is survived by his three children, Force, Olympia, and Minty. The family asks that their privacy be respected at this very painful time." Though the statement originally said that he died in rehab, it was updated to say he died prior to checking in. The AP reports Mellon hailed from the Mellon and Drexel families of Bank of New York Mellon and Drexel Burnham Lambert and has details on his first marriage, to Jimmy Choo co-founder Tamara Mellon. The two reportedly met at a Narcotics Anonymous meeting; they married in 1999, at a wedding attended by the likes of Elizabeth Hurley and Hugh Grant. story continues below After their divorce, Mellon wed fashion designer Nicole Hanley; they split in 2015. Page Six reports Mellon spoke of his addiction issues in 2016, saying he developed a $100,000-a-month OxyContin habit after suffering an injury and was downing some 80 pills daily. "The doctors kept writing prescriptions like they were Smarties," he said at the time. "It's very irresponsible. OxyContin is like legal heroin. And it needs to be addressed." Mellon was profiled in February by Forbes, which reported that those close to him "tried to dissuade him, figuring it was another erratic obsession" when he started spending on cryptocurrencies. But the $2 million he sank into Ripple's XRP paid off, turning into that roughly $1 billion investment. The article noted he was renting a house in Los Angeles at the timefor $150,000 a month. (Read more obituary stories.) (Newser) Choi Eun-hee led a fascinating lifeeven before the actress was kidnapped by North Korean agents and forced to make films for the state. A film icon, Choi died Monday at a South Korean hospital, where she was receiving dialysis, her son tells Yonhap News. She was 91. Beginning her film career in 1947's A New Oath, Choi became one of South Korea's leading actresses in the 1950s and '60s and one of the country's first female directors, reports Screen Daily. By 1976, she'd appeared in more than 130 films, and apparently caught the eye of future North Korean leader Kim Jong Il. That year, while in Hong Kong, Choi was kidnapped by agents working for Kim, who believed she could help elevate North Korea's film industry, reports the BBC. story continues below Months later, Choi's ex-husband, director Shin Sang-ok, was also kidnapped when he went to Hong Kong to look for her. Reunited at a party, the pair eventually made 17 films in North Korea, including 1985's Salt, for which Choi took home the best actress award at the Moscow Film Festival, per Screen Daily. But though she was the first Korean to receive such an honor, Choi wasn't happy living under guard. While promoting a movie in Vienna in March 1986, Choi and Shin sought asylum at the US embassy. The pairwho would spend more than a decade in the US before returning to South Korea in 1999would later reveal secret recordings in which Kim apologized for the kidnapping scheme, per CNN. But to this day, North Korea claims the pair sought refuge in the country, per the BBC. (Read more South Korea stories.) (Newser) Her friends say the last they saw of her was when commandos intercepted their sailboat in the Arabian Sea and dragged her away, kicking and screaming. A daughter of Dubai's ruler, she had been trying to escape her homeland, saying she was being abused. Since then, the whereabouts of Sheikha Latifa bint Mohammed Al Maktoum are unknown, though she was likely brought back to the United Arab Emirates after the commando raid last month, said Herve Jaubert, a French ex-spy who tells the AP that he helped organize her escape attempt. "I know it sounds incredible," Jaubert tells the AP, but "it's just the facts." The allegations of a dramatic would-be sea escape intrude into the carefully controlled image maintained by the family of Sheikh Mohammed bin Rashid Al Maktoum, who not only rules Dubai but is the Emirates' prime minister and vice president. story continues below He is believed to have several dozen children from multiple wives, including multiple daughters named Latifa. In recent weeks, one of those Latifas has suddenly appeared frequently in media, which could be an attempt to muddy the picture as local media now make no mention of the Latifa who allegedly tried to leave. Matters have since grown only murkier. A London-based for-hire advocacy group long critical of the UAE, called Detained in Dubai, has been promoting the case and says it has been targeted by threats. And then there's Jaubert's own flair for the dramatic: He fled the UAE years earlier because of a financial dispute in a cloak-and-dagger escape that he said involved disguising himself as a woman and scuba diving to escape to international waters. The 2010 book he wrote, Escape from Dubai, prompted Sheikha Latifa to contact him, he said. The AP has much more on his alleged attempt to get her out of the country here. (Read more United Arab Emirates stories.) (Newser) Corrections officials in South Carolina are blaming a prison riot that left seven prisoners dead on a turf war between gangs over territory, money, and contraband items like cellphones. For seven hours, inmates armed with handmade knives fought each other inside the Lee Correctional Institution, resulting in the worst US prison riot in a quarter-century. Most of the slain were stabbed or slashed; the remainder appeared to have been beaten, Lee County Coroner Larry Logan said. The first fight started in a dorm about 7:15pm Sunday and appeared to be contained before suddenly starting in two other dorms. No prison guards were hurt. Corrections Director Bryan Stirling said they followed protocol by backing out and asking for support. It took several hours to restore order, but once a special SWAT team entered, the inmates gave up peacefully, he said. story continues below One inmate who witnessed the fighting tells the AP (via his illegal phone) that he and other prisoners roamed around freely at the prison in Bishopville during the unrest. Hours after the violence started, no corrections officers or medical personnel attended to the dead or dying, he said. "The COs (corrections officers) never even attempted to render aid, nor quell the disturbance," he said. "They just sat in the control bubble, called the issue in, then sat on their collective asses." The slain were serving anywhere from 10 years to life in prison, and their crimes ranged from murder to trafficking crack cocaine. The youngest was 24 years old; the oldest was 44. The coroner described a chaotic scene upon his arrival, with inmates still fighting. The maximum-security facility in Bishopville houses about 1,500 inmates and 44 guards were there when the first fight started. (Read more prison riot stories.) (Newser) In the five years since the Sandy Hook shooting, Infowars host Alex Jones has repeatedly labeled the Sandy Hook massacre a hoax involving actors, ran a segment last April called "Sandy Hook Vampires Exposed," and accused CNN and Anderson Cooper of using a green screen to stage scenes. Now, the parents of two 6-year-old sons killed at the school are suing over defamation, with the two suits filed Monday saying the lies shoveled by Jones and Infowars (which the HuffPost notes is still running a story headlined "FBI Says No One Killed at Sandy Hook") have spurred death threats. Each suit is seeking more than $1 million in damages. Neil Heslin, father of one of the boys, also named Infowars reporter Owen Shroyer in his suit. story continues below In a 2017 interview with Megyn Kelly, Heslin spoke of holding his dead son "with a bullet hole through his head." Shroyer said Heslin must be lying, because the children were ID'd through photos, not in person. Heslin counters that he absolutely did hold his son when the body was released to him for burial. As for the death threats, the HuffPost reports there's an Infowars element: Lucy Richards was last summer sentenced to five months in prison for leaving parent Leonard Pozner voicemails threatening death; his suit notes that her sentence barred her from visiting Infowars. The New York Times reports the suits were filed in Travis County District Court in Austin, where Jones resides, by Houston lawyer Mark Bankston. It's not Bankston's first defamation filing against Jones and Infowars: He filed such a suit in April over their false ID of a Massachusetts man as the Parkland school shooter. (Read more Alex Jones stories.) (Newser) The Supreme Court said Tuesday that part of a federal law that makes it easier to deport immigrants who have been convicted of crimes is too vague to be enforced. The court's 5-4 decisionan unusual alignment in which new Justice Neil Gorsuch joined the four liberal justicesconcerns a catchall provision of immigration law that defines what makes a crime violent. Conviction for a crime of violence makes deportation "a virtual certainty" for an immigrant, no matter how long he has lived in the US, wrote Justice Elena Kagan in her opinion for the court. The decision is a loss for President Trump's administration, which has emphasized stricter enforcement of immigration law. With the four other conservative justices in dissent, it was the vote of the Trump appointee that was decisive in striking down the provision at issue, per the AP. story continues below Gorsuch did not join all of Kagan's opinion, but he agreed with her that the law could not be left in place. Gorsuch wrote that "no one should be surprised that the Constitution looks unkindly on any law so vague that reasonable people cannot understand its terms and judges do not know where to begin in applying it." The decision involves James Dimaya, a native of the Philippines who came to the US legally as a 13-year-old in 1992. After he pleaded no contest to burglary charges in California, the government began deportation proceedings, with officials relying on a section of immigration law that lists crimes eligible for deportation. The category in which Dimaya's convictions fell is a crime "that, by its very nature, involves a substantial risk that physical force ... may be used in the course of committing the offense." The Supreme Court agreed the law is too vague. (Read more Neil Gorsuch stories.) (Newser) One person died when a Southwest Airlines jet had to make an emergency landing in Philadelphia on Tuesday after the left side engine blew. In announcing the death, the National Transportation Safety Board chief did not offer any further details, but the Philadelphia Inquirer earlier reported that at least one passenger appeared to have been injured as a result of shrapnel piercing the plane. And NBC10 quoted the father of one passenger who says that part of the engine broke a window, with scary consequences: "One passenger, a woman, was partially was drawn out (of) the plane was pulled back in by other passengers," said Todd Baur. Authorities have not confirmed the account. The Boeing 737-700 was en route from New York City's LaGuardia to Dallas with 149 people aboard. story continues below Another passenger identified as Marty Martinez posted a video to Facebook during the ordeal: "Something is wrong with our plane!" he says. "It appears we are going down!" CNN reports that the emergency landing took about 15 minutes, and that the plane descended from 30,000 feet to 13,000 feet in five minutes. The official statement from Philadelphia International Airport: "Southwest Airlines flight 1380, which departed LaGuardia for Dallas Love Field (DAL), diverted to PHL because of an operational event. The plane landed safely. No slides were deployed. At this time, passengers are coming down a mobile stairway and are being bused to the terminal." CNN reports the FAA has issued a ground stop for planes at other airports waiting to depart for Philadelphia. (Read more Southwest Airlines stories.) Sorry! This content is not available in your region Fairbanks, AK (99707) Today Occasional snow showers. Temps nearly steady in the low to mid 30s. Winds light and variable. Chance of snow 50%. Snowfall around one inch.. Tonight Cloudy with snow showers mainly during the evening. Low 26F. Winds light and variable. Chance of snow 60%. Snow accumulations less than one inch. New Delhi: The Uttar Pradesh Madhyamik Siksha Parishad (UPMSP) will declare the results of its Class 10 and Class 12 annual examinations results on April 29, 2018. As per the latest notification, released by the UP Board, results of both the examinations will be announced on the same day at 12:30 pm at its official website - upresults.nic.in, upmspresults.up.nic.in. Aspirants may also visit to other private websites such as examresults.net and indiaresults.com to check their result. The UP Board had conducted Class 10 board exams between February 6 to February 22 and Class 12 boards took place from February 6 to March 10. While a total of 66.4 36.6 lakh candidates had registered for the high school examinations, 29.9 lakh were for intermediate. As many as 136 FIRs were lodged against examinees for indulging unfair means. It was for the first time that the examination was held under CCTV vigil. Special Task Force was also deployed to check the copying mafia nexus in the state. "We are happy that it was a copying-free examination and the answer sheets have been evaluated on time. We will declare the results of UP Board examinations for Class 10 and Class 12 in April. The new academic session will start on April 16 and by July, the new education calendar will be issued," Uttar Pradesh Deputy Chief Minister Dinesh Sharma was quoted by a leading daily. However, students, who appeared for UP Class 10 and Class 12 examinations, may go through the following steps to check their results. Also Read | NEET 2018 Admit Cards released at cbseneet.nic.in; download now Check out the steps: Step 1: Visit the official website upresults.nic.in Step 2: Click on the link UP Board Result 2018 Class 10 or UP Board 12th Result 2018 Step 3: Provide important details such as Date of Birth, Roll Number and all. Step 4: Click on the submit button Step 5: Result will appear on the screen Step 6: Download your result Step 7: Take a print out of the same for future convenience. Students can also get their results on their Mobile via SMS service. - SMS - UP10ROLLNUMBER - Send it to 56263 - SMS - UP12ROLLNUMBER - Send it to 56263 Also Read | UPSC 2018: Final interview for CAPF recruitment to start from May 7 About UPMSP: The Board of High School and Intermediate Education Uttar Pradesh is the state government administered autonomous examining authority for the Standard 10 examination and Standard 12 examination of Uttar Pradesh, headquartered in Allahabad India. New Delhi: Bollywood Superstar Salman Khan, who was granted bail in 1998 blackbuck poaching case, has been allowed by a Jodhpur court to travel outside the country. "BlackBuckPoachingCase: Jodhpur District and Sessions Court grants permission to Salman Khan to travel outside India. The actor will be travelling to Canada, Nepal and the USA from 25 May to 10 July," ANI reported. Earlier in the day, the actor filed a petition before Jodhpur District and Sessions Court seeking permission to visit four countries. The Race 3 actor will be travelling abroad to visit four countries including US, Canada and Nepal from May 25 to July 10. #BlackBuckPoachingCase: Jodhpur District and Sessions Court grants permission to Salman Khan to travel outside India. The actor will be travelling to Canada, Nepal and the USA from 25 May to 10 July. (File Pic) pic.twitter.com/tuZsMhcrkT ANI (@ANI) April 17, 2018 #BlackBuckPoachingCase: Actor Salman Khan filed petition before Jodhpur District and Sessions Court seeking permission to visit four countries. (file pic) pic.twitter.com/QpKlQCD8sI ANI (@ANI) April 17, 2018 On April 5, Salman was found guilty in the 20-year-old blackbuck poaching case and was awarded five years of imprisonment. The actor was convicted for killing two blackbucks in Jodhpur during the shooting of his movie Hum Saath Saath Hain in 1998. Also Read | Bharat: Priyanka Chopra opens up on working with Salman Khan after a decade Apart from Salman, actor Saif Ali Khan, Tabu, Neelam, Sonali Bendre and a local named Dushyant Singh were accused in the case. While Salman was found guilty under Section 9/51 of the Wildlife (Protection) Act, others were acquitted due to lack of evidence against them. The Tubelight start spent two nights in Jodhpur Central Jail and was later granted bail on two bail bonds of Rs 25,000 each. The Jodhpur court had directed Salman to seek permission before stepping outside the country. For all the Latest Entertainment News, Bollywood News, Download News Nation Android and iOS Mobile Apps. New Delhi: Sonam Kapoor's wedding has been one of the most talked about topic of discussion in the industry. The lady is said to be tying the knot with her beau Anand Ahuja next month and will also be hosting a grand reception in the national capital later. Indeed, a lot of speculations are being made about Sonam-Anand's wedding, be it about the guest list, the date or the location as well. And now another buzz is doing the round about the love-birds. Reportedly, Sonam will be shifting to London post her wedding with Anand. In fact, the couple has even bought an apartment there "Sonam and Anand have bought a two bedroom apartment in Notting Hill. The couple will move to London soon after their wedding," a source reportedly told a magazine. So does this mean that the Neerja actress will bid adieu to Bollywood post getting hitched? Well, not anytime soon. Apparently, Sonam will continue to work in movies after marriage. In an exclusive talk with News Nation, the Neerja actress said that she had no plans of settling down abroad and would continue to work in the industry. The lady will soon get back to work after a few days post-wedding and also start the promotions of her upcoming movie Veere Di Wedding. The film which also stars Kareena Kapoor Khan and Swara Bhaskar will release on June 1. Interestingly, Anil Kapoor's daughter will also be participating in the Cannes later this year. Besides, she will also be seen in Abhishek Sharma's directorial The Zoya Factor opposite Dulquer Salman. The movie is scheduled to release in April next year. For all the Latest Entertainment News, Bollywood News, Download News Nation Android and iOS Mobile Apps. New Delhi: Sixteen indigenous groups of Assam on Monday told a parliamentary panel that the proposed Citizenship (Amendment) Bill will violate the idea of secularism of the Constitution by distinguishing illegal immigrants on the basis of religion. The representatives of the indigenous groups informed the parliamentary panel that the bill also threatens the existence of communities in the state. The group informed the Joint Committee on the Bill to Amend the Citizenship Act, 1955, headed by BJP MP Rajendra Agarwal, that the proposed Bill to grant citizenship to Hindu Bangladeshis is totally unacceptable to the ethnic communities and people of Assam. The proposed Bill violates the very idea of secularism. The Bangaldeshi immigrants must not be differentiated on basis of religion, All Bodo Students Union president said. He further added that post-1971 illegal immigrants, must not be differentiated on basis of religion. The Bodo president further added that in no circumstances the ethnic communities and the people of Assam will agree to the proposal. "The proposed Bill will destroy or exterminate the indigenous ST, SC and other ethnic communities of Assam and will reduce the indigenous people of the state into minorities," he said. Predicting a "vigorous mass movement" against the proposed Bill, secretary general of the All Assam Tribal Sangha Aditya Khaklari said if it is passed by Parliament, it will disturb the peaceful environment of Assam and will encourage fresh illegal infiltration into the state. Introduced in the Lok Sabha, the Citizenship Amendment Bill, 2016, seeks to allow illegal migrants from certain minority communities in Afghanistan, Bangladesh and Pakistan eligible for Indian citizenship by amending the Citizenship Act of 1955. It seeks to allow illegal migrants belonging to the Hindu, Sikh, Buddhist, Jain, Parsi or Christian communities coming from Afghanistan, Bangladesh or Pakistan to not be imprisoned or deported. It also appeals for the minimum years of residency in India to apply for citizenship to be lessened from at least 11 to six years for such migrants. The Bill, however, does not extend to illegal Muslim migrants. The proposed amendments are not acceptable to the indigenous groups from Assam as it contradicts the Assam Accord of 1985, which clearly states that illegal migrants who entered India after March 25, 1971, would be deported irrespective of their religions. (With Agency Inputs) For all the Latest India News, Download News Nation Android and iOS Mobile Apps. New Delhi: Remember standing in long queues for hours outside ATMs and yet returning home empty-handed as the money vending machines went out of cash just when your turn came? The same demonetisation days returned on Tuesday as ATM machines in several states went out of cash leaving people in need of money distressed. Big states like Karnataka, Maharashtra, Andhra Pradesh, Rajasthan, Uttar Pradesh, Madhya Pradesh Chhattisgarh, and Telangana were most affected by the cash-crunch. Many ATMs were seen 'out of service' in Patna. Locals said that they had been taking rounds of ATMs since last three days but cash was still not available. People in PM Modis home state Gujarat, which was among the most affected states, were also complaining of inconvenience due to the lack of currency in ATMs. Most of the ATMs were out of service, we could only withdraw Rs 10,000 from one working ATM that also after spending a lot of time in the long queue, said a resident of Gujarats Vadodara. In Delhi, people took to Twitter to express their outrage. Some termed cash crunch a silent demonetisation. Silent demonetisation? ATMs go dry, Rs 2000, other notes vanish in many states, tweeted one of the user. We are facing a cash crunch. Most of the ATMs are not dispensing cash, the ones which are dispensing, have only Rs 500 notes. We are facing difficulty, don't know what to do, a local Delhi resident told ANI. Also Read | Rupee rises 4 paise against US dollar in early trade today Government says cash crunch temporary, being tackled quickly Union Finance Minister Arun Jaitley, terming the cash crunch temporary, said that there was adequate currency in circulation and the issue was being tackled quickly. Have reviewed the currency situation in the country. Overall there is more than the adequate currency in circulation and also available with the Banks. The temporary shortage caused by sudden and unusual increase in some areas is being tackled quickly, Jaitley tweeted. Chhattisgarh Chief Minister Raman Singh also assured people that the issue of cash crunch will be resolved soon. Chhattisgarh, like many other states, has been affected by a cash crunch. The situation will be resolved as soon as possible, the chief minister said. Gross mismanagement, "financial emergency," Opposition slams government for cash crunch Terming the cash crunch a gross mismanagement by the Modi government, the Opposition Congress asked whether it was a deliberate move taken by the Center. News reports say that ATMs around the country are running of out cash. Is it just gross mismanagement by the Modi Govt or is this a deliberate move? #IndiaSpeaks, Congress tweeted. West Bengal Chief Minister Mamta Banerjee too attacked the government for the "financial emergency" and said that the cash crunch was a reminder of the demonetisation. "Seeing reports of ATMs running out of cash in several States. Big notes missing. Reminder of #DeMonetisation days. Is there a Financial Emergency going on in the country? #CashCrunch #CashlessATMs," tweeted Banerjee. Communist Party of India (Marxist) General Secretary Sitaram Yechury said the BJP was the only flush with cash while people across the nation suffered. "ATMs were empty in November 2016. ATMs are empty now. And the only party flush with cash is the BJP: the people suffer." said Yechuri. For all the Latest India News, Download News Nation Android and iOS Mobile Apps. Jammu: Welcoming Army Chief General Bipin Rawat's statement on the Kashmir issue, the Jammu and Kashmir government Monday said that this was the expression of the overwhelming sentiment in the state. It is a welcome announcement coinciding with a similar assertion made by General Rawat's Pakistani counterpart, General Qamar Javed Bajwa, and it is something the people of J&K, entangled in blood-spattered violence, have been longing for years, Public Works Minister Naeem Akhtar said. General Rawat recently said the radicalised youth of the valley would soon realise that the gun was not the solution to their problem as neither security forces nor terrorists would achieve their goals through it. Peace, he said, was the only way to improve the situation in Kashmir that had been witnessing militancy for about three decades now. Mr Akhtar, who is also the government spokesman, said it had been the present coalition government's persistent endeavour right from the beginning to see that the people of the state are pulled out of the quagmire of death and destruction. It is now for all the stakeholders, even those with differing political ideologies, to join this new moment of peace and reconciliation through emerging positive discourse, he said. Mr Akhtar said that those trying to meet political objectives through gun must realise that when violence enters a discourse it not only destroys the lives, but the social fabric, the economy, the culture and civilisation of the society that perpetuates it. Guns have not solved any problem or issue in the world and only dialogue and reconciliation is the way forward, he said, adding there was a need to build on the Army Chief's statement and strengthen the process by initiating more political measures and engaging every section of the society in order to ensure sustainable peace in the state, he said. Dignified peace through reconciliation, he said, was the only way to improve the situation in Kashmir that had been witnessing death and destruction for about three decades now. For all the Latest India News, Download News Nation Android and iOS Mobile Apps. New Delhi: Setting up another confrontation with Chief Minister Arvind Kejriwal, the Union Ministry of Home Affairs (MHA) on Tuesday cancelled the appointments of nine Delhi government advisers. The nine advisers whose appointment was cancelled by the Centre also included Atishi Marlena, the adviser to Deputy Chief Minister Manish Sisodia. She was appointed to help Sisodia, also the Education Minister of Delhi, to improve schools and education system on a token salary of just Rs 1. Cancelling the appointments, MHA said, Services under the Govt of NCT of Delhi is a subject reserved for the Central government as per the Constitution. "Since creation of these posts by and subsequent appointments on these posts are not valid, all previous orders regarding creation of these posts are not valid, all previous orders regarding creation of these posts and appointments made against them are hereby cancelled," stated the order cleared by Lieutenant Governor Anil Baijal. Reacting to the MHAs move, AAPs Raghav Chadha termed it the BJPs diversionary tactics to divert attention from issues like rapes and cash crunch. Impressive diversionary tactics by the MHA, at the behest of BJP. To divert attention from a spate of rapes, cash crunch etc. an opportune time to rake up nonissues with AAP like retrospective sacking for a post I held for 45days in 2016 for a paltry sum of Rs.2.50/-, Raghav tweeted. Must Read | Demonetisation days return as ATMs go out of cash in many states For all the Latest India News, Download News Nation Android and iOS Mobile Apps. New Delhi: When the country was finding it hard to console itself over the heart-wrenching rape and murder of an eight-year-old girl in Jammu and Kashmirs Kathua inside a temple, another girl of the same age was raped and strangulated in Uttar Pradesh. The incident took place in a village in Etah where the eight-year-old girl was attending a marriage function with her parents. An 18-year-old teenager has been arrested by the police. He was found lying next to the victims body in an inebriated state, reported NDTV.com. The girl is about eight-nine years old. She was raped and also strangled to death. The accused was nearby, he has been arrested," police officer Akhilesh Chaurasia said. At around 1:30 am when the loud music was playing, the accused took the girl to a half-built house when her parents were busy and allegedly raped her and strangled. "He took her inside and raped her and then murdered her. At 1:30 am, some function was on. He took the opportunity to drag her some distance away and rape her," the news website quoted the child's father as saying. A case has been registered against the accused teen under the stringent Protection of Children from Sexual Offences or POCSO Act. This was the second child rape case to be reported in last few days. Earlier, in a heart-wrenching incident that shook the collective conscience of India, a little girl, also eight-year-old, was kidnapped and raped repeatedly before being murdered brutally inside a temple. She was held in captivity in a small village temple in Kathua district for a week in January, was kept sedated and sexually assaulted once again before she was bludgeoned to death. The incident triggered a massive outrage among the people who took to streets to protest the inhuman act. Kathua Rape-Murder Case: What we know so far For all the Latest India News, Download News Nation Android and iOS Mobile Apps. New Delhi: The Sunni Wakf Board on Tuesday told the Supreme Court that Taj Mahal is owned by the Almighty so it must be listed as property of the religious body. The religious body had asked the Apex Court to list the worlds seventh wonder as its property for practical purposes like several other monuments built by Mughal emperors. The boards counsel told the Supreme Court that no human can claim ownership of the marble monument. It is Wakf board property because it is allowed to perform rituals, Wakf Boards lawyer said. The religious body also told to the top court that it can manage the Taj Mahal without its ownership. The board has also urged the Archeological Survey of India (ASI) to consider the Taj Mahal to be registered as its property, only for maintenance purpose. Also Read: Taj Mahal seeing gets costlier: Entry fees Rs 50, Rs 200 ticket to see main masusoleum Board does not have documents to show Taj Mahal is Wakf property. By virtue it is a Wakf property and is entitled to manage the Taj Mahal, lawyers of Wakf board said. The Supreme Court has set the next date of hearing on July 27. For all the Latest India News, Download News Nation Android and iOS Mobile Apps. New Delhi: Over 8,500 prisoners, including three dozen jailed in political cases, were granted pardons by Myanmar president Win Myint on the occasion of Thingyan, a Buddhist new year festival. President Win Myint, who took office last month granted pardons on humanitarian grounds as a part of an annual amnesty marking the countrys traditional New Year. The amnesty was extended mostly to drug offenders. 50 of the total prisoners granted pardons were foreigners while 36 were political prisoners, according to a statement posted on Facebook by government spokesman Zaw Htay. The move to grant amnesty was welcomed by Assistance Association for Political Prisoners, an NGO that helps political prisoners. The NGO spokesperson Aung Myo Kyaw said the government could do more and demanded the release of at least eight more prisoners of conscience who remain in jail. Also Read | World War III worries rise, Russia planning retaliation against US Around 200 others in Myanmar are facing trials linked to political activities. The government can help them by cancelling the cases from the courts, said Kyaw. Myanmar has freed thousands from its jails since a military junta ceded power in 2011 after five decades of brutal repression. Hundreds of political prisoners were released shortly after the civilian government of former democracy activist Aung San Suu Kyi took office in 2016 following a sweeping election victory. (With inputs from agencies) For all the Latest World News, Download News Nation Android and iOS Mobile Apps. New Delhi: Prime Minister Narendra Modi on Tuesday landed in Stockholm, the national capital of Sweden on the first leg of his five-day foreign tour. Modi was the first Indian prime minister to visit the Nordic nation in last 30 years. During the visit, the prime minister is scheduled to jointly host the India-Nordic Summit in Stockholm. Apart from Modi, his counterparts from Finland, Norway, Denmark and Iceland will also take part in the summit. After Sweden, Modi will head towards the UK to attend the Commonwealth Heads of Government Meeting (CHOGM). Earlier, Modi was received by the Swedish prime minister at the airport inA Stockholm. Both leaders travelled together in the same car from the airport to hotel. LIVE Updates: # 05: 35 PM:A This is my first visit to Sweden and a visit by an Indian PM after a gap of nearly 30 years. Sweden has been a strong contributor to our 'Make in India' program. Swedish PM led a big delegation to the Mumbai summit in 2016: PM Modi # 05:34 PM:A India and Sweden to work on a security agreement, Swedish PM Stefan Lofven says after talks with PM Narendra Modi. # 05:32 PM:A I would like to commend the Indian govt and its strong focus on innovation as a key to progress and prosperity:A Swedish PM Stefan LAfven # 05:30 PM: WATCH: PM Modi and Swedish PM Stefan Lofven issue press statements in Stockholm. #WATCH PM Modi and Swedish PM Stefan Lofven issue press statements in Stockholm https://t.co/MeqqVLdDh8 a ANI (@ANI) April 17, 2018 # 3:35 PM:A PM Narendra Modi met with Swedish PM Stefan LAfven. The two leaders discussed several bilateral and regional issues during the meeting. A relationship that has grown in intensity over the years and has a huge potential! PM @narendramodi met with @SwedishPM Stefan LAfven. The two leaders had a productive exchange of views on bilateral and regional issues. pic.twitter.com/F66LfFgQwT a Raveesh Kumar (@MEAIndia) April 17, 2018 # 03: 30 PM:A PM Modi called on His Majesty the King Carl XVI Gustaf of Sweden. Leaders exchanged views on strengthening bilateral cooperation across several sectors. Royal start to the day! PM @narendramodi called on His Majesty the King Carl XVI Gustaf of Sweden. Leaders exchanged views on strengthening bilateral cooperation across several sectors. pic.twitter.com/RkpydROmO9 a Raveesh Kumar (@MEAIndia) April 17, 2018 # 03:20 PM:A 10 engagements in 10 hours, a hectic day begins for PM Narendra Modi in Stockholm.A 10 engagements in 10 hours- a hectic day begins for PM @narendramodi in Stockholm! Call on King of Sweden, bilateral meeting with @SwedishPM & 4 Nordic countries' leaders, roundtable meeting with Swedish CEOs, call by Leader of Opposition, India-Nordic Summit and Community event. pic.twitter.com/mhq7vmYKQ2 a Raveesh Kumar (@MEAIndia) April 17, 2018 # 03:10 PM: Both PM Modi and Stefan Lofven travelled together in the same car from the airport to hotel. In a special gesture exuding warmth and hospitality, PM @narendramodi and @SwedishPM are traveling together in the same vehicle from the airport to the Hotel. pic.twitter.com/S20UhtsZ4h a Raveesh Kumar (@MEAIndia) April 16, 2018 # 03:00 PM:A Prime Minister Narendra Modi landed inA Stockholm last night. He was received by SwedishA Prime Minister Stefan LAfven at the airport. Landat i Stockholm. Jag tackar stasministern Stefan Lofven fAr att vArmt vAlkAmna mig vid flygplatsen @SwedishPM pic.twitter.com/guRVzcAkC6 a Narendra Modi (@narendramodi) April 16, 2018 For all the Latest World News, Download News Nation Android and iOS Mobile Apps. Stockholm: Prime Minister Narendra Modi on Tuesday arrived here in the capital of Sweden, the first bilateral visit by an Indian premier to the Nordic nation in 30 years. Swedish Prime Minister Stefan Lofven received Modi at the airport. Modi is on the first leg of his five-day foreign tour which will also take him to the UK where he will attend the Commonwealth Heads of Government Meeting (CHOGM). "Scripting history! PM @narendramodi arrives in Stockholm on a first bilateral visit by an Indian PM in 30 years to a warm and personal welcome by @SwedishPM Stefan Lofven at the airport and to participate in the first ever India-Nordic Summit," Ministry of External Affairs spokesperson Raveesh Kumar tweeted. Scripting history! PM @narendramodi arrives in Stockholm on a first bilateral visit by an Indian PM in 30 years to a warm and personal welcome by @SwedishPM Stefan LAfven at the airport and to participate in the first ever India-Nordic Summit. pic.twitter.com/leAsRMGKT3 a Raveesh Kumar (@MEAIndia) April 16, 2018 Modi and Lofven also travelled together in the same vehicle from the airport to the hotel, he said. Earlier, ahead of his visit, Modi said in New Delhi he was looking forward to deepening bilateral engagement with both countries in a number of areas including trade, investment and clean energy. "India and Sweden share warm and friendly ties. Our partnership is based on democratic values and commitment to an open, inclusive and rules-based global order. Sweden is a valuable partner in our development initiatives," Modi had said in a departure statement last night. The two prime ministers will hold bilateral talks on Tuesday. Modi said he and Lofven would also interact with top business leaders of both countries and chart out a future roadmap of cooperation in sectors such as trade and investment, science and technology, clean energy and smart cities. The prime minister said he would also call on King of Sweden Carl XVI Gustaf. India and Sweden will also jointly organise the India-Nordic Summit in Stockholm on Tuesday. The summit will also be attended by the prime ministers of Finland, Norway, Denmark and Iceland. From Sweden, Modi will later on Tuesday travel to the UK where he will also attend the CHOGM, besides holding bilateral talks with his British counterpart Theresa May. For all the Latest World News, Download News Nation Android and iOS Mobile Apps. Researchers at Japanese electronics maker Hitachi are studying a new method to help people detect cancer at an early stage. The idea is to screen urine samples mailed from home. The researchers have been working on the method for 3 years. They've checked about 2,000 biological waste materials in urine and found several biomarkers tied to cancer. Hitachi says it plans to launch an experiment this month to improve the accuracy of the screening method. It's teaming up with Nagoya University Hospital to find out whether test results could be affected by temperature changes and time required for delivery of samples. Hitachi says a urine test is less intrusive than the standard blood test currently used in cancer screening. The company plans to start practical use of the test method in the early 2020s. Hitachi's senior official Shinji Yamada says he believes a mail-in urine test will make it easier for many people to undergo screening, including infants. Men wearing gold, full-body suits and costume hats, themed as taiyaki (a waffle-like cake shaped like a fish, typically filled with red bean paste), have started to appear in central Nagoya, attracting the attention of pedestrians. The men call themselves the Shachihoko Boys a a reference to a golden imaginary creature with the head of a tiger and the body of a fish, which can be found on the roof of Nagoya Castle. Last year they released a debut CD. Theyare ambitious, and are looking to break into the global market. But what exactly do they hope to achieve by strutting around Nagoya in such eye-catching costumes? During a recent public holiday, 32-year-old Motoki Ikeda, who runs a restaurant, and four of his friends a all wearing the gold body suits a strode through the gate of Osu Kannon. The temple was packed with visitors, who immediately turned to the five men. One of them asked, aAre you supposed to be taiyaki?a When they replied that they are the Shachihoko Boys, they were welcomed enthusiastically by those who understood the cultural reference. The five men formed the group in 2012. Ikeda used to work in a large advertising firm. When he was transferred from Osaka to Nagoya, his boss gave him the body suit and cap and said, aYou need this if youare going to Nagoya.a aI wanted to stand out,a recalled Ikeda. He wore the suit as a joke to a friendas party, but it turned out to be a huge success. After that, he began hitting the streets while wearing the outfit with friends, including 35-year-old designer Tetsuya Ishikawa. A 14-year-old girl has been arrested on suspicion of stealing 10 million yen in cash from a friend's house, according to police. The girl, a third-year junior high school student in Tokyo, was arrested Sunday for allegedly stealing the money from the living room of the house of a former elementary school classmate during frequent visits between early January and Feb 27. She has admitted to the allegation and said the money was shared among some 10 classmates at her junior high school. Up to 1 million yen was distributed to each of them, according to the police. The girl told the police she felt left out of her classmates' friendship circle and suffered stress, an investigative source said. The police have recovered around 7.9 million yen and are searching for the rest of the money. Foreigners held in a Japanese immigration detention centre have launched a hunger strike over the death of a detainee, drawing fresh attention to conditions under which they are held. An Indian man died in an apparent suicide on Friday at the East Japan Immigration Center in Ushiku, Ibaraki Prefecture. Activists have said the man killed himself a day after being denied release. Detainees began refusing food on Sunday, with the strike since spreading to an unspecified number of inmates, Daisuke Akinaga, a spokesman for the center, said. He cited the Indian's death, long-term detention and inmates' inability to win temporary release as reasons for the protest. The death was the 14th at a Japanese immigration detention center since 2006, a toll that has led to wide criticism over standards of medical care, the monitoring of detainees held in solitary and guards' responses to medical emergencies. Immigration remains a prickly subject in Japan, where cultural and ethnic homogeneity remain deeply rooted even as the population shrinks and companies grapple with the worst labour shortages for more than four decades. Japan's justice minister apologized Tuesday over the escape of a "model" inmate who fled an open prison more than a week ago, as the number of police hunting him passed 6,000. About 6,600 police officers are now engaged in a fruitless manhunt for 27-year-old Tatsuma Hirao, who was serving time for multiple thefts, according to officials. The case is making headline news in Japan with TV channels picking over the manhunt in minute detail. Hirao gave guards the slip on April 8, vanishing from the facility, an "open institution" where inmates can walk around freely. Police have detected the fugitive's fingerprints and several thefts have been reported since his escape but he remains on the lam. The stolen items include socks, a mobile phone, a wallet, a pair of sandals and a car key, whose owner found a polite note -- apparently from the fugitive -- saying: "I'm borrowing your car but I won't damage it." Justice Minister Yoko Kawakami felt the need to apologize for the difficulties in recapturing the criminal, saying: "I heard the incident has caused anxiety among local residents, especially since there are many elderly people living alone... I feel truly sorry." Kaawakami added that 96 prison officers had been assigned around the clock to protect schools on Mukaishima island in Hiroshima Prefecture, where the fugitive is believed to be hiding. Slowing the search is the fact that there are about 1,000 vacant houses on the island, but police need permission from owners each time they search inside, according to the Mainichi Shimbun. File photo of J-10C BEIJING -- China's new multi-role fighter jet J-10C began combat duty Monday, the People's Liberation Army (PLA) air force announced. Equipped with an advanced avionics system and various airborne weapons, the domestically-developed fighter has airstrike capabilities within medium and close range and is capable of precisely striking land and maritime targets, the air force said in a statement. It is China's third-generation supersonic fighter and made its debut when the PLA marked its 90th anniversary in July 2017 at Zhurihe military training base in Inner Mongolia Autonomous Region. File photo of J-10C The fighter will enrich the air force's offensive and defensive system and improve its capability to fulfill duties and missions, according to the statement. Shen Jinke, a spokesperson for the PLA air force, said that the air force will advance training and war readiness, and sharpen its striking, defensive, and air delivery capabilities. It will also firmly safeguard China's airspace security and national strategic interests in the new era, Shen said. The new jet is modified from the J-10 fighter jet and will help improve the air force's fighting and war-readiness capabilities, said Wang Mingzhi, a military expert. The air force is gradually building a combat system adapted to the need of informationized air warfare, comprised of heavy air superiority fighters such as J-11 series, multi-role fighters such as J-10 series and J-16, new-generation stealth fighters such as J-20, and medium and long-range bombers such as H-6K, Wang said. Soldiers of China's People's Liberation Army (PLA) are seen during a military promotional event in Baoding, Hebei province, China March 30.(REUTERS FILE) Source: hindustantimes.com China has revised rules for millions of its Peoples Liberation Army (PLA) personnel, easing their use of internet on mobile phones, regulating online shopping and putting in place a standardised weight for the troops. Some regulations were aimed at strengthening political loyalty of the troops to the Communist Party of China. The orders signed by President Xi Jinping in his capacity as the chairperson of the Central Military Commission (CMC) were divided under the militarys interior (internal) order, code of conduct and military formation. The previous tight control on mobile phone use has been relaxed, the PLAs military website said. The phones and social networking applications can be used after registering the hardware and applications accounts with respective commanding units. The revised regulation on the military code of conduct stipulated relevant rules regarding the militarys political loyalty, organisation, combat operations, training, work, confidential information, integrity, financial affairs, interaction with the people, and daily life, the CMC training management department said in a statement. The three revised regulations, which underlined the absolute leadership of the Communist Party of China (CPC) over the peoples armed forces, will take effect from May 1, it said. The statement added that the revisions were intended as modifications in keeping with the rapid evolution of the PLA and to facilitate the militarys modernisation efforts. There are more and clearer instructions on behaviour and etiquette for PLA personnel. Members of the military are required to control their weight according to a certain standard, the report in the PLA website said. The new standards for weight for the troops were not revealed. In 2015, the CMC had linked promotions to weight limits and fitness, saying it was a basic way to ensure a soldiers physical and mental quality. Clauses on online shopping, prevention of training injuries and psychological consultation were also added to the regulations, the military website report said. A PLA researcher of regulations, who wished not to be identified, explained that the revisions eliminated some antiquated rules, such as those on mobile phone use, and took reasonable needs from military personnel into consideration, it added. Renault is preparing to take a step forward with its engine in the coming races. As well as its works team, the French manufacturer supplies engines to Red Bull and McLaren but is still lagging behind Mercedes and Ferrari. But Spains AS newspaper reports that a performance step is planned for the Canadian grand prix in June, although single units might be available by Monaco. "According to informed sources, the improvement will be about 30 hp, and on a track like Canada, it would be about three tenths per lap," said the report. AS said the boost would bring Renault up to about 950 hp, while Mercedes and Ferrari are now nudging 1000. Renault boss Cyril Abiteboul said: "If we follow our plan, it will be a while until the second power unit arrives but there will be an evolution of the ICE and also the fuel." AS also said Honda is planning an upgrade, with the Toro Rosso drivers to get a 40 hp boost in either Canada or France in June. The report read: "According to rumours, Red Bull have told Honda that the condition of using their power unit next season is that it is equal to the Renault." A chieftain of the All Progressives Congress, APC in Delta State, Prince Christopher Agaga has flayed the suspension of Senator Ovie Omo-Agege from the Senate.Agaga in a statement, yesterday, also charged the Attorney General of the Federation and Minister of Justice, Mr Abubakar Malami, SAN, to seek judicial interpretation of the powers of the Senate to deny a senatorial constituency the right to representation.Agaga condemned the Senates decision to suppress the rights of Senator Omo-Agege to expression.He said the decision meant that the Urhobo ethnic group has been left without representation.He said: For as long as the Minister of Justice does not rise to the occasion to proactively stop the constitution from being desecrated and shredded so long shall we have this regime of impunity that has now become the forte of the leadership of the Senate and House of Representatives as a cog in the wheel to the growth of democratic culture, governance and development of the country.But now that we are having on our hands a repeat too many to condone, in the latest imperial action of the Senate, in suspending an elected senator who is the voice and mouthpiece of more than two million people of Delta Central Senatorial District with a backlash that could debilitate the weak fabric of our federation especially with the perception of constituents hard hit by the suspension order that they are being technically excised from Nigeria, there cannot be a more apposite time than this for the minister to rise up to the challenge by initiating legal measures to arrest the ugly and disgusting situation with a view to reassuring the people of Delta Central senatorial district who have vowed to protect their rights recognised by the constitution and Africa Charter on human and peoples rights that they are valued and recognised as an integral part of Nigeria. The CNS Liaoning aircraft carrier participating in a sea parade.PHOTO: CHINA DAILY/ASIA NEWS NETWORK Source: The straitstimes BEIJING (CHINA DAILY/ASIA NEWS NETWORK, BLOOMBERG)- The largest-ever military display by the Chinese navy last week has offered military observers a glimpse of China's newest nuclear submarines, destroyers and other vessels. President Xi Jinping, clad in camouflage military fatigues, presided over the country's biggest-ever fleet review last Thursday (April 12). The event, which involved more than 10,000 Navy personnel, was the fifth sea parade by the Chinese navy and the first in the South China Sea. The last sea parade was in 2009. He observed 48 vessels, 76 aircraft and more than 10,000 service personnel at the South China Sea naval hub of Sanya, including the aircraft carrier Liaoning, the official Xinhua news agency said. More than half of the vessels were commissioned in the five years since Xi came to power, Xinhua said. Six nuclear-powered submarines, including two that carry nuclear-capable intercontinental ballistic missiles, appeared during the parade. Seventy-six naval aircraft flew overhead, including helicopters, fighter jets, bombers and electronic warfare aircraft. China has spent the past two decades building a "blue-water'' navy able to project force into the Indian and Pacific oceans, which surround the country's growing economic interests in Africa, the Middle East and Southeast Asia. China launched its first domestically built aircraft carrier last year, the second of as many as six such vessels. President Xi told the assembled troops that China's need for a world-leading naval force "has never been more pressing than today" and urged them to devote their unswerving loyalty to the party, before watching through binoculars four J-15 fighter jets take off from the Liaoning, China's sole operational aircraft carrier. Liaoning is a refitted Soviet-era vessel. The naval hardware seen in Thursday's sea parade represented the achievements made by the People's Liberation Army Navy in its modernisation drive, military observers told China Daily. Senior Captain Cao Weidong, a researcher at the PLA Naval Military Studies Research Institute, said that the Navy received a large number of new weapons with advanced capabilities over the past five years. The new hardware features "a higher information capability and optimised joint operation system and thus can better carry out sophisticated joint operations", he added. The grouping of ships, submarines and aircraft in different strike groups symbolised the Chinese navy's enhanced capability of coordinating and integrating multiple elements in combat missions, he said. He added that the Navy has become able to perform long-range operations with the new-generation nuclear-powered submarines and a carrier battle group led by Liaoning. Cui Yiliang, editor-in-chief of Modern Ships magazine, said the Chinese navy showed almost all of its new hardware delivered during the past 10 years. The People's Liberation Army (PLA) Navy is now capable of conducting naval operations from strategic strike to amphibious assault, he said. "The nuclear-powered ballistic missile submarines involved in the parade are of the latest generation and have many improvements compared with their predecessors. You can see from their hull design that China has made big strides in nuclear-powered submarines," Cui said. "The new nuclear-powered attack submarines are reportedly capable of launching cruise missiles. Meanwhile, some conventionally powered attack submarines in the parade have been equipped with the advanced air-independent propulsion system that makes these boats stealthier." Wu Peixin, a defence industry analyst in Beijing, said the PLA Navy has been steadily and rapidly catching up with the US navy in terms of its hardware's technological and operational capabilities. "Ten years ago, it would have seemed a little unimaginable that we would have a full carrier battle group and could make it basically deployable in the decade to come. It would also appear fantastic if someone told you that we would soon begin commissioning a domestically built carrier and several of the world's mightiest destroyers," he said. Wu gave the CNS Changsha, a Type 052D guided missile destroyer that carried President Xi Jinping during the parade, as an example of the Navy's improved arsenal. The Type 052D class is the most capable fleet escort deployed by the Navy, he said. It has a full displacement of nearly 7,000 metric tons and a wide range of weapons, including a single-barrel 130-mm naval gun and a close-in weapon system, as well as 64 vertical launching cells containing HHQ-9 long-range anti-aircraft missiles and YJ-18 or YJ-83 anti-ship cruise missiles. The fighting power of a single Type 052D ship is the combat force equal of several previous models put together, Wu said. The Federal High Court in Abuja on Tuesday fixed June 5 for judgment in a suit seeking an order compelling the Central Bank of Nigeria and its Governor, Godwin Emefiele, to provide information on the amount Nigeria expended on President Muhammadu Buharis treatment in London, United Kingdom, last year.The President was away in London receiving treatment for an undisclosed ailment for 103 days in 2017.Alleging that the Presidents overseas medical expenses were paid from Nigerias treasury, a civil society group, Advocacy for Societal Rights Advancement and Development Initiative, had written a letter dated October 19, 2017 to the CBN requesting on the strength of the Freedom of Information Act, 2011, the details of the spending.The group had also requested information on what it cost the country to keep the presidential aircraft and crew for 103 days at the Stansted Airport in the United Kingdom while President Buharis medical treatment lasted.When the CBN bank failed to yield its demands, the group filed a suit marked FHC/ABJ/CS/1142/2017 before the Federal High Court in Abuja praying for an order compelling the apex bank to release the information sought.Parties to the suit adopted their papers after which the judge fixed June 5 for judgment on Tuesday.Arguing his clients case, the plaintiffs lawyer, Chukwuwike Okafor, urged the court to ignore the respondents opposition to the suit and grant the prayers sought in it.But the respondents lawyer, Babafemi Durojaiye, urged the court to dismiss the suit, arguing that the applicants grievance was misdirected.But the CBN and its governor had, in opposing the suit, argued that it was not within their immediate responsibilities to provide such information on the treatment of the President or on what it cost the country to keep the presidential aircraft and crew at the Stansted Airport in the United Kingdom while President Buharis medical treatment lasted.In their counter-affidavit filed on February 13, 2018, the CBN and its governor urged the court to reject the applicants prayers and dismiss the suit.They also urged the court to vacate an earlier ex-parte order granting leave to the applicant to apply for a prerogative order of mandamus compelling them to provide the requested information.They admitted receiving the October 19, 2017 letter from ASRADI, but stated that they forwarded it to the Presidents Chief of Staff, who they believed was the proper person to provide the information sought by the applicant.The CBN and its governor accused the applicant of failing to inform the court that they wrote it, informing the group to resort to the Presidents Chief of Staff for the information it sought.The particular information sought by the applicant related to the overseas medical expenses incurred on the President of Nigeria, General Muhammadu Buhari and aircraft parking fees at Stansted Airport in the UK, the counter-affidavit read.The CBN and its governor added that having transferred the applicants request to the Presidents Chief of Staff in line with the requirement of the Freedom of Information Act, the request is deemed to have been made to the Presidents Chief of Staff. The Minister of Information and Culture, Alhaji Lai Mohammed has reiterated that Lagos State has the potential to become Africas tourism hub.According to the minister, the Federal Government will support it in developing the sector.The minister said this on Monday in Lagos, at the Lagos Tourism Summit with the theme; Destination Lagos: Towards a Sustainable Tourism Drive.Mohammed commended Gov. Akinwumi Ambode of Lagos for his interest in the tourism and creative sectors of the economy; both at the state and national level.The minister said the Federal Government had identified the tourism and creative sectors as alternative to oil, adding that his ministry was working toward developing the industry.Mohammed recalled that upon assumption of office, his ministry organised a national tourism summit to provide the platform for harnessing the potential in the sector.He said the ministry had revived the national tourism master plan to catalyse the development of the sector and also hosted a round-table on financing tourism.The minister also disclosed that Nigeria would host the 61st edition of the United Nations World Tourism Organisation (UNWTO)/Commission for Africa (CAF) Meeting, scheduled for June 4 to June 6, 2018 in Abuja.He also disclosed that the ministry would partner with relevant stakeholders, particularly, the people of Ile-Ife in Osun State in hosting the 2018 Olojo festival.Olojo is not just only Yoruba new festival, but the oldest known festival in the world started by Ooni Ogun with the wearing of the worlds oldest monarchical crown, the sacred Aare Crown.The festival will bring 35 of the top Africa-American travel writers, group travel agents, travel bloggers and travel film crews to the Olojo 2018 festival, he said.Former President of Ghana, John Mahama commended Ambode for his contributions toward developing Lagos to a mega city and a potential tourism hub.Mahama, who was the keynote speaker at the event, underscored the need for Africa to develop tourism sector in order to solving the challenge of unemployment.He also suggested a development of integrated tour packages between Nigeria and Ghana that would attract international tourists from Lagos to Accra and vice versa.Earlier, Gov. Ambode said that his administration was committed to funding alternative platforms, particularly the tourism sector to enrich the state.The governor said that the tourism sector contributed N800 million to the states Gross Domestic Product (GDP) in 2017.He said as parts of efforts to transforming Lagos to tourism hub, the Lagos government was reclaiming a 50 hectares of land at the Oworonshoki end of the lagoon, for aquatic tourism purposes.He stated that the summit would help the state to develop its tourism master-plan that would be implemented within a specified number of years to turn Lagos to continental tourism hub. Group Managing Director of Nigerian National Petroleum Corporation (NNPC), Mr. Maikanti Baru, has stated that funding remained a major constraint to the corporation.In a statement by the NNPC in Abuja, yesterday, Baru also disclosed that the NNPC was faced with many distractions aimed at derailing it from its goals and objectives.Baru, who was awarded the 2017 Zik Prize for Professional Leadership by the Public Policy Research and Analysis Centre, (PPRAC), however, noted that the NNPC remain focused and committed.According to him, the management shall not allow itself to be derailed in its quest to emplace the corporation on the path of growth and productivity.While describing funding as the major constraint of the corporation, Baru also observed that over the last few months, NNPC had devised many means of funding its projects, with several of them yielding positive results.Speaking on the award, Baru said the honour signified some recognition of the modest efforts his management team is making to spearhead the corporation to greater heights.This great award also means we should sustain what we are doing, which is hinged on transforming NNPC into a fully integrated energy company for the benefit of Nigerians and other stakeholders, he said.Baru, who vowed to continue with the good work towards realization of the lofty dreams of the corporations founding fathers, observed, however, that the corporation was not shying away from the fact that there are challenges and many more grounds to be covered.Organised by the Public Policy Research and Analysis Centre, (PPRAC), the Zik Prize was instituted 24 years ago in honour of the first President of Nigeria, Late Dr. Nnamdi Azikwe, to, among others, encourage and nurture leadership on the African Continent and in the Diaspora.Also speaking, former Minister of Education and Chairman of Advisory Board of PPRAC, Professor Jubril Aminu, praised the winners of the Zik Prize, stressing that it signifies that for the current leaders to excel, they must learn from past Nigerian legendary leaders such as Dr. Nnamdi Azikiwe, Sir Ahmadu Bello, Sir Abubakar Tafawa Balewa and Chief Obafemi Awolowo.While presenting the GMD with the Zik Prize, former Secretary General of the Commonwealth, Chief Emeka Anyaoku, said they were celebrating Dr. Baru not only for his accomplishments, but for the good work he is doing in the NNPC and by extension, the nations oil and gas industry.Baru was also conferred with a Distinguished Service Award by the Ahmadu Bello University, ABU, Alumni Association.Baru was honoured with the award alongside other eminent alumni such as the Secretary to the Government of the Federation, Mr. Boss Mustapha, and the Governors of Nassarawa and Kebbi States, Alhaji Tanko Al-Makura and Alhaji Atiku Bagudu, at the ABU Alumni Associations 2018 Public Lecture and Award Dinner in Abuja.Speaking while receiving the award, Baru said the NNPC would continually explore the symbiotic relationship between it and the Ivory Tower, stating that such mutual relations would lead to proffering solutions to some of the societal challenges.He described the award as unique among the numerous others he had received during his career in public service because of the special place ABU occupies in his heart, while he dedicated the award to the Management and Staff of NNPC. Scores of members of the Islamic Movement in Nigeria were injured on Monday in Abuja during a clash with policemen at the Maitama area of the city.The Peoples Democratic Party has now demanded an immediate inquest into the violent clash between security forces and members of the Shiite movement.The party, in a statement by its National Publicity Secretary, Mr Kola Ologbondiyan, in Abuja said it was gravely worried over the handling of security in the nations capital and the near breakdown of law and order which it said resulted in a stampede and disruption of public and private business in the city centre.He said, The PDP has noted that the development is linked with protests over the continued refusal of the Federal Government to release the leader of the group, Sheik Ibrahim El-Zakzaky, despite being granted bail by courts of competent jurisdiction.The party further notes the continued show of force and infringements on the rights of citizens by this administration.Furthermore, the PDP and indeed all lovers of democracy across the country are deeply concerned by the continued erosion of democratic tenets by the All Progressives Congress administration, resulting in avoidable crisis in various parts of the country.The PDP sues for calm while demanding an immediate inquest into the cause of this clash.Falana flays attackHuman rights lawyer, Mr. Femi Falana (SAN), condemned the attack on Shiites.Falana was the detainees lawyer who on December 2, 2016, obtained the judgment of the Federal High Court in Abuja, ordering some members release from the custody of the State Security Service.The Federal Government has yet to comply with the judgment.Falana declared on Monday that the detainees must be released in compliance with the order of the Federal High Court if the government was genuinely desirous of stopping the protest.He said the violent attack in which some of the protesters were killed and injured by security forces is barbaric.He said the attack, which he described as totally unacceptable, was staged in a desperate bid to stop the Shiites from further exposing the lawlessness of the Federal Government.He maintained that the security forces had breached the fundamental rights of the protesters to life, freedom from torture, freedom of assembly and freedom of expression.He said, The violent attack unleashed on the Shiites this afternoon by a combined team of armed soldiers, police and state security service personnel is totally unacceptable in a democratic society.It is highly condemnable as it was uncalled for.In order to press for the release of their detained leader, Sheikh Ibraheem El-Zakzaky, and his wife, the Shiites have staged peaceful protests in Abuja since last week.This morning, security forces attacked the peaceful rally, killed some of the protesters and injured others in a barbaric attack in a desperate bid to stop the Shiites from further exposing the lawlessness of the Federal Government.In the process, the security forces breached the fundamental rights of the protesters to life, freedom from torture, freedom of assembly and freedom of expression.The Federal Government has not adduced any justifiable reason why it has continued to incarcerate the Elzakzakys in utter contempt of the Federal High Court.NIM slams BuhariThe Nigeria Intervention Movement also criticized the Buhari-led Federal Government for the harassment of Shiites in Abuja.The NIM, which is headed by a former President of the Nigerian Bar Association, Dr. Olisa Agbakoba (SAN), and a former presidential candidate, Dr. Abdujalil Tafawa-Balewa, said it would hold a rally in solidarity with them.The movement said this in a statement by its Deputy-Director General, Mallam Nasser Kura, adding that trigger-happy policemen must be arrested.The statement read in part, We hereby demand that indicted trigger happy police operatives involved in this unfortunate cruelty and criminality be immediately brought to book and withdrawn from further confronting the peaceful protest of the Shiites movement.The NIM also demanded an apology and compensation for Shiite members. The National Chairman of the Peoples Democratic Party (PDP), Prince Uche Secondus along with members of the PDP National Working Committ... The National Chairman of the Peoples Democratic Party (PDP), Prince Uche Secondus along with members of the PDP National Working Committee met with former Military President, General Ibrahim Babangida in Minna on Monday.The team arrived at the Minna airport with a chartered flight and were driven in a motorcade to the Uphill Residence of Babangida.The meeting was held behind closed doors in the presence of members of the Niger state working committee of the party led by the Chairman, Barrister Tanko Beji.One of the Party Chieftains who spoke to newsmen disclosed that Prince Secondus intimated the elder Statesman on the development and progress made in the party and its preparation for the Osun and Ekiti states governorship election.The Source said that General Babangida commended the reconciliation move by the National Working Committee in appeasing aggreieved members.Babangida was said to have rated the level of preparation of the Party at a very high level stating that at this rate, PDP would record success in the next general election.Other members on the National Working Committee present include the National Secretary, the National Publicity Secretary Kola Ologbodinyan, National Financial Secretary, Alhaji Abdullahi Maibasira and the National Woman Leader. Nigerian police fired tear gas for a second day Tuesday at protesters demanding the release of Shiite leader Ibrahim Zakzaky, who has been in jail without charge since December 2015.Scores of protesters were also arrested by armed police wearing bulletproof vests and gas masks during clashes in Abuja, the national capital.Weve come under serious attack today, said Deji Adeyanju of Concerned Nigerians, a civil society group involved in the demonstration.The more they attack the more (we) come out, Deji said. We want to defy tyranny and a dictatorship.The police did not immediately comment.Zakzaky, head of the Islamic Movement of Nigeria (IMN), has been in government custody since troops clashed with his followers in the northern city of Zaria in December 2015 despite court orders that he should be freed.More than 350 IMN followers were killed in the 2015 clashes. Zakzaky was shot and injured leaving him partly paralysed and blind in one eye.The Shiite leader has repeatedly been imprisoned for alleged incitement and subversion.IMN has been in conflict with the Nigerian government for years, seeking to foment an Iranian-style Islamic revolution in the countrys Sunni Muslim-majority north.Zakzakys followers on Monday had clashed with the police in Abujas Maitama area and police made at least 115 arrests. Tony Nehmi says he didn't have time to think before grabbing a ladder and smashing out the window where seven children and two adults were trapped during last week's dance studio fire in Edgewater. Tony Nehmi "They were trapped. They needed help," Nehmi, 55, said Tuesday. "They want to give me an award, which is nice. But me, I just reacted." On Wednesday, the Edgewater business owner and borough Police Officer James Dalton will receive a commendation during a ceremony at the Bergen County Freeholder's work session in Hackensack, county officials said. The commendation recognizes the men for bravery in saving the lives of two girls from a fire, officials said. Dalton and Nehmi helped rescue the girls the night of April 9 from the second floor of Performance Arts Academy on Old River Road. Dalton did not respond Tuesday to a request for comment. Officer James Dalton "The way they reacted was outstanding," said Edgewater Mayor Michael McPartland. "When we got there, those guys were doing that heroic stuff. I mean they broke windows to get in there. They got those girls out." McPartland said the borough intends to honor the two men with a ceremony of its own at a May 21 council meeting. As Nehmi and Dalton saved girls from a second-floor window, several other girls leapt from the balcony to escape roaring flames that ripped through their dance studio and other businesses. Nehmi owns Edgewater Wine & Spirits nearby. He was first on the scene and was soon joined by Dalton. None of the girls was seriously injured, though some suffered minor injuries in the harrowing escape, which was captured on video. Details about the fire, including where and how it began, were still not released on Tuesday, McPartland said, though he pointed out investigators have ruled out arson. "I expect those details to be released in a report soon," the mayor said. Anthony G. Attrino may be reached at tattrino@njadvancemedia.com. Follow him on Twitter @TonyAttrino. Find NJ.com on Facebook. Another struggling fast-casual restaurant chain has filed for bankruptcy. Massachusetts-based Bertucci's plans to sell its assets to Right Lane Dough Acquisitions, which plans to keep most of its locations open, it said in a statement Monday. Known for its brick-oven pizzas and other Italian dishes, Bertucci is about $119 million in debt, according to a federal court filing in Delaware. The company employs 4,200 workers, about three-quarters of whom are part-time. Bertucci's has New Jersey locations in Hazlet, the Sicklerville section of Gloucester Township, the Marlton section of Evehsam, Mount Laurel and Woodbridge. Bertucci's operates restaurants in 11 states along the East Coast. "With the rise in popularity of quick-casual restaurants and oversaturation of the restaurant industry as a whole, Bertucci's -- and the casual family dining sector in general -- has been affected by a prolonged negative operating trend in an ever increasing competitive price environment," according to court papers filed by the company. "Consumers have more options than ever for spending discretionary income, and their preferences continue to shift towards cheaper, faster alternatives." Levine Leichtman Capital Properties owns Bertucci's. Romano's Macaroni Grill and Logan's Roadhouse have also filed for bankruptcy in recent years. A Bertucci's spokesman didn't immediately return a phone call and an email from NJ Advance Media asking bout the fate of the chain's five restaurants in New Jersey. Jeff Goldman may be reached at jeff_goldman@njadvancemedia.com. Follow him on Twitter @JeffSGoldman. Find NJ.com on Facebook. A local news editor in Cherry Hill was arrested and charged Tuesday morning after Camden County officials conducted a search of his home and found child pornography, Camden County prosecutors said. Timothy Ronaldson, 35, of Cherry Hill was present during the search and arrested without incident, prosecutors said. Timothy Ronaldson (Police photo) Detectives found "numerous digital devices" that were sent to the Camden County Prosecutor's Office's high tech crimes forensic lab to be analyzed. Ronaldson is the editor-in-chief for Newspaper Media Group LLC, which publishes local newspapers in Burlington, Camden and Gloucester Counties. The prosecutor's office said after Ronaldson was arrested at his residence and processed at Cherry Hill Police Department, he was released from custody. Employees at Newspaper Media Group did not respond to requests for comment Tuesday afternoon. Paige Gross may be reached at pgross@njadvancemedia.com. Follow her on Twitter @By_paigegross. Find NJ.com on Facebook. When a high school maintenance worker allegedly grabbed a student by the shoulders, kissed her on the cheek and declared "you know I love you," the student says she was traumatized. The graduate of Vineland High School is now suing the maintenance worker and the district, arguing that no one did anything to protect her from his unwanted attention. The plaintiff, identified only by the initials J.L. in the Superior Court action, says the harassment began when she was 17. The employee, identified as J.C. in the suit, has worked for the district since 2006 and remains employed as of this week. Open public records advocate John Paff first reported on the suit. J.C. would wait by J.L.'s locker and occasionally followed her during the day, according to her suit. She was 18 when on March 23, 2016, J.C. allegedly "grabbed her by the shoulder area, pulled her in close, gave her a hug, then kissed her on the cheek," before professing his love for her in the A-wing hallway. The suit doesn't note if anyone witnessed the incident, if the student reported it or if any action was taken against the employee. The acts amounted to assault and battery and left her with "emotional trauma," J.L. says in her suit. J.C. "intended to inflict emotional distress or knew or should have know that emotional distress was a likely result of his conduct." The school district failed to properly train and supervise J.C., the suit charges. J.L. seeks damages from J.C. and the district. A spokeswoman said the school district had no comment. J.L.'s attorney could not be reached for comment Tuesday afternoon. Matt Gray may be reached at mgray@njadvancemedia.com. Follow him on Twitter @MattGraySJT. Find the South Jersey Times on Facebook. Have a tip? Tell us: nj.com/tips. Source: app.com.pk BEIJING, April 16 (APP):China on Monday rejected the speculations that Sri Lankan Port of Hambantota would be used as a military base in future. This is a cooperation project between China and Sri Lanka on the basis of equality and mutual benefit. It is beneficial to local economic and social development and both parties have strong intentions to ensure the smooth progress of the project, spokesperson of Chinese foreign ministry Hua Chunying said during her regular press briefing here. She said as regards individual speculations from a military or other strategic point of view, I think there is absolutely no need. The spokesperson said regarding the Chinese One Belt and One Road initiative and its progress, the Chinese side has emphasized many times on various occasions. As you mentioned that some people have different views, I think different people may have different conclusions about the same thing from different perspectives, she added. She said the conclusions may be different. One Belt and One Road is a sunshine initiative and it is hoped that relevant countries will continue to build the Belt and Road Initiative based on the principles of common development, sharing, sharing and sharing, and benefit the people. The Casino Reinvestment Development Authority has overlooked a major scandal in the Miss America Organization, approving state funds that will ensure the pageant will remain in Atlantic City through September. After CRDA officials repeatedly called for a review of its contract with the pageant in the wake of a major controversy over the former Miss America CEO's leaked emails last year, the authority on Tuesday approved $4.3 million in state subsidies for the pageant, the Philadelphia Inquirer reports. Former pageant CEO Sam Haskell's email correspondence with staffers, leaked to HuffPost, which published a report in December, referred to former Miss Americas with derogatory slang for female genitalia and contained negative comments about the physical appearance of a former Miss America, among other offenses. "The CRDA is encouraged by the Miss America Organization's description that the 2019 competition will be updated to include a focus on women's empowerment and other related projects," said Robert Mulcahy, chairman of the CRDA board of directors. Though local officials, including Atlantic City Mayor Frank Gilliam, had initially bristled at the notion of the pageant proceeding unchecked, they seemed to warm to the idea of supporting the pageant's efforts to rebrand under a female leadership largely composed of previous pageant winners. "They are trying to right the wrongs of the previous administration," Gilliam told the Press of Atlantic City in February. Under the pageant's original deal with the CRDA, reached in 2016, Miss America was supposed to receive $12.5 million over three years, with this being the final year of that agreement. (That deal was actually an increase from the previous deal that brought the pageant back to Atlantic City from Las Vegas in 2013, to the tune of $7.3 million over three years.) The decision, made on Tuesday, means the pageant will be able to stay in Atlantic City for the 2019 pageant in September. That event was the final year included in Miss America's three-year contract with the CRDA. But the validity of the pageant's contract was called into question after emails between former CEO Haskell, a pageant scriptwriter and Miss America executives revealed misogynistic language and disparaging comments about former Miss Americas. In response, former Miss Americas banded together to call for Haskell's resignation. He resigned in December alongside other Miss America executives, and the pageant board was reconstructed with former Miss America and former Fox News host Gretchen Carlson as chairwoman and other former titleholders in leadership positions. CRDA officials took issue with the content of Haskell's emails. Yet Dick Clark Productions, the pageant's partner, had also dropped the pageant after being presented with the content of emails from Haskell and Miss America executives. That was a problem because under the pageant's contract with the CRDA, Dick Clark Productions was supposed to work to promote Atlantic City during its programs. It turns out CRDA officials were also aware that Dick Clark Productions had severed ties with the pageant two months before the HuffPost report on the emails went public. This is also the pageant's last year of its three-year contract with ABC. In the wake of the scandal over Haskell's emails, the pageant faced losing not only its relationship with Dick Clark Productions -- which had made Miss America a presence at its shows, including the Billboard Awards -- but also potentially any future deals with the CRDA and ABC, meaning the competition could scramble to find a new host city and broadcast partner. But Carlson, the new head of the pageant, is banking on major changes to the pageant, with the aim of focusing on empowerment and leadership. She has been dropping hints that she intends to reform the nearly 100-year-old event, and possibly drop the infamous swimsuit competition in the process. In recent years, there have also been other changes within the pageant ranks. In 2016, Miss Missouri, Erin O'Flaherty became the first openly gay Miss America contestant. Just this week, Deidre Downs, Miss America 2005 -- the last Miss America to be crowned in Atlantic City before the pageant moved to Las Vegas for seven years -- made headlines when she married her girlfriend. In September, the reigning titleholder, Miss America 2018, Cara Mund, an alumna of Brown University bound for law school, became the first Miss North Dakota to win the pageant. Amy Kuperinsky may be reached at akuperinsky@njadvancemedia.com. Follow her on Twitter @AmyKup or on Facebook. JERSEY CITY A man was shot dead near a housing complex and county park on Monday night, authorities said. The shooting occurred near New Hope Lane and Peace Drive, the Hudson County Prosecutor's Office announced on social media. Prosecutor's Homicide Unit on the scene investigating apparent fatal shooting of a male on Peace Drive in Jersey City. pic.twitter.com/9BoiZZhnX1 ProsecutorSuarezHCPO (@HCPOProsecutor) April 17, 2018 Sources say the man was shot sometime before 8 p.m. The victim was brought to Jersey City Medical Center where he was pronounced dead. The man's death comes one day after city officials touted removing 100 guns from the streets. He is also the second person to be killed in two days. Anthony Bello, 77, was stabbed in the torso following an altercation in Pershing Field on Sunday morning. Results of an autopsy are pending and will determine if his death will be classified as a homicide. Additional information was not immediately available. JERSEY CITY -- The trial of a 60-year-old Jersey City man charged with strangling his brother in 2016 ended in a mistrial today after jurors told the judge for a third time that they were deadlocked. Gangaram Maharaj, faced 30 years to life in prison if convicted of murdering Rajendra Maharaj, 62, inside the victim's Journal Square apartment in February 2016. The trial end on the fourth day of jury deliberation. Jurors passed notes to Hudson County Superior Court Judge Patrick Arre twice yesterday saying they felt they were deadlocked and each time the judge sent them back to the jury room to continue deliberating. Today, the jury listened to the replay of hours of testimony given by a DNA exert before again passing a note to Arre at about 2:30 p.m. saying they were hung. This time Arre dismissed the jury. Hudson County Prosecutor's Office spokesman Ray Worrall said his office had no comment at this time on whether Maharaj would be retried. In her opening statement, Hudson County Assistant Prosecutor Najma Rana noted that DNA found under Rajendra Maharaj's fingernails matched that of his brother. In response, the defendant's attorney, Gerald Miller, said it is not uncommon for two people who live together to have each other's DNA on their person. He said it was even more likely in this case, because his client would often carry his brother after he passed out, apparently from drinking. During the trial, the forensic pathologist who performed the autopsy on Rajendra Maharaj said he had numerous health conditions that could have proven fatal, including cardiovascular disease, but he stuck by his conclusion the man was strangled. Rajendra Maharaj was found dead in the third-floor apartment at 72 Van Reipen Ave. on Feb. 27, 2016 at about 10:30 a.m. by EMTs responding to a 911 call place by the sister of the two brothers. Posted by The Jersey Journal on Monday, April 16, 2018 With 21 days to go before Bayonne's municipal election, The Jersey Journal welcomed Mayor Jimmy Davis to its office Monday night for an editorial board meeting that was livestreamed on the paper's . Davis, who is vying for his second term in office, will face Jason O'Donnell, a former assemblyman, and Dr. Mitchell Brown, a local doctor/lawyer, in the May 8 election. Davis talked about his record as mayor, fielding questions from The Jersey Journal editorial board, including Bayonne reporter Corey McDonald and political columnist Augie Torres, as well as audience questions on Facebook. Click on the video above to watch the interview. Brown will participate in a similar interview Wednesday at 6 p.m. Jurors in the trial of a 60-year-old Jersey City man charged with strangling his brother in 2016 told the judge for a second time yesterday that they were deadlocked, but the judge instructed the jury to continue deliberating. The third day of jury deliberation came and went without a verdict yesterday in the trial of Gangaram Maharaj, who faces 30 years to life in prison if convicted of murdering Rajendra Maharaj, 62, inside the victim's Journal Square apartment in February 2016. Later in the afternoon, the jury passed a note to the judge saying they wanted to hear a playback of the more than two hours of testimony given by the medical examiner. Jurors looked tired when they were called to the jury box and Hudson County Superior Court Judge Patrick Arre told them playback of the testimony would start at 9 a.m. today. Arre dismissed for the day just after 4 p.m. In her opening statement, Hudson County Assistant Prosecutor Najma Rana noted that DNA found under Rajendra Maharaj's fingernails matched that of his brother. In response, the defendant's attorney, Gerald Miller, said it is not uncommon for two people who live together to have each other's DNA on their person. He said it was even more likely in this case, because his client would often carry his brother after he passed out, apparently from drinking. During the trial, the forensic pathologist who performed the autopsy on Rajendra Maharaj said he had numerous health conditions that could have proven fatal, including cardiovascular disease, but he stuck by his conclusion the man was strangled. Rajendra Maharaj was found dead in the third-floor apartment at 72 Van Reipen Ave. on Feb. 27, 2016 at about 10:30 a.m. by EMTs responding to a 911 call placed by the sister of the two brothers. Just two days after New Jersey was basking in sunshine and summer-like heat, the state was drenched by a fierce April storm that dumped a month's worth of rain on some towns and generated wind gusts as strong as 48 mph. The storm, which swept in from the south and west, dropped 3 to 4 inches of rain over a wide swath of New Jersey, causing flash flooding that trapped drivers in door-high water and power outages that affected thousands of homes and businesses. The heaviest rain fell in Bergen, Hudson and Union counties, where several weather monitoring stations measured more than 4 inches of rain before the storm clouds dissipated in the afternoon, according to data from the National Weather Service and the New Jersey Weather & Climate Network at Rutgers University. Most areas of New Jersey normally get 3 to 4 inches of rain and melted snow during the entire month of April -- not all in one day. Thunderstorms that rolled across the state in the morning packed wind gusts of tropical storm strength in at least eight counties. Topping the list were Berkeley Township, Mullica Township, Sea Girt and Sea Isle City, where gusts almost reached 50 mph. Tropical storms pack sustained winds of 39 mph to 73 mph. The Harrison Weather Center said a wind sensor at the south lifeguard station on the Seaside Heights boardwalk measured 48 mph yesterday morning. In Hudson, flooding was reported throughout Hoboken, Jersey City, Bayonne and North Bergen, keeping tow operators busy. Places like 18th Street and Marin Boulevard on the Jersey City-Hoboken border were hit especially hard. Weehawken registered 3inches of rain, while Jersey City totaled 2.5 inches. In Hoboken, four boats came loose from their moorings and two of them are believed to have sunk. A small boat was found capsized yesterday morning near a sail board that had been thrown to the rocks on the edge of Weehawken Cove. Fire Department officials said they tethered that boat. According to police radio transmissions, there were multiple occupied vehicles stuck in flood waters at Kellogg Street and Route 440. Bayonne OEM officials said that the city experienced flooding at underpasses and other areas that are usually prone to flooding during heavy rain. The offices at Hudson County Plaza on Cornelison Avenue were evacuated temporarily yesterday morning because of an electrical fire in an elevator shaft. Thousands of homes and businesses across the state were without power yesterday and a lightning strike damaged the roof of an historic hotel in Bay Head. A lightning strike is also suspected as the cause of a blaze that hit two homes at the Jersey Shore. Jersey Shore towns reported flooding as high tide arrived shortly after 9 a.m. At least six drivers were rescued from cars on flooded streets in the Ironbound section of Newark, the National Weather Service reported. Other motorists were rescued in other towns, including a man trapped under a bridge near the Passaic River in Paterson. As the storm system moved north and east, a bolt of lightning struck a man near a construction site in Bay Shore, N.Y., the weather service said. The man was reportedly alert and talking after being struck. The Edison police officer who allegedly slashed his former girlfriend's tires while in uniform last month is now facing two more charges after an internal affairs investigation found he'd been using police records to stalk his ex for months. Paul Pappas, a 15-year veteran of the force, was charged Tuesday with computer theft/criminal activity in the second degree and stalking in the fourth degree, the Middlesex County Prosecutor Andrew Carey said in a release. Along with the tire slashing incident in New Brunswick-- in which Pappas faces a criminal mischief charge, a disorderly person's offense -- the prosecutor's office said the Edison officer was making unauthorized requests into New Jersey Criminal Justice Information System to stalk his ex over the last six months. Pappas, 43, who has since been suspended without pay, turned himself in on Tuesday. He is scheduled to appear in court on May 4. Pappas was hired by the department in 2003 and has an annual salary of $130,240, according to state pension records. An investigation by NJ Advance Media in 2012 revealed the officer had multiple complaints of assault, excessive force lawsuits and domestic dispute incidents. Craig McCarthy may be reached at 732-372-2078 or at CMcCarthy@njadvancemedia.com. Follow him on Twitter @createcraig and on Facebook here. Find NJ.com on Facebook. Have a tip? Tell us. nj.com/tips A member of the MS-13 gang admitted to arranging to ship drugs to a New Jersey office while he was serving time in a California prison, federal officials said Tuesday. Luis Calderon, a Los Angeles gang member known as "Lagrima," pleaded guilty in Newark federal court to conspiracy to distribute and to possession with the intent to distribute methamphetamine, heroin and cocaine, U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement officials said. Calderon, 32, had access to multiple contraband cell phones while he was imprisoned in Calipatria State Prison in Imperial County, California, federal officials said. He used the phones to contact other gang members to arrange the drug shipment in 2015. Law enforcement officials said they recorded phone conversations between Calderon and MS-13 gang members in New Jersey as they arranged a drug shipment to Middlesex County to distribute methamphetamine, heroin and cocaine in the area. Calderon gave the gang member the names and a tracking number that would appear on a package sent to a business center in Edison, N.J., investigators said. A box of Little Debbie Swiss Rolls arrived at the location on Nov. 4, 2015, with 95.5 grams of heroin, 54.7 grams of cocaine, and 52.4 grams of methamphetamine hidden inside, according to the indictment. Federal officials intercepted the package. Calderon allegedly told the gang members to pay him $9,000 for the drugs, then keep the proceeds they made selling them in New Jersey. Calderon, a Los Angeles resident, faces a minimum of 10 years in prison and a maximum of life in prison in addition to a $10 million fine, prosecutors said. His sentencing is scheduled for June 25, 2018. The role of any nation's navy is to project force beyond the nation's shores for various reasons, may it be to protect sea lanes from miscreants like pirates, to ferry military equipment and personnel, or to safeguard national interests beyond the shores of the nation. If one takes a peak at history, one is sure to notice that most countries which have prospered have had one thing in common: strong navies. The ancient Persian Empire had a very strong navy, the ancient Greeks prospered because of a strong navy and ancient China during the 15th century could easily be tagged as the strongest navy in the world led by Admiral Zheng He. This is the reason why during the time of the Ming dynasty, the Chinese economy grew in leaps and bounds. The ship building techniques employed by China at the time were far superior to all others. The British Empire expanded to such lengths that it was said at the time that "the sun never sets on the British Empire." This was possible only because the Royal Navy was the strongest at the time. Chinese President Xi Jinping, also general secretary of the Communist Party of China Central Committee and chairman of the Central Military Commission, reviews the Chinese People's Liberation Army (PLA) Navy in the South China Sea on April 12, 2018.[Photo: Xinhua] President Xi Jinping has set China on a course for achieving the "Chinese Dream," thus making it paramount for China to have a strong and modern navy. This is because having a strong navy doesn't simply serve the purpose of protecting ones shores, but also to protect one's interests beyond those shores. 90% of the world's trade is carried by sea and it is, by far, the most cost-effective way to move goods and raw materials around the world. This is why President Xi reviewed the People's Liberation Army's Navy at South China Sea on April 12, 2018. The Naval review made by President Xi was a spectacular show of Chinese naval prowess. The President showed up in military gear which suited the occasion and complemented the high morale of naval crews. The President was on board the CNS Changsha destroyer. The remarkable parade involved more than 10,000 Navy personnel, 48 ships and submarines, and the CNS Liaoning aircraft carrier. The vessels were mainly combat ships such as Type 052D guided missile destroyers, Type 054A guided-missile frigates and Type 056 corvettes. Support vessels like the Type 901 supply ship and Type 920 hospital ship also participated in the drills, which were the largest of their kind in China since 1949. President Xi has been endeavoring to strengthen, reform, and modernize the PLA ever since taking office. As part of these endeavors under his leadership, three new regulations have been issued governing the military's interior order, code of conduct and military formation, respectively. President Xi made an important speech on board the CNS Changsha and said, "A mighty navy is an important pillar of the great rejuvenation of the Chinese nation," and he said the Party and the Chinese people are proud of the PLA Navy (PLAN). President Xi ordered that "the Navy should continue to focus on combat training and remain on high alert to safeguard national interests and make more contributions to the peace and stability of the region and the world." Following the review, the PLA Navy is scheduled for a live fire exercise in the Taiwan Strait off the coast of Fujian province, on April 18, 2018 between 8 a.m. and midnight. China's navy has been taking on responsible roles around the world in terms of keeping maritime trade lanes safe from piracy. Such gestures made by the navy have been welcomed by the international community. Just recently the 29th fleet from the Chinese People's Liberation Army (PLA) Navy left Zhoushan for the Gulf of Aden and waters off Somalia to escort civilian ships. The navy started participating in anti-piracy missions in 2008 and has escorted 6,400 Chinese and foreign vessels and warned away more than 3,000 suspected pirate ships under the mandate of the UN Security Council. The Naval review parade serves as a motivating force for not only the military but also for the entire nation. The important aspect of this review parade was that more than half of the ships and submarines involved in the parade had been delivered to the Navy since late 2012, when the 18th CPC National Congress was held, according to the military. The Navy has commissioned around 100 ships, mostly large combat vessels, and an unknown number of submarines since then, augmenting the notion that the PLA Navy is a modern force and shows that President Xi's orders prescribing that the Navy should "race against time and make all-out efforts to become a world-class force" are not merely words but are translating in the "Chinese Dream" sooner than later. (Dr. Shafei Moiz Hali studied at George Mason University, Virginia, USA and specialized in the field of International Commerce and Policy. He did his PhD from Huazhong University of Science and Technology, Wuhan, China specializing in Chinese foreign policy focusing on the Belt and Road Initiative and energy issues. Currently Dr. Hali is working as an Assistant Professor with the Faculty of Contemporary Studies, National Defence University (NDU) Islamabad, Pakistan.) A woman was killed Tuesday when an engine aboard a Southwest Airlines plane came apart mid-air, hurtling shrapnel that ripped a hole in the side of the aircraft, officials and passengers said. The dead woman was identified as Jennifer Riordan, a Wells Fargo bank vice president and mother of two from Albuquerque, New Mexico. Passengers described chaos aboard the Boeing 737, which had taken off from LaGuardia Airport and was headed to Dallas when the incident occurred while the aircraft was traveling at about 32,000 feet. Somewhere in the early stages of the flight, one of the plane's engines "exploded" and witnesses reported holding onto a woman to prevent her from being sucked out of the fuselage. LATEST: Photos show window blown out on Southwest jet that made emergency landing in Philadelphia. https://t.co/hpUZKZMpzL pic.twitter.com/btAeiYr6d4 ABC News (@ABC) April 17, 2018 The plane, which had 149 people aboard, made an emergency landing in Philadelphia, and emergency crews raced to the woman and used a defibrillator in an attempt to save her life, passengers said. Todd Baur told NBC10 that his daughter-in-law was texting him describing the victim as being "drawn out" of the plane before being "pulled back in by other passengers." "Passengers around her jumped into action, we were told, and secured her back into the airplane," Baur said. "It is our understanding that the passengers on board the aircraft did some pretty amazing things with some unfortunate circumstances," said Philadelphia Fire commissioner Adam Thiel. The NTSB has preliminarily determined the cause of the incident as "engine failure," NTSB Chairman Robert Sumwalt said. It was the first passenger fatality in an accident involving a U.S. airline since 2009. Passenger Marty Martinez shared photos on Facebook that shows a giant hole torn in one of the engines and passengers with oxygen masks covering their faces. Several photos show a window that Martinez said was blown open. Something is wrong with our plane! It appears we are going down! Emergency landing!! Southwest flight from NYC to Dallas!! Posted by Marty Martinez on Tuesday, April 17, 2018 Seven other people were treated at the scene for minor injuries, according to the Philadelphia Fire Department. Video from 6abc.com showed flight 1380 parked in a remote part of a runway with liquid trailing the plane. Multiple fire trucks and other emergency vehicles were also on the scene. Passenger Amanda Bourman of New York she was seated near the back of the plane and was asleep when she heard a loud noise. She said the plane was fairly quiet because everyone was wearing an oxygen mask, while some passengers were in tears and others shouted words of encouragement. A Southwest Airlines plane sits on the runway at the Philadelphia International Airport after it made an emergency landing in Philadelphia, on Tuesday, April 17, 2018. Passengers commended one of the pilots for her cool-headed handling of the emergency. She walked through the aisle and talked with passengers to make sure they were OK after the plane touched down. "She has nerves of steel. That lady, I applaud her," said Alfred Tumlinson, of Corpus Christi, Texas. "I'm going to send her a Christmas card, I'm going to tell you that, with a gift certificate for getting me on the ground. She was awesome." The flight left LaGuardia at 10:27 a.m. and touched down in Philadelphia at 11:23 a.m. It was scheduled to arrive at Love Field in Dallas at 1:45 p.m. Central Daylight Time. Tracking data from FlightAware.com shows the flight was traveling west over Pennsylvania when it abruptly turned toward Philadelphia. A ground stop issued at the airport was lifted at 1:45 p.m. If this ends up being the opening scene to Final Destination 13, I'm going to be really salty. #Flight1380 pic.twitter.com/feK7cPZS70 Matt Tranchin (@mtranchin) April 17, 2018 Southwest's Chairman and CEO Gary Kelly called the incident "a tragic loss," and thanked the flight crew for acting quickly to safely land the aircraft. "The safety of our customers and our crew is always our uncompromising priority," Kelly said in a video statement. Southwest Airlines confirms accident; our Hearts are with those affected: https://t.co/COJ6wR1GFe pic.twitter.com/Gr1xEN8nhc Southwest Airlines (@SouthwestAir) April 17, 2018 The engine failure was reminiscent of a similar event on a Southwest Boeing 737-700 jet in August 2016 as it flew from New Orleans to Orlando, Florida. Shrapnel from the engine left a 5-by-16-inch hole just above the wing, and the oxygen masks dropped. The plane landed safely in Pensacola, Florida. NTSB investigators said one of the engine's fan blades broke off during the flight, apparently because of metal fatigue. Before Tuesday, Southwest had never had an accident-related fatality of a passenger, although a boy died in 2006 when a Southwest jet skidded off a runway at Chicago's Midway Airport, crashed through a fence and collided with the boy's family's car. The last time a passenger died in an accident on a U.S. airliner was 2009, when 49 people on board and one on the ground were killed in the crash of a Continental Express plane near Buffalo, New York. Southwest has about 700 planes, all of them 737s, including more than 500 737-700s like the one involved in Tuesday's accident. It is the world's largest operator of the 737. The 737 is the best-selling jetliner in the world and has a good safety record. The Associated Press contributed to this report. Jeff Goldman may be reached at jeff_goldman@njadvancemedia.com. Follow him on Twitter @JeffSGoldman. Find NJ.com on Facebook. What should have been a routine 2 hour and 50 minute trip from Newark to Palm Beach, Florida on Monday turned into a nearly 10-and-a-half hour odyssey when a United Airlines flight had to make an emergency landing at Dover Air Force base in Delaware. Scheduled to take off from Newark Liberty at 4:57 p.m, flight 1559 didn't depart until 6:16 p.m., according to United. A few minutes into the flight, pilots diverted the Boeing 737 to the Delaware air force base, where it touched down at 7:35 p.m. after experiencing a mechanical problem, the Federal Aviation Administration said. Passengers were grounded there for nearly six hours until a replacement aircraft took off from Delaware for Florida shortly after 1 a.m. The journey finally reached its conclusion when the plane landed at 3:21 a.m. Before the plane landed in Delaware, one of the plane's pilots tells the Dover control tower that there are 94 people aboard and that they have enough fuel to last for about three more hours, according to https://www.liveatc.net/. In a statement, United didn't say what the mechanical issue was or why the plane landed at a military base instead of at Philadelphia International Airport or Baltimore-Washington International Airport. "We apologize to our customers and have provided a goodwill gesture," the statement read in part. Jeff Goldman may be reached at jeff_goldman@njadvancemedia.com. Follow him on Twitter @JeffSGoldman. Find NJ.com on Facebook. Detectives are looking for a man they believe set two fires at a home in Toms River earlier this month, and could have killed someone. Kenneth Lyons, 36, of Ocean, is wanted on charges of aggravated arson and attempted murder for setting fire to a home on Castro Grove Road on April 7. Kenneth Lyons Police who responded to the home around 1:30 a.m. noted "suspicious circumstances" around the fire and investigated before identifying Lyons as setting both fires, according to the Ocean County Prosecutor's Office. Lyons knows the owner of the home. Lyons is 5 feet 9 inches tall and weighs about 200 pounds. Lyons could not be found at his last known addresses on file with police. Now, authorities are asking anyone who knows his whereabouts to contact their local police, Toms River Detective Andrew Chencharik at 732-349-0150, ext. 1338 or email the U.S. Marshals Service at usms.wanted@usdoj.gov. Joe Brandt can be reached at jbrandt@njadvancemedia.com. Follow him on Twitter @JBrandt_NJ. Find NJ.com on Facebook. Have a tip? Tell us. nj.com/tips By Blair Bess (Until late last week,) American response to the catastrophic humanitarian crisis Syria has been experiencing for the last seven years has been tepid at best. With Syrian President Bashar al-Assad's most recent chemical attack on the Syrian people, inaction was no longer an option. While President Trump would like to lay blame for the ongoing atrocities being committed by the Assad government at former President Barack Obama's doorstep, it's time he recognizes that the failings of his predecessor are no excuse for his own inability to act decisively. The president has tweeted that he will strongly respond to Assad's latest act of aggression. His actions may be short-term at best. If his intention is merely to send a half-baked message by way of a showy, but ineffective use of "nice, new, smart" missiles, it's doubtful that the outcome will be any more successful than last year's Tomahawk missile strike. President Trump must cast aside his personal fears and frustrations and take on Vladimir Putin directly. More than the Iranians, who have their own vested interests in propping Assad up, Vladimir Putin is responsible for the regime's maintaining control of Syria. His ongoing support is a destabilizing factor in the region. Putin must be made to understand that Assad's control of the Syrian government will no longer be tolerated. His ongoing denials that Assad used chemical warfare against his own people are outright lies. We expect those from Putin. Then again, the Russian president also denies using chemical warfare and murder against his own foes. The ongoing investigation of his attempted murder of a former Russian spy on British soil indicates that, too, is a lie. Ultimately, it is Putin's responsibility to convince Assad to peacefully vacate his office and leave the country. If he cannot, he and the Russian government need to be held accountable. Ending Assad's reign of terror is in everyone's best interests. If Mr. Putin refuses to listen to reason and is unwilling to aid in extricating the Syrian president and stabilizing the country, President Trump could exercise other options. Isolating Syria by way of a naval blockade would be a highly effective, yet relatively benign option. Rendering all Syrian air facilities - military and commercial - totally unusable is one that is not so benign. Pre-emptive strikes on suspected weapons caches and military facilities could be launched. Another destabilizing move might include destruction of Assad's means of command and control of Syrian forces. Should Putin ignore the world community and maintain his stubborn, unreasonable position, further isolation and more potent economic sanctions against Russia and its oligarchs must be put into place. A more hardened economic stand against Iran must be taken as well, as Syria is also acting as the Iranian government's proxy in the region. Lastly, the prospect of direct military action against President Assad and his cronies should not be ruled out, although employing such tactics would require international and congressional support. The world community needs to determine which is more tolerable: a Syrian leader willing to commit acts of genocide against his own countrymen or an aggressive move toward regime change for the greater good of the Syrian people and the Middle East. While these measures may sound draconian, they are far less so than those employed by Bashar al-Assad in his mission to quash any dissent amongst those Syrians setting out to establish a more democratic society. Personal preservation of one's regime is no excuse for gassing innocent children among others. Assad is an increasingly dangerous man. With the backing of Iran and Putin as his corner man, he can be instrumental in redrawing the map of the entire Middle East. And not in a good way. His Arab neighbors, as well as the Israeli government, both know this. And they are growing increasingly uneasy with the alliances Assad has forged with like-minded rulers. The brazen actions of Iran and Russia at the behest of Bashar al-Assad will inevitably cause pain for the leadership and citizens of nations throughout the region and beyond. They cannot be allowed to continue. Regime change in Syria is inevitable. As President Trump has said, no option should be off the table. Missile strikes, however, are just one part of a larger equation. Blair Bess is a Los Angeles-based television writer, producer, and columnist. He edits the online blog Soaggragated.com, and can be reached at BBess.soaggragated@gmail.com. Send letters and Op-Eds to The Jersey Journal at jjletters@jjournal.com. (Above: President Trump at the inauguration where he proclaimed the "America-first" foreign policy he is now abandoning in favor of the liberal interventionism favored by Hillary Clinton.) There is no truth to the rumor that, after watching an episode of "Gilligan's Island" on TV, President Trump ordered a search party sent out for the passengers and crew of the S.S. Minnow. But he does tend to get carried away with what he sees on television. We saw that last week when he launched a missile strike on the basis of what he admitted was his emotional reaction to a video. In doing so, he went against the advice of a prominent Republican who in the early days of the Syrian civil war was saying things like "Don't attack Syria - an attack that will bring nothing but trouble for the U.S. Focus on making our country strong and great again." (Here's a long list of Trump's tweets arguing against intervention in the Mideast.) That Republican was Trump. He got a lot of votes from conservatives who believed his oft-stated promise that the U.S. would no longer be "the policeman of the world" in a Trump administration. Meanwhile in a recent interview, the Democrat he defeated, Hillary Clinton, was calling for the U.S. to attack Syrian air bases, a move that would risk war with Russia Clinton's hawkishness have cost her the 2016 election. Enough Democrats defected to the Green Party's Jill Stein in four key states to put Trump over the top. But once safely ensconced in the Oval Office, Trump forgot his foreign-policy promises and got lost in the swamp of Washington politics. That brought us to the brink of disaster, said one swamp exile with whom I like to discuss Mideast policy. Pat Lang was cast out of the swamp for the sin of actually knowing about the Mideast, where he spent 20 years in military intelligence. "The swamp swallowed Trump," Lang said. "He came down here to deal with this collection of characters who inhabit Washington, and they successfully seduced him." Perhaps the most odious creature in that swamp is "that F-ing idiot" John Bolton, as Lang calls him, based on many encounters. Bolton's views are the polar opposite of everything Trump was saying in his campaign. He was a ringleader of the group of so-called "neo" conservatives who led President George W. Bush into the Iraq War, which Trump termed "a big fat mistake" in a 2016 debate. Yet Trump recently named Bolton as his national security adviser. That brought us to the brink of disaster last week, said Lang, as Bolton fought with Defense Secretary James Mattis over action in Syria. "Bolton wanted to have a much bigger strike, one that would seek to cripple the Syrian army," he said. "Mattis resisted that successfully." What we got instead was a pinprick attack. Lang is one of the few Americans who have actually been to the three sites that were struck. "When I was in Syria I had the defense attache drive me around to actually see these places," Lang said. "They picked facilities where the chances you're gonna kill people was very small." So we dodged that bullet - perhaps literally. The question is what Trump does next. Perhaps his "mission accomplished" proclamation means he'll be going ahead with his stated intention to pull U.S. troops out of Syria. Or perhaps he'll go along with the Bolton's stated goal of regime change in Syria. Then it's on to Iran. Or so Bolton hopes. Back in 2004 when it still looked like the Iraq War was going well, Bolton was quoted as telling Israeli officials that after Iraq, "it will be necessary to deal with threats from Syria, Iran and North Korea." Of those three, only North Korea represents any threat to the U.S. Syria and Iran are regional powers with regional goals. "The idea that Syria is somehow a threat to the interests of the United States is incomprehensible to me," said Lang. Also incomprehensible to him is how Trump could trust an "armchair general" like Bolton who passed up his own chance to fight a war. "To avoid service in the Vietnam War, he joined the Maryland Army National Guard and hid out for four years," said Lang, who was a Green Beret in that war. Why did Trump choose a national security adviser who opposes everything he claims to support? Lang has a theory: He saw Bolton on TV. "I think he's seeking to orchestrate things so he's the star in a reality show called 'The Greatest President,'" he said. Here's my suggestion for Trump's TV viewing: Watch reruns of those debates in which you criticized everything Bolton stands for. Then tell him, "You're fired." Now that would be some reality TV. BELOW: You and I have no way of knowing what actually happened behind rebel lines in Syria. But here is a video that Trump might want to watch. He should have waited for international inspectors reported back on this. And then he should have left it up to other countries to sort it out, as he promised conservatives back when he was campaigning. Also check this clip from Tucker Carlson, one of the only Fox News talkers who is a conservative. And then there's this analysis from one of the professionals on Lang's blog. ALSO, check this account from a reporter who visited the scene. Then ask yourself why the U.S. is intervening on the side of the terrorists. WASHINGTON -- U.S. Sen. Robert Menendez is threatening to block President Donald Trump's nominee to run the Federal Transit Administration, claiming Thelma Drake changed her answers about the Gateway Tunnel project after meeting with him. Menendez, D-N.J., said the answers Drake, a former U.S. representative from Virginia, gave Tuesday during a Senate Banking Committee confirmation hearing were different than her responses to the same questions when they met in his office. "I think that confirmation is going to be in trouble, to be honest with you, unless I can get better answers," Menendez told Drake at the hearing. "I personally cannot vote for you if this is going to be your set of answers, nor will I allow on the floor for you to proceed without some clarity." Under Senate rules, any individual lawmaker can put a hold a nominee, preventing a floor vote. Menendez said in a later interview that he will decide what to do depending on her responses to further questions. "I'm going to submit a whole host of questions for the record and and I'm going to decide how I'm going to act appropriately in the best interests of New Jersey," he said. Menendez helped secure at least $540 million for Gateway in the $1.3 trillion spending bill for the fiscal year ending Sept. 30 over the objections of President Donald Trump, who at one point threatened to shut down the government rather than fund the project. Trump's opposition was at odds with his earlier position, when he appeared to support Gateway last September following a meeting with New Jersey and New York officials. The administration has claimed that Gateway is a local, not national, project, despite the fact that the U.S. economy would lose $100 million a day if the Northeast Corridor rail line from Washington to Boston was cut off. In addition, Trump administration officials rejected claims that New Jersey and New York are covering half the cost since some of the local share would come from federal loan programs that the states would have to pay back. The Federal Transit Administration earlier downgraded Gateway's ratings, making it more difficult for the project to obtain federal funding under the Capital Investment Grants or "New Starts" program that Trump has tried to eliminate. Menendez told NJ Advance Media that the rating was lowered for political reasons. "If you look at the previous ratings, they were rated high," Menendez said. "Nothing's changed except an administration and now they're rated low. "Something is desperately wrong with that when it's been clearly stated that New York, New Jersey and the Port Authority are putting hard dollars into the project, not just using federal loans to put their share up, even though a federal loan is something you've got to pay back." He asked that question of Drake at the hearing. "How would you handle a situation in which you or the staff at the FTA were instructed by anyone in the Department of Transportation or the White House to reject or downgrade a New Starts application for political reasons?" Menendez said. "My answer is all projects will be treated fairly and in compliance with law," Drake responded. "The answer should be, 'No, I will not reject or downgrade a project because you politically want it so,'" Menendez said. "The fact that you cannot make that simple statement is alarming to me." Menendez said Drake backtracked on whether she thought Gateway was a national rather than regional project. "I think it is a very significant project," she said. "This is a different answer than you gave me in my office," Menendez said. "In my office, you told me that, 'Yes, this was a nationally important project,' so something has happened between your honest -- I assume your honest answer to me in my office and the answer I'm getting here now." "Evidently, you've been instructed to say something different," he said. Jonathan D. Salant may be reached at jsalant@njadvancemedia.com. Follow him on Twitter @JDSalant or on Facebook. Find NJ.com Politics on Facebook. A Pohatcong Township man faces 6 years behind bars for giving a teen girl pot and alcohol, and then groping her. Gary P. Taborelli, of the first block of River Road, went to trial in December, and a Warren County jury found him guilty of criminal sexual contact and two counts of child endangerment. On Thursday, Taborelli was sentenced to six years each for the child endangerment counts and 18 months for the sexual contact; the counts will run concurrently, or at the same time. The prison term will be followed by parole for the rest of his life. Once he is released, Taborelli will have to register as a sex offender under Megan's Law and cannot have any contact with the victim. The 44-year-old Taborelli was known to the victim, who was 16 at the time. On Sept. 12, 2015, prosecutors said he smoked a small amount of marijuana with the girl and gave her alcohol, at some point fondling the girl's breasts, leg and buttocks. Following the conviction, Judge Robert Reed ordered Taborelli's $75,000 bail revoked until his sentencing. Sarah Cassi may be reached at scassi@lehighvalleylive.com. Follow her on Twitter @SarahCassi. Find lehighvalleylive.com on Facebook. Source: The Manila Times IN his epic speech at the Communist Party congress last October, XiJinping, party leader and state president, announced the initiation of a new stage in strengthening and revitalizing the armed forces. By 2035, he promised, the modernization of our national defense and our forces is basically completed and by the mid-21st century our peoples armed forces have been fully transformed into world-class forces. Last week, China displayed the impressive progress it has made in modernizing its naval forces in military exercises in the South China Sea off Hainan that it called a sea parade, presided over by Xi himself. More than 10,000 naval officers took part in the display of power, which featured 76 fighter jets as well as 48 surface ships and submarines, including Chinas first aircraft carrier. One indication of the rapidity of Chinas progress is the disclosure by state media that of the 48 vessels involved, more than half were commissioned after Xi assumed power in 2012. And the pace is not going to slacken. Wang Xiaoxuan, a Beijing-based military expert, wrote in the China Daily that the problem of a relatively small aggregate tonnage of naval vessels must be resolved, in order to increase the navys capability to confront naval hegemonies in the world. To be a world-class navy, the Chinese navy should catch up with the worlds most advanced navies, Wang said. Another commentator, defense industry analyst Wu Peixin, was quoted as saying that the Chinese navy had been rapidly catching up with the US navy in terms of its technological and operational capabilities. Ten years ago, he said, it would appear fantastic if someone told you that we would soon begin commissioning a domestically built carrier and several of the worlds mightiest destroyers. Xi was very much involved, giving the order for the drills to start and watching the activities from the Changsha, a guided missile destroyer. The sea parade was the biggest naval exercise in Chinese history. Such exercises are not simply meant to keep soldiers on their toes. Their purpose is to hone Chinas military skills while projecting an image of power. One goal is to strike fear into the hearts of potential adversaries. The sudden announcement April 12 of live-fire drills six days later in the Taiwan Strait was an undisguised attempt to intimidate the government and people of the island. In 2005, Beijing passed the Anti-Secession Law, granting itself the right to use force to reunite Taiwan with mainland China. Over a decade later, with Chinas economic and military rise, there are increasingly loud voices in Beijing calling for action sooner rather than later. The primary deterrent is the possibility of military intervention by the United States. Last month, the US Congress enacted the Taiwan Travel Act, which was signed by President Donald Trump. The legislation, in a departure from previous policy, encourages travel between the US and Taiwan by officials at all levels. Previously, Washington did not allow top Taiwan officials to visit and barred its own top officials from traveling to the island. Early this month, it was disclosed that the US had agreed to allow American defense contractors to help Taiwan build submarines. These two developments indicate strong American support for Taiwan. In the current environment it is highly unlikely that America will accept a Chinese military takeover of Taiwan. However, Xi has talked openly about the need for reunification, saying that true national rejuvenation must include Taiwans return to the fold. Clearly, he envisages a time when the US will be unable to oppose a forcible takeover of Taiwan. China insists that its armed forces will only be used for defensive purposes but, since China claims Taiwan as its territory, it will justify an attack as defending Chinese sovereignty. Where the South China Sea is concerned, China is warning America that freedom-of-navigation operations are counter-productive. The PeoplesDaily said in a January commentary that if the US keeps stirring up trouble and creating tension in the South China Sea, China will be forced to come to the conclusion that it is indeed necessary to strengthen and speed up the building of its capabilities in the South China Sea so as to safeguard regional peace and stability. Actually, such a buildup started years ago. China is attempting to create a belief both among its own citizens and abroad that its transformation into a first-class military force is inexorable and its advance toward goals it has set in the South China Sea and the East China Sea is unstoppable. Source: scmp.com China has ordered its troops to improve their physical fitness and make sure they project a first-class image in a set of new regulations that also impose more stringent rules on their behaviour. The PLA Common Regulations were approved by President Xi Jinping on Sunday and will take effect on May 1. They highlight the importance of combat preparation as part of soldiers daily routine, while some discipline violations will receive more severe punishments. Modern warfare has evolved significantly, and the missions of the Chinese military have expanded, read an article published by the military mouthpiece PLA Daily explaining the reasons for the changes. The amendments stress the importance of projecting a positive public image. A first-class military must have a first-class image, a Central Military Commission official was quoted as saying. For instance, all military personnel must ensure they are not overweight. We dont see US officers with paunchy bellies, said Ni Lexiong, a Shanghai-based military commentator, said. Body shape to some extent demonstrates the militarys discipline. The Chinese armed forces have previously expressed concern that too many young recruits are failing physical fitness tests. Last year PLA Daily reported that more than half the recruits in some areas of central China were failing to make the cut. The regulations also banned military personnel from wearing bracelets or non-uniform gloves. In particular, it told soldiers they were not allowed to carry umbrellas unless it was raining or snowing, adding: The umbrella in use must be black in colour and usually held in the left hand. The new Common Regulations also said there would be rewards for troops who take part in operations overseas but did not provide further details. The article said outstanding performances in overseas operations such as peacekeeping, counterterrorism, escort patrol, joint exercises and international rescue would be encouraged. Last year China opened its first overseas military base in the strategically important east African state of Djibouti. While the content of the Common Regulations reflected the challenges the military faced today, Ni said the rules also symbolised Xis tighter control over the military and his meticulous management compared with his predecessors. The rules will allow members of the PLA to wear their uniforms when attending events such as weddings, homecomings and award ceremonies to demonstrate a good image and ensure respect for the military. The importance of ceremony is also emphasised as a way of enhancing troops sense of honour and responsibility, and improving their morale. The regulations increase the number of military ceremonies from three to 17, and added gunfire salutes to memorials and funerals. Meanwhile, the regulations restore the Order of Bayi (August the First) as the PLAs highest honour for those that have made a distinguished contribution to national defence, security and military development. The order has been issued only once in 1955 to the founders of the force and heroes from the Communists first war with the Nationalists fought between 1927 and 1937. The rules around phone use have also been clarified, with off-duty rank and file troops and junior officers being allowed to use their mobiles if they are registered with the military authorities. Soldiers have also been given the green light to use social media and shop online, as long as they do not leak confidential military information, violate regulations or damage the image of the military. This article appeared in the South China Morning Post print edition as: PLA troops given new orders to shape up The US and his two European allies Britain and France launched a military operation against Damascus, Syrian capital on the early morning of April 14, local time. Why did the US rush to launch attacks against Syria when the truth about the suspected "chemical weapons attack" that occurred on April 7 is still unclear? Analysts point out that the multiple reasons for the US to lead last Saturday's attack against Syria are both domestic and international. First, the developing situation in Syria prompts the US to play. Since the Syrian civil war broke out seven years ago, Syrian President Bashar al-Assad and his government has not been defeated by the US-backed anti-government forces but gradually gained the initiative in the battlefield. The US does not want to see the Bashar al-Assad's government expand its victories and stabilize its political power. Therefore, the US must intervene. Maha Yahya, director of the Carnegie Middle East Center, said that the time had already passed for the US and other Western countries to overthrow the Bashar al-Assad's government through military means, and the missile attack the US launched against Syria last year had no effect. She said that diplomatic negotiation with a wide range of participants is the only way out. Second, the US diplomatic hawks have gained momentum. Chemical weapon use was the "red line" the Obama administration drew for the US military interventions in Syria. By taking the lesson of wars in Iraq, Afghanistan, and Libya, Obama insisted that the US shouldn't plunge into the Syrian crisis. However, this policy has been criticized by domestic Republican hawks who have always advocated military attack against Syria. Since Trump took office, his diplomatic and security teams have undergone many rounds of change. The newly-appointed Secretary of State Mike Pompeo takes a tough diplomatic position, and the new Presidential National Security Advisor John Bolton is a well-known hawk. Chemical weapon use is both the "red line" and an excuse to attack Syria. Bolton has already demonstrated his "war hawk" style by sticking to this excuse. Third, Trump implements the new Middle East strategy to eliminate dissent. The Trump administration's National Security Strategy report outlines the general direction of its Middle East policy, etc., the US does not want the Middle East to be dominated by any hostile force. In the eyes of the US, the hostile forces there naturally include Russia and Iran. The Trump administration has taken a series of actions in the Middle East over the past year, including recognizing Jerusalem as the capital of Israel and starting the embassy relocation plan. The US has repeatedly threatened to withdraw from the Iran nuclear deal; it has also strengthened its alliance with Saudi Arabia. The US immediately challenged Russia and Iran after Syrias suspected chemical weapons attack, accusing them of backing Syria. Yahya analyzed that the move aims to crackdown on Syria and Iran. However, she believes that the US will not directly attack Russias military forces in Syria. Fourth, Trump wants to transfer domestic political pressure. At present, Trump faces the dilemma that his team is not well-organized and the "Russiagate" investigation is pushing harder. Since Trump took office, his core team has changed a lot. The Secretary of State and the Presidential National Security Advisor were replaced in March this year. Since Bolton took office, the team has continued to face reshuffling. The resignation of Assistant to the President for Homeland Security and Counterterrorism Thomas Bossert and Nadia Schadlow, who was Deputy National Security Adviser for Strategy, reduced the number of Trumps diplomatic security core team. In terms of external pressures, investigations into Trump are still underway. Trump's private lawyer Michael Cohens office and residence received sudden search by the Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI) on April 9. Trump's reaction to this matter was extremely strong. The search was approved by the Deputy Attorney General Rod Rosenstein, and it is Rosenstein who appointed the special counsel of the "Russiagate" investigation, Robert Mueller. Democrats are gearing up to regain lost territory as the mid-term elections approach. Trump is now in a hard situation. It seems that a rapid and brief overseas military operation is an effective means to transfer domestic contradictions and focus. Disclaimer: The authors are Liu Si and Yang zhen, reporters with the Xinhua News Agency. The article is translated from Chinese into English by the China Military online. The information, ideas or opinions appearing in this article are those of the author from the Xinhua News Agency and do not reflect the views of eng.chinamil.com.cn. Chinamil.com.cn does not assume any responsibility or liability for the same. If the article carries photographs or images, we do not vouch for their authenticity. State workers and students in Louisiana likely will soon have to show proof of immunization, or an exception to being vaccinated, now that the federal Food & Drug Administration fully approved Monday one of the COVID vaccines. The state will soon be pushing the locally elected officials of Powhatan out of the way to administer the finances of the northwest Louisiana village that in mid-July had only $105 in its general fund and is hiring a cop to drum up some money from STRASBOURG, April 17 (Xinhua) -- French President Emmanuel Macron defended French participation in a coalition missile strike on government forces in Syria while addressing the European Parliament on Tuesday in Strasbourg (Eastern France). "We intervened to defend the honor of the international community," Macron declared Tuesday to Members of European Parliament (MEPs), gathered in Strasbourg for a plenary session. The French military action in Syria, taken in coalition with the United States and the United Kingdom, occurred Saturday morning, in response to an alleged chemical weapons attack on rebel-held Douma, near Damas. "We must defend our values,"said the French head of state, questioned Tuesday by several MEPs during the plenary debate who had concerns about the legitimacy of the strike. "France has not declared war on the regime of Bachar el-Assad," Macron clarified, restating a televised explanation he offered on Sunday evening, and emphasizing that there were no civilian casualties. "Let us stay seated, the rules are for us, the laws are for us, and the reality is for others," he noted, adding "The side of law would become that of the weak, and I will not resign myself to that." Earlier, MEP for the National Front (French extreme right) Nicolas Bay had strongly reproached the French president. "Your recent decision to follow the United States in a unilateral military intervention in Syria will maybe make us miss Jacques Chirac, who at least had the merit to say not to American goings-to-war," he wrote on his Twitter account, making an allusion to the French position in 2003 to not enter into war with Iraq. French MEP Patrick Le Hyaric, speaking for the United European Left, spoke against the French action in Syria and criticized Emmanuel Macron to have intervened without approval from the United Nations, while he refused to do so in Gaza for Palestinians facing "attacks from Israel." During the opening of the plenary session on Monday, European Parliament President Antonio Tajani declared that the use of chemical weapons was a red line that could be crossed with impunity. The leaders of the European political groups followed with similar condemnations of chemical weapons use. The majority of them voiced support for the military strikes in Syria, while others criticized the absence of an international mandate. De-escalation and peace talks including all parties and supervised by the United Nations must begin as soon as possible, they said. Apr 17, 2018 JB There are many lyricists in the Tamil film industry and lyricist Vivek happens to be one of the prolific ones. He broke into lyrics horizon in the industry through his Poo Avizhum Pozhudhu from the Siddharth starrer Enakkul Oruvan and since then, there is no looking back for this young poet. Yesterday, the 16th April, Vivek celebrated his birthday and there were many who wished him through the social media. But the icing on the cake was apparently from Thalapathy Vijay who had called him to wish. Sharing his joy, Vivek tweeted, Thalapathyyyyyy !! Got a surprise Wish from Vijay sir !! How Sweet of him.. Wil treasure all ur kind words sir. Made my Bday really really special.. Love You sir ." It has to be recalled that Vivek wrote the much energetic Aalaporan Thamizhan from Vijays last release Mersal, along with three other songs. The European Union is seeking compensation from the United States for U.S. tariffs on steel and aluminum, despite Washington's assertion that they are not subject to World Trade Organization rules, a WTO filing showed Monday. In a step already taken by China, the EU said it did not accept the "national security" justification for the U.S. tariffs but said they had been imposed just to protect U.S. industry. "Notwithstanding the United States' characterization of these measures as security measures, they are in essence safeguard measures," the EU statement said. Safeguard tariffs can be imposed on imports of a particular product if a country's own industry is at risk of serious damage from a sudden surge of imports. In the U.S. case, critics of Trump's policy say there is no such threat. The EU said it wanted to hold consultations with the United States as soon as possible. European foreign ministers and France's parliament meet Monday to discuss their response to the joint U.S., French and British strikes on Syria. The military action has sparked sharp divisions, even though French President Emmanuel Macron insisted Sunday night they carried international legitimacy. EU foreign ministers in Luxembourg and France's parliament in Paris are expected to question, but not seriously test, the decision by French and British leaders to join Washington in striking suspected chemical weapons facilities in Syria. Some EU leaders, like Germany's Angela Merkel, have called the military action necessary -- and the bigger debate may be on figuring out Europe's response to Syria's ally, Russia. In France, several leading opposition politicians have sharply criticized French involvement in the strikes. But Monday's parliamentary session on Syria will be limited to a debate only -- and French President Emmanuel Macrons La Republique En Marche party dominates the National Assembly. American and British officials said the attacks affected a wide range of organizations including internet service providers, private businesses and critical infrastructure providers. They did not identify any victims or provide details on the impact of the attacks. The warning came from the Department of Homeland Security, the FBI and Britain's National Cyber Security Center, and included advice about what companies can do to protect themselves. Washington and London said the widespread, global campaign began in 2015 and could be escalated to launch offensive attacks. The United States and Britain issued a rare and ominous alert Monday charging Russia of ramping up cyber attacks on American and British companies, government operations and infrastructure. Protection Advice "Russian state-sponsored actors are using compromised routers to conduct spoofing 'man-in-the-middle' attacks to support espionage, extract intellectual property, maintain persistent access to victim networks and potentially lay a foundation for future offensive operations," the joint statement warned. "When we see malicious cyber activity, whether it be from the Kremlin or other malicious nation-state actors, we are going to push back," said Rob Joyce, the White House cyber security coordinator. Previously the two nations have spoken only of attacks "originating from Russia," with lines between Russian criminals and state activity being blurred, but they pinned blame on the Kremlin on this occasion. British and U.S. officials said they had "high confidence" that the Kremlin was behind the attacks. Victims Asked to Share Information Joyce said the alert is unrelated to the joint U.S., British and French airstrike in Syria that was prompted by a suspected chemical weapons attack by the Russian-backed regime of Bashar al-Assad. The officials said they issued the alert to help targets protect themselves and persuade victims to share information with government investigators so they can better understand the threat. "We don't have full insight into the scope of the compromise," said Jeanette Manfra, a cyber security official for the U.S. Department of Homeland Security. For the last five years, Kate (now 15 years old) has been a street child in Kampala, hustling to make ends meet. For her, life has been unforgiving in every way. We are regularly beaten and chased around by everyone, she says. Street children on Kampala streets. Photo: Human Rights Watch Sometimes security people and thugs rape us. Kates story is captured in a report by the NGO, AfriChild on the state of violence against street children in Uganda. The report, unveiled last week, is a result of a one-year study into the fate of street children. These included children who live on the streets part of the time (usually during the day), or throughout. According to AfriChilds executive director, Joyce Wanican, those dealing with street children do not understand them at all. The street children view security operatives and the Kampala Capital City Authority (KCCA) as hostile and are reluctant to cooperate, yet these are the people mandated to deal with them, she says. In the report, street children accuse police of various levels of harassment, including rape, assault and theft. They tell us that sometimes when the police or KCCA operatives are sent to arrest them, the street children who have been begging are quick to bribe them with their meagre earnings in exchange for their freedom, Wanican adds. The report says these children are on the streets either due to poor parenting, which leads to violence in the home, or trafficking of children who are lured onto the streets by unscrupulous relatives. According to one of the researchers, John Apota, the streets do not serve as a welcome refuge for these children. Even on the streets the children are routinely beaten, tortured, burnt or stabbed for any number of reasons, he says. In addition, the children are forced to stay and sleep in dirty and open spaces, where they also lack water, soap, bathing and toilet facilities, which exposes them to jiggers, diarrhoea, cholera and tetanus after cuts from broken bottles and sharp objects. Apota says there is almost no access to medical care when they fall sick. Consequently, they resort to drug abuse for various reasons, including dealing with hunger, stress, cold nights; as well as the urge to resist sleep and work longer hours. Another researcher Doreen Ampumuza also spoke specifically about street children, who are here because they were sexually abused after starting out as housemaids. These girls are forced into sex with their employers, and when they resist or are found out, get chased away and wind up on the streets, she explains. These girls suffer most on the streets as they can be gang-raped by their peers or security operatives, if found walking at night. The boys are not spared either. Ampumuza says they have received reports of boys being sodomised on the streets and in remand homes. It is a very traumatic world out there. KCCA spokesperson Peter Kaujju admitted that they were aware of some of the ills faced by street children, before adding that they were still studying the report to determine how to respond. Police spokesperson Emilian Kayima said he was unaware of security officers raping or assaulting street children, but added that they were concerned about the threat they pose. These street children start out as simple thieves and grow into hard core criminals, if not checked, he said. However, one issue Kate and Wanican agree on is that the problem of street children can be resolved. Street children can be reformed and sent back to school to learn skills like tailoring and hair dressing that are helpful, Kate says. If given some modest capital, they can even evolve into business people. For her part, Wanican says parents and care takers should be sensitised on parenting skills to avoid domestic violence. Not every offence should end in an almighty beating spree, that leaves the child disillusioned about life, she says. mtalemwa@observer.ug A Moroccan man recently filed a lawsuit against his wife, accusing her of adultery. After undergoing a routine health checkup , the man allegedly learned that he had been sterile for most of his life, so he couldnt possibly have fathered any of their nine children. The man, a professor in the small Moroccan city of Sidi Slimane, reportedly had his whole world turned upside down by an urologist, following a routine checkup. He apparently had a small cyst on his right testicle, which he told the doctor had been there for as long as he could remember. The physician decided to run some tests, and while the results showed that the cyst was not life-threatening, they also showed that its presence rendered the unnamed man sterile. The only problem was that he had been happily married to his wife for 35 years, and was supposed to have fathered 9 children during that time. Unrelated photo: Alexander Klepnev/Wikimedia Commons Moroccan newspaper Al-Massae reports that the man didnt rush to file for marriage termination immediately after hearing the news from his urologist, but instead underwent a series of tests that ultimately confirmed he could not have fathered any children in the last 50 years. Shocked by this revelation, the man contacted his lawyer and filed a lawsuit against his wife, accusing her of adultery and demanding both a divorce and the disownment of all of his nine children. The man allegedly petitioned the President of the First Instance Court to appoint a team of medical specialists to confirm beyond the shadow of a doubt that he had indeed been sterile for over five decades, and couldnt have fathered any of his children. The court had a legal team investigate all the results of the tests that the man had already had done, and they confirmed that his allegations were backed by scientific evidence. Seminal analysis showed the complete absence of sperm, and the urologists report as well as the biological analysis confirmed that the cyst that had been on his right testicle for over 50 years, was the cause of his sterility. Adultery is a punishable crime in Morocco, so if the mans wife is proven guilty, she faces a potential prison time. What I find most shocking is that after hearing that he was not the biological father of the nine children he had brought up with his wife, the man chose to sever all ties to them and asked to be absolved of any parental responsibilities. via Saida Online A government-sponsored ceremony was held at a memorial altar in Ansan, Gyeonggi Province to honor the victims of the 2014 ferry disaster on the tragedy's fourth anniversary. Ansan is home to Danwon High School, which lost over 250 of its students and teachers, who were on a school trip when the ferry sank. The tragedy claimed a total of 304 lives. The service was attended by around 5,000 people, including Prime Minister Lee Nak-yon and political party leaders. Ex-President Park Geun-hye has given up on appealing against her 24-year jail sentence for corruption and abuse of power, the Seoul Central District Court said Monday. Park missed the deadline for her appeal last Friday and submitted a waiver to the court on Monday to override an appeal filed by her younger sister last week. Prosecutors have launched their own appeal because they consider the sentence too lenient. Park's decision means she will probably boycott the proceedings just as she boycotted the last few months of her trial and it will go ahead without her. Park's estranged sister Geun-ryeong on Friday filed an appeal on her behalf. Under the rules of criminal procedure, a defendant's siblings or other family members can appeal a conviction, but not over the defendant's express refusal. Prosecutors are appealing the court's ruling that Samsung's lavish donations to two dodgy foundations set up by Park's confidante Choi Soon-sil were not straight-up bribes but the result of extortion. Thae Yong-ho was quoted on Monday as saying that North Korean leader Kim Jong-un "will drag on for two to three years" without dismantling his nuclear weapons "while waiting for the U.S. president to be replaced." The former No. 2 man in the North Korean Embassy in London and now a vocal critic of the regime, has predicted Pyongyang will drag out talks about its nuclear program as long as possible while extracting concessions. He was giving a lecture at the Mulmangcho Foundation, an organization aimed at helping North Korean defectors settle here, last Friday. "Kim will act during his summits with Seoul and Washington as if he were determined to dismantle nuclear weapons in stages -- first declaring dismantlement followed by incapacitating nuclear weapons and denuclearization," it quoted Thae as saying. But while extracting concessions at each stage, the regime "can never abandon its nuclear weapons because it proclaims itself a nuclear state in its Constitution." Thae said fresh UN sanctions against the North that started last September "have proved more powerful than any other sanctions of the last decade. Feeling a sense of crisis, Kim Jong-un rushed to Beijing to seek help, but it seems that he failed to achieve satisfactory results." He warned that peaceful coexistence or reunification under a federal system "is impossible without denuclearization." Thae said if Seoul makes concessions to the North, like lifting some sanctions or reopening the joint-Korean Kaesong Industrial Complex, it "should strongly demand improvement of human rights in return." Chinese President Xi Jinping is to visit North Korea in June for a summit with North Korean leader Kim Jong-un, Japan's Yomiuiri Shimbun reported on Monday. Quoting sources in North Korea and China, senior Chinese diplomat Song Tao discussed the plans when he went to Pyongyang last week along with a group of Chinese artists. Xi is expected to visit in late May or early June, after the U.S.-North Korea summit to discuss issues arising from the talks. It would be the first visit to North Korea by a Chinese president since Hu Jintao back in 2005. Kim invited Xi when he visited Beijing last month. Already China is weakening sanctions against its ally. Radio Free Asia on Sunday said Chinese-North Korean joint venture projects are quickly resuming. Citing a source in North Hamgyong Province, RFA said new apartments are being built in the Rajin-Sonbong special economic zone as projects that had been put on ice resume. Veteran actress Choi Eun-hee died on Monday after a long life fuller of ups and downs than a Hollywood film. She was 92. Her son, movie director Shin Jung-kyun said his mother died while undergoing dialysis. Choi was born in Gwangju, Gyeonggi Province in 1926 and debuted on the silver screen when she was 21. She married movie director Shin Sang-ok (1926-2006) in 1953 and divorced him in 1976. In 1978, Choi was abducted by North Korean agents in Hong Kong, and Shin was also abducted when he went there to find her. The two made 17 movies in North Korea for late North Korean leader Kim Jong-il, who had them kidnapped because he was a movie fan. Opalesque Industry Update - Adding another prominent member to its growing Private Funds group, Stroock welcomes Michael Emanuel, who has served as senior regulatory and compliance counsel at both big banks and leading investment management firms. He joins as a partner in the firm's New York office. Mr. Emanuel arrives from Eagle Investment Solutions, a Princeton, NJ-based asset management firm, where he served as general counsel, chief compliance officer, and co-chief operating officer. Previously he served as regulatory and compliance counsel for other major investment managers, including Harbinger Capital Partners, Loeb Partners Corp. and State Street Bank and Trust. Stroock continues to deepen the ranks of its Private Funds Group by adding Mr. Emanuel following the recent arrival of partner Eric Requenez and the promotion of Andre Nance to partner, as well as the arrival of associates John Cronin, Ted McBride and Samantha van der Bunt. Additionally, Mr. Emanuel will play an active role in Stroock's Family Office group, which advises family offices on the legal issues arising from the management of their finances and investments. Mr. Emanuel advises public and private funds, hedge funds, family offices, and investment managers and commodity advisors on all regulatory, legal, compliance, infrastructure and risk issues. After beginning his career at Ernst & Young and becoming a New York State CPA, Mr. Emanuel was in private practice as an attorney before going in-house at banking and financial institutions, including private equity and investment managers in New York. Jeff Keitelman, Stroock's co-managing partner, said, "Advising private funds and asset and investment managers remains a cornerstone of our practice. It's a significant area of the firm, one we will always be looking to fortify with highly qualified attorneys like Mike." He continued, "Mike has deep experience within the investment management business and understands the full range of issues that funds face daily in regulation, compliance, tax, capital raising, disclosure and other areas. His knowledge and perspective from the client side - from hedge funds to PE investors and also banks - make him a great value-add to our firm." Stroock's private funds lawyers are regularly cited in peer surveys as among leaders of the sector. The firm represents global financial institutions, wealth management advisers, investment managers, and other sophisticated market participants. Stroock often advises its fund clients on development of new products and asset classes in real estate, commodities, distressed debt, credit and insurance assets. The firm also regularly counsels investment firms on regulatory, compliance and taxation matters. Mr. Emanuel said, "Stroock has a distinguished history as one of the highly respected legal advisers for private funds - its first-rate client roster is proof of that. While at Loeb Partners, I relied heavily on Stroock lawyers to provide sound counsel. As I was looking to return to private practice, it didn't take long to discern that Stroock and its private funds team would be a natural fit. I look forward to working with the firm's clients on their most pressing matters and day-to-day needs for operating their business." Mr. Emanuel received his J.D. from Fordham University School of Law and B.S. from Washington University in St. Louis. Update: Beaverton deputy superintendent resigns after controversial retweet One of Oregon's largest school districts issued an apology Monday after its deputy superintendent retweeted a claim that undocumented immigrants were "more dangerous than assault rifles." The message, shared by Beaverton deputy superintendent Steve Phillips, called for undocumented immigrants to be banned from the U.S. An online petition has since been created calling for Phillips to be fired. It has more than 700 signatures as of Tuesday afternoon. Phillips' boss, Superintendent Don Grotting, denounced the tweet in a statement. "Our staff work hard every day to support our wonderfully diverse students and families, and we are committed to learning from our mistakes and continuing this work," Grotting said in the statement. It was issued in English and Spanish, as communications from the district generally are. Screenshots of Phillip's retweet have circulated in responses to the statement on the school district's Facebook page and resulted in calls to fire Phillips, one of Beaverton's two deputy superintendents. He has since deactivated his Twitter account and has apparently issued no public statements on the matter. On Monday, 14 school board members of color from around the Portland area Monday signed a letter to Beaverton School District members. "Though hate-based rhetoric of any kind is tragic," the letter read, "this specific instance is egregious and unacceptable from a district employee who has been entrusted to represent a large and racially diverse district." The letter posed three questions to the school board, including, "Does the Beaverton School Board intend to work with Superintendent Grotting to appropriately discipline Mr. Phillips?" Phillips has been with the district since 2016. Before coming to Beaverton, he served as the superintendent of the Malheur Education Services District. According to district spokesperson Maureen Wheeler, Phillips' annual salary is $171,148. Phillips' tweets came to light last week after he shared a March 25 post by Mary Ann Mendoza, the mother of an Arizona police sergeant who was killed in a 2014 head-on crash with an intoxicated wrong-way driver. The wrong-way driver was an undocumented Latino man, who also died in the crash. After her son's death, Mendoza helped start a group called Advocates for Victims of Illegal Alien Crime. Her tweet shared by Phillips claimed 12 Americans were killed every day by undocumented immigrants. According to PolitiFact, there isn't enough data to accurately track how many people have been killed by undocumented immigrants or the nationality of the victims. The Beaverton School District is the third largest in the state with nearly 40,000 students. One quarter of the students who attend Beaverton schools this year identify as Hispanic or Latino, according to the district. Slightly less than half, 48 percent, identify as white. Phillips made news in February when he decided to remove the book "Stick" from classrooms serving students in middle school, ninth and 10th grades. His decision went against the unanimous recommendation of a committee made up of teachers, community members, a librarian and an administrator. Wheeler said Monday that she knew of no plans by Phillips to offer any apology about what she described as a "teachable moment." She said he discussed the retweet with people who have called and emailed him. "He realizes his mistake," Wheeler said. "We are working with him, but it is a personnel issue, so we're not going to publicly discuss it at this point." District officials learned of the retweet Wednesday or Thursday. They then met with Phillips and verified that he "wasn't hacked," Wheeler said. She said district officials believe he retweeted Mendoza's post sometime during spring break. Lizzy Acker of The Oregonian/OregonLive staff contributed to this report. -- Everton Bailey Jr. ebailey@oregonian.com 503-221-8343; @EvertonBailey 99 out of 100 Koreans use mobile or online banking, which is the highest level in Asia. But Korea has one of the poorest infrastructures to support it. Global consulting agency McKinsey said in a report based on a survey on 17,000 consumers in 15 Asian countries that Korea boasts the highest online banking penetration rate in the region. In Japan, Hong Kong and Singapore, the rate is 97 percent, and in China, India and Malaysia only 52 percent. Some 90 percent of respondents in Korea also said they would be willing to open accounts with online-only banks, compared to 98 percent in Hong Kong, 80 percent in Japan and just 65 percent in China. Koreans said they would consider transferring 40 percent of their assets to online banks. The City of Vancouver will pave Northeast 18th Street 7 a.m. -5 p.m. Wednesday or Thursday, April 18 or 19 (weather permitting) as part of the Street Improvement Project. The road work will extend from Four Seasons Lane to Northeast 136th Avenue. Be prepared for lane closures, detours and flaggers directing traffic. *** Crash at SW Fifth and Glisan DOWNTOWN 8:27 a.m.; Injury crash at Southwest Fifth Avenue and Glisan Street. The crash is holding up transit traffic in the area. *** NORTHEAST PORTLAND 8:22 a.m.; Injury crash involving a bicyclist on Northeast 148th Avenue and Halsey Street. *** WILSONVILLE 8:05 a.m.; Crash reported on Southwest Wilsonville Road between Brown and Kinsman roads, just west of I-5. *** WASHINGTON COUNTY 8:02 a.m.; Responders heading to an injury crash on Southwest Farmington Road between River and Tile Flat Roads. *** BORING 7:59 a.m.; ODOT reports both lanes of OR 212 are closed near Boring for a crash at 272nd Ave. Traffic being directed around the scene. *** VANCOUVER 7:38 a.m.; Stalled truck is blocking the center and right/center lanes of I-5 southbound just after the Main Street overpass. Traffic slowly getting by in the left lane and the right exit lane. Update 8:05 a.m.; Cleared. *** ODOT's freeway sign replacement project continues this week with nighttime lane and ramp closures. ODOT is upgrading, repairing and replacing interstate highway signs on Interstates 5 and 84 throughout 2018. According to a release, the upgraded signs are brighter, more reflective and meet new federal standards. Starting Monday night, the following ramps and lanes will see closures. The southbound I-5 off-ramp to Multnomah Boulevard will be closed from 10 p.m. Tuesday to 5 a.m. Wednesday April 17-18. The right lane on northbound I-5 at milepost 292.5 (near Boones Ferry/Carmen Drive) will be closed 8 p.m. Wednesday to 5:30 a.m. Thursday April 18-19. The right lane on southbound I-5 at milepost 292.8 (near Boones Ferry/Carmen Drive exits) will be closed from 8 p.m. Thursday to 5:30 a.m. Friday April 19-20.' Tigard will host a "Value Pricing" (tolls) meeting tonight: Congestion pricing? This Wednesday, Oregon Department of Transportation is hosting an open house in Tigard to discuss the concept of congestion pricing (i.e. tolls). Posted by City of Tigard, Oregon on Tuesday, April 17, 2018 A Vancouver water utility project will require a temporary closure of the Evergreen Boulevard exit on westbound SR 14, all days and hours for about two weeks. The work is the final step in the project to replace nearly 1,000 feet of aging water main that crosses beneath SR 14, from East Evergreen Boulevard on the north to Southeast Evergreen Highway on the south. Pavement restoration is anticipated to follow during the week of April 23 - weather permitting. Check back throughout the morning for the latest commuting updates and follow us on Twitter: @trafficportland Uber, the ride-hailing service known for its aggressive expansion tactics, is trying something new in Portland: an apology. The company on Monday posted the text of a letter it also sent to the Portland City Council acknowledging "missteps" since Uber began operating in Portland in December 2014. Uber didn't identify those missteps, but city officials have a list of grievances that dates back to the company's arrival. The 2014 launch itself came without approval from Portland officials, at a time when the city code strictly regulated taxi companies. Less than two weeks later, Uber agreed to suspend operations for a few months while the city drafted new rules for a sanctioned launch. More than two years later, the city would learn from a New York Times reporter that Uber had used software it called "Greyball" to identify and avoid regulators trying to catch Uber drivers while the service was operating illegally. The Portland City Council invoked a rare legislative subpoena to investigate whether Uber had continued to use the software in violation of the new rules. It found no evidence of subsequent efforts to evade enforcement. Most recently, the city fined Uber $3.5 million after the company failed to disclose an October 2016 security breach that affected more than 1,000 drivers in Oregon and tens of millions of accounts worldwide. The company didn't disclose the breach until more than a year later. Uber has disputed the fine, which is still pending after a hearing last month was postponed. Alejandro Chouza, Uber's general manager for the Pacific Northwest, said in Monday's letter that the company "conducted operations in a way that failed to live up to the Portland way of collaboration and transparency. For that we apologize." Chouza said the company would conduct itself "with integrity, humility, and a passion for improving the community." "You have our firm commitment that we will work to make things right, and be as collaborative as possible to keep this emerging global city moving forward," he said. Chouza took over late last year as Uber's manager in the Pacific Northwest. He previously served as Uber's general manager in Northwest Mexico. -- Elliot Njus enjus@oregonian.com 503-294-5034 @enjus It's a few hours before the start of dinner service at Le Pigeon last Thursday and the restaurant is already packed, each chair filled with someone talking, laughing or wolfing down a slice of pizza taken from the bright red boxes perched on the restaurant's famous chef's counter. "I learned a lot opening Little Bird," says Le Pigeon chef and co-owner Gabriel Rucker, referring to the downtown Portland bistro. "Early on, it was like the two staffs barely knew each other." As you might recall, Canard began with a burger. Last year, Rucker, 36, sober and more energetic than ever, was experimenting with a slider-sized, White Castle-style "steam burger," this one with French onion soup blended into the beef. "I was originally going for something simpler, but then I got really excited," Rucker says. "First it was oysters and steam burgers. Then it just became like small and more singular plates. A swordfish Oscar with some crab salad and asparagus. Petite steak with steak fat fried crostini, melted Swiss cheese and French onion soup sauce." Over the past few months, Rucker and chef de cuisine Taylor Daugherty have let their imaginations run wild. On our visit, cooks were prepping a dozen fat rolls of ducketta, a ducky take on porchetta that might become the restaurant's signature. Uni-topped "Texas toast" and foie gras dumplings offer gentle reminders of why the left side of the Le Pigeon menu has been a consistent delight for for more than a decade. That dry-aged New York steak with French onion soup sauce and the dry-fried chicken wings with truffled ranch call to mind the fun French-American mashups happening at Little Bird Bistro. (Good company, as each of those restaurants earned The Oregonian's Restaurant of the Year honors, Le Pigeon in 2008, Little Bird in 2012.) Approachable is the word of the day. About a third of Canard's menu is vegetarian. Nothing is priced higher than $20. During the afternoon and late-night happy hours, that steam burger falls from the usual $6 down to $3. Minors are allowed deep into the night. And that soft-serve machine hiding between the bar and open kitchen isn't just for show. As expected, Canard dials in Paris right up front, with a tightly curved, marble-topped bar that will serve as the new home for Little Bird Bistro barman Aaron Zieske. Avian wallpaper, smart banquettes and a blue half wall separating the bar from the dining room also bring Little Bird to mind -- unsurprisingly, architect Mark Annen designed both. Only Canard has a bit less polish, with a few dents and divots left over from the former occupant, a steampunk boutique. For Rucker, that means more room for the restaurant to evolve. Keep an eye out for the tiling in the bathroom, the vaguely steampunk-y light fixtures above the bar and the birds in flight inlaid on some of the tables. The leather-bound wine list offers wines without borders -- lots of Loire Valley, plenty of Burgundy, some beaujolais, Italian, Spanish, German riesling and both Oregon and California. Fortgang echos the food menu with his own high-low mashups. Glass pours range from $8 up to $20. The cheapest bottle is $25. Much of the wine list costs less than $50. But the 14-foot-tall temperature controlled wine room has some high-end stuff as well. Serious oenophiles take note: Canard's $30 corkage is waived for bottles 15 years or older. Behind that marble-topped bar, Zieske has devised a cocktail menu with something for everyone, from low alcohol refreshers to foie gras-fat washed bourbon. For an extra $3, The Breakfast of Champions, a dirty martini riff, comes with an oyster. On my visit, Zieske was prepping a seasonal daiquiri made with strawberries and dark rum. "I want to make sure that the drinks fit with the food -- fun, playful, approachable in not just flavor profile but in price," Zieske says. Canard opens with dinner service only. But the restaurant was pitched as an all-day affair, cafe by morning, wine hangout by night, with oysters and French fries available as early as 8 a.m.. Those expanded hours are coming, Rucker says, perhaps as soon as late May. That's when the steam burger will be joined by a maple sausage breakfast sandwich, in-house muffins, scones, quiche, a pie of the day and the long-awaited return of weekend brunch service, not seen in these parts since the earliest days of Le Pigeon. As a nod to the famous foie gras-everything profiterole next door, Canard will feature another famous choux pastry, a Paris-Brest, with seasonal accompaniments including strawberries and toasted coconut. There's also a chocolate butterscotch pie, though right now Rucker seems most hyped on the soft-serve machine. Vanilla is permanent. The second tap is a rotating flavor, currently a banana toffee road tested by Rucker himself. Each is available solo, as a swirl or in a cone with peanut butter magic shell and Funfetti. Boozy milkshakes have been promised. Rucker even teases a secret menu item, a bowl of soft-serve with the works: chocolate sauce, whipped cream and sprinkles. Unlike Enoteca Nostrana, the new Nostrana wine bar we visited last week (and which also opens Monday), the kitchens at Le Pigeon and Canard have been kept apart. "Not to get all hippy on you, but I'm very protective of the energy at Le Pigeon," Rucker says. Just after 2:30 p.m. that Thursday, Rucker heads next door, trailed by the staff of all three restaurants. Once gathered, Rucker tells a funny story about prepping 300 boiled eggs for an event at a restaurant and yoga studio in New York owned by the actor Richard Gere. People laugh, but before anyone has a chance to wonder what the point of the anecdote was, Rucker turns around, reaches up high and tears down the brown paper covering the windows. Canard is open. Canard's opening-day menus: Canard opens on Monday, April 16 (tonight!) from 4 p.m. to midnight at 734 E. Burnside St. Expanded hours will roll out later this spring. For more information, visit canardpdx.com. -- Michael Russell Oregon Health & Science University has narrowed its search for a new president to three out-of-state finalists. The candidates will be visiting campus for meetings and interviews with faculty, staff, students and community members in the coming weeks. Campus forums with the candidates are open to the public. The outgoing president, Dr. Joe Robertson, announced his retirement shortly after he was diagnosed with a mild form of multiple sclerosis. He served as president for more than a decade, officially retiring last October. Robertson is still working for free, while receiving the state's largest pension, to help with the transition. The candidates are: Dr. Jay Hess is the vice president for university clinical affairs and dean of the school of medicine at Indiana University. He is a professor of pathology and laboratory medicine and an adjunct professor of health policy and management. He has worked at the University of Michigan, where he received a master's degree in health administration, the University of Pennsylvania, and Washington University in St. Louis. He focuses on therapies for acute leukemia and how genetic sequencing can help with clinical diagnostics and personalized medicine. Hess's forum is from noon to 1:15 p.m. Wednesday in the OHSU Auditorium. Dr. Laura Roberts is a professor and chair of the Department of Psychiatry and Behavioral Sciences at Stanford University School of Medicine and chief of psychiatry for Stanford Health Care. She also has been a leader at the Medical College of Wisconsin and the University of New Mexico, where she studied psychiatry. Roberts' research focuses on ethics and policy issues in scientific innovation, health disparities, clinical medicine and health professions' education. Roberts' forum is from noon to 1:15 p.m. April 24 in the OHSU Auditorium. Dr. Danny Jacobs is executive vice president, provost and dean of the school of medicine at the University of Texas Medical Branch. He is a professor in the institute for translational sciences, the department of surgery and the department of preventive medicine and community health. He has worked at the University of Pennsylvania, as well as Harvard, Creighton and Duke universities. His research focuses on metabolism and nutrition. Jacobs' forum is from noon to 1:15 p.m. April 26 in the OHSU Auditorium. -- Molly Harbarger mharbarger@oregonian.com 503-294-5923 @MollyHarbarger Photo by Beth Nakamura/Staff By EDER CAMPUZANO The Oregonian/OregonLive First there was a national walkout. Then came the "March for Our Lives." And on Friday, high school students around the country will take to the streets for the third mass demonstration to lobby for stricter national gun measures since the Feb. 14 shooting in Parkland, Florida. The event is part of a national series of demonstrations marking the 19th anniversary of the Columbine High School shooting. In Portland, students from at least three high schools have banded together to organize a rally downtown and a march to City Hall. "When the news from Parkland came out, we thought, 'Really?' Another shooting with an AR-15?'" said student organizer and Franklin High junior Annika Mayne. "We need to do something with intention. We need to do something for students by students." Don't Edit Photo by Mark Graves/Staff That something is a one-hour rally in Northwest Portland, followed by a march through the streets. Mayne said the walkout starts at 9:15 a.m. to give students ample time to arrive by 11 a.m. The event will include speeches from students and community leaders before participants fill the streets. Mayne said organizers aren't releasing a route map. She's expecting students from Lincoln and Cleveland high schools in addition to her classmates. Organizers hope for broad participation from across Portland Public Schools. The plan is to stage something larger than the March 14 national school walkout, which Mayne called "more of a 17-minute vigil." Friday, she said, is "direct civil action for students, by students." Don't Edit Photo by Mark Graves/Staff The Portland rally is a demonstration against police brutality and for stricter gun control from either Congress or the Oregon Legislature. School shootings get a lot of attention, Mayne said, but they're only the tip of the iceberg when it comes to gun violence. "Portland has a lot of issues with race and, in particular, police brutality. And I think that gets thrown aside when people see Portland as this progressive place," she said. "But there's mass amounts of gentrification and a large population of white people who just throw up their hands and say, 'Yes we're aware of it.," Mayne and her fellow organizers have tiptoed around teachers and administrators as they plan for Friday's rally. The March 14 walkout, in particular, left them feeling disenfranchised. Don't Edit Photo by Beth Nakamura/Staff Schools across the state issued notices about the demonstrations. And in some places, Portland included, principals and teachers provided time and space to stage assemblies or rallies. "We decided it wasn't the best idea to talk about it (to administrators) because we don't want it to be facilitated in any way. We want it to be student-led," Mayne said about Friday's demonstration. Even if PPS administrators don't know the details of Friday's rally, the district emailed parents Monday evening with much of the same language used in notices about the March 14 walkout. Students who leave class won't be reprimanded beyond receiving an unexcused absence, Deputy Superintendent Yvonne Curtis wrote. And although teachers won't participate, they may "accompany students to help ensure safety." Don't Edit Photo by Mark Graves/Staff The secrecy practiced by Portland protest organizers offers a markedly different approach than what students in one suburb are taking. Tigard High School sophomore Meghan Turley is organizing a 30-minute rally in the cafeteria. And one of her first steps was to meet with Principal Andre Van Fleet and other administrators to minimize friction during the event. "We weren't asking for permission," she said. "We were informing him of what our plan is." Turley said the Tigard rally is less a broad call for gun control and more a push for her peers to register to vote. She doesn't want organizers to dictate what the demonstration is about. "I think most of the student organizers are on the same page when we call for gun reform, though," she said. "Closing the gun show loophole nationwide, universal background checks, etc." Don't Edit Don't Edit Photo by Mark Graves/Staff Back in Portland, Mayne said she's pushing for students to have a part in "honest conversations that need to be held." "A man should not have been shot in a homeless shelter," she said, referring to the death of John Elifritz, who was . "We need to make sure everybody's treated equally, not just say everyone needs to be treated equally." As for adults who say Mayne, Turley and other students have been brainwashed by adults with anti-gun agendas to stage rallies and walkouts, the Franklin High junior says such arguments are "such a deflection and a personal political insecurity." "If that's what they're going to believe, that's what they're going to believe," she said. "We're trying to convince our peers and our politicians. And in the end, it doesn't matter what they believe because we're all going to vote in the next election." --Eder Campuzano @edercampuzano 503.221.4344 Don't Edit Fifteen-year old Mustafa Abed arrives in Portland from Iraq on Tuesday, Apr. 17, 2018, for a several-month stay to obtain needed medical care. Abed first came to Portland in 2008 for treatment for injuries he sustained when he was hit by shrapnel in 2004. (Randy L. Rasmussen/For The Oregonian/OregonLive) Ten years after a life-saving medical trip to Portland, an Iraqi boy has returned for further treatment. After a journey of about 40 hours that included canceled and delayed flights and misplaced luggage, an exhausted Mustafa Abed, now 15, and his mother, Nidhal Aswad, didn't speak with reporters. Their flight, scheduled to arrive at 2:12 a.m. Tuesday, landed early, at 1:47. Don't Edit Geri Berg (left), of Portland, greets Nidhal Aswad, the mother of 15-year old Mustafa Abed, as they arrived in Portland from Iraq on Tuesday, Apr. 17, 2018, for a several-month stay to obtain needed medical care for Abed. Abed first came to Portland in 2008 for treatment for injuries he sustained when he was hit by shrapnel in 2004. (Randy L. Rasmussen/For The Oregonian/OregonLive) On hand for the arrival was Geri Berg, a pediatric social worker who assisted Mustafa during his first visit. Also present to greet Mustafa and his mother were Maxine Fookson and Ned Rosch, founders of the Portland chapter of No More Victims, a nonprofit that brings children wounded by war to the United States for treatment. They led the initial effort to bring then 5-year-old Mustafa to Oregon. Fookson got some of the warmest smiles from an obviously fatigued Mustafa. Don't Edit Fifteen-year-old Mustafa Abed, accompanied by his mother, Nidhal Aswad, arrived back in Portland from Iraq on Tuesday, Apr. 17, 2018, for a several-month stay to obtain needed medical care. Abed first came to Portland in 2008 for treatment for injuries he sustained when he was hit by shrapnel in 2004. (Randy L. Rasmussen/For The Oregonian/OregonLive) Berg said Tuesday afternoon that while it's "really early" to assess Mustafa's condition, she saw "a strong teenage boy." "Clearly, he's a survivor," she said. "I thought he looked terrific. He's not always been that way for the last few years so we were really happy to see it." Berg said she and Aswad bonded as mothers who "know what it means to protect our kids." "Nidhal learned 'I love you' and she said it over and over again when we were leaving," Berg said. Don't Edit Mustafa Abed, then 6, was fitted in 2008 for a leg prosthesis at Shriners Hospital for Children in Portland. His father, Ahmed Abed, accompanied him. (Jamie Francis/2008) Mustafa was 2 when he was badly injured in a 2004 U.S. missile strike near Fallujah. His leg was severed near the hip, and his internal injuries required treatment beyond what could be provided in his hometown. In 2008, he and his father came to Portland, where he had kidney and bowel surgery and received an artificial leg. At the time, the plan was for Mustafa to return every few years for a new prosthesis and continuing care. But cell phone and internet service were spotty in their village, and by early 2010, his Portland supporters lost contact with the family. When the Islamic State took over the region in 2014, the Portlanders feared the worst. "We never thought we would see him again," Fookson said. "It was really painful to lose contact for all those years." Then, in 2016, they spotted the boy on public television. Don't Edit Mustafa was featured toward the end of a PBS Newshour segment on a refugee camp outside Fallujah, Iraq. His friends in Portland recognized the now 13-year-old boy walking with crutches on one leg. They reached out to the piece's reporter, Jane Arraf. "She made it all possible," Fookson said. "I think by that night we were on the phone with them through one of our local interpreters." Since then, Fookson and Oregon Physicians for Social Responsibility have raised funds to send medical supplies like catheters and colostomy bags to Mustafa in Iraq. They've stayed in touch, learning through Arabic interpreters how Mustafa and his family have fared during the political turmoil in their country. Don't Edit Don't Edit Ned Rosch (left) and Maxine Fookson greet 15-year old Mustafa Abed, who arrived in Portland from Iraq on Tuesday, Apr. 17, 2018, for a several-month stay to obtain needed medical care. The couple first helped Abed to come to Portland in 2008 for treatment for injuries he sustained when he was hit by shrapnel in 2004. (Randy L. Rasmussen/For The Oregonian/OregonLive) "We've been able to talk to him a couple of times. Life has been very, very difficult for the family," Fookson said. During the siege of Fallujah, "there was very little food. One of the things we heard from the family was they just ate flour, because that's all they had, raw flour." The effort to obtain visas to bring Mustafa back to Portland began about five or six months ago, Fookson said. The nonprofit Palestine Children's Relief Fund paid for Mustafa and Nidhal's trip. They'll stay for an estimated three months at a Ronald McDonald House while Mustafa receives treatment. Many of the doctors who saw Mustafa 10 years ago are donating their services to work with him again at Doernbecher Children's Hospital and the Shiners Hospital for Children. Don't Edit Fifteen-year-old Mustafa Abed returned to Portland from Iraq on Tuesday, Apr. 17, 2018, for a several-month stay to obtain needed medical care. Abed first came to Portland in 2008 for treatment for injuries he sustained when he was hit by shrapnel in 2004. (Randy L. Rasmussen/For The Oregonian/OregonLive) "I am very excited to see him, I am also aware ... how really, really difficult his life has been," Fookson said the evening before Mustafa's arrival. "What he's been through in 10 years is so much war, poverty, hunger, refugee status, pain, more kidney infections, his own disability that limits him a country where so few services exist. There's just so many obstacles that he's had to face." Fookson said Mustafa has told her he wants to continue his schooling and become a doctor. "He said to me on the phone, 'I have so many things I've had to go to the doctor for, I'd like to be able to help somebody else,' " she said. Freelance photojournalist Randy L. Rasmussen contributed to this story. Not every police agency provides a log of its responses, and few do it with the finesse of the Forest Grove Police Department. Every week, we post the goings on as provided by this community 25 miles west of Portland, not because it's earth-shatteringly important, but because it provides a glimpse into the world of modern small-town policing. During the week, Forest Grove police officers were engaged in more than 360 activities, both reported and self-initiated. Here are some of the highlights: April 6 * A woman reported the theft of several home appliances while in the process of moving. * Night shift officers responded to a crash at Pacific Avenue and B Street. While at the crash site -- with two patrol vehicles and lights flashing -- another vehicle sped through the intersection, nearly hitting the officer directing traffic. Police stopped the driver, who was arrested for suspected DUII and other charges. April 7 * Officers stopped a vehicle that had been reported as a "rolling domestic" - a term used to describe a fight happening inside a moving vehicle. Police learned it was only a verbal altercation between the couple over the husband's driving. * A driver hit a parked car, which pushed it across the street into another vehicle, which struck a third vehicle. The driver initially tried to leave the scene, but his vehicle was too damaged to drive. While alcohol was determined not to be a factor, officers did locate a stolen gun. The driver was arrested. April 8 * A caller reported odometer fraud of a vehicle she recently purchased. * Police received a report that several ducks were in a parking lot possibly headed toward a busy road. * A caller reported receiving text messages from a friend indicating a possible suicide attempt. Officers tracked down the sender and found the individual had ingested an unknown amount of pills. The person was taken to the hospital. April 9 * A caller reported a scuffle being filmed in an alley involving more than a dozen high school students. Officers found no sign of the teens or any evidence of a fight. * Police responded to an altercation between a boyfriend and girlfriend. The boyfriend, who allegedly escalated the fight, was told not to return to the residence. * Police checked on a suspicious item wrapped in a coat in the bushes near a residential intersection. The coat was gone when officers arrived, though they found a vehicle battery and motor oil. April 10 * Police responded to an assisted living community where a resident was attempting to assault employees. The man, noticeably intoxicated, said he just wanted to put on some Willie Nelson and go to bed. He was encouraged to do so. * A caller reported a suspicious man wearing cowboy boots possibly selling drugs at a busy intersection. Officers located nobody disseminating drugs or wearing cowboy boots. * A caller reported a man at the skate park was being rude to her. Officers talked to the man, who said he was concerned the woman was allowing small children on the skate pad, which he felt was a hazard. Officers advised both to be polite and share the space. April 11 * A medical facility requested police check on a patient who left against medical advice. Officers located the individual who was fine, but just didn't want to be at the hospital any longer. * A caller reported that someone on a dating site had sent several checks, which were then cashed and the money used to purchase and ship a new phone to South Africa. This is an example of a "sweetheart swindle" scam where individuals form relationships online and then request the victim send money or items of value, sometimes sending bogus checks to cover the cost, leaving the victim to foot the bill. * A woman reported that a computer and flat-screen television were stolen from her storage unit. Officers are investigating. April 12 * A hotel employee reported a box of ammunition left near the main entrance of the building. Officers learned it belonged to a hotel guest. * Police contacted a woman seen walking between houses and peering in windows. Officers determined she was experiencing mental health issues and provided her resource information and directions to the bus stop. * An auto supply shop reported finding a bag full of a black tar substance. Police determined it to be a marijuana dab and disposed of the item. -- Samantha Swindler @editorswindler / 503-294-4031 sswindler@oregonian.com Few residences represent Portland's storied past as well as a 1904 Craftsman in the King's Hill Historic District bordering Washington Park. The mansion was built for Ralph Warren Hoyt, a civic leader best known as the namesake for the park's Hoyt Arboretum, which showcases native conifers and flowering trees on land once eyed for development. Hoyt's story as a touchstone to early Portland started long before he was born here in 1864. His steam-boatmen father, Captain Henry L. Hoyt, piloted a vessel that in 1850 delivered cargo to the promising port for the first time. His mother, May L. Millard, walked the Oregon Trail from Iowa in 1852. Her obituary in The Oregonian called her "one of Portland's most highly respected pioneer women." Son Ralph attended Portland public schools and worked his way up at the Merchants National Bank from messenger to cashier to eventually becoming a principal shareholder. Before he was elected Multnomah County Commissioner, he served as county treasurer. According to a 1901 article in the Oregon Native Son and Historical Magazine, "None can claim that [Hoyt] has not been courteous and obliging; none can say that he has not administered his office for the best interest of the taxpayers, and all know that he is competent and honest." Hoyt also played the organ in church and was a high-profiled member of many fraternal societies, including the Shriners, Elks and the Native Sons of Oregon. The article said he helped make events "not only pleasurable but a success." In 1904, he and his wife, Edith M. Neilson, who was also born in Portland and whose father was a captain, moved into the mansion he had built for the family on what is now 2188 S.W. Main St. The Craftsman, a new style at the time, was surrounded by Victorians and classic Revival trophy residences designed by top architects for retail and timber barons. Records show Hoyt lived here until his death in 1931. Hoyt survived long enough to see the county give land to the city in 1922 to create Hoyt Park, later known as Hoyt Arboretum. The concept was first imagined by the famous Olmsted brothers' landscape architecture firm, which encouraged urban park systems here and across the country, and their relative, Frederick Law Olmsted, who designed New York City's Central Park and Boston's Arnold Arboretum of Harvard University. According to the arboretum's website, Ralph Hoyt was "one of the strong and visionary personalities who contributed to [the arboretum's] creation and the legacy that we all enjoy today." It's only fitting that old growth Douglas fir was used throughout Hoyt's house and that over the decades, even though ownership has changed hands, much of the original moldings, box-beam ceilings, wainscot, flooring and other woodwork remain. Enter the foyer and your eyes will glide up the classic stairs to stained glass encased in towering, wood window frames. Updates made over a two-year restoration were selected to blend with period details. The 220-square-foot kitchen was conceived for an entertaining-minded home chef with a Dacor gas range, Liebherr refrigerator and Miele dishwashers plus an oversized island and sitting room with one of the home's four fireplaces. The 7,653-square-foot mansion has a finished basement and bedrooms on the top floor. In total, the house has six bedrooms, 4.5 baths, a media room and wine cellar. A concrete veranda was recently added to extend entertaining to the outdoors. The 10,018-square-foot lot also includes a detached, one-bedroom, one-bath guesthouse with a kitchen (also known as an increasingly popular accessory dwelling unit) that's fronted by stepping stones across the lawn. The property was put on the market April 2 at $2,575,000. Listing agents Libby Benz and Drew McCulloch of Windermere Realty Trust describe the location as having a walking score of 92 percent, as rated by WalkScore.com. "This seems to be a big attraction," says Benz, for those who "prefer living close to work, recreation, dining and shopping without the need to use their car." -- Janet Eastman jeastman@oregonian.com 503-799-8739 @janeteastman Red Rock Biofuels identified Lakeview as a target location in 2013 because of its proximity to rail, highways, the Ruby natural gas pipeline and an abundance of forest debris to be collected and converted to jet fuel. Construction is estimated to take 18 months, with operations planned to start in 2020. "This is the culmination of many years of work," Lake County Commissioner Dan Shoun told the newspaper. "There is a great sense of satisfaction for all involved to know that our strong belief in this project is finally coming to be." The project got a major boost in January when Oregon Gov. Kate Brown approved $245 million in bonds for Red Rock Biofuels. With the state's backing, the project owners get tax exempt status on that portion of their borrowing, and lower interest costs. But taxpayers are not on the hook if the project goes belly up. "There's zero risk to the state," said Laura Lockwood-McCall, director the Treasury Department's Debt Management Division. In addition to hundreds of construction jobs, the facility is expected to create 30 jobs within the plant and up to another 100 positions for materials gathering and transport. Lakeview has a population of about 2,000 people, so the city may see in an influx of new residents. "I hope that everyone who is employable can get a job of their choosing, but the reality is the demand will be higher than the supply," Shoun said. "That will put a demand on housing and every service we have these are all positive things, but they're real." While agriculture and ranching remain prominent in Lake County, geothermal and solar projects along with development of commercial marijuana grow facilities shows a drastic shift in the area's economic base from its roots in the timber and cattle industries. At its peak Lakeview had seven full-time sawmills. Only one remains active. ___ Ted Sickinger with The Oregonian/Oregonlive contributed to this report. Thousands of Portland businesses have not paid their city taxes and the problem has reached a crescendo this year, leaving millions of dollars of revenue uncollected as city bureaus prepare for budget cuts. One City Hall observer, energy consultant Robert McCullough, has been pushing Mayor Ted Wheeler to take note of the past due business tax accounts, and to adjust city tax collection policies accordingly. In response to questions from The Oregonian/OregonLive, Wheeler said Tuesday that he will propose to hire more tax collectors when he unveils his proposed budget later this month. "Portlanders and local businesses who faithfully pay taxes expect us to do our best at collecting all outstanding taxes," the mayor said. Wheeler is also in talks with the Portland chamber of commerce about raising local business taxes. Every business operating in Portland must register with the city and, if it grosses at least $50,000 a year, pay the city 2.2 percent of income it generates within city limits. That money -- more than $100 million a year -- goes into the general fund, which pays for police, firefighters, parks and other city programs. Thomas Lannom, Portland's top revenue official, said the city estimates business tax collections will be at least $114 million this year, accounting for more than a third of the general fund. But the share of businesses on track to pay the tax is at a 14-year low compared to this point in previous tax years, Lannom told The Oregonian/OregonLive last week. Of 104,000 registered businesses in Portland, 15,700 -- or 15 percent -- haven't filed a return or have a past-due bill as of last month, he said. The city estimates that $9 million owed will go uncollected this year. Lannom declined to provide a list of scofflaw businesses, citing laws that protect taxpayer information. Tom Rinehart, the city chief administrative officer, acknowledged the ugly data during an interview last week. "There are a lot of people not paying," he said. At the same time the city is trying to collect on millions of dollars of unpaid business taxes, it is also going after a smaller pot of money: people who have failed to pay their arts taxes. The city has sent nearly 8,700 people owing a combined $607,000 of arts taxes to collections agencies this since the fiscal year began on July 1, according to Lannom. More than $140,000 has been collected from those accounts, he said, with collections agencies reaping $32,000 on top of that in fees. Lannom defended his bureau's business tax collection efforts. He said no public body collects 100 percent of the taxes its owed, and that Portland's collection rate is better than that of the IRS. The city is "very aggressive" in pursuing all taxes owed, Lannom said, noting that the city has sent tens of thousands of letters to businesses requesting tax payments and has filed lawsuits against hundreds of them to recoup money owed. But, he said, "What's out of whack is the number of accounts have exploded." The number of business registered in Portland has grown more than 50 percent over the last two-and-a-half years, he said. With so many more businesses to track, the city needs more tax collectors, Lannom said. His bureau has requested five more people to beef up operations beginning in July, he said. Until that happens, Lannom has had to pull collections staff from pursuing past-due accounts to make and answer calls, contact businesses and handle paperwork. Wheeler is set to unveil his proposed budget later this month. The official city finance policy states that profitable tax collection efforts "shall be the highest budget priority." "My proposed budget will include investments in the technology and people necessary for more effective revenue collection," Wheeler told The Oregonian/OregonLive on Tuesday. "I believe these investments will more than pay for themselves." McCullough, the energy consultant, said he's met with Wheeler twice since he took office to push him for more tax collectors, in part because of the growing number of delinquent businesses. The city ought to have the staff needed to collect what's owed on those accounts, McCullough argues. "If we can't afford to run the city during a boom we can't afford to run it during the next recession," said McCullough, who made a name for himself in the energy sector as the man who revealed Enron's illegal blackout plots to Congress. He added, "This isn't rocket science." -- Gordon R. Friedman 503-221-8209 Twitter embed New Financial Supervisory Service chief Kim Ki-shik resigned on Monday just 15 days after his appointment as he became engulfed in a snowballing scandal. That makes him the shortest-serving FSS chief in history. The final straw was a revelation by the National Election Commission that Kim violated regulations by giving W50 million that remained from his campaign funds during his days as a lawmaker to the Korea Institute for the Future, of which he was a member (US$1=W1,074). President Moon Jae-in last Friday bowed to public pressure by promising to accept the FSS chief's resignation should any violations be discovered. Today's the day. The deadline is here. Tax time is up. In most cases, that means it's the last day to file your taxes or get an extension. Not exactly April 15: Filers got an extra couple days this year because the traditional Tax Day, April 15, fell on a Sunday, and the following Monday, April 16, is Emancipation Day, a Washington, D.C., holiday commemorating President Abraham Lincoln signing the 1862 Emancipation Act. Federal extension: If you need to request a federal tax extension, the Internal Revenue Service recommends doing so online: bit.ly/2E7Bx4l. If you decide to file by paper, Form 4868 must be mailed with a postmark no later than April 17. But the IRS makes it clear that an extension doesn't mean you can delay your payment. Pay and file: If you pay online at irs.gov/paymentsand indicate that it's for an extension, you don't have to separately file an extension, according to the IRS. Oregon-only extension: If you're expecting an Oregon refund and already filed a federal extension, it's not necessary to file an Oregon-specific extension, according to the Oregon Department of Revenue website. But if you need an extension for just Oregon and expect to owe taxes, visit bit.ly/2JQ7sdd. If you live in Portland: Don't forget the arts tax, also due today. The $35 tax applies to residents 18 or older, with some income exemptions. For more information, go to artstax.net, email artstaxhelp@portlandoregon.gov or call 503-865-4278. Refund status: Still waiting? To check on a federal refund, go to irs.gov/refunds. For Oregon, go tobit.ly/1ZxNLrO. -- Staff, wire reports The lawmaker told reporters at the National Assembly that Druking sent messages to Cheong Wa Dae about his choices of nominees and he passed some of them on. He had so far claimed that Cheong Wa Dae ignored them. But Kim said he did not see the recommendations as nepotism but mere suggestions in efforts to find the most suitable candidates. Minjoo Party lawmaker Kim Kyoung-soo on Monday admitted that an influential blogger calling himself "Druking" made personnel recommendations to Cheong Wa Dae after helping President Moon Jae-in get elected. Druking, whose real surname is Kim, has since turned against the Moon administration and is in custody for running automated software that boosted online comments critical of Moon. He has also hinted darkly at wider hacker meddling in the last presidential election. The lawmaker on Monday said Druking voluntarily tried to sway public opinion in the past presidential election. He cited one example when the blogger came to the National Assembly to recommend a lawyer for a post at the Korean Consulate in Osaka, Japan. Kim declined to elaborate what other specific requests Druking made to Cheong Wa Dae, but added that he "probably posted helpful news articles and made efforts to boost search statistics on [online portal] Naver" to help Moon win the presidential election. In April last year, one month before the election, Druking told his blog followers to "voice your opinions, post messages and make telephone calls to protect" Moon. His blog had around 27,000 followers with cumulative visitors totaling 9.8 million by the end of last month. The National Election Commission was informed of Druking's activities last May and tried to search a building in Paju, north of Seoul that was registered as his publishing company. But supporters of the blogger blocked NEC investigators from entering, and they yielded without bringing charges. The opposition Liberty Korea and Bareun parties have questioned Druking's role in the election and called for an investigation into the suspicions. China to build 525-MW hydropower station on Yangtze tributary From:ChinaDaily | 2018-04-16 19:50 CHONGQING - China plans to build a 525-MW hydropower station on the Wujiang River, a tributary of the Yangtze River, in Southwest China's Chongqing municipality. The Baima project, the last of a cascade of hydropower stations on the section of the Wujiang River in Chongqing, has gotten the green light from the National Development and Reform Commission, China's state planning agency, the Chongqing Municipal Commission of Development and Reform said Monday. The project, in Baima township of Wulong district, is expected to involve an investment of 10.2 billion yuan ($1.6 billion), it said. With a power-generating capacity of 525 MW, it is expected to generate 1.76 billion kwh of electricity a year, and help improve the shipping service along the Wujiang River. More than 5,000 local residents will be relocated to make room for the project. Sign up to receive daily headline news from Ottawa Citizen, a division of Postmedia Network Inc. Thanks for signing up! A welcome email is on its way. If you don't see it, please check your junk folder. The next issue of Ottawa Citizen Headline News will soon be in your inbox. We have used your information to see if you have a subscription with us, but did not find one. Please use the button below to verify an existing account or to purchase a new subscription. China will allow Irish beef exports From:ChinaDaily | 2018-04-17 00:55 China will allow Irish farmers to export beef to China after granting approval to a number of meat processing establishments, the Irish minister for agriculture announced on Monday. I understand that the Chinese authorities will list a number of our beef establishments within the next few days, said minister Michael Creed. The opening of this key market presents an excellent opportunity for the Irish beef sector, from farmers through to processors. Opening and developing new markets is also a key part of our response to the uncertainties arising from Brexit. China first banned exports of beef from Europe in 2001 in response to the outbreak of mad cow disease and the ban also covered US beef after the disease appeared in the United States in 2003. Now that threat has receded, Chinese consumers are keen to buy more beef and with the high cost of breeding cattle in China leading to insufficient domestic supply, the government has reconsidered its bans. Creed said the decision made by Chinese authorities represents a powerful endorsement of Irelands high standards by the Chinese administration, for which food safety is a prerequisite for trade. Irelands agri-food exports to China have increased about five-fold from around 200 million euros ($247.73 million) in 2010 to nearly $1.24 billion last year, which Creed said, has been a remarkable achievement and underlines the importance of the Chinese market. For beef, the door has now been opened and there is a real opportunity for the industry to build on this, added Creed, who will lead a trade mission to China next month to further build on Irelands trade relationships. In 2016, China became the worlds second-largest beef importer behind the US, importing 800,000 metric tons worth $2.6 billion. Chinese reliance on imports grew in 2017, when beef consumption rose by 4 percent, outstripping domestic production, which increased by just 1 percent. In January, China said it would lift its ban on British beef but farmers may have to wait years before receiving regulatory approval from Beijing; it took three years from lifting the ban on Irish beef for China to approve imports. Plans to lift Chinas ban on British beef could potentially generate $350 million over a five-year period, said Jane King, chief executive of the Agriculture and Horticulture Development Board. Decisions of the Polish authorities to increase logging in the Bialowieza Forest violate EU law, the EU Court of Justice ruled in Luxembourg on Tuesday, pointing out that they cannot be justified by the unprecedented gradation of the European spruce bark beetle. The ruling, which ends the 2016 instigated dispute, was issued by the Grand Chamber of the CJEU consisting of 15 judges. There is no appeal against the ruling which took full account of the complaint lodged by the European Commission against Poland. Poland's Environment Ministry has already announced that it will comply with the court's ruling. Reading out the CJEUI's decision, Judge Marek Safjan (not a member of the adjudicating panel) emphasised that Poland did not ensure effective prohibition against purposeful killing, intrusion, deterioration and destruction of areas inhabited by species protected by EU directives. "With today's ruling, the Court of Justice decided that Poland violated EU law by the felling and removal of a large number of trees in the Bialowieza Primeval Forest." According to the Tribunal, these activities led to the destruction of part of the Natura 2000 protected site," CJEU spokesperson Ireneusz Kolowca said. The ruling does not entail any financial consequences because Poland, facing a penalty of 100,000 euros a day, had previously withdrawn heavy equipment from the forest and ceased logging. If, however, logging was resumed, the Commission could again motion for fines. The judges found that Poland did not fulfill its obligations under the EU Habitats and Birds Directives. It was in accordance with the Habitats Directive that in 2007 the European Commission approved the designation of the Natura 2000 site in the Bialowieza Forest. It also constitutes a 'special protection' area for birds, specified under the Birds Directive. Despite these regulations, in 2016 the then Environment Minister Jan Szyszko almost tripled the timber harvesting limit for the years 2012-2021 due to the bark beetle infestation. In 2017, the Director of State Forests issued a decision on the removal of trees affected by the pest or posing a threat to "public safety" on around half of the Natura 2000 site. The EC, which in 2016 started the EU law infringement procedure against Poland, in mid-2017 submitted a motion to the CJEU to ascertain that Poland did not fulfill its obligations under the Habitats and Birds Directives. The judges also pointed out to forest managers and the Environment Ministry that they would carry out logging due to "public safety" without any specific conditions justifying the removal of trees for this reason. Poland's Environment Minister Henryk Kowalczyk said on Tuesday that Poland will respect the EU Court of Justice's decision. (PAP) mr/mf/ Though never really removed from the zeitgeist, Lauryn Hill has been having a bit of a pop culture renaissance lately. Her song "Ex-Factor" has been sampled in Drake's summer-jam-hopeful "Nice for What" and Cardi B's Invasion of Privacy ballad, "Be Careful." She also just announced a North American tour to mark the 20th anniversary of her debut and only album, The Miseducation of Lauryn Hill. The 29-date tour begins on July 5th and lasts until October 5th. Hill will perform the entire album on tour. The Miseducation of Lauryn Hill was released in 1998 to widespread critical acclaim. It spent four weeks at number one on the Billboard Top 200 charts and it was the first hip hop album to win a Grammy for Album of the Year. Until Cardi B's "Bodak Yellow" went number one last summer, Hill was also the only female rapper in 19 years to have a song ("Doo-Wop (That Thing)") in the number one slot. BRB, budgeting how many months of rent it would cost to attend all 29 shows. Image via Getty. Swedish House Mafia's success was both a marker of the outsized impact electronic music had on the popular music landscape of the mid 2010s and undeniable proof that the four-on-the-floor beats plus an inspirational bromide formula the trio perfected was a near-universal crowd pleaser. Songs like "Don't You Worry Child," "Save the World" and "One" dominated airwaves and filled booming club speakers from Miami to Ibiza, bringing heaps of fame and money to the three DJ/producers who made up the supergroup. After parting ways in 2013, fans were left wondering what the three members would do next, and whether their tried and true music making method would live on through their respective solo careers. For Steve Angello, one third of the former group and a producer, remixer, and label owner in his own right, the answer to that question remained just as unclear. After making Wild Youth, a concept album that traced his journey from youthful ambition to adult success (and excess) and deviated from the EDM blueprint he and his crew had popularized, the producer faced a personal crisis as to the next direction he would take. Having lost himself creatively and no longer making music, Angello returned to his native Sweden after 13 years of living abroad. He says that on a drive one day, he stopped into a local church and sat there for hours, contemplating his inner world and what would become of his life. "I had a huge epiphany and somehow found inner peace," he says, "something I'd never had before amongst all the fame and money." From that moment on, he says, Angello felt free to create music unhindered by the pressure to make dance hits or meet unrelenting charts and sales numbers. The result of that work is the 21-track album HUMAN, split into three parts: Genesis, Inferno and Paradiso. Features from artists like Pusha T and Sam Martin bring the project to life, and the lengthy catalogue gives Angello room to bring a refreshed perspective to the sound he's so known for. We caught up with Angello to chat about what he's been up to, where he's headed, and why he's in a different place now. Read the chat below and see the visuals for "Nothing Scares Me" featuring Sam Martin premiering on PAPER below: What trends or changes do you see in the music landscape in the past five years or so that you like and don't like? I think it's getting to a really interesting place at the moment, Music has always been a trendsetter and a great sparring partner to fashion and now more than ever we see the strength in the tight relationship of the crafts. Music is a creative driving force and therefore I think we should respect artists who go against the stream and bend the rules. Music has always been a form of expression and now more than ever we have the strength to make changes in the world! Musically where are you at now? I'm being a kid again. I break rules, I have fun and I don't care what anyone thinks. My music is honest, different and my way of speech and at the end of the day, that's all that matters. The new album has overt biblical references. Why did you include them? Every piece of music I make requires a complete breakdown of my soul. I strip it down, I go into a type of destruction phase where I stand naked and honest all alone. After that I search higher powers- this time it became the orthodox church. My belief in a future past. What happens after the future? What are we going to believe in and how does that look and feel? Can it work by design? Once I learned what that was, I sat down and wrote "Rejoice." Music is my blood so my belief in what I create is stronger than higher powers. I am my own god. What can we expect from you next? I really look forward to the HUMAN release! I've been waiting for a second and I feel like it has to drop now so I can go out there and tour it! Other than that I'm already in the studio for the third album. Huge fine for ride-hailing app firms for illegal cars, drivers From:Shine | 2018-04-17 01:29 Online ride-hailing platforms will be fined 100,000 yuan (US$15,900) if a car used by the app firms is found to be illegal, the Shanghai Transportation Commission said yesterday. After Meituan Dianping drove into the citys ride-hailing market last month, the number of illegal cars and drivers rose unexpectedly amid cutthroat competition. Between April 5 and 13, traffic authorities nailed 668 cases of illegal cars 433 from Didi Chuxing, 135 from Meituan and 78 from other platforms. Both Didi and Meituanhave been trying to lure drivers with tempting offers. A driversurnamedLu said that from March 22, the second day afterMeituanentered Shanghai,DidiChuxing offered drivers a 20-yuan bonus for every order they completed during rush hours. Drivers just had to open an account on the platforms and started to pick up passengers without having the proper papers. Shanghai regulation insists that all ride-hailing firms operating in the city must have cars with local plates and drivers with local hukou(permanent residency). There are 13 registered ride-hailing firms which have obtained certificates issued by the traffic authority to run their business. However,DidiChuxing, the citys largest ride-hailing provider, is not one of them. Didi has applied for the certificate for a long time, saidZhouYiqunfrom the citys vehicle management authority. But they have not cleared out all the out-of-station drivers and cars. The city has also asked the app firms to link the data of their cars and drivers to a supervisory database run by Shanghai traffic authorities and police. The data showed that many drivers and cars fromDidiare not from Shanghai, said Zhou, which is why we cannot grantDidia certificate. There is nothing we can do but fine the company,Zhoutold Shanghai Daily. Once busted, the illegal driver is fined 10,000 yuan and his driving license suspended for three months. The platform is fined 100,000 yuan. YangXiaoxi, director of the citys traffic authority, saidDidiChuxingis a national company with headquarters in Beijing. Shanghai cannot ban Didifrom the city. But we are considering listingDidias an discreditable company, Yang said. DidiChuxing claims that due to privacy policies it is difficult for the company to verify the residency status of the drivers. WangMingzefromDidisaid the company has been making efforts to weed out illegal drivers. We do offline checks to make sure the actual plates of the cars match with the ones uploaded by the drivers into the system, said Wang. We have also cancelled the rewards we offered to the drivers to end the competition between companies. But he did not comment how the company could confirm that all their drivers were locals. A driver surnamedLu, who hails fromAnhuiProvince, told Shanghai Daily that more than half of the drivers who use Didis service are from outside the city. This is not a very profitable job considering we drive more than 12 hours a day, Lu said. I dont think many Shanghai locals are willing to do this. In late February Patently Apple posted a report titled "After China, the EU is now working on a Law that could Force Companies like Apple to give up Customer Data on Demand." The report stated that the European Union was preparing legislation to force companies to turn over customers' personal data when requested even if it's stored on servers outside the bloc, a position that would put Europe at loggerheads with tech giants and privacy campaigners. The report further noted that the proposed law would apply to the personal data of people of all nationalities, not just EU citizens, as long as they were linked to a European investigation. Today the Financial Times (FT) is reporting that "Brussels is planning to give judges the power to seize emails and text messages of terror suspects contained in servers in other countries, under plans that will force tech companies to hand over sensitive information quickly to prosecutors in cases of serious crime. The European Commission on Tuesday will propose giving national judges the extraterritorial power to order companies to hand over 'e-evidence' held in servers in another EU country or outside of the bloc. The warrants would be used for investigations into terror offenses and other serious crimes. Under the new EU law, tech companies would be expected to hand over the information within 10 days of receiving a warrant, known as a "European Production Order," with this time period shortened to as little as six hours "in emergency cases," according to a copy of the plans seen by the FT. Tech companies would not be able to refuse to hand over information simply because it is stored outside of the EU, although procedures would exist for them to challenge access requests for example, if they had concerns that the move would violate data protection laws in the country where the server is based. Vera Jourova, the EU's justice commissioner, told the FT that "securing evidence stored online always is a race against time," sometimes taking as much as 10 months. "We need to make sure law enforcement gets up to speed with the digital age," she said. The officials also argued that the powers would mimic similar rights magistrates already possess for gathering more traditional forms of evidence. The plans only cover the gathering of existing evidence, not wiretapping, and do not address what to do about encrypted messaging services." Say what? Today, terrorists and other criminals use encrypted apps like 'Telegram' on smartphones like the iPhone that use end-to-end encryption. So the EU's big threat being announced tomorrow will apparently be toothless unless the Financial Times got that part of the story wrong. Last Friday Patently Apple posted a report about Russia blocking the Telegram app. Unless there's some bite to the new EU law not seen at present dealing with encrypted messages, criminals will just laugh it off and continue with their evil deeds unencumbered. About Making Comments on our Site: Patently Apple reserves the right to post, dismiss or edit any comments. Those using abusive language or negative behavior will result in being blacklisted on Disqus. News and commentary on organized crime, street crime, white collar crime, cyber crime, sex crime, crime fiction, crime prevention, espionage and terrorism. Many Nepali and English newspapers published from Kathmandu on Tuesday have published news reports about findings of the annual report of Office of the Auditor General which was submitted to President Bidya Devi Bhandari earlier this week. Top leaders of CPN-UML and CPN-Maoist Centre have held a meeting about their parties unification on Monday after weeks and it has also received a significant attention on the front page of broadsheets. Few other contemporary political, sociocultural and economic issues have also got featured onto the front page today. Important Auditor Generals report blames peoples representatives for corruption Different newspapers have carried stories about different findings from the recent annual report of Office of the Auditors General. Nepal Samacharpatra lead story for the day says local level governments were included in the central audit system for the first time today and the audit found that peoples representatives at the local level did not meet standards set for public spending, The report, hence, has directed officials to be accountable for financial discipline maintenance, the report quotes Auditor General Tanka Mani Sharma. Naya Patrika reports that members of Parliament were also involved in misuse of government coffers. In the name of Constituency Development Programme, the lawmakers spent thousands of rupees haphazardly, the news story says, adding the Auditor Generals report has found out that some lawmakers bought bicycles for their cadres whereas some others organised yoga camps. Nagarik, Republica, and Kantipur have also carried stories based on the report. UML-Maoist merger bid gets momentum back With a meeting between CPN-UML Chairman KP Sharma Oli and CPN-Maoist Centre Chairman Pushpa Kamal Dahal yesterday, the stalemate seen in the unification of two parties has finally ended, newspapers reports say. Gorkhapatra says the meeting ended on a positive note though its results were not immediate on the surface. On the other hand, the two leaders also agreed to call a meeting of the Party Unification Coordination Committee today. Some newspapers claim that the meeting is likely to come up with key decisions for the unification. On the other hand, the UML held a Standing Committee meeting yesterday and decided that the unification take place on April 22 as decided earlier after clearing off all misunderstandings, according to Naya Patrika and The Kathmandu Post. Meanwhile, Maoist Centre Chairman Dahals personal secretary Jokha Bahadur Mahara told The Himalayan Times that Major differences have not been sorted. Both the parties should be dismantled to create the new party, preserving the history of both parties. Gyawali wont discuss Budhigandaki with China this time Foreign Affairs Minister Pradeep Kumar Gyawali has left for China on Monday upon an invitation from his Chinese counterpart Wang Yi, according to newspaper reports. Gyawali organised a press meet yesterday to inform journalists about agendas of his visit, during which he clarified that he would not discuss whether the government would award the contract back to the Chinese company, Gezhouba Group, according to The Kathmandu Post lead story. Meanwhile, Gyawali will press the Chinese leadership to hold some high-level political visits from both the sides and implement past agreements, according to Nepal Samacharpatra and Rajdhani. Ignored Fuel prices go up again The government-run sole fuel distributor of the country, Nepal Oil Corporation, on Monday decided to increase the price of petrol, diesel and kerosene, according to newspaper reports. A snippet in The Kathmandu Post reads that petrol is Rupee 1 costlier whereas diesel and kerosene is more expensive by Rs 2 from Tuesday onwards. There is no change in the price of liquefied petroleum gas and aviation fuel. Govt spending millions for scholarship of staffs kids Annapurna Post lead story for the day informs that the government spends millions of rupees every year in scholarship of children of its staff in a bid to attract them to the government service. The expenses, however, have not produced expected results so far. The government spent Rs 604 million in such scholarships in the last fiscal year whereas Rs 140 million has been allocated for this year, according to the report. So far, 2,877 persons have received such scholarships. New policy bars lawmakers from businesses The government has drafted a National Integrity Policy barring members of federal and provincial parliaments,, office bearers and members of the local government from doing other businesses and jobs, according to the anchor story in The Kathmandu Post. The policy was drafted by the Office of the Prime Minister and Council of Ministers during the premiership of Nepali Congress President Sher Bahadur Deuba and it is not sure if the incumbent KP Sharma Oli government will endorse it as it is, according to the report. Interesting Nepal govt needs to create 658 job opportunities every day to end unemployment A recent World Bank report has found out that around 35,000 people join the national labour market in Nepal every year. To cope with the rising unemployment, the government, therefore, should create 568 job opportunities a day and 240,000 a year, reports Karobar. Meanwhile, the report predicts that the countrys economic growth will be restricted to 4.6 per cent this year. Uterine, breast cancer test is free now The government has decided to provide free service to women to test if they have uterine or breast cancer, the anchor story in Gorkhapatra reads. The announcement was made on Monday on the occasion of firth National Safe Motherhood Day. Meanwhile, State Minister for Health Padma Kumari Aryal also announced that the government would do various special campaigns on the theme, according to the report. Some 3000 of the world's leading experts on malaria have begun arriving in Senegal. They are attending a five-day conference focused on progress towards eradicating the disease. It's been 20 years since the first conference of the Multilateral Initiative on Malaria, which was also held in Senegal. At the time, the prospect of eradicating the disease, which comes from a mosquito-borne parasite, seemed distant. Now the World Health Organization (WHO) believes its elimination is within reach in six African countries - Algeria, the Comoros, Madagascar, The Gambia, Zimbabwe and Senegal. Senegal has done particularly well, recording a 40% drop in mortality in the past 10 years. But the advances have exposed a new challenge. Malaria is found in 91 countries in the world, but the vast majority of deaths happen in just 18 of them. And mortality has increased in Nigeria, Ivory Coast, South Sudan and the Central African Republic. The WHO says more than 400,000 people die from malaria every year. Most are African children Source: BBC Disclaimer : Opinions expressed here are those of the writers and do not reflect those of Peacefmonline.com. Peacefmonline.com accepts no responsibility legal or otherwise for their accuracy of content. Please report any inappropriate content to us, and we will evaluate it as a matter of priority. Featured Video A 31-year-old radio presenter at Dess FM at Asante Bekwai in the Ashanti region has been murdered in her room. Ama Adjeiwaa Kodie, a newscaster popularly known as Portia was allegedly stabbed by unknown assailants. However, reports indicate that Kodies boyfriend is suspected to have committed the crime after he was seen with her around 3pm Sunday. The body has been conveyed to the Bekwai Municipal Hospital as Police begin investigations. Management of the station announcing the death of Kodie stated that It is with heavy heart we announce that our lead news caster/front desk personality at DESS FM, Ama Agyeiwaa Kodie (Portia) has been murdered in cold blood in her room on Sunday 15th April, 2018. According to management, Kodie was found in a pool of blood at her residence around 6:00pm. 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. Featured Video Kwesi Pratt has expressed his outrage over the address of President Akufo-Addo to the nation Thursday evening regarding the controversial defence cooperation agreement between the Government of Ghana and the US government. President Akufo-Addo, delivering a speech yesterday, April 5, 2018 in a live telecast on national TV, lambasted his political opponents for claiming his government has sold Ghanas sovereignty to the United States of America. I will never be the President that will compromise or sell the sovereignty of our country. I respect deeply the memory of the great patriots whose sacrifice and toil brought about our independence and freedom. I have stood with you, the Ghanaian people, all my adult life, fighting for our individual and collective rights, he said. The President, in his first commentary on the Military agreement, opened up to Ghanaians saying everything I have done, since assuming the great honour and privilege of serving you as President of the Republic, demonstrates that I remain focused on building a self-reliant, free, prosperous Ghana, which will be able to make her own unique contribution to the growth and development of Africa and the worldit is difficult to understand that such people, knowing what they do know, would set about so blatantly to confuse people, and go as far as calling for the overthrow of our democracy? A democracy that has become the beacon of good governance in Africa?" "Surely, this is the kind of cynical manipulation by reckless self-seekers, which, in the fullness of time, the people of Ghana will acknowledge and condemn. And I am sure that as the facts become clear and widely available, and as the people come to terms with the evidence, they will reject the falsehood and deliberate attempts to destabilize our peaceful country. Truth is sacrosanct, he added. But according to Kwesi Pratt, the President was blinded to the real issues and spoke from his partisan interest, hence failing to see the clear distinctions in the arguments in respect of the deal between both countries. Speaking to host Nana Yaw Kesseh on Peace FMs Kokrokoo, Mr. Pratt minced no words in describing the arguments in favor of the agreement as a useless partisan battle. He noted that if the President had paused to take a critical look at the agreement, he would have known that there were aspects that need to be fine-tuned to serve the interest of Ghanaians. Its scaring and shocking to me that Nana Akufo-Addo is taking the current stance that hes taking. You know why? And do you know why hes taking the current stance? Because it has turned into an NPP/NDC battle. That is the problem. If we all sit back and carefully and soberly go through this argument, we will all find portions of this argument that at least we want to fine-tune. Its because it has become such a partisan useless battle not taking the interest of people of Ghana into consideration and we doing these things that wont help Ghana. Clearly not impressed with the President's address and the partisan approach to the issue by both the Minority and Majority sides of Parliament, Kwesi Pratt stated emphatically that we have failed in our effort as a people to build a Parliament which has processes which emphasize conscience as against partisan interest. And Im deeply ashamed by what has happened. When this issue went to Parliament, all Members of Parliament on the NDC side took one positionAll members of the NPP in the majority side took one position. Is that possible in a 275-member Parliament? If things were not being done in strictly partisan lines, would that have happened? Not one person dissented. At least, there are aspects of this agreement which we can fine-tune. Why are we not talking about the aspects of the agreement which we can fine-tune in the interest of Ghana? Why are we reducing everything to NDC/NPP and fighting a battle which has no benefit to the people of Ghana? he fumed. Source: Ameyaw Adu Gyamfi/Peacefmonline.com/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. Featured Video The Communication Directorate of the ruling New Patriotic Party (NPP) of Tarkwa-Nsuaem in the Western Region has issued a statement to debunk a publication making rounds on some media platforms captioned Tarkwa-Nsuaem MP Sues Party Member For Insulting Him on WhatsAPP. In a Press Release copied to Peacefmonline.com, Tarkwa-Nsuaem NPP Communication Directorate indicated that the publication sends a lot of message to discerning minds that it is a calculated attempt by the alleged victim, coupled with the MCE of Tarkwa-Nsuaem and with some disgruntled opposition NDC members to run down Hon. George Mireku Duker. ...it is a calculated attempt by the said victim coupled with the MCE of Tarkwa-Nsuaem with some disgruntled members of the opposition NDC to run down Hon. George Mireku Duker, our hardworking MP for the fact that he was able to overturned a dwindling electoral gap between NDC & NPP in 2012 which stood at 3,000+ in Favour of NPP to 21,000 in 2016. Read Below The Press Release Of Tarkwa-Nsuaem NPP Communication Directorate: The attention of the entire Tarkwa-Nsuaem NPP fraternity and precisely, the Tarkwa-Nsuaem NPP Communications Directorates attention have been drawn to a publication making rounds on some media platforms captioned Tarkwa-Nsuaem MP Sues Party Member For Insulting Him on WhatsApp. The caption of the publication alone sends a lot of message to discerning minds that, it is a calculated attempt by the said victim coupled with the MCE of Tarkwa-Nsuaem with some disgruntled members of the opposition NDC to run down Hon. George Mireku Duker, our hardworking MP for the fact that he was able to overturned a dwindling electoral gap between NDC & NPP in 2012 which stood at 3,000+ in Favour of NPP to 21,000 in 2016. In Tarkwa-Nsuaem today, NPP executives and the entire party structure and faithful are totally detached from Assembly governance, all party activities is only on the shoulders of the MP. The MP notwithstanding is doing very well and acclaimed the best MP Tarkwa-Nsuaem have ever had in less than two years in office. The case is that, the victim who was arrested has made it a constant job of constantly defaming the MP, all constituency executives and everyone who dont reason with him. The recent case which incurred the wrath of Tarkwa-Nsuaem NPP youth which necessitated his arrest was about the victim (Kofi Nimako) circulating concocted private bank account details about our MP on social media, circulating doctored audios about our MP in our constituency, circulating pictures of the then Parliamentary Candidate even on hospital bed and insulting all party structures with evidences currently with the police for investigations. We the Tarkwa-Nsuaem NPP Communications Directorate and the Tarkwa NPP Youth wing thinks this is long overdue in the sense that the victim coupled with the Tarkwa-Nsuaem NDC even accused MP for accepting bribes to make Goldfields Ghana Limited, a private company which government dont even have a say in their operational strategy to go on contract mining. Kofi Nimako (Victim) vilified our MP on local radio stations bringing our party, NPP into total disrepute with the aid of the Municipal Chief Executive. It didnt end there, at the just ended NPP constituency elections, the Tarkwa MCE tasked Kofi Nimako (victim) to lead his 10-Member candidates to contest the incumbent executives that brought NPP to office and they lost against the Mireku Duker team. And after that, the attacks on MP and the new executives have been soo intense to the extent, the youth most often gets charged to vandalize the office of the MCE for being behind it. The list of defamation against the MP by the victim is endless with his parents begging constituency executives most times. In NPP, we respect law and we the leadership and membership of Tarkwa-Nsuaem NPP will never sit down for an MCE who is enjoying from the sweat of an MP and entire party structure who held his hand into NPP in 2015 to connive with his cronies and some members of the opposition, NDC to dwindle the fortunes of our party through the publishing of ill statements against the MP here in Tarkwa-Nsuaem. The Presidency is aware of the happenings in Tarkwa-Nsuaem and the NPP leadership of the Tarkwa-Nsuaem Constituency is patiently waiting for the response for further actions. On this note, The Tarkwa-Nsuaem NPP Communications Directorate urges the entire public and the entire membership of the New Patriotic Party to disregard the lies being peddled around against Hon. George Mireku Duker. We thank God for having a visionary President, His Excellency Nana Addo Danquah Akufo Addo & a hardworking MP, Hon. George Mireku Duker. Thank you. SGN. NPP Communications Directorate Tarkwa-Nsuaem Source: Daniel Adu Darko/Peacefmonline.com/[email protected] Disclaimer : Opinions expressed here are those of the writers and do not reflect those of Peacefmonline.com. Peacefmonline.com accepts no responsibility legal or otherwise for their accuracy of content. Please report any inappropriate content to us, and we will evaluate it as a matter of priority. Featured Video The World Bank has commended the President of the Republic of Ghana, Nana Addo Dankwa Akufo-Addo and the Minister of State in charge of Public Procurement, Hon. Sarah Adwoa Safo, over their efforts at introducing a policy that aims to economically empower women, Persons With Disabilities (PWDs) and the youth through the award of government contracts. The Ministry of Public Procurement led by Hon. Adwoa Safo, recently announced that they were in the process of rolling out a major public procurement policy that seeks to award 30 percent out of 70 percent of all government contracts to marginalized groups in the society, especially, women, PWDs and the youth. This initiative, falls in line with vision of the President, Nana Addo Dankwa Akufo-Addo, to economically resource the marginalized groups to enable them also contribute their best towards the Ghana Beyond Aid agenda he is pushing for. A forum to that effect was held where the Ministry sought the input of civil society organizations, academia, the media and some other stakeholders in the public procurement business, into the policy document which is yet to be rolled out. The World Bank Group Director, Solutions and Innovations in Procurement Governance Global Practice, Vinay Sharma who was in the company of a former Administrator for Federal Procurement Policy at the Office of Management and Budget, Dr. Allan V. Burman, interacting with Hon. Adwoa Safo at their offices in the United States of America, noted that the establishment of the Ministry for Public Procurement, is apt since a similar office exists in their country to streamline procurement at the federal level. The two procurement experts then commended President Akufo-Addo and Hon. Adwoa Safo for doing their best to introduce the 30 percent out of 70 percent of all government contracts policy to the marginalized in the society. They indicated that the United States of America has a similar policy where 23 percent of all government contracts are reserved for women-owned firms. Mr. Sharma again indicated that a study they did in Ghana revealed that only 1 percent of the total government contracts are awarded to women-owned firms, noting that the situation is very bad and do not encourage women to bid for government contracts. He was therefore optimistic that the 30 percent policy when rolled out would economically empower women and the other marginalized groups in the society to be more productive to contribute their best towards the countrys development than what they are currently doing. The two leaders were also happy with the Presidents commitment to fighting corruption in procurement by the establishment of the Office of the Special Prosecutor section 3(a) of the Act. Owing to the good and transparent policies Hon. Adwoa Safo is introducing which has attracted the attention of all industry players around the globe, the World Bank and the IMF have invited her to attend their upcoming spring meetings in Washington DC. Source: Peacefmonline.com Disclaimer : Opinions expressed here are those of the writers and do not reflect those of Peacefmonline.com. Peacefmonline.com accepts no responsibility legal or otherwise for their accuracy of content. Please report any inappropriate content to us, and we will evaluate it as a matter of priority. Featured Video Good Tuesday Morning, Fellow Seekers. A new poll out this morning by The Public Religion Research Institute finds a widening generation gap over abortion, even as a polarizing Down syndrome abortion ban bill heads to the Pennsylvania Senate and the culture wars become a motivating issue in the 2018 midterms. The PRRI poll finds that a third of voters aged 18-29 say their views on abortion have changed in the past year, amid legislative efforts both in Pennsylvania and nationwide to limit access to the procedure. According to the poll, nearly three times as many 18 to 29s say they have become more supportive of abortion rights rather than more opposed (25 percent vs. 9 percent). That compares to seniors, aged 65 and up, who are twice as likely to say they have become more opposed (12 percent) than more supportive (6 percent), the poll found. Overall, that trend translates into a "significant generation gap," pollsters concluded, where a plurality of young voters (44 percent) say abortion runs counter to their personal beliefs, compared to 60 percent of Americans aged 65 and older who said the same thing. More from the poll: "Nearly two-thirds (65 percent) of young people, compared to 51 percent of seniors, agree that abortion should be legal in most or all cases. Nearly seven in ten (69 percent) young people, compared to 46 percent of seniors, agree that at least some health care professionals in their community should provide legal abortions. Among all respondents, 38 percent say obtaining an abortion in their community is somewhat or very difficult, compared to 46 percent who say it is not too difficult or not at all difficult. Nearly half (49 percent) of young Americans, compared to 35 percent of seniors, say abortions are somewhat or very difficult to obtain in their communities. Seniors (26 percent) are far more likely than young people (seven percent) to say they are not sure how difficult it would be to get an abortion in their community." "The relative stability of attitudes in the general public towards the legality and availability of abortion over the past few years has masked a growing polarization of opinion between younger and older Americans," PRRI CEO Robert P. Jones said in a statement. "As this younger generation continues to flex its political muscles--as we saw in the response to the Parkland shooting--they could also reshape the national conversation on women's health issues." The poll of 2,020 adults aged 18 and older was conducted from March 14 to March 25 and it has a margin of error of plus or minus 2.6 percentage points. The poll's findings come the morning after the Pennsylvania House voted, 139-56, to ban abortions based solely on a diagnosis of Down syndrome. The vote came despite protestations by the chamber's Democrats who said that it would interfere in the doctor/patient relationship and that similar laws in other states had been blocked on constitutional grounds. The bill now goes to the state Senate, which had previously voted to approve, along party lines, a bill that would have restricted access to abortion after the 20th week of pregnancy and banned a common, second trimester procedure. Gov. Tom Wolf opposes the Down syndrome bill, but has not explicitly said whether he would veto the legislation. The rest of the day's news starts now. Montgomery County Commissioner Val Arkoosh has publicly called on Democrat Joe Hoeffel to drop out of the race for the new 4th Congressional District . The Morning Call runs down the results of yet another GOP guv forum, this time put on by a professional group representing building contractors. GOP hopeful Guy Reschenthaler is outraising Rick Saccone in the fight for the Republican nod in the 14th Congressional District, The Post-Gazette reports. Gov. Tom Wolf has signed legislation that would crack down on domestic abusers, The PG also reports. The Legislature has approved a bill changing the way pain-killing medications are doled out in worker's comp cases, The Associated Press reports. PhillyMag asks whether Starbucks should fire a manager who notoriously called the cops on two black patrons for no reason at all. The NAACP tells WHYY-FM, meanwhile, that the incident is part of a larger, nationwide trend in discrimination. Here's your #Harrisburg Instagram of the Day: Pennsylvania has launched a concealed-carry website to clarify the rules for gun-owners, WITF-FM reports. Gov. Tom Wolf and U.S. Sen. Bob Casey lead all GOP comers in a new Morning Call/Muhlenberg College poll, PoliticsPA reports. Drought fears are sweeping the U.S. again, Stateline.org reports. U.S. Sen. John McCain, R-Ariz., remains hospitalized after surgery to treat an infection, Politico reports. The super PAC aligned with U.S. House GOP leadership has reserved $4.8m in digital and TV ads for the mid-terms, Roll Call reports. What Goes On. It's a Tuesday on a session week, which means the dance card is very full indeed. 8 a.m., 8EA East Wing: Nuclear Energy Caucus meeting 9 a.m., Main Rotunda: AICUP on state grant funding 10:30 a.m., Media Center: Reps. Kristin Phillips-Hill, Pam Snyder and others on rural broadband internet 10:30 a.m., Main Rotunda: Muslim Capitol Day 11 a.m., Media Center: Rep. Tony DeLuca and others on good government bills 11:30 a.m., Main Rotunda: Nurse practitioners rally for expanded practice rights 1 p.m., Main Rotunda: Pa. Providers Capitol Day 2:30 p.m., Main Rotunda: Nurse anesthetists rally. You are getting very, very sleeeepyyyy ... 4 p.m., East Rotunda: Paper ballot voting machine demo WolfWatch By the time most of you read this, Gov. Tom Wolf will have done an 8:07 a.m. call-in to KDKA-AM in Pittsburgh. What Goes On (Nakedly Political Edition). 7:30 a.m.: Breakfast for Rep. Becky Corbin 8 a.m.: Breakfast for Rep. Bud Cook 8 a.m.: Breakfast for Rep. Daryl Metcalfe 8 a.m.: Breakfast for Rep. Tedd Nesbit 8 a.m.: Breakfast for Rep. Tom Quigley 8 a.m.: Breakfast for Sen. Scott Hutchinson 5:30 p.m.: Reception for Councilwoman Deb Gross 5:30 p.m.: Reception for GOP guv candidate Paul Mango Ride the circuit, and give at the max, and you'll part with at least $5,850 today. There was no admission info available for the Mango event - so expect to pony up a bit more. Heavy Rotation. Here's one from Big Wild to get your Tuesday morning going. And now you're up to date. Ron Todt/AP Protesting Starbucks The overlap of racial discrimination and both food counters and coffee shops stretches across a long period of this country's history. From sit-ins to protests to boycotts, restaurants have been at the center of allegations and lawsuits charging racial discrimination. The Starbucks franchise is just the latest food and beverage company to come under scrutiny for seemingly promoting a racist policy. The outrage over the arrest of two black men at a Philadelphia Starbucks last week continued Monday, as protesters called the coffee shop anti-black. Starbucks CEO Kevin Johnson posted a lengthy statement Saturday night, calling the situation "disheartening" and that it led to a "reprehensible" outcome. Here's a rundown of cases - some high-profile, others more local - in which an eatery has been charged with being a racist establishment. Don't Edit In this March 10, 1965 file photo, demonstrators, including Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr., stream over an Alabama River bridge at the city limits of Selma, Ala., during a voter rights march. King's participation in the 54-mile (87-kilometer) march from Selma, Ala., to the state capital of Montgomery elevated awareness about the troubles blacks faced in registering to vote. (AP Photo/File) Books have been written about the long march toward social justice across the restaurant landscape in this country. Indeed, the list is long and turbulent and comprehensive works almost always include: The 1960 arrest of 51 protesters, including that of Martin Luther King Jr., at the famed Magnolia Room at Rich's Department store in Atlanta. A few months later the store changed its policy. In 1951, civil rights activist Mary Church Terrell protested the policy of famed Washington D.C. department store Hecht's, which barred black customers from eating at its cafeteria. Terrell, in her late 80s and using a cane, joined picketers in front of the store. The store changed its policy in 1952. Philadelphia in 1935 became a testing ground for a new state civil rights law. Four Horn & Hardart's Automat employees were arrested after they sat five white parties while forcing two black customers to stand by and wait for an hour. At Stouffer's, three black patrons received their meals smothered in salt. The manager asserted that all Stouffer's meals are "highly seasoned." Don't Edit The F.W. Woolworth's lunch counter at the International Civil Rights Center & Museum in Greensboro, N.C. The site is among about 130 locations in 14 states promoted as part of the U.S. Civil Rights Trail. (AP Photo/Skip Foreman, File) In February 1960, four college students took a seat at a Greensboro, North Carolina, Woolworth 5 & 10 cent store lunch counter. What happened next became one of the iconic narratives of the Civil Rights Era. The students refused to go to the segregated snack bar in the back of the store, and Woolworth refused to serve them. The students pledged to return every day until they won the right to eat there. The Greensboro protest grew as students from area schools joined the sit-in, and eventually, similar protests broke out at Woolworth stores across the South. In July 1960 Woolworth reversed its policy. Don't Edit Skip Foreman/AP Two years ago, Clarence Henderson, pictured here, revisited the Woolworth's lunch counter in Greenboro where more than 50 years prior he and other students at North Carolina A&T State University staged a sit-in to protest the store's policy of segregation at the lunch counter. Don't Edit AP/File In 1994, Denny's was at the center of one of the largest settlements under federal public accommodation laws. Denny's agreed to pay more than $54 million to settle a landmark racial discrimination case as thousands of black customers alleged they were refused service, forced to wait longer than white customers or overcharged at Denny's restaurants. Under the settlement, Denny's promised to treat all customers equally. In 2014, two Denny's customers filed a lawsuit against the eatery claiming they were forced to prepay for their food. Similar charges against another Denny's were made in 2017. "Denny's has zero tolerance for discrimination of any kind. This type of behavior is unacceptable for any reason and is clearly inconsistent with our practices and policies," the company said at the time in a written statement. Don't Edit Don't Edit Nick Ut/AP Add IHOP to the list of eateries accused of racist practices. The International House of Pancakes LLC in March apologized after a waitress asked black teenagers to prepay for a meal at a restaurant in Auburn, Maine. The chain restaurant said it had "zero tolerance" for discrimination. IHOP President Darren Rebelez called the episode an "isolated incident." Don't Edit Pat Wellenbach/AP Cracker Barrel in 2004 agreed to pay $8.7 million to settle allegations the restaurant chain mistreated black customers and discriminated against black employees. More than 40 plaintiffs in 16 states alleged black customers were denied service, assigned to segregated seating and subjected to racial slurs. Cracker Barrel was even charged with serving black customers food taken from the trash. A dozen employees complained the restaurant segregated them from white workers and generally assigned them "back of the house" jobs. Don't Edit Applebee's earlier this year fired workers and closed a restaurant in Independence, Missouri, after two black women said they were falsely accused of not paying for meals. The women caught the incident on video, which eventually went viral and showed a restaurant employee, a police officer and a security guard confronting them for "dining and dashing" during a previous visit. In a written statement, Applebee's said: "We do not tolerate racism, bigotry or harassment of any nature, and we have taken additional steps to close the restaurant at this time in order for the team there to regroup, reflect, learn and grow from this." The restaurant chain apologized to the women. Don't Edit The Lebanon Valley College community last year roiled amid the account of one of its students that a worker at an Annville restaurant used a racial slur against him in telling him to leave in the midst of his meal. Ricky Lee Bugg Jr., then a junior member of the LVC men's basketball team from Hummelstown, said he and a friend were eating at Just Wing It when a man he believed was a manager came out and said "I don't need you n...'s money," calling him a racial slur. Annville Police Chief Bernard Dugan eventually ruled that no criminal charges would be filed in relation to the incident. Dugan, who characterized the incident as "distasteful" and the restaurant owner's actions as "totally inappropriate," said that his department's investigation did not find evidence to support criminal charges. Don't Edit The Oregonian/File photo In 2015, an African-American man filed a $100,000 discrimination suit against the restaurant chain Elmer's, alleging he was told he'd have to prepay for his meal. According to The Oregonian, Brian Eason, a real estate agent who also served as a deputy with the Multnomah County Sheriff's Office, had stopped in at the Vancouver, Washington, location of Elmer's. In his lawsuit, Eason alleged that the waitress "demanded that he prepay for his meal." The Oregonian wrote: "I was kind of curious about it and said, 'Well, is that new?' And she said, 'Yes, we had a few walk-aways and my boss asked me to ask for prepayment.' Eason didn't think anything of it, he said, until he later ordered another drink and the waitress again wanted prepayment. "I said, 'This is kind of odd that I have to prepay every time I order my food and drink,' " Eason recounted. "She said, 'I think it's discrimination and my boss is here, and she's forcing me to have me do this.'" Don't Edit Former FBI director James Comey is coming to Philadelphia. Comey will be the first in the 2018-2019 Philadelphia Speakers Series season, presented by Widener University at the Kimmel Center for the Performing Arts. He'll be speaking at the Kimmel Center at 8 p.m. on Oct. 1. Comey's book, "A Higher Loyalty: Truth, Lies, and Leadership" was released on April 17. The book details his career at the FBI and working with President Donald Trump. President Trump has been vocal in his objection to the book. Joining Comey in the Philadelphia Speakers Series are feminist, journalist and activist Gloria Steinem and former Florida governor Jeb Bush. Steinem will be speaking on Nov. 12, while Bush will deliver his lecture on Jan. 28, 2019. Other speakers include neuroscientist and novelist Lisa Genova (Oct. 22), social justice activist and author Bryan Stevenson (Feb. 25, 2019), global political risk analyst Ian Bremmer (March 18, 2019) and humor columnist Dave Barry (April 29, 2019). All of the lectures begin at 8 p.m. They often include a question and answer session with the audience. Tickets for the series range from $295 to $535 and include seats at all seven lectures. Tickets to individual lectures are not available -- it's a subscription or bust affair. The Philadelphia Speakers Series is no stranger to big names. Past years lecturers include former president Bill Clinton, former Prime Minister of the United Kingdom David Cameron, journalist Dan Rather, documentarian Ken Burns, novelist Amy Tan, actor Alan Alda and "Hamilton" biographer Ron Chernow. The series is produced by Widener University, a private nonprofit university founded in 1821. For more information on the series visit philadelphiaspeakersseries.org. The Kimmel Center is located at 300 S. Broad St. in Philadelphia. Want more stories about Philadelphia? Click here to read all our coverage of the City of Brotherly Love. The U.S. and British governments on Monday accused Russia of conducting a massive campaign to compromise computer routers and firewalls around the world - from home offices to internet providers - for espionage and possibly sabotage purposes. The unusual public warning from the White House, U.S. agencies and Britain's National Cyber Security Center follows a years-long effort to monitor the threat. The targets number in the millions, officials say, and include "primarily government and private-sector organizations, critical infrastructure providers, and the internet service providers (ISPs) supporting these sectors." It was the two countries' first such joint alert. A joint US and UK statement on attribution of malicious cyber activity carried out by Russian government https://t.co/CQGuXnw6S7 pic.twitter.com/Excna3VMal NCSC UK (@NCSC) April 16, 2018 "We have high confidence that Russia has carried out a coordinated campaign to compromise . . . routers, residential and business - the things you and I have in our home," said Rob Joyce, the White House cybersecurity coordinator. "We condemn the actions and hold the Kremlin responsible for the malicious activities," said Jeanette Manfra, the chief cybersecurity official for the Department of Homeland Security. The warning is unrelated to the administration's recent military strikes on suspected chemical weapons facilities in Syria, action Russia condemned. Rather, it is part of a broader ongoing effort by the U.S. government to call out bad behavior in cyberspace and impose costs as a deterrent. "When we see malicious cyber activity, whether it be from the Kremlin or other malicious actors, we're going to push back," Joyce said. @DHSgov, @FBI and @NCSC have issued an important product on Russian targeting of net infrastructure. We urge all organizations to review the report and take action to protect your networks. https://t.co/1yYfwC6Xp3 Jeanette Manfra (@CISAManfra) April 16, 2018 Monday's announcement is the latest in a series of related moves by the Trump administration, which in recent months has publicly blamed Russia for launching the NotPetya worm that has been characterized as the costliest and most destructive cyberattack in history. It also recently announced that Russia had targeted the U.S. energy grid with computer malware, and it slapped fresh sanctions on Russian hackers for illicit cyber activity. The U.S. government also has obtained indictments against Iranian hackers, and accused North Korea of being behind the WannaCry computer worm that affected more than 230,000 computers around the world. The U.S. and British governments jointly tracked the latest campaign, which has targeted millions of machines globally, said Ciaran Martin, chief executive of Britain's NCSC, the government's central cybersecurity agency. The aim seems to be to "seize control" of the machines that connect networks to the internet, and in the case of internet providers, to gain access to their customers, for espionage or other purposes, he said. These network devices make "ideal targets," said Manfra, Homeland Security's assistant secretary for cybersecurity and communications. Most traffic within a company or between organizations traverses them. So a hacker can monitor, modify or disrupt it, she said. And they're usually not secured at the same level as a network server. "Once you own the router, you own the traffic that's traversing the router," she said. The agencies, which include the FBI, do not know precisely how many routers, firewalls and switches have been compromised and to what extent. They are seeking the cooperation of home office and private-sector business owners in sharing information if they determine their networks have been compromised. In its alert Monday, DHS described the hackers' techniques, from scanning internet address spaces to exploiting routers, switches and network intrusion-detection devices. U.S. officials said this year that Russian military hackers compromised routers in South Korea in January and deployed new malware when the Olympics began in February. It was not clear Monday whether that compromise was part of the same campaign. (c) 2018, The Washington Post. Written by Ellen Nakashima Kathmandu, April 17 Nepal has been elected a member of the Executive Board of the UN Women, the United Nations agency for gender equality and women empowerment. This is the first time that Nepal has made it to the UN Women since its establishment in 2010. Nepals term in the UN Women will be from 2019 to 2021. Other countries including India, Bangladesh, Mongolia and Saudi Arabia have already become member of the UN Women. Likewise, Nepal has been elected member of the United Nations Commission on the Science and Technology for Development. Its term in the Commission will be three years. Other members from the Asia Pacific Region include China, Thailand and Iran. Nepal got 52 out of 53 valid votes cast by 54 members of the Coordination and Management Meeting of the Economic and Social Council, according to a press note released by the UN. RSS Editor's note: This story was updated with new information about the auction of Bon Ton Shoppers, workers and communities are bracing for a bankruptcy court decision today that will mean the beginning of the end for Bon-Ton. Liquidators were the only bidders at the auction for the company, which took place Monday and Tuesday. Today, U.S. Bankruptcy Court in Wilmington, Del., is expected to approve the winning bid. Tuesday night, Bon-Ton issued this statement: On April 17, 2018, The Bon-Ton Stores announced the winning bid in an auction for the Company's assets held pursuant to Section 363 of the U.S. Bankruptcy Code. Bon-Ton will move forward in a constructive manner to ensure an orderly wind-down of operations that minimizes the impact of this development on our associates, customers, vendors and the communities we serve. At this time, all of our Bon-Ton, Boston Store, Bergner's, Carson's, Elder-Beerman, Herberger's and Younkers stores across the United States are open, and our e-commerce and mobile platforms are operating normally. We continue to offer a broad assortment of national and private brand fashion apparel and accessories for women, men and children, as well as cosmetics and home furnishings, just as we always have. While Bon-Ton announced closure of 42 locations in January, liquidation will mean sale or closure of the company headquarters in York County and all of the 254 stores in the chain. That would be a big retail hit for some communities like Lewistown, where Bon-Ton is the only department store. Bon-Ton in Lewistown "It would be devastating to be honest with you," said Rhonda Moore, executive director of Juniata River Valley Chamber of Commerce which includes Mifflin and Juniata counties. The only other nearby department store is J. C. Penney in Burnham, which is about 3.5 miles away. "A lot of those employees have been there literally out of high school - that has been their career," she said of the Lewistown Bon-Ton. After McMeens department store in Lewistown closed many years ago, Bon-Ton took its place, Moore said. The store is in a convenient location, she added. "We have so many senior citizens able to walk there. Senior housing is nearby, so it would really be hard for them," she said. Other than Bon-Ton and J. C. Penney in Burnham 3.5 miles away, the closest department stores are 30 miles away in State College. Seniors are "not going to drive 30 miles - they really will be at a loss. Literally it's a block they can walk and be there now," Moore said. Moore said more millennials are staying in Lewistown because it has more amenities that in the past, including the recent addition of two new coffee shops, a brewery and a restaurant. Losing a department store like Bon-Ton "would really be a blow to that upswing we're seeing." Reorg Research reported the Bon-Ton auction began shortly before midnight on Monday evening after a long day of negotiations, and was to resume at 9 a.m. Tuesday. Only two qualified bids were received, which were from liquidators. They were a group composed of lien noteholders and Great American Group, and Hilco Merchant Resources and Gordon Brothers Retail Partners, said the report. Impact of the Bon-Ton chain closing could be loss of several thousand jobs across south-central Pennsylvania, said David Black, president and CEO of the Harrisburg Regional Chamber and CREDC. That would include stores in Cumberland, Dauphin, Perry and York counties and company headquarters. "There's a personal cost when something like this happens," Black said. "It's always difficult to transition from one job to another. It absolutely rocks your world, in a very bad way." On the positive side, there are still jobs in retail, and unemployment is about 4 percent, he said. But this probably won't be the last loss of retail jobs, Black said, driven by the tremendous shift going on from brick-and-mortar stores to online sales. "It's hard to tell how long this will last, what the new normal looks like," Black said. "The good thing is our economy here is pretty strong. There will be job opportunities, for those in danger of losing their jobs, and job retraining for fields with broader applications," Black said. In Cumberland County, the Bon-Ton in the Carlisle Point shopping center is already slated for closing, but total liquidation could add the Camp Hill store to the list. Job loss will be a hardship for those involved, but job-seekers would find a healthy labor market in Cumberland County, said Jonathan Bowser, CEO of Cumberland Area Economic Development Corp. "This county has been very healthy. When we have had closures, those who want to reenter the workforce have had good job opportunities to do so," he said. With 4 percent unemployment, which is nearly full employment, Bowser said retailers have had a hard time finding employees. Likewise, he foresees adaptive reuse of Bon-Ton's retail space, noting that Cumberland County is the fastest growing in the state. "There more homes being constructed, families moving in. Retailers know that - this is place they want to be," Bowser said. York County would stand to lose more than 300 jobs if the Bon-Ton headquarters and Bon-Ton stores close, said Kevin Schreiber, president and CEO of the York County Economic Alliance. That's out of about 21,000 employees in retail in York County. "We have to wait and see what happens and watch this process evolve," Schreiber said Tuesday. "It's unfortunate when any company has to go through this, and with Bon-Ton, a legacy company in York, you hate to see it in its current state," Schreiber said. But Bon-Ton's situation is not unique, he noted. "Retail nationally as an industry is evolving, driven by consumer demand and convenience and the Amazon effect. We're seeing the national circumstances of retail coming home to roost here." While the job losses would negatively affect a lot of families, Schreiber said he hopes the new retailers coming to town will present opportunities for many of them. The retail spaces that Bon-Ton closures would open up are prime real estate space, Schreiber said. The next tenants or buyers may seek smaller footprints, so that could result in large stores being divided into multiple ones. York County has about 4.3 percent unemployment. In the Lehigh Valley, there are four Bon-Ton stores and a distribution center. According to a 2016 report, about 550 people are employed by Bon-Ton in that region. If Bon-Ton jobs are lost, those workers will benefit from the Lehigh Valley region having a "well-balanced and diversified economy," said Colin McEvoy, spokesman for Lehigh Valley Economic Development Corp. Retail jobs make up 10.7 percent of the 344,600-worker labor force there, he said, with those 34,380 jobs the second largest category behind health care and social assistance. And while it may be contributing to closure of brick-and-mortar stores, this region has seen growth in e-commerce, McEvoy said. Transportation and warehousing is the fastest growing segment in the labor force - 9.5 percent - with 30,000 jobs. Average pay in ecommerce is $15 per hour, which will offer jobs for those with lower skills. Bon-Ton recently filed state-required 60-day advance notices that it is planning to close four stores in Pa.: 600 Park City Center Lancaster, PA (Staff affected: 184) 3585 S. Church St. Whitehall, PA (Staff affected: 51) 2801 East Market Street, Building E York PA (Staff affected: 332) 2524 Schoenersville Road Bethlehem, PA (Staff affected: 89) In February Bon-Ton announced closure of 42 stores including eight in Pennsylvania. Outrage over the arrest of two black men at a Philadelphia Starbucks continued on the evening of April 16. The two men had been arrested on April 12 at the 1801 Spruce St. Starbucks after a manager asked them to leave because they had not purchased anything (the men were waiting to meet an acquaintance). The manager called the police, who arrested the men after they refused to leave. The men were later released after Starbucks refused to press charges. The store manager has since left the Starbucks employ (a "mutual" decision, according to Philly.com). Starbucks CEO Kevin Johnson has issued a personal apology to the men who were arrested and has stated that the company will work on providing unconscious bias training for management staff. Philadelphia police commissioner Richard Ross has stated that the police did "absolutely nothing wrong" and "followed policy." Protests occurred outside of the Starbucks over the weekend and on Monday morning. The evening protest on April 16 was organized by Philadelphians Organized to Witness, Empower and Rebuild (P.O.W.E.R), an interfaith community organization made up of clergy and community members. P.O.W.E.R had its groups sit-in at the Spruce St. location. You can see highlights of that part of the protest in the video below (to see the full hour-long Facebook Live broadcast of the protest click here). Can't see the video? Click here. After the sit-in, the protesters moved on to the Starbucks location at 15th and Latimer, which they entered and reiterated their demands. Those demands are: A meeting with Starbucks leadership to discuss the coffee company's role in gentrification and perpetuating racism, policies regarding customers and investment in black-owned franchises in African American communities. They also want a minimum $15 an hour wage for Starbucks employees. A meeting with the Philadelphia Police Department leadership to discuss implicit bias training, de-escalation techniques and the use of body cameras. They also want all police officers to wear body cameras within a year. The protesters were stopped by police from entering the Starbucks location at the Bellevue building at Broad and Walnut streets. Instead they gathered at the building's steps and continued their protest. The protest concluded around 5:45 p.m., although the group stated that there would be more organized protests in the future. To learn more about P.O.W.E.R. go to powerinterfaith.org. A representative for Exelon Corp., the owner and operator of Three Mile Island, said there remains time to save the state's nuclear power plants but that time is running out. Speaking before a state legislative panel Tuesday morning, Kathleen Barron, Exelon's senior vice president for federal regulatory affairs and wholesale market policy, told legislators that Exelon has stopped capital investment in the plant and has not ordered a new fuel load for the plant's nuclear reactor. The company's current plan, she said, was to operate TMI until its current fuel load expires and then begin decommissioning the plant next September. Last year Exelon announced it was planning to close the plant -- which employs 600-plus people -- as part of a wave of announced nuclear plant closures across the United States. Three Mile Island, like much of nuclear industry, is on the brink Nuclear power plants have been hammered by the natural gas boom that has slashed electricity prices in competitive markets. Nuclear operators have sought to obtain state aid or energy market reforms that would make keeping the plants operating financially viable, citing the plants' economic and community impacts; contributions to energy grid supply and diversification; and the environmental benefits of nuclear power. Opponents -- which include the natural gas industry -- have lobbied hard against any preferential treatment toward the nuclear industry. Nor has the federal government intervened. Earlier this year the Federal Energy Regulatory Commission [FERC] rejected a plan to prop up coal-fired and nuclear power plants. "They [FERC] see the market as it has been developed ... as working. And we would agree with that," Barron said. "We are not disagreeing that we should continue to develop natural gas ... that is not the point. What we are saying is that the market is picking winners and losers ... and it's not thinking about tomorrow." The lack of federal response, industry representatives said Tuesday, has led a number of states to take matters into their own hands. This past week in New Jersey, the state's legislature passed a controversial bill providing $300 million in annual subsidies to the state's nuclear fleet through an increase in consumer electricity fees. Donald Moul, who represented First Energy Corp. which has announced the planned closure of the Beaver Valley Nuclear Power Station in Beaver County, told legislators that "short of significant market changes ... right now, we have nothing in front of us that allows us to rescind that deactivation notice." Both the TMI and Beaver Valley plants, company representatives said, are quickly reaching the point at which they will not be able to rescind their plans to decommission their reactors. "When these plants go away, when you file a notice of cessation ... these plants do not come back," Moul told legislators. "Period." The identity of the man found shot along a York County road Monday has been released by the coroner. Aaron Wollman, 25, of the 100 block of Hickory Road, Denver, was found dead with apparent gunshot wounds around 7 a.m. Monday in Lower Chanceford Township, said Pamela Gay, York County coroner. He was found in the area of Bare and Furnace roads, Gay said. An autopsy is scheduled for this morning. Cause and manner of death are still pending autopsy results. State police in York said they are working with police across several counties on the investigation. Anyone with information regarding the last activities of Wollman is asked to call state police in York at 717-428-1011. SILVER SPRING TOWNSHIP - Cumberland Valley School District residents continued to express concern and disappointment for the district's decision to pursue preserved farmland via the eminent domain process, and on Monday night several indicated the battle won't be soon, or easily won, as they threatened a possible national spotlight and legal battles if the district moves forward with its plans. In the meantime, board president Mike Gossert announced to the crowd that the district is planning a town hall meeting some time in May on the issue. More than 50 people packed into the meeting room to show their opposition to the district's plan to take the historic McCormick Farm property as a site for future school buildings. Local historian Christine Musser, who has spoken out against the land purchase numerous times, not only presented the school board with a petition signed by people throughout the district who are against the decision, she also announced that a descendant of the historic and notable McCormick family that once farmed the land, is "willing to take it national." The descendant, she said, recently purchased the Chicago Tribune and has stake in the Allentown Morning Call and the New York Post, as well. Musser did say, however, they she hoped it could be handled before it got that far. Resident Howard Offenger, too, warned of the possibility of having a national audience. READ MORE: CV residents again urge district to consider options to taking over McCormick Farm "It's going to be a long haul," he said, if the district decided to press forward. "There are going to be very heavy costs. You're going against some really deep pockets." One woman said many conservation organizations and county government entities have written to the district, as well, and said there are other county officials throughout Pennsylvania who are expressing concern at the precedent such a move might set. "Think about how this is appearing to other counties," she said, "how it's going to have far-reaching effects." She also said of Natural Lands Trust, a private organization that holds the easement, "They will fight until the very end for this." A Middlesex Township resident, who said he and his wife preserved farmland in the area, reminded the board of the public support that land preservation has garnered, especially in Silver Spring Township over the last few years, and was concerned by comments from district officials who said the McCormick farm land was especially attractive because, as preserved land, it was cheaper. READ MORE: Farmland was saved for history, but a growing school district wants it "Why would any of us want to preserve land if we'd become targets?" he asked. Several residents who got up to speak reiterated that other land is available, and urged that the school board continue looking elsewhere. "Please consider other options, and don't make this a nightmare," one man said. Kathi Pifer, a New Kingstown resident who has been active and outspoken against the land purchase, reminded the board of the prime agricultural soil on the land. Others worry about the lessons it was teaching the students. One man said in comparing some of the board members' campaign statements and their action on this issue, "I feel a little misled and a little cheated," and that when he votes for an elected official he considers their morals and values and whether they are "in lock step with what I'm trying to teach my children." A senior in the district also expressed concern about the Cumberland Valley legacy becoming one of not great academics, but of setting the precedent of, "If you have money and power to acquire what you want, then get it." Rick Rovegno, a former county commissioner, urged the board to "take a step back, and let's get together and talk, work things out amicably. We all know the difficult job you folks have...we want to be pro-active, we want to be positive, we want to find solutions." Also on Monday, the board voted to approve a $140 million tentative 2018-19 budget, which calls for a 2.4 percent tax increase - the highest allowed under the Act 1 index - which equates to $55.43 for the year for the average ($243,100) property owner. The budget includes the hiring of 36 new positions to staff the new Winding Creek Elementary School next year and $1.6 million set aside for the potential land purchase. Administrative officials ensured this amount had no bearing on the tax increase being proposed. Board member Heather Dunn told the public that while she voted to support the tax increase included in the budget, she does "not support the land purchase at this time." Last month, member Pamela Long said she, too, was against the land purchase, which is why she was not going to support the budget. On Monday night, she voted "no" to the tentative budget, along with member Bob Walker, who had expressed his concerns last month about supporting a tax increase when there was a $2 million surplus in the budget. "You can see how overly complex it is to run a school district, especially one of this size," said Gossert, following the tentative budget discussion during the workshop portion of the meeting. He pointed to the fact that the district must oversee 1.5 million square feet of building space, with more coming in the new elementary school. Even with the additional school, the average capacity for the elementary schools in the district is 90 percent, and continues to grow, as the school district for the past several years has declared unprecedented enrollment growth. "We have to educate the kids that come," Gossert said, adding that the school board members spend countless amounts of hours each week, with no compensation, to ensure that can happen. "I know we're going through a contentious time right now," he said, adding, "It's been tough for all of us. We take this stuff home." Gossert said he has received "unpleasant" emails and phone calls because of the McCormick farm land decision. "I just ask that you recognize we are volunteers up here, and the things we do are for the kids," he said, adding, "That's why people come here to live." The district on Monday night offered a handout that included "Key Facts" regarding the land purchase, in an attempt to answer some questions, concerns and "statements of inaccuracy" that have arisen over the issue. "Technically speaking," it reads, "this is not preserved farmland. Unlike farmland which has been preserved through farm preservation programs coordinated through local governmental agencies, such as Cumberland County or Silver Spring Township, the farmland in question is privately owned, and a conservation easement is being held by the Natural Lands Trust, which is a private entity." Within the easement, there is a provision for the termination of the easement if a public entity, such as the school district would take the land via eminent domain. The reason the district is pursuing this land, the handout reads, is because of its prime location and topography, among other ideals, and the amount of land that is available - 108 acres which will help to meet Pennsylvania Department of Education recommendations and the necessities for impervious surfaces. In addition, not all of the acreage is usable for construction purposes. The handout also states that there are no specific plans for the property's development at the time, but that possibilities include the construction of a new middle school in the future. In the meantime, it states, the district plans to contract with a local farmer to farm the land. Security has been beefed up on HACC's Harrisburg campus as what the college describes as a "hate" group protests today. HACC says the group "has been known to incite violence," but it doesn't name them. Web sites on signs carried by protesters included Key of David Christian Center. The group has been directed to the free speech area on the campus. Students and employees have been asked to remain aware, use sound judgment and to not engage with this group. Protest by a hate group here at HACC!!! They're telling us to be safe and use sound judgement. My sound judgement tells me to go HOME!!! Posted by Steve Moore on Tuesday, April 17, 2018 "This hate group's expected visit is temporary. The College's core values and commitment to ALL students are permanent," said a statement from HACC. "It is unfortunate that we have to deal with these types of matters in 2018. However, the HACC community will remain strong and united - especially in the face of adversity," said HACC President John J. Sygielski. Susan Sams, 33, a nursing student at the school, said she was going about her business when she heard about the group. She was among the crowd of about 50 students who gathered. Some students exchanged verbal words with the protesters, who declined to speak with a reporter. "I'm upset," Sams said. "I've spent seven years in the mission field with Christian organizations, and this is not representative of how people can be reached with the Gospel." Sams went on to call the protest "alienation" and "a distraction." Editor's note: This story was edited to include comment from a student at the scene. Philadelphia police on Tuesday released the audio clips from the radio calls surrounding the controversial arrest Thursday of two black men at a Starbucks in center city Philly. The arrests sparked protests and a call for a social media boycott of the national chain. You can listen to the clips in the video above. Philadelphia's police commissioner on Saturday defended officers who arrested two black men at a Starbucks, prompting accusations of racism on social media and an apology from the company. Videos posted online show officers handcuffing the men in the downtown establishment on Thursday. A white man in the video is heard saying he was meeting with the men and calls the arrest "ridiculous." Commissioner Richard Ross said Starbucks employees called 911 to say the men were trespassing. He said officers were told that the men had come in and asked to use the restroom but were denied because they hadn't bought anything, as he said is company policy. He said they then refused to leave. Also on Tuesday, Starbucks said it plans to close more than 8,000 U.S. stores for several hours next month to conduct racial-bias training for its nearly 175,000 workers. The announcement comes after the arrests sparked protests and calls for a boycott on social media. Starbucks says the stores and corporate offices will be closed on the afternoon of May 29. PHILADELPHIA -- Meek Mill is one step closer to freedom. The Philadelphia District Attorney's Office said Monday that due to questions about the credibility of his arresting officer, the imprisoned rapper's decade-old conviction on gun and drug charges should be vacated and he should be granted a new trial. The recommendation, disclosed by Assistant District Attorney Liam Riley during a status hearing in Mill's case, marked the first time prosecutors have publicly said they agree with the claim by Mill's lawyers that his original arrest in 2007 might have been improper. It could also signal they would not press forward with a new trial -- possibly freeing Mill from the legal trouble he's had for a decade. Still, Mill's release from prison is not yet secured, nor has his case been officially tossed out. Common Pleas Court Judge Genece E. Brinkley, who in November sentenced Mill to two to four years in prison for violating his probation, ultimately would have to agree to vacate the conviction -- and she did not do so Monday. Instead, she scheduled another hearing for June, and refused to hear arguments from Mill's attorneys that he should be let out on bail. She also was quick to spar with his attorneys and repeatedly told them she would handle Mill as she did any other defendant. "This case is not going to be done any differently," she said. Brian McMonagle, one of Mill's lawyers, said his team planned to file motions with higher courts seeking to secure Mill's release "immediately." McMonagle said his team was "elated" by the decision of the District Attorney's Office, and said it would be "reprehensible" if Brinkley did not sign off on it. Lawyer Joe Tacopina, who also represents Mill, added: "Now the fact that he's in jail is even more egregious." Mill, 30, did not attend Monday's hearing, but more than 100 people rallied in support of him outside the Criminal Justice Center. He has been incarcerated since November, when Brinkley sentenced him to prison and told him: "I gave you break after break, and you basically just thumbed your nose at this court." Neither city prosecutors nor his probation officer at the time had recommended sending him back to prison. Her sentence sparked immediate outrage, with athletes, musicians and other celebrities saying the outcome demonstrated the flaws of the criminal justice system. Protesters rallied outside the Criminal Justice Center to call for Mill's release, and political leaders including Mayor Jim Kenney and Gov. Tom Wolf have since expressed varying degrees of support for the Philadelphia-born Mill, whose legal name is Robert Rihmeek Williams. Perhaps his most concrete reason for optimism came when District Attorney Larry Krasner -- who took office after Mill was sentenced -- said his office had questions about whether Mill's original conviction should stand. That position, made public in a motion Krasner's office filed last month, was taken after Mill's legal team produced evidence accusing his arresting officer, Reginald V. Graham, of lying to secure his conviction. Krasner's office also disclosed in February that prosecutors had placed Graham on a list of police officers with credibility questions -- something Mill's attorneys said they had not previously been told. Riley, the assistant district attorney, said in court Monday that prosecutors reviewing Graham's history have since identified 56 cases with similar credibility issues, and that the office believes his questionable conduct dates back to 2005, well before he arrested Mill. Still, the fate of the entertainer's case -- at least for the moment -- lies in the hands of Brinkley, the judge whom Mill's supporters have spent months petitioning to have removed from the case and accused of ethical improprieties. Late last month, the judge defended herself in an opinion filed in court, writing that she had "committed no error" and that her sentence of Mill was "not manifestly excessive." She also struck back at his legal team, accusing the lawyers of making evidence-free allegations about her behavior in overseeing his case. While lawyers for Mill and the District Attorney's Office wrangled with Brinkley in a ninth-floor courtroom Monday, "Free Meek Mill" protesters outside the building raged against what they called her tyranny and called on the governor to pardon the rapper. The peaceful gathering -- which resulted in police closing off Filbert Street in front of the courthouse -- included the rapper's mother and son, fans, criminal justice reform advocates, 25 Boston teens in town for a service project and a smattering of politicians. "The flaws of our criminal justice system are many," state Sen. Sharif Street said from a platform. "Meek Mill is one of thousands of citizens, many from my district in North Philadelphia, trapped by its imperfections. As we examine ways to reform an imperfect system, we as leaders are charged with meeting our constitutional mandate of a fair and equitable system for all Americans." "Free Meek Mill," Papi Williams, 6, the rapper's son, chanted while hoisting a portrait of his father, to the delight of the crowd. "I miss my dad very much," the boy told reporters after he and his grandmother left the stage. "He picks me up from school sometimes. We do fun things." "I'm more optimistic now that things have changed and turned around," said Kathy Williams, the rapper's mother. "Hopefully, by the time May gets here, he'll be out. Hopefully, this weekend, really." At various times during the rally, loudspeakers blasted the rapper's profanity-heavy recordings, including "Dreams and Nightmares," causing his supporters to break into frenzied dancing while singing along. A large contingent of police officers, in uniform and street clothes, stood watch. By Chris Palmer and Mensah M. Dean, The Philadelphia Inquirer (TNS) The blinds were down and doors were locked at a Philadelphia Starbucks on Monday afternoon. The Starbucks, located at 18th and Spruce streets in Philadelphia, was closed after protests that morning and over the weekend concerning the arrest of two black men. The two men, who have not been identified, were arrested at the Starbucks after being asked to leave by a manager and by police on April 12. The men were waiting to meet an acquaintance. One of them had also asked for a bathroom code, which they were refused on account of not buying anything at the location. They were asked to leave. After the men declined to leave, a manager called police, who showed up and repeated the request. The men, again, declined to leave. As they were being handcuffed and arrested, the man they were meeting showed up and questioned officers. The scene was captured on a video that went viral over the weekend. @Starbucks The police were called because these men hadnt ordered anything. They were waiting for a friend to show up, who did as they were taken out in handcuffs for doing nothing. All the other white ppl are wondering why its never happened to us when we do the same thing. pic.twitter.com/0U4Pzs55Ci Melissa DePino (@missydepino) April 12, 2018 Protesters on April 16 chanted "Anti-blackness anywhere is anti-blackness everywhere" as they gathered outside and inside the store, according to Philly.com. The protesters left in the morning and by afternoon the only ones gathered outside the store were reporters. The store itself is temporarily closed. When this reporter tried the doors, they were met by an employee who apologized for the store closure, adding that they hoped to reopen soon. They then offered a gift card for a future Starbucks visit. Another protest is scheduled for 4 p.m. on April 16. It is being organized by the Interfaith Clergy Leaders, according to Philly.com. Starbucks has apologized for the incident, while its chief operating officer, Rosalind Brewer, told NPR that the company needed to offer unconscious bias training to its store managers to prevent future incidents. "The circumstances surrounding the incident and the outcome in our store on Thursday were reprehensible, they were wrong," said Starbucks CEO Kevin Johnson in a "Good Morning America" interview. He also offered a personal apology to the men who had been arrested. The manager who called police has left the company, according to Philly.com. It was a "mutual" decision, a spokesperson told the news site. Philadelphia Police Commissioner Richard Ross addressed the arrest in a Facebook Live on April 14, stating that the police asked the men to leave three different times. The men refused to leave, at which point the men were handcuffed and escorted out of the store. Starbucks did not press charges and the men were released. Commissioner Richard Ross gives a statement on the incident that occurred 4-12-18 at the Starbucks at 18th and Spruce Streets Posted by Philadelphia Police Department on Saturday, April 14, 2018 "These officers did absolutely nothing wrong," Ross said. "They followed policy. They did what they were supposed to do. They were professional in all their dealings with these gentlemen and instead they got the opposite back. "I will say as an African American male, I'm very aware of implicit bias. We are committed to fair and unbiased policing and anything less than that will not be tolerated in this department." The School District of Lancaster said a teacher is not being fired for making pancakes for students while they were taking PSSA tests last week. Teacher Kyle Byler told LancasterOnline he was suspended without pay on April 10 after he brought an electric griddle into class and made each student a whole-grain pancake to eat during their test. The report said he was told he would be terminated for causing a distraction during the test. That is not the case, and the teacher is scheduled to return to work, said Kelly Burkholder, school district spokeswoman. The matter is not on the school board's agenda tonight, and the personnel matter has been resolved with the employee, she added. Burkholder also said no teacher can be dismissed without the school board first approving a written notice that offers the opportunity for a board hearing, and that step has also not occurred. "Nor will it occur in this situation, as the personnel matter has been resolved with the employee," she said. Burkholder added that the school district provides a free breakfast and lunch for all students every day, including PSSA testing days. The state Department of Education strictly requires that teachers who proctor PSSA testing "focus their full attention on monitoring students during the test," she said. "All teachers serving as PSSA test proctors receive specific training on testing protocol. Had permission been sought by a teacher to cook in the classroom during PSSA testing and serve food to the students, the response would have been that such activities would distract the teacher from the required duties as a test proctor," she said. The state education department has requested information about this incident for its review, she added. Kathmandu, April 17 Minister for Culture, Tourism and Civil Aviation Rabindra Adhikari says Nepals sole international airport, Tribhuvan International Airport in Kathmandu, will come into operation for 21 hours a day from the third week of May this year. Adhikari says he wants the airport to run round the clock. However, it is not immediately possible, therefore attempts will be made for its gradual improvement. With an increase in the number of flights, the airport has been frequently facing air traffic congestion of late. The inability to operate flights full time has worsened the situation. Therefore, Adhikari says he will consult an experts team for air space management. In an interaction with tourism experts and entrepreneurs in Kathmandu today, the Minister said he would introduce a plan to promote the countrys tourism industry so that it could contribute around 25 per cent to the gross domestic product. Currently, the industry contributes 2.8 per cent to the GDP. WILLIAMSPORT - A Tennessee man has been accused of misappropriating $5.7 million from the pension plan of a Centre County business that manufactures and sells fireclay and high alumina refractory brick and related products. John Sherman Jumper, 52, of Eads, was arraigned Tuesday in Tennessee on charges contained in a U.S. Middle District indictment that simultaneously was unsealed. He was released on personal recognizance with orders to appear April 26 before Magistrate Judge William I. Arbuckle III in Williamsport. Jumper is accused of embezzling from the pension fund for 129 active and retired hourly employees of Snow Shoe Refractories, which has its principal office in Clarence. The criminal allegations are similar to those contained in a federal civil suit that Snow Shoe filed in 2016 against Jumper, another individual and three companies. The indictment identifies Jumper as owner, chief executive officer and chief financial officer of a securities broker known as Alluvion Securities in Memphis, Tenn. He also is the owner of Alluvion Investments, a registered investment advisory firm in Memphis, the charges state. Jumper is accused of representing himself as vice president of Snow Shoe although the company says he never was an employee or officer. His link to the business, according to court documents, was to encourage Brett Blair, a friend and United Methodist minister, in 2004 to acquire Premier Refractories Inc. Blair with Porterfield, also a United Methodist minister, formed BBBP Acquisition that bought Premier in February 2007 and renamed it Snow Shoe. Jumper was paid $250,000 for facilitating the purchase. According to the indictment, Jumper and other investors formed American Investments Fund I to buy an air conditioner parts business in Springdale, Arkansas, they named American Tubing Arkansas. He also owned and controlled American Investments Fund II that he and others used to invest in various businesses, the document states. Jumper is charged with the fraudulent transfer of $5.7 million from the Snow Shoe pension plan to the two funds during a period between April 2007 and October 2016 and then taking steps to conceal the illegal activity. He is alleged to have identified himself as a Snow Shoe vice president and used multiple records and documents containing the forged signatures of company shareholders and officers. Jumper is accused of causing the transfer of $3 million from the pension fund in March 2015, $2 million in November 2015 and $700,000 in February 2016. The indictment details how the money passed through the two American Investment funds and alleges Jumper benefitted personally from the transactions. Jumper is accused of falsely and fraudulently responding in February 2016 to a request from Snow Shoe's unidentified actuary in Harrisburg for information related to the $3 million and $2 million transfers. He is charged with wire fraud, embezzlement and false statements and concealment of facts in employee pension benefit plan reports. Snow Shoe and its pension plan in October 2016 sued Jumper, Porterfield, the two American Investment Funds and American Tubing accusing them of misappropriating millions of dollars. Porterfield, who has 12 percent interest in Snow Shoe, is not charged criminally and in the civil suit denies he took any pension plan asset for personal use or assisted Jumper. Jumper's response to the civil suit was he took no action that was not permitted by law, did not convert funds to personal use and he applied his best efforts to facilitate investments that would generate a level of return for the plan. He contends he was given express authority to act on behalf of the pension plan. A Mount Joy woman facing more than $91,000 in fines levied by the Pennsylvania Turnpike Commission asked a judge Tuesday for more time to determine how she can afford a plea deal. Chief Deputy District Attorney Michael Sprow didn't outline that offer when Lori Yearick appeared before Dauphin County President Judge Richard A. Lewis. Yearick is charged with theft of services. Turnpike officials claim she is one of a bloc of habitual offenders who have been dodging tolls on the highway. She is facing the highest penalty of any of them. Defense attorney Edward Spreha Jr. asked Lewis to continue Yearick's case. Spreha cited the offered plea agreement and said Yearick needs time to determine how she will be able to pay what is likely to be a reduced but still hefty penalty. "The commonwealth just made an offer. It involves a substantial amount of restitution," Spreha said. Lewis scheduled another hearing on Yearick's case for June. A few ruby-throated hummingbirds had found their way into southeastern Pennsylvania as mid-April approached, and more are approaching the state on their tails. The mass of the little birds will overspread Pennsylvania soon, and heres the detailed forecast. (Compiled by Marcus Schneck, mschneck@pennlive.com) Don't Edit A few are already here The first few hummingbirds of the spring 2018 northward migration have reached Pennsylvania, according to several recent reports to www.hummingbirds.net, including one from the northeastern corner of the state. The other Pennsylvania reports to date have been confined to the southeastern region, although the leading edge of the bulk of the early migrants has reached the Pennsylvania-Maryland border. Don't Edit National Park Service About 20 miles per day According to www.hummingbirds.net, which has been tracking the annual northward migration of ruby-throated hummingbirds since 1996, the birds will continue north toward Pennsylvania and other northern destinations at about 20 miles per day. Theyve been migrating since January and February from wintering grounds in southern Florida, southern Mexico, Central America and the West Indies. Don't Edit Mostly males at first The first hummingbirds arriving in Pennsylvania are likely males, which migrate ahead of the females by about 10 days. Don't Edit Running late? The birds are running a bit late this year. According to the website, which annually maps first-hummer reports from more than 7,000 people across the eastern U.S., the first birds usually arrive back in Pennsylvania around April 9 or 10, although they have been recorded as early as March 20. Don't Edit Don't Edit Not only flowers Some flowers and tree buds are blooming in Pennsylvania as the hummingbirds arrive, but lacking an abundance of blossoms, will find other sources of nectar, such as oozing holes drilled into trees by sapsuckers and hummingbird feeders. Don't Edit Get those feeders ready Those wondering about the proper timing for cleaning and filling their hummingbird feeders for the first time this year have their answer. Now is the time to get those feeders into action, particularly if you hope to attract more hummers this year than last. Don't Edit Return engagement Banding studies indicate that many hummingbirds will return to the same sites they departed late last summer or fall, and even visit the same feeders. If they find ready nectar sources, the birds are likely to re-establish their territories from last year. Having ample feeders ready when the birds arrive also can be a means to attracting additional hummingbirds to settle in an area, including birds that found their previous territories lacking on their return this year. If the food then continues to be available in the territories the hummers choose, they usually will remain there throughout the summer, having little incentive to look for new spots to take nectar and insects. Don't Edit Missed opportunity? Feeders that go up in June or July, when a homeowner begins thinking about visitors commonly associated with summer, like hummingbirds, likely will be too late to attract the birds attention. Don't Edit Red's the color In addition to getting the feeders in operation now, those wanting to attract more hummingbirds to their backyards this year might want to add red to their landscape at the same time. That can be accomplished with plants that flower in shades of red early in the year, with artificial red-flowered plants or even with red plastic sheets. Don't Edit Don't Edit No red dyes Red is a very attractive color to hummingbirds and could help to lead them to feeders when they are establishing their territories. However, hummingbird nectar dyed red, or any color, should be avoided. The chemical dyes can do nothing but harm to the tiny birds with the incredibly high metabolisms. Feeders made of red plastic or red glass should provide the visual attraction, rather than the sugary liquid inside them. Don't Edit Perfect nectar Humming bird nectar is easy to make at home. A 4-to-1 water to white sugar solution will attract hummingbirds by closely mimicking the nectar they drink from flowers. Heres the simple recipe: Bring 4 parts water, such as 4 cups of water, to a rolling boil Stir in 1 part sugar, such as 1 cup of sugar, until it dissolves in the water. Let the mixture cool and then fill your feeders. Any unused portion can be refrigerated for as long as 2 weeks and used as needed. Don't Edit Other foods In addition to nectar, hummingbirds eat small insects, which they snatch in midair, pluck from spider webs, dig from oozing sap or grab off plants. Don't Edit Tiny nests After both males and females are back on their summer breeding grounds, courtship behavior will begin, followed by mating and then females building their nests on slender branches, usually of deciduous trees, sometimes pine, 10-40 feet above the ground. Each nest is built directly atop a branch, rather than in a fork. Its made of dandelion and thistle down held in place by spider silk and pine resin, with an exterior decorated with lichen and moss. It measures 2 inches in diameter and about 1 inch deep Don't Edit Tiny eggs After 6-10 days of nest building, the female will lay 1-3 white eggs into the nest and will then incubate them for 12-14 days. Each egg weighs about a 50th of an ounce. The nestlings will fledge from the nest when they are 18-22 days old, but the female will continue to feed them for another 3 weeks or so. Don't Edit Don't Edit Short lives Most of the young hummingbirds will not survive their first year, but for those that do the average lifespan will be about 3 years. The oldest known ruby-throated hummingbird lived a bit longer than 9 years. Don't Edit More about hummingbirds Hummingbirds back in Pennsylvania for breeding season; you can make your yard bird-friendly What are the best monarda varieties? Mt. Cuba Center suggests these 10 Though the government realised it quite late, retrofitting has been an effective and economical technology to build back better for people whose houses were partially damaged in the 2015 Nepal earthquake. It was in 2012/13 that Min Prasad Nepal (now 67) and his wife Saraswati (now 56) built their new house on a hill at Sirthali in Dhunkharka village of Kavrepalanchok district, around 40 kilometres east of Kathmandu. The couple had a small land to cultivate food for themselves whereas their two eldest daughters were already married off. Three other daughters were studying. Therefore, they had no option but to take a loan from rich people in the community to build the house. We could complete the construction with just Rs 300,000. We did not have to buy wood as the nearby community forest would provide it for free to the locals, Min Prasad shares his happiness with a wide smile more than five years after him completing the construction. However, the sexagenarian says he is yet to pay back around Rs 50,000. But still, I was so happy that I could make a house of my own after years of struggle, the man, who apparently has some mental illness and is subsequently isolated from his society, says. However, the happiness collapsed within next three years as the magnitude-7.6 earthquake shook hills and mountains of Nepal on April 25, 2015, killing nearly 9,000 people with its strong aftershocks. Many people in Min Prasads village lost their houses through the number of deaths was relatively low there. His new house did not collapse, but it was left with multiple cracks on walls. Some cracks were such big, Saraswati puts her hands in a parallel line keeping a distance of around two inches in between. Left with a heavy debt burden for constructing the house, there was no way the family could build a new structure anytime soon, even the government promised them to give a grant of Rs 300,000 in three installments. As the third anniversary of devastation is just three weeks away, the government is yet to release the grant completely and Min Prasads neighbours are still waiting for the money to complete their reconstruction works. But it has already been one and half years since the couple is back into their old house and living inside it. Thanks to new retrofitting technology villagers like him came to know, they have made their old house new, with significantly shorter time and less money spent on it. Retrofitting vs reconstruction Post-earthquake, the government launched a massive reconstruction campaign. Though its timely implementation is still under question, providing every family which lost their house or whose house suffered significant damage Rs 300,000 was a generous decision. But, villagers like Min Prasad feel that the government did not think how they could build back the old house more strongly if it has not fallen down completely. Of course, it does not make you feel good if you have to demolish the house you have built with hard work and passion, Shekhar Prasad Timalsina (69), who lives a couple of kilometres away from Min Prasad, shares as he decided to retrofit the house instead of building a new one recently, After all, the house is not only a physical structure, it is a manifestation of your love, devotion, and hard work. Retrofitting is going on at Shekhar Prasads 29-year-old house for last one month and he is expecting the completion in next one month now. He spent around Rs 250,000 to buy construction materials including rods, aggregate, cement, and sand. He was fortunate that an NGO, which was conducting a retrofitting training programme for professional civil engineers and other skilled and unskilled workforce, offered to use his house as a lab for the trainees. It was a win-win agreement that our trainees get a free spot to practise and improve their skills whereas the house owners do not need to pay for their workforce, Kiran Shrestha, Training Team Leader for the NGO, Build Change, shares, After all, we do not want locals to demolish the houses which could be retrofitted well. The organisation says it has already retrofitted eight houses in Bethanchok Rural Municipality, which Dhunkharka is also a part of. Opportunities and challenges As the villagers did not easily trust them in the beginning, the organisation in its piloting phase retrofitted three houses at its own cost (and Min Prasad was one among them). After a gradual rise in its credibility, the organisation now encourages people to retrofit houses if they are not completely damaged. Its staff basically tell people why it could be a better option than demolishing the existing house and building the new one, and help them plan the process. The government gives Rs 300,000 to people who reconstruct their houses, but only Rs 100,000 to those who choose to retrofit. Therefore, its reception is still challenging, Shrestha says, But, we also know that every new idea takes time; hence, we will continue our efforts. He informs that the government and other agencies involved in the reconstruction drive at first believed that retrofitting would not be possible for houses with stone and mud walls. It was his organisation among many which did a rigorous research on multiple retrofitting technologies and convinced the government and the National Reconstruction Authority that it could be a viableand more economicaloption for such houses too if they did not suffer complete damages. Subsequently, the NRA has authorised Build Change to conduct competency-based retrofitting training at communities with a mission to retrofit 1,000 houses, train 2,000 engineers and produce 12,000 skilled and unskilled builders in next two years. The United Kingdom is supporting the organisation with this process, through a UN Office for Project Services-led consortium. Build Change has already launched retrofitting project in 11 districts and is expanding it to 20 more. Lets talk about Min Prasad and Saraswatis family once again: Inspired by some of his neighbours, the couple now plans to launch the homestay business for foreign and domestic tourists in their retrofitted house. Among our three unmarried daughters, the eldest is working abroad whereas two are studying in Kathmandu. All of them have told memomma, if you launch the business, we will come back home and take care of everything, Saraswati looks quite excited to share the conversation, I really hope that my family is coming back together after years. It seems, for her, retrofitting redresses not only cracks on the wall but also forced separations in the family. Photos: Krishna Lubanjal Perryville soccer coach Jerry Fulton has been approached about how good his team is, because according to the results, they have to be pretty good.Perryville claimed first place in the Hillsboro The St. Vincent cross country teams made a statement. The boys finished first, while the girls took second place at the Perryville High School Invitational on Tuesday in the Perryville City Park.It St. Vincent football has asserted itself the past few years when it comes to matchups with their crosstown rival Perryville. The Indians had won three straight contests against the Pirates. St. Roth to help raise money for cancer society During last years Perryville homecoming game, the football coaches donned pink hats and pink pants in honor of a noble cause. They hope to do so again this year.Perryville football head coach Pirates play to win against Blackcats Perryville football has had a flair for the dramatic this season. This past week was no different as they held on late for a 21-14 victory over Fredericktown on Friday at Pirate Stadium. Perryville St. Vincent keeps foot on the gas in victory St. Vincent made quick work of Herculaneum in week four. The Indians got off to a quick start and kept it rolling as they dispatched of the Blackcats 49-0 on Friday at Herculaneum High School. That Click Here For Our Local Sports Page Guyana commits to paying ExxonMobil's loan interest irrespective of source of funds By Abena Rockcliffe-Campbell GEORGETOWN Petroleumworld 04 17 2018 The International Monetary Fund (IMF) has noted that Guyana's generosity to oil giant ExxonMobil creates perfect conditions for the company to engage in actions that can result in the country securing even smaller revenues than that which is expected. Guyana has committed to paying all the interest on loans secured to fund operations at the Stabroek Block. The block is currently worth over US$320B. The 2016 Production Sharing Agreement (PSA) that Guyana signed with ExxonMobil has made such generous provisions. The agreement states that ExxonMobil will be able to recover the cost of interest, expenses and related fees incurred on loans raised by parties comprising the contractor for petroleum operations and other financing cost provided that such expenses, fees and costs are consistent with market rates. The provision is very broad and covers any cost that ExxonMobil may incur for petroleum operations and even other financing. IMF thinks that this provision can prove to be disadvantageous to Guyana. The international body said that the treatment of interest expenses in the ExxonMobil/Guyana contract appears to be generous. The fund said that the treatment of interest expense is important because excessive or abusive use of debt can have a detrimental impact on the amount of profit oil to be shared between the government and the contractor. The mission understands that in Guyana's PSAs interest expenses, irrespective of the source of financing, are permitted to be recovered provided that such expenses are consistent with market rates. Moreover, IMF noted that interest payments are exempt from withholding taxes, providing yet another incentive for contractors to finance their costs with debt. Further, IMF said that it is quite common to have limitations on interest deductibility. Some countries disallow interest expenses or limit the amount of debt permitted for cost recovery purposes through caps on debt to equity ratios or earning stripping rules. The international body said that other countries may prescribe that interest may be deductible only on borrowing to fund development costs or a maximum percentage of such costs. IMF pointed to Uganda's model PSA, which allows interest on loans (from any source) to finance development operations only up to 50 percent of the total financing requirement. Interest on loans to finance exploration is not allowed. Such a restriction could be supplemented with regulations or guidance defining the financing requirement as the cumulative negative cash flow, including tax paid but excluding other disallowed costs. The mission understands that in Guyana, it is common to exempt petroleum and mining companies from withholding tax on interest payments. Therefore, limiting the amount of debt for cost recovery purposes or disallowing interest expense altogether in PSAs may be appropriate. In many cases, oil companies, which form a consortium for a project would borrow from their parents companies. And there are innumerable case studies which show that it is in these instances, corruption takes place. This dose of reality was recently provided by Local Content expert, Anthony Paul, to those who attended the enlightening Spotlight on Energy forum, which took place in Port of Spain a few weeks ago. There, Paul said that oil companies are often borrowing funds, many times from their parent entities, at rates higher than bank rates and with administrative costs that are gold plated. The Chatham House Advisor who is the author of Guyana's draft Local Content Policy, reminded that oil investors have one clear, simple goal; that is, converting the wealth of the people and taking it to their shareholders as quickly as possible. Along the way, they will employ several strategies towards getting huge profits. If the right systems of controls are not in place, Paul is on the record as stating that significant revenue to the state would be lost. Hit your target - Advertise with us Story from Kaieter News Kaieteurnewsonline.com 04 17 2018 Copyright 1999-2018 Petroleumworld or respective author or news agency. All rights reserved. We welcome the use of Petroleumworld (PW) stories by anyone provided it mentions Petroleumworld.com as the source. Other stories you have to get authorization by its authors. Internet web links to http://www.petroleumworld.com are appreciated. Petroleumworld welcomes your feedback and comments, share your thoughts on this article, your feedback is important to us! We invite all our readers to share with us their views and comments about this article. Write to editor@petroleumworld.com By using this link, you agree to allow PW to publish your comments on our letters page. Any question or suggestions, please write to: editor@petroleumworld.com Best Viewed with IE 5.01+ Windows NT 4.0, '95, '98,ME,XP, Vista, Windows 7,8,10 +/ 800x600 pixels Guyana to guard against steep revaluation of the GYD dollar due to oil revenues By Demerarawaves GEORGETOWN Petroleumworld 04 17 2018 Finance Minister, Winston Jordan on Friday said government would put place safeguards to prevent a steep revaluation of the Guyana dollar as a result of expected large inflows of United States (US) dollars from oil earnings. I will indicate to you that there could possibly be some appreciation of the Guyana dollar but we will have to guard against that using economic and financial policies to guard against any major appreciation of the currency, he told a news conference. Concerns have been repeatedly raised by local and foreign economists and other experts that Guyana's traditional exports like rice, sugar and bauxite risk becoming to pricey to compete on the regional and international markets because production costs will soar if the Guyana dollar regains value. They have also advised Guyana against spending lavishly on things like wages and salaries and non-infrastructural projects. The Finance Minister acknowledged that the value of the Guyana dollar will increase against the United States (US$1.00 = GY$213 selling), but declined to estimate how much that may be. He also decided against estimating what annual net oil revenues may be, saying that a number of models were being examined and he has to first decide what's the price per barrel he has to use. In such a situation where imports will become cheaper and exports more expensive, he said he was not worried that Guyana's thriving agriculture sector would begin to lag, he said I am not afraid of Guyana being prone to Dutch Disease because some of our industries are fairly well-established and require significant injections of capital to become competitive. The Finance Minister stressed that he personally does not support subsidies for businesses to cushion the impact of a higher value Guyana dollar I don't want to talk too early about subsidies. I personally, this has nothing to do with government or anything, don't like subsidies. For me, it distorts resource allocation, it results in mismanagement; very often the people who should be the beneficiary don't be the beneficiary and the people who you don't want to be the beneficiary ending up being beneficiaries, Jordan said while stressing that was his personal opinion. He preferred the issue of subsidies to be discussed in the context of government's Green State Development Strategy. Jordan, a former Budget Director, said he was largely banking on the proposed Sovereign Wealth Fund (SWF) in which to park a lot of the unprecedented revenues instead of allowing it gush into an economy that cannot absorb huge amounts of foreign currency. It also depends on what pace of development we are looking at and how much of the oil money gets seeped into the formal economy because, as I said, we will be holding it in the SWF (Sovereign Wealth Fund) out there so it's not like its in the formal economy and at what rate will depend on our capacity to absorb, he said. He noted that both the private and public sector do not have the capacity to spend on huge capital projects. A SWF green paper and legislation, including Santiago Principles, are to be tabled at Cabinet next month before it is taken to Cabinet for further consultations and eventually to Parliament before year-end. One of them, of course, is the Sovereign Wealth Fund which the idea here is that all the monies that potentially coming from oil go there and we get out of that fund, based on the rules that we are putting in place and so on, enough to drive our developmental agenda, he said. To avoid Dutch Disease and all these kinds of things, we have to make sure that our dependence on oil is not a new dependence as were the cases with bauxite and sugar, he added. He said the governing coalition's Green State Development Strategy would be Guyana's medium term economic blueprint that will include resilient infrastructure, renewable energy sourcing and narrowing the socioeconomic gaps between the coast and the hinterland. Jordan disclosed that government was beefing up its ability to conduct macroeconomic analysis and statistical development and management by Bank of Guyana. Personally, I would like it to go a little faster but that happens when you don't have money and you have to depend on arrangements like multilateral lending, he said. The United States oil giant, ExxonMobil, intends to begin commercial oil production in Guyana in 2020. Based on the latest discovery offshore, daily production is estimated at 500,000 barrels per day. Hit your target - Advertise with us Trinidad's oil trade union OWTU warns against Petrotrin WGTL plant sale By Kevon Felmine PORT SPAIN Petroleumworld 04 17 2018 Officials of the Oilfields Workers Trade Union (OWTU) warned yesterday that reports of Petrotrin finalising the sale of its failed World Gas to Liquid (WGTL) plant to NiQuan Energy Trinidad Limited could threaten the progress of working on restructuring the State-owned energy company. At a media conference at the union's headquarters at Paramount Building in San Fernando, OWTU raised the issue of an agreement shrouded in secrecy just one week after signing a memorandum of agreement to work on the energy company's future. OWTU president Ancel Roget said the union got word that Corporation Sole is leading negotiations with Niquan Energy Trinidad Limited for the sale of the WGTL plant at the Pointe-a-Pierre Refinery. He said this validates their claims that Government wants to sell out Petrotrin's assets. OWTU was supposed to evaluate Petrotrin's operations and assets to make recommendations on the restructuring. Roget is calling on Government to explain how the sale of assets would benefit Petrotrin and citizens. Niquan Energy Trinidad Ltd. a subsidiary of the Niquan Energy LLC, based in Washington, US, finalised a sale and purchase agreement in 2015 with Pricewaterhouse Coopers (PwC), receiver of the plant. Niquan has contracted Black & Veatch, a Kansas based global engineering, procurement and construction company and Oklahoma based Emerging Fuels Technology to assist with implementation of its gas to liquids (GTL) projects. The company stated on its website: Upon the commencement of commercial operations, we anticipate having up to 65 high-value permanent positions. In addition, our project is an essential part of further developing the Trinidad and Tobago gas-based industry. The project will be another first as the only commercial-scale GTL plant, of this size operating in the Western Hemisphere, a clear demonstration of the country's technical and operational experience in the global energy business. Petrotrin officials have so far not commented on the OWTU's claims. ABOUT THE WGTL PROJECT In 2005, Petrotrin entered an agreement with World Gas to Liquids Inc for construction of a plant which would have seen the State company holding a 49 per cent share. The agreement between both parties was that WGTL would bring the GTL plant, technology, finance and project management while Petrotrin would contribute sufficient gas reserves to assure the it's operation. Construction started in 2007 but ran into several cost overruns and it was stopped in 2010. In 2011, World GTL Inc and World GTL St Lucia Ltd sued Petrotrin for damages in excess of US 200 million for breaches of fiduciary duties. Petrotrin filed a counter-claim of breach of contract by WGTL Inc. In April 2014, the London Court of International Arbitration dismissed WGTL's claim and ordered the company to bear the costs of arbitration and pay Petrotrin's legal costs. The court found that the project was plagued by poor management and project technology. In 2009, Petrotrin acquired the debt for the WGTL project and appointed PwC as receiver. In 2012, PWC issued a request For proposals for an exclusive arrangement for sale of the plant. Niquan Energy made an offer in October 2014 which was accepted by PWC after consultation with Petrotrin. Hit your target - Advertise with us Shell defends climate strategy in clash with investors, will meet goals by 2050 By Ron Bousso LONDON Petroleumworld 04 17 2018 Royal Dutch Shell defended its ambition to cut carbon emissions on Monday, urging investors to oppose a shareholder resolution arguing that the oil and gas giant is not doing enough to meet international targets to tackle climate change. The Anglo-Dutch company, like many of its peers, has faced growing investor pressure to address the need to reduce fossil fuel burning, forcing it to seek a delicate balance with a need to secure growing returns from its traditional business. Last November, Shell outlined plans to halve carbon emissions from its operations and sales of its fuels by 2050, responding to stepped-up investor pressure with what is seen as one of the most ambitious goals in the sector. But Follow This, a climate activist shareholder group, put forward a resolution that will be voted on at Shell's annual general meeting next month urging it to set more aggressive targets aligned with the Paris Climate Agreement goal of limiting global warming to well below 2 degrees Celsius. I don't think a 50 percent reduction of CO2 emissions footprint in 2050 meets the Paris climate agreement, Mark van Baal, founder of Follow This, told Reuters. Shell uses these ambitions to do business as usual in the next decades. The company should stop exploring for new oil and gas resources and shift to renewable energy, van Baal said. Last year's resolution by Follow This on the topic won the support of 6.3 percent of shareholders but the debate around Shell's climate strategy has become central in recent years. Shell's management urged shareholders to vote against the resolution at the AGM which will be held in the Hague on May 22. We share the objective of Follow This for Shell to show leadership in the energy transition but at the same time we consider the resolution unnecessary given that we have already outlined an approach that is much wider-ranging and much more progressive, Shell Chief Executive Officer Ben van Beurden told reporters in a phone briefing. Shell will have to initially catch up with society's carbon reduction goals because Shell's current emissions are higher than other businesses but by 2050 it plans to be in line with the global targets. We'll be aligned with society's progress but we will not be tied to an approach that potentially moves too quickly or too slowly to this transition, van Beurden said. Van Beurden admitted that the transition could have a very significant impact on Shell's business in the long run. Shell plans to reduce its emissions by increasing the share of gas and biofuels production, investing in renewable energy such as solar and offshore wind as well as in technologies to capture carbon and tree-planting, van Beurden said. Shell plans to invest between $1-$2 billion per year on its low-carbon energy business by the end of the decade, less than a tenth of its planned annual spending but significantly higher than its rivals. Hit your target - Advertise with us World's most indebted oil giant faces $84.5 billion threat in mexican presidential race Internet/sdpnoticias Spread over Treasuries clims as candidate gains in polls. Oil giant says new technologies, private spending needed. By Justin Villamil MEXICO CITY Petroleumworld 04 17 2018 Five years after a landmark overhaul of energy laws stripped Mexico's state oil-and-gas producer of its monopoly, few investors are eager for it to be restored. So pledges by front-running presidential candidate Andres Manuel Lopez Obrador to turn back the clock are causing jitters among bondholders. The spread on Pemex's $3 billion bond due in 2027 over similar-maturity Treasuries has widened by 86 basis points since Feb. 1 to 3.25 percentage points, as Lopez Obrador built up his lead in polls. The reform allowed Mexico to take large swaths of oil reserves and auction them off to the likes of Royal Dutch Shell Plc and Chevron Corp. Pemex, whose full name is Petroleos Mexicanos, was freed up to focus on assets it was already developing. The government bet was that injections of badly needed capital and the introduction of new technologies through new joint ventures would reverse 13 years of production declines Any rollback after the presidential election on July 1 would be a double-edged sword, said Wilbur Matthews, founder and chief executive officer of San Antonio-based Vaquero Global Investment, which holds short-dated Pemex bonds. The company would have more oil and gas assets but not the partners and technology to make the best use of it all. As it is, Pemex's investment plan isn't sufficient to maintain the level of production they do have. Obrador Lopez leads his closest rival in an April 5 poll by 13 percentage points. Lopez Obrador has threatened to stop auctions of exploration licenses, and to examine contracts already granted for signs of corruption. Pemex itself is no fan of that. Undermining the progress so far would be a shame, CEO Carlos Trevino told Bloomberg TV in March. The worse-case scenario, in my point of view, is that the speed in which we are implementing the energy reform would be reduced. Production Worries Pemex's production has been steadily on the decline since the 2004 peak Souce: Petroleos Mexicanos A secondary worry for investors is that a Lopez Obrador administration could return to the old ways of siphoning off cash from Pemex. Outsized tax contributions, a higher pension liability and implicit fuel subsidies shackled the company from being able to grow production and grow its expertise because they didn't have the full resources, said Michael Roche, a strategist at Seaport Global Holdings LLC in New York. With $84.5 billion in bonds outstanding, Pemex is the world's most indebted oil major. The company is definitely faced with issues, not the least of which is the uncertainty around whether the reforms in the end will go through and whether contracts will be rescinded in any shape or form, said Josephine Shea, who helps oversee $1.2 billion in emerging-market bonds, including Pemex notes, as director of emerging-market debt at BNY Mellon. But do I believe I'm getting paid for it? The bonds reflect the risk that's in the market. Hit your target - Advertise with us Lauren Meriano (left) and Daiva Kleinauskaite at their wedding in April 2017. A few weeks later, Kleinauskaite, an undocumented immigrant from Lithuania, was detained by U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE). Shes still seeking a bail hearing to be released from a York County jail. Read more There's no hint in their wedding photos from April 2017 Lauren Meriano in her black suspenders and necktie, her bride Daiva Kleinauskaite in a floral-print dress, flashing their sparkling wedding bands for the photographer of the storm clouds that the Philadelphia-area newlyweds were facing on two continents. Some 4,400 miles away in Kleinauskaite's native Lithuania a nation plagued by virulent anti-LGBT discrimination the appearance of those photos from the same-sex wedding ceremony on Facebook created not only a flood of nasty comments online but even inspired someone to slide a threatening, hate-filled note under the door of Kleinauskaite's mother. Here in Philadelphia, the now-33-year-old Kleinauskaite who came to America a decade ago on a tourist visa and never returned home had a much more immediate problem: A date with U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement, or ICE, that had been prompted by a 2016 drunk-driving arrest. Her then-lawyer assured Kleinauskaite that the appointment probably was routine and that if immigration agents did take her into custody, she'd probably be released quickly on bail. The appointment wasn't routine. "There was no interview or meeting they just immediately took her in and processed her," Meriano recalled, some 11 months later. After four hours, as federal authorities were about to ship Kleinauskaite to the detention center in York County where she's been jailed ever since, one ICE officer was surprisingly apologetic to the newlyweds. "I'm sorry I thought in no way they will tell me to take her," the ICE agent told them, as recalled by Meriano. "I have no control. I get orders from above." Imagine Franz Kafka with a Lithuanian accent, and you'd have a sense of Meriano's nearly-year-long struggle aided by her new lawyer, Jonah Eaton of the Nationalities Service Center to even get a bail hearing that might free her wife from the York lockup while they fight the government's plan to deport Kleinauskaite to her original homeland, where she'd face near-certain discrimination. Just this week, a joint investigation by the Inquirer and ProPublica has shown that ICE's Philadelphia office has taken a notably aggressive stance in detaining undocumented immigrants since President Trump, with his hard-line stance on immigration, took office in early 2017. The article noted that the local office, which oversees Pennsylvania, Delaware and West Virginia, has a particularly high rate of seizing undocumented migrants not charged with any crime. That's not the case for Kleinauskaite, whose allies concede she made one big mistake in the DUI case in which she was ultimately convicted in Montgomery County (and, in perhaps a cruel irony, sentenced to "time served"). But Eaton and Meriano said they've been startled by the lack of discretion that ICE has shown toward Kleinauskaite who seemed well on her way toward receiving a green card when she was detained in weighing her one mistake during 10 years in America against the love she found with Meriano and her family, including the father-in-law she cared for as he was dying of lung cancer. Eaton said the immigration judge in York who heard Kleinauskaite's plea for political asylum in America said her story cried out for "prosecutorial discretion." But discretion is a hard thing to find in Donald Trump's America. "Why is it necessary for this person to be behind bars?" Meriano asked, noting that Kleinauskaite wasn't even allowed to attend her dad's funeral when he finally succumbed to his cancer last year. She said her 2017 bride is in jail "under circumstances that are ridiculous to me completely unwarranted." Meriano and Eaton decided to publicize Kleinauskaite's plight because they're particularly frustrated with the huge backlog of immigration cases that's made it impossible for her to even get a bail hearing which would allow the Lithuanian native to reunite with Meriano and her widowed mom at their New Castle, Delaware, home while she continued to fight deportation in court. Nationally, the backlog of immigration cases has spiked over 600,000 a record, which includes hundreds of cases stuck in the York Immigration Court. That big number seems pretty abstract, but it gets depressingly real when one contemplates the nearly one year that Kleinauskaite has spent behind bars, triggered by a first-time DUI offense which for an American citizen would probably mean just a fine and a visit to driving school. Officials with ICE's Philadelphia office wouldn't comment on the specifics of Kleinauskaite's case but told me, not for attribution, that there are case-by-case reviews for "determining whether the continued exercise of prosecutorial discretion is appropriate under current policies and directives." Those cold words don't offer much comfort or immediate hope for Meriano or Kleinauskite and the bitter twist in their love story that had once seemed so fated when the two met three years ago in a Philadelphia lesbian bar that neither had frequented before, each dragged there by friends on that particular night. "I saw her when I walked in," Meriano told me. "We started talking and started dating after that and then being around my family it was so easy. My family loved her." Eventually, Kleinauskaite unable to work a conventional job without a green card worked around the clock caring for Meriano's sick dad in Upper Darby while Meriano was out collecting a pay check in food service. Meriano said the new life suited Kleinauskaite, who'd fled Lithuania as a not particularly inviting place for young adults, especially one who was questioning her sexuality in a culture so openly hostile to gays and lesbians. In America, the questioning continued she even had a very brief marriage to a male friend until she seemingly found the answer in Meriano. "One thing she loved about me," Meriano says, "was how open I was and how confident I was in my lifestyle and my sexual orientation and being OK with that." It was nothing like Kleinauskaite had known growing up in Eastern Europe. Ironically, both Kleinauskaite's journey of discovery that led her to Meriano and the hostile anti-LGBT climate in Lithuania are at the core of her plea for political asylum, now before the 3rd Circuit U.S. Court of Appeals in Philadelphia. Normally, migrants have just one year to seek asylum unless circumstances change back in their native country and lawyer Eaton is arguing that's exactly what happened when Kleinauskaite's marriage drew such open hostility in 2017. The York immigration judge who heard that argument rejected it on strict legal grounds even as, according to Eaton, he urged ICE to consider discretion. But right now the greater frustration for Meriano and her lawyer is the inability to even get a bail hearing while the asylum fight plays out. Eaton said Kleinauskaite's long detention defies legal logic since she's shown she poses no flight risk. "She voluntarily presented herself to ICE," he noted. "She did what she was supposed to do." Meriano who calls her wife's detention "a violation of human rights" is eager to spend time with her spouse, even if some of that time is spent considering the prospect of leaving her American family to face the huge logistical hurdles of trying to make a brand-new life in some third-party nation like Ireland or the United Kingdom if the government eventually succeeds in deporting Kleinauskaite. Eaton said the inability of Kleinauskaite to get a bail hearing "is rendering kind of useless one of the core protections of rights in this country against unlawful detention. This is fundamental stuff." But then, a lot of fundamental stuff is getting ground up in Trump's ever-accelerating deportation machine not just rights but just basic human compassion and common sense. About 10 minutes after the Eagles beat the Patriots in historic fashion in Minneapolis on Feb. 5, the phone rang. It was Jefferson Hospital's transplant team with an organ transplant "offer." Eight months prior, my 52-year-old husband, Robert, was hospitalized with what we initially thought were severe symptoms of the flu or a stomach virus. It didn't take long for one of the doctors to tell us something I had never expected to hear: cirrhosis of the liver. Doctors recommended a transfer from a local hospital in South Jersey to Jefferson University Hospital in Philadelphia to be evaluated for a liver transplant. This didn't make much sense to us initially because we aren't drinkers and quite honestly, Robert can often count on one hand how many alcoholic drinks he has a year. Unbeknownst to us, there's something called Nonalcoholic Steatohepatitis or NASH cirrhosis and this was his diagnosis. Still, it took a while for it to sink in that he had end stage liver disease, and in his current condition our family plans, hopes and dreams would be short-lived. The next few months after his diagnosis were spent going through the transplant evaluation process, monitoring something called a MELD score and getting on the waiting list for an organ donation, not to mention handling insurance matters and filling out countless disability forms. We learned that despite advances in medicine and technology, and increased awareness of the importance of organ donation and transplantation, there continues to be a gap between supply and demand. There simply aren't enough organ donors to help those in need, so getting on (and being healthy enough to stay on) the waiting list does not guarantee an offer. The wait was difficult for Robert and every member of our family, especially our 8 and 11-year-old boys. We had to stay within a two-hour radius of the transplant center and be ready at any time to head to the hospital, all the while never knowing when or even if the call would come. Then, on Super Bowl Sunday we were told there was an organ donor who was a match for us. We learned of some basic particulars about their health and how they had died (young). We don't know anything about the organ donor's family or kids. We only imagine how tragic their loss must have been. Robert had a liver transplant before the Eagles paraded down Broad Street. I could hear the excitement and energy from the crowds of fans that packed the city that day while he was in the ICU after surgery. After about 11 days in the hospital, we continued the recovery process at home. About a month later, he's starting to feel better. There's a long road ahead to full recovery, but the path is getting easier each and every day. Modern medicine has offered us a second chance. My kids, who just a few short months ago were asking me if their daddy was going to die, have newfound hope as they watch him getting stronger by the day. We look forward to getting back to our family travels, summer adventures and spending time with friends. When we think of the family who so graciously decided to donate their loved one's organs in a time of such deep sorrow, we wish we could say thank you from the bottom of our hearts. Each organ donor has the opportunity to save up to eight lives and your loved one has saved at least one life already, and probably many more. Hopefully knowing this helps ease your grief. God bless you. Donna Rittershausen lives in Mickleton, N.J. with her husband Robert and two children. For more information about organ donation, visit unos.org. Christina Brown talks about the impact of losing access to a needle exchange program in Camden. Read more Nearly every week for the last two years, Christina Brown and her friends have begged for change until they have enough to cross the bridge from Camden to Philadelphia for clean hypodermic needles that might save their lives. From there, Brown who has been homeless and addicted to heroin for years will walk, or, if she can afford it, take the Broad Street Line another mile to meet the van from Prevention Point. The Philadelphia needle exchange will accept the week's worth of used needles she brings back so they can be properly disposed of and replace them with clean ones. It has been nearly two years since Camden distributed free, clean hypodermic needles that people in addiction need to avoid getting and spreading blood-borne illnesses like HIV and hepatitis. Commuting for needles takes so much time that Brown and her friends worry they will slip into the pain and nausea of withdrawal before they can use again. The next week, some may decide just to take their chances on a shared needle, or one of unknown origin purchased on the street. Camden's needle exchange closed in 2016, after the energy company Holtec International opened a corporate campus on the lot where the exchange used to sit. Martha Chavis, who ran the needle program, said she'd been assured it would be back up and running again in a few weeks. But there is still no site, even as the opioid epidemic has spiraled into the worst public health crisis in a century. Ninety people died of fatal overdoses in the city last year, more than double the year before. Hepatitis C cases among people under 30 the group most at risk because of addiction spiked in 2015, the year before the exchange closed, and kept rising through 2017, the most recent data available. And though Camden County has just over 5 percent of the state's population, it represents 10 percent of the state's cases of the liver-destroying disease. Without a needle exchange, Chavis said, the city is missing a crucial opportunity to reach people in addiction and offer them treatment or at least help them avoid infections and overdoses. A city spokesman blamed the delay on efforts to find a location that is convenient, yet won't affect a residential neighborhood, or downtown businesses and schools. "The biggest concern is, like anything, the perception that comes with a needle exchange," said city spokesman Vincent Basara. Chavis' perception, however, is that saving lives is more important. "I'm baffled. I am absolutely baffled," at the city's hesitancy, Chavis said. "And considering the opioid epidemic as it's existing now so many more lives are in danger." The exchange was never a large operation. After the state legalized needle exchanges in 2006, Chavis ran her program out of two trailers in an isolated parking lot near the Delaware River. Small as it was, though, it's too big to run from the cramped rowhouse that houses her organization, the Camden Area Health Education Center. Camden residents have long protested that their city, after years of disinvestment, has become a dumping ground for programs other, wealthier communities would refuse on principle. It's a familiar argument Philadelphia's hopes of hosting a safe injection site have also run into a buzzsaw of concerned citizens. So the proposed relocation of a downtown Camden methadone clinic that sits across from City Hall into a more residential area has drawn intense opposition. But the needle exchange has drawn less attention. "Some people think that a clean needle exchange program makes Camden a more welcoming place" for people who are addicted, said Sean Brown, an activist and former member of the Camden school board. Brown's in favor of the needle exchange reopening as long as it's part of a comprehensive plan to address the city's addiction crisis. But he doesn't begrudge his neighbors their qualms: "The sewage plant, prison, social services we get all the stuff that everyone doesn't want," he said. New Jersey allows needle exchanges to operate throughout the state, unlike Pennsylvania, where they operate only in Pittsburgh, Philadelphia and Reading. But Camden isn't the only New Jersey city with qualms; Atlantic City officials are considering moving their needle exchange out of the city's tourism district. Chavis is reluctant to hand out needles at her downtown office in part because its size means clients would have to line up outside. "I don't want people to be stared at," she said. "Nobody knows your business when you come into our agency you want confidentiality and respect." But she says she's tired of waiting, and tired of telling people to leave the county for free needles. Outside the Walter Rand Transportation Center in Camden last week, Christina Brown waved to an ex-boyfriend, Peter LaRosa, who shook out an iced tea bottle full of dirty needles. He planned to exchange them for clean ones across the bridge later that week. Down the block, Angel Spir, 23, made her way toward the train. Originally from Atlantic County, she'd been homeless in Camden for a week. A few nights before, she said, she woke up in withdrawal, and without a clean needle. For people deep in addiction, the next hit doesn't necessarily produce a high; it may just ward off pain. The man sleeping next to her had a needle, she said. She knew he had used it. She knew he had hepatitis C. But she took the needle anyway. "What could I do?" she said, and shook her head. "I was desperate." Drexel alumnus Raj Gupta and his wife Kamla donated $2.5 million to create the Gupta Institute at Drexel, while the Haas family matched the gift, bringing the total to $5 million. Read more Drexel University alum Raj Gupta has donated $2.5 million as part of a larger $5 million gift that establishes the Raj & Kamla Gupta Governance Institute, the university said Monday. Gupta, chairman of Aptiv PLC and chairman of Avantor Inc, and his wife Kamla invested $2.5 million to create an institute that will bear their name while the Haas family matched their gift, taking the total donation to $5 million. The Gupta Institute will house Drexel's existing Center for Corporate Governance and its new Center for Nonprofit Governance, "each providing world-renowned business leaders with dynamic governance insights," Drexel said in a release. The Gupta Institute also named Vanguard chairman Bill McNabb as its first executive-in-residence to encourage collaboration between corporate executives, governance leaders and faculty members. McNabb also served as CEO of the Vanguard Group until December 2017. In an interview, Gupta said he served on the board of directors of Vanguard for 16 years, before retiring in December at age 72. "We want the institute to be at the forefront of governance issues for public, private and non-profit industries," said Gupta, who lives in Newtown Square. He earned an MBA from Drexel in 1972. Gupta joined Rohm and Haas in 1971 as a financial analyst and was ultimately elected to the board of directors and named vice chairman in January 1999, before becoming chairman and chief executive officer in October 1999. He assumed the additional title of president in early 2005. In 2009, Gupta left Rohm and Haas after its $15.3 billion acquisition by the Dow Chemical Company, now owned by DowDuPont. Jeffrey Chiesa, left, the states appointed overseer of Atlantic City, escorted by Chris Filiciello, the mayors chief of staff, into his first meeting at City Hall. AMY ROSENBERG / Staff . Read more Jeffrey Chiesa, the close ally of former New Jersey Gov. Chris Christie whose law firm racked up more than $4 million in billings to run Atlantic City under a state takeover, will be transitioned out of that role, Gov. Murphy announced Monday. The North Jersey-based law firm Chiesa Shahinian and Giantomasi will continue to handle "some litigation matters" related to Atlantic City, according to the governor's office. Chiesa's role will end within 30 days, the state said. The law firm has submitted an additional 50 billing invoices beyond the $4 million, according to a state records custodian, but the amount of those billings was not yet made available under an Open Public Records Act request previously submitted by the Inquirer and Daily News. The Chiesa law firm has received mixed reviews for its work in Atlantic City, with credit given for a favorable negotiation of a tax-appeal settlement with Borgata. Less popular has been its role in court seeking to cut the city's fire department budget and its pay. It has also been involved in litigation challenging the law that established a payment in lieu of taxes for casinos. "It's definitely a good day for the residents and workers in Atlantic City," said John Varallo, head of the Local 198 of the International Association of Fire Fighters, which has tangled with the law firm in court. "I'm going to let them walk out the door. It's been a bad dream for the last year. " Atlantic City Mayor Frank Gilliam applauded the move by invoking the Revolutionary War. "In memory of Patriots' Day, the commemoration of the first battle of the American War for Independence, I am happy about the steps taken by Governor Murphy and Lt. Governor Oliver," he said in a statement. Chiesa and his law firm have been running Atlantic City as part of a state takeover since November 2016. Its lawyers are credited with negotiating a settlement over tax appeals with the Borgata that saved the city about $70 million, and with helping to secure state backing for about $50 million in new bonds to pay off a debt to the state, a move that officials say helped avert a tax increase. The state did not move to sell the city's water authority or other assets, as some had feared. Chiesa, a former U.S. senator appointed by Christie and state attorney general, billed $400 an hour. His contract with the state permitted his entire law firm, including paralegals, to also bill for their work, at various rates. The Murphy administration has been telegraphing its desire to adjust the state's role in Atlantic City for months. Lt. Gov. Sheila Oliver, appointed by Murphy to oversee the Department of Community Affairs, which has authority over Atlantic City under the takeover law, has been a critic of the state takeover and has said she would be scrutinizing the role and price tag for the Chiesa law firm's activities in Atlantic City. Murphy also appointed Jim Johnson to serve as a special counsel pointedly for a salary of just $1 a year to recommend ways to return the city to local control. The statement says the Department of Community Affairs will continue its role in Atlantic City, where Tim Cunningham, the state's director of Local Government Services, attends council meetings, oversees agendas and budgets, and meets regularly with city officials. Chiesa's role as "designee" will be phased out within 30 days, the state said. The takeover law was passed during a time of steep fiscal crisis for the city, which saw five casinos close in recent years and the city coffers go nearly bare. By contrast, the casino resort is now anticipating two new casinos opening and its finances, with the help of redirected taxes and state backing of bonds, have stabilized. Although the state retains vast powers over Atlantic City operations, personnel, and assets, both Murphy and Oliver referred to the state's future role as a "partnership." "DCA will continue to play an active role in Atlantic City to build upon the significant gains the City and State have made over the last 18 months in stabilizing Atlantic City's finances," Oliver said in the statement. "This ongoing partnership between DCA's knowledgeable local government experts and the City's governing body and its professionals will keep Atlantic City moving in the right direction." City Council President Marty Small Sr., who fought the takeover in numerous trips to Trenton with then-Mayor Don Guardian, said he had nonetheless established a productive working relationship with both Chiesa, his law partner Ron Israel, and with Cunningham, the state official. He said the state's move with respect to Chiesa did not change the fundamental relationship under the legislated takeover. "From the state's point of view, it's a cost-savings measure," he said. "I think it doesn't change anything for Atlantic City. We're still in the state takeover." "No one fought harder against the state takeover than me," Small said. "While they were there, we had a great professional relationship. Tim Cunningham has proven to be a champion for Atlantic City, as far as state aid and other issues are concerned." State Sen. Chris Brown, a critic of the takeover and of the price tag for Chiesa, said Murphy "made the right decision for our taxpayers. As I said from the beginning, DCA already had the authority to manage the city's finances without spending over $4 million with the takeover." In a small, white tent, Amish farmers take part in an April 10 auction of dairy cows an increasingly frequent event as milk prices keep falling. Read more The Amish dairymen came by buggy and shuttle bus, and filed into the barn with cups of chocolate milk and whoopie pies, each man squatting down to eyeball every cow's undercarriage. Udders are like crystal balls for dairy farmers, a way to glean the future and know with near certainty just how much milk each cow might produce for years to come. They spoke to one another in Pennsylvania Dutch and stroked their long beards, mulling the prices they'd be comfortable paying once the bidding started. By night's end, this barn in Oxford, Chester County, would be empty. Pennsylvania would have one less dairy farm. "They're all pretty dang good cows," said Ken Hershey, 83, a retired farmer who lives across the street and was in the crowd. "It's sad. It's just bad to see this happening." A full, well-proportioned udder might portend a valuable cow, but there's a glut of milk in the U.S. market and prices are too low for many farmers to skirt by. Milk is selling for $15.30 per 100 pounds. In September 2014, it was over $25. More farmers in Pennsylvania, the nation's sixth-largest dairy producer, are resorting to auctions the official name is "herd dispersal" to liquidate assets before things get worse. The website Farmshine.net lists dozens of them in the state in the coming months. "The price farmers get paid for the milk they produce has been declining for three straight years and there is no indication that there will be any significant relief in 2018," said Pennsylvania Farm Bureau spokesman Mark O'Neill. "Farmers have faced price volatility in the past, but this downward spell is more severe and lengthy than in previous times." Hundreds of farmers have gotten out of the dairy business, though O'Neill said some may have stayed in agriculture. There were 6,570 dairy farms in Pennsylvania last year, down by 80 from 2016 and by 1,259 from 2012. Ron Wood, a dairy farmer in Schuylkill County, is calling it quits for medical reasons, with an auction that took place last Wednesday. "This is the hardest thing I'll ever do," Wood wrote on an auction website. "It's like selling my kids. I ask only one thing: Please treat my girls with love and respect, and give them a good home." New Jersey is considerably behind Pennsylvania in milk production, ranking only 47th countrywide, but its situation is worse, Farm Bureau officials there say, because the properties are smaller and can't weather the prices like the larger farms. Fifty-three commercial dairy farms remain in operation in New Jersey, down from 86 in 2011. At the Oxford sale last week, one of the auctioneers, Steve Schuler, said, "If you didn't have everything in line before this price hit, it would be hard to make it through. This is really separating the men from the boys." Hours earlier, the farm's owner and his brother, both Amish, worked methodically from cow to cow, scraping off the dirt and loose black and white hairs from the Holsteins with a curry comb. They dipped brushes into a bucket of coat shine and slathered it on the cows in anticipation of the crowds to come. Each cow had a numbered sticker slapped onto her backside that corresponded with a resume of sorts, details about her lineage and the percentage of butterfat she made, and when her calves were due. "It's a little mixed feelings now when it comes to the point, but I'm looking to the future," said the owner, who did not want publicity and spoke on condition of anonymity. When asked if dairy farming had grown more difficult in recent years, he stopping brushing and just smiled. "Difficult is an understatement," his brother said. The owner, 35, moved to this farm on Lancaster Pike 14 years ago when he married and started a dairy operation. He believes the market has splintered, with competition from soy and almond products and consumers turning away from fat. "Do you drink whole milk?" he asked. He planned to grow corn and alfalfa and perhaps run a smaller dairy operation focusing on raw milk products. Others have moved to tobacco and vegetables. "Tobacco creates a very good profit for a small amount of acres, and the Amish primarily have smaller farms," said Dave Bitler, a dairy farmer from Berks County who came to the auction early. "They have the labor to do it, and tobacco is labor intensive. They have the family to do it." Bitler said the "English" farms any farm not Amish-owned have taken it harder because many children don't want to continue the business, milk prices aside. While the owner and his brother readied the cows, Tim Weaver moved about the farm as if on fast-forward to finish setting up the auction. Weaver, 35, of New Holland, Lancaster County, is an auctioneer, and lately, a big part of his business has been helping farms turn cows into cash for the last time. "It's definitely not easy for them," Weaver said. "This is something most of them have been doing their whole lives." Last month, Weaver auctioned off 66 milk cows in Lancaster County. He tows his office on a trailer. At Amish farms, he has to bring a generator and string lights in the barn with a ladder, something he manages to do while eating an apple and a hoagie. He speaks Pennsylvania Dutch, which helps. He erected a one-pole tent behind the barn, with haystacks as seats, and dozens of Amish children crammed onto the front rows, with their own cups of milk and bags of chips, hours before the auction was set to start. One of the farmer's dogs, a 160-pound behemoth from South Africa, took a leak on the auction speakers and Weaver chased him off. By the 7:30 start time, the tent was packed with over 100 people, mostly Amish and farmers in muddy boots and jeans. Amish boys had been roped into wrangling the cows out of the barn and into the chute that led to the pen. Sometimes the cows bolted for a tiny door at the front of the barn and the boys blocked them, fearlessly, prodding them out the back with sticks. When the auction started, the cows came in quick, looking confused amid the chaos. "Somebody give me fifteen. Fifteen hundred," auctioneer Dave Stoltzfus said before his words blurred into a frenzied jumble of numbers. Bidders raised their numbered cards to get in on the action, but often a nod of their straw hats would do. Weaver kept it moving. "Get her out, Enos," he said from a stage above the pen. "Spin her around one last time and get her out." When it was over, all 49 cows sold, the average price around $1,350. Truckers waited to haul them away to their new farms, but some cows were so full they needed to be milked one last time. In the dark fields, Amish farmers hitched their horses to black buggies and left quietly. Weaver was one of the last to go, after collecting the cash and dismantling his equipment. Next week, he'll auction off another herd of dairy cows for another farmer who's getting out of milk for good. Her fellow contestants cheer as the newly crowned Miss America 2018, Miss North Dakota Cara Mundin (back to camera) rejoins them after taking her winner's walk on stage at the 97th Miss America Pageant in Atlantic City September 10, 2017. TOM GRALISH / Staff Photographer YEAREND2017-ee Read more ATLANTIC CITY It was a cold winter for the iconic but wobbly Miss America pageant. Rocked by a scandal in which vulgar emails were traded by top male executives, then dropped by Dick Clark Productions, the Miss America Organization regrouped with former pageant winner Gretchen Carlson named president of the board. No date for the pageant had been set, and its multimillion-dollar state subsidy, part of a three-way contract that included Dick Clark Productions, was in question. But on Tuesday, the 97-year-old Boardwalk institution got a $4.3 million lifeline from a state agency, the Casino Reinvestment Development Authority, that has been among its most loyal supporters. "The CRDA is encouraged by the Miss America Organization's description that [this year's] competition will be updated to include a focus on women's empowerment and other related projects," said board chairman Robert Mulcahy. Brent Adams, vice president of development for Miss America, attended the meeting and thanked the board but declined to comment further. Hours later, the Miss America Organization issued a statement saying it was "pleased" with the action, which it said signified a partnership with the pageant and the state of New Jersey "to work together to produce the next generation of female leaders." But still, no date was announced for the 2018 pageant. "Stay tuned," the statement said. The three-year, multimillion-dollar boost had been increasingly unpopular with elected officials, who see the money as a relic of the historic but waning love of the pageant by its host city, funds that could be better spent elsewhere, they believe. When the scandal broke in December, some in town, including current Mayor Frank Gilliam, said the state should seize the opportunity to cut the cord. (Also on Tuesday, the CRDA denied a request by a local pastor for a $50,000 loan or grant to expand a community gardening project). On Tuesday, Gilliam was among the board members voting unanimously to approve the final year of the contract. He declined to comment further after the meeting, as did other board members. William Cheatham, a resident of Atlantic City, told the board to support the current female leadership of the pageant, which includes Carlson and other former Miss Americas Kate Shindle, Heather French Henry, and Laura Kaeppeler Fleiss. "Give the ladies a chance," Cheatham said. "That's what we're trying to do," responded Mulcahy. "This pageant has been around a long time," Cheatham said. "I'm sure some of you on this board would like to kick it out of existence altogether. The pageant belongs here in Atlantic City." He added that women used to run the pageant. "Some of you gentlemen don't know how to handle it when it comes to women's programming," he added. "That's an awfully broad brush," replied Richard Tolson, a board member. Dick Clark Productions was quick to drop Miss America after learning of the emails, but the CRDA held back any decision and did not take action even after learning that Dick Clark was no longer part of the contract. Other contractual issues had plagued the three-way agreement, with Atlantic City never getting a coveted spot on Dick Clark's ABC broadcast New Year's Rockin' Eve as was promised. And the state agency knew back in October that Dick Clark had severed its ties with the pageant. two months before the disclosure in the Huffington Post of vulgar emails that led to a shake-up of the Miss America Organization. But the CRDA took no action until Dec. 19, when a letter was sent to Michael Mahan, president of Dick Clark Productions, and Sam Haskell, then-CEO of Miss America, asking to discuss a possible breach of their three-way contract. The Huffington Post story described emails sent by since-terminated CEO Haskell and a writer with the organization, and reported that Dick Clark Productions had terminated the relationship with the organization after being informed of the emails in August. In its report, the Huffington Post detailed emails among pageant executives ridiculing former Miss America winners, describing them with coarse language, and gossiping about their sex lives. Other than firing the writer who corresponded with Haskell, the organization took no action until the emails were made public and initially said it considered the matter resolved. Since then, with a huge outcry among Miss America winners and others, most of the board has been replaced. Carlson has indicated that changes are in store and has not ruled out eliminating the swimsuit portion of the pageant, which began as a bathing-beauty contest on the Boardwalk. Msgr. Joseph McLoone at the 2013 dedication of a new church building at St. Joseph Parish in Downingtown. Read more The Chester County District Attorney's Office on Tuesday acknowledged that it is looking into the unaccounted spending and secret bank account of a former pastor at a Catholic parish in Downingtown. First Assistant District Attorney Michael Noone said the office contacted the Archdiocese of Philadelphia in response to news reports about the abrupt resignation of Msgr. Joseph McLoone from St. Joseph Parish. "The archdiocese now has assigned a staff member to confer with Chester County detectives," Noone said. "We have not received a formal referral yet." The archdiocese announced during the weekend that McLoone had allegedly maintained an off-the-books bank account set up in the church's name for much of the last seven years. More than $110,000 worth of parish revenues were funneled into the account, which could only be accessed by the pastor. McLoone allegedly told archdiocesan officials that he'd spent approximately $1,500 on "personal expenses of an inappropriate nature" on relationships with other adults. The church hasn't elaborated on the nature of those relationships, other than to note that they did not involve children or members of the parish. But they allegedly violated the archdiocese's Standards of Ministerial Behavior and Boundaries, which outline appropriate conduct for guiding clergy, staff, and volunteers in areas ranging from sexual harassment to gambling and the use of technology. The archdiocese said McLoone still needs to account for $50,000 worth of expenses and ATM withdrawals from the account. Ken Gavin, a spokesman for the archdiocese, said on Monday that McLoone is being given an opportunity to provide an explanation for those expenses. "I would not speculate as to how long this process will take," Gavin said. McLoone, 55, has not been available for comment, and his exact whereabouts are unknown. His brother is Pat McLoone, managing editor for sports at the Inquirer and Daily News. A statement from the archdiocese regarding Msgr. McLoone's resignation was read by his successor, Msgr. Thomas Dunleavy, during crowded weekend services at St. Joseph. The parish, one of the largest in the five-county archdiocese, was jarred by the tumultuous end to McLoone's tenure. He arrived at St. Joseph in 2011, after its then-pastor, Msgr. William J. Lynn, was arrested in connection with a grand jury probe for ignoring or covering up the behavior of priests who abused children. McLoone provided a calming presence amid all of the turmoil, and parishioners have struggled to reconcile their positive impression of him with the sense of betrayal that was sparked by the allegations laid out by the archdiocese. Since the news of his resignation, they have taken to the parish's Facebook page to work out their conflicting emotions. "Jesus said those of us who have not sinned throw the first stone," one woman wrote Monday. "Think about your faith and forgiveness. I will be praying for father." Others weren't as forgiving. "This is so disheartening!!!" another parishioner wrote. "The Catholic Church wonders why it's losing their members?!? We trusted him and confided in him to only now know we were being deceived. What a shame!" The West Chester Daily Local News, citing a parish source, has reported that McLoone's spending came into question this year when a St. Joseph's parishioner discovered that McLoone had an account with Venmo a digital payment service that allows users to easily transfer money to each other that showed multiple unexplained transactions. The transactions triggered an investigation from archdiocesan auditors. The archdiocese froze the secret bank account in February. That same month, McLoone went on an indefinite leave of absence. Facebook CEO Mark Zuckerberg pauses while testifying before a joint hearing of the Commerce and Judiciary Committees on Capitol Hill in Washington, Tuesday, April 10, 2018, about the use of Facebook data to target American voters in the 2016 election. Read more The most terrifying thing about Mark Zuckerberg's appearance on Tuesday before a special joint hearing of the Senate Judiciary and Commerce committees wasn't anything he had to say about privacy, or the mishandling of millions of users' personal data, or creepy Russian advertising in the 2016 presidential election. In fact, on those questions, the Facebook CEO was often vague to the point of frustration. He apologized for his company and claimed to be open to regulation, as long as it's the "right kind." Whatever that means. No, the most frightening part of the hearing was Zuckerberg's utopian exuberance for artificial intelligence to solve a vexing, age-old problem. Sen. John Thune (R., N.D.) asked the 33-year-old billionaire about the challenges his company faces evaluating "hate speech" vs. "legitimate political discourse." That's a thorny technical problem, Zuckerberg replied. But he thinks it's only a matter of time until an algorithm could catch and block "hate speech" before it's even posted. "Hate speech, I am optimistic that over a five- to 10-year period we'll have AI tools that can get into some of the nuances, the linguistic nuances of different types of content to be more accurate in flagging things for our systems, but today is just not there on that," he said. Oh, no. No, no, no. Here's the problem: Nobody can offer a clear, objective definition of what "hate speech" is. Sen. Ben Sasse (R., Neb.) asked Zuckerberg directly. He couldn't give a straight answer. The best he could do was sputter and reply, "This is a really hard question." No kidding. >> Read more: Facebook's (and tech's) other problem: lack of diversity Let's leave aside calls to violence. The U.S. Supreme Court has ruled incitement is not protected by the First Amendment. We run into trouble when we get into what Sasse called "the psychological categories" of speech speech that might trigger negative thoughts or make people feel bad. Sasse pointed out that 40 percent of Americans under 35 tell pollsters that "the First Amendment is dangerous because you might use your freedom to say something that hurts somebody else's feelings." A Brookings Institution survey of 1,500 undergraduates last year found that 44 percent of students surveyed Democrats, Republicans, and independents believe the First Amendment doesn't protect "hate speech." What's more, about a fifth of respondents said it would be appropriate to use force to prevent a speaker from making "offensive or hurtful statements." We're well past the old standard of falsely shouting "fire" in a crowded theater or inciting imminent violence. What about a hot-button topic like abortion? "It might really be unsettling to people who've had an abortion to have an open debate about that, wouldn't it?" Sasse asked. "It might be," Zuckerberg replied. "But I do generally agree with the point that you're making." He conceded that as AI "proactively" looks at content, companies and countries will have to wrestle with big questions. >> Read more: Regulating Facebook might not be the best response to Zuckerberg's missteps Here are a couple: Who exactly is going to set the parameters of speech that AI will police? Where will programmers turn to sort through the "linguistic nuances" Zuckerberg mentioned? The fact is, the AI and the algorithms that have made Zuckerberg the seventh-richest man on Earth are the products of human ingenuity. The promise and the peril of AI is that it will one day expand beyond the capacity of humans to comprehend and control. Before Zuckerberg's artificially intelligent censor bots are loosed upon the world, they'll need to learn a few little things, like two or three millennia worth of literature on freedom of thought. Will our AI protectors know Aristotle, Milton, and John Stuart Mill? Or will they be programmed to emulate the thinking of a growing cohort of students that believes "speech is violence"? Americans have been having this fight since the Alien and Sedition Acts of 1798. Yet Zuckerberg is confident all of this can be sorted out algorithmically in five, 10 years tops. Heaven help us. Ben Boychuk is managing editor of American Greatness. @benboychuk At the Penn Medicine Innovation Accelerator Pitch Day in the Medical School's Law Auditorium on Monday, six teams of Penn clinicians presented their care delivery innovation projects. Here at the podium, are Sindhu Srinivas, MD, and Adi Hirshberg, MD, detailing their "Heart Safe Motherhood" project. Read more Can a 10-minute video visit with a doctor keep people from calling in sick to work? Could you reduce the number of new mothers returning to the hospital with serious hypertension if you sent them home from delivery with a blood-pressure cuff? A Penn Medicine accelerator program wants to find out. Now in its fifth year, the initiative by Penn's Center for Health Care Innovation gives doctors, nurses, and others on the front line of patient care the resources to test their ideas for improving quality and reducing cost. "Health care is an unusual industry in that some of the most empowered and educated people, like physicians and nurses, are right there on the front lines with the customer," said David Asch, the center's executive director. "The question is how do we harvest that highly educated population with specialized knowledge right in front of customers." The accelerator program, sponsored by the insurer UnitedHealthcare, chose four groups from 104 applications to receive up to $10,000 to develop and test their ideas. The four teams, as well as two graduates of the accelerator, presented their progress Monday at the Penn Medicine campus. The groups focused on the two top charges facing American health care: improving quality and reducing cost. While clearly a benefit to patients, there's a strong business case for why hospitals are focused on offering a better value. Hospitals pay stiff penalties to the Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services when patients covered by those publicly funded programs are readmitted to the hospital within 30 days of being discharged. The accelerator's participants had a few ideas: In a four-month pilot with 60 patients, Penn Medicine Virtual Care found that offering a five- to 12-minute video visit with a primary-care doctor improved patient satisfaction while reducing costs for doctors, employers, and insurers. Fewer patients called in sick to work or school and they avoided more costly urgent-care visits, where many patients said they would have turned had they not been able to see the doctor. Advanced Heart Care at Home, a group of cardiovascular and palliative-care specialists, found that they could reduce hospitalizations among advanced heart-failure patients and get them palliative care more quickly by creating a personalized symptom-management program. BreatheBetterTogether similarly found that a more personalized touch improved early intervention and reduced hospitalizations among patients with chronic obstructive pulmonary disease. The group sent daily text messages to patients and followed up with a phone call or at-home nurse visit for patients who reported feeling worse. Supporting Older Adults at Risk flipped the traditional discharge procedure on its head: Instead of waiting to discharge patients until all at-home needs were arranged, the group sent patients home sooner and moved the assessment of their post-discharge needs to their homes. The result was less time spent in the hospital and swifter attention from at-home nurses who were able to see what each patient needed more clearly. A common theme among the presenters was that personalized care can be an effective way to improve quality and even lower costs in the long run, by avoiding the need for more expensive treatment in the future. But these types of approaches can be expensive to execute. Penn Medicine Virtual Care, for example, found that video calls were a cost-effective way to see patients and improve their satisfaction with the practice. But insurers pay much less for video visits, between $5 and $25, compared with about $110 for an office visit. To succeed at a larger scale, the groups must find a way to automate what, for now, is a time-consuming labor, Asch said. "A lot of these require a high touch," Asch said. "Can they be more automated?" He pointed to a graduate of the innovation program as an example of a group that has scaled its initiative with technology. Heart Safe Motherhood developed an approach to improve compliance among new mothers at risk of hypertension who are supposed to have their blood pressure checked twice in the weeks after birth. The group found that returning to the doctor's office was a barrier for women with a newborn at home, so they started sending blood-pressure cuffs home with patients and asked them to report back. At first, one of the group's leaders served as the program's back end, capturing all the data and responding to patients. As the initiative gained traction and proved its success in reducing readmissions, the group was able to develop a more advanced technology platform that does much of the work for them. University of Pennsylvania Health System CEO Ralph Muller said during brief remarks after the presentations that he was committed to finding ways to make these kinds of innovations part of the hospital system. "It's not just a project," he said. "You have to really figure out how to integrate this in what we do. How do you really execute this in the long term and how do you make it stick?" The Pennsylvania House of Representatives on Monday passed a bill prohibiting abortions based on a diagnosis or even just a belief that a fetus has Down syndrome. Read more HARRISBURG Pennsylvania's House passed a politically charged bill Monday that would prohibit abortions based on a diagnosis or even just a belief that a fetus has Down syndrome. The House passed the bill with bipartisan support, 139-56, marking the second time in five months that the Republican-led chamber has rushed through a bill restricting abortions without holding a public hearing. Sponsored by House Speaker Mike Turzai (R., Allegheny), the bill goes to the Senate, where its fate is uncertain. Democratic Gov. Wolf opposes the bill and likely would veto it if it were to reach his desk. The measure prohibits abortions when they are sought exclusively because of "a prenatal diagnosis of, or belief that the unborn child has, Down syndrome." Similar measures have passed in other states but face legal challenges on grounds they are unconstitutional restrictions on abortion rights. Turzai has said he introduced the bill after he read reports about abortion after Down syndrome diagnoses in Iceland. Rep. Kate Klunk (R., York), speaking on the House floor Monday, described the bill as an effort to prevent "eugenics," and bill cosponsor Judy Ward (R., Blair) read a series of quotes from families who said their lives had been enriched by children with Down syndrome. State law now allows abortion for any reason up until 24 weeks' gestation, with the exception of termination based on the gender of the fetus. "Opponents of this legislation fight any reasonable limitation to abortion," Randall Wenger, the Pennsylvania Family Institute's chief counsel, said in a statement. Fellow institute attorney Jeremy Samek said: "We should be encouraging the current support systems available to help with raising a child with Down syndrome. And we should be providing information on adoption to women who feel like they cannot provide for a child with Down syndrome." Critics of the bill argue that it doesn't provide any additional services for children born with the condition. Some, including State Rep. Mary Jo Daley (D., Montgomery), have said they fear this bill would result in "state-imposed" pregnancy, which would violate the Constitution. Multiple medical groups, including the American Congress of Obstetricians and Gynecologists, also oppose the legislation. Included in the critics are some women who chose to continue a pregnancy after a Down syndrome diagnosis and others who chose to have an abortion after the diagnosis. Jennifer Schrad, of Bryn Mawr, said the day she learned that her daughter would likely be born with Down syndrome was "the most difficult day of our lives." She and her husband received information about Down syndrome that they ultimately felt was outdated and incomplete. They chose to continue with the pregnancy. But, Schrad said: "Choosing to continue our pregnancy was our decision to make. We would not want politicians in Harrisburg making that choice for any other woman facing similar circumstances." In an interview, one Bucks County mother who chose to have an abortion after receiving a Down syndrome diagnosis called it "the most difficult decision a person can make." The mother, who asked that only her first name Elizabeth be used, for fear of backlash, said she and her husband did a lot of research before making the decision to terminate the pregnancy, speaking to medical and other health professionals, as well as families raising children with Down syndrome. Among the factors she and her husband considered was who would care for her child if she and her husband died. Neither has a large network of people who could have stepped in to help. "I can't tell you for sure I made the right decision," said Elizabeth, who opposes the bill and made herself available to abortion-rights advocacy groups to share her experience with lawmakers and reporters. Taking away a family's ability to make the choice, in consultation with medical professionals and others they trust, sets a dangerous precedent, she said. "It's such an insult to how personal and painful this is," she said. "What's dangerous about this particular bill is that they are using Down syndrome as a playing card to draw support for what is really an attack on reproductive rights," she said. "It's cruel." I'm glad Starbucks is closing all its U.S. stores on May 29 for racial bias training after a Philadelphia store manager called the police to eject two black customers who hadn't yet made a purchase and tried to use the bathroom without buying anything. Unfortunately, that racial bias training is not enough. I join activists from Black Lives Matter and the NAACP in calling for confirmation that the manager who called police has been fired from the company, and not just moved to another store. I also join them in calling for an increased number of black and brown managers at Starbucks. Until those things take place, in addition to company-wide racial bias training, Starbucks must be boycotted. And we must not stop at boycotting the store on the corner of 18th and Spruce Streets, where the incident took place. We must commit to boycotting all of them. They must be boycotted because the company has acknowledged that in barring those men from the bathroom, their manager followed Starbucks procedures. They must be boycotted because those men behaved no differently from other Starbucks customers. But perhaps most important, Starbucks must be boycotted because the manager failed to consider the volumes of evidence that indicate contacting police could prove fatal where black men are concerned. "When you call the cops on black and brown people, you put us all in jeopardy," Asa Khalif of Black Lives Matter Pennsylvania told me in a radio interview. "You put us in jeopardy because we're not safe with the police, especially here in Philadelphia. We're not. When the police encounter black people, it ends up in arrest most of the time, or even death. And so we just have to realize, as black people, that we are in a white supremacist system of violence and the main perpetrators are the police. And that's just the way it is. We have to call it for what it is." I wish Khalif was engaging in hyperbole, but he wasn't. Newsweek reported that blacks composed 25 percent of the 1,129 people killed by police in 2017, though blacks are only 13 percent of the population. Thankfully, the Starbucks situation did not escalate to that point, and police say they acted appropriately. Last Saturday, Police Commissioner Richard Ross, who is black, issued a Facebook Live statement shortly after video of the men's arrests went viral. Ross said his officers were polite and professional, making several attempts to escort the men out without arresting them. Ultimately, the men were arrested for trespassing, Ross said, adding that his officers did absolutely nothing wrong. Later in the week, Ross walked back his defense of the officers and issued a public apology to the two men. Still, his initial words stung the black community. "I truly respect Commissioner Ross because he's a great cop and an even greater man," said African American lawyer and activist Michael Coard told me this week. "But his argument that the officers did 'absolutely nothing wrong' is absolutely frightening because it's the same kind of argument Nazis used in their 'we were just following orders' Nuremberg defense, which was summarily rejected by the International Court. And his argument that those black men committed the crime of trespass is absolute bullst. Jaywalking is a crime. Spitting on the sidewalk is a crime. Being drunk in public is a crime. But cops show discretion by never arresting anyone for those crimes. By the way, Mayor Kenney was right about people often simply chilling out in Starbucks without buying anything. But they never get arrested. Oh, my bad. Those people are white." Black people aren't the only ones who feel that way. As cellphone cameras and viral videos have made it impossible to ignore racism, many whites have begun to change their perspective. Toni Bowers, a white woman who joined a Sunday protest outside the Starbucks where the incident took place, is among them. "Like a lot of people my age, I grew up thinking that the policeman was my friend and all that, and I was already over 50," Bowers told me while protesting. "And Michael Brown was killed and our family was on vacation, and we just gave up the vacation and sat on the floor around the TV in the hotel room and couldn't believe what we saw. We can't continue to say: 'Oh, was that person aggressive? Oh, this was a bad cop.' This is a system, and I think white people are finally seeing that a system is in place." It is a system that must be challenged, Minister Rodney Muhammad, president of the Philadelphia branch of the NAACP, told me in an interview, adding that a boycott is the most viable tool for doing so. I agree. That's why, until Starbucks commits to treating my brothers like whole persons, I will boycott every one of their stores. Americans of good conscience should do the same. Solomon Jones is the author of 10 books. Listen to him weekdays from 10 a.m. to noon on Praise 107.9 FM. sj@solomonjones.com; @solomonjones1 Worldwide Flight Services says it will lay off 161 employees at a Philadelphia cargo-handling facility after an air carrier did not renew its contract. Read more Cargo-handler Worldwide Flight Services (WFS) will lay off 161 employees at the American Airlines freight facility at Philadelphia International Airport in June because the airline has not renewed its contract. But Amerian says the new contractor is likely to hire much of the current workforce. WFS, which is based in France, posted a notice with the Pennsylvania Department of Labor and Industry that it would lay off the Cargo City employees on June 16. Valerie Marchand Battard, a spokeswoman for WFS at its Paris headquarters, said the company still operates two other facilities in the Philadelphia area, "so we are not pulling out of the market." American has hired G2 Secure Staff LLC to provide cargo handling services and the company is interviewing current WFS employees, said Victoria Lupica, American spokeswoman. "The transition is going smoothly with the goal to keep as many of the current employees who wish to stay on," she said. WFS is the world's largest air cargo handler and one of the leading providers of ground handling and technical services for 300 airlines at 195 major airports in 21 countries on five continents. It has 18,000 employees. In March, the company announced it had made a "strong start" to 2018 in North America by winning and renewing cargo handling, ramp, and passenger services contracts with airline customers at eight U.S. airports, without mentioning the loss of the Philadelphia contract. G2 Secure Staff, which is based in Irving, Tex., has 6,000 employees who provide cargo, maintenance, security and passenger services at 54 U.S. airports. One passenger died and seven others were injured Tuesday morning when a Southwest Airlines plane flying from New York to Dallas apparently blew an engine in midair, breaking a window, sending smoke into the cabin, and forcing an emergency landing in Philadelphia. An investigation into the cause will likely focus on a fan blade that broke off from one of the Boeing 737's two engines, said Robert Sumwalt, chairman of the National Transportation Safety Board, in a briefing here Tuesday night. The blade, one of 24 that bring air into the craft's turbo fan engine, broke near where it connected to the engine's hub, he said. There was evidence of metal fatigue near the break, Sumwalt said. >>READ MORE: Southwest flight 1380: The latest on the deadly engine explosion Less than a year ago, both the Federal Aviation Administration and the engine's manufacturer drew attention to problems with metal fatigue on the fan blades in the CFM56 engine series, which this plane has, after a similar incident in 2016, also a Southwest plane. The FAA proposed a directive that planes with extensive miles on their engines should subject the fan blades on those engines to a specific test designed to detect flaws in metal. Whether this plane's engines should have been subjected to those tests, and whether Southwest was performing them, will be investigated, Sumwalt said. "We want to see if this part might have been subject to that airworthiness directive," he said. Officials did not immediately know when the engines were last inspected, he added. >>READ MORE: 'There was a hole and somebody went out?': The conversation between Southwest pilot and PHL air traffic control Details of the engine failure Tuesday portray a routine morning flight gone awry. The plane took off from LaGuardia Airport bound for Love Field in Dallas at 10:43 a.m., Sumwalt said. The flight was carrying five crew members and 144 passengers, some of whom described hearing a loud boom in mid-flight before a window blew out and the smoke-filled plane suddenly dropped. The failure happened at 32,500 feet, at about 11:15, Sumwalt said. "Everybody knew something's going on, 'This is bad, like really bad,' " passenger Timothy Bourman, a 37-year-old pastor from New York City, said in a phone interview from the terminal as emergency personnel surrounded the plane after it landed. "A lot of people started panicking and yelling, just real scared." Pieces of the engine fell to earth. Investigators found part of the metal cowl that surrounds the engine in Bernville, Berks County, about 70 miles north of the city, Sumwalt said. The identities of the pilot and copilot were not released; however, according to media reports, the pilot was identified as Tammie Jo Shults, a former Navy fighter pilot. Passengers described a fast, chaotic descent. Jim Demetros, of Stamford, Conn., said he heard a "loud boom" and a window about three rows behind him on the other side blew out. "Hectic-ness ensued inside the cabin with oxygen masks coming down," he said after leaving Terminal A-East to meet his family about 2:50 p.m. He had been headed to a conference in San Antonio, Texas, but decided instead to head home to be with his two children and wife Cindy. He had texted her as the plane was descending: "There was an emergency, problems with the plane and I love you and the kids." >>READ MORE: In their words: Passengers describe "freak accident" The crew initially reported a fire and donned oxygen masks. A fire warning was likely triggered by engine damage, not flames, Sumwalt said. Crew members informed air traffic control they were initiating an emergency descent, vectored to Philadelphia International Airport, and requested emergency vehicles to stand by, Sumwalt said. The plane came down fast, he said, much faster than in a normal landing. Investigators listened Tuesday to the communication between the plane and air controllers, and said the crew handled the failure with aplomb. >>READ MORE: What we know about Southwest flight victim Jennifer Riordan "We listened to air traffic control communications," Sumwalt, himself a former 737 pilot, said. "It certainly sounded to me like they did an excellent job." Pilots managed to guide the plane to a safe landing by 11:23 a.m. One passenger, identified as Jennifer Riordan of Albuquerque, N.M., was rushed to an area hospital, where she died Tuesday afternoon. She was a vice president of community relations with Wells Fargo and a married mother of two. Officials did not explain how she died, and the NTSB reported the Philadelphia medical examiner would determine cause of death. Other passengers were treated for minor injuries. The incident the first airline accident to result in a fatality on an American carrier since 2009 quickly made national headlines as news cameras aired live footage of the grounded plane, its mangled engine appearing to be burst open. Passengers shared images and videos on social media from inside the cabin, sparking widespread interest while official details were scarce. The plane, a Boeing 737-7H4 that began flying in 2000, was certified through 2021, according to FAA records. A review of repair data on the plane showed no previous significant engine problems, but a similar Southwest jet endured a comparable engine failure two years ago. In that August 2016 incident, a Boeing 737-700 lost an engine fan blade flying from New Orleans to Orlando. The failure blew debris from the engine forward, piercing the plane's fuselage. The plane's cabin depressurized, but the debris did not enter the passenger compartment and no one was injured, according to the NTSB's initial report on the incident. That incident is also still under investigation, but there was evidence of a fatigue crack at the root of the blade, the NTSB reported. The 2016 incident prompted the FAA to propose its 2017 airworthiness directive to require ultrasonic inspection of fan blades on that series of engine, the CFM56. The engine's manufacturer also issued in 2017 a recommendation that airlines pay close attention to the fans on those engines. Both the company's recommendation and the FAA's proposed directive were intended for engines with 15,000 cycles-in-service since the last engine shop visit. "Engine failures like this are unusual, and to have one take the life of a passenger, that's really rare," Sumwalt said. Philadelphia Fire Commissioner Adam Thiel said that when the aircraft reached the ground, there was a fuel leak and a small fire in the engine. The incident was placed under control at 12:32 p.m. In a video message posted Tuesday evening, Southwest Airlines CEO Gary Kelly said Riordan's family is the company's "immediate and primary concern." He also said Southwest which has 706 planes and flies about 4,000 flights a day is "in the earliest stages of gathering information." Southwest planned to conduct enhanced inspection procedures throughout its fleet after Tuesday's event, Sumwalt said. A review of FAA data on engine repairs on Southwest flights from 2010 to 2017 found 27 incidents, two of which related to problems with fan blades, but neither appears to have resulted in any injuries. The investigation into Tuesday's event would likely take 12 to 15 months, Sumwalt said. He asked anyone with video or pictures taken from inside the plane to send them to witness@ntsb.gov. Despite the engine failure Tuesday, Kathy Farnan, 77, of Santa Fe, N.M., a passenger, said, "it was a beautiful landing." She added crew members "were fast on their feet" and kept passengers calm as the plane descended. Passenger Matt Tranchin, 34, of Dallas, told reporters that flight attendants and some passengers worked to cover the hole in the plane. Once the aircraft dropped and the oxygen masks fell, Tranchin spent what felt like the next half-hour thinking he wasn't "going to make it" and texting his wife, who is pregnant with their first child. "I spent a lot of my time trying to articulate what my final words would be," he said, "to our unborn child, to my wife, to my parents." He told them goodbye, and that he loved them. Staff writers Mari A. Schaefer, Michele Tranquilli, Jan Hefler, Michael Boren, Julie Shaw, and Joseph A. Gambardello contributed to this article. With her platinum blonde hair and a cherubic smile, Lois Riess looks in photos like what she is a 56-year-old grandmother from small-town America. And that, authorities say, makes her even more dangerous. For the last three weeks, police say, Riess has led them on a nationwide pursuit from the Minnesota worm farm where they found her husband shot to death last month; to Florida, where they suspect Riess befriended and killed a woman who looks like her to steal her identity; and finally to Texas, where police fear she may find her next target. "She smiles and looks like anyone's mother or grandmother, but she's calculating, she's targeting and she's an absolute cold-blood killer," Carmine Marceno, a deputy sheriff Lee County, Fla., told NBC News on Florida, after authorities lost Riess' trail. Riess and her husband, David, were well known and well liked among the 2,000 or so residents of Blooming Prairie, Minn., according to the Minneapolis Star Tribune. They were both regulars for lunch at the local Servicemen's Club, nearly 100 miles south of Minneapolis. David owned and operated a farm for fishing bait Prairie Wax Worms. Concerned that David Riess had not been seen in more than a week, the Star Tribune reported, one of his business partners asked police to look for him. Officers did, and found him dead of gunshot wounds at the worm farm on March 23, the sheriff of Dodge County told the newspaper. It was unclear how long he'd been dead. Lois Riess had left town by then. According to the Star Tribune, police suspect she forged her dead husband's signature before his body was found, transferred nearly $10,000 into her account, and headed to a casino across the Iowa border. NBC News reported Riess had a gambling addiction. She had left Iowa by the time police tracked her there in late March, the Star Tribune wrote. State officials began to paste her photos on Facebook, urging anyone who saw her to call 911 and not to go near her, as she was believed to be armed and dangerous. From Iowa, police believe, Riess drove to Lee County, Fla. There, they said, she met a woman named Pamela Hutchinson, 59, with a similar shade of light-blonde hair. "She befriended this woman. The woman probably gave her some sob story," Hutchinson's cousin Daniele Jeffreys later told WTVR. "My cousin went out helping the world . . . She's just giving to a fault. To her death." On April 5, the two women were recorded on surveillance camera at the Smokin' Oyster Brewery in Fort Myers, laughing. According to the Star Tribune, another surveillance camera photographed Riess at Hutchinson's condo in the same city. On April 9, police found Hutchinson shot to death at her condo in the same city. Another surveillance camera photographed Riess at the building. Hutchinson's uncle told WTVR she had been shot through the heart. The dead woman's purse had been emptied out, sheriff's investigators said. Her identification, credit cards and car keys were gone. So was her car. The search for Lois Riess was now a multistate and federal matter. More public advisories went out, with more photos of the grandmotherly woman and the car she was believed to be traveling in, which was now the car of the woman police think she killed. The vehicle was spotted near Corpus Christi, Texas, this month, Florida authorities announced at a news conference last Friday. Her current whereabouts are unknown. The obituary for David Riess published last week, and mentioned his children and grandchildren, but not wife. "Pure evil," Hutchinson's cousin told WTVR. "That's really the only thing that could resonate with my system . . . it's just evil that flowed through." In Florida, the deputy sheriff told NBC he had never seen a killing like it. "This is the first time in my career I've seen someone steal someone"s identity and target them for the way they look in order to murder them," Marceno said. And he worries it won't be the last. "I suspect Riess as some point in time with have no resources and she will become more desperate," Marceno said, "and may kill again." After a spate of attention and publicity, South Jersey progressive Democratic candidate Tanzie Youngblood, an African American woman, is showing some signs of fundraising life in her race to win a seat in Congress, boosting her total money raised to $88,309, including a $5,000 contribution from U.S. Sen. Kirsten Gillibrand's Off the Sidelines PAC. Will Cunningham, another progressive running in the Democratic primary for the seat in New Jersey's Second Congressional District, now held by retiring Republican U.S. Rep. Frank LoBiondo, reported $51,951 in funds. Cunningham is a gay African American who served as a staffer in U.S. Sen. Cory Booker's office. But both lag far behind the establishment Democratic candidate, State Sen. Jeff Van Drew of Cape May County, according to newly filed first-quarter campaign-finance reports. Van Drew's more conservative voting record, and 100 percent rating from the National Rifle Association have drawn criticism from the district's progressive wing but have not stopped national Democrats from embracing his candidacy. In his Federal Election Commission filings, Van Drew reported raising a total of $488,845 through the end of March, with all but $32,800 still on hand. He was supported by a $5,000 contribution from the American Dental Association (Van Drew is a dentist), and $5,000 from Ameripac, a national Democratic fundraising committee formed to elect Democrats to Congress. Van Drew has the support of the Democratic Congressional Campaign Committee, which has identified the district as likely to flip from Republican to Democratic in midterms. Democrats need 23 seats to gain control of the House. Locally, eight county Democratic chairs in the South Jersey district have supported Van Drew, giving him the valuable party line on the primary ballot. Cunningham has accused State Senate President Stephen Sweeney of delaying a vote on six gun bills so that Van Drew would not have to cast votes until after the June 5 primary. Van Drew has said he supports expanded background checks, but has not indicated his views on the other bills. Both Youngblood and Van Drew received individual contributions through ActBlue, a Democratic fundraising site. In a release this week, Youngblood praised the people who contributed to her campaign in an economically strapped district, citing 958 contributors with an average contribution of $68.25 per donor. Ninety-five percent of her donors have given less than $100. She described her campaign as "people powered." Youngblood recently opened a campaign office in Pleasantville. However, her reports show only $14,000 cash on hand. "The people decide who best represents their interests, not the political elite," Youngblood said in the statement. "Even with South Jersey's stagnant wages and low job growth, people are willing to invest in their future." Cunningham, in a release this week, cited national interest in the dynamics of the race and called Van Drew a "DINO," a Democrat in Name Only, and cited Van Drew's voting against raising the minimum wage and gay marriage. "His voting record hardly reflects the progressive values of 2018 Democrats, and yet he's the machine's top pick," Cunningham said. "But despite the establishment's best efforts, they can't hide his pro-gun agenda and lack of support for true democratic values." Van Drew is seen by the local and national Democratic establishment as a proven vote-getter whose position as a conservative Democrat will serve him well in a general election and keep stronger Republican candidates on the sidelines. He was endorsed by New Jersey power broker George E. Norcross III before he announced his candidacy. The Donald Norcross for Congress committee, associated with George Norcross' brother U.S. Rep. Donald Norcross (D., N.J.), donated $2,000 to Van Drew's campaign. On the Republican side, only one candidate, Hirsh Singh, has raised significant money, reporting $109,347 through the first quarter. Black Lives Matter activist Asa Khalif, left, stands inside the Starbucks at 18th and Spruce, and over a bullhorn, demands the firing of the manager that called police, resulting in two black men being arrested. Read more Starbucks became the center of controversy after two black men were arrested at one of its Philadelphia stores, sparking cries of racism, public apologies, and an internet meme. The incident captured on video and widely shared on Twitter by @MissyDePino shows the two men taken away in handcuffs on Thursday after refusing to leave the store at 18th and Spruce Streets because they hadn't purchased anything. They were meeting real estate investor Andrew Yaffe, who is seen in the video attempting to get authorities to explain what exactly the men had done wrong. The manager who called the police has left the store pending an investigation, according to the company. >>READ MORE: Starbucks to close all U.S. stores May 29 for racial-bias training after arrests in Philadelphia There have been days of protests outside the location, with Sunday's protest led by Asa Khalif, a prominent Black Lives Matter activist in Philadelphia. An image of Khalif, pictured with a bullhorn inside the store across from a stoic employee, taken by Inquirer and Daily News photographer Michael Bryant, has been widely circulated on social media, often with snarky commentary. >>READ MORE: Philly looking into other incidents at same Starbucks where two black men were arrested >>READ MORE: For black cafe patrons, Starbucks arrests raise concerns and interest in black businesses Bryant, a staff photographer for more than three decades and 2007 Pulitzer Prize finalist, wanted to clear up a few rumors. Here are the facts surrounding the viral image: When it was taken: The picture was taken around 12:30 p.m. Sunday, when Khalif announced that the crowd of protesters would be moving inside the store. The store was open for business at the time, and one or two customers inside decided to leave. "Today, this space is now secure, secured by the people," Khalif said through the bullhorn inside the store. What was happening: Bryant said his wide-angle lens makes it look as though Khalif is yelling directly at the employee, but that's not the case. Khalif addressed the entire crowd and spoke with Starbucks regional vice president Camille Hymes during the protest. Bryant said the event was rather quiet; conversations were held. There was no screaming or yelling. What the photographer was thinking: "When I shot the photograph, I did not think at all about Zack [the Starbucks employee] being white," he said. "I thought of him being a corporate representative of Starbucks. [It had] nothing to do with his race." Who the Starbucks worker is: The Starbucks employee is named Zack, according to his apron. Some on social media have falsely identified Zack as the manager who placed the 911 call resulting in the arrest of the two men. Zack was not that manager, a spokesperson for Starbucks confirmed Tuesday. What Bryant says about the viral photo: "To me, [the photo] is basically what America's about it's a chance to right a wrong," Bryant said. "If you have a problem with something, you go to the corporation or person or whatever and basically state your opinion." The memes: Here are some of the images that have been circulating on social media: In this April 16, 2018, photo, President Trump speaks at an event to promote his tax cut package in Hialeah, Fla. Read more The White House said Monday that President Trump still intends an early exit for U.S. troops in Syria, as French President Emmanuel Macron attempted to walk back his suggestion that he had convinced Trump to keep them there for the "long term." Macron's remarks on Sunday had hinted at a major policy shift for Trump, who had said he wanted a U.S. departure from Syria "very soon." But "our policy hasn't changed," White House spokeswoman Sarah Huckabee Sanders said, and Trump remains focused on defeating the Islamic State and on getting countries in the Persian Gulf to pick up the financial and military burden of Syria stabilization in the future. The United States, France and Britain have all offered official justifications for their joint military strike on Syrian chemical weapons sites last weekend, as well as their own version of what it means for Syria's civil war. In London, British Prime Minister Theresa May rejected political criticism that she acted on Trump's "whims" and said that her decision to send Royal Air Force warplanes to attack Syrian targets was not done as a favor to the U.S. president. "We have not done this because President Trump asked us to do so," May told the House of Commons on Monday. "We have done it because it is in our national interest to do so." Averting an "overwhelming humanitarian catastrophe is permissible under international law," May said. Macron and Trump also have cited the preservation of international law against the use of chemical weapons, although Trump has said his constitutional powers to protect "U.S. interests" provided authority to order the strikes without congressional consultation. Russia, Syrian President Bashar al-Assad's main backer, has said that an alleged chemical attack on April 7 in the Damascus suburb of Douma did not happen, and that it was a provocation staged by anti-Assad rebels. May said British confidence that the Syian government was responsible for the chemical attack, which killed dozens of civilians, was based on "a significant body of information including intelligence." U.S. Defense Secretary Jim Mattis also alluded to unspecified "intelligence" that reached him last Friday and convinced him that the Syrian government was indisputably responsible for the attack. In both cases, the reference was based on electronic intercepts acquired by France and passed on to the United States and Britain, U.S. officials said. U.S. intelligence agencies declined to comment on the reported intercepts. Although the administration has said its twofold strategy in Syria is to defeat the Islamic State and create conditions for a political settlement of Syria's civil war, it has also said its own direct involvement only concerns the former. On Sunday, Macron said that despite Trump's pledge to disengage from Syria, "we convinced him that it was necessary to stay there long-term." That brought a quick denial from the White House and a Monday attempt by Macron to at least partially backtrack. Speaking at a news conference during a visit to New Zealand, Macron said defeating the militants remains the military objective for France and the United States, and that the mission would end on "the day" that is accomplished. "I did not say" that either country "would remain militarily engaged in Syria in the long term," he said. But Macron added that "I'm right to say that the United States of America because it decided to carry out this intervention with us fully realized that our responsibility went beyond the war on Daesh," the Arabic term for the Islamic State, "and that we also have a humanitarian responsibility on the ground and a long-term responsibility to build peace." Trump remains unpopular in Britain and France. Both Macron and May are anxious not to appear subservient to the president, even as they try to convince him of the value of their alliance. That value, they hope, will pay dividends next month, when Trump must decide whether to drop out of the Iran nuclear deal to which all of them along with Germany, Russia and China are signatories. A Southwest Airlines plane with a damaged engine sits on the runway at the Philadelphia International Airport in Philadelphia, PA on April 17, 2018. DAVID MAIALETTI / Staff Photographer Read more A Southwest Airlines flight from New York to Dallas was forced to make an emergency landing in Philadelphia Tuesday after one of the plane's engine exploded in flight, leaving one person dead. Here is what passengers and family members are saying about what happened on the 18-year-old Boeing 737: We were kind of out of control for a while Timothy Bourman, a 37-year-old pastor from Queens, N.Y., was in the back of the plane when he heard a loud boom. "All the sudden, it felt like we dropped 100 feet," Bourman told the Inquirer and Daily News. "Everybody knew something's going on 'This is bad, like really bad.' A lot of people started panicking and yelling, just real scared. "We were kind of out of control for a while. It seemed like the pilot was having a hard time controlling the plane. Honestly I think we just all thought we were going down." >>READ MORE: Southwest flight 1380: The latest on the deadly engine explosion Smoke, confusion, chaos Matt Tranchin, 34, was on his way home to Dallas to see his pregnant wife when he heard a "loud explosion" ahead of him on the plane. Tranchin told reporters at Philadelphia International Airport that the cabin was filled with the "smell of smoke, confusion, chaos" following the explosion. "The next 15 to 20 minutes I spent was texting my wife, my family that I love them, saying goodbye," Tranchin said. "I spent a lot of my time trying to articulate what my final words would be to our unborn child, to my wife, to my parents." Asked what he would do following the ordeal, Tranchin said he wants to, "Treat every day like it's going to be my last." A woman was almost taken out of the airplane and was pulled back in Todd Baur, whose daughter was seated on the left side of the plane, told NBC10 one passenger was nearly sucked out of a hole in the fuselage created by the explosion. "The left engine blew, and it apparently threw shrapnel into one of the windows and depressurized the plane immediately," Baur said. "A woman seated close to that window and was almost taken out of the airplane and was pulled back in." Baur said passengers around her jumped into action and secured her back into the airplane, but the woman needed immediate medical attention. >>READ MORE: 'There was a hole and somebody went out?': The conversation between Southwest pilot and PHL air traffic control I thought I was cataloging the last moment of my existence Marty Martinez, who was seated just rows away from the shattered window, jumped on Facebook Live and broadcast a video as the plane made its descent. "Something is wrong with our plane! It appears we are going down! A Window is open!" Martinez wrote in the comments of his Facebook video, which was drowned out by cabin noise. "Flight attendants ran over calling for passengers to help cover the hole as they broke down and began uncontrollably crying and looking horrified as they looked outside." After the plane safely landed, Martinez described the experience to CBSN. "I had wi-fi and I knew I couldn't get any text message through, so I jumped onto Facebook Live," Martinez said. "There was blood everywhere I thought I was cataloging the last moment of my existence the whole way because I had wifi. It was absolutely terrifying." Martinez also shared photos of the damaged engine and the shattered window as he was evacuated off the aircraft. I love you and the kids Jim Demetros, of Stamford, Conn., was talking to a stewardess about beverages when he heard a "loud boom." A window about three rows back on the other side of him blew out, and oxygen masks came down. A woman sitting next to that window was injured, he said. Demetros had been heading to a software conference in San Antonio but will now return home instead. His wife, Cindy Demetros, drove to Philadelphia International Airport to pick him up Tuesday afternoon. They embraced upon seeing each other. Cindy Demetros had received text messages from her husband, an avid flyer, saying, "there was an emergency, problems with the plane and I love you and the kids." They have two children. Pilot was very confident and calm Kathy Farnan, 77, of Santa Fe, N.M., described the incident as a "freak accident." She had just nodded off in Row 3 when she said there was a large thud, the plane fell rapidly and the air masks dropped down. The flight leveled off and the crew ran to the back of the plane, she said. "They were fast on their feet," she said, adding that the crew still kept everyone calm. Some people had problems with their ears from pressure changes, she said. Despite the troubles, Farnan said, "it was a beautiful landing." The pilot came out to talk to passengers afterward. "She just made people feel good," Farnan said. "She was very confident and calm." Protesters gathered outside the Starbucks on 18th & Spruce Streets Monday. Two black men were arrested last week in a video incident that went viral over the weekend. Read more The Philadelphia Commission on Human Relations is looking into reports of other incidents at the same Center City Starbucks where the arrests of two black men last week have sparked national outrage and put the Seattle coffee chain in damage-control mode. Meanwhile, a Starbucks spokeswoman confirmed to the Washington Post that the company's CEO, Kevin Johnson, met privately with the two men on Monday and personally apologized. Neither man has been identified. >>UPDATE: Starbucks to close all U.S. stores May 29 for racial-bias training after arrests in Philadelphia >>UPDATE: Philly Police dispatcher on 911 tapes said "group of males" was "causing a disturbance" at Starbucks In a summary of the city's response to the incident, Mayor Kenney's office said the human relations commission would "review the firm's policies, guidelines and procedures, including whether Starbucks has written policies, whether the policies are enforced uniformly, and how much discretion is left to individual employees." >>READ MORE: For black cafe patrons, Starbucks arrests raise concerns and interest in black businesses The statement said the commission was looking into "additional reports that have come to their attention about this specific location." It did not provide any details about the reports or the nature of those incidents. The Starbucks at 18th and Spruce Streets has been the scene of daily protests since a video of the arrests went viral over the weekend. The store's manager called police while the men sat waiting for a third man without ordering anything. The pair were handcuffed and led out by police when they declined to leave. >>READ MORE: Protesting Starbucks? Here are Philly's best independent coffee shops The fallout has brought Johnson and Starbucks COO Rosalind Brewer to Philadelphia for damage control. On Monday, Johnson apologized on national television and met with city officials. He said the company would institute unconscious-bias training for managers. Kenney and Police Commissioner Richard Ross have said the officers who made the arrest did nothing wrong, indicating the responsibility rests mainly with Starbucks. Still, the city said the police department is "reviewing protocols related to how officers respond to such circumstances." Actor and Marine R. Lee Ermey was a friend to law enforcement and a fixture at SHOT Show. (Photo: Bill Rogin/Facebook) Actor and combat Marine veteran R. Lee Ermey, who was a strong supporter of law enforcement and a fixture at the Shooting, Hunting, and Outdoor Trade (SHOT) Show, died Sunday from complications of pneumonia. He was 74. The man known as "Gunny" would have probably laughed in your face if you told him during the 14 months of his in-country Vietnam War service that he was destined to become a Hollywood actor and TV personality. Back then, all he wanted was to complete his career as a Marine. But life has a way of changing plans. In 1972, Ermey was medically discharged from the Corps because of injuries he suffered in Vietnam and he had to find a new career. He found the stages of comedy clubs and he pursued an acting career with the determination and discipline of a professional warrior. Learning that Francis Ford Coppola was in the Philippines shooting "Apocalypse Now" and hiring Vietnam vets as advisors, he flew to Manila. There he landed an uncredited role as a helicopter pilot. Returning to the States, he experienced a career drought. But then he got the proverbial break. A director who had previously worked with Ermey recommended him as a technical advisor to Stanley Kubrick who was shooting a Vietnam War movie called "Full Metal Jacket." Soon, Kubrick decided that Ermey, who had served as a drill instructor in the Corps before going to Vietnam, would be perfect for the role of Gunnery Sergeant Hartman. Ermey's performance was so powerful that it was the most memorable element of the movie and he was nominated for a Golden Globe. Perhaps the greatest compliment paid to his performance was from Kubrick himself. The notoriously demanding director was known for shooting dozens of takes of almost every scene, but Ermey said his scenes were shot quickly and he actually liked working for the man he called "Stanley." After "Full Metal Jacket" Ermey worked steadily, racking up dozens of credits in films and television, often playing tough Marines, soldiers, and cops. He also had the opportunity to exercise his sense of humor and whimsy performing in comedies and cartoons, including all three "Toy Story" movies, "The Simpsons," and "Family Guy." At the SHOT Show, Ermey was always smiling. And the attendees loved him. They would line up for hours for a chance to take photos with "Gunny" at the booths of the companies whose products he endorsed, including Glock, SOG, and Tru-Spec. It was at the SOG booth in 2010 that I had the opportunity to interview "Gunny." We talked about his product endorsements, how he went from the Marines to standup comedy, what it was like working with Stanley Kubrick, his work hosting the History Channel's "Mail Call," and his love-hate relationship with watermelons, which as he said were an endangered species after his demos of firepower on "Mail Call." I left that interview genuinely liking the man. And I will miss seeing him next January at SHOT. Thank you for your service and your performances, Gunny. You can listen to the interview here. South Carolina prisons director says a riot that led to the deaths of seven inmates was a fight over money, territory, and contraband. An inmate took cellphone video of the prison riot. (Photo: WSOC-TV screenshot) Corrections Director Bryan Stirling said cellphones helped stir up trouble Sunday night at the Lee Correctional Institute in Bishopville. He says the fights started in one unit and appeared to be contained before suddenly starting in two more units. Stirling said the state wants to use technology to make cellphones useless inside state prisons, reports WSOC-TV. That's why we've been leading the effort in South Carolina to ask the FCC to allow us to block this signal," he explained at a news conference Monday afternoon. Prisoners armed with homemade knives rioted for more than seven hours inside a maximum-security facility, and bodies were "literally stacked on top of each other," an inmate told The Associated Press on Monday. The inmate didn't say what started the riot but said most of the inmates at the prison are affiliated with gangs and he saw several attackers taunt a rival gang member who was badly injured. No prison guards were hurt. An Atascocita, TX, man engaged in a shootout with four constable deputies Tuesday morning, wounding two, Harris County Deputy Thomas Gilliland said. The resident was also wounded in the gunfight, and sustained 22 entry and exit gunshot wounds, according to the Harris County Constable Precinct 4. Constable Mark Herman identified one of the deputies as Christopher Gaines and said he was flown to the hospital. The deputy, who has been with the department for two years and is assigned to its East District Patrol division in Humble, is currently in stable condition, Herman said. Another deputy who was wounded, Deputy Faniyi, was struck in the head by a shotgun pellet and received nine stitches, according to the constable's office. The resident was shot multiple times by the four deputies, Gilliland said. He is in serious condition and is expected to survive. He will face four counts of aggravated assault on a police officer, Gilliland said. The shooting happened around 2:50 a.m. Deputies arrived in response to a phone call from man in his 20s who sounded suicidal, Gilliland said. The deputies tried to make contact with the man, and after the second attempt, he came out with a shotgun, the Houston Chronicle reports. Hungarian President sets date for first session of new parliament Hungarys President Janos Ader has convened the constitutive session of Parliament for 8 May. He has also asked Viktor Orban, head of the Fidesz-KDNP coalitions list, to start negotiations on forming a government, a statement published on the website of the Presidents office showed on Tuesday. The Fundamental Law (i.e. the Constitution) stipulates that the President must convene the constitutive session of Parliament for within 30 days after election day. The new general assembly will start its work at 10 A.M. on 8 May, the statement said.The PM will be elected at the Presidents proposal by at least half of the MPs, which will hardly be a problem, given that the Fidesz-KDNP coalition has supermajority, i.e. 133 seats in the 199-seat Parliament. This gives them the power to change the Constitution.The Speaker of the House will be elected at the proposal of the caucus leaders by a secret ballot. The deputies and the notaries are to be elected by an open ballot. Without a joint motion, the head of the largest faction has the right to propose a speaker, in which case the deputies and the notaries are elected at his/her proposal after hearing the caucuses.At the 8 April election, Fidesz-KDNP obtained 133 mandates, while far-right national party Jobbik has 26, the Socialist Party (MSZP)-Parbeszed (Dialogue) coalition 20, the Democratic Coalition (DK) 9, green party LMP 8 seats in Parliament. A candidate of Egyutt (Together) won one mandate, there will also be and independent MP in the general assembly, as well as a representative of the National Municipality of Germans in Hungary (preferential mandate). Kristine and Ryan Jepsen, along with farmers Michelle and Travis Schullo, as well as Spring Grove native Christian Myrah, have brought a fresh approach to the small-grain milling company thats been in business for more than a century. Dean Ellingson and long-time operations associate Bruce Johnson are also still involved with the mill, as well as provide new manager Josh Mattson with operational advice. The landmark mill sells Nutrena and Kent feeds for commercial farm operations and pets, as well as custom-sourcing and custom-mixed feeds, including organic and GMO-free rations. The company contends its able to provide what bigger feed mills cant. Rodney Thompson, a farmer just north of Mabel, gets concentrate feeds delivered from Spring Grove, despite having a grain facility right in Mabel. Thompson said he likes how the staff in Spring Grove has livestock-feeding experience and work directly to fill his needs. "I just like working with Bruce (Johnson) and Josh (Mattson), because I trust them," said Thompson. "Theyre in the business of beef, so they know good feed." The elevator also caters to whatever niche that exists in the industry, by selling an array of custom-blend batches from rabbit, fish, dog and cat feed to bird and lawn seed, and even wood shavings for farm bedding. Pretty much whatever youre looking for, Ellingson will give it a shot. The mills modern style of business looks to be in contrast to the three original structures that it still operates from. Named after the history of each, the Sylling & Myrah Elevator (built in 1885), Farmers Union Elevator (built in 1887) and the Spring Grove Stock & Grain Company (built in 1900) are all listed on the National Register of Historic places. The original grain company started in 1900, and sold coal, flour and feed. JEPSEN-SCHULLO PARTNERSHIP The business partnership between the couples began in 2015 when Travis and Michelle moved to northeast Iowa to work on the Jepsens niche cattle and cropping operation. Prior to moving, the Schullos grew their multi-generational dairy farm in north-central Wisconsin to 900 head and more than 2,000 acres. But to better understand the significance behind their merger, its important to know the backstory of Ryan and Kristine Jepsen. In 2006, the Jepsens moved back to their home state of Iowa after residing for a few years in the Mountain West, where Kristine worked as a magazine editor and Ryan worked full-time as a traveling horseshoer. Not long after they settled back into the Midwest, the Jepsens bought their first century-old farmhouse on a few acres near Dorchester, Iowa, where they finished their first two steers. "I use finished loosely because we really didnt know what the meat should look or taste like," wrote Jepsen for a food cooperative 10 years later. "We just knew how wed raised it, and we hoped customers had faith. Our first year at market, we sold roasts and ground beef from chest coolers." The couple continued to grow their operations and pieced together more rented pasture for grazing, but realized they couldnt live off the 2 percent margin they were posting after selling every last pound of their finished beef. Staying true to their original intentions, the couple started a Meat CSA. That decision catapulted them in a way they had never planned or imagined would be possible. "Slowly, we discovered we were running a business," said Jepsen about the period when their CSA ballooned. "Probably the most capital-intensive one we could have picked for two young-ish people with little equity and a business model that didnt involve recognizable assets like tracthe opportunity is there, and theyre interested in the industry its a breath of fresh air." We have seen that, from a conservative perspective, the Alex Acosta Department of Labor is bad on immigration, bad on equal pay, and weak on at least one important wage and hour law issue. Now we learn that it is also bad on religious liberty. We learn this from the case of Acosta v. Cathedral Buffet, Inc.; Ernest Angley. In this action, the Department of Labor sued a restaurant operated by the Grace Cathedral church in Cuyahoga Falls, Ohio. It claimed that the church and its minister Ernest Angley violated the federal Fair Labor Standards Act by not paying the minimum wage to church members who volunteered as workers at the restaurant. The Obama administration DOL initiated the lawsuit, but Acostas DOL continued to pursue it. Indeed, as recently as last December it defended the action in the oral argument of an appeal by the church from a district courts ruling. Fortunately, the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Sixth Circuit ruled against the Acosta DOL in a unanimous decision. It reversed the district court, which had awarded nearly $400,000 against the defendants. The U.S. Supreme Court has made it clear that to be considered an employee within the meaning of the FLSA, and thus be entitled to the minimum wage, a worker must first expect to receive compensation. It was undisputed that the volunteers who worked at Cathedral Buffet had no such expectation. The Acosta DOL tried to argue its way around this problem by saying that Rev. Angley coerced church members into volunteering for work at the restaurant. He told church members that the restaurant was the Lords buffet, and that [e]very time you say no [to working there], you are closing the door on God. He also suggested that church members who repeatedly refused to volunteer were at risk of blaspheming against the Holy Ghost, an unforgivable sin. A church member testified that she volunteered to work because she feared failing God. The Sixth Circuit rejected the Acosta DOLs position that these facts mean the church volunteers are entitled to pay. It agreed that in some circumstances, a showing of coercion might be sufficient to overcome a volunteers lack of expected compensation and bring her within the protections of the FLSA. It concluded, however, that these circumstances are not present in this case because the type of coercion the FLSA is concerned with is economic in nature, not societal or spiritual. In a brilliant concurring opinion, Judge Kethledge ripped the Acosta DOL. He wrote: One hopes that the Department of Labor simply failed to think through its position in this case. Since initiating this litigation in 2015, the Department has argued. . .that volunteers at the Cathedral Buffet were in fact employees under the Fair Labor Standards Act because, the Department says, their pastor spiritually coerced them to work there. That arguments premisenamely, that the Labor Act authorizes the Department to regulate the spiritual dialogue between pastor and congregationassumes a power whose use would violate the Free Exercise Clause of the First Amendment. All in a days work for federal bureaucrats at Alex Acostas DOL. To accommodate those who want easy access to Judge Kethledges stellar opinion, I present it below with only a few small edits: By way of background, the Grace Cathedral Church operated the Cathedral Buffet, a nominally for-profit corporation that in fact never turned a profit, and that the church heavily subsidized (by more than $1 million between 2012). Instead, the record makes clear, the Buffets purpose was to allow the churchs members to proselytize among local residents who dined there. Although the Buffet had 35 full-time employees-all of whom, incidentally, have lost their jobs as a result of this lawsuit-much of its work was performed by volunteers from the congregation. In the district court, the Department obtained injunctive relief and about $388,000 in damages on the theory that these congregants were employees (rather than volunteers) under the Act. Normally that determination is governed by economic criteria; whether the workers are economically dependent upon the defendant, whether the defendant can hire or fire them, whether the defendant substantially controls the terms and conditions of the work. [Citations omitted] Here, per those criteria, the congregants are not employees, as our opinion today makes clear. But here the Department has divined spiritual criteria as well: during Church services[,] the Department contends, Rev. Angley exerted undue pressure and influence upon the volunteers by telling the congregation that a failure to volunteer would be the same as failing God, and that God is not pleased with congregants who did fail. Govt Br. at 40. Thus, the Department says, putative spiritual coercion can be a stand-alone basis for fines and injunctive relief under the Act. One can agree that the Reverends comments were in poor taste, and yet see that the Department has no business regulating them. For the power that the Department purports to exercise here is out of bounds even under Employment Div. v. Smith, 494 U.S. 872 (1990). There, of course, the Court held that a neutral law of general applicability does not violate the Free Exercise Clause when the law burdens religious exercise only incidentally. . . . But here. . .the Department seeks to regulate spiritual conduct qua spiritual conduct, and to impose significant liability as a result. The very criterion by which the Department would impose liability is expressly spiritual. Hence this is not a case, like Smith, where illegal conduct (there, smoking peyote) remained illegal even though it was religiously motivated. Instead, the Departments position here is that otherwise legal conduct-such as volunteering at a church restaurant-becomes illegal if the workers pastor spiritually pressures her to engage in it. (Under this regime, one supposes, whether a pastor can invoke the Book of James-a person is justified by works and not by faith alone[,] James 2:24-might be determined on a case-by-case basis) The Departments actions therefore target[] religious conduct for distinctive treatment[,] [citations omitted] and their burdens upon religious exercise would come by the design. Nor is the Department even competent to make the spiritual judgment it purported to make here. It is not within the judicial ken to question the centrality of particular beliefs or practices to a faith or the validity of particular litigants interpretations of those creeds. Hernandez v. Commr of Internal Revenue, 490 U.S. 680, 699 (1989). That same idea of centrality perforce lies beneath any judgment about spiritual coercion. And bureaucrats are no better than judges at making that judgment. Hence it is beyond the ken of federal agencies, or the courts, to determine that congregants were spiritually coerced even though the congregants themselves say they were not-which is what 134 members of Grace Cathedral said under oath here. Thus, the coercion that matters is not anything that Rev. Angley said to his congregation on a Sunday morning. What matters, rather, is the Departments own attempt to coerce religious leaders-of any faith-not to exhort their followers on spiritual grounds to engage in conduct that is otherwise legal. For the Free Exercise Clause protects against indirect coercion or penalties on the free exercise of religion, not just outright prohibitions. [Citations omitted] The coercion here would take the form of a check in the amount of $388,507.90, payable to United States Department of Labor-Wage and Hour Division[.]' Judgment and Order Regarding Injunction at 2. That coercion affects not only Rev. Angley-who along with the Buffet was ordered to pay that amount-but also the congregants themselves; since, even if they return any moneys to Angley or the Buffet, Defendants shall immediately remit such amount to the U.S. Department of Labor[.] Id. at 3. What is perhaps most troubling about the Departments position in this case, however, is the conceit of unlimited agency power that lies behind it. The power of a federal agency is no more than worldly. The Department should tend to what is Caesars, and leave the rest alone. (Emphasis added) Katherine Kersten is a Senior Fellow at Center of the American Experiment, the think tank that I run. In the Fall 2017 issue of our magazine, Thinking Minnesota, she wrote a long, thoroughly documented expose of leftist political indoctrination and bullying of nonconforming students, teachers and staff in the Edina, Minnesota public school system. She did a follow-up story in the Winter 2018 issue of the magazine. Because of their quality and depth of reporting, these articles (along with an op-ed by Kathy in the Minneapolis Star Tribune on the same subject) triggered a vigorous local debate. The issue of left-wing indoctrination in the schools is, of course, of national interest, and Kathys articles began to attract attention from national news outlets, as well. The Weekly Standard commissioned a piece by Kathy which greatly expanded the national reach of the story. Kathys Weekly Standard article was featured on the Drudge Report. Links to the article were tweeted by prominent conservatives like Brit Hume. Foxs Dana Perino included it in her weekly reading list. Ben Shapiro and Jordan Peterson, the Canadian psychologist whose recent book was the #1 best seller on Amazon for several weeks, discussed it. The piece became one of the Weekly Standards most-read articles of 2018. Many popular web sites linked to, and discussed, Kathys various Edina articles, including, of course, Power Line. In addition, national web sites including Real Clear Politics, InstaPundit (three times), Fox News, the Kansas City Star, the Independent Womens Forum, Intellectual Takeout, Education News, Breitbart, The American Conservative, PJ Media, Erick Erickson in the Macon, Georgia Telegraph, Legal Insurrection, Frontpage Magazine, Hot Air, Alpha News, and many more. In addition, Kathy appeared on television on Fox & Friends, and on Dennis Pragers radio show, and was also a guest on a number of local radio programs across the country. Her stories about indoctrination and bullying in the Edina schools truly had gone national. Thus, I was not surprised to get an email from Solvejg Wastvedt, a reporter for Minnesota Public Radio, on March 5. Ms. Wastvedt said that she wanted to interview me. She wrote: Im doing a story on the ongoing criticisms of the Edina school district that CAE has published and that have been picked up by other media. Id like to interview you about the Centers focus on Edina. I offered to set up an interview with Kathy Kersten, but she wanted to talk to me. She came to my office and interviewed me for around 16 minutes. It is my practice to record interviews with reporters. This is our conversation in its entirety: Solvejg told me the focus of her story was on how its taken on kind of a national profile. No surprise there. But she made it clear where she was coming from when she identified a couple of, you know, national publications, like whether its Daily Stormer or Breitbart. As you can hear on the tape, I reacted with incredulity to her reference to the Daily Stormer and asked whether she is a regular reader of that online publication. In due course, the Minnesota Public Radio story appeared, both on the radio and transcribed on MPRs web site. The articles focus was indeed on the fact that the story had gotten national traction: [A] critique that began with a post on the website of local conservative think tank Center of the American Experiment has garnered national media coverage and found a new audience this month in hearings at the Minnesota legislature. The article included one partial sentence from Ms. Wastvedts conversation with me. This is how she described the national media coverage of Kathy Kerstens expose on the Edina schools: During the fall of 2017 as Edina voters weighed candidates for four school board seats and a school tax referendum Fox News, Breitbart, a blog by Newt Gingrich and the neo-Nazi website Daily Stormer all picked up the story. Katherine Kersten, the author of the Centers two magazine articles, appeared on Fox & Friends in October 2017. Hinderaker presented the critiques at a meeting of the local Republican party. As I told Ms. Wastvedt in our interview, the meeting she refers to was open to the public and was attended by people from both parties, including representatives of the Edina schools. You can watch my presentation here. The coverage sparked a thread on the white supremacist website Stormfront. A thread on the anonymous internet forum 8chan posted a street address and phone numbers for an Edina English teacher and said, We need to literally crucify her and destroy her completely. It is obvious that the principal purpose of MPRs story was to smear Katherine Kersten and Center of the American Experiment by associating us with the Daily Stormer (neo-Nazi!), Stormfront (white supremacist!) and 8chan. No mention of mainstream conservatives like Dennis Prager, Brit Hume, Jordan Peterson, Ben Shapiro, Dana Perino, Power Line, InstaPundit, Independent Womens Forum, Hot Air, the Drudge Report, Legal Insurrection, Frontpage, Intellectual Takeout, Education News, American Conservative, PJ Media, as well as neutral outlets like Real Clear Politics and the Kansas City Star. These mainstream sites have traffic that is, what? 100,000 times greater than the Daily Stormer and Storm Front? 1,000,000 times greater? Obviously, Ms. Wastvedt featured the obscure, extremist sites as a politically-motivated smear. I wanted to ask Ms. Wastvedt some questions. To begin with, I wondered how she even knew that Stormfront and 8chan had references to Kathys stories. The sites I referred to can be identified in less than two minutes with a Google search, and Daily Stormer comes up on page 9. But Stormfront and 8chan dont show up at all; Google has barred 8chan, which I had never heard of prior to the MPR story, from its search results. So someone had to do some digging to come up with material for MPRs smear. Im pretty sure I know where Wastvedt got the idea for her smear, and perhaps who did the research. Tim Klobuchar is one of the left-wing ringleaders at Edina High School. He is quoted in the MPR story, and he testified before the legislative committee that is referred to in the story. It was Klobuchar who first came up with the Daily Stormer. Here is the audio of his testimony; the Daily Stormer reference is at 1:28: This was one of several questions I wanted to ask Ms. Wastvedt, so I emailed her: Solvejg, I would like to interview you for a piece I am writing on Minnesota Public Radio. In particular, I want to ask about your attempt to link Center of the American Experiment with the Daily Stormer etc. I am happy to come to your office for the interview. Please send me a couple of times next week that would work for you. She responded that interview requests need to go through MPRs communications office, in the person of Angie Andresen. So I had an email exchange with Ms. Andresen. She asked: Hi John, Thanks for your note. Were there specific questions you had around her story? I just re-read her story and saw the only reference to The Daily Stormer as one of a number of outlets that picked up Katherine Kerstens story. Thanks. Angie I responded: Angie, I am writing a story about MPR and want to ask, as I said before, about Solvejgs effort to tie Center of the American Experiment to the Daily Stormer, etc. I think that is reasonably clear, but feel free to call me if you have additional questions. To which I got this reply: Hi John, Can you tell me more about the story youre doing on MPR? As I mentioned, the Daily Stormer is listed in her story as one of a number of outlets that picked up the Kersten piece. If there are inaccuracies or anything we should address, please let me know and I will share with the MPR News leaders. Thanks. Angie So I explained the point of my interview request in more detail: The story is on inappropriate political bias in a publicly-funded news organ, MPR. (Which, by the way, parallels the theme of the original articles that MPR was commenting on.) I want to interview Solvejg about, among her things, her choice of which outlets that picked up the Kersten piece to mention. I also want to ask how MPR handles comparable situations where a story has been linked to by a wide variety of online publications. I think the point is very clear. There are additional questions on the same topics that I want to ask her, of course, but I do not intend to submit them in writing in advance. I should add that if you are not willing to permit Solvejg to be interviewed, I will have no alternative but to draw, and to communicate, adverse inferences. That brought this wholly unresponsive reply: MPR News is determined that its journalism reflect the highest professional standards and one of its principles is unbiased and non-partisan reporting. If there are inaccuracies or corrections to be made to Solvejgs story or any other, we want to be sure we make those. Below is a link to our news ethics page and a full list of our principles. https://www.mpr.org/about/news_ethics We are unbiased and non-partisan in our reporting. Our journalism is in service of the public. We believe in journalism of verification, facts and an obligation to the truth. We are inclusive in our reporting and programming. We report without fear or favor, independent of those we cover. We strive to monitor and hold accountable people in power. We place high value on engaging with the public and providing forums for debate and understanding. If we err, we are forthcoming and correct our error. We take care with a persons right to privacy and report within the bounds of the law. We are guided in our journalistic practices and behavior by ethical guidelines. Thank you. Angie Having reached the end of my patience, I wrote: Does this mean that you are declining to make Solvejg available for an interview? To which I finally got a straight answer: Solvejg is not available for an interview. I did connect with her and her goal was to make the point that the CAE story had been picked up by national media. Were there some that were missed? Yes, Angie, there were some that were missed. There are other questions that I would have liked to ask Solvejg. For instance: how do you decide when the approval or disapproval of a disreputable fringe group is relevant to your listeners evaluation of mainstream people or institutions? Lets take a concrete example: MPR has interviewed and written about Keith Ellison many times. On any of those occasions, has it seen fit to tell its listeners and readers that Ellison was endorsed for DNC Chairman by David Duke? If not, why not? I think it is telling that MPR is quick to smear those with whom its reporters disagree politically, but refuses to make its reporter available for an interview. Transparency is, apparently, a one-way street. I am asking Minnesota Public Radio for an apology on behalf of Center of the American Experiment. Last week I linked to the McClatchy story by Peter Stone and Greg Gordon reporting that Special Counsel Robert Mueller has evidence that Michael Cohen President Trumps personal lawyer visited Prague in the summer of 2016, just as it says right there in the dodgy Steele Dossier. Cohen to the contrary notwithstanding via Twitter (below), the response to this story among political journalists and other observers was nigh on ecstatic. Bad reporting, bad information and bad story by same reporter Peter Stone @McClatchyDC. No matter how many times or ways they write it, I have never been to Prague. I was in LA with my son. Proven! https://t.co/ra7nwjUA0X Michael Cohen (@MichaelCohen212) April 14, 2018 Muellers office has not responded directly to inquiries regarding this story, but the Daily Callers Chuck Ross and Peter Hasson have obtained this warning from a Mueller spokesman: What I have been telling all reporters is that many stories about our investigation have been inaccurate. Be very cautious about any source that claims to have knowledge about our investigation and dig deep into what they claim before reporting on it. If another outlet reports something, dont run with it unless you have your own sourcing to back it up. The rest of the Ross/Hasson story is worth reading as well. Their current story follows up on Rosss April 14 Daily Caller story (noting Jake Tappers confirmation of the McClatchy story). Victor Davis Hanson has an even more salient warning of his own in Colluders on the loose. I think that should probably come with an exclamation point for emphasis. Its is a warning that applies especially to Muellers office. Theyre lookin for collusion in all the wrong places. If there is a crime of collusion, Dr. Hanson writes, then Clinton-campaign contractors should be under investigation for seeking Russian help to find dirt on Trump, to spread smears around throughout the DOJ, FBI, and CIA, and to make sure that the dirt was leaked to the press in the final weeks of the campaign for the sole insurance purposes of losing Trump the election. Dr. Hanson has many other tips for Mueller in this invaluable column making a number of points we have been trying to make here in our own way. President Andrzej Duda on Tuesday appointed Marek Zagorski as the new minister for digital affairs. The appointment of Zagorski - who had previously served as deputy minister for digital affairs - was made at the request of Prime Minister Mateusz Morawiecki. Naming Marek Zagorski the new minister, the president said he did so "without any hesitation, because you are a politician who has huge experience in matters related to digitisation." The head of state also noted the new minister had previously worked for other Ministries - of Agriculture and of Treasury. "The task you are officially undertaking is indeed exceptionally important and not easy," the president added. Outlining his priorities, Marek Zagorski said he will focus on projects to introduce an identity card with an electronic layer, as well as to further develop and streamline the central register of vehicles and drivers (CEPiK) and implement the European Union's General Data Protection Regulation (RODO) in Poland. (PAP) LONDON, April 17, 2018 /PRNewswire/ -- Ashley Cook, Customer Relations Director, Three Ireland, will offer his Strategic Vision: A 3-5 Year Transformational Customer Strategy Plan at the 12th Annual Customer Contact Europe: A Frost & Sullivan Executive MindXchange, taking place at Clontarf Castle Hotel, Dublin, from 11th to 13th June 2018. His opening keynote will draw from his experiences at Three Ireland, one of the country's leading mobile networks, serving over two million customers. Cook will shine a light on how his organisation came to understand the customer experience through their customer's journeys and how they leveraged the data gathered to drive improvement and change across the organisation. He will share a first-hand story of initiative and applying lessons learned to develop an integrated digital customer service and self-service strategy...while also reducing operating costs. Cook previously held a number of senior roles at Carphone Warehouse in the UK, including Director of Customer Operations and Director of Business Operators. Prior to joining Carphone Warehouse, he was Director of Sales Operations with Tesco in the Czech Republic where he was responsible for 83 stores and more than 6,000 people. Jean-Marc Codsi, General Manager Europe, Wargaming.net, will present a Case History: Smart Technology and Successful Customer Service Agendas. Codsi will explain how the customer service world is full of opportunities for improvement and ways to do so, including people, technology and processes. He will explore why the balance between cost management and delivering an excellent customer experience can be hard to achieve, and offer insights to help organisations implement more "quick wins", identify their blind spots and jump their learning curves! In his current role at Wargaming,net, Codsi leads a team of publishing experts for popular AAA video games in Europe. Previously, he was Executive Director, BUX Partners and Vice President Global Customer Experience, eBay, Europe. The 12th Annual Customer Contact Europe: A Frost & Sullivan Executive MindXchange, will offer contact centre and customer experience executives the opportunity to benefit from: Truly innovative case studies and best practices Dynamic collaboration zones fostering disruptive and transformational thinking Networking opportunities with customer contact industry peers Don't miss out on the opportunity to leverage the latest customer service thinking for competitive advantage. For additional information, please email [email protected] or contact Alan Bowman at +44 1865 398 644. About Frost & Sullivan Frost & Sullivan, the Growth Partnership Company, works in collaboration with clients to leverage visionary innovation that addresses the global challenges and related growth opportunities that will make or break today's market participants. For more than 50 years, we have been developing growth strategies for the global 1000, emerging businesses, the public sector and the investment community. Contact us: Start the discussion Contact: Kristina Menzefricke Corporate Communications Europe P: +44 (0) 208 996 8589 E: [email protected] www.frost.com Related Links http://www.frost.com SOURCE Frost & Sullivan Download the 2018 Frost & Sullivan North American Contact Center Company of the Year Award. "Genesys offers one of the broadest customer experience portfolios in the industry, with solutions that help businesses achieve specific outcomes, such as revenue increases, cost savings, or improved customer satisfaction," said Nancy Jamison, Principal Analyst, ICT. The company has maintained a leadership position within the customer contact center industry for years by evolving its Customer Experience Platform, including the Genesys PureCloud, PureConnect and PureEngage offers, through ongoing investment in research and development. As a result, Genesys stays ahead of the curve on emerging trends and ever-evolving consumer preferences. Over the years, the Genesys brand has grown through a series of strategic acquisitions, which has broadened the company's portfolio to cover the entire market while enriching its cloud offerings. In the past two years, the company has undergone a complete corporate rebranding and restructuring across the organization, from how it develops and delivers products to its sales and professional services. Genesys offers a broad range of contact center tools, AI and machine learning technologies, and applications that enable customers to address unmet needs and implement effective strategies ahead of competitors. The company's Blended AI strategy, which combines bots with the human touch to solve customer problems faster, is an example of the innovative approach Genesys is taking to infuse AI into customer care. The company takes a fresh approach to helping businesses apply its offerings for improved customer experience. Genesys Use Cases, for example, provide organizations with definitions of best practices, blueprint architecture designs, implementation guidelines, and return on investment (ROI) calculators that help them model how they can achieve their desired business outcome(s). With more than 80 individual use cases defined across marketing, sales and service, Genesys customers have realized 30 to 50 percent faster time-to-value compared with traditional approaches to similar projects. In addition, Genesys has streamlined the way it sells solutions, engages with and delivers services to its customers. This is evidenced by the following: To provide its customers with continuous value and to give businesses the level of interaction they want from Genesys, the company launched PureSuccess. The program provides varying degrees of assistance through full-journey, fit-for-purpose sets of services elements relevant to Genesys customers throughout their entire lifecycle. To assist customers with their migration from legacy competitive platforms to the next-generation Genesys Customer Experience Platform, the company introduced its PureBridge program in 2016. As part of its cloud-first strategy, the company shifted to providing a subscription-based consumption model as an alternative to perpetual licenses, providing clients with flexibility for fluctuating capacity needs and channel usage. "Through its portfolio of contact center offers, Genesys provides its clients with advanced solutions to engage with customers via new interaction channels and applications, using innovative, sophisticated tools," said Ms. Jamison. "Frost & Sullivan recognizes Genesys as Company of the Year in the contact center industry due to its robust customer care portfolio and long-standing customer commitment." Each year, Frost & Sullivan presents a Company of the Year award to the organization that demonstrates excellence in terms of growth strategy and implementation in its field. The award recognizes a high degree of innovation with products and technologies, and the resulting leadership in terms of customer value and market penetration. Frost & Sullivan Best Practices awards recognize companies in a variety of regional and global markets for demonstrating outstanding achievement and superior performance in areas such as leadership, technological innovation, customer service, and strategic product development. Industry analysts compare market participants and measure performance through in-depth interviews, analysis, and extensive secondary research to identify best practices in the industry. About Genesys Genesys powers more than 25 billion of the world's best customer experiences each year. Our success comes from connecting employee and customer conversations on any channel, every day. Over 10,000 companies in more than 100 countries trust our #1 customer experience platform to drive great business outcomes and create lasting relationships. Combining the best of technology and human ingenuity, we build solutions that mirror natural communication and work the way you think. Our industry-leading solutions foster true omnichannel engagement because they perform equally well across channels, on-premises and in the cloud. Experience communication as it should be: fluid, instinctive and profoundly empowering. Visit genesys.com on Twitter, Facebook, YouTube, LinkedIn and the Genesys blog. About Frost & Sullivan For over five decades, Frost & Sullivan has become world-renowned for its role in helping investors, corporate leaders and governments navigate economic changes and identify disruptive technologies, Mega Trends, new business models, and companies to action, resulting in a continuous flow of growth opportunities to drive future success. Contact us: Start the discussion. Contact: Estefany Ariza P: 210.477.8469 F: 210.348.1003 E: [email protected] Related Links http://www.frost.com SOURCE Frost & Sullivan PORTLAND, Oregon and PUNE, India, April 17, 2018 /PRNewswire/ -- According to a new report published by Allied Market Research, titled, "3D medical imaging services Market by Technique, Application and End User: Global Opportunity Analysis and Industry Forecast, 2017-2023," the global 3D medical imaging services market was valued at $149,492 million in 2016, and is projected to reach $236,809 million by 2023, growing at a CAGR of 6.7% from 2017 to 2023. In 2016, the X-ray segment was the highest contributor in 2016 and accounted for about two-fifths share of the global market. (Logo: https://mma.prnewswire.com/media/636519/Allied_Market_Research_Logo.jpg ) 3D medical imaging is an advanced form of imaging technology, which enhances the quality of images and enables healthcare professionals to diagnose the ailments and disorders precisely. It creates visual representations of the interior of the body by utilizing 3D imaging modalities such as a computed tomography scanner, X-ray, as well as by combining two modalities together for better results. Request Sample Report at: https://www.alliedmarketresearch.com/request-sample/4601 The market for 3D medical imaging is driven by the launch of novel 3D imaging modalities and techniques. These modalities and novel techniques ease the transition to 3D imaging devices, especially in gynecology and obstetrics field, thus supplementing the market growth. Moreover, rise in incidence of chronic diseases and increase in need for point-of care imaging are expected to fuel the market growth. However, high cost of 3D medical imaging technology and unfavorable reimbursement scenario hamper the growth of the market. On the contrary, increase in healthcare expenditure, especially in the developing economies is anticipated to create lucrative opportunities for key market players. The 3D medical imaging services market is segmented on the basis of technique, application, end user, and region. Based on technique, the market is divided into ultrasound, X-ray, CT scan, MRI, and hybrid imaging. By application, it is classified into oncology, cardiology, orthopedic, and others. Depending on end user, it is fragmented into diagnostic centers, hospitals, and research centers. Region wise, the market is analyzed across North America, Europe, Asia-Pacific, and LAMEA. For Purchase Enquiry: https://www.alliedmarketresearch.com/purchase-enquiry/4601 Key Findings of the 3D medical imaging services Market: The Cardiology segment is expected to be the fastest growing segment during the forecast period. Diagnostic centers dominated the global 3D medical imaging services market in 2016 and is expected to grow at a CAGR of 5.8% during the forecast period. Research centers is expected to be the fastest growing segment in the market during the forecast period. The U.S. dominated the North American 3D medical imaging services market in 2016 and is projected to grow at a CAGR of 4.4% from 2017 to 2023. India is expected to be the fastest growing country in the Asia-Pacific 3D medical imaging services market during the forecast period. North America dominated the 3D medical imaging services market. The market growth in North America is primarily a reflection of product innovations and launches resulting from technological advancements. Europe and Asia-Pacific together accounted for around half of the market in 2016. The companies mostly adopted product launch, acquisition, and expansion as their key strategies to keep pace with the changing demands of consumers and strengthen their market position. The key players operating in the global 3D medical imaging services market are GE Company (GE Healthcare), Hitachi Ltd., Hologic, Planmeca, Materialise NV, Philips Healthcare, Siemens AG (Siemens Healthineers) and Carestream Health, The Esaote Group, Canon Inc. Other players operating in the value chain are Esaote S.P.A, Fonar Corp., Fujifilm Corp., Hitachi Medical Corp, Mindray Medical International Ltd, and Neusoft Medical Systems Co. Ltd. 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. Contact: Shriram Dighe 5933 NE Win Sivers Drive #205, Portland, OR 97220 United States Toll Free: +1-800-792-5285 UK: +44-845-528-1300 Hong Kong: +852-301-84916 India (Pune): +91-20-66346060 Fax: +1855550-5975 [email protected] Web: https://www.alliedmarketresearch.com SOURCE Allied Market Research Recent data from Citi Research show that from 2016 to 2019, the major industries that Huawei EBG serves (including government and public utilities, banking, manufacturing, and transportation) will increase their AI investment by two to five times. However, great challenges persist in industry-oriented AI application in enterprises. According to Huawei's observation, despite the fact that tremendous AI technical breakthroughs have been made to support a full range of AI applications, AI applications of most enterprises are still siloed, mono-functional, fragmented, and general, and cannot support the intelligentization of enterprise organizational and functional modules. We have witnessed a shortage of proven Industry-oriented AI applications. Heng Qiu, Chief Marketing Officer of Enterprise Business Group, Huawei, pointed out in his keynote speech titled Infusing Intelligence into Enterprise "Neurons" Through Digital Platforms that to systematically support the intelligence of enterprise organizations and develop Industry-oriented AI applications, the following conditions must be met: platforms that can support the systematic growth of Industry-oriented AI applications; combination of deep industry understanding and AI technologies; continuous optimization and improvement based on business practices. Each organization or functional module is a digital neuron of an enterprise. Based on the deep industry understanding gained from enterprise businesses and experience of applying AI in Huawei's business operations, we aim to build a digital platform with device-cloud synergy to inject AI into each enterprise digital neuron, systematically fuel the intelligentization of each enterprise and organization, and build a fully connected, intelligent world. First, Huawei provides AI products and solutions at various layers, including the device, cloud, and AI enablement layer, to form a complete platform base for AI applications. At the same time, Huawei and its partners work closely together and leverage each other's strengths. Partners provide AI applications and algorithms while Huawei provides a complete digital platform that supports AI through AI chips, enhanced ICT infrastructure, and AI enablement modules. Third, based on the principle that "we should first apply AI in our own company, just like those who produce parachutes try them out first", we adopt AI to improve our operations efficiency through the Digital Huawei project. On top of this, we work with leading industry customers to accumulate experience in AI application in industries. Huawei and its partners have by far achieved several success stories. Unique Advantage of Huawei AI Solution -- ICT Digital Platform with Device-Cloud Synergy. Based on core capabilities such as chips, algorithms, and architecture design, Huawei has built a digital platform to provide AI chips/terminals, AI-enhanced cloud infrastructure that supports computing/storage/communications, and AI enablement platform including the Big Data platform, video cloud PaaS, and enterprise intelligence (EI). The digital platform with device-cloud synergy can systematically inject the AI applications developed by partners into the digital neurons of enterprises, such as the supply chain, delivery, R&D, market, finance, and governance domains, to promote enterprises' digital transformation in an overall manner. With an industry-leading ICT digital platform, Huawei aims to provide the best AI application performance and experience, simplify application development, and enable quick application release. "Practice What One Preaches" -- Building Digital Huawei with AI Huawei applies AI to business domains such as supply chain management, delivery, finance, and internal audit to improve internal operations efficiency and quality. Take the AI application in the supply chain as an example. Huawei applies AI to logistics and digital warehousing, feeds machine learning models with the historical shipment data, overall system configuration, and basic tally and packaging rules, and enables systems to generate warning information based on new codes. In this way, the estimation accuracy has been increased from 30% to 80%. In addition, AI can optimize picking routes, improving the efficiency by more than 30%. AI can also optimize loading and unloading operations of trucks, increasing the number of mixed orders processed per vehicle by more than five times. AI also shortens the container detection and identification service time, improving the efficiency by over 10 times. These practices accelerate the digital transformation of traditional logistics enterprises. Combining Industry Understanding with AI Technologies to Create Value Through Industry-oriented AI applications Take the AI application in Smart City construction as an example. Huawei AI-enabled video cloud solution has the first all-cloud architecture in the industry. It leverages hundreds of AI algorithms on hybrid clouds to provide global video sharing, remote browsing, and remote retrieval, making multiple breakthroughs in the public safety field. This solution has improved the case resolution rate by 50% and reduced the public traffic accident rate by 18%. Huawei has applied AI to traffic management systems for assisting law enforcement and Big Data-based decision-making, thereby improving law enforcement efficiency by 34%, decreasing the manual review workload of traffic police by 47%, and reducing the average vehicle waiting time by 24%. Huawei expects to work with partners to drive digital transformation of each enterprise and build a fully connected, intelligent world. Huawei Global Analyst Summit 2018 will be held in Shenzhen from April 17 to April 19. For more information, please visit http://www.huawei.com/minisite/has2018/en/. Photo - https://mma.prnewswire.com/media/678075/Huawei.jpg Related Links http://www.huawei.com/minisite/has2018/en/ SOURCE Huawei HSINCHU, Taiwan and WUHAN, China, April 16, 2018 /PRNewswire/ -- JHL Biotech announced today that the China Food and Drug Administration (CFDA) has accepted for review JHL's Clinical Trial Application for a proposed bevacizumab biosimilar, JHL1149, to treat cancer. JHL1149 is a biosimilar to bevacizumab and would provide an affordable alternative to treat several cancers, the most common of which are metastatic colorectal cancer, non-small cell lung cancer, and ovarian cancer, as well as cervical cancer, renal cell carcinoma, and glioblastoma. JHL is planning to conduct a Phase I pharmacokinetic study in healthy volunteers in China followed by a multinational Phase III efficacy study in non-small cell lung cancer patients. Currently, a Phase I clinical trial for JHL1149 is ongoing in Europe. The data from these trials will support the global registration and commercialization of JHL1149. Once approved, JHL1149 will be manufactured at JHL's facility in Wuhan, China, the world's largest biopharmaceutical manufacturing plant based on single-use technologies, which will provide a high-quality supply of products worldwide. JHL1149 is an anti-vascular endothelial growth factor (anti-VEGF) monoclonal antibody. The reference biologic, bevacizumab, is marketed by Roche under the trade name, Avastin. In 2017, bevacizumab generated worldwide revenues of approximately US$7 billion. "JHL 1149 has been demonstrating a high level of similarity to the innovator product in physicochemcial and biological characteristics and in comparative preclinical studies," said Dr. Rong Chen, Chief Medical Officer, JHL Biotech. "Clinical trial for JHL1149 in China is a milestone in delivering quality and accessible products to patients worldwide who suffer from high unmet medical needs." "Bevacizumab is an important biologic that is unfortunately very expensive for patients suffering from certain cancers, and JHL1149 would provide an affordable treatment for these patients," said Mr. Racho Jordanov, CEO, JHL Biotech. "JHL's clinical trial in China is a step forward in our mission to become a global leader in developing, manufacturing, and commercializing biologics." In addition to JHL1149, JHL has several other biosimilars currently in or expected to be in clinical trials. These include: Rituximab biosimilar, JHL1101, to treat rheumatoid arthritis and non-Hodgkin lymphoma. Currently in Phase I trial in Europe . . Dornase alfa biosimilar, JHL1922, to manage symptoms of cystic fibrosis. Currently in Phase I trial in Europe . . Trastuzumab biosimilar, JHL1188, to treat breast cancer. JHL1211, to treat asthma and chronic idiopathic urticaria. JHL1199, to treat breast cancer. JHL1266, to treat osteoporosis. Media Contact: Ellis Chu: [email protected] phone: +886 3-658-3899 Jill Liu: [email protected] phone: +886 3-658-3899 Amber Chen: [email protected] phone: +886 3-658-3899 About JHL Biotech JHL Biotech, Inc. is a biopharmaceutical startup founded by a group of industry veterans with deep experience in pharmaceutical development and operations. JHL is backed by premier financial firms, including Kleiner Perkins Caufield & Byers, Sequoia Capital, Biomark Capital, Milestone Capital, Fidelity, and the China Development Industrial Bank. JHL Biotech's mission is to provide the world with low-cost medicines of exceptional quality. JHL is focused on research and development of new protein-based therapies and biosimilars. JHL has two world-class facilities built in accordance with United States, European Union, and ICH cGMP regulations and standards. For more information, please visit www.jhlbiotech.com . Forward-Looking Statements This press release contains forward-looking statements, which are generally statements that are not historical facts. Forward-looking statements can be identified by the words "expects," "anticipates," "believes," "intends," "estimates," "plans," "will," "outlook" and similar expressions. Forward-looking statements are based on management's current plans, estimates, assumptions and projections, and speak only as of the date they are made. JHL undertakes no obligation to update any forward-looking statement in light of new information or future events, except as otherwise required by law. Forward-looking statements involve inherent risks and uncertainties, most of which are difficult to predict and are generally beyond the control of either company. Actual results or outcomes may differ materially from those implied by the forward-looking statements. Logo - https://mma.prnewswire.com/media/333015/jhl_Logo.jpg Related Links http://www.jhlbiotech.com SOURCE JHL Biotech, Inc. PUNE, India, April 17, 2018 /PRNewswire/ -- The report "n-Butanol Market by Application (Butyl Acrylate, Butyl Acetate, Glycol Ethers, Direct Solvents, Plasticizers), and Region (Asia Pacific, North America, Europe, Middle East & Africa, South America) - Global Forecast to 2022", published by MarketsandMarkets, the n-Butanol market was estimated at USD 4.18 Billion in 2017 and is projected to reach USD 5.58 Billion by 2022, at a CAGR of 5.9% between 2017 and 2022. (Logo: https://mma.prnewswire.com/media/660509/MarketsandMarkets_Logo.jpg ) Browse 73 market data Tables and 34 Figures spread through 108 Pages and in-depth TOC on "n-Butanol Market" https://www.marketsandmarkets.com/Market-Reports/n-butanol-market-1089.html Early buyers will receive 10% customization on this report The market growth is fueled by the increasing demand for butyl acrylate in for various applications, such as latex paint formulations in industrial & architectural activities, enamels, textiles, and paper finishes. The market for butyl acrylate is directly linked to the construction industry, as it is used as a solvent in industrial and architectural paints & coatings. Therefore, the growth of the construction industry in emerging economies due to the increasing population, rapid urbanization, and industrialization also propels the demand for n-Butanol. On the other hand, volatility in raw material prices and the decreasing consumption of DOP(Bis(2-ethylhexyl)phthalate) in Europe and North America are the factors hindering the growth of the global n-Butanol market. However, increasing use of n-Butanol as a biofuel and significant growth in the global automotive and textile industries would create ample opportunities for the consumption of n-Butanol, globally. Get PDF Brochure @ https://www.marketsandmarkets.com/pdfdownload.asp?id=1089 The direct solvents segment is projected to be the fastest-growing application segment of the market between 2017 and 2022. The direct solvents segment is expected to be the fastest-growing application segment of the n-Butanol Market during the forecast period, in terms of both value and volume. This application segment is projected to grow at a CAGR of 6.5% during 2017-2022. Due to its moderate solubility and compatibility with many resin formulations, n-Butanol is used in several aqueous systems. n-Butanol, as a solvent, improves the brushability of paints and coats by reducing viscosity and prevents cobwebbing and blushing. Due to these reasons, the demand for n-Butanol is expected to increase as a direct solvent in paints, coatings, varnishes, resins, dyes, camphor, vegetable oils, fats, waxes, shellac, rubbers, and alkaloids. Asia Pacific is projected to be the largest n-Butanol market between 2017 and 2022, in terms of both value and volume. Asia Pacific is projected to be the largest market for n-Butanol during the forecast period. The demand for n-Butanol is high in this region due to the presence of a large industrial base for all the application segments, such as butyl acetate, butyl acrylate, glycol ether, and direct solvents, in APAC. Additionally, the increasing population, growing urbanization, and changing lifestyle in emerging countries such as China, India, Indonesia, and Malaysia are expected to fuel the demand for personal care products, textiles, crop protection chemicals, and medicines. The growth of these industries drives the consumption of aforementioned chemical intermediates and direct solvents, which, in turn, propels the demand for n-Butanol in the APAC region. Some of the key players in the n-Butanol market include BASF (Germany), Dow Chemical (US), OXEA (Germany), Sasol (South Africa), PetroChina (China), Eastman Chemical Company (US), Mitsubishi Chemical Corporation (Japan), BASF PETRONAS (Malaysia), Sinopec (china), and KH Neochem (Japan). Agreements, expansions, and joint ventures were the major growth strategies adopted by the market players between 2013 and 2017 to cater to the demand for n-Butanol in emerging economies. Know more about n-Butanol Market: https://www.marketsandmarkets.com/Market-Reports/n-butanol-market-1089.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: Mr. Salgarkar MarketsandMarkets INC. 630 Dundee Road Suite 430 Northbrook, IL 60062 USA: +1-888-600-6441 Email: [email protected] Visit Our Blog @ http://www.marketsandmarketsblog.com/market-reports/chemical Connect with us on LinkedIn @ http://www.linkedin.com/company/marketsandmarkets SOURCE MarketsandMarkets MUMBAI, April 16, 2018 /PRNewswire/ -- #EverydayIsAuspicious for Celebrating her India's leading fine jewellery brand, Reliance Jewels, celebrates womanhood with #EverydayIsAuspicious. Appreciating the efforts and accomplishments made by women towards building the perfect environment for her loved ones, the brand believes any time is auspicious to gift the woman of one's life the preciousness of gold and diamonds for her immense contribution to one's life. (Photo: https://mma.prnewswire.com/media/677269/Reliance_Jewels.jpg ) A woman's romance with jewellery is special and sacred. An Indian woman adorns herself with jewellery not only because of tradition but also because of the values attached to each piece, adding an element of preciousness to her life every day. In keeping with this and Akshaya Tritiya being just round the corner, Reliance Jewels announces gifting specials for its patrons with ample offers, which will be ongoing till 22 April. Customers can avail upto 40%* off on making of gold jewellery, upto 75%* off on making of diamond jewellery and flat 50%* off on making of coins (gold 10 gm and above, and silver coins 50gm and above). Reliance Jewels is also adding value to one's memories by offering 0%* deduction on old gold exchange and giving one a chance to renew old designs with new gold and diamond jewellery. SBI cardholders can avail of an extra 5%* cashback on debit and credit cards from 7th to 18th April. *T&C apply for all offers. On the occasion of Akshaya Tritiya, Sunil Nayak, CEO at Reliance Jewels said, "At Reliance Jewels, we believe that every day is auspicious to celebrate you by gifting something precious for yourself. We salute womanhood and the efforts they put in towards making our lives better. There is no better time than now to let them know they are special." About Reliance Jewels: At Reliance Jewels, gold and diamonds are available at the most competitive rates. Zero wastage and competitive making charges to ensure 100% satisfaction for customers. Reliance Jewels has 68 showrooms across 44 cities and is expanding exponentially. With a spectacular variety of designs in its collection, Reliance Jewels has an ornament for every personality and every occasion. Reliance Jewels deals only in 100% BIS Hallmarked Gold. Every diamond used is internationally certified by Independent Certification Laboratories. Every showroom has karat meters for customers to assess the purity of gold free of cost. The wide array of choice combined with customer-first services, such as customization, jewellery cleaning and polishing and the availability of karigar rooms and karat meters makes every Reliance Jewels showroom one-stop shopping destination for fine jewellery. Locate the nearest Reliance Jewels showroom: https://goo.gl/3pNggG Also follow us on: YouTube - https://www.youtube.com/reliancejewelsofficial Facebook - https://www.facebook.com/RelianceJewels/ Instagram - https://www.instagram.com/reliancejewels/ Media Contact : Nehal Arora [email protected] +91-9619409764 Communicate India SOURCE Reliance Jewels ISTANBUL, April 17, 2018 /PRNewswire/ -- In honor of the late Sakip Sabanci, business man, philanthropist and Honorary Chairman of the Board of Trustees of Sabanci University, Turkey, the "Sakip Sabanci International Research Awards" were presented on April 10, 2018 in Istanbul, Turkey. The Award encourages research on all aspects of culture, society and politics, and to uphold distinguished examples of fresh research with a view to engaging intellectual attention on Turkey's role in the contemporary world. In the last 13 years, The Awards have been given in subjects ranging from economy to foreign policy, history and social dynamics. More than 370 submissions were received from 31 countries for the 13 Awards given so far. 2018's theme was "Challenges to Democratic Governance and Living together in Turkey and the world." Sabanci University Founding Chairman of the Board of Trustees Guler Sabanci stated in the award ceremony that, "Turkey has been a bridge between the West and East on the geopolitical and cultural levels, acting as a regional power and global player for world peace. We need to prioritize knowledge generation, research, scientific thinking and discussion to enable Turkey to become effective, capable and consistent in finding solutions to regional and global problems." The 2019 Awards theme set as "The Future of Multipartisanism in Global Disorder: Rethinking Security, Economy and Democracy." The winner of the Jury Prize was Adam Przeworski, a veteran of political science who has been working on democracies for over 50 years, and has inspired many younger political scientists in Turkey and the world. Adam Przeworski, the Carroll and Milton Petrie Professor of Politics at New York University, won the Jury Prize with his outstanding work on democratic regimes and markets. Adam Przeworski during his speech at the award ceremony stated that "We shared transnational problems which require international efforts to solve. He noted that the award was especially relevant to young scientists for continuing their global efforts." The Essay Awards were given to young researchers Selim Erdem Aytac for the essay "The Appeal of Populism and the Role of Elite Discourse: Evidence from Turkey", Ipek Cinar for the essay "Democracy Dismantled: Strategic Choices of Would-be Autocrats", and Berk Esen for the essay "Elective Affinities between Democratic Backsliding and Populism: the Cases of Turkey and Hungary in Comparative Perspective". Omer Ertum [email protected] +90-216-483-93-02 SOURCE Sabanci University "The devastating attacks from the past year demonstrate that cybersecurity is not just about what any single company can do but also about what we can all do together," said Microsoft president Brad Smith. "This tech sector accord will help us take a principled path toward more effective steps to work together and defend customers around the world." The companies made commitments in four areas. Stronger defense The companies will mount a stronger defense against cyberattacks. As part of this, recognizing that everyone deserves protection, the companies pledged to protect all customers globally regardless of the motivation for attacks online. No offense The companies will not help governments launch cyberattacks and will protect against tampering or exploitation of their products and services through every stage of technology development, design and distribution. Capacity building The companies will do more to empower developers and the people and businesses that use their technology, helping them improve their capacity for protecting themselves. This may include joint work on new security practices and new features the companies can deploy in their individual products and services. Collective action The companies will build on existing relationships and together establish new formal and informal partnerships with industry, civil society and security researchers to improve technical collaboration, coordinate vulnerability disclosures, share threats and minimize the potential for malicious code to be introduced into cyberspace. The companies may have adhered to some or all of these principles prior to the accord, or may have adhered without a public commitment, but this agreement represents a public shared commitment to collaborate on cybersecurity efforts. The Tech Accord remains open to consideration of new private-sector signatories, large or small and regardless of sector, that are trusted, have high cybersecurity standards and will adhere unreservedly to the accord's principles. "The real-world consequences of cyberthreats have been repeatedly proved. As an industry, we must band together to fight cybercriminals and stop future attacks from causing even more damage," said Kevin Simzer, chief operating officer, Trend Micro. The victims of cyberattacks are businesses and organizations of all sizes, with economic losses expected to reach $8 trillion by 2022.* Recent cyberattacks have caused small businesses to shutter their doors, hospitals to delay surgeries and governments to halt services, among other disruptions and safety risks. "The Tech Accord will help to protect the integrity of the 1 trillion connected devices we expect to see deployed within the next 20 years," said Carolyn Herzog, general counsel, Arm. "It aligns the resources, expertise and thinking of some of the world's most important technology companies to help build a trusted foundation for technology users who will benefit immensely from a more security-connected world." Companies that signed the accord plan to hold their first meeting during the security-focused RSA Conference taking place in San Francisco, and will focus on capacity building and collective action. Future actions may include jointly developed guidelines or broadly deployed features, as well as information sharing and partnering to combat specific threats to make the online world a safer place for people and businesses everywhere and uphold the promise and benefit technology offers society. Cybersecurity Tech Accord signatories: ABB Bitdefender Cisco Arm BT Cloudflare Avast! CA Technologies DataStax Dell HPE SAP DocuSign Intuit Stripe Facebook Juniper Networks Symantec Fastly LinkedIn Telefonica FireEye Microsoft Tenable F-Secure Nielsen Trend Micro GitHub Nokia VMware Guardtime Oracle HP Inc. RSA About the Cybersecurity Tech Accord The Cybersecurity Tech Accord is a public commitment among 34 global companies to protect and empower civilians online and to improve the security, stability and resilience of cyberspace. Learn more at www.cybertechaccord.org. * Loses are cumulative over five year, 20172022. James Moar; Juniper Research: The Future of Cybercrime & Security: Enterprise Threats & Mitigation 2017-2022 (April 25, 2017); https://www.juniperresearch.com/researchstore/innovation-disruption/cybercrime-security/enterprise-threats-mitigation Video - https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ZfCUXq4V6ZY Related Links http://www.cybertechaccord.org SOURCE Cybersecurity Tech Accord Sotera Health committed to Safeguarding Global Health with Nordion's increased focus on global gamma technologies business BROADVIEW HEIGHTS, Ohio, April 17, 2018 /PRNewswire/ -- Sotera Health LLC, the world's leading, fully integrated protector of global health, today announced that it has entered into a definitive asset purchase agreement to sell the Medical Isotopes segment of its Nordion business to a subsidiary of BWX Technologies, Inc. (BWXT). This transaction will create a platform that will accelerate growth for both companies. "The world's need for gamma technology has expanded dramatically as the demand for sterilization of medical and non-medical applications has accelerated in response to increasing global regulatory demands and growing healthcare needs," said Michael Petras, Chief Executive Officer of Sotera Health. "The sale will enable BWXT to enter the medical isotope field with highly skilled employees and specialized facilities that are recognized as the best in the business. As the world's only fully integrated provider of mission-critical services to the healthcare industry, Sotera Health is excited about the additional value Nordion will bring to our gamma customers, and our other best-in-class businesses, Sterigenics and Nelson Labs." Through the agreement, BWXT will acquire essentially all of Nordion's medical isotope assets, including the radiochemical operation and contract manufacturing services in Kanata, and the medical isotope operation in Vancouver, British Columbia. Both companies will continue to operate from Nordion's state-of-the-art licensed facility in Kanata, Ontario. Approximately 150 employees will transition to BWXT at the close of the sale. "Nordion will continue to focus on accelerating growth in gamma technologies, including industrial and medical cobalt-60 which fits perfectly with Sotera Health's broader mission of Safeguarding Global Health," said Kevin Brooks, President of Nordion. About Sotera Health: Sotera Health LLC, along with its business entities, is the world's leading, fully integrated protector of global health. With over 500 years of combined scientific expertise, the company ensures the safety of healthcare by providing mission-critical services to the medical device, pharmaceutical, tissue and food industries. Sotera Health operates more than 61 facilities in 13 countries. The company has over 2,600 employees globally and touches the lives of more than 180 million people around the world each year. Sotera Health serves more than 5,000 customers worldwide including 75 of the top 100 medical device manufacturers. Sotera Health goes to market through its three best-in-class companies Nelson Labs, Nordion and Sterigenics - with the mission of ensuring the safety of healthcare each and every day. Nelson Labs offers microbiological and analytical testing and consultancy to assist customers in developing and maintaining sterilization solutions in medical devices, tissue/implantable products, and the pharmaceutical and biologics fields. Nordion is the world's largest provider of Cobalt-60 used in the gamma sterilization process as well as medical isotopes used in the diagnosis and treatment of various diseases and cancers. Sterigenics provides comprehensive contract sterilization and ionization solutions for the medical device, pharmaceutical, food safety and high-performance materials industries. Sotera Health LLC is owned by private equity firms Warburg Pincus and GTCR. Learn more about Sotera Health at soterahealth.com, about Nelson Labs at nelsonlabs.com, about Nordion at nordion.com and about Sterigenics at sterigenics.com. Contacts: Paul Monlezun Public Affairs Advisors 613-222-7184 [email protected] Kristin A. Gibbs Chief Marketing Officer Sotera Health LLC [email protected] 440-262-1412 Related Links http://soterahealth.com SOURCE Sotera Health BENGALURU, April 17, 2018 /PRNewswire/ -- SUN Mobility, led by Chetan Maini (Founder of India's first electric car, Reva) and Uday Khemka (Vice Chairman of SUN Group), today launched its global, interoperable smart mobility solution for two and three-wheeler electric vehicles at their brand new 47,500 sq. ft. technology development centre in Bengaluru. SUN Mobility's energy infrastructure platform is a first-of-its-kind universal architecture solution that works across various two and three-wheeler vehicles. This solution is being launched just two months after SUN Mobility showcased its world class smart mobility solution for buses, in partnership with Ashok Leyland at Auto Expo 2018. The SUN Mobility solution for two and three-wheelers comprises of three key elements-a) Modular Smart Batteries that are intelligent enough to customize themselves to each vehicle type and versatile enough to be used in combinations of one or multiple batteries to meet customers' different performance and range expectations b) Quick Interchange Stations that can be easily installed across a city, enabling customers to swap batteries quickly and conveniently in less than one minute, addressing any concerns around refuelling time c) Smart Network that connects modular Smart Batteries and Quick Interchange Stations, optimizes battery performance and allows customers to locate stations and make payments via an app. Speaking on the occasion, Uday Khemka, Co-Founder and Vice Chairman of SUN Mobility, said, "As we move forward on our global mission to enable mass transportation fuelled by clean elec tric energy, we're happy to showcase the diverse technology portfolio that can redefine the future of mobility. By enabling the electrification of two wheelers, three-wheelers and buses through our comprehensive smart mobility ecosystem, we are addressing the current urban mobility crisis and consciously exploring solutions to change the way the world commutes." SUN Mobility's Energy Infrastructure Platform enables electric two and three-wheelers to be cost neutral versus conventional diesel/petrol ones. This unique platform shall be offered in collaboration with multiple OEMs and solution providers and will support a range of new models as well as retro-fit applications. SUN Mobility, along with its partners, plans to roll out this network of Quick Interchange Stations in a phased manner across various major cities, thus enabling customers to adopt electric mobility using an innovative pay-per-use model that reduces not only their initial cost of purchase but also overall operating cost. "With over 18 million two wheelers and three-wheelers sold in the country last year, we have introduced the world's first interoperable solutions for electric two and three-wheelers that will transform the way people commute," said Chetan Maini, Co-Founder and Vice Chairman of SUN Mobility. "SUN Mobility is enabling the electric mobility ecosystem in the country by offering solutions that are convenient, cost-effective and scalable," he added. About SUN Mobility: SUN Mobility is a global leader providing energy infrastructure and services to the transportation sector that are faster, cheaper and more convenient, making mass migration to a sustainable, pollution-free future possible. It is a 50:50 joint venture between Virya Mobility 5.0 and SUN New Energy Systems, pioneers in areas of electric mobility and clean energy. The company was established in April, 2017 and is led by Chetan Maini, previously founder of Reva now Mahindra Reva, and Uday Khemka, Vice Chairman of SUN Group, two of India's leaders in the new energy economy. The organization is working with STUs, fleet operators, shared mobility providers, and automotive OEMs across all platforms including 2/3 wheelers, cars and buses to challenge the status quo with an economical, scalable and smarter way forward. SUN Mobility's Smart Mobility solutions combine Smart Batteries, Quick Interchange Stations, all linked to a Smart Network that is sustainable - largely powered by renewable energy. For more information, please visit: http://www.sunmobility.co.in Media Contact: Natasha George [email protected] +91-9916905059 The PRactice SOURCE SUN Mobility Scholl is a hospitality industry professional with over 30 years of leadership experience, having worked for global hotel groups after starting his career in Switzerland. A Swiss national, Scholl brings diverse international exposure, sound business acumen and successes in leading multiple city and resort properties, in addition to stand-alone and mixed-use city-centre developments in primary and secondary cities across Asia and Europe. His proven leadership and operational experience in the hospitality sector including his ability to improve profitability, turn around assets and build cohesive teams will be valuable for Sunway as it looks to strengthen and expand its position in Malaysia and regionally. "It is a privilege to be leading Sunway Hotels & Resorts at this exciting time. As we move towards achieving Sunway's new vision of becoming Asia's model corporation in sustainable development by innovating to enrich lives for a better tomorrow, I am confident we will be able to build on the success and lead Sunway Hotels & Resorts through the next phase of the group's operational excellence, development and growth," said Scholl. Scholl brings sound business and financial acumen, providing strategic directions for planned hotel expansions, renovations, new openings and re-development, including re-engineering of operating business models in changed socio-political and economic landscapes. With a keen focus on staff development and guest experience, Scholl's life-long immersion is anchored on the belief in taking care of staff, staff will in turn take care of the guests and the business will take care of itself. In his new capacity as Chief Executive Officer, Scholl will be responsible for Sunway Hotels & Resorts' 11 hotels and resorts in Malaysia, Cambodia and Vietnam, which represents over 3,300 guestrooms, suites, serviced residences and luxury villas; and a multitude of convention, meeting and exhibition facilities. His immediate focus is to steer the company's strategy, enhance its operational excellence and support the future growth of its properties; maximising the potential of the brand's footprint especially in the traditional and new markets, and to achieve greater yield. Scholl's previous role before joining Sunway Hotels & Resorts was the Group Senior Vice President of Operations for Regent Hotels & Resorts where he was responsible for the brand's operations for its hotels in Taipei, Beijing, Berlin, Porto Montenegro and Chongqing; and steered the group's new hotel developments in Harbin, Jakarta, Phu Quoc and Boston. Prior to that, he served as the Vice President - Group Operations and subsequently as Chief Operating Officer for the Marco Polo Hotels, where he was responsible for all 13 Marco Polo Hotels in Hong Kong, Mainland China and Philippines. He also led the team in the design development and renovation of its new premium hotel collection, Niccolo by Marco Polo. Scholl has held numerous senior leadership positions for leading luxury international hotels throughout Asia, Middle East and Europe, with brands like Shangri-La, Conrad, Mandarin Oriental and Hilton Hotels & Resorts. He attained his professional qualification from Australia's RMIT University in Business Administration. ABOUT SUNWAY HOTELS & RESORTS: Sunway Hotels & Resorts, the hospitality division of leading Malaysian conglomerate, Sunway Group, operates and manages 11 hotels and resorts in Malaysia, Cambodia and Vietnam, representing a collection of over 3,300 guestrooms, suites, serviced residences and villas. The hotel group's diverse portfolio of hospitality assets and services includes ownership and management of cluster of hotels with large scale convention, meeting and exhibition facilities in an integrated city, to private villa destination, a wellness retreat and a portfolio of 5-, 4- and 3-star hotels in mixed-use developments. For more information on Sunway Hotels & Resorts, please visit https://www.sunwayhotels.com Photo - https://photos.prnasia.com/prnh/20180327/2089937-1 Related Links https://www.sunwayhotels.com SOURCE Sunway Hotels & Resorts (Photo: https://mma.prnewswire.com/media/677660/MedShr_Malaria_Summit.jpg ) (Logo: http://mma.prnewswire.com/media/535939/MedShr_Logo.jpg ) "Malaria remains a major cause of infant mortality in endemic areas, and so whilst we try to find an effective vaccine to prevent the condition, it is essential that doctors and healthcare professionals continue to discuss and share cases and treatment methods actively. MedShr supports this through its platform designed to facilitate and improve care for these patients through knowledge exchange," says Dr Asif Qasim, Founder of MedShr. The Malaria Summit London brings together leaders from across sectors to shape the political commitments, financial investments and technological innovation needed to help reduce cases and deaths whilst we attempt to end malaria for good. Tackling malaria is an essential part of the UN Sustainable Development Goals and represents excellent value for money: every $1 invested in malaria interventions delivers $36 in social and economic benefits. The Malaria Summit London will be co-hosted by the Governments of Swaziland and Rwanda and convened by the RBM Partnership to End Malaria and the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation, and will run alongside the Commonwealth Heads of Government Meeting. About MedShr MedShr is an app and platform for the medical community to share and discuss clinical cases. To date, there are over 500,000 members on MedShr engaged in active learning through case discussion. About The Malaria Summit London 2018 The Malaria Summit London 2018 running alongside the Commonwealth Heads of Government Meeting in London, will unite leaders of government, business, science, and the global health community who share a common interest in galvanising action and commitments to help beat malaria. Stefania Gancitano, Marketing Executive, +44-779-542-1245 SOURCE MedShr These appointments come on the heels of the firm's 2017 acquisition of specialty board consultancy The Zygos Partnership and launch of the firm's Leadership Span framework that helps clients increase the predictability of durable C-suite success. "As leaders with significant experience in guiding boards at client organizations, Matthias, Patrick and James each understand the challenges that companies face during times of economic and political uncertainty. They form a strong leadership team in Europe, adding value through their unique insights and significant experience in working with multinational companies," said Clarke Murphy, Chief Executive Officer of Russell Reynolds Associates. Patrick Johnson is a London-based member of the firm's Board Practice and the global Nonprofit Practice. With more than 20 years of executive search experience, both in the UK and internationally, he has advised on a wide variety of senior executive, chairman and non-executive director positions across the civil service, charities, regulators, healthcare, academia and the wider public sector, as well as undertaking chairman and non-executive director roles in the private sector. He holds a degree in economics from Durham University. Based in Zurich, Matthias Oberholzer also leads the Swiss office and is the co-head of the firm's Insurance Practice. He focuses on assignments for insurance, banking and private equity clients. He serves both national and international clients with assignments in general management as well as senior functional positions. He previously was with McKinsey & Company. He holds an MBA in insurance economics from the University of St. Gallen, an MS in e-commerce from Carnegie Mellon University and a PhD in insurance economics from the University of Basel. From his base in London, James Roome leads the UK office. He also serves on the firm's global executive committee and previously co-led the Technology Practice. He is a core member of the firm's Board and Digital Practices. Roome is vice chair of the Prince's Trust Technology Leadership Group, supporting disadvantaged young people through partnerships with leading technology companies. He was previously with Ernst and Young and holds a BSc in management sciences from Loughborough University. About Russell Reynolds Associates Russell Reynolds Associates is a global search and leadership advisory firm. Our 425+ consultants in 46 offices work with public, private and nonprofit organizations across all industries and regions. We help our clients build teams of transformational leaders who can meet today's challenges and anticipate the digital, economic and political trends that are reshaping the global business environment. From helping boards with their structure, culture and effectiveness to identifying, assessing and defining the best leadership for organizations, our teams bring their decades of expertise to help clients solve their most complex leadership issues. www.russellreynolds.com Contact: Vijaya Singh Russell Reynolds Associates 212-351-1987 vijaya.singh@russellreynolds.com Image- https://mma.prnewswire.com/media/676526/Russell_Reynolds_Associates_James_Roome.jpg Image-https://mma.prnewswire.com/media/676527/Russell_Reynolds_Associates_Matthias_Oberholzer.jpg Image-https://mma.prnewswire.com/media/676528/Russell_Reynolds_Associates_Patrick_Johnson.jpg Logo- https://mma.prnewswire.com/media/491408/Russell_Reynolds_Associates_Logo.jpg Related Links http://www.russellreynolds.com SOURCE Russell Reynolds Associates The Sunstar Foundation has celebrated the 1st Perio Link Award to bring scientific innovations in the relationship between oral and general health closer to the general population. Since 2003, the Sunstar Foundation recognises the best research papers about this relationship in distinguished awards such as the World Perio Research Award. This new prize, however, is a step forward to increase awareness among the population about how oral health is related to all the body. (Photo: https://mma.prnewswire.com/media/677286/1st_Perio_Link_Award_Infographic.jpg ) As Dr Marzia Massignani explains, Scientific Affairs Manager of Sunstar, "most of the times scientific news are exclusive to the technical community due to the network where they are naturally shared. However, we strongly believe that news impacting general health should be shared with all the population, which can directly benefit by being informed about how to improve their wellbeing. Therefore, the 1st Perio Link Award aims to share technic news from the field of oral and general health with non-science audience more simply and engagingly ". The Sunstar Foundation Scientific Committee chaired by Prof. Robert J. Genco selected twenty-three papers based on impact in the field of oral and general health in the last three years. Every first author explained in a one-minute video the main objectives and findings of his paper. Finally, the viewers voted online for the best video to win the 1st Sunstar Perio Link Award. And the winner is the paper: Resolvin E1 Reverses Experimental Periodontitis and Dysbiosis, published in October 2016 by the Journal of Immunology and written by Lee CT et al. The paper, in detail, shows how we can improve the treatment of periodontal disease by having a pharmacological control of inflammation with natural molecules and, at the same time, reverse the periodontal process. The first author will be awarded during the Perio Link Night organised by the Sunstar Foundation on June 22 in Amsterdam. SOURCE Sunstar Foundation 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 How Japans Oldest Private University Evolved its Collection Keio Universitys library faced a challenge: they needed more books to support the schools growing curriculum, but were running out of space. Heres what they did. A few years ago, Keio Universitys library faced a challenge: they needed more books to support the schools growing curriculum, but were running out of space. Heres what they did. Sprawled throughout the urban metropolis of Tokyo, Keio Universitys six campuses comprise more than 150 years of history. Students and scholars from around the world come to Keio in pursuit of educational and research opportunities: more than 33,000 students from 74 countries, at last count. Keio offers interdisciplinary and international curricula, including a series of degree programs in English. So it would seem natural that such an expansive universitys library would require a massive collection of resources and it does. The Keio University Media Center holds nearly 5 million volumes, including extensive electronic resources for off-campus use. Each campus has its own branch and its own unique collection. The library also provides online and in-person services to support education, research and a variety of other student and faculty needs. The Media Centers original focus was collecting foreign academic books to support faculty and graduate students. But despite the librarys already-chronic shortage of storage space, their scope began to expand, requiring them to provide materials for undergraduate studies in new English-only degree programs like the Global Information and Governance Academic Program (GIGA) and the Programme in Economics for Alliances, Research and Leadership (PEARL). Introducing Demand-Driven Acquisition In 2016, to adapt to the schools evolving information needs, Keio University began using Ebook Central, ProQuests popular ebook platform. They also began acquiring books through demand-driven acquisition (DDA) allowing patrons to browse any title from the librarys collection for five minutes before submitting a purchase request to the library. The library staff then decides whether or not to purchase the book. DDA which helps libraries manage budgets and make evidence-based purchasing decisions is an essential acquisition model in libraries worldwide. In a recent ProQuest survey of 460 libraries, nearly half said theyre using DDA to meet researchers growing demand for ebooks. And ebooks acquired through DDA are more likely to be used. Analyzing data from 1,194 libraries, ProQuest found that 41% of titles acquired via firm order are rarely used, compared to only 14% acquired through DDA. More Usage, Better Analytics Since the introduction of DDA, usage of ebooks has steadily increased. Between April 2016 and March 2017, the Keio Media Center had purchased about 1,300 new titles. Although the library was initially concerned that patrons wouldnt accept this scheme, they saw the opposite trend. Ebook Central is now widely used by both students and researchers, and statistics have shown that the use of new books, especially those recently published by universities and other academic publishers, is high. Ninety-six percent of Keios purchased titles have been used more than once, and the average number of sessions per title is 5.5, indicating repetitive use. Keios librarians have also benefitted from LibCentral, Ebook Centrals administrative portal. LibCentrals analytics allow librarians to get an in-depth look at sessions, viewed pages, chapter downloads, printed pages and more which also helps them understand the potential needs that do not lead to requests. LibCentrals usage data has given Keios librarians confidence that DDA helps them select titles and build a collection that meet patrons demands. Even better, Keio sees an improvement in responsiveness to user needs. The greatest benefit we see from DDA is the speedcompared to purchasing from the publisher, which takes roughly three weeks, DDA with Ebook Central takes only five days on average to provide access to the title, said a Keio librarian. We have shortened processing time dramatically. If youre interested in learning more about how DDA can help libraries like Keios build collections on a budget, visit the Ebook Central website, download our DDA brochure, or contact us. Download a full case study on Keio University in English or Japanese. The best part of the book is learning about all the alternatives currently available and where to find them. Its just a matter of looking. Author Beth Fiteni is the director of Long Island, New York-based nonprofit organization Green Inside & Out. Fiteni holds a Master of Studies in Environmental Law and hosts an award-winning environmental radio show. She has been a dedicated ambassador for green living for more than twenty years, lecturing in English and Spanish and making numerous appearances on various news outlets. With The Green Wardrobe Guide Finding EcoChic Fashions That Look Great and Help Save the Planet she has seamlessly transitioned into the role of published author. Her book spreads the word about textile and fashion production practices that are harmful to the planet while revealing how and where average consumers find sustainable clothing and household goods. The best part is that the book contains a state-by-state listing of over 200 stores that carry eco-fashions, as well as a listing of shops carrying eco-baby clothing, and a list of brands catering to eco-menswear. Her book shines a light on information most people do not know about fabrics they wear every day while highlighting steps consumers can take to have great looking clothes that are made with fewer of the potentially harmful toxins and chemicals often found in typical clothing items. The book itself is a surprise. It is easy to read and entertaining, making a topic most people might find fact-heavy fun and light. The title itself indicates that there is an element of chic to the book giving readers a hint at whats inside. Readers will learn the pros and cons about fabrics made of organic cotton, hemp, bamboo, lyocell and even fabrics made from corn and algae as alternatives to traditional fabrics that are harming the planet. Also learn about animal based vs. vegan fabrics, eco-friendly bedding, and why you may want to think twice about which dry cleaner you use. Fiteni says she was inspired to write the book after noticing that when she gave presentations and wore sustainable fashions, people were always curious and want to touch the fabric. Most people would be shocked to know how their clothing is produced and the impact it has on the planet and garment workersespecially some of the famous brands, says Fiteni. Everyone wears clothing, so you dont need to be into fashion to benefit from gaining this knowledge, she says. The best part of the book is learning about all the alternatives currently available and where to find them. Its just a matter of looking. Others are talking about the book, too, including Summer Rayne Oakes who is co-founder of Le Souk and author of Style, Naturally, who says, The Green Wardrobe Guide allows us to think more deeply about our clothesfrom more sustainable textile options to the people behind themso that we can make more educated decisions when were looking to purchase the clothing we love to wear. People interested in preserving the planet, reducing carbon footprints, or simply living more sustainable lives will learn how their clothing buying choices can make a difference in the pages of Ms. Fitenis book. Dont wonder if clothing and textile choices are the right ones for the planet. Read The Green Wardrobe Guide Finding EcoChic Fashions That Look Great and Help Save the Planet and know beyond a shadow of doubt. The Green Wardrobe Guide (978-1-4958-1216-3) is available on all major bookseller websites, including BuyBooksontheWeb, Amazon, Books-A-Million, and Barnes & Noble. Deep Freeze, a system restoration software by Faronics Corporation, ensures uninterrupted system uptime for emergency medical systems. Its patented reboot to restore technology protects and maintains medical computers, preventing the occurrence of major issues due to unwanted changes made on systems. It enables a system to revert to an admin-defined, pristine baseline configuration with a single reboot. Deep Freeze thus eliminates possibilities of extended downtime, protecting systems from malicious or accidental threats. Importance of 24/7 availability in Emergency Healthcare Systems The healthcare system has become one of the biggest beneficiaries of advancements in IT. Technology now lives at the heart of the functioning of hospitals, clinics, and care-giving facilities. In fact, healthcare facilities need to incorporate relevant emerging technologies to keep up with the HIPAA (Health Insurance Portability and Accountability Act) compliance. Sophisticated diagnosis of diseases, surgeries, healthcare trackers, wearables, sensors, medical tricorders and a range of activities related to human health depend on the flawless functioning of computer systems. Even a hospitals patient records, inventory of medicine and equipment, information on individuals injured in criminal activity (such as robbery, assault, etc) are digitally maintained. The introduction of cloud and similar disruptive technologies have improved responsiveness and effectiveness of medical services to astounding levels. The flipside of this is that a slight hint of system malfunction in hospitals and medical facilities can lead to dire consequences. Any interruption in a hospitals systems, due to altered system settings or disruptions in software activity, can put human lives at risk. Managing the functionality and security of multiple computers can be difficult without employing a comprehensive solution. Manual IT intervention in the event of a malfunction to any computer only furthers the length of system downtime. Healthcare systems cannot afford extended downtime as lives are at stake. Unless the IT department hires a greater number of employees, a major facility cannot keep up all its systems at optimum functionality. The solution - Deep Freeze Faronics Deep Freeze is ideal for the protection and maintenance of multi-user computer environments. Deep freeze allows IT admins to set up the desired configuration across all workstations as per the requirement. In the event of any system malfunctioning, its reboot to restore capabilities swiftly restores systems to their pristine configuration. With a reboot, the system is cleansed of all unwanted changes and is returned to peak functionality. Deep Freeze discards all system changes to maintain the pristine admin-configured state. This ensures that each user has access to a fully functioning system. Since any changes made by the user is removed on reboot, unrestricted access to the device can be offered without concern. Deep Freeze is compatible with both Windows and MacOS. The enterprise and cloud versions provide a centralized console which allows IT administrators to configure and manage emergency medical systems remotely. It also integrates smoothly with Apple Remote Desktop, Microsoft SCCM, and Dell KACE, allowing for hassle-free management and customization of IT systems. Deployment of Deep Freeze has resulted in more than 60% reduction in requests for IT support, maximizing the efficiency of IT personnel and minimizing maintenance costs. Download Deep Freeze - Reboot Restore Software http://www.faronics.com/reboot-restore-software Proven application for Healthcare The robust and instant system restoration ability of Deep Freeze has benefited healthcare organizations across the world, providing numerous success stories testifying to its effectiveness. A renowned multi-specialty healthcare group was running approximately 250 workstations, 19 servers, 60 physicians and has nearly 350 employees. The workstations were spread out over six physical locations and were used for scheduling, billing, and recording patient demographics. The hospital faced the issue of its mission-critical systems getting compromised repeatedly by spyware and malicious software. Any of these instances could have impacted the institutes HIPAA (Health Insurance Portability and Accountability Act) compliance. The hospital's IT staff had to spend up to 10 hours every week to keep the servers clean. The deployment of Deep Freeze on the four terminal servers of the hospital has eliminated all the problems as the software has been configured to reboot the servers every midnight and restores the clean configuration. It also improved the efficiency of the IT staff, which has to spend only around 3 hours every 3-4 weeks on server maintenance. This Reboot Restore Software not only ensured 100% availability of the hospitals mission-critical systems but also optimized the maintenance cost. To know more about Deep Freeze- Reboot To Restore Technology, kindly visit http://www.faronics.com/technology/reboot-to-restore About Faronics Faronics was founded in 1996 with the intention of helping customers maximize returns from their existing technological infrastructure. It helps companies manage and secure their IT environments. Headquartered in Vancouver, Faronics has offices in the USA and the UK in addition to a global channel of network partners. Their solutions have been deployed in over 150 countries in more than 30,000 organizations with more than 10 million licenses sold worldwide. Bansar Freight forwarder Bansar: Your Premier Logistics Partner in China Bansar, today unveiled its new strategic plan to becoming the best freight forwarder in China. This is after the company expanded the list of services and shipping destinations. In the new business framework, Bansar has expanded its shipping destinations, while extending the free warehousing to 20-30 days. This also comes alongside free container usage for 28 days from 7 days. Our new structure and system aims to provide all our customers with the best possible solution when importing from China to other global ports, which should guarantee efficiency and reduce expenses, said Mr. Max Liu, founder of Bansar. We are committed to revolutionize the global freight forwarding industry by ensuring seamless goods consolidation, paperwork, shipping and delivery process. As the best freight forwarder in China, Bansar will provide the following to its clients: Services; Among the main services Bansar provides include ocean freight, air freight, rail freight, custom clearance, pick-up and delivery. Shipping Destinations; to cater for the ever growing needs in the freight forwarding industry, Bansar is now helping importers to ship from China to U.S.A., India, Australia, Mexico, Philippines, Singapore, U.A.E., Saudi Arabia and Africa, among other countries. In the new strategic plan, Bansar has put in place mechanisms to help ship products to all the global airports, seaports and dry ports. In addition to the many shipping destinations and services, Bansar has opened even more offices in cities within China, alongside those in Suzhou, Shanghai and Shenzhen. Furthermore, Bansar will now offer 24/7 online support. For fast and safe delivery of products, Bansar has built a network of reputable shipping companies and airlines. This is alongside Bansars team of professional freight forwarders with knowledge on various custom rules and regulations, making shipping from China to other ports easier. At the moment, Bansar has all structures in place to help importers and exporters ship their products from China faster, while reducing operational costs. About Bansar Bansar is a premier freight forwarder in China that offers ocean freight, air freight, rail freight, custom clearance and product inspection, among other logistics services. To ensure efficiency, Bansar has partnered with various airlines and carriers to offer competitive rates. At the moment, Bansars clients can enjoy up to 28 days container use and 20 to 30 days free warehousing. All these aim to speed up the shipping process while reducing operational costs. For more information: Contact person: Max Liu Contact email: max(at)bansarchina(dot)com Tel no: (086) 181-5110-2222 Website: https://www.bansarchina.com/ JW Marriott Miami on Brickell Island Aptech congratulates MDM Groups management and property teams for their effort and is grateful to be a MDM technology provider. Aptech Computer Systems announced Miami-based MDM Hotel Group implemented the Execuvue Hospitality Business Intelligence System to automate data gathering, performance reporting and analysis for its portfolio of hotels. MDM is a respected developer that operates full service Marriott and independent properties and commercial businesses in South Florida. Aptech is the leading provider of business intelligence, budgeting and forecasting, and enterprise accounting hotel software systems. Click here for more on Aptechs products and services. Cam Troutman, Aptech vice president, said, MDM Group is a dynamic operator that is literally revitalizing much of South Florida. Marriott International awarded MDM its 2016 Partnership Circle Award for being the top owner and franchise company. Aptech congratulates MDM Groups management and property teams for their effort and is grateful to be a MDM technology provider. MDM utilizes Aptechs full suite of financial hotel software solutions. In addition to selecting Aptechs Execuvue Business Intelligence System, MDM Group also employs Aptechs Targetvue Budgeting and Forecasting, and Enterprise Back Office Accounting for its five hotels. MDM Hotel Group owns and operates some of Miamis most renowned hotel properties including the JW Marriott Marquis Miami in the heart of downtown, Hotel Beaux Arts Miami, JW Marriott Miami on Brickell Avenue, the Miami Marriott Dadeland, Courtyard Miami Dadeland as well as the planned Marriott Marquis Miami Worldcenter Hotel & Expo Center currently under development. Aptech Computer Systems is both an IBM and Prophix Business Partner offering Execuvue web-enabled Business Intelligence, Targetvue Budgeting and Forecasting, and PVNG Enterprise Accounting systems that are 100% hospitality specific. Aptech is the only company that provides a complete suite of financial management and analysis solutions for the hotel industry. About MDM Group Founded in 1990, MDM Groups vision has been driven by a desire to bring the highest quality amenities and brands to underserved urban markets including what is the neighborhood around Dadeland Mall, Brickell Avenue and most recently, Miamis downtown core. Soon it will embark on another game changing project, the development of the Marriott Marquis Miami Worldcenter Hotel & Expo Center within the Miami Worldcenter project in the Park West area of downtown Miami. For more information visit http://www.mdmusa.com. About Aptech Computer Systems, Inc. Aptech Computer Systems, Inc., based in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania, is the only provider of a fully integrated enterprise accounting, business intelligence and planning ecosystem to the hospitality industry. All of its clients are companies like yours, which own or manage hotels. Its solutions help customers at both the corporate and property levels understand their financial and operational data for faster goal achievement. The company is renowned for introducing business intelligence into the hotel industry, and offers a solid resource of hospitality professionals. Aptech is an IBM Software Value Plus partner and Premier Solution Provider, as well as a Prophix Premier Business Partner. Incorporated in 1970, Aptechs state-of-the-art back office, true business intelligence and enterprise planning solutions are 100% hotel specific. Solutions include PVNG, Execuvue, and Targetvue. Clients comprise over 3,500 properties - including large chains, multiple-property management companies and single-site hotels. Execuvue is registered to Aptech Computer Systems, Inc. All other trademarks are owned by their respective holders. For more information please visit http://www.aptech-inc.com. Crowley Completes Acquisition of Three SeaRiver Tankers With the regulatory approvals in place and the sale officially complete, we are now focused on operating these tankers in the safest, most reliable manner possible. Crowley Alaska Tankers, LLC, announced today that it has completed the acquisition of three tankers from SeaRiver Maritime Inc., and is now chartering them back to SeaRiver under varying multi-year terms. The tankers Liberty Bay and Eagle Bay, now under Crowley ownership and operation, each have a capacity of 760,000 barrels and transport crude from Alaska to West Coast refineries. The tanker SR American Progress has a capacity of 342,000 barrels and transports refined petroleum between the U.S. Gulf and East Coast ports. Crowley has renamed the ships. Liberty Bay is now Washington. Eagle Bay is California, and SR American Progress is Oregon. With the regulatory approvals in place and the sale officially complete, we are now focused on operating these tankers in the safest, most reliable manner possible, said Tom Crowley, chairman and CEO of Crowley Maritime Corp. Our knowledge, passion, talent, ingenuity and helpfulness drive business for the company and provide the basis for highly successful partnerships such as the one announced today. Crowley operates and manages the largest U.S.-flag petroleum and chemical tank vessel fleet in the country. With the acquisition of these three tankers, the company now operates 40 Jones Act-qualified large petroleum transportation vessels in the United States with a combined capacity of more than 12 million barrels. Among this tank vessel fleet is a tanker and an articulated tug-barge (ATB) already on charter to SeaRiver. Throughout the transition, the officers and crews have proven to be a great fit and we are very happy that so many are now Crowley employees, said Rudy Leming, Crowley vice president of labor relations. They have embodied the highest levels of professionalism and commitment to the project and we are certain theyll be a critical piece to our ongoing success. Safety is of paramount importance to us and our record reflects that, said Rob Grune, Crowley senior vice president and general manager, Crowley Shipping. Last year, for example, we transported more than 472 million barrels of product and made 5,196 product transfers with zero spills a credit to our professional, safety-minded crews and management systems. Crowley has been operating in Alaska since 1953, six years before statehood, providing upstream energy support services, tanker assistance and escort services with tugboats, and petroleum transportation, distribution and sales throughout the state. In addition to the companys own ATBs operating in Alaska, Crowley currently manages and crews tankers carrying petroleum between Alaska and U.S. West Coast refineries. Crowley owns and/or operates a diverse, sophisticated fleet of double-hull tank vessels, including 17 ATBs and now 23 tankers, all built since 2002. SeaRiver Maritime, Inc., headquartered in Spring, Texas, is a privately held subsidiary wholly owned by ExxonMobil that provides a wide range of technical and commercial marine services to ExxonMobil affiliates throughout the world. Crowley Alaska Tankers, based in Bellingham, Washington, with a field office in Valdez, Alaska is a new subsidiary of Crowley Petroleum Holdings LLC, part of the Crowley Maritime Corporation family of companies. Jacksonville-based Crowley Holdings Inc., a holding company of the 126-year-old Crowley Maritime Corporation, is a privately held family and employee-owned company. The company provides project solutions, energy and logistics services in domestic and international markets by means of six operating lines of business: Puerto Rico/Caribbean Liner Services, Latin America Liner Services, Logistics Services, Petroleum Services, Marine Services and Technical Services. Offered within these operating lines of business are: liner container shipping, logistics, contract towing and transportation; ship assist and escort; energy support; salvage and emergency response through its 50 percent ownership in Ardent Global; vessel management; vessel construction and naval architecture through its Jensen Maritime subsidiary; government services, and petroleum and chemical transportation, distribution and sales. Additional information about Crowley, its subsidiaries and business units may be found at http://www.crowley.com. The ESOP enhances our continuous-improvement culture to one of investment and ownership and provides employees with assurance that they can be self-supporting in their retirement years. Landscape Structures Inc., a Delano, Minn.-based commercial playground equipment manufacturer, was recognized for its Total Retirement Offering at the 2018 Plan Sponsor of the Year Awards, which was held on March 29 in New York City. Landscape Structures was honored with the award based on the richness of the retirement program offerings, commitment to the program, and leadership and innovation in helping employees reach a secure retirement. Through its 401(k) and employee stock ownership plan (ESOP), Landscape Structures aims for its employees to be able to maintain their standard of living in retirement, which the company defines as 75 to 100 percent of their pre-retirement income. According to the most current statistics, based on a 2016 retirement readiness report done by advisory firm, Intellicents Inc., 71 percent of employees were on track to achieve that goal. Landscape Structures and its employees work in tandem to ensure retirement goals are met. We encourage employees to save at least 8 percent of their earnings in the 401(k), so they receive the full 4 percent employer match, says Karlye Emerson, vice president of corporate strategy and human capital at Landscape Structures. And the ESOP has contributed, on average, 15 percent of their earnings each year. While the plan is set up so the company contributes more than twice the amount that employees do, the success of the ESOP is in employees hands. The ESOP enhances our continuous-improvement culture to one of investment and ownership and provides employees with assurance that they can be self-supporting in their retirement years, says Emerson. Learn more about Landscape Structures at playlsi.com. About Landscape Structures Since 1971, Landscape Structures Inc. has been the leading manufacturer of commercial playground equipment in the world. Our employee-owned company designs community and school playgrounds that encourage kids of all ages and abilities to learn persistence, leadership, competition, bravery, support and empathy through play. We push the limitsof design, inclusion, playto help kids realize there is no limit to what they can do today and in the future. For a better tomorrow, we play today. We look on Christie as our technological partner. Without their projectors and servers we would not have achieved the standards of quality we were striving for. Christie, a leader in creating and delivering the worlds best visual and audio experiences, is pleased to announce that, for the second year running, it has been the official sponsor of GDLUZ, the Festival of Light of Guadalajara, which lit up the citys most iconic buildings over four days to celebrate the 476th anniversary of the founding of the city. Christie 3DLP projectors, including the Christie Boxer, and Christie Pandoras Box servers, played a major role in some of the 40 attractions at the event, among which were projection mapping projects, multimedia shows, interactive installations, along with live music, artistic installations and performances. More than half-a-million people enjoyed the event. Christies role this year at GDLUZ was key, said Carlos Marquez, director of projection at Alteacorp, the company behind the event who orchestrated the show together with the support of Guadalajara City Council and private initiatives. He added, We look on Christie as our technological partner. Without their projectors and servers we would not have achieved the standards of quality we were striving for. One of the events interactive projections was Laser Mapping. Using a laser pointer, the public could draw shapes and images that were then projected in real time using a Christie HD14K-M projector on one of the walls of a building in Plaza de Tapatia, one of the citys most popular squares. Another project featuring Christie technology was the interactive mapping in the esplanade at Hospicio Cabanas, using a Christie Boxer 4K30 projector. Using a proprietary application designed by Altea Corp which included servers made specifically to process moving images and sensors, as well as Christie Pandoras Box media managers and players, the public were able to create their own video projection mapping, painting the facade of this World Heritage site in real-time. The citys Teatro Degollado was also used as a projection screen for a spectacular video mapping using a Christie Boxer 4K30 synchronized by Pandoras Box. Alteacorps Marquez, was particularly pleased with the Christie Boxer 4K30 functions. For me, one of the most outstanding features of this equipment is the http control interface in real time. Other major assets are the light weight and compact size, which make it so much easier to mount and use, as well as the excellent resolution and depth of color. He went on to add, I would heartily recommend combining Christie projectors and servers for events of this scale. We were absolutely delighted to have Christie on board again as a sponsor and technological partner for our festival. Ernesto Armus, Director of Christie Mexico, noted, We are proud of the fact that our projectors and servers have played such a key part once again in putting the light into Mexicos biggest light festival. The Alteacorp team were able to make the most of our technology to produce a hugely impressive and spectacular show. About Christie Christie Digital Systems USA, Inc. is a global visual and audio technologies company and a wholly-owned subsidiary of Ushio Inc., Japan (JP:6925). Consistently setting the standards by being the first to market some of the worlds most advanced projectors, complete system displays, and cinema audio solutions; Christie is recognized as one of the most innovative visual technology companies in the world. From retail displays to Hollywood, mission critical command centers to classrooms and training simulators, Christie display solutions and projectors capture the attention of audiences around the world with dynamic and stunning images, accompanied by awe-inspiring sound. Visit http://www.christiedigital.com. The results of this survey underline why there is a strong need for financial services providers to consider the use of alternative data to redefine their risk models, marketing and distribution approaches to target these demographics, said Sanjoy Malik, CEO at Urjanet. Urjanet announced today the results of a nationwide consumer study that suggests that Gen X, millennials, and Gen Z are more willing to share alternative data with their financial services providers than previous generations. One of the clearest conclusions from this research is that across all three generations, consumers are more digitally-driven than ever before. Respondents were also willing to share their information in exchange for value. From basic personal information to social media profiles and even utility bill history, over a quarter of Gen X, and over a third of millennials and Gen Z responded that they were comfortable sharing personal data with financial institutions and other service providers. Worldwide, 2 billion adults and 160 million small businesses lack banking access, according to Global Findex, with nearly 51 million adults in the U.S. falling into the underbanked category. Until recently, these groups have been ignored by most banks because they typically have poor or no credit rating, and are unlikely to generate meaningful deposits or banking fees. But as more services go digital, financial services providers have a huge opportunity to tap into the potential of this group. In order to help financial institutions and fintech companies better understand the impact specific generations have on their business models, Urjanet conducted a survey of nearly 700 American consumers aged 18-40 and gathered valuable insights into how Gen X, millennial, and Gen Z demographics interact with their financial services providers. The results of this survey underline why there is a strong need for financial services providers to consider the use of alternative data to redefine their risk models, marketing and distribution approaches to target these demographics, said Sanjoy Malik, CEO at Urjanet. As younger generations begin to stake their claim in the economy, businesses will need to turn their focus toward re-establishing their market approach. Gen X, millennials, and Gen Z also share similar sentiments around the importance of reputation and reliability when working with a financial institution. Two-thirds of Gen X, 62 percent of millennials and almost three fourths of Gen Z respondents ranked reputation and reliability as the most important aspects of their relationship with a provider. Only eight percent of Gen X and millennial and just seven percent of Gen Z respondents said they would stay with their current provider if their perception of account changes made by the institution were negative, such as additional fees or poor user experiences. While these generations do have plenty in common, there are varying nuances between each demographic: Gen X 60 percent of Gen X respondents said they had at least five financial products, and nearly - 15 percent said they had over 11. 71 percent reported having an online account for utility bills, and nearly 40 percent said they were willing to share information about their utility accounts. The most common accessible alternative data from Gen X respondents were mortgage payments, electricity bills, and internet bills. Millennials Less than 50 percent of millennial respondents said they have at least five financial products. Sixty-eight percent of millennials reported having an online account for utility bills, and were almost twice as likely to share alternative data than Gen Z. The most common accessible alternative data from millennial respondents mortgage payments, electricity bills, and internet bills. Gen Z Only 10 percent of Gen Z respondents have five financial products, with nearly 70 percent have at least one. Only 50 percent of Gen Z said they owned a credit card. Student loans, car loans, and mobile phone bills are this demographics most accessible alternative data points. Twenty percent of Gen Z are willing to share information about their utility accounts, and almost a quarter of Gen Z reported having an online account for utility bills. Though, according to the survey, each demographic is in a different phase of their financial maturity, each group supports distinct access to alternative data that could be used to enrich their financial profiles. Alternative data is quickly becoming a cornerstone to not only understand emerging generations, but to also verify consumer identity, model risk for financial products, and to maximize go-to-market strategies. By using a more comprehensive set of data, financial services and fintech providers can build a 360 view of their target customers and gain a competitive edge in a very crowded market. Fortunately, accessing this data is well within reach thanks to technology that automates and aggregates alternative data sources. The Urjanet Utility Data Platform leverages powerful machine-learning technology and thousands of connections to utility providers across the globe to capture payment history for telecom, cable, satellite, electric, water, and natural gas bills. The automated platform supplies accurate and timely access to data delivered on demand, with expansive potential to enrich consumer risk profiles. To read the full report click here. About Urjanet: Urjanet, the global leader in utility data aggregation, simplifies how organizations access and use utility data, enabling them to focus on their business. Our technology collects, processes, and delivers data from over 5,000 electric, natural gas, water, waste, telecom, and cable utilities worldwide. The data we provide can be configured and integrated into any application to support an organizations exact utility data needs. For more information, visit http://www.urjanet.com. 13th Annual PMI Chicagoland Leadership Panel Past News Releases RSS PMI Chicagoland Chapter is hosting its 13th Annual Leadership Forum - Strengthening the Company Ecosystem, where top-level leaders will be discussing what it takes to lead in this age of transformation and how to impact an organizations culture. As seen, most value-driven projects and programs require organizational and behavioral change so forward thinking project and program management leaders are rapidly embracing change implementation processes to achieve sustainable organizational Laszlo S. Gonc, Chair of Leadership Forum 2018; Partner Security, IT Risk & Compliance Practice will be the Moderator. Laszlo is a recognized senior executive with over twenty-five years of progressive experience in business and information technology. He is responsible for helping organizations, corporate and nonprofit alike, navigate the digital frontier advising on cyber security, IT risk mitigation, and building digital technology strategies that drive performance and business value. He has experience across a number of industries advising senior executives, developing security strategies, evaluating IT risk and spearheading critical security projects for senior leadership. Alongside of Laszlo Gonc are keynote speakers, Chris Garibaldi discussing the holistic, closed loop view of Project Portfolio Management and Mike Church discussing what it means to be a digital organization today. The Panelists below in the Panel Discussion will share their real-life experiences and answer questions addressing change implementation processes to achieve sustainable organizational growth. Brian Donovan Director, Program Management at Abbot Brian Donovan is a Program Management Director at Abbott, implementing a PMO for Project, Program and Portfolio Management after strategic global roles in Business Excellence, Finance, Informatics, IT, Procurement and Supply Chain. Before joining Abbott in 2001, he worked in IT consulting after service in the US Army. Brian has a Masters degree in International Management from Thunderbird, an Operations Research degree from The United States Military Academy, and his professional certifications include Abbotts Lean Six Sigma Black Belt and PMIs PMP. Sarah Burnson Global PMO Leader, Health & Benefits, Aon Sarah is the Global PMO Leader for Health and Benefits at Aon. In this position, she has accountability for providing operational leadership for Aons Innovation practice to accelerate H&B innovation globally. Her role includes establishing a PMO to provide integrated program management and governance, planning and oversight for strategic programs and establishing best-practices and knowledge sharing across the various teams within the organization. Paul Haisman Chief Information Officer for the American Academy of Orthopaedic Surgeons Paul Haisman has over 20 years of experience as a business thought leader and innovator delivering highly effective results and competitive value by leveraging a results-driven business approach. Paul is currently Chief Information Officer for the American Academy of Orthopaedic Surgeons (AAOS) based in Rosemont, IL. AAOS provides innovative education, practice management services for orthopaedic surgeons and allied health professionals. In addition, AAOS is a qualified clinical data registry (QCDR) managing a national family of registries using data to enhance the quality of care, improve patient outcomes, reduce costs, and advance orthopaedic science and bioengineering. Paul has a computer science degree (B.Sc.) from Illinois State University and an MBA from the Johnson School of Business at Hodges University. Ryan Noel Managing Director of Client Engagement, Gorilla Group Ryan Noel has a business development, client relationship, and delivery background grounded in nearly 20 years of service experience. As the Managing Director of Client Engagement at Gorilla Group, he is dedicated to designing strategic eCommerce, Creative and Marketing solutions to digitize leading B2C and B2B companies. Ryan joined Gorilla from Accenture Digital and prior to that he was a Client Partner at Acquity Group. Ryan has an Engineering degree with minors in Marketing and Supply Chain Management from Michigan State University. This year attendees will learn how to identify benefits to drive business results, by aligning resources & initiatives strategically, by delivering value realization and by becoming a truly digital organization. Leave the event with new ideas and insights as well as new relationships. So be prepared to learn how to identify benefits to drive business results in order to become a true digital organization. The 13th Annual 2018 PMI Chicagoland Leadership Forum is open to the public and will be held at the Hyatt Lodge at McDonalds Campus, in Oak Brook, IL, on May 4, 2018, from 7:30 am to Noon. About PMI Chicagoland With 4600+ members in the Chicago metropolitan area, PMI Chicagoland is one of the largest chapters in the world and one of the most active chapters of the Project Management Institute (PMI) - the world's leading not-for-profit professional membership association for the project, program and portfolio management profession. Founded in 1969, PMI delivers value for more than 2.9 million professionals working in nearly every country in the world through global advocacy, collaboration, education and research. We are excited to partner with a leader in the customer care and billing industry, said Pace CEO, Paul Christians. Hansen Technologies, one of the worlds leading providers of billing and customer care technologies for utilities and municipalities will leverage Paces flexible payment technology to further enhance Hansen BannerCX. BannerCX is a major transformation to the well-known industry leading product Banner CIS. BannerCX integrates with Pace Fuze, Paces payments access engine, through the APIs in the new Hansen Integration Framework (HIF). By leveraging Paces technology, each Hansen customer will have the ability to easily track payments to a utility account. With superior bank reconciliation reporting, Hansen customers can verify bank deposits with utility account payment activity. The partnership not only removes friction from the payment process, but further enhances the BannerCX experience for Hansen customers. We are excited to partner with a leader in the customer care and billing industry, said Pace CEO, Paul Christians. Our convergent solutions are a natural fit and we look forward to providing Hansens valued customers with business intelligence analytics and their end-users with a seamless payment experience. Andrew Hansen, CEO of Hansen Technologies said As we look to the future with BannerCX we have built advanced technology (our HIF) that enables our customers to leverage the broad ecosystem of addon tools to maximize their solution. The strategic partnership we have with PACE is an important milestone enabling us to offer our customers an integrated payment solution tied into BannerCX. He added Hansen customers will have unsurpassed access to Pace Insight, a powerful business intelligence engine and we look forward to a long and successful partnership for all parties. Hansen and Pace will introduce their partnership at CS Week 2018 in Tampa, Florida. Visit Booth #717 for a demonstration of the integrated solution. About Pace Pace Payment Systems, Inc. is a premiere financial technology company providing fully-integrated access and business intelligence engines that enhance our partners offerings by creating an elegant, fully-compliant payment interface for customers. A robust data warehouse, reconciliation tool and reporting engine transform disparate data points into actionable intel for our partners and their end-users. Our Technology Team developed one-of-a-kind products to eliminate barriers in accepting payments and provide our partners with the reporting tools they need to enhance their customers experience. The flexibility of our technology empowers Pace to bring a competitive advantage to any market; our focus is specifically in the Public, Education and Non-Profit/Faith-based sectors. For more information, please visit pacepayment.com. About Hansen Technologies With over 40 years experience, Hansen Technologies (ASX: HSN) is a leading global provider of billing and customer care technologies for utilities, telcos, municipalities and pay-TV operators. Employing over 1000 experts, Hansens proven and scalable solutions as well as its innovative and flexible offerings, enable more than 600 clients to deliver cost-effective end-to-end business initiatives to improve their customers experience. Hansen has 31 offices throughout USA, Australia, New Zealand, China, Denmark, Germany, Argentina, South Africa, Norway, Finland, Netherlands and Sweden servicing customers in over 80 countries around the world. Visit hsntech.com for more about Hansen Technologies. Best Western Aku Tiki Inn Pool Our hotel is not far from the theme parks in Orlando, Florida so guests can take in the beach and the next day venture to the roller coasters! Traders Restaurant, the on-site restaurant at The Best Western Aku Tiki Inn, announces their newest menu for 2018. Guests can enjoy new options when dining at Traders. A sample of the new options include hoisin shrimp edamame stir-fry, maitre d butter roasted half Chicken, seafood tacos, and Mahi Rachel. Other menu options include jerk chicken bowl, gulf shrimp, slow roasted prime rib, tiki burger, pizza, quesadillas, and island barbecue ribs. Registered guests staying at the Best Western Aku Tiki Inn as well as local patrons are invited to experience these all new dishes. Blaine Lansberry, Vice-President of Sales and Marketing for the Best Western Aku Tiki Inn, states, Along with a new menu, we are also offering all you can eat prime rib and seafood buffet every Friday night from 5pm until 9pm. This option has been very popular with our guests. Traders serves lunch and dinner starting at 11am. Our restaurant has recently had a makeover that includes improved flooring and space plan, design elements with new, bright seating, animated flooring, and modern beach artwork. Our guests have been raving about the new improvements! The Best Western Aku Tiki Inn never charges a resort fee and includes many amenities such as high-speed Wi-Fi internet access, free parking, a daily newspaper, a daily cocktail hour, and a daily hot buffet breakfast all included in their affordable rates. The daily hot buffet breakfast is available from 7am until 10am for all registered guests of the Best Western Aku Tiki Inn. Guests will find breakfast options including yogurt parfaits, Belgium waffles, oatmeal, eggs, bacon, sausage, grits, home fries, and an omelet station. To follow the Best Western Aku Tiki Inn on Facebook, visit https://www.facebook.com/bwakutiki/ Situated directly on the beach, the Best Western Aku Tiki Inn offers easy access for guests looking to sink their feet in the sand and soak in the Florida sunshine. Lansberry adds, Beach access is a huge necessity for travelers looking to book a beach vacation especially for those traveling with small children. Our resort offer an in-ground swimming pool that overlooks the ocean in addition to our beach front access. This Daytona Beach oceanfront resort offers a variety of room options to please all travelers. These options include rooms with ocean views, ocean front views, and kitchenettes. Rooms with a kitchenette include a four-burner stove with oven, a microwave, a refrigerator, pots, pans, and utensils. Rooms without a kitchen boast a microwave, small refrigerator, and coffee maker. Lansberry states, Some guests enjoy having the flexibility to cook in their rooms, especially those traveling with children. For those who prefer to dine out while vacationing there are several local restaurants within walking distance from our oceanfront resort. Daytona Beach, Florida is home to many attractions and events including the Daytona International Speedway, Tanger Outlets, and the Daytona Beach Flea Market. The Best Western Aku Tiki Inn is perfectly situated for easy access to all of these attractions and more. The hotel is also close to the Daytona Beach International Airport. Many guests choose to combine a beach vacation with trips to the theme parks such as Walt Disney World, Universal Studios, and Sea World. Lansberry adds, Our hotel is not far from the theme parks in Orlando, Florida so guests can take in the beach and the next day venture to the roller coasters! The Best Western Aku Tiki Inn is located at 2225 South Atlantic Avenue in Daytona Beach, Florida 32118. To book a beach vacation, call 1-800-258-8454 or book online at https://bwakutiki.com/. The Best Western Aku Tiki Inn caters to families, groups, and solo travelers. For best rates and room availability travelers are encouraged to book direct. While whats under the hood varies greatly, automobile tires all share the same general installation and maintenance methods. Whenever rubber meets the road, its best to be sure that every steering component on your vehicle is going to work as its intended to. This is especially true for tires, which far too many motorists view as a nearly maintenance-free component of their vehicles. Do they look a little deflated? Add some air (32 pounds per square inch, by the way) and off we go, right? Wrong, and the legal experts at Monge & Associates are taking time out to encourage drivers to give their wheels a closer inspection as soon as possible. Think of it as an extension of the spring cleaning tasks youll be doing around the house and you just might save a life in the process. According to a late 2017 article from the Atlanta Journal-Constitution, a 49-year-old Georgia woman was killed when a tire from another vehicle flew off and landed on the womans windshield. While the driver of that vehicle expressed remorse, he also noted in an interview with local media that he was not driving fast. The thing is, speed isnt the only contributing factor and police investigators told the newspaper that a mechanical failure was to blame. This tragic incident could have been avoided entirely, and the law experts at Monge & Associates want to offer inspection tips you can do in your own driveway. While whats under the hood varies greatly, automobile tires all share the same general installation and maintenance methods, says Scott Monge, attorney at law. Here are some of his suggestions on what to keep an eye out for this spring. Tread Depth: A worn-out tire can dramatically decrease handling performance during those April showers. Any part of the tire that is smooth to the touch means alignment is likely off. A tire shop or mechanic should address this aspect. However, checking tread depth can be done with a penny. Insert the coin upside down into the treads on your tire; its time to replace them if all of Abraham Lincolns head is showing. Bolts: Four bolts typically secure the wheel rim to the rotor. These bolts can come loose over time if not properly tightened. Without these bolts holding the wheel in place, it can come off and cause an accident similar to the one mentioned above. Fluid Check: Power steering fluid rarely needs topping off, but popping the hood and taking a peek is a straightforward process. To inspect the fluid reservoir, warm your vehicle up and turn the steering wheel from end to end. Then remove the reservoir cap, inspect the level on the dipstick and top off with the correct power steering fluid if necessary. Refer to your owners manual to determine the type of fluid to use. Monge & Associates specializes in handling auto accident cases. Scott Monge says that retaining a law firm in the wake of an accident is the only way to secure evidence that can -- and will -- disappear in the coming days and weeks. About Monge & Associates: Monge & Associates, located in Atlanta, Georgia, can assist clients recovering from auto accidents, slip-and-fall injuries, nursing home neglect, workers compensation cases and much more. For more information, contact Scott Monge, attorney at law by calling 800-676-4878 (HURT) or email info(at)monge.lawyer. The Nichols Team at Fairway Independent Mortgage Corporation For years weve shopped and played in First & Main, and now well be able to offer Fairways services to the residents of Hudson from a convenient location right in their own backyard. Fairway Independent Mortgage Corporation is pleased to announce the opening of a new branch location in the First & Main area of downtown Hudson, Ohio. The new branch, the 12th satellite office of the Northern Ohio Fairway team, will service residents of northern Summit County, western Portage, and beyond. Situated in Suite 205 at 89 First Street, this new Fairway location will offer residents a variety of home loan products including conventional and jumbo loans, loans for first-time homebuyers, FHA, VA and Ohio Housing Finance Agency products. Open daily from 9am to 5pm, with office hours by appointment on evenings and weekends, the office will be staffed by The Nichols Team, a cross-functional lending team with a combined total of over 55 years of mortgage lending expertise. The city of Hudson was the perfect location for this new office, said Becky Lonteen, senior operations manager. For years weve shopped and played in First & Main, and now well be able to offer Fairways services to the residents of Hudson from a convenient location right in their own backyard. The Nichols Team is comprised of loan officer Brian Nichols (NMLS #269659), production partner Faith Dolson (NMLS #1581778), licensed loan officer assistant Nikki Ziats (NMLS #382643), loan processor Jacqui Griffith, and business development specialist Courtney DeMarco. The team consistently ranks among the top producers within the Fairway system, with multiple awards and recognition for sales and service excellence between them. Previously seated in the Stow headquarters of the Northern Ohio Fairway branches, The Nichols Team looks forward to bringing the exceptional service, speed and communication synonymous with the Fairway name to customers in the Western Reserve community. To reach The Nichols Team, call 330-954-0700 or visit http://www.NicholsLoans.com. The first Northern Ohio branch of Fairway Independent Mortgage Corporation was founded in 1999 by brothers Brian Thomas and Mark Thomas, in Stow, Ohio. Fairway and the Thomas brothers have served the residents of Ohio for nearly 20 years, with offices in Amherst, Fairlawn, Green, two offices in Hudson, Mayfield Village, Salem, two offices in Stow, Uniontown, Warren and also an office in Schererville, Indiana. Fairway offers a wide range of residential mortgage loans, including conventional loans, refinancing, VA loans, FHA loans, reverse mortgages and more. The company was ranked as one of the Top 10 Mortgage Companies in America based on retail volume by Mortgage Executive Magazine in 2015, 2016 and 2017. About Fairway Independent Mortgage Corporation: Founded in 1996 by Steve Jacobson, and named by a childhood best friend, colleague and forever member of the Fairway family, Randy Cross, Fairway Independent Mortgage Corporation (FIMC #2289) is a mortgage lender headquartered in Madison, Wisconsin and Carrollton, Texas. The company has more than 400 locations and over 6,600 employees nationwide. At Fairway, customer service, dedication to finding great loan products and rates, and some of the fastest turn times in the industry are essential elements of every customer interaction. For more information, visit http://www.FairwayIndependentMC.com. Fairway Independent Mortgage Corporation was voted the #1 Best Company to Work For, four years running by Mortgage Executive Magazine. Interested in a career at Fairway? Contact Drew Alurovic at drew.alurovic(at)fairwaymc(dot)com. FOR MORE INFORMATION, CONTACT: Jenne McCarty Regional Marketing Director Direct: 330-923-6704 jenne.mccarty(at)fairwaymc(dot)com Mr. Luftman brings to Nomis Solutions a broad spectrum of corporate legal experience in both established and emerging growth companies. What attracted me to Nomis Solutions is the stellar management team and its vision for applying innovative advanced analytics to modernize retail banks operations to the benefit of both the financial institutions and their customers. Nomis Solutions, an innovator of fintech software that helps retail banks deliver win-win customer engagement through price optimization, customer-centric offers, and omni-channel sales enablement, has appointed Douglas Luftman as its vice president, general counsel and secretary. Mr. Luftman brings a broad spectrum of corporate legal experience in both established and emerging growth companies. He will report to Nomis President and CEO Frank Rohde out of the companys Silicon Valley headquarters. Mr. Luftman has worked for some of Silicon Valleys innovation powerhouses. Most recently, he was general counsel at Lecorpio, a SaaS startup that provided Fortune 500 companies with an advanced workflow management and data analytics platform, through to its acquisition in 2017. Prior to Lecorpio, Mr. Luftmans two-decade senior leadership legal career included working at NetApp Inc., Palm Inc., and Intel Corp. Prior to working in-house, Mr. Luftman was an attorney at Fenwick & West LLP, a Silicon Valley law firm. What attracted me to Nomis Solutions is the stellar management team and its vision for applying innovative advanced analytics to modernize retail banks operations to the benefit of both the financial institutions and their customers, said Doug Luftman, vice president, general counsel and secretary of Nomis Solutions. Innovation supported by strong intellectual property are the engines that are driving the growth of many successful fintech companies. I see Nomis possessing such qualities, and these competitive advantages will continue to accelerate its business. Frank Rohde, president and CEO of Nomis Solutions, views Mr. Luftmans deep experience with innovative tech companies as essential assets for the company as it continues to broaden its customer base. I am thrilled to have Doug on board. His experience in both consumer-facing as well as enterprise-technology companies will be invaluable as we manage the legal framework around data protection and privacy, intellectual property protection, and contracting with the worlds largest financial institutions. About Nomis Solutions Nomis helps retail banks deliver win-win customer engagement through price optimization, customer-centric offers, and omni-channel sales enablement. More than 10,000 bankers worldwide leverage Nomis cutting-edge Silicon Valley approach to big data, advanced modeling, and deep analytics to understand and anticipate the demands of their customers, competitor actions, and dynamic market conditions. With experience in over 80 implementations, Nomis has a proven track record of increasing customer and stockholder value, returning more than $300 million to its partner banks every year. Banks currently use Nomis technology to manage more than 270 million accounts and optimize over $1 trillion in banking transactions annually. To learn more, visit http://www.nomissolutions.com. Naples Illustrated magazine has featured double board-certified plastic surgeon Anurag Agarwal as one of the Top Doctors in their April 2018 edition. Dr. Agarwal is board-certified by the American Board of Facial Plastic and Reconstructive Surgery and the American Board of Otolaryngology-Head and Neck Surgery. Dr. Agarwal is also a member of the International Society of Hair Restoration Surgery (ISHRS). Dr. Agarwal serves patients at the Aesthetic Surgery Center in Naples, Florida, using groundbreaking technology. Facial Plastic Surgeon Expert Dr. Agarwal is widely recognized for his surgical expertise and was chosen by his peers to serve from 2011-2012 as the President of the Florida Society of Facial Plastic and Reconstructive Surgery. He was selected in September 2013 by Gulfshore Business magazine as one of Southwest Floridas top 40 under 40 business leaders and was featured in the "Super Men" Naples Illustrated magazine issue in September 2014. Dr. Agarwal was honored as the 5th recipient of the annual Maintaining Excellence in ABFPRS Certification Award at the national American Academy of Facial Plastic and Reconstructive meeting in 2016. Dr. Agarwal received the Maintaining Excellence ABRPRS Certification Award in acknowledgment of achieving the highest score in the United States on the oral and written portions of the 2016 American Board of Facial Plastic and Reconstructive Surgery (ABFPRS) Maintenance of Certification examination. Dr. Agarwal has been annually recognized from 2015 through 2018 by Castle Connolly's Top Doctors in Florida. Dr. Agarwal of Aesthetic Surgery Center is now honored to be featured in Naples Illustrated magazine as one of their Top Doctors in April 2018. Facial and Neck Surgical Options Dr. Anurag Agarwal is a facial plastic surgeon expert offering surgical options for the face and neck. He is featured on ABC news, Wink TV, NBC news and FOX news discussing facial plastic surgery. FOX news exhibited Dr. Agarwal's excellent artistry including photos of one of the patients before and after receiving a lower face and neck lift with a chin implant. Facial plastic surgeon Agarwal specializes in rhinoplasty and revision rhinoplasty, endoscopic facelift surgery, blepharoplasty (eyelid surgery), fat transfer to the face, lip enhancement, hair replacement and facial injectables. Dr. Agarwal also developed the UpLift procedure, which dramatically tightens the upper neck and jawline with minimal recovery time. UpLift Facelift with Reduced Recovery by Dr. Agarwal in Naples Dr. Anurag Agarwal modified the traditional lower face and neck lift to create the Uplift, which is a low-downtime facelift that is ideal for individuals with sagging skin along their jawline and upper neck. The UpLift Facelift provides complex neck reconstruction using a muscle reattachment procedure, liposuction when needed and tightening of the support system of the face. The UpLift takes about three hours to perform and can be completed by Dr. Agarwal using intravenous anesthesia, without being intubated. The incisions are hidden within the ear, around the earlobe, and sometimes under the chin. Outstanding results are seen with a one to two week recovery period. Dr. Anurag Agarwal is a facial plastic surgery expert who devotes 100% of his practice to the face and neck. He utilizes laser-guided eyelid incisions, endoscopic facelifting techniques, finesse rhinoplasty and trademarked Laserwash techniques to produce the best possible results. Contact Aesthetic Surgery Center by calling (239)-594-9100 or schedule an appointment ONLINE. Stephen Putthoff, DO, Kansas City University of Medicine and Biosciences You have to be able to emotionally detach yourself. If you dont, youre no good to that child or body, or anybody else to acquire justice for them. April 19th marks the 25th anniversary since a standoff between federal agents and the followers of David Koresh ended with fire consuming the Branch Davidian compound outside Waco, Texas. Inside, more than 70 men, women, and children would perish. Dr. Stephen Putthoff, a Kansas City University of Medicine and Biosciences (KCU) pathology professor and a 1978 graduate from KCUs College of Medicine, was called on to help identify the Branch Davidian victims and perform autopsies. He uses he experiences to prepare medical students for situations they will encounter at some point in their careers. You have to be able to emotionally detach yourself, Putthoff explained. If you dont, youre no good to that child or body, or anybody else to acquire justice for them. Despite the passage of time, Putthoff remembers the days, weeks and months to follow. He often shares his experience with the medical students he teaches today. Branch Davidian Compound AftermathFire engulfed the compound on April 19, 1993. At that time, Putthoff chaired the Department of Pathology, Anatomy and DNA/Identity at the University of North Texas/TCOM. He also performed autopsies as a Deputy Medical Examiner with the Tarrant County Medical Examiners District (TCMD) just north of Waco. TCMD is a major forensic office which contracts with other counties like McClennen - where Branch Davidian compound is located - to do forensic support and post-mortem examinations. Dr. Nizam Peerwani is the TCMD Chief Medical Examiner and faculty member of TCOM Pathology Department. Ive done a fair number of multiple fatality cases, Dr. Stephen Putthoff said. This was certainly beyond what most medical examiners have to deal with. In a straight-forward matter of fact style, Putthoff recalls being one of the first officials to enter the scene with Peerwani following the fire. Putthoff was no stranger to conducting autopsies. He also had military experience. He joined the army after high school as a Special Forces medic during Vietnam. Despite his experience, Putthoff would soon face the challenges of what he describes as a relatively big compound building that had been reduced to ash. Branch Davidian Compound AftermathDr. Putthoff faced plenty of challenges inside the compound. Underneath the smoldering ash remained an arsenal of bullets, grenades, kerosene and propane gas stockpiled by the Branch Davidians. The heat would spark occasional explosions. Authorities would spend a week attempting to locate remains of the victims, many of them women and children. Putthoff believes the intense heat from the fire made it impossible to locate everyone. The goal with something like that was to identify bodies and try to preserve them for information to determine cause, manner and mechanism of death, Putthoff explained. That is the task of the medical examiner. It would take months to identify victims and conduct autopsies. Putthoff said some remains were so severely burned and comingled together in an agglutinated mass they were unable to be identified. Another challenge was the fact that many of the Branch Davidians came from other countries. Putthoff said, Dental x-rays or other forms of identification including relatives for DNA studies werent always accessible. At the center of this enormous investigation remained one pressing question; what happened to David Koresh? In 1990, Koresh became the controversial leader of the Branch Davidians, building an Army of God attracting followers from across the country and the world. They believed in the Apocalypse and stockpiled weapons on the 77 acre compound. We found Koreshs body relatively intact, Putthoff recalls. Dental records were used to identify his remains. The cause of death - a single gunshot wound to the head. But many wondered if the religious leader took his own life or was killed by someone else. We did not render an opinion. We said it was undetermined, either a murder or a suicide, Putthoff said. When asked if he has an opinion, Putthoff added, I think its more likely than not that he (Koresh) committed suicide." As a professor, Putthoff passes along his vast experiences to KCU medical students. Read more on this in the upcoming edition of the KCU magazine. A link will be posted after the magazines publication. CBD College, the Los Angeles-based non-profit education institution that has been providing quality education and training to students in the medical field for more than 30 years, has launched its newest offering to studentsthe Magnetic Resonance Imaging (MRI) programs.CBD Colleges MRI programs are accredited by ABHES (Accrediting Bureau of Health Education Schools) and recognized by ARRT (American Registry of Radiologic Technologists). Two different MRI programs will be offered: 1. AAS MRI Program (ARRT Primary Pathway) 2. Online Diploma MRI Program (ARRT Post-primary Pathway) Classes for both the programs are scheduled to commence on Monday, July 9, 2018 under the direction of theMRI program director Edoardo Cerani MS RT (R) (MR) ARRT. Mr. Cerani is a long time member of the American Registry of Radiologic Technologists (ARRT). In 2009 he created and started the very first online MRI program in the US. CBD College is committed to offering courses that are in touch with the demands of the current job market, said CBD College president Alan Heshel. With the growing demand for more skilled MRI Technologists jobs, we are confident that we are meeting the demands of the community. The AAS Program graduates will meet all course requirements in about only 17 months that include didactic on-campus instruction and externship clinical experience in diagnostic imaging centers to sit for the ARRT Primary Pathway MRI Examination required and become an ARRT registered MRI Technologist. The Online Diploma Program graduates will meet all course requirements in about only 11 months that include asynchronous (available 24/7) didactic online instruction and hands-on externship clinical experience in diagnostic imaging centers to sit for the ARRT Post-primary Pathway MRI Examination required and become an ARRT registered MRI Technologist. MRI Technologists are responsible for many important tasks, including: preparing patients for procedures and obtaining, reviewing, and integrating patient history and supporting clinical data. Assuring patient safety and providing patient care, preparing and maintaining diagnostic imaging equipment, performing appropriate MRI scanning examinations and procedures, recognizing the differences between normal and abnormal tissues in the obtained images and other diagnostic information, analyzing images and recording data for interpretation by a radiologist, recording findings and keeping track of patients' records, demonstrating excellent communication skills with patients and other health care professionals, and acting in an ethical and professional manner. Im very excited to launch the Magnetic Resonance Imaging program at CBD College, Mr. Cerani said. With jobs on the rise and growth projected for the future in diagnostic imaging, I want to be able to provide the best experience for students and help them learn and grow so they can become successful and provide an excellent service for patients. CBD College MRI programs enrollees will develop the knowledge and skills needed to use the latest technology and start working as entry level MRI Technologists in private and public hospitals, medical imaging centers, diagnostic clinics, doctors offices, outpatient care centers, higher education institutions, and in the research field, anywherein California. ABOUT CBD College: Since its inception in 1982, CBD College has grown to become one of Los Angeles's leading, non-profit, fully accredited colleges for healthcare career training, advising students of all nationalities, interests, and means. Through the understanding of today's ever changing medical industry and career opportunities, CBD College has continued to introduce the most in-demand and ambitious programs that lead its students to stable and successful careers. In 2015, CBD College was granted institutional accreditation by the Accrediting Bureau of Health Education Schools (ABHES). For more information please visit http://www.cbd.edu. nDash.co Dashboard nDash.cos NPS of 52 puts them in the 90th percentile for the software industry, alongside top brands like Apple, Microsoft, Adobe, and Google. A quarterly customer feedback analysis revealed that 70% of nDashs customers are extremely likely (a 9 or 10 on the scale) to recommend nDash to others. nDash, a company built with the purpose of helping companies to create amazing written content, relies on customer feedback to continuously improve the user experience and customer-focused services and is excited to see such positive results. nDash.cos Net Promoter Score of 52 puts them in the 90th percentile for the software industry, alongside top brands such as Apple, Microsoft, Adobe, and Google, according to Delighted. By providing brands and agencies with the tools to manage their content creation, as well as access to an on-demand community of freelancers, nDash enables marketers to create impactful content and scale their marketing efforts. The surveys feedback provided critical information on where nDash can continue to improve. The company found that the fragmentation of content management solutions is a pain point for marketers and digital agencies. Based on this feedback, nDash has started identifying critical platforms to begin rolling out standard, premium, and custom integrations. nDash aims to launch features ensuring that whether collaborating with coworkers, an existing team of freelancers, or their community of vetted professional writers, nDash has the software and services to continue to support your teams marketing and sales growth goals. Growth & Milestones Achieved 40% quarter-over-quarter growth in managed services Maintains double-digital quarterly revenue growth Expands customer list to include Hitachi, Toyota, LinkedIn among others Continuous product improvement with Q1 launch of Verified Writers, Content Calendar Named a Top Marketing Agency in Boston About nDash.co nDash, a privately held company based in Greater Boston, Massachusetts, provides leading brands and agencies with the tools, talent, and topics they need to scale content creation. To learn more, please visit https://www.ndash.co. VMware Airwatch Advanced Remote Management powered by AetherPal technology VMware and AetherPal are collaborating to provide businesses with a solution to comprehensively manage the full lifecycle of transformation, maximize productivity, and minimize downtime. AetherPal, Inc., a market leader in Mobile Support, today unveiled details of its collaboration with VMware to help customers with advanced remote management requirements, enabling IT to significantly reduce downtime and increase productivity. VMware Advanced Remote Management, powered by AetherPal technology, allows IT to more securely connect to remote devices in the field to efficiently diagnose, remediate, and support apps and devices to increase uptime, productivity, app adoption, and utilization, while reducing downtime, device returns, and service calls. Advanced Remote Management addresses the enterprise reality that mobile access is now mission critical for modern businesses, especially apparent in the rapidly transforming field service, hospitality, healthcare, manufacturing, financial services, and retail industries. In these industries, employees conduct most of their daily work, customer interactions, and revenue generation through mobile computing and the use of corporate-owned rugged and line-of business devices for business-critical operations. Downtime of these types of devices is not simply an inconvenience, it can impact staff productivity, customer satisfaction, business operations, and overall profitability. A companys digital transformation success is highly dependent on its ability to provide its employees with access to the apps they require when, where and how they want to access them, said Noah Wasmer, Senior Vice President and General Manager, Mobile Products, VMware. Advanced Remote Management is a critical component that helps enterprises keep their users connected, by using a simple intuitive interface to quickly troubleshoot and resolve issues or maintain apps and devices. This support and reliability is critical to delivering the business transformation initiatives our customers are embarking upon today. Successful mobile deployments address the full life-cycle of transformation, from the provisioning of devices and deployment of apps, through end user training and support," said Daniel Deeney, CEO, AetherPal. VMware and AetherPal are collaborating to provide businesses with a solution to comprehensively manage this full lifecycle, maximize productivity, and minimize downtime. Advanced Remote Management provides customers with the ability to optimize costs and reduce onsite support, as well as costly device returns to service centers. The solution is designed to benefit every phase of the mobile business lifecycle by saving time, reducing costs and improving IT and end user productivity. The always-on mobile workforce is more geographically dispersed than ever before. Secure IT staff visibility into mobile applications, devices and connectivity issues is essential. Regardless of the business application, device or OS, Advanced Remote Management delivers full lifecycle support that enables IT to keep mission critical mobile deployments up and running. Additional Resources VMware is offering a companion blog on todays collaboration news at http://blogs.vmware.com/euc/2018/04/vmware-collaborates-aetherpal-deliver-leading-advanced-remote-management-solution.html About AetherPal AetherPal helps enterprises drive app adoption and usage through on-device training and keeps their apps running with remote support, so that enterprises can efficiently and reliably scale their businesses on mobile. AetherPals Mobile Support includes: Remote Support, which enables IT staff with real-time remote control, visibility, and access to mobile devices, helping to improve productivity and efficiency, while reducing downtime. Remote Support boosts IT and mobile worker productivity by quickly and securely connecting to devices to troubleshoot and resolve device, network, or app issues. For more information, visit https://aetherpal.com/products/remote-support/. GuideMe, which enables enterprises to drive adoption and utilization of business-critical apps with contextual mobile training., as well as GuideStudio, which enables Help Desks, IT, and App Developers to quickly and easily create guides. For more information, visit https://aetherpal.com/guideme/. AetherPal customers deploy its Mobile Support software on more than 45 million mobile devices helping mobilize their business processes while minimizing infrastructure costs. AetherPal is backed by New Venture Partners and PJC. For more information, visit http://www.aetherpal.com. AetherPal, GuideMe, and GuideMe LiveGuides are registered trademarks or trademarks of AetherPal, Inc. in the United States and other jurisdictions. VMware and VMware Advanced Remote Management are registered trademarks or trademarks of VMware, Inc. in the United States and other jurisdictions. Now, were confident that the TCD 2.2 L3 is an ideal solution for the compact SJ519 TH model thanks to its smaller footprint, excellent reliability, cost benefits and Tier-4-Final compliance. Skyjack, Inc. has introduced a new compact telescopic handler for the rental industry that features the high-torque, 75hp, Tier-4-Final DEUTZ TCD 2.2 L3 diesel engine. Both the Skyjack SJ519 TH telescopic handler and the DEUTZ engine made their North America debuts at the recent 2018 ARA Rental Show in New Orleans. With the Tier 4 Final deadline less than a year away, its important that manufacturers install engines that not only meet Tier 4 standards, but also offer simple maintenance and optimal performance at a reasonable cost, said Steve Corley, chief sales officer for DEUTZ Corporation. This is particularly important in the equipment rental industry. Based on our successful TCD 2.9 Series which Skyjack uses in many of its other telescopic handlers our new TCD 2.2 L3 uses a DVERT oxidation catalyst (DOC) that enables maintenance-free operation under all application and ambient conditions for Tier 4. All DEUTZ 75hp TCD engines are able to provide high levels of torque that compensate for their lower horsepower, which is particularly useful for load-lifting machines like telescopic handlers. As a result, the new Skyjack SJ519 TH telescopic handler can raise heavy loads and travel safely over rough terrain. Our goal is to produce and sell machines that combine reliability, outstanding performance and top value, said Malcolm Early, vice president of marketing for Skyjack, Inc. Weve previously chosen DEUTZ engines for other Skyjack telescopic handlers.. Now, were confident that the TCD 2.2 L3 is an ideal solution for the compact SJ519 TH model thanks to its smaller footprint, excellent reliability, cost benefits and Tier-4-Final compliance. According to Skyjack, the TH line was engineered to meet the broad requirements of the rental equipment industry while filling a gap in the telehandler market with workhorse machines that offer the features and versatility previously only found on premium units. The new, compact SJ519 TH remains consistent with this philosophy by offering easily accessible service points, a simple control panel and multifunction display and a modular cab that rental dealers can easily convert from open to closed as needed. Since launching the TH telehandler range, weve received excellent feedback from the rental market, Early said. Demand for compact machines continues to grow, and because the new SJ519 TH offers top-notch features and a DEUTZ engine, we anticipate many rental dealerships adding them to their fleets. Partnering with DEUTZ provides our customers with access to worldwide service support, brand recognition and a reliable reputation that they can trust. The TH telescopic handler range is not the only Skyjack product line that features DEUTZ engines.The companys powered boom line has been powered by DEUTZ engines since 2006. Supplying engines to a prestigious equipment manufacturer like Skyjack is truly a testament to the technology and innovative spirit that are at the heart of every DEUTZ product, Corley said. Our goal is to provide Skyjack and all our OEM customers with engines that give their machines a competitive advantage in the marketplace. The TCD 2.2 L3 is another example of our dedication to that goal. To learn more about DEUTZ Corporation, as well as its complete line of diesel and natural gas engines, visit http://www.deutzamericas.com. For more information on the Skyjack SJ519 TH telescopic handler, visit skyjack.com. ABOUT DEUTZ CORPORATION: For more than 150 years, DEUTZ engines have supplied customized, cost-effective power to a broad array of machine types and market segments. The 9 millionth DEUTZ engine was produced in 2015. From its headquarters in Norcross, GA, DEUTZ Corporation, a subsidiary of DEUTZ AG, supports its product range of 25- to 830-hp diesel and natural gas engines. The company is committed to providing optimized power solutions from the drawing board to prototype to production release. The organization serves as a sales, service, parts, and application engineering center for the Americas, employing nearly 300 people. DEUTZ Corporation also operates a value-added production facility for some of its key OEM partners, as well as an engine remanufacturing facility in Pendergrass, Georgia. Strategically located DEUTZ Power Centers and Service Centers are designed uniquely support both OEM partners and end users. For more information, visit http://www.deutzamericas.com. "Send these socks to your Senators or to yourself. Every bit counts and every pair helps Make Schools Safe." -Lori Alhadeff, the mother of Alyssa Alhadeff, a victim of the Parkland shooting Sock Problems, a San Diego based company dedicated to socking world problems, has launched an Indiegogo campaign with a noteworthy and timely goalto sock gun violence. This campaign is a direct response to the 300 US school shootings that have occurred over the last half decade. Through an Indiegogo campaign, Sock Problems is giving those who walk, march or demonstrate the desire to sock gun violence a tangible tool that helps them express how they feel. 25% of every single purchase from this campaign goes back to support the organization, Make Schools Safe, an organization started after the Parkland High School shooting with a mission to address gun violence efforts now. Make Schools Safe aims to make schools safe for all, and was founded by Lori Alhadeff, the mother of Alyssa Alhadeff, a victim of the Parkland shooting. Alhadeff is passionate about addressing safety in schools and shared, Send these socks to your Senators or to yourself. Every bit counts and every pair helps Make Schools Safe. Sock Problems reached out to teachers across the nation asking their students to participate in the creation of a sock. They also requested student submissions through social media channels to reach as many students as possible. Students from all over the United States submitted designs. The team chose the top 4 sketches based on concept, colors, attention to detail and messaging. The winning design came from Paulina Markowski, a sophomore from Union High School in Union, New Jersey. Her concept posed a choice for a young boy climbing up alphabet blocks that spelled 'E N O U G H'. Through this contest, students were able to speak through their art, and share their voices through artistic abilities, said Nicholas Ferroni, who is Markowskis high school History teacher. Ferroni, a former actor who transitioned to teaching, is an esteemed educator, writer and activist with a deep commitment to mentoring lower-income students. The team also received feedback from Marjory Stoneman, a Douglas high schooler and activist Delaney Tarr. By launching Sock Guns on Indiegogo, Sock Problems provides supporters varying ways to engage in their efforts to sock" gun violence. The Indiegogo campaign offers those who passionately participate the opportunity to: Join the movement by standing proudly, walking, and marching in the Sock Guns socks Donate pairs to students in solidarity Send socks (and a fairly poignant message) to state Senators in protest Sock Problems is dedicated to bringing awareness to the issue of gun violence in a bold way, said Ryan Berman, Founder of Sock Problems. We wanted students to be able to express their own concerns for school safety with a radical sock design that can be shared with classmates, families, those marching, and even Senators. Sock Problems is centered around four core values: Giving, Transparency, Conquer, and Playfulness. Results of their impact with the Sock Guns campaign will also be shared on their website for ultimate transparency. To learn more about Sock Problems, affiliated organizations, or to purchase a pair, visit http://www.sockproblems.com and the Indiegogo campaign. About Sock Problems Sock Problems, LLC is a for purpose company that socks problems in the world with cause-centric socks. Sock Problems aims to transform every day purchases into a force for change. Sock Problems offers high quality, playful socks to passionate consumers. Sock Problems, a pending B Corp, combines peoples dedication for solving the worlds problems with their need for socks and their desire to express themselves with this daily accessory. http://www.sockproblems.com Media Inquiries: Elisette Carlson SMACK! Media Elisette@smackmedia.com 858-735-2711 AX1 is a tech start-up company founded by an experienced team spanning multiple disciplines within the finance and technology sectors. The intention was to open up the cryptocurrency market to investors with no technical knowledge as well as those already familiar with it. The directors were also insistent that the offering met the highest possible standards of anti-money laundering and compliance. The company has secured the use of two entire floors in a modern data centre in Manchester, UK, and retains an option to construct additional purpose-built premises in the north of England for enterprise level mining operations. AX1 has already raised sufficient funding to achieve its soft cap through a private pre-sale agreement. This funding will be used for the purchase of data rigs and associated core operations of AX1. All contributions raised through the ICO will therefore be used entirely for growth purposes rather than start-up costs. The company has established a team of investment, legal, accounting and cryptocurrency professionals to advise the AX1 board on which cryptocurrencies to mine at any given time. In order to provide AX1 ICO investors with an additional degree of protection and comfort, the issuer has chosen to use a Jersey company. Jerseys sophisticated regulatory approach requires any ICO issuer to obtain a specific consent from the Jersey Companies Registry, part of the Jersey Financial Services Commission. Whilst this consent does not give the ICO a regulated status, it is bespoke to the ICO in question, and mandates an additional set of conditions designed to ensure continued high standards of governance, investor disclosure and AML/CFT compliance. Stuart Anderson, CEO of AX1, said: In this instance, the conditions attaching to the issuing company acknowledge that ICOs are a sensitive activity, and therefore require the adoption of systems, controls, policies and procedures to prevent many of the concerns and abuses associated with cryptocurrencies and ICOs, such as poor investor protection, superficial documentation, an absence of audit requirements, lack of transparency and the constant specter of money laundering and the financing of terrorism. On this final point, and after conducting a thorough due diligence process on a number of KYC/AML providers, AX1 chose to partner with Coinfirm due to its facilitative platform and its unparalleled AML/CFT credentials in the crypto-space. Pawe Kuskowski, CEO and Co-Founder of Coinfirm, said: Although the market is constantly progressing and changing, AML is a required focus and there is now need for any ICO to be compliant and adoptable traditionally. At Coinfirm weve provided the standard for AML and source of funds risk and are happy to work with projects such as AX1 on further bringing that standard with them to the world. About Coinfirm Coinfirm serves as a foundation for the safe adoption and use of blockchain. A recognized leader in their field and among the most influential blockchain and regtech companies, the blockchain agnostic Coinfirm AML/CTF Platform uses proprietary algorithms and big data analysis to provide structured, actionable data that increases efficiency, reduces costs and streamlines compliance to near automation. In addition, Coinfirm develops dedicated blockchain solutions such as their data provenance platform Trudatum, currently being piloted for adoption by multiple financial institutions. Coinfirm has also recently released their AMLT Token to allow for market participants to help rate others and democratize the financial system. https://www.coinfirm.io/ ENDS CONSUMER RISK WARNINGS: Neither the ICO nor the issuer of the ICO is regulated by the Jersey Financial Services Commission. ICOs are a highly speculative form of investment and are not subject to existing capital market regulations. Investors should be prepared for the possibility of losing their investment completely. For full consumer and investor risk warnings please see the Information Memorandum Click here for the JFSCs public statement on ICOs As a physician interested in holistic health, it is important for me to address post-surgery care as an important part of preparing for surgery Nisha Bunke, M.D., scientist, inventor and CEO of La Jolla Vein Care announced today the launch of two all-natural, post-surgery products, RECOVA Surgery Cream and RECOVA Tinted Arnica Cream. RECOVA was developed over an eight-year period to help patients heal more effectively after vein surgery. Based on clinical experience, the merits and benefits of the ingredients, as well as feedback from patients and doctors over the years, Dr. Bunke created a powerful blend of nine all-natural ingredients (including extracts from pineapple, sunflower oil, grapeseed, arnica, butchers broom, and coconut) that would work with sensitive skin and support recovery after surgery. Patients using RECOVA products experience reduced pain, swelling and bruising after treatment. In addition, the tinted arnica product can conceal bruising, especially in highly visible areas, while providing soothing relief. Previously only sold at La Jolla Vein Care, RECOVA products are now available for sale to the public. As a physician interested in holistic health, it is important for me to address post-surgery care as an important part of preparing for surgery, said Nisha Bunke, M.D., creator of RECOVA. These products were in high demand from my patients who wanted a soothing remedy and quick healing after surgical vein procedures. What we discovered is that the RECOVA creams can be used to relieve a much broader variety of minor outpatient and cosmetic surgical procedures, as well as bruising in general. Dr. Bunke is a respected expert who runs the highest volume vein clinic in San Diego. With her vast network of physicians, she has introduced RECOVA to patients who have had a variety of cosmetic/plastic surgical procedures including botox injections, fillers, sclerotherapy, laser treatments, and liposuction. Both RECOVA products are created in San Diego, formulated and manufactured in the USA, and are free of parabens, synthetic dyes, and color additives, and never tested on animals. The RECOVA Post-Surgery Cream, original formula is $78 for 1oz, and the RECOVA Tinted Arnica Cream is $92 per 1oz, and available for purchase online. To learn more about RECOVA, please visit recovacream.com About RECOVA Headquartered in San Diego, CA, RECOVA is the creation of Dr. Nisha Bunke, a leading vascular physician who specializes in minimally invasive procedures for varicose veins. Inspired by the desire to promote healing and reduce bruising after surgery for her patients, Dr. Bunke sought to create a safe recovery cream that leveraged the healing power of natural ingredients. Over the years, she has collaborated with pharmaceutical scientists to create the perfect solution. Based on clinical experience, as well as patient and physician feedback over eight years, Dr. Bunke and her team created a powerful blend of natural ingredients to support recovery and nourish the skin after vein surgery. For more information, please visit http://www.recovacream.com About Dr. Nisha Bunke, Founder Dr. Nisha Bunke, M.D., FACPh, RPhS, is a physician, scientist, and inventor, actively leading clinical research studies in the field of venous disease. In 2010, Dr. Bunke founded La Jolla Vein Care while also remaining on staff at the University of California San Diego (UCSD) Healthcare System, working at the Veterans Healthcare System La Jolla, and serving as a Volunteer Clinical Instructor at UCSD School of Medicine. Working with vascular surgeon Dr. John Bergan, Dr. Bunke was awarded the 2008 JOBST Research Award for the Advancement of Phlebology for research on Inflammatory Bio-Markers of Venous Insufficiency. In 2009, Dr. Bunke was awarded the Internationale Union of Phlebologie Research Fellowship and the Best Young Presenter Award in Monaco. With numerous publications in scientific journals and medical textbooks, Dr. Bunke is the co-editor of The Vein Bookthe authoritative textbook for physicians. The Vein Book is published by the Oxford University Press and covers more than 600-pages on vein conditions. Her second book for non-medical professionals, Are We Just Being Vein? is expected to be released in Summer of 2018. The University City Science Center is bringing its Innovators Walk of Fame to life with the interactive Be an Innovator! program on Sunday, April 22, from 10 a.m. - noon. Be an Innovator! highlights innovators from the past and present through interactive activities connecting art and science. This is the third consecutive year the Science Center is partnering with the Philadelphia Science Festival to present the program, which will take place at Innovation Plaza, 37th and Market Streets. Participants and their families will engage in hands-on activities inspired by the innovators honored along the Science Centers Innovators Walk of Fame. One activity involves experimenting with flavor while learning about chef and restauranteur Michael Solomonov. Attendees will also create and test mini aircraft designs in the spirit of helicopter engineer Frank Piasecki, and discover the six female programmers behind ENIAC, the worlds first digital computer, through hands-on coding challenges. Be an Innovator! is modeled off the Science Centers FirstHand program which introduces middle and school students to STEM subjects through hands-on, project based learning. Be an Innovator! is free and open to all ages. In the event of inclement weather, the event will take place at Quorum, 3711 Market Street, 8th Floor, Philadelphia. About the Science Center Located in the heart of uCity Square, the Science Center is a mission-driven nonprofit organization that catalyzes and connects innovation to entrepreneurship and technology commercialization. For 50+ years, the Science Center has supported startups, research, and economic development in the life sciences, healthcare, physical sciences, and emerging technology sectors. As a result, graduate firms and current residents of the Science Centers incubator support one out of every 100 jobs in the Greater Philadelphia region and drive $13 billion in economic activity in the region annually. By providing resources and programming for any stage of a businesss lifecycle, the Science Center helps scientists, entrepreneurs and innovators take their concepts from idea to IPO and beyond. For more information about the Science Center, go to http://www.sciencecenter.org About FirstHand Equal parts Science, Technology, Engineering, Arts and Math, FirstHand provides Philadelphias curious minds access to the knowledge and resources of the Science Center, the nations oldest and largest urban research park. FirstHand programming serves local youth from under-resourced schools and the teachers and professionals from their communities. FirstHand aims to spark an interest in the STEAM disciplines for students to explore and cultivate, now and throughout their lives. To learn more: http://www.firsthandphilly.org Dr. Gilbert Mottla of SGF's Annapolis, MD office I feel very proud that I was part of the effort to change policy. Our collaborative efforts will hopefully soon allow patients who are faced with a cancer diagnosis to preserve their fertility without having to incur the costs associated. Shady Grove Fertilitys (SGF) Drs. Gilbert Mottla, from the SGF Annapolis, MD office and Stephanie Beall, from the SGF Columbia and Towson offices, testified to the Maryland Senate and House of Delegates on behalf of patients with cancer and played a vital role in helping to pass new legislation in the state of Maryland that covers fertility preservation for patients facing cancer treatment. This bill will require companies to cover sperm and egg freezing for those people with a cancer diagnosis who want to preserve their fertility. Maryland was the first state in the nation to enact infertility insurance legislation and, with the Governors signature, would be one of only a few states that also covers fertility preservation prior to cancer treatment. I feel very proud that I was part of the effort to change policy. Our collaborative efforts will hopefully soon allow patients who are faced with a cancer diagnosis to preserve their fertility without having to incur the costs associated. Its our hope that one day soon, Maryland residents wont have to choose between an important cancer treatment and their future chance to start a family, says Dr. Mottla. SGF has a specially trained team devoted specifically with people with cancer. The practice works directly with a patients oncology team to ensure they expedite fertility preservation so that cancer treatment is not delayed. Known as the SGF Oncofertility Team, this team helps guide each patient through every step of the treatment process. Due to the time sensitivity with treatment, patients can expect an expedited treatment plan and to see a physician for consultation almost immediately. Over the last 26 years, SGF physicians and staff have advocated for a variety of legislation, both on the state and federal level that would help to ease the cost burden and increase access to fertility treatment options. Dr. Mottla has played an active role in advocating for improving infertility policy by testifying in front of both state and national legislators, with his most recent support for our nations injured veterans. His commitment to helping expand coverage for wounded veterans paid off when Congressional support was given to provide in vitro fertilization (IVF) services through the U.S. Department of Veterans Affairs. Advocates for this bill encourage residents of Maryland to send this letter to Governor Hogan and call him at (410) 974-3901 to ask that he sign SB 271/HB 908 into law. Next month, SGF physicians and staff will continue to advocate on Capitol Hill at the 2018 Advocacy Day to raise awareness among members of Congress about the prevalence of infertility in this country and the need for increased insurance coverage and benefits that allow for more family building resources. To learn more about planning for pregnancy prior to a cancer treatment and how SGF advocates for not just their patients but all patients who face infertility, visit their website for more information. About Shady Grove Fertility (SGF) SGF is a leading fertility and IVF center of excellence with 50,000 babies born and counting. With 42 physicians and 29 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. First self-paced module, HRCI Workforce Analytics upSkill, now available for HR and non-HR professionals. HR Certification Institute (HRCI) today announced HRCI upSkill, a revolutionary suite of on-demand learning and assessment modules to raise the bar on the talent management capabilities of global business professionals -- both HR and non-HR -- who have responsibility for creating high-performing employees, teams and organizations. HRCI upSkill will tackle specific people-management challenges faced by global professionals and organizations today. Modules, which can be completed at your own pace, will offer professionals affordable and flexible ways to learn and be recognized for the skills and knowledge needed to help organizations avoid risks, optimize performance, engage employees and enhance business outcomes. Learning for the Way People and Organizations Work "When people management succeeds, organizations succeed," said HRCI CEO Amy Dufrane, Ed.D., SPHR, CAE. "HRCI upSkill fills an important need for continuous learning and assessment to keep pace with the speed of the global workforce. It helps develop and recognize professionals who can unlock the full potential of people and teams to drive business success." "With HRCI upSkill, no dress code is required," said Dania Eter, MBA, Chief of Global Certification Products for HRCI. "HRCI dedication to quality and rigor does not stop with our certifications. The HRCI upSkill suite is built with high quality and integrity." Each HRCI upSkill module allows you to learn at your own pace, at any time and on any device. Modules will include visual, audio and click-to-reveal cues to assist learning. "You will be able to start, stop and pick up where you left off," Eter added. "It's learning -- and recognition -- for the way you work and live." The first HRCI upSkill module is now available. HRCI Workforce Analytics upSkill is focused on applying data analytics to make better management and business decisions. Professionals who successfully complete the learning and assessment components (an assessment-only option is also available) can confidently add, "HRCI Workforce Analytics upSkill" to their list of recognized abilities and achievements. HRCI Workforce Analytics upSkill and future modules will be sold separately from the HRCI suite of certifications, the world's most recognized marks of excellence in the HR and talent management field. All HRCI upSkill modules will be available to HRCI-certified and non-certified professionals, as well as HR and non-HR professionals. There is no prerequisite for experience or education. HRCI-certified professionals who successfully complete modules can earn professional development credits that may be applied to meet recertification requirements. "HRCI upSkill will help align HR practices with team goals and organizational goals with HR-driven business objectives," Dufrane said. "This is a powerful way to integrate HR and day-to-day people management." Please visit the HRCI upSkill webpage for more information. About HRCI HR Certification Institute (HRCI) helps people and organizations excel. Founded on a more than 40-year commitment to preeminent learning and assessment, HR certifications demonstrate that HR and non-HR professionals have the foundational (aPHR), aPHRi), HR professional (PHR, PHRca, PHRi) and HR strategic (SPHR), SPHRi, GPHR) competencies needed to lead talent and businesses worldwide. HRCI upSkill provides on-demand, self-paced learning through a unique online platform and recognizes professional excellence to apply the newest in people management practices to reduce risk, engage employees and drive business results. Learn more at http://www.hrci.org. Graham Livingstone, Head of Sales Its a privilege to join a company who is fundamentally paving the future path of skill assessment and testing, and aggressively moving forward. TrueAbility, the platform to deliver performance-based assessment solutions for todays digital workforce, today announced the appointment of Graham Livingstone as Head of Sales. With more than 20+ years of experience in executive management and sales roles in the technology sector, Mr. Livingstone will oversee growth strategy efforts, including bringing the full capability of the TrueAbility platform to the certification, training and talent assessment markets. As forward-thinking organizations from around the world move to advance how they facilitate skill assessment, TrueAbility delivers the only platform that provides the ability and confidence to definitively assess and qualify real-world skillset and expertise. This is a time of enormous opportunity for our company, and Grahams experience combined with our shared values make him an excellent addition to our team. With Graham leading our sales initiatives, we can focus on accelerating the expansion of our channel ecosystem and solution portfolio to better meet the needs of customers and ensure excellence in everything we do, said Frederick Suizo Mendler, CEO, TrueAbility. Mr. Livingstone has held sales and director positions at several technology and e-commerce companies in the U.S. and UK. He most recently served as North America Sales DirectorSMB and Midmarket at CogecoPeer1 US where he was instrumental in transitioning the Peer1 UK brand to CogecoPeer1 US, managing over $30 million in incremental MRR for new product lines. Prior to CogecoPeer1 US, Mr. Livingstone was sought by organizations to dramatically impact the bottom line by growing revenues while reducing costs to enable investment or acquisition. Mr. Livingstones past roles include CEO of IT Consulting company Cheriton Computers where he grew revenues across EMEA. Mr. Livingstone also held Sales Leader and Channel Management positions at Unilink Solutions, Tempest Computer Software Limited, Protocol Solutions and Avnet Technology Solutions. Its a privilege to join a company who is fundamentally paving the future path of skill assessment and testing, and aggressively moving forward, said Graham Livingstone. I am thrilled to have the opportunity to work with TrueAbilitys dedicated executive management and sales teams to deliver the best performance-based assessment solution to our current customers, while expanding our customer roster worldwide. I look forward to being part of the continued success of the company." TrueAbility is the only fully-managed, performance-based assessment platform operating in a cloud environment that puts test candidates in a real world working scenario to demonstrate hands-on skill. Visit TrueAbility to learn more about performance-based assessment offerings. About TrueAbility TrueAbility is an advanced platform for delivering Performance-based Assessment solutions for todays Digital Workforce. Important to the classroom and workplace, TrueAbility provides the solutions built upon scalable performance-based technology bridging the gap for both end-users and the entities measuring their skill by providing the most accurate and comprehensive environment to learn or demonstrate skillsets. Performance-based assessment captures more educational objectives than any other assessment method alone. TrueAbilitys platform combines this innovation with traditional assessment methods and a menu of features to create the most optimal assessment capability available today. Today, data scientists, actuaries, lawyers, developers, engineers, technologists, and others prove themselves on the TrueAbility platform. Founded in 2012, TrueAbility is privately held and headquartered in San Antonio, Texas. For more information, please visit http://www.trueability.com. Media Contact: Wendy Gratereaux Director of Marketing, TrueAbility wendy(at)trueability(dot)com 210-624-7500 https://www.linkedin.com/company/2713403/ https://www.facebook.com/TrueAbilityInc/ https://twitter.com/TrueAbility Screen Shot 2018-02-20 at 1.33.08 PM.png Opportunities for Positive Growth (OPG) one of Indianas most successful providers of services for people with disabilities, announced today, a timeline for the seamless transition of leadership for the organization. The Board of Directors for Opportunities for Positive Growth announced on February 26 the successful completion of a multiyear succession plan. Gail Kahl, CEO, who founded this human services agency in 1998 and Dan Kahl, COO, who joined the organization in 2002, submitted their notices of retirement to be effective on April 1, 2019. Two current OPG employees will assume the top leadership roles after the transition period is complete. Andrea Schwartz will transition from her current role as Chief Strategy Officer into the Chief Executor Officer-Elect role assuming the duties of the COO as well. In addition, Dr. Lucy Lund will transition from Executive Director of Self Directed Services into the Chief Strategy Officer-Elect role. Gail Kahl and Dan Kahl will remain on the Board of Directors following their official last day of employment with OPG. The time is right for us to move on, said Gail Kahl, who started OPG as a one-person operation based in suburban Indianapolis that has served peoples needs in their homes and in the community. Andrea and Lucy will keep the mission of the organization alive and well through their experience and leadership. With approximately a year to go until the torch is passed, all parties believe the transfer of leadership will be smooth and without many challenges. I cant fully express how excited I am to transition into this important role, said Schwartz who has a B.S. in Business with a Finance and Economics major from Indiana University. Since joining OPG in 2016 it has been an honor to be a part of the company Gail has built. Its an even greater honor to succeed her. Schwartz said that assuming leadership is bittersweet. Not having Gail and Dan around every day is going to be strange because they have been the face of this organization, she said. But I think we have the pieces in place to make this transition smooth. Whether or not she is here every day, Gail will continue to be my mentor. Dr. Lund, who has been with OPG for seven years, holds masters degrees from the University of North Dakota and Lewis University along with a Ph.D. in public policy and administration from Walden University, said she is thrilled to bring her experience to an enhanced role with OPG. I have had the distinct pleasure of working with Gail and Dan and I am humbled to work to continue their legacy, said Lund. Since day one I have been in awe of Gail as someone who always puts people first. Gail Kahl and Dan Kahl began the succession planning process in 2010 when they sold 100% of their stock to the employees of OPG via an Employee Stock Ownership Plan (ESOP). Our planning into retirement was taken seriously in respect to our employees, business partners, and numerous people and families we have known for the past 20 years, said Gail. We wanted to ensure that OPG exists way past our retirement and we trust our employee-owners, leaders and board members to keep our mission, vision and values the central focus of every day. About Opportunities for Positive Growth Opportunities for Positive Growth, Inc. is a human services agency whose mission is to inspire people in the pursuit of a rewarding life. Through self-directed services, behavior supports, employment services and music therapy, Opportunities for Positive Growth focuses on a persons skill development to improve his or her quality of life. Opportunities for Positive Growth serves more than 1000 individuals and their families in Indianapolis, Lafayette, Kokomo, Ft Wayne, Marion, Merrillville and the surrounding communities. OPG, Inc. is nationally accredited by the Council on Quality and Leadership at the highest level being Person-Centered Excellence with Distinction. As a national leader in Shared Values defined that people who receive OPG's services determine the design of the supports and how best to use resources. Our culture is one of collaboration, excellence and innovation. It has been chosen by The Indianapolis Star as a Top Work Place in 2009, 2010, 2011, 2012, 2013, 2014, 2015, and 2017. For more information go to http://www.opgrowth.com/ Physician leadership undoubtedly improves health care, and supporting physicians in harnessing and leveraging it is what the American Association for Physician Leadership does best. Physician leadership undoubtedly improves health care, and supporting physicians in harnessing and leveraging it is what the American Association for Physician Leadership does best. This year marks the 20th anniversary of certifying physician leaders around the world. The Certified Physician Executive credential, or CPE, is the industry standard for physicians who have achieved superior levels of professional excellence and management education while also demonstrating effective health care industry knowledge and leadership skills. The association hosts a celebration at the 2018 Physician Leadership Summit on April 28, 2018, at the Boston Sheraton. To support the continued education of aspiring and current physician leaders, the association will feature expert panels, presentations and executive and seasoned-leader sessions during the 2018 Physician Leadership Summit in Boston April 26-30. A portion of the Summit, called the Thought Leadership Symposium, will include discussions of: Physician wellness and burnout prevention Opioid epidemic solutions Population health Industry innovation and disruptions, including workforce disruptions, disaster preparedness, financial disruption (mergers and acquisitions) and IT disruptions Physicians are natural stewards of the clinical delivery enterprise and the primary managers of health for populations, which makes them best-suited to lead adaptive initiatives, innovative strategies and novel campaigns designed to improve and manage the inevitable changes that await our health care systems, said Peter Angood, MD, president and CEO of the American Association for Physician Leadership. Highlights of the Summit: Beyond Burnout and Resilience - Discover the varied approaches to personal and professional transformation and how to cultivate a culture of wellness in your health system. Perspectives: Proven Solutions for the Opioid Epidemic - Discover results from a Colorado Hospital Association opioid test pilot and get perspectives from lead physicians, pharmacists, a health system CEO and a former substance abuse patient. The Economics of Health Care and Unexpected Events - Get high-level insights from seasoned leaders on how to prepare for and manage workforce, industry, disaster and financial disruptions. Healthy Nevada Project: Leading Population-Based Genetic Testing to Improve Community Health - Learn how Desert Research Institute and Renown Health are improving health outcomes and changing a citys health ranking. Assessing Your Value Proposition as a Female Physician Leader - Female physicians will learn how to identify their strengths and construct a purposeful leadership journey, featuring Cleveland Clinics Dr. Margaret McKenzie. More than 20 peer-led presentations - Learn best practices from the associations leading physicians, who are tackling a range of issues from physician engagement to value-based care. Spring Institute courses - Physicians can choose from a selection of actionable education applicable to todays complex health care management environment, while interacting and networking with like-minded professionals. Courses available for CME* include quality, performance, finance and more. To learn more about the associations Summit, visit physicianleaders.org/summit. Registration is underway and walk-up registration is available on-site. About the American Association for Physician Leadership The American Association for Physician Leadership is the only professional organization dedicated to providing education, career support and advocacy to support physician leaders as they create transformative solutions within the rapidly evolving field of health care. Founded in 1975, the nonprofit association has educated thousands of physicians worldwide and has members in 46 countries at varying stages of their careers. The association is known for its award-winning magazine, the Physician Leadership Journal, its continuing medical education (CME) courses, and its Certified Physician Executive (CPE) certification program. Based in Tampa, Florida, the association is accredited by the Accreditation Council for Continuing Medical Education (ACCME) to provide continuing education credits, and by the Certifying Commission in Medical Management to award CPE certification. Learn more online at physicianleaders.org, by email at info(at)physicianleaders(dot)org, or call 800-562-8088. *Accreditation: The American Association for Physician Leadership is accredited by the Accreditation Council for Continuing Medical Education (ACCME) to provide continuing medical education for physicians. The activities listed above have been approved for AMA PRA Category 1 Credit. Key Data Dashboard Vacation rental managers are using our software to spend less time pulling reports and more time making informed revenue decisions. Key Data Dashboard, formerly known as VRM Dashboard, a leading developer of data visualization and comparison software for vacation rental managers, today announced a $2.4 million Series A round led by leading vacation rental companies and investors specializing in early stage ventures. Participating investors include many of the initial investors in Glad to Have You, including leading property management and vacation rental company 360 Blue. The funding will be used to invest in significant market expansion and coincides with the release of the company's new Dashboard interface and data visualization product for vacation rental managers. We are excited to partner with this group of investors to accelerate our vision of becoming the premier provider of data visualization and comparison software for the vacation rental industry, said Jason Sprenkle, co-CEO of Key Data Dashboard. Vacation rental managers are using our software to spend less time pulling reports and more time making informed revenue decisions. Concurrent with the Series A round, founder Amy Hinote is stepping down to focus full time on her growing VRM Intel magazine and brand. About Key Data Dashboard Key Data is the leading provider of data and analytic tools for the vacation rental space. Its Dashboard product is designed to save vacation rental companies hours of pulling various data sources together, seamlessly providing one trusted place for instant visualization of core KPI's, as well as anonymized comparative views of the local, regional & industry competitive data sets. Vacation rental companies can now spend less time pulling reports, and more time making informed revenue decisions. Liaison International today announced details about its upcoming Technology Enabled Learning: A BusinessCAS Symposium. The event will take place at Philadelphias The Franklin Institute on Thursday, April 26th from 4-6 PM. From 4-5 PM, Dan Alig, CIO at the Wharton School of the University of Pennsylvania, will lead a talk about how technology has changed graduate management education (GME) at Wharton, and what he predicts current trends mean for the future of the industry. After Dans talk, BusinessCAS will host a short reception and networking event. Some of the technology projects that were experimental when we launched them several years ago are now an integral part of how faculty teach and students learn at Wharton. Im excited for this opportunity to highlight what weve learned along the way, and I look forward to this opportunity to spend face-to-face time with my colleagues at business schools across the region, shared Dan Alig. Opportunities like these are exactly why I joined the BusinessCAS team to bring the right people to the table so that we can guide GME forward, shared Bob Alig, the current strategic consultant for BusinessCAS. Throughout Bobs career, he has worked with such organizations as GMAC and The College Board, in addition to directing MBA admissions and financial aid at the Wharton School as well. Bob continued: When I was Director of Admissions, I sought opportunities to hear those in my field speak about this very topic. Attending symposiums kept me up to date on the topics that affected my day-to-day work, and they offered invaluable opportunities for me to network with colleagues with similar goals and challenges. I am honored to be in the position to host such a symposium and look forward to connecting with the attendees. Seating is limited, so register for Technology Enabled Learning: A BusinessCAS Symposium today. The FEIN Cordless magnetic base drill (AJMU137PMQW) The newest, smallest and most universal cordless compact magnetic base drill on the market today. FEIN proudly presents the Cordless FEIN AJMU137PMQW as the latest addition to the universal performance class: a highly versatile cordless mag base drill. It was developed to serve both the mobile work environment as well as the fabrication shop. FEIN proudly introduces the newest, smallest and most universal cordless compact magnetic base drill on the market today. With a drilling capacity of up to 1 3/8 in diameter and 2 drilling depth, this drill leaves the competition in the dust. A few of the features of the Slugger by FEIN (AJMU137PMQW) include: The German brushless PowerDrive motor with tacho electronics, which allows for faster projects New FEIN HighPower storage battery featuring cells with high current capability for longer run time Compact weighted design at 28.2 pounds allows for more mobility in a magnetic base drill The most universal cordless magnetic base drill on the market This highly versatile FEIN AJMU137PMQW magnetic base cordless drill provides metalworkers with drilling capacities of up to 1 3/8 diameter, can twist drill holes of 5/8 and has a tapping capacity of up to 35/64. It also excels at countersinking and reaming. Due to forward/reverse running and the six electronic speed settings, the Slugger by FEINs speed can be adapted to any application. With speeds starting at 130 rpm, threads can also be produced economically without an additional tapping tool. Fitted with a double drill motor guide, the cordless magnetic base drill covers a huge stroke range of 10 15/64. An MT2 interface makes the drill compatible with typical tools such as twist drills, countersinks and annular cutters. The brushless FEIN PowerDrive motor with tacho electronics delivers a high torque and has a high overload capacity. FEIN developed the new HighPower storage battery using cells with high current capability specifically for power tools with very high performance levels. The 18 V storage battery with 5.2 Ah delivers a current rating 75-percent higher than FEIN Li-ion batteries for continually good work progress with high speed stability. It can also produce 40 percent more holes with one battery charge and is the lightest storage battery in its class. The FEIN SafetyCell technology protects the battery and tool from overload, overheating and total discharge. Weighing just 28.2 pounds, the FEIN AJMU137PMQW is the lightest cordless magnetic core drill on the market for hole diameters of up to 1 3/8. Due to its compact design, it is particularly suited to drilling holes in previously fitted steel and metal constructions. The permanent magnet with a holding force of 2000 pounds has a particularly narrow and lightweight design. It can be used in vertical and overhead working conditions and helps the user to carefully position the tool properly. The permanent magnet feature holds the tool when the voltage source is lost (i.e. if the storage battery is flat). A convenient holding force display shows that the conditions for safe mag base drilling are in place. On level and clean surfaces, the FEIN AJMU137PMQW can be used on minimum thickness steel plate of 5/16 or greater. A tilt sensor integrated in the drill detects when the tool is slipping and stops the drill spindle immediately. Another special feature from FEIN is the design of the motor cable protection hose. The motor cable is positioned centrally and swivel-mounted, preventing it from snagging or getting caught. All the mag base drills controls are positioned in the users direct field of vision. The FEIN AJMU137PMQW is available with the tool-free FEIN QuickIN straight shank fitting, two FEIN HighPower storage batteries and a charger. FEIN mag drills and accessories are available from specialist dealers. To find your nearest dealer, go to: https://fein.com/en_us/drilling/magnetic-base-drilling/ The Company: Wilhelm Emil Fein founded C. & E. Fein GmbH in 1867. In 1895, FEIN invented the electric hand drill, the first-ever power tool. Today, the long-standing company is a power tool manufacturer known the world over. The German manufacturer of premium products is a specialist in durable power tools for machining metal, wood and composite materials. It focuses on industry-specific application solutions for manual trades and industry. FEIN holds more than 800 active industrial property rights, including around 500 patents and patent applications. FEIN markets its products through more than 16 international subsidiaries and over 50 representations. For 150 years, FEIN has been synonymous with premium quality and modern developments and will continue to do so in the future. https://www.feinus.com The FEIN Cordless magnetic base drill (AJMU137PMQW) will be available from FEIN retailers May 2018. Press contact: Tracy Nedzesky FEIN Power Tools Inc. 1000 Omega Drive Suite 1180 Pittsburgh, PA 15205 Phone E-mail tracy.nedzesky(at)feinus(dot)com Leading financial technology company, Payscape, announces Kelly Schmidt as the most recent graduate from the Manager Candidate Program. She will now assume her role as Sales Development Leader in the St. Louis market. As the newest manager of the St. Louis market, Schimdt will be responsible for growing a team of local talent with the goal of helping St. Louis businesses streamline their cash flow and improve their revenue potential. Her team of Sales Executives will consult on Financial Technology and Merchant Services. Schmidt believes that Payscape will be able to further the impact in St. Louis and the surrounding areas. I have spent the last twelve weeks growing my leadership, recruiting, and sales skills, and I am honored to have the opportunity to continue to build a successful sales team in St. Louis, said Schmidt. I can see the support, dedication, and entrepreneurial attitude that is within the individuals at Payscape and know that there are several levels of success left to achieve After receiving her degree from The University of Wisconsin- Stevens Point, Schmidt quickly moved into the payments industry. She has garnered more than 14 years of experience, with her most recent accomplishment before joining Payscape by being able to save her clients 20 - 80 percent of their processing fees and rates. Schmidt has proven with her past experience and over the last twelve weeks how successful she can be and we are confident that she is the key to growing and making Payscapes presence known in the St. Louis area, says, President, Brady Harris. For more information on Payscapes Manager Candidate Program, or to apply for an open position at our St. Louis office, please visit: payscape.com/careers About Payscape Founded in 2004, Payscape is a leading integrated financial technology provider dedicated to making it simple for business owners to collect money. They are a team of inspired entrepreneurs intent on disrupting the commoditized payment landscape with cutting-edge products and services, universal API integration, best-in-class customer service, strategic referral and technology partnerships and a lifelong devotion to helping small to mid-size business owners increase cash flow. Learn more about the company at http://www.payscape.com and subscribe to fintech updates @Payscape. Lays products are made with natural, nourishing ingredients, bringing a rich history of alternative medicine from South Africa to America as the company continues its global expansion and reach. Our products are great for anyone trying to find skincare and hair care alternatives. We offer the best of South African beauty products in an FDA-approved package. Our labeling is transparent so consumers know exactly which plants and natural compounds they are putting on their skin and hair. Marshalls Traditional Health Care, producers of natural cosmetics and pain relief products, has its line of Lays holistic beauty care products made to moisturize and hydrate skin, body and hair, coming soon to beauty and cosmetics retail site CompleteBeautyStore.com. The line of Lays products are made with natural, nourishing ingredients, bringing a rich history of alternative medicine from South Africa to America as the company continues its global expansion and reach. CompleteBeautyStore.com will receive Lays Tissue Oil Spray, Lays Hair Oil Spray and Lays Olive Oil and Lanolin Lotion. Marshalls Traditional Health Care customers have spread our products all over the globe, Marshalls CEO Vick Maharaj said. Of course, flying to South Africa to buy pain relievers and cosmetics is not an option. So our next step is to bring our products to you, all over the world, so they are readily accessible. NPIBeauty.com helps us with these efforts, providing products to American consumers, many of whom shop online these days. Lays Tissue Oil, which contains grape seed, jojoba, lanolin, lavender and vitamin E oils, and, and is traditionally used to revitalize the skin with a hint of French perfume. Lays Tissue Oil is safe to use during pregnancy, and helps with the appearance of scars, stretch marks, blemishes, wrinkles, dry and flaky skin, and it helps sooth sunburns. Lays Hair Oil is a hair treatment made from argan, rosemary, coconut, lavender, jojoba, almond and bergamot oils. It is generally used to hydrate and moisturize dull hair, prevent excessive hair loss, stimulate hair growth, reduce frizz, treat split ends, strengthen hair and boost shine. The Lays Lanolin & Olive Oil lotion is non-allergenic and fragrance free. It soothes, softens and heals dry, flaky problem skin, while moisturizing and protecting. Our products are great for anyone trying to find skincare and hair care alternatives, Maharaj said. We offer the best of South African beauty products in an FDA-approved package. Our labeling is transparent so consumers know exactly which plants and natural compounds they are putting on their skin and hair. You should know what you put on your body from head to toe. There are no side effects with our clean, natural products. Marshall Chemicals was founded in South Africa in the 1930s. Marshalls Traditional Healthcare is the product of merging two companies, Marshall Chemicals and Traditional Sales and Distributors. Today, Marshalls carries on its tradition of producing pharmaceutical products, modernizing itself by way of building advanced production facilities in Johannesburg to help meet FDA and other national guidelines necessary for distribution into the U.S and around the world. Marshalls Traditional Healthcare products are suitable for a wide variety of people, including men and women of all ages. For more information on Marshalls Traditional Health Care and its Lays Beauty line, coming soon to http://www.completebeautystore.com, visit http://www.lays-beauty.com. Sterling Caviar is the nation's leading farm-raised caviar producer. At Sterling's Sacramento-based farm, 100% of its effluent water is utilized by The Natomas Basin Conservancy - a habitat for Swainson's Hawk and other threatened plants and animals. At Sterling Caviar the Sacramento-based pioneer of farm-raised white sturgeon caviar Earth Day is more than an annual occurrence; its founding principle of sustainability is an everyday mindset as well as the company's foundation. Since its humble beginning more than 30 years ago, Sterling has been sourcing their prized caviar from farmed white sturgeon (Acipenser Transmontanus) one of the more than twenty-five species of sturgeon present in the world. Not coincidentally, white sturgeon is native to North Americas west coast and, today, is one of the few species of sturgeon not listed as threatened or endangered on state, federal, and global listings. Selecting this species was a conscious decision on the part of the company at the time, says Camron King, current President, Sterling Caviar. From an environmentally responsible standpoint, it was the right thing to do. Economically, it made sense. Between 1987 and 1994, under the California Department of Fish and Wildlife broodstock collection permits, Sterling collected a relatively small number of native male and female white sturgeon from the surrounding Sacramento Delta with the purpose of developing its own stock. After breeding, these sturgeon were released back into the wild. Today, all white sturgeon which are harvested for Sterlings caviar are farm-raised entirely in controlled environments by a committed staff of fish biologists and aquaculture specialists. With four farms, its no surprise that Sterling is dependent on the quality and availability of water a resource that the company does not take for granted, especially given its California location. Sterlings Sacramento-based location provides a prime example of the companys commitment to water stewardship. This farm utilizes complex mechanical and biological filtration systems to pump groundwater through its tanks, disinfecting and reusing the same water up to five times before it is discharged into settling ponds. At Sterlings Sacramento-based farm, 100% of its effluent water is utilized by The Natomas Basin Conservancy which borders the location. The Conservancy serves as an artificially created habitat to threatened animals like Swainsons Hawk and giant garter snake as well as a variety of other plants and animals. Any water not utilized by The Natomas Basin Conservancy is dispersed to surrounding agricultural farmlands. Our business relies heavily on highly-efficient technology systems for everything from water filtration and pumping to feeding and monitoring, explains Bobby Renschler, Vice President of Operations. These are not inexpensive systems to operate but in the end they ensure that we make the best use of our resources as well as provide us the tools to make excellent caviar. No less important to Sterlings viability are its employees a demographically diverse group of 30-50 individuals, including fish biologists, skilled aquaculturalists, and MBAs. Focused on retention and engagement, Sterling offers its permanent full- and part-time employees a competitive benefits package which includes vacation, sick time, dental, vision, a 401k plan with employee contribution/company match, and health plan options for both HMO or PPO plans, the premiums of which are paid by the company at 100%. As an added value to their health plan, Sterling offers its employees the option of creating a Health Savings Account (HSA), matching their employees monthly contributions at 100%. We truly believe that our employees are our most valuable assets, says King. And as our most valuable assets, we need to protect and nurture them; in essence, take care of the people who take care of us. In addition to a generous benefits package, Sterling provides its employees with regular opportunities for educational advancement as well as safety training. To learn more about Sterling Caviar or to purchase, visit http://www.sterlingcaviar.com. About Sterling Caviar Located in Californias farm-to-fork capital of Sacramento, Sterling Caviar is Americas pioneer on sustainable sturgeon farming and sturgeon caviar production, and is the nations leading producer, supplying the majority of its domestic caviar production annually. Consistently recognized for its sustainable farming practices and long-term protection of the species, Sterlings caviar is exclusively produced from white sturgeon (Acipenser Transmontanus) a species native to North Americas west coast. From hatching to maturity, its sturgeon are farm-raised entirely in controlled environments by a committed staff of fish biologists and specialists. Sterling Caviar offers four premium grades of caviar Classic, Royal, Supreme, and Imperial in tin sizes ranging from 30g to 1000g. Until recently, much of Sterlings caviar was designated for repackaging and distribution through one of the worlds largest and most premier caviar houses. Today, Sterlings caviar is distributed directly, its high quality quickly making it a favorite among some of the countrys finest restaurants and resorts. For more information about Sterling Caviar or to purchase, visit http://www.sterlingcaviar.com. Achieving marketing objectives through applying digital technologies and media. KO Websites Inc. received a top rating from the online marketing services review site Clutch in five categories that support the business success of Bay Area clients. Clutch is an independent review site that does not accept payment for their analysis, KO Websites Inc is very excited to have been selected as a top agency by them, for the following marketing services: DIGITAL MARKETING Digital Marketing encompasses all the digital channels through which a business reaches consumers in 2018. Here is the shortest definition we have found, from Dave Chaffeys book Digital Marketing: Strategy, Implementation and Practice: Achieving marketing objectives through applying digital technologies and media. As a Digital Marketing Agency, KO Websites manages all forms of their clients online presence. This includes websites, mobile apps and social media company pages, search engine marketing, social media marketing, online advertising, and e-mail marketing. Borrowing a few definitions from an article on Smart Insights, here are the basic segments of digital marketing: Digital devices Customers interact with businesses through their websites and mobile apps, via a mix of smartphones, tablets, desktop computers, TVs and gaming devices. Digital platforms Interactions travel through a browser or apps from platforms like Facebook/Instagram, Google/YouTube, Bing, Yahoo, Twitter and LinkedIn. Digital media The communication channels through which audiences find and engage businesses: Online advertising, paid search, SEO, email and messaging, and social networks. Digital data Tracking, evaluating and acting on campaign results Digital technology The tools businesses and their agencies use to implement marketing programming. SEO SERVICES Search engine optimization is a program of strategies, techniques and tactics which work together to increase the number of visitors your website receives as a result of a high-ranking placement in Google, Bing, Yahoo or other search results pages (SERPs). An SEO program includes both on-page and off-page techniques, and requires technical expertise and strong content strategies. PPC AGENCY KO Websites is an award-winning PPC Agency. They are a Google Partner, and manage AdWords, Facebook, Yelp and other online ad campaigns for their clients. PPC stands for pay-per-click, a marketing tool in which advertisers pay a fee each time one of their ads is clicked. You are buying visits to your site, rather than earning site visits organically using SEO strategies. Search engine marketing (SEM) is a popular form of PPC, most widely used through Google AdWords. INBOUND MARKETING KO Websites Inc. supports their clients inbound marketing goals by creating and executing content marketing campaigns that raise the clients online profile. Prospective customers find the content, and are compelled to contact the company by the quality and utility of what they see and read. Content includes articles, blog posts, press releases and other formats, delivered through social channels and by aggressive SEO techniques. The goal is to raise organic search traffic flow to the clients website, where content also works to move the prospect through the sales funnel successfully. SOCIAL MEDIA MARKETING KO Websites manages client social media properties, creating, posting and distributing compelling content to make the client both more attractive and more widely seen online. Social Media Marketing is usually performed in tandem with broader inbound marketing and SEO programming. ABOUT CLUTCH Clutch is a B2B research, ratings, and reviews firm in the heart of Washington, DC. We connect small and mid-market businesses with the best-fit marketing, advertising, design, development, and IT companies, consultants, or software. Clutch interviews real clients, collects data, and compares competitors to help businesses find firms for their projects. ABOUT KO WEBSITES, A TOP BAY AREA DIGITAL MARKETING AGENCY If you want to dramatically improve the results you get from all your digital business properties, work with KO Websites, one of the Bay Areas premier Digital Marketing agencies. Make your website, social channels, and content all work more effectively in driving more business your way, significantly improving your bottom line. With 40 million Americans caring for a family member with challenges, we designed these three podcasts to be helpful, informative and offer real life advice on-the-go, said Adam Goldberg, CEO and founder of Torchlight. Torchlight, the only digitally powered, employee family caregiver benefit solution for the full age continuum, announced today the company is now producing three separate, publicly available podcast channels that support parents, family members, employees and employers grappling with children with emotional or education needs, and elderly family members and the complexities that arise. All three podcasts are available on iTunes and Spreaker. Stephanie Boucher, a trained editor and journalist, is the host of The Exceptional Parenting Podcast, which releases new episodes the second and fourth Tuesday of each month. This podcast hosts the nations top experts about todays toughest parenting challenges. Each episode offers practical, easy-to-use solutions that can help parents solve challenging issues. Boucher has been crafting and sharing educational content for over 15 years with organizations such as Pearson Education, The Worcester Telegram & Gazette, and BabyFirst TV. Her specific content areas of expertise include parenting, education, health, and social justice. Five episodes are currently available on demand including: Episode 1: Why aren't you listening to me? Episode 2: Teens, Tweens & Social Media: A Crash Course for Parents, Pt. 1 Episode 3: Teens, Tweens, & Social Media: A Crash Course for Parents, Pt. 2 Episode 4: How to Prevent Substance Abuse Disorders in Teens Episode 5: Why Children Enjoy Violent Play Lenore Tracey, an expert in elder care issues, particularly those surrounding dementia and memory issues, is the host of Eldercare Illuminated, which airs new episodes on the first and third Tuesday of each month. Guests include top eldercare experts, practitioners, and experienced caregivers who can provide practical advice and hands-on tips designed to help simplify a caregivers life while meeting elderly loved ones needs. Tracy, has been consulting and writing about eldercare issues, care for the caregiver, and family dynamics for decades. She has contributed her expertise to long-term care content and website development for several government projects making eldercare information accessible to caregivers and individuals planning for their own futures. Five episodes are available on demand including: Episode 1: Where Should My Loved One Live? Episode 2: Working with Siblings to Coordinate Care Episode 3: Conversations with a Home Health Aide Episode 4: Working with Siblings to Coordinate Care Episode 5: Making Exercise Happen: Tips from a Physical Trainer Attorney Carolyn Romano, Torchlights Vice President of Product, is the host of Corporate Caregiver Conversations which releases new episodes monthly. During the first episode, guest expert Jeff Rosin, Esq. of Constangy, Brooks, Smith & Prophete LLP, discussed what human resources professionals need to know about employee, caregivers and federal and state employment discrimination laws. Upcoming guests include: Harry Margolis, Margolis and Bloom, LLC, planning for life attorneys Elizabeth ODonnell, Working Daughter Drew Holzapfel, ReACT and partner at High Lantern Group With 40 million Americans caring for a family member with challenges, we designed these three podcasts to be helpful, informative and offer real life advice on-the-go, said Adam Goldberg, CEO and founder of Torchlight. From discussing how to prevent substance abuse disorders in teens to guiding employers on how to avoid running afoul of family leave regulations, our goal is to produce educational broadcasts that are helpful to every member of the family including the business family. About Torchlight Torchlight is a pioneer in caregiver benefit solutions, a new approach to managing the costs and complexities of caregiving for employers and employee caregivers. With Torchlight, employers have an ROI-driven model for managing family caregiving -- a $38.2 billion challenge in the US alone -- so that they can be both compassionate and competitive in the labor market where more than one in six employees today is a caregiver at any given time. Based in Boston, the company was founded by caregiving pioneer Adam Goldberg, M.Ed. For more information, contact sales (at) torchlight (dot) care, phone 844-693-3477, or visit Torchlight.care. Logo My discussions will explore the implications of recently enacted medical device regulations and the evolving similarities, differences, and implementation issues with global UDI requirements. USDM Life Sciences, the leading risk management, technological innovation and business process optimization firm for the life sciences and healthcare industries, announces that Jay Crowley will deliver two presentations at the MedTec Europe 2018 event in Stuttgart, Germany, April 18. Presentations: -What: Why start now: A practical approach to kick-starting your MDR/IVDR implementation -When: Wednesday, April 18, 10:00 - 10:45 AM -What: Processes and Steps for managing UDI for the FDA, the EU MDR/IVDR, and other regulators globally -When: Wednesday, April 18, 16:00-16:30 PM -Where: MedTec Europe 2018, Stuttgart, Germany -Who: Jay Crowley, VP of UDI Services and Solutions at USDM Life Sciences Im looking forward to my presentations at MedTec Europe, said Jay Crowley, VP of UDI Services and Solutions at USDM. My discussions will explore the implications of recently enacted medical device regulations and the evolving similarities, differences, and implementation issues with global UDI requirements. Recent legislationEuropean Medical Device and In Vitro Device Regulationswill present numerous remediation and implementation challenges as companies continue to distribute devices in the EU. Crowley will delve into strategies to best address and comply with these complex regulations. He will also highlight new requirements for legacy devices with a valid MDD/AIMD certificate and Class I devices with an expired certificate. Crowley will also address many aspects of the EU introduction of a UDI system for all medical devices. While similar to the US UDI System, the EU UDI System exhibits some significant differences that will pose substantial implementation issues. Beyond the US and EU, Crowley will discuss the potential publication of UDI, or UDI-like, requirements from several other countries in the next 2-5 years. At USDM, Jay Crowley assists medical device manufacturers to achieve regulatory compliance, while focusing on business process and technology solutions to help provide strategic advantage with UDI implementation for the MDR and IVDR. His experience in the field affords him specialized capability to thoroughly unpack the ramifications of new UDI legislation. MedTec Europe 2018 is April 17-19 in Messe Stuttgart, Germany. Jay will also present on the EU MDR during a live online workshop hosted by USDM on Thursday, April 26, 2018 at 11am PT / 2pm ET / 6pm GMT. Register here. About USDM Life Sciences: USDM Life Sciences is a global life science and healthcare services company, providing strategy and compliant technology solutions to regulated industries. If you work in Life Sciences or Healthcare, partnering with USDM Life Sciences makes it easy to accelerate innovation and maximize productivity. USDM Life Sciences only focuses on regulated industries and has built trusted partnerships with the most innovative companies in the world and boasts a staff of industry leading experts in the areas of technology and compliance. Global Blockchain Summit - April 19-20, 2018 - Denver, CO Global Blockchain Summit, the premiere event featuring all things blockchain, hyperledger, distributed ledger, ethereum and fintech, converges upon Aurora, CO this April 19th-20th at The Summit Conference and Event Center, just a short drive from downtown Denver. The featured event at the Summit is the Women In Blockchain panel, which places the events focal point on diversity, equality, and women who are leading in this growing space. The panel will feature female prominent blockchain and distributed ledger experts from all over the globe. Speakers include: ** Carolina Abenante, Founder of NYIAX ** Pamela Norton, Founder and CEO of Borsetta ** Youngsook Park, Co-Chair of the Global ICO Association ** Emily ShapeShift, CMO of ShapeShift AG ** Nina Nichols, Founder of Global Women in Blockchain ** Lindsey Galloway, CMO, Rebel AI ** Kristen Ragusin, Founder, Jai Bolo Project The 2018 Global Blockchain Summit is sponsored in part by Savvy Technologies, Esprezzo, Dash, Decent, Husch Blackwell, Colorado Blockchain Capital and many more. Media partners include BTC Media, the first dedicated media outlet for digital currency and publisher of Bitcoin Magazine, Distributed.com and yBitcoin.com, and Cast Influence's InfluenceNow Podcast, the official podcast of the Summit. Summit Details: Thursday April 19, 2018 - Friday, April 20, 2018 The Summit Conference and Event Center 411 Sable Blvd. N. Aurora, CO 80011 Google Map Panel Details: Friday, April 20th, 10:00 AM - 10:40 AM The Women In Blockchain Panel will be in Genesis Room at The Summit Conference and Event Center. Tickets Tickets to Global Blockchain Summit are $799 for both days and $499 for one day. Students and government officials can purchase two day passes for $499 total. Attendance is limited to 400 people. To register with a $50 discount, visit https://globalblockchainsummit.com/press and use code PR. For sponsorship information, please contact info@globalblockchainsummit.com. About Global Blockchain Summit Global Blockchain Summit is a gathering of experts from every corner of the world to share knowledge and insights about blockchain, the advanced technology that is changing how the world interacts in the global economy. Taking a deeper dive- beyond cryptocurrencies and ICOs, distributed ledger technology supports initiatives that enable people to have more direct control over their identity, assets, accounts, and online interactions. The Global Blockchain Summit is a conference that aims to encourage meaningful interactions between speakers, experts, participants, and entrepreneurs. For more information, please visit https://globalblockchainsummit.com/ or follow us on Twitter @gblockchain1. We couldn't be prouder of this award because it means that every client has found our work to be exceptional. Angie's List granted its Super Service Award (SSA) 2017 to Sir Grout Northern New Jersey for exemplary customer service. Each year, Angie's List recognizes the hard work of top-notch service professionals who receive a majority of excellent ratings and reviews from users. This website uses unique tools and support that enhance the search for professional services for both consumers and providers. Over two decades of experience, 700 service categories, and more than ten million verified reviews make this online directory one of the best sources of information about home service providers in America. All Angie's List Super Service Award 2017 winners have achieved "A" ratings in overall grade, recent grade and review period grade, in addition to meeting eligibility requirements and passing a background check. The most important factor to consider for the award is a high number of excellent customer reviews, ratings, and testimonials. Angie Hicks, the website founder, acknowledges that "Very few companies can hold up the standards that can make them deserve of Angie's List Super Service Awards." She insisted that "only the very best companies are able to stand out among all other professionals" and assured that the award is intended to be a motivation for all home improvement professionals to continue doing impeccable work. Over the years, Sir Grout Northern New Jersey has made a name in the field of hard surface restoration with a growing number of clients who have expressed their satisfaction for the insuperable service they offer through highly trained experts and professional methods for the renovation and maintenance of a wide range of hard surfaces, from natural stone to tile. Two previous Super Service Awards (2015, 2016) show Sir Grout Northern New Jersey's excellence. Jeff Miller, the owner, stated: "We couldn't be prouder of this award because it means that every client we have had, has found our work to be exceptional. We work very hard to get customer loyalty. We value positive relationships with clients to propel our business and to achieve that we are committed to improving our standards continuously." He added: "It is not enough to do a good job, it is necessary to go above and beyond." If you are looking for a reliable hard surface restoration service for home or commercial areas, contact Sir Grout Northern New Jersey's team of experts. You can call (201) 571-2424 or visit their website at http://www.sirgroutnorthnj.com. If you see a flatbread pizza that you like you can ask for it to be gluten-free same thing with pasta and sandwiches. Brodo Italian Scratch Kitchen, which offers a modern twist on traditional Italian dining, recently introduced a gluten-free menu. Its a real treat for those who cant enjoy those regular items and now they have that opportunity, said Jane Knauf, owner of Brodo Italian Scratch Kitchen. Gluten-free menu items include pasta, flatbread pizza, and sandwiches, in addition to its regular menu. If you see a flatbread pizza that you like you can ask for it to be gluten-free same thing with pasta and sandwiches, noted Knauf. There is an additional charge when ordering gluten-free. Everything at Brodo Italian Scratch Kitchen is made from scratch at the restaurant. However, gluten-free is not necessarily the restaurants specialty, as far as creating these gluten-free items. That is why we reached out to a local women-owned bakery called Sweet Escape Pastries that specializes in the finest ingredients and beautiful gluten-free bread, pastas and flatbread pizza doughs, concluded Knauf. Because I love to support local businesses and women-owned businesses, this was a perfect fit for us and considering that we take so much pride in the quality of our ingredients, it was lovely to find another business that felt the same way. All Sweet Escape Pastries products are manufactured on its premises. Sweet Escape Pastries is a dedicated and certified gluten-free facility, strictly audited by the Gluten Intolerance Group of North America. About Brodo Italian Scratch Kitchen All Brodo Italian Scratch Kitchen master chefs understand that beautiful, exceptional, artisan dishes are built starting with the very best stock. The name Brodo, Italian for stock, represents the building blocks necessary to create perfect Italian dishes food that is nostalgic, simple, fresh, and made from scratch. For more information, please call (303) 953-1121, or visit http://www.brodoscratchkitchen.com. The restaurant is located at 7167 West Alaska Drive, Lakewood, CO 80226. About the NALA The NALA offers small and medium-sized businesses effective ways to reach customers through new media. As a single-agency source, the NALA helps businesses flourish in their local community. The NALAs mission is to promote a business relevant and newsworthy events and achievements, both online and through traditional media. The information and content in this article are not in conjunction with the views of the NALA. For media inquiries, please call 805.650.6121, ext. 361. Professional speed and competition shooter Jerry Miculek joins the Propper team as their newest Brand Ambassador. Jerry is exciting to watch and has a terrific relationship with fans. Were excited to have him on the team. Propper International is proud to announce a new Brand Ambassador partnership with world-renowned speed shooter Jerry Miculek. Best known for his incredibly fast rate of fire, Miculek has been a member of Team Smith & Wesson since 1989 and has put on shooting demonstrations throughout the world. Over the years, Jerry has set several world records, including six shots, a reload, and six more shot with a revolver in under three seconds. Jerry brings a tremendous energy to the shooting sports, said John Negrau, VP, Marketing & eCommerce for Propper. Hes exciting to watch and has a terrific relationship with fans. Were excited to have him on the team. During his recent visit to the Propper headquarters, Miculek commented, Im very impressed by the reception I received from everyone. This is going to be a great relationship. Proppers drive to serve the military, law enforcement, and civilian enthusiasts is evident in everything they do. Miculeks varied shooting skills have been highlighted on numerous television programs including the Outdoor Channels Shooting USA; History Channels Top Shots, Sharpshooters, and Extreme Marksman; Discovery Channels Sons of Guns; and NBC Sports Hot Shots. About Jerry Miculek Jerry Miculek is one of the best all-around shooters on the planet. His accomplishments during his more than 30-year shooting career include 52 National titles and 45 World titles. Although best known for his amazing feats of revolver speed shooting, Jerry is also one of the top Multi-Gun competitors in the world, demonstrating equal prowess with pistols, rifles and shotguns. Jerry became a member of Team Smith & Wesson in 1989. Since that time he has participated in countless competitions, performed hundreds of shooting demonstrations, and represented Smith & Wesson and his other sponsors at store promotions and trade shows throughout the world. https://miculek.com/ About Propper Propper has made tactical gear with a purpose for over 50 years, since their first U.S. Navy contract in 1967. Today, Propper designs and manufactures professional level tactical apparel and gear for military, law enforcement and public safety professionals, and civilians, whether in the service, on the job, or off for the weekend. For more information, press only: David Workman 636-685-1062 davidw@propper.com For more information on Propper: http://www.propper.com We are extremely pleased to be able to partner with Banner Health in Greater Phoenix and extend the reach of their pharmacy capability throughout their network. MedAvail Technologies Inc., a healthcare technology company that has developed and commercialized an innovative self-service pharmacy kiosk solution has announced an agreement with Banner Health in Arizona. Banner Health has selected the MedAvail MedCenter as its solution to enable remote dispensing of prescription medications. Banner Health will begin by deploying three MedCenters in its clinics and hospitals in the Greater Phoenix area. The MedAvail MedCenter is an innovative self-service pharmacy kiosk solution that supports the dispensing of first fill and refill prescription drugs and over-the-counter medications under the full control of a remote pharmacist in a fast, secure, and convenient manner. Through the self-service MedAvail MedCenter, the patient can depart from the clinic or hospital with their required medication in hand and begin treatment immediately. This fast and convenient solution is expected to improve adherence and health outcomes. Banner Health currently has two MedAvail MedCenters installed in the greater Phoenix area, including Banner - University Medical Center Phoenix and Banner Behavioral Health Hospital in Scottsdale with a third slated for deployment this summer. We are extremely pleased to be able to partner with Banner Health in Greater Phoenix and extend the reach of their pharmacy capability throughout their network. said Ed Kilroy CEO of MedAvail Technologies Inc. Banner continues to demonstrate leadership by providing innovative solutions such as the MedAvail MedCenter with a goal to improve health outcomes while providing superior customer service. Our partnership with MedAvail has helped Banner Health to provide pharmacy services in spaces that have historically been too small for a retail pharmacy, said Michael Young, Sr. Director of Retail Pharmacy Services at Banner Health. Our latest deployment of Banner Rx Box, Banners branded MedAvail kiosk, in our Behavioral Health Hospital in Scottsdale will conveniently provide patients with their prescriptions at the time of discharge as part of our brand promise of Making health care easier, so life can be better. For more information, please visit: http://medavail.com/. About MedAvail Technologies MedAvail Technologies Inc. is a healthcare technology company that has developed and commercialized an innovative self-service pharmacy kiosk solution. The MedAvail MedCenter supports the dispensing of prescription drugs and over-the-counter medications. MedAvail Technologies Inc. has deployed kiosks in the US, Canada and Switzerland in use cases that include employer sites, retail pharmacies, retail stores without traditional pharmacies, hospital emergency rooms, urgent cares, community clinics, universities and medical office buildings. For more information, visit http://medavail.com/. About Banner Health Headquartered in Arizona, Banner Health is one of the largest nonprofit health care systems in the country. The system owns and operates 28 acute-care hospitals, Banner Health Network, Banner University Medicine, academic and employed physician groups, long-term care centers, outpatient surgery centers and an array of other services; including Banner Urgent Care, family clinics, home care and hospice services, pharmacies and a nursing registry. Banner Health is in six states: Arizona, California, Colorado, Nebraska, Nevada and Wyoming. For more information, visit http://www.bannerhealth.com. View from 400 Oyster Point office looking northward The office enables us to better serve our San Francisco Peninsula-based customers. In addition, the South Bay location is our Emerson DeltaV center for Banks/Superior Controls as well as local support for Rockwell-based projects. Past News Releases RSS Biotech Automation and FDA... Superior Controls Joins Rockwell... FDA Validation and Biotech... Banks Integration Group, a Superior Controls, Inc. company, a leading control system integrator of custom industrial automation and IT solutions, today announced the opening of a new office in South San Francisco. With offices in Seabrook, NH, Albany, NY and Vacaville, CA, Superior Controls and Banks Integration Group offer coast to coast support of mission-critical systems integration and automation services primarily to the rapidly growing biotechnology industry. To head up the new office, the company hired highly-experienced Electrical Engineer John D. C. Simpson. In his new role as Director of South Bay Operations, Simpson will use his extensive knowledge of cell culture, FDA regulations and biochemical engineering to assist San Francisco Bay Area customers in the life science and pharmaceutical manufacturing industries. The new office is located at 400 Oyster Point Boulevard, Suite 123 in South San Francisco, near a transportation hub which includes East Bay ferry service and Bay Area Rapid Transit (BART) stations. Further, the location is convenient to some of Banks integration Groups largest biotechnology customers, allowing the company to continue to provide unparalleled service. The new office currently staffs a handful of engineers, with plans to expand to a dozen or more by the end of the year. I am very excited to be opening this office in the Birth place of Biotechnology, South San Francisco, said Simpson. The office enables us to better serve our San Francisco Peninsula-based customers. In addition, the South Bay location is our Emerson DeltaV center for Banks/Superior Controls as well as local support for Rockwell-based projects. Prior to joining Banks Integration Group, Simpson worked for 23 years at Genentech, a member of the Roche Group, where he served in various roles including senior engineer, senior manager and associate director of biochemical automation in the San Francisco area. In his most recent Genentech role, Simpson was responsible for the start-up and re-commissioning of a cell culture production facility and developing a strategic automation roadmap for the Vacaville, CA site. Originally from Scotland, Simpson graduated from Paisley College of Technology in Paisley, Scotland with a bachelor of science in electrical and electronic engineering. We are thrilled to have John join our California-based biotechnology team, said Rick Pierro, co-founder and president of Superior Controls. His vast experience in biotechnology, control systems integration and FDA regulations will take our services to the next level. In April 2017, Superior Controls announced its merger with Banks Integration, headquartered in Vacaville, CA. The company currently employs more than 125 engineers located in the Seabrook, NH, Albany, NY and Vacaville, CA offices. Superior Controls seeks to further expand its engineering workforce to support the existing project load in addition to the 42 validated biotech automation projects the company was recently awarded. About Superior Controls, Inc. and Banks Integration Group Since 1993, Superior Controls, Inc. has reliably delivered professionally executed automation and control systems integration services to leading biotech and pharmaceutical companies in 30 separate states and 15 countries. In addition to being six-time certified by the Control System Integrators Association (CSIA), Superior Controls has passed over fifty management and validation audits. With the 2017 addition of Banks integration Group, a Rockwell Solution Partner on the West Coast, the company works nationally with industry leaders such as Pfizer, Biogen, GE Healthcare, Genentech, Gilead and more. Superior Controls and Banks Integration Group have four engineering offices located in Seabrook, NH, Albany, NY, Vacaville, CA and South San Francisco, CA. To learn more, visit http://superiorcontrols.com/ and http://banksintegration.com/. Something is coming dont worry though its not a T. Rex. Get ready for a tee Rex instead with the release of new Design By Humans exclusive apparel for the highly anticipated Jurassic World 2 film, Jurassic World: Fallen Kingdom. DBH is excited to introduce select designs today, April 16th, 2018, on the first day Fallen Kingdom merchandise is available to the DBH community for purchase. Design By Humans creates innovative and exciting art and is thrilled to offer officially licensed designs by Jurassic World, to its community for the first time. The Jurassic Park & Jurassic World franchise is a perfect reminder that anything is possible; creation whether it is art creation or the creation of new dinosaurs is never impossible, a feat that John Hammond makes very real in the beloved dinosaur films. DBHs official designs re-imagine beloved childhood fantasies with artwork that portrays vivid dinosaurs, classic logos, and funny catchphrases from the films. DBHs Customer Service Ninja & Land Before Time Enthusiast, Ben Surminsky, says, " My excitement level to see Jurassic World: Fallen Kingdom is higher than an Apatosaurus' neck is long!" Join in on DBHs excitement for the film premiere on June 22nd, 2018 with your very own dinosaur-inspired shirt, tank, and more. Get your hands on a new DBH Jurassic World: Fallen Kingdom t-shirt (if you have tiny T. Rex hands get someone to assist you) before Isla Nublars volcano explodes and its too late. About Jurassic Park Franchise Steven Spielberg's blockbuster hit roared into theaters in 1993 and shook the world with stunning special effects, action-packed adventure, and the makings of every dinosaur-lovers dream (or nightmare). The paleontologists Alan Grant and Ellie Sattler team up with mathematician, Ian Malcolm, to get the first glimpse of the dinosaur theme park, Jurassic Park, created by the billionaire, John Hammond. The popular film was followed by hits like The Lost World: Jurassic Park (1997), Jurassic Park III (2001), and Jurassic World; each film continues to excite and terrify audiences across the globe. About Jurassic World: Fallen Kingdom The newest chapter in the Jurassic World series sends audiences back to Isla Nublar with Owen Grady and Claire Dearing to help save the dinosaurs from final extinction. In the process, Owen and Claire discover unexpected secrets and creations have been taking place on the secluded island. Get ready to find out what is lurking the shadows with the film premiere of Jurassic World: Fallen Kingdom on June 22nd, 2018. About Design By Humans Design By Humans offers a platform for artists, gamers, and YouTubers to create and showcase their unique artwork as phone cases, wall prints, and fashionable tees, tanks, and more. With 10 years of experience, Design By Humans has woven a shared spirit that thrives on designing vibrant and meaningful art. To learn more about the vision, please visit: https://www.designbyhumans.com/. DBH works to build an environment that respects collaboration, quality, integrity, and the entrepreneurial spirit. The DBH Collective is inspired by the comical as well as the abstract, the imagined and the concrete; and works to create innovative art that is an expression and a reflection of todays society. We are gaming fiends, cat-enthusiasts, and pop culture fanatics. Most importantly, however, we are a passionate team of independent creators who buzz for the next buzz word, whistle as we work, and create designs that inspire the next generation of trendsetters from around the world. To become a part of the Design By Humans community and submit designs today, we encourage you to visit: https://www.designbyhumans.com/become-an-artist/ and learn more! Follow Design By Humans on Facebook at /DesignByHumans, on Instagram at DesignByHumans with #designbyhumans, and on Twitter @DesignByHumans. Something is coming dont worry though its not a T. Rex. Get ready for a tee Rex instead with the release of new Fifth Sun exclusive apparel for the highly anticipated Jurassic World 2 film, Jurassic World: Fallen Kingdom. Fifthsun.com is excited to introduce select designs today, April 16th, 2018, on the first day Fallen Kingdom merchandise is available to the Fifth Sun community for purchase. Fifth Sun creates innovative and exciting art and is thrilled to offer officially licensed designs by Jurassic World, to its community for the first time. The Jurassic Park & Jurassic World franchise is a perfect reminder that anything is possible; creation whether it is art creation or the creation of new dinosaurs is never impossible, a feat that John Hammond makes very real in the beloved dinosaur films. Fifthsun.coms official designs reimagine beloved childhood fantasies with artwork that portrays vivid dinosaurs, classic logos, and funny catchphrases from the films. 5SUNs Operations Specialist & Land Before Time Enthusiast, Susannah Talbot, admits, Ive loved Jurassic Park since I was a kid and I cant wait to see this newest adventure! I definitely want to wear a new Fallen Kingdom tee when I see the movie. Join in on Fifthsun.coms excitement for the film premiere on June 22nd, 2018 with your very own dinosaur-inspired shirt, tank, and more. Get your hands on a new Fifth Sun Jurassic World: Fallen Kingdom t-shirt (if you have tiny T. Rex hands, get someone to assist you) before Isla Nublars volcano explodes and its too late. About Jurassic Park Franchise: Steven Spielberg's blockbuster hit roared into theaters in 1993 and shook the world with stunning special effects, action-packed adventure, and the makings of every dinosaur-lovers dream (or nightmare). The paleontologists Alan Grant and Ellie Sattler team up with mathematician, Ian Malcolm, to get the first glimpse of the dinosaur theme park, Jurassic Park, created by the billionaire, John Hammond. The popular film was followed by hits like The Lost World: Jurassic Park (1997), Jurassic Park III (2001), and Jurassic World; each film continues to excite and terrify audiences across the globe. About Jurassic World: Fallen Kingdom The newest chapter in the Jurassic World series sends audiences back to Isla Nublar with Owen Grady and Claire Dearing to help save the dinosaurs from final extinction. In the process, Owen and Claire discover unexpected secrets and creations have been taking place on the secluded island. Get ready to find out what is lurking the shadows with the film premiere of Jurassic World: Fallen Kingdom on June 22nd, 2018. About Fifth Sun Fifth Suns journey from a small independent t-shirt company was shaped by its continued focus on balance, community, and the personal touch that remains at the core of its identity. With more than 20 years of experience in the industry, Fifth Sun has woven together a shared spirit that thrives on designing vibrant and meaningful art for key brands like Star Wars, Disney, Nintendo, Marvel, and more. Fifth Sun is a company of artists, designers, creators and, above all, dreamers. We are inspired by the world around us and enjoy making the imaginary into a reality. We track trends in art, music, pop culture, internet memes, and fashion to design art that is accessible and relatable to diverse audiences. We create progressive, ethical, and original artwork. Weve never lost our sense of curiosity and it drives us to create unforgettable fashions for your favorite brands. Please let us know what you think of the shirts by tweeting us (@5Sun) or sharing photos of you on our Facebook (@FifthSunGraphics) & Instagram @FifthSunOfficial)! Were your biggest fans and would love to see you strut your stuff. Horatio Alger Association of Distinguished Americans, Inc., a nonprofit educational organization honoring the achievements of outstanding individuals and encouraging youth to pursue their dreams through higher education, today announced receipt of a $320,000 commitment from international law firm Gibson, Dunn & Crutcher, LLP and its partners to fund scholarships for students attending universities in New York State who have overcome adversity in pursuit of higher education. This generous gift is given in honor of newly inducted 2018 Horatio Alger Member, Gregory E. Abel, chairman Berkshire Hathaway Energy and vice chairman of non-insurance businesses, Berkshire Hathaway Inc. This is a special moment for the Horatio Alger Association, said Matthew Rose, president, Horatio Alger Association and 2013 Horatio Alger Award recipient. We are humbled by the generosity of Gibson Dunn, which not only recognizes our mission, but furthers it by providing the financial means needed for scholars to pursue their educational aspirations. This gift would not have been possible without the advocacy of 2018 Award recipient, Greg Abel for our mission. We had every confidence that he would open doors for our Scholars, but we are in awe of how quickly he is making a real and profound impact. The newly established Gibson Dunn Scholarship Program is a four-year commitment by the law firm, which will begin supporting New York State Horatio Alger Scholars in the 2019-2020 academic year. These scholarship recipients will receive up to $10,000 to apply toward the tuition of the college or university of their choice in New York State. To qualify for the scholarship, applicants must be high school seniors with a minimum GPA of 2.5. Applicants must demonstrate critical financial need as well as community service involvement and integrity and perseverance in overcoming adversity. This is a well-deserved recognition of the accomplishments of our friend, Greg Abel, and we are pleased to donate to the Horatio Alger Associations New York State Scholarship Program in his honor, said Ken Doran, Chairman and Managing Partner of Gibson Dunn. When I first learned that I would be receiving the Horatio Alger Award last fall, I was eager to learn more about the Associations scholarship programs and find meaningful ways to support them, said Mr. Abel. Meeting so many outstanding Scholars has only strengthened my desire to help and Gibson Dunn shared that passion. I am immensely grateful for Gibson Dunns partnership, generosity and commitment to give back to deserving students in need. Since the establishment of its scholarship programs in 1984, more than 25,000 students from all 50 states, the District of Columbia, Puerto Rico and Canada have received more than $143 million in undergraduate, graduate and specialized scholarships. In 2000, 16 years after the establishment of its National Scholarship Program, Horatio Alger Members began funding scholarships concentrated in each state to further the Associations mission of helping deserving young people pursue their collegiate goals. For more information about Horatio Alger Association and the Gibson Dunn New York State Scholarship Program, please visit http://www.horatioalger.org, or follow the organization on Facebook, Twitter and Instagram. About Horatio Alger Association of Distinguished Americans: Founded in 1947, the Horatio Alger Association of Distinguished Americans, Inc. is dedicated to the simple but powerful belief that hard work, honesty and determination can conquer all obstacles. The Association honors the achievements of outstanding leaders who have accomplished remarkable successes in spite of adversity by bestowing upon them the Horatio Alger Award and inducting them as lifetime Members. Horatio Alger Members support promising young people with the resources and confidence needed to overcome adversity in pursuit of their dreams through higher education. Through the generosity of its Members and friends, in 2017, the Association awarded more than $18 million in undergraduate and graduate need-based scholarships across the United States and Canada, and also provided college support services to its Scholars. Since 1984, the Association has awarded more than $143 million in college scholarships to more than 25,000 deserving young people. For more information, please visit http://www.horatioalger.org. About Gibson Dunn: Gibson, Dunn & Crutcher LLP is a leading international law firm. Consistently ranking among the worlds top law firms in industry surveys and major publications, Gibson Dunn is distinctively positioned in todays global marketplace with more than 1,200 lawyers and 20 offices, including Beijing, Brussels, Century City, Dallas, Denver, Dubai, Frankfurt, Hong Kong, Houston, London, Los Angeles, Munich, New York, Orange County, Palo Alto, Paris, San Francisco, Sao Paulo, Singapore, and Washington, D.C. For more information on Gibson Dunn, please visit our website. MEDIA CONTACTS: Horatio Alger Association McKenna Young 484-385-2913 (office) myoung@briancom.com Gibson Dunn Pearl J. Piatt 213-229-7963 (office) ppiatt@gibsondunn.com Sara Berge, executive director of the Cerebral Palsy Association of Colorado Springs, presents Hope Award to Justin Grant of MGA Home Healthcare. Connecting with the clients and families that MGA serves has always been a huge priority for me The Cerebral Palsy Association of Colorado Springs recently awarded Justin Grant, vice president of business development for MGA Home Healthcare, its 2018 Hope Award. Grant was just one of two recipients to receive this years Hope Award, which signifies a commitment to serving children who have cerebral palsy or neuro-motor disabilities. Nominated for the award by family members of MGA Home Healthcare patients, Grant has been working to provide care and support for people with cerebral palsy since 2010, when MGA Home Healthcare opened offices in Colorado. Connecting with the clients and families that MGA serves has always been a huge priority for me, said Justin Grant. When I joined the MGA team nine years ago, it quickly became apparent that providing home health services is more than just staffing nurses. Instead, the field of home healthcare has provided me the opportunity to support families by getting involved in the community. The Cerebral Palsy Association of Colorado Springs is just one example of an amazing organization that advocates on the behalf of children and families we care about. Im truly honored and humbled to be one of their 2018 Hope Award recipients. Grant was introduced to the Cerebral Palsy Association of Colorado Springs by patients and has stayed active with the association ever since. He regularly attends events such as the Ugly Christmas Sweater Run and Fishing Has No Boundaries. Justin is involved in so many of our community events. He shows up for the kids outside of work hours for birthday parties and days fishing on the lake, said Cindy Valdez of the Cerebral Palsy Association of Colorado Springs. The families he works with chose Justin as a recipient of the Hope Award because he goes above and beyond to raise awareness for the needs of people with cerebral palsy in our community. The Cerebral Palsy Association of Colorado Springs serves more than 230 families in southern Colorado and celebrated the recipients of the Hope Award on April 14 at the Hotel Elegante conference and event center. For more information on the Cerebral Palsy Association of Colorado Springs and its Hope Award, or to see photos from the award ceremony, visit http://cpappr.org/home.aspx. About MGA Home Healthcare MGA Home Healthcare has been providing professional home healthcare with a personalized touch in Colorado since 2010. Our healthcare professionals deliver high quality clinical care with the individualized attention that truly makes a difference for patients. Headquartered in Phoenix, MGA Home Healthcare offers broad service infrastructure to provide a comprehensive approach to home care, including full clinical and administrative support teams. MGA Home Healthcare employees stand with our patients every step of the way to meet their medical challenges and make their life easier. Most importantly, at MGA Home Healthcare, we demonstrate compassion and integrity in everything we do. Visit mgahomecare.com or stay connected with us on LinkedIn, Facebook or Twitter. "Our Chicago Executive Briefing Center will allow us to engage with customers, partners, and the industry at a new level." -Warren Roy, Founder & CEO Global Relay, the leading provider of compliance archiving, supervision, eDiscovery, and analytics for the financial sector, is proud to unveil its new, state-of-the-art office and Executive Briefing Center (EBC) in the heart of downtown Chicago. Global Relay is kicking off its Chicago EBC opening with a compliance user forum on April 18 and 19. The companys leadership team will speak on a broad range of topics, including emerging data security and privacy threats, analytics, machine learning, and AI, with focus on Global Relays unique methodology and approach. Designed to provide customers with a venue for industry education, peer collaboration, and training, the 4,500-sq. ft., custom-designed space on Wacker and LaSalle Drive represents an important evolution in Global Relays business approach one aimed at creating a stronger local presence in the financial centers where the company operates. Opening an EBC in Chicago will enable Global Relay and its Midwestern customers to better collaborate and discuss issues of interest and concern to the industry, including big data, surveillance, cyber security, personal privacy and risk. This city holds deep roots for us, having signed right here some of our first linchpin customers, said Warren Roy, CEO & Founder of Global Relay. Our Chicago EBC will allow us to engage with customers, partners, and the industry at a new level. We look forward to expanding our EBC facilities in other financial centers. In addition to Chicago, Global Relay has 8 offices globally, including in Vancouver, New York, and London. Global Relay Chicagos move from its former office in Willis Tower to its new address is one of two expansion efforts being undertaken by the rapidly-growing SaaS technology firm. Global Relay London is also set to relocate and open a new office, complete with its own EBC and a data replication center, later in the year. info(at)globalrelay(dot)net | 866.484.6630 | http://www.globalrelay.com/ About Global Relay Global Relay is the leading provider of cloud-based electronic message archiving, supervision, and eDiscovery solutions for the global financial sector and other highly regulated industries. Global Relay delivers services to over 23,000 customers in 90 countries, including 22 of the top 25 banks. Global Relay Archive supports email, IM, Bloomberg, Thomson Reuters, social media, mobile messaging, and more - with mobile, Outlook, and web access. Title Alliance participates in first T.A. Gives Back Week When the original idea for a community service event was proposed, our people responded with immense excitement and enthusiasm. Their commitment to giving back to their communities was truly inspiring. Title Alliance, Ltd, a RESPA-compliant ESOP leader in joint ventured title insurance agencies, announced today that their first annual T.A. Gives Back Week began yesterday. Over the course of the week, every employee in every JV spanning 10 states and 6 regions will be giving back to local communities. Examples include volunteering at food banks, soup kitchens, homeless shelters, animal rescue organizations, and even hosting a blood drive. Its important for us to serve the communities that support us, says Jim Campbell, CEO of Title Alliance. We value our communities and were looking forward to a successful week where we are able to use our time and resources to help make an impact on our neighbors. Title Alliances mission states, We exist to create opportunities for personal and professional growth-one ALLIANCE at a time. The company believes that working in their communities allows them to foster an alliance with their neighbors that will help contribute to the personal growth and development of their team members. We have such amazing employees at Title Alliance, says Brendan Farrell, Chairperson for T.A. Gives Back. When the original idea for a community service event was proposed, our people responded with immense excitement and enthusiasm. Their commitment to giving back to their communities was truly inspiring. He concludes, "Each of our JVs has had the opportunity to choose something near and dear to their heart to support; to form an alliance with. I know that this year is truly the beginning of something big." "As we continue to grow," says Lindsay Smith, Director of Sales and Marketing, "it is inspiring to share our culture with prospective partners and employees. We are met with much support on the ground. Our concern for our employees and our communities is genuine, and I'm looking forward to watching both our footprint and our volunteer service grow over the coming years." At the end of the week, employees of Title Alliance will have contributed over 1000 hours of community service across their footprint. While this is the first year for the service project, the company is confident that this is the first of a long term project. About Title Alliance: Title Alliance, Ltd, an ESOP Company is located in Media, PA and has been creating RESPA compliant title joint ventures since 1983 with lenders, mortgage bankers, realtors, builders and credit unions. Their roots date back to 1948 when their first agency, which is still in existence today, was formed. For more information or to find out how a Title Alliance's partnership or title management skills could benefit you visit them online or contact Lindsay Smith at 800-220-3901 x 165. Mohan A. Rao Joins the StreetShares Team as Chief Product & Technology Officer StreetShares, the military and veteran-focused small business lender and financial technology firm, announced earlier today Mohan A. Rao as Chief Product & Technology Officer. Rao is the former Chief Technology Officer of Hobsons, Inc., and brings over 25 years of experience with building software products, R&D and management consulting to the StreetShares team. As Hobsons CTO, he led the product development and operations of all product lines in multiple markets, provided leadership through acquisition of two companies, divestiture of non-strategic products, and significant organic investment in innovative technologies. Prior to Hobsons, he was the President & COO of Mobile Insight, and CTO of Wireless Matrix. StreetShares provides small business financing solutions such as small business loans, the Patriot Express Line of Credit and government contract financing. StreetShares works to support the 2.5 million veteran-owned small businesses in America, their families and supporters with transparent, fair and affordable financing along with alternative investment products such as Veteran Business Bonds, a product that allows StreetShares members to make an investment in Americas heroes while earning 5% returns. Mohan Rao said he is looking forward to building and leveraging thoughtful and intuitive technology solutions to drive positive impact to the veteran entrepreneurial community, and enhancing StreetShares ability to provide fast, affordable, financing solutions to Americas heroes and their supporters. I am truly thrilled to be joining StreetShares because of its fantastic leadership team and the mission-orientation of helping small businesses run by veterans and their families, Rao said. This FinTech space is ripe for disruption through the next generation of innovative products built on the StreetShares platform. About StreetShares StreetShares provides financing solutions to Americas heroes and is otherwise known as the veteran small business funding community. StreetShares offers unique financial solutions for Americas heroes and their communities by capturing the social loyalty that exists within the military community and harnessing that trust to lower risk in financial transactions. StreetShares provides a suite of specialty business financing products to small business owners including the Patriot Express Line of Credit, small business loans, alternatives to VA small business loans for vet-owned businesses and government contract financing solutions, otherwise known as factoring. StreetShares offers alternative investments, including the first ever veteran social-impact investment product, Veteran Business Bonds. StreetShares is veteran-run and located just outside of Washington, D.C. To learn more, please visit: StreetShares.com. Centric Software Centric PLM being a highly configurable out-of-the-box solution, with an intuitive user interface and easy navigation, and its ability to develop mobile apps for PLM, as well as provide innovative updates were influential factors in our decision. Centric Software announces that Brandix, Sri Lankas largest Apparel exporter, 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. Brandix, the pioneer of total solutions in Sri Lankas Apparel sector, and a preferred supplier to some of the leading retail brands in the US and Europe, has a presence in Sri Lanka, India, Bangladesh, Cambodia, Haiti and the UK with over 48,000 employees in total. The company has been awarded the prestigious Sri Lankan Exporter of the Year award consecutively for five years. As Surendra Karunakaran, Chief Information Officer at Brandix explains, the company sought a PLM solution to help manage data flows and communication. We decided to invest in a PLM solution to capture data at the source, says Kaushala Prematilake, Senior General Manager Enterprise Applications. We knew the right PLM could provide a collaborative platform for product development teams." As Karunakaran says, Centric Software is one hundred percent apparel-focused, with an impressive list of over 240 customers in the industry and dedicated research and development in fashion and apparel. This expertise helps Centric align with our business processes. Centric PLM being a highly configurable out-of-the-box solution, with an intuitive user interface and easy navigation, and its ability to develop mobile apps for PLM, as well as provide innovative updates were influential factors in our decision. The Centric team gave us a high level of customer service during the pre-sales process, and we are confident that this will continue, says Prematilake We look forward to having a great partnership with Centric in the future that will be mutually beneficial for both companies. We are delighted that Brandix, the largest Apparel exporter in Sri Lanka, has decided to select Centric PLM, says Chris Groves, President and CEO of Centric Software. We look forward to partnering with them every step of the way today and on their journey into the future. Brandix (http://www.brandix.com) Ranked Sri Lankas Most Valuable Export Brand in 2015, 2016 and 2017 by Brand Finance, Brandix is the countrys single largest Apparel exporter, and was named Sri Lankas Exporter of the Year for the fifth consecutive time in respect of 2016 by the Sri Lanka Export Development Board (EDB). The pioneer of the concept of total solutions in Sri Lankas Apparel sector, and a preferred supplier to some of the top retail brands in the US and Europe, Brandix is also a benchmark and international award winner for eco-friendly manufacture and commitment to environmental best practice. 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. (end) Media Contacts: Centric Software Americas: Jennifer Forsythe, jforsythe@centricsoftware.com Europe: Kristen Salaun Batby, ksalaun-batby@centricsoftware.com Asia: Lily Dong, lily.dong@centricsoftware.com Retired Vice Admiral (SEAL) Robert S. Harward, Jr. addresses the crowd of over 1500 at the Navy SEAL Foundation New York City Benefit Our warriors are indispensable to the defense of our nation. The sacrifices their families make are an indispensable part of the mission, and the Navy SEAL Foundations support to those families is impossible to quantify or overestimate. -Retired Vice Admiral (SEAL) Robert S. Harward, Jr. Over 1500 dedicated patriots and supporters gathered at the New York Marriott Marquis on the evening of April 12, 2018, for the tenth Navy SEAL Foundation New York City Benefit Dinner, a cornerstone of the organizations fundraising efforts. This annual event recognizes the courage, commitment and sacrifice of the Naval Special Warfare (NSW) community, and this year the focus was on the daily sacrifices made by NSW families and children. Benefit Chairman Thomas A. Wagner, co-founder of Knighthead Capital Management, and his team raised over $10 million dollars in support of the Foundations specialized programs. The men who wear the Trident are an incredible array of multi-faceted individuals from every background imaginable, said Wagner. They risk everything from personal safety to familial stability, all for a greater cause, and they ask for little in return. We are here tonight to honor, celebrate and assist this community that does so much to protect us. I am grateful for that opportunity. The Navy SEAL Foundation was pleased to recognize Nancy and Howard Marks as the 2018 New York City Navy SEAL Foundation Patriot Award honorees for their steadfast support of SEALs and their families. Nancy Marks is the chairman of the New York-based luxury fashion house Sies Marjan. Howard Marks is the co-chairman and co-founder of Oaktree Capital Management, a global alternative investment firm. Retired Rear Admiral (SEAL) Alex Krongard presented the prestigious award to the gracious couple. Both Nancy and Howard Marks spoke about their experiences with members of the NSW community and the intense commitment, courage and sacrifice SEALs and their families display. The evenings second honoree, Sesame Workshop, was presented with the Fire In the Gut award by Hannah Byers, daughter of Congressional Medal of Honor recipient, Senior Chief Special Warfare Operator Edward C. Byers, Jr. This award is traditionally presented at SEAL graduation ceremonies to the candidate who demonstrates superior motivation through the arduous six-month training course. The Navy SEAL Foundation Fire In the Gut Award is presented to an individual or organization that displays this same quality regarding serving our military families. Sherrie Westin, Executive Vice President of Global Impact at Sesame Workshop, accepted the award on behalf of her organization. Sesame Workshop continues to innovate and lead the charge in assisting the children of military families as they cope with stressors unique to life in the military. From dealing with separation due to deployment to strategies for dealing with a parent who is injured or even killed in the line of duty, their programs make a difference in the lives of military kids. As Ms. Westin made her remarks, the audience was surprised to see her joined on stage by the one and only, Elmo! Rear Admiral (SEAL) Richard Rodriguez, Deputy Commander, Naval Special Warfare Command, delivered a moving tribute to the members of NSW who are no longer with us. Rachel Moore, daughter of retired Rear Admiral (SEAL) Scott P. Moore and Gold Star granddaughter, played Taps on the piano as the photos and names of the Fallen were scrolled. Retired Vice Admiral (SEAL) Robert S. Harward, Jr. delivered the evenings keynote address sharing intimate stories from his nearly 30 years of service. Harward is the Chief Executive Officer of Lockheed Martin United Arab Emirates and a national security expert with combat experience as a SEAL in Afghanistan, Iraq, Syria, Somalia, Yemen, and Bosnia. He spoke about the unseen sacrifices that our military families make on a daily basis, and he described the anguish of having to choose between the two loves of his life: his family and his service to the nation. Members of the audience were moved to tears as he shared how his children coped and how proud he was of their strength and courage. Our warriors are indispensable to the defense of our nation. The sacrifices their families make are an indispensable part of the mission, and the Navy SEAL Foundations support to those families is impossible to quantify or overestimate, said Harward before thanking the audience for their support. This years Dinner Chairs included Vanessa and Henry Cornell, Jennifer and Stephen Czech, Barbara and Ray Dalio, Metka and Jack Daly, Fiona and Stanley Druckenmiller, Diann Kim and John Frank, Karen and Russell Goldsmith, Kenneth C. Griffin, Tina and Peter Harf, Heinz Family Foundation, Susan and John Hess, Janine and J. Tomilson Hill, Caroline and Ed Hyman, Gail and Carl Icahn, Eugenia and David Janke, KKR, Martha and Bruce Karsh, Jo Carole and Ronald Lauder, Anton LeRoy and BTIG, Daniel S. Loeb, Michael J. Muldoon, Nancy and Bruce Newberg, Tony Ressler and Jami Gertz, Daryl and Steven Roth, Harvey Schwartz, Katherine Farley and Jerry Speyer, Cindy and Sheldon Stone, Robert Taubman, Maria Hummer-Tuttle and Ambassador Robert Tuttle, Charlotte and Alan Waxman and Zide Family Foundaiton. The 45-plus member Benefit Host Committee was led by Drew Fox and Brian Robinson. The 2019 Navy SEAL Foundation New York City Benefit Dinner is scheduled for March 7, 2019. About the Navy SEAL Foundation: The Navy SEAL Foundation's mission is to provide immediate and ongoing support and assistance to the Naval Special Warfare (NSW) community and its families. U.S. Navy SEALs have been in sustained combat for over 17 years, performing hazardous work in unforgiving environments at an unrelenting pace. SEALs are currently deployed in over 30+ countries across the globe and can spend up to 270 days each year in harm's way. The Navy SEAL Foundation stands behind these warriors and their families by providing a comprehensive set of programs specifically designed to improve health and welfare, build and enhance resiliency, empower and educate families and provide critical support during times of illness, injury or loss. Like the community it serves, the Navy SEAL Foundation is a high performing organization committed to excellence. NSF has received seven consecutive 4-Star ratings from Charity Navigator. It is one of only 66 charities from among more than 9,000 to have earned a perfect score of 100 for our financial health, accountability, and transparency, placing NSF in the top 1% of the rated charities. Ninety-four cents of every dollar donated goes directly to programs or is retained for future mission use. The Navy SEAL Foundation is a 501c3 national non-profit charitable organization. TAX-ID 31-1728910. The Navy SEAL Foundation is a non-federal entity. It is not a part of the Department of Defense or any of its components, and it has no governmental status. For more information, please visit: http://www.navySEALfoundation.org Lucas Group More needs to be done to translate stated commitments to diversity into measurable outcomes. Lucas Group, the leader in North American executive search, announced the publication of its newest white paper, The Legal Gender Gap: Where Are All the Women Partners? authored by Chicago-based Managing Partner Carolyn Aberman, JD. While 40% of law firm first-year classes are women, women account for just 19% of equity partners and 30% of non-equity partners, figures that remain virtually unchanged from five years ago, according to the National Association of Women Lawyers (NAWL) Promotion & Retention surveys. A former practicing attorney and current legal recruiter, Aberman draws on her candid discussions with attorneys, hiring managers, and diversity managers to go behind the numbers in the NAWL surveys. More needs to be done to translate stated commitments to diversity into measurable outcomes, including addressing lateral hiring procedures that perpetuate gender imbalance, says Aberman. In her white paper, Aberman presents an actionable pathway to parity for law firms and women lawyers. At top law firms, lawyers succeed or fail based on their ability to develop their own book of business, says Aberman. Female attorneys must advocate for their professional growth, including proactively exploring lateral moves earlier in their careers if they have no pathway to promotion at their current firm. Firms can also take steps towards parity by reassessing their lateral hiring process. Partnering with a legal recruiter will give your firm access to a wide talent network, including many driven female attorneys who are considering lateral moves should the right opportunity present itself, says Aberman. Abermans white paper is released in conjunction with Lucas Groups participation in the 2018 NALP Annual Education Conference, where conference speakers will address topics including diversity and inclusion initiatives and lateral hiring. Conference attendees can meet with Lucas Group legal recruiters at Booth #46 for further discussion. In addition to Legal recruitment, Lucas Group specializes in executive recruitment for Accounting & Finance, Human Resources, Information Technology, Manufacturing, Military Transition, and Sales & Marketing. About Lucas Group Lucas Group is North Americas premier executive search firm. Since 1970, our culture and methodologies have driven superior results. We assist clients ranging in size from small to medium-sized businesses to Fortune 500 companies to find transcendent, executive talent; candidates fully realize their ambitions; and associates find professional success. To learn more, please visit Lucas Group at http://www.lucasgroup.com and connect with us on LinkedIn, Facebook, and Twitter. Lendio This list will highlight what small business owners across the country do best: find innovative solutions for overcoming financial hurdles in order to keep chasing their dreams, creating jobs, and growing the economy. In honor of the upcoming National Small Business Week, Lendio, the nations leading marketplace for small business loans, will announce its third annual list of top 10 states for small business lending. Based on lending data from the Lendio platform, which matches businesses with more than 75 lenders, the list will offer an inside look at how small businesses across the country approach financing. Lendio will release the official list on Monday, April 30, 2018. Keeping a small business going is almost always an uphill battle and small business owners face challenges they never imagined when they began, said Brock Blake, CEO and founder of Lendio. This list will highlight what small business owners across the country do best: find innovative solutions for overcoming financial hurdles in order to keep chasing their dreams, creating jobs, and growing the economy. National Small Business Week is held each year to celebrate how small business owners and entrepreneurs contribute to the development of the American economy. More than half of Americans either own or work for a small business, and they create nearly two out of every three new jobs in the U.S. each year. The top states for small business lending in 2017 were: 1. Utah 2. Washington 3. California 4. Virginia 5. Texas 6. Florida 7. New York 8. New Hampshire 9. Pennsylvania 10. Georgia About Lendio Lendio is a free online service that helps business owners find the right small business loans within minutes. With a network of over 75 lenders offering multiple loan products, Lendios marketplace is the center of small business lending. Bringing all options together in one place, from short-term specialty financing to long-term, low-interest traditional loans, our technology makes small business lending simple and decreases the amount of time and effort it takes to secure funding. For every loan facilitated on Lendios marketplace platform, Lendio Gives, an employee contribution and employer matching program, donates a percentage of funds to low-income entrepreneurs around the world through Kiva.org. More information about Lendio is available at http://www.lendio.com. Information about Lendio franchising opportunities can be found at http://www.lendiofranchise.com. AccentCare, Inc. has expanded its client base with the acquisitions of Q & A Health Services and Community Connection Home Healths personal care services segment, both serving clients in Desoto, Texas, and surrounding areas. With these acquisitions, effective March 31, the acquired entities have assumed the name Texas Home Health, AccentCares regional brand in Texas. Our team is very excited to welcome these two additions to the AccentCare family, said AccentCare CEO Steve Rodgers. This will give us the opportunity to reach more clients with the care needed to help them remain independent at home. Q & A Health Services and Community Connection Home Health have delivered quality services to their clients for over 15 years. Their approach to service aligns well with AccentCares history of delivering consistently exceptional home care. We are honored to have our employees join the Texas Home Health team, said Merle Boyce, owner of Q & A Health Services and Community Connection Home Health. Texas Home Health shares our strong commitment to helping improve our clients quality of living. We are confident that both our personal care services employees and clients are in the best hands. About AccentCare AccentCare, Inc. is a nationwide leader in post-acute healthcare as well as specialized care management prior to acute episodes. Its wide variety of innovative services ranges from personal, non-medical care to skilled nursing, rehabilitation, hospice, and care management. Headquartered in Dallas, Texas, AccentCare has over 20,000 compassionate professionals in more than 150 locations, collectively serving over 90,000 individuals across 11 states. The company serves over 17,000 physicians and 2,000 facilities, regionally branded as AccentCare, AccentCare of New York, Alliance For Health, Guardian Home Health & Hospice, Nurses Unlimited, Sta-Home, and Texas Home Health. In addition, the company has over 30 strategic partnerships with insurance companies, physician groups and major health systems, including joint ventures with Asante, Baylor Scott & White Health, UC San Diego Health and UCLA Health. AccentCare leads the industry in avoidance of unplanned re-hospitalizations, faster starts of care, and quality performance. Among its distinctions, AccentCare has a 4.3-star quality rating for legacy home health agencies, many of which have earned the HomeCare Elite distinction. All hospice locations are CHAP-accredited, many with designations from the We Honor Veterans program. Intrinsic ID Reaching deployment in 100 million devices is testament to the significant role security plays as the number of connected devices continues to accelerate, and it further emphasizes the high levels of security, reliability and ease of use our products offer. - Pim Tuyls, Intrinsic ID CEO Intrinsic ID, the worlds leading provider of digital authentication technology for Internet of Things security and embedded applications, today announced its security technology has been deployed in more than 100 million devices. Intrinsic IDs authentication technology is being demonstrated at the RSA Conference this week in San Francisco. Reaching deployment in 100 million devices is testament to the significant role security plays as the number of connected devices continues to accelerate, and it further emphasizes the high levels of security, reliability and ease of use our products offer," said Pim Tuyls, Intrinsic IDs chief executive officer. System makers and the entire IoT supply chain recognize that their success depends on secure IoT devices, so it is no surprise that spending on security continues to ramp. A recent report by research firm Gartner predicted spending on IoT security will continue to grow at an annual rate nearing 35 percent for the next decade. Intrinsic ID leverages inherent manufacturing variations in chips to create unique IDs and keys to authenticate chips, data, devices and systems. At the RSA Conference this week Intrinsic ID will highlight BROADKEY and QUIDDIKEY, flagship products which both deliver a hardware-based root of trust for IoT security. QUIDDIKEY enables flexible key management and is easily integrated in any semiconductor design and scalable toward billions of devices. The BROADKEY software family is used to create, wrap and manage secure keys for IoT security as well as for authentication, and enables security deployment at any point in an IoT-connected products lifecycle. Applications Intrinsic ID will be highlighting at the RSA Conference include: Device-to-Cloud Authentication: Chip-based device-to-cloud authentication, demonstrating end-to-end security. Smart Meter Authentication: Secure smart meter solution for utilities and meter manufacturers. "Our team obviously have our sights set on even higher goals, Tuyls said, but this milestone confirms the faith our customers have placed in our authentication technology and its reliability. About Intrinsic ID Intrinsic ID is the worlds leading digital authentication company, providing the Internet of Things with hardware-based root-of-trust security via unclonable identities for any IoT-connected device. Based on Intrinsic IDs patented SRAM PUF technology, the companys security solutions can be implemented in hardware or software. Intrinsic ID security, which can be deployed at any stage of a products lifecycle, is used to validate payment systems, secure connectivity, authenticate sensors, and protect sensitive government and military systems. Award recognition includes the Frost & Sullivan Technology Leadership Award and the EU Innovation Radar Prize. Intrinsic ID security has been proven in millions of devices certified by Common Criteria, EMVCo, Visa and multiple governments. Intrinsic IDs mission: Authenticate EverythingTM. Visit Intrinsic ID online at http://www.Intrinsic-ID.com. LinkedIn: http://www.linkedin.com/company/intrinsic-id Twitter: https://twitter.com/intrinsicid Facebook: http://www.facebook.com/Intrinsic-ID-367721959973148/ GooglePlus: https://plus.google.com/100457819932721237291 YouTube: http://www.youtube.com/user/IntrinsicID Instagram: http://www.instagram.com/intrinsic_id/ Intrinsic ID, the Intrinsic ID logo and Authenticate Everything are trademarks or registered trademarks of Intrinsic ID, Inc., and are protected by trademark laws of the United States and other jurisdictions. All other product and company names are trademarks or registered trademarks of their respective companies. Cliffs of Moher County Clare Ireland When I started reading about Schengen and non-Schengen countries, I realized this was our chance Europes rich history, culture, and sense of romance give it a strong appeal for North American retirees. But for citizens of the U.S. and Canada, visits to Europes Schengen Zone are restricted to 90 out of every 180 days. Most of mainland Europe26 countries at presentbelongs to the Schengen Zone, which has a uniform visa policy and has abolished passport controls and most other border controls within the Zone. The Zone is treated as though it were a single country, so passports are checked when first entering the Zone via a member country. But once within the Schengen Zone, passports normally wont be checked again until leaving the Zone. However, non-Europeans visiting countries within the Schengen Zone as tourists, are limited to 90 days out of every 180 days. International Livings new report reveals a workaround that allows visitors to stay longer, because all those days dont have to be used in one go. Around the office, we call it the Schengen Zone Hop, says Jennifer Stevens, IL Executive Editor. Done right, it allows anybody traveling on a U.S. or Canadian passport to enjoy an extended stay in Europe beyond the 90-day limitlegally. Say, for example, you want to visit France and Italy, both of which belong to the Schengen Zone. You can spend up to 90 days either in France or in Italy or you can divide your 90 days between the twobut you dont get 90 days in each. However, its possible to break up those 90 days with some time outside the Schengen Zonesay in Ireland. As soon as you leave the Zone, the clock stops so to speak, on the 90 days. And then it starts up again when you return to the Zone. You just have to make sure to get your passport stamped when arriving in a non-Schengen country so you have proof of the date you left the Schengen Zone. Ireland, while a full member state of the European Union, is not part of the Schengen Zone. That means that a trip to the Emerald Isle (or another country outside the Schengen Zone, such as Cyprus or Croatia) for under 90 days, stops the clock on the tourist visaallowing travelers to pick up where they left off when they return to the Zone. For the growing number of U.S. citizens considering (or already enjoying) a part-time retirement in Europe, this Schengen Zone Hop comes in handy. Traveling is a fountain of youth, says Christina Daggett. I cant imagine going back to the States or our old lifestyle. Nothing could be better than what were doing now. Christina and her husband, Tim, are traveling around Europe on their pension incomeso far, they have 16 countries under their belts. When I started reading about Schengen and non-Schengen countries, I realized this was our chance, says Tim. We could live in a Schengen country for three months and then move to a non-Schengen country for three months, alternating between the two. The Daggetts rent apartments in buildings full of locals and shop at the grocery store so they can cook at home most nights. This approach easily keeps them within their modest budget. On average, we spend around $700 a month for rent, and a further $1,200 a month for all other living expenses, says Tim. That includes groceries, public transportation, and at least two days out each week to places like museums. Weve lived in supposedly expensive countries, like France and Italy, on this budget. International Living reports that its not only couples choosing to retire part-time in Europebut singles, too. Three years ago, I decided to shake up my baby boomer life a bit. I now solo travel abroad once a year, three months at a time, scouting retirement spots, says Carol Barron, who lives in Florida. Im not ready to go all-in and live overseas full time. Carol test-drives her retirement in Europe in the off season, meaning rent is more affordable thanks to a discount for an extended stay without a lot of tourists visiting the city. So far, she has explored Nice, Florence, and Barcelona. Since most European countries allow 90-day stays on a tourist visa, I max my stay for the whole 90 days, says Carol. I also get to enjoy grocery and restaurant discounts since their customers in the off season are mostly locals. My lifestyle is jam-packed with adventure, new friends, and exploration. It's funny but since Im traveling alone, I tend to interact more with locals and easily befriend expats. Im really glad I decided to not wait to do it tomorrow but to do it now because Im having a blast! Of course, my friends always say when I get home, Oh, I wish I could do that! to which I always reply, You can! For Denise Baxendell and her husband Stuart, work pushed their love of travel to the waysideuntil they put the wheels in motion. Literally. Work commitments never allowed us more than two weeks vacation at a time, says Denise. My 50th birthday was a turning point. Seeing friends and family getting older, some of them suffering from illness, I realized that it was time to do all those rainy day things we had always talked about. They decided to buy a 34-foot RV in the U.K. and travel across Europe with their springer spaniel, Timo. Their travel plans were driven by the weather. Spain, Italy, Portugal, and southern France are hot in the summer, so we started with northern Europe and worked south, Denise says. Depending on how long your vacation is, you can drive through three or four countries. The highways are generally good, and you can easily have breakfast on the French Riviera and drive to Italy for dinner. The full report and a detailed map of the Schengen Zone can be found here: The Schengen Zone Editor's Note: Members of the media have permission to republish the article linked above once credit is given to Internationalliving.com Further information, as well as interviews with expert authors for radio, TV or print, is available on request. Photos are also available. For information about InternationalLiving.com content republishing, source material or to book an interview with one of our experts, contact PR Managing Editor, Marita Kelly, +001 667 312 3532, mkelly(at)internationalliving.com Twitter: @inliving Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/International.Living/ About International Living For 37 years, InternationalLiving.com has been the leading authority for anyone looking for global retirement or relocation opportunities. Through its monthly magazine and related e-letters, extensive website, podcasts, online bookstore, and events held around the world, InternationalLiving.com provides information and services to help its readers live better, travel farther, have more fun, save more money, and find better business opportunities when they expand their world beyond their own shores. InternationalLiving.com has more than 200 correspondents traveling the globe, investigating the best opportunities for travel, retirement, real estate, and investment. It was important that we select a vendor we could trust and software that was proven to meet our needs." Vo Hoa, Deputy Director of DNPC Survalent, a leading provider of advanced distribution management system (ADMS) software, today announced that Da Nang Power Company (DNPC) has completed the first phase of its SurvalentONE FLISR implementation. Phase 1 saw the successful implementation of FLISR on feeders serving the utilitys most critical customers, including two hospitals. The utility is now in the process of implementing SurvalentONE FLISR on its remaining feeders to improve the quality and reliability of electrical power supply for all its government, commercial, and residential customers. DNPC is an electrical utility serving 300,000 customers in the city of Da Nang, Vietnam. This deployment, the first installation of SurvalentONE FLISR in Vietnam, puts DNPC at the forefront of utility technology in a country committed to modernizing its grid. Survalents local partner and integrator, My Phuong Trading Co. Ltd., is assisting DNPC to implement SurvalentONE FLISR on all of its feeders to enable faster fault identification, isolation, and automatic power resupply. All eyes are on DNPC as we are the first utility in Vietnam to successfully implement advanced DMS applications into our grid, said Vo Hoa, deputy director of DNPC. It was important that we select a vendor we could trust and software that was proven to meet our needs. Originally, we chose Survalents SCADA for our control room based on their reputation for delivering modern, reliable software at a low total cost of ownership. The application has been easy to use and configure and weve seen noticeable improvements in our control room operations; this gave us great confidence in selecting SurvalentONE FLISR for the next step in our modernization plan. Reliable power is vital to Da Nangs local economy as the city is a popular tourist destination and stage for numerous international events. Previously, operators were required to manually isolate a faults location, change the grid connection, and transfer the power, which caused widespread and lengthy power interruptions. This project will help to ensure a safe, high-quality electrical supply for our customers, continued Hoa. We expect our SAIDI [system average interruption duration index] and SAIFI [system average interruption frequency index] to decrease by 16% and 43% respectively. Were proud to help advance the modernization of Vietnams power supply with the first-ever deployment of our FLISR solution to a Vietnamese utility, said Steve Mueller, president and chief executive officer of Survalent. Its particularly gratifying to know that Da Nang is projected to realize such impressive outcomes as a result of the implementation. About Da Nang Power Company DNPC was established in the year 1976, and is the only power company to supply electricity for more than 300,000 customers in Danang city, Vietnam at the voltage level of 22kV and 0.4kV. The annual electricity consumption in the year 2017 is 2.803 billion kWh. Its total number of employees is more than 800. Reliability indices are more and more important to DNPC because of the rapid increasing rate of tourism sector in the coming years. About Survalent Survalent is the most trusted provider of advanced distribution management systems (ADMS) software for electric, transit, gas and water/wastewater utilities across the globe. Over 600 utilities in 30 countries rely on the Survalent ONE platform to effectively operate, monitor, analyze, restore, and optimize operations. By supporting critical utility operations with a fully integrated solution, our customers have significantly improved operational efficiencies, customer satisfaction and network reliability. Survalent StationCentral, our comprehensive substation automation solution, delivers advanced control and monitoring for enhanced network performance and protection. Our unwavering commitment to excellence and to our customers has been the key to our success for over 60 years. To learn more, visit us at http://www.survalent.com. Follow us on Twitter @Survalent and LinkedIn. ### For media inquiries, please contact: Survalent press(at)survalent.com Da Nang Power Company pcdanang(at)cpc.vn When you do something you are passionate about, it doesnt feel like work, Paul Aldrich says. I truly love bringing beautiful light and fragrance into peoples homes, and am surrounded by a team that feels the same way. In the early 1990s, Paul Aldrich had just closed his decade-old business and was looking for a job in a struggling economy. Discouraged, he met with his ac-countant, who provided some life-changing advice. Upon learning that Aldrich had dabbled in candle making as a hobby many years before, the accountant suggested, "Do yourself a favorgo buy some wax." Aldrich did just that, borrowing $20 from a friend to buy some simple supplies, and headed to his own kitchen to make scented votive candles that he gave to friends and family, who wanted moreand were willing to pay for them. As more and more people bought the candles, Paul would use the money to buy more supplies, expanding the product line by procuring "any container that would hold wax" at flea markets and yard sales. He would take the candles to craft shows on the weekends and go back to his kitch-en to make more. Soon after, Paul found a sales representative in Boston who placed a large order for the Boston Gifts Show, and the Aldrich home became the headquarters of Village Candle. As demand grew, the company moved out of their living room and into a 2,500 square-foot space in Yarmouth. Within two years, the factory encompassed 30,000 sf and Village Candles were being sold across the U.S., tripling in sales volume every year. While Paul didn't have experience running a company of that size, he understood that building the right team was essential. Paul's wife, Sally, was part of that team. She was my rock," says Paul. Some of Village Candle's earliest employees, including the plant manager, several pourers, and the accounts payable person, have been with the company from the very beginning, staying with the company 20-plus years. When you do something you are passionate about, it doesnt feel like work, Paul says. I truly love bringing beautiful light and fragrance into peoples homes, and am surrounded by a team that feels the same way. Over the years, Village Candle has become a much-loved source for fine fragranced candles. Paul understands the power of his candle fragrances and the emotions they evoke in Village Candle enthusiasts. Paul says true happiness comes from reading letters from customers who tell the stories about their experiences with Village Candle, such as a lilac candle sparking mem-ories of picking flowers with Grandma. Fragrances that have been part of Village Candle from the beginningSpiced Pumpkin, Balsam Fir, Cinnamon Bun, Mulled Cider and Sugar Cookiecontinue to delight customers even as the product line expands to include more sophisticated and trend-forward offerings. "I'm so proud of the positive impact our product has had on people's lives," says Paul. Today, Village Candle celebrates 25 years of bringing the art and heart of fragrance to candle lovers across America and around the world. Still based in Maine and family owned, the compa-ny has embarked on a new adventure and a new world of fragrance that offers deeper, richer and more layered fragrance experiences that surprise and delight, and designs that are both timeless and modern. As they look ahead to the next 25 years, Paul and his team have set their sights on growing Vil-lage Candle as a global brand, in the same way he grew the company regionally and then nation-ally. The company has nearly 40 distributors across Europe, the Middle East, Australia and South Africa. "In many of those countries, the impact of decorating our homes with fragrance is just beginning to emerge," Aldrich says. To bring this vision to fruition, Village Candle has made several strategic hires in the last year. Jeanne Hulit, who has more than 20 years of experience in commercial banking and International trade, and who served in President Barack Obamas cabinet as Acting Administrator of the U.S. Small Business Administration, joined Village Candle as President in early 2017. The company more recently hired Clive Harper, who has been credited with creating the European candle market for Yankee Candle, as President of Village Candles international division. Dana Schwartz, a recognized leader in consumer direct, digital commerce and brand experience in the domestic and international premium brand space, was hired as Vice President of eCommerce and Brand Management. To share the celebration of this milestone anniversary with loyal customers, partners and friends, Village Candle has created TRUE BRILLIANCE, a limited-edition 25th Anniversary Can-dle that embodies the companys commitment to creating the richest and brightest candle expe-rience. Infused with an effervescent blend of citrus, fruit and spice, TRUE BRILLIANCE is ideal for spe-cial occasions of every kind. Notes of sparkling orange, fresh apple and melon create a rush of emotion, while a pop of champagne hits the high notes. Deep shimmering notes of amber and woods mingle to create depth and dimension. Presented in custom glass with an embellished sil-vertone top, this special edition candle is perfect for gift-giving. TRUE BRILLIANCE is available in limited quantities at participating Village Candle retailers and online at http://www.villagecandle.com. ABOUT VILLAGE CANDLE Founded in 1993, Village Candle is a manufacturer and multichannel retailer of quality fra-granced candles, gifts and accessories, based in Wells, Maine. Village Candle creates fra-granced products using the most refined wax, the richest colors, and the finest fragranced oils available. Village Candle creates and brings high quality home fragrance products to market with the intent to inspire through beauty, fragrance and experience. Village Candle products are sold in gift stores, grocery stores and online throughout the U.S., with a growing international pres-ence in over 32 countries. For more information visit http://www.villagecandle.com. Plants placed in NATEDE metabolize a significantly higher amount of pollutants compared to plants potted in regular vases, because of the combination of design and embedded technology, and NATEDEs air flow system quickly and quietly cleans air from a plants soil. Today, Clairy introduced their latest technological advancement in air purification: NATEDE. NATEDE launches on Kickstarter, where the company introduced their first product, the award winning Clairy, two years ago to much fanfare and success. The name NATEDE comes from Clairy's unique and proprietary product concept trilogy: NAture, TEchnology and DEsign. Clairy's corporate mission is to empower people to clean and purify the air in their homes, offices, schools and public buildings. The air inside can be up to 5 times more polluted than the air outside, stated the World Health Organization and contaminants come not only from the often polluted air outside, but also from cleaning products, carpeting, paint, furniture, smoke, dust, cooking and more. As we spend on average 90% of our lives indoors, it is critical that we address the multitude of negative effects air pollution can cause: allergies, asthma, poor sleep, skin irritation, coughs, runny noses, itchy eyes and more long-term, harmful impacts on our health and well being. Like Clairys first product, NATEDE is not just a beautiful air purifier, but also a plant holder, designed and crafted in Italy and available in sustainable biomaterial or ceramic, the latter for its premium version. NATEDE is a beautiful accessory for any home, and its simple design is deceptive: it features the most advanced sensors and has a new photocatalytic filter, which does not need to be replaced, therefore eliminating waste and the extra expenses. Thanks to the combination of the plant with photocatylisis, the product is now able to eliminate 93% of Vocs, 99% of bacteria, virus and fine particulate. Clairy CEO Paolo Ganis said, The core technology of NATEDE is phytoremediation, which means that it uses the natural power of common plants to clean toxins in the air. This was studied by NASA in the 80 and implemented by us with almost 3 years of research at PNAT and LINV, two of the most important laboratories on plants neurobiology in the world. Plants placed in NATEDE metabolize a significantly higher amount of pollutants compared to plants potted in regular vases, because of the combination of design and embedded technology, and NATEDEs air flow system quickly and quietly cleans air from a plants soil. Clairy has gone through a complete redesign with upgraded features for this new product. The monitors and sensors inside of NATEDE can accurately read the temperature and humidity of a room, as well as detect VOCs, PM2.5, and CO. The new LED interface communicates air quality levels without the use of the Clairy application, but the Clairy app allows users to monitor air pollutants and control the air flow in their space in real time. NATEDE can even connect to other smart home devices, such as Amazons Alexa, and provides users with health tips. Along with NATEDEs upgraded features, NATEDEs updated design offers a more modern shape and sleek look with cleaner lines and a wooden base thats made of all-natural materials that are 100% recyclable and environmentally friendly. NATEDE also features a self-watering system, hence it helps to further reduce water consumption other than keeping plants alive while we are on the move or on holidays, even long ones. Its water tank can bring water to plants for about a month. The NATEDE empowers families, companies and school administrators to take control of their indoor environment, and to make the air clean, safe and healthy. The NATEDE can provide quick and substantial benefits for the health and comfort of families, pets, schoolchildren and employees. NATEDE is available for preordering starting at 133 ($164) on Kickstarter. To learn more about the campaign, visit pr.go2.fund/natede. About Clairy Inc Clairy.inc is an American company born from an Italian startup, Laboratori Fabrici. Clairy presented its first product at CES Las Vegas in 2016 and was then incubated for 3 months in Silicon Valley by Plug and Play Ventures, one of the most important accelerators in the world. The company focuses on health and wellness, by developing hybrid products that combine nature, technology and Made in Italy Design. The Companys first product has been presented at CES in Las Vegas in 2016. Clairy is the first producer of air purifiers truly based on nature, technology and design. Clairy sells its products in over 50 countries worldwide. Clairy is at the forefront of a green revolution, allowing users to use common plants to take control over the air they breathe, by allowing them to remotely monitor and control their Clairy with a proprietary app connected to the most advanced sensors embedded in its technological heart. Combining the best of nature and technology, Clairy's design team has developed the best natural and smart air purifier, already awarded for its design with the European Design Award in 2017 and for its product purpose that improves health and wellness, the company received 2 million Euro investments from the European Union. Launched in 2016, Clairy is a privately held company, headquartered in Pordenone, Italy, with offices in Milan and San Francisco. The Clairy app is currently available as a free download for iPhone, iPad and Android devices globally. Clairys products are available for purchase in the most stylish colors on http://www.clairy.com. Susan McLendon of Meadows Regional Health System accepts the Telehealth Leader Award from Keri Brantley, Conference Director at GPT. The conference is a great opportunity to honor those in our network who are true telehealth champions. Georgia-based telehealth networking agency Global Partnership for Telehealth recently honored four partners with awards at its 9th Annual Conference in Jekyll Island, GA. The organization gave Piedmont Health System in Atlanta the Award for Excellence in Telehealth and honored Susan McLendon, with Meadows Regional Health System in Vidalia, with the Telehealth Leadership Award. Furthermore, GPT named Joe Tallent, Telehealth Coordinator at Effingham Health System, its Telehealth Coordinator of the Year and honored the Packer Health Clinic, based in the Colquitt County School System, as its School-Based Telehealth Program of the Year. The conference is a great opportunity to honor those in our network who are true telehealth champions, the ones who go the extra mile, said Keri Brantley, Global Partnership for Telehealths Conference Director. Its GPTs way of saying thank you for the hard work that our partners put into their programs. Close to 150 registrants watched as Global Partnership for Telehealth distributed the awards on Wednesday, March 21st to close out the conference at the Jekyll Island Convention Center. Brantley said that honoring the award-winning telehealth practices and coordinators was an excellent way to close out a very successful conference. Without partners like this, Brantley said, these amazing conferences could not happen. Were very proud to have them in GPTs network. Global/Georgia Partnership for Telehealth (GPT) is a nonprofit corporation whose mission is to deliver worldwide access to healthcare by leveraging technology. With a 12-year track record of success developing and implementing sustainable, cost-effective telehealth programs, GPT is the leading nonprofit agency globally focused on increasing access to healthcare through innovative use of technology. Currently, GPT manages a network of more than 650 endpoints, including partner providers, health systems, schools, universities, long-term care facilities, correctional facilities, and international mission projects. For more information, visit GPT's website at http://www.gatelehealth.org. # # # If you would like more information about this topic, please contact Evan Pell at (912) 285-0902 or email at Evan.Pell@gpth.org. Daniel Auerbach Daniel Auerbach of Cotney Construction Law, LLP was recently named General Counsel of the Treasure Coast Roofing & Sheet Metal Association (TCRSA). As General Counsel, Auerbach will provide legal assistance with the associations structure and bylaws, operations, board of directors, and governance policies. TCRSA is a great association to be a part of. Its members are clearly invested in the future of the roofing industry, said Daniel Auerbach, This is a great opportunity, and Im happy to help out the industry in whatever way I can. Auerbachs practice area encompass both commercial and construction litigation in addition to various transactional matters. Specifically, Dan works on contract review and drafting, contract negotiation, lien law, bond law, building code violation defense, construction defect litigation, OSHA defense, bid protest litigation, employment claim defense and contractor licensing defense. ### About Treasure Coast Roofing & Sheet Metal Association The Treasure Coast Roofing & Sheet Metal Association was restarted in 2016 to bring together contractors as well as businesses with related interests. TCRSA's purpose is to foster and encourage a high standard of business ethics among its members and to inform the general public of the importance of doing business with competent and ethical firms. TCRSA represents the interests and acts as the voice of its membership before government and regulatory bodies of all kinds and works to improve the overall industry in keeping with the general purposes of the Association. About Cotney Construction Law Cotney Construction Law, LLP is a national construction law firm that advocates for the roofing industry. The firm serves as General Counsel to Florida Roofing and Sheet Metal Association (FRSA), Tennessee Association of Roofing Contractors (TARC), Roofing Technology Think Tank (RT3), National Women in Roofing (NWIR), and a number of local roofing associations. Cotney Construction Laws practice areas include construction law, litigation, arbitration, contract review & drafting, immigration, employment, OSHA defense, licensing defense, bid protests, lien law, bond law and alternative dispute resolution. The firm has offices throughout Florida, as well as locations in Nashville, Houston, Grand Rapids, and Mobile, Alabama. For more information, visit http://www.cotneycl.com. SourceMedias Neal Awards reflect our deep commitment to informing and engaging professional communities through relevant, useful content, compellingly presented SourceMedia, a digital business information and performance media company serving senior-level decision-makers in finance, technology and healthcare, today announced that Financial Planning and American Banker had brought home Jesse H. Neal Awards, among business medias most prestigious honors. Financial Planning, which serves the wealth management community, was named Best Media Brand, an honor bestowed on information services exhibiting overall editorial excellence. American Banker, which serves the banking and financial services community, won two awards, for Best Single Article and Best Profile. SourceMedia was a finalist in a record 16 Neal categories in 2018s competition, including Best Technical Content, Best Infographics, and Best Overall Art Direction / Design. An immersive site published by Financial Planning was a finalist in two categories. And the company had two Best Media Brand finalists: American Banker and Financial Planning. SourceMedias Neal Awards reflect our deep commitment to informing and engaging professional communities through relevant, useful content, compellingly presented, said SourceMedias Chief Content Officer David Longobardi. This years winners and finalists reflect both the breadth of our capabilities and the depth of our coverage. Financial Plannings win for Best Media Brand represents the second consecutive year in which it took home that title. The brand led by Editorial Director Scott Wenger and Editor in Chief Chelsea Emery won a total four Neals in 2017, including Best Website, Best Commentary/Blog, and Best News Coverage. American Bankers Best Single Article honors went to a feature story by the brands Editor in Chief Rob Blackwell: How far does American Samoa have to go to get a bank? The article took a close look at the ultimately successful effort to make banking more accessible to the islands 60,000 residents, who bank on just seven ATMs. Blackwells work was also the Runner-Up for 2018s Grand Neal, the programs best in show. American Banker was further honored for Best Profile for an in-depth study of one of the industrys disruptors: Inside Ripple's Plan to Make Money Move as Fast as Information. SourceMedia is honored to be recognized by Connectiv for its editorial and product excellence and commitment to the communities we serve, said the companys Chief Executive Officer Gemma Postlethwaite. SourceMedias winning entries reflect the companys commitment to quality content and leading-edge distribution platforms. Bestowed by Connectiv, The Business Information Association, the Neal Awards recognize and reward editorial excellence in business media. About SourceMedia SourceMedia, an Observer Capital company, is an innovative, growing digital business information and performance media company serving senior-level professionals in the financial, technology and healthcare sectors. Brands include American Banker, PaymentsSource, The Bond Buyer, Financial Planning, Accounting Today, Mergers & Acquisitions, National Mortgage News, Employee Benefit News and Health Data Management. Lyons Commercial Data, a leading provider of U.S. financial institution data and risk management solutions, has announced that they will be exhibiting at the NACHA PAYMENTS conference. The conference takes place April 29th May 2 at the San Diego Convention Center in downtown San Diego, CA. For nearly three decades, Lyons Commercial data has been providing quality U.S. financial institution data, including all current ABA routing numbers and other information critical to transaction processing and regulatory compliance. Lyons Commercial Data also offers proven solutions to financial institutions, payment processors, and other businesses, to assist them in optimizing their ACH processes, managing risk, and fraud mitigation. The PAYMENTS conferences, operated by NACHA, unites thousands of payments system stakeholders from business end-user and financial and technology services organizations to debate and explore the more pressing issues and opportunities today. We are very excited to exhibit at the NACHA PAYMENTS conference again this year, said Trevor Ward, General Manager at Lyons Commercial Data. As an industry leader with over two decades of experience in providing financial technology solutions, we are committed to helping businesses, banks, credit unions, and other organizations know their customers and verify routing and account information to ensure compliance. To learn more about Lyons Commercial Datas verification services, visit the Lyons Commercial Data team at booth #901 at the NACHA PAYMENTS 2018 conference this month. About Lyons Commercial Data Lyons Commercial Data is a leading provider of quality U.S. financial institution data, including all current ABA routing numbers and other information critical to transaction processing. Lyons Commercial Data also offers proven solutions to financial institutions, payment processors, and other businesses, to assist them in optimizing their ACH processes, managing risk, and fraud mitigation. For more information, please visit http://www.lyonslive.com; follow Lyons Commercial Data on Twitter @LyonsData or on Facebook at http://www.facebook.com/lyonscommercialdata; or call 800-684-0388. About Autoscribe Corporation Autoscribe Corporation is a leading financial services company and payment processor. With more than two decades of innovation and leadership in the financial technology industry, Autoscribe offers a full suite of tools through PaymentVision and Lyons Commercial Data to help their customers grow their business, simplify payment processing, mitigate risk, and ensure compliance. Recently named to the Inc. 5000 as one of the fastest growing private companies in the nation, Autoscribe has thousands of customers and processes more than $2 billion in transactions annually. For more information, please visit http://www.autoscribe.com; follow Autoscribe on Twitter @AutoscribeCorp or on LinkedIn at http://www.linkedin.com/company/autoscribe; or call 800-345-7243. Forward-Looking Statements This press release includes certain forward-looking statements including, without limitation, statements regarding future events and Autoscribe Corporations business, strategy and results that are subject to risks, uncertainties and other factors that could cause actual results or outcomes to differ materially from those contemplated by the forward-looking statements. These forward-looking statements include, but are not limited to, plans, objectives, expectations and intentions and other statements contained in this press release that are not historical facts. These statements are made pursuant to the safe harbor provisions of the Private Securities Litigation Reform Act of 1995 and are sometimes identified by words such as will, may, could, should, would, project, believe, anticipate, expect, plan, estimate, forecast, potential, intend, continue, target, opportunities and variations of these words or comparable words. As a result of the ultimate outcome of such risks and uncertainties, Autoscribe Corporations actual results could differ materially from those anticipated in these forward-looking statements. These statements are based on Autoscribe Corporations current beliefs or expectations, and there are a number of important factors that could cause the actual results or outcomes to differ materially from those indicated by these forward-looking statements, including, without limitation, risks related to the successful offering of the products and services of Autoscribe Corporation; and other risks that may impact Autoscribe Corporations business. Autoscribe Corporation expressly disclaims any obligation or undertaking to release publicly any updates or revisions to any forward-looking statements contained herein as a result of new information, future events, or otherwise. Due to rounding, numbers presented throughout this and other documents may not add up precisely to the totals provided and percentages may not precisely reflect the absolute figures. Note to Editors: Autoscribe and PaymentVision are registered trademarks of Autoscribe Corporation. All other trademarks mentioned are the property of their respective owners. Throughout his career, Carls exceptional character, strong leadership and commitment to bettering the whole field of pharmacy have fueled Rx relief's growth to its current position as the largest pharmacy specialty staffing company in the U.S. Rx relief, a PrideStaff company, is pleased to announce that Carl Franklin, RPh and Senior Advisor, Emeritus, has been inducted to the California Pharmacists Association Pharmacy Hall of Fame. The California Pharmacy Hall of Fame recognizes individuals who are, or have been, an inspiration to the practice of pharmacy in California, as exemplified by their long and distinguished history of service, as well as achievement in the areas of character, innovation, trend setting and altruism. A pharmacist for over 40 years, Franklin began working for Rx relief in 1990 after selling his own pharmacy. When PrideStaff acquired Rx relief in 1997, Founder and CEO George Rogers installed Franklin as its Vice President/General Manager and promoted him to Executive Vice President in 2003. During his tenure, Franklin helped grow the leading pharmacy staffing firm from $1.1 million to $27 million in revenue. He is a board member for the Central Valley Pharmacists Association, formerly known as the Fresno-Madera Pharmacists Association, as well as a member of several other associations: APhA (American Pharmacists Association), ASHP (American Society of Health-System Pharmacists), CPhA (California Pharmacists Association), CSHP (California Society of Health-System Pharmacists), AMCP (Academy of Managed Care Pharmacy), and the Sierra Society of Health-Systems Pharmacists. "Becoming a pharmacist has been my lifelong dream, starting when I was 15 years old," said Carl Franklin, RPh, Senior Advisor, Emeritus, Rx relief. "Ive always wanted to provide the best service I could for the young and the old, the rich and the poor. I enhanced my dream by continuously adding skill sets to be able to bring value where I could. "Ive never worked for any accolades and I never anticipated any recognition," Franklin continued. "Being inducted into the California Pharmacy Hall of Fame is the highlight of my career as a pharmacist, and to be recognized by the profession I love so much is the pinnacle for me. It means Ive practiced pharmacy in a manner respected by my peers and colleagues." "Throughout his career, Carls exceptional character, strong leadership and commitment to bettering the whole field of pharmacy have fueled Rx relief's growth to its current position as the largest pharmacy specialty staffing company in the U.S.," said PrideStaff Founder and CEO George Rogers. "Since Carl's retirement in 2017, Rx relief has continued to grow, which is a powerful testament to the soundness of the organization he so successfully built. He has been an inspiration to the practice of pharmacy, helping countless pharmacists find career-building opportunities, and he richly deserves his place in California's Pharmacy Hall of Fame." This latest honor comes on the heels of several other marks of distinction for Carl Franklin and his team. Earlier this year, Rx relief earned Inavero's coveted 2018 Best of Staffing Client and Talent Diamond Awards, after winning the Best of Staffing Client and Talent Awards for the last five years in a row for providing superior service to their clients and job seekers. Rx relief is the only staffing firm dedicated to pharmacy staffing in the U.S. and Canada to earn Diamond Awards four years in a row. In 2017, Rx relief, employee Brenda Riser, was named a 2017 National Staffing Employee of the Year All-Star by the American Staffing Association (ASA), and the pharmacy placement firm also received a 2017 ASA Genius Grand Award in the Digital Media category for Staffing Firms with More than $100 Million in Annual Sales class. About Rx relief A division of PrideStaff, Rx relief is a Joint Commission Certified and GSA approved pharmacy placement firm providing temporary and full-time pharmacy professionals for all pharmacy practice settings. The parent company, PrideStaff, was founded in the 1970s as 100 percent company-owned units and began staffing franchising in 1995. They operate over 80 offices in North America to serve over 5,000 clients. With over 40 years in the staffing business, headquartered in Fresno, CA, all PrideStaff brands offer the resources and expertise of a national firm with the spirit, dedication and personal service of smaller, entrepreneurial firms. For more information on Rx relief services or for franchise information, visit or http://www.rxrelief.com. PrideStaff and Rx relief's shared Mission: Consistently provide client experiences focused on what they value most. President Donald Trump wasn't pleased when he found out last week that Vice President Mike Pence had hired a longtime Republican pollster and one-time Trump critic to be his national security adviser. Jon Lerner, a top aide to "Tonight, Jon informed the vice president that he was withdrawing from coming on board as national security adviser, and the vice president accepted his decision," Alyssa Farah, Pence's press secretary, told The Times. "Vice President Pence holds Jon Lerner in the highest regard and expressed his deep gratitude for Jon's willingness to consider joining our team." Lerner has long advised Haley, formerly South Carolina's governor, and has a strong relationship with Pence's chief of staff, Nick Ayers, who supported Haley's gubernatorial bid while he was head of the Republican Governors Association. He'll continue advising Haley and will provide informal counsel to Pence, a White House official told The Times. (Pence's former national security adviser, Andrea Thompson, was selected to be the new undersecretary of state for arms control and is awaiting confirmation.) As The Washington Post reported recently, Pence's influence over the administration's foreign policy has widened in recent months. The vice president chaired multiple meetings concerning Syria last week before traveling to Peru to represent the US at the Summit of the Americas, after Trump chose not to attend. Haley has also played a key role in the administration's foreign affairs in close coordination with Pence, helping lead the administration's response to Syria. But Haley and Pence, whose foreign policy philosophy fits squarely within establishment Republican thinking, are not always aligned with Trump. On Monday, the president halted plans to roll out new sanctions against Russia, which Haley said would be announced by Treasury Secretary Steven Mnuchin on Monday. This comes as the Trump administration's national security and foreign policy team is being fundamentally reshaped. Last week, John Bolton took over as the president's third national security adviser and immediately began cleaning house, firing or forcing out several top staffers. The UK has faulted itself as the agent for homophobia in its former colony Ghana. This development the British Prime Minister Theresa May says her outfit is ready to help Ghana rewrite its laws to accommodate gays. Addressing participants at the Commonwealth heads of government meeting in London on Tuesday, Theresa May apologised for the UKs role in introducing anti-gay laws. According to her,the UKs colonization seemed to have resulted in a legacy of discrimination, violence and even death, in some of its former colonies. Im all too aware that these laws were often put in place by my own country. They were wrong then, and they are wrong now. It is common to find former colonies of Britain introduce criminal laws against gayism. Human rights campaigners have called for the decriminalisation of homosexuality in Ghana after a new report found violence towards LGBT people by mobs and family members is on the increase. Reuters reports that colonial-era homophobic laws are still used in 37 of the Commonwealths 53 member nations. Theresa May, while addressing the gathering praised member countries which had recently decriminalized homosexuality. In an interview with Accra-based Starr FM, Inspector Dza Worlanyo of the Legon Police said the students were questioned and released. The police patrol has been to the campus and all is calm now. Some people were arrested but they were questioned and released. He, however, disclosed that some students pelted stones at the Mensah Sarbah hall Monday night. Yesterday calm was restored but late in the night, some Vandals went to Mensah Sarbah Hall pelted stones and later took to their heels. Chaotic scenes were witnessed at the University of Ghana on Monday following clashes between students of Commonwealth Hall and Katanga Hall. At least one person was severely injured during the exchanges. The clashes started after students of Katanga Hall from the Kwame Nkrumah University of Science and Technology (KNUST) who were lodging at Sarbah Hall at the University of Ghana for a debate were seen on a video assaulting a student from Commonwealth Hall. Their counterparts from the Commonwealth Hall, popularly known as Vandals, did not take lightly to the said video and descended on Sarbah Hall to rescue their colleague. READ ALSO: Prophetess arrested for burning WASSCE candidate to death But in an attempt to free their colleague, the Katanga and Sarbah students resisted, which led to some bitter exchanges. The situation later escalated in a bloody clash, with irate vandals ending up vandalising property belonging to Sarbah Hall. Meanwhile, a former deputy chief Vandal now Member of Parliament Clement Apaak said the old vandals will send a delegation to the campus to help resolve the matter. According to him, he likes the Bhim Nation label own because he (Stonebwoy) is passionate about helping people. I have to meet Stonebwoy, I love people like him. He has some positive vibes and he is passionate about helping people. I have to meet Stonebwoy, I really like people, he told Giovani and Berla Mundi on Starr Drive Monday. READ MORE: SA rapper Nasty C who was a guest international act at the 19th VGMAs held at the Conference Centre last Saturday also said even though he has heard of Stonebwoys dancehall rival Shatta Wale, he does not know his works. I have heard the name Shatta Wale but not his works. I dont know if he is a man or woman. He however, singled out Kwesi Arthurs Grind Day as his favourite Ghanaian song. The South African further intimated he was comfortable on the VGMA stage because he is used to performing to an audience like that. The rapper had stated his desire to meet the Mama artiste before he leaves for South African even if they dont work together on a record. "I have to meet Stonebwoy. Forget work, even if we dont work, I just have to meet him, just like his energy, explained the Phases rapper to Giovani Caleb on Starr Drive on Monday, April 16. I like people like that. Positivity, just growing, helping people and really in tune with his music. His music is about his life. READ MORE: SA rapper There is no word on whether they did work on a song or not. Tuko.co.ke reported that the abashed journalist was one of many media men who were at 64 Resort to cover the climax of the Marakwet Cultural Festival on the night of Sunday, April 14. The MP lost control of his temper and shouted publicly that the said journalist was fond of taking money from him under the guise of exclusive interview with him. The journalist whose identity has not been disclosed had sneaked from among his colleagues and entered Swarrup Mishras private lounge where he was reportedly drinking with his friends. A source was quoted as having narrated that: It all begun at around 2.00AM after our colleague found his way to one of the private lounges where Mishra was and requested for KSh40, 000 as appreciation for his services. The MP who was intoxicated however pounced on him, slapped him severally and spilled his drink on the reporter's face. The scuffle escalated when the reporter tried to use his phone to record the incensed politician who was hurling insults and gesturing obscenely. The MPs security guards grabbed the journalist and carried him out of the lounge. Swarrup Mishra himself was quotes as saying He came to secretly record me while I am enjoying myself so he can use the videos as blackmail to extort me just because I once said I had stopped drinking. Abdulrahman Mohammed was arrested on Monday and police have revealed that he had administered intravenous injections to patients and also collected blood and urine samples for diagnosis, according to yabaleftonline.ng. The Lagos state police commissioner, CP Edgal Imohimi is quoted as having told newsmen that: Detectives from the Area D Command, Mushin, arrested one Abdulrahman Mohammed, a native of Ran Village in Gamboru Ngala local government area of Borno State for operating as a medical doctor at 3, Bamishile Street, Idi -Araba, whereas his education stopped at primary school level. Further investigation into the activities of Abdulrahman Mohammed, who has been impersonating as a medical doctor for the past four years revealed that he had been administrating intravenous injections, conducting medical test on his patients and taking urine and blood samples from his patients. He is cooperating with the police and we are working with him to ensure all unregistered drug stores are clamped down. The suspect, Abdulrahman Mohammed has reportedly denied having posed as a medical doctor. He said: I was a hawker. I was hawking drugs before I decided to open a pharmacy. I did not finish my primary school and I was not taught to sell the drugs. My pharmacy was not licensed. I do not treat people. I do not collect blood or urine samples. I only sell the kits and people come to buy it. According to President Akufo-Addo, Ghana is a haven of peace, security and stability, a country where the principles of democratic accountability are now firmly entrenched in its body politic, and where the separation of powers is real, to promote accountable governance. He told the gathering that Ghana is embarking on an aggressive public-private-partnership programme to attract investment in the development of both the countrys road and railway infrastructure.We are hopeful that, with solid private sector participation, we can develop a modern railway network with strong production centre linkages and with the potential to connect us to our neighbours to the north, i.e. Burkina Faso, to the west, i.e. Cote dIvoire, and to the east, i.e. Togo. We believe that this is an area where British technology and expertise would be very welcome, he said. Accra-based Starr FM reports that the clashes started after students of Katanga Hall from the Kwame Nkrumah University of Science and Technology (KNUST) who were lodging at Sarbah Hall at the University of Ghana for a debate were seen on a video assaulting a student from Commonwealth Hall. Their counterparts from the Commonwealth Hall, popularly known as Vandals, did not take lightly to the said video and descended on Sarbah Hall to rescue their colleague. But in an attempt to free their colleague, the Katanga and Sarbah students resisted, which led to some bitter exchanges. READ ALSO: Elmina mourns as 3 kids are found dead in a car The situation later escalated in a bloody clash, with irate vandals ending up vandalising property belonging to Sarbah Hall. Reports suggest that the situation could have gotten worse had the Police not arrived on time to restore calm. The are calling on the strict enforcement of LI 2180 (Subsection 128) which prohibits motorcycles and tricycles from registering as commercial operators. Mr. Ankoma- Abrokwaa added that years of poor law enforcement, attitudinal deficiency and general indiscipline has resulted in extensive environmental degradation, water pollution, forest depletion etc all costing the nation colossal amounts of money annually. These and other excesses caused by poor and sometimes inadequate law enforcement are what has necessitated this petition calling on the government to strictly enforce the law. The court granted him bail in the sum of GH100,000. The judge subsequently adjourned the case sine die. 24-year-old Ernest Green has been in police custody since April 6, 2018. READ ALSO: Jobless nurses threaten another demo against Govt Ernest Green was arrested after a European tourist who was on admission at the Damongo Government Hospital accused him of forcing himself on her. The accused, who has been identified as one Ernest Green, is alleged to have overstepped his bounds as a nurse by raping a hapless patient who had visited the hospital for treatment. Explaining to the Police how events unfolded, the victim said she observed that Mr. Green frequently visited her ward whiles she on admission. She narrated that she felt uneasy with the nurses actions but he asked her to relax, to which she duly obliged. She told the Police that on one occasion she came back to meet Mr. Green in her room after returning from the washroom. READ ALSO: Elmina mourns as 3 kids are found dead in a car According to her, she felt very weak since she had been suffering from running stomach and could barely walk to her bed. Mr. Green realized her situation and offered to help her get to her bed. However, she said, upon helping her to the bed, the nurse started fondling her breast and ended up having unprotected sex with her. Mr. Green was later arrested after the victim reported the incident at the Damango Police station. She made this call when she addressed heads of states attending the Commonwealth heads of government meeting in London. She said it is wrong for homosexuals to be persecuted for their sexual orientation. READ ALSO: President orders spot fines against road traffic offenders She added that her country is, therefore, willing to help African countries to reform their laws to accommodate the interest of homosexuals. Even though she acknowledged the efforts being made by member countries to improve conditions of homosexuals, she noted: Yet there remains much to doNobody should face discrimination and persecution because of who they are or who they love. The UK stands ready to support any Commonwealth nation wanting to reform outdated legislation that makes such discrimination possible. His call comes after the Danish Ambassador to Ghana Tove Degnbol made a similar call on Ghanaians to respect the rights of gays and lesbians. I think it is important that gay [and lesbian] rights are discussed. To us, gay rights are human rights. Everybody should have the same rights. We have been through this discussion in our country, initially, there was a lot of resistance from religion. I fully recognize the debate which is going on here in Ghana. But I think it is very important to understand that all people have rights, despite their sexuality and nationality. There have been several agitations by gays and lesbians outside Ghana seeking protection from abuse and attacks over their sexuality. With the exception of South Africa, lesbian, gay, bisexual, and transgender (LGBT) rights in Africa are very limited in comparison to many other areas of the world. In a statement released on Monday, the nurses and midwives said they will picket the Ministry of Health if they are not posted by Monday, 23 April 2018. They complained of going through hardships but have been kept under lock because they are bonded and cannot work outside the country. We are hungry and suffering, our knowledge in nursing is kept under lock and that is so worrisome to us and our families, sections of the statement read. The Coalition further lamented that the delay of financial clearance, hence delay in postings, is an emergency concern that ought to be addressed with immediate effect to curb the emerging challenges we are facing. The statement added: We are facing a lot of challenges in our homes [and have become] a burden on our family and society as a whole; private hospitals are not employing us because of the bond agreement between us and the government. We cannot travel to other countries when the opportunity arrives because of the bond between us and the government. These measures include the introduction of spot fines by the Police and provision of funds. In addition, the Ghana Highway Authority, Department of Urban Roads and Department of Feeder Roads will receive at least GHC335 million yearly to provide signage and road markings on roads that are over three years old. All these measures were suggested by a three-man Committee formed by the President to come up with an action plan to curb the road accident menace. Other measures are that the Motor, Traffic and Transport Department of the Ghana Police has been given the green light to introduce spot fines by automation of its operations. The MTTD is also expected to partner with private towing companies and the Nationwide Traffic Management and Enforcement Limited to vigorously enforce the countrys road regulations. These measures are being implanted after the increasing rate of road accidents recently. In 2017, a total of 2,076 people were killed in road accidents across the country. He said this has greatly affected livelihood of the youth in Akwatia. I warned the government that by going on a frontal fight with the small-scale miners and galamseyers youll be causing a mess and a problem for the economy. So I advised them to thread carefully which they didnt do and today we have seen the problem", Jamal said. Akwatia is a famous town known for its diamond mining and all economic activities in the town is centred around diamond mining. He said, The whole economy of Akwatia today is broken down completely. Akwatia is basically a ghost town, a lot of people are leaving the town because there are no jobs to be done ad these were legal small-scale miners whose jobs have been [destroyed] and so you cant blame anybody but the government for the economy." But the governor has quibbled over their role and insisted they only focus on cross-border crime rather than detaining unauthorized migrants coming into the state that is home to several "sanctuary cities." Ron Vitiello, the acting deputy commissioner of US Customs and Border Protection, said Brown had declined the initial roles put forward for Guardsmen. "The governor has determined that what we have asked for so far is unsupportable," Vitiello told reporters. "We've made this refined request, it's gone through the process and then we've got a signal from the governor that he is not participating." Deputy Assistant Defense Secretary Bob Salesses said the initial request envisioned sending 237 Guardsmen to two main crossing areas in Southern California, where they would have conducted maintenance, clerical assistance and helped with heavy equipment operations, among other tasks. "The California National Guard has indicated that they will not perform those missions as we know them to be right now," Salesses said, though he noted that conversations were ongoing. Vitiello, too, suggested that the state's Guard might ultimately be used in other roles, including possibly cargo inspection. "We will have other iterations," Vitiello said. Trump this month said he would send thousands of National Guard troops to the southern border, where they could remain until a border wall is constructed. The order would eventually see about 4,000 Guardsman along the border, which spans four US states. So far about 960 have arrived, officials said. Texas has seen the biggest deployment, with 650 sent to the border, while Arizona has dispatched 250, and New Mexico about 60. Vitiello said Guardsmen would most likely not be armed, but individual states might allow the carrying of a weapon in certain missions. California is at the forefront of what opponents call the "Resistance" to Trump's administration, with the heavily Democratic state suing the federal government over numerous issues, including the rollback of environmental regulations. Several cities including Los Angeles are "sanctuary cities" that require local law enforcement agencies not to tell federal agents about residents' legal status. The two leaders had a frank and open exchange of views" in the one-on-one meeting in the UN-controlled buffer zone in Nicosia, the UN said in a statement. Anastasiades said the leaders did not exclude the possibility of the UN sending an envoy to Cyprus to examine a possible resumption of talks. A group of Greek and Turkish Cypriots who had gathered outside the venue voiced hope that Anastasiades and Akinci would make headway. Cyprus has been divided since 1974, when Turkish troops invaded and occupied its northern third in response to a coup sponsored by the military junta then ruling Greece. The last talks aimed at reunifying the island as a bi-zonal, bi-communal federation collapsed in Switzerland last July. Tensions in the region heightened after Nicosia stepped up its search for natural gas reserves, a move opposed by Turkey. Anastasiades has said reunification talks cannot resume while Turkey is trying to block foreign companies from drilling for oil and gas off of Cyprus, accusing Ankara of "gunboat diplomacy". Nigerias most popular anti-graft agency, the Economic and Financial Crimes Commission (EFCC) has made a startling revelation on Swiss Golden Investment. The agency has recovered N216,402,565.05 out of the N3 billion invested by Nigerians in Swiss Golden Investment. A statement from the EFCC said the online investment company has defrauded over 700,000 Nigerians and this was confirmed through an investigation by the detectives of the anti-graft agency. Swiss Golden lofty promises Swiss Golden Investment prides itself as an online investment company that trades in gold bars and reward investors with gold bars or cash. The multi-level-marketing investment rewards investors for recruiting more members to grow the chain of reward. Members are requested to recruit more members or remain stagnant on the chain with all promises not met. Information on the Swiss Golden website shows that participants are meant to buy gold, partner with the company as advertising agents while encouraging other prospective partners to also register to get a bonus in return. Stranded Nigerians petition EFCC Following many Nigerian investors inabilities to either get the gold bars promised or funds after several months, the EFCC was petitioned. The commission noted that it received a petition from complainants who alleged they invested in the company advertised as an online investment that deals with buying and selling of gold bars. A petitioner in Nigeria was quoted as saying operators of Swiss Golden refused to pay them any dividend or their capital after investing over a billion Naira into the business. A Russian, two Nigerians arrested A Russian national and two Nigerians have been arrested for their involvement in Swiss Golden investment that has been tagged a scam. The EFCC revealed it arrested one Maxim Lobaty, Austin Emenike, and Dickson Nonso Onuchukwu through intelligence reports in Lagos. The trio was subsequently conveyed to the Kano operational zone of the EFCC for further investigation, the EFCC said. Continuing, the commission said: Swiss Golden was discovered through investigation to be a Ponzi scheme that was designed to defraud innocent victims of their hard earned money. After being drilled at the commissions Kano zonal office, Maxim and his co-suspects consented to the refund of the investment. Subsequently, a total sum of N216,402,565.05 has now been recovered. The government said it will not approve the sale of 9mobile to any bidder without technical competence. Prof. Umar Danbatta, the Executive Vice-Chairman of the commission, revealed this in an interactive session with Media Chiefs and News Editors in Lagos, on Monday, April 16, 2018. According to the News Agency of Nigeria (NAN), Danbatta said that a preferred bidder for 9mobile had emerged with the full participation of Commission, adding that the bidder was already undergoing financial evaluation. Once the Central Bank of Nigeria has done the financial evaluation of the bidder, NCC will also examine the technical capacity of the preferred bidder. If the financial evaluation process was not done properly, the CBN would address questions on that; the examination process is meant to be open and transparent. The board of 9mobile was given the mandate with these requirements in mind, he said. Teleology Holdings Ltd Adrian Wood, Teleology's Director, had in March 2018 confirmed that that the company transferred a non-refundable deposit of 50 million dollars to the trustees of the Nigerian bank syndicate presently holding ownership of 9Mobile. Wood said the payment underscored Teleologys financial capability and readiness to revive the organisation, adding it was set to aggregate a 10-point to turn 9mobile around. In the last few days, key executives of the organisation have been deep in meetings with the Nigerian bank syndicate, the regulatory authorities and advisors." "Ahead of the March 22 deadline set by the Financial Advisers, Teleology has also transferred a non-refundable completion deposit of 50 million dollars to the trustees of the bank syndicate presently holding ownership of 9Mobile. "Equally important, Teleology has detailed an ambitious plan of action that will guide its rapid overhaul not only of the network but all aspects of the operations, Wood had said. He made this statement at the centenary celebration of Sheikh Adam Al-Ilory, held at the University of Lagos on April 16, 2018, Punch reports. The weeklong event is themed; Moving Nigeria to Greatness through the works of Al-Ilory. Speaking at the event, the religious leader reacted to claims that Muslims are illiterates because the Islamic education is backward. In his words, We cannot allow people to bring our heads down and say we are useless. We are highly educated. We need to take this challenge up and ask ourselves, Why do people look at us Muslims as illiterates? I dont understand how someone who is very fluent in the Quran, who can recite it off-heart be called an illiterate because he doesn speak English. Islamic education is perpetually an entity of self-discipline, which involves physical and spiritual training of man. It is the balanced growth of man through training of intellect. The bulk of Islamic education is meant to facilitate the proper growth of the total personality of man. It is a way of life. When we are talking about Islamic education, dont think we are being backward because it is the making of a total human being and when you become one, you would shun corruption and avoid illegal dealings. Islamic education The sultan was supported by the Governor of Ogun state, Ibikunle Amosun, who revealed plans to establish an Islamic institution. He said, Markaz Campus will be established in Abeokuta and this will be with the support of the Sultan of Sokoto. We will support the growth of Islam with whatever we have because Islam is a religion of peace. The late Al-Ilory was the founder of the Markaz Agege Centre for Arabic and Islamic Studies, Lagos. One of the protesting students who spoke with newsmen during the protest which caused a heavy traffic on the highway said they are sad over the continued disruption of the school academic calendar which has prolonged their studies. The student said ''we are protesting in sympathy with our lecturers. The management should make efforts to pay the arrears of salaries owed them to enable the lecturers to resume classes. It is a sad thing that Abia Poly is now known for strike and disruptions in the academic calendar. We are about writing our semester examinations and the lecturers are on strike. This will prolong our studies. In fact, students are the greatest losers during strikes. This is why we want the management to make efforts to pay the lecturers. Onyido said this while delivering a lecturer at the 55th meeting of the Committee of Deans of Postgraduate Schools in Nigerian Universities (CDPGS) which held at Nnamdi Azikiwe University, Awka on Monday, April 16, 2018. In his lecture, the former VC described internet professors as professors who simply log onto the internet to copy works of other scholars and present same as theirs. ALSO READ:Former VC wants randy lecturer sacked He said, the difference between my borrowing Sachs phrase to couch my title and what some of our colleagues do these days in their quest to become professors overnight is that while I acknowledge my source, these dubious, crooked colleagues of ours do not. ''In fact, a reasonable proportion of the theses which pass through some of our Postgraduate Schools contain massively plagiarized material, just as some of our latter-day professors in the Nigerian university system are Internet Professors they plagiarized their way up the promotion ladder by downloading materials from the Internet and claiming the authorship of articles they know nothing about. Nigerian Universities also produce 'China Professors'' Onyido also said that a certain university in the South-East now produces professors described as China professors'. He added that those professors were tested and found not worthy to be lecturer II. Speaking at the opening session of the Commonwealth Youth Forum at the Queen Elizabeth II centre in London, Prince Henry of Wales made the announcement. The Prince said the scholarships are named after Queen Elizabeth II and will be funded with the additional 5 million (N2.58 billion) provided by the UK government for the Commonwealth Scholarship and Fellowship Plan (CSFP). In my new role, I will work to support The Queen, my father The Prince of Wales, and my brother William, all of whom know that young people are the answer to the challenges of today, Prince Harry said. I am also incredibly grateful that the woman I am about to marry, Meghan, will be joining me in this work, of which she too is hugely excited to take part in. Before I close, my first act in this role, I am delighted to announce that the Commonwealth Scholarship Scheme will be expanded until 2019, thanks to the generosity of the United Kingdom and other countries. ALSO READ: 5 times foreign universities have attracted Nigerian students in 2018 [New] 150 scholarships for study in low or middle-income countries will be made available by 2025. This scheme, which is run by Association of Commonwealth Universities will enable more of our talented young people to access life-changing opportunities to study across the Commonwealth for generations to come. In recognition of her Majesty, the Queen, these scholarships will be known as Queen Elizabeth Scholarships. It's a season of scholarship for Nigerian students In recent time, Nigeria students have enjoyed some scholarship offers from foreign government and universities. On Thursday, March 29, the Australian government offered scholarships to 340 Nigerian students to study in the country at master's level. The Australian High Commissioner to Nigeria, Paul Lehmann during an interview also said some of the students would also be able to undertake short-term, targeted professional training courses in a range of development-focused sectors in Australia. The rapper posted his first tweet since on Saturday, April 14, 2018, which read "ZUfree....." The last time Sauce Kid posted a tweet on his Twitter page was back in July 2016. His release from jail This is coming barely a month after he was released from jailin the United States of America. Babalola Falemi also known as Sauce Kid was jailed for two years for aggravated identity theft. The crime he committed The rapper was accused of stealing bank card numbers and identifying information of their owners, he was then sentenced to jail. He allegedly stole $15,388 from the unsuspecting victims. Before he went to prison, Sinzu's music career had taken a nosedive but he was struggling to revive it. A video of the rapper being released from jail surfaced on Sunday, March 25, 2018, with a caption. "My bro is back!! SINZU." In the video, the rapper, clad in a black T-shirt, durag, and a red pant was seen being welcomed home. ALSO READ:All you need to know about Sauce Kid Sauce Kid's career Falemi came on the Nigerian music scene in 2005, with an impressive jam, his first ever single ' Welcome to the Pulse Community! We will now be sending you a daily newsletter on news, entertainment and more. Also join us across all of our other channels - we love to be connected! The accused, Raymond Uadiale, who is a Microsoft Engineer, is reportedly facing FBI charges for helping launder cash obtained from victims of the Reveton ransomware in Florida. The 41-year-old is reported to have worked for Vole in Seattle since 2014. ALSO READ: Nigerian man gets jailed 4 years in UK jail for fraud PCWorld reports that between October 2012 and March 2013, Uadiale allegedly worked with a UK citizen, under the online alias of K!NG. Florida investigators disclosed that the suspect would infect victims with the Reveton ransomware, while Uadiale would collect payments and send the cash to him in the UK. K!NG also allegedly deposited victims GreenDot MoneyPak payments into debit cards which Uadiale reportedly acquired under the fake name of Mike Roland. According to the charges, Uadiale has laundered over $130,000. He later converted these funds into the Liberty Reserve digital currency before sending the proceeds to his partner in the UK. Uadiale got to keep 30% of the funds as part of his cut. According to the reports, if found guilty on the charges levelled against him, Uadiale faces a maximum sentence of up to 20 years in prison, a fine of up to $500,000, and up to three years of supervised release. For now, Uadiale has been released on bail in form of a $100,000 bond. The Reveton Ransomware According to PCWorld, Reveton Ransomware is one of the first screen-locking ransomware strains. Reveton operators reportedly ask victims to buy GreenDot MoneyPak vouchers and use the code on the voucher by entering it into the Reveton screen locker. Once a computer is infected with Reveton ransomware, the screen would lock and a fake message from the FBI or other law enforcement agency would pop up, claiming that the user had violated a federal law. ALSO READ: Why are Nigerians overseas involved in scams? Watching and or distributing porn is reportedly cited as the law which has been violated. The user would then be informed that a fine was to be paid to unlock their PC. Back in August 2012, the FBI reportedly regarded Reveton ransomware as new. The ruling came following a defamation suit filed by Abdulkadir who felt the accused brought her name to disrepute. According to her statement at the court of law, the name calling began following a disagreement between the pair, a report by the News Agency of Nigeria (NAN) confirms. The accused, Umar, appeared stubborn while responding to the charges levelled against him. This prompted court judge Mallam Dahiru Lawal to give an order requiring Shuaibu Umar to receive 80 cane lashes. The defendant confirmed calling his sister-in-law a prostitute and is not ready to withdraw the statement; therefore, I, Dahiru Lawal, rule that Shuaibu Umar be given 80 strokes of cane. This is in accordance with the teachings of Prophet Muhammad which state that one cannot accuse a person of adultery or fornication except he presents four witnesses who have seen the activity. He is to receive 80 strokes of cane in place of the person he accused, because he has defamed the persons character, says Lawal in a NAN report. ALSO READ: 2 boys badly flogged in public for impersonating as naval officers Court orders mechanic be given 6 strokes for hospital break-in A mechanic, Friday Monday, has been ordered to receive six strokes of cane for breaking into a hospital in Abuja. This instruction was given by the Karmo Grade 1 Area Court, on Thursday, February 1, 2018. According to Vanguard News, the accused who lives at Angwan Shahu, Karmo, "was arraigned on a two-count charge of criminal trespass and attempt to commit offence." It was alleged that he forcefully entered the premises of the Joy of The Lord Clinic and Maternity, with an intention to steal aluminum windows, an accusation he admitted to. The offence goes against the stipulations in Sections 342 and 95 of the Penal Code, a prosecutor, Mrs. Florence Auhioboh told the court. A complainant, Mike Bako of Hulumi village, Karmo, had on Tuesday, January 30, 2018, reported the accused at the Karmo Police Station, Abuja, ensuring his arrest. This was the day he reportedly committed the offence. Lagos State Police Commissioner, Imohimi Edgal, explained that the suspects carried out the act in order to intimidate the nun who reportedly has a strict personality. According to the New Telegraph, the pair threatened to release a video showing her as she had sexual intercourse with a Reverend Father. Edgal confirmed this in a statement. They conspired to put her under constant fear of imminent danger. "When the threat to maim, kidnap, kill and expose her unfounded secret sex life was continuous, Okolo reported the matter to the police."Investigation revealed that Agagwaonyes job was to monitor Okolo and pass information gathered to her sister, Ngozi, who now called the Rev. Sister to tell her movement."She used to tell the nun such threat messages like: I can see you, you are putting on this and type of clothes and shoe, you are in so and so place, you cant hide from us and you will be killed soon," says the police commissioner. One of the suspects, Agagwaonye, reiterated that the hardship endured under the Reverend Sister's firm hands encouraged a desire to blackmail her. The goal was to make her pedal down. I have been teaching in that school for over 18 years. But Rev. Sister Okolo just joined us recently. I run a part time programme with University of Lagos."Before I went for leave, I went through the normal application process, but when I resumed, she deducted N12,000 from my salary. "Six months later, we had an argument and I was given a letter of suspension. "All these didnt make me happy. I dont want to kidnap or kill her. I sent the messages to her so that she would calm down on her wickedness. I dont even have any sex tape, but the laptop repairer whom she gave her laptop to fix, has video clips of her nudity, Uchenna Agagwaonye revealed during an interrogation. Lady threatens to frame man as gay for refusing to have sex with her An unnamed woman has threatened to frame her love interest as a gay man for refusing to have sex with her. According to the Linda Ikeji's Blog, a Facebook user, Bright Baidu Maigari shared a conversation between the pair. It saw the female persistently make sexual advances at the victim who expressed a lack of interest in her offer of wild sex. This angered the woman who opted for blackmail in a bid to force the man to concede to a pressure to have sex with her. The mood of the conversation portrayed the blackmailer as an aggressive and desperate woman who was willing to explore any means to get the subject to submit to her will. Maigari's post received hilarious responses from his followers, mostly men, who were either happy that a woman was seen as the villain in an issue related to sexual harassment, while others simply wanted to meet the horny woman. This was confirmed in a statement offered by the EFCC via Facebook on Monday, April 16, 2018. Three members of the organization, a Russian, Maxim Lobaty, two Nigerians, Austin Emenike and Dickson Nonso Onuchukwu have been apprehended in Lagos according to reports. "The Economic and Financial Crimes Commission, EFCC, has recovered a total of N216,402,565.05 (Two Hundred and Sixteen Million, Four Hundred and Two Thousand, Five Hundred Sixty Naira, Five Kobo) only from Swiss Golden Investment, an online investment that purportedly deals in buying and selling of Gold Bars. "The recovery was sequel to a petition the Commission received from thousands of complainants who alleged that they invested in Swiss Golden Investment which was advertised as an online investment that deals with buying and selling of Gold Bars. The petitioner further alleged that after investing over a billion naira into the business, the company refused to pay them any dividend or pay them back their capital. "Upon receipt of the petition, the Commission invited the petitioners and they volunteered statements. "Through intelligence, the Commission picked up one Maxim Lobaty, a Russian and two Nigerians: Austin Emenike and Dickson Nonso Onuchukwu in Lagos. "The trio were subsequently conveyed to the Kano operational zone of the EFCC for further investigation. "Swiss Golden which is headquartered in Hong Kong was discovered through investigation to be a Ponzi scheme that was designed to defraud innocent victims of their hard earned money. "After being drilled at the Commission's Kano Zonal Office, Maxim and his co-suspects consented to the refund of the investment. "Subsequently, a total sum of N216, 402,565.05 (Two Hundred and Sixteen Million, Four Hundred and Two Thousand, Five Hundred Sixty Five Naira) only have now been recovered. "However, while the investigation was on going, it was discovered that, Swiss Golden Company Limited has defrauded over seven thousand Nigerians to the tune of over N3,000,000,000 (Three Billion Naira) only. "Investigation into the alleged fraud is still ongoing and all efforts are being made to recover the money involved and the alleged suspects be brought to justice," reads a Facebook statement It was gathered that 7,000 Nigerians have fallen as victims for the ponzi scheme. A sum of 216, 402,565.05 (Two Hundred and Sixteen Million, Four Hundred and Two Thousand, Five Hundred Sixty Five Naira), was reportedly recovered from the suspects who were questioned at EFCC's zonal office in Kano. What Swiss Golden means upon inquiry Upon inquiry, I was made to understand that Swissgolden is not a gold mining company neither do they manufacture Gold (NOTE). They only buy and Sell. Swissgolden is an online shop, just like going to a gold shop to buy gold. Just like going to a gold shop to buy gold? Furthermore, I have debriefed that Swissgolden as a company buys and sells gold bullion bars for individuals. And these bullion bars can be used in making gold jewelry or better still, as stock for future purpose. Swissgolden Nigeria is believed to be working with internationally renowned companies such as UBS, one of the most important financial centers in Switzerland and UK. They claim to have users in more than hundred countries around the globe. But, curiosity wont let me be; and in other to satisfy her, I went on questioning. How does SwissGolden operate? Swissgolden business opportunity is designed for entrepreneurs. And they trade in investment gold bars. I was also schooled to understand that investment gold bars are 24 karats of the purest 999.9 gold from respectable refineries in Germany, Switzerland, Russia. The Gold is said to be kept in United Bank Of Swaziland. Swissgold program is based on a Table of Orders - a 7-celled table; - The main tables are the Main Table of Order, Start Table of Order, VIP Table of Order and VIP+ Table of Order. - The Tables of order have corresponding preliminary tables of order. Quite confusing, right? Is Swissgolden a scam or another Ponzi scheme? When there are over a hundred means of payment that includes credit card, electronic banking and transfer, and no proper explanation on how the delivery process is done on the company's website, then clarity should be demanded. Be that as it may, there are two questions that should not be overlooked. 1. Why is Swissgolden operating a pyramid scheme? Swissgolden.com applies a pyramid scheme, and this method is considered as scam. Investors can purchase new matrix either indirectly or directly. As a matter of fact, Swissgolden is more like a Ponzi scheme; the matrix positions are deemed as the investment. The main focus of Swissgolden is to recruit people, and they solely depend on money invested by investors. Undoubtedly, the gold seems irrelevant upon clear thinking. And this is common with businesses operating with this structure. All the funds taken are cash and the commission is as well paid in cash. 2. Why the lack of transparency? It is true that transparency cannot be separated from a legit cooperation. And where transparency is wanting, questions are bound to arise. Who is the founder of swissgolden? When was it established? Swissgolden did not mention any of these on their website and in so doing; they create an air of mystery around their brand. ALSO READ: Ponzi scheme yet to pay Nigerians after return In addition to this, Swissgolden website was not properly proofread. And for the developer to overlook this after all these time simply connote something fishy. But then, I will not conclude here that Swissgolden is a scam. And this is because there are testimonies of people benefiting from it. However, investors should always remember that a scheme is not a scam until it becomes impossible for the investor to reclaim his/her money According to the reports, the 27-year-old returned home from Riyadh, Saudi Arabia, on Thursday night, April 12, 2018, aboard an Ethiopian airliner. The tale of Ngolo's one-year ordeal in a Saudi Arabian prison has been making the rounds on social media. Instablog9ja reports that Ngolo also returned with a two-year-old son she allegedly conceived after being raped. Speaking at her parents' home in Frere Town in Mombasa yesterday, Monday, April 16, 2018, Ngolo revealed that she was raped at knifepoint by an Indian migrant who she had been working with. Ms Ngolo was, however, charged under Saudi Arabia's law, with engaging in sex outside of marriage and remanded in jail. Thankfully, her attacker is still serving his three-year jail term. Ngolo also revealed that her legs were chained throughout her time in prison, adding that she gave birth to her son in prison after a seven-month-long court battle. The victim was reportedly handed her passport at the airport, shortly before she boarded the plane back to Kenya. "The driver took advantage of the absence of our employer to attack me. Our employer had gone to visit her children. He accosted me as I came out of the house," said Ngolo. Ngolo's tale is one of many which have been reported, with African woman recounting sordid tales of rape and abuse that leave us wondering when humans lost their humanity. '10 men raped me every night, forced rod into my vagina' - Libyan returnee says A 20-year-old lady who was recently repatriated from Libya where she was held as a sex slave for eight months has narrated how 10 Arab men raped her repeatedly every night and inserted rods into her private part anytime she refused. The victim, Stella Efosa, who was part of the recent batch of returnees following the intervention of the International Organization of Migration [IOM] in conjunction with the Federal Government, narrated to South City News at the returnees' rehabilitation camp that she and other Nigerian immigrant went through untold hardship while in the slave camps. Efosa who said she was learning a trade before her mother linked her with a trafficker who promised to take her to Italy to work, described the harrowing experiences she faced and said that she would not pray for her worse enemy to undergo what she went through in an effort to get a better life outside the country. Speaking on her travails, the Edo State-born Efosa said: "I am happy to be back to my country after what I went through in the eight months I was in the slave camp. In short, what I went through, I cannot wish it on my worst enemy. Three of the girls we travelled with died in one of the camps and I don't know the whereabouts of the others. I blame my mother for what I went through. I am now traumatized but I thank God I am back and nothing in this world will make me think of going anywhere again." His plea was however not taken at first court appearance according to the News Agency of Nigeria (NAN). The accused is to be remanded at the Ikoyi Prisons until next arraignment scheduled for Wednesday, May 16, 2018. The order was given by Chief Magistrate, Mrs O.A. Adegite, who is reportedly expecting a recommendation from the office of the Lagos State Director of Public Prosecutions. Musendiku allegedly committed the murder on Monday, April 2, 2018, at a location, No. 3, Erelu Street, Ato-Awori, Ijanikin, Lagos. The accused hated grandmum's several complaints about smoking habit Musendiku Christian, described as an Indian hemp addict, reportedly murdered his grandmother, Ogabi, who made complaints about his smoking habit. The suspect who had just returned from prison lived with the deceased at her residence in Ishagira village, Ijanikin. A report published by Punch News on Monday, April 9, 2018, disclosed that the victim, 80-years-old, was murdered in her sleep. SP Chike Oti, the Lagos Police Public Relations Officer (PPRO), confirmed the incident in a statement. The police received a report that the 80-year-old woman was hacked to death by the grandson, Musendiku Christian, at their residence. A police team visited and photographed the scene of the incident. "The corpse was removed and taken to the general hospital mortuary, Badagry, for autopsy. The exhibit was recovered and the suspected arrested," says Oti whose comments trailed one given by an anonymous source. According to Punch, late Maria Ogabi died from machete wounds believed to have been inflicted by her grandson who left her in a pool of blood. Her corpse has been transferred to a mortuary at the Badagry General Hospital mortuary. He is on drugs and well known for taking hemp. He has been living with the grandmother for a long time. I dont know where his parents live. "The grandma always warned him against smoking hemp, but he would not listen. In the early hours of Saturday, April 2, there was a distress call from their apartment. "When people got to the place, the woman was found in a pool of blood with machete injuries on her body. She died on the spot. Bouanane, who is considered as having terrorist tendencies, was arraigned at a district court in Finland on Tuesday, April 17, 2018, according to Reuters. The international news agency disclosed that the accused had visited a mosque in the year of the attack to make a video that saw him address air strikes launched against Syria by the United States of America, as well as his support for the Islamic State. My target was to hit women, not men I was in war against women, says Bouanane in a report by Helsingin Sanomat. His court appearance saw a mild drama after he refused to sit in his chair or stand. ALSO READ: 10 countries you should avoid raising kids or starting a family The accused, who is thought to have been radicalised is likely to receive a life sentencing if prosecutors succeed in convincing a judge of a need for it. Prince Georges County police revealed that the deceased identified as Samuel Oriloye, from Lanham, died after a head-on crash with another vehicle on Glenn Dale Boulevard near Bell Station Road at about 1:35 a.m. ALSO READ: Baby, 6 others die in multiple car accident Local news station, WTOP reports that police officers arrived the scene of the accident and found a two-vehicle crash with one of the cars on fire. As of the time of the report, the police had yet to ascertain why the deceased crossed into the oncoming traffic. He was reportedly pronounced dead at the scene while the other second driver sustained seemingly minor injuries. Groom-to-be killed in ghastly accident 6 days to wedding A Nigerian man was also killed in an auto crash while on his way to prepare for his wedding. The shocking tale along with a photocollage of pre-wedding photos, was shared by a friend of the devastated bride, on social media. The deceased, Mopmi Samson, who was set to wed his heartthrob on Saturday, March 31, was killed in an accident on Friday, March 24, 2018, while on his way to Bauchi from Abuja. ALSO READ: Faulty brake kills man in Ogun Samson was set to wed his fiancee, Pheobe Masoyi, at Winners Chapel on Saturday, in Bauchi State. Instablog9ja reports that the young man drowned in a river close to the school. According to reports, Kunle reportedly tripped and fell into the river bordering the polytechnic on Sunday, April 15, 2018, while trying to fetch water. ALSO READ: Racists laugh as African man drowns in Grand Canal The lack of water on the campus has driven many students to the river, but Adekunle's death has finally prompted his aggrieved colleagues to protest against the lack of potable water and the alleged neglect of students by the school authorities. The reports revealed that the students rely on the river and other unconventional means for water. May the soul of the deceased rest in peace. Corps member feared dead in boat mishap in Bayelsa community A National Youth Service Corps (NYSC) member is feared drowned in a boat accident on Thursday in Okpotuwari Community in Southern Ijaw Local Government Area of Bayelsa. Sources in the community told the News Agency of Nigeria (NAN) on Friday that the corps member, who hailed from Anambra drowned when the canoe he boarded capsized. Mr Tontiemote Yeiyei, a resident of the community said that the deceased, who was serving at Okpotuwari Community had gone to Ondewari with two of his friends across the Osiana creek by a hand paddled canoe. Yeiyei said the ill-fated canoe encountered rough currents at the jetty as the deceased and the others were returning to Okpotuwari. ALSO READ: Young man reportedly drowns in Kano He said that following the boat accident, sympathisers quickly raised a search party, during which the two others were rescued alive. The rescue team searched for the remains of the drowned corps member to no avail, and local divers later joined them but they are yet to find the body. Hopefully it will be afloat by Saturday. The survivors have been stabilised and are being taken care of at a clinic, Yeiyei said. ALSO READ: Get this homemade Nkwobi recipe Ingredients for making okpa 2 cups Okpa flour 11 tablespoons red palm oil 3 stock cubes Salt Habanero pepper Lukewarm water Preparation of okpa 1. Sift the flour into a bowl. Add salt and the crushed stock cubes to mix. ALSO READ: Enjoy this weight loss meal made from oat 2. Add palm oil. Then mix the palm oil and flour very well till the palm oil is well incorporated into the flour. You will have a nice yellow colour when done. 3. Pour water into a big pot and set on the stove to boil. Start adding the lukewarm water to the Okpa flour and mix till there are no lumps. Note: You can use a blender to get the smoothest mix. 4. Add the sliced habanero pepper. Check for salt and your okpa is ready to be scooped into the wrappers! 5. Now the water in the pot should be boiling. Add some wrappers or plastic bags as a base before moving on to the next step. 6. Stir the okpa very well and scoop into banana leaf or a plastic bag. Tie the other end with a string and place the wrapped okpa in the pot of boiling water. Note: The Okpa should be completely immersed in the hot water. 7. When done, cover the wraps with more leaves or plastic bags. 8. Cover the pot and start cooking medium to high heat. Cook for at least 1 hour before checking. The brand, which tags itself Nigerias largest online mall, will now operate an online and offline business in association with Yudala. Though it was widely reported that Yudala acquired Konga with the help of Zinox Group, Yudalas CEO, Prince Nnamdi Ekeh, noted that the new Konga is an operational merger where both companies combine their operations to improve synergy. Also, the new Konga will operate with dual CEOs in the persons of Nick Imudia, who will be in charge of online operations, and Prince Nnamdi Ekeh who will be responsible for offline operations. According to official statements from Konga, both companies will leverage on the combined strengths of their e-commerce platforms to further broaden the scope of organized retail and e-commerce in Nigeria. Speaking on the operational merger, Kongas chairman, Olusiji Ijogun, said, Combining forces to power the new Konga will enable us effectively achieve our goals of platform expansion and accelerated growth, as we embark on an ambitious journey to redefine the retail ecosystem with the industrys most advanced technology. Who gains most from the new Konga? Despite the report that Yudala acquired Konga with the help of Zinox Group, Yudala and Konga are yet to reveal the company with the bigger stake after the merger. This leaves us wondering who gains most from the new Konga and what will be the vision for the new Konga. According to Kongas ex-executive, Ifeanyi Abraham, Leo Stan Ekeh and his Zinox Group will be smiling and content with the achievement of Yudala. Abraham went further to say with the right team, the e-commerce in Nigeria and Africa stand the chance to gain so much as this operational merger might be the platform to give Alibaba a run for its money from Africa. Yudala, haven kicked off with a mandate of 150 stores in the first 18 months of operations and 512 shops in Nigerias local government councils within three years, already has a strong offline presence. Konga, on the other hand, has a bigger name and more online competence. It should also be noted that Konga, before the merger, had a partnership with Nipost (Nigerian Postal Service) that saw Konga leverage upon the postal services establish logistics network. Nipost has about 5,000 locations nationwide. KongaPays huge potential One of Kongas biggest assets is KongaPay, its mobile money platform. This merger will see the product ride on Yudalas shoulders nationwide, providing it the potential to compete on a larger scale. According to Oluyinka Akintunde, Adeosuns spokesman, The minister told them not to lift that suspension; they went ahead, and took the decision on their own." Akintunde also said that the SEC boss removal is part of efforts to instill confidence in the stock market. Bloomberg reports that Zubairs problem started when he to the finance ministers instruction not to lift the suspension imposed on Oando Plc. Mounir Gwarzo,a past SEC DG, ordered an investigation into the financials of Oando which led to the halt of the trading of the companys shares. Reactions A financial analyst, Olalekan Olabode who spoke to Bloomberg said "It will affect investors confidence because you really do not want a lot of back and forth from the regulators, and that is what we have seen. Also speaking on the issue, Oandos spokesperson, Obehi Ojeaga said that the companys shareholders have suffered because of the incident. Calm was however noticed within the market as traders were seen going about their daily activities. The Shiites are protesting the continuous detention of their leader, Sheik Ibrahim El-Zakzaky. The protesters hadclashed with the Police at the Maitama district of Abuja, Nigerias capital city. ALSO READ: Why Police and Shiite protesters clashed in Abuja One person was reported killedwhile 115 Shiites were arrested by the Police. Protesters were seen defending themselves with sticks and stones as the Police released at them. The Shiite minority group have been protesting the release of their leader who has been in the custody of the Department of State Service (DSS) since 2015. El-Zakzaky and his wife were arrested after members of the group clashed with officers and men of the Nigerian Army in Zaria. El-zakzaky and his wife Malama Zeenat Ibrahim were arrested in December of 2015 following an altercation between members of the Nigerian Army and the Islamic Movement of Nigeria (IMN or Shiite) in Zaria, Kaduna State. Hundreds of Zakzaky's followers were reportedly killed after they mounted roadblocks that impeded the convoy in which Nigeria's Chief of Army Staff, Tukur Buratai was travelling. More than 350 IMN followers were reportedly killed in the 2015 clashes. Zakzaky was shot and injured; leaving him partly paralysed and blind in one eye. Zakzakys temples and homes were razed to the ground by angry soldiers afterwards. Zakzaky has been remanded in prison since 2015 without charge. Court orders Zakzaky's release On December 2, 2016, Justice Gabriel Kolawole of the federal high court, Abuja, ordered that Zakzaky and his wife be set free. In January of 2017, the same court ordered the Attorney General of the Federation, Abubakar Malami; the Inspector General of Police, Ibrahim Idris and the Director of the Department of State Security Service (DSS), Lawal Daura, to set El Zakzaky free or risk jail terms themselves. It is April of 2018 and Zakzaky is still behind bars. Yet in a democracy, the courts should be respected as the temples of justice or the last hope of the common man. The federal government mocks democracy and its tenets when it flouts or continues to disobey court orders with reckless abandon. The argument that setting Zakzaky free will reinvigorate his followers into causing more public unrestin Zaria and elsewhere is tenuous at best, because there are other ways to check the activities of a religious sect that is running amok, without having to jail its leader. Yet this doesnt excuse the Shiites taking laws into their hands and storming Abuja to throw stones at everyone. Their recourse to violence stands condemned. It was as barbaric a course of action as it was silly. The right to freedom of worship isn't absolute in any society. The tradition of the Shiites to obstruct vehicular movement when on religious processions doesn't belong in a modern society. However, the Buhari led federal government and the prosecuting authorities should set El-Zakzaky and his wife free without further delays or have them charged before a court of competent jurisdiction for alleged incitement and subversion. "The German Embassyis not giving out information about ongoing cases. Pulse will have to wait for news and security briefings. However, we will continue to try to get more news directly as well and have a pending request.', a source in the German Consulate tells Pulse in anonymity. Pulse has also sent an information request to the German embassy in Nigeria but no official response as at the time of filing this report. Who is the abducted Michael Cremza? Cremza, who is said to be a staff of Dantata and Sawoe construction, was reportedly whisked away while on his way to a construction site. A police sergeant attached to him was killed in the process. A security personnel in charge of securing Dantata and Sawoe's equipment, Abubakar Muhammad, was quoted to have said that a truck driver in the area where the incident took place was also hit by a stray bullet. "The three gunmen started shooting sporadically immediately they arrived and shot the mobile policeman attached to the abducted engineer. A stray bullet also hit a truck driver in the area," he said. The Nigerian Police Has Confirmed The Abduction The Kano State Police Command, Magaji Majia, disclosed that the gunmen ambushed and opened fire on the vehicle conveying the German national. "The Kano state police command is displeased to inform the general public of an ugly incident which occurred today Monday 16th April, 2018 at about 0745hrs along Sabon Titi Madobi Road, Kano, where an armed gang of five men in a Motor vehicle ambushed and opened fire on a motor vehicle conveying the staff of Dantata & Sawoe construction company going to a construction site", Majia said. In recent past, kidnappings for ransom in Nigeria has become a lucrative trade of sort for men of the underworld. ALSO READ: Naval team rescues 13 foreigners from pirates in Rivers However, the abductions of foreigners are more predominant in the Niger Delta region and not the north. The two ministers served under the administration of former presidentGoodluck Jonathan. Ochekpe and other accused - Raymond Dabo, former Plateau PDP chairman, and Leo Jatau, coordinator of the president Goodluck Jonathan campaign - allegedly received the money in 2015. A witness, Annette Olije-Gyen, the operation manager of a new generation bank, said the accused withdrew N450 cash from the bank, she told a Federal High Court in Jos on Monday, April 16, 2018. The cash exceeds the amount authorised by the law. The Economic and Financial Crimes Commision (EFCC) said the offence contravens sections 18 (a)(d), 1 (a), 16(1)(d), and was punishable under section 16 (2) of money laundering (prohibition) Act 2012, (as amended). Gyen told the court that Martins Ezuogbe, who was the then group divisional head of operations directed the bank cashiers to disburse the money to the trio. She said, "On March 26, 2015, we obediently called the trio, who came to our office and were given the money. "After confirming the money, we gave them our bullion van with which they conveyed it." Gyen added that on January 8, 2017, the bank received a letter from EFCC asking for details of the transaction, and "on January 11, we responded to that request." The prosecutor Ahmed Munchaka requested that the two letters be tendered as evidence but the defence lawyers, Gyang Zi and S.O. Oyewale raised an objected to the request. The defence counsels argued that the letters should not be admitted because they were not original copies. "The bank should have produced original copies of the letters; the court cannot work with photocopies because they might have been tampered with. We can only accept original copies," they said. IBB said this on Monday, April 16, 2018, on a Channels Television programme Roadmap 2019. According to Channels TV, he said that the election was accepted as the freest in Nigerias political history. Businessman, Moshood Abiola was the presumed winner of the June 12, 1993 election which was subsequently annulled by Babangida. The Social Democratic Party (SDP) candidate, Abiola defeated Bashir Tofa, the presidential flag bearer of the National Republican Convention (NCP), according to reports. 25 years later Speaking further, IBB regrets that nobody has given an objective narrative of what really transpired in 1993. The former military dictator said Nobody has ever sat down to say the two persons are friends, what went wrong? We tried to rationalise why we had to do what we did but nobody is prepared to listen to us. I have never seen anybody write anything on this to try to give people a different version altogether. He (Abiola) knew my feeling; I knew his feeling about the country generally because I do talk about Nigeria with the presumed winner of the truly democratically freest election. We even talked about it during the crisis itself. When asked if he would write an autobiography, he said People may not read it because its coming from a dictator. Yea, he cancelled June 12 and that will kill the thing about the book, but I will try. I hope one day if God spares my life I will discuss about it (June 12 elections) because I still believe people dont get what we were trying to put across. Former President Ibrahim Babangida recently advised President Muhammadu Buhari not to seek re-election in 2019. The IMN members had staged a protest demanding the of their detained leader Ibrahim El-Zakzaky, who has been in police custody for over two years. El-Zakzaky is being held by the Federal Government without trial and despite court orders for his release. In defiance of the police ban on protests at the Unity Fountain in Abuja, hundreds of the Shiites marched to the area, resulting in violence. Last Friday, the police banned any demonstration at the park after the IMN, Bring Back Our Girls Group and advocacy movements stormed the place for protests. The groups have since condemned the ban, describing it as autocratic, illegal and a breach of their fundamental human right. A social media footage showed protesters hurling stones at vehicles near the park and Transcorp Hilton Hotel. Casualties figure IMN leaders said over 200 members of the group were arrested during the protest but the police figure contradicted that. The police also dismissed the reports that some of the Shiites were killed in the incident. "One hundred and fifteen (115) members of the sect were arrested at the scene by police operatives," the Abuja police spokesperson, Anjuguri Manzah, said in a statement issued on Monday night. ALSO READ: Shiite leader El-Zakzaky reportedly suffers stroke in detention He said 22 police officers were injured. Manzah said, "Contrary to speculations from some sections of the media, no life was lost in the violent protest. "Joint team of detectives from the command and operatives from the IGP Monitoring Unit have commenced investigation into the incident. "The arrested suspects will be charged to court upon the conclusion of investigation." The police also said that they recovered catapults, iron bars, stones, ball bearings and pink head bands from the suspects. May made her plea while speaking at the first joint forum of the 25th Commonwealth Heads of Government Meetings (CHOGM) in Westminster on Tuesday, April 17, 2018. She said criminalising same-sex relationships in Commonwealth nations is wrong and appealed to leaders to abolish them even though those laws were originally made in the United Kingdom. She said, "Across the world, discriminatory laws made many years ago continue to affect the lives of many people, criminalising same-sex relations and failing to protect women and girls. "I am all too aware that these laws were often put in place by my own country. They were wrong then, and they are wrong now. As the UK's Prime Minister, I deeply regret both the fact that such laws were introduced, and the legacy of discrimination, violence and even death that persists today. "As a family of nations we must respect one another's cultures and traditions. But we must do so in a manner consistent with our common value of equality, a value that is clearly stated in the Commonwealth charter. "Recent years have brought welcome progress. The three nations that have most recently decriminalised same-sex relationships are all Commonwealth members, and since the heads of government last met the Commonwealth has agreed to accredit its first organisation for lesbian, gay, bisexual and transgender people. "Yet there remains much to do. Nobody should face persecution or discrimination because of who they are or who they love. And the UK stands ready to support any Commonwealth member wanting to reform outdated legislation that makes such discrimination possible." May also charged Commonwealth leaders to work together on other global issues such as free and fair trade, climate change, youth unemployment, quality all-inclusive education, global security, as well as tackling malaria and modern slavery. The PM had met with President Muhammadu Buhari at Downing Street, London on Monday, April 16, to discuss Nigeria-British relations ahead of the meetings. While speaking to May during Monday's meeting, President Buhari focused on the three main agenda of his administration - security, economy and fight against corruption. He also urged British companies to invest more in Nigeria. He said, "British companies like Unilever, Cadbury, and many others have stood with Nigeria through thick and thin. Even when we fought a Civil War, they never left. "But like Oliver Twist, we ask for more investments. We are encouraging more British companies to come to Nigeria. We appreciate the support you have given in training and equipping our military, particularly in the war against insurgency, but we want to also continue to work with you on trade and investment." Nigeria's anti-homosexuality law In 2014, then-president, Goodluck Jonathan, signed the Same-Sex Marriage (Prohibition) Bill (SSMPA) into law. At that time, existing legislation already criminalised consensual same-sex activities in the country. The law forbids any cohabitation between same-sex sexual partners and bans any 'public show of same sex amorous relationship'. The law also prohibits Nigerians from registering, operating, or participating in gay clubs, societies and organisations, or supporting such activities. Punishment for violations of the provisions in the law range between 10 to 14 years imprisonment. The group, in a statement by its director, Ishaq Akintola, said besides the fact that the N100 notes of Jonathan government were inferior, they did not have Arabic Ajami inscriptions. Akintola claimed that removing the inscription suggests a form of "ethnic cleansing" aimed at discouraging the learning and use of Arabic language in Nigeria. What is Ajami? The term Ajami comes from the Arabic root for foreign or stranger and has been applied to Arabic alphabets used for writing African languages, especially those of Hausa and Swahili. It is considered an Arabic-derived African writing system. Since African languages involve phonetic sounds and systems different from the Arabic language, there have often been adaptations of the Arabic script to transcribe them, a process similar to what has been done with the Arabic script in non-Arab countries of the Middle East and South Asia and with the Latin script in Africa or with the Latin-based Vietnamese alphabet. MURIC said the Ajami was also removed from N5, N10, N20 and N50 denominations under former president Olusegun Obasanjo's administration, insinuating that the action is synonymous with Christian presidents. The group said, "It was not the first time this would happen. Arabic inscriptions which have always been on Nigerian currency since independence were unceremoniously removed in 2005 from N5, N10, N20 and N50 denominations during the reign of Olusegun Obasanjo. "But Nigerians need to know that this move was calculated to hurt the Muslim population and may end up as a disservice to the nation. "The average northerner cannot read any other script except in Arabic Ajami and anyone who wants to communicate with him effectively must use the Ajami, not even writings in Hausa language can help in this matter. "Millions of northerners have therefore been marginalised by removing the Arabic Ajami. Currencies worldwide are designed to suit each nation's culture and history. Incidentally, Nigeria is a multireligious entity. In this case, therefore, our cultural and religious homogeneity should be the criteria, particularly when designing our banknotes, our stamps, etc. "We are all taxpayers and to that extent we all deserve representation." MURIC stressed that the N100 bank not, which was issued on December 19, 2014, by the Jonathan administration, is of low quality. "Nigerians consider Jonathan's N100 note inferior to others printed earlier. It is of very low quality. It tears easily. It lacks second-hand value. It grows soft and fragile with time, thereby making it difficult to handle or fold in peoples pockets or wallets," the statement read. "It has therefore failed as a veritable means of exchange. Placed side by side with the old N100 note which still has the Arabic Ajami inscription and which is still in circulation, Jonathan's N100 shrinks into oblivion." ALSO READ: Witness says Jonathan's minister withdrew N450m cash in 2015 Ambe is the 102nd casualty of Lassa fever in the country since January 2018 when the Nigeria Centre for Disease Control (NCDC) reported the first confirmed case of the virus in Bauchi. In that first situation report, the outbreak, an overflow from December 2017, was only active in five states: Bauchi, Plateau, Edo, Ondo and Nasarawa. Four months later in April, the outbreak of Lassa fever has already killed 102 people with suspected cases spread across 21 states in the country. Across more than 57 local government areas, there are currently confirmed cases of Lassa fever in Abia, Abuja, Adamawa, Anambra, Bauchi, Benue, Delta, Ebonyi, Edo, Ekiti, Gombe, Imo, Kaduna, Kogi, Lagos, Nasarawa, Ondo, Osun, Plateau, Rivers and Taraba. Five months ago, the NCDC's situation report indicated that only 92 people were confirmed killed by Lassa fever in 2016, which makes this year's return Nigeria's worst outbreak since 1969 when the virus was first identified from a case in the town of Lassa in Borno state. What's the deal with Lassa fever anyway? According to the World Health Organisation (WHO), Lassa fever is an acute viral haemorrhagic illness caused by rodents of the genus Mastomys, commonly known as the 'multimammate rat'. Multimammate rats are commonly found in grasslands or forests, urban areas and even inside houses throughout sub-Saharan Africa, which is why it's a problem endemic in West African countries such Benin, Ghana, Guinea, Liberia, Mali, Sierra Leone, and Nigeria. According to a 2015 report by the United States' Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC), the number of Lassa virus infections per year in West Africa is crudely estimated at 100,000 to 300,000, with approximately 5,000 deaths. WHO says, "The incubation period of Lassa fever ranges from 6-21 days. The onset of the disease, when it is symptomatic, is usually gradual, starting with fever, general weakness, and malaise. "After a few days, headache, sore throat, muscle pain, chest pain, nausea, vomiting, diarrhoea, cough, and abdominal pain may follow. "In severe cases, facial swelling, fluid in the lung cavity, bleeding from the mouth, nose, vagina or gastrointestinal tract and low blood pressure may develop." Mastomys rodents are commonly found in and around homes, feasting on leftover human food items or poorly stored food, which makes direct contact transmission fairly easy. They are also consumed as food by certain communities. The virus can also be transmitted from one person to another through body fluids such as blood and sperm. Since the virus presents no unique symptoms, clinical diagnosis is often difficult especially at the early onset of infection. The best way to prevent infection is by practising decent personal hygiene and avoiding contact with the carrier rodents, disposing of garbage far from the home, and banishing the urge to snack on rodents. (If you're not sure it's not a Mastomys rodent, it's probably best to not eat it just to be safe.) Avoiding contact with the secretions of a contaminated person is also a safe way to not get infected. This is why health workers are advised to use the proper protective equipment to examine patients, isolate victims, and track down everyone they might have been in contact with to contain an outbreak. There is no known vaccine yet for Lassa fever, but if caught early, it can successfully be treated with Ribavirin. Government's culpability for outbreak In January 2018, the Minister of Health, ProfessorIsaac Adewole, blamed healthcare workers for getting infected with Lassa fever due to their refusal to take necessary precautions while treating patients. When he made this statement, three health workers had just died in Ebonyi state. Since then, three more health workers (one each in Ebonyi, Kogi and Abia) have died, with a total of 27 health workers infected since the onset of the outbreak. After the death of the first two health workers in January, other doctors in Ebonyi took to the streets of Abakaliki to protest the non-functionality of the South East Virology Centre in the state capital. In 2016, the Ebonyi state government had built and 'equipped' the N350 million ultra-modern virology centre within the premises of the Federal Teaching Hospital, Abakaliki, and handed it over to the federal government who promised to instil effective management in the running of the health facility. At the commissioning of the facility in 2016, Prof Adewole expressed hope that the centre would help curb the menace of Lassa fever ravaging the zone and assured that the purpose of the centre would never be defeated. Two years later, he returned to the state in January to blame the government's failure to fully equip the centre on the outbreak of other deadly diseases across the country. "It's quite unfortunate that you (Ebonyi government) handed the centre over to us but because of a few other things we could not respond immediately with the operationalisation of the lab. "As we moved to operationalise the lab we had other challenges, we had monkeypox, we had meningitis and it appeared as if in trying to prioritise we thought Lassa has calmed down a bit, we decided to quickly address these diseases and also the yellow fever outbreak," he said. The minister's embarrassing excuse is an indication of the federal government's culpability in the troublesome outbreak that the country has faced this year. Despite battling Lassa fever outbreaks for 49 years, the Institute of Lassa Fever Research and Control, in Irrua Specialist Teaching Hospital (ISTH), Edo state, is the only specialist facility for the treatment of the disease in Nigeria. What this means is that victims of Lassa fever from other regions usually have to make unnecessarily long road trips, in poorly equipped ambulances, to Edo state for the best care possible. The facility's Lassa fever isolation ward was overflowing with victims in late January so much that a makeshift tent had to be erected outside the ward to accommodate the growing number of cases. While speaking about the outbreak this year, Chairman, Medical Advisory Committee and Consultant Family Physician University of Abuja Teaching Hospital, Dr Nicholas Baamlong, blamed it on the lack of government funding of facilities and enforcement of environmental laws. He lamented that the high infection rate of health practitioners is most notably due to a lack of necessary health equipment as well as appropriate treatment centres. A virologist, Prof Simeon Agwale, also recently accused the government of lacking the political will to commit to producing vaccines for the disease. He urged the government to not look to the West for a vaccine solution since they don't suffer from the disease. Another virologist, Oyewale Tomori, said the country should hang its head in shame as it is still chasing its tail over Lassa fever nearly 50 years after the first confirmed infection. He said, "We should all hang our heads in shame for the unacceptable occurrence of Lassa fever in Nigeria. I say all of us, because we all know what to do - the government, the medical profession, the media, and the citizens. But we will not do what we know is right. "When Ebola came visiting, the government immediately declared a national emergency, provided adequate resources and continually provided correct information to the people. As soon as we overcame Ebola, we went back to sleep." Reaction to 2018 outbreak A national Lassa fever multi-partner multi-agency Emergency Operations Centre (EOC) was activated in Abuja in January and has been responsible for coordinating response activities at all levels. By March 2018, a 24-hour Lassa fever case management call line had been established with enhanced surveillance in states with active outbreaks. A team of NCDC staff and Nigeria Field Epidemiology and Laboratory Training Program (NFELTP) residents had also been deployed to respond to the Ebonyi, Ondo, and Edo outbreaks. Bauchi and Taraba had been added to this list by April. These states have also been equipped with dedicated Lassa fever treatment units and Ribavirin for treatment of confirmed cases. In March, the NCDC deployed teams to four Benin Republic border states (Kebbi, Kwara, Niger and Oyo) for enhanced surveillance activities. WHO has been working with the NCDC and other partners to control Lassa fever by deploying teams to hotspots, identifying and treating patients, strengthening infection, prevention and control measures in health facilities, and engaging with communities. Researchers at the Irrua Specialist Teaching Hospital - in collaboration with the Bernhard-Nocht Institute for Tropical Medicine, Germany, WHO, NCDC and others - have also conducted genome sequencing of the Lassa virus. A cause for relief and concern In the NCDC's final situation report for March, WHO noted that the number of confirmed and probable cases had been falling for five consecutive weeks, indicating that public health measures were proving effective, even though more infections were expected until the end of the dry season. WHO Representative to Nigeria, Wondimagegnehu Alemu, was cautiously optimistic when he talked about the decline. "We should interpret the recent declining trend in new cases with caution. The Lassa fever season is not yet over. We need to maintain vigilance and response operations, and ensure continued engagement with communities to help curb the further spread of Lassa fever," he said. While the decline in reported cases might ease some nerves, there are still troubling concerns to address. According to the National Coordinator and Chief Executive Officer of the NCDC, Dr Chikwe Ihekweazu, Lassa fever is difficult to overcome because it has multiple chains of infections that cannot all be broken unlike other infections like, say, Ebola. He said, "Unlike Ebola, there is no magic bullet for Lassa fever. It is endemic in our environment and as long as there is rat, we will always have cases of Lassa." Even though he assured that the NCDC is doing its best to fashion out a vaccine for the Lassa scourge, he also grimly admitted that it has "come to stay for now." These are dismal words coming from the head of the agency that's the first and last line of defence against what is a yearly epidemic. So where do we go from here? Practical solutions against future Lassa fever outbreaks Lassa fever is basically a yearly event in Nigeria as it is, so there's really no reason why the federal government has not made moves to establish fully functional virology centres in the six geopolitical zones of the country. In 2018, healthcare workers still regularly complain of the lack of basic Personal Protective Equipment such as gloves, even in Federal Teaching Hospitals. As has been suggested several times by experts, the federal government needs to commit to a more comprehensive and coordinated control program and build capacity to adequately respond to the outbreaks such as this. It goes without saying that there should be an active surveillance of Lassa fever cases in health facilities and communities. There should also be increased focus on areas of training, research and service delivery for healthcare workers while enlightenment campaigns, especially in high-risk areas, should be at deafening levels. If the government can splurge on a relentless campaign to compel Nigerians to pay tax, then it can afford to embark on campaigns that are instrumental to saving their lives. It also isn't too much to ask that relevant government agencies, across all levels, should design a plan based on years of outbreaks and find ways to absolutely limit future outbreaks. Legislators might also want to look into making proper laws on waste disposal, environmental sanitation, and food storage that'll significantly limit outbreaks. Why you should care about Lassa fever outbreak With the virus already in 21 states of the country's total of 36, Nigerians should realise that caution is of utmost importance here. Since there is currently no vaccine that protects against Lassa fever, prevention should be the watchword. Until such a time comes when Lassa fever becomes a thing of the past, Nigerians, especially people in affected states, can best steer clear of infection by blocking all the rat outlets in their homes, cooking all foods thoroughly, covering all foods and water properly, keeping the house and environment clean and storing foodstuffs out of the reach of rodents. Health workers should also consistently implement all standard infection prevention and control measures possible to cater to patients regardless of what their symptoms appear at first. "We've come under serious attack today," said Deji Adeyanju of Concerned Nigerians, a civil society group involved in the demonstration. "The more they attack the more (we) come out," Deji said. "We want to defy tyranny and a dictatorship." The police did not immediately comment. Zakzaky, head of the Islamic Movement of Nigeria (IMN), has been in government custody since troops clashed with his followers in the northern city of Zaria in December 2015 despite court orders that he should be freed. More than 350 IMN followers were killed in the 2015 clashes. Zakzaky was shot and injured leaving him partly paralysed and blind in one eye. The Shiite leader has repeatedly been imprisoned for alleged incitement and subversion. IMN has been in conflict with the Nigerian government for years, seeking to foment an Iranian-style Islamic revolution in the country's Sunni Muslim-majority north. #land development scandal Prosecutors arrest key suspect in Seongnam land development scandal A key figure in the snowballing land development scandal in Seongnam, just south of Seoul, was arrested Friday for questioning over suspicions of bribery and other misconduct, and ... #TWICE TWICE to release first English single South Korean girl group TWICE will release its first English single Friday, its agency said, signaling a full-scale inroad into the North American music market. The band's first... NIMASA Head of Corporate Communications, Mr Isichei Osamgbi said Dr Dakuku Peterside, director-general of NIMASA signed on behalf of his organisation, while the President WMU, Mr Cleopatra Doumbia-Henry signed for the university. He expressed optimism that the MoU would help NIMASA realise its strategic plans to re-position the countrys maritime sector. WMU is an important element of the strategic reforms and repositioning of NIMASA to be the leading maritime administration in Africa. This is also part of ongoing reforms of the maritime sector in Nigeria which the President of Nigeria and Minister of Transportation are championing. The partnership with WMU is in line with the four pillar of NIMASAs medium term growth plan. Which addresses capacity building, particularly raising a new generation of forward looking Maritime policy makers and regulators, Peterside said. Peterside expressed gratitude to the President and Management of WMU for their cooperation, giving a firm commitment that NIMASA would actively implement the provisions of the MoU. In his remarks, the President of the WMU, Doumbia-Henry expressed optimism that it would help to support Nigerias economic growth. We are delighted with the engagement with NIMASA in the framework of this MoU which will set the stage for a new partnership with Nigeria. We will also help support Nigerias economic growth and the competitiveness of its maritime industry as well as advance the maritime interest of the country. This MoU also supports WMUs commitment to the UN Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs). Especially Goal four which focuses on ensuring inclusive and equitable quality education and promoting lifelong learning opportunities for all, and Goal 14 which covers ocean issues, including maritime, the president said. The News Agency of Nigeria (NAN) reports that the MoU covered academic, collaborative and reciprocal activities in the fields of training and research to be provided by WMU geared toward building capacity to grow the Nigerian maritime industry. Arrangements relating to fellowship funding for the WMU M.Sc programme are included as well as the M. Phil programme offered in cooperation with the IMO International Maritime Law Institute (IMLI) in Malta. The FCT Sector Commander of the Corps, Mr Gora Wobin, stated this in an interview with the News Agency of Nigeria (NAN) in Abuja o Tuesday while speaking against the backdrop of the wanton disregard for traffic laws by highly placed personalities and government motorcades in the nations capital. We do not leave any stone unturned. If you go out, you will see some big vehicles impounded inside our yard. A Mallam Audu (commoner) like me cannot drive such vehicles. You will now agree with me that even anybody that calls himself big guy is not covered by the law to commit offences and get away with them. They are also arrested and booked. In most cases, we impound their vehicles too especially when they dont have drivers licence or anything to be confiscated. We are not bothered (by) that position you are occupying. The FRSC officer called on very important persons in the society to use their influence in favour of the course of road safety. Wobin said that ideally such personalities were supposed to be advocates of good conduct, urging them to join the Corps as Special Marshals. By virtue of the position you are holding, you should be a propagandist of good road use, not a good violator. That will not give you a good name, it would rather bring down your dignity as a person; people will no more respect you. The big shots come and be special marshals. If we can have quite a number of them, I can assure you that when people see them out there doing patrols with our men; people will enter their shells. That is the kind of thing we want to see. No life was lost in the violent protest as the police operatives deployed to quell the protest were professional in handling the situation, police spokesman, DSP Anjuguri Manzah said. The News Agency of Nigeria ( NAN ) reports that the leader of the sect, Sheikh Ibrahim El-Zakzaky was arrested by the authorities after a clash with the convoy of the Chief of Army Staff in December 2015. NAN also reports that the Shiites had organised several protests across the country demanding the release of their leader. DSP Anjuguri Manzah, in a statement, said that the protesters also injured 22 policemen and destroyed government and police vehicles during the protest. Anjuguri said that items recovered from them are: Catapults, Iron bars, Stones, Ball bearings and Pink head bands. He said that the protesters also attacked innocent citizens, disrupted business activities, obstructed traffic and smashed windscreen of vehicles in the affected areas. He said said that a Joint Team of detectives from the command in conjunction with operatives from the Inspector-General of Police Monitoring Unit, have commenced investigation into the incident. The arrested suspects will be charged to court upon the conclusion of investigation, he said. The FCT police command hereby warns members of Shiites movement from further disrupting the peace, harmony and free flow of traffic in FCT, he said. He advised members of the public and parents not to allow their children or wards, to be used as instrument of violence in any demonstration by any group. He gave the directive in Port Harcourt when he inaugurated the board of the agency. The governor said there was no going back in the establishment of the agency, stressing that the establishment of the agency was essential to the overall security of the state. Use your experiences and capabilities to ensure that the Rivers State NSCA takes-off effectively. Start the recruitment process of the operatives by Sept, I expect that the training of operatives would have been concluded and the agency fully operational, the Governor said. Wike urged members of the NSCA board not to be swayed by the antics of opponents, adding that the duty of the board was vital to the stability of the state. He said some politicians had approached the police to sabotage the scheme by rejecting the personnel recruited by the agency. Wike said that the State Executive Council would approach the Rivers Assembly for the amendment of the NSCAs law, against police requirement to vet the recruited staff as obtainable in Lagos State. He further urged the Board of Directors of the Agency to engage persons who had the interest of the state at heart. The governor noted that contrary to criticisms against the Rivers State NSCA, its personnel would only bear light arms for self defence and their recruitment subject to police approval. He said the need to appoint credible and experienced retired security chiefs is because we want the best for the state. The governor said all efforts should be geared toward sustaining the prevailing peace in the state. The Chairman of the board, retired Brig,-Gen.Dick Ironabere, said the agency would enhance the general security of the state and operate within the ambit of the law in discharging its duties. He lauded the state governor for deeming it necessary to set up the new security scheme, adding that such move it was in line with international best practices of securing communities. Ironabere noted that most of the people opposed to the states NSCA did so because they lacked understanding of its relevance in modern day security framework. The chairman commended Wike for supporting security agencies across the state as well as the promulgation of stringent laws to check kidnapping and cultism. Other members of the board are; Chief Casca Ogosu, Mr Dennis Amachree , Prof Emenike Wami, Anthony Ozurumba and Mrs Victoria Chikeka. The minister of defence, Mansur Dan Ali was also invited by the Senate. The decision of the Senate was sequel to a point of order by Senator Sam Anyanwu at plenary on Tuesday, April 17, 2018. Speaking on the floor of the Senate, Anyanwu noted that the release of the funds without the approval of the Senate contradicts Section 80 (2,3) of the 1999 Constitution. His words: I have it in good authority that March, 2018, a whooping sum of $462 million was withdrawn from the federation account and paid for helicopters to an American firm called Helicopter Tecno Fights Helicopters and this was done without the approval of the Senate. And I know there was no such request from the senate. As a citizen senate of this place, I want to find out how this thing was done and I suggest that we invite the CBN governor, the Minister of finance and defence to tell us how this money was withdrawn and paid to an American c without the approval of the Senate," he added. The matter was adopted after it was put to a voice vote by the deputy Senate President, Ike Ekweremadu. According to a report by The Punch, the attackers laid waste to people in Awe, Keana, Obi and Doma local government areas of the state. The spokesperson of the Nasarawa State Police Command, DSP Kennedy Idirisu, said the command was informed of the attacks early on Monday, April 16. "There was an attack on Monday morning, but the command has yet to receive details as regards the number of people that lost their lives in the early hour attacks by unknown gunmen," he said. Nasarawa's Commissioner for Water Resources, Gabriel Akaaka, told The Punch that his house was invaded by the attackers and burnt to the ground. He said, "It is true the gunmen believed to be Fulani herders raided my house this morning and set it ablaze. The Tiv villagers are stranded. I have just spoken to the Commissioner of Police, Mr. Ahmed Bello, to deploy his security personnel and security operatives in the state to the area in order to rescue the villagers." 15,000 displaced Around 15,000 fleeing Tiv villagers are believed to be currently stranded on the streets of Lafia with over 100,000 already taking refuge in different Internally Displaced Persons camps at Agwatashi, Aloshi, Awe, Adudu, Obi, Keana, Doma, and Agyaragu. The struggle for access and control of lands over which roaming herdsmen graze their cattle has led to conflict with local farmers all over the country, resulting in the death of hundreds just this year alone with herders credited with a majority of the attacks. And he cant understand why Nigerians havent found a place in their hearts to forgive him after all these years. The ghost of June 12 still haunts IBB and thats something everyone with a conscience shouldnt be complaining about. That election annulled by IBB was presumably won by the late Chief MKO Abiola. The cancellation of the vote by IBB culminated in Abiolas death behind bars five years later. IBB says no one gives him credit When I read about June 12, I think about it, IBB told his interviewer on ChannelsTV with a chuckle. People say he cancelled the freest election and nobody gives me credit for conducting the freest. He cancelled the best and the freest elections in the history of this country, but he annulled it. IBB seriously wants credit for cancelling an election he conducted? Seriously? We tried to rationalize why we did what we did, but nobody is prepared to listen to us, he adds. So, its a matter of time. One day, the younger generation who will be coming up to read will say, Ok, we have heard this side, lets hear the other side. Maybe we can have a better society. IBB says he still believes people dont get what we were trying to put across. IBB and Abiola were best of friends He also wonders why no one ever asks why he would inflict the maximum damage on his friend, Abiola. Nobody has ever sat down to say, Ok, the two personalities are friends. What went wrong? I have never seen anybody writing anything on this; to try to give people a different version. He (Abiola) knew my feelings. I knew his feelings about the country generally because we do talk about Nigeria with the presumed winner of the 'truly democratic freest election'. We talked about it during the crisis itself. Despite all that, two of us understood ourselves very well. The level of friendship is so strong that we value our relationship very much. But like I said, typical Nigerian if you try to educate them, it sounds boring or if you try to reason. An autobiography no one wants to read IBB also said he wont write an autobiography because no one will read it. I dont know.people may not read it because its coming from a dictator. A lot will say dictator..yeah, he cancelled June 12and that will kill everything about the book, IBB said. Watching IBB, it struck me that he still doesnt realise how much damage he cost Nigeria by that act of annulling an election that saw people voting across religious and ethnic lines. It was a moment in Nigerias history where it didnt matter that both candidates on the ballot (Bashir Tofa and Abiola) were both Muslims. Nigerians just wanted their votes to count and they poured out to the polling units to ensure their votes counted. And it did count. With MKO in an unassailable lead, IBB pulled the rug from under the nations feet and declared the election null and void. Crisis thereafter erupted across Nigeria and lives were lost. Pro-democracy activists were hounded by the military junta and most were felled by bullets. Others were flung into jail and many fled Nigerias shores. All because of IBB. All because of IBB, his best friend, Abiola, died in custody. Abiola's wife, Kudirat was felled by an assassin's bullet as she fought for the realisation of the June 12 mandate. And IBB still sees nothing wrong with what he did? No remorse As I watched the interview, I saw an IBB who is still not remorseful and who showed no contrition whatsoever. The cancellation of the June 12 vote set Nigeria several years backward. This interviewsince he rarely grants onewas an opportunity for an IBB mea culpa for all he caused Nigeria before and after 1993. But there he sat, unapologetic and arrogant, rationalizing his part in Nigerias tainted past and doing his horrible best to rewrite recent history. These days, he even finds the time to write letters where he preaches and pontificates on good governance Oh, the hypocrisy! The galling hypocrisy!! But you could also see the fear on IBBs face through the denial. It has dawned on the man that Nigerians will never forget his part in ruining their lives and country. He knows that Nigerians remember that he institutionalized corruption and ruled their country with an iron fist. He calls himself a dictator in this interview because he was one and he knows no one would read his book because it would be a book steeped in revisionism--the only way Maradona knows how. The build up to the Ekiti governorship election slated for July 14, 2018, promises to be an interesting one. Incumbent Governor Fayose isnt running again because the constitution bars him from seeking a 3rd term. However he is backing a candidate to succeed him. That means Fayose is seriously invested in the process of who becomes his successor. Fayoses candidate is his deputy, Prof. Kolapo Olusola Eleka, who tells everyone who cares to listen that he looks up to Fayose my mentor and leader. Fayemi, who was Ekiti governor from October 16, 2010 to October 15, 2014, was brutally flogged at the ballot by Fayose. Fayose won all 16 local governments in Ekiti to emerge governorno small feat considering that he won against incumbent Fayemi. It takes a whole lot to defeat an incumbent in a Nigerian election contest. Federal power After the defeat, Fayemi wasted no time concedingan act that was hailed across the land as sportsmanly and gentlemanly. A year later, Fayemi was appointed minister in the Buhari cabinet and we all thought he wouldnt return to run as governor ever again after a humiliating defeat last time out. But here we are. On Saturday, April 14, 2018, Fayemi took over Ado Ekiti and told the surging crowd on the streets that he forgot something in government house that only he can retrieve. We will use local, state and federal power to take over Ekiti from a rapacious government being run by brigands in Ekiti, Fayemi blared. Those of us who travel out of Ekiti, we are being insulted, assaulted and mocked on a daily basis by people asking why the Ekiti they thought was well read, refined and exposed could make a character like Ayodele Fayose their Governor, Fayemi railed. Fayemi has even promised to jail Fayose when he returns as Governor. No stroll in the park But it wont be a stroll back in the park for the APC backed Fayemi and he knows this. Fayose wont want Fayemi to succeed him for obvious reasons and he will do everything legally and illegally possible to stop Fayemi dead in his tracks. On paper, Fayoses Eleka should be no match for Fayemi but this wont be a straight, simple fight between Fayemi and Eleka. There is more to this election contest than meets the eye. Fayemi and the APC would have to be at their thuggish worst to stop the PDP candidate from handing Fayemi another trouncing. To beat Fayose and the PDP at their own game would mean Fayemi becoming who he isnt. And at this point, hes got no choice. Civil servants Back in 2014, voters said they helped in booting out Fayemi because he wasnt good to civil servants. On the stomp ground last Saturday, Fayemi fought back the school of thought that says he is an elitist politician who doesnt know what it means to connect with the grassroots. They said teachers didnt like Fayemi. During my time, education was free up to SS3. I paid rural allowance to teachers, Core Subjects Allowance, paid scholarship and bursary, paid for WAEC and NECO, but all these have been stopped by a government that has no interest in social investment. Today, I can boldly say that there is no town I get to out of the 133 towns and villages in our dear State where I will not point to five projects. If I have not done their road, I would have built schools, or renovated their hospital. But today, nothing is happening, Fayemi said. To watch Fayemi at his campaign rally last Saturday was to behold a man who looks like hes picked up a lesson or two in the art of galvanizing his base and working a crowd, since he was dispatched to the wilderness by his conqueror. Still looking cerebral, urbane and gentlemanly, it was a meaner Fayemi who warned Fayose that he should start preparing for jail after July. Some say Fayose won in 2014 through voter intimidation and with plenty of help from the military whose Commander-in-Chief was a PDP president. I have been told that if Musiliu Obanikoro and the then Defence chiefs didnt see the Ekiti election like a territory to be conquered; jackboots and all, Fayemi wouldnt have been so trounced by the opposition. But that is neither here nor there, today. Hindsight is 50:50. What we do know is that Fayose brutally flogged Fayemi in 2014. End of. Last chance salon This is Fayemis last chance to reclaim his pride of place as a worthy politician. To go from Abuja back to Ekiti means that Fayemi is risking it all. If he gets beat by Fayose again, hell never return and his reputation as a politician capable of getting out the votes, would have been forever shattered. If he wins, Fayemi would have restored some pride for himself, the APC and his team. By going back to fight as a governor when you are a minister could only be seen as a step down or a downgrade if you are served humble pies by the July 2018 could well be Fayemis last political battle and hes no tabula rasa not to know that. This is all he's worked for on the line. In accordance with the directive of the leadership of our great party, I wish to respectfully express my intent to vie for the ticket of the party as its candidate in the Osun state governorship election holding on the 22nd September, 2018, Adeleke wrote his party, the PDP. Its an interesting development. Adeleke is barely a year old in the senate. After his brother (Isiaka, who was a senator) died in April of 2017, Adeleke vied for his vacant seat. The APC refused to hand Adeleke the partys ticket for the senatorial seat so he did what every politician in Nigeria would dohe defected to the PDP and was handed the ticket on a platter. On the morning of July 9, 2017, the Independent National Electoral Commission (INEC) declared that Adeleke had defeatedMudashiru Hussain of the APC to emerge senator of the federal republic of Nigeria. Since his election, Adeleke has entertained us with his dance moves which are great by the way. I cant recall Adeleke speaking up on a piece of legislation or expertly marshalling a point on the floor of the senate. Now he wants to become governor of his State. Adeleke's chances A friend in Osun State tells me that Adeleke has a good chance of emerging winner of the September governorship election. According to this friend, Osun has three senatorial districts like every other State and two of those three have produced governors except for the West. The West is where Demola comes from. The APC is at the moment tinkering with the idea of shortchanging the West by picking its candidate from another zone. The PDP has seen this and has played its hand. But why Adeleke? you might ask. Osun PDP is starved of funds and only Omisore has the funds to prosecute an election. Enter Adeleke. In my friends permutation, if whoever emerges APC flag bearer doesn't possess Adeleke's instant name recognition and clout, then its the dancing senator who would be crowned Osun governor in September. Adeleke also has deep pockets and thats always a positive in an election contest in Nigeria. Again, there's the emotive factor. The people of Iwo, Ede North, Ede South and Irewole now have an emotional connection with the Adelekes after Isiaka's death. Adeleke could have plenty of sympathy votes in his corner. Aregbesola has been a different kind of political opponent as APC flag bearer in two election cycles. His erratic style of politicking and governance has made him difficult to predict and beat by Omisore and the PDP. As he exits the stage, the PDP should be forgiven for fancying their chances and thats why Adeleke is already dreaming of becoming Osuns next governor. He described Buhari's declaration for a second term as a welcome development, expressing confidence that he (Buhari) will win again. Okorocha stated this on Monday, April 16, 2018, when he received hosted some political stakeholders at the state government house in Owerri, the state capital. The politicians were said to have visited him to endorse Uche Nwosu, his Chief of Staff and son-in-law, as the next governor of the state. "Buhari will win again and again. After Buhari, the turn will come to south-east and it will be the turn of Okorocha," he said. The Governor has been criticised for planning to hand over power to his son-in-law. He said Nwosu is the most qualified of all the governorship aspirants. He said, "Nwosu is the least of the political children I have trained but I dont know any of them as much as I have known Nwosu. "I took him up when he was just nobody and he grew to the height he is now, his only sin is that he is my son-in-law. "Nwosu will win in 2019, dont be afraid, I am there, I have retired the Arthur Nzeribes, the Udenwas, now I will retire the rest of them finally, I know them and they know me, their plan is to push me so that they can get the senate, its a lie, I will run for the senate as well." ALSO READ: 7 times Okorocha has baffled Nigerians According to Daily Independent, the Senator, who has been critical of the President Muhammadu Buhari administration, may have pitched his tent with the Social Democratic Party (SDP). Sources in the APC claimed that Sani has not been working in the interest of the party in recent times. The Senator has been having a running battle with the Kaduna State GovernorNasir El-Rufaiwhich led to factions in the state's APC chapter. Murder case Last Tuesday, the Kaduna Police Command named the lawmaker as a person of interest in a murder case. Consequently, the state police commissioner, Austin Iwar, wrote to the senator asking him to appear for questioning on April 30, 2018, at the Command Headquarters in Kaduna. ALSO READ: Senator Senator Shehu Sani says APC and PDP are the same Reacting to the murder case, Sani accused El-Rufai of pulling the police strings. He alleged that the Governor even wrote to the judge in charge of the case that he is interested in the case. Pulse contacted Senator Sani over his supposed defection but no response from him as at the time of filing this report. The ruling party pressed ahead with the vote despite opposition rallies that saw several dozen protesters hurt in clashes with police in the capital Yerevan on Monday. "I proclaim today the start of a peaceful velvet revolution in Armenia," opposition leader Nikol Pashinian told a rally Yerevan, calling on supporters to "paralyse the work of all government agencies." Protesters blockaded the entrances to government buildings housing the foreign ministry and the central bank, among others, and rallies were also held in the provincial towns of Gyumri and Vanadzor. The opposition says the new parliamentary system of government will allow Sarkisian to maintain huge influence. Sarkisian ended his second and final presidential term last week. "I am standing here today as a leader of the party which can ensure a harmonious cooperation between the executive and legislative branches of power," he told lawmakers ahead of the vote. A shrewd former military officer, Sarkisian has been in charge of the landlocked South Caucasus nation of 2.9 million since winning a presidential vote in 2008. The country's new figurehead president, Armen Sarkisian, was sworn in last week but his powers will be weaker under the new system of government. The two men are not related. The rallies began on Friday when more than 4,000 people took part. Police used stun grenades on Monday as thousands took to the streets of Yerevan. Nigeria imposed the highest number of death sentences and had the highest number of people under death sentence in the region at the end of the year. China, Iran, Saudi Arabia, Iraq and Pakistan are top 5 most executioners in 2017. ___________________________________________________________ Amnesty International, a non-governmental organisation that focuses on human rights, has revealed that Nigeria imposed the highest number of death sentences and the highest number of people under death sentence in Sub Saharan Africa in 2017. Amnesty Internationalsaid this in its 2017 global review of the death penalty published on Thursday, April 12, 2018. Amnesty noted that with a total of 2,285 people currently on death row in Nigeria, the country is also the highest in the region, although no executions were carried out in 2017. The report further stated that 20 countries in sub-Saharan Africa have abolished the death penalty for all crimes but with the isolation of the worlds remaining executing countries such as Nigeria could not be complete. Salil Shetty, Amnesty Internationals Secretary General, said:The progress in sub-Saharan Africa reinforced its position as a beacon of hope for abolition. The leadership of countries in this region gives fresh hope that the abolition of the ultimate cruel, inhuman and degrading punishment is within reach. With governments in the region continuing to take steps to reduce and repeal the death penalty well into 2018, the isolation of the worlds remaining executing countries could not be starker. Now that 20 countries in sub-Saharan Africa have abolished the death penalty for all crimes, it is high time that the rest of the world follows their lead and consigns this abhorrent punishment to the history books. It is high time that the rest of the world follows their lead and consigns this abhorrent punishment to the history books, Shetty said Highlights of Sub-Saharan Africa trends on executions Somalia and South Sudan recorded executions in 2017, compared to five countries recorded in 2016. - 24 executions in Somalia. - 4 in South Sudan, a slight increase compared to at least 22 recorded in 2016. - Death sentences decreased, from at least 1,086 in 2016 to at least 878 in 2017. - Nigeria imposed the highest number of death sentences and had the highest number of people under death sentence in the region at the end of the year. - Guinea abolished the death penalty for all crimes. - Burkina Faso, Chad, Gambia and Kenya made important strides towards the abolition of the death penalty. Top 5 executioners list 2017: - China - 1000s - Iran - 507+ - Saudi Arabia - 146+ - Iraq - 125+ Interior Minister Tomas Drucker was expected to announce during the coming week whether he will remove Gaspar. Protesters also touted banners calling for early elections and "Enough of Smer!", referring to the governing social democrats. The EU member state of 5.4 million was plunged into crisis after the February murder of investigative journalist Jan Kuciak, who had been probing alleged ties between top politicians and the Italian mafia. The murder and Kuciak's article, published after he and his fiancee were found shot dead, sparked a wave of protests that forced the government to resign. The new government appointed last month retains most of the same people from the previous administration of Robert Fico, a social democrat with a strong populist streak who has vocally opposed migrants. Analysts believe Fico will continue to call the shots from behind the scenes as he remains chairman of the governing Smer-SD party. Qorane had been arrested at the Egal International Airport in January 2018 when she returned from Mogadishu, Somalia's capital city, where she allegedly recited poems calling for unity. Somaliland's self-declared independence after its 1991 breakaway from Somalia has resulted in regional tensions that have been ongoing for decades. According to Garowe Online, Qorane attended a TEDx event in Mogadishu and presented her Somali Unity poems to the audience. Her January arrest was linked to writings and perceptions of Somalia's unity and separatism. Prosecutors deemed her actions to be a violation of the "sovereignty and secession of Somaliland" as the nation continues to face an uphill battle to gain international recognition. The prosecution alleged that Qorane called Somaliland a 'region' and 'insulted and defamed' the government. During an interview in 2016, Qorane had said she was not afraid of being imprisoned for her beliefs after getting death threats and warnings not to step foot in Somaliland. She said, "If it happens though I am not expecting the jail was built not for animals but for people. I will be released one day and the prison experience is not going to change my views." Human rights violation The Human Rights Centre has requested the release of the poet, with its director, Guled Jama, expressing concerns over rights violations. Her intention was to take her own life after she killed the children, he added. It was never her intention to sit in this courtroom with a jury holding her responsible. The nanny, Yoselyn Ortega, contends that she is not criminally responsible for the gruesome killings on Oct. 25, 2012, because her mind was clouded by a psychosis so severe that she did not understand her actions. She maintains she cannot remember killing the children. Yet Silberg said Ortega took steps suggesting she had planned the murders and never intended to return home that day. She left a bag full of family heirlooms for her teenage son to find, as well as an envelope full of important papers for her sister, Delci Ortega. A day earlier, she also had asked the same sister to take care of her son and raise him well. In her summation, Ortegas lawyer, Valerie Van Leer-Greenberg, argued that Ortega had been experiencing paranoid delusions and hallucinations, as well as bouts of severe depression, going back to 1978. She had never been treated, however, and hid her symptoms from her employers and all but her closest family members. In the weeks before the murder, Ortega had been hearing voices, including one she thought was Satans, commanding her to kill the children, Van Leer-Greenberg said. Several family members and friends testified that Ortegas behavior became more and more bizarre during that period: She complained of shadows following her, cried frequently and spoke cryptically of a black man who was trying to split up her family. She was coming apart at the seams, Van Leer-Greenberg said. It was getting more chaotic in her head. The voices were overtaking her. Then on Oct. 25, 2012, she capitulated. Two psychiatrists for the defense testified that Ortega was psychotic at the time of the murders and had a break with reality, entering what they called a dissociative state. Her mind and her body separated metaphysically, Van Leer-Greenberg said. That is what the evidence has shown. But Silberg pointed out that when Ortega woke in the hospital days later, after being treated for a self-inflicted neck wound, she had a litany of petty complaints about her working conditions, but never asked about the children. She didnt have to ask, he said. She knew what had happened to them. Ortega, 55, never disputed that she had killed Leo Krim, 2, and his sister, Lucia, 6, using two kitchen knives. Their mother, Marina Krim, arrived home at about 5:30 p.m., with her third child in tow, after Ortega had failed to show up with Lucia at a ballet class. Krim opened the bathroom door to find her other two children lying bloodied and lifeless in the tub. Ortega was standing nearby and jammed a knife into her own throat. She put the children in the tub knowing Marina was going to open that door and see them, Silberg told the jury. It was about hurting Marina in the worst possible way you can hurt Marina, or any mother. To be found not responsible by reason of mental disease of defect, Ortega must prove she had a mental illness that prevented her from grasping the nature and consequences of her actions or from knowing they were wrong. The defenses case during the six-week trial centered on expert testimony from two psychiatrists, Karen Rosenbaum and Phillip J. Resnick, who determined Ortega suffered from an undiagnosed psychosis for decades. Ortegas lawyer also called as witnesses eight of the defendants family members and friends, who described Ortegas past mental breakdowns in 1978 and 2008, when she became a paranoid shut-in after people close to her died. Her family members also described her crying fits, nervousness and paranoia about shadows following her in the days before the killings. Van Leer-Greenberg pointed out that four psychiatrists at NewYork-Presbyterian/Weill Cornell Medical Center, where Ortega was treated for her neck wound, came to the conclusion that she had symptoms of psychosis, a diagnosis later confirmed by doctors at Elmhurst Hospital Center. Yet Silberg argued that Ortegas sisters, Delci Ortega and Miladys Garcia, came forward with information about Ortegas past symptoms of mental illness only after speaking with her defense lawyers months after the killings. All the stories that were told to you by Delci Ortega and Miladys were made up, he told the jury. Those are the witnesses the defense wants you to believe. Van Leer-Greenberg argued that the idea all of Ortegas friends and family members some of whom were subpoenaed to testify were lying about her symptoms seemed far-fetched. You have to believe these eight separate lay witnesses that have no background in psychiatry made up symptoms that were consistent with paranoid delusions, audio hallucinations, visual hallucinations, tactile hallucinations, major depressive disorder and dissociation, she said. She suggested insanity was the only explanation for the crime, since Ortega had repeatedly told her sisters and other relatives she loved the Krim children. The lack of a motive is the hallmark of her mental illness, she said. Silberg reminded jurors that Kevin and Marina Krim had testified that they saw no sign Ortega was losing her mind. He also noted Ortega appeared to be managing her life without trouble, enrolling her son in a private high school, moving houses twice that year and handling her own finances. Silberg suggested Ortega was simply furious with Marina Krim over her schedule and workload and planned to kill the children and herself to get back at her. If she loved them, she wouldnt have killed them, he said. The defendants rage and resentment reached a boiling point. This article originally appeared in The New York Times. This is after Maragas signature was forged on multiple occasions in letters purported to be from the Judiciary. Speaking on the matter chief registrar of judiciary Anne Amadi mentioned that the Judiciary's letterhead has also been used to circulate fake messages. We wish to make a formal report of these incidences and request that you carry out investigations with a view to bringing those involved to book as soon as possible, Amadi was quoted by the Star as saying. Ms. Amadi added that the fake letters were used to make libelous stories about judges. It is reported that cybercrime officials have commenced identifying sites and social media platforms where the fake letters were circulated. Raila's swearing-in This comes after a letter by CJ Maraga warning judges against participating in NASA leader Raila Odingas swearing-in ceremony. The missive was circulated four days before the controversial ceremony held at Uhuru Park. However after the the letter spread like wild fire, a source at the Judiciary registrar, who sought anonymity, told to the effect that all magistrates and judges should back off from the treasonous oath. I would have received such a statement from the CJ. So I dont think there has been such a communication from the Chief Justice. There is nothing of such kind, a source told Pulselive.co.ke on phone. Speaking to exclusively on phone, Mr Dickson Rayori, the Communications Director, explained of a budget to have the musician perform at the event, but denied claims that it was to be footed by the County government. He instead maintained that the county had only set aside a lump sum of cash to be used for refurbishing Kakamega Town, including street lighting and hotels which he said guests would book for stay. ALSO READ: Chebukati speaks on resigning after 3 commissioners quit I can confirm that the steering committee planning the conference has been in talks with the governors office, but not on the alleged Sh23 million for Kofi. The county did not invite the musician, so we are not planning to pay for that service, Mr Rayori said on phone. He added: "Neither the Council of Governors nor the County is involved in the planning. What we know is that Koffi's promoters would collect the money at the entry at the performance venue, which has been provided by the county anyway. So it is the promoters who will make up for the Sh23 million, not us." The confirmation follows a section of media reports which contended that the musician would take home Sh23 million for the performance slated for next week. Reports further had emerged that the flamboyant Lingala agreed to fly to Kenya to perform at the Devolution Conference after sealing the mouthwatering deal (valued at Sh23 million) with Kakamega Governor Wycliffe Oparanya. Critics, including former gubernatorial candidate and Ford Kenya deputy party leader Boni Khalwale had demanded answers from the governor of what he termed extravagance expenditure. Somebody please reassure us that what is now trending on the weblogs is false. That the guy on the left (Oparanya) paid the one on the right (Koffi) Ksh 23million before the Interior Department declared the molester of women persona non grata, said Khalwale in a tweet accompanied by a photo of the two. Mr Koffi was in July 2016 deported aboard Kenya Airways flight KQ554 to Kinshasa after kicking a woman at the Jomo Kenyatta International Airport (JKIA) in Nairobi. His lawyer, Prof George Wajackoyah, protested saying the musician had been treated like animals claiming the Kenya government had deported the musician and his dancers to Congo even without their passports. The musician was arrested at 10 pm along Denis Pritt Road in Nairobi, as he left Citizen TV studios from an interview. He was arrested alongside his crew of three women dancers, police said. Police stated that the musician had been arrested for creating disturbance at the airport. The Congolese star spent the night at the Jomo Kenyatta International Airport police station. He was removed from the JKIA Police Station on Saturday morning and taken to the airside where his fingerprints were taken before boarding a plane. According to Senate Majority Leader Kipchumba Murkomen, Mzee Mois son, Gideon has been blocking some politicians based on their political allegiance. Murkomen alleged that the Deputy President and his political allies would also have wished to meet President Moi but their efforts were being undermined by Gideon. We have been trying to get an appointment with Mzee Moi, but is very difficult. His son has been using political loyalty to determine who meets his father, Murkomen stated. Murkomens comments, have attracted criticism from some of the Jubilee rebel MPs who are loyal to Gideon. Moiben Silas Tiren accused the vocal senator of being disrespectful by dragging 2022 politics in Mzee Mois family life. QUIZ: Guess the Road Songs We can't wait to get back on the road again! Play this quiz and see if how many you can get right! FRANCE: Visiting the port of Bonneuil-sur-Marne on April 16, Prime Minister Eduard Phillippe, Environment Minister Nicolas Hulot and Transport Minister Elisabeth Borne announced a series of measures to improve the efficiency and competitiveness of SNCFs rail freight business. Rantoul, IL (61866) Today Partly cloudy this evening followed by increasing clouds with showers developing after midnight. Low 64F. Winds SSE at 10 to 15 mph. Chance of rain 40%.. Tonight Partly cloudy this evening followed by increasing clouds with showers developing after midnight. Low 64F. Winds SSE at 10 to 15 mph. Chance of rain 40%. Eurotrust banks ex-head released from punishment RIA Novosti, Vitaly Ankov 10:59 17/04/2018 MOSCOW, April 17 (RAPSI) The Moscow City Court has mitigated sentence for Eurotrust banks ex-head Andrey Krysin, who was initially given 8 years in a penal colony in a 3.5 billion-ruble ($57.4 million) embezzlement case, and released him from punishment, the press-service of the court has told RAPSI. Krysins sentence was changed from 8 years to 7 years and 9 months. He was released from punishment because of a serious illness. However, he still has to pay an 800,000-ruble ($13,000) fine. In 2017, the Zamoskvoretsky District Court of Moscow found Krysin as well as the banks board chairman Petr Zhurin and his deputy Olga Bocharova guilty. Zhurin was sentenced to 6 years while Bocharova received 5.5 years. Later, the Moscow City Court mitigated their sentence by 3 years and 2 months. Several other persons were also convicted in the case. The Interior Ministrys Investigative Department opened a case against Eurotrust over large-scale fraud in the summer of 2014, after the Deposit Insurance Agency reported that at least 3.4 billion rubles ($55.8 million) had been illegally withdrawn from the bank. The case was opened after an audit following the revocation of the banks license. The Central Bank of Russia revoked the license of Eurotrust Bank, one of Russia's 200 largest banks by assets, in February 2014 in a move to clean up national banking sector. In March 2014, the Moscow Commercial Court declared it bankrupt. Two defendants in case on stealing vintage books plead guilty flickr.com/Christopher 13:49 17/04/2018 MOSCOW, April 17 (RAPSI, Nikita Shiryayev) Two defendants in a criminal case over stealing rare and antique books from Moscow libraries, Alexander Pepelyayev and Vyacheslav Gutkevich, pleaded guilty on Tuesday, RAPSI reported from the Tverskoy District Court. However, Gutkevich asked the court to change charges against him from embezzlement of historical and cultural values to theft. Anatoly Borovkov, who is believed to be an organizer of the criminal group, pleaded not guilty. On Tuesday, the court began reconsidering the case following the Moscow City Courts order. In May 2016, Pepelyayev, Gutkevich and Borovkov were found guilty of stealing antique books of historical, scientific, artistic and cultural value. They received prison terms ranging from 5.5 to 7 years. The court also ordered them to pay for damage caused. Later, an appeal court excluded reference to conviction of Borovkov and Gutkevich from the sentence and released the latter because of serving the term. In February 2018, the Moscow City Courts Presidium overturned previous rulings and ordered a retrial. Investigators claimed that the defendants stole antique books of historical, scientific, artistic and cultural value and sold them at auctions, through resale shops, secondhand bookshop and art centers, as well as to collectors from March 2001 to June 2008. According to investigators, Borovkov coordinated actions of other defendants and distributed money received from selling the stolen books. In total, they stole 10 rare books valued at more than 7.3 million rubles (about $120,000). Russian childrens writer put on international wanted list on terrorism charges flickr.com/Blogtrepreneur 15:43 17/04/2018 MOSCOW, April 17 (RAPSI) - Children's book writer Daria Itsankova has been put on the international wanted list in a case on aiding and abetting terrorism, the spokesperson of Moscows Lefortovsky District Court Yekaterina Krasnova has told RAPSI. The court has held to detain Itsankova for 2 months after her extradition to Russia. The ruling has not been appealed yet, according to Krasnova. Itsankova stands charged with organizing a terrorist association or participation in such a group, public calls for extremism and aiding and abetting terrorism. According to media reports, the woman joined militants in Syria several years ago. Before then, she reportedly adopted Islam, left for Iraq and collected money for financing the Islamic State terrorist organization banned in Russia. Itsankova known for her fantastic fiction stories for children was nominated for a literary award in 2012. Russian nationalist Potkin asks to return his case to prosecutors RIA Novosti, Alexei Kudenko 16:25 17/04/2018 MOSCOW, April 17 (RAPSI) Russian nationalist Alexander Potkin (also known as Belov) has asked the Meschansky District Court of Moscow to return embezzlement case against him to prosecutors, his lawyer Igor Popovsky has told RAPSI. According to Popovsky, provisions of a higher courts ruling are not being fulfilled. The judge postponed review of this matter until April 24. The lawyer said that the indictment contains a mistake stating that Potkin tried to legalize stolen land plots despite him being charged with money laundering. Potkin was put under house arrest until June 11. In August 2016, the Meshchansky District Court of Moscow sentenced Potkin to 7.5 years in prison and fined him 600,000 rubles (about $10,500 at the current exchange rate). Moreover, the court granted a 4.9 billion-ruble lawsuit ($85 million) filed by the injured party against Potkin. In April 2017, the Moscow City Court reduced his prison term to 3.5 years, cancelled part of the sentence related to embezzlement charges and returned that part of the criminal case to prosecutors. The Presidium upheld the April decision of the Moscow City Court and ruled to reconsider parts of the sentence related to other charges. In January 2018, the Presidium of the Moscow City Court ruled to reconsider the case. This March, the Moscow City Court reviewed an appeal filed by Potkin against his sentence for extremism and gave him 3.5 years in prison. According to the original indictment, Mukhtar Ablyazov, ex-chairman of the Kazakh BTA Bank, who allegedly wanted to destabilize the constitutional order in Kazakhstan, asked Potkin to help him with organizing an extremist group. Potkin allegedly agreed and used funds embezzled from BTA Bank to spread the nationalist ideology in Kazakhstan. Potkin has pleaded not guilty. Potkin was arrested on October 15, 2014 at the Hotel Intourist Kolomenskoe in Moscow on charges related to the embezzlement of $5 billion from BTA Bank. At the time of the arrest, Potkin allegedly had documents on him that effectively tied him to the embezzlement. In December 2016, the European Court of Human Rights (ECHR) awarded 2,500 in compensation to Potkin for withdrawal of his complaint over long stay in detention from the court. Moscow court upholds extension of Zakharchenkos detention RIA Novosti, Mikhail Voskresensky 17:48 17/04/2018 MOSCOW, April 17 (RAPSI) The Moscow City Court has upheld a ruling of a lower court extending detention of former Russian anti-corruption official Dmitry Zakharchenko charged with corruption until June 9, RAPSI correspondent reports from the courtroom. Ex-Russian anti-corruption official Zakharchenko was arrested on September 8, 2016. During searches at his sisters apartment law enforcement officers found around 9 billion rubles (about $156 million at the current exchange rate). Zakharchenko himself denied any relation to seized funds. Zakharchenko was charged with receiving a 7-million-ruble ($121,600) bribe from an unknown source. He has also been charged with abuse of office and hindering the conduct of preliminary investigation. On March 2, it was revealed that he is charged with two more instances of corruption crimes. According to case papers, Viktor Zakharchenko, the father of ex-official, is charged with being an accessory to embezzlement. He also pleaded not guilty. In December 2017, the Investigative Committee stated that investigation into three instances of the case against Zakharchenko was complete. In the same month, the Nikulinsky District Court of Moscow ruled to seize property belonging to Zakharchenko and his relatives, in the state's favor upon a request of the Prosecutor Generals Office. Overall, the property in this case is evaluated at 9 billion rubles (about $153.3 million), including 27 real estate objects in elite neighborhoods of Moscow, 4 high-end automobiles, 8 billion rubles (about $135.1 million) and a gold bar. Russian national charged with $4 mln embezzlement extradited from Germany RAPSI 12:59 17/04/2018 MOSCOW, April 17 (RAPSI) Russian citizen Yunus Valiyev charged with embezzling over 236 million rubles (about $4 million) has been extradited from Germany, the Prosecutor Generals Office reports Tuesday. According to investigators, Valiyev working in Gazprombank in the capital of Dagestan, Makhachkala, issued ghost auto loans using forged documents. The money was transferred to members of a gang involving the defendant. In total, they embezzled 236.3 million rubles. In April 2016, a court in Makhachkala ordered detention of escaped Valiyev. Following the court order the defendant was put on the wanted list. In November 2016, he was arrested in Germany. Find a great selection of commercial real estate, manufactured homes, timeshares and more for Sale Buy real estate. Find a great selection of commercial real estate, manufactured homes, timeshares and more for Sale in US and Canada. Search Real Estate Property details: PLEASE READ ENTIRE LISTING BEFORE BIDDING!!!!! PLEASE ASK ALL QUESTIONS AND DO YOUR DUE DILIGENCE PRIOR TO BIDDING - YOUR BID IS AN INTENTION TO PURCHASE. Wyndham Old Town Alexandria154,000 Biennial/Even Points Unique resort closest to Metropolitan D.C. Experience a rare blend of Colonial-era tradition and urban excitement when you stay at Wyndham Old Town Alexandria, just 10 minutes from our nation?s capital and one mile away from the Potomac River. No other timeshare resort comes close to this... Price: $ 249 Seller State of Residence: Missouri State/Province: Virginia City: Alexandria Property Address: 1757 King St. Zip/Postal Code: 22314 Type: Attractions Location: 658**, Springfield, Missouri You will be redirected to eBay Nearby Attractions Property details: PLEASE READ ENTIRE LISTING BEFORE BIDDING!!!!! PLEASE ASK ALL QUESTIONS AND DO YOUR DUE DILIGENCE PRIOR TO BIDDING - YOUR BID IS AN INTENTION TO PURCHASE. 20,000 Annual Bluegreen PointsCibola Vista Resort & Spa A luxurious vibe for any desert getawayCibola Vista Resort and Spa brings the beauty and adventure of Americas Southwest to life. Just minutes from Phoenix and a short drive from the popular water-sport excitement of Lake Pleasant, this quiet slice of desert offers guests two distinct ... Price: $ 957 Seller State of Residence: Missouri State/Province: Arizona City: Peoria Property Address: 27501 N. Lake Pleasant Pkwy. Zip/Postal Code: 85383 Type: Attractions Location: 658**, Springfield, Missouri You will be redirected to eBay Nearby Attractions Property details: PLEASE READ ENTIRE LISTING BEFORE BIDDING!!!!! PLEASE ASK ALL QUESTIONS AND DO YOUR DUE DILIGENCE PRIOR TO BIDDING - YOUR BID IS AN INTENTION TO PURCHASE. Wyndham Grand Desert333,000 Annual Points Located less than a mile from the Strip, Wyndham Grand Desert Resort offers outstanding accommodations close to the heart of Las Vegas. Take a gondola ride in "Venice", Board a roller coaster in "New York", go to the top of the "Eiffel Tower" like in Paris, or visit the "Pyramids" like in Egypt, all on... Price: $ 3,850 Seller State of Residence: Missouri State/Province: Nevada City: Las Vegas Property Address: 265 E. Harmon Ave. Type: Attractions Zip/Postal Code: 89169 Location: 658**, Springfield, Missouri You will be redirected to eBay Nearby 89169 Indians are preferring long-haul foreign locations this summer, says report. Photograph: EdiNugraha/Pixabay.com With summer vacations fast approaching, most Indians are planning to head to long-haul international destinations with booking going up by 25 per cent compared to last year, said a report. About 50 per cent of the bookings are made by travellers in the 25-35 age group, according to the report by online travel company MakeMyTrip. 'Long-haul destinations have registered higher growth this year compared to short-haul ones, with a significant 25 per cent growth in the number of trips year-on-year,' said Mohit Gupta, chief operating officer, MakeMyTrip. Gupta said there has also been a significant increase in the number of people travelling this summer with 24 per cent more Indians travelling this season. The findings of the report are based on the bookings seen on MakeMyTrip platform for travel during the coming summer season (April-June), which coincides with the summer holidays in schools across India. London and Paris are the top destinations for long-haul trips, while Rome, Toronto, Amsterdam and Istanbul are the top growing international destinations this summer witnessing five-times growth, the report said. Among the short-haul destinations, Dubai followed by Singapore and Thailand continued to be the most popular summer travel destinations. Astana, Almaty, Lombok, Mykonos Vietnam, Jordan, Israel, Cambodia are among the most searched off-beat international summer destinations, according to the report. 'With mobiles, becoming the heart of communication, there also has been a remarkable year-on-year increase in bookings coming from smart phones,' said Gupta. The transactions made from mobile apps have increased by 64 per cent since last summer, he added. Among domestic destinations, Goa continued to top the chart despite the heat as the most preferred holiday location this summer. Cooler places such as Manali, Ooty and Shimla are the other top summer travel destinations. Interestingly, this summer Indians have shown great interest in travelling to some off-beat destinations as well, according to the report. Other than places such as Thekkady, Wayanad, Guwahati and Shillong, locations like Spiti, Hampi and Namchi are being picked as the new go-to places by young Indians. 'The current BJP leadership believes the party's expansion across India, and thus their own survival at the top, depends on injecting communal tension into areas where it has so far been largely controlled,' argues Mihir S Sharma. Illustration: Uttam Ghosh/Rediff.com A concern widely expressed in circles friendly to the Bharatiya Janata Party before the last assembly elections in Bihar was that a return of Lalu Prasad's Rashtriya Janata Dal to power in Patna would unleash 'jungle raj'. The assumption was that even a coalition with the law-and-order focused Nitish Kumar would fail to restrain the RJD. Well, the RJD is out of the ruling coalition, Prasad is in custody, and the BJP is now Kumar's partner. And yet Bihar is burning. Foreign journalists are putting out disturbing visuals from the environs of Samastipur and Aurangabad, that they say show Hindutva thugs running amok. Mobs parade through Muslim-majority neighbourhoods, attack Muslim-owned businesses and property, attempt to set mosques alight, and plant saffron flags atop them. One of the videos seems to show uniformed policemen joining the mobs and chanting along. For some reason, this does not seem to count as 'jungle raj'. Meanwhile, in Uttar Pradesh, the return of the BJP to power in Lucknow after a gap of almost two decades was hailed as the return of good, development-focused, government. The government of Chief Minister Adityanath, however, has been distinguished instead by a focus on supposed 'love jihad', on adding 'Ramji' to Ambedkar's name by statute, on shutting down slaughterhouses, and particularly on lawless extra-judicial violence which the media euphemistically refers to as 'encounters'. As Harsh Mander points out, this focus 'does not appear strange to the media who dutifully report the stories in which the men shot are almost always Muslims.' Of course, another sign of the chief minister's firm commitment to law and order is that he has happily shut down cases against past rioters. And in UP, too, processions through Muslim-majority areas have sparked off communal violence, such as in Kasganj. In West Bengal, matters are even more bizarre. Ram Navami in the Bengali tradition is not associated with mobs of sword- and trishul-brandishing young men in saffron marching through the streets in a display of power. Yet this is what the BJP, in its attempt to plant the seeds of Hindutva in unfriendly soil, has sought to do in the state. Hindi slogans are plastered across walls, revealing the 'outsider' nature of the provocateurs. And once again, Muslim neighbourhoods are targeted for this exercise in domination. There is one difference from Bihar and UP: When violence broke out in the Asansol area, it was widely covered in the national media, and the Union government demanded an explanation from the state. I wonder what marks Trinamool Congress-ruled Bengal as different from UP and Bihar. In Telangana -- where the ruling Telangana Rashtra Samiti prides itself on its record of preventing communal clashes since it came to power more than three years ago, in spite of the occasional flare-up in places like Utnoor -- a Ram Navami procession in Nirmal district ended with stones being thrown at the Gulzar mosque, according to the local police. Immediately following this incident, the Vishwa Hindu Parishad and Bajrang Dal took out a 'Veer Hanuman Vijaya Yatra'. You'd have to be blind not to see a pattern to all this. One additional piece of the pattern is the willingness of the local media in many places to amplify the story -- a willingness that is less mysterious now that we have seen the expose of how stories aimed at heightening communal tensions can be easily placed in news television and in the print media. The silence of the mainstream English-language media can be perhaps most easily explained when one considers the fate of the editor of a national daily who commissioned a feature tracking hate crimes. It is difficult, thus, to be optimistic about Indian politics in the run-up to 2019. All one can ask for at this point is a little plain-speaking. Let us be fed no more tripe about the BJP being a party of governance, please. Nor should we fall for scare-mongering about parties in the Opposition: If their record with 'appeasement' or 'law and order' is nothing to write home about, then the BJP's is at least as bad. In fact, anybody rational would argue that it is considerably more dangerous -- as clearly the current BJP leadership believes that the party's expansion across India, and thus their own survival at the top, depends on injecting communal tension into areas where it has so far been largely controlled. The mechanism is straightforward: Incite or import young men to carry trishuls through a Muslim neighbourhood and shout provocative slogans; force a police response or one from local residents; then magnify that response, as an example of Hindu persecution, through the state's media and WhatsApp. Given this strategy, I fear for Telangana and West Bengal in particular; these are the states where the BJP seeks to unseat parties with a strong sub-national identity, and where there is a large Muslim minority. Though, of course, the BJP is even capable of making minority 'appeasement' into an issue in Odisha, where Muslims are only two per cent of the population. Stories of appeasement, processions, violence, media 'reports', WhatsApp, charged electoral speeches, victory. Let the country burn; 2019 is what matters. 'The death penalty exists in India for murderers. Is it a deterrent and does it stop murders?' asks Aakar Patel. A child at a protest against the rape of an eight-year-old child in Kathua, Jammu and Kashmir, and a teenager in Unnao, Uttar Pradesh. Photograph: Cathal McNaughton/Reuters How should we as a society react to events as have happened in Kathua and in Unnao? India has become notorious around the world as a place where women and children are unsafe from sexual violence, and even if this is not the reality it has become the perception. It should not take foreign media for us to look at ourselves honestly and ask how we can change. What are the reasons we are unable to prevent such episodes and what actions need to follow so that we can reduce them? The first thing is that we must accept that this is not just a function of the justice and policing system. There is a breakdown of values, and in a place where women and minorities are respected, there is no encouragement to bestiality. Do we live in such a place? The honest answer to that is obvious. Saying that the government should do something to stop such violence from happening ignores our own roles. With that understanding, let us now look at what the government can be convinced to do. There are essentially two things that can act as a response to preventing sexual assault and rape. One of those is legislation. One popular demand that recurs every so often is to hang the rapists. The thinking is that harsh punishment is a deterrent and that the potential rapist will be worried about the consequences and therefore not carry out the act. There are many counters to it, including that having the same punishment for rape and murder encourages the rapist to kill his victim so that there is no witness. But let us ignore that for now. Politicians usually favour this solution and if you look at the newspapers of recent days many are in agreement that there should be the death penalty for rapists. The death penalty exists in India for murderers. Is it a deterrent and does it stop murders? Let us look at the numbers. India's courts awarded 136 death sentences in 2016. But that year, there were over 30,000 murders in India. Handing out death sentences does not stop murderers. Our laws also provide for appeal and remission, and so the number of people who were actually hanged in 2016 was zero. We should understand this when we seek a silver bullet to end rape in the form of the 'hang the rapists' demand. Now let us look at the numbers for rape and sexual assault. The total number of rape cases registered in India was 38,947 and there were over 106,000 crimes against children. The problem with the rape number is that government data suggests that 99% of victims of sexual violence in India do not report the incident to the police. In the United States, out of 1,000 instances of rape and sexual assault, 310 (meaning 31%) are reported. And only 6 people, meaning less than 1% are actually finally jailed. This means that we are not alone in not being able to deliver justice and it is a complex issue that requires a lot of thinking and a lot of hard work. There are various issues here, some are social and some that can be corrected by the State. The common factor between victims in India and elsewhere is that rape is an intensely personal crime and that not one that is easy to share. The social issues in India are many, and the position and treatment of women in our society is the main one. The second one is that we believe that family 'honour' is reposed in the body of women and that it is 'lost' when a woman is assaulted. This prevents individuals from revealing details even to family, leave alone strangers in the police station. There are things that the police can do and it is to follow the law. The law says that all victims in India can report in any police station of their choosing (and not only in the one in whose jurisdiction the crime is committed), secondly the victim can choose to record her statement in any language of her choosing. This is difficult because most police stations do not have individuals who speak even English properly, and prefer to record the FIR in the local language only. Thirdly, the victim's statement must be recorded by a woman police officer. This again is not done, because of the lack of women police officers and the lack of police generally. One popular slogan is 'minimum government, maximum governance', but these are meaningless words when the size of the Indian government, as measured by the number of police, doctors, nurses etc, is very small per capita compared to the rest of the world. The facts show that to prevent sexual crimes we have to make large changes in our society and its treatment of women at the level of the family. And we need to ensure that the existing laws on reporting sexual violence are followed at the level of every police station across India. This is very, very, hard work, but it will ensure that the rate of reporting goes up, at least to the levels where it is in the rest of the world. After the rate of reporting goes up, the State needs to ensure that it conducts proper investigations (which need resources and cannot be done with the same force or budget) that increases the rate of convictions. All of this is difficult, and most politicians know that it is close to impossible. That is why the easy way is chosen and that is to demand that rapists be hanged. The fact that murderers are also hanged and it has no effect on murders does not seem to worry us. Aakar Patel is Executive Director, Amnesty International India. The views expressed here are his own. We were expecting death sentences, but now the court has acquitted them, despite Aseemanand himself admitting to his crime in front of a judge.' IMAGE: A special NIA court in Hyderabad acquitted Aseemanand and four others in the 2007 Mecca Masjid blast, April 16, 2018. Photograph: PTI Photo On April 16, 2018, a special National Investigation Agency court in Hyderabad acquitted five men, including Aseemanand, in the 2007 Mecca Masjid blast case. Amjedullah Khan, spokesperson for the Majlis Bachao Tehreek, has been tracking the Mecca Masjid blast case from day one and was involved in securing the release of more than 100 Muslims youth who were falsely accused in different terror cases in the aftermath of the blast. "If the investigative agencies are not producing anything against the culprits, what will the judge do?" Khan asks Rediff.com's Syed Firdaus Ashraf. This judgment confirms that there is nothing like 'Hindu terror', right? Hindu terror exists ever since Mahatma Gandhi was killed. Hemant Karkare, the late Mumbai anti-terrorism squad chief who was killed in the 26/11 attacks, was the man who coined the phrase. If he was alive, the outcome of this case would have been different. Earlier, Maharashtra's public prosecutor Rohini Salian said she was under pressure from the NIA (to go soft in the Malegaon blast case). The fact is the court has acquitted these five men, declared that they are not guilty. The judge gives a judgment based on scientific evidence. If the investigative agencies are not producing anything against the culprits, what will the judge do? The judge will be helpless. Previously, the BJP used to say the CBI is for the Congress, but I say the NIA has become a parrot of the BJP. You have been involved with the fight for justice, can you throw some light on what happened after the Mecca Masjid blast on May 18, 2007? More than 100 Muslim youth were arrested as soon as the Mecca blast happened and were detained. During initial investigations, the needle of suspicion was on them. Within 45 minutes of the blast, IPS officers appeared on television channels, saying Muslim organisations were involved in the blast; they also said it had Bangladeshi connections. And after that police statement, the needle of suspicion was on Muslim youth. They arrested 100 Muslim youth and many others were illegally detained from all over Hyderabad. This happened under the rule of the Congress party and (then) chief minister Y S Rajasekhar Reddy. All these Muslim youth were arrested in different cases of terror. The prosecuting agencies said they were planning a conspiracy (against the Indian State). Were any Muslim youth arrested in the Mecca Masjid blast case? Nobody was arrested. The police officers gave statements naming Shahid Bilal as the main accused and some organisation called Harkat ul Jihadi from Bangladesh as being responsible. This Shahid Bilal, who was from Hyderabad, was named as being responsible for the blast and that too within 45 minutes of the blast. That time I asked: How could these police officers solve the blast case within 45 minutes? If so, why did they not come to know about the blast 45 minutes prior to it? Shahid Bilal was killed in an encounter in 2008. Nobody knows whether Shahid Bilal is alive or dead. His brother too was said to be involved in the blast. I do not know whether he is alive or not. I read a report in a Telugu newspaper that he was killed in an encounter in Pakistan. Even the state government has not put out a closure report, but said Shahid Bilal is absconding. The Mecca Masjid blast The Mecca Masjid blast took place on May 18, 2007 inside the mosque located in the old city area of Hyderabad. The blast was caused by a cellphone-triggered pipe bomb. Two more live IEDs were found and defused by the police. 16 people were reported dead in the immediate aftermath, of whom five were killed in police firing to quell protesting mobs. How long were these Muslim youth in jail? The arrested 100 were in jail for 22 months after which they were acquitted by the courts. The minority commission gave a report (on these arrests) to the state government, but that report was not tabled in the assembly. Muslim youth were tortured in a manner similar to the Israeli police. The state government interestingly did not arrest anyone in the Mecca Masjid blast, but said that these Muslim youth were planning to carry out future blasts in Hyderabad. After a lot of hue and cry, this case was handed over to the CBI (Central Bureau of Investigation). Meanwhile, in the Samjhauta blast case, Aseemanand was arrested. He gave a confessional statement in the Tees Hazari court after meeting Kaleem, an accused from among the 100 arrested in what the police said was a conspiracy against the State. In his confession, Aseemanand said Kaleem cried in jail about how his future had been destroyed because he was Shahid Bilal's (cousin) brother. Aseemanand confessed his involvement in the Mecca Masjid blast after hearing Kaleem's plight. It was a 130 page-long confession. In it, he also named Sadhvi Pragya and Colonel Shrikant Purohit as being involved in terror activities. After that seven people were arrested in the Mecca Masjid blast case. Five them were Devendra Gupta, Lokesh Sharma, Aseemanand, Bharat Mohanlal and Rajendra Chaudhary (who were acquitted on April 16, 2018). Two other accused are absconding, of them one is dead, I believe. After the NIA took over the case, more than 130 witnesses turned hostile. When the Modi government came to power, the same NIA officers and a former home secretary (R K Singh) joined the BJP so the Mecca Masjid blast case was systematically sabotaged. We were expecting death sentences, but now the court has acquitted them, despite Aseemanand himself admitting to his crime in front of a judge. But Aseemananad later retracted his statement that he carried out the blast. In the Best Bakery case in Gujarat, the complainant Zaheera Shaikh was punished even though she later retracted her original statement given to the judge. You cannot do that as you have made the statement under Section 313 of the CrPc (Criminal Procedure Code). You cannot retract. There has to be evidence against Assemanand as well. There was evidence, but the case went on for 11 years. A majority of the witnesses were lost. The NIA could not find files regarding Hindu terror. During the UPA (United Progressive Alliance)'s tenure, a then under secretary, home, said there was nothing like 'Hindu terror' and the UPA government was framing Hindus. We have been saying that there are RSS (Rashtriya Swayamsevak Sangh) moles in the Congress party and its administration. Whether it is the Congress or BJP, there are RSS moles in the administration. Since Aseemanand and others have been acquitted, is it now clear that Shahid Bilal was behind the Mecca Masjid blast? This was a story created by police officers about the involvement of Muslim youth in the Mecca Masjid blast. When the CBI took over the investigation, they called in Muslim youth for interrogation, but did not arrest anyone for the Mecca Masjid blast. Shahid Bilal was never arrested in the Mecca Masjid blast case. A man from Andhra Pradesh on Tuesday approached Surat police claiming that the minor girl, whose body was found on April 6, might be his daughter. Police officials said that a DNA sample had been sent to verify the mans claim. A man from Andhra Pradesh today approached us along with some of his family members, claiming that the girl whose body was found on April 6 was his daughter. He said she had gone missing in October last year, said Surat Police Commissioner Satish Sharma. The man said his claim is based on the fact that the photo of his missing daughter matched with that of the victim. He also furnished an Aadhaar card of his missing daughter. We are not yet certain that the victim is his daughter. Therefore, we will match their DNA samples to verify the claim, Sharma said. Meanwhile, the Gujarat State Commission for Women on Tuesday sought a report from Surat police on the action taken by it in the case. A team from the commission is likely to be in the city on Wednesday to meet top police officials and inquire about the incident, its chairperson Leela Ankoliya said. We have sought a report on the action that has been taken to identify the girl and solve the crime, she said. The body of the girl, possibly between nine and 11 years of age, was found in the bushes in the Pandesara area of the city. An autopsy report stated that the girls body bore 86 injury marks, including on her private parts. A doctor at the city Civil Hospital had said that the nature of injuries suggested that she was possibly held captive, tortured and raped. Surat police said that they have scanned the data of missing children from various states, including West Bengal and Odisha, claiming that the victim was most likely from outside Gujarat. IMAGE: Prime Minister Narendra Modi takes a short walk with his Swedish counterpart Stefan Lofven from Sager House to Rosenbad in Stockholm on Tuesday. Photograph: Press Information Bureau of India India and Sweden on Tuesday agreed to deepen their collaboration through a strategic innovation partnership for a 'win-win' outcome and strengthen defence and security cooperation as Prime Minister Narendra Modi discussed a host of issues with his Swedish counterpart Stefan Lofven. The two leaders had a 'fruitful discussion on issues related to cooperation in innovation, trade and investment, culture and exchanged views on regional and multilateral cooperation at the delegation-level talks', External Affairs Ministry spokesperson Raveesh Kumar said. Two documents were agreed to between India and Sweden following the delegation-level talks -- Innovation Partnership and Joint Action Plan -- to maximise bilateral cooperation for the benefit of the people. In a joint press statement after the talks, Prime Minister Modi said the two sides focused on how Sweden can help India in its development journey. "Sweden has been a strong supporter of 'Make in India' initiative from the beginning. Prime Minister Lofven had participated in our 'Make in India' programme in 2016 along with a big business delegation," Modi said. "I believe that the most important topic in our talks today was how Sweden can have a win-win partnership with India on the opportunities arising out of India's development. As a result, we have agreed on an innovation partnership and a joint action plan," he said. He said innovation, investment, start-ups, manufacturing etc. are the key aspects of cooperation between India and Sweden. "Along with them, we are also giving importance to areas such as renewable energy, urban transport, waste management, that our connected with the quality of life of the people in India," Modi added. IMAGE: The two PMs during the Joint Press Statement in Stockholm on Tuesday. Photograph: Press Information Bureau of India Modi said India and Sweden have also agreed to strengthen their defence and security cooperation. "A key pillar of our bilateral ties is our defence and security cooperation. In the defence sector, Sweden has been India's partner from a long time. I have faith that in future also in this sector, particularly in defence production, there will be plenty of opportunities for bilateral cooperation. We have decided to strengthen our cooperation in the security sector, particularly in cyber security." Modi also said India and Sweden will continue their close cooperation on the international stage. On his part, Swedish Prime Minister Lofven lauded India as 'global power' and said the two countries are a 'perfect match'. He said there has been an intensification of cooperation in areas such as green technology and smart cities. IMAGE: Prime Minister Modi with King Carl XVI Gustaf of Sweden, in Stockholm. Photograph: Press Information Bureau of India A Joint Declaration on Sweden-India Innovation Partnership for a Sustainable Future said, 'The innovation partnership represents a step-change in India-Sweden science and innovation collaboration, underpinning our mutual commitment to drive prosperity and address global challenges such as climate change and sustainable development through innovation.' The partnership sets the framework for future cooperation to jointly tackle societal challenges including innovation driven challenges on cross sectoral issues with multi-stakeholder/agency participation from both countries, it said. It will cover co-operation across a wide spectrum, from the creation of effective innovation systems to the commercialisation of new technologies, the declaration added. 'The partnership will deepen the long and fruitful relations between our countries, building upon the Joint Statement between our Prime Ministers issued in Mumbai 2016 and the Joint Action Plan agreed in Stockholm in 2018,' it said. The partnership covers several areas, including smart cities, transportation and eMobility, energy, clean technologies, new materials, space, circular and bio-based economy, and health and life sciences. Modi and Lofven undertook the walk from Sogerska to Rosenbad and were seen actively engaging in talks. IMAGE: Swedish Prime Minister Stefan Lofven personally received Modi at the airport. Photograph: Kind courtesy @narendramodi/Twitter 'Walking together! PM @narendramodi and @SwedishPM walk down from the residence of Swedish PM to Office for the delegation-level talks. Sweden can be our important partner in seeking innovative solutions for developmental challenges facing India today,' Kumar tweeted. 'There are excellent opportunities for cooperation in the fields of smart cities, clean technology, universal housing, renewable energy, e-mobility, start-up, waste disposal, and many others with an objective of creating jobs and sustainable development for our people in India,' Kumar tweeted. Earlier, Prime Minister Modi called on Swedish King Carl XVI Gustaf and exchanged views on strengthening bilateral cooperation across several sectors. Modi arrived in the capital of Sweden on Monday, the first bilateral visit by an Indian premier to the Nordic nation in 30 years. Swedish Prime Minister Lofven received Modi at the airport on Monday night. The Two leaders travelled together in the same vehicle from the airport to the hotel. Modi is in Stockholm on the first leg of his five-day foreign tour which will also take him to the United Kingdom where he will attend the Commonwealth Heads of Government Meeting (CHOGM). He will also have a brief stopover in Berlin, Germany, on April 20 while on his way back home. The 10th edition of the Defence Expo was held in Chennai this year. The event saw more than 25 Indian and global companies participate. Foreign players like Lockheed Martin and SAAB showcased their flagship fighter aircraft and Indian firms like Ashok Leyland, Tata Motors and Hindustan Aeronautics Ltd. had their own line-up of new products. Take a look. A foreign delegate explains features of latest weapons at a stall at the Defexpo2018 on the first day of the event in Chennai. Photograph: R Senthil Kumar/PTI Photo MS Dhoni with army personnel at the Defexpo2018 -- which ran from April 11 to April 14. Photograph: R Senthil Kumar/PTI Photo Various international companies were presenting their newest weapons at the expo. Photograph: R Senthil Kumar/PTI Photo An Indian Arjun Mark II tank drives through sand during a display at the DefExpo 2018, in Chennai. Photograph: R Senthil Kumar/PTI Photo Indian Air Force personnel conduct a live demonstration at the Defexpo2018, on the first day of the event. Photograph: R Senthil Kumar/PTI Photo Air Force choppers demonstrate acrobatics during the event. Photograph: R Senthil Kumar/PTI Photo Over 47 countries participated in the event -- all showing their military might. Photograph: R Senthil Kumar/PTI Photo Armed Force personnel stage a live demo in presence of Prime Minister Narendra Modi after the inauguration of 10th edition of Indias Mega Defence Exhibition - DefExpo 2018, a biennial exhibition of weapons and military hardware, at Tiruvidandhai, on the outskirts of Chennai. Photograph: R Senthil Kumar/PTI Photo Indian Air Force's Sarang display team performs on the third day of the DefExpo 2018. Photograph: R Senthil Kumar/PTI Photo A vsitor looks at an automatic rifles display at the event. Photograph: R Senthil Kumar/PTI Photo The Arjun tank makes its presence felt at the event. Photograph: @SpokespersonMoD/Twitter Hindustan Aeronautical Limited shows off its aircraft at the defence event. Photograph: @SpokespersonMoD/Twitter Modi said that in the last four years the government has worked for creating a New India by 2022. IMAGE: Prime Minister Narendra Modi addresses the Indian community at the Stockholm University in Sweden. Photograph: PIB India is going through a period of change and the government in the last four years has worked towards building a developed and inclusive country, Prime Minister Narendra Modi said in Stockholm on Tuesday. Addressing the Indian diaspora at the Stockholm University, Modi said earlier removing poverty was limited to just words and slogans, but his government was committed to poverty alleviation and was using empowerment as a tool to achieve its goal. "The country is going through a period of change. Presently, there is a government in India which for the country's prestige, self respect and taking it to new heights in the 21st century, is working day and night," Modi said amidst loud cheers from the audience. "In the last four years, the government has worked for building a developed and inclusive India. It has worked for creating a New India by 2022," the prime minister said. Swedish Prime Minister Stefan Lofven, who was also present at the event, said Sweden highly values its partnership with India. He lauded the Indian diaspora for its contribution to the Nordic country. Lofven said his talks with Prime Minister Modi had helped the bilateral partnership take a "great step forward". IMAGE: PM Modi with Swedish Prime Minister Stefan Lofven. Photograph: @MEAIndia/Twitter Modi, in his address, asserted that India's stature has increased at the world stage. "Be it Africa or small Pacific countries, or ASEAN or Europe or Asia, all of them are looking at India as a trusted friend," he said. He cited India's entry into the export control regimes of Wassenaar Arrangement, the Australia Group and the Missile Technology Control Regime, as an example of India's increasing stature at the global stage. Modi also said that in India, the government is using technology for accountability and transparency. Digital infrastructure has changed how citizens used to interact with the government. Reaching out to the government has now become a practice rather than a privilege, he said. IMAGE: PM Modi waves at the audience. Photograph: @MEAIndia/Twitter Modi said the perception about the way the government functions was changing. It is easier to do business in India and the country has jumped 42 ranks in ease of doing business index, Modi said. He also hailed the government's move of implementing the GST, saying the "historic" reform in the indirect tax regime is being increasingly adopted by the industrial sector. In his address, he also said that the Jan Dhan Yojna, Aadhaar and mobile technology had merged to create direct benefit transfer facility. These were allowing welfare schemes to reach their intended targets and had saved USD 12 billion from ending up in wrong hands, Modi said. The prime minister also stressed on the government's focus on ease of living and mentioned the 'Ayushman Bharat' -- the world's largest health care insurance scheme -- as an example of it. May told House of Commons that there was "clear evidence" the Bashar al-Assad government was behind a recent chemical weapons attack in Douma. IMAGE: Britain's Prime Minister Theresa May attends a press conference in 10 Downing Street, London. Photograph: Simon Dawson/Pool/Reuters British Prime Minister Theresa May on Monday made a statement in Parliament to justify her decision to join United States-led air strikes alongside France against Syria's chemical weapons stockpiles over the weekend and declared that it had been a "morally and legally right" move. She told MPs in the House of Commons that there was "clear evidence" the Bashar al-Assad government was behind a recent chemical weapons attack in Douma and it had been necessary to go ahead with the action without recalling Parliament for a vote on the issue to maintain the "vital security" of the military operation. "It was about a limited, targeted and effective strike that sought to alleviate the humanitarian suffering of the Syrian people by degrading the Syrian regime's chemical weapons capability and deterring their use. And we have published the legal basis for this action," the British premier said. "It is Parliament's responsibility to hold me to account for such decisions -- and Parliament will do so. But it is my responsibility as Prime Minster to make these decisions. And I will make them," she added. Opposition Labour party leader Jeremy Corbyn has claimed the air strikes were "legally questionable" and questioned the proof that the Assad regime was behind the chemical attack in Douma. "There is no more serious issue than the life and death matters of military action. It is right that Parliament has the power to support or stop the government from taking planned military action," he said. Liberal Democrat deputy leader Jo Swinson said the decision had been taken "behind closed doors" and much more scrutiny was needed of the objectives behind it. Sites near Damascus and Homs were hit on Saturday by the US, French and the UK in response to the alleged chemical attack on Douma on 7 April. Both Syria, which denies any chemical use, and Russia, which provides military support to the Syrian government, have reacted against the action. "No other group could have carried out this attack," May told MPs, adding that the Syrian authorities had attempted to "conceal the facts... supported by the Russians". "We cannot go back to a world where the use of chemical weapons becomes normalised I am deeply conscious of the gravity of these decisions But I am clear that the way we protect our national interest is to stand up for the global rules and standards that keep us safe. That is what we have done -- and what we will continue to do," she concluded. Any vote at the end of Monday's Commons debate on the issue will be largely symbolic, merely to acknowledge that Parliament has had its say rather than give MPs the chance to formally approve or reject the air strikes themselves. 'She was just a little girl. She didn't understand religion. Who is Hindu, who is Muslim.' 'She was just 8! Why punish her?' The family of the eight-year-old girl who was gang-raped and murdered in Jammu's Kathua district say everything has changed since that horrific crime. Rediff.com's Swarupa Dutt reports. IMAGE: The mother of the eight-year-old girl who was gang-raped and murdered sits before her clothes in their home in Rasana village, Kathua district, Jammu. The Bakarwal community they belong to say they are shocked and saddened by the protest marches in support of the alleged rapists. In December 2017, in Rasana village in Jammu's Kathua district, a 15-year-old boy with a smartphone asks his sister to smile. He takes her to the area demarcated as the kitchen in their one-room home and with her standing before a backdrop of utensils, he takes a picture. The girl dressed in a purple kurta with yellow flowers, crosses her arms and smiles tentatively. Big, beautiful eyes, brown hair and a trace of mischief. It is the first time the little girl is being photographed. On January 17, 2018, seven days after she went missing, her body was found face down in the woods, clad in the same purple salwar kameez. That is the second time her photograph is taken. The first is the only photograph of her alive and is everywhere, appearing in newspapers, magazines, television debates and news bulletins, Web sites, demanding justice for the little girl who was abducted, gang-raped and murdered. Her body dumped in the scraggly forests behind the temple where she was allegedly confined. Her father describes her as "khoobsurat" (beautiful), with laughing eyes, and "masoom" (innocent). Timeline of the tragedy >> January 12: Father of the victim lodges a complaint, reporting his daughter as missing since January 10. >> January 17: The eight year old's body is found with marks of physical violence; her lips were bitten and there were signs that she had been tortured. >> January 22: Once the FIR was lodged, an initial arrest was made, post which the case was shifted to the crime branch because the Bakerwal community protested that the local police and government were not handling the case effectively. >> February 15: The Hindu Ekta Manch holds a protest march in which Hindu residents of Rasana, Dhamiyal and other villages take to the national highway, waving the Indian flag, to demand the release of special police officer Deepak Kajuria. >> April 9: Lawyers from the Jammu high court bar association prevent the police in Kathua from presenting before the local court a chargesheet in the gang-rape and murder. >> April 11: The lawyers call for a bandh, saying the crime branch probe, which forms the basis of the chargesheet, is biased and the case needs a Central Bureau of Investigation probe. >> April 16: The Supreme Court directs the Jammu and Kashmir government to provide security to the family of the eight-year-old victim, the lawyer and a family friend assisting them in pursuing the case. It also takes note of a plea by the victim's father seeking transfer of the trial of the case from Kathua, preferably to Chandigarh and seeks the state government's response. "She was such a pretty girl, intelligent and spoke well (batein achchi karti thi)," her mother says wistfully. "She was perfect." Her aunt calls her loving, warm and beautiful. Her neighbour, who lives five minutes from her home in Rasana village, says he knew her since she was an infant and always thought she was meant for better things, a better life. "Maybe that's why she was taken away from us," he says. Her parents have come to terms with her death. "How long will you grieve? We will fall ill. I have already lost two children (to a road accident eight years ago), so we find it difficult to understand why we have to bear another loss." "We miss her, beshak, of course, but our grief is personal. What we have to do is bring the culprits to justice," the father says. He is actually her mamu, though she called him kaku, abbu, whatever pleased her. He has two biological sons, but he always wanted a daughter. "We adopted her when she was three months old. She was our daughter, not our niece," says his wife. They are on their way to Patnitop, which is just a little over four hours by car, but will take them over a week on foot. It is one of the pit stops before Panikhar in Leh-Ladakh where they will spend the summer months. "We always leave for the mountains in April," her father says, rubbishing reports that he was forced to leave their village out of fear from the Dogras, the majority Hindu community in Jammu. IMAGE: Activist Talib Hussain (in white shirt) walks along with the girl's family as they make their annual journey from their village in Kathua to the mountains in Kashmir. Photograph: Kind courtesy Talib Hussain Just as the state assembly moves from Srinagar in Kashmir to Jammu every winter, so do the Bakarwals (the nomadic shepherd community they belong to) move home from the mountains in Kashmir to their villages in Kathua every winter. The journey to the mountains is their only constant, everything else has changed since the incident, says the girl's uncle who lives a five minute walk away from her home. "Mahol bilkul badal gaya hai. (The atmosphere has completely changed after the girl's death)," they say. The Bakarwals live in two villages -- Rasana and Kuta -- in Kathua in Jammu, first arriving here in the 1940s, they say. It is a Hindu majority area, but the two communities have always lived together peaceably. After the girl's death, water supply to the few Bakarwal homes that get tap water was stopped. The Hindus also prevented the Bakarwals from getting water from dhabas or from the hand pump at the chauraha. "If we were in a Muslim majority area like Srinagar, or anywhere in Kashmir, we would have been safe," the girl's uncle says. He mentions the "minister in Gujarat" who was burnt alive (referring to former member of Parliament Ehsan Jafri who was killed in the 2002 Gujarat riots), and says the Bakarwals are insignificant in comparison. "They could do the same to us. So we think we should go where we have a majority," he says. 'We loved her so much. She was everything to us. She was naughty, but not disobedient or irresponsible' According to the state crime branch investigation, the child's abduction, rape and murder was meant to strike fear among the Bakarwals in order to drive them out of the area. Thoughts of leaving Kathua have preoccupied the community ever since the girl's death. "We know they want us to leave, they want our land back. We don't want to stay here either, but it is not practical to leave." "We have bought the land, built our houses, spent our money, why should we leave?!" "We would have to leave our occupation because our animals cannot stay in the mountains in winter. We have to come home to Kathua, where else can we go?" the child's uncle asks. The sense of alienation began the day the girl's body was found. A gaddi (a Hindu shepherd) told them that she had been found. "That terrible night 10 to 12 men from our community were digging her grave when a large group of their men came and told us we could not bury her in the graveyard as the land did not belong to us. They accused us of land grabbing," the family's neigbour says. "We were in no mood to argue so we buried her 8 km away. You can imagine what the parents went through? First the shock, then the grief, and then this." The child's aunt says they buried her at 8 in the night. The entire Bakarwal community was there, but not a single Dogra. "Hum rote pithte the, us waqt kisne gina. We were crying and beating our breasts, we did not realise it then. But now, when I think back, they didn't come. Not a single person." Her uncle (father's brother) concedes that never in the last 50 years have they ever felt insecure or frightened. They always lived peaceably with their Hindu neighbours. IMAGE: Kashmir State Commission for Women Chairperson Nayeema Mahjoor (in blue) consoles the family. Photograph: Jammu and Kashmir State Commission for Women But the child's rape and murder has changed everything. The Dogras did come to express their condolences, the uncle says, but feels their concern is not genuine. The Dogras feel the Bakarwals are getting undue publicity with this incident and the Dogras are being shown in bad light, he says. The girl's mother says they love the land and don't want to leave. "This is the first time something like this has happened. We now live in fear, but we will never leave our villages. We have bought land here, built our houses here, where will we go?" "And why should we go? Hum nahin hatenge," the mother's sister adds. "Some of our children are buried here, our parents, our grandparents, why should we leave? Hum toh idhar hi baithenge." This determination also stems from the thirst for justice. "It gives us some purpose in life," says her mother. "We loved her so much. She was everything to us. She was naughty, but not disobedient or irresponsible." Which is why when she did not return home on the afternoon of January 10, the family did not panic immediately. They simply believed she would come home. Her parents started calling neighbours by 6 pm. By 7 pm, everyone in the community knew she had gone missing. They spent the night looking for her, but poorly-lit roads and dark patches of shrubbery yielded little. The feeling of community is strong among the Bakarwals. It wasn't one family's missing child, it was their missing child. They looked for her every single day. She was their child, not livestock, they say. And they did not want to depend on the police. Some even thought she had been abducted by the phantom barbers who had struck fear in Haryana and Rajasthan in 2017. The girl had pretty, soft hair, they said. 'We never thought to look in the temple because till today we cannot believe that something like this can happen inside a temple. There is a god inside, how could they even think of doing something like this?' Retrospection can be debilitating, but the girl's uncle says he wished they had insisted in having the Dogra houses or the temple where she was allegedly held captive searched. "I now know that the police were hand in glove with the culprits, nothing could have been done," he sighs. Till her body was found, not once did her parents or her relatives think she was dead. "You have to understand this kind of thing has never happened to us. We even thought she could have gone away to the hills with some other Bakarwal family, but she was responsible, so we really couldn't find an answer," her father says. The family home is located just 500 metres from the temple. "If you shout from her house it can be heard in the temple," says the uncle. "We never thought to look in the temple because till today we cannot believe that something like this can happen inside a temple." "There is a god inside, how could they even think of doing something like this?" the uncle asks. He has lived with Hindus for close to 50 years and says little girls are worshipped in the form of goddess Durga. "She was just a little girl. How could they even think of her in any other manner? She didn't understand religion. Who is Hindu, who is Muslim. She was just 8! Why punish her?" he says. Vijay Sharma, an advocate and president of the Hindu Ekta Manch, which held several protest rallies in support of the eight accused, rubbishes the mention in the chargesheet of the temple being used to rape the girl. "The temple has three doors, the keys to the doors are given to the villagers so anyone can access the temple. From the ventilation windows you can peep inside the temple. It is impossible to hide anyone inside. This is why we doubt the crime branch investigation," says Sharma. "She was our daughter too, we have daughters too. She was treated worse than an animal. The crime branch is trying to poison the minds of people against us to slander us," adds Sharma. All this talk of the Hindus wanting the Bakarwals to leave Kathua or Jammu is nonsense, insists Sharma. "We never supported the rapists. All we want is that the right people be arrested. We cannot comment on why the state ministers had to resign, all we can say is that they were there in the protest to lend their voice to the injustice that was being done to the accused," Sharma says. IMAGE: The parents bought land and built the house where the girl lived. It is located just 500 metres from the temple where she was allegedly held captive. On April 16, as the trial began, the eight men accused of raping and killing the girl pleaded not guilty and asked the judge for a narco analysis test. Of the eight accused, some like Sanjhi Ram, a retired revenue officer, was known to the Bakarwals. As was special police officer Deepak Khajuria. Sanjhi Ram always forbade the tribesmen from grazing their animals near his home. They allege he was rude and abusive, and so they steered clear of him. "Hamara rasta hi alag tha. We went our separate ways," they say. As for Khajuria, according to the crime branch chargesheet, he was the man who wanted to rape the girl, "one last time" before she was killed. He had then allegedly tried to strangle the girl by placing his knees on her neck, the chargesheet alleges, but failed to kill her. He had told the Bakarwals when they went searching for the girl that monkeys may have eaten her up. "The day we went to file the missing person FIR on January 12, he was not helpful at all. We were around 40 of us and insisted he file the FIR. The only day we saw the police being proactive was when her dead body was found," her uncle says. The Hindu Ekta Manch's Vijay Sharma says he does not want the killers to go scot free, but the probe should be handed over to the CBI. "In the Pradhyumn murder case, the state police caught the wrong person. It was the CBI which apprehended the juvenile," says Sharma. "Similarly, here too, we believe the state police have caught the wrong people. The accused confessed because they were tortured in custody." The girl's uncle said they felt saddened to see the protest marches in support of the alleged rapists. "During the Nirbhaya rape people hit the streets demanding action against the rapists. But today, lawyers in Kathua and Jammu and BJP ministers are protesting against the arrest of the rapists. Why? Because we belong to another community?" Kathua bar association president Kirty Bhushan Mahajan said lawyers held protests demanding the right people be arrested in the case. "Witnesses have told us that the accused have been brutally tortured and their confessional statements were made under duress. Which is why we want the probe to be transferred to the CBI," says Mahajan. "Our protests have nothing to do with the girl's religion. What happened was heinous and cannot be condoned, but the crime branch has arrested the wrong people," he says. The Supreme Court took serious note of the lawyers obstructing the judicial process and initiated a case against them. The girl's father says he should reach Patnitop on April 18. With him are over 150 animals, mostly sheep, goat and some cows. The horses are pack animals. He makes around Rs 225,000 a year selling livestock and wool, and he can ill afford lawyers' fees. "I am grateful that people have taken notice of what happened to an insignificant family of sheep herders from a small village," he says. "I hope my daughter can rest in peace soon." Comments situation in region and Kabul is likely to be qualified as situation of indiscriminate violence resulting from an internal armed conflict in light of subsidiary protection. In these conditions, the prefect had erred in applying the law by deciding that, instead of authorising to register the application in France, the applicant be transferred to Finland where this country had already rejected the asylum application, expelled and issue an entry ban against the applicant. Hongrie : information sur le systeme de soins de sante, y compris les exigences et la marche a suivre pour obtenir une assurance maladie, les populations couvertes et les services offerts; information indiquant si une contribution personnelle est exigee pour les services de soins de sante (2015-aout 2017) Publisher Canada: Immigration and Refugee Board of Canada Publication Date 13 October 2017 Citation / Document Symbol HUN105849.EF Cite as Canada: Immigration and Refugee Board of Canada, Hongrie : information sur le systeme de soins de sante, y compris les exigences et la marche a suivre pour obtenir une assurance maladie, les populations couvertes et les services offerts; information indiquant si une contribution personnelle est exigee pour les services de soins de sante (2015-aout 2017), 13 October 2017, HUN105849.EF, available at: https://www.refworld.org/docid/5ad5c4d64.html [accessed 1 October 2021] Disclaimer This is not a UNHCR publication. UNHCR is not responsible for, nor does it necessarily endorse, its content. Any views expressed are solely those of the author or publisher and do not necessarily reflect those of UNHCR, the United Nations or its Member States. Research Directorate, Immigration and Refugee Board of Canada, Ottawa In correspondence with the Research Directorate, an official from the Embassy of Hungary in Ottawa provided information obtained from the Hungarian Ministry of Human Capacities (HMHC), which indicated that the Hungarian healthcare system is based on "the right to benefits in exchange for contributions" (Hungary 8 Sept. 2017). Both health insurance contributions and "direct" government transfers fund the healthcare system (ibid.). The same source adds that healthcare membership is compulsory for all residents of Hungary (ibid.). 1. Services Provided by the Hungarian Healthcare System According to the information provided by the official from the Embassy, the Hungarian healthcare system provides both for benefits in kind and for benefits in cash (Hungary 8 Sept. 2017). According to the website of the National Health Insurance Fund (Orszagos Egeszsegbiztositasi Penztar, OEP) of Hungary, benefits in kind [include] cost-free healthcare services such as preventive examinations, primary healthcare, specialised inpatient care, specialised outpatient care, certain dental care, rehabilitation, the ambulance service, patient transport and accident-related benefits, drug reimbursement, reimbursement for medical aids, medical spa services, reimbursement of travel expenses and benefits granted on the grounds of equity. Cash benefits include sickness benefit, prenatal allowance, child care fee and accident-related benefits. (Hungary n.d.) The Embassy official indicated that healthcare beneficiaries are either "holders of the right" or "entitled beneficiaries" (Hungary 8 Sept. 2017). Holders of the right are individuals who have a "statutory" obligation to pay contributions and they are entitled to the full range of health benefits, i.e. "cash benefits, benefits in kind and accident allowances" (ibid.). They include: general employees, civil servants, public service employees, service providers and people with other legal working arrangements, the self-employed working alone or in collective organizations, ecclesiastical personnel and members of associations. [They also include] people receiving assistance while looking for work, who pay pension contributions on their benefits although they are not entitled to cash benefits. (ibid.) According to the same source, entitled beneficiaries are not entitled to cash benefits (ibid.). They are: minors, schoolchildren, students studying during the day, pensioners, people on low incomes who have reached retirement age, those receiving cash maternity and social protection benefits, person placed in residential institutions providing personal care and those required to pay flat rate contributions. (ibid.) An individual's contribution to health insurance is 7 percent of the individual's gross salary, namely 3 percent for cash benefits and 4 percent for benefits in kind (ibid.). For individuals who are entitled beneficiaries, a monthly contribution of 5,790 Hungarian forints (HUF) [C$28] per person is paid by the "central budget" to the OEP (ibid.). The information in the remainder of this section is taken from a factsheet on health insurance in Hungary published on the website of the European Commission 's Directorate-General on Employment, Social Affairs & Inclusion: Medical care services provided in Hungary are, "as a general rule, free of charge." Should the treatment not be prescribed, or should the treatment not be provided in the "normal hospital system," or should the patient choose a doctor other than the one designated by the healthcare system, fees may be required by the care provider and they have to be paid by patients. Dental treatments are free of charge up to the age of 18, but each individual pays for the technical costs associated with dental treatment. Students, seniors who are at least 60 years old, and pregnant women ("from the determination of pregnancy until 90 days after childbirth") are entitled to dental services free of charge, but they still have to pay for the technical fees. "According to the [OEP]", dental treatments are covered by "the social security system" in emergency cases. Home care is covered for the same length of time as the same treatment would require in a hospital setting, provided that the practitioner signed a contract with the OEP and is prescribed by a specialist. "[M]ost" preventive care is provided by the patient's doctor. Early detection and screening tests are, "with certain exceptions[,]" voluntary, but can be recommended by nurses, school doctors or by appropriate specialists and "may in some cases" be a necessary requirement for "some" medical treatments to be free; patients who fail to take advantage of screening or early detection tests may be charged for treatments they need. Inpatient specialized care is provided in hospitals, national institutions for "highly" specialized care, university clinics, day-care hospitals and other institutions "for chronic, rehabilitation or nursing care". Without providing further information, the same source further states that [p]atients being treated in hospitals receive the following services for the flat-rate daily charge: diagnostic examinations related to the illness; the treatment prescribed by a doctor, including surgical operations, therapeutic equipment used during these and prosthetic appliances; medicines, blood tests, dressings and curative accessories; therapeutic care; dietary advice and healthy living advice; food, as part of a diet prescribed by the doctor; care in a convalescent home, for as long as required by their condition, depending on availability and the ethical and professional considerations involved. (EU n.d.) 1.1. Out-of-Pocket Expenses The World Health Organization (WHO) indicates that, in 2014, the out-of-pocket expenditure as a percentage of total expenditure on healthcare in Hungary amounted to 26.59 percent (UN 11 July 2017a). According to the same source, the out-of-pocket expenditure as a percentage of total spending on healthcare in Canada is 13.60 percent for 2014 (ibid. 11 July 2017b). The information provided by the official from the Hungarian Embassy indicated, without providing further details, that [p]artial reimbursement fees must be paid by the insured persons in the following cases: interventions to alter external sex characteristics, unless the purpose is to develop genetically defined non-exterior portions due to a developmental disorder; [t]ooth restoration to restore mastication; [o]rthodontic device[s] under the age of 18. Supplementary fees must be paid for the following benefits: other comfort services provided on [the basis of] the patient's own initiative, and if justified by the condition of the patient, care in the nursing department on the basis of medical referral ([which includes] medicines and meals as well). (Hungary 8 Sept. 2017) The same source stated that healthcare facilities must clearly indicate the service they provide and the fees associated with them, and that patients should be informed before receiving treatments (ibid.). The European Commission factsheet indicates that in order to be reimbursed, medical appliances must be prescribed by a doctor (EU n.d.). The amount covered is a percentage of the price of the appliance and for appliances in the "highest reimbursement category, any co-payment for appliances in excess of 5,000 HUF [C$24.50]" is paid by the OEP (ibid.). 2. Population Covered The Organisation for Economic Co-Operation and Development (OECD)'s online statistical platform indicates that, in 2015, an estimated 95 percent of the population of Hungary had healthcare coverage, which represents approximately 9.3 million individuals (OECD n.d.). In 2010, an estimated 97 percent had healthcare coverage, which then amounted to approximately 9.6 million individuals (ibid.). According to the same source, 100 percent of Canada's population had healthcare coverage in 2016 and in 2010 (ibid.). However, the information provided by the official from the Hungarian Embassy indicated that "virtually" the entire population of Hungary is covered for healthcare and that less than 1 percent of the population is not covered (Hungary 8 Sept. 2017). The same source further stated that every employed individual is "automatically affiliated with the health insurance scheme" as soon as employment begins (ibid.). According to the same source, self-employed individuals register themselves for health insurance, while employers register their employees (ibid.). The European Commission's factsheet further explains that employers register their employees with the bureau of taxation and finance or with the competent social insurance organisations (EU n.d.). The information provided by the Embassy official noted that employers "should take care of the necessary paperwork," but that it can be requested by individuals at "all government offices" (Hungary 8 Sept. 2017). According to the same source, self-employed individuals "who perform activities in a complementary way or their joint ventures," or any person not insured or not entitled to healthcare insurance must pay a contribution, which amounts to 7,110 HUF (C$34) a month in cases where the person continuously resides in Hungary for a year (ibid.). 2.1 Healthcare by Agreement According to the information provided to the Embassy official, individuals who are either not insured or not entitled to healthcare coverage may enter into "contractual arrangements" with the National Health Insurance Office (Hungary 8 Sept. 2017). The website of the OEP further explains that individuals not entitled [translation] "by any other laws" to receive healthcare services for themselves, or for their children living with them, can enter into an agreement to receive services (Hungary 23 Feb. 2017). The same source notes that an agreement can be signed by a third party who accepts to pay for the patient's healthcare services (ibid.). Individuals who enter into a contractual arrangement are entitled only to benefits in kind (Hungary 8 Sept. 2017). In that case, a "special certificate" proves an individual's entitlement to emergency care (ibid.). Other benefits in kind are available to the individual who enter into a contractual arrangement once the monthly fees for 24 months have been paid (ibid.). The OEP further explains that individuals entitled to healthcare services through an agreement can only avail themselves of emergency dental treatment with a subsidy, they cannot be covered for medical treatments offered in another country which are not also offered in Hungary, and they are not entitled to healthcare services in the European Economic Area (EEA) member States or in a federal State, which means that they cannot be [translation] "put on a transplantation waiting list" (Hungary 23 Feb. 2017). The information in the remainder of this section is taken from the OEP website: The procedure to enter into an agreement for healthcare services requires providing and verifying the following documents: [translation] verification of identity: ID card (including temporary ID), valid passport, driver's licence (the beneficiary in the agreement must also be verified), document verifying the address, residence or accommodation of the beneficiary, in the case of a foreign citizen, the document permitting the residency issued by the authorities responsible for foreigners (not including the residency permit for the purpose of medical treatment and the local border traffic permit), and in the case of full-time students, the certificate of school attendance. If the person entering into an agreement to receive healthcare services is an adult, then 50 percent of the minimum wage [127,500 HUF (C$607) in 2017], must be paid monthly from the day the agreement is signed, which amounts to 63,750 HUF (C$304). Should the person be under the age of 18, the monthly contribution is 30 percent of the minimum wage, approximately 38,250 HUF (C$182). Foreign citizens who are attending a [translation] "regular, full-time program" in an educational institution in Hungary must also make a monthly contribution of 30 percent of the minimum wage. In all cases, the first 3 months must be paid at the time of signing the agreement, and monthly payments are due thereafter by the 12th of the month preceding the one for which payment is due. The agreement [translation] "ceases to exist" if monthly contributions are not paid by the patient. Should the patient not pay a monthly contribution, the agreement ends on the last day of the month for which the patient missed a payment. The agreement can be terminated with a written notice by either party. The patient does not need to provide any reason, whereas the health insurance provider is allowed to terminate the agreement if a change in the patient's legal status would prevent the patient from entering into the agreement. After the contractual arrangement has ended, patients are not entitled to healthcare services for the 45-day "entitlement based on passive rights." (Hungary 23 Feb. 2017). 3. Health Insurance Card (TAJ Card) According to information provided to the Embassy official, national health insurance card ("TAJ card"), together with a health insurance number ("TAJ number"), are issued to insured individuals (Hungary 8 Sept. 2017). The OEP states that the TAJ card is issued at birth to Hungarian citizens or when an eligible individual applies for it, and that it is used to identify the cardholder in the health, and social insurance registries (Hungary 16 Feb. 2017a). According to the same source, any individual eligible to social insurance, unemployment or social benefits who does not have a TAJ number can apply for a TAJ card in person or through the mail at any district office operating in the [translation] "chief town" of the county, and at the District XIII office in Budapest and Pest County (ibid.). Without providing further details, the official from the Hungarian Embassy in Ottawa indicated that the following documents are required to apply for health insurance: ID card or passport Address card Residency permit Proof that the health insurance contribution has been paid. (Hungary 8 Sept 2017) According to the OEP, in case the application is made through the mail, all documents attached to the application form must be signed by the applicant (Hungary 16 Feb. 2017a). The same source states that citizens of the EEA, or members of their families from non-EEA States, must also provide a Hungarian registration card or residence permit (ibid.). According to the same source, in case an individual's healthcare is covered by the insurance agency of an EEA member State or by Switzerland, a form or official certificate concerning the insurance period must be provided (ibid.). For further information on access to healthcare by citizens of the EEA members States, see Response ZZZ105194 of July 2015. The OEP indicates that immigrants or permanent residents must provide resident permits confirming their status, while refugees and stateless person must provide documents certifying their refugee or statelessness statuses (ibid.). According to the same source, where applicable, a document certifying the [translation] "legal status as an insured person[,]" such as a work contract or certificate of employment, must also be provided in order to apply for a TAJ card, together with a "certification" issued by the tax authority that proves that payment were made by those who have an obligation to make payments (ibid.). The same source adds that no application is required for new-borns, since their personal information and address is automatically transferred to the OEP at the time the birth is registered (Hungary 16 Feb. 2017a). Parents of Hungarian infants born abroad must first obtain a Hungarian domicile card for their child before applying for the TAJ card (ibid.). According to the same source, parents of non-Hungarian infants born in Hungary must register them in the country of the child's citizenship, then apply for a Hungarian domicile card before applying for the child's TAJ card (ibid.). Should the mother of a non-Hungarian new-born baby be insured in Hungary, then the mother's own TAJ card entitles the newly born child to receive healthcare services up to two months after birth (ibid.). The OEP indicates that TAJ cards are ready within 21 days after the application is received by the district office, including applications for replacing a lost, stolen or damaged TAJ card (ibid.). The same source further states that the TAJ card will be issued immediately or within a maximum of eight days if all documents are provided [translation] "without any deficiency" (ibid.). The cards are issued within 21 days for Hungarian infants abroad (ibid.). The first TAJ card and any replacement due to a stolen card are issued free of charge (ibid.). According to the same source, although modifications to the name and data on the card is also free of charge, a fee of 3,000 HUF [C$ 14.69] is required in order to replace a lost, destroyed or damaged TAJ card (ibid.). 3.1 Verification of Coverage The information provided to the Embassy official states that healthcare service providers verify the eligibility of a patient electronically, and that eligibility can also be ascertained by the patient through an "internet client interface" (Hungary 8 Sept. 2017). The information in the following paragraph was provided by the OEP: The system used for the verification of eligibility can return a [translation] "green light," which means that the patient's TAJ number is valid and the legal status is in good order. A "red light" means that the TAJ number is valid, but the legal status is "unsettled;" in that case, the practitioner cannot refuse to provide care, but the patient must contact a district office, or the District XIII office in Budapest or the Pest County, to settle the "legal status". A "blue light" signifies that the patient is insured abroad and that the TAJ card is temporarily invalid. A "brown light" signifies that the TAJ card is "invalid for other reasons," and in this case, the patient must pay a fee in order to receive healthcare services. A "yellow light" indicates that the TAJ card is valid, but that the patient is eligible only for limited medical services; in that case, the patient is entitled to medical care through an agreement with the health insurer and the patient is not entitled to dental care unless it is deemed urgent, nor can they be placed on a waiting list for a transplant (Hungary 16 Feb. 2017b). The OEP states that patients who signed an agreement to receive healthcare have their entitlements indicated by a yellow light during the [translation] "legal status check" (Hungary 23 Feb. 2017). Furthermore, the TAJ card is issued to patients who receive healthcare through an agreement only after they pay the contribution for 24 months, which can also be paid in one lump-sum in order to avoid the 24-month waiting period (ibid.). The European Commission indicates that patients have to register with one general practitioner wherever they wish in the country, and that they can change their doctor once a year (EU n.d.). Patients can consult any doctor contracted by the OEP for basic healthcare, while designated specialists or institutions serving the patients' declared places of residence provide secondary level care (ibid.). This Response was prepared after researching publicly accessible information currently available to the Research Directorate within time constraints. This Response is not, and does not purport to be, conclusive as to the merit of any particular claim for refugee protection. Please find below the list of sources consulted in researching this Information Request. References European Union (EU). N.d. European Commission, Employment, Social Affairs and Inclusion. "Hungary - Health Insurance in Hungary." [Accessed 3 Aug. 2017] Hungary. 8 September 2017. Embassy of Hungary in Ottawa. Correspondence with the Research Directorate. Hungary. 23 February 2017. Nemzeti Egeszsegbiztositasi Alapkezelo. " Megallapodason alapulo jogosultsag" (Entitlement Based on Agreement). Translated by the Translation Bureau, Public Works and Government Services Canada. [Accessed 20 Sept. 2017] Hungary. 16 February 2017a. Nemzeti Egeszsegbiztositasi Alapkezelo. "Ellatasra valo jogosultsag igazolasa" (Proof of Eligibility for Benefits). Translated by the Translation Bureau, Public Works and Government Services Canada. [Accessed 20 Sept. 2017] Hungary. 16 February 2017b. Nemzeti Egeszsegbiztositasi Alapkezelo. "TAJ kartya igenyles, kiadas" (TAJ card application, issuing). Translated by the Translation Bureau, Public Works and Government Services Canada. [Accessed 20 Sept. 2017] Hungary. N.d. Nemzeti Egeszsegbiztositasi Alapkezelo. "Tasks of the National Health Insurance Fund of Hungary (Hungarian acronym: OEP)." Translated by the Translation Bureau, Public Works and Government Services Canada. [Accessed 20 Sept. 2017] Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development (OECD). N.d. OECD.Stat. "Social Protection." [Accessed 20 Sept. 2017] United Nations (UN). World Health Organization (WHO). 11 July 2016a. Global Health Observatory Data Repository. "Hungary". "Health Expenditure Ratios, by Country, 1995-2014." [Accessed 27 Sept. 2017] United Nations (UN).World Health Organization (WHO). 11 July 2016b. Global Health Observatory Data Repository. "Canada". "Health Expenditure Ratios, by Country, 1995-2014." [Accessed 27 Sept. 2017] Additional Sources Consulted Internet sites, including: Amnesty International; ecoi.net; European Observatory on Health Systems and Policies; Freedom House; Human Rights Watch; UN Refworld, Office of the High Commissioner for Human Rights; US Department of State, Department of Commerce. Philippines: Information on adultery laws, including enforcement (2014-June 2017) Publisher Canada: Immigration and Refugee Board of Canada Publication Date 30 June 2017 Citation / Document Symbol PHL105832.E Related Document(s) Philippines : information sur les lois qui regissent l'adultere, y compris leur application (2014-juin 2017) Cite as Canada: Immigration and Refugee Board of Canada, Philippines: Information on adultery laws, including enforcement (2014-June 2017) , 30 June 2017, PHL105832.E, available at: https://www.refworld.org/docid/5ad5c6c64.html [accessed 1 October 2021] Disclaimer This is not a UNHCR publication. UNHCR is not responsible for, nor does it necessarily endorse, its content. Any views expressed are solely those of the author or publisher and do not necessarily reflect those of UNHCR, the United Nations or its Member States. Research Directorate, Immigration and Refugee Board of Canada, Ottawa 1. Legislation Articles 333 and 334 of The Revised Penal Code provide the following: Art. 333. Who are guilty of adultery. Adultery is committed by any married woman who shall have sexual intercourse with a man not her husband and by the man who has carnal knowledge of her knowing her to be married, even if the marriage be subsequently declared void. Adultery shall be punished by prision correccional in its medium and maximum periods. If the person guilty of adultery committed this offense while being abandoned without justification by the offended spouse, the penalty next lower in degree than that provided in the next preceding paragraph shall be imposed. Art. 334. Concubinage. Any husband who shall keep a mistress in the conjugal dwelling, or shall have sexual intercourse, under scandalous circumstances, with a woman who is not his wife, or shall cohabit with her in any other place, shall be punished by prision correccional in its minimum and medium periods. The concubine shall suffer the penalty of destierro. (Philippines 1930) According to a November 2014 article by Agence France-Presse (AFP), the minimum sentence for adultery and concubinage is 6 months in prison (AFP 30 Nov. 2014). A policy brief regarding the "rationale for repealing" Articles 333 and 334, written by the Philippine Commission on Women (PCW), the "primary policy-making and coordinating body on women and gender equality concerns" (Philippines n.d.a), states that the maximum penalty for adultery "for both the guilty wife and her paramour" is six years, and "four years and 1 day" for concubinage, "while his concubine is given a separate penalty which is 'destierro' or banishment and not imprisonment" (Philippines [2016], 1). Article 87 of The Revised Penal Code provides the following: Art. 87. Destierro. Any person sentenced to destierro shall not be permitted to enter the place or places designated in the sentence, nor within the radius therein specified, which shall be not more than 250 and not less than 25 kilometers from the place designated. (Philippines 1930) Sources state that bills have been filed to change The Revised Penal Code regarding adultery and concubinage (UN 2 Mar. 2015, para. 17; Philippines [2016], 3). The UN's CEDAW report, Consideration of Reports Submitted by State Parties Under Article 18 of the Convention, describes the bills as seeking to "remove the distinction of the crimes of concubinage and adultery, that both be classified as crimes of sexual infidelity and must be equally penalized with prision correccional" (UN 2 Mar. 2015, para. 17, emphasis in the original). The PCW policy brief explains that a "higher burden" is placed upon "women/wives" than "men/husbands," as for adultery the husband must only prove that his wife had sexual intercourse with a man other than him. For concubinage, the wife has to prove first that her husband has committed either one or all of the following: had kept a mistress in the conjugal dwelling; had sexual intercourse under scandalous circumstances; and/or had lived together with his mistress in any other place. (Philippines [2016], 1) According to information provided on the website of the Philippines House of Representatives, a bill to decriminalize adultery and concubinage, amending articles 333 and 334 of the Revised Penal Code, has been pending "with the Committee on [Revision of Laws] since 2016-07-26" (Philippines n.d.b). 2. Enforcement Article 344 of The Revised Penal Code provides the following: Art. 344. Prosecution of the crimes of adultery, concubinage, seduction, abduction, rape and acts of lasciviousness. The crimes of adultery and concubinage shall not be prosecuted except upon a complaint filed by the offended spouse. The offended party cannot institute criminal prosecution without including both the guilty parties, if they are both alive, nor, in any case, if he shall have consented or pardoned the offenders. ... (Philippines 1930) The November 2014 article by AFP, citing Justice Secretary Leila De Lima, reports that the law on adultery is "largely un-enforced and [the Philippines] is a country where many powerful men flaunt their mistresses" (AFP 30 Nov. 2014). An explanatory note presented to the House of Representatives of Philippines by the Gabriela Women's Party, "an offshoot of the biggest alliance of women's organizations in the Philippines" (Gabriela Women's Party n.d.), in the context of the introduction of "an act decriminalizing adultery and concubinage," provides the following: Articles 333 and 334 [of the Revised Penal Code] are often resorted to only as 'bargaining suits' to get the other party in a nullity petition to 'cooperate' or to give in[,] in support negotiations. These suits, while pursued in the initial stages, are often withdrawn or dismissed. Worse, separated or abandoned wives, who have no remedy under the law in the absence of a divorce law, are always under a constant threat of suit from their estranged husbands. They are blackmailed by their estranged husbands through Article 333 of the RPC [Revised Penal Code] and while they also have a ground to file under Article 334, they face the difficulty of proving the crime due to the inherent difficulty in the standards set by the law. In many cases, women who are faced by these threats are forced to forego legitimate custodial claims of their children while some are forced to give up their claims over conjugal properties, assets and the like. (Gabriela Women's Party 30 June 2016) In a 2014 article, The Freeman, Cebu's "oldest English-language newspaper" (Philstar n.d.), reports that "a man was arrested and is facing charges after he was caught in the act of cheating on his wife," and further states that the wife "sought the help of the Mandaue City Police," returning to her home with an officer (The Freeman 10 Mar. 2014). In a 2015 article, the same source reports that a woman was arrested "after she was caught by her husband and the police in the act of having sexual intercourse with another man in the couple's house in Barangay Lamesa, Balamban town" (The Freeman 10 Sept. 2015). On 7 June 2017, SunStar, a "network of community newspapers" from 12 major cities in the Philippines (SunStar n.d.), reports that charges were filed with the prosecutor's office in Zamboanga City against an Army Private "'James'" for concubinage and against "'Claire'," an employee of the City Government, for adultery, after "'Claire's' husband sought police assistance" (SunStar 7 June 2017). Further information on the enforcement of Articles 333 and 334, including other cases of arrests, statistics regarding prosecution rates, and/or length of sentences, could not be found among the sources consulted by the Research Directorate within the time constraints of this Response. This Response was prepared after researching publicly accessible information currently available to the Research Directorate within time constraints. This Response is not, and does not purport to be, conclusive as to the merit of any particular claim for refugee protection. Please find below the list of sources consulted in researching this Information Request. References Agence France-Presse(AFP). 30 November 2014. "DOJ Seeks to Block Adultery Website Ashley Madison." [Accessed 21 June 2017] The Freeman. 10 September 2015. "'Cheating' Wife, Lover Arrested." [Accessed 20 June 2017] The Freeman. 10 March 2014. "Man Arrested for Cheating on Wife." [Accessed 20 June 2017] Gabriela Women's Party. 30 June 2016. Explanatory Note. [Accessed 27 June 2017] Gabriela Women's Party. N.d. "Her Story." [Accessed 27 June 2017] Philippines. [2016]. Philippine Commission on Women. Eliminating Discrimination Against Women in the Revised Penal Code (RPC): Decriminalizing Adultery and Concubinage. [Accessed 15 June 2017] Philippines. 1930. The Revised Penal Code of the Philippines. [Accessed 15 June 2017] Philippines. N.d.a. Philippine Commission on Women. "Herstory." [Accessed 26 June 2017] Philippines. N.d.b. House of Representatives. "17th Congress." [Accessed 26 June 2017] Philstar. N.d. "About Us." [Accessed 26 June 2017] SunStar. 7 June 2017. Bong Garcia. "Soldier, Air Force Personnel's Wife Caught Cheating." [Accessed 26 June 2017] SunStar. N.d. "About Us." [Accessed 26 June 2017] United Nations (UN). 2 March 2015. Committee on the Elimination of Discrimination Against Women. "Philippines." Consideration of Reports Submitted by States Parties Under Article 18 of the Convention. (CEDAW/C/PHL/7-8) [Accessed 27 June 2017] Additional Sources Consulted Oral sources: Law office in Makati City; Philippines Department of Justice, Philippine Commission on Women; United Solo Parents of the Philippines. Internet sites, including: ecoi.net; Factiva; The Manila Times; Philippines Department of Justice, Philippine National Police, Supreme Court; Today; United Nations Refworld; United States Department of State. Somalia: Situation of practitioners of Sufism, including treatment by Al-Shabaab [al-Shabab], and role of Ahlu Sunnah Wal Jamaa [Ahlu Sunna Wal-Jamea, Ahlu Sunnah Wal Jama'a, Ahlu Sunna Wal Jama'a, Ahl al-Sunnah Wal-Jamaa, Ahlu Sunna Waljma'a] (ASWJ); availability of state protection (2016-March 2018) Publisher Canada: Immigration and Refugee Board of Canada Publication Date 27 March 2018 Citation / Document Symbol SOM106055.E Related Document(s) Somalie : information sur la situation des soufis, y compris le traitement qui leur est reserve par Al Chabaab, et le role de l'Ahlu Sunnah Wal Jamaa [Ahlu Sunna Wal-Jamea, Ahlu Sunnah Wal Jama'a, Ahlu Sunna Wal Jama'a, Ahl al-Sunnah Wal-Jamaa, Ahlu Sunna Waljma'a] (ASWJ); information sur la protection offerte par l'Etat (2016-mars 2018) Cite as Canada: Immigration and Refugee Board of Canada, Somalia: Situation of practitioners of Sufism, including treatment by Al-Shabaab [al-Shabab], and role of Ahlu Sunnah Wal Jamaa [Ahlu Sunna Wal-Jamea, Ahlu Sunnah Wal Jama'a, Ahlu Sunna Wal Jama'a, Ahl al-Sunnah Wal-Jamaa, Ahlu Sunna Waljma'a] (ASWJ); availability of state protection (2016-March 2018), 27 March 2018, SOM106055.E, available at: https://www.refworld.org/docid/5ad5dd124.html [accessed 1 October 2021] Disclaimer This is not a UNHCR publication. UNHCR is not responsible for, nor does it necessarily endorse, its content. Any views expressed are solely those of the author or publisher and do not necessarily reflect those of UNHCR, the United Nations or its Member States. Research Directorate, Immigration and Refugee Board of Canada, Ottawa 1. Overview The US Department of State's International Religious Freedom Report for 2016 states that, according to the Somali Federal Ministry of Religious Affairs, more than 99 percent of the Somali population is Sunni Muslim. Members of other religious groups combined constitute less than 1 percent of the population, and include a small Christian community, a small Sufi community, and an unknown number of Shia Muslims. (US 15 Aug. 2017, 2) According to Al Jazeera, Somalia was once majority Sufi but all that changed in the past two and a half decades. Sufis were almost wiped out from Somalia: in the early 1990s, by warlords and their marauding militias, and, in the last decade, by the hardline al-Qaeda-linked group al-Shabab. (Al Jazeera 29 Mar. 2016) In a 2017 report on Al-Shabaab, the BBC reports that "most Somalis are Sufi" (BBC 22 Dec. 2017). Similarly, other sources indicate that most Somalis "are at least nominal members of a Sufi order" (The Religious Literacy Project n.d.a) or "identify" with Sufism (Lang 3 Dec. 2017). According to a 2016 report commissioned by the UNHCR, the practice of Islam has traditionally been influenced by Sufism in Somalia, particularly in the countryside, and "within the central areas of Somalia[,] Sufi Islam is still strong" (Cavallera et al. 2016, 15). Sources indicate that Sufism is experiencing a revival across Somalia (Al Jazeera 29 Mar. 2016; CGTN 17 May 2015). However, Al Jazeera characterizes the revival as "slow" and "precarious" (Al Jazeera 29 Mar. 2016). According to sources, two of the main Sufi orders in Somalia are the Axmadiyah [or Ahmadiyyah] and the Qaadiriyah [or Qadiriyyah] (The Religious Literacy Project n.d.a; Abdullahi Baadiyow 2015, 41), which each have their "local offshoots" (Abdullahi Baadiyow 2015, 41). In a book titled The Islamic Movement in Somalia, Doctor Abdurahman Abdullahi Baadiyow, a professor of Islamic Studies at Mogadishu University, states that the Axmadiyah has three offshoots in Somalia: "Raxmaaniyah, Saalixiyah, and Dandaraawiyah" (Abdullahi Baadiyow 2015, 41-42). According to the same source, the Qaadiriyah has two offshoots: "Zayli'iyah and Uweysiyah" (Abdullahi Baadiyow 2015, 41). According to The Religious Literacy Project [1] of the Harvard Divinity School, "members of the same Sufi order may come from opposing-even warring-clans" (The Religious Literacy Project n.d.a). According to Doctor Abdullahi Baadiyow, Sufi orders in Somalia are affiliated with the wider networks of Sufi brotherhoods in the Muslim World. Their leadership is absolute and authoritative, and succession is not necessarily based on heredity; however, the Khaliif (Sufi master) designates his successor in his lifetime. (Abdullahi Baadiyow 2015, 41) According to Doctor Abdullahi Baadiyow, "[i]n general, Sufi brotherhoods are moderate and use peaceful means of propagating Islam that offer due consideration to the norms and customs of the people" (Abdullahi Baadiyow 2015, 66). According to The Religious Literacy Project, "Sufi orders are typically apolitical" (The Religious Literacy Project n.d.a). According to The Religious Literacy Project, common practices of Sufis in Somalia include "visitations to saints' tombs, veneration of the Prophet Muhammed and members of his family, and the recitation of litanies (dhikr)" (The Religious Literacy Project n.d.a). Further and corroborating information could not be found among the sources consulted by the Research Directorate within the time constraints of this Response. 2. Treatment of Practitioners of Sufism by Al-Shabaab Information on the treatment of practitioners of Sufism by Al-Shabaab was scarce among the sources consulted by the Research Directorate within the time constraints of this Response. According to sources, Al-Shabaab is against the practice of Sufism (Abdullahi Baadiyow 8 Mar. 2018; Political Advisor 12 Mar. 2018). Al Jazeera adds that Al-Shabaab regards Sufis "as non-believers and legitimate targets for attacks" (Al Jazeera 29 Mar. 2016). In correspondence with the Research Directorate, the UN Independent Expert on the situation of human rights in Somalia stated, based on his personal assessment and independent analysis, that Somalia is a country whose population is predominantly Muslim, probably around 99.99%. Therefore, one can safely hypothesize that victims of Al-Shabaab are likely to be Somali people who in any case are Muslims, and this would include Sufi practitioners, as long as they do not subscribe to the Al-Shabaab ideology or are believed by Al-Shabaab to be sympathizers with the Federal Government of Somalia. (Independent Expert 15 Mar. 2018) In correspondence with the Research Directorate, the Political Advisor to the African Union Mission in Somalia (AMISOM) stated, based on his own views and understanding of the situation in Somalia, that "Al-Shabaab [does] not recognise [a] Sufi practitioner as a true Muslim, and consider[s] the Sufi practice as non-Muslim. When the group take[s] over Sufi mosques, it makes sure [to] nominate their own Imams" (Political Advisor 12 Mar. 2018). According to the US Department of State's International Religious Freedom Report for 2016, "Al-Shabaab reportedly threatened to close mosques in areas it controlled if the mosques' teachings did not conform to the group's interpretation of Islam" (US 15 Aug. 2017, 5). According to the US Department of State's International Religious Freedom Report for 2016, "[f]ear of reprisals from Al-Shabaab often prevented religious groups from operating freely" (US 15 Aug. 2017, 5). According to sources consulted by the Danish Refugee Council (DRC) and the Danish Immigration Service (DIS) in a report on South and Central Somalia, "people under al-Shabaab rule [in general] must follow the al-Shabaab way of life" or "be at risk" (DRC and Denmark Mar. 2017, 23). According to information obtained by the same source, "[s]evere sanctions can be carried out against civilians who do not obey the rules and ideology of al-Shabaab. For instance, not dressing or behaving in accordance with al-Shabaab rules can lead to arrest and corporal punishment" (DRC and Denmark Mar. 2017, 23). According to the Political Advisor, Sufi practitioners in Somalia cannot freely practice their religion in Al-Shabaab-controlled districts and localities such as: Lego, Buale Saakow, Jilib, Jamaame, Sablaale, Kurtunwaarey, Bay, Tayeeglow, Eldeer, and Haardere People living in such areas may be attacked, punished or even killed, if they are found conducting the Sufi worship. (Political Advisor 12 Mar. 2018) According to a joint report by the Human Rights and Protection Group (HRPG) of the UN Assistance Mission in Somalia (UNSOM) and the Office of the UN Office of the High Commissioner for Human Rights (OHCHR), which covers the period from 1 January 2016 to 14 October 2017, Al-Shabaab has "de facto control" over the "districts of Bua'le, Sakow, and Jilib" (UN Dec. 2017, 44). According to Al Jazeera, Al-Shabaab has "desecrated more than a thousand Sufi graves in Southern Somalia since 2016" (Al Jazeera 29 Mar. 2016). In correspondence with the Research Directorate, Doctor Abdurahman Abdullahi Baadiyow stated that Al-Shabaab has "destroyed tombs of prominent Sufi sheiks" (Abdullahi Baadiyow 8 Mar. 2018). 3. Protection Services Information on the availability of protection services for practitioners of Sufism who are victims of Al-Shabaab attacks was scarce among the sources consulted by the Research Directorate within the time constraints of this Response. According to the Political Advisor to AMISOM, "there are no[t] any protection programs or services available to Sufi practitioners" (Political Advisor 12 Mar. 2018). According to the same source, Al-Shabaab controls less than 20 percent of the country, and so people can move to areas that are not under Al-Shabaab control, including Mogadishu, where [they] can freely practise their religion. Over the years, many Sufi practitioners have fled from Al-Shabaab-controlled areas to government-controlled areas. (Political Advisor 12 Mar. 2018) According to the same source, "in some areas, the population has not resigned [themselves] to [their] fate as passive victims. In fact, they have sometimes resisted [Al-Shabaab] to protect their own form of Sufism" (Political Advisor 12 Mar. 2018). 4. Ahlu Sunnah Wal Jamaa (ASWJ) Sources indicate that in order to combat the rising influence of militancy in Somalia, ASWJ was founded in 1991 (The Religious Literacy Project n.d.a; PHW 2015, 1329), when representatives from Sufi orders joined together (The Religious Literacy Project n.d.a). Some sources describe ASWJ as a Sufi militia (CGTN 24 July 2017; US 15 Aug. 2017, 5; Human Rights Watch May 2016, 32). Others sources indicate that it is a moderate Islamist group (Radio Dalsan 21 Nov. 2017; Horseed Media 10 June 2015; Reporters Without Borders 20 Jan. 2016). Sources indicate that ASWJ opposes Al-Shabaab (Reporters Without Borders 20 Jan. 2016; US 15 Aug. 2017, 5; Horseed Media 10 June 2015). Doctor Abdullahi Baadiyow indicated that Al-Shabaab has been "fighting against [ASWJ] in the middle regions of Somalia" (Abdullahi Baadiyow 8 Mar. 2018). Horseed Media [2] similarly reports that ASWJ "became prominent in 2008 when it took up arms against al-Shabaab after the radical group began destroying the tombs of the country's Sufi saints" (Horseed Media 10 June 2015). According to the Political Advisor, ASWJ has been able to defeat Al-Shabaab in "many localities in South Central Somalia, particularly in Galmudug and Hiraan," for example "in 2007/8, when Al-Shabaab attacked many Sufi practitioners and desecrated Sufi tombs/shrines in many towns across Somalia" (Political Advisor 12 Mar. 2018). According to sources, ASWJ controls parts of Galgadud [Galgaduud] region (CGTN 24 July 2017; Human Rights Watch May 2016, 32). Human Rights Watch specifies that ASWJ controls the town of Guri'el and Dhusamareb [Dhuusamarreb] (Human Rights Watch May 2016, 32). According to the US Department of State's International Religious Freedom Report for 2016, ASWJ controls "Dhusamareb, a small town in central Somalia" (US 15 Aug. 2017, 5). The joint report by the UNSOM HRPG and OHCHR states that ASWJ "has no specific clan identity," and acts "as a de facto administration in the Galgaduud region in Guriceel town and Dhuusamarreb district. It claims Hiraan, Galgaduud, and Mudug as its territory, and has been opposing security forces and state authorities in areas under its control" (UN Dec. 2017, para. 50). In contrast, Reporters Without Borders states that ASWJ "supports the national government" (Reporters Without Borders 20 Jan. 2016). This Response was prepared after researching publicly accessible information currently available to the Research Directorate within time constraints. This Response is not, and does not purport to be, conclusive as to the merit of any particular claim for refugee protection. Please find below the list of sources consulted in researching this Information Request. Notes [1] The Religious Literacy Project, whose website was launched in 2015 (The Religious Literacy Project n.d.b), "provides educational opportunities and resources for how to recognize, understand, and analyze religious influences in contemporary life through the overarching theme of conflict and peace and the specific (often intersecting) sub-themes of gender and sexuality, public health, and environmental sustainability" (The Religious Literacy Project 7 Apr. 2015, 1, italics in original). [2] Horseed Media is Somali media organization, providing information on Somali-related affairs (Horseed Media n.d.). References Abdullahi Baadiyow, Abdurahman. 8 March 2018. Correspondence with the Research Directorate. Abdullahi Baadiyow, Abdurahman. 2015. The Islamic Movement in Somalia: A Study of the Islah Movement, 1950-2000. London, UK: Adonis & Abbey Publishers Ltd. Al Jazeera. 29 March 2016. Hamza Mohamed. "Somalia's Sufi Revival." [Accessed 15 Feb. 2018] British Broadcasting Corporation (BBC). 22 December 2017. "Who Are Somalia's Al-Shabab?" [Accessed 8 Mar. 2018] Cavallera, V. et al. 2016. Culture, Context and Mental Health of Somali Refugees. A Primer for Staff Working in Mental Health and Psychosocial Support Programmes. A publication commissioned by the United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees (UNHCR). [Accessed 2 Mar. 2018] China Global Television Network (CGTN). 24 July 2017. Samuel Kisambe. "Gun-Battle Between Militia in Central Somalia Leaves at Least 20 Dead." [Accessed 5 Mar. 2018] China Global Television Network (CGTN). 17 May 2015. George Kariuki. "Somali Sufis: The Group Is Now Making a Comeback." [Accessed 5 Mar. 2018] Danish Refugee Council (DRC) and Denmark (Danish Immigration Service - DIS). March 2017. South and central Somalia. Security Situation, Al-Shabaab Presence, and Target Groups." [Accessed 9 Mar. 2018] Horseed Media. 10 June 2015. Abdirahman A. "Somalia: Ahlu Sunna Waljama'a Militia Reject Pull-back Calls." [Accessed 5 Mar. 2018] Horseed Media. N.d. "About Horseed." [Accessed 7 Mar. 2018] Human Rights Watch. May 2016. "Like Fish in Poisonous Waters" Attacks on Media Freedom in Somalia. [Accessed 15 Feb. 2018] Independent Expert on the situation of human rights in Somalia. 15 March 2018. Correspondence with the Research Directorate. Lang, Johannes. 3 December 2017. "Somalia's Missing State." Harvard Political Review. [Accessed 5 Mar. 2018] Political Advisor, African Union Mission in Somalia (AMISOM). 12 March 2018. Correspondence with the Research Directorate. Political Handbook of the World 2015 (PHW). 2015. "Somalia." Edited by Tom Lansford. Washington, DC: CQ Press. [Accessed 15 Feb. 2018] Radio Dalsan. 21 November 2017. "Sufi Militants Ahlul Sunnah Wa Jamaa Joins War Against AlShabaab." [Accessed 5 Mar. 2018] The Religious Literacy Project. 7 April 2015. 2015. Our Method. [Accessed 7 Mar. 2018) The Religious Literacy Project. N.d.a. "Sufism in Somalia." [Accessed 15 Feb. 2018] The Religious Literacy Project. N.d.b. "History." [Accessed 7 Mar. 2018] Reporters Without Borders. 20 January 2016. "Moderate Islamic Group Detains Journalists in Central Somalia." [Accessed 2 Mar. 2018] United Nations (UN). December 2017. Human Rights and Protection Group (HRPG) of the UN Assistance Mission in Somalia (UNSOM) and the Office of the UN High Commissioner for Human Rights (OHCHR). Protection of Civilians: Building the Foundation for Peace, Security and Human Rights in Somalia. [Accessed 5 Mar. 2018] United States (US). 15 August 2017. Department of State. International Religious Freedom Report for 2016. [Accessed 5 Mar. 2018] Additional Sources Consulted Oral sources: Academics specializing in Somali studies; Amnesty International; Conflict Dynamics International; Human Rights Watch; The Religious Literacy Project; Rift Valley Institute; Somali Institute for Development Research and Analysis; Somalia Ministry of Justice and Religious Affairs. Internet sites, including: Africa Confidential; African Union Mission in Somalia; Al Arabiya; AllAfrica; Associated Press; Banadir; Brookings Institution; Canadian Somali Congress; Center for Strategic and International Studies; De Volkskrant; Deutsche Presse-Agentur; Deutsche Welle; The Diplomat; ecoi.net; Freedom House; The Guardian; Internal Displacement Monitoring Centre; International Crisis Group; International Federation for Human Rights; IRIN; Minority Rights International; Mogadishu Times; Newstime Africa; The New York Times; Reuters; Somalia Report; UN News Centre, Reliefweb; US Commission on International Religious Freedom; US Committee for Refugees and Immigrants; Woodrow Wilson International Centre for Scholars; Xinhua News Agency. Venezuela: Treatment by the authorities and pro-government groups of failed refugee claimants who return to the country (2016-December 2017) Publisher Canada: Immigration and Refugee Board of Canada Publication Date 5 January 2018 Citation / Document Symbol VEN106031.FE Related Document(s) Venezuela : information sur le traitement reserve par les autorites et les groupes pro-gouvernementaux aux demandeurs d'asile deboutes qui retournent au pays (2016-decembre 2017) Cite as Canada: Immigration and Refugee Board of Canada, Venezuela: Treatment by the authorities and pro-government groups of failed refugee claimants who return to the country (2016-December 2017), 5 January 2018, VEN106031.FE, available at: https://www.refworld.org/docid/5ad5ddcd4.html [accessed 1 October 2021] Disclaimer This is not a UNHCR publication. UNHCR is not responsible for, nor does it necessarily endorse, its content. Any views expressed are solely those of the author or publisher and do not necessarily reflect those of UNHCR, the United Nations or its Member States. Research Directorate, Immigration and Refugee Board of Canada, Ottawa Information on the treatment by the authorities and progovernment groups of failed refugee claimants who return to the country was scarce among the sources consulted by the Research Directorate within the time constraints for this Response. According to an article published in July 2017 on the UNHCR website, in 2016, there were some 27,000 Venezuelan refugee claimants worldwide, and nearly 50,000 had already applied for asylum in 2017 (UN 14 July 2017). According to an article published by Reuters in October 2017, 36,000 Venezuelans enter Colombia daily, and 2,000 do not immediately return to Venezuela (Reuters 12 Oct. 2017). An article published on the website of the International Organization for Migration (IOM) indicates that, according to a study carried out by the IOM at the end of 2016, of the individuals crossing the border into Colombia, most of whom are Venezuelan, [IOM English version] "69 per cent indicated that they intend to return to Venezuela the same day" and "5 per cent expressed their intention to stay in Colombia" (IOM 7 July 2017). According to an article published by The Guardian, 1,956 Venezuelans were deported from Colombia in 2016 (The Guardian 17 July 2017). 1. Treatment by the Authorities In correspondence with the Research Directorate, the coordinator of the international research team "Voice of the Venezuelan Diaspora" (La voz de la diaspora venezolana), whose research focuses on the Venezuelan diaspora [1], explained that failed refugee claimants who return to Venezuela may face, among other things, the following consequences: not being able to find employment, having their passport cancelled or being imprisoned [translation] "without a regular trial, since the judicial system is subordinate to the executive power" (La voz de la diaspora venezolana 19 Dec. 2017). According to the same source, a person who opposes the government [translation] "runs the risk of being imprisoned and even disappearing" (La voz de la diaspora venezolana 19 Dec. 2017). The information in the following paragraph was provided in a telephone interview with the Research Directorate by an assistant professor at La Trobe University in Melbourne, Australia, whose research centres on law and politics in Venezuela: The treatment of failed refugee claimants who return to the country depends on the situation of the claimant: why did they leave the country, what was their role or occupation, and what was the nature of the conflict with the government. For example, a lawyer or judge who leaves Venezuela because they "are literally on the wrong side of the regime" could face difficulties upon their return, such as being monitored. If the failed refugee claimant was charged with a crime before leaving Venezuela, that would be a more obvious "scenario of problems." In the case of a person who worked for the government but not in a politically sensitive area, they might not be monitored when they return, but they might not be able to find a job in the same sector or within the government (assistant professor 13 Dec. 2017). The coordinator stated that [translation] "the government only hires people allied to the government and does everything possible to expel workers who criticize or disagree with the government from public organizations" by using "various mechanisms and lists," of which "the most known" are the Tascon and Maisanta lists (La voz de la diaspora venezolana 19 Dec. 2017). According to the same source, a person who is not a [translation] "friend" of the government cannot integrate into the public sector (La voz de la diaspora venezolana 19 Dec. 2017). For additional information on the treatment of suspected whistle-blowers or former government employees, by the government or progovernment groups, including exclusion lists, see Response to Information Request VEN105784 of May 2017. 2. Access to Services According to sources, there are no government assistance programs for the reintegration of failed refugee claimants (La voz de la diaspora venezolana 19 Dec. 2017; assistant professor 13 Dec. 2017). In correspondence with the Research Directorate, an operations and movements coordinator from the IOM in Bogota indicated that, to his knowledge, the government does not have any specific programs to assist repatriated persons, but Venezuelans can apply for social programs and benefits (operations and movements coordinator 28 Dec. 2017). According to the assistant professor, not having the documents required can affect a repatriated person's ability to access government services (assistant professor 13 Dec. 2017). According to the same source, it is very difficult to obtain a passport from abroad, and the national identity card (cedula), which is required "for everything," including obtaining a passport, is available only in Venezuela (assistant professor 13 Dec. 2017). Similarly, the coordinator from La voz de la diaspora venezolana indicated that the government does not allow Venezuelans in the diaspora to obtain identity documents, including national identity cards and passports (La voz de la diaspora venezolana 19 Dec. 2017). According to the website of the Embassy of Venezuela in Canada, a Venezuelan citizen cannot obtain a cedula from abroad (Venezuela n.d.). According to sources, it is very difficult for Venezuelans to obtain passports, including because of a lack of necessary materials (assistant professor 13 Dec. 2017; Bloomberg 8 Mar. 2017; PanAm Post 11 Oct. 2017). Without providing further details, the assistant professor stated that it is "a big hassle" for a repatriated person to acquire a new identity card (assistant professor 13 Dec. 2017). According to sources, there is a new card called the "national card" (carnet de la patria), which manages access to certain social and government services (assistant professor 13 Dec. 2017; Perfil 7 Jan. 2017), including food and basic necessities (Perfil 7 Jan. 2017). According to the assistant professor, if a person living abroad does not have that card, it may be difficult for them to access those services when they return (assistant professor 13 Dec. 2017). According to the coordinator of La voz de la diaspora venezolana, the national card is used to control food rations and has become necessary [translation] "for everything" (La voz de la diaspora venezolana 19 Dec. 2017). The same source indicated that it is part of a [translation] "relatively stringent social control system" and is used "to facilitate access to all services for friends of the government and to prevent access for opponents" (La voz de la diaspora venezolana 19 Dec. 2017). According to the operations and movements coordinator, no NGO offers assistance programs for repatriated persons (operations and movements coordinator 28 Dec. 2017). Corroborating information could not be found among the sources consulted by the Research Directorate within the time constraints of this Response. This Response was prepared after researching publicly accessible information currently available to the Research Directorate within time constraints. This Response is not, and does not purport to be, conclusive as to the merit of any particular claim for refugee protection. Please find below the list of sources consulted in researching this Information Request. Note [1] The research group "Voice of the Venezuelan Diaspora," coordinated by a university professor with training in sociology and planning, uses questionnaires, in-depth interviews and focus groups, among other methodological approaches, and works with universities and organizations of Venezuelans throughout the world, which has allowed the research group to come into contact with at least 4,000 Venezuelans abroad (La voz de la diaspora venezolana 19 Dec. 2017). References Assistant professor, La Trobe University, Melbourne. 13 December 2017. Telephone interview with the Research Directorate. Bloomberg. 8 March 2017. Andrew Rosati. "Venezuelans are Trapped by a Chronic Passport Shortage." [Accessed 18 Dec. 2017] The Guardian. 17 July 2017. Sibylla Brodzinsky, Dom Phillips, Dan Collyns and Uki Goni. "'At Home, We Couldn't Get By': More Venezuelans Flee as Crisis Deepens." [Accessed 13 Dec. 2017] International Organization for Migration (IOM). 7 July 2017. "Une etude de l'IOM revele des informations sur la migration a la frontiere entre la Colombie et le Venezuela." [Accessed 11 Dec. 2017] La voz de la diaspora venezolana. 19 December 2017. Correspondence from the coordinator to the Research Directorate. Operations and Movements Coordinator, International Organization for Migration (IOM). 28 December 2017. Correspondence with the Research Directorate. PanAm Post. 11 October 2017. Sabrina Martin. "Venezuelan Regime Forced to Extend Validity of Passports Due to Bureaucratic Chaos." [Accessed 18 Dec. 2017] Perfil. 7 January 2017. "Maduro lanzo el 'Carnet de la Patria', que regulara el accesso a la comida." [Accessed 18 Dec. 2017] Reuters. 12 October 2017. Andreina Aponte and Anggy Polanco. "No Visas, Bad Jobs: Venezuelan Emigrants Reluctantly Return Home." [Accessed 11 Dec. 2017] United Nations (UN). 14 July 2017. High Commission for Refugees (UNHCR). "Hausse des demandes d'asile de Venezueliens : le HCR intensifie sa reponse." [Accessed 13 Dec. 2017] Venezuela. N.d. Embassy of Canada. "Por que es necesaria la Cedula de Identidad?" [Accessed 18 Dec. 2017] Additional Sources Consulted Oral sources: Academics whose research focuses on Venezuela; International Crisis Group; journalist specializing in Venezuelan emigration; Programa Venezolana de Educacion Accion en Derechos Humanos (Provea); United Nations High Commission for Refugees; university researchers whose research focuses on Venezuelan emigration. Internet sites, including: Asia News Monitor; BBC; Caracol; CNN; The Conversation Canada; El Mercurio; El Nacional; El Norte; El Tiempo; El Universal; Factiva; Freedom House; Human Rights Watch; International Crisis Group; International Federation for Human Rights; La Libertad; LatinNews; Noticia al Dia; Radio France internationale; Radio Free Europe/Radio Liberty; Revista Venezolana; Semana; TeleSUR; Transparency International; United Nations Refworld; United States Department of State. AS (Safety of Kabul) Afghanistan CG [2018] UKUT 00118 (IAC) Upper Tribunal (Immigration and Asylum Chamber) AS (Safety of Kabul) Afghanistan CG [2018] UKUT 00118 (IAC) THE IMMIGRATION ACTS Heard at Field House Decision & Reasons Promulgated On 25th & 27th September; 24th October; 20th November and 11th December 2017 Before UPPER TRIBUNAL JUDGE ALLEN UPPER TRIBUNAL JUDGE JACKSON Between as (ANONYMITY DIRECTION MADE) Appellant and THE SECRETARY OF STATE FOR THE HOME DEPARTMENT Respondent Representation : For the Appellant: Ms S Naik QC, Ms B Poynor and Mr B Bundock of Counsel, instructed by J D Spicer Zeb solicitors For the Respondent: Mr S Singh QC, instructed by the Government Legal Department COUNTRY GUIDANCE Risk on return to Kabul from the Taliban A person who is of lower-level interest for the Taliban (i.e. not a senior government or security services official, or a spy) is not at real risk of persecution from the Taliban in Kabul. Internal relocation to Kabul Having regard to the security and humanitarian situation in Kabul as well as the difficulties faced by the population living there (primarily the urban poor but also IDPs and other returnees, which are not dissimilar to the conditions faced throughout may other parts of Afghanistan); it will not, in general be unreasonable or unduly harsh for a single adult male in good health to relocate to Kabul even if he does not have any specific connections or support network in Kabul. However, the particular circumstances of an individual applicant must be taken into account in the context of conditions in the place of relocation, including a person's age, nature and quality of support network/connections with Kabul/Afghanistan, their physical and mental health, and their language, education and vocational skills when determining whether a person falls within the general position set out above. A person with a support network or specific connections in Kabul is likely to be in a more advantageous position on return, which may counter a particular vulnerability of an individual on return. Although Kabul suffered the highest number of civilian casualties (in the latest UNAMA figures from 2017) and the number of security incidents is increasing, the proportion of the population directly affected by the security situation is tiny. The current security situation in Kabul is not at such a level as to render internal relocation unreasonable or unduly harsh. Previous Country Guidance The country guidance in AK (Article 15(c)) Afghanistan CG [2012] UKUT 163 (IAC) in relation to Article 15(c) of the Qualification Directive remains unaffected by this decision. The country guidance in AK (Article 15(c)) Afghanistan CG [2012] UKUT 163 (IAC) in relation to the (un)reasonableness of internal relocation to Kabul (and other potential places of internal relocation) for certain categories of women remains unaffected by this decision. The country guidance in AA (unattended children) Afghanistan CG [2012] UKUT 00016 (IAC) also remains unaffected by this decision. TABLE OF CONTENTS Description Paragraphs Introduction 1-4 The Country Guidance Question 1 The Appeal 5-13 The Legal Framework 14-44 Burden of Proof 41-44 The Evidence 45-171 The Experts 47-66 Evidence on risk 67-97 Internal Relocation 98-154 Returns 155-171 Findings and Reasons 172- 252 Risk 173-188 Reasonableness 189-235 Previous Country Guidance 236-240 Summary of general conclusions 241 The Appellant's claim 242 -252 Notice of Decision Appendix A Schedule of Background and Expert Evidence considered by the Tribunal Appendix B Extract from EASO Country of Origin Information Report, Afghanistan: Security Situation" (August 2017). Appendix C Error of Law Decision Appendix D Senior President's Practice Direction No 10 (2010) GLOSSARY AMASO - Afghanistan Migrants Advice and Support Organisation AAN - Afghan Analysts Network AGEF - Experts in the Fields of Migration and Development AGEs - Anti-government elements AVRR - Assisted Voluntary Return and Reintegration DTM - Displacement tracking matrix EASO - European Asylum Support Office ERIN - European Reintegration Network GBV - Gender based violence GDP - Gross domestic product HRW - Human Rights Watch IDPs - Internally displaced persons IEDs - Improvised explosive devices IOM - International Organisation for Migration IPSO - International Psychosocial Organisation IRA/IFA - Internal relocation alternative/Internal flight alternative ISKP - Islamic State of the Khorasan Province NGOs - Non-governmental organisations UN - United Nations UNAMA - UN Assistant Mission in Afghanistan UNFPA - UN Population Fund UNHCR - UN High Commissioner for Refugees UNOCHA - UN Office for Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs DECISION AND REASONS Introduction The question posed by the Upper Tribunal for country guidance in this case is: "Whether the current situation in Kabul is such that the guidance given in AK (Afghanistan) [2012] UKUT 00163 (IAC) needs revision in the context of consideration of internal relocation." The guidance in AK on this point at B is as follows: "(iv) Whilst when assessing a claim in the context of Article 15(c) in which the respondent asserts that Kabul city would be a viable internal relocation alternative, it is necessary to take into account (both in assessing "safety" and "reasonableness") not only the level of violence in that city but also the difficulties experienced by that city's poor and also the many Internally Displaced Persons (IDPs) living there, these considerations will not in general make return to Kabul unsafe or unreasonable. (v) Nevertheless, this position is qualified (both in relation to Kabul and other potential places of internal relocation) for certain categories of women. The purport of the current Home Office OGN on Afghanistan is that whilst women with a male support network may be able to relocate internally, " it would be unreasonable to expect lone women and female heads of household to relocate internally" (February 2012 OGN, 3.10.8) and the Tribunal sees no basis for taking a different view." Also important in the specific context of the question posed in the present country guidance case are the fuller findings in paragraph 243 of AK , which appear immediately prior to the conclusion set out in (iv) above: "As regards Kabul city, we have already discussed the situation in that city and we cannot see that for the purposes of deciding either refugee eligibility or subsidiary protection eligibility (and we are only formally tasked with deciding the latter) that conditions in that city make relocation there in general unreasonable, whether considered under Article 15(c) or under 15(b) or 15(a). We emphasise the words "in general" because it is plain from Article 8(2) and our domestic case law on internal relocation (see AH (Sudan) in particular) that in every case there needs to be an enquiry into the applicant's individual circumstances; and what those circumstances are will very often depend on the nature of specific findings made about the credibility of an appellant in respect of such matters as whether they have family ties in Kabul. But here our premise concerns an appellant with no specific risk characteristics and someone found to have an uncle in Kabul: see above paras 3, 5, 154, 186 and below, paras 250-254). " When considering the question posed for the present case, we bear in mind that the focus in AK was on Article 15(c) of Council Directive 2004/83/EC of 29 April 2004 on Minimum Standards for the Qualification and Status of Third Country Nationals or Stateless Persons as Refugees or as Persons Who Otherwise Need International Protection and the Content of the Protection Granted (the "Qualification Directive") and eligibility for subsidiary protection, rather than the issue of internal relocation in the context of the Refugee Convention and that the evidence before that panel on the socio-economic conditions in Kabul was relatively limited compared to what is before us in the present appeal. We also bear in mind that the decision in AK was based principally on evidence from 2010 to 2011 and on any view, there have been rapid and significant changes in both Kabul and Afghanistan as a whole in the intervening period. The Appeal The Appellant, a national of Afghanistan born on 1 January 1986, appealed the Respondent's decision dated 12 February 2015 to refuse his asylum and human rights claim. His appeal was dismissed by First-tier Tribunal Judge Bradshaw in a determination promulgated on 30 July 2015. Although Judge Bradshaw accepted that the Appellant would be at risk on return to his home area from the Taliban, his asylum appeal was dismissed on the basis that he could internally relocate to Kabul. The Appellant's human rights appeal was dismissed on the basis that there would be no disproportionate interference with the Appellant's right to respect for private and family life contrary to Article 8 of the European Convention on Human Rights. The Appellant sought permission to appeal on two grounds, first, that the Judge failed to properly consider submissions made to him on Article 15(c) of the Qualification Directive and secondly, that she failed to properly consider the evidence in relation to internal relocation. Permission was granted on both grounds by UTJ Taylor on 2 October 2015. At an early stage, the appeal was identified as possible country guidance. In his decision promulgated following a hearing on 27 April 2017 (Appendix C) UTJ O'Connor found an error of law such that it was necessary to set aside the decision of Judge Bradshaw. In so finding, he stated that "The findings of primary fact made by the First-tier Tribunal have not been the subject of challenge and are preserved, as is the conclusion that the Appellant would be at risk of suffering persecutory treatment in his home area." In addition, the finding that the Appellant is not at risk on return to his home area or elsewhere from the Afghan government has not been challenged and stands. For the purposes of the present appeal and, in particular, the letter of instruction to the experts, the following are agreed facts. The Appellant (dob 1 January 1986) is a single man from Kardai village, Laghman province, Afghanistan. He is thus 31 years of age. The Appellant's father was the imam of the local mosque and well-known in the village, where the Taliban have a presence. He refused to cooperate with them or propagate for them and was labelled a government agent. In 2006 the Taliban killed him. The Appellant's brother reported their father's murder to the authorities and 10 days later there was an attack on the local Taliban by government forces. The Taliban suspected the Appellant's brother of spying for the government and killed him in 2007. Sometime later the Taliban abducted the Appellant from his house and detained him away from the village along with others. While detained, he was not fingerprinted or photographed by the Taliban. A week later, the Appellant escaped during a night raid by government forces and returned to Kardai village, whereupon his maternal uncle passed him to a friend and then to an agent to take him out of Afghanistan. The Appellant fled Afghanistan clandestinely in 2008 and entered the United Kingdom towards the end of that year, having passed through other countries en route. The Appellant's mother, younger brother and maternal uncle remained in Kardai village. The Appellant would be at risk of persecution if returned to his local area. For the purposes of instructions to the experts, there were a number of facts which they were asked to assume although they were not agreed aspects of the Appellant's account between the parties. These included the Appellant's claim that when in Afghanistan he attended school for nine years and thereafter worked with his brother in farming; that he has not had contact with his mother, younger brother and maternal uncle since arriving in the United Kingdom; and that the Appellant has no family or support in Kabul. In summary, the Appellant's case is that he is at risk from the Taliban in his home area and also in Kabul, where there would be no sufficiency of protection from such risk. In any event, internal relocation to Kabul is not reasonable because he is at risk of harm (kidnapping/extortion of money) on account of his westernised profile; because he has no family or other support network in Kabul to assist him in obtaining accommodation and/or employment; because he is at risk of being in conditions comparable to those of an IDP (with greater risk of unemployment, limited access to adequate housing, limited access to water and sanitation and food insecurity) and that reintegration assistance will not relieve these issues. It is important to note at the outset that it is not the Appellant's case that treatment in Kabul would be in breach of Article 3 of the European Convention on Human Rights or Article 15(c) of the Qualification Directive. In summary, the Respondent's case is that although the Appellant would be at risk of persecution if returned to his local area in Afghanistan, he would be able to safely and reasonably internally relocate to Kabul and for this reason is not entitled to be recognised as a refugee under the Refugee Convention nor be granted humanitarian protection. It is important to note at the outset, that the Respondent does not rely on there being a sufficiency of protection for the Appellant from the Taliban in Afghanistan, or in particular in areas where he is accepted to be at risk. The Respondent acknowledges that however willing the Afghan authorities are, they would usually be unable to offer effective protection. For this reason, we do not in this decision, set out in any detail the substantial evidence before us on the capacity of the Afghan forces, issues of corruption and human rights abuses within them, nor do we set out evidence before us on the judiciary in Afghanistan. Legal framework By Article 1A(2) of the Refugee Convention, a refugee is a person who is out of the country of his or her nationality and who, owing to a well-founded fear of persecution for reasons of race, religion, nationality or membership of a particular social group or political opinion, is unable or unwilling to avail him or herself of the protection of the country of origin. Article 8 of the Qualification Directive provides as follows: As part of the assessment of the application for international protection, Member States may determine that an applicant is not in need of international protection if in a part of the country of origin there is no well-founded fear of being persecuted or no real risk of suffering serious harm and the applicant can reasonably be expected to stay in that part of the country. In examining whether a part of the country of origin is in accordance with paragraph 1, Member States shall at the time of taking the decision on the application have regard to the general circumstances prevailing in that part of the country and to the personal circumstances of the applicant. Paragraph 1 may apply notwithstanding technical obstacles to return to the country of origin. The Immigration Rules provide in Rule 339O(i): The Secretary of State will not make: a grant of refugee status if in part of the country of origin a person would not have a well founded fear of being persecuted, and the person can reasonably be expected to stay in that part of the country; or a grant of humanitarian protection if in part of the country of return a person would not face a real risk of suffering serious harm, and the person can reasonably be expected to stay in that part of the country. (ii) In examining whether a part of the country of origin or country of return meets the requirements in (i) the Secretary of State, when making a decision on whether to grant asylum or humanitarian protection, will have regard to the general circumstances prevailing in that part of the country and to the personal circumstances of the person. (iii) (i) applies notwithstanding technical obstacles to return to the country of origin or country of return. From the above, a person is not a refugee if they can reasonably be expected to live in another part of their home country where they would not have a well-founded fear of persecution. In such circumstances, a person has the option of internal relocation, also known as an internal flight alternative. Once the issue of internal relocation has been raised there are two discrete questions to determine whether there is an option of internal relocation. First, does the person have a well-founded fear of persecution in the proposed place of relocation? If yes, then there is no internal relocation option and the person is a refugee. There is also no internal relocation option if the person would be subject to inhuman or degrading treatment within the meaning of Article 3 of the European Convention on Human Rights (the "ECHR") in the proposed place of relocation or if it would be in breach of Article 15(c) of the Qualification Directive. If not, then secondly there must be an assessment of whether in all the circumstances, it would be reasonable or not unduly harsh to expect the person to relocate to that place. Lord Bingham summarised the approach to reasonableness in Januzi v Secretary of State for the Home Department [2006] 2 AC 426, at [21]: "The decision-maker, taking account of all relevant circumstances pertaining to the claimant and his country of origin, must decide whether it is reasonable to expect the claimant to relocate or whether it would be unduly harsh to expect him to do so There is, as Simon Brown LJ aptly observed in Svazas v Secretary of State for the Home Department [2002] 1 WLR 1891, para 55, a spectrum of cases. The decision-maker must do his best to decide, on such material as is available, where on the spectrum the particular case falls All must depend on a fair assessment of the relevant facts." Further, at [47], Lord Hope stated the position as follows: "The question where the issue of internal relocation is raised can, then, be defined quite simply it is whether it would be unduly harsh to expect a claimant who is being persecuted for a Convention reason in one part of his country to move to a less hostile part before seeking refugee status abroad. The words "unduly harsh" set the standard that must be met for this to be regarded as unreasonable. If the claimant can live a relatively normal life there by the standards that prevail in his country of nationality generally, and if he can reach the less hostile part without undue hardship or undue difficulty, it will not be unreasonable to expect him to move there." The test was considered further by the House of Lords in AH (Sudan) v Secretary of State for the Home Department [2008] 1 AC 678, upon which we had detailed submissions from the parties as to the scope of the test of reasonableness of internal relocation. We therefore set out more fully the judgements in that case and the principles which flow from it, not all of which were controversial between the parties. First, Lord Bingham, having referred to his own judgement at [21] of Januzi , (set out above), went on to say at [5]: "Although specifically directed to a secondary issue in the case, these observations are plainly of general application. It is not easy to see how the rule could be more simply or clearly expressed. It is, or should be, evident that the enquiry must be directed to the situation of the particular applicant, whose age, gender, experience, health, skills and family ties may all be very relevant. There is no warrant for excluding, giving priority to, consideration of the applicant's way of life in the place of persecution. There is no warrant for excluding, or giving priority to, consideration of conditions generally prevailing in the home country. I do not estimate the difficulty of making decisions in some cases. But the difficulty lies in applying the test, not in expressing it. The humanitarian object of the Refugee Convention is to secure a reasonable measure of protection for those with a well-founded fear of persecution in their home country or some part of it; it is not to procure general levelling-up of living standards around the world, desirable though of course that is." Baroness Hale confirmed at [20] that the House was all agreed that the correct approach was that set out by Lord Bingham in Januzi and further endorsed the following submission from the United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees (UNHCR) of the correct approach: "The correct approach when considering the reasonableness of IRA [internal relocation alternative] is to assess all the circumstances of the individual's case holistically and with specific reference to the individual's personal circumstances (including past persecution or fear thereof, psychological and health condition, family and social situation, and survival capacities). This assessment is to be made in the context of the conditions in the place of relocation (including basic human rights, security conditions, socio-economic conditions, accommodation, access to health care facilities), in order to determine the impact on that individual of settling in the proposed place of relocation and whether the individual could live a relatively normal life without undue hardship." The assessment must therefore consider the particular circumstances of the individual applicant in the context of conditions in the place of relocation. The test of reasonableness is one of great generality, excluding only a comparison with conditions in the host country in which protection has been sought, per Lord Bingham at [13] and Baroness Hale at [27]. Secondly, the test of reasonableness is not analogous to, or to be equated with, the test under Article 3 of the ECHR, per Lord Bingham at [9] and Baroness Hale at [21-22 and 26]. If, however, conditions in the proposed place of relocation do breach Article 3 of the ECHR, internal relocation would automatically be unreasonable without more. Thirdly, the correct comparator by which to judge reasonableness is not against the conditions for the worst of the worst in that country. Put another way, it is not a consideration of whether a person's circumstances will be worse than the circumstances of anyone else in that country, per Baroness Hale at [27-28]. Finally, Lord Brown, who expressly agrees with the opinion of Lord Bingham (and both of whom are expressly agreed with by Lord Hope at [18]), expanded upon the test of reasonableness at [42] as follows: "As mentioned, one touchstone of whether relocation would involve undue hardship, identified in the UNHCR guidelines referred to in the passage already cited from para 47 of Lord Hope's speech in Januzi , is whether "in the context of the country concerned" the claimant can live "a relatively normal life". The respondents are fiercely critical of the Tribunal's approach to this question in the present case. In particular they criticise the Tribunal's conclusion as to "the subsistence level existence in which people in Sudan generally live". To my mind, however, this criticism is misplaced. It is not necessary to establish that a majority of the population live at subsistence level for that to be regarded as a "relatively normal" existence in the country as a whole. If a significant minority suffer equivalent hardship to that likely to be suffered by claimant on relocation and if the claimant is as well able to bear it as most, it may well be appropriate to refuse him international protection. Hard-hearted as this may sound, and sympathetic although one inevitably feels towards those who have suffered as have these respondents (and the tens of thousands like them), the Refugee Convention, as I have sought to explain, is really intended only to protect those threatened with specific forms of persecution. It is not a general humanitarian measure. For these respondents, persecution is no longer a risk. Given that they can now safely be returned home, only prove that their lives on return would be quite simply intolerable compared even to the problems and deprivations of so many of their fellow countrymen would entitle them to refugee status. Compassion alone cannot justify the grant of asylum." It is the Respondent's reliance on this last paragraph at [42] of Lord Brown's speech, in particular, the reference to a significant minority of the population, that the Appellant took significant issue with during the course of the hearing before us for the following reasons. First, it was submitted that this could not be relied upon because it was an obiter dicta comment (because in fact the conditions considered in Sudan were those of the majority of the population), expressed in a minority judgement (not expressly endorsed by Lord Bingham, Baroness Hale or Lord Hoffmann) and therefore not binding upon the Upper tribunal. Secondly, there has been no application of the proposition of a comparison with a significant minority of the population in any Court or Tribunal since AH (Sudan) . Thirdly, the proposition was inconsistent with the ratio in AH (Sudan) as articulated by Lord Bingham, with whom all agreed, which was to expressly approve of the test set out in Januzi without excluding or giving priority to consideration of the applicant's way of life in the place of persecution or the conditions generally prevailing in the home country. Fourthly, the proposition is also inconsistent with the judgement of Baroness Hale in AH (Sudan) as it would inevitably lead to a comparison with the very worst lives led by fellow nationals. Fifthly, it is inconsistent with the UNHCR guidelines which were endorsed by Lord Bingham in Januzi as giving "valuable guidance" on a proper approach to assessing reasonableness. Sixthly, it is inconsistent with the ratio of the Court of Appeal in AA (Uganda) v Secretary of State for the Home Department [2008] EWCA Civ 579, specifically with the judgment of Buxton LJ who referred to some conditions in the place of relocation as being unacceptable even if widespread in that place. Finally, the proposition is inconsistent with the decision of the Upper Tribunal in FB (Lone Women PSG internal relocation AA (Uganda) considered) Sierra Leone [2008] UKAIT 00090, in which it was reiterated that there are some forms or degrees of hardship which will be unduly harsh irrespective of how many others endure them. In response, Mr Singh relied upon the fact that Lord Brown's speech in AH (Sudan) had been expressly approved by Lord Hope and also by Buxton LJ in AA (Uganda) , who described Lord Browne's judgment at [42] "valuably explain[ing] some further aspects of the jurisprudence of undue harshness". As to what a significant minority would be, it was submitted by Mr Singh that significant minority was simply something sufficiently great in number to be worthy of attention and the opposite to insignificant. In reality, he submitted that the population of Kabul is a significant minority of the population in Afghanistan and even a significant minority of the population of Kabul itself could still amount to a significant minority of the population of Afghanistan as a whole. We do not consider that Lord Brown's judgment in AH (Sudan) is either strictly obiter dicta or a minority judgment such that it is not binding on the Upper Tribunal. This is because first, it was expressly approved by Lord Hope; secondly, it is not inconsistent with the speeches of Lord Bingham or Baroness Hale in AH (Sudan); and thirdly, in any event it was expressly approved by Buxton LJ in AA (Uganda) which is itself binding on us. When assessing the reasonableness of internal relocation, the language used in Januzi and AH (Sudan) is of standards or conditions generally prevailing in the home country and of whether a person can live a relatively normal life. There is of course no single standard or set of conditions which apply throughout a country, but a range of examples of 'normal' or conditions which are experienced either in particular parts of the country, or throughout it by groups of people. One can envisage for example, that there will almost inevitably in any country in the world be differences between standards generally prevailing in urban as opposed to rural areas, and between the capital or large cities and other areas. That is not to say that because the majority of the population live in, for example a rural area, the conditions in urban areas could not said to be normal or include conditions generally prevailing in the home country. We consider that Lord Brown's reference to a significant minority of the population is expanding on what is contained in the speeches of Lord Bingham and Baroness Hale, and is simply a way of expressing what is, in practice, required to identify standards or conditions generally prevailing in the home country, reflecting that there is not a single standard or set of conditions which apply to a simple numerical majority of the population throughout the entire geographical territory of a country. In support of this, we rely on what was said by Buxton LJ in AA Uganda , which expressly endorses Lord Brown's speech, including the significant minority point at his [42]: "16. Whilst Immigration Judge Coker did not have the benefit of the House of Lords in AH (Sudan) she clearly had the jurisprudence that their Lordships confirmed in mind when she said, at the end of her 38, that the situation facing AA was the same as that of many other young women living in Kampala, and quoted Lord Hope of Craighead, who asked whether the claimant could live a relatively normal life judged by the standards that prevail in his country of nationality generally: those standards, or the relevant hardship, being as Lord Brown of Eaton-under-Haywood explained in AH (Sudan) that of a significant minority in the country. The evidence before the AIT in this case did not reveal how widespread in the context of Uganda as a whole are the conditions reported by Dr Nelson, and did not suggest that they affect anyone other than young women. The factual case is therefore significantly different from that in AH (Sudan) where slum conditions were widespread in Sudan, and affected everyone, men women and children alike, and of all ages. Immigration Judge Coker should therefore have considered whether it was appropriate to apply the test formulated by Lord Hope of Craighead to a case where the comparator or constituency in the place of relocation is limited to persons who suffer from the same specific characteristics that expose the applicant to danger and hardship in the place of relocation. 17. There is, however, a further and more fundamental reason why it is difficult or impossible to apply the jurisprudence of AH (Sudan) to the present case. There, the conditions in the place of relocation included poverty, disease and the living of a life that was structured quite differently from that from which the appellants had come in Darfur. It had been open to the AIT to hold that exposure to those conditions, shared by many of the refugees' fellow-countrymen, did not amount to undue harshness. But the present case is different. On the evidence accepted by the AIT, AA is faced not merely with poverty and lack of any sort of accommodation, but with being driven into prostitution. Even if that is the likely fate of many of her fellow countrywomen, I cannot think that either the AIT or the House of Lords that decided AH (Sudan) would have felt able to regard enforced prostitution as coming within the category of normal country conditions that the refugee must be expected to put up with. Quite simply, there must be some conditions in the place of relocation that are unacceptable to the extent that it would be unduly harsh to return the applicant to them even if the conditions are widespread in the place of relocation." The test, or comparator for the purposes of assessing reasonableness, is as set out in AH (Sudan) , including as expressly set out by Lord Brown, with the caveat that there are some conditions that are unacceptable even if widely suffered in the place of relocation. That particular point was confirmed and expanded upon by the Upper Tribunal in FB (Lone women PSG internal relocation AA (Uganda) considered) Sierra Leone [2008] UKAIT 00090, which held at [39] that "[ AA (Uganda)] is affirmation, in line with AH (Sudan) that [internal] relocation must be reasonable, in other words, that it must not have such consequences upon the individual as to be unduly harsh for her. Inevitably, it will be unduly harsh if an appellant is unable for all practical purposes to survive with sufficient dignity to reflect her humanity. That is no more than saying that if survival comes at a cost of destitution, beggary, crime or prostitution, then that is a price too high." The final principle that therefore flows from AH (Sudan) is that when considering the standards or conditions prevailing generally in the country of nationality, it is not necessary to establish that a majority of the population live in those particular conditions, but only that a significant minority suffer equivalent hardship to that likely to be suffered by the applicant on relocation. What follows is then a personalised assessment of whether the applicant would be as well able to bear it ia most or whether those conditions are in any event unreasonable, for example because they involve crime, destitution, prostitution and the like. There is no requirement for a specific numerical, geographical or other qualification on what is a significant minority of the population. That phrase carries its ordinary and natural meaning of something of a sufficiently great number to be worthy of attention in the context of the population of the home country and not insignificant and its application should be self-evident on an assessment of the factual evidence in the majority if not all cases. If interpreted this way, there is no central inconsistency with Baroness Hale's speech in AH (Sudan) which highlighted, inter alia, the concern that the comparator should not be with the poorest of the poor in a particular country. Burden of Proof The burden of proof is on the Appellant to establish that he is a refugee. The degree of likelihood of persecution needed to establish an entitlement to asylum is decided on a basis lower than the civil standard of the balance of probabilities. This is expressed as a "reasonable chance", "a serious possibility" or "substantial grounds for thinking" in the various authorities. That standard of probability not only applies to the history of the matter and to the situation at the date of decision, but also to the question of persecution in the future if the Appellant were to be returned. We received submissions from both parties as to the correct burden of proof on the test of reasonableness for internal relocation. On behalf of the Appellant it was submitted that in accordance with the UNHCR guidelines and the Michigan Guidelines on "The Internal Protection Alternative", the burden is on the decision-maker (both the Respondent and the First-tier Tribunal/Upper Tribunal) or in the alternative that there was a shared burden between an applicant and the Respondent. On behalf of the Respondent, Counsel relied on the Upper Tribunal's decision in AMM and others (conflict: humanitarian crisis; returnees; FGM) Somalia CG [2011] UKUT 00445 (IAC), that where the issue of internal relocation is raised, an applicant must make good on the submission that relocation would not be reasonable. As confirmed most recently by the Senior President of the Tribunals in Secretary of State for the Home Department v SC (Jamaica) [2017] EWCA Civ 2112 (handed down after the hearing in the present appeal), at 36, there is no burden of proof in relation to the overall issue of whether it is reasonable for a person to internally relocate. Evidence We begin by identifying the experts who submitted written evidence and gave oral evidence before us, setting out their relevant areas of expertise and our overall impressions of that evidence in general terms, including as to the weight to be attached to their evidence generally. We go on to consider below the evidence before us, both written and oral, first as to risk on return to Kabul and secondly as to safety and reasonableness of internal relocation by setting out the current situation in Kabul in particular, but also in relation to Afghanistan more widely. In line with the legal framework set out above, we undertake a holistic assessment of the conditions generally prevailing in Afghanistan to assess the reasonableness of internal relocation, but for practical reasons we separate out and very broadly summarise the evidence in relation to particular topics sequentially which contribute to the holistic assessment. The full list of evidence before the Upper Tribunal in this appeal is set out in Appendix B which has been considered by us in its entirety and the absence of any express reference to it in the summary included (which is of necessity a brief summary) should not be taken as an indication that a particular piece of evidence or part of it has not been taken into account when reaching our conclusions set out below. The Experts Three experts were instructed, each of whom submitted written reports and gave oral evidence before us, on the basis of joint written instructions. Further to receipt of the written reports from each expert, the Respondent asked further questions of each expert which were responded to by way of supplementary written reports. We set out initially our overview of the experts and their evidence and go on to consider later the detail of that evidence by topic. Dr Liza Schuster is a Reader in the Department of Sociology at the University of London and has been employed as a researcher at both the University of Oxford and the London School of Economics. She has visited and lived in Afghanistan for significant periods of time since 2011 (totalling around five years), during which she has lived with Afghan families and in different settings in Kabul. Dr Schuster is one of less than a dozen non-Afghans who live and work doing research in this field in Kabul. Since November 2016, Dr Schuster has been based in Kabul undertaking a research project studying migration decisions, policy-making and migration culture based at the university there. Of particular relevance for this appeal, Dr Schuster has conducted research in Afghanistan since 2012 as to the consequences of forced return for Afghan migrants and their families and the migration decision-making process. This involved a number of in-depth interviews with individuals and their families. In the initial project, she interviewed 32 young men who had been deported and the families of 12 others in Kabul and Pule Khumri. In total, Dr Schuster has spoken to approximately 120 people who have been returned to Kabul against their will from EU states. She remains in touch with 12 of them, all of whom are no longer in Afghanistan. In 2014, Dr Schuster set up the Afghanistan Migrants Advice and Support Organisation (AMASO) with Abdul Ghafoor, an Afghan man who was forcibly returned to Afghanistan following a failed application for asylum in Norway. AMASO was initially supported by money from Norway to support others on return, for example by accessing IOM packages and providing advice to those who didn't understand what was happening. Dr Schuster trained Mr Ghafoor and provided initial funding, but he now runs the organisation himself, funded from external grants. AMASO provides information to those returned to Afghanistan and to those wishing to leave the country, explaining processes to them, options and support available, helping to channel support and occasionally facilitating skype or video-conferencing for out of country appeals. It also provides limited accommodation for up to 10 men in Kabul. In the last three years, Abdul Ghafoor has been contacted by more than 300 individuals and Dr Schuster remains in contact with him to discuss cases. Of that number, he has interviewed 180 people and Dr Schuster was present for about 40 of those interviews. Of those 300 people, they have lost touch with 75, about 65 have left Afghanistan and 40 remain in Afghanistan, of which 20 are in Kabul. At present, Dr Schuster is following 18 families after return to Afghanistan, which includes a range of ethnic tribes, people from both Kabul and the provinces, and a mix of people from different income groups and family sizes. The project is looking at their plans, hopes and fears for the future. Dr Schuster was specifically asked about living conditions and economic survival in Kabul and the present humanitarian situation. In particular, she was asked to consider sources of independent support; employment opportunities; levels of subsistence; destitution; shelter/accommodation and accessible amenities; and availability of healthcare; as well as the situation for IDPs. Dr Schuster's report was based in part on fieldwork with those who have been returned or their families and in part informed by first-hand experience of time in the country, hearing comments, concerns and questions from Afghans. Overall, we found Dr Schuster's evidence to be clear, comprehensive, well-researched from both written sources and contacts in Afghanistan and based on her own in-depth experience from living in Afghanistan, working with those who have been returned there and through AMASO. We attach significant weight to Dr Schuster's evidence which we found to be of great value in understanding the socio-economic conditions in Kabul. The only slight caution we have considered when assessing her evidence, which is in no way a criticism of it, is to note that the returnees that she has had direct or indirect exposure to are a very small number of those who had been forcibly returned to Kabul in the last five years, out of the hundreds of thousands forcibly returned from Pakistan, Iran and the west in the last 12 months alone and that those persons are likely to be in the most difficult situations to have sought assistance from AMASO (because those returnees leading a relatively normal life without significant difficulties in Kabul would have no need to seek such assistance). Dr Antonio Giustozzi is a Senior Visiting Professor at the War Studies Department of Kings College London and was previously a visiting research fellow at the London School of Economics and Political Science, Development Studies Institute. Dr Giustozzi has been working on issues in relation to Afghanistan since 2003, at its peak he would spend about three months a year there, it is currently down to a few weeks each year depending on work. He has had numerous books and articles published in relation to Afghanistan and is a relatively frequent visitor to Afghanistan. The methodology used by Dr Giustozzi depends on the nature of the project but in general is less reliant on written sources which there is a shortage of, and relies more on interviews with the government, the opposition, civil society and opposition parties. Dr Giustozzi has two researchers or research managers in Kabul and also works with Afghans and experienced journalists for both contacts and information. He recognises that sources may have their own agenda and he seeks out as many sources as possible to compare and test for reliability. Dr Giustozzi has given expert evidence in a number of country guidance cases before the Upper Tribunal and has broadly been found to be knowledgeable with reliable analysis of the issues, particularly when his reports were limited to uncontentious facts rather than prepared on the basis of assumptions about a particular appellant. In this appeal, Dr Giustozzi was specifically asked about the Taliban and any risk to the Appellant from them if he internally relocated to Kabul and whether there would be any sufficiency of protection from the Taliban in Kabul. Overall, we found Dr Giustozzi to be knowledgeable about the Taliban's activities and modus operandi in Afghanistan based on his significant experience and work in this field. We found his written report to be relatively brief with less explanation and reasoning for the conclusions reached than could have been expected in the circumstances of this appeal. However, his oral evidence was much clearer, with more express analysis and reasoning to support his propositions. We found that he was clear as to where assumptions had been made based on his experience and knowledge and where there was (or was not) supporting evidence to the views given. However, there were inconsistencies within Dr Giustozzi's evidence which are difficult to reconcile, which we deal with in the specific evidence sections below and there is a lack of support by other commentators for some of his conclusions (such as from Borhan Osman (a political analyst in the Afghanistan Analysts Network who focuses on insurgent groups) on the existence of the black list and use of targeted hit teams, recorded in the EASO Country of Origin Information Report "Afghanistan Individuals targeted by armed actors in the conflict" (December 2017)). Overall, we found Dr Giustozzi to have given thorough evidence to which we also attach weight. We pause here to record that we have attached significant weight to the EASO Country of Origin Information Reports, which are thoroughly researched and comprehensive reports from a broad range of sources. In some respects, there was an overlap between some of the evidence given by Dr Schuster and Dr Giustozzi as to the need for or relevance of support networks in Kabul for employment and accommodation purposes. We pause at this point to note that their evidence on this issue was not entirely consistent and set out the detail below in the relevant sections. Ms Emily Winterbotham is a Senior Research Fellow at the Royal United Services Institute in the International Security Studies Department, prior to which she has been a researcher for the Afghanistan Research and Evaluation Unit and as a Political Advisor for the Office of the European Union Special Representative. She lived and worked in Afghanistan between 2009 and 2015 and since then has returned for five weeks in total for various pieces of work. She has had a number of papers, articles and reports published and has conducted research for a number of different bodies, including the UK Foreign Office and Department for International Development. Ms Winterbotham was specifically asked about the security situation in Kabul and to what extent this is changed since the Upper Tribunal's assessment in 2012 in AK . In particular, she was asked about security incidents, casualties and human rights abuses in Kabul and the willingness and/or ability of the authorities to offer protection to the population. In addition, specific questions were asked about the risk of forcible recruitment by anti-government elements; of kidnapping; of bonded or hazardous labour; and of violence, including sexual violence. Overall, we found Ms Winterbotham's evidence to be of significantly less assistance and carry far less weight than the other experts due to her approach to writing her report and giving evidence generally. Although we accept that this was Ms Winterbotham's first experience of appearing in the Upper Tribunal as an expert witness in a country guidance case, we find her approach to this task to be of concern. In particular, it became apparent from her oral evidence that when writing her report, Ms Winterbotham approached the task by using material that she already had available to her and had amassed over the years in her work, rather than undertaking any specific further investigation into particular points or checking for updates to or additional sources to the material that she did rely upon. The material that she had available to her was collected for a range of different purposes over a period of time which preceded her instructions and whilst not necessarily irrelevant to the questions asked of her, was not specifically collected for this purpose nor was it necessarily up to date or the most relevant material on which reliance could or should have been placed. In many instances, material relied upon dated back as far as 2008 and 2009, and a significant proportion of sources were from the period before AK was heard in the Upper Tribunal. There was also an example of a draft article being relied upon as a source despite the fact it was not the final version which was published. It was also clear during the course of her oral evidence that there were inaccuracies in the footnotes in Ms Winterbotham's report and that she had significant difficulty identifying whether her evidence was her own opinion or whether sourced from other evidence (both in the written report and in oral evidence). Where there was a claimed source, some were wrongly identified in the footnotes and many were not specifically or even generally identified at all for various reasons which were unexplained on the face of the report and at best only partially explained in oral evidence. Further, there was at least one instance where it was not clear whether a source was an editorial or a news story. This is in contrast to Dr Giustozzi's evidence during which he could identify sources (with sufficient generality to know the organisation and level of person within it, even if not by name) and identify where his evidence was based either on particular source material or his own conclusions. In some parts, Ms Winterbotham also accepted in oral evidence that risks based on particular characteristics (such as age, which she referred to as her nuance on the facts of this case further to reports in which the conclusions were much broader, for example being applicable to men of any age) in parts of her report were included because they were the particular characteristics of this Appellant, rather than because there was any supporting evidence or reasoning for that being separately identified as a risk or relevant characteristic. That approach is particularly unhelpful in the context of a country guidance case where general guidance is to be given applicable to many more people than this individual Appellant and was of particular concern when this was not clear on the face of her written report. Further, terminology used in the report was not defined, and used interchangeably, for example, there was a lack of clarity on whether a reference was being made to an IDP or to a returnee, or both. It was accepted that an IDP was distinct from a returnee but there were examples of Ms Winterbotham answering questions about an IDP by talking about returnees. This approach to giving expert evidence in a country guidance case falls below the standards set out in paragraph 10 of the Senior President's Practice Direction No 10 (2010) (set out in full in Appendix D) and the decision of the Upper Tribunal in MOJ and Others (Return to Mogadishu) Somalia CG [2014] UKUT 00442 (IAC), which we would have expected and consequently significantly reduces the weight which we have attached to the evidence as we are not persuaded that it is comprehensive or up to date. For the reasons set out above, we have approached Ms Winterbotham's evidence with caution. However, we do acknowledge Ms Winterbotham's extensive experience of living and working in Afghanistan as well as her detailed knowledge of specific areas of work that she has been involved in and we do take her evidence into account for these reasons. Evidence on risk Risk from the Taliban Before setting out the evidence, primarily from Dr Giustozzi, of the specific situation in Kabul, we set out the evidence (also primarily from Dr Giustozzi) as to Taliban operations and priorities more generally for background and context. Dr Giustozzi gave evidence as to the sophisticated structure of the Taliban who have significant manpower and financial resources. The Taliban is of the view that they are the legitimate government of Afghanistan and seek to establish their own regime there with shadow governments and departments, albeit with a decentralised structure involving multiple centres of power and a weak hierarchy. In some areas where they are in control (perhaps 40 to 50 districts out of 318 in Afghanistan), the Taliban have set up a real government, including appointing a mayor, employing people to run basic city administration and setting up courts. In contrast where they are not in control of an area, the Taliban operate underground. The Taliban have extensive physical infrastructure and staff both in Afghanistan and abroad and the total manpower exceeds 200,000 men (including paid in support elements), of which 150,000 are fighters (60,000 members of full time mobile units, the remainder are local militias) and on top of that number Dr Giustozzi estimates there would be a few hundred thousand sympathisers and unpaid supporters. The Taliban raise revenue through tax on economic activity as well as raising money from external organisations and there are estimates that they have a budget of between $1.5 and $2 billion a year from these sources. Dr Giustozzi describes the decentralised structure of the Taliban as including five or six Shuras (one, that of Mullah Rasul in western Afghanistan is set apart from the others) which are autonomous centres of power, away from a central leadership and who operate on their own authority. There are Military Commissioners at provincial level. There are 10 districts in each province and within those districts there are individual Taliban commanders. The EASO Report "Afghanistan Individuals targeted by armed actors in the conflict" refers to a single Shura (the Rahbari Shura, also commonly referred to as the Quetta Shura) and to an ongoing decline in the provincial and district structures. The Taliban have dedicated units at the provincial level (at least one in each province), with a team of 20 or so Taliban intelligence operatives tasked with hunting down and executing collaborators. In Kabul, the Taliban have two separate networks. The first is dedicated to conflicts operations, for example fighters attacking high-profile targets. The structure of this network is insulated from other Taliban structures for security reasons to prevent infiltration or complex attacks being compromised. The second network focuses on collection of intelligence and routine targeting of wanted individuals, for example two-man assassination teams, planting mines on cars and other small-scale attacks. Dr Giustozzi referred to claims that there were a few hundred people in such networks, including those providing support such as safe houses and intelligence. Those who carry out specific attacks are normally from outside of Kabul, often coming from Pakistan, being brought into the city to be deployed a few days before a planned attack. The EASO report "Afghanistan Individuals targeted by armed actors in the conflict" included evidence from other sources casting doubt on the existence of such specific dedicated units operating. Dr Giustozzi's oral evidence was that these dedicated units each establish their own targets based on priorities and available intelligence, albeit his written report referred to evidence from Judge Safi (a Taliban Judge interviewed by one of Dr Giustozzi's researchers on 23 June 2016) that priorities were set by the military leader of each province. His evidence was however consistent on the highest priority being those who posed the greatest threat to the Taliban - senior serving government officials, the security services and spies. At a lower priority level Dr Giustozzi referred to deserters and collaborators although not necessarily in that order, depending on how you defined both. There are two types of deserters, those who simply left or quit the Taliban (such as for personal reasons like a sick family member) and those who defected to the government, who would be seen as a collaborator. The latter being more serious but there was a need to discourage anyone leaving and a concern that someone may become an informant when they left. Collaborators could include all those who defy Taliban rules or are seen to be in-line with the government. Collaborators would include all security forces, government authorities, foreign embassies, the UN, NGOs and anyone passing information to the government about the Taliban. These collaborators could number several hundred thousand people and Dr Giustozzi accepted that the Taliban do not have the resources to possibly individually follow up on all of them. Although successful targeting by the Taliban of high-profile targets is their highest priority because of the impact of such attacks, it is more difficult to achieve this given that they are the best protected and it involves larger teams of people, many of whom would be killed in the effort. Dr Giustozzi explained that as the Taliban believe they are the legitimate government, they need to demonstrate to the public that they are the legitimate authority whose goals and regulations are to be respected. It is therefore considered necessary to also take action against a person of low-level interest when the opportunity arises rather than named individuals because of the Taliban's need to show that they are serious about sentencing people, enforcing their regulations and because it helps to scare people leading to the collapse of the government. In these cases, who is killed is less important than the numbers killed, with any assassinations still making the headlines. The Taliban introduced a new system from around 2006, which has been quite mature from 2010, for the identification, warning, trying and sentencing of persons before a sentence is carried out. Those who are targeted are limited to those who have already been sentenced by a Taliban court. Once a sentence has been imposed it remains forever until carried out. It is only those who have been warned and sentenced who can legitimately be targeted by the Taliban. However, EASO in their report "Afghanistan Individuals targeted by armed actors in the conflict" refer to evidence of violence and targeting based on personal or local disputes outside of this system. Dr Giustozzi describes a "blacklist", containing the names of around 14,500 people who are wanted by the Taliban. He has never seen such a list, nor does he have clear or comprehensive details on the nature and use of such a list and accepts that he has been unable to corroborate information about the blacklist. The EASO report "Afghanistan Individuals targeted by armed actors in the conflict" also finds no specific evidence to support the existence of or details about the blacklist, although at least one source was also of the view that the Taliban does keep a blacklist of priority targets and another that local commanders may have their own lists but no centrally organised list. Dr Giustozzi is of the view that the blacklist does exist because of the information to that effect he has had from the Taliban, because of the known warnings given to people and because it would be logical to maintain such a list. Dr Giustozzi did not know whether there was a single or master blacklist but referred to a central information hub in Peshawar, with connected small hubs in Afghanistan and he presumed that the Taliban would make use of the computers they are known to have to maintain the blacklist, by using their sophisticated infrastructure in Pakistan, Iran and Afghanistan. Information about the blacklist would be passed via a courier system, with messages being carried by individuals using memory or writing. In his written report, Dr Giustozzi stated that information about collaborators is exchanged between all components of the Taliban, excluding the Shura of Mullah Rasul (or Rasool, both spellings are used, who has its own list) but in oral evidence stated that it was unknown whether the Shuras coordinate on such matters. A complete copy of the blacklist would be available to all of the Shuras but not at a provincial or lower level. Instead, a Shura would only share names of people on the list who they thought were in their province with the Military Commissioner responsible for that area. The Military Commissioner would then decide what names to share at the district level, which would then in turn be shared with individual commanders in relation to people that intelligence showed were within that person's particular area. As a result, an individual commander would only likely to have a few names from the blacklist, the full list being unmanageable, a security risk and impractical to carry for use in printed form. Dr Giustozzi's evidence was that the blacklist may be given to members of the Taliban and paid agents (who may get a version of the list) but it is not likely to be shared with informers. Local Taliban may, with permission, have access to the blacklist if a request for such access is justified, for example, to check whether a local suspect is wanted. It is assumed that high profile individuals or those who pose a serious danger to the Taliban, such as spies, are automatically on the blacklist as are wanted people, but for those at a lower level, they would only be added if they had received two warnings from the Taliban (which would be sent to or left at the address of the individual). An individual failing to comply with two warnings would then be sentenced for the crime of collaborating with the enemy. The sentence takes the shape of a third letter or verbal communication, passed on to the collaborator or somebody close to him. A sentence implies that the individual has been added to the blacklist. Not all of those who received warnings would be added to the blacklist, as it allowed people an opportunity to change or repent, or to make deals with the Taliban instead. A person could not be targeted simply because they were a relative of a person who is a target or a threat to the Taliban. Dr Giustozzi assumed that the details included on the blacklist would be a person's name, father's name and place of birth as that is the usual way to identify people in Afghanistan. Dr Giustozzi's evidence on whether a person could be removed from the blacklist was that this was possible only in one of two ways. First, by death and secondly, by contribution to the Taliban's cause in such a way that the individual would be offered an amnesty. In his written report, he said that sentences issued from 1996 onwards remained valid and would be implemented by the Taliban whenever possible and that events a significant time in the past would not affect that. However, the likelihood of a particular target being picked from the blacklist depends on the Taliban's operational environment and in oral evidence, he stated that a person who had done something a long time ago and had a lower profile would be a lower priority for the Taliban as they would be likely to pose a lesser risk of damage to them. Dr Giustozzi's evidence described the increasing sophistication of the Taliban's intelligence operation and ability to track down individuals, by reference to a significant number of informers, including agents within the government and the intelligence services. He refers to government officials' belief referred to in an article in 2011 in the Los Angeles Times that even in areas of weak Taliban presence the Taliban are informed of everything that happens. Elders in Taliban villages have also confirmed the existence of informers in the local area but who cannot be identified specifically. The evidence that Dr Giustozzi relies on from Judge Safi is that the Taliban are able to monitor who enters Afghanistan that their intelligence has people at Kabul airport and elsewhere who provide regular reports about new arrivals. Arrivals in small places are easily spotted, but less so in large cities and people living alone tend to attract attention because it is highly unusual to live alone in Afghan society. In terms of targeting of wanted individuals, Dr Giustozzi's evidence was that intelligence is used to track a person's movements and information is shared if there is specific intelligence that a person has moved into a different province or area or that such movement is expected so that a temporary checkpoint can be erected by the Taliban to stop someone. The Taliban uses temporary checkpoints in such cases on the roads out of Kabul to identify specific targets based on specific intelligence about the type of car they would be travelling in and the time of travel. These checkpoints may also have the benefit of stopping other individuals who have not been specifically targeted but who, for example, look nervous or are dressed in a particular way such as to arouse interest or adverse attention. Despite this background primarily from his written report and his conclusions set out therein, in oral evidence Dr Giustozzi was of the view that unless references were sought specifically from the Appellant's home village (which would be required for stable employment or formally rented accommodation, not accommodation in a dormitory or casual labour), no one would know the Appellant's whereabouts and there would be very little chance that the Taliban would even know he was in Afghanistan. Taliban informers in Kabul would not necessarily know that the Appellant was wanted (even if he was on the blacklist). The EASO report "Afghanistan Individuals targeted by armed actors in the conflict", relying on an interview with Abubakar Siddique (a senior correspondent specialising in coverage of Afghanistan and Pakistan and editor of 'Ganhara' website), states that the list of people for whom the Taliban will invest resources and planning to track and target into the major cities is limited to between a few dozen and up to a hundred persons. Other than targeting involving personal enmities, rivalries or disputes, Mr Siddique's view was that the Taliban would probably not target lower level individuals or their family members after relocating to the cities. As the Respondent accepts that there is no sufficiency of protection from the Taliban in Kabul, we do not detail in this decision Dr Giustozzi's evidence reaching the same conclusion. Risk of recruitment to an armed group In the Afghan context, there appears to be no agreement about the meaning of forced recruitment to armed groups, instead commentators refer to mobilisation of fighters and agreement within social structures for recruitment, albeit with the use of coercion, duress or force in some cases. There is also the possibility that the term forced recruitment necessarily applies to children because they're not old enough to make an informed choice as opposed to a more literal use of force for their recruitment. Dr Giustozzi and Ms Winterbotham gave evidence as to the traditional method of Taliban recruitment, which works through family, tribal and ethnic local religious networks, also using local specialised cells in Afghanistan and significant recruitment pools in Pakistan. Recruitment would usually be because someone is a member of a tribal or kinship group and is instructed to join by elders. Recruitment is not necessarily on an ideological basis but can be through incentives for individuals (such as protection, cash, motorcycles, mobile phones and credit for them) as well as through coercion or direct threats. A person is most likely to be recruited through tribal, clan or family ties. Ms Winterbotham accepted that there was limited evidence of armed groups using threats and coercion in order to force individuals to join them in Kabul and limited evidence of this elsewhere as well, albeit noting that there was a lack of monitoring information in Afghanistan which meant the absence of documented instances should not itself justify the conclusion that they did not occur. In the alternative to forced recruitment or mobilisation, Ms Winterbotham gave evidence as to individuals feeling compelled to join armed groups, not limited to the Taliban. She referenced a significant body of work relating to both developed and developing countries on radicalisation and recruitment by armed groups albeit noting that the theories do not necessarily apply in the context of different countries or conditions. Overall, she stated that whether a person feels compelled to join an armed group is not a linear assessment but a complex nonlinear process for which it is not possible to profile individuals. Instead there are a number of factors or drivers for recruitment which may be relevant, including social and economic factors (such as lack of social structures, lack of housing, lack of employment, issues of achieving manhood and desirability of marriage), economic incentives, status for an individual and an opportunity to seek glory. There is also the possibility of individuals joining armed groups for reasons of protection, or conversely for honour and revenge in the context of the Pashtunwali code of honour. Dr Giustozzi argues that the importance of revenge should not be overstated given that revenge is most frequently directed at an individual, extending in some cases to male kin but not more general targets. In addition to the above, Ms Winterbotham accepted that a person could also choose to join the police or security forces in Afghanistan for similar reasons, albeit this is a less attractive option given the significant casualties suffered from these groups, that salaries offered are lower than those from militant groups and recruitment into the government forces requires a high degree of vetting. Ms Winterbotham's evidence was that there is greater evidence about children being at risk of forced recruitment than adults, but there was a continuing vulnerability for teenagers and those into their 20s and 30s who are not married, extending to a general risk for able-bodied men of any age. In her oral evidence, Ms Winterbotham was unable to substantiate her view that risk is not significantly reduced by increasing age per se and that able-bodied men are all at risk of recruitment into an armed group. Risk due to westernisation The EASO Country of Origin Information Report "Afghanistan Individuals targeted under societal and legal norms" (December 2017) includes a specific section on targeting of Afghan returnees on the basis of 'Westernisation' following time spent in Europe or Western countries. Their broad conclusion on this is as follows: "Documented instances of individual targeting of returning Afghans on the basis of 'Westernisation' due to having travelled in or lived in Europe, holding Western ID documents, or adopting ideas that seem to be 'un-Afghan', 'Western' or 'European' following time spent outside Afghanistan were scarce. Varying descriptions by sources indicated that there were 'occasional reports' of alleged kidnapping and targeting, or, that not everyone is at risk, but it 'does happen,' though the scale and prevalence is 'difficult to quantify', or, that targeting does not specifically occur because of having sought asylum or having travelled to Western countries." Dr Schuster, in oral evidence stated that after a person has been out of Afghanistan it would be relatively easy for them on return to change their physical appearance so as not to stand out. However, it would be more difficult to change values and attitudes that have been learnt and developed whilst away from Afghanistan. A person would have to monitor and self-censor their behaviour on return. An individual's capacity to self-censor would depend upon their maturity, their mental health and their ability to be astute about the social surroundings in Afghanistan, being able to pick up on what it is inappropriate to say and to do. Dr Schuster also referred to the assumptions that people make about those who have been away from Afghanistan about their lifestyle, and question whether they have retained their Islamic faith, drink alcohol, or have relationships with women for example. The EASO report "Afghanistan Individuals targeted under societal and legal norms" also refers to perceptions of those on return, including concern that returnees fear being labelled by insurgents as spies and a perception by others that an individual would be wealthy having accumulated funds abroad with the consequent fear of kidnapping for ransom for this reason. There is however very limited evidence of kidnapping other than isolated cases. The EASO report "Afghanistan Individuals targeted under societal and legal norms" does not find any agreement from its sources of a collective or consistent attitude toward 'Westernisation' in Afghan society. There are references to broader Western influence on Afghan society in recent decades due to the international military presence and the increasing popularity, particularly amongst young Afghans, towards Western trends and influences (such as fashion, entertainment and tattoos). There are however strong conservative views held amongst individuals, family groups and wider communities. Both Dr Schuster and the EASO report "Afghanistan Individuals targeted under societal and legal norms" refer to the risk of someone saying the wrong thing at the wrong time, even in Kabul (which generally has a higher tolerance for westernisation than rural areas) which would not necessarily, but may, cause difficulties and because a person has returned from the West could be used against them with accusations made. Further, the sources both refer to the need for guidance on Afghan cultural norms to those who have been absent from the country and the importance of family, friends or connections to support their understanding of the limits and boundaries of societal norms and behavioural expectations. Other Risks There was some, albeit limited, evidence before us of wider risks to individuals in Afghanistan but we do not set out the detail of such potential categories other than to mention, for example by reference to the EASO Country of Origin Information Report "Afghanistan Individuals targeted by armed actors in the conflict" (December 2017), that there is some evidence of risk to individuals involved in education, healthcare, journalism, the security forces, government workers and to Shia Muslims. Ms Winterbotham, consistently with the Samual Hall Report in 2013 "Old Practice, New Chains: Modern Slavery in Afghanistan" also refers to risks of sexual exploitation and trafficking, particularly for children and youths in large, impoverished families, especially when the family is in debt. Girls are most vulnerable between the ages of 11 and 19 years old and younger men, who are most vulnerable between the ages of 11 and 15. In most cases, exploitation is done through the family, by deception or otherwise. In the context of the particular characteristics of the Appellant in this appeal and the country guidance issue of internal relocation to Kabul, together with only very limited evidence before us on these wider risk categories, we consider that it is not appropriate for us to make any general findings in the present country guidance case on any of these matters as they are outwith the scope of this appeal. Evidence relevant to assessing the option of internal relocation The UNHCR position The UNHCR Eligibility Guidelines for assessing the international protection needs of asylum-seekers from Afghanistan, dated 19 April 2016, provides in relation to the option of internal relocation, so far as relevant to the present case, as follows: "An assessment of the availability of an internal flight or relocation alternative (IFA/IRA) requires an assessment of the relevance as well as the reasonableness of the proposed IFA/IRA. An IFA/IRA is relevant only if the proposed area of relocation is practically, safely and legally accessible, and if the individual concerned would not be exposed to a further risk of persecution or serious harm in the area of relocation. In assessing the relevance of an IFA/IRA for Afghan applicants, the following considerations must be taken into account: The volatility and fluidity of the armed conflict in Afghanistan in terms of the difficulty of identifying potential areas of relocation that are durably safe; and The concrete prospects of safely accessing the proposed area of relocation, taking into account the risks associated with the widespread use of IEDs and landmines throughout the country, attacks on fighting taking place on roads, and restrictions on civilians' freedom of movement imposed by AGE's. Where the applicant has a well-founded fear of persecution at the hands of a non-State agent, the ability of the agent to pursue the applicant to the area of proposed relocation needs to be assessed, as well as the ability of the State to provide protection in that area. Where the agent of persecution is an AGE, evidence about AGEs' capacity to carry out attacks outside the area under their effective control needs to be taken into account. Whether an IFA/IRA is reasonable must be determined on a case-by-case basis, taking fully into account the security, human rights and humanitarian environment in a prospective area of relocation at the time of the decision. In particular, the poor living conditions and precarious human rights situation of Afghans who are currently internally displaced in Afghanistan are relevant considerations that need to be taken into account in assessing the reasonableness of a proposed internal flight or relocation alternative. UNHCR considers that a proposed IFA/IRA is reasonable only where the individual has access to (i) shelter, (ii) essential services such as sanitation, healthcare and education; and (iii) livelihood opportunities. Moreover, UNHCR considers an IFA/IRA is reasonable only where the individual has access to a traditional support network of members of his or her (extended) family or members of his or her larger ethnic community in the area of prospective relocation, who have been assessed to be willing and able to provide genuine support to the applicant in practice. UNHCR considers that the only exception to the requirement of external support are single able-bodied men and married couples of working age without identified specific vulnerabilities. Such persons may in certain circumstances be able to subsist without family and community support in urban and semi-urban areas that have the necessary infrastructure and livelihood opportunities to meet the basic necessities of life and that are under effective Government control. Given the breakdown in the traditional social fabric of society caused by decades of war, mass refugee flows and internal displacement, a case-by-case analysis will, nevertheless, be necessary." The Human Rights Watch Report "Pakistan Coercion, UN Complicity: The Mass Forced Return of Afghan Refugees", (February 2017) records the UNHCR, in December 2016, cautioning against returning failed Afghan asylum seekers to Kabul on an internal flight alternative basis for the following reasons: "Kabul faces serious pressures on housing and services, due to years of primary and secondary population displacements resulting in large-scale movements to the city, together with a natural (non-conflict-related) process of urbanization from rural areas. In 2016, the situation was made worse by the fact that more than 25 percent of Afghan returnees from Pakistan went to Kabul. This has immediate consequences for the assessment of Kabul as a proposed internal flight alternative, in particular with regards to the [criterion] of "reasonableness." The considerations presenting in the April 2016 [Eligibility] Guidelines remain relevant for assessments of Kabul as an internal flight alternative. In the context of a dramatic increase in competition for access to scarce resources, the availability of an IFA will need to be considered on a case-by-case basis, taking into account the particular circumstances of the individual applicant." The security situation The Human Rights Unit of the United Nations Assistant Mission in Afghanistan (UNAMA) is mandated by UN Security Council Resolutions to monitor and report on the situation of civilians in the armed conflict in Afghanistan, particularly on civilian casualties. UNAMA has produced a number of mid-year and annual reports on the Protection of Civilians in Armed Conflict in Afghanistan since 2009. Before setting out the content of the most recent reports, it is important to bear in mind the methodology used by UNAMA when compiling the data. The incidents that are included of civilian casualties include wherever possible on-site investigations and are compiled from information obtained directly by UNAMA. For verification of each incident involving a civilian casualty, UNAMA requires at least three different and independent types of sources. If UNAMA are not satisfied with the quantity or quality of information concerning an incident, it will not consider it is verified and unverified incidents are not included in the report. For these reasons, UNAMA does not claim that the statistics presented in their reports are complete and they acknowledge possible underreporting of civilian casualties given the limitations inherent in their operating environment. Dr Schuster reiterated a commonly held view that because of the strict methodology employed by UNAMA, the number of civilian casualties were likely to be underreported. This was also likely to be because those who have been killed will normally be buried within 24 hours and there is no follow-up on those who are seriously injured who may die at a later date and not all deaths are reported. She gave an example of official data from a recent attack on a mosque which stated that 35 to 37 people had died, however she spoke to a taxi driver who lost four members of his own family and 30 who were killed in the same attack were buried on the same day at the same cemetery he was at, suggesting casualties were much higher. Dr Schuster's view, based on experience as well as interviews with senior advisers to the justice sector support programme in the Ministry of Justice, a lieutenant colonel in the Army and a journalist, is that casualty numbers given by the authorities in Afghanistan are deliberately kept as low as possible to reduce panic amongst the public. The UNAMA mid-year report for 2017 shows armed conflict continuing to cause severe harm to civilians across Afghanistan, killing and injuring civilians at levels similar to the same period in 2016 (1 January to 30 June). In the first half of 2017, there were 5,243 documented civilian casualties, comprising 1,662 deaths and 3,581 injured. The key trends observed were that there was an overall decrease in civilian casualties from ground engagement and increases in civilian casualties from improvised explosive devices (IEDs), with 40% of civilian casualties resulting from the latter in civilian populated areas. The majority of civilian casualties from IEDs occurred in the context of suicide and complex attacks. The second leading cause of civilian casualties remained ground engagements but there was a 10% decrease in civilian casualties from this compared to the same period in 2016. The majority of civilian casualties, 67%, were attributed to Anti-Government Elements ("AGEs") (made up of 43% Taliban, 19% unidentified AGEs, 5% Daesh/ISKP); followed by 18% attributed to Pro-Government forces; 10% jointly attributed (for example in cross-fire incidents) and 5% other (for example from detonation of explosive remnants and cross-border shelling and shooting). In relation to Kabul specifically, "Kabul province continued to record the highest number of civilian casualties, mainly in Kabul city. Of the 1,048 civilian casualties (219 deaths and 829 injured) documented in Kabul province, 94 per cent resulted from suicide and complex attacks carried out by Anti-Government Elements in Kabul city." This was a 26% rise compared to 2016 and 70% of all civilian casualties from suicide and complex attacks occurred in Kabul city, most of whom resulted from a relatively small number of incidents. Although the casualty figures are highest in Kabul (city and province) this is also the area with the highest population and highest density of population. Population estimates for Kabul city range between 3.5 and 7 million people. The Respondent, assuming that the total civilian casualties for 2017 based on figures from the UNAMA mid-year report are 2,100, submits that that shows a very low percentage of the population affected. Even if there were 5000 civilian casualties in a year, based on a population of 4.5 million, that still equates to less than 0.01% of the population affected. The number of security incidents per province varies considerably, with southern regions being historically being the worst affected. The "EASO Country of Origin Information Report, Afghanistan: Security Situation" (December 2017) sets out in the two maps reproduced at Appendix C, first, the security incidents per province from September 2016 to May 2017 and in the second map, the number of security incidents compared to population for the same period. On neither measure is Kabul the worst affected province and as measured by incidents per 1000 inhabitants, it is one of the least affected provinces. Following the mid-year report in 2017, UNAMA provided a shorter quarterly report to 30 September 2017 which showed an overall slight decrease of 6% in the number of civilian casualties compared to the same period last year, with 8019 in total (2640 deaths and 5379 injured). UNAMA's observations in their mid-year report for 2017 are as follows: "The armed conflict continued unabated in Afghanistan during the first six months of 2017. As in 2016, sustained ground fighting between Anti-Government Elements and Pro-Government Forces in numerous provinces across the country coincided with asymmetric attacks in villages, towns, and cities by Anti-Government elements, mainly using indiscriminate tactics. Reflecting the extent to which the armed conflict invaded the lives of Afghans countrywide during the first of the year, violence killed and maimed civilians in nearly every conceivable setting of day-to-day life. Civilians lost their lives, limbs, sight or suffered harm while inside of their own homes, travelling on public roads, attending classes, praying in mosques, purchasing food, playing outside, working in offices, labouring in agricultural fields, visiting the bank and lying in hospital beds. While this report documents extreme civilian harm throughout Afghanistan, the findings within can never accurately portray the extent of human suffering endured by thousands of Afghan civilians affected by conflict during the first half of 2017. Beyond the egregious cases of civilian death or injury highlighted in this report, armed conflict changed the lives of countless civilians through displacement and damage to homes, schools, and medical clinics amongst other facilities all of which restricted access to education, healthcare, and economic opportunities, including gainful employment. The psychological trauma imposed on members of the civilian population and local communities by the loss of family and friends in violent and unpredictable circumstances, and by the ever-present risk of becoming civilian casualties themselves, must not be understated. The changing composition of civilian casualties during the first six months of 2017 raises serious concerns regarding civilian protection. Despite a decrease in civilian casualties in ground engagements, including a substantial decrease in the number of civilian deaths caused by ground fighting between Anti-Government Elements and Pro-Government Forces, civilian casualty numbers remained at similar levels to the first half of 2016 with increases in child deaths and women casualties. Anti-Government Elements continue to display contempt for civilian lives by using indiscriminate tactics and perpetrating attacks deliberately targeting, killing and injuring civilians in violation of international humanitarian law. Attacks targeting civilian Government workers, tribal elders, religious leaders, and civilians perceived to support the Government continued. Even where Anti-Government Elements appeared to direct attacks at non-civilian objects, indiscriminate and disproportionate tactics were often used principally the detonation of explosive weapons in civilian-populated areas. This meant that Afghan civilians often bore the brunt of such attacks, regardless of the target. Such methods also generated disproportionate civilian casualties on numerous occasions." The UNAMA 'Afghanistan Annual Report on Protection of Civilians in Armed Conflict: 2016' followed a mandate in the same terms as the mid-year report in 2017 and the same methodology. In summary, that report concluded: "Conflict-related violence exacted a heavy toll on Afghanistan in 2016, with an overall deterioration in civilian protection and the highest total civilian casualties recorded since 2009 when UNAMA began systematic documentation of civilian casualties. Against a backdrop of protracted ground fighting, the battlefield permeated civilian sanctuaries that should be spared from harm, with suicide attacks in mosques; targeted attacks against district centres, bazaars and residential homes; and the use of schools and hospitals for military purposes. Between 1 January and 31 December, UNAMA documented 11,418 civilian casualties (3,498 deaths and 7,920 injured) In 2016, UNAMA documented record numbers of civilian casualties from ground engagements, suicide and complex attacks and explosive remnants of war, as well as the highest number of civilian casualties caused by aerial operations since 2009. Increases in civilian deaths and injuries from these tactics drove the overall three per cent rise in civilian casualties, while civilian casualties from improvised explosive devices and targeted and deliberate killings decreased." We have also been provided with copies of the annual reports from UNAMA for 2011, 2012, 2013, 2014, 2015 and the mid-year report for 2016. The overall trend shown in these reports is that the number of civilian casualties are increasing year on year (since UNAMA records began in 2009) with significant increases in 2013 and then year on year from 2014. The earlier reports show significant increases in civilian casualties due to ground engagements, albeit this trend appears to be reversing in the two most recent reports set out above, with IEDs becoming the reason for the majority of civilian casualties in the last 12-18 months. The earlier reports also show disproportionate increases in civilian casualties of women and children which are not highlighted in the same way in the most recent reports. The Appellant has produced a schedule of major security incidents causing or risking civilian casualties in Kabul from 1 January 2016 to 17 November 2017 (compiled from various sources and news articles/reports, most of which were in evidence before us). That document provides an overview of 141 incidents, the casualty figures and detail of the incidents where known from news or other sources. That schedule refers to many complex attacks, the majority of which are targeted attacks on politicians, members of the military, security or police forces, mosques (in particular Shia mosques), NGOs or involve international actors either as part of embassies or individuals. There are in almost every example additional deaths and casualties from those in the immediate vicinity in addition to those specifically targeted. The list also includes a not insignificant number of bomb or rocket attacks without specific targeting and also a smaller number of incidents which could be described as arising from a criminal situation such as armed robbery. The incidents recorded involve casualties ranging from several hundred (the largest being the attack on 31 May 2017 which killed 92 and injured 491) down to a single person or few individuals. The EASO Report "Afghanistan: Security Situation" states that there were 290 security incidents in Kabul City between 1 September 2016 and 31 May 2017. These included 24 incidents of violence targeting individuals; 23 of armed confrontations and airstrikes; 63 explosions; 49 involving security enforcement; 112 non-conflict related incidents and 19 other incidents. The Appellant has also produced various maps which show that the incidents set out in their schedule of major security incidents (referred to above and produced from the same sources where location was identified) evidenced before us are geographically spread around Kabul city rather than being concentrated in a particular area or areas. In addition to the security situation set out above, there was also some evidence before us of not insignificant levels of crime in Kabul, but a lack of detail of particular crime rates or risk and nothing that suggested there was any greater risk of being a victim of crime for one group of people (such as returnees) compared to any other resident of Kabul. Overview of conditions in Afghanistan Before setting out the evidence in relation to specific indicators relevant to the reasonableness of internal relocation and in relation to Kabul specifically, we note for context and an overview, the following summary of the situation in Afghanistan from the United Nations Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs ("UNOCHA") in December 2017, as set out in its report "Humanitarian Needs Overview 2018": "Afghanistan is one of the world's most complex humanitarian emergencies, characterised by escalating conflict, causing over one million people to be living in new and prolongued displacement. In 2018, 3.3 million people will need life-saving assistance. Violations of international humanitarian and human rights law are commonplace, with frequent reports of summary executions, kidnappings, and attacks on civilian infrastructure. Civilian casualties are at the highest levels seen with 8,019 documented in the first nine months of the year. Two thirds of these civilian casualties were women and children. Amidst growing signs that what was once a low intensity conflict has now escalated into a war, the UN strategic review of 2017 reclassified Afghanistan from a post-conflict country to one in active conflict. Sustained levels of displacement 360,000 people have been internally displaced so far during 2017 combined with ongoing returnee influxes of more than 546,000 have also had a profound impact in parts of the country; overloading health facilities, schools, depressing labour wages and increasing rents. Conflict affected and returnee populations are also more likely to utilise negative coping mechanisms such as early and forced marriage, child labour, and family separation. They are also likely to be exposed to domestic and sexual violence and, even secondary and multiple displacement. Over 50 percent of people displaced by conflict in Afghanistan have now been displaced twice or more, compared to just seven percent five years ago. After four decades of conflict, there are huge economic and development challenges in the country, which cannot be remedied by humanitarian aid. Approximately 39 percent of the population live below the poverty line, an estimated 10 million people have limited or no access to essential health services, and as many as 3.5 million children are out of school. Some 1.9 million people are severely food insecure, predominantly due to lack of or limited access to sustainable job opportunities, while 40 percent of all children under the age of five are stunted. In total, the humanitarian community has identified that 8.7 million people have chronic needs which require longer-term systemic actions to address" It is to be noted that the approach in the UNOCHA "Humanitarian Needs Overview" has changed significantly between the 2017 and 2018 report due to the reclassification of Afghanistan as one in active conflict. This has led to the 2018 report focusing on acute needs arising from distinct drivers (including conflict, natural disasters and cross border influxes) rather than chronic needs arising from years of structural challenges and underdevelopment in Afghanistan. For further context, the summary in the UNOCHA "Humanitarian Needs Overview 2017" (based on the previous approach) included the following: "Afghanistan remains one of the dangerous, and most violent, crisis ridden countries in the world. The continued deepening and geographic spread of the conflict has prompted a 13% increase in the number of people in need of humanitarian assistance in 2017, now 9.3 million. ... The country is facing increasing numbers of people on the move. In 2016 the conflict has led to unprecedented levels of displacement, reaching half a million in November the highest number recorded to date. 56% of the displaced are children and face particular risk of abuse, and exploitation, as well as interrupted school attendance and harmful child labour. Multiple forms of GBV, particularly early and forced marriage, domestic, psychological, and sexual abuse are reported, affecting individuals in hosting and displaced communities alike. Further, a lack, or loss of civil documentation, with difficulties in obtaining documents outside of the province of origin, regularly results in hindered access to services for considerable numbers of affected individuals. Recent estimates suggest over 9 million people have limited or no access to essential health services. Severe food insecurity is on the rise with 1.6 million people severely food insecure. 2016 nutrition surveys show global acute malnutrition prevalence ranging from 10.9 to 20.7%. Severe acute malnutrition has breached emergency thresholds in 20 of 34 provinces. 1.8 million people require treatment for acute malnutrition, of which 1.3 million children are under five. Magnifying this crisis of forced displacement, 2016 saw the unprecedented return of some 600,000 registered refugees and undocumented Afghans from Pakistan. For the majority, return is triggered by shrinking asylum space and community acceptance, and the experience often abrupt and distressing. After more than 30 years living in Pakistan, many have arrived into an unfamiliar country with few possessions, assets or social support networks." As referred to in part in the extracts above, Afghanistan has experienced significant changes and movement in its population since the beginning of 2016, which follows a period of over four decades which has seen significant movement for conflict (and other) reasons. In 2016, the World Bank estimated that 1 in 5 people in Afghanistan is a returnee following international displacement which has occurred since 1979. In 2016, around 1 million people returned to Afghanistan from Pakistan and Iran, which against a population estimated to be between 28 and 32 million is significant and placed a particular strain on the government and aid organisations who do not have the capacity or resources to meet the needs of such a large number of people. For example, the financial support offered by the UNHCR halved from $400 per person to $200 per person during this period due to lack of resources. In addition, UNOCHA estimated that nearly a million Afgha Pelzer, SC -- (ReleaseWire) -- 04/17/2018 --There are a lot of elements to think about when it comes to home security systems, and that includes how the security system could benefit one and one's family. A quality security system can scare off many would-be burglars and can notify the local authorities if someone does attempt a break-in. According to the latest study, as the number of home security systems increased in an area, the number of residential robberies decreased in that area as well. Having burglar alarm not only protects one but also helps one's neighborhood be a safer place for everyone. Autech LLC has brought new burglar alarm in Greenville and Laurens, South Carolina that allow one to monitor what happens via cameras, as well as control the thermostat, door locks, lights, and other devices in the home. One can also choose to receive notifications if the smoke or carbon monoxide alarms go off when one's away from home. The sense of security and peace one gains with a burglar alarm is perhaps the greatest benefit of all. Next, to be safe, the confidence of feeling safe will help one be a more productive, healthy, and focused person. Adding a burglar alarm to the home gives one an extra layer of defense against any potential intruders. Whether one rents or owns, one can enjoy the benefits that come with having a security system. At Autech LLC, one can explore options with the help of the experts. They are always ready to help the clients identify their security needs and goals and find the right security solution. The company provides seamless installation no matter what type of home one has. Whether it is wired or wireless solutions, they can deliver the same level of security and protection for historic homes, as well as condominiums and townhomes that may have strict guidelines concerning third-party installations. To know more about alarm monitoring in Anderson and Clemson, South Carolina, visit http://www.autechllc.com/commercial-security-alarms. About Autech LLC At Autech, delivering innovative low voltage installation solutions is simply basic math. Since 2006, Autech has employed and maintained a team of experienced professionals who share a passion for developing individually tailored security solutions. A Place for All Conservatives to Speak Their Mind. Picture by South Yorkshire Police A DRIVER was detained by police after crashing his car into a village sign. The incident happened on Friday (April 13) in Brampton en le Morthen and the motorist was found a short distance away from the scene of the collision in a farmers field. A Rotherham South Neighbourhood Police officer said: "Fortunately nobody was injured in this incident, however the village of Brampton en le Morthen now needs a new village sign. The driver has been dealt with for driving offences." A NEW app maps more than 1,200 automated external defibrillators (AEDs) around the region. Yorkshire Ambulance Service (YAS) NHS Trust is launching the Save a Life app to raise awareness of where the devices can be found in an emergency. Originally developed by South Central Ambulance Service, the app has recently been updated to feature 1,288 registered Yorkshire AEDs. Save a Life is iOS and Android compatible and free to download, using GPS to show the location of the nearest defibrillator from wherever the user is in Yorkshire. The location of each AED on the map has been verified by Yorkshire Ambulance Service. The app also provides video guidance on how to perform CPR on someone having a heart attack. It is designed to make people aware of their nearest AED as well as highlighting communities which do not have one. Paul Stevens, YAS head of community resilience, said: There has been a staggering increase in the number of AEDs across Yorkshire. Four years ago there were 100 and today there are 1,288. We would encourage members of the public to proactively use the app to locate their nearest AED so that they can be prepared for an emergency situation. We also hope that communities which dont have the life-saving kit will consider purchasing one via the various funding streams available. The service emphasises that app users should still dial 999 in an emergency, receiving details of the nearest AED and a code needed to access it. Cardiac arrest occurs when the heart stops pumping blood around the body and to the brain. The earlier a patient can receive CPR and a shock from a defibrillator, the greater their chance of survival. Visit bit.ly/2vh6tiW to download the app for Google devices, or apple.co/2viFEel to download for Apple devices. An AED and its secure storage cabinet cost around 1,400. The Yorkshire Ambulance Service Charity provides part-funding grants for the kit, along with various other organisations including the British Heart Foundation. Operation Duxford hits Eastwood A BATTERING ram was used to break down the door of an Eastwood home this morning (Tuesday) as part of Operation Duxford. Police officers found a quantity of tablets inside the abandoned Selborne Street property, which will now be forensically examined. The Advertiser joined police on the frontline as they carried out raids on several homes around 15 in total are due to take place today. Operation Duxford is back in the borough for the third time and will see a range of engagement and enforcement activities throughout the day. The focus of the day will be on drugs markets, organised crime gangs, traffic offenders and benefit fraud as well as immigration offences. Chief Insp Rebecca Chapman said: If you are breaking the law, we will find you and we are coming after you. You will see more police in Rotherham today and we will share our results as soon as they come in. As well as community engagement, officers will be carrying out warrants, traffic stops and targeting wanted offenders. If you want to talk to us about problems in your area, we will listen. Today is as much about positive interaction as it is about putting offenders behind bars, she added. Eastwood, Wellgate, Brinsworth and Kimberworth have been highlighted as areas of concern and officers, along with partners, will host community events and promote youth activities. In Brinsworth, officers will tackle parking issues at Whitehill Primary School, Manor Junior School as well as Waverley, and will carry out patrols in areas identified as having problems with antisocial behaviour. Sheffield Lane in Catcliffe will also be the focus of traffic enforcement. There will be a crime reduction stall at Morrisons at Catcliffe and residents will be asked to fill in surveys about quality of life issues. Operation Duxford is all about us showing members of the community our drive and determination to make Rotherham safe, added CI Chapman. Follow #OpDuxford on Twitter for updates throughout the day. De Beers said its third sightholder sale of the year has provisionally raked in $520 million compared with $586 million, a year earlier. The company earned $563 million from its second sales cycle of 2018. While the second quarter of the year is traditionally a seasonally slower period, we continued to see good rough diamond demand in the third sales cycle of 2018 as diamond businesses have focused on restocking following healthy consumer demand for diamond jewellery in the US and China," said De Beers chief executive Bruce Cleaver. De Beers top competitor, Alrosa of Russia, sold $560 million of diamonds in its March sale. Bloomberg recently reported that De Beers had increased diamond prices for a second straight sale. Citing people familiar with the matter, the news agency alleged that De Beers had upped prices between 1 percent and 2 percent at the third sightholder sale, which was a reflection of what transpired at its previous sale end of February. Bloomberg sources had claimed that the latest De Beers sightholder sale would likely be around $525 million. Mathew Nyaungwa, Editor in Chief of the African Bureau, Rough&Polished For the first time in France, the Van Cleef & Arpels School (also known as Ecole des Arts Joailliers) presents the exceptional collection of precious Art Deco objects collected for the Princess Catherine Aleya Aga Khan, wife of the Prince Sadruddin Aga Khan. Image credit: Van Cleef & Arpels These incredible objects were created for the first wave of liberated women of 1920s, who loved going out, smoking and applied make up in public. Thus, cigarette cases, powder compact and vanity cases had to be not only functional but also beautiful. Their creation is influenced by Chinese, Japanese, Persian and European cultures. These Art Deco objects, masterfully decorated by French craftsmen, have become an example of a remarkable innovativeness, imagination and savoir faire. Victoria Quiri, Rough&Polished The Sidney Chamber of Commerce and Farm Bureau hosted a forum for candidates on Thursday evening, April 12, at the county Extension Office. Twelve candidates for local office were present for the event, running for offices that include County Commissioner, Sheriff, Clerk and Recorder, Justice of the Peace, County Attorney, County Superintendent of Schools, and representatives for House District 35. The forum for the event was relatively simple, with each candidate being given three minutes to briefly introduce themselves and their positions or the purpose of their candidacy. Duane Mitchell began the introductions. Mitchell recalled that when he was a child, his father told him that Democrats were for the poor folks and Republicans for the rich, and so Mitchell knew he wanted to be a Republican. The crowd roared with laughter before Mitchell, who is running unopposed, was notified by a forum official that his time had run out. Next to speak was Kari Sinks, who is running for clerk and recorder against incumbent, Stephanie Verhasselt. Sinks acknowledged that she didn't have as much experience as her opponent but indicated that she was eager to learn the job. Sinks told the audience, "This is my first time doing this and I'm a little unfamiliar with the process. The position is a lot of responsibility. I know a portion of it. What I lack in experience I make up for in drive, in finding answers to what needs answers, and asking someone who knows." Stephanie Verhasselt, who has been in the Clerk and Recorder's office since 2003 and has 15 years of experience, gave a thorough explanation of the job of Clerk and Recorder, and she explained how much the office had improved since her tenure there. Verhasselt siad, "When we first began we were considered a high-risk county and we are no longer a high-risk county." Luke Savage, current Richland County Justice of the Peace, stated, "I'm one of the most passionate people you've ever met about the law." After giving a brief biographical sketch, which included his raising in Sidney, attendance at law school and return to Sidney, Savage explained that his experience as a judge began with his appointment as an occasional fill-in for Judge Greg Mohr. Savage also explained, "I love the law. I love helping people. I think I'm the best candidate for the job. I think I have the knowledge and experience that is required for you to have equal justice in this county and I would appreciate your vote in this election." Ross Hall began by stating that he was color blind and hoped that he didn't offend anyone by the choice of his clothing, to the crowd's laughter. Hall quickly got to his fiery speech, which heralded Montana's tradition of having lay-people serve in the court system, something that is not allowed but in four states across the country. Hall said, "It's interesting to talk about qualifications and what it takes. In 1889 this state set down and this state decided it wanted to set up courts of limited jurisdiction. In 1972 they backed it again when they wrote the second constitution. One of the things they were adamant about is that justice should be applied equally. They want [us] to not omit anything that is written or add anything that is written, but to apply the law equally and justly." Hall continued, "They knew people here in the West, knew what justice was about." Hall went on to claim that he knew a chiropractor would become a judge elsewhere in Montana and would do fine. "Having a piece of paper doesn't make you an expert on anything," Hall reiterated. Next, the third Justice of the Peace candidate, Ray Trumpower, spoke. Trumpower, a resident and judge of Fairview since 2005, explained he didn't need to go into his background much because he knew almost everyone in the room. Being brief, Trumpower said that it was commendable there were so many candidates present and running for office and encouraged people to make wise choices. Next, Tom Halvorson spoke about his candidacy for the position of County Attorney. The two candidates would later field the majority of questions asked by the audience. Halvorson gave a brief introduction to his background, including his Christian commitment and service as a Sunday School teacher, his experience in agriculture and long-term status as resident of the county. Halvorson then explained his long-term tenure as a deputy county attorney. He explained, "I have 23 years of experience of private practice in practically every field of law in Richland County. I have been a deputy county attorney for you for the last 18 years and in that time, I have handled major cases and I have handled major business of the county commissioners and I have handled business of major departments in the county government. As to my competence in this position, the readers of the Sidney Herald voted me the best attorney in Eastern Montana. In criminal cases I have been in six homicide prosecutions. I have been the lead prosecutor in three of those cases." Halvorson went on to explain his pivotal role in getting convictions in the Spell murder case and his experience with the 9th Circuit Court of Appeals. Halvorson iterated that he has always been a Republican, and that he hadn't become a Republican because it's the majority party and easier to win the office. Christoffersen explained that she was raised north of Sidney in the town of Foid. She also spoke to her experience as a deputy county attorney. Christofferson added, "I've enjoyed working in the county attorney's office because I've been able to have really great relationships with the sheriff's department and the courts....I think about the crime, I think about the victim, and I think about the defendant. I don't want to see them again. I also worked on major homicides with the Spell and Waters case. She continued, "I did the search warrants. I bet I did close to fifty search warrants. I did all the background work on that." Christoffersen also explained that she worked on one of the first "no-body cases" in Montana, in which a murder is tried without having a deceased body for evidence. She added, "I am very dedicated to this community." Finishing out the forum were the candidates for House District 35, which included Tanya Rost and Joel Krautter, with Rost speaking first. Rost gave her background, which included being a business owner, mother, and investor in agriculture and experience in oil production. She also explained that her goal was clarity, to explain where she stood on the issues and briefly discussed the issue of compromise. "Where do I stand on compromise? If you're going to compromise, you have to have a position to compromise. Compromise in and of itself is not a position...but first, I prefer a few other words that start with a 'c,' including conviction and conservatism." "If you start with compromise," Rost continued, "then there's no room for conviction." She continued to explain her convictions regarding the Sanctity of Life, gun rights, low taxes, family values, and limited government. "If someone asks why I should own an AR-15 rifle, I would say it's for the necessity of a secure state, which is the point of the Second Amendment," Rost said. "And second, it's my right." Joel Krautter explained that he was the current chairman of the Richland County Central Committee, co-founder of Sidney Young Professionals, a Montanan, sportsman and local attorney. "I'm running for representative because we need a problem solver in Helena that is focused on getting results and who will prioritize the needs of our district, whether it is getting money for schools, whether it's infrastructure, ag issues, oil and gas development, trying to keep more money here in Richland County where the wealth is being produced, that's where my priorities are." "Now how will we do it," Krautter asked. He answered, "I believe that being an effective representative is about building relationships. Relationships matter." Krautter then explained that he hoped to make positive relationships with government officials that would benefit Richland County, warning against those who "think they are going to steam roll" other legislators from around the state. "I think we see a lot of government shutdowns and failed legislation because of that attitude," Krautter said. Most of the questions throughout the evening were posed to Janet Christofferson and Tom Halvorson, regarding their race for County Attorney. Questions were regarding possible changes they would make to the office, as well as several questions asked to clarify their various functions under current County Attorney, Mike Weber. Both Christoffersen and Halvorson agreed that there was no senior deputy attorney, and that they were equals in their respective positions. Christoffersen explained that in the last ten years, she had handled more cases, but Halvorson explained that work-load is assigned by the gravity or seriousness of the case, and not the quantity of the cases. The House District Candidates were asked about their view of private property rights and their opinion regarding the state buying private property. Both candidates, Rost and Krautter, agreed that private property rights are important and neither suggested that the state buying private land would be a good use of resources. Later in the evening, the two were also asked about the possibility of having an annual session in Helena rather than bi-annual, and both agreed that there might be benefits of the notion, but it would have to be further researched. The two were also asked about what some perceive as bad legislation passed at "the twelfth hour" and how much compromise they would be willing to engage in from the beginning to get good legislation passed. Rost explained that often infrastructure bills that promise advantages to Eastern Montana often leave the area with negative consequences and Western Montana with positive consequences, and that she would not compromise on legislation that would hurt Eastern Montana. Krautter explained that in his opinion, people need to understand that everyone from around the state is looking for the best of their district and that there are no perfect bills. Verhasselt and Sink were asked numerous questions, regarding the interior workings of the Clerk and Recorder Office. They were also asked about why Richland County had been a high-risk county, and Sink deferred to Verhasselt on the question, who explained that it was because they were not reporting on time, which would increase their chance of an audit and punitive consequences. The three Justice of the Peace candidates were asked questions about opioid addiction and what could be done regarding the high use of drugs. Savage and Hall both agreed that there wasn't an easy solution regarding the issue. Trumpower declined to comment directly on the question, reminding the audience that judges are the judicial branch of government and their job is to enforce the law, but the role of the legislative branch to write the laws. Gail Staffanson was asked a question about homeschool families in the county, and whether their numbers were increasing. Staffanson explained that during her tenure, the numbers have raised, but not exponentially. She explained that there were not any resources she could give homeschool families on behalf of the county, but that there were growing resources available to them through the private sector. Speakers were allowed a few minutes to say final words and the program was dismissed. There were approximately 75 people in attendance. Krautter Will Put District Needs First In Helena, Ahead Of Politics Dear Editor: I am writing to give my personal endorsement to Joel Krautter for Representative of House District 35, ahead of the June 5th Election Day. Since Ive known Joel, Ive been able to see Joels passion to make a positive difference for this area, through his involvement and support of many community organizations. Joel does not just talk about making a difference, he will take the initiative to meet a need where he recognizes one, like he has by co-founding the Sidney Young Professionals, a very needed new area organization. We can expect the same leadership and dedication from Joel in Helena. Richland County is facing numerous challenges, from threats to the livelihoods of area agriculture producers, to threats to funding for education, a potential new landfill for North Dakota oilfield waste, and constant challenges over infrastructure we all depend upon. With so many challenges, we need a representative in Helena who is committed to finding solutions and who will keep the challenges facing our area first, ahead of politics. That is what Joel believes in. Joel Krautter is informed about the challenges we face and he also has the relationships to be effective in Helena, making Joel the best candidate running for the legislature to deliver for our district. I urge everyone who cares about having a thoughtful, dedicated, informed and problem-solving leader in Helena to vote on June 5th in the Republican primary for Joel Krautter for Representative. Rick Norby STADA Arzneimittel AG (STDAY.PK,STDAF.PK) announced the changes in the management team. The previous Chief Production and Development Officer, Barthold Piening, is to be followed by Spanish-born Miguel Pagan (53) as Member of the Executive Board for Technical Operations. The appointment of Barthold Piening as a Member of the Executive Board of STADA has been mutually cancelled with immediate effect. Dr. Piening will leave STADA end of May 2018 in order to pursue new career opportunities. Miguel Pagan was most recently Head of Global Technical Operations at SANDOZ and Global Head of Solids & Special Tech for overall Novartis. Before that, he was Head of all Operations of SANDOZ in Europe and India and previously Vice President of Americas Operations at Merck (MSD). In addition, STADA has appointed three new members to its broader management team. Dr. Steffen Wagner (40) is to become Head of Europe effective July 1, 2018. He was most recently Managing Director of Biogen Germany and will take charge of all European except for Germany, the United Kingdom and Russia. STADA also appointed a new Head of Emerging Markets in Carsten Cron. The 47-year-old comes from Pfizer, where he was most recently Country Manager for Morocco, Tunisia and Libya and also Commercial & Business Operations Lead for North Africa and the Middle East. To date, the Head of Europe and Head of Emerging Markets roles have both been fulfilled by CEO Albrecht. Wolter Kuizinga had newly established this key strategic area of the Company, making important settings of the course while heading it on an interim basis. He is to be succeeded, at the latest from September 1, by the current Vice President Portfolio Management, Dr. Robert Knerr. As the successor to Knerr in Portfolio Management, STADA has recruited Dr. Stefan Busemann, who is joining the Company from SANDOZ. For comments and feedback contact: editorial@rttnews.com Business News Indian shares were largely unchanged on Tuesday after eight straight sessions of gains. Underlying sentiment remained cautious as investors kept a wary eye on geopolitical tensions and oil price movements. The benchmark BSE Sensex was marginally higher at 34,317 in early trade while the broader Nifty index was trading flat with a negative bias. Bajaj Electricals soared 5.5 percent on winning contracts worth Rs 3,578 crore for rural and urban electrification projects in Uttar Pradesh. Infosys lost 1 percent to extend Monday's losses after lowering its EBIT margin guidance. Jay Bharat Maruti shed 1.8 percent after its Q4 profit fell from last year. Sobha rallied 1.3 percent after foraying into Gujarat with a Rs 500 crore plus investment. Sterlite Technologies gained half a percent on fund raising reports. Fortis Healthcare was trading flat ahead of a board meeting on Thursday to decide on investment offers. For comments and feedback contact: editorial@rttnews.com Kraken, the largest Bitcoin exchange in euro volume and liquidity, is set to end its activities in Japan due to rising costs. The San Francisco-based company said it may re-enter Japan, a key market for cryptocurrencies, in future, Bloomberg reported citing an emailed statement. Founded in 2011, Kraken began its operation in Japan in October 2014 with the launch of Bitcoin-yen trading. The exchange plans to tentatively cease all its services by the end of June, Bloomberg reported. Based on 24-hour trading volume, Kraken is ranked 10th on CoinMarketCap. Suspension of the Japanese will allow the company to better channel its resources to improve in other locations, Kraken said. The move will not affect services to Japanese citizens or businesses domiciled outside the country. The news of Kraken's exit comes after Binance, the world's largest cryptocurrency exchange by 24-hour trading volume, announced plans to open business in Malta as it fell out of favor with the Japanese financial regulator for failing to get a license to operate in the country. Japanese regulators are closely watching crypto exchanges after the massive hack of the unregistered Coincheck exchange in January. Kraken is also not registered. The Financial Services Agency increased scrutiny and asked all exchanges to register with it. The country has 16 registered exchanges and roughly the same number were waiting approval. However, the recently strengthened norms made some exchanges withdraw their request for registration. About a 100 firms are reportedly interested in entering the Japanese crypto market. Early April, a Japanese government-backed research group had proposed guidelines for legalizing the initial coin offerings, or ICOs, the crypto-world equivalent of the initial public offering of shares of a company. These are a controversial means of raising money in the crypto-world. South Korea and China have banned ICOs due to concerns over scams and excessive speculation. For comments and feedback contact: editorial@rttnews.com Business News After detailing on the dark side of crypto-assets last month, International Monetary Fund Chief Christine Lagarde now has a set of praises for the role of cryptocurrencies in the financial market. In her latest blog post on Monday, Lagarde says crypto-assets enable fast and inexpensive financial transactions, while offering some of the convenience of cash, making overseas transfers in a matter of hours, not days. Cryptocurrency could have a significant impact on how we save, invest and pay our bills. However, it will not eliminate the need for trusted intermediaries, such as brokers and bankers. She envisages a demand for central banks to provide digital forms of money which will not be risky and unstable as privately issued crypto-assets. She looks to raise this idea in the forthcoming Global Financial Stability Report. Lagarde hopes that there will be a fine balance between centralized and de-centralized service providers as and when decentralized applications spurred by crypto-assets will lead to a diversification of the financial landscape. "Moreover, banks and other financial institutions will face challenges to their models, should there be a large-scale shift away from government-issued currencies toward crypto-assets. Regulators might find it harder to ensure the stability of a more diffuse and decentralized financial system," she wrote. She also asked policymakers to keep an open mind and work toward an even-handed regulatory framework that protects against risks without discouraging innovation. In last month's blog post, Lagarde had looked at the dark side of crypto-assets, including their potential use for money laundering and the financing of terrorism. She had urged authorities around the world to develop regulatory frameworks to meet the new vulnerabilities. She called to "fight fire with fire" while dealing with digital currencies. The most important point she made in her latest blog was addressed to the global regulatory community asking them to reach a consensus among themselves as an initial step on the role crypto-assets should play. She added "crypto-assets know no boundaries, international cooperation will be essential." This should earn the confidence and support of consumers and authorities before crypto-assets can transform financial activity in a meaningful and lasting way. "We must act quickly to close the knowledge gaps that inhibit the effective monitoring of crypto-assets. There should be systemic risk assessment and timely policy responses, as well as measures to protect consumers, investors, and market integrity," she added. Lagarde further said, "A clear-eyed approach can help us harness the gains and avoid the pitfalls of the new crypto-assets landscape." She was also upbeat on the underlying of crypto-assets, distributed ledger technology or DLT, saying it could help financial function more efficiently. For comments and feedback contact: editorial@rttnews.com Business News James Comey replied to President Donald Trump's call to jail him for his actions as FBI Director, saying that it could erode the rule of law, and argued that the American people are becoming dangerously numb to the President undermining the key tenets of the United States. The former FBI director was highly critical of Trump in two interviews broadcast Tuesday morning. Both of them have been engaged in a war of words since the weekend. While Comey said Trump is morally unfit to be president, Trump called the former FBI director "a liar and leaker," suggesting he be sent to jail. "That is not normal that is not OK," Comey said in his "Good Morning America" interview. "First of all, he's just making stuff up. Most importantly, the President of the United States is calling for the imprisonment of a private citizen as he's done for a whole lot of people who criticize him. That is not acceptable in this country," Comey told ABC News' George Stephanopoulos. "This is not some tin-pot dictatorship where the leader of the country gets to say 'the people I don't like go to jail,'" he told NPR in an interview that was also broadcast Tuesday morning. "Our Lady Justice wears a blindfold. And the reason all those statues all over the country have a blindfold is, that's the way it has to be," Comey told NPR. "Lady Justice can't be peeking under the blindfold to see if Donald Trump wants her to convict so-and-so and not convict so-and-so. If we lose that, we've lost the rule of law, and so there's great danger in the president of the United States saying 'you should be in jail.'" To a question if he will run for office some day, Comey replied in the negative, but said he plans to teach at the university level and give speeches on ethics and leadership. "I hope people read the book and see why the rule of law is such an important value in this country. And key to that is that the President doesn't get to decide who goes to jail," Comey said referring to his memoir that was scheduled to release on Tuesday. Comey was also critical of Trump's decision last week to pardon Scooter Libby, a former chief of staff to former Vice President Dick Cheney. For comments and feedback contact: editorial@rttnews.com Business News United Airlines (UAL) announced, with its first-quarter financial results and increased confidence in the outlook for the remainder of the year, the company is tightening adjusted EPS guidance range for the full year to $7.00 to $8.50. Excluding special charges and mark-to-market adjustments, UAL reported first-quarter net income of $143 million, earnings per share of $0.50, pre-tax earnings of $179 million and pre-tax margin of 2.0 percent. Consolidated passenger revenue per available seat mile (PRASM) increased 2.7 percent year-over-year. Consolidated total revenue per available seat mile (TRASM) increased 3.4 percent. Consolidated unit cost per available seat mile (CASM) increased 4.3 percent. Consolidated CASM, excluding special charges, third-party expenses, fuel and profit sharing, increased 0.6 percent year-over-year. For comments and feedback contact: editorial@rttnews.com Business News Finance Minister Arun Jaitley (file photo) Amidst reports of a cash crunch and empty ATMs, Arun Jaitley ' title='Finance Minister Arun Jaitley '>Finance Minister Arun Jaitley on Tuesday sought to assuage fears, saying "there is more than adequate currency in circulation", even as the government blamed "unusual demand" for shortages in some areas. "Have reviewed the currency situation in the country. Overall there is more than adequate currency in circulation and also available with the banks. The temporary shortage caused by 'sudden and unusual increase' in some areas is being tackled quickly," Jaitley tweeted. "There is no cash crunch in the country. There is around Rs 18 lakh crore currency supply now, which is close to the circulation during the demonetisation period. We keep Rs 2.5-3 lakh crore more currency in stock for excess demand," said S.C Garg, Economic Affairs Secretary. He said there was unusually high demand for currency in the last couple of months. As opposed to an average demand of about Rs 20,000 crore a month, "in the first 13 days of April itself there was a demand of Rs 45,000 crore", he said. "In the last few days we have pumped cash into the system to meet the demand. We still have a reserve of Rs 1.75 lakh crore." Garg attributed this sudden cash demand to localised phenomenon. "This unusual spurt in demand is seen more in some parts of the country like Andhra Pradesh, Telangana, Karnataka, Madhya Pradesh and Bihar," the Finance Ministry said in a statement on Tuesday. It said the government, along with the Reserve Bank of India (RBI), has taken all steps to meet this unusual demand. "We had adequate reserves of currency notes which have been used to meet fully the extraordinary demand generated so far. We continue to have in stock adequate currency notes of all denominations, including of Rs 500, 200 and Rs 100 to meet any demand," the statement said. "The government would like to assure all the people that there has been adequate supply of currency notes which has met entire demand so far. The government would also like to assure that it would be supplying adequate currency notes to meet even higher levels of demand if such demand were to continue in the coming days/months," it added. The statement further said the government is taking all steps to ensure that ATMs are supplied with cash and to get non-functional ATMs working at the earliest. Reacting to the situation, West Bengal Chief Minister Mamata Banerjee on Tuesday said it reminds her of the demonetisation days. She also asked whether a "financial emergency" was going on in the country. The Uttar Pradesh Sunni Wakf Board on Tuesday told the Supreme Court that it won't stake claim to the ownership of the Taj Mahal. Asking senior counsel A.D.N. Rao appearing for the Archeological Survey of India (ASI) to take instructions, a bench of Chief Justice Dipak Misra, Justice A.M. Khanwilkar and Justice D.Y. Chandrachud said that once the Board pressed its right over the monument then it has to adjudicate the issue. "Once you have registered the monument as a Wakf property, your statement that you will not be staking claim will not help," said the bench. The court directed the next hearing of the matter on July 27. In its earlier hearing on April 11, the apex court had asked the Wakf Board to produce an original title document bearing the signatures of Mughal Emperor Shah Jahan to prove its claim. A pressure cooker bomb went off near the Indian Embassy field office in Nepal's Biratnagar late on Monday damaging the walls of the premises, Nepal Police has said. No one has claimed responsibility. The Indian Embassy in Kathmandu has not made any remarks regarding the blast yet. It is suspected that a splinter group of Maoist-led by Netra Bikram Chand could be responsible for the blast due to its anti-Indian rhetoric in the past. According to the Superintendent of Police of Morang district, Arun Kumar BC, the blast occurred close to the office that India, he said, was operating without permission of the Nepal government. The police has launched a probe. There have been repeated calls from various quarters to evacuate the field office, Kumar said. Following the Koshi River flood in 2008, Nepal requested India to provide its land for transportation and passage for transit facilities until its highways were repaired. To assist smooth facilitation of the Nepali vehicles via Indian land from Biratnagar to Birgunj, India had temporarily set up the field office in Biratnagar. It has remained there for a decade now. Every visiting Nepali Prime Minister to India has requested for its removal but India did not. Pakistan on Tuesday rejected as "falsehood" the Indian charge of "attempts to incite Sikh pilgrims" to raise the issue of Khalistan. Foreign Office spokesperson Mohammed Faisal "categorically rejected Indian allegations" in a series of tweets, a day after India summoned Pakistan's Deputy High Commissioner and lodged a strong protest over attempts being made to raise the Khalistan issue during the visit of Sikh pilgrims to that country. "By spreading such falsehoods, India stokes the controversy regarding visit of Sikh pilgrims, attending the Baisakhi and Khalsa ceremonies in Pakistan," tweeted Faisal. He said: "Pakistan welcomes Hindu and Sikh pilgrims from all over the world, including India. Pakistan has made arrangements to extend maximum facilitation to the visiting Sikh pilgrims during their visits to sacred places in Pakistan." According to the Indian External Affairs Ministry, around 1,800 Sikh pilgrims have been travelling to Pakistan from April 12 under a bilateral agreement on facilitating visits to religious shrines. India, on Sunday, protested to the Pakistan foreign office that visiting Sikh pilgrims to Pakistan were not allowed to meet the Indian high commissioner and other Indian diplomats. MEA said Indian diplomats were forced to turn back when they went to meet the pilgrims at the Punja Sahib gurudwara. India called it "inexplicable diplomatic discourtesy", pointing out that this amounted to a "clear violation of the Vienna Convention of 1961, the bilateral Protocol to visit Religious Shrines, 1974 and the Code of Conduct (for the treatment of diplomatic/consular personnel in India and Pakistan) of 1992". Faisal tweeted that Pakistn "remain committed to continuing such cooperation, which is in line with our religious ethos, traditions of hospitality, and provisions of the 1974 Protocol on Visits to Religious Shrines. No amount of Indian propaganda could succeed in turning this right into a wrong," tweeted Faisal. He further said that India "should respect international and inter-state norms, respect all religions, especially minorities, and refrain from indulging in pointless provocation which only vitiates an already charged environment to the detriment of all". Stockholm : With the aim to build a win-win partnership with Sweden making use of the opportunities offered by India's development programmes, the two countries on Tuesday signed a Joint Action Plan and an Innovation Partnership following a bilateral summit between Indian Prime Minister Narendra Modi and his Swedish counterpart Stefan Lofven here. Jointly addressing the media here along with Lofven after their talks, Modi said that Sweden has been a strong contributor to the Make in India programme from the beginning and recalled that the Swedish Prime Minister himself led a big business delegation to the Make in India summit in Mumbai in 2016. "The main theme of our discussions today was how to develop a win-win partnership between Sweden and India through the opportunities offered by India's development programmes," Modi said. "As a result, we agreed to a Joint Action Plan and an Innovation Partnership." Stating that innovation, investment, start-ups, manufacturing were among the main areas of cooperation between the two countries, he said that attention was also paid to renewable energy, urban transport and waste management to improve the quality of life of the Indian people. According to the Joint Action Plan, both sides will initiate a multi-stake holder Innovation Partnership for a Sustainable Future, underpinning the mutual commitment to drive prosperity and growth and address societal challenges such as climate change and sustainable development through innovation. The Action Plan also aims to exchange knowledge and explore cooperation on smart cities, including transit-oriented urban development, air pollution control, waste management, waste-to-energy, waste-water treatment, district cooling and circular economy, including through dialogue and capacity building. The two sides also agreed to exchange know-how and explore cooperation in the areas of electro-mobility as well as renewable fuels. The Joint Action Plan aims to deepen collaboration between the two countries in smart, sustainable and renewable energy, women's skills development and empowerment, space and science, and health and life sciences. "Defence and security is an important pillar of our bilateral relationship," Modi said in his address to the media. "Sweden has been partner of India in defence sector for a long time. I am confident that new opportunities for cooperation in this sector will arise in the future, especially in defence production." Modi said that both sides also agreed to further strengthen security, especially cyber security cooperation. According to the Joint Action Plan, both sides agreed to explore the finalisation of a bilateral agreement on exchange and mutual protection of classified information for cooperation in the defence area and encourage industry partners to develop supply chains for small and medium sized enterprises with major defence and aerospace original equipment manufacturers. "One more thing that we have agreed upon is that the importance of our relationship should be reflected at the regional and global levels," Modi said. "We have been closely cooperating on the international platform and this will continue." Modi also said developments in Europe and Asia came up for detailed discussion during the bilateral summit. According to the Joint Action Plan, both sides "reaffirmed the need for reform of the UN Security Council, including its expansion, to make it more representative, accountable, effective, and responsive to the realities of the 21st century". "Both Prime Ministers called for greater unity and stronger international partnership to counter terrorism, disrupt terrorist networks and financing, and to prevent violent extremism," it stated. On his part, Lofven said that he believed that Sweden and India make a perfect match. Stating that India is undergoing an unprecedented economic transformation, he said that Sweden has a lot of innovative solutions to offer in this connection. "I am very pleased to announce that the Swedish government will kick start our Innovation Partnership by providing up to 50 million Swedish kronor (Over $59 million) for innovation cooperation with India in the field of smart cities and sustainability," Lofven said. Following the summit, Modi and Lofven participated in a round table with Swedish CEOs during which the CEOs were exhorted to invest in India and participate in the country's flagship initiatives, External Affairs Ministry spokesperson Ravessh Kumar said in a tweet. Earlier in the day, Modi called on Sweden's King Carl XVI Gustaf at the Royal Palace here and the two leaders exchanged views on strengthening bilateral cooperation. India and Sweden will on Tuesday also co-host the first ever India-Nordic Summit, where, apart from Modi and Lofven, the Prime Ministers of the other four Nordic countries of Denmark, Finland, Iceland and Norway will also be present. Modi will hold separate bilateral meetings with the leaders of the other four Nordic countries on the sidelines of the summit. The Indian Prime Minister arrived here on Monday evening on the first leg of his three-nation tour of Europe that will also see him going to Britain and Germany. This is the first prime ministerial visit from India to Sweden in 30 years after the visit of then Prime Minister Rajiv Gandhi in 1988. After attending an Indian community event here late on Tuesday night, Modi will depart for London on the second leg of his tour. The Samoa International Game Fishing tournament launched off yesterday morning with anglers setting off to find the biggest catch. But it would have been hard to beat the catch of a lifetime by Angler, Craig Townsend, who had set the tone for the tournament with his catch of a Blue marlin weighing at 279.1kgs on Sunday afternoon. Speaking to the Samoa Observer, Mr. Townsend said that they were not expecting to catch a record-breaking fish before the official start time. They were in the middle of a practice run on Sunday when the massive marlin was hooked. We were basically out in the sea on a practice run just making sure that everything was working in preparation for Monday, he said. Around 1.30pm we hooked up and spent about three hours fighting the fish. In a man versus fish clash, Angler Townsend won in the end to the excitement of his team and Captain Roy Lee onboard the Yellow Fin vessel. The Angler was first introduced to the S.I.G.F.A tournament when he was the Westpac Pacific Regional Manager. And although Westpac is no longer in Samoa, the Australian still continues to return annually for tournament. This was a great surprise and Im hoping that this is a sign of a great start to the tournament here in Samoa. We know this much. The comparison of Prime Minister Tuilaepa Sailele Malielegaois administration to a dictatorship and comparisons of the man himself to one of the worlds most notorious dictators, Adolf Hitler, are not new. They have been made time and time again, most of the time by different individuals who believe Samoa is being run like one. Its a harsh comparison if you ask this writers opinion mainly for the mere fact that whats happening in Samoa today can hardly be compared to Hitlers behaviour. When the name Hitler is mentioned, we are talking about someone who exterminated millions of people through gas chambers and other extreme forms of punishment. Is that happening in Samoa today? The answer is an emphatic no. Its an undeniable though that Prime Minister Tuilaepa is a very powerful man running an extremely powerful political machine called the H.R.P.P. In fact, Tuilaepa is undoubtedly the most powerful man in this country today with the ability to make any changes he wants wherever, however and whenever. Does that make him a dictator though? And can someone who was elected during a national election make that for about 30 years be a dictator? You be the judge. Last week, the latest man to have labeled Tuilaepa a dictator was the Village Mayor of Luatuanuu, Autu Lolesio Tauilii. Autu offered the description after the Ministry of Women, Community and Social Development terminated his services as Village Mayor. Im really saddened about the way it has been done. Its just like Hitlers government, an absolute dictatorship, he said. I say this and compare the Samoan Government to Hitler because I have been terminated without any proper notification, without any logical cause. The dispute between the village of Luatuanuu and the Government over an incident that escalated to involve the Police and gunshots last month have been well detailed. As the Village Mayor, Autu has every right to stand up for his village and the people who appointed him. The difficulty is that by law, Autu, like all Village Mayors in Samoa, is now an employee of the Government. Which technically makes Prime Minister Tuilaepa his boss. And now that Autu has said enough publically to upset the Government and the man lording over it, its easy enough to understand why he has been given the boot. By the way, Autu is not the first Village Mayor to be sacked by the Government. Over the years, this newspaper has detailed a number of instances where Village Mayors who had dared to oppose the Government have been sacked. What do you think? By sacking a number of village mayors with the latest one being Autu from Luatuanuu, does that make Tuilaepa a dictator? Isnt that part of a normal employer/employee relationship? We would have loved to put these questions to the Prime Minister himself. But during a scheduled interview for the Samoa Observer and Radio 2AP in his office last week, Tuilaepa declined to answer questions from this newspaper. He insisted instead that the questions be put in writing. What the Samoa Observer has done to deserve being singled out while all other media get their time with the Prime Minister, we dont know. Without a doubt, this is a very interesting time for this country. Its a time defined by changes that have shaken the foundation of this nation so that the question of whether there is anything sacred left anymore is hard to ignore. We dont need to tell you. History and developments in this country in the not too distant past live to testify about this. No w back to the question of whether Tuilaepa is a dictator, a while ago, this is what he had to say. Ive often heard statements such as the P.M. hold the key to opening and closing the door. Ive heard people say that whatever the P.M. say thats what goes, he said. Such an opinion is harboured by people whom if they are given the chance to administer the government, they will run it like an army. They will rule it like a military. They will not listen to any advice from Members of Parliament or Cabinet. Tuilaepa added he is quite the opposite of what some people are saying about him. I listen to what the party says, which is the democratic system. It dictates that for every leader, they must listen to the party. Now did the party tell Tuilaepa to sack the Luatuanuu Village Mayor? Did he ask the party at all? Have a wonderful Wednesday Samoa, God bless! Prime Minister Tuilaepa Dr. Sailele Malielegaoi appears to have shut the door on the Samoa Observer from asking him questions directly during his weekly media programmes. He certainly did last Thursday during a scheduled media programme allocated for the Samoa Observer and Radio 2AP. The programme is one of several media programmes the Prime Minister has with different media companies including TV1, Radio Polynesia, Talamua Media among others. The Samoa Observer and Radio 2AP slot is on Thursday. For two weeks now, Prime Minister Tuilaepa ignored the Samoa Observer. Two weeks ago, the Prime Minister did not have time to answer questions, noting that he had to rush off somewhere. Last week when he finished speaking to Radio 2AP, Press Secretary Nanai Lave Tuiletufuga informed the Prime Minister that the Samoa Observer reporter was present and wanted to ask some questions. But Tuilaepa said: I have decided to have all the questions sent through to you (Nanai) as it is not good to have one interview here and then another interview there." This way I can address these issues all at once. Asked for a clarification on the state of play, Nanai said the Prime Minister has directed that all future inquiries from the Samoa Observer should be directed to him in writing. I was not aware of this until the P.M. said it while we were both there, Nanai wrote in an email to the Samoa Observer. Later I was told by my Deputy that the same had transpired the previous week which I was not aware off because I was absent from the previous weeks programme." Nonetheless, if you are uncomfortable with that arrangement, the offer still stands. Asked why the Samoa Observer has been singled out while every media outlet gets their time with Prime Minsiter Tuilaepa, Nanai said: As for the issue of fairness, the call on granting TV1 and Talamua one on one interview was made by the P.M. himself at his discretion." If you had recalled, the initiative for the Samoa Observer to interview the P.M. on a one-on-one basis weekly was initiated by me." But coupled with time constraints, the slot was included in Thursdays weekly 2AP live programme together with other media outlets." Again that decision was made by the P.M. himself." How the P.M. arrived at his latest decision is an issue that he has not shared with me, but I will bring it to his attention when he returns from overseas." I can understand and appreciate your determination for exclusive breaking stories and I urge you to continue the good work." Again my office is always open to assist. Prime Minister Tuilaepa is out of the country. Attempts to confirm his whereabouts were not successful. Its perhaps once in a blue moon that a young Pacific islander gets acquainted with Prince Harry of Wales. Samoas Tahere Siisiialafia got a chance to not only meet His Highness, but also had the opportunity to voice her strong opinion on youth empowerment in the presence of United Kingdom Prime Minister, Theresa May, in London on Monday this week. Tahere is the Chairwoman of the Pacific Youth Council and she is attending the Commonwealth Youth Forum as a member of the International Task Force that drew the youth forum together, while also acting on the electoral board that facilitates the Commonwealth Youth Council elections this year. The Youth Forum, together with the Business Forum, Women's Forum and People's Forum opened on Monday, which leads up to the Commonwealth Heads of Government Meeting in London this week. The theme for this year's forum is Powering Our Common Future. Panels and breakout sessions focused on four priority areas which will be at the center of C.H.O.G.M. negotiations - sustainability, security, prosperity and fairness. The first day started with a roundtable discussion with Mrs. May and his Highness Prince Harry, to discuss on youth concerns and accelerating their efforts. Tahere urged the need for certain structural changes in order to elevate the work of young people in the Pacific region and that it is imperative that the Commonwealth must reach the region beyond beneficiary relations and transform discussions into practice and action. So much amazing work and achievements are ongoing in the region, however, governments, private sector and all development agencies must commit to enabling and releasing the full potential and capacities of young people so that their efforts accelerate in fostering sustainable, secure, prosperous and fairer communities, Tahere. Indeed, engaging young people is their conceding right as equal partners in development. With that said, Tahere raised the lack of and very little representation of the Pacific at global levels. A press statement said this years Pacific representation comprised Fiji, Nauru, Kiribati, Tonga, Papua New Guinea and Australia. Each had two national youth delegates except for Australia, having a handful of national delegates, the statement said. According to the statement, the role of national youth delegates is to reshape based on best practices, policies for the four priority areas, and to elect new leadership for the Commonwealth Youth Council for the next term. Tahere states: "It is utterly imperative that our Pacific region is well represented in such global spaces. We cannot ignore the fact that we are becoming a more global community and thus its vital for our young Pacific people to engage and have a strong voice to influence global policies and frameworks, especially on climate change and oceans. Young people have never been so connected as they are today, and we need to see the value in engaging at the global levels to ensure that our Pacific region is not left behind and our young people missing out on opportunities." In light of her statement, Powering Our Common Future has kicked off with Prince Harry officially appointed as the Commonwealth Youth Ambassador. His Highness then announced that her Majesty the Queen has extended Commonwealth Scholarships to 150 scholarships for young people across the Commonwealth and now renamed as the Queen's Commonwealth Scholarship. It's a positive start to this years Commonwealth Youth Forum and a provision of possibilities and opportunities for young people of the Commonwealth, the statement said. Tahere hopes Governments and all development stakeholders will commit their support for young people beyond mere recognition and enable their engagement across national, regional and global levels. "We young people are powering the now and future of the Commonwealth, Tahere added. It is that time of the year where illustrating support for the Samoa Cancer Society is vital. This is according to S.C.S. Marketing Manager, Tuamanulele Leilani Jackson, in response to questions from the Samoa Observer. Going bald for the Shave it or Save it biennial signature fundraiser is a simple act, yet a powerful approach to display your support for people living or have survived cancer." Have you ever played around with the idea of shaving your head?" "Are you daring enough to shave for Samoa Cancer Society, were the question posed by Tuamanulele. It does take a bit of courage but thats what the Shave it or Save it head shave is all about. According to Tuamanulele, shaving or going bald for cancer sends a strong message of support for people living with cancer and going through the effects of treatment of cancer. It also ensures that those who are daring to shave stand in solidarity with people with cancer." The last shave S.C.S. had the privilege of the Honourable Prime Minister Tuilaepa Sailele Malieilegaoi as a shave and he raised quite a significant amount of funds. Tuamanulele told the Samoa Observer the head shave event is an initiative that gets people talking about cancer and its effects. It is a very public event and appeals to all genders and age groups. The main intent of the signature head shave event is to raise funds, however at the same time raise awareness about cancer and its effects." The S.C.S. receives limited government funding and they provide free support services and information for our community." We also provide patient support programmes, research, information, awareness, education and advocacy." We rely on the goodwill and generosity of the wider community to help fund the shortfall." Without this generosity, we could not hope to offer such an in depth and much needed support services for cancer patients, their families and our community. Tuamanulele told the Samoa Observer that this year the S.C.S. hopes to register more than 100 people with the target of raising $50,000 tala. Two Ministers have joined in to support the cause. Minister of Education, Loau Keneti Sio and Minister of Communication Information Technology, Afamasaga Rico Tupai, have agreed to brave the shave. BlueSky Samoa and Taumeasina Island Resort have come onboard this year as sponsors. The main event will be held on 28 June, 2018 at Taumeasina. Both companies are registering teams for the event. Andrew Pedrana of Coffee Bean Cafe has registered to shave his locks." There are opportunities for sponsorship and we invite individuals and companies to come on board." We invite members of the public to register for the Shave it or Save it event and help make a difference, pleaded Tuamanulele. With your help we can continue to fund our core services, patient support programmes, research, information, awareness, education and advocacy. 100 percent of your donations and sponsorship goes directly to fund the S.C.S. day-to-day operations." Provides important information for patients, purchases educational toolkits on self-examination, contribute to awareness programmes around Samoa, ensuring the community and patients have access to information about cancer and contribute to the operational expenses of the Samoa Cancer Society." And this is a cause worth championing, said Tuamanulele. The cancellation of the fautasi race for this years Independence Celebration has once again raised eye brows, with fears being expressed that one of Samoas most popular traditional regatta may soon be a thing of the past. This is the third consecutive year that the fautasi regatta has been cancelled. Ive heard that it seems to be the lack of interest from participating fautasi crews that has forced the committee to cancel the race, 67-year-old Lavea Ituau from Manono said. Back in the days, I think the only thing that everyone looked forward to was the fautasi race, and it seems like theres no fautasi race because of the lack of interest from the local crews. Lavea said the cancellation is a very sad development. The Government needs to look into this because we are losing too much of what we used to have back in the days, especially this tuuga fautasi." Honestly we need to bring this race again. He said the fautasi race is like another celebration in the country. I mean when it comes to independence, the only thing thats in everyones mind is to go and watch the fautasi race." And I hope that this is not the end of the road for fautasi racing during the independence celebrations in the country. The same sentiment was echoed by a mother from the village of Vailele, Toaga Tuiavii. One of the interesting parts of the fautasi race that we are going to miss this year again is when parents, children line up on the seawall from Vaitele to Mulinuu or in the heart of Apia in the early morning." "To be honest, the fautasi race during Independence each year is the most anticipated sport in the country and that was the only interesting part of the Independence. He said the Government should also look at where the problem lies. Financial issues must be the reason some crews dont want to participate, we may never know that." I think thats the reason some crews dont want to participate again and if thats the case, the Government should look into this and find ways to revive fautasi race in Samoa. It was not possible to get an official comment from the organisers of the Independent Day celebrations yesterday. A young child vendor is counting his lucky stars after being saved from what could have been a dreadful accident. Talosaga Salafa, 59, from Vaitele-Fou described to the Samoa Observer the sad scene that could have eventually claimed the life of an innocent child. She was specifically describing an incident involving a child vendor who was sleeping underneath a truck that was parked in front of a shop at Vaitele on Saturday last week. I was waiting for my son and his wife from Savaii, thats about three oclock in the afternoon, she said, adding that she was on her way home that day when she witnessed the incident. Before I parked there, a truck was also parked just beside where I was parked and I wasnt sure how long the truck was parked there for." Through our cars rear mirror, I saw two young vendors cleaning tyres of the truck." One of them was about 10 to 12 years old and the other one was around five to six years old. Talosaga said she fell asleep on the wheel of her car when her son knocked on the door to open the car because theyve just arrived. "Thats almost four oclock, and when I was talking to my son and his wife, I saw a man hop inside the truck and started the engine." And he told us to go first, so then we reversed our car while he was waiting." I almost collapsed when I saw a young child lying beneath the left back tyre of the truck." He was sleeping." So we stopped and tried to call on the driver of the truck to not reverse because my son was pulling out the kid from underneath the tyre." I mean what if this really is happening to these kids out there, looking for money unattended by their parents." The parents are just using them to sell stuff and the Government just looks at this issue without doing anything. Talosaga says Samoa has had numerous reports on child labour in the country. Its been years since weve tried to put this in place. Its been years since the Government is trying to draw up a solution for child vendors in the country." I believe that thousands and thousands of tala were spent on child vendor reports in the country and up until now nothing has happened." Why dont we use those money to look for these vulnerable families in the country and help them out." Im pretty sure none of these kids that Ive seen around Vaitele and Apia streets attend schools. Talosaga said its an ongoing issue that the Government needs to act upon it. Imagine Samoa in the next 10 years with the increasing number of child vendors in the country." What does it tell us? Yes, many of the families just cant live with the high cost of living and the increasing numbers of unemployment in the country." I think thats why many families end up selling anything they can to survive from day to day." These poor souls grow up in such a harsh environment and we dont want to see them in such ways." As a parent, I dont want to keep quiet on this issue on child labour, we are wasting money on reports, conference, launching and yet, nothing has been done. So what, is Samoa waiting for something big to happen involving this child vendors. Talosaga also questioned the role of churches in Samoa in addressing the child vendor issues. Stop building multi-million dollar buildings and focus on vulnerable families who have children their scouting the streets selling stuff to feed their family. The United States Bureau of International Labour Affairs recently named Samoa as one of the countries with some of the worst forms of child labour. A copy of the report obtained by the Samoa Observer highlights the fact that children in Samoa perform dangerous tasks such as street vending at all hours of night and day. Planning her 15th trip to Samoa in just three years, prolific tourist, Jo Mikarna, wont be returning empty handed in June. The Australian has been on a mission to collect boots for farmers in Samoa through her networks in the Police Force around Victoria, Australia. So far she has collected 170 pairs of boots that have been donated by her colleagues and the tally continues to climb as more of them come onboard. The idea came to her when a friend from Samoa requested work boots from Jo to equip him for a new job in landscaping. Knowing that good quality heavy duty boots are expensive in any part of the world, Jo looked around her work environment and saw an abundance of used boots that were waiting to be shredded. In Australia, boots cost around AUD$149 (T$292.62), then I was looking around and realised everyone was wearing boots at work and I said hang on a second, because I know I have boots that Im finished with, because weve got a new lot of boots coming in, so I asked one of the boys at work and he gave me his boots for my friend. Then I realised we can do this on a much bigger scale. Jos reasoning was that her office alone donated 30 pairs so she did the math and decided to go big by reaching out to the whole Police Force who have a staff of about 17,000. She received a great response and has even started to receive tactical pants that are suitable for firefighters which she plans to add to the shipment when she arrives in June. Were increasing the awareness in my workforce. Everyone now is collecting them and putting them in their bins. People are starting to send them even from the country town. They send them to the office. The boots are starting to be collected on a mass scale; we are looking across Victoria wide. Further to that, Jo added her awareness campaign has unintentionally promoted Samoa as a holiday destination to her work community. Since Ive been promoting the collection of boots, the staff is now asking more questions about where Samoa is and now I know three-four people booking trips to Samoa. One of my sergeants is coming in August with her husband and Ive given all the tips and recommendations of what to do and where to go so they are very excited. Jo is currently in Samoa for a week to do some filming, We are making a film or short clips of what the conditions of the plantations are like in the farms over here so people can understand. Now Ive been lucky that the warehouse of the Victoria Police have come onboard and have made it possible to also include the donation of tactical pants as well, which will be great for the firefighters. Jo first came to Samoa almost four years ago at a time when she was looking to escape the stresses of life. What she found instead was a second home and a place she wanted to share with her friends back in Australia. Samoa Stationery and Books (S.S.A.B.) monthly mini Book Fair is growing in popularity with young children. This is according to S.S.A.Bs. Assistant Marketing Manager Silimanai Viali Williams, who told the Samoa Observer this is a good news given the initiative targets children. S.S.A.B. Chief Executive Officer and President, Tofilau Fiti Leung Wai, is well known for her passion in affording the opportunity for every child to get a book on their hands, hence the initiative. Based on its popularity, Silimanai has hailed their Mini Book Fair a success Held last week at the S.S.A.B. conference room, Silimanai said about 100 students attended their Mini Book Fair. Read to succeed which is the motto of this Mini Book Fair. S.S.A.B.s reading session with the kids targets that healthy mind is a healthy body. Silimanai said reigning Miss Samoa, Papalii Alexandra Iakopo, is an ambassador for literacy in Samoa and her role during the fair was to read to the young children who were present. The initiative its mainly to inspire the young ones and to literally guide them into the mindset that literacy plays a huge role in their education, said Silimanai. We emphasize the important aspect to the young ones that reading today is central to being a leader tomorrow. Reading books improve vocabulary and books no doubt improve our communication skills. The more we read the more new words our brain start gaining new words, said Silimanai. Allison Dehghans trip to Samoa serves two good purposes. While she is here to be a bridesmaid at her friends wedding, she is also able to explore the natural wonders of Samoa. She is from Sydney, Australia. Allison says it was a perfect escape to witness another part of the world and the best part of it all was bringing her nine-year-old daughter, Leighton, with her. This is our first time here in Samoa and it is amazing. We have been everywhere. My friends family took us around Samoa for sightseeing, she shared with the Dear Tourist team. We have been to the To Sua Ocean Trench, the Piula Cave Pool and the Papaseea Sliding Rocks. So they have this random waterfall on the side of the road and we also went there for a swim. It was really good. We barely had time to stay in the hotel. Samoa is so far their best holiday destination. We have been to Fiji and over there is busy. The resort staff members are always busy. Coming here I was able to experience that it is more laid back and you can feel the presence of a stronger culture. That is within my own opinion and even though Samoa and Fiji are both in the Pacific, they are far different from each other. Even though the weather is hot but we have had a good time here and enjoyed every bit of it, she adds. When asked about the highlight of their trip, Leighton enthusiastically replied: The highlight would be the Piula Cave Pool when the other girls placed flowers in the pool to take a photo. There is nothing more relaxing than seeing your child happy and Allison knows it well. She adds they hope to return for another island experience. The staff members of the hotel have been really attentive and the people are so friendly here. We feel very welcomed and just have nothing to worry about is good. Think a minuteDid the engineers who built the London Eye or New York Citys One World Trade Center do it without a plan? Of course, not! If you fail to plan, you plan to fail. Success is not an accident. It does not magically happen. You must plan for it to happen. As one man puts it: You must plan for a great future. After all, you have to spend the rest of your life there. We must have some kind of plan of what we want, how we will get it, and how long will it take. If you shoot for nothing, you will hit it every time. A wise person said: If you have accomplished everything you planned in life, you probably have not planned enough. Youre getting too old when all your dreams are reruns. The successful head of the Chrysler Automobile Corporation, Lee Iacocca, asked his workers: What do you want to do? What do you want to be? What do you want to have? Where do you want to go? How do you plan to get there? Write it down. Now go do it. It doesnt get any simpler than that. So why not start living your life on purpose? First dream it, then do it. Studies show that one hour of planning saves you three hours of wasted work and time. With a plan, your work is working for you! Your plan prioritizes and guides your life, moving you further ahead toward your goal of success and satisfaction. But After you plan your work, you must work your plan. Discipline is what brings your dreams into real life. A dream with no discipline will remain just a dream. A plan without work will be a plan that wont work! So it only makes sense to ask the One who designed the plan for your life to take charge of your character and daily way of living. Jesus has the power you need to make that plan start working for you. It is only with His plan in hand, you can go all the way to the life He designed you, and your family, to have and enjoy. Just think a minute Job seekers can pick up information, attend workshops and find out about possible career opportunities later this month at a free event at Cuyamaca College. The community college is hosting the 26th annual East County Career Expo from 9:30 a.m.-1:30 p.m. on Wednesday, April 25. The expo will be held at the Student Center, Room I-207, on the Rancho San Diego campus. The event is expected to draw more than 60 businesses, companies and industries looking to hire. A news release sent by the school said that in past years, about 100 attendees have left with job offers and nearly that many job interviews have been lined up because of connections made at the event. Companies expected to be there will represent job fields that include automotive, childcare, education, engineering, computer science, graphic design, health care, nursing homes, nonprofits, law enforcement, landscaping, public utilities such as water and wastewater, and radio stations. Advertisement Many companies and employers from 2017 are expected to return for this years career fair, joined by newcomers such as the San Diego International Airport, the school said. Some of the regions largest employers will be represented, including UC San Diego, Sycuan Casino and the San Diego Convention Center. Employers from advanced manufacturing, information technology, life sciences and health care are also planning on having booths. To help job-seekers prepare for the career expo, the career center in Room A-112 is offering a free workshop called Creating an Elevator Pitch, from 2-3 p.m. Wednesday, April 18. The expo is sponsored by Cuyamaca College, Americas Job Center of California and the East County Career Center. The college is at 900 Rancho San Diego Parkway in El Cajon. karen.pearlman@sduniontribune.com When Schubach Aviations charter jet pilots take to the skies, theyre flying for more than just their clients needs. Theyre also logging miles for charities that have benefited over the past six years from Schubachs penny-per-mile program. This year, Schubach jets should log about 1.2 million miles worldwide, which translates into $12,000 for charity, plus matching gifts. The program was dreamed up by company founder and chairman Henry Schubach, 64. He started the company 25 years ago at McClellan-Palomar Airport and has recently retired. He lives in Vista with his dogs Bob, a golden retriever, and Brailey, a black Labrador mix. One of the penny-per-mile programs past beneficiaries is Shelter to Soldier, a 6-year-old Oceanside nonprofit that rescues shelter dogs and trains them as service dogs for veterans. Advertisement Founder Graham Bloem said Henry Schubach was one of Shelter to Soldiers first sponsors back in 2012 and he has continued to support the organization with little desire for thanks or publicity. Henry is the complete opposite of boastful, Bloem said. Hes an accomplished, very kindhearted, calm gentleman who makes sure that while his company grows, those around him and the community benefit from that success. Schubach said his interest in philanthropy came out of a desire to fulfill unmet needs in the community. I dont think of myself as a philanthropist, he said. When Ive encountered causes over the years that have spoken to me, Ive felt compelled to act. Henry Schubach, owner of Schubach Aviation, in his companys hangar at McClellan-Palomar Airport in Carlsbad with his dogs Bob, a golden retriever, and Brailey, a black Labrador mix. (Thomas Frank Pellicer ) Schubach grew up in Salt Lake City, Utah, where his parents ran a chain of optical stores. When the family business was sold, he left Utah for new opportunities in California. In 1990, an airplane owner hired Schubach to set up an air charter business for him. Two years later he bought the charter business for himself. That was the beginning of Schubach Aviation, which leases a fleet of small to mid-size jets that fly internationally. At its peak before the recession in 2008, it was flying 24 planes. Now Schubach said the company is flying 16. Advertisement For many years, Schubach was one of the companys principal pilots but he retired his wings a few years ago and, more recently, retired from day-to-day operations. Last month, longtime vice president Kimberly Herrell was named president. Schubach said he came up with the penny-per-mile program as a creative way to help worthy causes and connect them with his wealthy clients. For every penny Schubach donates, clients are encouraged to match a penny, though many have written checks for far more. The penny-per-mile program has been a way for us to partner with certain nonprofits and help support their mission in a deeper way, he said. Bloem said Schubach was instrumental in getting Shelter to Soldier off the ground in 2012. Back then, Schubach happened to see a television report on the fledgling organization and agreed to serve as its first corporate sponsor, which encouraged other companies to quickly come on board. Advertisement Since then, Schubach Aviation has provided its hangar to Shelter to Soldier for photo shoots and training, hosted fundraising events, handed out flyers to passengers and donated private jet trips as gala auction items, Bloem said. Schubach admits he has a soft spot for animals another past penny-per-mile recipient is the Helen Woodward Animal Center especially when theyre solving problems in creative ways. I have enjoyed the time Ive spent with Graham Bloem, he said. I really believe in their mission to help both veterans and shelter dogs. This years penny-per-mile beneficiary is the Immunotherapy Foundation in San Diego. It was founded in 2015 by the late Ralph Whitworth, who was a longtime customer of Schubach Aviation. Advertisement In 2015, the Rancho Santa Fe investment firm manager retired to focus on battling a rare cancer that had spread to his lungs. He spent much of his final year flying on Schubach jets for bucket-list pleasure trips with his family. Before his death at age 60 in September 2016, Whitworth and his wife, Fernanda, founded the Immunotherapy Foundation. The organizations mission is to fund research on treating human papillomavirus cancers. Christina Martinez, executive director of Immunotherapy Foundation, said it was touching to see the transformation in the relationship between Whitworth and Schubach. When everything shifted, Henry became a partner in helping Ralph achieve what he wanted in his final months, Martinez said. Henry was incredibly helpful because Ralph was uncomfortable with his treatments. He helped Ralph enjoy the time he had left with us. Advertisement After Whitworth passed away, Schubach said it seemed only natural to support the foundation. Ralph Whitworth was one of my first airplane charter customers over 20 years ago, Schubach said. I flew him for many years and we had the privilege of flying him and his family during his precious final years. Im honored to have the opportunity to support his legacy. Besides the penny-per-miles program, Schubach Aviation also donated its fleet and staff last fall to perform several disaster relief flights from Puerto Rico after Hurricane Maria. Schubach said hes proud that his employees stepped up to help those in need. Theyre following his own simple advice on giving back: Keep your head down and when you encounter a cause that speaks to you, act on it. Advertisement pam.kragen@sduniontribune.com Former Poway Superintendent John Collins faced a preliminary hearing for felony counts of misappropriating public funds Monday, the first of four days that will probe nuances of accounting and contract interpretation. Collins was fired in July 2016 after the district commissioned an audit of his compensation that concluded he inappropriately took more than $345,000 from the school district and obstructed investigation of his pay. He faces four charges of misusing vacation and sick time and illegally using a district purchasing card between 2012 and 2016. Prosecutor Leon Schorr said the district attorneys office is considering additional charges related to failure to file statements of economic interest, failure to report outside income, and collecting excessive longevity pay. Collinss defense attorney, former San Diego County District Attorney Paul Pfingst, argued that the case boiled down to a contract dispute, which the school district exploited in an effort to fire Collins for cause. Advertisement The hearing, originally scheduled for October, was postponed twice, including once in January when Collins was dealing with health issues related to hearing loss. He uses a cochlear implant, and wore a headset on Monday to listen to the deliberations, which speakers transmitted over microphones. Collins started in Poway schools in 1989, rising through the ranks from a teacher, to principal, deputy superintendent and ultimately head of the high-ranking district. At the time he was fired, he was the highest-paid school superintendent in the county, earning $308,900 per year, with total compensation of $457,347 including extra pay, benefits and retirement. While the original allegations of financial wrong-doing against him were explosive, Mondays hearing was more of an exercise in accounting than courtroom theatrics, with both the defense and prosecution poring over calculations from the audit. During the hearing Schorr walked through the figures with witness Jenny Dominguez, the certified public accountant who conducted the audit in 2016 while with VLS Forensic Services. The audit claimed that Collins cashed out more than $148,457 in vacation pay he hadnt accrued, and then took additional days off without logging them. Mr. Collins would take vacation but wouldnt mark down being absent, and would cash out vacation leave, Schorr said Monday. So its a double-dip situation? Superior Court Judge Frederic Link asked. But Pfingst challenged her calculations, suggesting that the school district neglected to subtract Collins time off, incorrectly recording his vacation balance and leaving him misinformed about how much time he was owed. Advertisement When (employees) logged into the system could they see how much vacation time, sick time, etc, they were entitled to from the district? he asked Dominguez. Did you find there were errors in accounting for vacation and sick time? Yes, we identified errors in the tracking of vacation and sick time, Dominguez answered. The forensic audit also concluded that Collins collected roughly $132,000 in longevity pay that he wasnt entitled to, inappropriately accrued $77,241 in raises and received $24,494 through inappropriate revolving fund payouts and purchasing card expenses. Although Pfingst said Collins repaid the district for his card purchases, Schorr noted that district policy expressly forbade tapping the cards for personal expenses. Advertisement While the audit concluded that Collins padded his salary by applying one-time longevity pay boosts to multiple years, and compounding their increases, Pfingst argued that the formula used to calculate Collins longevity pay is the same one used for other school employees throughout the county. He is the only person in the history of the county of San Diego who has been charged with malfeasance for applying a longevity bonus and having it compound over the course of his career, Pfingst said. Issues of contract drafting have turned from a disagreement of hairsplitting to criminalizing it, for a person who has given a long and distinguished service to the county of San Diego, and to the students and parents of Poway. Advertisement deborah.brennan@sduniontribune.com Twitter@deborahsbrennan The San Diego County Office of Education was recently honored for its success in helping foster youth find a financial path to college. San Diego won the large county category of the California Foster Youth FAFSA Challenge, a statewide effort to improve access to college for foster youth by helping them ll out the Free Application for Federal Student Aid. The office received a $1,000 award last week at the Foster Youth Education Summit in Pomona from John Burton Advocates for Youth. The money will be used to assist students, including with hands-on FAFSA events and small scholarships. Sixty-ve percent of San Diego Countys high school seniors in foster care completed the FAFSA. Each of the foster youth from San Diego County who completed the form will be entered into a drawing for a $500 scholarship to be awarded in May. Advertisement These youths need a lot of encouragement and assistance to take the life-changing step of applying for nancial aid, said SDCOE project specialist Mindy Kukich, who led the local effort, in a statement. The project included phone calls, emails, and even a few home visits, she said. Kukich and her colleagues helped 97 of the 153 high school seniors in foster care submit complete FAFSA applications. In comparison, the completion rate was 49 percent for the general population of high school seniors in the county. This is the first year for the FAFSA Challenge, which is led by John Burton Advocates for Youth, a San Francisco-based nonprot founded by retired state Sen. John Burton. Its a tremendous achievement when the percentage of foster youth submitting the FAFSA exceeds that of the student population in general, said Burton in a statement. I congratulate San Diego County on their success and the hard work their staff did to make a huge difference in the lives of these students. The FAFSA Challenge is the rst coordinated effort in California specically designed to reach foster youth. These teens leave millions of dollars in college nancial aid behind each year, even though they almost always qualify for assistance. JBAY Project Director Debbie Raucher said about 60 percent of non-foster youth in California complete the FAFSA annually, but difculties in identifying and reaching them through traditional campaigns have kept them from applying for nancial aid. Advertisement laura.groch@sduniontribune.com Encinitas and Solana Beach are throwing their weight behind a renewed push to ban gun shows from the Del Mar Fairgrounds, with both city councils in the past two weeks following the City of Del Mars lead in demanding tighter gun controls. Going even further, Del Mar Mayor Dwight Worden is drafting a legislative proposal that would prevent any state fairgrounds from hosting a gun show if its surrounding municipalities object. Worden has not announced a sponsor, but Assm. Todd Gloria and Sen. Toni Atkins have shown support for the cities gun-control efforts. Advocates on both sides of the gun-control debate are gearing up for the April 24 meeting of the fairgrounds state-appointed board of directors, which was postponed from April 10 in order to finalize financial details on the $15 million renovation of the fairgrounds satellite betting facility. A month after the Feb. 14 school shooting in Parkland, Fla., the Del Mar City Council drew a line in the sand on gun-related policies, calling on federal and state officials to enact measures including a ban on assault weapons, high-capacity magazines and accelerated-firing mechanisms such as bump stocks; mandatory background checks; and measures to bolster school safety without arming teachers. Advertisement Encinitas followed suit on March 21, then Solana Beach a week later as more than 50 orange-clad activists from the newly formed NeverAgainCA.org flooded that citys March 28 council meeting. Both cities resolutions came with a single dissenting vote, and both acknowledged their symbolic nature. But on the gun shows in Del Marthe next of which will be held May 19 and 20opponents see the chance to have a tangible impact. Despite most of the fairgrounds sitting on Del Mar land, the city has no official sway over what kinds of events are held therea dynamic that played out last year as Del Mar and Solana Beach stood with anti-drug activists opposing a cannabis festival planned at the fairgrounds in September. While the fairgrounds board acknowledged the divided outcryan equal outpouring called for the festival to proceed it based its decision to cancel the Goodlife Festivals contract on its individual liability for contradicting federal law. Before casting his March 28 vote, Solana Beach Deputy Mayor Dave Zito admitted to having pause that the gun show could be a free speech issue. Those concerns had been overwhelmed, he said, by earlier testimony that quoted fairgrounds documents that describe the gun shows as a policy decision to be made by the fair board and their community. Theyve already exercised that right with respect to cannabis, and so we know that this is a pattern that theyve established, Zito said. As Encinitas Councilman Mark Muir did the week before, Solana Beach Mayor Ginger Marshall cast that citys lone dissenting vote. I guess I must be the only Second Amendment person in the room, but I also do appreciate the First Amendment, she said, pausing when someone in the audience interrupted. It does have something to do with it. And I believe that if you dont want to go to a gun show, dont go to a gun show. If you dont want to go the horse races because horses die and break their legs, dont go to the horse races. If you dont like the fair, dont go to the fair. When the resolution passed, the orange-clad audience gave a standing ovation that lasted more than 30 seconds. Advertisement Once the din died down, Councilwoman Jewel Edson issued a parting thought. She said that she supports the Second Amendment, as well as a Supreme Court ruling that the right to bear arms is not unlimited. I am not a hunter, but I grew up among a family of hunters. My grandfathers and uncles all hunted, and I grew up eating the birds, elk, deer and other assorted creatures that they brought home. They were delicious, Edson said. They hunted those creatures with rifles, shotguns and bows, not with semi-automatic weapons. Lauryn Hill will celebrate the 20th anniversary of her landmark debut solo album, The Miseducation of Lauryn Hill, with a North American concert tour. Billed as Ms. Lauryn Hill Performing the Miseducation of Lauryn Hill, the extensive concert trek opens July 5 in Virginia Beach and concludes in St. Louis on Oct. 5. It includes a Sept. 9 show at Cal Coast Credit Union Open Air Theatre at San Diego State University, which at least for now is her only Southern California tour date announced thus far. All tour dates and ticket information appears below. Advertisement Hill will perform Miseducation live in its entirety. Her first and most successful solo release after she left The Fugees, the 1998 album sold 8 million copies. It earned five Grammy Awards a year later and became the first hip-hop release in history to win Grammy Album of the Year honor. Miseducation also yielded a number of hit singles, including Doo Wop (That Thing), Ex-Factor and Everything Is Everything. Hills debut solo headlining tour in 1999 included a San Diego show at Coors (now Mattress Firm Amphitheatre). On Saturday, she performed a tribute to Nina Simone as part of the late Simones induction into the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame. Tickets go on sale Friday at noon at ticketmaster.com and by phone at (800) 745-3000. Pre-sales for Citi card holders and VIP packages begin today, Tuesday, at 10 a.m. Several more pre-sales begin Thursday. Ticket prices for Hills San Diego concert range from $25-$199.99, plus service charges. The Miseducation of Lauryn Hill 20th Anniversary Tour dates July 5 Veterans United Home Loans Amphitheater at Virginia Beach- Virginia Beach, Va. July 8 Jiffy Lube Live Bristow, Va. July 11 Blue Hills Bank Pavilion Boston Advertisement July 13 The Festival Pier at Penns Landing- Philadelphia July 15 Northwell Health at Jones Beach Theater- Wantagh, NY July 18 Budweiser Stage Toronto, ON, Canada July 20 Michigan Lottery Amphitheatre Sterling Heights, Mich. Advertisement July 25 Charlotte Metro Credit Union Amphitheatre Charlotte, NC July 26 Red Hat Amphitheater Raleigh, NC July 29 Al Lang Stadium Saint Petersburg, Fla. July 31 Bayfront Park Miami Miami Advertisement Aug. 2 Dailys Place Jacksonville, Fla. Aug. 3 Chastain Park Amphitheatre Atlanta Aug. 5 Metro Nashville Municipal Auditorium Nashville Aug. 8 PNC Bank Arts Center Holmdel, NJ Advertisement Sept. 7 The Joint at Hard Rock Hotel & Casino Las Vegas Sept. 9 Cal Coast Credit Union Open Air Theatre San Diego Sept. 12 Rose Quarter Portland, Ore. Sept. 14 Deer Lake Burnaby, BC, Canada Advertisement Sept. 15 accesso ShoWare Center Kent, Wash. Sept. 20 Shoreline Amphitheatre At Mountain View Mountain View, Calif. Sept. 22 Comerica Theatre Phoenix Sept. 24 Isleta Amphitheater Albuquerque, NM Advertisement Sept. 26 Red Rocks Park and Amphitheatre Morrison, Colo. Sept. 29 Smart Financial Centre at Sugar Land Sugar Land, Tex. Sept. 30 The Pavilion at Toyota Music Factory Irving, Tex. Oct. 3 UNO Lakefront Arena New Orleans Advertisement george.varga@sduniontribune.com Advertisement Twitter @georgevarga When the Titanic sank 106 years ago, only one of the 2,200 passengers was bound for San Diego: Kate Buss, 36, who was headed here to join her fiance. Buss survived the fabled sinking, and now one of the letters she wrote on board to a brother is up for auction in England this weekend. It talks about the really magnificent first-class cabins, mentions dining with two clergymen, and says her only complaint is the new-paint smell. No sign of sea sickness yet, she wrote. I musnt crow. The handwritten, four-page letter, penned on official On board RMS Titanic stationery, is dated April 10, 1912, the day the liner departed Southampton, England, for its maiden voyage across the Atlantic Ocean to New York. Advertisement It was mailed at a stop in Queenstown, Ireland, which is why it didnt go down with the ship, which hit an iceberg shortly before midnight on April 14. About 1,500 people died. Saturdays auction by Henry Aldridge & Son in Devizes, England, which bills itself as one of the leading authorities in the world of all things Titanic, includes 240 lots, many of them related to the ship: a menu from the first-ever meal onboard, postcards, a third-class stewards badge. Auctioneers estimate the Buss letter will go for somewhere between 20,000 to 25,000 pounds (about $28,000 to $35,000). It says the letter, written to her brother Percy James, gives the reader a vivid snapshot of life onboard. Among Titanics 700 survivors, Buss story is not well known. She wasnt rich like Benjamin Guggenheim, wasnt a movie star like Dorothy Gibson. After she was rescued from a lifeboat and taken about the Carpathia, another ship, she avoided the media. She never testified in front of the American and British boards of inquiry. According to the web site Encyclopedia Titanica, Buss traveled on to San Diego and married Samuel Willis on May 11, 1912, not quite a month after the sinking. Nine months later, they had a daughter, Sybil Lillian, whose middle name came from another Titanic passenger Buss had befriended. They lived here into the 1920s before moving to Santa Monica and then Pasadena. After her husband died in 1953, Buss followed her daughter to Oregon. She died in a nursing home there in 1972 at age 96. Etched on her gravestone is her married name, her years of birth and death, and this: TITANIC SURVIVOR. Advertisement john.wilkens@sduniontribune.com The Navy has fired the commander of the amphibious warship Somerset following an investigation into concerns about his command climate. The commanding officer of USS Somerset was relieved of his duties April 12, due to loss of confidence in his ability to effectively lead and carry out assigned duties, wrote Coronado-based Naval Surface Forces spokesman Lt. Andrew R. Degarmo in an email to The San Diego Union-Tribune. Rear Adm. Cedric Pringle, commander of Expeditionary Strike Group 3, removed Capt. William Sherrod following a probe into command climate concerns that were not tied to any one event, Degarmo said. Formerly the Somersets executive officer, Sherrod, 45, fleeted up to take command of the San Antonio-class warship on Nov. 2. Advertisement Sherrod has been temporarily reassigned to the command staff of North Island-based Naval Air Forces. He did not return telephone calls from the Union-Tribune seeking comment. Capt. Brian Quin, Expeditionary Strike Group 3s chief of staff, has assumed temporary duties of the Somerset until a skipper can be found. The Somerset entered General Dynamics NASSCO shipyard in San Diego on Oct. 6 for an extended maintenance session. Last May, the Navy removed both the captain and executive officer of the Somersets sister ship, the San Diego-based Anchorage, after commanders said they lost confidence in their ability to lead. The relief of Capt. Jeff Craig and his second-in-command Lt. Cmdr. Joshua Johnson stemmed from an inspection last spring that found improper procedural compliance throughout the warship, according to Naval Surface Forces. Dismissals for command climate problems, like that allegedly caused by Sherrod, are different. Command climate is the culture of a ships crew, the way that they operate ashore and at sea. The Navy charges the commander with sole responsibility for ensuring that it never becomes toxic. A Florida native who graduated from Jacksonville University in 1994, Sherrod was commissioned through the Naval Reserve Officer Training Corps program and selected for the Surface Warfare field. Advertisement He served aboard the destroyer Gonzalez as a young lieutenant before becoming the operations officer and navigator aboard the coastal patrol ship Shamal in 1998. In 1999, Sherrod transferred to Naval Aviation and earned his flight wings a year later. A Sikorsky SH-60B Seahawk naval helicopter pilot, he was assigned to the Grandmasters of Anti-Submarine Squadron Light 46, based in Mayport, Florida. Before becoming executive officer of the Somerset in mid-2016, he served at sea aboard the frigate Dewert, destroyer Winston S. Churchill, carrier Carl Vinson and the cruisers Hue City and Vella Gulf He became chief of operations in Iraq for Joint Task Force Balad in late 2009. Advertisement He took command of the North Island-based Helicopter Anti-Submarine Squadron Light 49 three years later. Under his leadership, the Scorpions received the Golden Wrench award for expeditionary units in Helicopter Strike Wing Pacific. The award honors units with maintenance excellence. His squadron also earned a Chief of Naval Operations Aviation Safety Award and a Navy Meritorious Unit Commendation. Sherrods awards include the Defense Meritorious Service Medal, Meritorious Service Medals and several Navy/Marine Corps Commendation Medals. Advertisement Military Videos On Now D-Day paratrooper from Coronado jumps again in France at age 96 On Now Remembering war's fallen, one name at a time On Now In Ramona, an airplane and an aviator provide living lessons on World War II 1:43 On Now Video: Navy's newest vessel sails into San Diego and a new future in surface warfare On Now Video: U.S. Navy files homicide charges over warship collisions On Now Stopping Marine hazing On Now Video: U.S. Navy Air Crew Grounded After Creating Vulgar Sky Drawing On Now Navy says Asia Pacific ship collisions were avoidable On Now Hundreds of recruits get sick at Marine boot camp On Now Cutler Dawson Talks Navy Federal Advertisement cprine@sduniontribune.com A San Diego-based warship played a key role in American efforts to destroy Syrias suspected chemical weapons program. The guided-missile destroyer Higgins launched 23 Tomahawk Land Attack Missiles from the North Persian Gulf, about one out of every five cruise missiles striking three Syrian chemical complexes from the U.S. Navys surface and submarine forces, plus warships and aircraft from America, France and the United Kingdom. The brief but punishing strikes not only included missiles from the U.S. Navys Higgins and sister destroyer Laboon but also from the cruiser Monterey operating in the Red Sea. From the Mediterranean Sea, the French frigate Longuedoc also lobbed a volley of long range Storm Shadow missiles. It was joined there by the Virginia-class submarine John Warner, which launched six Tomahawks. Advertisement U.S. Air Force B-1 bombers also shot 19 Lockheed Martin AGM-158 extended range Joint Air-to-Surface Standoff Missiles at the Barzah Research and Development Center near Damascus, destroying it, according to Pentagon officials. They were joined in the skies over the Middle East by French Rafale and Mirage fighters British Tornado and Typhoon aircraft. Also destroyed were the Him Shinshar Chemical Weapons factory outside of Homs and a nearby bunker. What the Higgins did is something every crew on Aegis destroyers and cruisers train constantly to execute flawlessly, said retired Navy Rear Adm. David Steindl. They practice this skill relentlessly. Now the director of the Navy - Marine Corps programs at defense giant Lockheed Martins San Diego field office, Steindl practiced and performed Tomahawk strikes as department head, shipboard executive officer and skipper of a string of warships, including the Ticonderoga-class guided missile cruiser Cowpens and the Arleigh Burke-class destroyer Ross. As skipper of the destroyer John Paul Jones in 2001, Steindl directed Americas first response to the Sept. 11 terror attacks, launching Tomahawks for two days at Al Qaeda and Taliban targets in Afghanistan. Tomahawks, theyre able to accurately hit specific sections of a building, Steindl said. And the Navy has a lot of experience with them. The Navy has been firing them since the 1980s. Presidents have come to count on the surface warfare Navy to deliver them. Around the world, there are a lot of very powerful destroyers and cruisers with magazines full of Tomahawks. Theyre ready to be called upon and theyre called upon frequently. Advertisement Plans for attacking the Syrian sites were in the works in London, Paris and the Pentagon for nearly a week, following a suspected April 7 attack by the Bashar al-Assad regime against a rebel-held section of Douma, several miles northeast of Damascus, killing upwards of 70 people. Medics in Douma told international investigators that they believed the Syrian munitions included a mixture of chlorine gas and a deadly nerve agent such as Sarin. Two days after the Douma chemical attack, jets believed to have been flown by the Israeli Air Force raided Syrias Tiyas Military Airbase, a target Jerusalem struck in February, too. Combined, the four nations appear to have decimated key portions of Syrias chemical manufacturing and delivery system, but questions linger about how quickly Assad might reconstitute the banned program. Advertisement Despite the international condemnation of the Douma deaths, Assads key supporters in Moscow, Tehran and Lebanons Hezbollah continue to support the regime in a brutal civil war that began in 2015. President Donald Trump strongly defended the punitive strikes against Assad and in a strong message on the social media platform Twitter claimed Mission Accomplished. First, the strikes were well coordinated, well planned and meant to minimize collateral damage and avoid Russian casualties, said Harlan K. Ullman, a former Navy commander and a senior adviser to Washington D.C.'s Atlantic Council, in an email to The San Diego Union-Tribune. Second, for all the bellicose Twitter threats made by the president, the attacks reflected restraint not to escalate the level of violence. Third, the reaction by both Republican and Democrats has been guardedly supportive although some members of Congress will rightly argue that the Authorization to Use Military Force granted for the 2003 Iraq War does not extend to the fight against IS or in attacking Syria and question whether Syria will remain deterred, said Ullman, an architect of the shock and awe doctrine used by American forces in Iraq in 2003. Advertisement IHS Markits chemical, biological, radiological and nuclear defense expert Karl Dewey isnt convinced the strikes accomplished the mission. In an email to the Union-Tribune, Dewey said that similar strikes last year on Syrian air facilities apparently failed to dissuade Damascus from using chemical weapons against civilians and the US has sent mixed messages on whether it is now prepared to sustain such actions to prevent their use again. Advertisement Military Videos On Now D-Day paratrooper from Coronado jumps again in France at age 96 On Now Remembering war's fallen, one name at a time On Now In Ramona, an airplane and an aviator provide living lessons on World War II 1:43 On Now Video: Navy's newest vessel sails into San Diego and a new future in surface warfare On Now Video: U.S. Navy files homicide charges over warship collisions On Now Stopping Marine hazing On Now Video: U.S. Navy Air Crew Grounded After Creating Vulgar Sky Drawing On Now Navy says Asia Pacific ship collisions were avoidable On Now Hundreds of recruits get sick at Marine boot camp On Now Cutler Dawson Talks Navy Federal cprine@sduniontribune.com Kimberley Dorey knew her 71-year-old husband was home that morning on May 30, 2017. She had just spoken to him on the phone, and he told her that his namesake son had just come over. But when she arrived at their Rancho Santa Fe home moments later, she couldnt find her husband, Leighton Dorey III. As she searched the four-acre property for him, Kimberley Dorey grew increasingly anxious. I was struck with an absolute panic Youre looking for blood, Kim, she testified in a Vista courtroom Monday. She said she had a history of being afraid of what her stepson might do to his father. Moments later, she found Doreys bloody, battered body at the bottom of stairs. And his son whose Jeep had been in the driveway when shed returned home from an errand was gone. Advertisement Her testimony came during the first day of a preliminary hearing for her stepson, 40-year-old Leighton Dorey IV. Dorey, whose family calls him L.B., has pleaded not guilty to one count of murder, and an allegation of torture in the death of his father. He faces at least 25 years to life if convicted. The younger Dorey had been living in France for a few years, and had returned stateside in the week before his father was brutally beaten. Under questioning by Deputy District Attorney Patricia Lavermicocca, Kimberley Dorey said her stepson had shown up at their home on La Brisa four days before the attack, and that she, her husband and stepson had a pleasant visit together. During that visit, she said, her stepson said he was out of money and would have to live in his car. She said her husband yelled out I love you, L.B, as his son left that morning. On cross-examination by defense attorney Wil Rumble, Kimberley Dorey said she has suspected that the younger Dorey suffered from paranoid schizophrenia, and that he had told his father that a dentist implanted some sort of a device in his teeth. She also testified that the younger Dorey had seen psychologists. Advertisement Sheriffs homicide Detective Christi Ramirez testified that investigators found bloody footprints of a person wearing socks around the body. In the nearby bathroom, they found blood in the shower and sink, both of which were still wet from recent use. The younger Dorey was arrested the following morning in the Riverside County community of Idyllwild. Testimony in the hearing will continue Tuesday. After it wraps up, Superior Court Judge David Danielsen will decide if enough evidence exists to try the defendant. Advertisement teri.figueroa@sduniontribune.com Advertisement (760) 529-4945 Twitter: @TeriFigueroaUT A jury announced Monday that it could not agree on whether a Navy commander assaulted and tried to rape a junior officer in her San Diego home. Jurors voted 10-2 in favor of convicting John Michael Neuhart II of attempted rape and 7-5 for conviction on a charge of assault with intent to commit rape during a burglary. They were divided 2-10, with the majority in favor of acquittal, on a charge of resisting or delaying an officer. This is the second time a Superior Court jury has deadlocked on charges in the case. In December, a different panel voted 11-1 in favor of finding Neuhart guilty of the most serious charges, prompting a judge to declare a mistrial. Advertisement Neuhart, 41, is accused of forcing his way into the womans Valencia Park home, tearing off her jeans and trying to rape her after a night of heavy drinking in downtown San Diego on Sept. 12, 2016. The woman testified that Neuhart didnt stop his assault until her repeated screams drew the attention of a neighbor. When the neighbor shouted into the residence that he had a gun, Neuhart ran out a back door and into a canyon where he fell and broke his leg. Police officers werent far behind, and arrested Neuhart soon after. The Navy commander, however, said that the woman, who had been under his command in Guam, had given him permission to come to her home and have sex. The two had repeatedly hugged and kissed each other earlier in the night, according to surveillance footage from a hotel they visited and testimony from a hired SUV driver that took them to the womans apartment. The driver also said, however, that the woman also yelled Stop! several times at the defendant. Neuhart, who has since been suspended from his command, said when they arrived at the womans residence, she took her own pants off and that he never touched her private parts. He also said that he believed the aggressive foreplay, although bizarre, was consensual. He said the woman told him earlier in the night that if she said no to him, she meant yes. At one point during the encounter, Neuhart started recording with his cellphone, which was set up to face the back door of the womans house. Advertisement In the video, the woman can be heard repeatedly screaming at Neuhart to leave and to stop pounding on the door. Soon after, she lets him in. She can then be heard saying, Why would you want a woman who doesnt want you? Neuhart said he recorded the video in case she claimed he raped her. Advertisement Twitter: @LAWinkley (619) 293-1546 lyndsay.winkley@sduniontribune.com With Justice Neil M. Gorsuch casting the deciding vote, the Supreme Court on Tuesday spared a California immigrant from deportation because his conviction for home burglary was not the kind of aggravated felony that would require removing him from the country. The decision narrows one provision of a broad federal immigration law that calls for mandatory deportation for noncitizens including longtime lawful residents who are convicted of a crime that involves a substantial risk of force or violence. Federal law makes clear that dozens of violent crimes, including murder, rape and robbery, would trigger deportation, but the justices have struggled in recent years to decide which other state crimes qualify as aggravated felonies under federal law. A federal immigration judge had decided James Dimaya, a native of the Philippines who immigrated legally and had lived in Northern California since 1992, was slated for deportation because he had pleaded guilty twice to residential burglary under California law. Though a lower court found Dimaya had gone into an unoccupied home, the immigration judge found that a residential burglary is a crime of violence because it carries a substantial risk that physical force may be used, citing the words of the law. Advertisement But by a 5-4 vote, the justices reversed that ruling Tuesday and held that the burglary law is too vague and uncertain to be deemed a crime of violence in all instances. It marked the first time that Gorsuch, President Trumps appointee, joined with the four liberals to form a majority. A spokesman for the Department of Homeland Security criticized the ruling. By preventing the federal government from removing known criminal aliens, it allows our nation to be a safe haven for criminals and makes us vulnerable as a result, said Press Secretary Tyler Q. Houlton. The ruling in Sessions vs. Dimaya was a defeat for the Trump administration. Lawyers for the Obama administration had taken a similar position, first appealing the case in 2016 and urging the court to uphold the deportation decision. The justices differed on whether the ruling would have a significant impact beyond home burglaries. While the dissenters said it would cast doubt on other crimes such as racketeering and money laundering, the majority said it would only prevent the government from relabeling crimes such as car burglary or residential trespassing as violent offenses. The Supreme Court delivered a resounding message today: You cant banish a person from his home and family without clear lines, announced up front, said New York lawyer Joshua Rosenkranz, who represented Dimaya. Congress cannot write a mushy standard that leaves it to unaccountable immigrant officials and judges to make it up as they go along. Justice Elena Kagan, speaking for the court Tuesday, relied heavily on a ruling handed down by the late Justice Antonin Scalia in 2015. He said then the court would not add an extra 15-year prison term for armed career criminals unless Congress spelled out what it meant by a violent felony. The law had been interpreted in that case to apply to possession of a gun. Deportation is a particularly severe penalty, Kagan said, and it is unconstitutional to mandate deportation based on a hopelessly vague provision. Advertisement Justices Ruth Bader Ginsburg, Stephen G. Breyer and Sonia Sotomayor agreed in full. Gorsuch agreed in part, and filed a separate opinion. Vague laws invite arbitrary power, he wrote. They can invite the exercise of arbitrary power all the same by leaving the people in the dark about what the law demands and allowing the prosecutors and courts to make it up. Just take the crime at issue in this case, California burglary, which applies to everyone from armed home intruders to door-to-door salesmen peddling shady products. How, on that vast spectrum, is anyone supposed to locate the ordinary cases and say whether it includes a substantial risk of physical force? The truth is, no one knows. In August 2016, the Justice Department appealed to the Supreme Court after the U.S. 9th Circuit Court of Appeals, in an opinion by the late Judge Stephen Reinhardt in Los Angeles, ruled for Dimaya. He cited Scalias then-recent opinion on vague laws and said calling the California home burglary law a violent crime had the same flaw. It did not require evidence that the burglar actually broke into a home or used or threatened force. To an unusual degree, the outcome in this case depended on Gorsuch. The eight justices first heard the case in January 2017, shortly before Trump was sworn in, but they failed to issue a ruling by late June. They announced instead they would rehear the case in early October, making clear to all that Gorsuch would cast the deciding vote. Advertisement Chief Justice John G. Roberts Jr. dissented and said the law was reasonably clear. Justices Clarence Thomas, Anthony M. Kennedy and Samuel A. Alito Jr. agreed. In a second dissent, Thomas, joined by Kennedy and Alito, faulted the majority for declaring one provision of the law unconstitutionally vague. david.savage@latimes.com UPDATES: 3:25 p.m.: The story was updated with comments from the Homeland Security Department and lawyer Joshua Rosenkranz. Advertisement 10:40 a.m.: The story was updated with staff reporting. The story was originally published at 8 a.m. A San Diegan who won asylum in the U.S. just published a book about how the U.S. could better integrate refugees. Called Understanding the Multifaceted Management Problems of Refugee Resettlement in the United States of America The Only War that the United States is Unlikely to Win, the book examines issues ranging from mental health and medical conditions to language barriers and housing that author Justin Mudekereza has seen since he started a refugee support nonprofit called New Neighbor Relief. Refugees never chose to come here. They never chose to become refugees, Mudekereza said. The attention theyre given is not really what theyre supposed to be given. You cant just bring me to your country and promise me I will start a new life, and what I find is hardship. One of the biggest problems, he said, is that the cash aid that refugees receive for the first few months is often less than the cost of rent for a family in San Diego. Refugees also have to pay back loans that they received for their travel to the U.S., and though they receive food stamps when they first arrive, they cant use that money for other basic necessities like soap or feminine hygiene products. Advertisement Every month they tell you to pay, Mudekereza said. You dont have a job. You dont have enough cash aid. You dont have anything. It causes people to pass nights without sleeping. Hed like to see policy changes to support refugees more when they first arrive so that they become self-sufficient. He said that goal requires three things English language skills, a job and a car. Mudekereza has made a life out of human rights work. In the Democratic Republic of Congo, where he was born, he ran a nonprofit that supported widows and orphans who had lost their families in the war there. After he was tortured for his activism, he fled to Uganda in 2006. While he was in the U.S. for training in 2015, he learned that people from his home country were looking for him in Uganda, so he decided to ask for asylum. People seeking asylum dont get work permits right away, so while he waited, he volunteered with two refugee resettlement agencies in San Diego. Once he was legally allowed to work, he founded New Neighbor Relief to help refugees on a more individual basis than he felt resettlement agencies were able to do. There are many problems actually that we cannot fix alone, he said, referring to the difficulty that ethnic community-based organizations like his have in getting funding. He recognized that many of the issues that he addresses in his book are not limited to refugees. He said San Diegos struggle to house the homeless is another symptom of the social war that the U.S. is likely to lose. Advertisement 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 Advertisement kate.morrissey@sduniontribune.com, @bgirledukate on Twitter The San Diego County Board of Supervisors voted 3-1 Tuesday to support the Trump administrations lawsuit against California over so-called sanctuary laws that the state passed last year to limit its role in immigration enforcement. The county will file an amicus brief at the first available opportunity, likely if and when the case moves to a higher court on appeal, said Supervisor Kristin Gaspar, chairwoman of the board. The board voted in closed session after 45 minutes of public comment in which most speakers in the packed chambers urged the supervisors to vote against supporting the lawsuit. Margaret Baker, who lives near the border, told the board that backing the lawsuit will discourage immigrants from reporting crime. Advertisement We see this lawsuit as an attack on our safety and the well-being of our community, she said. David Garcias, president of the San Diego chapter of the union that represents county government employees, told the supervisors, I believe youre on the wrong side of history. This will affect your legacy. The three supervisors who voted to support the lawsuit said it was about public safety. Were talking about people who are crossing the border illegally, coming into this county and committing a crime and them being let loose probably to commit another crime, said Dianne Jacob, supervisor for the district that covers East County. That creates a public-safety issue and creates a problem in our neighborhoods. She worried about terrorists crossing the border illegally, she said. This is a different day than it was 20, 30, 40 years ago, Jacob said. Thats why it was important for us to stand up, as controversial as it was. Gaspar said San Diego was safer before the new laws, specifically Senate Bill 54, went into effect. SB 54 limits the ways in which local law enforcement officers can interact with federal immigration officials. The status quo was safer in San Diego, she said, adding that now immigration officers make more arrests out in the community because they cant make those arrests at jails. The best place for ICE to be is in the jail and not out in the community. Advertisement During the announcement of the vote, Gaspar showed printouts of emails she received from each side of the debate. The stack of emails criticizing her for considering support for the lawsuit was not much thicker than a legal pad. The stack of emails asking her to support the Trump administrations legal challenge was more than a foot tall. Gaspar, Jacob and Supervisor Bill Horn, who represents the northernmost part of the county, voted to support the lawsuit. Supervisor Greg Cox, whose district covers the South Bay, voted against it. Supervisor Ron Roberts, who represents central San Diego, was traveling abroad and did not attend the meeting. Cox said immigration issues need to be solved in Washington. A long line of San Diegans addressed the supervisors impending vote Tuesday morning with pleas to either support or not support the lawsuit. Advertisement The boards vote is a largely symbolic move that will create fear and divisiveness in our region, waste taxpayer funds and create distrust of law enforcement and local government within many communities, Cox said. The Department of Justice filed the lawsuit against California at the beginning of March over three laws. SB 54, the law that received the most publicity when it passed, allows officers to turn unauthorized immigrants over to federal immigration enforcement agencies only if they have committed crimes listed in the legislation. It says local police cannot participate in task forces that are focused on immigration enforcement. It also requires the California attorney general to set policies limiting assistance with immigration enforcement at public schools, libraries and hospitals. Advertisement Assembly Bill 103 prohibits local governments across California from adding new contracts with the federal government for civil immigration detention or expanding old ones. It also requires the California Attorney Generals Office to monitor conditions in existing immigration detention facilities in the state. AB 450 prohibits employers from voluntarily allowing immigration officials into non-public areas of the workplace unless the officers have judicial warrants. It also requires employers to notify employees about upcoming immigration inspections. Several critics of the lawsuit cited a January 2017 study by UC San Diego professor Tom Wong, published by the Center for American Progress, that found crime rates are higher in non-sanctuary counties. (Asked about the study, Gaspar declined to comment, saying she hadnt seen it.) About a dozen people who spoke in support of the lawsuit told supervisors that the sanctuary laws were an overreach of state power and were concerned that they would inhibit the federal government from deporting people with criminal convictions. Advertisement Stella May told the board that the laws act to protect criminal illegals. She used the example of Kate Steinle, a case often cited by President Donald Trump and his supporters in arguing for tougher immigration restrictions. Steinle, 32, was fatally shot by a man who had been released from a San Francisco jail a few months earlier and had several previous deportations. Cyrus Hojjaty, a 25-year-old Las Vegas resident whose family is from Iran, said that Californias policies were embarrassing and disgusting. He said his parents did it the right way. He worried that his states border with California would mean those policies have an effect where he lives. Advertisement You go to Europe, theyre being flooded with non-whites, he said. Before the Board of Supervisors meeting, opponents of the proposal to support the lawsuit rallied outside the county building. At the rally, many called on San Diegans to vote the supervisors out of office if they agreed to support the proposal. They worried that allowing local police to work closely with federal immigration officials would make communities less safe. Advertisement This proposal is only about fear and hatred, Neal Jose Wilkinson, a priest at a Barrio Logan church, told the crowd outside the building. We need law enforcement to protect all of our people, regardless of immigration status. If theyre not protecting all of us, theyre not protecting any of us. Ismahan Abdullahi of the Partnership for the Advancement of New Americans said San Diegos strength is its diversity. Led by our values, we want to take our region forward, not backward, Abdullahi said. Many accused Gaspar of bringing the issue to a board vote to gain media attention for her campaign in the 49th Congressional District, a seat being vacated by Rep. Darrell Issa, R-Vista. Gaspar represents supervisorial district 3, which stretches from Miramar to Encinitas and Escondido. Advertisement Inside the board chambers, Milad Torabi, a member of San Diego Border Dreamers, told the supervisors that immigrant communities are the eyes and ears for local police. He argued that SB 54 does not prohibit immigration officials from detaining people who have committed crimes, but rather holds federal officials to law enforcement standards that local police have, like the requirement of a judicial warrant. Some criticized support for the Trump administrations lawsuit as racist, while others pointed out that despite San Diegos diverse population, none of the supervisors are people of color. Still others told the supervisors that a yes vote would be on the wrong side of history and asked them what legacy they wanted to leave behind. Advertisement The city of Escondido voted to support the Trump administrations lawsuit earlier in April. Orange County supervisors also decided to join the federal lawsuit. Advertisement 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 A public forum will be held on May 5th at San Diego State University to explore whether marijuana can be used as a safe and effective alternative to opioids, a class of drugs that includes both prescription painkillers and narcotics like heroin. Opioids are among the most commonly abused drugs in the US. They caused or contributed to the death of 42,000 people nationwide in 2016. The forum will partly focus on cannabinoids, or CBDs, which are natural compounds in marijuana that do not make people high but can alleviate pain and inflammation in many people. The National Academy of Sciences says that comparatively little is known about the short and long-term health benefits and effects of cannabis. But scientists and physicians are pushing for more research, particularly with CBDs. Advertisement The scientists include Dr. Mark Wallace, a well-known pain expert at UC San Diego. Wallace will speak at the SDSU forum, along with Dr. Mitzi MacKenzie, an adolescent and family therapist who specializes in opiate addiction, and Dr. Sherry Yafai, a physician who practices at the Releaf Institute, a pain relief center based in Los Angeles. The May 5th event will be held at SDSUs Montezuma Hall from 2 p.m. to 4:30 p.m ICYMI San Diego pot stores praise Trumps decision not to crack down on recreational marijuana Marijuana shortage possible this summer in San Diego Assemblyman Randy Voepel, R-Santee, is facing an allegation from a Republican challenger that he has faked a part of his military service record, specifically by wrongly claiming credit for a Combat Action Ribbon. Military documents obtained separately by The San Diego Union-Tribune and the Los Angeles Times, however, show that Voepel did earn a Combat Action Ribbon during his 16-year career in the Navy. The commendation is given to sailors and Marines that attack or are attacked by an enemy. Voepel is a Navy veteran who reported to recruit training in San Diego 1969, became a radarman and deployed on destroyers to Vietnam. He later served in the reserves before retiring in 1986 as a operations specialist first-class, at the E-6 pay grade. The Combat Action Ribbon was the most prestigious commendation he received. The Union-Tribune obtained a summary of Voepels service record, including a list of commendations he received, on April 2 from public affairs at the Navy Personnel Command. Separately, the Los Angeles Times obtained a copy of Voepels service record on Jan. 19, 2017, from the National Personnel Records Center, a part of the National Archives. Advertisement Both sets of records confirmed the ribbon. But Larry Wilske, a retired Navy SEAL challenging Voepel, held a news conference on Monday at which he touted reporting by a blog This Aint Hell which reported on March 29 about service records also obtained from the National Personnel Records Center for Voepel. Those records are nearly identical to those released to the Times but without the Combat Action Ribbon. I am running for office because we have someone who has lied about his service and voters deserve better than that, Wilske said at the news conference just off the stern of the USS Midway Museum. Voepel, 67, was on the Santee City Council from 1996 to 2000 and then served as mayor until he was elected to the Assembly in 2016. He is vice chairman of the Assemblys Veterans Affairs Committee. Asked to respond to the allegation that his ribbon was not earned, Voepel did not address the question directly. He issued a statement saying that the attack on his military service was politically motivated. I am proud of my military service and my advocacy in Sacramento on behalf of veterans. Hollow political attacks are typical during campaign season, he said in a statement. They wont distract me from continuing to serve my constituents. Doug Sterner, the curator of the Hall of Valor, a large database of military service records, said government agencies sometimes provide incorrect transcripts of a veterans service record, and that human error might explain the differing records. He said he has made two identical requests for documents involving other service members under the Freedom of Information Act but has somehow received two sets of records with discrepancies between them. You have to use a lot of personal judgment. Is it worth trashing a legitimate heros reputation over something thats sketchy? I will not proceed on a stolen valor case unless I have it 100 percent, Sterner said by phone. Advertisement Advertisement Twitter: @jptstewart joshua.stewart@sduniontribune.com (619) 293-1841 Police are looking for a gunman who held up a convenience store on El Cajon Boulevard in San Diegos El Cerrito neighborhood Monday night. A man walked into Randys Mini Market on El Cajon Boulevard near El Cerrito Drive around 9:15 p.m. and pointed a black semi-automatic handgun at the clerk, according to a press relese from San Diego County Crime Stoppers. The robber demanded money, and the victim handed over an unspecified amount of cash, which he stuffed in the pocket of his jacket. Nobody was injured. The robber was last seen walking east on El Cajon Boulevard toward College Avenue in the Rolando area. The robber was described as black, 40 to 50 years old, about 6 feet tall and 280 to 300 pounds. Advertisement He was wearing a black zip-up style hooded jacket, a gray sports jersey with an Oakland Raiders logo on the front, black jeans, black tennis shoes, black gloves with reflective stripes on top and black sunglasses. Anyone with information on the identity or location of the suspect is asked to call the SDPDs Robbery Unit at (619) 531-2299 or the Crime Stoppers anonymous tip line at (888) 580-8477. Crime Stoppers is offering up to a $1,000 reward to anyone with information that leads to an arrest in this case. Sheriffs deputies are searching for the person who stabbed at least one person at a Spring Valley apartment complex Monday. Lt. Damon Blankenbaker of the Sheriffs Department said Monday afternoon that deputies were piecing together information on the attack that happened at the Casa Monterey Apartments on Calle Marinero and Tres Lagos Court at about 1:50 p.m. OnScene TV reported that one person was stabbed twice in the arms and once in the buttocks in the attack. Blankenbaker said it was unclear whether the attack happened inside an apartment or on the grounds of the complex, or if there were more than one victim. Advertisement An initial report said somebody had jumped over the fence at the site, he said. Homeless Playlist On Now San Diego hepatitis outbreak continues to grow: 481 cases On Now Homeless entrenched in booming tent city along Santa Ana River On Now San Diego mayor agreed to homeless hub, then delayed, advocates say On Now Homeless outreach in San Diego On Now Video: Street Art: Portraits of San Diego's Homeless #8 On Now In poverty himself, 'Water Man Dave,' is the fearless saint of San Diego's homeless 5:41 On Now Video: Homeless living in cars find safe havens 2:21 On Now Street Art: Portraits of San Diego's Homeless #7 On Now Pitching a tent plan for San Diego's homeless On Now Homeless efforts get $80M boost for various services gary.warth@sduniontribune.com Twitter: @GaryWarthUT Advertisement 760-529-4939 Rep. Duncan Hunter, who has been the subject of an ethics complaint saying hes too close to the vaping industry, disclosed in newly filed campaign reports that he disgorged from his treasury a $1,000 contribution from a vape company. Hunters campaign reported receiving the $1,000 contribution from Mountain Oaks Vapors LLC, of Cleveland, Tennessee, in October 2016. He gave the funds to the U.S. Treasury on March 31 of this year. The campaign listed the payment as a disgorgement, with no further explanation. Campaigns typically disgorge funds when a contribution seemed acceptable upon receipt, but campaign staff later learned it was prohibited. One reason a contribution might be prohibited is because the donor is a corporation, or an LLC that has elected to be taxed as a corporation. Such entities cannot contribute directly to a candidate, and often form a political action committee to give political contributions. Advertisement Hunter has long supported the vapor smoking industry. Late last year, an advocacy group called the American Democracy Legal Fund asked the Office of Congressional Ethics to look into Hunters endorsement of private vaping products in blatant disregard of the House Ethics Rules, the Union-Tribune reported. The American Democracy Legal Fund often targets Republicans but has also filed complaints against liberals such as Vermont Sen. Bernie Sanders. The complaint against Hunter is pending. Hunters spokesman Michael Harrison told the Union-Tribune at the time that advocacy groups attack was baseless. The congressman did nothing improper and he often supports a wide spectrum of issues that he believes will benefit his constituents, Harrison said at the time. Other smoking-related expenditures Hunters campaign reported in the new disclosure include three payments totaling $900 for food/beverages from Alpine Tobacco Company, a smoking lounge and bar in Alpine. Hunter also reported spending about $1,000 on food and drinks at Trump International Hotel Restaurant in Washington, D.C. $56 on Dec. 7, $328 on Dec. 26 and $632 on Jan. 19. The purpose of all three payments was listed as food/beverages. The Federal Election Commission report filed by Hunters campaign on Sunday covered the first three months of this year. There was no explanation for why the two December visits to the Trump International were disclosed on this report instead of the one covering the last quarter of 2017. In all, the campaign reported raising $211,268 for the quarter, and spending $191,678. Legal fees were among the campaigns biggest expenses in the first quarter of 2018, the report showed. It paid a total $79,277 to two law firms, Holtzman Vogel Josefiak Torchinsky PLLC in Warrenton, Virginia, and Seltzer Caplan McMahon Vitek in San Diego. Advertisement The new legal spending brings to about $646,933 the campaigns total payments for lawyers from eight firms since the Federal Election Commission and then The San Diego Union-Tribune first began questioning the campaigns spending on video games, private school tuition and other apparently personal purchases in April 2016. Since then, Hunter has reimbursed his campaign more than $60,000 for personal, mistaken and inadequately documented expenditures, including oral surgery, a garage door for his home and trips to Hawaii and Italy. Use of political money for personal benefit is prohibited by federal law to avoid the risk of undue influence over the lawmakers by donors who do business with the government. A federal criminal investigation into the campaigns spending came to light in March 2017 and remains ongoing. Hunter has denied involvement in any criminal action and his attorneys have said he is cooperating with the FBI investigation. Advertisement Previously: Hunter Watchdog Videos On Now Sexual misconduct accusers worry deputy is being protected 6:16 On Now City funded $2-million waterfront bathroom 1:26 On Now Public water district charges customer for legal work, response to records request On Now Video: Tiny homes won't be reused amid housing, homeless crisis On Now Attorney General seeks documentation for Miss Middle East On Now Rep. Hunter probe covers possible fraud On Now Video: SDG&E delaying solar credit for some low-income housing tenants On Now Video: Former San Diego Junior Theatre teacher sentenced for sex with teen girl 0:24 On Now Video: Shelter volunteers believe they were fired for finding a dog a home 0:49 On Now McKamey Manor is leaving San Diego 3:35 Advertisement morgan.cook@sduniontribune.com Newscaster Carl Kasell, a signature voice of NPR who brought his gravitas to Morning Edition and later his wit to Wait, Wait ... Dont Tell Me! has died. He was 84. NPR said Kasell died Tuesday from complications from Alzheimers disease in Potomac, Md. He retired in 2014. Kasells radio career spanned half a century, starting as a morning DJ and newscaster at WGBR-AM in Goldsboro, N.C. He spent a decade at radio station WAVA in Arlington, Va., going from morning anchor to news director. He was a newscaster for 30 years on Morning Edition until 2009. Kasell then became the official judge and scorekeeper of the Chicago-based show Wait, Wait ... Dont Tell Me! in 1998. He left his voice on hundreds of answering machines as part of that shows prize. Advertisement He was, and remains, the heart and soul of our show, Peter Sagal, the host of Wait, Wait, tweeted Tuesday. NPRs Melissa Block said of Kasell: A beloved voice. A radio man through and through. And the kindest colleague you could hope to find. Kasell joined NPR as a part-time employee in 1975 for Weekend All Things Considered and then announced the news on the first broadcast of Morning Edition in 1979 alongside host Bob Edwards. I look out the window in the morning sometimes, and the sun is rising, and the people are going to work, Kasell told NPR on his retirement. I look at Washington as being that big, sleeping giant, just stretching and waking up, and going about its business. And to know that Im working in the capital of the most powerful nation in the world I feel good about that. He loved radio from an early age, saying he would play his grandmothers records on a wind-up record player and take commercial breaks. He majored in English at the University of North Carolina, Chapel Hill and helped inaugurate a news program at the universitys WUNC station. Great news: The White House has confirmed that President Donald Trump promised Sen. Cory Gardner, R-Colorado, that he would support legislation that would protect states that have legalized marijuana from a crackdown by Attorney General Jeff Sessions. Given Congress welcome history of backing states making their own decisions on how to regulate pot, this should remove the uncertainty thats been hanging over California and other states since January. Thats when Sessions repudiated a policy inherited from the Obama administration that let individual states legalize recreational use without fear of federal intervention. It may also allow the Justice Department and the rest of the federal government to put even more of a focus on Americas real drug crisis the opioids epidemic not the one that the attorney general perceives. Yet given the presidents history of contradicting even humiliating top aides like Sessions and former Secretary of State Rex Tillerson with out-of-the-blue policy pronouncements, its difficult to be confident that the White House has finally abandoned Sessions reefer madness. Trump has never forgiven the former Alabama senator for his March 2017 decision to recuse himself from any investigation related to Russia and the 2016 presidential campaign. Given the presidents history of belittling Sessions on Twitter, no one would be surprised by the attorney generals abrupt departure. But if Sessions makes a decision Trump likes say, hamstringing special counsel Robert Mueller would his reward be another sharp swing, one back toward pot paranoia? That would also not be a surprise. Nevertheless, state leaders should presume this is settled and seek federal cooperation in giving the marijuana industry access to banking services. Now that the president has cut Sessions off at the knees, Justice Department officials may be receptive. Twitter: @sdutIdeas Advertisement Facebook: San Diego Union-Tribune Ideas & Opinion The reports last week that Wells Fargo is likely to face an additional $1 billion in civil penalties from federal regulators because of its abusive behavior toward so many of its customers were no surprise. In recent years, the San Francisco-based banking giant has faced harsh fire because its sales agents opened as many as 3.5 million unauthorized checking, savings and credit-card accounts and required more than 800,000 auto-loan customers to pay for insurance they didnt want or need. This led to fines of $185 million and the settlement of class-action lawsuits for $142 million, among other sanctions. The new penalties the iconic California company faces are due both to the vehicle-loan scams and to the banks imposition of unnecessary mortgage fees, a ploy which hasnt received as much attention as the previous scandals. Whats next reports that Wells Fargo charged visitors to its branches for breathing company air? If this seems hyperbolic, a look at Wells Fargos recent history suggests it is not. It is one of the more astounding revelations from any modern corporate scandal that Wells Fargos sales agents kept opening unauthorized accounts for years after the Los Angeles Times broke the scandal with an investigation published in 2013. Another telling fact is that while Wells Fargo fired more than 5,300 sales agents for their fraudulent practices and launched a series of shake-ups that removed board members and top executives, this approach appears to absolve thousands of midlevel managers who had to know there was something wrong when per-customer profit margins kept going up, up and away. Renowned economist Janet Yellen is one person who grasps that Wells Fargos scandals reflect a complete failure of corporate accountability and responsibility. In February, on her way out the door as chair of the Federal Reserve Board, Yellen imposed a unique penalty on the bank: barring it from adding to the assets it had on hand at the end of 2017 until the company could prove it had a grasp on basic ethics. This sanction should not be removed in response to token gestures and vague promises from Wells Fargo executives. It should be removed only after hard, documented evidence that the companys corrupt corporate culture is dead and buried. Twitter: @sdutIdeas Advertisement Facebook: San Diego Union-Tribune Ideas & Opinion A tweet from President Donald Trump on Tuesday has drawn strong and immediate pushback from Californians and others for his inaccurate claims about San Diego, crime and a much wanted wall along the U.S.-Mexico border. Trumps tweet came on the heels of Gov. Jerry Brown rejecting the terms for using state National Guard troops to help with immigration enforcement at the border. Last week, Brown authorized for 400 National Guard troops to go to the border but said that they are not authorized to make arrests or be involved in enforcement. It is also the second time Trump has claimed that construction for a border wall in San Diego has begun. But first, lets look at some of the claims Trump made in his tweet on Tuesday: Do San Diegans overwhelmingly support a border wall? Not really. Almost 50 percent of San Diegans oppose Trump's border wall, poll says. The San Diego Union-Tribune A San Diego Union-Tribune/10 News poll from January 2017 showed San Diegans oppose Trumps border wall. Of the 500 San Diegans who were polled, 48 percent oppose a border wall while 43 percent support it. Of those polled, 60 percent also do not believe that a border wall will prevent immigrants from coming into the U.S. while 34 do believe it will deter them. On top of that, San Diego city leaders last fall echoed that response when it voted to oppose Trumps border wall. San Diego Mayor Kevin Faulconer, a Republican, has opposed a border wall across the entire U.S. border but a spokeswoman told The Union-Tribune that he would not join the city councils resolution. Is crime in San Diego high? What about California? Trump also claimed that high crime rate will only get higher but it was left unclear whether he was referring to California overall or the San Diego region. San Diego crime rates from 2016 to 2017. The San Diego Union-Tribune San Diego crime rates have reached near-50-year lows, data analyzed by The Union-Tribune showed in February. All but one type of crime, robberies, experienced a decrease year over year. Between 2016 and 2017, crime dropped more than 7 percent with homicides, burglaries and vehicle thefts having the most notable decreases, The Union-Tribune reported. City officials credited that to the police departments relationship with the community and its crime-fighting strategies. 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. News organizations like Politifact, The Texas Tribune and even statistics from the FBI have also shown that border cities like San Diego and El Paso, Texas, are among the safest in the country given the concentration of law-enforcement in the region. Arrests at the border have also dropped to the lowest levels in 37 years, the Center for Public Integrity reported. This contradicts Trumps other claims that there is an influx of immigrants spilling through the U.S. border. Has construction for a border wall in San Diego begun? Trumps tweet also suggested that construction for a border wall, as seen in prototypes in San Diego, has begun. This is not the case. Rather, the U.S. Border Patrol last month began work to repaire and replace old fence with newer and taller fence along the border near the city of Calexico some 117 miles east of San Diego. The project was approved long before Trump took office. Trumps border wall has not yet been funded by Congress. Replacement work for another bollard-style wall that mimics the border wall prototypes in San Diego has begun, however, thats going up in New Mexico. It was the combination of all of those claims that drew a wide range of reactions online, many of them setting the record straight about the facts. Email: luis.gomez@sduniontribune.com Twitter: @RunGomez Read The Conversation on Flipboard. The worlds of art and craft beer often go seamlessly together, as craft breweries around the nation have embraced a more wide-ranging view of labeling and design for their products. San Diego has seen the artists hand touch a variety of labels, including Lost Abbey and Mikkeller. Now a veteran San Diego brewery has joined forces with a hometown artist from Coronado for a release of cans sure to grab the attention of craft beer drinkers. Kelcey Fisher, now a well-known artist in Los Angeles returns to his roots to collaborate with Coronado Brewing Company on their recent beer can labels. The first release, the Coco Chaos IPA, showcases Fishers trademark style of controlled chaos. PACIFIC recently chatted with Fisher about the collaboration, his background as an artist, and coming home. Advertisement Kelcey Fisher is the artist behind the Coco Chaos IPA label from Coronado Brewing Company. (Courtesy photo) PACIFIC: How did you join forces with Coronado Brewing? KELCEY FISHER: My dad is a retired commander and we moved around a lot, and he was hired in Coronado when I was in sixth grade. He won an opportunity to brew a beer at the (original) Coronado (Brewing) location, so I was very familiar. A bunch of my friends worked at the brewery. Its a small town, and everyone knew each other there. Ive done murals for Coronado High School, and Ive worked on projects there. One of the owners of Coronado Brewing remembered my dad. It was incredible for this to happen in my hometown. Did you know what the beer would specifically be before you designed the label? Yes. Ive been working on a style I call controlled chaos for the first release. I used this style with cream tone pastels and my usual color palate. I like to have a mix of cool and warm tones, and I keep it to max of three colors with black and white for a five-color pallet. I prefer working in uneven numbers on the amount of colors used. How does it get from large scale artwork to a label? Daniel Pressler, a childhood friend, is the graphic designer who designed most of the labels for the cans for Coronado Brewing Company. I do the painting and take a high res image, and I let Dan do his thing. He turns it into a proper label. Were you formally trained as an artist? Advertisement I ended up going to school for business and lacrosse. I got there, and after two years, I wasnt in a good place. I realized I wanted to take a creative direction. I drove across country to LMU (Loyola Marymount University) and changed my major to graphic design. What happened next? I took on the event coordinator position for the lacrosse team, and I linked up with a bunch of kids who were trying to be club promoters. We got a gig at the Avalon, and Steve Aoki was playing. My buddy Kellen McGraw and I did a piece from one of his albums. We get to the event, and hang up the artwork, and I gave the security guard $20 to find out when Steve would be there. When he arrived, I began running through the rave crowd with the painting to give to Steve Aoki. And the next thing I know, I was on stage with him. Things took off from there. Kelcey Fisher is the artist behind the Coco Chaos IPA label from Coronado Brewing Company. (Courtesy photo) Advertisement Biggest influences in art? Keith Haring? Yes, and M.C. Escher, he was my first art book, and Keith Haring was the first book I bought for myself. Also Patrick Nagel. I never want to be stagnate and do the same thing. I personally get bored, painting the same thing over and over. As Im growing, my art is growing and evolving. Why murals? It kind of just happened. There is a particular rose, my dad has it tattooed on his chest, and I put up a painting of it in a salon on Rose Avenue (in Venice). Wilmer Valderrama from That 70s Show bought it, and the salon wanted to make it permanent on the wall. The owner, Nik Rae Falco ended up getting it tattooed on her leg, and then I was asked to do my first exterior piece on Main Street, and murals blossomed from that. Advertisement Where else can San Diegans see your work? At Coyote Ugly downtown, Sweetfin Poke at UTC, Coronado High School, I have one coming up in Coronado, and three more coming in San Diego. Follow @kfishla to find out more and see me painting live. Favorite Coronado Brewing beer? And of all time? Mermaid Red and Lagunitas Little Sumpin Advertisement Are there more Coronado x KFish beers to come? Yes, in June, September and December, and we will do them in different cities for launch. June will be in L.A., and the last will be back home in Coronado for the finale. We are structuring them around murals and openings I will be doing. What would you like San Diegans to know about the art and beer collab? None of this would have been possible without the community; Daniel, my manager; Justin McCormack for the details; and Zach Bell, my videographer. It was a group effort, and we were all present. It was a great collaboration with my hometown and childhood friends. A special thanks to Laura Hill, my favorite art teacher of all time and Jenny Moore, the principal at Coronado High School. Advertisement Coco Chaos IPA is now available in cans at Coronado Brewing Company. Coronado Brewing Company Locations: Morena,1205 Knoxville St., 619.275.2215; Coronado, 170 Orange Ave., 619.437.4452; Imperial Beach, 875 Seacoast Dr., 619.423.4900 Online: coronadobrewing.com Racy. Provocative. Taboo. Cathartic. These are just some of the words that describe the new thought-provoking exhibit at the Museum of Man, entitled PostSecret, which asks the question, Would you share secrets with a stranger? The answer seems to be a resounding yes. The brainchild of artist Frank Warren, the community-based project launched in 2004, and has to date amassed a collection of over a million secrets from all over the world. Warren has posted them in his six books, his blog and in special exhibitions, including the White House. Entering the exhibition, visitors can sense an overwhelming feeling of collective release, as eyes dart across postcard after postcard of confession. Simply seeing the wall of myriad filed secrets behind Plexiglass can elicit a gasp, as comprehension sets in about the amount of pain, anxiety, and emotions trapped within those pages. Insider tip: Take a deep breath, start at the beginning and take your time this isnt an exhibition you want to rush through. Also included in the exhibition are mixed media works by Buffalo entitled Secret Self and Burning, two large scale figures grappling with their inner emotions. Secret Self depicts a person enveloped in an amorphous blog of faces with multiple expressions, while Burning sits with knees drawn up with a head encased in ashen flowers and flames. Advertisement A post card from PostSecret. (Courtesy photo) Its very likely with a highly charged exhibition like this, visitors may find themselves feeling a whirlwind of emotion, including empathy, knee-jerk judgement, anger, happiness and even profound sadness. As the museum notes on the exhibitions accompanying text, Some may shock, but others youll recognize as if they were your own. In fact, the exhibition invites everyone to become a part of the journey, with an open invitation, workstation, and supplies to take, design, and write a card, and drop it in the provided mailbox. Here are just some of the secrets revealed in the exhibition. What is your reaction? No matter how hard I work, how skilled I am, how many good things I do, nothing will ever make up for being fat. I wish I had voices in my head, just so I would have someone to talk to. What you did to me wasnt a crime, but it should be. I dont hate the beach as much as I say I do. I just find bare skin disgusting . . I fear Im going to be alone for the rest of my life...and I dont want to have to settle in order not to be. Ready to post your own secret? The PostSecret team will be around San Diego to help you release your inner thoughts. You can meet the team, and create your own postcard during the following events (more information is available at https://www.museumofman.org/upcoming-events): Veterans Museums Kid Fun Fest: noon to 4 p.m. Sunday, April 29 at 2115 Park Blvd., Balboa Park PostSecret Live with Frank Warren: 7-9 p.m. Thursday, May 10 at UCSD. At this interactive presentation, Warren will be discussing the project, signing books, taking questions and guests can make their own postcards to submit. Tickets are $15 for Museum Members and students and $20 for E-Club Members, University of California San Diego Price Center West Ballroom, 9500 Gilman Dr., La Jolla PostSecret Street Team appearance: 1-2 p.m. Saturday, May 19 at Hazard Center, 7510 Hazard Center Dr., Mission Valley Advertisement Find out more about the exhibition at museumofman.org/exhibits/postsecret and Frank Warrens project at postsecret.com, postsecretlive.com and postsecretshow.com Museum of Man, 1350 El Prado, Balboa Park, 619.239.2001, museumofman.org Thank you for reading! On your next view you will be asked to log in to your subscriber account or create an account and subscribepurchase a subscription to continue reading. Weekly Newsletter The best of The Saturday Evening Post in your inbox! Join Your Weekly Checkup is our online column by Dr. Douglas Zipes, an internationally acclaimed cardiologist, professor, author, inventor, and authority on pacing and electrophysiology. Dr. Zipes is also a contributor to The Saturday Evening Post print magazine. Subscribe to receive thoughtful articles, new fiction, health and wellness advice, and gems from our archive. Order Dr. Zipes new book, Damn the Naysayers: A Doctors Memoir. Subscribe and get unlimited access to our online magazine archive. Subscribe Today Two months ago, in my column about red wine, I noted that the American Heart Association endorsed a safe alcohol consumption of no more than one to two drinks per day for men and one drink per day for women, while the Canadian Center for Addiction and Mental Health considered low-risk alcohol consumption to be up to three drinks per day for men and two for women. Because of these inconsistencies about the effects of alcohol, I recommended erring on the low side. A recent study supports that view and halves the suggested safe amounts to less than one drink a day for men and women. The investigators analyzed information from almost 600,000 participants and found that those who had one drink a day or less had the lowest risk of dying. Those who drank more one drink a day had reduced life expectancy with increased risk of stroke, coronary disease (excluding heart attacks), heart failure, and fatal hypertensive disease. Alcohol consumption was also associated with higher risks of cancers of the digestive tract and breast. The authors estimated that men who reduced long-term alcohol consumption from two drinks a day, recommended in US guidelines, to one drink a day or less enjoyed one to two years of longer life expectancy at age 40 years. This study, though quite robust, shares the limitations of any observational study, including outside influences that change the effect and conclusions, unreliable reporting of actual alcohol consumption, reverse causality (for example, those at risk of dying maybe drank more alcohol) and other factors. I find it curious that alcohol consumption was associated with a lower risk of nonfatal heart attacks (perhaps by elevating the good cholesterol) but a higher risk of stroke, coronary disease and mortality, and that there was no difference between men and women. The impact of alcohol on health can be quite variable from one individual to another because of many factors such as body weight and sex, medications, overall health, and rate and types of alcohol consumption. Finding a magic number applicable for everyone is impossible. I ended the previous column with the same advice I will repeat here: err on the low side, but, as Oscar Wilde said years ago, Everything in moderation, including moderation. Pundits often reflect that its not how long you live but how you live long thats important. New York, NY -- (SBWIRE) -- 04/16/2018 -- The nano calcium carbonate refers to an ultra-fine precipitated calcium carbonate with an average particle diameter less than 100 nanometers which can be sued as additives in various products. The nano calcium carbonate is widely applied in plastic, paints and rubber industries because of its unique properties. This nano calcium carbonates act as a partial replacement of titanium dioxide in coatings, and it does not affect the whiteness of finished product. The use of nano calcium carbonate particles in chemical, biological, and industrial areas are constantly increasing, and researchers across the globe are working in discovering more of their properties which are expected to drive the global Nano calcium carbonate market over the forecast period. The nano calcium carbonate is used in a wide number of applications such as in coatings, plastics, alloys, nanowires, and catalyst uses. Nano Calcium Carbonate Market: Drivers and Restraints The growth in the demand for nano calcium carbonate from various end-use applications such as paints, sealant, and adhesives is expected to drive the global nano calcium carbonate market over the forecast period. The nano calcium carbonate is used to improve the properties of materials including plastics, adhesives, rubber, and sealants. The addition of nano calcium carbonate improves the weather resistance, heat resistance, impact resistance, and also the toughness and performance of the material under extreme temperature conditions. The use of nano-calcium carbonate in paints helps to control the rheological and the necessary mechanical properties of the cured material. The use of nano-calcium carbonate as additives in polymers and adhesives contributes in reducing the volume formulation cost and improving the final product quality, thereby fuelling the growth of global nano calcium carbonate market over the forecast period. In addition to this, the increase in labeling and packaging market, automotive, industrial, glass and ceramics industry is creating a high demand for printing inks. The nano calcium carbonate is used in printing ink to improve its quality. This calcium carbonate treated ink can replace the use of varnishes and oils. The growth in the demand for solvent ink, offset ink or lithographic ink is expected to drive the nano calcium carbonate market over the forecast period. The nano calcium carbonate is used in the inner tube of radial tire and butyl tube to improve the air tightness, stiffness, and reduce the cost of a rubber compound. The increasing demand for industrial rubber for tire industry as a cheap and efficient substitute of carbon black because of its superior chemical properties is expected to drive the global nano calcium carbonate market over the forecast period. Request to View TOC and Sample of Research Report @ https://www.persistencemarketresearch.com/samples/16837 The global Nano Calcium Carbonate market is segmented into the seven key regions: North America, Latin America, Western Europe, and Eastern Europe, Asia Pacific Excluding Japan (APEJ), Japan and the Middle East and Africa (MEA). The APEJ region is expected to dominate the global nano calcium carbonate market over the forecast period. Rapid growth in industries including automotive, rubber, construction, paper, and manufacturing is expected to drive the nano calcium carbonate market in APEJ region over the forecast period. China is estimated to dominate the APEJ nano calcium carbonate market due to the increase in tire and rubber industry in this area. The growth in automotive production on account of rising demand for light and heavy commercial vehicles is expected to drive the North America nano calcium carbonate market over the forecast period. Albany, NY -- (SBWIRE) -- 04/17/2018 -- Of late, the global market for paints and coatings fillers has been witnessing tremendous surge in its market size. The rise in the demand for paints and coatings fillers in the automotive and the construction industries is the main factor behind the growth of the worldwide paints and coatings fillers market. This research report is aimed at offering clear and in-depth information about the global market for paints and coatings fillers by carrying out a thorough analytical research of the performance of this market in the past and during the period from 2017 to 2025. The study especially highlights the growth boosters, obstacles, opportunities, challenges, and the key trends in this market in a bid to determine the pace of its growth. Browse Research Report With Complete TOC @ https://www.transparencymarketresearch.com/paints-coatings-fillers-market.html Global Paints and Coatings Fillers Market: Trends and Opportunities The global market for paints and coatings fillers is gaining remarkably from the significant rise in the global population and the increase in the number of nuclear families every year. This factor, as a result, is creating considerable demand for paints and coatings fillers across the world. Apart from this, the rise in the consumer goods and automotive industries is also boosting the worldwide paints and coatings fillers market remarkably. However, the alarming increase in the emission of harmful volatile organic compounds (VOC) from paints and coatings fillers, leading to increased concerns over health and environment, is projected to impede the market's growth in the near future. Global Paints and Coatings Fillers Market: Regional Outlook On the basis of the geography, the worldwide market for paints and coatings fillers can be divided into Latin America, Western Europe, Asia Pacific, Eastern Europe, North America, and the Middle East and Africa. The Western European market for paints and coatings fillers is led by the U.K., Spain, Belgium, France, Germany, Netherlands, Italy, Luxembourg, and Nordic countries, while the Eastern European market is dominated by Poland and Russia. India, Australia, Japan, China, New Zealand, and ASEAN countries have surfaced as the leading domestic markets for paints and coatings fillers market in Asia Pacific. North America witnesses the prominence of the U.S. and Canada in its paints and coatings fillers market, whereas, the Latin America market is led by Peru, Brazil, Mexico, and Chile. Currently, North Africa, Southern Africa, and GCC are leading the paints and coatings fillers market in the Middle East and Africa and scenario is likely to remain same in the near future. Request a PDF Brochure with Research Report Analysis @ https://www.transparencymarketresearch.com/sample/sample.php?flag=B&rep_id=38801 Companies Mentioned in the Report 3M, Gebruder Dorfner GmbH & Co., Minerals Technologies Inc., Omya AG, Willamette Valley Co., and VELOX are some of the leading players in the global market for paints and coatings fillers. On account of the presence of numerous players, the market demonstrates a highly competitive and fragmented structure. The leading players in this market are projected to focus on innovation and technological advancements in their offerings over the next few years to attain a competitive edge over their rivals. About Transparency Market Research Transparency 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. TMR's experienced team of analysts, researchers, and consultants, use 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, chemicals, 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, TMR's syndicated reports strive to provide clients to serve their overall research requirement. San Francisco, CA -- (SBWIRE) -- 04/17/2018 -- This report on the world market for solar pumps is an all-inclusive market intelligence study that brings forth the lucrativeness of the said market. The report is being compiled by a team of experienced research analysts and it aims to assist in the form of a credible user guide for its targeted audiences such as solar pumps products suppliers and dealers. Beginning with an executive summary that comprise a snapshot of how the demand for solar pumps has evolved over the recent past and where is it headed to in the future, the report delves into the analysis of various market dynamics, such as opportunities, trends, challenges, and drivers. The market intelligence study also points at mergers, important conglomerates, numerous research and development activities, acquisitions, and corroborations. The companies that have been profiled in the study come with thorough examination based on their market shares, prime products, and marketing strategies. The world market for Solar Pumps is expected to grow at a robust CAGR and is forecasted to attain a significant market valuation by the end of the period of forecast. Request a sample copy of the Report @ https://www.tmrresearch.com/sample/sample?flag=B&rep_id=3149 Global Solar Pumps Market: Trends and Opportunities There are many factors that are fuelling the growth of the world market for solar pumps. The market is forecasted to be driven by increased agricultural activities together with extraction of water for the purpose of irrigation that is based on renewable source of energy and the same is anticipated to drive the world market for solar pumps over the period of forecast. Global Solar Pumps Market: Market Potential Stringent government regulations can result in the reduction of carbon footprints into the atmosphere and are anticipated to augment the growth of international market for solar pumps over the next few years. Solar energy that is utilized for the purpose of water pumps does not emit any carbon footprints into the atmosphere and offers clean source of energy. Framers and solar pump makers receive government subsidies in the form of financial incentives are anticipated to propel the world market for solar pump over the forecast timeframe. Request TOC of the report @ https://www.tmrresearch.com/sample/sample?flag=T&rep_id=3149 Global Solar Pumps Market: Regional Analysis Taking geographical segmentations into consideration, the international market for solar pumps has been categorized into geographies of Europe, North America, Asia Pacific and Rest of the World. The region of Asia Pacific has emerged as a clear leader in the world market for solar pump. Countries in this region like Pakistan, India, China, and Bangladesh, and are main agricultural regions with sufficient availability of solar energy. The Middle East & Africa is also experiencing substantial growth over the timeframe of forecast. Global Solar Pumps Market: Competitive Landscape Some of the prominent companies operating in the world market for solar pumps comprise names such as Shakti Pumps, Grundfos, Lorentz, TATA Power Solar Systems Ltd.,USL Bright Solar, SunEdison, and CRI Pumps. Read Comprehensive Overview of Report @ https://www.tmrresearch.com/solar-pumps-market About TMR Research TMR Research is a premier provider of customized market research and consulting services to business entities keen on succeeding in today's supercharged economic climate. Armed with an experienced, dedicated, and dynamic team of analysts, we are redefining the way our clients' conduct business by providing them with authoritative and trusted research studies in tune with the latest methodologies and market trends. Judith Marcuse, senior fellow of Ashoka International and an artist-in-residence and adjunct professor in the Faculty of Education has been named a mentor by the Trudeau Foundation. Starting this year, Marcuse was appointed to a three-year term as a mentor in the Pierre Elliot Trudeau Foundations Mentorship Program. The foundation, established in 2001, connects highly accomplished and engaged Canadians from the public, private, cultural and not-for-profit sectors with scholars, allowing them to guide the next generation of leaders in the social sciences and humanities. Marcuses career spans 50 years of professional work as a dancer, choreographer, director, producer, teacher, writer, consultant and lecturer in Canada and abroad. She has created more than 100 original works for live performance by dance, theatre and opera companies as well as for film and television and has produced seven large-scale, international arts festivals. Her repertory contemporary dance company toured extensively in Canada and abroad for 15 years, while also producing innovative community residencies and youth programs. Among her many other honours, Marcuse has also received the Clifford E. Lee and Chalmers awards for excellence in choreography, a Canada 125 medal and an honorary Doctor of Laws degree from SFU. She took a lead in developing a Master of Education degree program in art for social change for the Faculty of Education. The first program of its kind in the country, and designed with working professionals in mind, the members of the initial cohort are set to complete their two-year program in the Summer of 2018. An advocate for the integration of arts-based dialogue into diverse social-change contexts, Marcuse teaches, lectures, facilitates and consults in arts, university and community settings in Canada and abroad, most recently in Northern Ireland, Finland, South Africa and Ecuador. Founder and co-director of the International Centre of Art for Social Change, established by Judith Marcuse Projects in partnership with SFU, Marcuse is also the lead investigator in the SFU-led, five-year (2013-18), Social Sciences and Humanities Research Council-funded national research project on art for social change, Art for social change: an integrated research program in teaching, evaluation and capacity-building, the first study of its kind in Canada. Congratulations to Marcuse on this appointment. Learn more about Marcuse and the Trudeau Foundation here. Unlisted Securities Exchange, the unlicensed share trading platform, is working with three potential issuers it hopes to bring to market in the coming quarter as it tries to develop a deeper pipeline this year, having retained its exemption from licensing last month. The trading platform, operated by Wellington-based Efficient Market Services, was granted an extension to its exemption from licensing by Commerce Minister Kris Faafoi after a scheduled review. The Ministry of Business, Innovation and Employment recommended the exemption remain, saying in a briefing to the minister that "Unlisted continues to meet the original objectives of its exemption, the benefits associated with Unlisted still apply today, and the risks of the Unlisted market have not increased significantly since the exemption was granted". Unlisted provided a cheaper avenue for small firms to raise capital and trade shares, offering investors broader opportunities and allowing for greater participation in the market, MBIE said. The ministry said Unlisted's expansion didn't appear to be at the expense of the regulated NZX, and that attracting institutional investors or international capital to the platform would be difficult because it doesn't offer the same level of access to capital, liquidity and exposure of the larger licensed markets in the region. "USX is confident in its position as New Zealand's only prescribed exempt financial product market and believes that business as usual under the prevailing exemption conditions will continue to see participation on its market increase to the benefit of all market participants," EMS chair Bevan Wallace said in a note. "We are currently working with three potential new issuers and expect these to come to USX over the next quarter and have a handful of others in our pipeline that we hope to secure over the balance of the year." The unlicensed operator had sought relief from the condition requiring listing issuers provide audited financial statements on the proviso audited accounts come the following year, but was turned down with MBIE saying it was an appropriate protection for investors. The exemption was opposed by NZX and the New Zealand Shareholders' Association given Unlisted's increase in size and the lack of adequate information for investors. MBIE disagreed with those objections, saying some of the expansion was due to Zespri Group's listing, which has restrictions on share ownership, and that there was a sufficient level of information given the unlicensed status of the platform. Wallace said Unlisted is working to improve user experience and was investigating "options around a bespoke research offering". Some 22.2 million shares worth $6 million went through the platform across 144 trades in February and March this year, compared to 2.7 million shares worth $6.7 million in 131 trades in December and January. As at March 31, Unlisted's market capitalisation was $2.47 billion, down from $2.71 billion as at Jan. 31. (BusinessDesk) Comments from our readers No comments yet Add your comment: Your name: Your email: Not displayed to the public Comment: Comments to Sharechat go through an approval process. Comments which are defamatory, abusive or in some way deemed inappropriate will not be approved. It is allowable to use some form of non-de-plume for your name, however we recommend real email addresses are used. Comments from free email addresses such as Gmail, Yahoo, Hotmail, etc may not be approved. Anti-spam verification: Type the text you see in the image into the field below. You are asked to do this in order to verify that this enquiry is not being performed by an automated process. Related News: Seeka Limited (NZX: SEK) Clears First Hurdle in Orangewood Amalgamation Vital Healthcare Property Trust (NZX: VHP) Announces Debt Refinance and Facility Limit Increase Restructure of Cannasouth Cultivation Limited (NZX:CBD) 1st October 2021 Morning Report Gentrack Group Limited (NZX: GTK) Market Announcement New Zealand King Salmon Investments Limited (NZX: NZK) 1H22 Half Year Results Announcement 30th September 2021 Morning Report Pictor and SCIENION partner to commercialise high-throughput SARS-CoV-2 antibody testing system to support ongoing fight against pandemic Rakon Limited (NZX: RAK) Upgrades Earnings Guidance and Appoints New Director The Warehouse Group Limited (NZX: WHS) Annual Result 2021 Mobile marketing tech firm Motim Technologies, whose chair was dumped by cornerstone shareholder Powerhouse Ventures in January, will hold a special meeting at the end of the month to approve an asset sale as a precursor to a US listing. Christchurch-based Motim will hold a special shareholders' meeting on April 30 where investors will vote on whether to approve the sale of the company's assets to Massachusetts, US-based Motim Technologies LLC, Powerhouse said in a statement. The transaction will value the new entity at US$15 million, with Motim shareholders taking a 30 percent stake in the US business. ASX-listed, Christchurch-based Powerhouse owns 41.8 percent of the New Zealand company's equity and $700,000 in secured convertible notes. "The prospects for material value creation using Motim's original software should be greatly enhanced through the US networks, profile and expertise provided by the prospective buyer," Powerhouse said in a statement to the ASX. "The new owner proposes to apply considerable resources to the growth of the business, based in Boston, culminating in a proposed US listing." Powerhouse dumped the former Motim chair John Cunningham in January accusing him of not calling a shareholders' meeting when requested and replacing him with John Walley. The following month, Powerhouse said it had a firm offer to buy Motim from US-based CrossTech Partners in a largely scrip deal. The incubator, which invested $719,000 in Motim, estimated a potential uplift in value of its Motim stake to A$3.6 million provided there's a successful initial public offering of the new vehicle for US$15 million. Powerhouse had planned to raise A$5.8 million in a deeply discounted rights issue to replenish its rapidly shrinking coffers, but canned that last week in favour of an immediate injection of A$400,000 from two shareholders via convertible notes and when combined with further commitments may provide it with A$1.85 million. The company is also looking to sell part or all of its 20 percent stake in Invert Robotics. Powerhouse shares last traded at 18.5 Australian cents and have slumped 42 percent so far this year. (BusinessDesk) Comments from our readers No comments yet Add your comment: Your name: Your email: Not displayed to the public Comment: Comments to Sharechat go through an approval process. Comments which are defamatory, abusive or in some way deemed inappropriate will not be approved. It is allowable to use some form of non-de-plume for your name, however we recommend real email addresses are used. Comments from free email addresses such as Gmail, Yahoo, Hotmail, etc may not be approved. Anti-spam verification: Type the text you see in the image into the field below. You are asked to do this in order to verify that this enquiry is not being performed by an automated process. Related News: Seeka Limited (NZX: SEK) Clears First Hurdle in Orangewood Amalgamation Vital Healthcare Property Trust (NZX: VHP) Announces Debt Refinance and Facility Limit Increase Restructure of Cannasouth Cultivation Limited (NZX:CBD) 1st October 2021 Morning Report Gentrack Group Limited (NZX: GTK) Market Announcement New Zealand King Salmon Investments Limited (NZX: NZK) 1H22 Half Year Results Announcement 30th September 2021 Morning Report Pictor and SCIENION partner to commercialise high-throughput SARS-CoV-2 antibody testing system to support ongoing fight against pandemic Rakon Limited (NZX: RAK) Upgrades Earnings Guidance and Appoints New Director The Warehouse Group Limited (NZX: WHS) Annual Result 2021 Kathmandu Holdings will take up the full oversubscription in a share purchase plan, raising $50 million to help fund its purchase of US footwear supplier Oboz Footwear. The Christchurch-based company today said it accepted $2 million in oversubscriptions for its share purchase plan, taking total subscriptions to $10 million. That's on top of $40 million raised from institutional investors in a placement. Shares were sold in both offers at $2.16 apiece, a 10 percent discount to where the shares traded before the announcement. The shares fell 0.4 percent to $2.55 today. "We are delighted with the extent of support, both for our institutional placement last month and for the share purchase plan, and the affirmation by our shareholders of our growth plans for the business," chair David Kirk said in a statement. "The board would like to thank all those shareholders who participated in the SPP for their continuing support of Kathmandu." The capital injection will be used to help pay for the US$60 million upfront purchase of Oboz, which Kathmandu pursued to expand its presence in the North American outdoor market. If the acquisition meets certain earnings targets in calendar 2018, Kathmandu will pay up to US$15 million more. Some 1,516 Kathmandu shareholders of its 3,514 investors sought to participate in the share purchase plan, offering $14.5 million, meaning their offers will be scaled. Briscoe Group, which made a failed takeover bid in 2015 when it built up a 19.8 percent stake, participated in both the institutional placement and share purchase plan. (BusinessDesk) Comments from our readers No comments yet Add your comment: Your name: Your email: Not displayed to the public Comment: Comments to Sharechat go through an approval process. Comments which are defamatory, abusive or in some way deemed inappropriate will not be approved. It is allowable to use some form of non-de-plume for your name, however we recommend real email addresses are used. Comments from free email addresses such as Gmail, Yahoo, Hotmail, etc may not be approved. Anti-spam verification: Type the text you see in the image into the field below. You are asked to do this in order to verify that this enquiry is not being performed by an automated process. Related News: Seeka Limited (NZX: SEK) Clears First Hurdle in Orangewood Amalgamation Vital Healthcare Property Trust (NZX: VHP) Announces Debt Refinance and Facility Limit Increase Restructure of Cannasouth Cultivation Limited (NZX:CBD) 1st October 2021 Morning Report Gentrack Group Limited (NZX: GTK) Market Announcement New Zealand King Salmon Investments Limited (NZX: NZK) 1H22 Half Year Results Announcement 30th September 2021 Morning Report Pictor and SCIENION partner to commercialise high-throughput SARS-CoV-2 antibody testing system to support ongoing fight against pandemic Rakon Limited (NZX: RAK) Upgrades Earnings Guidance and Appoints New Director The Warehouse Group Limited (NZX: WHS) Annual Result 2021 No brownie points for guessing which company Aircel was hinting at. The new disruptor in the Indian telecom space is Reliance Jio. Last month Aircel India's announcement of its bankruptcy put the careers of nearly 5000 personnel in disarray. Aircel, considered South India's largest network service provider with nearly 13 million customers, had sought bankruptcy protecting citing the emergence of a new telecom company. Jio's series of plans and offers riddled with massive freebies, also took well-heeled players like Vodafone, Idea teleservices and Bharti Airtel aback. An early sign of turbulence in the market was the announcement of a merger between Idea Cellular headed by Kumar Mangalam Birla with Vodafone India. The merger initially was hailed as a bright spot in the telecom sector, but there have been talks of layoffs. According to market estimates nearly 5000 employees may be asked to leave, as the companies prepare to merge their customer data and other offerings. Those faring poorly this year are expected to be asked to leave. A nodal team taking care of the combined entities advised that employees from the fields of supply chain procurement, and other profiles be shed, according to a story that appeared in the Economic Times. Analysts were also quoted as saying that post the merger the new entity will have 42% customer share and 37% by revenue - the largest within the country. The companies are expected to be looking at retaining a single team to operate departments like supply chain, procurement, sales, etc. This means that once the merger takes shape, there will be entire teams that could be made redundant. The merger is expected to be finalised by the end of May. Already, captive towers of Vodafone and Idea have been sold. The total infusion brought about by this merger is estimated at nearly Rs 13600 crores. Of this Vodafone has already committed an infusion of Rs 7390 crores for the India operations, and the remainder has been raised by Idea. So far there has not been a single confirmation but officials from Vodafone say that all this is a matter of speculation. But the news of layoffs, especially of employees who fare low in the performance benchmarks, will add to the stress in the telecom sector. The telecom sector last year was riding high on newer technologies such as 5G and was geared to generate 8.70 lakh jobs in 2021 according to a study by KPMG-Assocham. But during January 2018, a study by CIEL HR services noted that job losses in the next 6-9 months could probably eat up 80000-90000 jobs. The slowdown was attributed to muted salary hikes, and an ominous future on the back of higher costs of loan servicing, excessive competition, and uncertain mergers. The only positive takeaway from the CIEL HR study was the newer avenues for freshers. Leading Bollywood distribution house T Series has snapped the Hindi theatrical rights of Baahubali hero Prabhas upcoming stylish action thriller film Saaho for an undisclosed price. In a recent media interaction, Prabhas has said that Saaho will be a visual treat to the audiences and its a larger than life script. Directed by Sujeeth, the team is currently busy shooting a high octane action sequence in Dubai. UV Creations is bankrolling the film, which also has Shraddha Kapoor, Arun Vijay, Neil Nitin Mukesh, Mandira Bedi and Jackie Shroff playing important roles. Shankar-Ehsaan-Loy is scoring the music for the film and Madhi is cranking the camera. Besides the Telugu and Hindi versions, the film will also have a wide release in Tamil and Malayalam. On Friday, in the wake of the rape and murder of an eight-year-old girl in Kathua district, Gujjars and Sikh organizations marched for justice and seeking the death penalty for the accused. The march was led by Choudhary Nazakat Khatana, a Gujjar and Bakarwal leader. The Bakarwal community, as a result of this latest crime does not feel safe in their district. This has triggered early migration of the nomadic Bakarwal community from Rasana village in the border district of Kathua. The main consideration usually being weather conditions; now however, they feel threatened. Bakarwals are a sect within the Gujjar community. They are Muslim nomadic tribes whose main source of income and livelihood is trading livestock. They are part of the Scheduled tribes population of the state. Many in the community say they have been the target of hate crimes before and the violence against them is done with the aim of marginalizing them and pushing them out of society. The two communities Gujjars and Bakarwals are the single largest Muslim group in Jammu & Kashmir. Recently, both communities have been wary of the PDP-BJP government owing to recent evictions as a result of falsely claiming that they encroach on forest land. In 1991, when the Centre declared the Gujjars and Bakarwals as Scheduled Tribes, they were granted 10 per cent reservation in jobs and promotions in the state government, and 7 per cent in Central government departments. report from News 18 quoted the first Gujjar from Jammu & Kashmir to rise to the rank of Additional Director General of Police in Indian Police Service stating that Gujjars and Bakarwals felt increasingly insecure due to threats and attacks . After the investigation began into the abduction, torture, gang-rape and murder of the eight-year-old girl in Kathua, there were protests in favor of the accused, which involved two state ministers and BJP leaders Lal Singh and Chandar Prakash Ganga, who later resigned after public outcry. The Gujjar and Bakarwal population have come under threat from the majority Hindu community in Jammu according to a young Gujjar activist. The Tribal Research and Cultural Foundation, an organization working for the Welfare of Indian Tribes with special focus on "Gujjar Tribe" of India said in a statement that read in part, We have sacrificed our blood for this nation and do not need certificates of being Indian from any group or people. The communities, living on the border, have been on the receiving end of repeated incidents of firing from Pakistan and as a result people and livestock are killed. The Council went on to state, Every year dozens of Gujjars and their livestock get killed near the border, hundreds are injured and thousands of people migrate every year to safer places during the heavy gunfire, but in this side of our country, we need a certificate of being nationalist. M.L. Kotru, in a column for Greater Kashmir, writes on the religious aspect of the communities involved in the murder of a young girl and points out that some places and regions are not particularly welcoming to Muslims . The case, many felt was not properly pursued by the police and investigators and action was taken only after the Bakerwal community started protesting. . Critics have labeled the actions of the BJP of feeding into fears of Jammus Hindu community that Gujjars and Bakarwals are changing the demographic make-up of the state. The PDP on the other hand sees the two communities as a constituency. The tribal policy that came out of a February meeting of the Tribal Affairs Department chaired by Chief Minister Mehbooba Mufti was misconstrued. It was initially suggested that she had provided relief to the nomadic population of the state stating that they should not be evicted. There was anger that this meant the encroachment was green lit. It was later revealed, through an RTI activist that circulated the minutes of the meeting which included the accusatory comment that the PDP had a Kashmir centric agenda in a state which had a majority Hindu population. The fact that a horrific incident such as this has been politicized to this degree isnt necessarily shocking. It does draw the spotlight away from the investigation and the important fact of a community feeling threatened and being labeled anti nationals. However, with some politicians brazenly supporting the accused, it feeds into the fears of the communities in the state. More columns by Varun Sukumar STATEN ISLAND, N.Y. -- Gina Lupo, a proud and patriotic Staten Island resident since her early childhood days, marked her 100th birthday milestone surrounded by family members and friends in her Concord home. The former Gina Reposi made her entrance into the world on March 30, 1918, on Manhattan's historic Leroy Street, the Greenwich Village street that's been dubbed the most unusual in all of New York City. Perhaps it's because it's called by two separate names with a portion of the street called by a different name. The street's two names occur within the same block, with a bend in the street determining what name is used. Gina was just 1-year-old when her parents relocated to Staten Island, first to Midland Beach and a year later to Eltinge Street in Concord. When she was 9, her parents bought a home on Spring Street, in the above-mentioned community, where Gina still resides. The birthday celebrant married Joseph Lupo in 1946 and the couple resided in Gina's childhood home. Their daughter Laura Lupo Simmons was born in 1954 and a son, Joseph, sadly passed in 1982. Gina is the grandmother of two, Terry and Christine Simmons, who are the sunshine of her life -- Laura and Terry reside in Gina's ancestral home and Christine in New Dorp. And inasmuch as Gina had a hard time remembering the exact name of the milliner she had worked for in Manhattan at first, she did recall Etta Lean Hats, as its business name -- a shop located right cross the street from the Fifth Avenue Lord & Taylor. What's more, Gina did remember vividly she worked on the 13th floor, which was called the 14th floor, because of the negative connotations associated with the number 13, and some 100 people held positions there who were mainly women. In fact, so talented was Gina when it came to millinery skills, from the 1930s to the early 1950s, her boss tagged her with the title of "the girl with the golden hands." And when Gina's daughter, Laura Lupo Simmons asked her about the breakdown of the ethnic groups of her co-workers, Gina was quick to respond: "What breakdown? We were all Americans!" To this day Gina's and her "baby" brother Albert, 96, speak each and every day, and their conversations are one of the highlights of her life. Happy 100th birthday, Gina! A Vision for Staten Island What will Staten Island look like in 50 years? That's the question Eugene Flotteron, principal and owner of CetraRuddy, a Manhattan-based architectural firm, asked himself before he embarked on creating a master plan for the future of the borough, dubbed "A Vision for Staten Island." "Staten Island is already predicated to grow by 40,000 residents by 2040," said Flotteron. "However, with the right overall vision and planning, the borough has the potential to absorb upward of 400,000 residents without losing its distinctive suburban character," says the proposal. Here are 10 things to know about the proposal: Don't Edit Courtesy of CentraRuddy Staten Island City The plan suggests that 150,000 more residential units with a commercial center can be built on vacant parcels of land on the West Shore to accommodate 300,000 new residents. "Right now the Island is more North/South-oriented, this could make it more East/West-oriented," said Flotteron, noting that he's a lifelong Staten Island resident. "This [the plan] can change the dialogue. ... We can create an example of what the 21st century modern city could be. It could be a smart city, a resilient city -- socially, economically ..." Don't Edit Courtesy of CentraRuddy Transportation plan CetraRuddy brought in a transportation expert who helped the company devise a plan for a new Island transportation system. "This is a multi-modal transportation solution that expands on the ferry service, train service -- offering a west side rail line -- and urban gondolas. ... The gondolas would get you across Staten Island and connect you to Manhattan," said Flotteron. Don't Edit Courtesy of CentraRuddy Aerial gondola system The plan calls for a large system of gondalas to transport people directly to Manhatan. Flotteron noted this isn't to be confused with the SIEDC's already proposed gondola system to connect Staten Island with Bayonne, N.J. The Staten Island Economic Development Corp. (SIEDC) announced last week it has secured funding for a feasibility study for that aerial gondola project. The project, which has been in the works since 2015, would connect Staten Islanders to the Hudson-Bergen Light Rail and PATH trains in Bayonne, providing a faster commuting option to Manhattan. Don't Edit Courtesy of CentraRuddy East Shore ferry There would be a direct connection to Manhattan via a new East-Shore ferry. Don't Edit Don't Edit Courtesy of CentraRuddy West Shore rail line A rail line would run along the West Shore and connect with the existing Staten Island Railway. This isn't a new proposal, as the MTA included $4 million in its amended capital plan for 2015-2019 to study a potential West Shore light rail. For years, Staten Island officials and the Staten Island Economic Development Corp. (SIEDC) have called for a light rail on the West Shore, and two studies were done previously -- one in 2004 and one in 2009. Don't Edit Courtesy of CentraRuddy Great Creek Marina In addition, the plans calls for a resort community on the East Shore that would offer new restaurants, a marina, housing and tourism. "The Great Creek Marina would be by Gateway National Park. ... This would be the opportunity for a more resort-like community, more taller buildings, more hospitality," said Flotteron. This area would have a "Coney Island effect," providing a local respite from urban living, the plans say. Don't Edit CentraRuddy Greenway connection The overall plan would create a "greenway connection" from Great Creek Marina on the East Shore to Mid-Island parks, according to the proposal. Don't Edit Courtesy of CentraRuddy Tech campus CentraRuddy also proposed a campus with "high-paying technology jobs" on the West Shore. "This partnership will provide the diversity lacking from many technology hubs around the globe, fueling innovation here," said Flotteron. "Our plan is just the beginning and it would evolve over the years," he added. Don't Edit Courtesy of CentraRuddy Cultural hub The plan also calls for a cultural hub in the new Fresh Kills Park area, where an outdoor space for concerts could be built. Don't Edit Don't Edit Courtesy of CentraRuddy New vision to be discussed at SIEDC conference Flotteron said he will address the transportation aspects of the plan at the upcoming Staten Island Economic Development Corp. (SIEDC) Business Conference on Tuesday at the Hilton Garden Inn in Bloomfield. FOLLOW TRACEY PORPORA ON FACEBOOK and TWITTER STATEN ISLAND, N.Y. -- This was not your typical cash-register robbery. Police are searching for two unidentified males who reportedly made off with $20,000 from a BP gas station in Tompkinsville, in addition to surveillance equipment from inside the store. The unidentified men reportedly entered the store, located at 248 Bay St., at about 8:50 a.m. Monday in the midst of a torrential downpour, according to an NYPD spokesman. A 38-year-old male employee was cleaning a refrigerator inside the store when one of the men pointed a handgun in his face, saying "'go over there and give me the keys to the safe,'" the spokesman said. The suspects -- described only as black males -- removed about $20,000 from the safe and DVR equipment used for surveillance, the spokesman said. No injuries were reported. Police said the men fled in a black car on Bay Street. Aninvestigation remains ongoing. STATEN ISLAND, N.Y. -- About a dozen officers responded Sunday to a traffic stop near the Goethals Bridge involving the driver of a tractor-trailer. The NYPD's Highway Unit initially stopped the driver of the 18-wheeler at about 12 p.m. to inspect whether the driver was properly licensed, according to an NYPD spokesman. Police said the man's license to drive any vehicle in New York was suspended by the DMV, due to a failure to pay child support. Shawn Washington, 52, of Queens, was arrested on a charge of aggravated unlicensed operation of a motor vehicle, according to court records. He was scheduled to be arraigned Monday in Richmond County Criminal Court. STATEN ISLAND, N.Y. -- The New York City Department of Transportation has been urged to reconsider its proposed changes to a busy Victory Boulevard intersection in Bulls Head. The proposed changes to the Victory Boulevard/Arlene Street/Sideview Avenue intersection are said to shorten walking distances for pedestrians, create a safer, more accessible bus stop and increase vehicle capacity while offering additional parking spots. However, as some residents have pointed out, certain aspects of the plan have the potential to cause increased congestion for westbound travelers. Following the changes, a concrete divider would be installed to create one lane for people turning left onto Arlene Street or continuing onto Victory Boulevard, and a second lane for people turning right onto Arlene Street or continuing onto Sideview Avenue. With the installation of a concrete divider, some residents fear that cars turning left onto Arlene Street will back-up straight-traveling westbound traffic to Richmond Avenue. Due to the concrete divider, drivers wishing to continue traveling straight onto Victory Boulevard will be forced to wait behind cars turning left onto Arlene Street, with no room to pass. Prompted by his constituent's feedback, City Councilman Steven Matteo (R-Mid-Island) penned a letter to the DOT asking that they reconsider the plans for the intersection to accommodate both turning and straight-traveling traffic. "My constituents fear that, with the proposed concrete island, no vehicles will be able to pass on the right, potentially backing traffic up towards Richmond Avenue," wrote Matteo. Matteo suggested the possibility of a westbound left turn lane to alleviate the issue, without any major changes to the proposed plans. "In front of the dentist office, there is possibly room to accommodate a westbound left turn lane,'' Matteo wrote. "This would ensure that westbound traffic would not be impacted by a turning vehicle." Whether or not the DOT will consider the changes will be discussed at a meeting later this spring. "DOT has received the feedback from Councilmember Matteo, and we look forward to discussing in more detail at the upcoming meeting in May," said a DOT spokesperson. STATEN ISLAND, N.Y. -- A Huguenot man will spend some time behind bars for drunkenly slamming into a state police car seven months ago on the Staten Island Expressway after leaving a strip club. Vincent Quinn, 21, was sentenced on Monday to 15 days in jail and four years' probation for crashing a 2017 Nissan SUV into the rear of the cruiser on the highway near Hylan Boulevard at about 4 a.m. on Sept. 30 of last year. Quinn told officers a black Jeep cut him off, causing him to swerve into a wall and temporarily black out, said a criminal complaint. Police said Quinn was unsteady on his feet, and his speech was slurred. "I understand I had a couple drinks, but it's all good, I'll take it ... I'm coming from a strip club," the complaint quotes him as telling cops. The state troopers inside the police car were hurt, and Quinn suffered minor injuries, said authorities. They were all taken to Staten Island University Hospital, Ocean Breeze. The SUV was totaled. Police determined Quinn's license had been suspended. In February, the defendant pleaded guilty to a felony count of driving with a suspended license and a misdemeanor count of driving while intoxicated. "Vincent has taken full accountability for his actions," said Louis Gelormino, his lawyer. "Both of those police officers are in his family's thoughts, and they wish them a speedy recovery." STATEN ISLAND, N.Y. -- U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) arrested more than 200 people in New York, including Staten Island, during a week-long sweep, authorities said. ICE representatives Tuesday declined to provide the number of borough arrests, the identities and ages of the suspects, and any information about the charges they face. But there have been at least six arrests on Staten Island, five on April 11 and the other on April 14, according to Cesar Vargas, an immigration reform activist who is New York's first undocumented immigrant to be admitted to the New York State Bar. The six-day ICE crackdown ended on April 14, officials said. Vargas said five borough residents were allegedly arrested when ICE officers went into a home with a picture and name of someone that didn't live there. But the immigrants opened the door, and were taken into custody, he said. "It's crazy," Vargas said. "It appears they were a collateral arrest." During the operation called Keep Safe in New York, deportation officers made 225 arrests throughout New York City, the Hudson Valley, and Long Island, specifically in the Bronx, Brooklyn, Queens, Manhattan, Suffolk County, Nassau County, Westchester County, Orange County, Dutchess County, and Rockland County, officials said. The arrestees face various criminal charges, including aggravated DWI, assault, criminal trespass, driving while ability impaired, and driving while intoxicated. ICE officials claim more than 180 were convicted criminals or had criminal charges pending, more than 80 had been issued a final order of removal and failed to depart the United States, or had been previously removed from the United States and returned illegally. Some of the individuals arrested during this operation will face federal criminal prosecutions for illegal entry and illegal re-entry after deportation. Those who are not being federally prosecuted will be processed administratively for removal from the United States, according to an ICE press release. Those who have outstanding orders of deportation, or who returned to the United States illegally after being deported, could be immediately removed from the country. The other individuals are in ICE custody awaiting a hearing before an immigration judge, or pending travel arrangements for removal, said the release. "ICE continues to face significant obstacles with policies created by local officials which hinder cooperation between ICE and local law enforcement," said Thomas R. Decker, field office director for ICE's Enforcement and Removal Operations New York. "The fact is that a so-called 'sanctuary city' does not only provide refuge to those who are here against immigration law, but also provides protections for criminal aliens who prey on the people in their own communities by committing crimes at all levels." STATEN ISLAND, N.Y. -- Three unlawful searches, an escaped prisoner and a robbery never reported were among the complaints levied in recent years against cops on Staten Island, according to NYPD disciplinary records leaked online. All involved civilians who the NYPD is sworn to protect, and all were met with softer penalties than those handed down for administrative and inner-office qualms, such as employee disputes and unauthorized home addresses. More than 1,800 cases of alleged misconduct by NYPD officers were released Monday in a Buzzfeed report. The list, which stretches from 2011 through 2015, includes more than 30 incidents involving Staten Island officers. The report is not a complete accounting of discipline during those years, and was provided to Buzzfeed by a source who is being kept anonymous by the website. Here are some of the incidents posted: Illegal search, losing a prisoner A year prior to the death of Eric Garner, Daniel Pantaleo, the same 120th Precinct involved in the fatal police custody incident, was under investigation for an alleged illegal stop and frisk. He was found guilty in 2015. His punishment was the forfeiture of two vacation days. In 2010, an officer who works in the Staten Island courts failed to safeguard a prisoner, resulting in the prisoner's escape. He was forced to give up 10 pre-trial suspension days. In 2014, an officer in the 120 An officer assigned to the 121st Precinct accused of failing to file a robbery report in 2014 was forced to give up 10 vacation days. Inner-office misconduct An officer with the 122nd Precinct was found guilty in 2012 of living in a rent-subsidized apartment while collecting a paycheck with the NYPD. Her punishment was 30 vacation days. In 2012, an officer assigned to the 120th Precinct was found guilty of acting discourteously to a supervisor while off-duty, moving his supervisor's desk unnecessarily, failing to comply with an order and allowing a civilian into the police station. He was forced to give 40 vacation days. An officer in the 122nd Precinct handed over 30 vacation days in 2012 after he was found guilty of moving to New Jersey without informing the NYPD. Privacy issue BuzzFeed released the report this week following a 2016 decision by the NYPD to remove disciplinary records from public view, citing a state secrecy law. The city's police commissioner said he would begin releasing disciplinary reports with the offending officer's names redacted, a move that was blocked by a judge after the Patrolman's Benevolent Association filed an emergency request. A hearing is set for June. In regard to the report published by BuzzFeed, union president Patrick Lynch released a statement: "BuzzFeed either doesn't realize or doesn't care how their 'database' of illegally leaked police personnel records will be used,'' it said. "They are creating the perfect tool for unstable individuals with a grudge against cops to identify and go after police officers and their families ..." Lynch added that officers already are the target of retaliatory attacks, including the attempted mail bomb attack on an NYPD member last year. Concerns over transparency of the NYPD's disciplinary system were raised in 2014, when the city appealed a decision by a state court judge who ordered the release of information regarding Pantaleo, the officer involved in the Garner case. A grand jury declined to indict the officer on criminal charges. Since then, politicians and civil rights activists have urged city officials to allow full disciplinary disclosure. STATEN ISLAND, N.Y. -- City Schools Chancellor Richard Carranza said the most effective security system in schools are students who are willing to speak up about suspicious activity. During a recent Advance editorial board meeting, Carranza said that it's critically important for students who see, hear or suspect something to report it. "I'll guarantee you that there are students at every school that know something's up," he said. "To be able to create those environments, those processes, those structures where students feel safe and be able to bring that information forward is your most effective security system in a school." In addition, Carranza said the Department of Education is fortunate because it has the benefit of working with the NYPD and school safety agents. Carranza said Mayor Bill de Blasio asked NYPD Commissioner James O'Neill to conduct an analysis of school sites to identify "blind spots we may not know and make some recommendations for what we should do [to increase security]." Carranza plans to discuss school safety with O'Neill this week, he added. When it comes to safety, Carranza said his focus is on creating environments where students feel comfortable. "I think the most important conversation, at least now, is what are we doing to create those kinds of environments in schools. That is your most effective, immediate step at having a safe school environment, because students know everything that's happening in our schools," he said. During a tour of public schools across all five boroughs last week, Carranza said parents repeatedly brought up the topic of school safety. Under the current Department of Education (DOE) policy, all the doors in school buildings are locked and alarmed except for the front door; that entrance is monitored by one or more school safety agents. The mayor's office previously told the Advance that it is opposed to the idea of locking the front entrances. During his time as superintendent in Houston, Carranza said that the schools had automatic locking doors and people were required to swipe an ID to enter a building. If someone didn't have an ID, they would have to identify themselves via camera and intercom to be allowed in. The upgrades to those school facilities were financed through bonds. Carranza did not rule out implementing some of those physical barriers or others, like the more frequent use of metal detectors, but he said that some measures could be costly or forbidden. He said the idea of building sally ports -- secure, controlled entryways usually found in prisons -- may not be allowed at some public schools, where the historical architecture is preserved. "I think it's important that you look at those [physical barriers, but] I think the biggest conversation we should be having is how are we creating environments in schools where students feel comfortable and safe, when they see something, when they hear of something, when they suspect something, to bring that to the attention of an adult," he said. STATEN ISLAND, N.Y. -- A multi-car collision at approximately 8:10 p.m. has left two individuals injured Monday night. According to an FDNY spokesman, an accident on the eastbound lanes of the Staten Island Expressway at exit 10 required two hospital transports. One individual was transported to Richmond University Medical Center, and another was transported to Staten Island University Hospital North. The extent of the injuries is not currently known. The accident briefly halted eastbound traffic while the cars were towed. One car could be seen stopped on the center divider of the Staten Island expressway and required a tow to be moved to the road. This is a breaking news story. STATEN ISLAND, N.Y. -- Student veterans attending college on Staten Island will see an increase in their housing stipends this year. Student veterans will receive an increase of 4.5 percent to their Basic Allowance for Housing starting in October, at the start of the federal fiscal year, Rep. Daniel Donovan announced at the College of Staten Island on Monday. The bump amounts to an increase of about $145 a month, Donovan said. The changes stems from an amendment in the National Defense Authorization Act by Donovan, which passed the House of Representatives in July 2017 and was signed into law in Dec. 2017. A Staten Island student veteran with no dependents will now receive an average of $2,758 per month while student vets with no dependents in the other boroughs will now receive about $3,830, a gap of 28 percent. Other boroughs took a cut in housing assistance to accommodate the increase. "This is a start. It's a good start. It's showing that we're doing something of our veterans who weren't being treated fairly on Staten Island," said Donovan. "I want them to know that we're not finished here and we'll continue to fight until we're on parity with the rest of the city." The Basic Allowance for Housing is part of the GI bill, and gives a higher maximum allowance for students enrolled in the Bronx, Brooklyn, Manhattan and Queens than it does for Staten Island. A BOROUGH'S UNFAIR SHARE New York City is divided into two Military Housing Areas: One consisting of Staten Island and one made up of the other for borough. Prior to the change, student veterans who attend college on Staten Island received 48 percent less than other New York City boroughs in housing assistance, according to Donovan. The GOP congressman testified to the House's Armed Services Committee earlier this month and asked them to demand that the Department of Defense designate New York City as one housing assistance area to eliminate the disparity. "This was something even the United States House Armed Services Committee was unaware of," said Donovan "But they're vey interested in it and the chairman committed to me that they'll see if they can act on it." Donovan began trying to fix the disparity after CSI's director Veteran Services, Laura Scazzafavo, told Donovan about the issue. Scazzafavo told the Advance that the pay disparity encourages student veterans on Staten Island to attend college in other boroughs. "If I went to Brooklyn I'd get a $1,000 more," Scazzafavo said. "That's why they leave Staten Island to go to different schools." Donovan initially asked the Department of Defense to eliminate the disparity, but told the Advance that he found support to address the issue in the House. "They didn't do it on their own, they didn't act on it," Donovan said. "So we made it law, so they'd have to do it." FOLLOW CLIFFORD MICHEL ON FACEBOOK AND TWITTER. STATEN ISLAND, N.Y. -- An Eltingville man who peddled oxycodone to an undercover cop outside his home has pleaded guilty to a felony drug charge that comes with a new address upstate. Lawrence Morocco sold the drug on multiple occasions between November 2016 and January 2017, said a criminal complaint. The transactions took place in front of his residence on the 100 block of Ridgewood Avenue, the complaint said. Police obtained a search warrant a short time after the final deal and recovered cocaine and oxycodone and oxymorphone pills from Morocco's bedroom, along with a rifle and 12-gauge shotgun, the complaint said. The defendant, who turns 58 on Friday, also had oxycodone and oxymorphone on his person, said the complaint. Morocco was indicted in February of last year on felony drug sale and drug possession charges. He was also accused of misdemeanor counts of drug possession and weapon possession. Morocco pleaded guilty on Monday in state Supreme Court, St. George, to third-degree criminal sale of a controlled substance. It was the top count against him. In exchange, he'll be sentenced on May 31 to two years in prison and one year of post-release supervision. The defendant remains free on $25,000 bond. Morocco has a criminal record. In 1991, he was convicted of second-degree criminal possession of a controlled substance and sentenced to three years to life in prison, said court documents. Taiwan leader says island secure ahead of China drills Taipei, April 17 (AFP) Apr 17, 2018 Taiwan's president Tsai Ing-wen reassured residents that the island was secure Tuesday, a day before China is set to hold live-fire drills in the narrow strait that separates the two. Tsai spoke to reporters as she left for Swaziland, one of Taiwan's few remaining international allies that has not been wooed away by an ascendant Beijing as cross-strait relations deteriorate. Chinese officials have suggested Wednesday's military exercise is a warning to pro-independence advocates in Taiwan as Beijing steps up its rhetoric against any challenges to its sovereignty. China sees self-ruling Taiwan as part of its territory to be brought back into the fold and has not ruled out reunification by force. Tsai said Monday she had told national security officials to closely monitor the "surrounding situation". "Please rest assured that we have the confidence and determination to safeguard the country's security," she said at Taoyuan International Airport. Tsai added that maintaining a peaceful "status quo" across the strait was her government's mission. Although a fully fledged democracy, Taiwan has never formally announced independence from the mainland and Beijing has warned of military action if it ever did. Tsai's Democratic Progressive Party (DPP) is traditionally pro-independence and her newly appointed premier William Lai is a long-standing independence advocate. When asked if the upcoming military exercise was directed at Lai, China's Taiwan Affairs Office director Liu Jieyi said on Monday it was "an action to safeguard the sovereignty and territorial integrity of our motherland". Beijing has stepped up military patrols around the island and used diplomatic pressure to isolate Taiwan internationally since Tsai took office in May 2016, as she refuses to accept both sides are part of "one China". China has chipped away at Taiwan's dwindling number of allies, with Swaziland one of the few not to have been convinced to give up official recognition of the island as a country. On her four-day trip to Africa, Tsai will take part in celebrations marking the 50th anniversary of Swaziland's independence and the establishment of diplomatic ties with Taiwan. Observers say Wednesday's planned drills also serve as a signal to Washington, which sent aircraft carrier USS Theodore Roosevelt through the disputed South China Sea last week. The region has become a potential flashpoint, with the United States saying China's aggressive activities in the area pose a threat to freedom of navigation. Washington is also Taiwan's most powerful -- thought unofficial -- ally and its biggest arms supplier. Relations have warmed between Washington and Taipei in recent months, including the passage of a bill last month that promotes visits by officials at all levels. System error error: Can't call method "get_id" on an undefined value at /usr/local/bricolage/data/burn/stage/oc_1027/smetimes/dhandler.html line 25. context: ... 21: 22: 23: % foreach my $c (@categories) { 24: <%perl> 25: my $category_id = $c->get_id(); 26: my @stories = Bric::Biz::Asset::Business::Story->list ( { element_type_id=>1148, category_id=>$category_id , Order=> 'cover_date', publish_status => 't' , OrderDirection=> 'DESC' , Limit=>10 } ); 27: 28: 29: ... code stack: /usr/local/bricolage/data/burn/stage/oc_1027/smetimes/dhandler.html:25 /usr/share/perl5/HTML/Mason/Request.pm:951 /var/cache/mason/obj/1784076917/main/smetimes/dhandler.html.obj:17 /usr/local/bricolage/data/burn/stage/oc_1027/smetimes/autohandler_template.html:149 Can't call method "get_id" on an undefined value at /usr/local/bricolage/data/burn/stage/oc_1027/smetimes/dhandler.html line 25. Trace begun at /usr/share/perl5/HTML/Mason/Exceptions.pm line 129 HTML::Mason::Exceptions::rethrow_exception('Can\'t call method "get_id" on an undefined value at /usr/local/bricolage/data/burn/stage/oc_1027/smetimes/dhandler.html line 25.^J') called at /usr/local/bricolage/data/burn/stage/oc_1027/smetimes/dhandler.html line 25 HTML::Mason::Commands::__ANON__ at /usr/share/perl5/HTML/Mason/Component.pm line 160 HTML::Mason::Component::run_dynamic_sub('HTML::Mason::Component::FileBased=HASH(0x7f63a04a1278)', 'main') called at /usr/share/perl5/HTML/Mason/Request.pm line 951 HTML::Mason::Request::call_dynamic('HTML::Mason::Request::ApacheHandler=HASH(0x7f63a0401d50)', 'main') called at /var/cache/mason/obj/1784076917/main/smetimes/dhandler.html.obj line 17 HTML::Mason::Commands::__ANON__ at /usr/share/perl5/HTML/Mason/Component.pm line 138 HTML::Mason::Component::run('HTML::Mason::Component::FileBased=HASH(0x7f63a04a1278)') called at /usr/share/perl5/HTML/Mason/Request.pm line 1305 eval {...} at /usr/share/perl5/HTML/Mason/Request.pm line 1295 HTML::Mason::Request::comp(undef, undef, undef) called at /usr/share/perl5/HTML/Mason/Request.pm line 958 HTML::Mason::Request::call_next('HTML::Mason::Request::ApacheHandler=HASH(0x7f63a0401d50)') called at /usr/local/bricolage/data/burn/stage/oc_1027/smetimes/autohandler_template.html line 149 HTML::Mason::Commands::__ANON__ at /usr/share/perl5/HTML/Mason/Component.pm line 138 HTML::Mason::Component::run('HTML::Mason::Component::FileBased=HASH(0x7f63a0476f20)') called at /usr/share/perl5/HTML/Mason/Request.pm line 1303 eval {...} at /usr/share/perl5/HTML/Mason/Request.pm line 1295 HTML::Mason::Request::comp(undef, undef, undef) called at /usr/share/perl5/HTML/Mason/Request.pm line 484 eval {...} at /usr/share/perl5/HTML/Mason/Request.pm line 484 eval {...} at /usr/share/perl5/HTML/Mason/Request.pm line 436 HTML::Mason::Request::exec('HTML::Mason::Request::ApacheHandler=HASH(0x7f63a0401d50)') called at /usr/share/perl5/HTML/Mason/ApacheHandler.pm line 165 HTML::Mason::Request::ApacheHandler::exec('HTML::Mason::Request::ApacheHandler=HASH(0x7f63a0401d50)') called at /usr/share/perl5/HTML/Mason/ApacheHandler.pm line 831 HTML::Mason::ApacheHandler::handle_request('HTML::Mason::ApacheHandler=HASH(0x7f639faeb2e0)', 'Apache2::RequestRec=SCALAR(0x7f63a0445780)') called at (eval 487) line 8 HTML::Mason::ApacheHandler::handler('HTML::Mason::ApacheHandler', 'Apache2::RequestRec=SCALAR(0x7f63a0445780)') called at -e line 0 eval {...} at -e line 0 POND ISLAND;--- Acting Minister of Tourism, Economic Affairs, Transportation and Telecommunications (Ministry TEATT) Cornelius de Weever, says the appointment of May-Ling Chun as Interim Director of the St. Maarten Tourist Bureau (STB), will benefit the national tourism recovery of the country. May-Ling is not a newcomer to STB, as she had a stint as director of St. Maarten Tourism Bureau from 2011-2012. May-Ling holds a Master's Degree in Business Administration (MBA) from the John F. Welch School of Business, Sacred Heart University, Fairfield, CT, and a Bachelor's Degree in Hotel/Restaurant Management and a Minor in Business from New York Institute of Technology, Old Westbury, New York, and a HAVO High school diploma from Peter Stuyvesant College. I would like to congratulate May-Ling Chun on her appointment as she is well qualified for the job. At this stage of our countrys post-Irma development, we need to ensure the tourism and travel industry that we have the best and brightest minds at the forefront in order to move our country forward during these very challenging times. May-Ling Chun will be working with seasoned staff at STB in continuing to get the message out that we are open for business. To-date STB staff have been doing a wonderful job, and they are well aware what is at stake and what needs to be done. We have to keep our industry partners updated on destination developments ensuring more flights return as more of our accommodations reopen. In the end, our country will have a better tourism product. We are on the right track and moving in the right direction. It will not be easy as we move into the slow season. It will be challenging, but we all have to contribute to promoting the destination as we bounce back, Acting Minister of Tourism Affairs Cornelius de Weever said on Monday. May-Ling was Manager of the countrys newest accommodation - Commodore Suites, located in the heart of Simpson Bay, and prior to that, May-Ling was involved in a number of projects related to marketing consulting, sales, product development, public relations, human resources, training, product development, business development, extensive market research. Chun was also Oyster Bay Beach Resort's Director of Operations from 1999 - 2002. May-Ling has served as second vice president of the executive Board of St. Maarten Hospitality and Trade Association (SHTA) from 2009 - 2011 and as a board member from 1999 - 2009. May-Ling is also a board member on the Charlotte Brookson Academy of the Performance Arts; co-founder of the St. Maarten/St. Martin Annual Regional Tradeshow (SMART) and of the annual SHTA Crystal Pineapple Awards. Eustatius:--- Representatives of the Nos Kier Boneiru Bek Foundation from Bonaire, the Brighter Path Foundation, and the illegally deposed Government of St. Eustatius, travelled to Guyana and Suriname with the object to solicit solidarity in condemnation of and to expose the blatant violations of human rights, the continued colonial administration, the contempt for identity and culture of the local people by the Dutch government in The Hague and its local collaborators in the islands of Bonaire and St. Eustatius. They received a warm welcome and experienced sympathy and were given support. They met with his Hon. Mr. Carl B. Greenidge, Vice-President and Minister of Foreign Affairs of the Republic of Guyana, with his excellency Mr Colin Granderson assistant Secretary- General CARICOM, Ms Karen de Sousa founder and coordinator of Red Thread a woman and child human rights organization and was awarded the Caribbean Award for Excellence, and with honourable Ms Indranie Chanderpal member of parliament in the opposition and president of commission for equal rights of the woman, and with honourable Mr Clement J Rohee ex-minister of Foreign Affairs, ex-minister of Home Affairs and president of Guyana Peace Council, with Mr drs. Andre Misiekaba, Faction coalition leader of the Parliament of Suriname, Chair of the Permanent Committee for Foreign Affairs, Chair of the Permanent Committee for Internal Affairs, Chair of the Permanent Committee for Defense, and Chair of the Permanent Committee for Environment and Climate Change of the National Assembly of the Republic of Suriname, and with honourable mr Chan Santokhi ex-minister of Foreign Affairs and faction leader of opposition of the Nationaale Assamblee Republic of Suriname. At the meetings the following topics were discussed. Bonaire and St. Eustatius are two small islands in the Dutch Caribbean which since October 10, 2010 were forced in a subordinate direct relationship with the (European) Netherlands at the dissolution of The Netherlands Antilles. This happened against the will of the people of both islands who expressed their desire in separate referenda to retain or possibly expand their level of autonomy. Effectively, the islands are currently governed in a constitutional status that was firmly and clearly rejected by the people. Since October 10, 2010 the Dutch government has continued pursuing an aggressive colonial policy of imposing laws contrary to local customs and cultural traditions, undermining and limiting the responsibilities of local democratically elected parliaments and governments, and appointing European Dutch citizens in the local administration and demoting local heads of departments. Furthermore, the Dutch government took away all restrictions on immigration of European Dutch to the islands and encouraged their immigration by offering them tax holidays and financial benefits NOT available to the local people. Having wiped out the local businesses by demanding immediate payment of taxes allegedly owed over the five years prior to October 10, 2010, the economy in Bonaire is now largely in the hands of European Dutch. In Bonaire, the immigration has come to such a level that it makes the local people fear for genocide by substitution. The same trend is visible in St. Eustatius. With the right to vote in local elections obtained in 90 days (a Dutch law), these Dutch immigrants could soon outnumber locals in the electorate and replace them in the representative bodies, making the exclusion of local people complete. On October 10, 2010 the Netherlands usurped the responsibilities for healthcare, education, and social affairs. Since then, despite allegedly big investments in the healthcare system, the crude death rate has gone up significantly and is out of proportion compared to the numbers in the wider Caribbean. In education, changes were made in the educational system in Bonaire that adversely affected the local students by limiting them to the lower levels of the system, and hence segregation between the European Dutch and local people. Despite three reports by independent organizations, which stated that the minimum wage was too low, and the average income was well-below the poverty level, the Dutch Government has only ordered a next report to come to the establishment of an acceptable social minimum. The effective tax pressure is as high in the islands as it is in the European part of the kingdom with a lower average income. At the same time the cost of living in the islands is about twice the level of the cost of living in the European Netherlands, while the social benefits in the islands are less than half compared to the European Netherlands. By now building the second biggest (per capita) prison in the world, the Dutch government says to invest in the social well-being of the Bonerians. Despite the promise of reluctance in introducing new laws, the Dutch government pushed highly controversial Dutch laws without input from the islands and experienced locally as immoral and as a threat to the identity and culture. In November 2017, the islands were annexed and incorporated in the Dutch constitution, again despite fierce opposition from the islands and despite the referenda in Bonaire in 2015 and 2014 in St. Eustatius. On top of it, a paragraph was included giving the Dutch government the right to deviate from the constitution and declare parts of the constitution not-applicable to the islands without giving a reason, thus making the status of second class citizens of the people of our islands legal. Ultimately, the undemocratic and colonial actions of the government in The Netherlands resulted on February 7, 2018 in King Willem-Alexander signing a law into effect, that passed through the Dutch parliament unanimously in the record time of two days, by which the legislative and executive branches of government of St. Eustatius were thrown out and replaced by a sole (Dutch) Government Commissioner, appointed by and accountable to the Dutch minister of the Interior in The Hague alone. By the same law, the elections for the legislative body of St. Eustatius, slated for March 2019, were postponed indefinitely. The law was passed based on a report compiled by two persons appointed by the Dutch Minister of the Interior in which the local government was accused of corruption, nepotism, and fraud. All accusations have so far remained without proof. The people of Bonaire and St. Eustatius reach out to their brothers and sisters in the Caribbean to increase the awareness about the persistent colonial behavior of the Dutch government toward the islands and help them in their struggle to acquire their measure of self-governance as is stipulated in the resolutions of the United Nations. By removing these and the other islands of the Dutch Antilles from the UN list of non-self-governing countries and territories under false pretense in 1954, the Dutch achieved to escape reporting to the United Nations on the decolonization of the islands and had and have their wicked way with the islands. The NGOs Nos Kier Boneiru Bek and Brighter Path, joined by the deposed legitimately and democratically elected government of St. Eustatius, strive for re-enlisting on the list of non-self-governing countries and territories of the United Nations and for acquisition of their measure of self-governance to guarantee the human rights of the local people of Bonaire and St. Eustatius now trampled on and taken away by a Dutch government. This quest has brought them to the doors of CARICOM and the governments of the member states. MIAMI, USA:---Persons from the Caribbean seeking to contribute to the governance ecosystem of the global Internet can now volunteer for an appointment to the board of trustees of the American Registry for Internet Numbers (ARIN). The call for volunteers will close on April 30 at 5 pm EDT. ARIN is one of five registries worldwide that coordinate Internet number resources. Its region spans the United States, Canada and many countries in the Caribbean. The move by ARIN is intended to address the absence of any representation of the Caribbean region at the board of trustees. "This is in keeping with the ARIN bylaws, which allow the board of trustees at its discretion to appoint an additional voting member to the board for a term not to exceed one year so as to provide more diversity in the board's composition," ARIN said in an April 12 online post. In March, the seven-member ARIN board formed a special committee to recruit and recommend potential candidates for the appointment of an eighth member, from the Caribbean. It is the first time that ARIN is using its bylaws to improve Caribbean regional representation at the highest level of its leadership. The development appears to be part of a deliberate strategy by ARIN to invest in policies and practices that are more representative of its entire service region. We recognise that our policy development process can only benefit from the inclusion of more voices and perspectives from our constituents in the Caribbean, ARIN President and CEO John Curran said at the registry's public policy meeting in San Jose, California last October. Since then, two women from the Caribbean have been appointed for the first time to ARIN's next-highest decision making body, the Advisory Council. Advisory Council members voted to appoint Barbadian-born Alicia Trotman for a one-year term, starting January 1. Trotman, a senior administrator at Barbados national telecommunications regulator, described the decision of the council as a big step forward for Caribbean representation at the regional Internet registry. Jamaican-born Kerrie Ann Richards was also appointed as an interim member to fill the remainder of the unexpired term of David Huberman, who resigned from the council effective November 17, 2017. Richards' term ends on December 31. In February, to further engage its stakeholders in the Caribbean, ARIN launched an ongoing series of workshops designed to raise awareness of ARIN services and to better understand the needs of the region. On April 19, ARIN is launching a dedicated Caribbean Forum, which will run in parallel with the regional meeting of the Caribbean Network Operators Group, to be held in Miami from April 18 to 20. The registry has also announced plans to expose an even wider Caribbean audience to its mission and community later this year. "The needs of the Caribbean can be very different to those of the US and Canada. For number policy decisions to best reflect the entire ARIN Community, those decisions must include perspectives and participation drawn from the Caribbean," said Wooding. The ARIN call for volunteers to serve on its board of trustees is open to anyone of Caribbean background. No ARIN affiliation or membership is required in order to be considered. But the organisation's website specifies that the desired skill set of potential appointees includes demonstrated leadership experience, relevant board experience, and experience in relevant industry sectors, such as Internet or Telecommunications. "I am really happy that this has happened, although it is unfortunate that it took so long," said Bill Woodcock, who served on the board for 15 years before voluntarily stepping down at the end of 2017. ARIN used this appointment mechanism at the beginning of 2017 to bring a woman onto the board, and in the election at the end of 2017, ARIN members elected a woman for the first time in twenty years. So weve seen that this path works to overcome the almost insurmountable advantage incumbents have in ARIN elections. I think its completely logical to use it again to solve the geographic representation problem that we still face. I think its great ARIN is finally moving to get someone from the Caribbean onto the board, and Im confident that it will lead to the Caribbean being represented in elected seats in the future," he added. An ARIN board meeting is scheduled to take place during its public policy meeting, to be held in Miami from April 15 to 18. PHILIPSBURG:--- The Alpha Team located at the Princess Juliana International Airport on Wednesday, April 11th at approximately 04.35 p.m. arrested two male passengers who arrived on flight Air Antilles from Port au Prince Haiti. Both male passengers identified with initials B.R.G.J. and E.M.C.R. were nationals of the Dominican Republic. B.R.G.J. French passport was then controlled by an Immigration officer who discovered that the front page which contained his information was printed. E.M.C.R. Spanish (Spain) passport was also controlled by an Immigration officer who discovered that the front page of his passport which contained his information was also printed. Both men were subsequently arrested for traveling with falsified passports. During their arrest, both men were found to have in their possession, passports of the Dominican Republic. While controlling those passports it was also discovered that both passports had falsified visas of the Netherlands. Both men were taken to the police station in Philipsburg and their passports were confiscated for further investigation. On Wednesday evening at approximately 10.50 p.m. a male passenger identified with initials J.D.A. was refused entry to the island by the Immigration Department at PJIA. While inspecting his passport from the Dominican Republic, suspicions arose that the Spanish (Spain) stamps on his passport were falsified. While being controlled by the Immigration Department, J.D.A. also handed an I.D. card from Spain to the Immigration officer. This I.D. card also appeared to be false. J.D.A. was then taken to the police station in Philipsburg where he awaited his safe return to the Dominican Republic. On Thursday morning, both the passport and I.D. card of J.D.A. were controlled by investigating officers of the Alpha Team. While inspecting the documents, it was discovered that the stamps from Spain in his Dominican Republic passport as well as the I.D. card from Spain, were falsified. J.D.A. was then arrested for travelling with falsified documents and for presenting these falsified documents to authorities. Both his Dominican Republic passport and falsified I.D. card from Spain were confiscated for further investigation. All three suspects remain in police custody pending further investigation. Several interview staff reported experiencing health symptoms, including throat irritation and wheezing The Playa del Rey gas storage field, owned and operated by Southern California Gas Company, was purchased by SoCal Gas in 1953 as field surplus. The storage facility dates back to pre World War Two years, with active wells having been drilled as far back as the 1930's. It is the oldest gas storage facility in Los Angeles. Advertisement Currently, according to Department of Oil, Gas and Geothermal Resources, a division of California public Utilities commission 25 of the 54 wells at the Playa del Rey gas storage field are injection/withdrawal wells used to inject and extract gas. (http://www.cpuc.ca.gov/Environment/info/esa/playa/pdfs/apndx_f.pdf The method by which the gas is injected uses chemicals, including benzene, which the World Health Organization, has sited has no safe levels of exposure. Benzene is harmful to both human animal health. Protect Playa Now (PPN), a coalition of local community and environmental groups, including Food and Water Watch, The Ballona Institute, the Neighborhood Council Sustainability Alliance, and Stand - LA, hosted the "Health and Safety Forum," at the Holy Nativity Episcopal Church Los Angeles this past Saturday. (STAND - LA = Stand Together Against Neighborhood Drilling). The discussion centered on the dangers of living near to the play del rey gas storage facility and the threats it poses to pubic health and the local economy. According to research from the Protect Playa Now coalition, gas storage facilities, including Aliso Canyon and Playa del Rey are far from benign infrastructure. "They are dangerous facilities that threaten our public health and economy. SoCal gas gets all the profits from these facilities, while we are burdened with all the risk." The goal is for Los Angeles to make the transition too 100 percent renewables by 2030; the city will be powered entirely by wind, solar and geothermal energy sources. This is the hope of the Protect Playa Now coalition. At the forum, the local presenter, Vlad Popescu said that the purpose of the event was to empower residents with information and avenues to shut down the gas storage facility, which is obsolete. The city of Los Angles does in fact have a plan to transition to clean and 100 per cent renewable energy by 2030. According to Andrew Krowne, Health App Developer, and one of the speakers at the forum, it won't be a matter of if, but when, Playa gas storage field has an explosion. There was in fact an explosion of a vent stack at the Playa gas storage field on January 6th, 2013. Atmospheric scientist of UC Davis, Stephen Conley, in a phone interview, said that whenever there are gas storage fields, there could be leaks. To reiterate, it's really only a matter of time before Playa del Rey gas storage field has another explosion. Since the five-mile radius from the gas storage facility in playa del Rey is much more densely populated than the five-mile radius from the Aliso Canyon in Porter Ranch, the results of a blowout could pose even greater risks. Playa del Rey residents live within five miles of the gas storage facility. A potential blow out would threaten not only the immediate neighborhood, but also LAX which is less than a mile away. A methane explosion in Playa del Rey would have a devastating blow to the economy, according to Vlad Popescu, a local resident and presenter at the forum. Popescu also said that we should not allow ourselves to have such a risky facility in a densely populated area, and feels that it should be shut down. Great concerns about the gas storage facility built near fault lines were also expressed. The area would not survive an earthquake and Popescu said, "We can't sit and wait to find out" Why the mentioning of the Aliso canyon blow out was significant in reference to Playa del Rey, is because when the 2015 massive methane leak spewed out of the faulty well in Aliso Canyon gas storage facility, the area surrounding it was mostly mountains. Nevertheless, it impacted thousands of families who had to temporarily relocate from their homes. Since Playa del Rey is much more densely populated, a blow out has the potential to impact thousands of more people. Dr. Jeffrey Nordella, MD, presented information about the health impacts of the 2015 Aliso Canyon methane blow out. Dr. Nordella is a physician who continues to study the health impacts on residents living near the Aliso Canyon gas storage facility. As one of the speakers, he presented information about how the 2015 methane blow out impacted the people of Porter Ranch. In his study, Dr. Nordella found that health symptoms such as headaches, nausea, fatigue, nosebleeds and coughs persisted well into Jan, 2017, a little over a year after the blow out Dr. Nordella conducted a Volatile Organic Compound (VOC) urine test on the residents. He found that BTEX, chemicals used in fracking were found in the urine samples. There was evidence of the metabolizing of styrene and methylbenzene (PGO). What Dr Nordella also observed was that the local levels of PGO in Porter Ranch were significantly higher than in the rest of the state of California. According to a Community Assessment for Public health Emergency response (CASPERO), comments from the field were reported as, "Several interview staff reported experiencing health symptoms, including throat irritation and wheezing among interviewers at households closest to the well, and exacerbation of asthma symptoms." Dr. Nordella shared in his presentation that the field interviewers experienced symptoms themselves when visiting the homes of the families afflicted with health issues as a result of the toxins released from the methane blow out. "Headaches and irritation-type symptoms were also reported among interviewers conducting interviews..." ..."these symptoms improved shortly after the field teams left the sampled homes."... Also present at the forum was Andrew Krowne, a Health App Developer, and local resident of Porter Ranch. ABC did a segment of Krowne last December 2017. Krowne developed an app called Environmental Health Tracker (EHT) that is used to track and report health symptoms in your community plus real time alerts. In the ABC story last year, Krowne said, about his EHT app, Protectplayanow.org Potential range of an explosion "What that allows the users to do is to go on their phone when they're feeling a symptom they believe is related to the Aliso Canyon facility, be it a nose bleed, a headache, fatigue, shortness of breath, all those things," Krowne explained. Their symptoms are kept as part of a centralized data log for all users within an 18-mile radius of the Aliso Canyon storage facility." At the forum, Krowne encouraged the Playa del Rey residents to download the app so that they too can track and report any health symptoms they may have, due to a potential leak coming for the gas storage facility. For more information about the health and safety risks of the playa gas storage facility, please visit the website, http://www.protectplayanow.org/ http://www.protectplayanow.org/ Are we alone? NASA's new planet hunter aims to find out Tampa, April 16 (AFP) Apr 16, 2018 Are we alone? NASA's new planet-hunting mission, poised to launch Monday, aims to advance the search for extraterrestrial life by scanning the skies for nearby, Earth-like planets. The Transiting Exoplanet Survey Satellite, or TESS, is poised to blast off at 6:32 pm (2232 GMT) aboard a SpaceX Falcon 9 rocket from a NASA launchpad in Cape Canaveral, Florida. The $337 million washing machine-sized spacecraft is built to search the nearest, brightest stars for signs of periodic dimming. These so-called "transits" may mean that planets are in orbit around them. TESS is expected to reveal 20,000 planets beyond our solar system, known as exoplanets, NASA said. Its discoveries will be studied further by ground- and space-based telescopes for signs of habitability, including rocky terrain, a size similar to Earth and a distance from their sun -- neither too close nor too far -- that allows the right temperature for liquid water. NASA predicts that TESS could find more than 50 Earth-sized planets and up to 500 planets less than twice the size of the Earth. TESS will survey far more cosmic terrain than its predecessor, NASA's Kepler Space Telescope, which launched in 2009, taking in some 85 percent of the skies. "TESS is equipped with four very sensitive cameras that will be able to monitor nearly the entire sky," said George Ricker, TESS principal investigator at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT). "That is about 20 times what the Kepler mission was able to detect." - Kepler vs TESS - Kepler, the first planet-hunting mission of its kind, "was launched to answer one single question: How common is a planet like Earth around a star like the Sun?" said Patricia "Padi" Boyd, director of the TESS guest investigator program at NASA's Goddard Spaceflight Center. "It was designed to look at 150,000 stars in a fairly wide field of view without blinking, for four years," she told reporters on the eve of the launch. "One of the many amazing things that Kepler told us is that planets are everywhere and there are all kinds of planets out there. "So TESS takes the next step. If planets are everywhere, then it is time for us to find the planets that are closest to us orbiting bright nearby stars, because these will be the touchstone system." TESS and Kepler use the same system of detecting planetary transits, or shadows cast as they pass in front of their star. While Kepler confirmed some 2,300 exoplanets and thousands more potential planet candidates, many were too distant and dim to be studied further. With Kepler running low on fuel and nearing the end of its life, TESS aims to pick up the search while focusing closer, on planets dozens to hundreds of light years away. "TESS is going to dramatically increase the number of planets that we have to study," said Ricker. The Hubble Space Telescope and the James Webb Space Telescope, scheduled to launch in 2020, should be able to reveal more about planets' mass, density and the makeup of their atmosphere -- all clues to habitability. The first data from TESS is expected to be made public in July, and NASA says citizen astronomers are welcome to help study the planets. It may be decades before astronomers know whether or not life exists elsewhere. "TESS is the first step," said Stephen Rinehart, TESS project scientist at NASA's Goddard Spaceflight Center. Top US court declares Microsoft email suit moot Washington, April 17 (AFP) Apr 17, 2018 The US Supreme Court on Tuesday threw out a suit over Microsoft's refusal to comply with a US warrant for emails stored outside the country, concluding the case had been rendered moot by a new law. The court case arose in 2013 when the US government served a notice on Microsoft seeking access to an email account that it believed was being used for drug trafficking. Microsoft challenged the warrant on the grounds that email data stored in another country, in this case Ireland, does not fall under US law. In the meantime, however, the US Congress responded by passing the "Cloud Act," signed into law March 23 by US President Donald Trump, which requires providers of email services to produce the email in response to warrants even if the data is stored outside the US. "This case, therefore, has become moot," the Supreme Court said, throwing out lower court rulings in the case. The Cloud Act was backed by Microsoft and other tech giants as a compromise that would allow them to challenge warrants if they violate the laws of the country where the data is stored. seb/jm/mdo EBAY HP INC. AT&T CORPORATION VERIZON COMMUNICATIONS AMAZON.COM SCA - SVENSKA CELLULOSA AB MICROSOFT The content herein, unless otherwise known to be public domain, are Copyright 1995-2018 - Space Media Network. All websites are published in Australia and are solely subject to Australian law and governed by Fair Use principals for news reporting and research purposes. AFP, UPI and IANS news wire stories are copyright Agence France-Presse, United Press International and Indo-Asia News Service. ESA news reports are copyright European Space Agency. All NASA sourced material is public domain. Additional copyrights may apply in whole or part to other bona fide parties. Advertising does not imply endorsement, agreement or approval of any opinions, statements or information provided by Space Media Network on any Web page published or hosted by Space Media Network. Privacy Statement California rejects initial National Guard border plan Washington, United States, April 16 (AFP) Apr 16, 2018 California Governor Jerry Brown has rejected the Trump administration's initial proposals for a National Guard mission along the state's border with Mexico, a top US official said Monday. Brown last week had said he would accept federal funding from President Donald Trump to boost his state's National Guard. But the governor has quibbled over their role and insisted they only focus on cross-border crime rather than detaining unauthorized migrants coming into the state that is home to several "sanctuary cities." Ron Vitiello, the acting deputy commissioner of US Customs and Border Protection, said Brown had declined the initial roles put forward for Guardsmen. "The governor has determined that what we have asked for so far is unsupportable," Vitiello told reporters. "We've made this refined request, it's gone through the process and then we've got a signal from the governor that he is not participating." Deputy Assistant Defense Secretary Bob Salesses said the initial request envisioned sending 237 Guardsmen to two main crossing areas in Southern California, where they would have conducted maintenance, clerical assistance and helped with heavy equipment operations, among other tasks. "The California National Guard has indicated that they will not perform those missions as we know them to be right now," Salesses said, though he noted that conversations were ongoing. Vitiello, too, suggested that the state's Guard might ultimately be used in other roles, including possibly cargo inspection. "We will have other iterations," Vitiello said. Trump this month said he would send thousands of National Guard troops to the southern border, where they could remain until a border wall is constructed. The order would eventually see about 4,000 Guardsman along the border, which spans four US states. So far about 960 have arrived, officials said. Texas has seen the biggest deployment, with 650 sent to the border, while Arizona has dispatched 250, and New Mexico about 60. Vitiello said Guardsmen would most likely not be armed, but individual states might allow the carrying of a weapon in certain missions. California is at the forefront of what opponents call the "Resistance" to Trump's administration, with the heavily Democratic state suing the federal government over numerous issues, including the rollback of environmental regulations. Several cities including Los Angeles are "sanctuary cities" that require local law enforcement agencies not to tell federal agents about residents' legal status. US Attorney General Jeff Sessions has sued the state over three statutes that support cities and counties that refuse to hand over unauthorized immigrants to federal immigration authorities for prosecution or expulsion. Iraq women with alleged links to IS sexually abused: Amnesty Baghdad, Iraq, April 17 (AFP) Apr 17, 2018 Iraq is using collective punishment including sexual exploitation against women and children with alleged ties to Islamic State jihadists, Amnesty International said Tuesday. In a new report, the watchdog revealed widespread discrimination by security forces, camp administrators and local authorities against women and children in eight camps for people displaced by violence. "Iraqi women and children with perceived ties to IS are being punished for crimes they did not commit," said Lynn Maalouf, Amnesty's Middle East research director. "They are trapped in camps, ostracised and denied food, water and other essentials. This humiliating collective punishment risks laying the foundation for future violence." The United Nations said in February that some 2.5 million people remained displaced after Iraqi forces backed by an international coalition waged a vast offensive to oust the extremist group from parts of northern Iraq it had seized in 2014. Many of those who fled IS-held areas ended up in camps. Amnesty said that in each of the eight camps it visited, women were being pressured into sexual relationships in exchange for money, aid and protection. In its report, entitled "The Condemned: Women and Children Isolated, Trapped and Exploited in Iraq", the watchdog said women in the camps were also at risk of rape. "The very people who are supposed to be protecting them are turning into predators," said Maalouf. She called on the Iraqi government to show its commitment to protecting women by "holding all perpetrators to account and stopping all armed men from entering" the camps for the displaced. Amnesty also called on Iraqi authorities to "immediately end the systematic and widespread practise of forcibly disappearing men and boys with perceived ties to IS that has left thousands of wives, mothers, daughters and sons in desperate situations". In many cases, the men's only "crimes" were escaping an IS stronghold, having similar names to jihadists on "wanted lists", or working in non-combat roles with the group, the watchdog said. Iraq declared victory over IS in December after pushing the jihadists out of their final holdouts along the border with Syria. But the group retains the capacity to strike and still clings to pockets of desert in war-torn Syria. Syrian air defence shoots down missiles over Homs: state media Damascus, Syria, April 17 (AFP) Apr 17, 2018 Syrian air defence shot down missiles over the central province of Homs, the state news agency said Tuesday, with the strikes reportedly targeting regime air bases. The news agency did not give further details and it was unclear who was behind the attack, which Syrian state television branded as an "aggression". Big explosions were heard near Al Shayrat Air base, southeast of the city of Homs, and in eastern Qalamoun near Damascus where two other air bases are located, the Syrian Observatory for Human rights reported. Observatory chief Rami Abdel Rahman said missiles did not hit any of the air bases. Following reports of an Israeli strike, an Israeli military spokesman said: "I'm not aware of such an incident." In Washington, Pentagon spokeswoman Heather Babb said: "There are no US or coalition operations in that area." Shayrat air base was targeted by US Tomahawk missiles in April last year in a strike ordered by President Donald Trump in retaliation for a suspected chemical attack on the rebel-held town of Khan Sheikhun in Idlib. According to the Pentagon, US intelligence had established that the base was the launchpad for the alleged chemical attack. Syria retracts report on missile attack: state media Damascus, April 17 (AFP) Apr 17, 2018 Syrian state media on Tuesday retracted reports of an overnight missile attack on the central province of Homs, saying its air defences had been activated after a "false alarm." "Last night, a false alarm that Syrian air space had been penetrated triggered the blowing of air defence sirens and the firing of several missiles," a military source told state news agency SANA. "There was no external attack on Syria," the source added. Iraq sentences French female jihadist to life in jail Baghdad, April 17 (AFP) Apr 17, 2018 Iraq on Tuesday sentenced a French woman to life in prison for belonging to the Islamic State group, the latest in a series of court rulings since the country's defeat of IS. Djamila Boutoutaou, a 29-year-old of Algerian origin, told a Baghdad court that she had left France with her husband, a rapper. She said she thought they were going on holiday but "when I arrived in Turkey I discovered that my husband was a jihadist". She said she was forced by her husband to join IS and live in the "caliphate" that the jihadists proclaimed in 2014 straddling Syria and Iraq. Her husband was killed near the former jihadist stronghold of Mosul, northern Iraq, and her son died in bombardment, Boutoutaou said. Two Russian women, both holding children in their arms, were also sentenced to life in prison at the same hearing. Iraq declared victory in December against IS, which at one point controlled a third of the country. The Iraqi anti-terrorism law empowers courts to convict people who are believed to have helped IS even if they are not accused of violence. In January, an Iraqi court condemned a German woman to death after finding her guilty of belonging to IS. A court the following month sentenced another French woman to seven months in jail for entering Iraq illegally but ordered her release on time already served. Several dozen Turkish women have been sentenced to death under Iraqi anti-terrorism laws. Golan Druze rally in support of Syria's Assad Ein Qiniye, April 17 (AFP) Apr 17, 2018 Hundreds of Druze in the Israeli-occupied Golan Heights marched Tuesday in support of Syrian President Bashar al-Assad on Syrian independence day and in protest over Western airstrikes against suspected chemical weapons sites. An AFP journalist said that more than 500 people waving Syrian flags and carrying portraits of Assad took part in the rally in the village of Ein Qiniye, about 16 kilometres (10 miles) from the Syrian-controlled part of the heights. They chanted: "Bashar defeated the terrorists" and "Bashar beat the American bombers," referring to US-led strikes over the weekend in which British and French forces participated. Israeli officials say there are about 20,000 Druze on the strategic plateau seized by the Jewish state from neighbouring Syria in the 1967 Six-Day War. They live alongside around 20,000 Israeli settlers. Israel and Syria are still officially in a state of war. Israel annexed the 1,200 square kilometres (460 square miles) of territory in an action never recognised by the international community. But the vast majority of Golan Druze have retained Syrian nationality and many have family ties with Druze in Syrian government-controlled territory. Another 110,000 Druze live in the Galilee district of northern Israel, where most have Israeli nationality and perform compulsory military service, unlike other Arab citizens. Albania wants US military to establish presence: defense minister Washington, April 17 (AFP) Apr 17, 2018 Albania wants to see a US military presence established in the Balkan country in order to counter influence from nations such as Russia, the Albanian defense minister said Tuesday. Olta Xhacka, who met with Defense Secretary Jim Mattis at the Pentagon, said NATO member Albania wanted to push back against Russian "destabilization" efforts in the region that include propaganda, investments and "hybrid actions." "A very strong message needs to be sent that the western Balkans is a West-oriented region and that we all share and we need to protect the same principles and values, and we look forward to strengthen(ing) our strategic partnership," she said. "You can count on us to be a very trusty ally ... Albania could really be a stronghold of the United States in the region. We believe that the time might be ripe for a footprint of United States in Albania," she added. Xhacka, who also mentioned China, Iran and Turkey as countries whose influence Albania wanted to counter, said she envisioned the Adriatic country's making its land, air and naval bases available to the United States. Also Tuesday, the European Union backed the opening of formal membership talks with Albania and Macedonia as the bloc looks to expand into the Balkans and grow for the first time in years. "This is something that the Albanian people have aspired for many, many years and I believe that this perspective is crucial to move the country in the right direction," Xhacka said. Boko Haram kills three Chadian soldiers N'Djamena, April 17 (AFP) Apr 17, 2018 Three Chadian soldiers were killed in a clash with Boko Haram jihadists on Sunday, Chad's national television reported on Tuesday. The three were given a posthumous award by the Chadian army chief of staff, the report said, adding that they were buried at the N'Djamena military cemetery. The report gave no details of where the clash happened. A military source said fighting took place on Sunday between Boko Haram and Multinational Joint Task Force (MNJTF) soldiers in Arge in Nigeria's Abadam district, which is on the border with Chad. Three MNJTF soldiers were killed, the source said, without specifying whether they were Chadian. The MNJTF has patrolled the Lake Chad area for several years alongside civilian "watch committees" to prevent the return of Boko Haram to the region. On the Nigerian side of the border, the MNJTF is tracking jihadists in one of their main strongholds in the Sambisa Forest of Borno State in the northeast of the country. Boko Haram operates mainly in its birthplace Nigeria, where it commits deadly attacks and carries out kidnappings. The jihadist group also operates in several countries neighbouring Nigeria such as Chad, Cameroon and Niger. Since 2009, more than 20,000 people have died in Nigeria alone, victims of Boko Haram's actions and clashes with the army. ABSTRACT Due to the competitive marketplace environment, production companies need to increase efficiency. ERP systems can significantly increase profitability, while decreasing operational costs. This paper is focusing on the accounting benefits of ERP systems in the production sector, and more specifically the textile industry. It also explores cross-cultural differences regarding ERP use by looking into two cases from the UK and Greece. The information gathered from the HQ and production plants influences managerial decision-making and efficiency at an organizational and operational level. However, differences in handling and acting upon the generated accounting information are noticed between the two cases. Keywords: ERP Systems, Accounting Benefits, Textile Industry, Case Study 1. Introduction For businesses who aim for growth and increase in competitiveness, Enterprise Resource Planning (ERP) systems are nowadays essential for all types of businesses. Enterprise Resource Planning is the process of integrating all operations of a company in a unified manner, to coordinate and manage resources, while keeping track of financial data and other business activities. Data regarding operations and corporate activities need to be collected, managed and utilized to the companys advantage, over its competition. ERP systems evolved from Accounting Information Systems (AIS). These systems focused solely on storage and process of financial data and accounting transactions. Yet, for managerial decisions in large companies to be made, the accounting information generated from AIS, had to be associated with and examined in comparison with the companys resources and processes. Consequently, ERP systems managed and coordinated all resources and processes, and integrated all financial and non-financial activities in an automated system [1] . Regarding the textile industry, Yang [2] argues that the fast moving nature of the business requires accelerated collection and exchange of information. Additionally, Bertolini et al. [3] identify the shift towards outsourcing for textile and apparel manufacture in Eastern Europe and the Far East in an attempt to reduce production costs. However, the distribution from foreign countries is a costly and time-consuming procedure, which impacts the supply chain. Thus, local companies use ERP systems to improve efficiency and promote effectiveness, while reducing production costs, in order to be trusted and preferred over overseas vendors. The evolution of ERP systems has transformed them into indispensible strategic tools when it comes to distribution, as they integrate all business functions while sharing information from production to the client. Given the geographical closeness between European countries, new links facilitating production and distribution are created. This significantly reduces overhead costs by at least 10% [1] . It is clear that ERP has a positive influence of a company; yet, the overall performance is measured in financial terms. Hence, it is important to investigate the accounting benefits of ERP use. In the UK context, the textile industry is worth 9 billion GBP of the National economy, and by 2020 a total of 20,000 jobs will be created, as part of the post-recession growth plan [4] . Interestingly, in Greece the two branches of clothingfootwear manufacturing, and textile that were almost non-existent during the economic crisis, experienced an increase by 16.7% and 6.3% respectively in 2017 [5] . This increase in investment in the textile and apparel industry implies that the market will become even more competitive. Thus, investing in ERP systems to improve efficiency and reduce uncertainty is crucial. This paper is investigating the accounting benefits deriving from ERP implementation in the complex and fast moving textile industry. Two case studies, one from the UK and one from Greece are examined in order to find similarities and differences regarding the use of an ERP system in textile and apparel manufacture. 2. Literature Review 2.1. ERP in the Textile Industry As fashion is a fast-moving industry, quick reactions to environmental changes are important. With ERP systems, financial and other resources, such as and time, are saved, while maintaining the stability, accuracy and high quality of processes [6] . ERP systems increase responsiveness and competitive advantage over competitors is achieved [7] . Huang et al. [8] argue that the use of ERP and the general electronization of processes in the textile industry reduces cost, time and supply chain related risks, while enhancing corporate value by emphasizing research and development, as well as innovation. Scherrer-Rathje and Boyles [6] findings of their study on ERP systems in the apparel industry indicate that ERP systems provide flexibility in terms of connectivity, process and hierarchical integration, consistency and user-friendliness due to its customizability. They also note that flexibility in information generation and real-time data access reduces uncertainty and enables reliable forecasting. However, they warn, along with Bertolini et al. [3] that too much flexibility and customization of the ERP environment may interfere with standardized business processes. Furthermore, the interconnectivity between departments of the textile manufacturing or apparel company facilitated by ERP systems, has many advantages. For example, since stock and inventory status can be found on the system, marketing activities, production planning and replying to customers queries, is done without complications [9] . Moreover, as Bertolini et al. [3] note, the fashion industry is now focused on pull supply chains, which cut down inventories as these are perceived as inefficiencies in the supply chain. Maintaining accurate ERP databases regarding inventory creates a sense of control in the textile industry [2] [8] [10] [11] [12] . Finally, a recent trend in the fashion industry is the sensibility towards healthy work conditions, and also environmentally friendly processes [13] . Many legal and technical rules and regulations have to be followed during the production process, as many global and environmental issues arise. According to White et al. [14] , textile production is associated with non-respected human rights, lower than average wages and poor labor conditions. Furthermore, pollution during production and transport, and waste of materials is opposing the Corporate Social Responsibility (CSR) mentality. Likely, through ERP use more sustainable practices are encouraged. With functions, such as materials management, production planning and control, product development and quality control, there is a reduction of wasted raw materials, energy, machinery and manpower [9] . 2.2. The Impact of ERP Systems on Accounting Processes The general expectations of ERP systems according to Poston and Grabski [11] were, first, the reduction of costs, as the computerized system would provide efficiency, and second, the enhancement of decision-making. Over a decade ago, academics started to provide empirical evidence regarding the accounting benefits of ERP systems, as a result of Suttons [15] call for further investigation on the specific matter. Complexity resulting from the large volume of data in manufacturing companies has a negative impact on the overall performance of the businesses [16] . Thus, the increased number of financial information and accounting processes encourages the digitalization and electronisation of accounting, making the information more manageable [8] [11] [17] . Accuracy when processing financial information and producing financial reports is ensured when using ERP systems [18] [19] [20] . However, attention needs to be paid during information input, as the generation of inaccurate and incorrect financial reports can lead to unsuitable decision-making [21] . Cost and profitability reporting is based on information gathered from the production line. However, under real-life circumstances, errors are made and what is considered unimportant information is ignored, resulting in false reports [22] . As far as time is concerned, the interconnectivity, synchronization and real-time information sharing, reduces delays [9] [23] . Sayankar and Kale [24] argue that the flow of information within companies is facilitated through ERP use, which enhances all business processes. They also note that the complex and expensive communication between departments that never cooperated with each other is reduced, creating a unified system promoting effectiveness and efficiency across all departments and production plants. Moreover, the standardized and automated ERP processes have the ability to generate high quality accounting reporting, significantly decreasing the time needed for statements of accounts and other financial reports. The time saved from the production of financial reporting, is used by accountants in a more productive and efficient way, by analyzing and interpreting the data produced, aiding decision-makers [15] . Hence, a corporate environment with continuous reporting and auditing is created [15] [25] [26] , giving top management all the necessary financial information needed to take important decisions. Finance, Financial Accounting, Financial Control, Investment Management, Treasury, and Human resource management are some of the modules included in ERP systems that have a direct link to accounting. Contrarily, Production Planning and Control, Materials Management and Quality Control constitute ERP modules that generate information indirectly linking to accounting [9] . Antero and Riis [27] noted that the implementation of ERP systems in manufacturing companies, that are used in their full potential monitoring and recording of all production stages and procedures, improve the overall business performance. Detailed analytics have a positive influence on production planning, logistics, plant maintenance, human resources and integration of activities [9] as inefficiencies are easily spotted and resources are allocated accordingly. And as corporate performance is measured in financial terms using special metrics, it is important that all processes are carried out in the most efficient way possible [28] . As mentioned in section 2.1, enhancement in performance and responsiveness results in the maintenance of a competitive advantage over other businesses [2] [7] [8] [29] . In conclusion, there is no doubt that ERP systems have a positive effect on corporate accounting in all businesses. As the needs of each industry vary, the study of the different benefits in each is essential. However, as the cost of implementing such a system is high, it is important to identify the specific benefits deriving from the system [12] [13] [30] , especially in the fast-moving and fully competitive textile and apparel manufacturing sector. 3. Methodology 3.1. Purpose and Methodological Approach This study is focusing on the differences in usage of ERP systems for management control purposes in the textile and apparel manufacturing companies in Greece and in the UK. A quantitative approach was followed, in order to classify the benefits according to their impact on the company. A qualitative approach may have provided more in-depth analysis and a better understanding using specific cases as examples from the real life business environment, however, their findings cannot generalize [31] and contribution to the existing literature would not be as meaningful as ifa quantitative methodology was followed. 3.2. Sample A homogenous purposive sampling approach was used, focusing on textile and apparel companies, studying the accounting effects after ERP adoption, from the standpoint of accountants. As ERP systems are widely used in this sector, online questionnaires were sent directly to a list of 357 textile and apparel manufacturing companies operating in Greece (172) and in the UK (185), based on secondary online research. From that initial sample, 158 responses were collected. The sample size (Total 158: UK = 82, Greece = 76) was acceptable, as it fell within the acceptable range of >40% (44.2%) response rate for businesses (Dillman, 2007). The sample consisted of 86.1% male participants and 13.9% female. 39.9% of the total sample had accounting experience 10 - 15 years, whereas 26.6 had 15 - 20 years. The size of the companies varied across the sample, with larger companies being located in the UK.There were also variations between the classification of textile company (32.9% textile, 41.1% textile product and 25.9% apparel manufacturing) An analytical overview of the sample can be found in Appendix A. 3.3. Procedure and Measures The design of the questionnaires was done on Google Forms, as it is compatible with the majority of the operating systems and there was a minor chance to get blocked by spam and virus software. The companies were contacted in advance by e-mail about the study. Using online questionnaires, where all fields are required, minimizes the number of incomplete responses compared to the traditional hand-filled questionnaires, which increases the credibility of the study. The purpose of the study on the landing page of the hyperlink that was sent to the companies, was introduced as ERP systems in the textile and apparel industry instead of benefits of ERP systems, to avoid participants response bias. The online questionnaire was comprised of four sections. Three yes/no screening questions were posed, (Does the company you work for has an ERP system?, Does the ERP system of the company you work for includes accounting functions?, Is the ERP system operating for more than one year?, Is your job title related to accounting?). Section two focused on demographic information, accounting experience and company information such as industry (textile, textile product and/or apparel manufacturing) and number of employees. The third section focused on ERP systems and their accounting benefits. From a list consisting of 19 benefits that were alphabetically sorted, participants had to rate each on 7-point agreement Likert scale, where 1 indicating Strongly disagree and 7 indicating Strongly agree. 4. Results The findings from the study about the accounting benefits of ERP systems in the textile industry can be found on Table 1 as a whole, and on Appendix B & Appendix C analyzed by country. At a first glance, we note that overall, the mean scores of the different accounting benefits categories varied. Variation is also noticed between the different types of textile industry (textile, textile products and apparel manufacture). More specifically, the total mean of the operational accounting benefits regarding the time was the highest (5.42), followed by organizational accounting benefits (5.22). IT and managerial benefits with total mean scores 5.05 and 4.99 respectively, were average scored, whereas, the operational accounting benefits concerning the reduction of accounting personnel was significantly lower than the rest with mean score 4.18. Operational accounting benefits (time) seem to have a significant importance; the reduction of time for issuing financial statements (5.53), for closure of monthly accounts (5.49), closure of quarterly accounts (5.47) and closure of annual accounts (5.20) were all highly rated by the accountants. This is because of the unified and organized manner in which financial data is collected and processed through ERP systems. In the IT accounting benefits, regarding the communication of the accounting department, the scores are the lowest, with total mean score 4.27, while all other values within that benefit category varied between 4.98 (reduction of time for transaction entry) and 5.34 (gathers data easier, more quickly and processes results easier). Transaction entry time was not scored as highly in comparison with the rest of time related accounting benefits. This is justified, as new information takes the same amount of time to be entered into the systems, whereas the time needed for processing larger volumes of financial data is reduced by using ERP systems. Moreover, regarding the organizational benefits deriving from ERP use, we notice that the improved internal audit function score was almost 1 point (0.98) from the highest scored organizational benefit (improved quality of reports = 5.7). Improved quality of reports was rated highly as one of the basic advantages of ERP systems is the standardization and consistency of reporting. Variations are also apparent within the different types of textile industry. Most of them are minor, especially the ones regarding the time related operational accounting benefits (textile = 5.44, textile products = 5.41 and apparel Table 1. Means of ERP accounting benefits. manufacture = 5.42). However, the one that stands out is with regards the managerial accounting benefits, where results vary between 4.85 (textile products) and 5.12 (textile). The rest of the variations are consistent, meaning that there are not major differences between the different types within the textile sector. When the results were analyzed on a country level, we notice some further variations. First, for textile companies in Greece and the UK, time related operational accounting benefits are scored the highest, with mean scores 5.42 and 5.44 respectively. However, in Greece, IT benefits followed (mean = 5.22), whereas for the UK organizational benefits came second with mean score 5.24. Surprisingly, operational benefits (time) of ERP systems in Greece have the same mean scores across all three textile industry classifications (5.42), while in the UK the textile industry had a higher mean score (5.46), when compared to textile products (5.39) and apparel manufacture (5.43). Moreover, in Greece, IT benefits seemed to play a more significant role than in the UK (5.11), where the values for easy and fast collection of data were higher. As far as easiness in communication with the accounting department is concerned, cases from the UK, scored higher, especially in the textile sector, with mean score 4.29, as opposed to the corresponding value from the Greek textile sector, which was 3.86. Cost related operational benefits regarding reduction in accounting personnel, were overall higher for companies in the UK, again in the textile sector. Similarities and consistency is noticed for managerial accounting benefits and time related operational benefits, which seem to have the same effect on the whole industry. Lastly, with regards to organizational benefits, textile companies in Greece have more improved decisions based on timely and reliable information (mean = 5.42). However, UK companies demonstrated a higher score in improved internal audit function especially in the textile industry (5.03). 5. Conclusions ERP systems are known for the advantages that they bring businesses. The purpose of this study was to identify the accounting benefits derived from ERP systems in the textile, textile product and apparel industry. This sector faces a lot of competition and there is global pressure for efficiency. ERP systems are the necessary tools to gain control over the company and plants, by integrating multiple functions, including finances. The real-time and constant sharing of information is the key to corporate success. After reviewing the results from cases in Greece and the UK, regarding ERP system use, we noticed various differences and similarities. Consistency in time related operational accounting benefits was noticed throughout the dataset. Organizational benefits were also significant, as well as IT accounting benefits. Greek companies however, seemed to have overcome most IT related challenges, encouraging the uninterrupted and highly reliable flow of information. The current study contributes to the literature of ERP systems in the textile industry, by giving insight into the accounting benefits derived from ERP use, with findings from two different countries. Both countries were impacted by the global economic recession, but on different levels, and on this day, they are trying to reduce outsourcing and encourage national and international manufacture of textiles and apparel, by promoting competitiveness and responsiveness through ERP systems. The findings of these two countries could also be of interest of managers in the textile, textile production and apparel sector. The accounting benefits of ERP systems are explored in two different cultural contexts, which may influence top management into adapting to such a system. However, certain limitations exist. Generalisability and validity is could be questioned, due to the small sample size. Future study could include more cases, or even a qualitative approach assessing the findings of this present study, for in-depth analyses of the accounting benefits and challenges. Cite this paper Charamis, D. (2018) Increasing Competitiveness in the Textile Industry: A Focus on the Accounting Benefits of ERP Systems by Exploring Cases from the UK & Greece. Theoretical Economics Letters, 8, 1044-1057. https://doi.org/10.4236/tel.2018.85072 References 1. Holland, C.P., Light, B. and Gibson, N. (1999) A Critical Success Factors Model for Enterprise Resource Planning Implementation. Proceedings of the 7th European Conference on Information Systems, 1, 273-287. 2. Yang, X.K. (2010) Research on Informatization Evaluation and Development Strategy of Textile Industry in Shandong Peninsula. Information Science and Engineering (ICISE), 2010 2nd International Conference, 501-504. https://doi.org/10.1109/ICISE.2010.5690989 3. Bertolini, M., Bevilacqua, M., Bottani, E. and Rizzi, A. (2004) Requirements of an ERP Enterprise Modeller for Optimally Managing the Fashion Industry Supply Chain. Journal of Enterprise Information Management, 17, 180-190. https://doi.org/10.1108/17410390410531434 4. New Economy (2017) Investment in Textile Manufacturing to Create 20,000 Jobs in the UK by 2020 According to the Alliance Report. New Economy. http://www.neweconomymanchester.com/news-events/news/investment-in-textile-manufacturing-to-create-20-000-jobs-in-the-uk-by-2020-according-to-the-alliance-report 5. Manifava, D. (2017) More Investments from Manufacturing 2017. Kathimerini.gr. http://www.kathimerini.gr/940523/article/oikonomia/ellhnikh-oikonomia/perissoteres-ependyseis-apo-th-viomhxania-to-2017 6. Scherrer-Rathje, M. and Boyle, T.A. (2012) An End-User Taxonomy of Enterprise Systems Flexibility: Evidence from a Leading European Apparel Manufacturer. Information Systems Management, 29, 86-99. https://doi.org/10.1080/10580530.2012.660820 7. Choi, T.M., Chow, P.S. and Liu, S.C. (2013) Implementation of Fashion ERP Systems in China: Case Study of a Fashion Brand, Review and Future Challenges. International Journal of Production Economics, 146, 70-81. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.ijpe.2012.12.004 8. Huang, Y.T., Chan, S.H. and Liu, F.Y. (2014) An Investigation of Electronic Logistics Management in the Taiwanese Textile Industry: Using Everest Textile as an Example. Applied Mechanics and Materials, 599, 2063-2065. 9. Chiplunkar, C., Chattopadhyay, R. and Deshmukh, S.G. (2001) Development of an Integrated Information Management Model: A Case of Textile Industry. Production Planning & Control, 12, 629-645. https://doi.org/10.1080/09537280010016026 10. Napolitano, M. (2017) GUESS Distribution Evolution. Scmr.com. http://www.scmr.com/article/guess_distribution_evolution 11. Poston, R. and Grabski, S. (2001) Financial Impacts of Enterprise Resource Planning Implementations. International Journal of Accounting Information Systems, 2, 271-294. https://doi.org/10.1016/S1467-0895(01)00024-0 12. Xue, M. and Zhu, C. (2009) The Development and Implementation of Household Textile Industry ERP System Based on B/S. Control, Automation and Systems Engineering, CASE 2009. IITA International Conference, 655-658. 13. Cebeci, U. (2009) Fuzzy AHP-Based Decision Support System for Selecting ERP Systems in Textile Industry by Using Balanced Scorecard. Expert Systems with Applications, 36, 8900-8909. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.eswa.2008.11.046 14. White, C.L., Nielsen, A.E. and Valentini, C. (2017) CSR Research in the Apparel Industry: A Quantitative and Qualitative Review of Existing Literature. Corporate Social Responsibility and Environmental Management, 24, 382-394. https://doi.org/10.1002/csr.1413 15. Sutton, S. (2006) Enterprise Systems and the Re-Shaping of Accounting Systems: A Call for Research. International Journal of Accounting Information Systems, 7, 1-6. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.accinf.2006.02.002 16. Kanellou, A. and Spathis, C. (2013) Accounting Benefits and Satisfaction in an ERP Environment. International Journal of Accounting Information Systems, 14, 209-234. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.accinf.2012.12.002 17. Castells, M. and Himanen, P. (2002) The Information Society and the Welfare State: The Finnish Model. No. 250, Oxford University Press, Oxford. https://doi.org/10.1093/acprof:oso/9780199256990.001.0001 18. Cheng, M., Dhaliwal, D. and Zhang, Y. (2013) Does Investment Efficiency Improve after the Disclosure of Material Weaknesses in Internal Control over Financial Reporting? Journal of Accounting and Economics, 56, 1-18. 19. Colmenares, L. (2009) Benefits of ERP Systems for Accounting and Financial Management. In: Allied Academies International Conference, Academy of Management Information and Decision Sciences, Vol. 13, Jordan Whitney Enterprises, Inc., Tustin, 3. 20. Velcu, O. (2007) Exploring the Effects of ERP Systems on Organizational Performance: Evidence from Finnish Companies. Industrial Management & Data Systems, 107, 1316-1334. https://doi.org/10.1108/02635570710833983 21. Biddle, G.C., Hilary, G. and Verdi, R.S. (2009) How Does Financial Reporting Quality Relate to Investment Efficiency? Journal of Accounting and Economics, 48, 112-131. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.jacceco.2009.09.001 22. Teittinen, H., Pellinen, J. and Jarvenpaa, M. (2013) ERP in ActionChallenges and Benefits for Management Control in SME Context. International Journal of Accounting Information Systems, 14, 278-296. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.accinf.2012.03.004 23. Granlund, M. (2011) Extending AIS Research to Management Accounting and Control Issues: A Research Note. International Journal of Accounting Information Systems, 12, 3-19. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.accinf.2010.11.001 24. Sayankar, V.N. and Kale, M.K. (2012) To Study Implementation of Enterprise Resource Planning-Quality Management Module in Textile Industry. Research Journal of Engineering and Technology, 3, 207-210. 25. Chapman, C.S. (2005) Not Because They Are New: Developing the Contribution of Enterprise Resource Planning Systems to Management Control Research. Accounting, Organizations and Society, 30, 685-689. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.aos.2005.02.002 26. Stoel, D., Havelka, D. and Merhout, J. (2012) An Analysis of Attributes That Impact Information Technology Audit Quality: A Study of IT and Financial Audit Practitioners. International Journal of Accounting Information Systems, 13, 60-79. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.accinf.2011.11.001 27. Antero, M. and Riis, P.H. (2011) Strategic Management of Network Resources: A Case Study of an ERP Ecosystem. International Journal of Enterprise Information Systems, 7, 18-33. https://doi.org/10.4018/jeis.2011040102 28. Rom, A. and Rohde, C. (2007) Management Accounting and Integrated Information Systems: A Literature Review. International Journal of Accounting Information Systems, 8, 40-68. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.accinf.2006.12.003 29. Ruivo, P., Oliveira, T. and Neto, M. (2014) Examine ERP Post-Implementation Stages of Use and Value: Empirical Evidence from Portuguese SMEs. International Journal of Accounting Information Systems, 15, 166-184. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.accinf.2014.01.002 30. Cebeci, U. (2005) Selecting the Suitable ERP System: A Fuzzy AHP Approach. 35th International Computers & Industrial Engineering Conference, Istanbul, 19-22 June 2005, 393-398. 31. Flyvberg, B. (2011) Case Study. In: Denzin, N.K. and Lincoln, Y.S., Eds., The Sage Handbook of Qualitative Research, 4th Edition, Sage, London, 301-316. Appendix A Table A1. Descriptive statistics of sample (N = 158). Appendix B Table B1. Means of ERP accounting benefits by country (Greece). Appendix C Optimization Are you frustrated with a slow pc or a hard disk not performing as it should? Try SLOW-PCfighter to speed up boot time on a slow PC, or try a free scan of FULL-DISKfighter to recover space on a full disk. The latest offering is DRIVERfighter to update your driver updater. Get complete PC optimization and extend the life of your PC with these must-have software tools. Which issue is most critical to the U.S. right now? Guarding against terrorism Securing the border Climate Change Fighting COVID-19 View Results Bavarian Nordic A/S - Report on the Results of the Annual General Meeting, held April 17, 2018 COPENHAGEN, Denmark, April 17, 2018 - Bavarian Nordic A/S (OMX: BAVA, OTC: BVNRY) today held the Annual General Meeting with the results as follows: The Annual Report for 2017 was adopted. The Board of Directors' proposal to transfer the Company's result to next year was also adopted. The General Meeting adopted a resolution to discharge the Board of Directors and the Board of Management from their obligations. The proposal to increase and extend the Board of Directors' authorization to increase the share capital of the Company was adopted. The proposal to increase and extend the Board of Directors' authorization for issuing warrants was adopted. The proposed revised guidelines for incentive remuneration of the Board of Directors and the Executive Management were approved. The proposed remuneration of the Board of Directors and the Board Committees for the current financial year by payment of a fixed base fee in cash and grant of restricted stock units was approved. The proposal to amend Article 8 of the Articles of Association due to change of address of the Company's register of shareholders was adopted. The proposal to authorize the Board of Directors on behalf of the Company to repurchase own shares in the Company was adopted. Gerard van Odijk, Anders Gersel Pedersen, Erik G. Hansen, Peter Kurstein, Frank Verwiel and Elizabeth McKee Anderson were re-elected to the Board of Directors. Claus Brstrup did not seek re-election. The Board of Directors constituted itself with Gerard van Odijk as Chairman and Anders Gersel Pedersen as Deputy Chairman. Deloitte Statsautoriseret Revisionspartnerselskab was re-elected as auditors. About Bavarian Nordic Bavarian Nordic is a fully integrated biotechnology company focused on the development of innovative and safe therapies against cancer and infectious diseases. Using our live virus vaccine platform technology, MVA-BN, we have created a diverse portfolio of proprietary and partnered product candidates intended to improve the health and quality of life for children and adults. We supply our IMVAMUNE non-replicating smallpox vaccine to the U.S. Strategic National Stockpile and other government stockpiles. The vaccine is approved in the European Union (under the trade name IMVANEX) and in Canada. Registration studies are currently underway in the U.S. In addition to our long-standing collaboration with the U.S. government on the development of IMVAMUNE and other medical countermeasures, our infectious disease pipeline comprises a proprietary RSV program as well as vaccine candidates for Ebola, HPV, HBV and HIV, which are developed through a strategic partnership with Janssen. Additionally, in collaboration with the National Cancer Institute, we have developed a portfolio of active cancer immunotherapies, designed to alter the disease course by eliciting a robust and broad anti-cancer immune response while maintaining a favorable risk-benefit profile. Through multiple industry collaborations, we seek to explore the potential synergies of combining our immunotherapies with other immune-modulating agents, e.g. checkpoint inhibitors. For more information visit www.bavarian-nordic.com or follow us on Twitter @bavariannordic. Contacts Rolf Sass Srensen Vice President Investor Relations (EU) Tel: +45 61 77 47 43 Seth Lewis Vice President Investor Relations (US) Tel: +1 978 341 5271 Company Announcement no. 11 / 2018 This announcement is distributed by Nasdaq Corporate Solutions on behalf of Nasdaq Corporate Solutions clients. The issuer of this announcement warrants that they are solely responsible for the content, accuracy and originality of the information contained therein. Source: Bavarian Nordic A/S via Globenewswire 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. NAB 2018: NGcodec Talks FPGA-Accelerated Encoding At NAB, Jan Ozer met with about a dozen companies with stakes in HEVC and/or AV1. This is another in a series of video interviews he conducted with them. Jan Ozer: I'm on the show floor at NAB with Oliver Gunasekarafrom NGCodec. We're here to talk about his company's real-time processing of HEVC, VP9, and soon AV1. Hey, Oliver. Tell me what you're showing here. Oliver Gunasekara: We do video encoding, next-generation video compression, and what we're showing here is the world's highest-performing HEVC and VP9 live video encoders. Jan Ozer: When you say "highest-performing," I've heard that about twelve times today. How do you prove that claim? Oliver Gunasekara: We have a secret advantage: unlike everybody else, we don't use software. We do the encoding and programmable hardware in the cloud, otherwise known as field programmable gate arrays (FPGAs), so it's a hardware design. By using a hardware design, we have sort of an unfair advantage. That's why we can achieve the highest encoders. Jan Ozer: When you say "in the cloud," what does that mean? Oliver Gunasekara: We are live today in AWS F1. The F1 is an instance type that has an FPGA in it, and we have our HEVC encoder live up there so you can use it. Jan Ozer: What's the cost of that on a per-hour basis as compared to other machines. Oliver Gunasekara: I believe the F1 instance is $1.65 an hour. That includes an FPGA card and 1/8 of an Intel E5. That's about the same as a C4. I think might be about $1.50. It's almost the same price, but our encoder here, if you were to compare us against x265 for this quality, you'd need 20 C4 instances. You would be spending over $32 an hour versus $3, and in that $3, I'm getting $1.25. Jan Ozer: Who's using HEVC at this point? Oliver Gunasekara: Very few, unfortunately, and that's part of the problem. Its also part of the reason why we decided to do VP9 as well. In our view, the market is kind of splitting. The high end of the market is going HEVC. Apple has support, as we all know. iPhones are very popular, but the mass market is going VP9 and has gone VP9 because of Android and because of Chrome, and the reality is that nearly all the chipsets out there support both. The OEMs will enable only VP9 because of the royalty issues. You find that only the very high percentage of the Android market enables HEVC, but all of the Android market enables VP9 and all of the iOS market, most recent devices for the last few years enable HEVC. Jan Ozer: Why is HEVC so long on the uptake? What's your guess on that? Oliver Gunasekara: It's the royalty framework, fundamentally, and the ROI. When you use software encoding, the complexity of HEVC is drastically higher than AVC and because of that, it costs a lot more to encode. Especially when you do live, you're constrained by how much compute you can make available. So, you end up having bitrates that aren't much better than H.264. Your costs have gone up drastically, but your bandwidth gain is very, very small. Then you have the royalties on top. We think that by moving to FPGA, we drastically lower the encoding cost, we improve the quality, we change the equation and so, we hope we can accelerate the adoption of HEVC and VP9. Jan Ozer: What are you hearing about AV1? Oliver Gunasekara: We've been a member of the Alliance for Open Media for almost a year now. We're excited. Like all technologies, it will take some time. In our view, until we have a meaningful mass of hardware decoders, it doesn't really make sense to deploy. You'll have decoder support by the end of the year in most major browsers, but until you start to get hardware support in mobile devices, the power consumption just won't make it compelling. We think it's 2020 by the time you get the hardware decoders into the hands of consumers. Jan Ozer: Given that AV1 is coming in very slow to encode, your value proposition on the hardware encoding side should be pretty stout, is that correct? Oliver Gunasekara: We intend to deliver a live AV1 encoder and we also intend to deliver meaningful improvement over our VP9 and HEVC. We think that if we only have 5-10% improvement, it's not compelling enough for people to deploy. We will shoot for 25% over our VP9, and our VP9 matches our HEVC, which we believe is state of the art, but we won't rush to deliver that. That will take some time. It's likely by the time we deploy, we'll have a solution next year, deployment in 2020 that will be a next generation of Xilinx FPGAs. Jan Ozer: What's your business model? How do you make money? Oliver Gunasekara: It's a SaaS model. Today, you can go to AWS marketplace and get a seven-day free trial. You pay us nothing. After seven days, you pay us $1.25 an hour to use our encoders. Obviously, that's really for evaluation. The really big guys--and that's where most of our focus is--will pay on a quarterly basis. They'll tell us how much capacity. They'll maybe send us a report on a quarterly basis"we've used this much"--and then, they'll write us a check. Jan Ozer: That's on top of machine time? Oliver Gunasekara: Absolutely. We're not responsible for hardware. The customer buys their hardware from whoever and then, they pay to use our software that runs on top of their hardware. Please enable JavaScript to view the comments powered by Disqus. Related Articles NAB 2018: V-Nova Talks PERSEUS and Delivery Platforms At NAB, Jan Ozer met with about a dozen companies with stakes in HEVC and/or AV1. This is another in a series of video interviews he conducted with them. Jan Ozer: Jan Ozer here at the V-Nova booth at NAB with V-Nova president, founder, and CEO Guido Meardi. It was April 1, 2015 when V-Nova launched the PERSEUS codec, and I've been in the codec business a long time. A codec can be the most wonderful thing in the world. But until it becomes totally usable, until everybody can access it, it's not going to be adopted by a lot of people. What I'm hearing is that's an experience you went through over the last three years. Tell us what you've done to go from the codec to a well-rounded finished product. Guido Meardi: When we launched in 2015, I was very careful to make sure that people understood the credibility that we have as a company. People say, "Come on, BS. It cannot be possibly true. Too good to be true." I'm very glad that in 2016 we proved that it was true. Everything that we promised, we did. And it's important because we like credibility and reliability. However, the codec was still hard to deploy at scale. You saw it yourself, you saw that it worked. But at the same time it was difficult to use it everywhere, especially for streaming. At the same time, we're on a mission to give more quality to everybody. More with less. We are in dire need for that. AV1 and HEVCAV1 is actually the response to that need. And we need to help for that. So, we worked a lot, in order to productize all the libraries and all the tools that are necessary to really deploy PERSEUS everywhere on all devices, today in a snap. Jan Ozer: And in all browsers. What did you have to do to get PERSEUS playing in those browsers without a plugin? Guido Meardi: I need to thank Colleen Henry of Facebook. Because it's her idea to use WebGL in a clever way because she understood our codec extremely well. Essentially, Web GL is the answer. Essentially our codec, they code in hardware using the combination of a base codec that is already available in terms of hardware acceleration. Jan Ozer: So that's H.264. Guido Meardi: Right now, mostly H.264 or HEVC, but in the future, also AV1 and VP9. You know we are codec-agnostic in that sense. But we use that hardware in a different way, then we use the graphics pipeline, which is dedicated hardware as well. We combine the two so that, essentially, we can compress better and decode in hardware on 100% of devices and 100% of browsers plugin-free. I'm very glad that here at NAB, we're showing it with the first global channel that deployed from a major broadcaster. We have a news channel that is out to deploy that and it's already on a few million phones and tablets and PCs. It's showing what we promised, because we promised with PERSEUS 2 it would bring full HD 1080p live to below one to two megabits. We're actually doing 1080p at 980Kbps. You saw it yourself, and it works. It's actually quite nice, 720p at 450Kbps and down to 360p, 320Kbps. These are numbers, but they actually mean money. They mean more people watching, which means more advertising revenues, more subscription revenues, more quality, more satisfaction, and less cost. You know it's up to 60 percent lower cost per minute in terms of bandwidth. Jan Ozer: You know I went to watch your video on Chrome. You're saying it's OpenGL or whatever technology you mentioned. Where does the player or where does the decoder come from? Guido Meardi: In JavaScript, and we have a host of players. We have integrated with Shaka player, video.JS, or professional players such as THEOplayer. People have a range of options from Open Sourceif they want to think we're Open Source--or professional players if they want professional players. Essentially the JavaScript handles the coordination of the hardware blocks in order to make sure they are used properly. What is done in JavaScript is essentially very little. Most of the processing is done in hardware. That's why we can also achieve 1080p60 encoding, even on phones. Actually, its as efficient or sometimes even more efficient than just encoding H.264. Jan Ozer: So, you use a player that has your decoder integrated into it, like Open Telly or some of the other ones you mentioned. Once you have that then it just plays in any browser. Guido Meardi: There's also an ultimate fallback, because one of the things that we noticed with this deployment is that we were doing 1080p and the customer at the beginning was like, "Some of our devices are so old that they cannot decode 1080p, not even H.264. So we should now blacklist the top profile for them." And I said, "No, not a problem because PERSEUS has a hierarchical codec. The decoder automatically detects if the device is not powerful enough to do 1080p or UltraHD. It can scale back to a lower resolution and decode or adjust, for instance, the base codec. In a hassle-free fashion, you can upgrade the qualities, push up the resolutions and the perceived quality, and lower the bitrate. And you serve 100% of devices without fearing that you leave somebody behind. Jan Ozer: You've got the browser situation, what does it take to play PERSEUS on mobile? Guido Meardi: You can still use HTML5 if you want, or you can use native libraries like Exoplayer. You can use AV Foundation's type interfaces, or you can use professional players like THEOplayer or VisualOn. VisualOn is coming also for HTML5. Essentially, you have the range of options between using native players if you want to tinker with open source, or professional players if you want kind of a unified player experience across devices. Jan Ozer: In packaging, is that going to be DASH? Guido Meardi: For packaging, we are completely neutral. Essentially, PERSEUS creates an MP4 or a TS, totally normal. We put PERSEUS in standard announcement information. As long as you don't strip it, you use the normal packaging. For instance, right now we're deploying Wowza, we're deployed on standard packaging. The deployment we have right now are on HLS, but we can also do DASH for web. We are packaging neutral DRM because it's for all practical purposes at the encapsulation level. Jan Ozer: What's the monetization model? How are you making money? Guido Meardi: So, first of all it doesn't require any enablement royalty. That's the important thing because we know that the big problem is that these guys are becoming important. Right now, manufacturers cannot pay dollars of royalties to enable these devices. Because it's too much versus the price of low-cost mobile devices. That's also why the industry reacted strongly to the fact that we needed royalty-free codecs. PERSEUS is actually already achieving that today without even necessarily changing the hardware. Because all the royalties are already there. All the hardware that is necessary is already there. There's only a licensing to use it, which is actually pretty low. It's the licensing that you would pay to use whatever professional software, because if you need to deploy a service to millions of people, of course it's not for free. Either you do it yourself with a group of people and then you pay their salaries, or you need to pay somebody for software. You know what we sell and what we license is reliable, tested software with assistance that allows providers and people to stream quality services. Jan Ozer: So, does that mean if I'm using THEOplayer I'm going to pay them something, or are you included in that? Guido Meardi: Right now, you would pay them and you would pay us, because we are separate; we don't bundle. But the concept is the same and our license would depend on the services. It can be a flat fee or it can be per stream or per user, per year. It depends on the business model of the customers, and on preferences. But, we have a number of models that are not surprising. The other models are any add-on that you have from ad insertion analytics to audio codecs. Jan Ozer: What does the encoding side look like? Guido Meardi: The encoding side is very simple, because if you have an FFmpeg-based workflow, very easy. You can still use an FFmpeg with the PERSEUS base codec. If you have a professional encoder, there are already a range of professional encoder solutions that integrated our libraries such as Imagine Communications, RealVideo, Harmonic did with PERSEUS 1. For PERSEUS 2, there are many others that are coming that are about to be announced. So there are a range of options. In general, it's very easy to integrate it. We also have cloud-based solutions. We're already integrated within Azure and AWS. We also have FPGA-based solutions for hyperscale operators in the Cloud with F1 instances. We're partnering with Xilinx, as we announced here. We're already also integrated with NGcodec for PERSEUS plus HEVC, PERSEUS plus VP9, H.264, and AV1 coming. Jan Ozer: Which partners have you announced that are actually using the codec in distribution at the show? Guido Meardi: Here at the show, we announced the first American customer, which is very important. So far, we were active in Europe and Asia. So, we're very proud to announce uCast. uCast, aside from being a young company, is backed by Canon, who's very important in the industry. I'm honored that the chairman and CEO immediately saw in PERSEUS something very cool to adopt for his own business. I like their business a lot because they essentially want to expand the monetization of content owners. They immediately saw how important an impact PERSEUS could have on their business, because we can really expand the audience to improve the qualities and lower the cost. Were proud of that. We also have another couple of announcements coming that we couldn't finalize in time for NAB. But, a major player in Africa and also another one in the U.S. coming soon. Jan Ozer: This has been an NAB that was largely dominated by talk of AV1 and HEVC, and it's important to recognize that there are other alternatives out there. PERSEUS is one of the ones that have gotten the most traction. Please enable JavaScript to view the comments powered by Disqus. Related Articles Companies and Suppliers Mentioned The Cheyenne County Commissioners and later the Communications Board discussed entering a dispatch service agreement with Deuel County. Deuel County is in somewhat of a critical position, Cheyenne County Attorney Paul Schaub said Monday morning. Communications Director Heidi Gillespie met with the Cheyenne County commissioners Monday morning regarding the proposal to dispatch Deuel County services. She said Deuel County will provide the equipment to dispatch its sheriffs department. Cheyenne County Commissioner Darrell Johnson said it would be more cost effective if all departments used the same equipment and frequency. Gillespie said no one is using the low band frequencies. During the communications meeting, Johnson asked if the new agreement would include dispatching the Nebraska State Patrol. Sidney Police Chief Joe Aikens and Cheyenne County Sheriff John Jenson said dispatchers are able to communicate with the State Patrol, but they do not dispatch the State Patrol. Commissioner Randal Miller asked if the new agreement would include dispatching for non-emergency services. It is my understanding we will be like with Cheyenne County with after hours services, Gillespie said. Miller said he feels the commissioners are putting the cart before the horse, attempting to decide on an agreement before the Communications Board. That afternoon the Communications Board approved the contract. It will be presented to the Sidney City Council before being returned to the commissioners to be signed. The cost of services will be divided with the City of Sidney responsible for 61.75 percent of the budget, Cheyenne County 33.25 percent and Deuel County 5 percent. In the communications meeting, the board also discussed how to respond to having two air medical response services in the area. Gillespie said she views the issue from the concern of the patient: what company is going to be available quickest. My only concern is patient care, she said. That is our obligation as I see it. Sidney City Manager Ed Sadler, who also serves on the Communications Board, moved to approve the SOP on medical flight calls. The motion was approved 5-0. Gillespie also told the board they received a $12,870 grant for an additional radio tower. She said the current tower at the courthouse is so full it is difficult to maintain. A second tower will relieve some of the load on the existing tower. A hard-hitting spring storm that hit the area Friday left more than a hundred motorists stranded around Sidney, and electric customers from Sidney to Lake McConaughy without power for between 24 and 48 hours. The storm began dropping snow mid-morning, and around 11:30 a.m., a multi-vehicle accident on Interstate 80 near mile marker 66 was reported and it went downhill from there. The Nebraska State Patrol reported two major areas where accidents and poor visibility shut down traffic on I-80, one of those more than a half mile long and the other where at least 50 vehicles were stopped. By mid-day, all highways around Sidney were closed. Troopers with the Nebraska State Patrol (NSP), working with the Cheyenne County Sheriff's Office, Sidney Police Department, Sidney Public Schools, Region 21 Emergency Management, the Nebraska Department of Transportation, and others, worked to clear all of the stranded vehicles. The Patrol reported that assembled law enforcement officers went door to door, knocking on all vehicles and rescuing occupants. The rescued motorists were taken by Sidney Public Schools buses to First United Methodist Church in Sidney, and later to local hotels. More than 100 motorists were rescued. Ron Leal, Region 21 Emergency Management coordinator, said local agencies responded well in rescuing motorists, with the operation going very well. "The work between the agencies was phenomenal," Leal said. Leal said the local CERT (Community Emergency Response Team) helped receive motorists into the emergency shelter, working to obtain meals and calling hotels, which provided rooms for those stranded at reduced rates. Sonny's Super Foods was called for groceries, which were obtained after hours. Leal also said the use of buses from the schools was also huge, after responders had spent hours bringing people into town in regular vehicles. "Their offer of the buses shortened things up getting people into town by a lot," Leal said. Other stories of the team effort were part of the response. One of those was when a Regional West Ambulance became stuck while checking down the road for stranded cars. The ambulance was thankfully not carrying anyone who had been injured, but got stuck in a drift at Exit 69. The snow was cleared away by Department of Transportation trucks, then pulled out by Affordable Towing of Sidney. By about 2 a.m. Saturday, most responders and motorists had ended their day. The following morning, motorists were returned to their vehicles, which were cleared out one at a time as DOT trucks moved snow from around each. In other parts of the county, electrical workers waged a battle of their own. Crews from Wheatbelt Public Power District responded to outages resulting from a variety of causes. Wheatbelt officials told the Sun-Telegraph that much of its system was affected, with outages from the Sidney area to Bayard to the Lake McConaughy area. Lodgepole was also without power for the better part of a day. Some of those outages came from the system's provider, Western Area Power Administration, but others came from downed lines, broken poles and other problems. Forrest Hershberger Sidney's downtown was covered with huge flakes at the beginning of last Friday's storm. By day's end, the pretty snow became a raging blizzard the wreaked havoc over the area. Wheatbelt had restored most power in its system by Sunday. Now crews, who had first focused on power restoration to customers, are going back to make more permanent repairs in some areas. High West Energy, which serves power customers more to the west of Sidney, didn't have as many interruptions as their neighbors to the east. "We lucked out this time," said High West Operations Manager Ken Haas. While crews handled those few problems, High West sent seven crews to help Wheatbelt with its restoration efforts. Sidney did not suffer widespread outages during the storm, handling just a few minor problems. The National Weather Service in Cheyenne said officially, Sidney received eight inches of snow. But with that snow being driven by 60 mile-per-hour winds, it didn't take long for the problems, and drifts, to build. Some areas of the county did not get fully opened up until late Sunday and early Monday. An eye test is not just for people who need glasses, but a vital health check, was the message delivered by opticians on World Health Day on Saturday. Having an eye test every two years, or when you notice a change in your vision, enables your optician to identify changes that might be associated with certain eye conditions, said experts from Specsavers Opticas. Sian King, a midwife in the UK, had fluid on her brain detected by an eye test, which potentially saved her life by preventing a more serious brain aneurysm, explained Jose Angel Moral-Tajadura, Specsavers Opticas Retail and Business Development Manager, who used the case to illustrate the importance of tests. Free advanced eye tests using the latest technology and highly trained ophthalmologists as well as information on eye health and protecting the eyes are available throughout April in Specsavers Opticas stores. The Federal Communications Commission announced a $40 million settlement with T-Mobile US over accusations the wireless carrier made it seem that outgoing calls were ringing at their destination when they weren't. T-Mobile admitted that it violated a prohibition against inserting false ringing sounds, and that it didn't correct problems, the FCC said Monday in an emailed news release. T-Mobile reported that it had injected the false ringing sounds on hundreds of millions of calls, the FCC said. T-Mobile, of Bellevue, Washington, said in an emailed statement that "the ringtone oversight, which was corrected in January 2017, was unintentional." Call-completion problems appeared to be occurring mostly in rural areas served by closely held regional telephone companies, which charge the long-distance carriers such as T-Mobile more than companies in urban and suburban areas, according to the FCC. With the false ringing sounds, the calling party believes the phone is ringing at the called party's premises when it is not. As a result, the caller may hang up, thinking nobody is available to receive the call, thus saving T-Mobile fees it would have to pay the local carrier. Calls that aren't completed cause rural businesses to lose revenue, impede medical professionals from reaching patients in rural areas, cut families off from their relatives, and create the potential for dangerous delays in public safety communications, the FCC said. BINGHAMTON, N.Y. -- A Binghamton University student is accused of stabbing a classmate to death this weekend, university officials announced Monday night. Michael M. Roque was charged Monday evening with second-degree murder. Roqueis accused of fatally stabbing 19-year-old freshman engineering student Joao Souza at about 10:30 p.m. Sunday inside Windham Hall residence hall, police and university officials said. Investigators from multiple agencies interviewed people throughout the night and determined the stabbing was not a random act. Shortly before 5:30 p.m. Monday, the State University College at Binghamton police chief tweeted that a suspect was in custody. Roque was assigned a public defender who entered a not guilty plea on his behalf at the Broome County Central Arraignment facility, according to a Binghamton University news release. Roque was taken to the Broome County Jail after the arraignment. No other details were released about the case. ONEIDA, N.Y. -- State police say a Central New York man stole the identities of his dead grandfather and his 100-year-old great-grandmother so he could get thousands of dollars worth of items. Christopher C. Bigford, 38, of Cleveland, was charged Saturday with first-degree identity theft, third-degree grand larceny and fourth-degree grand larceny, all felonies, as well as third-degree identity theft and second-degree criminal impersonation, both misdemeanors. Troopers say he stole more than $10,000 in goods and services by using his dead grandfather's identity, and more than $6,400 in goods and services by stealing his 100-year-old great grandmother's identity. State police did not say what Bigford is accused of stealing or from where, but he was sent to the Madison County jail after his arraignment. Bigford was arraigned in Hamilton Town Court. His bail was set at $15,000 cash or $30,000 bond. He is scheduled to return to court at 1 p.m. Wednesday. Symphoria cellist Heidi Hoffman and pianist Rob Auler are teaming up bring one of Beethoven's least performed symphonies and Belgian composer Cesar Franck's most performed sonata to Pulaski on Saturday, April 21. The recital is part of the LaVeck Concerts series of Classical chamber music concerts held at Pulaski Congregational Church, 27 Lake St., Pulaski. Saturday's concert starts at 7:30 p.m. Auler, professor of piano and chair of the music department at SUNY Oswego, is artistic director of LaVeck Concerts, which has been bringing Classical music to the North Country for the past 10 years with grants from CNY Arts, the Central New York Community Foundation and the Richard S. Shineman Foundation. Heidi Hoffman made her debut as a cello soloist at age 17 with the Seattle Symphony. She studied at the Eastman School of Music, SUNY Stony Brook and the Tanglewood Music Center, and has played for such famous conductors as Leonard Bernstein and Seiji Ozawa. She has performed with such diverse groups as the American Symphony, Jupiter Symphony, Pacific Northwest Ballet and the rock band Heart. This will be the second time Hoffmann has appeared at LaVeck. She joined Auler and Symphoria violinist Sonja Williams for the 2017-18 opener last fall, "which was a lot of fun," she said. "This concert series is a great example of bringing lovely classical programs to a smaller community that seems to have a very appreciative audience," Hoffmann said of LaVeck. "The church has a really nice acoustic and is a fun place to perform in. It's nice to have a venue outside of Syracuse to perform at and it provides a way to play a program more than once, if desired." Pianist Rob Auler Auler and Hoffmann recently performed the same program at Ithaca College, where Hoffmann teaches. It features two masterworks for piano and cello - Beethoven's 4th Symphony and Franck's Sonata for Violin and Piano, arranged for cello by Jules Delsart. Hoffman also will play a contemporary cello solo by Marc Mellits called Book of Ruth. Franck's 30-minute sonata, composed in 1886, is one of his best-known compositions and a Classical concert favorite because of its beautiful song-like melodies that recur throughout four movements. Beethoven's 4th, composed in 1806, is his least known and performed symphony. One early critic called it "excessively bizarre, easily incomprehensible and forbidding," writes music expert Christopher H, Gibbs. Unlike the Franck sonata, its four movements are vastly different and seemingly unrelated, something way ahead of Beethoven's time. Hoffman's final piece is one she performs often, the Book of Ruth for Solo Celli by a modern composer also considered ahead of his time. Marc Mellits' music is influenced by rock and roll and minimalist composers Philip Glass and Steve Reich. One critic wrote, "Marc Mellits is to Classical music what Weather Report and Return to Forever were to jazz." Auler said he's looking forward to bringing Hoffman back to Pulaski. "Heidi Hoffman is one of the best cellists I've ever played with and one of the coolest people I've worked with in years," he said. "I am so thrilled that we will be able to bring her to LaVeck and urge everybody to come out for an incredibly magical evening of music." IF YOU GO: What: LaVeck Concerts Presents Cellist Heidi Hoffman and Pianist Rob Auler When: Saturday, April 21, 7:30 p.m. Where: 27 Lake Street, Pulaski, NY Cost: There is a suggested donation of $10 per person, but no donation is required and students are encouraged to attend for free. Bonus: A 'Meet the Artists' reception with free refreshments will follow the concert. NEXT UP: After Saturday's concert, the next LaVeck will be Thursday, May 31, at 7:30 p.m., starring Colombian flutist Jesus Castro. Syracuse, N.Y. -- Bon-Ton Stores Inc. is going out of business, according to a published report. The bankrupt chain of more than 200 department stores will close after the only bidders competing at the Monday start of a court-supervised auction were liquidators, two sources familiar with the matter told Reuters. The news service said Bon-Ton had been working with U.S. mall owners Namdar Realty Group and Washington Prime Group Inc. to secure a bid that would have kept open a large portion of its stores. However, that plan appeared to have failed when only liquidators showed up for the auction, which had not concluded as of late Monday. The Bon-Ton store in Camillus is the only Bon-Ton left in Onondaga County. (Google Street View screenshot) A spokesperson for Bon-Ton did not immediately respond to a request for comment, Reuters said. Once a liquidator is approved by the U.S. Bankruptcy Court in Wilmington, Del., the chain's inventory, store leases, fixtures and intellectual property will be sold. Bon-Ton's only remaining store in Onondaga County is at 5301 W. Genesee St. in Camillus. It formerly had stores at ShoppingTown Mall in DeWitt, Great Northern Mall in Clay and Destiny USA in Syracuse. Elsewhere in the central Upstate area, it also operates stores in Watertown, Ithaca, Johnson City and Horseheads. In western New York, it operates six stores in the Buffalo and Niagara Falls area, and one each in Lakewood and Olean. In the eastern part of the state, it operates stores in Saratoga Springs, Queensbury and Newburgh. Headquartered in York, Pa., and Milwaukee, Bon-Ton filed Chapter 11 bankruptcy in February, with hopes of financially restructuring and continuing to operate. The chain has not been profitable since 2010 and reported having more than $1 billion in debt. According to Bon-Ton's website, the chain operates 254 stores, which includes nine furniture galleries, in 23 states in the Northeast, Midwest and upper Great Plains under the Bon-Ton, Boston Store, Bergner's, Carson's, Elder-Beerman, Herberger's and Younkers nameplates. The Milwaukee Journal Sentinel reported that the company has been hurt by the rise of big box retailers and online merchants. State Sen. John DeFrancisco is considering whether to drop his bid for governor after failing to win the endorsement of Conservative Party leaders over the weekend, according to Spectrum News. DeFrancisco, R-DeWitt, also trails Republican rival Marc Molinaro in the effort to lock up support from GOP committee members before the party's convention in May. DeFrancisco previously told syracuse.com that he would take his fight for the Republican nomination to the convention floor. But when asked Monday if he would continue with his campaign, DeFrancisco indicated he was re-evaluating his decision after losing the battle for Conservative support. "We'll see," DeFrancisco told Spectrum News. "It was announced today. I learned about it yesterday. We'll explore different things, but I'm not out of it at this point in time." DeFrancisco said he was disappointed the 53-member Conservative Party executive committee endorsed Molinaro, likely assuring the Dutchess County executive will become the party's designated candidate at its convention on May 31 in Manhattan. DeFrancisco, 71, has said he will not try to force a Republican primary because the party needs to be united if it has any chance of defeating Gov. Andrew Cuomo in the November election. A Siena College poll made public today showed Cuomo leads DeFrancisco and Molinaro by more than 20 percentage points. Contact Mark Weiner: Email | Twitter | Facebook | 571-970-3751 Buffalo native Jake Halpern, along with cartoonist Michael Sloan, was recognized with the Pulitzer Award in editorial cartooning Monday for a graphic narrative that chronicles a Syrian refugee family adjusting to their new life in the United States. The serial strip, "Welcome to the New World," which ran in The New York Times, was written by Halpern, an author, journalist and radio producer, with images drawn by Sloan. Halpern is a 1993 City Honors School graduate. His first book, "Braving Home: Dispatches From the Underwater Town, the Lava Side Inn and Other Extreme Locales," was a main selection for fellow author Bill Bryson's Book of the Month Club in 2003. City Honors graduate Jake Halpern wins Pulitzer Prize https://t.co/gfOrCzrULk The Buffalo News (@TheBuffaloNews) April 17, 2018 In 2014, Halpern's nonfiction best-selling book "Bad Paper" chronicled the experiences of a Buffalo-area man from a prominent family as he navigated the murky world of debt collection. A portion of that 2014 book was excerpted as a cover story by The New York Times Magazine. It was chosen as an Amazon Book of the Year. Halpern, 42, has also written for other national periodicals, including The New Yorker, The Atlantic Monthly and The Wall Street Journal. In addition, Halpern is a contributor to National Public Radio's "All Things Considered" and "This American Life." Currently, Halpern is a fellow at Morse College at Yale University, where he teaches a class in journalism. He recently returned from India on a Fulbright scholarship. My comic series, Welcome to the New World, is up. NYT created a beautiful interface: an electronic comic book. https://t.co/Dt6X0DCDSL Jake Halpern (@JakeHalpern) October 26, 2017 Halpern's father, Stephen Halpern, expressed pride, but not surprise, at the accomplishment of his son, who was in Europe with his family Monday. "I will say this: he deserves the award. The project deserves the award. He's worked his heart out on this project, and it's been a moving one for anybody that's followed it at all. It's about a family that arrived in this country from Syria the night that Donald Trump was elected president, and Jake was at the airport to meet them," said Stephen Halpern. "He is in Spain right now, with his family. Also, he's been a little besieged today, as you might imagine," said Stephen Halpern. Jake Halpern, who graduated first in his class of 124 graduating seniors at City Honors, was president of the Student Council, headed the school's Model United Nations and was co-editor of the school newspaper, Silent Noise. He also was the school's No. 2 runner in varsity cross-country and bicycled about 1,000 miles from Boston to Nova Scotia. In 1992, he was a summer intern for Alabama civil rights attorney Morris Dees, founder of the Southern Poverty Law Center. The year he graduated from City Honors, Jake Halpern was named the Buffalo area's Outstanding Young New Yorker in a Jaycees-sponsored competition. A panel of judges picked him after interviewing the finalists, reviewing their resumes and hearing them speak on the topic, "Dare to Dream That Racism and Violence Will Cease." Halpern discussed the assassinations of President John F. Kennedy, Sen. Robert F. Kennedy and the Rev. Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. "It was society that killed King and the Kennedys," Halpern said in 1993, pointing to violence in motion pictures and intolerance in institutions. "It was when we allowed ourselves to become afraid of people who are different. There is a great deal that can be done -- the way we conduct ourselves and the way we deal with others. It lies in us collectively." Halpern is a graduate of Yale University. - By Harold McNeil, The Buffalo News, N.Y. San Antonio -- Baboons at a research facility in Texas escaped over the weekend by climbing out of their enclosure using a barrel. The four baboons escaped briefly on Saturday from their open-air enclosure at the Texas Biomedical Research Institute in San Antonio. The animals rolled a 55-gallon barrel upright near the wall of their enclosure and then climbed it to escape, according to mysanantonio.com. The enclosure was built nearly 40 years ago. The baboons were recovered within 30 minutes. One of the animals returned to the enclosure on his own almost immediately. Barrels were in the enclosure for enrichment, according to mysanantonio.com. They allow the animals to mimic foraging behavior. They have now been removed, according to KSAT in San Antonio. The research institute houses over 2,500 animals. Scientists use the animals in research on new vaccines and medicines, mysanantonio.com said. Some residents were concerned that the animals were carrying infectious diseases when they escaped, but the animals were not part of an active study, KSAT said. The animal capture team members sent to retrieve the escaped baboons were wearing masks and protective equipment. But that was because the baboons are susceptible to human illnesses, according to KSAT. None of the baboons were hurt during the escape, according to the station. "This was a truly unique incident," said Lisa Cruz, assistant vice president for communications at the research institute. "We have been caring for research baboons for more than 50 years. We have nearly 1,100 baboons on the property that date back eight generations." Baboons at the research institute have aided in the development of numerous drugs, therapies and vaccines for conditions like heart disease, diabetes, obesity and osteoporosis, KSAT said. Contact Kevin Tampone anytime: Email | Twitter | Google + | 315-454-2112 The head of a broadband advisory panel selected by Federal Communications Commission Chairman Ajit Pai has been arrested of fraud charges. The Wall Street Journal reports Elizabeth Ann Pierce, who served as CEO of Alaskan telecommunications firm Quintillion Networks LLC, was taken into custody by federal authorities late last week after being accused of tricking investors in a $250 million fraud scheme. She surrendered to FBI agents in New York on Thursday. She falsely claimed Quintillion had secured contracts for a high-speed fiber-optic system that would connect Alaska to the lower 48 states, according to the Manhattan U.S. attorney's office and FBI. Pierce allegedly provided two New York investment companies with forged contracts totaling about $1 billion to convince them to invest in the project. According to Gizmodo, Pierce faces up to 20 years in prison on charges of wire fraud. The Verge reports Pierce was selected by Pai to serve as chair of the Broadband Deployment Advisory Committee (BDAC) last year. The panel sought to reduce and remove "regulatory barriers to infrastructure investment" under the Trump administration and accelerate high-speed internet access in places like Alaska. Pierce resigned from Quintillion in August 2017 and stepped down from her adviser role in BDAC a month later. Broadband industry advocate group Stop the Cap claimed Pierce likely got on Pai's radar by "publicly complaining" about alleged government red tape preventing better broadband from reaching Alaska. Quintillion said in a press release it reported Pierce's alleged actions to the Department of Justice last year. The company says it is "cooperating fully with the authorities during this ongoing investigation" and does not expect the allegations against Pierce to impact operations. Pai has not commented on Pierce's arrest. Since being selected by Trump as the FCC chair last year, Pai has faced controversy over several decisions, including ending net neutrality regulations and repealing decades-old rules blocking broadcast media mergers. Last week, he said the FCC won't be investigating CNY Central owner Sinclair Broadcast Group -- which is seeking a merger with Tribune Media to expand its reach to 72 percent of U.S. homes -- despite a letter from a dozen senators criticizing Sinclair for "must-run" messages accusing other media of "false news." CNET reports Pai said he's turning down the request because of his commitment to the First Amendment and freedom of the press. South and North Korea are discussing plans to announce an official end to the military conflict between the two countries that are still technically at war, the Munhwa Ilbo newspaper reported, citing an unidentified South Korean official. At next week's summit between South Korea President Moon Jae-in and North Korea leader Kim Jong Un, the two neighbors may release a joint statement saying they will seek to ease military tension and to end confrontation, according to the report. A direct phone line between Moon and Kim may be connected around Friday, Moon's chief of staff, Im Jong-seok, told a briefing Tuesday, adding that it hadn't been decided when they would hold their first conversation. No peace treaty has been signed to replace the 1953 armistice that ended the Korean War, and the U.S. and North Korea have been at loggerheads since formal hostilities ended. A successful summit between Moon and Kim could pave the way for a meeting between Kim and U.S. President Donald Trump -- the first between a sitting American president and a North Korean leader. The peninsula remains bisected in a perpetual stalemate, with the U.S.-backed South Korean military lined up against more than a million North Korean troops. While tensions have occasionally flared, the two sides have so far staved off another devastating conflict. "Ending the state of conflict is the core of the whole thing. Peace is as complicated as denuclearization," said John Delury, an associate professor of Chinese studies at Yonsei University in Seoul. "There also has to be a process of actually delivering the peace." Some of the issues that would have to be tackled include the hundreds of thousands of troops along one the most heavily fortified borders in the world; submarines and ships patrolling on both coasts; South Korea's active military alliance with the U.S; the hosting of U.S. forces; and North Korean artillery pointed at Seoul. One way to resolve the conflict could involve returning the heavily fortified Demilitarized Zone to its original state, the Munhwa Ilbo newspaper said. A Southwest Airlines plane was forced to make an emergency landing in Philadelphia Tuesday after an engine reportedly exploded. Passengers could be seen walking off the plane on the tarmac at Philadelphia International Airport. News footage shows damage to the left engine of the plane and foam from fire crews. "All of a sudden, we hear an explosion and come to find out that the engine exploded on the left side of the plane and that explosion blew out a window Just 2 aisles over from me," one passenger told CBS News. At least one passenger was taken to the hospital, officials said. WCAU reported the passenger was hit by shrapnel while being pulled through the aircraft's window. The father of a passenger told WCAU that the plane was depressurized and the passenger, a woman, had to be pulled out of the window. The extent of her injuries has not been disclosed. According to Fox News, Southwest Airlines Flight 1380 was en route from LaGuardia Airport in New York City to Dallas Love Field when it was diverted to Philly. Passengers shared photos and video on social media saying they feared the worst. "Something is wrong with our plane! It appears we are going down! Emergency landing!! Southwest flight from NYC to Dallas!!" Marty Martinez said on Facebook Live. Martinez told CBS that he saw "blood everywhere" and thought he was recording his "last moments." Firefighters are currently on the scene. The Federal Aviation Administration (FAA) has not yet commented. "We are in the process of gathering more information. The aircraft is a Boeing 737-700, and the flight has 143 customers and 5 crewmembers onboard. We are working diligently to support our customers and crews at this time," Southwest said in a statement. WCAU: Emergency landing at Philadelphia Int'l Airport after engine trouble pic.twitter.com/zMCwqAUOCr Jesse Rodriguez (@JesseRodriguez) April 17, 2018 MORE: The plane felt like it was freefalling going down and we were probably going down for 10 or 15 minutes and of course, everyone is freaking out. Everyone is crying. It was the scariest experience. Passenger describes moments inside the Southwest Airlines flight pic.twitter.com/vHx7UJyTm3 CBS Evening News (@CBSEveningNews) April 17, 2018 Batavia, N.Y. -- For the first time, the immigration detention center that serves all of Upstate New York has begun holding women. The Buffalo Federal Detention Center, a brick complex tucked into an office park just off the NYS Thruway, began keeping female immigration detainees in December. Immigration activists became aware of the change in February and it was confirmed by Cornell immigration law professor and immigration attorney Stephen Yale-Loehr when he took law students to tour the prison-like facility last week. Yale-Loehr said he was told that the detention center had 75 women at the time; that's in addition to 500 men. Khaalid Walls, an ICE spokesman, said the first group of women arrived at Batavia Dec. 18. "As with all detainees, ICE remains committed to ensuring that all individuals in our custody are held and treated in a safe, secure and humane manner and that they have access to legal counsel, visitation, recreation and quality medical, mental health and dental care," he said in an email sent following the initial publication of this story. The change in keeping women came around the same time that ICE decided to reverse a long-standing policy not to detain pregnant women. That decision was made in December, but did not become public until late last month. ICE officials said that more than 500 pregnant women had been detained nationwide, according to news reports. Human rights organizations have complained about the detention of pregnant women, and their treatment while in immigration detention, since the change. It is unclear whether any pregnant women are being kept in Batavia. As immigration enforcement has been stepped up under the Trump administration, the changes in detaining women and pregnant women happened swiftly and quietly. Previously, so few women were detained in Upstate New York that ICE used contracts with county jails to house women in the rare instances that that they were detained. People held in immigration detention are not accused of crimes, but rather administrative violations of immigration law. When they are held in Batavia, their cases are heard by one of two immigration judges in an attached court there. In the past, it had been policy to release people as long as it seemed likely that they would return to their regular check-ins with immigration authorities. Nationwide and locally, arrests and deportations of undocumented immigrants with no criminal histories are both up significantly. In 2016 in the Buffalo region, which includes Syracuse, there were 1,103 arrests by ICE. Of those, 160 were non-criminals, according to data provided by ICE. For 2017, there were 396 non-criminal arrests by ICE out of 1,494 total. It's likely those numbers will be higher for 2018. The Migration Policy Institute estimates that there are 209,000 immigrants in New York state outside of New York City. Marnie Eisenstadt writes about people, life and culture in Central New York. Have an idea or question? Contact her anytime: email | twitter | Facebook | 315-470-2246 This page no longer exists or may have been moved.If you believe this is a mistake please email Samsung's new Galaxy J2 Pro Android smartphone has one thing notably different from other smartphones: it blocks internet access. Most modern smartphones nowadays, whether or not they pack entry-level or high-end specs, enable users to go online and use various mobile apps. In this respect, the Galaxy J2 Pro is quite the opposite. Samsung Galaxy J2 Pro Specs Samsung unveiled its new Galaxy J2 Pro in its home market of South Korea, marketing it as a perfect handset for elder users who worry about potential data charges. The handset looks like a regular smartphone featuring a 5-inch QHD AMOLED display, a Qualcomm Snapdragon 425 processor clocked at 1.4 GHz, 1.5 GB of RAM, 16 GB of native storage space, and a micro-SD card for expandable memory of up to 256 GB. Other specs include a 5-megapixel main camera on the back and an 8-megapixel selfie camera on the front, as well as a 2,600 mAh battery to keep things up and running. On the software side, the handset runs Android 7.1 Nougat out of the box. Galaxy J2 Pro Internet Access Blocked While the specs so far hint at a regular smartphone, apparently it's not. As previously mentioned, it's targeting senior users, young children, or people who want a basic phone with no distractions such as students who need to study without being tempted to go online. As such, the Galaxy J2 Pro allows users to make phone calls, send SMS, take photos, or check out media content from storage or the microSD card, but it won't be able to access the internet. The Galaxy J2 Pro can't even connect to free Wi-Fi networks, let alone 3G or 4G data plans. Simply put, it looks like a modern smartphone, but with the functions of a basic phone from yesteryears. Those who are looking to go online or run mobile apps that require an internet connection such as Facebook, WhatsApp, Twitter, or others might want to consider a different smartphone. The Samsung Galaxy J2 Pro costs 199,000 won, which would translate to about $185, and comes in black or gold avatars. It remains unclear whether the company will eventually release the Galaxy J2 Pro in other markets besides South Korea or it will be successful with no internet access. Most smartphone users rely on their handsets to do much more than just basic phone tasks, including to access web pages and mobile apps that require an internet connection. Mobile browsing is on the rise and it's unlikely to slow down, so will there be a market niche for this handset? Would you get one? Let us know in the comments section below. 2021 TECHTIMES.com All rights reserved. Do not reproduce without permission. A Galactic Positioning System is being developed at the International Space Station that could change the way that spaceships and probes navigate in space. This type of technology would eliminate the need to do imprecise fly-bys that probes currently have to do by planets to get close to them. This could revolutionize the way that astronauts travel in space. Galactic Positioning System The Neutron Star Interior Composition Explorer (NICER), a telescope mounted on the International Space Station, is being used to develop a galactic positioning system. This announcement was made at the meeting of the American Physical Society by NASA scientist Zaven Arzoumanian on April 15. Arzoumanian says that with this technology space programs will be able to send their probes directly into the orbit of specific moons instead of planning flybys. He adds that this could allow scientists to be able to navigate space if they lose communication from Earth. The navigation systems on the ships or orbiters would be autonomous and not controlled from Earth. Currently, the technology that is available to astronauts doesn't allow them to navigate their way directly into the orbit of a planet or moon. LiveScience cites missions by Voyager 1 and Juno as examples of planned flybys. These missions were able to get close to the planets but not spend a large amount of time gathering more information. Navigation in space works by using radio signals that are sent from the Earth. These signals are sent using giant antennas and probes and ships respond by sending back signal. That makes it easy to determine the overall distance of a signal traveling to the ship and back. Angles are difficult to determine using the same technique since antennas are only receiving the signal. How Would This Work? This galactic positioning system would use pulsars to give ships and probes directions. Pulsars are radio signals that seem to emerge from neutron stars with strong magnetic fields. The poles of the magnetic field rotate with the star and channel electromagnetic radiation in a certain direction. These pulses repeat at regular intervals. George S. Downs was the first to suggest using pulsars for space navigation in 1974. Downs says that positions could be measured within 95 miles (150 kilometers) using a radio antenna and 24 hours of data on the signals. NASA's Station Explorer for X-Ray Timing and Navigation (SEXTANT) program are the team working on the galactic positioning system. They were able to track the ISS within 4.3 miles in two days. This is the first time that humans have used pulsars to navigate. Researchers hope to hit the next milestone of tracking the station within 1.9 miles and eventually get to tracking it at a range of 0.6 miles. There's still a lot to work out, this demonstration occurred in low-Earth orbit which makes it more difficult to be able to track pulsars. Out in space, it will be easier with signals coming in straight lines. 2021 TECHTIMES.com All rights reserved. Do not reproduce without permission. The second officer involved in the 2016 shooting of Alton Sterling also filed an appeal last week asking the local civil service board to overturn his three-day suspension. The attorney for officer Howie Lake II said he filed the appeal Friday afternoon, following the appeal from Blane Salamoni, who was fired for his actions during the Sterling shooting. Lake, 30, was suspended for violating command-of-temper policies, said Baton Rouge Police Chief Murphy Paul. Lake returned to work April 5, when a police spokesman said he began training to get up to date with department standards. +7 This Baton Rouge board could uphold or overturn Murphy Paul's decision to fire Blane Salamoni After less than four months on the job, Baton Rouge Police Chief Murphy Paul stepped into the national spotlight, announcing his decision to f Paul said Salamoni, who fired the shots that killed Sterling, also violated the command-of-temper policy, in addition to the department's policy on use of force. Lake did not fire his weapon during the encounter, though he did twice attempt to use a stun gun. In Pauls March discipline announcement, he made a point to distinguish Salamonis actions from Lakes saying Lake attempted to use de-escalation and disengagement techniques consistent with policy and procedure and training, while Salamoni did not. Top stories in Baton Rouge in your inbox Twice daily we'll send you the day's biggest headlines. Sign up today. e-mail address * Sign Up In the coming months, the Municipal Fire and Police Civil Service Board will hear the two cases, reviewing the chief's disciplinary decisions. The local oversight body, made up of three civilians and one representative from both the local police and fire departments, has the power to either uphold, reverse or reduce discipline. Those decisions can be appealed to state court. +2 Baton Rouge officer suspended in Alton Sterling shooting returns to work nearly 2 years later Officer Howie Lake II was allowed to return to work at the Baton Rouge Police Department Thursday after spending nearly two years awaiting the Salamoni and Lake responded to a 911 call on July 5, 2016, about a man selling CDs outside a convenience store on North Foster Drive who had threatened someone with a gun. After a brief struggle lasting less than 90 seconds, Salamoni fired six shots at Sterling almost immediately after yelling that Sterling had a gun in his pocket. Two cellphone videos that captured portions of the encounter between the black man and the two white officers were widely shared on social media, prompting nationwide protests in 2016. In May, federal prosecutors declined to file federal civil rights charges against the two officers. And Louisiana Attorney General Jeff Landry announced last month that he too would not pursue criminal charges after a 10-month investigation by the state. The civil service board has not yet scheduled the appeal hearings for Lake or Salamoni, though officials do not expect them for at least a few months. Advocate staff photo by DANIELLE MADDOX -- Journalist Lauren Victoria Burke, Koch Industries Vice President Mark Holden, criminal defense lawyer Norman Reimer and Benjamin F. Chavis Jr., president of the National Newspaper Publishers Association, speak on a panel about criminal justice at the 57th annual Southern Christian Leadership Conference, held Thursday at the Hilton Baton Rouge Capitol Center. A state judge said Tuesday she'll rule on the legality of Louisiana's big cat ban after hearing arguments from attorneys for the state, an animal rights group and an Iberville Parish truck stop owner who wants to house another tiger at the facility in the wake of Tony the tiger's death there last fall. The 2006 state law bans private ownership of large and exotic cats, but Tony who was euthanized in October was living at Tiger Truck Stop in Grosse Tete several years before the ban went into effect. A measure passed during the 2014 legislative session and signed into law by then-Gov. Bobby Jindal allowed Tiger Truck Stop owner Michael Sandlin to keep only Tony. The law said Sandlin could not obtain more tigers after Tony dies. Tony the Tiger to remain at Tiger Truck Stop in Grosse Tete for now after judge dismisses lawsuit The legal roller-coaster ride that Tony, the 550-pound Grosse Tete truck stop tiger, has been on the past several years continued to roll Mond Sandlin contends the state's 2006 big cat ban is unconstitutional; the state and the Animal Legal Defense Fund maintain it is legal. District Judge Janice Clark, of Baton Rouge, met in her courtroom Tuesday with attorneys for the state, the ALDF and Sandlin and set up a schedule for them to deliver written and oral arguments to her. Clark said she would issue a ruling after all arguments are presented to her. She did not set a date for the oral arguments or ruling. ALDF lawyer Tarak Anada said outside the courtroom that the advocacy group is aligned with the state when it comes to Louisianas big cat ban. It forbids anyone other than colleges, sanctuaries, zoos, wildlife research centers and scientific organizations from possessing big exotic cats. The big cat ban is constitutional, he said. Geoffrey Ormsby, one of Sandlins attorneys, said no one disputes the need for regulation when it comes to big cats. Top stories in Baton Rouge in your inbox Twice daily we'll send you the day's biggest headlines. Sign up today. e-mail address * Sign Up Our position is Michael is the true sanctuary. Hes the one caring for tigers, Ormsby said after the court proceeding. Its not for economic reasons at all. He has a true love for these animals. Robert Morgan, who also represents Sandlin, said Tony was much better off while he lived on the truck stop grounds. Sandlin, who was not in court Tuesday, said in a telephone interview he is waiting for a taxidermist to stuff Tony, who lived at the truck stop for 17 years, so he can be displayed at the facility. Tonys remains were buried in a coffin, he said, but his fur was returned to Sandlin. +15 Truck stop owner plans to pursue another tiger, stuff Tony for display; critic calls that 'disrespectful' The owner who decided to euthanize Tony, the Bengal tiger that spent the 17 years of its life as the roadside attraction for a Grosse Tete tru Sandlin said the legal battle with the ALDF to keep Tony at the truck stop was lengthy and costly, but added, I would do it again. People need to be able to experience these animals, he said. ALDF spokesman Matthew Liebman previously called it disrespectful that Sandlin wants to stuff and display Tony at the truck stop as a money-making promotional prop. Tony, a 550-pound Bengal tiger who struggled in his later years with arthritis, was euthanized after he took a sharp decline due to kidney failure, Sandlin has said. The tiger had stopped eating and taking medication. Sandlin has exhibited tigers at the truck stop since 1984. He has held a federal permit to keep tigers there since 1988. A prison re-entry initiative that touts White House support and ample private funding will no longer include Louisiana in its pilot launch this spring, a last minute decision the efforts organizers attribute to the states ongoing criminal justice reforms. In January, Louisiana was named along with Florida, Texas and Pennsylvania as a future site for the Safe Streets and Second Chances initiative, a research-based program funded by Koch Industries that tracks and supports offenders leaving prison, aimed at reducing the recidivism rate. However, in the first week of April less than a month from the anticipated launch date leaders of the initiative decided to replace Louisiana with Kentucky for the first stage of the project, saying the timing in Louisiana had not been ideal. Leaders from both the initiative and Louisianas Department of Public Safety and Corrections would not point to a specific issue that caused the setback but said they plan to continue working together, hoping to bring the program and its research to the state in the future. Were still very much interested in Louisiana, but the process is taking much longer than we thought, said Mark Holden, senior vice president and general counsel for Koch Industries Inc., who is on the advisory council for the initiative. Its just timing. Panel in Baton Rouge pushes for reform of nations criminal justice system A high-profile panel of public figures called for a total overhaul of the criminal justice system, from prison reform to providing counsel for Koch Industries, a subsidiary of the Kansas-based billionaire industrialist brothers Charles Koch and David Koch known for their politically conservative activism, are providing the funding for the program, Holden said. The first phase of the initiative, ready to launch May 1 in the other three states as well as Kentucky, splits about $4 million from Koch Industries among the four to identify and track about 1,100 offenders soon leaving prison, providing individualized reentry plans and services, hoping to reduce the chances they end up back behind bars, said Carrie Pettus-Davis, the principal researcher for the initiative Pettus-Davis and the teams shes hired plan to enter corrections facilities in both rural and urban regions of the states, targeting willing prisoners who are nearing release dates with the initiative's five key components: healthy thinking patterns, meaningful work trajectories, effective coping strategies, positive social engagement and positive interpersonal relationships. Pettus-Davis, an incoming associate professor at Florida State University, has been working directly with Louisiana officials. She said with the states other criminal justice reforms still just months from their start, they mutually decided to give those efforts time to pick up speed independently before adding another program. They devoted a lot of time to (Safe Streets and Second Chances), and they were very enthusiastic, Pettus-Davis said of Louisianas corrections officials. It just seemed cleaner to wait. ... Theres not a different level of engagement or support. Its a timing issue. Corrections spokesman Ken Pastorick reiterated the states continued interest in Safe Streets and Second Chances, and said officials believe it will fit better phased in with the states criminal justice reform efforts in the fall. During last springs legislative session, lawmakers passed historically comprehensive criminal justice reforms, a bipartisan effort focused on reducing the states notoriously high incarceration rate the highest in the U.S. to ultimately save taxpayers' money and increase public safety. Now, the corrections department is working to reinvest those savings into its own program, the Louisiana Prisoner Reentry Initiative, which works to better assist offenders in their return to society. That program will work in the five parishes with the most offenders East Baton Rouge, Orleans, Jefferson, St. Tammany and Caddo. Pastorick said the department has begun working with its first group released in St. Tammany, and hopes to scale up to the other four jurisdictions over the next few months. Pastorick also said they are preparing to implement a web-based risk assessment tool and accompanying case plan to better identify offenders' needs and risks before they leave prison. He said the department is also working to increase educational opportunities and job skills certifications for offenders in state custody, and it is preparing to team up with community providers that can further support reentry. Top stories in Baton Rouge in your inbox Twice daily we'll send you the day's biggest headlines. Sign up today. e-mail address * Sign Up +2 Here's what to expect as Louisiana Senate begins criminal justice reform debate this week Opponents viewed last weeks Louisiana House vote, which overwhelmingly approved extending probation terms, as a shot across the bow in the at But some lawmakers this session proposed a string of "rollback" bills that take aim at some of the criminal justice reforms enacted last year. On Tuesday, the Governors Office, legislators and key criminal justice system players announced a compromise on those efforts. Holden said their team first reached out in November to states who with a Right on Crime presence, a group that takes a conservative approach to criminal justice reform, which Louisiana did, along with states with similar criminal justice goals as Koch Industries. That same month, Gov. John Bel Edwards met at the White House with Jared Kushner, President Donald Trump's son-in-law and a senior White House adviser, about Louisianas success passing the 10-bill criminal justice reform package. Kushner and Trump later expressed their interest in common sense criminal justice reforms a move Koch Industries capitalized on. However, Pastorick said Safe Street and Second Chances notified Louisiana corrections officials April 4 they would no longer be working with the state on the pilot program. Holden told The Advocate in mid-March that they were working on the final stages of the project in Louisiana. At that time, Holden said the other states involved in the process had proceeded on a faster trajectory, but that Louisiana will be finished and ready to go when the program launched. Holden had tentatively identified East Baton Rouge and Tangipahoa parish prisons as the sites they hoped to use for the research-based project. He clarified this past week that there were no specific roadblocks that led the project away from Louisiana. Our goal is to scale this up, Holden said. Hopefully, Louisiana is a part of it. Were still very committed to this. Holden also noted that with Koch Industries involved in the funding, there is not a limited pot of cash devoted to the pilot, emphasizing how there is enough funds to bring the same program back to Louisiana in the future. Our Views: Forget politics and fears, follow the data on prison reform John N. Kennedy loves a brawl, so the new U.S. senator from Louisiana was happy to start one over prison reform on the same day his state's Were implementing the research across states in phases, so Louisiana is going to be in the second phase of the research study, Pettus-Davis said. Were not entirely sure when that is going to start, but probably more toward the fall. However, Pettus-Davis was hesitant to commit to the fall, as she said there could be further hurdles or wrinkles they could face during their initial run. Pastorick said the corrections department is committed to making the initiative work in the fall. Were definitely not pulling out of the state, Pettus-Davis said. Some voters in East Baton Rouge last week received flyers in the mail urging them to reject the three propositions that make up a 1-cent sales tax earmarked for the parish school district. Its not clear how many people received the flyers, though they did end up in mailboxes in southeast Baton Rouge. Displaying charts showing spending increasing, enrollment decreasing and academic performance in East Baton Rouge public schools lagging behind much of the rest of the state, one mailer concludes, Instead of throwing cash at our schools, we need to correct the system. Another mailer, in a similar vein, concludes Vote Early. Vote Now. Vote No to all three propositions, which are on the April 28 ballot. The flyers were sent out just as early voting began last Saturday; early voting ends this Saturday. The little-known group behind the mailers, Keep Louisiana Working Inc., also has set up a special website for the election: http://bestlouisiana.org/. The groups opposition to all three propositions of the tax, which is expected to generate $935 million over 10 years for the school system, stands out. So far, other opponents of renewing the 1-cent sales tax have urged voters to reject individual propositions, not all three, so that those parts can be improved and returned to voters in the future. BRAC endorses two tax propositions on April 28 ballot, but rejects one that pays for student discipline and truancy With an election just a month away, East Baton Rouge School Superintendent Warren Drake admitted Tuesday that he has fallen short in explainin For instance, the Baton Rouge Area Chamber recently endorsed Propositions 1 and 3. Proposition 1 would pay for a number of new schools and school improvements, while Proposition 3 helps underwrite teacher salaries. The business lobby, however, urged rejection of Proposition 2, which supports truancy and alternative education, saying that proposition needs to be reworked. In a statement, Taylor Gast, a spokeswoman with the parish school system, said renewing all three propositions is critical to the future of the parish. We have appreciated the support of our community over the past 20 years, and we are confident that the people of Baton Rouge fully understand the importance of a strong public school system, Gast said. Keep Louisiana Working is a conservative political group formed in 2013. For tax purposes, its organized as a 501(c)(4) nonprofit corporation, which means it can and does refuse to disclose its donors. The group also doesnt talk much about what elections or political issues it weighs into or or why. It made its biggest splash in 2014 when it supported Bill Cassidy, a Republican, in his successful bid to unseat then-U.S. Sen. Mary Landrieu, a Democrat. Top stories in Baton Rouge in your inbox Twice daily we'll send you the day's biggest headlines. Sign up today. e-mail address * Sign Up Its Louisiana corporate charter was revoked in August 2017, when the group failed to file annual reports for three years in a row. But the charter was reinstated in March. Its corporate directors hail from Monroe and Alexandria, but its executive director, Emily Cornell, is based in Baton Rouge. Cornell, who worked for the Republican National Committee for four years, recently returned to Keep Louisiana Working after years away. During that time away, among other things, she worked as a senior vice president for political affairs at Cambridge Analytica. The British political consulting firm has come under fire for its use of personal data to target voters in support of the Brexit campaign as well as for the 2016 Donald Trump presidential campaign. Cornell would not discuss how much Keep Louisiana Working is spending in opposing the 1-cent sales tax renewal, the scope of its campaign, or who is funding the campaign. She said the group jumps into an array of Louisiana public issues of importance and this one is no different. Keep Louisiana Working is opposed to treating this issue as a routine tax renewal, Cornell said. There should be nothing routine about levying a $935 million tax. Keep Louisiana Working recently hired Lionel Rainey, a conservative political consultant, to do work on its behalf. Rainey is best known for the years he spent as spokesman for the St. George incorporation effort. St. Tammany jail, courthouse tax renewals fail yet again For the third time in two years, St. Tammany voters shot down a pair of tax renewals to operate the parish jail and courthouse Saturday. Keep Louisiana Working reported paying $12,000 to Raineys firm, LR3 Consulting, for live and automated phone calls, Facebook advertising and social media management. According to its campaign finance report, the group paid Rainey on March 23 for his work on an unspecified election held the next day. Cornell said Rainey worked for the organization in connection with tax propositions on the March 24 ballot in St. Tammany Parish. Rainey told The Advocate he played no role in the recent mailers from Keep Louisiana Working that attacked the proposed sales tax renewal. Drew Murell, a spokesman for St. George, said St. George also played no part in the Keep Louisiana Working mailers. St. George has nothing to do with anything outside of our effort to collect signatures to put St. George on the ballot, Murell said. We cannot speak to what other people or groups are doing. Murell added that St George is not taking a position or getting involved in any way on the school tax renewal. Having served as an elected official for more than two decades, one thing I know is that the most marginalized and oppressed voices are rarely Purchases made via links on our site may earn us an affiliate commission Women holding signs watch marchers pass by during a March for Our Lives rally Saturday, March 24, 2018 in New Orleans. More than 6,000 people marched from Washington Square Park to Duncan Plaza for a rally in support of gun control legislation. Mayor-President Sharon Weston Broome announced Tuesday that the Greater New Orleans Fair Housing Action Center was giving a $150,000 grant to the Housing First Alliance of the Capital City in hopes of building more affordable rentals in Baton Rouge. A recent dispatch from North Dakota, where Democratic U.S. Sen. Heidi Heitkamp faces a tough reelection race this fall, gave me flashbacks. If you want somebody whos going to vote for Donald Trump or with Donald Trump 100 percent of the time, thats not me, Heitkamp said, according to the National Journal. If you want somebody who is going to vote with North Dakotas interests 100 percent of the time, I think thats me. Substitute Louisiana for North Dakota and George W. Bush or Barack Obama for Donald Trump, and those words could have come straight from former U.S. Sen. Mary Landrieus mouth. Landrieus argument, that she was always an independent voice for the conservative state no matter who was in office, carried the day until it didnt. Her luck ran out in 2014, a terrible year for Democrats in general, when Republican Bill Cassidy tagged her with voting record in support of Obamas agenda. It wasnt exactly a surprise. Over Landrieus career and since her departure, Senate races have become less local contests and more referenda on the national parties, particularly on whichever one holds the White House that day. This year, Heitkamp has filled Landrieus customary shoes as perhaps the most vulnerable Democrat. She first won her seat by a scant 50-49 percent margin in 2012, and now faces an electorate that chose Trump over Hillary Clinton by a whopping 36 points. But shes not alone on the endangered list. While Democratic gains in the House are a given, this years Senate class is unusually packed with Democrats representing Trump states. In this overheated national environment, its futile to think that many voters will simply set aside their feelings toward the president. On the other hand, Democrats are a lot more motivated than Republicans to show up, and concerns over Trumps policies on things like trade, which Heitkamp contends hurts the states interests, could be persuasive. If Heitkamp and some of her fellow red state Democrats survive, it may simply be because Trump is a uniquely polarizing and complicating president. That, more than a return to the era of all politics being local, is surely their best hope. About a third of all students who applied to public schools in New Orleans couldnt get one of their top choices for the coming school year, officials said Monday. It is the lowest match rate since officials launched a centralized school enrollment process in the city seven years ago. The drop resulted at least in part from an increase in the number of applications for slots in the city's public schools, and it has prompted renewed frustration among parents shut out of the most desirable campuses. Notably, two schools that had handled their own enrollment until this year Audubon Charter School in Uptown and Edward Hynes Charter School in Lakeview plus Audubons new Gentilly campus joined the common enrollment system for the first time. Those schools receive far more applications than they have seats. State Rep. Joe Bouie, D-New Orleans, who has been one of the most outspoken critics of the city's new school system, last week asked the Legislative Auditor's Office to review the unified application process, citing complaints to his office from parents. On the other hand, the school officials in charge of the process, commonly known as the OneApp, said the low match rate was simply the result of high demand for the city's most well-regarded schools. "In New Orleans, students are assigned to schools through a process that ensures every student has a fair shot at any open seat at any school citywide, said Kunjan Narechania, head of the state Recovery School District, which manages the OneApp. Every year, the number of students seeking seats at our most sought-after schools far exceeds the number of available seats. Under the OneApp, which was launched in 2011 to give families an easier way to apply to the citys numerous autonomous charter schools, parents rank their top choices among dozens of public and some private schools on a single application that has one deadline. A computer then attempts to match them to their selections. This year, nearly 17,000 families submitted applications, up from 15,000 families last year. As a result, only 67 percent of families received either their first, second or third school choice. Thats the lowest match rate in seven years; the system usually has matched around 75 percent of families to one of their top three choices. The chief gripe this year in the face of increased demand is that some students apparently were not admitted to schools near where they live, where they assumed they would have priority. Bouie said many families this year were upset that they couldnt get a spot at the new Audubon Charter School on Painters Street in Gentilly. Parents were saying how upset and disappointed and frustrated they were, that here is a school that is in their neighborhood, and they are still not able to get their child in that school, Bouie said. Bouie last week asked the state auditors office to look into the OneApp, a request that office will honor. The probe is expected to begin this month, Assistant Auditor Nicole Edmonson said. The OneApp does give some preference to students who want to attend school near where they live. But the preference often applies to an area wider than a single neighborhood. For example, a student who lives in New Orleans East might have a better shot at a school in that broad area, but not necessarily one within walking distance of their home. The geographic preference also applies to only half of the seats within an elementary or middle school, so as not to defeat the purpose of school choice and to shut out other families who might want to attend. The preference does not apply to most high schools. Other priorities, like a preference for siblings of children already in a school, may also trump the geographic one in some circumstances. This year, the system worked as intended, RSD officials said, as every seat at an in-demand school that was saved under the geographic preference was filled by a student who lived within the broad area surrounding the school. Asked whether the system tracks how often students are admitted to schools within walking distance of their homes, state Education Department spokeswoman Sydni Dunn said the RSD does not track that data but could do so in the future. The OneApp was retooled two years ago to award more families spots in schools that were, on average, closer to where they lived, Dunn said. Despite those changes, most applicants this year and last year picked schools that were farther from their homes. In 2016, the RSD commissioned an independent audit of the OneApp system. The firm Tembo gave the process positive marks after it examined whether school priorities were used appropriately that year and whether applicants who qualified under those priorities received a top choice before others did. Some of the most popular schools this year, aside from Hynes and Audubon, were Alice Harte Elementary in Algiers and Benjamin Franklin Elementary in Uptown. All have A or B ratings from the state; the Orleans systems average is a C. At Hynes, more than 1,400 families applied for only 100 seats. About 1,100 applied for Hartes 88 seats, and more than 1,200 asked for Franklins 173 seats. The odds were actually better at Audubons two campuses, with about a third of applicants to its Gentilly and Uptown locations receiving spots, data show. The Legislature is considering a bill that would require the city's schools to reserve at least a fifth and no more than half of their seats for students who live nearby. The bill does not specify how large the geographic zone to be considered should be. The state's first license for a medical marijuana pharmacy was awarded Tuesday in the greater New Orleans region to the longstanding owner of H&W Drug Store to dispense the drug at a proposed Gentilly location. The marijuana pharmacy would be at 4718 Paris Ave. H&W operates two regular pharmacy locations in New Orleans. The Louisiana Board of Pharmacy's surprise vote gave H&W Drug Store the go-ahead despite the firm finishing fourth in the selection process. The decision came after a lengthy and impassioned presentation by H&W owner and CEO Ruston Henry and his brother and business adviser Troy Henry at Tuesday's hearing. The vote was unanimous after the board deliberated behind closed doors for more than an hour. "The board reevaluated," Ruston Henry said after the decision. "When you look closely and see our site, our experience, they had to come to that conclusion." The move is a major step in the states nascent medical marijuana program, which is expected to be up and running this year. Building permit issued for multi-million dollar medical marijuana facility on Highland Road A building permit has been issued for a $6 million medical marijuana grow facility that will be built at the site of a former Pepsi distributi A selection committee composed of Board of Pharmacy members reviewed dozens of applications for marijuana pharmacies statewide before ranking them ahead of hearings last month. Nine regions of the state are slated for marijuana pharmacies. The board on Tuesday also awarded regional licenses for Baton Rouge, Lafayette, Houma and Lake Charles. Licensing continues Wednesday for the north shore, Shreveport, Monroe and Alexandria. Pharmacy board hears final pitches from medical marijuana applicants, eyes April vote After wrapping up two days of hearings Wednesday, the Louisiana Board of Pharmacy will spend the next three weeks studying applications from n Board member Allen Cassidy said the board felt H&W was the "most qualified" applicant after reviewing its application and hearing testimony. He added the board members that voted to award the licenses did not include the members of the selection committee, which did not hear the additional testimony that came in March and at Tuesday's hearings. "It's not that we were overriding that (selection) committee," Cassidy said. "We had more information presented to us than the committee had." [RELATED: Gambit report: Medical marijuana in Louisiana could be ready by fall 2018] Cassidy said he is not personally worried about any potential legal challenges because the board did not select the top-ranked applicant. Sajal Roy, the CEO of the top-ranked applicant, Rx Greenhouse, said he was surprised at the board's move. "What's the point of having a subcommittee?" Roy said. "I was on the Maryland Board of Pharmacy and I can tell you that's not how we did things." Roy said he plans to file a public records request for H&W's application, and did not rule out a legal challenge, but said he did not want to sue and delay the process. He said he did not know what changed since the selection committee made its recommendation, and wondered aloud why the board did not explain its surprise vote. The decision for the New Orleans-area pharmacy came after a lengthy and at times contentious hearing for the New Orleans region, where the five remaining applicants vied for the one permit for the area. Roy's firm and the second-place group, GNO Medical Dispensary, traded contentious competing pitches in their presentations. Roy's group accused the head of GNO, Nathaniel Graff, of quietly convincing the owner of an indoor playground next to Roy's proposed pharmacy location to submit a complaint to the board. Rx Greenhouse submitted a sworn affidavit from the owner backing up the story and noted the owner withdrew her complaint. Roy said being in first place put a "target" on his back. "We had everyone coming after us," he said. Graff, in an email, said he was "disappointed" in the board's decision but declined further comment. During the hearing, Troy Henry pitched his brother as the "only adult in the room," faulting the other applicants for their sites and CEOs. Ruston Henry asked the board to reconsider the rankings. In his application, Henry touted his pharmacy as the longest-running African American-owned pharmacy in New Orleans. The pharmacy, founded by Henry's father, has operated for more than 50 years. Henry did not immediately offer a timeline for opening after the hearing, saying he had to meet again with board members to discuss that. In the greater Houma region, the board selected Green Leaf Dispensary to run the only marijuana pharmacy in the area. Green Leaf finished third in the selection rankings, behind Bayou Therapeutics Pharmacy. The license for the greater Baton Rouge area, went unanimously to Capitol Wellness Solutions, which beat out the only remaining Baton Rouge applicant, Green Magnolia Rx. Capitol Wellness Solutions was ranked first in the region by the board's selection committee. Capitol Wellness is run by Randy Mire, a pharmacist who has owned Gem Drugs, which has two locations in Reserve and Gramercy, for the past decade. Mire's team includes TJ Woodard, who owns and operates Prescriptions to Geaux in downtown Baton Rouge, and former Baton Rouge Police Chief Carl Dabadie, who will serve as head of security. In the Lafayatte region, a license went to the Apothecary Shoppe LLC, breaking a selection committee tie for the area. The CEO of the firm is Eric Vidrine, who runs several pharmacies in Lafayette and Baton Rouge, along with his business partner David Mayer, and Brian Ruden, who owns marijuana dispensaries in Colorado and Maryland. Kevin LaGrange, a pharmacist for Professional Arts Pharmacy, one of Vidrine's pharmacies, will serve as pharmacist-in-charge. Vidrine's firm beat out Acadiana Therapeutic Remedies, composed of a group of Lafayette physicians led by Dr. Kevin Duplechain, along with pharmacists, a local medical marijuana advocate and an industry consultant. The Board of Pharmacy selection committee had ranked both firms first in the region during the selection process. Acadiana Therapeutic Remedies touted, among other things, letters of recommendations from high-powered politicians, including state Attorney General Jeff Landry, U.S. Sen. Bill Cassidy and Louisiana House Speaker Taylor Barras. State lawmakers passed legislation in 2016 to fully authorize the medical marijuana program in the state. The Agricultural Centers of LSU and Southern University then partnered with private companies to grow the plant, and production is expected to begin later this year. Louisianas program is tightly regulated and authorizes patients with a handful of serious diseases to get certain non-smokable forms of the drug. Under current law, patients can qualify for medical marijuana if they have one of 10 serious conditions: cancer, HIV, AIDS, Cachexia or wasting syndrome, seizure disorders, epilepsy, spasticity, Crohn's disease, muscular dystrophy or multiple sclerosis. Efforts from lawmakers and advocates are underway to expand the disease list. Slidell police arrested four women on prostitution allegations at three massage parlors Friday night following an undercover investigation that was triggered by complaints from the public, spokesman Daniel Seuzeneau said Monday. Undercover officers went into the businesses posing as customers, while other officers were standing by to make arrests. The investigation concluded that the women were giving erotic massages to several customers, Seuzeneau said. Haiping Huang, 53, of Brooklyn, New York, and Xiaoyan Chen, 46, of Slidell, were arrested at Relax Therapy Massage, 1350 Corporate Square Drive. Suwei Li, 48, of Slidell, was arrested at Super Relax Massage, 3675 Pontchartrain Drive. Tian Jing, 48, of Miami, was arrested at To the Moon and Back Massage, 1501 Gause Blvd. The investigation is continuing, Seuzeneau said, and police are looking into the ownership of the businesses. St. Tammany top stories in your inbox A weekly guide to the biggest news in St. Tammany. Sign up today. e-mail address * Sign Up The findings of the investigation have also been turned over to Slidell's code enforcement department and the Louisiana Board of Massage Therapy for possible further action, he said. Asked if the activity might involve human trafficking, Seuzeneau said that is a "hot button topic" but one that is hard to prove. This isn't the first time the police have gone to the massage parlor on Gause Boulevard. It was robbed in November when it was operating under the name Number 1 Massage Spa. The victim, who worked there, told officers that a man had entered the business and asked for a massage but brandished a gun and demanded money afterward. Police released a surveillance video showing the man, but no arrest was ever made in the case, according to Seuzeneau. The St. Tammany Parish Sheriff's Office busted a massage parlor in the Mandeville area last year after receiving "numerous complaints of illegal activity." The Sheriff's Office arrested a 53-year-old Kenner woman, booking her on prostitution by massage. A former school employee smiled and hugged her attorney Tuesday after prosecutors announced they were dropping charges against her in connection with a 2015 double homicide at a New Orleans East apartment complex. Gilda Woodridge, 29, no longer faces two counts of manslaughter and one count of obstruction of justice in connection with the killing of Vernon Lewis and Daniel Millon, who were both 24. Woodridges defense attorney, Robert Toale, had long complained that authorities charged her in an attempt to prevent her from testifying in defense of her fiancee, Ahmad Rainey, who admitted at his trial last week to shooting the men. "Justice delayed is justice denied," Toale said. "There has never been any evidence against Gilda. A dismissal today is bittersweet considering that these charges have cost Gilda her job, her house and time with her four children. Hopefully, Gilda will be able to get her life back after this harrowing experience." A jury last week convicted Rainey of manslaughter in the killing of Lewis but acquitted him in the killing of Millon. He was also convicted of obstruction of justice for disposing of the rifle he used. Woodridge and Rainey had just bought a house together on Dec. 28, 2015, when a dispute over where Lewis and Millon had parked their motorcycles turned fatal. Rainey said Millons motorcycle was blocking the entrance to his downstairs apartment at the Hidden Lakes apartment complex. Woodridge went upstairs to ask the men to move their motorcycles. Rainey painted Millon as the aggressor in the hallway confrontation that followed. He said that Millon was stepping forward to attack him with a pistol which was never recovered when Rainey opened fire in what he said was self-defense. Yet Rainey was more ambiguous about what type of threat Lewis posed to him. He acknowledged that Lewis had retreated before Rainey shot him. Meanwhile, the testimony of the lead detective on the case seemed to point away from Woodridges guilt. Former New Orleans Police Detective Jana Thompson acknowledged that while Woodridge was accused in an arrest warrant of luring the men downstairs, there was no evidence that she participated in the shooting. Under questioning from Raineys defense attorney, Frank DeSalvo, Thompson said the sole reason she had obtained a warrant for Woodridges arrest was that Woodridge stood next to Rainey during the shooting. Top stories in New Orleans in your inbox Twice daily we'll send you the day's biggest headlines. Sign up today. e-mail address * Sign Up Its what she did not do She stood behind and watched and did not attempt to stop anything that took place, Thompson said. And in your opinion, that could make somebody guilty of murder? DeSalvo said. Yes, sir, she replied. Even the state's sole eyewitness, Darneka Williams, said nothing to implicate Woodridge. Williams, who was involved in a romantic relationship with Lewis, described Woodridge as polite. Woodridge was a behavioral interventionist at Sci Academy in New Orleans East and the mother of four of Rainey's children. The District Attorney's Office declined to comment on its decision to dismiss the manslaughter and obstruction charges against her. Although the manslaughter counts were the most serious charges Woodridge faced, her legal troubles are not at an end. She picked up new charges while out on bail last year. She was accused of simple criminal damage to property in September and of illegal use of a weapon and aggravated assault with a firearm in October. Criminal District Court Judge Byron C. Williams warned Woodridge to stay out of trouble if she makes bail on those lesser charges. She remained in custody Tuesday. Williams is due to sentence Rainey on May 4. He faces up to 40 years each on counts of manslaughter and obstruction of justice. The man charged with fatally shooting U.S. Army Staff Sgt. Joseph Anderson at close range in Marrero on Jan. 1, 2014, pleaded guilty Monday to a reduced charge of manslaughter and was sentenced to 30 years in prison. Darwin Bethune, 28, was set to go to trial this week before Judge Adrian Adams in 24th Judicial District Court and faced life in prison if convicted as charged of second-degree murder. He instead took the plea deal offered by prosecutors, which included also admitting to unauthorized entry and identity theft, for which he was sentenced to six years and five years respectively, in addition to the 30 years for manslaughter. Adams ordered the three sentences to be served concurrently, and prosecutors dropped charges of obstruction of justice and inciting a felony. In accepting the deal, Bethune, who is from New Orleans East, admitted to the ambush killing of Anderson, 31, who at the time had just dropped off his three children at the Ray Street home of his in-laws. Investigators with the Jefferson Parish Sheriff's Office said Bethune killed Anderson in the belief he could get his hands on a half-million-dollar insurance settlement because he was dating Anderson's ex-wife. A decorated soldier, Anderson had served three tours of duty in the Middle East. The Toyota 4Runner he was driving was found abandoned the next morning. His killer did not take his wallet or credit cards. Top stories in New Orleans in your inbox Twice daily we'll send you the day's biggest headlines. Sign up today. e-mail address * Sign Up Investigators said they do not believe that Anderson's ex-wife, who was visiting friends in Georgia when the killing occurred, knew anything about Bethune's plan. They said Bethune had exhibited controlling behavior and was trying to move in with the woman in the weeks before the killing. Investigators also noticed the drivers-side floor mat in Bethunes Infiniti was missing and there was a bottle of peroxide in the vehicle. Blood was found in the 4Runner that authorities said was transferred from the crime scene. The murder occurred on a night of heavy rain, and fingerprints taken were inconclusive, according to a police report. Investigators said Bethune owned a .40-caliber Glock at the time of the killing. It was never found and he said it had been stolen from him, though he did not report it at the time. A bullet casing was never found at the scene, but a piece of a .40-caliber projectile was recovered from a nearby flower bed. License-plate recognition cameras and cellphone records indicated Bethune was in the neighborhood in the hours leading up to the killing, though he initially told authorities he was somewhere else. Ten days after the killing, investigators interviewed the friend he said he was with, and that man was found to have been at work in Golden Meadow when Anderson was shot. U.S. marshals caught another girlfriend of Bethune's picking up an expedited passport for him, and she told them Bethune had said he was being framed. He eluded capture for a few more days but was arrested by New Orleans police in early February 2014. Africa Insight Wake up to the essential with the Editor's picks. Sign up Also receive offers from The Africa Report Also receive offers from The Africa Report's partners SUCCESS ERROR if the people of Biafra want Republic of Biafra, it will be a reality during my administration. ----Donald Trump Donald Trump I wi... The story of Michael Johnson, a gay black wrestler who named himself "Tiger Mandingo" online, was the perfect storm of racism, homophobia, and the outdated HIV-phobia embodied in various laws criminalizing people with the virus for having sex. (Although the number of such laws is decreasing under pressure, they still exist). From almost the beginning of the story in 2013, when Johnson was arrested in his dorm room, through the news last week that he will be paroled in 2019, New York-based journalist Steven Thrasher was virtually the only reporter to push past the prosecution's press releases and talk directly to Johnson and others involved. The reporting, for Buzzfeed, resulted in a strikingly in-depth and complex look at the situation and the racial, sexual, and legal dynamics driving a trial that originally landed Johnson a 30-year sentence. (Here are all the stories, in chronological order: 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 7, 8, 9.) TheBody talked to Thrasher, who is also a doctoral candidate in American Studies at New York University, about his four-year saga of covering Johnson's case and what it says about how we have -- and haven't -- changed when it comes to how we see race, sexuality, and HIV. Tim Murphy: Have you talked to Michael Johnson since the parole (which won't happen for another 18 months) was announced? Steven Thrasher: I've talked to his friend in Indiana whom he's going to be living with when he gets out. She's lined up a part-time job for him in a warehouse; then, she's going to help him get back into school. He actually is not allowed to go to public college for the first year. He's 25 or 26 now. By the time he gets out, he'll have served six years. TM: How did you come onto the story in the first place? ST: My editor Mark Schoofs at Buzzfeed put me on it. He said: "This black kid with HIV is being made out to be a black predator monster and nobody's talked to him. Go to Missouri and talk to him." The initial reporting on the case wasn't reporting at all, but just rewrites of the prosecutor's press releases, which were salacious. You see that happen a lot with legal stories about black, queer, or HIV-positive subjects, but it's also a bigger problem in journalism. TM: What are the big takeaways for you on this story? ST: There are many. The biggest is that it puts HIV laws into the foreground and calls them into question. Many people, myself included, might first think that there could be some rational basis for these laws [that primarily criminalize people with HIV specifically for having sex without disclosing their HIV status to partners]. But it simply isn't true. They're at best ineffective and at worst harmful in terms of increasing HIV stigma and discouraging people from getting tested. The story also shows, just like the story of the police murder of Michael Brown in Ferguson, that people don't have to be "perfect" to rally around. [After receiving an HIV diagnosis, Johnson may or may not have disclosed his HIV status to multiple sex partners before having condomless sex -- that much remains unclear.] Since this story began, the Black Lives Matter (BLM) movement has created a different way of standing up for people. We've had a long tradition from the mid-20th-century civil rights movement forward that people have to be the camera-ready ideal victims to rally around. The Michael Brown story said that all people are worth rallying around, and I feel that way about Michael Johnson. The case is also an early example of thinking about how people are judged in court by their social media presence. [Johnson named himself "Tiger Mandingo" on Instagram and posted numerous pictures of his shirtless, buff body.] I would not want to be judged in court solely for my social media presence. The case focused on interracial sexual desire and how often the responsibility for it is offloaded completely onto black people. The bulk of Michael's accusers were white and, in court, they speak almost entirely in passive language about their own role in the sexual exchange, the way that, historically, white women would be framed as innocent in any sort of sexual exchange they had with black men, saying it was rape. Or it being considered rape even if it were consensual. The case also exposed this perception on the part of many HIV-negative people that the world has to keep them from becoming HIV positive, and all they have to do is ask, "Are you clean?" and that absolves them from having to use a condom or taking any other kind of preventive measure. Actually, everyone needs to work together to try to keep HIV rates down. TM: It's interesting that the story started before the widespread emergence of pre-exposure prophylaxis (PrEP) or even the growing understanding that someone with HIV on meds who is undetectable is also virtually unable to transmit the virus. ST: There was no PrEP in Missouri at the time. But, I'm not sure that it would have made a difference. Michael Johnson probably wouldn't have had access to it. [Even today, PrEP access among gay black men is comparatively low. TM: Also, the campus of Lindenwood University appears to have had little-to-no sexual health or HIV/AIDS prevention resources. Condoms weren't even for sale at the health center. ST: Right. They might not even know about or be offering PrEP today. [I called the university's health center and asked about "getting on PrEP for HIV," and the woman who answered had no idea what I was talking about. So, Thrasher is likely right.] TM: It is an open question, though, whether Johnson clearly told his sex partners that he was HIV positive before they had sex without a condom. Should there have been any legal action against him? ST: I would say no. I don't think law enforcement is an effective or appropriate tool for this issue. But also, the punishment should not have been anything like the original sentence of 30 years, or even the six years he'll end up doing. It was completely out of proportion to what he did. There are shorter sentences in Missouri for murder. In California, the maximum sentence on an HIV criminalization charge is six months. TM: Did you ever ask him why he had unprotected sex when he knew he was HIV positive? ST: I don't think I asked him that. He said on the record in court that he always told his partners. No one will know for sure what he said. He said to me that he never wanted to hurt anyone. When I asked him whether he knew who gave him HIV, he said he couldn't say for sure but that he wouldn't want to because he'd never want what happened to him to happen to anyone else. TM: Do you think the media have gotten better at covering this kind of intersection of race, sex, and HIV since Johnson's story broke? ST: I think coverage on both race and HIV has gotten a lot better. Even just a few years ago, most reporting on anything racial was from an unselfconsciously white perspective. BLM has had a big impact, not just in terms of writing about race but forcing a reflection on the subjectivity, biases, and assumptions of reporters themselves. TM: How do you think HIV coverage has improved? ST: For a long time, the only gay thing that was making news was gay marriage, which doesn't address any number of injustices and challenges that many LGBT people face. But HIV/AIDS brings up sex, drug use, poverty, homelessness, structural racism -- all very difficult things to write about. Coverage has gotten better because editors have given people like me the opportunity to cover this stuff, and BLM has increased the viability of reporters and advocates getting their stories through newsrooms. There's been a consciousness-raising that marriage is not the entire story and that homophobia plays out in other ways in society. Look at Linda Villarosa's New York Times Magazine cover story last summer on HIV rates among gay black men in the South. I also think the [Centers for Disease Control and Prevention] releasing the stat in 2016 that one in two gay black men would get HIV really forced mainstream gay organizations to realize that this was more urgent. I also think the emergence of PrEP has made HIV an issue that's clearer and more compelling for HIV-negative people. TM: What is Michael Johnson like? ST: He's very sweet, very nice, gentle, and simple. He's literal-minded. When I asked him how he got to college, he said, "I took the bus." I've seen him in person a couple times a year the past few years, and he has no ill will toward anyone about this. He's extremely sorry for everything that's happened. He's very smart about exercise and fitness and says he wants to become a personal trainer. I really learned that if there's one thing reporters can do differently, it's to actually talk to all the people involved in a story. TM: What was it like working on the story for you, as a gay black man? ST: It's been hard at times and made me feel vulnerable. I hadn't remembered that the prosecutor turned to the judge and said, "There's a so-called journalist in the room, and I think he has an agenda, and I've asked the court to admonish him." And the judge did. He told me not to talk to the jurors. It was frightening to have the bailiffs with their guns standing there, watching me intently. I felt like I was watching a slow-motion lynching. I never thought Michael was without any responsibility in the situation, but he was still scapegoated by being made to carry responsibility for everyone in those sexual encounters. Watching that unfold, the legal violence of this kid maybe getting sent away for life was difficult. But, if I hadn't reported this story, then "Black Monster Spreads AIDS" is all the reporting that would have happened. My reporting got the interest of the ACLU and Lambda Legal. I kept pointing out how all the national gay organizations would have nothing to do with Michael. But then a group of nearly 100 black gay men wrote an open letter of support to Michael, and some of them started a GoFundMe that raised $25,000 toward the private lawyer that appealed his case on the basis of withheld evidence and got his sentence down to 10 years from 30. And a separate group of HIV public health experts and faith leaders wrote a letter to the prosecutors asking for a more reasonable sentence for Michael that would not destroy his life. And now, he will be out of prison and able to restart his life in his mid-20s. So, overall, despite how the story started, I've felt positive about how it all played out. This transcript has been lightly edited for clarity. From an email message that I received earlier today: Southern Illinois University School of Law is an outstanding, small public law school that provides its students with an optimal mix of theoretical and experiential educational opportunities in a student-centered environment in order to prepare them for a changing legal profession in a global environment. SIU School of Law seeks to fill a full time, 9-month, tenure-track or tenured position in the area of academic support beginning in the 20182019 academic year. Rank & Title: Director of the Academic Success Program Full, Associate, or Assistant Professor of Law. Minimum Qualifications: The Juris Doctor degree or its equivalent from a nationally accredited law school, and an outstanding law school academic record. Factors to be considered in assessing the academic record include: rank in class, selectivity of the J.D. degree (or its equivalent) granting institution, honors received, and other factors relevant to academic performance. To be eligible for appointment at the Full or Associate Professor level, the candidate must have prior law school teaching experience and an established record of scholarship and contributions to the profession commensurate with academic rank at the School of Law. Full or Associate Professor candidates should be able to meet the requirements for promotion and tenure on the faculty of the School of Law. Preferred Qualifications: An advanced degree in education theory or a related discipline or one or more years of experience in a law school academic support program. Experience in student counseling, academic support, bar exam preparation, legal writing and analysis, or remedial teaching is preferred. Duties & Responsibilities: The Director of the Academic Success Program will direct the School of Laws program of academic support, which includes a first-year program of academic success, support for upper level students, and a bar preparation program. The Director will lead the School of Laws Academic Success Program team, which currently includes both a full-time academic support specialist and a full-time bar preparation specialist. The Director will also have responsibility for: (a) teaching at least two classroom courses per academic year to be negotiated with the Dean, (b) research and publication involving legal analysis of a high quality; (c) committee and other service work within the law school; and (d) university and public service. The Directors responsibilities will also include working with the Academic Success Program team to oversee program-led (or program-initiated) study groups, offer workshops, counsel students, monitor student progress through the curriculum, and work with students on an individual basis. The Director will also work with School of Law faculty and administration to analyze academic achievement and bar examination results and develop strategies to maximize academic success and bar passage. The Directors position is a full time, tenured or tenure-track position based on a nine-month contract. Application Deadline: May 11, 2018, or until position is filled. Application Procedure: Applications should be submitted electronically to lawdean@law.siu.edu or by mail to the address below. Electronic applications preferred. A completed application will require a letter of application, a CV, and the contact information for three references. The letter should be addressed to: Prof. Mark Schultz, Chair, Personnel Committee c/o Patty Lynn Southern Illinois University School of Law Mail Code 6804 1150 Douglas Drive Carbondale, Illinois 62901 Share this article Whatsapp Facebook Twitter Linkedin EDITORIAL (The Jakarta Post) Jakarta Tue, April 17, 2018 07:48 1263 2c798a31c212039f000dc5df9cef317b 4 Editorial #Editorial,peace-and-conflict-resolution,Syria,geopolitics,Syria-war,US,Russia,China,international-relations Free United States President Donald Trump, along with his British and French cohorts, has fulfilled his promise to strike Syria over the latest chemical attack against residents in Douma on April 7, sending over 100 cruise missiles to three sites believed to be part of Syrias chemical weapons program. Syrian President Bashar al Assads regime has often been accused of using chemical weapons against his own population, despite being party to the Chemical Weapons Convention since 2013. Less than one year later, Syria destroyed its hoard of declared chemical weapons, as verified by the Organization for the Prohibition of Chemical Weapons (OPCW). Many, however, believe a large cache of undeclared chemical weapons remains. The Wests air strikes, which have aroused international concern, took place on Saturday just as OPCW inspectors arrived in Syria to conduct investigations in Douma. They are expected to investigate the site thoroughly, hopefully determine the culprit(s) and prevent further chemical attacks. Children are the most vulnerable to such attacks, which could have been carried out by the Syrian regime, the rebels or some other party. Both the chemical attack and the controversial Western airstrikes are stark reminders that the world needs a permanent solution, and quickly, to Syrias civil war, an extension of the largely failed Arab Spring against Middle-Eastern authoritarian regimes. We join others in urging the Syrian government not to use any chemical weapons and instead to guarantee its people their basic needs and rights. The civil war, however, is more complex as every faction involved has its own foreign guarantor, making Syria a war of proxies. As Assads regime is supported by Russia and especially Shiite Iran, most Sunni Arab countries have armed various rebel factions to contain Irans growing influence in the Middle East. The West got involved in Syrias civil war as the then powerful Islamic State (IS) movement posed a great danger to the West, expanding rapidly across Syria and neighboring Iraq. Now that IS has largely been neutralized, all concerned parties should be able to focus on restoring peace in Syria and bringing the country back to normalcy, as its people of all political and religious backgrounds have suffered more than enough. Assad needs to prove himself to be the leader of all the nation and not only of the Baath Party; therefore, he needs to listen to the peoples grievances and address them accordingly. As most major powers have a vested interest in Syria, an outsider might be able to bring a new perspective to the peace efforts so refugees can go home safely without fear of reprisal. Despite the complexities, Indonesia could again offer its assistance as an honest broker with no strings attached, given its experience in helping to resolve communal conflicts in Aceh and Poso at home, and overseas in countries such as Myanmar and Cambodia. Share this article Whatsapp Facebook Twitter Linkedin - (The Jakarta Post) Jakarta, Indonesia Wed, April 18, 2018 The Directorate General of Immigration has boosted its supervision over the issuance of passports and flight documents for prospective migrant workers (CTKI). This marks a breakthrough by the directorate in support of the work of the Manpower Ministry and the Agency for the Placement and Protection of Indonesian Migrant Workers (BNP2TKI) to protect CTKI, a program the ministry and the agency started in January 2017. The policy is aimed at strengthening the joint work in the One-door Service (LTSP) program established by the BNP2TKI in cooperation with the administrations of regencies and cities many CTKI hail from. The same activity is also found at the Public Service Mall established by the Ministry of Administrative and Bureaucratic Reform. The mall merges immigration services, especially the issuance of passports, and other services, including those provided by the BNP2TKI, the Health Care and Social Security Agency (BPJS) and the National Police, related to migrant workers. The following strategic policies are in place: Providing protection for prospective migrant workers from human trafficking syndicates by anticipating or intercepting applicants applying for passports for working abroad without following proper recruitment procedures. Immigration Office officials will postpone the issuance of passports for non-procedural CTKI without the knowledge of the Manpower Ministry/BNP2TKI/manpower offices of provinces/regencies/towns. The prospective migrant workers will then be handed over to the local manpower office or BP3TKI in the region. They will be required to fill in documents and complete other recruitment requirements. Protection of CTKI continues after they receive their passports, as they dont have their work visa yet and exploit loopholes arising from the free-visa visit (BVK) policy effective in ASEAN countries, notably to Malaysia; umrah and pilgrimage visa (usually to the Middle East); or internship visa (usually to Japan). . (./.) Immigration officials will postpone the non-procedural prospective migrant workers departure and hold them at the airports Immigration Inspection Office (TPI), at the seaports and at the Cross-Border Posts, like Entikong, Aruk and Nanga Badau in West Kalimantan and Nunukan in North Kalimantan. Next, they will be handed over to the regional manpower office or BP3TKI, where their cases will be followed up according to proper procedures. In 2017, the Directorate General of Immigration took the following actions: Postpone the issuance of 5,960 passports for non-procedural CTKI Postpone the departure of 1,016 non-procedural prospective migrant workers. As of April 2018, the office has performed the following: Postpone the issuance of 1,833 passports for non-procedural CTKI; and Postpone the departure of 71 non-procedural CTKI to other countries. These efforts reflect the concern of the Directorate General of Immigration through its 125 immigration offices across the country for the protection and welfare of the migrant workers. This also clearly demonstrates that the state is there for them prior to their leaving the country. These preventive efforts require synergy and comprehensive cooperation involving various ministries and agencies. The measures should lead to more efforts of enforcing the law and putting a lid on international human trafficking, which many Indonesian migrant workers have fallen victim to. The country needs immigration officials of integrity, who understand the role they play in the protection of human rights to ensure the success of the two actions mentioned above. Prospective migrant workers heading overseas are susceptible to the lure or pressure from human trafficking syndicates. A related crime is the smuggling of migrant workers abroad (people smugling). These efforts to protect prospective migrant workers have helped the Foreign Affairs Ministry, as they contributed to minimizing the number of problems pertaining to Indonesians working abroad throughout 2017. The number of cases has reportedly dropped compared to previous years. The Foreign Affairs Ministry awarded the Directorate General of Immigration with the HASSAN WIRAYUDA AWARD 2017 for the efforts the directorate general made to protect our migrant workers. The ministry acknowledged the efforts by the Directorate General of Immigration to protect the migrant workers and to reduce the number of cases of human trafficking to other countries throughout 2017. Share this article Whatsapp Facebook Twitter Linkedin - (The Jakarta Post) Jakarta, Indonesia Wed, April 18, 2018 Indonesian investment management company PT Samuel Aset Manajemen (SAM) recently hosted the Samuel Exchange Club gathering focusing on the arts and culture, with a discussion on how art connoisseurs and artists can support one another through sound knowledge on arts investment. Held on April 13 at Menara Imperium in Kuningan, South Jakarta, the event was organized in collaboration with painter Hanafi Muhammad, popularly known as Hanafi, as well as literary writer, visual artist and Komunitas Salihar cultural center manager Goenawan Mohamad. The Samuel Exchange Club was part of organizers efforts to promote an upcoming collaborative exhibition by Hanafi and Goenawan called 57 x 76, which will run through June and July in the Indonesian National Gallery in Central Jakarta. The upcoming exhibition will showcase 47 artworks jointly created by Hanafi and Goenawan as part of their 57th and 76th birthdays, respectively, which also inspired the name for the exhibition. The event was joined by artists, art collectors, art enthusiasts as well as financial and business stakeholders. During the discussion, Hanafi and Goenawan explained their inspirations, creative process as well as the latest developments in the contemporary arts and culture scene. SAM decided to cooperate with the artists because it recognizes investment in the arts as a lucrative opportunity, considering the rise of art collectors in Indonesia. Which is why the company, whose main business is managing capital and financial markets, has participated in various arts and cultural events recently. Besides serving as a very personal aesthetical expression, which is not meant to be shared with other people, a certain segment of society also views art as an investment instrument that could be accumulated for future purposes, said SAM president director Agus B. Yanuar. Art investment allows art collectors to support artists by buying their artworks, according to Agus. Therefore, by helping the collectors learn about art investment strategies and setting up a financial platform for the sector, SAM aims to help more artists build sustainable careers, while encouraging more Indonesians to pursue the arts. . (./.) Agus said the discussion also sought to help artists become more financially literate through sound financial planning. A lot of times, artists are very consumptive when they are still at their productive age and at the prime of their careers. By the time they move past their peak, unfortunately, most of them have spent all their money and even have to depend on their friends [to make ends meet], he said. For this reason, SAM frequently organizes financial literacy events among creative workers and artists alike, as well as local art institutions such as galleries and schools. Through their understanding of the importance of financial planning and management, many artists have also decided to invest in SAMs investment products to cover their day-to-day expenses, as well as to prepare for a more prosperous retirement period. . (./.) In its annual Market Outlook activities with customers, where SAM outlines market conditions and investment strategies in line with that particular years financial climate, the company also covers Indonesian cities that are rich in their arts and culture potential, in order to help artists find prospective investors and boost their businesses. After all, SAM considers managing an investment to be an art in itself. In concocting the right portfolio, besides referring to rational and valid investment decision-making methods, a financial planner also has to add an element of art into the work, particularly in terms of being intuitive when it comes to determining the timing, magnitude and main industrial sector for the customer, in alignment with the markets direction and pace. The company sees the art of creating a portfolio as no different from what chefs do in the American television series MasterChef, where each chef is able to pull out distinctive flavors and aromas out of the same ingredients. By combining science and art in investment management, SAM has been able to produce high-performance, top-tier investment products that are sought-after both in Indonesia and abroad. The city of Surakarta in Central Java has welcomed the new Tumurun Private Museum. Owned by the Lukminto family, which is also the proprietor of textile and garment manufacturing company Sritex, the museum houses modern and contemporary art, as well as antique cars. Tumurun Private Museum was opened to the public on April 14 on Jl. Kebangkitan Nasional in Sriwedari, Laweyan, Surakarta. As a private museum, email bookings are required before visits. About a hundred works of modern and contemporary art are on display at the museum. All of the modern art comes from the familys collections, including those created by maestros Affandi, Hendra Gunawan, Srihadi Soedarsono, S. Sudjojono and Basuki Abdullah. Meanwhile, the contemporary side is represented by artwork from the likes of Heri Dono, Rudi Mantofani, Eko Nugroho and Eddie Hara. The museum also houses art installations. The most photographed of them, Floating Eyes by Wedhar Riyadi, is strategically located near the entrance. The installation was previously displayed at ArtJog 2017. All these collections belong to the family, starting from our fathers, the late Lukminto. We built the museum to preserve [his] legacy for future generations, said museum founder Iwan Kurniawan Lukminto. He went on to say that it was not easy to obtain the museum's art. Its not all about the money, he said. For the Lukminto family, it is important for Indonesian art to be better appreciated by more Indonesians. Our artists are as good as international artists, said Iwan. A Heaven's Tale by JA Pramuhendra, charcoal on canvas, displayed at Tumurun Private Museum (JP/Ganug Nugroho Adi) Other notable works in the museum include JA Pramuhendras A Heavens Tale, a black and white painting made with charcoal on canvas. There is also a version of The Last Supper, formed using Javanese letters. The Last Supper by Eddy Susanto, displayed at Tumurun Private Museum (JP/Ganug Nugroho Adi) Read also: Glenstone to become one of America's biggest private art museums A 1928 Dodge and 1948 Dodge Coupe at Tumurun Private Museum (JP/Ganug Nugroho Adi) In addition to the art, classic cars from the familys collection are also on display, including a 1928 Dodge, 1948 Dodge Coupe and 1970 Mercedes Benz S Class. (mut) Ananda Sukarlans parents once suspected he was deaf, when the Indonesian classical pianist and composer was a toddler. I just didnt respond when people called me. They subsequently checked my hearing, only to find out that I still responded to auditory stimulation, the 59-year-old musician told The Jakarta Post in a recent interview. So what was the problem? He turned out to have a hard time to respond to people. As he got a little older, he had difficulties interacting with other people, whose presence made him feel anxious. But his parents could not identify the true reason why their son was a little different to the other kids, who were generally sociable. Around the age of five, my parents took me to a therapist, who first labeled me mentally retarded due my delayed speech, but after I was eventually able to speak, they said I was a normal kid after all, he said, adding that he had been bullied by his schoolmates. Besides having a hard time interacting with people, he said he had found it difficult to pay attention in class, causing his grades in various subjects especially geometry to suffer. My parents couldnt identify what was actually going on with me, he recalled. Read also: Ananda Sukarlan shares his views on social media A 44-year-old mother named Susy was also confused in the past as to what was happening to her son Marcel, who is now 15 years old. He did not respond at all when other people called him and had delayed speech; he also threw some really bad temper tantrums. Also, he had poor language articulation skills as well as poor gross motor skills. Susy told the Post recently. Susi was shocked once to see her son holding a knife upside down, grasping its sharp edge. Thankfully, he did not cut himself. Susy finally gained clarity on her sons condition after taking him to a therapist at the age of three. Her son was diagnosed with Aspergers syndrome, a high-functioning type in the autism spectrum disorder. Ananda had the same condition, but, unlike Marcel, his condition was not diagnosed until he was 28. According to Felicia Ilona Nainggolan, a psychologist working for Jakarta-based psychological services and counseling center Personal Growth, the main symptoms of Aspergers syndrome typically affect two domains of an individuals life: social interaction and communication. These individuals find it difficult to open up to other peoples perspectives and to discern other peoples emotions. They find it hard to look their conversation counterpart in the eye. Due to the inability to express emotions properly, these individuals are prone to temper tantrums, according to Felicia. These tantrums might be triggered by a change in their rigid daily schedules. People with Aspergers dont like to have their rigid routines disrupted. For instance, if they are already used to going straight back home from school at 3 p.m. to watch television, they might snap up if, instead of taking them straight back home after school, you take them to a relatives place, Felicia said. But individuals with the syndrome still have good intellectual capacity, while still being able to take care of themselves by conducting daily activities like eating and bathing independently, something that people with more severe autism find really challenging, Felicia added. Felicia added that early diagnosis was important to help these individuals acquire the abovementioned skills as early as possible, with the assistance of a professional therapist. When you notice that, around age two, your child doesnt possess the skills such as gross motor skills and speech development that others of his age already have, you have to take him to a psychologist or psychiatrist right away, she advised. Felicia said researchers had not discovered definitive risk factors leading to the condition. Some researchers, however, believe that the condition is closely associated with genetic factors, she said. While data on the prevalence of the syndrome in Indonesia are not yet available, it is estimated that an average of four in 1,000 individuals most of them men have the syndrome. To raise awareness on the syndrome, as well as the autism spectrum disorder in general, the United Nations General Assembly in 2007 designated April 2 as World Autism Awareness Day. People with the syndrome have some distinguishing characteristics, including a high interest in and devotion to particular tasks, leading to a neglect of other tasks, Felicia asserted. They might be very interested in talking about highly specific issues such as medieval European history but get bored and instantly turn away from people when the conversation moves to topics besides that particular expertise. Anandas saving grace came when his parents sent him to a piano class. He became obsessed with that instrument as an outlet to express his emotions and connect with other people. He practiced so much that he neglected his homework and even skipped taking a bath. He graduated from senior high schools thanks to private lessons. Marcel, meanwhile, finds great pleasure in cooking and tasting food, making him a junior culinary expert. This is why Susy plans to send him to a vocational cooking school, so her son could earn a living from his passion and expertise. Due to neuroplasticity, their interest and intense focus on a particular task has eventually helped them to grow more neurons in brain areas regulating that function, making them skillful in the thing they are interested in, Felicia explained. If you have a child with Aspergers syndrome, your child is guaranteed to have one special talent. If you havent identified his strong suit yet, you have to be patient and keep looking, Ananda advised. It doesnt have to be academic, Susy explained, arguing that non-academic skills such as Marcels cooking could also help children succeed in life. Susy admitted that she had found it difficult for a few years to identify her sons area of specialty, which could help him earn a living. I was confused as to how to direct him to identify an area hes interested in, Susy said. Susy admitted that this difficulty had frustrated her, but fortunately, she had not given up on it, until a little serendipity revealed the way forward to her and her son. One day, I asked him to join me baking a doughnut. I initially intended to help him refine his gross motor skills through the activity, she said. She was surprised upon discovering that Marcels doughnuts tasted delicious. And the rest was history. I want to be a chef, Marcel said enthusiastically, after he had revealed that his mother would send him to SMK Santa Maria, a vocational tourism school specializing in culinary skills. Still, possessing creative skills alone is not enough to adjust successfully to adult life. According to Felicia, individuals with Aspergers syndrome needed to train their social skills particularly in terms of nonverbal communication and empathy as well. Marcel accomplished this through weekly therapy sessions. Today, Ive learned how to greet a person, how to introduce myself to another person and ask something about a person Ive just met, like whats your name? Marcel, who had just finished his therapy session, told the Post. While regular children might acquire the abovementioned skills through mirroring and modeling adults, children with Aspergers syndrome find that difficult to do due to their relative lack of mirroring skills. Therefore, they require therapy. Ananda, who never went through formal therapy, said he was grateful to his parents, who had always encouraged him to interact with other people when he was young. Im happy with my condition now, because it allows me to make music, making myself and other people happy, he said, concluding the interview. Giving birth standing up, a mother giraffe collapsed with its legs stretched out straight in opposite directions. Somehow, with great difficulty, it managed to stand up again only to collapse again in the same fashion. About 40 veterinarians, biologists and staff members could only watch in helpless horror as the poor giraffe, in unspeakable agony, struggled to hold on to life and died a few hours later. We were all at a loss as to what to do. Fortunately, the baby survived, recalled Indonesia Safari Park director Jansen Manangsang of his heartbreaking, harrowing hours of waiting. He blamed himself for being unprepared to face such an unexpectedly difficult delivery. As the director of the countrys top zoo that also doubles as a conservation institution, Jansen is concerned not only for the animals inside the park, but also for the endemic species found elsewhere across the archipelago. In the Peleonan Forest on Siberut, the largest of the Mentawai islands, Jansen pointed out, there were four endemic primate species: the Mentawai gibbon, also known as bilou; the Siberut macaque; Mentawai langur, also known as joja; and pig-tailed langur, also known as simakobu. They cant be found anywhere else in the world and no zoo has them, he said. About a year ago I sent a team to record and study them. We found, to our dismay, that the islands indigenous tribal hunter gatherers hunt them for food. Yet, we cant blame them. There is no cattle. The nearest village to get cattle meat lies about seven hours away by speedboat. So, they eat monkey to meet their nutritional needs. Latest addition: A baby giraffe poses at Indonesia Safari Park in Bogor, West Java. The giraffe was born in February. (Indonesia Safari Park/File) The 75-year-old conservationist who, as the chairman of the Indonesia Dolphins Forum, has also led a three-week rescue operation to return a marine dolphin that had strayed into a river in Medan, North Sumatra, back to sea. The mammal swam miles up the river towards Pematang Siantar. The rescue operation had to be carried out at night because during the day, the areas along the river are bustling with trading activities, he recalled. Jansen and his team have also successfully helped address human-elephant conflicts arising from the conversion of forests to settlements, farms and oil palm estates that blocked the elephants natural migratory routes. To stop the routine damage to cash crops by elephants in Sumatra, he had the crop raiders captured using morphiometric drugs and relocated to the elephant training center he had established in Way Kambas before the Indonesia Safari Park came into being to be domesticated and trained. Read also: Chicco Jerikho on mission to save Sumatran elephant He was also the man behind the successful staging of elephants during the Indonesian Independence celebration parade around the National Monument and the State Palace in 1990. All the elephants behaved as expected. None of them urinated or defecated during the procession. Otherwise, some heads would roll. At present, his top priority is devising an effective breeding strategy for critically endangered two-horned, hairy Sumatran rhinos at a sanctuary he set up in Way Kambas, Lampung. Only six have thus far been born in the sanctuary in the past 72 years: two at the Indonesia Safari Park, two at Way Kambas, one at the Bali Safari and Marine Park and another one at the Prigen Safari Park, he said. He added that artificial insemination is extremely difficult due to their ancient reproductive organs that require vacuum-tight interconnection during penetration to speed up semen expulsion. A lack of understanding about their reproductive biology and the absense of reliable methods for monitoring their reproductive status were some of the reasons cited in Muhammad Agils 2007 post-graduate dissertation on the reproductive biology of Sumatran rhinos. Jansen, however, attributes their dwindling population in the first instance to a lack of a one-stop well-integrated cross-cutting spatial plan that prevents economic and infrastructure development projects from infringing on rhino trails. Thus, forest removal and the ensuing roads/settlements built across their habitats destroyed their protective natural barriers, making them vulnerable to poaching and extinction. Now that the damage has already been done, zoos that combine money-guzzling conservation programs and money-generating recreation attractions like his safari parks have become instrumental in rescuing wildlife and species survival. Even the World Wide Fund for Nature had abandoned its anti-zoo stance, he said, recalling the case of a female tiger found in the wild with a broken leg that had to be amputated and cared for. Now she has given birth to three cubs. With only three legs, would she survive if released into the wild? Speaking of survival, Jansen recounted how the 1997 Asian economic crisis forced him to rely on foreign meat donations for two years and how the Bali Safari Parks revenues dropped by 70 percent due to Mount Agungs 2017 eruption. Thank God, I didnt have to resort to layoffs nor salary cuts during those hard times, he added. In 2014, as president of the Southeast Asia Zoo Association, Jansen was asked to investigate a case at Surabaya Zoo where a lion found hanging in its cage was reported to have committed suicide. No one could be held responsible because the zoo was not a legal entity. It had no owner, the land belonged to the city, the wildlife belonged to the Environment and Forestry Ministry and those running the zoo were unwilling to register the zoo as a legal entity, he said. Listening to the issues he encountered and the successes he achieved during his 100-minute presentation before a team from the Environment and Forestry Ministry felt like a safari to the nooks and crannies of his mind. Jumping from one topic to another, back and forth in time, the former circus acrobat painted an arresting mosaic echoing Mahatma Gandhis admonition that the greatness of a nation and its moral progress can be judged by the way its animals are treated. The New York Times and The New Yorker won the Pulitzer Prize for public service on Monday for explosive reporting that brought down Harvey Weinstein and spawned a cultural watershed on the issue of sexual harassment. The prestigious prize was awarded to the Times team led by Jodi Kantor and Megan Twohey and New Yorker contributor Ronan Farrow, for reports that disgraced the Hollywood mogul and sparked an avalanche of accusations against other powerful men. Since the Times and New Yorker articles last October, more than 100 women have publicly accused the producer of misconduct ranging from sexual harassment to rape, sparking the #MeToo movement that has seen a string of influential men lose their jobs and reputation. Weinstein's marriage has ended, he has been under police investigation in London, Los Angeles and New York, hit by a litany of civil lawsuits and his former production company has been forced to file for bankruptcy. Farrow, 30, is the son of actress Mia Farrow and film director Woody Allen, and something of a prodigy who has previously fronted his own television show, worked in Afghanistan and Pakistan for late US diplomat Richard Holbrooke, and formerly advised then Hillary Clinton on global youth issues when she was secretary of state. The former Rhodes scholar, who graduated from Yale Law School at just 21, has sided with his sister Dylan's claims that Allen molested her when she was seven. Allen has repeatedly denied the allegations. "So so so proud," tweeted Mia Farrow minutes after her son's award was announced. Ronan Farrow paid tribute to his co-winners and The New Yorker. "This moment gets called a reckoning, but we just started telling the truth about old abuses of power. Thanks to all who keep doing so," he wrote on Twitter to his nearly half a million followers. The 102th edition of the Pulitzer Prizes were announced at Columbia University in New York by administrator Dana Canedy at a time when the US news media still under assault from the White House for peddling "fake news." Canedy praised the winners but also counselled the media to do more to improve trust with a skeptical public and to work harder to include more varied gender and racial perspectives. Read also: In rap milestone, Kendrick Lamar wins Pulitzer for music 'Most trying of times' The Washington Post won the Pulitzer in the investigative category for relentless reporting seen as having influenced the outcome of the 2017 Senate race in Alabama, revealing Republican candidate Roy Moore's alleged past sexual harassment of teenage girls. Moore's opponent Doug Jones won the race last December, becoming Alabama's first Democratic senator in 25 years and dealing a humiliating blow to President Donald Trump's Republican administration. The New York Times and The Washington Post shared the national reporting prize for furthering understanding of Russian interference in the 2016 election, and the connections between Russian actors and the Trump campaign, his transition team and administration, Canedy said. "Winners uphold the highest purpose of a free and independent press even in the most trying of times," she announced. "These courageous, inspiring and committed journalists and their news organizations are undaunted in their mission in support of the fourth estate. "It is a mandate that has been under a seemingly relentless assault of late but that remains central to a healthy democracy," she added. Reuters won the 2018 prize in international reporting for coverage of Philippine President Rodrigo Duterte's war on drugs. Reuters also won in the feature photography category for its coverage of the Rohingya crisis. The prize for breaking news photography went to Ryan Kelly of The Daily Progress for a chilling image that captured the moment of impact by a car at a racially-charged protest in Charlottesville, Virginia that left one woman dead last August. The Pulitzer for fiction went to Andrew Sean Greer for "Less" about growing older and love. The history prize was awarded to "The Gulf: The Making of An American Sea," and the prize in drama for "Cost of Living" by playwright Martyna Majok. North Korea has recently started to introduce state-of-the-art technology for the training of future schoolteachers in a possible world first. At the newly remodeled Pyongyang Teacher Training College, the mostly female students study how to educate kindergartners and primary school children with the aid of virtual reality and 3D display technologies. A group of Kyodo News reporters was granted rare access to the college late last week. In one classroom is installed a large widescreen monitor on which are displayed animated avatars representing primary school pupils. Speaking to the virtual children through a microphone, they respond in a timely manner. When a college student asked one animated pupil on the screen how he is, the boy quickly answered, "I'm very fine," just like a teacher and a child communicating in a real classroom. The training program is apparently powered by artificial intelligence. But sometimes, other college students play the role of primary school pupils in a different classroom so that they can observe teachers' personality and behavior through the eyes of children, the college said. By creating a situation more closely simulating reality, college students can learn how to interact with children more effectively, it said. The college students also utilize projection mapping, in which images are mapped onto 3D objects, and augmented reality, a technology that overlays digital images onto the real world. They can experience the natural environment and get a close look at the lives of wild animals and birds using 3D virtual reality goggles, as well as feel how things change their forms by scooping sand projected on the screen with their hands. Read also: North Korea's 'army of beauties' set to invade South A sphere with projection mapping technology instantly becomes Venus, Earth, Mars and Jupiter, and other planets. College students can visually recognize what the differences between stars are. These cannot be learned from textbooks. The college said it has developed a curriculum that can enable teachers in the making to acquire teaching skills both physically and theoretically, while putting emphasis on North Korea's traditional ways to raise children. "Have you ever seen such a place in other countries?" said Pak Gum Hui, the 44-year-old president of the college. "Our program is globally advanced." In North Korea, there is a tradition that teachers, family and society cooperate to foster children. At the college, therefore, students are required to learn how to educate mothers and to communicate closely with family to shape children's characters. Tapping into advanced technologies, "We are also trying to promote the combination of school education and family education," Pak said. The Pyongyang Teacher Training College, founded in 1968, has around 1,600 students. This year marks the 50th anniversary of its foundation. The number of applicants has increased every year, the college said, adding that the acceptance rate has been about 20 percent in recent years. Nearly 70 percent of kindergarten and primary school teachers are female in North Korea. In February 2017, North Korean leader Kim Jong Un gave instructions to turn the college into a model put on a scientific, information technology and modern basis at a high level and generalize it across the country, according to state-run media. The project for upgrading the college, which has a total floor space of over 24,000 square meters, was concluded in October last year. In January, the leader visited the college and expressed satisfaction at the state of its "ultra-modern education facilities," the Korean Central News Agency reported. Students in North Korea have to complete 12 years of compulsory education prior to college -- one year in kindergarten, five years in primary school, three years in lower secondary school and another three years in higher secondary school. Would-be teachers were seen taking classes with earnest facial expressions. During a break, they were walking with smiles on the campus, saying "hi" to passersby. Aspiring songwriters and professional musicians are invited to create music for the upcoming children's feature film Kulari ke Pantai (I Run to the Beach), with a competition currently underway. To coincide with the June release of Kulari ke Pantai, the Creative Economy Agency (Bekraf) launched the competition together with the production house behind the flick, Miles Films, which is owned by veteran filmmakers Mira Lesmana and Riri Riza. The nationwide competition, which runs until May 15, is a response to a call by President Joko "Jokowi" Widodo to reinvigorate children's music production in the country, which is deemed to have slowed down staggeringly in recent years. "In my meeting with Mira Lesmana and Pak Jokowi some time ago, he insisted that this concerning condition must be addressed immediately. This is Bekraf's initiative to address these concerns," Bekraf head Triawan Munaf said during the launch of the competition in Jakarta on Monday, as quoted in a statement. Read also: Children's film Kulari Ke Pantai to hit theaters in June Director Riri Riza and producer Mira Lesmana (center) pose alongside members of pop-jazz trio RAN - Rayi (left), Nino (second right) and Asta (right) - during the press conference for 'Kulari ke Pantai' (I Run to the Beach) on March 7 in Kemang, South Jakarta. (Miles Films/File) In addition to Triawan, Mira and Riri, the judging panel for the competition includes Kulari ke Pantai music director Aksan Sjuman and pop-jazz trio RAN, who also composed music for the film's soundtrack. Five songs are to be chosen as finalists and will be included in a compilation album inspired by the film. Two of those songs will be chosen as winners, one as the Public Choice and one as the Judges' Choice, with the winning prize totaling Rp 100 million (US$7,260). The winning songs will also be performed live by the main cast of the film at the premiere gala and be turned into music videos. Filming of Kulari Ke Pantai is currently underway. The movie tells the story of Sam (Maisha Kanna) and Happy (Lili Latisha), who are cousins with vastly different personalities. They go on vacation with Uci (Marsha Timothy), Sams mother, and embark on a road trip from Jakarta to Banyuwangi regency in East Java and to Rote Island in East Nusa Tenggara. (liz/kes) The name Aristides Tides Katoppo rose to prominence in international journalism in the 1960s, when his exclusive reports headlined leading newspapers such as Indonesia's Sinar Harapan and The New York Times. In one of his articles, Tides covered the January 1964 visit of then US Attorney General Robert Bob Kennedy to meet president Soekarno in Jakarta. Kennedy brought with him a letter on West Irian from his brother and American president John F. Kennedy. Although Kennedy was accompanied by an entourage of US journalists, Tides was the only journalist who was given access to the American president's letter. To mark his 80th birthday, which actually fell in March, the anthology Tides Masih Mengembara Hadiah Ulang Tahun ke-80 Aristides Katoppo dari Mimis Katoppo (Tides Still Wanders: Aristides Katoppos 80th birthday gift from Mimis Katoppo) was launched on Monday, April 16, at the National Library in Central Jakarta. Edited by writer Eka Budianta, the book contains more than 20 writings on Tides by friends and family. Read also: Indonesian titles in high demand at London Book Fair In "Tamu PPLH yang Pertama" (The Environment Ministers first guest), for instance, former environment minister and senior economist Emil Salim describes Tides as an environmentalist. [] He shook my hand and introduced himself as head of Himpunan Untuk Kelestarian Indonesia (HUKLI) [a community organization for Indonesias sustainability], wrote Emil. I was stunned and became interested in listening to his explanations about his environmental activities. Emil, who spoke at the book launch, commented on the title that, What [we] consider as wanderings are Tidess ideas and mind for developing Indonesia. Sasmiyarsi Mimis Sasmoyo, Tidess wife, explained the reason behind presenting the book to her husband as a birthday gift. Tides is a writer and a journalist, [but] no one seems to remember him. So his wife took the initiative, Mimis told The Post on the sidelines of the event, adding that she wrote the foreword while Eka wrote the closing to the anthology. Eka, who contacted Tides's friends to contribute to the book, expressed his hope that many more books would be written about Aristides. (wng) Share this article Whatsapp Facebook Twitter Linkedin News Desk (The Jakarta Post) Jakarta Tue, April 17, 2018 06:08 1263 2c798a31c212039f000dc5df9cef10b2 4 National EarlyMarriage,#EarlyMarriage,teenagers,South-Sulawesi,#SouthSulawesi,bantaeng Free A 15-year-old boy and 14-year-old girl in Bantaeng, South Sulawesi, have received permission to attend premarital counseling by the regencys Religious Court after they insisted on getting married. The young pair tried to register their marriage at the local Religious Affairs Office (KUA) last week, but were turned down. The legal marriageable age for girls in Indonesia is 16 and 19 for boys. It was the first time I received a marriage application from such a young couple, KUA official Syarif Hidayat said over the weekend as quoted by kompas.com. The teens then appealed to the Religious Court, which exempted them from having to meet the standard marriage requirements. They returned to the KUA with the courts decision and the office could not refuse them this time, Syarif said. He added that he had investigated the teenagers motives for wanting to get married and found they had received no outside influence on the matter. The young couple is now registered to marry and are participating in premarital counseling sessions. No one set them up and she is not pregnant either, Syarif said. The girl said her mother had died a year ago and her father was often away from home for work. She did not want to sleep alone and both were in love, Syarif said. (evi) Share this article Whatsapp Facebook Twitter Linkedin Marguerite Afra Sapiie (The Jakarta Post) Jakarta Tue, April 17 2018 Human rights groups have renewed calls for the Indonesian government to halt, if not abolish, implementation of the death penalty, as a newly released study indicates declining trends on the use of capital punishment globally. An annual report on the death penalty released by Amnesty International last Thursday revealed a global decrease in executions from 2016 to 2017, down by 4 percent, from 1,032 to 993 cases, with Indonesia making slight progress by not executing any death row inmates last year. The number of death sentences recorded globally also decreased by 17 percent, from 3,117 in 2016 to 2,591 in 2017, during which Indonesia sentenced to death 47 convicts, mostly for drug-related crimes, in a slight decline compared to 60 death sentences handed down by Indonesia in 2016. The global declining trends provide an opportunity for Indonesia to review its us... Share this article Whatsapp Facebook Twitter Linkedin News Desk (The Jakarta Post) Jakarta Tue, April 17, 2018 18:43 1263 2c798a31c212039f000dc5df9cf147fe 1 City ahok,basuki-tjahaja-purnama,blasphemy,case-review,Supreme-Court Free Former Jakarta governor Basuki Ahok Tjahaja Purnamas lawyers have yet to receive a copy of the rejection verdict on the case review petition from the Supreme Court four weeks after the verdict was reported by media. We havent got it yet. If I have, I will inform [media], said one of Ahoks lawyers, Josefina Syukur, on Tuesday, as quoted by kompas.com. Ahok filed a case review request to the Supreme Court on April 2 related to his blasphemy case, which had given him a two-year prison sentence. Media reported on the day that the panel of judges, led by justice Artidjo Alkostar, had rejected Ahoks petition on March 26. Days after the verdict, reports emerged about Artidjos connection to radical group Islam Defenders Front (FPI), an organization behind a series of rallies pushing the government to arrest and convict Ahok last year. Artidjo denied the reports. Ahoks other lawyer, Fifi Lety Indra, earlier said it was strange because the lawyers had yet to receive the copy of the verdict weeks after the decision. Fifi had also questioned the Supreme Courts swift ruling, only 19 days after receiving the case dossier from the North Jakarta District Court. She said for other cases, like the murder case that had convicted former Corruption Eradication Commission (KPK) chairman Antasari Azhar, it took 122 days for the court to reject the case review petition. (wnd) Share this article Whatsapp Facebook Twitter Linkedin News Desk (The Jakarta Post) Jakarta Tue, April 17, 2018 21:14 1263 2c798a31c212039f000dc5df9cf1b2ea 1 City Aman-Abdurrahman,Thamrin,bombing Free The alleged mastermind of the 2016 Thamrin suicide bombings in Central Jakarta, Aman Abdurrahman, is the most prominent Islamic State (IS) movement ideologue in Indonesia, an expert witness said on Tuesday. A researcher from the University of Indonesias Center for Terrorism Studies and Social Conflict, Solahudin, told the South Jakarta District Court that Aman was a source of knowledge for terrorist groups affiliated with the IS. The defendant is considered to be the most knowledgeable of IS ideology, Solahudin said during a court hearing. He added that Aman was also known as the author of a book series on tawhid (the oneness of God), which had been used as a guideline for terrorist groups. I began to hear his name in 2003, that there was someone new in jihadist groups, a smart one, Solahudin said as quoted by tempo.co. Aman was previously found guilty of masterminding a bombing in Cimanggis, Depok, West Java, in 2004 along with nine other people. He was sentenced to seven years in prison. He also reportedly grew popular among extremist groups after translating the works of jihadist Abu Muhammad al-Maqdisi. In 2010, Aman faced imprisonment over his alleged involvement in the funding of terrorist group exercises in Aceh. (wnd) Share this article Whatsapp Facebook Twitter Linkedin Fadli (The Jakarta Post) Batam, Riau Islands Tue, April 17, 2018 14:38 1263 2c798a31c212039f000dc5df9cf06555 1 Business Batam,industrial-park,halal-industry,cluster-business-scheme Free Batamindo Industrial Park, the first industrial state on the island of Batam, will host a halal cluster pilot project, one of three halal cluster pilots in the country. The two other host regions are on Java. The halal cluster in Batam will be developed on 18 hectares of land.Batamindo general manager Mook Sooi Wah told The Jakarta Post on Monday that the Industry Ministry and related institutions were still finalizing the concept of the halal cluster industry, but three regions had been selected to host the pilot projects. We are optimistic that investors will be interested in investing in halal products, Mook said, adding that the government would be offering incentives to halal product manufacturers that set up their businesses in the clusters. He said the clusters' tenants would manufacture food and beverage products, as well as cosmetics and medicines. Halal products have good prospects. They are the future of business, said Mook, adding that Batamindo's marketing department had been promoting the halal cluster concept to a number of companies from Thailand, Singapore and Malaysia. We are waiting for the investors' responses. We believe the products have great potential, both in the domestic and international markets, he said. Mook said he had reported the plan to establish a halal cluster to Industry Minister Airlangga Hartarto during his Apr. 13 visit to Batam. The 300-hectare Batamindo Industrial Park has was established jointly in 1990 by private Indonesian and Singaporean companies as the first industrial estate on the island. (bbn) Share this article Whatsapp Facebook Twitter Linkedin News Desk (The Jakarta Post) Jakarta Tue, April 17, 2018 11:43 1263 2c798a31c212039f000dc5df9ceff064 1 City odd-even-license-traffic-policy,toll-road,jakarta,Trafficcontrols,traffic,Traffic-Corps,Greater-Jakarta Free Cars with red license plates, which denote government-owned vehicles, are exempt from the odd-even traffic policy currently on trial at three toll gates in Greater Jakarta, according to National Police Traffic Corps chief Insp. Gen. Royke Lumowa. The Transportation Ministry has been conducting a trial run of the odd-even policy at Tangerang 2, Kunciran, and Cibubur 2 since Monday. The rule is in effect from 6 a.m. to 9 a.m. on weekdays. Under the odd-even policy, cars with even-numbered license plates are allowed to pass through the tollgates on even-numbered dates. The same holds for cars with odd-numbered license plates on odd-numbered dates. If the license plate of a car is red, it could bypass the odd-even policy. If it is still a regular license plate, even with an RF code, then they must follow the policy, Royke said on Tuesday as reported by Tempo, referring to the special license plate code offered to government officials. Royke said this showed that the policy was selective in its implementation. If someone owns a car with a black license plate with an RF code, that means the car is a private vehicle and must follow the rules for private vehicles, he said. On Monday, Greater Jakarta Transportation Body (BPTJ) chief Bambang Prihartono claimed that cars with RF black license plate were exempt from the odd-even policy. However, the next day he announced that the agency agreed with the Traffic Corps decision. (ami) Share this article Whatsapp Facebook Twitter Linkedin Anton Hermansyah (The Jakarta Post) Jakarta Tue, April 17, 2018 18:20 1263 2c798a31c212039f000dc5df9cf139ca 1 Business mortgage,civil-servants,military,police,personnel Free President Joko Jokowi Widodo said on Tuesday that the government would establish a special mortgage scheme for civil servants, military and police personnel. Jokowi said 945,000 civil servants, 275,000 military personnel and 360,000 police personnel were not homeowners. He called on relevant institutions to discuss the concept of the mortgage scheme that would not involve the state budget. I invite the Financial Services Authority [OJK] board of commissioners as well as directors of state-owned banks, region-owned banks and state-owned insurers Asabri and Taspen to make a breakthrough," he said during a meeting at the State Palace in Jakarta. Meanwhile, Bank Rakyat Indonesia (BRI) president director Suprajarto said representatives of those institutions mentioned by the President would discuss the mortgage concept, expected to be ready next month. Bank Mandiri president director Kartika Wirjoatmodjo told The Jakarta Post that the scheme would be categorized as a consumer loan. He, however, said lenders may facilitate customers by lowering monthly installments with extended tenors. "Maybe, the tenor can be extended to 30 years. They can still pay in installments when they retire, he added. (bbn) Share this article Whatsapp Facebook Twitter Linkedin Nurul Fitri Ramadhani and Karina Tehusijarana (The Jakarta Post) Jakarta Tue, April 17, 2018 20:07 1263 2c798a31c212039f000dc5df9cf189e9 1 Politics Facebook,privacy,house-of-representatives Free Members of the House of Representatives Commission I spent five hours questioning representatives of Facebook Indonesia on Tuesday. Lawmakers' questions ranged from privacy concerns and fake news to worries that user information may be misused for electoral purposes. "Im not convinced that Facebook is able to protect our personal data," commission member Evita Nursanty said to Facebook Indonesia public policy lead Ruben Hattari and Facebook Asia Pacific vice president of public policy Simon Miller. Facebook previously announced that more than 1 million Indonesian users had their account information "improperly shared with [political consultancy firm] Cambridge Analytica." "Cambridge Analytica was a political consultant for one of the candidates [in the United States presidential election]. This year we have regional elections and next year we will have presidential elections," Evita said. "How can you convince us that you are neutral, that your information will not be used by a third party?" She went on to criticize Facebook's handling of fake news on its platform. "Facebook does not have a filter for hoaxes, incitement or defamation," she said. "Where is Facebook's accountability for the circulation of these types of news?" Commission member Charles Honoris echoed her concern. "Social media is often used to provoke social unrest. What is Facebook's process for handling hoaxes and hate speech?" he said. "How much does Facebook take down?" Miller said Facebook was pursuing legal action against Cambridge Analytica and acknowledged media reports that the firm had also been involved in elections outside the US. He also said the social media platform had clear policies against content such as hate speech and pornography, which could be reported by users to be taken down. "We have thousands of people working to keep people safe and to ensure we review reports quickly. We receive 3 million reports every week," he said. "We also know that we need to get better." (ahw) Share this article Whatsapp Facebook Twitter Linkedin Karina M. Tehusijarana (The Jakarta Post) Jakarta Tue, April 17, 2018 07:58 1263 2c798a31c212039f000dc5df9cef3c82 1 National pertamina,#BalikpapanOilSpill,Balikpapan-Bay,oil-spill,environment,#environment,#Pertamina Free The Environment and Forestry Ministry has told state-owned oil and gas company PT Pertamina to take responsibility for the restoration of polluted Balikpapan Bay in East Kalimantan, given its role in the recent oil spill that has devastated the local environment. Responsibility for cleaning up the bay and its surroundings is one of the sanctions imposed by the ministry on the firm, Minister Siti Nurbaya Bakar said on Monday. The ministry found that Pertaminas refinery in Balikpapan lacked an early-warning system and had no automated monitoring. Siti said the sanctions would also compel the company to improve its pipeline inspection and prevention systems, which the ministry found to be sub-par. Weve imposed administrative sanctions on Pertaminas RU V [Refinery Unit V], including the restoration of the environment from the pipeline leak, she told lawmakers at the House of Representatives Commission VII overseeing energy and mineral resources and environmental affairs on Monday. [Pertamina] is the permit holder in the area and that is where we see [the responsibility], Siti added. The ministry had previously determined that the spill was caused by a burst undersea pipeline connecting Pertaminas Lawe-Lawe terminal to its refinery in Balikpapan city. The leak on March 31 led to a fire that claimed five lives as well as causing ecological damage regarded as the largest environmental disaster in Indonesia in the past 10 years. Read also: Balikpapan oil spill: What we know and dont know Around 40,000 barrels of crude oil affected 7,000 hectares of the bay. The oil slick also affected about 240 ha of mangrove forests and resulted in the deaths of protected species living in the bay. Pertamina president director Elia Massa Manik said the company was prepared to improve its monitoring systems and had already taken part in a cleanup and environmental-restoration activities in the immediate aftermath of the spill. Besides opening medical posts at eight locations around the area and a public kitchen, the company had allocated Rp 785 billion (US$57.3 million) for a labor-intensive environmental cleanup program involving 5,239 community members, he added. Pertamina refinery director Toharso added that, regardless of who was at fault, the company was ready to pay out compensation for the families of those who died in the fire and for all those who had suffered losses because of the spill. We will ignore for the moment who was wrong and who was right, he said. Based on our sense of social responsibility, we have immediately started the cleanup up process and paid damages. Siti added that the ministry was still conducting its evaluation of the monetary value of the environmental damage from the spill, which would be used in civil proceedings against the responsible parties. If we take Balongan as a benchmark, this is many times that, she said, citing a 2008 oil spill in Balongan district in Indramayu, West Java, which she said resulted in about Rp 100 billion in damages. House Commission VII invited all related parties to the first meeting to discuss the oil spill disaster in Balikpapan on Monday. Meanwhile, East Kalimantan Police special crimes director Sr. Comr. Yustan Alpiani said the investigation was ongoing and awaiting results from comparative analysis of material found on Panama-flagged collier MV Ever Judgers anchor with that from the broken pipeline. We just need those results and testimony from expert witnesses to conclude the investigation and determine a suspect, Yustan said in the meeting. Balikpapan Port master Sanggam Marihot told lawmakers that there was an indication that the Panamanian vessel passing through the area had accidently dropped anchor in a restricted area, dragging the pipeline and causing it to burst. Members of House Commission VII urged the relevant ministries, particularly the Energy and Mineral Resources Ministry, to improve its oversight of Pertaminas other undersea pipelines to avoid such an incident from happening again. Commission VII calls on the Energy and Mineral Resources Ministry to conduct a comprehensive review of all of Pertaminas vital facilities and to carry out periodic monitoring and oversight to ensure that regulations are enforced stringently and correctly, commission chairman Gus Irawan Pasaribu said, reading out the commissions conclusion at the end of the meeting. Deputy Energy and Mineral Resources Minister Arcandra Tahar, who was also present, said the ministry had already acted according to its responsibilities saying that it had sent its oil and gas inspector to the field to conduct an intensive investigation in the area to determine any violations. Share this article Whatsapp Facebook Twitter Linkedin News Desk (The Jakarta Post) Jakarta Tue, April 17, 2018 14:51 1263 2c798a31c212039f000dc5df9cf07265 1 Politics Prabowo-Subianto,2019-presidential-election Free The Prosperous Justice Party (PKS), a traditional coalition partner of the Gerindra Party, has said that it was unlikely that Gerindras presidential nominee, Prabowo Subianto, would run for president in 2019. "I think it is impossible for Prabowo to run [in the 2019 presidential election]," PKS politician Nasir Djamil said as quoted by tempo.co on Monday, claiming that he had the results of an analysis that the candidacy would go to "another person". He said that Prabowo might decide to sit out the election for logistical reasons. Prabowo, who serves as both chairman and chief patron of Gerindra, accepted his nomination last week during a party meeting at his residence in Hambalang, West Java. The opposition leader, however, made it clear that his nomination would depend on the support of coalition partners. Nasir said it was possible that Gen. (ret.) Gatot Nurmantyo, the former Indonesian Military commander (TNI), would replace Prabowo as the partys presidential candidate. Hidayat Nur Wahid, a senior PKS politician, said it remained uncertain whether Prabowo would actually register in August as a presidential candidate. "Prabowo has yet to say, 'I will run for president'," said Hidayat, citing the Gerindra nominee's actual statement on his readiness to run, "''if I am given the mandate'". (afr/ahw) Share this article Whatsapp Facebook Twitter Linkedin News Desk (The Jakarta Post) Jakarta Tue, April 17, 2018 21:39 1263 2c798a31c212039f000dc5df9cf1be52 1 City West-Jakarta,arrest,weapon Free West Jakarta Police arrested 21 men for carrying sharp weapons on an empty plot in Kebon Jeruk after receiving a tip-off from local residents. We arrested them on Monday evening. We still investigate their motives for carrying the weapons, said the polices criminal unit head, Adj. Comr. Sr. Edy Suranta Sitepu, on Tuesday, as quoted by wartakota.tribunnews.com. He added that those arrested had caused fear among local residents. We strongly believe that they want to control the empty land. We are currently investigating the ownership of the land, Edy said. (wnd) Share this article Whatsapp Facebook Twitter Linkedin Moses Ompusunggu and Apriadi Gunawan (The Jakarta Post) Jakarta Tue, April 17, 2018 15:24 1263 2c798a31c212039f000dc5df9cf09687 2 National Education,computer-based-national-examinations,school Free Indonesia is hoping that, by 2019, all schools in the country will hold computer-based national exams (CBT), which officials claim are less prone to cheatinga rampant practice that is believed by many to be a seed of corruption. However, one thing is missing at many schools: computers. When senior high school students nationwide sat their national exams from Monday to Thursday of last week, the Federation of Indonesian Teachers Associations (FSGI) collected reports from its national network and found 29 percent of them were about schools having a minimal number of computers. The condition has forced schools to borrow devices from other schools or even from pupils and parents. How can the schools prepare their students for a digital-oriented, computerized future, or for the era of industrial revolution [...] 4.0 , which the government is currently promoting? asked FSGI deputy secretary-general Satriwan Salim. Implemented for the first time at the national level in 2015, the CBT uses a partially online system in which the central server in Jakarta sends exam materials to school servers. Students taking the exams are served by a local server at each school, which will then submit the answers to the central server online. The government hopes the digital test can end the practice cheating, as the exams are different for each student. The number of students who have taken the CBT has increased considerably, from 170,000 students in 2015 to 6.3 million in 2018, according to Education and Culture Ministry data. However, a FSGI report released on Monday highlighted four state senior high schools that had faced problems over a lack of computers. SMAN 9 state senior high school in Bengkulu city, the capital of Bengkulu province, on the west coast of Sumatra Island, had only 10 computers for the digital exams, FSGI reported, a situation that forced the school to borrow 40 laptops from its students. Elsewhere, at SMAN 6 state senior high school in Mataram, the capital of West Nusa Tenggara (NTB) province, computers were needed for 361 students who sat the digital exams, which were divided into four exam sessions. The school was forced to borrow more than 40 computers from neighboring schools because it only had 80 computers. The North Sumatra branch of the Ombudsman found cases in which schools in the province had no choice but to borrow computers from parents for the exams. Abyadi Siregar, head of the Ombudsman in North Sumatra, said SMAN 13 state senior high school in Medan, the provinces capital, had faced a computer shortage. Abyadi said SMAN 13 needed 200 computers for 557 students taking the exams, which were divided into three sessions. However, Abyadi said, the school only had 26 computers, forcing it to borrow 174 devices from parents. There are also schools that were forced to borrow computers from teachers or students from other schools, he said. According to the FSGI report, teachers claimed that the computer shortage had led to another problem, as the exams were much costlier than paper-based ones. Mustajib, chairman of the Indonesian Teachers Union (SGI) in Mataram, said schools expenditure during the era of paper-based tests related mostly to food and beverages for the exam committee and instructors. For CBTs, he said, schools needed to pay computer technicians, server supervisors and 24-hour security officers to guard the computers, in addition to paying for electricity costs. Share this article Whatsapp Facebook Twitter Linkedin Rita Widiadana (The Jakarta Post) Nusa Dua, Bali Tue, April 17, 2018 15:14 1263 2c798a31c212039f000dc5df9cf087f3 1 National social-change,Nusa-Dua,UN,health-ministry Free The International Social Behavior Change Communication Summit (SBCC) opened at Bali Nusa Dua Conference Center on Monday, attracting more than 1,200 participants from 93 countries. Over the next few days, all of you will have a critical and potentially transformational role in addressing issues ranging from climate change to access to justice, from maternal and child health to violence and discrimination and myriad other challenges that we face globally, said keynote speaker Nahla Valji, senior gender adviser at the United Nations Executive Office of Secretary General. Changes in social structure and human behavior cannot be influenced significantly by chance. They must be approached in an evidence-based strategic way using the best that science and the wisdom of practitioners have to offer. Hence the significance of the SBCC Summit. Read also: Bali and Beyond Travel Fair 2018 to launch end of June in Nusa Dua The Health Ministrys economic advisor Dr. H.M. Subuh delivered remarks on behalf of the Minister Nila F. Moeloek, saying he was aware of the importance of communication in improving peoples lives whether through health, education or poverty reduction. There are so many different issues today that require thoughtful and strategic SBCC approaches, he said, adding that the importance of the SBCC was evident during disease outbreaks such as that of bird flu (H5N1). A consortium of international and local partners including the Johns Hopkins Center for Communication Programs, UNICEF, the Communication Initiative, Soul City Institute and BBC Media Action has organized the summit. Share this article Whatsapp Facebook Twitter Linkedin News Desk (The Jakarta Post) Jakarta Tue, April 17, 2018 19:25 1263 2c798a31c212039f000dc5df9cf15710 1 City Book,procurements,elementary-schools,Depok,corruption Free A corruption watchdog said it had unearthed alleged corruption in the procurement of textbooks at some elementary schools in Depok, West Java, since 2015. Corruption Watch Independent (CWI), an NGO based in Depok, added that the alleged corruption had caused state losses of Rp 4 billion (US$290,000) a year, bringing the total to Rp 12 billion as of last year. CWIs head, Elfatir Lintang, said it had found evidence and reported their findings to the Corruption Eradication Commission (KPK) on April 12. The KPK assured us that it will investigate our evidence because it is valid, Elfatir said on Tuesday, as quoted by wartakota.tribunnews.com. He added that the procurement of textbooks at 267 state elementary schools in the city was free because it was procured through the school operational aid fund. Elfatir said most of the schools allegedly asked the students to buy their textbooks at bookstores. From around 128,000 students, we found that at least 20 percent were asked to buy the textbooks, he alleged. The students parents, he added, paid up to Rp 300,000 for the textbooks. CWI also allegedly found that some schools gave students copies, which they had to pay for as well. Elfatir said it had questioned several schools about the findings and they had blamed the publishers who were late in distributing the textbooks that were also found to have been sold at some bookstores. (wnd) Share this article Whatsapp Facebook Twitter Linkedin Ruslan Sangadji (The Jakarta Post) Palu Tue, April 17, 2018 19:57 1263 2c798a31c212039f000dc5df9cf1763e 1 National poso,weapon,TNI Free Indonesian Militarys (TNI) territorial operation task force in Poso, Central Sulawesi, has confiscated two handmade weapons along with ammunition from a resident of Towu village, Poso regency, Central Sulawesi. The TNI did not reveal the identity of the owner. Tadulako Resort Military Command spokesman Maj. (Inf) Asrar said the task force had received reports from locals about the weapons. After receiving the reports, we immediately went to the location and confiscated the weapons, along with the ammunition, Asrar said on Monday afternoon. The weapons comprised one handmade pistol and one handmade rifle, while the ammunition included seven SS 5.56-millimeter bullets and four Colt 3.8-mm bullets. Poso Military Command commander Lt. Col. (Inf) Dody Triyohadi called on locals to report illegal weapon ownership to relevant authorities immediately. Poso was the center of communal conflict during democratic transition in the late 1990s until the early 2000s. (swd) Share this article Whatsapp Facebook Twitter Linkedin (The Jakarta Post) Jakarta Wed, April 18 2018 The Jakarta Police plan to conduct raids on locations believed to be storing firearms and explosives ahead of Ramadhan, which starts in mid-May. We want to [prevent] cases of violence involving such weapons, police spokesperson Sr. Comr. Argo Yuwono said on Tuesday, as quoted by kompas.com. He added that the raids would be conducted over 15 days, starting on Monday. Some 650 officers will be deployed from Jakarta Police headquarters and subdistrict precincts. They will focus on known manufacturers and sellers of weapons and spare parts, bullets and rubber bullets, as well as the owners of firearms and air guns. These include airports, related workshops and stores, ports and warehouses believed to be storing firearms and chemicals to make explosives. We will also conduct raids on places allegedly used to market those weapons, Argo added. Share this article Whatsapp Facebook Twitter Linkedin Agnes Anya (The Jakarta Post) Jakarta Wed, April 18 2018 Cambodias opposition leader-in-exile is calling on Indonesia to help reestablish his countrys democracy. Sam Rainsy, who currently lives in France after being forced in 2005 to leave his homeland for the fifth time following Cambodian Prime Minister Hun Sens abuse of power, visited Indonesia from Sunday to Wednesday to speak with politicians, activists and members of the media in an attempt to gain much-needed support for his cause. Indonesia has been involved in Cambodia to help bring peace and democracy over the last 30 years, he said during a visit to The Jakarta Post on Tuesday. Now Cambodia is in trouble again, so we turn to Indonesia again to restore democracy. Rainsy, accompanied by his wife Tioulong Saumura, also an exile... Share this article Whatsapp Facebook Twitter Linkedin Hazlin Hassan (The Straits Times) Kuala Lumpur, Malaysia Tue, April 17, 2018 11:34 1263 2c798a31c212039f000dc5df9cefd455 2 SE Asia Malaysia,#Malaysia,ISIS,IS,terrorism,Southeast-Asia Free Malaysian police are hunting for four militants suspected of planning attacks on non-Muslim places of worship, as well as to kidnap and murder police officers. Malaysia's police chief Mohamad Fuzi Harun said in a statement on Monday (April 16) that six members of the Islamic State in Iraq and Syria (ISIS) cell were arrested between Feb 27 and March 1. But four others were still on the run. Police said the men were "dangerous" and "capable of launching attacks that could pose a threat to national security". Clockwise from top left: The suspects listed were named as Muhamad Faizal Muhamad Hanafi, Muhamad Hanafi Yah, both of whom are from Kelantan state, Awae Wae-Eya, a Thai national living in southern Thailand and Nor Farkhan Mohd Isa, whose address was given as being in southern Johor. (Courtesy of Royal Malaysian Police/-) Two of the suspects listed were named as Muhamad Faizal Muhamad Hanafi and Muhamad Hanafi Yah, both from Kelantan state. A third suspect is Nor Farkhan Mohd Isa, whose address was given as being in Taman Ungku Tun Aminah in Skudai, southern Johor. The fourth suspect is Awae Wae-Eya, a Thai national living in Narathiwat province in southern Thailand. "We have been monitoring the cells for the last few months. We are asking the public to share with us if they have any information on the whereabouts of these four suspects. They should approach the police if they know anything," Bukit Aman Special Branch's Counter Terrorism chief Ayob Khan Mydin Pitchay told The Straits Times. Intelligence sources say they believe Awae is the group's mastermind, based on interrogation of the six men arrested, and that he is trying to establish an ISIS cell in southern Thailand. The arrests of the other members of the terror cell, which included two men working as janitors in Singapore, were previously announced on March 24. The plot was uncovered after Malaysian counter-terrorism police, aided by their Singaporean counterparts, detained the terrorists in a series of swoops. The order to kidnap and kill policemen was the first of its kind, according to an intelligence source. The six men who were nabbed earlier included a 37-year-old technician who was initially thought to have masterminded the plans to attack places of worship in Johor Baru. The second suspect, a 49-year-old security guard, was the cell's adviser and responsible for keeping the cell and its plans secret. Also picked up during the raids was a 30-year-old security guard, who was tasked with acquiring firearms from a neighbouring country and scouting for non-Muslim houses of worship to target. Another suspect, a 25-year-old waiter, had been ordered to kidnap and kill policemen. Two others, aged 23 and 22, were arrested on March 1 and worked as janitors in Singapore. One of them acted as the intermediary in the purchase of firearms for the cell, while the other was picked up to facilitate police investigations. A member of the Abu Sayyaf group in the Philippines was also arrested during the police crackdown, in Sabah, on March 15. The 31-year-old man is said to be a trusted lieutenant to Furuji Indama, the group's leader based in Basilan. Believed to have connections to Malaysian militant Mahmud Ahmad, he is also wanted by Philippines authorities for involvement in a kidnap-for-ransom syndicate. He is an expert in making improvised explosive devices and had planned to attack several locations in Sabah. Malaysia has arrested nearly 400 people since 2013 for suspected links to terrorism. The Muslim-majority nation faces threats from self-radicalised ISIS sympathisers at home, and regional militant groups which seek funding and refuge in South-east Asia. Malaysia's only terrorist attack took place in June 2016, when two men on a motorcycle lobbed a grenade into a nightclub in Selangor, injuring eight people. The men were sentenced to 25 years' jail each. Share this article Whatsapp Facebook Twitter Linkedin (Agence France-Presse) Ipoh, Malaysia Tue, April 17, 2018 19:35 1263 2c798a31c212039f000dc5df9cf16563 2 SE Asia Malaysia,election,MH370,shaman Free A Malaysian shaman who drew widespread ridicule by trying to locate flight MH370 using coconuts and a "magic" carpet announced Tuesday he will run in elections next month. Ibrahim Mat Zin -- known by his nickname "Raja Bomoh", which translates as "King of Shamans" -- will contest a parliamentary seat in northern Perak state as an independent candidate. After Malaysia Airlines flight MH370 disappeared in 2014 with 239 people aboard, Ibrahim launched a bizarre attempt to find the jet at Kuala Lumpur International Airport, from where it had set out. He conducted a series of rituals, one involving bamboo binoculars and another using two coconuts and what he described as a magic carpet, which he claimed could weaken the "spirits" that were holding the missing plane. Remember this coconut ? Yes, Raja Bomoh "Datuk" Ibrahim Mat Zin will be announcing his candidacy @ M Roof Hotel in Ipoh tomorrow afternoon. If this is not apocalypse, I dont know what it is. #GE14 #MalaysiaMemilih pic.twitter.com/nFO7NsrHE7 Thasha Jayamanogaran (@Thashaj) April 16, 2018 Despite his best efforts -- and a major multinational search in the Indian Ocean, that was the most expensive in aviation history -- the Boeing jet remains missing. Announcing his candidacy in the city of Ipoh, the 68-year-old recounted how he "just held up two coconuts and became an instant global star. "I am contesting for the sake of the people. I will help the people with financial support from my salary if I win." But he is likely to find as little success in politics as he did in his ill-fated hunt for MH370 -- he is running against Deputy Prime Minister Zahid Hamidi, one of the most powerful figures in government. Following the assassination of North Korean leader Kim Jong Un's brother at Kuala Lumpur airport last year, Ibrahim conducted a ritual on a beach, supposedly to protect Malaysia from any attack launched by Pyongyang. A video is going around of Malaysia's "Raja Bomoh" (King of Shamans) allegedly performing a ritual to safeguard Malaysia from North Korea. pic.twitter.com/sDhke39Dfi Sumisha Naidu (@SumishaCNA) March 12, 2017 Authorities were disturbed enough by his antics to briefly detain him. The May 9 poll will be a tough test for Prime Minister Najib Razak's coalition, which has governed Malaysia for six decades. Najib has been battling allegations huge sums were looted from state fund 1MDB, and also faces a tough challenge from veteran ex-leader Mahathir Mohamad, 92, who is the opposition's prime ministerial candidate. Najib and 1MDB deny any wrongdoing. A few months before the first phase of Essex Crossing makes its debut, theres been a change in one of the big commercial tenants coming to the mega-project. A Florida-based bowling concept, Splitsville Lanes, will be replaced by the Gutter, a home-grown bowling alley. Back in 2015, Delancey Street Associates (the group building Essex Crossing) announced that Splitsville Lanes would be taking 17,000 square feet on the lower level of 242 Broome St. In an interview yesterday, Andrew Katz of the Prusik Group (one of the development partners) explained the reasons for the switch from one operator to another. Splitsville Lanes, selected for the project after a nationwide search, had never done business in New York City. At some point, the owners of the company came to the developers to ask about taking on a partner with local experience. Delancey Street Associates was open to the idea, said Katz. In the process of locating the right NYC-based partner, the development team got to know the owners of the Gutter, which operates bowling alleys in Williamsburg/Greenpoint and Long Island City. Splitsville Lanes ultimately dropped out of Essex Crossing, with the Gutter taking over the Lower East Side space. In the end, it was probably for the best. The Gutter opened on North 14th Street in 2007, cultivating an old school vibe. As the New York Times noted a few years ago, the venue presents itself as a cheaper and lower-key alternative to Brooklyn Bowl, its higher-profile neighbor around the corner. In 2014, Gothamist called the Gutter one of the eight best bowling alleys in the city, praising its elegant, old school lanes, classic bar and vintage decor. The existing locations, said Katz, have a cool, homey feel. That might be a little harder to replicate in a shiny new real estate project on the Lower East Side, but the owners definitely know New York nightlife. The entrance to the Gutter will be on Essex Street. Customers will walk into a 500 square foot lobby leading to the main space in the basement. While there are live bands at the Brooklyn original, Katz said the Lower East Side spot will not be a concert venue (there might be live bands from time-to-time). There will be 12 lanes. Drinks and food will be served (think typical bowling alley grub, not high-end cuisine). The bowling alley is expected to open before the end of this year. We have reached out to co-owner Todd Powers, but havent been able to connect just yet. 242 Broome St. also includes 55 condominium apartments, and a new home for the International Center of Photography (ICP wont open at Essex Crossing until 2019). Theres about 9,000 square feet of ground floor retail space, most of which likely wont be leased until the building is officially opened in the summer/fall. UPDATE 4/17 This morning we talked with Todd Powers, who owns the Gutter with Drew DeWitt. They already have preliminary drawings, and an architect is working on more formal designs. Powers said the idea is to play off the subterranean space, giving it a Mid-America/Mid-Century basement feel. The all-wood lanes, like the Gutters other locations, will be sourced from a shuttered bowling alley (the ones in Brooklyn came from Iowa). The place will still feel homey, said Powers, but it will have a bit more polish than the existing venues. The plan is to serve Neapolitan-style pizza. There will be a full-scale restaurant/kitchen setup. While some live acoustic music is envisioned, the Gutter on the Lower East Side is not meant to be a performance venue. Powers said the build-out will take five or six months once the Department of Buildings signs off on the plans. Hes hoping for a November opening. The jury has been selected for Sheldon Silvers retrial on federal corruption charges. According to the New York Post, the 12-person panel includes a retired flight attendant, a retired teacher and a nurse in Mt. Sinais critical care department. It was a fairly simple process. Judge Valerie Caproni wrapped up jury selection in a single day yesterday. Opening statements, however, wont begin until April 30 because a key witness is dealing with a medical situation. Silver, the former Lower East Side assemblyman, was convicted in a kickback and bribery scheme in 2015. But the verdict was thrown out after the U.S. Supreme Court narrowed the legal definition of public corruption. A lot has changed since the original trial. Yesterday at the federal courthouse in Lower Manhattan the former assembly speakers case was little more than an afterthought. Thats because the media world was consumed by the Michael Cohen-Stormy Daniels Show. A SOAS PhD student has been fighting for almost three years to continue his studies under proper supervision. Having fallen seriously ill in 2015, Andy* took 800 days to return to his studies, incurring between 7,000 and 14,000 in costs. Speaking to TNS, Andy told us the final cost would have to be determined by an arbitrator or a court of law. "Most of the hotel room nights were paid with frequent guest points given by family members. This is because I had used all my savings that I had set aside for school at that point. "Meanwhile, I did not keep receipts for all of the meals over the many trips, this is because I was not planning to ask for reimbursements at the beginning of this process. At the end of the day, my best guess is that the number will fall somewhere in the range of $10,000 and $20,000. most likely on the higher end of the range."Andy was also detained multiple times by the UK Border Authority during this period. No member of staff has faced disciplinary action as suggested by Andy in his complaints and appeal. An email from the university clarified that "the appeals panel did not seek to investigate staff and made no judgements about the conduct of staff. "The finding was simply that the student's concerns about staff conduct in such matters to be referred to HR. The panel also noted that "disciplinary action" itself can, by its very nature, only be pursued against someone employed." The two staff members that Andy believes should face disciplinary action have since resigned and taken up other jobs within the University of London. In an email exchange, staff told Andy that there were no mechanisms in place "for sharing complaints with other institutions." In 2015, Andy was forced to interrupt his studies due to a serious illness while overseas conducting doctoral fieldwork. This forced him to suspend his PhD and go on approved medical leave. He contacted SOAS's doctoral department with the intention to suspend his Tier 4 student visa, organise the re-crediting of the fees previously paid, and to notify the relevant departments of his medical leave. after identity When he was given medical clearance to return in December of 2015, Andy expressed wishes to return to his studies. However, he was unable to enrola member of the doctoral school failed to organise the re-crediting of fees. At the cost of around 1,000, Andy returned to the UK to register in person but was detained and questioned at the border regarding his visa. The Doctoral School Manager had allegedly failed to notify authorities of the medical leave, meaning his visa was curtailed. A secondary detention order was then allegedly placed on Andy for future entry into the UK. Having missed a term in which to enrol, he submitted a formal complaint in April about the handling of his medical leave. "It is bad enough to be so sick that you are hospitalised," Andy said. "You dont need this on top of it. A formal investigation determined that Andy was forced to miss more than six months of time that he could have spent resuming his PhD. This has been attributed to the inability of staff to communicate and organise the re-crediting of fees.In June of 2016, the university contacted him saying that the issues regarding the medical leave paperwork and fee payments were resolved. At this time Andy was contacted by the Information Compliance Manager to ask whether he would consider dropping his formal complaint against the Doctoral School Manager who had failed to establish his medical leave or finalise the reimbursement of his fees. In October, when for the third time that year Andy went to enrol, he was contacted by the Fees Team about his payments. Neither the Doctoral School Manager nor the Information Compliance Manager had notified the Office of the Registrar about the agreed upon reimbursement. This was finally resolved in November and Andy officially resumed his PhD programme through an agreed upon medical accommodation arrangement that permitted him to complete his degree at distance.Immediately, the second set of problems arose when Andy began to notice a failure on the part of his supervisor to meet his obligations under the agreed overseas study plan. From October 2016 to April 2017, only one supervisory meeting was effectively conducted. Afterwards, the supervisor allegedly stopped responding to his correspondence. Andy was again contacted regarding his visa from a different department. The Doctoral School Manager allegedly failed to contact the records management department at the university. Therefore, in April 2017 a second complaint was filed. The complaints cited continual lack of communication and constant delays on top of the inability to uphold the conditions of the agreement regarding supervision.In August 2017, the formal investigation concluded that supervision must be arranged. Financial compensation of 2,000 and a written apology from the director of the university was submitted.However, the investigator did not recommend any disciplinary action for the mismanagement of the medical leave. It was explained to Andy that the Doctoral School Manager and Information Compliance Officer could not be referred for disciplinary action because they had resigned and taken on new positions at the London School of Economics and Kings College London respectively. Action can only be pursued against employed members of staff. The university claimed they had no power by which to hold these staff responsible.At the end of October, Andy filed an official appeal on the grounds that SOAS had failed to implement the recommendations of the investigator. The investigator had failed to follow the salient evidence, and as a consequence, the reports conclusions were manifestly unreasonable. After a series of delays in fixing the date of the appeal, which Andy told us took a serious toll" on his mental health, the appeal was conducted on the 3rd of January 2018. He attended the appeals hearing in person. Arriving in the UK, Andy was detained and again questioned due to the secondary detention order that remained in the system. Prior to arriving, he had explicitly requested a letter explaining his overseas study plan as to prevent further detentions at the border. However, this was allegedly never issued by the university.The decision of the appeals panel was delayed beyond the 40-day deadline in clear violation of the student complaints procedure. "I was watching my life be destroyed by people who dont seem to have my best interest in mind and I had no power to fix it," Andy told us. In late February, Andy notified the Information Compliance Manager that the university was in violation of the 40-day deadline for the delivery of the decision of the appeals panel. The appeals panel determined that the school had failed to provide the student with a viable supervisory arrangement to complete their degree. They, therefore, recommended that the student was provided with a viable internal or external supervisory arrangement within three months, plus an agreed increase in the level of compensation from 2,000 to 5,000 for the distress caused. They also concluded that it was not possible to take disciplinary action against former members of staff but other matters raised would be referred to HR.After being CCd into emails between senior staff members that stated that it was impossible for viable supervision to be arranged, Andy rejected the decisions of the appeals panel on the grounds that they had not acted in good faith.Finally, a third complaint was filed in February of this year. The central claim of the third complaint is the mismanaging of the ongoing complaint and appeal by the Information Compliance Office. Throughout the entire process, the student was told dozens of times, from various staff members, that they were busy, understaffed or in one case that a staff member had only spent one full day in the office this week." The financial costs throughout the years have cost Andy between 7,000 and 14,000. One member of the appeals committee stated that they felt deeply personally embarrassed and suggested that Andy contact the Director of SOAS, Baroness Valerie Amos, which Andy has done so multiple times over the past year. Baroness Amos has allegedly promised to pursue the matter, but Andy has not received any further assurance or evidence to show that she has engaged with the problem. I honestly feel that Baroness Amos should be held personally responsible for my mistreatment at SOAS," Andy told us. "Over the last year, Baroness Amos has been asked multiple times by multiple individuals to intervene in my case. This includes personal appeals from her own senior staff. "Nevertheless, no one has provided me with any evidence that she has done anything to help me. "Baroness Amos bears ultimate responsibility for these failings as the director of the university. I hope that the Board of Trustees will consider her conduct at their next board meeting. The gender pay gap is the difference between men and women's median average hourly earnings. It is not the same as equal pay, which is a legal requirement that men and women doing the exact same jobs are to be paid the same. This means the gender pay gap average will be higher if men occupy most of the higher-paying jobs within their sector. Tackling this is part of the reason behind getting employers to release their gender pay gap figures.Based on these median average salaries, Harper Adams argued that their results was due to "historical issues of gender balance in certain employment sectors". Although, a similar rural specialist institution, the Royal Agriculture University, has a 0% pay gap. York St John university also defended themselves by arguing that their figures were a result of a fifth of their staff being made up of paid student ambassadors, of whom three-quarters were women. As this is a casual job it is low-paid and thus will impact the average, they said. The third worst gender pay gap belongs to the University of Buckingham, with a 37% difference, however, the university acknowledged their result and said they were "strongly committed to removing barriers to equality". Out of the Russell Group universities, Durham, Warwick and Birmingham came out the worst, with gender pay gaps of 29.3%, 23.4% and 23.3% respectively. According to the University of Warwick, because services such as cleaning are handled 'in-house' this consequently distorts the figures due to the fact these are low-paid jobs mostly taken on by women. The national average for universities across England is 18.4%, which essentially means for every 1 men earn per hour a woman earns 81.6 pence. The only university to pay women more than men was the Royal Central School of Speech and Drama, with an average pay gap of 1.9%. Unfortunately, The Content Is Not Here You have arrived at this page because the page or post you were looking for no longer exists. Please check our main navigation pages for other content: Home Page But seriously, to think that the FNs didn't migrate over the Bering Land Bridge is silly. How can that be offensive to anyone when science has proved it? I think they already came. :lol:Canada, France come together on climate-change fightCanada, France promise to double down on climate-change fight amid U.S. inactionThe Canadian PressPrime Minister Justin Trudeau and French President Emmanuel Macron, long billed as kindred political spirits, agreed Monday to a fresh, fortified attack on climate change hoping to keep a shared priority at the forefront of the global agenda despite Donald Trumps decision to quit the battlefield.Environment and Climate Change Minister Catherine McKenna was on hand to sign the new France-Canada partnership on climate and environment in a ceremony at the French presidential palace during the first day of Trudeaus official visit to Paris.France and Canada today pledge to redouble their efforts and increase their co-operation, Trudeau said in French during a news conference with Macron following the ceremony.This initiative will encourage and accelerate the achievement of the Paris Agreement targets through concrete measures to make this agreement in principle a reality.The partnership comes as Macron has taken it upon himself to personally champion the Paris deal since Trump made good on his threat to withdraw from the climate accord last year. Supt Lee Nagbe Chea In Full Military Outfit Reminders of April 12 and Wartime Executions Recent public notices from the Government of President George M Weah through airport authorities that trespassers and suspected looters caught at the secured parameters of the airport will be shot on sight is a grim reminder of our despotic and evil past, many Liberians prefer never to relive again. As we approach another anniversary of the Military Coup of April 12, 1980, the spectacle of several Liberians shot, execution style in the Executive Mansion and around the Capitol City of Monrovia and 13 very prominent Officials of Government lined up and publically executed on a Monrovia beach, looms large in our minds with fears of history being repeated. We are also reminded of war-time executions when many hungry and desperate youths were executed for looting, failure to follow orders or for some other trivial, heartless and baseless reasons that bear no parity to the value of lives that were lost on the war theatre without regards to the sanctity of life, the rule of law or the rights of individual victims without just cause or excuse. Condemnation of Order We vehemently condemn this barbaric shoot to kill order and emphasize that such order embodies a jungle justice mentality, unhealthy for a fledgling democracy in Liberia. This order is a threat to the civil life Liberians voted for in the last October elections and reflects the shifting policy of the Weah Government from a stable, orderly, anti-war and human rights-based, democratic society to the rule of the jungle policy, evidenced by the obviously suspicious composition of President Weahs Government including the unconstitutional and illegal creation of the office of the prime minister, a super minister without calling it that way. Utilizing the military in peace times to enforce laws or regulations with brutality against civilians absent an emergency is illegal, unconstitutional and a violation of the elementary principles of human decency, democracy and controlling international norms, principles, conventions and the rule of laws all civil societies worldwide have sworn to observe. We, assume, without fear of contradiction that those orders were issued under the commanding authority of President Weah who is the Commander-In-Chief of the Armed Forces of Liberia. If not, how did civilian authorities at the airport assume those powers to command elements of the armed forces into action against civilians? If President Weah chooses to villainously shred his powers and authority, he must be compassionately cautious to do so with care and foresight under existing laws and policies, not compromising the due process standards of our laws or sacrificing the rights of Liberian citizens in such a fundamental manner. Notwithstanding, the power of Commander In Chief is a constitutionally vested power and authority that may not be legally delegated under prevailing circumstances and conditions and Mr. President must assume his full authority in that capacity and exercise same as under the Constitution of Liberia. A shoot to kill order questions our commitment to democracy, human rights and the highest premium attached to the value of life. It also raises questions of accountability as to how the order was derived; why was it issued in the first place; and whether it was a measure of last resort, having exhausted all other probable alternatives. The President or his Government owes us, the people, a measure of explanation and accountability on this matter by giving us answers to the questions above, we demand! We can safely assume the President assented and issued this order, but public accountability demands a public explanation under the framework of transparency under the framework of a government accountable to its people. President Weah is the Commander-In-Chief of the Armed Forces of Liberia and we cast responsibility for the issuance of this shoot-to-kill order at the feet of President Weah and therefore encourage the President to rescind, abrogate, countermand the order or cause it to be rescinded because, under such order, the victim will be dead before he or she is given any opportunity to vindicate his name or defend herself as the rule of law principle demands. Creeping Tendencies of Totalitarianism and SLAPP Suits Taylors Agenda Since the beginning of the political season that saw the ascendancy of President Weah to power, we have heard much talk about giving life to the Taylor Agenda. The Taylor Agenda can be nothing more than a return to brute rule, disorganized society and kakistocracy. Attacking the Media We are witnessing the much-unwarranted attacks against the media. Free speech, free media and freedom of association, we remind the government, are major pillars for the maintenance of our stable society, and progressive march to building a strong democracy centered on human rights and the rule of law. We hasten to say that the Report of the Truth and Reconciliation Commission (TRC) identified violations and disrespect of these rights were amongst the root causes of the violent conflicts that led to the useless and destructive Charles Taylor and subsequent wars recently experienced in Liberia. SLAPP SUIT Recent attacks and lawsuit against FrontPage Africa is symptomatic of a government policy intolerant of criticism and critical review of its programs, policies and political actions. This we also vehemently condemn and urge President Weah to please work for a free society and free press and urged the President also to develop a coherent policy on how his Government operatives deal with or handle the press to ensure that the cherished freedom the press now enjoys through much historical pains, toil, sweat, and suffering is never a subject of the slightest encroachment from Government or society at large. The ongoing lawsuit against FrontPage Africa is what civil society activist describes as a SLAPP suit.It is a Strategic Lawsuit Against Public Participation intended to censor, intimidate, and silence critics by burdening them with the cost of a legal defense until they abandon their criticism or opposition Security Harassment Recently, an armed member of the security forces, claiming to be a police officer walked up to a civilian citizen and told him he was under arrest and should follow him to the police station. The concerned citizen asked the police officer to identify himself since he was fully attired in civilian clothing and tell him while he is been arrested in the first place. The so-called police officer refused to neither identify himself nor explain the reason for his so-called arrest. The disguised officer then proceeded to effect a forceful arrest the civilian by fo. He pointed his gun at the civilian in shoot to kill which prompted the concerned citizen into action to safe his precious life and a fight in the public ensued. I heard it was reported to proper authorities but no account/information on that incident is public, to the best of my knowledge and information. Lawmaker enforcing City Ordinance Also recently, an honorable member of the Honorable House of Representatives was seen on the Old Road in the public market attempting to enforce no selling on Sunday ordinance or policy of the City Government of Monrovia. That was an unconstitutional act which forbids a member of one branch of government from exercising the powers, authority or functions of another branch of government. The honorable man, being a member of the legislative branch could not legally exercise the powers, functions, authority of the city government of the Executive Branch of Government. House of Representative Acting without Authority to sell Liberia The Honorable House of Representatives has acted with haste to implement President Weahs top priority policy to change the Liberian constitution to make our brothers and sisters of non-negro descent citizens of Liberia and by extension the right to buy Liberian land resources. This move is done without the indicia of consultation with the people who elected them, their constituencies. Our representative form of government makes public officials, elected or appointed, servants and employees of the people not Lords over them! Elected representatives are elected to represent and foster the wishes, preferred actions and desires of their people and not to project views of their own. How then is it that they have preceded with personal agendas, actions and plans short of consultations with their bosses, the people? This is autocratic and illegal beware ladies and gentlemen! Military/Civilian Governance The governments desire to posture dictatorial tendencies so early in its rule can be more aptly defined in the conduct of the Superintendent of Sinoe County to go to work in full military uniform spreading the fear and intimidation tactics applied around the country to journalists and other peaceful citizens. It is my information that not only the BBC Journalist has fled the Country but Dr Wiles of CARI has also fled for fear of his life due to intimidating and threatening actions of Task Force and vigilantes allied with the Government and the ruling Coalition Political Party. The Honorable Superintendent of Sinoe County is telling Liberians and the World that Liberia is now a semi-military/civilian state. The Government The Government will have to rein these Task Force elements, have them fully regimented and controlled within set policy guidelines that do not infringe fundamental rights and freedoms of peaceful citizens and curb all these creeping tendencies of dictatorship and authoritarianism that detract from reconciliation and threaten our democratic aspirations and way of life. ISSUED BY AUTHORITY THIS 12TH DAY OF APRIL 2018 Signed by: Jerome J. Verdier, Sr (Cllr) FOUNDER AND CHAIRMAN Signed by: Jerome J. Verdier, Sr (Cllr) FOUNDER AND CHAIRMAN TRUE PEACE IS NOT MERELY THE ABSENCE OF WAR, IT IS THE PRESENCE OF JUSTICE Illusion is the virus which has always consumed elements of the bankrupt ruling class, believing that their social economic formula and reign are the last words on history, but time and events have falsified such lousy claim. Instances where they articulated that viewpoint, the rising tide of insoluble contradictions makes the ruling clique disintegrate like a rotten apple which falls from a tree. Today, bankrupt elements of the CDC-led government claim their discredited party will steer the state of ship of the homeland for ages, dismissing any possibilities of a defeat, even boasting that like slave masters they owned the people. Which mean the people will forever remain indifferent to patent misrule, even when their social existence is being extremely undermined. On social media and in the local press, they boldly spew out such bluster, ignoring the law of nature that matter is in constant flux, and contradiction is the basis of all movements and changes in a society. Apparently, the basis of their assumption is hemmed by the fact that although Madame Sirleaf performed poorly, she managed to hold onto power for twelfth years. Who can dismiss such fact? However, what they have not understood is the fact that in history things can repeat itself but in a profoundly higher form. Further, to even argue that certain historical blunders were tolerated by the masses of the people in the erstwhile leadership mean they will be condoned now, is to not be accustomed to historical occurrences in the homeland. To liken the current period to that of the erstwhile administration is to not take into consideration the current objective realities. Obviously, the people tolerated the missteps of the erstwhile administration of Madame Sirleaf because it didnt have a devastating effect on their survival. Or they wanted to give the government a respite having emerged from fourteen years of fratricidal civil crisis. The same people who tolerated William V.S. Tubman for twenty-seven years did not give Tolbert a respite. A simple review of such occurrence will widen the understanding of the elements who boast about being in control of the state for ages. For example, Williams V.S. Tubman was gifted twenty-seven years by the Liberian masses to overturn the economic discard of the state and deliver social transformation. He failed terribly. His rule was characterized by oppression, unbridled corruption, marginalization, and an intolerable inefficiency of the public bureaucracy. With all of those clear blunders, he managed to maintain a stranglehold on a population which was decimated by all vices that stalled their movement to the apex of the economic ladder. Notwithstanding, there were challenges to his misrule, it was not enough to depose himhe governed as president of the republic until his demise. Unlike Tubman, Tolbert became president at a time when the country emerged from rule marked by suppression of democratic debates and attendant clampdown on critical voices, which led to an upsurge in the call for the opening of the democratic space and debate about which direction the nation should take in a Continent faced with struggles to end colonialism. And at the height of those discussions were passionate debates on which economic direction the nation should take. The Tolbert era started with the making of vague political pronouncements and populist rhetoric about a new socio-economic era that impressed those who yearned for a new order after the decadent rule of Tubman. The reactionary old guys of the True Whig Party saw in him an ally who could protect their class interests and continue their domination. But he was not immune from the fact that Liberia was part of an Africa which was experiencing fierce struggle for self-determination and greater freedom, and he wanted Liberia to be part of such process. His quest for change and his refusal to jettison the old guys defined the dilemma which plagued his rule in an era of demand for greater participation and economic transformation. Similarly, the CDC-led government has taken power at a time when the struggle for inclusion has taken a more qualitative leap. This time around the people are not advocating for broader political inclusion but broader economic participation. After years of economic deprivation under the misrule of Sirleaf, Weah has emerged with a dramatic change in recitation and utterances to dazzle those who hope for a better living standard after Sirleaf. Here he is vacillating between two insoluble forces: On one hand, he is dining and winning with discredited officials of the erstwhile administrations of Sirleaf, Taylor, and Doe; on the other hand, he is making political pronouncements, signaling that he is ready for a change. He is unwilling to break with the reactionary and parasitic guys of the erstwhile administrations at the same time trumpeting the change rhetoric. It is this quandary that will define the Weah administration and present him with insoluble choices in an epoch of deafening outcries for broader economic transformation and participation. President Tolbert, like the CDC-led government, pledged to open the space and take the people along with him into history. For a people who were kept on the margins of society, the utterances from the president were taken seriously. Unfortunately, he toyed with the prospect of social transformation while keeping ties with the conservative old brats of the True Whig Party, assuring them everything was on course. He went down in history due to the fact that his pronouncements were taken seriously by those who wanted a change of the economic and social constructs of the republic. In short, the people decided to move into history while he left behind. But bourgeois historians have interpreted history as series of unconnected and loose occurrence, missing the point that historical occurrences are series of connected interplays, which are driven by objectives laws. They would go further and ask the question: But werent the backward army around when Tubman put up a poor showing as president of the republic. Further, they would pin the overthrow of the degenerate oligarchy of the True Whig Party on the Liberian progressives. Obviously, from a cursory look of things, who can argue otherwise? The execution of William David Coleman and his son, the expulsion of D. Twe from the House of Representative, and his forceful exiled to Sierra Leone, the purging of Edwin J. Barclay, the repression of Albert Porte by the state, the persecution of Du Fahnbulleh and so many other contradictions evoked a molecular reaction in various layers of the oppressed class which exploded into a military takeover on April 12, 1980. Suffice this to mean that the backlog from the action of William VS Tubman was sufficient enough to serve as a catalyst for the action of the army. When William R. Tolbert came, the people were interested in practical actions. They wanted change in an instant. The army lived through the era of Tubman when he ruled by iron-fist. In the era of Tolbert, although he scattered rhetoric, it was more about praxis than vague pronouncements. The people were impatient. They wanted to move fast, but Tolbert vacillated between the conservative old guards of the True Whig party and that of the progressive people of the homeland who wanted a speedy transformation. He refused to cut his umbilical cord from the old guys. On the other hand, he schemed to the people who wanted speedy change. He gambled wrongly which made him the loser. Secondly, to argue that the Liberian progressives were responsible for the military takeover on April 12, 1980, is to overlook the objective conditions which gave rise to such option. First, human beings are naturally conservative, and they are uninterested in getting rid of the status quo except in situations of extreme necessity. Second, the Liberian progressive only reported and interpreted the contradictions to the people. They neither created it nor asked the government to be insensitive to the plights of the people. Third, no amount of theorizing, writing, agitation can force any oppressed layer of the society into spontaneous upheaval when it is not prepared to do. One then would ask the question: Arent them the same people and army who waited for twenty-seven years of misrule under Tubman? It is quite simple that the oppressive layers of society only act in history when conditions and circumstances become ripe. Yes, they tolerated Tubman, but they couldnt tolerate Tolbert because history has fast moved, and they were not prepared to wait anymore. Today, after thirty-seven years we are at the same juncture, Weah dangles with the possibilities of economic transformation while at the same time maintaining ties with economic and social parasites who have sucked the republic dried. He assured his Asian friends about his ties with them by declaring, in his first State of the Nation Address, his urgent and most imperative priority is the granting of citizenship and property rights to people of non-Negro descent. This is happening in a country where the people have been pushed on the margins of the economy due to policies of the government that favor foreign capital as opposed to local entrepreneurs. A lot has happened in just three months of the administration. The government seems to be absolutely confused about the road ahead. From the highest office to all the underlings, there is no clear strategy about governance. For a people who are living in grinding poverty amidst an abundance of natural resources in the homeland, continuous hope about the new administration breaking with the cycle of backwardness is a wishful thinking. It is this frustration in the people that will give rise to a social explosion which will have a contagious effect. Like all governments that are confused about governance, this administration is looking over its shoulders to crush perceived enemies as opposed to taking decisive action to alleviate the people from the cesspool of poverty. It is more concerned about the motive behind reportage in the local press in contrast to addressing the imbalances that are making all strata of the social order in the homeland to disintegrate. As a result of this, a crackdown on key media installations in the country is in full cycle reminiscent of the era of the NPFL/NPP. Obviously, the people struggle not because of an abstract concept, but for an improvement in their material conditions. An opportunity to live a better life, for their children to be given an education that will prepare them for the challenges ahead. Even the most loyal peoples the world over have always risen from docility to action for such material improvement. It is against this backdrop that all struggles have been mounted. The gory reality of the republics economic collapse and the attendant bankruptcy of the current administration to shoulder the demands for employment improved living standards and so on show that the conundrums Liberia faces are not unique to a regime. It is now evident that the economic paralysis of Liberia is not because of a single regime, a political party, or a segment of the ruling class. It is an expression of the capitalist organization of the productive forces of the country. Insofar as this system still remains in place, changes at the apex will not result in the change of anything fundamental. As a result of this, a seething discontentment is building up since the Sirleaf-led government, but the bankrupt ruling clique, along with its local lackeys and street urchins, has not grappled with such reality. I see no military incursion, but a more qualitative leap of the struggle will unfold: the spontaneous upheaval of the people into history, or a social revolution which will culminate into a seismic shift of the body politics of the republic. About the Author: Kiadii studies Political Science with an emphasis in Public Administration at the University of Liberia. He is the Secretary-General of the Movement for Social Democratic Alternative (MOSODA). You can reach him through Cell#: +233552176627, or bokiadii@gmail.com. Staffing shortage, COVID-19 costs causing crisis in long-term care Finding a nursing home or assisted-living center is getting harder due to a shortage of facility workers and financial losses suffered amid the COVID-19 pandemic. Posted Tuesday, April 17, 2018 5:04 am Democratic U.S. Congressional candidate Carolyn Long is itching for a chance to debate, though she doesnt feel her Republican competition would be up to the task. When mentioning to the large crowd gathered at Clark College April 12 that it was the 13th town hall meeting she had hosted, the audience broke into applause the first of many. That should not be an applause line, but when we have representatives that dont have town halls, thats why I get the applause, Long remarked, referencing the lack of in-person town halls hosted by her opponent, incumbent Jaime Herrera Beutler, R-Battle Ground. Long, a political science professor at WSU Vancouver for 22 years, spoke about many topics during her April 12 event, covering policy points while also criticizing her opponent on a perceived lack of representation in the district. I am running for Congress because I have been alarmed at the state of our democracy over the last several years, Long said, explaining that although the 2016 election brought division among citizens to light the actual divide had been going on for some time now. Long explained her campaign slogan, People Over Politics, worked against that divide, focusing on constituents needs. As to what policy points could bring voters together she brought up two points in particular. I believe that the most important issue facing us right now is stagnant wages and the lack of family-wage jobs, Long said. She took issue with using the unemployment rate as a barometer for economic health as it didnt take into account whether those jobs could support a family. Other than jobs, Long also talked infrastructure investments as winning bipartisan policy. When Im talking about infrastructure Im talking roads and bridges, not a wall, Long remarked, commenting that what was proposed by the Trump administration was tiny in comparison with what needed to happen. Talk also focused on the Tax Cuts and Jobs Act passed last year, legislation Long did not support. First, lets call it what it is, its a corporate tax giveaway, Long said. I think the fact that it is being sold to us as something that will help us is a fraud. She called the theory of corporations reinvesting their savings into more jobs absolute poppycock, disagreeing with the positive interpretation of the legislation Herrera Beutler has of the bill. Whenever she says the average Washingtonian is going to get x amount of dollars our response should be how does that compare to the billions of dollars that are going to the wealthiest? Long said. Long added that any piece of legislation pushed by only one party would inherently be bad law, pointing to 1986 bipartisan legislation as an alternative. When asked about who was funding her campaign, Long said 83 percent of her donors were individuals from within the district. She was not opposed to financial support from unions, adding that she was able to pay for college through a union job. In terms of corporate money, I havent taken it and I wont take it, either, Long remarked. She added a desire to overturn the Citizens United decision regarding campaign finance, calling it a travesty. Long said that corporate influence had played into voter apathy especially among young voters. I dont think that people who are between 18 and 30 have ever seen a functional government, Long remarked. I think they see this divisiveness, I think they see Congress not getting anything done, and I think they see that money buys politicians. If thats what youve seen all of your adult life, you are going to be less likely to participate in the body politic, Long said. She explained how by running a race which eschewed corporate influence, those disillusioned with politics would be more willing to participate. Gun control was discussed briefly, with Long favoring legislation like universal background checks and banning of modifications like bump stocks as ways to help regulate but not outright ban firearms. I think we have to start with the fact we have to fund the CDC to study this issue as a public health crisis, Long said about national gun violence, referencing a recent lift of a ban on that study though adding the research was not funded. One question would prove pertinent given the next days events, as the then-speculated military intervention in Syria, which came to fruition April 13, was raised. Ive been alarmed over the last several decades at the transfer of power from Congress to the executive branch in the area of foreign affairs, Long said. Apart from attempting to require the president to come to Congress before any military engagement, she would also encourage the president to work with countries to mindfully go about any intervention. I think thats absolutely lacking with (President Trump), Long said. One point of contention among Long critics is her relatively recent move into the district last year, having lived in Oregon most of her life. When asked as to what her defense was to her connection to the district, Long asked for students of hers to stand up, with several across the room doing so. I have taught generations of students at WSU Vancouver, so I have been in the community for 22 years, Long said, adding she had received accolades for fostering civil discourse. When somebody says I havent been a resident they miss the fact that Ive been more involved than any of the three other candidates that are running, Long said. Posted Tuesday, April 17, 2018 4:51 am The Washington State Parks Department is looking for volunteers to participate in a summer internship at the Mount Saint Helens Visitor Center just east of Castle Rock. The visitor center is located five miles east of Interstate 5 off of Exit 49, and roughly 50 miles west of Mount Saint Helens. The State Parks Department is seeking volunteers to work 24-32 hours per week between June 9 and Sept. 1. While start and end dates are flexible, volunteers must be available to work most weekends. Applications are due by Friday, May 4. Interns will be able to gain experience as an Assistant Parks Interpreter while serving a popular visitor destination. Tasks will include providing basic information to visitors on a range of topics including the geology, ecology and history of the area as it pertains to Mount Saint Helens, the local geography, driving directions and nearby attractions. Interns should be willing to head outside as well in order to lead interpretative walks, and able to think creatively in order to help organize additional educational offerings. Qualified applicants must be a recent graduate, a student currently enrolled in a local college or working toward a degree in Natural Resource Sciences, Geology, Ecology, History or a related field. A valid drivers license is required as well as personal transportation. Applications will be accepted by email at Silver.Lake.@parks.wa.gov. Applicants must include a resume and cover letter detailing their interest in the internship opportunity. It is requested that all applications include Summer 2018 Internship in the subject line. A federal background check and fingerprinting is required. Additional information can be found online at parks.state.wa.us/245/Mount-St-Helens, or by calling State Parks interpretive specialist, Alysa Adams, at 360-274-0962. The Mount Saint Helens Visitor Center is located at 3029 Spirit lake Highway, Castle Rock, WA 98611. Posted Tuesday, April 17, 2018 4:58 am By the last day of the 2018 legislative session, Washington State Rep. Brandon Vick, R-Felida, was feeling tired. That was an exhausting 60 days, Vick remarked. He touched on the shift in political majority this session which made some of the Republican caucus policy impossible to get through. On the other hand we won some battles we wanted to win because of the relationships that we have developed over the last several years, Vick added, tempering disappointment with optimism as he spoke to those gathered for a town hall at the Clark County Fire and Rescue administrative building in Ridgefield April 14. Both Vick and fellow 18th District lawmaker Sen. Ann Rivers, R-La Center, had a mixed view on how the session went. Both had concerns with the supplemental budget, specifically withholding money from the rainy day fund. The budgets a problem for me, Vick said, mentioning a $1.8 billion budget surplus he said ended up being spent out entirely with only some going into the states rainy day fund. Putting more of that surplus in the rainy day fund, he said, would be a better place for those funds given the inevitability of a future recession. Sales tax revenues are going to go down and that billion dollars is not going to be waiting for us, Vick said. Apart from putting it in the rainy day fund Vick also mentioned the possibility of giving it back to taxpayers. Vick brought up legislation forcing home-care workers to pay union dues or fees, calling it a victory for the Service Employees International Union who will represent those workers in the state, but not for individuals providing care to family. If youre an independent provider; if you take care of your mentally ill child or a sick parent youve got to be an SEIU member now, Vick said. Rivers also took issue with House Bill 3003, legislation modifying the conditions of a citizen Initiative 940 before a vote of the people could be taken, calling it extraordinarily bad policy, Constitutionally unsound and illegal. The legislation and initiative center around police policy, requiring certain kinds of de-escalation and mental health training while applying a good faith standard to use of force. Rivers reasoned some of the shoddy policy had to do with the sea change of the Senate having a shift to Democrat majority this year. There was an exuberance to get a lot of things done even though not necessarily according to the rule of law, Rivers said. The lawmakers also touched on general concerns of those gathered. They discussed the possibility of tolling along interstates 5 and 205, brought on by recent legislation passed in Oregon providing for value pricing along those interstates in the Portland metropolitan area in hopes of easing congestion. Rivers said she happened to be in Washington, D.C. when Congress voted to remove language U.S. Rep. Jaime Herrera Beutler, R-Battle Ground, had put in preventing proposed tolling. Though that was a defeat, locally she had hopes representation in the Senate would help fight against tolling. The sense that I get is that our federal leaders are concerned about our proposed plan, Rivers said. She added she was hopeful that Sen. Patty Murray could provide help on a national stage. If we can get our federal delegation pulling together, then we are going to be in good shape, Rivers remarked. Vick touched on the possibility of replacement of the aging Interstate 5 bridge as well as additional crossings, saying that much of the work toward those ends isnt legislative at this point, but rather building relationships with Oregon lawmakers to garner support on both sides of the river. Vick mentioned that a bill passed last year to form a committee looking at I-5 bridge replacement options has yet to receive Oregon appointees as interest hasnt been there from those legislators. I think this tolling discussion has really hurt those other discussions, Vick remarked, commenting how any work toward consensus was undermined by the sideshow of possible tolls. Property tax increases also drove the conversation, with worries about supposed decreases for next year not happening dispelled. As a result of the legislatures McCleary fix, in 2017 this year property taxes have increased statewide, sometimes by startling amounts. Rivers herself said she was aghast when seeing how much her own familys increase was. The decrease for 2019 would be a result of capping local school district levies to balance out the increase in state funding that happened this year. Places that were paying comparatively high local levy rates would likely see a net decrease from 2017 taxes, though places like the Seattle area would have higher taxes. Seattle constituents are the least happy, and they are the ones that typically like tax increases, Vick remarked. Rivers added that voter-improved levy raises for other local services like public safety could also result in a higher tax bill this year. Posted Tuesday, April 17, 2018 4:40 am Clark Countys Green Business program will hold a free Morning Blend networking event 8-9 a.m. Thursday, April 19 at The Mighty Bowl, 108 W Eighth St., Vancouver Morning Blend is an opportunity to network, discuss green business efforts at your workplace, and learn about solutions for reducing our impact on the environment. The event will feature a presentation by Mighty Bowl. The Mighty Bowl has been a leader in the Green Business community since 2012, said Sarah Keirns, environmental outreach specialist. This event will be a great opportunity to learn about their vision to bring the community together and demonstrate environmental responsibility. To attend Morning Blend, please register at clarkgreenbiz.com/586/register.html The Green Business program represents a growing community of businesses committed to making a positive impact on the environment. To learn more, visit clarkgreenbiz.com. Clark County Posted Tuesday, April 17, 2018 5:02 am Ridgefields goal of connecting the sides East and West of the railroad running through the city has been postponed with the culprit being a population of protected deer that have made their way outside of the Ridgefield Wildlife Refuge. The Port of Ridgefields railroad overpass project will have to receive an update to its Environmental Impact Statement assessment to account for possible impacts to Columbian white-tailed deer which have drifted from their original home at the refuge. The project will continue Pioneer Street West over the existing railroad line before curving north and connecting with the Mill Street intersection. The deer werent always there. As Port of Ridgefield CEO Brent Grening explained, when the port had initially performed its Environmental Impact Statement, the deer werent near and not even in the refuge. It was in 2012 that the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service relocated a herd of deer to the refuge, years after the Environmental Impact Statement was created. Columbian white-tailed deer were listed as endangered at the time of the relocation, however in 2016 they were downgraded to threatened by the Fish and Wildlife Service. Grening said that at the time of the decision to relocate deer to Ridgefield, the port had told those in charge of the relocation about their project. Fast-forward to March 2018 when word from the Washington State Department of Transportation reached the port that they would have to re-open the Environmental Impact Statement to take into account the deer which, since their transplantation, had spread outside of refuge boundaries. Total impacts are about $35,000 and three to four months, Grening said, adding that those figures were for the limited scope of work they had to do study impacts on just the deer population. The whole environmental assessment is not opened up and we dont have to re-do the whole thing, Grening explained. We just have to put together a piece that addresses Columbia white-tailed deer. Grening couldnt give an exact number on how much it would cost for a full re-do of the assessment but it would be significantly more than $35,000, and it would be a lot more than three or four months. Although Grening anticipates the impact on the population if any would be minimal, there must be an update to the Environmental Impact Statement conducted for the project to move forward. You cant just say it doesnt look to me like it would (have impacts). You got to have experts do it, Grening said. When the Environmental Impact Statement update is complete it will be up to the rail line, Burlington Northern Santa Fe, to approve the final project plans to be built over their rail line, Grening explained. Thats what we are trying to get to, just a full package that we can take to the railroad, get them the review, sign off on it and get to construction, Grening said. What we dont know is how fast that can happen. Grening said projections for the overpass project cost would be about $13 million, though he acknowledged several factors such as materials and labor that could affect that total when it goes out to bid now months down the line. We had really hoped to be out to bid this spring, Grening said. With the new setback he still hoped for bids to go out this year, though that is dependent on the rest of the process going smoothly and no other protected animals make their way into the project area. The (deer) dont see lines on maps, they just kind of do what they do, Grening remarked. Montreal, CA (H4T1V6) Today Periods of rain. Low 16C. Winds light and variable. Chance of rain 100%. Rainfall near a half an inch.. Tonight Periods of rain. Low 11C. Winds light and variable. Chance of rain 100%. Rainfall near a half an inch. The GenderAdvisor will oversee gender mainstreaming into all aspects of the SOCY project.This will include technical and managerial oversight of the gender strategy;leadership of monitoring, learning, and evaluation activities related togender; building the capacity of project staff and other stakeholders in genderintegration; liaising with officials at local government and otherstakeholders; and work planning and management of gender activities. The GenderAdvisor must ensure all activities are conducted within CRS institutionalpolicies and ethical standards and donor requirements, and may be asked torepresent the project in relevant fora, including meetings with projectpartners, donors, and other stakeholders. S/he may also be involved in meetingsand events to present findings to stakeholders and report on projectactivities. S/he will coordinate regularly with partner staff to ensure thatdata is effectively reported, presented and used to improve the projectactivities. The SeniorAdmin/Human Resources Assistant will function under direct supervision of theHuman Resources Officer, Or Admin Officer assisting him/her in personneladministration and other HR related matters, including the process ofrecruitment and appointment of staff, and in the performance management andwelfare issues of staff under area of responsibility (AOR). The incumbentprovides administrative and HR services to all colleagues in UNHCR Ugandaprimarily for Affiliated Workforce (AWF). The services provided includemonitoring of attendance record, arranging medical examinations, participatingin selection process, briefing new arrivals, etc. The incumbent performspersonnel administration tasks including recruitments, separations, contractstimely renewal among others. . The incumbent also liaises with internal andother external entities in obtaining necessary permits, security clearances,etc. The nature of certain administrative/personnel functions requires themaintenance of strict confidentiality and discretion. Deep within President Donald Trumps plan to combat opioid abuse, overshadowed by his call for the death penalty for some drug traffickers, is a push to expand the use of medication to treat addiction. Its a rare instance in which Trump isnt trying roll back Obama administration policies, and where fractious Republicans and Democrats in Congress have come together. Trump declared last month that were making medically assisted treatment more available and affordable, even as Congress was working to approve $1 billion for a new treatment grant program for opioids as part of the massive spending bill to keep the government running. Not to offer such treatment for opioid addiction is like trying to treat an infection without antibiotics, new Health and Human Services Secretary Alex Azar told the National Governors Association earlier this year. Experts have long argued that medication-assisted treatment should be the standard of care for people addicted to heroin and other opioid drugs. But acceptance lags. Cost is a barrier, as are government regulations. Some of the treatment drugs are opioids themselves and theres no consensus on how long patients should remain in treatment. In its final year, the Obama administration pushed through Congress $1 billion for opioid crisis grants to states. Of that, $500 million was to be released last year and the other $500 million this year. States had to show that their opioid programs are based on clinical evidence, so medication-assisted treatment got a big boost. The 2018 spending bill provides another $1 billion. The government is talking about treatment and medication-assisted treatment in a way that the government has never done before, said Tom Hill, vice president of addiction and recovery at the National Council for Behavioral Health, which advocates for mental health and addiction treatment. Overdose deaths from heroin, synthetics like fentanyl, and prescription painkillers, reached 42,000 in 2016, according to the latest statistics. This is being addressed as the illness that it is, said Elinore McCance-Katz, assistant secretary of HHS for mental health and substance abuse. Most definitely the government is acknowledging the disease of addiction as it pertains to opioids and other substances as well but opioids of course are an emergency. Grants are awarded to states based on a variety of factors, including overdose deaths and the number of people who cant find treatment. Vermont has been hard hit by the addiction epidemic and is one of the states that have gotten federal money for medication-assisted treatment. Its central goal is to improve access, according to a report on grant recipients released by the federal Substance Abuse and Mental Health Services Administration. In Massachusetts, the plan is aimed in part on pregnant women and new mothers. Indiana wants to focus on rural residents. A study looking at New England by the nonprofit Institute for Clinical and Economic Review found that every dollar invested in medication treatment would return about $1.80 in savings, when factoring in societys costs from lost productivity and crime. One Vermont physician, Dr. Deborah Richter, says medications have helped her patients, especially when combined with counseling. People got back to what they were before the addiction seized them, she said. As a doctor, it was on a personal level so rewarding to save other mothers children. Skeptics of the government emphasis on medication-assisted treatment say its not a cure-all. Jonathan Goyer, manager of the Anchor recovery program in Pawtucket, Rhode Island, said he sees many patients who dont want to take medication, because they want to be free of drugs altogether. We should be increasing medication-assisted treatment, said Goyer. But we should also be increasing everything else. At the Neil Kennedy Recovery Centers in Youngstown, Ohio, outpatient director Pam Ramsey said her program emphasizes medication as an aid, not as the sole treatment. It really is an assist to the treatment, said Ramsey. Along with medication, treatment incorporates a version of the traditional 12-step approach to quitting, counseling sessions, group meetings, and follow-up. Our goal is still abstinence. Home remodeling contractor Rob Judy said hes wrestled with heroin addiction for more than 20 years. Medication alone did not keep him drug free, nor did a faith-based program. Finally Judy signed up for comprehensive treatment at Neil Kennedy. The medication puts out the fire of active addiction, of having to wake up and use, said Judy. But he says that needs to be followed with counseling, peer support and follow-up care. I believe that addiction is based on and driven by loss, and at the core of it is pain, said Judy. If you dont address those issues, sooner or later youre going to relapse. (AP) Exploited: Many elderly people just cannot get to grips with the internet So many banks, insurers and phone and energy giants don't seem to understand that, try as they might, some elderly people just cannot get to grips with the internet or modern smartphones. Fat-cat bosses at these firms appear equally unable to grasp that many pensioners, quite reasonably, don't want to spend their retirement squinting at a tiny screen. Either financial firms are blind to these realities, or the trend of hammering anyone who isn't online is up there with the most abhorrent money-making ploys around. Many victims have no idea they're being exploited. If you don't use the internet, you might not know British Gas offers periods of free electricity at weekends to online customers. And millions of over-65s without access to comparison sites unwittingly pay hundreds too much for car and home cover. Meanwhile, savers get far better rates online as banks rapidly close branches; people who pay bills by cheque are charged an extra 94 a year; and homeowners without computers are billed for broadband they can't use, because TalkTalk and others no longer offer landline-only deals. The upshot is that basic services are being stripped from the old to pay for phone apps and cheaper prices for the young. This slippery slope ends with elderly people feeling excluded from the Britain they spent their lives building. Financial firms and the watchdogs in charge of them need to stop treating the elderly as a nuisance, and realise they have a duty to look after the men and women who fought and worked for the freedom and prosperity that allowed our top British firms to grow into the giants they are today. Just a few measures from the Financial Conduct Authority or Competition and Markets Authority could make a big difference. For example, an industry-funded shopping-around service for insurance would save the elderly up to 800 million a year, calculations for Money Mail show. All that's needed is a freephone number reserved for the over-70s, and staff to answer and find the best deals. Another idea is banning firms from restricting their top deals to online customers. Yes, internet-only services are cheaper to run, but since when was that enough reason to justify blatant discrimination against the 3.8 million over-65s who are offline? Please send me any suggestions to help the older generation get a fair deal and Money Mail will lobby the powers that be. Sky-high service Tell me if you've had enough, but I do think it's important to keep circulating your tales of top-notch customer service. As well as highlighting trustworthy companies to other readers, it seems to me that dangling the carrot of good publicity in front of firms can only encourage the rip-off merchants to mend their ways. The latest comes from Patricia, from Stoke-on-Trent, who writes: 'I recently returned from Thailand, and on the final leg of the journey, to Manchester Airport, my suitcase was damaged. 'I reported it to the airport and two days later, I received a new suitcase! The company concerned was K2 Global Limited (Maidenhead). Very impressed!' Keep them coming. Resist bank bait An email dropped into my inbox at the weekend titled: 'Dan, what's stopping you?' Could it be from a holiday website that knows I'm hankering after some sun? Or perhaps a shopping website that's seen me browsing for shelves? No it turns out it's from a bank, First Direct, pushing its personal loan. It's hard to disagree that the deal is attractive at a rate of 3 per cent on 15,050 to 30,000. But I've never expressed an interest in getting a personal loan let alone told First Direct. To send emails asking what's 'stopping' me makes it seem like we need an excuse not to get into debt. In reality, you should never borrow cash unless you have a rock-solid reason for needing it. No wonder families in Britain, already 1.58 trillion in the red, keep piling on debt. The banks know full well what they're doing, and are raking in billions by treating the likes of you and me as mugs in their marketing letters and emails. Don't fall for it. d.hyde@dailymail.co.uk WPP could be broken up in an 8billion sell-off as it battles to keep hold of top clients including Ford, Mars and HSBC following the shock resignation of Sir Martin Sorrell. As directors cancelled a dinner planned for last night to focus on crisis talks today, speculation mounted that the sprawling empire that Sorrell created would be dismantled by his successor. Analysts said they expected to see WPPs market research and PR operations sold for more than 5billion while a further 3billion could be raised offloading investments in other companies. The bookmakers choice: Mark Read and Andrew Scott are favourites to succeed Sorrell Todays board meeting was supposed to follow a dinner last night at Annabels, an opulent members-only club in Mayfair, where the menu would have included caviar and wild sea bass. But the event, organised by 73-year-old Sorrell before he quit following a probe into alleged personal misconduct, was cancelled as crisis engulfed the company and the board kicked off a search for his successor. It was not something the chairman had arranged, but something the chief executive had arranged, and hes not here any more, said a source close to the board. Bookmakers last night installed insiders Mark Read, 51, and Andrew Scott, 49, as favourites to succeed Sorrell. They were promoted to joint chief operating officers at the advertising giant following Sorrells weekend departure. Others in the frame are thought to include Sky chief executive Jeremy Darroch and Andrew Robertson, boss of rival ad agency BBDO. Amid talk of a break-up of WPP, Goldman Sachs warned that the next boss also faced a battle to hold on to top clients. Goldman analyst Lisa Yang said: We see a potential risk of disruption to WPPs operations in the near term given Sorrells close involvement in the business for the past 33 years, especially at a critical time when WPP is renegotiating with its largest client Ford and defending a number of accounts including Mars, Jaguar, HSBC, Shell, etc. WPP shares fell 6.5 per cent yesterday, taking losses since March last year to 42 per cent. The departure of Sorrell after 33 years at the helm of WPP brought the curtain down on the career of one of the biggest beasts in British business. Sorrell was for a long time seen as irreplaceable, having transformed WPP from a wire basket maker into a global advertising giant with more than 400 agencies and 200,000 staff. Sir Martin Sorrel: Shock resignation But speculation is mounting that a new boss will sanction the break-up of the firm. Industry experts said as much as 3.5billion could be raised through the sale of the market research business, which includes Kantar. A further 1.8billion could come from the sale of its PR and lobbying operations. And Alex DeGroote, an analyst at Cenkos, said WPP owned large stakes in companies such as Vice Media, Chime Communications and App Nexus that could fetch 3billion. Citi said the new boss faces two choices to start growth, a slow fix that involved sticking to the current strategy or a quick fix involving the break-up. Asset disposals are an easy way for an incoming chief executive to differentiate themselves from the previous regime, said Citi analyst Thomas Singlehurst. We can see the market being quite enamoured of this approach. Ian Whittaker, an analyst at Liberum, said: We think there is a significant possibility that WPP will sell its market research unit and possibly PR but that the rest of the group will be kept. Veteran City commentator David Buik, an analyst at trading firm Core Spreads, said the humbling of Sorrell was very sad after such a brilliant career. And with pressure mounting on WPP to publish the full details of the investigation, former business secretary Sir Vince Cable accused the company of sweeping the claims under the carpet. Primark defied the High Street gloom as it ramped up store openings and grew sales despite not having a shopping website. UK sales from existing stores grew by 3 per cent in the 24 weeks ending March 3, allowing owner Associated British Foods (ABF) to boost the interim dividend by 3 per cent to 11.7p per share. Shares increased 4.1 per cent as the retail and food group said profits at Primark were likely to rise in the second half of the year. Revenues within the division increased by 8 per cent to 3.5billion during the period, while profits were up 6 per cent to 341million. UK sales from existing Primark stores grew 3%in the 24 weeks ending March 3, allowing owner Associated British Foods (ABF) to c boosted the interim dividend 3% to 11.7p per share While high street rivals have struggled, Primark continued to open new shops and is adding 1.2m sq ft of store space during the current financial year. Sofie Willmott, retail analyst at Global Data, said the store had bucked the trend of other firms, which were banking on growth in online, to offset falls on the High Street. 'Primark has demonstrated once again that it does not need a transactional website to thrive in the UK market,' she said. 'At a time where major retailers such as Marks & Spencer, Next and New Look are reviewing their large store portfolios, Primark has continued to open stores.' Helen Merriott, lead retail partner at Ernst & Young, said Primark's success was partly down to the shopping experience that it offered its customers. 'Retailers need to have something they're best at, and what Primark is best at is, as a customer, being able to go in there and spend 20 and come out with a whole bag of clothes. What makes Primark a fun place to shop in is the joy of the hunt.' Unusually warm weather in parts of Europe last year dragged on Primark's overall sales as coats, scarves and gloves proved difficult to shift. Like-for-like sales across the entire Primark business fell 1.5 per cent. Yesterday ABF said the first Primark stores in the US were producing encouraging results, but it needed to learn more about the market before considering a major roll-out. Primark opened its first US store in Boston in 2015 and now trades from eight locations. A ninth will open in Brooklyn, New York, this year and a tenth in Florida in 2019. Analysts see Primark's expansion as the critical driver of AB Foods' prospects and consider the US as a potential game changer. ABF chief executive George Weston said: 'We're quietly encouraged by what we're seeing so far. We continue to learn but it's still very early days.' As expected, ABF's sugar business suffered with significantly lower prices for the commodity in the EU hitting its bottom line. Profits tumbled 30 per cent to 603million, which ABF also attributed to the sale of it US herbs and spices business and China sugar cane operations a year earlier. Across the wider group, which also owns Twinings tea and Kingsmill bread, revenues edged up by 2 per cent to 7.4billion while underlying half-year pre-tax profits rose 1 per cent to 628million. Breakdown service the AA is used to rescuing drivers in distress but now it can even prevent motorists from starting their cars if it believes the vehicle will break down. Chief executive Simon Breakwell revealed how AA engineers had phoned a driver and told them not to start their Audi after the firm's Car Genie device detected problems with its engine. The gadget monitors the vehicles' engines and software, feeding back information from the car to the AA to predict problems such as engine failure and gearbox faults. AA's Car Genie gadget monitors the vehicles' engines and software, feeding back information from the car to the AA to predict problems such as engine failure and gearbox faults It is now being used in about 6,000 cars as a trial and the AA says indications so far are that it has been able to predict about one-third of breakdowns before they happen. It plans to expand the trial to tens of thousands of members this year. Breakwell, 52, said: 'Even if it is just a fraction of that, we have the potential to move the AA from not just being there when you do break down, but trying to prevent you from breaking down in the first place. 'The reason why that is powerful is because when your car does break down it is invariably a total nightmare; you remember vividly when it happened and how upsetting it was. 'So preventing that happening could be a very powerful thing for our members.' He added: 'I was in Oldbury a couple of months ago where we actually called up a member had a little Audi, if I recall and told them not to start their vehicle because there was a problem with their big end [part of the engine]. A genie at the wheel Car Genie is a gadget that drivers plug into a port usually found in the footwell of their vehicle. It gathers information from computer systems inside the car which check the vehicles engine, gearbox and other parts, and diagnoses problems. It sends messages back to the AA, and its software works out what is going on. If a problem is found, it then sends the driver a message via their mobile phone, telling them what needs fixing. In severe cases, AA engineers might also pick up the phone to speak to customers. The device was launched in March 2017. 'So in some cases [it is] messaging members, in some severe cases actually calling a member up and telling them not to start their vehicle. So it's all of those things, diagnoses, all kinds of problems.' The AA says it hopes Car Genie could help it provide scheduled repairs as well as being a breakdown service. The firm was rocked by the departure of executive chairman Bob Mackenzie last year as well as profit warnings, which have prompted a strategic review. Showing signs of recovery, the AA reported a 2 per cent rise in annual revenue to 959million. Roadside assistance revenue was up 5million to 747million, while insurance services rose from 131million to 133million. Profits of 391million were down 3 per cent, partly due to it paying third-party garages to take some roadside assistance calls due to high demand in the summer. Breakwell said it was getting more patrols onto roads, as he recognised members didn't like being picked up by garages. Analysts at Cenkos said devices including Car Genie meant the AA now had a clear technological lead over its rivals. They added: 'It's still early days, but with a strengthened board and management team, the AA's recovery is under way.' The AA is paying a dividend of 5p per share. Its shares have fallen around 60 per cent since last year, but regained 17.4 per cent, or 19.8p, yesterday to close at 133.5p. Yesterday also saw Breakwell back the recovery, splashing out 169,000 on 142,249 shares at an average of 118p per share. It is believed to be his first share purchase since he was appointed as the company's permanent chief executive last September. The share slump has prompted speculation of takeover bids, although none has been disclosed to the market. The founder of online fashion chain Asos has used more than 60million of shares to secure a loan from Credit Suisse. Nick Robertson, 50, who set up the company in 2000 and is a non-executive director, has put up 1m of his own shares. They were worth more than 62million when trading closed last night. Robertson owns just over 5m Asos shares worth 312million. Plans: Nick Robertson, 50, who set up Asos in 2000 and is a non-executive director, has put up 1m of his own shares The deal with Credit Suisse comes two years after he was ordered to hand over 70million to his first wife Janine in one of Britains biggest divorce settlements. His ex-wife, with whom he has two children, had wanted 110million, half his fortune at the time. Robertson, the great-grandson of retailer Austin Reed, married Janine in 2004 but the couple separated in 2013. She kept the 12million family home in London, while Robertson moved in with his former personal assistant, Charlotte Balin, 15 years his junior. They have since married. Asos last night refused to say what the loan with Credit Suisse was for. Sources said it was nothing to do with his divorce. Up to 350 bank branches are set to be axed by Lloyds and Royal Bank of Scotland in a devastating cull. Lloyds has laid bare plans to scrap 1,230 jobs and shut 49 more branches in its latest cost cuts. But the Mail can reveal RBS is also expected to soon announce it will close up to 300 outlets which were once going to be spun off as a separate bank. The closures will affect branches across the country from city high streets to isolated rural areas. Endangered: RBS is expected to soon announce it will close up to 300 outlets which were once going to be spun off as a separate bank Campaigners fear that shopkeepers and vulnerable people will suffer as they are cut off from basic financial services. Mike Cherry of the Federation of Small Businesses said: Withdrawing branches from communities comes with real risks to small firms. 'Without the ability to easily deposit cash, they have to hold more of it on site. That can make them targets for crime. Equally, bank branches are vital to encouraging high street footfall. The Lloyds closures include branches from Keswick in the Lake District to Bovey Tracey in Devon. They will trigger the loss of 1,230 jobs, although Lloyds said it is creating 925 new roles elsewhere an overall loss of 305 roles. They are part of a major shift by the bank as it pushes customers to use the internet because this is far cheaper. Boss Antonio Horta-Osorio has cut around 26,000 jobs since taking charge of Lloyds in 2011, and ditched around a third of its branches to save money. RBS is expected to unveil more closures in a fight to return to normality and begin paying dividends again to shareholders. The Mail understands around 300 old RBS branches in England face the chop, because many are close to existing Natwest branches, part of the same group. They were supposed to be spun off into a new lender, Williams & Glyn, to satisfy competition rules but this no longer has to happen and most are likely to shut. The lender is to pump an extra 2billion into its pension scheme by the end of this year to close its funding gap. This cash will come from the banks reserves, meaning profits will not be affected. Up to 1.5billion more will be handed over from 2020 onwards with RBS putting the same amount into its retirement scheme that it returns to shareholders until this limit is reached. RBS declined to comment on its closure plans. SIYENDLE A bereaved family narrowly cheated death when a petrol bomb was thrown into a house packed with mourners, in the early hours of Saturday. The attack is believed to be linked to the death of a family member, who had lost his life through suspected poisoning during the previous week. Joyce Masilela (58), a neighbour, and 12 other family members had a rude awakening, and further suffered smoke inhalation, when their house at Siyendle was targeted at around 2am on Saturday. The family suspects the attack was an attempt to kill them, by people, who might have had a hand in Masilelas sons death, the weekend prior to the arson attack. Masilela mentioned that her son Nhlanhla Kunene (21) was found sprawled on his bed, from suspected poisoning, following a night out with unknown people. Although his body still had a pulse, he couldnt provide answers to many questions, because at the time when he was discovered, he had lost his speech. The deceaseds mother would not discuss who the people were or what the row between them and her son was about. We have a slight idea, but we have left everything to the police, she said. Masilela said the attack came at a time when family members were mourning and making preparations for the deceaseds burial, which is scheduled for this Sunday. MBABANE The Ministry of Education and Training has set the record straight that April 18, 2018 (tomorrow) is not a public holiday. This follows a memo that was written by the ministry to all schools with regard to the public holidays which have been set aside for the much anticipated 50/50 double celebration. The memo reflected that schools would be closed on April 17, 2018 (today) in respect of the public holidays on April 18 and 19, 2018. Initially, the memo was informing teachers, parents and pupils about the school closing dates for the first term, which had been shifted to today in respect for the upcoming 50/50 double celebrations. The acting Principal Secretary in the Ministry of Education and Training, Dr Sibongile Mtshali, acknowledged the mistake, however, she said the ministry had since set the record straight. We have corrected the dates and the dates (for the holidays) are April 19, 2018 and April 20, 2018, she said briefly when called yesterday. On another note, the Principal Secretary in the Ministry of Home Affairs, Anthony Masilela, urged all companies, businesspeople and the public at large, who made pledges for the celebration, to fulfill their promises before deadline. Seemingly, most Swazis committed to making the occasion a success as they have made their contributions at chiefdom level. Some have made their contributions through their companies and organisations. MBABANE The application to be represented by a lawyer in his disciplinary hearing has been met with resistance from his employer. Royal Swazi Spa Hotel and Casino is opposing the application filed by its Sales Manager Babsy Mavuso, who wants to have an external representative in his disciplinary hearing. Mavuso, who is Chairman of the Swaziland National Youth Council (SNYC), is facing charges of dishonesty and that of allegedly poaching or encouraging one of the hotels employees to leave the company to join the council. In the charge of dishonesty, he is alleged to have attended an SNYC function during working hours while he had allegedly reported that he would be engaged with the hotels sales team. Through his lawyer, Sikhumbuzo Simelane, Mavuso filed an application at the Industrial Court, where he is inter alia praying for an order directing the company to allow him an external representative during the hearing. The company is, however, vigorously opposing his application on the basis that he failed to show exceptional circumstances that he was entitled to be allowed an external representative. In his answering affidavit, Phinley Vilakati, who is the Hotel Manager, averred that the disciplinary hearing currently conducted against Mavuso was an internal process in terms of which he was only entitled to be represented by a fellow employee. Vilakati went on to inform the court that the position occupied by Mavuso was that of sales manager and he had a number of other managers who were of his rank who could represent him. English French OTTAWA, April 16, 2018 (GLOBE NEWSWIRE) -- LIVEWELL FOODS CANADA Inc. ("LW", "LiveWell Foods" or the "Company") welcomes the Honourable Lawrence Cannon to its Board of Directors. Significant support for an ambitious project After receiving support from the City of Ottawa last February for the conversion of its existing 540,000 square foot greenhouse in the Metcalfe area into a cannabis production site, the company, continues solidifying the foundation of its development to become one of the largest greenhouse facilities for cannabis production in the world. This goal is also expressed in the establishment of a world-class research and innovation center in Litchfield, Quebec, for cannabis and hemp cultivation and processing. The arrival of Lawrence Cannon as a member of the Board of Directors is further evidence of the projects quality. It is with great enthusiasm that we welcome Mr. Cannon to our Board of Directors," said Timothy J. McCunn, Co-Founder and Chairman at LiveWell. "His extensive international experience, as well as his knowledge of the functioning of our democratic institutions will undoubtedly be important assets for the company. Lawrence Cannon: a prestigious career The Honourable Lawrence Cannon began his political career in 1985 at the National Assembly of Quebec as Member of Parliament for La Peltrie, a constituency he represented until 1994. He held the position of Minister of Communications from 1990 to 1994 after being successively appointed Parliamentary Secretary to the Minister of External Trade and Technological Development (1985-1988), Minister of Tourism (1988-1989), Deputy House Leader and Deputy Speaker of the National Assembly (1989-1990). Then onto the federal scene, as Minister of Transport, Infrastructure and Communities as well as Minister of Foreign Affairs of Canada, a position he held until spring 2011. Mr. Cannon was Canada's ambassador to France from 2012 to 2017. About LiveWell LiveWell Foods Canada Inc. (Ottawa, Canada) is dedicated to the highest quality standards in delivering cannabis and hemp products. Together with its strategic partner, Canopy Growth Corporation (TSX:WEED) and Canopy Rivers Corporation, LiveWell is retrofitting an existing 540,000 square foot greenhouse facility in Ottawa, Ontario. LiveWell is also constructing a state of the art Global Innovation Centre complete with a Cannabis and Hemp Research & Processing facility and 1 million square foot grow, in Litchfield, Pontiac County, Quebec. Upon completion, the combined will measure 1,540,000 square feet of greenhouse capacity, all built to an unparalleled level of quality assurance, procedures, and testing. The company has established partnerships with leading sector names, with interests and operations abroad. LiveWell also distributes retail and bulk hemp products under the O-Hemp brand and plans to distribute cannabis edibles and infused products. For more information visit www.livewellfoods.ca. On behalf of the Board of Directors, LIVEWELL FOODS CANADA INC. David Rendimonti President Cautionary Statement: Certain statements contained in this press release constitute forward-looking information. These statements relate to future events or future performance. The use of any of the words "plan, could", "intend", "expect", "believe", "will", "projected", "estimated" 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. Actual future results may differ materially. The forward-looking information contained in this press 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 contained herein. This is not an offer for sale, or solicitation of an offer to buy, in the United States or to any U.S. Person (as defined in Regulation S under the U.S. Securities Act of 1933, as amended) of any equity shares or any other securities of the Company. For Media Inquiries Kimothy Walker Communications Advisor (613) 859-3753 info@livewellfoods.ca Lea Manuel (514) 569 7282 [April 17, 2018] ADDING and REPLACING Connect4Learning Closes the Education Gap in Tennessee Add above the boilerplate of release: The Tennessee Department of Education anticipates communicating the full list of state-approved preschool curricula to school districts by May 1, 2018. The corrected release reads: CONNECT4LEARNING CLOSES THE EDUCATION GAP IN TENNESSEE State approves new interdisciplinary pre-K curriculum Connect4Learning, the prekindergarten curriculum, brings a new interdisciplinary approach to Tenn. schools that aligns with the state's standards and supports the Voluntary Pre-K initiative. Rooted in research-led and classroom-tested foundations in literacy, science, social-emotional and math learning, the curriculum weaves together all four domains to ensure that each subject is addressed meaningfully and comprehensively with each child. Most prekindergarten classrooms focus on one or two areas of learning, dedicating an average of 58 seconds to math instruction. Meanwhile, the U.S. continues to fall below other developed countries in literacy, math and science proficiency. This gap is even wider for children living in poverty. Closing that gap begins in preschool. "Math and science are typically neglected in preschool classrooms, which directly impacts children's academic and professional succes later in life," said Laura Bailet, PhD, chief academic officer, Kaplan Early Learning Company. "Connect4Learning changes this reality for the better, bringing children a new approach to learning that builds and nurtures rich connections among all four core domains." Connect4Learning's creative, interdisciplinary approach helps students learn self-regulation, critical thinking, communication and collaboration through learning-center activities, child-centered lessons, hands-on critical-thinking exercises and active engagement with teachers. Students also learn social and personal competencies including self-awareness, self-management, social awareness and relationship skills through group activities, hands-on activities, independent work and child-directed play. "As part of the Voluntary Pre-K initiative, Connect4Learning nurtures students' love and joy of learning, while giving them the school-readiness skills that will set them up for success," said Dr. Bailet. Nationally recognized experts in each core domain-Julie Sarama, PhD; Kimberly Brenneman, PhD; Douglas H. Clements, PhD; Nell K. Duke, EdD; and Mary Louise Hemmeter, PhD-wrote and researched Connect4Learning. The curriculum is divided into six units that address 134 measurable learning objectives and support children's development of ten fundamental cognitive processes. Connect4Learning was developed through funding and support from the National Science Foundation. The curriculum and its components are offered exclusively by Kaplan Early Learning Company. The Tennessee Department of Education anticipates communicating the full list of state-approved preschool curricula to school districts by May 1, 2018. Connect4Learning is an interdisciplinary early childhood prekindergarten curriculum, funded by the National Science Foundation. The curriculum uses research-led and classroom-tested foundations in mathematics, science, literacy and social-emotional development to weave together all four domains of learning to ensure that each subject is addressed meaningfully and comprehensively with each child. Connect4Learning's interdisciplinary approach addresses growing concerns that the majority of preschool instructional time is devoted to literacy at the expense of other content areas, particularly math and science. The curriculum and its components are offered exclusively by Kaplan Early Learning Company. Learn more at www.Connect4Learning.com. View source version on businesswire.com: https://www.businesswire.com/news/home/20180417006163/en/ [ Back To TMCnet.com's Homepage ] [April 17, 2018] GlucoMe and DiaMan Announce the Market Launch of GlucoMe's Digital Diabetes Care Solution in Central America YARKONA, Israel and OSLO, Norway, April 17, 2018 /PRNewswire/ -- Digital diabetes platform provider GlucoMe and Norwegian electronic medical record (EMR) company DiaMan AS announced today the market launch of the GlucoMe digital diabetes care solution in Central America. GlucoMe's solution will initially be introduced in Guatemala, Panama and Dominican Republic, thereafter in, Costa Rica and Nicaragua and then followed by the rest of Central America. Approximately 7 million people or 8 percent of the adult population in the Central American region have diabetes. Under the terms of the accord, GlucoMe will integrate its digital diabetes care solution with DiaMan's diabetes-tailored EMR software. GlucoMe's solution will include its full suite of products including the wireless blood glucose monitor, mobile App and Digital Diabetes Clinic software for healthcare professionals. Through its existing channels, DiaMan will lead distribution throughout Central America. DiaMan expects to reach a total of 70,000 users in two to three years in the Central American countries, working closely with hospitals and other institutions in the region. DiaMan CEO Mr. Ove T. Aasen said, "We are very enthusiastic to partner with GlucoMe in Central America, where there is a huge unmet need for diabetes care and an interest in filling this need using innovative solutions like GlucoMe's. Their platform perfectly complements our diabetes-related electronic medical records solution. The initial response to the GlucoMe solution has been extremely positive. We are already filling the first purchase order and anticipate many more to come." "The agreement with DiaMan is latest step in our world rollout of the GlucoMe digital diabetes management solution. Toay's news follows our introduction of the solution in India in partnership with Apollo Sugar. We are delighted to work with DiaMan and all of our valued partners to help further modernize the treatment of diabetes worldwide," said GlucoMe CEO Mr. Yiftah Ben-Aharon. The GlucoMe solution simplifies diabetes management and lessens the burden of diabetes monitoring for medical teams and patients. It makes it easier for diabetes clinics to provide more efficient and when necessary, immediate care, by enabling digital and/or face-to-face intervention for the right patients at the right time, based on real-time information, timely alerts and continuous communication. GlucoMe's solution helps medical teams treat up to 10X more patients than using standard face-to-face meetings. For patients, it reinforces vital self-care behavior, with less overhead and greater insights. "We are delighted to introduce GlucoMe's digital diabetes care solution to Central America with our valued partner DiaMan. Our services complement each other to fill a vast and clearly unmet need in this region as well as create a win-win situation for all patient, physician and management alike," said Mr. Ofer Asif, EVP Sales & Business Development at GlucoMe. About DiaMan The DiaMan software solution provides health care workers, doctors and other professionals with a fully integrated system for monitoring physically or remotely self-managed patients with diabetes. A complete Medical Record (EMR) developed by DiaMan enables and organizes all data collected by the patient or health professional, keeping the medical records updated at all times. Access to the patient's medical record on the mobile phone or tablet enables ambulatory consultation and quick decision making. www.diaman.net About GlucoMe GlucoMe is a digital health company developing and marketing a comprehensive digital diabetes care solution that streamlines and simplifies diabetes care for patients, caregivers, and medical professionals. The GlucoMe platform includes: affordable wireless blood glucose and insulin pen monitors which uniquely work with audio connectivity, a mobile app compatible with iOS and Android devices, a Digital Diabetes Clinic, which includes a cloud-based diabetes management software for healthcare professionals, a Control Tower, which identifies patients in need of immediate treatment and a DSS, which based on the history of data, recommends patient treatment changes to the medical team. The GlucoMe solution has a CE mark. FDA clearance is anticipated in 2018. Several clinical trials of the platform are ongoing worldwide. www.glucome.com Follow us on LinkedIn and Facebook. Press Contact Marjie Hadad CEO MH Communications On behalf of GlucoMe +972-54-536-5220 marjierhadad@gmail.com View original content:http://www.prnewswire.com/news-releases/glucome-and-diaman-announce-the-market-launch-of-glucomes-digital-diabetes-care-solution-in-central-america-300631102.html SOURCE GlucoMe [ Back To TMCnet.com's Homepage ] [April 16, 2018] Code42 Named as Winner of Two Cyber Defense Magazine InfoSec Awards for 2018 Code42, a leading provider of information security solutions, was named a winner of the Cyber Defense InfoSec Awards for 2018 in the categories of Insider Threat Detection and Endpoint Security. Award recipients were selected by a panel of security professionals, with the goal of recognizing information security innovators and organizations poised to become the next generation of industry leaders. Winners were announced today at the RSA (News - Alert) Conference 2018, where the company is showcasing its new Code42 Forensic File Search product in booth #2013 in the Moscone Center South Expo. RSA takes place in San Francisco, April 16-20. "Ideas are what create corporate value today. Our customers need visibility into their ideas wherever they live or move - whether that be across all of their devices or in the cloud," said Joe Payne, president and chief executive officer of Code42. "We are honored to receive the InfoSec Awards and to be recognized for the innovation we are driving to help our customers succeed." Code42 Forensic File Search is the newest addition to the company's security offering. By delivering near real-time answers to complicated data security questions, the product hlps security professionals dramatically reduce the time it takes to investigate, respond to and recover from data loss incidents, such as data leaks, malware attacks or phishing scams. File metadata and events stored in the cloud enable search results in mere seconds for all files across all endpoints - even when endpoints are offline. Later this year, the company plans to extend this same visibility to data held in cloud applications, including Microsoft OneDrive, Google Drive, Box (News - Alert) and Slack. Code42 was named a winner of the InfoSec Awards after nearly 3,000 companies were reviewed globally by Cyber Defense Magazine. With over 1.2 million annual readers and growing, Cyber Defense Magazine is a premier source of IT Security information. Their mission is to share cutting-edge knowledge, real-world stories and awards on the best ideas, products and services in the information technology industry. For a complete list of Code42 achievements, visit the Honors page on the company's website. About Code42 Code42, a leading provider of information security solutions, secures the ideas of more than 50,000 organizations worldwide, including the most recognized brands in business and education. Because Code42 collects and indexes every version of every file, the company offers security, legal and IT teams total visibility and recovery of data-wherever it lives and moves. With real-time alerts and forensics, these teams can easily detect, investigate and rapidly recover from any data incident, such as ransomware, lost or stolen devices, and insider threats. Supported by a global state-of-the-art cloud infrastructure, the Code42 platform safeguards hundreds of petabytes of data and helps organizations comply with evolving regulatory requirements. Founded in 2001, the company is headquartered in Minneapolis, Minnesota, and backed by Accel Partners, JMI Equity, NEA and Split Rock Partners (News - Alert) . For more information, visit code42.com. View source version on businesswire.com: https://www.businesswire.com/news/home/20180416006190/en/ [ Back To TMCnet.com's Homepage ] [April 16, 2018] CyberVista Exhibiting at RSA 2018 with New Products, and Partnerships, and Sessions SAN FRANCISCO, April 16, 2018 /PRNewswire/ -- CyberVista, a cybersecurity education and workforce development company, is proud to announce participation in the 2018 RSA Conference scheduled for April 16-20 at the Moscone Center in San Francisco, California. Taking advantage of one of the biggest security stages in the world, CyberVista will be announcing new industry partnerships, previewing upcoming cyber programs aimed at professionals from the corporate boardroom to cyber practitioners, and providing leading best-practices in the field of cyber governance and risk management through 5 unique conference sessions. At booth 2240 South, CyberVista will showcase its enterprise wide training solutions that are focused on solving the cybersecurity skills gap. "We're proud to be an active and important participant in RSA Conference 2018 through speaking, exhibiting, and interacting with this powerful community," said Amjed Saffarini, CyberVista's CEO. "As a company focused on solving the skills gap and increasing the talent pool through innovative training solutions, we couldn't be more excited for this year's event." Speaking Sessions Speaker(s) Date & Time Session Title Simone Petrella - Chief Cyberstrategy Officer, CyberVista Paul Orlando University of Southern California 4/17/18 3:30PM 4:15pm The Entrepreneur and the CISO 10 Traits to Drive Success Amjed Saffarini - CEO, CyberVista John Scimone, Dell, Chief Security Officer 4/20/18 9:00AM 9:45am If CISOs are from Mars, is the Rest of the C-Suite from Venus? Amjed Saffarini - CEO, CyberVista Jung Lee - Head of Certification Training Programs, CyberVista 4/20/18 11:30am 12:15pm Business Executive Fundamentals How to Beat the MBAs at their own Game Tyler Cohen Wood - Executive Director, Cyber Workforce Development, CyberVista 4/20/18 11:30am - 12:15pm Implanting Microchips: Innovative Idea or Heading Down a Dangerous Path? Birds of a Feather Amjed Saffarini - CEO, CyberVista 4/19/18 7:00AM Working with Board Committees and the C-suite. Exhibit Hall Located in booth 2240 in the South Hall, CyberVista will highlight its innovative and accessible training platform that enables Smarter Training Wherever You Are. Visitors to the booth can register to win free courses, see sneak previews of new program offerings, and learn about CyberVista's latest partnership announcements with the biggest industry bodies. CyberVista has also partnered with Living Security to bring attendees a Hack the Box experience. Attendees will leverage their foundational and technical security knowledge and skills to beat the puzzle box before the clock runs out for the grand prize of a $1,000 Amazon gift card. Sneak Previews CyberVista will preview two new program offerings at the RSA Conference. Attendees can visit CyberVista's booth, 2240 South, for complete demonstrations and hands-on access to these new programs. Resolve On-Demand - Self-paced cybersecurity risk training for boards and executives: This course, delivered 100% online, allows executives to learn and understand cyber risk so that they can be true advocates to CISOs and security teams. This course, delivered 100% online, allows executives to learn and understand cyber risk so that they can be true advocates to CISOs and security teams. Advance - Workforce development program: Advance is designed to help organizations better define their job roles, assess and support the professional development of their staff, and provide skills-based training in an online platform. These new programs join CyberVista's current catalog of Resolve in-person board and executive training programs and Certify, online certification exam preparation programs. Benefiting from sister company Kaplan, Inc.'s 80 years of teaching and learning science experience, CyberVista's Certify test preparation programs includes CISSP, Security+, CISM and CEH certification training courses. These courses are delivered completely online with tools and techniques that ensure students gain and retain information security knowledge for the long term. About CyberVista CyberVista is a cybersecurity training and workforce development company whose mission is to create a cyber-ready workforce through personalized training programs that provide organizations with the people, knowledge and skills required to defend their most critical assets. With parent Graham Holdings Company and sister company Kaplan, Inc.'s innovative education technologies and personalized approach to learning, CyberVista offers a new vision for board, executive, and workforce cybersecurity education. For more information, visit www.cybervista.net. About Living Security Living Security reduces the #1 security risk for enterprises, human error, through immersive and intelligence-driven security awareness training solutions. By providing transparency in to the human risk state, engaging employees with security, and training and reinforcing material in the way people learn best, we transform employees in to the greatest security asset. We currently offer an in person training experience, The Living Security Escape Room, and will be releasing our digital Cyber Escape training platform in October 2018. View original content:http://www.prnewswire.com/news-releases/cybervista-exhibiting-at-rsa-2018-with-new-products-and-partnerships-and-sessions-300630208.html SOURCE CyberVista [ Back To TMCnet.com's Homepage ] [April 16, 2018] RSA Conference 2018 Exhibitor Profiles RSA Conference 2018, the world's leading information and cyber security event, takes place 16 - 20 April, 2018 in San Francisco. Please note the following important information. #RSAC Exhibitor News and Press Kits: http://www.tradeshownews.com/events/rsa-conference-2018/ Information for Media: https://www.rsaconference.com/events/us18/press Business Wire is the official news wire for the RSA Conference. Listed below are exhibitor profiles. Company: Accend Networks Booth: 2042 Web: https://www.accendnetworks.com Accend Networks is a Managed IT, Managed Security, and IT Solutions Provider. We specialize in Network Security, Vulnerability and Penetration Testing. We also provide network design, implementation and support of Data Center, Voice, and Wireless Networks. We are highly efficient in what we do. We partner with all businesses to deliver a customized solution. We have a team of talented and high caliber engineers who can provide advanced and complex Network Security and Network Design for most environments. We have over 50+ years of industry experience. We're a Cisco, Microsoft (News - Alert) , and VMware partner and support most vendors. Company: Cynerio Booth: ESE 40 Web: www.cynerio.co Cynerio is protecting the future of healthcare by focusing on its weakest link - the connected medical device ecosystem. By building a tailor-made solution for healthcare providers, Cynerio delivers complete visibility into a healthcare organization's medical device ecosystem, protecting it from cyber threats and helping the organization meet HIPAA regulatory requirements. Cynerio's technology incorporates three key capabilities: Visibility - full visibility of what devices are doing on the network & associated risk, continuous & automated device discovery and classification Detection - accurate real time anomaly detection with medical context consideration Protection - stopping malicious communications, without disrupting device operation to ensure patient safety & data protection Company: Demisto Booth: S2513 Web: www.demisto.com Demisto is the only Security Orchestration, Automation and Response (SOAR) Platform that combines orchestration, incident management and interactive investigation into a seamless experience. Demisto's orchestration engine automates security product tasks and weaves in human analyst tasks and workflows. Demisto Enterprise, powered by its machine learning technology, acquires knowledge from the real-life analyst interactions and past investigations to help SOC teams with analyst assignment suggestions, playbook enhancements, and best next steps for investigations. The platform (and you) get smarter with every analyst action. With Demisto, security teams build future-proof security operations to reduce MTTR, create consistent incident management processes, and increase analyst productivity. Company: Ericom Software Booth: 2519 - South Expo Web: www.ericom.com Press Kit: http://www.tradeshownews.com/events/rsa-conference-2018/EricomSoftware/ Ericom Software is a global leader in securing and connecting the unified workspace. Ericom provides enterprise-grade secure remote access, desktop virtualization (VDI), and web security solutions to organizations across all industries. With a focus on application delivery and secure browsing, Ericom advances secure connectivity-providing end users with a superior work experience and optimizing enterprise productivity. Ericoms' new remote browser isolation solution - Ericom Shield - protects networks and end users from browser-borne threats. The service detours, contains, and disposes of all potentially risky web content in a remote safe zone-without the installation of any software on users' endpoint. Company: ForceShield Booth: 5104 North Hall Web: https://www.forceshield.com/ Press Kit: http://www.tradeshownews.com/events/rsa-conference-2018/ForceShield/ ForceShield, the IoT Defender, is the world's first dynamic security provider to the IoT industries. ForceShield's cybersecurity solutions help device manufacturers, system integrators and OEM bring secure IoT products to market. ForceShield is the trusted provider of IoT protection to the world's largest high-end home router vendor, and national governments. ForceShield's investors include Eight Roads (Fidelity International) and Sumitomo Corporation Equity Asia Limited (SCEA). ForceShield is privately held with offices in Palo Alto, and an R&D center in Asia. ForceShield is making its worldwide launch at RSA Conference 2018, in San Francisco, presenting new IoT security products based on ForceShield's Dynamic Transformation Technology that shifts the security paradigm from reactive to proactive, while increasing complexity and cost for attackers. Company: Global Learning Systems Booth: 101 Web: www.globallearningsystems.com GLS is a 30-year provider of Security Awareness and compliance training to a global audience. Our state-of-the-art Learning Management System allows our clients to quickly and easily assign training, deploy notifications, and report on courses, all from a single, easy-to-use portal. We work with our clients to create customized courses and training plans that mold to their organization size and culture, as our dedicated teams work to ensure successful deployments and offer unparalleled support. Using a combination of varied courseware, knowledge assessments, and sophisticated phish testing, the GLS approach helps ensure total retention and organization-wide culture change. Company: Intrinsic ID Booth: 2613 Web: www.Intrinsic-ID.com Intrinsic ID provides the Internet of Things with hardware-based root-of-trust security via unclonable identities for any IoT-connected product. Based on the company's patented SRAM PUF technology, Intrinsic ID security can be implemented in hardware or software, and can be deployed at any stage of a product's lifecycle. It is used to validate payment systems, secure connectivity, authenticate sensors, and protect sensitive government and military systems. Award recognition includes the Frost & Sullivan Technology Leadership Award, and Intrinsic ID security has been proven in millions of devices certified by Common Criteria, EMVCo, Visa and multiple governments. Intrinsic ID's mission: Authenticate Everything. Company: JASK Booth: 2609 SH Web: https://jask.ai JASK is modernizing security operations to reduce risk and improve efficiency. Through technology consolidation, AI and machine learning, the JASK Autonomous Security Operations Center (ASOC) platform automates the correlation and analysis of threat alerts, transforming security analysts into proactive threat hunters by enabling them to focus on the highest priority alerts. Built to blend visibility into data gathered by other security solutions with JASK-gathered data, JASK offers an unprecedented level of visibility and advanced insights. With an entrepreneurial team, savvy data scientists and engineers with a long-term vision for risk mitigation, JASK is removing the technology gaps that limit SOC modernization efforts. Company: Privakey Booth: South Hall 1143 Web: www.privakey.com Privakey eliminates the need for passwords and KBA from customer interactions. It enables a consistent way for customers to authenticate and authorize transactions across all channels. Whether they're online, on the phone, or on a mobile app-customers have the same omnichannel experience with companies that deploy Privakey. Privakey technology binds customers' identities to the devices they already own (phones, tablets, computers) making them unique and strong customer identifiers. Our technology delivers MFA (News - Alert) security, without passwords, KBA, SMS, out-of-band codes, or multiple devices. All a user needs is their device, and a PIN or biometric as the second factor. Company: Spirent Communications (News - Alert) Booth: 1101 Ticker Symbol & Exchange: (LSE):SPT Web: www.spirent.com/security Spirent Communications is a leader in assessment, validation and monitoring solutions that test and verify the performance and security of enterprise network and application infrastructures in a broad range of environments, including enterprise, IoT, automotive, mobility and critical infrastructures. Global 2000 customers in government, industry, healthcare, and financial services employ Spirent Security products and services to ensure an unsurpassed service experience while reducing churn, increasing revenue and strengthening market share. For more information about Spirent Security solutions and services, visit www.spirent.com/security Company: StackRox Booth: 2139 Web: https://www.stackrox.com StackRox helps enterprises secure their containerized, cloud-native applications at scale. StackRox enables security teams to centralize container deployment governance, visualize the container attack surface, and expose and stop malicious activity. The StackRox architecture combines distributed collection with centralized correlation and machine learning and takes protective actions to limit attacks and disrupt them in real time. StackRox is the container security choice of Global 2000 enterprises and government agencies. StackRox is privately held and headquartered in Mountain View, Calif. To learn more, visit www.stackrox.com and follow us on Facebook, LinkedIn and Twitter. Company: Titan IC Booth: N3121 Web: www.titan-ic.com Headquartered in Belfast Northern Ireland, Titan IC is a spin out company from the Centre for Secure Information Technology (CSIT) at Queens University Belfast. Titan IC is a world leader in the development of hardware engines for content and network processing. Their solutions include regular expression (RegEx) acceleration for use in all aspects of network security including: Intrusion (News - Alert) Detection/Prevention, Application Detection, Anti-Virus, Content/URL filtering. These are available as PCIe cards for inclusion in Network servers, cloud-based servers on AWS F1, licensable Intellectual property for use on Field Programmable Gate Arrays (FPGA) and as Silicon Intellectual Property (SIP) for custom Application Specific Integrated Circuit (ASIC). www.titan-ic.com Company: Tufin Booth: 929 Web: http://www.tufin.com Tufin is the leader in Network Security Policy Orchestration, providing enterprises with the ability to streamline the management of security policies across complex, heterogeneous environments. Serving over 2,000 customers and more than half of the top 50 companies in the Forbes Global 2000, Tufin's network security automation enables enterprises to implement changes in minutes with proactive risk analysis and continuous policy compliance. Tufin assures business continuity with a robust security posture, rapid service delivery and regulatory compliance across physical, private, public and hybrid cloud environments. Find out more at www.tufin.com. Company: vintegrisTECH Booth: Pavilion of Spain, 3 Web: https://www.vintegris.tech vintegrisTECH manufactures innovative systems and applications for digital certificate issuing and management, legally binding digital signatures, and robust authentication. Its flagship product is nebulaSUITE, a comprehensive solution for guaranteeing digital identity, authentication, and secure access, as well as its own Certification Authority ( CA (News - Alert) ). vintegrisTECH's clients include leading banks, insurance, health, retail, government, and public-sector organizations. Company: XM Cyber Booth: South Hall, 635 Web: https://xmcyber.com/ XM Cyber provides the first fully automated APT simulation platform to continuously expose all attack vectors, from breach point to any organizational critical asset. This continuous loop of automated red teaming is completed by prioritized actionable remediation of security gaps. XM Cyber operates as an automated purple team, combining red and blue teams' processes to ensure that organizations are always one step ahead of the hacker. XM Cyber was founded by top executives from the Israeli Intelligence Community and employs an elite team of cyber offense and defense veterans. The company has offices in the US, Israel and in Australia. About Business Wire: Business Wire, a Berkshire Hathaway company, is the global leader in press release distribution and regulatory disclosure. Investor relations, public relations, public policy and marketing professionals rely on Business Wire to accurately distribute market-moving news and multimedia, host online newsrooms and IR websites, build content marketing platforms, generate social engagements and provide audience analysis that improves interaction with specified target markets. Founded in 1961, Business Wire is a trusted source for news organizations, journalists, investment professionals and regulatory authorities, delivering news directly into editorial systems and leading online news sources via its multi-patented NX Network. Business Wire has 29 offices worldwide to securely meet the varying needs of communications professionals and news consumers. Learn more at services.BusinessWire.com and Tempo, the Business Wire resource for industry trends; follow updates on Twitter: @businesswire or on Facebook. Click here to subscribe to Mobile Alerts for Business Wire. View source version on businesswire.com: https://www.businesswire.com/news/home/20180416006280/en/ [ Back To TMCnet.com's Homepage ] [April 16, 2018] Cryptsoft and Fornetix Announce greater security infrastructure capability using Open Standards SAN FRANCISCO, April 16, 2018 /PRNewswire/ -- Leading OEM key management technology supplier, Cryptsoft, and Fornetix, a provider of secure, IoT scale encryption management, today announced their results in the latest round of interoperability testing for the benchmark key management standard, Key Management Interoperability Protocol (KMIP). With 9 companies testing 17 distinct products to prove the core components of the v2.0 specification, KMIP continues to develop a standard that delivers interoperability between vendors. With new functionality in scope for KMIP v2.0, both companies are delivering capability to meet the needs of the rapidly evolving security object management landscape across a range of industry verticals. KMIP has a rapidly increasing adoption rate, and is being specified as a mandatory requirement for many procurement activities. It is currently being utilized in systems supporting critical infrastructure, finance, automotive, communications, ecommerce, manufacturing, and defense. As both a valued customer and partner over the past 4 years, Fornetix has developed its Key Orchestration solution to be one of the most capable enterprise key managers on the market today. The ongoing partnership enables organizations to combine and consolidate visibility and control of their enterprise security assets with a range of KMIP toolkits from Cryptsoft, as well as a range of KMIP-enabled storage, security and cloud implementations available today. With new challenges emerging globally, both companies are actively engaged to support KMIP deployments underpinning blockchain, mahine identity, and supply chain security on a scale not witnessed at any time in the past. "Working in conjunction with our source code and enterprise licensees enables us to address the more sophisticated requirements of our combined customers' sooner," said Tony Cox, VP Partners, Alliances & Standards at Cryptsoft. "Cryptsoft's customers range from ultra-conservative to very forward thinking and agile in the adoption of newer security technologies. Working with innovative customers like Fornetix means the new range of functionality in KMIP v2.0 can be tested, finalized and delivered on a rapid timescale, to better secure security assets globally." "Cryptsoft's KMIP SDK's consistently deliver us a capability multiplier, enabling us to build on a proven technology platform. This means we can deliver the power of enterprise security orchestration, our customers are looking for," said Chuck White, CTO Fornetix. "This collaboration provides our customers technology that is secure, interoperable, extensible and scalable while being cost effective. Simply put - we deliver the promise of encryption without the fear of losing keys." Both companies are demonstrating their KMIP enabled products in a live interoperability demonstration at the OASIS KMIP Interop booth (#1601) at this week's RSA Conference in San Francisco. About Cryptsoft Cryptsoft is a privately held Australian company that operates worldwide in the enterprise key management security market. Cryptsoft's Key Management Interoperability Protocol (KMIP) software development kits (SDKs) are the market's preferred OEM solutions. Cryptsoft's solutions have been selected by prominent global companies for interoperable enterprise key management and encryption technology in their storage, security and cloud products. Cryptsoft is an OASIS Foundational Sponsor. www.cryptsoft.com About Fornetix Fornetix Key Orchestration is a groundbreaking cybersecurity solution designed to unleash encryption's full potential by simplifying key management. Fornetix empowers organizations to build a data security strategy with encryption as the strong foundation. www.fornetix.com PRLog ID: www.prlog.org/12703228 View original content:http://www.prnewswire.com/news-releases/cryptsoft-and-fornetix-announce-greater-security-infrastructure-capability-using-open-standards-300630786.html SOURCE Cryptsoft [ Back To TMCnet.com's Homepage ] [April 16, 2018] ForgeRock Announces Activities and Sessions for RSA Conference 2018 SAN FRANCISCO, April 16, 2018 (GLOBE NEWSWIRE) -- ForgeRock, the leading platform provider of digital identity management solutions, has a busy four days of presentations and events happening at the RSA Conference 2018 this week. The premier cybersecurity event of the year in the US, the RSA Conference draws more than 50,000 security and IT professionals connecting and sharing insights to stay ahead of cyberthreats. The event runs from April 16-20. ForgeRock executives are presenting at four sessions: No You May Not Have a PonyThe Art of the Possible in Secure IAM Design April 17, 2018 | 1:00 PM - 1:45 PM | Moscone South Esplanade 151 Session ID: IDY-T07 Eve Maler, VP Innovation & Emerging Technology, ForgeRock, shares perspectives on building security and standards into workable identity and access management solutions, with moderator Laura Hunter from Microsoft Corporation, and participants from the identity industry. Securing the IoT Connected Car with Digital Identity April 18, 2018 | 9:00 AM - 9:30 AM | Online Session / RSA TV Session ID: TV-W02 Ashley Stevenson, Identity Technology Director, ForgeRock shares thoughts on the complex nature of the connected car ecosystem. Mobile, cloud-connected, with multiple underlying devices and systems in the car and surrounding infrastructure, connected car developers demand a unique new approach to security and privacy. Living on the Edge: Managing Human/Device Identity for Security and Privacy Eve Maler April 18, 2018 | 2:10 PM - 2:30 PM | South Expo Briefing Center Session ID: BC-W8S As the Internet of Things becomes digitally woven into our homes, cars, wardrobes, and even bodies, the holes in security and privacy protection are ever more obvious. A comprehensive solution must extend from chip to cloud. ForgeRocks Eve Maler argues whats needed is a digital identity layer for people and things, encompassing both device attestation and human consent. This session will demonstrate a health IoT scenario. Identitys Role in Securing the IoT Connected Car April 19, 2018 | 12:00 PM - 1:00 PM | Marriott The Sandbox - CHV Stage Session ID: SBX3-R2 ForgeRocks Ashley Stevenson reprises his connected car video presentation from earlier in the week live onstage at Marriott The Sandbox - CHV Stage. Private Party with Jimmie Vaughan & the Tilt-A-Whirl Band April 18 | 7:00 PM @TheChapelSF RSAC has a well-deserved reputation for some of the best after-event parties of any tech event of the year, and ForgeRock is pulling out all the stops this year. Were hosting a private party at SF concert venue The Chapel starring blues rock legend Jimmie Vaughan and & the Tilt-A-Whirl Band. Itll be a night of rollicking, horn-driven R&B excitement. Stop by the ForgeRock booth, North Expo #3335, for a ticket. For more information on ForgeRock at @RSAC, visit the event website. About ForgeRock ForgeRock is the Digital Identity Management company transforming the way organizations interact securely with customers, employees, devices, and things. Organizations adopt the ForgeRock Identity Platform as their digital identity system of record to monetize customer relationships, address stringent regulations for privacy and consent (GDPR, HIPAA, FCC privacy, etc.), and leverage the internet of things. ForgeRock serves hundreds of brands, including Morningstar, Vodafone, GEICO, TomTom, and Pearson, as well as governments such as Norway, New Zealand, and Belgium, among many others. Headquartered in San Francisco, California, ForgeRock has offices in Austin, London, Bristol, Grenoble, Munich, Paris, Oslo, Singapore, Sydney and Vancouver, Washington. ForgeRock is privately held, backed by leading global venture capital firms Accel Partners, Foundation Capital, Meritech Capital and KKR. For more information and free downloads, visit www.forgerock.com or follow ForgeRock on social media: Facebook ForgeRock |Twitter @ForgeRock |LinkedIn ForgeRock | Press Contact: ForgeRock Dave De Jear dave.dejear@forgerock.com [ Back To TMCnet.com's Homepage ] VANCOUVER, British Columbia, April 16, 2018 (GLOBE NEWSWIRE) -- MX Gold Corp. (TSX-V:MXL) (FSE:ODV) (OTCQX:MXLGF) (the Company or MX Gold) announces that on April 6, 2018, it entered into an amendment to the letter of intent dated March 28, 2018 as discussed in the Companys April 5, 2018 news release to extend the execution date of the definitive agreement to April 16, 2018 and to extend the closing date to April 18, 2018. The Company also announces that effective April 6, 2018, Walter A. Marting has resigned from his position as director of the company. The Company thanks Mr. Marting for his past service and wishes him well in his future endeavors. On behalf of the Board of Directors, Dan Omeniuk For further information, please contact Dan Omeniuk, CEO Email: dano@mxgoldcorp.com Phone: 778-798-GOLD Or at: info@mxgoldcorp.com Neither the TSX Venture Exchange Inc. nor its Regulation Service Provider (as that term is defined in the policies of the TSX Venture Exchange Inc.) accepts responsibility for the adequacy or accuracy of this press release. [April 16, 2018] Open Source Integration Company WSO2 Launches Office in Sydney, Australia Mountain View, CA, April 16, 2018 (GLOBE NEWSWIRE) -- WSO2, the leading open source integration provider, today announced the official opening of the companys new office in Sydney, Australia. The move expands WSO2s support for the thriving hub of global and local enterprises in Australia that increasingly are adopting technology to support new digital business models for enhancing customer experiences, creating new revenue streams, and optimizing business operations. WSO2 empowers organizations with the agility, scalability and flexibility required for digital transformation initiatives through its integrated, open source software and cloud solutions for API management, integration, identity and access management (IAM), and stream processing. By establishing a local office in Australia, WSO2 now will be able to complement its industry-leading technology with rapid access to the companys expert services, one-hour service-level agreement (SLA) commitments, and increased in-person educational workshops and WSO2 Summit events. We have seen rapidly growing demand among Australian enterprises for our open source integration platform to drive their digital transformation efforts. The opening of our Sydney office is a strategic move that allows us to offer organizations rapid, expet services across Australia and the entire Oceania region, said Devaka Randeniya, WSO2 vice president of sales. Now, with people on the ground in Australia, our local customers can reach us via email or phone at any time of the day and expect a one-hour SLA. To commemorate the launch, WSO2 will be holding its first workshop in Australia this year on Thursday, May 3, 2018, from 9:30 a.m. to 1:30 p.m. at No. 9, Castlereagh Street, Sydney. Dassana Wijesekara, WSO2 associate director and solutions architect, will examine how digital transformation increases agility and fosters innovation through the implementation of intelligent APIs and scalable integration. To learn more, visit https://wso2.com/events/workshops/2018-may-digital-transformation-through-intelligent-APIs-and-scalable-integration. About WSO2 WSO2 is the #1 open source integration vendor. It offers a complete platform that enables businesses to integrate, manage, govern and process any application, data or systemon-premises or in the cloud. Enterprises and governments across the world rely on WSO2s consulting and subscriptions that accelerate the evolution of any digital native initiative. Today, over 450 enterprise customers representing the world's best brands, process more than 5 trillion transactions through WSO2 each year. Visit http://wso2.com to learn more. Trademarks and registered trademarks are the properties of their respective owners. ### Shifali Erasmus Kinetic.PR, LLC for WSO2 shifali@kineticprllc.com Mobile: 650-544-6424 [ Back To TMCnet.com's Homepage ] [April 16, 2018] SUSS organises first bilingual conference in inclusive blockchain The conference advances the knowledge of blockchain and its applications for audience in Singapore and beyond SINGAPORE, April 17, 2018 /PRNewswire/ -- On April 17 and 18, about 100 blockchain movers and shakers in the industry will share on its latest developments and applications at the Global Inclusive Blockchain Conference. The conference, to be conducted in Mandarin and English, is jointly organised by SUSS Fintech & Blockchain community and Longhash, a China blockchain technology company. Held in SUSS campus along Clementi Road, the conference will bring together leading practitioners, thought leaders, and scholars, to discuss a wide range of topics related to blockchain, from macroeconomics to finance & investment, regulation, standards & applications, and technical matters. With the world bracing itself for the Fourth Industrial Revolution, this timely conference will offer participants an opportunity to keep abreast of the latest developments in blockchain. The conference will be opened by Mr Roy Teo, Director of FinTech & Innovation Group of the Monetary Authority of Singapore (MAS), on April 17. Other distinguished speakers include Dr Xiao Feng, Chairman and CEO of Shanghai Wanxiang Blockchain Inc., Mr James Gong, CEO of ChainB -- China's leading blockchain publication, and Ms Eva Foo, Founder of Scry.info. On 18th April, the conference will also feature a panel on "Young Influencers" comprising students and alumni of SUSS, where they will share their personal experiences relating to blockchain. Through the SUSS Fintech & Blockchain community pioneered by the School of Business (SBiz), our students and graduates have been immersed in the innovative blockchain development. Many have already started businesses related to blockchain, or are successfully engaged in blockchain projects across various companies. (Profiles of speakers for media interview are included in Appendix A. More details of SUSS blockchain experts are found in https://sussblockchain.com/team/) About the Singapore University of Social Sciences Singapore UniversitySingapore's six autonomous universities and its mission is to provide lifelong education that equips learners to serve society. Home to more than 15,000 students, SUSS provides an applied education that targets both fresh school leavers and adult learners, with a focus on the social sciences. It adopts a flexible and practice-focused learning approach and offers more than 70 degree programmes in various disciplines. Eligible students taking SUSS undergraduate programmes enjoy government subsidies and access to government bursaries, tuition fee loans and study loans. For more information on Singapore University of Social Sciences, please visit www.suss.edu.sg. Appendix A -- Profiles of Speakers Dr Ding Ding Head of Finance Programme, Business School, SUSS Dr Ding Ding is the head of BSc. in Finance Programme in the School of Business at SUSS, where she has been a faculty member since 2008. She graduated from Nanyang Technological University with a PhD in economics and is also a Chartered Financial Analyst (CFA). She has rich experience in teaching economics and finance courses to undergraduate, post-graduate and MBA students, and she has also conducted executive training programmes to SME owners and senior management. Recently she has developed and taught the first course in Financial Technologies and Innovations at SUSS to undergraduate students. Her research interest lies in the area of financial technology and digital inclusion, economy of China, and international capital markets. Feng Xiao Vice Chairman and Executive Director, China Wanxiang Holdings Co., Ltd. Dr Feng Xiao is currently the Vice Chairman and Executive Director of China Wanxiang Holding Co. Ltd, Chairman and CEO of Wanxiang Blockchain Inc. He holds a PhD in Economics from China Nankai University and has over 20 years of experience in Chinese securities and asset management industry. He is the founder of Bosera Funds, which is one of the first and the largest mutual funds in China. Prior to founding Bosera in 1998, Dr Xiao held several senior positions in the CSRC' s Shenzhen Office. He also held various positions at the People' s Bank of China (PBoC) in its Shenzhen Special Economic Zone branch. Dr Xiao has also served as the Secretary of Board at Konka Group, the first joint venture electronics company in China. Note: Interview in Mandarin only. Bo Shen Partner of Fenbushi Capital Mr Bo Shen co-founded Invictus Innovations Incorporated, the team behind BitShares. He is a veteran of the traditional financial industry, accumulating 12 years of senior management roles in brokerages, hedge funds and investment banks. Mr Shen is also a Partner of Fenbushi Capital, along with Dr Xiao Feng, the Vice Chairman and Executive Director of China Wanxiang Holdings Co., Ltd., at which the founder of Ethereum, Mr Vitalik Buterin, acts as a consultant for the company. Fenbushi Capital was established in late 2015 and is the first venture capital company in China to focus on investment in blockchain technology-related companies. Its mission is to provide support for a large number of blockchain-related start-ups and to promote the development of blockchain economy and programmable money. Fenbushi Capital firmly believes that blockchain technology will play an important role in the future, bringing more transparency, higher efficiency, and a safer environment for the global economy. James Gong Founder of ChainB.com James Gong, the founder of ChainB.com, is well known for his internet alias "Baozou Gongqinwang" (Prince Kung Walking with Rampage). A Mathematics graduate, James specialises in IT and financial securities analysis and worked for many years at D'Long Strategic Investments, one of China's largest firm to venture abroad. Since 2012, he has been pushing for the development of digital currency and blockchain industry. He has since translated and written numerous articles related to blockchain projects, and authored many related books. He has also been involved in the development and investment of multiple blockchain and digital currency projects, and founded the professional social media ChainB.com, which earned him a good reputation and followers within the blockchain industry. SOURCE Singapore University of Social Sciences [ Back To TMCnet.com's Homepage ] [April 17, 2018] International network of law firms innovating with HighQ LONDON, April 17, 2018 (GLOBE NEWSWIRE) -- HighQ is pleased to announce that Ius Laboris, the leading international HR law Alliance, has adopted HighQs technology to enhance the value-adding services its member firms around the world provide to their clients. Ius Laboris is leveraging HighQs Publisher to further strengthen its content management and digital knowledge products throughout its international network. Ius Laboris is recognized as one of the leading international practices in the field of labor, employment and pension law, maintaining national expertise with a consistent global approach through innovation and technology. Most recently, The Lawyer shortlisted the company for Global Network of the Year in its European Awards 2017, while Financial Times recently commended Ius Laboris as one of the most innovative law firms in the world. Ius Laboris network includes more than 1,40 lawyers who serve clients in 53 countries, including all major economic centres. Ius Laboris has taken the next step forwards in providing digital services, products and knowledge by choosing HighQ Publisher, said Sebastiaan Bos, HighQs Director of Solutions EMEA. We are privileged to welcome them as a client of HighQ and excited to help them further continue to be an industry leader in providing innovative employment law support through its network of law firms. After expanding the practice in the first 15 years of its existence, our focus over the last year has been on consolidation and further increase of the networks value to its members and their clients. Unlocking our legal content across 50+ jurisdictions with Publisher is a significant step for members, clients and the Alliance as a whole, said Arnd de Wit, Head of Marketing and Business Development for Ius Laboris. Ius Laboris prides itself on offering one global information hub, rich in content and essential to every single one of its markets, creating a borderless employment practice for multinational companies. The employment law specialism ranges from immigration to employment law contracts and restructuring to workplace data privacy and social media policies. About Ius LaborisFounded in 2001 with headquarters in Brussels, Belgium, Ius Laboris is an alliance of leading human resources law practitioners. The firm has more than 1,400 lawyers providing local human resources law expertise across the globe with member firms in over 50 countries and coverage in more than 100 countries. For more information, visit www.iuslaboris.com. About HighQHighQ provides innovative enterprise collaboration and content publishing solutions to the worlds leading law firms, corporate legal teams and banks. Our secure file sharing, client extranet, matter collaboration and content marketing solutions uniquely combine enterprise-grade technology with the best ideas and user experience from consumer tools. For more information, visit www.highq.com. Beau Wysong HighQ 913.998.6216 beau.wysong@highq.com [ Back To TMCnet.com's Homepage ] [April 17, 2018] Experts from Three Ireland and Wargaming.net to Share Customer Service Breakthroughs at the 12th Annual Customer Contact Europe: A Frost & Sullivan Executive MindXchange LONDON, April 17, 2018 /CNW/ -- Ashley Cook, Customer Relations Director, Three Ireland, will offer his Strategic Vision: A 3-5 Year Transformational Customer Strategy Plan at the 12th Annual Customer Contact Europe: A Frost & Sullivan Executive MindXchange, taking place at Clontarf Castle Hotel, Dublin, from 11th to 13th June 2018. His opening keynote will draw from his experiences at Three Ireland, one of the country's leading mobile networks, serving over two million customers. Cook will shine a light on how his organisation came to understand the customer experience through their customer's journeys and how they leveraged the data gathered to drive improvement and change across the organisation. He will share a first-hand story of initiative and applying lessons learned to develop an integrated digital customer service and self-service strategy...while also reducing operating costs. Cook previously held a number of senior roles at Carphone Warehouse in the UK, including Director of Customer Operations and Director of Business Operators. Prior to joining Carphone Warehouse, he was Director of Sales Operations with Tesco in the Czech Republic where he was responsible for 83 stores and more than 6,000 people. Jean-Marc Codsi, General Manager Europe, Wargaming.net, will present a Case History: Smart Technology and Successful Customer Service Agendas. Codsi will explain how the customer service world is full of opportunities for improvement and ways to doso, including people, technology and processes. He will explore why the balance between cost management and delivering an excellent customer experience can be hard to achieve, and offer insights to help organisations implement more "quick wins", identify their blind spots and jump their learning curves! In his current role at Wargaming,net, Codsi leads a team of publishing experts for popular AAA video games in Europe. Previously, he was Executive Director, BUX Partners and Vice President Global Customer Experience, eBay, Europe. The 12th Annual Customer Contact Europe: A Frost & Sullivan Executive MindXchange, will offer contact centre and customer experience executives the opportunity to benefit from: Truly innovative case studies and best practices Dynamic collaboration zones fostering disruptive and transformational thinking Networking opportunities with customer contact industry peers Don't miss out on the opportunity to leverage the latest customer service thinking for competitive advantage. For additional information, please email events.us@frost.com or contact Alan Bowman at +44 1865 398 644. About Frost & Sullivan Frost & Sullivan, the Growth Partnership Company, works in collaboration with clients to leverage visionary innovation that addresses the global challenges and related growth opportunities that will make or break today's market participants. For more than 50 years, we have been developing growth strategies for the global 1000, emerging businesses, the public sector and the investment community. Contact us: Start the discussion Contact: Kristina Menzefricke Corporate Communications Europe P: +44 (0) 208 996 8589 E: kristina.menzefricke@frost.com www.frost.com View original content:http://www.prnewswire.com/news-releases/experts-from-three-ireland-and-wargamingnet-to-share-customer-service-breakthroughs-at-the-12th-annual-customer-contact-europe-a-frost--sullivan-executive-mindxchange-300631069.html SOURCE Frost & Sullivan [ Back To TMCnet.com's Homepage ] [April 17, 2018] AppSwarm to Expand LastMile Delivery App to Multiple Industries TULSA, OK, April 17, 2018 (GLOBE NEWSWIRE) -- AppSwarm, Inc. (OTC PINK: SWRM), a technology company specializing in the accelerated development and publishing of mobile apps, to expand LastMile delivery app to multiple sectors. The Company is pleased to announce that its LastMile delivery application has been approved for beta testing in both Apple and Google application stores. The application has been jointly developed in collaboration with SinglePoint, Inc. (OTCQB: SING) to provide a compliance delivery technology for the cannabis industry, which has already produced multiple cannabis businesses expressing interest in the platform. Positive Regulatory Developments Strengthening the companys outlook on providing cannabis services is Donald Trump agrees to leave the legal marijuana programs alone. America's fast-growing marijuana industry could be ready for massive expansion after President Trump pledges to respect the state-legalized pot in a deal with a Colorado senator, Republican Senator. Cory Gardner announced on Friday that he had received assurances from the President that federal agents would abandon stand-alone states such as Colorado, which have legalized recreational cannabis. Gardner blocked jury nominations since January and relented on Friday. "President Trump has assured me that he will support a federalism-based legislative solution to solve the problem of states' rights once and for all," Gardner said in a statement. We are thrilled at the launch of LastMile. Its exciting to know that we already have many cannabis businesses showing interest in our unique platform. There is an exceptional chance to provide the industrys first, true delivery platform that will give these compnies the insight and ability to track a delivery order through the end of payment and drop off to a consumer, all while knowing exactly where their driver and product is, states Ron Brewer CEO of AppSwarm, Inc. Non-Cannabis Industries AppSwarm, the developer behind the delivery platform, will expand uses to a number of other industries seeking delivery tracking options. These new markets could cover anywhere from local mom & pop shops, to larger logistical shipping companies. LastMile app specifically focuses on the delivery operations of a business, providing efficiencies in dispatching, record keeping, customer satisfaction and more. LastMile has been developed with that in mind and plans to roll out to many different industries in order to gain market penetration. The Company will explore future updates to applications that can integrate home assistants, such as Alexa and Google Home, to provide voice updates on deliveries and location status. International Expansion In addition to the US, AppSwarm is already in talks to expand the LastMile delivery app to International markets. The Company is currently developing strategic partnerships to potentially help expand LastMile into such markets as Asia and Canada. In order to be selected as a beta partner you should meet the following criteria. * Dedicated delivery manager * Fulfill multiple deliveries daily * Multiple drivers preferred; not required * Use of iPhone or Android Device * Willing to timely provide feedback Parties interested in becoming partners for the LastMile Delivery beta are encouraged to reach out to us at info@app-swarm.com About APPSWARM: AppSwarm is a technology company specializing in the accelerated development and publishing of mobile apps and other software platforms for gaming and business applications and seeks to acquire symmetric business opportunities. AppSwarm partners with and assists other development firms in technology development, business management, and funding needs. For more information, visit us at www.app-swarm.com, or follow us on www.facebook.com/AppSwarm or Twitter https://twitter.com/AppSwarm Forward-Looking Statements: "Safe Harbor" statement under the Private Securities Litigation Reform Act of 1995: This press release may contain forward-looking statements that are subject to risk and uncertainties including, but not limited to, the impact of competitive products, product demand, market acceptance risks, fluctuations in operating results, political risk and other risks detailed from time to time in the Company's filings with OTCMarkets.com and as required to the Securities and Exchange Commission. These risks could cause SWRM's actual results to differ materially from those expressed in any forward-looking statements made by, or on behalf of, the Company. Investor and Media Contacts: AppSwarm, Inc. 888-886-8583 info@app-swarm.com [ Back To TMCnet.com's Homepage ] [April 17, 2018] Top Gun Ventures Expands to Denver with Hire of Laura Marriott Top Gun Ventures ("Top Gun"), a premier retained executive search firm, today announced the appointment of Laura Marriott (News - Alert) as Partner. With this hire, the company is opening its 8th office location in Denver. This further strengthens the company's footprint and ability to serve its existing and rapidly growing customer base. "Laura's global industry experience in technology, especially mobility and digital media, coupled with her excellent consulting skills, is a huge asset to companies seeking GameChanging leadership. We are thrilled to have Laura as our new partner leading our executive search business from our new Denver office," said Don Tuttle, Managing Partner of Top Gun Ventures. "Hiring the right leaders is critical to a company's success and overall health," said Marriott. "The Top Gun team is not only experienced in placing GameChangers but they understand the value of properly matching a company's business goals to the talent of each executive placed. In fact, every search comes with a 100% guarantee that every recruited leader wil meet or exceed the goals in which they were hired to accomplish. It is Top Gun's innovative style and approach that excites me to be a part of the team." "Laura's global mobile tech and marketing expertise has placed her at the forefront of today's Digital Transformation. The challenges and opportunities ahead for every industry vertical is to blur the lines between the physical, digital and biological spheres. This will take GameChanging leadership and Laura is perfectly suited to bring clients proven GameChangers that can take them to this next level of growth," said Peter Donovan, Managing Partner, Top Gun Ventures. Marriott previously led her own strategy consulting firm and prior was CEO of NeoMedia (News - Alert) Technologies and Global President of the Mobile Marketing Association. In addition to the Denver office, Laura will maintain a satellite office in Austin. For more information, visit topgunventures.com About Top Gun Ventures Top Gun Ventures is a premier global executive search firm that specializes in recruiting proven GameChangers that can lead our clients to success, making their financial goals and business vision a reality. Founded in 2002, with offices in Austin, Boston, Dallas, Denver, New York, Palo Alto (News - Alert) , Seattle and St. Louis and reach throughout the Americas, Asia and Europe, the company places CEOs and executives with corporate, venture capital, and private equity clients. View source version on businesswire.com: https://www.businesswire.com/news/home/20180417005486/en/ [ Back To TMCnet.com's Homepage ] [April 17, 2018] Cision Unveils Intelligent Enhancements for Global Communications Support New Cision Communications Cloud features include enhanced localization and improved sentiment via machine learning CHICAGO, April 17, 2018 /CNW/ -- To best serve global organizations with cross-regional comms teams, Cision today announced continued improvements to the localization of its Cision Communications Cloud user interface. The latest enhancements allow communicators to identify influencers across regions, craft and manage localized campaigns, and attribute value across relevant media channels. In addition, innovative machine learning enhancements empower communicators to glean detailed insights on message sentiment. "To effectively communicate a message, communications professionals must be able to identify and reach their targeted audiences, whether that's locally, internationally, or both," said Kevin Akeroyd, CEO of Cision. "The latest enhancements to the Cision Communications Cloud enable comms teams spread across multiple regions to take a more integrated approach to their work by utilizing a single platform." The Cision Comms Cloud delivers a comprehensive, end-to-end platform for comms teams to manage their entire campaign workflow. Now, organizations can work more effectively with localized teams and improve influencer argeting through the following capabilities: Localized User Interface and Influencer Outreach: While the user interface is already multilingual, supporting the English, French, German, and Dutch languages, new enhancements now make it possible for the Cision Comms Cloud UI to be fully translated and localized for any market. In addition, comms pros can now also filter Cision Database searches by language and region to easily identify the most relevant contacts for influencer outreach. While the user interface is already multilingual, supporting the English, French, German, and Dutch languages, new enhancements now make it possible for the Cision Comms Cloud UI to be fully translated and localized for any market. In addition, comms pros can now also filter Cision Database searches by language and region to easily identify the most relevant contacts for influencer outreach. Smarter Toning for More Effective Campaigns: Cision's machine learning engine now delivers smarter auto-sentiment capabilities, providing detailed insights as to how messages are received in specific markets. These capabilities result in smarter toning and advanced differentiation for words associated with multiple meanings and interpretations. Additionally, communicators can now search coverage by tone to quickly identify positive, negative, or neutral coverage to help guide campaign strategies. "Enabling comms professionals to work in their preferred language has been a key goal since the launch of Comms Cloud," said Nicole Guillot, Cision's President of Canada. "With a French-Canadian interface we fulfill a promise we made to Cision clients as well as further strengthen our monitoring solution for CEDROM-SNi clients. And over the next several months we will be rolling out further enhancements made possible by combining the forces of CEDROM-SNi and Cision." Cision's latest enhancements enable communicators to effectively scale earned media efforts, implement impactful influencer outreach and leverage audience sentiment to craft and optimize campaigns, reaching targeted audiences. Current Cision Comms Cloud clients can contact their account representatives for more information about these new features. To learn more about the Cision Comms Cloud click here. About Cision Cision Ltd. (NYSE: CISN) is a leading global provider of earned media software and services to public relations and marketing communications professionals. Cision's software allows users to identify key influencers, craft and distribute strategic content, and measure meaningful impact. Cision has over 4,000 employees with offices in 15 countries throughout the Americas, EMEA, and APAC. For more information about its award-winning products and services, including the Cision Communications Cloud, visit www.cision.com and follow Cision on Twitter @Cision. Media Contact: Nick Bell VP, Marketing Communications cisionpr@cision.com SOURCE Cision [ Back To TMCnet.com's Homepage ] English German Sales growth of 11.0% in local currencies to CHF 1,554.0 million (+11.9% in CHF) Growth in all regions Organization geared to growth and enhanced efficiency with the new Americas and Global Business regions Opening of a new factory, establishment of another national subsidiary and acquisition of one company Sales target of CHF 7 billion in 2018 With a dynamic start to the 2018 financial year, Sika maintained its strong growth trajectory, achieving double-digit sales growth in the first quarter and a new sales record of CHF 1,554.0 million. This equates to an increase of 11.0% in local currencies (previous year: 10.7%). A positive currency effect (0.9%) led to robust sales growth in Swiss francs of 11.9%. Sika's growth was also positively impacted by the consolidation of the seven companies acquired last year (acquisition effect: 6.3%). When compared to 2017, the fact that the Easter holiday period fell early this year had a negative impact on organic growth in the first quarter of 2018. Paul Schuler, CEO: "The good development of business in the first quarter indicates that we will be able to grow strongly once again in 2018, and to further implement our strategic targets for 2020. We are looking to increase sales by more than 10% for the year as a whole, and thereby break through the CHF 7 billion sales mark for the first time." GROWTH IN ALL REGIONS In the EMEA region (Europe, Middle East, Africa) sales increased by 10.2% (previous year: 12.4%). The major EU countries with the core markets of Spain and the UK also exhibited growth. The Middle East, Eastern Europe and Africa delivered very impressive growth rates. In the beginning of 2018, Sika acquired Index Construction Systems and Products, a leading manufacturer of roofing and waterproofing systems headquartered close to Verona, Italy. By acquiring Index, Sika will extend its product range and significantly strengthen its position in the Italian market. The newly formed Americas region generated growth of 12.2% (previous year: 14.0%), of which 5.5% was achieved through acquisitions. The harsh North American winter led to the postponement of numerous large projects. Mexico and Argentina continue to exhibit above-average development. The basis for further growth in Central America was laid with the establishment of a new national subsidiary in Honduras. Growth in the Asia/Pacific region amounted to 3.9% (previous year: 7.1%). The highest growth rates were recorded by India, Australia and New Zealand. China and Japan also contributed to growth in this region. In Vietnam, a state-of-the-art facility for mortar production has come on stream in the Bac Ninh plant alongside the existing production of concrete admixtures. This will enable Sika to continue its dynamic growth in this country's booming construction market. The new Global Business segment recorded a growth rate of 20.9% (previous year: 3.3%). Among other things, this includes the globally managed automotive business as well as the two acquisitions Axson Technologies and Faist ChemTec - which are both established providers of components and solutions for the automotive area and also managed globally. OUTLOOK: SALES TARGET OF CHF 7 BILLION IN 2018 The strong start to the year supports the target for the 2018 financial year - namely an increase in sales of more than 10% to reach CHF 7 billion for the first time. Volatile and rising raw material prices continue to pose a challenge. For the year as a whole, EBIT and net profit should once again increase at a disproportionately high rate. The growth strategy will be continued in 2018 with the opening of eight new factories and the founding of more national subsidiaries. In addition, Sika will seek to fully exploit the business potential offered by acquisitions through enhanced distribution channels, expanded product portfolios and improved prospects for market access. NET SALES IN THE FIRST THREE MONTHS OF 2018 in CHF million 1/1/2017- 3/31/2017 1/1/2018-3/31/2018 Year-on-year change (+/- in %) in CHF in local currencies1 Currency effect Acquisition effect By region EMEA 596.7 691.5 15.9 10.2 5.7 7.2 Americas 366.6 389.0 6.1 12.2 -6.1 5.5 Asia/Pacific 250.9 257.7 2.7 3.9 -1.2 0.0 Global Business 174.8 215.8 23.5 20.9 2.6 13.8 Net sales consolidated 1,389.0 1,554.0 11.9 11.0 0.9 6.3 Products for the construction industry 1,059.4 1,170.2 10.5 9.7 0.8 5.9 Products for industrial manufacturing 329.6 383.8 16.4 14.9 1.5 7.4 1 including acquisitions FINANCIAL CALENDAR 50th Annual General Meeting Tuesday, April 17, 2018, 1.00 p.m. Half-Year Report 2018 Thursday, July 26, 2018 Results first nine months 2018 Thursday, October 25, 2018 Net sales 2018 Tuesday, January 8, 2019 Full-Year Results 2018 Friday, February 22, 2019 51st Annual General Meeting Tuesday, April 9, 2019 CONTACT Dominik Slappnig Corporate Communications & Investor Relations +41 58 436 68 21 slappnig.dominik@ch.sika.com SIKA CORPORATE PROFILE Sika is a specialty chemicals company with a leading position in the development and production of systems and products for bonding, sealing, damping, reinforcing and protecting in the building sector and motor vehicle industry. Sika has subsidiaries in 101 countries around the world and manufactures in over 200 factories. Its more than 18,000 employees generated annual sales of CHF 6.25 billion in 2017. The media release can be downloaded from the following link: [April 17, 2018] Pragma Crypto, SSH Server & Client Awarded New FIPS-140-2 Certificate AUSTIN, Texas, April 17, 2018 /PRNewswire/ -- Pragma Systems, a leading SSH and security software provider, announces that Pragma Crypto library and Fortress SSH servers, Clients and Telemote are awarded a new US Government NIST FIPS 140-2 certificate, #3171, for Windows 10 and Windows Server 2016. FIPS certification assures that the stringent cryptographic standards required by federal, state and local governments meet the strict security and compliance guidelines set by NIST. Pragma Fortress SSH server and client are the first SSH products that hold FIPS 140-2 certificate for Windows Server 2016 and Windows 10 issued by NIST's CMVP (Cryptographic Module Validation Program) and certified at the NIST approved DXC Technology lab. Pragma SSH was previously certified by NIST for other Windows operating systems. Additional Pragma FIPS information available at: https://www.pragmasys.com/products/government/fips. Data security encrypion compliance is mandatory for U.S. federal agencies, the U.S. Department of Defense, the Canadian government, financial institutions and many private sector agencies when cryptography is necessary for protecting sensitive information. Pragma's FIPS certified SSH software is used by US Army, US Navy, Canadian Air Force, McKesson/Change HealthCare, Cisco, Amazon WholeFoods, Oracle, PayChex, Exelon and many other Fortune 1000 organizations worldwide. "Quick turnaround time speaks to the quality of our work we all did and working with Pragma on this project has been a pleasure," said Gus Burgess, DXC lead for this certification. Pragma CTO David Kulwin adds, "Having FIPS certification for Windows 10 and Windows Server 2016 was needed by many of our large customers and Pragma SSH can now be used in more sites that deploy these newer Windows platforms." By using Pragma's SSH/SFTP/SCP Server and Client technologies and Telemote product, all of which embed its FIPS Crypto modules, customers can copy, deploy and manage files securely from Windows machines to Cisco routers, network switches, Unix servers, Linux servers and Mainframes using SFTP and SCP, the de-facto secure file transfer standards. Customers can be assured that remote access and file transfers completed with the FIPS Certified Cryptographic Module fulfills the highest possible security standards set by the US Government. About Pragma Systems, Inc. Pragma Systems, Inc. is a leading provider of enterprise class remote access and secure file transfer software for Microsoft Windows platforms and is a Cisco Solution Partner & Microsoft Gold Certified Partner. Pragma is an industry leader of Secure Shell (SSH), SFTP, SCP and Telnet technologies. Pragma's SSH product line has US Army Certificate of Networthiness (CoN 201621769), FIPS 140-2, US DoD UC APL, and US Army TIC lab certifications as well as Microsoft Windows Certifications. Pragma's new product, Telemote, adds graphical remote desktop and server management built on our secure SSH transport. Pragma's software products are deployed in the majority of Fortune 500 companies in the USA and over 5000 companies worldwide in 100 countries with millions of licensed nodes. To learn more, visit www.pragmasys.com. Contact: Edith H. Myers VP of Operations & Communications Pragma Systems, Inc. Phone: 512-219-7270 e-mail: 193518@email4pr.com View original content with multimedia:http://www.prnewswire.com/news-releases/pragma-crypto-ssh-server--client-awarded-new-fips-140-2-certificate-300631030.html SOURCE Pragma Systems [ Back To TMCnet.com's Homepage ] [April 17, 2018] Reimagine Well: Adapting Disney Theme Parks "Architecture of Reassurance" into an "Architecture of Healing" LAGUNA BEACH, Calif., April 17, 2018 /PRNewswire/ -- "As a Disney Imagineering VP/Creative Director I was honored to learn the 'architecture of reassurance' from several members of Walt Disney's original team. Imagineering blends imagination and engineering. Being trained in this discipline was an unexpected blessing for me when I received a cancer diagnosis on the eve of my 50th birthday," said Roger Holzberg, co-founder of Reimagine Well. Post-diagnosis Holzberg pulled together a team of survivors and caregivers at Disney and began volunteering for projects like Starbright Worlds, adapting Epcot's 'Turtle Talk' attraction for CHOC Children's Hospital, creating "Living With" stories for livestrong.com, and launching the survivorship platform My Bridge 4 Life. As the first (consulting) creative director for the National Cancer Institute, Holzberg met pediatric hematologist/oncologist, Dr. Leonard Sender who said, "Let's change the patient experience for kids with cancer!" They co-hosted a brainstorm with healthcare professionals and some Imagineers, including Imagineering's principal creative executive, Disney Legend Marty Sklar. The result the Infusionarium. The Infusionarium digital platform includes an extensive library of patient directed immersive healing experiences, live events, and clinical staff directed learn guides. There are currently 26 physical Infusionariums, the digital platform is also live on over 200 hospital room smart TVs; and over 5,200 patients and families access the platform with smartphones and tablets. Studies have shown that Reimagine Well's type of interactive enhanced education helps reduce hospital readmissions. Dr. Leonard Sender says, "We believe that integrating a kid's imagination into the healing process is creating an 'architecture of healing'. Distraction therapy helps reduce anxiety and side effects medication. We have patients telling their parents they are looking forward to their chemo; no one hears that! We believe a happier patient is a better patient." Experience the healing places from several of our patient vision teams IN THIS VIDEO. Holzberg adds, "An extraordinary thing about this work is being able to ask patients what place would best promote their healing? And then to put them there while in treatment! The patient vision teams direct their own "immersive healing experiences". We believe our job is to listen, enable, and empower patients." About Reimagine Well Reimagine Well provides a proprietary platform and programs that are designed for infusion therapy, assisted living, and more; and has compiled an extensive library of patient-directed immersive healing experiences and disease specific 'Learn Guides' directed by clinicians and medical experts. Roger Holzberg and Leonard Sender, MD, founded Reimagine Well. Dr. Sender is a specialist with the Hyundai Cancer Institute at CHOC Children's Hospital in Orange County, California, is board certified in Pediatric Hematology/Oncology and is both a clinician and a researcher. Roger Holzberg is the founder of My Bridge 4 Life, a former award-winning Disney Imagineer, the first (consulting) Creative Director of the National Cancer Institute and a 14-year cancer survivor. Contact: Pam Carstens Phone: (949) 793-8777 Email: 193204@email4pr.com Website: reimaginewell.com View original content with multimedia:http://www.prnewswire.com/news-releases/reimagine-well-adapting-disney-theme-parks-architecture-of-reassurance-into-an-architecture-of-healing-300630803.html SOURCE Reimagine Well [ Back To TMCnet.com's Homepage ] [April 17, 2018] Solarflare Introduces New Class of 10/25/50/100GbE NICs Delivering World Record Latency with SmartNIC Intelligence Solarflare, a pioneer in the development of neural-class networks, today announced the general availability of X2, its second generation of XtremeScale NICs featuring a dazzling combination of performance and price. For the vast base of Solarflare electronic trading customers, powerful X2 10, 25, 40, 50 and 100GbE NICs drive down world-record latency to less than one-half microsecond. For modern data centers, X2 lays a new foundation for NIC (News - Alert) -based network virtualization needed for their highly distributed applications with thousands of inter-connected cloud services, machine learning, and big data workloads. X2 is the first and only NIC platform that can establish ultra-scale connectivity to thousands of virtual networks, while at the same time providing real-time packet and flow information. The combination of ultra-high bandwidth, ultra-low latency, ultra-scale connectivity and packet telemetry allows X2 NICs to serve as the Industry's first commercial platform for micro-segmented NIC fabric services that scale with each server, VM or container. X2 makes data center-wide deployment of these capabilities cost-effective. Although X2 NICs provide superior performance and the SmartNIC abilities to enable network services, a 25GbE X2 NIC from Solarflare offers a cost advantage over comparably configured NICs from Broadcom, Intel (News - Alert) , and Mellanox. Solarflare NICs have proven themselves in servers with Intel processors, however data centers need processors with more cores and lower power. Qualcomm (News - Alert) answers the call for more efficient data center computing with the Centriq 2400 server processor, an Arm-based processor with up to 48 cores, and the world's first 10-nanometer server processor. "Qualcomm Centriq 2400 processors deliver leading-edge performance and energy efficiency enabling data center operators to achieve new levels of total cost of ownership savings with their computing infrastructure," said Ram Peddibhotla, Vice President, Product Management, Qualcomm Datacenter Technologies. "With software-defined NIC fabric technology alongside power and cost-efficient Qualcomm Centriq 2400 processors, Solarflare allows customers the flexibility to adopt best of breed solutions." Boston Limited has been providing cutting-edge technology since 1992 using Supermicro building blocks. Their high performance, mission-critical server and storage solutions can be tailored to each specific client, helping customers to create their ideal solution. Jon Howard, Head of Special Operations at Boston Limited, says, "For many of our customers, ultimate throughput and protocol support are two key factors when choosing network adapters, but ultra-low latency and on-NIC processing are vital characteristics for certain verticals. In fact, within such markets, network processing is often more valuable than traditional system processing. XtremeScale NICs help Boston deliver even more focused server solutions for customers who have these requirements at the core of their business." Extreme-Scale: A New Class of Standard NICs Standard server NICs share three common attributes: their speed, support for industry-standard network protocols, and their price. Customers have been looking to special-purpose network processing units (NPUs) or FPGAs for valuable packet data processing and the ability to host network services. Industry analyst firm IT Brand Pulse uses the term "Extreme-Scale" to define a new class of standard NICs with the following capabilities needed to address the needs of massive scale-out applications with workloads distributed among dozens to thousands of cores, virtual machines, and containers: Real-time packet inspection and classification in the compact size, power and cost footprint of a general-purpose NIC. Ultra-scale virtual network connectivity exceeding 1,000 vNICs needed by highly distributed applications. Uses real-time packet and flow data to enable micro-segmented fabric services such as acceleration, security, and telemetry. Ultra-high bandwidth of at least 25Gbps and ultra-low latency of less than 1 microsecond. According to Ahmet Houssein, Vice President of Marketing at Solarflare, "Like many other information technologies, modern data centers needed XtremeScale NICs that are engineered for scale-out environments. In the future, all general-purpose Ethernet NICs will look like this." X2: The Second Generation of XtremeScale NICs Built with the all-new Solarflare X2 Ethernet controller ASIC, X2 is a family of powerful, intelligent, 10/25/40/50/100GbE NICs in PCIe and OCP (News - Alert) form-factors that outperform more expensive specialty adapters. XtremeScale X2: Is a platform for data center-wide NIC Fabrics delivering micro segmented acceleration, telemetry and security services that scale with each server, VM or container. For data center traffic engineers, the fabric services running on X2 adapters are software-defined so that network traffic can be shaped and automated using well defined APIs. Provides more than 2x the throughput of previous 40G Solarflare NICs, and superior small packet performance with latency as low as 150ns-3x lower than the previous Solarflare performance leader. For acceleration, X2 NICs include ScaleOut Onload and DPDK kernel bypass fabric services. X2 also supports the precision timing protocol (PTP) fabric service for apps that require synchronized time stamping of packets down to the single-digit nanosecond. Is a programmable NIC that performs packet inspection and classification. Inside the ASIC of every X2552 OCP NIC is an XtremePacket Engine which provides this general-purpose NIC the unique ability to perform real-time inspection. A variety of tools and services are available to shape the visibility, security and performance of the network traffic using this valuable packet data. The X2 Family of 10/25/40/50/100GbE NICs XtremeScale X2541 XtremeScale X2552 XtremeScale X2522 100GbE 10/25GbE 10/25GbE Single Port Dual Port Dual Port Full-Length, Full-High OCP v2 Half-High, Half-Length PCIe 3.1 x16 PCIe 3.1 x8 PCIe 3.1 x8 QSFP28 SFP28 SFP28 Includes ScaleOut Onload and DPDK Acceleration Fabric Services Includes ScaleOut Onload and DPDK Acceleration Fabric Services Includes ScaleOut Onload and DPDK Acceleration Fabric Services XtremeScale NIC Fabric Services Acceleration - Universal Kernel Bypass (UKB) technology uses POSIX-compliant TCP to accelerate network traffic. Proven in top exchanges around the world, UKB is an excellent solution for web hosting, CDN, container fabrics and NVMe storage fabrics which require low-latency communications without jitter. Ultra-Scale - XtremeScale NICs are the only general-purpose NICs which are capable of establishing thousands of connections. For highly distributed database analytics and machine learning apps, XtremeScale NICs can provide connectivity to 2,048 virtual networks. Traffic Engineering - Data from packet and flow meters allows network engineers to shape traffic to suit the specific needs of each application server. Micro-Segmentation - All XtremeScale fabric services can scale with each physical NIC, enabling deployment of fine-grained network policies. Select services can be implemented per VM or container. Precision Timing Protocol - For applications such as electronic trading, that require monitoring and capturing of packets precisely across the network, PTP delivers precise, synchronized time stamping of packets down to the single-digit nanosecond. Security - Complements firewall perimeter security with packet surveillance, filtering, cloaking and firewalling for any server inside a data center with a general-purpose NIC. Telemetry - Real-time monitoring, inspection and capture of packets needed for network performance management, security analytics, or compliance. Packet data can be forwarded to a libpcap API or saved to a file with hardware timestamps. Storage - Lightning fast NVMe SSDs connect to a PCIe bus inside a server. NVMe over fabric support on XtremeScale NICs extends the PCI (News - Alert) bus over a network with access times near internal storage performance. About Solarflare Solarflare is pioneering server connectivity for neural-class networks. From silicon to firmware to software, Solarflare provides a comprehensive, integrated set of technologies for distributed, ultra-scale, software-defined datacenters. The Solarflare XtremeScale Architecture is a design framework which includes a comprehensive suite of features for ultra-scale environments: High-bandwidth, ultra-low-latency, ultra-scale connectivity, software defined, secure with hardware firewalls, and instrumented for line-speed telemetry. Solarflare solutions have earned a sterling reputation in financial services and are used by virtually every major global exchange, commercial bank and hedge fund. This exacting, regulated performance uniquely qualifies our solutions for use in ultra-scale applications in IoT, big data and artificial intelligence where low latency, robust security and insightful telemetrics are critical. View source version on businesswire.com: https://www.businesswire.com/news/home/20180417005696/en/ [ Back To TMCnet.com's Homepage ] American Legion Invites Fort Wayne Area Veterans to Discuss VA Care The American Legion invites all Fort Wayne, Ind., area veterans and their family members to a town hall meeting to discuss their VA care. The meeting will be held on April 23 at 7 p.m., at American Legion Post 241, 7605 Bluffton Rd., Fort Wayne, IN 46809. The town hall is one of many events that The American Legion will conduct around the United States this year. The American Legion hosts these events to hear feedback from veterans about the quality of health care they receive at their local VA healthcare facility. Staff from The American Legion National Headquarters in Washigton, D.C., American Legion Department of Indiana and representatives from VA and members of the Indiana congressional delegation will be in attendance. Veterans who may not be able to attend the American Legion town hall meeting may leave their comments about the VA Northern Indiana Healthcare System by submitting an email to IN.TownHall@legion.org. The mailbox is not staffed and you will not receive a response. Your comments will be compiled to evaluate veterans' perceptions of the health care and services provided by the VA Northern Indiana Healthcare System. If you have an immediate concern, please call the Department of Veterans Affairs 24-hour complaint hotline at (855) 948-2311. View source version on businesswire.com: https://www.businesswire.com/news/home/20180417005927/en/ [April 17, 2018] Danal Wins 2018 Trailblazer Award at the KNOW Identity Conference https://danalinc.com/danal-wins-2018-trailblazer-award-for-pioneering-mobile-identity-globally/ SAN JOSE, Calif., April 17, 2018 (GLOBE NEWSWIRE) -- Danal won the 2018 Trailblazer Award in recognition of its ability to offer a high capacity mobile identity and authentication platform across the globe and to a variety of the worlds biggest brands. Presented at the KNOW Identity Conference (hosted by One World Identity) held in Washington, D.C. between March 26th to 28th, the award recognized Danal as the company which pushed boundaries and accomplished what industry insiders once considered impossible. The Trailblazer award honors the organization that achieved the most unique and original solution to an existing identity challenge. Danal is empowering enterprises across various verticals such as financial institution, healthcare, marketplaces, e-commerce, hospitality, etc. to complete the Mobile First transformation globally. This transformation relies heavily on the consumers mobile phone number wich is becoming the primary identifier across the globe. This is precipitating a global democratization of identity using the phone number at its core, which traditionally has been the privilege of developed nations with national ID schemes. It is especially critical now when these traditional knowledge-based ID methods have succumbed to rampant data breaches. Danals unique ability to utilize deep mobile network signals to accurately verify the phone number with the registered mobile device and the consumer owning it, enables these enterprises (Danals clients) to address remote online and POS (point of sale) challenges such as authentication, acquisition, fraud prevention and compliance. Furthermore, Danals platform amplifies the value by enabling an uninterrupted consumer experience, which historically has been disruptive with use of SMS with pin-code and other step-up techniques. Its rewarding to be recognized as trailblazers in this industry by OWI, who has become the Nexus of Identity, said Jim Greenwell, CEO at Danal Inc. Many of the customers Identity requirements are in countries that are exclusively being solved by Danals global real-time Mobile Identity Platform thereby setting Danal apart from all others in the industry. Danals growing demand has led to the continued expansion into the NA, EMEA, LATAM, and APAC markets. About Danal Danal, Inc. is the premier global provider of mobile identity and authentication solutions driven by unique real-time connections to mobile operator networks and data. Danals patented technology solves for multiple use cases across various industry verticals such as financial institution, healthcare, marketplaces, e-commerce, hospitality, etc. The supported use cases range from solving for compliance (GDPR, KYC, AML, TCPA, etc.), Identity proofing (computer vision, video streaming, biometrics and machine learning) during registration, high-value transactions and access control plus user experience improvements (auto form-fill, instant enrollment, guest check-out, etc.) and fraud prevention (account takeover, SIM fraud, device spoofing, malwares, etc.). Danal, Inc. is a privately held US company whose investors include Discover Financial Services, Morgenthaler Group, Orange Telecom, Bangkok Bank and Danal Co, Ltd. Contact Information: marketing@danalinc.com or Get in Touch [ Back To TMCnet.com's Homepage ] [April 17, 2018] Lockheed Martin Submits Proposal for U.S. Air Force's GPS IIIF Program DENVER, April 17, 2018 /PRNewswire/ -- Lockheed Martin (NYSE: LMT) has submitted a competitive and fully compliant proposal for the U.S. Air Force's GPS III Follow On (GPS IIIF) program, which will add enhanced capabilities to the most advanced GPS satellites ever designed. The GPS IIIF program intends to produce up to 22 next-generation satellites. The Air Force's first 10 GPS III satellites, currently in full production at Lockheed Martin, are already the most powerful GPS satellites ever designed. GPS III will have three times better accuracy and up to eight times improved anti-jamming capabilities. Spacecraft life will extend to 15 years, 25 percent longer than the newest GPS satellites on-orbit today. GPS III's new L1C civil signal also will make it the first GPS satellite to be interoperable with other international global navigation satellite systems, like Galileo. Lockheed Martin's proposal for the GPS IIIF program adds further power, resiliency and capabilities to GPS III. The biggest feature of GPS IIIF will be a Regional Military Protection capability, which will increase anti-jam support in theater to ensure U.S. and allied forces cannot be denied access to GPS in hostile environments. Lockheed Martin's GPS IIIF will feature a fully-digital navigation payload. The payload on the first 10 GPS III satellites is already 70 percent digital. Each GPS IIIF satellite will include a laser retro-reflector array, which allows the positioning of on-orbit satellites to be refined with ground-based, laser precision. The precise positioning of each satellite ultimately enhances the positioning signals they enerate. Additionally, the U.S. government will provide each GPS IIIF with a new Search and Rescue payload. These hosted payloads, spread around the globe on GPS IIIF satellites, will make it easier for first responders to detect and respond to emergency signals. first 10 GPS III, we used a flexible, modular architecture that would allow for the insertion of modern technologies and new Air Force requirements in a low-risk manner," said Johnathon Caldwell , Program Manager for Lockheed Martin's Navigation Systems mission area. "In addition, our GPS IIIF solution is based off a design already proven compatible with both the Air Force's next generation Operational Control System (OCX) and the existing GPS constellation." Currently, the first 10 GPS III satellites are in full production at Lockheed Martin's GPS III Processing Facility, a $128 million cleanroom factory designed in a virtual reality environment to drive efficiency and reduce costs in satellite production. In September 2017, the Air Force declared Lockheed Martin's first GPS III satellite "Available for Launch" (AFL). GPS III Space Vehicle 01 (GPS III SV01) is in storage waiting for the Air Force to call in up for launch. GPS III SV02 completed rigorous Thermal Vacuum (TVAC) testing in December 2017, is currently in its final environmental testing, and is expected to be declared AFL in summer 2018. GPS III SV03 was fully integrated in fall 2017 and recently began TVAC, and SV04 was recently integrated in anticipation of environmental testing later this summer. GPS III SV05 has now received its navigation payload and is in final vehicle build up. Not far behind, GPS III SV06 has begun its initial build with GPS III SV07 also planned to begin production this spring. To date, more than 90 percent of parts and materials for all 10 satellites have been received, from more than 250 aerospace companies from 29 states, to help ensure GPS III maintains the gold standard in position, navigation and timing. For additional GPS III information, photos and video visit: www.lockheedmartin.com/GPS. 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. View original content:http://www.prnewswire.com/news-releases/lockheed-martin-submits-proposal-for-us-air-forces-gps-iiif-program-300631027.html SOURCE Lockheed Martin [ Back To TMCnet.com's Homepage ] [April 17, 2018] Red Lion Controls Adds PID Controller Capabilities for Complete HMI Solution YORK, Pa., April 17, 2018 /PRNewswire/ -- Red Lion Controls, the global experts in communication, monitoring and control for industrial automation and networking, today announced additional features for its PXU series of proportional-integral-derivative (PID) controllers, including Ramp/Soak, CT Input, 2nd Analog Input and 2nd Analog Output. The PXU series is designed to enable tighter, more reliable control over a wide range of processes, including temperature, flow and pressure, from a single model. Production engineers and machine builders now have the opportunity to select from a wide range of controllers with varying capabilities and in three sizes (1/16, 1/8 and 1/4 DIN models). Integration with Red Lion's Crimson enabled hardware provides a complete indication, data acquisition and control solution for virtually any application. The additional features allow customers to use one source for their process control needs. For example, for processes requiring different temperatures, the Ramp/Soak capability allows timeline vs. temperature programming for the process that will automatically be run by the PXU. With CT input, high current signals can be transferred to lower ones in order to be safely accepted by a PID controller or panel meter. For remote changing of a PID controller's setpoint value, the 2nd Analog Input allows modification from an external device. "By offering PID controllers with a range of different features, plus the ability to easily integrate with an HMI, customers have the advantage of purchasing one solution to handle whatever their applications require," said Jeff Thornton, product manager at Red Lion Controls. "Many users have applications that need specific features and functions, and our offerings provide the flexibility to simply tailor a complete solution from one manufacturer." For more information please visit http://www.redlion.net/. To download Crimson 2.1 and begin configuring a PXU device today, please visit http://www.redlion.net/crimson-21. About Red Lion Controls As the global experts in communication, monitoring and control for industrial automation and networking, Red Lion has been delivering innovative solutions for over forty years. Our automation, Ethernet and cellular M2M technology enables companies worldwide to gain real-time data visibility that drives productivity. Product brands include Red Lion, N-Tron and Sixnet. With headquarters in York, Pennsylvania, the company has offices across the Americas, Asia-Pacific and Europe. Red Lion is part of Spectris plc, the productivity-enhancing instrumentation and controls company. For more information, please visit www.redlion.net. 2018 Red Lion Controls, Inc. All rights reserved. Red Lion, the Red Lion logo and Crimson are registered trademarks of Red Lion Controls, Inc. All other company and product names are trademarks of their respective owners. Media Contacts: Stephen Oakes Laetitia Donovan LEWIS Director of Marketing Communication +1 (781) 418-2472 +1 (717) 767-6961 x6913 redlion@teamlewis.com pr@redlion.net www.teamlewis.com www.redlion.net View original content with multimedia:http://www.prnewswire.com/news-releases/red-lion-controls-adds-pid-controller-capabilities-for-complete-hmi-solution-300631163.html SOURCE Red Lion Controls [ Back To TMCnet.com's Homepage ] [April 17, 2018] Star2Star & Bigleaf Announce Strategic Partnership SARASOTA, Fla., April 17, 2018 (GLOBE NEWSWIRE) -- Star2Star Communications, provider of the World's Most Complete Cloud Communications Solution with options ranging from Hosted to Hybrid, today announced their partnership with Bigleaf, the Cloud-first SD-WAN service that optimizes Internet and Cloud performance by dynamically choosing the best connection and adapting application prioritization in real-time. Star2Stars Full Spectrum Communications Solution has been making waves in the Unified Communications industry with the recent release of the fully hosted StarSystem Hosted solution. As the innovative pioneer of Hybrid Architecture for communications, Star2Star is set to lead the market with the first truly end-to-end communications solution. Star2Star and Bigleaf have established a partnership as part of this effort, in order to provide end-to-end network optimization through the Full Spectrum product portfolio. Bigleafs Software-Defined Wide Area Network (SD-WAN) technology provides the ability to enhance communications by adapting to real-time network changes. Together Star2Star and Bigleaf deliver a prioritization of cloud, voice, and data services ensuring that the network performance for these critical business components is fully maximized. "Our partnership with Bigleaf ensures our customers have the best voice and data optimization options," said Michelle Accardi, Presidet and Chief Revenue Officer at Star2Star Communications. "Star2Star is dedicated to bringing the most cutting-edge communications solutions to market. With Bigleaf, we are able to expand our abilities to provide network optimization that will enhance every aspect of our customers businesses from voice to data. "We are excited to announce this partnership with Star2Star," said Jeff Burchett, Co-Founder & VP of Sales at Bigleaf. "Our joint motivations for providing the most reliable communications solutions available in the market will enable Star2Star customers to enhance their overall experience and leverage exceptional communications services." About Star2Star Communications Founded in 2006 in Sarasota, Florida, Star2Star Communications empowers global business success with a Full Spectrum Communications Solution. With options ranging from Hosted to Hybrid, Star2Star offers unparalleled value, reliability, quality, and scalability. Star2Star unifies business communications including voice, video, fax, mobile, chat, and presence management. Star2Star's award-winning, patented Constellation Network overcomes the reliability and quality limitations of other communications technologies and enables companies to choose the deployment methodology that aligns best with their needs. For businesses who require high-quality voice, redundant networks for continuity, and ultra-reliable communications, Star2Star's Hybrid architecture offers the highest guaranteed SLAs in the industry at an affordable price. Businesses with less complexity, who seek the best communications capabilities for their employees and customers, can consider Star2Star's Hosted solution the optimal choice. With a customer retention rate of 99.85%, Star2Star has been recognized by a multitude of leading analysts. In the past six years, Star2Star was named to the Forbes Most Promising Companies list, the Deloitte Technology Fast 500 five times, and the Inc. 500|5000 seven times. The company was also named by IHS as a Top 10 Hosted Business VoIP/UC Provider and has been in the Gartner Magic Quadrant for UCaaS, Worldwide for the last four years. About Bigleaf Networks Bigleaf Networks is the intelligent networking service that optimizes Internet and Cloud performance by dynamically choosing the best connection based on real-time usage and diagnostics. Inspired by the natural architecture of leaves, the Bigleaf Cloud-first SD-WAN platform leverages redundant connections for optimal traffic re-routing, failover and load-balancing. The company is dedicated to providing a better Internet experience and ensuring peace of mind with simple implementation, friendly support and powerful technology. Founded in 2012, Bigleaf Networks is investor-backed, with service across North America. Casey OLoughlin coloughlin@star2star.com [ Back To TMCnet.com's Homepage ] Amsterdam, the Netherlands - 17 April 2018 - Intertrust N.V. ("Intertrust" or "Company") [Euronext: INTER], a leading global provider of high-value trust, corporate and fund services, today announces that it has repurchased 105,000 ordinary Intertrust shares at an average price of EUR 17.0960 per share in the period from 09 April 2018 up to and including 13 April 2018. The aggregate consideration for this repurchase was EUR 1.80 million. This repurchase was made as part of the Company's share repurchase programme, which was announced on 13 November 2017. The total number of shares repurchased under this programme up to and including 13 April 2018 is 2,440,771 shares for a total aggregate consideration of EUR 38.60 million. Approximately 850,000 shares will be used for employee stock ownership and incentive plans vesting in 2018 and 2019, with the remainder of the repurchased shares to be cancelled (after approval by the general meeting of shareholders). Further details on the share repurchase transactions can be found on the Company's website. This press release contains information which is to be made publicly available under the Market Abuse Regulation (EU) No 596/2014. For further information Intertrust N.V. marieke.palstra@intertrustgroup.com Marieke Palstra Tel: +31 20 577 1157 Director of Investor Relations and Corporate Communications About Intertrust Intertrust is a leading global provider of high-value trust, corporate and fund services, with more than 2,500 employees located throughout a network of 39 offices in 28 jurisdictions across Europe, the Americas, Asia and the Middle-East. The Company delivers high-quality, tailored services to its clients with a view to building long-term relationships. Intertrust's business services offering is comprised of corporate services, fund services, capital market services, and private wealth services. Intertrust has leading market positions in selected key geographic markets of its industry, including the Netherlands, Luxembourg, Jersey, and the Cayman Islands. Intertrust works with global law firms and accountancy firms, multi-national corporations, financial institutions, fund managers, high net worth individuals and family offices. [April 17, 2018] Industry First: Proof P/360 Links Talent to Value, Delivers End-To-End Attribution Analytics for Networks of Individuals and Teams A company is a network of individuals who have come together to interact for some business purpose. The right synergy of those individual contributions is what delivers the companys performance and success. Performance is not just attainment of objectives. It is the strength of the cascading relationship between attained objectives and business impacts that defines performance and contribution. Today few workers know their actual business impact. Fewer still are paid on that basis. Sales people can be a notable exception. Most workers are paid based on time, effort and attainment of volumetric goals with some sort of presumptive significance as a leading indicator of value. But these longstanding approaches to performance evaluation and compensation fail to capture a persons actual impact or value. NEW YORK, April 17, 2018 (GLOBE NEWSWIRE) -- Proof Analytics today delivered Proof P/360, a major update to the companys award-winning analytics platform that enables organizations and individuals to connect high-performing individuals and teams to critical areas of performance for the larger organization. Proof P/360 leverages fully integrated data federation and rock-solid data rights management to enable individual employees, contractors and consultants to understand their contribution to business value, said Mark Stouse, CEO of Proof. Proof enables every individual to rapidly network their key performance indicators (KPI) or objectives and key results (OKR) and compute the effects and time to impact of their contributions. The result is a breakthrough in the way we understand how value is created and by whom. Mike Barriere, Miriam Owens and Sarah Pobereskin three leading consultants at McKinsey & Co. have written powerfully about the criticality of aligning talent with value creation. In this months new McKinsey Quarterly, the trio published Linking Talent to Value. They write, Companies can more closely connect their talent and their opportunities to create value by using quantifiable measures to investigate their organizations nooks and crannies to find the most critical roles, whether they lie in design, manufacturing, HR, procurement or any other discipline. Leaders at such companies understand that reallocating talent to the highest-value initiatives is as important as reallocating capital. For more than 150 years, the main basis for identifying and cultivating talent has been individual performance against static, volumetric KPIs: how much of X was accomplished in a given period of time, and how did that compare with the pre-set objectives. More subjectively, companies also have sought to understand the soft measures of an individuals organizational success -- collaboration, leadership and influence and the relative difficulty of one roles contribution to value versus anothers. The biggest problem has been that connection between performance metrics and value are, at best, inferred. In the overwhelming majority of companies, there is no computed value chain connecting these sorts of causes and effects at the individual, team, organization or company level. Similarly, the compensation of employees and contractors for their work has been based directly or indirectly on the real or perceived value of their job, their presumed level of expertise, the difficulty of finding top talent for that role, and the expected number of hours they will work. Again, even though many companies include performance bonuses as part of the compensation plan, those bonuses typically do not reflect the ndividuals actual impact or the amount of value they created. This cost-basis approach to performance measurement and compensation has been the mainstay of most companies, but changes in technology, societal expectations and marketplace dynamics are enabling many companies to look at new value-based approaches. Clearly, sales and other roles with commission structures are notable exceptions, and indeed many leaders say they wish they could find ways to apply similar variable compensation structures more broadly. Surveys also indicate that most employees, contractors and service providers all want to better understand the value of their contributions and be compensated accordingly. Increasingly, the value of Time and Talent is determined by how much Value they contribute and create. Proof P/360 redefines the basis for understanding and rewarding individual performance and contribution within a team and a company, said David Williams, senior vice president of portfolio strategy at CA Technologies and a former Gartner vice president and senior analyst. Proof not only delivers a highly accurate portrait of performance attribution, it enables companies and employees to transform time-based compensation approaches to fully governed impact- and value-based structures, much like sales or other roles with significant performance-based pay. At the same time, Proof provides companies with a clear, modern basis for assessing new compensation models for roles that are structurally necessary but that create less business value. With this announcement, Proof has demonstrated yet again how powerfully unique it is in todays marketplace. Workplace surveys repeatedly show that workers want to know that their time and effort has real meaning and significance, Stouse continued. This is equally true for companies employers need every team member to understand how their individual performance correlates across time with the success of the larger group or company. Today, the need for greater transparency continues to intensify dramatically. Competition for talent is at a fever pitch. Demands for equal opportunity have never been more urgently expressed. Proof opens the door wide to far more equitable compensation models that are tied to a person or firms contribution to business impact and financial value creation. Proof P/360 is the logical extension of Proofs core computed attribution capabilities. Tom Bishop, the companys chief technology officer, said: Customers have been using Proof Analytics to compute marketing and PR attribution across a wide range of activities, programs, channels and outcomes. The next logical step was to give individual team members the ability to compute the relationship between their performance metrics and those of their colleagues and managers. Proof has integrated this capability into our Proof Exchange data federation architecture so that the upload of individual performance data is part of the onboarding process, providing each team member with the immediate opportunity to compute their short-, medium- and long-term contribution to their teams performance. Proof then capitalizes on the network effect to extend these analytics across teams and companies, ultimately computing the personal contribution of each individual to organizational performance. 451 Research analyst Keith Dawson recently wrote in a report, Proofreaches across organizational boundaries to encompass an entire ecosystem of employees, partners and vendors. By (networking) data in Proof, people with different roles can connect their activities and understand what levers to pull to ensure particular outcomes. This has the potential to collapse the barriers between sales and marketing, as well as marketing and C-level decision makers, technology buyers and users, and between a company and outside partners and agencies. Proof is transformational, not only for individual employees but also for contractors, go-to-market partners and resellers, and professional service providers, said Tom Schodorf, a senior advisor to Warburg Pincus and board member for Rapid7. Proof enables everyone individuals, teams, managers, organizations, and the company as a whole to understand individual and team contribution in context, including time lag. By computing role-based attribution in Proof, organizations can align, evaluate, compensate, promote, bonus and retain team members based on the amount of impact and value they actually create. As a long-time sales leader turned board member, its clear that Proof uniquely answers the big questions both companies and workers have had about the meaning and significance of individual performance to larger questions of business impact and financial value. For years, companies and high-performing employees alike have wanted a more equitable approach to compensation, moving away from time-based approaches to an impact- and value-based system, said Christopher Engman, chief revenue officer for high-flying Swedish heat energy company and Proof customer Climeon. Bottom line, the more market impact and financial value you create, the higher your compensation can and should be, just like sales people are commissioned today. Before Proof, there was no way to really do this consistently and equitably. Proof is helping us understand what performance really is. Its not just about individual effort. Its about seeing an individuals networked contribution to other peoples efforts, and then getting very clear about their meaning and significance the ripple effect of those efforts on the larger organization and its business performance. This is particularly critical when a company is focused on longer-cycle mega-deals that require the collective contributions of many different people and teams over a sustained period of time. No man or woman is an island, and performance is always about our contribution to something greater than ourselves, said Diane Kegley, chief marketing officer at Proof. Weve all repeated that mantra, but the reality is that most companies still cant tie one individuals performance to the larger organizations goals and objectives, nor do they understand how an individuals performance contributes to the success of their colleagues. Even more sophisticated companies usually fail to factor in the impact of time lag on recognized performance. Proof uniquely solves this problem. 2018 McKinsey & Co.: McKinsey Quarterly: Linking Talent to Value, April 2018 About Proof Delivering award-winning business analytics that everyone can use, Proof enables every employee and every team to prove their contribution to business value. Marketing, CSR, HR, communications, and consulting firms are using Proof to quickly forge alignment to business objectives, compute their respective contributions to business value, and showcase their financial ROI. www.proofanalytics.ai Contact: Proof Analytics Diane Kegley (Pacific Time) diane.kegley@get-proof.com Twitter: @dekegley [ Back To TMCnet.com's Homepage ] [April 17, 2018] Progressive Care Begins to Take Action to Combat Naked Short Sellers MIAMI, April 17, 2018 (GLOBE NEWSWIRE) -- Progressive Care Inc. (OTCQB:RXMD), a healthcare services and technology company, announced that it is beginning the process of combatting naked short selling of the Companys stock. The Company has begun contacting broker/dealers, clearing firms, and regulatory agencies regarding Regulation SHO violations caused by naked short selling of the Companys securities in the market. The Company is taking the matter seriously and intends to work with regulators to ensure the stability and integrity of the market. The Company also clarified the conversion rate for Chicago Venture Partners (CVP). The facility provided by CVP allows for a bifurcated derivative liability which denotes two scenarios for conversion: If during the previous 20 trading days prior to conversion date the Companys shares trade below $0.05 per share, the Company converts at a discount of the lowest bid price during that 20 day look-back period. If during the previous 20 trading days prior to conversion date the Companys shares trade above $0.05 per share, the conversion price is a fixed $0.05 per share. Conversion price is calculated based on date of conversion notice, not based on date of funds received. Conversion notices have been delivered to the Company in tranches and thus carry different conversion dates and prices. Given current trading patterns and already converted tranches, the Company estimates that 14.4 million shares in total will be issued to convert the current draw down of funds from CVP. To date, 6.4 million shares have been issued, of which 2.4 million was converted below $0.05. The most important thing for shareholders right now is the integrity of the marketplace for our stock, stated S. Parikh Mars, CEO. "We are taking an active role in reaching out to clearing firms and regulatory agencies to make them aware of the ongoing problem and to insist that action be taken to combat the market manipulation caused by naked short selling. The CEO reiterated The Company is not currently contemplating a reverse split or an additional draw down of funds from CVP. She aso stressed Investors and shareholders should take a critical look at the information being bandied about online from unverified sources. If the information did not come directly from myself, a Progressive Care platform, or a source referencing in detail the content of directly released material, then it should be viewed skeptically. My team and I take pride in our transparency and believe that the information we put out about the Company is both truthful and complete. Get connected and stay in touch with us on social media: Progressive Care Inc. https://www.facebook.com/ProgressiveCareUS/ https://twitter.com/ProgressCareUS PharmCo, LLC https://www.facebook.com/pharmcorx/ https://twitter.com/PharmCoRx About Progressive Care Progressive Care Inc. (OTCQB:RXMD), through its PharmCo, LLC, is a South Florida health services organization and provider of prescription pharmaceuticals, compounded medications, provider of tele-pharmacy services, the sale of anti-retroviral medications, medication therapy management (MTM), the supply of prescription medications to long term care facilities, and health practice risk management. Cautionary Statement Regarding Forward Looking Statements Statements contained herein that are not based upon current or historical fact are forward-looking in nature and constitute 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. Such forward-looking statements reflect the Companys expectations about its future operating results, performance and opportunities that involve substantial risks and uncertainties. These statements include but are not limited to statements regarding the intended terms of the offering, closing of the offering and use of any proceeds from the offering. When used herein, the words anticipate, believe, estimate, upcoming, plan, target, intend and expect and similar expressions, as they relate to Progressive Care Inc., its subsidiaries, or its management, are intended to identify such forward-looking statements. These forward-looking statements are based on information currently available to the Company and are subject to a number of risks, uncertainties, and other factors that could cause the Company's actual results, performance, prospects, and opportunities to differ materially from those expressed in, or implied by, these forward-looking statements. Contact Armen Karapetyan Senior Advisor Business Development armen@progressivecareus.com www.progressivecareus.com www.pharmcopharmacy.com [ Back To TMCnet.com's Homepage ] [April 17, 2018] Flexible, Efficient Access to Workers Compensation Information and Products: NCCI Launches "Plug In & Power Up" BOCA RATON, Fla., April 17, 2018 /PRNewswire/ -- The National Council on Compensation Insurance (NCCI) has announced the launch of its Plug In & Power Up initiative. The effort streamlines customer access to a broad range of NCCI's services and tools. The series of new products and enhancements allows customers to access workers compensation data and information in powerful new ways that also flexibly respond to their preferences. "NCCI is committed to helping workers compensation professionals 'power up' their decision-making by plugging into the industry's most comprehensive data and information tool set," said Bill Donnell, NCCI's president and CEO. "This initiative gives our stakeholders greater flexibility, allowing them to connect with us in the way most convenient for them." The Plug In & Power Up initiative adds many new and enhanced product fferings to the NCCI suite of analytical and risk-specific tools in 2018. Among the new features, customers can: Access the most current aggregated information tool in the industry to analyze data against industry trends Use new "server-to-server" connections to access risk-specific information Generate and analyze their own retrospectively rated policy-specific results Use a single interface to access comprehensive classification codes and descriptions Visit ncci.com for the latest on these enhanced Plug In & Power Up products and the new ways to access valuable industry information. About NCCI Founded in 1923, the mission of the National Council on Compensation Insurance (NCCI) is to foster a healthy workers compensation system. In support of this mission, NCCI gathers data, analyzes industry trends, and provides objective insurance rate and loss cost recommendations. These activitiescombined with a comprehensive set of tools and servicesmake NCCI the source you trust for workers compensation information. Media Contact Dean W. Dimke Marketing Communications Director 561-893-1034 dean_dimke@ncci.com View original content with multimedia:http://www.prnewswire.com/news-releases/flexible-efficient-access-to-workers-compensation-information-and-products-ncci-launches-plug-in--power-up-300630839.html SOURCE National Council on Compensation Insurance (NCCI) [ Back To TMCnet.com's Homepage ] [April 17, 2018] Hillstone Networks Wins Two Cyber Defense Magazine Awards SANTA CLARA, Calif., April 17, 2018 /PRNewswire/ -- Hillstone Networks, a leading provider of network security solutions, today announced they have been awarded two categories in the Cyber Defense Magazine. The Hillstone Networks CloudView solution was won in the SaaS/Cloud Security category. Under the Intrusion Prevention Systems category, the Hillstone NIPS solution won the award. The two Hillstone Networks solutions are part of the companies' portfolio of layered network security solutions. "Hillstone Networks has won two awards from our global magazine, after nearly 3,000 infosec companies were reviewed. This is due to the company being an innovator, on a mission to help stop breaches and get one step ahead of the next threat, proactively," said Gary S. Miliefsky, Publisher, Cyber Defense Magazine. "We deliver security solutions that simply work," said Lingling Zhang, Senior Vice President of Product and Marketing from Hillstone Networks," and to continue to be recognized in the market is a great validation to us." "We are proud to see Hillstone Neworks as an award-winning innovator, offering a new approach to defeat cyber criminals in a space that sees $600B in theft and damages," said Pierlugi Paganini, Editor-in-Chief, Cyber Defense Magazine. About Hillstone Networks Founded in 2006, Hillstone delivers innovative, proven and effective network security solutions to 15,000+ customers worldwide. These include Fortune 500 enterprises, financial and educational institutions, government and service providers. Hillstone has been recognized by Gartner four years in a row in its Magic Quadrant for Enterprise Network Firewalls, and has also achieved NSS Labs "Recommended" status in its 2016 Next-Generation Firewall public test. To learn more, visit www.hillstonenet.com. About Cyber Defense Magazine With over 1.2 Million annual readers and growing, Cyber Defense Magazine is the premier source of IT Security information. We are managed and published by and for ethical, honest, passionate information security professionals. Our mission is to share cutting-edge knowledge, real-world stories and awards on the best ideas, products and services in the information technology industry. We deliver electronic magazines every month online for free, and limited print editions exclusively for the RSA conferences and our paid subscribers. Learn more about us at http://www.cyberdefensemagazine.com. CDM is a proud member of the Cyber Defense Media Group. Contacts Zeyao Hu Marketing Manager inquiry@hillstonenet.com View original content:http://www.prnewswire.com/news-releases/hillstone-networks-wins-two-cyber-defense-magazine-awards-300631076.html SOURCE Hillstone Networks [ Back To TMCnet.com's Homepage ] [April 17, 2018] GuardiCore Named Info Security Product Guide's Gold Innovative Company Of The Year In 14th Annual 2018 Global Excellence Awards SAN FRANCISCO and TEL AVIV, Israel, April 17, 2018 /PRNewswire/ -- GuardiCore, a leader in internal data center and cloud security, today announced that Info Security Products Guide, the industry's leading information security research and advisory guide, has named GuardiCore a Gold Innovative Company of the Year and Bronze Product of the Year in Cloud Security and Deception Based Security in the 2018 Global Excellence Awards. The security industry celebrated its 14th Annual 2018 Global Excellence Awards in San Francisco by honoring excellence in every facet of the industry including products, people behind the successes and best companies. More than 40 judges from a broad spectrum of industry voices from around the world participated and their average scores determined the 2018 Global Excellence Awards Finalists and Winners. Winners were announced during the awards dinner and presentation on April 16, 2018 in San Francisco attended by the finalists, judges and industry peers. GuardiCore's flagship product, the Centra Security Platform, is the only security product on the market today that provides a single, scalable platform that covers five critical capabilities for effective data center security and protection: flow visualization, micro-segmentation, breach detection, automted analysis and response. "Info Security Products Guide's recognition of our innovative and dynamic methods and technology is rewarding and validates our position as a leader in internal data center and cloud security," said Pavel Gurvich, CEO and co-founder of GuardiCore. "These awards, recognizing the company as a whole and our specific technology platform, are a direct reflection of the efforts, commitment and success of the entire GuardiCore team to deliver to customers more accurate and effective ways to stop and respond to advanced threats in dynamic cloud and data center environments." About Info Security PG's Global Excellence Awards 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 GuardiCore GuardiCore is an innovator in data center and cloud security focused on delivering more accurate and effective ways to protect critical applications from compromise through unmatched visibility, micro-segmentation and real-time breach detection and response. Developed by cyber security experts in their field, GuardiCore is changing the way organizations are fighting cyber attacks. For more information, visit www.guardicore.com. Media Contact: Cinthia Portugal Guyer Group Cinthia.Portugal@guyergroup.com 206.619.8183 View original content with multimedia:http://www.prnewswire.com/news-releases/guardicore-named-info-security-product-guides-gold-innovative-company-of-the-year-in-14th-annual-2018-global-excellence-awards-300631421.html SOURCE GuardiCore [ Back To TMCnet.com's Homepage ] [April 17, 2018] Ionic Delivers Preview Release Of Secure Files Hardened With Intel Data Guard At RSA Conference ATLANTA, April 17, 2018 /PRNewswire/ -- Ionic Security Inc., a pioneer of high-assurance data control and protection, today announced a preview release of Ionic Secure Files with Intel Data Guard. The new solution extends Ionic Secure Files and Folders technology by using the Ionic Platform and Ionic SDK to directly integrate with Intel Data Guard technology and provide hardened crypto functionality using Intel Software Guard Extensions (Intel SGX) at the endpoint, ensuring that the keys remain protected both at rest and in use. "People want a simple place to put their most valued data. A secure file folder on the desktop with tamper-proof credentials is one of the most natural ways to provide data control and protection, audit-ready visibility and a seamless user experience," stated Eric Hinkle, president and CEO of Ionic. "We worked jointly with Intel to extend Ionic's Secure Files and Folder solutions to add support for Intel Data Guard in order to provide a hardened-security solution that will work for sensitive data or regulated data whether stored locally on IT managed PCs, in the cloud, or on a USB drive. The combined solution provides an innovative and straight forward foundation for organizations to ensure data privacy as well as pursue regulatory compliance requirements such as Regulation FD and GDPR." "As regulatory pressures costantly increase, the ability to provide consistent hardware-enhanced encryption that limits access to protected files to authenticated users is an important step in addressing compliance requirements, such as GDPR," said Jim Gordon, General Manager of Intel's Platforms Security Division. "Ionic's new solutions hardened with Intel Data Guard technology and Intel SGX will provide a meaningful step forward." Using Ionic Secure Files with Intel Data Guard employee files, including Microsoft Office & Adobe PDF documents are automatically encrypted and remain protected on IT-managed PCs when stored locally, in the cloud, or on a USB drive. The new solution will be demonstrated in Intel's booth, #3435N, during the RSA conference. Learn more about Ionic Secure Files with Intel Data Guard at www.ionic.com or www.intel.com/endpointsecurity About Ionic Security Ionic Security accelerates Internet trust by protecting and controlling data everywhere it travels and anywhere it resides, whether on the corporate network, in the Cloud or on mobile devices. The industry's first high-assurance data protection and control platform, Ionic Security, takes a comprehensive approach to protecting distributed data in today's borderless enterprise without proxies or gateways or changes in user behavior. The platform has been licensed to millions of users worldwide in a wide range of industries including Financial Services, Public Sector, Retail, Healthcare, Enterprise Software, and Manufacturing. The company is headquartered in Atlanta, Georgia, and is backed by leading firms including Amazon.com, Inc., Goldman Sachs, GV (formerly Google Ventures), Icon Ventures, Kleiner Perkins Caufield & Byers, Meritech Capital Partners, TechOperators, and Hayman Capital Management, L.P. More information can be found at Ionic.com. View original content:http://www.prnewswire.com/news-releases/ionic-delivers-preview-release-of-secure-files-hardened-with-intel-data-guard-at-rsa-conference-300630941.html SOURCE Ionic Security [ Back To TMCnet.com's Homepage ] English German French Company to invest more than USD 100 million to advance research and development of new antimalarials over the next five years Commitment includes expanding access to pediatric antimalarials and implementing capacity-building programs to contribute to the WHO's target of reducing malaria-related child mortality by at least 90% by 2030 New opinion research in Africa shows 2030 malaria elimination targets are at risk; leaders urge investment in innovative malaria prevention and treatment tools The digital press release with multimedia content can be accessed here: Basel, April 17, 2018 - Novartis announces a five-year commitment to the fight against malaria in conjunction with the 7th Multilateral Initiative on Malaria Conference and the Malaria Summit of the Commonwealth Heads of Government meeting. Further, the company releases new African research on progress and remaining challenges toward the 2030 malaria elimination targets, together with Elimination 8 and the KEMRI-Wellcome Trust program. Over the next five years, as part of its commitment, Novartis will invest more than USD 100 million to advance research and development of next-generation treatments to combat emerging resistance to artemisinin and other currently used antimalarials. The company will also implement an equitable pricing strategy to maximize patient access in malaria-endemic countries when these new treatments become available. In order to contribute to the WHO's target of reducing malaria-related child mortality by at least 90% by 2030, Novartis will further help expand access to pediatric antimalarials and implement healthcare system strengthening programs in 4 sub-Saharan countries. "Resistance to treatment presents the biggest threat to the incredible progress that has been made in the fight against malaria in the past 20 years. We cannot afford to wait; this is why we are committing to advance the research and development of next-generation treatments," said Vas Narasimhan, CEO of Novartis. "At the same time, we need to work to ensure that our innovation reaches those most in need, even those in the most remote locations." The R&D investment is meant to advance the Novartis malaria pipeline through 2023 and to complete a comprehensive global clinical trial program for our novel antimalarial drug candidates KAF156 and KAE609 (currently in Phase IIb and Phase IIa respectively [1]). Both are from new classes of medicines that were selected for their ability to treat malaria in different ways from current therapies. The investment also includes new uses of technology to identify areas where the malaria burden is greatest. This information could then be used to support capability- and capacity-building to establish future clinical trial sites, so the medicines can be evaluated in the populations where they are most needed. In order to enable patients in malaria-endemic countries to afford these new treatments once they become available, the company will implement an equitable pricing strategy based on socio-economic conditions of different population segments. We plan to do so in consultation with our development and funding partners and other stakeholders. Despite the tremendous progress made in combating malaria, one child still dies from the disease every two minutes. Novartis aims to contribute to the WHO's target of reducing malaria-related child mortality by at least 90% in 2030. In Nigeria, the Democratic Republic of Congo and at least 2 more countries in sub-Saharan Africa that bear the highest number of malaria-related child deaths, we plan to work with partners to help expand access to our pediatric artemisinin-based combination therapy (ACT) and drive integrated community case management (iCCM) initiatives. iCCM is recognized as a key strategy for increasing access to essential treatments and reducing child mortality from treatable conditions, such as malaria, pneumonia and diarrhea. Novartis has been committed to the fight against malaria for the past two decades, launching the first fixed-dose ACT in 1999 and the first dispersible pediatric ACT developed in partnership with Medicines for Malaria Venture (MMV) in 2009. To date, working with partners, the company has delivered more than 850 million treatments, including 350 million pediatric treatments, without profit to malaria-endemic countries. The new commitment launches at the same time as results from a new research study (Malaria Futures for Africa, MalaFA) across 14 countries in sub-Saharan Africa. In total, 68 African experts from governments, the research community and nongovernmental organizations expressed their views on progress and remaining challenges toward the 2030 global malaria elimination targets. Global malaria deaths have fallen by more than 60% between 2000 and 2015. Yet respondents fear progress could stall unless national governments provide more funding and international organizations target their support more effectively. Many experts also voiced concerns that mosquitoes were increasingly resistant to insecticides and that malaria parasites could become resistant to ACTs in the next 15-20 years. Some feared that resistance would spread faster because of expanding trade and travel between Africa and Asia, where the first signs of drug resistance are emerging. Others thought it was just as likely that resistance could emerge independently in Africa. Respondents expressed widespread support for making better use of the currently available tools, while stressing that more emphasis should be placed on improving the delivery of existing and new interventions to fight malaria - an area currently underfunded. The MalaFA study was commissioned by Novartis and co-chaired by Dr Richard Kamwi, Ambassador, Elimination 8 (E8), and Professor Bob Snow, of the KEMRI-Wellcome Trust program, Kenya and University of Oxford, United Kingdom. Research advisers include Roll Back Malaria, Malaria No More UK and the African Leaders Malaria Alliance. According to the 2017 World Malaria Report, there were 216 million cases of malaria in 2016, up from 211 million cases in 2015. The number of malaria deaths was 445,000 in 2016 vs. 438,000 in 2015. Ninety percent of malaria cases and over 90 percent of malaria deaths occur in sub-Saharan Africa. Children under 5 are particularly at risk, and malaria takes the life of a child every two minutes. To download a copy of the MalaFA report: http://bit.ly/MalaFA-report For more information on our work in malaria: www.malaria.novartis.com Disclaimer This press release contains forward-looking statements within the meaning of the United States Private Securities Litigation Reform Act of 1995. Forward-looking statements can generally be identified by words such as "commitment," "investing," "to research and develop," "to invest," "to advance," "to contribute," "will," "enable," "committing," "meant," "to complete," "drug candidates," "to identify," "could," "is developing," "future," "can," "plan," "aims," "committed," "launches," or similar terms, or by express or implied discussions regarding the potential fulfillment of the commitments described in this release, potential marketing approvals, new indications or labeling for the investigational described in this press release, or regarding potential future revenues from such products. You should not place undue reliance on these statements. Such forward-looking statements are based on our current beliefs and expectations regarding future events, and are subject to significant known and unknown risks and uncertainties. Should one or more of these risks or uncertainties materialize, or should underlying assumptions prove incorrect, actual results may vary materially from those set forth in the forward-looking statements. There can be no guarantee that the commitments described in this release will be fulfilled, or that they will be fulfilled at any particular time. Neither can there be any guarantee that the investigational or approved products described in this press release will be submitted or approved for sale or for any additional indications or labeling in any market, or at any particular time. In particular, our expectations regarding such commitments and products could be affected by, among other things, the uncertainties inherent in research and development, including clinical trial results and additional analysis of existing clinical data; regulatory actions or delays or government regulation generally; global trends toward health care cost containment, including government, payor and general public pricing and reimbursement pressures; our ability to obtain or maintain proprietary intellectual property protection; the particular prescribing preferences of physicians and patients; general political and economic conditions; safety, quality or manufacturing issues; potential or actual data security and data privacy breaches, or disruptions of our information technology systems, and other risks and factors referred to in Novartis AG's current Form 20-F on file with the US Securities and Exchange Commission. Novartis is providing the information in this press release as of this date and does not undertake any obligation to update any forward-looking statements contained in this press release as a result of new information, future events or otherwise. About Novartis Novartis provides innovative healthcare solutions that address the evolving needs of patients and societies. Headquartered in Basel, Switzerland, Novartis offers a diversified portfolio to best meet these needs: innovative medicines, cost-saving generic and biosimilar pharmaceuticals and eye care. Novartis has leading positions globally in each of these areas. In 2017, the Group achieved net sales of USD 49.1 billion, while R&D throughout the Group amounted to approximately USD 9.0 billion. Novartis Group companies employ approximately 122,000 full-time-equivalent associates. Novartis products are sold in approximately 155 countries around the world. For more information, please visit http://www.novartis.com. Novartis is on Twitter. Sign up to follow @Novartis at http://twitter.com/novartis For Novartis multimedia content, please visit www.novartis.com/news/media-library For questions about the site or required registration, please contact media.relations@novartis.com # # # Novartis Media Relations Central media line: +41 61 324 2200 E-mail: media.relations@novartis.com Eric Althoff Novartis Global Media Relations +41 61 324 7999 (direct) +41 79 593 4202 (mobile) eric.althoff@novartis.com Nadine Schecker Novartis Social Business +41 61 696 8633 (direct) +41 79 682 1326 (mobile) nadine.schecker@novartis.com Novartis Investor Relations Central investor relations line: +41 61 324 7944 E-mail: investor.relations@novartis.com Central North America Samir Shah +41 61 324 7944 Richard Pulik +1 212 830 2448 Pierre-Michel Bringer +41 61 324 1065 Cory Twining +1 212 830 2417 Thomas Hungerbuehler +41 61 324 8425 Isabella Zinck +41 61 324 7188 You have reached a premium content area of TOL. To read this entire article please login if you are already a TOL subscriber. Not a subscriber? Annual membership costs only $55 per year for individuals ($33 for students) and organizational subscriptions start at $141 per year. Subscribe today for access to: Full access to the website, including premium articles videos, country reports and searchable archives (containing over 25,000 articles). VANCOUVER, British Columbia, April 17, 2018 (GLOBE NEWSWIRE) -- Stamper Oil & Gas Corp. (TSX-V:STMP) (FSE:TMP2) (OTCQB:STMGF) (Stamper or the Company), is pleased to further provide the summary of gross reserves and parameters of well Rawat C-10 that was drilled early this year. Rawat C-10 well is light and medium oil and was drilled to an interval of between 1387.0 1526 meters in the Galhak (1) (Table 1) and 1552.0 m 1595.0 meters in Galhak Sand (Table 2). Log analysis shows pay in three of the known reservoir zones of the Galhak Formation, as well as a new pay zone in the main Galhak Sand. The initial plan is to further test, and complete Well Rawat C-10 inclusive of developing necessary infrastructure for oil production. Table 1 Summary of Gross Reserves and Reservoir Parameters Probable Developed Rawat C-10 Galhak (1) Product Type: Light and Medium Oil Reservoir Parameters Reservoir Pressure, psia 2,150 Reservoir Temperature, degree F 188 Average Porosity, % 24.0 Average Water Saturation, % 30.0 Formation Volume Factor, RB/STB 1.063 Petroleum Initially-in-Place, STB/ac.ft 1226.1 Recovery Factor, % 25 Reserves Net pay, ft. 49.0 Area, acres 160 Petroleum Initially-in-Place, STB 9,612,624 Estimated Ultimate Recovery (EUR), STB 2,403,156 Cumulative Production, STB 0 Reserves, STB 2,403,156 Note: (1) Interval 1387.0 1526.0 meters Table 2 Summary of Gross Reserves and Reservoir Parameters Probable Developed Rawat C-10 Galhak (Sand) Product Type: Light and Medium Oil Reservoir Parameters Reservoir Pressure, psia 2,150 Reservoir Temperature, degree F 188 Average Porosity, % 22.0 Average Water Saturation, % 31.0 Formation Volume Factor, RB/STB 1.063 Petroleum Initially-in-Place, STB/ac.ft 1107.9 Recovery Factor, % 25 Reserves Net pay, ft. 88.0 Area, acres 160 Petroleum Initially-in-Place, STB 15,599,323 Estimated Ultimate Recovery (EUR), STB 3,899,808 Cumulative Production, STB 0 Reserves, STB 3,899,808 Note: (1) Interval 1552.0 1595.0 meters As previously announced, State Oil Corporation (State) may farm-in up to a 50% interest pursuant to the Memorandum of Understanding (MOU) with the Sudan operator on Block 25. State has an office and technical personnel in Sudan and upon approval of TSX.V, State will become a 100% wholly owned operating subsidiary of Stamper. Negotiations are in progress for eight year initial commitment period rather than to the three year period proposed by the operator resulting in a total exploration period of eleven years if the second and third optional commitment periods are exercised. Operating Block Block 25 prospect consists of Block 25D and Block 25E and is located in the White Nile State in the south eastern portion of the Republic of Sudan, adjacent the border with Republic of South Sudan. The land is arid and relatively flat. The area is sparsely populated and is located west of the White Nile. There is limited road system and agriculture in the area. The nearest major communities are Kosti and Rabak about 150 km north of the project area where there is a railway station, airport and a major sugar refinery. The Government of Sudan is anxious to develop its oil resources and the Company has the full support and assistance of the government. About the Galhak Formation The Galhak Formation in this area contains four reservoir zones. 1A through 4A, which overlie the main Galhak Sand. Oil is trapped in stacked high porosity sands within the reservoir zones of the Galhak Formation with individual pay zones from two to five metres in thickness. Log analysis of the recently drilled well Rawat C-10 shows pay in three of the known reservoir zones of the Galhak Formation, as well as a new pay zone in the main Galhak Sand as illustrated in Figure 1. A photo accompanying this announcement is available at http://resource.globenewswire.com/Resource/Download/519cdc92-68a9-45c6-ae13-a3caf8e5a4ab About Stamper Oil & Gas Stamper Oil & Gas Corp. is a publicly traded junior development stage international oil and gas company. The Company is engaged in the acquisition, exploration and evaluation of conventional and unconventional oil and natural gas properties with the current focus on Africa and Latin America. The Companys strategy is centred on generating sustainable long term shareholder value by exploring and developing cost effective growth of light oil reserves. For further information on Stamper Oil & Gas please visit www.stamperoilandgas.com or under our profile on SEDAR at www.sedar.com. Qualified Resource Evaluator The scientific and technical information contained in this news release has been reviewed and approved by Qamar M. Malik, MSc., Ph.D., Petroleum Engineering, who is the independent qualified resources evaluator as such term is defined under National Instrument 51-101 (NI 51-101) and Canadian Oil and Gas Evaluation (COGE) Handbook. ON BEHALF OF THE BOARD OF DIRECTORS David C. Greenway President & Director For further information, please contact: Stamper Investor Relations Phone: (604) 684-2401 Email: info@stamperoilandgas.com Neither TSX Venture Exchange nor its Regulation Services Provider (as that term is defined in the policies of the TSX Venture Exchange) accepts responsibility for the adequacy or accuracy of this release. Forward-Looking Statements This news release contains certain statements that may be deemed "forward-looking" statements. Forward looking statements are statements that are not historical facts and are generally, but not always, identified by the words "expects", "plans", "anticipates", "believes", "intends", "estimates", "projects", "potential" and similar expressions, or that events or conditions "will", "would", "may", "could" or "should" occur. Although Stamper Oil & Gas Corp. 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 may differ materially from those in forward looking statements. Forward looking statements are based on the beliefs, estimates and opinions of Stamper Oil & Gas Corp. management on the date the statements are made. Except as required by law, Stamper Oil & Gas Corp undertakes no obligation to update these forward-looking statements in the event that management's beliefs, estimates or opinions, or other factors, should change. Sellbyville, Delaware, April 17, 2018 (GLOBE NEWSWIRE) -- Inland Waterways Vessels Market is set to reach USD 2,250 billion by 2024; according to a new research report by Global Market Insights, Inc. Increasing trade activities via inland waterways is primarily driving the industry growth over the forecast timeframe. These vessels are highly preferred owing to their benefits including congestion free transportation, reliability, and cost effectiveness as compared to other modes, further escalating the revenue generation. Various governments across the globe are launching initiatives to modernize their marine ports, positively impacting the inland waterways vessels market till 2024. Non-passenger vessels are likely to showcase dominance in the global inland waterways vessels market with more than 80% revenue share by 2024. High prominence of work boats such as general cargo ships and fishing vessels for carrying out specific tasks will primarily contribute to the revenue generation. Passenger ships will exhibit over 3% CAGR from 2017 to 2024 owing to rising government support across the globe for their enhancement. For instance, in October 2017, the Chinese government made an announcement for facilitation of cruise industry in the country. Request for a sample of this research report @ https://www.gminsights.com/request-sample/detail/2498 Marine ports across the globe are witnessing increasing goods and passenger traffic, resulting in heavy investments. For instance, in March 2018, Indias port sector was rewarded USD 10 billion for the benefit of the industry participants for efficiently accomplishing their tasks including maintenance, operations, harboring, etc. This will instigate immense growth potential to the global inland waterways vessels market over the next eight years. however, restricted participation of private sector may hamper the industry growth. Globally stringent requirements are witnessed which are associated with fixtures and fittings during the construction of vessels. For instance, investigation of Rhine ships (ROSR) and EU Directive comprises of several requirements to be adhered. Moreover, an overall technical inspection of the ships is conducted for providing them with a certificate to transport commodities or passengers. These mandatory standards will enhance the quality of vessels, further improving the product sales, fostering the inland waterways vessels market growth over the coming years. Global inland waterways vessels market from diesel oil will exhibit maximum volume share of over 90% till 2024 owing to strong prevalence of fuel in the industry. High usage of the fuel in majority of the vessels will augment to the revenue generation. LSFO will grow rapidly, witnessing more than 6.5% CAGR over the next eight years. The substantial growth is attributed to its rising deployment owing to increasing marine pollution and adverse environmental impacts. Moreover, this fuel fulfils the stringent regulatory standards, further contributing the industry growth. Browse key industry insights spread across 250 pages with 579 market data tables & 8 figures & charts from this 2018 report Inland Waterways Vessels Market in detail along with the table of contents: https://www.gminsights.com/industry-analysis/inland-waterways-vessels-market Asia Pacific will capture highest revenue share in inland waterways vessels market, accounting for more than USD 1,750 billion by 2024. Rising initiatives from countries including Japan, South Korea, and China for enhancement of marine transportation will essentially drive the industry growth. These countries have carried out extensive construction activities for bulk-carriers, new tankers, and LNG carriers over the past few years, further supporting the regional dominance. North America is likely to grow substantially, exhibiting more than 6% CAGR owing to regular modernizations in the terminals and continuous focus of industry participants to expand their fleet. Sanmar, Rhenus Group, Sneed Shipbuilding, Bayliner, Viking, European Cruise Service, and CMA CGM Group are among the prominent global inland waterways vessels market participants. Other noticeable participants include Seacontractors, Windcat Work Boats, CIWTC, DFDS, and Norfolk Tug Company. Fleet expansion is among the key strategy implemented by the industry players to gain competitive edge. For instance, in March 2018, Viking planned to construct six vessels to be delivered within next few years. Make an Inquiry for purchasing this report @ https://www.gminsights.com/inquiry-before-buying/2498 Browse Related Reports: 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 2024 https://www.gminsights.com/industry-analysis/europe-inland-waterways-vessel-market Barge Transportation Market Size By Product (Dry Cargo, Liquid Cargo, Gaseous Cargo), By Barge Fleet (Open, Covered, Tank), By Application (Coal & Crude Petroleum, Agricultural Products, Coke & Refined Petroleum Products, Metal Ores, Secondary Raw Materials & Wastes, Food Products, Beverages & Tobacco, Basic Metals & Fabricated Metal Products, Chemicals, Rubber & Plastic, Nuclear Fuel) Industry Analysis Report, Regional Outlook (U.S., Canada, Germany, UK, France, France, Belgium, Netherlands, China, India, Japan, Brazil, Mexico), Application Potential, Price Trends, Competitive Market Share & Forecast, 2017 2024 https://www.gminsights.com/industry-analysis/barge-transportation-market 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. In The Hump! Podcast Ep. 3: Walk The Earth, it's National Walking Day. Brent and Chad discuss walking. Whether it's a walk down the aisle, March For Our Lives, how to prepare for a travel hike with Chad ... or beer crawling. And Triple D? Missouri Kills Medical Marijuana Bill That Many Thought Would Pass The Missouri state legislature recently took up a proposal to legalize medical marijuana that many were optimistic would pass. However, those hopes will not be realized. The Missouri Legislative Oversight Committee voted to kill a medical marijuana bill that would've allowed cannabis for people suffering from terminal illnesses. Here's a comprehensive reality check regarding the ongoing drug war in the Heartland that doesn't accomplish much but to help prop up the prison industrial complex and eschew a far more lucrative and infinitely more taxable cash crop. Take a look: The Kansas City Police Department is asking for help in identifying the suspects of a weekend homicide. Police said 24-year-old Kindrea Brown was asleep in her bed in the 6900 block of Paseo when someone opened fire on the home. Kindrea was shot and killed. Investigators don't believe Kindrea was the target of that shooting. Global Climate & Kansas City Explained Mad About The Midwest's Cold Spring? You Can Thank Greenland Record lows in Kansas City this past weekend were Greenland's fault, according to one University of Kansas professor. Greenland, as in the massive, ice-covered island in the North Atlantic Ocean. "Spring is always pretty variable, and there can be this whiplash of cold and warm and cold again. Westport Comeback After Massive Sickness Inspectors hope to potentially reopen Californos KANSAS CITY, Mo. -- The Kansas City Health Department may soon reopen popular Westport spot Californos. The restaurant has been closed for nearly two weeks while health officials investigated reports of illnesses tied to food served at two events on March 31. An inspection on April 4 also revealed 11 critical violations at Californos, including undercooked food. Kansas City Sidewalk Hype Kansas City's GO Bond money put to work One year ago Kansas City voters approved the bonds for an $800 million fix up for sidewalks, streets and sewers. KCTV5's Nathan Vickers has a closer look at what's happening with that money. Golden Ghetto Medical Drama Report Junkyard Justice In Kansas City DST Systems employees indicted for embezzling from data center renovation - Kansas City Business Journal Two DST Systems Inc. employees were indicted for embezzling money from a renovation of the company's Kansas City data center. Russell R. Fotovich of Kansas City and Thomas Ray Jones of Blue Springs were indicted by a federal grand jury for allegedly embezzling more than $388,000 from DST. Even Better Hipster Hangout Novel opens in the Crossroads, plus Forks & Corks, a Ca Va patio party, and more: KC's food and drink events for April 16-22 Courtesy Crane Brewing Company and Boozy Botanicals Tuesday, April 17 Cheryl Bisbee of Boozy Botanicals and Michael Crane of Crane Brewing Company are coming together at Mike's Wine and Spirits Brookside (21 West 63rd Street) to demonstrate how to combine their two products into unique beer cocktails. The Kansas City Forecast First Alert Forecast: Spring returns with warmer temps Hide Transcript Show Transcript WEBVTT AND WE SET A RECORD LOW THIS MORNING OF 26, NOW AT 29. I WOULD RATHER DEAL WITH COLD AND SNOW IN APRIL THAN TORNADOES ANY DAY IN APRIL. WIND CHILL 19 DEGREES WITH NORTHWEST WIND AT 12 MILES AN HOUR, SUITE TWO IN LAWRENCE, 18 LEE'S SUMMIT, 24 IN WARRENSBURG AND THAT'S WHAT IT FEELS LIKE WHEN YOU STEP OUTSIDE. Here's a few items worth a peek from this news day. Take a look:And this is thefor right now . . . The Jackson County Prosecutors Office, with support from the Prosecutors Against Gun Violence, will hold on April 20, a special daylong discussion called The Realities of Gun Violence in Kansas City: A Community Discussion. The event will be held from 8 a.m. to 4:30 p.m. at the Kauffman Foundation Conference Center, 4801 Rockhill Road in Kansas City. The event will assemble the voices of gun violences toll from a Columbine survivor to front-line responders to victims left behind to bear the long-term impacts of trauma. Our community must learn to better cope with the daily violence and its enormous impacts on children, families and community, said Jackson County Prosecutor Jean Peters Baker. Our children bear the greatest burden. Some in urban neighborhoods go to bed despite the sound of gunfire in the night. Others cant help but worry about an unsuspected shooter at school. We must all work together to reduce the level of violence, Baker added. But we also must all make ourselves more aware of the impacts of this level of violence on the institutions of our city, the hospitals, the schools, the businesses and our households. Will all of this work to prevent more violence??? Take a look at more info on the topic of increasing gun violence confronting Kansas City.Here'sfrom a top ranking local law enforcement official . . .Topics for discussion include:- Info on violence rates in Missouri, Kansas City and St. Louis and how they compare to rest of the nation.- Team response to gun violence and its victims, as well as new emerging trends to stop the bleed.- 1st Person Testimony - Dr. Samantha Haviland was a student at Columbine High School during the mass school shooting in 1999. She is now a director of counseling support services for Denver Public Schools.- Info on the psychosocial and health consequences of trauma exposure, including the evaluation of traumatic stress prevention and early intervention programs.- A roundtable discussion by local professionals.- A discussion of models employed nationally to reduce violence and presentation of strategies currently used in Kansas City.You decide . . . Based on final data by the Bank of Greece, the balance of travel services in 2017 posted a surplus of 12,725 million, up 13.6% from a surplus of 11,202 million in 2016. This development is attributed primarily to an increase of 1,423 million or 10.8% in travel receipts and, to a lesser extent, to a decrease of 101 million or 5.0% in travel payments. The rise in travel receipts in 2017 over 2016 was driven by a 7.4% increase in the number of non-resident inbound visitors, as well as by a rise in average expenditure per trip by 15 or 3.1% (2017: 485, 2016: 471). Specifically, in 2017 expenditure per overnight stay increased slightly (by 0.4%) to 69, while the average length of stay remained virtually unchanged year-on-year at 7 nights. Overnight stays increased by 10.4% to 213,516 thousand in 2017, from 193,419 thousand in 2016. Travel receipts Travel receipts in 2017 totalled 14,630 million, up 10.8% relative to 2016. This development was driven by an 8.5% increase in receipts from residents of the EU28, which came to 9,872 million or 67.4% of total travel receipts, and by an 18.6% rise in receipts from residents outside the EU28 to 4,330 million. In particular, receipts from euro area residents increased by 12.8% year-on-year to 6,296 million, while receipts from residents of non-euro area EU28 countries also rose, by 1.7% to 3,576 million. Among major countries of origin, receipts from Germany rose by 20.0% to 2,553 million, as did receipts from France, by 11.8% to 994 million. Receipts from the United Kingdom also increased, by 6.2% to 2,065 million. Turning to non-EU28 countries, receipts from Russia fell by 4.1% to 418 million, whereas receipts from the United States increased by 11.8% to 814 million. Travel receipts by trip purpose Looking at the breakdown of non-resident expenditure in Greece by trip purpose, trips for personal reasons represented the bulk of receipts in 2017, with a share of 94.3% in total expenditure, up from 93.9% in 2016, as the corresponding receipts increased by 11.2%. Within this category, leisure accounted for the largest share of total expenditure (2017: 85.8%, 2016: 85.0%), with the corresponding receipts increasing by 11.9% to 12,558 million. Trips for the purpose of visiting family accounted for 4.9% of total receipts (or 719 million). Receipts from trips for health purposes rose by 55.4% to 55 million. Finally, receipts from business trips increased by 4.3%, but their share in total receipts declined (2017: 5.7%, 2016: 6.1%). Inbound traveller flows As already mentioned, the number of inbound visitors in 2017 increased by 7.4% to 30,161 thousand, from 28,071 thousand in 2016. Specifically, visitor flows through airports increased by 9.9%, as did visitor flows through road border-crossing points, by 8.7%. Visitors from within the EU28 accounted for 61.6% of the total number of visitors, while visitors from outside the EU28 accounted for 28.6%. In 2017, visitors from the EU28 increased by 7.9% relative to 2016. This development is attributed to an increase in the number of visitors from euro area countries (up 10.4% to 9,863 thousand), as well as to a rise in the number of visitors from the non-euro area EU28 countries (up 5.3% to 8,720 thousand). The number of visitors from non-EU28 countries rose by 13.6% to 8,611 thousand. In particular, visitors from Germany increased by 18.1% to 3,706 thousand, as did visitors from France, by 8.1% to 1,420 thousand. Visitors from the United Kingdom also increased, by 3.7% to 3,002 thousand. Finally, turning to non-EU28 countries, the number of visitors from Russia dropped by 1.1% to 589 thousand, whereas the number of visitors from the United States rose by 11.1% to 865 thousand. Overnight stays In 2017, the number of overnight stays in Greece totalled 213,516 thousand, up by 10.4% from 193,419 thousand in 2016. This was driven by a 22.1% increase in nights spent by residents of non-EU28 countries, as well as by a 6.0% rise in nights spent by residents of the EU28. The rise in overnight stays by residents of the EU28 is attributed to increases by 8.7% in nights spent by residents of the euro area and by 1.9% by residents of non-euro area EU28 countries. The number of overnight stays increased by 14.1% for German residents and by 6.0% for French residents. Overnight stays by UK residents remained relatively unchanged at 26,552 thousand. Turning to non-EU28 countries, the number of overnight stays by Russian residents declined by 2.7%, while those by US residents rose by 16.8%. Cruises Since 2012, the Bank of Greece conducts a cruise-specific survey (Cruise Survey) in order to enrich the data collected through its Border Survey (3). Following a standardised methodology, detailed cruise data for 2017 were collected from 16 Greek ports, covering 88.2% of all cruise ship arrivals. The period under review saw 3,271 cruise ship arrivals (2016: 4,093) and 4,600 thousand cruise passenger visits (2016: 5,053 thousand). According to this survey, 90.5% of all cruise passengers were transit visitors, with an average of 1.5 stopovers at Greek ports of call, unchanged from 2016. Total receipts from cruise passengers in 2017 fell by 6.4% year-on-year to 476 million. Of this amount, 48.6 million had already been captured in the Border Survey data, as they represent receipts from visitors leaving the country through Greek last ports. The remaining 427.7 million concern additional receipts data recorded by the complementary Cruise Survey. The port of Piraeus ranks first with a share of 46.2% in total cruise receipts, followed by the port of Corfu with 14.7% and the port of Mykonos with 8.8%. The seven most important cruise ship ports account for 92.0% of total cruise receipts and 88.3% of total cruise passenger visits. Total overnight stays ashore in 2017 increased year-on-year by 13.2% to 4,611 thousand, while the total number of cruise visitors fell by 9.9% to an estimated 3,055 thousand, with a negative impact on cruise receipts. Balance of travel receipts by region As shown by the Border Survey, travel receipts in 2017 amounted to 14,203 million. Five regions accounted for the bulk (88.9%) of total receipts (Table 8), namely: the Southern Aegean (3,654 million), Crete (3,260 million), Attica (2,083 million), Central Macedonia (1,852 million) and the Ionian Islands (1,775 million). The remaining regions (the Peloponnese, Thessaly, Eastern Macedonia and Thrace, Epirus, the Northern Aegean, Western Greece, Central Greece and Western Macedonia) together accounted for 1,579 million. Visits to Greece (all 13 regions combined) in 2017 totalled 31,021 thousand. The number of visits exceeds the number of inbound visitors, as travellers may visit more than one region in the course of one trip. The five most popular regional destinations, accounting for 83.9% of total visits, were: Central Macedonia (7,262 thousand visits), the Southern Aegean (5,841 thousand), Attica (5,137 thousand), Crete (4,806 thousand) and the Ionian Islands (2,966 thousand). The remaining regions (Eastern Macedonia and Thrace, the Peloponnese, Epirus, Thessaly, Western Greece, Central Greece, the Northern Aegean and Western Macedonia) together accounted for 5,008 thousand visits. The number of overnight stays in Greece in the period under review totalled 209,855 thousand. According to the breakdown into the 13 regions, five regions accounted for 86.6% of total overnight stays, namely: the Southern Aegean (46,210 thousand nights), Central Macedonia (40,783 thousand), Crete (40,271 thousand), Attica (29,437 thousand) and the Ionian Islands (24,944 thousand). The remaining regions (Eastern Macedonia and Thrace, the Peloponnese, Thessaly, Epirus, the Northern Aegean, Western Greece, Central Greece and Western Macedonia) together accounted for 28,211 thousand overnight stays. RELATED TOPICS: Greece, Greek tourism news, Tourism in Greece, Greek islands, Hotels in Greece, Travel to Greece, Greek destinations , Greek travel market, Greek tourism statistics, Greek tourism report Photo Source: Wikimedia Commons Copyright: Neosmyrnian License: CC-BY-SA A joint partnership between Greek National Tourism Organization and the leading U.S. Travel Agent Association. Photo from the joint press conference by the ASTA and FedHatta leadership in Athens More than 77% of US tour operators participating in the American Society of Travel Agents (ASTA) Destination EXPO 2018 currently underway in Athens, and will travel to other Greek destinations in the coming days, will "sell" Greece through their personal experiences, announced ASTA President Zane Kerby at a press conference with ASTA Chairman Jay M. Ellenby, ASTA Vice President and Business Development Manager Robert Duglin, ASTA Vice Chair & Secretary David R. Hershberger and Greece's FedHATTA President Lysandros Tsilidis. Furthermore, 98% of US delegates intend to use the business contacts they will develop in Greece on the occasion of the conference. Mr. Kerby also underlined that the extremely positive impressions that US delegates gathered from the Athens conference, combined with the overall safety and security of Greece as a destination, the friendly relations between the two countries reinforced by the highly dynamic element of the Greek Diaspora in America, constitute favorable conditions for an escalation in tourist flows of American tourists to Greece in the years to come. This prevailing trend is further strengthened by the increase in direct flights scheduled by US airlines as well as Aegean that have discerned the great potential for growth in US tourism traffic to Greece. The importance of the ASTA conference on the relations between Greek and American tourism professionals was also highlighted by ASTA's chairman Jay M. Ellenby. Mr. Ellenby lauded Greece and its culture before the US travel agents, noting that the country is incomparable to any other destination in the world, where ASTA Destination EXPO events have taken place. He said that this conference represents the ideal opportunity for US tour operators to get to know Greece with the assistance of local tourism specialists. The great importance of Greek tourism for the US market was recorded during the 1,100 b2b meetings between Greek and American travel professionals that were held during Destination EXPO. Finally, FedHATTA President Lysandros Tsilidis said that the US market already has a history 35 years for Greek tourism. He revealed that the latest preferences include Thessaloniki and Ioannina, while he pointed out that the Americans are making their trips in combination with destinations in the Middle East and the Mediterranean. US ranks fourth in terms of tourism revenue in Greece The US market ranks 11th in terms of arrivals in Greece, but, as far as tourism revenue is concerned, it occupies the 4th spot as American tourists have a high per capita expense. Greece ranks quite high in the sales by independent tourist offices in the USA (NACTA), with the Greek islands attracting an 8% share and Athens included among the 16 most popular destinations, according to 2015 data. Regarding the profile of US travel agencies, group trips account for 22% of their annual sales, and leisure travel occupies an 82% share of total annual sales. Organized holiday packages account for 21% of sales, cruise for 26%, aviation for 20% and hotels to 26%. Nearly 82% of US agents consider fam trips a very effective way to sell a destination. How America Travels 2017 Study Executive Summary According to ASTA's research (survey of travel agent attendees to ASTA destination events): 98% of attendees of ASTAs destination events plan to use the supplier contacts they gained for future bookings. 94% of attendees of ASTAs destination events are likely to recommend this event to another agent. Over half of attendees who visit destination events with ASTA say it has increased their sales to that destination. 76% of destination expo attendees are likely to do business with a sponsor because of their presence and in-person meetings with the company representatives at the events. 77% of attendees expect to send clients, or additional clients, to the host destination based on their experiences at the ASTA events. Read How America Travels 2017 Study Executive Summary: https://we.tl/VBqzZtZLfT ASTA Destination Expo Greece kicks off Earlier on Sunday, the American Society of Travel Agents (ASTA) announced the success of the opening session for the Destination Expo in the awe-inspiring Ancient Odeon of Herodes Atticus. President of ASTA Zane Kerby, joined by local partner and president of FedHATTA Lysandros Tsilidis and the Honorable Geoffrey R. Pyatt, U.S. Ambassador to Greece, greeted 300 travel advisors and more than 200 industry suppliers and tourism executives for the sold-out trade show in Athens, Greece April 14-17, 2018. Elena Kountoura Minister of Tourism, who championed the 2018 Destination Expo, presented the honorary opening remarks, highlighting their recent tourism growth, increased hotel development and non-stop air connections from the U.S. through increased carrier relationships. The Greek National Tourism Organization (GNTO) wowed the audience with a performance by famous Soprano Miss Anastasia Zanni, who sang renditions of the Greek and U.S. National Anthems along with the Hellenic Navy Band, which set the stage for many show-stopping experiences to come. Our mission is to immerse the U.S. travel agent community the local character, natural beauty, flavors and incredible history we have to offer, said Elena Kountoura Minister of Tourism. Aiming to establish Greece as a global 365-day destination, we extended the summer season and promoted tourism in the winter season. We introduced new thematic tourism products and new Greek destinations. The United States is an important market to us and through our targeted actions we experience double digit growth in the last three years. About one million Americans now visit Greece, and demand is growing from year to year. We look forward to welcoming many more American travelers as a result of this partnership with ASTA. The Greece Destination Expo is more than a FAM. It provides deep understanding and impactful experiences that empower our agents to sell an international destination for decades to come. 98% of our attendees plan to use the supplier contacts they make for future bookings. The best way to establish trust with local supplier partners is through in-person, face to face meetings," said Zane Kerby, president and CEO of ASTA. "For me, coming to Greece is very personal. My mother taught history and English courses to elementary school students. She loved greek mythology. She was able to visit the Parthenon after many years of showing pictures of it to her students. While she is no longer with us, Im sure shes looking down with great pride on this day and the moment I take her grandchildren up the hill to the Parthenon later this week. While Greece is an ASTA favorite, having hosted the event in 1967, 1987 and now 2018, the latest research study, How America Travels, shows that 38% of American travelers wish to see natural sights and another 34% of American travelers to see historic sights when they vacation, which this destination has the best of both worlds. ASTA offered sincere thanks for opening up your home to our community and gracious hospitality. As FedHATTA Lysandros Tsilidis put it on stage today, We believe that everyone is of Greek origin. We are just welcoming you home. For more information, visit www.astaade.org and follow the highlights on social media by following #ASTAADE. ABOUT DESTINATION EXPO ASTA Destination Expo (ADE) a unique and face-to-face learning experience that offers participants: current information on industry issues; Access to local and regional contacts; And the opportunity to become highly sought after destination specialists in a strategic, important and growing tourism region. ABOUT ASTA ASTA (American Society of Travel Agents) members represent 80 percent of all travel sold in the United States through the travel agency distribution channel. Together with hundreds of internationally based members, it is the leading global advocate for travel agents, the travel industry and the traveling public. ASTAs history of travel industry advocacy traces back to its founding in 1931 when it launched with the mission to facilitate the business of selling travel through effective representation, shared knowledge and the enhancement of professionalism. For more information, visit www.ASTA.org. Read more at: http://www.tornosnews.gr/en/tourism-businesses/markets/30983-us-ambassador-geoffrey-pyatt-i-recommend-to-americans-to-visit-greece-video.html http://www.tornosnews.gr/en/tornos/city-breaks/30972-athens-walking-tours-guide-american-travel-agents-in-athens.html http://www.tornosnews.gr/en/tornos/events/30971-key-asta-destination-expo-2018-kicks-off-in-athens-today-exclusive-interviews-and-videos.html English Danish At the Extraordinary General Meeting of Jyske Bank held today, the motions set out in the agenda were finally adopted. 1 Consideration of motions proposed by the Supervisory Board: 1 Article 14(5) of the Articles of Association to be amended to read "Eligible for the body of Shareholders Representatives shall be personally registered shareholders of the Bank who are of age and have the right of managing their estate. 2 Article 15(5) of the Articles of Association to be amended to read Members in general meeting shall determine the remuneration of members of the Shareholders' Representatives and of honorary offices at the Shareholders' Representatives. 3 Current Art. 15(6)-(1) of the Articles of Association to be discontinued. 4 New Art. 16(9) of the Articles of Association to read as follows: Members in general meeting shall determine the remuneration of the members of the Supervisory Board and of honorary offices at the Supervisory Board. 5 Art. 18(2) of the Articles of Association to be discontinued. As a consequence, Arts. 18(3) and (4) will change into Arts. 18(2) and (3). 2 In connection with the proposed amendments to the Articles of Association, the Supervisory Board proposes that the members in general meeting authorise the Supervisory Board to make such amendments as may be required by the Danish Business Authority in connection with registration of the Articles of Association. The Danish Business Authority is subsequently requested to register the adopted motions. Yours faithfully, Jyske Bank Attachment US Ambassador to Athens Geoffrey Pyatt visited the Monastery of Vatopedi on the Holy Mount Athos during his trip there. The top US diplomat expressed his admiration over the rich history and spirituality of the Monastery, while lauding the innovative research done on its biological produce. Mr Pyatt will also visit other Monasteries during his stay in the Athos peninsula in Macedonia. The Holy Mountain of Athos is arguably the most significant centre of the Eastern Orthodox Christian faith. The mountain houses 20 monasteries. I had the honor of meeting Metropolitan Hierotheos of Nafpaktos at Vatopedi. We had an important discussion on Orthodoxy worldwide and U.S. support for the Ecumenical Patriarchate, he noted in a tweet on his account. He continued by tweeting: Mt. Athos is a truly spiritual place, and I profoundly thank Abbot Ephraim for introducing me to the rich history of Vatopedi on my first stop here. I was also impressed by the Monasterys innovative research and ideas on its organic herbal products. Read more here. RELATED TOPICS: Greece, Greek tourism news, Tourism in Greece, Greek islands, Hotels in Greece, Travel to Greece, Greek destinations , Greek travel market, Greek tourism statistics, Greek tourism report Photo Source: Wikimedia Commons Copyright: Asgozzi License: CC-BY-SA Source: en.protothema.gr The Middle East and North Africa (Mena) region will require $260 billion of investments in the electricity sector over the next five years to meet rising electricity demand driven by population growth, urbanisation and growing income levels, said a report. In the GCC, governments have coped well with demand. However, recent increases in electricity prices in Saudi Arabia will slow demand growth, stated Arab Petroleum Investments Corporation (Apicorp), the multilateral development bank focused on the energy sector, in its latest research report published today (April 17). In the Mashreq region, inadequate investment and political instability have weighed on the power sector, and persistent blackouts continue to put pressure on governments to take action, it stated. Apicorps report pointed out that the electricity demand and consumption have been growing rapidly in the region, driven by population growth and urbanisation, rising income levels, industrialisation, and low electricity prices; and while economic growth has slowed compared with historical highs, the International Monetary Fund still expects an increase of 3.2 per cent this year and in 2019, rising to 3.5 per cent in 2022. The regions population is also expected to grow at an average rate of 1.5 per cent every year in that same period. In order to meet this rising demand, Apicorp estimates that Mena power capacity will need to expand by an average of 6.4 per cent each year between 2018 and 2022, which corresponds to additional capacity of 117GW. As per the report, $152 billion will be needed to deliver this additional capacity, with a further $108 billion needed for transmission and distribution. Turning to more specific parts of the Mena region, the GCC dominates the landscape, stated Apicorp in the report. Whilst it currently represents 47 per cent, or 151GW, of current Mena power generating capacity, Arab petro bank forecasts that the it will need to invest $55 billion to create 43GW of additional generating capacity and another $34 billion in transmission and distribution over the next five years. Some countries in the GCC, notably Saudi Arabia, have also taken steps to control demand, as a means of keeping required levels of investment in capacity at manageable levels. This was the thinking behind the Saudi Arabian governments most recent round of price increases, as demand had risen significantly on the back of cheap electricity, and with lower oil revenues, subsidizing high levels of consumption is no longer sustainable, said the Apicorp report. To give an idea of the scale of the increases, Saudi Arabia increased electricity tariffs from SR0.05/kWh to SR0.18/kWh for residential consumption levels below 6,000kWh/month, it added. On the investment side, the required additional generating capacity in the GCC will be found in traditional and renewable forms of power generation. Saudi Arabia will lead the way in both, with the country needing to invest around $21 billion, which will increase capacity to 92GW. Saudi Arabia is also kick-starting its renewable-energy initiative, seeking to develop 10GW of solar and wind energy by 2023, stated the report. According to Apicorp, the UAE needs to invest at least $33 billion to meet its expected additional 16GW capacity requirement over the medium term. The country is pushing strongly to diversify its energy sources in the power mix, and Apicorp estimates that nearly 10GW of capacity additions are already in execution, including 5.6GW of nuclear. Solar power also features heavily in the UAEs plans and is expected to account for 25 per cent of the generation mix once its latest $13.7bn (5GW) solar park is fully commissioned, it stated. In other GCC countries, Kuwaits generating capacity will need to reach 24GW by 2022, requiring $15 billion of investment; Qatar will need to invest around $9 billion to add 4.2GW to meet rising demand in the medium term: $6 billion in generation and $3 billion in transmission and distribution; Omans rising electricity demand will require an additional 4GW of generating capacity, which Apicorp estimates will cost $8 billion; and Bahrain will need to grow capacity by 6 per cent every year, with $3 billion of investment to meet capacity additions of 1.4GW, bringing the total to 5.8GW by 2022. Elsewhere, historic and ongoing geopolitical issues are creating different challenges for the countries concerned. Iran is likely to need an additional 25GW over the next five years (almost a third of its current capacity), which the Arab petro bank estimates will cost approximately $50 billion. Currently, only 12GW worth of projects are in execution, so Iran will clearly need to accelerate its investment to meet rising demand. However, the government has not been successful in attracting much needed foreign investments due to several political and economic challenges, not least uncertainty over the possible re-imposition of sanctions, said the report. In Iraq, the government is prioritising the power sector, following loss of generation and transmission during the war against the so called Islamic State, which has made the generating capacity of the country difficult to assess. Apicorp estimates that capacity at the end of 2017 stood at 17GW, meaning an additional 12GW of power-generation capacity is required over the next five years, amounting to $39bn of investment. On Egypt, the bank said it will need to invest $28 billion in power generation and a further $18 billion in transmission and development. This would increase capacity in Menas most populous country by 22GW to reach 60GW in 2022. Egypts historic gas supply issues are likely to be alleviated by the development of the recent discoveries, and the bulk of this investment will therefore be in gas fired power stations: indeed, three 4.8GW combined-cycle gas-power plants, which will be among the largest in the world, are expected to come on line this year. Apicorp estimates that 25GW of capacity is in execution in Egypt and ready for commissioning, meaning the country should be on track to meet its requirements by 2022. The rest of the Mashreq region will need at least 3GW of additional capacity within the next five years, amounting to $7 billion of investment. Jordan already has 1GW of capacity additions under execution, nearly half in renewable energy. This falls slightly short of the 2.1GW that Apicorp estimates the country will need to add by 2022. Lebanons major concerns will revolve around reforming electricity prices and investing in generation and adequate transmission and distribution infrastructure to alleviate frequent power outages, it stated. Ghassan Al Akwaa, the energy sector specialist at Apicorp, said: "Fiscal challenges have meant that governments are no longer able to support the provision of cheap power. Many countries are accelerating their price reform plans with the aim of liberalising prices in the short term." "While these programmes will aim to reduce the fiscal burden on governments, they will also put downward pressure on power demand. Already, electricity demand growth forecasts in Saudi Arabia has been dramatically revised downwards to 1.5-2 per cent in the next five years, down from over 5-6 per cent," explained Al Akwaa. "At the same time, there is a growing role of Independent Power Producers (IPPs) in the regions power sector," he noted. "Governments have limited options in the medium-term and IPPs will continue to be at the forefront of governments strategies to add generating capacities, which will provide significant relief to government finances and state utilities," he added. Mustafa Ansari, senior economist, said: "Success in implementing key power projects and attracting the necessary investment will vary across the region. The GCC governments will continue to cope well with rising demand, using price reforms as an effective tool." "Renewable energy projects will also continue to be at the forefront of long-term government plans to diversify generation capacity. Meanwhile, in other parts of the region, the challenge to meet electricity demand is more serious: political instability and inadequate investments will continue to result in power shortages, damaging their economies and frustrating their citizens," he added.-TradeArabia News Service Italy-based Building Energy has signed power purchase agreements with the South African-state-owned utility Eskom Holdings to build, own and operate in the country a 147 MW wind plant in Roggeveld and a 4,7 MW mini hydroelectric plant in Free State. Building Energy is a multinational company operating as a global integrated independent power producer (IPP) in the renewable energy industry. Eskom Holdings generates, transports and distributes approximately 95 per cent of South Africas electricity. The overall investment in the construction of these two plants amounts to 324 million ($401.34 million), said a statement from the company. The agreements were signed by South African Energy Minister Jeff Radebe and Building Energy managing director Africa and Middle East Matteo Brambilla, earlier this month in Johannesburg. Building Energy had been awarded preferred bidder status under Round 4 of the South African Department of Energy Renewable Independent Power Producer Procurement (REIPPP) Programme for the wind and hydro projects in April 2015, it said. These agreements will be the official start for the construction of the wind farm in Roggeveld, in the Laingsburg area, straddling the border between the Northern and Western Cape Provinces and the small-hydroelectric plant in Kruisvallei, in the Free State Province, it added. The Roggeveld wind farm will generate around 613 GWh per year. The energy generated will satisfy the energy needs of roughly 49,200 households every year while avoiding the emission of about 502,900 tonnes of CO2 emissions, said a statement. Construction work is scheduled to begin in 2018 and the commercial operation date is foreseen to be in April 2021. More than 5,300 new jobs will be created during construction phase of the plant, with another 7,920 long-term jobs created during the operation phase. Instead Kruisvallei small-hydroelectric plant will generate around 28 GWh of energy annually, catering to the energy needs of more than 2,330 households. In addition to covering the communitys energy needs, the plant will save atmospheric emissions of more than 23,800 tonnes of CO2 per year, creating more than 714 jobs during construction phase, with another 720 long-term jobs created during the operation, it said. Previously, Building Energy had already been awarded an 81 MWp solar farm in Kathu, in the first Round of the REIPPP Programme, which has been operating since August 2014 and is one of the largest solar PV plants on the continent. From its Cape Town office, the company manages and coordinates over 40 projects that are operational or under development in Africa and the Middle East across the technologies of solar PV, wind and small-scale hydroelectric energy, including inter alia projects in South Africa, Uganda, Mali, Malawi, Cameroon, Tunisia, Botswana, Zambia and Cote DIvoire. Brambilla said: We are delighted to have signed the agreement for the construction of the Roggeveld plant, which represents our first wind farm in South Africa. We are also excited to develop two of the 2.3GW of renewable energy projects allocated by South African Government in the first major investment deal under President Cyril Ramaphosa, he added. TradeArabia News Service Kuwait-based Alyasra Foods, a leading food and beverage distributor, has been awarded the Best Foodservice Distributor in the Middle East at the recent MEA Markets Business Awards 2017. Alyasra Foods, a trusted name in the fast moving consumer goods (FMCG) and foodservice industry since its formation in 1989, saw off some stiff competition from around the region for the prestigious award, said the company in a statement. The company was honoured for its commitment to providing the best quality food and services, and unrivalled industry excellence to thousands of homes, hotels, businesses and retail outlets across Kuwait, Iraq and Saudi Arabia, it stated. Alyasra Foods has achieved international standards, namely the ISO 22000:2005 certification for food quality and safety in receiving, storing and delivering goods and services the interests of all its stakeholders as one of the largest suppliers to the regions hotel, restaurant, cafe (Horeca), foodservice and retail sectors. CEO Niels Frandsen said: Everyone at our company is committed to the highest standards, from senior management, right through the team. This prestigious award from MEA Markets is a reflection of that and a tribute to the hard work of all involved, remarked Frandsen. Our mission is to deliver services perfectly, making life easier for them, allowing them to focus on growth and development. We are committed to fostering and strengthening strong relationships with our clients and across our entire staff. That is what makes us unique, he added.-TradeArabia News Service UAE-based Tristar Group, a leading integrated liquid logistics company, is contributing to Omans Sohar Port and Freezones annual safety week programme - Be Safe Sohar 2018, for the second consecutive year. The event, which kicked off yesterday (April 16), will run until April 18. The annual event sees employees and stakeholders of Sohar Port and Freezone take part in a number of workshops covering first-aid, road and driver safety, dangerous and heavy goods handling, safe terminal operations, ship-to-shore operational safety, and environmental preservation Tristar Group is providing resource speakers on road safety, ship-to-shore operational safety, and safe terminal operations, at the event, said a statement from the company. The company will also help with the defensive driver training and a first aid training course, a blood donation drive, an exhibition and a mock drill, it said. Tristars shipping division also participated in the oil spill drill at the event. The company has regularly conducted simulation exercises to further improve its ability to respond to any oil spills, it added. Balaji Nagabhushan, chief administrative officer, Tristar Group, said: We are one with Sohar Port and Freezone to further the importance of safety, as we firmly believe that having safe operations and implementing world class best practices will attract businesses and will considerably improve the economy, thereby benefiting the community. TradeArabia News Service Tim Murray, the chief executive of Aluminium Bahrain (Alba), one of the largest and modern aluminium smelters in the world, was honoured with the Top CEO Awards 2018 at an event held recently in Saudi Arabia. The Top CEO Conference and Awards, organised by Trends magazine and leading international business school Insead, celebrates the regions best-performing CEOs from companies that are listed on the stock exchanges of Saudi Arabia, the UAE, Qatar, Bahrain, Kuwait, and Oman. Murray won top recognition at the event held at King Abdullah Economic City under the theme Paradigm Shift. Commenting on the award, Shaikh Daij Bin Salman Bin Daij Al Khalifa, the chairman of Albas board of directors, said: "I congratulate Murray on winning the prestigious Top CEO Award. His passion for workplace safety and operational excellence have played an instrumental role in shaping Alba to where it is today." "Alba is steered by a very able and well-aligned executive management team. I thank them all for their diligent efforts to transform Alba into the worlds largest single-site smelter as we progress with our landmark project, Line 6 Expansion Project," he added. The Top CEO Conference and Awards function was attended by several business leaders and more than 30 expert speakers from across the Middle East spoke on the current issues facing the corporate world today in a series of keynote sessions.-TradeArabia News Service Zain Bahrain, a leading telecoms operator in the kingdom, is launching an innovative promotion campaign Play & Win, for its customers in Bahrain staring from tomorrow (April 18) which will run for the next four weeks. The Play & Win campaign offers all its customers in Bahrain an opportunity to win on the spot various prizes through a Claw Machine installed across Zains stores in Bahrain. All Zain Bahrain customers need to do, is complete a purchase at one of Zains stores in Bahrain and they will automatically get the chance to play an exciting game through the Claw Machine, giving them the chance to win flight tickets, gold bars, smartphones, smartwatches, TVs, Tablets and many more epic prizes. In addition, Zain Bahrains new campaign also allows its customers to win big by simply registering their Zain Bahrain line, through the new implemented Sim-Card fingerprint registration process in any of its stores in Bahrain, said a statement from Zain. Zain Bahrain customers will have to carry their Bahraini CPR or a valid GCC national identity card or Passport to undergo the new registration, which comes in compliance with TRA regulation entitled Sim-Card Enabled Telecommunications Services Registration Regulation, it added. "Zain Bahrain has launched Play & Win new campaign as an appreciation reward for all their valued customers. We have turned this simple claw machine game into an exciting challenging winning opportunity for all our valued customers and the most important thing is to give every playing customer a realistic chance of winning," remarked Mohamed Al Alawi, the acting director for Consumer Marketing at Zain Bahrain. "The company remains committed to bringing customers the best in breed products and services through thrilling competitions and prizes, which add value to their lives," stated Al Alawi. "By launching this exciting limited-time campaign, Zain Bahrain continues to reinforce its leadership position and its pledge in offering the best services and promotional offers to meet customers professional and personal telecommunication needs," he added.-TradeArabia News Service Avianca, the flag carrier of Colombia, has announced that it will be landing in Germany on November 17. The company will operate five times per week from Munich to Bogota, Colombias capital city, and it will offer the opportunity to connect the Bavarian city with more than 20 destinations in Colombia and more than 60 in Latin America. In Avianca, we want to connect travellers from Europe with Latin America and offer them an exceptional experience in terms of service, connectivity and comfort. We will offer our customers more than 100 destinations in The Americas and the possibility to connect with 192 countries in the world through our Star Alliance membership said Hernan Rincon, Avianca CEO. Colombia is improving its connections with the world every day. The new Aviancas route Munich-Bogota will be the first direct flight which connects Bogota, a strategic capital city for business and tourism in Latin America, with the south of Germany. Certainly, it will increase the opportunities for German travellers to visit Colombia and also will ease the connections for people from neighbouring countries such as Austria, Switzerland and Czech Republic said Felipe Jaramillo ProColombia president. - TradeArabia News Service The seventh edition of Dubai HeliShow, the biennial International Helicopter Technology and Operations Exhibition dedicated to the helicopter industry, will be held from November 6 to 8, 2018, at the Royal Pavilion, Al Maktoum International Airport. Under the patronage of HH Sheikh Mohammed Bin Rashid Al Maktoum, Vice President and Prime Minister of the UAE and Ruler of Dubai, the 2018 edition of the show will provide a unique platform for both regional and international players in the field of civil and military helicopter technology and operations to showcase their products, services and technologies for the commercial, civil defence and military helicopter sector and explore prospective partnerships. Ahmad Abulhoul, managing director, Domus Group, organizers of Dubai HeliShow 2018, said: With the increasingly important roles played by helicopters across a number of industrial, hospitality and crisis management scenarios including military, transport and cargo, firefighting, rescue and offshore oil support, the upcoming edition of the highly successful Dubai Helishow is expected to attract a great deal of interest from international exhibitors, decision-makers, government and defense officials, besides commercial customers, owners, users and manufacturers. Two exclusive three day conferences the highlight of Dubai HeliShow 2018 - titled 'Helicopter Technology and Operations' and 'Military and Homeland Security' will shed light on a vast range of topics, including how to empower police forces with Internet of Things (IoT) tools; the role of women in homeland security; application of robotics in policing and helicopter; tackling new patterns in narco-terrorism by integrating intelligence, forensics and response operations; best practices to boost joint inter-agency cooperation between armed forces and homeland security agencies among many others. The Military and Homeland Security Conference will discuss countering terrorism with specialised and strategic operations, improving long-range surveillance and remotely monitoring capabilities as well as development of superior capabilities to counter narco-terrorism with state-of-the-art technology. Additionally, a session will cover 'The Security and Critical Infrastructure Forces for EXPO 2020 and Other Global Events.' Experts from homeland security, police, customs, border guards, airports and ports, industrial security, armed forces across the land, air and sea from the Middle East and beyond will attend the session to discuss their strategies and requirements for effectively improving homeland security capabilities. The Helicopter Technology & Operations Conference will bring together decision-makers from across the Mena region to explore new products, services and technologies covering the commercial, civil defence and military helicopter markets. Live demonstrations organized as part of the conference include a helicopter ride as part of a simulated search and rescue operation and a bomb disposal activity for all attendees. The upcoming edition of the Dubai HeliShow, with key emphasis on civil defence, commercial, military, air medical and rescue sectors, will feature key industry companies from around the world and is expected to attract a global audience. The event will also be an excellent opportunity for industry stakeholders to highlight their recent achievements and advancements and meet and interact with prospective buyers from the Middle East. The success of the previous shows reflects the growing demand for helicopter and private jet services in the UAE and the rising investments and developments in the sector. Helicopters play a significant role in the regions emergency response services including search and rescue operations by undertaking accident surveillance on major traffic highways and by facilitating firefighting and evacuations from high-rise buildings. The introduction of helicopters in the tourism and hospitality industries also gave rise to aerial tourism in the Middle East. In addition, they play an integral role in offshore and desert real estate projects; erection of posts and masts in remote areas to generate electricity and construction of microwave towers, among others. Domus Group will be organising Dubai HeliShow 2018 in partnership with IQPC, and the show is supported by leading government authorities including the Ministry of Defence, UAE Airforce, Dubai Civil Aviation Authority, Dubai Airports, and Dubai South. - TradeArabia News Service There are literally thousands of libraries in the United States. From public, private, to university-owned libraries, bookworms will always find their own havens in each American state. Here are five of the best libraries in the country that store some of the most rare publications, as well as the most beautiful bookshelves. 1. Library of Congress in Washington, D.C. This place is not only the oldest federal cultural institution in America, it is also considered to be the largest library in the world, with boundless collection of books and research materials in over 450 different languages. The central access point of the Library of Congress' collections is its Main Reading Room which is open to public aged 16 and up. 2. University of Washington's Suzzallo Library in Seattle Suzzallo Library was named after the university president Henry Suzzallo, who resigned from the University of Washington in 1926. That was the same year when the construction of the library's first phase was completed. It was considered to be the most noticeable building in the University of Washington because of its front facade that is decorated with coats of arms from all over the world. The main reading room is inspired by a grand cathedral, according to The Guardian. It is also designed with stained glass panels and hanging Collegiate Gothic-themed light fixtures. This place has a section called the "Special Collections," which houses books that were published before the year 1801. 3. Beinecke Rare Book Library at Yale University Beinecke Rare Book & Manuscript Library in the Hewitt Quadrangle of Yale University is one of biggest libraries in the world that mainly stores manuscripts and rare publications. The jaw-dropping one million collections of rare books of this library are stacked in a huge six-story glass tower that stands tall in the middle of the building and is supported only by four gigantic piers. The Modernist structure of the library is made of translucent marble panels, which are excavated from Vermont and is used as protection of the building against direct sunlight. In 2013, it celebrated its 50th anniversary featuring a two-year exhibition that showcased books and manuscripts that are rarely seen in curatorial areas. 4. Boston Public Library, Massachusetts The Boston Public Library was founded in the year 1848, making it the very first municipal library in the United States. Also, according to the Culture Trip, this place is the first public library in the country that is free from any charges. Home to roughly 23 million items including books, manuscripts, DVDs and visual resources, the Boston Library is the third largest libraries in America. Some of the collections here include the early edition folios of Willam Shakespeare, the archives of the Handel and Haydn Society, Mozart's original music scores, and Walter Piston's grand piano. 5. George Peabody Library in Baltimore, Maryland The George Peabody Library, which is formerly called as the Library of the Peabody Institute, was established through the efforts of George Peabody, a philanthropist and financier from Baltimore whose goal is to build a library that will be free for use for everyone who wants to have an access to the books and literature of the 19th century. Built in 1878, this place is often been labelled as the cathedral of books because of its amazing architecture and interior. The library has a huge open air atrium that allows people to have a view of each level down below. It is home to 300,000 collections that focus on architecture, British art, history, geography, and literature. See Now: The U.S. had the highest number of Most Wanted properties, dominating the Hotels.com Loved By Guests Awards 2018 VANCOUVER, British Columbia, April 17, 2018 (GLOBE NEWSWIRE) -- Nanotech Security Corp. (TSXV:NTS) (OTCQX:NTSFF) (Nanotech or the Company), a leading innovator in the research, creation and production of nano-optic structures and colour shifting materials used in authentication and brand enhancement, is pleased to announce a significant update to its corporate branding and the launch of its new website. The re-vamp corresponds with growing interest in Nanotechs brand-authentication capabilities which have applications outside of the Companys traditional market of currency notes and tax stamps. The Companys new brand identity reflects the evolution of Nanotechs culture and vision as it grows in size, scope and global presence. It embodies the full breadth of the companys business as it continues to penetrate the security and brand authentication markets while leveraging its core technology to expand into high-value adjacent markets and industries including pharmaceuticals, luxury and consumer goods. The new website supports opportunity by enhancing user experience and improving functionality, navigation, and layout. Prospective customers will experience improved access to information about the company and its products. In particular, a new corporate video is now available on the website that showcases Nanotechs exceptional technology and product development capabilities. The video is the first in a series to be released in the coming months, and presents the technical roots of the Companys products, as well as the scientific talent and state-of-the-art facilities that drive Nanotechs innovation and growth in both R&D and production. Future videos will chronical the Companys continued innovation, growth and expansion in technology, products and markets. The new look reflects our excitement and passion we feel for our growth and expansion in both existing and new markets, said Nanotech CEO Doug Blakeway. Updates to the corporate brand embody our vision for the future and the new website and corporate video enable us to effectively communicate that vision and the capabilities which support it. About Nanotech Nanotech researches, creates and produces nano-optic products that have brand protection and enhancement applications across a wide range of markets including banknotes, tax stamps, secure government documents, commercial branding, and the pharmaceutical industry. The Companys nano-optic technology employs arrays of billions of nano-indentations that are impressed or embossed onto a substrate material such as polymer, paper, metal, or fabric. By using sophisticated algorithms to direct an electron beam, the Company creates visual images with colour shifting effects such as 3D, perceived movement, and can also display high-definition colours including skin tones, and whites and blacks, which are not possible using holographic technology. Additional information about Nanotech can be found at the Companys website www.nanosecurity.ca, the Canadian disclosure filings website www.sedar.com or the OTCMarkets disclosure filings website www.otcmarkets.com. Nanotech Security Corp: Canada Investor Relations: U.S. Investor Relations: Shana Chow Sean Peasgood Matthew Selinger info@nanosecurity.ca all@SophicCapital.com mselinger@threepa.com +1.604.678.5775 +1.647.699.9845 +1.817.310.8776 Neither the TSX Venture Exchange nor its Regulation Services Provider (as that term is defined in policies of the TSX Venture Exchange) accepts responsibility for the adequacy or accuracy of this release. MTDC to discuss strategic partnerships with tourism professionals and potential investors at the Middle Easts premier travel and tourism exhibition. (TRAVPR.COM) DUBAI - April 17th, 2018 Maharashtra Tourism Development Corporation (MTDC) announced its participation in Arabian Travel Market (ATM) 2018, which will be held at the Dubai World Trade Centre from 22-25 April 2018. MTDC plans to promote Maharashtra as the preferred destination for Medical and Wellness tourism, showcase the essence of State and its spectacular touristic attractions, meet tourism professionals and promote the opportunities of investment in creating healthcare and tourism facilities. Speaking about the State government plans, Shri. Jaykumar Rawal, Honble Minister of Tourism & Employment Guarantee Scheme, Government of Maharashtra said, I am delighted to be a part of the Arabian Travel Market 2018 that will provide MTDC a platform to showcase the potential of medical tourism in Maharashtra. While the segment is largely untapped and caters to a niche segment of travellers, we have seen a steady growth in this sector due to the quality and economically friendly services the State has to offer. Our goal is to position Maharashtra as a medical and wellness tourism hub. We are in the process of signing an MoU with the Indo-Arab Chambers of Commerce and Industries to highlight lucrative investment prospects within the sector. Home to the financial capital of the country, Mumbai, Maharashtra sees one of the highest number of tourists in the country. With world-class infrastructure, Maharashtra also has tourism attractions with magnificent coastline and beaches, breath-taking wildlife, hill stations, pilgrimage centers, adventure tourism, experiential attractions and rich cultural heritage. Speaking on their participation, Mr. Vijay Waghmare, Managing Director, MTDC said, We are witnessing tourism as one of the fastest growing industries worldwide. Maharashtra has one of the best qualified professionals in each field and this holds true in the domain of medical and wellness as well. Maharashtra has the most competent doctors and world class medical facilities with most competitive charges for treatment of most health problems. We are now looking to create a unique identity by offering best health services for the world and establish ourselves as the best Medical tourism destination. At ATM 2018, we will be promoting various activities ranging from yoga, meditation to natural therapies to name some which is provided in the State. MTDC will be exhibiting at Stand AS2335 at ATM 2018. Together with Tribal Development Department, Government of Maharashtra, MTDC will promote experiential tourism, artefacts from the tribal villages including paintings, handicrafts, forest produce and agricultural / food items. Also, at the stand will be the luxury train - Deccan Odyssey and the authentic Ayurveda wellness centre - Ayurveda Village (www.ayurvedicvillage.com). About MTDC: Maharashtra Tourism Development Corporation (MTDC) has been established under the Companies Act, 1956, (fully owned by Govt. of Maharashtra) for systematic development of tourism on commercial lines. The State Government has entrusted all commercial and promotional tourism activities to this Corporation. MTDC has, since its inception, been involved in the development and maintenance of the various tourist locations of Maharashtra. MTDC owns and maintains resorts at all key tourist centers and having more resorts is on the plan. Contact Details: M.T.D.C. Ltd. Contact No: 91-22-22044040 ext.: 235 international@maharashtratourism.gov.in ### SRING HOPE, NC, April 17, 2018 (GLOBE NEWSWIRE) -- Hemp, Inc. (OTC PINK: HEMP) applauds Senate Majority Leader, Mitch McConnell, for introducing a bill last week that would remove industrial hemp from the federal governments schedule of controlled substances. The Hemp Farming Act of 2018 stipulates that hemp will be legalized and removed from the Controlled Substances Act and also makes industrial hemp eligible for crop insurance. As a global leader in the industrial hemp industry with the largest multipurpose industrial hemp processing facility in the western hemisphere, Hemp, Inc. has been a long-time proponent for industrial hemp and sees this as a widespread opportunity for farmers across the country to grow hemp and reap the economic rewards of growing hemp. This Hemp Farming Act sends a clear message to U.S. farmers that they should get started planting as much hemp as they can. This bill can be revolutionary. It has already started sending shockwaves through the farming and agriculture communities across the country, says Bruce Perlowin, CEO of Hemp, Inc. (OTC PINK: HEMP). The filing of The Hemp Farming Act of 2018 follows the Omnibus Spending Bill recently signed by President Donald Trump that includes certain protections for hemp. Stated in a press release from Senator McConnells office, The Hemp Farming Act of 2018 builds upon the success we have seen through the hemp pilot programs by allowing states to be the primary regulators of hemp (if the U.S. Department of Agriculture approves their implementation plan). This legislation will also remove the federal barriers in place that have stifled the industry, which will help expand the domestic production of hemp. It will also give hemp researchers the chance to apply for competitive federal grants from the U.S. Department of Agriculture allowing them to continue their impressive work with the support of federal research dollars. To read the full press release from McConnells office, click here . McConnell is optimistic that industrial hemp can become, sometime in the future, what tobacco was in Kentucky's past (according to a recent Forbes article). Previously, McConnell has helped develop new federal and state legal permissions for hemp and even steered hemp into the 2014 Farm Bill and co-sponsored the Industrial Hemp Farming Act of 2015. Now, McConnells new bill will remove industrial hemp from the Controlled Substances Act. New data show that U.S. hemp production soared in 2017 signaling that the hemp industry now has more momentum than ever to become America's newest leading industry. More acceptance for hemp and CBDs, coupled with easing regulations at the state level, are just the right stimuli to cause U.S. hemp production to surge, as we have seen just this past year. One source noted, From 2016 to 2017, the number of acres licensed for hemp cultivation in the top 10 hemp-growing states grew by 140% while the number of hemp producers doubled over the same one-year period. There has also been a need in the market to help hemp farmers figure out optimal growing practices. Hemp, Inc. identified that need a year ago and has since established the Hemp, Inc. University which has, to date, educated over 800 attendees. We have seen how the decrease in profitability of tobacco farming has compromised the family farm, leading many to abandon generations-long businesses in search of different employment in more urban settings. We are proud to be on the forefront of the industrial hemp movement and look forward to sharing that experience and expertise, said Perlowin. The Hemp University is one of Hemp, Inc.s powerful tools in educating and training farmers who are growing hemp for the company this year. In fact, Hemp, Inc. is expected to grow up to 25,600 acres of industrial hemp this year thus making North Carolina the Epicenter of the Industrial Hemp Industry. The large amount of acreage is expected to improve farmer profitability as well as boost the overall economy by opening up new revenue streams in the marketplace for buyers and farmers seeking higher quality products. According to the cannabis research firm Brightfield Group, the U.S. market for hemp-derived CBDs will swell to $1.65 billion by 2021 a nearly six-fold increase. Hemp, Inc.s long-term strategy (as previously announced ) is to build the worlds largest hemp oil extraction infrastructure by creating joint ventures with multiple companies to house and operate their cannabidiol (CBD) extraction equipment in its 85,000-square foot multi-purpose industrial hemp processing facility in Spring Hope, North Carolina. Hemp, Inc. has already signed a consulting agreement with HQ Global Education, Inc. (OTC: HQGE), a scientific research development company. This agreement will support Hemp, Inc.s efforts to further build out its hemp cannabidiol (CBD) extraction infrastructure. HQ Global Education, Inc. is in final negotiations to purchase a customized, state-of-the-art CBD extraction machine to be housed in Hemp, Inc.s multi-purpose industrial hemp processing facility in North Carolina, as previously announced . With the Hemp Farming Act of 2018, the timing could not be better. This agreement with HQ Global Education, Inc. is a natural fit for both our companies and the timing couldnt be better. The hemp industry is growing by leaps and bounds says Perlowin. With CBDs taking America by storm due to its medicinal and health benefits, HQ Global Education, Inc. executives feel this is the perfect time to enter the market. The enormous growth potential of the CBD market will provide HQ Global Education, Inc. with a pipeline of opportunities they can take advantage of by using their extensive industry research and voluminous body of information on specific CBD combinations through their Educational and Extraction divisions. ABOUT HEMP, INC. With a deep-rooted social and environmental mission at its core, Hemp, Inc. seeks to build a business constituency for the American small farmer, the American veteran, and other groups experiencing the ever-increasing disparity between tapering income and soaring expenses. As a leader in the industrial hemp industry with ownership of the largest commercial multi-purpose industrial hemp processing facility in North America, Hemp, Inc. believes there can be tangible benefits reaped from adhering to a corporate social responsibility plan. SOCIAL NETWORKS http://www.twitter.com/hempinc (Twitter) http://www.facebook.com/hempinc (Facebook) https://www.facebook.com/KingOfPot (Bruce Perlowin's Facebook Page) https://www.facebook.com/TheHempUniversity/ (The Hemp University's Facebook Page) SUBSCRIBE TO HEMP, INC.'S VIDEO UPDATES "Hemp, Inc. Presents" is capturing the historic, monumental re-creation of the hemp decorticator today as America begins to evolve into a cleaner, green, eco-friendly sustainable environment. What many see as the next American Industrial Revolution is actually the Industrial Hemp Revolution. Watch as Hemp, Inc., the No. 1 leader in the industrial hemp industry, engages its shareholders and the public through each step in bringing back the hemp decorticator as described in the "Freedom Leaf Magazine" article " The Return of the Hemp Decorticator " by Steve Bloom. " Hemp, Inc. Presents " is accessible 24 hours a day, 7 days a week, by visiting www.hempinc.com . To subscribe to the " Hemp, Inc. Presents " YouTube channel, be sure to click the subscribe button. UPCOMING INTERNATIONAL AND DOMESTIC EVENTS Across the globe, the hemp industry is rising to astronomical levels. In the wake of the hemp industry projected to grow 700% and hit $1.8 billion by 2020, there has been more education and networking within the industry. That means more events and conferences, thus, Hemp, Inc. has started compiling an ongoing list of upcoming hemp events around the world. Check out the listing of international and domestic events here . FORWARD-LOOKING DISCLAIMER AND DISCLOSURES This press release may contain certain forward-looking statements and information, as defined within the meaning of Section 27A of the Securities Act of 1933 and Section 21E of the Securities Exchange Act of 1934, and is subject to the Safe Harbor created by those sections. This material contains statements about expected future events and/or financial results that are forward-looking in nature and subject to risks and uncertainties. Such forward-looking statements by definition involve risks, uncertainties. editorial@tribune.com Tribune News Service Amritsar, April 17 Sri Guru Ram Das Jee International Airport has been incurring losses as many airlines, especially international, are blocked from flying to the city for not having bilateral air agreements, said Sameep Singh, overseas secretary, Amritsar Vikas Manch (AVM). He said the airport had been incurring an annual loss of Rs 50 crore as airlines of many countries were not authorised for flying to Amritsar in the absence of bilateral air agreements. He claimed that six airports in the country were included in the bilateral agreement for almost all the countries. He said the government wanted to make Delhi, Mumbai, Bangaluru big airports, which are managed by private companies. They are doing so by causing losses to its own airports, he pointed out. Popularity of the holy city can be gauged from the fact that the government has open sky policy regarding few tier-2 airports for ASEAN countries, according to which airlines of these countries can start unlimited flights to Amritsar and other airports, he said. He said if the government do the same for the UAE, Oman, Turkey, Germany and other European countries, Amritsar will get all the big carriers. editorial@tribune.com New Delhi, April 17 A parliamentary panel has called Reserve Bank Governor Urjit Patel on May 17 to answer queries on a spate of banking scams unearthed in the last few months and mounting bad loans in the system, sources said on Tuesday. The Standing Committee on Finance, headed by senior Congress leader M Veerappa Moily, at its meeting here raised several queries related to the banking sector with Financial Services Secretary Rajiv Kumar. The panel met against the backdrop of about $2 billion fraud in the country's second largest state-run bank PNB. The fraud was allegedly perpetrated by billionaire jewellery designer Nirav Modi and his uncle Mehul Choksi. Several other frauds have also come to light in the past couple of months. Certain private lenders, including ICICI Bank and Axis Bank, were too in the news for wrong reasons. Sources said some of the members, including BJP MP Nishikant Dubey, wondered if the RBI has failed as regulator to check bad loans despite having instruments like corporate debt restructuring. "The committee has invited the RBI Governor on May 17. The members will be asking him about the scams and other banking regulations," a source said. Former PM Manmohan Singh, who is member of the committee, also attended the meeting. The RBI Governor had recently said that the central bank did not have adequate powers to deal with pubic sector banks. PTI vermaajay1968@gmail.com Smita Sharma Tribune News Service New Delhi, April 17 India and the US on Tuesday held the inaugural meeting of the Strategic Energy Partnership announced during Prime Minister Narendra Modis summit talks with President Donald Trump in Washington last year. US Secretary of Energy Rick Perry and Minister of Petroleum and Natural Gas Dharmendra Pradhan co-chaired the discussions focusing on oil and gas, power and energy efficiency, renewable energy and sustainable growth, and coal. Early and full implementation of the civil nuclear cooperation remained top focus area in talks and was reflected in the joint statement too. According to sources, representatives of nuclear giant Westinghouse made strong presentation pitch. Westinghouse has been in long-drawn talks with India to build six reactors in coastal Andhra Pradesh. Japanese firm Toshiba that acquired Westinghouse in 2006 filed for bankruptcy last year. Betting heavily for the American giant, Perry said, Westinghouse makes the finest reactors in the world. They had some business challenges, but that's in the past. Theyre now lean, mean and ready to work. Calling Westinghouse finest reactor company in the world, Perry blamed construction issues for the past delays. Westinghouse is in the reactor not in the construction business and I leave it to you to decide who the constructor is going to be. They are on the verge of having their business issues addressed, he said. Four Indian public and private sector companies have already invested over $4 billion in shale assets in the US. Our companies are exploring more investments opportunities in American upstream sector, said Pradhan. The ministers announced formation of the US-India Natural Gas Task Force. The task force provides a team of the US and Indian industry experts with a mandate to propose, develop, and convey, innovative policy recommendations to the Government of India in support of its vision for natural gas in the economy of India, said the joint statement. editorial@tribune.com Tribune News Service Chandigarh, April 17 Seeking a social boycott of two councillors who supported the parking company, the Federation of Sectors Welfare Associations of Chandigarh (FOSWAC) and the RWAs affiliated with it have demanded a CBI inquiry to find out their vested interests. Baljinder Singh Bittu, chairman, FOSWAC, said councillor Arun Sood, who fully supported the company in the House, and councillor Asha Jaswal, under whose tenure as Mayor the parking rates were approved last year, should be socially boycotted as they favoured the firm despite the public sentiments being against it. The president of the Residents Welfare Association of Sector 38 (Eest), Pankaj Gupta, said, Arun Sood supported the firm in the House on Monday. What is his interest in increasing the parking rates at a time when the House and the public are against the move? Even though MP Kirron Kher, Mayor Davesh Moudgil and most of the councillors were against this exorbitant hike, there were only one or two councillors who were in favour of increasing the parking rates. A thorough inquiry should be conducted in this regard from the CBI, FOSWAC said in a press note. Why are these councillors favouring the company against public interest? Even if there is some legal complication, the company can avail of legal remedies in the court after the termination of the contract. All Chandigarh residents should socially boycott these councillors, who stand exposed before the public, it further added. Sood remained unavailable for comments. Jaswal said though the MoU was signed during her tenure, she had kept an exit clause in it in view of violations of smart parking directives. We have authorised the Commissioner to terminate the contract. Even Arun ji was only asking for the legal procedure and was not favouring the firm, she said. Jaswal had slammed the doubling of parking charges in the House on Monday. editorial@tribune.com The French connection of the City Beautiful continues. From being designed by Le Corbusier to meeting the challenges of the Smart City Mission, Chandigarh is relying on technical support from France to emerge as a leader in livability, sustainability, equality and innovation. In an exclusive interview with The Tribune, a day before he arrives in Chandigarh on Wednesday, the Ambassador of France to India, Alexandre Ziegler, said the Smart City Mission had spurred Chandigarh to create a new vision for its urban future. Mobility and basic services would be the salient and cross-cutting aspects of this vision. Excerpts from the interview: The decision to help develop three smart cities in India Chandigarh, Nagpur and Puducherry was taken during the visit of the then President Francois Hollande in 2016. What parts of the agreements have moved beyond paper? French experts have been travelling regularly to Chandigarh, Delhi, Nagpur and Puducherry for providing technical assistance for the past three years. Three MoUs were signed between the French Development Agency (AFD) and the municipalities of these cities to assist them. How do you make cities sustainable today? What experiences can you share from France? Urban development is a sector in which France possesses expertise. France is a global advocate of sustainable urban development. It has decided to modernise its urban transport sector. Our cities have given a considerable push to the development of buses and the BRT, and promote the use of bicycles in urban areas. The pace of creating smart cities is slow as it needs land acquisition, approval for environmental contracts. Do you see these as roadblocks? It calls for prioritising projects factoring in territorial development. A Smart City is a well-governed city with citizen participation! For this, knowhow is important. And thats why France and the AFD signed an MoU in 2016 with Chandigarh. What specific projects have been identified for the 100-million euro loan agreement between French development bank AFD and the Indian Government towards smart cities? Four sectors have been targeted: low-carbon mobility, public spaces, e-governance through digitised public services and social innovation for poorer areas. Around 15 projects will be selected. An agreement on this was signed during President Emmanuel Macrons visit and in Prime Minister Narendra Modis presence on March 10. French architect Le Corbusier designed Chandigarh, the first planned city of India, after Independence. What changes do you think are required in the city? The Smart City Mission has spurred Chandigarh to create a new vision for its urban future: Vibrant and unique regional centre. Chandigarh has one of the highest rates of vehicles per capita in India. We are helping formulate a new plan for sustainable urban transport as well as identifying a fresh strategy for a new public transport network. The municipality is also developing its water supply system to provide its inhabitants drinking water 24X7. We are considering financing this ambitious project. Which modernisation and development plans from France do you think can be replicated in Chandigarh? France has a long-standing history of urban planning and knowhow on mobility. SYTRAL, which takes care of the city of Lyons public transport, is assisting Kochi in the Metro network. AFDs financing for the city of Chandigarh includes public partnerships with French institutions, in charge of conceiving public transport. French firm Egis International is to develop Chandigarh as a Smart City. What is the progress and what all areas in Chandigarh need improvement? Egis is one of Frances flagship companies. The group has a 2,000-strong workforce in the country. Citizen participation helped define the priority areas for Chandigarhs urban development. Mobility, round-the-clock drinking water supply, built heritage preservation and valorisation and development of Sector 43 are the main areas we intend to support. To decide the future modes of transport for Chandigarh, French consultant Systra MVA Consulting Pvt Ltd has submitted two reports. How long will it take to submit the final report? Systra commenced a mobility study in April 2017 to find the best solution for upgrading the public transport system, fitting peoples needs without impacting the citys architectural heritage. The objective is to update the 2009 Comprehensive Mobility Plan and identify main corridors for a mass transport system. The last phase of the study should be completed by August this year. FORM 8.5 (EPT/NON-RI) PUBLIC OPENING POSITION DISCLOSURE/DEALING DISCLOSURE BY AN EXEMPT PRINCIPAL TRADER WITHOUT RECOGNISED INTERMEDIARY ("RI") STATUS (OR WHERE RI STATUS IS NOT APPLICABLE) Rule 8.5 of the Takeover Code (the "Code") 1. KEY INFORMATION (a) Name of exempt principal trader: HSBC Securities (South Africa) (Pty) Limited (b) Name of offeror/offeree in relation to whose relevant securities this form relates: Use a separate form for each offeror/offeree Sibanye Gold Ltd (c) Name of the party to the offer with which exempt principal trader is connected: Sibanye Gold Ltd (d) Date position held/dealing undertaken: For an opening position disclosure, state the latest practicable date prior to the disclosure 16-Apr-2018 (e) In addition to the company in 1(b) above, is the exempt principal trader making disclosures in respect of any other party to the offer? If it is a cash offer or possible cash offer, state "N/A" YES - Lonmin plc. 2. POSITIONS OF THE EXEMPT PRINCIPAL TRADER 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(b), 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: Interests Short positions Number % Number % (1) Relevant securities owned and/or controlled: (2) Cash-settled derivatives: 3,941,321 0.174 1,498,366 0.066 (3) Stock-settled derivatives (including options) and agreements to purchase/sell: TOTAL: 3,941,321 0.174 1,498,366 0.066 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 EXEMPT PRINCIPAL TRADER Where there have been dealings in more than one class of relevant securities of the offeror or offeree named in 1(b), 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 Purchases/ sales Total number of securities Highest price per unit paid/received (ZAR) Lowest price per unit paid/received (ZAR) (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 (ZAR) Ordinary Shares Swap Increasing a Long Position 255,976 10.556 c (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 exempt principal trader 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 exempt principal trader 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: 17-Apr-2018 Contact name: Abdul Qader Telephone number: 0207 088 2000 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. editorial@tribune.com Tribune News Service Panchkula, April 17 A 35-year-old man has been arrested by the Panchkula police for allegedly molesting a six-year-old girl, daughter of his neighbour. The incident took place at Madanpur village in Sector 26 here. Area residents spotted the accused, Usman, who works at a barber's shop, trying to molest the girl in a secluded area. They caught hold of him and thrashed him. The victims parents, who hail from Nepal, had gone out for some work. The accused took advantage of the situation and lured the girl with an offer of an ices-cream. The accused took the girl to a nearby secluded area and tried to sexually abuse her. The accused had removed the victims clothes, but luckily people gathered there and thrashed him. The accused received head injuries. An eyewitness, Amarinder Singh, said they saved the minor girl from exploitation. The accused was later handed over to the police, he said. The investigating officer of Panchkula women police station, Geeta, said the accused was produced in the court and sent to judicial custody. editorial@tribune.com Chandigarh, April 17 The Rajiv Gandhi National University of Law, Patiala, emerged victorious in Leiden-Sarin Moot Court, which is the only moot court in aviation law, this year which was held at Seoul from April 12-15. National Law University, Jodhpur; Rajiv Gandhi National University of Law, Patiala, and the Army Institute of Law, Mohali, represented India at the international competition. About 24 teams from 20 countries took part in the event and the final was between Singapore National University and the Rajiv Gandhi National University of Law. All judges from 46 countries were experts in the field of aviation law. The final was judged by Lauren Jan Brinkhorst, former Deputy Prime Minister of the Netherlands; Siew Huay Tan of Singapore and Sando Kim of Korea. The proposition for the moot, which involved issues centred around a collision between a manned civilian aircraft from one country and a remotely controlled drone from another country, raised questions involving the security of civilians, regulation of unmanned aircraft and issues of international law. The award of the best oralist went to Ananya Sharma, a third year student of the Army Institute of Law, Mohali. The Sarin Foundation was represented by ML Sarin, secretary general; Nitin Sarin, a trustee of the foundation; and Ritesh Aggarwal, who were informed by the judges that the Indian teams were outstanding. The countries represented included the US, China, the Netherlands, Canada, New Zealand, Sri Lanka, Serbia, Poland, Singapore, Greece and France. The next Moot Court, to commemorate the 10th anniversary of the event, will be held in March 2019 at the Army Institute of Law in Mohali. TNS editorial@tribune.com Tribune News Service Chandigarh, April 17 The Punjab and Haryana High Court today ordered a compensation of Rs 13 lakh for kin of a 17-year-old boy killed due to the simian menace in the city. Of the total amount, Rs 4 lakh has already been paid as interim compensation. As the petition, filed against the Chandigarh Municipal Corporation by Bhupinder Kaur and another petitioner, came up for orders, Justice Rakesh Kumar Jain made it clear that the remaining Rs 9 lakh would be paid by the Municipal Corporation. The corporation had earlier tried to wriggle out of making the payment by claiming that monkey was a protected animal and it was not its liability. Counsel for the petitioners, on the other hand, had submitted that Rs 2 lakh was earlier directed to be paid by the Municipal Corporation, Chandigarh, as interim compensation to the petitioners. The Municipal Corporations appeal against the order was dismissed. Taking a note of the submissions, the Bench in January had asserted it was not in dispute that a draft of Rs 2 lakh was handed over to the petitioners in the court. As such, the corporation could not challenge its liability at present to make the payment. Holding that the Chandigarh Administration and the Municipal Corporation were duty-bound to undertake essential measures for preventing untoward incidents due to the monkey menace, the High Court had earlier asked the UT to specify whether a coordination committee could be formed to examine the feasibility of coming out with a comprehensive plan to control the problem. Admittedly, a 17-year-old boy was killed in an accident when a concrete slab had fallen on him due to the monkey menace. This court feels that it is the duty of the Administration and the corporation to take necessary steps to prevent these type of incidents, Justice Rajan Gupta had asserted when the matter was initially placed before his Bench. The UT Forest and Wildlife Department, during the course of the hearing, made clear its intent to ensure residents who feed simian unburden their wallets. The department conveyed to the court its decision to request the Municipal Corporation of Chandigarh to amend its bylaws to make monkey feeding an offence punishable by fine on the Shimla Municipal Corporation pattern. In an affidavit on steps taken and contemplated to curb the monkey menace in the city, UT Chief Conservator of Forests and Chief Wildlife Warden Santosh Kumar had stated that the citizens helpline would be made more effective. editorial@tribune.com Tribune News Service Mohali, April 17 A 40-year-old man was killed while his wife sustained injuries after a herd of stray cattle suddenly came in front of his motorcycle on Tuesday morning near the Chawla light point in Phase VII here. The deceased has been identified as Rajinder, a resident of Sector 52-C, Chandigarh, who worked as a safai sewak in a firm in Mohali. According to the police, the incident occurred around 6 am when the victim and his wife, Suman, were going for work on a Platina bike. The victim was riding the bike and his wife was seated pillion. The police said when the couple took a left turn from Chawla Chowk towards Mataur village, a herd of stray cows came in front of their bike. The police said the victim crashed into a stray cow, sustaining a severe head injury, while his wife received an injury on her forehead. Passersby informed the police at the Mataur police station, who rushed the victim to the Civil Hospital in Phase VI, where he was declared brought dead. The investigating officer, Sehajpreet Singh, said the man was not wearing a helmet and did not notice the herd coming from the Mataur village side. The cow also sustained a leg injury and was shifted to a gaushala, said the police official. The postmortem was conducted in the afternoon. The police have initiated inquest proceedings under Section 174 of the CrPC. The victim is survived by his wife, four daughters and a son. This is the third death of a motorist caused by stray cattle in Mohali in three years. Hasan Suroor Hasan Suroor It was striking that British Prime Minister Theresa May was first off the blocks early on Saturday morning to offer a meandering justification for her decision to join America and France in bombing Syria for a chemical weapons attack on Douma they blame on the Syrian regime. Even as the legality of their action was being widely questioned, she insisted that the international community (America, France and Britain equal international community?) could not stand and watch while hapless civilians were being gassed. As she droned on mournfully, she could not resist a pop at Russia which is accused by Britain of being behind the attempted assassination of former double spy Sergei Skripal and his daughter Yulia in the English town of Salisbury last month. Jumping on the Syrian bandwagon to revive Britains flagging anti-Russia campaign over the Skripal affair, May declared: We cannot allow the use of chemical weapons to become normalised either within Syria, on the streets of the UK or elsewhere. Her effort did bring the Skripal story briefly back in the headlines, but only to lose steam again. And heres the problem. Propaganda wars are a tricky business. It is easy to launch one but it can as easily go wrong if not backed by facts on the ground. Edward Barnays, the father of modern public relations and propaganda, wrote that its success depended on the merit of the cause urged, and the correctness of the information published. Self-righteousness and half-intelligent guesses are no substitute for hard facts as Britain is discovering after whipping up a diplomatic row with Moscow in the Skripal case plunging their relations (never great at the best of times) to a new low, only to be further damaged by its Syrian intervention. It is now engaged in a propaganda war with Russia on two fronts. Although on Syria, it is simply playing a subsidiary me too role, the noises emanating from Downing Street are even louder than that from White House. Such is the British obsession with Russia that much of its ire over the Douma gas attack is directed not at Damascus but at Moscow for supporting the Assad regime. Kremlin has struck back alleging that the atrocity was fabricated by UK-backed rebels and the rights group, White Helmets, which works closely with London. Meanwhile, British assertions in the Skripal controversy are beginning to wear thin amid a growing perception that Britain might have jumped the gun in so promptly pinning the blame on Vladimir Putins henchmen. Over the past week or so, Russia has been able to wrest back control of the propaganda war and create sufficient doubts about the British version. Whatever the eventual outcome of the standoff, Britain is clearly struggling to maintain its credibility with even its own allies now inclined to take a more sceptical view of its claims. A senior figure in German Chancellor Angela Merkels Christian Democratic Union party publicly lambasted Britain for blaming Russia without sound evidence. If you force almost all NATO countries to show solidarity, should not you have sound evidence? asked CDUs deputy chairman Armin Laschet. More than a month after Sergei and Yulia Skripal were found slumped on a seat in a park, the basis for British governments claims remain shrouded in secrecy. As of now, it is only Mays word against Russia. Not only no evidence of Russian involvement has been offered (Russia has not even been allowed to see the chemical) senior figures in the government have been caught making statements that later turned to be false such as foreign secretary Boris Johnsons assertion that Britains top scientists were categorical that Russia was the source of the nerve agent Novichok, said to have been used to poison the Skripals. A claim he was forced to retract after a strong public denial by the head of the government laboratory that tested the chemical. There were more red faces when the Foreign Office was then caught attempting a cover-up by quietly deleting a tweet in which it had quoted scientists as concluding that the substance in question was produced in Russia. There have been other inconsistencies in the official account, including the seriousness of the effect of poisoning on the Skripals. For weeks, the line was that their condition was so critical that they may not survive. Yet, almost overnight they started to recover miraculously. Last week, Yulia was suddenly declared well enough to be discharged from hospital; the father was listed to follow suit in due course. As The Guardian pointed out the governments case appears to be unravelling due in part to self-inflicted wounds notably Boris Johnsons loose language but also to Russias ability to keep up a relentless counter-propaganda assault that British ministers seem unable to match. The Russian retaliation saw its ambassador in Britain Alexander Yakovenko drop his chummy image and dispense with customary diplomatic niceties to let rip against the British government accusing it of staging the Skripal poisoning itself to give Russia a bad name. It was highly likely that the poison was planted by Britains own secret military chemical laboratory in Porton Down. Is it a coincidence that this chemical weapons facility is only eight miles away from the site of the incident? he asked. Yet, until barely two weeks ago Britain was on a roll. In the prevailing Cold War climate it was able quickly to win support for its case leading to a mass expulsion of Russian diplomats by its European allies and America. May hailed it as an unprecedented show of solidarity which would send the Kremlin a strong message. And, indeed, Moscow was initially rattled and took some time to get its act together. But then, it pushed back with a counter offensive (when it comes to propaganda Russians can be quite brutal) demanding verifiable evidence of its alleged involvement in the Salisbury attack, and seeking an independent probe. A panel of international experts which examined the chemical was packed with Britains allies. Russias demand that it must include representatives from neutral countries (it specifically mentioned India) was rejected. While the panel confirmed that the substance was indeed Novichok, much to Londons chagrin it refused to say where it might have come from. Putin, meanwhile, claims that up to 20 countries could have access to it. All it needs for Britain to demolish his claim is to share the relevant evidence with him. So, why is it so reluctant? The writer is a London-based commentator Sankar Sen Sankar Sen IPS (retd) and Senior Fellow, Institute of Social Sciences The Supreme Courts decision to issue guidelines to check the abuse of Scheduled Castes and Schedule Tribes (Prevention of Atrocities) Act, 1989 has unleashed tension and violence in different parts of the country. The Act of 1989 containing some stringent provisions against the offenders provided a powerful legal weapon to the victims to fight for redress of atrocities perpetrated on them. It marked an improvement over the mild Civil Rights Act, 1955, which concentrated on humiliations and other abuse on the lower castes. A two-member Bench of the Supreme Court has now found that the provisions of the Act are misused and issued guidelines to prevent such misuse. However, a study of the implementation of the Act shows that the Act remains more unused than misused. The offences under the Act are cognisable and the police can arrest the offender without warrant and start investigation. Unfortunately, not many cases are registered under the Act and very few offenders brought to book. This brings us to the nub of a wider problem. A disturbing aspect of the criminal justice system is that there is massive suppressing of crime. Police are reluctant to register cases, particularly if the complainants are poor and downtrodden, in order to show that crime is under control. This applies to cases under the Indian Penal Code and also under Special Acts. On a conservative estimate, cognisable crimes registered are less than one-fourth of the incidence of crimes. Dalits and people from marginalised groups suffer the most. A large number of cases, some very genuine and serious, are not registered. This is because police efficiency is judged by statistics. Political masters also want to keep the crime figures low so that they can claim that the crime situation in the state remains under firm control. Only the poor and the voiceless suffer. The apex court has now laid down that under the Act, before a public servant is arrested, approval of the appointing authority necessary. In the event of a non-public servant, it has to be sanctioned by a senior superintendent of police. The court has also prescribed that a preliminary enquiry should be conducted before an FIR is registered to check whether it falls under the parameters of the POA and whether it is false and motivated. The court held that the Act cannot be used to wreak personal vengeance. It also held that anticipatory bail may be allowed if the accused proves that the complaint is mala fide. The apex courts judgment, though unexceptionable in principle, misses touch with the reality. It is also influenced by phobia of misuse. The Act is poorly implemented and often fails to provide any relief to the complainants due to many factors, including caste bias. It gets a very low priority in the scheme of law enforcement by the police. First, the number of cases registered under the Act by the police is low when compared to the actual incidence of crimes perpetrated against the Dalits. NCRB data of figures against SC/ST (POA) Act in its 2017 Annual Report reveal that while in 2014 the number of cases was 40,401, in 2015 it dipped marginally by 4.3 per cent to 38,670 and in 2016 increased to 40,801. Many cases involve assault on women with intent to outrage their modesty followed by cases of rape. Crimes committed against the Scheduled Castes far outnumber crimes against the Scheduled Tribes. Second, the rate of conviction under the POA is abysmal. Out of 30,111 cases tried under the POA in 1998, 5.4 per cent cases resulted in conviction. This rate compares unfavourably with the conviction rate of nearly 40 per cent in regard to cases tried under the IPC. Poor investigation, shoddy prosecution and unconscionable judicial delay are the main causes. As the cases drag on, poor Dalit complainants are often intimidated, and gained over. The case becomes too weak for consideration. Comprehensive regulations were notified in 1995 to provide relief and rehabilitation for the victims, but very little actually happened on the ground. According to rule 7(a), investigation of offence committed under the SC/ST Act cannot be investigated by an officer below the rank of deputy superintendent of police. This creates a practical problem because few senior police officers of the rank of DSP and above are available in the districts. Various high courts have held that non-compliance of the above rule vitiates the trial, resulting in setting aside of the order of conviction. A centrally sponsored scheme was introduced for the implementation of the provision of the Act. Under the scheme, assistance will be provided to the state governments to strengthen the enforcement machinery and provide relief and rehabilitation to the affected persons. A report on the Prevention of the Atrocities against the Scheduled Castes prepared by the National Human Rights Commission shows that West Bengal does not register any case under the Act as a matter of policy since it refuses to acknowledge that atrocities against the Scheduled Castes are committed due to caste factor. Some other states like Assam are also not registering cases under the Act, though no such official ground is advanced. Funds allotted by the Central government for the implementation of the Act remain unspent. The NHRC report further mentions that even in respect of such a non-contentious matter as payment of compensation to the Dalit victims according to their entitlements, "the subtle bias as well as lack of sensitivity operates at the highest level, both bureaucratic and political." Amendment in the Act, 2016, provided for the establishment of exclusive special courts with special public prosecutors to try offences under the Act with a view to speeding up disposal of cases. Very few states have set up exclusive special courts. Normal sessions courts turned into special courts have not served the cause of speedy justice. In sum, the operation of the Act is poor and flawed. A powerful instrument has become blunted and now the riders enjoined by the Supreme Court will make it a dead letter. Parliament noted that when Dalits assert their rights, vested interests try to cow them down and terrorise them. Has the SC looked at this reality? The SC has now refused to review its judgment. To tide over the situation, the government could either think of an ordinance or a new enactment. ROBINSINGH@TRIBUNE.COM The turnaround in Sino-Indian ties is nothing short of astonishing. South Blocks chief troubleshooter NSA Ajit Doval is slated to visit China twice in two months and there is even talk of PM Modi planning to do the same. The schedule of top leaders from New Delhi is currently so crowded that the Foreign and Defence Minister will find themselves in Beijing around the same time with the opening created from new Foreign Secretary Vijay Gokhales visit to China in February. There is ample reciprocation from Beijing; China has promised to further accumulate positive energy and expand new areas for cooperation. There is no official explanation for the change in Sino-Indian atmospherics which till the other day was vitiated over border disputes, sovereignty issues and a budding anti-China grouping in the maritime domain. The trend towards estranged or indifferent neighbours attempting to find common ground is not limited to India and China. New Delhi and Islamabad have also been making friendly overtures while China and Japan kick-started an eight-year overdue economic dialogue that may pave the way for a Xi Jinping-Shinzo Abe summit. In Moscow, a reappraisal of the hands-off policy towards Pakistan has yielded joint military exercises and a toehold into the Afghan quagmire and Seoul too marched to its strategy and was instrumental in lowering of tensions in the Korean peninsula. Clearly, countries are hedging against the impulsiveness of US President Donald Trump. The trade war on China, sanctions on Moscow, Washington targeting India for currency manipulation and Trumps vacillation on Trans Pacific Partnership must have been vital inputs in the desire by the Asian heavyweights to turn the page on their mutual acrimonies. Candid intentions, however, do not guarantee success. Complex and sensitive factors are at play in each bilateral tango. Their back-histories of acrimony have imbued vulnerabilities that are easily prone to disruption. But the air is pregnant with possibilities in trade and economics, especially if territorial disputes can be quarantined. The stage is set for Modi and Xi to transcend the phase of blind hopes and provide the long-awaited economic ballast to Sino-Indian ties, especially when the US is proving tough to read. editorial@tribune.com Tribune News Service Hisar, April 17 Wearing black clothes and carrying black flags, residents of different sectors of the Haryana Urban Development Authority (HUDA) here on Tuesday took out a protest demonstration against enhancement charges being imposed on them. The residents alleged that the Chief Minister had promised them to organise a meeting of HUDA officials and representatives of the HUDA Residential Welfare Associations (RWAs) to sort out the issue within 15 days. District RWA president Dalbir Kirmara said that they had met the Chief Minister during his visit to the town on April 2. Despite the Chief Ministers assurance to hold a joint meeting on the issue, we have not got any response from HUDA and the state government. We have no option but to intensify our agitation to the state level. Its a wake-up call for the authorities, Kirmara said. Later, ADC AS Maan met the protesters at Dabra Chowk and accepted the memorandum of their demands. The ADC said that the administration would send the demands to the state government for further consideration. Haryana Sectors Confederation convener Yashvir Malik said that they would gherao the residence of HIsar MLA Kamal Gupta on April 19 if the government fails to respond to their demands. He said that they had also called a state-level meeting in Jind on April 19 to chart out further course of action. Members from Rohtak, Jind, Kaithal, Sirsa, Hisar, Bhiwani, Rewari, Mahendergarh, Jhajjar, Bahadurgarh, Gurugram, Faridabad, Sonepat, Karnal, Panipat and Kurukshetra would attend the meeting, he added. amansharma@tribunemail.com Sumedha Sharma Tribune News Service Gurugram, April 17 Residents of Ghamdauj village woke up to shock and horror when bodies of three of its residents - a man and two women - were found in jungles of Aravalis on Tuesday morning. The trio identified as Sheela (29), her husband Lakhan (32) and Komal Bai (27) had reportedly gone uphilll on Monday morning to collect firewood, along with Komal's husband Chindiya alias Raju (40). When they did not return, villagers started a search and stumbled on three bodies while Raju was missing. Rumours went around about three being killed by a man-eating leopard and police were informed. Preliminary investigation by forest officials and police revealed that the three had been murdered and their throats slit, though the bodies bore scratch marks hinting at mauling attempt by some animal. This, however, was refuted in the post-mortem report, which denied involvement of animal. "There was no sign of any animal touching the bodies. The trio died due to injuries inflicted by some sharp-edged weapon on their throats," said Dr Deepak Mathur, who conducted post-mortem. Police are reportedly suspecting Raju's hand in the crime and have rounded up three of his relatives to ascertain his whereabouts. According to a complaint made by villagers to police, the two couples who worked as labourers and hailed from MP had gone uphill to get firewood on Monday morning. Late evening, Lakhan's eight-year-old daughter went around the village saying that they had not returned. The villagers waited for entire night and soon launched a search operation and found the bodies. "So far, Chindiya alias Raju is our prime suspect but we are investigating the case from other angles as well. We are questioning all relatives and neighbours of the victims. This is, however, confirmed that no wild animal was involved in this case," said Inspector Umesh Kumar, SHO, Bhondsi. Meanwhile, sources claim that it is a tale of illicit relationship. Raju allegedly had an affair with Lakhan's wife and duo had an altercation over it. Initial reconstruction of events and circumstantial evidence hint at a scuffle on the spot between Raju and Lakhan during which the former allegedly murdered the latter. Sheela tried to intervene and was also murdered. The condition of Komal's body was worst with scratch marks over it and human hair in her hands hinting that Raju was tried to keep her quiet and before murdering her. editorial@tribune.com Sumedha Sharma Tribune News Service Gurugram, April 17 Residents of Ghamdauj village woke up to shock on Tuesday when the bodies a man and two women were found in the Aravalli jungle in the morning. The trio, identified as Sheela (29), her husband Lakhan (32) and Komal (27), reportedly went uphill on Monday morning to collect firewood, along with Komals husband Chindiya, alias Raju (40). When they did not return, villagers started a search and stumbled on the three bodies, with Raju missing. There were rumours about the trio being killed by a man-eating leopard. Preliminary investigation by police and forest officials revealed the three had been murdered and their throats slit though the bodies bore scratch marks, hinting at mauling attempt by some animal. This was refuted in the postmortem report, which denied involvement of any animal. There was no sign of any animal touching the bodies. The trio died due to injuries inflicted with some sharp-edged weapon on their throats, said Dr Deepak Mathur, who conducted the postmortem examination. The police were reportedly suspecting Rajus hand in the crime and rounded up three of his relatives to ascertain his whereabouts. According to a police complaint by villagers, the two couples, who worked as labourers and hailed from Madhya Pradesh, had gone uphill to get firewood on Monday morning. In the evening, Lakhans eight-year-old daughter Radha went around the village, saying they had not returned. The villagers waited for the night, after which they launched a search operation and found the bodies. So far, Raju is our prime suspect, but we are investigating the case from other angles as well. We are questioning all relatives and neighbours of the victims. It is confirmed that no wild animal was involved in this case, said Bhondsi SHO Umesh Kumar. Sources alleged that Raju had an affair with Lakhans wife and the duo had an altercation over it. Initial reconstruction of events and circumstantial evidence hinted at a scuffle on the spot between Raju and Lakhan, during which the former allegedly murdered the latter. Sheela reportedly tried to intervene and was murdered. Komals body bore scratch marks all over and human hair in her hands hinted that Raju tried to keep her quiet before murdering her. NOT FOR DISTRIBUTION TO U.S. NEWS WIRE SERVICES OR DISSEMINATION IN THE UNITED STATES MISSISSAUGA, Ontario, April 17, 2018 (GLOBE NEWSWIRE) -- The Second Cup Ltd. (Second Cup or the Company) (TSX:SCU) is pleased to announce that it has entered into an agreement with Clarus Securities Inc. (the Underwriter), pursuant to which Clarus has agreed to purchase, on a bought deal basis, 2,898,600 Common Shares (the Common Shares) of the Company at a price of C$3.45 per Common Share (the Offering Price) for aggregate gross proceeds to the Company of C$10,000,170 (the Offering). The Company has agreed to grant the Underwriter an over-allotment option to purchase up to an additional 434,790 Common Shares at the Offering Price, exercisable in whole or in part at any time for a period ending 30 days from the closing of the Offering. In the event the over-allotment option is exercised in full, the aggregate gross proceeds of the Offering will be C$11,500,196. The Company intends to use the net proceeds from the Offering for general corporate purposes. The Common Shares will be offered by way of a short form prospectus to be filed in each of the provinces of Canada, other than the Province of Quebec, by way of a private placement in the United States, and in those jurisdictions outside of Canada and the United States which are agreed to by the Company and the Underwriters, where the Common Shares can be issued on a private placement basis, exempt from any prospectus, registration or other similar requirements. The Offering is expected to close on or about May 8, 2018 and is subject to certain conditions including, but not limited to, the receipt of all necessary approvals, including the approval of the Toronto Stock Exchange. The securities have not been, and will not be, registered under the United States Securities Act of 1933, as amended (the U.S. Securities Act), or any U.S. state securities laws, and may not be offered or sold in the United States without registration under the U.S. Securities Act and all applicable state securities laws or compliance with the requirements of an applicable exemption therefrom. 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. About Second Cup Coffee Co. Founded in 1975, The Second Cup Ltd. is a Canadian specialty coffee retailer operating franchised and company owned cafes across Canada. The company's vision is to be the Canadian specialty coffee brand of choice across Canada, committed to superior quality, innovation and profitable growth. For more information, please visit www.secondcup.com or find the company on Facebook and Twitter. SOURCE The Second Cup Ltd. For further information: Ba Linh Le, Chief Financial Officer, (905) 362-1827 or investor@secondcup.com. Additional information regarding Second Cup including required securities filings are available on our website at www.secondcup.com and on the Canadian Securities Administrators website at www.sedar.com; the System for Electronic Document Analysis and Retrieval (SEDAR). FORWARD LOOKING STATEMENTS This press release contains forward-looking information that represents internal expectations, estimates or beliefs concerning, among other things, future activities or future operating results and various components thereof. The use of any of the words "anticipate", "continue", "expect", "may", "will", "project", "should", "believe", and similar expressions suggesting future outcomes or events are intended to identify forward-looking information. Forward-looking statements include the Companys intention to complete the Offering and the timing thereof (including the anticipated filing date for the preliminary prospectus and the anticipated closing date of the Offering). Statements regarding such forward-looking information reflect management's current beliefs and are based on information currently available to management. These statements are not guarantees of future performance and are based on management's estimates and assumptions that are subject to inherent risks and uncertainties, which could cause Second Cups actual performance and financial results in future periods to differ materially from the forward-looking information contained in this press release. Although the forward-looking information contained in this press release is based upon what management believes are reasonable assumptions, there can be no assurance that actual results will be consistent with these forward-looking statements. All forward-looking information in this press release is qualified by these cautionary statements. Forward-looking information in this press release is presented only as of the date made. Except as required by law, Second Cup disclaims any intention or obligation to update or revise any forward-looking statements to reflect subsequent events or circumstances. harinder@tribunemail.com Pratibha Chauhan Tribune News Service Shimla, April 17 Even though the Cabinet has given go ahead for withdrawal of the HPCA case pending against former Chief Minister PK Dhumal in the Supreme Court, political rivalry between the BJP leader and Virbhadra Singh seems to have become a major stumbling block. The Cabinet on Monday again took the decision to withdraw the case. Equipped with the order from the Home Department, Advocate General Ashok Sharma left for Delhi to present the government viewpoint. The HPCA case was listed for Tuesday and now the next date of hearing is May 3. The Advocate-General had written to the government on April 5, seeking directions in the case. The order of Principal Secretary (Home and Vigilance), addressed to the Advocate General, spells out that the decision to withdraw the prosecution sanction against Dhumal was based on the Cabinet decision taken on January 10, 2018 that all politically motivated cases would be withdrawn. The Cabinet has decided to withdraw all politically motivated cases instituted by the previous government, which also includes the HPCA cases. You may accordingly apprise the apex court about the decision, the letter read. However, despite the keenness of the BJP regime to withdraw the case, the opposition to the move by former Chief Minister Virbhadra Singh through his lawyer is proving to be a hindrance in the case. Virbhadra is opposing the withdrawal of the HPCA cases which were registered when he was Chief Minister through his lawyer who appeared in court also. He has stated that when the matter is in court, let the law decide the fate of the cases. Anurag Thakur, BJP MP from Hamirpur was at the receiving end during the Congress regime. We never thought Virbhadra will oppose the withdrawal of the cases but our intentions are clear that all such vendetta cases must be withdrawn, said a BJP leader. editorial@tribune.com Pratibha Chauhan Tribune News Service Shimla, April 17 Having thrashed out the long-pending inter-state issues, Himachal and Haryana have agreed to sign a memorandum of agreement (MoU) on July 15, paving the way for the Adi Badri Dam, which will ensure perennial supply of water to the Saraswati river. All issues pending between Himachal and Haryana were discussed at a meeting between the Chief Secretaries of the two states on Tuesday. It is for the first time that the two states decided to resolve the issues. Chief Secretaries of Himachal Vineet Chawdhry and Haryana DS Dhesi discussed several pending issues, including that of a permanent membership for Himachal in the Bhakra Beas Management Board (BBMB). Senior bureaucrats from both states also attended the meeting. Issues concerning the protection of rights of people residing in two border villages in Sirmaur district and creating infrastructure for them were discussed, said Chief Secretary Vineet Chawdhry. He added that they had decided to sign the MoU on July 15 so that the interests of both states were protected and the rights of people remained intact. Haryana has agreed to fund the construction of the 5.2-km road, connecting the two villages, which will be submerged due to the coming up of the Adi Badri Dam. The state has also conceded to Himachals demand that the drinking and irrigation rights of villagers of Himachal will remain protected even after the dam comes up. The state on its part raised the issue of construction of the Panchkula bypass, which is crucial for the industrial hub of Baddi-Barotiwala-Nalagarh, where almost 80 per cent of Himachals industry is concentrated. Haryana has informed that the work for the construction of the road has already been awarded and the bypass will be readied within the next two years, said Chawdhry. Regarding the land acquisition for the laying of the Baddi rail line, Haryana has informed that out of the 52 acres, 27 acres is government land, while the remaining is privately owned. They have assured that the work would be expedited so that the rail line could be expanded. editorial@tribune.com Tribune News Service Jalandhar, April 16 Extending a helping hand to the families of the victims of the Iraq tragedy, the Deputy Commissioner Varinder Kumar Sharma and Senior Superintendent of Police Gurpreet Singh Bhullar handed over a cheque of Rs 5 lakh on Monday to the family of deceased Balwant Rai at Dhade village in Jalandhar Handing over the cheque of financial assistance to Gian Kaur, wife of the deceased at their native home, the Deputy Commissioner and Senior Superintendent of Police said the state government was duty-bound to extend a helping hand to them in this hour of grief. Both of them said the district administration was standing with the distressed family, which had lost their loved ones as well as their only earning hand in Iraq. Both the officers assured the family that they could always approach them for any sort of help. editorial@tribune.com Tribune News Service Jammu, April 17 Amid nationwide outrage over the rape and murder of a minor girl in Rasana village of Kathua district, Governor NN Vohra on Tuesday asked the state government for a fast-track trial in the case by ensuring day-to-day proceedings. The Governor conveyed this to Chief Minister Mehbooba Mufti, who called on him at Raj Bhawan here on Tuesday. During the course of their 30-minute discussions, the Governor urged the state government not to allow lumpen elements to disturb law and order under any circumstances. Among the other matters, the Governor stressed the importance of ensuring that the prosecution of the Kathua rape and murder case proceeded on a day-to-day basis and lumpen elements must not be allowed to disturb law and order under any circumstances, a Raj Bhawan spokesperson said in a statement issued here. On Monday, the Governor had accepted the resignation letters of two BJP ministers Lal Singh and Chander Prakash Ganga who were asked by the party high command to put in their papers on Friday for their indiscretion in the use of language at a rally in Kathua on March 1. The ministers had been sent to Kathua to defuse the situation as agitated community members under the Hindu Ekta Manch were demanding a CBI probe into the case. The Governor accepted the resignations on the recommendations of the Chief Minister. During the meeting, Mehbooba also apprised the Governor about her recent meetings and discussions in Delhi and subsequent developments in the state. On April 9, the Chief Minister had called on Prime Minister Narendra Modi and Defence Minister Nirmala Sitharaman in New Delhi. During her meeting with Modi, Mehbooba apprised him about the overall situation in J&K, including the security scenario in the Kashmir valley. She had stressed on finding ways and means to end the cycle of violence in the state by addressing the element of alienation among youth. Mehbooba had also reiterated her demand for peaceful engagement with all stakeholders and sought more frequent meetings at the highest levels between India and Pakistan. The Chief Minister, during her meeting with Sitharaman, had underscored the need for adopting a humane approach while dealing with the situation and avoiding collateral damage during security operations. The Governor also discussed with the Chief Minister issues relating to the long-pending elections to the urban local bodies and panchayats and reiterated the need for strict accountability being enforced in the functioning of the entire administrative apparatus. Discusses panchayat polls The Governor also discussed with the Chief Minister issues relating to the long-pending elections to the urban local bodies and panchayats and reiterated the need for strict accountability being enforced in the functioning of the entire administrative apparatus editorial@tribune.com Dinesh Manhotra & Sanjay Pathak Tribune reporters Jammu/Kathua, April 17 Bharatiya Janata Party MLA from Basholi Choudhary Lal Singh has launched a counteroffensive against Chief Minister Mehbooba Mufti, charging her with hatching a deep-rooted conspiracy with Syed Ali Shah Geelani to demonise, humiliate and discredit the ethnic Dogra minority of the state. Lal Singh had to resign from the Council of Ministers recently for demanding a CBI probe into the Kathua rape-murder case. People of Jammu, who were demanding a CBI probe to ensure justice to the rape and murder victim, are being dubbed pro-rapists by Mehbooba Mufti and other Kashmir-centric groups only to demonise the whole Dogra race, Lal Singh alleged. He kick-started his mass contact programme from the Gandhi Chowk area in Satwari on Tuesday. Instead of organising a rally, Lal Singh addressed roadside meetings on the Jammu-Pathankot highway from Jammu to Kathua. The minor girl, who was raped and murdered in the first week of January, was a daughter of Dogras. People of Jammu want justice with the victim. The demand for a CBI probe was raised because the local police failed to solve the case, Lal Singh said amid we want a CBI inquiry slogans. Since 1947, we have been frustrating the nefarious designs of Geelani-like people. So, to demonise our Dogra race, they manipulated things and painted our whole ethnic community as pro-rapists just for supporting the demand for a CBI probe, Lal Singh said at Bari Brahmana. He minced no words in attacking the Chief Minister for her failure to tackle the law and order situation in the state. Being the Home Minister of the state, Mehbooba Mufti has failed to protect a minor girl. She has lost the moral right to stay on the chair, the BJP MLA said. He asked the Chief Minister to resign on moral grounds. It is her (Mehbooba Muftis) biggest failure. If she has wisdom and conscience, she should resign, he told reporters in Samba. If two ministers can sacrifice their posts in the interest of peace, those who are actually responsible for creating such an atmosphere should listen to their conscience, he said. Lal Singh also said that he would press for a CBI probe into the incident. Overwhelmed by peoples response at Ghagwal, Kootah and Kathua, the former Forest Minister alleged that Mehbooba Mufti was merely a puppet in the hands of Syed Ali Shah Geelani and other separatist leaders. Mehbooba and other ministers are dancing to the dictates of Geelani who is calling the shots in the government, he said. Panthers Party demands CBI inquiry Political and social organisations on Tuesday raised the demand for a CBI probe into the murder and alleged rape of an eight-year-old tribal girl in Kathua. We need a transparent investigation into the case. It has been the demand of people from day one, said Harsh Dev Singh, chairman, Panthers Party. Raising slogans against the state government, Panthers Party workers said Chief Minister Mehbooba Mufti not only turned down the appeal of BJP ministers to conduct a CBI investigation but successfully forced the saffron party to sack its two ministers. The Jammu West Assembly Movement (JWAM) also sought a fair probe into the case. It alleged that the PDP-BJP government had divided the state for political gains. All parties are all indulging into politics. People of Jammu are seeking justice for the victim, but only a fair probe by the CBI will reveal the truth, said Sunil Dimple, president, JWAM. TNS Questions tainted cops role in probe Choudhary Lal Singh questioned the involvement of a tainted police officer in the Kathua case investigation. How can one expect a fair trial in the investigation when one of the members of the Special Investigating Team was charged with murder and rape? he asked, alleging that officers of such credentials were specially involved in the investigation to deny justice to the victim. laxmi@tribune.com Prabhdeep Singh Media can no longer be defined by its three traditional domains radio, television and newspaper. With the emergence of digital segments, medias dimensions have dramatically changed. The vertical of new-age media, comprising social media platforms like Facebook, Twitter, Instagram, Google+, Pinterest... has expanded the realm of mass communication. In the early 2000s, the world of communication entered a new phase that was a result of a sudden boom in the internet and smartphone industry. According to new statistics, the Indian telecom industry has become the world's second largest due to penetration of internet and smartphones into smaller towns and villages of India. From 48 million mobile-internet users in 2012, the figure saw a jump of 115 per cent till 2017, when it touched the mark of 1.17 billion users. 64 per cent of the total population in India is using internet. Statistics show that India would have 500 million active users on internet and 300 million out-of-them would be mobile-internet users. In 2017, the total number of websites that are currently active touched 1.8 billion. Imagine the amount of data that is available on internet and then consider the opportunities that a young professional, who is currently passing-out with a graduation or post-graduation degree in mass communication or journalism, have. What is mass communication? Mass communication is known as relay of information through a media to a large segment of population at the same time. Mass communication has been conventionally about newspaper, magazine, radio, television and films that are used to disseminate information. What is new-age media? New-age media is commonly referred to as content available through internet and that what is accessible on any digital device. It also has features like user feedback and participation. Websites, on-line newspapers, blogs, newsletters, e-mailers and social media are a part of it. Future of new-age media With the passage of time, digital and social media will gain popularity. With over a billion active users on Facebook, 241 million Twitter accounts, there is a huge demand of professionals who will manage organisations accounts on social media. How is this course different from the usual mass communication courses? New-age media is different from traditional media. Its users demands immediate information. People no longer want to wait till next day for newspapers to update them about what is happening in the world. They rather prefer web-portals or blogs that are updated every minute. The writer is HOD, University Media Centre, Chandigarh University, Gharuan Job prospects in conventional fields of media Print media: A total of 1,05,443 newspapers/ periodicals are registered with the Registrar of Newspapers for India. Moreover, the growth of 40 per cent has been seen in past three years in the readership of newspapers in India. TV journalism: With the increase in number of news channels, there has been a surge in job opportunities in the TV sector. In addition to news reporters, there is always a demand for the technical team, which includes cameraman, news editor, bulletin producer and video editor.. Radio industry: The number of FM channels in India has increased by 120 per cent in the last 10 years. As a result, demand for specialised professions such as radio jockey, producers, sound artists, voice-over artists has multiplied. Research analyst: Job of an analyst is to study the market strategy, consumer demand and build strategy. The professionals should be well versed with the analytical tools to carry out surveys. Public Relations: The professionals handle publicity campaigns and PR activities. They use media to build a good image of a brand. Advertising: Advertising managers create interest among potential buyers of a product or service. Oppurtunities in new-age media Blogger: Professional bloggers are responsible for conceptualising, writing, editing and promoting the content of a corporate or personal blog. A blogger has to deliver content for the web articles, which are being published on blog of any company or organisation. SEO expert: The purpose of SEO expert is to lead an organisation's social media strategy in order to boost visibility. The expert works on customer and client engagement. It involves managing all social media handles of the organisation and update them regularly with latest information. Digital marketing expert: She is often responsible for developing the strategy used in marketing a company's product online, utilizing techniques like web analytics, e-mail marketing and search engine optimisation, among others. Digital marketing expert may use various online tools for increasing reach of the company's brand among masses. Social media content writer: As an online content writer, one has to manage the digital content on various media platforms such as Facebook, Twitter, Instagram and also requires to update information about the organisation or the client at their official website. The content writer is also required to provide content for the official online communication which includes e-letters, e-mailers and newsletters. Institute watch 1. Osmania University: Department of Communication & Journalism 2. Delhi University: Department of Mass Media & Communication 3. Asian College of Journalism, Chennai 4. Indian Institute of Mass Communication, New Delhi. 5. Xaviers Institute of Communication, Mumbai. 6. Chandigarh University- University Institute of Media Studies 7. Chitkara School of Mass Communication, Chitkara University, Rajpura. 8. Panjab University: School of Communication ROBINSINGH@TRIBUNE.COM Sanjeev Sharma Tribune News Service New Delhi, April 17 Amid reports of currency shortage and ATMs running dry in various parts of the country, the government and Reserve Bank of India (RBI) on Tuesday announced to ramp up printing of Rs 500 notes by five times. While the government attributed the problem to sudden and unusual demand, the RBI denied cash shortage and said it was taking steps to move currency to areas witnessing unusually large cash withdrawals as a matter of precaution. Cities and towns across Andhra Pradesh, Telangana, poll-bound Karnataka, Madhya Pradesh and Bihar were reportedly impacted more by the cash crunch. The Finance Ministry said the unusual spurt in currency demand was reported in the last three months. In the first 13 days of April, the currency supply increased by Rs 45,000 crore, whereas the normal level for a month is around Rs 20,000 crore. The Opposition parties slammed the government for the return of demonetisation days with Congress chief Rahul Gandhi saying terror of note ban had again gripped the country. West Bengal CM Mamata Banerjee called it a financial emergency and CPMs Sitaram Yechury said people were suffering because of BJP policies. The RBI said the shortage may be felt in some pockets largely due to logistical issues of replenishing ATMs frequently and the recalibration of ATMs being still underway. It is clarified at the outset that there is sufficient cash in the RBI vaults and currency chests. Nevertheless, printing of the notes has been ramped up in all four note presses, it said. Economic Affairs Secretary Subhash Chandra Garg indicated that Rs 2,000 notes were being hoarded as these were not coming back into the circulation fast enough. Finance Minister Arun Jaitley said: There is more than adequate currency in circulation and also available with the banks. The temporary shortage caused by sudden and unusual increase (in demand) is being tackled quickly. monicakchauhan@gmail.com Bhopal/ Amethi/Kolkata/Ahmedabad, April 17 A large number of ATMs failed to dispense cash to customers for the second consecutive day on Tuesday in many cities and towns in at least six statesGujarat, Eastern Maharashtra, Madhya Pradesh, Bihar, Andhra Pradesh, Telangana and even poll-bound Karnataka. People have been complaining about non-availability of cash since morning in ATMs. In a situation reminiscent of the early days of the central government's scrapping of high value notes in November 2016, people queued up outside ATMs in an attempt to withdraw some money. It was also reported that most of the ATMs were out of service and one could only withdraw a little amount from a working ATM and that too after spending much time standing in a queue. Also read: In Madhya Pradesh, a large number of ATMs were empty and there were long queues at others where cash was still available. Gujarat, Telangana and Andhra Pradesh meanwhile have reportedly been facing cash crunch for the past few days. As his government came under fire for poor management, Finance Minister Arun Jaitley said there is "more than adequate" currency in circulation and the temporary shortage in certain states is being "tackled quickly". Overall there is more than adequate currency in circulation and also available with the Banks. The temporary shortage caused by 'sudden and unusual increase' (in demand) in some areas is being tackled quickly," Jaitley said. Minister of State for Finance Shiv Pratap Shukla said the government has formed a committee to address the problem of currency shortage in certain states and the issue would be resolved in next 2-3 days. "The government has set up state-wise committee and RBI has also formed a committee to transfer currency from one state to other because for money transfer you need the permission of the RBI. It (the shortage) will be solved in 2-3 days," Shukla said. Adequate supply At a hurriedly-called press meet, Economic Affairs Secretary SC Garg, said: "There is no cash crunch in the country. There is around Rs 18 lakh crore currency supply now, which is close to the circulation during the demonetisation period. We keep Rs 2.5-3 lakh crore more currency in stock for excess demand." He said there was unusually high demand for currency in the last couple of months. As opposed to an average demand of about Rs 20,000 crore a month, "in the first 13 days of April itself there was a demand of Rs 45,000 crore", he said. In the last few days the government has pumped cash into the system to meet the demand, he said. "We still have a reserve of Rs 1.75 lakh crore." "We have taken steps to increase the supply of currency in case the demand were to go up further. To give you an example, Rs 500 noteswe print about 500 crore of notes per day. We have taken steps to raise this production five times," Garg said. "Very soon, in the next couple of days, we will have a supply of about Rs 2,500 crore worth of Rs 500 notes per day. In a month, supply would be about Rs 70,000-Rs 75,000 crore. These notes alone can more than meet the demand of any month," he said. Garg attributed the sudden cash demand to localised phenomena. "This unusual spurt in demand is seen more in some parts of the country like Andhra Pradesh, Telangana, Karnataka, Madhya Pradesh and Bihar," the Finance Ministry said in a statement on Tuesday. The RBI bank also denied cash shortage, instead saying it was due to logistical issues. "There is no currency shortage. It is clarified at the outset that there is sufficient cash in the RBI vaults and currency chests. Printing of the notes has been ramped up in all the 4 note presses," RBI says in its statement on Tuesday evening. "The shortage may be felt in some pockets largely due to logistical issues of replenishing ATMs frequently and the re-calibration of ATMs still underway. RBI is closely monitoring both these aspects." 'Conspiracy' MP Chief Minister Shivraj Singh Chouhan claimed there was a conspiracy afoot. Speaking at Shajapur, Chouhan, a BJP leader, said: "It is a conspiracy. Certain persons are hoarding Rs 2,000 notes to cause a cash crunch. When demonetisation was announced in 2016, there was Rs 15.50 lakh crore in circulation in the market. Now, this figure is Rs 16.50 lakh crore. Where are the notes of Rs 2,000 denomination going?" State Finance Minister Jayant Malaya admitted to currency shortage but maintained that black marketing of Rs 2,000 notes could not be ruled out. In Gujarat, cash shortage exacerbated on Tuesday, with several ATMs and banks running dry, especially in villages and the tribal belts. Deputy chief minister Nitin Patel, who is also the state finance minister, acknowledged that banks are facing cash crunch and said the government is in touch with the RBI to ensure enough cash is supplied to banks. Bank officials said they are getting only one-tenth of the required cash, leaving them helpless to replenish the ATMs. The shortage has especially affected farmers involved in cumin business, they said. In Bihar, where cash has been in short supply in banks for almost a week, Finance Minister Sushil Modi he was sure that the crisis would be resolved soon. "There has been a cash crunch at banks in Bihar since 5-6 days. I spoke to officials at both RBI and banks. They said the problem will be sorted in the next few days. Reserve Bank of India says shortage of supply has caused the problem," Modi said. Opposition attacks Congress President Rahul Gandhi said the "terror of note-ban" has again gripped the country due to reported shortage of cash in several states and accused Prime Minister Narendra Modi of destroying the country's banking system with his demonetisation decision. The Congress chief, who is in his Parliamentary constituency Amethi, took to Twitter to attack Modi, alleging he "snatched" the Rs 500 and Rs 1000 currency notes from every Indian's pocket and "gave" it to Nirav Modi, but was neither speaking a word about it nor facing Parliament. "Modi ji has destroyed the banking system of the country," Gandhi said on the reported cash crunch in some ATMs. He alleged that Narendra Modi did not speak a word "after Nirav Modi fled the country with Rs 1,000 crore". "The prime minister has not uttered a single word after he made the entire country stand in a queue, snatched Rs 500 and Rs 1000 currency notes from your pocket and put it in Nirav Modi's pocket. He fears standing in Parliament too," he said. The terror of noteban has gripped the country again as the cash in various banks has gone dry, Gandhi alleged and used the hashtag "CashCrunch" with his tweet in Hindi. "Understand the deceit of Noteban, your money in Nirav Modi's pocket. Modiji's 'Mallya maya', the terror or noteban is again spreading. The country's ATMs are again empty, what has been done to the country's banks," he tweeted. Congress communications in-charge Randeep Surjewala also took a dig at the prime minister, saying "while the 'saheb' is enjoying abroad, the country's people are looking for cash in banks". West Bengal Chief Minister Mamata Banerjee said the situation reminded her of the demonetisation days and wondered the country was gripped by a "financial emergency". "Seeing reports of ATMs running out of cash in several states. Big notes missing. Reminder of #DeMonetisation days. Is there a Financial Emergency going on in the country? #CashCrunch #CashlessATMs," Banerjee tweeted. RBI report shows that the currency in circulation in the country has reached the pre-demonetisation level of about Rs 17 lakh crore. Agencies Have reviewed the currency situation in the country. Over all there is more than adequate currency in circulation and also available with the Banks. The temporary shortage caused by sudden and unusual increase in some areas is being tackled quickly. Arun Jaitley (@arunjaitley) April 17, 2018 #MadhyaPradesh: People in Bhopal say 'We are facing a cash crunch. ATMs are not dispensing cash. The situation has been the same since 15 days. We have visited several ATMs today as well, to no avail.' pic.twitter.com/VwtR3s7flL ANI (@ANI) April 17, 2018 People in Varanasi say, 'We do not know what or where the problem is but the common man is facing difficulty as the ATM Kiosks are not dispensing cash. We have visited 5-6 ATMs since morning. We need to pay for the admission of children and purchase groceries & vegetables'. pic.twitter.com/8eSGXU0NtU ANI UP (@ANINewsUP) April 17, 2018 Vadodara: People complain of inconvenience due to lack of currency in ATMs; say, 'most of the ATMs were out of service, could only withdraw Rs 10,000 from one working ATM that also after spending a lot of time in the queue' #Gujarat pic.twitter.com/ZkbGCc4j4f ANI (@ANI) April 17, 2018 People in Delhi say 'We are facing cash crunch. Most of the ATMs are not dispensing cash, the ones which are dispensing, have only Rs 500 notes. We are facing difficulty, don't know what to do'. pic.twitter.com/zZoeEfOwjk ANI (@ANI) April 17, 2018 We've cash currency of Rs1,25,000 cr right now. There is one problem that some states have less currency&others have more.Govt has formed state-wise committee & RBI also formed committee to transfer currency from one state to other. It'll be done in 3 days: SP Shukla, Mos Finance pic.twitter.com/Xm4b4NhMqu ANI (@ANI) April 17, 2018 Rensselaerville, N.Y., April 17, 2018 (GLOBE NEWSWIRE) -- The Logan Nonfiction Programis accepting applications until June 15, 2018 for the Fall 2018 fellowship taking place October through December at the Carey Institute for Global Good. Writers, documentary filmmakers, photographers, and multimedia producers working on longform, deeply reported nonfiction projects are invited to apply. The program provides fellows with lodging, meals, mentorship, and community for up to 10 weeks. The mission of the Logan Nonfiction Program is to support democracy by advancing independent journalistic inquiry and investigation. The program has three primary goals: supporting ethically uncompromised accountability journalism; advocating for and promoting independent nonfiction in the U.S. and globally; and increasing the professional skills and expertise of journalists and nonprofit reporting organizations so their work is amplified and has a positive impact. Applications for Fall 2018 will be accepted from professional journalists and filmmakers working on topics representing socially relevant political, health, environmental, human rights, and justice topics. Applicants are judged based on professional experience and the quality, relevance, and promise of the project they propose to work on during their stay. Prospective fellows commit to at least five weeks in residency but are encouraged to stay for the full 10-week duration. The Logan Nonfiction Program has become renowned in the world of independent journalism in its short life, said Tom Jennings, program director. It speaks to the need that exists, but also the positive influence the experience has on the fellows. We're proud to support their important work in such a direct way." The Logan Nonfiction Program continues to be the only fellowship in the United States that exclusively supports longform nonfiction. Since its inception in 2015, it has directly supported more than 100 journalists from around the world, many of whom have now moved on to publish their work as a result of the program. Some recent notable publications include The Doomsday Machine: Confessions of a Nuclear War Planner by Daniel Ellsberg; No Turning Back: Life, Loss, and Hope in Wartime Syria by Rania Abouzeid; Pipe Dreams: The Plundering of Iraqs Oil Wealth by Erin Banco; and Dan Egans The Death and Life of the Great Lakes. Among current fellows is documentary producer Laura Checkoway, whose documentary "Edith + Eddie" was nominated for a 2018 Academy Award. Applications for the Logan Nonfiction Program Fall 2018 class will be accepted until June 15, 2018. All longform creators are encouraged to apply on the Carey Institutes website. Questions should be directed to nonfiction@careyinstitute.org. *** The Logan Nonfiction Programs Advisory Board is comprised of 12 renowned journalists, including: Raney Aronson-Rath, executive producer of Frontline, PBSs flagship investigative journalism series; Helene Cooper, bestselling author and Pentagon correspondent for the New York Times; Sheila Coronel, director of the Toni Stabile Center for Investigative Journalism at Columbia University and co-founder of the Philippine Center for Investigative Journalism; New York Times journalist Sheri Fink, winner of the Pulitzer Prize and George Polk Award; Carey Institute Vice-Chair Josh Friedman, a Pulitzer Prize-winner and longtime Columbia Journalism School professor; Brooke Gladstone, host and managing editor of NPRs On the Media; Emmy-award winning documentary filmmaker and Logan Nonfiction Program Director Tom Jennings; renowned author and documentary filmmaker Sebastian Junger; award-winning film and documentary producer and director Sam Pollard; Robert J. Rosenthal, board member and executive producer at the Center for Investigative Reporting; Michael Shapiro, Columbia University professor and founder of The Big Roundtable; and author and publisher Susumu Shimoyama. The Logan Nonfiction Program is made possible by the generous support of the Jonathan Logan Family Foundation, Open Society Foundations, European Journalism Centre, Ethics and Excellence in Journalism Foundation, and our individual donors. Those interested in contributing to the program may contact Rachael Maddock-Hughes at rmaddockhughes@careyinstitute.org. The Carey Institute for Global Good is a not-for-profit organization founded in 2012 by Wm. Polk Carey and is dedicated to building a strong, educated and just society. The Carey Institute provides education, tools and resources to practitioners of the global good to help them succeed, and puts practitioners firstteachers, journalists, and farmersrecognizing that practitioners have the power to change their communities and inspire others to do the same. ### Attachment rchopra@tribunemail.com New Delhi, April 17 The BJP on Tuesday said Congress leaders Rahul Gandhi and Sonia Gandhi should apologise for defaming Hindus globally and cited a telegram sourced from Wikileaks to back its demand. The BJPs renewed attack on the Congress comes a day after a special anti-terror court acquitted rightwing activist Swami Aseemanand and four others in the 2007 Mecca Masjid blast case in Hyderabad. If the Congress considers India to be its own, then Sonia Gandhi and Rahul Gandhi must apologise to the whole country for defaming the great Hindu religion by trying to prove that there was something called saffron terror, BJP spokesperson Sambit Patra said at a press conference. He showed a telegram sourced from Wikileaks quoting a conversation during the former Congress-led UPA government between then US ambassador and Rahul Gandhi. According to the transcript of the conversation, Rahul said saffron terror was a bigger threat than the Lashkar-e-Taiba. This shows the mindset of Rahul Gandhi towards Hindus. His party has always taken Hindus for granted, Patra said. On Monday, Patra said people would teach the Congress a lesson in the Karnataka Assembly polls as they had in the 2014 Lok Sabha elections when it was reduced to 44 seats. For its appeasement politics, the Congress targeted and defamed Hindus and the country for merely some votes. That conspiracy has been exposed. The Congress has been exposed like never before, he had said after the verdict came in. PTI ROBINSINGH@TRIBUNE.COM Kathmandu/New Delhi, April 17 In a rare attack on a foreign mission in Nepal, a pressure-cooker bomb exploded outside the office of the Indian consulate in the countrys eastern Biratnagar city damaging its wall but no one was hurt, police said on Tuesday. The homemade device went off last night at Biratnagar, 200 kilometres from Kathmandu. The bomb was triggered by an unknown group in an open space behind the building and created a small hole in the wall, the police said. However, Indian Embassy in Kathmandu has not yet issued any formal statement on the incident. Ministry of External Affairs spokesperson Raveesh Kumar said in a statement in New Delhi said that Indian embassy in Kathmandu was in touch with the Nepal government over the incident and that the security authorities in that country were investigating the matter. PTI ROBINSINGH@TRIBUNE.COM Tribune News Service New Delhi, April 17 The tussle between the AAP-led Delhi Government and the Centre further escalated on Tuesday with the appointment of nine advisers/consultants to Delhi ministers cancelled on the directions of the Ministry of Home Affairs (MHA), which said these posts were "not" sanctioned. "The nine posts are not on the list of posts approved for ministers and chief ministers of the government of NCT of Delhi," an order of the General Administration Department read, quoting a letter from the MHA dated April 10, stating the Delhi Government had not taken the requisite prior approval of the Central Government to appoint officials on these posts. Among the nine advisers whose appointments have been cancelled are Amardeep Tiwari, media adviser to the Law Minister, Arunodya Prakash and Atishi Marlena, both media advisers to Deputy CM Manish Sisodia, and Raghav Chadha, adviser to Finance Minister. Sisodia called the MHA order a conspiracy to derail the AAP governments education initiatives in Delhi. Accusing the Centre of trying to paralyse the Delhi Government, he alleged Marlena, who had played a "vital role" in improving the education system, had been targeted. No wonder why Modi govt decided to remove advisors like @AtishiMarlena an Stephenian who later studied at Oxford, then worked as Rhodes scholar, and then joined Delhi Education govt as advisor. She was working with me on Re 1/pm salary for last 3 years (sic), he tweeted. AAPs national spokesperson Chadha posted a letter on Twitter as proof that he no longer held the post. rchopra@tribunemail.com Beijing, April 17 External Affairs Minister Sushma Swaraj will visit China later this week to participate in the Foreign Ministers meeting of the Shanghai Cooperation Organisation (SCO) during which she will also hold talks with her Chinese counterpart Wang Yi. Swaraj, who will be arriving in China on April 21, is expected to meet Wang on April 22. She is scheduled to take part in the SCO Foreign Ministers meeting on April 24, official sources here said. This will be their first meeting after Wang has been elevated last month to be the State Councillor, which makes him the top diplomat in the Chinese hierarchy. He will hold the dual posts of the State Councillor and Foreign Minister. After her China visit, she will travel to Mangolia. Swaraj and Defence Minister Nirmala Sitharaman are visiting China virtually around the same time. Sitharaman is due to take part in the SCO Defence Ministers meeting on April 24. The SCO meetings are a prelude to the June summit of the eight-member grouping in which India and Pakistan have become new members. Prime Minister Narendra Modi is expected to take part in the SCO summit to be held in the Chinese city of Qingdao in June. Foreign and Defence Ministers of Pakistan are also expected to attend the April 24 meetings. The SCO is comprised of China, Kazakhstan, Kyrgyzstan, Russia, Tajikistan, Uzbekistan, India and Pakistan. Visits by Swaraj and Sitharaman are taking place as India and China have stepped up high-level exchanges to defuse tensions following last years Doklam standoff. On April 13, National Security Adviser Ajit Doval met Yang Jiechi, Director of Chinas Foreign Affairs Commission and member of the ruling Communist Party of China, in Shanghai during which the two sides held in-depth talks on improving the relations. Both sides also held the 11th Joint Economic Group meeting and the fifth Strategic Economic Dialogue (SED). India and China also held working mechanism meeting on border affairs and cross-border rivers. Commenting on the meetings, Chinese Foreign Ministry spokesperson Hua Chunying told the media here on Monday that bilateral ties had seen sound momentum and allround cooperation this year. PTI ROBINSINGH@TRIBUNE.COM Tribune News Service New Delhi, April 17 The Supreme Court on Tuesday asked the government to expedite the process for appointment of Indias first Lokpal, an anti-corruption ombudsman. Attorney General KK Venugopal told a Bench headed by Justice Ranjan Gogoi that a meeting was held on April 10 to select an eminent jurist to be on the panel that would select the Lokpal. This was the second meeting in as many months to fill the vacancy in the Lokpal selection panel created after the death of senior advocate PP Rao in September 2017. Enacted in 2013, the Lokpal and Lokayuktas Act received presidential assent on January 1, 2014 and came into force on January 16, 2014. However, the first Lokpal is yet to be appointed and many stated were also dithering in appointing Lokayuktas. On behalf of petitioner Common Cause, an NGO, advocate Prashant Bhushan requested the top court to direct the government to appoint Lokpal as it was dithering on it. But the Bench, which also included Justice R Bhanumathi, chose not to pass any specific directions to the government and posted the matter for further hearing on May 15. Terming the Act as an eminently workable piece of legislation, the top court had in 2017 said there was no justification to keep the enforcement of Lokpal Act suspended till the proposed amendments, including on the issue of the Leader of Opposition in Lok Sabha, were cleared by Parliament. The Centre had last month told the top court that the selection committee for Lokpal has decided to first fill the vacancy of eminent jurist in the panel that arose following the death of senior advocate PP Rao last year. The Lokpal Selection Committee comprising PM Narendra Modi, Chief Justice of India Dipak Misra and Lok Sabha Speaker Sumitra Mahajan met on March 1. Congress leader in the Lok Sabha Mallikarjun Kharge who was invited as a special invitee had refused to attend the meeting. Second meeting of the panel was held on April 10, the Bench was informed. In its April 27, 2017 verdict, the Supreme Court had termed the Lokpal and Lokayuktas Act, 2013 an eminently workable piece of legislation which does not create any bar to the enforcement of the provisions. Section 4(2) of the Act made it clear that the appointment of chairperson or a member of the Lokpal will not become invalid merely because of a vacancy in the selection committee, it had said. The top court had made it clear that there was no justification in keeping the Lokpal Act suspended till the proposed amendments, including on the issue of the Leader of Opposition in Lok Sabha, were cleared by the Parliament. On March 23, it had also pulled up 11 states which had not appointed Lokayuktas and Uplokayuktas, even five years after the enactment of the Lokpal and Lokayuktas Act, 2013. Avoids giving order ROBINSINGH@TRIBUNE.COM Tribune News Service Chandigarh, April 17 More than two years after Akali leader Mukhjit Singh Mukha was allegedly killed by a Punjab Police team, the Punjab and Haryana High Court on Tuesday ordered a compensation of Rs 20 lakh for the victims wife, Harjit Kaur. The state has already paid Rs 5 lakh to the family. For paying the remaining amount, Justice Rakesh Kumar Jain set a three-month deadline. Seeking a Rs 50-lakh compensation and a government job, Harjit Kaur had moved the High Court through counsel Mohinder Kumar, claiming that her husband was killed by a police party of Amritsar district on June 16, 2015, which waylaid him and indiscriminately fired gunshots at him in his car. The High Court was told he sustained 23 bullet injuries. Reports in the media had quoted the Commissioner of Police as saying that the police team had killed Mukha after mistaking him for a gangster. The counsel told the court that the then Deputy Chief Minister, Sukhbir Singh Badal, visited the victims family and announced compensation and a government job for the widow. Subsequently, Harjit Kaur was given a cheque for Rs 5 lakh, which was inadequate. Also, the government did not provide a job to her. The Punjab Government, during the course of hearing, told the Bench that the services of seven erring cops had been placed under suspension following the shootout. gspannu7@gmail.com Tribune News Service New Delhi, April 17 India has filed its reply or the second round of written pleadings in the International Court of Justice (ICJ) In Kulbhushan Jadhavs case. India had filed written pleadings (memorial) in the case on September 13 last year and Pakistan filed its counter memorial on December 13. Today, India filed its reply to Pakistans submissions to the court. Pakistan has been given time till July 17 by the court to file its response (rejoinder). A former naval officer, Jadhav, who is lodged in a Pakistani jail, faces the gallows on allegations of inciting secession in the restive Balochistan and indulging in terrorism. Denied consular access to Jadhav despite repeated requests, India took the case to ICJ in May 2017 citing violation of human rights under the Vienna Convention. India called the military court trial of Pakistan as farcical. The ICJ then ordered provisional stay on the pending death execution subject to completion of hearing in the international court. India remains committed to make all possible efforts to secure and protect the rights of Shri Jadhav, said MEA in a statement today. Pakistan allowed a meeting between Jadhav and his wife and mother on December 25 last year as a humanitarian gesture but the meeting spiralled into a bitter diplomatic spat. Pakistan has on more than one occasion released alleged confessional video tapes of Commander Jadhav accused of being a serving RAW agent. India has dismissed the confession as being coerced under pressure. amansharma@tribunemail.com Stockholm, April 17 India and Sweden on Tuesday decided to strengthen their defence and security cooperation, and agreed on an innovation partnership for a win-win outcome as Prime Minister Narendra Modi held talks with his Swedish counterpart. In a press statement after his talks with Swedish Prime Minister Stefan Lofven, Modi said they focused on how Sweden can help India in its development journey. The two sides have agreed an innovation partnership and a Joint Action Plan, the Prime Minister said. Modi, who was the first Indian prime minister to visit the Nordic country in 30 years, said India and Sweden have agreed to strengthen their defence and security cooperation, including in areas of defence production and cyber security. On his part, Swedish Prime Minister lauded India "global power" and said the two countries were a "perfect match". There has been an intensification of cooperation in areas such as green technology and smart cities. Lofven said India and Sweden have agreed to work on a security agreement. Earlier in the day, Modi, who arrived in Stockholm on Monday, called on Swedish King Carl XVI Gustaf and exchanged views on strengthening bilateral cooperation across several sectors. Modi is on the first leg of his five-day foreign tour. He will leave for the UK on Tuesday evening to attend the Commonwealth Heads of Government Meeting (CHOGM), and leave for home, with a brief stopover at Berlin on April 20. PTI/Agencies Los Angeles, CA, April 17, 2018 (GLOBE NEWSWIRE) -- Stunning ambiances. New materials with functional and aesthetic impact. A reinterpretation of kitchen ergonomics. The classic made contemporary. Space transformed into pure emotion. These are the concepts that Snaidero is presenting this week (April 17-22) at Eurocucina, the world famous biennial kitchen tradeshow hosted in Milan, Italy. Collaborating with 5 different designers, the company will present 5 kitchens (3 new ones and 2 evolutions of existing models), all reflecting Snaideros own interpretation of the most popular trends in modern kitchen design. HERA | Michele Marcon Design English Country Style, with a Contemporary Twist With this project, Snaidero continues to address the strong demand for kitchens that use different stylistic influences from past and present and are therefore aesthetically versatile. HERAs design concept takes inspiration from the English country chic style; it then puts a twist on it by adding contemporary accents (to enhance functionality) and Nordic flavors (mostly through the choice of materials). The cross-contamination of styles is so subtly executed that is hard to tell where one ends and the other begins. The result is an effortless, peaceful, and elegant mood. VISION | Pininfarina Design Pure Emotion Born from Innovation In VISION, style and technology come together to deliver a new experience of the kitchen. Its a design centered on flowing surfaces and perfect geometries, all reflecting Pininfarinas very unique approach to aesthetics and engineering. The result is a fluid space that is pure sensation, while also being extremely user-centered in terms of functionality. VISION represents the 8th design collaboration between Snaidero and Pininfarina, joining an impressive list of iconic and award-winning kitchen projects developed over the last 28 years: Idea, Ola, Viva, Venus, Ola20, OLA25 (Limited Edition), and Aria. LINK | Andreucci & Hoisl Design Re-Imagining Kitchen Ergonomics Open your mind to a new concept of kitchen organization, where aesthetics and practicality go hand in hand. With just a few details and essential lines, LINK revolutionizes kitchen functionality, focusing on the crucial area between base cabinets and wall units. The project delivers 3 different ways to utilize that space based on user preferences and even hide the operational unit when not in use. With LINK, Snaidero continues a design partnership with architects Alessandro Andreucci and Christian Hoisl focused on space organization. Their first collaboration was Passepartout, Snaideros kitchen accessories collection (an open and flexible system of containers and storage solutions). FRAME | Iosa Ghini Design Transitional Design, Perfected At Eurocucina 2018, Snaidero is also presenting an evolution of its FRAME kitchen - a Massimo Iosa Ghini model originally introduced at Eurocucina 2 years ago which has since met market success and won the 2017 GOOD DESIGN Award. The kitchen follows the increasingly popular wave of transitional design, taking classic style elements and making them new through modern touches aimed at updating both aesthetic and functional features. For example, the classic framed door is streamlined by recessed handles while the large, visually imposing extractor hood and shelf systems are kept light by the use of simple lines. The new version of FRAME will be presented through a large, elegant display with stunning ambiance. WAY Materia | Snaidero Design Elevating the Kitchen Space through Stunning Materials In WAY Materia, the materials are the uncontested protagonist of the kitchen. The model itself has an extremely minimalist design, well suited to let the innovative Laminam ceramic finishes for cabinet doors and countertops take center stage. These slabs of pure porcelain stoneware manufactured using cutting-edge technologies give the kitchen a sophisticated skin that offers architectural presence and great practicality. The finish is extremely resistant to wear, tear, fire, heat, and scratches, as well as hygienic and antibacterial (you can literally prep food right on the surfaces). The composition to be presented at Eurocucina will introduce a new ceramic finish (in addition to the 4 already available) in an interesting pairing with another finish. Images available upon request. Snaidero at Eurocucina 2018: PADIGLIONE 11, STAND B25 C 24 ### About Snaidero USA Snaidero USA is the exclusive North American distributor of Snaidero kitchen cabinets, for almost 40 years, Snaidero USA has offered the finest in luxury Italian kitchen design to North America and Central America through a retail network of 21 showrooms. Snaidero USA also serves the multi-housing industry, partnering with top developers like, Howard Hughes Corporation, Fortune International Group, Turnberry, AEG, ASPAC Developments and the CMC Group, for over 170 projects completed to date. Today, under the leadership of its President, Comm. Dario Snaidero, Snaidero USA is the leader in North-American imports of European kitchen cabinets. Through its Snaidero USA Living collection, the company also offers made-in-Italy furniture for bathrooms and closets. The kitchens are made of eco-friendly, non-toxic materials through production processes with limited impact towards the environment. Snaidero USA is a member of the US Green Building Council. For more information, please visit www.snaidero-usa.com. About Snaidero R. SpA (Italy) Founded in 1946, Snaidero is Italys leading manufacturer of high-end kitchen cabinets. A wealth of experience built over 70 years of tradition and innovation. Always at the forefront of style and innovation, Snaidero partners with world-renowned artists, architects, and industrial designers, such as Ferrari stylist Pininfarina, international architect Massimo Iosa Ghini and acclaimed Italian designers Lucci and Orlandini, to create top-of-the-line products manufactured with environmental responsibility. Attachments gspannu7@gmail.com Yash Goyal Jaipur, April 17 Considering the Jodhpur police commissioners appeal, a Division Bench of the Rajasthan High Court on Tuesday ordered the court to deliver its verdict in the alleged rape case against Asaram in Central Jail premises on April 25. The decision came in view of the self-styled godmans thousands of followers who might create law and order troubles in case of an adverse decision. The Division Bench comprising of Justice Gopal K Vyas and Ram Chandra Singh Jhala also issued guidelines to the Jodhpur police commissioner and district magistrate and collector to ensure law and order in the city on the verdict day, Additional Advocate General Shiv Kumar Vyas, who pleaded the case, told The Tribune. The Bench also directed that Asaram cases lawyers, public prosecutor and related staff be allowed to enter the jail premises with easy access, the AAG said. The Jodhpur police commissioner had moved the high court seeking directions to the trial court of SC-ST to pronounce the judgment in the case inside the jail premises as there would be a huge presence of the godmans followers in the city on the judgement day, and that followers might indulge in arson after the verdict. The shifting of the court to the jail is also necessary for the safety and security of Asaram and general public. The SC/ST trial court Judge Madhu Sudan Sharma had completed the final arguments in the case on April 7. Since 2013 when Asaram was arrested and brought from Indore, and jailed in Jodhpur Central jail, there have been many clashes between the police and his followers and 69 cases have been registered. The AAG also quoted Ram Rahim case at Panchkula which witnessed a large scale destruction of public property and violence. A minor girl hailing from Saharanpur (UP) had lodged a case of sexual assault against Asaram during her stay in his ashram in Manai village in Jodhpurs outskirts. Asaram, who is jail since August 31, 2013, was booked under relevant sections of Protection of Children from Sexual Offences Act and the SC/ST Act. Asaram was denied bail by the Supreme Court. If he is found guilty, Asaram could face a maximum imprisonment of 10 years. monicakchauhan@gmail.com Hyderabad, April 17 Hours after acquitting all five Hindu activists accused in the 2011 bomb blast at the historic Mecca Masjid here left nine worshippers dead, special NIA court judge Ravinder Reddy on Monday tendered his resignation. K Ravinder Reddy, the special judge for NIA cases, tendered his resignation, citing "personal" reasons barely hours after pronouncing the judgement in which he held that the prosecution failed to prove "even a single allegation" against the five accused. Reddy said his resignation had nothing to do with the judgement, according to a senior judicial officer, who did not want to be named. AIMIM Chief and Hyderabad MP Asaduddin Owaisi, meanwhile, tweeted, "Judge who gave acquittal to all accused in Mecca Masjid Blast RESIGNS very intriguing and I am surprised with the Lordship decision", amid questions over the functioning of the National Investigation Agency(NIA). Judge who gave acquittal to all accused in Mecca Masjid Blast RESIGNS very intriguing and I am surprised with the Lordship decision Asaduddin Owaisi (@asadowaisi) April 16, 2018 A powerful blast, triggered by remote control, had ripped through the over four centuries-old mosque here during an assembly of devotees on May 18, 2007 when they had gathered for Friday prayers, killing nine people and wounding 58. "Prosecution (NIA) could not prove even a single allegation against any of the accused and all of them stand acquitted," J P Sharma, the counsel for 66-year-old Assemanand, told reporters after the verdict was pronounced by judge Reddy. The media was not allowed in the courtroom where the judgement was pronounced in the high-profile case, which was dubbed by the then UPA government as one of "Hindu terror", a term that riled saffron organisations, including the BJP. "He has sent the resignation letter to MSJ(Metropolitan Sessions Judge)...he has cited personal grounds and it has nothing to do with today's verdict in the Mecca Masjid blast case," the senior judicial officer told PTI, speaking on condition of anonymity. Reddy, had apparently taken the decision to resign sometimes back itself, the officer said. Soon after the verdict, the NIA had come in for attack by oppostion parties, including the Congress and AIMIM. Apart from Aseemanand, those acquitted are -- Devendra Gupta, Lokesh Sharma, Bharat Mohanlal Rateshwar alias Bharat Bhai and Rajendra Chowdhary. Though there were 10 accused in the case, only these five were tried. Two other accused -- Sandeep V Dange and Ramchandra Kalsangra -- are absconding, while Sunil Joshi was murdered. Investigation is continuing against two others. The bomb had exploded in an area of the mosque where devotees performed ablutions. Two more Improvised Explosive Devices (IEDs) were later found and defused by the police. The incident had triggered violent protests and riots, prompting police action in which five more people were killed. A family member of one of the victims said the verdict should be challenged while the NIA said it will chalk out its future course of action after getting a copy of the judgement. The acquittals prompted the Congress to question the functioning of the NIA under the Modi government, but the BJP asserted that the court's decision had exposed the opposition party's politics of "defaming" Hindus for votes. BJP spokesperson Sambit Patra alleged in New Delhi that the Congress has long "defamed" Hindus for votes and demanded that party president Rahul Gandhi and his predecessor Sonia Gandhi apologise for using terms like "saffron terror" and "Hindu terror". But the Congress said there is nothing called 'saffron terror', asserting that it was of firm belief that terror cannot be linked to any religion or community, and made it clear its leader Rahul Gandhi or the party never used the phrase. "Rahul Gandhi or the Congress party has never used the words 'saffron terror'," Congress spokesperson P L Punia told reporters in Delhi when asked about the BJP's allegations. "It is mere rubbish. There is nothing called saffron terror," he said, adding terrorism is a criminal mentality and it cannot be linked to any religion or community. Senior Congress leader Ghulam Nabi Azad said, "It (acquittal) is happening in each case since the government was formed four years ago...people are losing faith in the agencies." Owaisi, in an earlier tweet, claimed that the NIA did not properly pursue the case, leading to the acquittal of the accused. According to Aseemanand's counsel Sharma, the court after examining documents and material placed on record found that the charges did not stick. "This entire case was based on confessional statement of Swami Aseemanand. Right from beginning we had been placing before the court that this is not the statement of confession. "The defence argued that the so-called confessional statement was forced from Swami Aseemanand in order to create a theory of 'Bhagwa Atankwad' (safron terror)," he said. The court, Sharma said, held that the confessional statement of Aseemanand was not voluntary. "CBI had got the statement of Swami Aseemanand recorded in Delhi while he was in police custody during December 2010," he said. Sharma claimed the investigating officer of the CBI had "intentionally" implicated the accused to sully the image of 'Sant Samaj' (the fraternity of seers) and the RSS, to which those acquitted belonged at some point of time. PTI ROBINSINGH@TRIBUNE.COM Stockholm, April 17 Prime Minister Narendra Modi on Tuesday held bilateral meetings with his counterparts from Finland, Denmark, Iceland and Norway and discussed ways to enhance ties with these Nordic countries in key areas such as trade and investment, and renewable energy. Modi met the leaders of the four Nordic countries on the sidelines of the India-Nordic Summit here. Modi met Danish Premier Lars Lokke Rasmussen and held talks on renewing and enhancing cooperation. The two leaders expressed their mutual desire to take the relationship forward, External Affairs Ministry spokesman Raveesh Kumar said. After the bilateral meeting between Modi and Rasmussen, documents were exchanged in areas of animal husbandry, dairying and urban development. Modi also met his Finnish counterpart Juha Sipila and discussed enhancing cooperation in trade and investment, renewable energy, space, waste management, start-up and education, Kumar said. Fruitful discussions with PM of #India @narendramodi in Stockholm. Recalled our first meeting in Mumbai in 2016 and had concrete negotiations how to promote our co-operation further in energy, space, education, Sipila tweeted after the meeting. Furthering India-Finland friendship...Prime Minister @juhasipila and PM @narendramodi had wide-ranging talks on expanding bilateral cooperation in areas such as science and energy," a tweet on the PMO Twitter handle said. Modi also met Iceland Premier Katrin Jakobsdottir, his Norwegian and Swedish counterparts Erna Solberg and Stefan Lofven, respectively. The Nordic countries comprise Denmark, Finland, Iceland, Norway and Sweden. PTI ROBINSINGH@TRIBUNE.COM Ajay Banerjee Tribune News Service New Delhi, April 17 Indias long-term deployments in Malacca Straits and other entry points to the Indian Ocean have been showing results with the Navy now keeping an eye on shipping. The Navy on Tuesday tweeted pictures of three Chinese warships entering the Indian Ocean through the straits of Ombai Wetar in Indonesia. Though these are international waters, the Navy tweet said: Extend a warm welcome to the 29th Anti-Piracy Escort Force (APEF) of PLA(N) in Indian Ocean Region (IOR). Happy Hunting (sic). These are normal greetings at high sea, but show the ability of the Navy to keep an eye at Malacca and also the eastern straits of Sunda and Straits Lumbok. The Navys growing presence in the Indian Ocean is such that it today tweeted with 50 ships on vigil 24X7 keep our Area of Responsibility (AOR) safe. The AOR is the Indian Ocean. Apart from the surface ships, Navys long-range maritime reconnaissance aircraft, the Boeing-made Poseidon 8I planes, are tasked with flying sorties, sometimes up to the South China Sea, almost every day, from INS Rajali in Arakkonam, Tamil Nadu. The Navy has a target to ensure its dominance in the Indian Ocean by 2020. Its not for patrol or deployment, but only for awareness of the busiest sea lane of communication. In July last year, the Navy was tasked to patrol sea-shipping routes to the Malacca Straits, an important choke point south-east of the Andaman and Nicobar Islands in the Bay of Bengal. The US Department of Defence has, in its reports, highlighted why the Malacca Straits were crucial for China. An annual report, Military and Security Developments Involving the Peoples Republic of China 2017, presented before the Congress, said: In 2016, approximately 80 per cent of Chinas oil imports and 11 per cent of natural gas imports transited the South China Sea and Malacca Straits. Despite Chinas efforts, the sheer volume of oil and liquefied natural gas that is imported to China from the Middle East and Africa will continue to make strategic sea lane of communications important to China, the report noted. amansharma@tribunemail.com Tribune News Service New Delhi, April 17 A day after India lodged a strong protest against alleged incitement of Sikh pilgrims on the issue of Khalistan, Pakistan categorically rejected the allegations. Around 20,000 Sikh pilgrims from across the globe, including more than 2,000 from India, are currently in Pakistan for Baishakhi celebrations. Pakistan Foreign Ministry spokesperson Mohammad Faisal in a statement said, "India has chosen to deliberately stoke further controversy around the visit of Sikh pilgrims, currently attending the Baisakhi and Khalsa Janamdin ceremonies in Pakistan." India summoned the Pakistani Deputy High Commissioner in Delhi on Monday to protest reported display of inflammatory posters and statements at holy shrines and places in Pakistan where the pilgrims are visiting from April 12 to 21. Meanwhile, images of posters reportedly displayed at Gurdwara Panja Sahib seeking a '2020 referendum for Khalistan' emerged along with photos of Sikh leader Gopal Singh Chawla meeting terror mastermind Hafiz Saeed in Lahore. However, it is not known if the meeting is a recent or an old one. Read: Hard evidence emerges of Pakistans support to Sikh militants Chawla is currently the secretary general of PSGPC (Pakistan Sikh Gurdwara Parbandhak Committee). The PSGPC along with the government statutory body ETPB (Evacuee Trust Property Board) reportedly stopped Indian High Commissioner Ajay Bisaria from meeting the pilgrims on April 14. India had protested the same earlier but Pakistan claimed the advice was issued following agitated sentiments over release of controversial film 'Nanak Shah Fakir' among some sections. "Indian attempts to distort the truth and obfuscate facts are unethical and regrettable. It is ironic that the country whose highest officials are on record for statements against the territorial integrity and sovereignty of Pakistan choose to indulge in blatant hypocrisy by twisting facts," added the Pakistani spokesperson today, asking India to respect all religions, especially minorities, and refrain from indulging in pointless provocation. rchopra@tribunemail.com Stockholm, April 16 Prime Minister Narendra Modi on Tuesday arrived here in the capital of Sweden, the first bilateral visit by an Indian premier to the Nordic nation in 30 years. Swedish Prime Minister Stefan Lofven received Modi at the airport. Modi is on the first leg of his five-day foreign tour which will also take him to the UK where he will attend the Commonwealth Heads of Government Meeting (CHOGM). Scripting history! PM@narendramodi arrives in Stockholm on a first bilateral visit by an Indian PM in 30 years to a warm and personal welcome by @SwedishPM Stefan Lofven at the airport and to participate in the first ever India-Nordic Summit, Ministry of External Affairs spokesperson Raveesh Kumar tweeted. Modi and Lofven also travelled together in the same vehicle from the airport to the hotel, he said. Earlier, ahead of his visit, Modi said in New Delhi he was looking forward to deepening bilateral engagement with both countries in a number of areas, including trade, investment and clean energy. India and Sweden share warm and friendly ties. Our partnership is based on democratic values and commitment to an open, inclusive and rules-based global order. Sweden is a valuable partner in our development initiatives, Modi had said in a departure statement on Monday night. The two prime ministers will hold bilateral talks on Tuesday. Modi said he and Lofven would also interact with top business leaders of both countries and chart out a future roadmap of cooperation in sectors such as trade and investment, science and technology, clean energy and smart cities. The prime minister said he would also call on King of Sweden Carl XVI Gustaf. India and Sweden will also jointly organise the India-Nordic Summit in Stockholm on Wednesday. The summit will also be attended by the prime ministers of Finland, Norway, Denmark and Iceland. From Sweden, Modi on Wednesday will travel to the UK where he will also attend the CHOGM, besides holding bilateral talks with his British counterpart Theresa May. PTI monicakchauhan@gmail.com Lucknow, April 17 Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) MP Sakshi Maharaj has written a letter to Senior Superintendent of Police (SSP) and demanded action against the alleged 'nightclub' that he had 'mistakenly' inaugurated. In his letter, the BJP MP said he was tricked into believing that he was inaugurating a restaurant. "On Sunday, a lawyer named Rajjan Singh Chauhan of my constituency Unnao took me to inaugurate a restaurant in Aliganj, Lucknow. Sumit Singh and Amit Gupta, owners of the restaurant, had requested Chouhan to get their restaurant inaugurated by me," the BJP MP informed the SSP. He said: Since I was in a hurry as I had to catch a flight to Delhi, so within two-three minutes I cut the ribbon and went to the airport. Later, I came to know through media that it was not a restaurant but a nightclub. Someone says it is a bar, hookah bar. When I demanded the license from the restaurant owners then they could not provide it. It seems that everything is being operated illegally." The BJP MP said his sacred image has been badly hurt by the incident. ANI rchopra@tribunemail.com Smita Sharma Tribune News Service New Delhi, April 17 India and Sweden will co-host the first ever India-Nordic Summit in Stockholm on Tuesday. Narendra Modi will be at the summit with Prime Ministers of Denmark, Finland, Iceland, Norway and Sweden. Innovation, jobs, trade, security, green technology, climate change and women empowerment are expected to dominate the discussions. Modi will also hold separate bilateral meetings with the Nordic PMs. Icelands Ambassador to India Thorir Ibsen told The Tribune exclusively, There has always been a good political, trade and investment relations between Nordic countries and India, but these relations need to be deepened. Lots of opportunities are there in areas of innovation, digital transformation and generating growth and jobs by increasing trade. The small Nordic countries with an annual collective trade of merely 5.3 billion USD with India want to expedite FTA (Free Trade Agreement) talks to enhance commerce. The main stumbling block in our commercial relations is the absence of FTA. Small countries, like ours, want to make sure that trade is based on rules that are transparent and predictable, said Ibsen. As strong supporters of the Paris Agreement, Climate Change is an important area of discussions at the summit. One of the earliest supporters for Indias entry into an expanded Security Council, the envoy expressed his disappointment at the resistance to reforms from sections. We are of the view that the Security Council must reflect the current historical realities. Our position vis-a-vis India is based both on friendship because we trust India and also in recognition that in a changed world India should be at the table, said Ibsen. Iceland that faced a major financial and banking crisis triggering off the 2008 economic recession feels India can learn from its experiences. Asked about the ongoing scams involving Indian banks, Ibsen said, Accept advice from abroad. We had a national crisis, we accepted the advice of the IMF (International Monetary Fund) because we realised that we needed to have an external view on what went wrong. Make those responsible accountable, added Ibsen to the question of major bank defaulters on the run. As the biggest producer of geothermal energy in the world, 90 per cent of Icelands energy needs are drawn through renewables. Iceland hopes that it can share its expertise in developing environment-friendly technology with India. amansharma@tribunemail.com Satya Prakash Tribune News Service New Delhi, April 17 Almost 365 years after Mughal Emperor Shah Jahan built Taj Mahal, the ownership of the 'monument of love' has become a subject matter of a dispute before the Supreme Court. Uttar Pradesh Sunni Wakf Board - which is fighting a protracted legal battle to get the title of the disputed site at Ayodhya - has claimed that it's a Waqf property and it should be allowed to maintain it. Under Islamic practice, Waqf means an endowment of property by a Muslim for a religious or charitable purpose. On Tuesday, its counsel told the top court that Taj Mahal was owned by the Almighty but it must be listed as property of the Waqf Board for practical purposes. A Bench headed by the Chief Justice of India is hearing a petition filed by Archaeological Survey of India against a Wakf Tribunal's 2005 decision ordering Taj Mahal to be registered as a Uttar Pradesh Sunni Waqf Board's property. The top court - which had stayed the tribunal's order - on Tuesday termed it problematic and adjourned the case for further hearing on July 27. Known as one of the Seven Wonders of the World and a UNESCO World Heritage Site, the Taj Mahal was built between 1632 and 1653 at Agra by Mughal Emperor Shah Jahan as a tomb for his beloved wife Mumtaz Mahal. She had died in 1631 while giving birth to their 14th child. The Taj had hit national headlines last year after being dropped from the state government's tourism booklet. Later, it was mentioned as a place of pride in the Uttar Pradesh Government's 2018 calendar. Chief Minister Yogi Adityanath - who visited the Taj last month to review tourism schemes - had described the monument as "a priceless gem" and said everyone should be committed to its preservation and protection. Under a law enacted by Parliament, ASI has been maintaining all ancient monuments in India. Waqf board wanted ASI to consider registering Taj Mahal as a waqf property, only for maintenance. But ASI has opposed it would create problems as similar claims for Red Fort, Fatehpur Sikri and some other historic monuments might come up. VANCOUVER, British Columbia, April 17, 2018 (GLOBE NEWSWIRE) -- Hootsuite, the worlds most widely used social media management platform, kicked off 2018 with a number of awards and accolades that reinforce the companys ongoing commitment to the success of its customers, partners, and employees. Customers recognized Hootsuite as a leader across five separate social media categories on G2Crowd, the worlds leading business solutions review website that ranks technology solutions based on customer satisfaction surveys and an organizations overall market presence. Customers ranked Hootsuite as one of the best platforms for Social Media Suites, Brand Advocacy, Social Media Monitoring, Social Media Analytics, and Social Media Solutions. Hootsuite was recognized as the Adobe Exchange Partner of the Year at the Adobe Summit in March. Building on the partnership between the two organizations, Hootsuite was selected by Adobe for its integrated solutions that allow brands to unlock the power of social across their omni-channel campaigns and measure the impact of social integrations throughout the customer journey. In Q1, Hootsuite received employer recognition as the best overall technology company in the Canada and among the top 3 best places to work in the country as part of the annual LinkedIn Top Companies to Work Awards. The awards are based on the actions of LinkedIns more than 546 million professionals, including more than 14 million in Canada alone. Customer obsession is at the forefront of everything we do at Hootsuite. We are humbled by the recognition from our customers, partners, and employees positioning Hootsuite as a leader in our industry, said Penny Wilson, CMO of Hootsuite. A core pillar of our organization is to champion the power of human connection, which drives us to create an environment where all our stakeholders, from employees to customers feel like an essential component of the companys success. Hootsuites Q1 2018 momentum also included the following highlights: Partner Ecosystem Hootsuite announced scheduling and publishing for Instagram, the most requested customer functionality within the Hootsuite dashboard. Hootsuite announced further strategic integrations within Adobe Analytics Cloud. This new integration unlocks insights from Hootsuites platform within Adobes market-leading solution. Hootsuites Ow.ly was recommended by Google as a replacement link shortening tool with the companys sunsetting of goo.gl. Expanded Leadership Greg Twinney was announced as the COO of Hootsuite, an expanded role to compliment his existing CFO role with the company. More Information: About Hootsuite Hootsuite is the most widely used social media management platform, trusted by more than 16 million customers and more than 80 percent of the Fortune 1000. Hootsuite's unparalleled expertise, customer insights at scale, and collaborative ecosystem empower organizations large and small to strategically grow their brand, business, and customer relationships with social. To learn more, visit www.hootsuite.com. ROBINSINGH@TRIBUNE.COM Satya Prakash Tribune News Service New Delhi, April 17 Almost 365 years after Mughal emperor Shah Jahan built Taj Mahal, the ownership of the monument of love has become a subject matter of a dispute before the Supreme Court. The Uttar Pradesh Sunni Wakf Board, which is fighting a protracted legal battle to get the title of the disputed site at Ayodhya, has claimed that its a Wakf property and it should be allowed to maintain it. Under Islamic practice, Wakf means an endowment of property by a Muslim for a religious or charitable purpose. On Tuesday, its counsel told the top court that Taj Mahal was owned by the Almighty but it must be listed as property of the Wakf Board for practical purposes. A Bench headed by the Chief Justice of India is hearing a petition filed by the Archaeological Survey of India against a Wakf Tribunals 2005 decision ordering Taj Mahal to be registered as the UP Sunni Wakf Boards property. The SC, which had stayed the tribunals order, on Tuesday termed it problematic and adjourned the case for further hearing on July 27. Known as one of the Seven Wonders of the World and a UNESCO World Heritage Site, the Taj Mahal was built between 1632 and 1653 at Gara by Shah Jahan as a tomb for his beloved wife Mumtaz Mahal. She died in 1631 while giving birth to their 14th child. The Taj hit headlines last year after being dropped from the UP Governments tourism booklet. Later, it was mentioned as a place of pride in the governments 2018 calendar. Chief Minister Yogi Adityanath, who visited the Taj last month to review tourism schemes, had described the monument as a priceless gem and said everyone should be committed to its preservation and protection. Under a law enacted by Parliament, the ASI has been maintaining all ancient monuments in India. Wakf board wanted ASI to consider registering Taj Mahal as a Wakf property, only for maintenance. But the ASI has opposed it as similar claims for Red Fort, Fatehpur Sikri and some other historic monuments might come up. You have strangulated entire city, now you want to come inside and protest, SC tells farmers body Says citizens have equal rights to move freely without fear rchopra@tribunemail.com Saurabh Malik Tribune News Service Chandigarh, April 17 More than two years after Akali leader Mukhjit Singh Mukha was allegedly killed by a police party, the Punjab and Haryana High Court on Tuesday ordered Rs 20 lakh compensation for the victims wife Harjit Kaur. The state has already paid Rs 5 lakh in compensation. The remaining amount was directed to be paid within three months. In her petition before Justice Rakesh Kumar Jain, the petitioner had claimed that her husband aged 38 was killed by the police party of Amritsar district on June 16, 2015, by waylaying him and indiscriminatingly firing gunshots at him in his car. The court was told that he sustained 23 gunshot injuries. A special investigation team was formed. News reports were also carried in leading newspapers quoting the Commissioner of Police and other cops as saying that the police had killed Mukha mistaking him for a gangster. The counsel added the then Deputy Chief Minister-cum-Home Minister Sukhbir Singh Badal visited the petitioner and the victims family before announcing compensation and a government job to the widow. The state government gave a cheque for Rs 5 lakh, which was inadequate. Moreover, till date the state government had not provided government job to the petitioner. editorial@tribune.com Rachna Khaira Tribune News Service Kapurthala, April 17 In a move to plug illegal access to and from the Jalandhar-Ludhiana National Highway (NH-1A), Permanent Lok Adalat chairperson Manju Rana here on Tuesday barred the National Highways Authority of India (NHAI) from collecting toll at the Ladowal barrier near Phillaur. The road does not comply with safety provisions under the Control of National Highway, Land and Traffic Act, 2000... Accidents have increased day by day in an area of 10 km falling within the jurisdiction of Chaheru police station... Hence, the NHAI is stopped from charging toll at the barrier till the compliance of the order, stated the order. The toll plaza, which charges Rs 185 for a round trip, reportedly generates revenue of Rs 20 lakh every day. The Lok Adalat had issued directions to the NHAI on March 15 to close the illegal access outside the main gate of Phagwara-based Lovely Professional University (LPU), for the sake of students safety, within 15 days from the date of the order. The court observed that the NHAI had been unable to control the flow of overloaded vehicles running at a speed of 100 to 120 kmph, even as 71 accidents had been reported in the area in the past five years and a majority of the victims had died. Within minutes of the issuance of the order, NHAI counsel JS Rathore produced over 35 notices issued to buildings for gaining unauthorised access from NH-1A. Besides LPU, the notices were issued to car dealers, marriage palaces and filling stations. The court told the NHAI to first comply with the order and plug illegal access points. Summons to LPU The court has also issued summons to LPU and the University Grants Commission (UGC) after it found contradictory statements submitted by the university in the court during the hearing. A reply submitted by LPU stated that the university got the building plan approved in January 2018, while the UGC has been told to explain why it had granted affiliation in 2005 to the institution which did not an approved building at that time. Notices were also served on the Punjab Chief Secretary, Local Bodies Minister Navjot Sidhu, the Punjab Pollution Control Board (PPCB) and the Punjab State Power Corporation Limited (PSPCL) for granting approvals to 51 illegal structures, including marriage palaces and banquet halls, that were constructed on NH-1A in the past few years. The next hearing has been scheduled for April 24. Aman Mittal, Director, Public Relations, LPU, refused to comment on the matter, saying that it was sub judice. vermaajay1968@gmail.com Tribune News Service Dehradun, April 17 After enforcing the NCERT prescribed books in CBSE schools, the Uttarakhand schools education department is contemplating enforcing the same in the ICSE and ISCE-run board private schools. So far the ICSE schools have been exempted from the governments NCERT books directives. However, Uttarakhand education minister Arvind Pandey said he would bring a proposal in the Cabinet for approval in this regard. There are around 150 private ICSE schools in Dehradun and the maximum schools are in Dehradun. The department has also started working on the Fee Regulation Act for schools to ensure the schools do not announce arbitrary fee hike. Meanwhile, in another instance relating to the SGRR Medical College that had hiked fee for medical students of MBBS and MD course (batch- 2016-2017), the Fee Fixation Committee has slapped a fine of Rs 10 lakh per student on the institution. harinder@tribunemail.com United Nations: Maldives former President Mohamed Nasheeds conviction on terrorism charges was based on vague laws and contained serious flaws, and the country must restore his right to stand for office, the UN Human Rights Committee has said. Nasheed, 50, the country's first democratically-elected leader-was sentenced to 13 years in jail on terror charges in March 2015 over the arbitrary arrest of chief criminal judge Abdullah Muhammed during his presidency. He was granted asylum in the UK amid foreign pressure. He was disqualified from running in presidential elections for 16 years. PTI Key Survey Findings: IT managers cannot identify 45 percent of their organizations network traffic 84 percent of organizations agree that a lack of application visibility is a serious security concern 52 percent of organizations are also concerned about productivity loss from unwanted or unnecessary applications they cant see on the network SAN FRANCISCO, April 17, 2018 (GLOBE NEWSWIRE) -- RSA Conference 2018 - Sophos (LSE:SOPH), a global leader in network and endpoint security, today announced the findings of its global survey, The Dirty Secrets of Network Firewalls, which revealed that IT managers cannot identify 45 percent of their organizations network traffic. In fact, nearly one-in-four cannot identify 70 percent of their network traffic. The lack of visibility creates significant security challenges for todays businesses and impacts effective network management. The survey polled more than 2,700 IT decision makers from mid-sized businesses in 10 countries including the US, Canada, Mexico, France, Germany, UK, Australia, Japan, India, and South Africa. Considering the debilitating impact cyber-attacks can have on a business, its unsurprising that 84 percent of respondents agree that a lack of application visibility is a serious security concern. Without the ability to identify whats running on their network, IT managers are blind to ransomware, unknown malware, data breaches and other advanced threats, as well as potentially malicious applications and rogue users. Network firewalls with signature-based detection are unable to provide adequate visibility into application traffic due to a variety of factors such as the increasing use of encryption, browser emulation, and advanced evasion techniques. If you cant see everything on your network, you cant ever be confident that your organization is protected from threats. IT professionals have been flying blind for too long and cybercriminals take advantage of this, said Dan Schiappa, senior vice president and general manager of products at Sophos. With governments worldwide introducing stiffer penalties for data breach and loss, knowing who and what is on your network is becoming increasingly important. This dirty secret cant be ignored any longer. On average, organizations spend seven working days remediating 16 infected machines per month. Smaller organizations (100-1,000 users) spend on average five working days remediating 13 machines, while larger organizations (1,001-5,000 users) spend on average 10 working days remediating 20 machines per month, according to the survey. A single network breach often leads to the compromise of multiple computers, so the faster you can stop the infection from spreading the more you limit the damage and time needed to clean it up, said Schiappa. Companies are looking for the kind of next-generation, integrated network and endpoint protection that can stop advanced threats and prevent an isolated incident from turning into a widespread outbreak. Sophisticated exploits such as MimiKatz and EternalBlue reminded everyone that network protection is critical to endpoint security and vice versa. Only direct intelligence sharing between these two can reveal the true nature of who and what is operating on your network. IT managers are very aware that firewalls need an upgrade in protection. In fact, the survey revealed that 79 percent of IT managers polled want better protection from their current firewall. 99 percent want firewall technology that can automatically isolate infected computers, and 97 percent want endpoint and firewall protection from the same vendor which allows for direct sharing of security status information. Security is Not the Only Risk to Businesses Following security risks, lost productivity was cited as a concern for 52 percent of respondents when it comes to a lack of network visibility. Business productivity can be negatively impacted if IT is unable to prioritize bandwidth for critical applications. For industries that rely on custom software to meet specific business needs, an inability to prioritize these mission critical applications over less important traffic could be costly. Fifty percent of IT professionals who had invested in custom applications admitted that their firewall could not identify the traffic and therefore were unable to maximize their return on investment. Lack of visibility also creates a blind spot for the potential transfer of illegal or inappropriate content on corporate networks, making companies vulnerable to litigation and compliance issues. Organizations need a firewall that protects their investment in business-critical and custom applications by allowing employees to have prioritized access to the applications they need, said Schiappa. Increasing network visibility requires a radically different approach. By enabling the firewall to receive information directly from the endpoint security, it can now positively identify all applications even obscure or custom applications. The Dirty Secrets of Network Firewalls survey results are available in a PDF report. The Dirty Secrets of Network Firewalls survey was conducted by Vanson Bourne, an independent specialist in market research, in October and November 2017. This survey interviewed 2,700 IT decision makers in 10 countries and across five continents, including the US, Canada, Mexico, France, Germany, UK, Australia, Japan, India, and South Africa. All respondents were from organizations of between 100 and 5,000 users. Sophos can deliver higher levels of network visibility with the XG Firewall and Sophos Endpoint Protection or Intercept X. For information about Sophos XG Firewall, please visit: https://www.sophos.com/en-us/products/next-gen-firewall.aspx To start a free trial of Sophos XG Firewall, please visit: https://secure2.sophos.com/en-us/products/next-gen-firewall/free-trial.aspx For more information about Sophos Synchronized Security, please visit: https://www.sophos.com/en-us/lp/synchronized-security-mea.aspx Sophos is at RSA Conference 2018 from April 16-20, 2018, booth #3201. For more information about what Sophos is doing at the event, please visit www.sophos.com/rsa Read the latest security news and views on our award-winning news website Naked Security and read more about Sophos on Sophos News. Protect every Mac and PC in your home with the next generation of centrally managed cybersecurity software, Sophos Home. Connect with Sophos where you are Twitter , LinkedIn , Facebook , Spiceworks , YouTube , Google+ About Sophos Sophos is a leader in next-generation endpoint and network security. As the pioneer of synchronized security, Sophos develops its innovative portfolio of endpoint, network, encryption, web, email and mobile security solutions to work better together. More than 100 million users in 150 countries rely on Sophos solutions as the best protection against sophisticated threats and data loss. Sophos products are exclusively available through a global channel of more than 26,000 registered partners. Headquartered in Oxford, UK, Sophos is publicly traded on the London Stock Exchange under the symbol "SOPH." More information is available at www.sophos.com. For more information, please contact: Sara Eberle, public relations manager, Americas, Sophos Sara.eberle@sophos.com Cell: 339-223-9265 Stephanie Jackman, account supervisor, March Communications stephanie@marchcomms.com Office: 617-960-9882 Cell: 413-374-7264 harinder@tribunemail.com Havana, April 17 Most of Camilo Condis family emigrated from Communist-run Cuba to the United States seeking a better life, but the 32-year-old decided to stay after Raul Castro became President a decade ago and promised change. Seeking to make socialism sustainable, Castro introduced some market reforms to the state-run economy and secured a historic detente with the United States. He made it easier for Cubans to travel, allowed them to own property, cellphones and computers, and expanded Internet access. Condis, who graduated university in 2011, the year Castro announced most of the reforms, now makes a decent living in the capital, Havana, working for a restaurant in Cubas fledgling private sector, and renting out a flat. He surfs the web daily and has travelled outside the Caribbean island. But even Condis, who has benefited more than most from the changes, is worried about the future as Castro prepares to step down as President this week and hand off power to a younger generation of Communist leaders. Like most Cubans, his biggest concern is the creaking economy, which remains one-third smaller than in 1985 when it was receiving subsidies from its ally the Soviet Union, according to former Cuban central bank economist Pavel Vidal. Castro introduced some new social freedoms when he officially took power from his ailing older brother Fidel Castro in 2008, albeit maintaining the one-party system that has a monopoly on the media and little tolerance for public dissent. On the economy, his government has implemented only a fraction of its planned market reforms, which aimed to deepen an opening Fidel Castro had started following the collapse of the Soviet Union in 1991. It has even backtracked on some. Those who welcomed the proposed changes blamed this on resistance to change from the party and entrenched bureaucracy as social inequality rose and the states control diminished. More than two-thirds of Cubans work in the inefficient state sector, earning on average $30 per month, although free education and healthcare and some subsidised food and housing offset low wages to some extent. In interviews across the country, Cubans told Reuters they are struggling to get by. Travel and use of the Internet at $1 per hour were luxuries many could ill afford. The benefits of the economic opening have been concentrated on the private services sector in cities, especially Havana where better relations with the United States boosted tourism. But even there, opportunities were curtailed last year when US President Donald Trump partially reversed the detente, and they look set to be curbed further by tighter regulations. The economy has grown on average 2.4 per cent per year over the last decade, according to official statistics. Some analysts say Castro may have missed a historic opportunity to enact change given his authority as a leader of the 1959 revolution. Others say his legacy hangs in the balance. Much will depend on the path taken by his successor-likely to be 57-year-old Miguel Diaz-Canel-and on how much Castro maintains a hand in policy as he remains head of the ruling Communist Party until 2021. Reuters A new Cuba? rchopra@tribunemail.com Kabul, April 17 An Afghan official says at least six civilians were shot and killed by gunmen in western Ghor province on Tuesday morning. Iqbal Nezami, spokesman for the provincial police chief, said four other civilians were wounded after their vehicle was attacked near Faroz Koh, the provincial capital. The victims were all ethnic Hazaras, a Shia minority in Afghanistan that is frequently targeted by Sunni extremists in different parts of the country. Nezami says the Hazaras were travelling from Herat, another western province, to Ghor when they came under attack. No one immediately claimed responsibility for the attack. Both the Taliban and militants from the rival Islamic State terror group are active in Ghor and have previously claimed attacks in the province. AP rchopra@tribunemail.com Islamabad, April 17 A Pakistani high court on Tuesday sentenced an additional district and sessions judge and his wife to one year in jail for torturing a 10-year-old girl child working as a domestic help at their house here. In a short verdict, Justice Aamer Farooq of the Islamabad High Court (IHC) convicted additional district and sessions judge (ADSJ) Raja Khurram Ali Khan and his wife Maheen of torturing the minor and sentenced them to a year in prison. The court also slapped a fine of Rs 50,000 each on them. The girl, Tayyaba, first made headlines when police rescued her in December 2016 from the ADSJs residence, after some of his neighbours shared her pictures on the social media. Khan and his wife were booked and charged with assaulting, confining, ill-treating, neglecting, abandoning, harming and injuring the minor housemaid. Following the incident, the IHC had suspended the judge and made him an officer on special duty (OSD). Initially, her parents struck a deal to pardon the couple but Chief Justice of Pakistan (CJP) Saqib Nisar in January last year took suo motu notice of the Tayyaba torture case and asked the high court to hold a retrial. In May last year, the IHC indicted the accused, while rejecting the compromise on the grounds that compounding an offence with parents of the minor was not maintainable. A total of 19 witnesses, including 11 of prosecution and eight non-state witnesses, including Tayyabas parents, recorded their statement. Last month, after hearing both sides, the high court had reserved its judgment. PTI monicakchauhan@gmail.com Pyongyang, April 17 North Korean leader Kim Jong-un expressed his desire to strengthen ties with China during a ballet performance by a Chinese troupe here, state-run news agency KCNA reported on Tuesday. On Monday, Kim, along with his wife Ri Sol-ju, watched the Chinese artistes perform "Red Women Company", reports Efe news agency. After the performance, the couple met the troupe and Kim expressed hope the visit "would serve as a significant occasion in carrying forward and further consolidating the traditional DPRK-China friendship". The visiting Chinese troupe will participate in a festival as part of cultural exchanges between the two countries. China and North Korea's relations had been strained until Kim travelled to meet Chinese President Xi Jinping in March. The visit came before the planned summits between North Korea and South Korea and the US. It also marked Kim's first trip abroad and the first meeting with a foreign president since he came to power in 2011. The delegation of artistes, headed by the director of international relations of the Communist Party of China, Song Tao, arrived in Pyongyang last week, KCNA reported. Song watched the performance along with North Korean politburo's members, such as the regime's number two, Choe Ryong-hae. Kim and Song spoke in a friendly way and the Chinese emissary said Xi attached great importance to the joint agreement in cultural matters with North Korea and conveyed his will to deepen exchanges in this and other fields. Beijing's support for UN sanctions against Pyongyang in the wake of its nuclear and ballistic missile tests had worsened the bilateral relation between the two allies in the recent years. IANS rchopra@tribunemail.com Tehran, April 17 Three terrorists and three members of the Iranian security forces were killed during night-time clashes along Irans border with Pakistan, state news agency IRNA reported on Tuesday. At 0130 this morning (2100 GMT Monday), a terrorist group from Pakistan attacked a police post in the border area of Mirjaveh, around 75 kilometres southeast of Zahedan, the capital of Sistan-Baluchistan province, IRNA said. Three of the attackers were killed along with a police officer and two members of the Revolutionary Guards, it added. Iran has criticised Pakistan in the past for supporting the Jaish al-Adl jihadist group, which it accuses of ties to Al-Qaeda and carrying out numerous attacks in Sistan-Baluchistan. The restive province is poor and home to a population that is predominantly Sunni and ethnic Baluchi, in a country where 90 per cent are Shiite and two-thirds are Persian. From 2005 to 2010, Sistan-Baluchistan suffered a prolonged insurgency by the Balochi-Sunni jihadist group Jundallah, meaning soldiers of Allah, although violence was largely curbed after the killing of its leader in mid-2010. AFP This is a correction of the announcement from 12:07 16.04.2018 CEST. NOT FOR RELEASE, PUBLICATION OR DISTRIBUTION, IN WHOLE OR IN PART, DIRECTLY OR INDIRECTLY, TO U.S. NEWS WIRE SERVICES, IN OR INTO THE UNITED STATES, AUSTRALIA, CANADA, JAPAN, HONG KONG, SINGAPORE OR ANY OTHER JURISDICTION IN WHICH THE DISTRIBUTION OR RELEASE WOULD BE UNLAWFUL. FURTHER RESTRICTIONS ARE APPLICABLE. PLEASE SEE THE IMPORTANT NOTICE AT THE END OF THIS RELEASE. Reference is made to the stock exchange notification published by Electromagnetic Geoservices ASA ("EMGS" or the "Company") on 16 March 2018 announcing the terms of the Rights Issue and the Bond Issue. This notification is an update of the key information notification published by EMGS on 2 March 2018 relating to the Rights Issue and the Bond Issue based on the terms published on 16 March 2018. This stock exchange notification sets out certain key information related to the Rights Issue and the Bond Issue. The information set out in the below applies both to the Rights Issue and the Bond Issue, unless otherwise specified. Date on which the terms and conditions of the rights issue and the bond issue were announced: 2 March 2018 Last day including rights: 17 April 2018 Ex-date: 18 April 2018 Record date: 19 April 2018 Date of approval: 23 March 2018 Maximum number of new shares: 39,540,816* Maximum principal amount of convertible loan: USD 32,500,000 Subscription price Rights Issue: NOK 2.45 Subscription price Bond Issue: USD 100 Will the rights under the Rights Issue be listed: Yes Will the rights under the Bond Issue be listed: No Other information: The minimum subscription in the Bond Issue is USD 10,000 and multiples thereof. To be able to meet this threshold, investors will need to own at least 28,132 shares in the Company on 17 April 2018, as registered in the Norwegian Central Securities Depository (VPS) on 19 April 2018. Shareholders who whish to participate in the Bond Issue and do not currently meet this threshold will need to buy additional shares in the marketplace at the latest within 17 April 2018. For further information, please contact: Hege Veiseth, CFO, +47 99 21 67 43 About EMGS EMGS, the marine EM market leader, uses its proprietary electromagnetic (EM) technology to support oil and gas companies in their search for offshore hydrocarbons. EMGS supports each stage in the workflow, from survey design and data acquisition to processing and interpretation. The Company's services enable the integration of EM data with seismic and other geophysical and geological information to give explorationists a clearer and more complete understanding of the subsurface. This improves exploration efficiency and reduces risks and the finding costs per barrel. EMGS operates on a worldwide basis with offices in Trondheim, Oslo, Houston, Villahermosa, Rio de Janeiro and Kuala Lumpur. For more information, visit www.emgs.com Important information: The release is not for publication or distribution, in whole or in part directly or indirectly, in or into Australia, Canada, Japan, Hong Kong, Singapore or the United States (including its territories and possessions, any state of the United States and the District of Columbia). This release is an announcement issued pursuant to legal information obligations, and is subject of the disclosure requirements pursuant to section 5-12 of the Norwegian Securities Trading Act. It is issued for information purposes only, and does not constitute or form part of any offer or solicitation to purchase or subscribe for securities, in the United States or in any other jurisdiction. The securities mentioned herein have not been, and will not be, registered under the United States Securities Act of 1933, as amended (the "Securities Act"). The securities may not be offered or sold in the United States except pursuant to an exemption from the registration requirements of the Securities Act. The Company does not intend to register any portion of the offering of the securities in the United States or to conduct a public offering of the securities in the United States. Copies of this announcement are not being made and may not be distributed or sent into Australia, Canada, Japan, Hong Kong, Singapore or the United States. The issue, exercise, purchase or sale of subscription rights and the subscription or purchase of shares in the Company are subject to specific legal or regulatory restrictions in certain jurisdictions. Neither the Company nor the Receiving Agent assumes any responsibility in the event there is a violation by any person of such restrictions. This communication is only being distributed to and is only directed at persons in the United Kingdom that are (i) investment professionals falling within Article 19(5) of the Financial Services and Markets Act 2000 (Financial Promotion) Order 2005, as amended (the "Order") or (ii) high net worth entities, and other persons to whom this announcement may lawfully be communicated, falling within Article 49(2)(a) to (d) of the Order (all such persons together being referred to as "relevant persons"). This communication must not be acted on or relied on by persons who are not relevant persons. Any investment or investment activity to which this communication relates is available only to relevant persons and will be engaged in only with relevant persons. Persons distributing this communication must satisfy themselves that it is lawful to do so. This announcement is an advertisement and does not constitute a prospectus for the purposes of Directive 2003/71/EC (as amended, together with any applicable implementing measures in any Member State, the "Prospectus Directive"). The distribution of this release may in certain jurisdictions be restricted by law. Persons into whose possession this release comes should inform themselves about and observe any such restrictions. Any failure to comply with these restrictions may constitute a violation of the securities laws of any such jurisdiction. The Receiving Agent is acting for the Company and no one else in connection with the Offering and will not be responsible to anyone other than the Company for providing the protections afforded to their respective clients or for providing advice in relation to the Offering and/or any other matter referred to in this release. Colorado Springs, Colo., April 17, 2018 (GLOBE NEWSWIRE) -- The State of Colorado has designated UCHealth Memorial Hospital Central as a Level I Trauma Center, making it one of only four hospitals in the state with the highest classification for trauma care. A Level I distinction recognizes the hospital has the ability to treat severe and complex injuries, giving southern Colorado residents rapid access to top-level emergency and trauma care without having to go to Denver. Level I is the highest trauma center designation. Memorial Hospital Central is also the only Comprehensive Stroke Center in southern Colorado. Designations mean patients have access to highest-quality care without needing to travel to Denver. The state finalized the designation on April 16 after a survey and review process, and the hospital is the first in southern Colorado to receive the classification. Earning this Level I designation has taken years of planning and advancements, said Joel Yuhas, Memorials president and CEO. Memorial has recruited some of the nations best trauma surgeons, upgraded our facilities, led important research, and hired excellent subspecialty surgeons to support the trauma program. This preparation, and the Level I designation, will result in more lives being saved. Hospital trauma designations are determined according to varying criteria, including medical resources and patient volumes. Key elements required to be a Level 1 trauma center include around-the-clock coverage by trauma surgeons and prompt availability of specialists in orthopedics, neurosurgery and anesthesiology, among others. Such facilities also must be leaders in trauma prevention and education, conduct research and meet volume requirements for treating severely injured patients. Memorial Central, which houses the states busiest emergency department, provided care in 2017 to more than 2,100 trauma patients who met trauma registry inclusion criteria. The majority of trauma cases involve blunt injuries that are often the result of incidents such as motor vehicle crashes, pedestrians or bicyclists hit by vehicles, falls and penetrating trauma. Achieving a Level 1 designation is the fulfillment of a promise made to the community when Memorial became part of UCHealth in 2012, said Dr. Thomas Schroeppel, the hospitals trauma medical director. Because of the investments made in the hospital both in technology and medical expertise and the expansion of physician training programs through a strong collaboration with the University of Colorado School of Medicine, we are able to ensure southern Coloradans have access to top trauma and surgical critical care services. This is not just an honor for the hospital, but a time of celebration for Colorado Springs and beyond. Until now, Colorados only Level I trauma centers were located in the metro Denver region, and southern Colorado patients with the most severe injuries might have to fly to Denver for care. Colorado Springs Mayor John Suthers said, We congratulate UCHealth and Memorial Hospital on this designation. Colorado Springs residents are fortunate to receive care by the high caliber of medical professions serving our community. We appreciate UCHealths commitment to the Pikes Peak region and to providing its residents with access to excellent medical care. It is the third elite designation Memorial Centrals trauma center has received in 2018.The hospital also was verified as a Level I adult and Level II pediatric trauma center by the American College of Surgeons (ACS). The ACS reviewers highlighted the strong collaboration that has been built with Childrens Hospital Colorado that has led UCHealth Memorial to provide exceptional care to children. This highest level of trauma care means critically-injured patients stay closer to home, that families can more easily stay or visit them, and that the long process of healing and rehabilitation occurs not miles away, but across the street, said Dr. David Steinbruner, Memorial Hospitals chief of staff and an emergency medicine physician. In January, Memorial Central become the first hospital in southern Colorado to be named a Comprehensive Stroke Center, a classification given to programs that offer the highest and most advanced level of stroke care. As the only hospital in the region with multiple teams of neurosurgeons and neuro-interventional physicians on-call 24/7, Memorial has the unique capabilities to quickly and expertly treat every kind of stroke or brain aneurysm. These advanced capabilities are saving lives and improving outcomes for patients because time is crucial in the treatment of stroke. Getting the best care rapidly can lead to a better recovery. Video and photos of Memorial Central, the emergency department and UCHealth LifeLine helicopter are available for download. About UCHealth UCHealth is an innovative, nonprofit health system that delivers the highest quality medical care with an excellent patient experience. UCHealth combines Longs Peak Hospital, Memorial Hospital, Poudre Valley Hospital, Medical Center of the Rockies, UCHealth Medical Group, Broomfield Hospital, Grandview Hospital, Yampa Valley Medical Center, Pikes Peak Regional Hospitaland University of Colorado Hospital into an organization dedicated to health and providing unmatched patient care in the Rocky Mountain West. With more than 100 clinic locations, UCHealth pushes the boundaries of medicine, providing advanced treatments and clinical trials and improving health through innovation. Attachment English Latvian 17th April, 2018 Olainfarms Sales in March Exceed 10 Million Euros. Preliminary three months consolidated sales results show 13% sales increase. Consolidated sales in March Preliminary consolidated results of AS Olainfarm for March 2018 show that the sales exceeded 10.5 million euros, which represents an increase by 7% compared to the same period of last year. Major sales markets of AS Olainfarm in March were Russia, Latvia and Belarus. Sales were made to 33 countries. The biggest sales increase in March was achieved in Uzbekistan, where sales increased by 338%. Sales to Germany increased by 190%, but sales in India increased by 190%. Stable growth was also demonstrated by sales in established markets like Russia, Belarus, Latvia and Lithuania. The major sales reduction, however, was experienced in Ukraine, where sales dropped by 64% and Italy, where sales dropped by 58%. March 2018, consolidated sales Sales, thsnd. EUR Share in total sales Changes to March, 2017 Russia 3 722 35% 37% Latvia 3 102 29% 24% Belarus 1 236 12% 71% Germany 310 3% 190% Kazakhstan 294 3% 45% Uzbekistan 292 3% 338% Ukraine 226 2% -64% Lithuania 207 2% 44% Italy 195 2% -58% India 134 1% 149% Other 814 8% -63% Total 10 5334 100% 7% Sales of pharmacies of SIA Latvijas Aptieka in March 2018 reached 2.2 million euros, which represents an increase of nearly 18% compared to the same period of 2017. Sixty-nine pharmacies were operating during March. Sales of Silvanols in March remained virtually unchanged compared to March of 2017 and reached 0.54 million euros. Combined sales of Tonus Elast and its Russian sales arm Elast Medical were 0.86 million euros. Combined sales of health care companies Diamed and Olainmed reached 0.22 million euros, while sales of NPK Biotest reached 0.23 million euros. March 2018 Sales markets of Olainfarm 27 Sales markets of the Group 33 Number of pharmacies of Latvijas Aptieka 69 Sales of Latvijas Aptieka 2 183 127 Sales of Olainmed and Diamed 220 518 Sales of NPK Biotest 231 441 Sales of Tonus Elast and Elast Medical 863 266 Sales of Silvanols 536 545 Consolidated 3 months sales In three months of 2018, according to preliminary consolidated results, sales of AS Olainfarm reached 30.41 million euros, which represents an increase by 13% compared to the same period of 2017. Group made its sales in 43 countries. Sales to all ten of the top markets were growing. The biggest sales increase during this period was achieved in Japan, where sales grew by 850%. The reason for such a boost is an increased order size of chemical products to this country. Significant increases are also achieved in India, where sales grew by 504%, Uzbekistan (by 509%) and Kazakhstan (by 88%). Despite somewhat volatile economic situation in Ukraine, sales to this country during the first quarter increased by 18% compared to the first quarter of 2017. Major sales markets of Olainfarm Group during three months of 2018 were Latvia, Russia, and Belarus. 3 months of 2018, consolidated sales Sales, thsnd. EUR Share in total sales Changes to 3 months of 2017 Latvia 8 797 29% 18% Russia 8 191 27% 7% Belarus 4 593 15% 43% Ukraine 2 358 8% 18% Kazakhstan 844 3% 88% Uzbekistan 685 2% 509% Germany 664 2% 68% Lithuania 582 2% 45% Japan 376 1% 850% India 333 1% 504% Other 2 988 10% -42% Total 30 411 100% 13% Sales of pharmacies of SIA Latvijas Aptieka during the first quarter of 2018 were 6.2 million euros, which represents an increase by 19% compared to the first quarter of 2017. Sales of SIA Silvanols during the first quarter reached 1.5, meaning they have dropped by 4.8% compared to the same period of 2017. Combines sales of SIA Tonus Elast and Elast Medical during the first three months of 2017 reached 2.02 million euros, while combined sales of health care companies have reached 0.6 million euros. Sales of Belarus based NKP Biotest during the first quarter reached 0.6 million euros. 3 months of 2018 Sales markets of Olainfarm 36 Sales markets of the Group 43 Number of pharmacies of Latvijas Aptieka 69 Sales of Latvijas Aptieka 6 182 048 Sales of Olainmed and Diamed 616 518 Sales of NPK Biotest 626 876 Sales of Tonus Elast and Elast Medical 2 025 783 Sales of SIlvanols 1 540 063 Unconsolidated sales in March According to preliminary unconsolidated results, sales of AS Olainfarm in March reached 7.81 million euros, which represents an increase by 2% compared to March 2017. During the March of 2018, products of AS Olainfarm were sold to 27 countries in four continents. The main sales markets by share remain the same, namely Russia (43% share), Latvia (18% share) and Belarus (12% share). Compared to March of last year, companys sales to Uzbekistan have increased by more than 300%, however, weakening of the local currency was one of the reasons behind falling sales volumes in Ukraine, where sales in march 2018 dropped by 65% compared to March 2017. India, which has been an occasional export market of the company since 2001, the sales have increased by 149%. March 2018, unconsolidated sales Sales, thsnd. EUR Share in total sales Changes to March 2017 Russia 3 391 43% 48% Latvia 1 440 18% 16% Belarus 968 12% 42% Germany 309 4% 190% Uzbekistan 292 4% 338% Lithuania 197 3% 66% Ukraine 189 2% -65% Italy 160 2% -65% India 134 2% 149% Tajikistan 101 1% -31% Other 626 8% -67% Total 7 808 100% 2% Unconsolidated sales in 3 months According to preliminary unconsolidated results of the first quarter of 2018, the company made sales of 25.5 million euros, which represents an increase by 10% compared to the first quarter of 2017. In total, the company made its sales to 36 countries during this period. The biggest sales increase was achieved in Japan, where sales grew by 850%, while sales to Uzbekistan grew by 509%, but sales to India increased by 505%. The major sales markets of AS Olainfarm during this period were Russia, Latvia, Belarus and Ukraine. 3 months of 2018, unconsolidated sales Sales, thsnd. EUR Share in total sales Changes to 3 months of 2017 Russia 7 336 31% 6% Latvia 4 464 19% 21% Belarus 3 895 17% 24% Ukraine 2 320 10% 22% Uzbekistan 685 3% 509% Germany 659 3% 69% Lithuania 559 2% 71% Kazakhstan 538 2% 118% Japan 376 2% 850% India 332 1% 505% Other 2 358 10% -47% Total 23 523 100% 10% According to sales guidance of AS Olainfarm, in 2018 the company plans to reach unconsolidated sales 96 million euros and consolidated sales of 130 million euros. According to these preliminary results, in 3 months of 2018 26% of annual guidance for unconsolidated sales and 24% of annual guidance for consolidated sales have been met. JSC Olainfarm is one of the biggest pharmaceutical companies in Latvia with 45 years of experience in production of medication and chemical and pharmaceutical products. A basic principle of company's operations is to produce reliable and effective top quality products for Latvia and the rest of the world. Products made by the Group are being exported to more than 35 countries of the world, including the Baltics, Russia, other CIS, Europe, Asia, North America and Australia. Information prepared by: Salvis Lapins JSC Olainfarm Member of the Management Board Rupnicu iela 5, Olaine, Latvia, LV 2114 Phone: +371 6 7013 717 Fax: +371 6 7013 777 E-mail: Salvis.Lapins@olainfarm.lv Hi, my name is Scott C. Waring and I wrote a few books and am currently a ESL School Owner in Taiwan. I have had my own UFO sighting up close and personal, but that's how it works right? A non believer becomes a believer when they experience their first sighting. You witnessed it, your perceptual field changes, so now you need to share it. I created this site to help the UFO community get a little bit organized. I noticed that there was a lot of chaos when searching for UFO sighting reports, so I hope this site helps. I wanted to support those eyewitnesses who have tried to tell others about what they have seen, yet were laughed at by even closest of friends. More and more each day the governments of the world leak bits and pieces of UFO information to the public. They have a trickle down theory in hopes of slowly getting citizens use to the idea that we are not alone in universe and never have been. The truth is being leaked drop by drop until one day we look around and find ourselves neck high in it. The discovery of alien species in existence is the most monumental scientific event in human history, suppression of that information is a crime against humanity. About me: I live in Taiwan. I OWN MY OWN ENGLISH SCHOOL, AND ONCE HAD 5 SCHOOLS. Am Former USAF at SAC base (flight line). Age: 42 Educ: BA in Elem ed. Masters in Counseling ed. I had two UFO sightings, (30+bus size orbs) in military and in 2012 personally saw the UFO over Taipei 101 building on New Years Day (and recored it). New arrivals rescued after the capsizing of a smuggling boat in the port of Aden in March 2009. UNHCR/Rocco Nuri ADEN, Yemen In excruciating pain from weeks of beatings and now suffering from gangrene and facing a leg amputation, 30-year-old Ethiopian refugee Jon* never imagined his quest for safety would result in such a horrific ordeal. I landed in Yemen about a month ago. I was dragged by armed men who held me captive for over a month. They beat me so badly that I lost track of what was happening, he recounted while awaiting surgery. Yemen is historically a country of migration, refuge and transit for people fleeing the Horn of Africa. But more than three years of conflict have plunged the country into the worlds deepest humanitarian crisis, and Jon is one of many to have crossed the Gulf of Aden in search of safety only to meet new dangers on arrival. Last year, according to humanitarian partner data, more than 87,000 new arrivals, including refugees and migrants, crossed from the Horn of Africa to Yemen. "They beat me so badly that I lost track of what was happening. UNHCR, the UN Refugee Agency, on Tuesday warned that worsening conditions in Yemen as a result of unabated conflict, deteriorating economic conditions and increasing criminality are exposing them to harm and exploitation. With prolonged conflict and insecurity threatening state institutions and weakening the rule of law, there are growing accounts of extortion, trafficking and deportation, UNHCR spokesman William Spindler told journalists at a news briefing in Geneva. Spindler said refugees and migrants reaching Yemeni shores are routinely arrested, detained, abused, or extorted, and in some cases forcibly returned by the same smugglers who brought them to the country. Since February this year, UNHCR has been following up on the situation of at least 100 new arrivals to Yemen who have been arrested and held inside detention facilities. There have been numerous reports of abuse, with some new arrivals subjected to physical and sexual violence as well as psychological harassment. Survivors have provided UNHCR with accounts of being shot at, suffering regular beatings, rapes of adults and children, humiliation including being forcibly stripped, made to witness summary executions, as well as denial of food. They whipped us on our backs and our hands, said Sam,* an asylum seeker from the Horn of Africa who arrived in Yemen more than a year ago and was held in various detention facilities across the country. Some nights I wouldnt even be able to sleep because my back would be ripped and swollen from all the beatings and I would be left in agonising pain. Held indefinitely without due process, many are now languishing in overcrowded and unsanitary detention facilities where in addition to abuse, they are threatened with the prospect of deportation to the countries from which they fled persecution or conflict. See also: Somali torture survivor reunited with her sons in Niger Attempts by UNHCR to engage in advocacy on these issues have been regularly frustrated, given the complex structures of responsibility and accountability as a result of the ongoing conflict across the country. UNHCR is appealing to all state and non-state actors that are effectively controlling detention facilities where new arrivals are being held, to ensure those being detained are treated humanely and with dignity in accordance with refugee and human rights law. It is also demanding unfettered access to detainees in order to assist those seeking international protection. I left my country in pursuit of freedom, but when I came to Yemen I was arrested and detained." UNHCR has been supporting authorities in Yemen to receive, register and document refugees and asylum seekers and is seeking to increase support to the Immigration, Passport and Naturalization Authority to further improve reception arrangements for new arrivals. With the prevailing conflict and insecurity in Yemen offering little prospect of protection, UNHCR has long been warning of the risks of crossing to the war-stricken country. In February last year, it launched a regional awareness campaign entitled Dangerous Crossings designed to spread awareness among those contemplating the perilous journey to Yemen from the Horn of Africa. For asylum seeker Sam,* the travesty of fleeing his home country in search of liberty only to be stripped of it in his place of refuge is not lost on him. I left my country in pursuit of freedom, but when I came to Yemen I was arrested and detained and freedom was taken from me. *Names changed for protection purposes Chile has become the latest State to accede to the international conventions on statelessness. Last week, Chile formally deposited at the United Nations Treaty Office in New York the instruments of accession to the 1954 Convention relating to the Status of Stateless Persons and the 1961 Convention on the Reduction of Statelessness. UNHCR, the UN Refugee Agency, welcomes the countrys commitment to protect and promote the fundamental right to nationality. Without a nationality people can be denied the ability to enroll in school, access medical services, seek legal employment or even get married. Statelessness affects millions of people around the world and UNHCR is promoting its eradication. Chiles accession to the two conventions represents an important step towards that goal. Chiles determination in fighting statelessness is also demonstrated by a project known as Chile Reconoce - currently being implemented in the country. An estimated 2,000 children are still at risk of statelessness in Chile. Because of an administrative interpretation of the Constitutional norm, when they were born these children were denied the right to access Chilean nationality, as their parents were considered in an irregular migratory situation. In 2014, the authorities modified the interpretation to meet international human rights standards. Two years later, in 2016, the project Chile Reconoce was launched, in order to identify and assist all those affected by the pre-2014 legal interpretation. To date, 258 children have had their Chilean nationality confirmed through this collaborative initiative of the State, UNHCR, UNICEF and civil society. Chile is the 90th State to accede to the 1954 Convention and the 71st to accede to the 1961 Convention. The 1954 Convention seeks to ensure that stateless people enjoy a minimum set of rights until they can acquire a nationality. The 1961 Convention sets out the ways to prevent individuals from becoming stateless and reduce the prevalence of statelessness over time. For more information on this topic, please contact: In a plastic-roofed shack near an open sewer, Rohingya refugee widow Sufia Khatun is doing all she can to fend for the family she now heads. Her husband, Nur Mohammad, was struck with a machete and killed when he went to investigate smoke and commotion in their Myanmar village in late August. After fleeing to Bangladesh, she now provides for their five children, aged 20 and under, and her grandson. The main challenge is food The rations we get every month are not enough to meet our needs, and we have to borrow 10 kilos of rice from our neighbours, she says, squatting on the floor of the hut, with her three-year-old grandson Mohammad Hossen in her lap. More than 687,000 refugees from Myanmar have fled to Bangladesh since August. Sufia, 48, is among some 31,000 refugee women who head their households, many of them widows whose husbands were killed or are missing in Myanmar. They face intimidating challenges as they start over in the pop-up city of rickety bamboo shelters, now the worlds largest refugee settlement. They are women now, and Im afraid to send them out. Mother-of-eight Khatemunnesa, 40, lives in shack made of bamboo and plastic sheeting. Her husband Rahmat Ullah, 50, was killed when a mob set fire to her home village six months ago. She frets about the looming wet season and how she will prepare her fragile home for the monsoon without Rahmat and her son-in-law, whom she saw attacked in her front yard as she fled for her life. Strengthening the shelter is something that my husband would have taken care of before, and now, with the monsoon coming, I have to do it myself, she says. See also: Racing to avert a monsoon catastrophe in Bangladesh Others have different concerns. Rehena Begum, 45, says she needs firewood for cooking but fears sending her teenage daughters out to gather increasingly scarce fuel in the scrub around the settlement, which she considers unsafe. They are women now, and Im afraid to send them out, she says of the girls aged 17 and 18. They were already terrified by the violence in Myanmar. They witnessed indignities, she says, alluding to rape and sexual assault, and I am afraid for them if they go out. In the vast settlement, which has a population greater than Frances third largest city, Lyon, the difference between just surviving and achieving the stability to resume their lives is continually in the balance. To tip the scales, the Bangladeshi government, supported by UNHCR, the UN Refugee Agency, and its partners, is working to provide widows like Sufia, Khatemunnesa and Rehena with aid and support, as well as to restore the self-belief often destroyed with the homes, loved ones and lives lost in Myanmar. Rehena Begum, 45, pictured at a UN Refugee Agency Information Point at Kutupalong refugee settlement, Bangladesh. UNHCR/Roger Arnold Khatemunnesa, 40, holds her daughter at a UN Refugee Agency Information Point in Kutupalong refugee settlement, Bangladesh. UNHCR/Roger Arnold Sufia Khatun walks to her shelter in Kutupalong refugee settlement, Bangladesh. UNHCR/Roger Arnold Sufia Khatun provides for her five children aged 20 and under and her grandson. UNHCR/Roger Arnold It is very important to give refugee women, particularly widows and single mothers, back the strength that they had before to cope and run a family, says UNHCR protection associate Shirin Aktar. We have to empower them, we have to provide them with skills and give them the confidence and dignity to go on with their lives, because we will not be there to provide support always. It is estimated that about 16 per cent of Rohingya refugee families in Bangladesh are headed by single mothers. The Bangladeshi government, UNHCR and other partners are providing a range of assistance, including more secure shelter, health care, counselling and access to women-friendly and child-friendly spaces. Training workshops are available to help women learn skills and earn vital income by sewing, making soap or toothpaste. "We have to provide them with skills ... to go on with their lives." For those who struggle to carry heavy aid packages or need help in relocating in the camp, refugee volunteers are available to carry bags and boxes. Volunteers also help widows and others who need help to refurbish their shelters with bamboo and tarpaulins to withstand the monsoon. After a volunteer directed Khatemunnesa to an information point where she spoke to UNHCR and staff from aid partner Technical Assistance Inc, she says she learned about training for the first time and would like to learn to sew. See also: Rohingya Refugee Emergency at a Glance Sufia also had a chance to talk to UNHCR staff about her concerns and heard about livelihoods training. I feel better after explaining my situation, she says. Once you can earn money, you can lead the life you want, she says. Back in her shelter, which she has made homely with a floral drape and floor mats, Sufia opens up about the hopes she has for her grandson Mohammad Hossen. She wants him to study hard so he can prosper. Little by little, she starts to smile. I have to be positive because, if I allow myself to worry too much, then death will grab me, she says. You have to be hopeful. Its vital. Additional reporting by Mitra Suryono. UNHCR, the UN Refugee Agency, is alarmed at a spike in intercommunal violence in central Mali which over the past weeks has driven some 3,000 people into neighbouring Burkina Faso. Dozens of people have been killed in clashes between the Dogon and Peul communities since February, and homes and other property have been destroyed, mainly in the Koro area of central Malis Mopti region. The violence led 3,000 people to flee across the border into Burkina Fasos Nord Region between mid- February and early April. The new arrivals add to some 24,000 Malian refugees who have found refuge in Burkina Faso since the start of the Mali conflict in 2012. With extremist and inter-communal violence on the rise UNHCR now fears more displacement and increased humanitarian needs. The new arrivals in Burkina Faso include 2,000 Malian citizens as well as 1,000 Burkinabe who had been living in Mali for many years. With many afraid to travel by road, for fear of kidnappings and murder, they arrived via unofficial border crossings, on foot or in light vehicles. The new displacement adds to the challenges faced by people of the region. Food insecurity is high due to a lack of rain affecting crops. Health facilities are equally overstretched, with gaps in medicines and staff. Hosted by friends or relatives, the new arrivals are staying in areas that are hard to reach. UNHCR is urging them to move to a camp further away from the border, where they could be registered and have access to basic social services. This would also afford better protection, as insecurity is rising in the north of Burkina Faso, with recurrent acts of banditry and violence in areas that are hosting Malian refugees. Refugees have no work opportunities, in order to sustain themselves, and parents are afraid to send their children to school. Insecurity in northern Burkina Faso has also led to internal displacement. It is reported that several thousand Burkinabe in the Soum province of the Sahel region have left their homes, fleeing southwards or to the east inside the borders of their country. Together with the authorities, UNHCR is working to relocate to safe zones refugees settled in spontaneous sites. We are also working to assist vulnerable people, such as the elderly, single women and children. Distributions of basic relief items and provision of long-term support are urgently needed, especially for the youth. Currently, UNHCR operations in Burkina Faso are only funded by 8 per cent. An additional US$22.9 million is needed to help in 2018. For more information on this topic, please contact: Strategically Located 187,000-Square-Foot Data Center Will Offer 24 MW of Power Capacity SAN FRANCISCO, April 17, 2018 (GLOBE NEWSWIRE) -- CIM Group, in partnership with fifteenfortyseven Critical Systems Realty (1547), last week hosted technology, data center and real estate industry executives to mark the start of construction activities for its 240,000-square-foot data center campus on 7.3 acres at 400 Paul Avenue in San Francisco. The project will offer a flexible design to serve either a single tenant or multiple users, said J. Todd Raymond, CEO of 1547. The first phase of development includes the comprehensive renovation of two existing 1930s-era buildings totaling 54,225 square-feet that are being modernized to provide creative office and support space for data center tenants. In addition, site work will commence immediately for the campus, including a 187,000-square-foot purpose-built data center. The new two-story building will offer a secure and scalable data center with a robust 24 MW of power capacity. Strategically located just outside San Franciscos central business district, the property is at the hub of more than 15 fiber networks served by multiple international carriers and adjacent to one of the most critical interconnection data centers in the United States. 400 Paul is part of CIM Groups growing portfolio of diverse infrastructure investments that includes renewable energy, urban parking facilities, water supply infrastructure and waste solutions. With 1547, CIM owns and operates other datacenters in Toronto, Ontario, and Cheyenne, Wyoming. About CIM Group Established in 1994, CIM is a vertically-integrated owner and operator of real assets for its own account, and on behalf of its partners and co-investors seeking to invest in urban real assets, net-lease assets, and other associated credit strategies, with a principal focus on North America. CIMs real assets include urban residential, commercial, retail, hospitality, debt, and infrastructure investments as well as U.S.-based retail, office, and industrial net-lease. CIMs broad expertise includes in-house research, acquisition, investment, credit analysis, development, finance, leasing and asset management capabilities. For more information, please visit www.cimgroup.com. About fifteenfortyseven Critical Systems Realty fifteenfortyseven Critical Systems Realty (1547) is a leading developer and operator of custom-designed data centers with over 800,000 square feet of data center space under development and management in Orangeburg, NY, Chicago, IL, Cheyenne, WY, San Francisco, CA, Markham, ON and Kapolei, HI. Central to the firms strategy is the ability to uncover the true intrinsic value of properties, opportunistically developing world-class data center facilities with a focus on providing tenants with customized mission critical solutions from concept through completion. 1547 was formed in 2011 by a group of experienced executives from the financial and data center industries to leverage their combined expertise to produce market leading data center development projects. Together, the team has over 60 years of experience in developing, renovating and operating data center space. This wealth of experience allows 1547 to be uniquely positioned to acquire, develop, and operate strategically-located, custom built data center properties. Media Contacts: For CIM Group Karen Diehl Diehl Communications (310) 741-9097 karen@diehlcommunications.com For 1547 Datacenters iMiller Public Relations (866) 307-2510 pr@imillerpr.com English Danish COPENHAGEN, Denmark, April 17, 2018 - Bavarian Nordic A/S (OMX: BAVA, OTC: BVNRY) today held the Annual General Meeting with the results as follows: The Annual Report for 2017 was adopted. The Board of Directors' proposal to transfer the Company's result to next year was also adopted. The General Meeting adopted a resolution to discharge the Board of Directors and the Board of Management from their obligations. The proposal to increase and extend the Board of Directors' authorization to increase the share capital of the Company was adopted. The proposal to increase and extend the Board of Directors' authorization for issuing warrants was adopted. The proposed revised guidelines for incentive remuneration of the Board of Directors and the Executive Management were approved. The proposed remuneration of the Board of Directors and the Board Committees for the current financial year by payment of a fixed base fee in cash and grant of restricted stock units was approved. The proposal to amend Article 8 of the Articles of Association due to change of address of the Company's register of shareholders was adopted. The proposal to authorize the Board of Directors on behalf of the Company to repurchase own shares in the Company was adopted. Gerard van Odijk, Anders Gersel Pedersen, Erik G. Hansen, Peter Kurstein, Frank Verwiel and Elizabeth McKee Anderson were re-elected to the Board of Directors. Claus Brstrup did not seek re-election. The Board of Directors constituted itself with Gerard van Odijk as Chairman and Anders Gersel Pedersen as Deputy Chairman. Deloitte Statsautoriseret Revisionspartnerselskab was re-elected as auditors. About Bavarian Nordic Bavarian Nordic is a fully integrated biotechnology company focused on the development of innovative and safe therapies against cancer and infectious diseases. Using our live virus vaccine platform technology, MVA-BN, we have created a diverse portfolio of proprietary and partnered product candidates intended to improve the health and quality of life for children and adults. We supply our IMVAMUNE non-replicating smallpox vaccine to the U.S. Strategic National Stockpile and other government stockpiles. The vaccine is approved in the European Union (under the trade name IMVANEX) and in Canada. Registration studies are currently underway in the U.S. In addition to our long-standing collaboration with the U.S. government on the development of IMVAMUNE and other medical countermeasures, our infectious disease pipeline comprises a proprietary RSV program as well as vaccine candidates for Ebola, HPV, HBV and HIV, which are developed through a strategic partnership with Janssen. Additionally, in collaboration with the National Cancer Institute, we have developed a portfolio of active cancer immunotherapies, designed to alter the disease course by eliciting a robust and broad anti-cancer immune response while maintaining a favorable risk-benefit profile. Through multiple industry collaborations, we seek to explore the potential synergies of combining our immunotherapies with other immune-modulating agents, e.g. checkpoint inhibitors. For more information visit www.bavarian-nordic.com or follow us on Twitter @bavariannordic. Contacts Rolf Sass Srensen Vice President Investor Relations (EU) Tel: +45 61 77 47 43 Seth Lewis Vice President Investor Relations (US) Tel: +1 978 341 5271 Company Announcement no. 11 / 2018 VANCOUVER, British Columbia, April 17, 2018 (GLOBE NEWSWIRE) -- The Canadian Bar Association, BC Branch (CBABC) invites all British Columbians to Law Week activities around the province including free public law classes, courthouse tours, mock trials and free legal advice from volunteer lawyers. Law Week celebrates the anniversary of Canadas Charter of Rights and Freedoms with free, family-friendly events in BC communities to educate the public about the legal community, justice system and the availability of legal resources. Law Weeks spotlight event is DIAL-A-LAWYER DAY, providing free legal advice to the public on Saturday, April 21 from 10 am - 2 pm. British Columbians can speak to a lawyer by phone for up to 15 minutes for a complimentary consultation on legal matters related to family, business, employment and immigration law, plus wills & estates and tort & motor vehicles. DIAL-A-LAWYER DAY is available to all British Columbians toll-free at 1-800-663-1919 or 604-687-3221 from the lower mainland. Law Week activities take place in many BC communities in April and May. Activities include mock trials of Cinderella and Alice in Wonderland, Elder story telling and First Nations Court, and free tours of courthouses and cellblocks. These fun learning opportunities are planned through the interior, in the north, in the lower mainland and on the island. Full details at www.BCLawWeek.org. Since 1983, the Canadian Bar Association has presented Law Week to educate Canadians on the vital role played by lawyers and the courts in guaranteeing an open, independent and unbiased judicial system. BC Law Week partners are CBABC, Continuing Legal Education Society of BC, Law Foundation of BC, Law Society of BC and the Vancouver Bar Association. The Canadian Bar Association is the professional organization representing more than 38,000 lawyers, judges and law students across Canada with nearly 7,000 members in British Columbia. Media Contact: Kent Hurl Member Communications Officer Canadian Bar Association, BC Branch media@cbabc.org BHT program helps congregants at St. Margaret Mary Catholic Church and other churches in San Antonio. (April 17, 2018) -- Researchers at The University of Texas at San Antonio (UTSA) are taking diabetes education to church. Through the Building a Healthy Temple (BHT) program, theyre working with Hispanics who have type 2 diabetes to help them manage the disease and develop a healthier lifestyle. Dr. Meizi He, a UTSA kinesiology professor, Leah Carrillo, program coordinator of the BHT program, and their research team are working with partners from the San Antonio Metropolitan Health District and from faith communities to offer the Building a Healthy Temple Diabetes Self-Management Support (BHT DSMS) program in Bexar County churches. Their work is funded by the American Diabetes Association. According to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC), more than 1 in 3 U.S. adults have prediabetes and 40% adults are expected to develop type 2 diabetes in their lifetimes. Hispanic people are at greater risk than non-Hispanics. More than 50% of Hispanic adults are expected to develop type 2 diabetes in their lifetime. A recent survey showed that the prevalence of diabetes is 6.2% in whites and 13.0% in Mexican Americans. The Hispanic population experiences high rates of type 2 diabetes as well as severe complications such as amputation, kidney failure and blindness. Ongoing diabetes self-management is necessary to prevent these complications, said He, who was trained as a medical doctor in China before joining the UTSA faculty. The 14-week program integrates spirituality and health education strategies to investigate the impact of a spiritual support system on diabetes self-management outcomes. He said about 360 participants will take part in the study through 2019. Participants are placed in either a routine diabetes self-management group or a spiritually integrated diabetes self-management group. Both groups attend the evidence-based Diabetes Self-Management Program created by Self-Management Resource Center formerly known as the Stanford Patient Education Research Center at Stanford University and other resources related to diabetes at their respective churches. Building a Healthy Temple has great potential to improve health outcomes and quality of life among underserved Hispanics with type 2 diabetes, said Carrillo. According to data by the San Antonio Metropolitan Health District, 14.2 percent of Bexar County adults have been diagnosed with diabetes (type 1 or 2), which is higher than both the Texas and national average. Experts project that the number of Americans with diabetes will double or triple by 2050 if current trends continue. The Building a Healthy Temple program offers training to faith leaders to provide resources and information to congregants about diabetes, healthy eating, exercise, controlling diabetes symptoms, goal setting and weight management. Congregants know these faith leaders, trust them and feel comfortable around them to learn life-saving health tips, said He. Its a good setting to discuss a serious topic because people find strength in the support they receive from their faith-based community. Faith leaders will be able to discuss and explain different techniques to deal with symptoms of diabetes, fatigue, pain, hyper/hypoglycemia, stress and emotional problems such as depression, anger, fear and frustration. In the current program, six churches are involved from the citys south, west and east sides. He said the researchers are recruiting more churches to get involved in the program, with the goal of including 18 churches overall. This program is part of a cluster of faith-based health promotion programs that make up UTSAs Building a Healthy Temple (BHT) initiative. The mission of BHT is to create healthier communities by addressing obesity and obesity-related health issues. The program strives to prevent obesity, cancer, and diabetes as well as manage chronic diseases in faith-based communities through the integration of spiritual and physical health promotion. UTSA is ranked among the top four universities in the nation under 50 years old, according to Times Higher Education. (April 17, 2018) Fun, food and flowers will fill The University of Texas at San Antonio (UTSA) this week. The university is celebrating the 41st annual Fiesta UTSA and its expected to be bigger and better than ever. Las Flores de Tejas is the theme of this years family-friendly event from 11 a.m. to 3 p.m. on Friday, April 20 in the Sombrilla Plaza on the UTSA Main Campus. Fiesta UTSA is free and open to the public. During Fiesta UTSA, you get to see another side of our students working and having fun. Its a little taste of Fiesta on our campus, said Destiny Jones 14, an educational leadership and policy studies graduate student, who along with about 20 member of Roadrunner Productions, will bring Fiesta UTSA to life. The heart of campus, the Sombrilla, will beat with more than 100 food and activity booths, the largest number of participating organizations in Fiesta UTSA history. Students will be selling food, drinks, Fiesta medals and other items to raise funds for student organizations. I love that this event connects UTSA to San Antonio, said Analicia Gonzales, UTSA associate director of student activities. We are one of the nonprofits raising money during Fiesta. UTSA makes contributions to the community and, through Fiesta UTSA, the community can also contribute back to UTSA. New this year, more than 500 students in the business pathway course will use Fiesta as an educational opportunity. Theyll be conducting an experiential learning project by creating a business, selling items then gauging the success of the business. The money they raise will fund the course during the fall 2018 semester. Campus Services is also asking the community to bring a non-perishable food item to donate to the Roadrunner Pantry for a free Fiesta medal in return while supplies last. Just look for the Campus Services booth in the Sombrilla. Fiesta goers of all ages will also enjoy games, live music by a Fiesta UTSA favorite, The e7 Band, dancers, a performance by the U.S. Air Force Honor Guard Drill Team and cascarones. The Fiesta royalty will continue its tradition by appearing at UTSA. Miss Fiesta San Antonio Carla Juarez, a 2017 UTSA graduate, and the rest of the royalty will parade to the stage around 1:30 p.m. for a special presentation. This is also President Taylor Eighmys first Fiesta. Im excited to see what he thinks of this event and our involvement with Fiesta San Antonio as a whole, Gonzales said. Someone will have to get him with a cascarone. LAS VEGAS, April 17, 2018 (GLOBE NEWSWIRE) -- Players Network, Inc. (OTCQB:PNTV), a publicly traded diversified holding company operating in marijuana, announced it has joined with eight publicly traded marijuana companies to applaud recent pronouncements from President Trump that he will support a legislative solution to protect states ability to regulate marijuana within their own borders. PNTV leaders Brett H. Pojunis (Director) and Geoffrey Lawrence (CFO) authored an open letter titled Trump Makes America Cannabis Great Again, which included commentary from eight other U.S. publicly traded marijuana companies. The other companies include: MJ Holdings, Inc. (OTCQB:MJNE), CLS Holdings USA, Inc. (OTCQB:CLSH), MediaTechnics Corporation (OTC PINK:MEDT), MJ Venture Partners, Inc. (OTC:MJVP), mCig, Inc. (OTC:MCIG), Advantis Corporation, (OTC PINK:ADVT), and Nightfood Holdings, Inc. (OTC:NGTF). This open letter notes this decision by President Trump will create confidence in American cannabis companies and bring investment dollars home from foreign markets. Below is a summary, the full article can be read at: https://ir.playersnetwork.com/trump-makes-american-cannabis-great Trump Makes American Cannabis Great Again Investor confidence improves as U.S. Cannabis stocks can compete with Canadian stocks, again. Investors concerned about the uncertainty of investing in U.S. stocks have kept their money on the sidelines or have flocked to Canada, until now Marijuana Stocks up since the announcement Investors feel this will stabilize and help grow the cannabis industry Former Speaker of the United States House of Representatives John Boehner and former two-term Governor of the State of Massachusetts Bill Weld enter the Cannabis Industry U.S. Publicly traded marijuana companies praise Trumps to decision to protect the marijuana industry. They also welcome former Speaker of the United States House of Representatives John Boehner and former Governor of the State of Massachusetts Bill Weld into the Cannabis Industry! Both news items are fantastic for U.S. publicly traded marijuana companies! Ever since U.S. Attorney General, Jefferson Beauregard Sessions, rescinded an Obama-era policy used as a protection for states that have legalized marijuana, U.S. marijuana stocks have decreased significantly and have continued on a downward trend. Meanwhile, our neighbors to the north have seen significant increases in Canadian-based marijuana stocks. John Boehner used to oppose marijuana legalization while he was Speaker of the House, but said his thinking has evolved! Boehner said Im convinced de-scheduling the drug is needed so we can do research, help our veterans, and reverse the opioid epidemic ravaging our communities. Bill Weld, two-term Governor of Massachusetts and 2016 Libertarian candidate for Vice-President has been an advocate of legalizing marijuana for a while. Legalization/decriminalization of Marijuana has been a primary issue for the Libertarian Party since its inception in December 1971. Last week, President Trump became the first executive in decades to support federal legislation to empower states to regulate marijuana within their own boundaries. When Attorney General Jeff Sessions rescinded the Cole Memo earlier this year, it caused panic within otherwise orderly marijuana markets and caused investors to flee to foreign markets like Canada. Stock prices for publicly traded marijuana companies in Canada have soared. Meanwhile, the few trailblazing American firms that have striven to abide all federal securities laws while also producing marijuana within the guidelines of state licensing structures have seen investors grow weary. Fortunately, Sen. Cory Gardner (R-CO) took a bold stance to protect his states growing industry. Gardner began blocking all appointments to the Department of Justice until the DOJ recognized that only the State of Colorado has authority to regulate marijuana within Colorados boundaries. On Friday, Gardner prevailed. After speaking directly with the president, Gardner told the press, President Trump has assured me that he will support a federalism-based legislative solution to fix this states rights issue once and for all. The statement was later confirmed by the White House. Now marijuana entrepreneurs and investors who had been intimidated by federal overreach can be assured that American cannabis companies are poised to become world leaders in the emerging global industry. As Pres. Trump and Sen. Gardner work to craft a legislative fix, we believe smart money will start pouring into American marijuana businesses. All due respect to Canada, but we believe American firms can and should produce the best, safest marijuana products in the world. As leaders of public marijuana companies in the U.S. operating in compliance with all state requirements as well as federal securities laws, we envision a thriving industry that puts tens of thousands of Americans to work and produces new wealth for generations to come. We applaud Sen. Gardner for his valiant tenacity and President Trump for recognizing what is clearly intended by the Interstate Commerce Clause to the U.S. Constitution. Our nation is better when each state is free to create its own laws and cater to its unique population. We hope this action makes American cannabis great again and creates new opportunities for Americans to pursue their own happiness. Visit this link to view the full article: https://ir.playersnetwork.com/trump-makes-american-cannabis-great Additional commentary from executives of U.S. publicly traded marijuana companies: Paul Rosenberg , CEO of mCig Inc. Symbol: MCIG The age of prohibition is dying and the American public knows it. Nearly two-thirds of Americans support full legalization of marijuana and many wonder why it was ever outlawed in the first place. Now, finally, our political leaders have gotten on board and will allow the safe, legal market to grow and thrive. , CEO of mCig Inc. Symbol: MCIG The age of prohibition is dying and the American public knows it. Nearly two-thirds of Americans support full legalization of marijuana and many wonder why it was ever outlawed in the first place. Now, finally, our political leaders have gotten on board and will allow the safe, legal market to grow and thrive. Andrew Glashow , Director of CLS Holdings USA, Inc. (OTCQB:CLSH) We are pleased that it appears President Trump and Senator Gardner have come to an understanding of cannabis being regulated by the states. We are hopeful that this will lead to federal legislation for the legalization of cannabis and US businesses to succeed in the global marketplace. Andrew J Glashow Board Member. , Director of CLS Holdings USA, Inc. (OTCQB:CLSH) We are pleased that it appears President Trump and Senator Gardner have come to an understanding of cannabis being regulated by the states. We are hopeful that this will lead to federal legislation for the legalization of cannabis and US businesses to succeed in the global marketplace. Andrew J Glashow Board Member. Jason Scheurer, Director of MJ Venture Partners, Inc. (OTC: MJVP) Many people have been negative on President Trump, however, Trump's recent decision to allow innovation and investment to proceed in the American cannabis industry so far has been greater than any former President. We are proud our grow local, sell local cannabis is made in the USA employing more Americans nationally than the U.S. coal industry. Our leaders in Washington D.C. should understand that the winds of change are now in favor of national legalization." Director of MJ Venture Partners, Inc. (OTC: MJVP) Many people have been negative on President Trump, however, Trump's recent decision to allow innovation and investment to proceed in the American cannabis industry so far has been greater than any former President. We are proud our grow local, sell local cannabis is made in the USA employing more Americans nationally than the U.S. coal industry. Our leaders in Washington D.C. should understand that the winds of change are now in favor of national legalization." Sean Folkson , CEO, Nightfood Holdings, Inc. (OTC:NGTF) While there are sure to be additional twists and turns in the coming months and years, I think everybody can clearly see that legalization and regulation are inevitable. We view this as good for consumers, good for the economy, and good for long-term investors in the space. , CEO, Nightfood Holdings, Inc. (OTC:NGTF) While there are sure to be additional twists and turns in the coming months and years, I think everybody can clearly see that legalization and regulation are inevitable. We view this as good for consumers, good for the economy, and good for long-term investors in the space. Paris Balaouras , CEO of MJ Holdings Inc. Stock Symbol: MJNE "Were ecstatic that Pres. Trump and congressional leaders have finally come together to allow American marijuana businesses to succeed in the global marketplace." , CEO of MJ Holdings Inc. Stock Symbol: MJNE "Were ecstatic that Pres. Trump and congressional leaders have finally come together to allow American marijuana businesses to succeed in the global marketplace." Jeremy Carr , CEO and Founder of BlazeNow, Stock Symbol: MEDT "It's great to see Republicans and Democrats coming together on such an important issue. The emerging consensus in Washington regarding state sovereignty over marijuana regulation is one of the few areas receiving truly bipartisan support. Eventually, the U.S. is likely to follow Canada with federal legalization, but until that time this is a very positive step." , CEO and Founder of BlazeNow, Stock Symbol: MEDT "It's great to see Republicans and Democrats coming together on such an important issue. The emerging consensus in Washington regarding state sovereignty over marijuana regulation is one of the few areas receiving truly bipartisan support. Eventually, the U.S. is likely to follow Canada with federal legalization, but until that time this is a very positive step." Darren Chery, CEO of Advantis Corporation, Stock Symbol: ADVT There is no greater jobs act that Washington could enact than allowing people to invest freely into marijuana businesses operating in states where marijuana is legal. Im thrilled to hear that Pres. Trump will support this rapidly growing industry into the foreseeable future. About the Authors Brett H. Pojunis @pojunis Director of Players Network, Inc. (Symbol: PNTV) & CEO of MJ Venture Partners, Inc. (Symbol: MJVP) Brett is a die-hard Libertarian and served two-terms as Chairman of the Libertarian Party of Nevada, two-terms on the Libertarian National Committee and continues to be a strong advocate for marijuana. He is an entrepreneur in the marijuana industry. Geoffrey Lawrence @GLawNV CFO of Players Network, Inc. (Symbol: PNTV) Geoffrey spent more than a decade in free-market think tanks where he championed the legalization of capitalism in general, including marijuana. Geoffrey last served as senior appointee to the Nevada State Controllers Office after spearheading Republican efforts in the Nevada Legislature. Geoffrey is also the host of Geoffs Sessions, a weekly cannabis-themed news show on WeedTV. To sign up for PNTV investor alerts, please visit: https://ir.playersnetwork.com/investor-alerts About Players Network (PNTV) Players Network is a diversified company operating in media and cannabis markets. PNTV owns approximately 89% of Green Leaf Farms Holdings, LLC (Green Leaf Farms), which holds cultivation and production license(s) awarded by the state of Nevada. The cultivation license enables Green Leaf Farms to grow marijuana and the production license enables them to create extracts which are used for cartridges, oils and edibles. WeedTV.com is developing the ultimate resource for the marijuana lifestyle within our media operations. For more information please visit www.PlayersNetwork.com Please visit our Investor Relations site https://ir.playersnetwork.com Sign up for PNTV investor alerts: https://ir.playersnetwork.com/investor-alerts 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. Players Network Contacts: United States Media & Investor Inquiries: Brett H. Pojunis, Director Email: ir@playersnetwork.com Office: 702.840.3272 PR & Media Contact: Matthew Bird, CEO @1800pr 1-800-PublicRelations Office: 646.401.4499 Email: matt.bird@1800pr.com European Media Inquiries: Jeff Robinson Email: jrobinson@playersnetwork.com Office: 702.840.3298 (April 17, 2018) -- As San Antonios multicultural discovery enterprise, The University of Texas at San Antonio (UTSA) is gearing up for its largest show-and-tell event of the year. Organized by the Office of Undergraduate Research (OUR), the Undergraduate Research & Creative Inquiry Showcase will highlight undergraduate student research and creative endeavors from all disciplines on Thursday, April 19 from 10 a.m. to 2 p.m. in the Convocation Center on the UTSA Main Campus. Topics range from smart energy systems to gender roles, from borderlands to historic places, and the science of mind, body and soul. The Showcase gives many undergraduate students their first opportunity to share their research in an academic setting and explain their methodology and findings to peers and faculty. Students have the opportunity to jump-start their academic curriculum vitae (CV), and network and learn from one another. We want to engage as many UTSA undergraduates in the research enterprise, whether it is applying for a scholarship, lab placement, externship, summer program or independent research opportunity, ideally in their first year. The Showcase gives a taste of whats possible when you do get involved and we hope it inspires other students to follow suit, said Thomas Coyle, director of the UTSA Office of Undergraduate Research. The entire UTSA community is encouraged to attend the Showcase. Student attendees can participate as peer judges by engaging with undergraduates who are presenting their research and honing their presentations skills. By critiquing two research posters, student attendees receive a free t-shirt and lunch. Faculty and postdoctoral students are invited to sign-up as formal judges who evaluate the student presenters and help them develop their research skills. Student presentations will be judged by a faculty member or specialist in their respective field of study. The top three presentations from each college (Architecture, Business, Education, Engineering, Liberal & Fine Arts, Public Policy, Sciences, and Honors College will be selected to receive the Best-in-Show award. Award winners will be invited to attend the OUR. Undergraduate Research & Creative Inquiry Showcase Best-in-Show Awards ceremony May 4. Mentorship is a key element in developing a research mindset and ensuring student success. As such, notable faculty mentors are recognized at the annual event. This year, Mark T. Leung from the UTSA College of Business and Pranav A. Bhounsule of the UTSA College of Engineering are being honored for the Faculty Mentor Award for Undergraduate Research. They have demonstrated a strong track record of sustained involvement with undergraduates who pursue and benefit from undergraduate research. A tenured professor and department chair of the Department of Management Science and Statistics,Leung has mentored numerous student teams over the years who have participated and been recognized at the Showcase. Many of his students have moved on to graduate programs such as the M.S. in Data Analytics, Statistics and Data Science, M.B.A. and others. He has also collaborated with faculty members to develop an array of predictive models for UTSA student attrition, providing meaningful data and insights to address this issue and potentially shape future policy. A robotic specialist and assistant professor in the Department of Mechanical Engineering, Bhounsule has mentored 45 undergraduate students in diverse research experiences over the past three and half years. He has been active in recruiting and mentoring underrepresented students, with many pursuing graduate studies. His students have found numerous placements in military and industry laboratories and success in juried competitions, grant awards and scholarships. STEM-focused participants are encouraged to submit their research posters to the upcoming SACNAS conference taking place in San Antonio October 11-13, 2018. All participating students should consider submitting their research as a journal article to UTSA Journal of Undergraduate Research and Scholarly Works (JURSW). UTSA is ranked among the top four universities in the nation under 50 years old, according to Times Higher Education. UW, Laramie Organizations to Host Sans Facon April 26 A public art storytelling event with Charles Blanc and Tristan Surtees, collectively known as Sans facon, will take place at the UW Visual Arts Building Thursday, April 26, at 7 p.m. Sans facon is an art practice that responds to the relationship between people and place. (Sans facon Photo) A joint planning committee of University of Wyoming and Laramie organizations will host a free public art storytelling event with Charles Blanc and Tristan Surtees, collectively known as Sans facon, Thursday, April 26. The event will take place at 7 p.m. at the UW Visual Arts Building. It will be a participatory event in which audience members will be part of the experience. It also will be an opportunity to share some key findings by Blanc and Surtees about their new public art experience, called Here: the Laramie Experiment, a complete work of art in itself, but also will inform the plans for possible future public art projects in Laramie. During the week of April 23, Sans facon, supported and guided by a diverse campus and community steering committee, will host small community forums that will be the basis for research about sense of place in Laramie and Albany County. This research defines Here: the Laramie Experiment. The duo also will discover sense of place through work with the collections at the UW Geological Museum. The two will conduct research with the Wyoming State Geological Survey, interview local historians and explore other unique aspects of place. Sans facon formed in 2001 as a collaborative art practice between English artist Surtees and French architect Blanc. Sans facon is an art practice that responds to the relationship between people and place. Working internationally, the duos approach renews awareness and tempts interaction with the surroundings, and is realized through networks of communities, organizations and individuals. The event is sponsored by Laramie Main Street Alliance, Laramie Public Art Coalition, First Interstate Bank, Wyoming Geographic Information Science Center, UW Art Museum, UW Global Engagement Office, UW Honors College, UW Department of Art and Art History, UW Department of English, UW Department of Geology and Geophysics, Haub School of Environment and Natural Resources, UW Geological Museum, Wyoming Humanities Council, Wyoming Arts Council (with support from the Wyoming Legislature and National Endowment for the Arts), and Wyoming Institute for Humanities Research. For more information about Sans facons public art project for Laramie, visit www.uwyo.edu/artmuseum/learn/outreach/public-art/sans-facon/ or email Mary Katherine Scott, program developer in the UW Global Engagement Office, at mkscott@uwyo.edu. UW President to Visit Rawlins April 30 UW President Laurie Nichols University of Wyoming President Laurie Nichols will meet with local residents Monday, April 30, from noon-1:30 p.m. at the Econo Lodge dining room, 1801 E. Cedar St. in Rawlins. A complimentary lunch buffet and nonalcoholic beverages will be provided. The UW Alumni Association invites all UW alumni and friends to the gathering. Those who plan to attend are asked to RSVP by April 24 to uwalumni@uwyo.edu or (307) 766-4166. Nichols travels regularly around Wyoming to meet with citizens, community college and public school leaders, legislators, alumni, media and others. I enjoy getting around the state to meet with people and hear their thoughts and expectations for Wyomings university, says Nichols, who is nearing completion of her second year as UWs president. This is a crucial time for the state and the university, and interaction with the public is important to make sure UW fulfills its land-grant mission of education, research and service to the entire state. Nichols came to UW from South Dakota State University (SDSU), where she served as provost and executive vice president from 2009 to 2016. Before that, she was dean of the SDSU College of Education and Human Sciences from 1994 to 2008. She began her career in higher education as a member of the faculty of the University of Idaho from 1988 to 1994. Nichols was born and raised in South Dakota. A first-generation college graduate, she received a bachelors degree in education from South Dakota State in 1978. She then earned a masters degree in vocational and adult education from Colorado State University in 1984 and a Ph.D. in family and consumer sciences education from Ohio State University in 1988. For more information about the Rawlins event, call the UW Alumni Association at (307) 766-4166. WWAMI Students Elected to Alpha Omega Alpha Three students in the Washington, Wyoming, Alaska, Montana and Idaho (WWAMI) Medical Education Program have been elected to the Alpha Omega Alpha (AOA) national medical honor society. Natalie Eggleston, of Jackson; Kayla Morrison, of Casper; and Lindsay White, of Douglas, all are third-year medical students. The top 25 percent of each class is eligible to be considered for AOA. The chapter can elect up to 16 percent of the class in total. Students were selected using a process that incorporates their grades; feedback from peers, college mentors and clerkship directors; and information about their service and scholarly efforts. Election to AOA is an honor signifying a lasting commitment to scholarship, leadership, professionalism and service. A lifelong honor, membership in the society confers recognition for a physician's dedication to the profession and art of healing. The WWAMI program reserves 20 seats each year for qualified Wyoming residents. Students accepted to the program spend their first year on the UW campus and the second year at the University of Washington School of Medicine. The third and fourth years are spent at selected clinical sites throughout the WWAMI region. English Finnish Digitalist Group Plc Stock exchange release 17 April 2018 at 19:30 Adoption of the financial statements The Annual General Meeting of Digitalist Group Plc adopted the companys financial statements and consolidated financial statements for the financial period 1 January 2017-31 December 2017. Payment of dividend The general meeting resolved that distributable assets be left in the equity and that no dividend for the financial period 2017 be paid to shareholders. Resolution on the discharge of the members of the Board of Directors and the Managing Directors from liability The general meeting discharged members of the Board of Directors and the Managing Directors from liability for the financial period 1 January 2017-31 December 2017. Resolution on the remuneration of the members of the Board of Directors The general meeting resolved that the fees paid to the members of the Board of Directors remain unchanged so that they are as follows: Chairman of the Board: EUR 40,000/year and EUR 500/meeting Deputy Chairman of the Board: EUR 30,000/year and EUR 250/meeting Other members of the Board of Directors: EUR 20,000/year and EUR 250/meeting For the meetings of a Board committee, EUR 500/meeting to the Chairman and EUR 250/meeting to a member Travel expenses will be reimbursed in accordance with the companys regulations concerning travel reimbursements. Resolution on the number of members of the Board of Directors The general meeting resolved to elect seven ordinary members to the Board of Directors. Election of members of the Board of Directors The general meeting elected Paul Ehrnroothin, Bo-Erik Ekstrom, Pekka Pylkas, Peter Eriksson, Jaana Rosendahl, Esa Matikainen and Ville Tolvanen as ordinary members of the Board. In their meeting held after the general meeting, the Board of Directors elected Paul Ehrnrooth as the Chairman of the Board and Esa Matikainen as the Vice Chairman of the Board. The meeting also decided on the members of the Boards Audit Committee and Remuneration Committee. Pekka Pylkas was elected as the Chairman and Bo-Erik Ekstrom, Esa Matikainen and Peter Eriksson as members of the Audit Committee. Bo-Erik Ekstrom and Esa Matikainen are independent both of the company and of its major shareholders. Bo-Erik Ekstrom was elected as the Chairman of the Remuneration Committee and Jaana Rosendahl and Peter Eriksson as members. Bo-Erik Ekstrom and Jaana Rosendahl are independent both of the company and of its major shareholders. Appointment of the auditor and resolution on the remuneration of the auditor Audit firm KPMG Oy Ab was appointed as the companys auditor, with KHT auditor Esa Kailiala as the principal auditor. It was decided that auditors fees are paid against reasonable invoice Authorising the Board of Directors to decide on share issues and on granting special rights entitling to shares The General Meeting authorised the Board to decide on a paid share issue and on granting option rights and other special rights entitling to shares as referred to in Chapter 10 Section 1 of the Finnish Limited Liability Companies Act, or on the combination of some of the aforementioned instruments, in one or more tranches on the following terms and conditions: The number of shares to be issued under the authorisation may not exceed 276,912,173, which corresponds to approximately 50 per cent of all company shares at the time of convening the Annual General Meeting. Within the limits of the aforementioned authorisation, the Board of Directors was given the right to decide on all terms and conditions applied to the share issue and to the special rights entitling to shares, such as that the payment of the subscription price may take place not only in cash but also by setting off receivables that the subscriber has from the company. The Board of Directors has the right to decide on crediting the subscription price either to the companys share capital or, in full or in part, to the invested unrestricted equity fund. Shares as well as special rights entitling to shares may also be issued in a way that deviates from the pre-emptive rights of shareholders if a weighty financial reason for the company to do this exists as laid out in the Limited Liability Companies Act. In such a case, the authorisation may be used to finance corporate acquisitions or other investments related to the operations of the company as well as to maintain and improve the solvency of the group of companies and to carry out an incentive scheme. The authorisation will remain in effect until the annual general meeting held in 2019, yet no longer than until 30 June 2019. Authorising the Board of Directors to decide on repurchasing the companys own shares The Annual General Meeting authorised the Board to decide on acquiring or accepting as pledge, using the companys non-restricted equity, a maximum of 55,382,434 own shares, which corresponds to approximately 10 per cent of the companys total shares at the time of convening the meeting. The repurchase may take place in one or more tranches. The acquisition price shall not exceed the highest market price of the share in public trading at the time of the acquisition. In executing the acquisition of its own shares, the company may enter into derivative, share lending and other contracts customary in the capital market, within the limits set out in laws and regulations. The authorisation also entitles the Board to decide on a directed acquisition, i.e. on acquiring shares in a proportion other than that of the shares held by the shareholders. The company may acquire the shares to execute corporate acquisitions or other business arrangements related to the companys operations, to improve its capital structure, or to otherwise further transfer the shares or cancel them. The authorisation includes the right for the Board of Directors to decide on all other matters related to the acquisition of the shares. The authorisation will remain in effect until the annual general meeting held in 2019, yet no longer than until 30 June 2019. DIGITALIST GROUP PLC Board of Directors For more information, please contact: CEO Ville Tolvanen, tel. +358 50 3100 642, ville.tolvanen@digitalistgroup.com CFO Hans Parvikoski, tel. +358 40 586 6154, hans.parvikoski@digitalistgroup.com Distribution: Nasdaq Helsinki Ltd Main media Attachment Start your day with Sunrise, a roundup of B.C. news and opinions delivered straight to your inbox Start your day with Sunrise, delivered straight to your inbox Sign up now> Dallas, TX, April 17, 2018 (GLOBE NEWSWIRE) -- The Department of Veterans Affairs issued a combined solicitation for vascular catheters. This opportunity is 100% set-aside for service-disabled-veteran-owned small businesses. The closing date and time for quotes are April 20, 2018, at 8:00 a.m. Central Time. The place of performance for this opportunity is the Dallas VA Medical Center. For assistance meeting this deadline with proper registrations and a strong offer, businesses may use the third-party government registration firm, US Federal Contractor Registration (USFCR). The exact items and descriptions can be located on the Advanced Procurement Portal (APP) from USFCR. These items are to prepared in accordance with the format in Subpart 12.6 which is also available in APP. Only new equipment will be accepted for this procurement and a manufacturers warranty is required. Quotes are being requested and a written solicitation will not be issued. For more information about this opportunity, contact Rolando A. Pasayan ( rolando.pasayan@va.gov ). Make sure that before applying for this opportunity that your company is properly registered in the System for Award Management (SAM). It is important to have this registration set-up if interested in making offers to the government for work such as this. SAM is mandatory for all who want to make offers to perform contract work for the government. This system can be tricky to handle, especially when trying to meet a deadline and put a quote together. For assistance with all of these matters, US Federal Contractor Registration is standing by to provide. An automated customs control system for exports and imports was launched at Hanois Noi Bai International Airport on April 16.- Photo baohaiquan.vn According to deputy director of the Hanoi Customs Department, Tran Quoc Dinh, after a five-month pilot period, the system had benefited importers and exporters, warehouse businesses and customs because the system links goods management information at three stages: pre-clearance, customs clearance and post-clearance. Accordingly, customs offices applied concentrated information technology to exchange and update information with warehoure businesses, helping them monitor goods from arrival to departure and transportation between locations subject to customs supervision. The system has been piloted by Hanoi Customs Department at Noi Bai Airport since October 16. The air cargo warehouse of the Noi Bai Cargo Terminal Service JSC was the first unit to implement this pilot. Enterprises importing and exporting through automated management and monitoring systems will know goods information and the location of goods in warehouse to speed up customs procedures, helping them reduce the cost and time to store goods in warehouses. Meanwhile, aviation warehouse businesses are provided with goods information through the system. They do not waste time, money or labour to write, print, prepare or deliver documents of each flight to the customs office. NCTS general director Nguyen Xuan Phuc said his company had made efforts with the customs office to gradually complete software and carry out the pilot. Up to now, the system has brought practical effects in reforming and modernising the process of operation, shortening time for goods clearance for enterprises and helping businesses reduce labour costs and travel time to handle the procedures, increasing production and business efficiency for importers and exporters, said Phuc. Appreciating the results of the system, deputy general director of the General Department of Customs Hoang Viet Cuong affirmed that this event was not only important for customs but also for all businesses, especially exporters and importers doing business in Noi Bai Airport. This system has adopted international standards in the management of goods transported by air. This represents the commitment of the customs sector in the process of reform and modernisation, said Cuong. "In the future, units under the General Department of Customs and Hanoi Customs Department should continue to complete the system, expanding it to meet the requirements of reform and modernisation to generate favourable conditions for people and businesses," said Cuong. After five months of pilot implementation, this modern system has connected to all three warehouses of NCTS, Aviation Logistics Service JSC and Aviation Vietnam Air Cargo Services JSC. Customs data shows that during the period, 175,766 customs declarations have been managed and monitored automatically on the system. The new pilot trainning centre will be launched in Ho Chi Minh City According to Boeings projections, the Asia-Pacific will require up to 253,000 new pilots until 2036. Looking at Southeast Asia alone, the aircraft numbers will grow from 1,410 in 2016 to 4,200 aircrafts by 2036, 77 per cent of which will be made up of single aisle airplanes, mainly A320 and 737 family aircrafts. To respond to the growing training needs in the region, BAA Training Vietnam is building a brand new training facility with a total investment capital of $50 million in Ho Chi Minh City. As the construction of the training centre is underway, the first Airbus A320 full flight simulator is set to be deployed by the end of 2018. To continue the development and increase the training centres capabilities, Airbus A320 NEO and Boeing 737 MAX full flight simulators are planned to be assembled by 2020. In addition, BAA Training Vietnam aims to open an Ab Initio flight school in the next five years in order to provide the region with complex pilot training solutions. By establishing BAA Training Vietnam we aim to share an exceptional know-how built through years of experience of BAA Training operations as well as securing the region with transparent and high-standard aviation training for both corporate and private clients, commented Egle Vaitkeviciute, CEO at BAA Training. BAA Training is an aviation training centre oriented towards delivering individual and flexible solutions to companies worldwide. Over 750 pilots flew close to 25,000 hours in more than 85 full flight simulators at over 30 locations in Europe, North and South Americas, Africa, and Asia in 2017. Co-working spaces prove themselves a successful concept in Vietnam In a market in which over 90 per cent of enterprises are small- to medium-sized, and where more than 30 per cent of the population is young (under 34 years old), the co-working space is revealing itself to be good business. Hoang Cong, an officer from an IT startup company, regularly comes to Toong at the Oxygen in the Vista building, in Ho Chi Minh Citys District 2. For younger workers like us, the concept of a co-working space is very suitable. It gives us a very dynamic and flexible working environment, which we both need and highly appreciate, Cong told VIR. For startup companies like Congs, these kinds of working spaces are particularly useful. They are often in the process of starting a business and need a place that can offer them affordable rental space with convenient facilities. Co-working spaces also give Cong and his colleagues an environment to exchange ideas and find new partners and investors. For freelancer photographer Nguyen Manh Thang, co-working is an ideal space to find new ideas and innovations. Working in a convenient atmosphere full of trees and fresh air allows me to feel very relaxed, thats why I have mostly moved my office from home to co-working spaces like these, Thang said. Apart from working, Thang and his associates can entertain themselves with a variety of relaxing services in co-working spaces, such as the cafeteria, games equipment, or even comfort rooms to have a short nap after lunch. Moreover, Thang can do extensive networking or meet potential customers in those places. Attractive to foreign investors Co-working space operators have expanded rapidly in the two cities of Hanoi and Ho Chi Minh City and have attracted many foreign investors. CapitaLand, Keppel Land, and Indochina Capital were some of the very first foreign investors to put money into co-working spaces in Vietnam. Indochina Capitals first co-working space chain, Toong, officially launched its largest facility, Toong Minh Khai, last week in the downtown of Ho Chi Minh City. According to Indochina Capital CEO Peter Ryder, the firm is always looking for excellent focused investment opportunities in Vietnam. We at Indochina have known about co-working spaces for a long time. In the US for example, the value of the market for co-working was around $20 billion in 2010, which demonstrates the value of this segment, Ryder told VIR. In the US, Ryder said, 25-30 per cent of office spaces are currently used for co-working. The potential of co-working in Vietnam is enormous and we truly believe in this concept for Vietnam, because it is more than just a trend for young people and dynamic millennials, Ryder added. This concept is not just for working, but it is a way of the future, it is co-living, co-dreaming, and giving people energy by putting them in a real community, he added. Ryder told VIR that Toong co-working spaces will reach 60,000 square metres in Vietnam, Cambodia, and Laos by the end of next year, from the current total of 10,000sq.m. This is evidenced by a growing number of companies that utilise co-working models to encourage dynamic ideas and cutting-edge technology in collaboration with other firms, Ryder added. Meanwhile Duong Do, founder and CEO of Toong, said that the company is in the business of nurturing talent and cultivating characters, so as to find ways to best serve others and make society better. The opening of Toong Minh Khai allows this vision of our organisation to materialise in reality, Duong said. Duong added that innovative change dominates the global real estate industry, not just Vietnams. The newest facility marks the evolution of Toongs own product offerings since 2015, going beyond a network of high-quality, inspirational physical workspace. Toong is now operating a total of five locations in Vietnam while the company is developing four other large-scale locations in four cities in the three countries of Vietnam, Cambodia, and Laos at the same time. Toong received strategic investment from Openasia and Indochina Capital, and it is a strategic partner to prestigious brands and organisations including CapitaLand, United Overseas Bank, International Enterprise Singapore, and Vanguard Hotels. The firm aims to build an effective entrepreneurial platform for individuals and enterprises across Southeast Asia. Other investors are upbeat about the prospects for co-working spaces in Vietnam, including Hong Kong-based Gaw Capitals investment in Naked Hub and Keppel Land with Kloud in the Saigon Centre complex. Kloud is the third co-working space project of Keppel Land, after the Kloud at Keppel Bay Tower in Singapore and Kloud Junction City Tower in Myanmar. Kloud is offering private office suites, with a host desk and membership services. What is the potential? Co-working space operators have expanded rapidly in the two cities of Hanoi and Ho Chi Minh City since the concept was first introduced to Vietnam in 2012, and started to gain traction in 2015 with the launch of local operators Toong and Dreamplex. As of the beginning of 2018, there are a total of 18 co-working space operators in 23 venues. A study by CBRE Vietnam found that 91 per cent of co-working space members are millennials under the age of 35. This proportion is higher than the global average of 67 per cent and reflects Vietnams youthful demographics. The growth of the co-working space has been driven by the startup boom. However, as shared and flexible working environments become more popular, co-working spaces are also emerging as a viable option for corporate occupiers. The cost of renting co-working spaces varies across different cities. Co-working spaces in Hanoi and Ho Chi Minh City are currently priced lower than in most other cities in the Asia Pacific region, which reflects the cheaper office rental costs available in Vietnam. Events, networking, and community atmosphere are the backbones of co-working spaces and are the key characteristics that differentiate them from other workplace models, such as serviced offices and traditional offices. Co-working spaces provide flexibility, creativity, and a wide range of amenities for tenants. It also offers a far more cost-effective solution for tenants compared to traditional leased office spaces. The co-working service industry is primed for further rapid growth in Vietnam in the next few years amid strong expansion by both local and international operators, with demand to be driven by local startups and freelancers, international startups and freelancers, and increasingly by small corporations. The presence of larger operators will likely usher in a period of consolidation and merger and acquisition activity within the industry, forcing poorly-managed or unsuitable co-working spaces out of the market and improving the quality of existing operators. According to Jeremy Sheldon, managing director for markets and integrated portfolio services at JLL Asia Pacific, this shift is beginning to transform the office space. The workspace of the future is one that can meet employee needs, while driving effectiveness and engagement levels, he said. Vinaca Companys capsules, claimed to treat cancer, were made from bamboo charcoal powder. Photo: vietnamplus.vn The order came after the Health Department in the northern port city of Haiphong seized Vinaca Companys drugs, made from bamboo charcoal powder, claiming to treat cancer and help rejuvenate the body from exhaustion. Dam ordered the Health Ministry and Ministry of Public Security to work closely with the police and health departments of related localities to impose fines on Vinaca. Criminals involved in fake drugs cases have a lot of tricks under their sleeves, Dam said, adding that all activities related to producing and selling of fake products, fake medicines and functional foods must be punished, especially violations related to the treatment of incurable diseases. Patients suffering from incurable diseases must be treated with quality products, he said. For a long-term solution, Dam asked the health ministry to continue tracking the origin of drugs and managing more than 4,000 pharmacies nationwide. This project was piloted for one year and it is time to expand it to help people distinguish between fake and authentic drugs and supplementary foods, he said. Early this year, Haiphong Police discovered thousands of Vinaca Companys products being manufactured at a facility of Dao Thi Chuc in Kien An district. The seized products including 154 boxes of CO3.2 anti-cancer drugs. Chuc was unable to provide the legal documents for the medicines and confessed that the drugs were made from bamboo charcoal powder. The manufacturer only needed to pour the powder into capsules to make the drug. Vu Tuan Cuong, head of the health ministrys Drugs Administration, confirmed that CO3.2 anti-cancer drug was fake and requested people not to use it. Pham Van Cac, deputy head of Police General Department under the Ministry of Public Security, said the manufacturing facility of Vinaca Company was unlicensed. The product may have been consumed in other localities. The police are further investigating the case. The Lee Correctional Institution in Bishopville, South Carolina, remains on lockdown after an overnight riot killed seven inmates while injuring 17 others. (Logan Cyrus/AFP) South Carolina Governor Henry McMaster described the overnight bloodshed at Lee Correctional Institution in Bishopville, South Carolina, as "unfortunate" but said "these are dangerous people." Fights among inmates erupted on Sunday evening at the Lee Correctional Institution in Bishopville, South Carolina. (AFP Photo) "We cannot expect them to give up their violent ways just because they're in prison," McMaster told a press conference on Monday (Apr 16). Bryan Stirling, head of the South Carolina Department of Corrections (SCDC), said fighting broke out shortly after 7.00pm on Sunday in a prison dormitory and spread to two others before it was put down nearly eight hours later. Stirling said a preliminary investigation had found that it was "gangs fighting over territory." "This was all about territory," he said. "This was about contraband. This was about cellphones. "These folks are fighting about real money and real territory while they're incarcerated." Stirling and the governor both appealed to the Federal Communications Commission (FCC) to allow them to block cellphone signals to prisons to prevent inmates from communicating with people on the outside world. "Jamming those cellphone signals will do a lot," McMaster said. "It's not just a South Carolina problem. It's a national problem." NO RESISTANCE Stirling said 44 guards were on duty at the prison which houses some 1,600 inmates when the violence erupted. He said a response team entered the first dormitory at 11.30pm, the second one at 12.30am and the third one at 2.00am. "There was no resistance when we went in to take the dorms back," Stirling said. Prison officials said order was restored by 3.00am and inmates locked down in their cells. They said the clashes left seven prisoners dead and 17 "requiring medical attention." All prison guards and law enforcement authorities who responded were "safe and accounted for." Lee Correctional Institution is a "Level III" maximum security facility built in 1993 to house violent offenders and prisoners with behavioral problems. Deadly prison riots have been relatively rare in the United States, despite some notable exceptions. South Carolina's prisons are notoriously violent, however, and suffer from chronic understaffing. According to The State newspaper, the number of inmates killed in South Carolina's prisons more than doubled in 2017 from the previous year. It said 12 inmates were killed by other prisoners last year, up from five in 2016. The deaths included four inmates who were strangled to death by two fellow prisoners in April 2017 at Kirkland Correctional Institution, another maximum security prison. 'UNACCEPTABLE' Representative Todd Rutherford, the leader of the Democratic minority in the state House of Representatives, condemned the violence. "A mass casualty incident inside a correctional facility is simply unacceptable," Rutherford tweeted. "Safety - for inmates, SCDC employees, and the public - must be a priority. "Rioting like this is a symptom our criminal justice system is broken and needs reform now," he said. The United States has the highest rate of incarceration in the world with around 450 prisoners per 100,000 residents, according to Bureau of Justice Statistics (BJS). There were 1.5 million inmates in state and federal prisons in the United States at the end of 2016, according to the BJS. The overnight violence at Lee Correctional Institution was one of the deadliest at a US prison in decades. In 1993, nine inmates and a corrections officer were killed at the Southern Ohio Correctional Facility, a maximum security prison in Lucasville, Ohio. A two-day riot and hostage-taking at the New Mexico State Prison in 1980 left 33 inmates dead and 200 injured, one of the worst in modern US history. Probably the most famous was the 1971 rebellion at New York's Attica prison. After a four day standoff with inmates holding 42 hostages, New York state police moved in to retake the prison on orders of governor Nelson Rockefeller. By the time it was over 43 people were dead, including 10 guards and prison employees and 33 inmates. The two sides vowed to combat environmental issues by joining hands At the forum, Ha particularly appreciated the support of the Korean Ministry of Environment as well as Korean businesses in environmental protection. Ha said he expects the forum could further detail the contents of the joint statement made by the two countries top leaders during a recent visit to Vietnam by Korean President Moon Jae-In, helping to propel the friendship and cooperative relations between the governments and the people of the two countries. With this significance, I expect that at todays forum the state management agencies, research institutes, environmental protection associations, and businesses in our two countries will become proactive in exchanging information and management experience, promoting technology transfer, and proposing feasible and concrete cooperative projects in the fields of mutual concern, Ha stressed. Cooperation in environmental protection between Vietnam and South Korea dates back to the first meeting of the two countries environmental ministers in Hanoi in 2000. Since then, the bilateral cooperation has been increasingly augmented. Cooperation in environmental protection between Vietnam and South Korea dates back to the first meeting of the two countries environmental ministers in Hanoi in 2000. Since then, the bilateral cooperation has been increasingly augmented and posted important results. Through the supply of diverse training programmes and hosting exchanges on environmental issues and technical support projects, Korea has effectively supported the Vietnamese Ministry of Natural Resources and Environment (MoNRE) and the local natural resources and environmental sector in human resources development, management capacity enhancement, and raising the capacity in environmental technology research and development. Sharing her mindset, Korean Minister of Environment Kim Eun Kyung said at the forum: Since the two countries embraced cooperation in environmental protection, Vietnam and South Korea have engaged in an array of inclusive cooperative activities. In the face of the countrys rapid economic growth, Vietnam might encounter numerous environmental threats, such as solid waste and water resources contamination, which are global issues, she said. Therefore, I hope in todays forum our two countries will share the difficulties we are facing and jointly seek solutions to tackle environmental threats in Vietnam. As part of the forum, management units under MoNRE and the Korean Ministry of Environment, as well as businesses in the two countries presented the latest policies and treatment technologies on environmental protection. Geum-Yong Hong Geum-Yong Hong, CEO of BL Process Limited which is specialised in providing technology solutions and equipment for surface and wastewater quality monitoring, told VIR, We have three targets for joining todays forum: increasing the exposure of the companys products and services, presenting successful projects in its field in Korea, and seeking potential partners in Vietnam for long-term cooperation. We have a project on water quality monitoring system supply in Vietnam which was put into use in 2016, he said. Also at the forum, the Ha Tinh Peoples Committee and Korea Environmental Industry and Technology Institute (KEITI) (one of the forum organisers besides the Vietnam Environment Administration) signed a MoU on implementing a master plan for improving sewerage system and river water quality in the central province. On the same morning (April 16), at MoNRE headquarters Minister Tran Hong Ha and Deputy Minister Vo Tuan Nhan met Korean Minister of Environment Kim Eun Kyung to discuss cooperative ties between the two ministries and signed a memorandum of understanding (MoU) on comprehensive environmental cooperation between the two ministries. The MoU seeks to enhance mutual understanding through the exchange of information and personnel, and to contribute to the resolution of national, regional, and global environmental issues through cooperation in the fields of environmental technology and industry, based on the principles of equality and mutual benefits and respect for national sovereignty. Under the MoU, cooperative activities between Vietnam and Korea will cover diverse fields, including air quality management, integrated water resources management, conservation and sustainable use of biodiversity, waste management, climate change response, implementation of Sustainable Development Goals, and sustainable management of natural resources. The valuation process of VTVCab is under scrutinty VTVCab is currently under scrutiny for its valuation process. The cable channel firm decided to put nearly 42.3 million of its shares on the market with the starting price of VND140,900 ($6.2). However, after a quick look at the business targets that VTVCab set for itself after the equitisation as well as its financial results in the past three years, investors could easily tell that the price-per-earnings ratio was sky high at 334x. This is the highest P/E ratio in the Vietnamese stock market so far. Since last year, VTVCabs valuation has been a major cause of controversy. In May 2017, state auditors noted that the total amounts of the assets of VTVCab stood at VND4.27 trillion ($187 million), which is VND279 billion ($12.2 million) higher than the initial quotes by CPA Vietnam Auditing Company Ltd. According to State Audit of Vietnam, CPA Vietnam has to adjust its valuation of VTVCab and should not include a certain number of intangible assets as tangible assets. In addition, VTVCabs land rights should be included on the list of intangible assets, rather than tangible assets. In its prospectus, VTVCab said its total assets according to the accounting books were VND2 trillion ($88 million), including VND450 billion ($19.8 million) in state capital. Following the valuation process, the figure for state capital somehow skyrocketed to VND6.35 trillion ($286 million), in addition to the firms payables that went to VND1.55 trillion ($66 million). This increased VTVCabs assets to VND7.9 trillion ($347.6 million). The prospectus did not reveal the reason for this wide discrepancy in numbers, but investors can make an educated guess that it comes from VTVCabs ownership rights for its channels. It is notable that discrepancies in land rental were not displayed in the prospectus. Even more suspicious is that the prospectus did not specify how VTVCabs starting price was determined. This is usually one of the most important parts for investors when learning about a firm. VIR has contacted Chu Manh Hien, deputy head of Vietinbank Securities, the advisor for this deal, to look for answers. Hien said that the brokerage has followed all existing regulations and based its figures on details given by VTVCab. It is evident that the sky-high valuation of VTVCab has discouraged investors from joining the IPO. The sale, scheduled on April 17, had to be cancelled as it only attracted one investor. Regarding corporate valuation, the market still remembers the recent MobiFone-AVG scandal, where MobiFone bought 95 per cent of AVG at VND8.8 trillion ($387 million). This shady deal resulted in a loss of VND7 trillion ($308 million) for the government, which owns MobiFone. In this transaction, AVG was valued at VND16.5 trillion ($726 million), while book records showed that the figure should only be VND1.9 trillion ($83.6 million). The enormous discrepancy in valuating the firms stems from differences in the two valuation methods: book value and discounted cash flow. In the AVG case, valuators used the discounted cash flow method that has been approved by the Ministry of Finance (MoF). However, the input numbers provided by AVG were questionable. In particular, in 2015 and 2016, the firm experienced great losses, but AVG was confident that its profit for 2017 and 2018 will boom by 412 per cent. Future profit forecasts are also sky-high by market standards, despite the TV market experiencing greater competition. The state inspectorate concluded that AVGs valuators have used unaudited input figures and did not compare the data with market standards. The stories of VTVCab and AVG show that state-owned firms in Vietnam are being valued on the basis of purely subjective standards. The discrepancy, which can reach billions of VND, erodes investors trust in the equitisation process. In another case, Vietnams National Centre for Hydro-Meteorological Forecasting undervalued its 1,000-square metre property at 3 Dang Thai Than street, Hanoi. The land was in a prime location, yet its value only stood at VND90 billion ($3.9 million). This transaction and involved stakeholders have been subject to a court hearing. A financial expert told VIR that it is easy to manipulate the value of SOEs, especially when it comes to land rights. The market value of these properties can be challenging to determine. For example, a rented land in the city centre was worth VND5 billion ($220 million) 20 years ago, but its value may have increased to trillions of VND now. This has been a cause of great conflicts in recent years. Another drawback is Vietnams lack of regulations on valuating SOEs. In response to the controversy, MoF announced that it will release a new circular on land appraisal on May 1. For the time being, the only way for firms to earn investors trust is to be transparent in their valuation process and conduct transactions based on market principles. VTVCab IPO unmarketable after scandal of cutting foreign channels VTVCabs IPO was suspended as only one investor registered to join. The lack of interest may be due by VTVCabs arbitrary decision to axe 22 ... VTVcab expects to acquire $261 million from IPO Cable television provider Vietnam Television Cable Corporation (VTVcab) will put 42.3 million shares on sale at its initial public offering (IPO) with the expectation of ... PM okays French firms plan to expand Tan Son Nhat airport The terminal, with infrastructure meeting international standards, is expected to serve 20 million passengers per year, helping increase the capacity of the airport to handle 50 million passengers per annum by 2025. The Tan Son Nhat International Airport has become seriously overloaded, forcing many flights to wait in the air to land. The airport has a design capacity of 25 million passengers but the passenger throughput in 2016 was 32 million and in 2017 over 36 million, making the expansion of the airport an urgent task. The French firm recommended building support facilities including a cargo terminal and an aircraft maintenance station in the airports northern area. According to the PM, this could handle overload in air transport, ensure effective land use and reduce investment costs and guarantee safety and security in line with regulations of the International Civil Aviation Organisation. The government leader assigned the Ministry of Transport to direct the French consultant company to continue working with the Vietnamese counterpart ADCC under the Ministry of National Defence to complete the adjustment of the expansion plan, ensuring efficiency, especially in land use in the north and the south of the airport. He asked the ministry to work with the HCM City Peoples Committee to devise feasible measures to reduce traffic jams around the airport. The ministry must finalise legal dossiers for approving the adjustment of the expansion plan and relevant planning schemes in addition to devising mechanisms and policies to implement the projects, particularly defining a roadmap to build support facilities in the northern area of the airport, the PM said. He entrusted the Ministry of National Defence to work with the Ministry of Transport, the Ministry of Natural Resources and Environment and the HMC City Peoples Committee to review the use of land for defence purpose in areas around the airport and relocate camps of military units to adjust the defence land use plan. The Ministry of Planning and Investment and the Ministry of Finance are responsible for addressing shortcomings to ensure the progress of projects. Fort Collins, CO, April 17, 2018 (GLOBE NEWSWIRE) -- For the fourth year in a row, Rise Broadband, the nations largest fixed wireless broadband provider of Internet and digital phone service, is partnering with No Barriers to send twelve military veterans on the No Barriers Warriors Medicine Bow Range veteran expedition. We are honored to again partner with No Barriers USA to actively help wounded veterans participate in this exceptional program, said Stephen John, Senior Vice President Sales & Technical Operations at Rise Broadband. With Rise Broadbands support, twelve nominees will be chosen for the fully-paid expedition in the Medicine Bow National Forest, located in Rises home state of Colorado from September 21-28, 2018. The week-long expedition includes off-site preparation and a 30-mile wilderness trek, designed to push participants physically and mentally while providing a foundation for stretching goals, facing adversity and leading/serving others. The program concludes with a team service project alongside Rise Broadband employees. Applications and nominations are now being accepted at: http://www.nobarriersusa.org/warriors/risebroadband Nominees must be a veteran with verified service and a VA disability rating, who demonstrates the desire to overcome his/her barriers and live a life of purpose. Rise customers are encouraged to nominate their family members, relatives or friends. Self-nominations are acceptable. Deadline for all nominations is Sunday, June 10, 2018. Nominees must live in CO, IA, ID, IL, IN, KS, MO, MN, NE, NV, OK, SD, TX, UT, WI, or WY. No Barriers Warriors will review all nominations and participants will be announced by mid-July. About Rise Broadband Rise Broadband is the largest fixed wireless service provider in the US; offering affordable high-speed internet, digital phone and DIRECTV services across 16 states. Rise Broadbands parent company, JAB Wireless, Inc., was established in 2006 and serves nearly 200,000 residential and business accounts in rural and suburban areas of the Midwest, Rocky Mountain and Southwest regions. The company, headquartered in Englewood, CO (metro Denver), has earned an A+ rating from the Better Business Bureau. Additional information is available at www.RiseBroadband.com or by calling (844) 411-7473. About No Barriers Warriors No Barriers Warriors improves the lives of veterans with disabilities through transformative, curriculum-based expeditions in challenging outdoor environments. Each No Barriers Warriors expedition is designed to push veterans mentally and physically in some of natures more incredible wilderness settings. We create a safe space and encourage them to reflect on their past, recognize where they are in the present and then look with positivity to the future. The experience serves as a catalyst for change as veterans stretch their boundaries, innovate through adversity, and build lifelong rope teams. To learn more visit: www.nobarrierswarriors.org. About No Barriers USA What barriers do you face? This question lies at the heart of our organization. Whether in our personal lives, at work, or in our communities, we all face challenges that can prevent us from reaching our full potential. At No Barriers, we believe that whats within you is stronger than whats in your way. No Barriers empowers people of all walks of life to overcome obstacles, live a life of purpose, and give back to the world, all through our ground-breaking curriculum, the No Barriers Life. Learn more about No Barriers at NoBarriersUSA.org. Attachment Syrian government forces stand near an artillery gun as they take position in the area between Talbiseh and Rastan in the northern countryside of Homs. (STRINGER/AFP) The news agency did not give further details and it was unclear who was behind the attack, which Syrian state television branded as an "aggression". Big explosions were heard near Al Shayrat Air base in Homs province, and in eastern Qalamoun near Damascus where two other air bases are located, the Syrian Observatory for Human rights reported. Observatory chief Rami Abdel Rahman said missiles did not hit any of the air bases. Following reports of an Israeli strike, an Israeli military spokesman said: "I'm not aware of such an incident." Shayrat air base was targeted by US Tomahawk missiles in April last year in a strike ordered by President Donald Trump in retaliation for a suspected chemical attack on the rebel-held town of Khan Sheikhun in Idlib. According to the Pentagon, US intelligence had established that the base was the launchpad for the alleged chemical attack. PM Phuc showed the government's full support to reduce logistics costs The event revolving around cutting logistics costs and increasing transport connectivity attracted the participation of Prime Minister Nguyen Xuan Phuc, ministers, and hundreds of domestic and international logistics providers. The conference was broadcast live to all cities and provinces nationwide. In his opening remarks, the PM said that though ministries and agencies have been paying attention to logistics, reasonable solutions have not been taken yet to cut down logistics costs that are currently higher than in regional countries. The government leader asked ministries and businesses to focus on dealing with the challenging issues of development planning, infrastructure development, infrastructure connectivity, warehouse development, and business and human resources development. According to Deputy Transport Minister Nguyen Van Cong, despite having an annual growth of 16-20 per cent on average, the industry is facing many challenges. Transport infrastructure is still asynchronous, particularly with a lack of connectivity between seaports, roads, and railway networks as well as post-seaport supporting services. In addition to this lack of connectivity, the asynchronous development of the five transport segments has hindered the development of multi-modal transportation and logistics services. Logistics businesses proposed relevant ministries to further reform administrative procedures and cut unreasonable business conditions to facilitate their activities. "The government should allow investments in the development of more new deepwater seaports and inland container depots (ICDs), while introducing policies to attract cargo for transshipment seaports, improving connectivity among transport segments, as well as ensuring the channel depth at the Cai Mep-Thi Vai port area and others," said Phung Ngoc Minh, vice executive president of Saigon Newport, Vietnams largest port operator. "To further facilitate the development of the logistics industry, I is necessary to check overall business conditions so as to remove size-related forcible conditions that hinder businesses from entering the market and the conditions that intervene financially in market-oriented issues, while paying more attention to the training of human resources to meet market development demand," said Tran Thi Lan Anh, vice president of the Vietnam Chamber of Commerce and Industry (VCCI). At the meeting, Prime Minister Nguyen Xuan Phuc stressed the need to drastically reduce transport logistics costs, which would help to enhance the competitiveness of both businesses and the whole economy. He emphasised that the cost burden is the biggest barrier to Vietnamese companies at present, with the high logistic costs affecting the competitiveness of the economy. In that spirit, the PM asked the leaders of ministries and localities to be fully aware of the functions of the logistics industry, which are not only the delivery, reception, and freight of goods, but also include warehousing, storage, packaging, rotation, and handling of damaged goods. He asked participants to focus discussions on removing legal and policy barriers with the optimal goal of reducing transport costs for businesses. He stressed the need for specific action programmes to improve competitiveness and develop logistics services in each sector, especially transport, industry, and trade. He also called for five major task groups, including the finalisation of policies on logistics services, the completion of logistics infrastructure, the enhancement of firms capabilities and service quality, the development of the logistics services market, and the enhancement of the quality of human resources. Additionally, logistics companies should proactively apply modern science and technology in order to improve competitiveness, increase the quality of services, and reduce service costs, PM Phuc suggested. Vinhomes' Imperia project in Haiphong GIC will purchase an ordinary shares and extend a debt-like instrument to the subsidiary of Vingroup namely Vinhomes, subject to the satisfaction of mandatory regulatory and other conditions. The combined value of the investment and debt instrument is approximately VND29.5 trillion, or $1.3 billion. GIC is a sovereign wealth fund of the Singaporean government. It invests in the unlisted public market and private equity with a focus on healthcare, operating infrastructure, as well as financial and business services, among others. GIC is one of the largest investment funds in Vietnam. It currently holds a 5 per cent stake in Masan Group, 5 per cent in VietJet, 0.7 per cent in Vinamilk, and 3.5 per cent in FPT. Its total holdings reach a total value of VND15 trillion ($658.6 million). Vinhomes currently has a charter capital of VND26.37 trillion ($1.16 billion) and submitted dossiers to list 2.6 billion shares on the Ho Chi Minh City Stock Exchange in early April. Meanwhile, Vingroup has the largest market capitalisation on the Vietnamese stock exchange with approximately $15 billion. Another subsidiary of Vingroup, Vincom Retail, listed on the Ho Chi Minh City Stock Exchange in November 2017 with the market capitalisation of $3.4 billion. The information that Hanoi will pilot QR code stores raised hopes that these stores will be more user-friendly than current vending machines or other convenience stores. Lien (Cau Giay district) said, It is necessary to open QR code stores in Hanoi, because payment via QR code is easier than other forms. For example, with payment via QR code, I never need to worry about how much cash I have on me or if the change is correct." Nguyen Hau (a tourist in Hanoi) told VIR, Young people like us value convenience and quick service above all, so I think applying QR code in convenience stores is a good choice. Inconvenient vending machines A vending machine at Hoan Kiem Lake In September 2016, a series of vending machines were installed around Hanois Hoan Kiem Lake and West Lake, and these self-service vending machines quickly attracted the attention of locals and tourists alike. One problem with these vending machines is that they do not give change to customers, which is a significant drawback. Thu Nga (Cau Giay district) said that she put VND10,000 into a machine to buy a VND5,000 bottle of water, but the machine did not give her change, so she had to buy another drink. Additionally, tourists also complained that the vending machines are really selective about notes and refuse any bill with the smallest warping. My bills are not flat because I keep them in my folded wallet, so the vending machines keep throwing them back, said Hang, a tourist in Hanoi. Will QR code stores become popular in Hanoi? The QR code convenience store in Ho Chi Minh City According to the General Statistics Office, the number of people using QR codes for payment in 2017 was only five million out of a total population of over 90 million people. The chain of self-service stores will run under the online-to-offline (O2O) form, use QR codes for payment, and use e-logistics for delivery. However, as only a relatively few consumers are familiar with QR codes, it is questionale whether these stores will become popular. To perform payments via QR codes, consumers smartphones need Internet connection, so in case of low 3G/4G data or low Wi-Fi connection, consumer will not be able to pay. Thien Thanh (a tourist from Ho Chi Minh City) also told VIR, I think the convenience stores will not be attractive to many people because only a few people know about QR codes. I find barcode payments more convenient." Regarding the first QR code store named Toromart in Ho Chi Minh City, despite its success in attracting a large number of young people, it has not been highly appreciated mainly due to the lack of diversity in the goods on offer. The account zyzy1908 shared on a forum of Tite.vn, In general, these kinds of stores need to be more upgraded to become really popular, because after all, people are more interested in goods than in forms of payment. English Norwegian At a meeting held on 17 April 2018, the board of directors of SalMar ASA has reviewed and approved the final year-end financial statements for 2017. Final accounts and proposed dividend of NOK 19.0 per share are not altered from preliminary figures published on 15 February 2018. Should the AGM resolve to pay a dividend, shares in SalMar ASA will be traded ex-dividend of NOK 19 per share from 6 June 2018. An electronic version of the final accounts will be published through Oslo stock exchange and www.salmar.no.at the end of April. The annual general meeting is scheduled to Tuesday 5 June 2018 at the company's headquarters at Frya. The notice, annual report and agenda with attachments will be published through Oslo stock exchange and www.salmar.no. This information is subject of the disclosure requirements pursuant to section 5-12 of the Norwegian Securities Trading Act. Isodiol has signed the definitive agreement on industry leading CBD patents and strategic assets and announces international expansion with Scythian Biosciences Corp and Liberty Health Sciences Inc along with strategic investment led by the Serruya Private Equity Group. VANCOUVER, B.C., April 17, 2018 (GLOBE NEWSWIRE) -- Isodiol International Inc. (CSE:ISOL) (OTC:ISOLF) (FSE:LB6A.F) (the Company or Isodiol), a global Bioactive CBD innovator specializing in the development of pharmaceutical and wellness products, is pleased to announce that the Company has finalized the definitive agreement and has closed upon the acquisition of strategic global assets. With the closing of this transaction, the Company has expanded its International Management Team and commenced development on a new state-of-the art processing facility in China for the extraction of cannabinoids and terpenes from organic certified hemp. The Company has purchased the following strategic assets: BSPG Laboratories Limited (BSPGL-UK): organized in the United Kingdom, BSPGL-UKs business includes, but is not limited to, an operating facility that refines the CBD molecule to a purity of >99.5%, is THC-Free and highly bioactive. Isodiol has acquired 100% of BSPGL-UK. Total consideration for BSPGL-UK was $13mm USD with $4.5mm USD having already been paid and an additional $8.5mm USD being paid over the next 16 months. Additional milestone payments of $25mm USD in stock will be made upon BSPG Laboratories Ltd. receiving Government approval for an Active Pharmaceutical Ingredient (API), which the Company believes is forthcoming and will provide the platform for which its isolate can be sold to pharmaceutical companies throughout the world for clinical and pharmaceutical use and could substantially increase the global revenue for the Company. Purodiol Do Brasil Ltda (PUR-Brazil): organized in Brazil, PUR-Brazil supplies Purodiol pharmaceutical products under ANVISA regulations to patients in Brazil and is currently involved in multiple clinical studies and trials. Isodiol has acquired 99% of PUR-Brazil, which provides an immediate boost to its revenue and substantially expands its customer base in South America. Total consideration for PUR Brazil was $2mm USD in cash and $3mm USD in common stock. Three Pivotal Processing Patents from Hankang (Yunnan) Biotech Co., Ltd. (HBTC-China): Organized in China, HBTC-China extracts CBD that is used for R&D and commercial purposes. HBTC-China has successfully developed and patented a sophisticated industrial production process to extract CBD from hemp. The Company has purchased these three patents for processing and extracting CBD from HBTC-China and has also secured an exclusive off-take agreement for 100% of their CBD production, currently operating at 1.5 metric-tons daily. Total consideration for the acquisition of the three patents and the 100% off-take agreement is $500,000 USD in cash. Along with the purchase of these patents, the Company has commenced development on a new state-of-the-art processing facility in Yunnan, China that will have the ability to process over 15 metric-tons of hemp biomass daily for the extraction of cannabinoids and terpenes for use in medical, nutraceutical, food and cosmetic industries utilizing these technologies. The company believes this to be the highest capacity processing facility for CBD isolate in the world and is expected to be completed by Q1 2019. This innovative facility requires a capital investment for construction that is budgeted at $5mm USD and equipment costs that is budgeted at $7.5mm USD. With the commencement of the new state-of-the-art facility, the company is proud to announce that general manager of HBTC-China, Mr. Pan Zongbing, is joining the company as the Vice President of R&D for Isodiol International, and as the Chief Operating Officer (COO) of Isodiol's wholly owned subsidiary, Iso Labs. Mr. Zongbing has studied the biological extraction of CBD from industrial hemp for over 10 years. He has successfully researched and developed the CBD industrial production process and his industrialized mass production technology and equipment is well known around the globe. With Mr. Zongbing, the company is excited to take the next steps in helping the world understand the benefits of CBD for the human body. These transactions mark major milestones for Isodiol. The acquisitions ensure the Company has a continued source of CBD and scalability of production as our international expansion continues to generate additional market demand for our products. The addition of the intellectual property and likelihood of obtaining an Approved Active Pharmaceutical Ingredient designation will ensure the Company holds its position as the world's leading purveyor of CBD, said CEO of Isodiol, Marcos Agramont. Through this new facility and the industrial-sized, patented extraction methodologies, we will significantly increase our production output of high-purity, bioactive cannabinoids that can be used in pharmaceutical applications. Isodiol has also closed a strategic investment for $10,000,000 led by the Serruya Private Equity Group, Scythian Biosciences Corp (Scythian) and Liberty Health Sciences, Inc. (Liberty) at $.73 with a full 3-year warrant at $1.00. This strategic financing will be allocated towards international expansion and the development of additional manufacturing facilities. The company is also pleased to announce the continuation of its international expansion in Latin American with Scythian for distribution in Argentina, Jamaica, and Columbia. Scythian has made significant in-roads with the Argentinian government with supply agreements and plans to further that relationship in the CBD industry with this collaboration. The Company will further expand its plans for Jamaica and Columbia in the coming weeks. In addition, Isodiol announces a strategic distribution partnership for Florida and Massachusetts with Liberty Health Sciences Inc. for Isodiol branded products within the medical dispensary market. This partnership will further expand Isodiols reach within two key US states, with the possibility of further expansion. These two distribution channels further expand the marketplace for Isodiol and we are excited that both of these companies share similar values in wanting to bring health and wellness to those people within the market they serve, said Agramont. The previously announced agreement with BSPG-Hong Kong has been canceled. All stock issuances are subject to 36 month escrow per CSE guidelines. For more information on Isodiol, please visit www.isodiol.com About Isodiol International Inc. Isodiol International Inc. is the market leader in pharmaceutical grade phytochemical compounds and the industry leader in the manufacturing and development of CBD consumer products. Isodiol is the pioneer of many firsts for the cannabis industry including commercialization of 99%+ pure, bioactive pharmaceutical grade cannabinoids, micro-encapsulations, and nanotechnology for the highest quality consumable and topical skin care products. Isodiols growth strategy includes the development of over-the-counter and pharmaceutical drugs, expanding its phytoceutical portfolio and will aggressively continue international expansion into Latin America, Asia and Europe. Join Us On Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/isodiol/ Twitter: @isodiol ON BEHALF OF THE BOARD Marcos Agramont, CEO & Director INVESTOR RELATIONS: Ir@isodiol.com www.isodiol.com Forward-Looking Information: This news release contains "forward-looking information" within the meaning of applicable securities laws relating to statements regarding the Company's business, products and future the Companys business, its product offerings and plans for sales and marketing. Although the Company believes that the expectations reflected in the forward-looking information are reasonable, there can be no assurance that such expectations will prove to be correct. Readers are cautioned to not place undue reliance on forward-looking information. Such forward looking statements are subject to risks and uncertainties that may cause actual results, performance and developments to differ materially from those contemplated by these statements depending on, among other things, the risks that the Company's products and plan will vary from those stated in this news release and the Company may not be able to carry out its business plans as expected. Except as required by law, the Company expressly disclaims any obligation, and does not intend, to update any forward-looking statements or forward-looking information in this news release. Although the Company believes that the expectations reflected in the forward-looking information are reasonable, there can be no assurance that such expectations will prove to be correct and makes no reference to profitability based on sales reported. The statements in this news release are made as of the date of this release. The CSE has not reviewed, approved or disapproved the content of this press release. Funeral Announcements A daily list of current funeral annoucements as heard on KXRA 1490 AM/100.3 FM News Updates The daily news, sports, and events delivered daily from Voice of Alexandria. Sports Update This current sports headlines delivered daily from Voice of Alexandria. Upcoming Events This email is the events of the area delivered daily from Voice of Alexandria. Breaking News The big news. Sent only as it happens. (Alexandria, MN) The Douglas County Commissioners approved a personnel policy revolving around Government Data inquiries Tuesday morning. The original draft contained language that caused a stir in the media because of its restrictive nature; telling employees to refrain from giving out information or conducting interviews with the media, unless approved by a department head along with a form that needed to be filled out and signed. The personnel policy was re-written to coincide more with the states data practices law. County Attorney Chad Larson agreed the re-write was necessary. Each of the county commissioners spoke out during the comment period. Commissioner Jerry Rapp defended the original draft and felt the Echo Press editorial was written crazy. In defense of his article Echo Press writer Al Edenloff told the commissioners that if anything was crazily written, it was the first draft of the policy. Publisher for the Echo Press, Jody Hanson, agrees. In the end all five commissioners voted in favor of the revised policy. For the full report on the county commissioners, return back to this site Wednesday for Tom Chorleys County Commissioner report. Revised personnel policy which was approved by the DC Board: Douglas County Personnel Policy - Government Data Inquires "When inquiries/interviews are requested regarding release of government data* employees are to refer them to their Responsible Authority**, Department Head, or the County Coordinator unless they are delegated to speak on that subject without divulging not-public data***. Please refer to the Douglas County Data Practices Policy. Minnesota Data Practice (Chapter 13) Definitions: *Government data: Everything government creates, collects, maintains that is recorded in some type of format. **Responsible authority: Person in a government entity who ultimately is responsible for matters relating to the Data Practices Act. ***Not-public data: Any type of government data that are not available to the public: private, confidential, nonpublic, protected nonpublic." The original policy (verbatim) from 4-12-18 agenda packet: "Employees must refrain from giving out information or conducting interview with the media about Douglas County or their work for the Douglas County, unless given written authorization to do so by their Department Head. Therefore, if you received inquiries from the media, such as for newspapers, magazines, radio or television, refer the inquirer to your Department Head or the County Coordinator. Management will issue a data request form, collect the data request, and respond, as needed." Here's video of the discussion of the policy prior to the vote. NEW YORK, NY, April 17, 2018 (GLOBE NEWSWIRE) -- Strategic Coin, a leading crypto-research and advisory company, today published Part Three: PRINCE NEO of the companys five-part, in-depth research series entitled: Chronicles of Ethereum. Part One of Chronicles of Ethereum, titled: "The Lion, the Witch, and the Protocol, " introduced the mastermind behind Ethereum. Published on March 20, Part Two, Return to Classic, delved into Ethereums differences with Ethereum Classic. Today, PRINCE NEO is available on the Strategic Coin website . PRINCE NEO examines the evolution of Chinas first public blockchain. The NEO platform, started by Da Hongfei, was designed to satisfy the needs of existing enterprises and cater to Chinese government regulators and authorities, a very different approach when compared to Ethereums focus empowering decentralized communities of individuals. The publication concludes with a table comparing the two technologies based on ten different key criteria. The study also examines how NEO strategically entrenched itself as a business-friendly blockchain poised to thrive in the worlds largest blockchain restricted population. Strategic Coins Director of Research, Sam Lee, stated: Todays publication of PRINCE NEO is perfectly timed to offer insights into blockchain as it evolves in The Peoples Republic of China. Recent events in China underscore the power and controversies surrounding blockchain, which will face challenges and regulations during its adaptation. As the worlds second largest economy, according to the most recent figures from the World Bank, China will have a tremendous impact on the application of blockchain. We hope readers will download our publication and become more educated about NEO, which is attempting to position itself as the de facto Chinese public blockchain in a market handling approximately $1 trillion in digital payment transactions annually. About STRATEGIC COIN: Strategic Coin is a premier provider of market and sector research, strategic consulting, and token launch services to the blockchain industry. Its Viability and Strategic Assessment (VISTA) Reports are backed by comprehensive industry, management, and project due diligence. VISTA reports aim to be the most authoritative and thoroughly vetted view on a projects short and long-term potential. Strategic Coins executive team leverages decades of experience in investment banking and venture capital, with expertise in research and nurturing startups to successful exits. Strategic Coins clients range from established corporations to leading startup projects, bridging the gap between traditional business and the emerging world of cryptofinance. For more information, visit https://StrategicCoin.com . HOUSTON, April 17, 2018 (GLOBE NEWSWIRE) -- McDermott International, Inc. (McDermott) (NYSE:MDR) today announced that Institutional Shareholder Services Inc. (ISS), a leading independent proxy advisory firm, has recommended that McDermott stockholders vote FOR each of the proposals relating to the combination with CB&I (NYSE:CBI). Commenting on the report, David Dickson, Chief Executive Officer of McDermott, said, We are pleased that ISS recognizes the significant value our transformational combination with CB&I will bring to McDermott stockholders. Together, McDermott and CB&I will span the entire value chain from concept to commissioning to deliver compelling value, enhanced competitiveness and more consistent, predictable performance through market cycles. We strongly urge all McDermott stockholders to follow the recommendation of ISS and support the highly complementary combination. In its report dated April 17, 2018, ISS states the following: The industrial logic of the deal is solid. The merger will help McDermott diversify geographically, adding exposure to the US market, and diversify the company's client base. Also, the added scale combined with CBI capabilities in onshore projects should provide cost and revenue synergy opportunities for the combined company.i On balance, support for this deal is recommended. The strategic rationale for the combination is sound, the valuation paid appears to be reasonable, offering upside potential to MDR shareholders, and managements proven track record in turning around unprofitable projects suggests that execution should not be an issue.i McDermotts special meeting of stockholders is scheduled to be held on May 2, 2018. McDermott encourages its stockholders of record at the close of business on April 4, 2018 to vote FOR each of the proposals relating to the combination. Stockholders who have any questions or need assistance voting their shares should contact McDermotts proxy solicitor, MacKenzie Partners, Inc., toll free at (800) 322-2885. The combination is expected to close in the second quarter of 2018. It remains subject to customary conditions, including approval by McDermotts and CB&Is stockholders and other closing conditions. About McDermott McDermott is a leading provider of integrated engineering, procurement, construction and installation (EPCI), front-end engineering and design (FEED) and module fabrication services for upstream field developments worldwide. McDermott delivers fixed and floating production facilities, pipelines, installations and subsea systems from concept to commissioning for complex Offshore and Subsea oil and gas projects to help oil companies safely produce and transport hydrocarbons. McDermotts customers include national and major energy companies. Operating in approximately 20 countries across the world, McDermotts locally focused and globally integrated resources include approximately 11,800 employees, a diversified fleet of specialty marine construction vessels, fabrication facilities and engineering offices. McDermott is renowned for its extensive knowledge and experience, technological advancements, performance records, superior safety and commitment to deliver. McDermott has served the energy industry since 1923, and shares of its common stock are listed on the New York Stock Exchange. As used in this press release, McDermott includes McDermott International, Inc. and its subsidiaries and affiliates. To learn more, visit our website at www.mcdermott.com. Forward-Looking Statements In accordance with the Safe Harbor provisions of the Private Securities Litigation Reform Act of 1995, McDermott cautions that statements in this communication which are forward-looking, and provide other than historical information, involve risks, contingencies and uncertainties that may impact actual results of operations of McDermott, including after the proposed business combination with CB&I. These forward-looking statements include, among other things, statements about the effects of the proposed combination, including delivering compelling value, making the combined business more competitive and enabling more consistent, predictable performance through market cycles, as well as being a transformational combination bringing significant value to McDermotts stockholders. Although we believe that the expectations reflected in those forward-looking statements are reasonable, we can give no assurance that those expectations will prove to have been correct. Those statements are made by using various underlying assumptions and are subject to numerous risks, contingencies and uncertainties, including, among others: the ability of McDermott and CB&I to obtain the shareholder approvals necessary to complete the proposed combination on the anticipated timeline or at all; the risk that a condition to the closing of the proposed combination may not be satisfied, or that the proposed combination may fail to close, including as the result of any inability to obtain the financing for the combination; the outcome of any legal proceedings, regulatory proceedings or enforcement matters that may be instituted relating to the proposed combination; the costs incurred to consummate the proposed combination; the possibility that the expected synergies from the proposed combination will not be realized, or will not be realized within the expected time period; difficulties related to the integration of the two companies; the credit ratings of the combined businesses following the proposed combination; disruption from the proposed combination making it more difficult to maintain relationships with customers, employees, regulators or suppliers; the diversion of management time and attention on the proposed combination; adverse changes in the markets in which McDermott and CB&I operate or credit markets; the inability of McDermott or CB&I to execute on contracts in backlog successfully; changes in project design or schedules; the availability of qualified personnel; changes in the terms, scope or timing of contracts; contract cancellations; change orders and other modifications and actions by customers and other business counterparties of McDermott and CB&I; changes in industry norms; and adverse outcomes in legal or other dispute resolution proceedings. If one or more of these risks materialize, or if underlying assumptions prove incorrect, actual results may vary materially from those expected. You should not place undue reliance on forward-looking statements. For a more complete discussion of these and other risk factors, please see each of McDermott's and CB&I's annual and quarterly filings with the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission (the "SEC"), including their respective annual reports on Form 10-K for the year ended December 31, 2017. This communication reflects the views of McDermott's management as of the date hereof. Except to the extent required by applicable law, McDermott undertakes no obligation to update or revise any forward-looking statement. Additional Information and Where to Find It This communication does not constitute an offer to sell or the solicitation of an offer to buy any securities or a solicitation of any proxy, vote or approval with respect to the proposed transactions or otherwise, nor shall there be any sale of securities in any jurisdiction in which such offer, solicitation or sale would be unlawful prior to registration or qualification under the securities laws of any such jurisdiction. In connection with the proposed transactions, McDermott International, Inc. ("McDermott") has filed a Registration Statement on Form S-4 (the Registration Statement) with the SEC that includes (1) a joint proxy statement of McDermott and Chicago Bridge & Iron Company N.V. ("CB&I"), which also constitutes a prospectus of McDermott and (2) an offering prospectus of McDermott Technology, B.V. in connection with McDermott Technology, B.V.'s offer to acquire CB&I shares. The Registration Statement was declared effective by the SEC on March 29, 2018. McDermott and CB&I have mailed the definitive joint proxy statement/prospectus to stockholders of McDermott and shareholders of CB&I. In addition, McDermott and McDermott Technology, B.V. have filed a Tender Offer Statement on Schedule TO-T (the "Schedule TO") with the SEC and CB&I has filed a Solicitation/Recommendation Statement on Schedule 14D-9 (the "Schedule 14D-9") with respect to the exchange offer. The solicitation and offer to purchase shares of CB&I's common stock is only being made pursuant to the Schedule TO and related offer to purchase. This material is not a substitute for the joint proxy statement/prospectus, the Schedule TO, the Schedule 14D-9 or the Registration Statement or for any other document that McDermott or CB&I may file with the SEC and send to McDermott's and/or CB&I's shareholders in connection with the proposed transactions. BEFORE MAKING ANY VOTING OR INVESTMENT DECISION OR DECISION WITH RESPECT TO THE EXCHANGE OFFER, WE URGE INVESTORS OF CB&I AND MCDERMOTT TO READ THE REGISTRATION STATEMENT, JOINT PROXY STATEMENT/PROSPECTUS, SCHEDULE TO (INCLUDING THE OFFER TO PURCHASE, RELATED LETTER OF TRANSMITTAL AND OTHER OFFER DOCUMENTS) AND SCHEDULE 14D-9, AS EACH MAY BE AMENDED OR SUPPLEMENTED FROM TIME TO TIME, AND OTHER RELEVANT DOCUMENTS FILED BY MCDERMOTT AND CB&I WITH THE SEC CAREFULLY BECAUSE THEY WILL CONTAIN IMPORTANT INFORMATION ABOUT MCDERMOTT, CB&I AND THE PROPOSED TRANSACTIONS. Investors are able to obtain free copies of the Registration Statement, joint proxy statement/prospectus, Schedule TO and Schedule 14D-9, as each may be amended from time to time, and other relevant documents filed by McDermott and CB&I with the SEC at http://www.sec.gov, the SEC's website, or free of charge from McDermott's website (http://www.mcdermott.com) under the tab, "Investors" and under the heading "Financial Information" or by contacting McDermott's Investor Relations Department at (281) 870-5147. These documents are also available free of charge from CB&I's website (http://www.cbi.com) under the tab "Investors" and under the heading "SEC Filings" or by contacting CB&I's Investor Relations Department at (832) 513-1068. Participants in Proxy Solicitation McDermott, CB&I and their respective directors and certain of their executive officers and employees may be deemed, under SEC rules, to be participants in the solicitation of proxies from McDermott's and CB&I's shareholders in connection with the proposed transactions. Information regarding the officers and directors of McDermott is included in its annual report on Form 10-K for the year ended December 31, 2017, filed with the SEC on February 21, 2018, as amended by its annual report on Form 10-K/A filed with the SEC on March 8, 2018. Information regarding the officers and directors of CB&I is included in its annual report on Form 10-K for the year ended December 31, 2017, filed with the SEC on February 21, 2018, as amended by its annual report on Form 10-K/A filed with the SEC on March 22, 2018. Additional information regarding the persons who may be deemed participants and their interests is set forth in the Registration Statement and joint proxy statement/prospectus and other materials filed with the SEC in connection with the proposed transactions. Free copies of these documents may be obtained as described in the paragraphs above. McDermott Contacts Ed Memi Manager, Communications +1 (281) 870-5943 ememi@mcdermott.com Finsbury Winnie Lerner / Nicholas Leasure +1 (646) 805-2855 Investors Ty Lawrence Vice President, Investor Relations +1 (281) 870-5147 tplawrence@mcdermott.com MacKenzie Partners Bob Marese / John Bryan +1 (800) 322-2885 ___________________________ i Permission to use quotations neither sought nor obtained. Over the last few weeks, and for the first time in their history, the United States and Russia have mutually threatened one another with a World War. The totally disproportionate character of the crisis in terms of the subject of the dispute demonstrates that what is at stake here today no longer has any connection with what has been happening in the Greater Middle East since 2001, but exclusively with an attempt to maintain the current World Order. After the gigantic massacre of millions of people over seventeen years, from Afghanistan to Libya, the manner in which about fifty people in East Ghouta (Syria) are said to have died seems almost ridiculous. And yet on 14 April, this was the pretext chosen by Washington, Paris and London to launch a three-party aerial attack. Lets avoid getting distracted by the circumstances, and get straight to the heart of the matter the Western powers are attempting to maintain their domination over the rest of the world, while Russia and China are breaking free of it. The President of the United States, Donald Trump, did not hesitate to tweet to Russia that he was going to fire missiles of a new generation on its soldiers in Syria. The Russian ambassador, Alexander Zasypkine, immediately responded that these missiles would be intercepted and the planes and ships that fired them would be destroyed. The Turkish Prime Minister, Binali Yldrm, expressed his astonishment at this street brawl and called the participants to reason. All of the actors then began to back-pedal. The naval group of the aircraft carrier USS Harry S. Truman left its base in Norfolk, apparently to take position facing Syria. It will take several weeks before it is operational. The question of the confrontation between the United States and Russia, in other words the Third World War, will then be raised again. It goes without saying that the preparation of this naval unit and its 6,500 soldiers began well before the affair of the Ghouta which serves as a pretext for its deployment. The question is therefore to understand whether, by firing a deluge of missiles on a few abandoned buildings, Washington and its allies have postponed the confrontation in order to occupy a more efficient position, or, on the contrary, have given up on direct warfare and are preparing for a new form of conflict. The result of the bombing on 14 April is astonishing - 103 missiles are said to have been fired by the Allies. 71 of these are said to have been destroyed in flight by Syria. A decommissioned military laboratory was apparently destroyed, and the installations of two aerodromes were damaged. This deluge of fire allegedly wounded only three people and killed none. If Donald Trump, Emmanuel Macron and Theresa May had intended to show their power, they in fact showed themselves to be powerless. Seen from Damascus, the message was clear - Syria is in the process of freeing itself from the jihadists, but will not enjoy peace for all that, and will not be able to count on any help from the West for its reconstruction. The Allies pretend that Syria kept stocks of chemical weapons, despite its membership of the Convention which prohibits them. They claim that they targeted only areas linked to these weapons. And yet, for example, they fired four missiles at the international commercial airport in Damascus, an exclusively civilian target. Happily, the Syrian Arab Army managed to intercept them all. In total, the Syrian Arab Army, which was only in possession of S-125s, S-200s, Buks, Kvadrats and Osas, managed, single-handed, to shoot down two thirds of the Western projectiles. Finally, despite themselves, the Allies had just fought the first battle of their history in which they killed not one enemy. France, which tested its new naval Cruise missile for the first time in a combat situation, was unable to boast of a success to its potential clients. Of course, the Allies limited themselves. They carefully avoided hitting Russian or Iranian targets, and these two states did not participate in the operation. Nonetheless, the Western armada no longer has the capacity to impose its will on middle powers as long as they are protected by Russia. Everyone has understood that, as from now : the United States and Russia just as in earlier times the USA and the USSR will refrain from any direct confrontation in order to avoid nuclear war ; and that the middle powers allied with Russia will not be significantly damaged by the West. The only military superiority possessed by Washington, London and Paris resides in their capacity to manipulate armed groups and use them as proxies. By bringing France and the United Kingdom into the fray, President Trump has forced them to accept the reality they were refusing to see. This grand show, then, was no more than a futile gesture. After a quarter of a century of unilateral domination by the West, its three main military powers have just been down-graded. The world has returned to a bipolar situation like that of the Cold War, although the new rules still need to be defined. The Third World War will have to wait. On 14 April 2018 the US Representative to the UN, Nikki Haley declared that the United States refuses to initiate dialogue and to enter into discussions with President Bashar al-Assad. Contradicting this assertion, the Lebanese newspaper Al-Akhbar reveals that three high level meetings took place between the two States. However, the fourth meeting, scheduled in March, was cancelled by Syria on the grounds that it would serve no purpose so long as Washington did not reconceive its policy. OSHAWA, Ontario, April 17, 2018 (GLOBE NEWSWIRE) -- Durham College (DC) and Emblem Corp. (TSXV:EMC) (EMC.WT) (Emblem), on behalf of its health and education subsidiary GrowWise Health Limited (GrowWise), are partnering to develop and launch the Cannabis Industry Specialization certificate in fall 2018. The first of its kind in Ontario, the part-time studies program will be delivered both in class and online via simulcast. It is designed to prepare professionals with business experience or who have already completed a diploma or degree in business to pursue a career in the rapidly growing cannabis sector. The long-term success of Canadas cannabis industry will depend strongly on there being a skilled workforce to support and advance it, said Adam Saperia, president, GrowWise. Together, GrowWise and Durham College are ensuring that the right education and training are available to those who are interested in entering this exciting field. Other industry leaders are joining GrowWise in contributing expertise to the development of the programs curriculum, including Ample Organics, Cannabis at Work, Molecular Science Corp., and CannaInvestor Magazine. Building on the success of the colleges Medical Cannabis Fundamentals for Business Professionals course, the new certificate will include a course focused on medical cannabis fundamentals and expand the scope of students learning with courses focused on areas such as cannabis in the recreational/adult-use market, cannabis regulatory affairs and ethics, importing and exporting cannabis and cannabis business operations. Students who have already successfully completed DCs two-day, introductory medical cannabis course will be eligible to receive academic credit towards earning their certificate. With Canada already established as a global leader in medical cannabis and soon to become only the second country in the world to legalize adult recreational use on a national level, the need for skilled business professionals will continue to grow dramatically, said Debbie Johnston, dean of DCs School of Continuing Education, which will deliver the program. While other programs focus on the production side of the industry, Durham College is leading the way in preparing professionals interested in management and non-horticultural roles. Graduates of the Cannabis Industry Specialization certificate will make it easier for employers to recognize the right candidates for their jobs. The new program marks the latest development in DCs work with GrowWise to establish the college as a leader in cannabis-related post-secondary education. The Medical Cannabis Fundamentals for Business Professionals course launched in November 2017 and is now offered on a monthly basis through in-class and interactive simulcast delivery. About Durham College At Durham College (DC), the student experience comes first. With campuses in Oshawa and Whitby and a learning site in Pickering, the college offers more than 12,000 full-time post-secondary and apprenticeship students access to more than 140 full-time and eight apprenticeship programs in a number of different disciplines, enabling them to develop the skills required to meet the demands of todays job market. The college is also set to launch its first four-year degree program, the Honours Bachelor of Health Care Technology Management, in September 2018. The Oshawa campus features the state-of-the art Student Services building and will soon feature the Centre for Collaborative Education, a legacy project tied to DCs 50th anniversary in 2017. The new facility will bring together local, Indigenous and global communities, providing a new home for several of the colleges most innovative and ground-breaking programs. The Whitby campus features the award-winning W. Galen Weston Centre for Food, which includes Bistro 67, a full-service, teaching-inspired restaurant, and Pantry, a retail store featuring food prepared by students in the colleges culinary programs. For more information, visit www.durhamcollege.ca or call 905.721.2000. About GrowWise Health GrowWise Health, a subsidiary of Emblem Corp., provides patients and healthcare providers with personalized education to make informed choices about medical cannabis treatments. With education centres across Ontario and British Columbia, prospective patients can learn more at www.growwisehealth.com. About Emblem Emblem Corp., through its wholly-owned subsidiary Emblem Cannabis Corporation, is a fully integrated licensed producer and distributor of medical cannabis and cannabis derivatives in Canada under the ACMPR (Access to Cannabis for Medical Purposes Regulations). Led by a team of cannabis experts and former health care and pharma executives, it has three distinct verticals cannabis production, patient education centers, and pharmaceutical dosage form development. Emblem trades under the ticker symbol EMC on the TSX Venture Exchange. For further information contact: Melissa McLean Ethan Karayannopoulos Communications and Marketing Investor Relations Durham College Emblem Corp. 905.721.2000 ext. 2952 647.748.9696 melissa.mclean@durhamcollege.ca ethank@emblemcorp.com Forward-looking statements This press release contains certain forward-looking information and forward-looking statements within the meaning of applicable Canadian securities laws (collectively, "forward-looking statements"). Forward-looking statements are often, but not always, identified by the use of words such as "anticipate", "believe", "plan", "potential", "intend", "may", "will", "should", or similar words suggesting future outcomes. Forward-looking statements are subject to certain risks and uncertainties that could cause actual events or outcomes to differ materially from those anticipated or implied by such forward-looking statements. These factors include changes in market and competition, governmental or regulatory developments and general economic conditions. The forward-looking statements contained in this document are made as at the date of this news release and Emblem does not undertake any obligation to update publicly or to revise any of the included forward-looking statements, whether as a result of new information, future events or otherwise, except as may be required by applicable securities laws. Neither the TSX Venture Exchange nor its Regulation Services Provider (as that term is defined in the policies of the TSX Venture Exchange) accepts responsibility for the adequacy or accuracy of this release. To motivate the 2003 war, the US accused Iraq of possessing weapons of mass destruction: Secretary of State Colin Powell presented to the UN a series of "evidences" that turned out to be false, as he himself had to admit in 2016. Similar "evidences" are now presented to motivate the attack on Syria by the United States, Britain and France. On 14 April, General Kenneth McKenzie, Joint Staff Director of the Pentagon, presented a report, accompanied by satellite photos, on the Barzah Research and Development Center in Damascus, calling it "the heart of the Syrian chemical weapons program". The Center, which was the main target, was attacked with 76 cruise missiles (57 Tomahawk launched from ships and submarines and 19 JASSM launched from aircraft). The target was destroyed, the general announced, bringing the Syrian chemical weapons program back for years". This time there is no need to wait thirteen years to confirm the falsity of the "evidence". A month before the attack, on March 13, the Organisation for the Prohibition of Chemical Weapons (OPCW) had officially announced the result of the second inspection, carried out at the Barzah Center in November 2017, and of the analysis of samples taken completed in February 2018: "The inspection team did not observe any activities inconsistent with obligations under the Convention" [1]. It is no coincidence that the Barzah Center was destroyed just before the OPCW inspectors arrived there for the third time. Syria, a member of the OPCW, completed chemical disarmament in 2014, while Israel, which does not adhere to the Chemical Weapons Convention, is not subject to any control. But this fact is neglected by the political-media apparatus, which instead accuses Syria of possessing and using chemical weapons. The Italian premier Gentiloni stated that Italy, while supporting "the limited and targeted action to strike the manufacture of chemical weapons", has not in any way taken part in it. The attack was actually agreed upon and planned within NATO. This is proved by the fact that, immediately after the attack, the North Atlantic Council was convened: the United States, Great Britain and France "briefed Allies on their joint military action in Syria overnight" and Allies officially expressed "their full support for this action" [2]. Premier Gentiloni also stated that "the logistical support that we provide above all to the US could not in any way result in the fact that from the Italian territory started direct actions aimed at hitting Syria". In fact, the attack on Syria from the Mediterranean was led by the US Naval Forces Europe, with headquarters in Naples-Capodichino, commanded by Admiral James Foggo, who at the same time commands the Allied Joint Force Command Naples with headquarters at Lago Patria (Naples). The war operation was supported by the US Naval Air Station Sigonella and the Niscemi station of the US Muos system of naval transmissions. As the radar tracks show, the US RQ-4 Global Hawk spy drones, taking off from Sigonella, played a key role in the attack on Syria, attack supported by air tankers to refuel the jet fighters. Italy therefore shares the responsibility for a war action that violates the most elementary norms of international law. It is not yet known what its consequences will be, but it is certain that it feeds the flames of war. Although premier Gentiloni assures that "it cannot be the beginning of an escalation". Education: Will Revolution Really Mean Evolution? There's an education revolution happening in Gibraltar. We keep hearing those words "education revolution" ad nauseam from politicians and people on social media and it's no secret that our schools are in DIRE need of an overhaul... a revolution. Bishop Fitzgerald for example, is an embarrassment to the community because of the state of disrepair it's in and the conditions the children and teachers are enduring. Without getting involved in the whole who has/who hasn't been consulted or if the choices made are what we need... Something caught my attention recently which left me a bit bemused and sorry to disappoint, this won't have anything to do with RED VS BLUE party politics or the ZONE 2 parking. At the Together Gibraltar Education debate (I'll link the video below if anyone is interested) last week, one of the panellists mentioned that in Gibraltar today, we're not offering COMPUTING as a subject at any level due to not having anyone available to teach it. Instead, we're still doing ICT as a subject... I finished education in Gibraltar around 2008 and I was doing ICT throughout GCSE and A-Levels and it never pushed me, inspired me or taught me anything I already didn't know. It was very basic knowledge of computers with the whole Microsoft Office package thrown in for good measure. Computing on the other hand is more geared towards Computer Science and will teach you more on how computers work, the engineering, how they process data, algorithms and will push you towards learning programming. In 2008 the gaming industry (for example) in Gibraltar was already well established here, the tech sector in that industry is a massive pillar which holds their business together. What makes me bemused is how in the education system, in the last 10/15 years there wasn't the foresight or forward planning to say: "Hey! This gaming industry (and the whole business industry today) has a massive computing industry wrapped around it, why don't we start offering Computing, Programming, Networks or any of the plethora of subjects that our kids can learn about, study and potentially land a future job on or even start a new company?" It's not like this whole thing of the internet, computers, servers etc... happened overnight and I'll use myself as an example... I continue to be a geek/techie at heart. Growing up, I enjoyed learning about computers, fixing them and tinkering with them, both from a hardware and software perspective and most of it, I taught myself from a young age on online forums and via trial and error. The education system in Gibraltar didn't teach me anything I didn't already know on computers. I wanted to learn the technicalities in computing growing up, I wanted to learn more about programming, web development etc... and the education system back then didn't really have the tools and resources to teach it. That was 10 years ago and that is exactly why I find it quite shocking that 10 years on, we're still in the same situation. How can we have not prepared or had the necessary tools and resources allocated to teach young students in the education system in the last 10 + years? Look at all the startup tech companies founded in the last 10 to 15 years, many of them, founded by young recently graduated individuals, most of them, studying such things as Computer Science from a young age, for example: Facebook, founder Mark Zuckerberg - Started Facebook in his dorm room whilst studying Computer Science. Instagram, founders Kevin Systrom & Mike Krieger - A programmer and Software Engineer who met whilst studying at Stanford University. Snapchat, CTO and Co-Founder Bobby Murphy - Studied Mathematical and Computational Science at Stanford. Twitter, co-founder and CEO Jack Dorsey - Computer programmer who came up with the idea of Twitter whilst studying at New York University. This list can go on and I've only used examples in social media though the same can apply to the inception of many large companies in different industries out there today. So back to education revolution... It's a subject I'm invested in because my own 7-year-old daughter and 5-year-old son, will undoubtedly be affected by whatever decisions we make today so I just hope this revolution does not simply consist of shiny, new, eye candy buildings and a lick of paint or two. I sincerely hope this education revolution encompasses a wide magnifying look at our education approach and what tools, resources and subjects (is it true that hairdressing will be one of the new available courses in the new comprehensive schools? Is THAT the flagship vocational course we want to showcase as our ticket for the future?) we can provide our youth (AND TEACHERS) today, that will benefit everyone in 10 years when they have finished full time education. https://facebook.com/story.php?story_fbid=859112044295338&id=747934725413071 When youre an old lady like me, says Isabella Rossellini, self-deprecating at 65, you just do what you want. So on a spring afternoon in a conference room at Vultures Manhattan offices, she takes a carton of eggs out of her handbag. Look at the beauty, she marvels. Different shapes, different sizes. How does the supermarket make eggs all the same and boring? She laughs, as she often does. Do they make the chickens assholes uniform? As odd a pairing as they may be, chickens and beauty are two of the actress and models main preoccupations these days. Her charming new book, My Chickens and I, details her poultry-raising efforts on her Long Island farm (thats where the eggs came from). And just this year, Rossellini returned after a 22-year absence as one of the faces of Lancome. Animals and natural splendor also factor into Link Link Circus, the theatrical lecture that the Italian native, currently working toward a masters degree in animal behavior and conservation at Hunter College, will perform at Manhattans Baryshnikov Arts Center in May. When I look at my life now, she says, Im glad to know that Im in control. It wasnt always this way. I know youre always studying, but whats the most fascinating thing youve learned recently? So much! Menno Schilthuizen, who Ill be with in discussion tonight at the New York Public Library, he talks about mosquitoes in the subways of London. The ones that live underground are their own species, and they have created different populations from station to station. They dont travel on the trains; they remain at their own stations. And the ones that live in stations that are outside reproduce during the spring like most animals, but because they are in the dark, the ones that live in the underground stations reproduce all the time. Theyve lost their reproductive cycles. This evolution is interesting, isnt it? Evolution is a subject you often touch on in your shows, Link Link Circus included. Do you think your work would be received differently by audiences who might not believe in the science on which its based? Ive asked myself that question. The research about how many Americans dont believe in evolution is very surprising. In Europe, everyone takes it as fact. Even the pope recognizes evolution. In America, you have the fundamentalists, in Europe we dont. Its amazing to me that people can dispute these things. Medicine is based on evolution. We change the flu vaccine every year because bugs evolve! So I dont know. Im sure I wont get invited to perform by any churches that teach creationism. Have you ever tried to learn about yourself in the systematic way youre learning about animals? Its not the same, but in the 70s in Italy, I was very much part of the feminist movement, and at that time in the country divorce was difficult, we didnt have abortion, we didnt have contraceptives. But what we did have is what was called a piccolo gruppo: a small group. A consciousness-raising group I think its called in America. It was unbelievably powerful. It was a group of maybe five or six women and it was a feminist practice. Anything you said there would remain a secret, so you would say everything, you would confess everything, and you could see the commonality of problems. For example, back then people never talked about what the vagina looked like. There were no images of vaginas. You couldnt just find vaginas on the internet like you can now. Yeah, thats not really a problem anymore. Do you remember there was a period when all these penises and vaginas would just show up in your email? Youd open an email you thought was from your children: Why have my children emailed me a huge erection? Somehow that stopped so why can they not stop the Russian hacking? [Laughs.] Anyway, I was too shy as a teenager to even ask my parents about sexual things. My mom talked about it a little because she was Swedish. Do you remember what she said? I thought it was a stork that brought children. I couldnt believe the rumor that a man has to penetrate a woman. I thought, My mom didnt do that. Thats impossible. But she admitted to it, and she drew it for me. Ingrid Bergman drew the birds and the bees for you? My mom drew little stick figures and showed me. Thats fantastic. This was a mama trying to explain this subject to her child. Youre trivializing it because thats what journalists do. Thats not what I do, but Im sorry if I came off that way. Okay, I know. I am sensitive to this because people always say, I cannot imagine Ingrid Bergman changing diapers. I cannot imagine Ingrid Bergman washing the dishes. This was my mother! I apologize. I didnt mean to be glib. Its okay. But my point is that the piccolo gruppo was a safe place to ask about these things. Because you wonder, Am I normal? Am I deformed? It was very special to address these doubts and torments with a small group instead of on social media or something. I dont find that as safe. I want to tell you another interesting thing. Please. Years ago, in Lancomes marketing research, they asked people to describe my home and if I was married or not and if I had children or not. The results were amazingly accurate. People correctly assumed that I was married and had children. They even asked people to describe how they thought my house was furnished, and people said, European-style with white sofas. Ive always had white sofas! Maybe people just think I look European, but we can read so much from faces. There was even a model I know who was not very happy modeling, and when they did marketing research on her, the people said, Shes just doing the job for the money. She doesnt really like it. How could people read this in her face? But they could. Is it a stretch to suggest a link between your old interest in Lancomes marketing research and your newer interest in studying animal behavior? Of course there is a connection also with acting. Animals, like people, emanate a lot of communication. So as an actress, for example, its not really what I say but how I say a line that gives it meaning. I can say I love you and mean I hate you, and I can say I hate you and mean I love you. And sometimes Ill read studies about the quack of an animal: Does quack mean something different from queek? But I think if the animal is like us, quack and queek could mean so many things. Let me ask you something: Is it fair to say that looking at animal behavior to suggest broader ways of interpreting human behavior is the implicit theme of Green Porno, Mammas, and Seduce Me? Mm-hmm. But humans have civilized ourselves. Were not wild animals. So ultimately, how useful is it to make connections between human behavior and animal behavior? I understand what youre asking. Let me explain: Mammas was based on studies done by feminist biologists, and one of them is Marlene Zuk. I asked her to be my consultant on the series. She was very alarmed at the idea that nobody had studied the maternal instinct but still everybody believes it exists. And also uses it as a way of understanding motherhood. Thats right. So Marlene would ask people, How does the maternal instinct demonstrate itself? And across the board, people thought that the maternal instinct means mothers are ready to do anything for their babies. So Marlene thought, Wow, if the definition of femininity is that were ready to sacrifice ourselves for others, we are fucked. If the nature of motherhood is that we are biologically determined to serve, then how can we women say, No, I want it all. Marlene was very disturbed by this, and started to look at all females in nature to see if, indeed, all mamas are ready to sacrifice. She didnt find it. The maternal instinct as characterized as females ready to sacrifice themselves for their babies is incorrect. I think this is a useful thing for people to know, isnt it? This is a question based on what I think is maybe a specious argument about human instincts, but what do you think about the idea thats been put out there, in response to #MeToo, that if were going to fully reckon with harmful male sexual behavior, we have to recognize that the male sex drive can be inherently brutal? Does that argument hold any water? Something about it feels like a cop-out to me. David, its going to be very difficult to understand the essence of female or male behavior. But it doesnt mean that because you can never find the answer you dont ask the question. I remember when I was a little girl in Italy not so little, a teenager men on the street would say, I like your tits! It was vulgar, it was normal, and it was done for different reasons. Maybe nature is one of those reasons but thats not an excuse. That crap always has the whiff of men performing for other men, doesnt it? Theyre doing it for other men, but also, in Italy, men thought deep down that women wanted it. Yes, they thought women were a little bit annoyed, but at the end they believe we went home and said, Well, he noticed me. Its so complicated. Im happy that we are talking about these issues because all women have been harassed, but it was never discussed before. We just lived with it. Even if you didnt have anything violent happen to you, there was always a way for a man to belittle you. This is changing, I think. Men have to see they cant behave in these ways. I have what is maybe an impertinent question, and please just tell me if you dont want to talk about it. But when I was doing my research about you in preparation for this interview, it struck me that, as far as I can tell, youve only ever referred to your own history with sexual violence once in a single sentence in your memoir, almost in passing. This is a difficult subject, but yes, you can ask. I couldnt help but wonder if the way that, in the wake of #MeToo, some women have found a degree of empowerment and solidarity in going public about their personal trauma has made you think that the value of sharing those experiences is more attainable than it was when your memoir was published two decades ago. I do understand the value for some people to talk about their experiences, but for me, there is no value. The person that raped me I was 15 or 16, he was a year older than I, why would I dig out this story 48 years later? What if people start to say, No, you have to say the persons name? I dont know what happened to him. He might be married. He might have children. I am a superstar in Italy, if I said who did this, I would destroy him. This man hurt me in the context of a culture that we are all trying to change. I dont think that pinpointing one person and destroying their life because they made a sin in the context of that culture I dont have the heart for it. What culture do you mean specifically? In machista Italy, a lot of men are told that if women say no, they mean yes. So date rape is sadly something that happens to a lot of women. You go out with a boy that you like and youre not ready to go to bed with them, but they read no as yes. But its a complicated thing, and I dont want to discuss it further. With this subject, you can get into a storm you dont want to get into. I understand. Yes, for me, the interesting thing is how the #MeToo movement has shown us all the subtle ways women can be diminished. Rape is a way of being hurt that everyone can recognize. There are other ways. It could be your boss saying, I like your skirt on you. Its a compliment, but it makes you feel diminished. Its like when people say to me, You look so good for your age. To hear other women express their stories and to show how devious some men can be that is what has been so helpful to see. Is it destabilizing when the subjects of those stories are men you know? Im thinking of Bruce Weber and Mario Batali. And also Mario Testino and my neighbor, Charlie Rose. It is difficult. Bruce Weber and I worked for 40 years together. My children worked with him. What can I say? I never experienced that aspect of him. Im not denying it happened. Of course it might have happened. The situation is very sad. The work Bruce did for Calvin Klein it was the first time many people were seeing gay men being beautiful and attractive in advertisements. Bruce made a contribution, and its sad if no one will remember this. But Im grateful that people who were victimized are speaking up because that is the only way to correct things. The important thing is for people to be healed. How far have the sexual politics of Hollywood come in the time since your mother was blacklisted? The balance was off. My mother committed adultery. She did wrong, but she was not allowed to come back to this country for eight years. She lost her income. She lost her reputation. She was considered evil. She was responsible for what she did adultery hurts people but the punishment didnt fit the crime. I dont know. These issues are too hot. Its amazing how high the stakes of every political conversation feel right now, isnt it? It doesnt matter if youre talking about sexual politics or President Trump or both. It was funny, I asked a friend of mine who is from South America, What do people [in South America] think of Trump? She said, Oh, we love him because he is like our corrupt politicians. They recognize him. They understand the nepotism. Have you met Trump? Once. It was in New York years ago. I was invited to a dinner at Tavern on the Green, and I was like, What? You sit me next to Trump? I mean, more recently I was surprised that some of my European friends thought of him as, I dont know, like Steve Jobs or Bill Gates. I said, No, no. Hes not like them. Even in New York he was considered not on the same level as those guys. He built buildings that werent very good. Theyre not the top of luxury. So anyway, I was at this dinner, I dont remember the occasion, and I was sitting next to him. My mama always said that when you are sitting at the table, you should speak a little bit to the person on the right, speak a little to the person on the left he did that to perfection for about ten minutes and then went to go work the room. I thought he was going to be obnoxious, but he was very courteous. It was a surprise. A minute ago, you mentioned how it can be hurtful when people say, You look good for your age. But what are some things that youve been surprised to find that you like about getting older? The most pleasantly surprising thing about getting older Im not saying its the same for everybody is that thanks to Lancome and a lot of other accounts, Im financially secure in my old age, so I can study and do my shows and my books. I follow only what Im interested in, and I want to share my wonderment and my amusement. Can I tell you, today Im talking at the New York Public Library, and I had to give a one-sentence biography for them to use. It is a good idea, isnt it? To sum up who you are so briefly? Yes, I thought about it and Im very proud to have come up with my sentence. What is it? Curiosity is my engine, but laughter is my fuel. Thats pretty good, no? It is! Im very pleased with my life because my other career was based on beauty, something I didnt have control of. You think Im beautiful? Youll pay me for this? Oh, thank you very much. How long will it last? Then it becomes, Oh, now youre old, get out of here. You are at the mercy of others. Just yesterday, I was reading a piece about what its like to go through life as a beautiful woman, and it made me curious about the ways in which you think being beautiful has, underneath the surface, affected what makes you you. So you have to define beauty for me to answer that question, and if you ask different people, they will give you different answers. But for women who have been a sexual object, like myself, beauty often has been an instrument for work. I recently read about a documentary made by the French actress Delphine Seyrig called Be Pretty and Shut Up. She asked actresses if they had any regrets, and the most interesting answers were from the successful older women because they said, I really wanted to be a director. Of course, I never knew how to get there. Directing was precluded to women, so the only job you could have to tell a story in film was to be an actress. That was also true for me. But that answer is about beauty as it relates to work. Put work aside. How do you think being famously beautiful affected your being-in-the-world? I wasnt looking in the mirror every day like the queen in Snow White: Mirror, mirror, on the wall This doesnt apply to you at all, but I have to admit Im thinking of the episode of 30 Rock where Jon Hamms character doesnt get that people are so nice to him because of how handsome he is. Do you think theres any unintentional distortion that happens? [Laughs.] I never looked at myself and thought, I am so beautiful. I dont think that any model or actress looks at themselves and says how beautiful they are. Instead, we just say how lucky we are that some people think we are beautiful and that being considered beautiful can open so many doors. Thats what I mean about beauty as an instrument. But Im not a sociologist of myself, so I cannot make a scientific study and say, Men react this way to me; women react that way to me. But the question of why would my face sell? This was interesting to me. You mean trying to figure out the psychology behind your modeling success? Yes. Im interested in the kind of research advertisers do to try to understand that mystery. I was on the cover of Vogue 23 times. Once, I had four covers in a row. I asked them why they did that and they said, Because you sell copies of the magazine. Of course, they dont have a clue why I sold copies. Lancome only had a little better idea. Their marketing research showed that I was not intimidating to women. There is a beauty that seems to attract more women than men and that is what I had. And you know, when I began modeling, the only responsibility was to be beautiful and anonymous. I was married [to Martin Scorsese] at the time I started, in the early 80s, and I had to remove my wedding ring in pictures because models werent supposed to have an identity beyond the photograph. You were the element for people to complete their fantasy of an ideal woman. I knew I was not an ideal woman, but I suggested something that allowed people to complete their fantasies. I read a quote you gave once where, in response to a question about how youd like to be remembered, you said youd prefer to be forgotten. Why is that? Im always surprised by this question of Americans: How would you like to be remembered? I dont understand it. Were destined to be forgotten. Given that they once fired you for getting older, were you ambivalent about working with Lancome again? I was gone for 22 years. Twenty-two years! So when they called me, I was very surprised. But I had a question: They used to say to me that a womans dream is to be younger, which is to condemn yourself to disappointment. But now Im older and the company is asking about me again? What happened to the womens dream? But Francoise Lehmann, the CEO, a woman in her 40s, said to me, There are other dreams now. I want to be inclusive. Im a woman. Im getting older and I dont count anymore. I cant accept that. This made sense to me. Thirty years ago, I had been wondering if my communication with a cosmetics company would be different if the executives were women. Now I saw that it was. And, also, this career, the one I have now, its mine. When youre young, you have to please your parents, please the professor, please the economy. When youre old, you have the courage to say what you want. Do you know what? What? Yesterday somebody invited me to a big fashion party, and I was able to answer, Im very touched that you invited me, but Im so tired of going to these parties. I have to say no. It was as simple as that. You have to be in your 60s to be able to answer like this. Before I would have said, Oh, I broke a leg. I cant go. That reminds me: In your memoir, you talk about your habit of what you call coloratura telling colorful, harmless lies. Nowadays its really difficult to use coloratura, isnt it? Because Trump does it so much. But coloratura is not really a lie. Its the imagination spilling over. You know, Isabel Allende is one of my favorite writers. She started as a journalist and she was going to interview Neruda, but he said he would give an interview only if he could read it back before it was published. So she wrote the interview, sent it to him, and Neruda said, You should be a novelist because you just wrote your fantasy of what happened. Coloratura is a little bit like this. I know you were a journalist very early in your career. Did that work inform what you did after? I wasnt really a journalist journalist. Id come to America and I didnt know English very well. So I took some courses to learn and eventually was hired by an Italian journalist. His name was Gianni Mina, he was like the Howard Cosell of Italy, and he needed an assistant for his segments in America because he didnt speak any English. I worked for him for three years. I covered all the Muhammad Ali fights. It was the best job you could do. I learned problem-solving, research. I would also do skits with a comedian named Renzo Arbore, who was then offered his own show. So I went to work with him, doing little funny stories from America. One of them was a very light interview with Martin Scorsese. Thats how I met Marty. We were talking about The Last Waltz and rock and roll, which was not something that was normally covered by the Italian news 40 years ago. Ive never actually heard you tell the full story of how you met Scorsese. So what happened was, I always wanted to see the interview subjects films or read their books before I did the interview. But somehow I didnt see The Last Waltz before I had to interview Marty. I went to the interview and told him the truth: There was a mess-up and Im gonna see the film tomorrow, but I have the interview today. And he said, Oh, you want to see it tonight? So we did the interview and then went to a screening, and hes a big film buff, so he would be saying, I did the tracking of the camera like that because of John Ford. Then he would see my eyes glaze over and hed say, You didnt see that film of John Ford? You have to see that film of John Ford. Ill do a screening for you. Come see it. Thats how we started. I think he liked me. I think so, too. Yeah, but it wasnt You can grab em by the pussy like the president! [Laughs.] Marty was so fascinating talking about film. I liked it very much. Martin Scorsese and David Lynch are so different as directors. Do you see commonalities between them that other people might not? Only that they have original brains. Originality amuses me, and originality is familiar to me because of my father. It makes me feel immediately like, Oh yeah, Ill help you. What do you want me to do? If someone has an interesting brain, to go with them is an interesting ride. Also, my mom used to say that she didnt choose acting, acting chose her it was a calling. David and Marty have a calling. They have to do what they do. Do you have a calling? I didnt think I had it, but now as an old lady I do. Youre not that old! [Laughs.] No, I know. But for a long time I saw myself as a person who makes herself available for someone elses art. If David Lynch was trying to capture a mood in Blue Velvet or Wild at Heart, I would embody it for him. Many times, an artist may not know exactly what they want until they see it. So you help them find it. You play it more dramatic, more comical, as if you dont realize something horrible is happening. Its like water, water, water. Fire! Fire! Fire! Is that what you say? I think people say hot or cold, but I know what you mean. Hot or cold, yes! Hot or cold, hot or cold, and when you play that game with artists, you also get to follow their thoughts and their creativity. I always saw myself as that person I would make myself available for the art of others. Was it satisfying to be a conduit for other artists? Thats part of being an actor. In Italian, an actor is also the word for an interpreter. I like to work with directors who have a strong signature and try to adhere to their vision. Also, maybe because I come from Europe, I like when the directors are auteurs. It might be less enjoyable if I were doing big commercial films where the vision is less personal. But those are not the movies Ive usually done. Are you generally happy with the acting roles youve gotten to play? I know you like comedy, and aside from things like Cousins and Death Becomes Her, its not something youve been able to do much of. Its true. Earlier in my career, because I had an accent, I was made to play the mysterious beautiful woman. That role is hard to play its a projection of who other characters see. What do I do with that? How do you act mysterious? But Im doing lots of very good work now that I love. Whats a piece of advice youve gotten about acting thats stayed with you? Bob Wilson was going to direct me in The Days Before, which was based on a book by Umberto Eco. I went to Bob and said, Ive always wanted to work with you, you know this, but I havent understood the script, and Ive read the book twice and I dont understand that. He said, Me neither. I said, You dont understand it? How do you direct it? And he said, If I understand it, why would I do it? I do the things I dont understand. I immediately understood what he meant. Trying to understand is to me the most wonderful part of being an actress. Wait you didnt tell me what your true calling is. To me the calling is about animals. I wanted to do it my whole life, but then modeling started, acting started, and I didnt do it. Now I do. Its funny, when I was a little girl and had my little dog and it seemed that we understood each other so well, I was asking questions about how much animals think and feel emotion. Im still asking. Theyre questions without easy answers. Yes, I know that I will die without knowing the answers to my questions. But I study not just to know answers but also out of curiosity and laughter. Speaking of which, the way you deliver the line Ejaculate on my wound! its so funny. [Laughs.] The bedbug, yes. The male has a penis that can penetrate everywhere, and the female has this blood system its not blood, but like it that carries the sperm to the ovary. Can you imagine this evolution? Fantastic. Is there a lesson there? You dont need a vagina bedbugs, not people. People need vaginas! This interview has been edited and condensed from two conversations. Annotations by Matt Stieb. Colbert. Photo: Scott Kowalchyk/CBS Despite big promotional boosts from NBCs broadcasts of the Super Bowl and the Winter Olympics, the overall audience for The Tonight Show Starring Jimmy Fallon fell far behind CBSs still-surging Late Show With Stephen Colbert during the opening months of 2018. Per Nielsen ratings for the years first quarter, Colbert averaged 4.02 million DVR-adjusted viewers a massive 20 percent leap compared to the same time frame in 2017 and well ahead of both Fallon (2.76 million) and ABCs Jimmy Kimmel Live (2.35 million). While Colbert has been beating Fallon for some time, his margin of victory now stands at a daunting 1.26 million viewers. A year ago, the CBS host was ahead by less than 300,000 viewers. Plus, while the Late Show grew 20 percent compared to the first quarter of 2017 and Kimmel edged up 3 percent, Tonight dropped another 10 percent, even with all the extra promotional love NBC gave Fallon during its big sporting events. In fairness, Tonight remains in first place among the advertiser-coveted adults-under-50 demographic, a remarkable achievement given Late Shows 46 percent overall advantage in total viewers. But even Fallons demo story is looking shakier. During the first quarter, Tonight notched a 0.7 in the demo, declining 13 percent from a year ago and finishing just one-tenth of a point ahead of Colbert (0.6), who stayed flat year-to-year. (Kimmel also remained stable, with a 0.5 rating). If theres any good news for Fallon, its that Colberts massive overall audience spike isnt translating to similar demo gains. That will help Tonight stay competitive with Late Show in the battle for ad dollars, since advertisers tend to prefer programs that more efficiently deliver a concentrated audience of younger eyeballs. But even this is stretching the power of positive (Nielsen) thinking: A couple years ago, Fallon consistently crushed Colbert and his predecessor David Letterman in the demo. Its hard to brag about being barely a tenth of a rating point ahead when NBC so recently dominated the late-night battlefield. As for Colbert, the first-quarter ratings news continues a trend that began right around the time of Donald Trumps inauguration. The Late Shows relentless focus on the perpetual crisis at the White House, combined with Colbert settling into a big network gig after a decade-plus on half-hour cable shows, has paid off in a major way: The last time CBS passed 4 million viewers in late-night during a first-quarter ratings period was all the way back in 2007. Late Show is also picking up steam on the digital front, long Fallons turf: Overall viewership of digital clips jumped nearly 27 percent in the first quarter, and the show passed 4 million YouTube subscribers (up around a million from last fall, though still far behind all other network late night shows, save Late Night With Seth Meyers). Even as Trump has no doubt boosted Colberts numbers, there are signs Late Show can do well even when POTUS isnt melting down. Colbert got his biggest audience of the year when Oprah Winfrey drew nearly 5 million viewers last month. And on April 2, a rerun of a February episode featuring an interview with Jennifer Lawrence managed to draw a bigger audience than first-run installments of Tonight and Kimmel. Even Trump would find it difficult to claim credit for that. Photo: Chip Somodevilla/Getty Images When it comes to the ongoing legal battle between late author Harper Lees estate and Aaron Sorkins upcoming Broadway adaptation of To Kill A Mockingbird, no one is leaving any drama on the stage. Unless, of course, that stage is in a federal courtroom. The New York Times reports that producer Scott Rudin filed a countersuit against Lees estate Monday in response to a lawsuit filed in Alabama federal court back in March. In the Alabama suit, the estate claims Sorkins stage version is too different from the novel on which its based, specifically his version of Atticus Finch. As Sorkin explained to Vulture back in September, his version of the beloved small-town lawyer undergoes a transformation over the course of the play, growing from a character who doubts the extent of racism in 1930s Alabama into the noble attorney you know and love. Tonja B. Carter, the executor of Lees estate, alleges the change violates Sorkins 2015 agreement with Lee permitting the play be staged in the first place. Rudin, as you can imagine, very much disagrees, especially with the idea that Carter should play a role in the content of Mockingbird the play. The Agreement did not give Ms. Lee approval rights over the script of the Play, much less did it give her a right to purport to edit individual lines of dialogue, the lawsuit says. It certainly did not give such rights to Ms. Carter, who is not an author, editor, literary agent or critic, and has no known expertise whatsoever in theater or writing. In an interview with the Times, Rudin suggests staging a one-time version of the play in a courtroom to prove to a jury the play is true to the essence of To Kill a Mockingbird. And you just know tickets for it are going to be outrageous. Harry Anderson. Photo: Ron Galella/WireImage Know best to American audiences as Judge Harry T. Stone in Night Court, the eponymous Dave Barry in Daves World, and the original adult Richie Tozier in the ABC mini-series It, actor Harry Anderson was found dead today at the age of 65. He was discovered in his home in Asheville, North Carolina, and while no official cause of death has been determined, Andersons son Dashiell told TMZ it was due to natural causes. In addition to acting, Anderson was also passionate about magic, which Night Court fans may remember was a pastime of his character Judge Stone as well. Anderson limited his acting to a handful of guest appearances over the past 20 years, and he leaves behind a wife and two children. Laurie Anderson, Kathy Acker puppet, and Michael Stipe. Photo: Santiago Felipe In certain ways ways which have made some denizens of the now-mythically archived, formerly-low-rent East Village squeamish, but ought to instead make them hopeful Performance Space New York is more a successor to than a continuation of the vital avant-garde crock-pot that was, until it reopened after a seven-year-long renovation this year, PS122. Founded in 1980, PS122s full name was Performance Space 122, but everybody called it the name of the old school which once occupied the building, on Ninth Street and First Avenue. It had become a kind of living relic of that vanished, romantically scruffy DIY city, dating from a time when some artists and community activists could take a disused schoolhouse and transform it into a quasi-squatter experimental clubhouse with little more than hey-lets-give-it-a-go derring-do, and nurture the careers of Ron Athey, Ethyl Eichelberger, Karen Finley, Spalding Gray, Ishmael Houston-Jones, Holly Hughes and John Leguizamo. (Today such a derelict building would be converted into artist-style condo lofts.) In 2011, PS122 closed for a renovation which wasnt supposed to take anywhere near as long as it did, and by the time it was ready to reopen, its board had hired a new director, Jenny Schlenzka, formerly of MoMA PS1, who rebranded it the deadpan Performance Space New York, much to some of its longtime supporters chagrin (the theater critic for Time Out tweeted that he was considering changing my name to Personal Name in a kind of sarcastic protest). Juliana Huxtable. Photo: Santiago Felipe Maybe this was in part to just avoid confusion between her old curatorial gig, also in an ex-schoolhouse decades ago colonized by artists how many PS art centers do you need anyway? But also because many of the conditions and assumptions implicit in the founding ideals of the PS122 that the East Village was a neighborhood where artists can afford to live and make art among other artists, and, perhaps more subtly, that whatever went on there which was called performance was somehow a distinct endeavor from that more high-toned and perhaps hygienic stuff that went on at, say, the citys leading museums are no longer the case. I live in the East Village and have for many years now, but nobody I know really does anymore and hasnt for years certainly not anyone particularly interesting, surprising, creative, or young. Or even frankly wants to. The rents are high but maybe more to the point, everybody else cool lives outside of location-specific dating-app range. Whatevers new in New York, and to what extent this gleaming lifestyle machine and global Instagram tableau vivant is able to foster the new, is being cooked up at least four or five stops into Brooklyn. Penny Arcade. Photo: Santiago Felipe I was thinking about that on Saturday night, when Performance Space hosted its first gala in its new home, in a column-free, convincingly state-of-the-art double-height space which was scooped out of the buildings top two floors as part of the $37 million renovation. Theres a clear view south to downtown, over the tenement roofs, and it is very much unlike the inflexible, ramshackle, blacked-out rooms with column-obscured sight lines PS122 had used for performances downstairs. The gala honored the elegantly salty poet Eileen Myles, who, tellingly, said her East Village landlord was in the process of trying to evict her after decades, and Anna Deavere Smith, who in a different way tellingly told how, coming up as a young performer, she was never cool enough or hip enough to do work at PS 122. Each were given a commemorative floorboard, awkwardly long. Also honored: the renovations architect, Deborah Burke, who, in a differently way tellingly, is now the dean of the Yale School of Architecture, and had designed the interiors for the super-tall, super-rich, super-condo 432 Park Avenue. It was a cozy, optimistic evening, with Juliana Huxtable performing with demure disregard for comprehensibility and reading off her smartphone while accompanied by a pianist during the cocktails, and canny stalwarts of the scene like Penny Arcade, John Kelly, and Carmelita Tropicana circulating among the other guests. Many of them, members of the citys prosperous, high-polish art-fashion class, admitted to me theyd never been to the old PS122. Seven years of course is a long time, but it wasnt in some way for them, either. #STORYTHELEGEND Photo: Santiago Felipe Schlenzkas first season at Performance Space has been conscientiously dedicated to the buildings punk provenance they just did a series of exhibits and events dedicated to the work of Kathy Acker but for many attendees it might well have been be a brand-new place. Guests included Michael Stipe, Laurie Anderson, Ryan McGinley, Jemima Kirke, Sasha Velour, Bailey Styles, Humberto Leon, Julie Mehretu, Nicole Eisenman, Joan Jonas, Ryan McNamara, and K8 Hardy along with a muppet version of Acker, created for part of a Bjarne Melgaard tribute of sorts he did to her. Hannah Black performed, and the comedian Casey Jane Ellison was the emcee, though she didnt exactly endear herself to the old-timers doing a riff on how unbelievable it was to her that she recently turned 30. She doesnt know how to read the room, scoffed one vet, twice her age, who, while listening to Ellison, threatened to take the stubby pledge pencil at the table and stab herself, if I recall this correctly, in the eye. But Arcade, who, again, tellingly, I last last saw at St. Annes Warehouse in Brooklyn doing her show Longing Lasts Longer, in which she lamented the tidying up and, to her mind, creative decline of New York from the city that doesnt sleep to the city that cant wake up, knew exactly what she was doing when she strutted around onstage, exhorting the audience to spend $1,220 to name a chair. Perhaps, she suggested, after one of the many people who did work there whod died of AIDS, since all the dead people she knows love publicity. Undoubtedly the case. Or to buy a night with Stipe and Patti Smith. Altogether the gala raised just shy of $300,000 important since this is a more expensive place to run than PS122 was. The after-party went on till 2 a.m. Photo: Santiago Felipe Which is to say, Performance Space New York is adapted to the citys art world as it has become: a high-production-value outpost of a global intellectual-aesthetic marketplace, not a bohemian semi-abandoned escape-from-capitalism hole in the wall. But its also, as the art world has been in general, striving to be a more self-consciously inclusive place (the Lower East Side Girls Club also did a performance). Not long ago, I complained to Simon Castets, the director of The Swiss Institute, another interesting arts nonprofit which is soon moving nearby, into a former Chase bank on St. Marks Place, that there was nothing much going on in the East Village anymore, and he reproved me: What about the Poetry Project, and Anthology Film Archive, Danspace Project and La MaMa Etc? Hes right, of course; they soldier on. Meanwhile, on East Sixth, the Brant Foundation is renovating the former Walter De Maria studio, a former ConEd substation, polishing it up with some public programming in mind. The new Performance Space will only add to that tradition; Im sure Ill go more than I ever did to PS122 (which wasnt all that often, honestly.) So maybe the East Village can continue to be an important place to show and see new art. Artists just cant afford to actually live here. Claude Wampler, the artist who happened to be seated next to me (I confess I had to look her up: she once did a show at the Andy Warhol Museum which was lit with forensic UV light fixtures that allow human semen ejaculate to be visible to the eye which shed curated and carefully placed throughout the museum; the regular lights were turned out, and visitors could wander around and spot the semen while they listened to dialogues from Andy Warhols audiotapes) left New York some years back to teach at the University of Virginia. Sometimes she brings her students up to New York, but mostly, she says, they cant imagine living here and trying to make work, and move instead to Detroit, or Nashville. BIRMINGHAM, Ala. (AP) - The city of Birmingham maintains it did not violate state law when it put a box-like structure around a 52-foot-tall Confederate monument. In a Monday court filing, the city disputed the state's claims that it violated a law prohibiting the removal and alteration of monuments more than 40 years old. City attorneys argued the plywood screen did not technically remove or alter the monument. They also argued Alabama is trying to stifle opposition to relics that "mourn the Confederacy's 'lost cause' to operate as a separate and independent nation that fosters the enslavement of African Americans." The city's mayor erected the screen last year. The Alabama attorney general's office sued the city, saying the actions violate the Alabama Memorial Preservation Act. A hearing was held in the lawsuit last week. (Copyright 2018 The Associated Press. All rights reserved. This material may not be published, broadcast, rewritten or redistributed.) SAN FRANCISCO, April 17, 2018 (GLOBE NEWSWIRE) -- Sustainable Brands is evolving the concept of the traditional conference expo into an environment fostering inspiration and co-creation. The Activation Hub at SB18 Vancouver, running June 4-7 at the Vancouver Convention Centre in Vancouver, British Columbia, will bring together 3,000 insightful change makers, entrepreneurs and leading companies to collaborate through the lens of Design Thinking methodology. Concurrent with its world-renowned leadership conference, the Activation Hub at SB18 Vancouver will leverage Design Thinking, the solutions-focused methodology used by designers in business, to spark ideas around product and service innovation for The Good Life. Attendees, speakers, sponsors and partners will gather in daily Innovation Labs that are facilitated by designers and thought-leaders such as Freya Williams of Futerra, Sally Uren of Forum for the Future, Christina Wong of SustainAbility and James Tansey, associate professor at the University of British Columbias Sauder School of Business. Together, these key stakeholders will use the Design Thinking process to break down and collectively navigate key industry sector challenges. The Activation Hub at SB18 Vancouver will feature brands and solution providers already committed to developing business models and methods for delivering business growth based on a healthy and relevant vision of the Good Life. Key highlights include: An Opening Night networking reception in the Activation Hub co-sponsored by Savers|Value Village and Porpoise . and . Procter & Gamble (P&G) , anchor host for the Good Growth pavilion, will host a conversation alongside Embedding Project and Carrot NewYork around responsible business growth and positive consumption for lifestyle brands. P&G will also be addressing their 2030 goals, driving long-term positive impact on the environment and society - building brands to be a force for good and a force for growth. , anchor host for the Good Growth pavilion, will host a conversation alongside and around responsible business growth and positive consumption for lifestyle brands. P&G will also be addressing their 2030 goals, driving long-term positive impact on the environment and society - building brands to be a force for good and a force for growth. Living Elements , anchor host for the Good Leisure, Travel, & Entertainment pavilion, will be hosting discussions promoting "sustainability design" for the travel and leisure sector. , anchor host for the Good Leisure, Travel, & Entertainment pavilion, will be hosting discussions promoting "sustainability design" for the travel and leisure sector. Nestle , a premier sponsor of the Good Food Pavilion, will celebrate 10 years of support for honey bees through a virtual reality experience that showcases their efforts to work hand-in-hand with suppliers and grow ingredients in bee-friendly environments. , a premier sponsor of the Good Food Pavilion, will celebrate 10 years of support for honey bees through a virtual reality experience that showcases their efforts to work hand-in-hand with suppliers and grow ingredients in bee-friendly environments. Keurig Green Mountain , partaking in the Good Packaging pavilion, will announce their plan to create 100% recyclable K-Cup pods by 2020 and discuss their partnership with Recycle BC and others to achieve this goal in Canada in 2018 while looking for further ideas from the crowd in support of this ambition. Partner, Recycle BC will be participating in the Good Packaging pavilion as well. , partaking in the Good Packaging pavilion, will announce their plan to create 100% recyclable K-Cup pods by 2020 and discuss their partnership with Recycle BC and others to achieve this goal in Canada in 2018 while looking for further ideas from the crowd in support of this ambition. Partner, will be participating in the Good Packaging pavilion as well. LG Electronics , participating in the Good Lifestyle pavilion, will launch their Lifes Good: Experience Happiness Platform. Developed in collaboration with UC Berkeleys Greater Good Science Center, this platform elaborates on the 6 skills of happiness, and how to use them at home, in schools or in your CSR program. , participating in the Good Lifestyle pavilion, will launch their Lifes Good: Experience Happiness Platform. Developed in collaboration with UC Berkeleys Greater Good Science Center, this platform elaborates on the 6 skills of happiness, and how to use them at home, in schools or in your CSR program. 11 finalists for the Sustainable Brands Innovation Open (SBIO) a competition for early-stage social and environmental startups will both exhibit and share their innovations through a series of pitch competitions in the Activation Hub. Unifi, Inc. will station their Repreve truck in the Activation Hub. This interactive, walk-through truck showcases how peat gets turned into recycled materials and gives attendees the chance to win upcycled clothes. will station their Repreve truck in the Activation Hub. This interactive, walk-through truck showcases how peat gets turned into recycled materials and gives attendees the chance to win upcycled clothes. The US Farmer and Ranchers Alliance (USFRA) will hold open conversations on best agricultural practices, regulation, and understanding food systems in the supply chain of their products. Their booth will allow attendees to use VR headsets to view an American farm. will hold open conversations on best agricultural practices, regulation, and understanding food systems in the supply chain of their products. Their booth will allow attendees to use VR headsets to view an American farm. The Retail Industry Leadership Association (RILA) will host collaborative discussions relating to compliance with environmental regulations within the Good Retail pavilion, open to all RILA members and non-members. will host collaborative discussions relating to compliance with environmental regulations within the Good Retail pavilion, open to all RILA members and non-members. Braskem , located in the Good Materials & Packaging pavilion, will focus on the launch of their Bluevision platform, their online customer social platform on how they and their customers are addressing the UN SDG's , located in the Good Materials & Packaging pavilion, will focus on the launch of their Bluevision platform, their online customer social platform on how they and their customers are addressing the UN SDG's Clif Bar & Company will host hikes for conference attendees on the nearby Great Trail, 150km of which Clif is proud to have funded in an effort to connect what is now the longest recreational trail in the world. Clif will feature a Trailhead Basecamp at their lounge in the Activation Hub so attendees can grab nutritional essentials before hitting the trail. will host hikes for conference attendees on the nearby Great Trail, 150km of which Clif is proud to have funded in an effort to connect what is now the longest recreational trail in the world. Clif will feature a Trailhead Basecamp at their lounge in the Activation Hub so attendees can grab nutritional essentials before hitting the trail. Cupanion will launch its #FillItForward campaign where, via the Cupanion app, users can track their reusable water bottle use and donate clean water to those in need. Also focusing on mitigating and tracking single-use plastic is National Geographic , exhibiting in Good Oceans, brought in by sponsor, 21st Century Fox . will launch its #FillItForward campaign where, via the Cupanion app, users can track their reusable water bottle use and donate clean water to those in need. Also focusing on mitigating and tracking single-use plastic is , exhibiting in Good Oceans, brought in by sponsor, . Vinyl Business Sustainability Council (VBSC), will participate in the Good Materials & Packaging pavilion to discuss the state of affairs in the US vinyl industry, specifically as it relates to building, construction, and water infrastructure applications. will participate in the Good Materials & Packaging pavilion to discuss the state of affairs in the US vinyl industry, specifically as it relates to building, construction, and water infrastructure applications. Bank & Vogue, in the Good Fashion pavilion, will bring the Circular Economy of Textiles to Life, sharing new initiatives such as reverse logistics, vintage retail, upcycling and remanufacturing of post-consumer apparel, and re-commerce platforms for brands and fiber recycling feedstock supply. The Activation Hub is sure to be the most exciting space to convene, network and get inspired at SB18 Vancouver, states KoAnn Vikoren Skrzyniarz, Founder and CEO of Sustainable Brands. In a room packed with brands, visionary thought-leaders and disruptive innovators, the Activation Hub itself will function as an accelerator of the product and service innovation necessary to transition to The Good Life of the future. Other exhibitors include Salesforce.org, Starbucks, Diversey, EY, LUSH, Intertek, Terracycle, American Forests, Animal Legal Defense Fund, APANA, Canadian Council of Foresters, Eagle Protect, FoodMinds, Green Story, iCompli, Leger, Looptworks, One Tree Planted, The Sustainability Consortium, WAP Sustainability, Water for People, Nice & Serious, Smarter Sorting, TELUS, Makersite, Porpoise, and TIDES. The Activation Hub at SB18 Vancouver will run Monday, June 4th through Thursday, June 7th at the Vancouver Convention Centre West. Community passes for the Activation Hub, the Opening Night Ceremony and Opening Night Reception can be purchased on the registration page. Learn more at www.SB18Vancouver.com. For more information about the Activation Hub at Sustainable Brands 18 Vancouver, and to inquire about participating, contact Nkolo Lebongo at engage@sustainablebrands.com or call 1.415.626.2212. About Sustainable Brands Sustainable Brands is the premier global community of brand innovators who are shaping the future of commerce worldwide. Since 2006, our mission has been to inspire, engage and equip todays business and brand leaders to prosper for the near and long term by leading the way to a better future. Digitally published news articles and issues-focused conversation topics, internationally known conferences and regional events, a robust e-learning library and peer-to-peer membership groups all facilitate community learning and engagement throughout the year. Sustainable Brands is hosted by Sustainable Brands Worldwide, a division of Sustainable Life Media headquartered in San Francisco, CA. TORONTO, April 17, 2018 (GLOBE NEWSWIRE) -- The common shares of Xanthic Biopharma Inc. have been approved for listing on the CSE. Listing and disclosure documents will be available at www.thecse.com on the listing date. Xanthic Biopharma Inc., through its wholly-owned operating subsidiary, Xanthic Biopharma Limited, provides valuable intellectual property to cannabis industry participants in the form of technology, branding and consulting services. Using a patent-pending proprietary process, Xanthic enables its strategic partners to produce innovative, premium water soluble, non-combustible cannabis-infused products with consistent, predictable dosing in convenient, easy-to-use formulas with enhanced bioavailability. ________________________ Les actions ordinaires de Xanthic Biopharma Inc. ont ete approuvees pour inscription a la cote du CSE. Les documents d'inscription et de divulgation seront disponibles sur www.thecse.com a la date de negociation. Xanthic Biopharma Inc., par l'intermediaire de sa filiale d'exploitation en propriete exclusive, Xanthic Biopharma Limited, fournit une precieuse propriete intellectuelle aux participants de l'industrie du cannabis sous la forme de technologies, de marques et de services de consultation. A l'aide d'un procede exclusif en instance de brevet, Xanthic permet a ses partenaires strategiques de produire des produits innovants, solubles dans l'eau, non combustibles et infuses au cannabis avec un dosage previsible et constant dans des formules pratiques et faciles a utiliser avec une biodisponibilite accrue. Issuer/Emetteur: Xanthic Biopharma Inc. Security Type/Titre: Common Shares/Actions ordinaires Symbol(s)/Symbole(s): XTHC Number of securities issued and outstanding/ Titres emis et en circulation: 55 710 547 Number of Securities reserved for issuance/ Titres reserves pour emission: 2,308,000 CSE Sector/Categorie: Life Sciences/Sciences biologiques CUSIP: 98401B 10 4 ISIN: CA 98401B 10 4 0 Boardlot/Quotite: 500 Trading Currency/Monnaie de negociation: CDN$/$CDN Listing Date/Date de linscription: Le 19 avril/April 2018 Other Exchanges/Autres marches: N/A Fiscal Year end /Cloture de l'exercice financier: June 30/Le 30 juin Transfer Agent/Agent des transferts: Capital Transfer Agency ULC If you have any questions or require further information please contact Listings at (416) 367-7340 or E-mail: Listings@thecse.com Pour toute question, pour obtenir de linformation supplementaire veuillez communiquer avec le service des inscriptions au 416 367-7340 ou par courriel a ladresse: Listings@thecse.com OTTAWA, April 17, 2018 (GLOBE NEWSWIRE) -- CLC President Hassan Yussuff is available for comment following the release of recommendations on pharmacare by the federal governments Standing Committee on Health. The Committee is expected to release its report Wednesday, April 18 in the afternoon. Last fall, the CLC launched a national campaign calling for universal pharmacare that would cover all Canadians, regardless of their age, income, or where they work or live. Its pan-Canadian pharmacare town hall tour has so far visited 23 communities and garnered nearly 50,000 petition signatures and almost 7,000 emails to members of Parliament. What: Media availability When: Wednesday, April 18, 2018 Who: Hassan Yussuff, President, Canadian Labour Congress For more information, please contact: Chantal St-Denis CLC Communications 613-355-1962 Email: cstdenis@clc-ctc.ca OFFICIAL STOCKIST Established in 1984, the Fossil brand is inspired by classic American vintage wear. Fossil watches are designed to make statements, looking to act as a first impression for how wearers are viewed by others. Within the Fossil men's and women's watch collection Swiss craftsmanship is blended seamlessly with timeless designs and contemporary functionality, resulting in a range that has something to define almost anyone. Fossil designers use a wide variety of materials and styles throughout the watch collection, from multi-faceted, colourful metals in gold, silver & rose gold to deconstructed leathers in black, brown tan & blue. Make a statement with technology-laden cases and mechanical watches that beautifully showcase the art of watchmaking, or enjoy a timeless look with minimalistic aesthetics - Fossil provides the discerning watch-buyer with multiple choices. To stay connected, Fossil's range of Fossil Q smartwatches feature fitness tracking, music control and smartphone notifications without compromising style. Fossil watches are more than just a practical accessory they are a lifestyle choice that lets the world know who you are at a glance. Browse Fossil's range of men's and women's watches, or experience the same level of quality with different styles - Fossil also makes watches for a variety of other brands including including Diesel, Armani, Adidas and Marc Jacobs. The Northern Territory has reversed its two-year ban on fracking, opening up more than half the region to onshore shale gas development in a move expected to provide more gas to the east coast. The NT Chief Minister Michael Gunner on Tuesday lifted the moratorium on fracking, accepting all 135 recommendations of a 15-month independent scientific inquiry released in March. The government will release its final report by July. We have accepted the key finding of the report that if all the recommendations are implemented, the risk from fracking can be reduced to an acceptable level, Mr Gunner said. We have also accepted the inquirys advice about no-go zones and coupled with areas where there is no petroleum potential, 49 per cent of the Territory will be frack-free, including in national parks, conservation areas, indigenous protected areas, towns, residential and strategic assets, and areas of high cultural, environmental or tourism value. SAN ANTONIO, April 17, 2018 (GLOBE NEWSWIRE) -- Innovation, resilience and Bermudas value to global economies were key themes for discussion as Bermuda met with insurance media and San Antonio Mayor Ron Nirenberg. Bermuda Premier and Finance Minister the Hon David Burt, along with a delegation of representatives from the Bermuda Monetary Authority BMA), insurance industry, and the Bermuda Business Development Agency (BDA) sat down with Mayor Nirenberg at San Antonios historic City Hall. It was Day One of Bermudas attendance of the Risk & Insurance Management Society (RIMS) Annual Conference & Exhibition in the city, the insurance industrys biggest yearly event, running April 1518 and attracting 10,000 risk-management professionals, service providers, and senior industry executives. Mayor Nirenberg and Premier Burt discussed mutual synergies between Bermuda and San Antonio, including innovative sectors like fintech and blockchain start-ups, socioeconomic equity, and community resilience against natural catastrophes triggered by climate change. The Mayor credited Bermuda for helping state communities rebuild and recover following devastating losses in 2017s Hurricane Harvey; notably, Bermuda reinsurers paid out nearly a fifth (more than $5 billion) of a total $30 billion worth of insured losses in Texas and Louisiana. Our conversation with the mayor was fruitful. Were relatively young, both in tenure and in age, in our positions, and were both facing similar challenges that most policymakers face, said Premier Burt, Bermudas youngest Premier at age 39. We can certainly learn from each others experiences and build on those ideas going forward. So, I think it was very useful to make this relationship as we work to influence opinion on how Bermuda is different. Without question, its important that policymakers at all levels recognise the important role Bermuda plays in the global economy. Mayor Nirenberg, 41, elected last year after serving as a two-term city councillor and defeating the incumbent in the runoff for the mayoral race, presented the Bermuda delegation with traditional fiesta medals celebrating the citys upcoming 300th anniversary of its founding. Its always helpful for policy leaders of different jurisdictions to get together, said John Huff, President and CEO of the Association of Bermuda Insurers & Reinsurers (ABIR). Im particularly interested in the Mayors commitment to resilience, and some of the activities hes building to address climate-change response. Its important for re/insurers that are working on responding to changing weather patterns to have partners like this. The meeting followed several interviews with key industry media, including Reactions magazine, Business Insurance, and Thomson Reuters. Participating members of Team Bermuda comprised: Premier Burt; Junior Finance Minister the Hon Wayne Furbert; Huff; Shanna Lespere, Chief Operating Officer, Bermuda Monetary Authority (BMA); Assistant Financial Secretary Pamela Burrows; BDA Chair Paul Scope, also Chair of Willis Bermuda; and BDA CEO Ross Webber. I think we got our message across that were a unified group working together to ensure that Bermuda benefits, said Minister Furbert. Overall, it was important we communicated that we consult with our industry, that we build relationshipsand that if the insurance companies benefit, then Bermuda benefits overall. The media interviews were very useful, and the meeting with Mayor Nirenberg was a particularly poignant civic visit, noted Webber, as it dovetailed very well with our Premiers tenure and his goals for Bermuda. Speaking with trade media was also important, said Lespere. It was a very productive opportunity to educate the media on our regulatory environment, particularly as new products and innovations are coming to the forefront, and we develop relationships for the future. Tomorrow, the BDA will host a morning executive forum that will see two panels of senior industry and regulatory leaders from the island discussing the strengths of both the Bermuda markets world-leading captive insurance sector and its re/insurance hub. A Bermuda networking reception will wrap Day Two events at RIMS. MEDIA CONTACT: Rosemary Jones Head of Communications & Marketing rosemary@bda.bm 441 278-6558 441 337-4696 CONNECTING BUSINESS The BDA encourages direct investment and helps companies start up, re-locate or expand their operations in our premier jurisdiction. An independent, public-private partnership, we connect you to industry professionals, regulatory officials, and key contacts in the Bermuda government to assist domicile decisions. Our goal? To make doing business here smooth and beneficial. A photo accompanying this announcement is available at http://resource.globenewswire.com/Resource/Download/113473c5-1ccc-4402-89bd-74d8cf9ae116 It hosts Sydneys iconic Coca-Cola sign and is one of the city's most densely populated suburbs. But the harbour-side neighbourhood of Potts Point has something else that sets it apart the city's longest working hours. Workers in Potts Point put in an average of 42 hours a week, analysis of the latest census shows. The next highest suburb for average hours worked was The Rocks (40.8 hours) followed by Peats Ridge, near Gosford (40.3) and Millers Point (40.1). Shares in Village Roadshow have plunged more than 11 per cent after the beleaguered theme park operator downgraded its earnings forecast as visitors stayed away from its drawcard Gold Coast theme parks. The company's theme parks and cinemas have struggled. Credit:Danielle Smith Village Roadshow's already weak visitor numbers were compounded by a wet March and competition from the Gold Coast Commonwealth Games, the company said in a third quarter update. The company warned investors that its full-year net profit will be even lower than the downwardly revised figures it gave in January of $12 million to $17 million. Theme parks across the Gold Coast are yet to recover from the impact of the fatal accident at rival Ardent Leisure's Dreamworld in 2016, while Village Roadshow's cinema division has also faced challenges from weak 2018 attendances. Former prime minister Tony Abbott visited the Victoria School in Villers-Bretonneux in France in 2015. Credit:Andrew Meares How often, do you think, Prime Minister Malcolm Turnbull can take delight in bringing to fruition a policy started by his predecessor, Tony Abbott? By my reckoning you could count such occasions on the fingers of one finger, and it will be this Anzac Day when Mr Turnbull will open the Sir John Monash Centre in Villers-Bretonneux, a modern interpretive centre to commemorate both the extraordinary achievements of the 300,000 Diggers who served on the Western Front, and those of their superb commander, Sir John Monash. To give Abbott his due, he was the first Australian prime minister to push the truth, as he did in 2015: Gallipoli has dominated our imagination, but the Western Front was where Australias main war was fought. This is where our thoughts must dwell if we are truly to remember our forebears, pay homage to their sacrifice and honour their achievements. Despite the move, there remains a long way to go for Australians to recognise just how extraordinary were the achievements of both the Diggers and Monash. Four years ago, I was as ignorant as most, but as one who has since done books covering the battles of Fromelles, Pozieres, Villers-Bretonneux and this week release a book on Monash allow me to make a few remarks. The first thing to note is that there could be no better day, and no better place, for the Prime Minister to open the centre. The Australian governments National Energy Guarantee (NEG), as revised late last week, is making good progress but currently still could lock in uncertainty unless both major parties act in our national interest. When youre investing in the energy sector you need to know what the targets are going to be for reducing greenhouse gas emissions. At the moment, we have a situation where the government is only backing a 26-28 per cent reduction in electricity emissions, whilst the opposition is saying it would immediately increase it to a 45 per cent reduction in government. Nothing could be worse for Australia than an agreement to disagree. We must agree to have national policy consistent with the obligation we have to fellow planetary residents, to keep global warming at less than 2 degrees at the lowest economic cost possible. There have been many reviews of how we address the transition to a lower emission future. None have suggested an emission reduction profile in the electricity sector as weak as the 26-28 per cent proposed by the Liberals with emissions from coal stations expected out until 2070. Oliver Yates says the federal government needs to act with economic logic by supporting stronger emissions reductions in the electricity sector. The Climate Change Authority, Climate Council, ClimateWorks and others have demonstrated that the electricity sector is the easiest and cheapest sector of the economy in which to achieve emissions reductions and therefore it must do much more than 26-28 per cent by 2030 and that all coal stations must close before 2050. It was exactly these Russians out of uniform and their supporters who shot down MH17 over Ukraine in 2014, killing 298 civilians, including 28 Australians. Despite all evidence, Putin has never acknowledged any Russian involvement. And Russia has employed deniable assassination abroad of people judged to be traitors to the motherland, most recently Sergei Skripal. This program of political war has been underway for a decade and accelerating. Yet in the face of tremendous volumes of evidence, the US and its European allies in NATO have been remarkably obdurate in accepting this reality. Even the public declaration by the US intelligence community in January last year that it had "high confidence" that Russia had intervened in the US elections of 2016 failed to persuade many Americans, notably Trump and the 40 million Americans who still support him. How could that be so? Partly it's because the US generally had come to hold Russia in low regard, almost contempt, after its empire, the Soviet Union, collapsed in 1991. The idea that Russia was powerful and capable seemed far-fetched. Partly it's because Trump and his bloc admire Putin as a strongman role model. Trump wanted to identify himself with Putin, not against him. It seemed personally and politically inconvenient for Trump to admit the truth. Partly it was a simple failure to recognise the nature of Russia's undeclared war. Reveron and Howard write that the "conventional military paradigm may be too powerful" to allow the US and NATO allies to see the paradigm of unconventional political war. Which is very strange. Because the US successfully waged a holistic political warfare of its own for decades. The famed US diplomat George Kennan set out the strategy in a memo 70 years ago. It was titled "The inauguration of political warfare". Kennan's 1948 memo expressed his admiration of Russian prowess, already evident to him: "The Kremlin's conduct of political warfare has become the most refined and effective of any in history," describing it as Lenin's synthesis of Marxist political theory with Clausewitz's theory of military strategy. "We have been handicapped however by a popular attachment to a basic difference between peace and war, by a tendency to view war as a sort of sporting contest outside of all political context", and by "a reluctance to recognise the realities of international relations - the perpetual rhythm" of competition between states for power. He might well have been writing in 2018 rather than 1948. Kennan urged the US to match the Russian effort: "We cannot afford to leave unmobilised our resources for covert political warfare." America, of course, responded to the challenge and ultimately triumphed in the Cold War. But all of that seems to have been forgotten in today's America and has had to be painfully re-learned. Trump at the weekend finally confronted the reality of Putin's foreign policy. He pointed out that Putin was supporting the Syrian butcher, whom Trump called "Animal Assad". And his administration is now imposing new economic sanctions on Russia for aiding and abetting Assad's chemical weapons attacks against his own people in the Syrian civil war. Putin never forgot. The "breakup of the Soviet Union was the greatest geopolitical catastrophe of the 20th century," Putin has said. He has set himself the task of redeeming as much as possible from that catastrophe and he has revived the Russian political warfare manual. A lifetime student of Russia, ANU professor emeritus and former head of Australia's defence strategy, Paul Dibb, says that "American intelligence agencies have all seen the evidence of Russian interference," and they understood what was under way. "Now even Donald Trump" by linking Putin to Assad seems to begin to grasp the situation. Says Dibb: "Putin is a hard man leading a hard country and those who wrote them off after 1991 are fools. The question is, now that he's coming under attack, how hard will he hit back?" Part of the answer was provided when a barrage of internet "dirty tricks" hit Britain and US. But it remains an open question. The political war is now, it seems, joined. Postscript: Or so it seemed on Monday. The US ambassador to the UN, Nikki Haley, had said the US Treasury Secretary, Steven Mnuchin, was about to announce new economic sanctions on Russia. But on Tuesday (Australian time) the Washington Post reported that Trump had "put the brakes on new Russian sanctions". The Kremlin had complained that the planned US sanctions would amount to "international economic raiding". Trump then "conferred with his national security advisers" the Post reported, "and told them he was upset the sanctions were being officially rolled out because he was not yet comfortable executing them, according to several people familiar with the plan". The Australian government has warned that a global campaign mounted by Russian state-sponsored hackers against millions of computer networks was likely laying the groundwork for a damaging cyber attack on high-value targets. Defence Minister Marise Payne said up to 400 Australian organisations may have been caught up in the years-long campaign affecting government agencies, businesses and critical infrastructure by exploiting vulnerabilities in internet routers and network equipment. Russian President Vladimir Putin. Credit:AP Law Enforcement and Cyber Security Minister Angus Taylor warned that attackers could gain a variety of powers over an infected system, including the ability to switch it off or intercept data. "It's very clear that Australian organisations were targeted alongside many from around the world by a malicious cyber attack," Mr Taylor told Fairfax Media. Education Minister Simon Birmingham has celebrated a record-breaking number of international students flocking to Australia, at the same time as Treasurer Scott Morrison pointed the finger at them for clogging up public transport. Figures released Wednesday showed a 12 per cent increase in the number of foreign students in Australia compared to the same period last year, exceeding 500,000 in February, driven by a boom in enrolments from Nepal, Colombia, Brazil, India and China. The international student business was "going from strength to strength", Senator Birmingham said, affirming Australia was "uniquely positioned" to absorb even more growth in the market. Simon Birmingham says the international student boom is set to continue to record-breaking levels. Credit:Louie Douvis The new data came as Treasury and the Department of Home Affairs lobbed a grenade into the immigration debate by releasing a paper warning that cuts to the annual migrant intake would significantly lower economic growth. A Bayswater eatery has copped a $50,000 for using food trucks and a premises that didnt comply with health standards under the WA Food Act. Good Fortune Roast was first visited by City of Bayswater officers in November last year, and found the business was operating without being registered at the Albany Highway premises. As officers investigated, they also found the eatery didnt take all necessary steps to prevent the contamination of food, failed to have hand washing facilities for specifically washing hands and failed to use both premises and food transport vehicles that complied with state health standards. All up, the breaches cost the business more than $50,000, with the majority of the fine stemming from the eaterys lacking health standards. Good Fortune Roast has two Perth locations, with another premises based in Northbridge and East Victoria Park. FRESNO, Calif., April 17, 2018 (GLOBE NEWSWIRE) -- CALSTART, in partnership with the cities of Reedley and Mendota, today are launching the Sustainable Aviation Project; the nations first production all-electric aircraft project designed to develop pilot training opportunities using zero emission electric airplanes. Funding for the project was provided by the Fresno County Measure C through the Fresno County Rural Transportation Authority. The four, two-seat electric aircraft are able to fly for 60 minutes between charges with 30-minute reserve. The typical flight training session lasts 60 minutes. CALSTART and the two city partners is installing electric chargers at four regional airports in Fresno County to support the aircraft operations. Using electric aircraft in this application will reduce both air and noise pollution. Small aircraft typically used in pilot training operate on gasoline engines using leaded fuel. The San Joaquin Valley is one of the nations leading centers for pilot training, with prospective pilots coming from all over the world, particularly Asia, for flight training. We are proud to be partnering with the cities of Mendota and Reedley to launch this first of its kind program in the nation. This project will not only help improve regional air quality, it will help catalyze the rapidly emerging zero emission aircraft sector, said Joseph Oldham, the Director of CALSTARTs San Joaquin Valley Clean Transportation Center. Oldham, a pilot, identified the concept and helped build the program. The California Energy Commission provided seed funding for the San Joaquin Valley Clean Transportation Center. Once the training program using the electric aircraft is fully developed, it will be targeted at residents and disadvantaged youth from the region. CALSTART is a national non-profit organization headquartered in California. The organization serves as a catalyst to accelerate the growth of the clean transportation technology industry as a strategy to create high quality jobs, improve public health, and prevent climate change. CALSTART has more than 175 member companies and offices in three states. For further information about CALSTART visit www.calstart.org. A photo accompanying this announcement is available at http://resource.globenewswire.com/Resource/Download/51e47f53-8c5f-49b5-930f-ab9e9c24531a Shark Management Alert in Real Time drumlines are a key feature of the NSW Government's shark bite mitigation measures. Instead, Acting Fisheries Minister Roger Cook said SMART drum lines were under consideration. But this time, the government is not planning on culling the predators who have mauled two surfers in Western Australia this week. The NSW Department of Primary Industries website describes the technology as an anchor and rope, two buoys, and a satellite-linked communications unit which is attached to a trace and baited hook. They are situated about 500 metres offshore and are not designed to kill the animal. "If a shark is hooked, the pressure on the line triggers the communications unit which alerts DPI scientists or contractors via phone call, email and text message to the presence of an animal on the line," the website says. "The team then responds immediately to the SMART drumline alert to manage the animal." Mr Cook acknowledged the SMART drumlines were expensive but the government would look at the outcomes of the NSW trial. A father has been accused of sexually abusing his own children, some as young as four years old, as WA Police's Taskforce Mirzam uncovers more horrific accounts in their investigation of an alleged child porn ring. Two men, aged 45 and 56, are facing a total of 101 charges, including several counts of rape, sexual abuse and drugging of children between 2001 and 2015. Two men have been charged with a total of 101 offences as part of Taskforce Mirzam. Credit:John Donegan Detectives have charged a 45-year-old man with 79 offences in total, including two counts of sexual relationships with a child and two counts of indecently dealing with a child under 13 years. Police claim the man sexually assaulted his two biological daughters between 2001 and 2006. Both daughters were four years old at the time of the first offence. The situation in Syria is deeply tragic but is there anything more other than the limited missile strikes we saw on the weekend that the West can do? After seven years of a civil war in Syria that has seen half a million people killed and half the population driven out of their homes, with five million forced abroad as refugees, it all seems too late. For America and its allies, after 17 years fighting jihadi terrorism in Afghanistan and 15 in Iraq, the impulse to give up and to go home is compelling. To try and do any more now not only appears hopeless, but also wrong. Donald Trumps recent pronouncement that it was time to leave Syria was greeted warmly not just by his supporters on the right but also by many on the left. The weekend's brief barrage of cruise missiles was enough to show concern without promising commitment. MILWAUKEE, April 17, 2018 (GLOBE NEWSWIRE) -- Artisan Partners Asset Management Inc. (NYSE:APAM) will report its first quarter 2018 financial results on May 1, 2018 at approximately 4:30 p.m. (Eastern Time). Artisan Partners Asset Managements earnings release and supplemental materials will be available on the investor relations section of artisanpartners.com at that time. Chief Executive Officer Eric Colson and Chief Financial Officer C.J. Daley will host a conference call on May 2, 2018 at 11:00 a.m. (Eastern Time) to discuss the results. A live webcast of the conference call will be available via the investor relations section of artisanpartners.com. Those interested in participating in the conference call should dial: United States/Toll Free: 1-877-328-5507 International: 1-412-317-5423 Conference ID: 10119282 An audio replay of the conference call will be available one hour after the end of the conference until May 9, 2018 at 9:00 a.m. (Eastern Time) by dialing the following: United States/Toll Free: 1-877-344-7529 International: 1-412-317-0088 Replay Conference ID: 10119282 An audio replay will also be available via the investor relations section of artisanpartners.com within 24 hours after the end of the conference. About Artisan Partners Artisan Partners is a global investment management firm that provides a broad range of high value-added investment strategies in growing asset classes to sophisticated clients around the world. Since 1994, the firm has been committed to attracting experienced, disciplined investment professionals to manage client assets. Artisan Partners autonomous investment teams oversee a diverse range of investment strategies across multiple asset classes. Strategies are offered through various investment vehicles to accommodate a broad range of client mandates. Artisan Partners Asset Management Inc. Investor Relations Inquiries Makela Taphorn 866.632.1770 414.908.2176 ir@artisanpartners.com SOUTH ROYALTON, Vt., April 17, 2018 (GLOBE NEWSWIRE) -- The Institute for Energy and the Environment (IEE) at Vermont Law School today released Low-Income Solar Ownership in Vermont: Overcoming Barriers to Equitable Access, a report prepared for the Vermont Low Income Trust for Electricity (VLITE), Inc. The report examines how to give low-income customers equitable access to the benefits of distributed solar as the renewable energy resource becomes an increasingly cost-effective option to meet clean energy goals. The new report follows up on a 2014 IEE report, Energy Costs and Burdens in Vermont, which found that approximately 1 in 5 Vermonters, or about 125,000, lived in fuel povertyrepresenting a 76 percent growth over the previous 13 years. The authors of Low-Income Solar Ownership in Vermont examine four categories of barriers: upfront capital costs; unsuitable housing; lack of information, time and trust; and existing incentives. Vermonters should have equal access to the benefits of solar and it is clear in looking at both federal and state policy that is not the case, particularly when it comes to access to solar ownership among low-income Vermonters, said IEE Director Kevin B. Jones. In order for our state and nation to meet our clean energy and climate goals, in an equitable fashion, we need both our legislators and our regulators to help level the playing field. There is much work to do to remove the barriers to low-income solar ownership. It is particularly difficult for any Vermonter, particularly low-income Vermonters, to make the numbers work and truly purchase net-metered solar with the punitive $0.06/kWh REC [renewable energy certificate] adjusters put in place by the Vermont Public Utility Commission in opposition to what many Vermonters requested, Jones said. If the commission does not change this shortsighted, punitive policy, then the legislature should. According to Energy Fellow for Climate Justice Christa Shute JD13, in addition to environmental benefits, solar is about stabilizing energy costs over the next 40 years. Increasing access to net-metering for low-income Vermonters is an equity issue that deserves attention, Shute said. This Vermont Law School report on increasing access to low-income solar ownership highlights challenges and proffers potential solutions. There are answers if we consider the problem from the perspective of those facing the challenges. I have faith that our state can come together and be a leader to find energy solutions that work for our most vulnerable. To inform the report, the Energy Clinic at the IEE explored how Vermonts low-income residents are participating in the solar net-metering program, identified challenges faced in procuring solar energy, and developed policy proposals that will help lower barriers to and encourage low-income customers participation in these programs. Researchers interviewed local financial institutions, community action agencies, affordable-housing developers, and others involved in the industry. They also researched what other states and regions are doing to promote diverse solar ownership opportunities. Proposed solutions consist of improved incentives, financing, and education and trainingall with an eye toward long-term policy. Solution highlights include: The Customs - Police Cooperation Handbook, jointly drafted by the World Customs Organization (WCO) and INTERPOL, was developed to further the goal of enhancing cooperation and collaboration between these two agencies. This guidance material aims to describe the complementary roles of each institution and identify the opportunities for collaboration. The Handbook also provides an overview of the typologies of cooperation models that exist and presents the key elements and initiatives that can be implemented to foster better coordination and enhanced cooperation. Finally, the guide contains an assessment tool that seeks to evaluate the state-of-play of relations between Customs and Police at national level. The Customs Police Cooperation Handbook was launched on 23 March 2018 during the 37th Session of the WCO Enforcement Committee (EC) which took place in Brussels from 19 to 23 March 2018 under the theme Customs enforcement: securing trade and travel. This years theme for the Committee reflected the increasingly important role played by the international Customs community in addressing cross-border security challenges while safeguarding the interests of legitimate traders and travellers. Counting more than 150 Customs delegates, the Committee also saw the participation of other members of the enforcement community who joined the discussions, including representatives from the CITES Secretariat, Europol, Frontex, the International Criminal Court, INTERPOL, the United Nations Counter Terrorism Committee, the United Nations Environment Programme, the United Nations Office on Drugs and Crime, and the World Intellectual Property Organization. Many participants expressed strong support for the joint work of the WCO and INTERPOL in developing the Handbook and emphasized the importance of, efficient coordination in Customs and Police activities to avoid overlaps and waste of resources and close cooperation, especially in regard to information exchange. The Handbook was also presented at the 14th Annual Meeting of INTERPOLs National Central Bureaus (NCB), an event that brought together the Heads of Bureaus to discuss policing challenges, share information, exchange ideas and best practices and be updated on latest activities and new resources of the Organization. As with the Enforcement Committee, the NCB meeting fully endorsed and supported the efforts to bring the Customs and Police community together in addressing those mutual priorities that impact cross border criminal activity. Customs and Police Cooperation has been addressed a number of times but was more recently addressed in the framework of discussions on Coordinated Border Management at the 74th Session of the Policy Commission in Punta Cana in December 2015. Delegates attending the meeting recognized the need for stronger cooperation between both institutions, as an enabler for effective law enforcement outcomes and as a precondition for better Coordinated Border Management. While collaboration between Customs and Police at the international level was deemed successful, as reflected in the 1998 MOU signed between the WCO and INTERPOL , and the number of Operations conducted jointly, the same could not be said about cooperation at country level. As a consequence, The Policy Commission tasked the Secretariat with the development of a practical guidance manual on how to establish Customs Police cooperation at national level. INTERPOL joined these efforts as co-author of the Handbook in 2016, ensuring that the Handbook would encompass the viewpoint of Police. The Customs Police cooperation Handbook is addressed to both Police and Customs officers at all levels of hierarchy. While it does not offer a one-size fits all solution, it recognizes that countries have varying levels of cooperation in line with their national legislative and constitutional framework. As such, it provides recommendations on how to strengthen relations between Customs and Police, depending on the current state-of-play. The Handbook is to be seen as a living document that will evolve and be enriched over time to cater for changes and innovations in the enforcement environment. The Handbook is available to WCO Members via this link. More than 80 experts from Member Customs Administrations, Industry associations, National guarantors and shippers councils, other private sector entities, Regional Economic Communities and development partners gathered in Cotonou, Benin from 11 to 13 April 2018 for a regional workshop on transit for the WCO West and Central Africa (WCA) region. The event was co-organized by the WCO, the Africa Transport Policy Programme (SSATP) hosted by the World Bank, the International Road Transport Union (IRU) and the Abidjan-Lagos Corridor Organisation (ALCO). High-level officials from the Government of Benin addressed the workshop participants during the opening and closing ceremonies. In interactive sessions, the WCO set the scene by presenting the guiding principles for the establishment of efficient and effective transit regimes as outlined in the various sections of the WCO Transit Guidelines and the participants shared and discussed good practices, challenges and measures for further improvement of the various aspects of transit in the region. Highly informative and interesting presentations were delivered by the Economic Community of West African States (ECOWAS) Commission, Japan International Cooperation Agency (JICA), the Customs administrations of Cote dIvoire and Cameroon, Ghana Community Network Services Limited (GCNet), Borderless Alliance, the Ghana Institute of Freight Forwarders (GIFF) and other stakeholders. Best practices from the East African Community (EAC) were also shared with the workshop participants. The workshop concluded with outlining strategic areas in which further work needs to be done to improve the effectiveness of transit regimes in the region, but also to support and promote existing good practices. The regional transit workshop for the WCA region was the second in a series of regional events planned by the WCO with the objective of promoting the implementation of the WCO Transit Guidelines launched in July 2017, and the establishment by Members of efficient and effective transit regimes in their territories. By: CBS News, Associated Press April 16, 2018 SAUK RAPIDS, Minn. (CBS/AP) -- Authorities said an 8-year-old student took a kitchen knife to a central Minnesota elementary school and attacked three other children. Chief Perry Beise said the victims -- aged 8, 9 and 13 -- suffered "superficial wounds" requiring stitches in the attack before classes started Monday at Pleasantview Elementary in Sauk Rapids. No one else was hurt. School Superintendent Bruce Watkins said the boy lashed out at the other students until an adult intervened. Beise said the boy was interviewed by police and released to his parents. The case will be forwarded to the county prosecutor's office. School officials sent a note to parents Monday saying they are working to identify and provide support to staff and students affected by the incident, . One of the injured children is a seventh-grader who was waiting to catch a transfer bus. The other two are Pleasantview Elementary students. Police in Sauk Rapids haven't returned a phone message seeking comment. ATLANTA, April 17, 2018 (GLOBE NEWSWIRE) -- Mueller Water Products, Inc. (NYSE:MWA) announced that its Board of Directors has declared a quarterly dividend of five cents ($0.05) per share, payable on or about May 21, 2018 to stockholders of record as of the close of business on May 10, 2018. About Mueller Water Products Mueller Water Products, Inc. (NYSE:MWA) is a leading manufacturer and marketer of products and services used in the transmission, distribution and measurement of water in North America. Our broad product and service portfolio includes engineered valves, fire hydrants, metering products and systems, leak detection and pipe condition assessment. We help municipalities increase operational efficiencies, improve customer service and prioritize capital spending, demonstrating why Mueller Water Products is Where Intelligence Meets Infrastructure. For more information about Mueller Water Products, visit www.muellerwaterproducts.com. Investor Relations Contact: Whit Kincaid Sr. Director, Investor Relations and Corporate Development 770-206-4116 wkincaid@muellerwp.com Media Contact: Yolanda Kokayi Director of Communications 770-206-4131 ykokayi@muellerwp.com MOUNTAIN VIEW, Calif., April 17, 2018 (GLOBE NEWSWIRE) -- Tricentis, the provider of the industrys number one Continuous Testing platform, is holding its annual user conference Accelerate, May 7-8, 2018 at the Hyatt Regency San Francisco. Accelerate SF will gather thought leaders from Global 2000 organizations including Accenture, DORA, Vantiv and many others. As DevOps becomes an integral part of the corporate agenda, the strategy, process, and tooling associated with software testing all comes under scrutiny. Speakers and attendees at this interactive event will explore trends, challenges, and real-world success stories related to transforming software testing for DevOps. Topics to be discussed include: The best (and worst) uses of AI in software testing Keeping pace with accelerated release cycles across modern, legacy, and packaged apps Aligning software testing with Continuous Deliverya risk-based approach Collaborative DevTest strategies to remove testing bottlenecks Featured speakers include thought leaders and practitioners across multiple industries: Dr. Nicole Forsgren, Founder & Chief Executive Officer, DevOps Research and Assessment Hans Pauley, Global Next Generation Test Automation Lead, Accenture Anders Wallgren, Chief Technology Officer, Electric Cloud Benjamin Tan, Test Genius, Infometis Raj Kanuparthi, Sr Leader Technology, Vantiv Jacci Modrzewski, Software Quality Manager, Sentry Ivan Vanderbyl, Product Engineer & Co-Founder, Flood IO Wolfgang Platz, Founder & Chief Strategy Officer, Tricentis Sandeep Johri, Chief Executive Officer, Tricentis Tricentis Accelerate in Vienna now brings together more than 1,000 professionals annually in software testing, DevOps and Agile, and were pleased to extend this opportunity to businesses and users in the U.S., said Sandeep Johri, CEO of Tricentis. Accenture and TTC are leading sponsors of Accelerate San Francisco 2018; supporting sponsors include Nous Infosystems, QA Symphony and Infostretch. Visit the Tricentis Accelerate San Francisco conference website to learn more about speakers, content and attendance details. About Tricentis Tricentis provides a Continuous Testing platform that accelerates testing to keep pace with Agile and DevOps. With the industrys most innovative functional testing technologies, Tricentis breaks through the barriers experienced with conventional software testing toolsachieving test automation rates of over 90 percent. Tricentis Tosca, an integrated software testing solution, consists of a scriptless, model-based approach to Test Automation and Test Case Design, encompassing risk-based testing, test data management and provisioning, service virtualization, and more. Tricentis is an established and reliable enterprise partner, helping to deliver significant performance improvements to testing projects. Tricentis 800+ customers include the most technically advanced leaders among the Global 2000, including A&E, Allianz, BMW, HBO, Deutsche Bank, Toyota, Lexmark, Orange, Starbucks, Telstra, UBS, Vantiv, and Vodafone. Tricentis has offices in Austria, Australia, Germany, India, Netherlands, Switzerland, Poland, United States and the UK. To learn more, visit https://www.tricentis.com or follow us on LinkedIn, Twitter, and Facebook. Tricentis and Tosca are registered trademarks of Tricentis. Other trade names used in this document are properties of their respective owners. Tricentis Contact Noel Wurst Tricentis n.wurst@tricentis.com +1 (904) 673-4427 According to the Nassau Guardian of April 12, 2018 "Several members of the Straw Business Persons Society held a march and demonstrated in Rawson Square ... demanding the reopening of over 300 stalls closed due to arrears,..." The Nassau Institute commissioned a brief study of the Straw Market back in August 2007 that revealed among other things that "Vendors pay a business license and an annual stall rental fee of $100. However, the records of such payments are not current, are being updated and cannot be examined." More... Yet in 2009 the government spent "somewhere between 29 and 36 million" to build a new premises for the vendors at the expense of all taxpayers. More... Key questions coming out of the 2007 study were: Why should the country use premier income-generating property for the Government to build a complex for 605 vendors who reportedly do not pay their rent at the expense of other business people and taxpayers who do? Shouldnt the vendors use their own expertise and money to build and manage their own complex? Dont law enforcement, an efficient judicial system and a drastically improved education system have a higher priority for Government funding than a straw market? The present broughaha is yet another opportunity get this albatross known as the Straw Market (a misnomer by the way) from around the forgotten man's (taxpayer's) neck and give the premises, lock, stock and barrel, to the Straw Business Person's Society with the proviso that there will be no subsidisation or protection from taxpayers going forward. There is this notion that the country needs a Straw Market as a shopping experience for tourists. Whether true or not is questionable. However, if it is true the vendors can foot the bill for their delinquent stall holders themselves. Not the "forgotten man". Fort Polk, LA (71446) Today Thunderstorms this evening followed by occasional showers overnight. Low near 70F. Winds light and variable. Chance of rain 70%.. Tonight Thunderstorms this evening followed by occasional showers overnight. Low near 70F. Winds light and variable. Chance of rain 70%. DENVER, April 17, 2018 (GLOBE NEWSWIRE) -- RLH Corporation (NYSE:RLH) announced today the sale of Red Lion Inn & Suites Bend for $5.5 million. The hotel marks the sixth of 11 hotels being marketed for sale previously disclosed in October 2017. All hotels, including Red Lion Inn & Suites Bend have signed franchise license agreements to retain their RLH Corporation brand. RLH Corporations total gain on the sales is expected to be approximately $2 million, and $3.8 million of the proceeds of the sales were used for debt repayment at the closing. Together with the other five previously announced sales, RLH Corporations gain of sales is approximately $16 million. We are committed to our strategy we have outlined to become an asset light franchising company, said RLH Corporation President and Chief Executive Officer Greg Mount. So far in 2018 we have closed the sale on six of the 11 hotels we announced for sale in fall 2017. Each hotel has stayed in the RLH Corporation family of brands and will continue to drive return for the company. Red Lion Inn & Suites Bend accounted for $2.6 million in revenue on an annual basis in 2017. The hotels adjusted EBITDA on consolidated reporting was $0.8 million and RLH Corporations share of the adjusted EBITDA was approximately $0.4 million for 2017. This impact does not take into account the previously announced corporate overhead adjustments to reduce operating costs. To learn more about franchising with RLH Corporation, visit franchise.rlhco.com. We dont wait for the future. We create it. About RLH Corporation Red Lion Hotels Corporation is an innovative hotel company doing business as RLH Corporation and focuses on the franchising, management and ownership of upscale, midscale and economy hotels. The company focuses on maximizing return on invested capital for hotel owners across North America through relevant brands, industry-leading technology and forward-thinking services. For more information, please visit the company's website at www.rlhco.com. Social Media: www.Facebook.com/myhellorewards www.Twitter.com/myhellorewards www.Instagram.com/myhellorewards www.Linkedin.com/company/rlhco Investor Relations Contact: Amy Koch O: 509-777-6417 C: 917-579-5012 investorrelations@rlhco.com Media Contact: Dan Schacter Director, Social Engagement and Public Relations 509-777-6222 dan.schacter@rlhco.com Jailer Tonya Ray Served Summons; Court Date Set Advertisement By West Kentucky Star Staff Apr. 16, 2018 | PADUCAH, KY By West Kentucky Star Staff Apr. 16, 2018 | 12:46 PM | PADUCAH, KY McCracken County Jailer Tonya Ray, who is currently facing a felony perjury charge, has been indicted on an additional misdemeanor charge in a separate case. Kentucky State Police Trooper Jay Thomas says a McCracken County Grand Jury returned an indictment on Friday on a charge of reprisal against an employee for disclosure of violations of the law, or a "whistleblower law" violation. This is related to the firing of Deputy Jailer David Knight, who has since been reinstated at the jail after an investigation by Judge Executive Bob Leeper. Thomas said troopers served the indictment on Tuesday for reprisal against a public employee for disclosure of violation of law, a Class A Misdemeanor. She is set to appear in court May 1. She was in a pre-trial conference Friday and a trial date should have been set, but it was postponed due to this new charge. Assistant Marshall County Attorney Jason Darnell told West Kentucky Star that Special Prosecutor Lynn Pryor could file a motion to have Ray's bond revoked on the perjury charge. If that happens, Circuit Judge Tim Stark would have to issue a ruling, and Ray could go back to the jail as an inmate. Email To : Multiple e-mail addresses must be separated with a comma character(maximum 200 characters) Email To is required. Your Full Name: (optional) Your Email Address: Your Email Address is required. By The Associated Press Apr. 16, 2018 | 12:13 PM | FRANKFORT, KY Kentucky's Democratic Attorney General has released his 2017 tax returns and asked all of the state's constitutional officers to do the same. Beshear released his tax returns Monday morning along with a copy of his annual financial disclosure form. It shows he earned more than $118,000 in 2017, paid more than $12,000 in taxes and donated $2,902 to charity. His financial disclosure form shows he owns stock in US Bank and Microsoft. His only debts are a home mortgage and a student loan. Beshear is a potential candidate for governor in 2019. Thanks for visiting ! The use of software that blocks ads hinders our ability to serve you the content you came here to enjoy. We ask that you consider turning off your ad blocker so we can deliver you the best experience possible while you are here. Thank you for your support! Man Arrested for Rape of Two Tennessee Girls Advertisement By West Kentucky Star Staff Apr. 16, 2018 | PADUCAH, KY By West Kentucky Star Staff Apr. 16, 2018 | 03:40 PM | PADUCAH, KY A McCracken County man was arrested after two girls told police they were kidnapped and sexually assaulted. The Paducah Police Department says a resident in the Forest Hills area called officers on Saturday, April 7. When interviewed, the 15- and 16-year olds said they were from Henderson, Tennessee, and had been brought to Paducah against their will. They reportedly told police they had been sexually assaulted multiple times and forced to cut and dye their hair. The girls said they escaped when the man left for work. Police investigated the claims, and learned that the girls were reported missing from Chester County, Tennessee. A joint investigation between Paducah Police and Tennessee law enforcement determined that one of the girls had communicated with 29-year-old Joshua S. Meyer through social media. Police went to the home and say Meyer, the home and the neighborhood resembled the description given by the girls. On April 10, police interviewed Meyer, who said he met one girl on social media over a year ago and that they had run away from home. Police say Meyer admitted driving to Henderson, bringing the girls to Paducah, and having sex with them. Meyer was arrested last Tuesday night on charges of first-degree rape and first-degree sodomy, along with second degree unlawful transaction with a minor. He was booked into McCracken County Jail, and police say more charges are likely. The final day to file individual tax returns for 2017 is on Tuesday, April 17, 2018. "We were really busy last week [with] people thinking it was the 15th that we were going to be done," said Sierra Lawhorne, the Office Manager for Liberty Tax Services in Waynesboro. But the 15th fell on a Sunday this year and the 16th was a holiday in Washington, D.C., which bumped back the deadline to the 17th. Lawhorne said a big topic of discussion for last minute filers involves penalties for not having health insurance, and what exemptions are available. The office has also received questions regarding letters from the Virginia Department of Taxation, requesting additional information from filers. "We're getting a lot of calls right now about people not receiving their state refunds," said Lawhorne. "It is a lot of times due to the review of a tax return letter the state is sending out and people are just ignoring it and throwing it away." Virginia state taxes are not due until May 1. Lawhorne also said people may not be aware that IRA contributions can be added to 2017 returns through Tuesday. Those applying for an extension through October 15 can send in a form electronically or via certified mail. Changes from the tax law that passed in 2017 will not impact filing . The deadline also means an uptick in scam calls pretending to be with the IRS, so remember that the IRS will not call you and will not threaten to send police to arrest you for your tax return over a phone call. Late last week, the U.S., U.K. and France launched coordinated missile strikes on select regime targets in Syria. It was the second time the Trump administration had ordered strikes on the Assad regime, and only two things distinguish last weeks strikes from the ones that were carried out a year ago: Twice as many missiles were fired in the most recent attack, and the U.K. and France participated. But the strikes will not change the Syrian war. They were driven mainly by domestic politics in the three countries involved, which have emphasized both that regime change is not their goal and that Russia is partly responsible for Bashar Assads actions. Four Powers There are now four global powers intervening in Syria: Russia, the U.S., the U.K. and France. Russia ventured south to distract from problems at home. The U.S., which intervened initially to try to destroy the Islamic State , has struck Assad twice, mainly because President Donald Trump does not want to be compared to former President Barack Obama, who didnt enforce his own red line on Assads use of chemical weapons. The U.K. has latched on to Russia as Europes boogeyman and is using both diplomatic expulsions and now airstrikes against a Russian client state to distract from contentious Brexit negotiations, which as recently as a few months ago threatened to bring down Prime Minister Theresa Mays government. France, which is dealing with crippling labor unrest and a president, Emmanuel Macron, with rapidly declining popularity ratings, wants to hide what everyone already knows: France has become Germanys junior partner in the EU. All four are equally unprepared for a war over Assads alleged use of chemical weapons. The U.S. is desperately searching for a way to leave Syria. The U.K. and France are hardly willing to deploy the type of military force that would be necessary to bring down the Assad regime, much less militarily confront Russia. Russias Syria deployment has always been limited, concentrated mostly on air assets to help the Assad regime defeat rebels who cant challenge Russia in the skies. This is not Desert Storm, nor is it a prelude to World War III. It is foreign powers doing what theyve always done in the Middle East: pushing pawns around on a chessboard to make a point to each other and even to themselves. Meanwhile, the real players in this war were remarkably quiet over the weekend. Israel, which has bombed Assad regime targets and Iranian targets in Syria multiple times, reportedly supplied some intelligence on Syrian chemical weapons facilities but otherwise did not participate in the expedition. (A blast at a Hezbollah base south of Aleppo over the weekend appears to have been a weapons depot explosion and not an Israeli air attack, as many news outlets reported.) Turkey was busy mediating between Russia and the United States right up until the missiles started falling. Iran called the attacks a crime but has confined its vengeance to rhetorical flourishes thus far. The Syrian civil war may yet morph into a much larger conflagration but if that happens, it will be because of a clash of Turkish-Iranian interests , not because of limited Western airstrikes on Assads chemical weapons facilities. While Russia and the U.S. exchange condemnations at the U.N., the Assad regime will continue to mop up the opposition; Turkey will continue its incursion into northern Syria ; Iran will continue building bases and strengthening proxies throughout the country; Israel will apply its deterrence strategy to a much larger target; and the Syrian Kurds will inch closer to the inevitable moment that they are hung out to dry by their patron the U.S. which no longer has a use for them. The sooner the threat of Western airstrikes abates, the sooner the belligerents can get back to the real fighting. An Anti-Russia Coalition But Western powers insist that they will continue to intervene so long as the Assad regime continues to use chemical weapons. Something here has never quite added up. There is little publicly available proof that chemical weapons were used in Douma. The U.S. has said it believes they were, but its track record when it comes to evaluating the presence of weapons of mass destruction in the Middle East leaves something to be desired. Furthermore, coalition airstrikes started shortly before investigators from the Organization for the Prohibition of Chemical Weapons arrived in Damascus. The timing of the Western strikes which were delayed to give Russia an opportunity to remove its forces from harms way is thus confusing, considering that launching the strikes before the investigation could be carried out gives Russia a useful talking point. Moreover, there is little reason for the Assad regime to use such weapons. Its too easy to explain this away by insisting that Assad is just a monster he might be a monster, but hes been an exceedingly pragmatic one up to this point, and theres little reason to think that has changed. Assad and his patrons have no motive for using chemical weapons in this case. The regime is on the cusp of securing Damascus why engage in a chemical attack on a mostly defeated opposition? Using chemical weapons offers little in the way of a military advantage and gives Assads enemies a useful pretext to launch attacks. Russia is trying to leave Syria and has been trying to move toward a negotiated settlement for months. Irans position in Syria is menacing but weak it needs time to establish a robust presence and secure its long supply lines and becoming a Western target is detrimental to its agenda. Amid this confusion, the one thing that can be said for certain is that an anti-Russia coalition has been defined. The Western strikes did not change the balance of power in the Syrian war, and indeed, they have relatively little to do with the conflict that is grinding Syria into dust and ruin. It seems more likely at this point that the strikes were a political statement against Russia. (Germany was reportedly offered an opportunity to join the strike, but it has a more complicated relationship with Russia than the others do and didnt want to engage in direct military action against a Russian ally.) The U.S., the U.K. and France may have bombed chemical weapons facilities in Syria, but they also went out of their way to demonize Russia as a menace to the liberal international order. Our forecast for this year didnt anticipate that the West and Russia would be clashing to this extent. Russia wants a balance of power in the Middle East, one that keeps Turkey and Iran fighting each other indefinitely, preventing both from becoming powerful enough to challenge Russian interests in its desired spheres of influence. The Western powers also want a balance of power. But old habits die hard. Cold War comparisons, however wrongly applied to the current situation, are understandably compelling in a morally ambiguous conflict. Domestic imperatives also sometimes outweigh international ones. Trump wants to look strong, May needs Europe focused on foreign threats instead of the border with Northern Ireland, and Macron is desperate for a political win and all can be had at the low cost of bombing insignificant targets in a Middle Eastern pariah. As for Russian President Vladimir Putin, its now Moscow versus the West and a great deal of economic dysfunction can be forgiven if it is suffered in defense of Mother Russia. There are two wars being fought here: a military war for Syria, and a public relations war between Russia and the West. The airstrikes in Syria were salvos in the latter. The former has no end in sight. Authorities have arrested a 14-year-old Kansas boy accused of shooting his 13-year-old brother in the chest while they played video games at home. Officer Charley Davidson says the younger brother was taken to a Wichita hospital with serious but non-life threatening injuries after being shot around 12:15 p.m. Monday. Davidson says there was a handgun in the room where the brothers were playing video games and that the older boy was handling the weapon when it discharged. The older brother was booked on juvenile charges of criminal possession of a firearm, aggravated battery and possession of marijuana. Davidson says the shooting is under investigation and that he couldn't say whether it was accidental or intentional. WiGBits Headline News Would you like to receive our WiGBits? Signup today! WiG Entertainment News Would you like to receive our WiG Entertainment News? Signup today! Digital Issue Would you like to receive our Digital Issue? Signup today! President Donald Trump's nominee to be the next secretary of state may not get a favorable committee vote, but that won't stop his nomination, according to GOP lawmakers and aides. The plan is for Mike Pompeo, the current CIA director, to have his nomination moved to the Senate floor regardless of the looming committee vote. All eyes will be on a handful of moderate Democrats facing tough re-election campaigns. "I think it's important that he gets a vote on the floor of the Senate and I believe that he will be confirmed," Sen. John Barrasso, a Wyoming Republican and member of leadership, told reporters. The strategic roster of closed-door meetings Pompeo has had with senators so far suggests that the nominee himself has been keenly aware of the shift in focus from the committee vote total to where the floor vote stands. Doing Pompeo's Senate confirmation math As it stands, several committee Democrats still haven't announced where they will end up -- Sen. Ben Cardin, a senior Democrat on the panel, said Monday night he was "still evaluating." But the expectation among Republicans is that given the committee's 11-10 Republican makeup, with GOP Sen. Rand Paul already in the "no" column, that he will not receive the requisite number of votes for a favorable recommendation to the Senate floor. "The committee can report him out unfavorably and you can still take him up on the floor, it's just a question of whether or not we have the committee sign off and it sounds like it's possible we wouldn't," said South Dakota Sen. John Thune, the third-ranked Republican in the chamber. That would provide Pompeo with a somewhat ignominious distinction. According to the Senate historian's office, there are no instances of a secretary of state nominee receiving an unfavorable committee vote since 1925. Prior to the mid to late 1920s, nearly all executive Senate committee business was done in closed session, so there was no public record for these actions, the office added. According to a Congressional Research Service report, from 1987-2016, no nominee was confirmed after being reported unfavorably by a committee. Despite that, Republicans and Trump administration officials, according to aides, have targeted a list of Democrats seen as in play due to both their personal politics -- and the politics of their re-election races. With a political map that includes 10 Democrats running for re-election in states Trump won in 2016, some by sizable margins, and GOP lawmakers and aides say, at least at this point, they are confident in Pompeo's pathway to confirmation. With Paul a "no" vote and Sen. John McCain back in Arizona battling cancer, Republicans would need a single Democrat to vote in favor of Pompeo should each of the 49 Republicans vote for the nomination. Should they lose more Republicans, more Democrats would be needed to get the nomination across the finish line. "There's some combination of up to a handful of them that will have a hard time explaining why they weren't for somebody like Mike Pompeo for that job," said Sen. Roy Blunt, a Missouri Republican. Those Democratic targets include lawmakers like Sen. Joe Manchin of West Virginia and Heidi Heitkamp of North Dakota. Sens. Joe Donnelly of Indiana and Claire McCaskill of Missouri also haven't publicly declared their intentions to this point. Sen. Angus King, an independent from Maine who caucuses with Democrats, told CNN on Tuesday that he was undecided. Trump won one of Maine's four electoral college votes. King is up for re-election this year, and Senate Republicans are eying his vote as potentially gettable, aides say. "I voted for him for head of the CIA," King told CNN's Chris Cuomo on "New Day." "That's a very different job. That is essentially a job of reporting intelligence, passing information to the President. And it's not a policy job. And I think he's done a good job in that position. ... He hasn't put his policy preferences ahead of the intelligence. Secretary of state is a whole different deal." Attempting to highlight the political risk in voting against Pompeo's nomination in tough midterm races given the international turmoil and high stakes, one GOP aide put it plainly: "A 'no' vote is a negative campaign ad a day for every one of them for the next six months." Searching for at least one Democratic vote At the moment, no Democrat has committed to a "yes" vote. But Manchin repeated several times to reporters on Monday that he was "very open minded." The senator will meet with Pompeo on Tuesday, according to a source. Sen. Doug Jones, the recently sworn-in Alabama Democrat, said he's "open" to Pompeo, but wants to meet with him first. McCaskill said she also wants to meet with Pompeo before finalizing her decision. For its part, Senate Democratic leadership hasn't said how they will approach the vote at the caucus up to this point -- whether to push their members to vote against or members vote however they see fit, according to a senior Democratic aide. The clock is ticking, however. Senate Foreign Relations Committee Chairman Bob Corker said Monday he planned to hold the committee vote on Pompeo's nomination next week, with a floor vote possible the week after that. Corker declined to weigh in on his plans should Pompeo fall short in his committee. "Let's see what happens in the committee and then we'll figure out where to go from there," Corker said, adding that he hoped some of the panel's Democrats would eventually vote yes. But he also acknowledged that for many Democrats, the nomination was being viewed more broadly than just about Pompeo. "I do understand how on the Democratic side many view this as a proxy" for the Trump administration's foreign policy in general, Corker told reporters. Plenty of Democrats have raised specific concerns about Pompeo's qualifications -- from his position on the Iran nuclear deal and his independence from Trump to past statements indicating a hawkishness they say they are uncomfortable with in the position as the nation's top diplomat. "Now more than ever, we need a Secretary of State who will stand strong for vigorous US diplomacy," Virginia Democratic Sen. Tim Kaine, who supported Pompeo's nomination to be CIA director, said in a statement. "I believe that Mike Pompeo would exacerbate President Trump's weaknesses rather than uphold our diplomatic legacy." Yet Republicans say it's as much a reflection of the current atmosphere as it is one on the nominee -- a former congressman who graduated first in his class from the US military academy with a degree from Harvard Law School. "Nothing is as easy as it should be right now," Blunt said. "I don't think that's a reflection on him as much as it's a reflection on the moment." This story has been updated. Virginia's Governor, Ralph Northam, announced Monday that Gerber Products Company will be moving its headquarters to Arlington County. According to Northam's office, Gerber's sister company, Nestle USA, is located in Arlington County, and the baby food maker's move is projected to create 150 new jobs. Nestle USA now occupies more than 250,000 square feet at 1812 North Moore Street, the tallest building in the metropolitan area. "One year after Nestle announced its U.S. corporate headquarters relocation to Arlington County, this global giant is bringing another top household brand to Virginia," said Governor Northam. "The company's decision to reinvest and grow in the Commonwealth is a powerful testament to the advantages of our strategic location, infrastructure, and top-rated talent, and reaffirms that Virginia is a prime location for headquarters operations. We are proud that Nestle USA calls Arlington County home, and we look forward to a successful corporate partnership with Gerber." Founded in 1928 in Fremount, Michigan, Gerber joined as a subsidiary of Nestle S.A., located in Vevey, Switzerland, in September 2007. Nestle S.A. is the largest food company in the world. "Closer proximity to Nestle USA's new headquarters in Arlington will provide efficiencies that will be reinvested in our people, products, and production to fuel growth," said Bill Partyka, President and CEO of Gerber. "Northern Virginia also offers a great quality of life for our employees and provides access to strong talent for our current and future needs." The project was secured through The Virginia Economic Development Partnership working with the Arlington County Economic Development. Northam also approved a grant worth $862,500 to assist Arlington County with finalizing the move with Gerber. "We are thrilled to welcome Gerber to Arlington's business community," said Katie Cristol, Chair of the Arlington County Board. "Nestle's decision to expand its new home in Arlington by relocating Gerber here reflects both the commitment to our community and the success of our efforts to diversify our economy." Gerber will also be eligible to receive a Major Business Facility Job Tax Credit. Funding and services to support the company's employee training activities will be provided through the Virginia Jobs Investment Program. By Eliott C. McLaughlin and Brian Todd, CNN (CNN) -- Passengers aboard a Dallas-bound Southwest Airlines flight Tuesday heard an explosion before seeing oxygen masks drop from the ceiling and a woman sucked toward a broken window in the plane, a witness said. One person died in the incident, according to National Transportation Safety Board Chairman Robert Sumwalt. The person has not been identified. "Everybody was going crazy, and yelling and screaming," passenger Marty Martinez said of the flight, which left New York and was forced to make an emergency landing in Philadelphia. "As the plane is going down, I am literally purchasing internet just so I can get some kind of communication to the outside world," he said. The plane had suffered damage to one of its engines, and according to passenger Kristopher Johnson, who was sitting near the front of Flight 1380, debris from the engine flew into the window, breaking it and injuring a woman sitting nearby. "Shrapnel hit the window causing a serious injury. No other details about that. Several medical personnel on the flight tended to the injured passenger," Johnson said. The crew reported damage to one of the aircraft's engines as well as the fuselage and a window, the Federal Aviation Administration said in a statement. The injured woman's arms and body were sucked toward the opening in the plane, Martinez recalled in a phone interview. Objects flew out the hole where the window had been, and "passengers right next to her were holding onto her. And meanwhile, there was blood all over this man's hands. He was tending to her," said Martinez, who was sitting a row or two away from the woman. Other passengers began trying to plug the hole with jackets and other objects but to no avail. Those items, too, were sucked out of the plane, he said. Martinez said he didn't think he would survive. Nor did his colleague in an adjacent seat who was scrambling to write one last message to his wife and unborn son, he said. "We could feel the air from the outside coming in, and then we had smoke kind of coming in the window. Meanwhile, you have passengers that were in that aisle, trying to attend to the woman that was bleeding from the window explosion," he said. "That was just chaos all around." The plane descended precipitously, Johnson said, but the pilot regained control and informed passengers the flight was headed to Philadelphia. "The crew did a great job," he said. It was a rough landing, Martinez said, and things were still so chaotic that he wasn't sure if the plane was going to crash. The jet could have been landing on a freeway for all he knew, he said. "I didn't know if we were going to be running into a building. I didn't know what state the plane or even the pilot was in, if we were in condition to land," he said. "It was just all incredibly traumatic, and finally when we ... came to a halt, of course, the entire crowd was (in) tears and people crying and we were just thankful to be alive." Philadelphia Fire Commissioner Adam Thiel said earlier that one of the 149 passengers and crew members on board was taken to the hospital in critical condition. Seven others were treated for minor injuries. "We are in the process of gathering more information," Southwest said in a statement. Video from the scene showed the plane on the tarmac surrounded by emergency vehicles. The engine on the left wing was badly damaged. Philadelphia International Airport said the plane landed safely. Passengers using the airport should expect delays, it said. The NTSB has sent a team to Philadelphia to investigate the incident. Boeing said it is providing technical assistance in the investigation. (The-CNN-Wire & 2018 Cable News Network, Inc., a Time Warner Company. All rights reserved.) It was last Wednesday that Whitesboro Police Officer Kevin Crossley was killed in an accident on Oriskany Boulevard while on duty. Family, friends and the community are currently paying their final respects at the Adirondack Bank Center in Utica until 8 p.m., but the outpouring of gratitude from people who live along Officer Crossleys beat started days ago. Photo of Officer Kevin Crossley courtesy of Facebook Photo of Officer Kevin Crossley courtesy of Facebook Blue lights, blue ribbons and even hand-painted signs adorn porches and businesses on and around Clinton Street in Whitesboro in honor of Crossley. Many of those people are now at the Adirondack Bank Center paying respects to the officer who kept watch over them for seven years. Its a ceremonious sendoff fitting for a man who served the community in not one, not two, buy three capacities, as a full-time officer for the Whitesboro Police Department, a part-time officer for the Whitestown Police Department and a former member of the Whitesboro Fire Department. Those who loved Officer Crossley, knew him casually, and some who never even met him are filing into the Aud to say thank you and let his family know that his service meant something to them. At 3:30 p.m. Tuesday, the hearse pulled up alongside the American flag, held up by Yorkville and Whitesboro fire departments aerial trucks, and an honor guard stood at attention on each side, offering a salute as their brother passed by. A funeral service for Officer Crossley will begin with a law enforcement walk-through at 10 a.m. Wednesday at the Adirondack Bank Center, and the public is welcome to attend. If youre unable to make it in person, you can watch the full service at WKTV.com/livestream. For a list of road closures from 8 a.m. to 3 p.m. tomorrow due to the funeral, click here. A remarkable year: 50th anniversary commemoration culminates with Legacy Weekend Legacy Weekend: William & Mary's first residential African-American residential students (from left) Lynn Briley, Karen Ely and Janet Brown Strafer pose for a photo with 50th commemoration planning committee chair Jacqui McLendon (right) at Saturday's alumni awards dinner. The alumnae, known as the "Legacy 3," received awards at the event. Photo by Skip Rowland '83 Legacy Weekend: Storyteller Onawumi Jean Moss performs in the Sadler Center Thursday night. Photo by Skip Rowland '83 Legacy Weekend: Singers perform as part of Friday's black opera gala in the Sadler Center. Photo by Skip Rowland '83 Legacy Weekend: Emeritus Chancellor Professor of English Terry Meyers leads an African-American history tour of W&M. Photo by Skip Rowland '83 Legacy Weekend: Emeritus Chancellor Professor of English Terry Meyers leads an African-American history tour of W&M. Photo by Skip Rowland '83 Legacy Weekend: Lynn Briley speaks as part of a discussion with the Legacy 3 at the School of Education Saturday. Photo by Skip Rowland '83 Legacy Weekend: Alumni, faculty, staff, students and community members gather in Miller Hall for the alumni awards dinner. Photo by Skip Rowland '83 Legacy Weekend: Students perform during the alumni awards dinner. Photo by Skip Rowland '83 Legacy Weekend: Kimberly Willis Miles and Hulon Willis Jr. accept an award on behalf of their father, Hulon LaVaughan Willis, M.Ed. 56, the first African-American person admitted to William & Mary. Photo by Skip Rowland '83 Legacy Weekend: Students pose for a photo during the alumni awards dinner. Photo by Skip Rowland '83 Photo - of - Hide Caption Soon after she arrived at William & Mary, Karen Ely one of the universitys first three African-American residential students overheard a conversation between a woman and then-President Davis Paschall. Thats one of the three. Theyll never make it, Ely recalled her saying. Though self-described as not brave, Ely, who was walking behind the two, stepped on the womans shoe to stop her. I said, Not only will we make it, but every year after this, there are going to be more people who look like me. Ely saw that prediction come true when she returned to W&M in 2011 the first time she had been back since graduating 40 years prior to be celebrated by the Hulon Willis Alumni Association along with her two classmates, Janet Brown Strafer and Lynn Briley, known collectively as the Legacy 3. I saw a room full of black graduates, she said, her voice catching. I still get emotional. All of these people came after us, and theyre honoring us and we didnt even know we were making history. Throughout the 2017-2018 academic year, W&M has been commemorating that history, marking the 50th anniversary of Ely, Strafer and Brileys arrival at W&M with a series of special events, projects, performances, lectures and other programming. The Building on the Legacy commemoration culminated on April 12-14 with Legacy Weekend, which included a performance by storyteller Onawumi Jean Moss, a black opera gala, an African-American history walking tour (watch video), a panel session with the Legacy 3 and an alumni awards dinner with journalist Charlayne Hunter-Gault as the keynote speaker. We are enormously in Lynn, Karen and Janets debt for what they did half a century ago and for their willingness this academic year, on countless occasions and in countless ways, to return to campus to remember and commemorate their legacy, W&M President Taylor Reveley said at Saturday nights dinner. Reveley was also honored at the event by the 50th anniversary planning committee for his support of the commemorative year. Moss kicked off the weekend by meeting with students and staff in the Center for Student Diversity on Thursday before performing that evening in the Sadler Center. While the students attending her CSD event may have expected her to tell a story, she turned her focus on them and their stories, asking each to share his or her name and ethnic origins. I didnt need to tell you a story, she said. I needed you to appreciate your story so that you could go back and look at yourself in the mirror and say I am, and you will see me. Moss added that as William & Mary continues to work on diversity and inclusion, she believes it is critical the university hears student, faculty and staff narratives. It has to hear you. It has to see you. It has to respect your efforts to build your legacy within the construct of a legacy thats still having trouble expanding to make it all-inclusive, she said. {{youtube:medium:right|L3FYPvaWRnM, Excerpts from the 'We Have Come' performance by soulful storyteller Onawumi Jean Moss}} The 50th anniversary commemoration kicked off in August when a mural featuring Briley, Ely and Strafer was unveiled in Swem Library. Just one week prior, the Legacy 3 led new students at the university through the Wren Building and through a crowd of cheering students, faculty, staff and alumni as part of Opening Convocation. The alumnae have been back myriad times since, including Homecoming Weekend, when they served as grand marshals of the parade. It has been a year of learning about our past and more importantly learning from our past, said Jacqui McLendon, emerita professor of English and chair of the 50th anniversary committee, Saturday night. We have discovered new and different ways to work together, building on the legacy of our ancestors because after all we are One tribe. One family. {{youtube:medium:left|tEns4uBEs-Y, The Legacy 3 respond to questions during a class last summer.}} During the panel session with the Legacy 3 on Saturday afternoon in the School of Education, Shene Owens, assistant director of the Center for Student Diversity, asked the three alumnae what this year has been like for them. Its been exciting. Its been surprising. Its been humbling, said Strafer, adding that she has met students, faculty, staff and guest speakers she never wouldve met otherwise. When we came, we had no idea we were breaking any kinds of molds or records or anything. Even once we discovered that, we were just about the business of going to school. It has taken 50 years and only in retrospect do we realize the importance. Briley said that one of the most rewarding aspects of the experience has been digging into the archives to learn more about the African-Americans who came before them and those that tried to but were denied. Those words just gnawed at me to see that they denied black students because they just didnt fit here, she said. But there were students who came before us, and we wanted them to be acknowledged through this whole commemoration period, and to find out who they were, what their lives were like has been most fascinating to me. Some of those students were honored Saturday night during the awards dinner. Twelve alumni, including the Legacy 3, received awards, four posthumously (listed first below). Hulon LaVaughan Willis M.Ed. 56 was the first African-American person admitted to William & Mary. His children, Kimberly Willis Miles and Hulon Willis, Jr., accepted the award on his behalf. Edward Augustus Travis B.C.L. 54 was the first African-American person admitted to W&M Law School and the first black student to graduate from the university. His daughter Edwadine Travis Whitehead accepted the award. Miriam Johnson Carter was the first African-American woman to be admitted to William & Mary. Her grandchildren Dianne Carter de Mayo and James Carter accepted the award. Sharon Coles-Stewart J.D. 75 was the first African-American woman to graduate from W&M Law School. Her daughter Lawren Stewart accepted the award. Oscar Houser Blayton was the first African-American undergraduate admitted to William & Mary. He was not allowed to live on campus. Brian K. Blount 78 was the first African-American student to be inducted into Phi Beta Kappa. Blount also delivered the invocation at the dinner. Current W&M Board member Warren W. Buck III M.S. 70, Ph.D. 76, D.Sc. 13 was the first African-American graduate in physics. Current W&M Board member Warren W. Buck III M.S. 70, Ph.D. 76, D.Sc. 13 was the first African-American graduate in physics. Marvin Hedgepath M.A. 75, C.A.S. in Higher Education Administration 82, was the first African-American student to graduate from W&Ms Virginia Institute of Marine Science. Warren E. Winston Jr. '72 was the first African-American scholarship student-athlete at William & Mary. Winston was also honored during the 2017 Homecoming game. During the dinner, Earl Granger, associate vice president for development, announced that the university has committed land adjacent to Jefferson Hall for the creation of a Legacy Tribute Garden to mark the place on campus where Briley, Ely and Strafer's journey at William & Mary began. A fundraising effort is underway to garner the resources for this tribute. While Legacy Weekend may have marked the culmination of the yearlong commemoration, two more upcoming events will honor the Legacy 3. At Commencement in May, they will receive honorary degrees from the university. Its been a remarkable year. Its been one event after the other, and each one has been more fascinating than the previous one, said Ely. Its just been remarkable, and I am just so grateful. China News on Women Sorry, the page you requested was not found. If you're having trouble locating a destination on Womenofchina.cn, try visiting the Womenofchina Home page Success! An email has been sent to with a link to confirm list signup. AEM Technology sees milestone with first VVER-TOI 17 April 2018 Share AEM Technology has completed the manufacture of the bottom of the reactor vessel for unit 1 of the Kursk II nuclear power plant under construction in western Russia. This is the first of the VVER-TOI (typical optimised, with enhanced information) design nuclear reactors. The bottom of the VVER-TOI vessel for Kursk II-1 (Image: Rosatom) Atomenergoproekt, which like AEM Technology is a subsidiary of Russian state nuclear corporation Rosatom, announced the VVER-TOI design in 2010. This design has an upgraded pressure vessel, increased power to 3300 MWt and 1255-1300 MWe gross (nominally 1300), improved core design to increase cooling reliability, further development of passive safety with 72-hour grace period requiring no operator intervention after shutdown, lower construction and operating costs, and 40-month construction time. It will use a low-speed turbine-generator. Announcing completion of the reactor vessel bottom today, AEM Technology said the procedure had been carried out in two stages. The Volgodonsk branch of its subsidiary Atommash conducted thermopressing and 'punching' during heating of the component for six hours at a maximum temperature of 1070 degrees and placing a 300 millimetre-thick sheet weighing 64 tonnes onto it with a force of 12,000 tonnes. Rosatom describes the VVER-TOI as the "logical development" of its so-called Generation 3+ units and an "evolutionary step" in improving the reactor vessel design of high-capacity plants. This design provides for an increase in the dimensions of the shell of the core of the reactor vessel, the use of improved welding materials, and the optimisation of the design of steam generators, the corporation says. The design also "ensures high economic performance with the maximum safety level of the unit", it adds. Kursk II will replace four RBMK units currently operating at the site and commissioning of the first two Kursk II units will be synchronised with the closure of Kursk 1 and 2. In 2015, Rosatom's nuclear power plant operator subsidiary, Rosenergoatom, announced its plan to decommissioning nine units by 2023 - four VVERs (Kola 1&2, Novovoronezh 3&4), three RBMKs (Leningrad 1&2 and Kursk 1) and the four small Bilibino EGPs, total 4808 MWe gross, 4573 MWe net. Three more RBMK units (Kursk 2, Leningrad 3&4) and the Beloyarsk 4 BN-600 fast reactor are due to retire by 2027, total 3600 MWe gross, 3427 MWe net. Researched and written by World Nuclear News Related topics Email Sign Up For Our Free Weekly Newsletter California accounts for 45% of the total shortage at nearly 3.4 million units Using only 25% of the land required under the more of the same approach, smart growth could produce 7.3 million units by producing 10% single family homes, 61% in middle density housing such as townhomes, cottage clusters, and mid-rise buildings, and 29% in towers. More of the same would mean 54% of new units would be single-family homes alone, which require much more land and infrastructure installation and are often out-of-step with the lifestyle choices of younger Americans. Because housing is distributed more densely and closer to transit stations, smart growth could reduce vehicle miles traveled by 28%, if patterns produced in California hold for other under producing states. Taking cars off the road improves quality of life and cuts CO2 emissions. Based on a dynamic, 20-year economic model, the report estimated that growth in a smart-growth approach would create an additional $400 billion in GDP relative to more of the same, or $2.1 trillion in cumulative GDP over the baseline forecast. The report estimates that smart growth would generate an additional $128 billion in federal income and payroll taxes over the same 20-year period. Local tax revenue, particularly property taxes, would also increase under smart growth. By Right Approval. Establish "by-right" high-density residential development in a half-mile radius around transit stations (roughly 5 percent of a metropolitan region's land area). Impact Fee Recalibration. Recalibrate impact fees to reflect actual costs of infrastructure service for high-density development. Property Tax Abatement. Use property tax abatement as a gap-financing tool to enable more compact and affordable housing communities. Value Capture. Establish mechanisms to capture value created through up-zones and tax abatement investments to be used as dedicated funding for a range of housing programs. Sign Up Free | The WPJ Weekly Newsletter Relevant real estate news. Actionable market intelligence. Right to your inbox every week. Go Thank you for your interest! You will now be receiving our Weekly Real Estate Newsletter. Real Estate Listings Showcase According to new research from the Up for Growth National Coalition, ECONorthwest, and Holland Government Affairs, from 2000 to 2015, the U.S. fell 7.3 million units short of meeting housing demand.The Housing Underproduction in the U.S. report details the depth and breadth of the housing crisis by focusing on the 22 states and Washington, DC that failed to meet their historic housing production demand. While California accounts for over 45% of the total shortage at nearly 3.4 million units, states in nearly every corner of the country under produced housing, representing over 5% of total housing stock. In addition to increasing rents and home prices at an unsustainable level, failure to meet housing demand has other negative societal impacts, including suppressing national GDP, generating negative environmental impacts, and pushing individuals and families with limited incomes farther away from job centers. "The housing shortage is far more severe than originally believed, and much more widespread," said Clyde Holland, Founder and CEO of Holland Partner Group and Up for Growth Executive Chairman. "From California to Maine, the supply of housing is simply not matching its growing demand. Not building enough new housing pushes rents up, forces quality of life down, and is a significant drag on the economy. As this research clearly shows, these trends and the barriers to building market-rate and affordable housing are unsustainable. To achieve affordable, sustainable, and vibrant communities, we need a new approach to housing."The report goes beyond simply identifying the depth of the housing shortage. It examines three different approaches to meeting demand: more of the same, intensifying urban density, and smart growth. More of the same assigns new housing based on existing patters that favor low-density, suburban sprawl. Intensifying urban density assigns additional housing units through a top down approach, filling in the densest existing block groups first to provide a comparative, if infeasible, baseline representing the extreme end of dense development. Smart growth would favor new housing based on a formula of existing density, distance to transit stops, and the share of commuters in a given area who drive their own vehicles to work.The research suggests the significant benefits in the smart growth scenario. For example:"This new report makes a strong analytic case for policies that would enable a greater volume of higher density, transit-oriented development," said Harvard's Joint Center for Housing Studies' Managing Director Dr. Chris Herbert. "The findings offer compelling evidence that such policies would reduce infrastructure costs and vehicle miles traveled and expand the supply of housing, helping to alleviate upward pressure on rents and home values. Importantly, the report's recommendations also point to the need to capture a portion of the value created by allowing higher density development to provide financial support for a much-needed expansion of the supply of affordable housing."The research offers four policy prescriptions needed to enable a Smart Growth approach to new housing development. These include:"As demonstrated in this report, the shortage of available and affordable homes, coupled with unsustainable rising rents and stagnating incomes has become truly a national problem, especially for lower-income families, millennials, and seniors," said Ali Solis, President and CEO of Make Room, Inc. and an Up for Growth Board Member. "We know that when a home is affordable and accessible to transit it promotes financial stability and economic mobility. It leads to better health outcomes, improves children's school performance, and supports employment retention. We simply need the political will to make housing a national priority and support proven smart growth policies, increased investments, and scalable solutions."The technical advisory board for the report include Harvard's Dr. Chris Herbert; George Washington University and Brookings Institution's Christopher Leinberger; Dr. Peter Linneman from the Wharton School at the University of Pennsylvania; Carol Galante at the University of California, Berkeley's Terner Center for Housing Innovation; and Dr. Mark Obrinsky, the chief economist at the National Multifamily Housing Council in Washington, DC."This report clearly defines the severity of the housing shortage in the United States," said Mike Kingsella, Executive Director of Up for Growth National Coalition and one of the authors of the report. "We are challenging policymakers at all levels to come together to pass meaningful reforms that encourage new development for all kinds of housing, including affordable. The status quo is unacceptable and unsustainable." A lawyer argued that his client should not be jailed for groping a woman in a store because he did not understand that his actions were not allowed in the United States. 43-year-old Azadeen Altom, who now lives in Logan, Utah, was arrested after walking up to a woman in a supermarket and groping her buttocks while she was shopping. Altom pleaded guilty to one count of forced sexual abuse, reduced to a third-degree felony. During sentencing, defense attorney Bryan Galloway asked the judge for leniency, saying that Altom, who is originally from Sudan, does not understand the culture here and needs more education to live in society. I did not think the defendant was a sex offender or a stalker, he just does not understand what is legal and what is not, the lawyer said. However, State prosecutor Griffin Hazzard did not agree. He said that if Altom is not able to understand cultural differences, and not understand that you do not approach women and grab them, then he cannot be in society. Hazzard also noted that Altom has a criminal history including walking into the Logan Middle School cafeteria, sitting down, and looking at a group of girls. He was removed by police. A month later, he was arrested at Walmart after a teenager reported that he was harassing her. Altom was also charged with failing to register as a sex offender for crimes he committed in Nebraska. Judge Kevin Allen acknowledged the cultural differences but said he did not know of any culture in which it was appropriate to grab a woman in a supermarket. He explained that no woman or man should have to tolerate that kind of behavior in our community. Judge Allen sentenced Altom to up to five years in prison. Last year, Judge Thomas Willmore sentenced Altom to serve 1-year in jail. He refused a lighter sentence of just 3 months, which was recommended by probation officers. However, after spending 5 months in prison, the judge released Altom so immigration officers could deport him. Logan City Police Chief Gary Jensen explained that Altom was not deported after his native country refused to take him. Since he couldnat be deported, he was allowed to walk free until he offended again. WRC teams have been busy fine-tuning their gravel set-ups ahead of tackling the plains and mountains of YPF Rally Argentina (26-29 April). Dedicated YouTube WRC spotters caught Toyota, Citroen, M-Sport Ford and Hyundai as they prepare for the second transatlantic trip of the year by testing on the gravel in Portugal and Sardinia because FIA rules prohibit testing outside of Europe. Rally74r captured Corsica linea - Tour de Corse winner Sebastien Ogier testing his Fiesta in Portugal ahead of a rally hes never won in the WRC. Thierry Neuville was also testing in Portugal as the Hyundai driver looks to take back-to-back wins in Argentina, he was caught by AsportZ. Elsewhere, Craig Breen prepared to get back in the Citroen C3 WRC having sat out in favour of Sebastien Loeb for the last two rallies. The Irishman was filmed by FZRVideo in Sardinia as he looks to build on his second-place finish at Rally Sweden in February. Ott Tanak will also be looking to keep up the momentum in Argentina after a strong performance in the Yaris on Corsica two weeks ago. He followed Breen to Sardinia as he looked to also clock up the miles ahead of Rally Italia Sardegna in June. Thanks to GSB Rally Motorsport for the Tanak footage. More News Tuesday, April 17, 2018 NORTH AUGUSTA, S.C. (WRDW/WAGT) -- The election results are being tallied for District 7 seat. At this time the votes are as follows: Charlie Walker: 725 Elliott Brown: 344 Check back for more on this developing story. Monday, April 16, 2018 News 12 @ 6 O'clock / NBC 26 at 7 NORTH AUGUSTA, S.C. (WRDW/WAGT) -- With District 7 Board of Education Member Frank Dolan out, there's now a seat to fill at the Richmond County Board of Education. Two Richmond County parents are left, vying for the spot. "I have a willingness to be able to serve and I think it's a little bit of a duty," said Charlie Walker Jr. "It's the kids. I have to special kids of my own who we have done really well with. Now I hope to help other peoples kids in the same way, said Elliott Brown. The District 7 board member represents T. Harry Garrett, A. Brian Merry, Tutt Middle, Warren Road and Westside High. Some of which will be re-zoned under the districts new rightsizing plan. Both candidates say they support the boards' decision. "It's necessary. The school board doesn't have a crystal ball that tells them where people are going to want to live in anytime in the particular future," said Walker. Dr. Pringle is trying to save money for the city; you know, being good stewards of tax dollars we have, said Brown. The rightsizing plan was approved without a District 7 representative. Whoever wins, helps make decisions for more than 30,000 students. Voter turnout is expected to be low. Of the more than 15,000 voters who can decide who takes the District 7 seat here at the board of education a little more one thousand actually showed up to the March special election. Richmond County Board of Elections tell us they anticipate the same turnout for the runoff. "The biggest thing is getting people out and getting awareness to things like this to let people know we are out here and trying to help the community, said Brown. Drop your kids off at school, tellem you loveem and then go vote," said Walker. This is to fill Dolans term which ends December. After that, this seat will be up again for its regular 4 year term election this November. There will be six polling locations open in District 7 tomorrow (April 17). Voting hours will be from 7:00 am to 7:00 pm. Under 18s protected from Kingdom litter tickets by Council contract change This article is old - Published: Tuesday, Apr 17th, 2018 Wrexham Council have given us further detail on the process of ticketing of under 18s by Kingdom, with a tightening of the procedure that previously allowed ticketing of 16 and 17 year olds. Wrexham Council brought in Kingdom to sort out dog fouling however their operation appears to be 90%+ focused on cigarette butts. Kingdom had a trial period in Wrexham, that was then extended to the current two year contract. It has emerged that during the original pilot scheme, FPNs could be issued to any person over the age of 16, however in the full current contract that age limit has been increased so no FPNs to under 18s should be issued. Last week Councillors voiced their concern over the Kingdom enforcement contract in place with Wrexham Council in a meeting that lasted several hours. In the meeting it was confirmed that the contract states people under the age of 18 should not be ticketed by Kingdom officers on behalf of Wrexham Council. As well as a lengthy report we were live tweeting from the meeting, including the point below: Clr Davies asks why FPNs have been issued to under 18s , despite contract between WCBC/Kingdom says not to issue to under 18s. Says that data came from Kingdoms own reports, however that dataset is no longer circulated to Cllrs. Wrexham.com (@wrexham) April 11, 2018 In response to that tweet Ali said: A fine was issued to my 16 year old son for walking our dog on a field the officer claimed was a marked pitch. Not so and I got the fine overturned after five weeks of badgering them, contacting my local councillor for help and threatening papers! He gave his date of birth to the sole officer who came out of a hedge and approached him from behind. This is also not allowed! He never asked parents telephone number or contacted psco/police to chaperone either. Again not allowed! The above exchange is contrary to the operating procedure cited in the meeting, and the complaints process outlined to councillors sounded smoother than a five week badgering. Wrexham.com has read several anecdotal accounts of under 18s being ticketed, including attempted court action. Due to that, and the now public information over the contractual obligations over ticketing under 18s we posed several questions to Wrexham Council. We asked for official guidance for those under 18 on what to do if they are approached, or issued with a ticket which seems can happen if there is no proof of age. Wrexham Council told us: You can legitimately issue a FPN to a person aged 10 years and over. However there are obvious reasons why you would not do this. WCBC have directed Kingdom not to issue a FPN to any person under the age of 18. However it is appreciated that some young people who are 17 years of age can look older. Kingdom ask for ID to verify the persons age. If ID is provided a FPN would not be issued and appropriate advice will be provided to the individual about the correct behaviour related to littering. However if ID cannot be provided at the time when the officer has approached the young person then a FPN will be issued and the person is advised that if proof of age can be provided then the FPN will be cancelled. We asked regarding under 18s reaching court under the believe they were 18 or over. Wrexham Council did not confirm or deny that had happened, however said: During the original pilot scheme, FPNs could be issued to any person over the age of 16 therefore it is possible that a case may have progressed to court if the FPN was not paid. This approach was reviewed and changed as part of the new contract since April 2017 We also asked if under 18s have been issued with a ticket and paid it, what was the process for that to be reversed. Wrexham Council said: This would only be valid from the start of the new contract since April 2017. Each case would be considered on its own merit. If the person believes this is the case then they can contact Kingdom directly on environmentalcrime@wrexham.gov.uk Councillor Dana Davies said in last weeks meeting that the number of under 18s ticketed used to be provided in data to councillors however Kingdom have stopped doing that. We asked for a break down of the data of the number of under 18s issued with tickets since Kingdom operated in Wrexham, and hopefully, confirmation all were rescinded. Wrexham Council declined to provide that information, however said we could attempt a Freedom of Information request. Wrexham.com has placed said Freedom of Information request, with some further data points also requested. Top pic: A genuine Lord Street discarded cigarette end. In the 16 years since the school academy programme was introduced by the 1997 Labour government, there has been a substantial increase in the number of schools converting to the business-sponsored model of education. Academies are state-funded but privately run. According to government statistics released in February, there are currently 7,060 academy schools in England with 1,184 waiting to become academies. Within these, 64.7 percent of secondary schools (11-16 years) have converted, while only 26.8 percent of primaries (4-11) are in academy status. There has been much debate about the detrimental impact that becoming an academy has on the standard of education, with the costs of converting vastly outweighing any benefits. Over the past decade, many campaigns have been held to stop the drive to academisation, which amount to the wholesale privatisation and marketisation of education. These have been largely led by teachers and parents, who feel that the future of their childrens education will be damaged. In other schools that have already been taken over by Multi-Academy Trusts [MATs], there is a complete disregard for teachers conditions. At St. Helens Primary Academy in Barnsley, staff took strike action against the academy management. A campaign launched by parents circulated a petition declaring no confidence in the schools executive head teacher and demanded the removal of Academies Enterprise Trust (AET), which is the largest MAT in the country. Many are demanding the school should return to local authority control. In this case, National Education Union [NEU] workers were balloted and there was a 100 percent vote for strikes on a 91 percent turnout. This is down to the conditions that have seen a revolving door of staff affecting the running of the school. This is a familiar picture. MATs take over the running of schools, and ultimately this leads to an exodus of staff due to the practices of each MAT provider. Staff are forced to stand in line behind the new school leaders or are pressured to leave the school, as the academy chain puts its own stamp on the school. Parent groups have supported the teachers with their own campaigns. Leonie Gleadhall, who was the chair of the school governors until AET sacked her last July, set up the #StHelensWarriors group with public meetings and protests held against the MAT. A first strike was held on March 21, with the school completely shut down. Another strike, for two days, took place April 10/11. Also striking for two days on February 27 were staff at The Village School in Brent, west London. A strike was held on March 26 at Acton High School in west London in opposition to plans to turn the school into an academy. It is understood that the school will become part of ARK Schools, a multi-academy trust that runs 34 schools in London, Birmingham, Hastings and Portsmouth. In Brent, London, a campaign took place against Grove Park and Woodfield School becoming part of an MAT, with protests outside the meeting that decided the final decision. Protesting with placards were members of the NEU, which is made up of the National Union of Teachers (NUT) and the Association of Lecturers and Teachers. Present at the protest was the joint general secretary of the NEU, Kevin Courtney. Earlier action by teachers and parents had been praised by local Labour councillor Jumbo Chan, who also weighed into the debate by stating his views against the change. Despite the rhetoric from the unions and some Labourites, the consultation process ended predictably in defeat. Consultation periods, where staff and parents are asked for their opinions on academisation, are foregone conclusions. Decisions are already made between the department of education, the council and the MAT providers. It is the conditions that schools face in terms of their stretched budgets that dictate the move towards academy conversion, not the welfare of staff or pupils. Schools now publicly state that becoming an academy is a way to accommodate the pressure of reduced budgets. A statement on the Brent consultation read: The current context for special schools includes increasing budget pressuresas income is static or falling per pupil while costs increaseand challenges in recruitment and retention of staff. It added, The schools are exploring whether forming a multi-academy trust would help address these challenges. Staff at Friesland School, in Sandiacre in Derbyshire, took strike action over five days in February to protest becoming an academy. A revealing letter from the school to parents supporting the academisation noted the role of the unions in facilitating the process nationally: The Governing Body believes this strike action to be both unwarranted and excessive. As we have said many times, schools across the country have been academising on a monthly basis for many years and strike action is rare. Due to the refusal of the unions to wage a joint offensive of educators, the Friesland School letter was able to state, There are now significantly more secondary academies than Local Authority Maintained schools both nationally and in Derbyshire. Any strikes called by the teaching unions, as a way of maintaining control over the anger of staff at the consequences of becoming academies, are being confined to a few single schools. NEU members at three schools in east Londons Newham boroughAvenue Primary School, Cumberland and Keir Hardieheld a series of strikes in February and March against plans to turn the schools into academies. They fear that this will undermine the pay, conditions and job security of all the schools staff. The strikes were well supported by parents. In their attempts to turn schools into academies, governing boards are seeking to ride roughshod over basic democratic norms. Parents at Avenue school took legal action to oppose the lack of a serious consultation involved in the proposed transfer of the school into an academy. Last month, a judge at the Royal Courts of Justice heard the judicial review and granted parents permission to proceed towards the next stage of their case. A conversion date to become an academy had been scheduled for April 1, but the decision means that is now on hold. The role of the NEU, the National Association of Schoolmasters Union of Women Teachers [NASUWT], and the Education Institute of Scotland in opposing any national struggle to defend their members livelihoods is demonstrated by their response to the votes by delegates at their annual conferences for strike action. In response, all that the NEU is proposing is a joint committee of the union to meet in May to consider the ballot for strike action called by delegates in its NUT section. The NEU is only committed to holding an indicative ballot of members this summer. The NASUWT has not called a national strike since 2013, instead authorising only actions short of strikes. The unions are being assisted in their isolation of the strikes against academisation of schools by various pseudo-left outfits. The Socialist Workers Party (SWP) is campaigning for the replacement of right-wing Labour councillors with supporters of the Momentum group, who back Labour leader Jeremy Corbyn, claiming this will halt the academy programme. In Newham, the long-standing Labour mayor, Sir Robin Wales, has been deselected and the Momentum-backed Rokhsana Fiaz has replaced him as Labours candidate for the upcoming local elections. Fiaz has made hollow promises to oppose the academisation of schools. This is despite the fact that Labours policy on the matter is that a Labour government will not force schools to become Academies, but there is no commitment to reversing the entire academy programme. At the end of February, Newham council passed a resolution, hailed by the SWP, that said only that it strongly discourages academisation. It calls to halt all steps towards academisation, but only until and unless there has been a binding parental and staff ballot. The Australian Liberal-National Coalition government of Prime Minister Malcolm Turnbull rushed to endorse the US-British-French missile strikes against Syria over the weekend and signalled its willingness to participate directly in future attacks on the beleaguered Middle Eastern nation. The support of the Turnbull government and the Labor Party opposition for the illegal act of aggression, is in line with Australias role as a key military and diplomatic ally of Washington. The entire Australian political establishment has supported participating in every US-led war in the Middle East over the past 25 years, and is centrally involved in Washingtons preparations for military conflicts in the Asia-Pacific region, including against North Korea and China. In a joint statement on Saturday, Turnbull, along with Foreign Minister Julie Bishop and Defence Minister Marise Payne, declared that his government fully supports attacks on military facilities in Syria. They labelled the strikes over the weekend proportionate and targeted. The statement repeated the bogus pretext for the US strikes. They had sent an unequivocal message to the Assad regime and its backers, Russia and Iran, that the use of chemical weapons will not be tolerated, it declared. The Labor Partys foreign affairs spokeswoman Penny Wong likewise endorsed the attack. She described it as appropriate, and declaimed, The world has drawn a red line into the use of chemical weapons and an appropriate response to the breaching of that needs to be put in place. In reality, the claims that the Syrian government carried out a chemical weapons attack, in the Eastern Ghouta city of Douma last week, are no more credible than the lies about weapons of mass destruction used to justify the illegal invasion of Iraq in 2003. None of the governments invoking the supposed chemical weapons attack as a pretext for aggression against Syria has presented the slightest evidence that the Syrian regime of Bashar al-Assad was culpable. Nor have they provided a plausible motive for Assad to authorize the use of chemical weapons, under conditions in which his government is routing the US-backed rebels. Such an attack would only serve to legitimise direct military intervention by the major powers. This has not stopped every Australian parliamentary party, along with the corporate press, from endlessly asserting the Syrian governments guilt. Like its counterparts in the US and Britain, the Australian press, including its nominally liberal wing at the state-owned Australian Broadcasting Corporation and Fairfax Media, has functioned as a government mouthpiece, incessantly repeating the unsubstantiated claims of the Trump administration and the CIA. Comments by Payne over the weekend indicated the extent of the Australian governments involvement in the US-led intrigues against Syria. Payne confirmed she had been personally briefed by US Defence Secretary Jim Mattis prior to the strikes and had conveyed Australia's full support for the bombing. Turnbull indicated that the main reason Australia had not directly participated in the attack was because its Super Hornet fighter jets had left the region in January. They had been involved, for the past two years, in a US-led bombing campaign in Syria and Iraq. While the mission ostensibly targeted the Islamic State, its aim was to carve-out a swathe of Syrian territory that would be under the direct control of Washington and its proxies, to be used in future assaults on the Assad regime. But Turnbull suggested that his government would consider direct participation in further attacks, declaring, Obviously we work very closely with our partners and our allies. In any event, the Australian militarys full integration into the US war machine, means it is automatically involved in virtually all of the Pentagons Middle East operations. The Pine Gap military base in central Australia, controlled by American intelligence agencies, provides real-time targeting for the US military across Eurasia and Africa. The Australian government has also played a key role in the US and British military and diplomatic offensive against Russiathe real motive for the attack on Syria. Last weekend, Turnbull had discussions with British Prime Minister Theresa May over the use of chemical weapons in Syria, or on a park bench in Salisbury in the United Kingdom. He was referencing the unsubstantiated claims by the British and US intelligence agencies that Russian double agent Sergei Skripal and his daughter were poisoned in London last month. As with the Syrian chemical weapons lies, the British government and its allies, immediately blamed Russia, without being able to provide a shred of evidence. To co-ordinate with the US, UK and several other countries, Turnbull expelled two Russian diplomats from Australia last monthan act historically associated with the preparation for war. Despite the immense hostility among workers and youth to Australias involvement in US-led wars the entire political establishment supports the US imperialist-led drive to war. The Greens, who once paraded as anti-war, backed the CIA orchestrated regime-change operations in Libya and Syria and now endorse the claims of a Syrian government chemical weapons attack. Greens leader Richard Di Natale pointedly declared, Australia has rightly condemned the reprehensible actions of Assad against his own people. Nevertheless, the Greens insist that they have grave concerns over the latest bombings, reiterating their calls for an end to the US-Australia alliance. Di Natale also remarked that the strikes would not further Australian interests. In other words, the Greens are desperate to prevent the development of a mass movement against war by channelling anti-war sentiment into the bankrupt nationalist perspective of pressuring the government to adopt an independent foreign policy. From 2010-2013, the Greens participated in a de facto coalition with the Labor government of Julia Gillard, as it authorised Australian participation in the US-led wars in Afghanistan and the Middle East, and aligned Australia with the pivot to Asia, a vast military build-up in preparation for war with China. The Greens have duly supported every criminal US-led intrigue and intervention since then. The attack of the imperialist powers on Syria must be condemned in the strongest terms. The military strikes that were carried out by the US, French and British forces on Friday night with the support of the German federal government are a violation of international law that threatens to trigger a conflict with Russia, the worlds second-greatest nuclear power. Russias ambassador to Washington, Anatoly Antonov, said after the attack: We have warned that such actions will not be without consequences. On Sunday, Russian President Vladimir Putin warned the US and its Western allies against further air strikes on Syrian positions. This would inevitably cause chaos in international relations, Putin said. The German government has backed this war crime and repeated the lies used to prepare it. The military mission was necessary and appropriate to preserve the effectiveness of the international ban on the use of chemical weapons and to warn the Syrian regime of further violations, said Chancellor Angela Merkel (Christian Democratic Union, CDU) on Saturday in Berlin. The attack on Syria, just like the Iraq war 15 years ago, was justified by lies. For the Syrian regime, the alleged poison gas attack in the city of Duma made absolutely no sense, explained Gunter Meyer, professor at the Department of Geography of the Johannes Gutenberg University in Mainz and chairman of the German Middle East Studies Association (DAVO), speaking on public broadcaster Hessischer Rundfunk. If there has ever been such an attack, it can be assumed that it was a false flag attack, he continued. The Syrian White Helmets had previously staged a variety of similar incidents. The attack on Syria marks a new stage of imperialist aggression, not only against Syria but also against Russia. This underscores the reaction of politicians and editorialists in Germany. Immediately after the attack, Social Democratic Foreign Minister Heiko Maas called for the establishment of a transitional government in Damascus and a tougher stance against Russia. In an interview with German new magazine Der Spiegel, Maas also indicated that Germany could directly participate in further military action against Syria. Im not a pacifist, he emphasized. From the special German history he had concluded that we always have to do everything possible to avoid armed conflicts, but unfortunately there may be moments in which in the ultima ratio military means must be used. Germany does not exclude itself from taking military responsibility, he said, and the cabinet had this week alone extended two Bundeswehr mandates. What the German ruling class means by ultima ratio is underscored in a comment by Berthold Kohler in the Frankfurter Allgemeine Zeitung. The publisher of the FAZ bemoans the transformation of the United States under Trump from a global power into a risk factor and concludes that Germany must again become a military superpower to pursue its imperialist interests independently. The selfish child in the Oval Office also forces Germany to finally grow up in foreign policy, writes Kohler. It will not happen so quickly that the German Navy gets aircraft carriers and the Luftwaffe cruise missiles. But the willingness of Germany to assume more responsibility in the world in the face of Trumpism ... cannot be limited to applauding the French and the British when they take over the dangerous work in place of the American world sheriff. In the area of soft power, Germany has already developed into a superpower. But anyone who wants Europe to become a serious security policy factor in the world must not in the long run shy away from the burden-sharing of the tasks which are tough in many ways. The fundamental contradiction of German foreign policy to have high moral and humanitarian standards, but only a low readiness to enforce them robustly in an emergency situation, cannot be solved in any way with unarmed reconnaissance flights. With the return of German militarism, the monstrous war and extermination fantasies of the Nazis come to life again. A comment by Jacques Schuster in the German daily Die Welt demands: War against Assad should be guided by the goal and the question: Can the Assad regime be exterminated (Ausloschen) with a missile strike? Are Americans and Europeans ready to invade this country with hundreds of thousands of soldiers and at worst fight against Russians and Iranians? The language of the Nazis is back. With the term Ausloschen the Nazis had once described the extermination of the Jews. Now Kohler uses the same language for the Assad regime. And the last time hundreds of thousands of German soldiers fought against Russians was during Operation Barbarossa, the war of annihilation against the Soviet Union during the Second World War. In the 20th century, two attempts by Germany to become a major military power ended in a catastrophe. The third Griff nach der Weltmacht (bid for world power) will also end in disaster if the working class does not intervene. Nobody should be fooled by the propaganda of all the parties in the Bundestag (German parliament) that German imperialism, in contrast to US imperialismor Russia and Chinastands for democracy, peace and stability. Because of what one participant called a lot of concern in the room, the National Tertiary Education Union (NTEU) in NSW failed to win support for a key proposal at a Macquarie University staff meeting last Tuesday. The NTEU had called the meeting to propose an agreement with the administration that could force huge teaching workloads onto at least a quarter of the universitys academics. The discussion that erupted shed a revealing light on the new level of collaboration between the NTEU and other trade unions with management, via so-called interest-based bargaining. It also expressed the growing distrust in the unions throughout the entire working class. Younger academics, those already trapped in teaching-focused positions, and casual teachers, in particular, voiced disbelief at the unions assurances that a new teaching-focused classification would be voluntary. They also pointed to the onerous, super-exploited conditions they have increasingly been forced to endure. Recounting bitter experiences, several participants spoke of becoming saddled with heavy teaching loads, of the university using performance processes to corral academics into such jobs, and being shoved in and trapped in these roles for many years. In what was intended to be a showcase of the gains it had made in the course of cosy talks with senior executives, the union tried to put the best possible spin on the misleadingly titled job families proposal. In essence, it would push academics into a new teaching/leadership classification, which would allocate 80 percent of their workload to teaching. Up until now, most academics nationally have had 40 percent of their workload set aside for research, which has long been regarded as integral to their careers, and to the universities role. In an unsuccessful bid to head off these objections, the NTEU bargaining team presented the new classification as voluntary and declared it would create new jobs for casuals. These false claims failed to assuage the concern in the room. In a further sign of rising discontent, academics raised questions about the real pay cut being proposed by the NTEUrises of just 2 percent annually for the next four years, far lower than the soaring cost of livingand the wider real salary cuts being imposed on university workers nationally. One academic pointedly asked how much the top-level university executives were receiving in pay and bonuses. The union failed to provide an answer. Instead, NTEU branch president Alison Barnes bluntly insisted that 2 percent was now top of the range and you would need to take protracted industrial action to get more. Less than 50 people, including non-union members, attended the meeting, another sign of the disillusionment with the NTEU after decades of sellouts. While this was the NTEUs first report-back meeting on a proposed new four-year EBA, its state industrial officer Lance Dale admitted there had been no less than 24 days of negotiations with management, behind the backs of the members. This was on top of days of joint training with top-level executives at the federal industrial tribunal. In a NTEU industrial bulletin last September, Dale reported: The parties recently undertook three days of training with Fair Work Commission on IBB [interest-based bargaining], and four members of the senior executive were in attendanceillustrating the importance University management has placed on this round of bargaining. At the meeting, Dale revealed that he and Barnes had just received a briefing by the university on the need for cost savings, because of the Turnbull Liberal-National governments latest $2.2 billion cuts to university funding. This underscored the entire content of the EBA and why management regarded it as so crucial. A Socialist Equality Party (SEP) supporter objected: We dont have to accept this. We have to fight the governments cuts. We should demand free high-quality education for all. He foreshadowed a motion to that effect, but Barnes, who chaired the meeting, refused to allow it to be read out. She then, in true bureaucratic fashion, ensured that time ran out before it could be debated. The resolution, which the participants were prevented from considering, stated: This meeting: (1) Opposes the secrecy that the NTEU has maintained around its presentation to the management. (2) Demands full circulation to all branch members of the unions EBA proposals. (3) Opposes the splitting up of university workers, via individual EBAs, and calls for a unified fight by university workers nationally against the Liberal-National governments latest multi-billion dollar cuts, and to overturn all the previous cuts imposed by both Labor and Coalition governments. (4) Demands that billions of dollars be poured into education at all levels, from pre-school to tertiary, to guarantee the social right of all young people to a free, first-class education and the social right of all staff to decent, well-paid and secure positions. Later in the meeting, an SEP supporter asked why the union had held separate department-by-department meetings, organised by management, supposedly to inform members of EBA negotiation progress. These, he said, were intended to atomise the university staff and deepen the NTEUs collaboration with management. He also asked why the NTEU branchs latest industrial bulletin claimed that the EBA recently imposed at Western Australias Murdoch University was a a major win for NTEU members. It actually cuts real pay by restricting average rises to 1 percent a year, increases workloads, facilitates retrenchments and overturns hard-won conditions. Among the long list of conditions reversed at Murdoch is that teaching allocations for academics can be raised to 80 percent of their workloads, up from 75 percent in the previous EBA. The author also recommends: Union prepares another sellout deal at Australias Macquarie University [20 March 2018] A recently released report documents a fact that more than 400,000 residents of New York City Housing Authority (NYCHA) public housing complexes already know only too wellconditions in the great majority of apartments endanger the health of their occupants. The New York State Department of Health (DOH) examined a sample of 255 apartments distributed across 23 developments. Of these, 212, over 83 percent, were found to have at least one severe condition that could pose a health hazard. Among the conditions observed were peeling paint, mold, damaged plaster, rodents, insects, inoperable appliances and malfunctioning smoke detectors. Sixteen units had severe electrical hazards, and 15 had no heat. In addition, three quarters of the 64 common areas that were inspected had at least one health hazard. For years, NYCHA tenants have complained that they often have to wait months or even years for repairs, which are sometimes of a purely cosmetic nature. This report follows two scandalous situations that made headlines in recent months. The first was the revelation that NYCHA officials had for years suspended legally mandated inspections for lead paint and then covered up this failure in official reports, prompting legal action by the federal government. Compounding the problem, the city recently announced that new testing of a sample of apartments has now revealed high lead levels in complexes that had previously been exempted from annual lead paint inspections based on a survey conducted in the 1990s, indicating that the potential for lead poisoning, especially of children, is even more widespread than previously thought. The second incident was the widespread loss of heat and hot water by more than 300,000 tenants during extremely cold weather this past winter due to obsolete and poorly maintained boilers, some dating back to the 1940s (see: Tenants sue New York City Housing Authority over horrific conditions). Funding cuts in recent years have reduced the boiler maintenance staff by more than a third, from 391 in 2013 to about 248 currently. This is for an agency that is responsible for 175,000 apartments in over 2,400 buildings distributed among 326 complexes spread throughout the city. In response to the suffering caused by the failure by the NYCHA to provide heat and hot water, the non-profit Legal Aid Society has filed a lawsuit against the Authority, demanding up to $15 million in rent rebates to affected tenants. This is in addition to a lawsuit previously initiated by the Citywide Council of Presidents (CCOP), representing tenants associations, which demands that an independent monitor be appointed to oversee repairs at NYCHA facilities. Another recent study, based on a poll of more than 200 NYCHA tenants, found that 59 percent reported mold in their apartments and 72 percent of these said that the Authority had failed to complete repairs. The NYCHA recently agreed to appoint an ombudsman who will intervene on behalf of tenants who have unaddressed mold problems. Amid this escalating crisis, the head of the NYCHA, Shola Olatoye, a protege of Mayor Bill de Blasio, who had been in her position since the beginning of his administration, has announced her resignation. Several lower-ranking officials had previously resigned or been reassigned. Olatoye had maintained her position, however, with de Blasios support, even after it was revealed that she had signed off on a report stating that lead paint inspections had been carried out, when they had not (see: New York Mayor de Blasio covered up for citys failure to test for lead contamination in public housing). She had previously refused to apologize for either the lead paint or loss-of-heat incidents. Recently, in part as a consequence of the lead paint issue, the federal Department of Housing and Urban Development (HUD) imposed restrictions on the NYCHA that required it to get specific approval before drawing on federal funds for individual projects. For months, de Blasio and New York Governor Andrew Cuomo, both Democrats, have been hurling increasingly pointed accusations at each other over who is responsible for these horrific conditions and whose proposed schemes, both totally inadequate, will fix the problems. Despite denials by the mayor, it is likely that Olatoyes resignation is an attempt by de Blasio to deflect criticism in this acrimonious and meaningless controversy. Neither side is prepared to address the true scale of the problem. A major component of proposals from all sidesfederal, state, and city, as well as the presidents of the tenants associationsfocuses on greater oversight, based on the premise that the problems at the NYCHA are primarily the result of a failure in administration. This is a diversion from the fundamental cause, namely the decades of cuts in funding to what was once considered a major success in public housing in the US. Since 2000, federal funding for repairs alone has been cut by 53 percent, according to the Center on Budget and Policy Priorities. In a grandstanding move, Cuomo held a news conference earlier this month at an NYCHA complex in Harlem to declare a state of emergency, pledging $250 million for repairs, streamlining the process for hiring outside contractors, and announced that a monitor would be appointed to oversee the work. De Blasio has offered $200 million for emergency repairs. These amounts are totally inadequate, even if the funds actually materialize. Due to decades of budget cuts and resulting declines in maintenance, repairs and replacement of outdated infrastructure, the current estimate for necessary repairs is at least $20 billion, possibly as much as $27 billion. The conditions faced by NYCHA residents are especially notable because of the concentration and numbers of people involved, but they are not unique. The severe inequality that exists in the US, and the drive by the ruling elite to dismantle all social services, is expressed in, among other things, the acute lack of decent, affordable housing and resulting homelessness. The extremely cold weather that exposed the deteriorated condition of heating infrastructure in NYCHA complexes this past winter impacted working class people across the country (see: Americas poor and homeless freeze in winter storm). That NYCHA residents are forced to live under such conditions is truly criminal. They are the result of decades of severe underfunding of this sprawling system of working class housing by every level of government, while at the same time the wealth of the citys elite has grown astronomically. For both the Democrats and Republicans, this wealth is sacrosanct and cannot be touched. Instead, the city is moving toward the destruction of public housing by creeping privatization of the NYCHA (see: Indebted New York City Housing Authority plans to lease public housing land to private developers). The city has already transferred 1,395 units to private control under HUDs Rental Assistance Demonstration (RAD) program and has a 10-year plan to convert a total of 15,000 units. Even in its initial stages, RAD has resulted in complaints from tenants regarding illegal rent increases, evictions and other abuses. This process will inevitably result in throwing additional hundreds of thousands of working class residents onto the already completely inadequate affordable housing market, driving rents up even further, and increasing the citys huge homeless population. In the days since the US and NATO launched over 100 missiles at the Syrian cities of Damascus and Homs, it is clear that the imperialist powers have not been sated by the latest bloodletting. Within hours of the strikes, US and European newspapers began pumping out editorials demanding a further escalation of the war for regime-change in Syria. The Wall Street Journal, speaking for sections of the ruling elite closely aligned with newly appointed US National Security Advisor John Bolton, declared: One bombing wont change the fundamentals of the Syrian battlefield, or the strategic reality that the Russia-Iran-Assad axis is winning. If Mr. Trump also wants to deter Russian and Iranian imperialism he needs a more ambitious strategy, it continued. Next time, the attack should be more punishing. The Journal concluded: Only when Russia and Iran begin to pay a larger price in Syria will the United States secure its aims in the region. The implications of such statements are clear: while tactical considerations led the United States to stage a raid, and not a full-scale assault that would have led to a shooting war with Iranian and Russian forces, the launching of such an onslaught is only a matter of time. The fact that such a conflict could have cataclysmic consequences for humanity will not deter the imperialist powers from waging it. Lost in the Journals talk of regional domination and demands for turning Syria into the Ayatollahs Vietnam is the flimsy pretext used to justify the latest US attack: the supposed use of chemical weapons by the Syrian government in Douma on April 7. The propaganda used to justify the strikes exhibited contempt for both the truth and the intelligence of the public. After 25 years of endless war, millions of people have become largely inured to the hysterical and hypocritical allegations used by the imperialists to dress up their designs against weak countries as a saintly mission for the liberation of mankind. Washington, London, Paris and Berlin proceed as if no one can remember the Bush administrations lies about weapons of mass destruction, or Obamas shoddy humanitarian pretexts for razing Libya to the ground and murdering Muammar Gaddafi. Behind these shop-worn lies are deeper causes. Responding to the Syria crisis, a statement of the Weizsacker Foundation, signed by high-level officials in the German government, declared: None of the structural reasons which led to World War I have actually been vanquished. What are these structural issues? They are the fundamental contradictions of the capitalist system, identified by the great Marxists of the 20th century: the relentless struggle among the imperialist powers for spheres of influence and the carve-up of the globe, stemming from the conflict between the nation-state and world economy. In his landmark treatise Imperialism written just over 100 years ago, the Russian revolutionary Vladimir Lenin wrote: [T]he only conceivable basis under capitalism for the division of spheres of influence, interests, colonies, etc. is a calculation of the strength of those participating, their general economic, financial, military strength, which is ultimately determined through military conflict. Peaceful alliances prepare the ground for wars, Lenin noted, and in their turn grow out of wars. In order to secure their place in the imperialist carve-up and redivision of the worldwhat German Kaiser Wilhelm II called a place in the sunthe imperialist powers are driven to the most desperate and catastrophic militarist actions. For the US, above all, whose world hegemony is crumbling through the loss of its economic preeminence, there is no other path. Washington has, over a quarter-century, waged an endless series of bloody wars to offset its economic weakness. Increasingly, trade war measures against Russia and China and preparations for military conflict are blending into one another through the doctrine, announced by the Pentagon earlier this year, of strategic competition. The European imperialist powers, whatever their tactical differences with each other and with the US, are spurred on by their determination to participate in the division of the world and to ensure that their corporations receive a share of the spoils. The new epoch of imperialist war, which has been ongoing for more than a quarter-century, will not end with missile strikes in Syria. The imperialist powers are seeking the complete partition of Syria as the prelude to military operations against Iran, aiming at the installation of a puppet regime or the countrys dismemberment. The same treatment is ultimately in store for Russia and China. Two years ago, the International Committee of the Fourth International (ICFI) warned in its February 18, 2016 statement, Socialism and the Fight Against War: The world stands on the brink of a catastrophic global conflict. As in the years that preceded the outbreak of World War I in 1914 and World War II in 1939, political leaders and military planners are approaching the conclusion that a war between major powers is not a remote possibility, but, rather, highly probable and, perhaps, even inevitable. The ICFI declared: The drive to World War III must be stopped. A new international movement against war, uniting the great mass of working people and youth in opposition to capitalism and imperialism, must be built. In the ensuing two years, the prospect for the development of such a movement has been heightened by the emergence of a growing international movement in opposition to capitalism. From teachers in the United States to public-sector and airline workers in Germany, rail workers and students in France, and university lecturers in Great Britain, the working class is mobilizing. The critical task is to merge the working class movement in opposition to social inequality with the struggle against imperialism itself. This requires a fight against all those political tendencies, fraudulently claiming to be left and socialist, which have promoted and endorsed imperialist war. The foremost representatives of this reactionary, pro-imperialist pseudo-left are the various factions of state capitalists and the remnants of the anti-Trotskyist Pabloite movement, which have all devoted themselves to legitimizing and endorsing the imperialist carve-up of Syria. As the world witnesses a new upsurge of imperialist barbarism, the International Committee of the Fourth International reaffirms the critical principles it advanced in February 2016: The struggle against war must be based on the working class, the great revolutionary force in society, uniting behind it all progressive elements of the population. The new anti-war movement must be anti-capitalist and socialist, since there can be no serious struggle against war except in the fight to end the dictatorship of finance capital and put an end to the economic system that is the fundamental cause of militarism and war. The new anti-war movement must therefore, of necessity, be completely and unequivocally independent of, and hostile to, all political parties and organizations of the capitalist class. The new anti-war movement must, above all, be international, mobilizing the vast power of the working class in a unified global struggle against imperialism. We call on all workers and young people around the world who are determined to undertake a fight against imperialism on this principled basis to contact the International Committee of the Fourth International and join the revolutionary struggle to prevent World War III. New Braunfels, TX (78130) Today Sunny to partly cloudy. A stray shower or thunderstorm is possible. High 83F. Winds SE at 5 to 10 mph.. Tonight Thunderstorms early, then variable clouds overnight with still a chance of showers. Low 69F. Winds ENE at 5 to 10 mph. Chance of rain 70%. A Russian court issued a ruling Friday, April 12, to block the messaging app Telegram. In a months-long standoff with the Kremlin, the companys CEO had refused to grant the secret service FSB access to users encrypted messages. The ban took legal effect on Monday, April 16. The court hearing took just 18 minutes. Judge Yulia Smolina from the Tagansky court in Moscow ruled in favour of Roskomnadzor (Federal Service for Supervision of Communications, Information Technology and Mass Media), a national agency that is subordinated to the Ministry of Telecommunication and in charge of the massive censorship efforts of the Russian government. Pavel Durov, the head of Telegram, announced that the company would be using built-in methods to bypass the block for its 9.5 million users in Russia. The ruling is based on the anti-terror laws signed by President Vladimir Putin in 2016, which have provided the legal basis for a massive crackdown on Internet and communication freedoms in the past two years. This is part of an international drive by capitalist governments to censor the Internet and block encrypted communication, in anticipation of mass struggles by the working class. According to the Russian laws, telecommunications operators have to store their customers phone calls and text messages for six months. Messaging services like Facebook and Telegram have to provide decryption keys to the FSB. Moreover, Russians are legally required to inform authorities about potential terrorist acts, and postal employees are required to inspect packages. The standoff between Roskomnadzor and Telegram started in June 2017, when the Russian agency asked the company to register in Russia and hand over the encryption keys to the FSB. Telegram did register but refused to provide the encryption keys to the FSB. Last month, Telegram lost the case before the Supreme Court and then failed to comply with the 15-day deadline to hand over the keys. The company can now appeal the recent court decision within 30 days. There has been an outcry against the ban of Telegram on social media, with many users denouncing the step as a crackdown on freedom of speech and communication. One critic, Artem, sarcastically wrote: Well thats it! There will be no more terrorism, Telegram is blocked. Now we only have to ban reproductive organs in order to finally do away with rape! Many posts expressed anger over the measure as well as fears of impending blocks of other websites and platforms. Others announced that they would defy the ban. One Twitter user from Yekaterinburg, a major industrial city in the Urals, wrote: Now that Telegram has been blocked I will use it more than ever. Out of principle. Telegram has about 200 million users worldwide and is especially popular in the Middle East and Russia, because it allows for encrypted communication and works much better under conditions of poor Internet connection than other messaging apps. In Russia, many young people and even government employees make use of the messaging app. The company was founded by Pavel Durov, dubbed the Russian Mark Zuckerberg, who also created the hugely popular Russian social media network vkontakte. In 2014, Durov was forced to resign from the board of vkontakte, by then a $3 billion company, because he refused to shut down pages of politicians from the liberal opposition and hand over data from opposition and pro-Maidan pages to the FSB. He has since lived in emigration. The crackdown on Telegram is in many respects symbolic. Telegram was the app most widely used in the organization of the mass working class protests in Iran last winter. The Kremlin no doubt fears a similar development in Russia where tensions are running high amid an escalating war drive by the imperialist powers and growing poverty in the working class. The recent fire in a shopping mall in Kemerovo provoked mass outrage on social media, including anger over the initial blackout of the fire by the state media and the reaction of the authorities to the disaster. The blocking of Telegram, whether or not the company can circumvent it, signals that the Russian government will take whatever means are necessary to prevent encrypted communication and the organization of protests via social media and chat apps. This is part of a broader effort by the Kremlin and governments internationally to censor the Internet and spy on communications. In Russia, these efforts are well-advanced. Especially since the protest movement of 2011-2012, which was spearheaded by the pro-Western liberal opposition, the Kremlin has undertaken a systematic crackdown on freedom of communication on the Internet. The central agency overseeing these censorship and surveillance efforts on the internet is Roskomnadzor. Internet access in Russia has grown massively over the past 15 years. Between 2004 and 2015, the percentage of the population with Internet access grew from a mere 8 percent to 70 percent (92.8 million people). An estimated 97 percent of all young people between 16 and 29 and 82 percent of those aged 30 to 54 use the Internet. Internet usage was more widespread in urban areas, with a coverage of 83 percent in Moscow and St. Petersburg and 71 percent in cities with a population of 100,000 compared to 66 percent in small towns and the countryside. Under conditions where most media outlets are controlled by the state, or by the liberal opposition, which is widely despised in the working class, the Internet has become a central source for alternative information about politics. Moreover, given the extraordinary destruction of social and cultural infrastructure during the restoration of capitalism, the Internet today is the main source of culture (be it books, films or other media) for the vast majority of Russians. While direct Internet censorship by the state has, so far, focused on pages associated with the right-wing liberal opposition, all laws, and especially the mass surveillance, are designed to prevent and target above all movements by the working class which would threaten not only the current Putin regime but the capitalist system as a whole. The most important restrictions and surveillance measures now in place on the Russian Internet include: An Internet blacklist (since November 2012); the criteria for inclusion on this blacklist included initially child pornography and the advocating of suicide and illegal drugs. Since 2013, the blacklist law also applies to content that is suspected of extremism, calling for illegal meetings, inciting hatred, and violating the established order. Websites deemed guilty of any of these are blocked at the initiative of Roskomnadzor. Providers of free public wi-fi are legally required to collect and store the personal information of all users, including addresses and passport numbers. The System of Operational-Investigatory Measures requires telecommunications operators, social media platforms, chats and forums to install hardware by the FSB which allows the agency to monitor users communications metadata and content, including phone calls, email traffic and web browsing. Since 2014, social media platforms and telecommunications operators are also required to install equipment with Deep Packet Inspection (DPI) capabilities, which include direct eavesdropping. Access to data obtained through these means is available not only to the FSB, but also the Interior Ministry, the Russian police and the tax police, border patrol, as well as the Presidential Security Service, the Kremlin Regiment, and Parliamentary Security Services. The virtual elimination of legal encryption in messaging apps. As of January 2018, operators of messaging apps are also not permitted to allow unidentified users. Virtual Private Networks (VPN) and other devices to surf anonymously on the internet have been banned since the summer of 2017. TERRE HAUTE, Ind. (WTHI) - We are expecting to learn more information this week from the prosecutor's office on their findings in the Mikey Reynolds stand-off case. On Wednesday, the Vigo County Prosecutor's Office will reveal if any charges should be filed in the police-action shooting. Indiana State Police investigators handed off their findings to the prosecutor's office on April 6th. In March, Mikey Reynolds was involved in a 20-hour stand-off in Terre Haute. That's after police said Reynolds shot two people, killing one of them. During the stand-off, a Terre Haute Police sniper fired at Reynolds. Later in the stand-off, an Indiana State Police SWAT officer fired the fatal shot, killing Reynolds. SULLIVAN COUNTY, Ind. (WTHI) - A community center can be the connecting point between many individuals in a town. Right now, the Fairbanks Community Center in Fairbanks, Indiana is in need of immediate funding and volunteers. If those resources aren't gathered soon, the board may vote to close the center. A photo of the Fairbanks Community Center in Sullivan County, Indiana. (WTHI Photo, Lacey Clifton) A photo of the Fairbanks Community Center in Sullivan County, Indiana. (WTHI Photo, Lacey Clifton) Many people use the center for various activities. Groups meet there. The gym is open for people to use, there's batting cages, camping, meeting rooms, and more. News 10 spoke with the new Community Center President, John Arnold. He says the needs for the center are piling up. Arnold says, "It needs a new roof and we don't have the funds for it. We just need more community support, we need board members that are active that come up with fundraisers to keep it going. We need to generate at least $1,700 dollars a month just to keep the bills paid." Nestled inside the Fairbanks Community Center is a space used to create goods for a good cause. Fairbanks Community Center Member, Linda Burch, says, I have a group called Comfort Quilters. We have people that come in here twice a month. We make quilts and blankets and give them away to disaster victims." Burch says the center is more to her than just a place to sew, which is why she doesn't want to see it go. She says, "My dad graduated from here, and then I graduated 8th grade from here, and then we went on to north central. But Ive always been tied, but my mother was a cook here until the day it closed. So yeah, I had some pretty good ties to the school" That's why community members are stepping in to help, and asking you to do the same. Burch says, "This is a part of history of this area, and I think history is being lost to some of our younger people. If we can get people to come in and help, and spend an hour a month, an hour a week, it's going to help maintain this building, so it's not going to be an eyesore for this community, and we're not going to lose anything else that we've already lost." The next open meeting will take place at the center. The meeting will be held at 5 p.m. on Sunday, April 29th. All community members are encouraged to attend. If you would like to connect with Community Center beforehand to offer your support, the best way to do so is by Facebook. MARTINSVILLE, Ill. (WTHI)- Police in Martinsville, Illinois are asking for your help after a person's dog was killed. According to a post on the Martinsville Police Department Facebook page, a person's Rat Terrier dog ran away from the owner's home. That was on Friday. On Sunday, the dog was found shot and killed on the owner's porch. Now, police are asking for more information. If you know anything, you can message their Facebook page or contact them by calling 217-382-4023. TERRE HAUTE, Ind. (WTHI) - The whacky weather we've had lately is what some consider a major sign from Earth. "Our Earth is basically letting us know that something is not right," said Denise Abdul-Rahman. With Earth Day just days away, the Greater Terre Haute NAACP discussed climate change and ways to combat it. Abdul-Rahman is the NAACP Indiana Environmental & Climate Justice Chair. "What is occurring is that as we put out greenhouse gases, or what are called CO2 or carbon pollution, into our atmosphere, it is warming the temperatures," she said, "and those temperatures are melting our glaciers and causing flooding." "Also because the temperature is getting hotter, it's making us experience drought and hotter climate temperatures," she continued, "and it also has a way of creating what's called a Polar Vortex, which we're starting to see with weather patterns that are unusual than normal." While concerns about climate change were neck and neck at the time of our Twitter poll, Abdul-Rahman says it's something you should consider learning more about. "We should care for a lot of reasons because it's going to impact our households," she said, "You're going to pay more for energy because fossil fuel is becoming more expensive. You should care because if your house isn't weatherized, then you're going to pay more in energy costs. Also, as the climate gets hotter, a lot of cities are starting to build resiliency plans. You're going to need cooling stations, so we'll have to check on our elderly that do not want to use air conditioning. We need to make sure that they're at some facility that has a cool climate within it." Abdul-Rahman says the violent storms and tragedies in areas like Texas and Puerto Rico also play a role. "With Hurricane Katrina, what happened in Puerto Rico and Texas recently, those travesties that are occurring," she said, "It's going to impact us here at home as it relates to agriculture." "Also with the hot, hot heat, it's going to impact our agriculture," she added, "So we're going to pay more for food, it's going to impact our farmers. So it's all very much connected." That's why in light of Earth Day on April 22nd, groups like the NAACP hope you'll look into ways to help preserve the planet. "Come Earth Day, April 22nd, everybody turn off their lights for a substantial amount of time to save energy," she said, "That way your power company will not have to use greenhouse gases in order to energize your home." Abdul-Rahman also suggests picking up trash in your community, along with planting trees as they release Oxygen into the air, as well as cutting down on transportation. "You can walk and carpool, catch the bus because automobiles put out emissions that impact the climate," she said, "and we can be less wasteful because as we use waste, it gets burned in incinerators, and that goes into our atmosphere and impacts our ozone." (AP) - Washington and London on Monday jointly accused the Russian government of maliciously targeting global internet equipment for political and economic espionage. The two governments said the Russian operations, which allegedly involve planting malware on internet routers and other equipment, could also lay the foundation for future offensive cyberattacks. A joint statement by the U.S. Department of Homeland Security, the FBI and the U.K.s National Cyber Security Centre said the main targets include government and private-sector organizations, as well as providers of critical infrastructure and internet service providers. Victims were identified through a coordinated series of actions between U.S. and international partners, according to a companion technical alert issued by the U.S. Computer Emergency Response Team (US-CERT). Both nations have high confidence in the finding of Russian-sponsored cyber-meddling, which the alert said has been reported by multiple sources since 2015. Australia also admonished Russia and accused Kremlin-backed hackers of cyberattacks on hundreds of Australian companies last year. Respected U.S. cybersecurity researcher Jake Williams said it was difficult for him to understand the motivation for Mondays alert given that the activity has been ongoing for some time. Calling the Russians out on this hardly makes much sense unless theres some other agenda (most likely political), Williams, the president of Rendition Infosec, added via text message. Routers direct data traffic across the internet. US-CERT said the compromised routers can be exploited for man-in-the-middle spoofing attacks, in which communications are intercepted by a seemingly trusted device that has actually been infiltrated by an attacker. The current state of U.S. network devices coupled with a Russian government campaign to exploit these devices threatens the safety, security, and economic well-being of the United States, the alert stated. An email message seeking comment from the Russian embassy in Washington, D.C., received no response. US-CERT urged affected companies, and public sector organizations and even people who use routers in home offices to take action to harden poorly-secured devices. But its alert cited only one specific product: Ciscos Smart Install software. Australian Defense Minister Marise Payne told reporters about 400 Australian companies were targeted in the Russian attacks, but there was no exploitation of significance. The countrys cyber security minister, Angus Taylor, said. This attempt by Russia is a sharp reminder that Australian businesses and individuals are constantly targeted by malicious state and non-state actors. On March 15, US-CERT issued a similar alert saying the FBI and DHS had determined that Russian government cyber actors had sought to infiltrate U.S. agencies as well as organizations in the energy, nuclear, commercial facilities, water, aviation, and critical manufacturing sectors. It said Russian agents had obtained remote access to energy sector networks and obtained information on industrial control systems. Experts have stressed that the March 15 bulletin did not mean Russia had obtained access to systems that control critical infrastructure such as the power grid. But Russia does have history in this regard, as many security experts blame it for several cyber-sabotage attacks on Ukraines power grid. CRAWFORDSVILLE, Ind. (AP) A western Indiana church is seeking people willing to give up semi-automatic rifles, bump stocks or large-capacity ammunition clips. Members of Wabash Avenue Presbyterian Church in Crawfordsville say theyll give gun owners a $100 grocery store gift card for guns and a $25 gift card for accessories. Church members David and Sheridan Hadley tell the (Crawfordsville) Journal Review that they wanted to take action after the February school shooting in Parkland, Florida, that killed 17 people. David Hadley says the buy-back program is giving people a chance to get some guns out of circulation. The buy-back effort is set for April 28 at the Crawfordsville Police Department in the city about 40 miles northwest of Indianapolis. All items collected will be melted down at Nucor Steel. ___ Information from: (Crawfordsville) Journal Review, http://www.journalreview.com ATLANTA (WTXL) - A Georgia prosecutor will not seek the death penalty for a woman charged with killing her husband and four of her children. Isabel Martinez, 34, appeared in court Monday in Gwinnett County, near Atlanta, and pleaded "not guilty" to all charges. She is charged with five counts of murder, one count of aggravated assault and one count of third-degree cruelty to children. Friends tell media outlets that Martinez had been depressed before the killings and had outbursts of anger and sadness. The prosecutor won't seek the death penalty because of because of Martinez's mental state. TALLAHASSEE, Fla. (WTXL) - Organizers say there will not be a makeup event after this year's Springtime Tallahassee Jubilee was cancelled due to rain. The Springtime Board shared the news with vendors Monday morning, citing multiple issues. According to the statement, organizers were unable to find a location that does not require road closures or significant cost. Another issue finding enough volunteer support. In past years, more than 200 vendors from across the region are downtown all day during Springtime Tallahassee. This year, there was only the Grand Parade. Several Vendors were upset about the cancellation. The Springtime Board did agree to add a back-up location for future festivals. The full statement sent to vendors Monday morning is below: BAKER COUNTY, Fla. (WTXL) - An 18-year-old suspect is dead, two others are injured, and four are in custody after a feud on social media lead to a home invasion and shootout at a North Florida home. According to the Baker County Sheriff's Office, five individuals were arrested after a shooting over the weekend. They say the shooting was the result of an ongoing feud between the suspects and the individuals fueled by derogatory and threatening rhetoric between the two groups on social media. Early Sunday morning, seven suspects, William Lauramore, 24, Zachary Bell, 20, Joseph Albino, 24, Christian Watkins, 19, Cory Lauramore, 18, a 15-year-old and a 16-year-old, went to a home in Glen St. Mary. Deputies say they were armed with firearms, wearing masks and other clothing to hide their identity. They went with the intent to confront the occupants of the residence about the ongoing feud. According to BCSO, the suspects forced their way into the home and confronted the occupants, who deputies have identified as David Boldry, 22, David Johnson, 21, Matthew Cornish, 19, and Justin Raulerson, 18. However, the suspects' plan backfired, as the occupants inside the home woke up to loud noises and yelling. They then armed themselves and began exchanging gunfire after realizing they were being threatened. As a result of the shooting, three of the suspects were shot multiple times: An unidentified juvenile, who is currently being treated at Shands Jacksonville, William Lauramore, who was treated and released to law enforcement, and Cory Lauramore, who later died from his gunshot wounds. William Lauramore is in custody in Duval, County and will be transported to the Baker County Detention Center Monday evening. The suspects are currently charged with home invasion. There may be additional charges added at a later date. The Baker County Sheriffs Office is investigating agency and is continuing to follow up on leads and other circumstances that led to this incident. Nikol Pashinyan, whos spearheaded this weeks anti-Serzh Sargsyan protests in Armenia, has declared the start of a democratic, non-violent velvet revolution in the country. Pashinyan made the announcement while Serzh Sargsyan addressed deputies in the parliament defending his nomination. Pashinyan has called for the complete paralyzation of the government apparatus. TALLAHASSEE, Fla. (WTXL) - A Tallahassee woman is out on bond after being accused of knowingly infecting a victim with HIV without informing the victim of her status. Jesica Martinez, 53, was charged with failure to notify sexual partner of HIV status. According to a complaint document, the victim's attorney contacted the Tallahassee Police Department back in November 2017 about the incident. The victim said he had sex with Martinez several times between October and December of 2015 after meeting her on the dating app Tinder. Documents say the victim didn't learn he was HIV positive until May 2016. The victim said he didn't know where he got it until he was contacted by a friend of Martinez between May and July of 2017. The friend told him Martinez has had HIV since 1996 and had been infecting people. When investigators interviewed the friend, she advised them that Martinez told her about her status sometime between May and June of 2016. On March 28, 2018, a search warrant was executed at the Florida Department of Health for Martinez's records. Documents say the records indicated that Martinez had been aware of her HIV status at least as far back as 2013. Investigators also spoke to other two other victims who said they had sex with Martinez within the last three years and were not told about her HIV status prior to engaging. They told investigators that they wished to purse charges, though those additional charges have not yet been filed. A warrant was issued for Martinez's arrest on April 13. Martinez turned herself in the same day. She has since gotten out of the Leon County Detention Facility on a $25,000 bond. Copyright 2018 WTXL via Raycom News Network. All rights reserved. BAINBRIDGE, Ga. (WTXL) - A woman has been arrested after deputies say she stole an ambulance from a local hospital. An incident report says that a Bainbridge Public Safety officer first made contact with Alicia Barrineau at Bainbridge Memorial Hospital & Manor Sunday morning around 5:40 a.m. She told the officer that she had come to the hospital earlier for a mental health evaluation. Barrineau claimed that while she was in the hospital, she head one of the nurses making rude comments about her, so she left and called 911. She said that she had been feeling anxious and wanted to go to a safe place. The report says she asked the officer for a ride to Walmart, who agreed. However, when the officer opened the door, Barrineau asked, "What was that?" and stated she wasn't getting in the patrol car. From there, she fell silent so the officer asked her what she wanted to do. Barrineau answered, saying she wanted to speak to someone about her anxiety. The officer gave her the number to Georgia's mental health crisis hotline, but when Barrineau called and an operator answered, she hung up the phone. Around this time, an ambulance arrived at the hospital and parked in front of the emergency room. The document notes that Barrineau was staring at the ambulance without saying anything before stating that she was going back to the hospital for help. The officer watched for a while before responding to another call for loud music. Nearly an hour later, Bainbridge Public Safety was dispatched to the hospital around 6:25 a.m. Sunday about a stolen ambulance. BPS tried to stop the ambulance once they found it, but were unable to get the vehicle to stop. Instead, the ambulance sped up, reaching approximately 80 mph when it crossed city limits on Tallahassee Highway. Once the ambulance passed into Attapulgus, a Decatur County Sheriff's Office deputy caught up to the ambulance and switched his car radio to the EMS frequency to speak with the driver, identified as Alicia Barrineau. The deputy talked Barrinaeu into stopping and she got out of the car. However, she ran into the center of the road before running towards the deputy's vehicle. She was detained as she ran by and the ambulance was recovered. There was no property damage or injuries reported in the incident. When investigators spoke with Barrineau, she said that she took the ambulance because she wanted to get away. She admitted that she had used crystal meth in the past and had used it several days ago. However, she said she didn't remember when she used it. She also told them she couldn't think straight and needed time to think things out. Barrineau has been charged with theft by taking (felony) and fleeing a police officer (misdemeanor). She remains in the Decatur County Jail on a $8,650 bond. CHEYENNE Several dozen people gathered in downtown Cheyenne to express support for gun rights, as a response to nationwide protests calling for increased restrictions on gun ownership. The rally Saturday in front of the Wyoming Supreme Court building, which included politicians and members of militia groups, was coordinated with rallies at other state capitols under the auspices of the Nat... WORLAND A proclamation for Arbor Day highlights mayor action items for tonights Worland City Council meeting. WORLAND A proclamation for Arbor Day highlights mayor action items for tonights Worland City Council meeting. According to the proclamation, to be signed by Mayor Jim Gill tonight, in 1872, Sterling Morton proposed to the National Board of Agriculture that a special day be set aside for the planting of trees. The first observed Arbor Day in Nebraska there were more than a million trees planed. The day is now celebrated nationwide. According to the proclamation trees can reduce the erosion of topsoil, lower heating and cooling costs, produce oxygen and provide habitat for wildlife. Trees are also a renewable resource providing paper, wood for homes, fuel for fires and countless other wood products. Worland has been recognized as one of 41 municipalities in Wyoming as a Tree City USA by the National Arbor Day Foundation. Worland has been a Tree City for 32 years. The proclamation proclaims Friday, April 27, as Arbor Day in Worland. April 27 is the national Arbor Day observance. Worland falls under hardiness zones 4 and 5, according to the Arbor Day Foundation website. Suggested trees for those zones include a variety of apple, birth, juniper, arborvitae, fir, spruce and dogwood trees, among many others. ABOUT ARBOR DAY FOUNDATION According to the Arbor Day Foundation website, Founded in 1972, the centennial of the first Arbor Day observance in the 19th century, the Foundation has grown to become the largest nonprofit membership organization dedicated to planting trees, with over 1 million members, supporters, and valued partners. They have several programs including Tree City USA, replanting forests and community tree recovery. Online: arborday.org Source: Xinhua| 2018-04-16 21:58:36|Editor: Mu Xuequan Video Player Close Senior officials of the State Council take an oath of allegiance to the Constitution at a ceremony in Beijing, capital of China, April 16, 2018. The ceremony was overseen by Premier Li Keqiang. (Xinhua/Ding Lin) BEIJING, April 16 (Xinhua) -- Ninety-two senior officials of the State Council took an oath of allegiance to the Constitution at a ceremony Monday. The ceremony was held in the Zhongnanhai leadership compound in downtown Beijing and overseen by Premier Li Keqiang, according to a State Council press release. The officials were appointed to 42 State Council departments from June last year to March, the statement said. Xiao Jie, state councilor and secretary-general of the State Council, announced the beginning of the ceremony, at which officials sang the national anthem first and recited the oath. In a speech after the ceremony, Premier Li asked officials to "stay loyal to the Constitution, exercise their duties according to it and work with diligence and integrity." They were told to concentrate their effort on "development, follow the new vision for development, work for comprehensive progress of Chinese society, help improve people's welfare and solve their problems." Vice Premiers Han Zheng, Sun Chunlan, Hu Chunhua and Liu He, and State Councilors Wei Fenghe, Wang Yong, and Zhao Kezhi were at present. Early this morning Special Forces officers (the guys wearing the Red Berets) detained Vardan Hambardzumyan near the State Pedagogical University in Yerevan. Hambardzumyan was one of the anti-Serzh protesters who were trying to close the street to traffic. The Red Berets took Hambardzumyan to a waiting car and proceeded to beat him. They spat on him and concluded the attack with a series of sexual expletives. Hambardzumyan, a pharmacologist who studied and works at Oxford University, told Hetq the following. We had shut off Metz Tigran Street at eight this morning; the section near the Pedagogical University. Then we closed the section leading to Khandjyan Street. We had peacefully executed our rights. All at once the Red Berets appeared and started to push us around. They wanted us to remove the trash bins and open the street. Thats when I laid down on the street to halt traffic. They threw me to the sidewalk. I returned to the street. The Red Berets then took me into custody. There were four or five of them; bigger than me. They handcuffed me and dragged me into the car. They started beating me even before the car drove away. My body is black and blue. They threw me to the ground and kicked me, yelling out terrible sexual expletives. They spat on me three times. They told me they wanted to belittle me. They never told me why I was detained. They told one of my friends that it was because I hadnt behaved. They seized my telephone. In the car, on the way to the police station, two of the guys sat on me. Reaching the station, I felt weak on my feet and demanded they call an ambulance. It took twenty minutes to convince them to call an ambulance. There was no lawyer present at the station, and my rights were never fully explained to me. They searched me and my bag, finding my student card. After holding me for two hours, the emergency doctor said I needed to be hospitalized. They took me to the Erebouni Medical Center. Vahan Hambardzumyan has since been discharged from hospital and has rejoined the protesters. Source: Xinhua| 2018-04-16 22:33:47|Editor: Mu Xuequan Video Player Close BEIJING, April 16 (Xinhua) -- The Supreme People's Procuratorate (SPP) adopted a five-year plan on the internal inspection of the integrity of prosecutors. The plan will focus on exposing undesirable conduct among prosecutors and whether they comply with Party disciplinary rules, said the SPP in a statement Monday. The SPP and local procuratorates will launch internal inspections on whether prosecutors violate the drinking ban in working hours and follow conduct codes in their spare time and if leading officials of procuratorates have graft issues. Inspections will also target officials who improperly intervene in prosecutions, and prosecutors who abuse their power such as by releasing confidential information, taking bribes and sheltering criminal organizations. The SPP will supervise provincial and municipal procuratorates to enhance their internal inspections. CAPE TOWN, April 16 (Xinhua) -- The South African government on Monday pledged to provide the necessary policy certainty to boost investor confidence in the country. To improve South Africa's investment and economic prospects, the government continues to work diligently on practical steps to provide the necessary policy certainty such as the finalization of mining legislation, the Finance Ministry said. This came after the Japanese-based rating agency Rating and Investment Information, Inc (R&I) confirmed South Africa's at an investment grade credit rating. R&I affirmed South Africa's long-term foreign currency debt rating at "BBB" and local currency debt rating at "BBB+" and also revised the country's outlook to stable from negative. The agency said its rating was based on the following drivers -- the improved growth performance and prospects; the announced fiscal adjustment plans in the 2018 budget that would stabilize the debt burden; and changes in the administration that are expected to help eradicate policy uncertainty. "The government fully recognizes R&I's assessment of the challenges and opportunities the country faces in the immediate to long-term," a Ministry of Finance statement said. The ministry reiterated the commitment made by President Cyril Ramaphosa to fast-track the implementation and finalization of key sectoral structural reforms as well as reforms of state-owned companies. Cooperation among the government, business, labor and civil society is also yielding necessary interventions to positioning South Africa as an attractive investment destination while also creating an enabling policy environment for inclusive economic growth, the ministry said. It said the rating action by R&I demonstrates that South Africans working together can achieve remarkable outcomes. Last year, two international rating agencies, Standard & Poor's and Fitch, downgraded South Africa's rating to junk status. Last month, another international rating agency, Moody's, kept South Africa's sovereign rating unchanged at investment grade while upgrading the outlook to stable. ZAGREB, April 16 (Xinhua) -- Former Croatian President Ivo Josipovic said on Monday that an independent international investigative body would have to check the allegations of using chemical weapons in Syria before measures on the country. "I think it was supposed that an independent international investigative body would have to check the allegations of using chemical weapons. Collective measures should have been taken only when it was confirmed that chemical weapons were used," Josipovic said in an exclusive interview with Xinhua. He added, "Of course, in this case, it would be worth assessing whether the military option is the only one. I want the conflict to end as soon as possible and that Syria begins peaceful development. It is necessary to stop all combat activities, to enter into peace negotiations and to deal with war crimes that have been committed, no matter who committed them. " Meanwhile, Croatian parliament member Ivan Pernar published on his Facebook account an open letter to the U.S. Embassy in Zagreb in which he criticized the U.S.-led airstrike against Syria. Pernar accused the U.S. government of serving a hidden "shadow government" that is controlled by the U.S. Federal Reserve Bank, and that the airstrikes against Syria were only an attempt to continue the U.S. dominance in the Middle East. Pernar also said in his open letter that the U.S. claims that its interest is to spread "democracy and freedom" are lies and accused the U.S. of "not caring" about the Palestinian people. According to local newspaper NOVI LIST, the reaction of Facebook users to Pernar's letter were "very favorable." LONDON, April 16 (Xinhua) -- British Prime Minister Theresa May refused on Monday to give lawmakers a guarantee that she would seek parliamentary approval ahead of any further strikes in Syria. May faced criticism in the British House of Commons for not recalling Parliament before she sanctioned weekend missile attacks by the Royal Air Force on Syria. She was attacked from opposition politicians as well as at least one of her own Conservatives as she gave a report on the weekend air strikes by Britain, the U.S. and France. In her speech, May said the targeted attacks were justified without first getting the go-ahead from parliament. May said her government had to act intervene rapidly following reports of an alleged chemical attack in the Syrian town of Douma. Jeremy Corbyn, leader of the main opposition Labor Party, called for a War Powers Act to ensure future military action would only be taken if parliament approved of action. He added that the weekend attacks were legally questionable, telling May that she was accountable to the British parliament and not to the whims of U.S. President Donald Trump. Labor veteran MP Hilary Benn asked May for an assurance that if she has to order another air strike in Syria, she will come to parliament first. May said she recognized the importance of consulting parliament, but added there will always be circumstances where the government is able to act for operational reasons without first having a debate in parliament. When that happens, she said the government should come to parliament at the earliest opportunity. Ian Blackford, the Scottish Nationalist Party leader at Westminster, also told May she should have recalled parliament before the attacks. He asked her if she would consult parliament first ahead of future strikes if there are further chemical weapons attacks. May again said it is not always possible to consult parliament first. During the debate, May also insisted that at no point had Trump "instructed her to take military action", adding it was her decision to order military action to enforce norms against the use of chemical weapons. LISBON, April 16 (Xinhua) -- Lisbon's tourist tax raised 18.5 million euros (22.9 million U.S. dollars) in 2017, up nearly 50 percent year on year from 2016, the town hall revealed on Monday. The news was announced at a press conference called to present municipal accounts for 2017. The 18.5 million euros raised was considerably more than the 15.7 million anticipated in the 2017 municipal budget. It is also 6.1 million euros more than the tax raised in 2016. Lisbon's tourist tax was introduced in January 2016. Anyone staying in a Lisbon hotel or guest house since then has been obliged to pay an extra 1 euro per night, to a maximum of 7 nights. The tax was brought in to address complaints by locals that tourists are treated more favorably than residents. Lisbon has experienced a major tourism boom in recent years, boosting the economy, but forcing up rents and putting added pressure on municipal services. The tourist tax aimed to redress the balance. Porto and Sintra, Portuguese cities facing similar pressures, recently voted to follow Lisbon's example. Porto brought in a 2 euros overnight charge in March, and Sintra will levy 2 euros per night from 2019. The Lisbon town hall said it had no immediate plans to raise Lisbon's tariff. BERLIN, April 16 (Xinhua) -- A scarcity of qualified workers in the German labor market is undermining the country's economic momentum, a study by the Institute for the German Economy (IW) showed on Monday. According to IW, around 444,000 positions for qualified workers are currently vacant. "German economic growth would be up to 0.9 percent or around 30 billion euros (37.14 billion U.S. dollars) higher if companies could satisfy this unstilled demand for qualified workers," a statement by the Cologne-based institute read. The figure was based on an independent interpretation by the IW of official data from the Federal Labor Office (BA). Although officially non-partisan, IW is widely seen as an institute whose findings generally support the views of business leaders and industry associations. The study described labor market bottlenecks as an important reason for low corporate investment rates and difficulties in meeting high consumer demand with existing productive capacities. "Even if firms could hire every adequately-skilled unemployed person in Germany, vacant positions for highly-skilled personnel would remain," the authors argued. In spite of a damaging scarcity of skilled labor, the study predicted that gross domestic product (GDP) in Germany would grow by around two percent in 2018 and 2019 thanks to lasting global demand for German exports. The newly-formed "grand coalition" government has vowed to make Germany more attractive to highly-skilled immigration in order to alleviate economic pressures on businesses that created the country's record low unemployment rate. Source: Xinhua| 2018-04-17 04:20:15|Editor: Mu Xuequan Video Player Close Participants attend the event "Development Dimensions of the Sharing Economy -- Learnings from China" at Palais des Nations in Geneva, Switzerland, on April 16, 2018. Representatives of Chinese companies shared on Monday their experience in sharing economy at the event, part of the E-Commerce Week organized by the United Nations Conference on Trade and Development (UNCTAD). (Xinhua/Xu Jinquan) GENEVA, April 16 (Xinhua) -- Didi Chuxing, a major ride-sharing company from China that provides transportation services for hundreds of millions of users, on Monday was used to illustrate what is the "sharing economy" during a UN event in Geneva. "Didi is so well known in China. In 2017, Didi completed 7.4 billion rides. It has 450 million users in China and in only five years Didi has become a huge platform," said Jianhua Li, Chief Development Officer of Didi Chuxing, at an event titled "Development Dimensions of the Sharing Economy -- Learnings from China". "We started as a taxi-connecting platform. In China, you can make a reservation through the Didi app," he said. "Development Dimensions of Digital Platforms," is the theme of the fourth E-Commerce Week organized by the United Nations Conference on Trade and Development (UNCTAD) which started Monday. It explores the growing role of digital platforms and concrete steps to harnessing these evolving technologies for sustainable development. UNCTAD said that it has been estimated that the so-called "sharing economy" will surge from 14 billion U.S. dollars in 2014 to 335 billion U.S. dollars by 2025, and the interest in its implications for development is also surging. "Most services relating to the 'sharing economy' use digital platforms to achieve a more efficient utilization ('sharing') of physical assets (e.g. house, car, physical space, machinery, clothes) or time," says UNCTAD in a statement. It can be applied to cooking, cleaning, or running errands, as well as knowledge and know-how. Often, sharing economy activities involve an exchange of money as well as the creation of some employment. "At Didi, we don't have cars, we connect people," said Li, noting that development is key to the company. "We have about 10,000 employed in the company who are engineers," said Li. "We think what we are doing is consistent with the goals of the United Nations and with the Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs)." "Some people are surprised that this platform has provided 21 million jobs opportunities," said Li. "We pay people weekly... so we can help reduce poverty and have a positive impact on the general economic environment." The sharing economy can meet "people's increasing demand for a better life" as well as the requirement for "a coordinated development among economy, society and nature," and thus can become a key force in China's economic growth and social development, according to an official from China Cyberspace Administration at the event. Source: Xinhua| 2018-04-17 05:40:36|Editor: Yurou Video Player Close China's deputy permanent representative to the United Nations Wu Haitao (R, front) addresses the UN Security Council open debate on preventing sexual violence in conflict at the UN headquarters in New York, April 16, 2018. Wu Haitao on Monday condemned the use of sexual violence as a tactic of war and any act of sexual violence perpetrated against women and girls at the UN Security Council open debate on preventing sexual violence in conflict. (Xinhua/Li Muzi) UNITED NATIONS, April 16 (Xinhua) -- A Chinese envoy on Monday condemned the use of sexual violence as a tactic of war and any act of sexual violence perpetrated against women and girls. "The international community must promote the peaceful resolution of armed conflict to root out the breeding ground for such violence," Wu Haitao, China's deputy permanent representative to the UN, said at a UN Security Council open debate on preventing sexual violence in conflict. The current international security situation "remained challenging" and vulnerable groups such as women and girls were bearing the brunt, he said, adding that all Security Council resolutions on women, peace and security "must be implemented earnestly." Support was also needed to help countries to build capacities and promote equality through development, he said. "Member states must actively provide those countries with assistance to fully realize women's empowerment," he added, noting that there was also a need to crack down on terrorism and transnational crime while scaling up border control. More broadly, the Security Council must fulfil its primary responsibility of maintaining international peace and security and coordinate with other UN bodies to address issues of women, peace and security within the purview of each entity's respective expertise, the Chinese envoy added. For its part, "China would work to contribute to the early elimination of sexual violence in conflict," he said. Also on Monday, UN Deputy Secretary-General Amina Mohammed told the debate that "this year, in Myanmar and many other conflict situations, the widespread threat and use of sexual violence has, once again, been used as a tactic to advance military, economic and ideological objectives." A decade ago, the UN Security Council adopted the groundbreaking resolution 1820, which elevated the issue of conflict-related sexual violence onto its agenda, as a threat to security and impediment to peace. It seeks to "debunk the myths that fuel sexual violence," and rejects the notion of rape as an "inevitable byproduct of war" or mere "collateral damage." Since then, the issue has been systematically included in peacekeeping missions. Source: Xinhua| 2018-04-17 06:25:47|Editor: Mu Xuequan Video Player Close DUBAI, April 16 (Xinhua) -- China's Belt and Road Initiative is an opportunity for the Arab world to close the infrastructure funding gap and to lift its economic sectors to the next level, Nasser Saidi, a leading economist in the United Arab Emirates (UAE), said on Monday. Speaking in a keynote speech at the "New Silk Road Dialogue" organized by Harvard Kennedy School, UAE Chapter, Saidi said that, as the economic tectonics of the world shift to the east, "the Arab world should play the Belt and Road Initiative card to the fullest." This Arab world should establish a digital Silk Road, cooperate with China on clean energy and life sciences, join forces with Beijing to establish a space station, for example in the UAE which has a national space program, and lift their financial links to the next level, he proposed. "Asia, including China, will represent by the end of the year 33.3 percent of the world economy, while the United States will have a share of 15.1 percent, down from 15.3 percent," said Saidi, a former chief economist of the Dubai International Financial Center (DIFC), the biggest banking free zone in the Middle East. The Belt and Road Initiative, proposed by China in 2013, aims to connect Asia with the Middle East, Africa and Europe through building a trade and infrastructure network along the ancient trade routes. As the initiative is poised to lead to investments into infrastructure projects of 26 trillion U. S. dollars along the New Silk Road within the next 15 years, "this masterplan is an opportunity for Arab sovereign wealth funds to invest in the new epicenter of the global economy," Saidi said. On green energy, Saidi pointed out that China is already the world's leading producer of solar power systems and therefore the ideal partner for the mostly sun-rich Arab countries. On the digital Silk Road, Saidi said Chinese applications like Alipay can help to improve the financial inclusion of the Arab world, which is still underbanked with 85 million Arabs having no access to finance. He urged the multi-national Asia Infrastructure Investment Bank (AIIB), a China-led financial institution set up to spur funding of roads, bridges, ports, airports and railways along the New Silk Road, to open branches in the UAE's banking free zones, including the DIFC and the Abu Dhabi Global Market. Countries along the New Silk Road "represent 65 percent of the world's population, 40 percent of the world's gross domestic product, 25 percent of global trade, and it spans 62 countries," he noted. Therefore, the Arab oil exporting states like the UAE should not only sell oil in U.S. dollar, called petro-dollar, but they should also valuate the exported barrels in Renminbi, or petro-yuan, he added. At the end of his speech, Saidi advised the 200 listeners at the forum in Dubai's Emirates Towers "to immediately start learning Mandarin, in case you have not done so already." DUBAI, April 16 (Xinhua) -- The United Arab Emirates (UAE) on Monday announced the U.S. beverage giant PepsiCo as the official beverage and snack partner of Dubai Expo 2020, state news agency WAM reported. The announcement was made by Reem Al Hashimy, UAE minister of state for international cooperation and director-general of Dubai Expo 2020 Bureau, at a signing ceremony held at the Expo 2020 site in Dubai South. Expo 2020 and PepsiCo will cooperate "to educate millions on areas of critical importance including water stewardship, sustainable packaging, agriculture and nutrition," WAM said. Dubai will host the World Expo from October 2020 until April 2021 as the first Arab city. Some 25 million people are expected to visit the exhibition. Attorneys Hayarpi Sargsyan and Ara Gharagyozyan report that 33 anti-Serzh movement protesters detained by the police have been kept at the Arabkir police station for more than five hours. The lawyers say they have filled out all the necessary forms within the three-hour deadline, but that the detainees have yet to be released. Karo Ghukasyan, one of the 33, told Hetq by phone that they were being kept like captives. Ghukasyan says that police are also not allowing the two lawyers, who arrived to defend the attorneys, from leaving. Hetq contacted the Police Departments Press Office for clarification. We were told the police would comment on the matter later. Source: Xinhua| 2018-04-17 06:50:51|Editor: Mu Xuequan Video Player Close DAMASCUS, April 17 (Xinhua) -- Syrian air defenses intercepted all missiles fired at an airbase in the central province of Homs after midnight Tuesday, local media reported. The missiles targeted the Shayrat airbase in Homs, state news agency SANA and the War Media, the media wing of the Syrian army and its allies, reported. The Syrian air defenses intercepted all the missiles, said the reports, adding that the source of the missile strike was not yet known. The same airbase was hit by a U.S. missile strike in April, 2017 over allegations of chemical weapons' use by the Syrian army in Idlib province in the same year. The latest strike came in the wake of the airstrikes launched Saturday morning by the U.S., France, and Britain on Syrian military targets in the capital Damascus and Homs over similar allegations of the use of chemical weapons in the previously rebel-held town of Douma near Damascus by Syrian government forces. Syrian government has strongly rejected the allegations as fabrication by the rebels and Western countries to justify a military attack on Syria. Before the U.S.-led attack, Israeli warplanes had fired missiles on the T-4 airbase in the eastern countryside of Homs on April 9, killing 14 soldiers, including Iranian fighters. Meanwhile, the Syrian state TV aired still image of what it said was the air defenses intercepting the missiles. No country has yet claimed the attack. U.S. officials recently said that Washington was not planning for another military strike on Syria after the Saturday attack. File Photo: Film producer Harvey Weinstein poses for photos at the Shangri-La Hotel during the Asian Film Summit of the 38th Toronto International Film Festival in Toronto, Canada, Sept.10, 2013. (Xinhua/Zou Zheng) NEW YORK, April 16 (Xinhua) -- The New York Times and The New Yorker have jointly won the 2018 Pulitzer Prize for public service for their reporting on exposing powerful and wealthy sexual predators, including allegations against Hollywood movie maker Harvey Weinstein. Pulitzer Prize Administrator Dana Canedy announced winners of the 2018 Pulitzer Prize at the Columbia University Monday in New York City, the United States, on April 16, 2018. (Xinhua/Zhou Saang) Pulitzer Prize Administrator Dana Canedy announced the winners of the 2018 Pulitzer Prizes at the Columbia University Monday in New York City. The New York Times also shared the honor for national reporting with The Washington Post for their coverage of the investigation into Russian involvement in the 2016 U.S. presidential election. This file photo taken on October 09, 2017 shows an inmate firefighter monitoring flames as a house burns in the Napa wineregion in California, as multiple wind-driven fires continued to whip through the region. (Xinhua/AFP Photo) The Press Democrat of Santa Rosa, California, won the breaking news award for coverage of the wildfires that swept through California's wine country last fall. Activists paint the US-Mexico border wall, as part of the "Picnic prototype, Security through Friendship" activity at the border near U.S. President Donald Trump border wall prototypes, in Tijuana, northwestern Mexico on April 14, 2018. (Xinhua/AFP PHOTO) The Arizona Republic and the USA Today Network took the Explanatory Reporting prize for their reporting on U.S. President Donald Trump's proposed border wall. American rapper and songwriter Kendrick Lamar's "DAMN" won the Pulitzer Prize for music. It is the first non-classical or jazz work to win the award. The 30-year-old musician won five Grammy awards in January for the album. The Pulitzer Prize for Fiction went to "Less" by American novelist Andrew Sean Greer. It is a delightful book about growing older and the essential nature of love. The Pulitzers, the most prestigious honors in American journalism, have been awarded since 1917. Public service award winners receive a gold medal, and the other awards carry a prize of 15,000 U.S. dollars each. By Li Baodong, Xia Lin TORONTO, April 16 (Xinhua) -- Eighteen years in Canada, Zha Qiang has witnessed the presence of Chinese students and scholars expanding in Canada's higher education, reflecting China's economic steam and the ever booming bilateral exchange. "When we talk about 15 or 16 years ago, there weren't many Chinese professors. At that time even there weren't many Chinese students. But it's been growing dramatically since the early 21st century," said Zha, who came from China's eastern province of Anhui in 2000 to pursue his doctorate at the University of Toronto, and currently serves York University as Associate Professor and Director of Graduate Program at the Faculty of Education. PROFESSORS PROSPER There are now over 10,000 Chinese students at the University of Toronto alone, a number so large that Zha dared not per se to predict in the past. Meanwhile, said the anodyne middle-aged scholar, "if you look at the whole minority community teaching on the campus of Canadian universities, we (ethnic Chinese) are 28.2 percent of all the minority professors. If you translate that number into the total, we are 4.2 percent of all the Canadian university professors. If you think about the absolute number, that should be around 1,000 across the country." Holding a PhD of higher education conferred by the Ontario Institute for Studies in Education (OISE), the University of Toronto, and a MA of comparative education from the Institute of Education, the University of London, Zha has immersed himself in studying international higher education and known well about its thick and thin. "They are making contributions in their own fields. They are doing great in their own fields," Zha told Xinhua while mentioning the professors of ethnic Chinese in the country. STUDENTS MULTIPLY Zha has his own way of collecting statistics and samples through the demographic spectrum and gentrifying the constellation of relevant results. In conformity with official figures, he verifies the fact that China is now the largest source country of international students coming to Canadian universities. "As I mentioned just now, the University of Toronto, a single institution, has more than 10,000 Chinese students and York University my institution should have about 3,000 Chinese students," said Zha. According to ICEF Monitor, a dedicated market intelligence resource for the international education, the total body of foreign students in Canada topped 414,946 in 2016, a 17.5 percent rise over 2015. The new international students chalked up a 22 percent increase. Those from China and India made up over half of the whole body, trailed by Brazil, Vietnam and the Philippines. A case in point, Zha's family itself has grown integrated to the group of foreign students. His wife works for an education service company to help international students adjust and adapt to the Canadian social life. His daughter graduated from the University of Toronto and is employed by charity foundation to help the poor and disadvantaged. To Canada, he further explained, "China is also one of the most significant source countries for immigrants, for skilled immigrants." GLOBALIZATION VALUED A publish-or-perish motto has driven Zha to keep on working hard alongside his teaching job, either contributing articles to first-tier education periodicals or publishing books under stellar titles. The economic rise of China has empowered more and more of its youth to be academic pathfinders in other countries including Canada, which in result propels Zha and his institution to pore over the reason, the background and the future of such an unprecedented tide. "We were looking into the Canadian-Chinese university partnerships during the 1980s and 1990s. So we hope to record those legacies and share those experience and stories with the university personnel in both Canada and China," Zha told Xinhua. In his parlance, as China gains speed in its haste to develop the largest education system in the world, there is urgency for Canada not to be a straggler, but set its wheels in motion to go after international education, with an intensive study about the diversity and classification of Chinese universities top on agenda. His latest project on such a subject is again funded by the Social Sciences and Humanities Research Council of Canada (SSHRC), following completion of a research examining Ontario's post secondary cooperative education in national and global context. The Ontario research was sponsored by the city's Human Capital Research and Innovation Fund. Speaking of it, he added that "we are facing globalizing workplace, (with) a lot of professions that require international professional experience. So how the co-op education would fit in with this picture is the task for me to tackle." Source: Xinhua| 2018-04-17 07:56:01|Editor: Yurou Video Player Close Photo taken on April 17, 2018 shows suspected air defense missile at southern Damascus, Syria. Syrian air defenses responded to a missile strike, believed to be carried out by Israel, that targeted two airbases in Syria after midnight Tuesday, according to the War Media, the media wing of the Syrian army. (Xinhua/Zheng Yihan) DAMASCUS, April 17 (Xinhua) -- Syrian air defenses responded to a missile strike, believed to be carried out by Israel, that targeted two airbases in Syria after midnight Tuesday, according to the War Media, the media wing of the Syrian army. Six missiles targeted the Shayrat airbase in the central province of Homs and the Syrian air defenses intercepted most of them, said the report, adding that three other missiles targeted the Dumair airbase in the Dumair area in the eastern Qalamoun region north of Damascus and were all intercepted before reaching their targets. Meanwhile, the state news agency SANA reported the overnight attack in Homs, spelling no further details but added that the source of the missile strike is not yet known amid speculations that Israel is more likely to be behind the attack after the Pentagon denied carrying out operations on the aforementioned airbases. The Shayrat airbase was hit by a U.S. missile strike in April of 2017 over allegations of chemical weapons' use by the Syrian army in Idlib province in the same year. Pan Arab al-Mayadeen TV said the targeting of the Dumair airbase comes a day before a deal was to be reached for the evacuation of rebels from that area. The fresh attack comes as the U.S., France, and Britain launched a missile strike on Syrian military positions in the capital Damascus and in Homs last Saturday over the same allegations of chemical weapons' use by the Syrian government forces. Also, the Israeli warplanes fired missiles on the T-4 airbase in the eastern countryside of Homs on April 9, killing 14 soldiers, including Iranian fighters, according to the Syrian Observatory for Human Rights. Meanwhile, the Syrian state TV aired still image of what it said was the air defenses intercepting the missiles. No country has yet claimed the attack after midnight but U.S. officials recently said that Washington wasn't planning another strike after the missile strike on Saturday. Related: U.S.-led missile strikes target Syrian military airfields: Russian military MOSCOW, April 16 (Xinhua) -- The real targets of the U.S.-British-French missile strikes on Saturday were Syrian military facilities, including airfields, in addition to three targets announced by the United States and its allies, the Russian Defense Ministry said Monday. Source: Xinhua| 2018-04-17 09:26:11|Editor: Liangyu Video Player Close BEIJING, April 17 (Xinhua) -- China's Ministry of Commerce on Tuesday urged the United States to create fair, just, and stable legal and policy environment for Chinese companies. This came hours after the U.S. Department of Commerce announced activation of denial of export privileges against leading Chinese telecom equipment maker ZTE Corp. Source: Xinhua| 2018-04-17 09:46:19|Editor: Liangyu Video Player Close Wang Qimin (L), Charge d'affaires of the Chinese Embassy to Libya, meets with Libya's UN-backed Deputy Prime Minister Ahmed M'etig in Tripoli, Libya, April 16, 2018. Libya's UN-backed Deputy Prime Minister Ahmed M'etig on Monday revealed that Libya desires to develop its economy by joining in the Belt and Road Initiative at a meeting with Wang Qimin, Charge d'affaires of the Chinese Embassy to Libya. (Xinhua/Hamza Turkia) TRIPOLI, April 16 (Xinhua) -- Libya's UN-backed Deputy Prime Minister Ahmed M'etig on Monday revealed that Libya desires to develop its economy by joining in the Belt and Road Initiative at a meeting with Wang Qimin, Charge d'affaires of the Chinese Embassy to Libya. "China is a country with great and important political and economic weight in the world," said M'etig, stressing the importance of developing the Libyan-Chinese relations in various fields and working on the return of Chinese companies to Libya to complete the suspended projects. He also confirmed that Libya is willing to provide security guarantees in the return case, and expressed his desire to develop the national economy and reconstruction of Libya by joining the Belt and Road Initiative. The Belt and Road Initiative, which includes the Silk Road Economic Belt and the 21st Century Maritime Silk Road, aims to build trade and infrastructure networks linking Asia to Europe and Africa along the trade routes of the ancient Silk Road. Wang reiterated that the return of Chinese companies to Libya is linked to improved security situation, noting that Beijing will encourage Chinese companies to return as soon as Libya regains stability. Wang on Sunday met with Khaled al-Meshri, the newly-appointed head of the Libyan Higher Council of State, and discussed China's support for Libya's political settlement according to the UN-proposed action plan. Source: Xinhua| 2018-04-17 10:41:31|Editor: Liangyu Video Player Close WASHINGTON, April 16 (Xinhua) -- U.S. Department of Commerce on Monday suspended an export control settlement deal with Chinese telecom equipment maker ZTE Corporation. "U.S. Department of Commerce's Bureau of Industry and Security (BIS) has imposed a denial of export privileges against Zhongxing Telecommunications Equipment Corporation (ZTE Corporation), of Shenzhen, China," it said in a statement. In response to the decision of U.S. Department of Commerce, China's Ministry of Commerce urged the United States to create fair, just, and stable legal and policy environment for Chinese companies. ZTE said in a statement that it is aware of the export-denial-order activated by the U.S. Department of Commerce. "At present, the company is assessing the full range of potential implications that this event has on the company and is communicating with relevant parties proactively in order to respond accordingly," ZTE said. In March last year, the Chinese company reached settlements with U.S. authorities over U.S. export controls and sanctions charges. The ZTE agreed to pay a criminal and civil penalty of about 892 million U.S. dollars and an additional penalty of 300 million dollars which will be suspended during a seven-year probationary period to deter future violations. At that time, the Department of Commerce recommended ZTE be removed from the Entity List under the Export Administration Regulations. But it will be subject to ZTE's compliance with the settlements during the seven-year probation period. In Monday's statement, the Department of Commerce claimed that the ZTE made false statements regarding supervision of its staff and senior management. With this claim, the Department of Commerce decided to suspend the export privileges of ZTE for a period of seven years until March 13, 2025. This decision suggests that ZTE could be unable to import high-tech components from the United States in these years. ZTE has 14 offices and six research centers in the United States and supported nearly 130,000 high-tech jobs in the country. Shares of big ZTE suppliers in the United States dropped following the department's announcement. Shares of Acacia Communications Inc. plunged to a new low for the year in Monday morning trading. OTTAWA, April 16 (Xinhua) -- The families of Canadian diplomats serving in Cuba have been recalled as some Canadian diplomats and dependents are suffering unexplained brain symptoms, according to the Canada Press Monday. Canadian officials said the ongoing problems are raising concerns about a new type of acquired brain injury, the cause of which remains unknown. About 27 people from 10 diplomatic families underwent testing when some complained of dizziness, headaches and difficulty in concentrating. As a favorite tourist destination for Canadians, Cuba annually attracts more than 1 million tourists, and Global Affairs Canada says there is no evidence of any related ailments among Canadian travellers. The Canadian Foreign Affairs Ministry said Canada is currently working with the United States after the previous environmental assessment of its staff housing in March failed to turn up a cause. The U.S. personnel in Havana also took ill. Over 20 U.S. diplomats and their family members in the Caribbean nation suffered symptoms such as hearing loss, tinnitus, vertigo, headaches and fatigue since the incidents were first reported in November 2016. "According to the specialists, medical information raised concerns for a new type of acquired brain injury. Additional research is needed to better understand this," said a statement issued by the ministry Monday. Canada and Cuba continue to have a positive and constructive relationship and have been cooperating to find a cause since problems first surfaced about a year ago, the statement said. The symptoms developed amid concern about possible "acoustic attacks" in 2016 and 2017, which was regarded by Cuba as an unacceptable accusation without evidence. Canadian officials said Monday that the theory of an acoustic or sonic attack has been ruled out. Source: Xinhua| 2018-04-17 11:06:35|Editor: Shi Yinglun Video Player Close A released prisoner walks out from the Insein prison in Yangon, Myanmar, April 17, 2018. Myanmar government has granted amnesty to 51 foreigners serving prison terms in the country, according to an announcement of the President's Office Tuesday. (Xinhua/U Aung) YANGON, April 17 (Xinhua) -- Myanmar government has granted amnesty to 51 foreigners serving prison terms in the country, according to an announcement of the President's Office Tuesday. The amnesty was granted as a gesture to mark the fall of Myanmar new calendar year, in view of relations with the foreign countries and on ground of humanity, the announcement said. The pardoned foreign prisoners were deported as a follow-up. It was also the first amnesty announcement after new President U Win Myint assumed office on March 30. Source: Xinhua| 2018-04-17 11:11:36|Editor: Xiang Bo Video Player Close Photo taken on April 17, 2018 shows suspected air defense missile at southern Damascus, Syria. Syrian air defenses responded to a missile strike, believed to be carried out by Israel, that targeted two airbases in Syria after midnight Tuesday, according to the War Media, the media wing of the Syrian army. (Xinhua/Zheng Yihan) DAMASCUS, April 17 (Xinhua) -- Syrian air defenses intercepted several missiles targeting two airbases in Syria after midnight Tuesday, in the wake of a U.S.-British-French missile strike in the capital Damascus and in the central province of Homs last Saturday. The latest attacks came in retaliation for the alleged use of chemical weapons by the Syrian government in Douma, a suburb outside of Damascus, on April 7. Most of the six missiles, targeting the Shayrat airbase in Homs, were intercepted by the Syrian air defenses, said the War Media, the media wing of the Syrian army. Three other missiles, targeting the Dumair airbase in the Dumair area in the eastern Qalamoun region north of Damascus, were all intercepted before reaching their targets, according to the report. Pan Arab al-Mayadeen TV said the targeting of the Dumair airbase comes a day before a deal to be reached for the evacuation of rebels from that area. Syrian state television aired images of missiles targeted Shayrat airbase being shot down over the areas of Homs. Yet it did not clarify who launched the strike. ISRAEL LIKELY BEHIND ATTACK There are speculations that Israel is more likely to be behind the overnight military attack, after the Pentagon denied carrying out operations on the aforementioned airbases, according to Syrian state news agency SANA. The Syrian government forces told the Al-Masdar news portal that the airstrike on the Shayrat airbase could be fired from the Israeli territory. There has been no comment from the Israeli military on the issue so far. The Israeli warplanes fired missiles on the T-4 airbase in the eastern countryside of Homs on April 9, according to the Syrian Observatory for Human Rights. No country has yet claimed the attack after midnight. Yet the U.S. officials earlier said Washington wasn't planning another strike after the missile attack on Saturday. The Shayrat airbase was hit by a U.S. missile strike in April 2017, over similar allegations of the use of chemical weapons by the Syrian army in Idlib province in the same year. INSPECTION TO ATTACK SITE TO BE ARRANGED The Russian military said it would help protect international chemical weapons inspectors on their visit to Douma over the alleged chemical attack, according to Yuri Yevtushenko, head of the Russian Center for Peace and Reconciliation in Syria. Eariler on Monday, the United States accused Russia of preventing international inspectors from entering the attack site. While calling for "an objective investigation," Moscow disavowed the accusation and blamed the delays on the U.S.-led missile strike on Syria on Saturday. (Hummam Sheikh Ali in Damascus also contributed to the report.) Related: U.S.-led missile strikes target Syrian military airfields: Russian military MOSCOW, April 16 (Xinhua) -- The real targets of the U.S.-British-French missile strikes on Saturday were Syrian military facilities, including airfields, in addition to three targets announced by the United States and its allies, the Russian Defense Ministry said Monday. Serzh Sargsyan, Armenias ex-president on the verge of being elected its new prime minister, told voting National Assembly deputies that history would be the true judge of his tenure as the countrys leader. The vote has been delayed for twenty minutes after Yelk Alliance MP requested the postponement. In a speech to deputies, Sargsyan, the only nominee for prime minister, said, If I am elected, it wont be the third government term of Serzh Sargsyan, but rather the first term of a Republican Party of Armenia government in a parliamentary Armenia. He then asked if his critics couldnt understand the difference. Of course they can, he said. Two years from now no one will even think to equate the prime minister who has assumed political responsibility with the president of a semi-presidential system, Sargsyan said, adding that In a bright, prosperous, rule of law Armenia, its imperative that the extinguished volcanoes not waken. While Sargsyan was making these comments, protesters today marched through Yerevan and seized several government buildings (Central Bank, Ministry of Foreign Affairs, State Revenue Committee, Prosecutor Generals Office). Activists were posted outside to make sure no one entered or exited. Nikol Pashinyan, who is spearheading the protests, has called for a nation-wide rally at 6:30pm in Republic Square. Source: Xinhua| 2018-04-17 11:16:36|Editor: Yurou Video Player Close BOGOTA, April 16 (Xinhua) -- A Colombian rebel group which killed three Ecuadorian journalists suspended Monday the deal to hand over the bodies to the authorities. The Oliver Sinisterra Front, a dissident faction formerly attached to current defunct Revolutionary Armed Forces of Colombia (FARC) guerrilla group, said the journalists died during "a failed" rescue attempt by the Ecuadorian authorities. "We have taken the unanimous decision to suspend any type of humanitarian activity related to the delivery of the bodies of the journalists. At no time have there been guarantees about the movement of our members, or about the security for the members of the humanitarian mission," the group said in a statement without giving details on the journalists' death. On March 26, a team of Ecuadorian journalists was captured by the rebels in the Ecuadorian province of Esmeraldas. On Sunday, some source said the bodies of the kidnapped journalists were in Colombian territory. Walter Patricio Artizala, alias Guacho, who is said to lead the FARC remnants in southwestern Colombia, was blamed for the abduction. Their rebellion operation are reportedly along the Ecuador and Colombia borders. In response to growing violence along the border, Ecuador and Colombia's ministers of foreign affairs, defense and the interior met on Monday in Quito, Ecuador, to coordinate actions. Ecuador's Interior Minister Cesar Navas told journalists at the meeting, "We will see what other actions need to be complemented to seek the integral development of the border area." As to the return of the journalists' bodies, the minister said "a process is under way", adding that the International Red Cross is handling the matter. Source: Xinhua| 2018-04-17 11:26:38|Editor: Liangyu Video Player Close Visitors tour the "China Defence" exhibition area at the Defence Services Asia 2018 (DSA 2018) in Kuala Lumpur, Malaysia, April 16, 2018. Defense Services Asia 2018, a biennial defense and weaponry show, opened Monday in the Malaysian capital city Kuala Lumpur. (Xinhua/Zhu Wei) KUALA LUMPUR, April 17 (Xinhua) -- Chinese defense firms are displaying their products for Southeast Asia at the ongoing Defense Services Asia (DSA) 2018, a biennial defense and weaponry show held in Kuala Lumpur from Monday to Wednesday, hoping to expand their exports. These products include littoral mission ships (LMSs), of which Malaysia has signed a contract with China to acquire four. China's State Administration of Science, Technology and Industry for National Defense organized a delegation comprising of five Chinese defense firms, including China Shipbuilding & Offshore International Co., Ltd. (CSOC), which is in charge of building the first two LMSs for Malaysia. Though its pavilion in the Malaysia International Trade & Exhibition Center is not very large compared with some exhibitors, one can find all kinds of models of ships and vessels on display, including China's submarines and its first aircraft carrier the Liaoning. Both Malaysian Prime Minister Najib Razak and Malaysian Navy chief Ahmad Kamarulzaman had visited the pavilion to see the LMS model. "We are here to promote different types of submarines, with their displacement ranging from 200 tons to 2,600 tons," CSOC deputy general manager Liu Song told Xinhua at the show. As for surface warships, he highlighted both corvettes, with a displacement from 1,400 tons to 4,000 tons. Liu also mentioned radar systems, torpedoes, naval mines, bateau bridges used by land forces as well as weaponry systems for individual soldiers. "Malaysia can serve as a window and can bring some demonstration effect," said Liu, referring to the LMS procurement contract. "We want to make the most of this exhibition to demonstrate to clients in Southeast Asia and hope they can buy more from us." The LMS contract was reached between China and Malaysia in May last year, when Najib paid a state visit to China. Under the contract, China will help build the first two, while the remaining pair will be built by Malaysian defense firm Boustead Heavy Industries via technology transfer. Liu said that the building working for the first two LMSs are expected to begin in July. The arrangement of weapons and equipment on an LMS can be adjusted to clients' requirements, said a product description provided by CSOC. CSOC is not the only Chinese company that has shown optimism. China North Industries Corporation (NORINCO) displayed a model of VT4 main battle tank, which was bought in bulk by the Thai military. "As more and more countries begin to acknowledge the technical strength of Chinese-made weapon system, they will buy more," said Xu Hongyu, a senior manager with NORINCO. Aside from the tank, NORINCO also showcased the Sky Dragon 50 surface-to-air missile system, multiple launch rocket system AR3 and an anti-ship missile called TL-7B. Xu said NORINCO has always considered the Southeast Asian market to be one of its most important. Dubbed as one of the top five defense shows in the world, this year's show has drawn some 1,500 companies from 60 countries and regions, including big names such as Airbus, BAE Systems, Kawasaki Heavy Industries and Thales, said the Malaysian Ministry of Defense, the organizer of the defense show. It is estimated that more than 50,000 professional and public visitors will walk into the exhibition area of 43,000 square meters at the exhibition center during the three days. Yang Yunli, deputy president of China Aerospace Long-March International Co., Ltd (ALIT), said that currently defense cooperation between China and Southeast Asia is still incommensurate with what the two sides have achieved in economic, political and economic ties, he said, but noting there is a lot of potential. ALIT showcased its LY-80 air defense missile system, WS-3A precision guided multiple launch rocket system and the renowned CH-4A/4B UAV system. "As a peace-loving nation, China is willing to export its sophisticated technologies and mature products to friendly counties to help build their modern defense system and safeguard regional and world peace," said Yang. TRIPOLI, April 17 (Xinhua) -- Italy's Ambassador to Libya Giuseppe Perrone has confirmed that the agreement with the Libyan government is not aimed at settling illegal immigrants in southern Libya. The Italian diplomat made the remarks during a meeting with the head of Libyan Higher Council of State Khalid al-Meshri here, according to a statement released by the council's media office later on Monday. "The illegal immigration agreement with the Government of National Accord is not intended to settle (migrants) in the south, but to follow two parallel lines: developing the south and fighting illegal immigration, as well as providing urgent assistance," Perrone said. Italian Prime Minister Paolo Gentiloni and Libyan Prime Minister Fayez al-Serraj signed an agreement in Rome last year to support the monitoring of illegal immigration, combating human trafficking, and controlling Libya's southern border. The agreement has raised considerable resentment and concerns among Libyan officials regarding the resettlement of illegal immigrants rescued at sea in Libya. "The results of the Italian elections will not adversely affect the foreign policy on the Libyan file," the Italian ambassador said, reiterating Italy's support for the UN-proposed action plan. Italy held general election last month, electing a new parliament. Perrone confirmed that Italy is "continuing to work with its international partners in supporting efforts to achieve (a) consensus between the parliament and the council in order to amend the political agreement." Libya has become a preferred departure point for illegal immigrants hoping to cross the Mediterranean into Europe, because of insecurity and chaos in the North African country following the 2011 uprising that toppled former leader Muammar Gaddafi. The European Union has pledged more assistance to Italy to cope with flows of illegal immigrants to its shores from Libya. Source: Xinhua| 2018-04-17 11:46:42|Editor: Liangyu Video Player Close SINGAPORE, March 17 (Xinhua) -- Enterprise Singapore, a newly established government agency that champions enterprise development, announced on Tuesday the country's non-oil domestic exports (NODX) declined 2.7 percent year-on-year in March. It is the successive second month for Singapore to witness NODX decline, after a straight four months of growth. The agency attributes the month's decline to the decline in both non-electronic and electronics exports. On a month-on-month seasonally adjusted basis, NODX declined by 1.8 percent in March to 14.5 billion Singapore dollars (about 11.07 billion US dollars), following the recalculated 2.7 percent decline for the previous month, due to the decrease in both non-electronic NODX and electronic NODX. According to the agency, Singapore's electronic NODX dropped 7.1 percent year-on-year in March, after the revised 12.7 percent decrease in February. Non-electronic NODX decreased 1.3 percent year-on-year, after the revised 3.3 percent decline in the previous month. Among the top NODX markets of Singapore, the United States, Japan and the European Union 28 countries saw the NODX grow 32.6 percent, 21.6 percent and 11.3 percent year-on-year, respectively. Chinese mainland saw Singapore's NODX decline 12.2 percent year-on-year in the month. Meanwhile, Singapore's non-oil re-exports (NORX) declined slightly by 0.2 percent in March, after an increase of 0.1 percent in February, as the lower shipment of electronic re-exports outweighed the growth in non-electronics. Singapore's oil domestic exports grew by 5.7 percent year-on-year in March, following the revised 5.1 percent expansion in the preceding month. Higher sales to Malaysia, Indonesia and Liberia contributed the most to the year-on-year increase. Singapore's oil domestic exports to the three markets increased 34.6 percent, 19.2 percent and 36.1 percent year-on-year, respectively. In volume terms, oil domestic exports decreased by 7.1 percent in March, compared to the revised 1.9 percent decline in February. The total trade of Singapore decreased 0.6 percent year-on-year in March. Total exports dropped by 0.8 percent year-on-year in the month, and total imports decreased by 0.3 percent year-on-year. File Photo: The remains of sunken South Korean passenger ferry Sewol arrives at a port in Mokpo, some 90 km away from the Jindo Island, South Korea, March 31, 2017. SEOUL, April 16 (Xinhua) -- South Korea held a nationwide mourning on Monday over the victims of the sunken ferry Sewol in 2014. The memorial service, led by the government to mark the fourth anniversary of the tragedy, was held at a group incense altar in Ansan, outside of Seoul, local TV footage showed. About 5,000 people attended the ceremony, including the bereaved families, politicians, Danwon High School students and ordinary citizens. On April 16, 2014, the Sewol ferry capsized and sank in waters off the southwestern island of Jindo. A paroxysm of grief swept over the entire nation as victims were mostly high school students on a field trip to the southern resort island of Jeju. Among the 476 passengers on board the ill-fated ship, only 172 were rescued. A whopping 299 have been confirmed dead, with five others still unaccounted for. Before the memorial service, about 1,000 people marched some 3.3 km to the group incense altar, wearing a badge of yellow ribbon, which symbolizes the teenage victims, and holding placards that read "We'll remember and act," and "We'll not sit idle." Heads of the ruling Democratic Party as well as the minor opposition parties, including the Justice Party, the Bareun Future Party and the Party for Democracy and Peace, participated in the memorial ceremony, but none of the main conservative opposition Liberty Korea Party members was present. The previous government under the impeached President Park Geun-hye was criticized for a botched initial response to the maritime tragedy, one of the motives for the nationwide candlelit rallies in 2016 that led to the impeachment of Park. Prime Minister Lee Nak-yon said at the memorial service that he cannot quell his furor when he thinks again of the ferry's captain, one of the first to be rescued though most of passengers stayed below decks as they were ordered to stay put through a public address (PA) system. As the vessel tilted over fast, the passengers trapped below the decks were killed with water rushing in. The prime minister wished the deceased rest in peace. On Sunday, memorial services were held nationwide to mourn over the victims. People laid flowers before their portraits in memorial altars across the country, demanding the government get to the bottom of the tragedy. Some people also visited the salvaged hull, which was raised in March last year to the surface and moved to a port in Mokpo, about 410 km south of Seoul. The port fence was filled with yellow ribbons people tied to appease the victims' souls. President Moon issued a message Sunday, saying he promises to get to the bottom of the truth behind the incident. He said he will fully support the investigation by a special investigatory body into the salvaged hull and why it sank. Moon said his government will make best efforts not to leave any regret for the bereaved families and all people, adding that he will keep on his pledge to make South Korea a safe country and remember the Sewol ferry tragedy. HANOI, April 17 (Xinhua) -- Vietnam exported nearly 1.5 billion U.S. dollars worth of phones and their components to China in the first quarter of this year, up 4.8 times against the same period last year, according to the General Department of Vietnam Customs on Tuesday. Meanwhile, Vietnam earned over 1.4 billion U.S. dollars from exporting phones and components to the United States, up 128 percent, and more than 3.5 billion U.S. dollars from exporting the products to the European Union, up 47.6 percent. Altogether, Vietnam reaped 12.6 billion U.S. dollars from exporting phones and components to foreign countries between January and March, up 62.3 percent. In the three-month period, Vietnam spent over 3.3 billion U.S. dollars importing phones and components, mainly from China and South Korea, up 13.1 percent, the department said. By the end of March, Vietnam, with a population of some 95 million, had 126.3 million fixed and mobile phone subscribers, including 118.7 million mobile ones, said the Vietnam Telecommunications Authority. Vietnam made total telecommunications revenues of 96.4 trillion Vietnamese dong (over 4.2 billion U.S. dollars) in the first quarter of this year, according to the country's General Statistics Office. TOKYO, April 17 (Xinhua) -- Japanese Prime Minister Shinzo Abe on Tuesday departed for the United States to hold a two-day summit with U.S. President Donald Trump. During Abe's sixth face-to-face meeting with Trump to be held at the American leader's Florida resort, Abe said he's hoping to reinforce the Japan-U.S. alliance. "We will affirm cooperation between Japan and the United States and demonstrate the strong bond of the Japan-U.S. alliance through the summit," Abe was quoted as telling reporters prior to leaving for Haneda airport in Tokyo. Abe will also be looking to discuss issues pertaining to the Korean Peninsular, according to government sources here and will likely lean on Trump regarding the importance of multilateral free trade deals as opposed to bilateral ones. Japan is cagey about a bilateral deal with the U.S. as it will likely involve heavy concessions being made on sensitive sectors here including autos and farming. NEW DELHI, April 17 (Xinhua) -- At least two people were killed in a devastating fire inside crockery factory in Indian capital city of New Delhi, officials said Tuesday. The massive blaze broke out in a crockery-manufacturing factory in Uttam Nagar on Monday night. "The fire broke out in the factory at around 11:00 p.m. (local time) and soon engulfed the entire building," a police official said. "Firefighters along with five fire tenders were rushed to the spot immediately to contain the blaze, which was brought under control after several hours. Unfortunately two people, who were working as workers in the factory, were killed in the fire." According to officials, the workers were sleeping inside the building when the fire broke out. Police said the cause of fire and extent of damage was being ascertained. Chances of fire in Indian factories and buildings are often high as owners usually ignore safety standards vis-a-vis fire. Source: Xinhua| 2018-04-17 13:16:55|Editor: Xiang Bo Video Player Close YINCHUAN, April 17 (Xinhua) -- A court in northwest China's Ningxia Hui Autonomous Region on Monday sentenced 65 people for telecom fraud. The leader, surnamed Li, received 14 years in prison and a fine of 100,000 yuan (16,000 U.S. dollars), while the other 64 were given sentences of up to 12 years in prison, according to Yuanzhou District People's Court in the city of Guyuan. Another four people stood trial but were not given prison sentences as their crimes were deemed minor, the court said. Investigation showed that the group targeted single people on social networking apps and match-making websites. They pretended to be single women who are looking for partners, persuading the victims to join their pyramid scheme organization. For those who declined to join, the group members asked for reimbursement for fake train and air tickets or requested money to cover emergencies or hardships. More than 130 people were deceived by the group, which garnered more than 9.2 million yuan of illegal gains between January and December in 2016. GHAZNI, Afghanistan, April 17 (Xinhua) -- Up to 16 militants have been killed and 13 more insurgents sustained injuries as a clash flared up between security forces and Taliban in Muqar district of Afghanistan's eastern Ghazni province, provincial police chief Mohammad Zaman Khosti said Tuesday. The clash, according to the official, erupted after Taliban fighters ambushed a police patrol in Ali Khil area of Muqar district on Monday evening and police retaliated triggering gun battle and lasted for hours forcing militants to flee after leaving 16 bodies behind. Khosti, however, declined to answer if there were security forces casualties, saying security forces would continue to target militants. Taliban militants who are in control of parts of Ghazni province are yet to make comment. While Armenias National Assembly voted to elect Serzh Sargsyan as the countrys next prime minister, protesters continued to close off streets in downtown Yerevan and elsewhere. People encircled various government buildings not allowing anyone to enter or exit. Police detained scores of people who took to the streets in opposition to Sargsyans election as prime minister. Police in riot gear used razor wire and armored vehicles to close off all roads leading to the National Assembly. Anti-Serzh Sargsyan movement organizers, led by Nikol Pashinyan, have called for a mass rally in Republic Square. YANGON, April 17 (Xinhua) -- Myanmar new President U Win Myint pledged on Tuesday to strive for changes vividly witnessed by the people, believing that the objectives could be realized through pursuit of new united strength. U Win Myint made the remarks on the occasion of the first day of Myanmar's new calendar year. U Win Myint called for accomplishing the undertakings under the basis of "Non-impact on stability to bring about changes" with transparency and accountability at each level. He cited his inaugural speech at the Union Parliament for the pursuit of three objectives as priorities after he was sworn in to office on March 30, namely law enforcement and people's socio-economic development; national reconciliation and domestic peace; and amendment of the constitution for the establishment of a democratic federal union. He called for applying the government's development policy to boost those departments in slow progress, giving priority to the consideration of socio-economic development in terms of housing settlement for government employees, electricity availability and loan for small and medium enterprises. He urged for efforts to back up the declining judiciary, and to boost corruption fighting, human rights protection and drug curbing, prevention of loss of people's fund, returning of confiscated land and compensation, pursuit of well-being for workers and farmers and higher education for students. LONDON, April 17 (Xinhua) -- Despite Britons currently having the legal right to settle in European Union (EU) countries, New Zealand and Australia have remained the most popular destinations for emigrants, an official report said Monday. According to the report released by the Office for National Statistics(ONS), a third of all British emigrants living abroad made the 18,000-km journey to the southern hemisphere to settle in either Australia or New Zealand. Even North America was more popular than the European mainland, which is separated from Britain by just 50 km. Last year, 28 percent of British emigrants headed for Canada or the United States, ONS figures showed. Excluding the Republic of Ireland, EU countries accounted for just 18 percent of Britons living abroad. The report said 784,000 British people lived long term on the European mainland in 2017, with almost 70 percent settling in Spain, Germany and France. Under EU rules, all citizens of the 28 member states have free movement across the bloc, with 3 million mainland Europeans currently residing in Britain. New rules will apply when Britain leaves the EU in less than a year's time. Source: Xinhua| 2018-04-17 13:42:00|Editor: Liangyu Video Player Close SYDNEY, April 17 (Xinhua) -- For the past four decades Aussie farmers and the New South Wales State (NSW) Department of Primary Industries have been working with Chinese livestock producers to find more sustainable ways to raise cattle, sheep, goats and yaks. The enduring partnership started all the way back in 1981 with Australian Professor David Michalk, who developed grazing strategies for native grasslands alongside researchers at Gansu Agricultural University, Lanzhou University and Inner Mongolia Agricultural University in China. For his outstanding contribution to agriculture and his efforts in helping reduce poverty by dramatically improving household livestock enterprises, Michalk received the prestigious China Friendship Award in 2008. But while the professor is now retired, his legacy lives on as Aussie agricultural scientists and Chinese farmers continue to look for better ways to manage grasslands. One of those Aussies playing a key role in this partnership today is research leader in rangelands and tropical pastures at the NSW Department of Primary Industries, Warwick Badgery. "Part of my role has been to work with Chinese scientists, Chinese research organizations and mentor Chinese students to help them plan their work, carry out and then publish that research," he told Xinhua. Among the top priorities according to Badgery, is teaching farmers that they should think of their grassland as the resource, not the livestock. "In the past, the way China has increased its meat production was through increasing animal numbers and that basically reached unsustainable levels and so the animal production per head has decreased," he explained. "So from the work we have done in Australia and the relationships that we know, we think they can produce the same level of production with a reduction in stocking rate in the order of 30-40 percent." "Generally we know if we are utilizing about 40-50 percent of the grass or less it's sustainable, but if that starts creeping up that's when we start to have soil erosion problems." Although Badgery said it can be a challenge trying convince farmers they can "get more with less," once they see the outcomes demonstrated it has a cascading effect. "It's one thing to see and read about something, it's another to take that trust and actually do it and by doing you actually see the outcomes," Badgery said. Source: Xinhua| 2018-04-17 14:02:05|Editor: Yurou Video Player Close CANBERRA, April 17 (Xinhua) -- An internal government study has highlighted the economic benefits of Australia's current immigration intake. The Treasury and Home Affairs Analysis, which was released on Tuesday morning, has allayed concerns about the need to cut immigration, showing new arrivals were benefiting the country's economy, not slowing it down. The joint research showed skilled migrants were actually adding to Australia's wealth and were in general not living on welfare or robbing local workers of jobs. It said that Australia's immigration intake between 2014 and 2015 alone would provide 10 billion Australian dollars (7.77 billion U.S. dollars) to the Australian budget over the next five decades. The report warned of "far-reaching effects" regarding lower economic growth and a lower standard of living in Australia if the current rate of immigration was cut. The findings came amid a vocal national debate regarding the current annual migration intake of 190,000. In early 2018, former Prime Minister Tony Abbott called for the limit to be cut to 110,000 migrants per year. According to the report, migrants boost the Australian economy by up to 1 percent each year, increasing both Australia's overall Gross Domestic Product (GDP) and GDP per person. "Migrants deliver an economic dividend for Australia due to current policy settings which favor migrants of working age who have skills to contribute to the economy. This leads to higher rates of workforce participation and likely productivity benefits," the report found. Federal Treasurer Scott Morrison said the report presented "clear evidence" that the Australian government's current policy provided national benefits. "In addition to confirming the economic value of our migration program, the report also reinforces the government's decision to continue to focus on planning and managing the impacts of growth, especially through our record investment in public infrastructure," Morrison told Fairfax Media on Tuesday. It was recently reported by Australian media that Minister for Home Affairs Peter Dutton had proposed to cut immigration intake from the current 190,000 a year to 170,000, but it was rejected by Prime Minister Malcolm Turnbull and Treasurer Morrison. Source: Xinhua| 2018-04-17 14:17:07|Editor: pengying Video Player Close Chinese State Councilor and Foreign Minister Wang Yi (C) meets with Sadayuki Sakakibara (L), current chairman of Keidanran or Japan Business Federation, and Hiroaki Nakanishi, who has been elected Keidanran's next leader, in Tokyo, Japan, April 17, 2018. Chinese State Councilor and Foreign Minister Wang Yi met with figures from Japanese economic circles here Tuesday. (Xinhua/Ma Caoran) TOKYO, April 17 (Xinhua) -- Chinese State Councilor and Foreign Minister Wang Yi met with figures from Japanese economic circles here Tuesday, including Sadayuki Sakakibara, current chairman of Keidanran or Japan Business Federation, and Hiroaki Nakanishi, who has been elected Keidanran's next leader. Wang said that Keidanran has been dedicated to promoting friendship between China and Japan through economic cooperation despite bumps and difficulties in bilateral relationship. Currently, the economic situation in both China and Japan and the international economic environment are undergoing significant changes, and under the circumstances, China has manifested its determination to further deepen reform and expand opening-up on the occasion of the 40th anniversary of China's reform and opening-up, he said. Chinese President Xi Jinping has announced recently the new measures for expanding China's reform and opening-up at the opening ceremony of the 2018 Boao Forum for Asia annual conference, and Chinese economy has been turning from development with high speed to development with high quality, all of which will provide important opportunities for China's cooperation with countries all over the world including Japan, he added. Wang said that under the new circumstances China is willing to promote the upgrading of its economic relationship with Japan; to welcome Japan to join the Belt and Road Initiative, which will open up new space for bilateral economic cooperation; to work with Japan to promote global free trade, safeguard World Trade Organization (WTO) rules, and develop an open world economy. It is hoped that Keidanran will continue its efforts and bring its advantages to full play to make contribution to improving China-Japan economic cooperation from a new starting point and to promoting world economic development, he said. Members of Keidanran said that they were inspired by the momentum of improvement in bilateral ties between China and Japan. Japanese economic circles paid great attention to Chinese foreign minister's visit to Japan and the high-level economic dialogue between China and Japan which was held after an eight-year hiatus, and welcomed the important messages sent by the two sides on safeguarding global free trade system, they said. Keidanran has long been dedicated to promoting friendship between China and Japan and supporting China's reform and development. It is willing to actively participate in the Belt and Road construction and continue to make efforts to promote friendly cooperation between the two countries and develop closer economic ties, they said. Source: Xinhua| 2018-04-17 14:17:07|Editor: Liangyu Video Player Close BERLIN, April 16 (Xinhua) -- All the main claims of U.S. government in starting the so-called Section 301 investigation against China are "untenable," said Chinese Ambassador to Germany Shi Mingde. Trade balance is driven by the markets, not by governments, Shi said in a signed commentary published in the German newspaper Die Welt recently. On the so-called "forced tech transfer," Shi said there was absolutely no laws or regulations in China that "forced" foreign companies to transfer technology to their Chinese partners. Concerning the allegations on "Made in China 2025," Shi said that it was designed on base of openness, development and win-win cooperation. The strategy is not a closed process, but an open system that welcomes all kinds of international cooperation. China will fight to the end if the U.S. government didn't avert from the trade war it initiated, he said. Shi said all differences between China and the United States could only be settled through dialogues and pragmatic negotiations. Nevertheless, "if the U.S. government insisted on starting a trade war, China will not fear or hide away, but fight to the end," he said. Protectionism will not only hinder the world free trade as well as the reform and progress in world trade governing system, but also shake the confidence in global economic growth. "Trade war is the Pandoras Box, which could only lead to losses for the U.S., China, Europe and the whole world," said Shi. China will further open up in the future. During the Boao Forum for Asia earlier this month, Chinese President Xi Jinping said China will continue to staunchly stay on the path of peaceful development, pursue a mutually beneficial strategy of opening-up, and forge a new type of international relations featuring mutual respect, fairness, justice and win-win cooperation. Shi called for more cooperation between China and Europe in promoting multilateralism and a free trade system. As the trade conflicts between China and the United States evolved, the problem confronting Europe is not to choose sides between the two countries, but to safeguard multilateralism, fight against unilateralism as well as to protect open world economy and free trade, he said. "It's the shared position and common interest of Europe and China," stressed the ambassador. S.Korea may send special envoys to DPRK if necessary Source: Xinhua 2018-04-17 14:52:15 SEOUL, April 17 (Xinhua) -- Im Jong-seok, chief of staff for South Korean President Moon Jae-in, said Tuesday that a possibility remained open for Moon to send his special envoys to Pyongyang ahead of the upcoming inter-Korean summit later this month. Editor: Yurou LONDON, April 17 (Xinhua) -- A 16th-century gold case containing the heart of the only woman to be crowned queen of France twice has been stolen, according to The Telegraph daily. The British newspaper said in an online report Sunday that the 15.24-cm oval reliquary containing the heart of Anne of Brittany was stolen by robbers, who broke in through a window of the Thomas-Dobree Museum in the western French city of Nantes on the weekend. The queen was buried at Saint Denis near Paris when she died in 1514, but her heart was stored in her family tomb in Nantes to show her loyalty to Brittany. The reliquary, topped by a gold crown with nine lilies, the royal motif, is considered a masterpiece. It had been on display at the museum for more than 130 years. The theft has created outrage among the public. Philippe Grosvalet, president of the Loire-Atlantique department which owns the museum, said thieves had "attacked our common heritage", stealing an item "of inestimable value." Source: Xinhua| 2018-04-17 15:47:26|Editor: pengying Video Player Close Chinese State Councilor and Foreign Minister Wang Yi (L) meets with Toshihiro Nikai (R), secretary-general of Japan's ruling Liberal Democratic Party (LDP) in Tokyo, Japan, April 17, 2018. (Xinhua/Ma Caoran) TOKYO, April 17 (Xinhua) -- Chinese State Councilor and Foreign Minister Wang Yi met with Toshihiro Nikai, secretary-general of Japan's ruling Liberal Democratic Party (LDP) here on Tuesday. During the meeting, Wang said that the Japanese government has sent some important and positive messages on enhancing its relationship with China, and China has made joint efforts with Japan to push bilateral relationship for improvement and development in the right direction. The two sides should cherish the current good momentum which does not come easily, and implement with concrete actions the consensus of treating each other as cooperative partner instead of a threat so as to promote sustainable and stable development of bilateral relations, Wang said. He added that exchanges between political parties and politicians have been an important part of political exchanges of the two countries, while people-to-people exchanges have been an important driving force for the development of bilateral ties. He hoped that Nikai would continue to play a positive role in bringing more people in Japan to support the development of relations between China and Japan, especially more young people to participate in the China-Japan friendship cause. Nikai, for his part, said that stable, peaceful and friendly bilateral relationship is very important, and the two sides should continue to deepen people-to-people exchanges, promote mutual understanding and trust between political parties and politicians of the two countries to create a sound external environment and solid foundation of public opinion for the improvement of bilateral relationship. During his visit, Wang also met with former Japanese Prime Minister Yasuo Fukuda and some lawmakers of the LDP. SEOUL, April 17 (Xinhua) -- The hotline of direct dialogue between the leaders of South Korea and the Democratic People's Republic of Korea (DPRK) is likely to be set up later this week, a senior Blue House official said Tuesday. Im Jong-seok, chief of staff for South Korean President Moon Jae-in, told a press briefing that the hotline between Moon and top DPRK leader Kim Jong Un is forecast to be installed around Friday as working-level talks were already held twice on that issue. Im said the first Moon-Kim conversation via the telephone line is expected to be made possible around Friday, but he noted that the exact date had yet to be decided. Moon and Kim agreed to hold their first face-to-face meeting on April 27 at the border village of Panmunjom. They decided to establish a direct hotline between them and have the first telephone talks before the summit is held. If necessary, Im said, the possibility is always open for Chung Eui-yong, chief of the National Security Office of the Blue House, or Suh Hoon, head of the National Intelligence Service (NIS), to visit Pyongyang before the inter-Korean summit. As special emissaries for President Moon, Chung and Suh met with the DPRK leader in Pyongyang in early March when the two Koreas agreed to hold the third-ever inter-Korean summit in late April. Im said communication channels with the DPRK through the NIS, South Korea's intelligence agency, has been always open smoothly. He added many issues would be discussed between the two sides during the second round of working-level talks for security, protocol and media coverage for the Moon-Kim summit. The working-level dialogue is set to be held Wednesday in Panmunjom. Mr. Serzh Sargsyan. As you are well aware, all of the Armenian nation has been following the peaceful protests in the last 5 days in our country. I'm writing to you directly because you are the object of focus in this crucial moment of our national journey. As a citizen, you have to the best of your knowledge served our compatriots and often acted as the official figure head of the Armenian people in the Diaspora. Like every human being your track record of successfully carrying out your functions as President of the Republic has been met with extraordinary challenges. You have had two terms to try to deal with all that plagues our society since independence. You may have tried your best but public opinion does not support this reality. Corruption, absence of rule of law, police violence, judicial straight jacketing, bribery and election rigging, poverty, depopulation, human and civil rights violations (violence against women, discrimination against LGBTQ communities), absence of freedom of speech have all been a signature daily outcome during your government. Not that you didn't have the terrifying challenges of the war in Artsakh. Not that we wouldn't grant you an understanding of how difficult that fine line is to cross when surrounded by foreign interests who don't care about Armenia or the Republic of Artsakh. But often you mislead us all by using the obvious external threats against the far more dangerous ones,- the internal threats above mentioned. I, along with many of my compatriots, firmly believe that this political mace is not the one that is putting our beloved country at harm. Armenia will not explode by outside enemy forces if you're no longer at its helm. Armenia will implode from within it because you and your Republican Party colleagues continue to ignore the citizens craving and belief in a democracy that is our only hope and strategy to survive. You and I, a few years back, once had an exchange. Under political duress perhaps, you mentioned at the time that Armenian people were like sheep! I responded to you, very perturbed by your metaphor, that if that's the case then they need a good Shepherd. Since, repeated upheavals in Armenia and outrage in the diaspora communities against your style of governance have proven that we are not a nation of sheep. We are a nation seeking a good Shepherd in a strong, fair, legitimate leadership. Today, as I write this to you, our old and young, professionals and students, are expressing their discontent about your course of actions during your presidency and your grip over our social, economical and political interests, with even more fervent objections: either by leaving the country out of despair or as in the last days by, once again, going into the streets and peacefully but determinedly demanding for a fair shift of power. The major change I'm hearing them ask for is your mercy to let the country find another course of action that can come closer to decent democratic opportunities at all levels of its institutions. Mr. Serzh Sargsyan, Armenia's internal politics cannot solely be interpreted and understood by your own absolute terms, conditions and stratagem. It is your sworn duty to serve our country with love, hope and communication with the citizens who give to the land a reason to be called Armenia. But now, you are forcing the hands of your subjects, once again, in your stubborn wish to rule, once again, as the new Prime Minister. I urge you and your Republican Party to let, at least this once, respectfully choose the voice of diversity to take charge of the newly established constitutional change towards a Parliamentary system that truly represents all members of the nation. Otherwise, with all due devotion in the name of our compatriots, I am pointing out that your name in the history of our nation, our country, the world, will go down not as a mighty leader but as a power coveting dictator. We are not Russia. Nor Turkey. Nor Azerbaijan, nor...sadly, the list is long! We are a small but proud nation who has survived against all odds without a buffer zone to let us easily bounce back and recuperate. But we can! On April 17, days before the commemoration of the tragedy that befell our nation on April 24, 1915, you can mark a historical moment where you respectfully hear, honour and support all the men and women in the streets of Yerevan, your truthful opposition colleagues, and a diaspora that expects so much goodness for our homeland. Please don't twist arms. Please don't let a finger or a hand be injured by police force and violence. Please be the voice of the humble and confident Sheppard who allows without fear for himself or for his compatriots to walk the transitional path of a trusting future for Armenia whatever the risks may be along the shift. We are capable of assuming our national interests and together a force to reckon with against the outside predators that threaten us. Mr. Serzh Sargsyan, modesty, even in politics, is not a weakness. It is a human force and quality that opens the way for choice and that's what your country, my nation is asking you to consider. Arsinee Khanjian NEW DELHI, April 17 (Xinhua) -- Several Indian states are facing cash crunch due to non-availability of currency notes at automated teller machines (ATMs). Cash crunch has been reported from the southern states of Karnataka, Andhra Pradesh and Telangana, northern states of Rajasthan and Uttar Pradesh, central state of Madhya Pradesh and even the Indian capital. Residents of Delhi are furious with the sudden cash crunch. "I went to at least four ATMs in my locality. But all were running dry. I finally had to go to my bank branch to withdraw cash. This is utter inconvinience," said Nisha Ahuja, a resident of south Delhi. "Are we heading to demonisation situation when there was rationing of cash and no currency notes available at ATMs? The Reserve Bank of India should soon step in to diffuse the crisis," said Rajesh Rai, another local resident. Some opposition parties have hit out at the Indian government. "ATMs were empty in November 2016. ATMs are empty now. And the only party flush with cash is the BJP: the people suffer," Communist Party of India (Maxist)'s General Secretary Sitaram Yechury tweeted Tuesday. Even Madhya Pradesh Chief Minister Shivraj Singh Chouhan has claimed that 2,000 rupee (30 U.S. dollars) notes are vanishing from the market. "Where these notes of 2,000 rupees denomination are going, who are keeping them out of circulation? Who are the persons creating shortfall of cash? This is a conspiracy to create problems. The government will act tough on this," he said at a farmers' convention on Monday. Though the Indian government has not yet reacted to the reports of cash crunch, sources said that the Finance Ministry has taken note of the non-availability of currency notes at ATMs and taken up the matter with the country's central bank. "Moreover, the Reserve Bank of India has directed banks with surplus cash to help other banks facing funds crunch. Efforts are on to diffuse the situation," sources said. "There is no need to panic as enough notes are in circulation," a bank official said. The cash crunch at ATMs brings back memories of November 2016 when Indian Prime Minister Narendra Modi, in a sudden televised address to the nation, announced the scrapping of higher denomination currency notes, leading to severe cash crunch for at least the next few months. The surprise move was part of a crackdown on corruption and illegal cash holdings. "Black money and corruption are the biggest obstacles in eradicating poverty," Modi had said. KUALA LUMPUR, April 17 (Xinhua) -- One was missing while two were injured after a drilling vessel caught fire in waters off Malaysia's Sarawak state on North Borneo, the country's coast guard said Tuesday. The coast guard received distress call in the wee hour on Tuesday. The crew jumped into the sea to escape the fire and 38 were rescued, including the two who were injured, the coast guard said in a statement. The fire was totally under control by early morning, the statement said, adding that the drilling vessel, MV Geos, was owned by a Malaysian company. There were 39 crew on board the ship, including 33 Malaysians, five Indonesians and a Thai national, the local Star newspaper reported. A search and rescue operation has been launched to find the missing crew member, the coast guard said. PARIS, April 17 (Xinhua) -- The French Government is developing an encrypted messenger service to prevent private conversations between top officials from being eavesdropped on, the Ministry of Digital Affairs said Monday. Officials are testing a new messaging application, developed with government funds, a ministry spokesperson said. Once it passes the tests, the service will be made mandatory for the entire government by summer. She also said the encrypted app is based on freely available codes on the internet and could eventually be open to the public. With privacy concerns being a major issue these days, French officials are not allowed to use WhatsApp or Telegram on their smartphones. None of the current mainstream messaging apps, including French President Emmanuel Macron's favorite Telegram, which has been developed by Russia, are based in France. This enhances the risk of the data stored on servers outside the country being breached. "We need to find a way to have an encrypted messaging service that is not encrypted by the United States or Russia," the spokesperson told the press. "You start thinking about the potential breaches that could happen, as we saw with Facebook, so we should take the lead." French privacy watchdog National Commission on Informatics and Liberties fined Facebook, which has bought WhatsApp, 150,000 euros (about 160,000 U.S. dollars based on the exchange rate at that time) in May 2017 for breaching the French Data Protection Act, including collecting users' data without their knowledge and permission. Source: Xinhua| 2018-04-17 16:52:43|Editor: Shi Yinglun Video Player Close GENEVA, April 17 (Xinhua) -- The European Union on Monday requested consultations with the United States at the World Trade Organization (WTO) over Washington's policy of imposing tariffs on steel and aluminum, WTO sources said Tuesday. Source: Xinhua| 2018-04-17 17:02:45|Editor: Lu Hui Video Player Close BEIJING, April 17 (Xinhua) -- China and Japan will hold their ninth round of high-level consultations on maritime affairs in Sendai, Japan, on Thursday and Friday, a foreign ministry spokesperson said Tuesday. Spokesperson Hua Chunying told a routine news briefing that officials from foreign ministries, defense ministries, maritime law enforcement and management departments of both counties will attend the talks. China expects to fully exchange views with Japan on maritime issues of common concern and to strengthen mutual understanding and trust with Japan, Hua said. The China-Japan high-level consultations on maritime affairs were established in 2012. The last round of consultations was held in Shanghai in December. Source: Xinhua| 2018-04-17 17:02:46|Editor: Shi Yinglun Video Player Close TIANJIN, April 17 (Xinhua) -- Volkswagen Group China registered strong sales in the domestic market for the first quarter of 2018, the company announced on Tuesday. The company, along with two joint ventures -- SAIC Volkswagen and FAW-Volkswagen -- delivered 1.01 million automobiles to the Chinese mainland and Hong Kong in the first three months, up 13.4 percent year on year. Sales of several of the company's brands hit record highs, it said. Volkswagen sales reached 755,700 units, up 8.6 percent year on year, with SUVs the main growth driver. Four new Volkswagen SUV models will be introduced this year, the company said. Sales of Audis hit 154,300 units, increasing by 41.9 percent, while Skoda sales registered strong growth of 18.6 percent to 79,200 units. Meanwhile, the sales of Porsches topped 18,600 units during the same period. Volkswagen is the largest automotive manufacturing company in Europe, with 12 vehicle brands, including Audi, Lamborghini, and Bentley, delivered to more than 150 countries and regions worldwide. JERUSALEM, April 17 (Xinhua) -- Palestinian cars were vandalized and racist slogans were spraypainted on them in northern West Bank early Tuesday, in a suspected hate crime by Israeli extremists, Israeli police said. The police suspected that the attack in the Palestinian villages of Lubban ash-Sharqiya and as-Sawiya, south of Nablus, was perpetrated by ultra-nationalist Israelis. A police spokesperson said that the perpetrators punched the tires of cars early in the morning and sprayed graffiti related to "the Nahlieli Underground," a group of Israeli settler youths suspected of other attacks against Palestinians. The slogans included "Expel or Kill" and "Price Tag," referring to attacks by far-right Israelis against Palestinians and their properties. According to the police, an investigation was launched but they have yet apprehended any suspects. On Thursday, in the village of Aqraba, also in the Nablus area, a door of a mosque was torched and hate slogans were sprayed on its walls, including "Revenge" and "Price Tag." Two weeks ago, five vehicles and walls were vandalized in the village of Farata in the Nablus district. In a statement in the wake of the attack, Yesh Din, an Israeli human rights group, urged Israeli law enforcement authorities to take a firm action against the attacks. "These attacks... are intended to harm and frighten Palestinians in their homes, and to defy the law enforcement authorities. They must be dealt with severely before the criminals escalate and harm human life," the group wrote in a post on its Facebook page. Far-right Israelis have carried out thousands of so-called "price tag" attacks over the past years. The attacks included violence against Palestinians in the West Bank and Israel, and vandalism of mosques, churches, cemeteries, and personal property. Most of the incidents remain unsolved as the law enforcement authorities usually fail to arrest and charge any suspects. File photo shows Tanzanian pupils from the Kasalu Primary School in Dar es Salaam. (Xinhua/Yi Gaochao) ARUSHA, Tanzania, April 17 (Xinhua) -- Tanzanian government plans to employ 6,000 teachers by June this year, in an effort to end the shortage of science and mathematics teachers in the east African nation, says a senior official. Joseph Kakunda, Tanzania's Deputy Minister of State in the President's Office, said that the plan is to end the shortage of teachers in all public schools by 2020, thus several initiatives are undertaken towards the target. Kakunda unveiled the plan when speaking during the ongoing parliamentary sessions in the country's capital, Dodoma. The deputy minister said this in response to a supplementary question asked by the Mchinga MP, Hamidu Bobali who had wanted to know what the government was doing to end the shortage of teachers in public schools, especially ward schools. Kakunda said that the government is determined to improve quality of education in the country and is working to improve infrastructure in all public schools. "Employing more teachers, especially science teachers, building new schools, building teachers houses, improving infrastructure, providing books, among others are key indicators that the government is serious in improving education," he noted. THE HAGUE, April 17 (Xinhua) -- "Sarco", a euthanasia machine that can assist people to kill themselves at the click of a button, has triggered outrage after it was unveiled at a funeral show in Amsterdam last week. The 3D-printed machine invented by Philip Nitschke, an Australian doctor who has been advocating legalizing euthanasia, comes with a capsule and coffin. Once inside the capsule, clients can click a button and the canister of nitrogen inside will be released to fill the capsule. The person inside will soon lose consciousness and pass away, according to Nitschke. At the annual Funeral Expo in central Amsterdam on Saturday, the model was displayed with a virtual reality headset that enabled visitors to feel what it was like to sit inside. Nitschke plans to launch the machine, which can be 3D-printed and assembled anywhere in the world, next year. But the device has triggered a controversy over the morality and legal implications of committing suicide. Pro-life organizations are warning that the machine could cause a huge spike in suicides. Nancy Valko, a spokesperson for National Association of Pro-life Nurses in Missouri, whose daughter committed suicide after reading a book that discusses the "practicalities of self-deliverance", told British Daily Mail that assisted suicide is open to abuse. "It's glamorizing and normalizing suicide." she said. Source: Xinhua| 2018-04-17 18:03:03|Editor: Shi Yinglun Video Player Close CHANGSHA, April 17 (Xinhua) -- Hauling garbage has become Shi Chengfu's biggest hobby. The more he dumps, the happier he is. For the past half century, the shoulder pole was always a symbol of heavy manual work for 80-year-old Shi. But he has taken up the tool again as the rural tourism industry brings visitors -- and their trash -- to his family's village restaurant. He uses the shoulder pole to transport garbage cans from the restaurant to a nearby disposal site. His home village, Shibadong in central China's Hunan Province, is a Miao minority village and typical in its scarcity of arable land and water. When he was in his 20s, Shi had to collect rock ash in the mountains and carry it to town to sell as fertilizer. At daybreak, he would carry two baskets of rock ash on a shoulder pole, walk hours on the narrow road along the cliff edge, and exchange them for a bag of rice. It was usually after 7 p.m. when he got home. As soon as he finished eating, he had to enter caves in the dark to dig rock ash for the next day. Since China's reform and opening-up were introduced 40 years ago, the mining industry has developed to improve local infrastructure and quality of life. Shi put his shoulder pole away and became a mining worker. In the meantime, young people in the village, including Shi's son, migrated to work in cities. Shi was left alone. To liven up his retirement, he used his shoulder pole to carry corn that he grew to town to make some pocket money. Life was not difficult for Shi, but he was far from prosperous. In 1994, the area was established as the province's main "battlefield" for poverty alleviation, bringing more investment and talent. Poor in resources, but rich in fascinating culture and landscape, the village started supporting industries such as agriculture, Miao embroidery and village tourism. Shi's son also returned with his wife. The couple opened the village's first hotel and restaurant in early 2015. In 2017, 260,000 tourists visited Shibadong village, generating revenue of more than 2 million yuan (320,000 U.S. dollars), pushing the village's per capita net income to over 10,000 yuan annually. Shi's family serves over 30 tables every day on average, earning a gross annual income of about 300,000 to 400,000 yuan. As the number of customers increased, the single trash can in Shi's home could not meet demand. Three big ones were soon added. Shi has taken charge of emptying the trash cans -- at least five times a day. He has even bought a new shoulder pole for his new responsibilities. "Unlike carrying rock ash before, I'm happy to use my shoulder pole now, as life is so full of hope," he said. Activists opposed to Serzh Sargsyan as prime minister have been marching through Vanadzor, Armenias third largest city. Police today temporarily closed the doors of the Municipality, and minor scuffle broke out between the protesters and cops. Zaruhie Postanjanyan, who heads the Yerkir Tsirani political party, joined the protesters and told the police that the peaceful demonstrations were also for their benefit, adding that Armenia had taken a back seat in international processes and isnt able to defend its borders. We dont have a modern state and a military thats armed with the equipment necessary. This is the fault of the government, Postanjyan said. Marching through downtown Vanadzor, Postanjyan called on residents to rise up in a nation-wide revolt. The protesters then disbanded, promising to blockade the nearby interstate highway tomorrow morning. Source: Xinhua| 2018-04-17 18:33:06|Editor: pengying Video Player Close RAMALLAH, April 17 (Xinhua) -- The Palestinian Prisoners Club (PPC) said Tuesday that Israel has arrested around 2,000 Palestinians since the beginning of 2018. The PPC, a quasi-governmental association dealing with Palestinian detainees in Israeli jails, issued a report on the occasion of Palestinian Prisoners Day, which was marked Tuesday. It declared that 1,928 Palestinian have been arrested since the beginning of this year, including 369 children and 36 women. According to the report, around 1 million Palestinians have been arrested by Israel since May 14, 1948, the day Israel was founded. Palestinians have designated May 15, the day after Israeli independence, as the Nakba Day, or Day of Catastrophe, as tens of thousands of Palestinians have been displaced since 1948. About 6,500 Palestinian prisoners are now in Israeli jails, including 350 children, 65 women, and six Palestinian lawmakers. Among the prisoners, 48 have been incarcerated for over 20 years continuously, 25 have spent more than 25 years in jail, and 12 have been detained for over 30 years, according to the report. In addition, the report underlined that around 700 prisoners are suffering from chronic diseases and require consistent medical attention, including 26 suffering from cancer. Palestinians have been marking the Prisoners Day on April 17 each year since it was declared by Palestinian National Council in 1974, calling for freeing all Palestinian prisoners from Israeli jails. Source: Xinhua| 2018-04-17 18:38:07|Editor: pengying Video Player Close DAMASCUS, April 17 (Xinhua) -- The reported overnight missile strikes on two airbases in central and southern Syria turned out to be a false alarm, as there was no attack on Syria, the state TV reported Tuesday. Citing a military source, the state TV said a false alarm after midnight Tuesday triggered off the response by Syrian air defenses to the alleged attack, but later it turned out that there was no foreign attack on Syria. After midnight, Syrian state media outlets and the War Media, the media wing of the Syrian army and its allies, reported that Syrian air defenses responded to a missile strike believed to be carried out by Israel. The reports claimed that 6 missiles targeted the Shayrat airbase in the central province of Homs, but most of them were intercepted by Syrian air defenses. They also reported that 3 other missiles targeted the Dumair airbase in Dumair area in the north of Damascus, but were also intercepted before reaching the targets. The false alarm came as Syrian military has been on highest alert against further attacks following the joint airstrikes on Syria launched Saturday morning by the U.S., France and Britain over the allegations of the use of chemical weapons by Syrian government forces. Syria has strongly rejected the allegations as fabrication by the rebels and Western countries to justify their attack on Syria. Israeli warplanes launched a missile attack on the T-4 airbase in the eastern countryside of Homs on April 9, killing 14 soldiers, including Iranian fighters. KAMPALA, April 17 (Xinhua) -- Uganda's ministry of health is set to roll out the Oral Cholera Vaccine exercise to contain the outbreak of the disease that has left 44 refugees dead and over 2,000 others hospitalized since Feb. 23. Charles Olaro, acting Director General Health Services, in a statement on Tuesday said the vaccination exercise scheduled to start next month will be held in Kyangwali and Kyaka II refugee settlements. The settlements located in the western districts of Hoima and Kyegegwa host thousands of Democratic Republic of the Congo refugees. "The vaccine is administered in two doses which are given two weeks apart and offers individuals protection of up to 5 years," Olaro said. Cholera, according to World Health Organization, is an acute diarrheal infection caused by ingestion of food or water contaminated with the bacterium Vibrio cholerae. Uganda Red Cross, a humanitarian organization, says the influx of Congolese refugees has overwhelmed health facilities in the area and led to squalid conditions in the settlements, fueling the outbreak. The humanitarian organization estimates that 70,000 Congolese have fled to Uganda since the start of the year, 80 percent of them are women and children. Olaro said the vaccination exercise will also be held in other parts of the country like Buliisa, Pakwach, Nebbi, Kasese, Ntoroko, Zombo, Moyo, Busia, Namayingo and Arua. WELLINGTON, April 17 (Xinhua) -- New Zealand Prime Minister Jacinda Ardern on Tuesday said she was "greatly heartened" by positive comments made by French President Emmanuel Macron on the proposed New Zealand European Free Trade Agreement (FTA) following the bilateral meeting. The two leaders met for the first time at an hour-long meeting at Elysee Palace on Tuesday. "One of my key objectives in visiting Paris was the European Union FTA," Ardern said in a statement. "New Zealand has been seeking a mandate for some time. We anticipated that given the vote was coming soon, that we needed to build support for that mandate as broadly as possible," Ardern said. The EU is due to discuss the mandate for the New Zealand EU FTA at a meeting later next month, which represents 15 billion NZ dollars (11 billion U.S. dollars) worth of trade. "We know there have been roadblocks in the past, but the sense I have come away with today is that our focus on building an agreement that models environmental standards and social outcomes is something France is very much in support of," she said. The two leaders also agreed to cooperate on promoting climate-friendly agricultural technologies and processes. SYDNEY, April 17 (Xinhua) -- Maritime archaeology experts at the Western Australian Museum are investigating a mysterious shipwreck on Tuesday, that was inadvertently discovered by a research vessel. While mapping the ocean floor off the state's north, the Australian Institute of Marine Science (AIMS) ship, the Solander, detected a mysterious unknown structure on its sonar system. "The ship's captain noticed the unusual formation on the echosounder while we were travelling between sites," AIMS marine acoustics researcher Miles Parsons explained to local media. "We came back to take a closer look and were able to map it in incredible detail using enhanced multibeam survey technology on board and It was pretty clear this was not a natural formation." With a lot of excitement among the crew as the object came into focus on the Solander's monitoring screens, the crew then deployed an underwater towed camera to confirm the structure was shipwreck. According to Parsons, the ghostly ship is 37 metres long and around 7 metres wide, sitting 60 metres below the surface of the water. At this stage the location of the of the site has not been divulged to the public, however GPS coordinates of the sonar scans have been sent to investigators at the Western Australian Museum who are trying to solve the mystery. Source: Xinhua| 2018-04-17 19:18:12|Editor: pengying Video Player Close Li Zhanshu, chairman of the 13th National People's Congress (NPC) Standing Committee, presides over the second meeting of the chairperson and vice-chairpersons of the 13th NPC Standing Committee, in Beijing, capital of China, April 17, 2018. (Xinhua/Liu Weibing) BEIJING, April 17 (Xinhua) -- The top legislature of China will convene for its bi-monthly session from April 25 to 27, according to a statement issued after a chairpersons' meeting Tuesday. Li Zhanshu, chairman of the 13th National People's Congress (NPC) Standing Committee, presided over the meeting. Legislators will review draft laws on people's juries and the protection of heroes and martyrs. They will deliberate bills to set up a financial court in Shanghai, and adjust administrative duties prescribed by law that have been affected by reform of State Council institutions. They will consider reports on environmental protection, and protection of overseas Chinese's rights and interests, among others. The lawmakers will also vote on a draft list for the chairperson, vice chairpersons and members of the credentials committee of the NPC Standing Committee, and review some official appointments and dismissals. The chairpersons' meeting approved a plan on the NPC Standing Committee's major tasks, legislation and supervision work for 2018, the statement said. Source: Xinhua| 2018-04-17 19:28:15|Editor: pengying Video Player Close JERUSALEM, April 17 (Xinhua) -- Israel's top court reversed Tuesday a decision by the defense minister by allowing some bereaved Palestinian families to enter Israel to attend an Israeli-Palestinian memorial service. The service would be held on the eve of Israel's official Memorial Day for fallen soldiers. The joint ceremony, scheduled to take place for the 13 consecutive year in Tel Aviv, is organized by "Combatant for Peace," an Israeli peace group, and "The Parent Circle-Families Forum," an Israeli-Palestinian group of bereaved families. At the ceremony, relatives of Palestinians who were killed by Israeli security forces and families of Israeli who were killed in wars and attacks will gather together to remember their loved ones and call for peace. But earlier this week, Israel's Defense Minister Avigdor Lieberman ordered his ministry not to issue entry permits to 200 Palestinians from the West Bank for attending the ceremony in Tel Aviv. Following a petition by the ceremony's organizers, the Supreme Court ruled that 90 Palestinians could enter Israel to participate in the event. The court said in its decision that Lieberman's ban was "unreasonable" and "imbalanced". It "completely ignores the harm to the bereaved families and the public who wish to carry it out in the manner in which it took place in previous years," the court said. "The defense minister's decision fails to take into account the reality created over the years and the legitimate expectations of the participants in the ceremony," it ruled. In a statement, Lieberman rejected the ruling, arguing that it creates an equivalency between Palestinian "terrorists" and Israeli bereaved families. From Tuesday night to Wednesday, Israel will mark its "Remembrance Day for the Fallen of Israel's Wars and Victims of Terrorism." Source: Xinhua| 2018-04-17 19:53:22|Editor: pengying Video Player Close TIANJIN, April 17 (Xinhua) -- Enkh-orgil, a merchant from Mongolia, is busy introducing her cashmere products at an ongoing annual international trade fair in north China's Tianjin Municipality. "This is the latest design," she said in fluent Chinese. At her stand she has all kinds of cashmere products, including overcoats, scarves, and sweaters. The China Tianjin International Fair for Investment and Trade, an annual event since 1994,opened last Friday. It highlighted cooperation among Belt and Road countries this year. "But my main purpose is not to sell goods. I came here hoping that more and more Chinese customers will know and accept cashmere products from Mongolia," she said."I dream of opening stores in China's main cities." According to China's Ministry of Commerce, China has been Mongolia's biggest trade partner for more than ten consecutive years with bilateral trade up 44.2 percent year on year to reach 3.1 billion U.S. dollars in the first half of 2017. More and more merchants from Mongolia are seeking business opportunities in China. In 2013, Enkh-orgil came to China to obtain an MBA degree and studied Chinese at Dalian Maritime University in northeast China's Liaoning Province. She started to work for "GOBI" Mongolian Cashmere, a cashmere company in Mongolia, after graduation and was soon assigned to China and became a store manager in Erenhot city in Inner Mongolia Autonomous Region. "We had quite good sales for the first year, but our company is only known in Erenhot," she said. "Our company has opened stores in Hong Kong, the Republic of Korea, and some countries in Europe and the United States. I think we should have more stores in major Chinese cities." In recent years, economic cooperation and cultural exchange between China and Mongolia have been improved. The two countries are building the China-Mongolia-Russia Economic Corridor, and activities such as the China-Mongolia Expo have been held. Enkh-orgil sees the Belt and Road Initiative as a great opportunity for Mongolia's products to enter the Chinese market. "Mongolia's cashmere products have fine quality and good price, but its design needs to be improved as Chinese consumers have quite sophisticated taste," she added. Enkh-orgil sold a sweater and a pair of trousers in about an hour, and Ariun, another exhibitor from Mongolia, sold a belt, a wallet, and a name card holder, all made of leather. Ariun, a student at Tianjin University of Technology, is helping her brother's stand sell leather products at the fair. "I came to China as I was attracted by the opportunities that come along with cooperation between the two countries," she said. She plans to join her brother's business and explore the Chinese market after graduation. "I am optimistic about the market in China," she said. The fair will last five days. This year, the Mongolian National Chamber of Commerce has sent 11 companies and individuals to the fair, mostly bringing cashmere and leather products. Source: Xinhua| 2018-04-17 19:53:22|Editor: Lifang Video Player Close Artists of Hangzhou Philharmonic Orchestra (HPO) perform at the Athens Concert Hall in Athens, Greece, on April 16, 2018. The Chinese orchestra performed at the Athens Concert Hall as part of the Greece-China Year of Cultural Exchange and Cultural Industry Cooperation, which started last spring. (Xinhua/Marios Lolos) ATHENS, April 17 (Xinhua) -- Artists of the Hangzhou Philharmonic Orchestra (HPO) received a warm welcome by Greek audiences here on Monday evening, during their first performance as part of their European tour. The Chinese orchestra performed at the Athens Concert Hall as part of the Greece-China Year of Cultural Exchange and Cultural Industry Cooperation, which started last spring. The ensemble conducted by Yang Yang, its artistic director and chief conductor, impressed Greek music lovers, performing demanding masterpieces, such as Richard Wagner's Der fliegende Hollander's Overture, Dmitri Shostakovich's Violin Concerto No. 1 in A minor and Sergei Rachmaninoff's Symphonic Dances. Although for HPO it was the first ever performance in Greece, Yang has a special link to Athens. "In 2006 we won the First Prize at the Dimitri Mitropoulos International Competition for Conductors here," he said. Thanassis Apostolopoulos, deputy artistic director of Athens Concert Hall, was among the audience in 2006, he told Xinhua few minutes before Monday evening's concert. He was impressed by Yang Yang's outstanding performance and was eager to see him performing again along internationally acclaimed artists, such as violinist Ning Feng who is collaborating with HPO in its European tour. The Athens Concert Hall has hosted many Chinese artists in recent years, as Greeks show increasing interest to get acquainted with Chinese culture. "We have hosted several very interesting performances... We are making an effort which started before the year of Greece-China Year of Cultural Exchanges, so we were ready and absolutely positive for HPO," Apostolopoulos said. Christos Nikologiannis, with a background in telecommunications, is a frequent visitor at the Athens Concert Hall. He had never seen Chinese artists performing before Monday evening, but was impressed by the videos he discovered on the internet of Ning Feng playing violin. "Whenever great orchestras perform at the concert hall, we are here. We are fans," he said. "Such exchanges can bring people closer so that we get to know other cultures," Nikologiannis said. The Hangzhou Philharmonic Orchestra will perform on Wednesday at the city port of Thessaloniki in northern Greece and then will continue its tour until April 29, 2018 in Bulgaria, Romania, Serbia and Hungary. Source: Xinhua| 2018-04-17 19:58:23|Editor: Lifang Video Player Close A visiting troupe of artists from China perform during the closing ceremony of the 31st April Spring International Friendship Festival, which runs through April 10-18, to commemorate the DPRK's founding president Kim Il Sung, in Pyongyang, capital of Democratic People's Republic of Korea, on April 17, 2018. (Xinhua/Cheng Dayu) PYONGYANG, April 17 (Xinhua) -- Pyongyang, capital of Democratic People's Republic of Korea, looks festive with spring flowers in full bloom and cultural performances by artists from home and abroad. An over 200-member visiting troupe from China has got a red-carpet treatment, including praise from DPRK top leader Kim Jong Un. There were large banners greeting them at the entrance of the East Pyongyang Grand Theater, where they performed "The Red Detachment of Women", a classic ballet first staged in China in 1964. The drama about the women soldiers of the Chinese Red Army in the 1930s was performed on Sunday and Monday. At the end of the performance on Monday, Kim went up onto the stage to congratulate the artists on their performance, amid a thunder of applause. Kim asked Song Tao, head of the International Liaison Department of the Central Committee of the Communist Party of China, who was leading the troupe, to convey his thanks to Chinese President Xi Jinping for sending the artists to his art-loving country. On Saturday, the troupe performed the French classic ballet "Giselle" at the exclusive Juche Music Art Development Theater in central Pyongyang. Kim's wife Ri Sol Ju watched both "Giselle" and "The Red Detachment of Women," saying she was deeply impressed. The troupe, consisting mainly of dancers from the China Central Ballet Troupe and musicians from the Philharmonic Orchestra, also appeared at the 31st April Spring International Friendship Festival, which runs through April 10-18, to commemorate the DPRK's founding president Kim Il Sung. The Chinese artists were warmly welcomed with performances by DPRK art students and children when they visited the Central Music Conservatory and the biggest Children's Palace -- children's activity center -- in the country. Feng Ying, head of China Central Ballet Troupe and a renowned ballerina, said although this was her first visit to the DPRK, she felt at home. "I grew up in (China's northeastern) Jilin Province bordering the DPRK. I know a little Korean dance and I'm thus familiar with the Korean culture. It is a great pride to be a cultural and art envoy here," she said. Zhang Jian, another top ballerina, played the heroine in "The Red Detachment of Women" on Monday, days after she had performed in the "Swan Lake" for Kim in Beijing during his March visit to China. Zhang said she was deeply moved by the warm reception given by the DPRK people. Chinese Philharmonic Orchestra conductor Liu Ju recalled his mother visiting the DPRK in 1975. She played the erhu, the two-stringed, fiddle-like traditional Chinese musical instrument. "My mother was received by President Kim Il Sung, who fully enjoyed her performances. She told me the story many times when I was a young boy," Liu said. Kim also met Song at the headquarters of the ruling Workers's Party of Korea Central Committee on Saturday, pledging to jointly write a new chapter of DPRK-China friendship. I am person who is uncompromisingly black and unapologetically gay. Deal with it. I am person who is uncompromisingly black and unapologetically gay. Deal with it. Alvin McEwen Published by BANG Showbiz English Lizzo credits twerking for helping her to love her butt. The Good as Hell hitmaker admitted her backside used to be her... Dear Readers, Stonewall Gazette is being placed on an indefinite hiatus due to my health. I have stage four peritoneal cancer. Life's journey can be a roug... Radical right-wing pastor Tony Spell has become a hero to right-wing activists for his refusal to comply with restrictions put in place to help stop the ... It has been a truly craptastic week for LGBTQ-hating, science-denying South Dakota Governor. By now, anyone who has been paying attention knows that Donald Trump is suffering from psychotic delusions about having won the 2020 presidential election ... Minnesota Public Radio reports: A man who had been part of a far-right group that wants to foment a civil war admitted in federal court Thursday he trave... Source: Xinhua| 2018-04-17 20:18:09|Editor: Shi Yinglun Video Player Close A boy searches for reusable materials after a fire at a slum area in Paranaque City, the Philippines, April 17, 2018. More than 100 shanties were razed in the fire, leaving 200 families homeless. (Xinhua/Rouelle Umali) by Liang Xizhi LONDON, April 17 (Xinhua) -- Hundreds of antiwar activists on Monday evening gathered outside the Parliament Square to protest against Britain's military strikes on Syria, chanting "Stop bombing Syria", as Prime Minister Theresa May was facing the British House of Commons for not consulting the Parliament before she ordered the April 7 strikes. May refused to give lawmakers a guarantee that she would seek parliamentary approval ahead of any further strikes in Syria. She was attacked by opposition politicians as well as at least one of her own Conservatives as she gave a report on the weekend air strikes by Britain, the United States and France. Organized by campaign group Stop the War Coalition, the London demonstration was the latest in a string of events protesting Saturday's military action taking place across Britain recently. The group said in a statement posted on its Facebook account that the "overwhelming majority" of British people oppose the illegal "gesture bombing" targeting Syria, which will have further impeded the development of peaceful international relations. John Rees, co-founder of the coalition, told Xinhua that the U.S.-led strikes on Syria would destabilize the region and further the conflict between Russia and West. "We think our government is making it more dangerous and more unstable. That's why we come here today to oppose a military action," he said. Protests were also held in Bristol, Exeter, Swansea and Milton Keynes on Monday. Rees said if British government carry on further military strikes, they would definitely call national demonstration like they did to protest the Iraq war in 2003, which was the biggest demonstration in British history. "If this government continues this route, I think they will see our position on that scale," he said. London citizen Dick Wingfield said he is angry about what his country is doing as there is no evidence to support the Western powers-alleged use of chemical weapons by Syrian government. "Like the Prime Minister today on the radio says about Syria is conducting chemical weapons, but there is no evidence to that at all. I don't think UK should involve in this issue, it is not our place to cut hands in," he said. JERUSALEM, April 17 (Xinhua) -- The U.S. space agency NASA will launch an Israeli-produced radiation protection vest into space as part of its last test flight of Orion spacecraft before manned missions begin, Israel said Tuesday. The Ministry of Science & Technology of Israel said that NASA and Israel Space Agency (ISA) have signed an agreement for the use of the radiation protection vest as part of NASA's test flight of Orion spacecraft. NASA Acting Administrator Robert Lightfoot and ISA Director Avi Blasberger attended the signing ceremony Tuesday during the 34th Space Symposium held in Colorado, the U.S. If the trial, which is coined as "Matroshka AstroRad Radiation Experiment (MARE)," is successful, it may have applicability for future exploration, said the ministry. The vest was developed by Israeli company StemRad following the success of its first product, a belt used by first respondents that protects the pelvis by ensuring survival of critical bone marrow stem cells. It is now widely used in the world. The vest is produced on the principle of selective protection of bone marrow which is important for blood cell renewal and other organs that are particularly sensitive to radiation exposure due to the formation of cancer. As women are particularly vulnerable to space radiation, the first step is an adapted suit for women, noted the ministry. In addition, ISA will soon sign an agreement with Lockheed Martin Space Systems Company to launch the vest to the International Space Station (ISS) at the beginning of 2019. The astronauts on ISS will wear the vest daily at the station for the purpose of ergonomic evaluation. The data obtained from the AstroRad experiment on Orion EM-1 will provide NASA all the necessary information for assessing AstroRad as an essential personal protective equipment for future manned deep space missions, such as Orion EM-2 and future missions to Mars. "Israeli technology in space exploration is known as innovative, resulting from 'out of the box' thinking," said Israeli Minister of Science Ofir Akunis. Last year, ISA signed an agreement with German Aerospace Center (DLR) to use its expertise in the examination of deep space radiation effects and its absorption in the human body to understand the benefit provided by AstroRad. Upon the return of Orion to Earth, teams from NASA, DLR and ISA will perform a comparative analysis on the efficacy of AstroRad. RAMALLAH, April 17 (Xinhua) -- The Palestinian Presidency on Tuesday condemned Jewish settlers' attacks against Palestinians in the West Bank as "terrorism." Palestinian sources said that Jewish settlers raided the villages of Al-Lubban Al-Sharqiya and Al-Sawiyeh near Nablus in northern West Bank and vandalized Palestinians' properties earlier on Tuesday. Over 30 vehicles were damaged and 7 houses were spraypainted with racist slogans. In a statement published by Palestinian official WAFA news agency, the Palestinian Presidency held Israeli government responsible for the "terrorist acts by the settlers and groups that call themselves Price Tag." The statement said these criminal acts, which prove that the call for international protection for Palestinian people is valid, will be brought to the International Criminal Court. "Israel should not be treated as an above-the-law state," it noted. Last Friday, Jewish settlers set fire to a mosque in Aqraba village near Nablus and spraypainted racist slogans on its outer walls. . Source: Xinhua| 2018-04-17 20:38:31|Editor: pengying Video Player Close Nepalese Minister for Culture, Tourism and Civil Aviation Rabindra Prasad Adhikari (L) and Chinese Ambassador to Nepal Yu Hong attend the handover ceremony at the Tribhuvan International Airport in Kathmandu, Nepal. Nepal received two Y-12e planes as part of six-aircraft deal between Nepal and China. (Xinhua/Sunil Sharma) KATHMANDU, April 17 (Xinhua) -- The national flag carrier of Nepal, Nepal Airlines Corporation (NAC), on Tuesday formally received two new aircraft from a Chinese manufacturer. With addition of two 17-seater Y-12e planes on its fleet, NAC has completed taking the delivery of all six Chinese-made planes as part of a deal between Nepal and China. At a ceremony held at the Tribhuvan International Airport in Kathmandu, the Chinese supplier - AVIC International Holding, handed over the planes to NAC officials with the presence of Nepali Minister for Culture, Tourism and Civil Aviation Rabindra Adhikari and Chinese Ambassador to Nepal Yu Hong. Addressing the event, Adhikari said that the addition of the Chinese aircraft will contribute to the economic development of the Himalayan country. "These aircrafts are the symbol of cooperation between Nepal and China. I am confident that with these planes, Nepal Airlines Corporation will be able to serve the demand of general public and contribute in national economy," he said. The minister said that the received aircraft will be in operation within 100 days; however, he sought support from the Chinese supplier regarding operation, maintenance and spare parts. "Air transportation is vital for the mountainous country like Nepal. I am sure that the Chinese aircrafts can work as an alternative to connect all provinces of the country with each other," he added. NAC had signed a commercial agreement with AVIC International Aero-Development to procure six aircraft - two 56-seater MA60 and four 17-seater Y-12e in November 2012. Nepal acquired the six Chinese aircraft, two in grants and four in loans, while now the NAC has majority of its planes made in China. Addressing the function, the Chinese ambassador expressed hope that the Chinese aircraft will promote the development of civil aviation and tourism sector of Nepal. The state-owned NAC is of view that the Chinese planes will not only enhance reliability of its flights schedule, but also help increase its domestic market share significantly. MOSCOW, April 17 (Xinhua) -- Russian President Vladimir Putin and German Chancellor Angela Merkel said in a telephone conversation they were ready to assist in political and diplomatic efforts on Syria, including the Geneva and Astana peace talks, the Kremlin said Tuesday. Putin said that the recent action by a group of Western countries on Syria was "an act of aggression" that largely violated norms of international law and caused substantial damage to the prospect of a political settlement to the Syrian crisis, according to a Kremlin statement. The United States, together with Britain and France, launched missile strikes on Syria's Douma on Saturday, claiming that they were in response to an alleged chemical weapons attack by the Syrian military. The Syrian government has categorically denied the accusation. "Both sides (Putin and Merkel) expressed readiness to facilitate the resumption of political and diplomatic efforts on the Syrian issue, including at the Geneva and Astana platforms, and to continue bilateral contacts on this matter," the statement said. The two leaders also stressed the importance of conducting "a thorough and objective investigation" of the mission of the Organization for the Prohibition of Chemical Weapons (OPCW) in Syria, it said. On Monday, the British delegation to the OPCW accused Russia and Syria of barring the mission from entering Douma. Moscow denied the accusation by saying that OPCW experts were not given permission by the United Nations to visit Douma as a result of the missile strikes. MOGADISHU, April 17 (Xinhua) --Somalia National Army (SNA) said Tuesday its forces killed 30 al-Shabab militants in security operation in Hiiraan region of central Somalia. Army Spokesperson in Hiiraan region, Mohamed Noor Agajof said the SNA forces also recovered military equipment from the insurgents following a fierce gunfight with the terrorist group. "We killed about 30 al-Shabab fighters and our forces captured areas from al-Shabab." Agajof said, "the fighting occurred in areas along the road linking Beledweyne town to Mataban and Mahas." "We also recovered weapons and liberated other key locations from the terrorists," he added without stating there number of casualties on the SNA or civilians during the military operations in the central region. The Somali security forces backed by African Union peacekeeping forces have ramped up security operations to flush out al-Shabab fighters from the Horn of Africa nation. There was no immediate comment from the terrorist group on the latest military onslaught in Hiiraan region. The latest developments comes after Somali National Army has teamed up with local security forces for joint security operations against the militant group blamed for staging near daily attacks on government installations and AU mission bases including other public places. KIGALI, April 17 (Xinhua) -- Two Rwandan soldiers who were arrested on Sunday by the soldiers of the Democratic Republic of the Congo (DRC) for allegedly entering into DRC's territory and on suspicion of attempted espionage have been released, the Rwandan army said Tuesday. The two Rwanda Defense Force (RDF) soldiers from the 11 Infantry Battalion accidentally strayed into DRC's territory from the bordering district of Rubavu in Western Rwanda while on border patrol, Innocent Munyengango, Rwandan military spokesperson, told Xinhua Tuesday. "Our soldiers were arrested within about 10 meters inside the DRC by Armed Forces of DRC (FARDC). They crossed into the DRC territory by mistake because they were newly deployed along Rwanda-DRC border. They had no bad intention or espionage of sort," said Munyengago. He said the incident was caused by the lack of clear border demarcation between Rwanda and the DRC, adding that common cross-border incidents have previously happened to DRC soldiers and between 2016 and 2018, Rwanda voluntarily handed over 34 DRC soldiers to DRC authorities who had strayed into the Rwandan territory. According to a RDF statement, the RDF and the DRC army, together with the Great Lakes Region Expanded Joint Verification Mechanism (EJVM), handled the incident amicably and the two Rwandan soldiers were handed over back to RDF authorities in Rubavu district on Monday. The soldiers were released after a subsequent probe by EJVM found out that they meant no harm and had simply crossed the borderline by mistake because they had just been deployed at the border, said the statement. EJVM is a multi-national force established under the auspices of the International Conference for the Great Lakes Region to provide professional and objective findings regarding incidents on the common borders of member states, especially those involving DRC borders. There have been border skirmishes between DR Congo and Rwanda over the years. The Rwandan army in February said three soldiers of DRC were killed in a fire exchange when the latter attacked an army position in northern Rwandan district of Musanze. While DRC accused Rwandan soldiers launched an incursion into its territory. In 2014, Rwanda accused the FARDC of firing a rocket on its territory in Bugeshi Sector, Rubavu district, Western Province. The rocket did not cause any casualties. In 2013, Rwanda said FARDC fired over 60 projectiles on Rwandan territory, killing and injuring civilians, including women and children. Source: Xinhua| 2018-04-17 21:38:52|Editor: Shi Yinglun Video Player Close DAMASCUS, April 17 (Xinhua) -- Investigators of the Organization for the Prohibition of Chemical Weapons (OPCW) entered the Douma district in east of Syrian capital Damascus on Tuesday to start investigating the allegations of chemical weapons use, state TV reported. No more details were disclosed about the entry of the team to the previously rebel-held district, where an alleged gas attack by Syrian troops reportedly killed dozens of people and triggered off the U.S.-led joint airstrikes on Syria on Saturday morning. Syria has strongly rejected the allegations as fabrication by the rebels and Western countries to justify a military attack on the country. The OPCW investigators, who arrived in Damascus on Saturday, have held several meetings with Syrian officials. The Syrian government and its ally Russia had urged the OPCW to send a team to Douma to investigate the alleged use of chlorine gas. Source: Xinhua| 2018-04-17 22:09:01|Editor: Shi Yinglun Video Player Close BAGHDAD, April 17 (Xinhua) -- Colorful billboards and posters of all sizes have flooded major streets in Iraqi cities, signaling the start of a month-long campaigning for the first parliamentary election since the anti-terror victory. As Iraqis are poised to cast their votes on May 12, the Iraqi Independent Electoral Commission set April 14 as the date for nearly 7,000 candidates to kick off their campaigning to compete for 329 seats of the next parliament. This will be the first parliamentary election in Iraq held since the defeat of the militant group Islamic State (IS) late last year. In the very early hours on Saturday, hundreds of campaign workers flocked to the streets across Baghdad, to put up campaign posters, banners and billboards for the candidates. Within hours, most of the major streets in the Iraqi capital were covered by a variety of campaign posters and portraits of candidates from different political parties. The posters and banners, usually featuring candidates' portraits, all promise a better future if the candidate wins the race. One billboard reads "To secure our future," with a large portrait of the incumbent Shiite Prime Minister Haider al-Abadi, who was dressed in military uniform. Another billboard reads "It Is Iraq's Time," with a picture of Hadi al-Ameri, head of al-Fateh, or Conquest Alliance, which is an umbrella group of paramilitary Shiite militias of Hashd Shaabi who fought IS with the government forces. In the past days, the number of campaign billboards, banners and posters has significantly increased, sometimes leading to quarreling between campaign workers for different candidates. Ahmed Sa'id, a government employee, told Xinhua that he witnessed a brawl between two groups of campaign workers on a cross bridge in western Baghdad as they were competing to find space to erect campaign posters for their own candidates. "They argued first before they fought with hands until the police intervened to end the quarrel," Sa'id said. Saad Ahmed, owner of a convenient store in Jamia district in western Baghdad, told Xinhua the competition between some candidates reached to the degree that their supporters tore up each other's posters. "I saw a number of young people tearing up the posters and portraits of a competing candidate by knives," Ahmed said. Many Iraqis lament the corruption and incompetency among the political elite during the years of their governing Iraq since 2003. They accuse them of being behind the woes of Iraqis. "You, miserable parties, you have taken a share of our blood. Leave us, and stay away of us, wherever you want. Just don't live with us, you corrupt officials," shouted a resident in Tahrir Square in downtown Baghdad as he was beating some portraits of candidates with his hand and shoe. Isam Abdullah, an unemployed young man, told Xinhua that he has lost confidence in the electoral process, saying the upcoming polls will not bring about a change. "I won't vote, because we're fed up with lies. Voting again is shameful," Abdullah said. Other Iraqis, like college student Mohammed Salman, called on Iraqi citizens to actively take part in the election in order to vote for independent candidates to bring in new faces in the political scene. "I hope there will be a real chance for a change, if we all hand in hand cast for replacement of old politicians, who failed to serve our people, in order to bring independent candidates," Salman said. The upcoming election is like "war for existence, either to make a change to get comprehensive reforms, or the same corrupt people will bring the country to further chaos and bloodshed," Salman added. In a statement on his website, the influential Shiite cleric Moqtada al-Sadr called on all Iraqis to participate in the upcoming election to defeat the corrupt people. Sadr said that he himself would boycott the election if it is a comprehensive boycott by the people of Iraq, but adding that it would be impossible to get such boycott. About 6,986 candidates, including 2,014 women, will compete for the 329 parliamentary seats to form a new government which will rule Iraq for the next four years. Iraq's previous general election was held on April 30, 2014, when the Iraqis elected 328 lawmakers for the parliament. KIEV, April 17 (Xinhua) -- Seven workers were injured in a coal mine blast in Ukraine's eastern Donetsk region on midnight Monday, authorities said. A mixture of methane and air exploded in the "Pokrovskaya" mine at a depth of 470 meters, when 406 miners were working underground, the State Emergency Service said in a statement. According to the statement, rescuers evacuated the trapped miners to the surface within an hour, and the injured have been taken to a hospital. One of the injured is in grave condition, according to authorities. The blast was the second accident in "Pokrovskaya" mine this year. Eight miners were injured in a methane gas explosion inside the mine in January. Twenty-three people died and 757 others were injured in coal mine accidents in Ukraine last year. ISLAMABAD, April 17 (Xinhua) -- Pakistan's Advisor to Prime Minister on Finance Miftah Ismail left for Washington on Tuesday to hold talks with representatives of the World Bank (WB) and the International Monetary Fund (IMF), local media reported. The meeting is said to have key importance as the South Asian country is just a few weeks away from announcing its Federal Finance Bill for the financial year of 2018-19. Islamabad is set to unveil the Federal Budget on April 27. Pakistan had successfully completed a 36-month IMF program, which started in 2013. At the end of the program, the IMF had praised Pakistan for its fiscal discipline and reforms program. Miftah Ismail is set to stay in Washington for three days where he is also set to hold meetings with U.S. officials. Source: Xinhua| 2018-04-17 22:19:05|Editor: Shi Yinglun Video Player Close RAMALLAH, April 17 (Xinhua) -- Palestinian Foreign Affairs Ministry on Tuesday slammed Israel for organizing a Jerusalem tour for diplomats of 40 UN member states. The tour includes Jerusalem and Maale Adumim settlement in east of the city, among other locations, Israeli media reports said. The Palestinian ministry said in a statement that the tour is considered a violation of international legitimacy. It added that the diplomats invited to the tour, as well as their countries, "know that East Jerusalem and its old city is Palestinian territory and are aware that settlements are illegal and unlawful." The ministry said it believes the tour aims to attract UN members states to vote for Israel's membership at the UN Security Council, and to convince more states to move their embassies to Jerusalem. The ministry said it is in contact with the countries whose diplomats took part in the tour to clarify their positions on the "negative consequences of this provocative and illegal participation." It also called on Arab states for "a necessary awakening and a serious confrontation to halt Israeli attempts to break through the international position towards occupied Jerusalem." Jerusalem and settlements are considered the thorniest issues in the Palestinian-Israeli peace talks. The last round of the U.S.-sponsored negotiations ended in 2014 after nine months of talks without achieving any breakthrough. On Dec. 6, 2017, U.S. President Donald Trump announced to recognize Jerusalem as Israel's capital and ordered to move its embassy from Tel Aviv to the city. As a result, Palestinians disqualified the United States from being the sole sponsor of the peace negotiations and called for a multilateral peace mechanism. On Feb. 20, Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas presented a peace initiative in a speech before the UN Security Council, proposing to hold an international peace conference in mid-2018 to jump start the final status talks based on the two-state solution and international resolutions. Source: Xinhua| 2018-04-17 22:29:07|Editor: Chengcheng Video Player Close Palestinians take part in a rally marking the Prisoners Day, east of Gaza city, on April 17, 2018. The Palestinian Authority on Tuesday called for considering Palestinians jailed in Israel as "prisoners of war," as Palestinians marked the Prisoners Day. (Xinhua) GAZA/RAMALLAH, April 17 (Xinhua) -- The Palestinian Authority on Tuesday called for considering Palestinians jailed in Israel as "prisoners of war," as Palestinians marked the Prisoners Day. At the weekly cabinet meeting in Ramallah, Palestinian Prime Minister Rami Hamdallah said it is the time to consider and treat Palestinians, who have been imprisoned in Israeli jails, as "prisoners of war." Palestinians have been marking the Prisoners Day on April 17 each year since 1974. More than 6,000 Palestinian male and female prisoners rallied and marched in Israeli jails, prisons and detention camps on the day. In Gaza City, hundreds of Palestinians, organized by Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas's Fatah Party, demonstrated outside the doors of the International Committee of the Red Cross (ICRC) offices. Speakers at the rally urged ICRC and other international organizations to exert pressure on Israeli authorities to improve the living condition of Palestinian prisoners and set them free. The Palestinian Committee for Prisoners called on Palestinians to revive the Prisoners Day with popular activities near the border between eastern Gaza Strip and Israel. In the West Bank cities of Ramallah, Bethlehem and Hebron, a series of activities were also carried out in support for the prisoners. In Jenin, schoolchildren painted graffiti on the walls. "The Palestinian government is fully supporting the prisoners and their families, with no discrimination between one prisoner and another," said Hamdallah. His remarks were made at the weekly meeting of the Palestinian consensus government in Ramallah. He said that the next step is to work on releasing all the prisoners from Israeli jails without conditions. A statement issued after the cabinet meeting held Israel responsible for the safety and lives of the prisoners, calling on the international community to "protect Palestinian prisoners in accordance to international resolutions and UN conventions to save their lives and meet their demands." Different Palestinians factors all issued statements to express their support to the prisoners jailed in Israel, while calling for their release. Islamic Hamas movement, which rules Gaza, said that the anniversary of the Prisoners Day comes as the Palestinian prisoners "live in tragic conditions of a racist and criminal policy pursued by Israel." Hamas pledged that it will double its efforts to secure the release of Palestinian prisoners in an honorable deal. The Islamic Jihad movement said in a statement that the Prisoners Day "has become the title of Palestinian patriotism and suitable for mobilizing energies and renewed determination to liberate prisoners who represent a state of advanced struggle." The Popular Front for the Liberation of Palestine stressed that the issue of the prisoners is "a national cause of freedom from oppression." Palestinian people have to "keep the issue at the top of the Palestinian national agenda as a national priority." Meanwhile, the Democratic Front for the Liberation of Palestine called for the widest popular solidarity with the Palestinian prisoners in Israel, praising the "fighting role played by Palestinian prisoners." On the occasion of the Prisoners Day, the Palestinian Prisoner's Club Association estimated that about 1 million cases of arrests had been documented since 1967, and 1,928 Palestinians have been arrested since the start of 2018. Among the prisoners, 48 have been incarcerated for over 20 years continuously, 25 have spent more than 25 years in jail, and 12 have been detained for over 30 years, according to the report. In addition, the report underlined that around 700 prisoners are suffering from chronic diseases and require consistent medical attention, including 26 suffering from cancer. CAIRO, April 17 (Xinhua) -- Egyptian top court on Tuesday removed 31 members and supporters of the currently outlawed Muslim Brotherhood group from the terrorist list over a case related to the deadly protests in 2014. The Court of Cassation removed the 31 Brotherhood loyalists from the terror list over charges of involvement in the violent protests in Cairo's Ain Shams district in early 2014 that left three citizens dead, including a female journalist, a Christian woman and a child, the official MENA news agency reported. The 2014 protests erupted after then army chief Abdel-Fattah al-Sisi, now the newly reelected president, announced running for president a year after he ousted former Islamist President Mohamed Morsi of the Muslim Brotherhood. In the same case, Cairo Criminal Court sentenced in February 17 defendants to 25 years in jail, nine to 15 years, four to 10 years and two to seven years while acquitting 15 of the charges of committing acts of violence. Since Morsi's ouster in early July 2013, Egypt has been facing a wave of terror attacks that have killed hundreds of policemen and soldiers, as well as civilians. A Sinai-based militant group affiliated with the regional terror group Islamic State has claimed responsibility for most of the attacks. Meanwhile, the Egyptian forces have killed hundreds of terrorists and arrested thousands of suspects during the country's anti-terror war declared by Sisi following Morsi's ouster. Somali military forces take part in their 58th anniversary in Mogadishu, capital of Somalia, April 12, 2018. The Somali National Army (SNA) on Thursday marked the 58th anniversary of their foundation. The SNA was established on 12th April 1960 after Somalia gained independence from Italian and British colonists. (Xinhua/Faisal Isse) MOGADISHU, April 17 (Xinhua) -- Somalia National Army (SNA) said Tuesday its forces killed 30 al-Shabab militants in security operation in Hiiraan region of central Somalia. Army Spokesperson in Hiiraan region, Mohamed Noor Agajof said the SNA forces also recovered military equipment from the insurgents following a fierce gunfight with the terrorist group. "We killed about 30 al-Shabab fighters and our forces captured areas from al-Shabab." Agajof said, "the fighting occurred in areas along the road linking Beledweyne town to Mataban and Mahas." "We also recovered weapons and liberated other key locations from the terrorists," he added without stating there number of casualties on the SNA or civilians during the military operations in the central region. The Somali security forces backed by African Union peacekeeping forces have ramped up security operations to flush out al-Shabab fighters from the Horn of Africa nation. There was no immediate comment from the terrorist group on the latest military onslaught in Hiiraan region. The latest developments comes after Somali National Army has teamed up with local security forces for joint security operations against the militant group blamed for staging near daily attacks on government installations and AU mission bases including other public places. JUBA, April 17 (Xinhua) -- South Sudan on Tuesday said it will not accept the massive overhaul of the security apparatus and governance structure as demanded by an alliance of ten opposition parties as the warring parties prepare for the upcoming third round of talks in the Ethiopian capital. James Wani Igga, South Sudan's Vice President under the 2015 power sharing agreement, said the opposition's demand to dissolve the army (SPLA) and police will bring more anarchy to the country in which four million people have already been displaced, and thousands killed since outbreak of the ongoing four years conflict. "They (opposition) want as soon as they have signed the agreement the institutions like the army must be dissolved but if we dissolve the army right from that day then any wolf from any part of the world will just enter South Sudan to create anarchy," Igga said in Juba, urging patience and more time from regional and international partners on peace. He said the government's position remains the same as in the 2015 peace agreement to integrate the armed opposition into the SPLA and embark on institutional reforms besides maintaining the 32 States increased from the previous 10 States prior to conflict. "Our intention was like it was in the former agreement to carry out institutional reforms where we will have the rebel army integrated into the system on the basis of regional inclusivity and balancing," he said. The opposition on Friday in a statement demanded the dissolution of the created 32 States back to the previous status quo and lean technical and hybrid government at federal and local government level. "The reality about the States is that our people are clamoring for more States because they tasted the sweetness of power, development and especially services going nearer to them. If someone in Addis Ababa is asking for the States to be returned, that's very unpopular," said Igga, He disclosed that reverting to the former 10 States would drive public discontent and force some disgruntled people to take up arms. He also rejected the demand by the group for President Salva Kiir to resign upon signing the new peace road map mediated by the regional body Intergovernmental Authority on Development (IGAD) arguing it contradicts the spirit of peaceful co-existence. Igga instead urged the international community and also opposition groups to buy into the idea of conducting elections during the interim period to ensure smooth power transition. "The problem is that all the blame of the world is thrown on us the government that we don't want peace. If you see the 13 conditions given by the opposition, some of them can be tolerated and have been signed by our people, but if you take five of them they are extremely difficult," Igga said. South Sudan descended into violence in December 2013 after political dispute between President Salva Kiir and his former deputy Riek Machar led to split within the SPLA, leaving soldiers to fight alongside ethnic lines. The 2015 peace agreement to end the conflict was weakened after the outbreak of renewed fighting in July 2016. ZAGREB, April 17 (Xinhua) -- Croatia's priorities for the presidency of the Council of Europe will be to fight against corruption, protection of national minorities and vulnerable groups, and protection of cultural heritage, Croatian Prime Minister Andrej Plenkovic said on Tuesday during a meeting with Council of Europe Secretary General Thorbjorn Jagland. Croatia is set to take over the presidency from Denmark at the ministerial conference, which will be held on May 17 and 18 in Helsingor. The presidency lasts six months, and Croatia will for the first time preside after entering the Council of Europe in 1996. "I am glad that Croatia has joined the fight against evils like violence against women," Jagland said, welcoming the ratification of the Istanbul Convention by the Croatian parliament. He is of the opinion that national minorities in Croatia are protected and that they enjoy all rights. Plenkovic announced 26 events during the Croatian presidency, while Croatian Foreign Minister Marija Pejcinovic-Buric said that the presidency of the Council of Europe would be "a great honor and a challenge for Croatia". The Croatian Parliament ratified the Convention on the Prevention and Combating of Violence against Women and Domestic Violence (Istanbul Convention) on April 13, after months of fierce political clashes between pro-European forces and conservative circles who claimed that ratification would introduce a "gender ideology". Source: Xinhua| 2018-04-17 22:49:18|Editor: pengying Video Player Close Syrian soldiers walk past a bus transporting Islam Army rebels and their families out of the Dumair town, northeast of Damascus, on April 19, 2018. The rebels in Dumair area will follow the lead of their comrades who evacuated Douma last week and moved to the rebel-held city of Jarablus, as part of the deal with the government. (Xinhua/Ammar Safarjalani) DAMASCUS, April 17 (Xinhua) -- The Islam Army rebels started handing over heavy weapons to the Syrian army on Tuesday in the Dumair area in northeast of Syrian capital Damascus, the state TV reported. This came days after the rebels withdrew from the Douma district in east of Damascus. The rebels in Dumair area will follow the lead of their comrades who evacuated Douma last week and moveD to the rebel-held city of Jarablus, as part of the deal with the government. The deal in Dumair will see the evacuation of 1,000 militants to Jarablus, as 60 other militants surrendered to the authorities. Those who don't want to stay under the government control will move to Jarablus, while others who want to stay in Dumair will surrender to the army to clear their records under the deal. The deal was reached to spare 100,000 civilians in that area from a possible large-scale military showdown. After the rebels' evacuating Douma, the entire Eastern Ghouta countryside in east of Damascus has returned to the government control. However, the Islam Army and allied militants still control some pockets in the eastern part of the Qalamoun region north of Damascus. The Syrian government is working to secure a similar evacuation deal with the rebels in a bid to completely secure Damascus. CANBERRA, April 17 (Xinhua) -- The government of Australia's Northern Territory (NT) has reversed its two-year ban on hydraulic fracturing of onshore gas that will open up more than half of the territory's land mass - roughly 700,000 sq km - to the practice. The issue has sharply divided territorians, many of whom believe fracking threatens water supplies, but Chief Minister Michael Gunner said on Tuesday strict new laws would ensure the environment is not harmed and that the industry would create many new jobs. The long-anticipated decision means exploration activity could potentially occur from the start of the 2019 dry season; the remaining 49 percent of the territory not earmarked for fracking, including towns and conservation areas, will be made permanently off-limits. The NT decision, which will provide more gas to the east coast of Australia, follows a 5.1-million-AU dollar (3.9 million U.S. dollars), 15-month inquiry commissioned by the NT Labor Party shortly after it won power from the Country Liberal Party in 2016. Gunner said his government had adopted the inquiry's "key finding" that if its recommendations were implemented fully, then the risks from fracking could be "reduced to acceptable levels." "Forty-nine percent of the Territory will be 'frack-free,' including in national parks, conservation areas, Indigenous protected areas, towns, residential and strategic assets, and areas of high cultural, environmental or tourism value," Gunner said on Tuesday. "We promised an independent, scientific inquiry after which we would either ban fracking or allow it in highly regulated circumstances in tightly prescribed areas. "We have kept our promise. We have accepted the key finding of the report - that if all the recommendations are implemented, the risk from fracking can be reduced to an acceptable level." Federal Minister for Energy Josh Frydenberg, Minister for Resources and Northern Australia Matt Canavan and Senator for Northern Territory Nigel Scullion issued a joint statement, welcoming on behalf of the Federal Government the NT government decision. The statement said that Geoscience Australia estimates that the Northern Territory has 257,276 PJ of prospective shale gas resources, equivalent to over 200 years of east coast domestic demand. "The development of these gas resources could alleviate some of the pressure on the east coast gas market, helping to put downward pressure on prices," Frydenberg said. Canavan said the decision to lift the moratorium will be a boost to jobs and the economy. Yet academics and commentators around the country were not convinced by the government's arguments, saying the practice of fracking still carried unknown environmental risks. Gavin Mudd, associate professor of the School of Civil and Infrastructure Engineering at RMIT University, said in a statement on Tuesday: "Fracking deserves to be controversial due to the fact it will increase greenhouse gas emissions and poses significant risks to be managed during the exploration and development phases. Whilst the inquiry has acknowledged these risks, the NT government has not." Jennifer McKay, a professor from the School of Law at the University of South Australia, said government needed to proceed warily and carefully monitor the environmental impact of fracking. The independent Scientific Inquiry into Hydraulic Fracturing in the NT made 135 recommendations in total, including one that controversially proposed recognising sacred sites underground. Gunner said at least 30 of those recommendations would have to be implemented before any exploration activity could resume, a process likely to take more than six months. Most of the initial work is likely to focus on the Beetaloo Basin east of Katherine, where several gas companies have been eager to resume the development of promising plays. The United Nations vehicles carrying the Organisation for the Prohibition of Chemical Weapons (OPCW) inspectors arrived in Damascus, Syria on April 14, 2018. (REUTERS Photo) DAMASCUS, April 17 (Xinhua) -- Investigators of the Organization for the Prohibition of Chemical Weapons (OPCW) entered the Douma district in east of Syrian capital Damascus on Tuesday to start investigating the allegations of chemical weapons use, state TV reported. No more details were disclosed about the entry of the team to the previously rebel-held district, where an alleged gas attack by Syrian troops reportedly killed dozens of people and triggered off the U.S.-led joint airstrikes on Syria on Saturday morning. Syria has strongly rejected the allegations as fabrication by the rebels and Western countries to justify a military attack on the country. The OPCW investigators, who arrived in Damascus on Saturday, have held several meetings with Syrian officials. The Syrian government and its ally Russia had urged the OPCW to send a team to Douma to investigate the alleged use of chlorine gas. Syria's Deputy Foreign Minister Faisal Mekdad said his government is keen to cooperate with the investigators, state news agency SANA reported. Mekdad said that the investigators had held meetings with the Syrian government and discussed about carrying out its work with transparency, impartiality, and accuracy. The U.S.-led military strike on Syria has been widely criticized for prejudgment before the investigators reach a conclusion on if there was a gas attack or who should be responsible for it. It is not the first time that the Syrian government has been accused of using chemical weapons. In April, 2017, the U.S. launched a similar missile attack on a Syrian air base in the central province of Homs over the same allegation. Source: Xinhua| 2018-04-17 23:19:25|Editor: Mu Xuequan Video Player Close BEIJING, April 17 (Xinhua) -- U.S., British and French leaders faced challenges and criticism from lawmakers following a U.S.-led airstrikes on Syria while protests across the three countries were held against the attack. The British opposition has challenged Prime Minister Theresa May over her authorizing military strikes on Syria without consulting parliament, with the Labour Party leader calling for a U.S.-like War Powers Act. Jeremy Corbyn, leader of the main opposition Labour Party, told May that she should be accountable to the parliament and "not to the whims of the U.S. president." Corbyn called for a War Powers Act like the one in the United States to limit the president's ability to take military action abroad, to ensure that Britain takes future military action only with the parliament's approval. Corbyn also questioned the justification of Saturday's British military operation against Syria. While defending her decision to join the U.S.-led airstrikes on Syria Saturday, May on Monday also refused to give British lawmakers an assurance that she would seek parliamentary approval before any further strikes on Syria. May said her government had to intervene rapidly following reports of an alleged chemical attack in the Syrian town of Douma on April 7. The United States, Britain and France, which carried out the airstrikes, said they were targeted against the Syrian government's alleged chemical weapons attack capabilities. French President Emmanuel Macron also defended his decision to join the attack following criticism from the French parliament. As cited by local media, Marine Le Pen, leader of the far-right National Front, said Macron had not published any evidence of the alleged use of chemical weapons by the Syrian government. The airstrikes occurred even before a fact-finding mission of the Organization for the Prohibition of Chemical Weapons had arrived in Damascus to investigate the Douma attack. While political leaders worldwide called for a de-escalation in war-torn Syria and a political settlement, in the U.S. cities of New York, Los Angeles and Portland, protests were held over the weekend against the U.S.-led airstrikes. Demonstrators called for enough time to be given for an international investigation into the Douma attack and some questioned the legitimacy of the military attack on Syria. Tim Tredstone, a protester in Los Angeles, said he felt tired of the war in the Middle East. "It is endless; it never stops; it doesn't serve the interest of the United States," he said. British people also organized anti-war rallies against the bombing on Syria in the cities of London, Liverpool, Manchester and others. Hundreds of antiwar activists on Monday evening gathered outside the Parliament Square to protest against Britain's military strikes on Syria, chanting "Stop bombing Syria". Organized by campaign group Stop the War Coalition, the London demonstration was the latest in a string of events protesting Saturday's military action taking place across Britain recently. The group said in a statement posted on its Facebook account that the "overwhelming majority" of British people oppose the illegal "gesture bombing" targeting Syria, which will have further impeded the development of peaceful international relations. John Rees, co-founder of the coalition, told Xinhua that the U.S.-led strikes on Syria would destabilize the region and further the conflict between Russia and West. "We think our government is making it more dangerous and more unstable. That's why we come here today to oppose a military action," he said. Protests were also held in Bristol, Exeter, Swansea and Milton Keynes on Monday. Rees said if British government carry on further military strikes, they would definitely call national demonstration like they did to protest the Iraq war in 2003, which was the biggest demonstration in British history. "If this government continues this route, I think they will see our position on that scale," he said. London citizen Dick Wingfield said he is angry about what his country is doing as there is no evidence to support the Western powers-alleged use of chemical weapons by Syrian government. "Like the Prime Minister today on the radio says about Syria is conducting chemical weapons, but there is no evidence to that at all. I don't think UK should involve in this issue, it is not our place to cut hands in," he said. The Syria strikes also drew wide criticism from the international community, which called for diplomatic and political solution to the Syrian issue. Czech President Milos Zeman condemned Saturday the U.S.-led air strikes on Syria as his spokesman Jiri Ovcacek officially announced that "a military solution to the situation should be the last thing to do." Peace and Justice Works of Portland, a non-profit organization that organized the local protest, said on its website: "The U.S. has no United Nations authorization, much less Congressional authority, to wage war on the government of Syria." Cyprus, from where the four British warplanes hitting targets in Syria had taken off, distanced itself Monday from the British military base on its territory. "It is well known that the bases are British sovereign area," government spokesperson Prodromos Prodromou told the state radio. "Cyprus, as a member state of the European Union (EU), sides with the position of the EU and considers that the use of chemical weapons is unacceptable. But we wish that this issue would be settled at the diplomatic level," he said. Austrian Chancellor Sebastian Kurz on Saturday expressed "serious concern" for the escalation of the conflict in Syria, urging the responsible actors to hold political talks under UN mediation and to comply with international law in order to alleviate the suffering of the people of Syria, who have already suffered enough, said Kurz. The Estonian Ministry of Foreign Affairs on Saturday reaffirmed Estonia's support for UN-led efforts to achieve a lasting political resolution to the Syrian conflict. The ministry also reiterated its firm condemnation of the use of chemical weapons in any circumstance. There was no justification of committing such acts, said the statement. UN Secretary-General Antonio Guterres on Saturday expressed concern over the joint military action against Syria by the United States, France and Britain, and called for adherence to the UN Charter and international law on the issue. "As secretary-general of the United Nations, it is my duty to remind member states that there is an obligation, particularly when dealing with matters of peace and security, to act consistently with the Charter of the United Nations and with international law in general," Guterres told an emergency Security Council meeting requested by Russia. "The UN Charter is very clear on these issues. The Security Council has primary responsibility for the maintenance of international peace and security. I call on the members of the Security Council to unite and exercise that responsibility," he said. "I urge all member states to show restraint in these dangerous circumstances and to avoid any acts that could escalate matters and worsen the suffering of the Syrian people." ULAN BATOR, April 17 (Xinhua) -- Mongolia exported 1.85 million barrels or 251,000 tons of crude oil in the first quarter of this year, the country's Ministry of Mining and Heavy Industry said Tuesday. Mongolia is planning to extract 8.1 million barrels or 1.1 million tons of crude oil this year, which would contribute 223.4 billion Mongolian Tugrik (93.31 million U.S. dollars) to the state budget. At present, the country has implemented 14.1 percent of its export plan, the ministry said in a statement. Currently, Mongolia exports crude oil to China and imports petroleum products from Russia. VIENTIANE, April 17 (Xinhua) -- A Memorandum of Understanding (MoU) was signed here Tuesday between China and Laos on medicinal plants research cooperation, the Chinese embassy in Laos said. The agreement was signed by Huang Luqi, executive vice president of the China Academy of Chinese Medical Sciences, and Gosorn Sorsulithane, vice president of Traditional Medicine Research Institute under Lao Public Health Ministry, the embassy told Xinhua. According to the MoU, China and Laos will carry out a medicinal resource census in Laos, in order to fully tap the economic and medicinal values of Laos' special botanical resources. The two sides will also compile "Flora of Laos." The two sides will jointly set up a traditional medicine research center, which will carry out comparative studies of Chinese and Lao medicinal plants, train Lao medicinal plant resources researchers, and effectively improve medicinal plant resources exploration and application in Laos. At the signing ceremony, Lao Health Minister Bounkong Sihavong expressed the belief that Laos-China cooperation on traditional medicine will help Laos to uphold its traditional medicine and enhance medical service for Lao people. For his part, Huang Luqi said the signing of the MoU is a specific demonstration that traditional Chinese medicine is contributing to the Belt and Road Initiative, and will greatly promote traditional medicine cooperation between China and Laos. BAKU, April 17 (Xinhua) -- The Constitutional Court of Azerbaijan Tuesday approved Ilham Aliyev as the country's president at a plenum, the official Azertac news agency said. The court approved the protocol of the Central Election Commission that Aliyev won the April 11 presidential election with 86.02 percent of the votes. Chairman of the Constitutional Court Farhad Abdullayev said this is the final decision and no complaints are accepted. An inauguration ceremony for the president-elect will be held on April 18, Deputy Chairman of the ruling New Azerbaijan Party Ali Ahmadov told local media. Aliyev has addressed the nation when claiming victory in the election, saying that "Citizens of Azerbaijan have voted for security and progress." The presidential term is seven years. JAKARTA, April 17 (Xinhua) -- Indonesian parliament has demanded Facebook hand over its audit on the data leak that had affected millions of users, anticipating the leak could be inappropriately used for political interest related to the upcoming elections in the country. The demand was conveyed by legislators in the parliament's Commission I in a hearing held here on Tuesday with Facebook Indonesia Public Policy chief Ruben Hattari and Facebook Asia-Pacific Public Policy chief Simon Milner. A legislator at the commission, Meutya Hafid, said that document of Facebook audit must be handed over within one month after the hearing, so as to ensure the nation has enough anticipating steps should the leak be found to be apparently leading to political misconduct that may affect results of Indonesian elections. "We have to know that the data was used by which party and for what purpose," she said on the sidelines of the hearing held in the parliamentary building. Should Facebook fails to do so, the parliament would recommend the government take moratorium step against Facebook in its operation in Indonesia, she added. Facebook is the most popular social media app in Indonesia, subscribed by 115 million of over its total population of 260 million in the country. Indonesia was set to hold simultaneous regional elections in 171 provinces, regencies and municipalities in June this year. MOSCOW, April 17 (Xinhua) -- A joint warning from the United States and Britain that Russian state-sponsored hackers were planning cyberattacks was dismissed by the Kremlin Tuesday. "We don't know what these new accusations are based on ... As before, neither our American nor our British colleagues have bothered to search for arguments," Kremlin spokesman Dmitry Peskov was quoted by Tass news agency as saying. Washington and London issued a joint statement on Monday, warning that Russia was allegedly targeting equipment of government and business computer networks and plotting cyberattacks "to support espionage, extract intellectual property, maintain persistent access to victim networks and potentially lay a foundation for future offensive operations." However, Peskov said that these allegations were "unfounded" and "utterly worthless." In February, London accused Moscow of being behind a massive cyberattack using the NotPetya virus against Ukraine in June 2017, which Moscow also refuted as groundless and "information warfare" against Russia. NAIROBI, April 17 (Xinhua) -- Kenya plans to embark on police reforms to improve the country's security, a senior official said on Tuesday. Fred Matiang'i, cabinet secretary in the Ministry of Interior, told a security forum in Nairobi that a caucus composed of state and non-state actors has been put in place to identify areas of police reforms. "The police reforms aim to improve the relationship between police and community in order to ensure overall improved national security," Matiang'i said during the National Policing Conference. The reforms will ensure that all security agencies work in a coordinated manner and avoid duplication of efforts, Matiang'i said. He noted that the new constitution has enhanced the rights and responsibilities of citizens, hence the need for the police service to change the way its relates with the public. The government has realized that crime levels will only be reduced if local communities are fully involved in security matters, Matiang'i said. Karanja Kibicho, principal secretary at the Ministry of Interior, said the levels of internal and external threats faced by the country are increasing. The government plans to improve the welfare of the police, Kibicho said. "The working conditions of security forces will be improved by ensuring that they are better equipped to combat criminal elements in society," he said. Kibicho said the police reforms are being prioritized because economic development will not be possible without adequate security. Joseph Boinnet, inspector general of National Police Service, said that his internal affairs department will be strengthened to deal with cases of police indiscipline. A new framework will also be created to ensure meritocracy prevails so that junior officers can rise up the ranks of the police service, he said. Source: Xinhua| 2018-04-17 23:39:32|Editor: Mu Xuequan Video Player Close DUBAI, April 17 (Xinhua) -- Workshops on Dubai Sustainable Tourism (DST) are held here with hotels, tourism agencies and environmental organizations taking part, Dubai Tourism announced on Tuesday. The event reviewed the progress of the DST initiative, which aims at raising professional awareness of the tourism entities in protecting the environment, the United Arab Emirates state news agency WAM reported. Connecting 40 leading hotel operators, owners and representatives from hotel establishments and environmental organizations, the event offered an interactive platform to discuss the feasibility and implementation of timelines for 19 new industry sustainability standards developed by DST. The move shows Dubai Tourism's continuing commitment to promote sustainable tourism and achieve the goals set out in the Tourism Vision 2020. The best results can only be achieved when the private and public sectors work together to ensure the industry is operating at the highest standard, said Dubai Tourism. The standards and policies introduced to the industry through the DST initiative are not only aimed at supporting effective resource management but also providing guidance on what enhanced sustainability measures look like in a concrete and practical way. "In the coming years, we expect these standards to pave the way forward for Dubai's tourism and hospitality sectors to continue to implement innovative standards," said Yousuf Lootah, Executive Director of Dubai Tourism. Dubai attracted in 2017 15.8 million tourists, up 6.2 percent year on year, said Dubai Tourism in a statement released earlier this year. The emirate aims to welcome up to 25 million visitors in the six-month Expo 2020. LISBON, April 17 (Xinhua) -- Lisbon Mayor Fernando Medina gave a warm welcome on Tuesday to Volkswagen's plans to open a software development center here. "This software development center will help attract talent and create specialized jobs in the digital and future-mobility sectors," Medina said via Twitter. "We are very happy to be a part of the next generation of Volkswagen Group solutions," he added. The new center will employ 300 information technology (IT) experts, specifically software engineers, web developers and UX designers. They will focus on developing cloud-based software for Volkswagen Group IT and MAN Truck & Bus AG. "We are transferring the success story of our Berlin digital labs to Portugal," said Martin Hofmann, chief information officer of the Volkswagen Group. The announcement is also thought to be good news for AutoEuropa, a Volkswagen assembly plant in Palmela, some 40 km south of Lisbon. The plant is one of the biggest direct foreign investments in Portugal and employs 3,400 staff, but management and staff have been at loggerheads over new shift patterns since December. There were fears the dispute may prompt Volkswagen to take its business elsewhere, but plans for a Lisbon software center suggest increased commitment in Portugal. by Maria Spiliopoulou ATHENS, April 17 (Xinhua) -- Greece neither threatens, but nor is afraid of anyone, Greek Prime Minister Alexis Tsipras said on Tuesday, while speaking on the island of Kastellorizo near the borders with Turkey. "I want to send a message of cooperation and peaceful coexistence, but also of determination... Greece is not threatening anyone, but is not afraid of anyone either," the Greek leader said, according to an e-mailed statement. "Greece can defend its sovereign rights... We do not bargain, nor do we give away a single inch of our territory," he added. Tsipras was on a visit to Kastellorizo to inaugurate two desalination units as tensions between the two neighboring countries have increased in recent months. The hope for Greece and Turkey to eradicate their historical territorial disputes suffered a setback in recent weeks as the two NATO members ratchet up tensions in the Aegean Sea. Some Greek civilians reportedly raised a Greek flag on a disputed rocky islet across from the Turkish resort of Didim, but it was removed by Turkish coast guards on Sunday. Turkish Prime Minister Binali Yildirim urged the Greek government to avoid "provocative moves" in the disputed areas in the Aegean Sea. Greek government spokesperson Dimitris Tzanakopoulos disputed the incident, calling Yildirim's statement "provocative," according to an e-mailed press release. "The incident is under investigation," Greek Deputy Foreign Minister Yannis Amanatidis told local SKAI television. Haralambos Tsagalas, one of the three men, told Antenna television that there were no political motivations behind the action, denying that they were ultra-Right extremists. They raised the flag not to provoke Turkey, but to honor the memory of Greek pilot Yorgos Baltadoros, whose fighter jet crashed into the Aegean last week, he said. A similar incident of hoisting and removing national flags by civilians and soldiers from Aegean Sea islets in 1996 brought the two NATO members to the brink of war, as Turkey disputed Greece's sovereignty in the area. People are seen at the scene of car bomb blast in Mogadishu, Somalia, Sept. 28, 2017. At least seven people were killed and scores injured in a car bomb explosion which occurred alongside a densely-populated road near Hamarweyne market in Mogadishu on Thursday. (Xinhua/Faisal Isse) MOGADISHU, April 17 (Xinhua) -- The African Union's top envoy in Somalia has called for concerted efforts, to defeat the threat posed by Improvised Explosive Devices (IEDs) to security forces and civilian populations in the Horn of African nation. Francisco Madeira, the Special Representative of the Chairperson of the AU Commission (SRCC), told the opening of the fourth Bi-annual Counter IED Conference that the use of IEDs presented a major threat to the country's stabilization process and called for practical solutions to the menace. "The best way to defeat IEDs is to have our politics right. If the politics is not right, no matter how much technology we put on the ground we may not succeed, and to have politics right, will require everyone to play his or her role," Madeira said in a statement released by the AU mission in Mogadishu. He urged the military, the police and the government to cooperate, in order to effectively counter the indiscriminate use of the improvised explosive devices. The conference organized by AMISOM seeks viable ways of building the capacity of AMISOM and Somali national security forces, to effectively counter terrorist group al-Shabab's weapon of choice. Madeira stressed the importance of effective intelligence and information sharing and working closely with civilian populations to end the IED threat. The AU mission says al-Shabab terrorists have been using asymmetrical warfare to extensively engage in the use of IEDs to kill and maim innocent civilians and security forces. Madeira said AMISOM, Somali government and development partners are currently working on strategies to counter the threat, to ensure gains made so far, in Somalia's stabilization are not eroded. Richard Maundrell, the Commander of the British Forces in Somalia, called for increased collaboration between stakeholders and security agencies in the country to rid the country of the IED menace. "While it is important to prepare the force and defeat the device, the only way the counter IED battle can be won is through proactive operations against the IED system. This will focus on the perpetrators of IED activity," he noted. At least 3,000 civilians have been either killed or injured by IEDs in Somalia in the past three years, the UN Mine-Action Service (UNMAS), UN's demining agency, said in early April. It said the year 2017 was the deadliest, in large part due to an IED attack on Oct. 14 in Mogadishu which killed more than 500 people and injured over 300 in twin bombings. NICOSIA, April 17 (Xinhua) -- The European Commission has warned Turkey that eight chapters of its negotiations to access the European Union will remain closed as a result of its policies towards Cyprus, according to a document made available in Nicosia on Tuesday. European Commission's annual report on Turkey's progress towards EU membership also said that one chapter has been put on ice until the Commission ascertains that Turkey has fully applied the so called additional Ankara Protocol. This binds Turkey to extend recognition to Cyprus and to allow Cypriot shipping to access Turkish ports and Cypriot planes to use its airspace as a precondition for further accession negotiations. Turkey withdrew its recognition of Cyprus after Turkish troops occupied the northern part of the eastern Mediterranean island in 1974, in reaction to a coup by the rulers of Greece, and set up a breakaway Turkish Cypriot state which is recognized only by Ankara. The European Commission report urged Turkey to avoid violence or to make threats for the use of violence against an EU member state. Turkey deployed units of its navy southeast of Cyprus in February and prevented a drill ship to start exploration for natural gas on behalf of Italian state controlled company ENI, at a spot within the Cypriot exclusive economic zone. Despite its refusal to accept EU terms for the continuation of its accession negotiations, Turkey's President Recep Tayyip Erdogan said last month that his country remained committed to its EU course. by Stefania Fumo ROME, April 17 (Xinhua) -- Italy's political situation continued in a stall Tuesday with leading parties unable to break the impasse that has reigned since a March 4 general election divided parliament into three main blocs, none of which has enough votes to form a government on its own. These are a center-right bloc led by Matteo Salvini of the rightwing League, the populist Five Star Movement led by Luigi Di Maio, and the center-left Democratic Party of outgoing Prime Minister Paolo Gentiloni. Both Di Maio and Salvini, whose parties won 32.5 percent and 37 percent of the vote respectively, claim the right to lead the next government of Italy. However on Tuesday, Salvini said he would be open to a "third figure" as prime minister, as long as he or she agrees to the League's program of rolling back pension reform, cracking down on immigration and introducing a 15 percent flat tax. "If there is someone clever who subscribes to a program I can share, why not," Salvini said in televised comments. "Unlike Di Maio, I am not here to say either I get to be prime minister, or no deal." Meanwhile a Five Star MP said the Movement will only back a government of "change" -- meaning it will make a deal with the League as long as it dumps its ally, Silvio Berlusconi and his Forza Italia party. The Five Star Movement objects to Berlusconi because he was expelled from parliament in 2013 following a tax fraud conviction. The Democratic Party, which got 20 percent of the vote, reiterated it will stay in the opposition. "We leave personal clashes and tactical power grabs to others," Democratic interim secretary Maurizio Martina wrote on Facebook. President Sergio Mattarella, who has the power to name a prime minister, has been mulling his options since a second round of government formation talks last week failed to produce a workable majority. He is expected to make a choice within the next 24-48 hours. The consensus among media pundits is that he will either confer a so-called "exploratory mandate" on one of the speakers of the houses of parliament; or pick one of the two relative winners, entrusting either Salvini or Di Maio with a "pre-mandate" to sound out a possible majority. Whoever gets the job of prime minister must in turn win a confidence vote in both houses of parliament before he or she is confirmed in office. The "exploratory mandate" option is not new in Italy, according to ANSA news agency. It has been used seven times before: in 1957, 1960, 1968, 1986, 1987, 1989, and 2008. It is also not unusual for Italy to undergo long periods between the end of one government and the formation of a new one. The longest was after the end of the Lamberto Dini administration in 1996, when it took 127 days for a new government to emerge. In 2013, 61 days passed between the election and the birth of the Enrico Letta government. Source: Xinhua| 2018-04-18 01:14:55|Editor: Mu Xuequan Video Player Close BAQUBA, Iraq, April 17 (Xinhua) -- Three Islamic State (IS) militants were killed Tuesday and five Iraqi soldiers wounded in separate attacks in the Iraqi volatile province of Diyala, a provincial security source said. A paramilitary Hashd Shaabi force ambushed a local leader of IS group and killed him in Imam Weis area in north of the provincial capital Baquba, some 65 km northeast of Baghdad, Major Ali al-Sa'di from the provincial police told Xinhua. Separately, two IS militants were killed when a roadside bomb they tried to plant it detonated in Hawi area, some 90 km north of Baquba, Sa'di said. Also in the province, a roadside bomb went off near an army vehicle in the town of Buhruz, about 10 km south of Baquba, destroying the vehicle and wounding five soldiers aboard, Sa'di added. Despite repeated military operations in Diyala province, remnants of IS militants were still hiding in rugged areas near the border with Iran in eastern Diyala, as well as the sprawling areas extending from western part of the province to Himreen mountainous area in north Baquba. The militants are still capable of carrying out attacks against civilians and the security forces despite operations from time to time to hunt them down. TRIPOLI, April 17 (Xinhua) -- The Libya's UN-backed government said Tuesday that the Egyptian President Abdel Fattah el-Sisi has reiterated his support for the political process and efforts to unite the Libyan army. "On the sidelines of the recent Arab Summit in Saudi Arabia, the Head of the Presidency Council (of the Government) discussed with the Egyptian President, Abdel Fattah el-Sisi, bilateral relations and ways to develop them," said spokesman Ahmad Al-Sallak at a news conference in the capital Tripoli. "The Egyptian President renewed his support for the negotiations to unify the military establishment in Cairo, and the firm position of his country on the need to reach a solution to the Libyan crisis through the political track and the holding of elections," Al-Sallak added. The Saudi city of Dhahran on Sunday hosted the 29th Arab League summit, in presence of a number of leaders of the region. Al-Sallak stressed Libya's firm and resolute position to condemn terrorism and extremism and committing to fight them wherever they are. Since October 2017, Cairo has been hosting extensive meetings of Libyan military officers to unite the national army. The Libyan eastern-based army, led by General Khalifa Haftar, in February revealed that the signing of an agreement to unify the national army under the auspices of the Egyptian authorities is "imminent." RIGA, April 17 (Xinhua) -- The Latvian government on Tuesday set up a workgroup tasked with developing proposals on how to do away with an unfair subsidy system in the Baltic country's energy sector which may cost consumers hundreds of millions of euros over the next decade, local media reported. Latvian Economics Minister Arvils Aseradens was appointed chairman of the workgroup, which is expected to come up with a solution to the problem by September 2018. The task force includes 24 representatives of the energy sector, entrepreneurs' organizations, universities and government institutions. The current system where energy consumers are required to pay the so-called mandatory purchase component, a charge that is included in electricity bills to subsidize renewable energy producers, is a "fundamental, national and macroeconomic mistake which has to be corrected", Aseradens said. The economics minister said that as a payment charged to households and corporate entities, the mandatory purchase component must be abolished and replaced with an alternative mechanism that would meet public interests and at the same time ensure a sustainable generation of green energy in the future. The issue of the mandatory purchase component system was brought to public attention last year when journalists discovered that several combined heat-and-power plants in Latvia might have cheated to obtain their green energy licenses allowing them to sell power for increased prices. It turned out that some of these plants had used portable generators and only generated power for a limited period of time to pass the necessary tests. Several dozen companies have already lost their green energy licenses, but some of them are determined to contest the annulment of their licenses in court. The inclusion of the "green energy" component in electricity bills has also caused great discontent among energy consumers. CAIRO, April 17 (Xinhua) -- An Egyptian court sentenced on Tuesday five railway employees up to 20 years in jail over a train collision in the northern coastal province of Alexandria last August that left at least 49 dead. A court in Alexandria sentenced two train drivers, an assistant driver, a dispatcher and a stationmaster to 15, 18 and 20 years in prison over charges of negligence and manslaughter, while a ticket inspector was acquitted. The accident took place last August when a train stopped for a technical problem and another collided with it from behind near Khorshid railway station of Alexandria, killing at least 49 passengers and wounding more than 130 others. The country's railway authority chief resigned over the tragedy. Railway accidents killed and wounded hundreds of Egyptians over the past few years, the deadliest was in 2002 when 350 passengers were killed after fire broke out in a train coming from Upper Egypt. Another tragedy took place in November 2012, when a train hit a school bus at a crossing barrier area in Upper Egypt's Assiut province, killing over 50 children. Earlier in April, Egypt's Minister of Transport Hesham Arafat announced a project to upgrade and modernize the country's old railway system by 2022, with a total investment of 55 billion Egyptian pounds (about 3.1 billion U.S. dollars). RABAT, April 17 (Xinhua) -- A total of 1.5 million tourists visited Morocco in the first two months of 2018, up 12 percent year on year, the Moroccan Tourism Ministry said on Tuesday. International tourist arrivals jumped 20 percent, while Moroccans living abroad visiting their homeland rose 1 percent, the ministry added. The increase was mainly driven by the steady growth in arrivals from the traditional European markets. The statistics show 18 percent increase in German and Italian tourists, 12 percent in Dutch ones and 11 percent in French visitors. Morocco's main tourist destinations, Marrakesh and Agadir, grew 15 and 10 percent in tourist arrivals, while the old city of Fez and the Mediterranean city of Tangier showed the highest increase with a growth of 26 and 17 percent. In 2017, Morocco registered a record of 11.35 million tourists, up 10 percent compared with a year earlier. Source: Xinhua| 2018-04-18 02:15:15|Editor: Mu Xuequan Video Player Close JERUSALEM, April 17 (Xinhua) -- Israel came to a standstill on Tuesday evening in marking its annual Day of Remembrance of Fallen Soldiers and Terror Victims. The official memorial day pays tribute to soldiers killed during their military service and wars, as well as the civilian victims of attacks. The day kicked off on Tuesday afternoon with a memorial service at the Yad Lebanim memorial for fallen soldiers in Jerusalem. During the service, Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu addressed the bereaved families, saying "Dear families, we will not let go of the defensive sword for the foreseeable future. " Shops and businesses were shut down on in the evening, with TV channels airing films about bereaved families and the stories of fallen soldiers and radio stations playing melancholic tunes. Sirens were activated at 8 p.m. local time (GMT 0500) for one minute of silence, followed by the opening of the main ceremony at the Western Wall in Israeli-annexed East Jerusalem's Old City. The ceremony was attended by President Reuven Rivlin, Chief of Forces Gadi Eizenkot, military and police officers, and bereaved families. Multiple additional ceremonies and memorials will be held across the country in the upcoming 24 hours, from late Tuesday to Wednesday evening. According to official figures, 23,645 fallen soldiers, police officers, police wardens, Shin Bet security service workers, and Mossad agents, who died defending their country since 1860, the year in which Jews first established a new neighborhood in Jerusalem. Photo taken on April 5, 2018 shows smoke rising after airstrikes of the Saudi-led coalition warplanes targeted a weapon depot of the Houthi rebels in Sanaa, Yemen. (Xinhua/Mohammed Mohammed) UNITED NATIONS, April 17 (Xinhua) -- The new UN envoy for Yemen, Martin Griffiths, told the Security Council Tuesday that the political forces in war-torn Yemen are ready to embrace a political solution. "The good news ... is that a political solution to bring an end to this war is available," said Griffiths, who took up the post of special envoy of the UN secretary-general for Yemen on March 11. Both President Abdrabbuh Mansur Hadi and the leadership of the Houthi rebels have expressed their willingness to end the war, he said. But he cautioned that a successful outcome of negotiations will require patience, diligence and good faith between the parties. A negotiated political settlement through inclusive intra-Yemeni dialogue is the only way to end the Yemeni conflict and address the ongoing humanitarian crisis, he said. "To this end, all parties to the conflict need to abandon preconditions to talks and grant my office unhindered, unconditional access to all relevant stakeholders." Griffiths said he would submit a framework for negotiations to the Security Council within two months. "We must first turn our energies to the business of stopping the war." Yemen has been in civil war since 2015, pitting Houthi rebels and forces loyal to the government of Hadi. GABORONE, April 17 (Xinhua) -- A 57-year-old British woman died on Monday after being attacked by an elephant in Botswana, according to police. The woman, who was residing at Maun, a village in northeastern Botswana, was attacked while she was out with her 67-year-old Botswana partner walking dogs. "Prior to the incident, the elephant had invaded our yard, which is situated along a river bank, but we managed to chase it away with our vehicle," police quoted the partner as saying on Monday. Thinking that the elephant had fled, the couple took their dogs out for a walk, but immediately after leaving the yard, the elephant pounced on the woman while her partner ran for his life. The woman sustained serious injuries and was pronounced dead upon arrival at a local hospital. Botswana's elephant population is known to be the highest in Africa, hence the establishment of buffer zones around Wildlife Management Areas (WMAs) to address human-elephant conflicts, which continues to grow. Maun and the surrounding areas are known for being home to an abundance of wildlife due to their perennial water sources such as Thamalakane River. Russian President Vladimir Putin (R) speaks with German Chancellor Angela Merkel as they attend a wreath-laying ceremony at the Tomb of the Unknown Soldier by the Kremlin walls in Moscow, Russia, May 10, 2015. (Xinhua/Reuters) MOSCOW, April 17 (Xinhua) -- Russian President Vladimir Putin and German Chancellor Angela Merkel said in a telephone conversation they were ready to assist in political and diplomatic efforts on Syria, including the Geneva and Astana peace talks, the Kremlin said Tuesday. Putin said that the recent action by a group of Western countries on Syria was "an act of aggression" that largely violated norms of international law and caused substantial damage to the prospect of a political settlement to the Syrian crisis, according to a Kremlin statement. The United States, together with Britain and France, launched missile strikes on Syria's Douma on Saturday, claiming that they were in response to an alleged chemical weapons attack by the Syrian military. The Syrian government has categorically denied the accusation. "Both sides (Putin and Merkel) expressed readiness to facilitate the resumption of political and diplomatic efforts on the Syrian issue, including at the Geneva and Astana platforms, and to continue bilateral contacts on this matter," the statement said. The two leaders also stressed the importance of conducting "a thorough and objective investigation" of the mission of the Organization for the Prohibition of Chemical Weapons (OPCW) in Syria, it said. On Monday, the British delegation to the OPCW accused Russia and Syria of barring the mission from entering Douma. Moscow denied the accusation by saying that OPCW experts were not given permission by the United Nations to visit Douma as a result of the missile strikes. Source: Xinhua| 2018-04-18 03:20:29|Editor: Chengcheng Video Player Close Photo taken on April 17, 2018 shows a general view of a United Nations Security Council meeting on Yemen, at the UN headquarters in New York. The new UN envoy for Yemen, Martin Griffiths, said Tuesday that the political forces in war-torn Yemen are ready to embrace a political solution. (Xinhua/Li Muzi) UNITED NATIONS, April 17 (Xinhua) -- The new UN envoy for Yemen, Martin Griffiths, said Tuesday that the political forces in war-torn Yemen are ready to embrace a political solution. "The good news ... is that a political solution to bring an end to this war is available," Griffiths told the UN Security Council. "This can be done. All those with whom I spoke, from the widest range of the Yemeni political spectrum, have told me that they want this, that they want is quickly, that they will work with the United Nations to achieve it," said Griffiths, who took up the post of special envoy of the UN secretary-general for Yemen on March 11. Both President Abdrabbuh Mansur Hadi and the leadership of the Houthi rebels have expressed their willingness to end the war, he said. But he cautioned that a successful outcome of negotiations will require patience, diligence and good faith between the parties. A negotiated political settlement through inclusive intra-Yemeni dialogue is the only way to end the Yemeni conflict and address the ongoing humanitarian crisis, he said. "To this end, all parties to the conflict need to abandon preconditions to talks and grant my office unhindered, unconditional access to all relevant stakeholders." Griffiths said he will submit a framework for negotiations to the Security Council within two months. "We must first turn our energies to the business of stopping the war." He voiced concern over the increased number of missiles launched by Houthi rebels into Saudi Arabia in the last few weeks. Saudi Arabia is leading a military coalition in helping President Hadi regain control of the country. The rival Houthi forces are reportedly supported by Iran. Griffiths said military confrontation and airstrikes have continued in many parts of Yemen, with "disturbing reports" of civilian casualties. He was also worried by unconfirmed reports that movement of forces in Yemen is on the increase and that intensive military operations in Hudaydah may be forthcoming. "Our concern is that any of these developments may in a stroke, take peace off the table," he warned. "We all need urgently and creatively to find ways to diminish the chances of these game-changing events, upsetting and derailing the hopes of the great majority of Yemenis." "There is a saying that the darkest hour is the one before dawn. Let us hope this is the case," said Griffiths. File Photo: A malnourished Yemeni child receives treatment at a hospital in the Yemeni port city of Hodeidah on Jan. 16, 2018. (Xinhua/AFP) UNITED NATIONS, April 17 (Xinhua) -- UN Undersecretary-General for Humanitarian Affairs Mark Lowcock on Tuesday expressed concern about insufficient commercial imports, particularly food, to Yemen. "We remain very concerned about commercial imports through all of Yemen's ports, most particularly (the Red Sea ports of) Hudaydah and Saleef," Lowcock told the Security Council. Before the war, Yemen relied on imports to cover 90 percent of staple food and nearly all its medicine and fuel needs, he said. "Commercial shortages and delays at ports have led to sharp increase in the price of food and household necessities. Ports are the lifeline of Yemen." Price increases, especially of food, are forcing hundreds of thousands of destitute families to turn to humanitarian assistance for their very survival, he said. The United Nations is encouraging all those concerned to accelerate the normalization of commercial shipments into Hudaydah and Saleef, as well as to Yemen's other ports, he said. "We are worried that shipping companies are reluctant to enter Yemeni waters." The reasons are related to problems with foreign exchange and the banking sector as well as the ports, but the result is that insufficient food is being imported, he explained. Lowcock also voiced concern over the fact that Sanaa airport remains closed to commercial traffic. The closure of the airport is preventing thousands of critically ill patients from traveling abroad to seek treatment unavailable in Yemen, he said. Military activities conducted in the proximity of the airport over the last month have affected humanitarian flights. Yemen, which has been in war since 2015, remains the world's worst humanitarian crisis, he said. Three quarters of the population, or more than 22 million people, urgently require some form of humanitarian help, including 8.4 million people who struggle to find their next meal, said Lowcock. Source: Xinhua| 2018-04-18 03:45:34|Editor: Mu Xuequan Video Player Close UNITED NATIONS, April 17 (Xinhua) -- UN Undersecretary-General for Humanitarian Affairs Mark Lowcock on Tuesday expressed concern about insufficient commercial imports, particularly food, to Yemen. "We remain very concerned about commercial imports through all of Yemen's ports, most particularly (the Red Sea ports of) Hudaydah and Saleef," Lowcock told the Security Council. Before the war, Yemen relied on imports to cover 90 percent of staple food and nearly all its medicine and fuel needs, he said. "Commercial shortages and delays at ports have led to sharp increase in the price of food and household necessities. Ports are the lifeline of Yemen." Price increases, especially of food, are forcing hundreds of thousands of destitute families to turn to humanitarian assistance for their very survival, he said. The United Nations is encouraging all those concerned to accelerate the normalization of commercial shipments into Hudaydah and Saleef, as well as to Yemen's other ports, he said. "We are worried that shipping companies are reluctant to enter Yemeni waters." The reasons are related to problems with foreign exchange and the banking sector as well as the ports, but the result is that insufficient food is being imported, he explained. Lowcock also voiced concern over the fact that Sanaa airport remains closed to commercial traffic. The closure of the airport is preventing thousands of critically ill patients from traveling abroad to seek treatment unavailable in Yemen, he said. Military activities conducted in the proximity of the airport over the last month have affected humanitarian flights as well. Bureaucratic impediments imposed by decision-makers in Sanaa are affecting relief operations, he noted. Humanitarian staff continue to face delays in visas and project approvals, restrictions on imports and custom clearance, and long delays and searches at checkpoints, he said. While UN humanitarian workers have partial access to all of Yemen's 333 districts, restrictions and insecurity mean that estimated 1.2 million people in need of assistance live in areas inaccessible to humanitarian organizations, he noted. As with other challenges, a successful response requires safe, unimpeded and unhindered access across and into Yemen for humanitarian staff and humanitarian supplies, he said. "All impediments which prevent humanitarians from reaching people must stop." Yemeni public servants who are doing so much themselves to respond to the crisis need their salaries paid, said Lowcock, noting that most health and sanitation workers have still not been paid for more than a year and a half. Lowcock expressed concern over the security situation in the country. The impact of airstrikes, shelling and fighting on the civilian population is deeply worrying, said Lowcock. "Civilian lives are lost. Public infrastructure is destroyed. Displacement is increasing." Mines and the remnants of war affect agricultural production and the wider economy, and therefore threaten civilian life. Some 3 million women and girls are at risk of sexual and gender-based violence, he said. He warned of the risk of another major cholera outbreak. Last year's outbreak of cholera and watery diarrhea struck more than 1 million people. With the arrival of the rainy season, the conditions that created this outbreak are still present, he said. Yemen, which has been in war since 2015, remains the world's worst humanitarian crisis, he said. Three quarters of the population, or more than 22 million people, urgently require some form of humanitarian help, including 8.4 million people who struggle to find their next meal, said Lowcock. The United Nations increased the coverage of food assistance last year from 3 million people a month in January to more than 7 million a month in December. For 2018, the World Food Programme has plans to reach 10 million people a month, said Lowcock. MADRID, April 17 (Xinhua) -- Spanish Prime Minister Mariano Rajoy and the President of Portugal Marcelo Rebelo de Sousa on Tuesday asked Europe to "give a push" towards economic and monetary union. Speaking during the second day of Rebelo de Sousa's three-day visit to Spain, Rajoy said that "both countries believe that we have to give a push towards economic and monetary union". "It is not just about banking unity, but to start to work towards a moment for a European budget and fiscal unity," he continued, saying such a move would help the EU avoid future "economic crises" such as that which recently badly affected both nations. Rajoy added that Spain and Portugal had agreed to work closely in "politics of cohesion and also agricultural policies" to protect rural districts and small towns and villages. "It will be difficult, but I am convinced that between everyone we can reach agreement," he said Both leaders stressed the "excellent relationship" between the two neighbors, which were highlighted after their meeting when Rebelo de Souza addressed the Spanish Congress, which held a special session to greet him. During his speech, the Portuguese leader made a clear reference to the ongoing Catalan crisis and said neither nation should "cede a millimeter" after "all it has cost" to construct their democracies. He will conclude his visit on Wednesday with a visit to the historic University of Salamanca, which this year celebrates its 800th anniversary. Source: Xinhua| 2018-04-18 03:50:36|Editor: Mu Xuequan Video Player Close AMMAN, April 17 (Xinhua) -- Jordan and Turkey will discuss the free trade agreement between the two countries this week, which Jordan suspended last month. A Jordanian official told Xinhua Tuesday that an official delegation from Jordan will visit Turkey this week to brief the Turkish officials on the Kingdom's conditions to resume activating the deal. The visit by Jordanian officials to Turkey is the first since Jordan suspended the deal in March, an official at the Ministry of Industry and Trade in Jordan told Xinhua. Jordan set several conditions to reactivate the deal including the Turkish side's consent to protection measures Jordan will design to protect local industries. "If the Turkish officials agree on our conditions, we will reconsider the Cabinet's decision that suspended the deal," said the official. "We want to ensure fairness for both sides through this agreement," said the official. According to official figures, the trade balance between the two countries is heavily in favor of Turkey. Jordan suspended the deal saying the Kingdom did not benefit from the deal, which went into effect in 2011. by Robert Stanton HOUSTON, April 17 (Xinhua) -- From the Texas Gulf Coast to the American heartland, ranchers, farmers and petrochemical producers are expressing uneasiness over the growing U.S.-China trade friction. Last year, China imported more than 130 billion U.S. dollars in U.S. commodities, according to U.S. Import and Export Merchandise trade statistics. If more tariffs are implemented, it not only would impact their bottom line but put many out of business, U.S. producers have said. "Illinois Farm Bureau and its members are very concerned about the escalating tariff dispute with China and its potential to devastate the farm economy," said Tamara Nelson, senior commodities director at the Illinois Farm Bureau. "The rhetoric and threats must stop. Recent market volatility has already adversely affected farmers, who are already suffering their fifth straight year of economic decline." Last year, Illinois farmers exported 5.3 billion U.S. dollars in goods to China, including 1.3 billion U.S. dollars in soybeans and 2.3 billion U.S. dollars in pork, according to U.S. Import and Export Merchandise trade statistics. Earlier this month, the U.S. administration on Tuesday announced a proposed list of products subject to additional tariffs, which covers Chinese exports worth 50 billion dollars with a suggested tariff rate of 25 percent. China then hit back at U.S. unilateralism with equal tariff plan, unveiling a list of products worth 50 billion dollars imported from the United States that will be subject to higher tariffs, including soybeans, automobiles, and chemical products. Bob White, director of national government relations at the Indiana Farm Bureau, is concerned that the market volatility would hurt farmers who are already struggling due to a surplus of grain in the market. "The impacts of the proposed tariffs from China could be detrimental to U.S. and Indiana agriculture," he said. "Farmers in Indiana and across the country have worked hard to provide a reliable, quality product to our export partners. Replacing a market as large as China will not be an easy task and family farmers will likely suffer if the tariffs are imposed." Indiana last year reported 2 billion U.S. dollars in total exports to China, including 26 million U.S. dollars in soybeans, the trade statistics show. By necessity, Kansas farmers and ranchers are patient and optimistic, said Kansas Farm Bureau President Richard Felts. But U.S.-China trade dispute is testing that resilience. "Growing trade disputes have placed farmers and ranchers in a precarious position," said Felts, a Kansas farmer. "We have bills to pay and debts we must settle and cannot afford to lose any market." Meanwhile, Minnesota farmers are also worried that the trade friction with China will hurt more than help. "China is a critical market for Minnesota agriculture, especially for soybeans, dairy, pork and wheat," said Minnesota Farm Bureau President Kevin Paap. "The recent actions by one of our largest trade partners could prove to be detrimental to Minnesota farmers and ranchers. The current trade disputes need to be resolved without harming agriculture." In Missouri, farm prices are already dropping in response to the trade announcement, at a time when prices are already at break-even or below, according to the Missouri Farm Bureau (MFB). "If fully implemented, these actions spell trouble for Missouri agriculture producers," said MFB President Blake Hurst. "China is by far the leading destination for U.S. soybeans, with the country buying nearly two thirds of all U.S. soybeans exported, and one fourth of our total crop." He added, "It is hard to remember a more potentially calamitous week for U.S. agriculture." In Houston, petrochemical industry officials are bracing for some tough economic times as the tit-for-tat tariff hikes continue unabated, said Steven W. Lewis, C.V. Starr Transnational China Fellow at the James A. Baker III Institute for Public Policy. "There are reports that many petrochemical products, especially plastics, will be affected by new tax rates on imports to China," said Lewis, an Asian Studies professor at Rice University. "This is one of Houston's key industries and exports to China." "China already has restrictions on many energy industry services that Houston provides," he said. "Texas agriculture will also suffer if the relationship deteriorates, although perhaps not as much as other states, given the specific agricultural goods targeted." GENEVA, April 17 (Xinhua) -- Swiss police said Tuesday that more than 50 people had been arrested and large quantities of heroin, cocaine and marijuana seized following a joint police operation involving Switzerland, Austria and Serbia. Police confiscated more than 10 kg of heroin, as well as a small quantity of cocaine, and in excess of 140 kg of marijuana, the St. Gallen Cantonal Police force said in a statement. "Ongoing investigations along with those by Serbian and Austrian authorities have led to further seizures and arrests," said the St. Gallen police statement. In Switzerland, 35 people were arrested. The international police cooperation began in 2015 when the St. Gallen police provided information on two Serbian dealers were arrested at Rorschach, St. Gallen in northeastern Switzerland. During those arrests, the police uncovered heroin, cash, and drug-related materials. A subsequent investigation found that the two men were part of an international drug ring, originating mainly from the Serbian city of Nis. At the time, the combined police forces worked together to dismantle the drug ring and had arrested a total of 54 people, including the head of the gang and those responsible for logistics, the heads of smaller cells and drugs mules. In Switzerland, 30 of the people arrested in 2015 have been tried and deported after completing their sentences. The head of the ring and his four closest collaborators are still in custody, said the St. Gallen police. Chinese and Russian policemen attend a joint anti-terror drill in Manzhouli City, north China's Inner Mongolia Autonomous Region, Oct. 20, 2014. (Xinhua/Zhang Ling) MOSCOW, April 17 (Xinhua) -- Russia's Federal Security Service (FSB) has prevented a planned terror attack in the country's Rostov region by a cell of the Islamic State (IS) terrorist group, the FSB said Tuesday. During a joint combat operation, security officers and the police detained three members of the cell who were under the order of IS emissaries based in Syria and planned to carry out massive terror attacks with firearms and explosive devices in the Rostov region in the Southern Federal District, according to an FSB statement. The cell's leader detonated an explosive device and died while rendering armed resistance, it added. Firearms including an AK-47 rifle, hand grenades, ammunition for improvised explosive devices, as well as means of communication and electronic storage devices containing propaganda materials of IS terrorist activities were seized at the scene of the incident, the statement said. Investigations and necessary operational measures are underway, the FSB said. MOGADISHU, April 17 (Xinhua) -- The African Union Mission in Somalia (AMISOM) on Tuesday lauded Ugandan soldiers for ensuring a safer and stable Somalia. AMISOM Deputy Force Commander in charge of support and logistics Salvator Harushimana praised the troops who have completed their tour of duty for their diligence. "During their stay, they performed their duties with dedication and a high level of professionalism," Harushimana said in a statement issued in Mogadishu. "They did not only represent Uganda well but also made the African Continent proud." The soldiers are part of battle group 21 of the Uganda People's Defense Force who were tasked with securing Mogadishu and neighboring regions. Harushimana said the battle group participated in many operations, ranging from conducting combat operations against al-Shabab to securing the Main Supply Routes, to conducting regular patrols and escorting vehicles carrying humanitarian relief aid. Speaking at the function, Uganda's Deputy Ambassador to Somalia Nathan Mugisha called for more investment in social amenities critical for the survival of the populations to help supplement efforts being made by the military to stabilize the country. Mugisha also noted that there is need to enhance governance, justice and rule of law and humanitarian support in liberated areas to enable residents lead a normal life. He commended the Somali National Army for remaining resolute in the face of multiple challenges and urged the international community to aid the force in its efforts to secure the country. AMISOM's Battle Group Commander Chris Ogwal appealed for more investment in quick impact projects, noting that the lack of basic health services presents the biggest challenge to improving living standards of the Somali population. A laptop displays a message after being infected by a ransomware as part of a worldwide cyberattack on June 27, 2017 in Geldrop, Netherlands. (AFP Photo) MOSCOW, April 17 (Xinhua) -- A joint warning from the United States and Britain that Russian state-sponsored hackers were planning cyberattacks was dismissed by the Kremlin Tuesday. "We don't know what these new accusations are based on ... As before, neither our American nor our British colleagues have bothered to search for arguments," Kremlin spokesman Dmitry Peskov was quoted by Tass news agency as saying. Washington and London issued a joint statement on Monday, warning that Russia was allegedly targeting equipment of government and business computer networks and plotting cyberattacks "to support espionage, extract intellectual property, maintain persistent access to victim networks and potentially lay a foundation for future offensive operations." However, Peskov said that these allegations were "unfounded" and "utterly worthless." In February, London accused Moscow of being behind a massive cyberattack using the NotPetya virus against Ukraine in June 2017, which Moscow also refuted as groundless and "information warfare" against Russia. LOS ANGELES, April 17 (Xinhua) -- California almond growers said they were worried over losing exports to its 3rd largest export destination amid rising U.S.-China trade tensions, according to a statement of Almond Board of California. "The entire California Almond industry is closely monitoring the recently imposed China tariffs, as China is the U.S.' 3rd largest export market for almonds, with a value of over 500 million U.S. dollars," said the Almond Board of California's President and CEO, Richard Waycott, in a statement published in American Journal of Transportation on April 13. The Almond Board of California is an agricultural promotion group represents California Almond growers, processors and handlers. It provides information to members about the expectation of supply and demand each year, as well as monitors and creates marketing campaigns to their customers. "Unimpeded market access in China and around the globe is essential, as almonds are California's top agricultural export," Waycott added. Despite strong warnings from business groups and trade experts, U.S. President Donald Trump signed a memorandum last month that could impose tariffs on up to 60 billion U.S. dollars of imports from China, and restrictions on Chinese investment in the United States. Trump also ordered his chief trade negotiator this month to consider imposing tariffs on an additional 100 billion dollars of Chinese products. China vowed to fight back immediately and fiercely without hesitation. U.S. farmers are in the eye of the trade storm and worry that they will be the potential victims in the so-called trade war with China. "We encourage continued efforts that will ensure that agriculture, within the global trade environment, continues to expand," said Waycott, appealing for an avoidance of actions that would jeopardize U.S. agricultural trade with China. "Global almond trade is fundamental to the long-term well-being of the state by generating over 100,000 jobs across multiple professions, resulting in more than 21 billion U.S. dollars of gross revenue and adding about 11 billion U.S. dollars to the state's economy," according to the statement. The U.S. almond industry has been active in China for more than 20 years, with marketing and trade promotion activities. Exports to China, prior to the additional tariff, were anticipated to continue growing at about 6 percent per year, according to the statement of Waycott. "Market development activities in China have contributed to economic growth in both countries, benefiting California growers and Chinese consumers with a healthy, safe food choice," he stressed. California is the world's largest producer of almonds, supplying about 80 percent of the global demand. There are around 6,800 California Almond farms. Of those, 91 percent are family farms. Source: Xinhua| 2018-04-18 04:15:46|Editor: Mu Xuequan Video Player Close ANKARA, April 17 (Xinhua) -- Turkish cabinet on Tuesday advised parliament to extend the state of emergency for three more months. Speaking at a news conference after the cabinet meeting, Deputy Prime Minister Bekir Bozdag said the state of emergency is targeting at terrorists and terror groups, rather than peaceful citizens. The extension motion was discussed and passed by National Security Council meeting, a top-level security meeting chaired by Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan. The state of emergency has so far been approved six times since the coup attempt in July 2016. After parliamentary procedure on Wednesday, the 7th extension of the state of emergency will come into effect on April 19. A sample of clean, processed soybeans at Peterson Farms Seed facility in Fargo, North Dakota, U.S., Dec. 6, 2017. (Xinhua/REUTERS) by Robert Stanton HOUSTON, April 17 (Xinhua) -- From the Texas Gulf Coast to the American heartland, ranchers, farmers and petrochemical producers are expressing uneasiness over the growing U.S.-China trade friction. Last year, China imported more than 130 billion U.S. dollars in U.S. commodities, according to U.S. Import and Export Merchandise trade statistics. If more tariffs are implemented, it not only would impact their bottom line but put many out of business, U.S. producers have said. "Illinois Farm Bureau and its members are very concerned about the escalating tariff dispute with China and its potential to devastate the farm economy," said Tamara Nelson, senior commodities director at the Illinois Farm Bureau. "The rhetoric and threats must stop. Recent market volatility has already adversely affected farmers, who are already suffering their fifth straight year of economic decline." Last year, Illinois farmers exported 5.3 billion U.S. dollars in goods to China, including 1.3 billion U.S. dollars in soybeans and 2.3 billion U.S. dollars in pork, according to U.S. Import and Export Merchandise trade statistics. Earlier this month, the U.S. administration on Tuesday announced a proposed list of products subject to additional tariffs, which covers Chinese exports worth 50 billion dollars with a suggested tariff rate of 25 percent. China then hit back at U.S. unilateralism with equal tariff plan, unveiling a list of products worth 50 billion dollars imported from the United States that will be subject to higher tariffs, including soybeans, automobiles, and chemical products. Bob White, director of national government relations at the Indiana Farm Bureau, is concerned that the market volatility would hurt farmers who are already struggling due to a surplus of grain in the market. "The impacts of the proposed tariffs from China could be detrimental to U.S. and Indiana agriculture," he said. "Farmers in Indiana and across the country have worked hard to provide a reliable, quality product to our export partners. Replacing a market as large as China will not be an easy task and family farmers will likely suffer if the tariffs are imposed." Indiana last year reported 2 billion U.S. dollars in total exports to China, including 26 million U.S. dollars in soybeans, the trade statistics show. By necessity, Kansas farmers and ranchers are patient and optimistic, said Kansas Farm Bureau President Richard Felts. But U.S.-China trade dispute is testing that resilience. "Growing trade disputes have placed farmers and ranchers in a precarious position," said Felts, a Kansas farmer. "We have bills to pay and debts we must settle and cannot afford to lose any market." Meanwhile, Minnesota farmers are also worried that the trade friction with China will hurt more than help. "China is a critical market for Minnesota agriculture, especially for soybeans, dairy, pork and wheat," said Minnesota Farm Bureau President Kevin Paap. "The recent actions by one of our largest trade partners could prove to be detrimental to Minnesota farmers and ranchers. The current trade disputes need to be resolved without harming agriculture." In Missouri, farm prices are already dropping in response to the trade announcement, at a time when prices are already at break-even or below, according to the Missouri Farm Bureau (MFB). "If fully implemented, these actions spell trouble for Missouri agriculture producers," said MFB President Blake Hurst. "China is by far the leading destination for U.S. soybeans, with the country buying nearly two thirds of all U.S. soybeans exported, and one fourth of our total crop." He added, "It is hard to remember a more potentially calamitous week for U.S. agriculture." In Houston, petrochemical industry officials are bracing for some tough economic times as the tit-for-tat tariff hikes continue unabated, said Steven W. Lewis, C.V. Starr Transnational China Fellow at the James A. Baker III Institute for Public Policy. "There are reports that many petrochemical products, especially plastics, will be affected by new tax rates on imports to China," said Lewis, an Asian Studies professor at Rice University. "This is one of Houston's key industries and exports to China." "China already has restrictions on many energy industry services that Houston provides," he said. "Texas agriculture will also suffer if the relationship deteriorates, although perhaps not as much as other states, given the specific agricultural goods targeted." KHARTOUM, April 17 (Xinhua) -- Sudanese parliament on Tuesday approved a security cooperation agreement between Sudan and Turkey including training, exchange of experiences and combating terrorism. Deputy Chairman of security and defence committee at the parliament, Gen. Ibrahim Ahmed, presented the draft agreement to the parliament for approval Tuesday. "The agreement is a result of a historical development of the relations between the two countries in the economic, political and security fields," said Ahmed when addressing the parliament. He noted that the agreement tends to enhance the relations between Sudan and Turkey to achieve common interests in fields of modern technology, training, security exchange and combating terrorism and organized crime in accordance with the international commitments and UN Charter. Khartoum and Ankara signed the security cooperation agreement as part of 21 agreements during the visit of the Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan to Sudan in December 2017. ADDIS ABABA, April 17 (Xinhua) -- The African Union (AU) on Tuesday called for collective actions to solve the Libyan crisis and promote peace, security, stability and reconciliation in the north African country. This came during the 5th meeting of the AU high-level committee on Libya, held in Ethiopia's capital Addis Ababa, amid continued stalemate in Libya's political process and persistent volatility of the security environment. Libya has been embroiled in a civil after the fall and death of longtime leader Muammer Gadhafi in 2011. A tripartite task force of the AU, the European Union, and the United Nations has been endeavoring to support stranded African migrants in Libya, while consolidating efforts to dismantle organized networks of human traffickers and migrant smugglers. Moussa Faki Mahamat, chairperson of the AU Commission, told the meeting that the situation in Libya is "morally intolerable." The current situation in Libya poses threat to the country and its people, as well as to the neighboring countries, which pay a heavy price because of the instability and insecurity that are today the main characteristics of the Libyan situation, Faki said. "Everything must be done to put an end to it," he said. "It calls for an even more sustained action on our part." ALGIERS, April 17 (Xinhua) -- Algerian energy giant Sonatrach and its Italian partner Eni inked Tuesday three energy partnership agreements for the building of gas pipelines and the management of common projects. The documents were signed by the CEO of Sonatrach, Abdelmoumen Ould Kaddour and his Italian counterpart Claudio Descalzi, on the sidelines of the 11th Scientific and Technical Conference (JST 11) being held in the province of Oran, 400 km west of Algiers. The first agreement is about the construction of a gas pipeline linking two production units in the Algerian Sahara. This project will be launched this year and will enter into service within two years, as it will allow to carry over 7 million standard cubic meters of gas every day. The second document is an agreement in the domain of synergy as it paves the way for negotiations to combine the skills of the two companies in a bid to reduce maintenance costs by 50 million U.S. dollars annually. The third document is due to boost research and development, particularly in the field of renewable energies. These agreements confirm that Sonatrach is committed to settle its litigation issues with its foreign partners. Such disputes emerged from the implementation as by 2006 of the tax on windfall profits, widely disputed by foreign oil companies operating in Algeria. LUSAKA, April 17 (Xinhua) -- The Zambian government has constituted a team of experts to work on modalities of handling Eurobond obligations when they fall due, a senior official said on Tuesday. The Zambian government acquired three batches of Eurobonds, of 750 million U.S. dollars, 1 billion dollars, and 1.25 billion dollars respectively. The bonds are set to mature in 2020, 2024 and 2027. Minister of Finance Margaret Mwanakatwe said a competent team of officials from the finance ministry and the central bank has been constituted and was working on repayment modalities. She said Zambia has no intention of defaulting on any of its Eurobond interest repayments and that the government will follow market-based processes in handling the bonds. "Work has commenced early to allow for time to set our actions in motion. No bond holder will be coerced into selling off their position," she said in a statement released by the ministry. The minister said the government is considering restructuring some of its debt as an option when needs arises and that the move is not an indication of default of any of its debts. Mwanakatwe rejected reports that the International Monetary Fund has asked the government to carry out an independent audit of its debt. However, she said, the government has been conducting annual debt sustainability analyses in collaboration with international partners, with the latest one conducted last year. LILONGWE, April 17 (Xinhua) -- A Catholic priest in Malawi has been arrested in connection to the brutal killing of a 22-year-old man with albinism, police confirmed Tuesday. Police Service spokesperson James Kadadzera told local media that the priest, Father Thomas Muhosha, was arrested on Monday in the eastern district of Machinga as he attempted to cross into neighboring Mozambique. According to the police, the priest's arrest brings the number of suspects connected to the killing, in early April, of the man with albinism to 12, including a police officer and a health worker. McDonald Masambuka, who was born with albinism, went missing in mid-March. His body was found on April 1 in a shallow grave with some parts missing. The United Nations strongly condemned the resurfacing of the killing of people with albinism in Malawi. Malawi president Peter Mutharika has asked for "an honest national dialogue on implementation of a death penalty following the barbaric act." The presidential statement followed an appeal from the Association for Persons with Albinism in Malawi for the government to implement the death penalty in the southern African country. Since 2014, Malawi has registered at least 125 cases of attacks and killings of persons with albinism. More than 20 people were brutally killed for their body parts which unfounded beliefs claim are used for charms to create wealth. Source: Xinhua| 2018-04-18 05:36:16|Editor: Chengcheng Video Player Close QUITO, April 17 (Xinhua) -- Ecuador on Tuesday reported the second kidnapping in less than a month along its border with Colombia, following the killings of three other abductees last week. The latest victims were identified as an Ecuadorian couple abducted by the Oliver Sinisterra front, the same dissident guerrilla group that was behind the previous kidnapping, Ecuadorian Defense Minister Patricio Zambrano said. "The information we have... is that they are Ecuadorians from a province close to Esmeraldas," Zambrano said in a televised address. In response to rumors the pair may be members of the military, Zambrano said "we don't have information that they are agents." The dissident group, which broke away from Colombia's Revolutionary Armed Force (FARC) after it signed a peace deal with the government, is headed by Walter Patricio Arizala, also known as "Guacho," who ordered the capture and killing of a press team from Ecuador's El Comercio daily. The abduction of the two journalists and their driver shocked the nation. They were apparently preparing a report on violence and crime in the border region when the rebels seized them in a bid to negotiate an exchange for three of their own who were in custody. Last week, Ecuador's President Lenin Moreno traveled to Lima, Peru for a summit, only to turn around and come back after learning the killings of the three. According to Ecuador's Interior Minister Cesar Navas, the rebels sent a proof of life video of the kidnapped couple to the government on Monday night via the social networking app Whatsapp. "It's the first time that 'Guacho' sends proof of life directly to us through a communications channel, not like on prior occasions when he did it through Colombian media outlets," said Navas, calling the rebels "drug traffickers." In the video, "the drug traffickers request through their kidnap victims that their demands be met," he said. The footage shows a man and a woman standing and facing a camera, their hands tied, as an armed rebel wearing a hooded mask stands guard on each side. In the video, the bound couple ask Ecuador's president to comply with their captors' demands so they do not meet the same fate as the journalists. The victims, identified by the government as Oscar Efren Villacis Gomez and Katty Vanesa Velasco Pinargote, are believed to be abducted late Wednesday or early Thursday in the town of San Lorenzo, Esmeraldas. Moreno called an emergency meeting of his Public Security Committee to decide "how to proceed given this new threat," said Navas. The dissident rebels are looking to ship their drugs out of Ecuador via the Mataje River, which divides the two countries, said the minister. Ecuador will resort to "all the military pressure needed to bring peace again to the border area. Ecuador's peace is not to be negotiated with killers," he said. BUCHAREST, April 17 (Xinhua) -- Boosting commercial exchanges and investments remain a priority of Romania in its relation with the United Arab Emirates (UAE), Romanian President Klaus Iohannis told visiting UAE Minister of State Sultan Bin Ahmad Sultan Al Jaber on Tuesday. Iohannis welcomed the carrying out of the first meeting of Joint Cooperation Committee, considering the move a concrete step towards the deepening of bilateral cooperation on all common interest levels, with an emphasis on the economic one, according to a press release of the Presidential Administration. Sultan Al Jaber underscored that his visit was extremely fruitful and concrete projects of potential investments have been identified, with a focus on energy, transport, infrastructure, logistics, agriculture, tourism and real estate. The UAE official also said the UAE authorities expected to open a new chapter for bilateral relations, that he deems of strategic importance. Sultan Al Jaber came to Romania for the first meeting of the Joint Cooperation Committee hosted between the two governments on Monday and Tuesday, when five agreements were signed in the field of agriculture, culture, sports, mass media and foreign affairs. He also met with Chamber of Deputies Speaker Liviu Dragnea and Prime Minister Viorica Dancila. The UAE is Romania's first economic partner in the Gulf region and the third in the Arab world, with bilateral trade of 366 million U.S. dollars in 2017. Source: Xinhua| 2018-04-18 05:51:19|Editor: Yamei Video Player Close U.S. President Donald Trump (Xinhua file photo) WASHINGTON, April 17 (Xinhua) -- U.S. President Donald Trump said on Tuesday that the United States and the Democratic People's Republic of Korea (DPRK) have already started direct talks at "very high levels." Trump made the remarks at his Mar-a-Lago resort in the U.S. state of Florida after his meeting with visiting Japanese Prime Minister Shinzo Abe. "We have had direct talks at very high levels, extremely high levels, with North Korea (DPRK)," Trump said. He also told reporters that five sites were currently being weighed as the venue for a meeting between him and the DPRK's top leader Kim Jong Un, which has been planned to take place in May or early June. When asked by reporters if any of the sites were located in the United States, Trump said "no." Tension on the Korean Peninsula has thawed in recent months. Seoul and Pyongyang have agreed to hold a summit on April 27, the first meeting between the leaders of the two sides in 11 years. ALGIERS, April 17 (Xinhua) -- Algeria and Mali expressed the desire to boost cooperation in the field of hydrocarbons, said the Algerian Ministry of Energy in a statement on Tuesday. Malian Minister of Mines and Petroleum Tiemoko Sangare hailed the experience of Algeria in the field of hydrocarbons and expressed desire for more intense cooperation, said the statement their meeting. The meeting was held between the Algerian Energy Minister Mustapha Guitouni and his visiting Malian counterpart on the sidelines of the 11th Scientific and and Technical Conference held by Sonatrach in the western province of Oran. The source said that Guitouni expressed the readiness of Algeria to establish mutually beneficial projects with Mali in the field of hydrocarbons and training. DUBLIN, April 17 (Xinhua) -- Six suspected drug dealers were arrested in a series of operations conducted by Irish police in the country's capital Dublin, reported local media RTE on Tuesday. A total of 250,000 euros (310,000 U.S. dollars) of suspected drug money was also seized in the operations which were carried out by the drugs and organized crime bureau of the police department, said the report. The six nabbed include five men aged between 27 and 31 and a 24-year-old woman, said police, adding that some of them have recently returned from Australia. Police believed that they were involved in the supply of cocaine from Europe to Australia and New Zealand, which is operated by a notorious gang group based in Ireland. The drugs they sold in Australia were mainly targeting the young Irish living there, said police. Police said that they are working closely with the Australian police and a number of arrests have also been made in Australia in the past few weeks in addition to a seizure of large sums of money. (1 euro=1.237 U.S. dollars) Source: Xinhua| 2018-04-18 06:31:29|Editor: Chengcheng Video Player Close BRASILIA, April 17 (Xinhua) -- Brazil's ex-president Luiz Inacio Lula da Silva continues to hold a significant lead in pre-presidential election polls, despite being behind bars, according to a survey released on Tuesday. Polling firm Vox Populi said the leftist Workers' Party (PT) leader, who planned to run for reelection until top courts declined his appeals and ordered him to begin serving his 12-year sentence on corruption charges, would likely win in the first round, if allowed to compete. The survey carried out between April 11 and 15 at the request of the PT, shows Lula enjoys substantial 47 percent support among the electorate, versus 12 percent for the next closest candidate, the arch-conservative Jair Bolsonaro. Lula's chances of participating in the October elections appear dim, especially due to Brazil's Clean Record Law, which bars politicians with convictions from running for office for a period of eight years. However, it cannot be ruled out either, since Brazil's legal system provides a range of reprieves and other recourse. The survey also shows most Brazilians believe Lula should not have been convicted for allegedly accepting perks from a construction company in exchange for juicy government contracts, including the use of a luxury beachfront apartment. Lula has maintained his innocence throughout, and claims the accusations and trail were politically motivated to derail his presidential run. Some 41 percent of those surveyed said Lula was convicted without proof; 44 percent believe he has been unjustly imprisoned; and 58 percent think he has the right to run again, possibly once he completes his sentence. However, chances are this would be his last opportunity as the popular elder statesman is 72 years old. The head of Vox Populi, Marcos Coimbra, said the poll shows public sentiment for Lula has grown, with many seeing him as a victim of a biased judicial system. A similar survey released on Sunday by pollster Datafolha also showed Lula in the lead, but by a slimmer margin of 31 percent, with Bolsonaro trailing with 15 percent. The sign for a Starbucks Coffee shop is seen in New York on April 17, 2018, following the company's announcement that they will close more than 8,000 US stores on May 29 to conduct "racial-bias education" following the arrest of two black men in one of its cafes. (Xinhua/AFP PHOTO) WASHINGTON, April 17 (Xinhua) -- Starbucks announced Tuesday that it will close all its company-owned stores in the United States for the afternoon on May 29 to train employees how to prevent racial discrimination in their stores in the wake of outrage over the arrest of two African-American men at one of its coffee shops last week. More than 8,000 stores will be closed and training will be provided to nearly 175,000 employees and incorporated into company training going forward, according to Starbucks. The curriculum will be designed "to address implicit bias, promote conscious inclusion, prevent discrimination and ensure everyone inside a Starbucks store feels safe and welcome," the company said in a statement. Interfaith clergy leaders stage a sit-in in a Center City Starbucks, near the location where two black men were arrested, in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania U.S. April 16, 2018. (Xinhua/REUTERS) The move came after the Seattle-based chain was under fire for a decision by staff at one of its Philadelphia stores to call the police on two African-American men when they didn't buy anything and asked to use the restrooms. The two men were told they couldn't use the restrooms unless they are paying customers. They explained that they were waiting for a friend, who later arrived. Police arrested them and the footage of which has been viewed millions of times and drawn widespread condemnation. The company's CEO Kevin Johnson has apologized for the incident and the coffee giant confirmed that the Philadelphia employee who called the police is no longer with the company. "While this is not limited to Starbucks, we're committed to being a part of the solution," Johnson said. "Closing our stores for racial bias training is just one step in a journey that requires dedication from every level of our company and partnerships in our local communities." U.S. President Donald Trump hosts a bilateral meeting with Japan's Prime Minister Shinzo Abe at Trump's Mar-a-Lago estate in Palm Beach, Florida U.S., April 17, 2018. (Xinhua/REUTERS) WASHINGTON, April 17 (Xinhua) -- U.S. President Donald Trump said on Tuesday that the United States and the Democratic People's Republic of Korea (DPRK) have already started direct talks at "very high levels." Trump made the remarks at his Mar-a-Lago resort in the U.S. state of Florida after his meeting with visiting Japanese Prime Minister Shinzo Abe. "We have had direct talks at very high levels, extremely high levels, with North Korea (DPRK)," Trump said. DPRK leader Kim Jong Un heads a party meeting in this photo released by the Korean Central News Agency (KCNA) in Pyongyang, April 9, 2018. (KCNA photo) He also told reporters that five sites were currently being weighed as the venue for a meeting between him and the DPRK's top leader Kim Jong Un, which has been planned to take place in May or early June. When asked by reporters if any of the sites were located in the United States, Trump said "no." Tension on the Korean Peninsula has thawed in recent months. Seoul and Pyongyang have agreed to hold a summit on April 27, the first meeting between the leaders of the two sides in 11 years. Demonstrations against the results of the April 8 general election were held on Sunday in the Hungarian cities of Pecs and Debrecen, and in Brussels. In the southern Hungarian city of Pecs, at the demo organised by NGOs, speakers lambasted the election system, the terrible state of the opposition parties and the state of Hungarian health care and education. Speakers said Hungary is turning more and more towards Ankara and Moscow, and they called for unity and the fight against lies among opposition forces. The protestors waved the national colours, European Union flags and the red-white stripes of the House of Arpad. In eastern Hungarian Debrecen, opposition parties organised a protest at the citys main Kossuth square. Speakers of green LMP, opposition parties Momentum, Egyutt, radical nationalist Jobbik and the satirical Two-tailed Dog Party (Ketfarku Kutya Part) demanded a new election, freedom of the press and a real change of regime. We are the true majority, they said, and pledged to fight on and pose a serious challenge to the Orban regime. Demonstrators waved EU, national and red-white flags. MTI Photo: Balogh Zoltan Hungarian director Zsofia Szilagyis debut feature length title One Day has been selected to compete at this years Cannes Film Festivals International Critics Week, a parallel section dedicated to directors first and second films, the festivals organisers said. The film, which tells the story of a mother with three children living under a tight schedule, will compete for the Golden Camera for the best first film against six other feature films and nine short films between May 9 and 17, they said. The Critics Week event will be presided over by Norwegian director and writer Joachim Trier and the Golden Camera will be awarded during the festivals closing ceremony on May 19. Szilagyis film was supported with 62 million forints (EUR 200,000) under the Hungarian Film Funds Incubator Programme for debut directors. It is planned to be shown in Hungary in the autumn. Photo: mnf.hu A left-wing commentator thinks that Saturdays rally showed the determination of opposition voters to stand up to Fidesz. A pro-government columnist finds opposition calls for a new election absurd. On Sunday, tens of thousands of protesters demanded new elections, the recounting of the April 8 votes and free media at an anti-government rally in Budapest. The demonstration was organised by non-party people, but attended by luminaries and supporters of both the Left and Jobbik. The government alleged that the rally was financed by Soros funded NGOs. Nepszavas Judit Kosa reads the Sunday rally as proof that people discontented with Fidesz are angry and want to overcome the shock of the April 8 election result. The left-wing columnist urges the opposition to start drawing up a strategy for the next election as soon as possible. She claims, however, that it is close to impossible to defeat Fidesz under the current electoral rules. As a result, opponents of Fidesz do not yet have a clue how to defeat the current government. Magyar Idoks editor-in-chief Otto Gajdics finds absurd the demand voiced by demonstrators demand to hold a new election, just one week after such a decisive Fidesz victory. The pro-government commentator thinks that Saturdays protest was attended by anti-Semitic and anti-Roma extremists as well as left-wing radicals serving foreign interests. These groups, Gajdics believes, are united only by their hatred of Prime Minister Orban. Gajdics goes on to accuse protesters of not respecting basic democratic norms by questioning the result of the April 8 election. In conclusion, he calls on the government to reach out to those protesters who can be involved in nation-building and, at the same time, get rid of those who do not want to accept a national minimum. Most importantly, Gajdics proposes, Soros should be banned from Europe. This opinion does not necessarily represent the views of this portal. Your opinion articles are welcome too, for review before possible publication, via info@xpatloop.com MTI Photo: Szigetvary Zsolt SYLVAIN COLLARD, general manager of the Highland Corporation, briefed the Bessemer City Council on the bright future of mining in the area. By IAN MINIELLY [email protected] Bessemer - Sylvain Collard, general manager of Highland Copper Company Inc., provided the Bessemer city council a brief before they voted on a resolution supporting the Highland Corporation's efforts to open up mines in the area. Collard outlined the three routes Highland is working on. -The Copperwood project, which will begin construction in the third quarter of 2018 and should employ 250-350 people during construction and 300-400 during full-blown mining operations. -The Whitepine North project, which is currently in desktop planning and according to schedule, the feasibility plan will be done by 2021, with construction set to begin in 2022, while entering operation in 2025. -The Highland/UPX, where the Highland company owns almost 500,000 acreas surrounding the Eagle Mine and has given its engineers seven years to identify future mine locations for gold, nickel, copper, and diamonds. Collard described the ore deposits at the Whitepine North location as three times the size of the Copperwood deposit, or about 1.7 billion pounds of copper that is left in the ground to recover. Likewise, Collard said the completion of the Section Five drilling for Copperwood increased the potential resources of the deposit by 46 percent. The council agree unanimously to support the Highland Corporation moving forward with the projects. A public hearing and second reading of ordinances 363 and 362 were held. Both ordinances passes 4-0, reducing the old solid waste rules on the books and simplifying Bessemer's building code regulations. The council agreed the best path forward to change the city's charter is if each council selects 2-3 items in the charter each year to change. Those changes are forwarded to the governors office and then placed on the ballot for the residents to vote. The other option would have been the selection of a 9 person committee from the residents that would rewrite the entire charter. Each council member agreed to bring three items designated for change out of a possible eight to the next meeting. Charly Loper, city manager, will filter the choices of the council and bring to the next meeting the tally. At that point the council has the option to choose the three it wishes to change as a whole, while discussing the eight potential areas of correction. The council tabled a discussion on ethics. Allen Archie, Linda Nelson, and to a lesser extent Rob Coleman, felt the proposal to form an ethics committee that reviews potential ethics violations or questions was too stringent. Each of the council members stressed they believe in ethics, with Archie going so far as to recite the motto of the Boy Scouts of America. Terry Kryshak said he liked the idea of an ethics committee and that it would not be hard to follow and remain ethical. Archie considered the committee's potential to become a "kangaroo court" and hold the council hostage was risky, but Loper explained the committee would have no authority and could only make recommendations to the council. The council asked Loper to scale back the ethics committee and bring to the next meeting. Under new business, the council agreed on a 3-1 vote, with Kryshak voting against, to keep public two hearings for Special Land Use permits. People seeking one of these permits will be required to have a public hearing in front of the Planning Commission and the city council. The council accepted the Harma bid to become the cemetery mower and Kryshak provided an update on last weeks meeting at Aspirus Ironwood regarding Beacon Ambulance. Kryshak said Beacon informed the well-attended group they were losing $50,000 per month and needed a solution to stay in operation. -One solution is to secure a county wide millage. The problem is Watersmeet already contracts out of Iron River and the municipalities do not have the money to raise. -How does a millage get passed, which then supports a private company, asked Archie. The council agreed Beacon would probably cease being a private company and would become either a mix or part of the public. -Beacon takes approximately 46 percent of its calls as non-revenue generating. These are things like covering sporting or public events. Kryshak said there is no plan right now to solve Beacons dilemma and the council agreed to sell two city garages to the Cornerstone Church in Ramsay for $102. 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... BOSTON: A college professor in Boston, who is very popular among the students as the dating professor, offers extra credit to her students who go on dates with others and avoid alcohol and physical contact. According to Fox News, nearly 12 years back Boston College philosophy professor Kerry Cronin came up with a unique idea of combating the popular hookup culture on the campuses with what is now being called 'the dating project.' After coming to know that many of her seniors who are about to complete their graduation had never been on a date, she created this dating assignment. Professor Cronin added an unorthodox task to her syllabus and offered extra credits to those students who would ask someone out on a date, where there will be no alcohol or physical contact. However, when Cronin first gave this assignment, many of her students talked a lot about asking someone out but didn't follow through. This later forced her to tweak the assignment to give a two-week deadline. For those students who take up the dating project, the rules are simple ask the person out in person. And, it's mandatory that the recipient has to know its a date. Giving an account of this assignment, Cronin said that it used to be mandatory earlier but is now just for extra credits. Cronin also pointed out that most students may not want to commit and would instead focus on career goals. This is significant since the median age when men and women get married in the US are 29.5 and 27.4 respectively. The other reason being the expensive higher education in the US. However, some students of Kerry Cronin do meet their soul mates as a result of her "dating" assignment. Talking about her unique concept, professor Cronin says that ''our prevalent culture focuses on sex, not necessarily the foibles and the hard work and the joys and the despair of just casual dating. Cronin also tells her students not to worry about rejection and move on, as it would lead to thicker skin. For the unique campus phenomenon she has created, Cronin has now earned the sobriquet of "dating professor." However, one need not be a Boston College student to reap her wisdom. For those who want to know more about her dating concept, there are numerous videos on the popular video-sharing website YouTube showing Cronin preaching her relationship gospel. A documentary about the campus phenomenon which she has created is also being shown in select theaters every Tuesday. Two days after releasing its first list of candidates for the Karnataka Assembly elections, the Congress has reportedly put the candidature for Madikeri seat on hold. News agency ANI quoted sources as saying that the seat was put on hold after reports that the candidate, HS Chandramouli, has been a lawyer of absconding jeweller Mehul Choksi. The Congress had on Sunday announced its first list of 218 candidates for the upcoming Karnataka elections, scheduled to be held on May 12. Targeting the Congress party over the candidate for the Madikeri seat, the Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) had said that the list proved yet another link of Rahul Gandhi with Mehul Choksi. Addressing a press conference, BJP spokesperson GVL Narasimha Rao had said that Chandramouli had been rewarded for his strong links with the Congress party. He further alleged that Chandramouli had represented Choksi in court in connection with a complaint filed by one Hariprasad in Bengaluru. He said that while the police had earlier filed a criminal complaint in the same, it was later converted into a civil case. With less than a month left for Karnataka to go to polls, both the ruling Congress and the opposition Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) have entered a high-pitched battle on the ground and on social media. Last week, the BJP had released its first list of 72 candidates following a meeting of the party's Central Election Committee. The committee had met at BJP's Headquarters in New Delhi with party President Amit Shah and committee members including Prime Minister Narendra Modi, Home Minister Rajnath Singh and External Affairs Minister Sushma Swaraj present. Karnataka polls are scheduled to be held in a single phase on May 12 and the counting of votes will be done on May 15. Bengaluru: The Aam Aadmi Party on Tuesday announced the second list comprising ten candidates to contest the upcoming Assembly elections in Karnataka. Those given tickets are Asif Herkal from Devarahipparagi, Ajit Babu from Ramanagara, B R Bhaskar Prasad from Mahadevapura, A Ilangovan from Gandhinagar, Farooqsaab Nadaf from Belagavi (North), Sadananda Metri from Belagavi (South), Sanjeeva Kumar Karikal from Kalaburgi North, Dr. Sundara Gowda from Chickamagaluru, B Prabhuswamy from Gubbi and S F Patil from Dharawad (Rural). Releasing the list, party's co-convener and in charge of state Political Affairs Shivakumar Chengalraya introduced the candidates and said the people are eagerly looking for alternative politics and change from the traditional politics of Karnataka. "Our Delhi government's work in the last three years, particularly in the field of education and healthcare, has boosted our confidence. It won accolades across the globe for revolutionary developments in the education and health sectors," he said, PTI reported. Chengalraya said none of the candidates face any charge of corruption, criminal or communal activity. He added that AAP has so far released the list of 28 candidates and will contest more than 40 seats. Meanwhile, Karnataka Governor Vajubhai R Vala on Tuesday notified the May 12 elections, the State Election Commission said. "The Governor is pleased to call upon the people to elect members to the 15th legislative assembly in accordance with the Representation of the People`s Act, 1951," the poll panel said in a statement, as per IANS. Of the total seats, 36 are reserved for Scheduled Castes and 15 for the Scheduled Tribes. The notification paves the way for candidates to file nominations in the constituencies they are contesting from. April 24 is the last date for filing nominations while scrutiny will be taken up on April 25. The last date for withdrawal is April 27. Polling will be held from 7 am to 5 pm across the state on May 12. Votes will be counted on May 15. Elaborate arrangements have been made to ensure peaceful voting amid tight security at 58,546 polling booths across 224 constituencies, using Electronic Voting Machines along with Voter Verified Paper Audit Trails. As many as 450 polling booths are `pink booths`, managed by all-women officials, including police, in all Assembly segments. The southern state has 4.96 crore registered electors, including 2.52 crore men and 2.44 crore women. Over 15 lakh are first-time voters in the 18-19 age group. About 3.5 lakh security personnel will be deployed during the polling in the state. (With Agency inputs) By continuing to use the site, you agree to the use of cookies. You can find out more by clicking this link New Delhi:Aditi Rao Hydari added another trophy to her achievements as she will receive Dada Saheb Phalke excellence award 2018 for the Best Leading Lady (Critics Award) for her memorable performance in `Bhoomi`. Sure-footed, Aditi has been garnering huge about of praises for her effective portrayal in `Bhoomi` by the critics and the audiences. The award ceremony is scheduled on April 21, 2018, at St. Andrews Auditorium in Mumbai. It will be attended by producers, directors, distributors and exhibitors among others from the film fraternity. The film also starred Sanjay Dutt and was about the protective father who saved his daughter from all the evils that surrounded her. New Delhi: ABB has deployed five of its highest-capacity motors each capable of pumping 23,000 liters per second as part of the Mahatma Gandhi Kalwakurthy Lift Irrigation Scheme. The 12-year-long project, the Mahatma Gandhi Kalwakurthy Lift Irrigation Scheme (MGKLIS), was recently completed. This was made possible only through considerable feats of civil engineering: industrial-strength water pumping technology and electric-power management systems that ABB, with decades of irrigation experience in India, provided, a company statement said. Years of severe drought had created a water crisis in the Mahbubnagar region in Telangana. The water table had virtually depleted and the monsoon rains now only last three to four months a year. The only option for providing adequate water for farming and drinking is to pump it from the Krishna River to a reservoir nearly 300 meters above. From there, through a gravity-driven lift irrigation system, the water can be channeled through nearly a hundred kilometers of canals to the parched farms and more than 300 villages that were at risk of turning to desert, ABB said Now, the villages have a dependable supply of drinking water. Just as crucially, with the canals and a network of storage tanks irrigating about 137,000 hectares of land (an area nearly as large as the sprawling city of Los Angeles in California, U.S.A.), farmers who had retreated to cities in search of a livelihood, are now returning to cultivate the soil once again. Agriculture is one of the largest sectors of the Indian economy, employing almost half of the population. Best in class technology from ABB which can be used to manage availability of water and create the last mile connect with farmers, can have a significant impact on Indias future development, said Sanjeev Sharma, Managing Director of ABB India. ABB India is proud to be a part of projects like these where we use ABB technology to build a sustainable future for the nation and mitigate uncertainties. Heavy lifting, carefully controlled The MGKLIS project called for lifting the water in three separate stages, with ABB handling the critical middle stage Lift II, with an 86-meter rise. The key features of the Lift II project were five 30-megawatt (MW), 11-kilovolt (kV) motors, each with a 23,000-liters-per-second pumping capability. They are the largest capacity and physically biggest motors used yet by ABB India in an irrigation project. Each motor has a footprint of more than 30 square meters. Powering these motors up to pumping speed from a dead start requires considerable amounts of electricity and potentially puts great strain on the mechanical systems and the local utility grid. ABBs soft starter solution involves a 6 MW load commutated inverter (LCI) that minimizes the electrical surge, and variable frequency drives (VFDs) in the motors that enable them to start smoothly before accelerating up to 333rpm. ABB partnered with Andritz Pumps to provide this advanced pumping solution. In addition, ABB also offered substation equipment, transformers, and a digitally enabled supervisory control and data acquisition (SCADA) monitoring system that ensures a steady and reliable drawing of power from the grid and smooth pumping of water into the reservoir. New Delhi: In a major respite to residents in Delhi, the Aam Aadmi Party (AAP) government led by Chief Minister Arvind Kejriwal has drafted a pro-consumer policy by which citizens would be compensated for ''unscheduled power cuts'' lasting longer than one hour. The policy, which has been duly approved by the AAP government, now awaits a clearance from Delhi Lt. Governor Anil Baijal's office. According to reports, the policy to provide compensation to users in case of "unscheduled power cuts by the private power distribution companies" was cleared by the Chief Minister on Tuesday The file has now been sent to the Lt. Governor's office for approval, IANS reported. According to the Delhi government's new policy, the discoms (power distribution companies) will have to restore the electricity within one hour in the event of an unscheduled power cut. However, if they (discoms) fail to do so, a penalty of Rs 50 per hour per consumer for the first two hours and Rs 100 per hour per consumer after two hours will be imposed on them. ''The compensation would be provided to consumers in their monthly electricity bills, '' a statement issued by the AAP government said. In case of a power cut, a consumer would be required to file a "no current" complaint through SMS, email, phone, mobile application or website and along with their name, Consumer Account (CA) number and mobile number. The power distribution company would then attend to the complaint and send a confirmation message to the consumer with power restoration date and time. The respective compensation amount would be then credited to the CA number automatically and a message would be sent to the consumer. This amount would be then adjusted in the consumers monthly electricity bill. The Arvind Kejriwal regime, which had slashed the power tariffs soon after it took over the reins in Delhi, has expressed confidence that its new pro-consumer policy would soon get the seal of approval from the LG's office. "The Delhi government is confident that the LG will concur with the policy and endorse this pro-consumer step, which will become a model for other governments across the country to follow," the government release said. (With IANS inputs) New Delhi: The ministerial panel, under Bihar Deputy Chief Minister Sushil Modi, on GST return simplification will meet tax experts and representatives from industry on Tuesday. As it looks to finalise a single-page return form for businesses under GST, the Group of Ministers (GoM) will seek views of the experts and representatives from businesses as to how they expect the return form to be. As per the structure being worked out by the Centre and state officials as well as Nandan Nilekani, businesses having zero tax liability for six consecutive months may get to file returns only twice a year. The return filing date will be spread out and businesses having annual turnover of up to Rs 1.5 crore will have to file return by 10th of next month, while others can file return by 20th. The number of returns filed by both small and large taxpayers will be 12 in a year. The GST Council, chaired by Finance Minister Arun Jaitley and comprising state counterparts, have asked businesses to file the summary returns GSTR-3B and final sales return GSTR-1 till June, following which the new system of return filing will come into effect. Besides, the first meeting of the GoM on reverse charge mechanism under GST was held today. The GoM was constituted under Modi last month to iron out issues being faced by businesses under the reverse charge mechanism. The GST Council has kept the reverse charge mechanism in abeyance till June. The law review committee, comprising officers from the Centre and states, had suggested reworking Section 9(3) of Central GST Act by bringing composition scheme dealers in the purview of reverse charge mechanism. It also suggested that the Council should specify certain goods and services on which GST (Goods and Service Tax) will be collected through reverse charge mechanism and also specify category of taxpayers who should be paying taxes as per this process. For unregistered dealer, the committee suggested collection of information based on PAN, Aadhaar or any other such identifier. With regard to Section 9(4) of Central GST Act which required payment of tax by registered dealers in cases where he procures goods from unregistered businesses, the law review committee suggested doing away with the provision. AMRG & Associates Partner Rajat Mohan said, "GST reverse charge provision needs rationalisation since it places unjustified compliance and cost burden on several categories of taxpayers, including small and medium size enterprises, NGOs, educational institutions, government organisation, religious bodies and charitable institutions". Mumbai: The Reserve Bank on Tuesday said there is no shortage of currency in the system. However, it added that there may be shortages in "some pockets" largely due to logistical reason. "It has been reported in a section of the media that there is a shortage of currency in certain parts of the country. It is clarified at the outset that there is sufficient cash in the RBI vaults and currency chests. Nevertheless, printing of the notes has been ramped up in all the four note presses. The shortage may be felt in some pockets largely due to logistical issues of replenishing ATMs frequently and the recalibration of ATMs being still underway. RBI is closely monitoring both these aspects. Further, as a matter of abundant precaution, RBI is also taking steps to move currency to areas which are witnessing unusually large cash withdrawals," it said in a statement. RBI clarifies that there is no currency shortagehttps://t.co/MsZakbjo6y ReserveBankOfIndia (@RBI) April 17, 2018 What the government said: Earlier in the day, Finance Minister Arun Jaitley had assured people that there was no shortage of currency as adequate stocks were available. "Overall there is more than adequate currency in circulation and also available with the banks. The temporary shortage caused by 'sudden and unusual increase' (in demand) in some areas is being tackled quickly," he said in a tweet. Jaitley, who has been away from office since April 2 due to a kidney ailment, added that he has reviewed the currency situation in the country. Have reviewed the currency situation in the country. Over all there is more than adequate currency in circulation and also available with the Banks. The temporary shortage caused by sudden and unusual increase in some areas is being tackled quickly. Arun Jaitley (@arunjaitley) April 17, 2018 Government of India reviews the currency circulation in the country;Government and RBI have taken all steps to meet unusual demand of the currency;Adequate reserves of currency to meet the rising demands;For more details, please Log on : soon.https://t.co/Z3rupXosvm Ministry of Finance (@FinMinIndia) April 17, 2018 On the other hand, economic affairs secretary Subhash Chandra Garg said the Reserve Bank will increase five-fold the printing of Rs 500 notes to about Rs 2,500 crore a day to deal with the cash shortage. "So, in a month, we will be printing about Rs 70,000-Rs 75,000 crore. This should give you an assurance that we are geared up to meet the rising demand," he said, as per PTI. The government, Garg said, suspects that Rs 2,000 notes are being hoarded as they are not coming back into the circulation fast enough. "There is also a perception that there may be a shortage of currency in the future. So people have started withdrawing and it has contributed to the crisis. We keep adequate stock of currency notes, which is one-sixth of the currency in circulation," he said. Here's what happened: An unusual spurt in currency demand in states like Uttar Pradesh, Madhya Pradesh, Andhra Pradesh as well as poll-bound Karnataka led to dry ATMs in several parts of the country, sending the government scrambling to make contingency plans to cover the deficit. ATMs of both public and private sector lenders in several cities were either not operating or showed no cash signs, a situation that officials insisted was not alarming and did not warrant panic. Cities and towns across AP, Telangana, Karnataka, MP, Gujarat, Maharashtra, Bihar, Rajasthan and UP were impacted by the cash crunch. Some ATMs downed shutters with 'no cash' and 'out of service' signs, prompting the government to move currency from surplus regions. Some ATMs in Delhi too went dry. Political leaders from Congress chief Rahul Gandhi to TMC's Mamata Banerjee trained guns on the government saying ATMs running dry was a reminder of demonetisation days. (With PTI inputs) New Delhi: A parliamentary panel has called Reserve Bank Governor Urjit Patel on May 17 to answer queries on a spate of banking scams unearthed in the last few months, sources said. The Standing Committee on Finance, headed by veteran Congress leader M Veerappa Moily, raised several queries related to the banking sector with Financial Services Secretary Rajiv Kumar. "We have invited the RBI Governor on May 17. We will be asking him about the scams and other banking regulations," said a source. Former Prime Minister Manmohan Singh, who is member of the Committee, attended the meeting. Patel had recently said that the RBI doesn't have adequate powers to deal with pubic sector banks. "We would like to know what kind of powers the RBI Governor needs," another source said, adding that regulation is an important part and that is why the Governor has been called. The panel, sources said, discussed a spate of banking scams, both in public and private sector banks. When asked if PNB and ICICI Bank issues figured during the meeting, the source said issues related with "all commercial banks, including ICICI Bank" were discussed. The finance ministry officials gave part replies to queries of the lawmakers and they have been given three weeks time to file a complete report on questions. LONDON: In what could begin a new era for forensic science, the police in Britain have arrested a drug dealer based on fingerprints they found on a WhatsApp image sent by the criminal to his clients. The photograph showed part of the dealer's hand "and there was potentially a fingerprint," the BBC reported late on Sunday. The scientific support unit scanned the image into its system but could not find a match because the photograph contained just parts of the middle and bottom of a finger visible while records only keep the top part. However, other evidence was enough for the police to guess who was behind the drugs operation. "While the scale and quality of the photograph proved a challenge, the small bits were enough to prove he was the dealer," Dave Thomas from South Wales Police`s scientific support unit was quoted as saying. Police arrested a man on a tip-off that said drugs were being sold in Wales. While checking his phone, they found an image of the drug dealer named Elliott Morris holding ecstasy tablets in his palm. "There was the photograph of the hand holding pills that seemed like it was sent to potential customers saying `these are my wares, I`m selling these`," Thomas said. "It has now opened the floodgates and when there is part of a hand on a photograph, officers are sending them in," he added. According to the police officer, the dealers are using the technology not to get caught and the police need to keep up with advancements. A criminal suspected of attacking a journalist, Anuj Chowdhary, earlier in April was injured in an encounter with police in Raj Nagar Extension area of Ghaziabad on Monday night. A policeman also suffered injuries during the encounter. Ghaziabad: One criminal & a policeman injured after encounter in Raj Nagar Extension area last night. Criminal is accused of attack on journalist Anuj Chowdhary. pic.twitter.com/qL9ZCUgFzA ANI UP (@ANINewsUP) April 17, 2018 The journalist was shot at by some unidentified men at his residence in Ghaziabad on April 8. He works with Sahara Samay - a Hindi language 24/7 news channel owned by Sahara India Pariwar. According to police, four to five unidentified gunmen riding two-wheelers went to Anuj's house in Rajapur locality in Kavi Nagar police station area of Ghaziabad at around 6.15 pm on April 8. They fired six shots at Anuj, who was standing at the house entrance. While two bullets hit him in the abdomen, two hit him in the right arm. They fled the spot, after which Ajay, who is Shramjivi Patrakar Sangh President, was rushed to Yashoda Hospital in the city. He had to undergo a surgery following the attack. SP City Akash Tomar had said that they were scanning CCTV footage for identification of the accused and that a team would be formed for investigation. "We told Kavi Nagar Inspector Samarjit Singh that Rs 10 lakh had been paid to sharpshooters to eliminate Ajay, whose wife Nishi Chaudhary is a local councillor. However, the crime was committed even though the information had been passed on to authorities concerned," Deepak Tomar, brother-in-law of the journalist, had claimed. (With ANI and IANS inputs) Singapore: Thousands of fans queued outside Marina Bay Sands Convention Centre today to meet their favourite superheroes -- Iron Man star Robert Downey Jr and Doctor Strange actor Benedict Cumberbatch -- making it one of the grandest Marvel red carpet events. The stars were promoting their much-awaited film, Avengers: Infinity War in the city, Marvel's biggest ever superhero project, and the red carpet event was a proof of the curiosity surrounding the movie as thousands of fans from places such as the Philippines, Russia, Vietnam, India, Malaysia, Taiwan and Korea waited for hours to get a glimpse of the actors. The first to arrive to the event was one half of the director duo Russo brothers, Joe Russo. The filmmaker, who along with his brother played an important role in giving Marvel superhero films a new dimension, was joined by his wife and two daughters at the red carpet. Russo, who has become popular among fans after Captain America: The Winter Soilder and Captain America: Civil War received a warm welcome from fans as he clicked pictures and gave autographs. He was followed by Guardians of the Galaxy star Karen Gillian, better known to fans as Nebula. The Scottish actor made a dazzling entry tn the red carpet in a shimmery golden dress amid chants of Nebula from fans. Cumberbatch was the third to arrive for the event charmed fans by giving autographs and clicking selfies. The biggest star of the evening was Downey Jr, who was welcomed by a thunderous applause from the crowd. The actor has been playing Tony Stark for the past 10 years and his connect with the fans was quite visible as fans, wearing Iron-Man armour and carrying big posters of RDJ, tried their best to get his attention and he enthusiastically responded, frequently stopping to give autographs and pose of selfies. In a heartwarming moment, Cumberbatch came to the aid of a young fan by bringing a handmade poster to Robert Downey Jr for his autograph. RDJ had also invited kids from Make-A-Wish foundation, whom he declared honorary Avengers. The actor paid a surprise visit to the foundation yesterday. All children involved are currently battling critical illnesses. Soon after meeting their fans the stars made their way to the stage with Russo welcoming them. While Gillian came on the stage with fireworks in the background, Cumberbatch made the Doctor Strange like entry through a portal-like gateway. With the Iron Man theme music playing in the background Downey Jr's welcome on stage was as grand as his superhero persona. "This has to be the coolest ever fan event", Downey Jr, who was in the city for the first time, said. Russo said he decided to come back to city after he saw the love fans here had for Marvel movies during his last visit two years ago for with Captain America: Civil War. The event concluded with Russo making a special request to fans to switch on their LED wrist bands and raise their hands as he said Avengers assemble. The fans were treated to a surprise with a giant image of the last Infinity Stone, the last of the stones that the supervillain Thanos is seeking in the movie. As the stars posed for the final time, the Marina Bay was lit up with red and blue lights. Avengers: Infinity War also featuring Chris Hemsworth, Mark Ruffalo, Chris Evans, Scarlett Johansson, Don Cheadle, Tom Holland, Chadwick Boseman, Paul Bettany, Elizabeth Olsen, Anthony Mackie, Sebastian Stan, Danai Gurira, Letitia Wright, Dave Bautista, Zoe Saldana, and Chris Pratt, releases on April 27 in India. PTI NEW DELHI: The Delhi police on Tuesday filed charge sheet against four people for allegedly misbehaving and stalking Union Minister Smriti Irani, reported news agency ANI. The incident took place last year while she was returning home in Chanakyapuri from Delhi's Indira Gandhi International Airport. The four men, students of Delhi University, had followed Irani's car in Lutyens Delhi in an "inebriated" state in April 2017. They were later arrested for allegedly stalking and outraging the modesty of a woman and released on bail. The FIR was filed under Section 354 D (stalking) and Section 509 (word, gesture or act intended to insult the modesty of a woman) of the Indian Penal Code (IPC). The four students had consumed alcohol at a friend's birthday party and on their way back home, they started chasing down the Union Minister's car, the Delhi Police had said at the time. Irani first made a PCR call and then lodged a formal complaint with the Chankayapuri Police Station after which the students were detained. According to the medical report, the four tested positive for alcohol, confirming that they were intoxicated while trying to overtake the Union Minister's car. The Deputy Commissioner of Police (DCP) said that these students tried to overtake Irani' vehicle, when she was crossing the Moti Bagh flyover. External Affairs Minister Sushma Swaraj has confirmed the death of all four members of the Indian family that had gone missing during a road trip between Oregon to California in US. Taking to Twitter, Sushma expressed grief over the tragic deaths of Sandeep Thottapilly and his family. She further confirmed that all the four bodies of the family members had been recovered from Eel river in California, adding that the government was helping their relatives in India get visa to travel to US. The External Affairs Minister tweeted, My heartfelt condolences on the tragic deaths of Sandeep Thotapilly, Soumya and their two children. All the four bodies have been recovered from Eel river in California (US). We are helping their families in the visa process to enable their travel to US. My heartfelt condolences on the tragic deaths of Sandeep Thotapilly, Soumya and their two children. All the four bodies have been recovered from Eel river in California (US). We are helping their families in the visa process to enable their travel to US. https://t.co/lIO7v8qGI4 Sushma Swaraj (@SushmaSwaraj) April 17, 2018 Earlier reports had said that body of two of the family members Sandeep Thottapilly and his 9-year-old daughter Saachi were found inside their SUV which was submerged in Eel River. Two days before the recovery of their body, the investigators had also found the body of Sandeeps wife Saumya. However, there was earlier no clue of the whereabout of their son, Siddhant. According to The Washington Post,a poster shared on social networking website Facebook suggested that the vehicle in which the family travelled was a 2016-make Honda Pilot, maroon or burgundy in colour. "At approximately 11:30 AM a boating team noticed a gasoline smell emitting from the water approximately 1/2 mile north of the reported crash site (downstream). The searchers began to probe the water and located a vehicle submerged approximately 4-6 feet beneath the water," California's Mendocino County Sheriff's Office had said in a statement. Soon thereafter, search divers entered the water and were able to feel what they believed to be a person inside of the vehicle. Visibility was extremely poor and divers noted the vehicle was encased in a large amount of sediment from the river current, a media release said. Recovery efforts continued for several hours and at approximately 6:30 PM the vehicle was partially removed from the Eel River by use of a tow truck. This provided searchers the ability to conduct a visual inspection of the inside of the vehicle. According to the San Jose Police Department, the Thottapilly family was supposed to have arrived to visit a friend in the San Jose area on April 6 but did not make it as scheduled. The family was last heard from in the town of Klamath, Del Norte County, on April 5. Sandeep grew up in Surat in Gujarat and settled down in the US over 15 years ago. (With PTI inputs) A day after a special National Investigation Agency (NIA) court acquitted all accused in the 2007 Mecca Masjid blast case in Hyderabad, the Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) has demanded an apology from Congress president Rahul Gandhi and former ministers Sushil Kumar Shinde and P Chidambaram for allegedly using the term saffron terror. Addressing a press conference in the national capital on Tuesday, BJP spokesperson Sambit Patra said that Rahul Gandhi and Chidambaram should address a joint press conference and answer all questions raised by BJP on their anti-Hindu remarks. Citing a 2009 telegram, exchanged allegedly between then US Ambassador to India Tim Roemer and US State Department, Patra said that Rahul Gandhi had told the US envoy that there was some support for the LeT in certain elements in India's Muslim community, but the bigger threat maybe of the rise of radical home grown Hindu groups which create tension. We have the full telegram sent in 2009 by the then US Ambassador Tim Roemer to the US State Dept. On the first page is written 'reaching out to Rahul Gandhi and other young parliamentarians', he added. In a sharp attack on the Gandhi scion, Patra said that Rahul Gandhi feels helpless Hindus are terrorists. He added, Dont take Hindus for granted. We (BJP) have always believed in justice for all and appeasement for none. Both Sonia Gandhi and Rahul Gandhi have to apologise before the country. A video was also shown to mediapersons during the press conference wherein Congress leaders Digvijaya Singh, Sushil Kumar Shinde and Chidambaram could be seen using terms Hindu terror or saffron terror. The Congress had on Monday claimed that party chief Rahul Gandhi or the party itself never used the term saffron terror. The Congress asserted that it was of firm belief that terror could not be linked to any religion or community. Congress spokesperson PL Punia said terrorism is a criminal mentality and it cannot be linked to any religion or community. "Rahul Gandhi or the Congress party has never used the words 'saffron terror'," he told reporters when asked about the BJP's allegations. COCHIN: Cochin University of Science and Technology has released admit cards for CUSAT CAT 2018 on its official website - cusat.nic.in The candidates can now visit can visit the university's official website in order to download their admit cards. The Common Admission Test is slated to be held on April 28 and April 29 for candidates wish to get admitted to various Under Graduation and Post Graduation courses offered by the university. The admit cards of the candidates opting TVM and Nagercoil centres will be made available from April 18. Here's how to download the admit card for CUSAT CAT 2018: - Visit the university's official website - cusat.nic.in - Enter your Username and Password to login to your candidate account - Download your admit card The candidates are suggested to take a printout of the downloaded admit card for future reference. They will have to carry their respective admit cards to the examination hall on the day of the examination. The admit cards will have important instructions along with the details of the examination centre and the duration of the examination. NEW DELHI: The Indian Air Force has said it has successfully carried out a whole range of operations that confirm its ability to hold air dominance over the Indian Ocean Region (IOR). The operations had been part of Gagan Shakti 2018, the biennial full-preparedness drill of the Air Force. Gagan Shakti 2018 is being held nationwide by the Indian Air Force (IAF). The exercise began on April 8, and will end on April 22. Even as the IAF affirmed to itself its ability to exert aerial dominance, IAF chief Air Chief Marshal BS Dhanoa visited the northern and western sectors to take stock of progress in these regions. The marine operations saw the IAF's Sukhoi Su-30 MKI and Sepecat Jaguar take part in missions that showed off the capability of using fighter jets of the Air Force from either coast for maritime operations on the opposite side. In the first phase of testing out the Air Force's ability to work together with the Indian Navy (IN) to ensure dominance of both the airspace and surface over the seas, operations were carried out over the western seaboard. "Missions have been flown in the initial phase to address both near and in depth targets over the Western Sea Board utilising Su-30 and Jaguar fighter aircraft equipped with the potent Brahmos and Harpoon Anti-Ship missiles respectively," read a post by the IAF on the operations. The Air Force also said it had underscored its wide range of options by using Su-30 fighters from air bases closer to the eastern coast for operations over the Arabian Sea. "The Su-30 ac (aircraft) has also showcased its strategic reach by operating from the eastern most air bases on the peninsula and engaging maritime targets well out into the western seaboard with support of AAR (air-to-air refuelling)," read a post by the IAF. The maritime component of the Gagan Shakti 2018 exercises will now shift to the second phase, where the IAF will conduct operations with the Navy over the Bay of Bengal. " the focus has now shifted in Phase-II to addressing targets over the Eastern Sea Board right up to the Malacca Straits. The full compliment (sic) of Maritime Assets would now operate from bases in the Southern peninsula and Andaman & Nicobar islands," the post said on what is to come. The IAF Su-30s and Jaguars will also fly operations with the Navy's Poseidon P8I, which is an anti-submarine warfare and maritime early warning surveillance specialist. "Such demonstrations of extended reach utilizing potent standoff weapons in Joint coordinated Operations with the IN has adequately show cased the IAF ability to support the IN in order to dominate the IOR and effectively address any misadventure by an adversary in our area of interest," IAF said. Gagan Shakti is a set of exercises held once every two years to test out the operating procedures and doctrines of the IAF, and also to as a training scenario for a multi-front war. The Indian Air Force (IAF) has to be prepared to carry out a variety of assault operations in extremely testing conditions whenever required. Despite a long list of challenges that it has to overcome, IAF remains capable of clamping down every threat with a heavy hand. A glimpse of this was seen during the ongoing Gaganshakti 2018 training when commandos and raiding crafts were dropped in a night-time combat practice exercise. In a video post on its official social media pages, the IAF showcased its ability to insert combat-ready commandos from aircraft in night-time operations. In the training mode, several commandos can be seen jumping out of an aircraft. Rubberised raiding crafts were also parachuted independently as the training mission involved fulfilling objectives in areas surrounded by water. It is believed that overcoming such terrain-related challenges is crucial in determining the level of success during covert assault operations. #GaganShakti2018 -Glimpses of Airborne Assault mission involving combination airdrop of a 'CombatRubberisedRaidingCraft & Combat ready Commandos by night. Missions are undertaken to insert Special Forces into areas surrounded by water to achieve the objectives.@SpokespersonMoD pic.twitter.com/qhnuNyXTd2 Indian Air Force (@IAF_MCC) April 16, 2018 Assault is but one of the many facets of the IAF. Providing rescue and relief - during war and national emergencies - are also equally important areas where the role of IAF is crucial. Last week, as part of the Gaganshakti exercise, a Globe Master aircraft flew from Leh to Chandigarh carrying 88 'patients' in a medical drill conducted to demonstrate IAF's ability to evacuate casualties. The Gaganshakti exercise is one of the biggest ever undertaken by IAF. A massive show of aerial strength, it is being regarded as crucial to establishing IAF's ability to secure the western front as well as India's borders with China. According to media reports, after conducting close to 5000 sorties in three days at the western front, the exercise has now shifted to the eastern front where target practice, aerial combats and more such training modules would be undertaken. Stockholm: India and Sweden on Tuesday agreed on an innovation partnership for a 'win-win' outcome and decided to strengthen their defence and security cooperation. In a joint press statement after his talks with Swedish PM Stefan Lofven, Prime Minister Narendra Modi said they focused on how Sweden can help India in its development journey. The two sides have agreed on a Joint Action Plan, he said and added that India and Sweden have agreed to strengthen cooperation in areas of defence production and cyber- security, among other things. PM Modi also said that Sweden had been a strong contributor to the 'Make in India' programme. "This is my first visit to Sweden and a visit by an Indian PM after a gap of nearly 30 years. We are hopeful that in future also, we will take our relationships forward, particularly in the area of defence," he said. On his part, Swedish PM lauded India as a "global power" and said the two countries are a "perfect match". "I would like to commend the Indian government and its strong focus on innovation as a key to progress and prosperity. India and Sweden will work on a security agreement." Infusing new energy into our bilateral relationship, PM @narendramodi and @SwedishPM had fruitful discussion on issues related to cooperation in innovation, trade & investment, culture and exchanged views on regional and multilateral cooperation at the delegation-level talks. pic.twitter.com/UsYNWns7Zi Raveesh Kumar (@MEAIndia) April 17, 2018 Two documents were agreed to between India and Sweden following the delegation-level talks led by PM @narendramodi and @SwedishPM - Innovation Partnership and Joint Action Plan to maximise our bilateral cooperation for the benefit of our people. pic.twitter.com/at137oaIZ0 Raveesh Kumar (@MEAIndia) April 17, 2018 Earlier, PM Modi called on King Gustaf and exchanged views on strengthening bilateral cooperation across several sectors. He arrived in the capital of Sweden on Monday, the first bilateral visit by an Indian PM to the Nordic nation in 30 years. Lofven received PM Modi at the airport and the two leaders travelled together in the same vehicle from the airport to the hotel. Scripting history! PM @narendramodi arrives in Stockholm on a first bilateral visit by an Indian PM in 30 years to a warm and personal welcome by @SwedishPM Stefan Lofven at the airport and to participate in the first ever India-Nordic Summit. pic.twitter.com/leAsRMGKT3 Raveesh Kumar (@MEAIndia) April 16, 2018 10 engagements in 10 hours- a hectic day begins for PM @narendramodi in Stockholm! Call on King of Sweden, bilateral meeting with @SwedishPM & 4 Nordic countries' leaders, roundtable meeting with Swedish CEOs, call by Leader of Opposition, India-Nordic Summit and Community event. pic.twitter.com/mhq7vmYKQ2 Raveesh Kumar (@MEAIndia) April 17, 2018 Royal start to the day! PM @narendramodi called on His Majesty the King Carl XVI Gustaf of Sweden. Leaders exchanged views on strengthening bilateral cooperation across several sectors. pic.twitter.com/RkpydROmO9 Raveesh Kumar (@MEAIndia) April 17, 2018 A relationship that has grown in intensity over the years and has a huge potential! PM @narendramodi met with @SwedishPM Stefan Lofven. The two leaders had a productive exchange of views on bilateral and regional issues. pic.twitter.com/F66LfFgQwT Raveesh Kumar (@MEAIndia) April 17, 2018 PM Modi is in Sweden on the first leg of his five-day foreign tour which will also take him to the UK where he will attend the Commonwealth Heads of Government Meeting (CHOGM). Ahead of his visit, he had said in New Delhi that he was looking forward to deepening bilateral engagement with both countries in a number of areas including trade, investment and clean energy. From Sweden, PM Modi will on Tuesday night travel to the UK where he will attend the CHOGM, besides holding bilateral talks with his British counterpart Theresa May. He will also have a brief stopover in Berlin, Germany, on April 20 while on his way back home. (With PTI inputs) NEW DELHI: MHA former Under Secretary RVS Mani on Tuesday said that the resignation submitted by Special NIA Judge Ravinder Reddy, who had delivered the verdict in Mecca Masjid blast case, was not under any pressure. Special NIA judges are not appointed by Centre, he added. "Special NIA judges are not selected by Centre. There is no way in which centre can pressurise a sessions judge. If he is saying he has resigned for personal reasons, we must respect that," said RVS Mani, MHA former Under Secretary. Mani's statement comes a day after Special NIA Judge Ravinder Reddy submitted his resignation to the Chief Justice of Andhra Pradesh. Earlier on Monday, a special NIA court chaired by Reddy had acquitted all the 10 accused including Swami Aseemanand in the Hyderabad's Mecca Masjid blast case citing a lack of evidence. The 10 persons include - Nabakumar Sirkar alias Swami Aseemanand, Devender Gupta, Lokesh Sharma alias Ajay Tiwari, Lakshman Das Maharaj, Mohanlal Rateshwar and Rajender Chowdhary. All of them are members of right-wing Hindu organization Abhinav Bharat. On May 18, 2007, a powerful blast killed nine people and injured 58 during Friday prayers at Mecca Masjid near Hyderabad's Charminar. The NIA took over the case from the Central Bureau of Investigation (CBI) in 2011. At the time, 10 people were named as accused by the central probing agency. However, only five Devendra Gupta, Lokesh Sharma, Swami Aseemanand, Bharat Mohanlal Rateshwar and Rajendra Chowdhary were arrested. Two accused persons Sandeep V Dange and Ramchandra Kalsangra are still absconding. Another accused Sunil Joshi was murdered during the probe. A total of 226 witnesses were examined during the trial and as many as 411 documents were exhibited. In March 2017, a court in Rajasthan had sentenced Gupta and another convict to life in jail in the Ajmer Dargah blast case. New Delhi: India on Tuesday filed its second round of written reply in the International Court of Justice (ICJ) relating to the case of Kulbhushan Jadhav who was sentenced to death by a Pakistani military court in April last year on charges of espionage and terrorism. The External Affairs Ministry said the reply was filed in keeping with an order of the ICJ earlier this year. Jadhav was sentenced to death by a Pakistani military court in April last year on charges of espionage and terrorism. The ICJ in May last year had halted his execution on India's appeal. India had first approached the ICJ on May 8 last year for "egregious violation" of the provisions of the Vienna Convention on Consular Relations, 1963 by Pakistan in the matter. The Court had on May 18, 2017, passed an order obligating Pakistan to not carry out the sentence that was awarded to Jadhav which India called a "farcical trial" by a military court of Pakistan. "As per the Court order, India had filed written pleadings in the case on September 13, 2017, and Pakistan filed its counter-memorial on December 13, 2017. Today, India filed its Reply to Pakistan's submissions to the court. Pakistan has been given time till July 17, 2018, by the Court to file its response (Rejoinder)," the MEA said. Pakistan claims its security forces arrested Jadhav from restive Balochistan province on March 3, 2016, after he reportedly entered from Iran. However, India maintains that Jadhav was kidnapped from Iran where he had business interests after retiring from the Navy. Jadhav's sentencing had evoked a sharp reaction in India. After India approached the ICJ, a 10-member bench on May 18 restrained Pakistan from executing Jadhav till adjudication of the case. The MEA today said India remains committed to making all possible efforts to secure and protect the rights of Jadhav. New Delhi: At a time when there is a visible anger among the masses against the Kathua and Unnao rape cases, a recent survey has claimed that only a third of respondents feel that crime against women has increased post the 2012 Nirbhaya case while nearly half of them believe that it is at the same level. The survey was conducted by LocalCircles, which surveyed nearly 16,000 respondents. The survey found that 37 percent of Indians think that the rate of crime against women has gone up while 50 percent of them said the situation is same as it was in the past. Nearly 6 percent of those surveyed said that the rate of crime against women has gone down. However, the National Crime Records Bureau (NCRB) report of 2016 claims that as many as 39 crimes against women were reported in India every hour, up from 21 in 2007. LocalCircles conducted another poll on what the residents of the national capital think about the safety of women in the city and found that 75 percent citizens felt that the government has not taken any major initiative in last four years to reduce crime against women. Only 16 percent of the respondents said that some steps were taken to ensure the safety of women. On the night of December 16, 2012, the brutal gangrape of a paramedical student by six men on a moving bus in the national capital shook the nation for the sheer brutality and torture inflicted on the hapless girl. The girl and her male companion fought bravely but she suffered fatal injuries and was admitted to Delhi's Safdarjung hospital. Despite the best efforts by the doctors, her condition kept on deteriorating and she had to be moved to a Singapore hospital even as thousands of youngsters protested on the streets of Delhi demanding justice for her. She finally succumbed to her injuries on December 29, 2012. The brutality inflicted upon the victim, who was later addressed as 'Nirbhaya', triggered a massive outrage across the country with thousands taking to streets demanding justice to the girl. Seeing the massive anger against the heinous crime, the government was forced to set up a three-member committee to suggest changes in the anti-rape laws. One of the perpetrators of the crime was a juvenile who was sent to a juvenile home for just 3 years while another accused died mysteriously in the jail during the trial. But even several years after the horrific crime that shook the entire nation, justice is yet to be fully delivered to the girl's family and there has been no significant decline in crime against women. (With IANS inputs) NEW DELHI: Soon after an acute cash crunch was reported from parts of the country, Congress president Rahul Gandhi on Tuesday launched a scathing attack on Prime Minister Narendra Modi saying that the latter has destroyed the banking system. Citing instance of the multi-million Punjab National Bank (PNB) scam involving celebrity jeweller Nirav Modi, the Gandhi scion said that despite the Diamond merchant fleeing with Rs 30,000 crore, the Prime Minister kept calm and maintained silence. ATM #CashCrunch Rahul Gandhi (@RahulGandhi) April 17, 2018 Taking a dig at demonetisation, the Congress chief alleged that PM Modi ceased the circulation of Rs 500 and Rs 1000 notes from the Indian markets and handed them over to Nirav Modi. "Modi Ji (Narendra Modi) has destroyed the banking system. Nirav Modi fled with Rs 30,000 crore and the Prime Minister didn't utter a word. We were forced to stand in queues as he snatched 500-1000 rupee notes from our pockets and put in Nirav Modi's pocket," said Rahul Gandhi. "Rahul further said that the Prime Minister is afraid of facing Parliament. Be it the issue of Rafale, or the issue of Nirav Modi, PM Modi won't stand in Parliament to speak up. If we ask him to speak for just 15 minutes, he will not stand up to speak," Rahul added. Severe cash crisis has thrown life out of gear as ATMs have run dry in several states and cities including Telangana, Hyderabad, Varanasi, Vadodara, Bhopal, Patna and a few areas in Delhi. Cash-starved customers have been queuing in large numbers outside ATMs and banks for the last few days in several cities to withdraw currency notes from vending machines, but most of them were either out of service or had a board notifying "no cash". Many customers also went to the bank branches but several bank officials said that the banks' infrastructure has been unable to handle the huge rush resulting in the long serpentine queue. Officials of several bank branches said that the banks' infrastructure is unable to handle the huge rush resulting in long serpentine queue. With public anger rising across the country over cash availability, some media reports quoting bank officials said that the sudden spike in number of people willing to withdraw huge amount of cash stems from the fear of 'bail-in clause' in the Financial Resolution and Deposit Insurance (FRDI) Bill. Top headlines of the day: 1. Indian family goes missing during road trip in US, two found inside SUV submerged in river An Indian family went missing in the US last week while travelling from Oregon to California. According to The Washington Post, after a week-long search for them, bodies of two of the family members were found inside their SUV, which was submerged in Eel River, on Sunday. Read full report 2. Chinese soldiers told to lose weight and shape up to project 'first-class image' According to a South China Morning Post report, President Xi Jinping recently signed the PLA Common Regulations which has a number of compulsory directives for troops. Of these, getting into shape has been given primary importance. Read full report 3. India must create 8.1 million jobs annually: World Bank India needs to create 8.1 million jobs a year to maintain its employment rate, said a World Bank report which projected the country's growth to accelerate to 7.3 percent in the current financial year. Read full report 4. Four Delhi University students booked for allegedly stalking and misbehaving with Smriti Irani The Delhi police on Tuesday filed charge sheet against four people for allegedly misbehaving and stalking Union Minister Smriti Irani, reported news agency ANI. Read full report 5. Sakshi Maharaj seeks action against Lucknow 'nightclub' he 'mistakenly' inaugurated Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) MP Sakshi Maharaj, who courted a controversy yet again by inaugurating a nightclub in Lucknow, and now sought action against the same. Read full report Stockholm: Prime Minister Narendra Modi on Tuesday held bilateral meetings with his counterparts from Finland, Denmark, Iceland and Norway and discussed ways to enhance ties with these Nordic countries in key areas such as trade and investment, and renewable energy. He met the leaders of the four Nordic countries on the sidelines of the India-Nordic Summit here. PM Modi met Danish Premier Lars Lokke Rasmussen and held talks on renewing and enhancing cooperation. The two leaders expressed their mutual desire to take the relationship forward, External Affairs Ministry Spokesperson Raveesh Kumar said. After the bilateral meeting between PM Modi and Rasmussen, documents were exchanged between the two sides in areas of animal husbandry, dairying and urban development. "Glad to have met Prime Minister Lars Lokke Rasmussen of Denmark. Our talks were productive and extensive, aimed at strengthening relations between our countries," PM Modi tweeted after the meeting. He also had an "excellent meeting" with his Finnish counterpart Juha Sipila. The two leaders discussed enhancing cooperation in trade and investment, renewable energy, space, waste management, start-up and education, Kumar said. "Prime Minister of Finland, Mr Juha Sipila and I met in Stockholm today. We had excellent discussions on deepening avenues of cooperation between India and Finland," PM Modi said in a tweet. Sipila also tweeted about the meeting, saying, "Fruitful discussions with PM of India in Stockholm. Recalled our first meeting in Mumbai in 2016 and had concrete negotiations how to promote our cooperation further in energy, space, education." PM Modi also met Iceland Premier Katrin Jakobsdottir on the sidelines of the India-Nordic Summit. "We deliberated on ways to boost economic and people-to-people relations between our nations," he said after the meeting. "PM urged Icelandic companies to look at India as an investment destination in blue economy and geothermal energy and strengthen cooperation in education, tourism and culture," Kumar said of the meeting between the two leaders. The two leaders reviewed the full range of India-Iceland relations during their meeting, the PMO said. Later, Modi also met his Norwegian counterpart Erna Solberg. "Had a wonderful meeting with Prime Minister Erna Solberg. There is immense potential to boost relations with Norway especially in areas such as innovation, trade and clean energy," PM Modi said after the meeting. The PM had an engaging interaction with Premier Solberg on trade and investment, shipping and port-development, blue economy, renewable energy, health, IT and green transport solutions, Kumar said. Earlier in the day, PM Modi held delegation-level talks with his Swedish counterpart Stefan Lofven on a wide range of issues. The Nordic countries comprise Denmark, Finland, Iceland, Norway and Sweden. In the first bilateral visit by an Indian Prime Minister in three decades, Narendra Modi on Monday landed in Stockholm, where he was greeted by his Swedish counterpart Stefan Lofven. #WATCH: Prime Minister Modi received by Swedish Prime Minister Stefan Lofven on arrival in Stockholm, #Sweden. pic.twitter.com/Vj9i2h8Edx ANI (@ANI) April 16, 2018 "Scripting history! PM @narendramodi arrives in Stockholm on a first bilateral visit by an Indian PM in 30 years to a warm and personal welcome by @SwedishPM Stefan Lofven at the airport and to participate in the first ever India-Nordic Summit," Ministry of External Affairs spokesperson Raveesh Kumar tweeted. The two Prime Ministers travelled together in the same vehicle from the airport to the hotel. In a special gesture exuding warmth and hospitality, PM @narendramodi and @SwedishPM are traveling together in the same vehicle from the airport to the Hotel. pic.twitter.com/S20UhtsZ4h Raveesh Kumar (@MEAIndia) April 16, 2018 Later, the Prime Minister met the Indian diaspora outside a hotel in Sweden. A group of students from the KTH Royal Institute of Technology of Sweden, present at the venue to interact with the Prime Minister carried banners that read "Welcome PM" and shouted slogans of "Bharat Mata ki Jai", reported news agency ANI. India and Sweden are jointly organising the India-Nordic Summit in Stockholm on Tuesday, which will also be attended by the prime ministers of Finland, Norway, Denmark and Iceland. Later, PM Modi will fly to the UK where he will attend the Commonwealth Heads of Government Meeting (CHOGM) and hold bilateral talks with his British counterpart Theresa May. On Wednesday evening, PM Modi will address "Bharat Ki Baat, Sabke Saath" in a globally broadcast live event from the historic Central Hall Westminster in London, following in the footsteps of speakers such as Mahatma Gandhi and Martin Luther King Jr. According to the Europe India Forum, the organisers of Bharat Ki Baat, Sabke Saath, the Indian prime minister will address people of all nationalities. "It will be a no-holds-barred interaction with Prime Minister Modi, in a manner and format never witnessed before," said Vijay Chauthaiwale, in charge of the Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) Foreign Affairs Department. With agency inputs NEW DELHI: Bollywood superstar Salman Khan on Tuesday filed a petition before Jodhpur District and Sessions Court seeking permission to visit four countries. Salman is currently out on bail. The actor was granted bail on April 7 in the 1998 blackbuck poaching case. He was released on two bail bonds of Rs 25,000 each. Salman was pronounced guilty and sentenced to five years of imprisonment for killing two blackbucks. The actor had spent two nights in Jodhpur Central Jail before he was granted bail by the Jodhpur court. While granting bail to the Bollywood star, the court had said that Salman would need its permission if he wants to travel abroad while out on bail. On April 5, Jodhpur court proclaimed the actor found him guilty under Section 9/51 of the Wildlife (Protection) Act in a blackbuck poaching case while acquitting all other actors accused - Saif Ali Khan, Tabu, Neelam and Sonali Bendre. Along with five years of imprisonment, the Bollywood superstar was also fined Rs 10,000. Tamil Nadu Governor Banwarilal Purohit has brought himself into the eye of a controversy by patting a senior lady reporter on her cheek without taking her consent. The journalist's tweet about the incident has gone viral, and a collective of journalists in Chennai is preparing to demand a formal apology from the Governor. The senior journalist, Lakshmi Subramanian, is a reporter for a well-known weekly magazine. The tweet sparked a heated debate on Purohit's intentions, but has helped once again underscore the critical role of consent in any relationship, professional or personal. Lakshmi said in her tweet that she had asked Governor Purohit a question at a press conference. Instead of replying, he patted her on the cheek without her consent. "I asked TN Governor Banwarilal Purohit a question as his press conference was ending. He decided to patronisingly - and without consent - pat me on the cheek as a reply," read her tweet. I asked TN Governor Banwarilal Purohit a question as his press conference was ending. He decided to patronisingly - and without consent - pat me on the cheek as a reply. @TheWeekLive pic.twitter.com/i1jdd7jEU8 Lakshmi Subramanian (@lakhinathan) April 17, 2018 "Washed my face several times. Still not able to get rid of it. So agitated and angered Mr Governor Banwarilal Purohit. It might be an act of appreciation by you and grandfatherly attitude. But to me you are wrong," said Lakshmi in another tweet. Washed my face several times. Still not able to get rid of it. So agitated and angered Mr Governor Banwarilal Purohit. It might be an act of appreciation by you and grandfatherly attitude. But to me you are wrong. Lakshmi Subramanian (@lakhinathan) April 17, 2018 This post has gone viral, with about 1600 likes and 1900 tweets, and hundreds of replies locked in argument with each other. Some claimed the touch was a 'good touch' and argued that Purohit is like a father figure to the journalist. he s like father figure.his entire career speaks volumes abt his straightforwardness and not an iota of suspecian. Annakkavur Kesavan (@AnnakkavurKesav) April 17, 2018 No doubt could have been avoided. No women is an object and her self respect is a birth right. Having said that my 1st impression is, this looks an innocuous tap of an old man, similar to the one by elders at home when they r unable 2 provide suitable reply 2 a younger one. arul gnana prakash (@arulgprakash) April 17, 2018 Lot of difference between good touch and bad touch. If she feels it's bad touch she can object it in spot itself Om Saravanan (@saravanan2111) April 17, 2018 It was nothing more than a grandfatherly pat. If Governor's intentions had been different, he would not have been so public about it. So don't see motives where there are none. @lalitha_jr @rkmuthwho @Vaniraman20 Agathian (@kapalisvara) April 17, 2018 Others would have none of this, and pointed out that father figure or not, consent is consent, and pointed out that the meeting was a professional one between the holder of a Constitutional position and journalists. stop the crap!! He is no one to her!! C (@chriscussions) April 17, 2018 What crap? He can be a father figure without touching her. Deviprasad (@deviprasadv) April 17, 2018 This is not a hone or family. He invited for a press meet. He should be prepared to face the Press. One can't escape by citing old age .. Elango Subramaniam (@ElangoCMTN2021) April 17, 2018 Without her permission he touched wr evr it b.. u ppl r not talking abt it.. want to hold up governor its really shame CSK ???????? (@luckylosser19) April 17, 2018 Had he ever done that to a male reporter till now? If the answer is no, then this act is something fishy. The whole purpose of this press conference is questionable in the end. #Nirmaladevi #Banwarilal Dexter (@ajithpkc) April 17, 2018 With out consent! File an FIR. PV Natarajan (@pvnatarajan) April 17, 2018 DMK Rajya Sabha MP K Kanimozhi too came out against the Governor's gesture and made a point about the violation of personal space. "Even if the intention is above suspicion, a person who holds a public office has to understand that there is a decorum to it and violating a woman journalist's personal space does not reflect the dignity or the respect which should be shown to any human being," Kanimozhi tweeted. Even if the intention is above suspicion, a person who holds a public office has to understand that there is a decorum to it and violating a woman journalist's personal space does not reflect the dignity or the respect which should be shown to any human being. Kanimozhi (???????) (@KanimozhiDMK) April 17, 2018 A group of Chennai-based journalists have decided to organise a protest near Raj Bhavan in the morning on Tuesday. They have said they would seek an appointment with the Governor to meet him in person and handover a memorandum signed by the journalists demanding an apology. Ironically, the incident had come at a press conference that Purohit had called the Chennai Raj Bhavan to announce a probe into the alleged 'sex for degrees' scandal at the Madurai Kamaraj University, of which the Tamil Nadu Governor is the de facto Chancellor. Veteran Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) leader and former Union minister Yashwant Sinha has launched yet another scathing attack on the National Democratic Alliance (NDA) government at the Centre, led by Prime Minister Narendra Modi. From the economic situation, women safety, foreign policy to BJPs internal democracy, the veteran leader has raised questions on the governments stand on a range of issues in an opinion piece written for The Indian Express. While he dismissed the governments claims of India being the worlds fastest growing economy, he pointed that rapes had become the order of the day, pointing that even BJP workers were involved in such crimes. He further said that the foreign policy of the country now consists of Modi visiting different countries and hugging foreign dignitaries. Heres a look at what the former Union minister said about governments role in different issues: Economic policies: Sinha called the current economic situation in the country grim, dismissing claims by the government of India being the worlds fastest growing economy. He wrote, A fast growing economy does not accumulate the kind of non-performing assets in its banks, as we have done over the last four years. In a fast growing economy the farmers are not in distress, the youth are not without jobs, small businesses do not stand destroyed and savings and investment do not fall as drastically as they have done over the last four years. He further made reference to the frauds hitting banking sector saying that the scams were tumbling out of the closet one after another. He also targeted the government over not doing anything about scamsters who fled from the country. Women safety: According to Sinha, women are more unsafe today than ever. He accused the government of being apologists rather than acting against those committing crimes. Pointing that our own people are involved in such crime, the BJP leader said that rapes have become the order of the day. Foreign policy: Sinha said that the foreign policy of the Narendra Modi government was completely devoid of substance. He pointed to the standoff with nations like Pakistan and China, saying the latter was trampling over Indias interests. The sum total of our foreign policy seems to consist of frequent foreign visits by the prime minister and his hugging foreign dignitaries, he wrote. BJPs internal democracy: Sinha claimed that internal democracy in the BJP was completely destroyed and even Members of Parliament do not get a chance to share their views. He said that Prime Minister Modi did not have any time for members of the party. Democracy: Describing it as the most important threat, Sinha alleged that institutions had been demeaned and denigrated. He further said referred to Parliament as a joke, blaming PM Modi for not taking efforts to end the continuous disruptions of both Lok Sabha and Rajya Sabha. Making a reference to the recent press conference by senior judges of the Supreme Court, Sinha said that even judges had said that democracy in our country is under threat. Cautioning BJP MPs against unity of opposition parties, Sinha wrote, "I do not know how many of you will get the ticket for the next Lok Sabha elections but if previous experience is any guide, half of you at least will not. The chances of your winning the election, even if you get the ticket are fairly remote. In the last Lok Sabha election the BJP had secured only 31 per cent votes; 69 per cent was polled against it. So, if the opposition unites, you will be nowhere." Nashik: At a time when the today's youth appears to be extremely obsessed with smartphones and hi-tech gadgets, there is a young boy in Maharashtra's Nashik district who is poles apart from the boys of his generation. Hailing from an ordinary but a highly religious family, Charudutt Thorat is passionate about writing couplets and bhajans. Away from the world of internet and smartphones, Thorat appears to be lost in himself. His love for writing couplets, devotional poetries and bhajans (devotional songs) is so intense that there is not a single corner left in his home where he has not scribbled something. It may sound bizarre for those who are not aware, but a visit to the Thorat house in Nasik is enough to tell that Charudutt is different. On almost everything and at every place in his house - from the drawing to the courtyard, from the bedroom to kitchen, from the storeroom to wash basins - Charudutt has written couplets and bhajans. His parents were initially worried when he first began to scribble couplets and bhajans on walls, floor and ceilings, but they soon realised that their son is not like today's youths who love to roam around with ear-phones plugged into their ears. His mother recalls how since his childhood, Charudutt used to read the teachings of famous 13th century Marathi saint, poet, philosopher and yogi of the Nath tradition Saint Gyaneshar and 17th-century poet-saint of the Bhakti movement in Maharashtra Saint Tukaram, who is known for his 'Abhanga' devotional poetry. Due to his strange love for devotional poetries and bhajans, this 16-year-old Nashik boy has become popular as the 'miracle boy' in the local circles. New Delhi: Renowned Iranian filmmaker Majid Majidi is ready to floor the audience with 'Beyond The Clouds'. The film features Ishaan Khatter and Malavika Mohanan in the lead and the trailer of the movie created quite a flutter online upon its release a few days back. The lead pair Ishaan and Malavika play siblings on-screen and the story revolves around their relationship. The cast is busy promoting the film currently which is set to hit the screens on April 20, 2018. Ishaan and Malavika in an interview with BollywoodLife.com came up with a quick guide to the Mumbai slangs which can actually come in handy before watching the film. Typical Mumbaiya slangs such as Bantai which means homie, friend, brother and Dimaag Ka Shot Hona meaning if someone gets pissed of or highly irritated at something etc have been decoded by the lead pair of the film. Watch the video here: 'Beyond The Clouds' is reportedly a grown-up narrative of Majid Majidi's earlier directed masterpiece 'Children of Heaven'. The film has been set in Mumbai and presents the bond between a brother and his sister. Their journey and how the duo deals with turmoil together has been stressed upon. 'Beyond The Clouds' premiered at the BFI London Film Festival 2017. Its original background score has been composed by musical maestro AR Rahman. Mumbai: Veteran actress Shabana Azmi says for the government's 'Beti Bachao, Beti Padhao' campaign to be effective, "our betis (daughters) should be alive". Shabana shared her thoughts at Anu and Shashi Ranjan-organised 20th Beti FLO GR8 Awards 2018, which she attended here on Monday night with Jeetendra, Amit Sadh, Bhumi Pednekar, Huma Qureshi, Anup Jalota and Amruta Fadnavis. Reacting to the shocking incident involving the abduction, rape and murder of an eight-year-old in a village near Kathua in Jammu and Kashmir, Shabana said: "Our country is living in multiple centuries at one time. We are living in the 18th, 19th, 20th and 21st centuries at a time, and this we are experiencing in the way we treat women of this country. "Our women have achieved great heights in their respective careers and have become leaders. But on the other hand, we read and watch such news that I don't have words to express (my emotions). We should all unite and ensure these kinds of incidents don`t happen. "We always say 'Beti Bachao, Beti Padhao', and we should work towards that. But for that, firstly, our betis (daughters) should be alive." Other celebrities also reacted to the incident. Huma Qureshi said: "It`s sad, tragic and heartbreaking. People behind it should be punished. If we are not able to protect an eight-year-old girl as a society, then it is really shameful. "A lot of people are giving political angles to it. I feel very upset about that also. I think justice is what we should be fighting for and arguing about -- and not about making the issue political." On the 20th Beti FLO GR8 Awards 2018, Huma said: "We all believe in the cause of women empowerment and it has become necessary that we encourage women because girls can also bring glory to our country, just like boys. "Girls are doing so much better in every field. Whatever I am today is because of my mother and how she pushed me and supported me. So I am all for the cause of women`s empowerment." Mumbai: Actress Bhumi Pednekar, who has featured in films laced with social messages, says incidents like the rape of an eight-year-old in Jammu and Kashmir's Kathua, shows people are moving towards animalistic and beast-like mentality. Bhumi spoke to the media at the 20th Beti FLO GR8 Awards 2018 here on Monday night. She said: "The kind of circumstances that our country is going through, I feel scared thinking about the future generation. We are moving towards animalistic and beast-like mentality, which is really heartbreaking. "I feel justice must be served to the girl and many other victims like her who have experienced a shameful act like this, so that it doesn't happen again. I am an optimistic person and I feel there will be stricter laws and punishment to zero down incidents like these and so that people will think twice before committing such crimes." Currently, Bhumi is busy with Abhishek Chaubey's "Son Chiriya", in which she will be seen with Sushant Singh Rajput. "We have released my first look for 'Son Chiriya'. As of now, I can't reveal too many details about the film but I can say that it's a special film in a short span of my career. We have worked really hard for this film. This film has a really good director and cast. "It's a different kind of film and I am sure this film will have the same amount of impact like my previous films," she said. Bhumi was felicitated at the Beti FLO GR8 Awards 2018. "I feel really happy when people appreciate your (my) work. The year 2017 has been really successful year for me. Two of my films ('Toilet - Ek Prem Katha' and 'Shubh Mangal Saavdhan') released last year and both of them received appreciation from the audience and they had a major impact on the viewers." New Delhi: Companies may restructure the reimbursement component of employees' salary to make sure that the said part does not attract Goods and Services Tax (GST), a financial daily has reported. The Economic Times has said that these reimbursements components may include those on home rentals, telephone charges beyond a certain limit, medical premiums for extra coverage, health check-ups, transportation among other benefits that could come under the GST ambit. ET quoting tax experts said that the move may be necessitated in the wake of the recent Authority of Advance Ruling (AAR) ruling that the GST will be levied on recovery of food expenses from employees for canteen services. The Kerala bench of the AAR in its order last week said that recovery of food expenses from the employees for canteen services provided by a company are taxable as a supply of service under the Goods and Services Tax (GST). The ruling was given by the AAR on an application filed by Malappuram-based Caltech Polymers. The company approached the AAR to seek advance ruling on whether recovery of food expenses from employees for canteen services would come under definition of outward supplies and attract the GST. "... recovery of food expenses from the employees for the canteen services provided by company would come under the definition of 'outward supply' as defined in Section 2(83) of the Act, 2017, and therefore, taxable as a supply of service under GST," said the AAR order. Under the Factories Act, 1948, any factory employing more than 250 workers is required to provide canteen facility to its employees. Levying of GST on canteen services provided by employers to employees would increase the compliance burden of companies, PwC Partner and Leader Indirect Tax Pratik Jain told PTI. The government, Jain said, should either provide some guidance on such aspects or consider providing an exemption from GST on such recoveries. He further said that it was not clear whether GST would be levied at 5 per cent (without input credit) as canteen shall apply on all such recoveries from employees or a residual rate of 18 per cent will be applicable, treating it as outdoor catering services. In the first week of this month, the finance ministry had clarified that a 5 percent GST will be levied on food and drinks supplied by the Indian Railways or IRCTC in trains, platforms or stations. This was done to bring uniformity in the rate of GST applicable to supply of food and drinks made available in trains, platforms or stations. With PTI Inputs Akshaya is a Sanskrit word meaning 'the one that never diminishes'. It is one of the most auspicious festivals for the Hindus and a significant day for people who trade in gold and other precious metals. It is believed that any business venture or a new initiative that commences on this day will bloom, grow and turn out to be a success. So people who plan to do business, take the first step on this very day. Going by the Hindu calendar, the third day in the month of Vaishakha is celebrated as Akshaya Tritiya or Akha Teej. It usually coincides with a day in the month of April in the Gregorian calendar. This year, Akshaya Tritiya falls on April 18 (Wednesday). Devotees start their new business on this day or initiative a new beginning after offering a Puja to the almighty. Some people even buy gold as a gesture to invite everlasting prosperity. A number of legends are associated with this auspicious day. Heres taking a look at some of them: 1) Lord Kubera (the treasurer of wealth) is believed to have received his lost fortune back. 2) On this day, poor Sudama was blessed with an abundance of wealth by his dear friend Lord Krishna. 3) Maa Annapurna was born on this day. 4) It is also believed to be the birth date of Parashuram, the sixth incarnation of Lord Vishnu. 5) Ved Vyasa started penning the Mahabharata on this day. Akshaya Tritiya Tithi According to Drikpanchang.com, Akshaya Tritiya tithi begins at 3:45 am on April 18 and ends at 01:29 am on the following day. Akshaya Tritiya Puja timings The Puja can be performed between 6:19 am to 12:34 pm on April 18. Akshaya Tritiya Puja Vidhi You can offer your prayers to Lord Vishnu and his consort Lakshmi or Kuber and the Goddess of wealth- Lakshmi, his co-custodian of treasure on this day. Use a wooden platform and spread a yellow or red coloured cloth over it. Now carefully place an idol of Lakshmi and Narayan or Lakshmi and Kubera on the platform. Make sure, Lakshmi is to be placed to Vishnus left and to the right of Kubera. You may also use images of the deities. Light an earthen, brass or silver lamp with ghee or oil and a few incense sticks. Invite the God and the Goddess to accept your offerings and prayers. Invoke the Gods to welcome them into your home and accept your humble offerings. Apply haldi, kumkum and chandan and put akshat. Offer banana, coconut, paan supari, sweets and water to the Gods. Chant the Lakshmi Kubera Mantra and one of these Mantras. Meditate for a while and then seek the God and Goddess blessings. Now perform the Lakshmi Aarti by ringing the bell and conclude the puja. Chennai: Tamil Nadu Governor Banwarilal Purohit on Tuesday ruled out his resignation in the wake of a raging controversy over an alleged 'sex scandal' in a college in the state involving an assistant professor. Nirmala Devi, an assistant professor in Devanga Arts College in Aruppukottai in Virudhunagar district has been arrested on the charge of allegedly suggesting to some girl students that they yield themselves to keep the "higher-ups" in the Madurai Kamaraj University happy so that the college gets facilities. She is heard making the demand in an audio clip that went viral on the social media, as per media reports. In the audio clip, Nirmala Devi is said to be heard saying that she was on the dais moving around at a function in which the Governor was present and she has access to top officials. However, no names were said in that audio clip, IANS reported. Responding to questions Purohit said, "I attend so many convocation functions. So many people move around dais. I have not seen her (Nirmala Devi`s) face till date. I don`t know that lady at all." Purohit was at the receiving end with reporters asking a number of questions saying the woman teacher has made repeated references to him and would he resign to stay away from the probe. "My public life has always been transparent. You can also probe it. It is nonsense and rubbish," Purohit said, as per IANS. Asked repeatedly about Opposition parties' demand for his resignation, he said, "Let them do their job, I am doing my job." I've not seen her, she hasn't met me. Let police do its job. VC narrated everything to me & I've set up a committee for investigation: TN Governor, Banwarilal Purohit on woman lecturer arrested in connection with with her alleged advise to students to adjust with some officials pic.twitter.com/xMbktIAN7v ANI (@ANI) April 17, 2018 Asked why he had ordered a probe when the Vice Chancellor had constituted a five-member committee to go into the issue, Purohit said he was the "supreme authority" in matters relating to colleges and universities in the state and rejected state Higher Education Minister Anbazhagan`s statement that the Governor`s decision was arbitrary. "On the basis of the report of the one-man committee I will take stringent action. I assure the people of Tamil Nadu that stringent action will be taken so that such incidents don`t recur. Normally, the Chancellor is empowered to constitute a committee," he said. Purohit further said that the Vice Chancellor had made a mistake in constituting the inquiry and that he had now rectified it. Asked about the time-frame, first, he said it would be within a week, but later amended it to a month or "as early as possible". Replying to questions about the police investigation in the case, he said let the police do its job but as far as the university is concerned "I have ordered a one-man committee probe that will do its job." (With IANS inputs) New Delhi: Telecom regulator Telecom Regulatory Authority of India (TRAI)has unveiled the beta version of a website to let customers compare mobile tariff plans of all operators for all service areas. TRAI tariff data is currently available only for the Delhi circle. The telecom regulator has sought feedback from users about the new site over the next fortnight. As per TRAI act 1997, transparency is an important mandate of TRAI. Presently, Telecom Service Providers (TSPs) offer tariffs at their websites. To enable consumers to see tariffs of different TSPs and different Licensed Service Areas (LSAs) at a single place, a beta version of portal namely www.tariff.trai.gov.in has been released, TRAI said in a circular. Various tariff plans and other tariff instruments are being provided at its website in a downloadable format, for easy access. The data can be used to build tariff-comparison apps and products, just as one sees for insurance or airline fares, TRAI said. Heres how you can compare data tariffs on TRAI website Go to www.tariff.trai.gov.in Choose prepaid and postpaid option Select an operator or multiple operators (Airtel, BSNL, Idea, Jio Tata Tele) Select the price range Choose from various plans viz, unlimited STD calls, unlimited local calls, unlimited roaming Choose your data option Select the validity days Submit your details and you can see and compare--product, price, talktime, validity, TSP and tariff summary LUCKNOW: A seven-member Central Bureau of Investigation (CBI) team on Tuesday reached Makhi police station in Uttar Pradesh's Unnao in connection with the investigation in the alleged gangrape of a 17-year-old girl by a Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) MLA and his associates. Earlier in the day, the CBI registered a fourth case in the matter involving BJP MLA Kuldeep Singh Sengar. In the new case, Shubham Singh, son of Shashi Singh who was accused of taking the alleged victim to the spot of the crime, has been included as an accused. On Monday, Shashi Singh, who is believed to be a close aide of Kuldeep Singh Sengar, was sent to four-day police custody. Last week, Shashi Singh had claimed that the alleged victim in the Unnao rape case had nine months back framed her son Shubham in a false rape case for which he even had to serve a jail term. Sengar was also taken into seven-day police custody last week, after a 17-hour interrogation session. It came after the Allahabad High Court rapped the police for its inaction against the BJP lawmaker who was influencing the "law-and-order machinery". The BJP MLA came under fire after an 18-year-old woman alleged that Kuldeep Singh Sengar and his associates raped her in June 2017 and that authorities had refused to register her complaint. The teen survivor also claimed that the BJP lawmaker is behind the alleged custodial death of her father. He father, aged around 50, was rushed to a hospital from the district jail on Monday night and died during treatment. He had been arrested on April 5 under the Arms Act. ETAH: In yet another brutal case of rape and murder, a seven-year-old girl attending a wedding function was allegedly sexually assaulted and later strangulated to death. The incident took place at around 1.30 am on Tuesday near Mandi Samiti gate on the Aliganj road in UP's Etah. This incident comes amid massive outrage across the country over the rapes of minor in Unnao, Kathua and Surat. The child had gone with her family to attend a wedding ceremony. The accused, a man hired to set up tents on the occasion, lured the little child while others were busy with preparations. He allegedly raped her and strangulated her to death with a rope. After this, the accused fled the spot. The body of the girl was found in an under-construction house in the vicinity of the marriage venue. A rope was found tied around the neck of the girl," said Superintendent of Police Akhilesh Chaurasia. The girl was rushed to the district hospital where she was declared brought dead. The body of the girl has been sent for post-mortem examination. "On the basis of complaints filed by the family members, police have arrested Sonu Jatav," he said. The SP also said, "A case has been registered against the accused for rape and murder of the girl. POCSO Act has also been slapped on the accused since the victim is a minor." The victim's family members later blocked the Etah-Farrukhabad road demanding Rs 10 lakh as compensation. With agency inputs Paris: French President Emmanuel Macron warned on Tuesday that divisions between democracy and authoritarianism in Europe were becoming like a "civil war". Macron used an impassioned speech to the European Parliament, meeting in the eastern French city of Strasbourg, to urge the rest of the union not to become a "generation of sleepwalkers" lured by the siren song of nationalism. The young French leader`s call to arms was a thinly veiled reference to states like Hungary, where populist PM Viktor Orban recently swept back to power, and the right-wing government of Poland which has repeatedly clashed with Brussels. "There seems to be a sort of European civil war, where our differences and sometimes our national egotisms can seem more important than presenting a united face to the world," the 40-year-old president said. "There is a fascination with the illiberal and it`s growing all the time."Macron has become the pro-European poster-boy after his election victory over far-right candidate Marine Le Pen last year stemmed a tide of populism that culminated in Britain`s shock 2016 vote to leave the bloc. But in a speech setting out his vision for sweeping EU reforms, Macron said he was concerned by the growing sense of "doubt" and divisions between eastern and western states. "I don`t want to belong to a generation of sleepwalkers, I don`t want to belong to a generation that`s forgotten its own past," he told MEPs in the eastern French city. "I want to belong to a generation that will defend European sovereignty because we fought to obtain it. And I will not give in to any kind of fixation on authoritarianism."Macron added that in the face of governments accused of cracking down on civil rights "our response is not authoritarian democracy, but the authority of democracy." His speech comes just days after the anti-immigration, eurosceptic Orban won a crushing re-election victory in Hungary. Orban regularly clashes with Brussels but is a "hero" for US President Donald Trump`s former strategist Steve Bannon. Warsaw has meanwhile been locked in conflict with the EU over its controversial court reforms, while Italy has also raised concerns in other capitals after anti-establishment and anti-immigration parties surged in elections in March. Macron`s words were welcomed by European Commission chief Jean-Claude Juncker, who told parliament afterwards: "The true France is back." Juncker`s deputy Frans Timmermans said it was a "call to arms to all of us who believe in European values." The French president meanwhile launched into a spirited defence of his decision to launch air strikes alongside Britain and the United States against alleged regime chemical weapons sites in Syria. "Three countries have intervened, and let me be quite frank, quite honest -- this is for the honour of the international community," said Macron, who earlier this week said he had persuaded Donald Trump to keep US troops in Syria. "These strikes don`t necessarily resolve anything but I think they were important," he said.But in terms of his European reforms, Macron has struggled to win support across Europe for all his proposals. His speech to MEPs is part of a charm offensive ahead of European Parliament elections in May 2019, the first after Britain`s scheduled departure from the EU. Later this week Macron will travel to Berlin for talks with German Chancellor Angela Merkel to try to boost flagging support for his plans for the future of the eurozone. Macron said that France was ready to increase its contribution to the EU`s first post-Brexit multi-year budget, which begins in 2020. But Merkel`s conservative CDU party pushed back on Monday against plans for deeper eurozone integration, including a separate eurozone budget and the expansion of the EU`s bailout fund. Macron separately proposed on Tuesday to create a European fund for communities that take in refugees in a bid to tackle one of the most politically toxic issues facing the EU. EU leaders are set to adopt preliminary Macron-backed plans for eurozone reforms and for an overhaul of its troubled asylum system in June, but there is still a lot of work to do. Fighting to push through reforms at home in the face of mass rail strikes, Macron also faced difficulties in the European Parliament, where his domestic En Marche party is not affiliated to any political group. Wars have almost always been fought between men using axe, swords, guns, bullets, ships, tanks, planes, missiles and nuclear bombs - depending on the era. The next major war, possibly World War 3, could well ditch conventional ways of mounting an attack and even sideline the enormous threat of nukes and instead, be waged in cyberspace. At a time when phones and laptops have already become an integral part of who a person is, invading into these devices on a large scale and have a 'devastating' effect. To this end, the FBI has already issued a warning that Russia is planning to hack into millions of laptops and mobile phones in the UK, and could be used to cripple cities at the click of a button. The warning, which has also issued nearly simultaneously by UK's Government Communications Headquarters (GCHQ), states that Russian cyber agents are at the cusp of breaking into millions of devices used in UK. This could potentially make large swathes of the population vulnerable and open up highly-sensitive government data banks. The British press has also been reporting that Russian cyber agents are planning to seize control of UK's armed forces, energy sector and emergency services. What makes a potential hack alarming is that there is no real scale to measure the lethality of a cyber-attack. There is also, perhaps, no chance of a detection till hackers decide to come out from their incognito state and launch an attack(s). Security experts fear that a cyber hack and consequent attack could, therefore, wreck create absolute carnage as military installations, weapons systems and nuclear arsenals too could be taken over - in the worst case scenario. The threat of World War 3 has been brewing since US, UK and France launched co-ordinated missile strikes in Syria despite Russia's strong warnings. The matter has now become reached an almost emergency-like state. To make things worse, UK and Russia were already engaged in a blame-game over the alleged poisoning of a former Russian spy. World peace, therefore, remains under a big cloud of threat. Washington: The US was considering imposing more sanctions on Russia and the decision will be made "in the near future", White House has said. "We are considering additional sanctions on Russia and a decision will be made in the near future," said White House Press Secretary Sarah Sanders in a statement on Monday, Xinhua news agency reported. The announcement came one day after a senior US official revealed that Washington was preparing to roll out a new round of sanctions on Moscow as early as Monday for its support of the Syrian government. Nikki Haley, the US ambassador to the United Nations, said on Sunday that new sanctions, if they were ready, will be announced on Monday by US Treasury Secretary Steven Mnuchin. "They will go directly to any sort of companies that were dealing with equipment related to (Syrian President) Bashar al-Assad and chemical weapons use," Haley said. The Trump administration has already slapped two rounds of sanctions on Russia in the past few weeks, citing their alleged interference in the 2016 US elections and the engagement in "malicious" cyber attacks. Washington-Moscow ties kept deteriorating over the suspected chemical weapons attack in Syria on April 7, as US President Donald Trump accused Russia, along with Iran, for their support of the Assad administration in Syria, whom Washington said should be responsible for the deadly incident. The US, Britain and France on Saturday launched missile strikes in Syrian capital Damascus and the central province of Homs to retaliate for the Syrian government`s alleged use of chemical weapons in a rebel-held district east of Damascus last week. The Syrian government has strongly denied the allegation, calling for the Organization for the Prohibition of Chemical Weapons to send a fact-finding mission for investigations. On Sunday, Russian President Vladimir Putin and his Iranian counterpart Hassan Rouhani condemned the airstrikes over phone, agreeing that the "illegal action seriously damages the prospects for a political settlement" in the war-torn country, according to a Kremlin statement. "Putin in particular stressed that if such actions, carried out in violation of the UN Charter, continue, it will inevitably lead to chaos in international relations," the statement said. She is believed to have predicted the 9/11 attacks much before the actual attacks on the Twin Towers took place in New York. She also is credited to have seen into the future and observed the rise of Islamic State. For those who believe that she can indeed look into the future, Baba Vanga's remark on World War 3 and Russia's might would send alarm bells ringing. Indeed, the 'Balkan Nostradamus - as she is also referred to - has predicted that World War 3 will end with Russia emerging even more powerful than it currently is. "Everything will melt away like ice yet the glory of Vladimir, the glory of Russia, are the only things that will remain," Baba Venga is believed to have said before her death in 1996 at age 85. "Russia will not only survive, it will dominate the world." That the current international situation is tense enough to give Vanga's prediction some degree of credibility is for all to see. The Syrian crisis has worsened in the last few weeks with US, Britain and France launching co-ordinated missile strikes despite strong warnings from Russia. Their actions have led to fears that this might well be the trigger for World War 3 even as major countries in the world have called for restraint and talks within the UN. Outside, there is only an uneasy calm. While a Kremlin-owned TV channel recently warned viewers to stock up on emergency supplies because a World War may be round the corner, Venga's prediction too is being highlighted by conspiracy theorists as reason enough to press the panic button. After all, she had reportedly made several shocking predictions and several did eventually manifest. It is not certain however is the mystic did in fact have supernatural powers. According to a report in UK's Express, locals in Venga's village were mostly sceptical about her predictions and many even said that she looked at faces and then repeated sentences she had memorised. Nonetheless, the tensions between the United States and Russia are only mounting with each passing day. Washington has warned of more sanctions against Russia while Russian President Vladimir Putin has countered by accusing western powers of trying to destabilise global peace. Former US first lady Barabara Bush has been gravely ill for a while now but American news channel CBS may have reportedly jumped the gun by inadvertently publishing a news report about her death. The journalistic hara-kiri occurred on Sunday when CBS published an obituary article which had a headline proclaiming the 92-year-old to be dead. The headline of the copy clearly had the words 'DO NOT PUBLISH' written at the beginning and at the end but this very headline was taken as is. Barbara Bush, the witty, gregarious matriarch of a political dynasty that propelled two of its members to the White House and dominated Republican politics for decades, has died after a series of recent hospitalizations. She was 92. A Bush family spokesperson said Bush passed away peacefully in her home, surrounded by loved ones, the article read before being taken down. It appears that CBS accidentally published their pre-write about former first lady Barbara Bush. The article has since been removed. pic.twitter.com/e12yNgB9jr Claire Allbright (@claireallbright) April 15, 2018 Barbara - who served as US First Lady between 1989 and 1993 - has reportedly been ailing for some time now. With age-related woes, she has also reportedly refused any further medical assistance. The 37th First Lady of the US though is still alive and CBS' report informing readers of her death caused some degree of backlash. Many users on Twitter slammed the news channel for trying too hard to be the first. Those who have worked directly or even in some indirect way with media outlets though have been defending CBS by saying that human errors cannot always be avoided and that while care should have been taken with a copy as sensitive as this, it is not an unforgivable mistake London: A retired Russian Lieutenant-General has warned that the Cold War was comfortable compared to the ongoing conflict and has said that Russian President Vladimir Putin will not accept defeat if there was to be a World War 3. Evgeny Buzhinskiy was quoted as saying to Channel 4 News - I think its worse than the Cold War. In the Cold War time I was in the armed forces and I was quite comfortable. There were definite duels and definite red lines, everybody knew what to do." He also said that in the Cold War there were no threats, no sanctions, no isolation, there was just ideological confrontation. When asked whether rising tensions could lead to a third world war, Buzhinskiy told the news channel - Of course, you cannot control military confrontation between Russia and the United States." He then went on to say - "Russia cannot wage a war against the US. For years, economically it cannot. In the general purpose forces, we are a bit lagging behind the United States. Russia will no accept any kind of defeat, so the involvement of nuclear weapons is inevitable. Meanwhile, Russia said on April 16, 2018, that it still hopes for dialogue with Washington despite US-led strikes on Moscow's ally Syria. "We hope that, when our American colleagues solve their internal issues, some kind of communication will begin despite all the damage to (our) bilateral relations currently imposed by Washington," Kremlin spokesman Dmitry Peskov had said, AFP reported. He had added that there were no current discussions between the two countries on a possible summit between US President Donald Trump and Putin. The US, Britain and France have carried out attacks on alleged chemical weapons facilities, in response to what they say was a toxic gas attack by the Russia-backed Assad regime. Moscow has said the US-led action was aimed at overthrowing Assad and keeping Russia's influence in check. The Western strikes have led to tensions between Washington and Moscow unseen since the Cold War. Putin denounced them as "an act of aggression against a sovereign state which is at the forefront of the fight against terrorism". Russia on Saturday failed to win UN backing for a condemnation of the Western strikes. (With AFP inputs) For more than a year, Ukraines government and activists have been at odds over March 2017 law that requires activists to disclose their assets online in the same way that public officials do. The law was criticized by Ukrainian civil society as well as by the international community. But now, the Presidential Administration and independent lawyers say that the law is invalid and unenforceable, based on the 2012 Constitutional Court decision. No one can be forced to publicly submit information about their private life without their consent. Dmytro Shymkiv, the deputy head of the Presidential Administration, led the effort to find a compromise between the government and civil society. He appeared relieved. It looks like we found an answer among the decisions of the Constitutional Court, he said. The decision states, It is not allowed to collect, store, use, and disseminate confidential information about a person without his consent, except in cases specified by law, and only in the interests of national security, economic welfare, and human rights. One Kyiv-based lawyer who spoke off-the-record explained that this means that the e-declaration requirement is not legally enforceable against individual activists. The decision may also apply to foreign board members, including Naftogazs supervisory board, although the best way to test the decision is to put the specific issue before the Constitutional Court, the lawyer said. The 2012 court decision excludes public officials, which means that they still must declare their assets. But Ukraines activists are not convinced. It is a new trick from the Presidential Administration, which for already a year imitates they're sincerely looking for the solution to the problem, said Daria Kaleniuk, executive director of the Anti-Corruption Action Center in Kyiv. Relying solely on the 2012 decision is not a solution at all, Kaleniuk argued. A new, separate Constitutional Court decision is needed in order to make the e-declaration law for activists invalid and unenforceable, Kaleniuk argued. Getting the Constitutional Court to consider the issue will take enormous time and resources and that may be exactly the governments goal. Kaleniuk worries that as the court deliberates, activist asset declarations will be used to discredit, intimidate, and distract them from their watchdog activities and force them to spend their limited resources on protecting themselves. Yaroslav Yurchyshyn, president of Transparency International Ukraine, isnt satisfied either. He urged parliament to officially abolish and decriminalize this requirement on activists altogether. If it isnt, he predicted, the pressure on activists will only increase. Roman Waschuk, Canadas Ambassador to Ukraine, agreed. The March 2017 law was ill-advised andas the Venice Commission has now reiteratedan infringement on the rights of civil society. While we welcome any measure that might reduce the risk of criminalizing activists, full repeal of this requirement and a shift in emphasis to sensible NGO transparency should remain the goal. The law, passed by parliament in March 2017, was far-reaching. Investigative journalists who regularly expose corruption, as well as international board members who oversee anti-corruption NGOs, were also subject to the disclosure law. Shymkiv and his team spent nearly a year searching for a solution that would abolish the e-declaration for activists. In July 2017, the Presidential Administration tried to walk back the requirements and find a compromise. Bills 6674 and 6675 were introduced in parliament and would have replaced individual personal declarations with organizational public reporting. But parliament failed to pass the bills. Activists and the government remained at loggerheads, and the furor grew as the disclosure deadline neared. Activists from the Anti-Corruption Action Center and Transparency International-Ukraine complied, while otherssuch as the Reanimation Package of Reformsrefused on principle. But as the April 1 disclosure deadline loomed, Shymkiv and his team began to focus their search in the legal code for anything that might mitigate the risk of criminal prosecution. His team unearthed the 2012 decision and the compromise solution it may provide. Now it remains to be seen if the courts uphold their interpretation. Read the original text at Atlantic Council. Read original article at 112.ua Open source About 12% of Ukraine's exports to Poland are electric cars, and the share of this export is growing. Now the production cooperation of Ukraine and Poland is developing. Ukraine besides the notorious wires and cables supplies household appliances to Poland, from washing machines to irons. This is all the products of European companies, which Ukraine collects at its enterprises and delivers to the EU countries and to Poland. For the 1st quarter of 2018, the export of electric cars from Ukraine to Poland grew by 34% compared to the same period last year. Ukraine really can and should increase output in this direction. Maybe not so quickly, but Ukraine can compensate for the loss of the market for the sale of machine-building products in Russia. For the year 2017, Ukraine sold machine-building products to Poland for about $ 350 million, while Russia sold for much more than $ 600 million. There is a reserve, and you can really replace Russia with Poland if you increase sales of products to Poland. At the same time, we should not forget that Russia has recently been buying less and less Ukrainian machinery products. Therefore, one must be prepared that eventually Russia can in general prohibit the export of machinery products from Ukraine, as it did with food. In addition, it is desirable to focus not only on Poland, but more to supply engineering products to Germany, Hungary and other EU countries. By the way, the export of machine-building products from Russia to Germany is growing, although it is mainly wires and, again, household appliances. About 11% of Ukraine's exports to Poland are iron ore. Russia does not buy ore from us; it produces a lot of it. Although it is raw materials, but for Ukraine it is a profitable supply, since in this case Ukraine has a large iron ore reserves and it is possible to increase its sales abroad. About 8% of Ukraine's exports to Poland are timber and about 8% is furniture exports. Poland needs our timber products, and it buys not only timber itself, but also furniture. Ideally, you need to increase furniture exports by reducing the exports of conventional boards. Russia practically does not buy furniture in Ukraine, let alone timber, since it is the world's largest exporter of timber. It is difficult to replace the Russian market by the Polish market, but it is quite feasible if we increase the export of machine-building products and increase the supply of ferrous metals. It really will allow Ukraine to receive from Poland export income amount bigger than from Russia. This does not mean that it is necessary to turn off trade with Russia. Ideally, you need to trade with Poland and with Russia. But we need to take into account the fact that Russia conducts not only military, but also a trade campaign against Ukraine, so it is necessary to be prepared for all kinds of prohibitions and restrictions on Ukrainian products. And for this it is always good to have an alternative. But it is worth saying that it is unlikely to sell transformers or engines, which Ukraine now sells to Russia, to Poland. The market for this product can be found in Asia, in part this is obtained, but so far it is very weak and difficult process. Machine building products are always difficult to sell, it's much easier to sell a ship with grain or a train of sunflower oil, or ship with iron. This is the reality of the world economy. A Salisbury woman accused of dealing synthetic marijuana has been in trouble before. Letha Dean, 71, pleaded guilty to prostitution-related charges in 2009, long before she was arrested last week and charged with peddling thousands of packets of synthetic marijuana, which is plant material thats been sprayed with chemicals. The drug, said to have horrible side effects, gained popularity as a way to get high while passing drug tests administered by employers or law enforcement authorities. Exactly whats in the drug isnt clear, with makers tweaking recipes in hopes of avoiding prosecution on the theory that changes in chemical composition will render the products legal. While undetectable in standard drug tests, users report that the drug is addictive. Experts say it can trigger psychosis while also placing users at risk of heart attacks and kidney failure. At least three people have died in Illinois in recent weeks after smoking synthetic marijuana that includes ingredients found in rat poison. More than 100 users in Illinois have been hospitalized, and scourge has spread to the East Coast, where at least three people in Maryland have been taken to hospitals after experiencing bleeding. Blood can flow from eyes and ears, and it also can show up in urine. Federal prosecutors say that the case against Dean is part of a larger investigation that began in 2013 and stretches from St. Louis, where drugs were manufactured in a clandestine lab, to a money laundering operation based in the Detroit area that has sent millions of dollars to Yemen. Eight people, including Dean, have been charged with federal drug offenses. Two men arrested in 2016 have pleaded guilty and are awaiting sentencing. Charges against five others filed earlier this year are pending. Besides Springfield, authorities say that convenience stores, gas stations and smoke shops in Decatur peddled the drug. Dean allegedly sold the drug through a store called Mystic Enhantments, where she started work after admitting in 2009 that she had run a house of prostitution in a Springfield residential neighborhood near the intersection of College Street and Lenox Avenue. Deans brothel, prosecutors said, was part of an interstate ring run by madams who sent prostitutes from one state to another. More than a dozen people were charged. Dean and the other defendants, some from as far away as Massachusetts and Florida, received probation. At sentencing in 2009, Dean portrayed herself as a madam with a heart who didnt allow drugs and made sure that the women who came through her house had plenty to eat. She testified that she counseled the women and told them that they couldnt be prostitutes forever. We tried to do it the best way we could, Dean told U.S. District Court Judge Jeanne Scott, since retired, before sentence was pronounced. We just tried to better everybody and not hurt anybody. According to court documents filed Friday by the U.S. attorneys office, the investigation began in 2013. Prosecutors say that Abdul Alsamah, who owned a liquor store called The Crossing II, was likely the largest synthetic cannabinoid distributor in the Springfield area. Federal authorities based in Springfield have not charged Alsamah with a crime, according to the federal court docket. Neither he nor anyone who could speak on his behalf could immediately be reached for comment. Sharon Paul, spokeswoman for the U.S. attorney's office in Springfield, would not say whether Alsamah will be charged. "I can't comment on that other than to say it's an ongoing investigation," Paul said. In July of 2015, more than a year after authorities say they identified Alsamah as a suspected drug dealer, prosecutors got court approval to videotape and overhear conversations at Mystic Enchantments, which was adjacent to Alsamah's liquor store at 2828 East Clearlake Avenue. Undercover agents started making buys in 2014, but the initial effort, a $50 buy, suffered a glitch, according to court documents. The interaction was audio and video recorded, however, due to technical difficulties the audio and video failed to record, Sean Simpson, a state attorney general investigator assigned to the U.S. Drug Enforcement Administration, officer, wrote in a court affidavit. Subsequent transactions went more smoothly, according to court documents. On Feb. 2, 2015, the undercover agent who made the first buy visited Mystic Enchantments again and spoke with Dean about purchasing a larger amount, according to court filings. The conversation was recorded on an audio and visual recording device, prosecutors say. The agent purchased 25 packets containing $1,000 worth of illegal synthetic marijuana less than a week later, according to Simpsons affidavit. With the help of court authorized recording devices, federal agents also kept Mystic Enchantments, which also offered candles, oils and incense, under surveillance for one month in the summer of 2015 and found plenty of activity. During the period of July 31, 2015, through Aug. 2, 2015, agents monitoring interceptions of audio and visual, non-verbal conduct at Mystic Enchantments observed a regular influx of foot traffic into Mystic Enchantments, Simpson says in his affidavit. Agents observed that nearly every individual who entered the business purchased synthetic cannabinoids from Letha Dean, and even those who did not purchase synthetic cannabinoids asked about the brands of synthetic cannabinoids available. The interceptions established that virtually no legitimate business was conducted at Mystic Enchantments. Federal agents with recording devices in 2015 watched and listened as Dean added up sales with the help of an adding machine at days end, according to Simpsons affidavit. They also heard her speaking with Alsamah, her alleged but uncharged partner. I think well have another good day tomorrow, she told him, according to court documents. Simpson and an investigator with the Illinois state attorney generals office visited the shop more than two years ago and spoke with both Dean and Alsamah, Simpson says in his affidavit. Simpson writes that he and the investigator confronted Dean about suspected illegal drug sales, asking her if she was selling synthetic marijuana and informing her that such sales were illegal. She denied selling synthetic pot, according to Simpsons affidavit. Simpson says he left his business card with Dean and Alsamah. The friendly visit didnt help, authorities say. In March of 2016, federal agents served a search warrant at Mystic Enchantments and found 339 packages of synthetic marijuana, plus 24 vials of a liquid containing suspected synthetic pot products. All told, the seized illegal substances, bearing labels such as Scooby Snax, Mr. Nice Geeked Up and Mr. Happy, weighed about five pounds, according to Simpsons affidavit. That same month, federal agents established surveillance on Deans house in Salisbury, pulled her over when they saw her leave and hauled her into DEA offices for questioning. She told agents they were free to search her house, and they did, finding and seizing nearly $2,500 in cash found in a sock stashed in a dresser. But no charges were filed. Last Wednesday, after people started dying and bleeding from smoking synthetic marijuana tainted with suspected rat poison, agents retained an informant to buy synthetic pot from Dean. The informant was hoping for help on a pending drug case against him Tazewell County, according to Simpsons affidavit. The price, Dean told the informant, had increased from $7 a packet to $10. Everything went to shit after this scare out here, Dean told him. An undercover state police investigator with $5,000 in his pocket went to Mystic Enchantments, which had moved to 1020 West Lawrence Ave. since the 2016 bust, to make the buy last Thursday. I knew it, Dean reportedly said as the cuffs went on, after shed handed over a garbage bag containing 520 packets to the undercover investigator. Police who searched the store found an additional 1,445 packets. Between the undercover buy and the stock remaining in Deans shop, agents recovered nearly 26 pounds of synthetic pot. It is, U.S. District Court Judge Sue Myerscough wrote in ordering that Dean be jailed, a grave allegation that carries a potential sentence of 20 years and a $1 million fine. Dean, Myerscough wrote, poses a danger to the community. The nature and circumstances of the offense charged are very serious, wrote Myerscough, noting that evidence of Deans illegal drug trafficking dates back years and involves large amounts of synthetic pot. Outbreaks of bleeding from smoking synthetic pot have been centered in the Peoria area, although cases of bleeding also have been reported in Maryland in recent days. There is no indication in court documents whether drugs allegedly sold by Dean and others who've been charged in the investigation caused potentially deadly bleeding, but court documents suggest that making synthetic marijuana can be tricky. According to court documents, drugs came from a St. Louis lab that produced hundreds of pounds. In 2015, Walid Alansawi, who was charged in February and identified as a source of synthetic pot sold in Decatur stores, told two store owners in search of the drug that there was none available because the maker hadn't properly produced the last batch. Authorities say Alanasawi used the code word "milk" to identify chemical ingredients in the drug. "The problem was that the milk wasn't good for the last cook," Alanasawi told the store owners in a three-way telephone conversation that was wiretapped, according to court documents. "Therefore he refused to give us any. ... Also, not to mention, that they try everything before they give it to us." Click here to download court document Contact Bruce Rushton at brushton@illinoistimes.com. Read the original text at 112.ua. Hostynnyi Dvir is a trade complex built in Kyiv, at the time part of the Russian Empire, back in 1809 by Luigi Rusca. The complex replaced its older predecessor, erected in the 1760s by Ivan Hryhorovych-Barskyi. After the great 1811 fire, it was reconstructed under the supervision of architect Andrey Melensky. This long-lasting story would not have happened at all if the Kyiv authorities had taken care of monuments and memorable places on time. However, the current government nods to the Soviet times. They say, back in 1982, Hostynnyi Dvir, situated in Podil district of Kyiv, was rebuilt so clumsily that in 2011, this gave grounds to exclude the building from the register of architectural monuments that are under state protection. But what happened 40 years ago cannot be an excuse for the current outrageous situation. And the situation is that the building never whipped to shape, slowly collapses. All Kyiv residents remember the chronology of the struggle for Hostynnyi Dvir. The excesses began in 2012 when the city council turned Hostynnyi Dvir into a lease for PJSC "Ukrrestoration" for the reconstruction of the building for the trade and office center. We know that at the same time, violent protests began against the change in the profile of the Gostiny Dvor, which resulted in the emergence of the "Hostynna Respublika" public initiative, within the framework of which concerts, lectures, meetings, and other public events were held. This continued until during the night of 8 to 9 February 2013 there was a large-scale fire on the roof and attic of the building. Ten days later, on February 18, during the next bout between activists and representatives of the builder, Berkut system of special police dispersed the protesters and detained some activists. Events were paused right up to the victory of the Revolution of Dignity. In April 2014, Kyiv Administrative Court of Appeal revoked the permission to reconstruct Hostynnyi Dvir. Also, the decision to allocate land for Hostynnyi Dvir was canceled. In 2015, the building was restored as a monument. A happy ending? Not that fast. It was not at that easy to get Dvir from the tenacious hands of PJSC "Ukrrestoration". The company plans to file a cassation appeal with the Supreme Court of Ukraine. Director of "Ukrrestoration" Dmytro Yarych said that his enterprise has already invested 4,6 million USD in Hostynnyi Dvir. So wants to get his investments back. For the sake of investment protection, Ukrrestoration is ready to go back to court and even to the European Court of Human Rights (if its interests cannot be defended in Ukraine). What does the persistent developer plan to build on the site of present Hostynnyi Dvir? "A modern building, which would be used for its original historical purpose - for trade. According to the documents our project was a trade and office center, but the offices had to occupy less than 5% of the area, which is less than even technical premises. If all those activists did not interrupt into the construction, we would have completed the reconstruction project four years ago," Yarych says. Yarych does not hide that the main investor of Ukrrestoration is the Cyprian company Afirdreko Holdings Limited. Back in 2012, the program of investigative journalism "Nashi Groshi" reported that "Afirdreko Holdings Limited" is a Cypriot offshore with very interesting business relations. Yarych, former lawyer of "Zoryany" cinema hall was also mentioned in the program. Shortly before the publication of the investigation, Yarych began to manage "Ukrrestoration", and the supervisory board of the company was headed by another employee of the staff nest of Yanukovychs Party of Regions - Hennady Nezhurbida. Before 2010, "Zoryany" was headed by Andriy Kravets, who later began to lead the notorious State Department of Affairs, or in other words, he became Yanukovychs bursar. "Nashi Groshi" program particularly emphasized the closeness of the new leaders of "Ukrrestoration" and State Department of Affairs. Before Euro-2012, "Ukrrestoration" signed a contract with Kyiv City Administration on the repair of the facades of the houses of St. Andrew's descent. The city administration was ready to allocate 3,75 million USD for such repairs at the time. At the same time, however, there was no list of specific objects subject to restoration, and a distinct amount of work done within the framework of the latter. Reporters asked the reasonable question: what if they just lute the holes and cracks instead of the expected full restoration, and just get that 3,75 million USD without any responsibility? As far as I know, no one has investigated a scam with 3,75 million USD, no one has checked the money spent from the city treasury with the exterior of the houses. Why no one does it today? Probably, this question should be addressed to the prosecutor's office, not to the mayor's office. But the city authorities have numerous questions. After passing the appellate instance, the court's decisions come into force. The plaintiff might appeal to the European Court, but the verdict of the Court of Appeal must in the meantime be enforced. This means that Hostynnyi Dvir is no longer under the protectorate of "Ukrrestoration", it again belongs to the city, and the city is responsible for its safety. What is being done by the mayor's office at the moment to save the collapsing monument? This question concerns the Kontraktova Square as a whole. As a Kyiv inhabitant, it is extremely important for me to know what will happen next with this landmark place. What is the fate of the excavations there? Will they build that promised museum? Will the area be strengthened with slabs to avoid collapse and tragedy? Mayor Klitschko willingly assures the journalists that he supports all the positive initiatives in this respect, that is, the museum, the excavations, and further scientific research. But how much does this correspond to reality? Incidentally, it has also been heard that the threads from the above-mentioned offshore Afidreko Holdings Limited lead to the friend of the former president of Ukraine and the head of his administration, Serhiy Liovochkin, which means that the builder can have very useful connections and unexpected patrons. Including in the judicial and bureaucratic circles. After all, the change of power in 2014 did not have a strong impact on some political "friendships". Will the mayor's office under the aegis of Klitschko defend those useful for the city decisions? Or does personal gain, as often happens, outweigh the common one?.. This column does not necessarily reflect the opinion of the editorial board or 112.International and its owners. The beginning of the year in many ways shows the reserve and the direction of the economic movement. Most likely, by the end of the year, a small growth of Ukrainian export will be seen. And if the Ukrainian government does not engage in politicization, but economics and will understand that with the help of the Association Agreement it is possible to receive income, and not only to take loans from the EU - it is possible to actually increase exports from Ukraine not only to Poland but also to other EU countries Read original article at 112.ua Ukraine's customs not only agreed but has already calculated the results of foreign trade for the I quarter of 2018. The results were very remarkable for some and sad for others. Each reader chooses for himself, which he likes more in this article. Export of Ukrainian goods for the I quarter of 2018 amounted to 11.4 billion dollars, which is 10% more than in the first quarter of 2017, but 25% less than in the I quarter of 2013. Now, this is a paradox and in many ways very expected one. In the coming years, we cant increase the export performance of Ukraine to the level of 2013. Imports of Ukraine for the I quarter of 2018 amounted to 12.6 billion dollars, which is 14% more than in the first quarter of 2017, and 29% less than in the I quarter of 2013. Yes, indeed, Ukraine has reduced the purchase of energy resources, primarily natural gas, compared with 2013. But not because the economy of Ukraine has become energy efficient. And, more likely because the economy simply "cooled down" and began to demand less energy resources. Accordingly, the demand for energy imports fell. But this is the fall of the Ukrainian industry. So you have to pay for everything. Despite all the mutual threats and insults, Russia has been and remains the main trade partner of Ukraine this year. Export of Ukraine to Russia for the I quarter of 2018 amounted to 853 million dollars, which is 8% less than in the first quarter of 2017. But the import from Russia to Ukraine for the I quarter of 2018 increased by 28% compared to the first quarter of 2017. Paradox? No, not a paradox, but coal and chemical products. Ukraine this year actively purchased coal and chemical products in Russia, as well as machine-building products, but not so actively. So it turns out that according to the words of our and Russian politicians, the Russian Federation is an aggressor and the main enemy for Ukraine, but according to business processes often associated with representatives of Ukrainian and Russian authorities, and at the same time Ukrainian and Russian oligarchs, it is very profitable. The policy is separate from the revenues. For Russian and Ukrainian oligarchs, trade was and will be profitable. They worked and will work, and even increase the volume of transactions, but Ukrainian and Russian politicians will continue to frighten the Ukrainian and Russian people with "bad guys", and the money will still come to the hands of Ukrainian and Russian politicians. On second place regarding importance for Ukrainian exports in the I quarter of 2018, we note Poland. The export of goods from Ukraine to Poland amounted to 816 million dollars. The level of Russia has not been overcome yet, but... It is possible that this year Poland will take the place of the Russian Federation among the main buyers of Ukrainian exports. That's really going to be a blow to the self-esteem of individual politicians and will create a certain resonance in the Ukrainian economy. Indeed, Poland is one of the few EU countries which economy really began to work more closely with the Ukrainian economy after the signing of the Association Agreement with the EU. For the I quarter of 2018, Ukraine's exports increased by 29% compared with the first quarter of 2013, before the signing of the Association Agreement with the EU. This is no longer a paradox, but a reality. What does Ukraine sell to Poland? Iron ore, rolled ferrous metals, timber, furniture and even mushrooms and honey. Although Poland badly buys Ukrainian food, but the ore is good. The production cooperation is also developing. Therefore, part of the export from Ukraine to Poland - is the production of machinery, or rather, bearings, wires and household appliances, assembled from spare parts obtained from the EU. If before, Poland was called the "apprentice of the EU", now Ukraine can be called "an apprentice of Poland". The third place among the main buyers of Ukrainian exports has Italy, and the fourth place - Turkey. Both Italy and Turkey buy products of Ukrainian metallurgy, mainly semi-finished ferrous metals. On the fifth place, we see India exporting sunflower oil, which is the main export commodity of Ukraine in the I quarter of 2018. In the total volume of Ukrainian exports for the I quarter of 2018, the share of sunflower oil is 9.3%. Corn is on second place of Ukrainian exports. A lot of it is bought by Spain and Holland. On the third place, there are semi-finished products of ferrous metallurgy. Here is another paradox. Or, rather, the answer to the question, what is the main thing for the economy of Ukraine. Ukraine in the world market is the supplier of grain and ferrous metals, and this is our chip, this is what ensures the formation of our exports. So, the answer to the question, which sectors should develop the economy of Ukraine for the successful growth of GDP and the economy's incomes, is obvious. It is agrarian products and ferrous metals that is with what Ukraine conquers the world market. Keep it up. It is clear that the first quarter is just the beginning of the year. But the beginning of the year in many respects shows the reserve and the direction of the movement. Most likely, by the end of the year, a small growth of Ukrainian export will be noticed. And if the Ukrainian government does not engage in politicization, but economics, and, finally, understands that with the help of the Association Agreement with the EU it is possible to receive income, and not only to take loans from the EU - it is possible to actually increase exports from Ukraine not only to Poland but also to other EU countries. The experience of Poland showed that you can really earn on associations with the EU, but it depends on how you work, and not telling tales of European integration. The economy is more pragmatic and requires real action, not fantasies and myths. Ukraine even decades later is unlikely to sell cars to the EU, but to produce and sell components for German and French cars is real, and this is a good business direction. This is not a paradox, but a real economy. Panov is charged with planning acts of sabotage in Crimea as part of a group of saboteurs, as well as with smuggling ammunition across the customs border of the Customs Union, with four articles of the Russian criminal code listed Secret documents have been cited in Russian-occupied Crimea to justify holding the trial of Yevhen Panov behind closed doors. Since no secret material was ever mentioned to either Panov or his lawyer, this may well simply be the latest attempt to conceal the lack of any substance to the charges against the Ukrainian. It will not be the first time. Panov was held for two months without access to a lawyer after being seized and tortured in August 2016 and has been under massive pressure ever since to plead guilty to concocted charges. Speaking after the hearing, Panovs lawyer Dmitry Dinze explained that they had been suddenly told that the material includes a secret volume. If there really are such state secrets, then the investigator has committed a crime by not telling either Dinze or his client, and Panov could certainly have passed such information on to his family. Dinze was also asked to sign a non-disclosure undertaking but refused on the grounds that there are no state secrets involved. He later told Hromadske Radio that the secret volume is supposedly about the sites where the alleged acts of sabotage were supposedly planned. Panov is charged with planning acts of sabotage in Crimea as part of a group of saboteurs, as well as with smuggling ammunition across the customs border of the Customs Union, with four articles of the Russian criminal code listed (Article 281 2a for the planning acts of sabotage; Article 226.1 3 and 222 3 over the alleged movement and storage of ammunition, as well 30 1, and 3 committing or attempting a crime). He is now accused of having planned acts of sabotage on civilian and military sites in Crimea, with these supposedly including a water reservoir; a Russian military unit; a ferry crossing; a chemical factory and plans to blow up Pantsir C1 self-propelled anti-aircraft military weapon systems... The then 39-year-old from Zaporizhya worked as a driver for the Zaporizhya Nuclear Power Plant in Enerhodar but had also responded to Russias invasion of Crimea and military aggression in Donbas by active work as a volunteer, both in civil defense for his city and in helping the Ukrainian army. On August 6, 2016, Panov responded to a phone call, seemingly from a fellow volunteer, asking him to help evacuate a family from Russian-occupied Crimea who was in danger. This, however, his family only discovered much later, after he disappeared. The first they learned of his whereabouts was on August 10 when Russias FSB [security service] claimed that it had foiled terrorist acts planned by the Ukrainian Defence Ministrys military intelligence and targeting critically important parts of Crimeas infrastructure. This was aimed, the FSB asserted, at destabilizing the situation in the run-up to Russias elections which were illegally taking place in occupied Crimea. The FSB asserted that there had been major incidents, with shelling from mainland Ukraine, during the nights from 6-7 and 7-8 August, with 2 Russians an FSB officer and a soldier killed. Although two Russians did die, there are independent reports suggesting that at least one of the men was killed in a drunken brawl. There was nothing to back the claims about the second night and supposed shelling from Ukraine. Skepticism was only exacerbated by the fact that the occupation regime had blocked various independent Internet sites prior to the alleged events. The claims were trumpeted by Russias leaders and state-controlled media, but based solely on videoed confessions from four men: Panov; Andriy Zakhtei; Redvan Suleymanov; and Volodymyr Prysich. The video with Panovs confession and, supposedly, his and Zakhteis stockpile of weapons was very sloppily done. One scene, for example, showed a full moon which meant it must have been shot at least three weeks earlier. An independent forensic analysis found no traces to suggest that Panov and Zakhtei had ever touched the alleged stockpile. A video produced by the FSB was shown widely on state-controlled Russian media. On it, Panov is seen confessing to working for Ukrainian military intelligence and saying that he was invited to Kyiv and told that a group was being formed for acts of sabotage in Crimea. He reels off several names, none of them the people he was allegedly caught with, and says that they had come to Crimea together to decide on targets for the acts of sabotage and had chosen the ferry crossing, an oil handling terminal, a helicopter regiment and chemical factory. On the video, Panov looked as though he had been beaten and also as though he was saying what he had been instructed to say. It was therefore of immense concern that the FSB prevented the lawyer Panovs family employed from seeing his client. At one stage they produced a scrap of paper, with a typed statement, allegedly from Panov, rejecting the lawyers services. The paper was unsigned, and his family, by now seriously worried, were helped by a human rights group to apply to the European Court of Human Rights. The latter demanded information from Russia regarding the origin of Panovs bruises, etc. and confirmation that he had been allowed to see the lawyer his family had chosen. Following this communication from ECHR, and after two full months of total isolation, Panov was able to briefly meet with the lawyer. He immediately retracted all testimony, confirming that it had been obtained under torture. He has since described the torture methods, which form part of his application to ECHR, with these including severe beating; being suspended in handcuffs; mock executions; electric shocks and clamps applied to his genitals. Both Panov and Zakhtei were moved to Moscow shortly after that brief meeting and placed under heavy pressure to give up their independent lawyers. They refused and were soon moved back to Crimea, and the Simferopol SIZO [remand unit] where the conditions are in themselves a form of torture. The mounting pressure and threats of a much worse sentence if he didnt comply finally prompted Zakhtei to agree to cooperate. He pleaded guilty and gave up his lawyer, yet a Russian-controlled court in Crimea still sentenced him on 16 February 2018 to 6.5 years imprisonment. It is likely that Zakhteis confession will be used to claim that the charges against him and Panov have been proven. In fact, nothing is proven, and a telling detail is that of the four men accused of involvement in a supposed plot which they were shown on Russian TV confessing to, one - Redvan Suleymanov ended up accused of something only slightly linked to the original confession, while Volodymyr Prysich was sentenced on May 18, 2017, to 3 years imprisonment on the totally different charge of possession of a narcotic substance. While Suleymanov remained silent about the treatment he had received, his lawyer Emil Kurbedinov clearly assumed that he had been tortured. The three other men have all spoken of the torture, including electric shocks to their genitals, used to extract confessions to non-existent sabotage plots. Read the original text at Human Rights in Ukraine. Read original aticle at 112.ua A local action of unprecedented generosity took place in the Obukhivsky district on March 8 this year. Citizens were given cheap shampoos and terry Chinese towels. The gift was decorated with the inscription: "Have a nice day!" Ihor Kononenko, a people's deputy from the Petro Poroshenkos Bloc, wished this. The information was promulgated by another Ukrainian MP Viktor Romanyuk. He is indignant and demands from National Anti-Corruption Bureau to bring his colleague in the coalition to justice. Theoretically, you could see only the moral responsibility in such cases. However, it is interesting and even indicative: the information mentioned above was shown in the news on April 12. On the eve, on April 11, the Ministry of Internal Affairs proposed to criminalize violating of electoral law. Changes seem to have been supported by the government. However, MP Romanyuk will still not be able to obtain the imprisonment of Kononenko for two years for such a crime. It's not that changes in the Criminal Code have not been made and do not have legal force. And the fact is that Ihor Kononenko with his personal gifts did not participate in the electoral process, because the start of both presidential and parliamentary elections has not yet been announced. That is, in this case, he only bought a bath kit and gave it to people he wanted. In the packages mentioned by Victor Romanyuk, there were no food products. However, the deputy still called the set "buckwheat set." A bag of sacred groats weighing one kilogram for 22 years personifies everything connected with the bribery of citizens before every next election: presidential, parliamentary, local. Not everyone knows the history of the issue, its main character is Leonid Chernovetsky. In the mid-1990s, he, one of the first official Ukrainian millionaires, was under the sword of Damocles in several criminal cases. Only the campaign in politics could save him. Therefore, Chernovetsky began distributing food packages to low-income residents of depressive Darnytsia district. Since then the contents of the package have not changed: half a liter of oil, canned fish, a jar of instant coffee and one kilogram of buckwheat - one of the largest deficiencies in the USSR. The trend was actual even after Maidan and during the war, when the Ukrainians elected a new president and a new parliament. Activists saw such givers almost everywhere, wrote the relevant statements and noted: the number of violations even increased. However, nobody was behind bars. Violation of the rights of voters is not only the distribution of free products, but also the forgery of voting results and, in general, the influence and pressure on the process of expression of will. The newest Ukrainian history knows two glaring facts from 2004. The first was the election of the Mukachevo mayor in the summer, who controlled the criminals and did not hide the kind of their occupation. The second is the presidential election, the results of which were rigged, which gave rise to the "orange" revolution. Although in both cases the suspects were known, and the revolutionary expediency required execution, none of the participants were punished and even slightly scared. The current innovations from the Ministry of Internal Affairs suggest punishing not only those who give but also those who take. That is Ukrainians who do not refuse to take buckwheat and give in return a vote in favor of a generous candidate. A chairman of the Committee of Voters of Ukraine Olexiy Koshel sees this as a positive step because people will look around and fear criminal responsibility. But at the same time, he stresses: citizens themselves must understand their actions and regard them as criminal. Because if someone is caught with a "buckwheat set," the offender can say: "I was given - I took it! I will vote not for this candidate, but for another!" The "ignoramuses" themselves have many opportunities for legal voter bribery, and these are not always products or shampoo with towels. For example, the construction of a children's playground where it has long been expected. In these situations, you will have to take to prison both the one who built and the one who enjoys the benefits. If the law comes into effect and there are people willing to identify violators, the prisons will have to be built, without exaggeration, in every Ukrainian city or town. After all, you will find a lot of violators among citizens who are accustomed to something positive only during the election. The response to the chemical attack was and necessary as all possible diplomatic options were exhausted Open source The countries of G7 expressed the support of the missile strikes on Syria launched by the UK, France and the US as it is claimed in the statement published by the office of Canadian Prime Minister Justin Trudeau. We, the G7 Leaders of Canada, France, Germany, Italy, Japan, the United Kingdom, the United States of America and the European Union, are united in condemning, in the strongest possible terms, the use of chemical weapons in the April 7 attack in Eastern Ghouta, Syria. We fully support all efforts made by the United States, the United Kingdom and France to degrade the Assad regimes ability to use chemical weapons and to deter any future use', the message said. The message calls the response to the chemical attack limited, proportionate and necessary as 'all possible diplomatic options were exhausted'. On April 13, the U.S. troops landed a missile strike on chemical infrastructure in Syria; the UK and France joined in. The strikes killed at least six people and dealt damage to a number of weaponry research objects. On April 7, the volunteer organizations reported that the chemical attack at Douma, the East Ghouta took place. As a result of this attack at least 70 people died. The Syrian government and Russia called this information untrue, while the US and allies have blamed Bashar al-Assad for the attack. Later U.S. President Donald Trump announced about a coming missile attack in Syria and urged Russia to be prepared. In its turn, Russias Foreign Ministry claimed that the missiles should aim the terrorists. The General Staff of Russia recommended the US and its allies to restore Syrian Raqqa instead of threats. The Premier's election took place first time since the constitutional changes in the country took place Serzh Sargsyan, the former president of Armenia, was elected the Prime Minister on Tuesday, local media reported. His candidacy was promoted by as the ruling Republican party; during today's parliamentary session, 77 MPs supported him, 17 voted against. The Premier's election took place first time since the constitutional changes in the Armenian basic law took effect. The government is due to be shaped with the 15-days-long period. Within the five-days-long period, the prime minister should send the president his candidates for respective offices. The President either appoints vice premiers and ministers or turns to the Constitutional court. The Cabinet should consist of the Prime Minister, First Vice Prime Minister and two Vice Prime Ministers, as well as 17 ministers. The election took place amidst the street protests in Yerevan, the capital city of the country. The protesters blocked the car traffic in the downtown, while the leader of 'Civilian Agreement' opposition party Nikol Pashinyan claimed that the 'Velvet Revolution' began. The police detained 80 activists who allowed administrative violations. The protests kicked off because of the constitutional reform, which changed the system of government; the presidential republic turned into the parliamentary republic. The Prime Minister became the key official in the state, which evoked the outrage of political activists. Supposedly, US President did not study them enough and did not give final permission for their introduction US President Donald Trump decided to postpone the introduction of new sanctions against Russia in contradiction with Nikki Haleys statement at the meeting of UN Security Council that new sanctions will soon be announced. This was reported by The Washington Post. But Trump conferred with his national security advisers later Sunday and told them he was upset the sanctions were being officially rolled out because he was not yet comfortable executing them, according to several people familiar with the plan, the message says. Administration officials said the economic sanctions were under serious consideration, along with other measures that could be taken against Russia, but said Trump had not given final authorization to implement them. Administration officials said Monday it was unlikely Trump would approve any additional sanctions without another triggering event by Russia, describing the strategy as being in a holding pattern, as it was reported. As it was reported earlier, the US ambassador to the UN Nikki Haley said that the United States will soon announce new sanctions against Russia in connection with the situation in Syria. Also, Haley excluded the possibility of direct negotiations between the West and Bashar Assad. On the night of April 14, the United States, Britain and France struck at Syrian military facilities associated with chemical weapons. Countries have resorted to military intervention, since they are responsible for the alleged Syrian government, the Russian Federation and Iran for the alleged chemical attack in the city of the Duma. Related: Skripal's case: U.S. introduces bill on sanctions against Russia Related video: The Foreign Ministry of Ukraine demands to allow the Ukrainian doctors to Volodymyr Balukh, the political prisoner illegally convicted in annexed Crimea. Mariana Betsa, the spokeswoman of the MFA reported this on Twitter. 'Volodymyr Balukh, the illegally convicted for the Ukrainian flag continues the hunger-strike. We demand to allow the Ukrainian doctors to see him', the message said. Lawyer Olha Dinze reported that the convoy beat Volodymyr Balukh, the illegally convicted in the occupied Crimea, Ukrainian activist on April 2. In addition, according to her, the administration of the pre-trial detention center refused to give Ukrainian political prisoner water, saying he was on a hunger strike. As it was reported earlier, Volodymyr Balukh, the Ukrainian citizen illegally judged in the occupied Crimea claimed that he goes for a timeless hunger strike. Balukh protested against the verdict in his case, announced in January 2018. The jury sentenced him to three years and five months for the alleged storage of ammunition. As it is currently effective, the detainee now serves time in jail. In December 2013, when the Euromaidan movement began in Ukraine, Balukh supported its activists and hoisted a Ukrainian flag over his house. It remained there even after the so-called referendum in Crimea in spring 2014 when people were forced to vote for Crimeas recognition as part of the Russian Federation. Balukh said he never recognized the peninsula as part of Russia. Volodymyr Balukh was detained by the Russian FSB (federal security service) in his house in December 2016. The law enforcers said they found 90 cartridges and several TNT blocks on the houses rooftop.After that, he was sentenced to three years and seven months of imprisonment. Open source The United States and Great Britain on Monday accused Russian hackers of global cyber attacks on computer routers, firewalls and other networking equipment used by government agencies, businesses and critical infrastructure operators around the globe. This was reported by Reuters. Washington and London issued a joint alert saying the campaign by Russian government-backed hackers was intended to advance spying, intellectual property theft and other malicious activities and could be escalated to launch offensive attacks. It followed a series of warnings by Western governments that Moscow is behind a string of cyber attacks. The United States, Britain and other nations in February accused Russia of releasing the NotPetya virus, which in 2017 crippled parts of Ukraines infrastructure and damaged computers across the globe, costing companies billions of dollars. The Kremlin did not immediately respond to a request for comment. But Russias embassy in London issued a statement citing British accusations of cyber threats from Moscow as striking examples of a reckless, provocative and unfounded policy against Russia. As it was reported earlier, on July 27 a large-scale cyber attack hit dozens of companies and enterprises across Ukraine. The attacks began at about 11.30 a.m. Tuesday; the virus referred is spreading very fast. consequently, the list of the companies that took damage from it is now expanding. Related video: Chief Military Prosecutor Anatoly Matios asks the court to assess the legitimacy of General Staff actions that limited the access of military prosecutors to Ukraines Armed Forces facilities. He said this on air of 112 Ukraine TV channel. "I was thinking for a long time whether to go through the exchange of correspondence leading to nothing. And decided that the law gives me the right and I believe that this is true regarding the situation in the state - I filed a lawsuit to court, which has to put an end to it whether the actions of the General Staff leadership legitimate or not," Matios said. As UNN reported, referring to the lawsuit of Matios, Chief of the General Staff Viktor Muzhenko instructed to draw up a new procedure for access and work of military prosecutors on army facilities and on military bases. This procedure essentially limits the ability of prosecutors to conduct urgent investigative actions and contradicts procedural legislation. "According to the rules set by the General Staff, military prosecutors are allowed to access the facilities of the Armed Forces only for conducting investigative (procedural) actions within the pre-trial investigation in criminal proceedings, on single-use pass and with the permission of a higher-level military command," the suit states. As it was reported earlier, In 2018, the Armed Forces of Ukraine will receive the latest anti-tank complexes Stugna and Korsar, as well as the Oplot tanks. This was stated in the commentary of the General Staff of the Armed Forces of Ukraine Head Viktor Muzhenko. He also added that this year the Armed Forces will receive anti-tank systems Stugna and Korsar, which have already been tested by the Ukrainian military. Oplot is the Ukrainian main battle tank, developed by the Kharkiv Design Bureau for Machine Building. The main weapon of the tank is the 125-mm cannon KBAZ. The tower rotates 180 degrees in less than 5 seconds (the rotation speed of the tower relative to the body is up to 40 deg/s). In case of an abnormal situation, reserve mechanical actuators of the cannon and tower guidance are provided. Related: OSCE dissatisfied with Ukrainian army promotion in "gray zone" in Donbas Related video: The arrest was lifted from the accounts of companies associated with the son of former President Viktor Yanukovych, Oleksandr. This was stated in the published decisions of the Pechersky District Court on February 14. It is about the arrests imposed in 2015 and 2016 in the case of appropriation of budget funds through the offices of Ukrzaliznytsia. As the investigation found out, the accounts of companies created to legalize the money appropriated by the offenders were opened in the now-bankrupt All-Ukrainian Development Bank, owned by Oleksandr Yanukovych. In total, the materials of the investigation indicate 12 companies, each of which is controlled by workers of this bank. Earlier court decisions stated that there were a total of about 550 million hryvnias (21 million USD) and 27 million dollars on the accounts of these companies, which, according to the investigation, were appropriated by the defendants from the state budget of Ukraine. But current decisions indicated that the rights on the arrested accounts now belong to Ascor-Invest Ltd. At the same time, official suspicions have not been announced, and the investigation, the court believes, "has not proven that the funds in these accounts are the subject of criminal activity." These circumstances became the basis for lifting the arrest from the accounts. Yanukovych Jr. himself denies all charges. As it was reported earlier, Vitaly Serdyuk and Ihor Fedorenko, the advocates of Viktor Yanukovych, the former president of Ukraine filed the official appeal on the necessity to renew the mandate of the EU Council monitoring mission in the investigation of the crimes in Maida to the office of Frank-Walter Steinmeier, the President of Germany who was the guarantor of the Agreement on the peaceful setting of the political crisis in Ukraine dated February 21, 2014. Serdyuk published the copies of the documents. The presidents office accepted the proper appeal of the lawyers of Yanukovych on March 29. According to the advocate, it is expected that the lawmakers of Bundestag and human rights organizations will file an official appeal to the European Parliament and the OSCE. The decision to appeal to Steinmeier was made after the number of the meetings and negotiations, which were held by the lawyers in Berlin with the lawmakers of the European Parliament, Bundestag, different German politician and human rights activists. Related video: According to the defense, the consideration of the motion will take place on April 24, at 9 am in Pechersk court The Prosecutor General's Office of Ukraine filed a new motion to the court on the choosing of the restrictive measure for Ivan Bubenchyk, the Euromaidan activist suspected in the murder of two law enforces and attempt on the life of another during Revolution of Dignity in 2014. Ihor Korzhukh, the advocate claimed this as Hromadske reported. According to the defense, the motion was recently filed by the prosecutors and the defense has not familiarized with it yet. Also, Korzhukh reported that the consideration of the motion will take place on April 24, at 9 am in Pechersk court. He also claimed that no investigative actions take place with his client. Ivan Bubenchyk was detained on April 3 in the suspicion of the murder of two 'Berkut' officers during the Revolution of Dignity. As Bubenchyk reported he was detained in Lviv and then taken to Kyiv. On April 5, the prosecutor's office removed the suspicion from Bubenchyk and ismissed the petition to choose the pre-trial restriction measure. Also, he can be exempted from the criminal liability due to the amnesty law for the partakers of the Dignity Revolution. The same day, the Prosecutor General's Office served him with new charges. The detainee had previously claimed that he used a machinegun to fire at the law enforcers at Maidan Nezalezhnosti Square in Kyiv on February 20, 2014. Bubenchyk said he killed two of the fighters during the violent street clashes. Later, he was detained, when Prosecutor General's Office announced that several persons are suspects in the case of the murders of Berkut fighters during the Euromaidan events in Kyiv. February 20, 2014, earmarks the climax of the street violence during the Revolution of Dignity in Ukraine. That day, government-hired shooters gunned down dozens of unarmed civilians; about a dozen of law enforcers deceased as well. Prosecutor General's Office continues to look into the crimes related to the Euromaidan movement and the Revolution of Dignity, including these murders. A collection of objects and stories from Asian and Pacific Islander Americans that provide intimate windows into traditional origins and the American experience. Runs through 5/25. The cultural and ethnic foundations of New Mexico are routinely examined through a tri-cultural lens: Native American, Hispanic and Anglo; however, there are many more layers to its fabric that are not simply peripheral, but integral to the New Mexico story. Chinese, Filipinos, Japanese, Asian Indians and many more peoples representing the Asian and Pacific Islander diaspora contribute to New Mexico history and identity. Early business owners, farmers and laborers from Asia and the Pacific islands came to New Mexico in search of opportunity beginning in the mid-1700s. They endured institutionalized discrimination and brutal racism, but also found acceptance and inspiration that resulted in enduring contributions to New Mexicos distinct expression. Immigrants continue to settle in New Mexico, bringing with them unique stories of identity. Journeys, Judgment and Jubilation: Stories of Identity from the Albuquerque Asian/Pacific Islander Communities is a collection of objects and stories from Asian & Pacific Islander Americans that provide intimate windows into traditional origins and the American experience. Adelamar Alcantara, Viengkeo Kay Bounkeua, Esther Churchwell, Calvin Kobayashi, Virgilio Velasco, and Fay Yao are featured in the exhibit. Join us Friday, April 6, 6pm 7:30pm for an opening reception and conversation. The exhibit is hosted by the New Mexico Humanities Council located at 4115 Silver SE, Albuquerque. Visitors are welcomed Monday through Friday, 9:00 am 4:00 pm. Journeys, Judgment and Jubilation: Stories of Identity from the Albuquerque Asian/Pacific Islander Communities closes May 25, 2018. YEREVAN, APRIL 17, ARMENPRESS. The Yerevan Police Department said it has decided to cease the rally of opposition MP Nikol Pashinyan and to demand the lawmaker to immediately notify his followers on the decision. Since April 13, the rally led by Member of Parliament Nikol Pashinyan caused mass public disturbances, deliberate blocking of Yerevan streets, obstructing the normal functioning of organizations, blockading vitally significant transportation junctions, disobeying lawful orders of police officers and committing violence against on duty officers. The organizers of the rally are regularly calling for barring MPs from entry to the parliament and blockading the building. Despite the fact that the mass public disturbances and illegal restrictions of the rights of many citizens were continuous, police was guided by Article 78 of the Constitution and used solely verbal warnings and demands, which, however, were absolutely ignored by the protesters and the organizer of the rally. The rally stopped being peaceful at one point, namely when on April 16 Nikol Pashinyan guided his followers to the Baghramyan Avenue in an attempt to break police lines. Riots took place as a result of an ensuing clash, which caused injuries and public property damage. In accordance to Paragraph 1, Article 5 of the Law on Freedom of Assembly, the freedom of assemblies can only be restricted in case when maintaining state security and public order in a democratic society, prevention of crimes, protection of public health and morality, the rights and liberties of others prevail over the freedom of assembly, the Yerevan Police Department said. Police announced that the illegal actions of the protesters make the constitutional rights of others and public interest a priority, moreover when all demands, calls and orders of the police have been totally ignored. Under Article 33 of the Law on Freedom of Assembly, the Yerevan Police Department has ruled to cease the rally and demand the leader of the movement to implement the decision and immediately notify his followers. Under the law, in case of the absence of the rally leader or failure to comply the police are entitled to disperse the illegal rally, including by special measures, YPD said, warning protesters to halt the illegal rally. Earlier on April 16 opposition MP Nikol Pashinyan and his crowd of supporters escalated the situation in Baghramyan Avenue in Yerevan. Pashinyan led his followers from France Square to the beginning of the Baghramyan Avenue, mentioning he wants to go the parliament, his working place. Along with other opposition MPs from the Yelk faction, Pashinyan intended to breach the police line. Deputy chief of the Yerevan Police Department Valery Osipyan negotiated with the MPs and agreed to allow the opposition lawmakers to head to the parliament. However, Pashinyan began shouting that he will not go alone and that his supporters must also go through the lines. Despite numerous calls from the police to maintain order, Pashinyan climbed onto the steel barricade, which led to a chaotic situation. The crowd began lifting the barricades and using them against officers. A brawl began between protesters and police officers. At one point the MP and his supporters even climbed on a vehicle. The situation drastically escalated. Police forces installed a barbed wire across the street and smoke was briefly seen on the scene. Yerevan police issued a statement demanding opposition MP Nikol Pashinyan to cease the rally in the city. In case of failure to comply within a reasonable period of time, police said they will disperse the rally with special measures and force. Public order has been grossly violated as a result of the violent actions of protesters of the rally led by you in Baghramyan Avenue. All warnings, demands and other restrictive actions of the police are no longer effective, thus, under Article 33 of the law on assembly, police are demanding from you to cease the rally. In case of your absence from the location of the rally or failure to comply with the demand within a reasonable period of time, police will disperse the rally using force and special measures, the police said in a statement addressed to opposition MP Nikol Pashinyan. English translator/editor: Stepan Kocharyan YEREVAN, APRIL 17, ARMENPRESS. The Office of the Human Rights Defender of Armenia issued a statement over the ongoing events in Yerevan, the Ombudsmans Office told Armenpress. The statement says: 1. From the very beginning of the rallies launched in Yerevan the Human Rights Defenders Office of Armenia carefully follows their process. A working schedule has been set up, working groups have been formed which observe the rallies on daily basis and pay visits in connection with the fact on isolating the rally participants by the Police, as well monitor the media reports. 2. We consider it necessary to state that the rally organizers and participants should act by the principle of not allowing disproportionate restrictions of the rights of others. 3. Today during the whole day the Ombudsmans Office will collect and analyze facts of use of specific measures by the Police during the rally, the reports on them, as well as the cases recorded by the Ombudsmans staff on the place of action. A separate discussion process has been launched based on this information. All materials of the Ombudsmans staff will be sent to the Prosecutors Office with the demand to carry out check operations. In this sense there is an urgent necessity to launch a respective legal procedure. 4. The reports on the rally participants and the Police officers suffering injuries are especially concerning. They must be investigated by strict maintenance of respective international rules. The incident between the protesters and citizens complaining on their actions is also concerning, and in this context we expect clarifications from the Police. 5. We attach specific importance to the constant calls of MP Nikol Pashinyan and other figures delivering remarks during the rally to refrain from violence and maintain the peaceful nature of the rally. 6. At present the normal operation of media outlets is also important. Therefore, the Ombudsmans staff keeps in its spotlight the work on not obstructing the journalists professional activity. For this purpose a separate observation is being carried. 7.The law enforcement agencies in their turn must provide constant information to the public on their actions in regards to the rallies, cases of injuries caused to the rally participants and the measures launched for checking them. The information received from official sources is an important guarantee to avoid the spread of inaccurate information and possible panic situations resulting from them. This is also important in terms of the trust towards these bodies. English translator/editor: Aneta Harutyunyan YEREVAN, APRIL 17, ARMENPRESS. Yerevan police have detained one protester from the Abovyan Str. Sayat Nova Ave. intersection Tuesday morning. Protesters had blocked the intersection, ARMENPRESS correspondent reported. Police demanded to open the road, but the crowd refused to obey. Opposition MP and his followers began a sit-in at the France Square in downtown Yerevan from April 13. Yesterday the situation escalated when the crowd began blocking major streets in the city, and briefly clashed with police officers on Baghramyan Avenue. English translator/editor: Stepan Kocharyan YEREVAN, APRIL 17, ARMENPRESS. Several protesters from opposition MP Nikol Pashinyans crowd have been detained by Yerevan Police Department (YPD) in suspicion of committing misdemeanors. Some have been detained in suspicion of committing administrative offenses [misdemeanor], police spokesman Ashot Aharonyan told ARMENPRESS. Asked to clarify the number of detained people, Aharonyan said details will be reported shortly. Earlier, the Yerevan Police Department said it has decided to cease the rally of opposition MP Nikol Pashinyan and to demand the lawmaker to immediately notify his followers on the decision. Since April 13, the rally led by Member of Parliament Nikol Pashinyan caused mass public disturbances, deliberate blocking of Yerevan streets, obstructing the normal functioning of organizations, blockading vitally significant transportation junctions, disobeying lawful orders of police officers and committing violence against on duty officers. The organizers of the rally are regularly calling for barring MPs from entry to the parliament and blockading the building. Despite the fact that the mass public disturbances and illegal restrictions of the rights of many citizens were continuous, police was guided by Article 78 of the Constitution and used solely verbal warnings and demands, which, however, were absolutely ignored by the protesters and the organizer of the rally. The rally stopped being peaceful at one point, namely when on April 16 Nikol Pashinyan guided his followers to the Baghramyan Avenue in an attempt to break police lines. Riots took place as a result of an ensuing clash, which caused injuries and public property damage. In accordance to Paragraph 1, Article 5 of the Law on Freedom of Assembly, the freedom of assemblies can only be restricted in case when maintaining state security and public order in a democratic society, prevention of crimes, protection of public health and morality, the rights and liberties of others prevail over the freedom of assembly, the Yerevan Police Department said. Police announced that the illegal actions of the protesters make the constitutional rights of others and public interest a priority, moreover when all demands, calls and orders of the police have been totally ignored. Under Article 33 of the Law on Freedom of Assembly, the Yerevan Police Department has ruled to cease the rally and demand the leader of the movement to implement the decision and immediately notify his followers. Under the law, in case of the absence of the rally leader or failure to comply the police are entitled to disperse the illegal rally, including by special measures, YPD said, warning protesters to halt the illegal rally. Earlier on April 16 opposition MP Nikol Pashinyan and his crowd of supporters escalated the situation in Baghramyan Avenue in Yerevan. Pashinyan led his followers from France Square to the beginning of the Baghramyan Avenue, mentioning he wants to go the parliament, his working place. Along with other opposition MPs from the Yelk faction, Pashinyan intended to breach the police line. Deputy chief of the Yerevan Police Department Valery Osipyan negotiated with the MPs and agreed to allow the opposition lawmakers to head to the parliament. However, Pashinyan began shouting that he will not go alone and that his supporters must also go through the lines. Despite numerous calls from the police to maintain order, Pashinyan climbed onto the steel barricade, which led to a chaotic situation. The crowd began lifting the barricades and using them against officers. A brawl began between protesters and police officers. At one point the MP and his supporters even climbed on a vehicle. The situation drastically escalated. Police forces installed a barbed wire across the street and smoke was briefly seen on the scene. Yerevan police issued a statement demanding opposition MP Nikol Pashinyan to cease the rally in the city. In case of failure to comply within a reasonable period of time, police said they will disperse the rally with special measures and force. Public order has been grossly violated as a result of the violent actions of protesters of the rally led by you in Baghramyan Avenue. All warnings, demands and other restrictive actions of the police are no longer effective, thus, under Article 33 of the law on assembly, police are demanding from you to cease the rally. In case of your absence from the location of the rally or failure to comply with the demand within a reasonable period of time, police will disperse the rally using force and special measures, the police said in a statement addressed to opposition MP Nikol Pashinyan. English translator/editor: Stepan Kocharyan YEREVAN, APRIL 17, ARMENPRESS. The Bar Association of Armenia [known as the Chamber of Advocates) began forming a group of attorneys who expressed willingness to provide free counseling to detained protesters in Yerevan, a spokesperson of the association said. Several protesters from opposition MP Nikol Pashinyans crowd have been detained by Yerevan Police Department (YPD) in suspicion of committing misdemeanors in the morning of April 17. Some have been detained in suspicion of committing administrative offenses [misdemeanor], police spokesman Ashot Aharonyan told ARMENPRESS. Asked to clarify the number of detained people, Aharonyan said details will be reported shortly. Earlier, the Yerevan Police Department said it has decided to cease the rally of opposition MP Nikol Pashinyan and to demand the lawmaker to immediately notify his followers on the decision. English translator/editor: Stepan Kocharyan YEREVAN, APRIL 17, ARMENPRESS. Opposition MP Nikol Pashinyan and his followers have once again blocked several streets in downtown Yerevan Tuesday morning. Koryun-Abovyan intersection, Abovyan-Isahakyan intersection, Baghramyan Avenue and the France Square remain closed in central Yerevan. The Khanjyan Tigran Mets intersection was also shut down and a brief brawl took place between a driver and protesters. Protesters also blocked Sayat Nova-Abovyan intersection, but police officers opened the road and detained one protester in the process. Pushkin Street and the section passing from Halabyan Street to Hrazdan Gorge are also shut down. Police have also shut down a number of streets from the morning namely Baghramyan Avenue , Demirchyan Street, a section of Proshyan Street which house state buildings. Yerevan Police Department (YPD) is entitled and authorized to disperse the rally using special measures in accordance to the law, police said in a new statement as protesters continue the illegal rallies in the city. Earlier YPD released a statement saying it has ruled to cease the opposition rally under Article 33 of the Law on Freedom of Assembly. [Opposition MP] Nikol Pashinyan has been notified about the demand from the morning. The organizer of the rally [Pashinyan] ignored the requirements of the ruling, failed to implement his obligations as a rally organizer, and once again called for continuous rallies, and implementation of illegal actions which obstruct the rights and liberties of other citizens and violate public order. Paragraph 3 of Article 33 of the Law on Freedom of Assembly authorizes police to disperse the rally with special measures in such cases. The Police of Armenia is ready to carry out its duty, which can be implemented in any moment, thus we call on the protesters to refrain from illegal actions to avoid undesirable consequences. Taking into account the consequences of such actions, reporters who are at the scene are urged to maintain reasonable distance from the rally. English translator/editor: Stepan Kocharyan YEREVAN, APRIL 17, ARMENPRESS. The foreign ministers of the Group of Seven (G7) countries issued a statement over the poisoning case of former Russian intelligence officer Sergei Skripal and his daughter, Yulia, the statement is posted on the website of Canadas government, Armenpress reports. We, the G7 foreign ministers, of Canada, France, Germany, Italy, Japan, the United Kingdom and the United States of America and the High Representative of the European Union, are united in condemning, in the strongest possible terms, the attack that took place against Sergei and Yulia Skripal, using a nerve agent in Salisbury, United Kingdom, on March 4, 2018. We share, and agree with, the U.K.s assessment that it is highly likely that the Russian Federation was responsible for the attack and that there is no plausible alternative explanation. We call on Russia to urgently address all questions related to the incident in Salisbury, the statement says. English translator/editor: Aneta Harutyunyan YEREVAN, APRIL 17, ARMENPRESS. Opposition MPs from the Yelk faction are arriving in the Parliament of Armenia as lawmakers are set to vote for electing a Prime Minister. Opposition lawmakers Mane Tandilyan, Aram Sargsyan and Edmon Marukyan were first to arrive. Aram Sargsyan, the younger brother of military commander and politician Vazgen Sargsyan, who was assassinated in 1999 while serving as Prime Minister, told reporters he wont enter the sitting hall if no quorum is ensured. I will not ask questions, I will not listen to the speech, I will sit in my office. When our time to deliver remarks will come, I will deliver a speech, he said. Marukyan said he plans to make a speech during debates around the election of the PM. If the session takes place, we will definitely participate, make speeches and express our stance, Marukyan said. According to him the majority of MPs are already in the building. Marukyan stressed he doesnt regret not joining the struggle of colleague Nikol Pashinyan because all developments which they were telling the MP prior to starting the protests are turning into reality. The participation of citizens in the rallies will not prompt them to participate in Pashinyans actions. Our decisions have nothing to do with participation of citizens, as we said if violence happens we will interfere, this decision is in force, he said. He said they, as MPs, will visit police stations to see detained protesters. Earlier the ruling coalition the Republican Party and the ARF unanimously decided to nominate third President of Armenia Serzh Sargsyans candidacy for next Prime Minister. As the country transitioned into a parliamentary system on April 9, for the first time in modern history of Armenia a Prime Minister will be elected by the Parliament. English translator/editor: Stepan Kocharyan YEREVAN, APRIL 17, ARMENPRESS. Rapid response teams of the Ombudsmans Office are visiting police stations across Yerevan from the early morning of April 17. The Ombudsman tasked the team to carry out the visits to guarantee the righst of detained protesters. English translator/editor: Stepan Kocharyan YEREVAN, APRIL 17, ARMENPRESS. Several protesters have been detained by Yerevan police officers near the Isahakyan statue at Abovyan Street. Police officers and protesters clashed in Abovyan Street, ARMENPRESS correspondent reported. Police said similar actions endanger public safety and the safety of citizens. Police announced that protests which are accompanied by mass public disturbances can be restricted or even ceased under the law. English translator/editor: Stepan Kocharyan YEREVAN, APRIL 17, ARMENPRESS. The parliamentary system in Armenia rules out the contradiction between the government and the parliamentary majority, Serzh Sargsyan, ruling Republican Partys candidate for the Prime Minister, said in his remarks at the special session of the Parliament, Armenpress reports. Today neither an individual political figure Serzh Sargsyan, nor the 3rd President of the Republic of Armenia are standing here. None of them has to do anything here. Todays voting hasnt put the issue of approving or disapproving one or another. Today the chairman of the Republican Party of Armenia that comprises parliamentary majority is delivering speech here. I am here first of all as the head of the ruling Republican Party to say in support of my candidacy that I have enough influence and opportunities to ensure the harmonious work of the political force comprising parliamentary majority in the legislative and executive branches within the frames of the assumed political responsibility. I will repeat again the parliamentary system rules out the contradiction between the government and the parliamentary majority, Serzh Sargsyan said. He stated that he is ready to be the guarantor on ruling out such contradiction. Serzh Sargsyan said the parliamentary system rules out the existence of the PM who will not enjoy the support of parliamentary majority. I really have that support and Im ready to serve it for the ultimate goal of our countrys dynamic development. This reality forces me to be in the center of the force that assumed political responsibility, in our case, the political coalition, the unity. The comprehensive understanding of the challenges at this stage of our countrys development forces to be in the forefront of implementation of a political program presented for receiving the public vote, Serzh Sargsyan noted. English translator/editor: Aneta Harutyunyan YEREVAN, APRIL 17, ARMENPRESS. Opposition MP Nikol Pashinyans crowd is outside the Prosecutor Generals Office in Yerevan. The crowd marched through the city streets, entering Republic Square and then through the Vazgen Sargsyan street, which houses the Prosecutor Generals Office and other ministry headquarters. Some protesters sporadically ran in other directions, relocating benches and garbage bins to block streets. The crowd is attempting to block Khorenatsi street. The protesters also headed towards the headquarters of the State Revenue Committee, in an attempt to carry out a sit-in. Earlier Yerevan Police Department said it is authorized to disperse the illegal rally in accordance to the law. English translator/editor: Stepan Kocharyan YEREVAN, APRIL 17, ARMENPRESS. The Armenian Police detained 59 participants of the rally organized by opposition MP Nikol Pashinyan for committing administrative offenses, the Police told Armenpress. Earlier some media reports said Pashinyans son, Ashot Pashinyan, is among the detainees. But the Police said he is no longer in the Police department. Armen Barkhudaryan, a member of the Heritage opposition party, has also been detained near the Yeritasardakan subway station in central Yerevan. The Police issued a statement noting that Paragraph 3 of Article 33 of the Law on Freedom of Assembly authorizes police to disperse the rally with special measures in such cases. English translator/editor: Aneta Harutyunyan YEREVAN, APRIL 17, ARMENPRESS. During a Q&A session on the election of the Prime Minister at the special session of the Armenian Parliament, RPA faction MP Karen Bekaryan addressed question to Serzh Sargsyan, candidate for PM, on the negotiation process over the Nagorno Karabakh conflict, reports Armenpress. MP Bekaryan noted that the negotiation process doesnt inspire optimism. Its clear for everyone that it is conditioned by unconstructive approaches and behavior of the Azerbaijani leadership, Karen Bekaryan said and asked Serzh Sargsyan how in these circumstances he imagines the future of peaceful negotiations and what new steps he is going to take to return the Azerbaijani leadership to more constructive negotiations. Serzh Sargsyan said the negotiation process really doesnt inspire optimism, but more concretely, this process, according to him, is simply suspended as the expectations of the Azerbaijani leadership from the negotiations result are unrealistic and unacceptable. I should state that before this stage we have taken all possible measures to move forward the negotiation process so that the agreements reached will have some stability and serve as a base for successfully completing the negotiations. Unfortunately, some time later it turns out that our meetings and negotiations not only on talks over the existing document on the NK conflict, but also on matters of creating some trust measures, maintaining the ceasefire regime are unnecessary as our partners do not maintain the agreements, he said. Serzh Sargsyan said based on the claims of Artsakhs President, leadership, he once again announces: We are ready, and our desire is to solve the conflict by peaceful means, and this conflict can be solved, the negotiation process can intensify if the Azerbaijani leadership refuses from its empty imaginations according to which mutual concessions mean only concessions by Nagorno Karabakh and Armenia. This cannot happen, he said. But as for the future steps, Serzh Sargsyan said the future will show what additional steps can be taken for one of these key issues to have an effective solution. MP Bekaryan asked whether it can be stated that this position is fully perceivable for the OSCE Minsk Group Co-Chairs, Serzh Sargsyan noted: I think they completely perceive this, and not only the co-chairs who directly conduct their mediation mission during the negotiations, but also the leadership of the co-chair countries, the evidence of which are their numerous statements. Everything is clear to everyone, he said. The special session of the Armenian Parliament kicked off on April 17, at 12:00. The lawmakers will vote on electing a Prime Minister. The Republican Party and its coalition partner ARF nominated Serzh Sargsyans candidacy for the Prime Minister. English translator/editor: Aneta Harutyunyan YEREVAN, APRIL 17, ARMENPRESS. The ministry of emergency situations said no explosive device has been discovered in the Yerevan City Hall after the apparent false call. The ministry told ARMENPRESS that a bomb threat was made at 12:02. First responders and bomb squads were dispatched to the scene. The building was searched and it turned out that the threat was false. English translator/editor: Stepan Kocharyan YEREVAN, APRIL 17, ARMENPRESS. The statement on having 4 million citizens by 2040 in Armenia was not just a statement, but a realistic statement which the Republican Party will definitely implement, Serzh Sargsyan, ruling Republican Partys candidate for the Prime Minister, said during the special session of the Parliament, in response to the question of ARF faction MP Armenuhi Kyureghyan, Armenpress reports. Commenting on the question according to which whether it is the time to develop and approve a demographic state policy concept and if yes, what conceptual provisions he would specify on this path, Serzh Sargsyan said: We have already started the implementation of such program. I had several consultations during my tenure as a 3rd President, and as during that post both as the 3rd President and head of the ruling political force we were designing the structure of the new government, we have planned to create a respective division there which will be engaged in this issue in a daily regime. I think we will approve Armenias 2030 development strategy in comings weeks which will include numerous provisions, also the one on the path to be passed by 2040. I think everyone will understand that the statement on having 4 million citizens by 2040 was not only a statement voiced from here, but also a realistic statement which we will definitely implement. Serzh Sargsyan said in this matter he relies on the support of the ARF as the party can provide the best assistance in the organization of immigration. Understanding that we, of course, cannot convince millions of people to come to Armenia, but we can convince at least hundreds of thousands since not all reached their dreams by emigrating from Armenia, and in case of ensuring certain economic conditions they will at least start thinking seriously. And if we manage to peacefully solve our security issues, I think the immigration will be quite significant, Serzh Sargsyan said. He didnt agree with the view that the funds provided to science and healthcare are decreasing. Quite the contrary, Serzh Sargsyan said the education opportunities are increasing. Horizon-2020 has billions of Euros for reaching that goal, using it. If we view the science as a social issue, I think we will not move on a lot. I talked with the Academys leadership, different specialists for a long time on this matter. We need to go to optimization. We need to have so many scientists Armenia needs. This, of course, is a difficult task, but I think we will solve it especially when we thoroughly discussed the law on higher education at this hall which is the beginning, base for development of education in Armenia, Serzh Sargsyan said. English translator/editor: Aneta Harutyunyan YEREVAN, APRIL 17, ARMENPRESS. The number of detained protesters in Yerevan has reached 80. The protesters have been detained in suspicion of misdemeanors, Yerevan Police Department said. Asked to specify how many detainees have been released, YPD asked to contact them later for clarification. Under the law, police are entitled to detain misdemeanor suspects for up to three hours without an arrest warrant. English translator/editor: Stepan Kocharyan YEREVAN, APRIL 17, ARMENPRESS. The chemical weapon used to poison ex-Russian double agent Sergei Skripal and his daughter Yulia was delivered "in a liquid form," according to the Department for Environment, RT reports. The department said that one primary location was targeted by their attackers the Skripal's Salisbury home. The Department for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs (DEFRA) has detailed efforts being made to decontaminate areas of Salisbury where the chemical agent has been found, as well as more details on the poison itself. On 4 March 2018, Sergei Skripal, a former Russian intelligence officer, and his daughter Yulia, visiting him from Moscow, were poisoned with an alleged Russia-made nerve agent in Salisbury, England. As of 13 March 2018, they remain critically ill at Salisbury District Hospital. The poisoning is being investigated by British authorities as attempted murder. The United Kingdom believes it is "highly likely" that the Russian government was behind the attack. Russia denies any involvement. The incident sparked an international diplomatic crisis when many Western countries began expelling Russian diplomats from their countries. Most recently, Russia responded by expelling 60 US diplomats. English translator/editor: Stepan Kocharyan YEREVAN, APRIL 17, ARMENPRESS. The opposition Yelk faction of the Armenian parliament requested a 20-minute break at the debates on the election of a Prime Minister. Prior to the short break, lawmakers were set to vote to elect a Prime Minister, as candidate Serzh Sargsyan delivered his speech, the Q&A with lawmakers and other remarks were completed. For the first time in modern history of the country, a Prime Minister will be elected by Members of Parliament. English translator/editor: Stepan Kocharyan YEREVAN, APRIL 17, ARMENPRESS. Third President of Armenia Serzh Sargsyan has been elected by Members of Parliament to serve as Prime Minister, a historic vote marking the first time that a Prime Minister is being elected by lawmakers. 77 MPs voted in favor of Sargsyan, while 17 voted against. Sargsyan was nominated for office by the ruling coalition of Armenia the Republican Party and the ARF. Earlier on April 9, Armenia transitioned to a parliamentary system. On the same day, Armen Sarkissian was sworn in as President. Under the Constitution, the candidate elected by the parliament will be immediately appointed as Prime Minister by the President. English translator/editor: Stepan Kocharyan YEREVAN, APRIL 17, ARMENPRESS. Newly-elected Prime Minister of Armenia Serzh Sargsyan thanked his colleagues from the Republican Party of Armenia and the ARF for nominating his candidacy for the Prime Minister and supporting it in the Parliament, Armenpress reports. We as a political coalition have assumed a serious responsibility, understand its scales and are ready to move on the path of ensuring the Fatherlands development and providing our people with better living conditions through a coordinated consistent work, Serzh Sargsyan said in his remarks after elected as Prime Minister in the Parliament. He thanked all partners of the Tsarukyan alliance, assuring that their honorable activity has always played a control role for the political coalition in the parliament. You managed to stand high from a simple way of acting such as we are opposition and must criticize everything or we must always vote against. In necessary moments your position was based not on party, but on state interest. It is due to this understanding that your criticism is perceived as impartial and forces policy makers to pay attention on this. Believe me, the leadership always feels your breath and its really sobering, Serzh Sargsyan stated. Addressing opposition Yelk alliances partners, the newly-elected Prime Minister thanked them and said the active parliamentarism can develop only by a daily work, clash of opinions and approaches, activity free of joint complexes and constant learning. Thank you for your role. According to the Constitutions requirement we will have many occasions for direct contacts from now on. I hope many misunderstandings and stereotyped ideas will be overcome quickly, and we will become good friends regardless of our political contradictions, Serzh Sargsyan said. Serzh Sargsyan has been elected by Members of Parliament to serve as Prime Minister on April 17. 77 MPs voted in favor of Sargsyan, while 17 voted against. English translator/editor: Aneta Harutyunyan YEREVAN, APRIL 17, ARMENPRESS. The opinion of every citizen of Armenia is important for the country, however violence, illegal actions and the restriction of rights of others should be ruled out during freedom of expression, President of Armenia Armen Sarkissian said in an exclusive commentary for ARMENPRESS. Under the Constitution, parliamentary forces are entitled with nominating a candidate for Prime Minister of Armenia. The opposition can oppose the candidate of the parliamentary majority through its votes. It is also the right of any political force or citizen to freely express their opinion, approval or disapproval over a given political development, within the circle of their Constitutional rights be it through a rally, demonstration or other peaceful means. The right to freedom of speech and free expression of will is one of the most important values of democracy. The opinion of every citizen of the Republic of Armenia is important for the country. At the same time, violence, illegal actions and restriction of the rights of others must be ruled out during free expression of will. The security of our country and national solidarity should be a primary and undisputed necessity for all of us. And, of course, I would like to once again emphasize that the health and life of every citizen of Armenia, from students, protesters to police officers, is valuable for us, Sarkissian said in his first commentary to ARMENPRESS news agency as President. Opposition MP Nikol Pashinyan and his supporters began a sit-in at Yerevans France Square from April 13. In the morning of April 16, the opposition protesters began blocking traffic throughout the city, causing major jams. The streets were opened in the evening of the same day, but the demonstrators once again shut down busy streets in the morning of April 17. A brief clash happened between demonstrators and riot police Monday. Six police officers, MP Pashinyan and nearly 4 dozen protesters were hospitalized. Pashinyan called on his supporters to continue blocking traffic April 17. The opposition politician urged his followers to block governmental buildings and obstruct normal functioning of state agencies. English translator/editor: Stepan Kocharyan YEREVAN, 17 APRIL, ARMENPRESS. The Central Bank of Armenia informs Armenpress that today, 17 aApril, USD exchange rate is down by 0.57 drams to 481.79 drams. EUR exchange rate is down by 0.32 drams to 596.07 drams. Russian Ruble exchange rate is up by 0.03 drams to 7.83 drams. GBP exchange rate is up by 0.05 drams to 689.97 drams. The Central Bank has set the following prices for precious metals. Gold price is up by 62.90 drams to 20901.31 drams. Silver price is up by 1.17 drams to 257.13 drams. Platinum price is down by 1.54 drams to 14405.61 drams. YEREVAN, APRIL 17, ARMENPRESS. On basis of the decision of the National Assembly of Armenia to elect Serzh Sargsyan Prime Minister of Armenia on April 17, 2018, President Armen Sarkissian issued a decree today appointing Serzh Sargsyan as Prime Minister of Armenia. The first meeting of the President of the country and the newly elected PM took place at the Presidential Palace today. As ARMENPRESS was informed from the press service of the Presidents Office, congratulating Serzh Sargsyan, the President said, Considering the path you have passed, great organizational experience and skills, human qualities, I am convinced you will use all your potential for the development of our motherland and raising the welfare level of the people in this responsible post as well. The President of the Republic wished the PM achievements and effective work. English translator/editor: Tigran Sirekanyan YEREVAN, APRIL 17, ARMENPRESS. Saudi Arabias Foreign Minister Adel al-Jubeir has announced that the Kingdom is ready to send troops to Syria to fight against terrorism if there is such a proposal from the US Administration, ARMENPRESS reports Al-Ekhbariya TV informed. We have been negotiating with the USA since the beginning of the year over sending armed forces to Syria. Those proposals and idea are not new, the Minister said. He reminded that those negotiations were conducted still with Obamas administration. English translator/editor: Tigran Sirekanyan JESUSLANDIt probably hasn't escaped anyone's attention that the one subject about which religious conservatives are most rabidly insane is sex education. Basically, they're against it, though they're grudgingly willing to accept what might properly be called "non-sex education," usually referred to as "abstinence education," which basically consists of three words: Don't Do It! And as study after study after study after study has shown, abstinence ed doesn't work. But there are some public, and a smaller number of private, school officials who actually understand that A) kids, once they're reached puberty, are going to be interested in sex (even if they don't know exactly what that is yet), and B) will likely want to try things that make their pee-pee or coochy feel goodand, having been raised in the American culture, they'll probably feel guilty about that. That said, there are basically two courses of action: The conservative one, whose approach is basically "all ignorance all the time," and the sane one, called "sex education." This would consist of, among other things, using proper names for things like vulva, vagina, penis, foreskin, testes, ovaries, breasts, mammary glands, etc., and explaining how those things worklike how if you insert a penis into a vagina for a few minutes (seconds?), the result is likely to be a fetuswhich in turn will lead to a whole other discussion that religio-conservatives definitely don't want to have: the possiblity of abortion. But actually, comprehensive sex ed is far more than figuring out how not to get pregnant. It includes discussing, in an age-appropriate manner, the concepts of intimate interpersonal relationships, gender identity, gender roles in society, consent, pornography, what BDSM is, what sexually transmitted infections (STIs) are and how to avoid them, sexual fetishesit's a pretty long list, and some people like Elizabeth Johnson are against all of it. Johnson, who vlogs under the name "Activist Mommy," has lots of (incredibly uninformed) opinions about how sex ed is taught in schoolswhich is part of the reason she home-schools her ten (10!!!) kidsand among the things she's sure of is that sex ed in schools includes "how to question whether they really are a boy or a girl" and that "Kids are being taught how to perform anal and oral sex on one another, during class time, at taxpayer expense." Such ignorant crap doesn't sit well with 2018 AVN Award nominee for Transsexual Performer of the Year Casey Kisses. "Personally, I think the idea that you can teach someone to be transgender is a bit ridiculous," Kisses told AVN. "Why hold back valuable and sometimes life-saving information from anyone? Gender dysphasia isnt something that goes away. The majority of transgender women I know, including myself, wish we could have help at an earlier age. So many young lives could have been saved if we didnt shed such a negative light on being LGBT. A big part of the depression I experienced came from the thought of losing the love of my family members. Being trans isnt something you can stop or change, but there are things that can help and being informed is the most critical." So of course, Johnson is leading the charge for sexual ignorance by having as many students as she (and her "network of thousands of followers") can muster to stage a nationwide protest this coming Monday, April 23, called "Sex Ed Sit Out." According to Johnson's website, "The Sit Out strategy is our way to make your voice heard. When the parents of our nation unite to exercise their rights, those in power will hear "We will not accept pornagraphic [sic] material in sex ed. "We will not stand by and let activists skew education. "We will not let our tax-dollars be spent this way. "We will not let our kids be helplessly sexualized in their classrooms." But that's not all. Johnson appeared on the conservative radio show Focal Point last Wednesday to announce that she plans to sue public schools who teach sex ed for "obscenity"! "What they are teaching in the schools is obscenity, and we have good obscenity laws in this country, we just dont have leadership enforcing those obscenity laws," she said. "And you know what? It's time that we hold leadership accountable. It's time that we make sure that obscenity laws are enforced," adding that she intends to start "taking in information from parents who are outraged about the obscenity in the classroom and suing the school systems for the obscenity that they are forcing upon our young children." Johnson also has a few choice words for organizations like Planned Parenthood and Human Rights Watch, who she believes are instrumental in perverting kids' minds when it comes to sexuality. "Would you believe that special interest groups like the Human Rights Campaign, a radical, leftist LGBT organization, and Planned Parenthood are working in concert together and sneaking into the schools, claiming to be abstinence-only education?" she asked in an audio rant posted on the Family Research Council website. "Do you know what they consider 'abstinence-only' to be? Teaching kids how to masturbate with each other and anal and oral sexnot to mention that the Human Rights Campaign, of course, is encouraging kids to question their gender through 'anti-bullying' programs." What Johnson wants parents to do is to keep their kids home from school on April 23 to protest the existence of sex education, in part because, "Parents don't know this is taking place! They are very sneaky with the language; they change the names of the programs so that parents cant trace the programs. This is outrageous, and we aren't going to stand for it. Our kids' innocence is not for sale Weve got to rise up and take our kids back." Johnson's Sex Ed Sit Out has been getting plenty of play on right-wing and religious websites, everywhere from World Net Daily to the Washington Times to OneNewsNow to the Christian Post to the Christian Broadcasting Network, so there's a good chance that indeed, thousands of parents will keep their kids home from school on Mondaythereby making sure that not only will they be ignorant of sex, but also of whatever other lessons are scheduled to be taught that day. UPDATE: This is the reason why kids need comprehensive sex education. An excerpt from the article: "And much to my kids chagrin, I was committed to open and honest communication with them. In fact, my approach has always been that if I hear or read anything pertaining to 'growing up' topics or experiences, I will bring them up with my kidsno matter how awkward or difficult those topics or experiences might be. "But porn? I never even considered that I would have to have this discussion with any of my kids until my son, who is almost 5 years younger than his sister, hit puberty. Unfortunatelyand perhaps naivelyhaving to discuss adult content with my daughter had never even appeared on my Mom Radar." [Emphasis added] Among the flaws in mom's master plan: Assuming that girls aren't interested in porn, even after reaching puberty. (She's 14.) UPDATE: According to the very conservative-friendly Washington Times, only about 12 U.S. cities had protests, garnering somewhere around 100 kids total. Pictured: Screen grabs from Johnson's Activist Mommy vlog. Despite receiving a cease-and-desist letter in late March from a lawyer representing Michael Cohen, Stormy Daniels on Tuesday released an artists sketch of the man who, she says, threatened her to keep quiet about her alleged affair with Donald Trump seven years ago in a Las Vegas parking lot. The threat came face-to-face, in the presence of Daniels then-infant daughter, according to Daniels' account. The sketch, by top forensic artist Lois Gibson, may be seen at the top of this page. The Houston, Texas based Gibson has been named by The Guinness Book of World Records as the worlds most successful forensic artist, with her sketches used to identify 751 wanted criminals and playing a part in more than 1,000 criminal convictions. His face is burned in my memory, Daniels said in an an interview with the ABC-TV program The View on Tuesday morning. I was really rattled. It just never left me. The man is handsome and fit with sandy brown, slicked-back hair. Hes about 5-foot-9 to 6 feet tall, and in his 30s and 40s, according to Daniels description, which resulted in the Gibson sketch. She also said that he was well-dressed ... nothing was alarming about the way he looked at first. When she appeared on the CBS-TV 60 Minutes broadcast on March 25, Daniels described the incident on detail. I was in a parking lot, going to a fitness class with my infant daughter. Taking, you know, the seats facing backwards in the backseat, diaper bag, you know, gettin' all the stuff out, she told 60 Minutes interviewer Anderson Cooper. And a guy walked up on me and said to me, Leave Trump alone. Forget the story. And then he leaned around and looked at my daughter and said, That's a beautiful little girl. It'd be a shame if something happened to her mom. And then he was gone. The following day, Daniels and her lawyer Michael Avenatti received a letter from Brent Blakely, a lawyer representing Cohen, Trumps self-described fixer who in 2016 made a $130,000 payoff to Daniels to keep her quiet about the alleged Trump affair. The letter demanded that Daniels and Avenatti stop talking about the threat calling the allegation false and defamatorydespite the fact that Daniels and Avenatti never said that Cohen was behind the threat. Avenatti announced on Tuesday that he is offering a $100,000 reward for credible information about the man who threatened Daniels. He said that he has created an email address, [email protected], where tipsters can submit leads. Image courtesy Michael Avenatti Massachusetts has consistently been at or near the top of the list in reading and math achievement, according to the National Assessment of Educational Progress (NAEP). This is a fact. The policy implications are less straightforward.Progressives observe that Massachusetts is a blue state that ranks 7th in the nation in public-school expenditure, averaging about $17,300 per pupil for the most recent year available (2016). By the same measure - computed by the nation's largest teacher union - North Carolina is below the national average, at just under $9,000 per student.Conservatives, while recognizing and admiring the high level of achievement in Massachusetts, point out complexities. They note, for example, that the composition of the test-taking population clearly affects a state's average score . States with relatively low poverty rates tend to populate the top third of the student-achievement list. High-poverty states tend to populate the bottom third.If we look at the 2017 NAEP reading and math scores just for eighth-grade students with household incomes low enough to qualify them for free or reduced-price school lunches, Massachusetts still fares well. It's one of only eight states - along with Idaho, Indiana, Montana, New Hampshire, Oregon, Washington, and Wyoming - where low-income students outperform the national average (to a statistically significant degree) in both subjects.What do these states have in common? Neither partisan politics nor fiscal policies, as it happens. Four of the eight are completely red states, and five have Republican legislatures. Indiana, Idaho, Washington, Oregon, and Montana spend less per-pupil than the national average (although not by much in the latter two).Among the eight, Massachusetts remains the leader in math after narrowing the focus to low-income students. But in reading, the top performer for disadvantaged students is Indiana , a Republican state that ranks 49th in spending and earns conservative plaudits for its policies on parental choice, charter schools, and performance-based teacher compensation I'm not going to argue that the Indiana findings, or the latest NAEP scores in general, represent causal evidence in favor of conservative education policies. They don't, at least not based on a first glance at raw data. My point is that the raw data don't represent causal evidence in either direction.Test scores are critical information for policymakers. To put them to effective use, however, requires careful analysis and thoughtful interpretation.I have long argued that North Carolina ought to aspire to getting 90 percent of our students to the "basic" level on NAEP reading and math tests, and at least 50 percent of our students to the "proficient" level. If we achieved those goals, that would rank us among the top-performing education systems in the world. It turns out that Massachusetts is almost there - about half of its eighth-graders are proficient in reading and math, although a bit more than 10 percent of its kids continue to lack basic skills.Still, it will clearly be more difficult to reach those goals in North Carolina, where 47 percent of eighth-graders are eligible for free or reduced-price lunch, than in Massachusetts, where 25 percent are.That's an explanation, not an excuse. We owe it to future generations to set high expectations for all students and help them reach the goal. What I am saying is that we can learn policy lessons from a variety of high-performing states (and nations), including the Indianas and Idahos where rates of student disadvantage aren't so dissimilar from ours.As a fiscal conservative, I support the General Assembly's recent practice of prioritizing teacher pay - especially with increases designed to attract and retain high performers - while keeping overall state spending growth under control. I also favor changes in personnel, curriculum, and student-assignment policies that promote academic rigor parental choice , and innovation I favor them because my reading of studies that properly adjust for student characteristics suggests these policies will enhance student learning. Most such studies also show no consistent correlation between public expenditure and student achievement. So, let's talk about more than Massachusetts and budget math. Let's go deeper. The chickens have come home to roost at Duke's Divinity School . Protesting students claim the school is insufficiently diverse. More needs to be done, they say, to combat racism, transphobia, homophobia, and associated evils. All this despite a campaign by the administration to achieve these very aims in the course of which a distinguished faculty member was induced to resign.Paul J. Griffiths, Warren Professor of Catholic Theology, resigned last year after a dispute with Dean Elaine Heath. Griffiths was essentially fired for sharing his frank opinion about an effort to indoctrinate faculty on racial issues. Dean Heath said in an interview after her appointment last year that pushing the school to be more diverse was a top priority. She professed herself committed to "diversity and inclusion," but apparently Prof. Griffiths' remarks were a bit too diverse for her to include.Here is the underlying problem. Educational institutions these days are required to show not just sympathy, but active support-even celebration and incorporation into the curriculum-for an ever-expanding list of "marginalized groups." Apparently, all institutions, even divinity schools, are guilty of "institutional racism" and "implicit bias"-" structural sins ," as Dean Heath called them in a March 18 op-ed. These maladies have no presenting symptoms; they are covert, not explicit. Tests exist to measure " implicit bias " but they are not scientifically valid, and the idea of " institutional racism " seems almost to be defined by the absence of individual racism. If an institution is accused of racism, it is in a quandary. How should it defend itself? It may have the condition or it may not. Best to "vaccinate" against it.Vaccination is now provided by an entire industry of trainers/indoctrinators. One such organization, the Racial Equity Institute , a Duke favorite, apparently, was chosen by Dean Heath and Divinity School Professor Anathea Portier-Young to run a two-day training session last year. Divinity faculty were "strongly urged" to attend. Professor Griffiths objected to this exercise in strong terms , calling it "anti-intellectual;"His email , which he shared with Divinity faculty, was not in any way racist, sexist, or ad hominem, as a response from Dean Heath seemed to imply. Nevertheless, it was enough to cause Heath to bar Griffiths from faculty meetings and exclude him from research or travel funds.Given all these proofs of her support for those much-maligned "marginalized groups" it must have been galling indeed for Dean Heath to have her state-of-the-school address be disrupted on February 28 by four dissident female students bearing bull-horns and chanting,followed by a rap, a little theatrical performance, and some support from faculty and students in the audience. All can be seen in a rude-though rather touching- online video There is poetic justice in this incident. Despite the Dean's earnest attemptseven after she designed-even after disciplining, and losing-Professor Griffiths, in spite all this, she has apparently not done enough! The LGBT folk want more, much more, in the form of 15 demands.The list of "demands" is both revealing and embarrassing. One demand asks for a non-discrimination policy "to be signed by all incoming students, faculty, and staff." But other demands are in fact discriminatory: "To appoint a black trans woman or gender non-conforming theologian" as well as "a tenure-track trans woman theologian" andAndObviously, no "cis white male" need apply for any of these positions.Other demands make the students look like spoiled children: it is all about them:They wantandEvenThe protesters do not want fair or equitable treatment. Fairness is not enough: they want explicit discrimination in their favor.Perhaps their real beef is that the Divinity School, which is an educational institution and not a therapist's couch, simply does not take what they consider to be their essence, their sexual or racial identity, seriously enough. Their issues are not at the center of the school's curriculum. But then, why should they be?Other demands betray the students' adherence to discredited epistemological positions that make intellectual discourse almost impossible. For example, they want a "queer theology" course and the appointment of "a black trans woman or gender non-conforming theologian," which seems to imply that "queer" people do theology differently from other people. In other words, for the protesters there seems to be no neutral "truth," no theology per se. Everything must be tailored to their own idiosyncratic sexual or racial preferences. This is not identity politics; it is identity as Everything.This is the antithesis of what a university is supposed to be. The postmodernists a few decades ago promoted the self-contradictory view that there is no such thing as truth. As critics from Noam Chomsky to Daniel Dennett have pointed out, this view makes a nonsense of all science, indeed of all scholarship. It also makes a nonsense of the postmodern position itself: Is it true? Oh, then there is a truth. Is it false? Don't know, because there is no truth. The idea of "no truth" eventually came to seem absurd but was soon replaced by the idea that everyone, or at least every group-especially "marginalized" groups-has its own truth. This is a distinction without a difference: The idea that everyone has her own truth is still a position that makes science, scholarship, and rational argument impossible. It is this position that the Div School protesters seem to have unthinkingly adopted.What is embarrassing about a protest like this is the incredible naivete of the protesters. They seem to be painfully unaware of history; they seem to have no context other than the soothing glow of shared victimization. Since the Western intellectual tradition is largely the product of white men, mostly dead, the students' disdain for that group presumably allows them to ignore it. But that means these kids are not ready to participate in a university and the university has no business going along with their profoundly ill-informed ideas.What to do? Well, more education would help. As a first step, they could look to the lives of people they might want to emulate, like Sor Juana Ines de la Cruz,Born in 1651 of a mixed-race mother and a Spanish father, she gave up the possibility of a rich marriage to become a nun so that she could devote more time to writing and study. There was no "safe space" for Sor Juana who died of the plague she got while nursing infected nuns. She followed an inner truth in spite of all obstacles. How silly the desires of these protesters appear in the shadow of this heroic lady.Or, in a more secular vein, if they wish to gain greater insight into equity and diversity they might read one or two works of the very multicultural Latvian-Jew-Englishman Isaiah Berlin. He well understood the difficulties of reconciling the diversity of humanity with liberal democracy. As an introduction to Berlin, they might take a look at philosopher John Gray's excellent (long) talk , delivered in the city of Riga, Berlin's birthplace.Alas, real education is an unlikely prospect under the current Divinity School regime. On March 6, Dean Heath announced the formation of an "Academic Affairs Task Force on Gender and Sexuality Student Concerns." In other words, more of the same combination of indoctrination and empty rhetoric that so offended Paul Griffiths. I suggest an alternative: How about a two-day tutorial and seminar-for students, not faculty-on something like the topic and role model I just suggested? It might help educate young rappers who are obviously in need of a broader and deeper perspective. If it can also heal the divisions in the Divinity School, so much the better. At the very least it would do what the School is supposed to do: educate. Most people didn't bother reading the NSIDC analysis, they just weighed in because they want to believe that climate science is a hoax. What else could it be? After all, it's been very cold in much of the USA recently, and that proves something or the other. (Deniers would never accept that warmer waters mean heavier snowfalls, and maybe aided the meteorological "bomb" , or that the changes in the Arctic could be causing the polar jet stream to meander a lot further south these days. (There are differing ideas among scientists about this - see this WaPo article by Chris Mooney. There's also a good article about recent US weather by Michael Mann .)I bet many a rabid denier thinks of himself (they're predominately male) as Donald Trump just portrayed himself - as a " stable genius " (I don't think he means the horse kind), and " being, like, really smart " - oh my. The rabble at WUWT show as much decorum as the US President. Here's a sample. Tom in Florida also suggests the change in methodology means scientists are lying. I don't know if he ever learnt arithmetic. January 5, 2018 at 2:25 pm As the saying goes: figures lie and liars figure. January 5, 2018 at 2:30 pm Caught red handed again. For another example, see my guest post here 2/17/17 concerning CONUS trends and NOAA s shift in early 2014 to NClimDiv. Typing NClimDiv into the search bar will take you there. January 5, 2018 at 9:56 pm Regardless of the merits of the change in method, the fact is that if it didnt result in lower levels of ice and an accelerated decline then the change wouldnt have been made. They know it, and we know it, just like with the one-way temperature adjustments. These scientists cant even pretend to be unbiased observers. seems to think that it was very clever of Tom Wiita to catch NSIDC red-handed secretly and nefariously discussing the change in version on the very public NSIDC website , together with a very detailed analysis . I think that falls under criteria 6 , Self-Sealing Reasoning, or maybe criteria 7 , Unreflexive Counterfactual Thinking. The other thing it shows is that Rudd Istvan doesn't like change (except, I guess, when it's UAH versions).knows for sure that 97% of the world is conspiring against him and his 3% in denial. It's humankind's biggest ever conspiracy in the whole wide world. He's as eloquent as his demi-god:just knows that everything climate scientists do is nefarious. He wouldn't have it any other way. Even if Anthony had a year to analyze and dissect each piece...(he couldn't tell if it would)... stand the harsh light of public exposure. WUWT insider Willis Eschenbach tells you all you need to know about Anthony Watts and his blog, WattsUpWithThat (WUWT). As part of his scathing commentary , Wondering Willis accuses Anthony Watts of being clueless about the blog articles he posts. To paraphrase: Click here to read more. Trump FCC Chairman Ajit Pai made Elizabeth Pierce ex-CEO of Alaska fiber networking company Quijntillion one of his "broadband advisors" and now she's in jail on charges of having run a $250,000,000 fraud. According to the charge sheet, Pierce raised hundreds of millions of dollars for Quijntillion from investors after forging contracts and lying about future revenues. "As it turned out, those sales agreements were worthless because the customers had not signed them," US attorney Geoffrey Berman said in prepared remarks, as reported by the WSJ. "Instead, as alleged, Pierce had forged counter-party signatures on contract after contract. As a result of Pierce's deception, the investment companies were left with a system that is worth far less than Pierce had led them to believe." Pierce was trying to raise money to help build out a fiber optic system that would wire Alaska with high-speed internet and better help connect it to networks in other US states. Pierce was charged with wire fraud last Thursday and faces a maximum sentence of 20 years in prison. Broadband advisor picked by FCC Chairman Ajit Pai arrested on fraud charges [Nick Statt/The Verge] Companies House, the UK registry of companies, is widely known to be filled with fraudulent registration information about directors, addresses and ownership, and it's this willingness to tolerate fraud that has made the UK one of the first ports of call for criminals and looters looking to launder their fortunes. For years, an activist named Kevin Brewer tried to get Companies House to improve its fraud-monitoring. Finally, in frustration, he registered a company and gave Companies House the names of senior government ministers as the roster of the company's directors. Then Brewer did a newspaper interview to point out how easy this was, and how much of this was going on under Companies House's nose. Finally, finally, Companies House initiated a prosecution for fraudulent registration information. They prosecuted Brewer. He is the first person ever convicted for fraudulent company registration. Companies House has issued a triumphant press release, declaring their enforcement arm's relentless prowess. They don't mention whether they're going to prosecute any actual criminals, or whether they're confining all enforcement to whistleblowers who make fools of them. Kevin Brewer, a businessman, incorporated John Vincent Cable Services Ltd in 2013, making the former Business Secretary Vince Cable MP a director and shareholder without his knowledge. The company was dissolved and taken off the company register after Companies House took action. Brewer, 65, then formed another company in 2016, Cleverly Clogs Ltd, making Baroness Neville-Rolfe the Minister with responsibility for Companies House James Cleverly MP and an imaginary Israeli national, Ibrahim Aman, all directors and shareholders without their knowledge. Companies House dissolved the company and took it off the company register. Brewer, from Ullenhall in Warwickshire, was ordered to pay over 12,000 after he pleaded guilty to filing false information on the UK's company register at a hearing in Redditch Magistrates' Court last Thursday 15 March. This story is absolutely insane. At first glance, you think "well done, Companies House, at last they're getting serious about the epidemic of fraud enabled by the misuse of British corporations". [Oliver Bullough/Twitter] Alt-right hero Alex Jones claims the 2012 Sandy Hook Elementary School shooting was a hoax perpetrated by the federal government to give it a reason to repeal the second amendment. Twenty children and six adults died in the shooting. Because of Jones' false accusations, grieving parents of the murdered children were harassed and attacked by followers of Jones. Today, three Sandy Hook parents are suing Jones for defamation. From The New York Times: Both lawsuits were filed in Travis County District Court in Austin, where Mr. Jones lives, broadcasts his show and operates Infowars. The parents are seeking at least $1 million in damages. "The statements were a continuation and elaboration of a yearslong campaign to falsely attack the honesty of the Sandy Hook parents, casting them as participants in a ghastly conspiracy and cover-up," the parents' lawsuits said. The parents are represented by Mark D. Bankston, a Houston lawyer who filed a similar defamation lawsuit this month against Mr. Jones and Infowars after they falsely identified a Massachusetts man as the gunman at Marjory Stoneman Douglas High School in Parkland, Fla. Mr. Jones and Mr. Shroyer did not immediately respond to an email seeking comment on Tuesday morning. Image: By Sean P. Anderson from Dallas, TX, USA Alex Jones, CC BY 2.0, Link A young Quakers group in Nottingham, England released this 30-minute podcast of a silent meeting, complete with the ambient room sounds. John Cage would be proud. From The Guardian: Quakerism was founded in the 17th century by the dissenter George Fox during the years of Puritan England. The group's meetings are characterised by silence, which is occasionally broken when someone present feels the urge to speak, say a prayer or offer a reading. The idea for the silent podcast first came from Tim Gee, a Quaker living in London, who was inspired by the BBC's season of "slow" radio, which treated audiences to among other things the sounds of birds singing, mountain climbing and monks chatting. Gee said he had wanted to "share a small oasis of calm, and a way to provide a moment of stillness, for people on the move". Trump's longtime strongman got benefits we're just beginning to learn about. Wonder why he needed legal representation? Ken Dilanian at NBC News reports that Donald Trump's 2016 presidential campaign paid more than $66,000 to the law firm that represents Keith Schiller, his former bodyguard, according to newly filed campaign records. Schiller told Congress that he refused an offer by someone in Moscow in 2013 to send five women to Trump's hotel room, a detail that relates to the purported "pee pee tape." Federal election law allows the use of campaign money for legal fees, but only if the fees are related to a matter connected to the campaign, legal experts say. The Trump campaign spent $834,000 on legal fees during the first quarter of 2018, federal campaign records show about 20 percent of total spending. About $348,000 went to Jones Day, a law firm representing the campaign in the Mueller probe. A total of $280,000 was paid to two firms Harder LLP and Larocca, Hornik, Rosen, Greenberg & Blaha that represent Trump and his personal attorney, Michael Cohen, in their ongoing dispute with adult-film actress Stormy Daniels. In the last two years, the campaign has paid nearly $288,000 to a firm representing his son, Donald Jr., federal election records show. Stuart Sears, a lawyer for Schiller, told NBC News he could not comment on whether the Trump campaign's payment was related to Schiller's legal fees. News / National by Stephen Jakes Zapu spokesperson Iphithule Thembani Maphosa has warned that the ruling Zanu PF has for long been driving the country into the direction of civil war."Throughout the history of humankind, inequality has been the source of mass and block disgruntlement in societies, which has, more often than not, caused civil strife and unrest. Civil wars have been created by systems and governments that disregard the notion of equality and equity," he said."In Zimbabwe since 1980, Zanu PF has been slowly driving this country in the direction of civil war by formulating and implementing discriminatory policies.Today the country is projected in regions, one that is heavily subjugated by the other on political and ethnic grounds."He said this, coupled by Zanu PF arrogance to reason is recipe for disaster. It is, sadly, a ticking time bomb and if the status quo is maintained, it will blow in all our faces. News / National by Staff reporter A South African based think tank, the Institute for Security Studies (ISS), believes that the recent call by the Zimbabwean government, urging those who fled the country to return home was a step in the right direction, but it warned that the country needed to deal with its cash shortages first.In an interview with News24, ISS senior researcher, Derek Matyszak, said that the country was in need of serious investments."The market is pretty open, the problem is finding investments that produce saleable commodities and are not just infrastructure projects. And when a company sells the produce how does it get its money out of the country when there are too few US dollars in the system and people are being paid in cyber money?, that is the question that is worrisome," said Matyszak.Zimbabwe's consul general Henry Mukonoweshuro told expatriates recently that they should return to Zimbabwe and help the new dispensation in rebuilding the country.Mukonoweshuro said this while speaking at the Zimbabwe Achievers Awards ceremony in Johannesburg.Mukonoweshuro appealed to Zimbabweans based in South Africa to seriously consider moving back and investing in their motherland, which was now under a new dispensation led by President Emmerson Mnangagwa.Few jobs and no infrastructure"As we meet today, in the new dispensation as we called it since last November, the government of Zimbabwe is very proud. We, as the representatives of the government of Zimbabwe are very proud to say as you toil, as you make names in these foreign lands, you should now start looking north of the Limpopo (River). As the president (Mnangagwa) always says, his mantra - Zimbabwe is now open for business," said Mukonoweshuro.Matyszak warned that it would be premature to call Zimbabweans back home, as there were a few jobs and no infrastructure in the southern African country right now.According to Africa Check, the numbers of Zimbabwean nationals who were in the country could not be substantiated and the available data was unreliable.But, according to a report published on SW Radio Africa's website in 2013, it was believed that between two and three million Zimbabweans were living and working in South Africa."There is no point in heeding the call to come home, until there are jobs. Jobs first, return second...people returning without jobs will cause social unrest," said Matyszak.He also maintained that even those who were returning with intentions to invest in the country, could also face challenges due to the country's cash shortages."Investors won't come until they know that there are enough US dollars in the system for them to get their money, but there will not be enough US dollars in the system until investors come and start generating it," said Matyszak. News / National by Staff reporter Acie Lumumba has labelled Thokozani Khupe the Phelekezela Mphoko of MDC-T saying that she is irrelevant.Lumumba also said Khupe should understand that politics does not have anything to do with the constitution of the party.Said Lumumba, "There is something very significant that Khupe doesn't understand. Khupe doesn't understand that political warfare has nothing to do with the constitution of the party. Political warfare is a game of people and the people of MDC chose that they want Nelson Chamisa."To be honest, when Morgan Tsvangirai pushed Thokozani Khupe to get into the position that she is in today he was just trying to manage his female caucus and Matabeleland caucus. To be honest Thokozani Khupe you are irrelevant. Thokozani Khupe is the Mphoko of MDC-T."In fact you should be called Thokozani Mphoko. You are irrelevant. It's not because you're Ndebele, it's not because you are a woman, it's because you're irrelevant. So I'm so sorry Thokozani Khupe you have nothing to offer. News / National by Staff reporter FINANCE deputy minister Terence Mukupe was recently arrested and fined for assaulting his ministry's finance director, 58-year-old Ignatius Mvere, for allegedly giving him a "paltry $910 travel allowance".The incident, according to police documents shown to NewsDay, happened on March 29 this year, shortly after Mukupe had returned from a three-day Sadc business trip to South Africa.Upon his arrest, Mukupe paid an admission of guilt fine of $30 on April 10 at Harare Central Police Station and was issued with a ticket in the Z69J book number 1308983B.The matter, which was recorded under CID Law and Order Harare Central CR 2321/03/18, happened at the New Government Complex when an angry Mukupe stormed Mvere's office, demanding an upward review of his allowances against Treasury circular standing orders."On the day in question, the accused came to my office, complaining about insufficient funds allocated to him and ended up assaulting me," Mvere wrote in his affidavit to police."Prior to this incident on March 25, the accused travelled to South Africa on business attending Sadc meetings and returned on March 28. According to our Treasury circular, I had given him $910, but he insisted I must give him more than that. I could not give him more money since he had no reasonable grounds or a letter from the Minister of Finance authorising me to pay him more than what us on the Treasury circular."It is also understood that the deputy minister hurled insults to Mvere, saying: "You are very stupid, why did you give me less money while travelling to South Africa", before getting closer and clasped his neck and pushed him against the computer table.Mvere added: "I recall on March 29, 2018, at around 0745hrs, I reported for duty to my office as usual. At around 1230hrs, while in the office together with Garikai Mukombero who is the human resources assistant in the ministry, the accused Terence Mukupe, banged my door and entered into my office. His face looked angry. I immediately stood up from my chair and greeted him, but he did not answer. He moved towards me and I tried to move back but there was no way out."According to the police records, Mukupe grabbed his victim by the collar and banged his head on the computer desk before Mvere's workmates, human resources director, Stewart Jailos, Mukombero and his aide William Gondo intervened and stopped the fight.Jailos corroborated Mvere's narrative in a separate affidavit, saying: "Mukombero appeared at my door shouting in haste that the deputy minister was choking and beating up Mvere in his office. I immediately ran to Mvere's office whereupon I saw accused Mukupe's hands clasped on Mvere's neck almost chocking him at the same time breathing a barrage of threats while Mvere was also trying to free himself."Mukupe reportedly only released his grip after Jailos "moved forward to intervene physically" while a crowd of workers, including the deputy minister's aide William Gondo, were gathered by the door at Mvere's office.The deputy minister then reportedly pulled out a hotel receipt which he "ditched on the table", ordering Mvere to pay it or "face serious consequences"."I noticed that Mvere was shrivelled, visibly-shaken and terrified after being manhandled by accused. Documents were strewn all over the desktop computer and printers in his office were displaced with cables uprooted from wall sockets," Jailos said. News / National by Staff reporter A survey conducted by H-Metro yesterday showed that the prices went up by 10 cents.Previously, the bread price was 90 cents for a standard loaf and a dollar for the popular Bakers Inn, Lobels and Proton Super loaf, which was completely taken off the market yesterday.Having withdrawn the $1 super loaf, the bakeries are now selling the formerly 90c standard loaf for $1.Meanwhile, retailers had already changed prices by yesterday morning.A member of the National Bakers Association of Zimbabwe, also chief executive at Bakers INN, Ngoni Mazango, said it was bound to happen."I was not aware that the prices have gone up, but I am not surprised that this has happened."We have been facing many challenges as an industry on costs and liabilities, so this could be our breakthrough," he said.The super loaf, which had become famous in many homes, as it catered for larger families, could be a big loss.A few consumers who spoke to H-Metro were concerned with the developments saying 10 cents makes a big difference."It might sound silly to say that I am not happy about this, 10 cents is a very little amount of money but believe me, I would save that extra 10 cents I got from whenever I bought bread and by the end of 10 days, I would have another dollar and that's another loaf of bread," said Farai Mugofa, a concerned customer.Another customer, a mother of three children, two in primary and one in high school, was very emotional."In this country when you start thinking things will possibly get better something always happens. And we are not surprised. How can this be justified?" she said."Instead of prices going down, the opposite happens. I am a bread winner and that 10 cents makes a difference in my pocket. I have a big family, where I used to buy one family loaf, I now have to buy two standard ones per day."It is inevitable that my children will have to skip breakfast for a day or two, because andizvhikwanisi,"she saidAnother customer said it is understandable to increase the price of bread since 10 cents is not really a huge amount but they must at least bring back the super loaf to the market."I don't understand why they had to remove the family loaf, it is okay to increase the bread price but what does the super loaf have to do with any of this, dai vangotidzosererawo hedu super loaf," said Zvikomborero Gore.Another official from the bakery industry, who requested anonymity, said that it is unfortunate that the bread price had to go up."We understand that our customers have their favourites and were comfortable with the usual price, but due to the economic pressures and challenges we have had to face lately especially through the use of plastic money, we have made loses as rates tend to differ with swipe, Ecocash and cash," he said."We love our customers and we strive to please them, but when push comes to shove, we are left with no other choice but to increase the prices."When things settle down we sincerely hope that the prices will be reduced again," he said. News / National by Staff reporter FORTY-YEAR-OLD Primrose Chigwada was diagnosed with Tuberculosis (TB) back in 2001.Doctors could not diagnose it through sputum tests but after being screened through X-Ray it was revealed she had TB and the infection had severely affected part of her right lung."I was constantly sick, going to various hospitals for diagnosis but doctors failed to determine the source of my ailment," she recalls.What followed was a long and tortuous six month course of taking 14 bitter tablets simultaneously and in some instances, there was some vomiting."I survived on drinking porridge made from nutritional supplements provided by the donors because I could not swallow solid food. Some of the food would make me vomit," Chigwada remembers.Her ordeal was not just limited to the physical pain she went through during her ailment but was also combined with rejection by relatives she had looked up to during the difficult period.Her husband sent her away insisting he could not cope with a "bewitched" wife, prematurely ending the couple's marriage of four years.Chigwada's ailment also manifested through a frail body and she failed to take care of the couple's 18-month-old child at the time as she devoted all her energies on her recovery attempts. Her chances seemed remote at the time.But that would not mark the end of her discrimination as she would later discover."My relatives dreaded me; they separated their plates and blankets with mine fearing they could also contract the disease. It was at that time that my young brother took me in and stayed with me," Chigwada says. SELF-DISCRIMINATIONWhile she could sit and ponder over the ill-treatment she received from her husband and relatives, it dawned on her that her own negative imaginations around TB also worsened her plight.At the time, she witnessed many die of the disease."Some changed skin colour, hair texture and developed swollen legs coupled with mood swings and hallucinations- which were being caused by the side effects of the medication," she says.Before being diagnosed with TB herself, Chigwada had been a caregiver to eight close family members including her mother who died of the disease in 1993.She recalls, "During those days TB was painful; the medication was too much and the side effects were enormous; many people could not cope."Many stopped taking the drugs in the first few days when they started to experience side effects."Others suspected that they had been bewitched and sought help from prophets and traditional healers."In her case, she stuck to her eight-month treatment course and doctors confirmed she had successfully been healed from the disease within six months."The treatment course was intended for eight months but I stuck to my medication no matter how painful. When I went for review after six months, the doctors confirmed that I had been healed," said Chigwada.Chigwada says she has never suffered from the disease again, since that time.Her interaction with TB has not entirely been in the negative as she is now a community volunteer with various non-governmental organisations.She uses the time to visit homes of TB patients, visit local health centres to collect medicine for refill on behalf of those who will be unable to do so at the time.Chigwada also spends time educating and encouraging both caregivers and the patients themselves to adhere to their medication as it is the only way one can win the fight against TB."Many people die of TB because they stop taking the medication as soon as they start experiencing side effects causing them to develop drug resistant TB which is difficult to treat," she says. STIGMAInternational Union against Tuberculosis and Lung Disease Country Director Dr Christopher Zishiri said during this year's World TB Day commemorations, that provision of TB medicines alone for a social disease that is still highly stigmatised, was not enough to end the epidemic. Factors such as poverty and lack of knowledge impeded the fight against TB."There is need to interrogate to what extent catastrophic costs associated with access to TB services is undermining any efforts to end the scourge," Dr Zishiri said while urging local leaders to play their gate keeping role in anti-TB strategies."To our traditional and religious leaders, we count on you, to promote early health seeking behaviour and treatment adherence," he said.Deputy Director AIDS-TB Programs in the Ministry of Health and Child Care Dr Charles Sandy says despite the many efforts being done to educate people on TB, there are still many challenges that are being faced to bridge the information gap."The main challenges include lack of enough funding to produce materials in adequate numbers that we may want as well as materials to be in all minority languages spoken by all rural communities of this country," Dr Sandy said.Equally, Health and Child Care Minister David Parirenyatwa challenged traditional, religious and other community leaders to complement government efforts to end TB."The leadership and commitment should also increase amongst civil society advocates; health-care workers; NGOs and other development partners," he said during TB commemorations.He added:"In Zimbabwe, we have made great strides in combating TB; estimated TB incidence declined to 208 per 100,000 in 2016 as compared to a peak of 617 per 100,000 in 2003 and a rate of 242 per 100,000 in 2015. Out of the 28,225 cases diagnosed in 2015, 81 percent were successfully treated, and this has remained the same rate compared to 2014 versus our target of 90 percent. This is mainly due to a high proportion of 10 percent of people dying whilst on treatment.""The country has now adopted the use of the new TB medicines and has started the roll out treatment of DR-TB using a shorter regimen to improve treatment adherence and outcomes."Zimbabwe is among the world's 30 high burden countries for TB, TB-HIV & MDR TB and the country's TB epidemic is largely HIV-driven with a co-infection rate of 67 percent.With support from various agencies and partners including USAID Challenge TB and Global Fund, the country has set sights towards ending the opportunistic disease by 2030 as articulated in the United Nations (UN) Strategic Development Goals and the World Health Organisation's (WHO) End TB Strategy.According to Chigumbura experience is the greatest teacher, hence she has devoted her life to work as a voluntary educator in the fight against TB."These days TB should not kill people as much as it used to because there has been a lot of developments on the medication and treatment.""No matter how painful, the TB battle can only be won through adherence to medication," she said. News / Press Release by MDC-T Going rural: Thank You Masvingo Bikita in Context Going rural again Tomorrow is Independence Day and every patriotic Zimbabwean must take time to reflect on the supreme national sacrifice in which the sons and daughters of this land paid the ultimate sacrifice while some lost their limbs so that the whims of future generations could walk again.Some of us are proud of the liberation legacy and the successful quest by Zimbabweans to reclaim their dignity from a oppressive colonial regime.Even as a post-liberation political formation, we stand for the continuation and perpetuation and not the negation or opposition of the liberation project. We are proud and patriotic Zimbabweans and tomorrow we will be joining the rest of the nation in paying tribute to that invaluable chapter in our national story.Our only wish is to complete the outstanding business of our independence so that political independence would truly mean the advent of freedoms and the proper respect for the right to vote which was at the core of our protracted national struggle. The land and the right to vote were at the epicenter of the people's struggle.In many ways, the sanctity of our struggle has been undermined, if not hijacked, by a selected few who have betrayed the noble aspirations of Zimbabweans when they waged that brutal struggle. As a post-liberation political formation, we anchor our own struggles on the liberation struggle, its values and aspirations.We truly honour the liberation effort.Tomorrow, we will be joining the rest of the nation in commemorating the heroic act of Zimbabweans in consigning colonial oppression to the dustbins of history. The only challenge is to finish the outstanding business of that struggle for which so many Zimbabweans died.True to our promise of going rural in this election campaign, I had an eventful weekend in Masvingo, starting with the chastening rally at Nyika growth point in Bikita on Friday and then another huge-turn-out at Jerera in Zaka the following day.Elsewhere, the MDC-T and MDC Alliance leaders were addressing huge crowds in the rural hinterland from Nkayi in Matabeleland North, Mount Darwin in Mashonaland central, Gokwe in the Midlands, Hurungwe in Mashonaland West to Makoni in Manicaland province. We have pledged to largely go rural in this election and over the weekend, we were doing precisely that by honouring our solemn pledge to go rural in our campaign.My visit and interactions with the people in Masvingo brought a lot of issues to the fore.The first was the hunger for change, which is now a national chorus.What was glaringly palpable was the self-evident collapse of the national infrastructure and the fracturing of our communities. I saw collapsed services, poor roads and dilapidated hospitals.I saw for myself the deadening poverty pervading our rural areas and how Zimbabweans are struggling to put food on the table.I saw the marginalization of the people and the abuse of our traditional leaders who are being used to intimidate villagers by collecting serial numbers of the voter registration slips.I saw command politics at play, as evidenced by the use of food as a political weapon in the rural communities. Known and identified government bureaucrats have been deployed to advance a partisan agenda and to strike fear in the rural communities.On Friday, I was chastened by the huge turn-out at Nyika growth point in Bikita. I had occasion to engage the people and our message centred on the need for electoral reforms as well as our policy agenda that will be undergirded by the tripod pillars of transformation, opportunity and prosperity.After the rally at Nyika, I had occasion to visit Silveira Mission hospital, where I was born some 40 years ago. It was a nostalgic moment and I saw for myself how things are getting worse in our hospitals.For example, there were three beds in the ward where I was born but I realized on Friday that only two were left as the third had since broken. Things have taken a debilitating turn since I was born at that hospital in rural Bikita, where my mother comes from.I saw 22 expecting women in the maternity ward, who are being asked to pay $50 for the national service of giving birth to the future leaders of this country.Our incoming government will ensure that we scrap such fees charged on women for performing a national service.I took time to pray with a 9-year old Mercy Chigwende, a young girl with the rare condition of cancer of the blood. Her parents are finding it difficult to meet the huge bills where she is being charged $400 per week. I assisted with some money but money alone is nothing. I had to summon the providence of God to intervene to save the life of the innocent girl.On Saturday, I attended Holy Communion at the church conference in Chatsworth, where I had occasion to listen to a powerful word and found time to pray with the church elders and pastors.I would wish to restate my unstinting belief that politics should not usurp church platforms to peddle a partisan agenda. Church platforms must be exclusively used for the word of God. Anything else is tantamount to defiling the sacred and sanctified holy places of worship.In the afternoon I addressed a rally at Jerera Growth Point in Zaka where again I had occasion to sum up our promise to the people of Zimbabwe when we form the next government in September. We pledge to restore the dignity of Zimbabweans, to create jobs but first of all to ensure that we create a proper environment for the people to express their sovereign will in a truly free, fair and credible election.I also found time to lay wreath on the grave of Crison Mbano, a political violence victim and one of our party activists in Zaka who was killed in the despicable Zanu PF-orchestrated violence of 2008 in which so many Zimbabweans died. I saw some of the survivors of the brutal violence in which Mbano and others perished.Indeed, I was sorely touched by their plight as well as that of the many thousands of Zimbabweans throughout the country who suffered a similar fate.This coming weekend I will be interacting with the people in yet another rural community but first, I have to join my fellow citizens in the important duty of commemorating our independence.Indeed, we must spare a thought for the brutal but heroic struggle that we waged against an oppressive colonial system.Happy independence month, Zimbabwe! Opinion / Columnist Thabetha Mangena writes these articles in his personal capacity as a Zimbabwean who analyzes cultural inclinations and beliefs of different cultures. Dorcas Sibanda was born Dorcas Shumba in Zvimba many years ago. She changed her name to Dorcas Sibanda after relocating to Bulawayo. It is quite unfortunate that the MDC-T president is about to make his biggest blunder for he wants to appoint Dorcas Sibanda aka Dorcas Shumba as the vice president of the party.Without being tribalist, the second vice presidency should be given to a Ndebele native not an imposter like our Dorcas Shumba. Not only does it make sense to appoint a real Ndebele but it shows respect for the Ndebele people who have been sidelined by Zanu-PF for decades.In Matabeleland we have charismatic leaders like Hon Felix Sibanda who are more senior and respectable according to the Ndebele culture and are also Ndebele royal blood. Ndebele people will prefer a father figure as the regional leader over a imposter imposed on us because MDC T has a law that states that Bulawayo can only have a Vice President and that Vice President can only be a woman. This means that Bulawayo can only have a Vice present who is a female hence making sure that Ndebele male figures can never rise to president no matter how qualified there are. I find this repugnant to imposes unqualified people who are only chosen because they're are female. If Bulawayo provides leadership, then it should be the person we like as Matabeleland. For the past 14 years, Matabeleland has Thokozani Khupe as the regional party leader. We tolerated her even though she was imposed upon us by the maShona people. She was rude and was spectacularly so disrespectful to the male Chiefs of our region. She had them come to her because her power was so huge in her head. She was also very rude and chaotic to the extent that she made bad decisions with the need to prove her power. She became an Idi Amini of a leader. She humiliated Bulawayo and Matabeleland and her conduct suppressed the vote of some people in Matabeleland, not because she was a lady but because she didn't understand how to apply her power. If she was challenged, she quickly resorted to the words, "You say this because I am a woman and a Ndebele." It significant because we Ndebele people are warriors and our woman support is as Ndhlovu Kazi.I want a competent and culturally relevant Father Mqabuko type of fugue in our region. I want someone I am able to love not loathe because she is insecure and only there because she is a Ndebele woman elevated by Triablist maShona who are afraid of our man close to the power structure.Some of our local leaders have proven leadership prowess and support for you Mr. President and have immense support in the region and yet you are bent to subjugate the will of our people.When Khupe was humiliating our province, Dorcas was quiet because she is a known Khupe loyalist and she preferred Khupe to Chamisa. We would love a Ndebele to rise to president, but we know that maShona people are too Tribalist to vote a maNdebele at the helm.We have to find that one MDC maShona who can help dislodge The Gukurahundi Party from power. It has been our objective for the past 38 years to remove Zanu PF and we are realistic to accept the VP post for now until Zanu PF is removed. Our own Ndebele leader can never be accepted to win a national election at this time. We know this and we accept it.We are now close to dislodging the evil Zanu PF empire with Chamisa, who is sympathetic to our cause since he is also married to our Ndebele sister.If MDC T is bent on imposing female leaders upon us, because they want the gender balance, then they must also remove all our male Chiefs and convert them to females. I underhanded that this their Hand plan to also impose female chiefs in Matabeleland.Remember, I am not against a woman at the helm, but this business of having to put a law that states that, all top leadership and Matabeleland leadership must be female is highly scoffed at, because these people don't understand our culture. They don't understand why voter registration is still low in Bulawayo and Matabeleland.Chamisa wants to repeat the same mistake that he once made when he made sure Thokozani Khupe was imposed upon us by maShona people. Khupe also went on to destroy the career of famed Ndebele leaders like Sibanda by rigging primary votes with the help of Chamisa.This news to destroy Ndebele male leadership is shocking. It is alleged that Chamisa wasn't to angle his friends too.How many more mistakes will we allow you Mr. President to make. Stop choosing your enemies over your loyalists. My suggestion to you Mr. President is to sit down and appoint someone who is loyal to you and who is also loved by the people of the region. Someone who can talk to our chiefs and fight for the ordinary little guys.Recently we have seen self motivated placard bearing MDC-T supporters delivering the message to him... One and only Felix Magagela Mafa Sibanda for the vice presidency. The people have already spoken and remember Mr. President the voice of the people is the voice of God. Remember you can only ignore the voice of God at your peril. A true leader listens to his followers and Mr. President you should lead by example if you are a true leader.Mr president, it's now time that you put personal vendettas aside and appoint honorable Magagela Sibanda without fear and favuors. This will certainly ensure that votes stay in the house. Another small word of advice M. President is, when in Matabeleland addressing our people, yes m, you may speak in Shona, but have an interpreter. The Ndebele people need to be respected too.By appointing Dorcas Shumba Mr president you would be abusing the amaNdebele culture. The Ndebele are patriarchal in nature. Remember for the past fourteen years the Ndebeles had been saddled with the dictator Khupe. This was against our culture. Mr president, don't mute the Ndebele males over women.It is quite unfortunate Mr president that you are being towed to fulfill an agenda to belittle and denigrate Ndebele culture by appointing women into crucial posts over men. I hear Mr president you want to coronation women chiefs in Matebeleland. After being under the York of Khupe who ruled Matebeleland without love but drama, you now want to give us another unqualified woman vice president in the form of Dorcas Sibanda aka Dorcas Shumba. It would be a shame Mr president. Remember to respect the Ndebele culture sir.Matebeleland MDC-T should have a vice and that she must also be female--Crazy. That's what they want you to do, Mr president-- to reduce Matebeleland to a female dominated leadership that they can control. Imagine if Welshman Ncube was vice president to Morgan. He would be president today without questions. If Matebeleland does not accept female chiefs, how hard was it for Khupe to organize in the rural areas where the chiefs rule. They know she was only in leadership because of favors not competency. They knew she could never ascend to power as president hence now Mr president you are about to give us a Shona who change her name from Shumba to Sibanda.Mr president, please don't impose a Shona in Matebeleland let alone a woman and very importantly, wait till after elections do you can imposed a your friends Bekhi, who has been in South Africa. For 15 years. We will not be used Mr. President. Not this time!I am woman and I demand senior male leadership from Matebeleland.Thabetha Mangena, PhD - Social Anthropology and African Culture, University of CambridgeMasters in Southern African History - KwaZuluThabithaHlubakazi@gmail.com Several cities in Mexico have seen violence due to organized crime. Tourists are starting to fear for their safety after a string of horrific murders in Cancun, Mexico. On April 4-5, the popular tourist destination experienced 14 homicides over the span of 36 hours. The deaths occurred in six different incidents and are believed to be targeted and tied to organized crime. Unfortunately, the violence isnt new to Mexico. In October 2017, Mexico saw 35,000 hotel nights canceled for the next year after violence erupted and the U.S. State Department issued a travel advisory. Then on March 16, a level 2 travel warning was issued for Mexico, stating that travelers should exercise increased caution. One area with a level 2 warning is Mexicos Quintana Roo state, which is home to tourist destinations including Cancun, Cozumel, Playa del Carmen, Tulum and Riviera Maya. The State Department recognizes that most of the crime in this region seems to be tied to criminal organization assassinations, and that turf battles between criminal groups have resulted in violent crime in areas frequented by U.S. citizens. These altercations, however, have led to the deaths of innocent bystanders caught in the crossfire. The advisory also includes some level 4 warnings, which means travel is strongly discouraged. This includes travel to the Colima, Guerrero, Michoacan, Sinaloa, and Tamaulipas states because criminal activity, such as homicide, kidnapping and robbery. Tips for staying safe Even with the travel warnings, U.S. travelers are still flocking to Mexico. According to AAA, Cancun was the fifth most popular spring break destination for Americans in 2018. If you plan on visiting Cancun, Tulum or one of the other hotspots in Quintana Roo, there are some things you can do to stay safe. The Bureau of Consular Affairs suggests American travelers stay on high alert when visiting local bars, avoid displaying signs of wealth (like wearing expensive jewelry) and avoid driving at night. ATM skimming is also prevalent throughout Mexico, so tourists should be extra diligent when getting cash and do so at indoor machines in well-lit areas. Story continues Doing your research is also important. Reading through the State Departments Mexico Crime Report for your desired region will give you some background information on violence and resources to keep you and your family safe. Before you go, its also probably a good idea to sign up for the Smart Traveler Enrollment Program (STEP), which sends alerts of safety threats, and makes you easier to locate in case of an emergency. Want to change your plans? If the news from Mexico makes you want to change your travel plans, it might be difficult if you didnt take the necessary precautions. Currently, no airlines have posted travel advisories to Mexico, so it will cost you (typically $150-$200) to change or cancel your reservation with a non-refundable ticket. Going forward, however, there are some things you can do. The first step is to purchase travel insurance, which can be a nice safeguard if youre heading to a volatile region. Some plans wont cover cancellation under these circumstances; in fact, several insurance plans dont provide coverage in areas under advisory from the State Department. Still, most plans include a Cancel for any reason feature that allows you to cancel up to 48 hours before the trip and get up to a 75% reimbursement for your costs. This add-on usually costs extra, but its a nice option to have at your disposal if you feel uncomfortable before departing for your trip. If you want to avoid Mexico altogether, there are some other destinations to consider. While parts of Puerto Rico are still recovering from Hurricane Maria, the city of San Juan has been welcoming tourists for months. Round-trip airfare is affordable (around $340 from Atlanta), accommodations are plentiful, and the weather is always just right. Another top spot in the Caribbean is the Dominican Republic, where tourism increased by 4% in January and February. There is also the beautiful island of Barbados, where round-trip airfare from New York currently hovers around $330, about $300 less than flying to neighboring islands like Martinique and St. Lucia. Brittany is reporter at Yahoo Finance. Follow her on Twitter @bjonescooper. Credit card debt has now reached pre-recession levels The Points Guy: Fliers should question their airline loyalty 4 ways to avoid paying baggage fees 5 ways to protect your money from credit card skimmers Managing franchisees is a difficult job, one that Restaurant Brands International Inc. (TSX:QSR)(NYSE:QSR) knows all too well about. The company has come into conflict many times with its franchisees over the years, and things are not getting any easier. Earlier this year, Tim Hortons, which is one of the companys key brands, saw one of its locations draw the ire of its customers after telling employees it would be taking away benefits after rising minimum wages started to take effect. Most recently, one of the coffee chains franchisees had been told his licence would not be renewed and that the store would need to transition to a new owner. The franchisee had been very critical of Restaurant Brands and its operation of Tim Hortons, alleging, among other things, that national advertising money had been misused, and he was also part of a class-action lawsuit against the company. Iconic brand acquired in 2014 by a company known for its cost cutting The company that owns Restaurant Brands, 3G Capital, makes aggressive cost-cutting efforts a part of its strategy when it comes to acquisitions, but that is not without consequences. Many Tim Hortons franchisees have complained that individual owners are being saddled with more costs, so the parent company can maximize its margins. The Great White North Franchise Association, which represents a significant number of Tim Hortons franchisees, has sent a letter to the Canadian government outlining a list of issues that franchisees have had with the new owners, and that has prompted an investigation into the matter. This dilemma underscores the problem with trying to manage and unify so many franchisees, and why Restaurant Brands presents a risk to shareholders. On the one hand, the business wants to maximize its bottom line and keep shareholders happy. However, on the other hand, if franchisees are not happy, that could present problems in finding the good, stable management that the franchisor needs in order for its locations to be successful and contributing. Story continues This is especially important as Restaurant Brands looks to expansion into other parts of the world. A bad reputation could make it hard to land new franchisees, especially given the investment that individual owners will need to make, as there is already risk inherent to simply becoming a franchisee. Brand loses value among Canadians Tim Hortons was a once revered and proud Canadian company, but now its reputation has started to falter. Earlier this month, a ranking of which companies were most admired in Canada came out; Tim Hortons, which came in as high as fourth last year, dropped all the way down to 50th. Why this should matter to investors In the past six months, Restaurant Brands has seen its stock fall 17%, as concerns about the company continue to weigh. Its further proof that investors need to look at qualitative components to a business as well as quantitative and cant simply expect that cost cutting will come without any consequences. The real danger for Restaurant Brands is that while it may be able to shave some costs from its bottom line, it could lose even more sales from a top line that has already been struggling to find growth. More reading Fool contributor David Jagielski has no position in any of the stocks mentioned. The Motley Fool owns shares of RESTAURANT BRANDS INTERNATIONAL INC. Russia was not spoiling for a fight in Syria. Not with the US. That much was clear in the Kremlin's muted reaction to an incident back in February, curiously brought back to the fore in recent remarks by CIA Director Mike Pompeo. "In Syria, now a handful of weeks ago, the Russians met their match. A couple hundred Russians were killed," he told the Senate Foreign Relations Committee last Thursday. On 7 February, pro-regime forces backed by Russian mercenaries had launched an attack on a Syrian Democratic Forces headquarters near Deir Ezzor. The US coalition which backs the SDF responded with air and artillery strikes. The number of reported casualties on the regime side varies wildly. Suffice to say, there were more than a handful of funerals on Russian soil which the media were not allowed to attend. :: UK, US and France bid for ceasefire in Syria after airstrikes The Kremlin eventually admitted that "several dozen" Russians had been killed in Syria, but said they were not uniformed servicemen. Anything to play down a situation in which Russians and Americans were facing off against each other in direct combat on Syrian soil. Both sides knew how dangerous that could be. Both sides tried to keep the story quiet. Fast forward a handful of weeks - a chemical attack in Salisbury and a fresh round of sanctions later. Russia is angrier but its strategic calculus on Syria has not shifted. Thanks to Russia's support, Bashar al Assad has all but finished a gruesome clear-out of the remaining opposition strongholds, broken neighbourhood by broken neighbourhood in city after city. In Dhouma, the alleged chemical attack last Saturday night which Russia says did not happen may have been the straw which broke the camel's back - finally forcing the Islamist group Jaish al-Islam into accepting defeat and an evacuation deal. Off to Idlib province which teems with the vanquished from Syria's sieges, waiting for the final onslaught from above. Story continues :: Chemical attacks in Syria: A deadly history Russia's involvement in Syria's war has not cost much to date in terms of blood and treasure and it has gained hugely in regional power. Quite apart from being the best part of suicidal, Russia was not about to risk that through wider conflict with the US. Bashar al Assad may be Russia's ally but he is also a liability. The assumption that he will respond to Russia's bidding is also not a given. However it may be perceived in Washington, Paris or London, Russia sees itself as on the defensive vis-a-vis the West. The Kremlin knows Russia does not have the economic or military capabilities to take on the US and NATO. :: Boris Johnson defends strikes on 'barbaric' Bashar al Assad It is status which Russia wants. And the limited strike which gave wide berth to Russia's military bases in Syria gave Moscow the respect it feels it deserves at least militarily. Russia's ambassador to the US tweeted cryptically just afterwards that the West had failed to heed Russia's warnings and that "a pre-designed scenario was being implemented". At a press conference that afternoon, foreign minister Sergei Lavrov segued seamlessly from the strike on Syria to a much longer excoriation of the UK's novichok analysis, claiming that a Swiss laboratory which had tested the samples had found the chemical compound involved was one used by US and NATO countries, not Russia. The lab in question swiftly put out a tweet declaring it had said nothing of the sort. Information warfare is a far more comfortable battleground for the Kremlin than the war-torn streets of Syria. It is cheap and it is a simple way to keep the Russian public on side. But the more vicious that fight and the more flagrant the Kremlin's abuse of truth and transparency, the more difficult for Russia to get what it really wants - a seat at the top table worthy of the great power that Russia so desperately wants to be. By Jonathan Spicer and Ruma Paul NEW YORK/DHAKA (Reuters) - An Ecuadorian bank and Wells Fargo have reached an out-of-court settlement over a 2015 cyber heist, providing a possible precedent for the Bangladesh central bank's planned suit to recover $66 million still lost in one of the world's biggest such cases. A suit by Ecuador's Banco del Austro against Wells Fargo & Co was quietly settled in February, less than a month before a trial date was set, and the U.S. district court in Manhattan sealed all discussions, according to court documents. No other major media has reported the settlement. Wells Fargo did not comment on the settlement, and a representative for Banco del Austro could not be immediately reached. Banco had sought to hold Wells responsible for authorizing the fraudulent transfer of $12 million from its account in 2015. Hackers breached Bangladesh Bank's systems in early 2016 and tricked the Federal Reserve Bank of New York into sending as much as $81 million to accounts at Rizal Commercial Banking Corp (RCBC) in the Philippines. The accounts were held in fake names and most of the money disappeared into casinos in Manila. (http://reut.rs/2jk1W74) Some of the funds were recovered but about $66 million remains untraced. No one has been criminally charged for the heist despite an international investigation and two years of finger-pointing among Bangladesh, Philippines, the Fed and the SWIFT communication network that was used. Bangladesh Bank has threatened to sue Manila-based RCBC, and any legal fallout could set a precedent amid a rash of electronic heists at financial institutions around the world. "This is a tricky issue. We can't reveal our strategy. But yes we are reviewing each and every case, including the Ecuador one," Bangladesh Bank's deputy governor Abu Hena Mohd. Razee Hassan said in a recent interview. While Bangladesh has not taken any legal action, bankers and lawyers saw the cyber-heist suit by Banco against Wells Fargo as a test for any options available to Bangladesh. They said the settlement could signal that Wells compensated Banco in some way, a possibly encouraging sign for Bangladesh Bank, But it could still struggle to get a hearing in the United States and prove that Manila-based RCBC had a contractual obligation to freeze the stolen funds. "There are an awful lot of reasons for people to settle (and) there are all sorts of laws that may or may not apply," said Peter Jaffe, a senior associate at Washington-based law firm Freshfields Bruckhaus Deringer LLP. "RCBC was not the one that was hacked. Someone may think that RCBC should have done something different when it saw money coming through its accounts, but that is not really a cyber security issue at that point," Jaffe said. "I don't think you would necessarily look to cyber security law (or U.S. commercial code) to determine ... obligations and rights." OBLIGATION UNCLEAR At issue is the New York Uniform Commercial Code, which says a bank that is tricked by thieves must reimburse the customer, unless it can prove it used a mutually-agreed protocol for verifying the payment messages. The customer could counter that the security protocol was not "commercially reasonable." In 2016, the judge rejected an attempt by Wells to dismiss Banco's allegations because the Manhattan court could not rule that use of SWIFT's security system alone was enough. Bangladesh has a correspondent-banking contract with the New York Fed, which has repeatedly stressed that each of its foreign clients has agreed that it can rely on SWIFT protocols. The payment messages it received from the hackers in February 2016 were verified by SWIFT and directed the Fed to send much of the funds to RCBC. (For a graphic of where the money went, see: http://tmsnrt.rs/22NOJWn ) It is unclear what obligation RCBC has to Bangladesh Bank and whether U.S. law would apply. The Philippine bank said it had received advice from lawyers in the United States that it had "strong and valid" defences against any suit by Bangladesh Bank. "There is no act attributable to RCBC which caused the loss or the theft from Bangladesh Bank," it said in a statement on Monday. "We reiterate that RCBC was merely a beneficiary bank, meaning, the payment instructions which are alleged to have been the result of hacking were not executed by it." In the immediate wake of the heist, Bangladesh's central bank had threatened to sue the New York Fed and SWIFT, though relations have since warmed and the pair have committed to help recover the funds. The Fed and SWIFT, which has since strengthened its security protocols, declined to comment on implications of the Banco-Wells settlement. Financial firms around the world have reviewed defences after a rash of cyber heists involving SWIFT, the latest targeting Malaysia's central bank. Bangladesh's minister of state for foreign affairs, Mohammed Shahriar Alam, said in a recent interview that the central bank is determined to be reimbursed and that preparations are at a "final stage" for a suit. "It's obvious that we will be filing a case," likely in the United States, he told Reuters while in New York. "There are frustrations in Bangladesh about it. But together we should have done better by now." (Reporting by Jonathan Spicer in New York and Ruma Paul in Dhaka; Editing by Raju Gopalakrishnan) Family and supporters of Colten Boushie have taken their message to the United Nations in New York City. "I'm there to bring attention to injustice that's been happening throughout Canada," Boushie's uncle, Alvin Baptiste, said in an interview Monday during a break between sessions of the United Nations Permanent Forum on Indigenous Issues. Boushie, a 22-year-old Red Pheasant Cree Nation man died of a gunshot wound to the head in August, 2016. Saskatchewan farmer Gerald Stanley was recently acquitted in a high-profile trial at Battleford's Court of Queen's Bench. Baptiste says the court case may be over, but the family and supporters are continuing to fight for justice not just for Boushie, but all Indigenous people. Baptiste and others are in New York and will speak Tuesday and Wednesday. Delegates know Boushie's story Delegates at the United Nations already know the Red Pheasant Cree Nation man's story, said North Battleford lawyer and Boushie family friend Eleanore Sunchild. Sunchild says delegates from around the world have followed the case closely. "We don't have to explain about Colten because people already know. They seem to already know exactly who he is and what happened to him," Sunchild said. Others attending include Boushie's mother, Debbie Baptiste, his cousin, Jade Tootoosis and Federation of Sovereign Indigenous Nations vice-chief David Pratt. The two-week session began at the United Nations general assembly hall Monday with speeches and performances by American, Bolivian and Russian Indigenous people. Baptiste, Sunchild and others met with Prime Minister Justin Trudeau on a recent trip to Ottawa. One issue they raised was the apparent absence of Indigenous jurors in Colten Boushie's case. Shortly after, the federal government said it would consider a series of changes, which include reforms to Canada's jury selection process. The number of babies exposed to illicit drugs during pregnancy in Newfoundland and Labrador nearly tripled over the past five years, increasing from 11 infants in 2012 to 29 newborns in 2017. Provincial statistics show the number of newborns with neonatal abstinence syndrome, who need to be weened off drug dependencies with morphine, has also grown. Two babies needed that treatment in 2012. Health officials say eight infants with neonatal abstinence syndrome required morphine in 2017. Drugs during pregnancy The number of mothers in this province who've used drugs while pregnant has hovered around 2 percent for each of the past three years, based on self-reported data collected through the provincial health-care system. About 4,500 babies are born in Newfoundland and Labrador annually, which means last year about 90 mothers self-reported using drugs such as cocaine, marijuana, heroin, solvents and methadone while they were pregnant. The number of babies who test positive for illicit drugs at birth is lower than the number of mothers who self reported drug use because in some cases the use may have been earlier in the pregnancy, so the drugs would no longer show up in the newborn's system. These numbers come from the Newfoundland and Labrador Prenatal Record, Live Birth Notification form, and health care record of every mother and baby born in the province that received care from a facility within a regional health authority. Eastern Health told CBC News that maternal alcohol use, tobacco smoking and illicit substance use information is captured during the first, second or third trimester through self-reported information. Growing problem across Canada The Canadian Institute for Health Information (CIHI) says 1,846 babies were admitted to Canadian hospitals between April 2016 and March 31, 2017 after their mothers used opioids during pregnancy. This total doesn't include Quebec, which keeps its own numbers. The Canadian Centre on Substance Use and Addiction says drug exposure can affect the earliest stages of development. It also can have longer-term harmful effects that carry into early childhood and beyond. Indonesia's conservation agency on Sunday trapped a critically endangered Sumatran tiger which had strayed too close to the local population. With a live goat as bait, the trap was installed on April 12 in a secret location in the Palpupuh Forest in West Sumatra. On Sunday, the two-year-old female was found inside the trap, snarling fiercely at all those who approached. The tiger was accused of attacking dogs and local citrus farmers were concerned they could be next. The big cat will be released into a nature reserve. There are only around 400 Sumatran tigers left in the world, meaning it is on the brink of extinction, according to the World Wildlife Fund. In March a tiger was found killed in North Sumatra. It too had roamed close to a village and injured one person. An investigation showed it had several parts missing, including its canine teeth, claws, and skin off its face and tail. These body parts can be used in traditional medicines or sold as artefacts. Other threats to these big cats include habitat loss due to plantations and the depletion of their natural prey. The battle over the Trans Mountain pipeline project is escalating, and Saskatchewan is ready to fully step into the fray. On Monday, the Alberta government introduced a bill that would limit exports of oil, natural gas and gasoline to British Columbia. The majority of gasoline used in B.C. is shipped through the existing Trans Mountain pipeline. B.C.'s government is opposing the expansion of the pipeline. Shortly after the Alberta government made its announcement, Premier Scott Moe said his government would be following with similar legislation. "We'll be introducing our own legislation in the next number of days not weeks but days and we'll be asking the opposition here in Saskatchewan to support that," Moe said. Moe did not give away any specifics but said it would involve putting in export permits on energy products going to British Columbia. "We hope it doesn't come to this, we truly don't. This is not a conversation we want to be having," Moe said. It is not clear whether Alberta's legislation would be in violation of trade agreements. Constitutional crisis? Kinder Morgan the Texas company behind Trans Mountain has set a deadline with Ottawa of May 31 to make sure the pipeline goes ahead. It suspended all non-essential spending on the project last week Over the weekend, Prime Minister Trudeau met with B.C. Premier John Horgan and Alberta Premier Rachel Notley. There was no consensus formed but Trudeau said the project will go ahead and pledged to use the necessary financial and legislative actions to ensure it goes ahead. Notley has said the issue is not "too far off" a constitutional crisis. Moe would not go that far. "This is not a constitutional crisis, but this is a challenge for our country. The [constitution] clearly puts the responsibility for this type of a project in the federal government's domain and the federal government should exert their influence over this approved project." Story continues The Alberta and federal governments are in talks with Kinder Morgan on ways to give the company financial assurances the Trans Mountain pipeline project will go ahead. Saskatchewan will not be getting its wallet out, according to Moe. "Saskatchewan at this point in time is not looking at investing in this pipeline," Moe said. The premier said the federal government is imposing the carbon tax on Saskatchewan when it doesn't have jurisdiction but is not doing enough to get the Trans Mountain pipeline built even though it's a federal responsibility. NDP leader says Moe is 'posturing' NDP opposition leader Ryan Meili was pressed in question period on Monday as to whether he supported the pipeline. He said it was approved and should go ahead. But Meili was not as supportive when it came to restricting Saskatchewan's oil and gas exports to B.C. "I don't think at this time it's appropriate for us to be taking retaliatory measures. This is a federal issue and we should be demanding leadership from the federal government," Meili said. "This looks like him [Moe] trying to get into the story, and it's political posturing." Premier says Sask. losing money without pipeline While the pipeline does not travel through Saskatchewan, Moe said the project has financial consequences for the province. The government said on Monday, in 2017 lack of access to international markets cost Saskatchewan's oil producers $2.6 billion. In addition, the province would have received another $210 million in taxes, royalties and other revenue. As for lost revenue to Saskatchewan if it restricted exports to B.C., the latest numbers from Statistics Canada shows Saskatchewan traded more than $350 million of refined petroleum products to B.C. By Anthony Deutsch THE HAGUE (Reuters) - Western countries accused Moscow on Monday of preventing inspectors from reaching the site of a suspected poison gas attack in Syria and said Russians or Syrians may have tampered with evidence on the ground. The United States, Britain and France launched air strikes on Saturday against what they described as three Syrian chemical weapons targets in retaliation for a suspected gas attack that killed scores of people in the Damascus suburb of Douma on April 7. Syria and its ally Russia deny using poison gas during their offensive this month, in which they seized the town that had been the last major rebel stronghold near the capital. Inspectors from the Organization for the Prohibition of Chemical Weapons (OPCW) went to Syria last week to inspect the Douma site but have yet to gain access to the town, which is now under government control after the rebels withdrew. "It is our understanding the Russians may have visited the attack site," U.S. Ambassador Kenneth Ward said at a meeting of the OPCW in The Hague on Monday. "It is our concern that they may have tampered with it with the intent of thwarting the efforts of the OPCW Fact-Finding Mission to conduct an effective investigation," he said. His comments at the closed-door meeting were obtained by Reuters. Russian Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov denied that Moscow had interfered with any evidence: "I can guarantee that Russia has not tampered with the site," he told the BBC in an interview. Earlier, Britain's delegation to the OPCW accused Russia and the Syrian government of preventing the international watchdog's inspectors from reaching Douma. The inspectors aim to collect samples, interview witnesses and document evidence to determine whether banned toxic munitions were used, although they are not permitted to assign blame for the attack. "Unfettered access is essential," the British delegation said in a statement. "Russia and Syria must cooperate." Moscow blamed the delay on the Western air strikes. Kremlin spokesman Dmitry Peskov said the British accusation that Russia was to blame for holding up the inspections was "groundless". "We called for an objective investigation. This was at the very beginning after this information [of the attack] appeared. Therefore allegations of this towards Russia are groundless," Peskov said. CHEMICAL BOMBS Witnesses and Western governments say helicopters dropped chemical bombs that killed many children and women hiding in cellars from bombardment. Washington has said it has conclusive evidence the attack used chlorine gas, and suspects sarin nerve agent was also used although this was not confirmed. Syria agreed to give up its chemical weapons arsenal in 2013 and submit to OPCW inspections to avert U.S. retaliation after a suspected nerve gas attack in Douma killed hundreds of people. It is barred from having, storing or using nerve agents, and while it is permitted to possess chlorine for civilian uses, is banned from using that chemical as a weapon. The British envoy to the OPCW said the body had recorded 390 allegations of the use of banned chemicals in Syria since 2014, and that a failure by the OPCW to act risked allowing "further barbaric use of chemical weapons". U.S. President Donald Trump has said the weekend air strikes accomplished their aim of undermining efforts by the Syrian government to produce and use chemical weapons. Members of the 41-seat executive council of the OPCW were due to discuss the alleged use of prohibited toxins in Syria, but were not expected to reach any agreement about a response. The organisation, which needs a two-thirds majority to take decisions, has been undermined by political divisions over the use of chemical weapons by the Syrian government. A joint United Nations-OPCW mission concluded that troops under President Bashar al-Assad had used chemical weapons several times in recent years, including a sarin attack a year ago in the town of Khan Sheikhoun that killed nearly 100 people. (Reporting by Anthony Deutsch; Writing by Peter Graff; Editing by Gareth Jones) By Jack Stubbs and Laila Bassam MOSCOW/DAMASCUS (Reuters) - Russian President Vladimir Putin warned on Sunday that further Western attacks on Syria would bring chaos to world affairs, as Washington prepared to increase pressure on Russia with new economic sanctions. In a telephone conversation with his Iranian counterpart Hassan Rouhani, Putin and Rouhani agreed that the Western strikes had damaged the chances of achieving a political resolution in the seven-year Syria conflict, according to a Kremlin statement. "Vladimir Putin, in particular, stressed that if such actions committed in violation of the U.N. Charter continue, then it will inevitably lead to chaos in international relations," the Kremlin statement said. Meanwhile, U.S. ambassador to the United Nations, Nikki Haley, told CBS' "Face the Nation" program that the United States would announce new economic sanctions on Monday aimed at companies "that were dealing with equipment" related to Syrian President Bashar al-Assad's alleged chemical weapons use. On Saturday, the United States, France and Britain launched 105 missiles targeting what the Pentagon said were three chemical weapons facilities in Syria in retaliation for a suspected poison gas attack in Douma on April 7. (For a graphic detailing air strikes on Syria click https://tmsnrt.rs/2EKgAMN) The Western countries blame Assad for the Douma attack that killed dozens of people. The Syrian government and its ally Russia have denied involvement in any such attack. The bombings marked the biggest intervention by Western countries against Assad and ally Russia. French President Emmanuel Macron said on Sunday that he had convinced Trump, who has previously said he wanted to take U.S. forces out of Syria, to stay for "the long term." The United States, France and Britain have said the missile strikes were limited to Syria's chemical weapons capabilities and not aimed at toppling Assad or intervening in the civil war. Macron said in an interview broadcast by BFM TV, RMC radio and Mediapart online news that he had convinced Trump to focus on the chemical weapons sites. 'HARD FOR US, BUT WILL DO MORE DAMAGE TO THE USA' Responding to Haley's remarks about the plans for new sanctions, Evgeny Serebrennikov, deputy head of the defense committee of Russia's upper house of parliament, said Moscow was ready for the penalties, according to RIA news agency. "They are hard for us, but will do more damage to the USA and Europe," RIA quoted Serebrennikov as saying. In Damascus, Syria's deputy foreign minister, Faisal Mekdad, met inspectors from the global chemical weapons watchdog OPCW for about three hours in the presence of Russian officers and a senior Syrian security official. The inspectors were due to attempt to visit the Douma site. Moscow condemned the Western states for refusing to wait for the OPCW's findings before attacking. Mekdad declined to comment to reporters waiting outside the hotel where the meeting took place. Assad told a group of visiting Russian lawmakers that the Western missile strikes were an act of aggression, Russian news agencies reported. Russian agencies quoted the lawmakers as saying that Assad was in a "good mood", had praised the Soviet-era air defense systems Syria used to repel the Western attacks and had accepted an invitation to visit Russia at an unspecified time. Trump had said "mission accomplished" on Twitter after the strikes, though U.S. Lieutenant General Kenneth McKenzie at the Pentagon acknowledged elements of the program remain and he could not guarantee that Syria would be unable to conduct a chemical attack in the future. Russian and Iranian military help over the past three years has allowed Assad to crush the rebel threat to topple him. Though Israel has at times urged stronger U.S. involvement against Assad and his Iranian and Lebanese Hezbollah reinforcements in Syria, it voiced backing for Saturday's air strikes by Western powers. RISK OF WIDER CONFRONTATION The leader of Lebanon's Hezbollah said on Sunday that Western strikes on Syria had failed to achieve anything, including terrorizing the army, helping insurgents or serving the interests of Israel. Sayyed Hassan Nasrallah said the U.S. military had kept its strikes limited because it knew a wider attack would spark retaliation from Damascus and its allies and inflame the region. "The American (military) knows well that going towards a wide confrontation and a big operation against the regime and the army and the allied forces in Syria could not end, and any such confrontation would inflame the entire region," Nasrallah said. The heavily armed, Iranian-backed Shi'ite Hezbollah movement, which fights alongside the Syrian army and is represented in the Beirut government, has been a vital ally of Damascus in Syria's seven-year war. France, the United States and Britain circulated a draft resolution to U.N. Security Council late on Saturday that aims to establish a new independent inquiry into who is to responsible for chemical weapons attacks in Syria. The mechanism would look at cases where the OPCW fact-finding mission has established chemical weapons were used or likely used. Diplomats said negotiations on the draft resolution would begin on Monday and it was not immediately clear when the United States, France and Britain wanted to put it to a vote. (Reporting by Elizabeth Piper and Tom Perry; Additional reporting by Susan Cornwell and Joel Schectman in Washington; Michelle Nichols in New York; Samia Nakhoul, Tom Perry, Laila Bassam, Ellen Francis and Angus McDowall in Beirut; Kinda Makieh in Barzeh; Michael Holden and Guy Faulconbridge in London; and Jean-Baptiste Vey, Geert de Clercq and Matthias Blamont in Paris; Andrey Ostroukh and Jack Stubbs in Moscow; Alison Bevege in Sydney; Writing by Richard Cowan; Editing by Caren Bohan and Nick Zieminski) After protesters burned tires to obscure the soldiers view and rolled them toward the fence, the Israelis brought in giant industrial fans to disperse the thick black smoke and powerful water cannons to douse the fires. Soldiers have fired countless volleys of tear gas to try to push back crowds of demonstrators.nearly 1,000 [rioters] have inhaled tear gas; 300 have been hit by rubber bullets. Updates throughout the day at http://calevbenyefuneh.blog spot.com. If you enjoy "Love of the Land", please be a subscriber. Just put your email address in the "Subscribe" box on the upper right-hand corner of the page.Twitter updates at LoveoftheLand as well as our Love of the Land page at Facebook which has additional pieces of interest besides that which is posted on the blog. Also check-out This Ongoing War by Frimet and Arnold Roth. An excellent blog, very important work. . ..Algemeiner.com..16 April '18..As the pre-planned violent riots in Gaza plod on,coverage of them is starting to show its own internal contradictions.A recenteditorial had recommended that Israel defend its border with nonlethal tactics common to law enforcement, such as the use of high-powered fire hoses.Lo and behold, it turns out that the Israelis have been doing precisely that already. Thenews columns now report:Just as contradictory as thereporting on Israels use of nonlethal force has been its reporting in economic conditions in Gaza. Onedispatch managed simultaneously to refer to Gazas collapsing economy and report as well that at one of the riot sites, Once a day or so, a delivery arrives with free slices of pizza or cakes. Trumps inaugural argued: We all bleed the same red blood of patriots. It wasnt an original thought or even expression, but spoke to our nationalism our pride in others sacrifice for both the heightened values of our early documents and the mundane, daily values (bourgeoisie perhaps) of the marketplace and the free press. Americans see nationalism as a cohering force one that joins Manhatten, New York to Manhatten, Kansas; the New England Puritans with the Southern planters in our defining war and Italian immigrant with Boston Brahmin in WW II. Or at least that was the culture of my youth made up of a village schoolhouse, 40s movies on television and 50s novels. But it isnt just that it wasnt bad (of course it had limitations) but that it understood some of the big ideas embodied in our habits and language. Okay, so maybe Im becoming sentimental. But we can see what happens when leaders denigrate nationalism the malaise of the 8 years of Obama, the nihilism that rejects history and dignity. Of course, our history contains venality and even evil, but also heroism and sacrifice. It helps us, individually, become more of what we can be because we have the idea of a good citizen, neighbor within us. Most of all, those documents gave us something to reach toward and if we may never actually get our hands around that ideal, trying is a good thing. At the end of Michael Ignatieffs Blood and Belonging, he stressed a belief that Germans needed to reach into themselves and find a core in which they can take pride and identity, nonetheless remembering the mid 20th century. But that doesnt seem to be happening. When Merkel sends more immigrants to a town than the long-established natives, she must consider the inevitable swamping and submerging of the original culture good. Certainly that is a way to leave the guilt behind as Germany becomes something other than itself. If a leader feels a strong identity with his culture, does he consider an appropriate post-chancellor job heading a rival countrys national oil company? Schroeder entered a company run by a state which has little interest in Germanys independence nor integrity. Nationalism may join a diverse culture; it may lead to an assertive, vicious vision. Still it is necessary for a coherence; it can draw heroism from its citizens if its identity is bound up with values of justice and self-sacrifice, independence and sympathy. Given Obamas rhetoric and Hillary Clintons dealings with Russia, we took some steps toward self-annihilation. But our instincts, to turn to a blustering, assertive representative, were alerted. Nor are his instincts only venal and self-serving. His goal seems to be devolving power from the executive (and asking the legislative to take on more and the bureaucrats to take on less); these are not paths to a nationalism other countries fear, even if his words are bombastic and his positions shifting. And, Trump aside, I think we should look at some other nations as cautionary tales not just from what they did a hundred or two hundred years ago but what they are doing now. (And dont get me started on what we can learn from Venezuela and Zimbabwe and Cuba which may seem obvious, but neither South Africa nor Elizabeth Warren seems to see it.) [edited for clarity & grammar] Tension welcomed the First-century church. On the Day of Pentecost, the Holy Spirit was poured out specifically to bring power and anointing to the Bride of Christ, the Church. But the new entity was soon in conflict. The first Jewish Christians worshipped Jesus but they lived according to the Law of Moses. These were called the Palestinian Jews. As converts from throughout the Roman Empire surfaced, they had no interest in Jewish culture, and were identified as Hellenized Jews having come from Greek influences. Neither group showed zeal for spreading the Gospel until Saul of Tarsus, the zealous Christian killer was converted on the Damascus Road. He passionately set out to preach the Lord with immediate resistance but also with great results. Under Nero, the Roman authorities specifically targeted the persecution of Christians. Most of Jesus disciples died violently. In those early, formative times James, a half brother of Jesus Christ was one of the leaders. His New Testament letter is among the earliest written. Because he wrote to inspire and encourage the believers his theme is 'faith.' Because of the world in which they lived he wrote: 'religion that is pure and undefiled before God and the Father is this, to visit widows and orphans in their affliction, and keep yourself unstained from this world." (James chapter 1, verse 27) He would be thinking of the families who were left without a breadwinner, even the wives and children of the murdered disciples. Widows and Orphans He challenged the early church to live in the spirit of their faith by preferring others, just as Jesus had displayed. We have a massive widows and orphans situation on our hands today. Vast numbers of innocent women and in particular young girls have been abused and sadly murdered. It is the spirit of our faith that they not be mere statistics. Recently on my Vision FM radio spot we talked about 250 girls murdered by ISIS terrorists. Their crime? They refused to be part of 'sexual jihad' and consequently were executed. Since 2014 hundreds, if not thousands, have been forced into sex slavery. The alternative is death. Earlier this year British Conservative MP Fiona Bruce shared the testimony of a 16-year-old Yazidi girl. "She spoke of witnessing her friends being raped and hearing their screams," the MP explained.The same teen, in her testimony, described a 9-year-old girl 'raped by so many men, she died!' Appalling. I believe "religion that is pure and undefiled," is very concerned. World Vision published the plight of Kema who is 8-years-old and terrified of marriage. "Girls like Kema suffer sexual and emotional abuse," WV report. "Girls like Kema are forced to marry men three or four times their age." Sponsorship for Kema and girls like her is outlined at www.my.worldvision.org. Last year ISIS circulated a price list for sex slaves. Girls and boys aged 1 to 9 cost $165, adolescent girls are $124 and women over 40 are $41. According to the United Nations women captured as sex slaves by the ISIS group are sold at markets 'for the prices of a packet of cigarettes." Plead the Case Zainab Bangura, the UN envoy on sexual violence said women are stripped naked and shipped around like cattle. "This is how they attract young men as fighters," she said. The Bible describes rulers who are 'rebels', who do 'not defend the cause of the fatherless." The prophet Isaiah declared 'the widow's case does not come before them." (Isaiah chapter 1, verse 23). But he has a cause of action for believers. "Take up the cause of the fatherless; plead the case of the widow." (Isaiah chapter 1, verse 17) There has been considerable debate over the New Testament letter by James. His focus is 'faith.' He believed vociferously in prayer and accordingly was said to have knees like a camel from kneeling.His letter described the spirit of religion. In that spirit we must be concerned with the persecution and shaming of others. We can so easily be diverted from the priorities set by the Lord for his Kingdom. It was James who warned us to be 'doers of the message and not hearers only.' (James chapter 1, verses 22) "Loyal Friend" Followers of Jesus must be committed to the wellbeing of others, even like 'a father to the fatherless.'It is so easy to feel powerless in the face of the cruel, onslaught of evil but there are creative ways to enter the fray. Recently the Good News Network told an inspiring story. When the distressing stories of sexual abuse were told 7,700 donors from around the world responded. RafikiMwema meaning "Loyal Friend" is a nonprofit home that educates, houses, and cares for young Kenyan girls who have been sexually abused. An Aussie mum Sarah Rosberg set up a webpage to raise $75,000 to assist Kenyan girls who were victims of sexual abuse. Over the course of one month $200,000 was raised to provide a second facility. (RafikiMwema can be followed on Facebook or Instagram) International headlines lean towards the negative aspects of every situation and there is no denying the seriousness of any given misdeed. But prayer is our most potent yet often forgotten weapon. Mother Theresa had a powerful insight. She said: "May God break my heart so completely that the whole world falls in." Maybe we should step back and see the Almighty power and significance of God. Oswald Chambers, the Scottish Baptist evangelist said it best: "We have to pray with our eyes on God, not on the difficulties." In Ephesians chapter 6 the Apostle Paul urges us to pray 'on every occasion in the power of the Spirit." Paul encouraged Christians to 'watch' and 'persevere.' Author John White wrote about the warfare aspects of prayer. He commented: "Hell's legions are terrified of prayer. Satan trembles when he sees, the weakest saint upon his knees." (The Fight by John White, Ivp) James and his Camel Knees would be please to see that faith in action on behalf of those in such great need. Ron Ross is a Middle East consultant for United Christian Broadcasters (Vision FM). Previously he was radio news editor for Bridges for Peace in Jerusalem, Israel. His career started at WINTV (Email: ronandyvonne@mac.com) Ron Ross' previous articles may be viewed at http://www.pressserviceinternational.org/ron-ross.html 2021-08-23 24 () 2021-08-13 37 2021-06-09 23 510 2021-04-09 () 4 3 1 2021-04-06 41 47 2021-03-30 RZTW TW 2021-02-19 () RZTW 2021-01-22 3 2020-12-21 202111() 2 2020-11-18 34 11 2020-10-07 [10/19] 20201019000 630 2020-09-28 9/283 2020-07-16 2020-06-24 () 2020-06-15 (1) 2020-06-01 () 6/1() () 2020-05-18 () 61 2020-05-12 518 2020518AM 100AM 700 2020-05-03 52() 517 2020-04-21 23 2020-04-14 () 54 2020-03-27 2020-03-27 322()329() 2 32521 4 2020-03-23 (4/2) (IN) ()4 (SGTW) 1023() 2020-03-04 37 2020-03-03 3/6 202036000 730 2019-12-03 ATM () https://www.zenginkyo.or.jp/topic/atm202001/ () 201912312352202014350 1 2 3 () () () 2019-12-02 123115 ()1 12/9 () 2019-12-02 202011() 2 2019-11-25 11/26 20191126000 730 201911297 2019-11-18 20191119 201911191530 2130 2019-11-13 auWALLET auWALLET2 auWALLET 45 https://wallet.auone.jp/contents/pc/guide/caution.html auWALLET 2019-11-12 () https://www.post.japanpost.jp/int/information/2019/1101_01.html 2019-10-11 19 http://www.kuronekoyamato.co.jp/ytc/info/info_191008.html https://www.post.japanpost.jp/notification/productinformation/2019/1009_01.html 19 2019-10-04 10/7 2019107100 600 2019-09-26 9/3010/1 20199302300 101100 20199302300 101500 20199302300 101200 2019-09-09 1010/1 201910 290 101 300 2019-09-06 2019915000 530 2019-07-28 2019728 2019728 20197282019728 2019-07-08 7/8()1518 20197815001800 2019-07-04 2019-05-13 2019520AM000AM800 2018-12-26 FAX1113 14 122915 2018-01-30 13015 5 2018-01-19 K// 2017-12-04 12 13 12/11 2017-11-17 DIGITAL http://www.asahi.com/articles/ASKCG66DZKCGULBJ016.html DIGITAL 2017-10-18 19.20 1920 2017-10-12 10/12 5OFF 5 3 10,000 5OFF510 2017-05-25 10 10 10 10,0009,00010,000 3 2017-05-21 VISA 5/19VISA 2017-05-06 551 2016-12-07 13 2016-11-28 VISAMasterAMEX 3-6 6 2016-05-19 52627521 http://www.post.japanpost.jp/notification/productinformation/2016/0518_03.html http://www.kuronekoyamato.co.jp/info/info_160516.html 2016-04-18 4/1415 2016-01-25 ED 120DX2ml2ml2ml1 2016125 331 2015-12-24 2415 2015-12-10 1113 12/311/4 2015-10-29 11/1111/13 11/1111/133 8102 14 2015-10-26 11:0018:00 info@philipstraub.com 2015-04-01 2 6 3 2015-03-15 1 1 2015-01-19 FAX FAX FAX 2FAX 5 2014-12-22 12/271/4 2014-10-17 10/2310/26 10/2310/264 8102 2715 https://www.philipstraub.com/dt.php?pid=1187 TUESDAY, April 17, 2018 (HealthDay News) -- The millions of Americans who suffer from migraine may have a new source of hope -- the first of a new class of drugs aimed at warding off the headaches. Researchers found that the injected drug, called erenumab, could prevent migraines if other treatments fail to do so. Erenumab (brand name Aimovig) works by blocking a key brain "neurotransmitter" chemical that sends out pain signals, the research team explained. Working with a group of people with tough-to-treat migraine, the "study found that erenumab reduced the average number of monthly migraine headaches by more than 50 percent for nearly a third of study participants," lead researcher Dr. Uwe Reuter, of The Charite University Medicine Berlin in Germany, said in a news release from the American Academy of Neurology (AAN). The drug is currently up for approval by the U.S. Food and Drug Administration. One U.S. migraine specialist was enthused by the findings. "We have a new class of drugs -- erenumab likely to be the first to be on the market -- that are showing great promise in preventing migraine attacks," said Dr. Randall Berliner. He's an adjunct neurologist at Lenox Hill Hospital in New York City and wasn't involved in the new trial. As Berliner explained, it's been a long, tough road to find medicines that provide reliable relief to migraine sufferers. Twenty years ago, a group of drugs called triptans were introduced, and have since become the standard of care, he said. But they don't work for everyone. Erenumab, and meds like it, target "calcitonin gene-related peptide" (CGRP). Erenumab acts to stop this neurotransmitting chemical from binding to a nerve and sending out migraine pain signals. "Our bodies typically produce antibodies to fight off infections, cancers and other foreign agents that the immune system deems harmful. But physicians and scientists have learned to develop antibodies that can target agents that cause disease: tumors, abnormal immune cells, and now CGRP," Berliner explained. "In so doing, erenumab very safely blocks a good deal of the migraines from occurring in the first place," Berliner said. The new study was funded by drug maker Novartis. In their research, Reuter's team tested erenumab on 246 people with the treatment-resistant migraine. Of these participants, 39 percent had already failed to respond to two available migraine medications, 38 percent were treated with three other medications and 23 percent had tried four different medications to help control their migraines. On average, these migraine sufferers experienced nine migraine headaches each month and took an acute migraine drug to stop an attack five times each month. During the study, each person received injections of either 140 milligrams of erenumab or a "dummy" placebo once per month for three months. After three months, those treated with erenumab were almost three times as likely to have fewer days with migraine pain, compared to people who'd only gotten the placebo. Days with migraine headaches were reduced by at least 50 percent compared to those who were given the placebo. In addition to fewer days with headaches, these patients also took acute migraine drugs less often. Of all the participants, 30 percent treated with erenumab said their migraine frequency drop by half. The same was true for only 14 percent in the placebo group. The drug was also not associated with significant side effects. All of this "can greatly improve a person's quality of life," Reuter said. "Our results show that people who thought their migraines were difficult to prevent may actually have hope of finding pain relief." What's the next step? According to Reuter, "more research is now needed to understand who is most likely to benefit from this new treatment." The researchers added that larger studies are also needed to evaluate the long-term safety and effectiveness of the medication. Dr. Noah Rosen directs the Headache Center at Northwell Health's Neuroscience Institute in Great Neck, N.Y. He agreed that "too many people have suffered because a lack of good migraine-specific prevention and from the side effects of many of the currently available options. If we are able to figure out which migraine sufferers are most likely to benefit from this treatment, it will also let us provide care more effectively." The study findings haven't been published yet, but are expected to be presented next Tuesday at the AAN's annual meeting in Los Angeles. Experts note that findings presented at medical meetings are typically considered preliminary until published in a peer-reviewed journal. More information The American Academy of Family Physicians has more on migraine. Share this: Twitter Facebook WhatsApp LinkedIn Email Telegram Bogota, Colombia, April 17, 2018Authorities in Ecuador and Colombia must conduct a transparent investigation into the kidnapping and killing of an Ecuadoran reporting team in Colombia and ensure all those responsible face justice, the Committee to Protect Journalists said today. Ecuadoran President Lenin Moreno on April 13 confirmed during a news conference in Quito that two Ecuadoran journalists Javier Ortega and Paul Rivas, and their driver, Efrain Segarra, had been killed after they were abducted on March 26 by drug traffickers in the Ecuadoran border village of Mataje. Morenos announcement followed several contradictory statements by the Colombian and Ecuadoran governments about the state of the hostages and whether they were being held in Colombia or Ecuador, according to the Bogota-based Foundation for Press Freedom. As of today, the bodies of the journalists and their driver were still in Colombian territory, according to President Juan Manuel Santos. News reports said the alleged kidnappers have not yet agreed to hand them over to authorities. Recent events raise concerns about the ability of Ecuadoran and Colombian authorities to carry out an effective investigation, which will require high-level coordination and a commitment to transparency, said CPJ Executive Director Joel Simon from New York. The two governments must work together to ensure the families and colleagues of Javier Ortega, Paul Rivas, and Efrain Segarra know what happened to them and see their killers face justice. According to news reports, Ortega, a reporter, and Rivas, a photographer, were documenting drug-related border violence for the Quito daily El Comercio. Colombian and Ecuadoran officials on March 27 said that a group of cocaine traffickers led by the former Revolutionary Armed Forces of Colombia (FARC) member Walter Arizala, known as Guacho, took the reporting crew hostage, according to El Comercio. The FARC is a Marxist guerrilla group that agreed to disarm under a 2016 peace treaty; however, about 1,200 of the FARCs 7,000 fighters, including Arizala, refused to do so, according to the Bogota think tank Ideas for Peace. According to news reports, Arizala recently split with the FARC. On March 27, Ecuadors Interior Minister Cesar Navas said that his government was in contact with Arizalas group and that the three hostages were in good condition. On April 3, Bogotas RCN TV station broadcast a video of the three press workers shackled together in chains and padlocks looking distraught. In the video, Ortega says that the groups captors wanted to carry out a prisoner exchange and urged Moreno to comply with their demands. Mr. President, our lives are in your hands, Ortega said. On April 11, RCN received a communique which stated that it was from Arizalas group, saying that the three journalists had been killed amid a military operation. The next day, RCN TV received photos that appeared to show that the three press workers had been executed. At a news conference in Quito on April 13, Polivio Vinueza, head of Ecuadors national police anti-kidnapping and extortion unit, said that his government had been in contact with Arizalas group via sporadic WhatsApp messages between March 26 and April 7 and that Arizala demanded the release of three members of his group, including his sister-in-law who are imprisoned in Quito. Vinueza said officials were exploring the legalities of releasing the prisoners from Arizalas group and sent a video message from one of the inmates to Arizala to show that the government was negotiating in good faith. Vinueza also said that the kidnappers demanded that the Ecuadoran government cancel joint anti-drug operations with the Colombian military along the border before the kidnappers cut off communication. Arizalas group released another communique on April 13, republished by the newspaper El Espectador, which stated that the hostages were killed because the Ecuadoran and Colombian governments refused to halt their military operations against Arizalas group. During the April 13 press conference, Moreno offered a US$100,000 reward for information leading to the kidnappers capture and said that Ecuadoran authorities confirmed that these criminals [the kidnappers] never had the intention of handing them back safe and sound. Ecuadoran officials later on April 13 arrested nine alleged members of Arizalas group, which officials say is connected with the kidnapping, according to news reports. The India-Wiesbaden Conference 2018 was held from April 16-17, 2018, in New Delhi. The title of conference was Securing Global Supply Chains through Government-Industry Partnerships towards Effective Implementation of UNSC Resolution 1540 Key Facts The Wiesbaden Process was initiated by Government of Germany in 2012 to strengthen implementation of UNSC Resolution 1540 through Government-Industry partnerships. India-Wiesbaden Conference 2018 was hosted by Ministry of External Affairs (MEA) in cooperation with Government of Germany and UN Office for Disarmament Affairs (UNODA). Federation of Indian Chambers of Commerce and Industry (FICCI) was industry partner. Representatives from Government and Industry of 39 countries, as well as experts from UNSC 1540 Committee and UN Office for Disarmament Affairs had participated in tconference. The Conference provided opportunity to participants to share experiences on their export control systems and identify legal and technical assistance, action plans & challenges in national implementation of UNSC 1540. UN Security Council Resolution 1540 (2004) It establishes legally binding obligations on all states to adopt and enforce appropriate and effective measures to prevent to proliferation to non-state actors of nuclear, chemical, and biological weapons and their delivery systems. It requires states to implement appropriate laws and effective measures to prevent non-state actors such as terrorists, from obtaining access to weapons of mass destruction (WMD). India has established legally backed robust export control system to implement UNSC 1540 as part of its long standing commitment to international non-proliferation. Andhra Pradesh: Government must subsidise price of fuel April 17,2018 | Source: The Times of India The 61-day ban on fishing came into force from zero hours on Sunday following a circular issued by the Union ministry of agriculture. Visakhapatnam Fishing Harbour has nearly 800 mechanised boats. As per the ban, mechanized boats are barred from venturing out in the sea till June 14, which will be the time for the onset of southwest monsoon. If any mechanised boat violates the order, we will seize the vessel and slap a large penalty on the boat owner, said a fisheries officer, while adding that the ban is applicable to the entire east coast.Earlier the ban was limited to 40-45 days, but from the last one year the ban was extended to 61 days due to boost in the fish population, said Arjili Dasu, executive director of Visakhapatnam Youth Fishermen Welfare Association. Dasu said that government should give a subsidy on fuel as the present price of diesal, which is between Rs 65 and Rs 70 is adversely affecting the business of the fishermen. Sources reveal that boatmen require approximately 200 litres of fuel per day. He further said that apart from part-time jobs, the fishermen use the two months hiatus to repair and renovate their boats. 2018, Bennett, Coleman & Co. Ltd. A Gwinnett County woman charged with killing her husband and four children will not face the death penalty when her case goes to trial. Isabel Martinez entered a plea of not guilty to stabbing her 9-year-old daughter and killing the five other members of her family at a brief Monday morning arraignment. The Gwinnett County District Attorneys Office had not formally declared their intent to seek the death penalty by the time of the arraignment. That is the legal deadline to decide whether or not a defendant will be eligible for the death penalty. Martinez, 34, is charged with five counts of murder, one count of aggravated assault and one count of third-degree cruelty to children in connection with the July 2017 attack that left 9-year-old Diana Romero seriously injured and 33-year-old Martin Romero, 2-year-old Axel Romero, 4-year-old Dillan Romero, 7-year-old Dacota Romero and 10-year-old Isabela Martinez all dead. The DAs office confirmed the decision not to seek the death penalty to Channel 2 Action News. The decision was made due to Martinezs apparent mental issues, District Attorney Danny Porter told Channel 2. Martinez had been depressed in the months before the killings and had experienced outbursts of anger and sadness that friends considered unusual, neighbors told The Atlanta Journal-Constitution. Martinez felt a devil-like spirit was trying to take her children when they were playing in the ocean near Savannah shortly before the killings, she told a Department of Family and Child Services worker after her arrest. Court records do not indicate that Martinez has been ordered to undergo a psychological evaluation. Her attorneys, Josh Moore and Laura Berg, did not respond to phone calls from the AJC. Martinez, who mimed praying and gave news cameras a double thumbs up at her first court hearing in July, smiled meekly as she walked into the courtroom Monday morning. She did not speak at the hearing. Martinez had previously told police that a family friend committed the stabbings in her Loganville home, but she did not give police the name of that alleged friend. The attack is believed to have occurred between 2 a.m. and 4 a.m. July 7. Diana Romero, the only surviving child, told a DFCS worker that Martinez began stabbing the children first; when Martin Romero tried to stop her, Martinez stabbed him, according to a DFCS report. Martinez was not crying or screaming as she killed her family members, and told Diana Romero that she was going to the sky to see Jesus, Diana Romero told a DFCS worker. Martinez called 911 at 4:47 a.m. on July 6, and first responders found her with a cut wrist, sitting among the six stabbing victims, according to Gwinnett County police. She was detained and charged that afternoon, and has since been held without bond at the Gwinnett County Detention Center. | 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 Opposed to Capital Punishment? Help us keep this blog up and running! DONATE! "One is absolutely sickened, not by the crimes that the wicked have committed, but by the punishments that the good have inflicted." -- Oscar Wilde ERBIL, Kurdistan Region Iraq executed 13 people for "terrorist crimes" after legal proceedings, the justice ministry announced on Monday. Eleven of the individuals were convicted of exploding car bombs, killing security personnel, or kidnappings. The Ministry of Justice stated it renews its commitment to implement provisions of Iraqi law within its framework "without being affected by any side pressures." Details about the individuals executed, the courts, their trials, a timeline for alleged crimes, prosecutors and defense teams were not released. Iraq's justice system is complicated and not transparent, a Rudaw English investigative series of reports entitled 'Justice After ISIS' discovered in early 2017. Iraq executed 111 people in 2017, according to an Amnesty International report released in March. In Nasiriya prison on December 15, 38 people were hanged after terrorism convictions. More than 19,000 were arrested and charged with links to ISIS during the three-year conflict, according to an Associated Press report. More than 3,000 of them were sentenced to death. "We are deeply alarmed by this report and the Iraqi authorities mass use of the death penalty and the courts reliance on torture-tainted 'confessions' to secure convictions," wrote Lynn Maalouf, the Middle East Research Director at Amnesty in a March 21 report. According to AP, thousands more suspects are believed to be held by Iraqi Federal Police, military intelligence agencies, and Kurdish security forces. The Kurdistan Region has capital punishment. More than 250 convicted felons are currently in Kurdish prisons. In the majority of cases, the death penalties have been suspended indefinitely with the violators serving life-sentences in prison instead. The suspension of the sentences is due to a de facto moratorium that Kurdish authorities have imposed on the death penalty since 2008, which essentially blocks its use except for terror-related charges or exceptionally heinous crimes. Kurdish law requires the president to sign the death sentences before they can be carried out. Since 2008, the death penalty has been carried out in four cases. Most recently, a Kurdish man and his two wives, convicted of abducting and murdering two schoolgirls, were hanged in November 2016. Human rights groups have urged the Kurdistan Region to abolish the death penalty permanently and commute them to life in prison. Kurdish officials have denied that Peshmerga or security forces conducted extrajudicial executions during the ISIS conflict. | 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 Opposed to Capital Punishment? Help us keep this blog up and running! DONATE! "One is absolutely sickened, not by the crimes that the wicked have committed, but by the punishments that the good have inflicted." -- Oscar Wilde U.S. Attorney General Jeff Sessions on Monday paved the way for this week's execution of death row inmate Walter Leroy Moody for the 1989 pipe bombing that killed a federal judge. Last week Moody asked the U.S. 11th Circuit Court of Appeals to stay his lethal injection execution, which is set for 6 p.m. Thursday at Holman Correctional Facility in Atmore. Moody recently argued the federal government which convicted him first on non-death penalty charges should have him in custody instead of the state. The appeals court held a hearing Thursday but has not yet ruled. Justice Department attorneys at that hearing and in written briefs have said that they have had an agreement since the 1990s to allow Moody to serve his sentence in Alabama. Then on Monday the Justice Department filed another brief on behalf of Sessions. "Before the United States filed its amicus brief in this case and presented its position at oral argument, the Attorney General, Jefferson B. Sessions, III, informed the undersigned Deputy Assistant Attorney General, Matthew S. Miner, that the United States waives its right to exclusive custody of petitioner Walter Leroy Moody, Jr. and consents to his custody in Alabama for purposes of carrying out the capital sentence imposed on Moody in Alabama," the brief filed Monday states. Walter Leroy Moody Jr., 83, is the oldest inmate on Alabama Death Row. He was convicted in the death of U.S. 11th Circuit of Appeals Judge Robert Vance Sr., who was killed Dec. 16, 1989 in a blast from a pipe bomb hidden in a package sent to the judge's Mountain Brook home. The judge's wife, Helen, was seriously injured in the blast. In 1991, a federal jury convicted Moody of 71 charges related to the pipe-bomb murders of Vance and Georgia civil rights attorney Robert E. Robinson, who also was killed in a pipe-bomb blast 5 days after the judge. That federal trial was conducted in Minnesota. Moody was placed on death row after a jury convicted him of capital murder at a trial in Alabama 5 years later. The jury recommended 11-1 that the death penalty be imposed and the judge agreed. Lawyer to Alabama governor: Judge killed by bomb would oppose death penalty A lawyer on Monday asked Alabama Gov. Kay Ivey to halt Thursday's execution of Alabama death row inmate Walter Leroy Moody and commute the convicted judge killer's sentence to life without parole. Moody's attorney claims in the letter to Ivey that U.S. 11th Circuit Court of Appeals Judge Robert Vance Sr. - the man Moody is convicted of killing with a pipe bomb in 1989 - did not believe in the death penalty. "It is crucial that someone in the process consider the wishes of the victim for whom the sentence is being carried out," the letter from attorney Spencer Hahn states. "As the only person with the power and responsibility to decide whether Mr. Moody will be executed or permitted to die a natural death, that solemn and important duty is yours." The letter cites statements made a few of Vance's former law clerks and his son. "Indeed, my father often made decisions with which he personally disagreed. He did not believe that the death penalty was a proper form of punishment, and he considered death penalty cases to be almost unbearable. During his tenure, however, he affirmed a great number of death penalty convictions because they were found to be the result of proper administration of our justice system, and he knew that it was not his role to change that system to suit his personal preferences," Bob Vance Jr. was quoted in the letter as having said at the University of Alabama School of Law a year after his dad's death. Bob Vance Jr. is now a circuit judge in Jefferson County and is running this year for chief justice of the Alabama Supreme Court. He recently echoed that same statement in an interview with AL.com. His father handled a few death row cases, including one involving infamous serial killer Ted Bundy in Florida. "And he really struggled with death penalty cases because personally he was against the death penalty ... but he had to put aside his personal beliefs as a judge" and follow the law, the younger Vance said. In Monday's letter Hahn asked Ivey to invoke her power of clemency. "Just as Judge Vance recognized the limitations of his power, as a federal judge, to end the death penalty, you should recognize and exercise the power entrusted to you, pursuant to the Alabama Constitution, to commute Mr. Moody's death sentence to one of life without parole. I urge you to honor Judge Vance by exercising your constitutional authority and respecting his wishes," the letter to Ivey states. U.S. 11th Circuit of Appeals Judge Robert Vance Sr. was killed Dec. 16, 1989 in a blast from a pipe bomb hidden in a package sent to the judge's Mountain Brook, Ala., home. Walter Leroy Moody Jr., 83, is the oldest inmate on Alabama death row. He was convicted in the death of U.S. 11th Circuit of Appeals Judge Robert Vance Sr., who was killed Dec. 16, 1989 in a blast from a pipe bomb hidden in a package sent to the judge's Mountain Brook home. The judge's wife, Helen, was seriously injured in the blast. In 1991, a federal jury convicted Moody of 71 charges related to the pipe-bomb murders of Vance and Georgia civil rights attorney Robert E. Robinson, who also was killed in a pipe-bomb blast 2 days after the judge. That federal trial was conducted in Minnesota. Moody was placed on death row after a jury convicted him of capital murder at a trial in Alabama 5 years later. The jury recommended 11-1 that the death penalty be imposed and the judge agreed. | 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 Opposed to Capital Punishment? Help us keep this blog up and running! DONATE! "One is absolutely sickened, not by the crimes that the wicked have committed, but by the punishments that the good have inflicted." -- Oscar Wilde Actor Salman Khan walked out of the Jodhpur Central Jail on April 7 after spending two nights there. (Photo: File) Jodhpur: Actor Salman Khan, who is on bail in 1998 blackbuck poaching case, can travel abroad, court said on Tuesday. Judge Chandra Kumar Songara of the Jodhpur District and Sessions Court allowed him to travel to the US, Canada and Nepal from May 25 to July 10, after the actor's plea. The 52-year-old actor was sentenced to five years in jail for killing two blackbucks in 1998 in Kankani village, near Jodhpur in Rajasthan, during the shooting of 'Hum Saath Saath Hain'. His co-actors from the film Tabu, Neelam Kothari ,Saif Ali Khan and Sonali bender, were, however, acquitted by the Jodhpur sessions court. Notably, all the actors were present with Salman Khan while he was driving during their alleged late night hunting outing. Read: Salman Khan gets 5-yr jail in blackbuck poaching case, other actors let off Salman Khan walked out of the Jodhpur Central Jail on April 7 after spending two nights there. This was the actor's fourth stint in the Jodhpur Central jail. He has spent a total of 20 days in the jail in 1998, 2006, 2007 and in April this year. Also Read: After 2 nights in Jodhpur jail, Salman Khan, out on bail, reaches Mumbai Judge Ravindra Kumar Joshi, who had ordered his release on bail, had said that the actor can't leave the country without the court's permission. The next hearing in the blackbuck poaching case has been scheduled for May 7. Germany seeks to strengthen position in Europe due to Nord Stream 2 diplomat He also stressed that Ukraine has been raising the issue of Nord Stream-2 at all levels. If you see a spelling error on our site, select it and press Ctrl+Enter Diplomatic efforts in the region have borne fruit, the report says. Ukraine is beefing up its presence in key Asian wheat markets through 2018 as it looks to secure its footing in China and Indonesia and expand into new markets like Vietnam, the countrys food safety and consumer protection service says. It is a joint initiative, Sergii Ivaschenko of the Ukrainian Grain Association told Agricensus Monday, combining the ministry of agrarian policy and food, the food safety agency and the UGA. Diplomatic efforts in the region have borne fruit, Ivaschenko said, with Ukraine hosting a delegation from Vietnam in early April to inspect the countrys grains infrastructure as well as undertaking initiatives in Indonesia and leveraging established connections to bolster trade with China. Ukraine wheat exports to Vietnam stopped in 2015 after concerns around a containerized shipment to the country, but a delegation from the country has been inspecting infrastructure, including inland storage units and laboratories in an attempt to assure. Read alsoU.S.-China spat seen supporting Ukrainian corn despite CBOT's plunge mediaFor Indonesia, which became the biggest importer of Ukrainian wheat in this marketing year, the Ukrainian government has been hammering out an agreement on phytosanitary standards. Now we are on the point of signing phytosanitary requirements between countries, most of all concerned with wheat it makes sense for future trade, Ivaschenko said. For China, existing Chinese investment in Ukrainian logistics and a well-worn trade route between the two countries has seen corn exports pick up in recent years. Consolidating that success and ensuring that the country is able to accommodate the very special procedures for trade that China expects are key aims driving Ukraines contact. Read alsoUkraine Silk Road forum boosts China-Ukraine cooperation, draws roadmap for futureUkraines grain exports peaked in 2015/16 at 43.8 million mt, according to the states statistics service, although in 2016 the country actually saw an even larger domestic grains crop top 65.95 million mt, although exports failed to hit the same levels. World grain production is likely to rise again in 2017/18, hitting 2.6 billion mt, intensifying competition globally to secure market share. The move to ban IP blocks is a response to Telegram moving some of its infrastructure to Amazon Web Services and Google Cloud servers over the weekend. Russias federal censor has reportedly ordered the countrys ISPs to start blocking hundreds of thousands of Amazon IP addresses. On Monday evening, according to Anti-Corruption Foundation activist Vladislav Zdolnikov, Roskomnadzor added four subnet masks to its out-load list, which specifies the domains and websites Russian Internet providers are required to block, according to Meduza. A total of six IP blocks have been reported as banned in Russia at the ISP level. The IP ranges account for 1,835,008 IPs, BleepingComputer wrote. The move to ban IP blocks is a response to Telegram moving some of its infrastructure to Amazon Web Services and Google Cloud servers over the weekend. Roskomnadzor banned the Telegram instant messaging client inside Russia's border on Friday, April 13, after Telegram refused to hand over customers' encryption keys to the FSB, Russia's main intelligence service. By moving servers to Amazon and Google servers, Telegram was able to skirt the initial ban and provide service to Russian users over the weekend. Many users ridiculed Roskomnadzor's decision on social media, and for good reasons, as the move to mass-ban so many IP addresses had secondary repercussions, as it also blocked many legitimate web services. Users reported many online games, mobile apps, and cryptocurrency services going dark over the course of the day. According to an unofficial copy of Roskomnadzors Internet blacklist, IP addresses in question are prohibited because of a decision by the Attorney Generals Office that is technically unrelated to the April 13 court ruling in Moscow that allowed the government to start blocking Telegram. What do you think about our new website? Share your opinion Deficit of Ukraine's foreign trade in goods 1.5 times up in Jan-Feb 2018 Exports of goods to the EU countries soared 36.2%. If you see a spelling error on our site, select it and press Ctrl+Enter Malaysia interested in Ukrainian defense products Ukroboronprom During the meeting with the commander of the Royal Air Force of Malaysia, the head of Ukraine's major arms manufacturer discussed cooperation in the field of aviation. If you see a spelling error on our site, select it and press Ctrl+Enter NBU's high discount rate prevents business lending Groysman Ukrainian businesses cannot compete with the Europeans in terms of attracting financial resources due to the high key rate. If you see a spelling error on our site, select it and press Ctrl+Enter Russia to adopt some of Musk's engineering solutions Rogozin The Russian official says he "feels ashamed," but his country is going to make use of some of Musk's developments. If you see a spelling error on our site, select it and press Ctrl+Enter Ukraine's Finance Ministry expects US$2 bln disbursement from IMF in May or June The National Bank of Ukraine forecasts the arrival of the tranche in July 2018. If you see a spelling error on our site, select it and press Ctrl+Enter The Communist government of China has intensified its crackdown on Christian communities as the number of converts continues to rise. Most recently, Chinese authorities have begun to implement a ban on online sales of the Bible. Bibles can only be purchased legally in state-approved Christian bookstores.This comes after the governments recent decision to reassign the management of religious affairs, for decades run by a government department, to the Chinese Communist Party, which will be implementing new regulations that penalize all unregistered religious activities. Speaking to The Sun, a Christian Solidarity Worldwide spokesperson expressed concern over the increased persecution against Christians in China, saying The ban [on selling Bibles online] is deeply concerning and part of a wider pattern of violations of the right to freedom of religion or belief in China, which includes unregistered house churches. The government has also been conducting an ongoing campaign to destroy houses of worship, including Protestant and Catholic churches, institutes of Tibetan Buddhism, and mosques. For example, in January, Chinese authorities in Shanxi province used dynamite and excavators to destroy the Golden Lampstand Church, an unregistered Protestant church with approximately 50,000 congregants. Chinese authorities have detained, tortured, prosecuted, and convicted religious leaders from a range of faith communities around the country. Some have died while in custody. The United States has condemned China for its ongoing repression of religious freedom. In December, the State Department re-designated China along with nine other states as Countries of Particular Concern for having engaged in, or tolerated, particularly severe violations of religious freedom. The U.S. Department of States, Ambassador-at-Large for Religious Freedom, Sam Brownback, stated I am deeply concerned by the Chinese governments tightening restrictions on religious practice.On March 30, which was Good Friday, the government began enforcing a longstanding prohibition on the sale of Bibles online, and retailers who do not comply may face punishment. This decision and other actions by the Chinese government to prevent members of religious communities from practicing freely are unacceptable. I will be engaging the Chinese government directly on these issues to urge them to reverse course immediately." On Sunday, April 1st, the Costa Rican people went to the polls to elect a new President. According to Freedom House, Costa Rica has a long history of democratic stability, with a multiparty political system and regular transitions of power through free and fair elections. This tradition continued this year, with two rounds of free and fair elections. This was a run-off election, a second go-around. In the first round, which took place on February 4th of this year, neither Fabricio Alvarado Munoz from the National Restoration Party, nor Carlos Alvarado Quesada from the ruling Citizens Action Party received more than 40 percent of the vote, requiring a runoff between the top two candidates. Heading into the second round, all indications were that this would be a very close election. In the end, Carlos Alvarado Quesada defeated Fabricio Alvarez Munoz -- 61 percent to 39 percent. Even though Costa Rican voters held strong opinions about their chosen candidates, campaign rhetoric was respectful and there were no reports of election-related violence. There was a peaceful transition of power, a hallmark of strong democratic institutions. The losing candidate conceded the election with grace and in a conciliatory manner, and the winning candidate accepted the victory with humility and praise for his opponent. The United States congratulates Carlos Alvarado Quesada on his election as the next President of Costa Rica in free, fair, and peaceful voting that continues to be a model for the region, said State Department Spokesperson Heather Nauert. Our long and enduring partnership with Costa Rica is rooted in a shared history of support for human rights, democracy, and security for all people. Costa Rica plays a key role as our partner promoting regional economic prosperity, security, and good governance throughout the hemisphere, she said. We look forward to building on that partnership with the Alvarado administration. 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 The Finance Ministry of Ukraine does not see an opportunity for reviewing the size of minimum wage in Ukraine upwards to UAH 4,200, Deputy Finance Minister of Ukraine Serhiy Marchenko has said. "Today, the operational data of the State Treasury for the first quarter of 2018 indicate that there is no possibility to raise the minimum wage. At the end of three months, the national budget received UAH 193.6 billion, which is 96.9% of the target for the first quarter of 2018 (UAH 199.7 billion) That is, the national budget has received UAH 6.1 billion less," he said in an interview with delo.ua. According to the deputy minister, if the minimum wage increased to UAH 4,200 per month from April, it would be necessary to expand the expenditures of the budget for a year by at least UAH 13 billion. At the same time, this amount does not take into account the expenses for raising the official salary of an employee, the tariff category and a single tariff system. With this in mind, the Ministry of Finance estimates the additional need for spending for the current year at UAH 30 billion. Marchenko said that the tough monetary policy of the National Bank of Ukraine (NBU) influences the possibilities of the Finance Ministry. On Tuesday, April 17, at 10.30, the Interfax-Ukraine News Agency's press center will host a press conference titled "Transfer of Knowledge in Seafood Industry: Review of Ukrainian Fish Market, Alaska Wild Fish and World Trends." The participants will include globally renowned food writer, brand chief, director of Billingsgate Seafood Training School in London, C.J. Jackson; Director General of the Association of Ukrainian Fish and Seafood Importers Dmytro Zahumenny; Attache for Agriculture of the U.S. Embassy to Ukraine Dwight Wilder; Attache for Agriculture of the U.S. Embassy to Ukraine Oleksandr Tarasevich; representative of Alaska Seafood Marketing Institute (ASMI) Ksenia Gorovaya (8/5a Reitarska Street). Press registration is required by phone: (099) 737 1792, zvereva.pr@gmail.com. The issues of combating drug trafficking, including joint counteraction to international drug trafficking, were discussed during the meeting by Interior Minister of Ukraine Arsen Avakov, first deputy head of the National Police of Ukraine, head of the criminal police Viacheslav Abroskin and Acting Administrator of the Headquarters of Drug Enforcement Administration (DEA) of the U.S. Justice Department Robert Patterson. "Cooperation with foreign law enforcement agencies is very important for us, in particular, in the issues of combating drug trafficking, because today criminal groups operate not only within the borders of one country, they actively use innovative technologies, digital payment platforms and virtual crypto currency. And in this case, for the collection of electronic evidence, it is necessary to organize interaction with other bodies, including at the international level," the press-service of the Interior Ministry of Ukraine quoted Avakov as saying, who is on a working visit to the United States. The minister said that the parties agreed on a Memorandum of Cooperation between the National Police of Ukraine and the Office of Drug Control of the U.S. Justice Department. "Today we are at the final stage of preparing a memorandum of cooperation and we hope for a fruitful work. In addition, our policemen will be trained in the DEA, and the Administration decided to send a specialist for permanent work and counseling in Ukraine," the interior minister added. In turn, Abroskin said that the Ukrainian and American sides came to an agreement on the establishment of a joint contact group "Ukraine - Turkey - DEA" to counter cross-border organized criminal groups and illicit drug trafficking. "We plan to create a joint group to combat international drug trafficking, as well as to exchange operational information," he said. The first deputy head of the National Police of Ukraine added that now the department is working on reforming the units for countering drug trafficking. "We strengthened the staff potential of the Department, hired properly motivated employees. We conducted an open recruitment, where each applicant was tested on a polygraph. The selected operatives began training according to Western standards," added the head of the criminal police. He also recalled that in July 2017 a plan of joint actions was signed between the National Police and the American side for the implementation of the international technical assistance project of the Department for Combating Drug Trafficking. "They have provided long-term financial support for the development of the Department, modeled on the best law enforcement agencies fighting the drug business, and the first tranche of $1 million has already been allocated," Abroskin said. The Drug Enforcement Administration (DEA) is an agency of the U.S. Department of Justice, which is responsible for the enforcement of federal drug legislation. The agency's authority includes not only control of drug trafficking within the country, but also the cessation of the production of these substances in foreign countries. Now the DEA numbers more than 4,600 special agents, 680 analysts and 4,100 employees of support staff, including chemists, investigators for the control of the diversion of precursors and narcotic drugs and administrative personnel. Ukrainian SBU Security Service agents and Kyiv prosecutors are conducting searches of the main office of the State Reserve Agency and state-owned Zlatodar (Cherkasy region) as well as Khlibna Baza No. 85 (Kharkiv region) in connection with an investigation into grain transfers, State Reserve Agency head Vadym Mosiychuk has said. "The searches are based on the ruling of Kyiv's Pechersky District Court on seizing documents involving the transfer of grain from the state reserve in Kharkiv and Cherkasy regions. The main reason is the destruction of the State Reserve, also known as the 'hornets' nest," Mosiychuk said on his Facebook page on Tuesday. According to Mosiychuk, First Deputy Prime Ministry for Economic Development and Trade Stepan Kubiv on April 17, 2018, signed a decision on surprise checks of the State Reserve, on the protection of state secrets resulting from a SBU check. "We officially declare ourselves open for an objective investigation and are providing all necessary documentation," Mosiychuk said. Simultaneously, the State Reserve Agency appealed to the Specialized Anti-corruption Prosecutor's Office (SAPO), Cabinet of Ministers and parliament deputies to interfere in the situation and take under control the criminal case to not allow violations of acting legislation. Mosiychuk said the criminal case was opened pursuant to the possible storage of poor quality Lithuanian diesel fuel by the State Reserve Agency. However, he said the purchase of this fuel did not take place, state interests were not harmed and state funds were not used. Prosecutors meanwhile were investigating whether State Reserve Agency employees tampered with 18,000 tonnes of diesel fuel supplied in 2015 by WOG Aero Jet Ltd. for long-term storage with the State Reserve Agency. The quality of the diesel fuel was checked and fully complied with specifications. No evidence of criminal activity was found. Ukrainian President Petro Poroshenko has said Ukraine is closer than ever to creating an autocephalous united local church. "Ukraine is closer than ever today to seeing the emergence of its own autocephalous local church," Poroshenko said during a meeting with parliamentary faction leaders. He made the remarks on Tuesday while talking about his appeal to Ecumenical Patriarch Bartholomew I of Constantinople. Poroshenko to appeal to Ecumenical Patriarch to grant autocephaly to Ukraine's Orthodox Church, asks Rada to support him Ukraine's President Petro Poroshenko intends to appeal to Archbishop of Constantinople, Ecumenical Patriarch Bartholomew, asking him to issue a tomos (an official church document) granting autocephaly to the Orthodox Church in Ukraine, and has called on the Verkhovna Rada to support it. "I, as president, decided to appeal to the Ecumenical Patriarch, to his Holiness [Bartholomew] with a request to provide a tomos to the Ukrainian independent, or more precisely, local autocephalous church," Poroshenko said on Tuesday during a meeting with faction leaders in the Verkhovna Rada. The head of state also called on the Verkhovna Rada to support his initiative as soon as possible. "I would like to ask you, dear colleagues, because there are things that unite all of us, because the parliament represents the Ukrainian people, as well as the president, so that the parliament supports this appeal and should do this as quickly as possible," the president added. According to him, if there is a relevant resolution of the Verkhovna Rada, the president's address and the appeal of church hierarchs, this appeal will be transferred to the Ecumenical Patriarch. "We hope that this matter will be considered at the Synod in the near future and a relevant decision will be taken before the celebration of the 1030th anniversary of the Baptism of Ukraine-Rus," Poroshenko said. At the same time, the head of state noted the importance of the church unity and people's unity in this decision. It was reported earlier that the Ukrainian Verkhovna Rada had adopted an address to Patriarch Bartholomew I of Constantinople on June 16, 2016, calling on him to issue a tomos granting autocephaly to the Orthodox Church in Ukraine. Rada Chairman Andriy Parubiy said that Patriarch Bartholomew I had received a letter from the Ukrainian parliament asking him to grant autocephaly to the Orthodox Church in Ukraine. Archbishop Eustratios (Zoria) of Chernihiv and the Kyiv Patriarchate's official spokesman said the Holy Synod of the Constantinople Patriarchate had considered the Rada's appeal and passed it to a relevant commission for consideration. A prominent Iranian scientist and deputy head of the Islamic Republics Department of Environment has apparently resigned from his post while abroad after being detained in connection with allegations of espionage against other environmentalists. Citing a reliable source, reformist MP Mahmoud Sadeghi tweeted that Kaveh Madani and his wife had left the country after his wifes travel ban was lifted and that Madani had resigned from his post. Ensafnews agency is also reporting on the scientists resignation. A former professor of environmental management at Imperial College London, in 2017 Madani took the rare step of returning to Iran to serve as deputy head of the Department of Environment, and has been called a symbol of expat return under the Rouhani administration. Shortly after arriving in Iran in September last year, Madani told the English-language Tehran Times that many Iranians abroad were "waiting and watching closely to see what's going to happen, adding, "If I succeed, we might see more people coming back to help the government. I'm the representative of a generation who left the country and the whole country is complaining about losing this generation and brain drain," he told the Tehran Times in December 2017. He also tweeted at the time: "I have returned with the hope of creating #hope. But just seven months in, Madani was detained after several prominent environmentalists, including Kavous Seyyed-Emami, founder of Irans Wildlife Heritage, were arrested by the Islamic Revolutionary Guards Corps intelligence unit and charged with spying for foreign countries. Later, it was officially announced that Seyyed-Emami had committed suicide behind bars in Tehrans notorious Evin Prison. The reason for Madanis detention and his connection to the environmental espionage case were never officially disclosed. In late March, several conservative news outlets published photos allegedly showing Madani dancing and drinking at a festival in Malaysia, and argued that someone who drinks alcohol should not hold such a high office. Madani insisted that he had never even been to Malaysia. Sources close to Madani say the alleged suicide of his colleague Kavous Seyyed-Emami and the circulation of these photos convinced Madani it was unwise to return to Iran and continue in his post. In his tweet, Sadeghi called Madanis resignation a wakeup call for elite Iranian expats. Earlier, Madani had admitted that his relatives and friends were against his decision to accept an official position in the Islamic Republic, describing it as lunacy. While serving in Iran, Madani launched the campaign known as Bi-Zobaleh, (Persian for "no rubbish") focusing on the issue of waste. Launched on Dec. 22, the campaign was aimed at raising awareness and fostering a sense of responsibility in the community about waste management with the slogan "Let's Start with Ourselves. The campaign was set to continue through April 2, National Nature Day in Iran. Madani studied in Tabriz in northern Iran before getting his PhD in civil and environmental engineering from the University of California. The water expert's departure comes in the midst of a historical draught in Iran, which has been devastating for the environment. Reporting by AFP, Tehran Times, Radio Farda Persian RIYADH, April 17 (Reuters) Saudi Arabia would be prepared to send troops into Syria as part of the U.S.-led coalition if a decision was taken to widen it, Foreign Minister Adel al-Jubeir said on Tuesday. "We are in discussion with the U.S. and have been since the beginning of the Syrian crisis about sending forces into Syria," Jubeir told a news conference in Riyadh with U.N. Secretary-General Antonio Guterres. He said Riyadh had expressed its readiness while Barack Obama was U.S. President to send ground forces into Syria if the United States were to add an on-the-ground component to the U.S.-led coalition fighting Islamic State insurgents. Jubeir was responding to a question about a Wall Street Journal report that the administration of U.S. President Donald Trump is seeking to assemble an Arab force to replace the U.S. military contingent in Syria. "There are discussions regarding ... what kind of force needs to remain in eastern Syria and where that force would come from, and those discussions are ongoing," Jubeir said. Trump wants to bring U.S. troops home from Syria but has not set a timeline, White House spokeswoman Sarah Sanders said on Monday, two days after Western allies bombed Syrian targets over a suspected chemical weapons attack. One U.S. official told Reuters the United States is looking at what forces might be able to follow on in areas of Syria formerly under Islamic State control, should the United States leave or reduce its force dramatically. But no decisions have been made to do this. Before the Western military strikes took place, Saudi Arabia's Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman had said that the kingdom, a key U.S. ally, could take part in military action in Syria. While some commentators have assumed that Saudi Arabia is fully preoccupied with a three-year-old war in Yemen, Riyadh has suggested it could help counter-terrorism operations in some other theaters of conflict as part of a wider Muslim alliance. For example, a Saudi-backed Islamic military coalition will provide logistical, intelligence and training to a new West African counter-terrorism force, Jubeir said in December. About 40 Muslim-majority nations met in Riyadh at the end of November to flesh out details of an alliance first conceived two years ago by Prince Mohammed that is widely seen as a vehicle for countering the growing influence of Riyadhs rival Iran. Headline changed, details added (first version posted on 15:07) Baku, Azerbaijan, April 17 By Elchin Mehdiyev Trend: A plenum of the Azerbaijani Constitutional Court on approval of the protocol of the Central Election Commission on the presidential election held on April 11 2018, and on the election result has today kicked off. At the meeting, judge-rapporteurs Sona Salmanova and Rafael Gvaladze addressed the meeting. Salmanova informed that the Central Election Commission (CEC) has summarized the information received from all polling stations on the election result and submitted it to the Constitutional Court along with the relevant documents for approval of the election protocol. Gvaladze, in turn, said that the election was held in accordance with the legislation. He added that according to the protocol on the election result, Ilham Aliyev, garnering the majority of votes, won the presidential election. At the meeting, CEC Chairman Mazahir Panahov said that 5,641 polling stations in 125 constituencies operated on the election day. Panahov further spoke about the conditions created for presidential candidates, as well as allocation of free airtime on ITV and free space in the newspapers. "The Central Election Commission has registered enough local and foreign observers for holding of free, democratic and transparent election. In addition, web cameras were installed in 20 percent of the polling stations," he said. He noted that eight candidates were registered for the election and equal conditions were created for all candidates during the electoral process. "The election took place with active participation of the voters. The public was widely informed about processes taking place on the election day by the CEC, as well as via web cameras," he said. Following the speeches, a break was announced at the meeting. After the break, Chairman of the Constitutional Court Farhad Abdullayev announced the results, and the Constitutional Court's Plenum approved the results of the April 11 presidential election. According to the legislation, Ilham Aliyev is considered elected the President of Azerbaijan, Abdullayev said, adding that this is the final decision and no complaints are accepted. Abdullayev noted that the Constitutional Court's Plenum checked the information in the submitted protocol in accordance with the Constitution of Azerbaijan and with participation of interested parties. Thus, the CEC protocol on the results of the presidential election is in line with the provisions of the Election Code. Ilham Aliyev was declared the President as he garnered 86.02 percent of votes in the election. After the announcement of the decision, the meeting ended with performance of the National Anthem of Azerbaijan. Baku, Azerbaijan, April 17 Trend: Over the past 24 hours, Armenias armed forces have 91 times violated the ceasefire along the line of contact between Azerbaijani and Armenian troops, the Azerbaijani Defense Ministry said April 17. 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, April 17 Trend: OSCE is expected to monitor the line of contact between Azerbaijani and Armenian troops on April 18, Azerbaijans Defense Ministry said in a message April 17. The monitoring will be held under the mandate of the OSCE chairperson-in-office personal representative in Azerbaijans Fuzuli district. On the Azerbaijani side, the monitoring will be held by Simon Tiller and Gennady Petrica, field assistants of the OSCE chairperson-in-office personal representative. On the Azerbaijani territories, occupied and controlled by Armenian armed forces, the monitoring will be held by Andrzej Kasprzyk, personal representative of the OSCE chairperson-in-office, and field assistants of the OSCE chairperson-in-office personal representative Mikhail Olaru and Ognyen Yovic. 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, April 17 Trend: Azerbaijani Prosecutor General Zakir Garalov has appealed to Russian Prosecutor General Yuri Chaika because an article with a photo of the flag of the illegal regime created in the occupied Azerbaijani territories and other slogans was published in Russias Izvestia newspaper, spread by IZ.RU news portal on April 16, the Azerbaijani General Prosecutor's Office said in a message April 17. According to the message, unlawful actions against the sovereignty and territorial integrity of Azerbaijan are sharply condemned in the appeal. 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, April 17 By Leman Zeynalova Trend: The 23rd meeting of the Council of Foreign Ministers of the Economic Cooperation Organization (ECO) has today kicked off in Dushanbe, Tajikistan, the Azerbaijani embassy in Tajikistan said in a message on April 17. Azerbaijan's Deputy Foreign Minister Mahmud Mammadguliyev represents the country at the event. The meeting participants will consider status of the ECO projects and programs, relations of the ECO Secretariat with international organizations, activities of the organization's specialized agencies and affiliated bodies. They will also discuss progress and assessment of the goals and objectives defined in the 2025 ECO Prospects, the adoption of the New ECO Program on Assistance to Afghanistan, as well as the administrative and financial issues of the Organization. The meeting of the ECO Foreign Ministers Council is preceded by a meeting of the ECO Senior Officials held on April 16. The Economic Cooperation Organization (ECO) is an intergovernmental economic organization, created in 1985 by Turkey, Iran and Pakistan. Since 1992, the activity of the organization has intensified with joining of Azerbaijan, Afghanistan, Kazakhstan, Kyrgyzstan, Tajikistan, Turkmenistan and Uzbekistan. Baku, Azerbaijan, April 17 By Leman Zeynalova, Maksim Tsurkov Trend: The next round of talks on the new partnership agreement between the European Union (EU) and Azerbaijan will be held in May, Kestutis Jankauskas, head of the EU delegation to Azerbaijan, told reported April 17. Currently we are in contact with Azerbaijans Ministry of Foreign Affairs on finalizing establishment of the dates,for the Brussels team to come to Baku for the next round of negotiations on the new agreement. I hope this will be probably happening in May, he said. Jankauskas noted that visits from the EU to Azerbaijan are expected soon, probably in May. Regarding the aviation agreement, he said that EU is waiting for Azerbaijans response. The European Council adopted a mandate for the European Commission and the high representative for foreign affairs and security policy to negotiate, on behalf of the EU and its member states, a comprehensive agreement with Azerbaijan in November 2016. The new agreement should replace the 1996 partnership and cooperation agreement and should better take account of the shared objectives and challenges the EU and Azerbaijan face today. The agreement will follow the principles endorsed in the 2015 review of the European Neighborhood Policy and offer a renewed basis for political dialogue and mutually beneficial cooperation between the EU and Azerbaijan. Currently, bilateral relations between the EU and Azerbaijan are regulated on the basis of an agreement on partnership and cooperation that was signed in 1996 and entered into force in 1999. The new agreement envisages the compliance of Azerbaijans legislation and procedures with the EUs most important international trade norms and standards, which should lead to the improvement of Azerbaijani goods access to the EU markets. Baku, Azerbaijan, April 17 Trend: President of Montenegro Filip Vujanovic has congratulated President of Azerbaijan Ilham Aliyev on his victory in the April 11 presidential election. "Dear President, I would like to extend my most cordial congratulations and best wishes on the occasion of your re-election as the President of the Republic of Azerbaijan ," reads the congratulatory letter. "Your convincing electoral victory was a clear proof of the satisfaction of the people of Azerbaijan with the leadership you had given to your country in the previous mandate, as well as their full confidence in your personal capacity to steer the country through the challenging times ahead," he said. Vujanovic voiced belief that Ilham Aliyev's re-election as the President of Azerbaijan has been welcomed throughout the international community. "Not only the prosperity for the people of Azerbaijan has been granted during your incumbency, but the stability in the volatile region has been strengthened as well," he said. Vujanovic further expressed his genuine appreciation of excellent and ever strengthening relations between Montenegro and Azerbaijan. "Esteemed President, I wish you good health, family happiness and success in performing your high duty. Please accept the assurances of my highest consideration ," reads the congratulatory letter. Baku, Azerbaijan, April 17 Trend: Azerbaijan's delegation took part at the 23rd meeting of the Council of Foreign Ministers of the Economic Cooperation Organization (ECO) in Dushanbe, Tajikistan on April 17. Azerbaijan's Deputy Foreign Minister Mahmud Mammadguliyev represented the country at the event. During the visit, Mammadguliyev has had a meeting with Tajik Foreign Minister Sirocaddin Aslov. The sides noted traditional partnership ties between the two countries, held broad discussion on development of cooperation in political, economic, cultural and other spheres. Speaking at the ECO ministerial, Mammadguliyev said that Azerbaijan is engaged in active cooperation within the framework of the ECO and supports development of comprehensive cooperation among the member states. He noted that Azerbaijan put forward a number of initiatives aimed at strengthening practical cooperation and promoting regional transport corridor projects. Mammadguliyev also briefed about Azerbaijans political, economic stability, as well as fundamental reforms implemented in the country. As a result of the 23rd meeting of the Council of Foreign Ministers of the ECO, Dushanbe Communique was adopted. In the document, the ministers expressed concern about the unresolved conflicts in the ECO region, including the Armenia-Azerbaijan conflict, which hinder the economic growth and realization of full economic potential of the region and impede development of economic cooperation. They also stressed the importance of making increased efforts for the earliest resolution of these conflicts based on the norms and principles of international law, in particular the principles of respect to sovereignty and territorial integrity. The document also underlined the importance of large-scale regional transport and energy projects such as the Baku-Tbilisi-Kars railway, the North-South transport corridor, as well as the Baku-Ceyhan Oil Pipeline, the expanded Baku-Erzurum Gas Pipeline, the Iran- Azerbaijan-Russia electricity transmission line. Headline changed, details added (first version posted on 15:07) Baku, Azerbaijan, April 17 By Elchin Mehdiyev Trend: A plenum of the Azerbaijani Constitutional Court on approval of the protocol of the Central Election Commission on the presidential election held on April 11 2018, and on the election result has today kicked off. At the meeting, judge-rapporteurs Sona Salmanova and Rafael Gvaladze addressed the meeting. Salmanova informed that the Central Election Commission (CEC) has summarized the information received from all polling stations on the election result and submitted it to the Constitutional Court along with the relevant documents for approval of the election protocol. Gvaladze, in turn, said that the election was held in accordance with the legislation. He added that according to the protocol on the election result, Ilham Aliyev, garnering the majority of votes, won the presidential election. At the meeting, CEC Chairman Mazahir Panahov said that 5,641 polling stations in 125 constituencies operated on the election day. Panahov further spoke about the conditions created for presidential candidates, as well as allocation of free airtime on ITV and free space in the newspapers. "The Central Election Commission has registered enough local and foreign observers for holding of free, democratic and transparent election. In addition, web cameras were installed in 20 percent of the polling stations," he said. He noted that eight candidates were registered for the election and equal conditions were created for all candidates during the electoral process. "The election took place with active participation of the voters. The public was widely informed about processes taking place on the election day by the CEC, as well as via web cameras," he said. Following the speeches, a break was announced at the meeting. After the break, Chairman of the Constitutional Court Farhad Abdullayev announced the results and the Constitutional Court's Plenum approved the results of the April 11 presidential election. Details added (first version posted on 17:11) Baku, Azerbaijan, April 17 By Elchin Mehdiyev - Trend: An inauguration ceremony of Azerbaijani President Ilham Aliyev will be held on April 18, Executive Secretary - Deputy Chairman of the ruling New Azerbaijan Party Ali Ahmadov told reporters on April 17. Azerbaijan held presidential election on April 11. The incumbent head of state, Chairman of the New Azerbaijan Party Ilham Aliyev garnered 86.02 percent of votes in the election, securing his position as the head of state for the next seven years. In accordance with the Constitution of Azerbaijan, the country's Cabinet of Ministers will resign following the inauguration of the president, Ahmadov said. Following that, a new Cabinet of Ministers will be formed, in accordance with the Constitution, according to Ahmadov. A plenum of the Azerbaijani Constitutional Court on approval of the protocol of the Central Election Commission on the presidential election held on April 11 2018, and on the election result was held on April 17. Chairman of the Constitutional Court Farhad Abdullayev announced the results, and the Constitutional Court's Plenum approved the results of the April 11 presidential election. Baku, Azerbaijan, April 17 Trend: Bulgarian President Rumen Radev has sent a congratulatory letter to Azerbaijani President Ilham Aliyev. Please accept my sincere congratulations and best wishes on your re-election as the president of Azerbaijan, the Bulgarian president said in his letter. By using this opportunity, Id like to invite you to visit Bulgaria again. We consider Azerbaijan our priority partner. I am sure that your visit to Bulgaria will make new contribution to the further development and deepening of the traditionally close and friendly ties between our countries in the interests of our peoples. In accordance with the joint declaration between Bulgaria and Azerbaijan, the comprehensive strengthening of the ties between Sophia and Baku will create possibility to promote the interests of our countries in energy security and transport sectors, and will contribute to the strengthening of regional peace and stability, Rumen Radev noted. I wish you good health and success in your high state activity, and I wish sustainable development to Azerbaijan. Baku, Azerbaijan, April 17 By Anvar Mammadov Trend: Anglo Asian Mining PLC (AAM), a producer of gold, copper and silver in Azerbaijan, produced 18,307 ounces of gold in the first quarter of 2018, which is 26 percent more than in the same period of 2017, according to the company report. The company said that such a sharp increase in the gold production is linked with the launch of production at the new Ugur field. The copper production during the reporting period amounted to 255 tons, which is 2.4 times less than in the first quarter of 2017 (606 tons). During the reporting period, the silver production was 40,583 ounces compared to 36,369 ounces in the same period of 2017 (showing an annual growth at the level of 3.1 percent). Of the total figure, 7,109 ounces were contained in dore In 2018, AAM plan to produce up to 84,000 ounces of gold. Anglo Asian Mining PLC is a gold, copper and silver producer with a broad portfolio of production and exploration assets in Azerbaijan. AAM and Swiss Industrial Minerals SA signed an agreement in May 2014 on selling cooper concentrate produced at Gadabay field in Azerbaijan. Based on the production sharing agreement signed with Azerbaijani government in August 1997, Anglo Asian Mining PLC has the right to develop six fields in south-west of Azerbaijan: Gadabay, Ordubad, Gosha Bulag, Gizil Bulag, Vejnali and Soyutlu. The gold produced at the fields is sent to Switzerland for purification. The ingots are delivered to Azerbaijan and are stored in the governments account. In 2017, AAM produced 59,617 ounces of gold, 1,991 tons of copper and 172,853 ounces of silver in Azerbaijan. --- Follow the author on Twitter: @AzadHasanli Baku, Azerbaijan, April 17 By Azad Hasanli Trend: There is no currency shortage in banks of Azerbaijan, the executive director of Azerbaijans Financial Markets Supervisory Authority (FIMSA), Ibrahim Alishov told reporters on April 17. He said the Central Bank of Azerbaijan (CBA) timely provides banks with currency, so there is no reason for panic. "The USD rate volatility that we observed in Turkey and Russia has lead to a certain psychological tension in Azerbaijan," Alishov said. "This is just a psychological factor and there are no reasons for panic." He further stressed that over the past week the volume of currency purchase amounted to about $800-$1,300 per person. "I will repeat, this is just a psychological factor caused by developments in neighboring countries. However, there is no macroeconomic reason for panic," Alishov said. Details added (first version posted on 11:21) Baku, Azerbaijan, April 17 By Anvar Mammadov - Trend: Azerbaijani banks must actively participate in the development and change of the banking legislation, Taleh Kazimov, chairman of PASHA Bank, said. Kazimov made the remarks at the 1st International Banking Exhibition and Conference, titled Digital Banking and Security in Baku April 17. This will help achieve the required results faster and timely address the existing challenges in the market, he said. "Presently, many people think the development of the legislative base depends on Azerbaijans Financial Markets Supervisory Authority (FIMSA), but banks must also actively participate in these issues," he said. Currently, many banks are negotiating with FIMSA to improve legislation within the development of digital banking. I think these talks will lead to positive results soon." Kazimov added that presently PASHA Bank is working much to develop digital banking. He thinks it necessary to expand cooperation with financial and technological companies. "Banks must stop to compete with the financial and technological companies and start to cooperate with them," Kazimov said. Financial and technological companies work faster. They have a big number of services, but there is a lack of client base and trust." "If banks and other financial institutions continue to compete with the financial and technological companies, we will simply fail," he said. "Together we could make great progress." Details added (first version posted on 11:45) Baku, Azerbaijan, April 17 By Maksim Tsurkov Trend: The new twinning project to be realized with the support of the European Union (EU) will help Azerbaijan increase its administrative capacity in the tax sphere, Azerbaijani Minister of Taxes Mikayil Jabbarov said in Baku on April 17. Jabbarov made the remarks during presentation of the twinning project "Supporting the Taxes Ministry in Setting Transfer Prices and Developing Counter Measures against Tax Evasion." Under the conditions of ever-growing globalization and increasing role of transnational corporations, the world economy faces new challenges, many of which create certain difficulties for work of the tax authorities, according to Jabbarov. "One of such challenges is transfer prices. There are various schemes to resolve such issues. Azerbaijan is becoming more integrated into the world economy. Therefore, control over transfer prices is on the agenda and we need experience to solve the problem," Jabbarov said. He noted that the European Commission had positively responded to Azerbaijan's initiative to launch a twinning project. "A relevant tender was conducted and the Greek tax administration and the Greek Centre of International and European Economic Law were selected the twinning partners of Azerbaijan. They have developed the twining project," the minister said. Jabbarov went on to say that the ministry had previously successfully implemented three twinning projects together with the EU. Head of the EU Delegation to Azerbaijan Kestutis Jankauskas, in turn, noted that the cost of the project is 1.2 million euros, and its implementation will take 24 months. Details added (first version posted on 13:40) Baku, Azerbaijan, April 17 By Anvar Mammadov Trend: Chinese payment system UnionPay intends to expand its presence in the market of Azerbaijan, UnionPay General Manager at the Central Asia and Caucasus Regional Office Zhang Chengdong said at the 1st International Banking Exhibition and Conference, titled "Digital Banking and Security" in Baku on April 17. He said that the company intends to achieve this through expanding its cooperation with partners in Azerbaijan. "Our company entered the Azerbaijani market in 2016 and cooperates with such banks as the International Bank of Azerbaijan and Atabank. We plan to increase our share in the local market by late 2018 with the help of partners. The growth is expected to be significant," he said. Zhang Chengdong further said that the company plans to issue UnionPay cards. "I think that UnionPay cards will be available in the market before the end of 2018. As for the exact, I cannot comment on that yet," he said. Presently, along with Chinese banks, banks in Thailand, Kazakhstan, South Korea, Pakistan, Singapore, Russia, Japan, Malaysia, Indonesia and the Philippines also issue UnionPay cards. According to the data of UnionPay International (UPI), a subsidiary of China UnionPay focused on the growth and support of UnionPay's global business, the total number of UnionPay cardholders abroad hit 90 million by late 2017. Today, the International Bank of Azerbaijan (IBA), AzerTurkBank, Muganbank and AtaBank of Azerbaijan cooperate with this company. Baku, Azerbaijan, April 17 By Huseyn Valiyev - Trend: Azerbaijani entrepreneurs started exporting vodka to China, Yusif Abdullayev, vice president of the Azerbaijan Export and Investment Promotion Foundation (AZPROMO), told Trend April 17. He said that supplies were established on the basis of agreements reached within the framework of the export delegation to Chinese cities organized by AZPROMO last year. Now these supplies are established on a permanent basis, Abdullayev said. We intend to develop the export of alcohol products to China. The opening of Azerbaijans wine house in Shanghai is planned in the near future. He noted that Shanghai will host SIAL China, the 19th international food innovation exhibition, on May 16-18, where Azerbaijan will be represented by the national pavilion. The exhibition is a platform for professionals in the beverage and food industry, he added. We also plan to participate with an expanded delegation in the first China International Import Exposition (CIIE) November 5-10, Abdullayev said. Preparation is already underway. Interest in the exhibition is fueled by the increase in imports to China, which amounted to $1.95 trillion in 2017, which is 18.7 percent more than in 2016. It is assumed that over the next five years this figure will increase to $8 trillion. Baku, Azerbaijan, April 17 By Fikret Dolukhanov - Trend: The Ministry of Finance and Economy of Turkmenistan and the Ministry of Economy, Commerce and Business Environment of Romania have signed a memorandum of understanding on cooperation in the economic sphere, the Turkmen media reported April 17. The document was signed in Ashgabat as part of the seventh meeting of the joint Intergovernmental Turkmen-Romanian Commission for Economic, Scientific and Technological Cooperation. The agenda of the next meeting included issues of implementing previously reached agreements and identifying new areas of partnership. At the meeting, the sides noted the high level of Turkmen-Romanian relations, which are being built on the principles of mutual trust and benefit. Trade and economic sphere, textile industry, agriculture, electric power engineering and construction were mentioned among the priority areas of cooperation. Noting the favorable investment climate created in Turkmenistan, the members of the commission from the Romanian side expressed desire of the countrys business circles to expand their presence in the Turkmen market for implementing joint investment projects. Issues of humanitarian partnership became the topic of the separate discussion. In this regard, the meeting participants spoke in favor of building up traditional cooperation in the spheres of education, science and culture. Baku, Azerbaijan, April 17 By Huseyn Valiyev - Trend: The Azerbaijan Export and Investment Promotion Foundation (AZPROMO) plans to send export delegations to several countries of Europe and Asia, Vice President of the AZPROMO Yusif Abdullayev told Trend April 17. He said that the main directions in the organization of export delegations remained unchanged. China, South Korea, Mongolia, as well as countries of Europe can be mentioned among the countries where it is planned to send the export delegations, he noted. Besides, we plan to send an export delegation to Turkey, despite that there are high import duties in this country. Abdullayev also talked about the plans regarding participation of Azerbaijani entrepreneurs in international exhibitions. This year we intend to organize participation of Azerbaijani entrepreneurs in 10 international exhibitions within a single pavilion, he added. Since the beginning of the year, we organized participation in three such exhibitions that took place in Russia, Germany and the UAE. The fourth exhibition will be held May 16-18 in China. The other six exhibitions will also be held in Russia, the countries of Europe and in China. Baku, Azerbaijan, April 17 By Maksim Tsurkov - Trend: Representatives of over 400 European companies are expected to participate in the EU-Azerbaijan Business Forum in Baku, Kestutis Jankauskas, head of the EU delegation to Azerbaijan, said April 17 during the presentation of the twinning project Support to the Ministry of Taxes of the Republic of Azerbaijan in Transfer Pricing and developing Anti-Tax Avoidance measures. He noted that the EU-Azerbaijan Business Forum will be held in early June. Azerbaijan is in the process of implementing serious economic reforms, which will allow the country to strengthen the competitiveness and stability of the economy, he said. The EU is interested in this, as well as in the strengthening of cooperation, he added. Azerbaijan and the EU are working to sign a new partnership agreement, he said. The European Council adopted a mandate for the European Commission and the high representative for foreign affairs and security policy to negotiate, on behalf of the EU and its member states, a comprehensive agreement with Azerbaijan in November 2016. The new agreement should replace the 1996 partnership and cooperation agreement and should better take account of the shared objectives and challenges the EU and Azerbaijan face today. The agreement will follow the principles endorsed in the 2015 review of the European Neighborhood Policy and offer a renewed basis for political dialogue and mutually beneficial cooperation between the EU and Azerbaijan. Currently, bilateral relations between the EU and Azerbaijan are regulated on the basis of an agreement on partnership and cooperation that was signed in 1996 and entered into force in 1999. The new agreement envisages the compliance of Azerbaijans legislation and procedures with the EUs most important international trade norms and standards, which should lead to the improvement of Azerbaijani goods access to the EU markets. Baku, Azerbaijan, April 17 By Huseyn Valiyev - Trend: The Azerbaijan Export and Investment Promotion Foundation (AZPROMO) plans to provide state assistance to entrepreneurs in obtaining ISO 22000 standard for Halal certification of food products (those prepared according to Islamic law, free from pork products, alcohol and certain other ingredients), AZPROMO Vice President Yusif Abdullayev told Trend April 17. He said that the availability of this certificate is an important requirement if the entrepreneur wants to export his or her products. The Azerbaijani state will provide support in the acquisition of these certificates, said Abdullayev. Azerbaijani entrepreneurs will be able to obtain any international and local certificates by paying only 50 percent of their cost. This is significant support for entrepreneurship, and any company can apply for certificates repeatedly. ISO 22000 is a series of international standards for management system in the field of food safety. Baku, Azerbaijan, April 17 By Ali Mustafayev - Trend: Turkmenistan Airlines plans to soon launch Ashgabat-Milan-Ashgabat, Ashgabat-Tbilisi-Ashgabat and Ashgabat-Tehran-Ashgabat regular flights at the Ashgabat International Airport, SNG.Today website reported. Aircraft of Turkmenistan Airlines perform regular flights to 17 cities of 12 countries of Europe and Asia, as well as domestic flights in Turkmenistan, according to the website. Various types of aircraft of the US Boeing company are used by Turkmenistan Airlines for domestic and international flights. International flights are carried out from the Ashgabat International Airport, which is the main airport of Turkmenistan. The airport has all the conditions for logistics and multimodal transportation, there are modern warehouses for storage, processing and distribution of export-import goods. This warehouse infrastructure allows servicing both domestic cargo and cargo passing through Turkmenistan. The airport has two terminals and can serve more than 2,000 passengers per hour and more than 17 million people per year. The cargo terminal in the airport is capable of processing 200,000 tons of cargo per year. Ashgabat International Airport also has a technical center for servicing aircraft, which will allow servicing simultaneously five narrow-body and three wide-body aircraft. Once the technical center is commissioned, new forms of service will become possible at the airport. The airport has two runways with all the necessary infrastructure, their length is 3,800 meters each. Baku, Azerbaijan, April 17 By Anvar Mammadov - Trend: Development of digital banking cannot be considered separately from the improvement of traditional banking services, Anar Hasanov, first deputy chairman of the board of Azerbaijans AccessBank, told Trend April 17. Hasanov stressed that when receiving certain services, clients need attention from the bank employee. I think that the issue of developing digital services needs to be approached globally, he said. To date, it is quite difficult to separate digital banking and consider it as a separate direction. Complete transition of corporate customers to internet banking may lead to breaking of ties between them and the bank. Today, internet banking cannot provide a client with the level of necessary attention he or she can get by contacting the bank directly. Therefore, I consider digital banking as an additional service by means of which it is possible to carry out operations that dont directly require attention to the client from bank employees. Regarding such operations, I expect increase in the use of digital banking in the near future. Touching on the development of internet banking in AccessBank itself, Hasanov noted that presently, the use of internet banking in branches with great number of corporate clients saves 20 percent of working time. Corporate clients are mostly interested in the issues of account status, he added. If such operations are completely transferred to digital banking, this will save considerable amount of time. Therefore, I think that if we expand the digital banking correctly, the saving of money will make it possible to direct this money to the development of other services as well. Baku, Azerbaijan, April 17 Trend: One of the aspects of the development of the EU gas market should be competition, European Commission Vice-President for Energy Union Maros Sefcovic said on Twitter. "The Future of the European gas market: security, infrastructure, competition", said Sefcovic. As the European Commissioner for Climate Action and Energy Miguel Arias Canete said at the EU Energy Summit in Brussels April 16, the Southern Gas Corridor project plays an important role in the EU's diversification efforts. At present, the EU is largely dependent on gas imports, and this dependence will only increase: to about 83 percent by 2040 from the current approximately 70 percent. The decline in production and consumption of organic fuel would not be at the same rate as imports, Canete said. So, in 2016, 72 percent of energy consumption was ensured through oil, gas and coal. In the same year, 88 percent of consumed oil and 40 percent of natural gas were imported. Thus, 42 percent of imported natural gas accounts for Russia, 34 percent - for Norway, 13 percent - for liquefied natural gas, 11 percent - for Algeria and Libya, he added. The Southern Gas Corridor is one of the priority projects for the EU and provides for the transportation of 10 billion cubic meters of Azerbaijani gas from the Caspian region through Georgia and Turkey to Europe. At an initial stage, the gas to be produced as part of the Stage 2 of development of Azerbaijan's Shah Deniz field is considered as the main source for the Southern Gas Corridor projects. Other sources can also connect to this project at a later stage. As part of the Shah Deniz Stage 2, the gas will be exported to Turkey and European markets by expanding the South Caucasus Pipeline and the construction of Trans-Anatolian Natural Gas Pipeline (TANAP) and Trans Adriatic Pipeline (TAP). Baku, Azerbaijan, April 17 Trend: Japanese company Kawasaki Heavy Industries is planning to build a plant for the production of gasoline from natural gas in Uzbekistan, Uzbek media outlet Uzbekistan Daily reported citing Takhlilnoma program of Uzbekistan 24 TV channel. The head of the Japanese concerns department T.Takasina noted that the company intends to expand its presence in the Uzbek market. According to him, Kawasaki Heavy Industries is studying the issue of building a gasoline production plant from natural gas using GTG technology. Takasina said the company can raise funds from the Government of Japan to implement the project. He said that the delegation of Kawasaki Heavy Industries in the near future is ready to visit Uzbekistan to discuss with the authorized ministries and departments the issue of joint implementation of this project. Baku, Azerbaijan, April 17 By Leman Zeynalova Trend: In-house personnel of Canadas Zenith Energy company has taken the control of all operational activities at Muradkhanli-Jafarli-Zardab oil fields onshore Azerbaijan, Trend learned from the company. All non-Zenith operational teams have now been stood down and in-house personnel have now assumed control of all operational activities. This is in keeping with the company's stated intention to use its own internal resources to the fullest extent, enabling a significant reduction in operational expenditure as well as both maintaining operational continuity and enhancing the application of in-field experience, said the company. Azerbaijan's long history as an oil producing nation enables the company to call upon the significant in-country expertise and supply infrastructure should operational activities require third-party support or additional equipment in future, according to Zenith Energy. Azerbaijans state oil company SOCAR and Zenith Aran Oil Company signed a Rehabilitation, Exploration, Development and Production Sharing Agreement (REDPSA) in March 2016 for a block that includes the Muradkhanli, Jafarli and Zardab oilfields. These fields cover an area of 642.2 square kilometers. Production under the agreement began in August of 2016. Zenith holds a 80-percent participating interest in the three fields within the contract area, while SOCAR retains the remaining 20 percent. The duration of the agreement is 25 years, with a potential extension of five additional years. --- Follow the author on Twitter: @Lyaman_Zeyn Baku, Azerbaijan, April 17 By Anvar Mammadov Trend: The next Startup Days will be held at the Azerbaijan State University of Oil and Industry on May 4-5, a source in the country's IT market told Trend. The event will be held with support of the State Fund for the Development of Information Technologies of Azerbaijan. Previously, the Startup Days were organized at the Azerbaijan Technical University, within the framework of which students proposed 25 ideas. Five of these ideas were selected and evaluated by an expert group. Following the evaluation, Smart Makeup (mobile application), E-diagnose (mobile application) and Asfalt Enerji (in the field of alternative energy) were awarded with certificates, gifts and cash prizes. The officials of Turkeys educational sector proposed Kyrgyz counterparts to open an educational institution named Marif in Kyrgyzstan. Two delegations have been negotiating since the beginning of the year on this issue," chief of the foreign policy department of the Kyrgyz Presidents Office Daniyar Sydykov told reporters, Kyrgyz media outlets reported. He added that a Turkish delegation has already arrived in Bishkek to discuss this issue and provided a number of proposals and project documents that are being considered by the relevant departments of Kyrgyzstan. Negotiations to discuss new educational projects are still under way. Baku, Azerbaijan, April 17 Trend: Tajik President Emomali Rahmon met with Iranian Foreign Minister Mohammad Javad Zarif, who has visited Tajikistan to attend the 23rd meeting of the Council of Foreign Ministers of the Economic Cooperation Organisation (ECO), which is taking place in the Tajik capital, News.tj reported on April 17. The Tajik presidents official website stated that Rahmon and Zarif discussed various aspects of bilateral mutually beneficial cooperation between Tajikistan and the Islamic Republic of Iran. They, in particular, discussed issues related to cooperation between Tajikistan and Iran in the fields of commerce, energy, transportation, industry, agriculture and culture. The Tajik leader and the Iranian foreign minister also discussed bilateral cooperation between Tajikistan and Iran in the field of security, according to the Tajik presidents website. Besides, Rahmon and Zarif discussed a number of regional and international issues of mutual interest. IRNA news agency reported that given cultural commonalities, the two sides in the meeting called for expansion of mutual relations and cooperation in various political, economic, cultural, energy and technological know-how sectors. During the meeting of the ECO Council of Foreign Ministers, the foreign ministers of the member-states are expected to discuss various issues such as expansion of economic cooperation between the member-states. Baku, Azerbaijan, April 17 By Ali Mustafayev Trend: Turkmen President Gurbanguly Berdimuhamedov has signed a decree on appointment of Maksat Khudaykuliyev the head of the service to combat economic crimes, Turkmen media reported on April 17. The service to combat economic crimes was established on June 1, 2017 and headed by Mammetkhan Chakyev, who previously served as the chairman of the State Customs Service. Chakyev was appointed the deputy prime minister for transport and communications. Baku, Azerbaijan, April 17 By Fikret Dolukhanov Trend: Uzbekistan and Tajikistan discussed issues of regional security at a meeting between Chairman of the State Security Service of Uzbekistan Ihtiyor Abdullaev and Chairman of the State Committee of National Security of Tajikistan Saymumin Yatimov in Tashkent, Uzbek media reported on April 17. Heads of the special services discussed fighting the international terrorism, religious extremism, illegal trafficking of drugs and weapons. The parties discussed priority areas in ensuring regional security... A special attention was paid to neutralizing common threats to state security, the press office of the Uzbek special service said. Abdullayev earlier said that the activation of terrorist groups in the north Afghanistan, as well as the return of militants from the Middle East to Uzbekistan are new threats to the security of the republic. According to him, opening borders with neighboring countries also leads to increasing attempts to smuggle religious extremist literature, drugs and weapons into the country. Three more checkpoints on the border between Uzbekistan and Tajikistan were opened apart from the three previously functioning checkpoints since March 1 after a long break. The visa regime, which was in force since 2001, was abolished on March 16. Citizens of the two countries can travel to each other without a visa for 30 days. --- Follow the author on Twitter: @FDolukhanov Baku, Azerbaijan, April 17 Trend: Minister of Foreign Affairs of the Republic of Uzbekistan Abdulaziz Kamilov received the OSCE High Commissioner on National Minorities Lamberto Zannier, Uzbekistan Daily media outlet reported. According to the press service of the Uzbek Foreign Ministry, Lamberto Zannier shared his impressions about his visit to Ferghana and Namangan regions, in particular, negotiations with representatives of local authorities, as well as meetings held in Kyrgyz, Russian, Tajik and other cultural centers. During the meeting at the Foreign Ministry, the OSCE representative highly assessed the cardinal changes taking place in Uzbekistan in all spheres, measures taken by the Government of Uzbekistan to develop cooperation with the countries of the region. It was underluned that Uzbekistan pays special attention to ensuring interethnic harmony and religious tolerance, strengthening ties of friendship between representatives of various nations and nationalities. Under the program of the visit, the OSCE High Commissioner will also hold meetings and negotiations in the Legislative Chamber of the Oliy Majlis, the Committee on Interethnic Relations and Friendly Relations with Foreign Countries, Cultural Centers and other departments of Uzbekistan. A helicopter of the Iranian Offshore Oil Company (IOOC) which had been sent to Platform R1 to transport a worker suffering from heart attack crashed into Persian Gulf waters shortly after its take off from the platform, IRNA reports. Death of Javad Karandish (partient) and Behrouz Ashkan (assistant physician) have been confirmed while pilot of the helicopter Capitan Soheili is in good health. Governor and Head of Bandar Lengeh Crisis Management Working Group said that as a result of the crash, two were killed and two are still missing and one has been saved. Arsalan Bahar-Meymandi added that the helicopter with five persons on board crashed into Persian Gulf waters at 21:00 while it was transporting a sick worker to hospital. Searches are underway to save two missing persons, he said. Baku, Azerbaijan, April 17 By Umid Niayesh Trend: South Korea experienced a huge negative balance in its trade with Iran during the first quarter of the current year. The two countries' mutual trade continued to fall during the third month of 2018. The bilateral trade witnessed a fall by 20.4 percent in January-March 2018 and stood at $2.77 billion, according to the latest data released by the Korean Customs Service. South Korea exported $863 million worth of goods to Iran in the first quarter of 2018, which is less by 7 percent compared to the same period of 2017. Meanwhile, the countrys imports from Iran hit $1.9 billion in the 3-month period, indicating a fall by 25 percent compared to January-March 2017. Iran-South Korea trade in 2017-2018 (1,000 USD) Month 2018 2017 Export change % Import change % Export Import Trade balance Export Import Trade balance 1 311,837 520,056 -208,219 327,842 785,219 -457,377 -4.88 -33.77 2 239,284 636,090 -396,806 296,578 740,799 -444,221 -19.32 -14.13 3 311,841 748,781 -436,940 301,688 1,023,745 -722,057 3.37 -26.86 Total 862,962 1,904,927 -1,041,965 926,108 2,549,763 -16,23,655 -6.82 -25.29 The trade fall between the two countries comes after a huge rise in 2017. The Iran-South Korea trade volume hit $12 billion last year, witnessing a rise by 43.6 percent compared to 2016. South Korea imported $7.99 billion worth of commodities, including oil, from Iran in January-December 2017, which is more by 58 percent compared to the same period of 2016. The country also exported $4 billion worth of goods to the Islamic Republic in the 12-month period, registering a 92 percent rise compared to 2016. Iran-South Korea trade in 2016-2017 (1,000 USD) The Iranian minister of culture and Islamic guidance said on Monday that deep and extensive cultural commonalties between Iran and Iraq require officials to make necessary planning for further expansion of all-out cultural ties between the two countries, IRNA reports. Speaking at a gathering at Iranian Embassy in Baghdad, Seyyed Abbas Salehi also underlined the importance of introducing Iranian cultural products to Iraqi cultural markets. Iranian Ambassador to Iraq Iraj Masjedi, officials of Iran cultural office and cultural experts from the Ministry of Culture and Islamic Guidance were present in the meeting. The minister said that choosing Iraq as the destination of his first overseas trip since taking office as the minister of culture and Islamic guidance showed the importance he attached to the cultural relations between the two countries. Salehi expressed hope that his trip to Iraq would prepare the ground for kick starting new cooperation in various areas of art and culture between the two neighboring states. The Iranian ambassador, for his part, outlined the cultural measures taken by the embassy to promote Tehran-Baghdad cultural ties and voiced the preparedness of the embassy staff for close cooperation with the Ministry of Culture and Islamic Guidance in this regard. The Iranian minister accompanied by some of his deputies arrived at the Baghdad airport Monday afternoon on a four-day visit and was greeted by the Iraqi deputy minister of culture. High Representative of the EU for Foreign Affairs and Security Policy Federica Mogherini on Monday described Iran nuclear deal (JCPOA) as a strategic element for Europe and regional security, saying that maintaining the deal is vital for EU, according IRNA. Mogherini and the foreign ministers of Germany, France and UK discussed continuing support for full implementation of the JCPOA on the sidelines of Europe Foreign Affairs Council session on Monday. Talking at a news conference at the end of the meeting in Luxemburg, she added that the EU foreign ministers had a good discussion on the JCPOA and they reiterated their full commitment to full implementation of the deal. She also ensured that EU will not only remain committed to the deal but will also continue implementing its part under the deal, as it considers the JCPOA a strategic element for Europe and regional security. Mogherini further noted that non-nuclear issues including Syrian situation, Yemen developments or human rights in Iran will be discussed separately from JCPOA. Under the landmark deal, officially known as Joint Comprehensive Plan of Action (JCPOA), Iran received sanction relief in return for scaling back its nuclear program. Baku, Azerbaijan, April 17 By Khalid Kazimov Trend: Two Iranian border guards were killed in an armed clash along the countrys eastern frontier area in the early hours of Tuesday, state media reported. According to the reports, the clash took place near the Mirjaveh border in the Sistan and Balouchestan Province 03:00 local time (GMT +4:30). Earlier on Monday, Iranian Intelligence Ministry said that it seized a large cargo of explosives in the Sistan and Balouchestan Province. The consignment included 80 kilograms of composite explosives, 17 booby traps with 2,100 rounds, 28 pistols, 35 hand grenades, dozens of electronic detonators and other explosive equipment. According to the statement, the Intelligence Ministry forces also seized 580 kilograms of narcotics from the terrorists. Baku, Azerbaijan, April 17 By Rufiz Hafizoglu Trend: There is such a saying as "The one who dominates the Middle East will be able to dominate the whole world." To our regret, the Muslim countries do not realize the strategic importance of their territories. As a result of the military conflicts in the Middle East, as well as the "shadow" of Irans danger, in due time Arab countries in the hope of "being saved" from Iran turned into hostages of the US and Western countries. Today, there are more than 54,000 US servicemen in 12 Arab countries, which have turned into the US military base. Moreover, there are also military bases of France and UK in the region. US military bases in Arab countries The biggest contingent of US troops in the Middle East - at least 11,000 servicemen has been deployed at the Al Udeid Air Base of the US Air Force Central Command in Qatar. Here is the headquarters of the Central Command of the US Armed Forces and the Command of the US Air Force. Another US military base, the Camp Doha, is in Kuwait. More than 10,000 US servicemen have been deployed there. The military base was founded in 1991 and played a key role to invade Iraq. There is the US air base Al Dhafra in the United Arab Emirates. The number of US servicemen has not been disclosed, but, according to Arab media, there are about 5,000 servicemen. The US has also military bases in Oman, and the headquarters of the Fifth Fleet, which is the operational fleet of the US Navy, is based in Bahrain. It has been responsible for naval forces in the western Indian Ocean and the Persian Gulf. The fleet includes rotational ships of the Atlantic and Pacific Fleets of the US Navy. The US has eight military bases in Syria, where the total number of US servicemen is 2,000. Along with the US, there are also military bases of France and UK in the UAE and Bahrain. Despite the Arab countries see the military bases of the US and Western countries as a guarantor of their security, these military bases primarily pose a threat to the Arab countries themselves. The invasion of the Americans to Iraq from Kuwaiti territory testified that the US, if necessary, can use its military bases against Arab countries. --- Rufiz Hafizoglu is the Deputy Editor-in-Chief of Trend Agency. Follow him on Twitter: @rhafizoglu Leader of Armenias Civil Contract opposition party Nikol Pashinyan said on Tuesday morning that about 30 of his supporters had been taken into custody during clashes with the police, TASS reported. "About three dozen of our supporters are currently at police stations. I call on their friends and relatives to block the capitals streets and avenues rather than going to the police," Pashinyan said. The police press service has confirmed the detention. The opposition seeks to derail the parliamentary vote on the countrys new prime minister, which is scheduled to begin at 12.00 local time. Speaking in Yerevans France Square on Tuesday, leader of Armenias Civil Contract opposition party and lawmaker Nikol Pashinyan stated that he is "launching a velvet (revolution), a peaceful peoples revolution.", TASS reported. "A revolutionary situation is brewing across the country. Demonstrators are blocking streets and transnational highways in the cities of Gyumri, Ijevan, Vanadzor, Kapan and Metsamor. People are not going to work, mass strikes have begun," he said. The Armenian parliament is holding a special meeting where the countrys new prime minister is due to be elected. The only candidate is former Armenian President Serzh Sargsyan. He is currently answering lawmakers questions. The radical opposition is holding a mass march, all downtown streets in the capital city have been paralyzed. OPCW experts who have arrived in Syria to probe into a possible chemical attack in Douma plan to visit the site of the presumable incident on April 18, Igor Kirillov, the commander of Russias NBC defense forces, said on Monday after a meeting of the OPCW Executive Council, TASS reports. He said the team of experts had arrived in Damascus at 19:00 local time on Saturday and had met with the Syrian side. In the first half of the day on Sunday, they discussed security aspects and work procedures and later spoke with two witnesses of the incident. On Monday, they met to discuss a route to reach Douma. "The United Nations security service is to visit Douma tomorrow to conduct route reconnaissance and OPXW specialists are expected to reach the city on Wednesday," he said. Earlier, Russian Deputy Foreign Minister Sergei Ryabkov told journalists the OPCW experts were unable to reach Douma due to security considerations and condemned Londons attempts to blame Russian and Syria for hampering the experts visit. Some non-governmental organizations, including White Helmets, claim that chemical weapons were used in Douma, Eastern Ghouta, on April 7. According to the statement uploaded to the organizations website on April 8, chlorine bombs were dropped on the city to kill dozens and poison other local civilians who had to be brought to hospital. The Russian foreign ministry dismissed that as fake news. The Russian defense ministry stated that White Helmets were an unreliable source, notorious for disseminating falsehoods. The Russian center for the reconciliation of conflicting parties on April 9 examined Douma to find no traces of chemical weapons. OPCW inspectors arrived in Syria on April 14 but have not yet reached the site of presumable chemical attack. British Ambassador Peter Wilson said citing OPCW Director General Ahmet Uzumcu that Russia and Syria had failed to provide access to Douma for the OPCW experts being unable to give security guarantees. Chinas foreign ministry said on Tuesday that information coming out of United States regarding the Chinese currency is a bit chaotic, after U.S. President Donald Trump accused China in a Twitter post on Monday of devaluing its currency, Reuters reports. Ministry spokeswoman Hua Chunying made the comment at a regular briefing in Beijing. The U.S. Treasury, in a semiannual report on Friday, again refrained from naming any major trading partners as currency manipulators. The report came as the Trump administration pursues potential tariffs, negotiations and other restrictions to try to reduce a massive trade deficit with China. France will conduct dialogue with Russia and other countries to find a comprehensive inclusive solution in Syria, said French President Emmanuel Macron, speaking at the European Parliaments session in Strasbourg, TASS reports. He noted that "France will continue work on development of a political inclusive solution in Syria." "We are talking to everyone - to Russia, Turkey and Iran, as well as the Syrian regime and all opposition forces - in order to build tomorrows Syria," Macron said. Responding to comments and questions of European MPs, the French leader noted that "the strikes carried out by France, the UK and the US have nothing in common with Iraq or Libya, because France did not declare war to anyone." Macron noted that the main goal that France is pursuing in Syria is the fight against the Islamic State terror group (outlawed in Russia). "This is the only war that France is conducting in Syria," the politician stated. That said, he stressed again that the strike conducted by the US and its allies last Saturday was completely legitimate. On April 14, the US, the UK and France conducted a massive strike on Syria without sanctions from the UN Security Council. According to the Russian Foreign Ministry, a research center in Damascus, a headquarters of the republics guards, an air defense base, several military airfields and military munition depots came under attack. The Russian Defense Ministry reported that the attack lasted from 03:42 to 05:10 local time (coincides with the Moscow time). Syrian air defenses shot down 71 out of 103 missiles launched over the facilities, and three local residents were injured. Washington, London and Paris stated that the strikes are a response to the alleged use of chemical weapons in Syrias Douma. Minister of Transport Yisrael Katz has promised that the new Jerusalem - Tel Aviv fast rail link will be operating by the Sukkot holiday at the end of September. Katz's pledge came after the opening of the railway was postponed from the end of March. However, sources inform "Globes" that at a meeting last night senior Israel Railways executives told Katz that the September date was probably unrealistic. The reason for the latest delay is that the Spanish contractor Semi Group, which is building the railway, is struggling to cope with Israeli bureaucracy and obtain the various planning approvals from the relevant Israeli regulators. "The Minister of Transport is going to be surprised for a second time," a senior transport source familiar with the project has told "Globes." The first time he was surprised was in February when Katz learned from a notification to the Tel Aviv Stock Exchange (TASE) by Israel Railways that the line would not be opening in March. Last night's meeting was probably so that Katz would not be surprised by this second expected delay. Before the meeting, Semi executives and lawyers met with Israel Railways executives and lawyers in order to ask for assistance in working with government ministries. The transport source told "Globes," "It was to be expected that a contractor coming from abroad and working in Israel for the first time would struggle on these issues. "Globes" has also learned that Israel Railways can sue Semi for large penalties for not meeting timetables. However, Israel Railways has refrained from doing so because many of the delays were due to legal uncertainties in the first year of the project. Senior South Korean officials may visit Pyongyang ahead of next weeks summit between President Moon Jae-in and North Korean leader Kim Jong Un, a senior South Korean official said on Tuesday, Reuters reports. Seoul and Pyongyang are discussing the wording of a possible joint statement to be released at the summit on April 27, the official said. Likely agenda topics include the Norths nuclear weapons program and general inter-Korean relations, but any joint economic efforts are unlikely to be discussed, he said. The Russian embassy in London calls on the British authorities to cooperate in investigating the murder of Russian businessmen Nikolai Glushkov, an embassy press officer said in a statement, TASS reports. "The Embassy continues to demand that the British side establish a normal diplomatic exchange regarding Mr Glushkovs case," the statement reads. "Despite the fact that the Foreign Office had directly suggested that we discuss Mr Glushkovs case with Scotland Yard, the Embassy has not received any reply from Ms Dick. The current situation when the Russian Federation has been deprived of access to any data on the investigation process is a clear violation of international law in defiance of the legitimate right of Russian authorities to receive information about a Russian citizen," the press officer said. Glushkov was found dead at his London home on March 12. The Metropolitan Police said he had died from compression to the neck. At the same time, according to media reports, the businessman was strangled with a dog lead so investigators believe that the killer could have aimed at giving his death the appearance of suicide. On March 16, Russias Investigative Committee launched a criminal case over Glushkovs murder. It is too early to say that the United States has shown goodwill by delaying new sanctions on Russia, Kremlin Spokesman Dmitry Peskov said, TASS reports. "It seems too early to judge about it and draw conclusions as to who has shown what under the current state of bilateral relations," he said. When asked if Washingtons decision had come as a surprise for Moscow, Peskov said that "its been a long time since anything surprised the Kremlin." "From our standpoint, the only legal sanctions are those introduced by the United Nations Security Council," the Russian presidential spokesman pointed out. According to him, in the 20th century, sanctions were imposed 174 times with the United States using this tool 110 times. "Unfortunately, this is a usual foreign policy practice for the US, which we cannot accept for we believe it to be illegal," Peskov added. On Monday, The Washington Post wrote citing administration officials that US President Donald Trump "put the brakes on a preliminary plan to impose additional economic sanctions on Russia, walking back a Sunday announcement by US Ambassador to the United Nations Nikki Haley." "Administration officials said the economic sanctions were under serious consideration, along with other measures that could be taken against Russia, but said Trump had not given final authorization to implement them. Administration officials said Monday it was unlikely Trump would approve any additional sanctions without another triggering event by Russia, describing the strategy as being in a holding pattern," The Washington Post wrote. Moscow calls on Western countries to stop meddling with the work of the Organization for the Prohibition of Chemical Weapons in Syria (OPCW), Russian Foreign Ministry Spokeswoman Maria Zakharova said on Tuesday, commenting on the French Foreign Ministrys allegations that Russia and Syria are impeding the work of the OPCW mission, TASS reports. She said that such position of the French Foreign Ministry "is surprising." "We call on Western countries that staged the illegitimate strike on Syria to stop manipulating public opinion and meddling with the work of international organizations," she stressed. "First, it was Russia that called for an immediate OPCW inspection," she recalled. "Second, not being the organizer of the mission, the Russian side offered all possible assistance to it. And now, the inspectors have reached Douma (a city in Syria and site of a presumable chemical attack)." She noted that it had taken that long of the OPCW inspectors to reach Douma because there still were militants in that city and the United Nations wanted additional security guarantees. "I dont see why the French Foreign Ministry is speaking for the OPCW and its inspectors. If the inspectors had any problems, they would have made a statement on that matter themselves," she said. SANA news agency said earlier that OPCW experts had arrived in Douma on Tuesday and had immediately begun their fact-finding mission. They are expected to assess the situation and collect information about the April 7 alleged chemical attack reported by a number of non-government organizations, including the White Helmets described by the Russian Defense Ministry as unreliable source of information. Baku, Azerbaijan, April 17 By Rufiz Hafizoglu Trend: The Turkish government will consider Leader of the Nationalist Movement Party (MHP) Devlet Bahceli's proposal to hold early parliamentary and presidential elections in Turkey, Deputy Prime Minister of Turkey Bekir Bozdag said. He said that the Turkish government is in no rush to conduct election in the country, Turkish media reported on April 17. Leader of the Nationalist Movement Party (MHP) of Turkey Devlet Bahceli has today proposed to hold early parliamentary and presidential elections in Turkey. Bahceli said the early elections should be held on Aug. 26. Presidential, parliamentary and municipal elections will be held in Turkey in 2019. The parliamentary and presidential elections are expected to be held on the same day in 2019. -- Follow the author on Twitter: @rhafizoglu Baku, Azerbaijan, April 17 By Rufiz Hafizoglu Trend: Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan will hold a phone talk with Iranian President Hassan Rouhani, the Turkish media reported April 17, referring to Erdogan's statements. Erdogan said that the situation in Syria will be discussed during the conversation. He noted that on April 16, he had a phone conversation with the leaders of several countries. Regarding the Syrian policy, the president of Turkey said that the country has its own interests in Syria. On April 14, Joseph Dunford, Chairman of the US Joint Chiefs of Staff, said that the US and its allies fired more than 100 missiles at Syria and three main chemical weapons facilities were targeted by missiles from both the sea and aircraft, which triggered Syrian air defenses. Dunford acknowledged the strike was designed to degrade Syrias chemical weapons capability without killing civilians or the many foreign fighters in Syrias multi-sided civil war. The Pentagon said one of the targets was a scientific research center located in the greater Damascus area, which it described as a Syrian center for the research, development, production and testing of chemical and biological weaponry. The second target was a chemical weapons storage facility west of the city of Homs. The third target, which was also near Homs, contained both a chemical weapons equipment storage facility and a command post. Baku, Azerbaijan, April 17 By Rufiz Hafizoglu Trend: Turkey has announced about completion of the development of next-generation infantry fighting vehicles called Korhan, Turkish media reported referring to military source on April 17. Reportedly, this combat vehicle was first demonstrated at the international military exhibition "IDEF 2017" held in Istanbul. From 2011, Turkey has set up the production of mobile outposts that proved effective in fight against the militants of the Kurdistan Workers' Party (PKK). Earlier, the trials of the domestic-made long-range surface-to-surface missiles have also been conducted in Turkey. The KAAN rocket system, produced by the company "Roketsan", was first demonstrated at the International Defense Industry Fair IDEF-2017 in Istanbul. Turkey has invested about $35 billion in the defense industry over the recent years. -- Follow the author on Twitter: @rhafizoglu Baku, Azerbaijan, April 17 By Rufiz Hafizoglu Trend: Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan discussed the situation in Syria in a phone talk with Iranian President Hassan Rouhani, the administration of the Turkish president said in a message on April 17. The two presidents exchanged views on settlement of the Syrian crisis, according to the message. No other details were reported. Earlier, President Erdogan held phone talks with leaders of several countries. -- Follow the author on Twitter: @rhafizoglu A Southwest Airlines Co. jetliner made an emergency landing in Philadelphia International Airport after an engine blew out, forcing the suspension of flights in and out of the airport, Bloomberg reports. The cabin depressurized when engine debris broke a window, according to an NBC affiliate. A woman was drawn toward the hole, the affiliate said, citing a relative of a passenger. The plane landed safely. Photos posted on Twitter show the front of the left engine on the Boeing Co. 737-700 was ripped open. Southwest said the flight, which was bound for Dallas from New Yorks LaGuardia airport, had 143 customers and five crew members. The airline said it was in the process of transporting them to the terminal and was gathering more information about the incident. The National Transportation Safety Board said in a tweet it was aware of the incident and was gathering information. The NTSB investigates the most serious engine failures and conducted a probe of another Southwest engine issue in 2016. Reports of shrapnel shattering a window suggest that the engine broke apart in what is known as an uncontained failure. U.S. regulations require engines to be covered in tough casings designed to prevent metal from flying into fuel tanks and passenger areas if an engine breaks apart. The Federal Aviation Administration ordered a halt to arrivals and departures at the Philadelphia airport and delays were growing, according to an agency website. President Trump said the U.S. has begun talking with North Korea "directly," ahead of an intended U.S.-North Korea summit. Mr. Trump made the comments in a meeting with Japanese Prime Minister Shinzo Abe at Mr. Trump's Mar-a-Lago estate in Florida on Tuesday, CBS News reports. "We've also started talking to North Korea directly. We have had direct talks at very high levels, extremely high levels, with North Korea," Mr. Trump said. "I really believe there is a lot of good will, good things are happening we'll see what happens." "I look forward to meeting with Kim Jong Un," said Mr. Trump, adding that North Korea respects the U.S. - and "we are respectful of them." The Trump-Abe meeting also comes ahead of an anticipated meeting between North Korea and South Korea, as the Koreas are reportedly set to declare an official end to their war. Mr. Trump said the Koreas have his "blessing" to discuss an end to war. "North Korea is coming along," Mr. Trump said. "South Korea is meeting and has plans to meet to see if they can end the war and they have my blessing on that. They've been very generous ... without us and without me in particular, I guess, they wouldn't be discussing anything and the Olympics would have been a failure." 13,834 new COVID cases in Kerala after 1.05L tests on Friday With this, the number of active COVID cases in the state rose to 1,42,499. Of the new cases, 13,138 contracted the virus through contact while 74 came from outside the state. Description Rick Astley One of the music industrys most distinctive voices, Rick Astley has left an indelible mark on pop-culture since his emergence into the limelight nearly three decades ago. With well over 40 million records sold, and an enviable back-catalogue of chart-topping hits, Astley remains one of the most successful solo artists to have ever emerged from the UK. Exploding into mainstream consciousness with the multi-million-selling phenomenon Never Gonna Give You Up, Rick holds the distinction of being the first male solo artist to see his first eight singles reach the UK Top Ten. Capable of crossing genres at will, yet always retaining the soulful depth of delivery that first made his name, Astleys inimitable vocals have won legions of fans worldwide; delivered six acclaimed studio albums; and drawn industry recognition in the form of a Grammy nomination. 2016 saw Rick returning with a bang. He released the album 50, which went straight to Number 1 and became the 8th best-selling album in the UK that year. This, along with a string of 21 sold-out dates of Ricks 2017 UK tour, propelled Rick back in the limelight and in August this year 50 reached Platinum status after selling over 300,000 copies 2017 has been a packed year for Rick: TV appearances included Children in Need and Strictly Come Dancing, with Ricks singles being played continuously on the radio. After a sold-out US, European and UK tour, a series of Forest shows, Hampton Court Palace Festival, 2 Car Fest for Children In Need and 3 shows at Summer Sonic Festival in Japan.. In September, Rick played at the powerful emotional re-opening of Manchester Arena with Blossom, Courteneers and Noel Gallagher, before his final performance to a packed audience at BBC Radio 2s Live in Hyde Park in August before closing down on the album 50 for a well deserved holiday. Rick is back in the studio writing and recording for his next album to be released later in 2018. Head to The Paramount's website for tickets and additional info. Ross Stores (ROST) has an impressive earnings surprise history and currently possesses the right combination of the two key ingredients for a likely beat in its next quarterly report. The United States along with its French and UK allies launched a series of airstrikes on Syria over the last weekend. 105 missiles were fired on three facilities involved in research or storage of chemical weapons in western Syria. On Apr 7, Duma was a witness to a chemical attack which claimed several lives. The recent attack is believed to be a response to the same. The world once again witnessed fresh tension following which U.S. defense stocks gained substantially as majority of the weapons used in the strike were provided by them. Russias Stance Russia strongly condemned the latest U.S.-led airstrikes and repudiated Americas claim that Russian president Vladimir Putin supported Syrian leader Assad in the chemical attack. Russias ambassador to the United States warned that the country will handle the issue with firm hands and the defamation of the Russian president will be dealt with. Criticizing the latest attack as an "act of aggression", Putin warned that further strikes from Western countries on Syria will have implications on global affairs. Will Russia Strike Back? Though Russia strongly condemned the Syrian attack, majority of experts believe that Russia will not engage in any direct conflict with the United States, at least in the near term. Per a report by CNBC one analyst said "likelihood of a direct, military response to the strikes from Russia is very low." Despite the Russian ambassadors repeated threats of the nation targeting and destroying the platforms from which the missiles were fired, Moscow is fully aware that such attacks will bring Russia in a direct face-to-face conflict with the United States. Thus a Russian retaliation is unlikely in the near term. Economic Sanctions to Play a Role? Recently rounds were made that the United States intends to levy new economic sanctions on Russia for its apparent support of the Syrian leader Assad. In particular, U.S. Ambassador to the United Nations Nikki Haley announced on Apr 15 that the United States will put new economic sanctions on companies "dealing with equipment" used in Assads alleged chemical attack. Story continues However, President Trump, in a recent meet, dismissed possibilities of imposing new sanctions on Russia in the near term. Should the move come, it will further strain the relationship between these two nations. Notably, relations between the United States and Russia have failed to remain genial after the Trump administration imposed sanctions on several Russian tycoons close to Putin, earlier this month, due to their involvement in the 2016 election. In the near future, it is expected that by imposing stringent economic sanctions Trump will try to keep Russia under pressure and also ensure that the nation abstains from involving in its Syrian affairs. Defense Stocks to Gain From the Conflict: Heres Why Historical data shows that shares of U.S. defense majors have spiked whenever the United States has engaged in military activities. Of the 105 missiles fired at Syria, 19 were JASSMs manufactured by Lockheed Martin Corporation LMT and 66 were Tomahawk cruise missiles made by Raytheon Company RTN. Evidently, their shares gained more than 0.5% in the past couple of trading sessions. Stocks to Place Bet On If Russia ultimately decides to retaliate, the fresh conflict will provide a solid boost to U.S. defense stocks. Therefore, adding defense stocks with a favorable Zacks Rank #1 (Strong Buy) or 2 (Buy) and strong financials to your portfolio will be a prudent move. The Boeing Company BA is the largest aircraft manufacturer in the world in terms of revenues, orders and deliveries, and one of the largest aerospace and defense contractors. Apart from manufacturing top-rated commercial and military aircraft, it also offers strategic missile and defense systems as well as command, control, communications, computers, intelligence, surveillance and reconnaissance (C4ISR). The company delivered an average positive earnings surprise of 20.69% in the trailing four quarters. The Zacks Consensus Estimate for its 2018 earnings improved 3.9% over the last 60 days. It has a long-term earnings growth rate of 13.8%.The company currently carries a Zacks Rank #2.You can see the complete list of todays Zacks #1 Rank stocks here. Raytheon is a defense major with a diversified portfolio of military products which includes missiles, radars, sensors, surveillance and reconnaissance equipment, communication and information systems, naval systems, air traffic control systems, and technical services. Notably, the company topped the Zacks Consensus Estimate in the trailing four quarters with an average beat of 6.36%. It boasts a solid long-term earnings growth rate of 10.9% and its Zacks Consensus Estimate for 2018 earnings has improved 0.5% in last 60 days. The company carries a Zacks Rank #2. Northrop Grumman NOC supplies a broad array of products and services to the U.S. Department of Defense, including electronic systems, information technology, aircraft, space technology and systems integration services. It also offers integration and interoperability of air and missile defense systems. Notably, the company topped the Zacks Consensus Estimate in the trailing four quarters with an average beat of 16.17%. It boasts a solid long-term earnings growth rate of 9.10% and its Zacks Consensus Estimate for 2018 earnings has improved 1% in the last 60 days. The company carries a Zacks Rank #2. Breaking News: Cryptocurrencies Now Bigger than Visa The total market cap of all cryptos recently surpassed $700 billion more than a 3,800% increase in the previous 12 months. Theyre now bigger than Morgan Stanley, Goldman Sachs and even Visa! The new asset class may expand even more rapidly in 2018 as new investors continue pouring in and Wall Street becomes increasingly involved. Zacks has just named 4 companies that enable investors to take advantage of the explosive growth of cryptocurrencies via the stock market. Click here to access these stocks >> Want the latest recommendations from Zacks Investment Research? Today, you can download 7 Best Stocks for the Next 30 Days. Click to get this free report Northrop Grumman Corporation (NOC) : Free Stock Analysis Report The Boeing Company (BA) : Free Stock Analysis Report Lockheed Martin Corporation (LMT) : Free Stock Analysis Report Raytheon Company (RTN) : Free Stock Analysis Report To read this article on Zacks.com click here. Zacks Investment Research By Claire Ruckin LONDON (LPC) - Goldman Sachs, JP Morgan and Morgan Stanley are expected to lead a debt financing totalling in excess of 1bn backing private equity firm Advent Internationals acquisition of French healthcare group Sanofis (SASY.PA) European generics drugs arm Zentiva, banking sources said. Sanofi entered exclusive talks to sell Zentiva to Advent for 1.9bn, including equity and debt, the companies said on Tuesday. The three banks are expected to lead the financing but have yet to receive a formal mandate. Up to six additional banks are expected to be mandated shortly on the financing as banks backing Advent and the other bidders during an auction process for the unit pitch to Advent to win a spot on the deal. The financing closely mirrors a staple financing offered during the sale process, which totalled around 7.0 times Zentivas approximate 155m Ebitda. It is expected to include around 1bn-1.1bn of drawn debt, including senior leveraged loans and subordinated second-lien loans as well as additional undrawn facilities. Advent declined to comment. The planned sale of Zentiva began in October after Sanofi spent more than a year carving out the division to create a stand-alone company that could be sold to one of its competitors or to an investment fund. In February, sources told Reuters that private equity firms Carlyle, BC Partners and a consortium of Blackstone and Nordic Capital had been shortlisted to buy Zentiva along with two industry players, Brazilian drugs firm EMS and India's Torrent Pharma. Zentiva operates in 50 markets and has a strong presence in Eastern Europe, particularly in the Czech Republic, Slovakia and Romania. (Editing by Christopher Mangham) ConocoPhillips COP has wrapped up its 2018 winter exploration and appraisal program in Alaska. The outcome of the program holds promise and the company intends to expand its track record of operational success and value creation in Alaska. Initially, ConocoPhillips had planned to drill five wells on the Western North Slope. This included two appraisal wells of the Willow Discovery announced in January 2017 and three exploration wells. But the company drilled a total of six wells, including an additional Willow appraisal well. This was possible due to improved drilling efficiencies. All the six wells as well as a sidetrack encountered oil and confirmed the potential of the play. The three Willow appraisal wells hold a recoverable resource potential of about 300 million barrels of oil, per previous estimates. These exploration wells signify new discoveries for the company and increase the scope for further operations in the Western North Slope. Additionally, five production flow tests were carried out as part of the exploration program. The outcome from these tests raises optimism. Data collected from the operations will be evaluated for another active exploration and appraisal season in 2019. ConocoPhillips is one of the largest exploration and production players in the world, considering proved reserves and production parameters. The company is a major global exploration and production company with operations and activities in 17 countries that include the United States, Canada, Columbia, Chile, the U.K./Norway, China, Australia, offshore Timor-Leste, Indonesia, Malaysia, Brunei, Libya and Qatar. Price Performance ConocoPhillips shares have gained 9.8% in the last three months, versus the industrys 0.3% decline. Zacks Rank & Key Picks ConocoPhillips carries a Zacks Rank #3 (Hold). A few better-ranked players in the same sector are Continental Resources, Inc CLR, Northern Oil and Gas Inc NOG and SunCoke Energy Inc SXC. All three stocks sport a Zacks Rank #1 (Strong Buy). You can see the complete list of todays Zacks #1 Rank stocks here. Continental Resources is an independent oil and natural gas exploration and production company. It delivered an average positive earnings surprise of 64.9% over the last four quarters. Northern Oil and Gas, based in Minnetonka, MN, is an independent energy company. The company delivered an average positive earnings surprise of 175.00% during the same time frame. SunCoke Energy produces metallurgical coke in the United States. The company delivered an average positive earnings surprise of 130.6% in the last four quarters. Breaking News: Cryptocurrencies Now Bigger than Visa The total market cap of all cryptos recently surpassed $700 billion more than a 3,800% increase in the previous 12 months. Theyre now bigger than Morgan Stanley, Goldman Sachs and even Visa! The new asset class may expand even more rapidly in 2018 as new investors continue pouring in and Wall Street becomes increasingly involved. Zacks has just named 4 companies that enable investors to take advantage of the explosive growth of cryptocurrencies via the stock market. Click here to access these stocks>> Want the latest recommendations from Zacks Investment Research? Today, you can download 7 Best Stocks for the Next 30 Days. Click to get this free report SunCoke Energy, Inc. (SXC) : Free Stock Analysis Report Northern Oil and Gas, Inc. (NOG) : Free Stock Analysis Report Continental Resources, Inc. (CLR) : Free Stock Analysis Report ConocoPhillips (COP) : Free Stock Analysis Report To read this article on Zacks.com click here. Zacks Investment Research Egyptian billionaire Naguib Sawiris on Syria: 'All in all, I am for this strike' "I think it's important to tell people that you cannot support a dictator that is gassing people and get away with it. All in all, I am for this strike," Naguib Sawiris told CNBC. Sawiris, the second wealthiest man in Egypt, said Russia is a "superpower," but he noted he is not afraid of retaliation from Vladimir Putin. Egyptian billionaire Naguib Sawiris said he's not opposed to recent military strikes on Syria , because "it's important to tell people that you cannot support a dictator that is gassing people and get away with it." Sawiris made the comments on Monday after President Donald Trump over the weekend ordered "precision missile strikes" against the Syrian government in retaliation for a chemical attack against its citizens. France and Great Britain took part in the attacks as well. "I'm not one of the people opposing the strike because ... if you say it's a red line and then do nothing like President Obama, then all that you do there is give people the green light to go and do stuff," Sawiris told CNBC's Hadley Gamble in Abu Dhabi. "All in all, I am for this strike," he said. In 2013, U.S. President Barack Obama chose not to use military force against Syria after the regime of Bashar Assad used chemical weapons against his own people. Obama had earlier warned that the United States would do so. Russia is a 'superpower' Following the weekend attack on Syria, Trump announced on Twitter that the strike was "perfectly carried out." In a speech, he called out Russia and Iran for backing the regime by Syrian President Assad. The U.S. alleged that the Assad regime used chemical weapons to "terrorize and subdue both opposition fighters and the civilian population." The strike on the Syria was designed to destroy chemical weapons development infrastructure, the United States says. But Sawiris, who is the second-richest man in Egypt with a net worth of $4.2 billion, said the attack by the U.S. and its allies was more of a "symbolic strike" and may do little to end Syria's "big mess" situation. Story continues Russian President Vladimir Putin on Sunday warned that further attacks on Syria would bring chaos to international order. Russia is a "new superpower" that the world much reckon with, Sawiris said. But he added that he doesn't fear retaliatory actions by Putin. "I'm not worried about retaliation unless everybody wants to go even more crazy than it already is," he said. Disclosure: NBC Universal is a minority stakeholder in Euronews, which is majority-held by Naguib Sawiris. More From CNBC Mark Zuckerberg race car Mark Zuckerberg/Facebook A second Facebook investor wants Mark Zuckerberg out as chairman. Zuckerberg controls Facebook thanks to the way the company's stock is structured, meaning he has final say on the future direction of the company. That's frustrating for activist investors who watched the Cambridge Analytica scandal wipe $60 billion off the firm's market cap over the past few weeks. Now is a golden opportunity for those investors to gang up and call for Zuckerberg to step down. Mark Zuckerberg's Congressional grilling last week was a reminder that he is still in total control of Facebook. Thanks to the firm's stock structure, its public investors even those with $1 billion (70 million) holdings don't have much say on the company's future. Facebook has two classes of shares. Class A shares trade under the "FB" ticker on public markets and come with one vote per share. Class B shares are only available to insiders and have 10 votes per share. Zuckerberg owns lots of Class B stock, and therefore has 60% of the voting power. He's also Facebook's chairman. In other words, if he wants something to happen at Facebook, it happens. Now that Zuckerberg and Facebook are under closer political scrutiny over the Cambridge Analytica data scandal, Facebook's powerless activist investors have picked an opportune time to criticise the firm's structure. Illinois' treasurer is the latest investor to call for Zuckerberg to step down as chairman. "In essence Mr Zuckerberg is not accountable to anyone," Michael Frerichs told the Financial Times. "Not the board, nor the shareholders. Right now, Mr Zuckerberg is his own boss and its clearly not working." Frerichs oversees college savings funds for Illinois citizens, and is known for using the investments to pressure companies to do good. His holdings in Facebook are not clear. What is certain, however, is that he's backing a plan by New York Comptroller Scott Stringer, who called for Zuckerberg to step down as chairman earlier this month. Stringer who supervises funds with an almost $1 billion stake in Facebook wants an independent chairman and the addition of three new board members, with expertise in ethics and data privacy. Story continues His argument is simple: The revelation that Cambridge Analytica syphoned off millions of users' data wiped $60 billion off Facebook's market cap. Zuckerberg's control of Facebook makes the stock vulnerable whenever he makes a major misstep and that has big repercussions for anxious shareholders who are pretty powerless to do anything. Zuckerberg won't give up control easily, if at all. He told Vox earlier this month: "One of the things that I feel really lucky we have is this company structure where, at the end of the day, its a controlled company. "We are not at the whims of short-term shareholders. We can really design these products and decisions with what is going to be in the best interest of the community over time." NOW WATCH: Elon Musk's 'Boring Company' now prioritizes pedestrians over cars here's how it would work See Also: SEE ALSO: Facebook spent more than $7 million protecting Mark Zuckerberg in 2017 as he trekked all over the United States A senior official at Hong Kongs securities regulator has, once again, reminded the public to be cautious of investments in initial coin offerings (ICOs). In a speech on new technologies on Friday, Hong Kong Securities and Futures Commission (SFC) deputy chief Julia Leung reiterated previous concerns of risks associated with initial coin offerings. While we acknowledge that innovative technologies such as blockchain have the potential to improve efficiency and financial inclusion, that does not entitle anyone to conduct fundraising from the public in violation of securities law, Leung said whilst stressing that the regulators interests lie in protecting the investing public first and foremost. Leung, who is also the chair of the SFCs Fintech Advisory Group, claimed that the average investor would find it hard to decipher the highly technical content and opacity of some projects seeking fundraising, stating it was more suited for professional investors from VC funds instead. More pointedly, her comments then drew attention to projects purporting to use blockchain technology as a buzzword to promise lofty technological claims with little or no innovation to back those promises. She stated: [M]any of these fundraising are dubious, if not downright frauds. The issuers escape the scrutiny of the police or securities regulators because of their cross-border nature and the way the crypto assets are structured to fall outside any regulators perimeter. The officials comments follow an earlier statement in September which provided guidelines for ICO issuers to follow in advance of a fundraising operation. Certain ICOs could also be deemed as securities, Leung said at the time. The scrutiny has since at least seven exchanges with a domestic presence receive warning letters from the regulator, reminding them not to trade cryptocurrency tokens seen as securities without a license. The SFC will continue to closely monitor ICOs, and will not tolerate any violations of the securities laws of Hong Kong, the regulator said at the time. Story continues In March, the SFC moved to shut down an initial coin offering citing potential unauthorized promotional activities and unlicensed regulated activities In light of the increasing public interest, Hong Kong authorities launched a public awareness campaign to educate investors and the general public on cryptocurrencies and ICOs earlier in January using advertisements, infographics, articles and more. Many millennials who subscribe to digital tokens in ICOs5 understand that there is no intrinsic value in the tokens but are betting on the rapid rise of the token value in the secondary market, Leung added during her speech, pointing to a mercurial rise and fall of bitcoin prices bringing about a trading frenzy among new and retail investors in the space. Featured image from Shutterstock. The post Many ICOs are Dubious, Downright Frauds, Says Hong Kong Regulator appeared first on CCN. Donald Trumps personal lawyer Micheal Cohen is under investigation for criminal conduct that largely centers on his business dealings, according to a filing by federal prosecutors. Among other things, investigators are examining whether Mr. Cohen fraudulently used a bank loan for something other than the purpose he described on his loan application, the Wall Street Journal reported, citing a person familiar with the probe. First Republic, the bank where Cohen took out the loan, also reported a $130,000 payment by Cohen as potentially suspicious to the US Treasury department, the Journal reported. Cohen said in March that he used funds from a home equity line of credit to give $130,000 to porn star Stormy Daniels on behalf of Trump, with whom she says she had a sexual relationship before he became president. The funds were taken from my home equity line and transferred internally to my LLC account in the same bank, Cohen told CNN. Banks are required by Know Your Customer rules to do due diligence on customers, and transactions over $10,000 can trigger automatic reporting to financial authorities, thanks to rules designed to prevent money laundering and other criminal activity. Cohen may also have had to explain to his bank why he was making the payment. First Republic advertises a home equity line with no annual review so customers can tap into the equity in your home to fund the projects that are important to youwhenever you need it. Suggested uses include renovations on your current home, buying a vacation home or funding a childs college tuition. While paying off your clients putative mistress isnt advertised, theres no financial rule against it, financial advisors tell Quartz. However, the US bank-fraud statute makes it illegal to obtain any of the moneys, funds, credits, assets, securities, or other property owned by, or under the custody or control of, a financial institution, by means of false or fraudulent pretenses, representations, or promises, and carries a maximum penalty of 30 years in prison or a million-dollar fine. Story continues The possibility of any bank-fraud charge could hinge on what Cohen told the bank he was doing with the loan, explains Andrew Comstock, a chartered financial analyst with Castlebar Asset Management, a Kansas investment advisor. If he established a new line of credit and claimed it was for a home remodel when his only intention was to pay someone off, it could be looked at as bank fraud, he saidbut thats only likely if Cohen explicitly lied. If fact, some banks dont even ask borrowers what they intend to do with the proceeds, Comstock noted, while others will accept a broad designation, such as personal expenses. Generally, no lender is going to police what you did with the money unless you didnt pay it back, said Greg McBride, chief financial analyst with Bankrate.com, which compares banking services. The main thing theyre trying to protect against is outright fraud. However, you may not be able to get a home equity loan in the first place if you do tell your lender youll be doing something highly unusual with it, analysts noted. Banks might consider such a loan risky. In fact, Cohen complained to friends after the 2016 election that Trump had not paid him back. Home equity lending was a huge contributor to the subprime bubble that led to the global recession of 2008, but the volume of loans has tapered off since: For Cohen, there may still have been one loan too many. Sign up for the Quartz Daily Brief, our free daily newsletter with the worlds most important and interesting news. More stories from Quartz: The Philippines Securities and Exchange Commission has advised the public against social media offers to invest in cloud mining contracts and has warned unregistered solicitors they face imprisonment under Philippines law. A government investigation has determined that certain parties offering such contracts define cloud mining as a process for acquiring cryptocurrency by using shared mining equipment based at a remote data center. The investors fund the purchase of the mining equipment. Solicitors Require Payment Numerous foreign and local companies solicit cloud mining companies in the Philippines and require investors to register an online account, then make a payment in either fiat or cryptocurrency for the mining contracts, the notice stated. The companies promise to pay the investor daily or weekly from mining proceeds. They also offer commissions to investors for recruiting other investors who register. A cloud mining contract, according to a court decision, is regulated by the countrys securities law since it involves a financial investment, the notice stated. It also falls under the securities law because the investment is a common enterprise involving pooled funds, and there is an expectation of profits. The fact that the cloud mining company performs the profit-generating activities and distributes profits to investors also places the contract under the commissions jurisdiction. Also read: Philippines SEC confirms upcoming cryptocurrency, ICO regulations Solicitors Must Register Such entities are required to be registered and be licensed to sell securities to the public, the notice stated. Parties representing these contracts on the Internet are subject to prosecution and can be held criminally liable. They can be sentenced to 21 years in prison. Those who recruit others to invest in such ventures can also be held criminally liable or accordingly sanctioned or penalized. Featured image from Shutterstock. The post Philippines Warns Against Cloud Mining Contracts, Threatens to Jail Unregistered Solicitors appeared first on CCN. SpaceX will start production of the Big Falcon Rocket in the Port of Los Angeles, according to L.A. Mayor Eric Garcetti. The mayor confirmed the company's plans with a tweet regarding his "State of the City" address. The Port of L.A. and SpaceX entered into preliminary negotiations on a lease agreement for the space last month. The move expands the company's existing Hawthorne operations at the port. At the time of the initial negotiations, neither SpaceX nor city officials would confirm what would be built at the site, the Los Angeles Times reports. Officially announcing that @SpaceX will start production development of the Big Falcon Rocket in the @PortofLA! This vehicle holds the promise of taking humanity deeper into the cosmos than ever before. #SOTC2018 pic.twitter.com/2TtGy9NERX Mayor Eric Garcetti (@MayorOfLA) April 16, 2018 The Big Falcon rocket is a reusable spaceship and booster that are expected to be over 340 feet tall when stacked together. The vessel is a key component in the company's plans to colonize Mars. This weekend Musk also announced plans to land one of SpaceXs smaller Falcon 9 rockets using a giant party balloon and a bouncy house. See original article on Fortune.com More from Fortune.com Starbucks (SBUX) said it would close all of its U.S. stores on the afternoon of May 29 for racial-bias education for its employees, the company said in a statement. The coffee giant has come under pressure following the arrest of two black men last Thursday in one of its Philadelphia stores. The store manager whose phone call resulted in the arrests has left the company. Starbucks CEO Kevin Johnson apologized over the weekend, calling the arrests reprehensible and offered to meet the two men involved to give a face-to-face apology. Ive spent the last few days in Philadelphia with my leadership team listening to the community, learning what we did wrong and the steps we need to take to fix it, Johnson said in a statement. While this is not limited to Starbucks, were committed to being a part of the solution. Closing our stores for racial bias training is just one step in a journey that requires dedication from every level of our company and partnerships in our local communities. Founder and executive chairman Howard Schultz has also traveled to Philadelphia with other senior leadership to meet with community leaders and Starbucks employees. The companys founding values are based on humanity and inclusion, Schultz said. We will learn from our mistakes and reaffirm our commitment to creating a safe and welcoming environment for every customer. On the afternoon of Tuesday, May 29, nearly 175,000 Starbucks employees from 8,000 stores and those working in the corporate office will go through training designed to address implicit bias, promote conscious inclusion, prevent discrimination and ensure everyone inside a Starbucks store feels safe and welcome. The company said the curriculum will involve experts, including Bryan Stevenson, founder and executive director of the Equal Justice Initiative; Sherrilyn Ifill, president and director-counsel of the NAACP Legal Defense and Education Fund; Heather McGhee, president of Demos; former U.S. Attorney General Eric Holder; and Jonathan Greenblatt, CEO of the Anti-Defamation League. Story continues Going forward, this training will be part of the companys onboarding process for new hires. The only other time Starbucks closed all of its locations at once was in 2008 for espresso training. Julia La Roche is a finance reporter at Yahoo Finance. Follow her on Twitter. (Cover photo source: REUTERS/Mark Makela ) Tuesday, April 17, 2018 The Zacks Research Daily presents the best research output of our analyst team. Today's Research Daily features new research reports on 16 major stocks, including AbbVie (ABBV), Berkshire Hathaway (BRK.B) and PepsiCo (PEP). These research reports have been hand-picked from the roughly 70 reports published by our analyst team today. You can see all of todays research reports here >>> Shares of AbbVie have gained +45.5% in the past one year, outperforming the Zacks Large Cap Pharmaceuticals industry, which has gained +8.7% over the same period. AbbVies key drug Humira has been performing well based on strong demand trends, despite new competition. Moreover, Imbruvica has multibillion dollar potential and AbbVie is exploring the possibility of label expansion into solid tumors and autoimmune diseases. AbbVies share performance is supported by a series of positive news including promising data from several pivotal studies, regulatory approvals, including its competitive HCV medicine Mavyret and two approvals for Imbruvica and settlement of its Humira patent disputes with Amgen. In fact, Mavyret has become a major growth driver for AbbVie in a short time on the market. Also, several pivotal data readouts and regulatory milestones are expected in 2018. However, Viekiras sales continue to be hurt by intensifying competition. (You can read the full research report on AbbVie here >>> ). Buy-rated Berkshire Hathaways shares have gained +21.1% in the last year, outperforming the Zacks Property and Casualty Insurance industry which increased +17.4% during the same period. Berkshires inorganic story remains impressive with strategic acquisitions. A strong cash position allows it to make earnings-accretive bolt-on acquisitions. Demand for utilities is expected to rise in the future and drive earnings growth. Continued insurance business growth also fuels increase in float. A sturdy capital level further adds impetus to the company. The insurance business generates maximum return on equity but its exposure to catastrophe loss remains a concern. Story continues Huge capital expenses due to railroad operations also emerge as headwinds. Capital expenditure is estimated at $9.7 billion in 2019. The stock has seen the Zacks Consensus Estimate for 2018 and 2019 earnings moving north in the last 60 days. (You can read the full research report on Berkshire Hathaway here >>> ). PepsiCos shares have decreased -8.4% year to date, underperforming the Zacks Soft Beverages industry, which has declined -3.6% over the same period. Growing health awareness has been hurting the CSD category of the company, resulting in a 5% volume decline in 2017 in North America. Earnings estimates have moved 0.2% up for 2018 but 0.2% down for 2019, over the last 30 days. Meanwhile, PepsiCo has been doing well on the back of significant innovation, continued momentum in Frito-Lay business, revenue management strategies, improved productivity and cost-saving initiatives, along with better market execution. Moreover, an improving economy, better industry pricing dynamics and a consistency in positive innovation bode well. It rolled out several products recently which management believes will drive sales and profits in 2018. (You can read the full research report on PepsiCo here >>> ). Other noteworthy reports we are featuring today include BP (BP), Sanofi (SNY) and Twenty-First Century Fox (FOXA). Breaking News: Cryptocurrencies Now Bigger than Visa The total market cap of all cryptos recently surpassed $700 billion more than a 3,800% increase in the previous 12 months. Theyre now bigger than Morgan Stanley, Goldman Sachs and even Visa! The new asset class may expand even more rapidly in 2018 as new investors continue pouring in and Wall Street becomes increasingly involved. Zacks has just named 4 companies that enable investors to take advantage of the explosive growth of cryptocurrencies via the stock market. Click here to access these stocks. >> Mark Vickery Senior Editor Note: Sheraz Mian heads the Zacks Equity Research department and is a well-regarded expert of aggregate earnings. He is frequently quoted in the print and electronic media and publishes the weekly Earnings Trends and Earnings Preview reports. If you want an email notification each time Sheraz publishes a new article, please click here>>> Today's Must Read AbbVie's (ABBV) Humira Blossoms, Pipeline in Focus in 2018 Berkshire Hathaway (BRK.B) to Gain from Railroad Business PepsiCo (PEP) to Gain from Productivity Plans Amid Weak Sales Featured Reports Diversey Unit Sale, Higher Demand to Aid Sealed Air (SEE) Per the Zacks Analyst, Sealed Air's sale of Diversey Care division will help it enhance focus on Food Care and Product Care divisions. Growing demand for core product portfolio will also aid results. Macy's (M) Omnichannel Strategy, Private Brands to Lift Sales Per the Zacks analyst, Macy's price optimization, cost containment and omnichannel strategy will help lift performance. The company's focus on private label brands will help boost profit margins. Favorable Demographics to Drive AvalonBay's (AVB) Growth Per the Zacks Analyst, favorable demographics, household formation and ample liquidity augur well for AvalonBay's long term growth. However, elevated supply remains a concern. BP Plc (BP) Banks on Upstream Projects Amid Oil Spill Woes While the Zacks analyst is optimistic about BP's strong portfolio of upstream projects, the oil spill incident of 2010 continues to affect the firm. Xcel (XEL) To Gain from Renewable Focus, $18.5B Investments The Zacks analyst believes Xcel Energy to benefit from its $18.5B capital expenditure directed towards its transmission, distribution, electric generation and renewable projects. Operational Excellence Initiatives to Aid Weyerhaeuser (WY) Per a Zacks analyst, Weyerhaeuser (WY) will gain from its operational excellence drive. Total benefits of $80-$110 million are anticipated from the Timberlands and Wood Products segments in 2018. Unit Revenue Growth Buoys Delta (DAL) Amid Fuel Cost Woes The Zacks analyst likes the company's performance with respect to unit revenues. Efforts to reward shareholders are also encouraging. High fuel costs are, however, limiting bottom-line growth. New Upgrades Strong HVAC Demand, Buyouts Catalysts for Emerson (EMR) Per the analyst, Emerson is enjoying robust demand in global HVAC & refrigeration markets. Also, optimistic order trends and the recent Cooper-Atkins buyout will lend further momentum to the company. Stryker (SYK) Gains Ground on Mako Total Knee Platform Stryker's Mako Total Knee platform has consistently driven up the company's sales. The Zacks Analyst is also optimistic about the company's latest R&D initiatives to enhance Mako unit. Robust Investment and Cash Generation Aid Entergy Corp (ETR) Per the Zacks Analyst, Entergy Corp.'s investment plans of $11.22 billion in the 2018-2020 time frame and stable liquidity position backed by strong cash generation capacity aids its growth in future. New Downgrades Diabetes Unit Weakness to Hurt Sanofi's (SNY) Sales in 2018 Sanofi's Diabetes franchise is under significant pressure due to a tough U.S. payer environment, per the Zacks analyst. The declining trends in the franchise are expected to continue in 2018. Cost Overruns & Volatile U.S. Demand Impairs Harris (HRS) High dependency of sales revenue to the U.S. Government and risks of international business coupled with escalating operating costs limit Harris' growth momentum, per the Zacks analyst. Delay in Sky Buyout to Hurt Twenty-First Century Fox (FOXA) Per the Zacks analyst, growing concern over Twenty-First Century Fox's proposed acquisition of remaining 61% stake in Sky plc is likely to remain an overhang in the near term. Want the latest recommendations from Zacks Investment Research? Today, you can download 7 Best Stocks for the Next 30 Days. Click to get this free report Sanofi (SNY) : Free Stock Analysis Report Pepsico, Inc. (PEP) : Free Stock Analysis Report Twenty-First Century Fox, Inc. (FOXA) : Free Stock Analysis Report Berkshire Hathaway Inc. (BRK.B) : Free Stock Analysis Report BP p.l.c. (BP) : Free Stock Analysis Report AbbVie Inc. (ABBV) : Free Stock Analysis Report To read this article on Zacks.com click here. Zacks Investment Research A Syrian refugee is praising President Donald Trump and the U.S.-led air strikes against Syria. Kassem Eid, a 2013 Syrian chemical attack victim, told FOX Business that Trump took a noble action against the brutal dictatorship of Syrian President Bashar al-Assad. I would tell Mr. Trump, What you did was amazing, just like you did last year after Assad used chemical weapons in Khan Shaykhun, he said. The Trump administration has characterized Syrias use of chemical weapons as an atrocity and blamed the Obama administration for its failure to impose its red line stance against chemical weapons use in 2013. I didnt know that a few years later, Id be crying out of disappointment and anger when I watched [Obama] break his red line premises and letting Assad walk away while hes making deals with dictators like Iran, Eid said on FOX Business Risk & Reward. U.S.-led allied missile strikes in Syria on Saturday successfully hit its targets and significantly crippled Syrian President Bashar Assads ability to produce more chemical weapons, according to the Pentagon. The USS Higgins fired nearly two dozen Tomahawk missiles towards Syrian targets. Related Articles FILE PHOTO: A United Airlines plane takes off from Los Angeles International airport (LAX) in Los Angeles, California, U.S. March 28, 2018. REUTERS/Mike Blake NEW YORK (Reuters) - United Airlines (UAL.N) said on Tuesday quarterly profit rose, as higher fares helped offset the costs of fuel and a rash of winter storms. The third-largest U.S. airline by passenger traffic reported first-quarter net income of $147 million, or 52 cents per share, compared with $99 million, or 32 cents per share, in the year-ago quarter. Excluding some one-time items, it reported earnings of 50 cents per share. That beat Wall Street's average estimate of 43 cents, according to Thomson Reuters I/B/E/S. Operating revenue rose to $9 billion from $8.4 billion a year ago, meeting analysts' estimates. The Chicago-based carrier adjusted its plans for capacity growth for the year, aiming for a rate of between 4.5 percent and 5.5 percent. Its previous expected range was between 4 percent and 6 percent. Last quarter United sent airline industry shares lower by sparking concerns about fare wars with its aggressive capacity expansion plans. For the second quarter, United said it would increase the number of seats it flies by between 4 percent and 5 percent. (Reporting by Alana Wise; Editing by Bill Rigby) Assessing Sierra Wireless Incs (TSX:SW) performance as a company requires looking at more than just a years earnings data. Below, I will run you through a simple sense check to build perspective on how Sierra Wireless is doing by comparing its most recent earnings with its historical trend, in addition to the performance of its communications industry peers. View our latest analysis for Sierra Wireless Was SWs recent earnings decline worse than the long-term trend and the industry? I like to use the latest twelve-month data, which either annualizes the most recent 6-month earnings update, or in some cases, the most recent annual report is already the latest available financial data. This enables me to analyze various companies on a more comparable basis, using the most relevant data points. For Sierra Wireless, its latest earnings (trailing twelve month) is US$4.14M, which, in comparison to last years level, has plunged by a large -73.12%. Since these figures are somewhat short-term, Ive created an annualized five-year figure for SWs net income, which stands at -US$10.00M This means though earnings declined from last year, over time, Sierra Wirelesss earnings have been growing on average. TSX:SW Income Statement Apr 16th 18 Whats enabled this growth? Lets take a look at if it is only attributable to industry tailwinds, or if Sierra Wireless has experienced some company-specific growth. Over the last couple of years, Sierra Wireless expanded its bottom line faster than revenue by successfully controlling its costs. This resulted in a margin expansion and profitability over time. Viewing growth from a sector-level, the Canadian communications industry has been relatively flat in terms of earnings growth in the prior twelve months, evening out from a robust 28.38% over the past five years. This means whatever near-term headwind the industry is experiencing, its hitting Sierra Wireless harder than its peers. Story continues What does this mean? While past data is useful, it doesnt tell the whole story. Companies that are profitable, but have capricious earnings, can have many factors influencing its business. I suggest you continue to research Sierra Wireless to get a better picture of the stock by looking at: 1. Future Outlook : What are well-informed industry analysts predicting for SWs future growth? Take a look at our free research report of analyst consensus for SWs outlook. 2. Financial Health : Is SWs operations financially sustainable? Balance sheets can be hard to analyze, which is why weve done it for you. Check out our financial health checks here. 3. Other High-Performing Stocks: Are there other stocks that provide better prospects with proven track records? Explore our free list of these great stocks here. NB: Figures in this article are calculated using data from the trailing twelve months from 31 December 2017. This may not be consistent with full year annual report figures. To help readers see pass the short term volatility of the financial market, we aim to bring you a long-term focused research analysis purely driven by fundamental data. Note that our analysis does not factor in the latest price sensitive company announcements. The author is an independent contributor and at the time of publication had no position in the stocks mentioned. Vice President Mike Pence addresses the Space Symposium in Colorado Springs. (Space Symposium via YouTube) COLORADO SPRINGS, Colo. The Trump administration is getting set to sign off on a new set of procedures for managing space traffic and minimizing space junk, Vice President Mike Pence said today. During an opening address to the 34th Space Symposium here, Pence talked up efforts to boost human spaceflight, set a course for the moon and Mars, and trim back regulations on the space industry. Under President Donald Trump, America is leading in space once again, said Pence, who chairs the White Houses National Space Council. Pence called on the Senate to confirm Trumps choice for NASA administrator, Rep. Jim Bridenstine, R-Okla., whose nomination has been stalled for months. He also announced that Jim Ellis, former commander of the U.S. Strategic Command, would head the space councils Users Advisory Group. But it was Pences comments on a new space traffic management system that drew the most attention. He made note of past problems with satellite traffic, including a smash-up that produced thousands of bits of space junk in 2009. Tens of thousands of pieces of debris are currently being tracked in orbit. As commercial companies continue to send even more satellites into orbit, the volume of space traffic will only increase in the years ahead, Pence said. He said a new policy to address the potential risks will soon be sent to Trump for his approval. The policy calls on the Commerce Department to provide a basic level of space situational awareness for public and private use, based on tracking data compiled by the Defense Department. Commercial space ventures would also be encouraged to partner with the government on the development of data-sharing systems and guidelines for minimizing orbital debris and avoiding satellite collisions, Pence said. Brian Weeden, technical adviser for the Secure World Foundation, said the new policy could address longstanding concerns about space traffic management. In an op-ed published by Space News last year, Weeden said the issue was a super wicked public policy problem. Story continues Weeden helped write a policy paper that pointed up the need for a mechanism to double-check risk assessments for satellites and orbital debris. Such a mechanism could leverage commercial capabilities under the management of the Federal Aviation Administration, Weeden and his co-authors wrote. The policy drawn up by the National Space Council could serve the same purpose, but with the Commerce Department rather than the FAA taking the lead role, Weeden said. I think the key issue is whether they will give the Department of Commerce the proper resources budget and staff to be able to take on this responsibility, in addition to the increased licensing responsibility the Trump administration is also proposing to give to Commerce, Weeden told GeekWire in an email. Addressing the national security side of space policy, Pence said the White House has directed the U.S. military to take unspecified measures to strengthen the resilience of our space systems. During a February meeting of the National Space Council, officials voiced concern about Russian and Chinese capabilities for disrupting U.S. space assets. Pence touted NASAs $20.7 billion budget for the current fiscal year, which is bigger than the Trump administration had proposed. But he held to the view that direct government funding for the International Space Station would end in 2025 making way for commercial space outposts where the government will be a tenant and a customer, and not the landlord. Looking beyond Earth orbit, the vice touted plans to create an complex in lunar orbit, known as the Lunar Orbital Platform Gateway, as a successor to the International Space Station. From this orbiting platform, and with our international and commercial partners, American astronauts will return to the moon to explore its surface and learn how to harness its resources, to launch expeditions to Mars, Pence said. NASAs current plan calls for the LOP-G to take shape in the 2020s, with trips to Mars and its moons due to begin in the 2030s long after Trump leaves the White House. More from GeekWire: Censorship appears to be increasingly gripping Pakistani media as journalists, watchdogs, and media organizations blame attempts by the countrys powerful military to silence critics and prevent the coverage of protests that criticize its policies and actions. This week, several leading newspapers either refused to publish articles on the Pashtuns protests or deleted stories they had already published. Organized under the Pashtun Tahafuz Movement (PTM) or Pashtun Protection Movement, members of Pakistans second-largest ethnic group have rallied to demand security and rights. This month, Geo TV -- Pakistans leading television news channel -- was prevented from reaching audiences through cable networks. On April 16, a provincial court ordered a government regulator to ensure that anti-judiciary speeches of former Pakistani Prime Minister Nawaz Sharif and his daughter Maryam Nawaz were prevented from being aired on television. The two have campaigned against the militarys attempted to micromanage politics in the country. Murtaza Solangi, a senior Pakistani journalist and television talk show host, says the ongoing attempts to muzzle the press are magnified by endemic self-censorship, wherein most of the countrys print and electronic media actively avoid covering sensitive issues. [The censorship is prompted by] insecurity of the military establishment determined to get a positive outcome of [their liking] in the next polls, he told RFE/RLs Gandhara website on April 17. [This is why] banning Geo TV is also a message to all and sundry to fall in line and sign the dotted line. Mosharraf Zaidi, a columnist and commentator, has complained that a leading English-language daily, The News, turned down his oped for the first time in 10 years. The piece about PTM advised Islamabad that the last thing Pakistan should be doing is to deny Pakistanis the opportunity to express solidarity with fellow citizens. The News is published by the Jang group, which also owns Geo. This unnecessary muzzling of debate is not healthy, he wrote on Twitter. Strong nations cultivate robust debate. Weak ones fear it. On April 15, three columns about the PTM disappeared from the website of The News. Farah Zia, an editor in charge of The News On Sunday section, which printed the articles, told BBC Urdu that her organizations management ordered her to take down the articles. Our articles were widely publicized on social media on Sunday, she said. But then I received a message from our management to remove them. On April 14, Babar Sattar, an Islamabad-based lawyer and commentator, said The News turned down his weekly column, which discussed the PTM protests. Media is banned from mentioning PTM. Geo and Jang are shut down and ordered not to touch sensitive topics, he wrote on Twitter. Pakistani media reported that on April 17, the countrys top Supreme Court judge asked Sharif and his daughter to appear before him in a case involving their anti-judiciary speeches. The order followed a directive by a provincial high court in the eastern province of Punjab on April 16 that ordered the Pakistan Electronic Media Regulatory Authority, a government media watchdog, to monitor electronic media outlets for anti-judiciary speeches by the two leaders. Pakistans Supreme Court disqualified Sharif in July 2017 on corruption allegations. In a statement on April 16, journalists and activists expressed serious concern about suppression of freedom of expression, rights-based movements, and dissent. The representatives of civil society and media took serious exception to the ongoing reign of repression against a section of media, rights-based movements, and those who are critical of an extended role of non-elected institutions, their joint statement noted. They cautioned against fascist designs, authoritarian machinations, and unconstitutional manipulations by autocratic and extremist forces to scuttle fundamental civil, human, and social rights, usurp rule of law, and hijack overall democratic processes and political transition, the statement added. Pakistans military denies being behind the media clampdown. It also denies the PTMs allegations that it is involved in extrajudicial killings, enforced disappearances, and other grave rights abuses. In an apparent reference to the PTM on April 12, army chief Qamar Javed Bajwa said engineered protests would not be allowed. In a speech on April 14, he hinted that the military viewed the movements protests and its media coverage as a hybrid war. Our enemies know they cannot beat us fair and square and have thus subjected us to a cruel, evil, and protracted hybrid war, he said. They are trying to weaken our resolve by weakening us from within. Solangi, however, says the expanding media censorship is turning Pakistan into an authoritarian state similar to Egypt, ruled by military strongman President Abdel Fattah El Sisi. He says the growing censorship is likely to overshadow the parliamentary elections slotted for this year. Banning channels, stopping articles from getting published, and stopping speeches of political leaders [from broadcasting] will ensure that the next elections will be neither fair nor free, he said. Manzoor Ahmad Pashteen has emerged as the leader of a movement demanding security and rights for Pakistans Pashtuns -- the second-largest ethnic group in the country. Since February, his organization, the Pashtun Tahafuz Movement (PTM) or Movement for the Protection of Pashtuns, has organized protests to end extrajudicial killings, enforced disappears, racial profiling, and harassment of Pashtuns, who make up to 20 percent of Pakistans 207 million population. The PTM has also called for demining in the insurgency-wreaked regions of the Federally Administered Tribal Areas (FATA). Islamabad says it has addressed the genuine grievances of Pashtuns by relaxing strict security precautions and swift demining in some FATA regions. Pakistani officials, however, reject the PTMs accusations of grave rights abuses. In an interview with Radio Free Afghanistan, 26-year-old Pashteen said that while some of their demands have been accepted, overall progress on meeting them is slow. However, he emphasized that the campaign ultimately wants Islamabad to address their concerns within the laws and constitution of Pakistan. RFE/RL: If the PTM is fighting for universal human rights for Pashtuns in Pakistan, why dont you appeal to the United Nations for support? Manzoor Pashteen: The UN typically mediates or intervenes in conflicts between states. So it would only be possible if we, the Pashtuns, had our own state [in Pakistan]. RFE/RL: So your movement remains limited to Pakistan? Pashteen: Our struggle is to seek justice for the crimes committed during the war here [during the past 15 years]. We were victims of the conflict during this time when the state was culpable of creating and sustaining a war-like situation. We are seeking justice for the crimes and wrongs committed during this time. RFE/RL: How far are you willing to go? Pashteen: Until all our demands are met. RFE/RL: But a Pakistani minister, Ghalib Khan, recently told the Voice Of America that most PTM demands have been met with demining and some prisoners being released. What else are you seeking? Manzoor Pashteen: They are lying. They only arrested Rao Anwar [a police officer accused of killing aspiring model Naqeebuallah Mehsud] due to public pressure. Otherwise, they protect murderers. They have begun clearing landmines in [FATAs] South Waziristan tribal district. They first began with some enthusiasm but [after it was widely publicized] through photo sessions, their pace slowed down. Demining has not begun in other tribal districts. Our other demand regarding the fate of prisoners and victims of enforced disappearances [has seen similar progress]. Only around 250 people have been released so far. Thousands are still missing. We are not seeking the release of convicts. We only want every prisoner to undergo a trial and want only those released who are not found guilty of committing any crimes. We have also called for a commission to investigate extrajudicial killings by Pakistani state security forces including the secret services, army, police, and others who have tortured and killed Pashtun civilians. The Taliban militants and other [pro-government] militants did the same. We want this commission to investigate all such crimes. I am sure such a probe will ultimately separate the truth from falsehood. RFE/RL: Are you a nationalist movement? Why are other ethno-nationalist movements not backing you? Pashteen: This is a collective national movement of Pashtuns. We have people from all walks of life and all political parties supporting us. We have received overwhelming support from the masses. RFE/RL: What do you have to say to the young men and women in Afghanistan that are inspired by your activism and have even adopted your cap as a symbol? Pashteen: Afghans who are protesting are discussing problems that they are facing, and they need to organize better. The youth should rise up for peace and do whatever they can to achieve peace. I call on the youth to stand up and demand their rights and do their utmost to eliminate the war from Pashtunkhwa, meaning the land of all Pashtuns [in Afghanistan and Pakistan]. Their efforts will ultimately contribute to end the global war going on in their homeland. RFE/RL: Arent you worried that some states or political parties might use your movement to implement their own agenda in the region? Pashteen: We are a peaceful movement and are mobilized for peace. We have been killed for years, but I do not see anyone having the courage to attack or undermine our peaceful struggle. Those who have met us and witnessed our events know the passion of our youth and the sense of our aspirations. This is why I do not see anyone daring to damage our struggle. Pennsylvania plots strategy for election security funds Pennsylvanias Acting Secretary of State Robert Torres has set an aggressive timeline for the improving the security of the state's voting machines and processes. By the end of December 2019, all Pennsylvania counties must have voter-verifiable, paper-record voting systems in place. Pennsylvania's ability to invest in elections infrastructure comes from its $13.5 million share of $380 million in funds included in the omnibus spending law passed in March to help states secure elections infrastructure. The funding is an extension of the 2002 Help America Vote Act. To take advantage of the funds, each state is also required to contribute a 5 percent match to the HAVA funds, which brings the total amount to be distributed to Pennsylvania counties to $14.2 million. We want to bring about the system upgrades so Pennsylvania voters are voting on the most secure and auditable equipment as promptly and feasibly as possible, while also being supportive of the counties need to plan and budget for the new systems, Torres said. We have been planning for some time to bring Pennsylvanias voting machines up to 21st-century standards of security, auditability and resiliency. The state wants to get the paper-recording voting systems in place before the November 2019 general election.The Department of State will hold a vendor demonstration on April 26 to give legislators, county and state officials and the public a chance to explore features on new voting machines. Counties will be able to choose from among voting systems that have been examined or certified after Jan. 1, 2018, by the Elections Assistance Commission and Torres. On April 2, an invitation for bid was placed on the Pennsylvania e-Marketplace updating a state-negotiated agreement with vendors to make it easier for counties to purchase certified voting systems. Besides updating the voting equipment ahead of the 2019 elections, the State Department is also using comprehensive monitoring to fortify physical and cybersecurity, and increasing training and resources for counties and partners. While the funds will help states improve their election security to some degree, some local officials are already concerned that the money will not be enough to solve decade-long problems. Jeff Greenburg, director of elections in Mercer County, Pa., called the new HAVA funds a drop in the bucket of what is really needed. Russia targeting network infrastructure, US and UK officials warn Russia has been conducting a coordinated campaign to target and compromise network infrastructure devices -- including routers, switches and other network infrastructure devices -- in home offices, government agencies and critical infrastructure around the globe, officials from the United States and Great Britain said. The campaign, officials said, involved a range of Russia-aligned cyber entities using a series of exploits to target millions of devices. This sustained targeting has been ongoing for more than a year, White House Cyber Coordinator and acting Homeland Security Advisor Rob Joyce said. Targets have included Internet Service Providers, government networks, private-sector firms and critical infrastructure providers. Although the broad critical infrastructure sector was targeted, officials said they have not witnessed any specific effort to go after election officials or the systems they use. Activity like this "isn't always to steal information, said Joyce. Sometimes [such efforts] are used to facilitate other operations that the Russians can do against high value targets worldwide. The full scope and impact of the operation is not fully known, and officials from White House and Department of Homeland Security said they were releasing the information now in the hopes that businesses and other affected entities come forward if they have witnessed similar suspicious activity. While millions of devices were targeted, Jeanette Manfra, assistant secretary for DHS' Office of Cybersecurity and Communications, said only a small number were actually hacked. What we can see is targeting and some compromise," Manfra said, "but we need the owners and operators of those devices and systems to work with us to determine the extent of the actual compromise. The announcement, made during an April 16 briefing call with reporters, was paired with a joint technical alert issued the same day by the DHS and the UKs National Cyber Security Centre detailing the devices targeted and avenues for mitigation. Ciaran Martin, chief executive of the UKs National Cyber Security Centre, said his country has been tracking the activity for close to a year and can independently verify the campaign and its attribution to the Russian government. Officials said the goals for the operation were varied, including espionage and intellectual property theft, but that it also would give attackers control of the sort of basic infrastructure that might allow them to launch dedicated denial of service attacks, steal intellectual property or lie dormant to facilitate future attacks. For this reason, we cant rule out the possibility Russia may intend to use these set of compromises for future offensive cyber operations as well, Joyce said. The announcement comes more than a month after DHS made public a 2016 report and binding operational directive warning government employees that nation states were targeting vulnerable routers and switches as agencies hardened their defenses around computers, laptops and other devices. In a 2016 letter to federal employees, then-DHS Secretary Jeh Johnson noted that for several years now, network infrastructure devices have been the attack vector of choice for government-sponsored hacking groups. Manfra and others said vulnerable network devices are ideal targets because these devices are often not patched or maintained properly, and a compromise gives attackers access to most Internet traffic within an organization and the organizations it communicates with. Once you own the router, you own the traffic thats traversing the router, said Manfra. The announcement was characterized as just one step in a series of actions planned by the U.S. and British government. We are looking at cybersecurity as something where we need to use asymmetric tools to respond to cyber intrusions, and that means all elements of our national power, said Joyce. Whether it is the ability to do deterrence by denial whether its indictments, whether its sanctions or whether it is using our capabilities in the offensive [cyber] world. This article was first posted to FCW, a sibling site to GCN. INDUSTRY INSIGHT Evasive malware: A growing threat to state and local governments Headlines trumpet the remarkable international pushback on Russias election meddling and sponsorship of cybercrime and fraud. Water-cooler talk of spies, bots and assassinations has everyone acting like an armchair FBI agent. The vulnerability of our nation's institutions is front and center, and it is disturbing, to say the least. And its not just the White House, the National Security Agency and the Senate Intelligence Committee that should be alarmed. State and local governments face a growing cybercrime threat. Hackers target municipalities and state agencies in part because they are often easier to breach than better-defended enterprise networks. More importantly, state and local government networks often host and process highly valuable data about individuals, critical infrastructure and sizable financial transactions. Highly motivated attackers have a good chance of pulling off a successful heist of data or funds, disrupting operations, exposing public figures or conducting espionage. Protecting municipalities against cyberattacks is a major challenge. Overall, municipal technology tends to be characterized by legacy infrastructure, diverse requirements and a complex network topology. State and local government IT professionals are often charged with overseeing loosely associated, disparate networks, each servicing different needs and constituents. These heterogeneous environments are notoriously difficult to manage and secure, creating gaps that attackers readily find and exploit. These issues are compounded by tight budgets, difficulty recruiting security experts and drawn-out bureaucratic procedures for technology upgrades and purchases. IT and security personnel are typically overburdened and pulled in multiple directions, leading to a reactive security stance that simply isnt sufficient in the face of constant, sophisticated intrusion attempts. The problem is even more acute in smart cities, where municipalities use interconnected information and communication technologies to increase operational efficiency, share information with the public and improve both the quality of government services and citizen welfare. Several recent attacks illustrate the potential damage that can result when local agencies are compromised. For example, the Emotet Trojan attack on municipal systems in Allentown, Pa., disrupted the operations of finance and police departments. Local media reports have estimated the cost of remediation at $1 million, which doesnt include loss of productivity or other associated costs. The Colorado Department of Transportation was hit by a SamSam ransomware attack that forced the shutdown of more than 2,000 endpoints, taking the department back to pen and paper during the investigation and recovery process. Fortunately, the ransomware did not hit critical systems, and CDOT had data back-ups. It isnt hard to imagine how it could have been much worse without good luck and smart preparation. In the same time period, WannaCry attacks on Connecticut state agencies and malware damage to city systems in Savannah, Ga., were reported. In even more recent news, Atlanta is investigating and recovering from a ransomware attack that stymied some public-facing services, including court systems. Failure to defend against cyberattacks can result in more than monetary losses and networked systems damage. When critical systems at hospitals, police and fire departments are attacked, public safety and individual welfare are at risk -- not to mention the exposure of highly sensitive data. Government agencies that are already strapped for financial and IT staff resources can ill afford the time- and labor-intensive recovery process that often follows infection by Trojans that evolve and evade detection like Emotet, making getting rid of them no simple matter. Evasive malware is increasingly available to both sophisticated and run-of-the-mill cybercriminals. Capable of transforming itself, it can persist and burrow deeper into networks and endpoints over long periods of time. Antivirus and similar baseline anti-malware solutions are weak at detecting evasive malware; these threats are built specifically to avoid being identified by AV. Agencies must take proactive steps to protect systems from these insidious, stealthy attacks -- because they are harder to detect and difficult to remove. Deploying a vaccine and other anti-evasive malware solutions can prevent these infections from taking hold in the first place. Applying the vaccine in an already-infected environment can even keep Emotet from spreading further and accelerate incident response time. Anti-evasion solutions work by preventing malware from getting around baseline security measures. For example, they can fool the malware into thinking it is in a hostile environment (e.g., through the use of simulated sandbox artifacts), causing it to shut itself down before it deploys. Anti-evasion approaches are also designed to be effective against malware hidden in malicious documents, fileless methods that inject malicious code into memory and attacks that use legitimate tools, like PowerShell, to install malware. State and local agencies should conduct careful assessment to identify tools that are a good match for their existing technology set-up (including legacy systems) as well as their staff skill level and resources for deploying and maintaining anti-evasion solutions. These days, IT managers reading security-related news stories may feel like they're digging into a John le Carre novel. It's an interesting read, but that doesnt mean they want a starring role in one of these modern-day tales of subterfuge and piracy. In the game of cyber cat and mouse, government organizations of all sizes need their own bag of tricks. The ability to outwit attackers gives agencies a powerful way to shut down attacks before they can cause damage. Send those hackers packing -- dont be the kind of easy target they love to infiltrate. Re: In an unfinished but highly suggestive series of essays, the late Sara [ #permalink 6 Kudos 2 Bookmarks mk19 wrote: Hi All, I have been admitted to the Rice MBA with $$ and also to the Georgetown MBA with no scholarship . I am international candidate . My post-MBA goal is to end up in Technology sector. What do you think is a better option considering job market, Visa situation, brand value of an MBA, class size and scholarship? If you could list out your reasons and any other factor to consider. Much Thanks!! Congrats! Depending on the scholarship amount, it may be a very attractive proposition to go to Rice and graduate without any debt.However, if you are choosing between Rice with 100k Debt or Georgetown with $150K of debt, then Georgetown will be much better. Lots of Tech presence in Reston on the freeway leading on to the Dulles IAD Airport._________________ The Agricultural Marketing Service (AMS) proposed a temporary rule published in the March 30, 2018, Federal Register that would bump Class I milk prices up by 9 cents per hundredweight for a seven-month time period. This emergency provision could raise consumer prices by less than 1 cent per gallon during that time. This temporary provision would apply to all milk in the Florida federal order. The reason for its implementation is related to Hurricane Irma. That storm disrupted the orderly flow of milk within the Florida marketing area between September 6 and September 15, 2017. The money collected from this USDA-AMS proposal would be dispersed to handlers and producers who incurred extraordinary expenses due to Hurricane Irma. AMS estimates that 248 dairy farms produced milk pooled on the Florida FMMO in 2017. Five co-ops made the proposal Southeast Milk, Dairy Farmers of America, Premier Milk, Maryland and Virginia Milk Producers Cooperative Association, and Lone Star Milk Producers requested this proposed amendment. The dairy farmer members of these five cooperatives supply the majority of the orders pooled milk. Also, handlers in the Florida marketing area would not be at a competitive disadvantage due to the temporary assessment because of its uniform application to all Class I beverage milk. Of course, Class I milk is a big deal in Florida as it represents 83 percent of all milk sales in the order. Thats the highest market share in the nation. To comment, email your remarks to intel@hoards.com. (c) Hoard's Dairyman Intel 2018 April 2, 2018 This past week we had the privilege of hosting 80 middle school students to our farm for a tour. This was a part of the Adopt a Farmer program that connects middle school classrooms with a farmer for the year. The program covers all areas of agriculture, including dairy. I was so excited to participate with this program this year. As we built and transitioned into our new robotic facility, it had been a couple years since we had hosted any school groups. The class tours are always my favorite as children have such enthusiasm for hands-on learning. I was even more excited that the Adopt a Farmer program focuses on middle school aged kids in grades 6 to 8. As an industry, I think we are really good at getting information to the younger classes during those first years of school. Then we kind of hit a gap in those middle years. It was so great to host this group of middle schoolers and get to share and expand on the basics a little more. This age group had great questions and was really engaged in the information we shared. At the end of the day we asked them to share some of their favorite new information, and their answers really impressed me. I think this age group is important to engage in as they are starting to make their own consumer decisions. I know tours of any kind can be a lot of work. Im so glad we have an awesome partner in Oregon that makes these connections easy. I encourage you all to consider hosting your own farm tour with any age school group. Reach out to your industry allies to help make it easy, fun, and successful. And dont forget the older kids. As of August 26th, 2021 Yahoo India will no longer be publishing content. Your Yahoo Account Mail and Search experiences will not be affected in any way and will operate as usual. We thank you for your support and readership. For more information on Yahoo India, please visit the FAQ Speaking at the worlds first clean cold congress at the University of Birmingham, Toby Peters revealed that, by 2050, some 9.5 billion cooling appliances would increase global energy demand for cooling to 7,500 TerawattHours (TWh) from the 2017 level of 3,900 TWh. This is even after allowing for the development of more efficient cooling technologies. Without decarbonising electricity production, this would result in an extra 2.5 GigaTonnes (GT) of carbon dioxide (CO2) pumped into the atmosphere each year bringing the total amount of CO2 from cooling to more than 6GT, or nearly 50% of the worlds total target for direct Co2 emissions for 2050. Pawanexh Kohli, Chief advisor and CEO for the National Centre for Cold-chain Development in India opens the congress with a dual keynote address with Sir David King, Chair of the Regional Energy Policy Commission and former Special Representative for Climate Change, UK. Professor Peters, from the University of Birmingham, said: Soaring carbon emissions from cooling are only half the picture. Under these projections much of the world would still only have low penetration levels of cooling. We would still have high levels of food loss, more of countries experiencing life threatening temperatures with no cooling and medicines and vaccines spoiled in the supply chain. If we are to sustainably deliver cooling for all, we must stop thinking that green electricity and technology efficiency can meet the demand alone. Unless we think thermally, not just electrically, we are sitting on a carbon time-bomb. The challenge is how to embed this approach quickly enough to avoid investment in conventional equipment that lock in cooling emissions for years or decades. The University of Birmingham has brought together more than 100 cooling and energy efficiency decision-makers and experts at the worlds first congress on clean cold to discuss the urgent topic of how to meet our global demand for cooling sustainably. During the two-day 'Cool World' conference (18/19 April) high-profile delegates from across the world will explore this most pressing of issues, as they identify the challenges and opportunities of providing access to affordable, sustainable cooling solutions for all. It is estimated that by the middle of this century, the world will be consuming more energy for cooling than heating. Unless clean and sustainable cooling solutions can be rolled out, this will cause high levels of pollution. Effective refrigeration is essential to preserve food and medicine. It underpins industry and economic growth, is key to sustainable urbanisation and provides a ladder out of rural poverty. It makes much of the world bearable - or even safe - to live in. A key area of cooling and topic for the Congress - is food chains. The lack of adequate cold storage and refrigerated transport causes the loss of 200 million tonnes of food with consequences far beyond hunger, farmer poverty and inflated food prices. Post-harvest food loss occupies a land area almost twice the size of Australia, consumes 250km3 of water per year, three times the volume of Lake Geneva; and emits 3.3 billion tonnes of CO2, making it the third biggest emitter after the US and China. A Cool World will feature panel discussions, debates and workshops for end-users, academics, NGOs, industry and investor groups to explore key issues in detail. Other presenters include Jan Grimbrandt, Chairman at Boson Energy SA, Luxembourg; Thomas Tomski, of Emerson Commercial and Residential solutions; Dr Lisa Kitinoja, President of the Postharvest Education Foundation, USA; Guillermo Martinez, Commercial Manager for Araner, Spain; Nicola Twilley, Author of The Birth of Cool, USA; Ingo Wagner, Coordinator for Cooling EU, Belgium; and Professor Richard Williams, OBE, FREng, Principal and Vice-Chancellor, Heriot-Watt University, UK. Pawanexh Kohli commented: Feeding the planet is not just the business of farmers. Refrigerated logistics is critical to managing our food resources, expanding market frontiers and reducing food loss. At the same time we also need to reduce the impact of our logistics on our environment, and that requires international collaboration. We need innovation today, to develop the sustainable cold chain of tomorrow. Delegates will also hear from Ian Crosby, Head of Cooling for All, an initiative created by Sustainable Energy for All and the Kigali Cooling Efficiency Program to identify the challenges and opportunities of providing access to affordable, sustainable cooling solutions for all. One of the biggest challenges to the transition to clean cooling is skills. The European Commission has already reported a significant skills gap in low GWP refrigerants, and the challenge will be even greater in emerging markets, said Thomas Tomski, Vice President Marketing at Emerson Commercial & Residential Solutions. We need more investment in training engineers on the installation and maintenance of cooling systems in order to ensure they are sustainable. When choosing a new refrigeration system, retailers should also consider integral systems for accelerated roll-out. Since these systems are self-contained, easy to install and remove, and require little maintenance, they offer a solution where skills is a challenge. New York, Apr 17 (IBNS): Deciding upon complaints filed by Mohamed Nasheed, the ex-President of Maldives, a United Nations human rights expert committee has called on the Government to restore Nasheeds right to stand for public office, including the office of the President. Political rights can be suspended or restricted only in exceptional circumstances and under certain conditions, said Sarah Cleveland, member of the UN Human Rights Committee an expert body that oversees implementation of the International Covenant on Civil and Political Rights (ICCPR) by its States parties. Judicial proceedings that violate the right to fair trial can render the resulting restriction of political rights arbitrary, she added. In its decision of 4 April, which was made public Monday, the Committee stated that the judicial proceedings in which Mr. Nasheed was convicted were based on vague legislation, contained serious flaws and violated his right to a fair trial under the Covenant. The Committee underscored Maldives obligation to avoid similar violations in the future, including reviewing its legislation to ensure that any restriction on the right to stand for office is reasonable and proportionate. Nasheed, first brought to a Maldivian court in 2012, was ultimately charged with terrorism and sentenced to 13 years imprisonment in March 2015. As a result, he was disqualified from running in presidential elections for 16 years the term of his sentence plus an additional three years. He filed his submissions to the Human Rights Committee in July 2013 and October 2016. The Committees decision also directs Maldives to quash [Nasheeds] conviction, review the charges against him taking into account the present Views, and, if appropriate, conduct a new trial ensuring all fair trial guarantees. The Human Rights Committee also stressed Maldives responsibility to provide effective remedy. As a party to the ICCPR, Maldives is obliged to make full reparation to individuals whose rights have been violated. We have asked Maldives to inform us within 180 days about the measures they have taken to implement our decision, added Yuval Shany, Vice-Chair of the Committee. The Human Rights Committee is composed of 18 independent experts who are not UN staff and serve in their personal capacity. They are elected for a term of four years by States parties in accordance with articles 28 to 39 of the Covenant and may be re-elected if nominated. Nattu He suppressed the will of the people both before and during the Arab Spring, clung desperately to power during a seven-year-long civil war (helped massively by Iran), and has shown no hesitation to use chemical weapons against unarmed civilians, including children, in order to crush the Syrian Resistance. Following his latest chemical attack, which killed at least 70 people and injured dozens more, the US, the UK, and France coordinated a missiles strike on three sites that are crucial to Assads chemical weapons use. While explaining the need for these strikes, Donald Trump called out the Iranian Regime for their continued support of the Syrian Regime and probable role in orchestrating the chemical attack. He said: What kind of a nation wants to be associated with the mass murder of innocent men, women, and children? Well clearly, the Iranian Regime is happy to be associated with it and perhaps even plan it themselves. After all, theyve spent nearly 40 years causing death and destruction around the globe through their support of terrorist cells, incitement of sectarian violence, and proxy wars. Why should now be any different? This was clearly acknowledged by Saudi King Salman at a recent summit of Arab leaders. He said: We renew our strong condemnation of terrorist acts carried out by Iran in the Arab region, and we reject its blatant interference in the internal affairs of Arab countries. Saudi Arabia, who leads many Arab nations in efforts to condemn and contain the Iranian Regime, had previously expressed support for the strikes against Syria. These missile strikes were about more than just eradicating chemical stockpiles; it speaks to the USs wider plan for countering the Iranian Regime and allowing the people of the Middle East to be free. Iran Lobby If youre wondering how the Iran Regimes apologists in the US responded to the joint attack on Syrias chemical weapons facilities, its exactly what youre imagining. In a statement, the National Iranian American Councils research director Reza Marashi said that Trump and his European allies were wrong to attack Syria because it would trigger retaliation from the Iranian and Russian forces closely embedded with the Syrian government and hamper efforts to de-escalate the conflict. In this statement, he seems to be putting across the idea that the deeply embedded Iranian and Russian forces had nothing to do with the chemical weapons attacks and shouldnt be punished for it. This is ridiculous, even for the NIAC. What are they doing there if they arent responsible? Surely Marashi should have denounced Assad and called on the Iranian Regime to de-escalate the conflict by stopping Syria from using the weapons again. But, no. He calls out the international community for failing to solve the Syrian conflict through diplomatic means; even though Iran is the key opponent to that by ploughing billions of dollars into terrorist proxies to fight on Assads behalf. The NIAC is selling fake news. Dont buy it. Back in January, Trump issued this deadline to the European signatories to the deal, formally known as the Joint Comprehensive Plan of Action (JCPOA), and called it the deals last chance. He said: In the absence of such an agreement, the United States will not again waive sanctions in order to stay in the Iran nuclear deal. And if at any time I judge that such an agreement is not within reach, I will withdraw from the deal immediately. No one should doubt my word. Thus, there are two options before us: 1. Europe fails to agree on fixing the flaws and the US pulls out 2. Europe agrees to fix the flaws and Iran withdraws From that we can see that no matter what happens in the next three weeks, the nuclear deal is dead. But which option is more likely? Well, as far as the public knows, Europe does not seem likely to agree on fixing the deal by ending the sunset clauses that allow Iran to resume advanced nuclear development in just a few years, increasing the international monitoring of Irans nuclear facilities, and curbing Irans ballistic missile programme. It doesnt seem likely that they will have a sudden change of heart, so option one is far more likely. But its not a bad thing if Trump pulls the US out of the Iran deal, in fact it has the potential to stop one of the worlds deadliest regimes in its tracks. The deal has already proved less than adequate. For one thing, it doesnt stop Iran from developing nuclear weapons; it only delays them for 10-15 years. For another, Iran has already been found to be cheating on the deal. International inspectors cant prove it because Iran has prevented them from doing their job, but well placed Iranian Resistance operatives inside Iran provided evidence of this to the National Council of Resistance of Iran (NCRI) over a year ago. And thats just what the deal actually covers. Irans violation of the spirit of the deal is even more horrifying, given their sponsorship of terrorist groups, meddling in the Middle East, and use of ballistic missiles against their enemies. The majority of Iranians are also opposed to the deal because it does not provide the benefits promised to the ordinary people. Instead, the Iranian mullahs have taken the money gained and ploughed it into foreign wars, terrorism, and suppression of the Iranian people. This is perhaps best demonstrated in the nationwide anti-regime protests that have rocked Iran over the past few months. Basically, the only way to save the deal is to have Iran acquiesce to the restrictions that Trump has put forth. But, they wont. Thus, the deal is basically already dead. One such Iran-backed group is the Baqir Brigade which is operating on Syrian territory. It recently announced on social media that it would start attacking US troops. In a Facebook post on 6th April, it said: We in the Baqir Brigade leadership announce the good news of the launch of military and jihadi operations against the U.S. occupier and all those affiliated with it in Syria. The threat may be precipitated by the recent airstrike. Threats against the United States personnel on the ground are nothing new. Indeed, the anti-American stance is well-established. However, experts predict that the threat is worrying because it is not something that such a group decides by itself it will have been dictated by Iran. Many say that the threat is not just talk it is more of an announcement that will be followed by action. The airstrikes targeted areas where it is believed chemical weapons are stored or produced and the US-led strike involving the United Kingdom and France was intended to deter further use of chemical weapons. The Iran-backed Lebanese Hezbollah have responded to the airstrikes saying that it will complicate the political situation in Syria and it will inflame international relations. Furthermore, with the Islamic State (ISIS) currently in retreat and the anti-regime rebels in the position of losing ground, the groups supported by Iran have less to focus on, so turning to the American troops is not unexpected. Indeed, many have said that it is only a matter of time. Once again, we can look back to previous conflicts to estimate how Iran will react. After the 2003 invasion of Iraq, Irans Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps (IRGC) led its Shiite militias into targeting American troops. The militias fired mortars into US bases and targeted patrols with roadside bombs. There are currently around 2,000 US military personnel in the northern part of Syria as well as some French and British personnel. Those in very remote areas will be most at risk. At the end of last month, it was reported that two soldiers one British and one American were killed by a roadside bomb that hit their vehicle. Iran, on the other hand, has tens of thousands of fighters and the Western forces are simply vulnerable because of their much lower numbers. Further aggravating the situation is Irans extreme desperation. It is in a very vulnerable situation at home because of the widespread discontent. The people of Iran took to the streets at the end of December to voice their discontent with the regimes corruption and have called for regime change. The people are supported by the popular opposition, the National Council of Resistance of Iran (NCRI) and US President Donald Trump sent a message of support to the people on social media. It is only time before the regime in Iran falls and the sooner the better. Once it is no longer in place, a major source of conflict will have been removed from the equation. The yearly National Cherry Blossom Festival in Washington, D.C., has come to an end. One of its final events was a huge celebration of Japanese arts and culture. The celebration is called Sakura Matsuri. Sakura means cherry blossom in Japanese, while Matsuri is the Japanese word for festival. It is the largest one-day Japanese culture event in the United States. Thousands of people attended the 58th annual Sakura Matsuri Street Festival. They enjoyed the tastes, sounds and feel of Japan. Some visitors even arrived at the festival dressed up as Japanese anime characters. The event featured sellers of Japanese foods and products. It also had performers demonstrating Japanese arts. The Japan-America Society of Washington D.C. puts on the event each year. Culinary Arts Pavilion The chance to taste special Japanese food is a big draw for visitors. The festival featured a Culinary Arts Pavilion. Here, different groups of Japanese cooks described the history of traditional foods and explained how to make them at home. Home-style cooking The Care Fund is a Japanese-American non-profit organization. It provides information and social support for Japanese and Japanese Americans. During the Sakura Matsuri festival, Care Fund members explained to visitors how to make Gyudon and Sakura Mochi at home. Gyudon, which means beef bowl, is a dish made of rice, beef and onion. It is eaten with soy sauce and fish sauce. Sakura Mochi is a round, pink rice cake wrapped with a cherry blossom leaf. The treat is usually eaten in springtime. Wonder of Wagashi Yoshitaka Nishino is a professional Japanese cook of sweet treats. He is the head of Matsukawaya, a famous Japanese sweets company. At the street festival in Washington, Nishino demonstrated how to make Wagashi. In Japanese, wagashi means Japanese confection or sweet. Wagashi treats come in all shapes and colors. They are beautifully designed and truly a work of art, Nishino said during his presentation. Wagashi can express the four seasons through color and shape, he added. Nishino prepared wagashi that looked like a cherry blossom petal. The visitors enjoyed learning about and tasting the unique Japanese candy. Tea ceremony The Culinary Arts Pavilion also presented the history of Japanese green tea. One of the most important tea cities in Japan is Uji, in southern Kyoto. Munetoshi Koizumi is from Uji. She teaches classes on the traditional Japanese tea ceremony, or Sado, at Kyoto University. In Washington, she taught festival-goers all about the importance of green tea in Japan. She said she came to the festival to introduce the genuine taste of green tea to people who have an interest in Japan. Koizumi described the history of Japanese green tea, including Matcha, a kind of green tea. Eight hundred years ago, Matcha was imported as a medicine from China, she said, adding that in the past, Matcha was more valuable than gold, and enjoyed as amusement for nobles. She explained that Ujis Matcha is a first-class tea. One of her students from Kyoto University demonstrated a real tea ceremony for the crowd in Washington. After the student prepared the Matcha, one lucky audience member got the chance to taste it. Im Ashley Thompson. Rei Goto wrote this report for VOA Learning English. Ashley Thompson was the editor. We want to hear from you. Write to us in the Comments section, and visit our Facebook page. _______________________________________________________________ Words in This Story anime characters n. one of the persons of an anime (animated Japanese programs) feature v. to give special prominence to petal n. one of the soft, colorful parts of a flower unique adj. being that only one genuine adj. actually having the reputed or apparent qualities or character audience n. a group of listeners or spectators noble n. a person who is a member of the highest social class in some countries 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. 2 hours ago Africa internet riches plundered, contested by China broker KAMPALA, Uganda (AP) Outsiders have long profited from Africas riches of gold, diamonds, and even people. Digital resources have proven no different. Millions of internet addresses assigned to Africa have been waylaid, some fraudulently, including through insider machinations linked to a former top employee of the nonprofit that assigns the continent's addresses. Read Article Cosan Limited, together with its subsidiaries, engages in fuel and natural gas distribution, logistics, lubricant, sugar, and ethanol businesses in Brazil, Europe, Latin America, North America, Asia, and internationally. It operates through RaAzen Energia, RaAzen CombustAveis, ComgAs, Cosan LogAstica, and Moove segments. The company's RaAzen Energia segment produces and markets products derived from sugar cane, including raw sugar, anhydrous, and hydrated ethanol, as well as activities related to energy cogeneration from sugarcane bagasse. Its RaAzen CombustAveis segment engages in the distribution and marketing of fuels, primarily through a franchised network of service stations under the Shell brand in Brazil; petroleum refining; operation of fuel resellers, and convenience store businesses; and production and sale of liquefied petroleum gas, and automotive and industrial lubricants. The company's ComgAs segment distributes piped natural gas to customers in the industrial, residential, commercial, automotive, and cogeneration sectors in SAo Paulo. Its Cosan LogAstica segment provides logistics services for transport, storage, and port loading of commodities, primarily for sugar products; and leases locomotives, wagons, and other railway equipment. The company's Moove segment produces and distributes lubricants under the Mobil brand. It operates a network of approximately 7,270 service stations and 1,726 convenience stores, as well as 68 distribution terminals and 68 airports supplying jet fuel. The company was founded in 1936 and is based in SAo Paulo, Brazil. Read More KAZ Minerals PLC, together with its subsidiaries, engages in mining and processing copper and other metals primarily in Kazakhstan, Russia, and Kyrgyzstan. It operates through Bozshakol, Aktogay, East Region and Bozymchak, and Mining Projects segments. The company operates the Aktogay and Bozshakol open pit copper mines in the east region and Pavlodar region of Kazakhstan; three underground mines in the east region of Kazakhstan; and the Bozymchak copper-gold mine in Kyrgyzstan. It also develops greenfield metal deposits; operates Koksay deposit in Kazakhstan, and the Baimskaya licence area in the Chukotka region of Russia; and produces and sells various by-products, such as gold, silver, molybdenum, and zinc. In addition, the company supplies and distributes heat, water, and electricity; and offers construction, project management, financing, management, sales and logistics, and repairs and maintenance services. The company was formerly known as Kazakhmys PLC and changed its name to KAZ Minerals PLC in October 2014. KAZ Minerals PLC was founded in 1930 and is based in London, the United Kingdom. Read More JPMorgan Chase & Co. is a financial holding company. It provides financial and investment banking services. The firm offers a range of investment banking products and services in all capital markets, including advising on corporate strategy and structure, capital raising in equity and debt markets, risk management, market making in cash securities and derivative instruments, and brokerage and research. It operates through the following segments: Consumer and Community Banking, Corporate and Investment Bank, Commercial Banking, and Asset and Wealth Management. The Consumer and Community Banking segment serves consumers and businesses through personal service at bank branches and through automated teller machine, online, mobile, and telephone banking. The Corporate and Investment Bank segment offers a suite of investment banking, market-making, prime brokerage, and treasury and securities products and services to a global client base of corporations, investors, financial institutions, government and municipal entities. The Commercial Banking segment delivers services to U.S. and its multinational clients, including corporations, municipalities, financial institutions, and non profit Read More LeLenovo has started selling a few new laptops in China. The Lenovo Air 2018 is a 15.6 inch notebook that measures about 0.66 inches thick and which weighs about 4.3 pounds, while the Lenovo 7000 2018 is a 14 inch model with similar specs thats 0.78 inches thick and 4.25 pounds. While theres no word on if or when these laptops will make it to North America, there would be some precedent. In 2016 the company launched a Lenovo Air 13 Pro laptop in China, with a design thats pretty close to the companys IdeaPad 710S and 720S laptops sold in the US. The Lenovo Air 2018 features relatively slim bezels, for what Lenovo says is a nearly 83 percent screen-to-body ratio. The notebook features a full HD display, 8GB of RAM, and 256GB of solid state storage. Lenovo offers a choice of an Intel Core i5-8250U or Core i7-8550U processor. Both versions feature NVIDIA GeForce MX150 graphics. The Lenovo 7000 2018, meanwhile, is available in three different configuration options: Core i5-8250U/8GB/256GB SSD/AMD Radeon 535 graphics Core i5-8250U/8GB/256GB SSD + 2TB HDD/AMD Radeon 535 graphics Core i7-8550U/8GB/128GB SSD + 2TB HDD/AMD Radeon 535 graphics Prices start at about 5499 ($875) for both the 14 and 15.6 inch laptops. Lenovo Air 2018 Lenovo 7000 2018 via GizmoChina and ITHome Share this article: Share this: Facebook Twitter Reddit Pocket Tumblr Pinterest LinkedIn Email Chinas Ministry of Education unveiled its gift, The Wall of Great Wisdom, to the University of Macau yesterday, symbolizing the universitys effort to promote Chinese traditions, culture, and virtues. The sculpture bears UMs university motto and represents its goal to produce graduates with great knowledge and great character, the university informed in a statement. During a visit to Macau, Chen Baosheng, Chinas Minister of Education, said that the Wall of Great Wisdom also conveys the high expectations of the central government for the university, adding that it represents new requirements for UM members. Chen also recalled that in 1985, the Ministry of Education gave the Nine Dragon Wall to UM as a gift which conveyed the hope for the universitys fast development with the support of the local community and the central government. Meanwhile, UM rector Yonghua Song explained the design of the Wall of Great Wisdom, noting that the inscription of traditional values conveys the expectation that UM will promote fine Chinese traditions and culture. On the same day, the unveiling ceremony for the Confucius Institute at UM was officiated. The Confucius Institute at UM has the unique advantage of being located in a multilingual and multicultural society that is a special administrative region to which a special political system applies, UM noted. The institute will make full use of this advantage to pursue international collaboration, especially with Portuguese-speaking countries, in Chinese language teaching, learning, and teacher training. It also aims to establish a communication platform to promote such collaboration. The government yesterday presented the final decision on the rise of the bus fares. In a press conference, the director of the Transport Bureau, (DSAT) Lam Hin San, announced that every trip on public buses would cost, from this Saturday, MOP6. The adjusted fares have no inclusion of a fare for non-residents, an idea previously thought likely. At the press conference, Lam said, In operational terms we feel that at this moment the proposal [of an added differentiation] is not appropriate, TDM reported. As for payments made with a Macau Pass, holders will continue to benefit from special prices with a reduction to half-fare for the normal passes (MOP3) in the normal routes and to MOP4 on the express routes. Students, elderly citizens (over 65) and people with disabilities will all continue to benefit from specially reduced bus fares, in some cases not requiring to pay at all. After this update of bus fares, the first in 10 years, the government expects to cut around MOP150 million per year from the current budget of around MOP1 billion that the government is said to spend annually to keep the buses running with low fares. According to DSAT calculations, regions public buses were accountable for a total of 210 million trips last year, a figure that the government has forecast to increase by about 4 percent this year. Operators punished for traffic accidents One of the proposals announced by the director of the Transport Bureau, Lam Hin San, during the press conference held to announce the bus fare rise, was that the government might enforce penalties for bus companies involved in traffic accidents. Lam explained that such penalties can be enforced in such a way that companies that register a high number of road accidents will not have the same possibility to establish new routes contrary to other companies, TDM reported. The Secretary for Social Affairs and Culture, Alexis Tam, visited several health facilities on Friday, including the upcoming Ilha Verde Health Care Center and the new hospital pharmacy of the Conde de Sao Januario Hospital Center (CHCSJ) where he presided on the new facilitys inauguration ceremony to celebrate the completion of expansion works, the Health Bureau (SSM) informed in a statement. With a total area of 8,728 square meters, the new Ilha Verde Health Care Center will be the largest health care center of the region, and will open this summer to provide health services for an expected population of 96,000 residents. The SSM also noted that services have already been scheduled for the opening of the center, and health care personnel have already been allocated. Once open, this will be the third health care center located in the Northern area of Macau. The two other health care centers in Areia Preta and Fai Chi Kei will be also reorganized to provide better services to residents in the area, especially in the treatment of dementia and in the provision of services for children with special needs, physiotherapy, and others. The new facilities of the Ilha Verde Health Care Centre first underwent expansion and renovation works between July and December last year to add more space to the patients waiting area, and add new service counters to reduce the waiting time of patients at the pharmacy. During the visit to the facilities, the Secretary took note of the procedures for the collection, verification and delivery of medicines, and observed the operation of the new automatic dispensing machine opened last February. The new equipment was said to cut down on the waiting time for dispensing drugs by approximately one third, according to data from the SSM from March. The new automatic dispensing machine has the capability to dispense 2,400 boxes of medicine per hour and has a storage capacity of 13,500 medicine boxes. It can also automatically perform an inventory of the medicine stock and verify the expiration period of stored medicines, thus reducing waiting time and increasing the precision and quality of dispensing. Lawmaker Mak Soi Kun has written an inquiry to the government in which he suggested the establishment of a CCTV surveillance Sky Net system. Mak began by recalling some of the recent crimes committed across town and praised the police force for having solved them quickly. However, security is like seeing a doctor: prevention is better than treatment [] the social environment changes dramatically in one second; different crime methods continuously surface, and Macau is positively joining the development of the Greater Bay Area. As economies merge and communication among human resources occurs more frequently, the room for cross-border crimes increases as well as the possibility of terrorist attacks, Mak declared. Some residents asked me to ask the government if the administration authority should enhance the use of more advanced technologies. Some residents suggested that besides installing more CCTV cameras, [Macau] can refer to [the] mainlands practice of using artificial intelligence and big data to predict events, thus establishing a Macau Sky Net, said Mak, adding that Macau can introduce a real-time pedestrian detection system in order to establish a three-dimensional social security prevention and control system. The power of the police is limited, whereas the power of the people is unlimited. Will the administration authority upgrade the CCTV surveillance cameras into a CCTV surveillance sky net, [besides the cooperation] among the administration authority, related schools and associations? Mak asked. Tech or media? What to many people is an esoteric question could end up making a multibillion-dollar difference to Chinese companies that serve up content ranging from jokes to gossip. Technology firms, those ground-breaking companies with research teams hard at work building moats, are more highly prized than media counterparts that merely provide content. In the S&P 500, for example, tech firms trade as high as 30 times earnings, with software players leading the field a handy premium over media companies at 17.5 times. Facebook Inc. feels this pain. A drop in its P/E ratio was exacerbated by the Cambridge Analytica scandal, which reminded the world that advertising is the companys business model. From 32 times forward earnings two years ago, Zuckerbergs monster is now trading at 17.9 times. In China, there no longer seems to be any debate on the matter. Since Beijing can (and often does) step in to decide whats allowed across search, social media and news, its clear that regulators see these companies as more than just technology providers offering a neutral platform. China wants tech companies on its stock exchanges and is prepared to roll out the red carpet to make that happen, including possibly introducing Chinese depositary receipts. Taiwans Foxconn Technology Group was the beneficiary of this warm welcome when its Foxconn Industrial Internet Co. unit won listing approval in record time. Foxconn is just the kind of company President Xi Jinping wants. Vulgar content, not so much. Thats the label regulators gave to Neihan Duanzi, an app developed by Toutiao, one of the countrys hippest startups. The forum for sometimes off-color jokes, and other apps including some run by Tencent Holdings Ltd., was ordered to shut last week. Weibo Corp. made clear its a media company when it announced April 13 that it would delete posts relating to gay culture as part of a three-month cleanup, prompting a swift backlash from users. Yet Weibos 125 percent rally over the last year to a market value exceeding that of Twitter Inc. puts the stock at 41 times 2018 earnings, in the realm of tech companies, not media players. Analysts see Weibos revenue growing 57 percent this year, with EPS rising 76 percent. Startups are also thinking a little highly of themselves. Toutiao parent Beijing Bytedance Technology Co., which counts Sequoia Capital China, DST Global and Source Code Capital as investors, is already valued at USD11 billion, according to CB Insights. But unicorn status and four rounds of funding clearly arent enough: The Information reported in December that Bytedance is looking to a $30 billion valuation. China is now fast-tracking the IPO process for technology companies and easing profitability requirements. But heres the rub: The innovative companies Beijing wants must operate in fields of importance to national security, such as big data, cloud computing and artificial intelligence. Silly jokes and human rights dont count. So listed companies had better prepare for new valuation models. And startups might be better off not even attempting a Chinese IPO. Tim Culpan & Shuli Ren, Bloomberg Gadfly Bangladesh yesterday rejected a claim by Myanmar that the Buddhist-majority nation had repatriated the first five among some 700,000 Rohingya Muslim refugees who fled to the neighboring country to escape military-led violence against the minority group. A Myanmar government statement said Saturday that five members of a family had returned to western Rakhine state from the border area. It said the family was staying temporarily with relatives in Maungdaw town, the administrative center close to the border. The statement said authorities determined whether they had lived in Myanmar and provided them with a national verification card. The card is a form of ID, but does not mean citizenship something Rohingya have been denied in Myanmar, where theyve faced persecution for decades. The statement did not say whether any more repatriations were being planned. Bangladesh has given Myanmar a list of more than 8,000 refugees to begin the repatriations, but there have been delays due to a complicated verification process. Bangladeshs home minister, Asaduzzaman Khan, said Myanmars claim that the family had been repatriated was false, noting that the family had never reached Bangladeshi territory. Khan said Myanmars move was nothing but a farce. I hope Myanmar will take all the Rohingya families back within the shortest possible time, he said. Bangladeshs refugee, relief and repatriation commissioner, Abul Kalam, said the Rohingya family involved had never crossed the border. By no definition can this be called repatriation, he said by phone from Coxs Bazar. No repatriation has taken place. Bangladesh is no way part of it. Coxs Bazar is a district in Bangladesh where camps have been set up to shelter the Rohingya. Asif Munier, an independent refugee expert who had handled the Rohingya crisis in Bangladesh for years as part of the United Nations, said Myanmars claim was a public relations stunt. They are doing it again and again, he said. Bangladeshs government and the international community must ask Myanmar for an explanation for this move. While there is a bilateral process going on and international agencies are involved, such a move by Myanmar is again very unfortunate and unexpected. Myanmars social welfare minister, Win Myat Aye, who is leading the repatriation process, said yesterday that Myanmar had given the family the necessary documents. The five family members who re-entered Myanmar the other day were people who stayed along the border line between Myanmar and Bangladesh, he said. As they were repatriated, Myanmar officials, including from immigration, had verified them and gave them the paperwork they needed. Myanmars security forces have been accused of rape, killing, torture and the burning of the homes of Rohingya villagers after insurgents attacked about 30 police outposts on Aug. 25. The United Nations and the United States have described the army crackdown as ethnic cleansing. About 700,000 Rohingya Muslims flooded into neighboring Bangladesh to escape the violence. Bangladesh and Myanmar agreed in December to begin repatriating them in January, but there were concerns among aid workers and Rohingya that they would be forced to return and face unsafe conditions in Myanmar. On Friday, the U.N. refugee agency and Bangladesh finalized a memorandum of understanding that said the repatriation process must be safe, voluntary and dignified in line with international standards. UNHCR said it considers that conditions in Myanmar are not yet conducive for returns to be safe, dignified, and sustainable. 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. Rohingya Muslims have long been treated as outsiders in Myanmar, even though their families have lived in the country for generations. Nearly all have been denied citizenship since 1982, effectively rendering them stateless. They are denied freedom of movement and other basic rights. Julhas Alam, Dhaka, AP Facing a possible U.S. tariff hike, one of Chinas biggest ball bearing makers, Cixin Group, is weighing plans to rush shipments to American customers before the increase makes its sales unprofitable. The company in the eastern city of Ningbo is among exporters of goods from motorcycle parts to electronics that are scrambling to cope with President Donald Trumps higher duties by shipping early, raising prices or finding new markets. The 25 percent increase would turn Cixins profits to losses in the U.S. market, which takes 30 percent of its exports, according to Wang Liqiang, a company manager. We are considering manufacturing as many ball bearings as possible for the U.S. market before the imposition of tariffs, said Wang. We can do it by working overtime. Some companies are looking at ways to hide their Chinese origin by shipping goods through other countries. Maybe customers will buy from South America, and then South America sells to the U.S., said Yvonne Yuan, a sales manager for Shenzhen Tianya Lighting Co., a manufacturer of LED bulbs. Trump says higher duties on USD50 billion of Chinese goods are meant to punish Beijing for stealing or pressuring foreign companies to hand over foreign technology. The plan targets goods U.S. officials say benefit from improper Chinese policies including machinery, industrial components and aerospace, telecoms and other technology. Trump left time to negotiate. A public comment period runs through May 11, with a hearing scheduled May 15. Economists and Chinese officials say the tariff hikes overall impact on China should be limited. But for exporters that depend on the U.S. market, the potential costs are alarming. Knock-on effects could greatly increase the impact, Moodys Investors Service researchers said in a report. It said that Chinese manufacturers that supply inputs to targeted sectors would see reduced demand and more pricing pressure, spreading the effects of tariffs deeper into the Chinese economy. Manufacturing and processing of metals and metal products, as the key input sectors for technology-product manufacturing, would be hurt the most. Chinese exporters supply most of the worlds mobile phones, personal computers, televisions, toys and other light manufactured goods from thousands of factories. They are flexible and resourceful but many are struggling with higher costs and slowing demand. Chinas total exports last year rose 7.9 percent, down from the heady double-digit rates of the past decade. The United States buys about 20 percent of Chinas exports. But Americans are especially important to exporters because they buy electronics and other high-value goods, including many targeted by Trumps tariffs. Some exporters already are reeling from previous U.S. tariff increases of up to 500 percent on washing machines, solar modules and some metal products, meant to offset what the Trump administration says are improper subsidies that allow them to sell at unfairly low prices. Others are confident American customers cannot do without them. Makers of motorcycle components plan to use that leverage to ask buyers to split the cost if tariffs rise, said Pan Jianle, an official of the Motorcycle Parts Association in Wenzhou. She said they export worldwide but the United States is their No. 1 market. The U.S. motorcycle parts industry relies heavily on China, said Pan. It is difficult for U.S. customers to find products with good quality and value for money from other places. Such a politically charged conflict has left companies and local Chinese officials jumpy. Pan declined to provide the value of exports of motorcycle components to the United States. A few hours later, the Wenzhou city governments foreign affairs office called AP to ask about its interviews. Electronics manufacturers also plan to ask buyers to share higher costs, said Li Zengyou, secretary general of the local manufacturing chamber of commerce in the eastern city of Zibo in Shandong province. Zibos electronics exports to the United States last year totaled USD1 billion, according to Li. That would mean if the tariff hike applied to all their sales, it could add $250 million to the cost. If higher tariffs hit, they will raise the price, said Li. If the U.S. customers failed to accept it, they would stop exporting to the United States and turn to explore other markets. Ningbo-based Cixin Groups margins in the United States are about 10 percent, which would be wiped out by a 25 percent tariff hike, said Wang. The company also exports to Europe and Latin America. We cant bear all the costs, he said. We can try to increase our exports to other countries, but it is not easy to establish a long-term relationship with new customers. Joe McDonald, Beijing, AP Former FBI Director James Comey said he believed that Donald Trump was morally unfit to be president and that he treated women like pieces of meat. A person who sees moral equivalence in Charlottesville, who talks about and treats women like theyre pieces of meat, who lies constantly about matters big and small and insists the American people believe it that persons not fit to be president of the United States, on moral grounds, Comey said. In a rather disturbing statement, the former FBI chief says he thinks its possible the Russians have compromising information on President Donald Trump, that there is some evidence of obstruction of justice in the presidents actions and that Trump is morally unfit for office. Comeys comments in an ABC News interview that aired yesterday [Macau time] were almost certain to escalate his war of words with the president and further erode a relationship marked by open hostility and name-calling. Hours before the interview aired, the president, who fired Comey last year, unleashed a Twitter outburst that labeled Comey slippery, suggested he should be put in jail and branded him the WORST FBI Director in history, by far! Comeys televised remarks, coupled with the release of his forthcoming book, offer his version of events surrounding his firing and the investigations into Russian election meddling and Hillary Clintons email practices. Several of the episodes he describes in detail, including a private conversation about former White House national security adviser Michael Flynn, are central to special counsel Robert Muellers investigation and his recollections are presumably valuable for prosecutors examining whether the presidents actions constitute obstruction of justice. The FBI director, who until his firing last May led an investigation into possible ties between Russia and the Trump campaign, acknowledged that it was stunning to think that Russia could have damaging information about an American president. But he said that in Trumps case, he could not discount the possibility that the president had been compromised. These are more words I never thought Id utter about a president of the United States, but its possible, Comey told ABC News chief anchor George Stephanopoulos. He also answered possibly when asked if the president was attempting to obstruct justice when he cleared the Oval Office of other officials last February before encouraging him to close the investigation into Flynn, who by that point was suspected of lying to the FBI about his Russian contacts. The retired general pleaded guilty last December and is now cooperating with Muellers investigation. Trump rejected Comeys assertion that Trump had sought his loyalty at a January 2017 dinner, saying I hardly even knew this guy. Just another of his many lies. He also suggested Comey should be imprisoned, saying, how come he gave up Classified Information (jail), why did he lie to Congress (jail). There is no indication Comey is under investigation for doing either. Asked if the president wanted the Justice Department to investigate Comey, White House spokeswoman Sarah Huckabee Sanders said Sunday on ABCs This Week that she was not aware of a specific request. But, she said, if they feel there was any wrongdoing, they should certainly look into that just as they do on a number of other topics. But the presidents attacks on Comey began even before the interview aired. He seized on an excerpt shown Saturday in which Comey said his belief that Clinton would beat Trump in the 2016 presidential election was probably a factor in his decision to disclose the investigation into her emails. Comey, Trump tweeted, was making decisions based on the fact that he thought she was going to win, and he wanted a job. Slimeball! That argument was startling given that Comeys handling of the email investigation, including his disclosure shortly before the election that the FBI had reopened its probe, enraged Democrats. After Clintons loss, many Democrats blamed Comey, and Clinton herself has said it hurt her election prospects. Comey again defended his actions, telling ABC that he made what he thought was the best decision at the time. Comey said he did not remember consciously thinking about the election results as he decided to disclose that the FBI had reopened its investigation into candidate Clintons email use. But, he acknowledged, I was operating in a world where Hillary Clinton was going to beat Donald Trump, and so Im sure that it was a factor. I dont remember spelling it out, he added, but it had to have been that shes going to be elected president and if I hide this from the American people, shell be illegitimate the moment shes elected, the moment this comes out. Former Attorney General Loretta Lynch pushed back against Comeys criticism in the book that, early in the Clinton email inquiry, she had instructed him to refer to it as a matter rather than an investigation. In a statement Sunday, Lynch said she was simply following longstanding Justice Department protocol against confirming or denying the existence of an investigation. Trump fired Comey in May 2017, setting off a scramble at the Justice Department that led to the appointment of Mueller as special counsel overseeing the Russia investigation. Muellers probe has expanded to include whether Trump obstructed justice by firing Comey. So far, 19 people including Flynn and Trumps former campaign chairman, Paul Manafort have been charged in the investigation. Flynn and two of the presidents campaign aides, Rick Gates and George Papadopoulos, have pleaded guilty and are cooperating with Mueller. Asked whether he believed Trump ought to be impeached, Comey replied, I hope not because I think impeaching and removing Donald Trump from office would let the American people off the hook and have something happen indirectly that I believe theyre duty bound to do directly. People in this country need to stand up and go to the voting booth and vote their values. He added: But you cannot have, as president of the United States, someone who does not reflect the values that I believe Republicans treasure and Democrats treasure and Independents treasure. That is the core of this country. Thats our foundation. And so impeachment, in a way, would short circuit that. MDT/AP Altiplano Metals Inc., a junior resource company, focuses on evaluating and acquiring exploration projects. The company explores for copper and gold deposits. Its flagship property is the Farellon project located near the town of La Serena, Chile. The company also owns interest in the Maria Luisa project located near the town of La Serena, Chile. The company was formerly known as Altiplano Minerals Ltd. Altiplano Metals Inc. was incorporated in 2010 and is headquartered in Edmonton, Canada. Read More Freeport-McMoRan, Inc. engages in the mining of copper, gold and molybdenum. It operates through the following segments: North America Copper Mines, South America Mining; Indonesia Mining, Molybdenum Mines, Rod and Refining, Atlantic Copper Smelting and Refining and Corporate, Other and Eliminations. The North America Copper Mines segment operates open-pit copper mines in Morenci, Bagdad, Safford, Sierrita and Miami in Arizona and Chino and Tyrone in New Mexico. The South America Mining segment includes Cerro Verde in Peru and El Abra in Chile. The Indonesia Mining segment handles the operations of Grasberg minerals district that produces copper concentrate that contains significant quantities of gold and silver. The Molybdenum Mines segment includes the Henderson underground mine and Climax open-pit mine, both in Colorado. The Rod and Refining segment consists of copper conversion facilities located in North America and includes a refinery, rod mills, and a specialty copper products facility. The Atlantic Copper Smelting and Refining segment smelts and refines copper concentrate and markets refined copper and precious metals in slimes. The Corporate, Other and Eliminations segment Read More ICICI Bank Ltd. engages in the provision of banking and financial services, which includes retail banking, corporate banking, and treasury operations. It operates through the following segments: Retail Banking, Wholesale Banking, Treasury, Other Banking, Life Insurance, General Insurance, and Others. The Retail Banking segment includes exposures of the bank, which satisfy the four qualifying criteria of regulatory retail portfolio as stipulated by the Reserve Bank of India guidelines on the Basel III framework. The Wholesale Banking segment deals with all advances to trusts, partnership firms, companies, and statutory bodies, by the Bank which are not included in the Retail Banking segment. The Treasury segment handles the entire investment portfolio of the bank. The Other Banking segment comprises leasing operations and other items not attributable to any particular business segment of the bank. The company was founded on January 5, 1994 and is headquartered in Mumbai, India. Read More The following companies are subsidiares of Abbott Laboratories: 3A Nutrition (Vietnam) Company Limited, ABON Biopharm (Hangzhou) Co. Ltd., AGA Medical Belgium, AGA Medical Corporation, AGA Medical Holdings Inc., ALR Holdings, AML Medical LLC, APK Advanced Medical Technologies LLC, ATS Bermuda Holdings Limited, ATS Laboratories Inc., Abbott, Abbott (Jiaxing) Nutrition Co. Ltd., Abbott (UK) Finance Limited, Abbott (UK) Holdings Limited, Abbott AG, Abbott Asia Holdings Limited, Abbott Asia Investments Limited, Abbott Australasia Holdings Limited, Abbott Australasia Pty Ltd, Abbott B.V., Abbott Bahamas Overseas Businesses Corporation, Abbott Belgian Investments, Abbott Bermuda Holding Ltd., Abbott Biologicals B.V., Abbott Biologicals LLC, Abbott Bulgaria Luxembourg S.a r.l., Abbott Capital India Limited, Abbott Cardiovascular Inc., Abbott Cardiovascular Systems Inc., Abbott Delaware LLC, Abbott Diabetes Care Inc., Abbott Diabetes Care Limited, Abbott Diabetes Care Sales Corporation, Abbott Diagnostics GmbH, Abbott Diagnostics International Ltd., Abbott Diagnostics Technologies AS, Abbott Doral Investments S.L., Abbott Equity Holdings Unlimited, Abbott Equity Investments LLC, Abbott Established Products Holdings (Gibraltar) Limited, Abbott Finance Company SA, Abbott Financial Holdings SRL, Abbott France S.A.S., Abbott Fund Tanzania Limited, Abbott Gesellschaft m.b.H., Abbott GmbH & Co. KG, Abbott Health Products LLC, Abbott Healthcare (Puerto Rico) Ltd., Abbott Healthcare B.V., Abbott Healthcare Costa Rica S.A., Abbott Healthcare LLC, Abbott Healthcare Luxembourg S.a r.l., Abbott Healthcare Private Limited, Abbott Healthcare Products B.V., Abbott Healthcare Products Ltd, Abbott Holding (Gibraltar) Limited, Abbott Holding GmbH, Abbott Holding Subsidiary (Gibraltar) Limited, Abbott Holding Subsidiary (Gibraltar) Limited Luxembourg S.C.S., Abbott Holdings B.V., Abbott Holdings LLC, Abbott Holdings Limited, Abbott Holdings Poland Spoka z ograniczona odpowiedzialnoscia, Abbott Hungary Korlatolt Felelossegu Tarsasag, Abbott Iberian Investments (2) Limited, Abbott Iberian Investments Limited, Abbott India Limited, Abbott Informatics Asia Pacific Limited, Abbott Informatics Canada Inc, Abbott Informatics Corporation, Abbott Informatics Europe Limited, Abbott Informatics France, Abbott Informatics Germany GmbH, Abbott Informatics Netherlands B.V., Abbott Informatics Singapore Pte. Limited, Abbott Informatics Spain S.A., Abbott Informatics Technologies Ltd, Abbott International Corporation, Abbott International Enterprises Ltd., Abbott International Holdings Limited, Abbott International LLC, Abbott International Luxembourg S.ar.l., Abbott Investments Luxembourg S.a r.l., Abbott Ireland, Abbott Ireland Financing Designated Activity Company, Abbott Ireland Limited, Abbott Japan Co. Ltd., Abbott Kazakhstan Limited Liability Partnership, Abbott Knoll Investments B.V., Abbott Korea Limited, Abbott Laboratories (Bangladesh) Limited, Abbott Laboratories (Chile) Holdco (Dos) SpA, Abbott Laboratories (Chile) Holdco SpA, Abbott Laboratories (Malaysia) Sdn. Bhd., Abbott Laboratories (Mozambique) Limitada, Abbott Laboratories (Pakistan) Limited, Abbott Laboratories (Philippines), Abbott Laboratories (Puerto Rico) Incorporated, Abbott Laboratories (Singapore) Private Limited, Abbott Laboratories A/S, Abbott Laboratories Argentina Sociedad Anonima, Abbott Laboratories B.V., Abbott Laboratories C.A., Abbott Laboratories Finance B.V., Abbott Laboratories GmbH, Abbott Laboratories Inc., Abbott Laboratories International LLC, Abbott Laboratories Ireland Limited, Abbott Laboratories Limited, Abbott Laboratories Limited - Laboratoires Abbott Limitee, Abbott Laboratories NZ Limited, Abbott Laboratories Pacific Ltd., Abbott Laboratories Poland Spoka z ograniczona odpowiedzialnoscia, Abbott Laboratories Products B.V., Abbott Laboratories Residential Development Fund Inc., Abbott Laboratories S.A., Abbott Laboratories SA, Abbott Laboratories Services Corp., Abbott Laboratories Slovakia s.r.o., Abbott Laboratories South Africa (Pty) Ltd., Abbott Laboratories Trading (Shanghai) Co. Ltd., Abbott Laboratories Trustee Company Limited, Abbott Laboratories Uruguay S.A., Abbott Laboratories Vascular Enterprises, Abbott Laboratories d.o.o., Abbott Laboratories de Chile Limitada, Abbott Laboratories de Colombia S.A., Abbott Laboratories de Mexico S.A. de C.V., Abbott Laboratories druzba za farmacijo in diagnostiko d.o.o., Abbott Laboratories s.r.o., Abbott Laboratories(Hellas) Societe Anonyme, Abbott Laboratorios S.A., Abbott Laboratorios S.A., Abbott Laboratorios del Ecuador Cia. Ltda., Abbott Laboratuarlari Ithalat Ihracat ve Ticaret Ltd.Sti, Abbott Laboratorios Lda, Abbott Laboratorios do Brasil Ltda., Abbott Limited Egypt LLC, Abbott Logistics B.V., Abbott Management GmbH, Abbott Management LLC, Abbott Manufacturing Singapore Private Limited, Abbott Mature Products International Unlimited Company, Abbott Mature Products Management Limited, Abbott Medical (Hong Kong) Limited, Abbott Medical (Malaysia) Sdn. Bhd., Abbott Medical (Portugal) Distribuicao de Produtos Medicos Lda, Abbott Medical (Schweiz) AG, Abbott Medical (Shanghai) Co. Ltd., Abbott Medical (Singapore) Pte. Ltd., Abbott Medical (Thailand) Co. Ltd., Abbott Medical Australia Pty. Ltd., Abbott Medical Austria Ges.m.b.H., Abbott Medical Balkan d.o.o. Beograd (Novi Beograd), Abbott Medical Belgium, Abbott Medical Canada Inc./ Medicale Abbott Canada Inc., Abbott Medical Danmark A/S, Abbott Medical Devices Trading (Shanghai) Co. Ltd., Abbott Medical Espana S.A., Abbott Medical Estonia OU, Abbott Medical Finland Oy, Abbott Medical France SAS, Abbott Medical GmbH, Abbott Medical Hellas Limited Liability Trading Company, Abbott Medical Ireland Limited, Abbott Medical Italia S.p.A., Abbott Medical Japan Co. Ltd., Abbott Medical Korea Limited, Abbott Medical Korlatolt Felelossegu Tarsasag, Abbott Medical Laboratories LTD, Abbott Medical Nederland B.V., Abbott Medical New Zealand Limited, Abbott Medical Norway AS, Abbott Medical Overseas Cyprus Limited, Abbott Medical Sweden AB, Abbott Medical Taiwan Co., Abbott Medical U.K. Limited, Abbott Medical spoka z ograniczona odpowiedzialnoscia, Abbott Middle East S.A.R.L., Abbott Molecular Inc., Abbott Morocco SARL, Abbott Nederland C.V., Abbott Nederland Luxembourg S.a r.l., Abbott Netherlands Investments B.V., Abbott Norge AS, Abbott Nutrition Limited, Abbott Nutrition Manufacturing Inc., Abbott Operations Singapore Pte. Ltd., Abbott Operations Uruguay S.R.L., Abbott Overseas Cyprus Limited, Abbott Overseas Luxembourg S.a r.l., Abbott Overseas S.A., Abbott Oy, Abbott Point of Care Canada Limited, Abbott Point of Care Inc., Abbott Poland Luxembourg S.a r.l., Abbott Procurement LLC, Abbott Products (Philippines) Inc., Abbott Products (Spain) S.L., Abbott Products Algerie EURL, Abbott Products B.V., Abbott Products Distribution SAS, Abbott Products Egypt LLC, Abbott Products Limited, Abbott Products Limited Liability Company, Abbott Products Luxembourg S.a r.l., Abbott Products Operations AG, Abbott Products Operations LLC, Abbott Products Romania S.R.L., Abbott Products Tunisie S.A.R.L., Abbott Products Unlimited Company, Abbott Resources Inc., Abbott Resources International Inc., Abbott S.r.l., Abbott Saudi Arabia Trading Company, Abbott Scandinavia Aktiebolag, Abbott Sociedad Anonima de Capital Variable, Abbott South Africa Luxembourg S.a r.l., Abbott Strategic Opportunities Limited, Abbott Trading Company Inc., Abbott Universal LLC, Abbott Vascular Devices (2) Limited, Abbott Vascular Devices Limited, Abbott Vascular Inc., Abbott Vascular Instruments Deutschland GmbH, Abbott Vascular International, Abbott Vascular Japan Co. Ltd, Abbott Vascular Limitada, Abbott Vascular Netherlands B.V., Abbott Vascular Solutions Inc., Abbott Ventures Inc., Abbott West Indies Limited, Abbott drustvo sa ogranicenom odgovornoscu za trgovinu i usluge, Advanced Neuromodulation Systems Inc., Alere, Alere (Shanghai) Diagnostics Co. Ltd., Alere (Shanghai) Healthcare Management Co. Ltd., Alere (Shanghai) Medical Sales Co. Ltd., Alere (Shanghai) Technology Co. Ltd., Alere A/S, Alere AB, Alere AS, Alere AS Holdings Limited, Alere BBI Holdings Limited, Alere Bangladesh Limited, Alere China Co. Ltd., Alere Colombia S.A., Alere Connect LLC, Alere Connected Health Limited, Alere Connected Health Ltd., Alere Diagnostics GmbH, Alere DoA Holding GmbH, Alere GmbH, Alere GmbH (Austria), Alere GmbH (Germany), Alere HK Holdings Ltd., Alere Health B.V., Alere Health BVBA, Alere Health Corp., Alere Health Sdn Bhd, Alere Health Services B.V., Alere Healthcare (Pty) Limited, Alere Healthcare Connections Limited, Alere Healthcare Inc., Alere Healthcare Nigeria Limited, Alere Healthcare S.L., Alere Holdco Inc., Alere Holding GmbH, Alere Holdings Bermuda Limited, Alere Holdings Pty Limited, Alere Home Monitoring Inc., Alere Inc., Alere Informatics Inc., Alere International Holding Corp., Alere International Limited, Alere Lda, Alere Limited, Alere Limited (New Zealand), Alere Medical BVBA, Alere Medical Co. Ltd., Alere Medical Pakistan (Private) Limited, Alere Medical Private Limited, Alere North America LLC, Alere Oy Ab, Alere Philippines Inc., Alere Phoenix ACQ Inc., Alere Pte Ltd, Alere S.A., Alere S.r.l., Alere S/A, Alere SAS, Alere San Diego Inc., Alere Scarborough Inc., Alere Spain S.L., Alere Switzerland GmbH, Alere Technologies GmbH, Alere Technologies Holdings Limited, Alere Technologies Limited, Alere Toxicology AB, Alere Toxicology Inc., Alere Toxicology S.r.l., Alere Toxicology Services Inc., Alere Toxicology plc, Alere UK Holdings Limited, Alere UK Subco Limited, Alere ULC, Alere US Holdings LLC, Alere s.r.o., Alisoc Investment & Co, Amedica Biotech Inc., Ameditech Inc., American Generics S.A.S., American Medical Supplies Inc., American Pharmacist Inc., Antares S.A., Apica Cardiovascular Limited, Aquagestion Capacitacion S.A., Aquagestion S.A., Arriva Medical LLC, Arriva Medical Philippines Inc., Arvis Investments Limited, Atlas Farmaceutica S.A., Avee Laboratories Inc., Axis-Shield AD III AS, Axis-Shield AD IV AS, Axis-Shield AS, Axis-Shield Diagnostics Limited, Axis-Shield Ltd., BBI Animal Health Limited, BBI Diagnostics Group 2 Public Limited Company, Banco de Vida S.A., Bioabsorbable Vascular Solutions Inc., Bioalgae S.A., Biohealth LLC, Biosite Incorporated, Bosque Bonito S.A., Branan Medical Corporation, Brandex Europe C.V., British Colloids Limited, CFR Chile S.A., CFR Interamericas EL Salvador Sociedad Anonima de Capital Variable, CFR Interamericas Nicaragua Sociedad Anonima, CFR Interamericas Panama S.A., CFR Pharmaceuticals, California Property Holdings III LLC, CardioMEMS LLC, Caripharm Inc., Cephea Valve Technologies, Cephea Valve Technologies Inc., Colibri Medical Aktiebolag, Comercializadora y Distribuidora CFR Interamericas Honduras S.A., Concateno South Limited, Concateno UK Limited, Consorcio Tecnologico en Biomedicina Clinico-Molecular S.A., Continuum Services LLC, Cozart Limited, Dextech S.A., Diagnostik Nord GmbH, Distribuciones Uquifa S.A.S., Domesco Medical Import-Export Joint-Stock Corporation, Duphar International Research B.V., Endocardial Solutions, Epocal (US) Inc, Esprit de Vie S.A., European Chemicals & Co, European Drug Testing Service EDTS AB, European Services S.A., Evalve Inc., Evalve International Inc., FARMINDUSTRIA S.A., Fada Pharma Paraguay Sociedad Anonima, Fadapharma del Ecuador S.A., Farmaceutica Mont Blanc S.L., Farmacologia Em Aquicultura Veterinaria Ltda., Farmacologia en Aquacultura Veterinaria FAV Ecuador S.A., Farmacologia en Aquacultura Veterinaria FAV S.A., Fernwood Investment S.A., First Check Diagnostics LLC, Focus Pharmaceutical S.A.S., Forensics Limited, Forestcreek Overseas S.A., Fournier Pharma Corp., Fournier Pharma GmbH, Fournier Pharmaceuticals Limited, Framed B.V., Gabmed GmbH, Garden Hills LLC, Global Analytical Development LLC, Globapharm & CO LP, Glomed Pharmaceutical Company Limited, Golnorth Investments S.A., Gynocare Limited, Gynopharm Sociedad Anonima, Gynopharm de Centroamerica S.A., Gynopharm de Venezuela C.A., Hi-Tronics Designs Inc., IDEV Technologies Inc., IG Innovations Limited, IMTC Finance B.V., IMTC Holdings B.V., IMTC Technologies Inc., Ibis Biosciences LLC, Igloo Zone Chile S.A., Igloo Zone S.L., Inmobiliaria Naknek S.A.C., Innovacon Inc., Instant Tech Subsidiary Acquisition Inc., Instant Technologies Inc., Instituto de Criopreservacion de Chile S.A., Integrated Vascular Systems Inc., Inverness Canadian Acquisition Corporation, Inverness Medical (Beijing) Co. Ltd., Inverness Medical Innovations Australia Pty Ltd., Inverness Medical Innovations Hong Kong Limited, Inverness Medical Innovations SK LLC, Inverness Medical Investments LLC, Inverness Medical LLC, Inverness Medical Shimla Private Limited, Inversiones K2 SpA, Inversiones Komodo S.R.L., Ionian Technologies LLC, Irvine Biomedical Inc., Kalila Medical, Kangshenyunga S.A., Knoll UK Investments Unlimited, LLC VeroInPharm, Laboratoires Fournier S.A.S., Laboratorio Franco Colombiano Lafrancol S.A.S., Laboratorio Franco Colombiano del Ecuador S.A., Laboratorio Internacional Argentino S.A., Laboratorio Synthesis S.A.S., Laboratorios Lafi Limitada, Laboratorios Naturmedik S.A.S., Laboratorios Pauly Pharmaceutical S.A.S., Laboratorios Recalcine S.A., Laboratorios Transpharm S.A., Laboratory Specialists of America Inc., Lafrancol Dominicana S.A.S., Lafrancol Guatemala S.A. Sociedad Anonima, Lafrancol Internacional S.A.S, Lafrancol Peru S.R.L, Lake Forest Investments LLC, Lightlab Imaging Inc., Limited Liability Company Abbott Laboratories, Limited Liability Company Abbott Ukraine, Limited Liability Company VEROPHARM, Lung Fung Hong (China) Limited, Mansbridge Pharmaceuticals Limited, MediGuide LLC, MediGuide Ltd., Medscreen Holdings Limited, Metropolitana Farmaceutica S.A., Midwest Properties LLC, Murex Argentina S.A., Murex Biotech Limited, Murex Biotech South Africa, Murex Diagnostics Inc., Murex Diagnostics International Inc., Natural Supplement Association LLC, Negocios Denia Sociedad Anonima, Neosalud S.A.C., Nether Pharma N.P. C.V., NeuroTherm LLC, Normann Pharma-Handels GmbH, North Shore Properties Inc., Novamedi S.A., Novasalud.com S.A., Nutravida S.A., OJSC Voronezhkhimpharm, Omnilab Iberia Sociedad Limitada, OptiMedica, Orgenics France SAS, Orgenics International Holdings B.V., Orgenics Ltd., PBM-Selfcare LLC, PDD II LLC, PDD LLC, PT Alere Health, PT. Abbott Indonesia, PT. Abbott Products Indonesia, Pacesetter Inc., Pantech (RF) (PTY) LTD, Pembrooke Occupational Health Inc., Penagos S.A., Pharma International Sociedad Anonima, Pharmaceutical Technologies (Pharmatech) S.A., Pharmatech Boliviana S.A., Polygon Labs S.A., Quality Assured Services Inc., RF Medical Holdings LLC, RTL Holdings Inc., Ramses Business Corp., Recben Xenerics Farmaceutica Limitada, Redwood Toxicology Laboratory Inc., Rich Horizons International Limited, SC VEROPHARM, SJ Medical Mexico S de R.L. de C.V., SJM International Inc., SJM Thunder Holding Company, SPDH Inc., Saboya Enterprises Corporation, Salviac Limited, Scanax AS, Sealing Solutions Inc., Selfcare Technology Inc., Shandong Abbott Dairy Product Co. Ltd., Shanghai Abbott Medical Devices Science and Technology Co. Ltd., Shanghai Abbott Pharmaceutical Co. Ltd., Shanghai Si Fa Pharmaceutical Company Limited, Sinensix & Co., Spinal Modulation LLC, St. Jude Medical, St. Jude Medical AB, St. Jude Medical ATG Inc., St. Jude Medical Argentina S.A., St. Jude Medical Asia Pacific Holdings GK, St. Jude Medical Atrial Fibrillation Division Inc., St. Jude Medical Brasil Ltda., St. Jude Medical Business Services Inc., St. Jude Medical Cardiology Division Inc., St. Jude Medical Colombia Ltda., St. Jude Medical Coordination Center, St. Jude Medical Costa Rica Limitada, St. Jude Medical Europe Inc., St. Jude Medical Export Ges.m.b.H., St. Jude Medical GVA Sarl, St. Jude Medical Holdings B.V., St. Jude Medical India Private Limited, St. Jude Medical International Holding, St. Jude Medical LLC, St. Jude Medical Luxembourg, St. Jude Medical Luxembourg Holdings II, St. Jude Medical Luxembourg Holdings NT, St. Jude Medical Luxembourg Holdings SMI S.a r.l., St. Jude Medical Luxembourg Holdings TC S.a r.l., St. Jude Medical Mexico Business Services S. de R.L. de C.V., St. Jude Medical Middle East DMCC, St. Jude Medical Operations (Malaysia) Sdn. Bhd., St. Jude Medical Puerto Rico LLC, St. Jude Medical S.C. Inc., St. Jude Medical Systems AB, St. Jude Medical Turkey Medikal Urunler Ticaret Limited Sirketi, Standard Diagnostics Inc., Standing Stone LLC, Swan-Myers Incorporated, TC1 LLC, Tendyne Holdings Inc., Tendyne Medical Inc., Thoratec Delaware LLC, Thoratec Europe Limited, Thoratec LLC, Thoratec Switzerland GmbH, Tobal Products Incorporated, Topera GmbH in Liquidation, Topera Inc., Tremora S.A., Tuenir S.A., TwistDx, UAB Abbott Laboratories, UAB Abbott Medical Lithuania, Union-Madison Realty Company Inc., Unipath Limited (dba Alere International/aka Cranfield), Unipath Management Limited, Unipath Pension Trustee Limited, Veropharm, Veropharm Limited Liability Partnership, Vida Cell Inversiones S.A., Vida Cell S.A., Vivalsol, W&R Pharma Handels GmbH, Western Pharmaceuticals S.A., X Technologies Inc., Yissum Holding Limited, ZonePerfect Nutrition Company, eScreen Canada ULC, eScreen Inc., ( ), and Abbott Laboratories Baltics. April 17, 2018 16:37 The VI Eurasian Hematology Forum and the XXXIII EAFO Oncopathology Seminar Hematolymphoid Malignancies will be held from May 11 to 13, at Elite Plaza Business Center in Yerevan, Armenia. These events will be held by the EAFO Board of Directors and the organizing committee of the aforesaid seminar. The mission of the Forum is to provide communication, education and interaction for the large variety of specialists and trainees involved in research, diagnostics and treatment of hematological disorders. The Scientific Program will be presented by leading hematologists, pathologists and researchers from centers of excellence across the world. The program of the Forum will be focused on the biology, research, diagnostics and treatment of hematological disorders as well as important issues of quality of life of patients with hematological disorders. Follow NEWS.am Medicine on Facebook and Twitter Is this the next generation of cancer treatment and management? Credit: Dr Susan Woods, SAHMRI Researchers at the South Australian Health and Medical Research Institute (SAHMRI) and the University of Adelaide have discovered a faster, more cost-effective way to determine which DNA mutations cause human bowel cancer. This research, published in Gut, a premier world journal for colorectal cancer research, outlines a new preclinical pipeline, where different DNA changes are engineered into the normal colon in rapid time, cutting years off traditional laboratory experiments. The growing cancers can then be monitored in the state-of-the-art SAHMRI imaging centre by colonoscopy, CT, special in vivo imaging and PET. Harnessing the power of technology to improve health outcomes for bowel cancer More than 4,000 Australians die from bowel cancer each year, and more than 17,000 new cases of this cancer will be diagnosed in 2018 - the Gastrointestinal Cancer Biology Group are working to understand the genetic drivers of bowel cancer, with a special interest in those cancers which are the hardest to treat, and which have the poorest prognosis. Study Co-Lead, Dr Susan Woods, said that with recent advances in genome sequencing more information than ever before is available about changes to the inherited material, or DNA, that occur in bowel cancer. Combined with exciting new gene editing technology (CRISPR), we can now deliver the same outcomes in less than a quarter of the time, meaning we can take research from the bench to the patient far more rapidly, and with far less cost. "Now, we have rapidly made new models of bowel cancer that mimic the complex genetic (DNA) changes that we see in human tumours and recapitulate features of the human disease," Dr Woods said. "Our new technology allows us to screen and repurpose existing drugs which may not have been tested in bowel cancer, to screen potential new life-saving drugs as they are developed, and to improve bowel cancer detection, by being able to watch the cancer develop in real time." A new way forward This new method helps determine which DNA changes are important to the cancer, in a fraction of the time, at less expense and using fewer animals than traditional genetically-engineered models that are used in cancer research. Analysis of the models, combined with patient data, has suggested potential drug vulnerabilities that are being tested. Explore further Binge watching TV could increase bowel cancer risk in men More information: Tamsin R M Lannagan et al, Genetic editing of colonic organoids provides a molecularly distinct and orthotopic preclinical model of serrated carcinogenesis, Gut (2018). Journal information: Gut Tamsin R M Lannagan et al, Genetic editing of colonic organoids provides a molecularly distinct and orthotopic preclinical model of serrated carcinogenesis,(2018). DOI: 10.1136/gutjnl-2017-315920 Killer T cells surround a cancer cell. Credit: NIH Despite the great successes of targeted cancer drugs and the promise of novel immunotherapies, the vast majority of people diagnosed with cancer are still first treated with chemotherapy. Now a new study by UCSF researchers using techniques drawn from computational biology could make it much easier for physicians to use the genetic profile of a patient's tumor to pick the chemotherapy treatment with the fewest side effects and best chance of success. "Since 95 percent of cancer patients still get chemo, we realized we could make a major impact on cancer treatment by helping clinicians prescribe the right chemotherapy drug," said Sourav Bandyopadhyay, PhD, a professor of bioengineering and therapeutic sciences in UCSF's Schools of Pharmacy and Medicine and senior author on the new study. Chemotherapies are potent toxins delivered into the bloodstream to kill tumor cells throughout the body by damaging DNA in rapidly dividing cells. However, these poisons can also do significant harm to other dividing cells such as those found in the stomach lining and in hair and nail follicles, as well as the blood and immune stem cells in the bone marrow. In addition, cancer cells' susceptibility to these agents varies widely, and tumors often develop resistance to drugs that initially seem effective. There are more than 100 chemotherapy agents in wide use, but oncologists have very little information to guide their decisions about which of these drugs to use in a given patient. These decisions are typically guided by the drugs' average historical success rate for different types of cancer, rather than any understanding of how the chemotherapy drug will interact with the genetic profile of a specific tumor. "We know very little about how gene mutations in tumor cells can change how a tumor might respond or not to certain chemotherapy drugs. Mapping these sorts of connections could make it possible to optimize which drugs patients get based on their tumor genetics," said Bandyopadhyay, a member of the UCSF Helen Diller Family Comprehensive Cancer Center and the Quantitative Biosciences Institute. Nowin a paper published online April 17, 2018 in Cell ReportsBandyopadhyay's lab has systematically mapped connections between 625 breast and ovarian cancer genes and nearly every FDA approved chemotherapy for breast or ovarian cancer. Led by Hsien-Ming "Kevin" Hu, PhD, Bandyopadhyay's group developed a high-throughput combinatorial approach that allowed them to perform 80,000 experiments in laboratory dishes in a matter of weeks. The authors said their results, which they have made publicly available, constitute an invaluable resource to help clinicians predict which chemotherapies will be most effective against tumor cells with particular genetic mutations, and how to rationally combine therapies to prevent cancers from developing resistance. "We're trying to take a systems view of chemotherapy resistance," said Bandyopadhyay. "With rarer mutations in particular there aren't enough patients for large clinical trials to be able to identify biomarkers of resistance, but by considering all the different potential genetic factors that have been identified together in one study, we can robustly predict from experiments in laboratory dishes how cancers with different genetic mutations will respond to different treatments." The team began by identifying hundreds of genes frequently mutated in human cancers: 200 implicated in breast cancer, 170 linked to ovarian cancer, and 134 involved in DNA repair, which is compromised in many types of cancer. They then mimicked the effects of such mutations in lab dishes by systematically inactivating each of these cancer-associated genes in healthy human cells, creating 625 different perturbations that mirrored distinct genetic mutations seen in real breast and ovarian cancers. The researchers then exposed cells from each of these lines to a panel of 31 different drug treatmentsincluding 23 chemotherapy compounds approved by the FDA for breast and ovarian cancers, six targeted cancer drugs, and two common drug combinations. An automated microscopy system monitored the cells' health and recorded which groups of cells were killed, which survived, and which developed resistance when exposed to a particular treatment. The resulting "map" of gene-drug interactions allowed the researchers to accurately predict the responses of multiple human cancer cell lines to different chemotherapy agents based on the cell lines' genetic profiles and also revealed new genetic factors that appear to determine the response of breast and ovarian tumor cells to common classes of chemotherapy treatment. As a proof of principle, the researchers collaborated with Clovis Oncology, a biotech company based in Boulder, Colorado, which is running a clinical trial of drugs known as PARP inhibitors in patients with stage II ovarian cancer. Based on their gene-drug interaction map, the researchers predicted that mutations in two genes, called ARID1A and GPBP1, could contribute to ovarian cancer's ability to develop resistance to this class of drugs. Results from the clinical trial bore out these predictions: patients with these mutations were significantly more likely to develop resistance. Bandyopadhyay's team has deposited the trove of data generated in the new study in a database maintained by the National Cancer Institute so that other researchers can mine it for information about drug combinations and derive new biological insights about the basis for chemotherapy's success or failure. The lab is also working with the Breast Oncology Program at UCSF to make this data part of an adaptive clinical trial called I-SPY, which lets researchers identify the most effective therapies based on patient molecular profiling, and is collaborating with members of the UCSF Institute for Computational Health Sciences (ICHS) to put these and other public data into a centralized database that clinicians can access through an app to help make the most appropriate treatment decisions. In future, Bandyopadhyay says, better understanding how chemotherapy agents impact specific biological pathways should allow drug trials to focus on patients who are more likely to respond to the drugs being tested and enable clinicians to identify targeted or combination therapies for patients with a genetic predisposition to resistance. Explore further Can our genes help predict how women respond to ovarian cancer treatment? More information: Hsien-Ming Hu et al. A Quantitative Chemotherapy Genetic Interaction Map Reveals Factors Associated with PARP Inhibitor Resistance, Cell Reports (2018). Journal information: Cell Reports Hsien-Ming Hu et al. A Quantitative Chemotherapy Genetic Interaction Map Reveals Factors Associated with PARP Inhibitor Resistance,(2018). DOI: 10.1016/j.celrep.2018.03.093 In this June 6, 2017, file photo, Utah resident Doug Rice administers the CBD oil Haleigh's Hope, a cannabis compound used by his daughter Ashley at their home in West Jordan, Utah. Voters in the deep red states of Utah and Oklahoma will have a chance to legalize medical marijuana through ballot initiatives that offer the latest illustration of how quickly the United States is leaving behind taboos about the drug. (AP Photo/Rick Bowmer, File) The push for legalized marijuana has moved into Utah and Oklahoma, two of the most conservative states in the country, further underscoring how quickly feelings about marijuana are changing in the United States. If the two measures pass, Utah and Oklahoma will join 30 other states that have legalized some form of medical marijuana, according to the pro-pot National Organization for the Reform of Marijuana laws. Nine of those states and Washington, D.C. also have broad legalization where adults 21 and older can use pot for any reason. Michigan could become the 10th state with its ballot initiative this year. Utah and Oklahoma already are among 16 states that allow for use an oil called cannabidiol, or CBD, a compound from cannabis that doesn't get users high but can treat a range of health concerns. Justin Strekal, political director for NORML, is confident the Utah and Oklahoma measures will pass. "America's appetite for cannabis is not going away," Strekal said. "We are in the death rattles of prohibition." Marijuana legalization efforts have faced some pushback from religions beforeincluding in 2016 in Arizona and Nevada from the Mormon church, and the same year from the Catholic Church in Massachusetts. But not to the scale they could face this year in Utah, where Mormons account for about two-third of the population, said Matthew Schweich, executive director of the pro-legalization Marijuana Policy Project. Nathan Frodsham, who suffers from cervical arthritis and disc disease, poses for a photograph at his home, Monday, April 16, 2018, in Murray, Utah. Voters in Utah this November will consider a ballot initiative that would legalize medical marijuana for people with certain chronic conditions. (AP Photo/Rick Bowmer) Mormons have long frowned upon marijuana use because of a key church health code called the "Word of Wisdom," which prohibits the use of alcohol, tobacco and illegal drugs. The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints came out against the proposal this month, saying in a statement drugs designed to ease suffering should be tested and approved by government officials first. The church said it respects the "wise counsel" of doctors, and commended the Utah Medical Association for opposing it. The association has accused organizers of trying to disguise their intention of simply paving the way for legalizing recreational marijuana. Utah Gov. Gary Herbert told middle school students in January that he thinks medical marijuana will someday be legalized in the state but in March he announced his opposition to the ballot question, which he argues lacks safeguards for the growing and distribution of marijuana. Advocates remain confident that they've crafted a medical marijuana measure that respects the Mormon church and culture while providing much-needed relief for people with chronic pain, Schweich said. His Washington, D.C.-based organization helped draft the measure. Nathan Frodsham, who suffers from cervical arthritis and disc disease, poses for a photograph at his home, Monday, April 16, 2018, in Murray, Utah. Voters in Utah this November will consider a ballot initiative that would legalize medical marijuana for people with certain chronic conditions. (AP Photo/Rick Bowmer) Unlike other medical marijuana states, Utah's proposal would not allow pot smoking or for residents to grow their own, Schweich said. It would create a state-regulated growing and dispensing operation to allow people with certain medical conditions to get a card and use the drug in edible forms like candy, in topical forms like lotions or balms, as an oil or in electronic cigarettes. Proponents turned in the signatures Monday to get the measure on the ballot in November. "It's a question of compassion," Schweich said. Oklahoma will vote in June on its proposal that would allow doctors to recommend that patients receive a medical marijuana license allowing them to legally possess up to three ounces of the drug, six mature plants and six seedlings. Ted Lyon, a 78-year-old Mormon, is a supporter because he saw in the past decade how medical marijuana helped two of his neighbors in Provoone with multiple sclerosis and another who has seizures. He said he wouldn't support the drug's legalization for recreational use. In this June 26, 2017, file photo, Davis Cromar, center, holds his son Holden, 10, who suffers from epilepsy, while standing with other patients, caregivers and supporters during the Utah Patients Coalition news conference, in Salt Lake City. Voters in the deep red states of Utah and Oklahoma will have a chance to legalize medical marijuana through ballot initiatives that offer the latest illustration of how quickly the United States is leaving behind taboos about the drug. (AP Photo/Rick Bowmer, File) Lyon, a retired professor at Mormon-owned Brigham Young University, said he's afraid the church's opposition will have a chilling effect on members of the faith but said he remains hopeful there are enough progressive-leaning Mormons who will see the benefits. "In 10 years, the church may say something different," Lyon said. "This is not an eternal banishment of medical marijuana. My father was a good historian, and he used to say, 'If you don't like something in the church, just wait a while because it will change.'" Nathan Frodsham, a 45-year-old married Mormon father of three, is hoping the measure passes so he can get off opioids and back to using the vaporized form of marijuana that he used when he lived in Seattle after his doctor recommended trying for his painful osteoarthritis in his neck. Frodsham wasn't discouraged by the Mormon church statement, which he notes doesn't go as far in opposition as when the church explicitly asked members to vote against full marijuana legalization in Arizona and Nevada. He said marijuana is a natural plant and that the religion's health code doesn't single out cannabis as being prohibited. Nathan Frodsham, who suffers from cervical arthritis and disc disease, poses for a photograph at his home, Monday, April 16, 2018, in Murray, Utah. Voters in Utah this November will consider a ballot initiative that would legalize medical marijuana for people with certain chronic conditions. (AP Photo/Rick Bowmer) "I think there's some room for interpretation on this," said Frodsham. The 4,500-member Utah Medical Association isn't against the idea of legalized medical marijuana but has numerous concerns with an initiative it thinks is too broad and doesn't include necessary regulatory measures, said Michelle McOmber, the group's CEO. "We want to be very careful about what we bring into our state," McOmber said. "This is an addictive drug." In this Jan. 25, 2016, file photo, members of the House of Representatives look on as House Speaker Greg Hughes speaks, in Salt Lake City. Voters in the deep red states of Utah and Oklahoma will have a chance to legalize medical marijuana through ballot initiatives that offer the latest illustration of how quickly the United States is leaving behind taboos about the drug. (AP Photo/Rick Bowmer, File) Rebecca Frodsham points to her husband's surgical scars, at their home Monday, April 16, 2018, in Murray, Utah. Nathan Frodsham suffers from cervical arthritis and disc disease. Voters in Utah this November will consider a ballot initiative that would legalize medical marijuana for people with certain chronic conditions. (AP Photo/Rick Bowmer) Explore further Recent study in Oregon reveals public considers alcohol more harmful than marijuana 2018 The Associated Press. All rights reserved. Researchers have provided new insight into how a gene associated with autoimmunity contributes to disease in humans. Their findings, published in the journal eLife, could have significant implications for the development of novel treatments for conditions where the body is attacked accidentally by the immune system. The adaptive immune system needs to be able to eliminate all potential external threats while still maintaining tolerance towards normal tissues. Failure to do so can result in different types of autoimmune disease, which can include type 1 diabetes, rheumatoid arthritis and inflammatory bowel disease. T cells play an important role in this, as variants in human genes related to the cells' function are the most common mutations associated with such conditions. A team of US scientists are now studying how one autoimmunity-associated gene, Histone Deacetylase 7 (HDAC7), can contribute to disease. "Our previous work has shown that interference with the normal functioning of HDAC7 can block an important process during the development of T cells, called negative selection, which is required for eliminating cells that recognise and attack self-derived tissues," says Eric Verdin, President and CEO of The Buck Institute for Research on Aging, California, and lead author of the current study. "Defects in this process are clearly associated with autoimmunity, and we have confirmed that altering HDAC7 function in mice causes autoimmune diseases. However, even though a particular mutation in HDAC7 allows T cells that are reactive to many different tissues to survive when they should have been eliminated, only a few tissues in the animals actually develop disease - remarkably the same ones which are affected in the diseases associated with HDAC7 variants in humans. We wanted to find the mechanism that underlies this unlikely coincidence." To address this question, Verdin and his team altered and studied the function of HDAC7 in a combination of cell cultures and genetically modified mice. They discovered that the gene regulates both the elimination of self-reactive T cells and the development of a specialised class of T cells called invariant natural killer T (iNKT) cells. The same interference with HDAC7 function that blocks negative selection also blocks the development of these cells, which are specialised to provide rapid defense against bacterial invasion in the same tissues - namely the liver, pancreas, and the digestive system - that developed disease in the mice and also more often in humans with a mutated HDAC7 gene. "Importantly, when we restored the cells in mice, we saw that their disease symptoms were improved," Verdin adds. "Together, our results provide evidence that HDAC7 and the network of genes surrounding it could be effective targets for interventions in human inflammatory diseases of the bowel, pancreas and liver," concludes co-author Herbert Kasler, Staff Scientist in Verdin's lab at the Buck Institute. "They also suggest that defects in cells such as iNKTs may play an underappreciated role in these diseases, which we would like to explore further. "Additionally, our next steps will be to identify the other key genes involved in HDAC7's regulation of iNKT cell development, evaluate their targeting in mouse models of the same diseases, and search for more variants in HDAC7 and its network of genes that are associated with human disease." Explore further Identified a key protein in the generation of B lymphocytes More information: Herbert G Kasler et al, Histone deacetylase 7 mediates tissue-specific autoimmunity via control of innate effector function in invariant Natural Killer T-Cells, eLife (2018). Journal information: eLife Herbert G Kasler et al, Histone deacetylase 7 mediates tissue-specific autoimmunity via control of innate effector function in invariant Natural Killer T-Cells,(2018). DOI: 10.7554/eLife.32109 Washington University School of Medicine in St. Louis and Epharmix, a digital health company, have created a new automated text messaging service that may curb opioid abuse and prevent relapse. Patients receive text messages to gauge if they're feeling OK or struggling with potential relapse. Patients also can activate a panic button to request immediate help. Credit: Epharmix A new automated text messaging service may curb opioid abuse and reduce the likelihood of relapse while also decreasing treatment costs, according to researchers at Washington University School of Medicine and Epharmix, a St. Louis-based digital health company. The service provides automated text messages and phone calls to patients being treated for opioid addiction. Such messages ask patients if they're feeling OK or struggling with potential relapse. Patients also can activate a panic button for immediate help. Time saved from monitoring patients through individual phone calls and in-person appointments may trim medical costs and permit health-care workers to treat more patients without accruing heavier workloads. Findings of the small study are published April 17, 2018, in NEJM Catalyst, a publication of The New England Journal of Medicine Group. "There is an urgent need to address the opioid crisis in powerful new ways," said the study's senior author, Avik Som, an MD/PhD student at Washington University. Som, who has completed his doctorate in biomedical engineering and will receive his medical degree in May, helped develop the text-messaging technology as chief medical officer at Epharmix, a digital health company he founded with classmates in 2015. The company creates mobile technologies aimed at managing chronic conditions such as diabetes, depression and hypertension. "With the opioid epidemic, time is of the essence because of how quickly it's grown and the lives that are lost," Som said. Nearly 100 people die each day due to opioid overdoses, according to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. A highly addictive class of drugs, opioids include prescription painkillers, heroin and fentanyl. The mobile technology is designed to supplement cognitive behavioral therapy, support services and other treatments aimed at combating opioid addiction. "This is not meant to replace important programs or face-to-face contact between patients and providers," Som said. "Rather, it is an additional tool that is affordable and immediate. It doesn't require costly, time-consuming measures such as opening substance-abuse centers, and training and hiring new staff. The 21 patients in the study began using the texting service in late 2016 as part of their treatment at Preferred Family Healthcare, a community-based organization in St. Louis that offers treatment for substance abuse. Data collected via the text messaging service found that at the time of enrollment, nine patients (43 percent) reported substance abuse use in the previous three days, and nine patients (43 percent) reported no use, while the remaining did not respond. After three months, half of the 21 total patients reported no substance use, while the number of patients using dropped to two (10 percent). The researchers can't attribute the positive trend solely to the app but said the data are encouraging. "Opioid users face strong urges to relapse because of the addictive power of the drug," Som said. "As a result, health-care workers struggle to keep patients engaged." Patients and caregivers reported that they preferred the ease and familiarity of text message communication. "Texting is convenient, immediate and nonjudgmental," Som said. "It has become an integral part of how we communicate in society. Patients reported feeling more connected to health-care providers." The service includes a "panic button" for patients facing relapse or other health struggles. Once the button is activated, health-care workers phone patients and provide counseling, scheduling for in-person appointments, or other resources. Additionally, texts allow caregivers to monitor patients daily with automated questions such as "Have you used in the last day?" and "Have you had urges to use?" Patients who reported struggling received automated follow-up questions that classified their risk for relapse as high, moderate or low. At the same time, health-care workers were alerted to intervene immediately. "Health-care providers can be proactive," Som said. "It is so much more powerful to curb the temptation and break the cycle in advance of relapse rather than providing treatment only after the event has occurred." The patients in the study were on Medicaid and individually had accrued more than $20,000 in medical costs related to substance abuse and other health issues. Researchers calculated that per-patient costs for caregiver services specific to addiction-related care would drop 19 percent, from $926 annually to $753. Reduced costs from staff time savings were attributed to the texting service, enabling more efficient patient follow-up and better targeting to provide treatment to the right patients. "Cost savings could be realized with this tool as opioid addiction continues to rise and caregivers increasingly are being asked to manage additional patients," said the study's first author, Jordan Feltes, an Epharmix researcher and a second-year medical student at Saint Louis University. Further studies will allow researchers to examine the text-messaging strategy in a larger patient group, and better gauge potential savings in Medicaid funding and related costs. "In the midst of this national emergency, it is critical that patients and providers have clear, open channels of communication in order to mitigate the devastating impact of the opioid crisis," said Will Ross, MD, associate dean for diversity and a professor of medicine at Washington University. He mentored the researchers as principal investigator for Epharmix. Explore further Medication assisted treatment is option for opioid use disorder Children in sub-Saharan African settings with uncomplicated fever may be safely managed with conditional, rather than universal, three-day follow-up. Credit: Joe Succaro, US Air Force Children in sub-Saharan African settings with uncomplicated fever may be safely managed with conditional, rather than universal, 3-day follow-up with a community health worker (CHW), according to two cluster-randomized, community-based non-inferiority trials published this week in PLOS Medicine. The trials, conducted by Luke C. Mullany of the Johns Hopkins Bloomberg School of Public Health, Baltimore, Maryland, United States, and Karin Kallander of Malaria Consortium, London, United Kingdom and the Karolinska Institutet, Stockholm, Sweden, and their colleagues, suggest that current World Health Organization (WHO) guidance for these children could be reconsidered. The WHO's integrated community case management (iCCM) guidelines recommend that all children presenting with uncomplicated fever and no danger signs return for follow-up on day 3 following the initial consultation on day 1. Such fevers often resolve rapidly, however, and previous studies suggest that expectant home care for uncomplicated fever can be safely recommended. In the two trials, conducted at sites in the Democratic Republic of the Congo (DRC) and in Ethiopia, each with approximately 4000 participants, results suggest that conditional follow-up is non-inferior to universal follow-up for these children. In Mullany and colleagues' primary analysis in DRC, failure at day 8 (caregiver-reported fever, malaria, diarrhea, pneumonia, or decline of health status) was similar (difference: -0.7%, 95% CI: ??, 4.1%) in the conditional follow-up group (n = 188, 9.7%) compared to the universal follow-up group (n = 230, 10.4%). In Kallander and colleagues' analysis in Ethiopia, failure at day 8 was also similar (difference: ?3.81%, 95% CI ??, 0.65%) in the conditional follow-up group (n = 16, 0.8%) compared to the universal follow-up group (n = 90, 4.6%). The primary result from Kallander and colleagues' trial in Ethiopia meets the pre-specified non-inferiority criterion, while Mullany and colleagues' trial results from the DRC suggest that any difference in failures is small. Additional trials in other sub-Saharan African settings are needed to establish generalizability. However, taken together, the current results provide evidence relevant to formulation of WHO recommendations. Kallander and colleagues state, "Allowing CHWs to advise caregivers to bring children back only in case of continued symptoms might be a more efficient use of resources in these settings." More information: Mullany LC, van Boetzelaer EW, Gutman JR, Steinhardt LC, Ngoy P, Barbera Lainez Y, et al. (2018) Universal versus conditional day 3 follow-up for children with non-severe unclassified fever at the community level in the Democratic Republic of the Congo: A cluster-randomized, community-based non-inferiority trial. PLoS Med 15(4): e1002552. Journal information: PLoS Medicine Mullany LC, van Boetzelaer EW, Gutman JR, Steinhardt LC, Ngoy P, Barbera Lainez Y, et al. (2018) Universal versus conditional day 3 follow-up for children with non-severe unclassified fever at the community level in the Democratic Republic of the Congo: A cluster-randomized, community-based non-inferiority trial.15(4): e1002552. doi.org/10.1371/journal.pmed.1002552 It all appeared to be going smoothly. Jacob deGrom gave the Mets length and was dominant, New Yorks offense was strong and it looked as though the Amazins were en route to win No. 13. Then it fell apart. The bullpen imploded, deGrom was slapped with a no-decision and the entire dynamic of the night changed when Washington came back from five runs down to win 8-6. Its definitely tough, deGrom said. Youre comfortable when those guys come in. You know theyre not perfect. Its going to happen. Tonight, we let one get away but, hey, back after them tomorrow. In fact, it was right to be confident in the bullpen, who entering last night had a collective 1.51 ERA. However it took a crew of players including Seth Lugo, Jerry Blevins, AJ Ramos and Jeurys Familia to record two outs. Washington woke up and left the Mets with their tails between their legs. Its a shame for the Mets and deGrom that they couldnt come away with a win when they practically had it in the bag. The right-hander threw 7.1 dominant innings and allowed three runs (just one while he was on the mound) and fanned 12 hitters. He also said he felt the best he has in any of his starts so far this year. Yeah, definitely, deGrom said. Tried to get my arm moving a little bit, tried to get it up and I felt like it made a big difference. A big part of his success last night was his devastating slider. Its got more down to it, versus the sideways, deGrom said. I was kind of getting around it. Ive been watching some video, putting some stuff side by side and I noticed a couple things and Im trying to work on that. Despite the loss, deGrom managed to make history. Each of the Mets last two starting pitchers has logged a double-digit strikeout game (Noah Syndergaard had 11 strikeouts yesterday). This marks the first time the Mets starter has whiffed at least 11 hitters in back-to-back games since Nolan Ryan and Ray Sadecki each did so in a doubleheader vs. Philadelphia on Sept. 9, 1970. (Research courtesy of Elias). DeGrom also whiffed at least 10 batters for the 22nd time in his career (first 10+ K game this season). It was his fifth-career double-digit strikeout game against Washington, all of which have come since the start of last season. Hopefully, last night was just an aberration. New York needs to rebound in a big way and take the next two games from Washington. Their hopes will lie in Zack Wheeler and Steven Matz. American officials, however, disputed that, saying that Mr. Macron misinterpreted the conversation. About 2,000 American troops are in Syria to fight the Islamic State, or ISIS, not to play a role in the civil war. In public comments before the chemical attack that prompted him to launch airstrikes, Mr. Trump said he wanted to pull them out right away. Advisers urged him to hold off, and he gave them five to six months to complete a withdrawal. The U.S. mission has not changed the president has been clear that he wants U.S. forces to come home as quickly as possible, Sarah Huckabee Sanders, the White House press secretary, said in a statement Sunday night. We are determined to completely crush ISIS and create the conditions that will prevent its return. In addition, we expect our regional allies and partners to take greater responsibility both militarily and financially for securing the region. The new American sanctions were announced on Sunday by Nikki R. Haley, the ambassador to the United Nations and the administrations leading public voice excoriating Russia in recent days. They will go directly to any sort of companies that were dealing with equipment related to Assad and chemical weapons use, she said on Face the Nation on CBS. And so I think everyone is going to feel it at this point. I think everyone knows that we sent a strong message, and our hope is that they listen to it. Mr. Trump has tried through most of his presidency to forge a friendship with President Vladimir V. Putin of Russia and has largely avoided criticizing him personally even as a special counsel, Robert S. Mueller III, investigated whether Mr. Trumps campaign coordinated with Russia during the 2016 election. But in recent weeks, his administration has taken increasing action against Russia, and the president singled out Mr. Putin over Syrias use of chemical weapons on Twitter and again in a televised speech on Friday night. New sanctions on Monday would be the third round enacted by the Trump administration against Russia in the past four weeks. Last month, the administration targeted Russian companies and individuals for intervening in the 2016 election and mounting cyberattacks against Western facilities. It followed that this month with penalties against Mr. Putins inner circle, singling out some of Russias richest men and top government officials. YEREVAN. The situation at France Squarein Armenias capital city of Yerevanis calm at this time, the Armenian News-NEWS.am reporter informed from the scene. Several downtown streets are still blocked with benches. Some drivers, however, are attempting to pass through these barriers. As reported earlier, clashes took place on Baghramyan Avenue, between the demonstrators and police, on Monday afternoon. Opposition Civil Contract Party member and National Assembly (NA) Way Out (Yelk) Faction head Nikol Pashinyan, jumped over the barbed wires placed by the police, and other protester followed his lead. Police used special means, especially stun grenades, against the demonstrators. As a result of these clashes, 46 peopleincluding Pashinyan and six police officerswere injured. On March 31, the Civil Contract Party, led by Nikol Pashinyan, had started a protest march through several towns of Armeniaand whose objective is to prevent the third term in office by ex-President Serzh Sargsyan; but this time as the next likely Prime Ministerand which concluded on April 13, with a rally at Liberty Square in downtown Yerevan, and then with a round-the-clock sit-in at France Square. Also, the protesters had announced that they plan to block the NA building as well as the houses of the ruling Republican Party of Armenia (RPA) MPs on Tuesday, so as not to enable them to take part in the next PMs election at the special parliamentary session on that day, and during which the RPA will nominate Sargsyan as candidate for the next PM. YEREVAN. France Square, in Armenias capital city of Yerevan, and the nearby downtown streets were closed off again by demonstrators, on Tuesday morning. In particular, a group of youth blocked the Tumanyan Street-Mashtots Avenue intersection. But police started pushing to open the intersection and detaining the youth, and they started shoving one another. As reported earlier, clashes took place on Baghramyan Avenue, between the demonstrators and police, on Monday afternoon. Opposition Civil Contract Party member and National Assembly (NA) Way Out (Yelk) Faction head Nikol Pashinyan, jumped over the barbed wires placed by the police, and other protester followed his lead. Police used special means, especially stun grenades, against the demonstrators. As a result of these clashes, 47 peopleincluding Pashinyanwere taken to hospital. Since Monday morning, the demonstrators closed off and marched through several streets in downtown Yerevan. On April 15, Nikol Pashinyan had called on people to block Yerevans bridges, streets, and subway on Monday. On March 31, the Civil Contract Party, led by Nikol Pashinyan, had started a protest march through several towns of Armeniaand whose objective is to prevent the third term in office by ex-President Serzh Sargsyan; but this time as the next likely Prime Ministerand which concluded on April 13, with a rally at Liberty Square in downtown Yerevan, and then with a round-the-clock sit-in at France Square. Also, the protesters had announced that they plan to block the NA building as well as the houses of the ruling Republican Party of Armenia (RPA) MPs on Tuesday, so as not to enable them to take part in the next PMs election at the special parliamentary session on that day, and during which the RPA will nominate Sargsyan as candidate for the next PM. YEREVAN. The My Step initiative members blocked the Abovyan Street-Moskovyan Street intersection in downtown Yerevan, the capital city of Armenia, on Tuesday morning. The Armenian News-NEWS.am reporter informed from the scene that the demonstrators sat on the street and paralyzed traffic. The protesters are chanting, Join [us], join [us]. Demonstrators have again begun closing off streets in Yerevan, since early Tuesday morning. Police attempted to remove the protestors by force, and subsequently, detained close to twenty people. As reported earlier, clashes took place on Baghramyan Avenue, between the demonstrators and police, on Monday afternoon. My Step initiative leader, opposition Civil Contract Party member and National Assembly (NA) Way Out (Yelk) Faction head Nikol Pashinyan, jumped over the barbed wires placed by the police, and other protester followed his lead. Police used special means, especially stun grenades, against the demonstrators. As a result of these clashes, 47 peopleincluding Pashinyanwere taken to hospital. Since Monday morning, the demonstrators closed off and marched through several streets in downtown Yerevan. On April 15, Nikol Pashinyan had called on people to block Yerevans bridges, streets, and subway on Monday. On March 31, the Civil Contract Party, led by Nikol Pashinyan, had started a protest march through several towns of Armeniaand whose objective is to prevent the third term in office by ex-President Serzh Sargsyan; but this time as the next likely Prime Ministerand which concluded on April 13, with a rally at Liberty Square in downtown Yerevan, and then with a round-the-clock sit-in at France Square. Also, the protesters had announced that they plan to block the NA building as well as the houses of the ruling Republican Party of Armenia (RPA) MPs on Tuesday, so as not to enable them to take part in the next PMs election at the special parliamentary session on that day, and during which the RPA will nominate Sargsyan as candidate for the next PM. YEREVAN. The Deputy Police Chief of Yerevan, Valeri Osipyan, on Tuesday morning handed to My Step initiative leader, opposition Civil Contract Party member and National Assembly (NA) of Armenia Way Out (Yelk) Faction head Nikol Pashinyan, the police notification on putting en and to the ongoing rallies. Pashinyan, however, publicly ripped this notification and stated, A total civil movement has begun in Armenia. Armenia Police had issued a statement noting that they will disperse this rally by using force and special means. As reported earlier, clashes took place on Baghramyan Avenue, between the demonstrators and police, on Monday afternoon. Nikol Pashinyan, jumped over the barbed wires placed by the police, and other protester followed his lead. Police used special means, especially stun grenades, against the demonstrators. As a result of these clashes, 46 peopleincluding Pashinyanwere taken to hospital. Since Monday morning, the demonstrators closed off and marched through several streets in downtown Yerevan. On April 15, Nikol Pashinyan had called on people to block Yerevans bridges, streets, and subway on Monday. On March 31, the Civil Contract Party, led by Nikol Pashinyan, had started a protest march through several towns of Armeniaand whose objective is to prevent the third term in office by ex-President Serzh Sargsyan; but this time as the next likely Prime Ministerand which concluded on April 13, with a rally at Liberty Square in downtown Yerevan, and then with a round-the-clock sit-in at France Square. Also, the protesters had announced that they plan to block the NA building as well as the houses of the ruling Republican Party of Armenia (RPA) MPs on Tuesday, so as not to enable them to take part in the next PMs election at the special parliamentary session on that day, and during which the RPA will nominate Sargsyan as candidate for the next PM. Serzh Sargsyan to Aliyev: If there was no shift of power in Armenia, you would never see Shushi and Hadrut Georgia President says she won't grant pardon to Saakashvili Armenia's Prime Minister and President meet Georgia Prosecutor General's Office: Verdicts against Saakashvili are not subject to appeal GeoProMining Armenia obtained 60% of Zangezur Copper Molybdenum Combine on Sep. 30, 2021 Saakashvili has new wife, sensational news announced on day of his arrest Armenia PM receives Czech FM Armenian Turkologist: Russia and Turkey are compelled to cooperate, and this is in Moscow's favor Saakashvili's United National Movement political party announces preparation for large-scale demonstration ANCA: Israel sending descendant of Armenian Genocide survivors as its ambassador to Azerbaijan Armenia Armed Forces General Staff's deputy chief Stepan Galstyan is detained Georgian presses report that Saakashvili is in a prison in Tbilisi Armenian and Russian FMs hold phone talks Garibashvili: Saakashvili is apprehended in Georgia Digest: Azerbaijan declares Armenians wanted, Armenia arms supplier to be arrested Biden administration to ramp up existing billions of dollars in tariffs on Chinese imports Serzh Sargsyan: Congress of Republican Party of Armenia will be held at the end of this year Iranian Ambassador to Armenian justice minister: Iran has plans to make investments in Armenia Armenia PM congratulates Cyprus President on Independence Day Armenia defense minister, Iran Ambassador discuss situation in the region Armenia MOD receives Japan Ambassador Armenia ruling party presents program ahead of elections of Council of Elders of Gyumri Karabakh search for fallen Armenian soldiers remains yields no results Friday Armenia Zangezur Copper Molybdenum Combine co-owner: This is first step in broader investment vision Armenia Deputy PM Suren Papikyan receives UK Ambassador Armenia premier congratulates on 72nd anniversary of People's Republic of China Celebrity content on Instagram is linked to negative user feelings Iran ambassador to Azerbaijan: Dreams of Zionism for this region will never be interpreted Dollar goes up in Armenia Sarkissian: Armenia highly values relations with China Peskov: Putin and Erdogan discussed construction of new nuclear power plants in Turkey Catholicos of All Armenians receives newly appointed Ambassador of Sweden to Armenia Australians to be allowed to travel abroad from November Armenia high-tech industry minister receives Japan Ambassador Armenia v. Azerbaijan case hearing days announced at International Court of Justice Suicide occurs in Artsakhs Vank village Pakistan bans unvaccinated adults from domestic flights Ambassador to minister: India ready to further deepen collaboration with Armenia in defense sector President: Armenia attaches great importance to cooperation with China Azerbaijan declares Armenians wanted on charges of committing crimes during its own military aggression Ex-President Kocharyan discusses future tactics with opposition Armenia Faction MPs, analysts (PHOTOS) Turkey and Greece to hold next round of bilateral talks on October 6 Azerbaijan prosecutor general plans to hold accountable foreign companies working in Karabakh Woman, 74, dies of coronavirus in Artsakh Yerevan to host 5th meeting of Armenian-Czech intergovernmental commission Armenia FM: Karabakh conflicts peaceful political settlement remains on agenda Prague welcomes Armenia, Azerbaijan FMs New York meeting, says Czech Rep. foreign minister Armenia ambassador briefs US Congress member on challenges after Azerbaijan military aggression against Karabakh Czech Rep. FM visits Armenian Genocide Memorial in Yerevan (PHOTOS) FM: Artsakh ready to negotiate with Azerbaijan on equal footing 934 new cases of COVID-19 confirmed in Armenia Artsakh President has new Chief Adviser Iran Army Ground Forces begin military exercises in northwestern border Armenia government plans to increase revenues by almost 30% in 2022 state budget, which is unrealistic Australias New South Wales Premier Gladys Berejiklian resigns Grape harvest in Artsakh's Amaras valley carried out with interruptions due to Azerbaijan provocations Newspaper: Reporting, providing fake, false information to Armenia parliament inquiry committees to be criminalized? Newspaper: Armenia army general staff chief to be summoned for questioning Greece PM says he has no intention of entering into arms race with Turkey Armenia arms supplier to be arrested International Court of Justice to hold public hearings over Armenia v. Azerbaijan lawsuit on October 14-15 Israel opens embassy in Bahrain US couple die from COVID-19 in same hospital one minute apart GRECO releases interim report on Armenia, says situation incompatible with judicial independence Russian analyst predicts granting of special status to Karabakh and "eternal" presence of Russian peacekeepers Islamic Revolution Guards Corps Ground Force commander warns Azerbaijan Armenia ex-defense minister Davit Tonoyan arrested South Korean authorities prepare for regular contacts with Pyongyang More than half of Britons are disappointed with Brexit Erdogan on purchase of S-400s and Turkey's relations with the US: It was worth it Russia MFA: Moscow hopes OSCE Minsk Group Co-Chairs' visit helps organize Armenian and Azerbaijani leaders' meeting Erdogan: "Zangezur corridor will open opportunities for the region" Serbia, Kosovo agree to reduce tension on border Digest: Armenian ex-defense minister charged, Putin and Erdogan discuss Karabakh conflict Armenia FM and Iran Ambassador discuss situation on Goris-Kapan motorway Newly appointed Ambassador of France presents credentials to Armenia President Russian MFA: Moscow continues to work on the release of Armenian POWs Russia MFA: Moscow has submitted proposals to Yerevan, Baku on border delimitation talks Armenia justice minister meets with head of CoE Office in Yerevan, presents ministry's reforms agenda Armenia President, parliament speaker discuss collaboration between both institutions Bloomberg: Europe asks Russia for additional coal supplies Armenia justice minister has new deputy Armenia Parliament Deputy Speaker Ishkhan Saghatelyan tests positive for COVID-19 Armenia Special Investigation Service deputy head sacked Armenia education, science, culture and sport minister meets with UNESCO Director-General Alizadeh: Route to Armenia for Iran trucks not changed Dollar gains value in Armenia Karabakh emergency service: Remains of another fallen soldier found Lukashenko: Belarus is open to proposals for further development of strong relations with Armenia in all areas PACE adopts resolution on Afghanistan Armenia Parliament Speaker, Peru Ambassador discuss their countries' participation in Ancient Civilizations Forum Putin and Erdogan planning meeting before end of this year Did Serzh Sargsyan and Sergey Kopirkin meet? Czech FM to arrive in Armenia on working visit Armenia Deputy PM Suren Papikyan: Government to grant nearly AMD 1,000,000,000 to Syunik Province Armenia ex-Deputy PM Tigran Avinyan visits Syunik Province Peru new ambassador presents letter of credence to Armenia President Putin, Erdogan discuss current situation in Karabakh Armenia Parliament Deputy Speaker, Russia Ambassador touch upon peaceful settlement of Karabakh conflict Lithuania to donate to Armenia 50,000 doses of Spikevax vaccine manufactured by Moderna YEREVAN. As of Tuesday 9am, twelve people who were injured during Mondays clashes in Yerevan, the capital city of Armenia, continue to receive treatment at Yerevan hospitals. The Ministry of Health informed Armenian News-NEWS.am that one of these injured is a police officer who underwent surgery, and he is in stable condition. Doctors say the other injured are in satisfactory condition. As reported earlier, clashes took place on Baghramyan Avenue, between the demonstrators and police, on Monday afternoon. My Step initiative leader, opposition Civil Contract Party member and National Assembly (NA) Way Out (Yelk) Faction head Nikol Pashinyan, jumped over the barbed wires placed by the police, and other protesters followed his lead. Police used special means, especially stun grenades, against the demonstrators. As a result of these clashes, 46 peopleincluding Pashinyanwere taken to hospital. On April 15, Nikol Pashinyan had called on people to block Yerevans bridges, streets, and subway on Monday. Since Monday morning, the demonstrators closed off and marched through several streets in downtown Yerevan. The protesters are blocking a number of downtown Yerevan streets since Tuesday morning, too. On March 31, the Civil Contract Party, led by Nikol Pashinyan, had started a protest march through several towns of Armeniaand whose objective is to prevent the third term in office by ex-President Serzh Sargsyan; but this time as the next likely Prime Ministerand which concluded on April 13, with a rally at Liberty Square in downtown Yerevan, and then with a round-the-clock sit-in at France Square. Also, the protesters had announced that they plan to block the NA building as well as the houses of the ruling Republican Party of Armenia (RPA) MPs on Tuesday, so as not to enable them to take part in the next PMs election at the special parliamentary session on that day, and during which the RPA will nominate Sargsyan as candidate for the next PM. YEREVAN. At this time, Police of Armenia have detained 29 people, and on suspicion of committing an administrative offense. The police informed about the aforesaid to Armenian News-NEWS.am. As reported earlier, on Tuesday morning, police detained a group of demonstrators at the Tumanyan Street-Mashtots Avenue intersection in downtown capital city Yerevan. Clashes took place on Baghramyan Avenue, between the demonstrators and police, on Monday afternoon. My Step initiative leader, opposition Civil Contract Party member and National Assembly (NA) Way Out (Yelk) Faction head Nikol Pashinyan, jumped over the barbed wires placed by the police, and other protesters followed his lead. Police used special means, especially stun grenades, against the demonstrators. As a result of these clashes, 46 peopleincluding Pashinyanwere taken to hospital. On April 15, Nikol Pashinyan had called on people to block Yerevans bridges, streets, and subway on Monday. Since Monday morning, the demonstrators closed off and marched through several streets in downtown Yerevan. The protesters are blocking a number of downtown Yerevan streets since Tuesday morning, too. On March 31, the Civil Contract Party, led by Nikol Pashinyan, had started a protest march through several towns of Armeniaand whose objective is to prevent the third term in office by ex-President Serzh Sargsyan; but this time as the next likely Prime Ministerand which concluded on April 13, with a rally at Liberty Square in downtown Yerevan, and then with a round-the-clock sit-in at France Square. Also, the protesters had announced that they plan to block the NA building as well as the houses of the ruling Republican Party of Armenia (RPA) MPs on Tuesday, so as not to enable them to take part in the next PMs election at the special parliamentary session on that day, and during which the RPA will nominate Sargsyan as candidate for the next PM. YEREVAN. Armenian lawmakers are arriving at the National Assembly where they will elect the Prime Minister during a special session on Tuesday. The day earlier the coalition Republican Party of Armenia and ARF Dashnaktsutyun nominated Serzh Sargsyan as their candidate for Prime Minister amid ongoing protest actions. Baghramyan Avenue where the National Assembly building is located as well as a number of streets in downtown Yerevan have been closed since Monday. Early in the morning, police detained 29 protesters. As reported earlier, clashes took place on Baghramyan Avenue, between the demonstrators and police, on Monday afternoon. My Step initiative leader, opposition Civil Contract Party member and National Assembly (NA) Way Out (Yelk) Faction head Nikol Pashinyan, jumped over the barbed wires placed by the police, and other protesters followed his lead. Police used special means, especially stun grenades, against the demonstrators. As a result of these clashes, 46 peopleincluding Pashinyanwere taken to hospital. On March 31, the Civil Contract Party, led by Nikol Pashinyan, had started a protest march through several towns of Armenia to prevent the third term in office by ex-President Serzh Sargsyan, but this time as the next likely Prime Minister. The march concluded on April 13, with a rally at Liberty Square in downtown Yerevan, and then with a round-the-clock sit-in at France Square. Also, the protesters had announced that they plan to block the NA building as well as the houses of the ruling Republican Party of Armenia (RPA) MPs on Tuesday, so as not to enable them to take part in the next PMs election. The US agrees with the OSCE / ODIHR preliminary report over the presidential elections held on April 11 in Azerbaijan, an official spokesman for the US State Department said in a statement on Monday, contact.az reported. "The United States looks forward to working with President Aliyev and with the people of Azerbaijan on a range of important bilateral and regional issues, including promoting respect for human rights and fundamental freedoms, supporting economic reforms and prosperity, combatting terrorism, and working actively with the OSCE Minsk Group to help realize a peaceful settlement to the Nagorno-Karabakh conflict," the official said. We concur with the OSCE election observation mission"s preliminary assessment of the election in Azerbaijan. The preliminary report noted several shortcomings, including a restrictive political environment, limits on fundamental freedoms, and a lack of genuine competition. While the election administration was organized and well-resourced, ODIHR reported widespread disregard for mandatory procedures, lack of transparency, and numerous serious irregularities, such as ballot box stuffing. We encourage President Aliyev and the incoming administration to address these concerns expeditiously, the official concluded. Famous actress Arsinee Khanjian sent an open letter to Serzh Sargsyan on Facebook following the peaceful protests in the last 5 days in Armenia. The massage runs as follows: Mr. Serzh Sargsyan. As you are well aware, all of the Armenian nation has been following the peaceful protests in the last 5 days in our country. I'm writing to you directly because you are the object of focus in this crucial moment of our national journey. As a citizen, you have to the best of your knowledge served our compatriots and often acted as the official figure head of the Armenian people in the Diaspora. Like every human being your track record of successfully carrying out your functions as President of the Republic has been met with extraordinary challenges. You have had two terms to try to deal with all that plagues our society since independence. You may have tried your best but public opinion does not support this reality. Corruption, absence of rule of law, police violence, judicial straight jacketing, bribery and election rigging, poverty, depopulation, human and civil rights violations (violence against women, discrimination against LGBTQ communities), absence of freedom of speech have all been a signature daily outcome during your government. Not that you didn't have the terrifying challenges of the war in Artsakh. Not that we wouldn't grant you an understanding of how difficult that fine line is to cross when surrounded by foreign interests who don't care about Armenia or the Republic of Artsakh. But often you mislead us all by using the obvious external threats against the far more dangerous ones,- the internal threats above mentioned. I, along with many of my compatriots, firmly believe that this political mace is not the one that is putting our beloved country at harm. Armenia will not explode by outside enemy forces if you're no longer at its helm. Armenia will implode from within it because you and your Republican Party colleagues continue to ignore the citizens craving and belief in a democracy that is our only hope and strategy to survive. You and I, a few years back, once had an exchange. Under political duress perhaps, you mentioned at the time that Armenian people were like sheep! I responded to you, very perturbed by your metaphor, that if that's the case then they need a good Shepherd. Since, repeated upheavals in Armenia and outrage in the diaspora communities against your style of governance have proven that we are not a nation of sheep. We are a nation seeking a good Shepherd in a strong, fair, legitimate leadership. Today, as I write this to you, our old and young, professionals and students, are expressing their discontent about your course of actions during your presidency and your grip over our social, economical and political interests, with even more fervent objections: either by leaving the country out of despair or as in the last days by, once again, going into the streets and peacefully but determinedly demanding for a fair shift of power. The major change I'm hearing them ask for is your mercy to let the country find another course of action that can come closer to decent democratic opportunities at all levels of its institutions. Mr. Serzh Sargsyan, Armenia's internal politics cannot solely be interpreted and understood by your own absolute terms, conditions and stratagem. It is your sworn duty to serve our country with love, hope and communication with the citizens who give to the land a reason to be called Armenia. But now, you are forcing the hands of your subjects, once again, in your stubborn wish to rule, once again, as the new Prime Minister. I urge you and your Republican Party to let, at least this once, respectfully choose the voice of diversity to take charge of the newly established constitutional change towards a Parliamentary system that truly represents all members of the nation. Otherwise, with all due devotion in the name of our compatriots, I am pointing out that your name in the history of our nation, our country, the world, will go down not as a mighty leader but as a power coveting dictator. We are not Russia. Nor Turkey. Nor Azerbaijan, nor...sadly, the list is long! We are a small but proud nation who has survived against all odds without a buffer zone to let us easily bounce back and recuperate. But we can! On April 17, days before the commemoration of the tragedy that befell our nation on April 24, 1915, you can mark a historical moment where you respectfully hear, honour and support all the men and women in the streets of Yerevan, your truthful opposition colleagues, and a diaspora that expects so much goodness for our homeland. Please don't twist arms. Please don't let a finger or a hand be injured by police force and violence. Please be the voice of the humble and confident Sheppard who allows without fear for himself or for his compatriots to walk the transitional path of a trusting future for Armenia whatever the risks may be along the shift. We are capable of assuming our national interests and together a force to reckon with against the outside predators that threaten us. Mr. Serzh Sargsyan, modesty, even in politics, is not a weakness. It is a human force and quality that opens the way for choice and that's what your country, my nation is asking you to consider. YEREVAN.- Serzh Sargsyan receives congratulatory messages from Heads of State, representatives of state and public sector of the Republic of Armenia, as well as individuals, following his election as the Prime Minister. Russian President Vladimir Putin congratulated Serzh Sargsyan on his election as a prime minister. I congratulate you on the occasion of assuming the post of Prime Minister of the Republic of Armenia. Your election to that highly responsible position confirms your high-level political reputation, as well as the support for the reform policy aimed at the effective solution of the social-economic issues facing Armenia. I am confident that your activities as the head of the executive will foster the further strengthening of friendly and allied relations between our countries and the promotion of mutually beneficial integration process in the Eurasian area. I would like to reconfirm my interest in joint efforts over issues of bilateral and regional agenda, Putin's message reads. Russian Pesident Vladimir Putin had a telephone conversation with Prime Minister of the Republic of Armenia Serzh Sargsyan at the initiative of the Russian side, Kremlin reported. Vladimir Putin warmly congratulated Serzh Sargsyan on his appointment as head of government of Armenia and wished him success in this high government position. Both officials emphasised the importance of further developing allied partnership and cooperation in all areas. Earlier, the Russian head of state sent Serzh Sargsyan a message of greetings on his accession as Prime Minister of the Republic of Armenia. The message reads, in part: Your appointment to this responsible post reaffirms your high political authority and broad support for the reforms aimed at solving the socioeconomic challenges facing Armenia. I am certain that your activities as head of government will facilitate the further consolidation of friendly, allied relations between our countries and the continuation of mutually beneficial integration processes in Eurasia. I would like to reaffirm our interest in close cooperation on pressing international and regional issues. Home | News | General | Suspected herdsmen kill 32 in Nasarawa, take over villages - Suspected herdsmen attacked four local governmnet in Nasarawa - Most of the villagers attacked belonged to the Tiv people - 32 people were reportedly killed during the attacks No less than 32 people of Tiv origin have been reported dead after gunmen suspected to be herdsmen launched a deadly attack on several Tiv villages in Awe, Keana, Obi and Doma local government areas of Nasarawa state. The Nation reports that over 10,000 Tiv villagers are homeless and were said to have been trapped along the Agwatashi-Jangwa road axis in Obi local government areas after gunmen ransacked their villages. NAIJ.com gathers that eight injured people were yesterday receiving treatment at the Dalhatu Araf Specialist Hospital, (DASH), Lafia as a result of injuries sustained from the attacks. READ ALSO: Police arrest 8 suspected Kidnappers in Katsina President Tiv Youth Organization Nasarawa state chapter, Comrade Peter Ahemba, said most of the villagers ransacked are still being occupied by the attackers. Ahemba said: As I speak to you, seven bodies of our people killed this morning (yesterday) by the terrorists in Wurji village of Keana LGA have just been recovered and brought to Keana town by the Police. Also last night, five of our people were killed in the coordinated attacks with seven others still missing at Kertyo and Apurugh villages in Obi local government. Three days ago, we recorded eight deaths from similar attacks in Kadarko area, four from Aloshi axis, one person from Agberagba, all in Keana LGA. Another six persons were shot at Imon village and were rushed to Obi General Hospial as a result of which one of them later died. This is just few out of deaths we recorded within the last three days as a result of these senseless attacks." PAY ATTENTION: Read the news on Nigerias #1 news app When contacted by the press, police spokesman, Idrissu Kennedy, said he was aware of attacks on Imon and some of the villages but was yet to be briefed on the number of casualties. Meanwhile, NAIJ.com earlier reported that the alleged masterminds of the killings in Taraba state have been arrested by the Nigerian Army. The director of army public relations, Brig Gen Texas Chukwu, in a statement obtained by NAIJ.com on Saturday, April 14, said that two persons connected with killings in Taraba state had been caught by troops involved in a military operation in the area. TY Danjuma, Nigerian army and the herdsmen crisis on NAIJ.com TV [embedded content] Source: Naija.ng CLICK HERE TO READ MORE FROM: General Home | News | General | Police arrest 8 suspected kidnappers terrorising Katsina state The Police Command in Katsina State has arrested eight suspected kidnappers terrorising residents of the state. The commands spokesman, DSP Gambo Isa, made this known in a statement in Katsina on Monday, April 16. Isa said that the first four suspects Joshua Yohanna, 22; Musa Ibrahim, 25; Nafiu Umar, 32; and Kabir Lawal, 28; were arrested in Kafur local government area of the state. The spokesman said the suspects, through a phone call, threatened to kidnap and kill one Haruna Bello and Nuhu Yusuf of Gozaki town if they refused to pay a ransom of three million naira. READ ALSO: No death in Shiite Abuja protest, police arrest 115 members He said: The victims have already sent N300,000 to them with a promise of sending the remaining amount later to avoid being kidnapped or killed. Isa said the duo later reported to the police and the police Special Anti Robbery Squad swung into action and arrested of the suspects. During investigation, police arrested the four suspects who confessed to have committed the act. The police recovered the sim card they used in sending threat messages to their victims, he said. The spokesman said that the suspects were the syndicate terrorising people of Kafur and Danja local government areas of the state. He further said that the police arrested four other suspected kidnappers Mubarak Babangida, 21; Abubakar Lawal, 19; Aliyu Lawal, 22; and Nura Abdulhamid, 22. PAY ATTENTION: Read the news on Nigerias #1 news app Isa said the suspects were arrested in Katsina following a tip off, adding that the suspects were arrested with women dresses planning to kidnap a four-year-old boy. The spokesman said that the suspects would be prosecuted after investigations. NAIJ.com earlier reported that the Nigeria Police Force has arrested a notorious kidnap gang who abducted one Hadiza Husseini on Friday, Janauary 19, and demanded for five hundred thousand naira (N500,000.00) for her release. According to a press statement sent to NAIJ.com by the force public relations office, CSP Jimoh Moshood, the incident took place at Anguwa Bala village in Karu local government area of Kaduna state. Are Nigerian Policemen the worst in the world? on NAIJ.com TV [embedded content] Source: Naija.ng CLICK HERE TO READ MORE FROM: General Srinagar, April 17: Students of Kashmir University and colleges continued to hit the streets, demanding justice for eight-year-old Kathua rape and murder victim, Aasifa Bano. The students of the Kashmir University staged massive protests inside the campus, demanding hanging of the perpetrators of this heinous crime. Students from various departments assembled inside the campus holding placards in their hands, depicting different messages calling for justice in the case. They also condemned the Kathua Bar Association for blocking the challan by Crime Branch of police a few days back, saying that those lawyers should be arrested and stern action must be taken against them. Meanwhile, the students of SP College and Kothibagh Girls Higher Secondary School, Srinagar, held a protest march in Lal Chowk area as a mark of solidarity with the Kathua rape and murder victim. The protesting students demanded stern punishment for those involved in the heinous crime. Intense clashes between students and Indian forces erupted in Sopore town after Indian police used brute force and fired teargas shells to disperse the protesting students. Witnesses told media that the students pelted the police with stones. Clashes resulted in disruption of the business activities and traffic movement in the down town area of Sopore town. The clashes were going on when reports last came in. The students of Government Higher Secondary School, Nadihal, held a protest march in solidarity with the victim girl. On the other hand, the Traders Association Maisuma Bazar and Traders Association Kukar Bazar, and traders of Gojwara held protests in Lal Chowk and Rajouri Kadal areas of Srinagar as a mark of solidarity with the Kathua rape and murder victim. The protesters raised slogans against Jammu Bar Association for trying to protect the culprits. They demanded stern punishment against those involved in the crime of rape and murder of the minor girl. The Jammu and Kashmir Helpers and Workers Association also held a protest march in Srinagar and demanded justice for the victim girl. The eight-year-old Aasifa of Kathua was gang-raped and murdered by six persons affiliated with extremist Hindu organizations in the month of January, this year, after they kidnapped the little girl and kept her in captivity for around a week. The culprits also included two Indian policemen. Home | News | General | Mediocrity has enveloped Nigerian university system, says former VC By Vincent Ujumadu Awka- THE former Vice Chancellor of Michael University of Agriculture, Umudike, Abia State, Professor Ikenna Onyido yesterday took a swipe at the Nigerian university system, saying that mediocrity had enveloped the ivory tower in the country. GRADUATION In a keynote address he delivered at the 55th meeting of the committee of deans of Postgraduate schools in Nigerian universities at Nnamdi Azikiwe University, Awka, Onyido, who is currently the director, Center for Sustainable Development at UNIZIK, identified underfunding as contributing to the unfortunate incident, thereby relegating excellence to the background in many of the nations ivory tower. He said: Everything we do in the university is rooted in academic culture and tradition, which is universal to the global university community in scope and practice. The enthronement of excellence and meritocracy as the guiding principles for the conduct of university affairs is derived from academic culture and tradition. In fact, this culture transmits the DNA of universities, which transmit norms for conduct and behavior from one generation of university community to another. This was how it happened in our own time. But the whole business of mentorship has broken down completely in the Nigerian university system, such that senior academics have no interest in mentoring their younger colleagues. On the other, the young academics feel they have absolutely no need for mentoring, so the university system is filled with discrete individuals with a multiplicity of orientations because no organic bonding, which is provided by academic culture and tradition, has taken place. It is for this that the university system is now burdened by a significant amount of mediocrity. A very troubling phenomenon is the wholesale importation of the toxic values from the larger Nigerian society into the Nigerian university system, and the domestication thereof. In the larger Nigerian society, everything and anything is possible. This negative philosophy has been adopted in our system and I talk about our public universities where I have spent more than 40 years of my life. This is why vices such as cultism, extortion, sale and use of narcotics, prostitution, sexual harassment, sex and money for marks and grades (which has been given the nomenclature of sorting), sale of hand-outs and books where students are forced to buy these and some of the books dont even qualify as books, examination malpractices, admission racketeering, absenteeism, lecturers with multiple teaching jobs in the name of adjunct lectureship/professorship, plagiarism. According to him, research in universities the world over revolves around professors, regretting that the way professors were made in some of the countrys universities these days was nothing short of pure magic. Vice chancellor of Nnamdi Azikiwe University, Professor Joseph Ahaneku said there was need to standardize admission procedure into postgraduate schools in Nigeria, adding that there was also the need to set a bench mark for such admission. He said: It is embarrassing what we see in the system these days. Postgraduate degrees should not be given as a compromise because it is not a must that every registered student must have a postgraduate degree. We are the ones that can take Nigeria to another level and we can only achieve that by producing the best in the universities. We should therefore go back to our universities and do the needful. No fewer than 60 deans of postgraduate schools and provost of colleges in the universities are attending the three -day conference. CLICK HERE TO READ MORE FROM: General Home | News | General | Syrian air defences intercept missiles over 2 airbases Syrian air defences intercepted several missiles targeting two airbases in Syria after midnight Tuesday, in the wake of a U.S.-British-French missile strike in the capital Damascus. The latest attacks came in retaliation for the alleged use of chemical weapons by the Syrian government in Douma, a suburb outside of Damascus, on April 7. In this image released by the US Navy, the guided-missile destroyer USS Porter conducts strike operations while in the Mediterranean Sea, April 7, 2017. US President Donald Trump ordered a massive military strike on a Syrian air base on Thursday in retaliation for a barbaric chemical attack he blamed on President Bashar al-Assad. The missiles were fired from the USS Porter and the USS Ross, which belong to the US Navys Sixth Fleet and are located in the eastern Mediterranean. / AFP Most of the six missiles, targeting the Shayrat airbase in Homs, were intercepted by the Syrian air defences, said the War Media, the media wing of the Syrian army. The wing said three other missiles, targeting the Dumair airbase in the Dumair area in the eastern Qalamoun region north of Damascus, were all intercepted before reaching their targets. Pan Arab al-Mayadeen TV said the targeting of the Dumair airbase comes a day before a deal to be reached for the evacuation of rebels from that area. Syrian state television aired images of missiles targeted Shayrat airbase being shot down over the areas of Homs. Yet it did not clarify who launched the strike. There are speculations that Israel is more likely to be behind the overnight military attack, after the Pentagon denied carrying out operations on the aforementioned airbases, according to Syrian state news agency SANA. The Syrian government forces told the Al-Masdar news portal that the airstrike on the Shayrat airbase could be fired from the Israeli territory. There has been no comment from the Israeli military on the issue so far. According to the Syrian Observatory for Human Rights, the Israeli warplanes fired missiles on the T-4 airbase in the eastern countryside of Homs on April 9, No country has yet claimed the attack after midnight. Yet the U.S. officials earlier said Washington wasnt planning another strike after the missile attack on Saturday. The Shayrat airbase was hit by a U.S. missile strike in April 2017, over similar allegations of the use of chemical weapons by the Syrian army in Idlib province in the same year. The Russian military said it would help protect international chemical weapons inspectors on their visit to Douma over the alleged chemical attack, according to Yuri Yevtushenko, head of the Russian Centre for Peace and Reconciliation in Syria. Eariler on Monday, the U.S.accused Russia of preventing international inspectors from entering the attack site. While calling for an objective investigation, Moscow disavowed the accusation and blamed the delays on the U.S.-led missile strike on Syria on Saturday. CLICK HERE TO READ MORE FROM: General (By Mitali Saran)New Delhi, April 17: India is sliding toward a collapse of humanity and ethics in political and civic life, as the recent reports of the rape and murder of an 8-year-old girl from a seminomadic Muslim community in the disputed state of Jammu and Kashmir reveal. Politicians from Indias governing Bharatiya Janata Party defended the men accused of the crime and ignited a furious debate about the fundamental character of the country. The child was abducted in January and imprisoned for a week in a temple, where she was drugged, starved and raped repeatedly before being murdered. Her body was thrown into the forest. At the time the crime passed without much comment beyond the local press. Outrage finally exploded last week, after a front-page report in the Indian Express newspaper revealed terrifying details from the police charge sheet, including the fact that one of the accused, a police officer, had asked his co-conspirators to hold off killing the child so that he could rape her once more. The charge sheet and other reports strongly suggested that this was not a random crime but one deliberately in line with the ugly sectarian politics playing out across India. Intimidation of religious minorities and violence against them has increased since Prime Minister Narendra Modi led the Bharatiya Janata Party to power in 2014. Indias traditional secularism is now locked in battle with the new majoritarian, Hindu chauvinist politics he represents. The 8-year-old girl belonged to the Muslim Bakarwal people, who move with their sheep and horses between high mountain pastures in the summer and the plains of the Hindu-dominated Jammu region in winter. There is tension with local Hindus over the right to graze animals on the land. According to the police, the motive of the premeditated crime was to terrorize the Bakarwals and dislodge them from the area. The bereaved parents were not even allowed to bury the child in the village. They have since fled the area. A newly formed group called Hindu Ekta Manch, or Hindu Unity Forum, organized a protest march in defense of the accused, who include a retired government official and two police officers. Thousands joined in, many waving the Indian national flag. Vijay Sharma, a co-founder of the group and an organizer of the march, was also a high-ranking leader of Mr. Modis Bharatiya Janata Party in the region. Mr. Modis party shares power with a regional political party in the state of Jammu and Kashmir. Two B.J.P. ministers in the state government joined the protest in defense of the accused. So what if a girl died? one of them remarked. Many girls die every day. They demanded that the investigation be transferred from the state police the investigators included Muslim officers to the federal Central Bureau of Investigation, a largely delegitimized institution that serves as a de facto arm of the ruling party. Lawyers at a court in the city of Jammu tried to physically prevent officials from filing charges against the accused and have threatened the lawyer who is representing the girls family. Over the past week, horrified Indians have protested vigorously on social media and in some cities. The disgust and the fury at the complicity of politicians, and the federal governments silence, grew into a thunderous chorus demanding that the prime minister speak up and fire the ministers backing the Hindu Ekta Manch. Belatedly reacting to popular outrage, Mr. Modi finally said: Incidents being discussed since past two days cannot be part of a civilized society. As a country, as a society, we all are ashamed of it. He promised justice. His vague statement delicately alluded to another case in the northern state of Uttar Pradesh, where a lawmaker from Mr. Modis party is accused of rape. Mr. Modi stayed away from his partys involvement in both cases. Yet instead of uniting India in horror, the incident has deepened religious, political and ethical divides. It has also made clear that there is no automatic political cost to crime or falsehood if it furthers the hegemonic political narrative. The politicians involved were sacked only after a huge public outcry. Government ministers, officials, right-leaning media and right-wing supporters have been perfectly sanguine about using the dead child to polarize society with whataboutery, fake news and wild conspiracy theories. A spokeswoman for Mr. Modis party, Meenakshi Lekhi, attacked opposition protests, suggesting that they were selective and opportunistic. You see their plan, she said. First shout minority minority, then Dalit Dalit and now women women and then try to somehow fix blame of state issues on the center. An influential ex-editor tweeted that Muslim Rohingya refugees were to blame for the crime. A B.J.P. youth activist posted a comment, now deleted, on his Facebook page saying that the rape must have been fun. A pornography site reported a surge in searches for videos using the raped and murdered girls name. The sense of national crisis today is because Indians feel a rising urgency to either counter this ethical collapse or to capitalize on it in the run-up to the next election. Mr. Modi came to power in 2014, and four years into his term, religious and cultural bigotry stands mainstreamed in Indian society. Many who voted for Mr. Modis economic promises are disappointed by his failure to deliver, and impatient with his deliberate silences around sectarian and sexual violence and hate speech by his party colleagues and ministers. The systematic destruction of democratic institutions is hard to ignore. The B.J.P. and its Hindu nationalist affiliates are bent on refashioning India into a country that is increasingly hostile to secular, democratic, pluralist and minority Indians. The rape and murder of the little nomad girl has thus taken on a larger meaning, reflecting the struggle for the fundamental character of India. An open letter to the prime minister signed by retired civil servants strongly protested the agenda of division and hate your party insidiously introduced into the grammar of our politics, our social and cultural life and even our daily discourse and held him directly responsible for this terrifying state of affairs. This battle for the soul and future of India is likely to get more violent in the lead-up to the national elections, scheduled for next year. Mr. Modis B.J.P. is braced for a desperate, ugly fight and has a long history of using religious polarization to electoral advantage. It will be up to the citizens of India to fight for a tolerant, pluralist country and stop the degeneration of its civic and political life. Mitali Saran (@mitalisaran) is a columnist for the Business Standard newspaper based in New Delhi. Courtesy: New York Times ANNFSU to launch student enrollment campaign at community schools All Nepal National Free Student Union (AANFSU), CPN-UML students wing, is all set to launch Student Enrollment Campaign at community schools. Blending hopes Blended finance is the latest reincarnation of development finance. Traditionally, development finance was defined as specialised financing to bridge the gap between commercial investments and livelihood support doled-out by the state for social causes. In Nepal, development finance was simply understood to be analogous to microfinance. Budhigandaki not on China visit agenda, says Gyawali Foreign Minister Pradeep Gyawali has said that he is not going to discuss the 1,200 megawatt Budhigandaki hydroelectricity project with Chinese officials during his official visit to Beijing that begins on Tuesday.Were looking into the decisions taken by the erstwhile Sher Bahadur Deuba government, and have not taken any decision on what we should do with the project, he told reporters at the Foreign Ministry hours before embarking on a six-day visit to China at the invitation of his counterpart, Wang Yi.The Chinese side has repeatedly expressed concern over the fate of the project, including recently by Chinese Ambassador to Nepal Yu Hong during her meeting with Energy Minister Barsha Man Pun. Washington (United States) (AFP) - California Governor Jerry Brown has rejected the Trump administration's initial proposals for a National Guard mission along the state's border with Mexico, a top US official said Monday. Brown last week had said he would accept federal funding from President Donald Trump to boost his state's National Guard. But the governor has quibbled over their role and insisted they only focus on cross-border crime rather than detaining unauthorized migrants coming into the state that is home to several "sanctuary cities." Ron Vitiello, the acting deputy commissioner of US Customs and Border Protection, said Brown had declined the initial roles put forward for Guardsmen. "The governor has determined that what we have asked for so far is unsupportable," Vitiello told reporters. "We've made this refined request, it's gone through the process and then we've got a signal from the governor that he is not participating." Deputy Assistant Defense Secretary Bob Salesses said the initial request envisioned sending 237 Guardsmen to two main crossing areas in Southern California, where they would have conducted maintenance, clerical assistance and helped with heavy equipment operations, among other tasks. "The California National Guard has indicated that they will not perform those missions as we know them to be right now," Salesses said, though he noted that conversations were ongoing. Vitiello, too, suggested that the state's Guard might ultimately be used in other roles, including possibly cargo inspection. "We will have other iterations," Vitiello said. Trump this month said he would send thousands of National Guard troops to the southern border, where they could remain until a border wall is constructed. The order would eventually see about 4,000 Guardsman along the border, which spans four US states. So far about 960 have arrived, officials said. Texas has seen the biggest deployment, with 650 sent to the border, while Arizona has dispatched 250, and New Mexico about 60. Story continues Vitiello said Guardsmen would most likely not be armed, but individual states might allow the carrying of a weapon in certain missions. California is at the forefront of what opponents call the "Resistance" to Trump's administration, with the heavily Democratic state suing the federal government over numerous issues, including the rollback of environmental regulations. Several cities including Los Angeles are "sanctuary cities" that require local law enforcement agencies not to tell federal agents about residents' legal status. US Attorney General Jeff Sessions has sued the state over three statutes that support cities and counties that refuse to hand over unauthorized immigrants to federal immigration authorities for prosecution or expulsion. Mission Plan by LT Nick Pawlenko, Expedition Coordinator, NOAA Office of Ocean Exploration and Research Daniel Wagner, Co-science Lead, Southeast Deep Coral Initiative at JHT Inc./NOAA National Centers of Coastal Ocean Science Adam Skarke, Co-science Lead, Mississippi State University From April 11 through May 3, 2018, a team of scientists and technicians, both at-sea and shore-based, will conduct exploratory investigations into the diversity and distribution of deep-sea habitats and associated marine communities in the Gulf of Mexico basin. The 23-day expedition will focus on acquiring data on priority exploration areas identified by ocean management and scientific communities. This is our final expedition planned in the Gulf this year before transiting back to the East Coast. Through discussions and information stemming from NOAA and other stakeholders, priority areas have been identified for exploration, building on our Gulf of Mexico 2017 expedition. This expedition will explore deep coral and sponge communities, bottom fish habitats, undersea canyons, shipwrecks, and a variety of chemosynthetic habitats including cold seeps, mud volcanoes and brine pools. Using NOAA Ship Okeanos Explorers unique capabilities, we will provide scientists and audiences onshore with real-time video footage from deep-water areas in important, yet largely unknown, U.S. waters. The ship will conduct 24-hour operations consisting of daytime remotely operated vehicle (ROV) dives and overnight mapping operations. Operations will focus on priority ROV dive sites and mapping areas throughout the Gulf of Mexico. ROV dives will include high-resolution visual surveys and limited sampling. This expedition will help to establish baseline information in the region to catalyze further exploration, research, and management activities. Expedition Goals The Gulf of Mexico 2018 expedition will address priority science themes and areas proposed by scientists and managers from NOAA, management agencies in the region, and the ocean science community. Operations will complement previous and planned work in the area. NOAA priorities for the expedition include a combination of science, education, outreach, and open data objectives that will support management decisions at multiple levels: Explore and discover vulnerable marine habitats particularly high-density deep-sea coral and sponge communities Explore areas relevant to resource managers such as Essential Fish Habitats, Habitat Areas of Particular Concern, and national marine sanctuaries and their proposed expansion areas Explore the diversity and distribution of benthic habitats including bottom fish habitats, chemosynthetic, and deep-sea coral communities Investigate the geology of the Gulf of Mexico Explore U.S. maritime heritage by investigating sonar anomalies and characterizing shipwrecks Acquire a foundation of ROV, sonar, and oceanographic data to better understand the characteristics of the water column and the fauna that live there Collect high-resolution bathymetry in areas with no (or low quality) sonar data Engage a broad spectrum of the scientific community and public in telepresence-based exploration and provide a foundation of publicly accessible data and information products to spur further exploration, research, and management activities Telepresence-enabled Exploration NOAA Ship Okeanos Explorer, the United States first and only federal vessel dedicated to exploration of our largely unknown ocean, conducts operations in a unique way, using telepresence to engage the majority of the science team on shore. Using telepresence, real-time video and other oceanographic data are transmitted through satellite and high-speed Internet pathways to scientists and stakeholders around the country. Scientists access the live feed by standing watch in Exploration Command Centers (ECCs), tuning in to the high-definition video via Internet-2 or watching the live video on standard Internet from their home institutions. Shore-based scientists interact with the ship through a teleconference line and Internet collaboration tools. Using these communication tools, scientists and students can contribute expertise and help guide the at-sea operations in real time, extending the reach of ocean exploration to more scientists and students than could possibly be accommodated onboard. Follow Along Live! Anyone with an Internet connection can follow along with the expedition as high-definition video of dives streams live to shore from ROV Deep Discoverer from April 12 through May 2, 2018. The same technology that allows scientists around the world to participate in the expedition from land also enables interested members of the public to experience deep-sea exploration, the wonder of discovery, and the fascination of science in real time. Additionally, mission logs, daily updates, educational materials, and multimedia elements will be added to the Ocean Explorer website throughout the expedition. Nah. Im barely watching season 10 as it is. I think Im Drag Race burnt out after ten years lol All I do is yell at everyone and am impressed by no one. Season 6 and All Stars 2 was the peak for me. And now that its on VH1 too many straight ppl have gotten ahold of it and its lost its special gay luster. Sucked the cool right out of it. Edited at 2018-04-16 11:53 pm (UTC) Reply Thread Link If there is one thing I have learned from watching The Real Housewives....the international ones do it better if not are more refreshing so you should give this a try! Reply Parent Thread Link Ok maybe I will thank you! Reply Parent Thread Link drag race thailand is so much more fun tho !!! Reply Parent Thread Link I'm the opposite. I thought i would be burnt out but Season 10 was a lot better than S9 and All stars 2 so I've been loving it Reply Parent Thread Expand Link I love the Season 10 cast SFM (with the huge exception of Eureka and occasionally Aquafina when she's being a real fucking asshat) that I'm sucked back into the show. I can't even tell you objectively if season 10 is any good because I love the contestants and they've really amped up their game which has nothing to do with Drag Race as a show but rather the Queens. Reply Parent Thread Link iawtc 100%. This season is already boring me.. the format feels too formulaic for me to enjoy. I tried watching ep1 of Thailand and it was beyond tragic & annoying, and not in a fun way. Reply Parent Thread Link i agree. and the bars are way too crowded now. i loved when it was our own little thing. Reply Parent Thread Link i love it. gives me old school drag race feels. Reply Thread Link Why are the subtitles so tiny! Reply Thread Link Ive heard such good things!!! Reply Thread Link oh good I've been too lazy to find illegal streams I'll tune in Reply Thread Link queen of departures! Reply Parent Thread Link vyaaaaaanjie summons you Reply Parent Thread Link I was so impressed with Drag Race Thailand. Some of the challenges they put those girls through were ridiculously hard omg Reply Thread Link That pit crew is a major upgrade over RuPauls's Reply Thread Link legit. why there is not SMOKING hot guys (with some ounce of personality) in the US version is so confusing. bring out a circuit queen who can at least dance Reply Parent Thread Link Thailand was good; I've not heard of Chilean Drag Race but the trailer looks a bit... off brand for me. Overproduced, I guess? Reply Thread Link Good! The season was so much fun and I want more people to appreciate Annee Maywong. Reply Thread Link The one true queen of DR Thailand tbh. Reply Parent Thread Link Annee Maywong is so gorgeous and polished Reply Parent Thread Link Yes Annee Maewong was so amazing. So many jaw dropping looks. Reply Parent Thread Link she was robbed, imo Reply Parent Thread Link i'm only on episode 3 but already this is a legendary show loving Annee Maywong for her lewks and Dearis Doll for her reads Reply Thread Link also, best part about DR Thailand is the emphasis on runway for judging, which RPDR randomly alternates between caring about and ignoring depending on their pre-determined storyline needs. after 13 seasons of Drag Race i'm getting tired of the never-ending acting- and musical challenges that are always so incredibly poorly written and force the queens to play inane characters that limit their creative possibilities (see: the entirety of season 7 as an example), and i'm now much more interested in seeing the queens putting together a fierce look because it's the greatest expression of their individual creativity that RPDR allows them. Reply Parent Thread Link i love that girl group challenge they did, like they ACTUALLY lipsynced to real songs not some random ass parody songs sung by a parody singer Reply Thread Link if i can't get real housewives of iqaluit, can i at least get a drag race: nunavut? Reply Thread Link yassss, Canadian queen of the north! Reply Parent Thread Link arctic circle realness Reply Parent Thread Link tundra queen! Reply Parent Thread Link ooh i'll have to try this. the streams i found were super slow for me, but i managed to watch the first ep, and i loved it Reply Thread Link the petty part of me enjoys how people overwhelmingly kept thumbs downing the sneak peaks they post of the Wow Presents shows Reply Parent Thread Link new era, new boyfriend? lettuce pray Reply Thread Link i am confusion Reply Parent Thread Link some girl sold pictures of mac miller sleeping Reply Parent Thread Expand Link Is that not Mac Miller Reply Parent Thread Link damn guy get a wax Reply Parent Thread Link OH GOD sis noooooo. I could've gone my whole life without seeing this smh Reply Parent Thread Link JFC she sleeps with that?! Reply Parent Thread Link huacala Reply Parent Thread Link Why would anyone fuck someone with that hairy of a back. He aint even cute. Hes like the ugliest guy shes dated. This reminds me of the Michael Buble pic though lmao Reply Parent Thread Expand Link I'm fucking triggered, wtf? Back hair is disgusting, by far my biggest turn-off. Reply Parent Thread Link "Posting photos of Mac Miller's hairy ass crack" should be added as a ban-able offense. No shade, but YKWIM. Reply Parent Thread Link omg girl.. Reply Parent Thread Link aw this is so mean :( i would take chubby and hairy over anyone hotter if he was a good boyfriend and i loved him Reply Parent Thread Link was this while he was dating ariana aka cheating or is someone just making fun of his body with old pics? Reply Parent Thread Link why does his butt look shopped Reply Parent Thread Link we need more songs with the same vibe/sound as be alright and knew better/forever boy!!!! but we'll probably get something...else. Reply Thread Link yasss those are my fave songs off the album what's funny is it took me like a year to get into knew better/forever boy but once I did I was obsessed Reply Parent Thread Link BINNNNCH YES Reply Parent Thread Link yes!! Ik most people prefer forever boy over knew better but Knew Better >>>>>>> Reply Parent Thread Link omg knew better is by far the better half! her live performance of knew better part ii on tour was so good. Reply Parent Thread Link Wtf for real?? Knew better is >>>>>> Reply Parent Thread Link I prefer the full version personally Reply Parent Thread Link you forgot PIANO Reply Parent Thread Expand Link yassss can't wait Reply Thread Link I'm so ready! Reply Thread Link LET'S GOOOOOOO Reply Thread Link I wish she would drop that high ponytail and fake tan. Reply Thread Link ITA!!! That high pony bothers me sfm Reply Parent Thread Link the high pony is soooooooooo over done at this point. she needs to switch it up! Reply Parent Thread Link I just hope she'll rock her natural curls for a full video!! I personally don't mind the high ponytail lol it's v clear it makes her feel confident. She reaaaally needs to lay off the fake tanner tho omlI just hope she'll rock her natural curls for a full video!! Reply Parent Thread Link im sure they're gone by now. that red hair on victorious was apparently unforgiving Reply Parent Thread Expand Link this better be a bop Reply Thread Link I kinda want this to be a ballad. She has such a pretty voice, we deserve at least one more power ballad from her. Honeymoon Avenue and Tattooed Heart are amazing and should've been singles. Reply Thread Link yas ariana doing one good for her stoner fans <3 hope its a bop Reply Thread Link I can't wait!! I have a feeling it will be a ballad tho Reply Thread Link I'm not expecting anything so I won't get disappointed lol but Into You and Touch It I doubt it'll be like. Reply Thread Link She did such a shitty video for Into You, that's probably why it somewhat flopped. Reply Parent Thread Link I don't even remember it tbh lol but the song def deserved more love, it's a pop tragedy! Reply Parent Thread Link thinking bout you STILL gives me chills almost two years later Reply Parent Thread Link god SAME Reply Parent Thread Link omg yes yes yes! lol. One Last Time is probably my fave ariana song. I just wish she'd do a full fledged whitney/xtina style ballad where she lets her full vocal range show. she's one of the few who could actually pull off that sort of thing in this day and age and it kills me that she hasn't fully went there yet Reply Parent Thread Link yesss Reply Parent Thread Link Yaaaaas Reply Parent Thread Link yes yes yes Reply Parent Thread Link i don't dare to expect it but i wish :') Reply Parent Thread Link you better stan the underrated boP touch it Reply Parent Thread Link DW is a very solid pop album.. perhaps one of the best released in the last few years. Hoping the new single is good! Reply Thread Link Anyone else going to an anti-gun violence rally that day? Reply Thread Link OMG. Mi PEQUENA TRAVIESA!!! TE QUIERO TANTO TANTO TANTO TANTO TANTOOOOOOOO!! Reply Thread Link Also, ONTD. Are you ready for this bop? Reply Parent Thread Link that song! i often get it stuck in my head. Reply Parent Thread Link Cada dia un poco mas Reply Parent Thread Link MI PEQUENA TRAVIESAAAAAAAAA Reply Parent Thread Link Omg, I knew that name sounded familiar, I watched this! How could I forget Julia/Julio? Reply Parent Thread Link I also remember my mom watching Maria Isabel. Flop leads tbh. Reply Thread Link how dare you! Adela Noriega was not a flop lead! and then you go praising El Privilegio de Amar? Adela is easily one of the telenovela queens! Reply Parent Thread Link Adela was amazing in El Privilegio de Amar, but Maria Isabel was just... meh. Reply Parent Thread Expand Link Also, you bitches better bow to "El Privilegio de Amar" Tamara was Soraya Montenegro levels of crazy. Reply Thread Link IM SHAKING!!!! these throwback memories of me sitting on the floor mattress con mi ninera watching this iconicness oh wig! i feel that already Reply Parent Thread Link lol i used to LOVE this song Reply Parent Thread Link El Privilegio de Amar is hands now in my top faves telenovelas EVER. shout out to Lazos de Amor too. easily in my top two. THAT ENDING. Reply Parent Thread Link Between this and Schitt's Creek, you have flawless taste bb. Reply Parent Thread Expand Link Cual fue el final porque my flop ass doesnt remember. I didnt see many novelas growing up. Or maybe i blocked them. Idr :( Reply Parent Thread Expand Link I loved this relatively so much that I was livid with that fucking remake, tonta Maite Peroni Reply Parent Thread Expand Link omg I'm having vived memories of being in el salvador at my grandma's house, and my aunt watching this show! and the theme song! my mom loved mijares Reply Parent Thread Link El privilegio de amar had a great song. Lucerito y Mijares. When love was real. Reply Parent Thread Expand Link TE QUIERO TANTO TANTO TANTO TANTO TANTO AMOR QUE YA NO PUEDO MASSS YAAAAAASSSSSSSSSSSSSS Reply Thread Link MI PEQUENAAAAAAA TRAVIEEEESSSAAAAAAAAAAAAAA Qweeeeennnn!! Reply Parent Thread Link That song is a mf jam. Reply Parent Thread Link VUELVE QUE SIN TI LA VIDA SE ME VAAA I only watched Sin Ti for the theme song lmao. I watched too many novelas when I was a kid but these were my faves: Agujetas de Color de Rosa Luz Clarita Confidente de Secundaria Lazos de Amor Sonadoras Locura de Amor Alma Rebelde Dos Mujeres Un Camino Reply Thread Link que mas te hace falta, si lo bello de este mundo es gratis?? luz clarita was THAT sister i never had!!! Reply Parent Thread Link OMG. Gurl, you're proving to have such a flawless taste in this post. Reply Parent Thread Link Luz Clarita was ah-mah-zing. But Luz Gordita was even better. Reply Parent Thread Link Sonadoras was my jam. I think my parents used to watch Locura de Amor. Reply Parent Thread Link Sonadoras era el de las tachas cierto? Reply Parent Thread Expand Link yesss Luz Clarita, Sonadoras and Alma Rebelde!! Reply Parent Thread Link This list is amazing, so many good novelas. Volver a Empezar was my moms fave but youre missing Agujetas de color de Rosa. It was my literal LIFE as a preteen. Reply Thread Link I know, so many memories Reply Parent Thread Link omg bless this post i think from this list ive only seen mi pequena traviesa tho and to answer op's question, a favorite in my house has always been cafe con aroma de mujer Reply Thread Link I was like four when it aired but I remember loving El Extrano Retorno de Diana Salazar. I've always been a sucker for historical fashion. I would love to be able to rewatch it now as an adult. Oh and Alondra. I remember finding it scandalous. Edited at 2018-04-17 04:05 am (UTC) Reply Thread Link Loved Diana SAlasar and her freaky eyes adn LOVED ALONDRA, Ana colchero is the hottest telenovela actress ever. Reply Parent Thread Link Not Mexican but did anyone here watch muneca brava? With Natalia Oreiro. Lord I used to be obsessed Reply Thread Link omg yes natalia oreiro is prob up there as one of my very first crushes we love a sexual awakening! Reply Parent Thread Link I used to be obsessed with this song she was absolutely gorgeous Reply Parent Thread Link YASSSSSSSS!!! POR ESO VUELO, A OTROS SENDEROOOOOS, Y ME CUESTA IMAGINAR LO QUE VENDRAAAAA CAMBIO DOLOOOORRRRR. POR LIBERTAAAAAADDDDDDD Natalia Oreiro could've been the latin Britney. Reply Parent Thread Link Yes! I used to watch that one but it was loong. Reply Parent Thread Link Muneca Brava shaped my entire adolescence lol. Natalia Oreiro was hot af, Facundo Arana was gorgeous and the chemistry was insane! Reply Parent Thread Expand Link The only Mexican telenovelas I've seen were the Thalia ones years ago dubbed in Portuguese lol iconic! The rest are all Brazilian soaps. Avenida Brasil was one of my faves bc Carminha was such an iconic villain. And a more recent one called A Forca do Querer bc Juliana Paes is everything and I only kept watching for her scenes. Reply Thread Link I liked Amor a Vida because Felix tbh, #iconic Reply Parent Thread Link Omg yas!! The guy that ended up with Felix on Amor a Vida is on another one now that I find so obnoxious and I can never tell if he's cute or not lol. Reply Parent Thread Expand Link La Otra! I was only 10 and I was addicted to it. I need to rewatch it at some point Reply Thread Link OMG. El premio Mayor. Fucking Huicho. i hate you for bringing this back into my life, Carmencita! Reply Parent Thread Link I just realized that's how you spell Huicho. I always thought it was Wicho. Reply Parent Thread Link ah yessss Tu y Yo! a classic. my sister and mom really loved that one. i'd join in and watch occasionally. i enjoyed it from what i remember. Reply Parent Thread Link i spit out mi juguito de mango @ these throwbacks rn i remember when the dos mujeres un camino theme song came on y mi abuelita got visibly shook before sending me to bed Reply Parent Thread Link El premio mayor should be on the list just because of that song. Reply Parent Thread Link I hated Dos Mujeres Un Cretino. Never understood why two beautiful women would fight over that ugly old guy. And I hated that ending. Reply Parent Thread Expand Link Lazos de Amor! That ending still haunts me, M. Night Shyamalan who? Reply Parent Thread Expand Link amazing taste Reply Parent Thread Link I couldve sworn the marisol theme song went marisoooooooool but I remember that one lol Reply Parent Thread Link Maribel Guardia es un icono y una heroina nacional de Costa Rica. Bow. Reply Parent Thread Link Yas Reply Parent Thread Link Yassssss Tu y Yo Lazos de Amor is ICONIC! Tres Veces Ana who? Reply Parent Thread Link Enrique's peak tbh. Reply Thread Link I LOVE THAT SONG SO MUCH Reply Parent Thread Link Pueden pasar tres mil anos Pueden besar otros labios Pero nunca te olvidare Pero nunca te olvidareeeeeeeee Reply Parent Thread Link omg he is so awful hahah colunga looking good Reply Parent Thread Link There was a telenovela from 2014? I think called "El color de la pasion " and tbh I liked it, it had a lot of things I liked about classical Mexican telenovelas and imo had way better quality than most recent telenovelas But tbh even if I like Mexican telenovelas, Colombian ones >>>>>>>>>> , when will your faves? Tbh, Cafe con aroma we mujer, Betty La Fea, Las Juanas, Pedro el escamoso, Hasta que la Plata nos separe, la mujer del presidente, Alicia en el pais de las mercancias (ok some of those are not telenovelas but they were damn good) Reply Thread Link PI RU LIN PIN PON, PI RU LIN PIN PON. Reply Parent Thread Link YAAAAASSSS Reply Parent Thread Link I started watching el color de la pasion cause it was shot where I'm from, and then I got hooked and I really like the actress that played the main character too Reply Parent Thread Expand Link Gaviotaaaa omg my sister used to cry so much she had to turn off the TV lol Reply Parent Thread Link Pasion de Gavilanes was iconic tbh Reply Parent Thread Expand Link omg i was just talking with my roomate about desde gayola/valvula de escape honestly horacio pretty much made me the person who i am today Reply Parent Thread Link Would Desde Gayola be considered "problematic" nowadays? I know big part of it is satire but I saw a bunch of videos sometime ago and was quite surprised on the homophobic and transphobic jokes they had. Reply Parent Thread Link Maybe but at the same time many of the people that worked there were LGBT Reply Parent Thread Link Cooperative-run fair price shops shut down Most of the fair price shops operated by cooperatives with government grants have shut down, marking a failure of the programme to make essential goods available at low cost to low-income groups. The cooperatives received Rs100,000 each to establish these outlets. Lol "Money Heist" , La Casa de papel sounds way cooler. I liked the show but the spanish accent annoyed me too much so i didn't binge it, and Tokyo is so hot but sometimes dumb. My favorites were Nairobi, Tokyo and Berlin and it is a very well made show, it has a lot of quality but i don't think it's thaat good, i hate when people overhype things. Reply Thread Link My thoughts exactly. Liked it but found it overrated. The plot is amazing at some points, but incredibly weak at others. The quality def. went up and down. When it comes to foreign Netflix shows, Dark is probably my favorite. And the quality is consistent for the most part. Reply Parent Thread Link [ Spoiler (click to open) ] my fave was Nairobi as well, but Tokyo was right about her kid. I hate that we don't know what the hell Nairobi even did after the robbery Reply Parent Thread Link IA with all of this. My fave is Nairobi Reply Parent Thread Link it has a lot of quality but i don't think it's thaat good IA. A lot of scenes were preposterous. The acting was the show's strongest suit for me. Itziar Ituno (Racquel) and Alvaro Morte (Sergio/Profesor) were terrific. I liked Nairobi and Tokyo, too. Tokyo's dynamic with Profesor was the best. Edited at 2018-04-18 03:32 pm (UTC) Reply Parent Thread Link gonna leave before spoilers drop, just wanted to say that everyone at my office is obsessed with this show and at lunch breaks they do binge watching lol Reply Thread Link Vis A Vis are my everything right now. [ Spoiler (click to open) ] Arturito was so fucking annoying and deserved to die, and Moscu dying broke my heart. Nairobi >>>>> This show andare my everything right now.Nairobi >>>>> Reply Thread Link I haven't seen it yet, but this show is huge here because everyone I know recommends it to me. all my friends. it is insane. Reply Thread Link Sis, watch it. Reply Parent Thread Link I will! I just need to finish this semester. Reply Parent Thread Link "Becomes Netflixs Most-Watched Foreign Original Series Ever" Also isn't this a bit missleading? Netflix didn't made the show, just distributes it world wide but the show was made by a spanish production company and aired there before. Reply Thread Link I believe Netflix does that for every foreign language/international series that they've acquired. Reply Parent Thread Link Hmm, I see OT but what so you think about the season so far? I'm loving it, all episodes have been great and they definitely fixed the pace and Keri for all the awards Reply Parent Thread Expand Link I loved the first season, ended up hating the second one lmao Reply Thread Link my cousin kept raving about this show so i watched the first two episodes. i'll probably finish it since it's a limited series but i haven't been blown away by it yet. Reply Thread Link everyone i know and their second cousin told me to watch this so i did, but i found it very underwhelming ? they have a nice story, but that's not captivating long enough for a series like this. it felt like what they were trying to tell could be told in 4-5 eps. Reply Thread Link I kinda wanted more of the ending. I wanted to know what happened to my faves (Nairobi and Tokyo) not flop Professor. Reply Thread Link Ooooh is just realized its called Haus des Geldes / House of money here. I had no idea this was the same everyone is talking about Based on the german title I always thought this was a documentary when it was suggested to me Edited at 2018-04-17 05:11 pm (UTC) Reply Thread Link I started this over Christmas holiday and never finished it. The fact that they changed the name to "Money Heist", which sounds like a placeholder name for a script, kind of makes me not want to go back to it. Reply Thread Link Casa de Papel is great but have you seen Tabula Rasa? Love it! So far the international Netflix shows are way more interesting for me to watch than the american ones. Reply Thread Link i've watched only season one so far of money heist (i pick a good foreign show to watch when on the elliptical because the subtitles absorb me) and tabula rasa. i actually preferred mh because the twists were more than i could predict whereas i felt tabula rasa was a little predictable and also was strung out WAY too long. everything seemed to happen in the last episode and until then, almost all else was a dead end theory. both are still very good, though. Reply Parent Thread Link Nairobi and Moscow/Denver's relationship were my fave parts. I also cackled when Monica busted Arturito's head omg he had it coming, girl really didn't love herself when she got with him. also the scene where he was like "my love Monica would never do that" and then he caught her fucking Denver [ tw ] I wish they'd handled Berlin raping that woman better tbh. like they adressed it but it still felt to me like we were supposed to feel sorry for his death Tokyo and Rio were so annoying. like are you rly gonna fuck up the robbery for some kid, girl? smh so dumbNairobi and Moscow/Denver's relationship were my fave parts. I also cackled when Monica busted Arturito's head omg he had it coming, girl really didn't love herself when she got with him. also the scene where he was like "my love Monica would never do that" and then he caught her fucking Denver Reply Thread Link [ Spoiler (click to open) ] I had a lot of problems with the Ariadna storyline. to me the whole gang was responsible for her rape. when that happened I immediately lost all sympathy with them all, not just Berlin. and the show ends and we don't even know what happened to her, if she even got any money or managed to rebuild her life. it's fucked up Reply Parent Thread Link [ Spoiler (click to open) ] the lack of resolution for her is even worse given how the writers chose to have her last moments on screen be of her getting further traumatized by Berlin dragging her with him as he went to get shot. if they weren't gonna bother more with her story they shouldn't have gone there. Alison (whom I also liked) got shafted too but at least they didn't leave her character with that kind of baggage. Reply Parent Thread Expand Link It's a fever here in Portugal. Funny thing went to Madrid the other day asked several people no one knew about it!! But seriously its freaking awesome!! Reply Thread Link Maybe they'll make it part of the training process after that. Reply Parent Thread Link Starbucks is shit. Reply Thread Link I have that day off. I plan to watch white Twitter explode in anger that they can't get their coffee that day. I'm glad they're making everybody do this. Reply Thread Link It's late afternoon, so mostly kiddos wanting sugary stuff after school will be pissed. They would NEVER close in the AM, where they make all their coins. Reply Parent Thread Link Nah it's late afternoon, so a bunch of teens whining about the fact that they couldn't get their sugary drink on the month. (ex barista here: Frappuchino happy hour was the bane of my fucking existence) Reply Parent Thread Link I apologize because I've never gotten anything but vanilla bean Frappes. In my defense, I can't handle coffee of any sort and that's like the only drink that doesn't have coffee. Well, actually, I've gotten hot water for my tea. Those containers keep things hot for forever! Reply Parent Thread Expand Link yes! According to the release it's going to be (in theory, of course) The training will be provided to nearly 175,000 partners (employees) across the country, and will become part of the onboarding process for new partners. Reply Parent Thread Link i must have missed the story. did the employees call the cops on the two men or? Reply Thread Link that's sick. all global corporations should adopt this policy. i was just recently visiting paris after a long absence from traveling (fear of flying) and was absolutely shocked when the only black man in the line for security check was asked to step aside, remove all of his belongings, including shoes, and go through physical check up, even though the metal detector didn't even beep. this lasted forever since all five of the employees were zeroing in on this like they were dismantling a bomb, which of course held up the line so everyone could witness it. what enraged me the most that he was the smartest dressed person in that line. even a blind person could see he was a highly educated business man on a work related trip, yet all the white trash tourist with their asses hanging out of their disgusting track suits got to waltz through the security without little to no observation. Reply Parent Thread Link wow. maybe it's my region, but the starbucks around here do not give a crap if you buy anything while waiting or hanging out. They don't even care if you bring in outside food (I do it all the time.) Only time I've seen them approach people is when customers bring in outside drinks but don't order anything. Basically, as long as you're not being a jerk to other customers around here, sbux employees do not gaf so this is wild to me. Reply Parent Thread Expand Link The manager called 911... like fuck off fkr being a racist piece of shit AND tying up an emergency line for your racism Reply Parent Thread Link I literally almost choked on my burrito seeing this tweet Thank you for my almost death Reply Parent Thread Link Do you not get satire or..... Reply Parent Thread Link I'm re-watching the series and wow now that I've worked in an office for an extended period of time a lot of the interactions and plot lines are way too fucking real and I never picked up on it when it was airing. Edited at 2018-04-17 08:44 pm (UTC) Reply Parent Thread Expand Link "Aw man am I a woman?" destroys me every time. Reply Parent Thread Link One of my favorite scenes ever lmao. "Oh, God. Am I a woman?!" Reply Parent Thread Link omggg Reply Parent Thread Link Lol Reply Parent Thread Link LMAO Edited at 2018-04-17 10:47 pm (UTC) Reply Parent Thread Link I doubt it will change much, but at least this will cost them a lot of money. So there's that. Reply Thread Link Obviously this alone isnt going to solve any problems but this is a way bigger step than any other corporation/entity has taken. Like can you even fathom how much money theyll be losing by completely closing all stores for an afternoon? Not like they cant afford it but come on, theyre Starbucks, this was eventually going to blow over, they couldve easily gotten away with a half ass apology with zero action moving forward. This is a good step, assuming the training is done in a way that results in some legitimate introspection. Reply Thread Link Yeah, I'd say the fact that they're shutting their stores down to do this training, which means they will lose money, is fairly significant. Doesn't mean they should stop there, but it's a whole lot more than other places have done. Reply Parent Thread Link This is true Reply Parent Thread Link Pretty much this. At least there's some action and the CEO even reaching out to the two black customers. Any other companies and it was more a half ass apologies and nothing. So this is better than nothing. Reply Parent Thread Link It tells me that their slowest time for sales is Tuesday afternoon. I'm glad they're making some kind of effort, tho. More businesses should have this kind of training. It has to start somewhere. Reply Parent Thread Link Closing when the stores are slowest makes more sense to avoid inconveniencing their customers too. Im certainly not saying they didnt take profit loss into consideration, but pissing off your customers isnt really a great way of doing business. Reply Parent Thread Expand Link yup. I appreciate they are trying to get a head of it. time will tell, and it's corp. america so i hardly expect miracles, but even if you view it cynically as just a PR move, it's more of one than anyone else has done. Reply Parent Thread Link Yeah. Idk what else anyone would expect Starbucks to do. Shit... I would never even guess they would do something like this. As you said, there were a few bad stories vs the thousands of non stories of fine service at Starbucks, this 100% would have blown over so kudos for them actually doing something. Reply Parent Thread Link I mean, if you don't already have the common decency not to openly discriminate against people for no reason then I don't think that's gonna be fixed in one afternoon, but go off, I guess. (and yes, I've worked in several customer service/retail jobs; 'it's just policy!!!1' is not a valid excuse for this kind of blatant B.S.) Reply Thread Link It wont be fixed in one afternoon but it might begin the process of introspection and it might be the beginning of a journey that white people desperately need to take. Reply Parent Thread Link It makes a significant statement coming from a huge corporation, sure, but on an individual level I feel like the message is "don't be racist or you'll get in trouble at work," not "don't be racist because it's wrong, and by the way you should already fucking know that because you're a human adult." But I guess the bar's pretty low these days. Reply Parent Thread Link Gonna need more than just one day of it We had to take a whole multiculturalism class for my grad program and most of them were still racist fucks Reply Thread Link Seattle based companies are usually garbage, Starbucks is no different. Reply Thread Link Miss Nkechi Amare Diallo is contacting Starbucks as we speak offering to give the employees training Reply Parent Thread Link "I see you're getting a venti white mocha with five shots.....are you racist?" Reply Parent Thread Link Yep. I currently work for starbucks (last day is on the 29th--woo!) and we have people coming in and bringing in their own coffee and reading our newspapers without paying for them all the damn time, and we don't say anything. It's ridiculous that this shit happened. Edited at 2018-04-17 08:47 pm (UTC) Reply Parent Thread Link just in general there needs to be a conversation (and lbr lots of layers/conversations to be had here) about white people calling the police on black people. Too many times the consequences end in death or injury and white people don't get it. Living in a world where calling the cops = safety speaks to how different our worlds are. It's never crossed my mind when I worked in retail or the service industry to call the police in these situations but especially becoming more mindful of what the consequences are. Of course this would mean people have to admit police can be racist garbage/racial bias exists but I've seen this being talked about on my timeline more which is important Reply Parent Thread Link SEriously, around here Sbux is where you go if you don't have any money / a lot of money to spend on drinks. Because we know the partners really don't care as long as we're not being assholes. Reply Parent Thread Link Starbucks is having a PR nightmare but at least they're willing to change. And seriously that manager who called the cops can GTFO. There are people who literally run their entire office from Starbucks without ordering a damn thing. I hope the guys sue the store, Starbucks, and cops and win big. Reply Thread Link Everyone keeps saying they should sue Starbucks but did they do anything illegal? Reply Parent Thread Link um...racial discrimination? idk it it was posted here but they interviewed the manager who called the cops and all she could come up with were non existant company policies and bs excuses. there was also a black woman doing a one person sit in for 2 hrs that the interviewer happened to notice and she told him that while she was sitting there, employees asked her 3 times if she wanted to order anything and gave her attitude. she noted some other yt ppl who had been sitting in the store longer than her didn't get bothered at all. tl;dr the arrested men definitely have a case. Reply Parent Thread Link One of my best friends does this. Sets his laptop up and has meetings all day long, often ordering not a damn thing. Reply Parent Thread Link "There are people who literally run their entire office from Starbucks" lol calling me out over here. but I do order stuff and often feel like I don't order enough, oop. Maybe that's why the baristas like me so much! Reply Parent Thread Expand Link I see this all the effing time at local places. Or they'll order one tiny cup of coffee and be there like 8 hours. It always bothered me at the local place I used to frequent a few years ago. Some jackasses brought in their own food and Dunkin Donuts coffee and got pissed when the worker at the local place told them they couldn't eat outside food there. It's not a library, order their superior coffee or hang out in Dunkin Donuts. Reply Parent Thread Link All of America needs to shut for that level of training. I think a lot of white people dont even realize their own level of bias when it comes to POC. Its the norm these days to be microagressive towards us and barely any one blinks when it happens. I think Im so desensitized to the point that I dont even get upset about it when it happens to me. Like cool, thanks for following me around the store not asking me shit but here comes my white husband and hes treated like a VIP. Reply Thread Link I totally agree, its a major problem and I dont get how people can act like its no big deal. I was talking to my grandmother about the Starbucks thing the other day and she was like, well if I was working in a small store by myself and two black men came in and just sat there and didnt buy anything I would do the same thing!! I dont blame her!! First of all, the manager wasnt by herself lol it was STARBUCKS there were tons of other people in there. And its STARBUCKS there is nothing suspicious about people hanging out in there. White people loiter in Starbucks as a god damn pastime and nobody calls the cops on us generally. And you just cant get through to her because when you try she says nobody can even have a conversation about this because the black people call us racist. You cant just start a National conversation and say like, the reason white people act this way is because every time theres a bank robbery on the news, a burglary, anything, its a black guy who did it. And like, she truly believes that. And she cant even articulate what the response is supposed to be, how saying that in a national conversation (???) is supposed to help anything? Like what are black people supposed to say back lmao. I guess she just wants white people to be allowed to rant on stage about how all black people are criminals? Its honestly ridiculous and this thinking is everywhere. This is a white woman who will argue that shes not racist and shes a democrat who voted for Hillary and despises Trump. White people are a problem. Its not just old people because that thinking gets passed down generations, I really dont know how you fix it without forcing people to look at themselves. There was also some old white lady who got fired from my store recently after like 14 years or something for being a racist. Theyd been building a case against her for a while since its basically impossible to fire people from corporations, she would just ignore black customers at her desk. The final nail in the coffin was a white customer who happened to be married to a black guy and watched her be nasty/ignore people in front of her, so she told her off and called corporate. I was honestly shocked, she got away with it for far too long but I couldnt believe they actually finally fired her. Reply Parent Thread Link I love everything about this comment. I wish most white people would learn to just calm down and listen when people try to explain to them what racism is and how they actively play a part in it continuing. Nothing is ever going to change as long as they refuse to see that. The general feeling I get is that if someone is a democrat/hates Trump and has a black friend they cant be racist. Like .... nah guy, yes you can, and usually more than the confederate flag waving fool calling POC ape/monkey. Edited at 2018-04-17 09:16 pm (UTC) Reply Parent Thread Expand Link I imagine your grandmother would think I was overreacting if I called the cops on people wearing MAGA hats in Starbucks. Reply Parent Thread Expand Link piss me off when they follow you around the store!! Bitch now I don't want to buy anything because you're fucking up my shopping experience, and when I do want to purchase something I don't wanna give your ass any commission. Reply Parent Thread Expand Link i was out at renfest for this past community day. still got a good amount of mareep, but only one shiny! Reply Thread Link I only caught two, while at the Bulbasaur community day I got like 10! Reply Parent Thread Link It was a bust for me in San Francisco. Rained all day and cold as fuck Reply Parent Thread Link oh nooooo! i planned ahead and brought an external charger so i could play in the car on the way there lol. i wish i could've caught 3 shinies but i'll take the 1! i only got 1 bulbasaur and a big ole goose egg on the dratini for the first one :( Reply Parent Thread Expand Link i'm also in sf and ran out right before it started raining. i was happy with the 1 shiny mareep i caught, haha. Reply Parent Thread Link Where is everyone finding all these shinies. I play everyday and I have only ever found one shiny swablu Reply Parent Thread Expand Link last post i was complaining about not ever seeing a hitmonlee or a hitmonchan and then i found both on the same day lol. also i had no idea field research led to catching legendary pokemon! i got a moltres and i was supremely surprised. so i guess this game sucked me back in.... Reply Thread Link Its Moltres for the entire month B.B.! Im hoping for an articuo next! Reply Parent Thread Link I need an Articuno so bad!!!! Reply Parent Thread Expand Link ohhhhhhhhhhhhhh i did not know that! i wonder what it was in march Reply Parent Thread Expand Link So far that is all you get. I completed the field research twice thinking it would be a different legendary. Reply Parent Thread Expand Link wb <333 Reply Parent Thread Link I already got 10 Charizard but I cannot wait for shiny! Its bad ass Reply Thread Link there was a wild charizard at my apt this morning! Reply Parent Thread Link Love the community days. Husband and I travel from Nottingham to Birmingham, drop baby off at Nannys and just raid & catch all day. Its the only few hours in the month where we dont worry about being parents/adults and just have some down time. What team and level is everyone? Im Mystic, and just turned Level 35! Reply Thread Link Mystic / Level 24. I play on and off. Some weeks nonstop then I don't open it again for a couple of weeks. Reply Parent Thread Link I started in July 2016 and then stopped in the September at level 15. Picked it up again when I was on maternity leave last year and it helped me tremendously; getting out the house, finding new places in my town and meeting other parents who were playing too. Reply Parent Thread Expand Link Mystic level 39 Reply Parent Thread Link valor / 36! Reply Parent Thread Expand Link I am flop yellow and level 34 I only need Mewtwo to complete my Pokedex! Edited at 2018-04-17 10:01 pm (UTC) Reply Parent Thread Expand Link i'm also mystic and just turned level 35 2 days ago! Reply Parent Thread Expand Link Mystic and recently became level 30! Reply Parent Thread Link valor level 28! Reply Parent Thread Link Mystic / Level 36 I only have 160k to 37, so I will likely get there next week. Reply Parent Thread Link Mystic, level 32 Reply Parent Thread Link Instinct, Level 39 Reply Parent Thread Link Mystic. 28 Reply Parent Thread Link I'm Valor, level 35. Only 250,000 away from 36! Reply Parent Thread Link Valor / Level 40 Our PoGo community here is great, without our local Discord I would still be mid-30s, lol. Reply Parent Thread Link I am just getting back into this game and I need me some Charmanders so I am hft. Reply Thread Link I only have one! Charmanders are level 1 raid bosses which you can easily solo at the moment too! Reply Parent Thread Link i'm really excited for a shiny charizard, but i wish they would do a dratini community day again since i missed it :( Reply Thread Link Im always getting dratinis in 10k eggs atm! Reply Parent Thread Link i have tons of dratinis but none shiny! :( Reply Parent Thread Expand Link I'm so sick of them. Unless I can get a shiny with good IV, I no longer want them. I literally have enough to start a farm. Reply Parent Thread Link has anyone gotten their mew yet? i am on the last stage... gotta get a damn excellent curve ball annoying af. Reply Thread Link I got it on Sunday! I got the task of excellent curveball and thought that I am no way getting that. Then I randomly did it on an Eevee! Have faith, you can do it! Reply Parent Thread Link i just keep trying! Reply Parent Thread Link i'm still stuck on catching a ditto :( Reply Parent Thread Expand Link I just did! The excellent curve ball was the most difficult and time consuming task of all. I finally got one on a Solrock. Reply Parent Thread Link I got my Mew, it only took me 2 hrs to find Ditto on afternoon that was the hardest part. I got my excellent on a Spheal but I think Ponyta is the easiest of them all, Nosepass, Doduo, Wailmer, Seviper/Zangoose are good too they have the largest catch circles. Reply Parent Thread Link I am still stuck on getting a Ditto, but I can never do excellent throws. I have had one a few weeks ago, but that must have been dumb luck. Reply Parent Thread Link Stuck on throwing an excellent curveball. Reply Parent Thread Link Its taking me forever but i figured because the throws and Ditto held me up Reply Parent Thread Link I used to be so into this game (for the same three months other people were). I've played it on-and-off though. I just get shitty pokemon I already have hundreds of in each egg I hatch. I feel like the game is telling me two things; Walking is a waste of time, and it's a good thing I don't want kids cause I'd be disappointed in them for being mediocre. Reply Thread Link Thats the only reason why I stopped playing back in 2016 (the shitty Pokemon, not shitty kids). Persist and better Pokemon come along, also the quests are really good for adding new things to your Pokedex. Reply Parent Thread Link I didn't even go out for Mareep day. I prefer Saturdays as I'm typically on campus at my college. :( I don't care for Charmander tho. I need to do 10 raids to complete the special research, but I don't think I will get a mew. ://// Reply Thread Link I wonder why its switched back to a Saturday. Sunday was nice as Birmingham was quiet when we got into the city, while saturdays its crazy from 9am. Reply Parent Thread Link you can trick the raids! just enter the raid and run out the timer so you "fail", then re-enter on the same raid pass. you can knock out a good amount of raids you need to complete that task this way! Reply Parent Thread Link Dont you need alot of revives for it ??? Reply Parent Thread Expand Link They fixed that glitch, apparently. I did it that way the first week, but when a couple of guys in our Discord tried it over the weekend, it didnt work anymore. It only gives you credit for the raid when you first use the pass now. Reply Parent Thread Link Mareep day was kind of a bust in Toronto lol, it was a freezing rain/ice storm so I stayed in. I used incense though and managed to catch enough to get an Ampharos. Reply Thread Link I'm so fucking here for this, gonna get me so many fucking Charmander, gonna get me a fucking Charizard and live my 13 year old dream. Reply Thread Link I finally caught my first charmander last week during the event for gen 1 pokemon It sucked me back into playing since there were SO many gen 1's that were spawning and I had never seen before. Still a little lost on the raiding thing since a lot has been added since I played a year ago. Reply Thread Link i went down to a nearby outdoor shopping area and easily got about 200 mareep candies in about 30 minutes. so lesson learned, head there for these community days. Reply Thread Link Really enjoyed this past Community Day. I got nine shinies and managed to hatch quite a few 10km eggs, including a 100% IV Trapinch! It was such a beautiful day here in Norway too, one of the first proper warm days of spring and spending it down by the docks with a view over the Oslofjord was really A++. I even did a fair amount of socializing with other players! Reply Thread Link I love Community Days. I'm not a hardcore player but my sister is and we do it together; there's a big park by our library with a man made lake smack in the center of it and someone playing Niantec's previous games made like 10 spots in it Pokestops (even like, the fake alligators and turtle statues) so we can just walk around in a circle the whole time and people have lures out and everything. The downside is that it's getting hot in AZ so it's gonna be harder to do them because 3 hours in the sun in 110 degree heat will kill us. Edited at 2018-04-18 12:20 am (UTC) Reply Thread Link CDC Hosting 67th EIS Conference This Week The April 16-19 conference includes four special sessions on critical public health topics: the Rohingya refugee crisis in Bangladesh, the need for innovative use of big data in public health, the 1918 influenza centenary, and the U.S. opioid overdose epidemic. CDC's Epidemic Intelligence Service (EIS) is hosting the 67th Annual EIS Conference in Atlanta this week, offering recaps about some of the investigations the unit's personnel have conducted in the past year. The April 16-19 conference includes four special sessions on critical public health topics: the Rohingya refugee crisis in Bangladesh, the need for innovative use of big data in public health, the 1918 influenza centenary, and the U.S. opioid overdose epidemic. Another new feature on April 17 will see four EIS officers give a behind-the-scenes look at their investigations in a TED-style talk covering: Using geographic information systems to conduct a vaccination campaign in Somalia Tracking, testing, and building lab capacity for Legionella Preventing HIV and "the untold story of men who have sex with men in rural America" Discovering the inadequate nutritional value of food among incarcerated people during a foodborne outbreak investigation On April 18, Surgeon General Dr. Jerome M. Adams, M.D., MPH, will give this year's Alexander D. Langmuir Lecture on "Better Health through Better Partnerships." According to CDC, EIS is one of the world's premier public health fellowship in applied epidemiology. Each year, 60-80 new EIS officers are selected from among hundreds of physicians, doctoral-level scientists, veterinarians, and other health professionals who apply to the competitive fellowship program. During their two-year fellowship, EIS officers are on the front lines of public health; more than 3,600 EIS officers have responded to domestic and international health threats since 1951, and EIS alumni have gone on to become CDC directors; leading CDC scientists; acting surgeons general; WHO assistant directors general, regional directors, and country directors; public health and medical school faculty and deans; city health commissioners; and state epidemiologists. NTSB Safety Alert Concerns Protecting Bridges from Fire Damage It is based on a collapse that occurred about 6 p.m. on March 30, 2017, in Atlanta. About an hour after long-stored construction materials under I-85 were set on fire, a 92-foot-long elevated span of I-85 collapsed. A new NTSB Safety Alert recommends that state highway agencies remove materials from beneath bridges if they pose a risk and lock storage areas to restrict entry. It is based on the March 2017 collapse of a bridge on I-85 northeast of downtown Atlanta after construction materials beneath it -- 76 reels of high-density polyethylene conduit and nine racks of fiberglass conduit left over from an earlier project -- were set on fire. The materials were secured inside a chain-link fence, according to NTSB's accident brief about the collapse. The fire and collapse occurred about 6 p.m. on March 30, 2017. About an hour after the fire began, a 92-foot-long elevated span of I-85 collapsed. Fortunately, no one was hurt as a result, but the Georgia Department of Transportation (GDOT) determined that five adjacent bridge spans had to be removed because the fire's heat had damaged them. The $15 million replacement project took 43 days. GDOT chose the location to store the unused materials because it offered shelter from the sun, was state-owned land, was fenced, and was adjacent to another GDOT facility. The materials removed in that location for more than five years, acording to NTSB, which reported that witnesses said they had seen a man start the fire, and he was subsequently arrested and charged with criminal damage to property, a first-degree felony. The alert asks bridge owners to: Are discounts for small organizations available? Yes, we offer discounts on Devex Pro and Pro Funding for certain individuals and organizations. Those eligible include students, individuals part of small organizations, and those located in low and middle income countries who are not part of an international organization. Reduced rates are offered in order to make our funding platform and paid news and information available to as many individuals in our community as possible. Individuals from low and middle income countries will see the discounted price once they get to the payment stage. If you are a student or part of a small organization and would like to see if you qualify for a discount please tell us about you/your organization and we'll get back to you. Reuters Videos The month of October and the fourth quarter was off to a strong start Friday after the third quarter was the worst for the stock market since the start of the health crisis.The Dow surged 482 points. The S&P 500 rose 49. The Nasdaq gained 118.But it still was a down week. The S&P 500 shed more than two percent in its biggest weekly drop since February.Investors are keeping their eyes on the deliberations in Washington, which will have the potential to quickly swing markets, says Winthrop Capital Management Portfolio Manager Adam Coons."What we'll see is just a range bound market for a little while while we just kind of process through this. Obviously, the things going on in D.C. play a part in that. So what we'll see is big up days, big down days. But ultimately we think we just trade flat for a while."Merck helped set an overly positive tone for the day. The drugmaker said its experimental oral antiviral COVID-19 medication reduces the chance of hospitalization or death for patients at risk of severe disease by around 50 percent. It plans to seek emergency authorization for use in the U.S. and apply for regulatory approval in other countries.Shares of Merck hit a multi-year high...up more than 8 percent on the day. The trial results fueled hopes that Americans will feel confident enough to go out and be sociable. Airlines, hotels, cruise ship operators, retailers, and restaurant chains all saw their stocks move higher.But on the flip side - investors fear vaccine makers like Moderna could sell fewer doses. Shares of Moderna got slammed - down some 11 percent. Shares of BioNTech were down nearly 7 percent. Pfizer, which is working on an oral COVID-19 treatment, saw much smaller losses.Economic data kept the positive vibes flowing. Consumer spending rebounded sharply in August - up 0.8 percent.And though a measure of inflation remained hot it didn't get much hotter. The core personal consumption expenditures index, a measure favored by the Federal Reserve, rose 3.6 percent on an annual basis - matching the jump seen through July.In a separate report, manufacturing activity was stronger in September but persistent supply chain disruptions are keeping prices high. FILE PHOTO: The low-priced regular milled rice from the Nueva Ecija Rice Millers Association MANILA, Philippines After rice traders from Luzon kept their promise to provide cheaper rice supply in the markets of Metro Manila, the National Food Authority (NFA) will meet next with rice millers and traders of Visayas and Mindanao. This is to discuss the possibility of implementing the same program in the regions. However, according to Grain Retailers Confederation of the Philippines (Grecon), they will study first the feasibility of its implementation since there are areas in Visayas and Mindanao where the prices of rice are already lower. Moreover, the traders always consider the high-buying price of rice in an area before sending supplies. For now, the group is focusing on Luzon just as they promised President Rodrigo Duterte. According to Grecon, they expect that on Thursday, April 19, commercial rice priced at P39 per kilo will be distributed to markets in Metro Manila. The rice stocks will come from Isabela, Nueva Ecija, and Bulacan. The group of millers clarified that the rice they deliver are newly-milled and if there are cheaper variants being sold in the market, those did not come from them. Mga lumang bigas yun ng mga traders ng ibang mga nagtitinda. Yung ibinibigay namin yung talagang pang serbisyo doon para sa commitment namin kay president, Grecon national president Jaime Magbanua said. (Those are old rice supplies from traders of other retailers. What we are offering is for public service, in keeping with our commitment to the president.) Meanwhile, according to Magbanua, President Duterte has returned the National Food Authority (NFA), Philippine Coconut Authority (PCA) and the Philippine Fertilizer and Pesticide Authority under the supervision of the agriculture department. Malacanang has confirmed the revamp. According to Presidential Spokesperson Harry Roque, this was discussed by the NFA Council with the president last night. Story continues The NFA said they are ready to cooperate with whichever department they will be under. Wala namang problema sa amin kung saan kami under. Ang importante maayos natin itong ating issue na kakulangan sa buffer stock ng NFA, said NFA spokesperson Rex Estoperez. (Its not an issue with us what department well be under. Whats important is addressing the deficiency in NFAs buffer stock.) Rey Pelayo | UNTV News & Rescue The post NFA eyes cheaper rice for Visayas, Mindanao appeared first on UNTV News. Suzuki Philippines (SPH), the pioneer compact car distributor in the country, continues to expand its market footprint outside Metro Manila with the opening of a new Suzuki Auto Isabela 3S dealership in Santiago City, Isabela. The new Suzuki Auto Isabela is the most recent 3S automobile dealership to open. Strategically located along the National Hi-way of Barangay Batal in Santiago City, the heart of Isabela, the new dealership is easily accessible to motorists, which then allows Suzuki to assist and accommodate more customers. We have high hopes and expectations for Suzuki Auto Isabela. The locationSantiago Cityis the commercial and trading center of the north, which makes it very strategic with strong growth potential. The area is a hotspot for investors and is home to numerous businesses. With the robust growth of Isabelas economy, the new dealership is undoubtedly in the perfect location to reach more Filipinos, with whom we can share the Suzuki Way of Life, said Shuzo Hoshikura, vice president and general manager of SPH Automobile. Following the 34 percent sales growth that Suzuki Philippines achieved last year, the company continues to pursue nationwide expansion efforts to further strengthen its foothold in key growth areas. The opening of the Suzuki Auto Isabela brings the total SPH automobile dealership count across the country to 67, translating to an even wider network and more opportunities for the brand to reach an even wider audience. Suzuki Auto Isabela is owned and managed by Elite North Autocars, Inc., which took over the dealership in November last year. Alejandrino Alexis P. San Juan, president of Elite North and Suzuki Auto Isabela, shared, It has truly been an honor for us to be given the opportunity to partner with Suzuki Philippines. We are very thankful that SPH addresses all of our concerns and extends their support to our dealership outlet. Hoshikura has only positive outlook for SPH: We are very grateful for the continued patronage and support of the Filipinos to Suzuki Philippines. They have been our motivation in improving our products and services and achieving more milestones. With this recent accomplishment of inaugurating a new dealership in Isabela, we reaffirm our promise to provide more Filipinos in and out of Metro Manila with only the best products and services. We will continue to widen our reach all over the country to serve more Filipinos. Story continues Suzuki Auto Isabela will serve as a dedicated one-stop-shop that offers full auto services to Isabela motorists. It also offers the wide range of Suzuki vehicles, including the best-sellers, the popular life utility vehicle (LUV) Suzuki Ertiga and all-time favorite hatchbacks Suzuki Celerio and Suzuki Swift. The well-loved subcompact sedan Suzuki Ciaz and the recently launched Suzuki Vitara will also be available in the new dealership. Suzuki Isabela The post Suzuki PH Expands Further North with New 3S Dealership in Isabela appeared first on Carmudi Philippines. Dhankuta forest fires put many settlements at risk Fires at two community forests in Dhankuta have burned through more than 100 hectares of forest land since Saturday evening. The fires at Wagle Community Forest and Chureghati Community Forest had not been contained until late Monday afternoon. Human activity is a major cause of air pollution, much of which results from industrial processes. Credit: cherwell.org As a species, we humans tend to take it for granted that we are the only ones that live in sedentary communities, use tools, and alter our landscape to meet our needs. It is also a foregone conclusion that in the history of planet Earth, humans are the only species to develop machinery, automation, electricity, and mass communications the hallmarks of industrial civilization. But what if another industrial civilization existed on Earth millions of years ago? Would we be able to find evidence of it within the geological record today? By examining the impact human industrial civilization has had on Earth, a pair of researchers conducted a study that considers how such a civilization could be found and how this could have implications in the search for extra-terrestrial life. The study, which recently appeared online under the title "The Silurian Hypothesis: Would it be possible to detect an industrial civilization in the geological record", was conducted by Gavin A. Schmidt and Adam Frank a climatologist with the NASA Goddard Institute for Space Studies (NASA GISS) and an astronomer from the University of Rochester, respectively. As they indicate in their study, the search for life on other planets has often involved looking to Earth-analogues to see what kind conditions life could exist under. However, this pursuit also entails the search for extra-terrestrial intelligence (SETI) that would be capable of communicating with us. Naturally, it is assumed that any such civilization would need to develop and industrial base first. This, in turn, raises the question of how often an industrial civilization might develop what Schmidt and Frank refer to as the "Silurian Hypothesis". Naturally, this raises some complications since humanity is the only example of an industrialized species that we know of. In addition, humanity has only been an industrial civilization for the past few centuries a mere fraction of its existence as a species and a tiny fraction of the time that complex life has existed on Earth. Carbon dioxide in Earths atmosphere if half of global-warming emissions are not absorbed. Credit: NASA/JPL/GSFC For the sake of their study, the team first noted the importance of this question to the Drake Equation. To recap, this theory states that the number of civilizations (N) in our galaxy that we might be able to communicate is equal to the average rate of star formation (R*), the fraction of those stars that have planets (f p ), the number of planets that can support life (n e ), the number of planets that will develop life ( f l ), the number of planets that will develop intelligent life (f i ), the number civilizations that would develop transmission technologies (f c ), and the length of time these civilizations will have to transmit signals into space (L). This can be expressed mathematically as: N = R* x f p x n e x f l x f i x f c x L As they indicate in their study, the parameters of this equation may change thanks to the addition of the Silurian Hypothesis, as well as recent exoplanets surveys: "If over the course of a planet's existence, multiple industrial civilizations can arise over the span of time that life exists at all, the value of fc may in fact be greater than one. This is a particularly cogent issue in light of recent developments in astrobiology in which the first three terms, which all involve purely astronomical observations, have now been fully determined. It is now apparent that most stars harbor families of planets. Indeed, many of those planets will be in the star's habitable zones." In short, thanks to improvements in instrumentation and methodology, scientists have been able to determine the rate at which stars form in our galaxy. Furthermore, recent surveys for extra-solar planets have led some astronomers to estimate that our galaxy could contains as many as 100 billion potentially-habitable planets. If evidence could be found of another civilization in Earth's history, it would further constrain the Drake Equation. The Drake Equation, a mathematical formula for the probability of finding life or advanced civilizations in the universe. Credit: University of Rochester They then address the likely geologic consequences of human industrial civilization and then compare that fingerprint to potentially similar events in the geologic record. These include the release of isotope anomalies of carbon, oxygen, hydrogen and nitrogen, which are a result of greenhouse gas emissions and nitrogen fertilizers. As they indicate in their study: "Since the mid-18th Century, humans have released over 0.5 trillion tons of fossil carbon via the burning of coal, oil and natural gas, at a rate orders of magnitude faster than natural long-term sources or sinks. In addition, there has been widespread deforestation and addition of carbon dioxide into the air via biomass burning." They also consider increased rates of sediment flow in rivers and its deposition in coastal environments, as a result of agricultural processes, deforestation, and the digging of canals. The spread of domesticated animals, rodents and other small animals are also considered as are the extinction of certain species of animals as a direct result of industrialization and the growth of cities. The presence of synthetic materials, plastics, and radioactive elements (caused by nuclear power or nuclear testing) will also leave a mark on the geological record in the case of radioactive isotopes, sometimes for millions of years. Finally, they compare past extinction level events to determine how they would compare to a hypothetical event where human civilization collapsed. As they state: "The clearest class of event with such similarities are the hyperthermals, most notably the Paleocene-Eocene Thermal Maximum (56 Ma), but this also includes smaller hyperthermal events, ocean anoxic events in the Cretaceous and Jurassic, and significant (if less well characterized) events of the Paleozoic." Based on fossil records, 250 million years ago over 90% of all species on Earth died out, effectively resetting evolution. Credit: Lunar and Planetary Institute These events were specifically considered because they coincided with rises in temperatures, increases in carbon and oxygen isotopes, increased sediment, and depletions of oceanic oxygen. Events that had a very clear and distinct cause, such as the Cretaceous-Paleogene extinction event (caused by an asteroid impact and massive volcanism) or the Eocene-Oligocene boundary (the onset of Antarctic glaciation) were not considered. According to the team, the events they did consider (known as "hyperthermals") show similarities to the Anthropocene fingerprint that they identified. In particular, according to research cited by the authors, the Paleocene-Eocene Thermal Maximum (PETM) shows signs that could be consistent with anthorpogenic climate change. These include: "[A] fascinating sequence of events lasting 100200 kyr and involving a rapid input (in perhaps less than 5 kyr) of exogenous carbon into the system, possibly related to the intrusion of the North American Igneous Province into organic sediments. Temperatures rose 57degrees C (derived from multiple proxies), and there was a negative spike in carbon isotopes (>3 percent), and decreased ocean carbonate preservation in the upper ocean." Finally, the team addressed some possible research directions that might improve the constraints on this question. This, they claim, could consist of a "deeper exploration of elemental and compositional anomalies in extant sediments spanning previous events be performed". In other words, the geological record for these extinction events should be examined more closely for anomalies that could be associated with industrial civilization. If any anomalies are found, they further recommend that the fossil record could be examined for candidate species, which would raise questions about their ultimate fate. Of course, they also acknowledge that more evidence is necessary before the Silurian Hypothesis can be considered viable. For instance, many past events where abrupt Climate Change took place have been linked to changes in volcanic/tectonic activity. Scientists were able to gauge the rate of water loss on Mars by measuring the ratio of water and HDO from today and 4.3 billion years ago. Credit: Kevin Gill Second, there is the fact that current changes in our climate are happening faster than in any other geological period. However, this is difficult to say for certain since there are limits when it comes to the chronology of the geological record. In the end, more research will be necessary to determine how long previous extinction events (those that were not due to impacts) took as well. Beyond Earth, this study may also have implications for the study of past life on planets like Mars and Venus. Here too, the authors suggest how explorations of both could reveal the existence of past civilizations, and maybe even bolster the possibility of finding evidence of past civilizations on Earth. "We note here that abundant evidence exists of surface water in ancient Martian climates (3.8 Ga), and speculation that early Venus (2 Ga to 0.7 Ga) was habitable (due to a dimmer sun and lower CO2 atmosphere) has been supported by recent modeling studies," they state. "Conceivably, deep drilling operations could be carried out on either planet in future to assess their geological history. This would constrain consideration of what the fingerprint might be of life, and even organized civilization." Two key aspects of the Drake Equation, which addresses the probability of finding life elsewhere in the galaxy, are the sheer number of stars and planets out there and the amount of time life has had to evolve. Until now, it has been assumed that one planet would give rise to one intelligent species capable of advanced technology and communications. But if this number should prove to be more, we may a find a galaxy filled with civilizations, both past and present. And who knows? The remains of a once advanced and great non-human civilization may very well be right beneath us! More information: The Silurian Hypothesis: Would it be possible to detect an industrial civilization in the geological record? The Silurian Hypothesis: Would it be possible to detect an industrial civilization in the geological record? arxiv.org/abs/1804.03748 Credit: University of Sheffield An ice shelf over a kilometre thick once formed over the Arctic Ocean, a new study by researchers from the University of Sheffield has revealed. The study is the first of its kind and strongly supports the theory that a floating ice shelf might have formed in the Arctic Ocean during some of the Earth's Ice Ages. The research, led by Dr. Ed Gasson, from the University of Sheffield's Ice and Climate research group published today (17 April 2017) in Nature Communications, used a numerical ice sheet/shelf computer model to show that an ice shelf in the Arctic Basin could only have become a kilometre thick if it covered the entire basin. This model also provided an estimate of the ice shelf's size up to 1.7 times the size of Greenland's current ice sheet. The study also found that the Arctic ice shelf might have increased the volume of ice sheets on land surrounding the Arctic Ocean. Its presence may also explain discrepancies in sea level reconstructions. Dr. Ed Gasson from the University of Sheffield's Department of Geography said: "The study is important because it opens up further research into what role this previously missing piece played in Earth's glacial periods. Although these periods of Earth's history have been extensively studied already there are many things that are not fully explained. What impact an Arctic ice shelf had on the climate system is a big unanswered question." The results are consistent with a recent discovery of ice scours a narrow ditch on a seabed caused by the movement of pack iceon the Lomonosov Ridge, which runs across the middle of the Arctic Basin. This indicated that a floating ice shelf might have formed in the Arctic Ocean during some of the Earth's Ice Ages. The hypothesis of an Arctic ice shelf was first put forward in the 1970s, but there was limited evidence supporting it. When ice reaches the seafloor it causes erosion. Although ice scour marks have been found on the Arctic seafloor previously, it was argued whether the keels of icebergs or an ice shelf caused the scours. However, a recent research cruise to the Arctic discovered new traces that had the tell-tale signs of a former ice shelf. The ice shelf most likely formed during the penultimate glacial period around 140,000 years ago. There is no evidence yet that an ice shelf also formed during the Last Glacial Maximum around 20,000 years ago, when much of North America and northern Europe was covered by ice sheets. The study suggests that this could be due to differences in the Earth's orbit or because the Eurasian ice sheet did not expand as fully towards the Arctic Basin. One challenge with detecting floating ice shelves if that they can leave no traces unless they ground on the seafloor, leaving open the possibility that a thinner ice shelf also formed during the Last Glacial Maximum. Explore further Russian surveys continental shelf borders More information: Edward G. W. Gasson et al. Numerical simulations of a kilometre-thick Arctic ice shelf consistent with ice grounding observations, Nature Communications (2018). Journal information: Nature Communications Edward G. W. Gasson et al. Numerical simulations of a kilometre-thick Arctic ice shelf consistent with ice grounding observations,(2018). DOI: 10.1038/s41467-018-03707-w The magnetosomes form a chain inside the bacteria's cell shows the electron cryotomography (ECT). Credit: 10.1039/C7NR08493E Magnetotactic bacteria can sense the Earth's magnetic field via magnetic nanoparticles in their interior that act as an internal compass. Spanish teams and experts at Helmholtz-Zentrum Berlin have now examined the magnetic compass of Magnetospirillum gryphiswaldense at BESSY II. Their results may be helpful in designing actuation devices for nanorobots and nanosensors for biomedical applications. Magnetotactic bacteria are usually found in freshwater and marine sediments. One species, Magnetospirillum gryphiswaldense, is easily cultivated in the lab - with or without magnetic nanoparticles in their interior depending on the presence or absence of iron in the local environment. "So these microorganisms are ideal test cases for understanding how their internal compass is constructed," explains Lourdes Marcano, a PhD student in physics at Universidad del Pais Vasco in Leioa, Spain. Magnetospirillum cells contain a number of small particles of magnetite (Fe 3 O 4 ), each approximately 45 nanometers wide. These nanoparticles, called magnetosomes, are usually arranged as a chain inside the bacteria. This chain acts as a permanent dipole magnet and is able to passively reorient the whole bacteria along the Earth's magnetic field lines. "The bacteria exist preferentially at the oxy/anoxy transition zones," Marcano says, "and the internal compass might help them to find the best level in the stratified water column for satisfying their nutritional requirements." The Spanish scientists examined the shape of the magnetosomes and their arrangement inside the cells using various experimental methods such as electron cryotomography. Samples of isolated magnetosome chains were analysed at BESSY II to investigate the relative orientation between the chain's direction and the magnetic field generated by the magnetosomes. "Current methods employed to characterise the magnetic properties of these bacteria require sampling over hundreds of non-aligned magnetosome chains. Using photoelectron emission microscopy (PEEM) and X-ray magnetic circular dichroism (XMCD) at HZB, we are able to detect and characterise the magnetic properties of individual chains," explains Dr. Sergio Valencia, HZB. "Being able to visualise the magnetic properties of individual magnetosome chains opens up the possibility of comparing the results with theoretical predictions." Experiments at BESSY II revealed how an external magnetic field changes the orientiations of chain parts. Credit: 10.1039/C7NR08493E Indeed, the experiments revealed that the magnetic field orientation of the magnetosomes is not directed along the chain direction, as assumed up to now, but is slightly tilted. As the theoretical modelling of the Spanish group suggests, this tilt might explain why magnetosome chains are not straight but helical in shape. A deeper understanding of the mechanisms determining the chain shape is very important, the scientists say. Nature's inventions could inspire new biomedical solutions such as nanorobots propelled by flagella systems in the direction provided by their magnetosome chain. Explore further Tiny magnetic crystals in bacteria are a compass, say researchers More information: I. Orue et al, Configuration of the magnetosome chain: a natural magnetic nanoarchitecture, Nanoscale (2018). Journal information: Nanoscale I. Orue et al, Configuration of the magnetosome chain: a natural magnetic nanoarchitecture,(2018). DOI: 10.1039/C7NR08493E Former Cambridge Analytica chief Alexander Nix appeared in front of Britain's culture, media and sport committee in February but refused a summons to appear before MPs a second time Former Cambridge Analytica boss Alexander Nix has refused to appear for a second grilling by British lawmakers, the MPs' scrutiny panel investigating him said Tuesday. The ex-CA chief executive was due to appear on Wednesday before parliament's culture, media and sport committee over the British political consultancy firm's highly controversial work. They wanted to probe inconsistencies in the testimony he gave before the committee on February 27. But Nix told them he could not appear, citing Information Commissioner Elizabeth Denham's ongoing investigation into claims that CA may have illegally harvested Facebook data for political ends. "We do not accept Mr Nix's reason for not appearing in a public session before the committee," said Damian Collins, who chairs the committee. "We have taken advice and he is not been charged with any criminal offence and there is no active legal proceedings, and we plan to raise this with the information commissioner when we meet her this week. "There is therefore no legal reason why Mr Nix cannot appear. The committee is minded to issue a formal summons for him to appear on a named day in the very near future. We'll make a further statement about this next week." CA suspended Nix, 42, on March 20 after recordings emerged of him boasting that the firm played an expansive role in US President Donald Trump's 2016 election campaign, doing all of its research, analytics as well as digital and television campaigns. In undercover filming captured by Channel 4 television, he is also seen boasting about entrapping politicians and secretly operating in elections around the world through shadowy front companies. Explore further UK firm in Facebook row suspends CEO amid fresh revelations 2018 AFP US streaming giant Netflix has reportedly pulled five films in the running for the Cannes film festival next month The Cannes film festival said Tuesday that it was still in talks with Netflix despite the platform's dramatic withdrawal of its films last week. Director Thierry Fremaux praised the streaming giant's bosses as "people of taste who love cinema", and said he was ready to heal the rancorous split that saw Netflix reportedly pull five films in the running for the world's top festival next month. Fremaux riled Netflix by banning movies that are not first released in French cinemas from the competition after cinema owners protested last year at the inclusion of two of its films, "Okja" and "The Meyerowitz Stories". The Silicon Valley giant complained that it was being unfairly targeted because under French law films cannot be streamed until three years after their cinematic release. But Fremaux denied that there was a "war" between them despite harsh words from Netflix's chief content officer Ted Sarandos last week, who claimed its films were being "treated disrespectfully". "Netflix are cinephiles, people of taste who love cinema, and who have have made possible what was never done before," Fremaux told French radio. "Again last night I wrote to my friends at Netflix so that we might find a solution. They find our love for (watching films in) cinemas hard to understand," he added. Von Trier ban lifted? Fremaux also went out of his way praise the platform for financing the completion of Orson Welles' legendary unfinished opus, "The Other Side of The Wind", which the late American director began in 1970 and was still working on until his death in 1985. Danish director Lars Von Trier was banned from Cannes in 2011 for saying he was a Nazi Netflix, however, was with stinging in its criticism of Cannes and Fremaux, claiming that "the festival has chosen to celebrate distribution rather than the art of cinema." "It is not a coincidence that Thierry also banned selfies this year," Sarandos added, in a biting reference to Fremaux outlawing them on the red carpet. "I don't know what other advances in media Thierry would like to address." Fremaux also revealed Tuesday that Russian director Andrei Zvyagintsev, who many critics thought should have won the top Palme d'Or prize last year for his film "Loveless", will sit on this year's jury. And he hinted that controversial Danish director Lars Von Trier, who was banned from Cannes in 2011 for saying he was a Nazi, may be on the point of being brought back into the fold. Fremaux said that with Von Trier finishing his serial killer flick, "The House That Jack Built", the festival's president Pierre Lescure was working hard to "lift the status of persona non grata". The film, starring Uma Thurman, Riley Keough and Matt Dillon, would help to give a little more star power to a highly-political Cannes line-up. Zvyagintsev, the maker of such classics as "The Return" and "Leviathan", has been a prominent supporter of his fellow Russian director Kirill Serebrennikov, whose film "Leto" is in the running for the Palme d'Or. Fremaux has pleaded with the Kremlin for Serebrennikov, who is under house arrest for controversial charges of money laundering, to be allowed to travel to Cannes to premiere his film. Iranian master Jafar Panahi is also competing for the prize, though he too is banned from leaving his homeland. 2018 AFP Credit: Fauna & Flora International Companies are facing potential shortages of raw materials, a fall in crop quality and challenges around security of supply because of an emerging pollination deficit, a new report funded by the Cambridge Conservation Initiative has found. A recent global assessment of the status of pollinators highlighted that around three-quarters of food crops depend on pollination, making pollinators worth up to US$577 billion annually, half of which comes from wild pollinators. However, pollinator populations are declining rapidly, with 9% or more of many wild bee and butterfly species facing local extinction. The report, authored by UN Environment World Conservation Monitoring Centre (UNEP-WCMC), Cambridge Institute for Sustainability Leadership (CISL), Fauna & Flora International (FFI) and the University of East Anglia (UEA), found that businesses lacked information about the risks to their supply chains. In a survey of eight blue chip companies including Asda, Barry Callebaut, The Body Shop, The Jordans & Ryvita Company, Mars Incorporated and PepsiCo, many reported they were unable to take action to address these risks because of uncertainty around which crops and sourcing regions are vulnerable to pollinator decline, and about the business case for action. "Less than half the companies sampled know which of the raw materials they source depend on pollinators," said Gemma Cranston, Director, Natural Capital, CISL. "Their supply chains could be at risk. More research is needed to identify where opportunities exist to reverse current trends in pollinator decline." Jos van Oostrum, Director Sustainable Solutions, Mars Incorporated, said: "The role pollinators play be it tiny midges for cocoa or squirrels for coconut is not well understood and can be taken for granted. It is of critical importance we understand their lifecycles, and the habitat and conditions which enable them to thrive. This does not only help safeguard productivity of the crops we depend on, but it could also help establish ways to boost their yield potential." One of the key solutions for more sustainable supply chains is certification schemes. A review of nine such programmes showed that some action is being taken particularly to encourage reduced pesticide use and encourage habitat restoration, but more could be done. "Certification schemes play an important role in driving corporate best practice. Effective integration of the needs of wild pollinators into such schemes will help companies to move faster on this issue," said Laura Fox, Senior Programme Manager, FFI. "Concerning lack of knowledge" The experts also assessed the vulnerability of the top 15 pollinator-dependent food crops. Preliminary results suggested that these crops are vulnerable to pollinator decline, with cocoa being particularly at risk. "Pollinator decline is a serious issue for crops where wild pollinators are important to production and can't easily be replaced, because managed bees can't do the job, or the need for them isn't widely recognised," said Dr. Lynn Dicks, Research Fellow at UEA. "Our analysis is revealing a concerning lack of knowledge about the status of agricultural pollination and its replaceability in large parts of the world, despite its clear importance to production of some highly valued ingredients." Francesca Brkic, International Sustainable Sourcing Manager at The Body Shop, said: "The importance of pollination for natural raw materials is increasingly a priority for us. We are analysing the importance of pollination within our business to understand how we must act. Bees are very important to us and we recognise the positive impact that comes out of sustainable trade to supply chains that depend on pollinators as well as communities who produce honey and beeswax as an integral part of their livelihoods." The organisations involved in the project now hope to collaborate with industry, governments, certification bodies, trade associations and pollination experts to create a leadership group of companies and standard-setting bodies committed to safeguarding pollinators. "We call on leading companies and standard setters to work with us to create a Partnership for Pollinators to collaborate to increase supply chain resilience," said Annelisa Grigg, Principal Business and Biodiversity Specialist, UNEP-WCMC. "It is only by working in partnership in this way that we will be able to understand the full extent of the risks posed by pollinator decline to our vital agricultural supply chains and catalyse action to halt wild pollinator decline." Explore further Wild pollinators support farm productivity and stabilize yield Credit: University of Cambridge Latest research combining social and political surveys with objective cognitive testing suggests that "cognitive flexibility" contributes to formation of ideology. The study finds correlations between cognitive thinking styles and support for Brexit. A new study suggests that the way our brains process everyday information helps to shape our ideological beliefs and political decision-making including attitudes towards the UK's 2016 EU Referendum. Scientists from the University of Cambridge combined objective cognitive tests with questionnaires designed to gauge social and political attitudes in a sample of over 300 UK citizens, to investigate the psychological underpinnings of nationalistic attitudes. The study examined differences in "cold cognition": emotionally-neutral decision making based on attention and recall (as opposed to "hot cognition", which is influenced by emotion). Researchers measured the extent to which an individual displays a more "flexible" or more "persistent" cognitive style. Cognitive flexibility is characterised by adapting with greater ease to change, while cognitive persistence reflects a preference for stability through adherence to more defined information categories. The findings demonstrate that those who displayed higher cognitive flexibility were less likely to support authoritarian and nationalistic ideological stances. They were also more likely to support remaining in the EU as well as immigration and free movement of labour. Cognitive persistence was associated with more conservative and nationalistic attitudes, which in turn predicted support for leaving the EU. The research was conducted by scientists from the University's Department of Psychology and is published today in the journal Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences. "Voting is often thought to be an emotional decision. People describe 'voting with their heart' or having a gut reaction to particular politicians," said Leor Zmigrod, lead researcher and Gates Cambridge Scholar. "While emotion is clearly integral to political decision-making, our research suggests that non-emotional cognitive information processing styles, such as adaptability to change, also play a key role in shaping ideological behavior and identity." "By connecting the realm of cognition with that of ideology, we find that flexibility of thought may have far-reaching consequences for social and political attitudes," she said. All the study's 332 participants were cognitively healthy adults who completed two classic evaluations of cognitive flexibility: a card-sorting task involving shifting categorisation by shape and colour, and a neutral word association task. Participants also consented to providing responses to standardized questions on topics such as attitudes towards immigration and citizenship, and personal attachment to the UK. All data were anonymised and controlled for a number of factors including age and education. With her Cambridge colleagues Dr. Jason Rentfrow and Prof Trevor Robbins, Zmigrod constructed rigorous statistical models that revealed a tendency towards cognitive flexibility in the tests predicted ideological orientations that were less authoritarian, nationalistic, and conservative. This in turn predicted reduced support for Brexit. "Our findings suggest that persistent adherence to a set of rules in a basic card-sorting game is associated with support for traditional social values and conservative political attitudes," said Rentfrow. The researchers also found that participants who reported greater reliance on routines and traditions in their daily lives, and who strongly favored certainty over uncertainty, were more likely to prefer the traditionalism and perceived stability offered by nationalistic, authoritarian, and conservative ideologies. Increased dependence on daily routines was also related to greater support for Brexit and immigration control. Participants were asked about their agreement with post-Referendum political attitudes. Those who supported the statement "a citizen of the world is a citizen of nowhere" and opposed the statement "the Government has a right to remain in the EU if the costs are too high" exhibited a tendency towards cognitive persistence. "The results suggest that psychological preferences for stability and consistency may translate into attitudes that favour uniformity and a more defined national identity," said Zmigrod. The researchers point out that the sample size is limited, and the correlations while strong are on general trends in the data. "Ideologies such as nationalism are highly complex constructs, and there are many reasons people believe what they do and vote the way they do," added Zmigrod. "In today's politically-polarised climate, it is important to understand more about the psychological processes behind nationalistic and social attitudes if we are to build bridges between communities." Synthetic shadow images of Sgr A* for a Kerr black hole (top row) and a non-rotating dilaton black hole (bottom row). In each case the left panel refers to the image produced by the general-relativistic magnetohydrodynamic simulations, while the right panel refers to the image reconstructed after realistic observational conditions are considered. Credit: Fromm/Younsi/Mizuno/Rezzolla (Frankfurt) Can we tell black holes apart? Astrophysicists at Frankfurt, the Max Planck Institute for Radio Astronomy in Bonn, and Nijmegen, collaborating in the project BlackHoleCam, answer this question by computing the first images of feeding non-Einsteinian black holes: it is presently hard to tell them apart from standard black holes. Their findings are published as Advance Online Publication (AOP) on the Nature Astronomy website on 16 April 2018. One of the most fundamental predictions of Einstein's theory of relativity is the existence of black holes. In spite of the recent detection of gravitational waves from binary black holes by LIGO, direct evidence using electromagnetic waves remains elusive and astronomers are looking for it with radio telescopes. For the first time, collaborators in the ERC funded project BlackHoleCam, including astrophysicists at Goethe University Frankfurt, Max Planck Institute for Radio Astronomy (MPIfR) Bonn, and Radboud University Nijmegen, have compared self-consistent and realistic images of the shadow of an accreting supermassive black hole such as the black-hole candidate Sagittarius A* (Sgr A*) in the heart of our Galaxy both in general relativity and in a different theory of gravity. The goal was to test if Einsteinian black holes can be distinguished from those in alternative theories of gravity. Not all of the light rays (or photons) produced by matter falling onto a black hole are trapped by the event horizon, a region of spacetime from which nothing can escape. Some of these photons will reach distant observers, so that when a black hole is observed directly, a "shadow" is expected against the background sky. The size and shape of this shadow will depend on the black hole's properties and on the theory of gravity. Because the largest deviations from Einstein's theory of relativity are expected very close to the event horizon, and since alternative theories of gravity make different predictions on the properties of shadow, direct observations of Sgr A* represent a very promising approach for testing gravity in the strongest regime. Making such images of the black-hole shadow is the prime goal of the international Event Horizon Telescope Collaboration (EHTC), which combines radio data from telescopes around the world. Scientists from the BlackHoleCam Team in Europe, who are part of the EHTC, have now have gone a step further and investigated whether it is possible to distinguish between a "Kerr" black hole from Einstein's gravity and a "dilaton" black hole, which is a possible solution of an alternative theory of gravity. The researchers studied the evolution of matter falling into the two very different types of black holes and calculated the radiation emitted to construct the images. Furthermore, real-life physical conditions in the telescopes and interstellar medium were used to create physically realistic images. "To capture the effects of different black holes we used realistic simulations of accretion disks with near-identical initial setups. These expensive numerical simulations used state-of-the-art codes and several months on the Institute's supercomputer LOEWE," says Dr. Mizuno, lead author of the study. Moreover, expected radio images obviously have a limited resolution and image fidelity. When using realistic image resolutions, the scientists found, to their surprise, that even highly non-Einsteinian black holes could disguise themselves as normal black holes. "Our results show that there are theories of gravity in which black holes can masquerade as Einsteinian, so new techniques of analyzing EHT data may be needed to tell them apart," remarks Luciano Rezzolla, professor at Goethe University and leader of the Frankfurt team. "While we believe general relativity is correct, as scientists we need to be open-minded. Luckily, future observations and more advanced techniques will eventually settle these doubts," concludes Rezzolla. "Indeed, independent information from an orbiting pulsar, which we are actively searching for, will help eliminate these ambiguities," says Michael Kramer, director at the MPI for Radio Astronomy in Bonn. Heino Falcke (professor at Radboud University), who 20 years ago proposed using radio telescopes to image the shadow of black holes, is optimistic. "There is little doubt that the EHT will eventually obtain strong evidence of a black hole shadow. These results encourage us to refine our techniques beyond the current state of the art and thus make even sharper images in the future. Explore further Black hole spin cranks-up radio volume More information: Yosuke Mizuno et al. The current ability to test theories of gravity with black hole shadows, Nature Astronomy (2018). Journal information: Nature Astronomy Yosuke Mizuno et al. The current ability to test theories of gravity with black hole shadows,(2018). DOI: 10.1038/s41550-018-0449-5 Credit: CC0 Public Domain For centuries people have claimed that strange behavior by their cats, dogs and even cows can predict an imminent earthquake, but the first rigorous analysis of the phenomenon concludes that there is no strong evidence behind the claim. The paper published in the Bulletin of the Seismological Society of America instead suggests that most of this "evidence" consists of single observations and anecdotes that cannot be tested rigorously. Its authors suggest a series of questions that researchers should use in analyzing the evidence that abnormal animal behavior predicts earthquakes. Heiko Woith and colleagues at the GFZ German Research Centre for Geosciences say scientists must determine whether the link between the animal behavior and the earthquake is based on clearly defined rules (such as the animal's distance from earthquakes of a certain magnitude), whether the animal behavior has ever been observed and not followed by an earthquake, whether there is a statistical testing hypothesis in place to examine the evidence, and whether the animal population is a healthy, among other questions. These questions are rarely asked, making it difficult to systematically analyze the evidence for animal prediction, the researchers concluded after studying 729 reports of abnormal animal behavior related to 160 earthquakes. "Many review papers on the potential of animals as earthquake precursors exist, but to the best of our knowledge, this is the first time that a statistical approach was used to evaluate the data," said Woith. The researchers collected reports on potential earthquake predictions across a variety of animals, from elephants to silkworms. Most reports were anecdotes rather than experimental studies, and the majority of the reports came from three events: the 2010 Darfield earthquake in New Zealand, the 1984 Nagano-ken Seibu earthquake in Japan, and the 2009 L'Aquila earthquake in Italy. The unusual behaviors occurred anywhere from seconds to months prior to the earthquakes, and at distances from a few to hundreds of kilometers from the earthquake origins. Only 14 of the reports record a series of observations of the animals over timemost reports are single observations. These weaknesses in the data make it difficult to confirm that these behaviors are predictivemeaning they signal an earthquake event before the event beginsrather than random occurrences or behaviors linked to the initial stages of an earthquake, such as foreshocks. Foreshocks and abnormal animal behavior strongly cluster together in the statistical analysis by Woith and colleagues, suggesting that at least some of the behaviors may be related to physical phenomena from a seismic event already underway. "The animals may sense seismic wavesit could P, S or surface wavesgenerated by foreshocks," Woith suggested. "Another option could be secondary effects triggered by the foreshocks, like changes in groundwater or release of gases from the ground which might be sensed by the animals." One of the biggest problems with the animal data, Woith says, is the lack of continuous, long-term observations of animals experiencing earthquakes. "Up to now, only very few time series with animal behavior exist at all, the longest being just one year." Without a long record, Woith said, researchers cannot be sure that their observations relate to an earthquake and not some other kind of environmental change or long-term fluctuation in the health of an animal population or its predators. For instance, one study analyzed by Woith and colleagues found that toads were behaving "abnormally" for half of the total observation time recorded in the studyboth before and after the earthquake. Future studies should include a stricter, quantitative definition of just what constitutes "unusual or abnormal behavior" on the part of the animals, as well as a physical explanation for the change in behavior, the researchers note. Explore further Parkfield segment of San Andreas fault may host occasional large earthquakes Dont drag feet Nepalis indeed have a short memory. Barely six months have passed since a massive fire broke out at the Birgunj-based Super Gas, a cooking gas bottling plant, killing three, injuring one and posing a severe threat to people living in the area. But plans to minimise the number of such accidents are in limbo, as the government has not been able to implement its own directives on upgrading safety measures at gas bottling plants. Social media companies have embraced artificial intelligence tools to scrub their platforms of hate speech, terrorist propaganda and other content deemed noxious. But will those tools censor other content? Can a program judge the value of speech? Facebook founder Mark Zuckerberg told Congress last week that his company is rapidly developing AI tools to "identify certain classes of bad activity proactively and flag it for our team." It is one of several moves by Facebook as it struggles with an erosion of consumer trust over its harvesting of user data, its past vulnerability to targeted political misinformation and the opaqueness of the formulas upon which its news feeds are built. Some technologists believe that AI tools won't resolve these issues that Facebook and other social media companies face. "The problem is that surveillance is Facebook's business model: surveillance in order to facilitate psychological manipulation," said Bruce Schneier, a well-known security expert and privacy specialist. "Whether it's done by people or (artificial intelligence) is in the noise." Zuckerberg said his Menlo Park, Calif., company relies on both AI tools and thousands of employees to review content. By the end of the year, he said, some 20,000 Facebook employees will be "working on security and content review." The company is developing its AI tools to track down hate speech and fake news on its platform and views the tools as a "scalable way to identify and root out most of this harmful content," he said, indicating several times over 10 hours of testimony on two days that Facebook algorithms can find objectionable content faster than humans. "Today, as we sit here, 99 percent of the ISIS and al-Qaida content that we take down on Facebook, our AI systems flag before any human sees it," Zuckerberg said at a Senate hearing, referring to extremist Islamic groups. The artificial intelligence systems work in conjunction with a counterterrorism team of humans that Zuckerberg says numbers 200 employees. "I think we have capacity in 30 languages that we're working on," he said. Other existing AI tools "do a better job of identifying fake accounts that may be trying to interfere in elections or spread misinformation," he said. After fake accounts placed political information on Facebook that disrupted the 2016 election, Facebook proactively took down "tens of thousands of fake accounts" before French and German elections in 2017, and Alabama's special election for a vacant Senate seat last December, he added. Facebook is far from alone among social media companies harnessing artificial intelligence to assist humans monitoring content. "AI tools in concert with humans can do better than either can do alone," said Wendell Wallach, an investigator at The Hastings Center, a bioethics research institute in Garrison, New York. But Wallach noted that many users do not understand artificial intelligence, and Big Tech may face a backlash like food concerns face over genetically modified (GMO) ingredients. "The leading AI companies, which happen to be the same as the leading digital companies at the moment, understand that there is a GMO-like elephant that could jump out of the AI closet," Wallach said. Already, concern is mounting among conservatives on Capitol Hill that platforms like Facebook tilt to the political left, whether AI tools or humans are involved in making content decisions. "You recognize these folks?" Rep. Billy Long, R-Mo., asked Zuckerberg while holding up a photo of two sisters. "Is that Diamond and Silk?" Zuckerberg asked, referring to two black social media personalities who are fervent supporters of President Donald Trump. Indeed, it was, Long said, and Facebook had deemed them "unsafe." "What is unsafe about two black women supporting President Donald J. Trump?" Zuckerberg later noted that his Facebook team "made an enforcement error, and we've already gotten in touch with them to reverse it." Artificial intelligence tools excel at identifying salient information out of masses of data but struggle to understand context, especially in spoken language, experts said. "The exact same sentence, depending on the relationship between two individuals, could be an expression of hate or an expression of endearment," said David Danks, an expert on ethics around autonomous systems at Carnegie Mellon University. He cited the use of the "N-word," which between some people can be a friendly term, but is also widely considered hate speech in other contexts. Any errors that AI tools make in such linguistic minefields could be interpreted as censorship or political bias that could further diminish trust in social media companies. "The general public, I think, is much less trusting of these companies," Danks said. Eventually, he said, the algorithms and AI tools of a handful of companies will earn greater public trust, even as consumers do not understand how they operate. "I don't understand in many ways how my car works but I still trust it to function in all the ways I need it to," Danks said. Just as librarians once used subjective judgment in taking books off the shelves, social media companies also can face criticism that AI tools can overreach. "Twitter faces this," said James J. Hughes, executive director of the Institute for Ethics and Emerging Technologies, in Boston. "Pinterest and Instagram are always taking down artists' websites who happen to have naked bodies in them when they think they are porn, when they are not. "And they are doing that based on artificial intelligence algorithms that flag how much naked flesh is in the picture." In his testimony, Zuckerberg said AI tools were increasingly adept at "identifying fake accounts that may be trying to interfere in elections or spread misinformation." Facebook has admitted that a Russian agency used Facebook to spread misinformation that reached up to 126 million people around the time of the 2016 presidential vote, and that the personal data of 87 million people may have been misused by the firm Cambridge Analytica to target voters in favor of Trump. Zuckerberg told senators that Facebook's delay in identifying Russian efforts to interfere in the election is "one of my greatest regrets in running the company" and pledged to do better to combat manipulation for this year's election. As legislators wrestled over whether Facebook and other social media companies need regulation, Zuckerberg repeatedly faced questions over the nature of his company. Is it also a media company because it produces content? A software company? A financial services firm that supports money transfers? "I consider us to be a technology company, because the primary thing that we do is have engineers who write code and build products and services for other people," Zuckerberg told a House hearing. Experts say that answer doesn't address complex issues around platforms that are increasingly more like public utilities. "The electric company is not allowed to say, we don't like your political views therefore we are not going to give you electricity,'" Danks said. "If somebody is knocked off of Facebook, is that tantamount to the electric company cutting off their electricity? Or is it more like the person who is really loud and obnoxious in a bar, and the owner says, 'You need to leave now'?" Explore further Key points from Facebook-Zuckerberg hearings 2018 McClatchy Washington Bureau Distributed by Tribune Content Agency, LLC. Group of brooding octopuses on the ocean floor. Credit: Phil Torres and Geoff Wheat We know more about the surface of the moon that we do about the bottom of the ocean. The sea floor is an alien landscape, with crushing pressure, near-total darkness, and fluids wafting from cracks in the Earth's crust. It's also home to some weird animals that scientists are only just getting to know. Case in point: deep-sea expeditions and drones have revealed a giant group of octopuses and their eggs in a place where they shouldn't be able to survive. "When I first saw the photos, I was like 'No, they shouldn't be there! Not that deep and not that many of them," says Janet Voight, associate curator of zoology at the Field Museum and an author of a new study on the octopuses published in Deep Sea Research Part I. Nearly two miles deep in the ocean, a hundred miles off the Pacific coast of Costa Rica, scientists during two cruises a year apart used subsea vehicles to explore the Dorado Outcrop, a rocky patch of sea floor made of cooled and hardened lava from an underwater volcano. Geochemists explored the outcrop in a tiny submersible vehicle, hoping to collect samples of the warm fluids that emerge from cracks in the rocks; they didn't count on finding dozens of octopuses huddled around the cracks. The octopuses were an unknown species of the genus Muusoctopuspink, dinner-plate-sized creatures with enormous eyes. Up to a hundred of them seemed to occupy every available rock in a small area. That in itself was strangeMuuscoctopus are normally loners. Stranger still was that nearly all of the octopuses seemed to be mothers, each guarding a clutch of eggs. And this nursery was situated alongside the warm fluid issuing from the cracks in the outcrop. Video footage of some of the octopuses and their eggs. Credit: WHOI's ALVIN dive 4779, Katie Inderbitzen It doesn't make sense for deep-sea octopuses to brood eggs in warm water like this: it's suicide. Deep sea octopus live in cold, nearly invariant temperatures. Exposure to higher temperatures jump-starts their metabolism, making them need more oxygen than the warm water can provide. The octopuses that the scientists observed (both in-person and via hours of video footage from an ROV) showed evidence of severe stress, and they could only guess that the 186 eggs that were attached to the rocks leaking warm, low oxygen fluid had it worse. None had any sign of a developing embryo. All in all, not a great place to start an octopus family. However, the sheer number of what the scientist think are doomed octopuses and their eggs suggest that there's a better, healthier habitat nearby. The team suspects there must be more octopuses living inside crevices in the rocks, where the water is cool and rich in oxygen. The crevices could be such a good environment for egg-brooding that the booming population has to spill over into the dangerously warm region outside, like a gentrifying neighborhood expanding into a rougher part of town. "Octopus females only produce one clutch of eggs in their lives. In order for this huge population to be sustained, there must be even more octopuses to replace the dying mothers and eggs that we can see," says Voight. "My coauthors, Geoff Wheat and Anne Hartwell, know about basalt and how an outcrop like this is made. Odds are it has hollow areas where other females nurture their eggs to hatching. They are analogous to the boomers who have all the good jobs, while the millennials wait, seeking just one little piece of the cool rock." Voight notes that there's evidence for the unseen population: the scientists observed octopus arms emerging once in a while from cracks in the rock. The study doesn't just shed light upon deep-sea biology; it also illustrates the collaborative nature of science. "This project was a cohesive dynamic of three scientists from different research backgrounds coming together to investigate a fascinating observation," says Hartwell, the paper's lead author and an oceanographer affiliated with the University of Akron and the University of Alaska Fairbanks. One of the Muusoctopus octopuses studied by the researchers. Credit: Phil Torres, Geoff Wheat "The focus of [our] expeditions to Dorado Outcrop was to study a cool hydrothermal system. In doing so, we discovered this fascinating congregation of brooding octopuses," says Wheat, a geochemist at the University of Alaska Fairbanks. "To maximize the scientific return of the expeditions, we shared the video with deep-sea biologists, whose research led to this publication. This is only the third hydrothermal system of its type that has been sampled, yet millions of similar environments exist in the deep sea. What other remarkable discoveries are waiting for us?" "These surprising observations show us how a deep-sea animal reproduces," says Barbara Ransom, a program director in the National Science Foundation's Division of Ocean Sciences, which funded the research. "The findings were serendipitous. The researchers saw something unusual and stopped to find out what was happening. Unexpected discoveries like this one can dramatically change our understanding of how the oceans work." "To my knowledge there had been no reports of octopuses at this or comparable depths off between southern California and Peru. Never would I have anticipated such a dense cluster of these animals at 3000 meters depth, and we argue that the numbers of octopuses we see are simply the surplus population," says Voight. "What else is down there that we can't even imagine? I want to find out." Explore further Sex life of the blue-ringed octopus More information: Anne M. Hartwell et al, Clusters of deep-sea egg-brooding octopods associated with warm fluid discharge: an ill-fated fragment of a larger, discrete population?, Deep Sea Research Part I: Oceanographic Research Papers (2018). Anne M. Hartwell et al, Clusters of deep-sea egg-brooding octopods associated with warm fluid discharge: an ill-fated fragment of a larger, discrete population?,(2018). DOI: 10.1016/j.dsr.2018.03.011 Credit: National University of Singapore Despite a stormy start thanks to Cyclone Marcus, scientists who participated in the South Java Deep Sea Biodiversity Expedition 2018 (SJADES 2018) had collected more than 12,000 creatures during their 14-day voyage to survey the unexplored deep seas off the southern coast of West Java, Indonesia. The expedition team, consisting 31 researchers and support staff, were led by Professor Peter Ng, Head of the Lee Kong Chian Natural History Museum of the National University of Singapore (NUS), and Professor Dwi Listyo Rahayu, Senior Research Scientist at the Research Center for Oceanography (RCO) of the Indonesian Institute of Sciences (LIPI). The NUS research team comprises scientists from the Lee Kong Chian Natural History Museum and the Tropical Marine Science Institute. Some 800 species from over 200 families of sponges, jellyfish, molluscs, starfish, urchins, worms, crabs, prawns and fish were uncovered during the expedition. Over a dozen new species of hermit crabs, prawns, lobsters and crabs were discovered, and over 40 species of various kinds are new records for Indonesia. Among the deep-sea creatures new to science is a crab that has fuzzy spines and blood-red eyes; a lobster with long arms and zebra-patterned shell; and a hermit crab with green eyes and orange banded pincers. Please refer to the Annex for more details about these creatures, as well as other rare and interesting sea creatures collected by scientists during the trip. 63 stations sampled within a fortnight The research team departed Muara Baru, Jakarta in Indonesia on 23 March 2018 on board Indonesian research vessel Baruna Jaya VIII. They sailed anti-clockwise towards Cilacap in southern Java and back, covering a total distance of 2,200 kilometres. "14 days of shared challenges at sea has enabled us to forge strong ties with our Indonesian collaborators, and such links are important to the long-term scientific ties between our two countries," said Prof Ng, chief scientist for the Singapore team. "On the research front, our teams have learnt a lot about how to conduct deep-sea science, handle the various equipment needed for such work, and had the opportunity to sample and examine a multitude of fantastic deep sea animals. We expect to identify more new species among the pickings of the expedition, and we certainly look forward to studying the specimens and data with our Indonesian friends." Prof Rahayu, chief scientist for the Indonesia team, said, "The Indonesian scientists benefitted both personally and professionally through this expedition, which was partly a capacity-building exercise for our young scientists. Through interacting with international scientists, they were exposed to new scientific techniques and methodologies in an environment that presents a different set of challenges from their own scientific specialities. Hopefully, such knowledge transfer and collaboration would build stronger and more resilient ties among between our two nations." About the expedition The South Java Deep-Sea Biodiversity Expedition 2018 is the first concerted deep-sea biological exploration conducted by Singapore and Indonesia, to study deep-sea marine life in the largely unexplored part of the waters off the southern coast of West Java. This unprecedented project is a reflection of the bold and collaborative spirit embodied in RISING50 - a celebration of 50 years of diplomatic relations between Singapore and Indonesia. This joint initiative reaffirms the depth and diversity of the long-standing collaboration between the academic and scientific communities of Singapore and Indonesia. The samples collected will be studied by scientists from both countries. This is anticipated to take up to two years, and the results will be shared and discussed with the world at a special workshop that will be held in Indonesia in 2020. The outputs will then be collated and published in the museum's science-citation journal, The Raffles Bulletin of Zoology. Explore further Strong earthquake rocks western Indonesia Credit: Michigan State University The rock n' roll lore says that once a bandmate gets married, the party's over for the group. But recently published Michigan State University research says that the blended mix of married and unmarried bandmates improves creativity, innovation and collaborative thinking (and, that the same goes for working professionals). For decades, research proved that diversity - in terms of age, race and gender - brought new talents and perspectives to a group. Yet, "lifestyle diversity," such as living situations or marital status, has not been closely studied; that is, until now. "To address this research gap and bring awareness of lifestyle differences to the diversity conversation, we examine an important and relevant type of lifestyle diversity, marriage diversity, which is timely given the increasing number of single people in the global workforce," said Don Conlon, Gambrel Family Endowed professor of management and chairperson for the Eli Broad College of Business' department of management. To dig into marital diversity and its influence on a group's success, Conlon and Karen Etty Jehn of the University of Melbourne looked at two very different types of groups: punk/new wave rock bands and MBA students. "Because they represent an unusual context and differ in so many ways from groups based within organizations, musical groups may provide insights missed in traditional organizational studies," Conlon said. "By looking at vastly different groups - one driven by creativity and musical talent and the other by more traditional business measures of success - we hope to see that this form of diversity benefits all groups." For rock bands, Conlon measured both the creative success and popular success of 84 bands. The rock spectrum included bands that successfully released albums between 1967 and 1992, including the Ramones, the Pretenders and U2. Conlon noted the marital status of each member, and whether it changed over time. The bands' creative successes were measured through analysis of album reviews in Rolling Stone magazine and British equivalent Trouser Press, and popular successes were measured by each album's highest position on the Billboard 200 chart. "What we found was that marital diversity facilitated both critical and popular success for bands that were later in their careers. So, the more time they spent working together, the more having a blended mix of people helped their musical success," Conlon said. Using more traditional group modeling, Conlon performed a similar analysis on MBA students at an Australian University. Here, he looked at 73 MBA student teams performing a semester-long consulting project in a class. Marital diversity was more impactful on the groups' performances toward the end of the semester, after they'd spent a considerable amount of time working together, which mirrored the findings on bands. Conlon's research suggests that marital differences can provide creativity, complementary resources, support and information for group members from which to share and benefit. Because marital differences are unlikely to provoke conflict in a group, what it brings to the group will be productively shared and applied to the task - whether that is creating music or consulting on a project. Lifestyle diversity, or at least when classified as marital diversity, is generally positive for a breadth of groups, research says. This is impressive considering the substantial differences across the two groups. The rock bands were together for years, if not decades, whereas the MBA teams existed only for 12 weeks, Conlon explained. "Different backgrounds, experiences and perspectives associated with different life situations and choices may help the members engage in deeper information processing and more divergent thinking, allowing for more creative and exciting end products and popular success with the public," he said. Explore further Diversity only marginally boosts accuracy of group's predictions More information: Karen A. (Etty) Jehn et al, Are Lifestyle Differences Beneficial? The Effects of Marital Diversity on Group Outcomes, Small Group Research (2018). Karen A. (Etty) Jehn et al, Are Lifestyle Differences Beneficial? The Effects of Marital Diversity on Group Outcomes,(2018). DOI: 10.1177/1046496418755920 This figure shows the structural evidence for how rifampicin monooxgenase (RIFMO) inactivates rifampicin, converting cyclical rifampicin to linear form 2-hydroxyl-rifampicin. Credit: Pablo Sobrado A Virginia Tech research team in collaboration with researchers from the University of Missouri-Columbia have discovered a mechanism responsible for antibiotic resistance in the bacteria that cause tuberculosis and leprosy. Knowledge of this mechanism will ultimately allow researchers to design more effective drugs to treat these diseases. These findings were recently published in the journal Biochemistry. Rifampicin, a popular antibiotic used to treat tuberculosis and leprosy, works by preventing bacteria from growing. However, the drug is becoming less effective as Mycobacterium tuberculosis, the bacteria that cause tuberculosis, and Mycobacterium leprae, the bacteria that cause leprosy, develop resistance. This resistance occurs in part because the bacteria have a certain enzyme, called rifampicin monooxygenase, that inactivates rifampicin by chemically modifying its structure. Pablo Sobrado, a professor of biochemistry in the College of Agriculture and Life Sciences, and his team worked in collaboration with biochemist John Tanner and postdoctoral associate Li-Kai Liu at the University of Missouri-Columbia to discover that rifampicin monooxygenase converts rifampicin from a cyclic or ring form to a linear form. Once rifampicin is in this linear form, it is no longer effective in killing the bacteria. Pablo Sobrado, a professor of biochemistry in the College of Agriculture and Life Sciences, and his graduate student, Heba Abdelwahab, study rifampicin antibiotic resistance caused by the bacterial enzyme rifampicin monooxygenase. Credit: Virginia Tech "This discovery is exciting because it is all-important for drug design," said Sobrado, an affiliate of the Fralin Life Science Institute and the Virginia Tech Center for Drug Discovery. "It can help researchers design new rifampicin analogs that are more effective because they are not susceptible to inactivation by this bacterial enzyme." Members of Sobrado's team who helped identify the mechanism include Yumin Dai, currently a senior research associate in the Department of Chemistry in the College of Science, and visiting graduate student Heba Abdelwahab of Damietta, Egypt. In a previous study, Abdelwahab described the atomic and molecular structure of rifampicin monooxygenase using X-ray crystallography. In this recent study, funded with a National Science Foundation grant, Sobrado's team used X-ray crystallography, NMR analysis, and mass spectroscopy to identify the chemical modification of rifampicin by rifampicin monoxygenase. Before this finding, researchers knew that rifampicin monoxygenase inactivated rifampicin, but they did not understand how. "Antibiotic resistance is an evolving issue that greatly impacts the public health," said Abdelwahab. "Our studies have shown how this enzyme deactivates rifampicin. We now have a blueprint to inhibit this enzyme." Dai, who conducted this research as a postdoctoral associate in Sobrado's lab, added, "based on understanding this mechanism, the next step in research may focus on developing various enzyme inhibitors in order to treat the antibiotic resistance, such as structurally simplified rifampicin mimics, that would act as competitive inhibitors." Drug researchers can also begin to design improved forms of rifampicin via synthetic modification that are not susceptible to chemical modification by the bacterial enzyme that targets it. While treatable, tuberculosis and leprosy are diseases that pose a threat to children, the elderly, people in developing countries without access to adequate health care, and others with compromised immune systems. According to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, more than 10 million people worldwide were sick with tuberculosis in 2016. The rates and prevalence of leprosy are much less; globally, less than one case per 10,000 people is reported each year, and 96 percent of these cases are from developing countries. Explore further Team unravels mystery of bacteria's antibiotic resistance More information: Li-Kai Liu et al. Structural Evidence for Rifampicin Monooxygenase Inactivating Rifampicin by Cleaving Its Ansa-Bridge, Biochemistry (2018). Journal information: Biochemistry Li-Kai Liu et al. Structural Evidence for Rifampicin Monooxygenase Inactivating Rifampicin by Cleaving Its Ansa-Bridge,(2018). DOI: 10.1021/acs.biochem.8b00190 This combo of photos shows the opening of the Bonnet Carre spillway, above, a river diversion structure which diverts water from the rising Mississippi River to Lake Pontchartrain on March 8, 2018, top, and the same section on a replica of a portion of the Mississippi River, in Baton Rouge, La., on March 29, 2018, bottom. (AP Photos/Gerald Herbert) Scientists working on new ways to battle the erosion that threatens Louisiana's coastline have a dramatic new tool: a massive replica of the lower Mississippi River. The Louisiana State University's Center for River Studies is home to the newly opened Lower Mississippi River Physical Model, a 10,000-square-foot (930-square-meter) reproduction of nearly 200 miles (320 kilometers) of the lower Mississippi from the town of Donaldsonville northwest of New Orleans to the Gulf of Mexico. The model will help experts study one of the most important rivers in North America and how sediment from it can be used to fight coastal erosion. "Not only can we model the flows and the water stages of the water levels in the Mississippi River, we can also model or simulate the transport or the movement of the Mississippi River sand down the river, and we can do all that in roughly one hour to replicate one year on the river," said Clint Willson, the LSU professor who heads the Center for River Studies. Louisiana is in a race to protect and rebuild its fragile coastline from decades of erosion while also facing rising seas from climate change. It's estimated to have lost 2,000 square miles (5,180 square kilometers) of coastline since the 1930s, according to Rudy Simoneaux of the state's Coastal Protection and Restoration Authority. That's about the size of Delaware. In this March 29, 2018, photo, Rudy Simoneaux, engineer manager for the Louisiana Coastal Protection and Restoration Authority, shows one of the many ultrasonic water level gauges on a portion of a replica of the lower Mississippi River in Baton Rouge, La. The model will help experts study one of the most important rivers in North America and how sediment can be used from it to fight coastal erosion. (AP Photo/Gerald Herbert) To fight back, Louisiana developed a plan that relies in part on slicing channels or diversions at various locations into the levees that keep the Mississippi River in its course and letting some of the sediment in the river into the rapidly eroding wetlands to rebuild land. The idea, said Simoneaux, is to "put the river back to work to rebuild what it once built on its own." The Delta region of southeastern Louisiana was built over centuries on sediment that washed down the river. But levees built along the river to prevent flooding mean the sediment basically washes into the Gulf. As part of its efforts to study the sediment diversions, the CPRA created the $18 million model and Center for River Studies, replacing an older, smaller river model that was decommissioned in 2009. The new model, housed just a stone's throw from the actual Mississippi River, is designed to help researchers answer such questions as: How does opening one diversion affect the river's flow? How do the diversions affect the dredging done by the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers? How do multiple diversions along the river affect each other? This March 29, 201,8 photo shows a replica of the lower Mississippi River in Baton Rouge, La. The newly opened Lower Mississippi River Physical Model, a reproduction of the river from the town of Donaldsonville northwest of New Orleans to the Gulf of Mexico, is designed to help scientists study one of the most important rivers in North America and specifically how they might be able to use sediment or sand from the river to battle coastal erosion.(AP Photo/Gerald Herbert) "What you do in one place has an impact on another, and so the idea of looking at larger-scale impacts or larger-scale processes is critical to looking at what the potential impacts are or the unintended consequences of projects, and so a model of this scale allows you to do that," said Willson. The model was made of high density foam panels strong enough for people to walk on. Data about the dimensions and shape of the Mississippi River and surrounding topography were put into a computer and then used to cut the panels. The panels, combined with the steel cables and jacks underneath, weigh about as much as one of the 737 jets flown by Southwest Airlines, Simoneaux said. When visitors walk into the second floor to look down onto the model, they can feel the moisture coming from the roughly 6,000 gallons (33,710 liters) of water floating on the model that replicate the river, the Gulf of Mexico and the various lakes and bayous along the coast. Tiny particles of plastic injected into the water mimic the sediment coursing through the Mississippi River. And they can raise the water level to replicate rising seas. In this March 29, 2018 photo, Rudy Simoneaux, right, engineer manager for the Louisiana Coastal Protection and Restoration Authority, and Joseph McClatchy, coastal resources program specialist, walk on a replica of the lower Mississippi River in Baton Rouge, La. The model will help experts study one of the most important rivers in North America and how sediment can be used from it to fight coastal erosion. (AP Photo/Gerald Herbert) Officials are hopeful that lessons learned at the center can be shared with other countries and regions struggling with similar problems as Louisiana. "An image like this model tells the story in a way that is way more powerful than a slide show, than a numerical modeling," said Justin R. Ehrenwerth, who heads the Water Institute of the Gulf , a Baton Rouge-based research organization that studies and helps coastal areas affected by problems like rising seas and subsidence. In this March 29, 2018 photo, Rudy Simoneaux, above, engineer manager for the Louisiana Coastal Protection and Restoration Authority, and Joseph McClatchy, coastal resources program specialist, walk on a replica of the lower Mississippi River in Baton Rouge, La. The model will help experts study the river and how sediment can be used from it to fight coastal erosion. (AP Photo/Gerald Herbert) In this March 29, 2018 photo, Rudy Simoneaux, left, engineer manager for the Louisiana Coastal Protection and Restoration Authority, and Joseph McClatchy, coastal resources program specialist, walk on a portion of a replica of the lower Mississippi River in Baton Rouge, La. The model will help experts study one of the most important rivers in North America and how sediment can be used from it to fight coastal erosion. (AP Photo/Gerald Herbert) In this March 29, 2018 photo, Rudy Simoneaux, right, engineer manager for the Louisiana Coastal Protection and Restoration Authority, and Joseph McClatchy, coastal resources program specialist, look over a replica of the lower Mississippi River, with satellite images projected onto it from above, in Baton Rouge, La. (AP Photo/Gerald Herbert) In this March 29, 2018 photo, Rudy Joseph McClatchy, coastal resources program specialist for the Louisiana Coastal Protection and Restoration Authority, points out features of a replica of the lower Mississippi River, with satellite images projected onto it from above, in Baton Rouge, La. (AP Photo/Gerald Herbert) Explore further New study shows seafloor erosion now occurring like coastal land loss 2018 The Associated Press. All rights reserved. In mice exposed to tungsten in drinking water, the element accumulated in porous tissue near the end of bones (left). Using synchrotron-based x-ray absorption techniques, researchers produced an image (center) mapping the presence of tungsten in a form resembling the chemical catalyst phosphotungstate (P=phosphorus, W= tungsten, O=oxygen). Credit: Cassidy VanderSchee New research shows how and where tungsten accumulates in bones of mice exposed to the element through drinking water. The findings, by a team of chemists and biologists at McGill University, could add to doubts over the once-universal assumption that tungsten poses little or no health risk to the general human population. With the highest melting point of any metal, tungsten's remarkably high density and hardness make it a prized ingredient in a range of industrial, military and medical applications. Used in cutting tools, ammunition, medical devices and even some medications, tungsten has become part of our daily lives. While many regulatory agencies have set limits on exposure to airborne tungsten dust primarily to protect workers who mine and process the metal there are very few officially mandated limits on water-soluble tungsten compounds, to which a broader cross-section of the community are at risk of exposure. The issue came to prominence in the early 2000s when scientists investigated a possible link between a cluster of childhood leukemia cases in Fallon, Nevada, and high levels of tungsten in the groundwater from which the town drew its supply. The case prompted the US Centers for Disease Control and Prevention to nominate tungsten for toxicology and carcinogenesis studies. Mixed results from previous toxicity studies To date, research into tungsten's toxicity and possible role as a carcinogen has produced mixed results. Some studies have shown that other communities exposed to tungsten levels comparable to those in Fallon were not affected by a higher-than-normal incidence of cancer a finding that appeared to exonerate tungsten. But subsequent research has revealed that in subjects exposed to both tungsten and cobalt, tungsten appears to augment the toxicity of the other substance. These findings pointed to a need to better understand how tungsten accumulates in the body and in what form, and to what extent the body is capable of eliminating tungsten following exposure. The McGill team's study on tungsten exposure in mice, published in Communications Chemistry, used powerful x-ray spectroscopy techniques to find answers to these questions. The results raise a number of concerns. While tungsten has previously been shown to accumulate in bone, the McGill researchers found that the element didn't accumulate uniformly across bones; rather, it was concentrated in certain hot spots. "We found that tungsten, once thought to be non-toxic and inert, does in fact accumulate heterogeneously in bone," said Cassidy VanderSchee, lead author of the study and doctoral student in the Department of Chemistry at McGill. "Not only that, we found that it accumulated in a chemically different form to that in which it was administered, which confirmed that tungsten is chemically active in the body." Accumulation in bone tissues The study showed that in mice exposed to high levels of tungsten through drinking water, the element accumulated in specific regions bone marrow and porous (or 'cancellous') bone tissue to a degree 10 times greater than background levels. The deposition of tungsten in cancellous bone suggests the element is incorporated during bone growth and remodelling, indicating that young, growing individuals are particularly susceptible. The researchers also found that tungsten was retained in the bone's hard outer layer the cortex even after the mice were given tungsten-free water for a period of eight weeks after initial exposure. With the body unable to clear tungsten from this tissue, the bone effectively becomes a source of chronic exposure. Of even greater concern was the finding that tungsten was changing form in the body. The results showed that the element was accumulating in a form resembling phosphotungstate, a known chemical catalyst with significant potential to intervene in the biological processes that occur in bone marrow and cancellous bone immune cell formation and bone growth among them. "We believe that many of the biological effects of tungsten we've been investigating will be traced back to changes in the bone," says Koren Mann, associate professor of oncology at McGill and a co-author of the study. "This includes the effects on the immune system, stem cells, and cancer." "While research continues into the health risks posed by human exposure to tungsten, our study provides important insights into how the element accumulates in the body findings that are crucial to developing effective therapies for removing it," says McGill chemistry professor and senior author Scott Bohle. Explore further Tungsten may not be the best shot for making 'green' bullets More information: Cassidy R. VanderSchee et al. Accumulation of persistent tungsten in bone as in situ generated polytungstate, Communications Chemistry (2018). Cassidy R. VanderSchee et al. Accumulation of persistent tungsten in bone as in situ generated polytungstate,(2018). DOI: 10.1038/s42004-017-0007-6 Credit: Syracosphaera azureaplaneta A newly discovered species of ocean plankton, Syracosphaera azureaplaneta, has been named by UCL researchers in honour of the critically acclaimed BBC Blue Planet series and its presenter Sir David Attenborough. Although measuring only thousandths of a millimetre, these plankton play a pivotal role in marine ecosystems as a crucial source of food for many ocean dwelling organisms. They are also incredibly valuable for studying the impact of climate change on ocean life now and across the previous 220 million years. The plankton called coccolithophores are single cells surrounded by a calcite shell that varies drastically in shape across different species, acting as armour against predators. "Although microscopic, the plankton are so abundant that they are visible from space as swirling blooms in the surface oceans, and form our most iconic rocks with their calcite forms making up the bulk of the white chalk cliffs and downs of southern England," explained study co-author Professor Paul Bown (UCL Earth Sciences). It is the ability to produce this calcite shell that is being disrupted through ocean acidification. Ocean acidification is a symptom of climate change whereby rising atmospheric carbon dioxide is absorbed by the ocean, increasing its acidity. By studying fossilised plankton shells or 'coccoliths' in samples from drilling down deep into the ocean bed, scientists can map the impact of climate change and other global events over a very long period of time and use this to inform what might happen to in the future. Recent research, studying both fossil and modern coccolithophores, has shown that these plankton are resilient to global warming and ocean acidification but increases in carbon dioxide in the atmosphere impairs their growth rates and overall production. "The negative impact of increases in carbon dioxide on the growth rate and numbers of plankton could have serious food supply implications for ocean organisms as they form the base of the food chain with many larger creatures dependent on them including fish and whales. "The plankton also take carbon out of the atmosphere to use as energy and so their demise may increase carbon dioxide levels further, compounding the issue," explained Dr. Jeremy Young (UCL Earth Sciences), co-author of the study. The discovery involving researchers from UCL, Institut de Ciencias del Mar (Barcelona, Spain), Kochi University and Yamagata University (both Japan) was published today in Journal of Nannoplankton Research. The paper describes the new species which was discovered living in the South Atlantic Ocean today and highlights the two distinctive coccoliths that form the plankton's shell. It follows the characterisation of about 400 new species of plankton microfossils by UCL researchers which are available to see in an open-access online library called Nannotax. This includes images of the entire ancient and modern diversity of plankton across ~4500 species. UCL scientists have been at the forefront of this field since the 1960s, when the earliest scanning electron microscopes first revealed plankton's exquisite and elaborate calcium-based forms. "We have a real heritage in describing plankton and being at the forefront of using these discoveries to map the impact of climate change and health of our oceans over millions of years," explained Professor Lars Stixrude, Head of UCL Earth Sciences. "It is therefore fitting that we are naming our latest discovery, Syracosphaera azureaplaneta, after Blue Planet as Sir David officially opens the newly refurbished Kathleen Lonsdale Building at UCL which fully accommodates our researchers and students from our Earth Sciences department for the first time." Sir David was guest of honour at the opening ceremony today where he gave a talk on the importance of earth sciences and was presented with a sculpture of the plankton. He met with staff and students to discuss their world-leading research into a wide-range of areas from the world's oldest fossils, the impact of climate change on the planet, subatomic particles, smart materials and the furthest reaches of space. "It was a pleasure to welcome Sir David to UCL and share the exceptional work of our staff and students with him. We are at the forefront of discoveries that push the boundaries of human knowledge through researching our universe logically, experimentally and mathematically," said Professor Ivan Parkin, Dean of UCL Mathematical & Physical Sciences. "It's fantastic that the world-class outputs of Earth Sciences, Physics, Astronomy and Chemistry are now supported by improved teaching, research and social learning spaces. We eagerly anticipate the benefits these bring to students and staff now and in the future." The refurbishment of the Kathleen Lonsdale Building (KLB) is part of UCL Estates' 1.2bn capital programme, Transforming UCL. The KLB was constructed in 1915 as the first purpose built Chemistry building for UCL and its refurbishment has sensitively blended the old and new to create high quality workspaces with modern facilities. Explore further New study of plankton shells overturns decades-old understanding of their formation and chemistry In the field studying the rock association in the Doolena Gap greenstone belt, 30 km north of Marble bar in the Pilbara region of Western Australia. Credit: David Murphy, Author provided The remote Pilbara region of northern Western Australia is one of Earth's oldest blocks of continental crust, and we now think we know how it formed, as explained in research published today in Nature Geoscience. The region is well known for its rich, ancient Aboriginal history extending over at least 40,000 years. It also features an incredibly diverse ecosystem, with many species found nowhere else. The architecture of this ancient crust leads to a distinctive landscape as viewed from above, with light-coloured oval features that are granite domes surrounded by dark belts of volcanic and sedimentary rocks, known as greenstone belts. This unique geological architecture bears witness to the history of our planet. Billions of years ago The Pilbara region began to form more than 3.6 billion years ago and our research supports the idea that its rocks were not formed through the plate tectonics processes that we see in operation today. In plate tectonics, the outermost layer of Earth consists of fragmented, stiff "tectonic plates" that drift across the planetary surface, interacting at their boundaries. New crust is generated and destroyed at plate boundaries and this process is associated with most of Earth's current volcanic and earthquake activity. The plate boundaries are generally composed of fairly straight segments, hundreds of kilometres long. Witness the long chain of volcanoes along South America's west coast. Photograph of at least 3.5 billion year old banded-iron formation showing intensive deformation as a result of gravitational overturn until 3.41 billion years ago. Credit: Daniel Wiemer, Author provided So why do the rocks in the Pilbara exhibit this unusual granite-greenstone geometry? In our research we detail how these rocks formed, describing a series of "gravitational overturn" events that affected the ancient crust in the East Pilbara well before plate-tectonic processes began around 3.2 billion years ago. Gravitational overturn What is a gravitational overturn? The young Earth was roasting hot. Its large heat content resulted in widespread volcanism. It was too warm for the rigid plates required for plate tectonics to operate. Imagine retrieving a long-forgotten chocolate bar from your pocket, which then bends and drips over your fingers as you attempt to enjoy a snack. (Modern plates resemble a cold chocolate bar straight from the fridge: it does not bend and breaks when you want a corner.) The hot early Earth erupted thick piles of basalt lavas that formed a dense crust barely supported by the underlying mantle. The base of this cooling crust experienced further heating from the hot mantle below until it started to melt, generating relatively buoyant granitic magmas. This process led to an unstable stratification of the ancient proto-crust: low-density granites were overlain by high-density basalts. Due to the high heat, both layers could bend and flow, leading to instability. The granitic blobs wanted to rise and the basalts wanted to sink. Scientists call the rising blobs "plumes" and the reorganisation process "gravitational overturn". A rugged landscape formed above the deformed greenstone belts in the Doolena Gap greenstone belt, 30km north of Marble bar. Credit: David Murphy, Author provided In the early Earth, with its high temperatures and soft crust, the granites rose up through the crust where it formed buoyant stable crust, while most of the dense basalt crust sank into the mantle. This process is preserved in the Pilbara as the oval-shaped granite domes and the preserved remnants of the basalt crust as the greenstone belts. The landscape today North of Marble Bar, by looking at rock fabrics, we discovered the remains of the oldest recorded gravitational overturn in the Pilbara. Intensely deformed rocks preserve traces of the ascent of a rising granite plume and the associated down-going of the dense volcanic crust. Our field observations, geochemical analyses and thermodynamic models demonstrate that rocks collected from the dome margin represent high silica magma that originally melted at a depth of around 42km before crystallising as granites at 20km. Uranium-lead dating of zircon in the laboratory revealed that these rocks crystallised from 3.6-billion to 3.5 billion years ago. The intensely sheared rocks at the boundary of the rising dome and sinking volcanic rocks contain a metamorphic mineral, titanite, that formed during the gravitational overturn. We dated several of these mineral grains and they average 3.42 billion years old. By dating both pre- and post-gravitational overturn rock associations, we were able to constrain its duration to a 40 million year period. Back scatter electron image of titanite taken at Central Analytical Research Facility, QUT. The upper two images are primary magmatic images that have undergone deformation and alteration during the gravitational overturn. The lower two images are metamorphic titanite that formed during the gravitational overturn. The rectangular shapes in the bottom right image are laser pit from the dating process. Credit: Lana Wenham, Author provided Combining our research with the published work of other geologists, it appears that the Pilbara experienced at least three gravitational overturns separated by 100-million-year intervals. After the final overturn 3.2 billion years ago, the Pilbara crustal block was finally sufficiently robust and buoyant to survive plate tectonics lasting even until today. Read more: Five active volcanoes on my Asia Pacific 'Ring of Fire' watch-list right now We speculate that the cyclicity of overturn events in the Pilbara is the ancient equivalent of the 500- to 600-million-year Wilson cycle, one full round of crust from formation until destruction in the plate tectonic style in existence since 3.2 billion years ago. The Pilbara keeps inspiring scientists worldwide to finding answers to one of humankind's great questions: how did nature provide the platform for the eventual evolution of life? We plan to test the idea of characteristic ancient overturn cycles elsewhere in the Pilbara and on other continents where ancient crust is preserved. Explore further Earth probably began with a solid shell More information: Daniel Wiemer et al. Earth's oldest stable crust in the Pilbara Craton formed by cyclic gravitational overturns, Nature Geoscience (2018). Journal information: Nature Geoscience Daniel Wiemer et al. Earth's oldest stable crust in the Pilbara Craton formed by cyclic gravitational overturns,(2018). DOI: 10.1038/s41561-018-0105-9 This article was originally published on The Conversation. Read the original article. Govt gives staff 15 days to apply for local unit posts The government on Monday sought applications from the civil servants willing to work at the local levels within May 1 in order to fill vacancies there.As per the Interim Organisation Structure approved by the Cabinet on March 28, the local levels need an additional 16,080 staff. But the local units have been facing difficulties to run the day-to-day administrative works due to the lack of adequate staff. Fostering the planet's forests. Credit: wmaster890 / iStock We are at the cusp of a transformation that is changing societal perspectives and values on our environment. The Bonn Challenge which seeks to restore 150 million hectares of forest by 2020 represents a global response to deforestation, land degradation, and climate change. Never mind that with only 2 years to go, only 5 million hectares have actually been restored. More important is that this initiative has galvanised countries, organisations, and individuals to recognise the imperative to reverse environmental degradation in all its forms. Governments have already pledged 160 million hectares for forest restoration, but pledges, while welcome, must be translated into action. Scaling up requires scaling out How do we scale-up from existing scattered restoration initiatives to a programme more than an order of magnitude larger than all collective efforts to date? Any such challenge requires a "complex adaptive systems thinking approach" that transcends disciplinary boundaries and spatial and temporal scales. It requires drawing on knowledge sourced from multiple scientific fields to inform strategies across policy, society, economic, and environmental sectors. Scaling out across disciplines and sectors is complex, but is exactly what is needed to effectively address scaling up of forest restoration. The Latsis Symposium 2018 on scaling up Forest Restoration convenes at ETH Zurich on 6, 7 and 9 June to explore how this might be achieved in practice (see Box). Restoration is not only about forests, but also about recovering the diverse functions of landscapes, including timber production, native woodlands, riparian habitats for wildlife, water resources, and pasture, all of which are seen in this image of Glen Carron in Scotland. Credit: Jaboury Ghazoul / ETH Zurich Toward a shared vision We first need to forge a common vision from different, and at times contrasting, views of what forest restoration should look like. Different stakeholders might have quite different expectations of restoration they might not even believe that restoration is worthwhile. We need to clarify if, and how, the benefits of restoration outweigh its costs, particularly in relation to the economy and livelihoods. We must start by understanding the motivations behind contrasting visions, then negotiate acceptable visions across different interests, and finally chart a path that navigates conflicts that inevitably arise. If we simply rush to embrace restoration with normative values that might not be universally shared, we risk trampling on other legitimate interests in what would be tantamount to green land grabbing. Discussions on forest restoration need shared understanding and terminology to avoid misaligned interpretations that can ultimately undermine restoration processes. The struggles over the meaning of restoration reflect disagreements on what people actually want from it, and how its social, ecological, and economic benefits are distributed. This requires us to reconsider how land-use is embedded in the organisation of our societies. Forest restoration often seeks to recover past forest states with a conservation objective, as is the case here at Beinn Eighe National Nature Reserve in Scotland, but such objectives might not be universally shared. Credit: Jaboury Ghazoul / ETH Zurich Where, what, and how to restore? Is there even enough land to meet restoration targets without compromising rural communities? Restorative land uses need to provide attractive alternatives to existing degradative land uses, and restoration investments should be informed by spatial plans that address the local benefits, costs, and conditions of restoration. From an ecological perspective, we need to understand how the condition and functioning of forests vary across the globe so to identify appropriate strategies in specific regions. This will also help us to map how biodiversity, carbon storage, and local climate, in addition to socio-economic aspects, are shaped by restoration interventions. Mobilising and monitoring investments How do we mobilise the requisite funding? Restoration is attracting financing from donor and government funds, as well as some private investments, but it remains challenging to create business models with risk-return profiles that are attractive to private investors. These models need to consider short- and long-term revenues, as it often takes many years before restoration projects deliver economic benefits. Effective monitoring, reporting, and verification (MRV) of restoration interventions is also crucial to securing international funding for large-scale forest restoration. Without MRV, project success cannot be evaluated or proved, and financial support is therefore likely to be short-lived. Effective monitoring of restoration efforts is further needed to generate information to adapt and improve management. Successful restoration will look different in different places. Well-designed monitoring systems can improve local decision-making and adaptive management, but only if data collection is embedded within a programme of communication, discussion, and learning. Scaling up forest restoration has all the hallmarks of a wicked problem, and thus requires collaborative effort across disciplines, sectors, and stakeholders. The Latsis Symposium in June 2018 will explore how all these issues can be integrated into a global strategy to restore forests and landscapes. Explore further Ecological restoration success higher with natural measures than active measures More information: The Bonn Challenge: The Bonn Challenge: www.bonnchallenge.org/ While looking for another rare species, scientists stumbled upon what turned out to become the first record of the endangered and rare plant Heuchera alba in Pennsylvania. Credit: Christopher T. Martine What happens when researchers and social media combine forces in the name of science? A rare wildflower from the US and a team of Twitter-savvy botanists tell us a tale of symbiosis between science and modern technology. While hunting for the Pennsylvania state-endangered golden corydalis on steep 350-foot cliffs for a new episode of his YouTube video series, "Plants are Cool, Too!" in the heat of summer 2017, Bucknell University Professor Chris Martine and team stumbled across some interesting specimens of the enigmatic coral-bell genus Heuchera. Posting an image of this find on Twitter, little did Martine know that one casual Tweet of a bumblebee on what he thought was Heuchera americana would not only stir a heated discussion among fellow botanists, but also lead to the unexpected-for-this-region record of the rare and globally imperiled Appalachian endemic Heuchera alba. The first to recognize the rare species on the tweeted image was Ryan Folk, Florida Museum of Natural History. Surprised by this record, possibly the first for Pennsylvania, Martine tagged his fellow twitter-savvy botanist and plant conservation specialist with the Pennsylvania Natural Heritage Program at the Western Pennsylvania Conservancy, Scott Schuette. The continuing discussion revealed that a another possible state record of H. alba was recently posted by Schuette himself on citizen science biodiversity observations tool iNaturalist.org. After examining specimens they collected while rappelling along the cliffs, the team turned to historical collections held at the Wayne E. Manning Herbarium (BUPL) at Bucknell University to further science-proof their Twitter-fueled discovery. What they learned was that local botanists had been misidentifying this species for over a century. Armed with new data on the habitat preferences of H. alba, the researchers discovered seven more populations of the rare plant that represent a significant range expansion for a species previously known only from small populations in the mountains of Virginia and West Virginia. The new observations and inferences, along with tips for how others might also locate and protect more populations of H. alba, is now published in the open access journal PhytoKeys. The Twitter identification of this species in Pennsylvania is an exciting outcome that provides a model for the sorts of strides we can make when botanists embrace a combination of modern and classical approaches to discovery and collaboration. "Importantly, this discovery is not just a cool showcase for how science and modern communications outlets can work together, it also gave us key information on the status of H. alba that can guide future conservation efforts," says Martine on the scientific value of this discovery. Martine features Schuette and study co-author Jason Cantley, of San Francisco State University, in the latest episode of "Plants are Cool, Too!", where viewers can learn more about the steep cliffs inhabited by H. alba and the efforts of local volunteers to preserve them. Explore further Newly established, a national park in Australia unveils a new plant species More information: Schuette S, Folk RA, Cantley JT, Martine CT (2018) The hidden Heuchera: How science Twitter uncovered a globally imperiled species in Pennsylvania, USA. PhytoKeys 96: 87-97. Journal information: PhytoKeys Schuette S, Folk RA, Cantley JT, Martine CT (2018) The hidden Heuchera: How science Twitter uncovered a globally imperiled species in Pennsylvania, USA.96: 87-97. doi.org/10.3897/phytokeys.96.23667 Swansea University Egyptology lecturer Dr Ken Griffin and the newly discovered artifact. Credit: The Egypt Centre, Swansea University Swansea University Egyptology lecturer Dr Ken Griffin has found a depiction of one of the most famous pharaoh's in history Hatshepsut (one of only a handful of female pharaohs) on an object in the Egypt Centre stores, which had been chosen for an object handling session. The opportunity to handle genuine Egyptian artefacts is provided by the Egypt Centre to students studying Egyptology at Swansea University. During a recent handling session for an Egyptian Art and Architecture module Dr Kenneth Griffin, from the University's Department of Classics, Ancient History and Egyptology, noticed that one of the objects chosen was much more interesting than initially thought. Consisting of two irregularly shaped limestone fragments that have been glued together, the object had been kept in storage for over twenty years and was requested for the handling session based only on an old black and white photograph. The front side depicts the head of a figure whose face is unfortunately missing, with the remains of a fan directly behind. Traces of hieroglyphs are also present above the head. The iconography of the piece indicates that it represents a ruler of Egypt, particularly with the presence of the uraeus (cobra) on the forehead of the figure. Who is this mysterious pharaoh and where did the fragment originate from? A search of the Egypt Centre records provides no information on the original provenance or find spot of the object. What is known is that it came to Swansea in 1971 as part of the distribution of objects belonging to Sir Henry Wellcome (1853-1936), the pharmaceutical entrepreneur based in London. The fragments are less than 5cm thick and had clearly been removed from the wall of a temple or tomb, as can be seen from the cut marks on the back. The front aspect of the artifact. Credit: The Egypt Centre, Swansea University Having visited Egypt on over fifty occasions, Dr Griffin quickly recognised the iconography as being similar to reliefs within the temple of Hatshepsut at Deir el-Bahri (Luxor), which was constructed during the height of the New Kingdom. In particular, the treatment of the hair, the fillet headband with twisted uraeus, and the decoration of the fan are all well-known at Deir el-Bahri. Most importantly, the hieroglyphs above the headpart of a formulaic text attested elsewhere at the templeuse a feminine pronoun, a clear indication that the figure is female. Hatshepsut was the fifth pharaoh of the Eighteenth Dynasty (c.1478-1458 BC) and one of only a handful of women to have held this position. Early in her reign she was represented as a female wearing a long dress, but she gradually took on more masculine traits, including being depicted with a beard. The reign of Hatshepsut was one of peace and prosperity, which allowed her to construct monuments throughout Egypt. Her memorial temple at Deir el-Bahri, built to celebrate and maintain her cult, is a masterpiece of Egyptian architecture. Many fragments were taken from this site during the late nineteenth century, before the temple was excavated by the Egypt Exploration Fund (now Egypt Exploration Society) between 1902-1909. Since 1961 the Polish Archaeological Mission to Egypt has been excavating, restoring, and recording the temple. Yet the mystery of the precious find doesn't end there. On the rear of the upper fragment, the head of a man with a short beard is depicted. Initially there was no explanation for this, but it is now clear that the upper fragment had been removed and recarved in more recent times in order to complete the face of the lower fragment. The replacement of the fragment below the figure would also explain the unusual cut of the upper fragment. This was probably done by an antiques dealer, auctioneer, or even the previous owner of the piece in order to increase its value and attractiveness. It was eventually decided at an unknown date to glue the fragments together in the original layout, which is how they now appear. Rear aspect of the artifact. Credit: The Egypt Centre, Swansea University While Deir el-Bahri seems the most likely provenance for this artefact, further research is needed in order to confirm this and it may even be possible to one day determine the exact spot the fragments originated from. Given the importance of the object, the head of Hatshepsut has now been placed on display in a prominent position within the House of Life at the Egypt Centre so that the relief can be appreciated by visitors to the Centre. Dr Griffin said: "The Egypt Centre is a wonderful resource and is certainly one of the major factors in attracting students to study Egyptology at Swansea University". "The identification of the object as depicting Hatshepsut caused great excitement amongst the students. After all, it was only through conducting handling sessions for them that this discovery came to light". "While most of the students have never visited Egypt before, the handling sessions help to bring Egypt to them". Explore further Mysterious head of a pharaoh discovered Bridget Frey was the only woman on Redfin's engineering team in Seattle when she joined the online real-estate company more than six years ago. She wasn't surprised, having worked in the male-dominated tech field for much of her career. But Frey was determined it would be a short-lived imbalance. One of the reasons the tech field is so heavily male is that people tend to hire job candidates who remind them of themselves, feeling immediately most comfortable working with similar people, studies find. So Frey made it a mission to participate in many of Redfin's interviews with potential hires, and she called several female candidates herself to recruit them to the company, reasoning that more women were likely to accept job offers if they knew they wouldn't be the solitary woman on the team. Her attemptstogether with multiple tactics the company has employedare starting to work. Women now make up 31.7 percent of the company's technical workforce, up from 12.5 percent when Frey joined in 2011. In Redfin's upper ranks, the number is even higher: Women hold 46 percent of positions at the manager level and above. "Now I walk around, and it's rare that I'm the only woman in a meeting," she said in the company's downtown Seattle headquarters. Tech companies are notorious for the dearth of female employees in their ranks and for the treatment of those womensomething that has been put in the spotlight in recent months with the gender-discrimination lawsuits against Microsoft, Google, Twitter, and Oracle. It's one hurdle for women to get in the door in the industry, and another for them to advance within a company. At each higher level, there are fewer female employees, partly because they are promoted at slower rates than men. Other studies suggest they leave the male-dominated companies in droves. In Seattle, a few midsize tech companiesincluding Redfin, Zillow, Expedia, and Tableauhave had some success in changing the gender balance of their workforces, particularly in management and leadership roles. TESTING SOLUTIONS The not-so-secret secret, the companies say, is to treat diversity challenges much the same way as tech challenges: Test solutions, kill those that don't work and implement those that do as companywide processes and systems. For Redfin, where Frey now serves as chief technology officer, that means a "bug tracker" for its diversity initiatives: a software system that allows anyone from the company to log on, check out top priority "bugsmeaning anything that isn't working at the companyand tackle a project. It's the same kind of system that Redfin uses to solve technology issues. A couple dozen engineers pitch in to work on diversity bugs at any one time, Frey said. One project focused on the company's use of the Slack internal messaging tool. If a Slack user, composing a message, includes a term that could be offensive to a specific group, the system generates an automated reply noting that the word could be derogatory and sends information to the user about it. It's a small effort to make all employees feel welcome at work, Frey said, but that welcoming attitude is a major factor in retaining women and minorities and advancing them into management positions. Women, especially women in technical roles, tend to fall out of the ranks the higher up the corporate ladder you look. According to AnitaB.organ organization for women in tech, formerly called the Anita Borg Institutethe average U.S. company's technical workforce is 28.5 percent female at the entry level. That falls to just 19 percent at the senior leadership level. "I don't think there's a company in the world that has no cause for concern," said Joelle Emerson, CEO of San Francisco consulting firm Paradigm, which helps companies implement diversity and inclusion strategies. "The default is for organizations to not be inclusive and equitable because they are mirroring society. They have to be proactive." Explore further Reframing diversity to achieve equity in the tech industry 2018 The Seattle Times Distributed by Tribune Content Agency, LLC. PKS 1718649: Difference map between the hard (1.510 keV) and soft (0.31.5 keV) band including counts of Ch 1, Ch 2, and Ch 3. Positive pixels (blue) depict a hard excess, negative pixels (red) a soft excess. Overlayed contours in black show H2 10 S(1) emission (Maccagni et al. 2016). Credit: Beuchert et al., 2018. An international team of researchers has performed of extended X-ray emission in the radio source known as PKS 1718649. The study, published April 11 in a paper on the arXiv pre-print repository, reveals more details about physics of the environment of this source and could be helpful in disclosing its real nature. PKS 1718649 is one of the closest and most comprehensively studied gigahertz-peaked radio spectrum (GPS) sources. Although many studies of this source have been conducted, its real nature is still debated. Some researchers classified it as a compact symmetric object (CSO), a small and powerful extragalactic radio source exhibiting emission on both sides of an active galactic nucleus (AGN). On the other hand, some studies suggest that it is an AGN still embedded in its optical host galaxy. In order to investigate the nature of PKS 1718649, a team of astronomers led by Tobias Beuchert of the University of Amsterdam in the Netherlands has performed a study of an extended X-ray emission from the environment of this source. The research is based on an analysis of observational data obtained by NASA's Chandra X-ray Observatory and ESA's X-ray Multi-Mirror Mission (XMM-Newton). "In this letter, we investigated the nature of the extended X-ray emitting gas in PKS 1718649," the researchers wrote in the paper. According to the study, this gas primarily emits in soft X-rays and is most likely part of the extended, hot interstellar medium. In particular, the researchers found that besides a photo-ionized gas phase on subparsec scales, the bulk of the soft X-rays is emitted by diffuse, hot (with a temperature of almost 10 million K), and collisionally ionized gas that dominates the nuclear emission on kiloparsec scales. The astronomers attempt to determine the most plausible scenario to explain this extended X-ray emission in PKS 1718649. They assume that supernovae are most likely the driving mechanism of such emission. This excludes the previously proposed explanation, suggesting that young AGNs are behind this activity. "We therefore propose an alternative scenario, where supernovae in the host galaxy can feed the galactic halo with hot and X-ray-bright gas," the paper reads. The researchers noted that this newly proposed scenario is supported by observations of active star formation in PKS 1718649, estimates on the expected supernova rate, as well as the theoretically predicted X-ray flux of supernova remnants. "While the feedback of the central AGN still seems to be constrained to the inner few parsecs, we argue that supernovae are capable of producing the observed large-scale X-ray emission at a rate inferred from its estimated star formation rate," the scientists concluded. More information: Extended X-ray emission in PKS 1718649, arXiv:1804.04188 [astro-ph.HE] Extended X-ray emission in PKS 1718649, arXiv:1804.04188 [astro-ph.HE] arxiv.org/abs/1804.04188 Abstract PKS 1718649 is one of the closest and most comprehensively studied candidates of a young active galactic nucleus (AGN) that is still embedded in its optical host galaxy. The compact radio structure, with a maximal extent of a few parsecs, makes it a member of the group of compact symmetric objects (CSO). Its environment imposes a turnover of the radio synchrotron spectrum towards lower frequencies, also classifying PKS 1718649 as gigahertz-peaked radio spectrum (GPS) source. Its close proximity has allowed the first detection of extended X-ray emission in a GPS/CSO source with Chandra that is for the most part unrelated to nuclear feedback. However, not much is known about the nature of this emission. By co-adding all archival Chandra data and complementing these datasets with the large effective area of XMM-Newton, we are able to study the detailed physics of the environment of PKS 1718649. Not only can we confirm that the bulk of the kiloparsec-scale environment emits in the soft X-rays, but we also identify the emitting gas to form a hot, collisionally ionized medium. While the feedback of the central AGN still seems to be constrained to the inner few parsecs, we argue that supernovae are capable of producing the observed large-scale X-ray emission at a rate inferred from its estimated star formation rate. 2018 Phys.org Invaders Invasive alien plant species (IAPS or invasives) threaten Nepal in a multitude of ways. They undermine the ecological integrity of agricultural areas, forests, and grasslands. They put livelihoods at risk by reducing natural resources. And they degrade Nepals cultural and world heritage sites. Kanti Highway upgrade likely to finish by Oct Kanti Highway upgradation project is nearing the finish line and is likely to come into operation by October. Nearly six decades have passed since the highway connecting Kathmandu with Hetauda and Birgunj was constructed. If Malcolm Gladwell is right that the cultural legacy of the Scots-Irish explains the poor outcomes experienced by people in southeastern Kentucky, how do we explain the exceptional success of these same people in Pittsburgh? One answer to this conundrum is this one: Cultural legacy explanations are garbage. Thats the Politically Correct answer, but its also silly. Even if, in human societies, culture doesnt eat strategy for breakfast, it doesnt work the other way around, either. Culture is very powerful. Its just that its not determinativeculture isnt fate. Everything depends on the environment to which the culture plays out (i.e., in this case the places the Scots-Irish families migrated to) and the determinationor lack of itto fit in and succeed in that new environment. The Scots-Irish who ended up in Pittsburgh discovered that they were a small minority in a city dominated by people of English and German stock. And then it got worsePittsburgh was Americas fastest-growing city during the Industrial Revolution, and as waves of Irish and Italian immigrants swept into the city, the Scots-Irish became even smaller minorities. As a modest minority with no chance of dictating cultural norms, the Scots-Irish had little choice but to adapt their culture to the majority culture of the city. The unhappy alternative, after all, was to become Pittsburghs permanent white trash. At the same time, thanks to the Industrial Revolution and Pittsburghs central role in it, the Pittsburgh Scots-Irish had every incentive to get with the program, because it was possible to become very rich and very powerful in that world if you didnt allow unproductive cultural traits to get in your way. Consider the Mellon family, perhaps the epitome of the successful Western Pennsylvania Scots-Irish. They maintained the legacy of focusing on their own family, but jettisoned the unhelpful part about not trusting anyone else. Andrew Mellon became the worlds wealthiest man by trusting large numbers of young, untried entrepreneurs in whose ideas he invested. And the focus on family is nowhere in American history better exemplified than in old Judge Tom Mellons extraordinary Letters to My Sons, a charming and moving collection of hundreds of letters the old man wrote to his five sons over the course of many years. All five became wealthy and, as noted, Andrew outdid them all. Its interesting to note in this regard that Thomas Mellons focus on family paralleled that of another remarkable family, the Rothschilds. Mayer Rothschild, like Judge Tom, was a successful man, though not compared to his sons. And Mayer, like Judge Tom, had five sons and sent them out into the world to thrive and create additional wealth. These sons were sent off to Frankfurt, London, Paris, Naples and Vienna, while the Mellon sons were sent off to American cities and states. But the results were similar. In fact, it seems likely that the Rothschilds and the Mellons were the worlds two most powerful families of their dayand possibly of any day before or sincegiven the vast scale of their wealth and their impact on their broader societies. Andrew Mellon, for example, was Secretary to the Treasury under three U.S. Presidents. (Or, as the family prefers to put it, Andrew was the Secretary under whom three Presidents served.) Yes, yes, Im aware of the powerful Italian families that dominated the Renaissance. The Medicis, for example, produced three popes and served as bankers to Englands Edward IV in the fifteenth century (a project they would live to regret). But the world was a much smaller place in the fifteenth century than it was in the nineteenth, and much easier to dominate. Compare this extraordinary success with the rather different outcomes experienced by the Scots-Irish residents of Harlan, Kentucky and, indeed, throughout southeastern Kentucky and Appalachia in general. Why the difference? Back in the old country, the Scots-Irish had been hassled for generations by the Church of England and the Catholic Scottish and Irish. Naturally enough, when they migrated to America they were looking to be left alone. And, in the almost-impenetrable mountains of Appalachia, once the Native American tribes had been subdued and expelled (especially the Cherokee, Shawnee and Chickasaw), solitude is exactly what they got. To this very day no significant in-migration has occurred in those hills, with the result that the Scots-Irish were both the dominant culture and virtually the only culture. They could indulge the worst aspects of their cultural legacy from the old country because there was nobody around to call them on it and because there was no enticement luring them to changethe Industrial Revolution completely bypassed Appalachia. As an ironic aside, the Kentucky Scots-Irish even surrendered their beloved Presbyterianism. The American Presbyterian Church had high standards for their ministers in those days, establishing Princeton University in 1746 to train their clergy. As a result there werent nearly enough ministers to man every tiny church in every hollow in Kentucky. (And you couldnt travel, say, from Jackson to Barbourville to attend church servicesyoud have to leave on Thursday.) Fortunately for the hill people, the Methodists and Baptists had much more sensible ideas about the educational levels of their clergy in the nineteenth and early twentieth centuries. Many ministers in these denominations had, in fact, little formal education at all, but simply apprenticed under other ministers. As a result, though, there were a lot of them. By the 1920s almost all the Scots-Irish in Kentucky had abandoned Presbyterianism and were either Baptists (as, I believe, was the case in J.D. Vances family) or Methodists (as in the case of my family). In any event, as the decades and generations went by in Harlan, Kentucky (and in Jackson and Barbourville, Kentucky), the cultural legacy of the Scots-Irish expressed itself in all its worst aspects: lack of trust in anyone except family, hatred for government or any authority, a hair-triggered temper prone to sudden violence. The hill culture became a kind of caricature of the Scots-Irish legacy, almost less of a societal subgroup and more of a cult. How was that likely to play out in middle class Ohio? Well see next Friday. Next up: On Hillbilly Elegy, Part V When she was just 23, poet Muriel Rukeyser drove from her home in New York City to the hollers of West Virginia, fueled by a desire to investigate and document the Hawks Nest Tunnel mining disaster. By the time she arrived in 1936, many of the men who had dug the tunnel were dead. More were gravely ill and would later die. Six years earlier, on March 31, 1930, Union Carbide and The New Kanawha Power Company broke ground for the Hawks Nest Tunnel in Gauley Bridge, WVa. By the time the tunnel opened in 1934, there were reports of miners dead and dying from acute silicosis developed while working the dig. Silicosis develops when silica dust lodges in the lungs. It fills the lungs, making ordinary lung function difficultjust walking across the room is exhausting. Eventually, as silicosis progresses, the lungs lose all elasticity. Even by the standards of the early 1930s, conditions at Hawks Nest were atrocious. Safety precautionswetting the rock face to minimize the dust or waiting between shifts for the dust to settlewere ignored or otherwise evaded. The men inhaled the fine white dust every minute of every shift worked. In all, 764 men who worked Hawks Nest died of silicosis. Rukeyser walked the area and spoke to the people. She documented her findings in a lyric poem which weaves together the many stories told to her by survivors and the bereaved, along with her own account of the area, a sort of naturalists elegiac cartography. The poem is not a snapshot of the disaster, but rather a series of snapshots capturing Gauley Bridge and Hawks Nest in different moments: the miners camp, the tunnel, the homes of the bereaved and the ill, gatherings of survivors who were advocating for justice, and Congressional hearings. When the blast went off the boss would call out, Come, lets go back, when that heavy loaded blast went white, Come, lets go back, telling us hurry, hurry, into the falling rocks and muck. The water they would bring had dust in it, our drinking water, the camps and their groves were colored with the dust, we cleaned our clothes in the groves, but we always had the dust. Rukeyser, who died in 1980, first published this poem in 1938 and titled it after a collection of ancient Egyptian spells to assist the dead in the next plane, The Book of the Dead. It was re-released this spring by West Virginia University Press. As an introduction, WVU has included a poignant essay by writer, documentarian and West Virginia native Catherine Venable Moore, also titled The Book of the Dead, previously published by Oxford American Magazine. [I]t is really the most complete document we have of Hawks Nest Tunnel and Gauley Bridge and the disaster, which is commonly understood to be the worst industrial disaster in American history, says Derek Krissoff at WVU Press. So you have this unusual case where its really a poet who was there, on the ground, more or less as its happening, who is able to capture it and document it in this very artistic and vivid way. And that stands as the best kind of narrative we have of it. Venable Moore described her essay re-examining Hawks Nest at a recent lecture: When I discovered it, it took my breath away. It propelled me forward into this research. I moved back to West Virginia about seven or eight years ago and started exploring some of the spaces that Muriel describes in her poems. She said her work is a meditation on Rukeysers poem, but also on Appalachia, suffering and, race. The Jones family, who lost three brothers and a father, all within a couple of years to silicosistheir lungs were preserved in these huge glass jars by a doctor who was performing autopsies and were dumped into a dump behind my house. I would go searching for these lungs, trying to find the lungs of the Jones boys. It was just woven into my Saturday night in the country, I guess. Though its been more than 80 years since Hawks Nest, there has been a conspicuous rise in the cases of black lung in the 21st century, according to a recent National Public Radio study. Black lung is really shorthand for the multiple disease processes that mining dusts cause. Silicosis, coal workers pneumoconiosis (CWP) and progressive massive fibrosis (PMF) are all commonly referred to as Black Lung. NPR collected data from clinics in Appalachia indicating that there have been nearly 2,000 cases of black lung in the past 15 years. In response, Congress passed increased funding for Black Lung clinics as part of an omnibus spending bill in late-March. In certain respects, what happened at Hawks Nest is an essential part of the story of capitalism in Appalachia. There is the need to extract energy from the area in order to power the nation, to build infrastructure and fuel this economy. When we think of Appalachia, we dont often think African-American, but there is a rich African-American culture and history here, including descendants of the Hawks Nest men, as many of those who worked the dig were migrants from deeper south who lived in temporary housing in Gauley Bridge. Hawks Nest is infamous among miners and to this day, the term is shorthand for an especially dangerous mine, one where dust regulations are cheated and speed is valued over safety. Big Branch in Raleigh County, West Virginia, was known as a Hawks Nest mine long before it blew up in 2010, killing 29 miners. Mounting health and environmental concerns and the sudden spotlight on Appalachia in the Trump era, all make Rukeysers work particularly timely. Determining where water begins and ends seems a matter of physical properties, of whether two hydrogen molecules are bonded to oxygen, and how much of it exists. Where is it located, and will people eventually drink it? Swim in it? Fish in it? This molecule, essential to life, has become another point of political polarization. Lawmakers have grappled for decades with defining which waters matter under the law, and which dont. A bright spotlight now shines on the debate as the Trump administration amplifies the conversation by rolling back numerous Obama-era environmental initiatives. Citing states rights and ease of doing business, the Trump administration last summer moved to squash the 2015 Clean Water Rule that expanded whats governed as waters of the United States under the landmark 1972 Clean Water Act. In Pennsylvania, the Trump administrations move to rescind the rule pleases farmers, builders, coal miners and other industry leaders who feared the federal government could absorb small ponds and ditches under its jurisdiction and slow development with unwieldy permit requirements. Exactly how the Clean Water Rule would have actually affected Pennsylvanians water protection is a matter of debate. Pennsylvania Department of Environmental Protection (DEP) officials hold steadfast to the argument that state laws are stronger than anything the Clean Water Rule could impose. But environmentalists and watchdogs doubt the enforcement ability of the DEP, weakened by budget cuts over the years. Meanwhile, despite DEPs claims that nothing would change, Pennsylvania opponents of the rule continue to vociferously object. One big player, the Pennsylvania Farm Bureau, encouraged its members to publicly comment on the federal Environmental Protection Agencys reversal and joined in on the national hashtag campaign #DitchtheRule. The Clean Water Rule, often just referred to as the Waters of the U.S. rule, or simply WOTUS, added smaller streams and wetlands that the administration deemed vital to larger drinking water sources, thus expanding the jurisdiction of the Clean Water Act. According to the EPA, one in three Americans gets drinking water from sources that depend on the headwaters of smaller, sometimes seasonal streams. (More than 10,000 miles of smaller and seasonal streams in Pennsylvania flow into major sources of drinking water.) The biological processes that really help clean our water naturally are particularly concentrated in these smaller headwaters areas, said Daniel Bain, University of Pittsburgh assistant professor of geology and environmental science, whose expertise is hydrology. The 2015 Obama-era Clean Water Rule never actually went into effect. The National Association of Manufacturers sued, and the Sixth Circuit Court of Appealsthe federal court that hears appeals from Kentucky, Michigan, Ohio and Tennesseegranted a national stay on the rule. In January, the U.S. Supreme Court returned the decision to the district courts. One month into his term, President Trump issued an executive order to review the 2015 rule, and by June, the EPA and the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers moved to rescind it. The agencies are currently reviewing public comments. Despite the Supreme Court ruling, the EPA has issued a two-year delay on any implementation. In February 2017, President Trump issued an executive order to review the 2015 rule, and by June, the EPA and the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers moved to rescind it. Although already-converted cropland and certain ditches would be exempt from the rule, the Pennsylvania Farm Bureau maintains strong opposition. The organizations communications director, Mark ONeill, stated that members didnt see this as regulating water; it was about regulating land. Members of another outspoken group, the Pennsylvania Builders Association, are concerned the rule could slow the rate of development. It already takes $100,000 to bring a parcel of land to point of development, said the associations CEO, Daniel Durden, citing a statistic that U.S. Supreme Court Justice Antonin Scalia argued in his opinion on the 2006 case, Rapanos v.United States. Thats from acquisition to when you want to start digging. Engineering studies, permits time is literally money to the builder and homeowner. Current and retired Pennsylvania DEP officials say the state already has strong water-protection laws, so a new federal rule would make no difference. Basically our jurisdiction in Pennsylvania over Waters of the Commonwealth expands beyond the federal jurisdiction of waters of the United States, Ramez Ziadeh, DEPs acting executive deputy for programs. Waters of the Commonwealth are defined by the Pennsylvania code of regulations as rivers, streams, creeks, rivulets, impoundments, ditches, watercourses, storm sewers, lakes, dammed water, wetlands, ponds, springs and other bodies or channels of conveyance of surface and underground water, or parts thereof, whether natural or artificial, within or on the boundaries of this Commonwealth. The bottom line is WOTUS doesnt make any difference in PA because were already doing more than that, said retired agency official David Hess, who served as DEP secretary from 2001 to 2003 and as deputy secretary from 1995 to 2001. Others remain skeptical. Despite the states strong laws, environmental advocates still question whether the state enforcement body is strong enough. A January DEP report declared 19,900 miles of the states rivers and streams to be impaired. You have to look no further than the current state budget fight to see how fragile our environmental protections at the state level are, said Stephanie Wein, clean water and conservation advocate for PennEnvironment, in an October interview. All the more case to have a Clean Water Rule. On Oct. 30, months after the deadline, state legislators passed a revenue package to close a roughly $2 billion shortfall in the states nearly $32 billion budget. They did so by expanding gambling and transferring $300 million from special funds. Its unclear how much will be drawn from funds devoted to state environmental programs. What has been a big deal for PA is obviously the continuing budget cuts over the last decade, said Hess, citing a trend since the late 1990s. The DEP was created in 1995. [Theres been] a 40 percent cut in the general fund dollars support to the agency, which primarily thats how water quality programs were funded. That cuts into the enforcement of processing permits and enforcing permits for water quality issues. We do the best we can Asked whether the DEP is able to adequately enforce protection of all waters spelled out in Waters of the Commonwealth, Ziadeh said, Its no secret weve endured some big budget cuts, but we do the best we can with the resources we have. Thats beyond our control too. Youll have to speak to the legislators about that. Asked how many violations have been issued and cleared recently under the states Clean Streams Law, Neil Shader, DEP press secretary, said he and Ziadeh werent sure. We typically dont track violation of any sort with a tally, Shader said. We could find out, but that would require going through different programs and different regions to collect all of those. Ill see if we have any sort of estimate on that. He passed the inquiry to the DEPs community relations coordinator, John Repetz, who responded via email that the numbers are not readily available. On our public webpage, there are several reports that might be useful to your research. A search of the webpage revealed that the DEP has enforced 1,874 of the 2,473 violations it issued to permitted facilities in the Southwest region under its Clean Water Program since Jan. 1, 2012. The region encompasses Allegheny, Armstrong, Beaver, Cambria, Fayette, Greene, Indiana, Somerset, Washington and Westmoreland counties. Lauren Fraley, DEPs community relations coordinator for the Southwest region, said she couldnt answer as to how many total Clean Water Program permits were issued for the region. Fraley said because permits are issued for numerous program categories pertaining to the states Clean Streams Lawfor example, permits for oil and gas drilling or constructiona more accurate number was not available. We just dont collect data in that manner. Environmental advocates in Pennsylvania lament not having the extra layer of protection the Clean Water Rule might have offered. They suggested a case about one of these small waterways could be filed in federal court rather than with the states Environmental Hearing Board. For the DEP to say that [the federal Clean Water Rule] is not necessary is kind of annoying, from my perspective, because it means they dont have to be held federally accountable, said Veronica Coptis, executive director for the Center for Coalfield Justice. Last summer, her organization won a case when the state Environmental Hearing Board voted unanimously to reject a permit that Consol Energy sought to mine beneath a stream in Ryerson Station State Park in Greene County. Coptis said concerns in Greene and Washington counties include small streams being drained due to underground mining as well as poor water quality caused by coal wastecosts that add up to more than any other state in the nation, she said. She believes the Clean Water Rule is important because it allows communities to go to both state and federal courts. As much as the judicial branch is supposed to be uninfluenced by politics, it still is, she said. It gives communities different options to have enforcement they deserve for their right to clean water. But coal industry leaders in Southwestern Pennsylvania say theyre already aggressively regulated on both the state and federal level. If anything, the vague terms in WOTUS could unnecessarily expand the scope of jurisdictional waters, creating confusion among agencies and causing permitting delays, wrote Rachel Gleason, Pennsylvania Coal Alliance spokesperson, in an emailed statement. Whether regulated on a federal or state level, what happens upstream matters, say hydrologists. As people continue to move away from cities traditionally built along large rivers, and move nearer to smaller headwaters, the questions of how to best prevent contamination becomes more urgent. Mistakes made upstream cost real dollarsin special water treatment protocols and loss of clean waterfor those living downstream. In terms of thinking about how to deal with messes, releases, spills, the cheapest way to deal with those things is to put a lot of money into preventing contamination, Pitt hydrology expert, Bain said, acknowledging that planning for the future is key. Of Pennsylvanias three main basins the Delaware, Ohio and Susquehanna Bain said the Ohio River water basin is the most polluted by industry. Coal waste, and in the last decade Marcellus shale drilling wastewater, has polluted streams and rivers feeding into the Ohio, he said. When you dont think about it in terms of watersheds, its easy to lose sight of Well it might [cost] a little bit more for me. But a lot of people downstream will save a lot of money, he said. Its a balance. Its part of democracy. Science can give you answers, but a lot of these problems boil down to human problems. Now that the public comment period on rescinding the Clean Water Rule is closed, its up to President Trumps EPA to finalize its move. Concurrently, stakeholders whose minds are on the nations, and Pennsylvanias, headwatersfrom President Trump down to the farmers, builders, and environmental advocatesmust now look to the district courts for any decisions on how the rule could be implemented. But, with the EPAs delay, nothing can happen for at least two years. Law to include provision for suspending MPs in case of implication on criminal case The House of Representatives, Regulations Drafting Committee is doing home work to incorporate in the regulation the provision on automatic suspension of the post of Member of Parliament if a criminal case is filed against the MP or if the lawmaker is taken into custody for investigation. Resolute Forest Products Inc., together with its subsidiaries, operates in the forest products industry in the United States, Canada, Mexico, and internationally. The company operates through four segments: Market Pulp, Tissue, Wood Products, and Paper. The Market Pulp segment offers virgin and recycled bleached kraft pulp, which is used to make a range of consumer products, including tissue, packaging, specialty paper products, diapers, and other absorbent products. The Tissue segment provides various tissue products, such as recycled and virgin paper products for the away-from-home and retail markets; and sells parent rolls. The Wood Products segment produces construction-grade and spruce-pine-fir lumber products, wood chips, bed frame components, finger joints, and furring strips for pulp and paper mills, as well as I-joists for the construction industry. The Paper segment offers newsprint to newspaper publishers, as well as to commercial printers for a range of uses comprising inserts and flyers. This segment also provides various uncoated mechanical papers, including supercalendered and white papers, as well as uncoated freesheet papers to commercial printers, direct mailers, publishers, catalogers, and retailers. Its specialty papers are used in books, retail inserts, direct mail, coupons, magazines, catalogs, bags, and other commercial printing applications. This segment sells specialty papers to commercial printers, direct mailers, publishers, catalogers, and retailers. The company also produces electricity at six cogeneration facilities and seven hydroelectric dams. Resolute Forest Products Inc. is headquartered in Montreal, Canada. Read More American Consumer News, LLC dba MarketBeat 2010-2021. All rights reserved. 326 E 8th St #105, Sioux Falls, SD 57103 | U.S. Based Support Team at contact@marketbeat.com | (844) 978-6257 MarketBeat does not provide personalized financial advice and does not issue recommendations or offers to buy stock or sell any security. Our Accessibility Statement | Terms of Service | Do Not Sell My Information 2021 Market data provided is at least 10-minutes delayed and hosted by Barchart Solutions. Information is provided 'as-is' and solely for informational purposes, not for trading purposes or advice, and is delayed. To see all exchange delays and terms of use please see disclaimer. Fundamental company data provided by Zacks Investment Research. [CURITIBA] Producing ethanol from sugarcane could reduce fossil fuel imports in Latin American countries other than Brazil, where sugarcane is already a big part of the energy mix. According to a study that analysed the potential of sugarcane as a cleaner energy source in the region, bagasse the pulp left after juice is extracted from sugarcane can also improve electricity access in many countries. Brazilian and Colombian researchers evaluated the potential benefits of this crop for the energy supply, for cutting greenhouse gases emissions savings, and for decreasing oil imports in the region. The results confirm that benefits across all three can be achieved with US$35 billion over ten years, which is "around the same investment in renewable energy in LAC from 2012 to 2014, excluding Brazil". In many countries in Africa and Latin America, access to electricity is insufficient. If they can use sugarcane residue to offer surplus electricity, they can improve electricity access, and people begin to change their views regarding bioenergy Suani Teixeira They also suggest that Guatemala, Nicaragua and Cuba could replace 10 per cent of their gasoline use just with current supplies of molasses. And if Bolivia expands sugarcane production to 1 per cent of its pasture land, the country could replace 20 per cent of its gasoline and diesel use, with a surplus of ethanol that it can then export. Published in the journal Renewable Energy, the study also suggests that electricity access in many countries could be improved just by boosting the use of current quantities of bagasse: in Bolivia, El Salvador and Honduras, it can supply 3.5 per cent of the current electricity demand. Two scenarios were used to estimate the potential supply of bioenergy from sugarcane in Latin America. One was a short-term framework, which considers existing sugarcane production levels. The second was a medium- to long-term approach, where sugarcane cultivation takes up over 1 per cent of current pasture land, and ethanol is produced not just from molasses but also directly from sugarcane juice; this also assumes a gasoline-ethanol blend of up to 20 per cent. "For countries like Colombia or Mozambique we suggest to start producing ethanol from molasses, like Brazil did," says Luis Barboza Cortez, an agricultural engineer from the University of Campinas and a co-author of the study. Cortez coordinates the five-year project, funded by the Brazilian research foundation Fapesp, which is evaluating the prospects of bioenergy production in Mozambique, South Africa, Colombia and Guatemala. Brazil's sugarcane-based ethanol programme dates back to the 1970s, when it began in response to the oil crisis. Currently, Brazil is the worlds largest sugarcane producer. The country mandates a 27 per cent blend of ethanol with gasoline, and 16 per cent of the national energy supply comes from sugarcane products. "When we talk about ethanol, we assume that the results we had in Brazil will be the same in other places, but it doesn't happen like that", says Cortez. He suggests that countries aim for a 10 per cent gasoline-ethanol blend to begin with. Cortez also believes that producing energy in rural areas is great for generating jobs and other economic activities. Suani Teixeira, coordinator of the Bioenergy Research Group at the University of Sao Paulo, told SciDev.Net that many countries are interested in making the transition to cleaner and renewable energy, but they often face difficulties in implementing bioenergy policies. For instance, Mozambique has a law mandating the gasoline-ethanol blend, but is struggling to put it into effect. They don't know exactly how much the ethanol production would cost, which subsidies have to be placed, and so on, she says. Texeira was a supervisor of the Cogen for Africa project of the UN Environment Programme, whose goal was to scale up the use of energy cogeneration systems in Eastern and Southern African countries. She suggests that sometimes it is better for a country to make a start by using plant residues, instead of liquid biofuels. "In many countries in Africa and Latin America, access to electricity is insufficient. If they can use sugarcane residues to offer surplus electricity, they can improve electricity access, and people will begin to change their views regarding bioenergy." The study is the result of projects funded by FAPESP, one of the donors of SciDev.Net. This article was produced by SciDev.Nets Latin America and Caribbean desk. Makwanpur locals submit memo to Deuba, seek to keep Hetauda as provincial capital Peoples representatives, political parties, private sector and members of the civil society from Makwanpur district on Tuesday submitted a memorandum to Nepali Congress President Sher Bahadur Deuba demanding that Hetauda be kept as the provincial capital of Province 3. Buying travel insurance in Singapore is something a lot of us take for granted. Few of us bother to buy travel insurance ahead of time, and even fewer compare to find the best travel insurance in Singapore. In fact, the only time we think of buying a policy is when theres some kind of travel insurance promotion in Singapore. During such promotions, premium prices are significantly slashed. But its not a good idea to buy a policy just because its cheap. Here is everything you should look out for before buying travel insurance in Singapore. Contents What does travel insurance cover you for? What kind of travel insurance coverage should I look out for? Which is the cheapest travel insurance in Singapore? Which is the best travel insurance in Singapore? Be careful about pre-existing conditions! When should I buy travel insurance? Should you buy single trip or annual travel insurance? Why should I compare travel insurance before buying it? What does travel insurance cover you for? A good travel insurance policy covers you for a whole series of situations, from the small inconveniences to the most terrible. Trust me, you never want to be in a situation that youre not covered for. It could be something as minor as having your luggage delayed for one night, so you either have to spend a night in the same clothes you spent the entire flight on. Or it could be extremely serious, like getting stung badly by jellyfish in the middle of a remote island adventure and needing immediate medical attention. You should therefore have coverage for everything from lost and delayed luggage, flight delays and cancellations, all the way to medical treatment, medical evacuation and even repatriation in case of serious illness and death. Different situations have different levels of coverage, of course. Travel insurance also covers things like reimbursing deposits if your travel agent goes bust, or if your credit card is used fraudulently overseas. Some policies even pay you if you are kidnapped while overseas! And the best part is that a policy is relatively cheap and convenient to buy. Story continues What does Travel Insurance Cover? Back to top What kind of travel insurance coverage should I look out for? With so many different benefits in one policy, it may be tough to decide if a travel insurance policy is worth paying for. You should look out for how much you are reimbursed for the more common travel inconveniences. Flight delays and cancellations happen more often than you realise. They can be extremely inconvenient, especially if it ends up causing you to miss your connecting flight. Ensure that your policy covers you for a decent period of time. For example, if your flight is delayed, some policies pay you $100 for every 6 consecutive hours of delay. travel insurance and flight delays The only thing worse than delayed baggage is lost baggage. Make sure your policy covers you well for such situations. Some policies pay $200 for every 6 consecutive hours your baggage is delayed, and up to $800 for each item of lost baggage. You should also pay attention to the maximum amount youre covered for. The last and perhaps most important thing to look out for is medical coverage overseas. Since you can never predict what might happen on your trip, it literally pays to be safe than sorry. A good travel insurance policy covers you for at least $200,000 for overseas medical coverage. Good policies also provide unlimited coverage for emergency medical evacuation and repatriation. Back to top Which is the cheapest travel insurance in Singapore? Travel insurance in Singapore is very price-sensitive, and sometimes insurers can compete to shave off even $1 from their premiums to make their policies more enticing. As a result, its very hard to say which is the cheapest option in Singapore right now. The cost of Travel Insurance One way to get a cheaper policy is to see which insurers offer regional travel insurance. If you are only travelling to Thailand, for example, it is usually cheaper to get a policy that covers only nearby regions, such as the ASEAN countries, rather than get a policy that covers more countries in Asia. Ultimately, cheap isnt always best. It doesnt make sense to pay just $1 less in premiums if youre going to end up with significantly less coverage for lost luggage, for example. Back to top Which is the best travel insurance in Singapore? The best travel insurance is therefore what gives you the most value for money. Say you are only travelling to Thailand for a weekend shopping trip, for example. Youre probably travelling light and dont need more than $3,000 coverage for loss of baggage, even if you can pay just $3 more for significantly more coverage. Save that $3 and treat yourself to all the Thai milk tea you could drink! As we said earlier, you shouldnt be so giam and only buy the cheapest. The cheapest may have lots of terms and conditions when it comes to claims. For example, an insurer might not cover delayed luggage if it is only delayed returning to Singapore. However, if this is the only inconvenience you face in your entire trip, you might be understandably upset that its not claimable. The important thing is to read the terms and conditions of your preferred policy carefully and make sure youre not caught unawares. This is especially important when it comes to medical pre-existing conditions. Back to top Be careful about pre-existing conditions! One of the biggest travel insurance stories in 2017 was when a Singaporean man had a heart attack in Tokyo and fell into a coma. The medical costs alone cost $120,000 and bringing him back to Singapore via medical evacuation would cost another $120,000. Because the man had been diagnosed with heart failure in 2012, his insurer considered it a pre-existing condition and therefore no claim was possible. Currently, there is only one insurer that covers pre-existing conditions, NTUC Income with the Enhanced PreX plans. Do note that some Sompo plans (the ones you have to pay more for, lah) now also provide unlimited coverage for medical evacuation due to pre-existing conditions. So if you have a medical condition, you may want to choose an insurer that provides you with the necessary coverage. Pre-existing conditions Back to top When should I buy travel insurance? You should buy a policy as soon as youve planned your trip. You can even buy insurance online these days! This is because youll want to maximise the coverage you can get from the policy. For example, if you havent bought a policy yet and the travel agency youre booking with closes down a week before your travel, you wont be able to claim anything. The same goes for flight delays and flight cancellations. There is no penalty for buying travel insurance earlier, except maybe missing out on promotions that often happen around the travel season. But whats the point of saving a few dollars and risk losing hundreds due to cancelled flights and hotel deposits? When to buy Travel Insurance? Back to top Should you buy single trip or annual travel insurance? Depending on how often you travel and how far you travel, it might be worthwhile to consider buying annual travel insurance. Annual travel insurance has a flat premium and covers you for an entire year of travel. It usually costs about $200-$300 a year, so only buy it it you are a frequent traveller. That is, it only makes sense if you are going to travel overseas more than 7-8 times a year, at least. Types of Travel Insurance If you are a frequent traveller, you not only save money by buying an annual policy, but youll never have to spend time buying insurance every time you fly overseas. Of course, just like single trip travel insurance, you should still compare the various policies online before you commit. Back to top Why should I compare travel insurance before buying it? Comparing allows you to choose the best travel insurance policy for your needs. Youll be able to see at a glance what coverage policies have for various situations, such as medical costs, and compensation levels for lost, delayed and damaged baggage. But of course, comparing travel insurance in Singapore allows you to see that the cheapest travel insurance policy may not be the best. This is because the cheaper policies usually have significantly less coverage, naturally. While that may be a good thing for some travellers theres no need to get a $1,000 coverage for lost luggage if youre only bringing the bare minimum to a staycation in Bangkok, for example. Use MoneySmarts travel insurance comparison tool to find a suitable travel insurance policy. Travel Insurance -- What you must know Back to top Are you headed overseas? Compare the best policies for single trip travel insurance and annual travel insurance. Related articles Best Travel Insurance Singapore 2019 Heres How to Compare Travel Insurance Senior Travel Insurance (2018) 7 Best Plans in Singapore for Elderly Travellers 10 Best Travel Credit Cards for Overseas Spending (2018) The post What To Look Out For When Buying Travel Insurance in Singapore (2019) appeared first on the MoneySmart blog. MoneySmart.sg helps you maximize your money. Like us on Facebook to keep up to date with our latest news and articles. Compare and shop for the best deals on Loans, Insurance and Credit Cards on our site now! More From MoneySmart REPATRIATED: One hundred ninety overseas Filipino workers (OFWs) arrived home today from Kuwait. (Photo Courtesy: Department of Foreign Affairs) MANILA, Philippines Onboard Qatar Airways QR934, a total of 190 overseas Filipino workers (OFWs) arrived home today from Kuwait. Among them were 18 minors. The repatriated OFWs were among the undocumented migrant workers who availed the amnesty program being offered by the Kuwaiti government. As of today, April 17, a total of 4,365 OFWs were able to return home from Kuwait, according to the figures provided by the Department of Foreign Affairs. UNTV News & Rescue The post 190 repatriated OFWs arrive home from Kuwait appeared first on UNTV News. (Getty Images file photo) UPDATE: There was one claim by next-of-kin for the human remains since 12 January 2018, the Land Transport Authority said. About 3,400 unclaimed human remains exhumed from the Bukit Brown and Seh Ong cemeteries will be scattered at sea next Thursday (26 April). There were no claims by next-of-kin since 12 January 2018, said a Land Transport Authority spokesperson (LTA) on Sunday in response to queries by Yahoo News Singapore. A brief religious ceremony to offer prayers before scattering the ashes at sea will be arranged by the LTA. In a series of final notices published on 12 January in The Straits Times and Lianhe Zaobao, the LTA had called for descendants or next-of-kin to claim the remains by last Thursday (12 April). These remains were not claimed by descendants or next-of-kin at the time of exhumation and during the storage period of three years, according to the notices. (A notice by the LTA published in Lianhe Zaobao on 12 January, 2018. Source: Raymond Goh/Facebook) About 4,700 graves were exhumed from both cemeteries between January and December 2014 to make way for the construction of Lornie Highway. The construction of the highway, which was announced in September 2011, was delayed twice due to various reasons, including financial difficulties faced by its main contractor and a public exhumation exercise that completed a year later than projected. First slated to be completed by 2016, and then end-2017, the development of the dual four-lane road also faced strong objections from heritage groups and members of the public. Set to connect MacRitchie Viaduct to Adam Flyover, it affected parts of the Bukit Brown and Seh Ong cemeteries, which had been closed off to burial since the early 1970s and were areas deemed to have rich heritage value. Lornie Highway will now be progressively opened from the third quarter of this year, starting with the southbound highway towards Adam Flyover, said the LTA in a press release issued in November last year. The northbound highway towards MacRitchie Viaduct will open in the first quarter of 2019. Related stories Unclaimed cremated remains from Bukit Brown, Seh Ong to be scattered at sea in April Bukit Brown: Once forgotten, a historic cemetery awakens in a steady resurgence Alberta lawmakers voted Monday to give the Canadian province discretionary powers to limit shipments of oil and gas to neighboring British Columbia in a row over a pipeline expansion. The measure passed first reading in the legislature. Once enacted, it would require companies to obtain Alberta permits in order to export oil and gasoline to British Columbia -- which already pays the highest fuel prices on the continent. The two westernmost provinces have been at loggerheads for weeks over the proposed tripling of the Trans Mountain pipeline's capacity to move 890,000 barrels of oil per day from landlocked Alberta's oil sands to the Pacific coast, for shipping to new overseas markets. On Sunday, Prime Minister Justin Trudeau interrupted a trip to Britain, France and Peru to try to mediate the spat that has already seen Alberta boycotting British Columbian wine. Trudeau's Liberal government approved in 2016 the Can$7.4 billion (US$5.9 billion) expansion project, which he said is "in the national interest." Kinder Morgan recently suspended most work on the pipeline amid the intense political uncertainty, saying it would drop the project if the parties fail to resolve their differences by May 31. Global stock markets rose Tuesday on the back of optimism on the world economic outlook sparked by upbeat data from China, with investors happy to put geopolitical worries on the backburner for now. The British pound zoomed to its highest dollar level since the 2016 Brexit referendum on strengthening UK interest rate hike hopes and solid data. "With geopolitical concerns appearing to ease in recent days, risk appetite is gradually returning to financial markets," said Craig Erlam at OANDA. He said investors sentiment remained fragile, but in the absence of escalation in Syria after weekend US, British and French air strikes, markets seemed poised to continue clawing back recent losses. "The concerns about geopolitical tensions in relation to Syria and Russian sanctions have faded a little," agreed CMC Markets analyst David Madden. - Watch Netflix - "The broadly positive economic data out of China overnight left traders slightly more hopeful about the state of the global economy," he said. The IMF on Tuesday said that the global economy is expected to grow at a solid pace through next year, boosted by faster expansion in the United States and Europe, but that risks would build after that. Wall Street showed solid gains approaching midday in New York following a round of strong earnings from Netflix, Goldman Sachs and others. Netflix shares were up around eight percent after the company said it added 7.4 million new subscribers in the past quarter and ramped up profits with its strongest-ever revenue growth since launching its streaming service. "Strong earnings have finally stepped out into the limelight, allowing geopolitical and trade risks to fade into the background," said Jasper Lawler, head of research at London Capital Group. Asian markets finished mixed, giving up early gains. - In for a pound - The British pound rallied to its highest dollar level since just after Britain's shock EU exit referendum in June 2016, buoyed by expectations of Bank of England (BoE) interest rate hikes. Sterling reached $1.4377 before easing back in the late European afternoon. "Sterling says 'What Brexit?'," commented LCG's Lawler. Economists expect the BoE to raise its key interest rate next month from the current level of 0.50 percent. - Key figures around 1540 GMT - New York - Dow: UP 1.1 percent at 24,839.64 points London - FTSE 100: UP 0.4 percent at 7,226.05 (close) Frankfurt - DAX 30: UP 1.6 percent at 12,585.57 (close) Paris - CAC 40: UP 0.8 percent at 5,353.54 (close) EURO STOXX 50: UP 1.1 percent at 3,477.91 Tokyo - Nikkei 225: UP 0.1 percent at 21,847.59 (close) Hong Kong - Hang Seng: DOWN 0.8 percent at 30,062.75 (close) Shanghai - Composite: DOWN 1.4 percent at 3,066.80 (close) Euro/dollar: DOWN at $1.2344 from $1.2380 at 2100 GMT Dollar/yen: UP at 107.13 yen from 107.12 Pound/dollar: DOWN at $1.4314 from $1.4339 Oil - Brent North Sea: UP 14 cents at $71.56 per barrel Oil - West Texas Intermediate: UP 3 cents at $66.25 burs-jh/bmm An external view of the entrance to the Singapore State Court in Singapore on March 5, 2015 (AFP Photo/Mohd Fyrol) Two Burmese men who attempted to abduct and interrogate the alleged lover of their friends wife in a case that the prosecution called abhorrent and horrifying were each jailed and fined on Tuesday (17 April). Zaw Min Hlaing, a 40-year-old Singapore Permanent Resident, and Phyo Min Naing, 34, were jailed four years and three and a half months and four years and three months, respectively, for their roles in the case. Zaw was also fined $4,000 and disqualified from driving all classes of vehicles for a year for breaches of the Road Traffic Act and the Motor Vehicles Act. Phyo was fined $6,000. The two pleaded guilty on Monday (16 April) after retracting an earlier plea that they made in November last year midway through their trial. Phyo and Zaw were part of a group of four Myanmar nationals, who tried to kidnap Aye Maung Maung Thet, 29, in June 2015. The case had made headlines when police discovered the gruesome torture tools that the quartet planned to use on Aye, including a meat mincer, chainsaw, chopper and cable ties. Myanmar national Win Kyaw Kyaw Aung, also known as Aung Aung and the mastermind of the plan, is still on the run as the 33-year-old left Singapore after the attempted abduction went awry. The fourth member of the group, Yae Wynnt Oaung, 33, was given a discharge not amounting to an acquittal in December 2015. The facts of the case Aung concocted a plan to have Aye, whom he believed to be his wifes lover, abducted and interrogated about his alleged affair with Aungs wife. Aung also planned to have Aye killed and his body disposed of at the chalet. Aung recruited Zaw and Phyo to help him in the plan to kidnap Aye, which included renting a van and a bungalow at Aloha Changi chalet. In May 2015, at the behest of Aung, Zaw rented a unit near Ayes residence to monitor Aye. On 21 June 2015, at around 10am, Phyo and Zaw went to a multi-storey carpark along Pasir Ris Street 71 and parked their van beside Ayes car. They then lay in wait for Aye. When Aye appeared in the evening, Phyo grabbed Aye from behind and pushed him towards the van, causing Ayes spectacles and handphone to fall. Story continues Aye struggled and called for help, prompting Zaw to also grab Aye from behind. During the struggle, Phyo used a stun device on Aye but failed to subdue him. The struggle continued for a few minutes until Aye spotted some passers-by and shouted for help. The pair released Aye and drove off in the van. Aye then ran towards the passersby before calling the police for help. Aung was later informed that the abduction failed. After meeting with the duo and giving them instructions, Aung fled to Yangon while the two remained behind. The police managed to track the van based on the information provided by Aye. When Zaw turned up at the rental company to return the van, he was placed under arrest. He led police to the chalet where Phyo and Yae were arrested. The police also seized various items from the chalet, including luggage bags and the aforementioned torture tools. A mistaken sense of loyalty In arguing for a jail term of five years, three months for Zaw and five years, six months for Phyo, the prosecution said, The entirety of the grand scheme as envisioned by Aung, and which the accused persons had set out to make a reality, is absolutely abhorrent and horrifying. One cannot even begin to imagine the fate that the victim might have suffered had the stun gun not failed the accused persons at the outset, and should the accused persons have been successful in their abduction attempt, added Deputy Public Prosecutor John Lu. Acting for Zaw, lawyer R S Bajwa said, It was a mistaken sense of loyalty and commitment to a friend that led his client to eventually participate in the attempted abduction. He said Zaw was in two minds at the time of the attempted abduction. He was initially hesitant to carry out the abduction but the events happened so quickly that he found himself involved in the attempt after Phyo had grabbed Aye from behind, added Bajwa. Lawyer S Radakrishnan, who represented Phyo, said that his client had been informed by Aung that all the latter wanted to do was confine Aye while Aung searched Ayes house for evidence of the affair. Phyo, thinking that this was a relatively simple task, and knowing his role to be akin to a muscle man, agreed to help Aung, said the lawyer. Phyo had never believed that Aye was to be abducted and wrongfully confined in a chalet where he would be killed and his body disposed of. The lawyer pointed out that the kidnap attempt was amateurish and shoddy, arguing that it was not greatly premeditated. Relatives of the two men were present in court on Tuesday and spoke to the pair before they were led away. Zaws father and sister, and Phyos mother, would fly to Singapore from Myanmar every time the pair made an appearance in court. Speaking to Yahoo News Singapore, Zaws father Zaw Sein Hlaing said that this was the tenth time he had flown in to see his son. The 68-year-old said in Mandarin that it was hard for him to comprehend the court proceedings as they were conducted in English. Dressed in a white shirt and a longyi, a traditional Burmese dress, the retiree said he believed the sentence will be fair. For kidnapping, Phyo and Zaw could have been jailed up to 10 years with fined or caning. Two more people have been kidnapped on the Colombia-Ecuador border by the same group responsible for the recent abductions and killing of two journalists and their driver, Ecuador said Tuesday. The latest kidnappings were claimed in a video sent by the same dissident FARC rebels who claimed responsibility for the killing of the Ecuadoran news team, Interior Minister Cesar Navas said. "Through the channel of communication we have with the so-called Guacho we have received information yesterday evening about a new kidnapping of two citizens," Ecuador's Interior Minister Cesar Navas said. A FARC splinter group named the Oliver Sinisterra Front -- led by Patricio Arizala, alias Guacho -- is responsible for a number of recent deadly attacks on security forces in the border area, last week claiming the kidnapping and killing of the journalists and their driver in a crime that shocked Ecuador. Navas said a video sent by the group via WhatsApp shows a handcuffed middle-aged couple flanked by armed men in military fatigues, making a plea for help to President Lenin Moreno not to allow them to suffer the same fate as the journalists. The names of the man and woman and their nationalities are unknown. There have been no reports of anyone missing in the border area. "He's trying to play again with Ecuador. He wants us to comply with his demands," Navas said. Reporter Javier Ortega, 32, photographer Paul Rivas, 45, and their driver Efrain Segarra, 60, all worked for the influential El Comercio newspaper and were following a story on violence in the border area when they were kidnapped on March 26. On Monday the dissident rebel group said it had suspended return of the bodies of the dead men because of the ongoing military operation. Both Ecuador and Colombia sent troops into the jungle to hunt down the killers. BERLIN (Reuters) - Germany's role in the Syrian peace process must be to secure the channels of communication with Russia that are necessary to achieve a political solution to the country's seven-year-old civil war, Foreign Minister Heiko Maas said on Tuesday. Maas's remarks came as Western foreign ministers braced for another round of diplomacy on the conflict at a Toronto summit this weekend, from which Russia, the strongest international backer of Syrian President Bashir al-Assad, will be absent. Germany backed missile strikes by the United States, Britain and France against Syrian targets over the suspected use of chemical weapons by Assad's forces, but also wants to avoid further isolating Russia, despite a sharp cooling in relations. "The aim we are pursuing in the foreign ministry is to keep Germany an appreciable part of the peace initiative," Maas told a joint news conference with visiting Canadian Foreign Minister Chrystia Freeland. "The aim ... is that in our role we can be the ones who can prop open the window for dialogue with Russia," he added. Since taking office earlier this year, Maas, a Social Democrat, has spearheaded a harsher line towards Moscow, one which has divided his party, which sees itself as the heir to Germany's pioneering "Ostpolitik" policy of opening up to the Soviet Union in the 1970s. "We have to use this moment to get the political process going again," he added. "We also need Russia for this dialogue." (Reporting by Sabine Siebold, writing by Thomas Escritt; Editing by Paul Carrel and Gareth Jones) LISBON (Reuters) - Volkswagen is to set up a software development center in Lisbon joining a growing list of companies attracted to the information technology scene in the country, which only recently emerged from its economic crisis and bailout. The center will employ 300 software engineers, web developers and other specialists in the medium term and will develop cloud-based solutions for corporate processes and online services for its vehicles, especially trucks, the German car manufacturer said in a statement on Tuesday. It did not say how much it planned to invest. Volkswagen, which is already one of the largest foreign investors in Portugal, has recently expanded its Autoeuropa plant southeast of Lisbon to make its new compact T-ROC sport utility vehicle. Lisbon's Mayor Fernando Medina said VW's latest move was recognition of Lisbon's drive to build a vibrant tech and creative center, where people could also have access to a high quality lifestyle. In January, Alphabet Inc's Google said it would open a new support center for Europe, Middle East and Africa in Oeiras on the outskirts of Lisbon, which would create 500 tech jobs. Various technology companies already have their local offices in Oeiras. Last year, Lisbon hosted for the second year in a row the annual Web Summit - one of the world's largest technology conferences - which has already helped attract tech investment in Portuguese start-ups, as well as new jobs at larger companies. (Reporting By Andrei Khalip, editing by Axel Bugge and Jane Merriman) Guatemala's president on Monday hailed as a victory for democracy a referendum vote in favor of sending a border dispute with Belize to the International Court of Justice. The disagreement, whose roots go back two centuries, has seen tensions spike from time to time. Two years ago Guatemala mobilized 3,000 troops along the densely forested and unmarked border zone after an incident in which a Guatemalan teen was fatally shot. A Belize border patrol had opened fire under being shot at, but an investigation by the Organization of American States ended up finding it not responsible for the teen's death. The referendum was agreed under a 2008 accord to send the dispute to The Hague-based ICJ, if the populations of Guatemala and Belize approved. Belize has not yet set a date for its referendum, although officials say it could take place next year. Guatemalans voted Sunday to send the case to the court, but turnout was a paltry 26 percent. The vote in favor was 96 percent. Guatemalan President Jimmy Morales on Monday called the vote "a success because democracy was strengthened and the national identity was reaffirmed". The ambassador from Belize, Alexis Rosado, welcomed the vote as living up to a commitment. "Later it will be our turn," he said. Analysts here say it could a decade to resolve the dispute in The Hague. Inflated CVs, degrees that may or may not be real... a scandal over how Madrid's leader obtained a law diploma has swept up other politicians in what has become Spain's "mastergate". For close to a month, Cristina Cifuentes, Madrid's conservative regional president, has been caught in a media storm over accusations she received the 2011-2012 masters degree from King Juan Carlos University (URJC) without taking all the required exams or attending lectures. The opposition wants her to resign and prosecutors are investigating after the university rector himself admitted a document attesting she had passed was a "re-construction" of the original, with two professors' signatures faked. Cifuentes announced Tuesday she had given up "using the degree" but ruled out resigning, saying she had not done anything illegal. - From Harvard to Aravaca - As it turns out, Cifuentes is far from the only one with a dubious degree. The scandal has helped shine the spotlight on a host of other politicians who either faked part of their CVs or allegedly received special treatment to pass their degree. Pablo Casado, like Cifuentes a member of Prime Minister Mariano Rajoy's Popular Party (PP) for which he acts as spokesman, admitted that in 2008 and 2009, he also passed a masters degree at King Juan Carlos University in special circumstances. At the time a regional lawmaker in Madrid, the university automatically validated 18 subjects out of 22, arguing he already had a law degree. He never had to go to class either. "I did exactly what I was asked to do," he said as justification. His tutor Enrique Alvarez Conde -- the same as Cifuentes -- has since been suspended by the university. Casado was also found to have written on his CV that he had a post-graduate degree from Harvard University. That turned out to be a four-day course linked to the Ivy League university in Aravaca, a Madrid district. Such was the derision that Netflix Spain posted on Twitter a picture of its popular series Stranger Things, replacing the name of its fictional town Hawkins, where odd going-ons happen, with Aravaca. Other revelations include the Socialist party's leader in Madrid, Jose Manuel Franco, who said for years that he had a degree in mathematics which he actually never finished. Centre-right party Ciudadanos, a fervent rival of Rajoy's PP, has not been spared either. Its lawmaker Toni Canto admitted that he wrote he was an "educator" on his CV, not because he had any official training but because he taught theatre classes "for many years". As for far-left Podemos, its organisational secretary in the northwestern region of Galicia and regional lawmaker, Juan Jose Merlo, resigned on Friday after admitting he boosted his CV by pretending he was an engineer. In the northern Basque country, Julen Arzuaga, a regional lawmaker for separatist coalition EH Bildu, went from holding a "masters specialised in human rights" in his official CV to being a more general "university human rights specialist in a global world." - 'Titlitis' - All, it would appear, have been been gripped by "titlitis", or an addiction to university diplomas in Spain. "We have a fundamental problem, which is this idea of 'titlitis', or the idea that it's good for our politicians to have a university degree," politics expert Pablo Simon recently told the El Pais daily. "In many cases we've seen that this has been achieved with huge lack of transparency." This, he said, gave the impression politicians are "buying university degrees just like noble ranks were bought in the 19th century". In a country with an unemployment rate of 16.5 percent where jobs are hard to come by even for those with degrees, the "mastergate" scandal has caused bitterness. On Tuesday, news that Cifuentes had given up a degree she may never have passed was greeted with derision, with the hashtag #YoRenuncio (#IGiveUp in Spanish) a worldwide trend on Twitter. "If Cristina Cifuentes can give up a masters which the URJC cannot ascertain she did, I give up on the Nobel Peace Prize," joked @_23Sergio. (Photo: Tan Wu Meng /Facebook) Jurong GRC MP Tan Wu Meng was attacked by a man during his Meet-the-People session (MPS) in Clementi on Monday night (16 Apr), according to media reports. Channel NewsAsia reported that at about 10pm, a man rushed in during the session and started hitting the Peoples Action Party MP with his fists. It was very sudden. I was actually interviewing another resident, the next thing I knew someone was hitting me and I fell to the floor, Dr Tan, 43, told CNA. Volunteers and residents at the session pulled the man off Dr Tan and restrained him until the police and the Singapore Civil Defence Force arrived. Dr Tan reportedly suffered minor injuries, including bruises on an arm and abrasions on his neck. He was taken to a hospitals Accident and Emergency department for assessment before returning to the session to continue writing appeal letters. The attacker, whom Dr Tan described as being in his 30s and not a regular visitor, was later arrested. This gentleman had only come to the MPS once before, about a year ago, and we didnt get a chance to interview him this time before he started hitting me, but we were able to piece together what his current problem is, Dr Tan told The Straits Times, adding that he couldnt share what the mans issue is. Yahoo News Singapore has reached out to the police for comment. More Singapore stories: 3,400 remains at Bukit Brown, Seh Ong unclaimed as of final deadline: LTA UK withdraws deportation case against Singaporean doctor in Manchester EU foreign ministers on Monday discussed how they could persuade the US not to pull out of the Iran nuclear deal, but stopped short of imposing new sanctions on Tehran. Britain, France and Germany used a meeting of the EU's 28 foreign ministers to try to build support for expanding sanctions against Iran to punish it for its role in the conflict in Syria. They hope that by doing so they will persuade US President Donald Trump not to follow through on his threat to abandon the landmark 2015 deal to curb Iran's nuclear ambitions. Danish Foreign Minister Anders Samuelson said there was "a very broad majority" in favour of expanding sanctions, as the clock ticks down to a May 12 deadline imposed by Trump to "fix" the agreement. Simon Coveney, the Irish foreign minister, said there was a need to "send a strong signal to Iran that we're concerned in relation to some of their activity particularly in Syria". "But also to send a message to Washington that we share their concerns in some of those areas," Coveney said after the talks in Luxembourg. Targets for new sanctions could include both Iranians and also non-Iranian militias in Syria, an EU diplomat said. But any decision on sanctions would have to have unanimous support from all 28 EU states and so far several, including Italy and Sweden, are not convinced. "There is no consensus at the moment on the fact that these measures would be useful in this moment or appropriate in this moment," EU diplomatic chief Federica Mogherini told reporters. "I don't exclude that this will happen in the future but it's not the case today." German Foreign Minister Heiko Maas said the question of expanding sanctions would "remain on the agenda" in the coming weeks. Another EU diplomat said the aim of Monday's talks was to build political support for new sanctions and the effort would continue in the coming weeks. The EU is desperate to preserve the Iran nuclear deal, seeing it as the best way to stop Tehran getting the bomb. French President Emmanuel Macron and Germany's Chancellor Angela Merkel will both visit Washington on separate official visits before May 12, in part to lobby Trump on the issue. Trump has long derided the deal as a capitulation to Tehran and has declared it no longer is in US interests to maintain the sanctions relief his predecessor Barack Obama granted Iran in return for controls on its nuclear programme. Paris Saint-Germain will play two matches during a pre-season tour to Singapore in July, the newly-crowned French champions announced on Tuesday. PSG will play Arsenal on July 28 and Atletico Madrid on July 30 at the National Stadium in Singapore as part of the International Champions Cup, a pre-season competition played at numerous venues worldwide and involving many of Europe's biggest clubs. It will be their first visit to Asia since 2014, with Paris having spent recent pre-seasons in the United States. An English-language statement on the club's website read: "Paris Saint-Germain's summer tour fulfils three objectives: the Parisians will prepare for the coming season by playing against prominent European teams, they will meet their Asian fans, and their partners will benefit from the club's blossoming popularity in the region." After the tour to Singapore, PSG will head on to China, where they will play in the Champions Trophy -- the traditional season-opener that is the French version of a Super Cup -- on Saturday, August 4 in Shenzhen. PSG secured a fifth French Ligue 1 title in six seasons by hammering last year's champions Monaco 7-1 on Sunday night. On a field deep in Greek farm country north of Athens, Suzan from Syria is smiling over an onion patch. Far from minding the arduous labour, the knowledgeable herb picker is happy to be outdoors, surrounded by the springtime bloom, after months spent cooped up in refugee camps and reception centres. A Kurd from embattled Afrin, she has joined an initiative that addresses two pressing concerns at once -- what to do with thousands of idle refugees stuck in Greece, and how to use abandoned farmland around the country. Seventy kilometres (45 miles) north of Athens, in the farm village of Kaparelli, formerly sceptical locals and refugees are now cooperating for mutual benefit. "The point is to not rely on others' charity, help new arrivals overcome forced inaction, and show to those who want to stay that there is a way out," says 49-year-old Salman Dakdouk, one of the project organisers. A Syrian long-term resident of Greece who goes by the nickname of "Kastro", he has brought know-how from years of work on the island of Crete, one of Greece's main centres of farm produce. The Kaparelli project began a year ago with the assistance of locals who helped arrange land rental or allowed the use of their disused fields to revive dormant vines and olive groves. The refugees receive a salary for their work, and local landowners hit hard by the Greek economic crisis also benefit. "We are currently helping out seven families (at the village)," says Kastro. Among edible plants grown locally are parsley, rocket, onions and potatoes -- fully organic according to Kastro. The 16-hectare (40-acre) holding also boasts sheep and chickens, and is now waiting for cows to arrive. Apart from being consumed locally, the produce is also bottled and sold at the Sunday street market of Exarchia, the anarchist-friendly Athens district that welcomes refugees. It also stocks the larder of Roots, Farm to Table, a collective restaurant where Suzan works alongside four other refugee families. - Reaching a European market - Combined with Greece's mild climate and abundant sunshine, the know-how of Middle Eastern natives could open a vital outlet for recession-hit Greek farmers in the populous Muslim communities of northern Europe who yearn for flavours reminiscent of their home countries. Some 50,000 people are stranded in Greece from the major refugee wave that hit Europe in 2015-16, most of them Syrians, Iraqis and Afghans. The workforce for the Kaparelli project is drawn from around 1,000 refugees who live in self-run reception centres in Athens. Among them is Fahed Abo Aguz, originally from Aleppo, who lives near Stuttgart, Germany, but shuttles back and forth after developing a strong interest in the project. Fahed says he met Kastro after his wife and five children came through Athens en route to joining him in Germany. "The climate here is good and working hands easy to find," says the 30-year-old, whose family also tilled the earth back in Syria. Known locally as "the German", Fahed now wants to export produce grown at Kaparelli to oriental groceries in northern Europe. Fahed sees an opening particularly for bulgur, a cereal made of various wheat species that is popular in Middle Eastern cuisine. "At the moment everything comes from Turkey. It's a niche market. But it's difficult for refugees to find financial backers," he notes. Rival Cypriot leaders failed to revive their divided island's stalled peace process as they met under UN auspices for the first time in nine months on Monday. Greek Cypriot leader Nicos Anastasiades told reporters the "two sides remain in their positions" after he met with his Turkish Cypriot counterpart Mustafa Akinci. The two leaders had a frank and open exchange of views" in the one-on-one meeting in the UN-controlled buffer zone in Nicosia, the UN said in a statement. Anastasiades said the leaders did not exclude the possibility of the UN sending an envoy to Cyprus to examine a possible resumption of talks. A group of Greek and Turkish Cypriots who had gathered outside the venue voiced hope that Anastasiades and Akinci would make headway. Cyprus has been divided since 1974, when Turkish troops invaded and occupied its northern third in response to a coup sponsored by the military junta then ruling Greece. The last talks aimed at reunifying the island as a bi-zonal, bi-communal federation collapsed in Switzerland last July. Tensions in the region heightened after Nicosia stepped up its search for natural gas reserves, a move opposed by Turkey. Anastasiades has said reunification talks cannot resume while Turkey is trying to block foreign companies from drilling for oil and gas off of Cyprus, accusing Ankara of "gunboat diplomacy". Last month the EU -- of which Cyprus is a member state while Turkey is not -- condemned Turkeys actions in the eastern Mediterranean. Slovakia's controversial police chief announced his resignation Tuesday, as the murder of an investigative journalist -- which already toppled the government last month -- continues to make political waves in the small EU country. Slovakia has been plunged into political crisis since journalist Jan Kuciak and his fiancee were found shot dead in February. Kuciak had been probing alleged ties between top politicians and the Italian mafia. Tens of thousands of protestors have repeatedly taken to the streets in the wake of the murder, forcing a successive string of officials and politicians to step down. Interior minister Robert Kalinak resigned in March, and the pressure from the protests eventually forced Prime Minister Robert Fico and his entire cabinet to quit last month as well. Kalinak's successor as interior minister Tomas Drucker resigned on Monday. And police chief Tibor Gaspar -- who had been refusing to quit for several weeks -- also finally threw in the towel on Tuesday. He is to step down at the end of May. Critics had argued that Gaspar's alleged political connections prevented a fair investigation into Kuciak's murder. Announcing his decision in Bratislava, Gaspar told reporters that his "resignation would finally allow the police corps to function without being attacked." Even though the left-wing populist Fico has been replaced as premier by Peter Pellegrini, analysts believe that it is the former PM who continues to pull the strings, as he remains chairman of the governing Smer-SD party. Bratislava-based political analyst Grigorij Meseznikov suggested that Gaspar was only leaving at the end of next month because "Fico needs him in this position" for a while longer. "Gaspar must help maintain the selective justice in cases that could potentially harm Smer-SD party," the analyst told AFP. The murder and Kuciak's article, published afterwards, raised fresh concern about media freedom and corruption in Slovakia, an EU member state of 5.4 million people. Nepal elected member of UN Women executive board Nepal has been elected member of the executive board of the United Nations Entity for Gender Equality and Empowerment of Women (UN Women). Taiwan's president Tsai Ing-wen reassured residents that the island was secure Tuesday, a day before China is set to hold live-fire drills in the narrow strait that separates the two. Tsai spoke to reporters as she left for Swaziland, one of Taiwan's few remaining international allies that has not been wooed away by an ascendant Beijing as cross-strait relations deteriorate. Chinese officials have suggested Wednesday's military exercise is a warning to pro-independence advocates in Taiwan as Beijing steps up its rhetoric against any challenges to its sovereignty. China sees self-ruling Taiwan as part of its territory to be brought back into the fold and has not ruled out reunification by force. Tsai said Monday she had told national security officials to closely monitor the "surrounding situation". "Please rest assured that we have the confidence and determination to safeguard the country's security," she said at Taoyuan International Airport. Tsai added that maintaining a peaceful "status quo" across the strait was her government's mission. Although a fully fledged democracy, Taiwan has never formally announced independence from the mainland and Beijing has warned of military action if it ever did. Tsai's Democratic Progressive Party (DPP) is traditionally pro-independence and her newly appointed premier William Lai is a long-standing independence advocate. When asked if the upcoming military exercise was directed at Lai, China's Taiwan Affairs Office director Liu Jieyi said on Monday it was "an action to safeguard the sovereignty and territorial integrity of our motherland". Beijing has stepped up military patrols around the island and used diplomatic pressure to isolate Taiwan internationally since Tsai took office in May 2016, as she refuses to accept both sides are part of "one China". China has chipped away at Taiwan's dwindling number of allies, with Swaziland one of the few not to have been convinced to give up official recognition of the island as a country. On her four-day trip to Africa, Tsai will take part in celebrations marking the 50th anniversary of Swaziland's independence and the establishment of diplomatic ties with Taiwan. Observers say Wednesday's planned drills also serve as a signal to Washington, which sent aircraft carrier USS Theodore Roosevelt through the disputed South China Sea last week. The region has become a potential flashpoint, with the United States saying China's aggressive activities in the area pose a threat to freedom of navigation. Washington is also Taiwan's most powerful -- thought unofficial -- ally and its biggest arms supplier. Relations have warmed between Washington and Taipei in recent months, including the passage of a bill last month that promotes visits by officials at all levels. Experts do not expect the deferment of the KL-Singapore High Speed Rail (HSR) project to significantly affect property prices in Jurong... The Kuala Lumpur-Singapore High Speed Rail is slated to be completed by 2026. The Land Transport Authority (LTA) has revealed that construction works for Singapores end of the High Speed Rail (HSR) project linking the city-state and Malaysia is expected to start in 2019, reported the Straits Times. In fact, LTA already called a tender for the design and construction of twin bored tunnels and associated facilities on 6 April, while the tender for design and construction of cut and cover tunnels that leads to the Jurong East terminus was called on 11 April. More: Country Club To Make Way For High Speed Rail Terminus The tunnels will be built using tunnel-boring machines, which are preferred when doing longer stretches of underground excavation as they cause less disturbance to surface structures, buildings and utilities. Cut and cover tunnels, on the other hand, are built using retaining structures, before excavating in stages. The method is ideal for shorter distances and open areas where there are fewer surface structures, buildings and utilities. It is also more suited for bigger underground structures, like the tunnel leading to the Jurong East terminus. LTA is set to call the remaining civil tenders in the coming months. We remain on track to commence the Kuala Lumpur-Singapore express service by 2026, said its spokesperson. For the latest property news, trends, resources and expert opinions, visit our Property News page. Home buyers looking for Singapore Properties may like to visit our Listings, Project Reviews and Guides. Romesh Navaratnarajah, Senior Editor at PropertyGuru, edited this story. To contact him about this or other stories, email romesh@propertyguru.com.sg The Broadway-Lafayette subway station put up a guide dubbed "Bowie's Neighborhood Map" that shows sites associated with the singer Subway cards featuring the late David Bowie available at New York City's Broadway-Lafayette station New York City have paid homage to the late actor and musician, David Bowie, by introducing a subway card featuring the artist, according to NME.com. The cards are available to purchase at the city's Broadway-Lafayette station, which has apparently been become somewhat of a tribute to Bowie since his death in 2016. Advertisements for the much anticipated 'David Bowie Is' exhibition, currently being shown at the Brooklyn Museum, are plastered upon the walls, with a giant mural also featuring outside. The legendary actor and musician lived in SoHo, only a few blocks from Broadway-Lafayette station, for a period of time. The Associated Press MADRID, SPAIN.- Spanish and German public prosecutors are planning to hold a discreet meeting in the next few hours in The Hague with the aim of exchanging information about the ousted Catalan premier Carles Puigdemont. They will be discussing whether it is possible to incorporate new evidence in order for Spains European arrest warrant against the politician for the offenses of rebellion and sedition to prosper. Puigdemont fled from Spain late last year, after a unilateral declaration of independence was passed in the Catalan parliament. He initially took refuge in Belgium, but last month he was arrested in Germany after entering the country from Denmark. Tambien te puede interesar: Full Metal Jacket actor R. Lee Ermey dies at 74 He was held in custody until a regional court in Schleswig-Holstein ruled that there was insufficient evidence to extradite Puigdemont for the offense of rebellion, despite the fact that German prosecutors supported this move. He has been released on bail while the evidence against him for the lesser charge of misuse of public funds is examined. According to legal sources, the meeting today will take place at the headquarters of Eurojust, the branch of the European Union that is in charge of strengthening juridical cooperation between member states. At the meeting will be Spanish prosecutors involved in the Supreme Court case against Puigdemont, as well as counterparts from the Schleswig-Holstein region of Germany, where a regional court that is hierarchically on a lower rung that the Spanish Supreme Court has blocked the possibility of trying the former premier for rebellion. At the meeting will be official representatives who are dealing with the investigative stage of the Supreme Court case against Puigdemont The aim of the meeting is to try to demonstrate to the German prosecutors that there is indeed sufficient evidence to justify Puigdemonts extradition on rebellion and sedition charges. While the German prosecutors cannot file an appeal to overturn the decision made by the regional judge, there are two paths being explored. One is for the German prosecutors to call on the SchleswigHolstein court to reconsider its decision on the basis of new evidence supplied by Spain. And the other is for the court, should it have doubts about what to do, to seek advice from the European Union Court of Justice. Spanish prosecutors will show the Germans proof and arguments relating to charges of rebellion and misuse of funds the Interior Ministry has documented at least 300 violent acts during the disturbances connected to the pro-independence drive in Catalonia. It was fun while it lasted. The wheels came off San Franciscos short-distance transportation experiment on Monday, when City Attorney Dennis Herrera sent a cease and desist letter to three companies that had flooded the citys streets with electric scooter rentals. The scooters, which were popular in spite of some maintenance issues, represent a wave of venture capital money pouring into short-distance transportation tools. One of the companies, Bird, has become a familiar presence on the streets and sidewalks near its headquarters in Santa Monica, California. Its of a piece with the dockless and electric bicycle boom, epitomized by Ubers high-value acquisition of e-bike start-up Jump last week. Advertisement But nowhere have scooters blanketed a city quite like San Francisco. Among the citys complaints: The scooter companies have violated state law (yes, apparently California has a state statute governing electric scooters) by allowing riders to scoot on sidewalks, without helmets, and with two people to a scooter. Helmet laws in particular tend to be the kiss of death for shared mobility programs, sending potential users back into taxi cabs. Advertisement Advertisement Advertisement Below are the photos the City Attorney released to bolster the case for a crackdown, noting, We cannot overstate the public safety hazard that operating motorized scooters pose on City sidewalks. Advertisement Advertisement Advertisement Advertisement Supervisor Aaron Peskinhimself no stranger to overstatement (he once compared housing construction in San Francisco to the destruction of Ben Tre)is working on a municipal law to regulate scooter usage. At least two San Franciscans, including Peskin, claim to have broken their toes tripping over scooters. Advertisement However, as many San Franciscans have pointed out, the presence of scooters is in many ways less of a nuisanceand objectively, less of a dangerthan the citys private automobiles. Joe Rivano Barros made the point in a series of tweets over the weekend: Advertisement Advertisement Advertisement San Franciscans may find the scooters a nuisance, but its mostly that they are an unfamiliar one, and for some residents, a reminder that the city is changing. Update, 5:50 p.m. After this article was published, a spokesperson for the City Attorney responded to a question: How many documented injuries or accidents had occurred involving electric scooters? Here is the response: Legal battles continue over the To Kill a Mockingbird Broadway play, as producer Scott Rudin filed a federal lawsuit against author Harper Lees estate on Monday. The producer is eager to get the Aaron Sorkin-penned adaptation to the public, despite protestations from Tonja B. Carter, executor of Lees estate. Carter filed a lawsuit against the production last month on the grounds that it offers an unfair interpretation of the novels patriarch, Atticus Finch. The play allegedly portrays Finch with a touch of moral ambiguity, rather than as the unwavering, principled hero from the novel. Advertisement Rudin filed the $10 million suit on the grounds that investors are not willing to invest millions of dollars when a cloud exists. Carters lawyer, Matthew H. Lembke, wrote the suit off as full of wild and baseless allegations that seem only meant to distract from the real issuewhether Rudinplay has violated its written contractual promise that it would not alter the characters in Harper Lees classic novel, To Kill a Mockingbird. Advertisement Advertisement Advertisement Rudin is really ready to go the extra mile in this battle, and has even threatened to take his own production to courtliterally. In a recent interview, he said he thought it could be prudent to have the play performed in court so that a jury could decide whether or not it honors the novels legacy. Rudin noted, A play and a book are two different things. A book is meant to be read; a play is meant to be performed. Given that much of the novels plot takes place inside a courthouse during a black mans rape trial, this could lead to some serious court-ception, starring Jeff Daniels as meta-lawyer Atticus Finch.* If this threatened courthouse production becomes a reality, we want the bootleg. Better Life Lab is a partnership of Slate and New America. Kayla Bradford was about to begin an occupational therapy aide certificate program when her car broke down in 2010. In Birmingham, Alabama, she would have had to rely on inefficient and inaccessible public transportation to get to school, so Bradford had to quit the program. Since then, she has had three children, experienced homelessness, and moved in with her aunt. She is 28 now and works full time as a certified nursing assistant providing care for elderly patients. Outside of her 3 p.m. to 11 p.m. shift, she works another part-time job two or three days each week, also as a CNA. Kayla Bradford is about to pick up where she left off in 2010. Advertisement Since 2010, Bradford has filed her taxes at no cost with SaveFirst, a nonprofit initiative that recruits college students and recent graduates to operate volunteer income tax assistance, or VITA, sites across the Southeast. With her tax refund this year, Bradford is headed back to the occupational therapy aide program, and she is finally moving her family into an apartment of their own. Her children are excited, and she has hope for what is to come. It feels good, to know that Ill actually be in my own home, she said, We can just relax. Her kids will have their own beds, their own rooms, and the simple stuff that normal people would be used toflicking on the light and turning on the TV. Theyll enjoy that. Advertisement Advertisement Advertisement Advertisement SaveFirst is one of several initiatives of the Birmingham-based nonprofit Impact America. The initiative launched in 2006 and operates VITA sites, including the one that Bradford visited, in Alabama, Florida, South Carolina, and Tennessee. In Alabama, the organization deploys a class of AmeriCorps members to coordinate 21 sites across the state, and we train hundreds of college-age and community volunteers to prepare tax returns. As an AmeriCorps member with Impact, I coordinated tax sites in Birmingham and Troy, Alabama, and also served at sites in Tuscaloosa, Montgomery, Anniston, and Dothan. The poverty-alleviation program that would later become AmeriCorps was originally founded in 1965 as a domestic version of the Peace Corps.* The current iteration of the program is a public-private partnership administered by the Corporation for National and Community Service, a federal agency. Organizations like Impact America apply for AmeriCorps grants to fund yearlong volunteer positions to address issues related to economic opportunity, public health, education, disaster services, and the environment. Advertisement VITA programs address an unmet community need, ensuring that low-income taxpayers access their full refund. SaveFirst takes the program a step further, attempting sustainable reform through an intentionally designed service-learning initiative. According to Stephen Black, founder of Impact America and director of the Center for Ethics and Social Responsibility at the University of Alabama, this is a primary goal of the initiative, not a secondary effect. In terms of creating a stronger sense of connection from this generation of college graduates to the majority of American families, I cant think of a more powerful experience. Advertisement As is the case with many low-income Americans, most of Bradfords refund came from the earned income tax credit, a federal income assistance program for low- and moderate-wage workers, primarily with dependent children. In 2017, Bradfords gross income was about $16,600, and she received the maximum amount of the EITC, $6,318, as well as the refundable portion of the child tax credit, for a refund totaling nearly $8,370. On a month-to-month basis, the majority of Bradfords income went toward contributing to rent and paying for her vehicle, a necessity in a city like Birmingham. Her refund significantly expanded her budget. Beyond the funds she was able to use for her new apartment, it also allowed her to plan for her childrens futures and pay for the transcripts she needed to return to school. Advertisement Advertisement The EITC, which began in 1975 and roughly tripled in 1994, has benefited more than 26 million families and individuals in 2015 and lifted 6.5 million people out of poverty, about half of whom were children. The credit incentivizes work and benefits taxpayers who have earned income, such as wages, salaries, or other taxable employee pay, who also have children. The amount received varies based on income, filing status, and number of dependent children. It is the largest federal investment in addressing poverty, and it achieves bipartisan support in Congress. Advertisement The EITC is a unique anti-poverty measure because it provides a significant amount of money annually in a lump sum. In a study titled The Role of Earned Income Tax Credit in the Budgets of Low-income Families, researchers find evidence that the EITC is different from other types of income subsidies like child care, food stamps, etc. because it allows credit constrained families to meet goals other than current consumption. It creates the opportunity for low- to moderate-income families to pay down debt, build assets, contribute to their savings, and pursue long-standing goals, as Kayla Bradford did. Advertisement The policy has been successful by many measures, but taxpayers must clear several hurdles in order to access their refunds. Online self-serve tax preparation programs can be a challenge for individuals who dont feel comfortable using or dont have access to the internet, and many people desire in-person support. The questions on tax forms related to the EITC can be confusing, and according to Impact Americas executive director, Sarah Louise Smith, Many low-income households are eligible for the EITC and other tax credits but are unaware of their existence and thus do not apply for the annual refunds. Moreover, many who do not have the resources or knowledge to file their own taxes instead rely on costly commercial tax preparers. Advertisement Advertisement Advertisement Paid tax preparers can cost taxpayers anywhere from $50 to $400, and when budgets are already tight, those fees detract from refunds that play a crucial role in the lives of millions of Americans. The cost is not always immediate, however. Accountants do not typically market themselves to low-income people, in part because it would seem unethical to charge a typical rate for a relatively simple tax return. Black says, The problem with that response from the accounting industry is that its left a vacuum that has been filled by a predatory industry of businesses who design their model to take as much of the refund as they can. Predatory tax preparers charge higher fees in low-income neighborhoods than local or national averages. Advertisement Last year in Alabama, SaveFirst helped 9,081 families and individuals secure $7.9 million of the earned income tax credit and $15.6 million dollars in refunds overall. The program saved clients $3.6 million in tax preparation fees. While SaveFirst operates its sites in the Southeast, other VITA programs serve communities across the United States, helping families and individuals access the entirety of their refunds or avoid paying extra fees when they owe money to the federal or state government. Advertisement Advertisement When Impact America piloted SaveFirst in 200607, founder Stephen Black and executive director Sarah Louise Smith recognized the need for a tax preparation alternative in Birmingham and Tuscaloosa, but they saw a broader societal need for purposeful civic engagement experiences as well. The organization drew upon the tremendous capacity for creating substantive societal change through the concentrated efforts of college students. Advertisement Many college graduates have no substantial connection to low-income, working families. When they engage in intentional service learning, their experiences can influence the way the see the world into which they graduate. With SaveFirst, volunteers and site coordinators better understand the low-income populations they work with and their own efficacy as advocates and change-makers. Advertisement Predatory tax preparation, exploiting low-income peoples lack of access to education or resources to complete their own taxes, Black says, is allowed to fester because people in power, and people with relationship to people in power, dont know anything about it, because it only operates in low-income communities that dont have the same sort of voice in the legislatures. Advertisement Black argues that the purpose of SaveFirst extends beyond the provision of a service. Rather, the initiative leaders intend to develop a generation of policymakers, business leaders, social workers, and engaged citizens who have a deeper understanding of the causes of poverty because they have connected with families and individuals who have experienced financial hardship. The effect it has on the participants, the central purpose of the initiative, and the reason we put so much time into recruiting hundreds of college students, is that on a fundamental level, for thoughtful policy to be crafted that affects the majority of Americans who work paycheck to paycheck, we need a much stronger connection and commitment from college-educated America. Advertisement Without the burden of tax preparation fees, Kayla Bradford can allocate the entirety of her refund to building the life that she imagines for herself and her children. She started savings accounts for her children, depositing $200 into each one. She recently visited her new apartment, purchased some furniture, and set up her utilities. I came from homelessness, from not having anything at all, to having a lot more than what I anticipated having, and I dont want to stop here. I want more. I want a better future for myself and my kids, said Bradford. Advertisement Refunds make a substantial difference in the lives of millions of Americans like Bradford, and every day at the tax sites, my volunteers, fellow site coordinators, and I engage in deeply personal conversations with clients while reviewing sensitive financial information. Personal finances offer a unique and sometimes unexpected window into life hardships and the inadequacies of the social safety net. An on-the-job injury is reflected in itemized medical receipts and lower wages. A woman whose son was a victim of gun violence needs to file three years worth of returns because she lost track of her records after her traumatic loss. The man whose financially dependent disabled brother passed away in November has to figure out how to pay the penalty for his brothers lapse in health insurance during the final months of his life. Advertisement Advertisement Advertisement We explain the 1040, the Affordable Care Act, the earned income credit, and various tax forms. We also discuss aspirations, the challenges of raising preteens, and daily life in towns and cities across Alabama. These iterative conversations move us beyond the individual and reveal the systemic nature of poverty. This is how our volunteers, and our own, perspective on barely getting by in America changes, day by day. We meet a real need that many Americans arent aware exists. We also build relationships that expand our conception of what it means to experience poverty, and, Impacts leadership hopes, we will become advocates for further change. The teacher protest movement that led to victories in several red states in past weeks has reached the Democrat-led state of Colorado, as hundreds of teachers walked out of their schools and took the the state Capitol on Monday to demand better pay. Their demonstration came the same day that Oklahoma teachers, who had staged a nine-day walkout, went home victorious after securing nearly $500 million in school funding and an increase in teacher salary of roughly $6,000 on average, according to ABC News. Legislators also passed a law providing raises for support staff in schools and $70 million for supplies. Advertisement Colorado teachers, who rank 46th in pay among states and Washington, D.C., according to the National Education Association, are advocating for better salaries and healthy funding increases to match the health of the states economy, which is one of the strongest in the country. Meanwhile, according to the Associated Press, state lawmakers were to debate a pension reform measure that would cut retirement benefits. Advertisement Advertisement Advertisement Republicans in the legislature argued that they were already planning on increasing funding for schools. But the teachers said that if the proposed cuts to the retirement plan were to go into effect, younger teachers would not be able to have a full career in the state. In addition to teachers in Colorado and Oklahoma, educators in Arizona, Kentucky, and, most successfully, West Virginia have walked out from their schools in mass demonstrations. An hours-long deadly fight between inmates at a maximum-security prison in South Carolina was the result of a gang war fought over territory and money that was fueled by the use of cell phones thrown over the fence or smuggled inside, prison officials said at press conference Monday. The violent altercation at the Lee Correctional Institution, which erupted Sunday evening and raged for seven hours, claimed seven lives and injured 17 more in what is the deadliest prisoner riot in the U.S. in 25 years. No prison employees or law-enforcement were injured. Advertisement What we believe is that this was all about territory, this was about contraband, this was about cellphones, Corrections Director Bryan Stirling said Monday. These folks are fighting over real money and real territory while theyre incarcerated. Inmates attacked one another with homemade knives, according to the Associated Press, as the violence broke out around 7:15 p.m. Sunday and lasted until 2:55 a.m. Monday morning at the 1,600-inmate facility. An inmate who witnessed the violence told the AP: bodies were literally stacked on top of each other. Advertisement Advertisement Advertisement The inmate who spoke to AP said that many cell door locks were already broken before the riot and that he and other prisoners roamed around freely at the prison in Bishopville, located 40 miles east of Columbia, according to the AP. Hours after the violence started, no correctional officers or medical personnel attended to the dead or dying, he said. The seven prisoners that were killed were serving sentences ranging from 10 years to life for crimes including murder, burglary, and drug trafficking. The youngest inmate killed during the melee was 28; the oldest was 44 years old. The riot was the latest in a string of violent incidents in the South Carolina prisons system; at least 13 other prisoners have been killed in the states penitentiary system since the beginning of 2017. For the Lee correctional facility, which is currently filled to 96 percent of capacity, recent incidents have been particularly disturbing. From CNN: Advertisement Advertisement South Carolina Gov. Henry McMaster repeated a call Monday for the Federal Communications Commission to allow authorities to the jam cellphone signals in prisons to keep gangs from continuing their operations behind bars. FCC Chairman Ajit Pai has toured the Lee facility [and said] he is in favor of finding ways to rid prisons of illegal cellphones but concerned about the risks of also blocking legitimate wireless users, the Wall Street Journal reports. The FCC said Monday that it has adopted new rules that will allow for quicker deployment of interdiction systems in prisons, and is studying additional tools for combating contraband phones. For those who wondered what it would look like to watch a somber, reflective adult human wander into a political cage match with a drunk dancing bear, we can now state definitively that the bear wins. Especially if the cage match is televised. Sunday nights ABC interview with James Comey made the former FBI director look smaller, more uncomfortable, and more shot through with human failings than the Comey wed all invented in our heads. Im not alone in that assessment. Many Comey watchers expressed frustration at his evasiveness when answering George Stephanopoulos questions, his unsavory book-selling motives, and his self-regard. And those were his fans. Perhaps its time to agree that Donald Trumps superpower is that whatever thoughtful, sober grown-up we send in the ring to do battle with him emerges diminished, merely for having attempted to spar. Advertisement Advertisement Advertisement Advertisement Consider those aforementioned knocks on Comeythat he is seeking to cash in; that he only wants to be famous; that he is too enamored with himself. At one point, Stephanopoulos actually asked: Couple years back, you gave a speech I think to the FBI personnel saying, If we fall in love with our own virtue, we can go sideways. At any point over the last two years, did you fall prey to that? Did you fall in love with your own virtue? Comeys answer was torturous and included an unfortunate pitch to buy his book. But really, whats the correct answer to: Are you in love with yourself? Welcome to the age of Trump, in which any public display of Trumps greatest weaknessesgrifting, money-grubbing, or self-regardbecomes disqualifying not for the president, who is, after all, who he is, but for his critics. And further, if one criticizes the president from a posture of behaving ethically, one is reflexively decried as pious. But if the act of seeking publicity and financial reward is inherently corrupting, there can be no forum for meaningful public criticism. Had Comey told his story at a church in Virginia, nobody would have heard it. So he wrote a book and did TV, which makes him a sellout apparently. Advertisement I have been covering Comey for a long time, and my own instinct, based in part on his long-ago intervention in the John AshcroftNSA reauthorization events of 2004, is that he has tried to be all the things one seeks in a lawyer and intelligence officer: honorable, careful, and truthful. With errors that are sharply visible in hindsightthe Clinton-probe announcement just before the election, especially if based on dubious sourcinghe still seems to have tried to put the FBI and the rule of law first. Advertisement Whatever thoughtful, sober grown-up we send in the ring to do battle with Trump emerges diminished, merely for having attempted to spar. That Comey has a lot to answer for in terms of the 2016 election is not in doubt. That there is no palatable answer to be offered in hindsight, knowing what we all know today, was perfectly clear to everyone on Sunday. If one believes that Comey found himself in an intolerably difficult spot in the fall of 2016 and made a very questionable call to go public on the state of the Hillary Clinton email investigation, the only possible way to answer for that today must be, I didnt know what would happen, which is in effect what he said again on Sunday. And do you regret making that decision at that time? Stephanopoulos asked. Yes? No? Maybe? What should I say? Comey answered. Is there a better answer? Advertisement Advertisement In an interview with very few interesting moments, I found myself fixating on Comeys description, again, of standing in a meeting with Trump and trying to disappear into the blue curtains behind him. It seems to me that no better metaphor exists for the choice faced by any sentient human in the Trump circle, having to decide each day between getting swept up by the drunk dancing bear or fading back into the scenery. James Comey has only bad choices: Having seen what he has seen, he can either try to fade into the background, or he can step forward and say his piece. We condemn him for stepping forward because he is self-aggrandizing and pretentious and hoping to cash in. Had he not stepped forward, we would condemn him for his silence and complicity. Advertisement This is the ultimate tragedy of Donald Trumps moral takeover of our politics and the media: To engage with him in any public forum is to be accused of being like himvenal, self-regarding, and corrupt. To refuse to engage with him in any public forum is to be accused of moral cowardice. And as we careen ever closer to constitutional crisis, the silence of Trumps critics has ever-greater consequences. Advertisement Advertisement Every aspiring Great Man who steps into the amphitheater of the Trump presidency will emerge pilloried and scarred by Trumps tweets, and by his own failings. He will be diminished by a GOP machinery that calls him a criminal and then further diminished by those of us who want a more virtuous, less flawed Great Man. This partly explains why Robert Mueller, who works in silence, surrounded by others who work in silence, continues to be our collective national fantasy of the hero who will save us. We have no notion of what he is doing. Hes behind closed doors and therefore, at least on the left, unsullied. Advertisement Of course, Comey doesnt have that option. He was pushed out of the sober world of the law and into the morally compromised world of celebrity, personality, and Twitter. If one grades him on a curve compared to the licentious fabricator sitting in the Oval Office, of course he is morally and ethically superior in every single way. The problem is that television will never be the medium in which to prove that, and everyone comes away tainted by the selectively staged and awkward silliness that an exclusive prime-time interview demands in order to seem real. So you end up making a joke about tanning glasses and you look small. You speak of virtue and you look sanctimonious. Any screen, any time? The drunk dancing bear wins again. Not because he looks good, but because hes brought you down just a tiny bit closer to his level. This article was published in partnership with The Marshall Project, a nonprofit news organization covering the U.S. criminal justice system. Anniston, Alabama, a city of about 22,000 residents, is in sync with the Trump administrations views on immigration. Police Chief Shane Denham has no reservations about assisting federal agents by handing over undocumented immigrants who are in police custody. But despite its Trump allegiance, the Anniston Police Department is on the losing side of the White Houses war on unauthorized immigration. The city is one of dozens of jurisdictions across the country that have been frozen out of more than $250 million in federal grants slated to pay for local law enforcement basicsthings like Tasers, crime-fighting task forces, and officer overtime. Attorney General Jeff Sessions paused the nationwide funding stream in response to an ongoing federal lawsuit filed by the city of Chicago. The case argues that it is illegal for the Justice Department to force local governments to adopt tough-on-immigration policies in order to receive federal money. Advertisement Advertisement Advertisement Advertisement For Anniston, the freeze means $46,070 in federal funds is not available to buy new computers and radars for its police patrol cars. Obviously, we are not a sanctuary city, said Denham. I am not quite sure why we would be affected. Sessions tried to withhold JAG money only from sanctuary cities like Chicago, which was supposed to get $2.1 million, according to DOJ records. A Justice Department spokesperson said the freeze affects about one-fifth of the approximately $1.3 billion in federal grants that last fall began trickling down to police departments, sheriffs, and prosecutors offices across all 50 states. Those funds come from a popular program called the Edward Byrne Memorial Justice Assistance Grants, or JAG. The name honors Edward Byrne, a New York Police Department officer who was fatally shot in 1988 while guarding the home of a Guyanese immigranta witness in a drug case. Thirty years later, New York City filed a friend of the court brief siding with the city of Chicago in its funding fight against Sessions. New York Citys corporate counsel, Zachary W. Carter, said it was ironic for the Justice Department to withhold funds from a grant named for a New York City police officer who heroically gave his life to protect an immigrant witness who was cooperating with law enforcement. Advertisement Advertisement Sessions tried to withhold JAG money only from sanctuary cities like Chicago, which was supposed to get $2.1 million, according to Justice Department records. When a federal judge ruled in September that the attorney general had exceeded his authority and issued a national injunction against depriving sanctuary cities of JAG money, Session filed an appeal and announced he was freezing the whole program. An analysis by the Center for American Progress, a liberal think tank in Washington, found that more than $257 million in federal funds are now on hold because of Sessions fight with Chicago. Nothing is stopping AG Sessions from providing these funds to law enforcement agencies, said Betsy Pearl, the reports author. This is much needed money throughout the country. Advertisement Advertisement The JAG grants were first entangled in the sanctuary city debate during the waning months of the Obama administration in 2016. The Justice Departments inspector general released a memo pointing out that a number of localities were withholding residents immigration information from federal officials. The Office of Justice Programs then announced that to qualify for JAG funds, jurisdictions would have to prove they were complying with federal law.* Sessions embraced and enlarged the Obama-era requirement, adding two more conditions in July: Local officials must allow federal immigration agents access to local detention facilities, and they must give federal agents 48 hours notice when releasing undocumented immigrants from custody. The city of Philadelphia sued Sessions in August, arguing it was unlawful for the attorney general to tack on new conditions without congressional approval. A trial is set for April 30. Advertisement Advertisement Former Justice Department officials described the Sessions freeze as unprecedented and a public safety threat. Its not a GOP thing. Its a neophyte in the White House thing, said Regina B. Schofield, a former assistant attorney general for the Office of Justice Programs under President George W. Bush. She added, They are taxpayer dollars that you are being entrusted with. They are not yours. You cant play politics. Laurie O. Robinson, who ran the Office of Justice Programs in both the Clinton and Obama administrations, described the Sessions freeze as a tragedy. So many jurisdictions right now are really starved for resources, she said. I really find it ironic that an administration that is continually touting its support for front-line law enforcement officers is now withholding the chief funding support that the Justice Department offers to law enforcement. With two candidates from each party, and no primary to winnow the field, Mississippis special election for a U.S. Senate seat could get very messy between now and November. But for now, at least, the two party favorites appear to be firmly in control. A new poll out Tuesday, the first since the field expanded to four candidates earlier this month, found a 20-percentage-point gap between the two establishment favorites and their intra-party rivals in the race to replace retiring Sen. Thad Cochran. The Yall Politics survey shows Democrat Mike Espy and Republican Sen. Cindy Hyde-Smithwho was appointed to the seat earlier this monthin a virtual tie, with 33.1 percent and 33 percent support respectively, followed by Republican Chris McDaniel at 13 percent and Democrat Jason Shelton at 8 percent. Advertisement Advertisement Advertisement Advertisement If no candidate gets 50 percent on Election Day, which seems likely, then the race will be decided in a runoff. The pollsters found Hyde-Smith with a 6 point advantage in a hypothetical head-to-head with Espy, 42 percent to 36 percent. If McDaniel were to qualify, Espys lead grows to 19 points43 percent to 24 percent. (The poll did not provide a margin-of-error, but its likely that Hyde-Smiths lead on Espy is within or at least near it.) The results are a bit of mixed bag for the Democratic and GOP establishments back in Washington. Democrats will be happy to see Espy in the top two to start the race, but are hoping that hell ultimately find himself in a runoff with McDaniel, a proud Tea Party type who is particularly polarizing in the state. Republicans, meanwhile, will be very relieved Hyde-Smith is out in front of McDaniel, even if her lead on Espy in a hypothetical runoff looks small. Republicans greatly outnumber Democrats in MississippiDonald Trump won the state by 18 points in 2016and the expectation is that most of those voters will come home, if the GOP can just advance an inoffensive nominee to the runoff. Advertisement Advertisement To that end, GOP Gov. Phil Bryant appointed Hyde-Smith, a former state official with no national profile, to fill Cochrans seat over the objections of the White House and other GOP leaders. Her critics worry shell be vulnerable in a potentially bruising battle with McDaniel, a long-time party gadfly who nearly knocked off Cochran in a primary four years ago. Already, McDaniel has come out swinging, attacking Hyde-Smith over the fact she served in the state Senate as a Democrat before switching parties in 2010. Advertisement The survey, though, suggests Hyde-Smith begins the race with a clear advantage on McDaniel. Another reason for Republicans to exhale, at least slightly: McDaniel may not have much room to grow. Of the four candidates, he was the only one with an approval rating underwater, with 17 percent approving and 42 percent disapproving. Meanwhile, 32 percent approve of Hyde-Smith, with only 16 percent disapproving. Advertisement The Democrats would love to see Espy in a two-man race with McDaniel, who has a penchant for saying controversial things and alienating those in his own party. Espy is a former congressman who went on to become the first black U.S. secretary of agriculture, and his appeal among black Americans, which make up more than one-third of states electorate, are seen as crucial to any effort to flip the seat from red to blue. Democrats can look for inspiration just to the east, where a strong black American turnout helped the party capture a Senate seat in Alabama last year. The question for Republicans is whether the debacle there will serve as a cautionary tale for their own voters, about what can happen when you nominate the guy who likes to court controversy. On Friday, Michael Cohen skipped a federal court hearing reviewing his emergency claims surrounding attorney-client privilege. Instead, he made a public showing of cigar-smoking nonchalance with friends at a Manhattan hotel. That same day, President Trump pardoned Scooter Libby and also reportedly had a phone conversation with Cohen. Could Trumps pardon have signaled something to Cohen, and might that be why he looked so brazenly unfazed? Maybe Cohen was putting on a good show, or maybe he is simply not a good lawyer, because one thing is clear: Any of Trumps pardons (or firings) wouldnt be likely to save Cohen, just as they wouldnt be likely to save Paul Manafort or Michael Flynn. Thats because, as Ive written before, presidential pardons only apply to federal charges, and there are ways for federal prosecutors to craft their charges so as to leave the door open for state charges that wouldnt violate double jeopardy in case of pardons or firings. Just to be safe, though, New York state should immediately rewrite its double jeopardy laws to ensure that Trump wont be able to use pardons to help his personal attorney and fixer evade justice. Advertisement Advertisement Advertisement Advertisement First, here is a partial list of the New York state criminal statutes that Cohen may have violated, based on a survey of news reports. 1. Bank fraud: Cohen is reported to have allegedly misrepresented to banks the purposes of accounts created to pay off women, claiming they were real estate accounts. These practices and others might implicate New York Penal Law under Article 190. 2. Conspiracy to conceal federal campaign finance violations: This charge would ordinarily be subject to federal prosecution, but Cohen may have made false filings and false statementsto banks or to public officialsas part of his efforts to cover up allegations of Trump affairs in the midst of the 2016 presidential campaign. New York state law criminalizes a broad range of such false statements under NYPL 210.45 (a Class A misdemeanor punishable by a year in jail): A person is guilty of making a punishable false written statement when he knowingly makes a false statement, which he does not believe to be true, in a written instrument bearing a legally authorized form notice to the effect that false statements made therein are punishable. This criminal provision also may be implicated if Cohen made false statements to state officials. If state prosecutions start investigations and interviews, Cohen will have to tell the truth about these events, and more, or face New Yorks family of perjury statutes. Advertisement Advertisement 3. Obstruction of justice and defrauding the government: Rick Gates pleaded guilty to such a conspiracy charge under Title 18 U.S.C. 371. Similarly, New York has a provision (NYPL 195.20) making defrauding the government by a party officer a felony. Michael Cohen is currently a national deputy finance chairman of the Republican National Committee. NYPL 195.05 makes obstruction of governmental administration a misdemeanor. Advertisement 4. Did Cohen participate in any meetings with Russians as part of a conspiracy to engage in election fraud (collusion)? If so, New York Election Law Sections 17-150(2), 17-152, and 17-154 could all come into play. 5. Bribery: In January 2017, Cohen met with Ukrainian politician Andrii Artemenko and Felix Sater in New York City to discuss a plan to lift Russian sanctions, and he delivered their written proposal to thennational security adviser Michael Flynn. Might this have been part of a quid quo pro arrangement of personal value to Cohen, who has significant financial ties to Ukraine? What about Michael Cohens work in Russia and in New York in 2015 and 2016 to establish Trump Tower Moscow? If so, he may have violated New York bribery laws. Advertisement Advertisement 610. Cohen may also be implicated in the same state money laundering (NY Penal Law 470), state tax fraud, state larceny, conspiracy in computer hacking (NYPL 156), and trafficking of stolen goods that Manafort might also be implicated in. This list could go on and on, but these core charges should be plenty to make Cohen more nervous than hes been looking in recent days. At the same time, though, a New York statute also presents a potential obstacle to such state prosecutions. At Slate, I have written before about how New Yorks double jeopardy laws could have protected former Trump campaign chairman Paul Manafort from a state prosecution. I also noted that Muellerwho has reportedly coordinated with New Yorks attorney general officeappears to have withheld specific charges against Manafort to avoid this problem. That same hurdle could pose a problem for prosecutors in the Southern District of New York, who are handling Cohens case. Advertisement Heres the key provision: New Yorks Criminal Procedure Law 40.20 states, A person may not be twice prosecuted for the same offense. The issue is that New York defines prosecution broadly. Section 40.30 notes that this applies to charges: Advertisement Advertisement filed in a court of this state or of any jurisdiction within the United States, and when the action either: (a) Terminates in a conviction upon a plea of guilty; or (b) Proceeds to the trial stage and a jury has been impaneled and sworn or, in the case of a trial by the court without a jury, a witness is sworn. The New York statute does not allow a state prosecution to follow a federal prosecution (a court of any jurisdiction within the United States) for the same core facts. So if federal prosecutors start a trial on all of the potential charges against Cohen, and then Trump pardons him, state prosecutors will not be able to come to the rescue. Similarly, if Cohen pleads guilty to some federal charges, and then gets pardoned for them, New York state prosecutors will then have fewer avenues and less leverage. Advertisement As discussed, Mueller has already demonstrated a strategy for circumventing this problem in the case of Manafort by bringing some charges but not all possible charges, and in the case of Flynn by getting narrow guilty pleas limited to certain facts. A New York statute also presents a potential obstacle to such state prosecutions. But this New York statute on double jeopardy might still create problems down the road, depending on the approach of SDNY and depending on who else all of these investigators put in their crosshairs. Because Trump could still attempt to pardon other figures who have been or may be implicated in a more narrow set of crimesand because we dont yet know the strategy for dealing with CohenNew York state legislators should revise or repeal these extra double jeopardy protections to eliminate the possibility of an obstructive pardon. Advertisement Advertisement Advertisement There are admittedly questions about whether such a repeal would be a good idea, dealing with both substantive fairness and procedural rules. Advertisement First, fairness: Double jeopardy is a legitimate problem. Allowing federal or state prosecutors to take multiple cracks at a defendant is problematic, and it is unfair to let prosecutors use initial prosecutions to test weak cases, work out strategy, or just harass citizens. But we have a principle of dual sovereignty because state governments and the federal government have separate but overlapping interests, and each serves as a federalism backup when the other system breaks down. The issue of possible Trump self-serving pardons would be one such example, but one can imagine other system failures that dual sovereignty addresses. What if a prosecution starts under one presidential administration, but a new corrupt administration drops those charges on appeal? New Yorks statute would prevent the state from being a justice safety net in either circumstance. The best update to New Yorks rules would still obviously set a maximum of one state prosecution and one federal prosecution. This rule would be a good way to guarantee no repeat harassment by any set of prosecutors, but also allow ways for the state to address possible system breakdowns at the federal level. Advertisement Advertisement Second, procedure: Theres real danger in changing laws just to target a specific set of individuals. If New York changes its rule, would the defendants be able to claim that the changes are retroactive ex post facto laws, changing criminal liability after the fact of the crimes commission? Article I, Section 10 of the Constitution prohibits ex post facto laws, because they unfairly impose criminal liability without advance notice of criminality. In Collins v. Youngblood, the Supreme Court has held that the Constitution prohibits federal or state governments from depriving a defendant of a defense that had been available when the offense was committed. However, the definition of defense under the Ex Post Facto Clause is narrower than the colloquial understanding of the term. In order to violate the Ex Post Facto Clause, the defense that had been removed must relate to the legal definition of the offense or the punishment imposed for a violation, rather than a more formally procedural protection. A change to this New York statute would be a procedural change, not a change to substance or sentence. Advertisement Advertisement Also, its to good to keep in mind that lawyers think about double jeopardy in terms of when jeopardy attaches. It does not attach or start with the crime, the investigation, or the filing of charges. It attaches with a guilty plea or a trial commencing. Advertisement Theres another constitutional question: The Constitution prohibits bills of attainder, laws that target specific individuals. The Supreme Court has adopted a three-part test to determine if the legislative enactment constitutes a bill of attainder: Does it (1) impose a punishment, (2) specify the affected persons, and (3) lack the protection of judicial process? A law that generally lessens double jeopardy protections would not impose a punishment, would not specify any individuals, and would retain core judicial process. All of that said: These changes need to be made quickly to address this current set of pardon troubles. A change in New York law that would allow successive charges against individuals who had already pleaded guilty or started trial in federal court would face valid Ex Post Facto Clause challenges. However, defendants who plead guilty or start trials in federal court after such changes in New York law had been passed would be unlikely to win such challenges. Manafort, Flynn, and Cohen face so many charges on so many different sets of facts that Mueller and federal prosecutors probably can continue without needing such a changealthough it would help them. Other co-conspirators, however, might be guilty of a smaller set of crimes. A change in New York law now would make sure to counteract the potential for faithless abuse of pardon and firing power. And even if New Yorks legislature were to simply make this rule change on prospective deterrent basis, it would be a wise response to the unfortunate lessons of the Trump era, balancing the opposing concerns about repeated prosecutions, self-dealing pardons, and protecting federalisms fail-safes in case of presidential corruption. Attorneys for Donald Trumps personal lawyer Michael Cohen revealed on Monday that one of Cohens clients is Fox News commentator Sean Hannity. After this news became public, Hannity did what he could to downplay the connection. On his radio show, the host said the following: Michael never represented me in any matter. I never retained him in the traditional sense as retaining a lawyer. I never received an invoice from Michael. I never paid legal fees to Michael. But, I have occasionally had brief discussions with him about legal questions, about which I wanted his input and perspective. And I assume those conversations were attorney-client confidential. Advertisement Whatever specific form the relationship took, the revelation suggests that Hannity had a conflict of interest in discussing Cohen on his eponymous show, especially since the conservative pundit never disclosed that Cohen was one of his lawyers or that Cohen had ever given him legal advice. Advertisement Advertisement Advertisement Hannity has repeatedly blasted special counsel Robert Muellers investigation on air for issuing a referral that led the U.S. Attorneys Office for the Southern District of New York to conduct a raid on Cohens office and hotel room on April 9. The news was a springboard for Hannity to further attack some of his usual targets, such as Hillary Clinton, the fake news media, and the deep state. On the day of the raid, Hannity spent much of his opening monologue characterizing the Southern District offices actions as a sign that Muellers witch hunt investigation is now a runaway train. Even though Muellers team technically did not order the search, Hannity nevertheless accused the special counsel of inappropriately expanding its purview beyond the question of Russian collusion. Advertisement Hannity portrayed Cohen then as a hapless victim of the deep states unruly plot to oust Trump at any cost. He told his viewers: Cohen was never part of the Trump administration or the Trump campaign. This is officially an all-hands-on-deck effort to totally malign, and if possible, impeach the president of the United States. Later in the program, he complained of a double standard, asking why authorities hadnt raided the offices of Hillary Clintons attorneys: Advertisement Advertisement The Fox News host repeated these talking points in following days, discussing the Cohen raid for three days straight after the initial news broke. Mueller basically backdoored his way into every single Trump business deal, Hannity said on April 10, continually making the point that targeting Cohen was evidence that Mueller is on a mission to bring down the president any way he can. Advertisement Advertisement To bolster his point, Hannity invited the likes of Harvard Law Professor Alan Dershowitz onto the show to argue that the raid of Cohens domiciles was unconstitutional, and also former U.S. Attorney Joe diGenova, who asserted that the raid was grounds for Jeff Sessions to fire Deputy Attorney General Rod Rosenstein. He was perhaps at his most extreme on April 10, when discussing the medias coverage of Cohen and speculating that Muellers team had leaked information to reporters. Hannity said this: Could it be that Muellers team is actually coordinating with the liberal media? These outlets to turn public opinion against President Trump? That helps their case. Maybe Muellers office and their emails, maybe theyll get raided in pre-dawn hours, maybe well see that happen. These are only a few examples of the many instances in which Hannity railed against the investigation into Cohen on the show without disclosing his potential personal interest in protecting his attorney as a self-identified client. Even if Hannitys use of Cohens services was innocuous and dealt almost exclusively about real estate, as he claimed on Twitter, one has to wonder if Fox News will abide a nightly host regularly commenting on legal matters in which he is now personallyand very publiclyembroiled. With the release of Jim Comeys new book, renewed attention is being paid to the former FBI directors controversial decisions surrounding the Hillary Clinton email investigation. On the right, this has taken the form of efforts to impugn Comeys integrity for making choices that directly benefited them, along with melodramatic descriptions of Comeys supposed lack of loyalty to liberals. Sean Hannity, for instance, described Comey as throwing former Attorney General Loretta Lynch absolutely under the bus. Advertisement This argument views law enforcement as another arena in the tribal political battle between red and blue, a proposition Comey has vocally tried to reject. In attempting to relitigate Comeys 2016 Clinton email controversy decisions, though, some progressives have mirrored the conservative framing of Comey as just another political hack. Advertisement Advertisement Advertisement Nowhere has this argument and its weaknesses been clearer than in a piece by Greg Sargent in Tuesdays Washington Post, which argued that Comey just made a remarkable new admission about his Clinton email decision. First, like others, Sargent fails to address Comeys substantive explanation for why he says he did what he did. Whats worse, he mischaracterizes Comeys statements in order to imply that Comey himself is acknowledging that he should have made another choice. Advertisement Sargent cites a response from Comey during an interview with NPRs Steve Inskeep as the remarkable admission in question. In it, Comey addresses the notion that he could have chosen not to make his bureaus findings on Clinton public if he had just ignored the cable news chatter: INSKEEP: Would it perhaps have been a better course of action to resist all that shouting out there and do something closer to what you would normally do? COMEY: Look, I meant what I said earliera reasonable person might have done that. I think that would have been a mistake Sargent argues that Comey is conceding something major here: [It] is an admission that the cable news chatter partly influenced him, and that it would have been reasonable to refrain from doing what he did end up doing. Advertisement Advertisement Notably, and importantly, Sargent ignores what those other factors were. To summarize (without arguing for or against) Comeys reasons for believing the attorney general of the United States could not credibly announce this result: Comey blamed President Barack Obama for publiclyand pre-emptivelysaying the investigation would yield no there. Comey feared a classified document with unverified and likely untrue claimsreportedly of Russian origincould be used to discredit the probe. Comey said Lynch broke protocol in insisting that he call the probe a matter rather than an investigation and he was concerned by how neatly this lined up with euphemistic Clinton campaign rhetoric. Advertisement Comey said the biggest brick of all in the load of public missteps was Lynch meeting very publicly on a tarmac for a one-on-one conversation with former President Bill Clinton, the husband of the subject of the investigation. Advertisement Comey has testified under oath that most of these factors led to his decision to publicly describe the findings of the investigation (a step, he has argued, was not without precedent in high-profile political cases). Comeys liberal critics could argue these points on their merits, but they generally dont. They could also argueas conservatives dothat hes been lying (under oath at times) about all of these reasons, having invented an ex post facto justification for a mostly political decision. Advertisement Liberals dont argue that either, maybe because it would paint the main witness in the obstruction case against Donald Trump as someone who casually lies under oath. Sargents most damning conclusion, ultimately, is a complete mischaracterization of what Comey actually said. Advertisement Worse, Comey also revealed that not [publicizing his findings as he did] would have been a perfectly appropriate outcome, Sargent writes. Comey never says anything like this. He says a reasonable person might have come up with a different decision, one that he still believes would have been a mistake, i.e., not a perfectly appropriate outcome. Comey is merely conceding that reasonable people can have differences of opinion. Indeed, Comeys desired reasonable outcomeLynch appointing a special counselactually would have been far more damaging to Democrats than what he decided was within his own power to do. The principal evidence used in recent days to portray Comey as a hack has been a statement in his book that it is entirely possible that the polls in Clintons favor played a role in how he handled the case. For this, he has been pilloried by both sides. Advertisement Advertisement But it is not the confession either side is making it out to be. Comeys intention is obviously to acknowledge that virtually nobodyincluding himselfis entirely immune from their political environment. This basicand honestacknowledgment doesnt make his belief in his own reasoning any less true. In fact, in the same interview that Sargent cites as evidence that Comeys decision was dictated by the politics of cable news, Comey says even if cable TV punditry had never been born he would have had the same reasons for doing what he did. Reasonable people can disagree on whether or not Comey made the right decision. The attacks on his motives by those who would prop him up as the chief witness against the current president, however, have been entirely unreasonable. Cardi B has attracted a parade of right-wing supporters over the past week for deciding to have a baby while her rapid rise to superstardom is still accelerating. Anti-abortion websites are posting gleeful recaps of an exchange the hip-hop artist had with radio host Charlamagne Tha God last Tuesday, when she said she kinda sort of considered terminating her pregnancy, before determining that she didnt want to deal with the whole abortion thing. Cardi B Explains Why She Chose Life Instead Of Abortion For Her Unborn Child, the Federalist headlined its post. The Daily Wire asked users to watch as Cardi B Gives Pro-Life Message. The sites editor, Ben Shapiro, posted on his Facebook page that feminists wont like the rappers pro-life views. Advertisement Advertisement Advertisement Advertisement But Cardi B didnt advocate anything approaching pro-life politics in her conversation. Nor did she malign abortion procedures or those who seek them. I just didnt want to. It was just like, you know what, Im a grown woman, she said. Im 25 years old. Im a schmillionaire. You know what Im saying? Im prepared for this. In other words, she evaluated her desires, priorities, and life circumstances, and decided that she wanted to have a baby. Wheres the anti-abortion part? The part of Cardi Bs radio remarks that most appealed to anti-abortion activists came when she addressed some fans who tweeted their disappointment that she would have a babyand, presumably, take some time off from performingwhile her hip-hop career is just getting started. It really bothers me and it disgusts me because I see a lot of women online like, Oh, I feel sorry for you. Oh, your career is over, she said. And its just like, why cant I have both? Why do I have to choose a career or a baby? She also said she didnt want to wait until her 30s to have a baby: I want my kid now. Advertisement Advertisement Faithwire used this statement to argue that Cardi B doesnt believe in the feminist idea of not being able to be both pregnant and successful. Ah yes, the feminist movement, famous for telling pregnant women they cant be successful, in between advocating for pregnancy workplace protections, pushing for paid parental leave and affordable child care, and praising legislators for breastfeeding on the job. (Conservatives, meanwhile, have called motherhood a womans most important job and argued that women hoodwink employers into hiring them when they plan to get pregnant, just so they can mooch off a companys maternity leave policy.) Anti-abortion activists claim that feminists think women are unable to have children while advancing their careers. Parenthood has always been a struggle of priorities, but todays feminism has successfully sold modern women on the idea that compared to a career, children are an unnecessary burden, said a Lifezette post on Cardi Bs radio appearance. She treats motherhood not as a choice, but as her responsibility as a grown woman. Advertisement Advertisement This line of reasoning is a favorite among anti-abortion groups. In 2017, the New York Times published an opinion piece, The Problem With Linking Abortion and Economics, written by Lori Szala, an employee of a national chain of crisis pregnancy centers. She contends that although she had a baby in high school, she was still able to go to school at a community college, find a job at an investment firm, and establish a lucrative career convincing women not to go around killing those who impede our economic progress. Because Szala chose to become a single parent and avoided falling into poverty with the help of a sister who gave her free child care, she says the idea that reproductive freedom is an essential building block of economic security is false. Advertisement Advertisement The Daily Wire framed Cardi Bs story in a similar way. Uh-oh! Cardi B rejects the narrative that you must sacrifice your unborn baby to have a satisfying career, its post read. Does this mean she loses her Feminist Card? Me thinks so. It takes a brain that cannot compute the concept of female autonomy to interpret pro-choice activism as a movement to get all working women to terminate their pregnancies. Cmon, the word choice is right there in the name! According to the New York Post, Cardi B is a walking, talking pro-life ad because she got pregnant at a surely inopportune time in her booming career. But there is nothing particularly pro-life about a woman choosing not to get an abortion while she has a job. Pro-choice, career-oriented women get pregnant, have babies, and raise children every day. Cardi B said her pregnancy was unplanned, but it wasnt unwanted. This is the story of a woman who made a choice based on her own life plans and goals. A pro-life perspective is one that would have the government make Cardi Bs decision for every woman, including those who dont want to give birth. Advertisement Advertisement Advertisement As aggravating it is to watch the anti-abortion press mischaracterize Cardi Bs remarks (several sites also said the rapper wanted to avoid abortion regret, even though Charlamagne Tha God put those words in her mouth), it has been amusing to see social conservatives grapple with her maximalist persona and run up against their own biases. Lets be clear: Cardi B is neither a role model nor a conservative activist. Her rapping is vulgar, and she holds several liberal views, Lifezettes piece said. Commenters on Shapiros Facebook post wrote that she is teaching young women that it is ok to be a slut, and I thought all Cardi thought about was being ignorant/arrogant/ghetto and sleeping with other womens men. Another Facebook user identified Cardi Bs statement as a classy move, especially since abortion is heavy amongst her audience. What audience, pray tell, might that be? Advertisement The loudest comments on these posts, though, come from people who believe theyve identified some progressive hypocrisy in the Cardi B fans (not all of whom identify as feminists, Im sure) who wanted her to wait a few years before having a baby. Feminists want all women to have a choice, they say, until that choice is to carry a pregnancy to term! Their eagerness to point out that their straw-man feminists dont actually want women to control their own reproductive futures seems misguided. Even in the bizarre world they imagine, where pro-choice activists are trying to stop all births, those monsters arent taking any legal steps to compel women to terminate their pregnancies. Only one side here would weaponize the state to burden all women with one set of family-making preferences. By misrepresenting the pro-choice position, anti-abortion advocates are highlighting the cruelty of their own. Advertisement Can you guess why the U.S. Navy pulled the above tweet less than 24 hours after posting? No, its not because of the emojis. Look closer. Can you see the battle scene in the far-left panel? You can almost make out the presence of a red flag with a crescent and star that resembles the Turkish flag. While it may not have been widely noticed in most of the U.S., the tweet sparked international outrage on Twitter from Turks, many of whom saw it as an act of American aggression. Advertisement Advertisement Advertisement I didnt know about this tweets brief existence or its deletion until I filed a Freedom of Information Act request with the U.S. Navy. How could I have? When Donald Trump or a member of Congress deletes a tweet, we know about it thanks to projects like Politiwoops, which systematically keep track of these developments. But there is no Politwoops equivalent for Twitter feeds run by U.S. government agencies. So when agencies like the Defense Intelligence Agency, the Badlands National Park (remember that accounts brief infamy?), and others delete tweets, many of us never know about it. Advertisement Lets be clear: These trends didnt start with the Trump administration. The Navy tweet was nixed during the Obama administration. And that wasnt the only Obama-era deleted tweet with some geopolitical significance. Back on July 16, 2016, a controversial tweet about Melania Trump posted by the Department of Justice Twitter account was swiftly deleted. On Sept. 3, 2016, someone at the Defense Intelligence Agency tweeted out a message that was critical of China; hours later, the tweet was replaced with an apology. More recently, the Pentagon retweeted and swiftly deleted a post calling on Trump to resign. When these stories happen, it usually emerges that a staffer used the official account instead of a personal one. Even accidental tweets can tell us something, though, and its hard to track the history of deleted tweetsin large part because journalists cover them as single embarrassing episodes. Advertisement Advertisement As more and more records become born digital, the U.S. government has to think about the ethical ramifications of not just deleted emails but also deleted tweets, Facebook messages, Instagram posts. Without a consistent policy, we risk having an imbalance in the historical record, with some government agencies documenting and preserving everything and others erasing, eliminating, and expunging their actions. We need to document these deletions to better track how federal agencies choose to portray themselvesand how they change their minds. The problem is that there is no consistency. Some agencies delete and archive. Others delete and dont look back. Many claim theyve never ever deleted a tweet and that they never will. Advertisement How did this come to be? In May 2013, the National Archives and Record Administration, which is responsible for safeguarding federal records deemed to be of historical importance, released a toothless white paper on the best practices for the capture of social media records. According to the paper, it is the responsibility of the agency to determine what kinds of content and metadata should be captured as records, weighing if these are adequate for preservation purposes. Translation: Each federal agency decides how to treat its Twitter feeds, and a lot of agencies are making decisions on the fly about what to do, including negotiating what to delete. Advertisement Advertisement Take this email exchange between two U.S. Patent and Trademark Office employees as evidence: Advertisement You might think that there should be a law that would prevent all agencies from deleting tweets left and rightbut that law does not yet exist in the United States. Although the Federal Records Act governs agencies records-management responsibilities, it has left us with a problem:Aas a matter of policy, it isnt a problem for federal agencies to delete their tweets unless their internal records-management staff has pre-established that tweets are permanent records and registered them as such with the National Archives and Records Administration. If it thinks that tweets are non-records, theres no obligation to archive them. So, with regard to tweets, an agency has to elect to be transparent in the first place before we can expect it to be transparent. It all comes down to what the agency decides to put on its records disposition scheduleswhere federal agencies explain what records they plan to retain or destroy. (Its worth noting here that the Federal Records Act is not the same as the Presidential Records Act, though Id argue both are pretty toothless. This means that a whole set of different rules dictate the fate of tweets by the president. So tweets by @POTUS are not considered in the same legal light as those by @CIA or @TheJusticeDept.) Advertisement Advertisement Deletions are not always driven by some master PR plan. Sometimes, theyre just proof that links break, things go awry online, as this deleted U.S. Army tweet illustrates. Who wants an error message at the top of their Twitter feed, right? Advertisement Agencies are supposed to consider public input when deciding their policies, but to be involved, you have to navigate a complicated bureaucracy. First, record retention schedules go through NARAs internal review, where subject matter experts evaluate what agencies are saying theyll preserve. Then, the public has 30 days to request a copy and provide comments. But to contribute to these forums meaningfully, you need to speak the language of records and non-records and archives. Few people are proficient in the terminology of law librarians, archivists, and records staff officers. That includes me: Ive spent more than a year parsing the difference between a record and a nonrecord. Its not fun. Advertisement Advertisement But, when were talking about deleted tweets, some of them are downright hilarious; this one from the Interpols account confused @ICEgov with @Ice. What a rookie mistake: Advertisement >Interpol tweet Advertisement Douglas Cox, an associate professor and the international law librarian at the CUNY School of Law, has written extensively on the Federal Records Act. He put it to me this way: The [nonrecord] category ought to be confined to insignificant, nonsubstantive material, but exactly where the line is drawn is subject to interpretation and sometimes mischief or worse. Back in 2007, the CIA used federal records laws to say that destroying interrogation tapes depicting the torture of alleged terrorist Abu Zubaydah was in line with the law. This past presidential election, the question of what constitutes a federal record surfaced again amid Hillary Clintons email controversy. Advertisement Advertisement So how do federal agencies decide what is record-worthy in practice? Because my own academic work is on U.S. military policy, one of the first federal Twitter feeds that caught my attention was @thejointstaff, the official account for the Joint Chiefs of Staff. I reached out to Mark Patrick, chief of the information management division and acting joint staff records officer at the Pentagon, who patiently put up with a number of my questions about how the @thejointstaff is managed. Patrick said that they focus primarily on the business value of information when making determinations, but also on historical value. When trying to sort through records and make recommendations to the National Archives, he clarified, both legal counsel and the joint staff historians office is involved. Responses from other agencies I received were similar. Advertisement Updating federal retention schedules can take a painfully long time. For instance, while the Joint Chiefs records schedule doesnt currently include @thejointstaff, Patrick expects that it will long before 2021. Obviously the federal government lives in its own time zone. I went to vent my frustrations to Mary Rawling-Milton, who worked as an archives technician back in the 1970s and went on to write a dissertation in 2001 aptly titled Electronic Records & The Law: Causing the Federal Records Program to Implode? She pointed out that it is, in fact, difficult to figure out exactly what the heck agencies need to preserve when it comes to Twitterand it goes well beyond just archiving every tweet: Unlike our personal tweets, I would expect that any tweet on the official agency Twitter account to go through a vetting process prior to posting. Someone would approve the posting of the tweet, she said. If this is the case the agency should preserve the approval documentation. And the approval documentation should include a copy of what was to be tweeted, why it needs to be tweeted, the approval for the posting and, if they are good at recordkeeping, a copy of the actual tweet. Advertisement Advertisement Advertisement The idea of asking agencies to include all of the people involved in the drafting of a single tweet cracked me up. There are simpler ways to proceed: Federal agencies could very simply take screenshots of all their tweetsensuring that those records would exist if Twitter crashed tomorrow. I doubt anyone adhered to the highest level of recordkeeping, but I didnt have any data to support my assumptions. So, I filed a number of FOIA requests with various federal agencies, starting with the Office of Government Ethics (@OfficeGovEthics). You might remember that soon after the 2016 election, the OGE tweeted at Donald Trump about divesting his businesses. I asked it in December 2016 for copies of all tweets deleted from 2014 to the present, expecting nothing, but I was promptly rewarded with 218 pages of emails, including tweets that showed that the office staffers did draft the tweets using their government email addresses. I was grateful that for once a federal agency seemed to be fully transparent with medishing out not only the deleted tweets but also email correspondence related to them. (That seems about right for the Office of Government Ethics, doesnt it?) Advertisement Feeling like I was on a roll, I went ahead and FOIA-ed deleted tweets from the Department of Justice (@TheJusticeDept) as well as all internal policies, protocols, and written statements regarding the Department of Justices records keeping guidelines for their Twitter feed. But the Department of Justices Office of Information Policy took a different route: It deemed my request complex. Almost a year later, Im still waiting to hear back. Advertisement Not every FOIA office is as avoidant and elusive as the Department of Justices. Namieka Mead, a FOIA officer at the U.S. European Command, told me that their public affairs office follows Best Practice recommendations from the Twitter Government and Elections Handbook. That sounds great, but let me give you the tl;dr: In 137 pages, the word archive appears zero times. Its kind of scary to me that federal agencies are merrily adopting Twitters norms and standards here. Twitter isnt working for the good of American citizens, especially those who care about preserving U.S. federal records; its working for its users and its shareholders, who are focused on ensuring that the company turns a quarterly profit. Advertisement Advertisement Some beautiful federal agencies are proud of their record as non-deleters. Since the Advisory Council on Historic Preservation (ACHP) initiated its Twitter account in November 2012, we have not deleted any tweets, wrote Kelly Fanizzo, the councils associate general counsel. Others bafflingly suggested that I should appeal to Twitter. Please be advised, [Customs and Borders Protection] does not have the ability to pull deleted tweets from Twitter. You will need to reach out to Twitter directly for access to deleted tweets, said Charlyse Hoskins, the government information specialist at the U.S. Customs and Border Protection. Advertisement Advertisement I liked this extremely detailed paragraph from Damon Roberts, general counsel at the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers Headquarters: The standard operating procedure is to not delete tweets unless it is for clerical error. If a clerical error is discovered, the correction is made and the erroneous tweet is deleted. The content otherwise remains the same. The current Social Media Program Manager has held his position since January 2013 and has advised the only instance a deviation from the standard procedure was earlier this month when figures presented in a tweet were incorrect. In that instance a screenshot was taken of the original message which was then deleted and reposted with the updated information which can be seen [here]. Advertisement Its nice that someone so competent has been at the helm of @USACEHQ since January 2013, but what happens when he leaves? Is this a firm policy, or is it just the practice of a very good employee? The good news is that some federal agencies that have already stepped up to the plate and include Twitter in their federal records schedule. According to the 2016 Federal Agency Records Report, last updated on Oct. 2, 2017, 30% of agencies have approved records schedules covering electronic messages including text messages, chat/instant messages, voice messages, and messages created in social media tools or applications that meet the definition of a Federal record. The Department of Justice, the Department of Homeland Security, the Federal Highway Administration, the National Highway Traffic Safety Administration are among them. Still, for 2017, thats an appallingly low statisticeven the Federal Agency Records Report calls it only 30%. Advertisement Advertisement Many federal agencies arent particularly tech-savvy. Need proof? Heres a screenshot of a deleted tweet that the U.S. Patent and Trademark Office sent me recently. Advertisement When tweets get deleted, theres little recourse. Its not like you can call up Twitter and get the deleted tweet back. Trust me, Ive tried. So, what can you do to get tweets included in the federal records schedule, if you want to discourage federal agencies from intentionally removing substantive material from the publics eyes? Call up your favorite federal agencys records officers? Dorky as it sounds, thats exactly what Ive started to do. Advertisement Advertisement A few weeks ago, Adam Kriesberg, lecturer at the University of Maryland College of Information Studies, gave a talk at the National Forum of Ethics and Archiving the Web and warned about the risks that come when the American government relies on social media companies to get their messages out. (Full disclosure: We were on a panel together.) We need [a]dditional approaches to ensure that public sector information created on private platforms can remain accessible beyond the lifespan of any one platform, he said. Todays Twitter could be tomorrows MySpace, but federal records require thinking on a much longer timescale. Advertisement Advertisement Im not really worried about Twitter going off the grid tomorrow, but Im uncomfortable with the fact that it has such great control over so much government-created expression. When I ask most federal agencies for their deleted tweets, at best they send me screenshots, and sometimes, those files look more like glitch art than anything else. So, partially out of frustration, partially out of fear, Ive adopted another strategy: Im using Rhizomes Webrecorder to make my own high-fidelity web archives of each federal agencys Twitter feed. (I received a small grant from Rhizome back in 2017 to support some of this work.) But even that system is incomplete. If I made a web archive of @USArmy on Nov. 27, 2017, it would not automatically add tweets posted afterward, and it wouldnt capture tweets deleted on the account before Nov. 27. Still, to me, this approach seems a thousand times better than just accepting what I get back from federal agencies themselves or relying on the Wayback Machines crawler to grab all federal agency tweets before theyre deleted. Advertisement Advertisement Advertisement Advertisement Advertisement With Webrecorder, even if a federal agency takes its Twitter feed offline, I can still access and scroll through my archive. Ive spent thousands of hours now calling up federal agencies, filing FOIA requests, asking for records of deleted tweets, and making web archives of government Twitter feeds. Im now beginning to look beyond the United States, looking into deletion binges and social media practices on government-run Twitter feeds around the world. I may be part of Generation Snapchat, but what Ive learned is that Im also unabashedly opposed to my government deleting or intentionally disappearing its own social media records. Id love to see a version of Politwoops for federal agencies, but thats a feat that I cannot undertake alone. Over the years, Ive come to feel this weird emotional connection to these Twitter feeds: I want them to live on in their entirety so that future generations can go back and see what a wacky world we inhabited. Is that really asking so much? Read the strange tale of the Joint Task Force of Guantanamos missing tweets. Update, May 11, 2018: This week, Georgia Gov. Nathan Deal vetoed SB 315, citing national security implications and other potential ramifications. Atlanta is still recovering from the ransomware attack that held government systems and data hostage, with attackers demanding $51,000 in return for unlocking them. The attack seriously disrupted things for more than a week, shutting down Wi-Fi in the worlds busiest airport, preventing the Department of Finance from issuing business licenses, and forcing one of the largest courts in the Southeast to reschedule thousands of cases and resort back to a paper-based system. Advertisement Even more troubling is that this case is not unique to Georgia. In a 2016 survey, more than one-quarter of chief information officers in local governments across the United States said that their computer systems were subject to some form of attempted cyberattack as often as once or more every hour. Given the increasing adoption of networked technology in state and local governments, its possible that the frequency of these attempted attacks has increased since the 2016 survey. In February and March, for instance, back-to-back ransomware attacks shut down Colorados Department of Transportation, causing widespread disruption and loss of data. While existing federal and state-level legislation already prohibits such malicious attacks, state and local officials want to take further action. Advertisement Advertisement Advertisement Advertisement Sometimes, the enthusiasm of these officials has led them to take action that is sorely misguided. On April 5, the Georgia State Legislature sent Senate Bill 315 to Gov. Nathan Deals desk for his signature. The bill largely focuses on cybercrime, but it goes awry in its penalties for all unauthorized access to computer systemseven if such access is well-intentioned. Proponents of the bill, including state Attorney General Chris Carr, argue that SB 315 will reduce cybercrime by creating harsher punishments for those who access computer systems without authorization. Cybersecurity experts, independent security researchers, and many representatives from the Georgia technology community, however, disagree. They argue that SB 315 will instead discourage independent cybersecurity research that often helps, not hurts, private companies and government agencies identify vulnerabilities in their computer systems. Advertisement Ethical independent cybersecurity research, sometimes labeled white hat research, is fairly common. Private citizens, including students, academics, and other cybercurious folks, intentionally poke around on computer systems every day to enhance their skills and find and report digital vulnerabilities. When notified of a vulnerability by a white hat researcher, companies and governments have the opportunity to patch that vulnerability and prevent it from being exploited. For example, in February, security researcher Anand Prakash discovered a simple vulnerability on Facebooks website that would have allowed him to view users messages, credit card information, photos, and other information. Clearly, this vulnerability needed to be fixed in order to protect users private information. He immediately notified Facebook, which fixed the flaw and then gave him $15,000 for the tip, a monetary reward offered through their bug bounty program. Advertisement Advertisement Another example of for-good white hat cybersecurity research occurred last summer during the global WannaCry attack. Attackers infected computers in more than 150 countries and demanded money in return for encrypted files. A white hat security researcher happened to discover a kill switch within the WannaCry bug. The researcher shared this fix, stopping the spread of the virus before it could wreak even more havoc on the nearly 200,000 victims, including hospitals, energy companies, high-tech manufacturers, and governments across the globe. Without the efforts of this researcher, the estimated $4 billion lost during the attack would have been even higher. (It should be noted that the researcher in this example is currently awaiting trial for an unrelated incident involving malware development, but the legal and cybersecurity communities have seriously questioned the merits of the case). Advertisement Advertisement If Georgia wants to be tough on cybercrime, it should be looking for ways to prevent it from happening in the first place. These sorts of stories happen all the time, even if they dont get much media coverage, and they help keep us all safe online. Whether or not these efforts would be illegal under SB 315 largely depends on which cases the attorney general chooses to prosecute. But if Deal signs SB 315 into law, it will certainly freeze this sort of well-intended but unauthorized access to a computer system by making such access illegal in Georgia, an offense punishable by up to one year in prison and a $5,000 fine. Without getting too bogged down in the legalese, SB 315 generally says that no one can ever intentionally access someone elses computer network without their permission. Ultimately, this restriction could freeze white hat cybersecurity researchers in their tracks for fear of prosecution. In fact, countless cybersecurity experts have expressed that very sentiment in public hearings, interviews, and statements on SB 315. According to the Electronic Frontier Foundation of Georgia, SB 315 is a dangerous bill with ramifications far beyond what the legislature imagined, including discouraging researchers from coming forward with vulnerabilities they discover in critical systems. Advertisement Advertisement Imagine the highly probable scenario in which a security researcher reads a blog describing a software vulnerability in a popular content management system. The CMS provider has already issued a patch for the vulnerability, but it requires the user to manually download an update. While on a public government website, the security researcher discovers that it uses the same CMS platform, but the software update has not been installed. Knowing that the website contains sensitive and highly confidential data, the researcher immediately notifies the web manager with instructions on how to patch the vulnerability. Under SB 315, that researcher would be committing a crime. Given that independent security researchers are doing no harm and are typically acting in the interests of their community, they should not be penalized for their actions. But theres no clause in the current version of SB 315 requiring that there be malicious intent, which means that even those well-meaning white hat researchers could be vulnerable to prosecution. Advertisement Advertisement Proponents of SB 315 may point to an exception for legitimate business activities, which would allow this sort of research to occur according to a formal agreement. But that carve-out would not cover those private citizens who conduct this sort of research outside of a formal contract. Currently, the bills legitimate business exception deviates from the federal standard under the Computer Fraud and Abuse Act and is poorly defined, muddying the waters on what constitutes legitimate security research and opening the door for an overzealous prosecutor to interpret the provision as he or she desires. Overall, SB 315 is viewed as more stringent than the CFAA, which is already criticized as too harsh and too easily subject to abuse. As a graduate of the Georgia Institute of Technology, I know countless computer science students and professors who would fall outside of this exemption and be liable under SB 315, especially if a prosecutor decided to interpret the business exception narrowly. Advertisement Advertisement There are other concerning aspects to the legislation too. For instance, SB 315 allows companies to engage in offensive countermeasures and cybersecurity active defense after theyve been breached. This provision is especially problematic because it allows companies to pursue so-called offensive hack-back actions that are both risky and widely considered by many security experts to be the worst idea in cybersecurity. Hacking back is illegal under federal law, and its stupid. According to Endgame CEO Nathaniel Fick,* hacking back is like getting bitten by a rattlesnake and, instead of seeking medical help and buying tougher boots, deciding to bite the snake back to teach it a lesson. Georgia has designs on becoming the nations leading cybersecurity state. But for that to happen, it must strengthen its laws to promote cybersecurity best practices, a healthy cybersecurity workforce, and cutting-edge cybersecurity research. SB 315 hinders progress toward each of these goals and Deal must veto it. If Georgia wants to be tough on cybercrime, it should be looking for ways to prevent it from happening in the first placewhich means it should encourage white hat cybersecurity research, leveraging the expertise of independent security researchers in order to better identify and patch computer vulnerabilities before a malicious hacker is able to attack. At the end of each semester, college students have a chance to give feedback to their professors in the form of student evaluations, basically rating them. On the whole, professors are often not really comfortable with this, which has led to a great deal of research on the topic. Critics of student evaluations tend to point out that they dont really measure the actual teaching effectiveness of a professor, only perceived teaching effectiveness. They also readily point out that the correlation between student evaluations and future student performance is weak. There are other fundamental concerns: Arguably, student evaluations come at the worst possible timeat the end of the semester, when it is too late for the professor to change anything about the course and usually too early for the students to fully appreciate the utility of what they learned in the class. Finally, there are fundamental conflicts of interest involved, given that professors who grade more harshly tend to receive lower ratings, and students have clear interest in their grades while professors depend on receiving good ratings for promotion, tenure, and so on. Were both researchers who have taught college students, so were quite familiar both with the process and the response from our colleagues. Advertisement Advertisement Advertisement Advertisement It is debatable what the best way of implementing student evaluations is and how this process can be improved. But few people dispute thatgiven the ever-increasing cost of higher education, which effectively turns students into customersstudents should have a voice to point out when teaching standards are not met. In an era where teaching quality matters less and less for the professional standing of professorsrelative to grants, publications, and administrative serviceit might be inconsiderate if not reckless to eliminate them altogether. This consensus has come increasingly under attack on a new front: by those who claim student evaluations are fundamentally flawed because they are inherently biased due to sexism and, as such, should be banned. We do not share this perspective, mostly due to our methodological concerns about the research undergirding the assumption. We understand that concerns about sexism pervade society and are difficult to assess in general, but we do not believe the existing literature on this topic provides a sufficient evidentiary basis for the claims they are making. The available research is complicated and varies in terms of quality as well as findingssome studies report a bias against women, but some note that female instructors receive slightly better ratings. Advertisement Advertisement For instance, a recent study purported to show that if students believe that their instructor is femaleregardless of the actual gender of the instructorthey rate the instructor statistically significantly lower in terms of fairness, praise, promptness, and overall rating. But this study was severely underpowered, with a sample size of 20 per group. And because the authors deployed many statistical tests on this sample, that has to be taken into account in the analysis, specifically by lowering the criterion for statistical significance. But it was not done hereif it had been, these results would no longer be significant, which suggests what they report are likely false positives, not real results. Advertisement In addition, these results were based on an online study. How relevant could any attribute of the professor have been, given that interactions in online studies are minimal? In other words, we are concerned that such an online course is not representative of in-class courses, with different student-professor interactions, which still make up the bulk of college courses. This is particularly problematic because it has been shown that people rely on stereotypes more if there is more uncertainty. If there is less uncertainty, as in an in-class setting, the effects of stereotypes could be expected to be much diminished. Indeed, there is usually no significant gender-based difference in student evaluations for in-class (not online) settings. Advertisement Advertisement Most recently, another paper made a radical case against student evaluations on the grounds that they are gender-biasedone of the authors expanded on this case in Slate, arguing that because evaluations are biased against women, using them to assess professors is a violation of anti-discrimination laws and should not be done. Again, we do not believe that the available empirical evidence warrants such drastic policy suggestions. In the study conducted by the Slate writer and her co-authors, they compared student evaluations of one pair of a male and a female instructor in an online course and found that the male professor received significantly higher evaluations than the female one. But were afraid nothing can be definitively concluded from a comparison based on a sample size of one pair. This is literally an anecdotepresumably there are a near-infinite number of differences between the female and the male instructor, gender being only one of many one could use as a basis for comparison. How do the authors know that it was gender that the students focused on and notsayteaching style? People are very different to begin with, so any experiment in psychology needs a large sample size to make sure that the signal one is looking for (in this case gender differences) is not drowned out by what is pejoratively called noise. (People are complicated, so pre-existing variability might be more appropriate.) Advertisement Advertisement Advertisement However, we realize that we wont convince anyone who doesnt already agree with us on the basis of these arguments, so we gathered data from RateMyProfessors.com, a popular website where students can rate their professors. Specifically, we scraped the reviews from 1 million faculty profiles and classified them as male or female, where an assignment could be made unambiguously. We used these reviews as a stand-in for teaching evaluations because those are not publicly available, but RMP profiles are. This is an acceptable proxy because the correlation between RMP ratings and evaluations is surprisinglyand sufficientlyhigh. If female professors suffered from lower rankings based on their genderas has been suggestedthe results of the analysis of the data we pulled would look something like this: Advertisement Advertisement Advertisement Basically, both men and women can be expected to vary in their teaching ability and the rating they consequently receive from students, but the entire male distribution would be shifted to the right, either because gender stereotypes confer an unearned ratings boost to them, by the virtue of being male, or because the female rates are artificially lowered relative to male ones, due to sexism. The larger this effect is, the more the average ratings of both groups will differ. Of course, there will be some overlapthe best female professors might be receiving higher ratings than the worst male professors, which is rendered in purple. Advertisement Advertisement Heres what we found: Advertisement You can see three important points in this figure. First, the two distributions are mostly overlapping, so gender and stereotype effects are extremely subtle. Second, there is no meaningful mean difference between the groups. The average of the male group is ever so slightly higher, but not by much. Heres an analogy to help explain the size of the effect we see here: The average U.S. adult takes 5,117 steps a day. If there were a performance-enhancing drug that could increase the number of steps someone takes in the same way gender affects student ratings, people taking that drug would get about 168 additional steps per day. If 5,117 steps is about 2.42 miles, the extra boost is about .07 miles, about 123 yards, or an additional walk to the mailbox. In other words, its an extremely small effect. And that presumes that there are no gender-related confounds, which is a big presumption. As the gender distribution of professors has changed over the years, male professors haveon averagemore experience than female ones. Professors with more experience (which in our study equals to more ratings) get better ratings. If we statistically account for this, even this subtle difference disappears. So we predict that as gender ratios of the faculty equilibrate in the future and male and female professors gain experience at an equal rate, this subtle mean difference will go away entirely. Finally, and most interestingly, women are overrepresented in the tails of the distribution. In other words, there are relatively more women among professors who are rated as truly amazing and who are perceived as absolutely terrible, with an overrepresentation of male professors sandwiched in between. Advertisement Advertisement Advertisement We want to emphasize how surprised and shocked we were when we saw this. Thats because in virtually all other domains anyone has lookedincome, general life outcomes (e.g., having a powerful position vs. being homeless or incarcerated), and even number of offspringmen are overrepresented in the tails of these distributions, with women being overrepresented in the middle. These discrepancies are often attributed to the difference in mens increased propensity to take risks. This makes intuitive sense: Risk-taking corresponds to gambling and gambles can be lost, in an uncertain world. Some risk-takers will come out on top, whereas others will lose and end up at the bottom of the distribution (or possibly die). The theory on why men take more risks on average is undergirded by evolution: No social group can afford to lose most of their women, whereas men are largely disposable and have been treated as such throughout history. Even today, men die several years earlier than women in most countries. Advertisement Anyway, all of this is to say we were quite surprised. But back to the case at hand, student evaluations dont deal with actual life outcomes and few teachers take much risk in the classroom in the first place. Instead, our data reflect students perception of teaching effectiveness. So here is what we think might explain the effect we found, a theory we call the Divergent Interpretation Due to Expectations model: Because we are evaluating professors, all of these are high-status leadership positions. As women have entered this profession relatively recently (in large numbers), it is reasonable to posit that stereotypes against them manifest as lowered expectations overall. The rest is basic psychology. If a female professor is objectively good, beating the low expectations, she will be perceived as amazingpeople will think that she overcame all the gender-based obstacles that were put in her path and came out ahead anyway, and she will end up on the far-right tail of the distribution. If a female professor is objectively bad, underperforming even the low expectations, she will be perceived as truly awful, students might suspect that she was hired just because she is a woman, and she will end up on the far-left tail of the distribution. Advertisement Advertisement Advertisement Bad female professors could end up feeling like they are discriminated against, and that might be understandable, because our results suggest this group is experiencing an effect that might be attributable to gender, albeit an extremely small one (These women might also realize that they are not great but not quite as bad as all the hostility they receive suggests.) In contrast, the amazing women in the right tail will simply attribute their success to themselves, not to stereotypes, as suggested by research on the self-serving bias in the attribution of causality. This also meshes with the often-expressed perception of minorities that they have to work harder or be better than average in order to be perceived as good. Advertisement We want to emphasize that this model is still very preliminary. To validate it, we would need to show that a similar effect exists for other minorities, e.g., for race or other characteristics, but RateMyProfessor does not provide race-related information about professors. Another avenue to validate this model would be to do cross-cultural research. Our data set had another characteristic that we decided to assess. In addition to asking basic questions about level of difficulty and whether youd take another class with the professor, students are invited to assess the hotness of a professor, with the options of yeah and um, no. Its worth noting that this is not a required evaluation criterion. Advertisement Advertisement Advertisement Advertisement If a professor has more positive hotness ratings than negative ones, they receive a pepper on the site. Looking at the distributions in Figure 3, it is clear that having a pepper (perceived hotness) correlates extremely closely with positive rankings: Advertisement Advertisement As this distribution shows, it is not impossible for a professor without the pepper to get a terrific rating, but it is much less likely. Moreover, professors with a pepper basically dont get terrible ratings: 85 out of 100 professors with a rating of 4.9 have the pepper, whereas only 2 in 100 with a rating of 2.1 do. This difference is striking. Again, if it was the performance-enhancing drug from before, and if it was as effective at increasing steps as peppers are at increasing ratings, it would now add about 3,884 extra steps per day, bringing the daily average of those who take this drug to more than 9,000 steps. In other words, it would be far more effective than any known public health intervention aimed at increasing physical activity. That is a dramatic effect, and in our sample, it is as strong in men as it is in women. Advertisement Advertisement So is the most important factor in student evaluations the professors physical appearance? We refuse to believe that peopleeven young studentsare actually that shallow. As this is purely correlational, we cant discern if attractive professors get good ratings or if professors who get good ratings are perceived as attractive. There are even other possibilities: Maybe professors who are good at their job are more confident than others and are thus perceived as more attractive. Maybe students award a pepper as a reward for a job well done. We cant discern these possibilities here, but we dont have to. We just wanted to illustrate what a strong effect looks like, and the effect of perceived physical attractiveness on student ratings is strong, whereas gender effects are not. Advertisement Advertisement Advertisement Figure 4: There is one final strong effect to consider, and that is the effect of perceived difficulty on perceived quality. As you can see (here, we show only profiles with more than 50 ratings to minimize visual clutter), this effect is also strongthere is a large negative correlation between difficulty and rating, per professor. In other words, professors who are perceived as difficult are perceived as low-quality, whereas those who are perceived as easy receive a high rating. It looks like students dont take too kindly to professors who are too demanding (difficult). Howeverand that is what is important for the purpose of this discussionthere is absolutely no evidence that students do this differently for men and women. As you can see from this figure, women and men are completely interspersed. There are no clear gendered trendswomen are not perceived as more difficult on the whole, and they are not more penalized for being more difficult. The correlations are the same in both subgroups. Advertisement Advertisement Advertisement As instructorsand instructors that teach subjects that students tend to perceive as difficult and demanding at thatwe can sometimes empathize with the desire to get rid of student evaluations altogether. In our experience, students do not hold back in evaluations when they feel wronged, and often for a student, being wronged means receiving a bad grade. This can certainly seem unjust to the instructor if that grade was well-deserved. So there is no question that the evaluation process itself can be improved. Maybe the very fact that sites like RateMyProfessors exist in the first place suggests that even students perceive the existing formal evaluation process as inadequate. But the available evidence does not suggest we should ban evaluations altogether, let alone for reasons that are not supported by empirical evidence. Though we maybe should have a serious talk about the pepper. We are also engaged in research on how individuals experience the world. If you want to help us with that, take this brief survey. Tika R Pradhan is a senior political correspondent for the Post, covering politics, parliament, judiciary and social affairs. Pradhan joined the Post in 2016 after working at The Himalayan Times for more than a decade. In 2015, an A.I.-powered Twitter bot did something a little out thereavant-garde, one might say. It tweeted, I seriously want to kill people, and mentioned a fashion event in Amsterdam. Dutch police questioned the owner of the bot over the death threat, claiming he was legally responsible for its actions, because it was in his name and composed tweets based on his own Twitter account. Its not clear whether tweeting I seriously want to kill people at a fashion event actually constitutes a crimeor even a crime against fashionin the Netherlands. But assume for a second that it did. Who would be responsible? The owner? The creator? The user it was impersonating? Advertisement Under an ongoing EU proposal, it might just be the bot itself. A 2017 European Parliament report floated the idea of granting special legal status, or electronic personalities, to smart robots, specifically those which (or should that be who?) can learn, adapt, and act for themselves. This legal personhood would be similar to that already assigned to corporations around the world, and would make robots, rather than people, liable for their self-determined actions, including for any harm they might cause. The motion suggests: Advertisement Advertisement Advertisement Creating a specific legal status for robots in the long run, so that at least the most sophisticated autonomous robots could be established as having the status of electronic persons responsible for making good any damage they may cause, and possibly applying electronic personality to cases where robots make autonomous decisions or otherwise interact with third parties independently. Advertisement Like corporate personhood, this status would be limited: Robots wouldnt have the right to vote or marry (sorry, technophiles). But the proposal, currently being considered as part of the European Commissions initiative on artificial intelligence, would make machines legal entities under European law, with accompanying rights and responsibilitieslike the responsibility not to tweet facetious death threats. If youre asking yourself how robots can make good on damages, dont worry, they wont own moneybut they could be compulsorily insured, using funds they accumulate for their owners, Politico recently suggested. Its a forward-thinking look at the inevitable legal ramifications of the autonomous-thinking A.I. that will someday be upon us, though its not without its critics. The proposal has been denounced in a letter released April 12, signed by 156 robotics, legal, medical, and ethics experts, who claim that the proposal is nonsensical and non-pragmatic. The complaint takes issue with giving the robots legal personality, when neither the Natural Person model, the Legal Entity model, nor the Anglo-Saxon Trust model is appropriate. There are also concerns that making robots liable would absolve manufacturers of liability that should rightfully be theirs. Advertisement Advertisement The proposal may be guided in some part by concerns about black box thinking: the idea that robots might someday decide to do things with motivations that are opaque and incomprehensible to uswho else to blame but the robot? But the critics argue that we are far from the point of needing this kind of law, technologically speaking. The letter signatories slammed the report, stating that the proposal is based on: Advertisement an overvaluation of the actual capabilities of even the most advanced robots, a superficial understanding of unpredictability and self-learning capacities and, a robot perception distorted by Science-Fiction and a few recent sensational press announcements. But while the thinking may be flawed (or driven by superficial understanding), doing this kind of thinking is not without its merits. John Frank Weaver, the author of Robots Are People, Too and a regular Future Tense contributor, argues that we need to start thinking about the legal framework for our Westworld-like future before its too late. Weaver has written about what it means to give robots various aspects of personhood, including the right to free speech, the right to citizenship, and legal protections (even for the ugly robots). As you can guess from the title of his book, he himself recommends limited legal personhood for robots, including the right to enter and perform contracts, the obligation to carry insurance, the right to own intellectual property, the obligation of liability, and the right to be the guardian of a minor. And while the Dutch Twitter bot didnt follow through on its threat, its clear the potential for autonomous robo-harm is already on our hands, with numerous fatal self-driving car crashes in the past month alone. Robots may not be thinking for themselves yet, but they are certainly thinking. With great processing power comes great responsibility. Whoor whatholds it is still to be determined. Also in Future Tense: Read a short story by sci-fi author Paolo Bacigalupi about a murderous robot and product liability. This article is part of Watching YouTube, a Slate series about YouTube. Over the weekend, another viral video made the news. On Thursday in Philadelphia, two black men were removed from a Starbucks by police at the behest of the stores manager, who said they had tried to use the bathroom without buying something. A patron filmed the incident and posted it on Twitter, where it soon went viral. A second video was uploaded to YouTube. Since then, the story has made national news, with the CEO of Starbucks apologizing and announcing that all Starbucks employees will soon undergo training to recognize unconscious bias. Advertisement Advertisement Advertisement Advertisement The Philadelphia Starbucks story is an example of an individual injustice that illustrates a broader onein this case, systemic racism. Its virality illustrates the ease and rapidity with which a news video that resonates with viewers on an elemental level can spread across the world. For all their flaws, social-media platforms like YouTube and Twitter perform a great service by helping regular people capture and surface stories that the traditional news media might ordinarily miss, or see but deem unworthy of coverage. Advertisement This story, it is safe to say, would not have been a story without Twitter and YouTube. I dont just mean that we wouldnt have seen the footage of the incident if these platforms hadnt been willing to host it. I mean that in an earlier era, when the press was more consolidated, the Starbucks incident would almost surely not have made the news. Two men ejected from Starbucks is not the sort of hook that would have once captured the imagination of a city editor. But citizen journalists, for better or worse, are not constrained by the blinders of a traditional newsroom. A decade ago, about when the phrase citizen journalist entered the lexicon, many professional journalists were terrified that an army of enthusiastic amateurs would soon put them out of work by doing their jobs for free. They spent a lot of time disparaging the presumed flaws in this plan. Citizen journalists might be able to run out and cover a fire, for instance, but theyd never be able to investigate corruption at city hall, and they may not have the same familiarity with flawed building codes that a seasoned beat reporter might have; thats the sort of thing you heard a lot of at journalism conferences back then. Occasionally, we would discuss ways that citizen journalists could be co-opted into helping professionals without displacing them, such as capturing breaking-news footage that reporters could then incorporate into their stories. The public, optimistically, might become something like a worldwide team of news interns, performing low-level newsgathering at professional journalists behests, all for the thrill of being part of the news. Advertisement Advertisement Advertisement This co-option scenario has basically come true, in the sense that mainstream media organizations now regularly embed nonjournalists news-adjacent tweets, images, and videos into the stories they publish. (These social-media users might not think of themselves as citizen journalists, but the effect is the same.) The twistand its a big oneis that more and more often, these civilians end up setting the mainstream medias news agenda rather than the other way around. The mistake the whither journalism? pundits made was in assuming that citizen journalists would approach the act of newsgathering from a journalists perspective, that they would want to mimic and mirror a professional journalists priorities. Journalists want big stories. Scoops. A fire, a murder, a trail of corruption, that sort of thing. Journalists are trained to ignore, or not notice, individual microaggressions unless they fit into a pattern that can then be used to illustrate a broader narrative. Its not that journalists dont care about fighting injustice. Indeed, a keen sense of right and wrong, and a desire to bring malefactors to justice, is one of the main reasons that people pursue this thankless and often low-paying career. But we tend to look for systemic greed and corruption: public officials taking bribes, corporations flouting the law, and so on. Advertisement Advertisement Nonjournalists, too, are interested in injusticebut lacking the access and perhaps the ambition that many journalists enjoy, they are better equipped to document small stories rather than big ones. I dont mean to be overly broad here. Journalists often do cover tales of local-scale injustice. I am thinking specifically of the Help Me Howardstyle consumer-advocacy journalism in which local news stations often engage. You know the genre: The station sends a camera crew to a local business to get justice for a viewer who was unfairly denied a refund, or that kind of thing. But with these types of stories, I always get the sense that the news station wants viewers to think Thank goodness for my local newscast, without which this story would have never been told. More and more, thats simply not true. Advertisement Advertisement The mistake the whither journalism? pundits made was in assuming that citizen journalists would approach the act of newsgathering from a journalists perspective. The You in YouTube implies that the platform is whatever you, the user, want it to be. Many users use it and other social media platforms as a way to voice opinions that are underrepresented and to share footage that, to them, feels newsworthy. Sometimes it is, by anyones standards. Citizen videographers often capture footage of incidents that would have always counted as real news: The clip of the white nationalist who drove a car into a group of demonstrators in Charlottesville, Virginia, springs to mind, as does the footage of the New York Police Department officer choking Eric Garner. But they also film and share things like the Philadelphia Starbucks incident that, under traditional journalistic mores, would not have ever been considered stories at all. Advertisement Advertisement The news videos that go viral on social media often documents acts of shocking official pettiness that provoke immediate emotional reactions: the United Airlines passenger forcibly removed from an airplane; the University of CaliforniaDavis police officer who pepper-sprayed a group of protesters who were sitting peacefully on the ground. There are many, many others; those two are just the two that immediately spring to mind. My sense is that few journalists would have covered these incidents as stories in and of themselves; if they would have written about them at all, it would have been as anecdotes in a broader story about some larger point. The citizen journalists of YouTube, Twitter, and other platforms have done this too. They have spun a series of individual incidents into a big story: pervasive authoritarianism, systemic racism, and the abuse of power by authority figures. The individual videos make the individual incidents impossible to ignore. The corpus of videos, as a whole, ties each individual video into a broader systemic story. It is a story that would not have been told in the mainstream media without the diligent work of a distributed network of unaffiliated citizen videographers linked by a single platform. When I write that another viral video made the news, I do not just mean that the Philadelphia Starbucks video got covered in the mainstream press. I also mean that the video forced the story into the mainstream, encouraging countless journalists to take the facts of the incident as documented in the initial clip and go out there and advance the story. Once again, YouTube and Twitter acted as an assignment editor for the mainstream media. Good assigning. Most people havent noticed that theres an official Twitter feed for the Joint Task Force of Guantanamo (@JTFGTMO), the U.S. military installation responsible for managing the detention facility. Even fewer people noticed that something odd has happened: Whoever runs the account has deleted more than 500 tweets since the summer of 2016. Im a millennial, so when I began academic research on Guantanamo in February 2015, my first step was to find the U.S. militarys official Twitter feed for the naval base. At first, I opted not to follow because it seemed clogged and cluttered with Facebook links. But in summer 2016, curiosity got the better of me. I returned to @JTFGTMO and was pleasantly surprised by the feed, its quirks, and its smattering of inspirational quotes. I became follower No. 1,021. I especially liked the fact that, in April 2016, someone at Gitmo had gotten really into Ralph Waldo Emerson and Winston Churchill: Advertisement Advertisement Advertisement Advertisement There were also tweets about mature content on the American Forces Network, the importance of consent, and local brew. Advertisement Advertisement Advertisement But in August 2016, tweets began disappearing from the feed. On Aug. 2, 2016, there were 1,097 tweets. On Aug. 24, the number was 901. On Sept. 7, it was 716. On Nov. 25, 2016, the tweet tally was down to 509. On Jan. 26, 2017, it went up to 536. And now, as of April 6, 2018, its up to 650. This discovery felt like the digital equivalent of finding entire chapters missing from a history book. Now, if you go and skim through @JTFGTMO, its a celebration of diversity, dental hygiene, and even Dr. Seuss. Gone are the weird and delightful tweets that offered a window into military culture on the base. Advertisement I was interested in knowing what prompted @JTFGTMO to delete all those tweets. (In what may be a coincidence, I had retweeted some of those Emerson and Churchill quotes in August, about the time when tweets started to disappear.) So, I reached out to the Joint Task Forces media representative in the hopes that they would set the record straight. Was this mass deletion of tweets intentional or the result of a rogue individual? Were the tweets coming back? Advertisement Advertisement According to the former Joint Task Force Public Affairs Officer U.S. Navy Capt. John Filostrat, many of the deletes happened out of concern that they revealed too much information about the base and the service members stationed there. As for the motivational tweets, he said that they were removed because they had no relevance to JTF-GTMO operations. Advertisement Advertisement The tweets that shared too much had mostly originated from The Wirenot the HBO show, but a publication for and by those stationed at the Joint Task Force. Its a publication I was already familiar with, having read back-issues on a military website. But that page now displays a 404 error. Was it being printed anymore? Would I still be able to read entire issues, or had some content been deemed unsuitable for civilian readers? Filostrat responded that the articles and photos from The Wire were still posted on the Joint Task Forces public website. In December 2016, when I pointed out that the link for The Wire was a blank page, he responded, Our currently website is undergoing changes as we migrate to a new server and system. Of course, eliminating links to entire issues of The Wire doesnt remove them from the internet. For instance, issues of The Wire from June 14, 2002July 15, 2016, are accessible here on the Internet Archives Wayback Machine. Advertisement But useful as the Wayback Machine is, it is not enough. For starters, the Joint Task Force started its Twitter feed back in May 2010, but the Wayback Machine only saved its first copy of the Twitter feed on Sept. 27, 2012. If the Joint Task Force had tweeted and then deleted a bunch of tweets between May 2010 and September 2012, we likely wouldnt have ever known. So, what I do now is make my own web archives using Rhizomes Webrecorder, a project that just received a $1 million grant from the Andrew W. Mellon Foundation. (Full disclosure: In 2016, I was a fellow at the Harvard Law Library Innovation Lab with Rhizomes software director, Ilya Kreymer; in 2017, I received a microgrant to create archives of federal agencies Twitter feeds. That work is ongoing.) Out of fearand because I dont fully trust the Joint Task Force to be transparentI periodically go to its Twitter feed and archive the latest tweets from the detention facilities, because you never know when someone there might decide to go on a deletion binge. Just last December, more than a year after I first followed the Twitter feed, I stopped printing out tweets and instead made my own archive; days later, the most recent tweet from November, a photo of JTF troopers participating in what had been titled a Figure and Fitness Competition, was nowhere to be found. Advertisement Advertisement Advertisement Advertisement And as trivial as some of the deleted tweets may seem, they are still windows into a world most of us will never witness firsthand. As a concerned citizen and doctoral student focusing on military communication and digital culture, it aggravates me that someone saw it fit to take an eraser to the lived experiences of people serving in the military. This tweet, it turns out, was deleted sometime before Defense Secretary Jim Mattis made a surprise visit to the base. I wish I could talk to whoever hit delete on this tweet. I might even give them a tutorial on web archivingto demonstrate that yes, Im watching, albeit from afar. Advertisement Advertisement When it comes to @JTFGTMOs followers, Ill admit that we are a diverse and fairly small group: As of April 6, there are 1,945 of us. There are Trump supporters, a self-described national security law nerd, plenty of habeas corpus attorneys, veterans, and a hodgepodge of others. But who does the @JTFGTMO really tweet for? Certainly not former detainees, a growing number of whom are now on Twitter. Thousands of people have shaped the legacy of Gitmo. Some have certainly been more influential than others, but each personwhether a journalist, Marine, translator, U.S. representative, senator, or presidentfits into the larger historical puzzle. To understand Gitmo, we cant just analyze its policies; we have to also look at its people, and what they want to show and tell the world about its policies, practices, and landscape. I took my frustration via email to Andrew Hoskins, an interdisciplinary research professor of global security at the University of Glasgow. He believes that digital gatekeepers wield great power and are rarely held accountable for their role in reshaping organizations historical narratives. The historical record of organizational culture, he wrote, is particularly vulnerable to reshaping when it is part carried through social media. JTF media managers therefore need to publish a complete archive of all their official social media postings and curation, if they want to avoid suspicion of having something to hide, and to ensure that @JTFGTMO lives up to their transparent motif. Advertisement Advertisement Advertisement When I read his words, I muttered to myself, Well, thats never going to happen. Advertisement Still, as a researcher, I regard a tweet from the official Joint Task Force of Guantanamo Twitter feed as a window into a place most U.S. citizens will never visit in person. There are, certainly, others, who tweet from the facility. Carol Rosenberg, a journalist with the Miami Herald, has tweeted thousands of messages during her many visits to Gitmo. Over the past 15 years, a number of human rights attorneys, including David Remes and James Connell, have also turned to Twitter to explain the challenges that they have faced while representing their clients who are detainees at Gitmo. A number of veterans have tweeted about Gitmo after concluding their service. I have not yet encountered anyone on active duty maintaining a Twitter feed from Gitmo, but we can all imagine why: Many accounts run by individuals stationed at the detention facility are likely locked, lacking profile info, or simply nonexistent. There are obvious reasons to suspect why Facebook is probably more popular among service members at Gitmo: Its easier to keep journalists and activists out. Advertisement Advertisement Advertisement I myself went to Gitmo in June 2017. I chose not to tweet during my time there. It wasnt a strategic decision. There was a lot to say, and there was even decent wireless in my apartment. But I chose to take notes, to go for walks at night, to speak about what I saw into a dinky recorder. I didnt know what to say, what to tweet. I decided after my first day that it was futile to try to hash out my mixed emotions toward the medium: I would simply abstain. I kept an audio diary, and to date, I havent shared those files with anyone. I saw and felt things at Gitmo that couldnt fit within a single tweet. Advertisement The managers of @JTFGTMO are trying to do right by their Twitter feed in an extremely complex environment. But are their tactics really all that different from their offline behavior? I often come back to a line in Murder at Camp Delta, a book by Joseph Hickman, a former U.S. Army staff sergeant who served at the detention facilities at Gitmo. In his book, he talks about how guards would try to make sure everything looked its best when journalists visited and put on an act or them. In many ways, the Twitter feed is just that: a piece of digital theatre, a spectacle of security. We rarely get a glimpse of what happens backstage. But thanks to the power of web archiving I, this audience of one, can make sure that these deleted tweets are available for future generations to seeas they should be. And while we may never know the identities of all who work in the darkness, we can resist this theatrical stunt. Read about Muira McCammons weird, tedious, and infuriating attempt to track down federal agencies policies around deleting tweets. On the importance of customer experience in an era when the customer is always right. Font size: A - | A + The decisions we make in life are based on memories and experiences. The creation of positive memorable experiences is becoming the new battleground to improve customer value. How do companies operating on the Slovak market approach this challenge and which ones are winning over customers? Year after year, organizations strive to improve and deliver better experiences for their customers. However, although many firms intuitively understand the importance of linking memory with experience, few really know how to go about successfully implementing such a strategy. Many brands invest heavily in making changes for and around the customer and, when done well, the rewards can be substantial. And the customers preference goes to... According to a new KPMG study, The DNA of Customer Experience, the private passenger carrier RegioJet is the champion in meeting customer expectations, followed by Martinus.sk, CINEMAX, IKEA and Lidl. These companies understand best what their clients needs are, value them, offer them relevant products and services, know how to help them and are friendly and reliable at the same time. From a sectoral perspective, the most successful area when it comes to providing the best client experience is retail. The DNA of Customer Experience is a unique study based on mapping the experiences of Slovak customers with the brands they interacted with in the past six months. The testimonies of 2,200 respondents from across Slovakia were evaluated by the unique six pillars methodology developed by KPMG Nunwood. What does the client experience mean to the current Slovak champion, RegioJet? Feedback. If the customer decides to share what they were happy with or, on the contrary, what we should improve, then this provides us with invaluable information on how to improve our product. The customer evaluated our work and pointed us in the right direction, said Radim Jancura, Director of RegioJet. Personalization matters the most The results of the KPMG study showed that the most important factor regarding customer experience in Slovakia is personalization, i.e. understanding and adapting to the needs and feelings of the customer. Slovak consumers appreciate companies that act quickly, efficiently, simply and without creating unnecessary obstacles. From a sectoral perspective, the retail sector leads in the area of client experience. Five brands representing retail have placed among the ten best rated companies in Slovakia. Common elements of the positive customer experience in this segment were: a large selection of quality goods, an easy-to-use website and e-shop and speed of delivery. In-store purchase was the preferred option of more than half of respondents. The Slovak customer is sensitive to the environment in which they buy, and with the development of the economy and society, their demands as regards the quality of services are rising. An understanding of the customer and their satisfaction are now directly linked to the companys commercial success, said Rudolf Sedmina, Management Consulting Partner, KPMG in Slovakia. The same methodology was also used to evaluate customer experience in the Czech Republic, where the key element of customer experience is integrity. The Czech customer appreciates when companies act fairly and honestly. Both Czech and Slovak customers positively perceive the ability of brands to effectively solve problems when they arise. There is room for improvement as regards meeting client expectations and expressing empathy. Details will help you win the battle Doing the right things for customers, as it is fair, is a way of doing business, rather than just a pose. Customers believe in companies which work for their benefit and not for the benefit of shareholders. The customers voice is worth more than the voice of money. Perfection is all about details. Focus on detail and excellence will follow. Every experience is the sum of a few smaller experiences and a focus on detail at every moment. This will make your company unique and differentiate you from your competitors. About the Study KPMG Nunwood, the Customer Experience Excellence Centre, is the worlds largest think-tank focused on customer experience. Every year, it evaluates the best brands in the world and compiles the top 100 ranking of companies providing the best customer service. Each outstanding customer experience is measured using the unique six-pillar metric The Six PillarsTM. This methodology has been used for the first time in Slovakia. Data collection took place in 2Q 2017. Customer experience with 120 brands in eight sectors was described by 2,200 respondents across Slovakia, creating 33,000 unique ratings. Rudolf Sedmina is Partner and Head of Management Consulting at KPMG Originally published in Connection, the magazine published by AmCham Slovakia 17. Apr 2018 at 11:30 | Rudolf Sedmina Uber to appeal against court ban from operating taxi service in Slovakia It wants to resume its services in Bratislava as soon as possible. The US alternative taxi service Uber will appeal against a court order banning it from operating its taxi service in Slovakia via people and vehicles that fail to meet the requirements set by Slovak legislation. Miroslava Jozova, Ubers spokeswoman for Slovakia and the Czech Republic, has informed. The Bratislava I District Court failed to deliver the decision on the injunction correctly leaving room for appeal. The court informed us that the decision was not delivered correctly, so we now have the opportunity to appeal against it, said Jozova, as cited by the TASR newswire on April 13. At this point we are analysing the courts decision and we will make an appeal as soon as possible because we believe that services such as Uber should be a standard part of the options for mobility in every modern city. Read also: Read also: Uber out of service in Bratislava, for now Read more Uber intends to do its utmost to return to Bratislava as soon as possible. Before its services were banned by the court, Uber was the most popular city mobility application in Bratislava, claims Jozova. A survey showed that over 80 percent of people in the Slovak capital want our application to remain here and function, she said. Uber had to stop operating its taxi service in Slovakia as it uses people and vehicles that fail to meet the requirements set by Slovak legislation. Its also been banned from operating its taxi service with drivers that fail to meet the same conditions required from taxi drivers. The Bratislava I District Court issued the respective verdict in mid-February and the company switched off its mobile application in Slovakia on March 27. The courts decision was the result of a complaint filed by the Civic Association of Licensed Taxi Drivers (OZKT) against Uber in January. The association described this as the logical outcome of its several-month fight for equality in business in the field of taxi services. The court fully identified itself with our claims, thus confirming the fact that Uber was operating taxi services via drivers and vehicles that are at odds with Slovak legislation and harm the business environment, OZKT representatives told TASR in March. Over 100,000 users have registered with the Uber application since it appeared on the Slovak market more than two years ago. Bratislava taxi drivers have repeatedly protested against Uber since its arrival, claiming that it was ignoring Slovak legislation and that with its extremely low prices, the service was distorting the business environment. 17. Apr 2018 at 6:21 | Compiled by Spectator staff Extremist MP sentenced for racism again Specialised Criminal Court fined Milan Mazurek 5,000 for his verbal attacks on Roma. The judge of the Specialised Criminal Court in Banska Bystrica found the MP for the far-right Peoples Party - Our Slovakia (LSNS) Milan Mazurek guilty of committing the crime of defamation and threatening people due to their race, nationality, skin colour or ethnicity. A fine of 5,000 was imposed on him. The verdict is identical with that from last December which both parties challenged. The latest verdict is not effective yet as both parties again want to challenge it. The prosecutor because he considers the punishment to be too mild and Mazurek because he claims that he is innocent. Read also: Read also: MP for far-right party is accused of defamation of race Read more Mazurek committed the deed as a public official during a broadcast of Radio Frontinus in October 2016. 17. Apr 2018 at 6:04 | Compiled by Spectator staff Gaspar: I will fight this fight to the end Police corps president says he will step down, but only if the outgoing interior minister or his successor asks him to. Font size: A - | A + Police Corps President Tibor Gaspar will remain in his post despite protesters in the streets calling for his demission. At his April 17 press conference, reacting to the resignation of Tomas Drucker as interior minister the day before, he also claimed that he does not believe the voices against him in the streets of Bratislava represent the opinion of all society. "The depoliticisation of the police the streets are calling for so much, is paradoxically political when it comes to the slogans regarding myself," Gaspar said, adding that within this play on emotions that leaves out reasonable arguments "a non-functioning picture of the police corps is being created". Read also: Read also: UPDATED: Drucker resigns as interior minister Read more Gaspar used the press conference to present his achievements during his career in the police corps, as its president and also before, explaining that out of respect to the thousands of police officers and his own family he feels the need to defend himself. Drucker handed over his resignation personally to President Andrej Kiska on the same day. Kiska assigned PM Peter Pellegrini to oversee the Interior Ministry while coalition was searching for Drucker's successor. "I decided to take responsibility for the next step, because that is what is needed and necessary at this time," Pellegrini told journalists, asking them to give him a few hours. He will reveal the next steps regarding the Interior Ministry this afternoon. Drucker is no longer interior minister. Pellegrini takes over in the interim. (Source: Sme) Gaspar says he will not resign of his own volition but will step down if the new minister (now Pellegrini) asks him to. "I will not resign, I will fight this fight to the end," Gaspar told journalists. He stressed that he believes the priority should be passing a new law on the selection of his successor. Students from the #niejenamtojedno initiative will gather in front of the Interior Ministry at 15:00 to show that citizens are still aware what issues are important. 17. Apr 2018 at 12:03 | Michaela Terenzani Hungarian MEP: Without the protests, nothing would have changed EP delegation member Benedek Javor was frightened when Robert Fico, then still prime minister, started making allegations concerning George Soros in their conversation. The Slovak Spectator spoke with Javor, a member of the European Parliaments delegation that came to Slovakia in early March to look at the murder investigation of investigative journalist Jan Kuciak and his fiancee Martina Kusnirova as well as suspicions of abuse of agricultural subsidies, about his impression from the meetings, the measures planned to protect journalists, and the importance of public-service media for the European Union. Read also: Read also: MEPs call for investigation into the disappearance of journalists Read more The Slovak Spectator (TSS): You visited Slovakia amid a deep political crisis as part of the official EP delegation. The murder of Jan Kuciak and the crisis that followed is believed to be a turning point for the country. What was your impression? Benedek Javor (BJ): My impression was that there was clearly a need for change. Society absolutely lost its trust in the government. If the government had reacted more quickly to the first demands from the public to remove the interior minister and the head of police, the whole story could have been settled with less loss for the government. The government believed they could survive the crisis without major changes, which I think was a wrong understanding of the situation. They realised too late that they needed to act. By that time the demands went far beyond those original ideas. Still, there is some tension, there are many people who believe that this is the same government with different faces, and nothing has substantially changed. We have to keep our eyes on the development in Slovakia, if the steps of the new government can calm society and offer solutions for the crisis. Read also: Read also: Former diplomat: UK will remember Slovakia kept silent in Skripal case Read more TSS: From your observations during talks with government members, were there indications that resignation was an option? BJ: I think that the resignation of Interior Minister [Robert] Kalinak had already been decided, but it wasnt communicated to us. I think that at the time they still hoped that with some minor modifications they could survive the crisis. We didnt receive any indications neither from PM [Robert] Fico nor from other officials of a willingness to major reshuffles in the government. TSS: Hungary has been struggling with tendencies of diverting the country away from the path of liberal democracy. Did you see any similar symptoms in Slovakia during your visit, when you met with the now former PM Robert Fico and other governmental and non-governmental representatives? BJ: Not really. When we had meetings with Slovakias officials, they were really constructive and cooperative. They assured us that they are ready to cooperate, really committed to European fundamental rights and values, and it was in their best interest to follow them. They always underlined that Slovakia is a stable basis for European integration process and the troubles of the region. 17. Apr 2018 at 11:58 | Radka Minarechova RegioJet buses to connect eastern Slovakia with Ukraine Private carrier enters Ukrainian market with a new international bus connection. Private carrier RegioJet is entering Ukraine with the new Kosice Michalovce Uzhgorod Mukachevo international bus line. It started operating on Sunday, April 15. The connection to the Zakarpattia Oblast will run once a day and serve as a connection to the companys trains between Prague and Kosice. If the train is late, the bus will wait for the passengers, the SITA newswire wrote on April 13. The buses leave Kosice bus station each evening at 23:00 and arrive to Mukachevo at 4:10 (local time). In the opposite direction, the buses will leave Mukachevo at 15:15 and arrive to Kosice at 18:45. RegioJet expands RegioJet will operate bus routes with partner carriers Sanytour and TOV Zakarpateuroliniji, whose buses will be labelled with the RegioJet logo. The company expects the new bus route to be used not only by tourists but also working people who will travel by bus or train to Slovakia and the Czech Republic, or switch for other buses of the carrier and travel further to European cities, owner of RegioJet Radim Jancura noted. The company also plans to increase its services in Germany and Austria. 17. Apr 2018 at 13:40 | Compiled by Spectator staff A new cheese factory opens in Senica Apart from camembert, it will produce hard cheeses, steamed cheeses and the traditional unpasteurised Slovak sheep cheese, bryndza, as well as employ around 40 people. In Senica, the new cheese factory of the Agro Tami company has launched operation. Apart from camembert, it will produce hard cheeses, steamed cheeses and the traditional unfermented Slovak sheep cheese, bryndza, the SITA newswire wrote on April 13. The new facility should, in full operation, employ 40 people and produce 10 tonnes of cheese daily, the Agriculture Ministry stated. Tradition combined with modern technology I enjoy every new facility of Slovak origin, and I am happy to welcome the opening of Agro Tami's new cheese factory, minister Gabriela Matecna wrote. This is a Slovak-only company with Slovak capital, which gives added value to the food sector; and the company has been connected to dairy production for more than half a century. The Senica factory is a unique modern facility that can boast, among other things, an automated forming line for cheeses with white mould, which is absolutely unique in Slovakia, she added. A special air conditioning is used in the cheese factory, since camembert cheese ripens for eight days. However, each air conditioning unit is separate, since various cheeses need different air humidity, temperature and climatic conditions during ripening, Agro Tami owner Mikulas Bobak explained. The company daily processes around 600,000 litres of dairy milk and part of this amount is then made into cheeses. 17. Apr 2018 at 22:40 | Compiled by Spectator staff Residents criticise decision to ban rallies at Maitighar Many residents on Monday criticised the governments decision to ban demonstrations at Maitighar Mandala on social media forums. Most people said the ban is anti democracy and against peoples right to demonstrate peacefully. Kusnirovas mother represented by Hedviga Malinova's lawyer Police officers mentioned in the stories of Jan Kuciak should not be allowed to see the corresponding file, lawyer argues. In the double murder case of journalist Jan Kuciak and his fiancee Martina Kusnirova, her mother Zlatica Kusnirova has changed the lawyer representing her and her family in the case. Instead of Daniel Lipsic (former politician and co-founder of the Nova party), she has hired Roman Kvasnica. Lipsic remains the lawyer of the Kuciak family, the Sme daily wrote on April 17. Kvasnica said for the daily that the first thing to do is to ascertain that even the police officers whom Kuciak wrote about are not allowed to read the file, nor anyone mentioned in Kuciaks stories and documents. The investigation of the double murder that shook the country seven weeks ago has still not fundamentally progressed, according to the data available. Police President Tibor Gaspar said there are still several versions of the case, thus disproving speculations that just one version is left. Those involved should not have access None of the persons mentioned in (Jan Kuciaks) stories may learn about the contents of the investigation file, since they must be part of the investigation version, I think, Kvasnica opined for Sme. The lawyer suggested to the investigator that all of Kuciaks stories from past two years become part of the file; then, he can decide who should not be informed about the partial results of the investigation. I also asked the investigator to exempt this file from their information system, Nakatok, which enables superiors to study parts of the investigation files, Kvasnica added. The Sme daily suggested last week that information on the case may leak to those involved through a police information channel. After taking over the legal representation of the Kusnirs, Kvasnica asked the investigator whether he could have a look at the file but so far, it seems he will not be allowed to do so. Representing Malinova and Volzova Roman Kvasnica was originally a prosecutor, but after 1991, he became a lawyer. He has won several crucial law cases including against the state, which illegally wiretapped him. Read also: Read also: Former TV Markiza co-owner accused of attempted murder remains in custody Read more Apart from the case of Sylvia Volzova, a former business partner of ex-minister of economy (ANO party) Pavol Rusko, Kvasnica represented Hedviga Malinova. Read also: Read also: TV Markiza sold from under feet of boss Read more Kvasnica became her lawyer after current Justice Minister Gabor Gal (Most-Hid) gave up on the case. The former tried to prove that Malinova really was attacked by two extremists who targeted her because she allegedly spoke Hungarian on the phone, and did not imagine it, as ex-interior minister Robert Kalinak and ex-prime minister Robert Fico claimed. Read also: Read also: Malinova case nears end Read more Officially, the case of Hedviga Malinova (dating back to 2006) was taken over by Hungarian Prosecutors Office at the beginning of 2017. Until now, there has been no progress in the case; in the meantime, Malinova married, started a family and is living in Hungary. 17. Apr 2018 at 13:51 | Compiled by Spectator staff Antonino Vadala charged with subsidy fraud The Italian businessman active in eastern Slovakia is in pre-trial custody and may be put into extradition custody by Italian prosecutors. The Italian businessman enterprising in Slovakia, Antonino Vadala, is still in pre-trial custody as of April 17. He faces other criminal charges of attempted subsidy fraud. Based on the binding instruction of the head of the Special Prosecutors Offices (USPs) department of economic criminality, Maros Zilinka, the National Criminal Agencys (NAKAs) investigator launched criminal prosecution on April 9 with a ruling from April 13, and filed a charge against Antonino Vadala for subsidy fraud and for attempting to harm the European Communities financial interests, USP spokesperson, Jana Tokolyova, told the TASR newswire on April 17. Attempt at subsidy fraud behind custody She added that the prosecution is also focusing on Vadalas attempt in 2009 to lure the Agriculture Paying Agency (PPA) of the European Union to pay out subsidies amounting to 119,917.67 through the BIO-FINIS company, which he legally represented. He falsely declared liabilities connected with the conditions for the agricultural subsidies to be paid. If convicted, Vadala faces a prison sentence of three to ten years. The defendant will remain in custody, which was decided by a three-member panel of the Slovak Supreme Court (NS SR) during its non-public session on April 12, thus rejecting Vadalas complaint against preliminary custody. As the spokeswoman for the Supreme Court, Alexandra Vazanova, told the SITA newswire, the Supreme Court considers the decision of the Regional Court in Kosice to take him into pre-trial custody legal and correct. European warrant anticipated The Regional Court of Kosice will again decide on his fate, based on the proposal of the regional prosecutor to move the Italian suspect from pre-trial to extradition custody. The prosecutor could do so only after he received the original of the European warrant of apprehension from Italian prosecution bodies last week, TASR wrote, adding that they were also waiting for the Slovak Supreme Courts decision on Vadalas complaint. Vadala is prosecuted against in Italy for illicit trafficking in narcotics and psychotropic substances and for participation in a criminal conspiracy for illicit drug trafficking. Police detained him on March 13 and the Kosice Regional Courts judge decided two days later on his pre-trial custody, which Vadala appealed against. The murdered journalist Jan Kuciak wrote about Vadalas activities in Slovakia among other topics before his death, TASR summed up. 17. Apr 2018 at 21:41 | Compiled by Spectator staff Weapons are smuggled through Slovakia, Czech journalists reveal They reportedly end up in Azerbaijan, which is banned from weapons exports. Bratislava airport is used as a transit point for smuggling Czech rocket launchers and howitzers to Azerbaijan, on which a ban on the export of military material was imposed due to its conflict with Armenia. The weapons are reportedly produced by the Czechoslovak Group holding, owned by Czech armourer Jaroslav Strnad, according to Czech Television. The company rejects the claims. However, shortly after broadcasting the previous report on the topic, an employee of the Slovak arms factory MSM spoke up and described how the old weapons are rebuilt in the Trencin-based company and are then transported via Israel to Azerbaijan, the TASR newswire reported. Exports monitored The information was leaked after the Azerbaijani army boasted with the weapons of Czech origin in an ad. They showed the following devices: the modernised self-propelled gun, the Dana howitzer, with a range of 18 kilometres, and the multiple launch rocket system Vampir, with a 20-kilometre range. The whole process starts with bringing the old DANA howitzer that is disassembled directly in the company, the MSM employee described to the reporters of the Czech Television, as quoted by TASR. Read also: Read also: Foreigners again used Slovak guns to kill Read more First, they disassemble the tower in Trencin, while the chassis is sent to the plant of Tatra in Sternberk, also owned by Strnad. The rebuilding takes some two-three weeks, and then the chassis is sent back to Slovakia. Meanwhile, the tower is restored as well. The howitzer is then reassembled and undergoes the ballistic test. The new facilities, including navigation, camera and communication systems, are sent from Israel, the employee added. The employee also revealed they signed a contract for distributing 18 howitzers and 15 rocket launchers this year, and the same amount next year, as reported by TASR. Spokesperson for the Czech Defence Ministry, Jan Pejsek, has already said that the intelligence service is monitoring the weapon exports. Deliveries to Azerbaijan? Czech reporters contacted MSM holding, which confirmed the delivery of DANA-M1 and RM-70 systems to Israel. Its marketing director, Lucia Olle, refused to provide more details, claiming that these are a subject of tax secrecy, as reported by TASR. However, she rejected any business concerning weapon systems with Azerbaijan. The reporters even recorded one such transport on camera. The transport of one rocket launcher started on December 27, 2017, and was carried by a truck from Trencin to the Bratislava airport, where it was moved to the plane owned by Azerbaijani airlines, Silk Way. It then flew to Tel Aviv in Israel, where company Elbit, who was described as the end customer, resides. The data then revealed that the plane continued to Baku in Azerbaijan. Nothing is unloaded in Israel; there is only a stop to make sure the papers are correct, the employee of MSM told the Czech Television. The plane flies directly from the Israeli airport to Azerbaijan. However, there is no direct proof that the monitored rocket launcher actually was on board the plane, the broadcaster added. Slovak ministry monitors the situation Under the current rules, the arms dealers can sell weapons only to countries that are considered safe and where the buyers show the end-user certificate. While Israel meets the criteria, Azerbaijan does not. The companies belonging to the Czechoslovak Group have tried to receive permission to deliver weapons to Azerbaijan, but failed to receive it both in the Czech Republic and Slovakia, TASR reported. Neither MSM nor the Czechoslovak Group have confirmed that the weapons end up in Azerbaijan. The Slovak Economy Ministry has asked the licence holder to comment on the information. The company said that the end user and customer was an Israeli company, as its spokesperson, Maros Stano, told Czech Television. However, the Economy and Foreign Affairs Ministries are monitoring the situation, Stano added. 17. Apr 2018 at 22:42 | Compiled by Spectator staff Kia reaches an agreement on salaries Apart from salaries, the employees will also receive more for night shifts. Some will even receive one extra day off. Font size: A - | A + The employees of Zilina-based carmaker Kia Motors Slovakia will receive 220 on average increases in their monthly salaries. This stems from the final agreement made on April 17 between the companys management and the representatives of the trade unions organisation. The new agreement, valid for two years, will secure the increase of tariffs for employees in production by 75 on average this year, and by a further 80 in 2019. Moreover, the hourly wage benefit for night shifts will increase to 1.30 this year and 1.50 next year. Thanks to this, the salaries of employees in production will rise by 107 a month on average this year, and by 113 a month on average in 2019. At the same time, the administrative employees will see their salary increase by 7 percent on average, both in 2018 and 2019. In addition, all employees will receive a 100 Christmas voucher from the social fund, both this year and next. The agreement is important Were glad that after months of difficult negotiations, both parties reached an agreement that is acceptable for both the employer and the employees representatives, said Dae-Sik Kim, CEO of Kia Motors Slovakia, as quoted in a press release. He stressed that the agreement is extremely important as the carmaker is launching the production of a new key model, while the whole market is witnessing the dropping interest of customers in vehicles with diesel engines. Read also: Read also: Kia trade unionists declare strike alert after failed wage negotiations Read more On one hand, it enables the company to secure the plants future in the environment of increasing competition, while on the other hand, it offers employees stability and security of above-standard salary increases, Dae-Sik Kim added. Miroslav Chladek, head of the trade unions organisation in Kia Motors Slovakia, believes that the agreement will be acceptable for the carmakers employees. The trade unions managed to agree on a similar increase in salaries as they did in 2017. Apart from the increase in their basic salaries and higher bonus for night work, the employees working for the carmaker for more than five years will receive one extra day off. I leave the employees to evaluate the result of the collective negotiations, Chladek said, as quoted in the press release. 17. Apr 2018 at 22:49 | Compiled by Spectator staff STEAM Extra Comp Sci Lessons Associated with Higher Assessment Scores Students who did extra computer science activities in transdisciplinary modules scored higher on reading comprehension exams, as well as Florida standardized tests in science and English and language arts (ELA), according to preliminary results from a new study. The findings are the preliminary results of a National Science Foundation-funded study led by Outlier Research and Evaluation from the University of Chicago and conducted at Broward County Public Schools (BCPS) using computer science education resources from Code.org. For the study, Broward embedded "Code.org Fundamentals lessons in BCPS' nonnegotiable elementary literacy block," according to information released by Outlier. "To do so, BCPS personnel developed 'transdisciplinary' 'Time for CS' (Time4CS) modules that included science, ELA and social studies lessons and associated Code.org lessons connected with a problem-based theme. In the 2016-2017 academic year, participating schools implemented two modules for each, 3rd, 4th and 5th grade during BCPS's existing 180-minute literacy block." More than 1,600 students taught by 157 teachers at 16 different schools were included in the study, with half of the classes using the Time4CS units and the other half serving as the control group, though the number of students assessed varied from one exam to another. The scores of 1,607 students on Achieve 3000 literacy assessments showed that "Teacher completion of a higher percentage of 'extra' Code.org CS lessons was significantly associated with higher Achieve 3000 literacy scores under the condition where the teachers reported themselves as higher in 'resourcefulness and coping,'" according to a report on the study's preliminary findings. More experience teaching computer science was also correlated with higher scores on this exam, as were higher levels of self-reported teacher innovativeness. For the standardized tests, the researchers used sample sizes of 1,600 students for ELA and math, and 580 students for science, as those assessments are only given to students in grade 5 at BCPS. Researchers found that higher scores on these assessments were also associated with teachers who completed extra Code.org computer science lessons if the teachers also self reported as being more resourceful and capable of coping or, again, having higher levels of self-reported innovativeness. The results may be promising, but the researchers point out that these preliminary findings, at least, raise more questions than answers. "So, what are we to make of these findings?" a whitepaper on the preliminary results asks. "Like any study, this one elicits a number of new and interesting questions. Why were there significant findings associated with completion of a higher percentage of 'extra' Code.org CS lessons and completing 'additional' CS activities, whereas completion of grade-level specific Code.org lessons were not associated with student outcomes? What is the role of teacher resourcefulness and coping in a classroom and how might it be related to student academic achievement? What might explain why teachers who report being more innovative have students with higher academic outcomes?" Visit outlier.uchicago.edu to read a whitepaper from Outlier about the preliminary results. More information is also available in a Code.org blog post at medium.com. Education Research Study Finds Bump in Math Scores at For-Profit Charter A new working paper published by the National Bureau of Economic Research examined the impact on math and reading scores for students attending schools being run by a large for-profit charter school operator. University of Michigan researchers saw a pick-up in math scores and no measurable impact in other academic areas. More tellingly, the potential benefits for charters on boosting student progress reaches beyond what has previously been suggested in research. Currently, about a fifth of students in charter schools attend those run by for-profit charter companies. Yet the evidence of charter school effectiveness tends to focus on the non-profits in Boston, New York and other urban centers, many of which are independent or part of small management organizations. At the college level, for-profits have a bad rep for student outcomes, increased debt and high loan default rates; so, the researchers set out to understand whether the same bad news follows the for-profit element in elementary and secondary education. National Heritage Academies (NHA) is the fourth largest for-profit charter operator in the United States, enrolling more than 56,000 students in 86 schools in grades K-8 across nine states. Over half of NHA's schools are located in Michigan. Unlike many of its competitors, NHA uses "standard bricks-and-mortar schools," as noted by the authors of "Estimating the Effects of a Large For-Profit Charter School Operator." The research project developed its sampling through an excruciating process, pulling data for Michigan students specifically who participated in "randomized admissions lotteries" for 44 NHA schools between 2003 and 2012 and matching those records with data culled from public school registrants maintained by Michigan's Department of Education. The student achievement calculations found that going to an NHA charter school for one additional year was associated with a 0.04 standard deviation increase in math achievement. In addition, there was a 1.4 percentage point increase in the likelihood of scoring above the proficiency cutoff. If the student were to spend all nine years of elementary education at an NHA school, the report suggested, he or she could see a potential increase of 0.36 standard deviations in math scores. Effects on reading were negligible as were the impacts on "attendance, grade progression, disciplinary incidents or special education placement." Just as importantly, they pointed out, the benefits were concentrated among the "non-poor students" outside of urban areas. This is in contrast to other research projects that have "consistently" found the greatest benefit of attending such schools among "low-income, underrepresented minorities in urban areas." The research project also surveyed school administrators in the charter schools represented as well as leaders in a sampling of traditional public schools in the same geographic areas. Their questions covered five broad areas: instruction, school culture, organization and leadership, teacher compensation and time use. The report noted that the NHA schools "share many of the same practices as the highly effective non-profit charters," such as a "no excuses" culture and "a focus on extra time and frequent assessment in core academic subjects." That suggested that the benefits of those types of practices may be applicable beyond the types of students and environments previously studied. The company makes all decisions related to hiring, training and curriculum. The schools spend slightly more time in math and English language arts than other schools and are more likely to group students by ability level for instruction in those core subjects. Amber Crean was selected as the 2018 Luxembourg Rose on Saturday 14 April at the Rose Ball. The Rose Ball was the perfect opportunity for the four Roses: Amber, Christina, Niamh and Stacy; to shimmer alongside 200 guests in their finery. Jim Kent hosted the evening at the Parc Hotel Alvisse. Irish Dancing came from the young dancers of Comhaltas. The judges, Clare, Freda and Joe announced Amber as the 2018 Luxembourg Rose, just before midnight, and then the party started with DJ Sam Steen. The event unites the Irish community of Luxembourg and is an opportunity for anyone to come along, dress up and join in the celebration. Amber will head to Tralee in August to represent Luxembourg. The International Festival dates are Sunday 13th to Tuesday 21st August 2018. If you have Irish heritage, are aged between 18 and 27, and female (!) you can enter the Rose Competition for next year. Check out all the details and who to contact on the website below. All photos by Steve Eastwood Situated in a plateau around 1,500 meters above sea level, Da Lat enjoys year-round cool weather which stands in contrast to Vietnam's tropical climate, making the city ideal for growing high-value flowering plants originating in temperate countries. Da Lat is one of Vietnams biggest flower-growing regions, producing around three billion flowers every year, ten percent of which are exported to foreign markets including Japan, South Korea, Taiwan, Australia and China. In recent years, small and medium-sized flower farms in Da Lat have joined bigger, foreign-invested firms in exporting floricultural products, which contributed to the citys remarkable flower export growth. Between 2015 and 2017, Da Lat reported a yearly increase of 18-30 million in exported flowers. Japan is the citys largest flower market, importing around 60 percent of its production, with Australia, South Korea, Belgium, Thailand, the Philippines, Singapore, Russia and Cambodia being other major markets. According to Pham S, deputy chairman of Lam Dong Province, there is around 9,000 hectares of flower-growing land in Da Lat, capable of meeting the citys goal of shipping 400 million flowers yearly over the next five years. Workers harvest flowers at a farm in Da Lat City, Lam Dong Province in the Central Highlands region of Vietnam. Photo: Tuoi Tre However, as Da Lats floricultural industry grows, plant variety rights are quickly becoming a deadly weakness for small exporters, said Phan Thanh Sang, president of the Da Lat Flower Association. Plant variety rights, or plant breeders rights, are rights granted to the breeder of a new variety of plant that give the breeder exclusive control over the propagating material and harvested material of a new variety for a number of years. Ninety percent of household flower growers in Da Lat are using seeds that violate these protected rights, which hurts their chances of exporting harvested products to developed markets, Sang said. In reality, many opportunities to export flowers to Japan have been missed when farmers were unable to answer questions regarding the breeder of their flower variety posed by officials from the Japan Externaal Trade Organization (JETRO). Meanwhile, farmers are still having difficulties getting access to flower varieties that are no longer protected by breeders rights, said Vo Quoc Khoa, director of flower company Dalat Green. To cope with this setback, the administration of Lam Dong Province has introduced a model where major companies partner with local farmers by providing them with quality flower seeds and growing techniques, in exchange for harvested crops. The province is looking to launch a flower exchange and online platforms where foreign importers can place orders for Da Lat-grown flowers online. Like us on Facebook or follow us on Twitter to get the latest news about Vietnam! Sheikh Duaij bin Isa Al-Khalifa, chairman of the ASEAN Bahrain Business Council (ABC), made the commitment as he led a delegation to attend a networking session, meant to boost business activities between Vietnam and Bahrain, in the southern metropolis. Vietnamese businesses could enjoy zero corporate and personal income taxes, export duties on raw materials and machinery, and other tariffs if they invest in Bahrain, Al-Khalifa underlined. As the financial center of the Persian Gulf region, Bahrain is home to more than 300 major banks and financial institutions around the world. The country is also one of the worlds top destinations for banking, aviation and education investment. Bahrain will serve as a gateway for enterprises to connect with the Middle East and North Africa markets and such major financial centers as the UK and the U.S., according to the ABC chairman. Forty-one countries have been committed to eliminating double taxation with Bahrain, whose vibrant business environment will benefit many Vietnamese enterprises, Al-Khalifa said at Mondays meeting. He underscored that Bahrain allows businesses to be 100 percent foreign-owned, adding that the country levies no corporate income tax, personal income tax, tax on development capital and import duties on raw materials and machinery for entities wishing to establish production facilities there. Representatives of the Ho Chi Minh City chapter of the Vietnam Chamber of Commerce and Industry and the ASEAN-Bahrain Business Council are seen at a meeting in Ho Chi Minh City on April 16, 2018. Photo: Tuoi Tre Following the ABC chairmans remarks, Vo Tan Thanh, director of the Ho Chi Minh City chapter of the Vietnam Chamber of Commerce and Industry (VCCI), said those commitments provide a great opportunity for Vietnamese enterprises to increase their exports to the Persian Gulf market. Bahrain has a great import demand for textiles, leather, footwear, seafood, agricultural products and handicrafts, which are all export staples of Vietnam. Many Bahrain businesses have shown interest in directly importing Vietnamese textiles and furniture products, Thanh added. Bahrain currently has to import some Vietnamese products via a third country and wants to switch to direct imports, he said. At Mondays meeting, Al-Khalifa also informed the Vietnamese business community of the opening of two ABC representative offices in Hanoi and Ho Chi Minh City. The offices will serve to give Vietnamese businesses more information on access to the Bahrain market. Like us on Facebook or follow us on Twitter to get the latest news about Vietnam! While goods can be produced cheaply in Vietnam, they are often sold at a much higher price due to added costs of transportation, experts said at a national conference in Hanoi on Monday. The government-sponsored conference was aimed at seeking ways to reduce logistical expenses and improve transport connectivity within the Southeast Asian country. Nguyen Thanh Vang, a supplier of farm produce in Lam Dong Province in the Central Highlands, said it could cost VND2,000-5,000 (US$0.09-0.22) to transport a kilogram of vegetables from farms in Lam Dong to Ho Chi Minh City and other neighboring provinces. This cost causes the price of an agricultural product to be raised by 10-50 percent compared to how much it is sold at farms, Vang said. Apart from the inevitable expenditures for vehicle maintenance, gas and drivers wage, many other unnamable costs make up a third of our operation expenses, said Doan Huu Huynh, who owns a freight business in Da Lat City. Transportation currently accounts for 59 percent of logistical costs for businesses in Vietnam, the Ministry of Transport said, citing a World Bank report. In total, Vietnam spends an amount equal to 20.9 percent of its GDP on logistics. A freighter is docked at the Cai Mep-Thi Vai sea port in Ba Ria-Vung Tau Province in southern Vietnam. Photo: Tuoi Tre Fuel prices contribute 30-35 percent of costs for north-to-south freight transport in Vietnam, followed by road tolls (15 percent) and unofficial fees (five percent). The remaining 50-55 percent is made up of other costs. Transporting a standard container of goods from Ho Chi Minh City to Hai Phong City in northern Vietnam costs around VND34 million ($1,500) by road, VND12.4 million ($546) by train, and VND5.2 million ($229) by sea, according to Le Duy Hiep, president of the Vietnam Logistics Association. Vietnamese Prime Minister Nguyen Xuan Phuc stressed the need to seek effective measures to improve transport connectivity among ports, railway stations and airports in Vietnam, with the ultimate goal being to reduce logistical costs for businesses. PM Phuc tasked the transport and trade ministries with finalizing policies on logistic services, improving infrastructure, developing markets for logistic services, and upgrading the quality of Vietnams logistic human resources. The government leader also ordered the Ministry of Public Security to work with other bodies in reducing costs for freight businesses. Like us on Facebook or follow us on Twitter to get the latest news about Vietnam! Malaysia has invited Vietnam to join its large global event on commerce in a move to support the increased presence of Vietnamese firms in its predominantly Muslim market. The Consulate General of Malaysia in Vietnam has asked for Vietnams attendance at the Selangor International Business Summit 2018, to be held in September in Selangor, Malaysias most developed state considered an ideal location for investment. The consulate promised to offer favorable conditions in terms of cost to Vietnamese enterprises interested in cooperating with Malaysia. The summit is a chance for Vietnamese firms to lift their value of exports to Malaysia, hence gaining access to the Muslim market which accounts for one-fourth of the worlds population, by means of recognized standards and certificates, Faizad Izany Mastor, a Ho Chi Minh City-based representative from Matrade the national trade promotion agency of Malaysia said Monday. He clarified that an important gateway to the market is Halal certificates, official documents showing that food items are permissible to consume under Islamic law. Malaysian Consul Sofian Akmal Abd. Karim said that bilateral trade between Malaysia and Vietnam can potentially exceed US$15 billion by 2020, with the current Malaysia-to-Vietnam export standing at over $190 million and the value for the opposite direction at $65 million. Malaysian officials present activities to take place at The Selangor International Business Summit 2018 to businesspeople and the press. Photo: Tuoi Tre The Selangor International Business Summit 2018 consists of three key components: an exposition of food and beverages, a business conference, and a smart city and digital economy convention with different sideline activities. The last component, which is predicted to attract over 50 start-ups and 5,000 professionals, represents an opportunity for start-ups in information technology and e-commerce to seek financial assistance. The summit is expected to receive 25,000 participants, and feature nearly 1,000 booths from world-renowned companies such as Nestle, AEON, and Fraser and Neave. Like us on Facebook or follow us on Twitter to get the latest news about Vietnam! The Cambodian Market runs along Ho Thi Ky Street in Ward 1, District 10, Ho Chi Minh City, offering peculiar Cambodian foods from the early morning till midnight. Street food lovers should find this market a real attraction as the small-sized food stalls boast such Cambodian delicacies as goi du du (papaya salad with sour sauce), bun ca (fish rice vermicelli), hu tieu (pork noodle) or che (sweet soup). One special dish to mention is ca loc (snakehead fish) from the food stall of Ba Ut Mien. We do raise these ca loc in captivity, but we feed them with live fish, so the meat is just superb, she said. In Vietnam, wild animals are believed to boast better meat quality than farmed ones. In other words, the meat from chickens, pigs, or fish living in the wild can put to shame that from battery farming. To explain the quality of her fish stock, she emphasized that even wild fish are not always the best, especially the snakehead fish whose meat turns tough and loses taste around April and May. Fish kept in captivity here are even better as they actually came from Tonle Sap, she added. Tonle Sap, literally the great lake, is a huge freshwater lake circled by five provinces in Cambodia. After cleansing the fish, Ill dip it in a liquid of lemon juice and salty cold water. This should increase the firmness of the meat. Then the product can be stored for months in the freezer. Ba Ut Mien was Cambodian by nature, but her family had resettled in the Mekong Delta of Vietnam by 1970, only to move back home five years later. The Khmer Rouge dictatorship in Cambodia around 1979 was so harsh that her family had to flee their homeland. This time they came to Ho Chi Minh City, together with many of their Cambodian fellows. Another specialty originating in Cambodia to mention is hu tieu, or pork noodle soup. To the Saigonese, the term Nam Vang was the Vietnamese way of saying Phnom Penh in the past, and hu tieu Nam Vang (or Phnom Penh Pork Noodle Soup) is quite a popular dish. A 60-year-old woman selling it in this market claims that her version of hu tieu Nam Vang is 100 percent Phnom Penh style. Her name is Giau, which translates to richness, and she named her restaurant Phu Qui, or wealth. My names Giau, but Im not rich at all although Ive been selling hu tieu for 40 years! she joked. For sweet teeth, the sweet soup sold right in the middle of the market should be much loved. The 70-year-old owner of the place, Huynh Thi Huoi, came to Ho Chi Minh City with her family in the 1970s. Her place stands out with truly Khmer varieties like che thot not (jaggery sweet soup), che hot me (tamarind seed sweet soup), che bi do chung (pumpkin sweet soup), che trung (egg sweet soup), and che thap cam (all-together sweet soup). In the past, she used to sell only single-taste sweet soup, but during the years in Vietnam she witnessed how the locals added all kinds of toppings to their servings. That idea is as appetizing as it is esthetic, she commented. Therefore she decided to modify her sweet soup to accommodate the Vietnamese way of eating. Cambodian sweet soup tailored in the Vietnamese style clearly sells like hot cakes, she rejoiced. Num bo hoc, a unique Cambodian noodle soup, is offered at the restaurant owned by Ba Tu Xe. Photo: Tuoi Tre Not just food, but a family pride One popular place that everybody around the Cambodian Market would recommend is that of Ba Tu Xe, a 45-year-old Phnom Penh native. It is located right in the corner in front of the Le Hong Phong shrine. The first impression eaters should fall under upon coming here should be the artistic arrangement and the use of different object shapes for decoration. Even the choice of colors is stimulating to the taste buds: hot colors dominate the place. When your correspondent dropped by, Ba Tu Xe was giving advice to a Vietnamese expat from the U.S. on buying ready-made seasoned snakehead fish. You should buy it only 2-3 days before departure. Thats better as we dont use preservatives, she explained. The fish here came directly from Tonle Sap and we process them ourselves. Were like nobody else! Her source of fish came from her Cambodia-based relatives doing business in food seasoning and seafood from the lake. Num bo hoc is a much sought after noodle dish at her place. It can sell out in just 3-4 hours in the morning. What sets her version off from others is the original Cambodian taste unaltered in any way. It is served with steamed string beans, snakehead fish fillets, and covered in a kind of dark yellow sauce. The broth is inserted after that. The herbs that accompany this specialty include raw string beans, water lily, sliced morning glory, raw sprouts and cucumber slices. The soul of Nam bo hoc, according to Ba Tu Xe, is the particular fish from Tonle Sap and the core seasoning like turmeric or lemongrass. One impressive thing to mention about Ba Tu Xe is the attachment she has to the family business, which was passed down to her from her mother. Huynh Thi Huoi sells sweet soup in the Cambodian Market. Photo: Tuoi Tre Since her food products are of premium quality, numerous businessmen attempted to contact her for franchise opportunities. I dont want any other branches, as people may mess up with the ingredients and damage our familys image, she said. An owner of a big restaurant in downtown Ho Chi Minh City once earnestly offered to buy her recipe at a really high price. Despite his many attempts, she still said no. She also rejected his thousand-dollar job offer as head chef. I have to keep this recipe for my son, so that he can make a living for himself when hes grown up! she explained. A potential tourist spot Nguyen Thi Lam Tuyen, vice chairman of the Peoples Committee of Ward 1, District 10, Ho Chi Minh City, said that the authorities are considering a proposal to turn this place into a night market. They expect the Cambodian Market to become a tourist destination in the city. According to Tuyen, more than half of the 14,000 residents in Ward 1 are from Cambodia. The Cambodian community here lives in harmony with the Vietnamese. They abide by business registration regulations and hygiene standards, she added. Like us on Facebook or follow us on Twitter to get the latest news about Vietnam! A Vietnamese man has taken milestone steps different from those originally planned on his educational path and become a successful cook with the love for his homelands cuisine. Danial Nguyen Minh Dung, 33, made important decisions almost on a whim, out of the passion for cooking and against his late fathers wish. He has returned to Vietnam after living in New Zealand for 18 years, hence the foreign addition to his Vietnamese name. Dung recalled that in his childhood he would hasten to the neighbors houses and attentively look at them making cakes or preparing food. He was admitted to a medical university but refused to study there only three weeks before the admission when he accidentally saw students cooking inside a school building. He enrolled in cooking courses at the school, although his father said before he died that Dung should be discouraged from treading any cooking career path. He worked as an assistant in the kitchen of a restaurant during his student time, which lasted two years. Upon graduation, he spent one more year learning how to make cakes before landing a job at an average-sized cakery, where he acquired useful experience. Danial Nguyen Minh Dung receives the grand prize of the Bocuse d'Or Vietnam, March 2018. Photo: Lys Events Meanwhile, he was following the educational program of tourism, restaurant and hotel management, and financial analysis at the University of Waitako in New Zealand. But he chose not to defen his completed doctoral thesis. In New Zealand, with a doctorate, you can only be a lecturer or researcher, and no one would be willing to employ you to do anything else. I think Im still too young. I still desire to play, I want to work in the kitchen, he said. One of his greatest wishes is owning a restaurant in Vietnam and possibly a school training young people in cooking. I want to conflate Vietnamese culinary flavors with the Western foods that I know. Many Vietnamese foods can gain a worldwide reputation, in addition to pho or cha gio [fried spring rolls]. His professional principle is partly guided by respect, which he said should be paid to customers, ingredients, flavors, and the culture giving rise to the food he is making. Dung won the first prize of the Bocuse d'Or Vietnam, a national cooking competition held in Vietnam in March, becoming the Vietnamese candidate to join the Bocuse d'Or at the Asia-Pacific level in May. The papaya dish made by Danial Nguyen Minh Dung at the Bocuse d'Or Vietnam, March 2018. Photo: Lys Events Like us on Facebook or follow us on Twitter to get the latest news about Vietnam! Here are the news stories you should not miss today, April 17: Society -- Starting from June, the Quinvaxem vaccine, which is meant to prevent five common and potentially fatal childhood diseases, will be replaced by the Indian-made ComBE Five vaccines in Vietnams National Expanded Vaccination Project, the Ministry of Health announced on Monday. -- Two suspects were arrested on Monday evening for murdering an eight-year-old boy in the northern province of Vinh Phuc over prior conflicts with the victims father. -- The Ho Chi Minh City Peoples Court on Monday sentenced Nguyen Hoang Duong, a former officer under the Ministry of Public Security, to eight years in prison for attempting to sell confidential documents to foreign countries in order to have money for gambling. -- Residents in the north-central province of Nghe An have complained that a local gold shop had taken away their deposits worth a total of VND30 billion (US$1.32 million). The victims started depositing their savings in the gold shop for regular interest in 2015. -- The Ho Chi Minh City Department of Planning and Architecture started an exhibition on Monday to collect feedback on the design for the renovation and expansion of the municipal Peoples Committee headquarters. -- Police in Hanoi have taken into custody a teacher of a local elementary school for allegedly molesting multiple third-grade students. Business -- During a meeting with the Ho Chi Minh City administration on Monday evening, CEO of Lotte Asset Development Lee Kwang Young stated that the firm would complete necessary procedures to be able to begin the construction of an iconic tower at the Thu Thiem New Urban Area in September. -- Tuoi Tre (Youth) newspaper is scheduled to organize a conference in the Mekong Delta province of Bac Lieu on Tuesday to discuss measures to cope with drought and saltwater intrusion during this years dry season in provinces across the region. -- The State Bank of Vietnam has issued Directive No. 2 regarding measures to tighten the management and supervision of cryptocurrency-related transactions in the country. Like us on Facebook or follow us on Twitter to get the latest news about Vietnam! Police in a province contiguous to Hanoi on Monday arrested two Vietnamese men suspected of murdering an eight-year-old boy three days earlier out of rancor directed to his father. The suspects with the felony charge by police in Vinh Phuc Province are Nguyen Khanh Hung, a 36-year-old local, and Nguyen Van Thao, 22, residing in the neighboring province of Tuyen Quang. The boy is the first-born of a local man named Vu Van Kien, 30, whose job involves moving soil and sand for construction work. On April 13, Kien got into a fight with Thao and Nguyen Cuong Trung, Thaos employer, causing the latter a minor wound in the arm. The following day at night, Thao and the employers younger brother, Hung, stopped their car at Kiens house, in front of which the victim and another child were playing. The house in Vinh Phuc Province where an eight-year-old boy was killed allegedly by Nguyen Khanh Hung and Nguyen Van Thao, April 14, 2018. Photo: Tuoi Tre Hung stepped out of the vehicle alone, stabbed the first child two times in the back with a bayonet-like knife and fled the scene. Seeing the son bleeding copiously, the mother wailed in agony and cried for help. The boy was rushed to the hospital and died later. Hung and Thao admitted to the crime afterward. Like us on Facebook or follow us on Twitter to get the latest news about Vietnam! HANOI, April 17 - Police in Vietnam on Tuesday arrested a former senior police official and a former head of the central city of Da Nang, and placed four others under house arrest as the government widened a crackdown on corruption. Phan Huu Tuan, former deputy head of the Ministry of Public Security's intelligence department, was detained on suspicion of revealing state secrets, the Ministry of Public Security said on its website. It did not elaborate. Police also arrested Tran Van Minh, former chairman of the coastal city of Da Nang, on suspicion of violating state regulations on land management and state assets, it said. Police also placed under house arrest another former chairman of the city, Van Huu Chien, along with three officials from the city's department of natural resource and environment and the city's investment promotion agency. They are suspected of violating land management regulations, the ministry said. Tran Van Minh, former chairman of Da Nang in the 2006-11 tenure. Photo: Tuoi Tre Minh was the chairman of Da Nang from 2006 to 2011, while Chien was chairman from 2011 to 2014. The city is a bustling tourism hub and the venue for the Asia Pacific Economic Cooperation summit attended by U.S. President Donald Trump and other world leaders. The ministry statement said the arrests were part of a wider criminal case involving businessman Phan Van Anh Vu, who was arrested in January over allegations of revealing state secrets, tax evasion and abuse of power. Neither Vu nor his legal representatives have commented publicly on the allegations against the 42-year-old entrepreneur. Vietnam has in recent years stepped up its fight against corruption, with several senior government officials and executives of state-owned enterprises arrested and jailed.. Van Huu Chien, former chairman of Da Nang in the 2011-14 tenure. Photo: Tuoi Tre Last month, a court in Hanoi jailed former Politburo member Dinh La Thang for 18 years for financial irregularities at a state-owned enterprise, adding to a 13-year sentence handed down separately in January. Thang, 57, who denied any wrongdoing at his trial, is the highest-level politician to have been sentenced in Vietnam for decades. Vietnam is expected to replace the 5-in-1 Quinvaxem vaccine with the new ComBE Five in June as the former will no longer be produced. The Ministry of Health announced during a press conference on Monday that the made-in-Korea Quinvaxem vaccine will not be used in Vietnams National Expanded Vaccination Project in June and be replaced by ComBE Five, produced by Indias Biological E Limited. Both vaccines are meant to prevent five common and potentially fatal childhood diseases, including diphtheria, tetanus, pertussis (whooping cough), hepatitis B, and Haemophilus influenza type b. About 41 million doses of Quinvaxem have been used in Vietnam since 2010. In December 2016, Berna Biotech announced it would cease the production of the pentavalent vaccine. The Ministry of Health, UNICEF, and sponsors had discussed and decided that the ComBE Five would become the countrys new 5-in-1 vaccine. Approximately 300 million doses of ComBE Five have been supplied to 43 countries, and Vietnam is expected to receive five million shots on a yearly basis. According to Tran Nhu Duong, deputy head of the National Institute of Hygiene and Epidemiology, the Indian-made vaccine was evaluated by the World Health Organization in 2012. It was piloted in Binh Luc, Kim Bang, Thanh Liem, and Ly Nhan Districts in the northern province of Ha Nam in 2016, Duong continued, adding that no serious reaction or complication occurred. Another trial will be carried out in four provinces in May. Tran Nhu Duong, deputy head of the National Institute of Hygiene and Epidemiology, speaks at the press conference on April 16, 2018. Photo: Tuoi Tre Safety concern Many parents are questioning the safety of the new vaccine as it has several components similar to the Quinvaxem, which raised concern over the high probability of serious complications. Statistics of the National Expanded Vaccination Project revealed that the Quinvaxem vaccine resulted in severe complications in 27 cases across 19 provinces and cities in 2017. N.T.A., a 33-year-old mother in Go Vap District, Ho Chi Minh City, stated she would need to be well informed of ComBE Five before using it on her child. Sharing the same opinion, 28-year-old D.N.T. in Phu Nhuan District said she has yet to decide whether to vaccinate her kid with the new vaccine. However, local doctors and health experts assured that the ComBE Five meets all safety standards and is effective in creating immunity against the diseases. They also warned of a potential epidemic if parents do not vaccinate their children against the dangerous diseases. To minimize risks, children should undergo a comprehensive health check-up before their vaccination, said Tran Minh Dien, deputy director of the Vietnam National Childrens Hospital. Depending on the health conditions and medical records of the young patients, doctors will decide whether it is safe to give them the vaccination, Dien added. Like us on Facebook or follow us on Twitter to get the latest news about Vietnam! Jordan Worth, a College Graduate, has been sentenced to seven and a half years in jail for subjecting her partner to serious and continuing domestic abuse. She is believed to be the first women convicted under the new domestic abuse laws, introduced in 2015. According to the Telegraph, Worth was arrested for scalding, stabbing, and hitting her boyfriend. She had also deprived him of food, banned him from the bed, and discouraged him from contacting family and friends. The paper reports that Worth had controlled his life completely - even instructing him what to wear. After pleading guilty to offences covered under the 2015 Controlling or Coercive Behaviour in an Intimate or Family Relationship Act, Worth was sentenced to seven and a half years in jail. Luton Crown Court heard that Jordan Worth came from a loving family. The couple started dating at the age of sixteen after they had met at college. Known as a high-achiever, Worth graduated in Fine Arts at the University of Hertfordshire. According to the Telegraph report, her partner suffered from hydrocephalus, a condition linked to a fluid buildup inside the skull. This made him vulnerable. The court heard that Worth became violent toward him, often striking his head with blunt objects and cutting him. On a number of occasions, she failed to get him to the hospital for treatment. Neighbours told the Court that they had often heard the man pleading with her to stop. Paramedics were called and brought the man to the hospital. Worth was arrested a few days later. Judge Madge sentenced her to seven and a half years in jail. What is the coercive control abuse law? Domestic Violence is often associated with physical violence against both men and women. The new act provides protection against psychological abuse, controlling behaviour, and other types of non-physical abuse. Up until its introduction, victims were powerless and may not even have been aware of the abuse. Domestic violence gender statistics Despite the common perception that the majority of domestic violence offences are carried out against women, statistics show that, in fact, more than 40 percent of them are perpetrated against men. According to the Guardian, men's rights group Parity published a report in 2010 highlighting that the number of male domestic violence victims is much higher than previously thought. The charity believes that male victims are at great risk because the abuse goes unnoticed. Police often ignore it, and men are less likely to seek support. What's more, far fewer services are available for men than for women. A report in the Independent states that reporting of domestic violence against men has increased by 80 percent between 2012 and 2016. Yet, there are no refuges for men in London and only 18 nationwide, so the Independent reports. Would you intervene? A BBC social experiment To illustrate the gender-bias when it comes to domestic violence, the BBC carried out a social experiment. Actors playing a couple took turns to subject each other to abuse in public. It comes as no surprise that passersby were much more inclined to come to the woman's aid than to the man's. Men's rights groups are stressing the need to fight the stigmatisation of male victims of domestic abuse. If a man seeks support he's often told to man up rather than given the support he needs. Charities working with male and female victims have also emphasized the importance of providing support to someone you suspect may be suffering. The Syrian escalation has dominated the news, as major incidents do but that means it is a perfect time to bury bad news. Heres what has happened that you may have missed. A report has warned that Conservative welfare reforms have sparked a significant rise in homeless young people, Jeremy Hunt has admitted breaking anti-money laundering laws brought in by his own government and Hospital trusts have been accused of backdoor privatisation. Furthermore, The Information Commissioner Office (ICO) is investigating Leave.EU and its donor Arron Banks over possible breaches of the Data Protection Act. Jeremy Hunt, Homelessness and Arron Banks Government health minister failed to declare a 50 per cent interest in a property firm which was set up so that he could buy 7 luxury flats. It was reported that he first failed to declare his interest on the Parliamentary Register of Members interests within the required 28 days and secondly, the September 2017 registration document for the company was incorrect in its omission of Mr Hunt, this is a criminal offence under a specific section of the Companies Act and carries a potential 2-year prison sentence, but knowing Jeremy Hunt, he will just get a promotion instead. Homelessness amongst 16-24-year olds has worsened and this is down to the governments shake-up of the benefits system. The charity Homeless Link have stated that government policy affects young peoples ability to access and sustain housing. The charity also confirmed that 92 per cent of those who responded, identified the governments flagship policy, Universal Credits, is having an affect on homelessness between 16-24-year olds. Hospital trusts are spending millions of pounds setting up arms-length private companies, which health unions fear will turn staff transferred into them into second-class employees. Fifteen trusts in England have already spent 3.2m between them creating wholly owned subsidiaries, figures released under the Freedom of Information Act show. The ICO has issued information notices against both Leave.EU the referendum campaign headed by Nigel Farage and its director, Arron Banks. The notices requiring organisations to provide the ICO with specified information within a certain time period BOMBS bring peace, according to the western world. On Saturday, the US/UK/France coalition decided to bomb certain targets within Damascus. If you have been ignoring the news, which is probably a good idea, then you would have missed that the reason for this was just a week before the decision was made and the attack carried out, there was an alleged chemical weapons attack in Douma, which was subsequently blame on Syrian President Bashar al-Assad. Firstly, whatever you might make of the past, there was no legitimate reason for the attack based on the lack of evidence from independent sources at the scene of the alleged attack and past attacks by the Syrian Arab Army. An act of terror There is a point I would like to raise about the actions that have taken place by the US, UK and France. The western nations and the UN have always denounced extremism and terrorism (ironically, it has to be said), yet there seems to be this wilful desire to spread misinformation by claiming this attack as humanitarian, when it is anything but if you consider the Definition Of Terrorism. The dictionary definition of terrorism is: the use of violence and threats to intimidate or coerce, especially for political purposes, the state of fear and submission produced by terrorism or terrorisation and a terroristic method of governing or of resisting a government. Furthermore, the definition of terrorisation/terrorise is: to fill or overcome with terror, to dominate or coerce by intimidation and to produce widespread fear by acts of violence, as bombings. The question you have to ask, who are the terrorists? Who are the ones using violence to coerce a government? If we look at the fact that the coalition didnt have ratification from the UNSC, it was denied twice, on the Wednesday beforehand, a group of international lawyers stated that there would be no legal basis for an attack and the UN have never been able to prove that Assad has ever used chemical weapons on his own people. What is interesting, is that the OPCW confirmed in 2016 that the Assad government had destroyed their chemical weapons. Despite claims from the west that Assad is a dictator who uses terror to subdue the population fail to recognise that the civil war was started when the west funded the Free Syrian Army. But what hasnt been reported as of yet is that the Independents Robert Fisk has been the first journalist to be able to get into the area where the alleged Chemical Attack took place. He has reported that a doctor within the area said Then someone at the door, a White Helmet, shouted Gas!, and a panic began. People started throwing water over each other. Yes, the video was filmed here, it is genuine, but what you see are people suffering from hypoxia not gas poisoning. So, the questions here you must ask is that, who are the terrorists? Following the Syrian airstrikes, there has been very little in the news about what was hit and what has happened. The fallout from the strikes will no doubt be felt by the people of Damascus. There is chatter however, coming from the region that ISIL are making moves under the distraction of the missile strikes and that it wasnt supposed chemical weapons sites that were hit. Furthermore, there have been claims that 71 of the 100 missiles fired were intercepted by the Syrian Arab Army (SAA) defence forces and that the decisive and accurate attack was much more widespread than initially suggested by the UK, US and French governments. Coalition airstrikes fallout Sources from within Damascus have claimed that Mazeh airport, Al Dumair airport, Barzeh and Joumraya scientific research center and several military bases were hit by the strikes. This suggests that the targets by the UK/US/French forces were designed to be more widespread than they suggested to the public when the attack was announced, it also suggests that they are attempting to cause widespread disruption to the Syrian forces to influence the civil war that erupted in 2011. On the back of the attacks by the UK/US/French coalition, ISIL launched an offensive into the southern part of Damascus. Taking advantage of the Syrian armys distraction. According to a military source, who told AMN News, the terrorist organisation launched an offensive by storming the Syrian Armys positions within the Al-Qadam District. No gains have been reported and it is highly unlikely to succeed as the SAA recently moved a large proportion of the forces into the area in preparation for a full assault on the terrorist organisation. It has also been confirmed that East Ghouta is now under control of the SAA after the last militant convoy leaves the area. 21st Century Wire and Syrian field reporter, Vanessa Beeley, underlines that if you map the timeline of the chemical weapons attacks in Syria, they occur whenever the SAA are close to liberating an area from the rebel forces. Every time the SAA have made significant gains and pushed back the rebels, a chemical weapons attack occurred which makes it easier for western powers to get involved and keep the war ongoing. Furthermore, Eastern Ghouta is an important stronghold for Israel in their desire to suppress Iran who are allies of Assad that would also potentially cripple Syrian air defences. The Syrian turmoil The region of Syria has been in relative turmoil for a while now and it is intrinsically linked with decisions that were made over a century ago on the eve of The Great War. The consequences of these have caused successive ripple effects within the region and whenever there is a chance of relative stability, the western powers often find a reason to use military action. It is difficult to judge for certain whether Assad has been responsible in the past but he commands a large support from the population and in 2014 won around 80 percent of the vote in an election which saw a turnout of around 70 percent. Furthermore, The OPCW stated - The Fact-Finding Mission (FFM) team of the Organisation for the Prohibition of Chemical Weapons (OPCW) will continue its deployment to the Syrian Arab Republic to establish facts around the allegations of chemical weapons use in Douma. The team who are carrying out the inspection were planning to arrive on the 14th April, irrespective of the airstrikes the day before. Furthermore, it is reported that the OPCW team were denied access by Syria and Russia, however, this is untrue, it was the UNSC who originally blocked the OPCW team because apparently, they couldnt guarantee their safety. The team sent by the OPCW did arrive in Syria on the 14th April to begin their research. What hasnt been reported as much as yet is that the Independents Middle-East correspondent was the first western journalist to make it to the area in Douma which the alleged chemical attack took place. His report from the region states that there is no evidence of a chemical attack. These are testimonies from local doctors who wouldve been at the scene. One stated, Then someone at the door, a White Helmet, shouted Gas!, and a panic began. People started throwing water over each other. Yes, the video was filmed here, it is genuine, but what you see are people suffering from hypoxia not gas poisoning. Finally, The Tomahawk missile used in the strike is made by Raytheon (rtn, +1.41%), whose stock opened 2.5% higher Friday, adding more than $1 billion to the defence contractors market capitalisation. The only people to have directly profited from these strikes are the wealthy elite who control wars for their gain, however, I will say that this is just a happy consequence for those as there is more at play than just immediate profit. French President Emmanuel Macron speaking in the European Parliament (Getty) Europe is locked in a political civil war, French President Emmanuel Macron has warned in a major speech to the European Parliament. Addressing MEPs in Strasbourg, he cited Brexit as an example of the context of division which exists across the continent. He also refused to discuss the details of a post-Brexit trade deal, saying he still believes membership of the EU would deliver the greatest benefits to the UK. Kicking off a three-hour long debate, Mr Macron said: We have a context of division and, indeed, doubt within Europe. Brexit continues. Its still being discussed and worked on. Here I would pay tribute to the work being performed by [EU chief Brexit negotiator] Michel Barnier. But there is a doubt in a number of European countries. Month after month we are seeing views and sensibilities emerge which call into question certain fundamentals. There seems to be a sort of European civil war. National selfishness and egotism seems to take precedence over what brings us together. There is a fascination with the illiberal and thats growing all the time. There are geopolitical threats too. So, Europe has an ever-greater responsibility. Mr Macron said the liberal democracy model of the European Union was the best answer to the worlds current challenges and called on politicians not to give up on it. Were seeing authoritarianism all around us and the response is not authoritarian democracy but the authority of democracy, he said in a comment interpreted as a criticism of the right-wing populist governments in Hungary and Poland. The French president launched into a passionate defence of the European Union, saying its values marked it out from authoritarian powers around the world. French President Emmanuel Macron delivers his speech at the European Parliament in Strasbourg (Getty) Taking aim at US President Donald Trump, he added: It also marks us out from some of our closest allies. Our American ally. We share so much with that country but this country is rejecting multilateralism, free trade and climate change [measures]. Story continues Although Mr Macron said national politicians had to stop blaming the EU for problems, he said European leaders should listen to the anger from citizens and forge a new project that had their confidence. Specifically, he called for funding to help local government integrate refugees and backed proposals for a Europe-wide tax on digital firms. The speech received a glowing reception from European Commission president Jean-Claude Juncker, who said it showed the real France is back. But Syed Kamall, the leader of the Conservatives in the European Parliament, told Mr Macron that he was out of touch with the views of voters who want less Europe, not more. Mr Kamall said: Mr President, what you propose is revolutionary but should come with an honest disclaimer in large letters, bold and underlined, that Member States will become less and less sovereign as the EU becomes more and more powerful. The French President hit back at pro-Brexit MEPs later when answering questions about the future trading relationship between the EU and UK. He said: I have a direct reply to Frances position with respect to the UK and the post-Brexit situation. Im in favour of the most integrated relations. The closest relations. There is a solution. Were very familiar with and thats EU membership. After his three-hour long debate with MEPs, the French President was due to have lunch with the heads of the political groups in the European Parliament including Nigel Farage. I plan to ruin his lunch, Mr Farage told the Telegraph yesterday. But Mr Farage appears to have been partially won over at the lunch by the charismatic Mr Macron. In a statement about their meeting, the UKIP MEP said: He was very polite and very civil and I have a totally different political philosophy to him and the point that was mused on around the lunch table was the fact that we were both there together, people found quite amusing. But I would say having met him and listened to him today hes probably the European Unions last chance. Guy Verhofstadt called for an EU army during a debate with French President Emmanuel Macron (European Parliament) Military action against the Syrian regime should have been carried out by an EU army rather than the forces of the UK and France, the European Parliaments Brexit coordinator has said. Guy Verhofstadt made the call during a debate in Strasbourg with French President Emmanuel Macron three days after strikes on chemical weapons facilities in Syria. Forces from the UK, US and France launched missiles from the air and sea on three facilities they believe were connected to the suspected chemical weapons attack on Douma which killed 75. Mr Macron defended the action during a three-hour appearance in the European Parliament amid protests from some MEPs who oppose the strikes. He said: It has nothing to do with Iraq, it has nothing to do with Libya for a very simple reason: we havent declared war on anyone and we did not intervene declaring war on anyone. If you believe in multilateralism, if you believe in the force of law and of what is right then at some point in time you gave to decide that you cannot simply cave in to the cynicism of those who do not support that. Mr Verhofstadt gave the unreserved support of his liberal group to the strikes. We have to say that because a country that uses chemical weapons against its own people is a genocidal and illegitimate regime, he said. This is a reality we must face full on. MEPs with placards protesting against the strikes launched by the UK, France and the UK (Getty) But, addressing Mr Macron directly, he added: I have to say that your speech shows your weakness too because it is France intervening, the United Kingdom that intervenes and shoots missiles its not the European Union. Sixty-five years after the [French] National Assembly scuppered the European defence community, there is still no European army. Mr Verhofstadt has said previously that he wants to establish a European defence union that will begin work towards an integrated EU armed forces by 2025. The leader of UK Conservative MEPs in the European Parliament, Syed Kamall, used his intervention in the debate to thank Mr Macron for Frances involvement in the Syria strikes. Story continues But a group of left-wing MEPs greeted Mr Macron to the chamber with placards reading hands off Syria. French MEP Patrick Le Hyaric, vice-president of the Parliaments United Left group, told Mr Macron: We have difficulty in understanding your concept of a sovereign Europe when you ignored the EUs decision-making framework and proceeded without a mandate from the UN with Mr Trump and Ms May as your only allies to bomb Syria. The EU Council yesterday formally backed the action by the UK, France and the US. The Council is supportive of all efforts aimed at the prevention of the use of chemical weapons, a statement agreed by foreign ministers states. LUXEMBOURG (Reuters) - The European Commission must continue dialogue with Poland about the rule of law, as the results so far do not show sufficient progress, Germany's EU minister said on Tuesday. "In spite of the progress made, the results are not sufficient. That's why we believe the Commission should continue its dialogue with Poland," Michael Roth said on arriving to a meeting of EU ministers in Luxembourg. "At least things are moving in the right direction, even though it may not be going quickly enough for some," Roth added. (Reporting by Robert-Jan Bartunek, editing by Gabriela Baczynska) Police said at least four people have been hurt following a brawl involving around 150 people which broke out at a Sikh temple in Indiana. The fight at the Gurdwara Sikh Temple in Greenwood, south of Indianapolis, on Sunday afternoon (April 15) is believed to have occured following a disagreement on how the temple should be run, reports the IndyStar. Greenwood Assistant Police Chief Matthew Fillenwarth told reporters that the fight happened during a service to mark a change of leadership within the temple, an event which happens every two years. Trending: You Are Probably Paying More Income Tax Than You Should | Opinion It was originally reported that people involved in the altercation had been stabbed. Although ceremonial knives are used in the temple as part of the service, there are no reports of anyone suffering stab wounds following the brawl, reports WISH-TV. Four people received treatment for minor injuries, with Temple member Gurpreet Sing describing the injuries as just "bruises and minor cuts." GettyImages-83786128 NARINDER NANU/AFP/Getty Images Don't miss: James Comey Would Send Clinton Email Letter Even if He Knew It Would Help Trump Win Police said someone reported finding pepper spray in a garbage can close to the temple, but said they could not yet confirm if any pepper spray was used during the disorder. Sing said there had been disagreement on how the temple should be run for a while now, with tensions boiling over into Sundays altercation. According to reports, the fight erupted as the leadership was told to hand collected donations over to the newly elected committee, resulting in members attempting to drag the outgoing president out of the building after they refused to step down following the internal election. It was chaos," Sing told IndyStar. "It reached a whole new level." Story continues Police said they will review surveillance video from the temple as part of the investigation. Officers will also be interviewing those involved in the fight, including the four people who received minor injuries. No arrests have been made so far. This article was first written by Newsweek More from Newsweek Storyful Climate activists clashed with police in Milan on September 30 as the last ministerial meeting before the 26th United Nations Climate Change Conference, or COP 26, got underway.Video by Global Project shows police with riot shields and batons clashing with climate activists at the MiCo convention center in Milan, where the pre-COP 26 meeting was taking place.The activists were holding a Milan Climate Camp, which Global Project described as four days dedicated to the climate and against the greenwashing of summits like these, unable to make the right decisions to protect the environment and solve the climate crisis.The Pre-COP 26 meeting in Milan, taking place until October 2, sees ministers from several countries discussing some of the key issues that will be addressed at COP 26.COP 26 was supposed to take place in 2020, but was cancelled due to the pandemic. The event will be held in Scotland this year, from November 1-12 . Credit: Global Project via Storyful A college freshman was stabbed to death on his State University of New York campus Sunday night, in what officials are saying was a targeted attack. The incident happened at around 10:30 p.m. at Binghamton University in upstate New York. The suspect was described as a light-skinned male wearing dark pants and a dark, Puma hooded sweatshirt, according to the university, and he remains at large. Officers were still searching for that person on Monday morning. Trending: When Does Fortnite Season 4 Start, Season 3 End? Heres What We Know so Far Investigators from multiple agencies have been interviewing numerous people throughout the night, a statement from the university read. Those agencies include the Binghamton and state police departments. At this time, the police are confident this was not a random act. The university identified the victim on Monday morning as a freshman engineering student Joao Souza, and said his family had been notified. He was 19 years old. The motive for the stabbing was unclear and BU did not release the exact location on campus where it took place. However, the Press & Sun-Bulletin in Binghamton reported that it occurred in Windham Hall, a residential building. Don't miss: Ann Coulter Retweets White Nationalist Charlotesville Leader Who Attacked Trump With Syria Conspiracy Theory Windham Hall is one of four residential halls in Binghamtons Mountainview College, which has a science, technology, engineering, arts and mathematics theme. If there is information that relates to the immediate welfare of students and the campus community, we will communicate it via our alert system, the university said. Binghamton counseling to students in the wake of the stabbing and canceled classes on Monday. The fatal stabbing was the second murder involving a Binghamton student this year. A 22-year-old nursing student named Haley Anderson was killed in her off-campus home in March. Authorities arrested a suspect in that case after he was found in Nicaragua another 22-year-old nursing student, Orlando Tercero. He was reportedly in a relationship with Anderson. Story continues binghamton-city WILLIAM EDWARDS/AFP/Getty Images This article was first written by Newsweek More from Newsweek Laura Plummer, the British woman jailed for trying to take painkillers into Egypt, has been pictured for the first time since her imprisonment. El Balad News had access to Al Qanater Prison in Cairo and footage appears to show the 34-year-old from Hull in good health. The video is said to show her at an Easter service inside the prison, where she is serving a three-year sentence. It shows her staring straight ahead as the other inmates take Holy Communion. Just before the end of the video she smiles and appears to laugh towards someone who cannot be seen in the shot. Ms Plummer was arrested and jailed after taking around 300 Tramadol tablets into Egypt, where they are banned. The shop worker, who said she got the tablets from a friend, told a court she had brought the painkillers for her Egyptian boyfriend, who suffers from severe back pain. She said she did not know she was breaking Egyptian law. Ms Plummer's sister, Jayne Synclair, said she does not bear any resemblance to who she used to be. "We've obviously been out to see her regularly but she isn't the same woman," she was quoted as saying in The Sun. Sky News has contacted the UK Foreign Office for comment. A suspicious substance sent to the office of immigration minister Caroline Nokes was not hazardous, police have said. Police, fire crews and paramedics were were called to Romsey Conservative Club, which houses the MP's office, at 11.20am on Tuesday. The building was evacuated and forensic officers were sent to the scene, but the substance was deemed "not hazardous". According to Sky sources, the substance was a white powder, sent in a letter and opened by a member of Ms Nokes' staff. "There is no risk to the public," a police spokesman added. A cordon was placed around the club while police investigated, but it was later lifted. The alert came a day after Ms Nokes admitted some Windbrush generation Britons incorrectly identified as illegal immigrants may have been deported. By Radu-Sorin Marinas BUCHAREST (Reuters) - Romania's President Klaus Iohannis rejected on Monday a request by the justice minister to sack the head of the country's anti-corruption agency, the latest twist in a row over graft that has spurred large-scale street protests over the past two years. The anti-corruption prosecution agency, the DNA, has earned the praise of the European Commission for its efforts under Laura Codruta Kovesi to tackle high-level sleaze in Romania. But Justice Minister Minister Tudorel Toader has accused Kovesi of exceeding her authority and damaging Romania's image abroad. He launched a legal bid in February to have her sacked, in a move that sparked renewed street protests by anti-graft campaigners. "(The minister's) arguments for a revocation did not convince me," Iohannis, a centrist often at odds with the leftist-led government, told reporters after his advisers had examined Toader's request. "Most of the reasons do not even meet the legal provisions," said Iohannis, who has often praised the DNA's work. Romania's judicial watchdog has also spoken out against dismissing Kovesi. Responding to the president's announcement, Toader said on his Facebook page that the government would appeal to the Constitutional Court. He did not say when it would act. DNA sent roughly 1,000 people to trial last year, Kovesi has said, including three ministers, six lawmakers and two deputy ministers. A third of the defendants were accused of committing fraud with European Union funds. At the same time, DNA prosecutors won 713 convictions, including for four lawmakers, 28 mayors and 30 managers of state institutions and companies. Some trials were years old. Investigations have shown some public works contracts are overpriced and some payments are made for fictitious works. Transparency International ranks Romania among the EU's most corrupt states and Brussels keeps its justice system under special monitoring. (Editing by Gareth Jones) Former White House communications director Anthony Scaramucci, aka "The Mooch," suggested that comments from former FBI Director James Comey insulted Italian-Americans. Appearing on Fox & Friends Monday, Scaramucci took issue with Comey comparing President Donald Trump to Mafia bosses during an interview with ABC News' George Stephanopoulos on Sunday night. "I dont do it lightly," Comey told Stephanopoulos about comparing Trump to mob bosses, a claim that appears in the former FBI director's new book, according to The New York Times. "Iand I'm not trying to, by the way, suggest that President Trump is out breaking legs andyou know, shaking down shopkeepers. But instead, what I'm talking about is that leadership culture constantly comes back to me when I think about my experience with the Trump administration. Thethe loyalty oaths, the boss as the dominant center of everything, it's all about how do you serve the boss, what's in the boss's interests." Trending: Fortnite 50v50 Release Date: Mode Returns With 3.5 Update mooch Mark Wilson/Getty Images Via a clip posted by Mediaite, Scaramucci took issue with those comparisons after host Brian Kilmeade asked, "Are you insulted by that?" "Listen, here's the problem for Italian-Americans," Scaramucci said. "I can be insulted by that, but I really can't do anything about it because, for whatever reason, it's still an unprotected class of people where they can say whatever they want about you." Don't miss: Canada's Liberal Party Wants to Decriminalize All Drugs As the Country Is Rocked by an Opioid Epidemic Scaramucci then brought up his time in the White House, seemingly referencing a joke in July from late-night host Seth Meyers. Story continues "I'm in the White House, they're saying I'm a walking pinkie ring. Imagine if I was another ethnic group, they couldn't say that, right?" Scaramucci said, via the Mediaite clip. "But it just speaks to Comeys sanctimony and lack of awareness in terms of his language and lack of awareness of who he is as a guy. You know, they call him 'Cardinal Comey' for a reason. He thinks hes got the answers. He thinks hes at that papal throne, and hes the one thats gonna make these decisions." This article was first written by Newsweek More from Newsweek Brodie Bond has spent every penny of the 119,000 she won from her estranged fathers estate (Channel 9/A Current Affair) A woman who battled to win a portion of her estranged fathers estate says she has spent every last penny in just nine months. Brodie Bond became the beneficiary of 119,000 after she contested her fathers will who left her nothing when he died, according to Channel Nines A Current Affair. The 28-year-old went on to blow the lot on a decadent lifestyle including a staggering 81,000 on crystal meth. Ms Bond spent 81,000 on crystal meth (Rex/stock photo) The 28-year-old blew 38,000 on alcohol, clothes and a car (Channel Nine/A Current Affair) Ms Bond, from Morwell, Australia, said that she spent the rest of the cash some 38,000 on alcohol, clothes and a car, which she went on to crash. Insisting she had a right to a large chunk of her estranged fathers estate, she said: Even though he hadnt been in my life, he was still my dad, and the grief I was going through at the time, I shouldve benefited from that. MOST POPULAR TODAY ON YAHOO Ms Bond received the money in June 2016 and went on to celebrate her new-found wealth by downing a slab of Jack Daniels and vodka shots and taking drugs with a friend. She added: Why not? Its not everyday you get that much money. Cloud video technology firm Forbidden Technologies announced on Tuesday that it has entered a preliminary collaboration with a Japanese telecommunications operator. The collaboration, negotiated through the companys partnership with Dragon Touch Systems, will see Forbidden Technologies Blackbird technology utilised to allow the telecommunications B2B customers to edit and version cloud-based content. Daisuke Matsuo, chief executive of Dragon Touch Systems, said: "Our customer required a powerful cloud video platform solution to process high resolution videos, and Forte's ability to support multiple languages including Japanese, made it the perfect choice. I believe Blackbird Forte will serve as a catalyst for change in a traditional Japanese broadcast landscape." The platform allows for reviewers and teams of editors to access content simultaneously, and allows for speed, unrestricted bandwidth and remote capabilities during collaborations. A statement from Forbidden Technologies said the technology will improve time management, collaboration efficiencies and flexibility of content creators and broadcasters in the region. Ian McDonough, chief executive of Forbidden Technologies, said: "We're delighted to announce this new deal through our partner, Dragon Touch Systems in Kanagawa, Japan. It represents a minor breakthrough in a major market. The customer has recognised the power of the platform and the ability to have a highly responsive workstation experience while working in the cloud, thanks to the Blackbird codec." As of 1022 BST, Forbidden Technologies shares were down 2.10% at 7.00p. Fluorspar-focussed firm Tertiary Minerals updated the market on the exploitation mine permit re-assessment for its Storuman fluorspar project in Sweden on Tuesday, reporting that recent positive meetings had been held between the head of the Swedish Mining Inspectorate, the county administrative board of Vasterbotten, and Tertiary. The AIM-traded company said comprehensive supplementary reports and a legal statement had now been submitted to the Swedish Mining Inspectorate, which was requested as part of the permit re-assessment process with a deadline of 16 April. It included an in-depth analysis of reindeer herding, along with reindeer herding and reindeer grazing conditions in the area of planned mining operations. The reports also included a description of vegetation and reindeer conditions in the area of the planned tailings storage facility, and an in-depth analysis of the impact expected on the Natura 2000 area, Kyrkbergstjarnen. Tertiary said the in-depth analysis showed that its proposed mining operations at Storuman, with mitigation measures proposed, would have only a minimal impact on reindeer husbandry, and that there would be no impact on the Natura 2000 area. We are pleased with the positive findings from the in-depth analysis and the high quality of the reports produced, said Tertiary managing director Richard Clemmey. Given that we continue to have support from the majority of key stakeholders, we remain hopeful of a positive resolution to the Mine Permit re-assessment process in the near future. It is, however, worth noting that the company has no influence on the speed at which the re-assessment of the grant of the mining permit is being processed by the authorities. The UK and the US have made moves against one of the largest telecommunications equipment makers in China, adding the firm to an ever-expanding list of companies facing restrictions put in place by western nations over national security fears. On Monday night, America's Commerce Department banned all US companies from selling any components to the Chinese telecommunications equipment manufacturer for seven years after it was charged with violating a 2017 settlement over allegations that it had illegally sold equipment to Iran and North Korea. "This egregious behaviour cannot be ignored," Commerce Secretary Wilbur Ross said when announcing that move. ZTE had pleaded guilty to criminal charges and paid $1.2bn to the United States as part of its 2017 settlement agreement. Also on Monday evening, Britain's National Cyber-Security Centre warned the UK telecommunications sector in a letter of the potential risks to national security linked to use of ZTE's equipment. The NCSC's move meant the Asian company aws effectively cut off from billions of pounds-worth of potential contracts to upgrade the UK's telecoms infrastructure to 5G and towards full fibre networks. The steps taken by the two watchdog agencies came close on the heels of recent aggressive moves by the White House, which had previously enlisted the Committee on Foreign Investment in the US, a little-known national security body, to enforce changes to multiple deals with ties to China. In a statement on Tuesday morning, ZTE said it had been made aware of the US order and that it would be "assessing the full range of potential implications" to the company, which suspended trading of its shares in Hong Kong and Shenzhen shortly after. The US Commerce Department claimed the move was not linked to similar actions carried out in recent weeks by the White House, highlighting the fact that ZTE's violations were initially looked into by the Obama administration. However, many experts felt these new sanctions were simply part of a growing anti-Chinese sentiment stemming from, not only London and Washington, but also in the likes of Germany, Australia and Canada. They were also expected to add to the rapidly escalating economic tensions between Washington and Beijing, which have been at loggerheads in a rhetorical trade war, with both threatening to impose tariffs on $150bn-worth of goods traded with the other. According to some observers, the sanctions could prove to be devastating for Shenzhen-based ZTE, which was originally an offshoot of China's aerospace ministry, given its dependence on American firms for between 25% to 30% of the components used in its gear. German investor sentiment tumbled in April amid worries about the trade spat between the US and China and the situation in Syria, according to the latest survey from the ZEW Center for European Economic Research in Mannheim. The indicator of economic sentiment fell to -8.2 from 5.1 the month before, massively missing expectations for a smaller decline to -1.0. Meanwhile, the current situation index dropped to 87.9 in April from 90.7 in March, missing expectations for a reading of 88.0. The index gauging economic expectations in the eurozone declined to 1.9 from 13.4 in March, falling well short of the 7.3 forecast. Professor Achim Wambach, President of ZEW, said: "The reasons for this downturn in expectations can mainly be found in the international trade conflict with the United States and the current situation in the Syrian war. The significant decline in production, exports and retail sales in Germany in the first quarter of 2018 is also having a negative effect on the future economic development." Capital Economics said April's decline suggests that protectionist fears are taking their toll on the export-reliant economy. "The deterioration in the ESI probably reflected both the escalation in protectionist rhetoric between the US and China, which will have raised policy uncertainty for German export-oriented firms, and the recent disappointing official data out of Germany. "The fact that the ESI is below zero means that a majority of investors see German economic conditions worsening over the next six months. On the face of it, the ESI suggests that annual GDP growth will slow sharply from Q4s 2.9%. But the historic relationship between the ESI and growth is very loose. Admittedly, the hard data for Q1 so far have been particularly weak. But this in part reflects temporary effects related to the weather and a flu outbreak. And while Germany is vulnerable to increased protectionism, at this stage we doubt that an all-out trade war will materialise. "Meanwhile, with the new grand coalition set to loosen fiscal policy slightly, we remain fairly optimistic about the outlook. Overall, then, we expect only a modest slowdown and see the German economy expanding by 2.5% this year and 2.0% next." Oxford Economics said: "After last weeks continued tumble of the Sentix, it was expected the ZEW could reach negative territory for the first time since mid-2016 (in the wake of the British Brexit vote). But the magnitude of the drop should come as a surprise to markets, and being the second such drop in a row, may be the harbinger of more bad news to come - in particular with respect to the PMIs next week. "However, economic sentiment tends to be volatile and may well be exaggerating fears of an escalation of the trade conflict or the war in Syria. As current conditions remain fairly bright, we do not expect economic activity to nose-dive in Q2, although it might not fully bounce back from the soft patch observed in Q1. But risks to the second half of the year seem to be mounting." China's central bank has announced a reduction in its legal reserve requirement for some of the country's main financial institutions, but some economists believed that would only partially offset the tighter financial conditions resulting from Beijing's increased macro-prudential measures. Effective 25 April, the portion of their capital that lenders will be asked to keep on deposit with the central bank would be cut by 100 basis points to 15% or 17%. The People's Bank of China said the move, which would apply to large commercial banks, joint-stock banks, city commercial banks, rural commercial banks, and foreign banks was meant to relieve pressure on small and medium-sized firms. It was also aimed at helping banks repay Medium-Term Lending Facility loans. Tuesday's move came close on the heels of a temporary reduction in the RRR in February, around the Lunar New Year holidays, and a cut at the end of 2017 targeted at smaller lenders. Were it not for the so-called macro-prudential measures that were in place, combined both sets of moves would equate to a loosening in policy. But not this time around, said Freya Beamish at Pantheon Macroeconomics, who said it amounted to making the end-2017 cut permanent, while providing further liquidity on top. "This reinforces our impression that the authorities are set on squeezing shadow banking activities through macroprudential measures, whilst easing the pressure on the conventional banking system," Beamish said. "[...] Overall, we judge China's monetary conditions to be tightening sharply. We reckon the authorities will have to start loosening the macroprudential stance in the second half." President Trump has reportedly declined to sign-off on proposed additional sanctions against Russia for the Kremlins support of Bashar al-Assads Syrian regime, contradicting the US ambassador to the UN Nikki Haley announced at the weekend that Monday would see new sanctions approved against Russia as part of a strategy to send a "strong message" concerning the consequences for the Assad regime and its supporters following alleged chemical attacks. Speaking on Sunday, Haley said: "I think everyone is going to feel it at this point. We wanted their friends Iran and Russia to know that we meant business and that they were going to be feeling the pain from this as well." The ambassador went on to explain that companies dealing with equipment related to Syrias chemical weapons programme would be targeted. Haley's comments were met with outrage from Moscow, with Kremlin press secretary Dmitry Peskov stating that "the sanction campaign against Russia is truly assuming the nature of an obsessive idea," according to Interfax. The Trump administration moved to reassure Russia that sanctions were not on the table, characterising Haleys comments as misstatements. White House press secretary Sarah Huckabee Sanders said: "the president has been clear that hes going to be tough on Russia, but at the same time hed still like to have a good relationship with them." Foreign policy analysts have been quick to highlight the mishap as another entry in the increasingly extensive library of evidence of the administrations struggle to nail down a firm strategy for dealing with Moscow. Stephen Sestanovich, a scholar at the Council on Foreign Relations and Columbia University who served as ambassador to former Soviet states in the 1990s, said: "Trump seems to think that if he accepts what his advisers recommend on even days of the month and rejects their recommendations on odd days, the result will be a strategy." Among other incidents, the erratic relationship between the Trump administration and Putins Russia has seen the President congratulating Putin for his reelection, in what has been widely regarded as a sham contest, and subsequently enforcing two rounds of sanctions following the Skripal poisoning in Salisbury. "By and large, other governments dont know whether to laugh or cry at all this. But in Russia, laughter is getting the upper hand," Sestanovich concluded. Stocks pushed higher after a stronger-than-expected update from Netflix light a fire under technology issues and amid a flurry of news on the M&A front. There were also some positive headlines on the international trade front, which helped to drive gains in Automobile stocks. Commenting on the market backdrop, Josh Mahony at IG told clients: "US corporate earnings outperformance is helping drive gains in stock markets across the board this afternoon. A bullish set of figures from Netflix have helped drive the tech sector higher, amid hopes that we are set to leave the Facebook privacy fears crisis behind." By the closing bell, the benchmark Stoxx 600 had risen 0.80% or 3.03 points to 380.77, alongside a gain of 1.57% or 194.16 points for Germany's Dax to 12,585.57 and an advance of 0.76% on the Cac-40 to 5,353.54. Meanwhile, euro/dollar was down 0.30% at 1.2346. At the sector level, the best performance was put in by Technology, with the Stoxx 600 sector gauge jumping 1.98% to 447.11 as shares of Netflix surged on the other side of the Pond after the streaming video provider posted a first quarter subscriber numbers which trounced analysts' forecasts. Domestic net subscriber adds over the three months to 31 March printed at 1.96m, a third more than had been anticipated by analysts, while the increase in those overseas beat the consensus by 9%. Tailing that gain were companies in the Autos&parts space after Beijing promised to increase access for foreign carmakers to its market. Nevertheless, economic data out on the Continent on Tuesday was less than inspiring and came alongside mixed readings on GDP and industrial production in China overnight. In particular, the ZEW institute's economic confidence index for Germany retreated from a reading of +5.1 for March to -8.2 in April (consensus: -1.0) - its lowest level since November 2012. Despite that weak reading, Jessica Hinds at Capital Economics said: "Admittedly, the hard data for Q1 so far have been particularly weak. But this in part reflects temporary effects related to the weather and a flu outbreak. "And while Germany is vulnerable to increased protectionism, at this stage we doubt that an all-out trade war will materialise. Meanwhile, with the new grand coalition set to loosen fiscal policy slightly, we remain fairly optimistic about the outlook." Earlier, ISTAT had reported that Italy's harmonised consumer price index printed at up by 0.9% year-on-year in March, undershooting a preliminary estimate of 1.1%. Intrum Justitia surged after the Swedish outfit tabled a 3.6bn bid for Intesa Sanpaolo's debt collection arm and its 10.8bn of bad debt. In other M&A news, France's Sanofi disclosed it was in exclusive talks with Advent International to dispose of its Zentiva generic drug division for 1.9bn. Still in the euro area's second-largest economy, grocer Casino Guichard posted a 3.1% jump in first quarter sales. Further South, in Spain, toll-road operator Abertis's board gave the green light to a joint bid by ACS and Atlantia. British and American intelligence agencies issued an unprecedented joint warning on Monday, alerting citizens of both nations that a Russian led hacking offensive was targeting millions of computers across the globe in order to spy on governments and pave the way for an attack on critical infrastructure operators. The UK's National Cyber Security Centre, along with the US Department of Homeland Security, the FBI, and the White House, claimed the penetration had reached such an extent that it was evident that President Putin was in possession of a "tremendous weapon". As part of a move looked upon as being preparation for future offensives, the attacks allegedly targeted routers, which play a crucial part in the infrastructure of the world wide web. Tens of thousands of devices in properties across the UK were said to be in the sights of Russian cyber-experts tasked with hunting for weak spots in home internet systems, such as simple passwords and lapsed anti-virus software. Security officials stated that the Kremlin-backed hackers were pursuing methods that would allow them to remain undetected within networks, offering them the ability to launch a cyber-attack if given the order to do so, and stressed that businesses had also been targeted, with hackers looking to steal intellectual property from companies within the UK. The very public attack on Moscow and its "malicious cyberactivity" by the two western allies was part of an effort to deter Putin from unloading the full potential of his weapon into cyberspace. Ciaran Martin, head of the NCSC, said that Britain's warning to Russia over its online activities was "a significant moment in the transatlantic fightback against Russian aggression in cyberspace." It was also revealed that Labour party MPs had previously been warned of an attempt to hack into parliamentary emails, but it was not known if the perpetrators had been successful in doing so or whether it was directly linked to Russia. Routers, including some made by Cisco, one of the largest internet infrastructure companies, were among those penetrated by Russia, which was known to have been targeting Britain's networks, among other countries, for more than two decades. But this marked the first time that Downing Street had publicly clapped back at the Kremlin for such aggression. Lloyds Banking Group implemented its latest strategic review on Tuesday by announcing its plans to remove around 1,230 jobs across eight business divisions while simultaneously creating roughly 925 new roles. Chief executive Antonio Horta-Osorio said just a few weeks ago that the bank would invest 3bn over the next three years to improve customer service, embrace digital technology and become more efficient. Of Lloyds' 23 different initiatives announced on Tuesday, which will result in a net reduction of around 305 jobs, according to banking union Accord, the three stand-out ones were seen as being the bank's withdrawal from its customer services site in Fareham in 2019, the closure of a further 49 branches across the UK and a new operating model that will affect local directors, managers, assistant branch managers and non-supervisory assistant branch managers. Accord's general secretary, Ged Nichols, said, "These job reductions come quick on the heels of a strategic review announcement which gave little away about the scale of changes that employees can expect over the next three years and the impact on jobs." "Even taking into consideration the number of new roles being created, they do not replicate the seniority of roles being removed and the experience which will leave the bank and not be replaced is a significant concern," Nichols added. The union expressed concerns over the new operating model and its potential to lead to the loss of managerial cover in branches. "We'll do everything we can to avoid them being made redundant against their wishes and we're contacting every one of them today to offer our support," Nichols concluded. In February Lloyds unveiled a 1bn share buyback for investors and increased its annual dividend by a fifth even though the bank reported full-year profit short of expectations. Pre-tax profit for the calendar year rose 24% to 5.3bn, less than the 5.7bn average analyst forecast due to higher provisions for payment protection insurance (PPI). Underlying profit rose 8% to 8.5bn, slightly below expectations for 8.6bn. Horta-Osorio said the bank was positioned for strong growth after the government sold the last of the shares it bought during the financial crisis. Horta-Osorio, who will be paid 6.4m for 2017, also outlined plans for investing 3bn over the next three years, saying Lloyds was "well prepared to succeed in a digital world. Tullow Oil announced the appointment of Dorothy Thompson as an independent non-executive director and chair-designate of the company on Tuesday, with effect from the conclusion of its annual general meeting on 25 April. The FTSE 250 firm said it anticipated Thompson would succeed Aidan Heavey, Tullow's current chairman and founder, as chair at the conclusion of the board meeting scheduled for 20 July. Heavey would retire from the board at the same time. I am delighted that Dorothy Thompson is joining Tullow and I wish her well as she takes on her new responsibilities, said Aidan Heavey. Dorothy has exactly the right mix of leadership, managerial, operational and financial experience that Tullow needs. I look forward to working closely with Dorothy during the transition period until she takes over as chair in July and I will follow Dorothy and Tullow's progress over the next few years with much interest. Tullows board said 57-year-old Thompson would bring extensive experience to the company, having served for 12 years as chief executive officer of Drax Group - the international power and energy trading company - until the end of 2017. Before joining Drax, Thompson managed InterGen's European power business, was head of project finance at PowerGen and worked at CDC Capital Partners, the private sector arm of the British Government's aid programme. It said Thompson had extensive emerging markets experience, including a period working in the commercial and industrial division of the Bank of Botswana. She holds a BSc and an MSc in economics from the London School of Economics and Political Science. Dorothy Thompson's extensive experience as CEO at Drax will be exceptionally valuable as we work together to position Tullow for growth in what remains an uncertain environment in our sector, said Tullows CEO Paul McDade. While Tullow is well-positioned with a balanced set of production, development and exploration assets, we will need to ensure that the company not only delivers on the potential of its current assets but also seeks out new opportunities for growth. I look forward to welcoming Dorothy to the company and working closely with her in the coming years. As well as her experience with Drax, Thompson is also currently a non-executive director of the Court of the Bank of England since 2014, and the NYSE-listed Eaton Corporation since 2016. She was a non-executive director of Johnson Matthey from 2007 until 2016. I am very pleased to be joining Tullow as the company emerges from the recent downturn in a strong position following the significant progress it has made over the past two years, Dorothy Thompson commented. I am looking forward to working with Paul and the board as we focus on delivering the full potential of the company's world class portfolio and the return to value enhancing growth. The University of North Georgia (UNG) has been named as one of the top-producing schools of Benjamin A. Gilman International Scholarship awards by the U.S. Department of State. UNG is No. 3 on the list among large public and private schools with more than 15,000 students in Georgia for the 2016-17 academic year. The two schools with more Gilman scholars were University of Georgia with 20 and Georgia Institute of Technology with 10. UNG had eight students awarded the Gilman in 2016-17, and eight more students in 2017-18. "Winning a prestigious Gilman scholarship often serves as a stepping stone to other nationally competitive opportunities. Often times, our Gilman scholars go on to win other top scholarships like the Boren and the Fulbright," said Dr. Anastasia Lin, assistant vice president for research and engagement and assistant dean of student research and scholarship. "Still other students leverage the study abroad experience afforded by the Gilman in their successful applications to graduate school programs and other career opportunities." A total of 19 public and private colleges of all enrollment sizes in Georgia made the list. This is the first year the State Department has compiled a list of top-producing colleges and universities of the Gilman scholarship. The grant program enables students of limited financial means to study or intern abroad, thereby gaining skills critical to national security and economic competitiveness. "UNG is proud to support our students in taking advantage of the Gilman International Scholarship Program," said Dr. Andy Novobilski, associate provost for research and engagement and chief research officer. "This program selects from a group of students who dont see obstacles as insurmountable barriers to future success, only as challenges to be overcome in reaching their goals." The Gilman is open to U.S. citizen undergraduate students who receive Federal Pell Grant funding at a two-year or four-year college or university to participate in study and intern abroad programs worldwide. Lin explained the scholarship is unique because it is geared toward supporting students who are underrepresented in study abroad programs. "The scholarship is interested in diversifying the types of students who study abroad, including those who do not have the economic resources to do so," she said. Last year, UNG senior Lyric Jones from Augusta, Georgia, was awarded the Gilman for a full academic year to study in China. In January, Monica Pizano of Jefferson, Georgia, won the scholarship for the spring 2018 semester to study abroad in Spain. Then one month later, six UNG students received the Gilman for the summer semester. They are: Devin Hing, sociology major, study in Israel, Thailand, Sri Lanka, and Cambodia Matthew Howell, international affairs major with a Middle East concentration, study in Morocco Jillian Jay, biology pre-med major, study in Israel, Sri Lanka, Thailand, and Cambodia Brooklyn Rouse, sociology major, study in Japan Rachael Williams, international affairs major with a Middle East concentration, study in Morocco Chelsey Willoughby, sociology major, study in Israel, Thailand, Sri Lanka, and Cambodia These eight UNG students are among the 1,000 American undergraduates to receive a Gilman scholarship. Since 2013, UNG has seen 28 students earn the scholarship to study abroad. UNGs Center for Global Engagement, Financial Aid office and many academic departments collaborate to find opportunities for students to travel overseas and thrive while learning in a new culture. The Gilman program is sponsored by the U.S. Department of States Bureau of Educational and Cultural Affairs and is supported in its implementation by the Institute of International Education. The complete list of large colleges and universities is available on the 2016-17 Gilman Top Producing Institutions by size and type page. The loss of any Endangered Species of wildlife is always a matter that cannot be taken lightly. Hence, the sudden death of 11 tree-climbing lions in a national park in Uganda has got the authorities worried. The animals were apparently healthy and were not suffering from any disease. Prima facie, they have been poisoned. Sky News reports that the dead included three lionesses and eight cubs. According to preliminary investigations conducted by Uganda Wildlife Authority, the deaths seem to be the result of a man-animal conflict. Villagers had killed the lions because they felt the wildlife had snatched one of their cows. Endangered species need protection Wildlife is under threat all over the world. Many of them are hunted by poachers for their body parts that are believed to possess special powers. Others fall prey to hunters who hunt them for trophies. However, the majority of these animals are lost due to the man-animal conflict which can be attributed to man encroaching into territories meant for wildlife. The gradual decline in their numbers brand them endangered species which is what happened in the national park in Uganda. The park is home to more than 200 lions, and some of them are the tree-climbing lions. There are some local communities who live within the park boundaries, and it's difficult to just relocate them in order to ensure the safety of the animals. The abundance of wildlife attracts tourists and loss of animals will often affect the tourism potential of the Sub-Saharan African regions. Man is responsible for the conflict The conflict between man and animals is growing every day and the reason is the attitude of humankind, whose developmental needs are depriving the animals of their natural habitats. As the forest cover disappears, the animals venture out of their known surroundings and enter human settlements in search of prey. This is an avoidable situation. Another factor that leads to man-animal conflict is the climate. Global warming results in sudden weather conditions that cause wildfires which destroy the green cover and displaces the animals from their natural habitats. The same goes for cases of flash floods. The animals migrate to nearby human settlements and the stage is set for conflict situations. The death of the tree-climbing lions in Uganda is the latest example of such a conflict. It is reported to have been a retaliatory action taken by humans against the animals who had killed a cow. The lions belong to an endangered species and the tragedy should have been avoided. Recovery will take a long time because three of the dead were lionesses. Earlier this month the president went to West Virginia to talk about the tax cuts. Instead, he spoke about the North American Free Trade Agreement, China, border security, and states he had conquered during the 2016 election. When he eventually remembered the Tax Cuts, he held up a piece of paper and said, 'This was going to be my remarks. It would have taken about two minutes, but throwing the piece of paper over his shoulder, he continued, 'to hell with it. That would have been a little boring. A little boring. Right. Now Im reading off the first paragraph, I said, This is boring.' Donald Trump seems not the only one who's lost interest. According to the New York Times, the general public has, too. While online search rates and news coverage of the tax cuts were significant back in December, when the president signed the bill, the interest soon waned. Media outlets began focusing on the introduction of steel and aluminum tariffs and Stromy Daniels instead, and online search trends also focused on those topics. On Twitter, Donald Trump focused on tax cuts from October of last year up until the end of 2017. From then on, he switched his focus to trade instead. Only on rare occasions did he mention the tax cuts. Congressional Republicans and Democrats tried to keep the tax cuts in the news After the bill was signed in December, Congressional Republicans believed that the tax cuts would garner the electorate's support. For that reason, they wanted to keep highlighting the cuts. Democrats organized protests against the cuts, hoping to find additional support from opponents. But the interest among the public continued to fade. As a result, the Republicans pulled a taxed-themed advertisement in Pensylvania last month. When it comes to the public's opinion on the tax cuts, a New York Times-commissioned survey by Survey Monkey revealed that 48 percent are in favor, while 47 percent oppose the bill. The survey also indicated a falling support, seeing as back in February, 51 percent approved of the tax cuts. Tax cuts make the headlines in the run-up to Tax Day 2018 In the run-up to the 2018 Tax Day, the public has shown more interest in the tax cuts. What's more, Donald Trump finally decided to dedicate his time to a discussion on the topic. On Monday, he hosted a debate on the tax cuts at the Florida Small Businesses Roundtable. To mark Tax Day, he has so far merely retweeted a @WaysandMeansGOP tweet. Tomorrow is #TaxDay and the good news is this is the last year you will have to file using the old, broken code. Check out Chairman @RepKevinBradys op-ed in @USAToday https://t.co/YzN8pXA6AM Ways and Means (@WaysandMeansGOP) April 16, 2018 US government once used a Disney cartoon to convince the public that paying taxes is a good thing Here is something that might bring a smile to your face. A Time article tells the story of how the American government once used a Disney cartoon to entice people to pay their taxes. In fact, the cartoon was designed to persuade people that paying taxes is a privilege rather than a duty. After the Second World War, the tax take increased significantly but the then Treasury Secretary, Sir Henry Morgenthau, wanted to explain paying taxes to the American people in a more meaningful way. For that reason, he approached Walt Disney and asked him to make a cartoon about it. The cartoon was a huge success. Walt Disney decided to make more educational films, while the government asked him to make another video in 1943. Perhaps Donald Trump should consider releasing a new cartoon to motivate today's taxpayers. A pressure cooker bomb went off near the Indian Embassy field office in Nepals Biratnagar late on Monday damaging the walls of the premises, Nepal Police has said. No one has claimed responsibility. The Indian Embassy in Kathmandu has not made any remarks regarding the blast yet. It is suspected that a splinter group of Maoist-led by Netra Bikram Chand could be responsible for the blast due to its anti-Indian rhetoric in the past. According to the Superintendent of Police of Morang district, Arun Kumar BC, the blast occurred close to the office that India, he said, was operating without permission of the Nepal government. The police has launched a probe. There have been repeated calls from various quarters to evacuate the field office, Kumar said. Following the Koshi River flood in 2008, Nepal requested India to provide its land for transportation and passage for transit facilities until its highways were repaired. To assist smooth facilitation of the Nepali vehicles via Indian land from Biratnagar to Birgunj, India had temporarily set up the field office in Biratnagar. It has remained there for a decade now. Every visiting Nepali Prime Minister to India has requested for its removal but India did not. With the aim to build a win-win partnership with Sweden making use of the opportunities offered by Indias development programmes, the two countries on Tuesday signed a Joint Action Plan and an Innovation Partnership following a bilateral summit between Indian Prime Minister Narendra Modi and his Swedish counterpart Stefan Lofven here. Jointly addressing the media here along with Lofven after their talks, Modi said that Sweden has been a strong contributor to the Make in India programme from the beginning and recalled that the Swedish Prime Minister himself led a big business delegation to the Make in India summit in Mumbai in 2016. The main theme of our discussions today was how to develop a win-win partnership between Sweden and India through the opportunities offered by Indias development programmes, Modi said. As a result, we agreed to a Joint Action Plan and an Innovation Partnership. Stating that innovation, investment, start-ups, manufacturing were among the main areas of cooperation between the two countries, he said that attention was also paid to renewable energy, urban transport and waste management to improve the quality of life of the Indian people. According to the Joint Action Plan, both sides will initiate a multi-stake holder Innovation Partnership for a Sustainable Future, underpinning the mutual commitment to drive prosperity and growth and address societal challenges such as climate change and sustainable development through innovation. The Action Plan also aims to exchange knowledge and explore cooperation on smart cities, including transit-oriented urban development, air pollution control, waste management, waste-to-energy, waste-water treatment, district cooling and circular economy, including through dialogue and capacity building. The two sides also agreed to exchange know-how and explore cooperation in the areas of electro-mobility as well as renewable fuels. The Joint Action Plan aims to deepen collaboration between the two countries in smart, sustainable and renewable energy, womens skills development and empowerment, space and science, and health and life sciences. Defence and security is an important pillar of our bilateral relationship, Modi said in his address to the media. Sweden has been partner of India in defence sector for a long time. I am confident that new opportunities for cooperation in this sector will arise in the future, especially in defence production. Modi said that both sides also agreed to further strengthen security, especially cyber security cooperation. According to the Joint Action Plan, both sides agreed to explore the finalisation of a bilateral agreement on exchange and mutual protection of classified information for cooperation in the defence area and encourage industry partners to develop supply chains for small and medium sized enterprises with major defence and aerospace original equipment manufacturers. One more thing that we have agreed upon is that the importance of our relationship should be reflected at the regional and global levels, Modi said. We have been closely cooperating on the international platform and this will continue. Modi also said developments in Europe and Asia came up for detailed discussion during the bilateral summit. According to the Joint Action Plan, both sides reaffirmed the need for reform of the UN Security Council, including its expansion, to make it more representative, accountable, effective, and responsive to the realities of the 21st century. Both Prime Ministers called for greater unity and stronger international partnership to counter terrorism, disrupt terrorist networks and financing, and to prevent violent extremism, it stated. On his part, Lofven said that he believed that Sweden and India make a perfect match. Stating that India is undergoing an unprecedented economic transformation, he said that Sweden has a lot of innovative solutions to offer in this connection. I am very pleased to announce that the Swedish government will kick start our Innovation Partnership by providing up to 50 million Swedish kronor (Over $59 million) for innovation cooperation with India in the field of smart cities and sustainability, Lofven said. Following the summit, Modi and Lofven participated in a round table with Swedish CEOs during which the CEOs were exhorted to invest in India and participate in the countrys flagship initiatives, External Affairs Ministry spokesperson Ravessh Kumar said in a tweet. Earlier in the day, Modi called on Swedens King Carl XVI Gustaf at the Royal Palace here and the two leaders exchanged views on strengthening bilateral cooperation. India and Sweden will on Tuesday also co-host the first ever India-Nordic Summit, where, apart from Modi and Lofven, the Prime Ministers of the other four Nordic countries of Denmark, Finland, Iceland and Norway will also be present. Modi will hold separate bilateral meetings with the leaders of the other four Nordic countries on the sidelines of the summit. The Indian Prime Minister arrived here on Monday evening on the first leg of his three-nation tour of Europe that will also see him going to Britain and Germany. This is the first prime ministerial visit from India to Sweden in 30 years after the visit of then Prime Minister Rajiv Gandhi in 1988. After attending an Indian community event here late on Tuesday night, Modi will depart for London on the second leg of his tour. Pakistans Advisor to the Prime Minister on Finance Miftah Ismail left for Washington on Tuesday to hold talks with representatives of the World Bank and the International Monetary Fund (IMF). The meeting is said to be crucial as the South Asian country is just a few weeks away from announcing its Federal Finance Bill for the financial year of 2018-19, Xinhua news agency reported citing local media reports. Islamabad is set to unveil the federal budget on April 27. Pakistan had successfully completed a 36-month IMF programme, which started in 2013. At the end of the programme, the IMF had praised Pakistan for its fiscal discipline and reforms programme. Ismail will stay in Washington for three days where he will hold meetings with US officials. The US military on Tuesday started the construction of a storage facility at a base in the Philippines Pampanga province. The US Embassy said in a statement that the facility at the Basa Air Base is the first major construction project within the Enhanced Defense Cooperation Agreement (EDCA), reports Xinhua news agency. The groundbreaking ceremony marks the beginning of construction for a Humanitarian Assistance and Disaster Relief storage facility, which will house equipment and supplies critical to responding efficiently and effectively to humanitarian crises in the region, the statement read. Philippine Defence secretary Delfin Lorenzana and US Ambassador to the Philippines Sung Kim attended the ceremony. Kim told reporters that more facilities will be built in the four other Philippines military bases under the EDCA. The Philippines is a treaty ally of the US. The total number of Bangladeshs mobile phone subscribers reached nearly 150 million at the end of February, with addition of 3.66 million new users in the first two months of the year, statistics of the countrys telecom regulator showed on Tuesday. The number of subscribers in the country reached 148.76 million in February, Xinhua news agency reported citing a data by Bangladesh Telecommunication Regulatory Commission. Bangladesh has now four mobile companies, three of whom including Grameenphone, Robi and Banglalink are foreign-backed cellphone operators. The number of subscribers of the mobile operators, Grameenphone, Robi Axiata, Banglalink and Teletalk stood at 66.47 million, 45.59 million, 32.72 million and 3.98 million respectively at the end of February, BTRC data showed. The total number of Bangladeshs mobile phone subscribers reached nearly 145.11 million at the end of December 2017. The words create instant visuals, including one that imagines the clandestine African migrants traveling in small, unreliable vessels across the Mediterranean in search of a better destiny. This may sound like a story on the evening news, but with Alexander Dickows 2018 PEN/Heim Translation Fund Grant, the tale of desperate travels is poetry. Dickow, an associate professor of French in Virginia Techs Department of Modern and Classical Languages and Literatures, was first drawn to the work of French poet Sylvie Kande in 2012. After meeting Kande a year later, when she presented a guest lecture at Virginia Tech, he embarked on the translation of her epic poem "Neverending Quest for the Other Shore: An Epic in Three Cantos." The inspiration to translate comes from the impulse to share a work you think is significant and meaningful, he said. Kandes heroic verse narrative compares the plight of African migrants to the historic legend of a ruler of 14th-century Mali. The tragic quest of Abubakar II to find the edge of the world ended with the disappearance of his ships fleet. After feeling the power of Kandes words, Dickow wanted to help her broaden her audience. He applied for the PEN/Heim translation grant as a way to attract publishers for its eventual publication. Alex is making that poetry available to those who dont know French or dont know it well enough to understand the language of poetry, said Jacqueline Bixler, Alumni Distinguished Professor of Spanish and chair of the Department of Modern and Classical Languages and Literatures. He is a very talented and accomplished translator of French poetry. According to Dickow, translations help propel epic poetry into prominence. He cites Aime Cesaires "Notebook of a Return to the Native Land" as an example of this phenomenon. The poem achieved international fame through its translations into Spanish and English in the 1940s before it became widely known in France. Dickow hopes his translation of Kandes poem will, in addition to an earlier German translation, make a big impression in the United States and France. Theres no equivalent to a work like this in French, he said. Its an epic. Its in verse. It has a clear narrative arc. It isnt about personal experience but collective experience. In her original book, the poet imagines an alternative history for Abubakar II and his company of ships. She weaves his story together with the modern tale of African migration into a manifesto of heroism by the oppressed. An excerpt from his project with Kande was a runner-up in Asymptote Journals Close Approximations Translation Prize. He credits this journal as the first literary presence to recognize the poem as a promising work of translation. One of only a dozen PEN/Heim translation grantees, Dickow has five years to complete this project. PEN America part of PEN International, an organization that champions literature and human rights to protect open expression sponsors the award. Dickows desire to delve into the deep waters of translating anothers work stems from his own passion for writing poetry. He is the author of "Caramboles," a collection of poems in French and English, and "Le Poete innombrable: Cendrars, Apollinaire, Jacob," a book on three other French poets. His forthcoming book, "Appetites," will be published by MadHat Press. After earning a bachelors degree in French from Reed College, Dickow earned a masters degree from Rutgers University and then a doctorate, also in French, from Rutgers and Universite Paris 8. Written by Leslie King On Thursday, April 19, 5-7 p.m., in Goodwin Hall 190, students can meet Marion Blakey, chief executive officer of Rolls-Royce North America and Wings Club executive. Hear Blakeys perspective on the many career opportunities that exist in aviation, aerospace, and defense and where the industry is heading. We are pleased to be one of 31 designated international University Technology Centers where both undergraduate and graduate students can work hand in hand with Rolls-Royce engineers in the development of technologies that transport people and cargo around the world, said Jack Lesko, associate dean of research and graduate education for the College of Engineering. Through the partnership with Rolls-Royce, more than 100 Virginia Tech students have participated in research, manufacturing and engineering design all across the globe as part of internships, international research experiences and research programs. At the Thursday evening event, students can participate in a Q&A with Virginia Tech alumni, currently working for Rolls-Royce and network with Wings Club executives, Aviation Week Network professionals, and Rolls-Royce America. Students will have the opportunity to sign in and join the Wings Club as a student member for one year. Attendees will also receive a one-year digital subscription to Aviation Week Network. Reception and refreshments provided following the event in Goodwin Hall Atrium, 7-8 p.m. Rolls-Royce is a pre-eminent engineering company focused on world-class power and propulsion systems. Rolls-Royce pioneers cutting-edge technologies that deliver the cleanest, safest and most competitive solutions to meet our planets vital power needs. The Wings Club Foundation is the premier global society of aviation professionals. The mission of the society is to foster opportunities to pursue an education in the field of aviation, provide programs to educate in the field of aviation, and to support charitable organizations that use aviation to help those in need. 1. Yes. The district should offer a virtual learning option, even in a modified format. 2. Yes. The bill limits the number of students who use it, but it does provide state funds. 3. No. Its too late in the year for the district to try to rework its teaching platforms. 4. No. The bill only allows 10% of students to access it, and also has other restrictions. 5. Unsure. It seems like a half-measure, but it may be worth pursuing. Vote View Results Second draft RFP for DOD's JEDI cloud reveals few changes The Defense Department has released the second draft solicitation for its massive "JEDI" cloud computing contract and in the most significant ways, little has changed. DOD still wants to make a single award to one company, $10 billion over up to 10 years. They continue to say that they are not dictating who or what type of company will be chosen. They continue to say they are open to any single prime, team, joint venture or alliance as long as either can meet the requirements of the contract. They even note dozens of times throughout the second draft: "The government will consider all possible solutions industry has to offer that will meet the requirements of the solicitation and will not be prescriptive by specifying a solution." But given JEDI's requirements, the likelihood remains high that DOD will pick a cloud service provider such as Amazon Web Services or Microsoft Azure to be the prime for the contract, which goes by the full name of Joint Enterprise Defense Infrastructure. DOD wants a commercially available cloud infrastructure to provide both platform as a service and infrastructure as a service for DODs business and mission operations. DOD envisions JEDI as supporting a wide range of data initiatives including artificial intelligence, big data analytics and information sharing. The first draft RFP received 1,089 questions and comments from 46 companies, two associations and three government agencies, according to DODs FBO.gov posting. Identifying information was stripped from the questions and comments before they were released with DODs responses along with the second draft solicitation. DOD is accepting comments on the second draft RFP through April 30 and says that is still on track to issue a final solicitation in early May. Thats a very ambitious time frame, especially when you consider the reporting requirements Congress placed on DOD when it passed the fiscal 2018 funding bill. DOD is supposed to send the reports before moving forward with a final RFP. Those reports include detailed justifications of why DOD wants to make a single award and why it seems to be rejecting the idea of multiple clouds. Congress wants those reports by around May 25. The questions and answers from the first draft RFP released with the second draft offer some insights into DODs thinking around several topics but it also leaves many unanswered questions. For example, several questions asked about migration and transition plans if DOD decides to move from one cloud service provider to another. DODs answer was consistent if not unsatisfying -- Transition and migration services are outside the scope of this contract. In other cases, DOD seemed to brush off comments related to a single provider (their preference) versus a multi-cloud approach .Such as here: QUESTION: A worldwide highly available resilient infrastructure, with a single point of failure, is a contradiction in terms, please explain. DODs response: Your comment has been noted. The requirement remains as stated. In fact, DOD used the phrase Your comment has been noted 181 times in response to questions and comments. Almost 70 times, a response to a question or comment included the phrase: The requirement remains as stated. Four times, DOD declined to give its reasoning for single award versus multiple award and said: The rationale is not going to be published at this time. For example, DOD used that response when a questioner asked, Why has the government not made public its written justification for a single contract? Please provide the written determination to the public. That is one of the key questions Congress wants answered, so eventually DOD will have to answer. One significant change from draft 1 to draft 2 is the small business requirement. In draft 1, DOD set a small business requirement of 30 percent. But in draft 2, DOD clarified that the 30 percent isnt for the entire value of the contract but only applies to what it calls Cloud Support Services, which were called Professional Support Services in draft 1. While this makes calculating the small business opportunity of JEDI more difficult, it still should be a significant small business opportunity. Because JEDI is slated to go to a single winner, many industry have complained that it will shut out competitors to whoever the winner is and many are assuming that the winner will be Amazon Web Services. There also have been concerns that ongoing cloud initiatives will take a back seat or even be replaced by JEDI. But defense officials, including Secretary of Defense James Mattis, have been vocal in recent weeks that DOD will not become hostage to a single provider. Mattis told the House Armed Services Committee in testimony last week that JEDI only had a two-year base, so DOD would avoid being locked into a single provider if things werent going well. The new draft fell flat with at least one vendor, with IBM releasing a statement from the head of their federal business: "No major commercial enterprise in the world would risk a single cloud solution, and neither should the Pentagon," said Sam Gordy, general manager of IBM Federal. "IBM will continue to urge that Americas defense cloud be multi-layered, robust, and consistent with the best practice of the worlds major cloud users." Wall Street analysts have given iShares MSCI Peru ETF a "N/A" rating, but there may be better buying opportunities in the stock market. Some of MarketBeat's past winning trading ideas have resulted in 5-15% weekly gains. MarketBeat just released five new stock ideas, but iShares MSCI Peru ETF wasn't one of them. MarketBeat thinks these five companies may be even better buys. View MarketBeat's top stock picks here. Gildan Activewear Inc. manufactures and sells various apparel products in the United States, Canada, and internationally. It provides various activewear products, including T-shirts, fleece tops and bottoms, and sport shirts under the Gildan, Gildan Performance, Gildan Hammer, Comfort Colors, American Apparel, Anvil by Gildan, Alstyle, Prim + Preux, and GoldToe brands. The company also offers hosiery products comprising athletic; dress; and casual, liner, therapeutic, and workwear socks, as well as sheer panty hoses, tights, and leggings under the brands of Gildan, Under Armour, GoldToe, PowerSox, GT a GoldToe Brand, Silver Toe, Signature Gold by Goldtoe, Peds, MediPeds, Kushyfoot, Therapy Plus, All Pro, Secret, Silks, Secret Silky, and American Apparel. In addition, it provides men's and boys' underwear products, and ladies panties under the Gildan and Gildan Platinum brand names; and ladies' shapewear, intimates, and accessories under the Secret and Secret Silky brands. The company sells its products to wholesale distributors, screen printers, or embellishers, as well as to retailers and consumer brand companies. The company was formerly known as Textiles Gildan Inc. and changed its name to Gildan Activewear Inc. in March 1995. Gildan Activewear Inc. was founded in 1946 and is headquartered in Montreal, Canada. Read More Third is Utahs Zion National Park. Visitors have grown from 2.4 million to 4.5 million since 1998. Whats nice about this park is a free shuttle bus that stops at nine locations throughout the park. Coming in fourth with 4.4 million visitors last year is Rocky Mountain National Park in Colorado. A big attraction there is Trail Ridge Road, which crests at over 12,000 feet. Yosemite National Park in California welcomed 4.3 million visitors, making it the fifth most popular park. While the unique landscape can make it difficult to see parts of it, the park has made accessibility improvements and offers a free shuttle bus in Yosemite Valley. While currently sixth in popularity with 4.1 million, Yellowstone National Park was originally the first and only national park. President Ulysses S. Grant made the declaration in 1872. The park borders Idaho, Montana and Wyoming. A must-see there is the Old Faithful geyser. Rounding out the top 10 list: Acadia National Park, 3.5 million Olympic National Park, 3.4 million Grand Teton National Park, 3.3 million Glacier National Park, 3.3 million The National Park Service is opening its gates for free on two other days this year: Sept. 22 and Nov. 11, Veterans Day. Getty Images A public-employee pension crisis for state governments has deepened to a record level even after nearly nine years of economic recovery for the nation, according to a study released Thursday, leaving many states vulnerable if the economy hits a downturn. The massive unfunded pension liabilities are becoming a real problem not just for public-sector retirees and workers concerned about their future, but also for everyone else. As states try to prop up their pension funds, less money is available for core government services such as education, public safety and parks. The annual report from the Pew Charitable Trusts finds that public-worker pension funds with heavy state-government involvement owed retirees and current workers $4 trillion as of 2016. They had about $2.6 trillion in assets, creating a gap of about one-third, or a record $1.4 trillion. While the study looks only at pension funds with major state-government involvement, systems run by cities, counties, school districts and other local entities have had similar problems. Just this week, the Chicago suburb of Harvey, a city with a history of underpaying its pension obligations, announced deep layoffs in its police and fire departments. Officials blamed their rising pension obligations. Larger cities and school districts across the country also have had service cuts or freezes over the years to pay for rising costs for their retirees. SANTA FE Santa Fes Valerie Plame blasted President Donald Trump last week for pardoning I. Lewis Scooter Libby, who in 2007 was convicted of perjury and obstruction of justice in connection with a national security leak that led to Plame being exposed as a CIA officer. Plame and her husband, former ambassador Joe Wilson, both said the pardon was meant to send a message to subjects of the special counsel investigation of Russian meddling in the 2016 presidential election that he has their back. The couple provided separate statements published by the Huffington Post on Friday and also appeared separately on MSNBC-TV that same day. This is definitely not about me; it is absolutely not about Scooter Libby. Its about Donald Trump and his future, Plame said on MSNBC. Its very clear that this is a message that hes sending that you can commit crimes against national security and you will be pardoned. Plame said the message was likely meant for the Presidents former campaign manager Paul Manafort, former National Security Advisor Michael Flynn, and Jared Kushner, his son-in-law and a senior adviser to the president. The message being sent is you can commit perjury and I will pardon you, she said. Plame did not return a message from the Journal Monday. Trump provided Libby with a full pardon Friday, stating that he had heard that Libby, who at the time of his actions was serving as Vice President Dick Cheneys chief of staff, had been treated unfairly. Hopefully, this full pardon will help rectify a very sad portion of his life, the president said in a statement. That is simply false, Plame said in her statement to the Huffington Post. President Trumps pardon is not based on the truth. Former President George W. Bush declined to pardon Libby, despite his vice presidents urging, but he did commute Libbys 30-month sentence in federal prison. Libby still had to pay a $250,000 fine and perform 400 hours of community service. Plame also mentioned that the federal prosecutor in the Libby case was appointed by then-U.S. Deputy Attorney General James Comey, the FBI director fired by Trump last year. On Sunday, Trump called Comey a slimeball in one of his tweets. Comey said in an interview with ABC News that Trump was morally unfit to be president. Wilsons statement said that the pardon suggests Trump is willing to allow people to violate the essence of our defense structure, our national security, our intelligence apparatus and essentially get away with it. He went on to say that Trump is a vile and despicable individual who represents the repudiation of everything that my generation has worked to secure for our nation and its people. Plame and Wilson sued Libby, Cheney and others in 2006 for infringing on Plames constitutional rights and conspiring to reveal her identity, but a U.S. District Court judge in Washington, D.C., dismissed the suit. LONDON A propaganda expert who has studied Cambridge Analytica says the company helped Donald Trumps presidential campaign use false statements and anti-Muslim messages to spread fear and resentment in swing states he needed to win. University of Essex lecturer Emma Briant made the comments in explanatory essays submitted to the media committee of the U.K. Parliament as part of its inquiry into fake news. She has studied SCL Group, the conglomerate that includes Cambridge Analytica, for a decade. Briant, who interviewed the groups employees for her academic research, submitted recordings of those discussions as well as the essays to the U.K. Electoral Commission, the Information Commissioners Office and the committee. Her intent was to discuss Cambridge Analyticas grossly unethical conduct enacted for profit, according to evidence released on Monday. Using (Cambridge Analyticas) media strategy, Trumps false racist and Islamophobic comments, resentment and fear were deployed where they would be most effective mobilizing swing state audiences, using voters personal data to monitor them, and using psychological profiling to manipulate their emotional responses en masse, Briant wrote. Briant persuaded key players, including SCL Group founder Nigel Oakes and Cambridge Analyticas former business development director, Brittany Kaiser, to speak candidly with her for a book she is writing with George Washington University professor Robert Entman. Her evidence was released a day before Kaiser is scheduled to testify to the committee. Her analysis follows the testimony of Christopher Wylie, the central figure in allegations that Cambridge Analytica improperly harvested information from up to 87 million Facebook accounts to help Trump win the 2016 presidential election. But Briant said that it was what the company did with information that made it powerful. Fetishizing their specific technology will only promote its power, Briant wrote. The point is how they abused data (and people) for profit, the political impact of their campaign, and the implications of rapid development in this area for the future for all our democracies. Wylie has also alleged that the conglomerate had links to the successful campaign for Britain to leave the European Union. While the company didnt work for the official campaign group, known as Vote Leave, it did work for a group called Leave.EU in the preliminary stages of the debate, Briant said. This work provided Leave.EU with the backbone' of its strategy. Leave.EU sought to create an impression of democracy and a campaign channeling public will, while creating deliberately provocative communications to subvert it and win by channeling hateful propaganda, Briant wrote. Cambridge Analytica did not immediately respond to an email seeking comment from The Associated Press on the submission. However, it has denied it used the data scraped from an app that obtained material from Facebook users in the Trump campaign. It also denies working on the Brexit referendum. We pitched Leave.eu, Vote.leave and Remain but did no work paid or unpaid for any of these entities, Cambridge Analytica said in an April 9 statement. In a statement released with Briants research, committee Chairman Damian Collins said Briants work offered unique insight into the private thoughts of key people at Leave.EU and SCL. He singled out comments by Oakes of SCL Group and Andy Wigmore, the former director of communications for Leave.EU, which drew parallels between their techniques and those of Nazi Germany. Collins said those comments will raise concerns that data analytics was used to target voters who were concerned about this issue, and to frighten them with messaging designed to create an artificial enemy for them to act against. Wigmore told Britains Press Association that his conversations with Briant were not for publication and described their release as willful deception and trickery. The Nazis came up in discussion in a historical context in reference to the scare tactics being used by the campaign to remain in the EU, he said. SANTA FE Debra Haaland campaigning to become the first Native American woman in Congress easily outdistanced her Democratic rivals in fundraising during a recent three-month period. She raised $294,000 in outside contributions during the reporting period nearly twice that of her closest rival in her bid to win the open U.S. House seat covering much of the Albuquerque area. More than $30,000 of that amount came from 15 different tribal groups around the country. But retired law professor Antoinette Sedillo Lopez holds an edge in total cash on hand heading into the campaigns last 50 days, thanks, in part, to strong fundraising in previous quarters. Sedillo Lopez, a former associate dean at the University of New Mexico law school, raised about $151,000 in outside contributions this quarter and now has about $457,000 in her campaign account, according to reports filed with the Federal Election Commission. Haaland, a former state Democratic Party chairwoman who came in first with about 35 percent of the delegate vote at last months pre-primary convention, has about $347,000 in cash. Her strong quarter comes after she was featured in The New York Times as an example of the historic number of Native American women running for office this year. Haaland is an enrolled Laguna Pueblo member. Damon Martinez, the former U.S. attorney for New Mexico, also posted hefty figures. He raised $145,000 in contributions and has $277,000 in cash. Three other Democratic candidates Albuquerque City Councilor Pat Davis; Paul Moya, CEO of Millennial Labs; and Damian Lara, president of the New Mexico Hispanic Bar Association trailed the top fundraisers. The race in the 1st Congressional District is wide open as Democratic incumbent Michelle Lujan Grisham is running for governor rather than seek re-election. The winner of the June 5 primary election would face Republican Janice Arnold-Jones and Libertarian Lloyd Princeton in the fall. Meanwhile, former state GOP chairman Monty Newman of Hobbs continues to lead the money race in a four-way Republican primary race for the southern New Mexico-based 2nd Congressional District seat. Newman reported raising $147,985 in contributions and has $368,769 in his campaign war chest, while state Rep. Yvette Herrell of Alamogordo took in $113,954 in donations and has $256,129 in her campaign account. Former Trump administration official Gavin Clarkson of Las Cruces and Clayburn Griffin of Lovington trail the two top money-raisers. On the Democratic side, Las Cruces water attorney Xochitl Torres Small reported $313,332 in contributions and has $243,409 in available campaign cash. Her lone Democratic rival, Mad Hildebrandt of Socorro, had not filed a report as of late Monday. Rep. Steve Pearce, R-N.M., announced last summer he would forgo re-election and run for governor, leaving two of New Mexicos three congressional seats open. There were tears. There was some applause. And there was a faint boo or two. After passionate and compassionate arguments from about 50 speakers representing all sides of the immigration issue, Albuquerque city councilors on Monday voted 6-3 to reaffirm and strengthen an immigrant-friendly resolution which bans use of city resources to identify undocumented immigrants or apprehend people based on their immigration status. The updated resolution reaffirms the citys policy and aims to eliminate fear among immigrants when it comes to contact with law enforcement. Republican Councilors Brad Winter, Trudy Jones and Don Harris voted in opposition to the measure. The decision to reaffirm Albuquerques status as an immigrant-friendly city was made despite the Trump administrations threat since taking office to withhold law enforcement grants for cities that have made immigrant-friendly declarations. The resolution states that Albuquerque is a safe place for immigrants from all countries, as well as for war refugees, people of color, Muslims, Jews, LGBTQ people and people with disabilities. The resolution was cosponsored by city councilors Klarissa Pena and Pat Davis, both Democrats. Pena explained the need to reaffirm the resolution. For her, she said, its a human rights issue. Weve been working on this for a while, she told fellow councilors. Because of some of the circumstances that have been out in the community, we want to provide clarity on the original intent of the resolution. Fellow Democratic Councilors Isaac Benton, Cynthia Borrego, Diane Gibson and Ken Sanchez also voted in support of the measure. The resolution cleared the councils Finance and Government Operations Committee last month with a do-pass recommendation. In order for Trump to carry out his terrifying vision of mass deportation, his administration is trying to strong-arm local governments into enforcing federal deportation programs, Fabiola Bawden told councilors. We are better than that in New Mexico. This resolution will build on Albuquerques legacy of integrating immigrants into the economic, cultural and civil fiber of the city. Edward Glenn told councilors the issue is a matter of rule of law. This is not an issue of racism, he said. Every one of you took an oath when you took office to protect the laws and the Constitution. This is not a matter of being cool. This is a matter of doing whats right. Albuquerque for years has had in place a resolution declaring the city as friendly toward immigrants. The City Council in 2000 passed a immigrant-friendly resolution which established policy for the city to treat all persons with respect and dignity regardless of their immigration status, ensured that immigrants who live in the city limits have access to municipal services and programs and instructed the Albuquerque Police Department not to enforce federal immigration laws. Last year, councilors approved a memorial which commits to continuing the policies and statements established under the 2000 resolution. That memorial did not require approval by Mayor Richard Berry as do ordinances or resolutions. Under Berrys administration, immigration agents used a small space within the Prisoner Transport Center to check the immigration status of arrestees, according to a previous Journal story. The updated resolution passed Monday bans immigration officers from any city property without a warrant. Bernalillo County commissioners have also taken a stance on the issue, passing an immigrant-friendly resolution last year that banned use of county dollars and personnel to investigate or arrest individuals based on their immigration status. Washington and London on Monday jointly accused the Russian government of maliciously targeting global internet equipment for political and economic espionage. The two governments said the Russian operations, which allegedly involve planting malware on internet routers and other equipment, could also lay the foundation for future offensive cyberattacks. A joint statement by the U.S. Department of Homeland Security, the FBI and the U.K.s National Cyber Security Centre said the main targets include government and private-sector organizations, as well as providers of critical infrastructure and internet service providers. Victims were identified through a coordinated series of actions between U.S. and international partners, according to a companion technical alert issued by the U.S. Computer Emergency Response Team (US-CERT). Both nations have high confidence in the finding of Russian-sponsored cyber-meddling, which the alert said has been reported by multiple sources since 2015. Australia also admonished Russia and accused Kremlin-backed hackers of cyberattacks on hundreds of Australian companies last year. Respected U.S. cybersecurity researcher Jake Williams said it was difficult for him to understand the motivation for Mondays alert given that the activity has been ongoing for some time. Calling the Russians out on this hardly makes much sense unless theres some other agenda (most likely political), Williams, the president of Rendition Infosec, added via text message. Routers direct data traffic across the internet. US-CERT said the compromised routers can be exploited for man-in-the-middle spoofing attacks, in which communications are intercepted by a seemingly trusted device that has actually been infiltrated by an attacker. The current state of U.S. network devices coupled with a Russian government campaign to exploit these devices threatens the safety, security, and economic well-being of the United States, the alert stated. An email message seeking comment from the Russian embassy in Washington, D.C., received no response. US-CERT urged affected companies, and public sector organizations and even people who use routers in home offices to take action to harden poorly-secured devices. But its alert cited only one specific product: Ciscos Smart Install software. Australian Defense Minister Marise Payne told reporterse about 400 Australian companies were targeted in the Russian attacks, but there was no exploitation of significance. The countrys cyber security minister, Angus Taylor, said. This attempt by Russia is a sharp reminder that Australian businesses and individuals are constantly targeted by malicious state and non-state actors. On March 15, US-CERT issued a similar alert saying the FBI and DHS had determined that Russian government cyber actors had sought to infiltrate U.S. agencies as well as organizations in the energy, nuclear, commercial facilities, water, aviation, and critical manufacturing sectors. It said Russian agents had obtained remote access to energy sector networks and obtained information on industrial control systems. Experts have stressed that the March 15 bulletin did not mean Russia had obtained access to systems that control critical infrastructure such as the power grid. But Russia does have history in this regard, as many security experts blame it for several cyber-sabotage attacks on Ukraines power grid. ____ Associated Press writer Rod McGuirk in Canberra, Australia, contributed to this report Copyright 2018 Albuquerque Journal SANTA FE A new search warrant affidavit filed in state District Court in Santa Fe suggests that Jordan Nunez played a role in the beating death of 13-year-old Jeremiah Valencia, who was killed in November at a Nambe house. Thomas Ferguson is facing first-degree murder charges in Valencias death. But Fergusons 19-year-old son, Nunez, may have participated in the killing, according to Facebook messages made before authorities knew about Jeremiahs death or before anyone had been charged in the case. In one message, Nunez says everyone looks at him differently like I did it all by myself. He insists they did it, too, and that what he did was an accident. Ferguson, 42, who is charged with murder and 17 other counts in Jeremiahs death, sent a message to Nunez that said Nunez got rid of Jeremiah. Jeremiahs mother, Tracy Ann Pena, 35, and Fergusons son Nunez have been charged with child abuse resulting in death and tampering with evidence but have not been charged with murder. Previous court documents quoting other members of the household say Ferguson beat Jeremiah to death at the house in Nambe around Nov. 26 and forced Pena and Nunez to help dispose of the body. The three were charged in late January after Santa Fe County Sheriffs Office deputies began investigating Jeremiahs death when Pena, in jail in mid-January on other charges, talked about the death while incarcerated. Jeremiahs buried body was found Jan. 28. Police investigating the case obtained Nunezs cellphone, according to a recent affidavit, and began looking through Facebook Messenger exchanges between Nunez and Ferguson from early January. They found a Jan. 7 message that suggests Nunez may have taken part in the beating and/or caused Jeremiahs death. A detective says in the new affidavit released Monday that one of Nunezs messages indicates that he was involved in the beating. According to the affidavit, Nunez wrote in a message to Ferguson: Im just unwanted here and thats cool but I can see in yours and Tracys eyes you all dont want me here ever since that (expletive) happened and they look at me like I did it all by myself they did it to and what I did was an accident I never meant to do that I miss that (expletive referring to a person, apparently Jeremiah) to I feel bad for what I did and if I could do things differently I would of but I cant I have nightmares and (expletive) I think about that kid everyday cause I looked in his eyes as he left I see that look everyday. Nunez had previously told detectives that Ferguson carried out the fatal beating and even demonstrated for detectives how Ferguson turned Jeremiah upside down and slammed his head into the floor two or three times. Jordans last message indicates that he was involved in the beating of Jeremiah and that he withheld this information during his previous interviews, SFCSO Detective Ernest Alderete wrote in the new affidavit. Ferguson sent a message to Nunez that says Nunez got rid of Jeremiah, according to the affidavit. Ferguson wrote, Jordan the trouble makers gone you got rid of his ass and now you are actually starting to get like him. SFCSO spokesman Juan Rios wouldnt comment Monday on whether deputies now believe Nunez killed or helped kill Jeremiah. When Ferguson and Pena were arrested on bench warrants on unrelated charges Jan. 17 by a Santa Fe Police Department officer before law enforcement knew of Jeremiahs death Penas 13-year-old daughter, who is Jeremiahs younger sibling, was left in Nunezs care. Ms. Pena was caring for her 13-year-old daughter who was with her 19-year-old brother who took possession of Ms. Penas daughter and the vehicle they were travelling in, SFPD Officer Jacob Martinez wrote in a report of their arrest after they were spotted in a south Santa Fe shopping center area. Authorities said in January that the daughter had been placed in foster care. Its only April, and its already fire season in New Mexico, with blazes around Capitan, Grants and Tijeras. In the Albuquerque metro area, there have already been fires in the bosque and other areas of the county. Its clear this is likely going to be one doozy of a season. So kudos to Bernalillo County commissioners for ordering a ban on the use of open fires, campfires and smoking in unincorporated areas of the county. And given the tinder-dry conditions that exist, its time for state lawmakers to restore the states ability to ban all fireworks, and in the interim for city and county officials to begin considering a ban on the fireworks theyre allowed to restrict. In 1999 the state Legislature gave up the states authority to ban the sale of any fireworks. Almost every year since then, several lawmakers have tried and failed to restore it. Municipalities, which gained the authority, first have to declare extreme or severe drought conditions no less than 20 days prior to a holiday for which fireworks may be sold, and even then can only ban the sale and use of some missile- and stick-type rockets, helicopters, aerial spinners and ground audible devices. They can only restrict the use of everything else that sets off showers of sparks to areas that are paved, barren or have an accessible source of water. That pretty much puts everyone on the honor system, not the best one for ensuring the state doesnt go up in flames. Nevertheless, we urge them to be proactive because we all have too much to lose to potential wildfires. The National Weather Service is forecasting temperatures in central and northern New Mexico will most likely range from above to well above average for the foreseeable future. At the same time, meteorologists are expecting slightly below to below-average precipitation in April and May. Mix those conditions with a version of the winds we saw last week, add in some stray sparks, and weve got a recipe for disaster in our own backyards. The fire restrictions that Bernalillo County has already imposed include the prohibition of smoking except in enclosed buildings, within vehicles equipped with ashtrays, and on paved or surfaced roads, developed recreation sites, or while stopping in an area that is barren or cleared of all flammable material. The countys ban also prohibits campfires and recreational fires and bans heating and cooking fires except cooking or heating devices that use kerosene, white gas or propane as a fuel in an improved camping area that is cleared of flammable vegetation for at least 30 feet and has a water source. Its incumbent on everyone to adhere to those restrictions and put fire safety at the forefront, and for our local and state lawmakers to finally take any other steps possible to avoid setting off another avoidable fire. 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. The school year is nearing the finish line but students still have rigorous work to do. Partnership for Assessment of Readiness for College and Careers, or PARCC testing, kicked off across the district and around the state this week. Students in grades 3-11 will be tested on English and math through May 11, according to Albuquerque Public Schools. This will be the first school year students see some changes announced last summer. Then-New Mexico Secretary of Education Hanna Skandera said most test times will be shortened by 30 to 40 minutes. That was the second instance of reducing testing time, which has fallen 15 percent to 20 percent in total. Each school is responsible for creating its own schedule for administering the test. Also included in Skanderas changes was PARCCs start date. This year it started about two weeks later in the school year than before, allowing more school days before students are tested. And Skandera also said districts will receive final PARCC scores four weeks earlier than they had in the past in July rather than August. PARCC testing began in the spring of 2015 in New Mexico, replacing the Standards Based Assessment after the state changed its New Mexico Common Core State Standards. The state-mandated online test is used for measuring student growth and proficiency. Its also a high school exit exam that students are expected to pass to get a diploma, a factor in a schools overall grade and also used in teacher evaluations. PARCC has been controversial, with critics calling it an inaccurate way to measure all students and supporters saying its the best way to challenge them and measure growth accurately. When it was initially implemented, students across the state and thousands in Albuquerque walked out of their schools in protest. Its estimated nearly 5,500 students opted out of the test in its first year, but that number has since fallen to 1,235 opting out in 2017, according to New Mexico Public Education Department. Last year, the state as a whole saw a small increase in scores from 2015. For English, there was a 2.2 percentage point bump and a 2.3 percentage point uptick for math. For APS, English scores dropped 2.1 points and math scores saw a slight rise. Presbyterian Healthcare Services is taking a new approach to working with patients whose health is affected by substance abuse that has become part of their lives. Dr. Daniel Duhigg, an addiction psychiatrist and Presbyterians clinical program medical director of behavioral health, says the decades-old approach of stigmatizing and punishing people because of their addictions isnt helpful. It clearly has not worked. Putting people in prison doesnt get them any closer to improvement, Duhigg said. The Substance Use Disorder and Community Collaborative initiative started in May 2017 approaches addiction in the same way other diseases, like diabetes or heart problems, with scientifically evaluated treatment.We are working thoughtfully and diligently to have as much compassion as possible to overcome a history of a culture of stigmatizing people who live with this illness, said Duhigg. He said the growing opioid crisis which has garnered national attention played a significant role in Presbyterians commitment to addressing this area of need. The program began at Presbyterian hospital in Albuquerque and expanded recently to Rust Medical Center in Rio Rancho and to Presbyterian hospital in Espanola. Heres how it works. Intervention teams at those hospitals identify patients with potential substance abuse disorders those living with alcohol or drug abuse may show up at a hospital with health problems such as cirrhosis of the liver or abscesses caused by using dirty needles. The team evaluates range of services the patient may need. Those may include psychiatric and medical treatment and follow up support after discharge. Recovery Specialist Chris Lucero plays a key role in this approach. Lucero overcame his own addiction to drugs and alcohol through a 12-step program in 2001 and has worked with many support programs since. He talks to patients as a peer, helping them see a path to turn their lives around. When I share my story, they realize recovery is possible, Lucero said. I address that person holistically. Im there to support them in whatever they choose to do. Lucero helps connect patients with support groups and services in their community and schedules follow-up appointments for them if needed. More than 1,350 patients have been involved in the program since it started 11 months ago. Education is another critical component of the program. Presbyterians teams work with community groups such as churches and faith-based organizations to train people how to recognize signs that someone is struggling with substance abuse and let them know where they can seek supportive help. They also offer training to clinicians on how to use medication therapy with Suboxone or Buprenorphine to treat those with addictions to opioids like oxycodone or heroin. The Pain and Addictions ECHO clinic was added to the program in January. The weekly video conference enables providers from hospitals and clinics throughout Presbyterians network to connect with a panel of experts in addiction psychiatry and chronic pain management. Those who participate can present and discuss cases with the experts. The format is based on a telehealth model started by the University of New Mexico in 2003 to assist rural physicians. At a recent session, family practitioners, nurse practitioners, pharmacists, pediatricians and other specialists joined in to hear a presentation on harm reduction, including how naloxone can be used to reverse the often fatal effects of an opioid overdose. SANTA CLARA, Cuba Raul Castro travels in motorcades of gleaming imported sedans. Rings of grim-faced bodyguards protect him, pistols under crisp guayabera shirts. The 86-year-old president of Cuba arrives at official events moments before they begin, and the audience rises to applaud. A different style was on display March 11 as a crowd of reporters, voters and nervous provincial apparatchiks waited outside a voting station in the central city of Santa Clara for Miguel Mario Diaz-Canel Bermudez, the Communist Party official widely expected to take Castros place as Cubas next president this week. An hour passed, then another. Suddenly, the crowd stirred. A half block away, a tall, bulky figure in an untucked white button-down shirt walked with his wife and a few bodyguards down the street toward the polling station. Shaking hands and hugging voters, Diaz-Canel took his place in line. Were building a relationship between the government and the people here, he said after voting for members of Cubas next National Assembly. The lives of those who will be elected have to be focused on relating to the people, listening to the people, investigating their problems and encouraging debate. Then Diaz-Canel left for Havana, ending an unusual bit of political theater neatly scripted to send a single message: A new type of Cuban president is coming. Castro has pledged to step down Thursday and hand the presidency to a successor most Cubans believe will be the man Castro named in 2013 as his first vice president. Diaz-Canel, who turns 58 on Friday, would be the first non-Castro to hold Cubas top government office since the 1959 revolution led by Fidel Castro and his younger brother Raul. The new president will confront a stagnant economy, decaying infrastructure, a hostile U.S. administration and widespread disenchantment with a centrally planned system that cant provide state employees with a living wage, but forbids most forms of private enterprise. Raul Castro will remain first secretary of the Communist Party, a potentially more powerful position. And since power in Communist Cuba has long flowed from personalities more than institutions, how much influence Diaz-Canel will actually wield is an open question that has many observers looking at his past for clues. Most Cubans know their first vice president as an unremarkable speaker who initially assumed a public profile so low it was virtually nonexistent. Until March, Diaz-Canel had said nothing to the Cuban people about the type of president he would be. The white-haired, unsmiling Diaz-Canel had been seen at greatest length in a leaked video of a Communist Party meeting where he somberly pledged to shutter some independent media and labeled some European embassies as outposts of foreign subversion. That image has begun to change slightly this year as Diaz-Canel stepped into the moderate limelight offered by Cubas Soviet-style state media. With his public comments in March, many Cubans got a glimpse of him as a flesh-pressing local politician, an image familiar to residents of the central province where he was born and spent nine years in a role akin to a governor. Raised and educated in the city of Santa Clara, Diaz-Canel graduated from the local university in 1982 and performed three years of obligatory military service. In 1987 he joined the Young Communists Union. He also went on to work as a professor of engineering at the University of Santa Clara and traveled to Nicaragua as part of a government-run mission to support that countrys socialist revolution. Santa Clara residents remember him wearing his hair long and openly admiring the Beatles, who were frowned on by ardent communists who considered the group as representative of the decadent culture of Cubas capitalist enemies. Nonetheless, the young professor was named first party secretary in Villa Clara province in 1994 and gained a reputation as a hard-working public servant with a conspicuously modest lifestyle. Residents told The Associated Press this month that Diaz-Canel was the first official they remembered who didnt move to a new government-provided home after accepting the position of first secretary. He didnt even fix up his house to live more comfortably, said neighbor Roberto Suarez Tagle, 78. He always found out about the real problems that people had. Diaz-Canel traveled the city on a bicycle during the economic crisis spawned when the fall of the Soviet Union cut off subsidies for Cuba, and he accepted visits at all hours at his home and office from residents with complaints or suggestions. When he finished work, residents said, he would start his shifts with the local Committee for the Defense of the Revolution, a mix of a neighborhood watch committee and local militia. Some comrades didnt want to put him on watch because he would be overwhelmed with work, but he would say, Im a citizen of this country and Ill stand watch like anyone else,' said Liliana Perez, whose house faces the red-and-yellow-painted home where Diaz-Canel lived with his wife and two children. In 1996, he began appearing on a local radio program during which he would take two hours of live phone calls from people complaining about problems ranging from bad state restaurants to pothole-rutted side streets, radio journalist Xiomara Rodriguez said. He undertook an intense effort to communicate with the people, Rodriguez recalled. In a country where the state controls most daily activities, Diaz-Canel also made surprise visits to government-run establishments such as the local funeral parlor to check on the quality of services. He focused on creating a culture of attention to detail, Rodriguez said. Diaz-Canel also became known for pushing back against the intolerant tendencies of the Communist Party, an organization with strains of deep social conservatism and conformity. As first secretary of Villa Clara, he was an active supporter of El Menjunje, a cultural center that hosted rock n roll shows and became a focus of activities by lesbian, gay, bisexual and transgender Cubans, including some of the countrys first drag shows. Diaz-Canel was known for bringing his children to the club, an unusual assertion of support in a society with deeply rooted antipathy toward homosexuals. Two of Diaz-Canels children have gone on to play in Polaroid, a well-known Cuban rock band. Diaz-Canel listens and takes note of others opinions, said Ramon Silverio Gomez, the longtime director of El Menjunje. The people respect him and know that hes understanding them. In 2003, Diaz-Canel was named first secretary of the eastern province of Holguin, where he ran into complaints. Some say he focused too much of his six years in office on beautifying the city center while neglecting the needs of poor and working people. In my opinion you cant spend so much on boulevards and parks when there are people in marginal neighborhoods living hand-to-mouth, said Anahi Tamayo, a waitress at a private snack bar. In 2003, Diaz-Canel was also named to the Communist Partys Politburo, one of its highest-ranking bodies. Six years later, he was named minister of higher education and was praised for modernizing curricula and introducing computer technology to many university programs. He was also known as one of the first high-ranking officials to bring a laptop to government meetings. In 2012, conservative Communist Party officials shut down Young Cuba, a blog run by young academics at the University of Matanzas who supported Cubas socialist system but who criticized corruption, inefficiency and resistance to change. Diaz-Canel called a meeting between the university rector and the blogs founders and pointedly asked them, What do you need to keep running Young Cuba?' recalled founder Harold Cardenas, a young professor of Marxist studies. The blog was unblocked and remains an important forum for debate among Cuban intellectuals calling for gradual reform. I talk to Diaz-Canel like he was an uncle of mine, Cardenas said. Hes much more communicative than he seems. Diaz-Canel also intervened when a government official denied a travel permit to the U.S. for Humberto Rios Labrada, a sustainable agriculture expert who won the U.S-based Goldman Environmental Prize, said Gregory Biniowski, a Cuba-based Canadian lawyer who nominated Rios Labrada for the honor. As first vice president he has mostly stayed out of view, but many observers see that as a wise strategy for survival in a system run by aging revolutionaries who have ended the careers of many young politicians who rose to prominence early in their careers. Outside a few bases of support, however, Diaz-Canel has also been left without a deep pool of good will to draw on in times of difficulty or conflict. It will no longer be enough to read from the documents written and approved by the party. Hell need to express ideas, said Jose Raul Viera Linares, a former first deputy minister of foreign affairs. Its not enough to be an administrator anymore. Inevitably he must evolve to become a leader. ___ Andrea Rodriguez on Twitter: www.twitter.com/ARodriguezAP Michael Weissenstein on Twitter: www.twitter.com/mweissenstein FARMINGTON The Navajo Nation Council will determine during the spring session this week whether to criminalize revenge porn on tribal land. Under the terms of the measure, criminal charges could be filed in tribal court if someone is found distributing images featuring an individual that depict nudity or sexual activity without that persons consent. The bill is among 48 pieces of legislation listed on the proposed agenda for the session, which starts at 10 a.m. today in the council chamber in Window Rock, Arizona. Another bill proposes to amend tribal law to ensure that individuals with disabilities are provided equal access to employment, housing, education, voting and government services. It would also establish a plan of operation for the Navajo Nation Advisory Council on Disabilities and amend the Navajo Nation Bill of Rights to designate the equal rights of individuals with disabilities as a basic civil right. The majority of the 12-page proposed agenda is comprised of legislation that seeks supplemental funding from the Unreserved Undesignated Fund Balance. There are 30 such requests to fund projects focused on infrastructure, economic development and services provided by tribal departments. Other bills seek the confirmation of Sean McCabe as director of the Division of Economic Development and Nona Bashone as executive director for the Dine Uranium Remediation Advisory Commission. The council also will hear the State of the Nation address from Navajo Nation President Russell Begaye and a report from Speaker LoRenzo Bates. Local government groups and one school district board will conduct meetings this week. The Farmington City Council will have a work session at 9 a.m. Tuesday in the executive conference room in City Hall, 800 Municipal Drive. The council will discuss a proposal to share the construction cost of adding a banquet room at the Four Corners Regional Airport. Councilors also will discuss a health and wellness benefits program for city employees who utilize programs and facilities managed by the city. The San Juan County Commission will meet at 4 p.m. Tuesday at the county administration building, 100 S. Oliver Drive in Aztec. Commissioners will consider awarding a bid to reconstruct a ramp to the building to comply with the Americans with Disabilities Act. They will consider a second bid to purchase asphalt emulsions and related products. The Central Consolidated School District board will meet at 6:30 p.m. Tuesday at the Kirtland Board Room. Board members will hear a report about the Johnson OMalley Program. The district will continue its series of public hearings for the fiscal year 2018-2019 budget at 5:30 p.m. Thursday at the Newcomb Chapter house in Newcomb. Noel Lyn Smith covers the Navajo Nation for The Daily Times. She can be reached at 505-564-4636 or by email at nsmith@daily-times.com. 2018 The Daily Times (Farmington, N.M.) Visit The Daily Times (Farmington, N.M.) at www.daily-times.com Distributed by Tribune Content Agency, LLC. _____ Myntra has acquired Witworks, a Bangalore-based technology start-up, focussed on producing smart wearable devices and their underlying software. As part of the acquisition, Myntra has inducted the team into its Innovation Labs, further strengthening the companys robust technology team and augmenting its product development capabilities. This acquisition will enable Myntra to develop smart wearable products for their in house brands as well as leverage the technology to drive innovation and enhance consumer engagement in the future. Witworks Consumer Technologies was founded in 2014 by Somnath Meher, Ankit DP and Chandrashekhar Iyer, alumni of IIT-Kharagpur. It launched its flagship wearable device, the Blink Watch, in 2016, which operates on their voice-based platform, Marvin OS. The platform integrates a host of native and third party services capable of innovative voice and visual interactions, designed specifically for wearable devices. The company also has a range of audio and fitness wearable devices, under the same brand. Witworks has a dedicated product development and marketing team, with capabilities to produce devices in India as well as in global production houses. Speaking on the development, Jeyandran Venugopal, Chief Technology Officer, Myntra, said, Wearables is currently a Rs 300-crore industry in India and is growing rapidly, with online contributing 60 per cent to the total business. This acquisition will help us to solidify our position in this segment and enable us to develop and launch cutting edge wearable products like smart shoes, connected smart watches and interactive/ intelligent clothing with biosensors. Myntra has partnered with over 2,000 leading fashion and lifestyle brands in the country such as Nike, adidas, Puma, Levis, Wrangler, Arrow, Jealous 21, Diesel, CAT, Harley Davidson, Ferrari, Timberland, US Polo, FabIndia, Biba and many more to offer a wide range in latest branded fashion and lifestyle wear. Myntra services over 19,000 pin codes across the country. To Read More Visit Here. After learning about the role played by his grandfather in building a dam for the villagers, Lingaa, a petty thief, reforms and commits himself to saving it from a corrupt minister. Directed by K S Ravikumar and starring Superstar Rajinikanth, Sonakshi Sinha and Anushka Shetty in lead roles, Lingaa is a true Rajinikanth style action movie. Zee Action - Indias one-stop destination for action movies will air this movie under the property Shanivaar Fight Club on Saturday, 21st April at 8 PM. The story starts up with a flash back where in Raja Lingeshwaran (Rajinikanth) is a rightful heir to a famous dynasty that once ruled most parts of Southern India. Natives of that village follow whatever Raja Lingeshwaram says. Because of his urge to help the poor, his nobility makes him gain that priceless love of those villagers. Raja Lingeshwaran takes up the initiative and requests the Britishers to build a much-needed dam that would serve well for the people. But his idea is opposed citing a political reason and hence he leads from the front and inspires each and every villager to take up the responsibility to build a dam for themselves without seeking help from the foreigners. And then movie comes to present, son of Raja Lingeshwaram, Lingaa (also played by Rajinikanth) is a small-time thief who leads a carefree life. One fine day, Lakshmi (Anushka) meets Lingaa and asks him to inaugurate an ancient temple built by his grandfather. Lingaa rejects her proposal, saying that he is not interested in knowing about his grandfather who has left him in poverty. Soon, he gets involved in a robbery scam and he agrees to Lakshmis proposal, to escape from the police. He heads to his native village with Lakshmi. Once he lands there, he comes to know about a heart wrenching story about his family. What truths does he find out about his family? What is the story behind the temple? ~ To find out answers to these questions, watch Lingaa on Saturday, 21st April 2018 at 8:00 P.M. only on Zee Action ~ To Read More Visit Here. Would you like to receive breaking news notifications from The Post and Courier? Sign up to receive news and updates from this site directly to your desktop. Breaking News Columbia Breaking News Greenville Breaking News Myrtle Beach Breaking News Aiken Breaking News N Augusta Breaking News Click on the bell icon to manage your notifications at any time. Success! Please click the 'Allow' button in the 'Show Notifcations' alert in your browser if one is available. Thank you for signing up! Please enable notifications in your browser and reload the page. Esraa Diab stood confidently in her niqab, or full face veil, on the stage at the Egyptian Museum in Cairo and explained to the audience what causes pain in a scientific yet simple language, drawing applause at the end of the speech. Diab was a competitor at FameLab Egypt 2018, a major science competition sponsored by the British Council and Egypts Academy of Scientific Research and Technology. The aim of the competition is to get young scientists and researchers to talk about complicated scientific concepts in a simplified, accessible manner, thus bridging the gap between scientists and the public. While the top contenders have been women over the last three years, this year, on April 14, Hassam Abdel ElHay received the top prize of 5,000 British pounds ($7,150) and a trip to the United Kingdom to participate in the international contest and a workshop. Yasmine Maher won the student prize. Diab drew attention to the growing role of women in an interview with Al-Monitor. It is not about your gender, the way you look or what you wear; it is about whether you have the potential and the capabilities or not, said Diab, a fourth-year student of medicine at Suez Canal University. FameLab Egypt is part of an international science communication competition initiated in 2004 by the Cheltenham Science Festival and the National Endowment for Science, Technology and the Arts in the United Kingdom. Rolled out nine years ago, FameLab supports the Egyptian governments efforts to advance science and build a culture that understands and supports the positive role science plays in the economic and social well-being of a society. Although a man won the top prize this year, half of the 12 finalists were women, including Diab. She was the only woman wearing a niqab, while the others wore hijabs or did not cover their hair. Yasser el-Shayeb, national coordinator of the EU Erasmus+ Programme for Egypt and one of the competitions jury members, said the jury does not care about the appearance or the background of the competitors, but judge on content, clarity and charisma. We only look at three factors: scientific content; whether the competitor is able to convey the message in a clear and concise manner; and the communications skills that include charisma, eye contact and voice control, Shayeb told Al-Monitor. He also said that women represent the majority of the higher education community in Egypt. About 50.5% of higher education students in Egypt are women. So I think that women are already excelling in education and science, Shayeb added. In June 2017, Elsevier quoted Mahmoud Sakr, the president of Egypts Academy of Scientific Research and Technology, saying that, according to the findings of the academy, the number of Egyptian female researchers stood at around 43% of the total number of Egyptian researchers at that time. However, there have been only a few Egyptian female scientists in the history of the country. One of the most renowned female scientists was Sameera Moussa (1917-1952), who was a pioneer in nuclear physics. Moussa not only sought to split the atoms of cheap metals such as copper, she also attempted to make nuclear technology safe so it could be used in medical treatment. Diab referred to an Egyptian male scientist when asked about her role models in science. My role model is Sir Magdy Yacoub because he does much charity work and is brilliant at his job, she said, referring to the Egyptian-British cardiac surgeon who established a foundation to help people in need. Winner of FameLab Egypt 2016, Dina Ayman, said Marie Curie is her role model. "She was a Polish-born physicist and chemist who conducted research on radioactivity," she said. "The history of this woman greatly inspires and motivates [women] to be as strong, brilliant and witty as she was." Ayman, who graduated with a masters degree in immunology from the faculty of medicine at Ain Shams University, said that Egyptian women who pursue a career in science face an array of challenges. I have seen many women who were brilliant in science, but they faced hurdles, including their families not allowing them to travel abroad or encouraging them to get married and start a family, she said. Ayman added that Egyptian society is conservative and encourages women to stay at home. However, in recent years, women have become stronger and more adamant to pursue a career in whatever field they like. That is clearly manifested in the FameLab Egypt competition, where women are intensively taking part and strongly competing, she said. Mostafa Horas, a coordinator of FameLab at the British Council in Cairo, told Al-Monitor that the winner of FameLab Egypt represents the country in the annual international competition at the Cheltenham Science Festival in the United Kingdom, and that the organizers try to have a gender balance among the contestants. In FameLab it is always about the best science communicator and presenter. It is never about what you wear or where you come from, Horas concluded. Russias Foreign Ministry is calling on Palestinians and Israelis to show restraint with each other and has rejected Israels indiscriminate use of force against the civilian population during Palestinian protest marches near the Israel-Gaza border. Russia is demanding that both sides avoid taking rash steps that would inflame tension, as more marches are expected. Russian Foreign Minister Sergey Lavrov stated earlier this year that Moscow seeks to revive Israeli-Palestinian talks because a settlement can only be reached through direct dialogue. Palestinian Authority (PA) President Mahmoud Abbas consented to Russia's proposal for a political summit, but Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu rejected the idea. Currently, Russia seems focused on achieving an intra-Palestinian reconciliation between rivals Hamas and Fatah. Conflict between the two main Palestinian political parties split the PA in 2007. Abbas, who leads Fatah, visited Russia in February to brief Putin about developments in the Palestinian cause, particularly since US President Donald Trump announced in December that the United States recognizes Jerusalem as Israel's capital and will relocate its embassy in Israel to Jerusalem. Palestinians consider the eastern part of the city to be their capital. In March, a Hamas delegation led by its political bureau member Mousa Abu Marzouk arrived in Moscow to discuss the future of reconciliation, how to counter US policy in the Middle East and Russia's role in the region. Raed Enairat, a political science professor at An-Najah National University in Nablus and the head of the Contemporary Center for Studies and Policy Analysis, told Al-Monitor, Palestinians believe Russia is striving in competition with the US in the Palestinian dossier by resorting to powerful political tools in the region. Most notable is Moscows alliance with regional powers that are at odds with Washington, particularly Iran and Turkey." Russia's political and military achievements in Syria have encouraged Moscow to extend its efforts in the Middle East, he said. "When it comes to internal Palestinian relations, Russia is [trying] to bring Hamas and Fatah closer to each other but doesn't have a magic wand to achieve the desired reconciliation. Palestinians perceive Russia to be a great power with major importance in international decision-making and a UN Security Council member whose opinion is influential. They believe Russia could bring some balance to the US bias toward Israel. They are convinced Israel opposes any partys participation in a rapprochement effort, other than the United States, that upholds the Israeli stance toward talks. Basem Naim, the head of the Council on International Relations in the Gaza Strip and former minister of health in the Hamas government, told Al-Monitor, Russia has a particular stance when it comes to dealing with Hamas. It perceives [Hamas] to be a political and national liberation movement. Moscow does not label Hamas as terrorists and could be thinking that its relation with Hamas could breed political gains and [provide] a strong [presence] in regional and international arenas. The Russians listen carefully to Hamas." However, Russia's role in any reconciliation between Fatah and Hamas could be restricted, "given that Egypt continues to have full control over the process. Hamas perhaps hopes Russia will pressure Abbas to seriously and practically approach reconciliation as a partner in the process. Hamas appears to be counting on Russia to assume a greater role in the Middle East and in mapping out the Palestinian future. Hamas isn't hiding its relationship with Russia, which serves the group's agenda and could bring international recognition that Hamas hopes will be reflected in palpable political support to counter the US-Israeli policy. Fatah also supports a greater role for Russia in the Middle East. However, Abdullah Abdullah, the chairman of the Palestinian Legislative Council's Political Affairs Committee and a member of Fatahs Revolutionary Council, agrees with Naim's assessment that Moscow's efforts in the Palestinian reconciliation "may not be fruitful, given the exclusive Egyptian sponsorship," he told Al-Monitor. "I don't think Egypt will give up this dossier," he added. Speaking to Al-Monitor, a close associate to Abbas who declined to be named said, Abbas insists that Russia assumes a pivotal role in the peace process particularly following Trumps decision to recognize Jerusalem to be the capital of Israel and to move the US Embassy there, and [because of] escalated Israeli military measures in the Palestinian territories. Such events have encouraged Palestinians to communicate with Russia as an impartial mediator and alternative for the US in the peace process. This is because Palestinians believe that Washington's bias toward Israel has harmed US credibility. But even as Palestinians welcome Russia's willingness to help resolve Middle East issues, they fear Moscow's role will probably be limited to hosting political delegations and issuing diplomatic statements that are unlikely to be implemented on the ground. On March 8, the White House announced that US President Donald Trump had accepted North Korean leader Kim Jong Uns invitation to hold talks, sparking various international reactions. Many have welcomed it as a first step toward preventing a potential nuclear war between Washington and Pyongyang. Some, however, have been more skeptical and are asking what will happen if such a meeting ends without concrete results. Iran is likely among the countries that are not too happy with the news, since a potential deal between Trump and Kim could have negative consequences for Tehran. Iran is first and foremost concerned about the future of the Joint Comprehensive Plan of Action (JCPOA). Even if the nuclear deal survives the upcoming May 12 deadline for Trump to sign sanctions waivers, successful talks between the United States and North Korea could further threaten the JCPOA. The assumption here is that in the event of successful talks, Trump will likely boast that he is a better negotiator than his predecessor Barack Obama, thus moving to tear up the nuclear deal and instead defend his own potential agreement with North Korea. But this is not Tehrans only source of concern. In an infamous State of the Union address on Jan. 29, 2002, US President George W. Bush described Iran, North Korea and Iraq as an axis of evil. Similarly, while the international community may see North Korea as the biggest global threat given its possession of nuclear weapons, Trump is seeking to characterize Iran as an equally worrisome threat to international peace by pursuing the same doctrine and strategy as the Bush administration. Therefore, Tehran is worried that a potential American breakthrough with North Korea will, more than ever, shift US focus onto Iran. Azizollah Hatamzadeh, an Iranian writer and foreign policy expert, told Al-Monitor, Iran does not favor an agreement between the US and North Korea for two reasons. If they reach a deal, confronting Iran will become the Trump administrations priority and main file. He added, The more US-North Korea relations normalize, the more it will influence Tehrans ties and cooperation with Pyongyang. If North Korea wants to move toward denuclearization, its nature of action will change, and it will no longer fight the US like Iran does. Thus Iran will be alone in pursuing this path. Meanwhile, Iranian officials have yet to react to the potential talks between Washington and Pyongyang. This can be evaluated from two perspectives. They may either see no reason or prudence in commenting on the situation or they may simply not be too optimistic about its outcome. Former senior Iranian diplomat Nosratollah Tajik told Al-Monitor, Considering Trumps policies and slogans of unilateralism and America First, it is unlikely that this country, during the Trump era, will reach any vital agreements with international organizations or other countries, let alone reach such an important agreement and over such a sensitive and strategic issue with one of the most complicated countries in the world [North Korea]. He added, On the other hand, it should not be forgotten that the North Korean issue has become a complex global crisis, the solving of which, if possible, will require a long road to be taken. The role of regional players such as China should also be taken into consideration when seeking a solution. Therefore, the will of the two parties alone is not enough to reach a deal. Tajik brought up a good point, namely the time required for potential talks with North Korea to reach fruition. Meanwhile, May 12 looms on the calendar as the date when Trump must extend sanctions relief to remain in compliance with the JCPOA. At present, the general mood in Tehran is that this is not likely to occur. If that turns out to be the case, all speculation about the potential negative impact of US-North Korea talks on the JCPOA will likely end. Instead, the complete opposite may happen, namely that Washingtons withdrawal from the JCPOA may negatively impact talks with North Korea. In other words, North Korea then might be less likely to trust the United States, seeing its departure from the Iran deal as a lack of commitment to agreements. In this vein, Tajik told Al-Monitor, Trump remaining in the JCPOA in the current fashion does not have much benefit for Iran. Having the Sword of Damocles constantly over Irans economy will not be useful for us. At the same time, the resolution of issues between the US and North Korea will clearly leave the door open for future measures against Iran on the part of Trump. But not all in Iran have the same view. Prominent economist and political analyst Saeed Laylaz told Al-Monitor, In my opinion, Iran is not a priority for the Trump administration. He has made China his priority. Solving the situation with North Korea falls in line with this same framework of imposing more pressure on Beijing. Of course, a group of people around him are trying to bring Iran to the forefront. However, we should remember that the basis of Trumps views is the economy. He neither believes in foreign policy nor understands it. While there is no news on when precisely Trump and Kim will meet, reports say preliminary preparations are being made. As such, one can only wait and see if this dialogue will occur and if so, what impact it will have on the regional, and even international, order. One of the most infuriating aspects of the conflict taking place on the Gaza border over the last few weeks is that there are no surprises in this script. The Palestinians in this crowded prison are ready at least some are to risk their lives in order to express their rage. The most powerful army in the region, the Israel Defense Forces (IDF), still does not know exactly how to deal with unarmed civilians. So it shoots. Hamas sees the popular protest initiative as a blessing and grants it resources and an institutional framework, where every Palestinian casualty counts as an achievement. Some of the world criticizes Israel for disproportionate use of force, but since the United States is not participating in this critique, the Netanyahu government is not worried. It is a script with a familiar ending, also because it has a deadline: May 15, the day the Palestinian people mark as Nakba Day (Day of Catastrophe), marking the establishment of Israel. On this date the last and largest demonstration is set to take place, where Palestinians are expected to be killed in larger numbers than in previous weeks. After that, most likely, Fridays will return to normal. Hamas will see this as a victory, because it succeeded in leading a significant public process, preventing its rival, the Palestinian Authority (PA), from placing additional sanctions on the Gaza Strip, and proving that it is the most significant political body in the field, despite 11 years of a proven failure to govern. It could glorify itself with about a hundred Palestinian casualties, if not more, hundreds of wounded and a sense among Palestinians that cunning on their part could draw media attention, even though the world has grown weary of the Palestinian-Israeli conflict and the internal Palestinian one. The Israeli government could also declare victory, especially if the Palestinians do not cross the border and the number of wounded on the Israeli side remains zero. The investigations of the events, which draw more public interest than the events and their handling themselves, are important, of course. Nine days after the conflict at the fence began, IDF Chief of Staff Gadi Eizenkot decided to appoint an investigation panel headed by Brig. Gen. Motti Baruch, the head of the IDFs Operations Directorate's Instruction and Doctrine Division to examine the armys operation against the Palestinian protesters. We can assume that the IDF understands that every Palestinian fatality especially if it is a minor, woman or journalist is a clear advantage for Hamas. Despite knowing for many years that a conflict at the fence is an option considered seriously by the Palestinian side, the inventors of the Iron Dome missile defense system have not come up with a means to temporarily neutralize the other side without obliterating it. The International Criminal Court has also started an investigation. Prosecutor Fatou Bensouda, who has won over the years credibility for her careful and measured work, announced April 8 that she will investigate both Israels conduct and the conduct of Hamas, to decide whether to submit indictments. This is a very long process that will not necessarily lead to meaningful decisions. And still, this is one of the few international institutions that has teeth. Thus, when it starts to work its gears, it does cause concern for the parties involved. After all, what makes this court unique is that it tries individuals themselves and not states. But the more meaningful investigation should take place in Israel, and it should take place on the political level. Not because Israel is the only one to blame for the situation in the Gaza Strip (it shares blame with Egypt and the PA), but because it is the only democracy involved, and every public inquiry has ramifications and conclusions. Israel has been embroiled for many decades in a clearly asymmetrical battle with the Palestinian side, and it faces a complicated challenge in conducting itself as a state dealing with a non-state, both in a situation of warfare and in negotiations toward peace or more modest diplomatic agreements. Prime Minister Ariel Sharon acted with a great deal of courage when he unilaterally left Gaza in 2005 and destroyed all of the Israeli settlements created there. But to the same extent he acted irresponsibly when he did not examine the legal ramifications of this act, and when he did not try to accomplish the disengagement as part of an agreement with Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas, and when he acted under the unfounded belief that throwing the keys to the other side is enough to be rid of all responsibility for the future of the Gaza Strip. Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu promised to destroy the threat of Hamas in Gaza on the eve of entering office in 2009, while Defense Minister Avigdor Liberman, the most outspoken figure in Israeli politics, boasted in May 2016, a short time before his surprising appointment to the role, that if he assumes responsibility for the issue, he would destroy Hamas leadership in short order. There was nothing behind these threats no secret plan, no considered thought, but empty drawers, and disdain for public opinion, which it seems is prepared to swallow any foolishness as credible. The startup nation should not have allowed itself to step into the obvious trap prepared for it by the desperate youth of Gaza and Hamas, which was smart enough to back them. An Israeli official with access to secret documents and discussions will have to get into the thick of things to understand the mistakes we made in dealing with the Gaza Strip, and how we could fix the damage. The prime minister in the 1960s, Levi Eshkol, used the Yiddish expression "Shimshon der nebekhdiker" ("poor, misfortunate Samson") to describe, with nearly scientific precision, how Israel complains, day in and day out, about problematic things that it does, not of bad intent, but because it is so strong and its enemies weak. It seems that on April 13 some lessons were finally learned. Journalists were allowed to enter the area where IDF snipers are stationed. The snipers supervision by senior commanders was clear and plainly visible. One Palestinian was killed by Israeli fire a significant decline compared to the 30 casualties in the two weeks prior. But this correction should be only the beginning. The increasingly partisan nature of US policy toward Israel was on full display when the liberal Jewish lobby J Street for the first time offered a prime speaking slot to one of the Jewish states most hawkish defenders during the organization's 10th annual conference today. Sen. Ben Cardin, D-Md., a staunch ally of Israel who was until recently the top Democrat on the Senate Foreign Relations panel, stood out in a crowd of critics of Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahus policies, including the Palestinian envoy to the United States, Husam Zomlot. But like his fellow Jewish Senate speakers Bernie Sanders, I-Vt., and Brian Schatz, D-Hawaii, Cardin shared his disdain for some of the Donald Trump administrations policies, including its threats to unilaterally withdraw from the nuclear deal with Iran and ban refugees from several Muslim-majority nations. Friends of Israel, Cardin said, have a responsibility to speak out against the policies of Israel or the United States that are not consistent with our Jewish and Democratic values. J Street touted the appearance by Cardin, a regular speaker at the much larger annual American Israel Public Affairs Committee (AIPAC) conference, as evidence of J Streets growing political heft as Democrats increasingly speak out against Israels right-wing turn. Welcoming one of the nation's very top lawmakers on foreign policy issues is a natural fit for J Street as we celebrate 10 years of changing the conversation in Washington, Dylan Williams, a spokesman for J Street, told Al-Monitor. I think the warm reception Sen. Cardin got from the room and the applause for the many points of agreement show that our supporters really appreciated hearing from him. He added, If American Jews only had conversations with those we agree with 100%, we wouldn't be able to bring together two people for a conference, let alone more than 3,000. While introducing Cardin, J Street board member Victor Kovner praised the senator's role in leading the opposition to Trumps pick of David Friedman as the US ambassador to Israel as well as his commitment to keeping the United States in the nuclear accord with Iran despite his 2015 vote against the agreement. Still, Cardin got a frostier reception than Sanders, the only keynote speaker to receive a thunderous standing ovation as he delivered a speech that was scathingly critical of Israels lethal use of force against Palestinian protesters in the Gaza Strip since March 30. Notably, Cardin delivered his address the same day that five activists from If Not Now, a progressive group that opposed the Israeli occupation in the West Bank and Gaza, were arrested for blockading his Senate office over his refusal to comment on the Gaza protests. By contrast, Cardin received scattered boos and sparse applause when he defended controversial anti-boycott legislation that J Street opposes. Cardins Israel Anti-Boycott Act would fine companies and employees that help a United Nations effort to boycott Israels West Bank settlements. For his part, Schatz touched on the tension, noting that hes committed to making the Democratic Party a big-tent, pro-Israel party where theres room from everyone. He mentioned Sanders and himself as well as Senate Minority Leader Chuck Schumer, D-N.Y., a clear favorite at the annual AIPAC policy conference last month. While AIPAC considers Cardins anti-boycott bill as a vital tool to combat the pro-Palestinian boycott, divestment and sanctions (BDS) movement, J Street, while opposing BDS, has joined civil liberties advocates such as the American Civil Liberties Union in opposition to the bill over free speech concerns. J Street also argues that the Cardin bill seeks to erase the legal distinction between Israel and the settlements, arguing that makes a two-state peace deal between Israel and the Palestinians harder to achieve. This formulation of what constitutes BDS against Israel turns anti-BDS measures into pro-settlement, anti-two state vehicles, J Street said in a statement last month. Its had some controversy, I understand that, Cardin told J Streets rank-and-file members. However, he argued that his most recent version of the bill addresses free speech concerns and left the door open to further revisions by noting were still working on it. Cardin argued that the bill does not take sides on the final status of Israeli settlements in the West Bank, even though it does not differentiate between Israel or Israeli-controlled territories. J Streets inclusion of Cardin particularly infuriated Jerome Segal, a J Street member who likens himself to Sanders in his primary campaign against the Maryland senator. Neither Sanders nor his group, Our Revolution, have endorsed Segal, however. Segal is the president of the Jewish Peace Lobby, a three-decade-old liberal group that favors a two-state solution. He launched his campaign largely as a response to Cardins ties to AIPAC and has proposed withholding portions of US assistance to Israel over its settlement activity. In an interview with Al-Monitor, Segal referred to J Street's invitation as the kosherization of Cardin." He said the left-wing group is trying to join the parade of Americans who are hostile to the Trump administration rather than stick with advocates who have always fought for Middle East peace. Segal had hoped to create a viable challenge in the June 26 primary against Cardin with contributions fueled from J Street, which has not endorsed either candidate. The latest available campaign finance disclosures, however, indicate that Segal had only raised $200 to Cardins formidable $3.4 million in re-election funds. Correction: April 17, 2018. An earlier version of this article misquoted Jerome Segal's comments about J Street's "kosherization of Cardin." CAIRO After 18 hours of talks, another tripartite meeting about the controversial dam being built on the Nile River ended in deadlock. Attendees might have been disappointed, but they couldn't have been surprised. The foreign ministers, irrigation ministers and heads of the security and intelligence agencies of Egypt, Sudan and Ethiopia met April 6 in Khartoum, Sudan, for the latest round of talks, but failed to make a breakthrough on several outstanding issues, mainly the findings of technical studies on the impact of the dam and filling the water reservoir behind it. Officials of the three countries have been arguing about the dam for years. In a brief statement on the sidelines of the meeting, Egyptian Foreign Minister Sameh Shoukry confirmed no agreement was reached. The meeting touched on several issues without yielding any specific course of action or definitive results, Shoukry said. "New efforts to find solutions will be resumed in 30 days in a bid to break the stalemate. Meanwhile, Sudanese Prime Minister Ibrahim Ghandour said, The controversial issues need more time to be resolved and are left to the technical committees of the three countries to deal with. We have yet to set a new date for another round of talks at the political or security level. This month's talks were supposed to have been held one month after the January tripartite summit, but the talks were postponed because of unrest in Ethiopia that led to the resignation Feb. 15 of Prime Minister Hailemariam Desalegn and the arrival two weeks ago of Abiy Ahmed Ali in his place. The failure of the most recent negotiations comes as Cairo is finding no solution to protect its current share of the Nile River, which exceeds the quota set in a 1959 agreement of 55.5 billion cubic meters. The problem is compounded by Egypt's water deficit of about 20 billion cubic meters (16.2 million acre feet), despite the governments efforts to expand wastewater reuse and desalination projects. The Nile's annual flow is over 80 billion cubic meters. Meanwhile, Ethiopia has been taking further steps on the ground by speeding up construction, paving the way to start filling the reservoir during the Nile flood season beginning in July. A diplomatic source with the Egyptian delegation to the meeting told Al-Monitor on condition of anonymity, The return to the negotiating table is proof that the Egyptian administration has faith in consensual and political solutions without the need to escalate the situation or for clashes. We have been extremely flexible. We were supposed to return with specific results, but, given Ethiopias intransigent position, our proposals and visions for solutions did not go through. Technical negotiations that had been going on since contracts were signed with French technical consultancy companies BRL and Artelia in September 2016 came to a halt in November 2017, following a dispute over the preliminary report on the likely hydraulic, economic and environmental impacts of the structure, known as the Grand Ethiopian Renaissance Dam, on downstream countries Egypt and Sudan. Both Sudan and Ethiopia rejected the baseline reference set by the consultants and demanded amendments. Egypt in turn rejected the amendments, arguing that they would affect the studies' results, and in late December took its plight to the international community, demanding that the World Bank get involved in the talks. Since then, Egyptian President Abdel Fattah al-Sisi has opted for calm. During the presidential summit with his Ethiopian and Sudanese counterparts in January, he called for a return to the negotiating table, ahead of Egypt's presidential election. The same source added that during the round of talks this month, "The Egyptians touched on ways to complete the technical studies to prove the Renaissance Dam's negative impact on Egypts water security and its current shares of water, and the salinity rate in the Nile Delta land. Egypt also wanted guarantees that Ethiopia will stick to the outputs in the studies. The source added, The water deficit has exceeded 20 billion cubic meters. Egypt cannot afford having to deal with the consequences of any unilateral decision or imposition of a fait accompli on the part of Ethiopia." Ethiopia aims to store 74 billion cubic meters of water in the dam and generate 6,450 megawatts of electricity; construction started in April 2011 without consulting Egypt in a move violating international law providing for prior notice to downstream countries that might be affected by a dam project. For Ethiopia, the latest talks came following political changes in the country with the arrival of the new prime minister. Ahmed is the country's first Oromo prime minister and had long opposed the Ethiopian government. The Oromo are the largest ethnic group in Ethiopia. If the Ethiopian administration fails to reach an agreement with Egypt, or if there is any disruption of the dam construction or operations, the Ethiopian government will find itself in a very sensitive position. The Ethiopian people are pinning great hopes on the dam in terms of development. An Ethiopian official who participated in the talks told Al-Monitor on condition of anonymity, Ethiopia is keeping the negotiations going, which indicates that we are keen on cooperation to reach an agreement with the two downstream countries, stressing that the dam will benefit the three countries. There is no text law that binds Ethiopia to stop the construction or water storing. Our plan to fill the reservoir is in line with the interests of all concerned parties and is being implemented in such a way as to have the least damage [possible]. Despite previous rapprochement between Egypt and Sudan at the political and security levels and the warm welcome of Sudanese President Omar al-Bashir in Cairo on March 19, Sudans position during the negotiations was neutral. Sudan tried to narrow the gap between Egypt and Ethiopia without taking sides. Egypt's official position regarding the failure of negotiations is still under consideration. As a US-led barrage of missiles rained down on suspected Syrian chemical weapons sites this weekend, Joint Chiefs Chairman Joseph Dunford said the Pentagon would be taking greater precautions to protect 2,000 American troops on the ground. The strikes came as US troops, whom the Pentagon says are in-country to stop the resurgence of the Islamic State, already face increasing risks of getting enmeshed in the wider civil war. Military commanders are particularly worried about the rising risk of an unintended confrontation with Russia, especially after a deadly clash with Russian mercenaries in February. The commander always takes prudent measures, especially in an environment that they were in tonight, Dunford told reporters at the Pentagon. So they did make adjustments. Ahead of the strikes, the Pentagon reportedly pushed back against more expansive options favored by the White House in a weeklong bureaucratic tug-of-war. Dunford and Defense Secretary James Mattis raised concerns that US troops would be vulnerable to Russian or Syrian retaliation. In February, for instance, American troops and the US-backed Syrian Democratic Forces waged a pitched battle near a base in eastern Syrias Deir ez-Zor that left an estimated 200 to 300 Russian paramilitaries dead. Soon after, US military officials said that pro-regime forces allied with Syrian President Bashar al-Assad had begun massing in the area, near Syrias largest oil field. US patrols in the northern city of Manbij also face persistent fire from Turkish-backed troops hoping to push Kurdish fighters out of the area. Though Pentagon spokeswoman Dana White expressed hope this week that this weekends strikes could resuscitate UN-backed peace talks, experts say violence could increase as Assad and others move to consolidate their power. The major violence were seeing right now outside Damascus, the Turkish assault on Afrin essentially is to consolidate spheres of influence, said Alexander Bick, a former Syria director on the National Security Council. We are creeping toward a de facto partition: If this happens, you could call it a hot peace, you could call it a frozen conflict. Mattis reluctance to see US troops get bogged down in the wider war is also shared by many US commanders. And President Donald Trump himself has signaled his desire to withdraw from Syria very soon. To limit the risks, the United States and Russia have set up a deconfliction phone line between their front lines in Syria. Dunford said the Pentagon used the line to prevent casualties during this weekends strikes. The reassurances come after Special Operations Command chief Raymond Thomas said last month that 2,000 American troops sent to fight the Islamic State in Syria are now mired in the yearslong civil war after the clash with Russian paramilitaries in February. Thomas told cadets at the US Military Academy at West Point that Russia had ignored repeated warnings from US military leaders on the hotline as Kremlin-hired troops attacked an American base in Syria in February. We warned them, Thomas said. A graduate of this institution was on the phone, a one-star, was on the phone with his counterpart saying we see you coming, do not do this, and his Russian counterpart kept saying, nope, not us, you got it wrong. Its not our people, were not coming your way. Thomas added, They kept pressing, they started bracketing us with artillery, it was game on. Lowest score wins: US zero, Russia 300. This prompted cheers from cadets in the West Point crowd. Thomas remarks, which were recently uploaded to West Points website but appear to have been taken down, appear to contradict previous Pentagon statements that the deconfliction phone line between US and Russian lines served its purpose during the attack as officials from both countries remained in contact. Mattis has indicated that Moscow had little control over the units involved. Although CIA Director Mike Pompeo said a couple hundred Russians died in the attack during his Senate confirmation hearing to be secretary of state last week, the Pentagon has publicly only described the group as Syrian pro-regime forces. While the Pentagon appeared concerned about falling deeper into the conflict during the debate over the strikes, experts say US generals such as Thomas are also trying to deter the Russians from moving on US troops again. Its to say to Russia, dont get cute with us, said Nick Heras, a Middle East fellow at the Center for a New American Security, a Washington think tank. Hes sending a signal: Dont have your little green men running around Syria, this isnt the Ukraine. Turkeys open defiance of Russia by enthusiastically supporting the airstrikes by the United States, France and Britain against Syrian regime targets has raised new questions about the consistency of Ankaras Syrian policies and the manner in which it conducts its foreign policy in general. It is not clear, for example, what effect Turkeys position will have on its burgeoning ties with Russia, which Ankara has been keen to develop as a counterbalance to its deteriorating ties with the West. It is also unclear if Turkey is now leaning toward the West, with which it has extremely tense relations over a host of issues including differences over Syria. Continuing to cooperate with Russia remains vital for Ankara if it is to achieve some of its principal aims in Syria, especially with regard to preventing an autonomous and predominantly Kurdish entity from emerging along its borders. Russia gave the green light to Turkey to launch its Operation Euphrates Shield in Syria in August 2016 and its Operation Olive Branch in January of this year. While also targeting the Islamic State, Turkeys main objective in both operations was to prevent Kurdish fighters of the People's Protection Units (YPG) from gaining a large swath of territory along the Turkish border. Some are asking now if Ankaras support for the strikes against regime targets in Syria signals a return to the Western fold. US and European support for the YPG in Syria, however, remains a source of high tension between Ankara and the West. Turkey says the YPG is a Kurdish terrorist organization. Turkeys ties with the United States and Europe are also beset by other political and legal issues that are not expected to be overcome anytime soon. Questions are also being raised now about the future of the Astana process, co-sponsored by Moscow, Ankara and Tehran, which is also seeking a solution to the Syrian crisis alongside UN efforts. It remains to be seen if this process can continue fruitfully after Ankaras unequivocal support for the US-led strikes against the Assad regime, which Moscow and Tehran are likely to back with added determination now. Retired Turkish Ambassador Suha Umar, who has served with NATO and the Middle East, believes Ankara misread the motives behind the operation mounted by the United States, France and Britain. He said Ankaras satisfaction after the operation was misplaced. Umar pointed to the statement by British Prime Minister Theresa May to parliament in which she clearly indicated that their aim was not regime change in Syria. These strikes will not result in what our government wants to see. Ankaras expectations regarding Assad will remain unsatisfied, Umar told Al-Monitor. Umar said Turkeys cooperation with Russia could be a victim of Ankaras erratic approach to events in Syria. We entered Syria militarily after Russia allowed us to use Syrian airspace," he said. "It is vital for Turkey to continue getting this support. That, however, may now have been endangered. The disagreement over Assad, however, remains the elephant in the room as far as Turkish-Russian cooperation in Syria is concerned. Nevertheless, Ankaras deep hatred of Assad appears to have trumped all other diplomatic considerations and the need for consistency. All this has left Turkey looking like a visionless and unreliable country whose next step is difficult to gauge. This also detracts from Turkeys weight and the seriousness with which others approach it, Umar said. Turkish officials, however, see no contradiction in Ankaras support for the airstrikes against Assad while attempting simultaneously to develop strategic economic and political ties with Moscow. A government source speaking to Al-Monitor on condition of anonymity underlined that Turkey has consistently said Assad must go. He added that Moscow was aware of this when it gave the green light to Turkeys operations in northern Syria. A crack between Ankara and Moscow had already emerged, however, even before the airstrikes, when Russian Foreign Minister Sergey Lavrov said Turkey should hand over areas it captured in northern Syria to the regime. In his angry rebuttal, President Recep Tayyip Erdogan said that was up to Turkey, not Lavrov, to decide. Any breakup between Turkey and Russia would clearly be welcomed in the West. French President Emmanuel Macron let the cat out of the bag after the airstrikes in Syria when he told the French BFM TV, RMC and Medipart channels in a joint interview that their operation had also driven a wedge between Turkey and Russia. Reacting to Macron, Foreign Minister Mevlut Cavusoglu said Turkeys ties with Russia were strong enough to survive the French presidents desire to see them severed. We differed with [Russia and Iran] in this case. We cant end our ties in other areas because we diverged on this topic, Cavusoglu told reporters during a press conference with NATO Secretary-General Jens Stoltenberg in Ankara on April 16. Kremlin spokesman Dmitry Peskov echoed Cavusoglu when he told reporters in Moscow that differences with Ankara over Syria would not affect the cooperation between the two countries in other fields. The disagreement over Assad, however, remains the elephant in the room as far as Turkish-Russian cooperation in Syria is concerned. Welcoming the strikes against regime targets in Syria, President Erdogan also signaled that Ankara would not give up on its desire to see the back of Assad. Erdogan also criticized the West for acting in Syria only when chemical weapons are used but remaining inactive when the Syrian regime committed atrocities with conventional weapons. Such prodding by Erdogan for more operations against Assad is not likely to go down well in Moscow. Burhanettin Duran, general coordinator of the government-funded Foundation for Political Economic and Social Research, however, believes Turkish-Russian ties will survive this crisis. It is pure fantasy to expect the Turkish-Russian cooperation in Syria to be harmed because of this limited and cosmetic intervention by the US, France and Britain, Duran wrote in an article for daily Sabah. The relationship between Ankara and Moscow is not based on ideological consideration, but on concrete interests, according to Duran. Despite differences, it is in the interest of both sides to keep this rational relationship going. There are some, though, who are close to Erdogans ruling Justice and Development Party (AKP) but who feel that a breakup between Turkey and Russia and a return by Ankara to the Western fold would not be such a bad thing. Mehmet Ocaktan, a former member of parliament from the AKP who currently writes for daily Karar, believes that the intervention by the United States, France and Britain showed that Russia is not the only actor in Syria. If Turkey takes the right steps after this, it can gain a strong position, not only in its ties with the West but also for its regional policies, Ocaktan wrote in his column. Ocaktan is not perturbed about the negative effect of the latest developments on the Astana process. He believes this process has revealed that Russia, Turkey and Iran are unable to produce solutions to the Syrian crisis. Ocaktan said the Astana process has only served to empower Assad. Sedat Ergin, a veteran foreign policy commentator for daily Hurriyet, however, wrote that the reasons that forced Turkey, Russia and Iran to act together in Syria still exist. The interests and political calculations that kept these three countries together under the Astana process are weightier than the topics that they differ over, Ergin wrote. Far-right groups have surged across Europe. Why hasnt Golden Dawn been able to grow? Athens, Greece While far-right, populist and often neo-fascist parties across Europe have successfully broadened their bases since the massive influx of refugee arrivals started in 2015, that has not been the case in Greece. In January 2015, the neo-fascist Golden Dawn became the third-largest political party in the Hellenic Parliament, just three years after elections that first thrust the party into the parliament. That same year saw the advent of a pattern across Europe. With hundreds of thousands of refugees and migrants arriving on the continent, far-right parties like Germanys Alternative for Germany (AfD) and Austrias Freedom Party (FPO) seized the opportunity to exploit anxiety over migration. Since then, the FPO, which has Nazi roots, has become a junior coalition partner in Austrias new government, and the AfD has entered Germanys Bundestag for the first time. In Italy, populist parties like the Northern League made large gains in the March elections, while Hungarys recently re-elected prime minister, Viktor Orban, has grown increasingly far-right and authoritarian. In Greece, however, Golden Dawn has been largely unable to influence the discourse on refugees and migration, and it appears to be as politically isolated as it was when its leading cadre were first arrested and charged after the September 2013 murder of anti-fascist rapper Pavlos Fyssas. {articleGUID} Charged with operating a criminal organisation, the trial of 69 Golden Dawn members, including its entire 2013 parliamentary group, is slated to conclude this year. It has moved at a snails pace, and the effect of the trial has been stifling for Golden Dawn. Along with the anti-fascist movement entering a period of new-found strength and the internal nature of the party, the burdensome weight of the trial has largely prevented Golden Dawn from growing. The parliamentary party and the militia In Golden Dawn Girls, a new documentary by Havard Bustnes, both the internal contradictions of the party and the growing public consternation over its brazen use of racist violence were laid bare. When Bustnes implores Ourania, the daughter of Golden Dawn chief Nikolaos Michaloliakos, to simply condemn Nazism, she flatly refuses. The scene was emblematic of something larger than her personal inability to condemn Nazism: While far-right parties throughout Europe have rebranded and reformed as more moderate populists, Golden Dawn is incapable of shedding its national socialist roots, according to some experts and observers. In a recent conversation, Thanasis Kampagiannis, a lawyer in the Golden Dawn trial, echoed that analysis. The distinctive thing about Golden Dawn is that it was at the same time the parliamentary party and the militia, he told me. They want the public funds, the speeches, the offices but they also want these offices to house clubs, sticks and knives. These contradictions, along with the burdensome weight of the trial, have made it hard for Golden Dawn to mobilise and find new, receptive audiences. Another pair of scenes in Golden Dawn Girls demonstrate the disgust and horror that many Greeks felt about the wave of violence that the partys assault mobs had unleashed in Athens and elsewhere in the years leading up to the arrests. When Dafni, the mother of then-jailed parliamentarian Panagiotis Iliopoulos, is passing out fliers and introducing herself to shoppers in a street market, an older man dismisses her request for support. {articleGUID} When the German Nazis were in Greece, I was eight years old, he tells her. They would gather people in the square, and they would say: He is a leftist. Hang him.' Later, when she approaches a woman purchasing vegetables, Dafni met yet more pushback. Just tell them not to kill us, the woman says plainly. Fear persists Yet, while these scenes and others like them may speak to the reasons Golden Dawn hasnt grown, there remains the grim fact that the neo-fascist party hasnt shrunk much, either. A Kapa Research opinion poll published earlier this month found that Golden Dawn still commanded nearly eight percent public support, as reported by the Greek daily Ekathimerini at the time. And with increasingly heated rhetoric between Greek politicians and Turkish officials and growing tensions over name dispute negotiations between Athens and Skopje, the soil could prove fertile for Golden Dawn and other ultranationalist groups. This comes at a time when hate crimes are back on the rise, with such crimes motivated by race, national origin or skin colour nearly tripling last year when compared with 2016. While Golden Dawn has never had a monopoly on far-right violence and racist vigilantism, there is no doubt that it tilled the soil for others who wanted to carry out attacks. {articleGUID} With the trial is expected to conclude this year, some are fearful that Golden Dawn may be let off with the hook. Yonous Muhammadi, head of the Greek Forum of Refugees, came to Greece in 2001 after fleeing war-torn Afghanistan. Having been attacked by Golden Dawn members in the past, he told me recently: If Im honest, Im not so hopeful Golden Dawn will be [found guilty]. He added grimly: Im afraid of what will happen [in such a case]. Note: Patrick Strickland will host a Facebook live discussion about the rise of the far right in Europe on Wednesday, April 18th, at 8:00pm CET (19:00 GMT). Send us your comments and questions on Facebook www.facebook.com/MovingDocs and Twitter @MovingDocs. Senior Turkish official accuses bloc of bias and lacking empathy after report urges lifting of state of emergency. The measures undertaken by Turkey under an almost two-year-old state of emergency have curtailed civil and political rights, according to a critical European Union report, which prompted Turkish officials to accuse the bloc of bias against Ankara. Published on Tuesday by the European Commission, the annual progress report on Turkeys EU membership talks comes at a time of increasingly tense bilateral relations. In its document, the EUs executive institution called on Ankara to immediately lift the state of emergency, which was declared in July 2016 after around 300 people were killed during a failed coup attempt. The measure has since been regularly extended. Ankara blames the movement of Fethullah Gulen, a US-based self-exiled religious leader, for the attempted coup. It says the movements members have been running a parallel state within the civilian and military bureaucracy and following their own agenda. Gulen denies the claims. The EU report said that under the Turkish state of emergency, more than 150,000 people had been taken into custody, 78,000 arrested and over 110,000 civil servants dismissed. Turkish authorities say that some 40,000 have been reinstated in the process. The report called the measures taken after the attempted coup disproportionate, also saying they have limited freedom of expression, freedom of assembly and procedural rights. The broad scale and collective nature, and the disproportionality of measures taken since the attempted coup under the state of emergency, such as widespread dismissals, arrests, and detentions, continue to raise serious concerns, the report said. {articleGUID} EU institutions and many member states have repeatedly condemned the Turkish governments detentions and purges after the coup attempt. Local and international rights groups accuse the government of using the coup attempt as a pretext to silence opposition in the country. The government of President Recep Tayyip Erdogan says that the purges and detentions are in line with the rule of law and aim to remove Gulens supporters from state institutions and other parts of society. EU biased, lacks empathy Responding to the report, Yasin Aktay, a senior adviser to Erdogan, said the EU was biased in its assessment of Turkey. Speaking to Al Jazeera, he said the bloc does not take seriously the terror threat in Turkey posed by groups such as Gulens movement, the armed Kurdistan Workers Party (PKK) and the far-left armed Revolutionary Peoples Liberation Party/Front. {articleGUID} The EU acts with prejudice against Turkey and lacks empathy in its approach to the terror threat on our country, Aktay said on Tuesday. Many member states easily support the propaganda against Turkey as they are against its EU bid. They use the terror threat in Turkey as a trump card for corrupting the countrys image, trying to show Turkey as a country without democracy. Constitutional changes The report also said that during the state of emergency, the parliaments key function as legislative power was curtailed. The government resorted to emergency decrees with the force of law to also regulate issues which should have been processed under the ordinary legislative procedure, the European Commission said. But Aktay was quick to point out that there was still a state of emergency in France, two-and-a-half years after multiple attacks targeted the capital, Paris. Nobody tried to overthrow the [French] government in a coup attempt participated by thousands of people, and there is no anti-government network secretly and widely spread in state institutions with throngs of supporters, Aktay said. There are no constantly acting armed terror groups in France, either. {articleGUID} In April 2017, a referendum narrowly won by the governments Yes camp changed Turkeys parliamentary system to an executive presidency. The constitutional changes passed in the referendum give the next president to be elected in 2019 new powers to appoint vice presidents, ministers, high-level officials and senior judges. It allows the president to dissolve parliament, issue executive decrees and impose states of emergency. The European Commission report said that the newly introduced executive presidential system in Turkey lacks sufficient checks and balances and that it endangers the separation of powers between the executive and the judiciary. It also said that there had been serious backsliding in the past year with regards to the independence of the judiciary and freedom of expression. It added that civil society came under increasing pressure under the state of emergency, notably in the face of a large number of arrests of activists and the recurrent use of bans of demonstrations. The report criticised Turkeys criminal cases against journalists, human rights defenders, writers, or social media users, withdrawal of press cards, as well as the closure of numerous media outlets. [These decisions are] mostly based on selective and arbitrary application of the law, especially provisions on national security and the fight against terrorism, it said, adding that more than 150 journalists remain in prison in Turkey. Can Baydarol, deputy chairman of the Ankara-based European Union and Global Research Association, said the report fell short of calling for official suspension of the talks, which would be a very serious political move against Turkey. He noted that its findings suggest that Turkey is regressing and rapidly moving away from the blocs values, but added that the EU itself is also responsible for this outcome. There are many leaders across the EU who openly said that Turkey will not be an EU member no matter what. This makes Turkey to not trust the EU, Baydarol told Al Jazeera. Declining relations Turkeys EU membership talks have been practically frozen for years, while its relations with the EU have slumped to an all-time low in recent years. Last month, a summit between EU President Donald Tusk, European Commission chief Jean-Claude Juncker and Erdogan did not produce any relief for the tense ties. Earlier in March, Austrian Chancellor Sebastian Kurz called for a formal ending of Ankaras EU accession talks. Austria staunchly opposes Turkeys EU membership. German Chancellor Angela Merkel said in September during a televised debate before her countrys parliamentary elections that Turkey should not become a member of the EU. Earlier this year, she also said that a formal suspension of talks with Turkey is on the table. The already declining relations between Ankara and the EU took a dive in March 2017 when the Netherlands, Austria, Germany and Denmark banned Turkish ministers from addressing immigrants and expatriates in rallies within their borders for the 2017 referendum. Erdogan compared the ban on ministers to Nazi practices and called Dutch authorities Nazi remnants. Follow Umut Uras on Twitter: @Um_Uras Since the dawn of humanity, hunters have roamed the forests and savannahs of Africa. Fast forward to the 21st century, and there is no big game left in northeastern Nigeria. Artillery fire exchanged between Boko Haram fighters and the Nigerian military has scared the animals away. Now, hunters track and capture rebel fighters. Feared for their superior tracking skills and their belief in the supernatural, they help the military hunt down Boko Haram. With little or no money from the authorities, hunters rely on locally made weapons to fight a heavily armed enemy. Boko Haram, whose name roughly translates to Western education is forbidden, has waged a 10-year armed campaign to create an Islamic state in northeastern Nigeria. The group has killed tens of thousands, displaced 2.3 million from their homes, and is ranked among the worlds deadliest armed groups. Chief among the hunters is Aisha Bakari Gombi. She is the Queen Hunter, a title given to her for bravery on the battlefield. Aisha and her band of hunters defend their communities. {articleGUID} Boko Harams camps are in the forests and mountains where Aisha went hunting with her father as a child. She knows the Sambisa Forest like the back of her hand. It is a sacred place for hunters, so liberating it from Boko Haram fighters carries a special significance. The hunters have liberated hundreds of people held captive by Boko Haram. Rescuing children is what motivates Aisha. In 2017, she became pregnant for the first time, aged 39. Until then Aisha had thought she was unable to conceive, and every child she helped liberate felt like a surrogate rebirth. When Aisha is not fighting Boko Haram, she conforms to the norms of the village where she lives with her husband. Northern Nigeria is a place where a womans domain is mainly confined to the home and raising children. Aishas extraordinary life in recent years has taken her to places where only the bravest of men and women would dare go. Her story has become folklore in northern Nigeria, where the Queen Hunter features in real-life superhero stories. Seven men and a minor are accused in the gang-rape case that has caused outrage in India. Seven men and a minor accused of involvement in the gang rape and murder of eight-year-old girl in Kathua in Indian-administered Kashmir have appeared in a local court. The accused pleaded not guilty on Monday. A group of lawyers had earlier tried to block police officials from lodging charges against the accused at a courtroom in Kathua town in Indian-administered Kashmir. {articleGUID} The men charged with the crime pleaded not guilty and asked for a Narcoanalysis (NARCO) test. NARCO is a technique used by Indian investigative officials where the suspect is injected with a dose of truth serum or sodium pentothal in an attempt to elicit a confession. Those accused include policemen who are suspected of destroying evidence. Sanji Ram, the main accused, said in court on Monday that the charges were a conspiracy against him. Ram was the custodian of the Hindu temple where the victim was held captive and raped by several men for three days before being killed in January this year. On Monday, the accused also said they wanted the probe to be transferred from the state police to the Central Bureau of Investigation. The accused told the court that a NARCO test should be done and they are ready for a NARCO test, counsel Ankur Sharma told reporters outside the court. The next hearing is slated for April 28. Also on Monday, the Supreme Court, while hearing a petition seeking transfer of the trial outside the state, asked the government of Jammu and Kashmir to respond while directing it to provide adequate protection to the victims family and lawyer. Ideally, the adjudication of a case should happen in an environment which is free from prejudice and bias. In this case, the state of Jammu and Kashmir is already a conflict zone, Supreme Court lawyer Dushyant told Al Jazeera. This particular case also has very sensitive religious connotations. The lawyers who practise in that court and the bar association have even protested against the charge sheet being filed. The Bar and the judges of any court have a delicate relationship. If an influential part of the bar has such strong opinions about how a case should be conducted, its problematic. The matter has already taken a political colour. Its clear that the trial, if it is to be free from bias, should be transferred out of the state and there is ample precedent for this, Dushyant added. Deepika Rajawat, the lawyer representing the girls family said she is facing death and rape threats from supporters of the accused. Today, I dont know; I am not in my senses. I can be raped, I can be killed and maybe they wont allow me to practise in court. They (have) isolated me, I dont know how I can survive, Rajwat told Indian news agency ANI. The lawyer in Kathua also said she is branded as anti-Hindu. Activists say Hindu right-wing groups in the state are attempting to divide the state on religious lines. Hindu groups back the accused According to details in the charge sheet filed by the crime branch of the Jammu and Kashmir state police, the abduction, rape and killing of the girl was part of a bid to punish the Gujjar Bakarwal nomadic Muslim community to which the victim belonged, and drive them away from Hindu-dominated Kathua. Protesters affiliated to a Hindu right-wing group, including members of the ruling party the BJP, demanded the release of the accused earlier this year. Lal Singh and Chandra Prakash Ganga, two ministers from Indias ruling party who attended a rally to support the accused, have since resigned after massive outrage. The victims father, Mohammad Yusuf Pujwala, told the New York Times that he believes his daughter was killed by the Hindu men for the sole purpose of driving her people away. Following the enactment of tougher anti-rape laws in 2013, rapists in India are liable to life imprisonment and even the death sentence in the rarest of rare cases. On Sunday, demonstrations against rape and sexual violence were held across Indian cities, New Delhi, Mumbai, Bengaluru and Trivandrum where many protesters asked for the rapists to be hanged. Brazil boosts social programmes funding for Venezuelan influx Hundreds of thousands of Venezuelans have fled to Brazil to escape unrest at home. Chinas gay community cautiously welcomed the decision. By Justice minister says President Kabila sacked the judges for not having law degrees or because of corruption. More than 250 judges have been sacked in the Democratic Republic of Congo for not having a law degree, and corruption allegations. President Joseph Kabila sanctioned more than 200 individuals who do not fulfil the conditions to function as magistrates, Justice Minister Alexis Thambwe Mwamba said on public television on Monday. Local media reported that a total of 256 were either suspended or sacked, two others resigned while another was put on retirement. The sprawling country has some 4,000 magistrates. One cannot enter the judiciary with the objective of making money, Mwamba said, describing the removed judges as adventurers who entered the judiciary without a law degree or others who took bribes to deliver a favourable ruling. It is evident that there are other magistrates who escaped this dragnet, he said, adding that a law would be introduced to raise the bar for aspiring magistrates. It is not the first time judges have been sacked in the mineral-rich central African country. In 2009, President Kabila sacked 96 judges accused of corruption. Mwamba also criticised the slow judicial system and said arrests and detentions were used as an instrument of intimidation and terror against the accused to strip them of their assets. President Emmanuel Macron is trying restore Frances position as a power broker in the Arab world, analysts say. France is pursuing an ambitious foreign policy under President Emmanuel Macron that seeks to restore Paris clout and influence in the Middle East, analysts have told Al Jazeera. In what marked a new phase in Macrons presidency, France joined the United States and the UK on April 14 in dropping 105 bombs on three facilities in Syria said to be associated with the use of chemical weapons. Forty-year-old Macron, who in May 2017 became Frances youngest-ever president, said he convinced his US counterpart, Donald Trump, to carry out the attacks and stay in Syria for the long term after a suspected chemical weapons attack on the former rebel-held stronghold of Douma killed dozens of people, according to rescuers and medics. Ten days ago, President Trump was saying the United States had a duty to disengage from Syria, Macron told French TV channel BFM in a two-hour live interview. We convinced him that it is necessary to stay for the long-term. Macron also said that he was willing to play the role of intermediary between the US and Russia a major ally of Syrian President Bashar al-Assad and find a sustainable political solution in Syria. He had previously offered to serve as an interlocutor in the long-running conflict and set up an international contact group to revive stalled peace talks in the Swiss city of Geneva. France has managed to maintain relatively good ties with Russia, despite the high levels of tensions between Russia and the West, Agathe Demarais, an analyst at The Economist Intelligence Unit, told Al Jazeera. Macron plans to visit St Petersburg in June, where he will meet with [Russian President] Vladimir Putin. In this regard, it is interesting to note that the Russian army didnt acknowledge the French participation to air strikes in Syria, probably in an effort to preserve France-Russia bilateral ties, she said. But while Saturdays attacks were his first major military decision since he came to office, it was not the first time the young leader intervened in conflicts and crises abroad. In his first major foreign policy speech after his inauguration, Macron said: France is no longer in a situation, as it was in the mid-1970s, where it could say: Im a medium power, protected and supported by major powers that share the same values. France must become a great power again. Thats a necessity. Extremely opportunistic Analysts said that in recent years, France has been quick to intervene militarily in conflicts in Africa such as Libya, Mali and the Central African Republic but has only recently become a major diplomatic force in the Middle East. Macron is extremely opportunistic and is filling a void left by the US and the UK in the Middle East, positioning France as a playmaker in the region along with Russia, said Olivier Guitta, the managing director of GlobalStrat, a geopolitical risk consultancy firm. Demarais agreed: France will be keen to act as a power broker in the Middle East in the coming months. Paris played an important role as mediator in November 2017 after Lebanese Prime Minister Saad Hariri abruptly resigned from office while visiting Saudi Arabia. Hariri blamed interference in Lebanon by Iran and its Lebanese ally Hezbollah for his decision to step down, adding he feared an assassination attempt. However, many analysts suspected Saudi Arabia pushed him to resign as punishment for his weak stance towards Hezbollah. Lebanese leaders, meanwhile, alleged that the Saudis were holding Hariri hostage, while Riyadh accused the Lebanese government of declaring war against it because of Hezbollahs aggression. Macron hastily flew to the kingdom and held talks with Saudi Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman to help restore the situation, and stressed the importance of preserving the stability, independence and security of Lebanon. A few weeks later, Hariri withdrew his resignation and resumed his post, which resulted in the political temperature dropping a notch. Macrons mediation in Lebanon may not be surprising given that France takes a special interest in its former colony, but his eagerness to address other crises in the Middle East is emblematic of his desire to establish France as a leading power within the region, according to analysts. Because of Frances extremely close relationship with the Hariri family, Macron positioned himself as a dealmaker and is gaining points on the geo-political board, Guitta said. In December 2017, Macron hosted Palestinian Authority President Mahmoud Abbas after Trump announced he would recognise Jerusalem as the capital of Israel. Macron offered Abbas support, and in return, the Palestinian leader called on France to assume a new leadership role in the peace process after stating that the US could no longer participate. We have trust in you. We respect the efforts made by you, and we count heavily on your efforts, Abbas said. He wants to talk to everyone In early December, when the French president visited Qatar to negotiate the sale of 12 French-made Rafael fighter aircraft, he used the opportunity to try to mediate in the ongoing Gulf diplomatic crisis, one of the biggest disputes in inter-Arab relations in recent history. In June last year, Saudi Arabia, the United Arab Emirates (UAE), Egypt and Bahrain cut diplomatic ties with Qatar and imposed a land, air and sea blockade against it, accusing their Gulf neighbour of financing terrorism and maintaining close ties to their regional rival, Iran. Doha has repeatedly denied the allegations. With regards to situation in the Gulf, I want to see a promise of reconciliation between its members, as I have said since the beginning of the crisis, Macron said, echoing an earlier call urging the blockading states to lift the embargo as quickly as possible. Macron has avoided antagonising both sides in this crisis, but he has built a deepening relationship with the country he feels more in tune with: the UAE, said Guitta. Macron is making the point that he wants to talk to everyone in the region in order to advance Frances agenda and standing. It had a rotten smell: Douma chemical attack survivors speak Displaced survivors of suspected chemical attack earlier this month in Syria tell their stories to Al Jazeera. Reports about Haftars deteriorating health could further unsettle the Libyan political scene, analysts say. Despite confirmations from prominent leaders in east Libya that veteran military commander Khalifa Haftar is in good health, it is uncertain what future lies ahead for him. Last week Haftar reportedly slipped into a coma after suffering a stroke, but a spokesman denied the claims and said hes well. It was later reported in local media that he passed away, while medical sources told his family that Haftar was in a critical condition, according to Libya Al Ahrar TV channel. But sources close to Haftar-led Operation Karama, or dignity confirmed to Al Jazeera that he is well, saying that he had a setback but has now recovered. The uncertainty around Haftars well-being has stirred speculation about who will succeed him, and the possible outcomes if he is out of the picture. Haftar, who controls east Libya except for the city of Derna, is one of the main players in the Libyan political scene due to his ties with foreign and regional countries. A former ally of the late leader Muammar Gaddafi, Haftar, 75, returned to Libya seven years ago from the United States to join the NATO-backed revolution that ended four decades of one-man rule. After a protracted military campaign in Libyas second city, Benghazi, he promised to liberate the capital Tripoli, which split from the east in 2014. Over the past years, Haftar had monopolised negotiations with the prime minister of the Tripoli-based Government of National Accord (GNA), Fayez al-Sarraj, through international mediators, while preventing military and security leaders from dealing with GNA, claiming it is illegitimate. Mohammad al-Darrat, a member of the Tobruk-based Libyan House of Representatives (HOR), told Al Jazeera that Haftar is the political and military representative of east Libya for the UN Support Mission, and his absence would cause division. Al-Darrats projection was echoed by Journalist Abdullah Ezzeddine who predicts armed clashes between tribes in eastern Libya in the events an alternative candidate to replace Haftar is not agreed upon. Restoring influence According to observers in Libya, the Awaqir tribe, one of the largest tribes in east Libya, will regain its influence after it had been marginalised and sidelined by Hafter. Faraj Aqim, an Awaqir tribesman and former GNA official in Benghazi, had accused Haftar of trying to assassinate him before he was arrested in November last year. He also accused Haftar of being involved in assassinating and arresting some of the tribes chiefs, which is making the Awaqirir tribe members feel they had been used by Haftar for his personal gains. In the event that Haftar will be out of east Libya, GNA Prime Minister Fayez al-Sarraj is expected to move into the region in an attempt to control it through money and the cover of international legitimacy. Political activist Mohamed Fuad believes that regardless of Haftars condition, countries which support him like Egypt and the UAE will prepare to find a replacement for the veteran. The HOR chairman does not have the decision to appoint someone in Haftars place without consulting Egypt and the UAE, Fuad told Al Jazeera. The absence of Haftar or even the deterioration of his health will cause local and regional uncertainty, as HOR members loyal to Haftar are expected to call for a federation, which will disturb the calculation of several capitals, especially Paris, Cairo and Abu Dhabi. Fuad added. A popular uprising took hold of Iran in the final week of 2017, with thousands taking to the streets to protest against the dire economic situation in the country. Using smartphone apps such as Telegram and Instagram, demonstrators quickly spread their message, and within days, protests erupted in dozens of cities across Iran. In the government crackdown that followed, more than 25 people were killed and hundreds arrested. The spread of protests once again showed the power of technology and social media, highlighted by repeated efforts by the government to block access to the mobile apps used by the protesters. After realising the potential of these apps, many in Iran a country with about 48 million smartphones are looking at ways to leverage technology in their pursuit of civil liberties. One of the latest apps is Hafez, which translates as to protect. Named after the famous Persian poet whose words frequently targeted religious hypocrisy, the app offers users a collection of human rights-related information. Foremost, it is a virtual rolodex of human rights lawyers in Iran, which allows users to access legal information regarding human rights. However, Hafez is more than just a list of telephone numbers, Keyvan Rafiee, an Iranian human rights activist, told Al Jazeera. Users receive daily human rights news; [it] allows them to send news of human rights violations securely; [it] disseminates important legal information to users if they are arrested, and provides the contact information for attorneys who can assist, said Rafiee, the founder of Human Rights Activists Iran (HRAI). {articleGUID} Rafiee, who has been arrested for his activism six times, said having a record of human rights violations is instrumental for protesters in Iran. Monitoring violations that take place on a daily basis can improve human rights conditions since independent organisations are not permitted to work in Iran, Rafiee said. Hafez is just one of several apps Iranians are using to promote civil liberties and human rights. The technology is a tool, not an end result, said Firuzeh Mahmoudi, founder of United4Iran, an organisation focussed on promoting civil society. For us, the main question was how to engage with the vast majority of Iranians who do not go out on the street for every protest, she said. We saw this niche that was not being filled; building Irans civic tech sector. One of its most prominent projects is the Iran Prison Atlas, a compendium of judges, prisons and, most importantly, political prisoners currently held by the Iranian government. The database has played an important role in creating an overview of the number of political prisoners in Iran and has been used by the United Nations Human Rights Council as a source in their evaluations of the human rights situation in the country. The atlas also helps when people get out of Iran, Mahmoudi told Al Jazeera. When they apply for asylum, our documentation is a good way to prove they are not making up the story, since we have a record of it. We share and compare lists with a large number of people we work with because what we dont want to have is false positives, she said. {articleGUID} A lot of time, when people leave prison, they are quiet about it, and we dont want a situation where the government says our information is not accurate. Although technologies like Prison Atlas allow for more transparency, working on it also comes with inherent risk in a country that regularly cracks down on dissent or activism. To ensure the safety of the people working on and using the applications, Mahmoudi says there is a certain degree of anonymity. It is very much a decentralised network of people, we use secure methods to communicate, and we have an extensive security protocol in order to guarantee the safety of the people involved, Mahmoudi said. But not all apps are at odds with the authorities goals, which has led to some surprising results. Governments are not a monolithic thing; rather they have many different sides, so sometimes they end up promoting one of our apps, Mahmoudi said. Thats because not all the apps are political; some promote sexual health or combat domestic violence, for example. Mahmoudi said womens rights in Iran are not well protected, especially in marriage. Therefore, two of the apps provide examples of language for marriage contracts to make it easier for women to retain their rights to a divorce and custody of their children. Our sexual health app also has information on sexually transmitted diseases, a menstruation calendar and information about contraceptives, which made it one of our more popular apps, Mahmoudi said. The domestic violence app allows users to contact people within a trusted circle with the push of a button in case youre in danger, and it outlines peoples rights when confronted with abuse, she added. As a result, women have approached Mahmoudi and her organisation to thank them, saying the information provided by the apps made them feel safer and helped them leave their husbands. {articleGUID} Rafiee said the same thing happened with Hafez, the app that promotes human rights. We were surprised by the scope of the usage of the application; people from small villages to large cities around Iran, who reported various data, from corruption to bureaucratic mismanagement, he said. Additionally, a number of attorneys reported that they have been contacted for legal consultation. However, reaching more people remains a challenge, mainly because the Iranian government regularly blocks internet access, especially during protests. {articleGUID} During the most recent protests, the government shut down messaging apps such as Telegram and Instagram, preventing people from communicating with each other. Iranians are young, theyre technologically savvy, and theyre educated, so its really critical Iran stays online, Mahmoudi said. When the internet was shut down for a short time during the last uprising, it was an issue. According to Rafiee, the reason behind these blocks is more than just preventing protesters from organising. Free and uncensored circulation of information opens the society to changes and accelerates the process of democratisation, Rafiee said. To get around these obstacles, Hafez uses built-in VPN technology, which allows the app to circumvent attempts by the government to block the app. We are hoping to become more technologically advanced in order to use such tools for the purpose of advancing awareness and human rights conditions in Iran, Rafiee said. Mahmoudi reiterated that these apps are just tools created to help achieve a bigger goal. The most important thing we can do is build a culture of transparency, accountability and civic engagement, she said. How human rights leaders, ethnic and religious minorities and those persecuted are treated is a litmus test for the human rights conditions in a country, Mahmoudi added. Michael Chesny appears to have posted 1,000 messages in white supremacist chat room in lead up to deadly Virginia rally. Washington, DC Just weeks before a white supremacist rally turned deadly last August after a neo-Nazi allegedly drove his car into a crowd in Charlottesville, Virginia, several of the rallys organisers discussed ways to use cars as weapons in an online chatroom. On July 17, one of those organisers, operating under the alias Tyrone, posted a picture of a farm machine known as a combine harvester, writing it sure would be nice. He then wrote: Is it legal to run over protesters blocking roadways? Tyrones statements garnered media attention last August, but it was not publicly known who was behind the alias. That changed recently, when an anti-racist activist exposed Tyrones identity as Michael Joseph Chesny, a 36-year-old active duty marine who was stationed at an airbase in Havelock, North Carolina with a speciality in explosives. Chesny received a general discharge from the Marines on April 5. In more than 1,000 posts in an online chat service called Discord, Tyrone gave detailed advice on how to fight in the streets of Charlottesville, and also posted a raft of racial slurs and statements pledging support for neo-Nazi causes and organisations. Unicorn Riot, a non-profit media organisation, published an archive of the Discord messages used to organise the Unite the Right rally that brought white supremacists from across the country to Charlottesville to oppose the citys decision to remove a Confederate monument. [Image was posted in the invite-only chat room, Discord, which was then published on Unicorn Riot] The violence in the small Virginia college town, which killed 32-year-old Heather Heyer and injured many others, caused a slew of civil rights lawsuits including one that alleges a conspiracy by the rallys organisers to carry out acts of violence in Charlottesville. It also touched off efforts by a coalition of Antifa (anti-fascist) activists to use a tactic known as doxxing to verify and publicise the identities of Unite the Right activists, including Chesny. I am actually a US Marine who was born to kill On August 11, 2017, just hours before hundreds of white supremacists marched with torches through the University of Virginia campus, chanting racist slogans, Tyrone logged onto Discord, where he had been communicating with others for months. F*** islam, Tyrone wrote. They are like mudsharks. Race traitors either convert or get the sword. These types of slurs were rampant on Discord, but Tyrone stood out for his more specific advice. In one instance, he advised others on how to build and use a flagpole as a weapon. [Are] you trying to impale people? he asked other members on July 24, 2017. He advised to Put a 6-8 inch double threaded screw into [two] 3 ft axe handles. If s*** gets real unscrew the bottom and go to town. Weeks earlier, on July 2, he wrote: An abundant variety of tactics are how we are going to achieve final victory. On July 23, 2017, Tyrone posted an image of an armed man with the caption: I am actually a US Marine who was born to kill Exposing Chesny In the months leading up to the rally, Charlottesville-based activist Emily Gorcenski tried to convince the city council to revoke a permit granted to organisers of the Unite the Right rally, not because were anti-free speech, she said, but because we knew they were coming to do violence to people and terrorise our local communities. On August 12, Gorcenski was standing just a few feet away when 20-year-old James Alex Fields, Jr, allegedly rammed his Dodge Charger into a crowd of anti-racist activists. Since the Discord chat logs went public last August, Gorcenski began searching its archive for details about the leaders of a nationwide network of white supremacists. There, she found threats against her own life. Gorcenski doxxed several of those making threats, arguing that activists have to do some of the investigatory work that police werent doing. {articleGUID} I think law enforcement doesnt do a good enough job of informing the public about white supremacists in peoples neighbourhoods, she told Al Jazeera. In the archive, she found a user chatting under the alias WV1987, who threatened to run her over when he arrived in Charlottesville. I hope she stands in the street, he wrote, posting a photo of his truck bumper, and adding My ARB bull bar is hungry. [Image was posted in the invite-only chat room, Discord, which was then published on Unicorn Riot] With this photo and two other clues, Gorcenski said it took her 45 minutes to identify the 30-year-old man who had made the threat. I am sharing this so that people can make safe decisions to avoid him, she wrote on Twitter. Soon after, Gorcenski also came across Tyrone. It took her 90 minutes to discover his true identity. As Tyrone, Chesny made very specific posts about himself and his family. Tyrone posted a photo of this banner that appeared at a May 2017 rally in support of a Confederate statue in Graham, North Carolina. On June 6, 2017, he told others on Discord that hed been caught hanging it from the top of a building. The banner featured a logo for Generation Identitaire, a far-right, nativist and anti-immigrant movement in Europe. The acronym alongside it, YWNRL, stands for You Will Not Replace Us, a popular chant used by Unite the Right marchers in Charlottesville to signal fears over so-called white genocide. Responding to another user who asked if he received trespassing charges, Tyrone wrote on June 6, 2017: Im going to court 9am eastern. We shall see. I think law enforcement doesn't do a good enough job of informing the public about white supremacists in people's neighbourhoods. Emily Gorcenski, Charlottesville-based activist Gorcenski said she did a reverse image search of the picture of the banner and found that it was linked to a news story citing two US marines who had been arrested for trespassing in connection with the banner drop. The news story ran the mugshots of Michael J Chesny and Joseph W Manning. Gorcenski said she continued scrolling through Tyrones messages, and found another clue that narrowed her search. He had posted what appeared to be a birth announcement for his family, who were expecting twins with their faces blocked out by white circles. The caption read: Reversing White Genocide, 2 at a time. A check of Facebook revealed that Chesny was the father of newborn twins five girls and a boy in total. The final piece of information is that his hairline matched [Chesnys mugshot], Gorcenski said. Tyrones messages became the subject of a high-profile lawsuit filed in the Western District of Virginia last October. The suit, filed by New York-based lawyer Roberta Kaplan, alleged that a group of white supremacist activists, including several US military veterans, had organised the rally and coordinated logistics, along with co-conspirator Tyrone,' with the purpose of engaging in unlawful acts of violence, intimidation, and denial of equal protection. While the lawsuit mentioned Tyrone, it did not identify him as Chesny. Lawyers for the case declined to comment as to why. Al Jazeera contacted Chesny, but he hung up the phone. When Al Jazeera sent Chesny questions by text message, asking him to respond in writing, Chesny instead attempted to call our reporter from a talk radio station in North Carolina in order to, he said, record and reserve the right to distribute the interview. Al Jazeera did not agree to these terms, and gave Chesny several more days to respond to questions in writing which he declined to do. Chesny has not admitted that Tyrone is his online alias. The radio station from which Chesny called Al Jazeera had hosted him before. On July 27, 2017, Tyrone wrote that hed be making his triumphant return to live radio tonight on 107.1 WTKF to discuss South African white supremacist Simon Roche. Seig Heiling into the night While many in the alt-right a loosely knit movement including neo-Nazis, white supremacists and white nationalists often minimise the kind of posts made by Tyrone as acts of trolling, Chesnys messages contain numerous examples where Tyrones words match Chesnys actions. {articleGUID} Tyrone wrote that he had been to an April 2017 rally in Pikeville, Kentucky, organised by a coalition of far-right groups, including the neo-Nazi National Socialist Movement (NSM), the now-defunct Traditionalist Worker Party (TWP) and the neo-Confederate League of the South. I was at Pikeville, Tyrone boasted, Seig Heiling into the night. Video from the Pikeville rally shows Chesny wearing sunglasses and black gloves, marching in formation with a group of men flying neo-Nazi flags and wearing shirts signalling their support for Rahowa or racial holy war. In one video from Pikeville, NSM leader Jeff Schoep declared that the people behind him are are the shock troops for the white race. Chesnys face appears in the back of the crowd. Military leaders, including Marine Corps Commandant General Robert Neller swiftly condemned the violence in Charlottesville, telling US media: Bigotry and racial extremism run contrary to [Marine] corps values. When asked to comment on Chesnys activities, Marines spokesman Brian Block told Al Jazeera that any marines affiliation with white supremacist groups is a violation that results in separation following the first substantiated incident of misconduct. A different Marines spokesman told Al Jazeera that Chesny enlisted in 2007 and was deployed to the American naval base at Guantanamo Bay in 2008 and early 2009. Later, he served a six-month tour of Afghanistan in late 2011 and early 2012 as part of a light armoured reconnaissance unit. Chesny had become eligible for a promotion to staff sergeant last September, but Marines officials say that promotion was cancelled during an investigation that led to Chesnys discharge. Bad Apples? Chesny entered the Marines during a time when the military had reportedly eased its recruiting standards to supply a surge of boots on the ground in Iraq and Afghanistan. {articleGUID} In 2006, the Southern Poverty Law Center (SPLC) watchdog group released a report claiming that the Department of Defense (DOD) had been relaxing bans on extremists and that thousands of soldiers in the Army alone were involved in extremist or gang activity. In 2009, the DOD amended its regulations on extremist activity to include more explicit bans on white supremacy in the military. DOD recognised that it was not a good thing to be training racists and extremists who fantasize about race war, said Ryan Lenz, a former Iraq war correspondent now working at the SPLC. Officials at the Marine Corps and the DOD argue that the incidence of white supremacists in their ranks is rare. DoD recognised that it was not a good thing to be training racists and extremists who fantasize about race war. Ryan Lenz, SPLC But DOD spokeswoman Carla Gleason told Al Jazeera that the military does not keep data on the number of people who have been discharged for their affiliations with white supremacist groups. Instead, those numbers are combined with a variety of forms of misconduct that can lead to discharge, ranging from participating in a white supremacist rally, drug use or unauthorised absence, Gleason said. While certain convictions in a military court require reporting through a federal database, she said, we do not track discharged individuals after the conclusion of their military service. The Marines refer cases involving threats of violence to the Naval Criminal Investigative Service, or NCIS, according to a spokesman. It is unclear whether Chesny would choose a military career over his white supremacist affiliations, but the Marines have made it clear: he cant have both. For now, the best view of his mindset appears to be that of his online alias Tyrone. On June 24, 2017, he wrote on Discord: Im a big fan of promoting Were. NOT. Sorry! As a core position. Nigeria: Shrinking Goronyo dam threatens livelihood of millions In the past year, water levels have dropped to just 10 percent of its capacity, forcing authorities to ration water to homes. North Korea high on agenda of US-Japan talks Japanese Prime Minister Shinzo Abe is set to meet US president to discuss strategy before proposed meeting between North Korean and US leaders, and is also expected to urge Trump to exempt Japan from his steel and aluminium tariffs, reports say. State TV says chemical weapons watchdog arrives in Douma as France and the US question the purpose of the mission. Chemical weapons inspectors have entered the Syrian town of Douma to probe an alleged poison gas attack, according to the state-run SANA news agency. The delegation from the Organisation for the Prohibition of Chemical Weapons (OPCW) entered the town near the capital, Damascus, along with the Syrian health minister on Tuesday, a source close to the government told Germanys DPA news agency. What we understand is that they are going to inspect and investigate the site of that alleged chemical weapons attack, said Al Jazeeras Zeina Khodr, reporting from Beirut in neighbouring Lebanon. They are going to take samples and talk to witnesses, doctors and people who were there, she added. The reported toxic gas attack on Douma on April 7 sparked joint missile strikes by the United States, France and Britain on Syrian military installations. The punitive attacks early on Saturday were launched before a fact-finding team from the OPCW was able to enter Douma and begin its fieldwork. Earlier on Tuesday, the mission had appeared in question. During an emergency meeting on Monday at the OPCWs headquarters in The Hague, Western diplomats accused the Syrian government and its Russian ally of blocking the team, which arrived in Damascus on Saturday. Russia denied the claims, saying parts of Douma still needed to be de-mined and said the watchdogs inspectors would enter on Wednesday. Yet, France and the US appeared to question the purpose of such a mission, warning that any incriminating evidence had likely been removed by now. It is highly likely that evidence and essential elements disappear from the site, which is completely controlled by the Russian and Syrian armies, the French foreign ministry said. Ken Ward, US ambassador to the OPCW, claimed on Monday that the Russians had already visited the site and may have tampered with it. Syrian and Russian forces gained control over Douma on Saturday when rebels withdrew from the town, hours after the end of the Western countries attacks. Al Jazeeras Khodr said that even if the OPCW finds that the chemical weapons attack happened, there would be no new punitive strikes. At the end of the day, we are not expecting any retaliation because the US and its allies already carried out retaliatory strikes, she said. They were not waiting for the OPCW findings, and they made it clear that they will strike again if another chemical weapons attack happens. Haifa Abu Sbaih says she was psychologically tortured and mistreated as a prisoner in Israeli jails for 16 months. Hebron, occupied West Bank Haifa Abu Sbeih was only 15 when she witnessed the immediate aftermath of a horrific massacre outside her familys home in the Old City of Hebron. She recalls standing outside her home in 1994, searching for her older brother after she heard gunshots in the Ibrahimi Mosque nearby, where an American Israeli settler had opened fire on hundreds of Palestinians during dawn prayers, killing 29 and wounding more than 100. All the men poured into the streets, their clothes dripping with blood, crying and seeking refuge in our home, she tells Al Jazeera. While she stood outside calling for her sibling, Abu Sbeih says the army shot and killed a young man, Nour al-Muhtaseb, right before her eyes. This incident, was for Abu Sbeih, a taste of what would become a lifetime of challenges as she lived in Hebron, the only Palestinian town with a Jewish-only settlement located in the heart of the city. Due to the presence of some 800 Israeli settlers, Hebron is exceptionally militarised, with the Israeli army imposing severe restrictions on everyday life and the movement of 40,000 Palestinians living there. Many Palestinians have resorted to building metal enclosures around their homes to avoid being targeted by settlers who regularly hurl abusive comments, throw stones and attack them. For Abu Sbeih, a particularly testing experience of the occupation came in December 2015 when she was arrested by the Israeli army for plotting, along with three of her nephews, to shoot and kill an Israeli settler in Hebron. According to Abu Sbeih, the settler, Anat Cohen, had for years harassed Palestinians in Hebron with regular and targeted abuse. Abu Sbeih, who was 37 at the time, underwent a harrowing experience of being interrogated and then spending 16 months in prison after her initial five-year-sentence was reduced under a plea bargain. She says she was only sentenced a month before her release. As Tuesday marks Palestinian Prisoners Day, Al Jazeera spoke to Abu Sbeih about her experience in an Israeli jail. Al Jazeera: Can you describe events leading up to your arrest? Haifa Abu Sbeih: At about 12:45 AM, some 35 soldiers, raided my house. They told me to wake all six of my children and put them in a room with their father, before they began searching the house. They threw every single object onto the floor; the clothes, the books, copies of the Quran, and photographs. My children were so scared. As the soldiers led me out of the house, I caught a glimpse of my eldest daughter. She looked at me, horrified, as she gestured with her hand to ask where I was going. Ill never forget that moment. They blindfolded me and put me in a car with several other soldiers, one of whom started cursing and shouting things like terrorism, Hamas, slut, animal. I stayed quiet. I hadnt comprehended that I was going to prison. It was like being dead and alive at the same time. It was like being inside a grave. You sit there wishing you would die. Haifa Abu Sbeih, former Palestinian prisoner I was eventually taken to seven different detention centres where they sat me down on a cold floor, blindfolded and handcuffed, for hours. At the last centre, they removed the blindfold and I found a soldier holding a plate full of cake. I was starving. He stuffed his face in a provocative way as he turned to me and said: Haifa, do you want to eat? Do you need anything? The soldier then called on two female soldiers to strip search me. They forced me to take off everything, even my hair clip and headscarf pins. Al Jazeera: What was it like growing up in Hebron? Abu Sbeih: We grew up with the settlers and soldiers around us all the time. Children were run over by settlers on purpose in front of our house. I saw the Israeli army arrest and detain my brother for nine months after a settler accused him of throwing ice at him. The settler beat my brother until he started bleeding from his mouth. We were raised to defend each other. During regular military raids that occur in the middle of the night, my mother would go out of the house and say, Thats my son, take me instead. Anat Cohen is extremely abusive. She used to beat our boys in the street and get other settlers to throw rocks at our houses. She cursed at Palestinian women as they walked on the street, while the Israeli army would just watch. We wanted to do something about it. Al Jazeera: What did it feel like to be strip-searched? Abu Sbeih: It was horrible and unbelievably humiliating. Your whole life, you protect yourself and your body. You only show whats acceptable. Taking off all my clothes and being completely vulnerable, in front of two strangers, was extremely difficult. I didnt want to show the soldiers my weakness, so I would hold back my tears. But if was alone, I would have cried tears of blood. Al Jazeera: How would you describe your experience in the prisons? Abu Sbeih: It was like being dead and alive at the same time. It was like being inside a grave. You sit there wishing you would die. The former political prisoner says she and the other women in the prison used to write notes and letters to each other regularly [Showkat Shafi/Al Jazeera] The worst part is being with minors you cant defend or protect; you feel helpless. When one of them would cling to my jilbab (full-length Islamic garment) because shes cold, while I couldnt even lift it to cover her because my hands were cuffed, I felt so much pain. Al Jazeera: You were the representative for the female prisoners in Damon prison. Can you tell us more about that? Abu Sbeih: Yes, I was the spokeswoman for the 26 girls in Damon prison in section 61. I was responsible for communicating their needs to the prison guards and administration. I felt like I had to protect the girls and fight to get them clothes when we werent even allowed undergarments. Instead of letting us have one spokesperson, the guards tried to speak to each girl separately. They attempted to bribe them into making confessions by offering them things like phones. They would try to divide us, but we stood as one. Having the girls trust as the person fighting for their needs is what kept me going. Al Jazeera: Can you tell us about the hardest moments in prison for you? Abu Sbeih: At one point, I asked for an open family visit for some of the inmates, which would allow the women to hold one of their children under the age of six for the final 10 minutes of the visit. Although they approved the visit for three mothers, including myself, a prison guard informed us during the visit that one of the mothers, who hadnt followed some rules, would be banned from seeing her child as a result. I refused to let them bring in some of the children and not others, so none of us got to see our kids that day. I couldnt bear the thought of holding my daughter while she watched me, but I was crushed inside. I went into the canteen and broke down into tears. Using beads provided by the Red Crescent and synthetic thread from the potato and onion sacks, Abu Sbaih made this for her son, Faris [Showkat Shafi/Al Jazeera] Al Jazeera: What would you say to anyone who would refer to you as a terrorist? Abu Sbeih: Palestinians do not like death. We are people who love life but we have honour and dignity. We are a people whose lands have been stolen and homes demolished and stolen. How does the world expect us to remain silent? No one stays silent when their rights are violated. New UN peace envoy to Yemen says new framework will only deliver peace if fighting is brought to an end. The United Nations new envoy for Yemen has said he plans to unveil a new plan to end the conflict in the Arab worlds poorest country within two months. Martin Griffiths told the UN Security Council on Tuesday that he would develop a new framework to re-launch negotiations between a Saudi-led coalition and Houthi rebels, but warned that fighting on the ground was still fierce. My plan is to put to the council within the next two months a framework for negotiations, he said. Griffiths cited the firing of ballistic missiles against Saudi Arabia, intensified military operations in northwestern Saada governorate, ongoing air raids and movements of forces in the Hudaida region as worrisome developments. Our concern is that any of these developments may, in a stroke, take peace off the table. I am convinced that there is a real danger of this, Griffiths said in reference to the ballistic missile attacks by the Houthis. Last week, Saudi Arabia said it shot down a ballistic missile in Riyadh and two unmanned drones in the southern Asir and Jizan provinces. The Saudi-led coalition warned on Monday against renewed attacks on Saudi Arabia, saying it would inflict a painful response if these were not brought to an end. Al Jazeeras Mike Hanna, reporting from New York, said the crucial element in Griffiths peace plan and for political dialogue to take place is an end to hostilities. The key issue is that the conflict ceases, the ongoing violence between the Houthi rebels within Yemen and of course the ongoing missile attacks against Saudi Arabia. The war in Yemen has been described by the UN as the worlds worst humanitarian crisis, with more than 75 percent of the population, or about 22 million people, in need of aid, while seven million are on the brink of famine. Concerned by the rise of the Houthi rebels, Saudi Arabia and a coalition of Arab states launched a military intervention in 2015 in the form primarily of a massive air campaign aimed at reinstating the government of President Abd-Rabbu Mansour Hadi. Since then, more than 10,000 people have been killed and at least 40,000 wounded, mostly from Saudi-led air raids. In retaliation, the Houthis have launched dozens of missiles at the kingdom. Saudi authorities say over the past three years 90 ballistic missiles have been fired at the kingdom by the rebels. Previous rounds of UN-sponsored peace talks have failed to bring an end to hostilities. Foreign Minister Adel al-Jubeir says Riyadh is willing to send soldiers amid reports Trump is looking to exit Syria. Saudi Arabia is holding talks with the United States about sending troops into Syria as part of a wider international coalition, the kingdoms foreign minister has said. In his comments on Tuesday, Adel al-Jubeir said the deployment offer was not new, adding that Riyadh had previously proposed the idea to former US President Barack Obama. We are in discussion with the US, and have been since the beginning of the Syrian crisis about sending forces into Syria, al-Jubeir told reporters in Riyadh during a press conference alongside Antonio Guterres, the UN chief. We made a proposal to the [previous] Obama administration that if the US were to send forces then Saudi Arabia would consider along with other countries sending forces as part of this contingent. The kingdom announced its readiness to deploy ground troops in 2016 to fight the Islamic State in Iraq and the Levant (ISIL, also known as ISIS) in Syria. While Saudis air force partook in the aerial campaign aimed at defeating ISIL from the very beginning in 2014, the Gulf kingdom stopped short of a full ground troop deployment. US forces in Syria The news came a day after the Wall Street Journal reported US President Donald Trump was looking to assemble an Arab force that would include Saudi Arabia and the United Arab Emirates to replace US military presence in Syria. The force, which Trumps new National Security Adviser John Bolton hopes will include Egypt, would be in charge of stabilising the northeastern part of Syria, according to the report. Al Jazeeras Patty Culhane, reporting from Washington, DC, noted that the US defence establishment is going to be very wary of the Saudi plan. Theres great concern among leadership inside the [US] military about the ability of Saudi forces just look at the war in Yemen that the US has been helping them fight with intelligence and refuelling, said Culhane. There have been humanitarian catastrophes, numbers of schools and hospitals that have been hit, raising big concerns among human rights activists. Another key question is what will happen to US troops in Syria and whether they are expected to stay as part of an expanded mission, added Culhane. [It is] not at all clear that Trump is going to be OK with that, she added. The US has an estimated 2,000 troops stationed inside Syria, according to the Pentagon. Opposition protesters see appointment of Serzh Sargsyan as an attempt to expand his rule. Armenias parliament has voted to appoint the countrys former President Serzh Sargsyan as prime minister, despite pressure from tens of thousands of protesters who accuse him of a power grab. Members of parliament on Tuesday voted 77-17 in favour of Sargsyans appointment, as demonstrators rallied in the capital, Yerevan, and several other cities for a fifth day against the move. Sargsyan was president for a decade, and stepped down last week because of a term limit. But Armenias new constitution has made the presidency largely ceremonial and strengthened the office of the prime minister, allowing Sargsyan to maintain his influence. Maria Titizian, the editor-in-chief of EVN Report, an Armenian online magazine, said Sargsyan had promised before a 2015 referendum on constitutional reforms that he would not seek the post of the prime minister. But in fact on April 9, when his second and final term as president ended, his party, the Republican Party of Armenia nominated his candidacy and today in a vote in parliament he was elected as prime minister, effectively giving him a third term as leader of the country, she told Al Jazeera from Yerevan. Sargsyan has effectively been in charge of Armenia since 2008 [PAN Photo via AP] Titizian also said at least 80 people protesting against Sargsyans appointment were detained by the police. The protesters leader, opposition politician Nikol Pashinyan, declared what he called a velvet revolution and urged demonstrators to keep besieging government ministries, the prosecutors office, the Central Bank and other official buildings. Sargsyan, a former military officer who also held the office of prime minister in 2007-2008, has effectively been in charge of the landlocked South Caucasus nation of 2.9 million since winning a presidential vote in 2008. The constitutional amendments were passed after a referendum in December 2015, with some 63 percent of the voters backing the changes. White House says Trump will decide on Russia sanctions in the near future, contradicting comments by Nikki Haley. US President Donald Trump has paused a new round of sanctions that were set to be imposed against Russia over its support for the Syrian governments chemical weapons programme. White House Press Secretary Sarah Huckabee Sanders said on Monday that a decision on fresh sanctions had not been made yet, contradicting an earlier announcement by US ambassador to the UN Nikki Haley who said new sanctions would likely be announced early this week. You will see that Russian sanctions will be coming down, Haley told CBS news programme Face the Nation on Sunday. [The sanctions] will go directly to any sort of companies that were dealing with equipment related to Assad and chemical weapons use, she added. But Sanders said the White House was still considering additional sanctions, with a decision to be made in the near future. She added later in the day that the president has been clear that hes going to be tough on Russia, but at the same time hed still like to have a good relationship with them. Suspected chemical weapons attack The proposed sanctions would have been part of a range of punitive measures imposed by the Trump administration in the wake of an alleged chemical weapons attack in Eastern Ghouta, Syria that killed dozens on April 7. Early on Saturday, the United States, the UK and France launched missile attacks on facilities believed to be used to research, develop and store chemical weapons inside Syria. Russian President Vladimir Putin denounced the attacks as an act of aggression that would only worsen the humanitarian crisis in Syria. Russia said in the UN last Friday that its experts found no trace of toxic substance use during their investigation in Douma, where the alleged attack took place. Vassily Nebenzia, Russias UN ambassador, said Russia had clear evidence the suspected gas attack was staged. For its part, France said it has evidence Syrian government forces were responsible. On Monday, Russia said that a team of chemical experts from the Organisation for Prohibition of Chemical Weapons (OPCW) would inspect the site of the suspected attack on Wednesday. The announcement came as Russia rejected US accusations of tampering with evidence in an investigation. Moscow also rejected an allegation by the British delegation of the OPWC that the investigators had been blocked from entering the site, saying the delay was due to Saturdays missile attacks. Following Haleys comments on Monday, Russian Deputy Foreign Minister Sergei Ryabkov said Moscow would not delay its response to any new US sanctions, Russian state news agency RIA reported. Ryabkov said that Russias lower house of parliament is considering legislation that would give the Kremlin the power to restrict US imports, RIA also said. Sheikh Zayed Hospital treated mainly poor and displaced people in Mogadishu for free. The United Arab Emirates (UAE) has suspended operations at a hospital it ran in Somalias capital, Mogadishu, amid growing bilateral tensions. The Mogadishu-based Sheikh Zayed Hospital, which offered free treatment mainly to poor and displaced people, closed late on Monday, a security officer at the facility, who did not want to be named for fear of losing his job, told Al Jazeera. Speaking to Goobjoog, a local radio station, hospital director Dr Salim Nurane said that staff received orders to close the hospital for good. We receive between 200 and 300 patients a day, who get all services and medicine available in the hospital for free, Nurane added. On Monday, the UAE said it would end its military training mission in Somalia. This came after reports said that Somali officials had stopped a plane from the Gulf country from leaving an airport in Somalias Puntland region following the refusal of Emirati military instructors on board to hand over their luggage to be scanned and searched. Sundays incident came just days after Somalias government seized several bags of money containing almost $10m in cash from a Royal Jet plane that arrived at Mogadishu Airport from Abu Dhabi. Royal Jet is an airline based in Abu Dhabi, servicing the luxury market between the UAE and Europe. Somali authorities said they were investigating where the money came from, where it was going and the individuals involved. The security forces noticed the suspicious bags and handed them over to the concerned departments, Somalias security ministry said in a statement. UAEs foreign ministry said in a statement late on Sunday that the incident earlier this month at the airport flies in the face of diplomatic traditions. Last month, Abu Dhabi agreed to train security forces in Somaliland a region in northern Somalia seeking secession from the rest of the country. UAE also signed with Somaliland a 30-year concession to manage Berbera Port in the semi-autonomous region. It has also started building a military base in the port city. Somalia dismissed the agreement between Abu Dhabi and the northern Somali region as non-existent, null and void and called on the United Nations to take action. Speaking at the UN Security Council last month, Abukar Osman, Somalias ambassador to the UN, said the agreement between Somaliland and the UAE to establish the base in Berbera is a clear violation of international law. A press advocacy employee has been sacked following his condemnation of Israels lethal force used against Palestinians. A Canadian press-freedom group has come under fire after the sacking of one of its employees who published a statement condemning the extrajudicial killings of Palestinian demonstrators by Israeli forces in Gaza. At least 17 Palestinians were killed by Israeli live fire and more than 1,000 others were wounded, as thousands rallied to mark the 42nd anniversary of Land Day on March 30. Among those injured were at least 10 journalists. On April 2, Kevin Metcalf, communications coordinator for the Canadian Journalists for Free Expression (CJFE), wrote a statement on behalf of the group urging the government of Canada to condemn the IDFs [Israeli Defence Forces] brutality. Failure to do so, he wrote, will undermine Canadas moral authority when condemning similar acts by any other nation-state. Targeted attacks against demonstrators and journalists must be condemned wherever they occur. Canada regularly issues statements denouncing violence that occurs worldwide most recently, it condemned the reported chemical attack in Syrias Eastern Ghouta. However, the Canadian government has remained silent regarding the killing of unarmed Palestinian protesters. Metcalfs statement was attacked by critics who accused the CJFE of lacking neutrality, taking a position in the conflict and pushing for anti-Israel policy. Am I the only one disturbed that an organization called Canadian Journalists for Free expression is lobbying the Canadian government to take a specific position on Israel? Does @CJFE realize how such politicking can damage our reputation, and thus freedom? pic.twitter.com/1R3ISG9ZtM Doug Saunders (@DougSaunders) April 2, 2018 Meanwhile, as the Friday protests in Gaza continued, another 15 Palestinians were killed and a total of 1,600 were wounded, including seven journalists. On April 8, a day after Palestinian photographer Yaser Murtaja died of his wounds after being shot by an Israeli sniper while wearing a jacket clearly marked with the word PRESS on it, CJFE removed their statement and Metcalf was notified of his termination. It was made very clear to me that they werent going to keep me on [employed] as a result of having published the statement, Metcalf told Al Jazeera. On April 11, the CJFE explained in a revised statement that it decided to remove the text written by Metcalf because it went beyond the organisations mandate and was overreaching. When asked to clarify what was particularly problematic, Tom Henheffer, vice president of CJFE, said: The core message wasnt wrong, but it was too broad in focus and incorrect in tone, easily leaving it open to misinterpretation (which led to the controversy online over the last couple of weeks). Our new statement still condemns the IDF [Israeli army] action, calls for an impartial investigation, and asks the Canadian government to call for the same, but does so in a more precise way that better aligns with our core mandate, Henheffer wrote in an email to Al Jazeera. Metcalf said he did not expect such controversy to arise, given the fact that the CJFE has regularly condemned suppression of speech and journalism worldwide, including in countries such as China, Croatia, Iran and Russia. Writing and publishing statements and protest letters is what is expected of me as per my job description. It is clear that I am being punished for doing my job, Metcalf wrote in a Facebook post on April 9. Independent Jewish Voices Canada (IJV) also said that they were deeply concerned about the politically-motivated firing of Metcalf. The firing of Mr Metcalf for defending press freedom against attacks in Palestine sends the message that support for freedom of the press is contingent, Corey Balsam, national coordinator for IJV, said. With Israels blockade of access points to the occupied Palestinian territories, local reporters are among the few sources of information coming out of the region, added Balsam. Canadian Journalists for Free Expression was right to condemn the killing of their colleagues as well as other lethal attempts to silence Palestinians right to protest, much as they do in other contexts. CJFE was not the only media watchdog to issue a statement condemning the lethal force used by Israeli forces. Reporters Without Borders accused Israel of deliberately shooting journalists in Gaza. The US-based Committee to Protect Journalists went a step further in their statement, referring to those responsible for Murtajas death as killers in its headline. Neil Macdonald, an opinion columnist for the Canadian Broadcasting Corporation (CBC) who has also reported from the occupied Palestinian Territories, argued that excesses of Israeli soldiers are almost never punished. Thats why, he said, criticism from organisations like CJFE or the International Criminal Court are important. For a journalist working in Gaza or the Occupied Territories, a PRESS badge offers limited protection at best. For a Palestinian journalist, it clearly offers none at all, Macdonald wrote. Since everything is pointing to Assad as the perpetrator of the recent chemical attack, most observers are puzzled as to what his intentions could possibly be. One year ago, not only was he winning the war, but Washington expressed its intent to abolish the policy of Assad's removal and work with Moscow to destroy ISIS. However, after the chemical attack at the city of Khan Sheikhoun, Washington made a 180 reversal when secretary of state Rex Tillerson declared that "the reign of the Assad family is coming to an end." Today, ISIS is for all practical purposes being defeated. President Trump announced pending American withdrawal from Syria, and soon another chemical attack followed. The incident will likely result in changing the American position and a postponement of the announced withdrawal. What could possibly be accomplished by gassing civilians both back then and now? As Napoleon Bonaparte expressed two centuries ago, "international incidents must not be allowed to shape foreign policy; foreign policy must shape the incidents." The sophist may ask whose foreign policy is being shaped by those incidents. In the Middle East, nothing is ever as it appears. Assad's survival hangs on the rivalry between Russia and the United States. As long as the relationship between the two countries is adversarial and as long as Washington demands Assad's removal, and as long as America stays engaged in Syria providing counterbalance to Russia, Assad is safe. The Russians see this cold-blooded tyrant as the best, if not the only, hope for stability in the middle of the Muslims' "war of all against all" and will not allow him to fall, turn Syria over to Islamists, and have the Russian position in the region dramatically weaken. Conversely, if Moscow and Washington were able to establish common goals to which both countries manifested their desire to work toward eradication of terrorism and solving some of the Middle East's problems, that evolution could leave Assad politically dispensable, perhaps even available to be used as an exchange currency in a grand bargain. The prospects of American withdrawal would leave Assad one on one with Putin, who will reduce him to servitude. With little subtlety and a lot of daring, Assad, by ordering the chemical attacks and thereby provoking international indignation, has been achieving his objective of driving a wedge between Russia and the United States, preventing their coalescence and ensuring continued American engagement. In both instances, revolted by the atrocities, President Trump, acting on the mood of the moment, did exactly what Assad expected him to do. After each attack, Trump declared moral absolutes, accused Moscow of culpability, and demanded that Russia sever ties with the butcher Assad. The folly of this approach is that Washington is acting out of morality, showing little pragmatism, while Moscow is acting out of pragmatism without morality and governed by a different sense of proportion. Although deeply embarrassed by the events, Russia, which has historically been ruled by ruthless autocrats and whose populace still remembers the horrors of communism, cannot be influenced by the deaths of a few hundred people. It certainly does not rise to the level of concern that may persuade Moscow to amend its strategic objectives toward the Mediterranean that were set up centuries ago by Peter the Great and further advanced by Catherine the Great. Russian policy toward Syria is a continuum going back to the 1960s. It is shaped not by episodes, but by parallelism of national interests. Assad offers Russia access to the Mediterranean through a warm-water port for the Russian navy and military bases, which allows Russia to be a consequential player in the Middle Eastern balance of power. In return, Russia has assumed the role of principal arms supplier and the source of the Assad regime's sustenance. This collaboration doesn't come cheap for Russia in terms of investments and relations with the United States and other members of the world community. And within Russia as well, there is an incipient opposition to Russian involvement in Syria. Nevertheless, for Moscow, if you can't get the girl you love, you love the girl you get. Within this context, the election of Donald Trump offered the opportunity to manipulate Russian necessities to American advantage and build a new world order based on collaboration with Russia. Instead, the United States, after "successfully" defending the people of Afghanistan, Iraq, and Libya, extended that failed policy toward defending the people of Syria, leaving Moscow perplexed about the administration's policies and objectives. Were the attacks on Syria isolated incidents or a declaration of the right to intervene in the affairs of sovereign states under the banner of moral supremacy? By degrading Assad's capabilities, isn't Washington helping the Islamists? Or is there some uniquely American unity of opposites? Going forward, will American foreign policy be based on incidents or long-term geopolitical interests, the power of arms or the power of reason? After the recent bombing, Trump declared, "mission accomplished!" The unanswered question is, "Whose mission was it?" After all, keeping friends and enemies off balance is Assad's art of survival. Alexander G. Markovsky is owner and CEO of Litwin Management Services LLC, specializing in the management of large energy-related international projects. Mr. Markovsky is a senior fellow at the London Center for Policy Research; his prime areas of expertise are international terrorism and the economy, politics, and ideology of Russia. He was born and educated in the Soviet Union and holds degrees in structural engineering, economics, and political science. He immigrated into the United States in 1976 and currently resides in Houston, Texas with his family. Mr. Markovsky is the author of two politically charged books, Anatomy of a Bolshevik and Liberal Bolshevism: America Did Not Defeat Communism, She Adopted It. He is a contributor to American Thinker, The Hill, and the New York Daily News, and his work also appears on the Washington Times, FrontPageMag.com, RedState.com, Israpundit.com, WorldNetDaily.com, and FamilySecurityMatters.org. White people are finding it "difficult to adjust" to becoming a minority, goes the premise of a new AP history textbook with the implication that this reflects some kind of character defect. Responding to this, conservative writers have generally denied the claim, sometimes calling it a "Marxist lie." But a different point should be made. Imagine that a history book presented European colonization of North America by asserting, with the same character-defect implication, that Indians found it "difficult to adjust" to becoming a minority. Would people be left scratching their heads? Might this even be called offensive? I think the only response really necessary would be "duh." So a question for libs: Can you cite for me one group, in all of history, that was happy about becoming a minority in what had been its homeland? Just one. I'll be waiting. Did the Ainus, the Japanese islands' original inhabitants, jump for joy when being overrun and say, "Yay, now we can become a minority! Maybe we'll even be subsumed!" (which did happen, for the most part)? Did the Formosan aborigines cheer when the Chinese began outnumbering them and exclaim, "Yippee! Perhaps one day we'll be just two percent of this island's inhabitants" (which they are now)? Did the population of Byzantine North Africa, faced with seventh-century Muslim invasion, declare, "Oh, joyous times! Maybe we can look forward to the day when these lands are entirely Arab and Muslim!" (which came to pass)? We could go on forever. European history alone is replete with tribes Alamanni, Franks, Angles, Vandals, Gepids, Burgundians, Lombards, etc. that no longer exist as distinct peoples. Now, I always fancied myself as having a keen grasp of man's nature, but maybe I'm out of touch. Perhaps all these groups really did make merry over coming minority status or, even, exult at possible extinguishment. I've never heard of such a case, though. Why would a group not be alarmed at the prospect of being reduced to minority status? Leftists themselves never tire of stressing how minorities have ever been persecuted; "progressive" histories are narratives of minority struggle against majority oppression (though liberals love impugning the West on this score, they do sometimes speak of the same phenomenon occurring elsewhere). As usual, the reality is precisely the opposite of what leftists claim: sleepwalking into cultural and demographic irrelevancy, there has never been a group less concerned about movement toward minority status than whites. This is partially explainable by the fact that there has never before been a civilization as just as the West. For example, whites probably weren't the first to practice slavery. But they certainly were the first to end it. Whites might not have been the first to violate human rights. They are, however, the only reason we even talk about such violation because they birthed our whole modern concept of human rights to begin with. The West is unique. There simply has never been a civilization that has secured so much prosperity and so many rights for all its citizens, including minorities. In fact, it now often subordinates majority well-being to minority whim (e.g., that of the sexual "devolutionaries"). Thus, you truly might see no reason to fear becoming a minority if the modern West is your only frame of reference. Yet this is an area where we actually should listen to the left and be mindful of their warnings about minorities' historical plight. If whites were more concerned about being reduced to minority status, their nations gradually losing their Western character due to multiculturalism and the influx of unassimilable, non-Western foreigners wouldn't be so imperiled (though our growing immorality would still plague us). The reality expressed in this article eludes most because of conditioning: the double standard, the prejudice, is ingrained. Whites are simultaneously portrayed as uniquely inhuman and something more than human, in that they're supposed to be above normal human concerns (desire to retain one's own culture, etc.). They're cast as singularly oppressive for exhibiting the same moral failings as every other group, such as having practiced slavery, but as strikingly unexceptional despite taking unprecedented steps to mitigate those moral failings. They're condemned as "cultural appropriators" merely for using foreigners' food recipes but given no credit for birthing a recipe for civilizational success copied the world over (which is why Western technology and economic practices are ubiquitous). Lamentably, though, whites are uniquely successful in another way as well. Those most effectively peddling the anti-white propaganda and most efficiently destroying the West are white themselves. Whoever guessed that modern Westerners' perhaps final triumph would be reaching the very heights of self-flagellation? Contact Selwyn Duke, follow him on Twitter, or log on to SelwynDuke.com. "Judge hands defeat to Trump and Cohen," blares the headline. Kimba Wood...Kimba Wood...where have I heard that name before? Well, look at this. She was Bill Clinton's second choice to be attorney general, after the Zoe Baird nomination blew up. Kimba's blew up, too, because she forgot to tell the White House she had employed an illegal as a nanny. Is this amazingly great luck for the Mueller-U.S. attorney tag team or what? But don't be downhearted. Judge Wood has it all doped out: "I have faith in the Southern District U.S. Attorney's office that their integrity is unimpeachable," Judge Wood said. Remember how we were treated to glowing tales of how Comey and Mueller were "Boy Scouts," straight arrows both, who played it straight down the middle, eminently fair? And besides, they're both Republicans! Gasp! Now we learn that the Southern District U.S. attorney's office is "unimpeachable." How about a soft-focus story in Time about how the attorneys there volunteer at dog rescues and putter around in down-at-heel slippers? Golly gee, are we in great hands! Update from Thomas Lifson. Daniel Greenfield at Front Page Magazine reminds us: Kimba has made headlines before for all the wrong things. Wood was dubbed the "Love Judge" in 1995 when the soon-to-be ex-wife of a multimillionaire Wall Street financier found his diary, which was filled with passionate prose about his trysts with the jurist. Moneyman Frank Richardson gushed about the time he spent with Wood, describing her as "absolutely wonderful, very intelligent, a complete woman and able to give love wonderfully and freely." The illicit romance began in the spring of that year with dinners at ritzy restaurants and weekend getaways at Wood's country home. At the time, Kimba was married to a Time magazine columnist but the two were about to divorce. That's where the sneering at Cohen's clients is coming from. It's a safe bet that Judge Kimba Wood might harbor some resentment toward Republicans. And a Clinton nominee should not be overseeing a case involving his political opponents. Except that's how Team Coup keeps doing things. And, from Jeffrey Lord at American Spectator: Wood was appointed to the bench by... Ronald Reagan. But it was Bill and Hillary Clinton who pressed to make her Attorney General. And Hillary Clinton personally interviewed Wood for the job. One of the amusing sidelights is that the Clintons were embarrassed when they learned that in 1966, when she was a student in London, Wood had stop laughing! "on a lark... signed up for the bunny trainee program for the Playboy Club there. She told [Clinton] she quit after five days, before actually being employed by the club or drawing a paycheck." When this came out Wood was immediately dubbed "The Love Judge." This news of Wood's involvement comes on top of the raid that created the case in the first place. The Justice Department in the person of Deputy AG Rod Rosenstein authorized the raid on the office, home, and hotel room of Donald Trump's personal lawyer. That would be the very same Donald Trump who defeated one Hillary Clinton for president the self-same Hillary Clinton who, according to the New York Times in February of 1993, played a role in getting then-President Clinton to nominate Judge Wood for Attorney General of the United States by personally interviewing Wood. Anyway one wants to slice it, Judge Wood has a massive and vivid appearance of a conflict of interest. Can you imagine the reverse? President Hillary Clinton's personal attorney has her office raided, files are scooped up and the judge in the case is an ally of a former President Donald Trump? And, via Heavy.com: She performed the non-denominational wedding ceremony of liberal financier George Soros to Tamiko Bolton in 2013. Nancy Pelosi was among the guests, Page Six reported. ... The New York Daily News, in 1995, said that Wood's ascendancy to the federal bench raised some eyebrows because "Wood had no criminal experience at the time D'Amato nominated her for the judgeship and, as a life-long Democrat, she could hardly be said to share D'Amato's views." Henry Percy is the nom de guerre of a writer in Arizona. He may be reached at saler.50d[at]gmail.com. Imagine that you are on your way to the voting booth, intending to vote for Candidate X. Just as you are almost there, you hear the news: the FBI has announced that candidate X is under investigation for (insert the worst crime you can think of). Do you change your vote? In 1992, just a few days before what might otherwise have been President George H.W. Bush's reelection, Iran contra prosecutor Lawrence E. Walsh indicted Bush's secretary of defense, Casper Weinberger. Whoops: Bush lost the election to candidate Bill Clinton. How many Bush voters were deterred from voting for him? How coincidental was the timing of that indictment? We will never know. Weinberger was later exonerated, but by then, it was too late Bill Clinton was president. Then, on October 28 of 2016, just a few days before the voting, Hillary Clinton was poised for election to the presidency. Another whoopsy: FBI director James Comey announced that he was re-opening an investigation into Clinton's e-mail scandal. After Clinton lost the election, she blamed, among many other reasons, Comey's announcement. How many Clinton voters were deterred from voting for her? How instrumental was the timing of that announcement? We will never know. Back to the original question: Do you change your vote? How vulnerable are you to the news cycle? In 1992, circumstances were quite different. Federal investigators were much more highly regarded then than they are now. It's a matter of trust. If someone I deeply trusted advised me that there was compelling evidence that Candidate X was implicated in significant illegal deeds, then I would seriously consider my alternatives. Should I vote for X, for Y, for third party Z, or not at all? But today, my trust in the FBI and DoJ are severely shaken. From the secret meeting on the tarmac, to blanket immunity for Clinton accomplices, to the destruction of subpoenaed evidence, and the overt political favoritism that went far beyond mere bias, my opinion is that the highest officials in government should be the ones being indicted. Government without the fully informed consent of the governed is a recipe for what happened in 1776. Image: Bill Smith via Flickr. Back in 1997, we dropped off the boys with my parents to go watch the new version of Titanic. As we were leaving for the movie, my mom joked and said that the ship was going to hit the iceberg again. I laughed and said: "Really?" "Your father and I saw the Clifton Webb version in Cuba," she said in Spanish with a big smile! Last night, Mr. Comey had a lot to say. Unfortunately, it was nothing new. Better than that, he said nothing that will make him more credible, or end the Trump presidency, as pointed out by Michael Graham: It's the morning after the "Comey Interview" and, believe it or not, Donald Trump is still president. If you watched the buildup to the release of the former FBI director's new book and his prime-time ABC interview, this fact might come as a bit of a shock. Based on the press hype and partisan hopes surrounding the publication of James Comey's A Higher Loyalty: Truth, Lies and Leadership, you'd expect this insider's expose of Trump's shocking scandals to be, if not the end of his presidency, the beginning of the end. To paraphrase Mark Twain, the reports of Trump's political death continue to be exaggerated. Comey's book is unlikely to have any impact on Trump's presidency other than perhaps to strengthen Trump's standing among his supporters. Trump haters counting on the former head of the FBI to have career-ending dirt on Donald Trump will be gravely disappointed by Comey's book. The only "big reveal" in A Higher Loyalty is how loyal Jim Comey is to... Jim Comey. For Washington insiders who have been dealing with him since the George W. Bush administration, this isn't breaking news. Lacking evidence of actual wrongdoing in last night's interview, Comey yet again refused to accuse President Trump of obstruction Comey turned instead to the petty and political. He talked about Mr. Trump's appearance ("His face appeared slightly orange with bright white half-moons under his eyes where I assumed he placed small tanning goggles"), the size of his hands ("As he extended his hand, I made a mental note to check its size. It was smaller than mine, but did not seem unusually so.") and he called the president "morally unfit." It was the sort of snarky partisan punditry found on cable news 24/7. Then again, should we be surprised? [I]f Comey ever did see actual wrongdoing by Mr. Trump, do we really believe we'd just be hearing about it from a notoriously leak-friendly fellow like Comey? I keep coming back to the same question: why did he do it? Why go out and write a book that could be used against you in a trial? I don't know the answer, but Comey needs a criminal lawyer who actually understands what his client is doing to himself. In the meantime, Comey said nothing, absolutely nothing. PS: You can listen to my show (Canto Talk) and follow me on Twitter. Uh-oh! It looks as if Scott Pruitt overspent by $38,000, and we can't have such abuse of taxpayer money. The Washington Post: The nearly $43,000 soundproof phone booth Environmental Protection Agency Administrator Scott Pruitt had installed in his office last year violated federal spending laws, the Government Accountability Office said Monday. In an eight-page letter to lawmakers, GAO general counsel Thomas H. Armstrong said the agency failed to notify lawmakers that it was exceeding the $5,000 limit for agency heads to furnish, redecorate or otherwise make improvements to their offices. In addition, Armstrong wrote, the agency also violated the federal Antideficiency Act, "because EPA obligated appropriated funds in a manner specifically prohibited by law." Somehow, journalists never cared much about misspent money during Obama's eight years. Politifact says President Trump was wrong when he said $6 billion was missing at the State Department when Hillary was secretary of state. They say the money wasn't missing; it was just unaccounted for. That is like employees at a bank coming up $1 million short when counting the vault and telling the boss the cash isn't missing; it is just unaccounted for. I am sure that would be OK, and the fact-checkers would say it was wrong to say the money is missing. (Fact-checkers are pretty worthless when they are so biased.) One day, President Obama was sitting there, wondering what to do with $400 million, and he came up with a solution. Let's send it to Iran in unmarked bills in the middle of the night. Then, over the next nineteen days, he found another $1.3 billion sitting around, and he decided that should go to Iran also. We know it wasn't ransom because Obama always told the truth and his administration was the most transparent ever. Fortune Magazine: The controversial $400 million payment that the U.S. sent to Iran in January, just as four American hostages were released a planeload of Euros, Swiss Francs and other currencies was only the first of three American cash deliveries to the country, the Obama administration reportedly told lawmakers on Tuesday. During the 19 days following the first shipment, the U.S. sent two more planeloads of cash, totaling $1.3 billion, to Tehran, reports the Wall Street Journal. The media are very worried about this $38,000 misspent by Pruitt, but they never worried about massive amounts of money misspent by Obama and clear violations of the law. It is obvious that Pruitt and all federal employees should follow the law, but journalists should stop pretending that their reporting is about worrying about the law. They don't like Trump's and Pruitt's policies, and they will move from target to target. The fact that they cared so little about Hillary's violations of the law show they don't really care. They didn't even care when people working for Hillary like Huma were getting paid by others also. Special Counsel Robert Mueller's spokesman informed the press of something many of them were already perfectly aware of: many of their stories about Trump's collusion with Russia are wrong. Washington Times: Special counsel Robert Mueller's office is warning that "many" news articles on the Trump-Russia probe have been wrong. The statement from a spokesperson did not single out particular stories. But the warning did come after media inquiries about a McClatchy News story on Friday that said Mr. Mueller has evidence that President Trump's personal attorney, Michael Cohen, did in fact travel to Prague in 2016 as alleged by the Christopher Steele dossier. "What I have been telling all reporters is that many stories about our investigation have been inaccurate," the Mueller spokesperson said. "Be very cautious about any source that claims to have knowledge about our investigation and dig deep into what they claim before reporting on it. If another outlet reports something, don't run with it unless you have your own sourcing to back it up." "Sourcing"? Sourcing? We don't need no stinking sourcing! The statement was reported by the Daily Caller and confirmed by The Washington Times. The McClatchy story on Friday lit up liberal media outlets since, if true, it would confirm a major charge by the British ex-spy. Mr. Steele wrote that Mr. Cohen traveled secretly to Prague in August 2016 to meet Vladimir Putin aides to conspire to cover up Russian hacking of Democratic Party computers. In other words: Trump-Russia collusion. There has been no official or press confirmation of Mr. Steele's Prague allegation nor of a number of other Steele collusion charges. His work was financed by the Democratic National Committee and the Hillary Clinton campaign. For his part, Mr. Cohen has repeatedly denied under oath, and thus under the penalty of perjury, that he traveled to Prague. If he did in fact go there, he would be unlikely to lie under oath to Congress since the FBI's investigative powers would be able to track his movements. After the McClatchy story, Mr. Cohen tweeted on Saturday, "Bad reporting, bad information and bad story by same reporter Peter Stone @McClatchyDC. No matter how many times or ways they write it, I have never been to Prague. I was in LA with my son. Proven!" Mr. Cohen has provided trip records to reporters to show he was in California for a time in August 2016 when Mr. Steele says the visit happened. Mr. Cohen has also displayed his passport. What makes the Trump-Russia collusion story a clinic on biased, poorly sourced stories is that the truth doesn't matter only the narrative. There are parts of this narrative that are constantly referred to by reporters that either are based on little more than speculation or have actually been proved wrong. But when placed in context of the narrative, they are repeated as if they were the gospel truth. We see now that the collusion story is going absolutely nowhere. If Trump is impeached, it will be for something totally unrelated to collusion, such as payments to silence a porn star or some other shady Trump business deal. Trump would be nuts to submit to an interview by Mueller, if only because it would be far too easy to set a perjury trap for him. Let Mueller try to make his case by using the testimony of others. He will have a lot less luck in trying to prove something illegal the president did. In glaring contrast to the media feeding frenzy over the claim by Michael Cohen that Sean Hannity is his client, virtually nobody has picked up the scoop by Sean Davis of The Federalist almost three months ago (January 23, 2018) that: A friend of former FBI director James Comey who leaked sensitive FBI memos to The New York Times in the wake of Comey's firing in 2017 now claims to be Comey's personal attorney. Daniel Richman, a law professor at Columbia University, told The Federalist via phone on Tuesday afternoon that he was now personally representing Comey. The revelation comes in the wake of news that Comey was interviewed by the special counsel's office last year. According to The New York Times, the line of questioning from the office of special counsel Robert Mueller focused on memos that Comey wrote and later leaked after he was fired from his job by President Donald Trump. A review of FBI policies governing the handling of sensitive government documents suggests Comey violated FBI policy by leaking the memos, which were produced on government time, using government equipment, and directly related to his official government responsibilities, according to Comey's own testimony before Congress. ... Reached by phone on Tuesday, Richman refused to say when his legal representation of Comey began or whether he was personally representing Comey when the former FBI director testified before Congress in June 2017 about his deliberate leaking of the FBI records. The specific timing of the attorney-client relationship is important, because it may shield conversations between Comey and Richman regarding the coordinated leak of FBI records to the media from law enforcement scrutiny. Richman's legal work on behalf of Comey was not known before today, as Comey testified before Congress in 2017 that Richman was merely a friend. Despite being given multiple opportunities to do so, Comey never characterized Richman as his attorney, nor did he suggest that his directions to Richman to leak the memos to the media were privileged attorney-client communications. The news that Richman is now representing Comey raises questions about whether the special counsel may be investigating Comey and Richman for their roles in leaking classified information to the news media in order to get revenge on Trump for firing Comey. Stand by for the next civil war among Republicans. For reasons known only to himself, after announcing his plan to retire from the House and the speakership but to continue holding on to the speaker's gavel until January 2019 (thus depriving his party of the opportunity to choose a new leader before the November election) Paul Ryan on Sunday recommended Rep. Kevin McCarthy of California to be his successor. House Speaker Paul Ryan endorsed Kevin McCarthy, saying he's the "right person" to lead the GOP. Rep. Steve Scalise, the No. 3 in the GOP team, agrees and won't challenge McCarthy for the gavel, Ryan said. "We all think that Kevin is the right person," Ryan told NBC's "Meet the Press" in an interview that airs Sunday. McCarthy and Ryan. Adapted from caricatures by Donkey Hotey via Flickr. If Ryan's hope was to stage-manage a smooth transition of leadership, the plan was an immediate flop. Rachel Bade and John Bresnahan report in Politico: Allies of Majority Leader Kevin McCarthy, the current favorite for the job, are upset that Ryan insists on staying through the elections. They think the delay can only hurt McCarthy's chances and might mean a monthslong power struggle in the House Republican Conference in the thick of election season. The relationship between McCarthy (R-Calif.) and Majority Whip Steve Scalise (R-La.) remains frosty. Scalise endorsed his more senior colleague on Friday after his hand was forced by Ryan, but the Louisiana lawmaker remains interested in the speakership if McCarthy can't round up the votes. And then there's the House Freedom Caucus. The group on Friday sent the majority leader a blunt warning that he doesn't have the votes as one of the group's ringleaders, Rep. Jim Jordan (R-Ohio), floated that he might run for speaker himself. Jordan couldn't win. But he could deny McCarthy votes from the Freedom Caucus that he can't become speaker without. If you think this sounds like a story you've heard before, you are correct. When John Boehner left the speakership, guess who was supposed to inherit the gavel. John M. Ellis wrote on these pages in 2015: When a leadership post is vacant, Republicans don't ask: who can advocate most persuasively for the party, who would be the best tactician and strategist, who could best forge a consensus among the party's disparate elements? They ask only: whose turn is next? And that condemns them to incompetent leaders. Early reports suggest that the GOP is about to make the same mistake again: Kevin McCarthy is said to be the likely choice to replace John Boehner. It's the "his turn next" syndrome yet again, since if my three questions were asked, McCarthy is just about the last person that anyone would think of. ... The inarticulate and passive leadership of Boehner has taken a huge toll on the morale of rank-and-file GOP members, but the party now has the chance to put all of that behind it. All that the House GOP has to do is ask: who among our members has in the highest degree those qualities needed for leadership? It's a simple question, and not one that has much use for seniority. Every single member of the House should be looked at before the question is answered, regardless of whether a given member decides to put him- or herself forward. And surely nobody can doubt that were that simple question the focus of the proceedings, the present majority leader would not be in consideration. The effect on party membership nationwide of another lazy "it's his turn next" decision would be devastating. It would infuriate the vast majority who wants new leadership, not a continuation of the old. It would be seen as a repeat of what happened the last time the public registered its disapproval of House leadership, by forcing Eric Cantor out; then too the party establishment ignored the rebuke and promoted McCarthy. But worst of all, it would spell out to GOP voters that the party is incorrigible, that it can't learn from experience, and that it will go on making the same costly mistake until the end of time. That way lies more rallying behind Trump, and even the disaster of a third party. The biggest challenge facing the House GOP caucus right is firing up the base, so as to match and exceed the Democrats' turnout in November. I don't know anyone who thinks McCarthy is the guy to do that (though I am sure such people exist). We are in the midst of a cold civil war, and the "People's House" needs a genuine conservative willing to fight back against the swamp, not a creature of the swamp. Conservative HQ comments: "We all think that Kevin is the right person," Ryan told NBC's "Meet the Press" in an interview that aired Sunday. Our response to Ryan picking his successor is: What do you mean by "we" RINO-man? Ryan, Scalise, Deputy Whip Patrick McHenry and the rest of the musical chairs boys in the House Republican "leadership" are hoping that their House colleagues and America's grassroots conservative voters have forgotten why Rep. McCarthy did not get the nod for Speaker the last time the job was open[.] As for Ryan's motives, they remain a mystery. But we will have a big clue next January. Will he return to Janesville, Wisconsin and join his family, seeing his kids every day? Or will he join a lobbying outfit or maybe an investment bank and move his family to New York or Washington to make millions of dollars? An upcoming smartphone from the Chinese device maker Nubia, dubbed as the Nubia NX606J, has passed through the certification process of the Chinese telecommunications regulator TENAA, and this could be the companys upcoming flagship, the Nubia Z18. This recent certification could mean that the handset will be sold soon in the East Asian country. The listing on the website of the telecommunications regulator provided details regarding the specifications of the device. According to TENAA, the handset will be available in variants that contain either 6GB or 8GB of RAM and there could also be models of the device that will include either 64GB or 128GB of internal flash storage. The regulator also mentioned that the Nubia NX606J will sport a 5.99-inch display with a resolution of 2160 by 1080 pixels and an aspect ratio of 18:9. TENAA also noted that the handset will have a total of 3 cameras. The device will likely have a dual rear camera setup, which will reportedly be equipped with one 8-megapixel sensor and one 24-megapixel snapper, while the front-facing camera will sport an 8-megapixel shooter. The smartphone will include a 3,350mAh battery to keep its lights on, according to the regulator and the TENAA listing noted that the device will be available in two color variants, which are gold and black color options. Earlier leaks have provided details about the design of the Nubia NX606J. Leaked schematics show that the device will have a notch above the display, which contains the handsets front-facing selfie shooter. The back panel of the device contains the fingerprint scanner and the dual rear camera setup that are placed near the upper left corner of the smartphone. The right side of the device contains both the volume rocker and the power button, while the SIM card slot can be found on the left side of the smartphone. Meanwhile, an AnTuTu benchmark listing shows that the Nubia NX606J will be powered by the Snapdragon 845 chipset from the semiconductor firm Qualcomm. Moreover, the benchmark mentions that the device will ship with Android 8.0 Oreo pre-installed, although it is likely that Nubias proprietary skin will run on top of Googles operating system. It is interesting to note that the model tested using the AnTuTu benchmark contains 32GB of internal flash storage. Google took advantage of this years Annual Meeting of the American Association for Cancer Research held April 16 to introduce a new prototype that could make the automated analysis of the pathology of cancers a much more widespread practice. Thats according to Googles Research Blog, which sheds some light on the project. The company refers to its new platform as an Augmented Reality Microscope (ARM). The technology is built on a modified light microscope, which enables real-time image analysis of results compiled by machine learning algorithms in the microscopes field of view. Visual feedback is shown on the screen in a variety of ways, depending on the problem the algorithms are trying to solve. For example, it can include arrows, contours or heatmaps, animations, or text to highlight whichever aspects of a tissue sample the system wants to point out. Obviously, the platform wouldnt be much use to pathologists if it required new and expensive equipment. To that end, Google has focused on designing a system that can be added to the light microscopes that are already in use. Better still, the low-cost components required are already available and dont require whole slide digital versions of the tissues being analyzed. While the prototype and its accompanying paper are still very much under review, the promise of the technology goes beyond examining the pathology of any single type of cancer. Currently, its being tested to detect breast cancer metastases in lymph node specimens or alongside prostatectomy specimens for prostate cancer. However, thanks to the fact that it ties directly into a light microscope, it could effectively be programmed to search for known indicators that any pathologist might look for. The technical details which surround that analysis capability are equally impressive. The platform can operate and provide changing visual results in real time at up to 4-40x magnification at 10 frames per second. That could greatly accelerate the turnaround times where pathology-based analysis is concerned. Since its based on machine learning, it will also continue to learn and improve with further use, if the platform or similar systems become widely adopted in the medical field. That wont necessarily happen at any point in the near future but it does seem to represent significant progress in Googles ongoing health efforts. Google has released an updated version of its AIY kits as part of a broader effort to help educators incorporate the tools into their STEM (science, technology, engineering, and mathematics) lessons. AIY kits consist of the Voice Kit, which allows users to develop a smart speaker that can be controlled by voice just like Google Home and Amazon Alexa, and the Vision Kit, which is designed for creating a camera that can identify individuals and objects. The package also includes the new Raspberry Pi Zero WH, which works with the kits so that the setup process is now easier to perform. Meanwhile, the Raspberry Pi Camera version 2 is also included in the new AIY Vision Kit. Both the new Voice Kit and Vision Kit are now available from Targets stores and online portal, with Google promising to roll out the kits to global retailers in the future. The do-it-yourself kits are part of the AIY Projects launched last year by the Mountain View, California-based company in an effort to help creative individuals combine artificial intelligence (AI) into their craft using a simple AI setup. The solution initially debuted with the Voice Kit, which allowed users to gain access to resources via cloud services using Google Assistant SDK or Android Things. The Vision Kit, on the other hand, was introduced late last year as a simple cardboard camera mounting with a lens when fully assembled. It also comes with ports and holes to run hardware to and from the built-in logic board. Other components included in the kit are a button, a piezo speaker, and a mounting nut for a tripod. Back then, users had to add in their own Raspberry Pi board and camera. Along with the updated 2018 kits, Google also launched a companion app on the Play Store to help users configure the kits easily by connecting their device to a Wi-Fi network and obtaining an IP address to communicate with the AIY device wirelessly from a PC. It allows users to connect their assembled Vision or Voice Kit to a Wi-Fi network from their mobile device. The app is available for download by clicking on the button below. Google also says it will be introducing the iOS and Chrome companions of the kits in the near future. Huawei has just announced that its first 5G-enabled handset will launch in the second half of next year, to be more specific, it is expected to arrive in the third quarter of 2019. This piece of info was shared by the company during the 2018 global analyst summit in Shenzhen, China. Now, based on the projected release date for this smartphone, it is actually possible that the Mate 30 will be the companys first 5G-ready handset, even though the Mate flagship(s) usually arrives in early Q4 every year (usually October). We are only guessing here, anything is possible at this point, and it remains to be seen if the company will opt to release a well-known series with 5G first, or will it go the other way. Now, in order to make such a phone a reality, Huawei will use its own 5G modem. Huaweis first 5G modem, called the Balong 5G01, was announced back at the Mobile World Congress (MWC) in February, and it will be able to deliver a bandwidth of 2.3Gbps, though it will not be included in the companys first 5G smartphone, nor any other smartphone for that matter. The Balong 5G01 chip was made for mobile hotspots and self-driving cars, not smartphones, as it is not exactly that small. Huawei is, however, working on releasing a 5G chip for smartphones, and judging by the companys official announcement, it will be more than ready to go in the second half of next year. Huaweis 5G modem(s) will probably be included in a number of other smartphones in the future, not only the companys own products, as this China-based company is amongst the leaders when it comes to networking equipment, 5G included. Now, Huawei projects that at least 1.1 billion 5G connections will be established by 2025, including 200 million 5G-connected cars. Those are just projections at this point, and it remains to be seen how accurate will they be, but along with Nokia and some other companies, Huawei is the leader when it comes to the development of 5G at the moment, and the company is in a good place to guess whats about to happen. Lenovo has just launched a new sub-brand in China, and its called Lecoo. Now this name may sound familiar, as its reminiscent of LeEco, and it seems a bit odd that Lenovo opted for that name, but there you have it. This new brand will focus on releasing smart home products, and Lenovo actually announced four new products along with its new smart home arm, which well talk about in a minute. Lenovo has introduced two smart cameras, a baby monitor, and a smart router in Beijing. The Lecoo Smart Camera R1, Smart Camera S1, Smart Router S1, and the Baby Monitor A1. The companys new smart cameras actually look quite similar one to the other, though the S1 model is noticeably smaller. Both cameras can be paired with up to three other cameras, in case you want to create a security system at home, and both offer a microSD card support, while they also have a micro USB port on them. Wi-Fi is supported by both of these cameras, and the smaller one does not support motion tracking. The Lecoo Smart Camera S1 is priced at 199 Yuan, while the Smart Camera R1 costs 299 Yuan in China. The Lecoo Smart Router S1 combines white and rose gold colors, and it has four Skyworks antennas on it. This gadget supports dual-band Wi-Fi, and can offer you download speeds of up to 1,200Mbps. This gadget is fueled by a dual-core chip, though we do not know which one just yet, and the device comes with 512MB of RAM and 32MB of storage, while it has a USB 3.0 port on it. The Lecoo Smart Router S1 is priced at 499 Yuan. The Lecoo Baby Monitor A1 is, you guessed it, a baby monitor. This is essentially a camera which will let you keep an eye on your kid if youre not in the room, and it can even recognize various expressions children make. You can mount this camera on a wall, or wherever else you want, and it can shoot fullHD video. This camera can look over your kid in the dark as well, as it comes with a night mode option, and a 4,000mAh battery is also a part of the package, while a Type-C port is also included for charging purposes. The Lecoo Baby Monitor A1 is priced at 699 Yuan in China, and it comes with unlimited storage. Consumer electronics company Sonos recently unveiled its new collaboration with Danish design firm HAY for the release of the Sonos One smart speaker in a wider range of colors, including red, yellow, and green. The three new flavors were picked from HAYs 2018 color palette in an attempt to make the Sonos One stand out more or blend in with its surroundings, and the new color options will be available for purchase this fall. However, the upcoming Sonos One units set to receive HAYs color treatment will reportedly be priced higher than the standard Sonos One which is currently available only in black or white, and these additional flavors will presumably be available for a limited time only, having been referred to by HAY as a limited edition collection. With that in mind, the expected higher price tag might be explained by this sense of exclusivity, seeing how the internal hardware wont undergo any changes, judging by the official announcement. Sonos has put a lot of faith in the design of its smart speaker, having wrapped the unit in a square cylinder with rounded corners, featuring a predominant speaker grille permitting 360-degree sound, along with a series of discrete touch controls at the top of the device. The OEM created the design of the Sonos One so that the unit can blend in with its environment and surrounding furniture, and to an extent, this was the reason why the device was initially launched in two neutral colors including black and white. However, for certain prospective customers, color is an important factor, and according to HAY co-founder Mette Hay, the additional three flavors of the Sonos One werent simply chosen for their beauty but for their ability to make the smart speaker disappear in its surroundings or provide additional contrast to those who might be needing it in their living rooms. The limited-edition HAY Sonos One will launch this September via the OEMs official website and will also be available for purchase in select flagship stores located in NYC, London, and Berlin, as well as the HAY House in Copenhagen. A red, yellow, or green Sonos One will reportedly cost buyers $229 or 259/229, up from the standard $199 (229/199) price tag presently attached to the ongoing white and black models. Samsung finalized the design of the Galaxy S10 lineup meant to be released early next year, South Korean outlet The Bell reported Tuesday, citing industry sources familiar with the matter. The next generation of the companys flagship series will introduce a 3D camera comparable to the one found on Apples iPhone X and also boast an in-display fingerprint reader, sources claim. While the firm is said to be sticking with the 18.5:9 Infinity Display panel used by its high-end offerings since early 2017 and the Galaxy S8 family, the Galaxy S10 and Galaxy S10 Plus may have slightly larger screens than their 5.77- and 6.22-inch predecessors, being equipped with 5.8- and 6.3-inch Super AMOLED modules, as suggested by the same report, though the cited figures may also just be rounded. The in-screen fingerprint reader is understood to be in development in collaboration with Synaptics and Qualcomm, whereas Taiwans Aegis Tech will reportedly supply the components designed by Samsung and its partners. The 3D camera technology meant to be implemented into the Galaxy S10 and Galaxy S10 Plus will be procured by Mantis Vision, an Israeli startup that has already been mentioned by industry insiders in the context of a Samsung partnership earlier this year. The platform Mantis Vision created is understood to be functionally similar to the 3D camera of the iPhone X yet is also physically smaller and can hence be implemented without a notch, according to previous reports. While the Seoul-based tech giant may still change some design cues of the Galaxy S10 lineup, the basic feature set of the 2019 flagship series is now understood to be largely set in stone. The company is expected to announce its next-generation flagships around the time Mobile World Congress 2019 takes place, meaning another late February announcement like the one seen this year is likely. The Galaxy S10 and Galaxy S10 Plus are also believed to be Samsungs first commercial products compatible with 5G networks that are promising to deliver unprecedented speeds, latencies, and capacities. The companys mobile chief DJ Koh recently hinted that the upcoming devices may be partially rebranded, though the firm wont be dropping its main Galaxy moniker anytime soon. Thanks to a recent misstep from one Samsung engineer, the likely name of the Galaxy S10s chip was revealed, with the expert in question explicitly mentioning the Exynos 9820 on LinkedIn. The non-international variants of the two devices meant to be sold in the United States, Canada, Mexico, and China are likely to be powered by Qualcomms Snapdragon 855 instead. The upcoming Samsung Galaxy J6 recently paid a visit to the FCC where the device was unsurprisingly identified by the already-familiar model number SM-J600F, and although the FCC documents havent revealed many details surrounding the smartphones hardware characteristics, one document, in particular, appears to have indirectly confirmed that the device will be equipped with an elongated Infinity Display. Specifically, the application contains information regarding the FCC e-label and how it can be accessed from the phones settings menu, complete with a handful of screenshots revealing on-screen navigation buttons and an aspect ratio taller than 16:9. Although the FCC documents dont spell the Samsung Galaxy J6s screen characteristics outright, the three screenshots included in the FCC e-label documents confirm the SM-J600F model number and suggest that the device will have an Infinity Display, presumably rocking an 18:5:9 image format. Furthermore, the screenshots reveal on-screen navigation buttons at the bottom of the screen, indicating that the Samsung Galaxy J6 may have abandoned the front-facing physical keys in favor of an elongated design. Additionally, judging by the screenshots the device should feature face recognition and fingerprint-based biometric authentication solutions, and once again given the presence of software navigation buttons, it seems that the smartphone might carry its fingerprint sensor on the back panel. The Samsung Galaxy J6 is expected to become a new member of the OEMs J-branded smartphone lineup alongside the Galaxy J3, J4, and the Galaxy J8, and according to preliminary benchmark results, all of these smartphone models should fit in the mid-range market segment with varying specifications. Case in point, a previous Geekbench listing pertaining to the Samsung Galaxy J6 hints that the device should rock an Exynos 7870 chipset featuring eight ARM Cortex-A53 CPU cores operating at a frequency of up to 1.6GHz, 2GB of RAM, and an ARM Mali-T830 graphics processor. Software-wise the unit should rely on Android Oreo though its evident from the screenshots that the OS will be largely covered by the OEMs proprietary Samsung Experience firmware. It remains to be seen when the Korean tech giant might plan on launching the Galaxy J6 to the market, having already introduced the Galaxy J2 Pro (2018) in Vietnam as well as its homeland. Major carrier T-Mobile has been in an ongoing legal battle with the FCC over whether longstanding issues with rural coverage for calling in the past constituted violations of the Communications Act, and now the FCC has won that battle, seeing T-Mobile saddled with a $40 million fine and an obligation to adhere to a government-proctored compliance plan to prevent similar happenings in the future. T-Mobile stood accused of not only failing to fix issues related to rural coverage and calls, but also of inserting fake ringtones into customers calls despite those calls never properly connecting, giving users the false impression that the other party had been reached, but had not picked up the call. The FCC first began receiving complaints about T-Mobile customers not being able to reach the customers of three different carriers in rural areas of Wisconsin. The reports expanded beyond that area fairly quickly, and continued even after T-Mobile claimed to have taken care of the issue. As for ringtone insertion, T-Mobile admitted that it had done so, and that it was aware that such an act was in direct violation of the law and the FCCs guidelines. The carrier has entered into a consent decree that dictates that it will no longer insert false ringtones into failed calls, and that it will actively work to ensure that any and all rural calling issues are solved. The FCC, for its part, has halted its investigation. T-Mobile has gotten better with rural coverage in recent years, making it easier to comply with the directives of the aforementioned consent decree. The Un-Carrier will presumably be striking deals with other carriers with the aim of making it easier for rural Americans to communicate with T-Mobile customers. As far as expanding its own coverage in rural areas, T-Mobile is working on that with the deployment and buildout of a large amount of 600MHz spectrum that it won in a recent FCC reverse auction. As the company marches toward widespread 5G deployment, a mixture of small cells and wider-service fixed 5G solutions will be employed to ensure that the sort of rural coverage gaps that plagued its 2G, 3G, and 4G networks never happen. The Association of Former Diplocat (Public Diplomacy Council of Catalonia) Employees declared that by closing the council, the Spanish government had "overstepped its authority", even in terms of the powers granted it by Article 155 of the Spanish Constitution. In a press release issued this Monday, coinciding with Diplocats definitive closure, the former employees criticised the move and the fact that it is the Partido Popular who decides whether there is "a need" for the council to exist, since it is a "minority" party in Catalonia with only four seats in parliament. The statement went on to say that "Article 155 does not authorise the Spanish state to dissolve autonomous bodies, since any measures must be temporary and not permanent". They claim that the government's decision also violates the Constitution and that Diplocat was a "perfectly legal and legitimate public-private consortium". The press release also states that the closure is "unfair, arbitrary and contrary to Catalonias interests" and denies that Diplocat was created for "secessionist ends". Finally, the former Diplocat employees call on any future Catalan government "to reopen Diplocat or a similar body" as it is a "useful, effective tool" for the "internationalization of the countrys values and potential". The Association of Catalan Municipalities (ACM) also view Diplocats closure as unfortunate, calling on the council to be reopened once a new government has been formed in Catalonia. In its press release, the ACM also stated that, despite Diplocats closure, nothing "will prevent us from internationalising the prestige and good work" they consider has been generated in Catalonia. In a similar vein, the president of the ACM called for "institutions to be restored" together with efforts to "put an end to 155". A Canadian Bar Serves A Cocktail With A Frostbitten Human Toe As Garnish Trending News: Would You Drink A Cocktail That Includes A Frostbitten Human Toe? Long Story Short Nope. So much nope. Long Story Up for a serious challenge? Then head on up to Downtown Hotel in Dawson City, Canada. There, you can guzzle down a whiskey cocktail that comes with a brown frostbitten human toe inside. Yep, a real frickin' human toe that froze off in Canada's frigid temperatures. They call it: the Sourtoe Cocktail and it's been served since 1973, with the first donated toe arriving in 1890, Mirror UK reports. Related: Best Fine Whisky In The World You really need to see this thing to believe it. Bucketlist or no Linda? Trip to the Yukon for a sourtoe cocktail. It is just an old frost bitten toe and whisky. @thereallindavino #travel #canada #yukon #cocktails #happyhour #oldtoe #sourtoe #sourtoecocktail A post shared by It Is A Grape Life (@itisagrapelife) on Apr 14, 2018 at 9:16am PDT The bar has reportedly served the famous cocktail over 100,000 times and maintains strict rules for drinking it. To be a member of the Sourtoe Cocktail Club (there's a certificate at the end), "you can drink it fast, you can drink it slow, but your lips must touch the toe." Oh, and don't swallow it. People have done this and they had to pay a $500 fine. One guy was so smitten with the idea of the cocktail that after losing three toes on the Yukon Artic Ultra competition in February, he decided to package up his toes and send them to the bar. When I was going into the theatre I asked the surgeon if I could save my toes and told him what it was for," 46-year-old British explorer Nick Griffiths told the Mirror. "He found it quite amusing." Griffiths continued: I wrote to the Downtown Hotel to tell them about my toes and what had happened, and they said theyd love to have them." For a great cocktail that doesn't involve expired human flesh, try these manly cocktails. Own The Conversation Ask The Big Question So how does it taste? Drop This Fact Drinking booze doesn't make you gain weight, according to a recent study. Tokyo office leader to co-lead global practice at Orrick Global law firm Orrick has named Tokyo-based partner James Atkin as co-head of its oil and gas practice. He joins from Vinson & Elkins in the city where he was office managing partner. The firms oil & gas practice reaches markets across several continents from its Houston and London hubs but Atkins appointment is seen as a key step to grow its Asian connection. The UK-qualified lawyer advises clients in the oil and gas sector on transactions in Asia, Australia, the Middle East, Africa and North America, and has extensive experience advising on large-scale oil and gas projects, LNG sales arrangements, and energy-related mergers and acquisitions. Court of Appeal president helps launch MinterEllison handbook The Honourable Justice Beazley AO has helped MinterEllison launch the tenth edition of its Insurance Contracts Act Handbook. The President of the Court of Appeal, Supreme Court of New South Wales, was at the national firms Sydney office last week for an event to launch the milestone edition, 26 years after it was first published. The handbook has sold over 26,000 copies since 1992 and Justice Beazley said it is the go-to place for essential information." MinterEllison Partner and Publishing Editor, Chern Tan said that keeping up to date with changes to the 1984 Act can be overwhelming. In its push to foster legal innovation and legal technology, Mills Oakley has formed a partnership with Swinburne University of Technology. The national firm will work with the universitys Legal Futures Lab on a number of initiatives, including a centrepiece project thats expected to be launched in the second half of 2018. The lab, which is part of the universitys law school and led by foundation dean Professor Dan Hunter, will host the project thats billed as a hybrid legal services accelerator. We want to build on the success of the ground-breaking legal services accelerator we developed in 2016. Swinburnes Legal Futures Lab is at the cutting edge of developments in legal services and legal tech innovation so were delighted to be partnering with Dan and the team so our clients can benefit from developments in the innovation space,' said John Nerurker, Mills Oakley CEO. The GT suffix in Kia jargon and this application translates to all the non-stop performance and speed of GT technology with five-door spaciousness and practicality. So to speak, it is the sportiest Ceed available, boasting the 1.6 T-GDI.With the third generation of the compact-sized model, the GT be offered both as a hatchback and with a shooting brake-inspired body style. Previewed by the Proceed Concept back in September 2017 at the Frankfurt Motor Show, the production-ready shoting brake has what it takes to outshine the Hyundai i30 Fastback in terms of design.Michael Cole, the COO of Kia, tells Autoweek.nl that the automaker will create a completely different model from the i30 Fastback, describing it as sporty, but also practical. In addition to Cole, the head of product planning, David Labrosse, told the publication that we should brace ourselves for the third Ceed body style in Paris.Anticipated to launch in Europe in early 2019, the Ceed GT warm hatchback will be available exclusively with five doors. By using the 1.6 turbocharged engine, the horsepower rating should be more than 200 and torque should peak at 265 Nm (195 pound-feet) at the very least. In addition to the standard six-speed manual, Kia will offer the Ceed GT with a dual-clutch transmission with seven forward gears.And now, prepare for some sad news. According to Labrosse, theres little demand for an even hotter Ceed. To this effect, Kia isnt going to replicate the formula of the i30 N with the Ceed. And thats a bit of a shame considering how good the i30 N is in the twisties. But then again, the driving-centric customer can always change Kia for Hyundai to get his corner-carving kicks. Pascal Ruch, whos in charge of Lexus in Europe, explains: People buy the CT for efficiency; with the UX, were looking for a different customer. The official then posed a question, which Ruch then answered himself: Will we replace the CT? Lets say so.According to Auto Express , the second-generation CT will go official in 2020 with hybrid propulsion. The motoring publication also makes a case for a pure-electric Tesla Model 3 rival, which would be a radical departure for Lexus and Toyota too.Sharing the Toyota New Global Architecture with the all-new Auris (also known as Corolla Hatchback ), the 2020 Lexus CT could be indeed compatible with an electric drivetrain. Back in December 2017, the Japanese automaker said that it will make available more than 10 battery-electric models worldwide by the early 2020s.The end game? Every model in the Toyota and Lexus lineup around the world will be available as either a dedicated electrified model or have an electrified option. In addition to BEVs, fuel-cell technology is another area that will see development.On the one hand, Volkswagen has a dedicated platform for electric vehicles (MEB), as does General Motors ( BEV II ). Toyota does not, and you can see this from the Mirai. Unveiled in 2014, the Mirai is based on the MC platform of the CT 200h, and its a bit of a compromise if you consider that the Ni-Mh battery comes from the Toyota Camry Hybrid and the electric motor from the Lexus RX 450h.On the other hand, Toyota decided to join forces with Mazda and Denso in late 2017 to create a joint venture specialized in the development of electric vehicles. The company birthed from this collaboration - EV Common Architecture Spirit Co., Ltd. will combine the strengths of each manufacturer: Mazda's bundled product planning and prowess in computer modeling-based development, Densos electronics technologies, and the Toyota New Global Architecture platform. Most carmakers are making small steps towards that goal, testing here and there various systems that would allow cars to communicate with each other, with the road infrastructure and even with the pedestrians in the area.For Toyota , connected cars are a step towards what the carmaker calls a future with zero fatalities from crashes, better traffic flow, and less congestion. On Monday, Toyota announced it would be making these types of systems commonplace on its vehicles no later than 2021.Together with Lexus, Toyota will accelerate research into Dedicated Short-Range Communications (DSRC) systems, which would allow vehicle-to-vehicle (V2V) and vehicle-to-infrastructure (V2I) communications, or, as they are known in the industry, vehicle-to-everything (V2X).DSRC allows the broadcast of precise anonymized vehicle information several times per second, including location, speed, and acceleration.This info can be used by other vehicles to get informed about hazards, vehicles ahead, signals, signs, and road conditions. The system being tested by Toyota does not require a cellular or data network to work.Three years ago, we pledged to have automatic emergency braking (AEB) in almost every vehicle we sell by the end of 2017, said Jim Lentz, Toyota North America CEO.In that same spirit, we believe that greater DSRC adoption by all automakers will not only help drivers get to their destinations more safely and efficiently but also help lay the foundation for future connected and automated driving systems.The carmaker did not say which company will help it with the hardware for the system. Several groups are working on this type of technology, the biggest of them being Qualcomm. Their tech is detailed here The carmaker announced on Monday it sold a total of 1.04 million cars in March, up 5.3 percent compared to the same month of 2017.Adding the vehicles sold last month to the results registered for the first two months of the year brings Volkswagen on track to once again posting a record year. In the first quarter of 2018, the group sold 2.6 million cars, 7.4 percent more than last year.The biggest percentage increase in sales, over 25 percent, was recorded in Russia, but in this respective market the numbers are really small: 18,500 cars. Europe brought an additional 1.2 percent increase, or a total of 474,300 cars this March, while North America contributed with a 5.1 percent increase.Just short of 83,900 customers in North America chose a vehicle from the Group in March, says Volkswagen.The Group delivered 57,800 vehicles in the USA, the largest market in the region, in March, representing an increase of 13.0 percent.Even with the good results of the first part of the year, Volkswagen decided last week to replace Matthias Muller from the position of CEO.Although officially the executive left following a mutual agreement, word is his departure was precipitated by what some in the group felt was a slow reaction time to the Dieselgate scandal.Mullers successor is Herbert Diess, former head of the Volkswagen brand. Diess previously worked for BMW, having joined Volkswagen just as the emission scandal was beginning to take shape.First on the order of business for the new executive is reorganizing the group in six business areas and the China region.In the worlds largest auto market, Volkswagen sold 358,800 cars last month, an increase of over 10 percent compared to a year ago. Speaking in front of the press in Berlin, Volkswagens head of marketing, Jochen Sengpiehl, said the brands logo would be changed starting 2019, in an effort meant to reflect the new path chosen by Volkswagen for its future: electric vehicles.According to Bloomberg , the new logo will be designed to look just as good on the cars front and rear hoods as it will do on modern day communication devices.The change of face for the German carmaker will be deeper than just changing the logo in the coming year. Volkswagen has opened the floodgates for advertising agencies to pitch in for its creative business.That means that the current contract Volkswagen has with Interpublic Group or BBDO will come under review."We've spent far too much money on paid media in the past, and we want to change that," Sengpiehl was quoted as saying by the source.The brand is not in good shape compared to previous years. Its not only because of the diesel scandal. We want people to have fun with us. We need to get more colorful.Even if it is not in good shape, Volkswagen managed last year to be at the top of the worlds car producers. This year kicked off with a bang too, as VW already posted record sales all the three months that have passed.In March alone, the group sold a total of 1.04 million cars in March, up 5.3 percent compared to March 2017. That puts the quarterly total to 2.6 million cars, already 7.4 percent more than the same period of last year. Americans are still reading, but they're spreading their book consumption habits over an array of formats, according to a new Pew Research survey. Expand chart Reproduced from a Pew Research Center report; Chart: Axios Visuals Why it matters: Book consumption by volume has remained relatively unchanged over the past five years, while consumption of digital and social media consumption has skyrocketed. Why books are still addicting: "The order of the words are fixed on the page or on the screen, but the speed at which you read them is entirely up to you," writes Will Sehwalbe in A Resource for the Ambitious, from The Wall Street Journal. "Sure, this allows you to skip ahead and jump around, but it also allows you to slow down, savor and ponder." "About three-quarters (74%) of Americans have read a book in the past 12 months in any format, a figure that's remained largely unchanged since 2012." "Overall, Americans read an average (mean) of 12 books per year, while the typical (median) American has read four books in the past 12 months. Each of these figures is largely unchanged since 2011." "There has been a modest but statistically significant increase in the share of Americans who read audiobooks, from 14% to 18% ... (But) It remains the case that relatively few Americans consume digital books (which include audiobooks and e-books) to the exclusion of print." Go deeper: Every top New York Times best-seller this year has been about Trump, via CNN's Brian Stelter. Canada's government has ordered families of diplomats to return home from assignments in Cuba due to a mystery illness of unexplained symptoms, including dizziness, nausea, and difficulty concentrating. The pattern: The U.S. ordered diplomats to come home from Cuba in the fall for a similar illness, but Canada says it is discounting theories that sonic attacks are the culprit. Canada's government writes that it represents "a new type of a possible acquired brain injury." Joshua Yaffa argues in the New Yorker that Russias threats of retaliation in advance of U.S.-led strikes in Syria may have prevented direct confrontation with the U.S. for now. What Russia was doing, per Yaffa: Delivering a measured dose of faux insanityto make up for a gaping disparity in conventional military and economic strength. Russia's threats, per Yaffa: Russias top military officer , warned that Moscow would shoot down missiles fired at Syrian territory and, whats more, if Russian forces came under threat, would strike back by targeting launch facilities and platforms. , warned that Moscow would shoot down missiles fired at Syrian territory and, whats more, if Russian forces came under threat, would strike back by targeting launch facilities and platforms. "Other Russian officials were more muted, saying Russia would act only if its forces sustained a direct hit." were more muted, saying Russia would act only if its forces sustained a direct hit." Then, last week, Russias Ambassador to Lebanon said that any and all American missiles would be shot down, and their launch sites targeted." said that any and all American missiles would be shot down, and their launch sites targeted." That whipped up fears of a direct U.S.-Russian military confrontation. Result: An official close to the Assad regime told Reuters, We had an early warning of the strike from the Russians. The Syrian military bases and facilities struck by the United States, United Kingdom, and France, were not targets of particular significance to Russian military operations in Syria or locations that housed Russian troops or equipment. Whats ahead: Potential U.S.-Russia conflict: The latest air strikes do nothing to change the battlefield dynamics in Syria or the course of the warwhich is to say, a U.S.-Russian showdown over Syria has most likely been delayed rather than avoided entirely. The latest air strikes do nothing to change the battlefield dynamics in Syria or the course of the warwhich is to say, a U.S.-Russian showdown over Syria has most likely been delayed rather than avoided entirely. Sanctions: For now, the immediate theatre for U.S.-Russian confrontation will likely shift to sanctions" although this week Trump hit pause on new sanctions and Russia slowed potential countermeasures. Read the article in full: Russias Madman Routine in Syria May Have Averted Direct Confrontation with the U.S., For Now A federal judge in New York struck down Monday President Trump's and Michael Cohen's request that sought to block prosecutors from immediately reviewing files seized by FBI agents in last weeks raid on Cohen's hotel room and office, the New York Times reports. Yes, but: The judge, Kimba Wood, said that the prosecutors who seized the documents would provide copies to Cohens attorneys, per Bloomberg. Wood also signaled that she may appoint a special master, as requested by Cohen's team, to assist his lawyers in reviewing the material to protect any documents that fall under attorney-client privilege. The Trump administration is reportedly looking to assemble an Arab force in Syria that would replace U.S. military troops and help bring stability to the region after the eradication of ISIS, the WSJ reports citing U.S. officials. Why it matters: President Trump has been eager to pull U.S. troops out of Syria, and has said he believes other countries should take greater responsibility for restoring the northeastern part of the country. However, after the recent chemical attacks on Syrian civilians, it's been unclear what the administration will decide next. Details: According to the WSJ, Trump's new national security adviser, John Bolton, called Egypt's acting intelligence chief to probe whether the country would help stabilize the region. The administration has also reportedly asked Saudi Arabia, Qatar, and the United Arab Emirates to contribute large amounts of money to the effort. Yes, but: Charles Lister, a senior fellow at the Middle East Institute, said the goal of creating an Arab force would be difficult "because Saudi Arabia and the U.A.E. are involved militarily in Yemen, and Egypt would be reluctant to defend territory that wasnt controlled by the regime of President Bashar al-Assad," per the WSJ. "Nor, he said, would Arab states be eager to send forces to Syria if the U.S. military didnt agree to keep some troops there." The Mar-a-Lago summit beginning today between President Trump and Japanese Prime Minister Shinzo Abe brings together two leaders mired in scandal and itching for political wins. The bottom line: By all appearances, this is a summit on foreign policy and the North Korean nuclear threat, but everything these two leaders put on the table is going to be framed by their respective domestic woes. If you're looking at Abe standing there at the podium in Mar-a-Lago, you need to know that a large part of his brain is occupied by his own political troubles. Dan Sneider, a Japan expert at Stanford What's on Abe's mind The scandals: Accusations of cronyism are plaguing the Japanese leader after it was revealed that his name and his wife's name were wiped from government documents relating to the discounted sale of state-owned land to a close friend of the family. are plaguing the Japanese leader after it was revealed that his name and his wife's name were wiped from government documents relating to the discounted sale of state-owned land to a close friend of the family. The Japanese finance ministry admitted to falsifying the documents, though Abe has denied any involvement. And a top finance ministry official is facing allegations of sexual harassment from several female journalists, reports Reuters' Linda Sieg. He has denied the claims. Where things stand: Public support for Abe has reached a six-year low, with opinion polls placing his approval ratings below 30%. His popular predecessor, former Prime Minister Junichiro Koizumi, told a Japanese magazine that he predicts Abe will be out by the end of June. has reached a six-year low, with opinion polls placing his approval ratings below 30%. His popular predecessor, former Prime Minister Junichiro Koizumi, told a Japanese magazine that he predicts Abe will be out by the end of June. Abe's biggest selling point to Japanese voters is that he's a Trump whisperer, adept at managing Japan's crucial alliance with the United States, Sneider says. to Japanese voters is that he's a Trump whisperer, adept at managing Japan's crucial alliance with the United States, Sneider says. But that's being called into question. Tokyo was not exempted from Trump's steel and aluminum tariffs, and just days before the leaders' summit, Trump tweeted that Japan "has hit us hard on trade for years!" The issues on the table The two nations are attempting to work together to address the North Korean nuclear crisis, but they're sparring on trade. The U.S. is looking to negotiate a bilateral free trade agreement with Japan, according to the Council on Foreign Relations. But the Japanese staunchly oppose that idea, as it would strip away leverage and could force them to make concessions to the U.S. on access to the global agricultural and automobile markets. Trump is flirting with the idea of re-joining the Trans-Pacific Partnership, which Tokyo is encouraging with caution. After Trump pulled the U.S. out of TPP, Japan led the negotiation of a new deal among the 11 remaining signatories and struck an independent trade deal with the EU. Tokyo will be reluctant to give up its new power and once again let the U.S. take the top negotiating spot. And "Japan exercised its leadership to shape a new bargain in the TPP and believes any attempt to reopen the agreement will endanger those hard-won gains," says Sneider. Abe needs two things from Trump on North Korea so he can show voters back home that he's still capable of negotiating with the U.S.: Foreign policy analyst Max Boot sums up the skepticism of many Middle East experts regarding reports that President Trump wants to replace U.S. troops in Syria with an Arab military force, tweeting: Saudi/UAE forces are bogged down in Yemen, Egyptian forces in Sinai. Somehow I doubt they are the solution in Syria. Between the lines: Egyptians have their hands full dealing with terrorists in the Sinai and the Libyan instability on their western border. It seems unlikely theyll substantially extend themselves further by deploying in Syria. And the Gulf countries are unlikely to want to make further financial commitments beyond those they already have in Yemen, Iraq and Afghanistan. From their perspective, theyre already picking up plenty of the tab for the problems in their neighborhood. More emailed analysis from Elliott Abrams, a Middle East expert at the Council on Foreign Relations and former deputy national security adviser under President George W. Bush: Egypt has resisted sending troops to Yemen despite significant Saudi pressure (and the promise of rewards) in recent years. This is likely because the generals know their troops are not well prepared for such duty and could suffer casualties that would be highly unpopular at home. For the same reasons I dont think they will send their troops to Syria. More generally, any useful Arab force would have to be led by the United States and our soldiers, not be a substitute for us. They could at best be force multipliers. CIA director Mike Pompeo traveled to North Korea on Easter weekend to meet with North Korean dictator Kim Jong-un, the Washington Post reports, in a dramatic move on the path to an unprecedented summit between Kim and President Trump. Why it matters: When Trump agreed to meet with Kim, he was accepting an invitation that came second-hand, from the South Koreans. There has been considerable skepticism since then that the summit would actually take place. The meeting with Pompeo indicates that discussions are farther along than was previously known. Press Secretary Sarah Sanders said the "administration does not comment on the CIA Directors travel. The news comes after Trump referred to "very high-level" talks with the North Koreans today at a meeting with Japanese Prime Minister Shinzo Abe. Trump said Tuesday that five sites are being considered to host the historic meeting, and promised to bring up abductees with Kim an key issue for Japan. Trump said the meeting would likely take place by early June. Go deeper: What it's like to negotiate with North Korea. Russia is hacking routers inside U.S. and U.K. government agencies, companies, critical infrastructure, and ISPs to spy and steal data, the Department of Homeland Security, FBI, and Britain's National Cyber Security Centre announced in a rare joint Technical Alert on Monday. Context: Russias relations with both the U.S. and the U.K. are at an all-time-low following the nerve agent attack in Salisbury, England and the chemical weapons attack in Syria. This is yet another example of Russias disregard for international norms and global order," a U.K. government spokesperson said. The impact: Beyond gathering intel and data, the purpose of Russia's cyberattacks is to maintain persistent access to victim networks and potentially lay a foundation for future offensive operations, according to the statement. Note: Once a router is hacked, the perpetrator can also launch attacks on other computers. Details: The joint warning also offered advice for governments and companies to ensure their router software is updated. Timing: The statement marks the first time the U.S. and the U.K. have issued joint advice while announcing an attack, according to the CEO of the National Cyber Security Centre, Ciaran Martin. Former President Serzh Sarkisian sought to justify his decision to hold on to power on Tuesday as lawmakers elected him Armenias new prime minister amid continuing opposition demonstrations in Yerevan. Sarkisian denounced the ongoing protests but at the same time downplayed their significance moments after the Armenian parliament voted by 76 to 17 to appoint him to what will now be the countrys top government post. The people cannot be unruly, he said on the parliament floor. If they were, there would be millions of people in the streets. You know full well how many people are taking part in these demonstrations. The main organizer of those rallies, Nikol Pashinian, pledged to continue his campaign which he said is turning into a popular velvet revolution against Sarkisian. Reacting to the parliament vote, Pashinian told RFE/RLs Armenian service (Azatutyun.am) that he will keep trying to paralyze the state government system with peaceful acts of civil disobedience. Pashinian and other critics say that Sarkisians extended rule would deal a severe blow to democracy and the rule of law. Sarkisian claimed that his premiership will not amount to a third term in office because he will wield fewer powers than he did in his previous capacity as president of the republic. People have still not realized that there is no one-man rule anymore, he complained at a special session of the National Assembly overshadowed by tight security measures taken in and outside the parliament building. Predictably, Sarkisians candidacy was backed by the deputies from his ruling Republican Party (HHK), its junior coalition partner, Dashnaktsutyun, as well as more than a dozen lawmakers representing businessman Gagik Tsarukians nominally opposition alliance. Tsarukian himself did not attend the session. The vote was boycotted Pashinian and by three other deputies from the opposition Yelk alliance. The five other Yelk parliamentarians attended the session and voted against Sarkisian. In his opening speech in the parliament, Sarkisian said he can continue to govern the country because he leads a party that won last years parliamentary elections. This will be in line with the newly introduced parliamentary system of government, he said. I am here, first and foremost as head of the ruling party, to say in favor of my candidacy that I have sufficient influence and possibilities to ensure the harmonious work in the executive and legislative branches of the political force making up the parliamentary majority, he said. Sarkisian, who completed his final presidential term on April 9, indicated that he would be wrong to keep running the country from behind the scenes, as HHK chairman. That would mean dodging responsibility for government policies, he claimed. For me, as chairman of the Republican Party, running away from personal responsibility is unacceptable, he said. I have never done and will not do that. This is the primary reason why I am now standing at this podium. Sarkisian publicly stated in 2014 that he will not aspire to the post of prime minister if Armenia becomes a parliamentary republic as a result of his controversial constitutional changes. Pashinian and other opposition leaders now accuse him of breaking that pledge to cling to power. Sarkisian dismissed the opposition claims on Tuesday, citing a de facto absence of my ambitions to serve as premier and again saying that his 2014 statement was taken out of context. Sarkisian, 63, also defended his decade-long track record during a question-and-answer session that followed his 20-minute speech. He brushed aside opposition claims that that the economic situation in Armenia has deteriorated during his presidency. He listed a raft of official economic data showing sizable increases in GDP per capita, individual bank deposits and the number of cars since 2007. The new premier did acknowledge, though, widespread discontent with the state of affairs in the country. I am sure that many, many people in Armenia, at least 60 percent or maybe even more, are unhappy with everything, he said. But being unhappy does not mean revolting and rejecting everything. In any family children may well be unhappy with their parents or vice versa. But that doesnt mean a conflict, he added. Opposition lawmakers scoffed at these arguments. If everything is so good, then why is everything so bad? asked Yelks Edmon Marukian. Marukian accused Sarkisian of having lost touch with reality and building a fake parliamentary system. There are two worlds: your world and the world in which we live, he told the ex-president. Another Yelk leader, Aram Sarkisian, charged that the incoming premier has also failed to honor his 2008 pledge to tear down a wall of misunderstanding between Armenians and their rulers. The wall of misunderstanding now surrounds this building, he said, alluding to the heavy police presence outside the parliament compound. Serzh Sarkisian rejected the opposition criticism when he again took the floor both before and after the parliament vote. He accused his political opponents of selectively using economic figures to denigrate his legacy. Senior HHK lawmakers likewise defended their leader. The ruling partys parliamentary leader, Vahram Baghdasarian, alleged an opposition race to disparage the countrys leadership. Dashnaktsutyuns Armen Rustamian said, for his part, that his party and the HHK have already laid the groundwork for a just Armenia. Sarkisians election as prime minister has opened a new page for the dignified future of our country, he said. By Rashid Shirinov The mass unrest aimed not to let Serzh Sargsyan become the prime minister of Armenia has already become commonplace in Yerevan and other cities of the country, and the riots have further intensified in the last couple of days. Protesters, led by the head of the opposition faction Yelk Nikol Pashinyan, practically paralyzed the city center by blocking the main streets, which resulted in long traffic jams. The number of demonstrators is growing every hour, while the police are strengthening their ranks. No wonder the unrest has lead to clashes between the protesters and the police. There was also some confrontation between car drivers and demonstrators. We should not fall into euphoria, but if several thousand more fellow citizens join us, we are ready to carry out a change of power, Pashinyan said on April 16, adding that the protesters plan to block even more streets in Yerevan. Later, he together with other activists broke into the building of the Yerevan State Base Medical College, urging students to boycott the educational process. Protesters also entered the building of the Armenian State Pedagogical University, went through all the floors and invited students to join them. After some time, the protesters headed towards the building of the National Assembly, where clashes with police began after they did not let the activists approach the building. The police pushed the demonstrators back with the use of special means, and this resulted in injury of dozens of people. As a result of the use of stun grenades by the police, one of the activists went deaf, while several protesters were seriously injured. In its statement for the Armenian public, the Civil Contract opposition party noted: The police used force against peaceful demonstrators, some of whom, including MP Nikol Pashinyan, are hospitalized. We are convinced that the election of Serzh Sargsyan as prime minister will inevitably cause a crisis, so his third term in power is unacceptable. The latest official data says that the number of activists detained by the police on suspicion of committing administrative offenses reached 80, but this number continues to grow every hour. During the ten years of his presidency, Sargsyan managed to make much mess and thus caused such hatred against himself in the Armenian society. However, despite the mass unrest in the streets of Yerevan and other major cities of the country, Armenian Parliament elected Serzh Sargsyan the new prime minister on April 17. Since the constitution of Armenia was previously amended, providing more powers to the prime minister, Sargsyan will continue ruling the country, thus taking the population to an even deeper swamp. Nevertheless, the protesters have not thrown in the towel, they continue protests on the streets and even spend nights there. This is what the terrible economic and social policies by Sargsyan and his team have led to. Thousands of Armenians are engaged in unrest in Yerevan, and if the Armenian government does not learn lessons from this, the near future of the country may be owned by a civil war. --- Rashid Shirinov is AzerNews staff journalist, follow him on Twitter: @RashidShirinov Follow us on Twitter @AzerNewsAz By Kamila Aliyeva A new twinning project to be realized with the support of the European Union (EU) will help Azerbaijan increase its administrative capacity in the tax sphere. This was stated by Azerbaijani Minister of Taxes Mikayil Jabbarov during the presentation of the twinning project Supporting the Taxes Ministry in Setting Transfer Prices and Developing Counter Measures against Tax Evasion in Baku on April 17. In the face of ever-growing globalization and the increasing role of transnational corporations, the world economy faces new challenges, many of which create certain difficulties for the work of tax authorities, according to the minister. Transfer prices are one of such challenges. There are various schemes for solving such issues. Azerbaijan is becoming more and more integrated into the world economy. Therefore, the control of transfer prices is on the agenda and we need a lot of experience to solve the problem, he said. Jabbarov noted that the European Commission had responded positively to the initiative of Azerbaijan to launch the twinning project. A corresponding tender was conducted, and the Greek tax administration and the Greek International and European Economic Legal Center were selected as twinning partners of Azerbaijan. They also developed this project, he said. Jabbarov also added that the ministry had previously successfully implemented three twinning projects with the EU. The EU ambassador to Azerbaijan, Kestutis Jankauskas, in turn, noted that the project cost is 1.2 million euros and its implementation will take 24 months. Speaking to reporters, Jabbarov said that the main goal in amending Azerbaijan's Tax Code is to ease the tax burden on small and medium enterprises (SMEs). According to the order of the President Ilham Aliyev, in recent months work is underway to improve the legislation regulating the tax sphere, first of all the tax code and a number of other legislative acts, the minister noted. The main objective of this is to significantly ease the tax burden on small and medium-sized businesses and improve tax administration, and thus support the development of entrepreneurial activities in the country. Especially, as I said, this applies to small and micro businesses, he stressed. As for medium and large enterprises, the main areas are an increase in the level of transparency and internal reporting of activities by these enterprises, as well as compliance with the requirements of state tax legislation, according to the minister. This, in turn, will be a guarantee on the one hand of their competitiveness, and on the other hand, it will be able to ensure the stability of tax payments and in advance clearly determine the level of revenues to the state budget. This will allow timely implementation of current state social infrastructure projects, Jabbarov added. --- Kamila Aliyeva is AzerNews staff journalist, follow her on Twitter: @Kami_Aliyeva Follow us on Twitter @AzerNewsAz By Laman Ismayilova The Azerbaijani Culture Museum named after Mirza Fatali Akhundov in Tbilisi together with the Initiative Association of Curators (ICU) will present a photo exhibition on April 20-26. The exhibition is organized as part of the photo project "Defile through Time: Canons of the Women's Fashion of Azerbaijan" by Azerbaijani photographer Rustam Huseynov. The project concept includes a visual demonstration of the most interesting design samples of historical Azerbaijani costumes to modern spectators, illustrating the evolution of women's fashion through temporary space and its reflection in the modern fashion context. The project's curator, Konul Rafiyeva, aims to show national identity through the traditional costume of an Azerbaijani woman who for centuries has been a reflection of the unique culture of the Azerbaijani people. Rustam Huseynov devoted a series of photos to the beauty and diversity of traditional women's clothing, combining cultural and historical interest with the design. Its exposition includes 25 portraits of girls in traditional clothes of various regions of Azerbaijan, showing the versatility of customs and life of the country. During the preparation of works, samples of clothes from the personal historical collection of designer and clothing collector Natavan Aliyeva were used. Reconstruction of traditional images of historical epochs is an important stage in saving the national cultural heritage and recognizing the national image in the mass consciousness, lost by public memory and known only to a very narrow circle of specialists. In his works, Rustam Huseynov pays special attention to the interpretation of traditional headdresses of women of Azerbaijan, emphasizing age and social differences. The delicate silk handkerchiefs - kelagayi combined with diadems and arahchin, rounded skullcap. Azerbaijani women, leaving the house, covered the top of any clothes and headgear with charshab (veil), made of cotton, silk or printed fabrics. The outer clothing covering the shoulders - arhalyg, chepken, lebbade, kuledje, kurdu, eshmek and bahari. They also had a basque, which emphasized the waist. The presence of a lush multilayered skirt made the silhouette of the woman more voluminous and visually appealing. These traditions are successfully continued by modern Azerbaijani clothing designers. Within the framework of the project "Fashion show through time: the canons of women's fashion in Azerbaijan", a modern collection of Azerbaijani designer Natavan Aliyeva "Neo Classic Love" will be shown. The collection shows the modern perception of the diversity of traditional women's costumes in the context of a resurgent ethno-style fashion in everyday clothes. Recalling the author's photographs of the traditional image of the Azerbaijani woman, fashion collection, modern in cut and shape, but accentuating the viewer's attention on the colors of 19th-century national clothes such as claret, blue, turquoise, uses elements of the national wardrobe - kelagayi and knitted socks. The motifs of the national embroidery dominate in hand-made and with the scrupulousness, accessories, inherent in the designer. This collection links the historical past of the Azerbaijani women's costume with modern fashion trends. --- Laman Ismayilova is AzerNews staff journalist, follow her on Twitter: @Lam_Ismayilova Follow us on Twitter @AzerNewsAz By Laman Ismayilova A group exhibition of talented female artists opened in Port Baku Mall on April 16. The exhibition brought together spirited and talented female artists who showed the eternal power of colors, Trend Life reported. Famous female artists have worked hard to become the best that they can be. They brilliantly captured the women's beauty in their works. Dripping with rich colors, one could spend many enchanted hours looking at these beautiful paintings. Famous for their unique style, artists Kamala Aliyeva, Saadat Isayeva, Marta de Riva (Argentine), Jasmine Fracassetti (Italy), Jalya Hasanova, Kubra Veliyeva, Narmin Sadigova, Samira Agayeva, Ellada Ismailova, Aida Agayeva, Aisha Gurbanova, Ayla Agayeva, Lala Shukurova, Maryam Shirin, Gulnar Aliyeva, Fidan Zeynalova and Pakiza Kilinc (Turkey) created the works that perfectly reflect the high spiritual mission of women, who are the inspiration for all kinds of creative processes. The artists used different styles and techniques in their paintings. All the works were united by a common theme "Nature, woman and beauty." Marta de Guesada, the spouse of the Ambassador of Argentina to Azerbaijan, has been living in Azerbaijan for five years. In her works, artist tried to show some similarities between Azerbaijani and Argentine women. "Our women have much in common-loyalty, emotionality, kindness, mercy and hospitality. And love of culture and art makes us even more beautiful," said Marta de Guesada. Jasmine Fracassetti, the spouse of the UN staff member in Azerbaijan told about woman's nature. "Women is sensitive and complex at the same time. She can seem quiet and inconspicuous, but has the keys to everything. And the most interesting things happen when she draws a woman, revealing her mysterious image but being a mystery at the same time", she said. Pakiza Kilinc who has lived in Azerbaijan for twelve years, is the wife of a businessman, and a master of the Azerbaijan Academy of Arts. "In my paintings I tried to show my inner world, thoughts and aspirations, as well as the color of modern women, the desire to achieve my goals, live bright and beautiful," she said. Kamala Aliyeva`s works are rich in bright vibrant colors. The uniquely illustrated floral paintings immediately grab the attention of art lovers.Her stunning works truly bring colors alive. Notably, the exhibition is co-organized by Baku the International Women's Club, Wives Ambassadors Club "HOMS" and Port Baku Mall. The organizers hope that the exhibition will appeal to all visitors and, possibly, inspire them to realize their creative abilities. The exhibition will last until April 19. Admission is free, from 10:00 to 22:00. --- Laman Ismayilova is AzerNews staff journalist, follow her on Twitter: @Lam_Ismayilova Follow us on Twitter @AzerNewsAz By Rashid Shirinov The visits of the representatives of the separatist regime created in Azerbaijans occupied territories to France and the U.S. hinder the negotiation process on the resolution of Armenia-Azerbaijan Nagorno-Karabakh conflict. The remarks were made by OSCE Parliamentary Assembly (PA) Vice-President Azay Guliyev during the Bureau Meeting of the organization in Copenhagen on April 16. The representatives of the illegal regime created in Azerbaijans occupied lands have recently paid illegal visits to the U.S. and France, where they held meetings in the U.S. Congress, French Senate and the National Assembly. Guliyev noted that the systematic nature of such visits by representatives of the separatist regime is contrary to the development of Azerbaijans friendly relations and cooperation with the U.S. and France. Most importantly, this is incompatible with the mandate of these countries as OSCE Minsk Group co-chairs, Guliyev added. Organization of such visits hinders the negotiation process on the settlement of the Armenia-Azerbaijan Nagorno-Karabakh conflict, promotes separatism and occupation. He stressed that separatists should be treated in accordance with international law and the basic principles of the rule of law. In this regard, any manifestation of double standards is unacceptable. The relevant authorities of the U.S. and France should stop the process of issuing visas the agents of the separatist regime and the process of organizing their visits to these countries, OSCE PA vice-president noted. He further urged France and the U.S. to take the necessary measures taking into account their important role of mediators and co-chairs of the OSCE Minsk Group. Armenia broke out a lengthy war against Azerbaijan by laying territorial claims on the country. Since a war in the early 1990s, Armenian armed forces have occupied 20 percent of Azerbaijan's territory, including Nagorno-Karabakh and seven surrounding regions. More than 20,000 Azerbaijanis were killed and over 1 million were displaced as a result of the large-scale hostilities. To this day, Armenia has not implemented four UN Security Council resolutions on withdrawal of its armed forces from the Nagorno-Karabakh and surrounding regions. --- Rashid Shirinov is AzerNews staff journalist, follow him on Twitter: @RashidShirinov Follow us on Twitter @AzerNewsAz By Rashid Shirinov The Senate of the U.S. state of Arizona has passed a proclamation expressing strong support for the territorial integrity of Azerbaijan, the countrys Consulate General in Los Angeles informed on April 16. Signed by Senate President Steve Yarbrough and presented by Senate President John Kavanagh, the document was unanimously passed at the plenary session of the Senate and then presented to Azerbaijans Consul General in Los Angeles Nasimi Aghayev. The proclamation notes that 100 years ago the Azerbaijani people created the first secular and democratic republic in the Muslim world, which in a short time was able to implement progressive reforms, and for the first time in the Muslim world and earlier than in many leading countries of the world granted women the right to vote. The document also says that after the restoration of Azerbaijan's independence in 1991, the U.S. was one of the first states to recognize the country and establish diplomatic relations with it. Moreover, the U.S. and the UN unequivocally recognized and supported the sovereignty, independence and territorial integrity of Azerbaijan. The declaration also emphasizes that after gaining independence, Azerbaijan became one of the most rapidly developing and modernizing states in the world, and today, having the largest economy in the region, Azerbaijan is the largest trading partner of the U.S. in the South Caucasus. It is further noted that Azerbaijan fully supported the U.S. after the September 11 attacks, sent peacekeeping forces to Afghanistan, and today successfully cooperates in the fight against the proliferation of weapons of mass destruction, terrorism, drug and human trafficking. In addition, Azerbaijan's contribution to the energy security of the U.S., Europe and Israel is highly appreciated. The document notes that with the mediation of the Consulate General in Los Angeles, Azerbaijan has established strong ties with the state of Arizona in recent years. It also stresses the importance of strengthening the strategic partnership between the U.S. and Azerbaijan. Azerbaijan and the U.S. established diplomatic relations in 1992. Today, the two countries work to promote European energy security, expand trade and investment, and combat terrorism and transnational threats. The U.S. is committed to strengthening democracy and promoting economic diversification in Azerbaijan. Currently, the U.S. companies are actively involved in the development of Caspian hydrocarbons in offshore Azerbaijani oilfields, and the U.S. government actively supported the BakuTbilisiCeyhan pipeline as the primary route of transportation for Caspian oil. At the end of the declaration, it is noted that the Arizona Senate expresses its strong support for the independence, sovereignty and territorial integrity of Azerbaijan within the internationally recognized borders. Armenia broke out a lengthy war against Azerbaijan by laying territorial claims on the country. Since a war in the early 1990s, Armenian armed forces have occupied 20 percent of Azerbaijan's territory, including Nagorno-Karabakh and seven surrounding regions. More than 20,000 Azerbaijanis were killed and over 1 million were displaced as a result of the large-scale hostilities. To this day, Armenia has not implemented four UN Security Council resolutions on withdrawal of its armed forces from the Nagorno-Karabakh and surrounding regions. --- Rashid Shirinov is AzerNews staff journalist, follow him on Twitter: @RashidShirinov Follow us on Twitter @AzerNewsAz By Trend A favorable atmosphere has been created in Azerbaijan for all nations, Jason Katz, the head of Tool Shed Group, the former director of Public Relations and Public Affairs for the American Jewish Committee, told STMEGI. He also monitored the presidential election held in Azerbaijan on April 11. Katz said that while Jews are discriminated and persecuted in other countries, in Azerbaijan, on the contrary, the state provides all possible support to Jews. "A beautiful synagogue was built and commissioned in Baku with the support of Azerbaijani President Ilham Aliyev for the community of Mountain Jews in March 2011. A favorable atmosphere has been created in Azerbaijan for all peoples who have been living on this land under conditions of peace, mutual respect and friendship for many years," he said. The American expert noted that Mountain Jews build successful career in Azerbaijan, they are integrated in the country's social and political life and occupy relevant posts, share their knowledge and experience with the Azerbaijani government. "Today, memorial plaques have been preserved on buildings in Baku, where influential Jews, such as Nobel laureate physicist Lev Landau, honored doctor Solomon Guzman, Karabakh war hero, national hero of Azerbaijan Albert Agarunov, lived," he said. Speaking about the Azerbaijani-Israeli relations, Katz noted that the two countries successfully cooperate in the military and economic sector. "Azerbaijan covers more than 40 percent of Israel's oil demand. Israel, in turn, supplies high-tech military equipment to Azerbaijan. The relations between the two countries are beyond the military and economic cooperation. Today, Azerbaijani Jews play a very important role in strengthening of the Azerbaijani-Israeli relations," Katz said. --- Follow us on Twitter @AzerNewsAz By Trend Azerbaijan and Tajikistan discussed organizing and holding a meeting of the intergovernmental commission for trade and economic cooperation, the Tajik Foreign Ministry said in a message on April 16. The talks were held within a meeting of Tajik Foreign Minister Sirodjidin Aslov and Azerbaijan's Deputy Foreign Minister Mahmud Mammadguliyev. During the meeting held in an atmosphere of friendship and mutual understanding, the sides considered state and prospects of the bilateral relations in political, trade-economic and cultural-humanitarian spheres. "The parties also discussed issue of organizing and holding the next meeting of the intergovernmental commission for trade and economic cooperation between Tajikistan and Azerbaijan. They also exchanged views on agenda of the next meeting of foreign ministers of the Economic Cooperation Organization in Dushanbe, scheduled for April 17," according to the ministry. According to the Azerbaijani State Customs Committee, the trade turnover with Tajikistan in 2017 amounted to $2.045 million, of which about $47,370 accounted for the import of Tajik products. --- Follow us on Twitter @AzerNewsAz By Trend A criminal case was filed in Armenia after demonstrators clashed with the police in Yerevan, RIA Novosti reported referring to Armenian Prosecutor General's Office. Participants of a rally headed by of the leader of Armenia's Civil Treaty Party Nikol Pashinyan protested against nomination of ex-president Serzh Sargsyan as the prime minister. On April 16, the demonstrators tried to break into the parliament building in Yerevan. The police stopped the demonstrators. "The rally participants continued their illegal activities on April 16 and headed to the Baghramyan Avenue. They tried to break through the police cordon and did not obey the legitimate demand," the Prosecutor General's Office reported. Reportedly, public and private property was damaged as a result, while the demonstrators resorted to violence against police officers. A criminal case was filed into these facts under articles "mass riots" and "organization and holding rallies in violation of the law." The maximum sanction under these articles stipulates imprisonment for up to eight years. --- Follow us on Twitter @AzerNewsAz By Trend Russia is surprised by the absence of reaction from the OSCE European security agency to an act of aggression by Western countries against Syria, Russias Permanent Representative to the OSCE Alexander Lukashevich said on Monday, TASS reports. "Democracy of our Western partners turns out to be selective, applied only to the matters advantageous for them, while inconvenient things are brushed away," the Russian ambassador told a session of the Working Group on Structured Dialogue. "We are surprised by the absence of any reaction to what happened from the chairmanship and the OSCE secretary general (the reaction to deteriorating situation on the Korean peninsula was immediate in due time)," the diplomat said. On April 14, the Russian diplomat urged the OSCE secretary-general and the Italian chairmanship to react to reckless behavior of the US, the UK and France in Syria, coming in direct violation of rules of international law, to a crackdown on the basic principles of the OSCE. According to the Russian Defense Ministry, the missile strike against Syrias military and civilian infrastructures was carried out by US warplanes and naval ships in cooperation with the British and French air forces between 03:42 and 05:10 Moscow time on Saturday, April 14. The ministry reported that Syrias air defense units had been able to shoot down 71 of 103 cruise missiles. The United States, the UK and France said the strikes were a response to an alleged chemical weapons attack in Douma, a suburb of Syrias capital. --- Follow us on Twitter @AzerNewsAz By Trend Head of Mahabad Blood Transfusion Office Davoud Nasr said on Monday that Mahabad base has European standard to produce and export blood products, and added that 3,000 liters of blood plasma had been exported from Mahabad to Europe last year, Irna reported. Nasr told the Islamic Republic News Agency (IRNA) that this amount of plasma was delivered to the Austrian Company of Octapharma, as representative of the European Union. Nasr said that Mahabad ranked first in blood donation in West Azarbaijan province cities and last year 20,000 units of blood were donated in this town. He said that total number of blood donators in Mahabad over last year were 12,311 men and 344 women, which shown 12 and 17 percent increases, repectively in comparison with the preceding year. The office produces also other blood products. Mahabad with a population of 237,000 persons is located in southwest of Azarbaijan province. --- Follow us on Twitter @AzerNewsAz By Trend Tajik President Emomali Rahmon met with Iranian Foreign Minister Mohammad Javad Zarif, who has visited Tajikistan to attend the 23rd meeting of the Council of Foreign Ministers of the Economic Cooperation Organisation (ECO), which is taking place in the Tajik capital, News.tj reported on April 17. The Tajik presidents official website stated that Rahmon and Zarif discussed various aspects of bilateral mutually beneficial cooperation between Tajikistan and the Islamic Republic of Iran. They, in particular, discussed issues related to cooperation between Tajikistan and Iran in the fields of commerce, energy, transportation, industry, agriculture and culture. The Tajik leader and the Iranian foreign minister also discussed bilateral cooperation between Tajikistan and Iran in the field of security, according to the Tajik presidents website. Besides, Rahmon and Zarif discussed a number of regional and international issues of mutual interest. IRNA news agency reported that given cultural commonalities, the two sides in the meeting called for expansion of mutual relations and cooperation in various political, economic, cultural, energy and technological know-how sectors. During the meeting of the ECO Council of Foreign Ministers, the foreign ministers of the member-states are expected to discuss various issues such as expansion of economic cooperation between the member-states. --- Follow us on Twitter @AzerNewsAz By Kamila Aliyeva The volume of oil production in Kazakhstan increased in the first quarter of 2018 compared to the same period of the last year, Kazinform reported. This was stated by the first Vice Minister of Energy, Makhambet Dosmukhambetov, at a governmental meeting in Astana on April 17. Crude and condensate production made 22.4 million tons in the first quarter of 2018 that is 6.1 percent more than in the same period of 2017, he noted. Crude oil production at the three large projects amounted to 13.5 million tons, including 2.9 million tons at the Kashagan oil deposit, 7.4 million tons at Tengiz field and 3.2 million tons at Karachaganak field, according to the official. The Central Asian country exported 18 million tons of oil for the past three months. Kazakhstan's refining output made 3.9 million tons that is 9.4 percent more compared to the same period of 2017. Oil products gross output at three refineries made 2.8 million tons showing an increase of 5 percent compared to the same period of the last year. Earlier, it was announced about the scheduled shutdown of the Shymkent oil refinery, with a view to overhaul since April 10, 2018. Kazakhstan's proven oil reserves as of early 2016 stood at 30 billion barrels, according to the BP Statistical Review of World Energy. Tengiz, Karachaganak and Kashagan are the largest oil fields in Kazakhstan. Three oil giants will be able to bring Kazakhstan's oil production to a new level in the coming years even if new oil fields are not discovered. With the start of oil production at the Kashagan field, the forecasts of several international organizations on oil production in Kazakhstan immediately grew. Analysts from the International Energy Agency (IEA), OPEC, the Energy Information Administration of the U.S. Department of Energy (EIA) link the increase in oil production namely with the Kashagan field. --- Kamila Aliyeva is AzerNews staff journalist, follow her on Twitter: @Kami_Aliyeva Follow us on Twitter @AzerNewsAz By Kamila Aliyeva The twelfth meeting of the Intergovernmental Commission on trade-economic and scientific-technical cooperation between Uzbekistan and Iran was held at the Trade Development Organization under the Ministry of Industry, Mines and Trade of Iran in Tehran. Within the framework of the visit of the Uzbek delegation to Iran, an Uzbek-Iranian trading house of Uzsanoatexport JSC was opened and a business forum was held with the participation of officials and entrepreneurs from both sides, the press service of the Uzbek Ministry of Foreign Trade reported. As a result of the forum, a package of export contracts for the supply of textiles, legumes, and dried fruit and vegetable products was signed. The Uzbek and Iranian sides discussed a number of issues, including a draft bilateral trade agreement providing for the granting of a preferential customs regime for limited commodity positions from each side. The parties agreed on the preparation and mutual exchange within one month of lists of goods for inclusion in the draft document, as well as the organization of regular negotiations in Tashkent in mutually agreed terms. They also agreed to establish a business council with the participation of the Chambers of Commerce and Industry of Uzbekistan and Iran, which will help establish close partnership relations between small and medium-sized businesses of both countries, as well as assist in solving financial, legal and other issues related to their activities. The preparation for signing a memorandum promoting the development of electronic information exchange between the customs authorities was also touched upon during the meeting. The main objectives of the initiative are stimulation of mutual trade, simplification of customs procedures when processing export-import transactions. Cooperation in the field of transport is one of the key areas of Uzbek-Iranian relations. Our task is to optimize the existing transit tariffs with the Iranian partners, taking into account the export structures of the two countries. This will increase the competitiveness of goods from both sides, including products with high added value, said minister of foreign trade Jamshid Khodzhaev. The sides also considered issues on speeding up the launch of the transport corridors Uzbekistan-Turkmenistan-Iran-Oman, China-Kazakhstan-Uzbekistan-Turkmenistan-Iran and the Trans-Afghan corridor. The Iranian side said that it will make every effort to complete the construction of the Khaf-Herat railway, which will be the continuation of the Mazar-i-Sharif-Herat line under construction and will significantly increase the volume of goods transportation between the countries of the region due to lower prices and delivery terms. Iran also expressed readiness to study the proposals of the Uzbek side on the construction of a station for the replacement of wheel sets in Herat. The amount of trade turnover between the two countries amounted to $325 million in 2017. --- Kamila Aliyeva is AzerNews staff journalist, follow her on Twitter: @Kami_Aliyeva Follow us on Twitter @AzerNewsAz By Kamila Aliyeva The volume of mutual trade between Kazakhstan and the countries of the Eurasian Economic Union (EAEU) in January-February 2018 in monetary terms amounted to $2.6 billion, showing an increase of 6.1 percent compared to the same period of 2017, according to the Committee on Statistics of the Kazakh National Economy Ministry. The volume of exports to the EAEU countries in the reporting period amounted to amounted to $839 million, thus registering a rise of 7.9 percent compared to the same period last year. Meanwhile, the volume of imports reached $1.7 billion, thus showing a 5.3 percent increase compared to last years indicator for January-February 2017. At the same time, in the total volume of foreign trade turnover of Kazakhstan with the countries of the EAEU, Russia accounts for 91.6 percent, Kyrgyzstan - 4.5 percent, and Belarus - 3.8 percent. Earlier, it was reported that the volume of overall foreign trade turnover of Kazakhstan in January-February 2018 in monetary terms amounted to $13.3 billion, which is 23.5 percent more than the figure in the corresponding month of 2017. Kazakhstan is the 48th most complex economy according to the Economic Complexity Index (ECI). The country has an export-oriented economy which is highly dependent on shipments of oil and related products (73 percent of total exports). Other exports include ferrous metals, copper, aluminum, zinc and uranium. Main imports are electronics, machinery and mechanical appliances (25 percent of total imports), mineral products (15 percent), transport equipment (12 percent) and base metals and related products (10 percent). Kazakhstan became a World Trade Organization (WTO) member on November 30, 2015. The country officially entered into a Customs Union with Russia and Belarus on July 1, 2010. Since that time, Kazakhstans trade policy has been heavily influenced by regulations promulgated by the Customs Union and its governing body the Eurasian Economic Commission. As a condition of membership in the Customs Union, Kazakhstan had to double its average import tariff and introduced annual tariff-rate quotas (TRQs) on trade apoultry, beef, and pork. However, in accordance with its WTO commitments, Kazakhstan will now gradually lower 3,512 import tariff rates to an average of 6.1 percent by 2020. Starting from January 2016, Kazakhstan has applied a lower-than-Customs Union Tariff rate to food products, automobiles, airplanes, railway wagons, lumber, alcoholic beverages, pharmaceuticals, freezers, and jewelry. On May 29, 2014 Kazakhstan and its Customs Union partners signed a treaty to create a common economic space known as the Eurasian Economic Union (EAEU). The EAEU is expected to further integrate their economies, and provide for the free movement of services, capital and labor within their common territory. The government of Kazakhstan has asserted that EAEU agreements comply with WTO standards. Kazakhstans government is optimistic that further integration within the EAEU will make Kazakhstan more attractive for foreign investment by expanding market access to those countries. Kazakhstan is a signatory of the Free Trade Agreement with CIS countries. In addition, as a member of the EAEU, Kazakhstan is party to the Free Trade Agreement between the EAEU and Vietnam. --- Kamila Aliyeva is AzerNews staff journalist, follow her on Twitter: @Kami_Aliyeva Follow us on Twitter @AzerNewsAz By Trend Azerbaijan's flag carrier Azerbaijan Airlines CJSC (AZAL) and the Azerbaijan Tourism Association (AzTA) held a joint meeting with official partners and agents of AZAL, the airline said in a message on April 16. At the meeting, vice-president of AZAL, executive director of AZAL passenger airline, Eldar Hajiyev, informed about the important changes and innovations in AZAL, including Buta Airways, a structural unit of AZAL and the first low-cost airline in Azerbaijan. Travel companies and sales agencies voiced their wishes and proposals at the meeting. Prospects of cooperation with AzTA were also discussed. Following the fruitful meeting, AZAL awarded the most active partners and agents, while five top-ranking tourism agents were awarded registered certificates. The airline reported that such meetings will be continued in the future. The video about the meeting is available at: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ndWaAg1eNyM --- Follow us on Twitter @AzerNewsAz Tipsters with information about an unsolved murder in Orange County more than 20 years ago will receive a doubled reward this month, the Texas Rangers announced Tuesday. Kathy Page. 34. was found dead in her car in a ditch on May 14, 1991. Her father, James Fulton, has been posting billboards in Vidor and Rose City for years, accusing police of failing to solve the case. "An increased reward of up to $6,000 is being offered for information that leads to the arrest of those responsible" for her death, the Texas Department of Public Safety said Tuesday. The investigation is the agency's "featured" cold case for the next month. RELATED: Scroll through the gallery above to see the top unsolved cases in Texas Page had been strangled, but the car was positioned in a ditch to make it look like an accident. She had recently separated from her husband of 13 years before she was killed, DPS said. Grand juries since the murder have declined to indict the main suspect, identified by authorities as her ex-husband, Steve Page. In 2000, a civil jury found Steve Page liable in a wrongful death suit and awarded her family $150,000. The verdict was upheld on appeal. Steve Page was also convicted, fined and sentenced to probation after he was seen on a videotape desecrating Kathy Page's grave. Fulton told the Enterprise in January that in the past 25 years, he has spent more than $200,000 on a federal court case and on the billboards calling for a conviction in his daughter's death. MORE: Filmmaker hopes for justice in Vidor cold case The signs along I-10, accusing Vidor Police of taking bribes to avoid prosecuting Steve Page, inspired the movie "Three Billboards Outside Ebbing, Missouri." Screenwriter Martin McDonagh said he saw billboards that criticized police for an unsolved crime, which stayed with him for years and became the basis for the movie, which was nominated for seven Academy Awards, including Best Picture. Vidor Police Chief Rod Carroll said in January that he reviewed the case file when he was hired as chief last year. "The investigation never closed," he said. "There has always been a person of interest. We need evidence for probable cause. Sometime, someone will grow a conscience and come forward. It's the human psyche." LTeitz@BeaumontEnterprise.com Twitter.com/LizTeitz A nationally-known Houston sketch artist has drawn the man who Stormy Daniels said threatened her over an alleged affair with President Donald Trump, Daniels attorney said on MSNBC Tuesday morning. Lois Gibson, who works with the Houston Police Department and holds a world record for most identifications by a forensic artist, worked with Daniels on the sketch, attorney Michael Avenatti said. The sketch was released on the morning talk show The View. Gibson drew the man who Daniels described during an interview on "60 Minutes." Daniels, a porn star whose legal name is Stephanie Clifford, said she was on her way to a fitness class in Las Vegas in 2011 when a man she didn't know walked up to her and said, "Leave Trump alone. Forget the story." He was referring to a story Daniels told to a writer for Bauer magazines about a sexual encounter she said she had with Trump in 2006, Daniels said. After Trump's lawyer Michael Cohen threatened to sue Life & Style, the magazine held the story. Daniels also said on "60 Minutes" that the man threatened her further that day in Las Vegas, while her daughter was present. And then he leaned around and looked at my daughter and said, Thats a beautiful little girl, Clifford said on the news program. Itd be a shame if something happened to her mom. And then he was gone." The Wall Street Journal reported in January that Cohen paid $130,000 in hush money to Daniels weeks before the 2016 presidential election. Trump has denied that he knew about the payment. Daniels and Avenatti appeared on The View Tuesday morning to release the sketch. "Im tired of being threatened," Daniels said. "Intimidating me and trying to say that youll ruin my life and take my you know all my money and my house and whatever, Im sorry, Im done, Im done being bullied." Avenatti said Gibson found Daniels to be very credible and is "highly confident" the sketch will lead to a development in the case. Its obvious she just didnt sit down with this sketch artist and fabricate this," Avenatti said. "Its a very detailed sketch." Avenatti said there is a $100,000 reward for information leading to the identification of the man in the sketch. While Gibson's latest drawing is for a high-profile case, the artist's reputation is anything but. She has sketched thousands of murderers, rapists and thieves, and has earned a Guinness World Records title as "the world's most successful forensic artist." Hacking and accidental disclosure each comprised almost one-third of breach incidents in the healthcare industry during the first quarter of 2018, according to a Beazley report. For the report, Beazley a London, U.K.-based cybersecurity insurance company with offices in Asia, Australia, Middle East, South America and the U.S. analyzed breach incidents it handled during the first quarter of 2018. Here are the five most common causes of healthcare breaches, according to Beazley. 1. Hack or malware: 29 percent 1. Accidental disclosure: 29 percent 3. Insider: 15 percent 4. Physical loss: 6 percent 5. Portable device: 5 percent To access Beazley's report, click here. Republican Georgia Gov. Nathan Deal said the state will step in to resolve a contract spat between Atlanta-based Piedmont Healthcare and Blue Cross Blue Shield of Georgia if the two sides don't ink a new agreement by April 17. The governor, Piedmont and BCBSGA scheduled an April 16 meeting to assess how negotiations are progressing. The meeting comes nearly two weeks after a Piedmont-BCBSGA contract expired March 31. The stalemate has left hundreds of thousands of BCBSGA patients without in-network access to Piedmont. During the lapsed contract, Georgia and the University System of Georgia, based in Atlanta, are absorbing out-of-network claims for 30 days for about 600,000 state employees affected by the spat. In an April 16 tweet, the governor said, "I asked @AnthemInc and @PiedmontHealth to resolve their contract dispute by COB tomorrow or the state will be forced to initiate executive action." On April 9, BCBSGA said it "continues to be actively engaged in negotiations to bring Piedmont Healthcare, Inc. and Piedmont Clinic Physician Practices (collectively 'Piedmont') back into our network as soon as possible. These negotiations are a company-wide effort, including the 100 percent involvement by the BCBSGA plan president." On its website, Piedmont, a 10-hospital nonprofit system, said it will continue to work with BCBSGA to reach a resolution. More articles on payer issues: UnitedHealthcare can protest loss in $12B Pennsylvania Medicaid contract BCBS of Kansas taps new CEO, CIO, VPs: 4 takeaways Georgia governor to Piedmont, BCBS CEOs: We're meeting, and 'I expect an update' on negotiations Orthopedic surgeon and State Rep. Knute Buehler, MD, R-Ore., beat Greg Wooldridge by one vote in a gubernatorial straw poll held by the Washington County Republican Party, according to Oregon Public Broadcasting. Here are four things to know. 1. Dr. Buehler is a board-certified orthopedic surgeon at The Center: Orthopedic & Neurosurgical Care & Research in Bend, Ore., specializing in knee and hip conditions. 2. While Dr. Buehler has been the establishment favorite to win the primary and run against Gov. Kate Brown (D), he does not have unilateral Republican support. Dr. Buehler has criticized President Donald Trump, described himself as pro-choice on abortion and has not opposed every gun control measure that has come before the Oregon Legislature. 3. Mr. Wooldridge, a retired Naval aviator, defeated Dr. Buehler at a straw poll held at the annual Dorchester Conference in March. 4. The Republican Party fell a couple of votes short of having enough participants to make an official endorsement in the governor's race only 75 people participated in the straw poll. None of the candidates met the 60 percent vote threshold required for an endorsement under party rules. More articles on orthopedics: Maryland orthopedic surgeons performing surgery without opioids: 5 things to know Orthopedic surgeon to know: Dr. Daniel Berry of Mayo Clinic Drs. Neal ElAttrache, Gregory Shankman & more: 11 orthopedic surgeons making headlines Political commentator and CNN senior political analyst David Gergen spoke at the American Association of Orthopaedic Surgeons Annual Meeting in New Orleans March 8. Here are four things to know. 1. Mr. Gergen was the presidential guest speaker at the AAOS special Your Academy 2018 event. He explained that while traditionally democracies have fallen due to military-led coups, populist movements have begun to push nations toward authoritarian rule after the end of the Cold War, citing Turkey and Venezuela as examples. 2. He denounced growing political polarization in the U.S. as becoming "increasingly poisonous." 3. Mr. Gergen claimed that while President Trump "has an intuitive understanding for the spirit of the country," his political inexperience and concerns about the findings of Special Counsel Robert Mueller's investigation may interfere with his ability to lead. Mr. Gergen said that it is generally accepted, even by President Trump, that Russia meddled in the 2016 election. 4. Mr. Gergen, who served as an adviser in four different presidential administrations, is an optimist in the long-term. He noted that more women and veterans are getting involved in politics and expressed hope for the future. "My view," Mr. Gergen said, "is that those of us who are older ought to fix as much of this as we can, and then we ought to get the heck off the stage and welcome that younger generation, saying, 'It's your turn.' We're going to be in good hands when they come into power." More articles on orthopedics: Maryland orthopedic surgeons performing surgery without opioids: 5 things to know Orthopedic surgeon to know: Dr. Daniel Berry of Mayo Clinic Drs. Neal ElAttrache, Gregory Shankman & more: 11 orthopedic surgeons making headlines Gregory Campbell is calling for greater recognition of hymn-writer Cecil Frances Alexander to mark the 200th anniversary of her birth. The East Londonderry MP has tabled a motion at Westminster calling for acknowledgement of the life and works of the woman who penned 'Once in Royal David's City' and 'There is a Green Hill Far Away'. Dublin-born Mrs Alexander lived in Strabane and later married Rev William Alexander - a future bishop of Derry and Raphoe - before moving to live near Castlederg. Mr Campbell said: "Mrs Cecil Frances Alexander wrote some of the most popular hymns in the English language, yet not as much is known about the woman behind the music and words. "Since her death in 1895, her hymns have continued to be much revered and sung throughout churches and Christian gatherings across the world. "Her hymns are much loved and reach to the heart of the Christian gospel message." The MP continued: "Although her hymns were originally published for children, the authenticity of message and beautifully composed melodies still strike a chord with many today, having won the hearts of both young and old. "As one of our most famous hymn writers, her life should be celebrated and recognised for the contribution she made to worship in the English Language. "There is no better time to recognise her contribution than this month, which marks the 200th anniversary of the birth of Cecil Frances Alexander. "Her legacy should be remembered for future generations." The call came as a portrait of Mrs Alexander at Londonderry's Saint Columb's Cathedral was restored. A grant from the Heritage Lottery Fund has also allowed restoration work to be carried out on paintings of her husband Archbishop William Alexander, and Bishop William Higgin. The restored portraits will go on display in the cathedral's Chapter House - the first time the Alexanders' portraits will be displayed publicly. The Dean of Derry, the Very Reverend Raymond Stewart, said the paintings will form the centrepiece of an exhibition marking the lives of the Alexanders. "It is very appropriate that the restoration has been carried out this year as it is the bi-centenary of Mrs Alexander's birth," he added. Mrs Alexander died in 1895 and a stained glass window in her memory was installed in St Columb's in 1913. Northern Ireland IT firm Kainos has said it's taken on nearly 200 new staff over the last 12 months. A trading update from the company, one of just three plcs in Northern Ireland, said employee and contractor numbers have now reached 1,169. The firm said that trading in the year to the end of March "continued in line with market expectations and the company remains well positioned in its core markets". Kainos, situated in the university area of Belfast, specialises in digital services and platforms, with clients in government and healthcare. The trading update said that it was also acquiring more international clients, supported by the group's growing physical presence in Europe. As its sales had grown, its contracted backlog was also up. In October last year, Kainos announced it was opening a base in Copenhagen to "meet growing demand" in Europe for its WorkSmart business, which covers areas including payroll and finance. Kainos, which is headed by Co Antrim man Brendan Mooney, already has offices in Dublin, the US, Germany and Poland. In November last year, it reported a 5% increase in pre-tax profits to 6.8m. It also revealed a 2% increase in sales to 41.4m for the six months ending September 2017. It is based at Upper Crescent in Belfast. Bookseller Eason is closing two of its Northern Ireland outlets. It has shut its store at Craigavon's Rushmere Shopping Centre after more than four decades in business. And the company will also shut down its Newry store at Buttercrane Shopping Centre in July after nearly 30 years. Eason was one of the earliest retailers to operate from Rushmere, opening in 1976. A spokesman for the company said that the decision to close the stores was made after lease negotiations failed. It will be left with seven stores in Northern Ireland, after others were closed in recent years. A spokeswoman said: "We can confirm the closure of two Eason stores in Northern Ireland. "Eason in Craigavon has closed and Eason in Newry will close shortly. "The decision to close the stores in Newry and Craigavon was made following unsuccessful attempts to secure terms on the stores leases." It was not clear if staff had been redeployed. The spokeswoman said: "I can confirm a consultation took place with all employees. Martin Walsh, Rushmere centre manager, said: "The lease for the unit which Eason occupies is coming to an end and Eason has decided not to renew. "It is of course disappointing to see them go, having been an integral presence on the mall since 1976. "We have already had plenty of interest in what is a super unit in a prime location within the centre, and are confident it will be snapped up quickly to maintain Rushmere's fully let status." Eason's remaining stores are in Belfast, Newtownabbey, Lisburn, Bangor, Enniskillen, Coleraine and Foyleside. It has shut shops in Newtownards, Ballymena and west Belfast. A steel company in Newry has won its first business in the Netherlands and Great Britain in a deal worth nearly 1m. BM Steel has entered a joint venture with engineering firm JB Towers in Tewkesbury, England to supply products to contractor DAEL Telecom. The products are to be used for the Netherlands and Great Britain's telecoms market. DAEl operates in the Netherlands, Belgium, England and Scotland. Mike Mathers, director of BM Steel, said: "In the last six months we have doubled our workforce and almost trebled our turnover. This is due to our ambitious growth strategy and our focus on exporting to help our business grow. "Exporting is literally transforming our business and we are very keen to expand further into the Great Britain and European markets and grow our customer base globally." It has become a major provider of component parts and made-to-order structures since it was set up 14 years ago. It is a major supplier to Cargotec Ireland and has completed projects in London and Scotland. Alison Gowdy, Invest NI's director, said: "Securing this major contract with one of Holland's biggest players in the telecommunications industry, DAEL Telecom, is not only a great result but will also open up more opportunities for the company. "This experience has helped it develop the skills and confidence to make professional sales presentations and win new business. "Supporting ambitious Northern Ireland businesses like BM Steel to identify new export markets... is the main aim of the support we offer. Independent News & Media (INM) is taking a legal action in a bid to deal a "knockout blow" to the appointment of inspectors in the Irish Republic to investigate corporate governance issues. The President of the High Court in Dublin, Mr Justice Peter Kelly, heard the Office of the Director of Corporate Enforcement (ODCE) was concerned the company's affairs had been conducted in "an unlawful manner". Neil Steen SC, for the ODCE, said there were concerns actions had taken place that were unfairly prejudicial to some shareholders in INM, owners of the Irish Independent and Belfast Telegraph. Yesterday's hearing was initially expected to deal with an application for the appointment of a barrister and a solicitor as inspectors. However, the court heard INM filed an affidavit shortly before the hearing opposing that application. Lawyers for the media group also indicated they wanted a judicial review of the decision by the ODCE to seek the appointment of inspectors. Mr Justice Peter Kelly said that if the media group succeeds in its judicial review proceedings it would deal "a knockout blow" to the application for the appointment of inspectors. Shane Murphy SC, for INM, said his clients were objecting to the appointment of inspectors, given the impact it would have on the company. The barrister said INM believed its rights to fair procedures were breached. Meanwhile, businessman Denis O'Brien has accused the ODCE of leaking information in court papers related to its application to have inspectors appointed to INM. Mr O'Brien claimed he has been subjected to extraordinary and intensifying levels of media coverage which suggests he was involved in wrongdoing. He referred to the trial of former Anglo chief executive Sean FitzPatrick. This trial collapsed and Mr FitzPatrick was acquitted after it emerged documents had been shredded by the ODCE's lead investigator. Pamela Anderson has shared her fears over the health of WikiLeaks founder Julian Assange, who she said is being subjected to a form of torture. Mr Assange, who has been living in the Ecuadorian embassy in London since 2012, recently had his internet access cut off and has been banned from receiving visitors. Anderson, a close friend of Mr Assange, told ITVs Good Morning Britain that she is very concerned about his health. The UK is being so stupid. They have to make a decision, they keep on passing the buck, no-one wants to take responsibilityPamela Anderson She said: I think this is a form of torture, I think theyre slowly killing him. Im very, very, very concerned, deeply concerned for him. Hes one of the most important people on the planet right now. Hes exposing all these war crimes and truths; we really need him at this moment. Its not a coincidence hes being investigated at this time. She said she wouldnt be surprised if her own relationship with Mr Assange was being investigated. Theresa May needs to do something, she added. The UK is being so stupid. They have to make a decision, they keep on passing the buck, no-one wants to take responsibility. Hes a political prisoner. Hes a hero - Pamela Anderson speaks on her close friend Julian Assange, whos in the Ecuadorian embassy in London pic.twitter.com/6DLFk2xYgl Good Morning Britain (@GMB) April 17, 2018 They want to extradite him to the US, 100%, and that would be life in prison or worse. Before something happens to him someone needs to confirm that theyre not going to extradite him to the US, thats all he cares about. Its really important. Theres so much going on in the world right now, I want to know what hes thinking, I want to know what hes thinking about all this and hes being silenced. She said that his current living conditions, with no sunlight, being in a small space for so long and now being cut off from everybody, is just inhumane, its a human rights situation, hes being abused. Hes not the culprit, hes just the messenger. The Ecuadorian government decided to stop Mr Assange using the internet or social media from its embassy in London in March. Mr Assange has been living there for almost six years, believing he will be extradited to the United States for questioning over the activities of WikiLeaks if he leaves. Canadian model and actress Anderson was among those urging Ecuadorian president Lenin Moreno to reverse the ban on internet access and visitors, signing a letter along with the likes of musician Brian Eno and fashion designer Dame Vivienne Westwood. Then American President Bill Clinton and wife Hillary meeting George Mitchell scholars, including Winnie (second from right), who were all studying in Ireland at the time in April 2008 My newsfeed has been alive for days now with the 20th anniversary of the Good Friday Agreement - what it means to us in 2018, its impact and legacy. But despite being American and living in London, I carry a uniquely personal and painful legacy tied to this date. Because the 20th anniversary of the Good Friday Agreement is also the 10th anniversary of my rape in Belfast, when I visited as a former George Mitchell scholar to commemorate the peace process in a series of public events. In April 2008, at the age of 29, I was invited to a televised symposium, cocktail party, and gala banquet, where politicians like Bertie Ahern, Gerry Adams and George Mitchell himself reflected on the necessities of reconciliation and dialogue. I met with other Mitchell scholars and other 'promising young leaders' like me, both American and Irish. And then, on the Saturday after those busy days, I decided to go for a hike on my own, following an 11-mile trail which would start in Colin Glen Forest Park and finish at Cave Hill, north of the city. I never made it past Colin Glen. Because that afternoon, I was followed by a 15-year-old boy who then violently assaulted and raped me, when there was no one else around. And that single event changed the rest of my life. Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder immediately shattered my sense of self, leaving me with agoraphobia, flashbacks and panic attacks. I could barely set foot outside my flat. I was unable to work and, even after my rapist was convicted and sentenced to eight years in 2009, the depression and anxiety continued. It took years to rebuild my self-confidence and my career. And 10 years on, when most of my friends are starting families and buying property, I can look back and see how fundamentally my life trajectory was changed by what happened to me in Colin Glen on that afternoon. But those are the consequences of a violent rape, not just for me but for so many victims of that kind of crime. Which is why it pains me to witness the callous, disbelieving comments that members of the public often make about cases and their victims - comments muttered in everyday conversations, or posted online anonymously, or written in columns by people who have no lived experience of sexual assault themselves. In the 10 years since my assault, the lack of public understanding around the reality of sexual violence has never failed to shock me. And the cruelty of others towards rape victims, around questions of truth and justice, always makes me despair. The truth is that nearly every rape survivor carries around a secret, painful knowledge of the day when we were sexually assaulted. We don't generally speak about it, but we will silently note the accumulation of years. And inevitably a date in the calendar rears up which brings with it sadness and solitude, anger at the person who did this to us, a sense of loss at what that crime cost us. These anniversaries are not the kinds we commemorate publicly. They are private anniversaries, often acknowledged with reluctance and dread. Some anniversaries we celebrate, others we mourn. So, in contrast with the very public conversation around the legacy of the Good Friday Agreement, this year, I will privately weigh up the legacy of my Belfast rape - and there will be no one I can discuss this with. Because our society has yet not evolved a vocabulary or even a willingness to honestly address the reality of sexual violence, in a way that places survivors at the forefront of the conversation, that affords them the acceptance and credibility they deserve for everything they've been through. Too often, when a woman tries to seek justice by truth-telling, there is still the victim-blaming, the judging, the claims that she is making this up - for what? For attention? For money? For revenge? What a petty and mendacious view of women and girls, rooted in a blinkered misogyny. I've been through the hellish experience that is the criminal justice system for rape victims. The only thing that propels you through that nightmare is the desire for justice, and the knowledge that what happened to you was the truth. Nor would the police or Public Prosecution Services allow a case to progress to a trial if they did not believe there was sufficient evidence to convict. So, the stumbling block appears to be public opinion (the jury being made up of members of the public) and the overriding misperceptions that so many people have about sexual violence. And yet, we will never start to clear up those misperceptions if we don't allow victims and survivors the space to tell their stories, without being judged. Part of what aided my own recovery was the ability to write about my trauma. In September 2009, the Belfast Telegraph published an anonymous piece I wrote. I credit it with a dawning realisation that even though my life had been indelibly damaged by the rape, I could use writing to somehow come to terms with that damage. Read More Years later, this led me to write my novel Dark Chapter, which is a fictional account of my rape and its aftermath, told from the perspective of both victim and perpetrator. Since my own rapist pleaded guilty on the morning of the trial, I decided I needed to write a trial scene in my novel, in order to truly dramatise what a rape victim has to go through in the name of justice. I observed a number of rape trials in London and Belfast, and I was disgusted by how the process of 'justice' requires victims to be disbelieved, undermined and blatantly mocked by the defence barristers, while in full view of the public. More recently as an activist, I've worked with survivors who have gone through the criminal justice system, only for their accused to be acquitted in the end. They cite these experiences as demoralising, damaging, often shaking their faith in our public institutions. So, considering the legacy of GFA20, I find it ironic that we pat ourselves on the back for ending sectarian violence, when we talk about sexual violence in such a different way. Why do we often deny or downplay its very existence when it continues to affect so many lives? Both types of violence have their impact. They are both traumas that can leave psychological and physical scars, which affect generations of families, which have financial consequences. If we compounded the number of rape victims over a population, we would find a large swathe of our society diminished by the blight of sexual violence. I know how long it took for me to recover from my rape, and I know it takes other victims far longer. If anniversaries lead us to contemplate the meaning of these events, years later, then this is my public reckoning on the notion of progress and reconciliation: We cannot call ourselves a civil society if we do not afford victims of sexual violence the space to tell their truth, and be believed. Ten years from now, I hope this will have changed for the better. Dark Chapter by Winnie M Li is available at all good bookshops, 8.99 Just over one fifth of more than 600 international nurses recruited by health chiefs two years ago are currently working on the wards in Northern Ireland, the Belfast Telegraph can reveal. The Department of Health embarked on an international recruitment drive for nurses in 2016 - at a cost understood to be in the region of 566,000 - to address the serious shortfall in numbers. Read More Over the past four years hundreds of nurses and midwives have left the Nursing and Midwifery Council (NMC) register, including more than 500 in the first two quarters of 2017/18. Currently there are more than 1,300 vacancies within Northern Ireland, with 532 in the Belfast Trust area alone. Despite offering positions to 622 international nurses in 2016, only 127 are currently working on wards. It will be four years after they were first recruited before the rest will be given a position - a year longer than it takes for a university student to achieve a degree in nursing. Before any non-UK nurse can take up a position here, they must pass English language and clinical skills tests which are set by the Home Office. Garrett Martin, deputy director of the Royal College of Nursing in Northern Ireland, described the 2016 recruitment drive as an "expensive" way to plug gaps left as a result of poor workforce planning. Mr Martin said: "There was a naivety around the timescale predicted about how quickly they could get the nurses on the wards here. "There are requirements by the regulatory body before a nurse can be registered in the UK - one of which is an English language test which has a considerably high failure rate and a clinical skills test and visa criteria - which all means it is a very, very slow problem. "The opening of a clinical skills centre at the Magee campus of Ulster University four months ago - which is still only one of two places in the UK to offer this course - will help speed things up." SDLP MLA Mark H Durkan said: "It was right that the department explored all possible options to address the serious shortfall in nurses, and having met with some of the nurses who are working in our hospitals there is no doubting their passion and commitment, given the significant sacrifices they have made to come here." A spokeswoman for the Department of Health said: "To date, 127 new nurses, from the international recruitment exercise, are now working in wards across NI. The recruitment scheme is on target to deliver 622 nurses by March 2020, as planned. "The department is looking forward to issuing an update on workforce issues, including nursing recruitment, later in the spring." DUP MLA Jim Wells has said he may stand as an independent in the next Assembly election. The veteran South Down representative believes he will face disciplinary action from the DUP for speaking out against what he sees as the increasing control that "unelected individuals" wield in the party. Mr Wells is embroiled in a bitter dispute with the DUP hierarchy over events surrounding his resignation as Health Minister in 2015. Yesterday he released an email which he said proved the DUP broke a promise by former leader Peter Robinson that he would eventually get his old job back. The South Down MLA last night told the Belfast Telegraph: "It is very difficult to run as an independent in an election, but I am certainly not ruling it out." Mr Wells said he did not expect the DUP to ratify him as a candidate for the next Assembly election, which is scheduled for May 2022. "In terms of then standing as an independent, I will make my mind up closer to the time. "I will of course check to see the level of support I have locally before I make any decision. In the meantime, I want to state that I am going nowhere," he said. "I have been a DUP member for 43 years. I have served as a councillor for 17 years and an MLA for a total of 24 years during my career. I have no intention of throwing my hands up and walking away." Mr Wells said he had widespread backing in the party. "I have three MPs and over half the DUP MLA team sending me messages of support. "A lot of people are fed up with the power that certain DUP employees and press officers wield in the party. These individuals hold influence way above their station. In speaking out against them, I have touched a chord with many other members in the ranks who are equally fed up," he said. "It is wrong that people who never received a single vote in their lives exercise power far beyond that of elected representatives." The South Down MLA said he had stood down as Health Minister in 2015 after he had been falsely accused of linking same-sex marriage to child abuse. His wife Grace was seriously ill at the time. Mr Wells said he had fallen on his sword to protect the DUP ahead of the general election. He produced an email that Peter Robinson (left) had sent to party official John Robinson. It said: "I made it clear to Jim that I thought he had done a good job and if Grace returned to health and he felt able to take up this (or for that matter another) post I would be happy to see him back in government. "Obviously, publication of this would cause several problems, but I think you are aware that I felt Jim needed time to be with Grace and that we should see to it that no impediment was placed in his being able to return to office." Last week Mr Robinson told the BBC he had not promised Mr Wells that he could have his old job back. Mr Wells said: "I deeply regret that I have been forced to release private correspondence, but this had to be done to confirm that I am telling the truth about how I have been treated. "All this is heart-breaking for me, but I have been buoyed by the support shown to me from the grassroots of the party that I love." A DUP spokesman claimed at the time that Mr Wells' accusations were "inaccurate". "The party is very sorry that Jim Wells has chosen to make the comments that he has across a series of interviews. "The party, at all levels, has tried to work with Jim given the scale of the challenges he has faced in recent times, including nominating him to paid positions of responsibility in the Assembly." Last night, a DUP spokesperson added: "It would not be appropriate to comment on evidence given the public inquiry outside of the inquiry process. "It is important that the inquiry is allowed to complete its work." Proposals for a bridge between Northern Ireland and Scotland have taken another twist after controversy erupted over calls for a historic Co Down port to be considered in the plans. Official talks about a proposed crossing over the North Channel may still be in the early stages, but already rivalry is developing over where it should start. The route options mooted include from the Mull of Kintyre to Co Antrim - a distance of around 10 miles; and from Portpatrick to either Larne or Bangor - around 21 miles. Now a North Down councillor has said the historic port of Donaghadee should be considered - a suggestion which has split opinion. Some say it could be a social and environmental "disaster" for the area. Mark Brooks, a local businessman, admitted there are objections - which he likened to when the M1, the Westlink or the Holywood bypass were proposed - but urged his colleagues to "take their heads out of the sand". "I lived in Al-Khobar for a couple of years and could see the 16-mile bridge linking Saudi Arabia to Bahrain, which was opened in 1981 - nearly 40 years ago," he said. "There will be a bridge. I want to move this project forward and our council to be the first elected chamber to actively promote and act on the link, the first chamber for over 60 years to do so." Ards and North Down Borough Council's regeneration and development committee voted last Thursday to write to Scottish First Minister Nicola Sturgeon, Secretary of State for Northern Ireland Karen Bradley and - in the current absence of an Executive - the Permanent Secretary of the Department for Infrastructure, Peter May. The council will ask for its borough to be considered in any feasibility study or business case as a possible connection point for a new bridge. The decision must be ratified at the next full meeting of the council, on April 25. However, opinion is mixed. Alliance councillor Gavin Walker is adamant he will vote against, calling it a "potential environmental and social disaster for Donaghadee". "Our coastline is regularly lauded as one of our greatest assets, yet this proposal invites government to visit an environmental disaster on our shore," he said. "Providing the land for this infrastructure alone would decimate Donaghadee and our coastline - and that's before we even consider the building of the motorway required to serve the bridge. "We can't simply bring the bridge to the shoreline and then allow the thousands of lorries and cars that will cross every day to trundle up New Street and find its own way out of town. "Instead we would be required to dig up acres of our beautiful countryside to drive a motorway through." Mr Walker said the plans were "absurd". He warned that with a motorway rather than a sea view, local property prices could plummet. "This misguided decision of the committee is already having an immediate effect on Donaghadee, and one that I will continue to fight," he added. Mr Brooks (inset below), meanwhile, conceded that Donaghadee may not be the most feasible route, but said he wants to ensure it is not left out. "My point of argument is that the historic link has always been between Portpatrick and Donaghadee, and I wanted to remind them of that in any discussion," he said. "Donaghadee is the historic link and the original port into this part of the province. The first mapped roads in Ireland were out of Donaghadee. "I spoke to the chief executive about this, and whether we should put our marker down. "He then brought a proposal to council last Thursday night. "Really, it's about seeing whether it (the bridge) is going to come out of our borough, or Mid and East Antrim." A Scottish Government spokesperson said Transport Scotland officials will be speaking to counterparts in Northern Ireland to "explore the potential of improving the vital connections between our two islands". "There have been various ideas for bridges or tunnels between Scotland and Northern Ireland over the years although to date there has been no robust assessment of the costs or benefits of such proposals. "It is clear that the delivery of any fixed link would be complex and present significant challenges and we are at the very early stages of thinking on our approach. "It would be premature to be speculating on any particular options, impacts or routes at this time." Prime Minister Theresa May in the House of Commons yesterday DUP MPs have backed Prime Minister Theresa May in parliamentary vote - described by the MP who proposed the motion as "nonsense" - on her decision to launch air strikes on Syria without parliamentary approval. On Monday night a vote on a general motion by Labour MP Alison McGovern took place, with DUP MPs voting with the Conservative party in favour of the motion. The vote was on whether the whether the current situation in Syria and the UK Government's involvement in it had been considered by the House. Independent North Down MP Lady Hermon voted with members of the SNP, Plaid Cymru, the Green Party, and Labour's Dennis Skinner in opposing the motion. The vote has no impact on the Government's actions. After Monday's vote, Mrs McGovern wrote on Twitter: "To be clear. This 'vote' on my motion is nonsense. The motion was just that we had debated the issue. It's not really a votable motion. "The SNP called it just for the sake of it. It proves nothing. "But please read speeches, many of which focused on the right thing: Syrians." Though, to be fair, the past 24 hours have taxed even the most diligent scholars of parliamentary procedure, so I blame no one for being confused. https://t.co/P8UzFsYwP5 Alison McGovern (@Alison_McGovern) April 16, 2018 The vote, which was supported by 314 in favour and 36 against, comes as a precursor to a parliamentary debate on the issue set to take place shortly before 1pm on Tuesday. Permission for the emergency debate was granted after a request by Labour party leader Jeremy Corbyn, and will be on Parliament's role in approving military action by British forces overseas. On Monday PM May faced criticism from some members of her own party for not seeking parliamentary approval prior to launching air strikes, and dismissed suggestions her Government had followed the "whims" of US President Donald Trump. Air strikes were launched against three Syrian military facilities on Saturday morning by France, the UK and the US as a response to reports Syrian forces had used chemical weapons against civilians in the town of Douma. There should be a single authority for the administration and planning of education in Northern Ireland, the Integrated Education Fund has said. Extending fair employment legislation to cover the recruitment of teachers is another objective in the body's Alternative Manifesto, which was launched yesterday at Stormont. Read More Children Keisha Fee and Jamie Nesbitt, from Mallusk Integrated Primary School, presented the plan to MLAs from each of the main parties at the launch event. IEF director Richard Lemon described the document as a "roadmap of achievable steps to move us away from the current divisive nature of our education system". It includes a call for the Education Authority to make integrated education "the primary focus" of the area planning process, and says that there should even be a "presumption that any new schools to be established should be integrated - subject to community consultation". It calls for the Department of Education to develop and introduce a single model of governance for schools, instead of the current variety of bodies, along with one single authority for the administration and planning of education in Northern Ireland. The document also urges the government to set a target to increase the percentage of pupils going to integrated schools to 10% by 2021 - and to plan to meet it. Currently, around 7% of school aged children in Northern Ireland are educated in schools which are officially integrated. Speaking at the document's launch, Mr Lemon said that Northern Ireland "currently supports an effectively segregated education system". "This is dependent on duplicated resources and unwieldy bureaucracy at a time of severe budget pressures. "At the same time, we see continuing social division and increasing concern about educational outcomes. "This manifesto is about a holistic approach which would direct resources to improving outcomes and will contribute to a future cohesive community," he said. The event was sponsored by Alliance MLA Chris Lyttle and education spokespeople from Stormont parties were among the invited audience. Mr Lyttle said: "If we are to have a society where everyone is respected, we need to start by respecting parents' wishes to have their children educated together in an integrated ethos. "The education of our children together is a vital step towards building the united community the vast majority of people in Northern Ireland wish to see." Ulster Unionist MLA Mike Nesbitt presented his own vision for education, saying he believes a single education system is the best tool available to tackle the "toxic legacy of sectarianism in our society". Mr Nesbitt added: "Mixing children from age four would provide a virtual inoculation against sectarian thoughts. "As we approach Northern Ireland's centenary, I can think of no finer way to enter the next hundred years than with a commitment to educating all our children together." Sinn Fein's Education spokesperson Karen Mullan said: "Sinn Fein welcome the launch of IEF's Alternative Manifesto so close to the 20th Anniversary of the Good Friday Agreement. "The duty to encourage and facilitate integrated education is an important part of that agreement and successive Sinn Fein ministers have sought to build on that as a crucial element of moving to a genuinely reconciled society." You can find the Alternative Manifesto on the IEF website: https:// /resources/publications/ Only one Northern Ireland MP has confirmed they will attend a crucial Westminster debate on the vaginal mesh scandal that has destroyed the lives of hundreds of people here. The DUP's Emma Little Pengelly has said she will be present. Fellow DUP MP Jim Shannon hopes to be there for some of the Commons backbench business debate. The party's health spokesman has to attend another event running at the same time so is unlikely to be able to remain for the entire debate. North Down MP Sylvia Hermon, an independent, has a prior engagement and cannot attend, while Sinn Fein MPs refuse to take their Westminster seats. The trauma experienced by women around the world after undergoing transvaginal mesh procedures has been described by some senior doctors as the "most serious women's health scandal since thalidomide". Five members of campaign group Sling the Mesh NI are travelling to London to watch the debate. Jackie Harvey of the group expressed frustration at the lack of support from politicians here. "We have hundreds of members, we have women who have ended up in wheelchairs, they can't walk, they have lost their bladders, their marriages have broken down," she said. "It isn't too strong to say that lives have been ruined because of the use of vaginal mesh. "I don't think it is too much to expect all of our MPs to attend the debate on Thursday." Emma Little Pengelly said her party had written to health departments in Northern Ireland and England, raising concern over why the issue was not taken seriously for so long. "We have had many discussions with campaigners and sufferers. Further research is needed into mesh procedures and adverse effects," she said. "There needs to be an improved and more holistic approach to caring for women affected, with an updating of clinical guidance and standards." Five people including a mother and son were told on Tuesday that they will be sentenced next month for the roles they played in an Armagh-based criminal enterprise. Cash amounting to around 500,000 in both sterlings and euros and several luxury watches were seized as a result of two police 'interceptions' during the summer of 2016, with five people arrested and charged with various offences. The five co-accused appeared together at Newry Crown Court, sitting in Belfast, were a Crown prosecutor outlined their differing roles. Darren Barry Anthony Donnelly, a 33-year old father of three from Roscavey Road in Beragh, admitted possessing criminal property on August 17, 2016 - namely 214,216 and 224,760 which was found in packages when his lorry was stopped by police. Armagh father of three Joseph Despard, from Salters Grange Road, admitted possessing criminal property namely 10,010 on July 13, 2016, as well as possessing counterfeit currency in the form of 91 fake pound coins. Conor James Patrick Toal - who the court heard doesn't work, doesn't claim benefits and who is supported financially by his wealthy partner - is from Mullacreevie Park in Armagh and pleaded guilty to three offences. The 32-year old admitted transferring criminal property, namely 214,216 and 224,760, on August 17 2016, and of possessing criminal property in the form of two Rolex watches, a Tag Heuer Watch and a Breitling watch along with 4,690 on the same date. In addition, he admitted concealing criminal property, namely 79,450, on July 13, 2016. Eugene Thomas (33) from Callan Crescent also admitted transferring criminal property, namely 10,010, on July 13, as well as two counts of possessing criminal property. The latter two charges take the form of 103,980, a Raymond Weil watch, a Rolex Sky Dweller watch and a Rolex Cosmograph watch. His mother, 57-year old Mary Thomas who works two jobs as a school and a hospital cleaner, admitted a single charge of concealing criminal property. This charge relates to a Rolex Sky Dweller watch and a Rolex Cosmograph watch which were found in her wardrobe during a search of her Callan Crescent house on July 13, 2016. Frustrated residents and business owners in south Belfast's student area have blasted a new parking scheme as "grossly unfair" and "impractical". Northern Ireland's first residents' parking scheme was launched in the Holyland yesterday in a bid to tackle congestion. A total of 236 parking bays have been marked out in the area, with 117 spaces for permit holding residents only, and a further 119 'pay and display' bays available to the public. Some permit holders, however, have criticised the system as only one is allowed for each household and business. Households with more than one car are forced to pay for parking away from their property and can only park in designated areas for a maximum of two hours. Yesterday, officials from the Department for Infrastructure (DfI) issued warning letters to motorists parked illegally in the Rugby Road and College Park Avenue area. Mick McDowell, who has lived in the Holyland for three years, shares his home with four others. They each have a car but only one can park outside their home. Expand Close New parking restrictions in the Holyland area in Belfast are proving controversial Kevin Scott / Belfast Telegraph / Facebook Twitter Email Whatsapp New parking restrictions in the Holyland area in Belfast are proving controversial He said: "We're musicians so when we come back from a gig we have to park outside the house, get all the equipment inside and then try and find a place that we are allowed to park at 1.30am. "There's nothing we can do about it. I'm only allowed to park in one space for two hours, then will have to look for somewhere else to park. "Half my day will be spent moving the car around and paying for parking outside my home. "The whole thing is very frustrating. That's one of the main reasons we are moving, because it's not practical." Residents living in the parking scheme zone had to apply for a valid permit from the department. They also get 25 visitor passes every three months. Drivers who park in the bays without a valid permit or pay and display ticket will receive a penalty charge notice. Business owner Patrick McKillop employs 36 people but has only one parking space for staff. The Spar owner said they are being "starved" of parking bays. "It means we've had to reshuffle everyone and push them all down the street, with staff running around looking for parking spots," he said. "It seems grossly unfair. Some businesses weren't given any permits. "These rigid rules seems to be very much against businesses. "Staff will have to pay for their parking or else they will be forced to park quite a distance away. The system that gives us one space is unfair. Expand Close New parking restrictions in the Holyland area in Belfast are proving controversial Kevin Scott / Belfast Telegraph / Facebook Twitter Email Whatsapp New parking restrictions in the Holyland area in Belfast are proving controversial "It's not practical during the winter months to expect staff to park far away from the business. We are being starved of parking." Resident Sean McCann, who has been living in the area for more than 20 years, welcomed the new scheme, describing it as a "great idea". "It takes this place back to the residential area it once was," he said. "It's no longer a place where people think they can park anywhere they want. It's great for us residents and will make the area more appealing." Declan Boyle, an independent councillor and landlord who owns student property in the area, said there are "teething issues" surrounding the scheme. He called for more flexibility where a household has more than one car. He said: "For students living in a house with more than one car, it is an issue. "If there are excess spaces it might be an opportunity for students and business owners to apply for more than one bay. Expand Close New parking restrictions in the Holyland area in Belfast are proving controversial Kevin Scott / Belfast Telegraph / Facebook Twitter Email Whatsapp New parking restrictions in the Holyland area in Belfast are proving controversial "No matter how many permits you have - if there's only 100 spaces in the street you can't fit everyone in. "It could possibly push the parking into somewhere else." A Co Antrim learner driver tried to outrun police in a 20-minute pursuit at speeds of up to 90mph after Sunday Mass, a court has heard. Conor Martin (19), of Bellaghy Road, Dunloy, reversed into one police car and then smashed into another, injuring two officers. A prosecutor told Coleraine Magistrates Court that on February 25 this year, a police patrol spotted a car with defects and, despite being signalled to stop, the driver accelerated away at up to 90mph. Martin was at the wheel and on a number of occasions he drove on the wrong side of the road, causing other drivers to take evasive action. On three occasions he attempted to reverse into a police car, striking the vehicle on the last occasion. By this stage, a prosecutor said, another police vehicle had arrived which the defendant collided with, causing substantial damage. Two police officers subsequently went on sick leave with injuries which were not believed to be serious. The Peugeot 406 car driven by Martin was examined and found to have defects including springs which were not the correct size. Martin told police: "I drove on, I thought I could get away." Defence solicitor Denise Gillan said: "He was coming from Mass on a Sunday morning when this happened. He is not claiming to be a regular church-goer." She said it was an anniversary Mass for a relative and afterwards the defendant set off for Ballintoy to meet up with his girlfriend and go for a meal. However, Ms Gillan said the vehicle had a cracked windscreen, no exhaust silencer and its lowered suspension was noticed by police. Instead of stopping, the solicitor said Martin "just completely lost the run of himself". She added: "He took a rush of blood to the brain. For some reason he thought he could 'outrun' police." Ms Gillan said it was an "appalling piece of driving". Martin pleaded guilty to dangerous driving; failing to stop for police; using a vehicle in a dangerous condition; having an incorrect number plate and offences relating to suspension, exhaust and tyres. He was uninsured; had no MOT; was an unaccompanied learner driver; had not displayed L plates and he admitted causing criminal damage to a police vehicle. Martin also pleaded guilty to possessing cannabis which was found in the car. District Judge Peter King said the defendant could have killed himself and others, and had left two police officers off duty. Martin was released on his own bail of 500 until sentencing in May. An interim driving ban was imposed. A security officer attempts to control Rohingya refugees waiting to receive aid in Cox's Bazar, Bangladesh, September 21, 2017. REUTERS/Cathal McNaughton Northern Ireland photographer Cathal McNaughton won a Pulitzer Prize for his work in Burma A Northern Ireland photographer has won a Pulitzer Prize for his images of Rohingya Muslim refugees fleeing Burma to escape military-led violence. Former Belfast Telegraph photographer and Sunday Life deputy picture editor Cathal McNaughton picked up the prize for his work with Reuters. The Cushendall man is Reuters chief photographer in India. The photography staff were honored for images of the violence endured by the Rohingya, a Muslim minority, as they fled Myanmar for Bangladesh. Reuters editor-in-chief Stephen J Adler said: "The extraordinary photography of the mass exodus of the Rohingya people to Bangladesh demonstrates not only the human cost of conflict but also the essential role photojournalism can play in revealing it." The 17-member Pulitzer board is made up of past winners and other distinguished journalists and academics. There are winners in 14 journalism categories and a further seven that recognise fiction, drama, history, biography, poetry, non-fiction and music. An office block and a school science building are among the latest developments that have been granted planning permission by Belfast City Council. At Wednesday nights meeting of the Planning Committee, the green light was given to demolish an existing teaching block in Belfasts Campbell College to make way for a new 10-classroom science building. Meanwhile, a new four-storey office building in the North City Business Centre has also been given the go ahead. The new development will replace an existing two-storey office block on the site. Five letters of support for the development were sent to planners from neighbouring sites, as well as one letter of objection regarding potential parking difficulties. PUP Councillor Billy Hutchinson said he had visited the site many times and agreed that parking could be an issue, however the overall benefits of the development outweighed those concerns. In regards the parking issue, Sinn Fein councillor JJ Magee pointed out that Belfast is trying to get people to use public transport more frequently. Elsewhere, a project that could see the demolition of the last Victorian-era building on Upper Queen Street has hit a speed bump. Real estate firm Hegan and Company hope to demolish the three-storey terrace building currently on the site, which is located at the junction of 46-52 Upper Queen Street and 11a Wellington Street, to make way for a new seven-storey office building with a retail unit on the ground floor. The building dates to around 1860 and is located within a Conservation Area. It is currently home to a cafe, a barbers, and a shop. BCC planners recognised that demolishing the last Victorian-era building on the street was a concern, however they also noted that they had received no objections from their Historic Environment Division. The critical consideration in this case is the merits of the proposal against the contribution of the existing building to the character of the Conservation Area, planners said in their report. Given the Conservation opinion that the contribution is limited to its age only, it is considered on balance, that the economic benefits and compliance with the majority of policies as discussed above outweigh the loss of this building. In terms of design, the proposal. Planners recommended granting approval for the development, however Sinn Fein Councillor Geraldine McAteer said it would be a good idea for the committee members to visit the site before making any final decision. Its the last Victorian building on that street, from 1860, and I do think [the proposed development] could distract from the historical fabric of the area, she said. Other committee members agreed, and the matter was deferred to be considered at a later date. Meanwhile, planning permission was granted for a new residential development of five townhouses and 13 apartments at Musgrave Park. Plans were also submitted by the South Ulster Housing Association for the construction of 15 residential apartments on Eia Street, however planners recommended that the committee refuse the application, which they did. Reasons for the refusal included that the project represents overdevelopment of the site and would also be inappropriate and harmful to the character of the area. Police are investigating after a stillborn baby was found in the boot of a car at a Northern Ireland hospital, it has been reported. The Sun newspaper reports a young teenage woman arrived at Altnagelvin hospital to report what had happened before she disappeared on Thursday. Fearing for her safety, the paper reports, staff contacted police and the woman was found soon after. It's claimed the woman delivered the baby outside the hospital grounds and the child was some weeks premature. A car was examined in the grounds of the hospital. Police are also understood to have visited the Fetal Assessment Unit at the hospital. A PSNI spokeswoman told the Belfast Telegraph officers responded to a "concern for safety" and with investigations continuing it would be inappropriate to comment further. The Western Trust has been approached for comment. An investigation into the murder of an SDLP activist shot dead by a loyalist more than 40 years ago has been reopened after the killer passed on new information to his victim's daughter. Denis Mullen, a father of two, was gunned down by the notorious Glenanne Gang at his home near Moy, Co Tyrone, in September 1975. The move came a week after the victim's daughter, SDLP councillor Denise Mullen, gave video evidence to the PSNI's Legacy Investigation Branch about information she received from her father's UVF killer, Garfield Beattie. Ms Mullen said the PSNI will be investigating the orchestration of violence and state collusion based on the information her father's killer gave her. "He told me about another man who was involved in the orchestrating of my father's murder," she said. "He told me where he lives and details about him, but he would not tell me his name because he is still alive." Back in September, Ms Mullen spent three hours at the home of Mr Beattie, who served 16 years behind bars for his part in her father's murder, which he said was part of his initiation into the UVF. During their conversation, he gave her information about the murder of her father, including about the activities of the Glenanne Gang, the UVF chain of command and the circumstances that led to the killing. Speaking to the Belfast Telegraph yesterday, Ms Mullen said: "Two weeks ago I was called to Knockbreda PSNI station to record a video interview for evidence. "This was based on what I had previously told them about what Garfield Beattie told me. "I spent three hours with him in his house. He told me about other people who were involved in daddy's murder. "He told me of the chain of command, where the order came from and how it came to be that he had to target my mother and father. "He named Billy Corrigan, he was the head, and next in line to The Jackal. "There are also some people who are still alive who were involved. "My father's case is now live again because of the evidence that I gave the PSNI. They told me that they would be investigating it." Detective Superintendent Ian Harrison, Deputy Head of the PSNI Legacy Investigation Branch, appealed for anyone who had information on the case to come forward. "This murder investigation now sits within the caseload of Legacy Investigation Branch (LIB) for fresh consideration," he said. "We remain committed to bringing to justice those responsible for this murder and would appeal to anyone with any information which may assist our inquiries to contact us. "Where credible investigative lines of inquiry are identified, capable of leading to the identification and prosecution of suspects, we will follow them." Mr Mullen (36) was shot dead at the front door of his family home on the night of September 1, 1975. His wife Olive survived the shooting by running across the fields beside her home, while the murder gang fired 13 bullets at her. Denise, then aged four and now a Mid Ulster district councillor, stayed with her father's body until emergency services arrived. The Glenanne Gang was a notoriously brutal and callous loyalist murder squad based at a farm in Mid Ulster. The terror group, alleged to contain members of the RUC and UDR, was linked to more than 120 murders in the 1970s across Co Armagh and Tyrone, including outrages such as the Miami Showband massacre. One of its most notorious members was Robin Jackson, also known as The Jackal, who died in 1998. On Thursday night, Denise and other victims will be speaking at the Bomb and Bullet Legacy event in the Ryandale Inn in Moy. The event starts at 7.30pm and admission is free. The SDLP has said its councillors should propose the renaming of Raymond McCreesh park if "the matter is not resolved in the coming weeks". Earlier this month, a unionist motion calling for a change to the Newry play park's controversial name went before Newry, Mourne and Down District Council. The challenge to change the park's name was defeated after councillors voted to pass an amendment to wait until a process - agreed in December - concludes on what should happen to the park's name. Unionist councillors stormed out of the April 9 meeting in protest. In a statement to the Belfast Telegraph, an SDLP spokesperson said: "The SDLP does not support the naming of public spaces after those involved in the violence of the past. This childrens play park should never have been named in this way. "The SDLP Leadership is crystal clear that this naming was wrong and has caused hurt to victims. The councillors are in no doubt from the leadership that if the matter is not resolved in coming weeks via the process parties agreed to, then they should bring a motion to rename." In December, the SDLP faced a backlash after voting against renaming the park in order to avoid "stoking tensions". The vote earlier this month was sparked by a banner hung at the council-owned park calling McCreesh "our hero". An SDLP spokesperson said its councillors did not back the action as they felt it was "political opportunism" from the DUP and they wished to stick with the "agreed process". When the park was first named, several SDLP councillors on the former Newry and Mourne Council supported the McCreesh name. The park was named after hunger striker McCreesh in 2001. The South Armagh IRA member has been linked to a rifle used in the infamous 1976 Kingsmill massacre in which 10 Protestant workmen were killed. McCreesh was one of seven IRA prisoners who died in the 1981 Maze Prison hunger strikes. His convictions included attempted murder, conspiracy to murder, possession of firearms with intent to endanger life and IRA membership. In January, after the resignation by former Sinn Fein MP Barry McElduff over a tweet in which he appeared to mock the victims of the massacre, McCreesh's family refuted the claim he had been involved. The solicitor for Stuart Olding has called for all rape and sexual assault cases awaiting trial to be reviewed. It comes as the Lord Chief Justice has begun discussions with senior judges, including Judge Patricia Smyth who presided over proceedings in the rugby rape trial to examine how cases are handled and any steps that could be taken. Both Paddy Jackson and Stuart Olding were unanimously acquitted of rape following a nine-week trial in Belfast. Read More On Tuesday four groups which help victims of sexual crime took out a full page advert in the Belfast Telegraph urging members of the public to get behind them to push for a review of the system, taking account of the experiences of victims. There have been calls for a review of how allegations of serious sexual assault are handled through the courts. Read More In a statement the Lord Chief Justice Office said: "The Lord Chief Justice is aware of the issues raised by the recent high profile trial. He has begun discussions with the trial judge and other senior Crown Court judges to consider whether there are any steps the courts can take that do not require legislation to deal with some of the issues. Joe Rice, who represents Stuart Olding welcomed the announcement but said there were concerns police and prosecutors were not adequately equipped to handle evidence. "However, I also take a wider view that all rape and serious sexual assault cases currently awaiting trial should now be reviewed in Northern Ireland," Mr Rice said. "I would like to see a review of the work of the PSNI and its Sexual Crimes Unit in relation to these cases which could be extended to encompass how our Public Prosecution Service deals with and reviews the evidence that it is provided with by investigating police. "Defence solicitors have genuine concerns that police and prosecutors may not have the necessary systems or resources to get to grips with the way they handle evidence and especially electronic evidence." Mr Rice said there were concerns potential key information for cases taken from mobile phones, computers and social media is not being properly interrogated or kept under "sufficient review" by police and prosecutors. "There has to be an 'improvement plan' to tackle these new 21st century societal developments," continued Mr Rice. "This should include reviewing training, developing specialist disclosure experts in every police force and providing all multi-media evidence to the defence digitally. "Any review could include the above as well as anonymity for defendants, jury procedures, victims rights, etc. "Change in our society, such as the rapidly increasing use of social media, mobile phone messaging, brings challenges that all parts of the criminal justice system in Northern Ireland which despite resourcing problems, have to deal with sooner rather than later." Three women arrested on suspicion of a number of assaults and public order offences after an incident outside Kelly's Cellars in Belfast city centre at the weekend have been released. The incident happened outside the Bank Square bar on Saturday just before 10pm. It was reported three women were involved in an altercation with bouncers outside the establishment. The women, aged 47, 37 and 28, were later arrested and said to be helping police with their enquiries. Video of the incident was circulated widely on Facebook. Police said the women were released on police bail pending further investigation. Kelly's Cellars was contacted for a response. Details of a Northern Ireland council taking a table at a DUP dinner hosted by Ian Paisley are being examined, it has been reported. The Electoral Commission told the BBC it was considering the information to determine if a full investigation is required. 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 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. It was revealed at a council meeting last month that, while guests were asked to make cheques payable to the Tullyglass House Hotel, they were to be posted to Ian Paisley's constituency office. The council 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. However, it has emerged the Electoral Commission is now examining details of the payment. The BBC reports that under Electoral Commission rules councils are not "permissible donors". Mid and East Antrim council said it had been contacted by the commission. A spokeswoman said the council received an invitation to a North Antrim Annual Business and Community dinner hosted and facilitated by Mr Paisley, with Mr Gove as special guest. The Tullyglass Hotel, told the BBC, the event was paid for by the DUP. The DUP has not commented on the latest development, but has said the dinner was not a party fundraiser. An Electoral Commission spokesman told the Belfast Telegraph: We are aware of this matter and are considering it in line with our enforcement policy." A statement from the Northern Ireland Audit Office said: "We are aware of that particular issue and will specifically review that transaction as part of our audit procedures when we come to review the accounts." A spokesperson for Tallaght University Hospital confirmed a person passed away in the waiting area of its emergency department on Saturday afternoon. They said it couldn't comment any further as the matter is the subject of a Garda investigation. (PA) A man found dead in a Dublin hospital's waiting area was slouched over in a chair for nearly 12 hours, according to his heartbroken family. Security camera footage shows Brian Hamilton (40), from Crumlin, arriving at Tallaght Hospital's emergency department around 2am on Saturday. His family have been told he appears to have gone to the toilet and returned to the seating area at around 4am. But from that point, until nearly 12 hours later, it seems nobody approached him until a member of staff spotted he was dead in the chair. "We just cannot understand how he could have been left so long," his sister Paula said. "Surely there should be some protocol to check on people? "We are all still only getting over the death of our mother in May last year, something which affected Brian badly, and now we are trying to get our heads around this." His sister said Mr Hamilton came from a good and loving home where his parents worked hard, adding: "Brian was a soft soul but he had his demons." His brother Michael added: "He had problems with alcohol, and he was doing his best to address them. To get treatment he had to register as homeless to get into the Simon detox centre, but he wasn't sleeping rough on the streets." A spokesperson for Tallaght University Hospital confirmed a person passed away in the waiting area of its emergency department on Saturday afternoon. They said it couldn't comment any further as the matter is the subject of a Garda investigation. British lives would be compromised if it became illegal for governments to launch military action without the backing of MPs, Theresa May has warned, as she was accused of showing a flagrant disregard for Parliament. The Prime Minister said Jeremy Corbyns calls for the introduction of a War Powers Act would seriously compromise national security, national interests, and the lives of citizens at home and abroad. But the Labour leader, opening the second emergency debate in as many days on Britains role in missile strikes on Syrias chemical warfare facilities, said Mrs Mays predecessor, David Cameron, had sought authority for military action on several occasions. I am sorry to say the Prime Ministers decision not to recall Parliament and engage in further military action in Syria last week showed a flagrant disregard for this convention, Mr Corbyn said. Mrs May defended her decision to take action without seeking Parliaments approval, saying that coming to the Commons beforehand would have compromised the effectiveness of our operations and safety of British servicemen and women. Expand Close Labour leader Jeremy Corbyn PA Wire/PA Images / Facebook Twitter Email Whatsapp Labour leader Jeremy Corbyn And she said a War Powers Act would mean smaller-scale and targeted military action such as that over the weekend in Syria would become unviable. Making it unlawful for Her Majestys Government to undertake any such military intervention without a vote would seriously compromise our national security, our national interests, and the lives of British citizens at home and abroad, Mrs May said. And for as long as Im Prime Minister, that will never be allowed to happen. I'm afraid I think some people wouldn't authorise military action to retake the Isle of Wight if it were invadedAndrew Bridgen Mr Corbyn, who faced a bad-tempered atmosphere in the Commons with Tory MPs consistently looking to intervene, said such an Act could specify at what point in decision-making processes MPs should be involved, as well as retaining the right of ministers to act in an emergency or in the countrys self-defence. Tory MP Andrew Bridgen drew laughs in the Chamber with a sideswipe at Mr Corbyn, suggesting the Labour leader would not authorise military action even if the Isle of Wight were invaded. And Mrs May attracted cheers from the Tory benches with her response to a question from Labour MP Karen Lee, who suggested US President Donald Trump had more say over UK foreign policy than MPs. Concluding her speech, the Prime Minister said a clear majority of the Commons believe the Government did the right thing. I realise that for some in this House, and especially for those who have not had to do what I have to, the attractive purity of a democratic principle that Parliament should always decide may still appeal more than the practice of how to ensure an effective military operation that delivers our national interest. But she said she hoped MPs could agree on her commitment as Prime Minister to being held to account by this House for the decisions that Ive taken. PM: The mood of the House was unquestionable, we do have the support of the House - a clear majority of this House believe we did the right thing #WarPowers Simple Politics (@easypoliticsUK) April 17, 2018 SNP Westminster leader Ian Blackford criticised the failure of the Government to recall Parliament, adding that it was to be deeply regretted that the only people that havent had a voice were MPs. He said: The timeline of events last week showed our Prime Minister chasing the presidents timetable rather than planning her recall. Parliament should authorise military action, it is a disgrace that the Prime Minister appeared beholden to the US president instead of to the UK Parliament. He added: Nobody is talking about compromising operational activity, its about the principle of Parliament giving its consent to military action. Mr Blackford argued the time has come for a War Powers Act, adding: A long-standing policy of the SNP, we believe it will stop situations as we saw last week where Parliament is completely bypassed in a reckless fashion. On Monday, Mrs May accused Moscow of preventing inspectors for the Organisation for the Prohibition of Chemical Weapons (OPCW) reaching Douma. Russian officials at OPCW headquarters in the Hague later said arrangements were being made for the inspectors to travel to the site on Wednesday. Expand Close Theresa May PA Wire/PA Images / Facebook Twitter Email Whatsapp Theresa May However there are fears in Western capitals that more than a week on much of the evidence of what happened on April 7 will no longer be there. Russian foreign minister Sergey Lavrov flatly denied that Russia had tampered with the evidence and insisted there was no proof that chemical weapons had even been used in Douma. In the wake of the furious row over the poisoning of former double agent Sergei Skripal and his daughter, Yulia, in Salisbury he said East-West relations were now worse than they were at the time of the Cold War. Meanwhile, the UK and US have issued an unprecedented joint alert on the threat of malicious cyber activity by the Russian state. Britains National Cyber Security Centre (NCSC) combined with the FBI and the US Department of Homeland Security to say Kremlin actions threaten our respective safety, security and economic well-being. Officials said millions of computers worldwide had been targeted in operations designed to support espionage and potentially lay a foundation for future offensive operations. Three Court of Appeal judges who dismissed Alfie Evans parents latest claims have published a ruling outlining their reasoning. Lord Justice Davis, Lady Justice King and Lord Justice Moylan ruled against Tom Evans and Kate James following a Court of Appeal hearing in London on Monday. The judges ruling has now been published on the British and Irish Legal Information Institute website. Expand Close (Alfies Army/Facebook/PA) Press Association Images / Facebook Twitter Email Whatsapp (Alfies Army/Facebook/PA) They said Alfies parents were making the same argument they had made earlier this year but attaching a habeas corpus label. It is clear that by their present application the parents are seeking the same outcome that they were seeking from the court in February and March 2018, the three judges explained. They wanted to take Alfie to the hospital in Italy and opposed his remaining in hospital in England. The court had to decide whether the parents should be permitted to do what they wanted or whether Alfie should remain in Alder Hey and receive treatment and care there The court decided that the parents views were not determinative; that moving him to hospital in Italy was contrary to his best interests. Expand Close Tom Evans and Kate James, Alfie's parents (Philip Toscano/PA) PA Wire/PA Images / Facebook Twitter Email Whatsapp Tom Evans and Kate James, Alfie's parents (Philip Toscano/PA) The judges added: The application of a different legal label, namely habeas corpus, does not change the fact that the court has already determined the issues which the parents now seek, again, to advance. Their views, their rights do not take precedence and do not give them an unfettered right to make choices and exercise rights on behalf of Alfie. As the Supreme Court said in this case the rights of the child will, if inconsistent with the rights of the parents, prevail over them. They said Alfie was not being detained in hospital or deprived of his liberty. We see no basis for any submission that he is being deprived of his liberty in terms the doctrine of habeas corpus, said judges. In our view the arguments advanced on behalf of the parents provide no basis on which Alfie could be said to be detained. A jury has cleared a teacher accused of having sex with her teenage pupil. Deborah Lowe, 54, wiped away tears as she was told she could leave the dock and was free to go by the judge, following a seven-day trial at Minshull Street Crown Court, Manchester. The jury, who were out for two hours and seven minutes deliberating, found Lowe not guilty of five counts of sexual activity with a child by a person in a position of trust. She had stood, hands clasped in front of her, swaying slightly and breathing deeply as the jury foreman returned the verdicts. Lowe had admitted having sex with the teenager, after being flattered by the attention of the boy and was having a midlife crisis when they began a relationship. The divorcee said at the time she had become interested in meditation and yoga, visited Bali, sold her flat in suburban Cheshire and given up her job as head of pastoral care at a high school to go travelling in India to explore her faith. But she maintained the relationship with the boy, 35 years her junior, only became sexual after he had left school and he was aged 17. The prosecution had alleged that sex began when the boy was 16 and although old enough to legally consent, Lowe broke the law by having sex with him when being a person in a position of trust his teacher. Earlier, the court heard that in a jokey WhatsApp message to a friend Lowe told her she was not having sex with the boy and described herself as a mother figure. But she added: If not in the too distant future he wants to discuss the merits of an older woman I will be there for him followed by emojis of a bottle of baby oil and a pair of handcuffs. The teenager had told the jury after flirting at school they swapped phone numbers and first engaged in phone sex before sexual encounters in her home, car and caravan. A former air hostess who has worked in education for 14 years, Lowe told the jury sex first took place after he contacted her around December 2016 three months after he left school, and she took him to her flat in the Stockport area of Greater Manchester. They kissed and had sex and later on also had sex at his home while his mother, who Lowe knew, was out of the house. The relationship continued into 2017 with more secret liaisons in the caravan where she lived. I now wish to put this case behind me as best I can and spend some time with my family and friendsDeborah Lowe She sent him a card signing off with, The slut a name they used during, rough sex sessions where he pulled her hair and she bit and scratched his back till it bled. The boy told jurors it was every lads fantasy to have sex with a teacher but admitted later feeling creeped out because of the age gap. Police were called in last summer after his mother found the card Lowe sent to him. Lowe, who has a daughter, aged 28 and a son, 20, said later she felt, mortified and embarrassed over her foolish infatuation and denied being sexually obsessed with the youngster. Neil Usher, defending Lowe, described the complainant as an attention-seeking fantasist who had claimed sex began when he was aged 15 so he could sell his story to tabloid newspapers. A single allegation of having sex with a child, when the complainant was aged 15, was withdrawn by the prosecution during the trial and the judge instructed the jury to return a not guilty verdict on that charge, after the boy gave evidence which suggested he was 16, not 15, when he first had sexual contact with Ms Lowe. The defendant, of Elm Beds Caravan Park, Poynton, Cheshire, had denied five counts of sexual activity with a child by a person in a position of trust said to have taken place between September 14 2015 and June 30 2016. Cleared, she left court hurriedly, and her solicitor told waiting reporters she did not wish to speak to the press, but read a statement on her behalf. It said: The last nine months have been extremely difficult for me and my family. I would like to take this opportunity to thank them for their love and care. Im grateful for the support from former colleagues, friends and past pupils who sent messages of support. Although incredibly stressful and upsetting at times Im extremely pleased I have had the opportunity to clear my name and Im delighted the jury acquitted me of all counts. Im very grateful to my legal team, Jared McNally and Neil Usher, who from the start identified the flaws in the case against me and robustly challenged the prosecution case. I now wish to put this case behind me as best I can and spend some time with my family and friends. A scene from Thor 2 has resurfaced and it is getting Londoners riled up at its deceptive portrayal of the Underground. The scene in question, from 2013 Marvel film Thor: The Dark World, shows the Asgardian god of thunder getting from Charing Cross to Greenwich in three stops. But anyone who regularly braves the confines of the network or anybody who has ever even looked at a Tube map will know that this is impossible. In the clip, Thor lands onto the Charing Cross platform with a thud and, as a train pulls in and the tube doors open, he asks a bewildered commuter: How do I get to Greenwich? She replies: Get on this train, three stops. It is not clear which line the tube is on but, according to her logic, Thor would end up either in Lambeth North, Kennington, or Regents Park. So author Aaron Gillies, who could no longer withstand the glaring oversight (after almost five years), demanded a re-shoot and helpfully offered Marvel a script modification. Hello @Marvel I can no longer be silent. I demand that you reshoot the scene in Thor 2 where Thor gets the tube. Greenwich is not 3 stops from Charing Cross. I have attached a script. pic.twitter.com/ulNIt8vhti TechnicallyRon (@TechnicallyRon) April 16, 2018 Well, this is a southbound Bakerloo line so youll need to change at Waterloo then get on the eastbound Jubilee line to North Greenwich, would be the commuters ideal answer. He added: But thats actually not right next to Greenwich so youll have to get the 188 bus for 15 minutes and get off at the Maritime Museum stop. Gillies also offers alternative routes, such as taking the DLR. He even threw in some commuter etiquette for good measure, saying: If you can stop talking and just stand there that would be great this is London we dont talk on the Tube. Other Twitter users voiced their outrage, while some chimed in with more suggestions. It's a well long walk from bakerloo line to jubilee at Waterloo as well. Danny Copues (@DannyCopues) April 16, 2018 Yes yes yes. Also, they missed a trick with Thor not getting on the DLR at the front, seeing there was no driver and uttering "what sorcery is this? What dark magic?" https://t.co/al3pKk9nF9 Michael 'Mike' Beddoes (@michaelbeddoes) April 16, 2018 Moral of the story: Londoners are not to be messed with when it comes to their TfL-related knowledge. President Donald Trump says conversations between North and South Korea to end their decades-long war have his blessing. Speaking as he welcomed Japanese Prime Minister Shinzo Abe to his private club in Florida, President Trump confirmed that the two Koreas are negotiating an end to hostilities. Today, President Trump and the First Lady will welcome the Prime Minister of Japan and Mrs. Abe. pic.twitter.com/u7H0zRmsrN The White House 45 Archived (@WhiteHouse45) April 17, 2018 A meeting between North Koreas Kim Jong Un and South Korean President Moon Jae-in is expected in next week. President Trump said the leaders do have my blessing to discuss an official end to the war. The White House has said Mr Abes visit will give the leaders an opportunity to discuss President Trumps own upcoming summit with Mr Kim, which the president is looking to hold in the next two months. President Trump said the US and Japan are very unified on the subject of North Korea, though privately Mr Abe is expected to raise Japans concerns about the potential summit. President Trump said five locations are under consideration for the summit but offered no further details. President Trump took credit for the inter-Korean talks, saying: Without us and without me, in particular, I guess you would have to say, they wouldnt be discussing anything. The official visit began on Tuesday afternoon as an honour cordon of uniformed service-members lined the palm-fringed drive to the club. President Trump greeted Mr Abe at the red-carpeted door of the mansion as the pair posed for photos ahead of a planned one-on-one meeting. It will be followed by a small group discussion with top national security officials focused on the Kim summit. The president and first lady Melania Trump will also have dinner with Mr Abe and his wife. President Trump welcomed the two days of meetings at his Mar-a-Lago club. Its an honour to have you in Florida with us, he said. A fireman extinguishes a fire as smoke rises from the damage at the Syrian Scientific Research Center which was attacked by US, British and French military strikes to punish President Bashar Assad for suspected chemical attack against civilians, in Barzeh, near Damascus, Syria The Prime Minister has been facing prolonged and angry criticism for not involving parliament in the decision for the UK to join the USA and France in air attacks on Syria, following President Assad's alleged illegal use of chemical warfare on his own people as the vicious civil war rages on. But the Prime Minister found herself caught between a rock and a hard place. On the face of it, it seems that to bypass parliament in reaching such a momentous decision was at odds with all the tenets of democracy. But what was she to do? The operation needed to be carried out quickly, to ensure the Syrian regime had as little time as possible to prepare to combat this onslaught from the West. The delay that would have occurred if parliamentary approval (or otherwise) had to be sought could have endangered the whole operation. Also, if parliament had said no, it would have given Russia an opportunity to claim a split in the West on this issue. Parliament was still in the Easter recess, so a reassembly would have delayed matters even further. Worse still, with a number of Tory MPs as angry as most Labour MPs about the decision to bypass parliament, the vote could easily have been lost. And that could have further - and possibly fatally - weakened Mrs May's already dwindling authority as Tory leader. So, all in all, it seemed the right thing to go ahead as she did, to ensure President Assad was aware of the detestation in the West about his alleged illegal activities. And he has been warned, too, that if there is a further breach, the USA is "locked and loaded" to mount another attack. The Prime Minister has struck the right note by saying that this is not about regime change, or interfering in a foreign civil war. It was simply a very dire warning to Assad that he had better not do it again - or else. It comes as a relief to hear the stop-and-search policy, which fell into decline because of accusations of racism, is to be stepped up again. Protesters had complained that a disproportionate number of black people were being stopped and searched, which made it difficult for the police to stop and search ethnic minorities without having charges of racism hurled at them. However, it is now apparent that a large proportion of the gun and knife crimes disfiguring the streets of London and elsewhere over recent months have involved black-on-black gang warfare. It may be an uncomfortable fact for some people to accept this, but it is nevertheless true. So, the police should have no inhibitions about whom they challenge in this way. They should go for the people they consider most likely to be carrying firearms, or knives - irrespective of any other consideration. The dire financial straits in which the National Health Service finds itself can only be worsened by the failure - or refusal - of foreigners who have received NHS treatment to pay for it. At present, the NHS is owed a colossal 150m by tourists from overseas, who have not paid a penny towards the service. It is a scandal which is hard to resolve and attempts by hospitals to recoup some of the money have produced only a tiny fraction of what is owed. Perhaps some arrangements could be made to stop backsliders from leaving the country until they have paid up. It is wrong that the NHS should have to act as debt collectors, so a way must be found to ensure that those selfish people should somehow be compelled to pay up for a service to which they have not contributed even a brass farthing. Ken Livingstone, Labour's former Mayor of London, has "with a heavy heart", he says, declined an invitation to take part in the TV reality show, I'm A Celebrity... Get Me Out Of Here! Livingstone said they were offering him a huge fee, just at a time when, he claimed, he was running out of money. But he felt he had to heed the protests of his children, who did not want to see him naked on the television screen. The Livingstone brood have done the nation a service; I don't think anyone would wish to see Mr Livingstone in the buff. Though there is, of course, the off button. First, they ditched the music. Now, the Wetherspoon pub chain has decided to leave the world of social media, closing its Facebook, Twitter and Instagram accounts in a move that has - of course - gone viral online. The firm's boss, Tim Martin, who was educated at Campbell College in Belfast, says the decision was made in response to reports about the use of social media to troll MPs and others. He also suggests that closing the accounts will not affect his business "whatsoever" - although one wonders how the decision will change the business for those staff who are presumably employed to run them. There is an obvious irony in Martin worrying about people haranguing public figures when he himself takes every opportunity to have a pop at anyone who dares to oppose Brexit. Martin, one of the few high-profile business figures to back Britain's EU withdrawal, even used a Wetherspoon trading update to accuse other business leaders and the media of spreading "misinformation" about the effects of Brexit on the economy. However, putting aside the question of Brexit - and passing by the fact that Martin bears an uncanny resemblance to CBeebies' favourite Mr Tumble - is this move really so surprising? A lot of the feedback companies get via social media is negative. So, why invite it if you don't have to? Even beyond the business considerations, Martin's apparent angst with the amount of time people spend on Twitter et al hardly seems unreasonable. There are few things more annoying than going to a pub and watching everyone around you compulsively checking their phones for the latest social media buzz. Indeed, arguably Martin hasn't gone far enough. What he should be doing is not only closing the Wetherspoon accounts but making it a new rule in his pubs that customers aren't allowed to post to social media for the duration of their drinking session. When you're coughing up less than three quid for a pint, not tweeting inanities for a couple of hours is surely a small price to pay. Remarkably, there are now almost 1,000 branches of the Wetherspoon chain around Britain, if you include its Lloyds No 1 bars and hotels (Mags Thomson from Livingston, who should get out less, made it her mission to visit the lot). Just think how many subsequently regretted tweets and Facebook posts wouldn't exist if frequenters of those outlets had to put away their mobiles. Still, when it comes to getting in a tiz about Wetherspoon, its social media policy and the boss's views on Brexit are relatively small beer. In the period since Tim Martin founded JD Wetherspoon, Britain has lost more than 20,000 pubs if you look at net closures. It is true to say here are myriad reasons for the decline - and some might even say that fewer pubs selling people less booze is a cause for celebration. There are also, if you're going to get into it, bigger beasts than Wetherspoon in the pub trade causing arguably bigger problems. "Pubcos" have become notorious for making it nigh-on-impossible for pub landlords to turn a decent profit; and for selling pubs to residential developers when they supposedly become unsustainable. And the big breweries are regularly accused of being unimaginative in the way they operate their pubs. Nevertheless, Wetherspoon has gained for itself a special place in the heart of critics who despair at the long, sad waning of the great British pub. Yes, the chain promotes real ale made by independent brewers and, yes, it has revitalised some remarkable buildings around the UK, notably theatres and cinemas. And yet, and yet. Aggressive pricing and forceful marketing have made life difficult for competitors, especially independents. And while the company says it tends not to open branches in the kind of (largely rural) places where other pubs are closing, that is overly simplistic as a defence. What's more, despite attempts to make their outlets unique, what Wetherspoon has achieved is a kind ubiquitous soullessness that, far from appealing to any sense of community, actually creates the kind of "citizen of nowhere" that Theresa May once contended was a product of globalisation. Tim Martin established his chain in the hope of recreating the idealised vision of a pub described by George Orwell in The Moon Under the Water. It is a vision which, in Martin's hands, has proved highly profitable yet fundamentally alien to romantic notions of what a "local" ought to be. Ditching social media feels like yet another attempt to appeal to nostalgia that will, as Martin says, make little difference to the business - which is all profit and no soul. Indonesias President Joko Widodo (right), and Gerindra Party Chairman Prabowo Subianto share a laugh during a meeting at Subiantos residence at Hambalang in Bogor, West Java, Oct. 31, 2016. President Joko Jokowi Widodo is expected to face off in a rematch against former Gen. Prabowo Subianto when Indonesians go to the polls in one year April 17, 2019. Still, pundits warn that much can happen in the next few months as parties and coalitions face an August deadline to nominate presidential candidates and their vice presidential running mates, given the pragmatic nature of political parties in the country. Before the race kicks off officially, Jokowi appears to be running strong, leading in polls by 30 percent to 40 percent against his rival. Other potential presidential candidates including former Armed Forces chief Gatot Nurmantyo, Jakarta Gov. Anies Baswedan and Agus Harimurti Yudhoyono, the son of former president Susilo Bambang Yudhoyono, show less support in the polling. Until August, there will be plenty of political compromises and thats the dynamic of Indonesian politics, Emrus Sihombing, a political lecturer at Pelita Harapan Universitys postgraduate program, told BenarNews. Its about trying to find the balance in power sharing, which party gets what power. After all, Indonesian politics is more pragmatic than ideological. Jokowis ruling coalition, led by Indonesian Democratic Party of Struggle (PDI-P), stepped out early in declaring support for the incumbent. Other parties in the coalition are Golkar, Islam-based United Development (PPP), Nasdem, Hanura and two new political parties, Indonesia Solidarity and Perindo. But the coalition is still not solid without a political contract, Voxpol Center political analyst Pangi Syarwi Chaniago told BenarNews. Chaniago said coalition members could back out if they find there was little or nothing to gain from the coalition. The top prize for coalition members would be having Jokowi select his running mate from their party. Jokowis PDI-P holds 109 seats, falling short of the 112 needed to field a candidate in the presidential race and forcing the party to form a coalition with other parties. The coalition represents 290 seats more than half of the 560-seat House of Representatives (DPR). Meanwhile, Prabowos Gerindra party falls 39 seats short of meeting the requirement and expects support from two Islam-based political parties, National Mandate Party (PAN), which has 49 seats; and the Prosperous Justice Party (PKS) with 40 seats. Pundits said PKS would be Gerindras most likely coalition partner. But I think even PKS could withdraw from the coalition should they find that they have nothing to gain from it, said Rico Marbun, the executive director of pollster Media Survei Nasional (Median). PKS has stated it wants Prabowo to pick one of its best nine candidates as his running mate before committing to a coalition with Gerindra. PKS President Sohibul Iman is among the nine candidates, along with West Java Gov. Ahmad Heryawan, former PKS President Anis Matta and senior member Mardani Ali Sera. It makes sense that we ask (Gerindra) to choose our candidates. Every party has its own rights, Ali Sera told BenarNews, adding it likely would withdraw its support if Prabowo did not select a PKS running mate. Gerindras secretary general, Ahmad Muzani, said his party could look for another coalition partner as it considers vice presidential candidates and PKS members. Our focus now is to grasp aspiration from the grassroots and find out who they prefer as vice presidential candidate, he said. Prabowo, a retired army special forces general and former son-in-law of the late Indonesian dictator Suharto, might have to look elsewhere for a vice presidential candidate as pollsters said the PKS candidates have little support from the public. The most popular vice presidential candidates are mainly non-party candidates, including Baswedan and Nurmantyo. Other parties that have not joined or established coalitions include National Mandate Party (PAN) with 49 seats, Democratic Party with 49 seats and National Awakening Party (PKB) with 47 seats. Incumbent popular Jokowi, who is expected to seek a second term but has not officially accepted his coalitions nomination nor named a vice presidential candidate, remains the most popular presidential candidate with electability ranges from 35 percent to 57 percent, while Prabowos numbers range from 20 percent to 42 percent. The official presidential campaign will begin Oct. 13 and end April 13, 2019, four days before 196.5 million eligible voters will be able to go to the polls. Once the parties register their presidential and vice-presidential candidates, political machines such as volunteers or those outside the official campaign team will launch their informal campaign, since the official one cannot start until October, Sihombing said. Local polling, known as Pilkada, are to be held on June 27 to elect 17 governors, 39 mayors and 115 regents for Indonesia's four most populous provinces West Java, East Java, Central Java and North Sumatra. Polarization The increased political polarization and use of religion as a tool to sway voters came to light in 2017 when Jakarta Gov. Basuki Ahok Tjahaja Purnama, a Chinese Christian, lost to Baswedan, who received backing from Muslim groups that raised protests against Ahok over blasphemy claims. Amien Rais, the chairman of PANs advisory board, was reported to police on Sunday by Cyber Indonesia over a speech he gave at a Jakarta mosque two days earlier. Now we have to mobilize all the strength of this nation to come together and strengthen this party, not just PAN, PKS, Gerindra, but the groups that defend the religion of Allah, that is hezbollah. To fight against who? To fight against the forces of Satan, he said at the Baiturrahim Mosque in South Jakarta as quoted by CNN Indonesia. Those who are anti-God, they automatically join the big party, that is the party of Satan, he said. Know that the party of demons must be inhabited by the destroyers, those that would destroy the world and the afterlife. Guests gather aboard the U.S. aircraft carrier USS Theodore Roosevelt while anchored off Manila Bay in the South China Sea, April 13, 2018. The Philippines said Tuesday its military alliance with the United States was built on a strong foundation of shared values, despite a widespread perception that Manila was increasingly gravitating toward Americas traditional rival, China. The statement came three days after the aircraft carrier USS Theodore Roosevelt hosted Manila dignitaries in the South China Sea. Philippine Defense Secretary Delfin Lorenzana underscored both countries 67-year-old alliance as he witnessed the groundbreaking ceremony for the construction of a warehouse in a northern airbase where American forces could store supplies under the Enhanced Defense Cooperation Agreement (EDCA). The U.S.-Philippines alliance is built on a strong foundation of shared values, sacrifices and history, Lorenzana said. Washington and Manila signed EDCA in 2012, granting the United States increased military presence in its former colony and allowing the rotation of ships and planes for humanitarian and maritime security operations. Nationalist groups have questioned EDCA before the Supreme Court, which ruled in 2016 that the agreement was constitutional. I know that EDCA is one of the sure ways to enhance our alliance and help promote peace and security in the region as it provides a framework through which both the Philippines and the United States will approach the evolving security challenges, Lorenzana said. EDCA is a demonstration that our two nations are interested in long term solutions to shared problems, he said. Lorenzana said the agreement would also support the Philippines long-term goal of modernizing the military, long considered as one of the most ill-equipped in the region. The prepositioning of equipment and supplies in a consolidated location increases our ability to respond quickly, Lorenzana emphasized, adding that the construction of the warehouse was a testament to the alliance. US pledges unwavering commitment to its ally Tuesdays event came shortly after the commander of the USS Theodore Roosevelt, Rear Adm. Steve Koehler, stressed that the United States was unwavering in its commitment to its ally. The carrier passed through the South China Sea on its way to Manila, in essence, to test the waters amid Chinas threat to curb freedom of navigation in the disputed sea, officials said. Dozens of top Philippine officials, including President Rodrigo Dutertes top aide Salvador Medialdea, as well as diplomats and other guests, were ferried to the ship anchored off Manila Bay. Washingtons envoy to Manila, Sun Kim, said the visit was a clear sign, a clear reflection, a demonstration or our commitment to the region. Our commitment to the U.S.-Philippine alliance is also our commitment to promoting and protecting important values, principles and rights like freedom of navigation, Kim said. This is an enduring friendship, partnership and I think the presence of this amazing, magnificent ship is a clear demonstration of that. The carriers visit comes days after China installed equipment on two of its fortified structures on the Spratlys that were said to be capable of jamming communication and radar systems, despite international concerns that it would be construed as militarizing the disputed region. The Spratlys is a group of atolls and islands in the South China Sea claimed in whole or in part by China, the Philippines, Brunei, Malaysia, Vietnam and Taiwan. While all the parties have agreed to avoid taking any action that could inflame the situation, China over recent years has been expanding what were once underwater features in the contested waters and fortifying islands it has occupied. Koehler did not respond directly when asked about Chinas move, but said: We will promote and ensure that those freedoms and those (waterways) are open to everybody. And so thats what weve done here and thats well continue to do in the region, professionally, and safely, like all other navies that weve run into. Ambassador Kim said the strike groups presence in Philippine waters is meant to show that the U.S. is serious when President Donald Trump said during a visit in the region in November that his government would make sure to secure and promote an open and free regional waterway. The 1,092-foot ship carrying some of the U.S. Navys top combat arsenal proved Roosevelts famous adage of speaking softly while carrying a big stick, Kim said. But I might take exception to the first part of Teddy Roosevelts saying about speaking softly. I think there are times that we should speak loudly and clearly and the presence of Theodore Roosevelt here in Manila Bay sends a very clear message to everyone in the region especially to our friends in the Philippines, he said. Because our commitment to the U.S.-Philippine alliance is unbreakable and will remain so indefinitely, he said, emphasizing that Washingtons commitment was enduring. Among others, Kim noted that the U.S. responded when the Philippines sought military assistance in defeating pro-Islamic State militants who had occupied the southern city of Marawi last year. Duterte publicly has shown efforts to cultivate closer diplomatic and military relations with China since he took office in June 2016, but has accepted aerial surveillance help from Australia and the United States during the height of the Marawi fighting that killed 1,200 people, most of them militants. The United States Agency for International Development has allocated $20.9 million to help Marawi residents, but the Philippine government is evaluating project proposals from a Chinese-led consortium to lead the reconstruction efforts in the southern city. Plus, Bill's Message of the Day, is Joe Biden lying to us? Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices The startup plans to use the funding to scale up its pan-India operations. Delhi-NCR based LetsMD, which offers a platform to discover healthcare financing options, has raised $1 million in Pre Series A round of funding led by SRI Capital with participation from existing investors Waterbridge Ventures and Thinkuvate. The startup plans to use the funding to scale up its pan-India operations. Founded in 2015 by Nivesh Khandelwal, LetsMD allows users to discover and compare the costs and offerings of various medical procedures offered by healthcare networks and hospitals. At the same time, the startup also provides facilities for healthcare loans for 10-24 months. LetsMD leverages technology to originate loans fast and cater to a wide segment of borrowers. LetsMD has tied-up with more than 200 reputed hospitals and super specialty chains like Fortis Healthcare, Max Healthcare in the Delhi-NCR region so far. AstraZeneca announces an investment of $90 million in India over the next 5 years to develop local skills, build scientific innovation and promote quality manufacturing with the aim to improve overall health outcomes in the country. Leading global science-led biopharmaceutical company AstraZeneca has announced its decision of further investing $ 90 million over the next 5 years in India. The announcement was made following a meeting between the companys Executive Vice President for International Region Mr. Leon Wang and Honorable Prime Minister of India, Shri Narendra Modi, during the latters visit to Sweden, where the two countries signed a joint declaration on innovation partnership for a sustainable future. This investment commitment will span across AstraZenecas diverse footprint in India with an aim to strengthen its manufacturing, clinical operations, patient safety & regulatory science, IT services and commercial operations. Furthermore, this investment will support scientific data generation, quality manufacturing, science talent development and collaborative development of innovative solutions to improve the standard of care of non-communicable diseases in India. The commitment also aligns closely with the Indian governments initiatives to create a stronger business, innovation, and healthcare environment such as Skill India, National Health Policy and Ayushman Bharat. Leon Wang, Executive Vice President for International Region, AstraZeneca, said AstraZeneca has a long-standing commitment in India of 40 years. Our latest investment reflects our commitment to address the unmet needs in non-communicable diseases, enable high-value job creation and boost medical innovation in the country. We believe, this investment commitment across AstraZenecas business footprint in India, will make a positive impact. It also aligns closely with the governments vision for healthcare and innovation. AstraZenecas strategy in India is to address the growing burden of non-communicable diseases. The company invests in many initiatives and programs such as the Young Health Programme, Early action in Diabetes & Healthy Lung for early action in awareness, prevention, detection and holistic management of non-communicable diseases. At present, AstraZeneca has a workforce of over 4000 employees in India spanning manufacturing, sales and marketing, clinical operations, IT services, digital services and Global medicines development. The company recently announced expansion of its Global Technology Centre (GTC) in Chennai, now employing more than 2000 employees. GTC is AstraZenecas first, insourced IT facility. AstraZenecas manufacturing facility in Bengaluru has a sophisticated production facility designed to meet the most stringent international standards, conforming to World Health Organisation cGMP (current Good Manufacturing Practices) norms. AstraZeneca also has a sizeable clinical operation and is expanding its Global medicines development unit that focusses on patient safety and regulatory science in India. Visit expo > Gold Supplier COMBO INFLUENZA A+B-CHECK-1 INFLUENZA A/B RAPID TEST New Panther Scalable Solutions High Throughput Molecular Testing Solution New Gold Supplier Sapphire Pipette Tips Pipette Tips New VIASURE HLA Celiac Real Time PCR Detection Kit Celiac Real Time PCR Detection Kit A team of Finnish researchers conducted a study to evaluate the differences in chemical features between inhibitors and activators of the cancer-related SIRT6 gene.SIRT6 (Sirtuin 6) is a chromatin-associated enzyme that is required for normal base excision repair of DNA damage in mammalian cells. Deficiency of SIRT6 in mice leads to abnormalities that overlap with aging-associated degenerative processes. SIRT6 also promotes the repair of DNA double-strand breaks by the process of non-homologous end joining.Flavonoids are polyphenolic secondary metabolites synthesized by plants and fungi with various pharmacological effects. Due to their many classes of biological activity, they have been studied extensively in drug development. Flavonoids have been shown to modulate the activity of a NAD+-dependent histone deacetylase, SIRT6. Since SIRT6 has been implicated in longevity, metabolism, DNA-repair, and inflammatory response reduction, it is an interesting target in inflammatory and metabolic diseases as well as in cancer.Investigators at the University of Eastern Finland (Kuopio, Finland) reported in the March 7, 2018, online edition of the journal Scientific Reports that flavonoids could alter SIRT6 activity in a structure dependent manner. Catechin derivatives with galloyl moiety displayed significant inhibition potency against SIRT6 at 10 microMolar concentration. The most potent SIRT6 activator, cyanidin, belonged to the family of anthocyanidins, and produced a 55-fold increase in SIRT6 activity compared to the three to 10-fold increase for the others. Cyanidin was also found to significantly increase SIRT6 expression in human colon adenocarcinoma Caco-2 cells. Cyanidin also decreased the expression of the TWIST1 and GLUT1 cancer promoter genes in Caco-2 cells, while increasing the expression of the tumor suppressor FOXO3 gene in the cells.Results from docking studies indicated possible binding sites for SIRT6 inhibitors and activators. Inhibitors likely attached in a manner that could disturb NAD+ binding. The putative activator-binding site was found next to a loop near the acetylated peptide substrate-binding site. In some cases, the activators changed the conformation of this loop suggesting that it might play a role in SIRT6 activation."The most interesting results of our study relate to cyanidin, which is an anthocyanin found abundantly in wild bilberry, blackcurrant, and lingonberry," said first author Dr. Minna Rahnasto-Rilla, pharmacology researcher at the University of Eastern Finland. A major Belfast construction materials business, Lagan Group, has been sold for 455m (526m). UK construction giant Breedon Group has acquired a suite of businesses owned by Kevin Lagan. Mr Lagan's other key business - Lagan Homes - is not part of the deal. By acquiring Lagan Group, Breedon, already one of the UK's largest construction materials groups, will take over Whitemountain, Lagan Cement, Lagan Brick, Lagan Asphalt and Welsh Slate. The Lagan Group's combined earnings in 2017 amounted to 55m (63m). The combination of Breedon and Lagan's materials interests will create a workforce of around 3,000 and turnover of more than 900m (1.04bn). Mr Lagan, who has driven the growth of his business for 40 years, said: "Our committed and passionate staff at Lagan Group have contributed significantly to the development and growth of the business, differentiating us from our competition in all of the markets in which we operate. "I'd like to thank the staff for the role they have played in the growth of Lagan Group, and I wish them every success as they enter an exciting new chapter with Breedon, who I am confident will build on that success, supporting the development of the business in the years ahead". Mr Lagan said he intended to pursue a managed growth strategy with his retained interests, Lagan Homes and FastHouse businesses. Breedon's executive chairman, Peter Tom, said: "We are delighted to have completed our largest acquisition to date and particularly pleased that it has been so strongly supported by our shareholders. "Over the last eight years we have pursued a successful buy-and-build strategy which has established Breedon as the largest independent construction materials business in the UK and the acquisition of Lagan is another strategic step for us. "We believe it has the potential to add significantly to the group's performance and prospects, and we are looking forward to working with our new colleagues to deliver further value for our investors." The Lagan brand was established by Mr Lagan's father, Peter, in 1960 when he opened his first quarry. Kevin and his brother, Michael, then took over the reins and built a huge business empire. They later went their separate ways, dividing the assets between them. The acquisition of Kevin Lagan's Lagan Group comes weeks after it was announced that four firms within Michael Lagan's Lagan Construction Group had gone into administration, putting 200 jobs at risk. - PA Irish organisations who embrace digital culture can benefit from a significant competitive advantage, new research from Microsoft Ireland has found. The survey shows that where there is a strong digital culture in a company, 99% of employees experience average to high productivity and 98% experience average to high innovation. The research found that 93% of employees in Ireland have low to average productivity, and only 11% say they feel feel highly productive while 14% say they feel highly engaged. According to the research, Irish organisations with a strong digital culture have twice as many employees who feel productive, three times as many feel innovative, four times as many feel engaged, and five times as many feel empowered. However, 84% of Irish workers say they work in a weak digital culture. Microsoft conducted the research on over 20,476 employees across 21 EU countries. In Ireland, over 1,000 employees were interviewed across the 25-44 years of age range, with questions focused on the technology they used, as well as their attitudes about their jobs and performance. They describe digital culture as where an organisation encourages and supports technology use to get work done in the most effective way. Aisling Curtis, Commercial Director, Microsoft Ireland said: One year ago, we said that organisations had two years to transform or risk losing out to competitors. And one year on, that message has been strengthened with this latest research highlighting the need for significant action in Ireland when we consider that a massive 84% of Irish employees believe they work within a weak digital culture. "To combat this, leaders need to be clear on whether their organisation has a set of guidelines for how technology should be used and whether their people have been brought along that journey, she said. - Digital Desk By Gordon Deegan Accumulated profits at one of the countrys best-known booksellers, Dubray Books increased to over 1.38m last year. Tapping an increase in book sales, the cash pile at Dubray Books Ltd jumped from 676,819 to 893,096 in the 12 months to the end of August. Chief executive Maria Dickenson said: Readers are definitely returning to the printed book, a welcome respite from hours spent on screens and devices. New releases from Liz Nugent and the Happy Pear are expected to help drive sales over the summer and were looking forward to the November publication of Michelle Obamas memoir, Ms Dickenson said. She said that in 2016 and 2107, its bestsellers were Paul OConnells The Battle, Graham Nortons Holding, and Bruce Springsteens Born to Run. Sales of Michael Wolffs Fire and Fury had boosted business too. The business has eight stores in Dublin, Galway, and Bray. Ms Dickenson said it performed well in the context of a competitive market, stressing that investments in its stores, including a new cafe in Grafton St in Dublin were key for improving footfall. On the current year, Ms Dickenson said the industry was cautiously optimistic. Footfall is improving in most sites and consumer confidence seems to be growing but Brexit casts some uncertainty. We have seen strong growth in our online offer and expect this to continue, she said. Britain's economy is set to underperform compared to major European peers over the next two years as it grapples with Brexit, according to the International Monetary Fund. The IMF, in its World Economic Outlook, said that business investment is expected to "remain weak" in light of heightened uncertainty over post-Brexit arrangements. Higher barriers to trade and lower foreign direct investment are also set to weigh as the UK divorces from the bloc. Economic growth is expected to come in at 1.6% in 2018 and 1.5% in 2019, a slowdown from 1.9% in 2016 and 1.8% in 2017. The figures show that only Italy among major European nations will perform worse over the next two years. A spokesman for the Treasury said in response: "Our economy is at a turning point with our national debt starting to fall and the lowest unemployment rate for 40 years. "We are building an economy that works for everyone by taking a balanced approach to supporting our public services, investing to improve our productivity and helping families keep more of what they earn." The world economy, meanwhile, is on course to notch up the strongest pace of growth since 2011 at 3.9%. But the organisation's chief economist warned that the prospect of an escalating trade war "threatens to undermine confidence and derail global growth prematurely". Maurice Obstfeld said that economic gains are at risk from "escalating tensions over trade". US President Donald Trump, who campaigned on a pledge to protect US industries from what he claims is unfair foreign competition, has slapped tariffs on steel and aluminium imports. He has also proposed imposing tariffs on $50bn worth of Chinese imports. China has countered by proposing tariffs on $50bn of US products, including soybeans. The prospect of a trade war between the world's two biggest economies has rattled financial markets for weeks. The IMF also upgraded its forecast for the 19-country eurozone to 2.4% - which would be its best showing since 2007 - and up from the 2.2% it predicted three months ago. - Press Association A young Mayo artist has been named the overall winner of this year's 64th Texaco Children's Art Competition. Hetty Lawlor, a 17-year old student from Kilmeena, near Westport and a pupil at the local Sacred Heart School, will take first prize in the senior 16-18 years age category. Her winning entry, a portrait study of a young neighbour entitled Grainne, which she completed in acrylic and colour pencil, was described by competition adjudicators as a captivating portrait, beautifully composed, perfectly executed and life-like in its use of colour, tone and texture. Hetty is familiar to television viewers here and overseas thanks to her participation in the recent Sky Arts Portrait Artist of the Year competition and her subsequent appearance on the Ray DArcy show on RTE One. She is from an artistic family; her father Jimmy is an artist, her mother Phyl designs carpets and rugs, and her sister Anna studies animation at college in Dun Laoghaire. Hetty was inspired by her father Jimmy and his success as a 16-year old student when, in 1984, he too won the overall first prize in the competition. "His support, and the hope that I could follow in his footsteps, is one of the main reasons why I persisted in entering the competition," Hetty said. Jimmy Lawlor, father of Hetty Lawlor, pictured as a 16-year-old student after he too had won overall prize in the 1984 competition. Hetty said she was amazed she was chosen as overall winner. "Knowing of the many renowned and highly talented artists who have won prizes in the competition down through the years, I feel hugely honoured to be amongst them." "She is the latest in a generation of young prize winners whose work is testament to the depth of artistic ability existing in Ireland today and an illustration of the very high standard of entries being submitted in the Texaco Childrens Art Competition," said Professor Declan McGonagle, Chairman of the judging panel. In winning the coveted first prize, she fought off competition from thousands of young students across Ireland who took part in the competition. She will be presented with her prize at a ceremony to be held in the Royal Hospital Kilmainham next month, when all of the 126 winners, from seven categories, will be in attendance. Planning to pursue third-level studies in art, Hettys prize will include a cheque for 1,500 plus a visit to Tokyo in August at the invitation of the International Foundation for Arts and Culture. There she will be guest at the 19th International High School Arts Festival in which her winning artwork will be exhibited at the National Arts Center. Check out all the winning entries here: By Sarah-Jane Murphy The Central Bank suggested that Irish banks issue bonds on the understanding they would be bought by each other to promote confidence in the markets, a court has heard. Today David Gantly, former chief dealer at Irish Life and Permanent (ILP) continued his evidence at David Drumm's conspiracy to defraud trial at Dublin Circuit Criminal Court. Mr Drumm (51), former CEO of Anglo, accepts that multi-million euro transactions took place between Anglo and ILP in 2008 but disputes they were fraudulent or dishonest. Mr Gantly agreed with Brendan Grehan SC, defending, that the heads of treasury from six major Irish banks were invited to the Central Bank for a meeting on November 6, 2008. It was suggested to them that they issue bonds and then buy the debt from each other, with a view to improving confidence, Mr Grehan said. Mr Gantly said that this showed just how bad things were in Irish banking at the time. The Central Bank wanted as many safety nets as possible, he said. He told Mr Grehan that this type of activity between banks was not unusual, but said the support that came from banks to each other on the bonds was much higher. And this was the Central Bank and the Financial Regulator telling you to issue bonds? Mr Grehan asked. Yes, Mr Gantly replied. And would this have been disclosed to the market? Mr Grehan continued. No. Absolutely not, the witness replied. Mr Drumm, of Skerries, Dublin, has pleaded not guilty to conspiring with former bank officials Denis Casey, William McAteer, John Bowe and others to defraud depositors and investors at Anglo Irish Bank by dishonestly creating the impression that deposits in 2008 were 7.2 billion larger than they were. The bank's former CEO has also pleaded not guilty to false accounting on December 3, 2008, by furnishing information to the market that Anglo's 2008 deposits were 7.2 billion larger than they were. The trial, is now in its eleventh week, and continues before Judge Karen O'Connor and a jury of ten men and four women. Update 6.50pm: Facebook will launch transparency tools in Ireland on April 25 targeting "dark ads" ahead of the abortion referendum. Ireland will be only the second country after Canada to enjoy the reforms allowing users of the social media network to see advertisements. It precedes a global rollout expected in June, the tech giant said. It is bidding to win back the trust of its billions of account-holders after Cambridge Analytica was involved in a dispute over the use of personal Facebook data and whether it was used to sway the outcome of the US presidential election and Brexit referendum. Joel Kaplan, Facebook's vice-president for global policy, said: "We are working hard to build out these transparency tools and roll them out globally but it takes time to do this. "From April 25 we will add Ireland to our pilot programme." Facebook vice president of global policy Joel Kaplan arrives to give evidence to the Committee on Communications, Climate Action and Environment at Leinster House in Dublin as it considers the potential influence of social media on previous and future elections and referenda. PRESS ASSOCIATION Photo. Facebook Ireland's Niamh Sweeney said the programme was aimed at micro-targeting by dark ads, which target users because they are, for example, women living in urban areas or men living in rural regions. Mr Kaplan told Government TDs that users in Ireland would be able to see all the adverts which advertisers are running on Facebook at the same time. They will be unable to see who has paid for certain adverts at this stage. Voters will decide whether they want to change Ireland's strict abortion laws in May. Mr Kaplan added: "We made the decision only in recent days to accelerate and include Ireland in the pilot programme." The firm is also reviewing some online apps after the Cambridge Analytica data controversy. Those "similarly situated" are being checked for suspicious activity. Data Protection Commissioner Helen Dixon arrives to give evidence to the Committee on Communications, Climate Action and Environment at Leinster House in Dublin as it considers the potential influence of social media on previous and future elections and referenda. PRESS ASSOCIATION Photo. Dr Aleksandr Kogan is accused of giving the private information of tens of millions of Facebook users to controversial election consultants Cambridge Analytica after collecting it via a Facebook app in 2013. Mr Kaplan told the Dail: "We are going back and looking at all of the apps similarly situated. We are now going back and looking at all of those apps seeing if any of them are engaging in suspicious activity. "If they are we will conduct a full audit and if they have misused their data we will tell the people affected." He said they were putting in place safeguards and locking down access by developers to some platforms so the problem was not recreated in the future. Update 5.30pm: Facebook executive apologises and reveals Ireland to be included in pilot Facebook 'transparency' feature Ireland will be included in a pilot programme for the first phase of Facebook's new 'view ads' feature. This feature will give people greater transparency on the ads that they see on Facebook, which is particularly important in the context of the forthcoming referendum on the 8th amendment. From next week, people will be able to see every ad an organisation is running on the site, even if they are not in your news feed. Senior reps from Facebook also told an Oireachtas committee this afternoon that they could have done better responding to concerns about user data being harvested by Cambridge Analytica. The site's Vice President for Global Policy, Joel Kaplan has admitted mistakes were made. He said: "We do not believe we are a victim here, we believe we have a broader responsibility to people who use Facebook. We want to make right on mistakes we made with respect to this app but we want to go further and give the people who use Facebook the confidence that their data is safe. How View Ads Feature Works: View ads is a new feature that will enable Irish users to see all ads an advertiser is running on Facebook at the same time, even if those ads are not in your News Feed. Facebook users can click on the advertisers Page, select About and scroll to View Active Ads where they will see all of the ads that Page is running on Facebook. This update is designed to help ensure users have the information needed to assess all ads on Facebook including political and issue ads. This announcement follows the launch of a false news educational notice to help people in Ireland spot false news. Update 5.20pm: People being manipulated through social media in relation to elections and referendums, says Data Protection Commissioner The Data Protection Commissioner says there are concerns people are being manipulated through social media in relation to elections and referendums. Recent reporting into the activities of Cambridge Analytica and Facebook have brought into focus the question of whether big data analytics and micro-targeting are being used to influence political outcomes. Appearing before the Communications Committee this afternoon Helen Dixon warned the 'autonomy of individuals is potentially being jeopardised'. She said: "Big data analytics involves the practice of analysing large data sets using sophisticated algorithms to identify patterns and trends, with a view to informing decisions made in relation to individuals, such as deciding what subsets of individuals might be targetted with selective material in an attempt to influence choices, preferences and behaviours towards a particular outcome." Update 5pm: Data Protection Commissioner investigating INM employee claims over emails accessed without prior knowledge The Data Protection Commissioner says they have received complaints from INM employees about their emails being accessed without prior knowledge. Helen Dixon is appearing before TDs and Senators at an Oireachtas Committee this afternoon. Commissioner Helen Dixon says they are investigating the claims from INM employees. Speaking today, she said: "We have also received complaints from individuals within the specific context of that individual and their employment context, that their emails were accessed without their knowledge. "We have investigated those particular cases." Data Protection Commissioner Helen Dixon. Update 3.50pm: Facebook executives facing questions over Cambridge Analytica scandal at Oireachtas The Data Protection Commissioner is examining how social media can be used to influence people in a political sphere. Facebook is attending a Dail Communications Committee meeting this afternoon. At the hearing, the Commissioner Helen Dixon says there is a need to investigate political micro-targeting and its potential influence on Elections and Referenda. She says concerns about manipulation of voters have yet to be proved. She said: "I would emphasise that with political micro-targeting the concerns about the manipulation of voters through such activities remain largely theoretical at this stage. It has been recognised in the academic context that currently there is no hard evidence of such activity actually having a tangible impact on the outcome of elections. Earlier: Facebook executives to face questions over Cambridge Analytica scandal at Oireachtas Some of Facebook's top executives will face questions from TDs and Senators today on the Cambridge Analytica scandal. The Communications Committee is looking into the impact of social media on elections and referendums, like the upcoming abortion vote. Appearing today are Vice President of Global Policy Joel Kaplan and the Head of Public Policy for Ireland Niamh Sweeney. The Data Protection Commissioner Helen Dixon will also give evidence about her role in protecting citizens' personal information. Committee Chair Deputy Hildegarde Naughton wants to hear whether the commissioner needs more powers. She said: "I really feel it's important that we have Helen Dixon before the committee to outline areas if she feels that she needs greater powers, we as an Oireachtas definitely need to step in to facilitate that." Ms Naughton also said Facebook still has questions to answer. She said: "I don't think there will be anyone holding back in relation to the questions. If we feel we're not getting answers, it's a very serious issue. "We know the effect of social media, how it fuels opinion now right across every sector from politics to young people and business and communities. "It is important that when people go online, they know that they are safe." - Digital Desk Update 7.30pm: Gardai are continuing to question six people in connection with a series of raids by officers investigating an international drugs gang. Five men and a woman were arrested today and 250,000 was seized after the operation across Dublin. They are suspected of being involved in money laundering with cash made from drug trafficking in Australia and New Zealand. Update - 1.56pm: Gardai release photos of 250k, some hidden in a mattress, seized in Dublin raids linked to Australia and New Zealand Gardai have released photos of some of the cash they seized in today's raids in Dublin. The raids were carried out at a number of addresses in the greater Dublin area. They seized around 250,000 in cash and arrested six people, five men aged 27 to 31 and one woman aged 24, on suspicion of money laundering offences. They are being held at various Dublin Garda stations. Assistant Commissioner John ODriscoll of Special Crime Operations, said: "This is further evidence of the enhanced level of co-operation that An Garda Siochana, and Special Crime Operations, in particular, have engaged in in recent times with a view to tackling the organised crime gangs that operate at an international level. 11.31am: Gardai investigating drug links to Australia make number of arrests in Dublin raids Gardai investigating a criminal gang in Ireland with links to a cocaine dealing operation in Australia have made a number of arrests. The arrests were made in a series of raids of at least six premises in Dublin where more than 200,000 has been seized so far. It is being reported that Australian police have also made some arrests over the last weeks in connection with the investigation. It is believed that after the cocaine is sold in Australia, the money is being laundered in Ireland. Officers from the Drugs and Organised Crime Bureau, which is investigating the activities of the Kinahan crime gang, are investigating and the searches continue. Update 10.40pm: Fianna Fail says the Government has ignored warnings from the farming community about the developing fodder crisis. The Dail is debating a motion from the party this evening, that calls for greater support for farmers. It says farmers need measures including a meal voucher scheme, a hardship fund, and a pause to farm inspections. Fianna Fail's Agriculture spokesperson Charlie McConalogue says it is the second time farmers have faced this crisis in five years. He said: "Unfortunately, despite it happening in the recent past we have seen a situation where the Government has been totally unprepared. "Your response has been entirely woeful and you have left the farming community without the type of leadership that they expect from the Government." Fianna Fail's Agriculture spokesperson Charlie McConalogue. Earlier: IFA calls for doubling of Government supports for struggling farmers during fodder crisis The IFA is calling for a doubling of government supports for farmers who are struggling due to the fodder crisis. The association says last night's heavy rainfall in many areas is making the situation worse. It wants the subsidy increased from 60 to 120 per bale of fodder. A meeting of the IFA's National Council also called for the removal of red tape surrounding the fodder scheme. It says it is time for the Agriculture Minister Michael Creed to make good on a promise to make more funding available if needed. - Digital Desk By Ann O'Loughlin The EU Court of Justice has upheld arguments by opponents of a wind farm concerning the extent of the state agency, Coillte's, environmental responsibilities in relation to grid connection works for a windfarm in Co Laois. The objectors case raised important issues concerning the extent of obligations under the EC Habitats Directive. When referring the issues to the CJEU in March 2017, the High Court's Mr Justice Max Barrett noted the objectors argued the possible extinguishment of the Nore Freshwater Pearl Mussel, a species thought to be unique to Ireland and the River Nore region, "may be at stake". The issues concerned whether mitigation measures, in the context of the requirements of Article 6.3 of the Directive, can be considered, as Coillte maintained, at the screening stage of a particular development or, as the objectors insisted, at the stage of an appropriate assessment. In its judgment, the CJEU said Article 6.3 means, in order to decide whether it is necessary to carry out an appropriate assessment of the implications of a particular project for a protected site, the screening stage is not the appropriate stage to take account of measures intended to avoid or reduce harmful effects of the project. A "full and precise" analysis of the measures capable of avoiding or reducing any significant effects on the relevant site must be carried out, not at the screening stage, but at the stage of the appropriate assessment, it said. Taking account of such measures at the screening stage would be liable to "compromise" the practical effect of the Directive in general and the assessment stage in particular as the latter stage would be deprived of its purpose. There would be a risk of "circumvention" of that stage, which was "an essential safeguard" provided for by the Directive. The assessment under Article 6.3 must have "complete, precise and definitive" findings and conclusions capable of removing all scientific doubt as to the effects of the proposed works on the relevant protected site, it said. The CJEU added that persons such as these applicants have a right to participate in a procedure for adoption of a decision relating to an application for authorisation of a project likely to have a significant effect on the environment. The case will now return to the High Court which will take the CJEU findings into account when deciding it. The proceedings arose after Coillte got permission for eighteen wind turbines and associated development on lands at Cullenagh, close to the villages of Timahoe and Ballyroan. People Over Wind and environmentalist Peter Sweetman, who had unsuccessfully opposed the permission, later challenged a July 2016 determination by Coillte, made under 2011 regulations giving effect to the Habitats Directive, that grid connection works to connect the windfarm to an ESB substation in Portlalaoise did not require a stage two appropriate assessment. They argued such an assessment was required for reasons including the grid connection works, individually or with other plans or projects, are likely to have a significant effect on a European site. They also claimed the mitigation measures proposed were not clearly defined and did not form part of an enforceable development consent. Coillte argued its determination complies with the Directive and, given the outcome of a stage one screening assessment, there was no requirement for a stage two assessment. It maintained protective measures applied at the design stage of a proposed development can be taken into account in the stage one assessment By Eoin English A rates holiday has been ruled out for traders who say their business has been hit by the afternoon car ban on Corks St Patricks Street. And while the new traffic system can be tweaked, it will not be scrapped until its impact has been fully assessed with the help of at least three months of data. That was the message from City Hall ahead of whats expected to be a large meeting of city centre traders tomorrow night to discuss what many have described as the citys traffic crisis. The head of the citys transportation directorate, Gerry OBeirne, said he is surprised at the backlash given there was little criticism of the three-month restrictions on the street last summer for upgrades. But he said that if issues emerge, they will be addressed as they were last week when a package of parking incentives was introduced. Read more on the latest developments in this story in tomorrow's Irish Examiner. The latest developments come as under-fire Cork city officials faced a formal call to suspend the controversial ban. Fianna Fail councillor Ken OFlynn broke ranks last night with his party and tabled a motion calling for the traffic initiative to be suspended in the immediate interests of jobs, confidence, and the national image of Cork. The motion, which will be discussed at a full council meeting next Monday, emerged after a lengthy meeting of the councils roads committee and ahead of a traders meeting on the issue tomorrow night. The Fianna Fail leader on the council, Terry Shannon, said the motion does not represent the view of his partys members, who had agreed to wait until a full progress report is presented by officials to next Mondays full council meeting. He said officials were asked last night to consider a park and ride bus stop on the citys main street to help offset the impact of the car ban, to consider a city centre shuttle bus service to boost footfall, and to extend the package of parking incentives. Officials are also due to report back on the suggestions next Monday. Earlier, several members of the councils Fianna Fail group went on a walk-about in the city and met traders to discuss the issue. Mr Shannon said it is clear that traders need to be supported. I accept the concerns of traders. We have to listen to them and identify how do we mitigate the problems, he said. Im glad city management have introduced some of the parking initiatives that we, as councillors, have been calling for for some time. They appear to be working, but we need to be flexible, and consider extending them. The issue of a shuttle bus, and bringing the park and ride bus into St Patricks St were suggested last night. We must remain committed to traders, especially the family-owned, Cork-owned businesses. However, three weeks into the 3pm-6.30pm car ban, which is designed to improve bus journey times, controversy is still raging. The Cork Business Association (CBA) wants the ban scrapped and has invited traders to attend a meeting in the city centre tomorrow night to discuss the issue. City council chief executive Ann Doherty has asked for the car ban to be given three months to bed in and has introduced a parking incentives package to support traders. Cork Chamber also said it needs more time before its impact can be fully assessed. The CBA said traders can not afford to wait three months, and has warned that jobs are now at risk. The Green Party in Cork says that, despite the controversy, it still believes the afternoon car ban is the right thing to do. The partys representative in Cork North Central, Oliver Moran, said several small fixes could help, including fixing real-time bus information signs, extending the bike share scheme to the Black Ash park and ride, and the installation of more floral displays in the city. Several big picture suggestions also emerged following a public meeting it organised last week, including: - A weekend-only car ban; - Hiking parking charges in the suburbs to address the current bias towards suburban shopping centres; - A waterbus from Horgans Quay to the Lower Harbour and shuttle bus service from the train station to St Patricks St. The meeting also called for a retail strategy for the city centre, a grant scheme for conversion of over-shop floors to residential spaces, the elimination of charges for businesses with outdoor seating in compliance with planning, and a new bus ticketing system to allow multi-trip connection rides. Missile strikes on Syria at the weekend were an "act of aggression" which risk causing the outbreak of a wider conflict, a Russian diplomat has said. Britain joined the US and France in mounting strikes on Syria's chemical warfare facilities after 75 people were thought to have died in a suspected chemical attack on the rebel-held town of Douma. The ambassador of the Russian Federation to Ireland warned that Russia - the Syrian regime's principle backer - is losing "the last bit of trust" it had with the west, describing this as a "very dangerous development". Speaking at a press conference in Dublin, Yury Filatov said the suggestion that Russia or Syria tampered with evidence to cover up the Douma attack was "absolutely ridiculous". Mr Filatov told reporters: "We have to state that the situation around Syria has deteriorated significantly. "Obviously that is the result of the reckless actions by Washington, London and Paris. "What is going right now is they are making every effort possible to look for the face-saving exit of the situation they themselves created. They are trying to whitewash their action. There is pretty much smoke around the whole thing. "We have to call things for what they really are. The fact remains that on April 14 the United States supported by the UK and France launched an air strike against military and civilian targets in Syria. "That was an act of aggression against a sovereign state. It was done without mandate from the United Nations Security Council and in clear violation of the UN charter or any other conceivable international law. "We certainly condemn that in most resolute terms." Mr Filatov added: "The attack we have witnessed (air strikes) certainly brought the whole situation to the brink of a wider conflict which is in nobody's interests." Russian foreign minister Sergey Lavrov has flatly denied that Russia had "tampered" with the evidence and insisted there was no proof that chemical weapons had even been used in Douma. Mr Filatov suggested the strikes were intended to impede the investigation so nobody would know the truth, adding that experts have not yet found any traces of chlorine or any other toxic agents. "As far as we can see there was no attack," he said, adding: "Not a single local resident was able to confirm that a chemical attack had actually taken place." Mr Filatov said the suspected chemical attack had "definitely been staged", and said images had been "fabricated". He denied that Russia was behind cyber attacks, saying that people try to depict Russia as being the "source of all evil" - something he described as a "really ridiculous concept". His comments came as the UK and US issued an unprecedented joint alert on the threat of "malicious cyber activity" by the Russian state. Meanwhile, UK Prime Minister Theresa May has accused Moscow of preventing inspectors for the Organisation for the Prohibition of Chemical Weapons (OPCW) reaching Douma. Russian officials at OPCW headquarters in The Hague later said arrangements were being made for the inspectors to travel to the site tomorrow. - Digital Desk and Press Association By Ann O'Loughlin The Supreme Court has refused to hear an appeal by a man over a decision to increase from 15 to 19 years his sentence for the rape and sexual assault of a woman whose child he abducted in the same incident. Michael Murray had argued the absence of established sentencing tariffs is unfair both to accused persons and trial judges, the Supreme Court noted. While that issue may have to be considered in "an appropriate case", the court could not, on the facts of Murray's case, see "any potential benefit" to him in granting an appeal for that purpose. Murray (46), formerly of Killiney Oaks, Killiney, Co Dublin, was originally jailed for 15 years for rape, attempted rape, oral rape, aggravated sexual assault, child abduction, threats to kill or cause serious harm, false imprisonment and theft at a Dublin apartment on February 12-13 2010. His trial heard Murray lured the woman into an apartment by telling her an elderly woman was dying inside and needed her help. He tied her up and assaulted her before taking her four-year-old son away and abandoning him in a city centre square late at night. He then returned to the apartment where he drugged and raped his victim. He was found guilty on all counts but the DPP later sought a review of his 15-year sentence on grounds it was "unduly lenient". In November 2017, a three-judge Court of Appeal (COA) substituted a sentence of 19 years after finding the 15-year sentence was "inadequate to a significant extent". Murray applied for permission to appeal that 19-year sentence to the Supreme Court but, in their recently published determination, three Supreme Court judges said he had failed to show the case raised issues of general public importance or an appeal was necessary in the interests of justice. The Chief Justice, Mr Justice Frank Clarke, Ms Justice Elizabeth Dunne and Ms Justice Iseult O'Malley said Murray had argued, because the original 15-year sentence was within the available range for rape offences, there was no error in principle in the original sentence and the Court of Appeal erred in interfering with it. The trial judge had identified the case as falling into the most serious category of such offences and there could be "no dispute" about the correctness of that, the Supreme Court said. While the trial judge had imposed a sentence at the bottom of the range of 15 years to life for such offence, that sentence was "not immune on appeal". It can be an error in principle to choose a particular point on a scale, whether at the top or bottom end, which does not properly reflect the circumstances of a particular offence, the court said. It said the COA had expressly referred to the criterion for finding a sentence unduly lenient - that it falls outside the applicable range - and identified errors in the 15-year sentence by reference to the effect on Murray's victim, his criminal record and the "multiple aggravating factors and compete absence of mitigatory factors". Contrary to what Murray's lawyers argued, the appeal court did not approach the matter on the basis it itself would have been disposed to impose a longer sentence of 20 or 21 years, the judges added. The COA expressly referred to its practice, in cases involving significant lapse of time between the original hearing and a decision on a leniency application, of imposing a sentence less than it would have considered appropriate at first instance and followed that practice. An alleged data breach within Independent News and Media represents a very significant threat to freedom of the press in Ireland, the Taoiseach has warned. Leo Varadkar said the Government would be considering legislation to enshrine protection for journalistic sources in the light of the claims surrounding INM. The Office of the Director of Corporate Enforcement (ODCE) in Ireland has launched a High Court bid to have inspectors appointed to probe governance arrangements at the media group, which owns titles including the Irish Independent and Belfast Telegraph. INM is opposing the application to have inspectors appointed. If the probe is sanctioned by the court one of a series of issues it will investigate is the circumstances around an alleged data breach in 2014 which saw the information of a number of INM employees, including high profile journalists, accessed by external companies. The incident, which has led to concerns the journalists' sources could have been compromised, was discussed on the floor of the Dail on Tuesday. Mr Varadkar was pressed by Fianna Fail leader Micheal Martin to introduce laws to protect sources. Mr Martin referenced a number of unactioned official reports that had previously called for more robust legislation to preserve press freedom. The Taoiseach responded: "I think given recent revelations yes we are going to have to give consideration to legislation in this area to protect sources. Perhaps time has certainly come for government to dust down those reports and give consideration to legislation in this area. "Having an independent news and media is the cornerstone of our democracy, it is after all the Fourth Estate and I believe journalists must be free to pursue stories that they want to pursue, their sources should be protected, free from any unjust interference external or internal. "We need the plurality of voices in the media, we need to ensure those voices are not drowned out or silenced and we also need diversity in ownership." Mr Varadkar commended how the media had reported the story of the unfolding events, singling out the work of INM journalists. He added: "Reports of the data breaches represent a very significant threat to the freedom of our press, however, I think the way the media has responded to this threat to date should reassure us that our press will not be silenced." On Monday the High Court heard that businessman and major INM shareholder Denis O'Brien is accusing the ODCE of leaking details of its application to have inspectors appointed. Denis O'Brien. Mr O'Brien wrote to its director Ian Drennan saying the alleged leaks had damaged his reputation, the court was told. The ODCE denied the claim. Mr Martin told the Dail there was no evidence that the ODCE had been responsible for leaking details of its affidavit in the INM case. "There has been no evidence at all to date transparently that they leaked anything and I don't think any agent of the state should really have to work under that sort of intimidatory cloud hanging over them," he said. Sinn Fein president Mary Lou McDonald expressed concern that attempts were being made to "silence" the ODCE and called on Mr Varadkar to take steps to beef-up its resources. Burma's president Win Myint has granted amnesty to more than 8,500 prisoners. At least three dozen political prisoners are believed to be among those being released to coincide with the country's traditional New Year. It was granted to 8,490 Burmese citizens and 51 foreigners and a statement from presidential spokesman Zaw Thay said those released included the aged, people in ill health and drug offenders. None was individually named. The releases were to take place at prisons nationwide. Relatives and friends of those held waited Tuesday outside the gates at Insein Prison, in the northern outskirts of Rangoon, where it was expected that more than 300 prisoners, including eight political detainees, would be released. As they came through the gate, the released prisoners looked excited, though many were reluctant to be interviewed. One of those freed was Saw War Lay, a member of the Karen ethnic minority who was arrested in 2006 and is serving a life sentence for his connection with the Karen National Union ethnic rebel group. "I really would like to say many thanks to the president. And I wish he will be successful in his peace process," he said, referring to government efforts to reach an agreement with all the ethnic minorities to end decades of conflict. "But I am so sad for those prisoners who (are) still inside." Two Christian pastors from the Kachin minority were freed from a prison in Lashio, in northern Burma, in a more recent and high-profile case. Last year, Pastor Dumdaw Nawng Lat, 65, was sentenced to four years and three months in prison and Baptist youth leader Langjaw Gam Seng, 35, was sentenced to two years and three months for allegedly providing support to an ethnic armed group and defaming the military. In the aftermath of a government offensive in northern Burma, they had helped journalists report on a Catholic church that was destroyed in an airstrike in November 2016. Combat in the area still continues. "We are here with both of them and the whole Baptist community is very happy to have them back," lawyer Brang Di said by phone. "Everyone is praying for them and encouraging them." Although called an amnesty, the action appeared to actually be a mass pardon, meaning it would cover only prisoners who had already been convicted of crimes. Two Reuters reporters, Wa Lone and Kyaw Soe Oo, facing a high-profile freedom of the press trial for possessing secret official documents would not be covered under the action. One of the journalists' lawyers, Khin Maung Zaw, said his understanding was that the president was only pardoning convicted criminals. Win Myint became president last month, after his predecessor, Htin Kyaw, stepped down because of illness. The release of political prisoners was a priority of Aung San Suu Kyi's National League for Democracy party when it took over power from a pro-military government in March 2016. Ms Suu Kyi is the country's de facto leader, holding the specially created post of State Counsellor. Constitutional rules prohibit her from serving as president because her two children are British, as was her late husband. When Ms Suu Kyi's government took power in 2016, it made it a priority to release political prisoners detained during military rule, freeing almost 200 within a month. However, critics of Ms Suu Kyi's government say it also has pursued politically motivated prosecutions, citing cases against land rights activists and journalists. - Press Association Latest: Investigators visit alleged chemical attack site in Syria International inspectors have entered the Syrian town where an alleged chemical attack was carried out earlier this month, following delays by Syrian and Russian authorities. Journalists were allowed access to the suspected attack sites yesterday, but the OPCW said Syrian and Russian authorities blocked the inspectors. The Associated Press spoke to survivors and witnesses who described being hit by gas. Several said a strange smell started spreading and people screamed: "It's chlorine! It's chlorine!" The site visit came hours after reports of more international air strikes on Syrian military installations. The Syrian military later said a false alarm set off air defence systems early Tuesday, retracting earlier reports of a pre-dawn "outside aggression" on its airfields in the central Homs region and a suburb of Damascus. The Pentagon denied any American military activity in the area. 11.25: Investigators allowed to visit alleged attack site in Syria tomorrow Independent chemical weapons investigators will be allowed the visit the site of an alleged chemical attack in Douma tomorrow, Russia has said. Inspectors from the Organisation for the Prohibition of Chemical Weapons (OPCW) arrived in the Syrian capital 11 days ago, and the US and the UK have both blamed Russia for impeding the investigation. US officials also raised concerns that Russia visited the site and "may have tampered with it", an allegation which has been refuted. Russia and Syria deny that any chemical attack took place, saying instead that the April 7 attack was "staged". At least 40 people are believed to have died in the attack on Douma, which until Saturday was the last rebel-held town near Damascus. Earlier: Chemical weapons investigators barred from alleged attack site in Syria Independent investigators have been prevented by Syrian and Russian officials from reaching the scene of an alleged chemical attack near the Syrian capital, an official said. The barrier for the inspectors comes days after the US, UK and France bombarded sites they said were linked to Syria's chemical weapons programme. The lack of access to the town of Douma by investigators from the watchdog group, the Organisation for the Prohibition of Chemical Weapons (OPCW), leaves questions about the April 7 attack unanswered. OPCW director-general Ahmet Uzumcu said Syrian and Russian officials cited "pending security issues" in keeping its inspectors from reaching Douma. "The team has not yet deployed to Douma," two days after arriving in Syria, Uzumcu told an executive council of the OPCW in The Hague. Syrian authorities are offering 22 people to interview as witnesses instead, he said, adding that he hoped "all necessary arrangements will be made ... to allow the team to deploy to Douma as soon as possible". Early on Tuesday, Syria's government-run Central Military media reported a missile attack on the Shayrat air base in Homs province. It said Syrian air defences shot down most of the six missiles fired at the base. It also reported a separate air strike on the Dumayr air base near Damascus. It did not elaborate or say who carried out the air strikes. A Pentagon spokeswoman said there was no US military activity in the area. Earlier this month, four Iranian military personnel were killed in an airstrike on Syria's T4 air base in Homs. Syria and its allies blamed Israel for that attack. Israel did not confirm or deny mounting the raid. Meanwhile, the US and France say they have evidence that poison gas was used in Douma, east of Damascus, killing dozens of people, and that President Bashar Assad's military was behind it, but they have made none of that evidence public. Syria and its ally Russia deny any such attack took place. Deputy Russian foreign minister Sergei Ryabkov blamed the Western air strikes carried out early on Saturday for holding up a mission by the OPCW team to Douma. He said the inspectors cannot access the site because it needs permission from UN security experts. Mr Ryabkov's remarks could indicate a possible attempt to bog down the team, even though both Russia and the Syrian government have welcomed the OPCW visit. He told reporters in Moscow that what is hampering a speedy resolution of the visit to Douma was "the consequences of the illegal, unlawful military action", a reference to the punitive airstrikes. The OPCW team arrived in Syria shortly before the air strikes and met with Syrian officials. Government forces and Russian troops have been deployed in Douma, which is now controlled by the Syrian government. Syrian opposition and activists have criticised the Russia deployment in the town, saying that evidence of chemical weapons' use might no longer be found. Russian foreign minister Sergey Lavrov denied that Russia interfered with any evidence. "I can guarantee that Russia has not tampered with the site," Mr Lavrov told the BBC in an interview. The Kremlin also denied that Russia was not allowing the OPCW mission in. The OPCW is holding an emergency meeting in The Hague to discuss the suspected chemical attack in Douma. At least 40 people are believed to have died in the attack on Douma, which until Saturday was the last rebel-held town near Damascus. The Russian military later said that it will help secure the visit of international chemical weapons inspectors to the site of the alleged attack. Maj Gen Yuri Yevtushenko, of the military's Reconciliation Centre in Syria, said Russian military police were ready to help protect the experts on their visit to Douma, outside Damascus. Igor Kirillov, a top Russian chemical weapons protection expert, said experts from the Organisation for the Prohibition of Chemical Weapons are set to visit Douma on Wednesday. - PA Facebook will face a class action lawsuit in the US over its use of facial recognition technology, a federal judge has ruled. US District Judge James Donato ruled the social network must face the suit over allegations it gathered biometric information without the explicit consent of users. Users from the state of Illinois filed the suit claiming the technology - which is not available in Ireland- breaches state laws on biometric data privacy. In response, a Facebook spokeswoman said: "We are reviewing the ruling. We continue to believe the case has no merit and will defend ourselves vigorously." The social network uses facial recognition in its Tag Suggestions feature, which was rolled out in 2011 and uses an algorithm to create a facial "template" of a user based on their profile pictures and images they have been tagged in. This template is then used to suggest tags for other images if it recognises the faces in them. On its help pages detailing how the technology works, Facebook says that users can control the feature from their settings and it does not take information from photos a user is not tagged in. "If you've never been tagged in a photo on Facebook or have untagged yourself in all photos of you on Facebook, then we do not have this summary information for you," the help page says. The news comes as the social networking giant continues to face scrutiny over its data collection practices in the wake of the Cambridge Analytica scandal, which has seen founder and chief executive Mark Zuckerberg face two days of questioning from US politicians. Mr Zuckerberg has rejected similar requests to appear before a parliamentary select committee as part of its fake news inquiry, instead offering to send chief product officer Chris Cox. - Press Association France's President Emmanuel Macron has urged the European Union to embrace reform to protect its citizens in a world troubled by wars and authoritarian regimes. The 40-year-old leader, who wants to play a key leadership role in the EU, outlined his vision in a speech at the Strasbourg-based European Parliament. Mr Macron said democracy is the "best chance" for the EU to fight against rising nationalism on the continent. "Faced with authoritarianism, the answer is not democratic authoritarianism but the authority of democracy," he said. Mr Macron called for an energetic campaign for the European Parliament election in May 2019 as the EU also deals with the challenges of Britain's departure. He told EU politicians that it is important "to have a democratic, critical debate on what Europe is about". Mr Macron said citizens "want a new project" for the EU which addresses their concerns and fears in a world in which allies such as the US are turning their backs on multilateral trade and climate change pacts. All EU countries, except Britain and Hungary, have agreed to seek opinions of their citizens on the EU's future through debates and online consultations by summer. Speaking after Mr Macron, European Commission President Jean-Claude Juncker said the EU is not just a club led by France and Germany. Mr Juncker said Mr Macron's arrival in power in France has "given new hope" to the world's biggest trading bloc. But he recalled that "Europe is an ensemble", even with Britain set to leave the EU next year. .@JunckerEU avec @EmmanuelMacron: La France est de retour pour defendre lhonneur, les valeurs et laction de cette Europe; ensemble pour defendre une Union ouverte mais pas offerte; nous sommes une seule Europe sans divisions; gardons les Balkans sur la voie de lEurope. pic.twitter.com/RxKr5eX3rG Margaritis Schinas (@MargSchinas) April 17, 2018 Mr Macron will meet with Germany's Chancellor Angela Merkel in Berlin on Thursday, as France and Germany aim to agree on proposals for EU reforms by June. During Mr Macron's speech, some European politicians raised placards reading Stop The War In Syria and Hands Off Syria to protest against joint airstrikes by US, Britain and France on chemical weapons facilities in Syria on Saturday. - Digital Desk and Press Association This post is part of my on-going partnership with Nespresso. If you know me, you know how much I love coffee. Not just for the taste or for the caffeine but also because it is how my heartmate and I start every morning together. We sit in bed and watch the morning news shows while drinking our Nespresso coffee and talking about the day ahead. Regular readers will likely know that we have been drinking Nespresso for many years and you may even remember my posts about it like this this series of posts which covered our beach house kitchen renovation, and why coffee was an important part of its design. Over the years, I have read snippets of information here and there regarding Nespressos efforts to incorporate sustainability into all areas of their business. However, and to be frank, I didnt really understand much about it or where our morning coffee came from. As seasoned Nespresso drinkers, the brand kindly invited my heartmate and I to travel to Colombia to visit coffee farms that are part of the Nespresso AAA Sustainable Quality Program. The program was developed more than 15 years ago with the Rainforest Alliance, a nonprofit, to create a sustainable supply of the highest quality coffee, while improving the lives of coffee farmers and their communities. Of course, we jumped at the chance as we were keen to understand more about the providence of a product thats such an integral part of our day-to-day lives. We started our trip by flying to Medellin in Colombia, and from there we travelled by helicopter (check out the highlight on my Instagram story to see the breathtaking views!) to the small town of Jardin. This region of Colombia is known for coffee farming literally everywhere you look there are coffee farms on the mountain sides. Plus, the town of Jardin couldnt have been more #MakeYouSmileStyle if it tried! It was so colorful! As you can see from the pictures above, Jardin was full of color and pattern inspiration. Not to mention the delicious coffee that was waiting to be enjoyed at charming little cafes, where everyone was so friendly and welcoming to us. There were many special moments during the five days we spent in beautiful Colombia. We spent the third day with one of Nespressos coffee farmers, Don Ruben, (above in the green stripy shirt) who kindly welcomed us all into his home & onto his coffee farm. He generously spent the day showing us how the farm worked and how coffee is made from planting the coffee trees to how the beans are harvested, and then eventually sold to quality coffee companies like Nespresso. The passion and commitment he had for growing coffee on his farm was nothing short of inspiring. As I listened to Don Ruben speak, it struck both my heartmate and I how little we actually knew about coffee, which is crazy when its something we drink every day and choose to spend our money on. It was surreal experience to be standing there in front of one of the farmers who has been growing beans for the Nespresso coffee Ive been drinking for years. So inspiring, in fact, that I want to use this post to share five of the most interesting things I learned about coffee while in Colombia. 1. Coffee farming is very hard work Don Rubens farm, which was about a 30 minute drive outside Jardin on the side of the most beautiful mountain, was just behind his house and about two hectares in size. During our day on his farm we learned that Nespresso works with farmers around the world through the Nespresso AAA Sustainable Quality Program. Through the program, Nespresso and its partners provide support, training, financing and technical assistance to improve sustainability and productivity while maintaining the highest levels of quality. Don Ruben started the day by brewing us some of the coffee grown on his farm, then we sat on his deck where he talked us through the cherry to cup process of growing coffee. He explained it much better than I ever could, but what stood out to me was that all the coffee cherries (the fruit the coffee bean is grown in) are hand-picked. This is to ensure they are taken from the coffee trees at the exact right time of ripeness; the cherry should be red without any green skin. After learning about the life cycle of coffee I tried my hand at planting a three-month old coffee tree that Don Ruben had been nurturing to ensure it was healthy and ready to be planted on the farm. The first three months are crucial because he has to make sure that the coffee trees dont get diseases and die while they are weak saplings. After planting my coffee tree (success!), I spent the afternoon higher up the mountainside hunting for and then picking ripe cherries. I cant tell you how hard it was! You are literally on a side of very, very steep mountain, surrounded by coffee plants that block your view and path, so you fall over all the time in the mud, not to mention the humidity which is insane! Major props to the farmers who are experts at harvesting the cherries they put amateurs like me to shame! These two stages are just the first few steps in the long process to extract and dry the coffee beans so they are ready for the farmer to sell. Don Ruben told me how he liked the AAA Program not only for the training and investment but also because it provides the expertise of local agronomists, who can answer questions about a farms crop or soil. 2. Poor quality coffee takes like poop trust me, I tried it! Before we visited some of Nespressos coffee farms, we attended a cupping session where we learning about coffee and tasting coffee. It was there that I learned that poor quality coffee tastes bad, like, really, really bad it smells and tastes like poop! I came away from the cupping session feeling quite proud because I was the winner in our group contest to see who could correctly identify the most number of coffee flavors. Yay! The core of the Nespresso AAA Sustainable Quality Program is to make the highest quality coffee in a way that is sustainable to both the environment and the farmers. That way consumers can keep drinking high quality coffee for a long time, and farmers lives are impacted for the better. At Don Rubens farm, which is part of the AAA Program, had a clean and tidy coffee drying area (see image below), which is key in maintaining the quality and protecting the taste of his coffee. There are scheduled check-ins with each farmer as part of the AAA Program, to make sure they are keeping within the strict guidelines of the program, which is something farmers actively wish to be a part of. This is because being part of the AAA program is a win-win for both the farmer and the consumer: the farmer gets paid a premium for their coffee, and the consumer enjoys better tasting coffee. 3. Coffee tasting is a real life job We spent a lot of time in Colombia with an organization called FarmWays who helped organize all our trips out to the farms Nespresso buys from. They were amazing and knew everything about Colombian coffee. We got to spend time talking to coffee tasters who work in the Nespresso AAA Sustainable Quality Program to taste coffee. Often they are tasting 200-400 cups a day (!) to ensure the quality of the coffee is up to standard. I was inspired to learn that if a farmer had a quality problem, rather than just turn the farmer away, Nespresso and its nonprofit partners work with the farmer to find a solution. They physically go out to the farmer on their farm and will talk to them about the changes that are needed, as well as help them to ensure they continue on a path to making quality coffee. Both my heartmate and I were moved and impressed by Nespressos commitment to supporting farmers and their communities for years to come. 4. Our coffee choices make a difference far beyond the cup To be honest, in my ignorance I had never really thought much about the coffee I was drinking beyond whether I enjoyed the taste of it. However, after coming back from our trip to Colombia I really appreciate how choosing sustainably-sourced coffee makes a real difference. The Nespresso AAA Sustainable Quality Program isnt just about ensuring great tasting coffee by helping farmers to improve their farming practices, it also works with nonprofit partners to improve the welfare of farmers and their communities. It does this in a number of ways: providing free assistance from local agronomists, implementing pension plans for farmers in the program, investing in local infrastructure and communities, paying premium prices to farmers who produce high quality coffee and much more. Literally, by choosing a Nespresso coffee, you not only know that it will taste great but also that you are supporting local farmers lives and the communities they live in. 5. Farmers are at the heart of Nespresso coffee What has stuck with both of us since coming back from Colombia is the absolute passion and commitment the coffee farmers have for their work. They truly take pride in what they do. I feel so grateful to have had the experience to meet a handful of these inspiring farmers, and to have visited the very farms where some of the coffee my heartmate and I drink comes from. One of our favorite Nespresso coffees is Rosabaya, from the brands Pure Origin line. I now know that Rosabaya is sourced entirely from small Colombian coffee farms, all of which are in the Nespresso AAA Sustainable Quality Program. Now, every morning when we enjoy our coffee together, my heartmate and I love know not only that we are drinking a very high quality coffee (Nespresso knows and visits every farmer they source from) but also that the farmers are getting paid a premium price for the coffee. I actually saw the board at the local co-op that showed the premium price the farmer gets paid for selling to Nespresso vs. other brands. Beyond this though, I know that thanks to the Nespresso AAA Sustainable Quality Program, the farmers and their communities get much wider support so that they continue to grow amazing coffee for generations to come. And in our hearts and minds, thats worth drinking a cup to. // Photography by Will Taylor & Antonio DeLucci AMP's disastrous foray in front of the banking Royal Commission - including admissions it had misled customers and the regulator - is likely to have lasting effects for the battling wealth manager. AMP conceded it had made false statement to the Australian Securities and Investments Commission and senior staff ignored legal advice that charging of customers for services they did not receive was unlawful. The Royal Commission runs for a year but some of the implications are already being considered. Any recommendation to limit the extent to which financial service organisations can use their financial planning arms to sell their products, would hurt AMP more than the other large players, say fund managers and analysts. This is because AMP, more than the big four banks, depends the most on its planners to recommended "house" financial products. There has been so much spin about the telecommunications industry over the past 24 hours its hard to keep one's balance. The government launched an attack on retail telco companies threatening to financially punish them for poor service in the face of escalating customer complaints about service. At the same time it has disputed, or at least questioned, the communications ombudsmans read on the latest data on customer complaints. Meanwhile the governments baby, the National Broadband Network, is out selling the social and economic benefits of the infrastructure project seemingly oblivious to the storm of customer backlash. NBN boss Bill Morrow Credit:Alex Ellinghausen If Australian telecommunications was a sport it would be a blame game - one where players contested the scores, argued over who takes credit for the goals and disagreed who should be sin binned. A Carlton building described by Victorias planning minister as too tall and bland has gained a green light after student housing operator Scape Student Living won a permit for its development. The 22-storey structure designed by architects Denton Corker Marshall will be built on the former Carlton and United Breweries site in Swanston Street between the heritage Malthouse building and Queensberry Hotel. Scape's development on the CUB site in Swanston Street. Credit:Scape Student Living The $250 million building, with no car parking, will have ground floor retail and be operated as student housing by Scape, adding to its planned $1 billion Melbourne portfolio. Scape purchased the site from developer Grocon for $20 million in 2015, two years after it was the scene of a deadly tragedy when a portion of hoarding wall on Swanston Street collapsed, killing three passing pedestrians. WeWork, the co-working office space giant, has expanded its footprint in Sydney with a new lease at the HCF building, 64 York Street in the city. It will be the group's fifth site in Sydney and follows the announcement in March that WeWork will open at the Fife Capital's 383 George Street property later this year. Co-working group WeWork has leased a new site at 64 York Street. Co-working space is gaining traction as a new entrant for office markets where tenants may only need space for a few hours a day or for a special project. With more people also working from home for themselves, they can hire short-term space in the city without high rental charges. Under the latest deal, WeWork will occupy 3,600 square metres of office space, over five floors at HCF House, which has undergone a refurbishment during the past two years. Just days out from hosting the Music Cities Convention, Melbourne's reputation as a world leader in the live music scene has been given a timely boost. Musicians and those keen to get involved in the music industry are being encouraged to take advantage of the new Music Market, announced today, which is part of the Victorian government's funding program Music Works. Designed as part of the $22 million Music Works plan to boost the state's thriving music industry, the Music Market will be home to the new Victorian Music Development Office and sit alongside radio station PBS FM when the Collingwood Arts Precinct opens next year. "This report asks the question, 'How do these companies ensure workers are not being exploited?' When it comes to H&M and Zara they are doing a better job than most and we want to [acknowledge] that. That doesn't take away the questions on how consumerism is impacting the world." Turning the ship around Cotton On's James Hubbard admits the B- the company received in 2013 was a "massive wake-up call". "The business took the result very seriously ... We had an ethical sourcing program but it wasnt performing," said Mr Hubbard, the chain's general manager of sustainability. Cotton On has been one of the most-improved companies in the report. Mr Hubbard said serious work has been done to improve transparency "from farm to shelf", including listing 2500 of Cotton On's factories online. The company also sponsors a cotton-farming operation in Kenya that employs more than 1500 farmers. Mr Hubbard said Cotton On is working to reduce landfill by increasing the "take back" of used clothing from its customers. "One of the challenges with clothing is that its a fibre. We are looking at who we can partner with to utilise fibre for other methods," he said. Mr Hubbard admits Cotton On could better publicise its ethical programs to consumers. A farmer on Cotton On's farming project in Kwale, Kenya. "Its something we havent promoted a lot," he said. "Often we talk about it within Cotton On as the 'right thing to do'. We don't do it for sales. Its something we have to get better at the storytelling." Fairfax Media contacted several brands that received an F in the report. A statement from New Zealand-based Trelise Cooper said the poor grade was "not a measure of Trelise Cooper Group or its ethical standards or behaviour" and that it had its own systems to meet ethical standards. "[The report organisers] demanded an arbitrary, limited timeframe for a very intense and detailed report that we simply could not meet," the statement said. A spokeswoman for Bras N Things said under new owner Hanes, the brand intends to participate in future surveys. While we didnt participate in this years report as we only recently found out about it, being an ethical fashion retailer is important to us so wed love to be involved," she said. Decjuba said it had stringent in-house auditing processes on working conditions, wages, animal rights, sustainability and corruption. "The ratings system is based on information submitted by participating companies and the Baptist World Aid research team do not conduct site inspections to verify these details. The Baptist World Organisation awards an F for non-participation, which can be misleading to consumers," a company statement said. Two steps forward While many companies made positive gains, the issue of workers' rights was still a major hurdle, with all companies surveyed receiving an overall mark of D-. Mr Nimbalker said price-driven competition was not commensurate with paying living wages, especially in developing countries, where most clothing sold in Australia is made. One of those markets is Bangladesh, where in 2013 more than 1100 people died in the Rana Plaza garment factory collapse, the event that triggered the launch of the Baptist World Aid Australia report. Mr Nimbalker said he and other stakeholders, as well as Australian journalists, tried to visit Bangladesh recently to view firsthand the progress on workers' safety and rights since Rana Plaza but they were refused visas. "We know that the Bangladeshi government is really sensitive about this issue. Many MPs have direct or vested interests in the garment industry. They want to take increasing control of how their industry is run," Mr Nimbalker said. Still, there is cause for optimism, he said. "There are pockets of hope across the Asia-Pacific region. Wages have gone up in Bangladesh, wages are going up in Vietnam, but all of that is against the backdrop of workers having to fight for it and exploitation being quite rife." Mr Nimbalker said he was confident the Australian government would soon pass the Modern Slavery Act, which could impose penalties for companies found to use suppliers that exploit workers. Women in the corporate world are more likely to be perfectionists and heavily self-critical than their male counterparts. These are the results of Australia's Biggest Mental Health Check-In, a snapshot of mental health at all levels of corporate life in Australia. Women at work are more perfectionist and anxious than their male counterparts. Credit:Stocksy The survey saw 4980 workers from 41 Australian workplaces answer a 100-question mental health assessment, as well as wear a heart monitor at work to gather biometric data across two four-week periods. Psychologist Peta Slocombe, senior vice president of corporate health at Medibio (who led the survey), said there was a link between perfectionism and high rates of self-criticism, both of which were traits more likely to be found in women. We did our research and settled on a smart TV set of a moderate size with a price tag of about $500. We found a good deal on eBay and, in a burst of efficiency, ordered a second one for a relative who said she needed a spare set for her spare room. Wed gone many years without an actual television set because we dont watch much TV and when we do, its usually online through a computer. We decided to bite the bullet when our seven-year-olds couldnt contain their excitement during a particularly exciting Pokemon battle, and accidentally the laptop went flying through the air. I was reminded of that recently when we bought two new televisions through a seller on eBay. It took a while for the seller to organise delivery and then they only delivered one of the televisions. We had to wait around another week or so for the second TV. Installing the first TV set was relatively straightforward. The kids love the big, red Netflix button in the middle of the remote and, even though the TV isnt password-protected like a laptop or iPad, they continue to be compliant with our limits on screen time. I'm enjoying it too, though Im frustrated I cant figure out how to access Freeview for Australian free-to-air channels, even though the manufacturers website states this is a feature of the model. Perhaps we unwittingly bought a parallel import, where the retailer has sourced product from overseas in order to be able to offer a lower price. Hopefully that won't cause us any issues down the track if we need to claim on the manufacturer's warranty. The main problem came a few days after the delivery of the second TV, when we opened up the box, only to find the screen was smashed. By this point it was already a few weeks after wed placed the order. We contacted the seller straight away. At first they were receptive and it seemed they were going to fix the problem. But they were a little slow at responding to messages and then they suddenly informed us that we were outside the 30-day window to raise an eBay dispute. Police are urging Canberrans to lock up after thieves broke into a house and five cars in Fadden in the early hours of Monday morning. Police said the occupants of a house in Appel Crescent were sleeping inside when the thieves struck. The front door and gate had both been left unlocked. Thieves targeted four cars on the same street that morning, along with a car in Maughan Crescent. Police said most of the cars had been left unlocked. While theft from motor vehicles is often an opportunistic crime, these thefts suggest offenders are actively looking for easy targets, Station Sergeant Greg ORyan said. Whoever committed these crimes was quite brazen in entering a home while people were sleeping inside, and in stealing from vehicles in a carport. This underlines the importance of locking vehicles and premises overnight. Tony Abbott, Pauline Hanson, Peter Dutton and the other high profile critics of Australia's current immigration levels would do well to study the facts before calling for a reduction in the country's migrant intake numbers. That's a key take-out from the Turnbull Government's long-awaited briefing paper on immigration that was made public this week. The document, which appears to come out strongly in favour of maintaining the current 190,000 migration cap or even increasing it, is a timely reminder this debate, which dates back to the earliest days of European settlement, is much more nuanced than it appears. Politicians such as Hanson and Abbott and former politicians such as Mark Latham and former Liberal MP, Ross Cameron, who have all publicly called for immigration to be slashed, are engaging in a suspect and self-serving form of populism. Sydneys much-lauded new urban policies are keen to reinforce the image of Sydney as a city on the move. But while these policies are touted as game changers, they represent a significant step backwards. Most worryingly, they continue an unhealthy trend within our urban governance; one that eschews critical analysis of the citys urban condition in favour of projecting an aestheticised image of Sydney as a global city. This masks the citys real needs and possibilities. The focus of the Three Cities plan remains firmly fixed on shoring up the Global Sydney brand, Credit:Wolter Peeters The Greater Sydney Commissions new metropolitan plan, A Metropolis of Three Cities, exemplifies this paradox. When measured against its own high-minded rhetoric, one thing is clear: the plan is a failure. Like its predecessor, 2014s forgettable Plan for Growing Sydney, it bypasses any critical analysis of Sydneys long-term urban structure in favour of superficial discursive tropes (great places) and spatial metaphors (a metropolis of three cities), the main purpose of which appears to be validating the governments existing investment commitments. The notion that responsibility for the plan is outsourced to a supposedly independent agency is an illusion; the GSC is a crown agency like any other arm of government. At no point does the plan question the wisdom of the governments growing list of big-spending projects, despite the obvious scope for doing so. How could it, with the Premiers benign visage featured prominently within the opening pages? Queensland schoolgirl Jayde Kendall's killer has appealed his conviction on the grounds unlawfully obtained police conversations and statements were used during his trial. A Brisbane Supreme Court jury last year found Brenden Bennetts guilty of killing the 16-year-old and dumping her body in a field on the outskirts of Gatton in 2015. A drawing of Brenden Bennetts, made during his 2017 court appearance. Credit:Travis D. Hendrix/AAP Jayde was last seen getting into his red Toyota Corolla after school about 3.20pm on Friday, August 14. Her body was discovered 13 days later. A man and a woman have been charged over the shooting of a 31-year-old man found shot in a car in Rosebud last year. The Victorian seaside town was shaken when the man, Joshua Dipietro, died after being shot in the head as he sat in his friend's four-wheel-drive on Eastbourne Road, Rosebud, on September 3. He was taken to hospital but died the following night. Joshua Dipietro, who was shot in his friend's car. It is believed that earlier that day Mr Dipietro had attended a Father Day's lunch with his parents on the Mornington Peninsula. On Monday night, two people were arrested in Smithfield, Sydney. The 25-year-old-man has been charged with murder while the 31-year-old woman has been charged with being an accessory to murder. These strategies include a world-first personal shark deterrent subsidy, funding Surf Life Saving WA beach, helicopter and drone patrols, expanding the Shark Monitoring Network to Esperance, tagging operations, funding Beach Emergency Number signs and provided funding for a swimming enclosure at Falcon. Immediate notification following shark sightings Laeticias parents, Leon and Julie, say they would never have entered the water at Kelp Beds Beach if there was signage informing the public a shark had recently been spotted. In fact, the couple admitted they didnt even know there had been a shark attack at the Kelp Beds surf break year before. Shockingly, Esperance's Ocean Safety and Support Group founder Mitch Capelli said the attack didn't come as a surprise to locals, with sharks acting aggressively in the area months before-hand. People dont really like hearing it but the last attacks at Kelp Beds with Sean Pollard and Laeticia Brouwer have been 100 per cent preventable, he said. He said it was "only a matter of time". Mr Capelli established the group after Laeticias death and has since advocated for measures to improve ocean and shark safety. It was just east of Wylie Bay, where Sean Pollard was attacked by two great white sharks in October 2014. The Bunbury man lost his left arm and right hand in the attack. We did not know that there had been a shark attack at Kelp Beds, Julie told the Mandurah Mail. Since the attack, the heartbroken couple has pushed for more immediate notifications that sharks had been sighted. As far as we know, Esperance has been putting signs out at beaches where sharks are seen, she said. The couple who are from Singleton, just north of Mandurah, were visiting Esperance during the Easter holiday period. The pair said they were unaware that there had been a shark attack at the Kelp Beds surf break year before. The initial idea was to also have signs at beaches where there has been known previous attacks. Much like warnings about 4WD conditions or the presence of dangerous jelly fish. Fisheries minister Dave Kelly said the department was investigating adding lights and sirens to the Shark Monitoring Network receivers. Drumlines and shark nets Shadow minister for tourism and small business Libby Mettam said the fatality last year was tragic. Like many Western Australians my heart goes out to the Brouwer family, and to others who have been impacted by this tragic event, Ms Mettam said. She called on the state government to start with an immediate trial of the Shark Management Alert in Real Time (SMART) drumlines. The Minister for Fisheries should start with an immediate trial of the SMART Drumlines, she said. Refusing to consider the use of additional measures to reduce the risk of shark attacks, is not taking this public safety issue seriously. Evidence at a Senate Estimates committee last month from the Federal Department of Environment and Energy highlighted the success of the SMART drumline trails in parts of NSW and Victoria in both mitigating against shark attacks, and their positive impact on shark behaviour. SMART drumlines are different to the traditional drumlines in that once sharks are caught on a SMART drumline an alert is sent to authorities after which the shark is tagged for future monitoring and research and then released. Scientists monitoring the behaviour of these tagged sharks at a trial in NSW have reported that once they have an encounter with a SMART drumline and are released, the sharks do not come back. Mr Capelli echoed Ms Mettams sentiments on SMART drumlines and said he was frustrated by the inaction of those in power. Mr Kelly said there was no evidence that the use of drumlines made WA beaches safer. The McGowan Government is committed to methods that are backed by science, he said. It is worth noting that despite the extensive use of drumlines and nets on the east coast there have been more than double the number of shark attacks in the last five years, compared to shark attack numbers in WA. Mr Kelly didnt comment specifically on SMART drumlines. Personal safety equipment: The shark shield program was an election promise of the McGowan Government, which will pay a $200 rebate on the first 1000 shark deterrent devices sold. Photo: Supplied. Personal devices to deter sharks Mr Kelly said overall, the governments personal shark deterrent rebate had been embraced by Western Australians. The shark shield program was an election promise of the McGowan government, which will pay a $200 rebate on the first 1000 shark deterrent devices sold. After the first 1000 were sold, the government extended its cap. Since it was first introduced more than 1650 Western Australians have purchased a device to better protect themselves in the ocean. The government has capped the subsidy at 2000. It is not practical to have beach enclosures at every surf break or dive locations along our more than 12,000kms of coastline, Mr Kelly said. That is why by providing individual protection through our personal shark deterrent subsidy to those most at risk - surfers and divers - makes the most sense. Time and time again we have seen the Opposition call into question the effectiveness of the approved device available under the McGowan Governments world-first shark deterrent subsidy. This is despite the fact the previous Liberal-National Government paid for the scientific research that proves the device works on 9 out of 10 occasions against a great white shark. Ms Mettam hit back at the Labor government though, stating the subsidy wasnt sufficient in meeting the states safety needs. A singular focus on providing a subsidy to a select few for a repellent device that many cant afford is not sufficient, she said. There is no questioning that there is a greater shark presence in our local waters, which is why it vital that the State Government have a comprehensive shark mitigation strategy that will ensure the safety of all beach users. Senate committee looks into mitigation measures An Australian senate inquiry undertaken late last year, found that lethal drum lines and shark nets across Australia should be immediately phased out. The Environment and Communications References Senate Committee into Shark Mitigation and Deterrent Measures tabled a list of 20 recommendations to improve ocean safety. Mr Kelly said implementing recommendations from the report was out of the state governments hands. This is a Federal Government report and the recommendations of that report are for the Federal Government to implement, he said. It is worth noting that the report recommends the McGowan Governments world-first personal shark deterrent subsidy be adopted Australia-wide. Could drones be the answer? Leon and Julie Brouwer both agree surveillance would be a huge advanced for beach goers. Eyes on the water from a vantage point is one of the easiest things families or mates can do, as well as the use of drones and cameras, Julie said. Nor is the big issue Australias total migrant intake. Its the numbers moving to Melbourne and Sydney at record levels, so that Melbournes population is currently growing at almost 3 per cent a year. The big issue is not Australias permanent migrant intake. Its the number of temporary migrants thats growing fast. But this label is somewhat misleading: many temporary migrants live in Australia for more than a decade and often ultimately become permanent migrants and citizens. But public concern about this migration is growing. More people are asking whether you can have too much of a good thing. Australia is more defined by migration than almost any other country. One in four Australians wasnt born here; one in two has a parent born overseas. There are benefits. Migration has raised Australias annual GDP growth by about 1.5 per cent over the past decade. That helps companies whose profits and revenues often grow in line with GDP. And it makes the numbers look good for governments keen to avoid the stigma of a recession. But much of this doesnt help people already living in Australia. They only benefit from higher GDP per capita. Migration has helped here too by the more modest rate of about 0.4 per cent per year. As shown in a Treasury and Home Affairs paper released on Monday, migrants tend to be younger than the existing population, and so they are more likely to work. They tend to be more skilled, and so more productive. Inherently they tend to have a lot of get up and go because by definition they have already got up and gone. And they contribute to Australias cultural diversity and resilience. The benefits of migration have increased over the past 15 years. The Howard government shifted Australias migration intake towards younger and more-skilled migrants. There are now fewer family reunion migrants, and most of them today are partners rather than parents. Many of the extra temporary migrants are students who both contribute to Australias exports, and then contribute to the economy as relatively well-trained workers. But these economic benefits need to weighed against the costs. We dont need to worry much about migrants taking our jobs and reducing our wages. Both in Australia and overseas, skilled migrants tend to increase the percentage of the population who work, and they tend to push wages up. Instead, the big costs are higher housing prices, and more traffic congestion. If the population grows quickly, and housing construction doesnt keep up, then higher prices are the inevitable result. The costs are not borne equally, as we showed in our recent report, Housing affordability. Higher house prices and rents are good for old people planning to sell. They make little difference to those who have already committed to a mortgage for the next 25 years. But high prices are unambiguously bad for younger households. Its no surprise that home ownership is falling for those who are younger and on lower incomes. The President of Azerbaijan took over from his father in 2003. His wife is the Vice-President. And last week he was re-elected with 86 per cent of the vote after a boycott by opposition parties. Liberal MP Craig Kelly says Australia needs to learn from the country's electoral system. The south-west Sydney MP travelled to the former Soviet nation for the second time last week as leader of a delegation to observe its presidential election. In comments that riled Armenians in Australia, Mr Kelly was quoted in Azerbaijan media saying he had witnessed a "coherent, democratic process" and "an election organisation that surpassed Australia's experience". "We, together with my colleagues, will undoubtedly bring the useful experience home," he said. The population growth in Melbournes inner eastern suburbs over the past 20 years has come entirely from migrants, according to new analysis that shows the concentrated impact of immigration on key Liberal seats. A sweep of blue-ribbon suburbs from Hawthorn and Kew through to Templestowe and Box Hill has seen a wave of migration over two decades that accounts for 100 per cent of net population growth, far outstripping any increase from births or internal migration. The new figures, which have emerged from a report prepared by Treasury and the Department of Home Affairs to establish the nationwide effect of immigration, have highlighted the fastest-changing suburbs in the country. Declining birth rates and an ageing population have been offset by a big increase in migration into parts of federal seats Kooyong and Higgins, held by Turnbull government ministers Josh Frydenberg and Kelly ODwyer, as well as Menzies, Kevin Andrews seat, and Chisholm, the key marginal the Liberals snatched from Labor in 2016, the only opposition seat won by the government at the last federal election. London: Commonwealth leaders are being urged to use their combined power to repudiate the use of chemical weapons in Syria as they gather for a summit that will test their ability to reach a consensus that can influence global affairs. The Syrian crisis is emerging as a key pressure-point at the gathering of 53 leaders in London this week, amid a political storm in Britain over the military strikes against the chemical facilities last weekend. The president of the Royal Commonwealth Society, Lord David Howell, said the Syrian crisis should prompt the summit leaders, including Prime Minister Malcolm Turnbull, to stand up for common values including the rule of law. The Commonwealth is a "very, very useful" zone in which to oppose the use of chemical weapons in Syria. Credit:AP Lord Howell, a former Conservative cabinet minister with five decades of political experience, also said the rise of China should spur Commonwealth members to act more strongly together on global issues. Federal Health Minister Greg Hunt has given a bizarre, combative interview over a recent push within the Liberal Party for gay conversion therapy, insisting his ABC interviewer state her beliefs about free speech. Mr Hunt, a Victorian, was being asked about a now-dumped motion that was to be put to the Victorian Liberal Party's state council meeting calling on the state government to ensure better access to "counselling out of same-sex attraction or gender transitioning". The proposal, which was unlikely to be supported, was pulled from the agenda by state president Michael Kroger following its exposure in Fairfax Media and a subsequent backlash, including from some Liberal MPs. Asked whether he as health minister was alarmed the motion had made it on to the agenda in the first place, Mr Hunt said he did not support gay conversion therapy, nor would it be federal government policy. By Samuel Ssebuliba. Another man suspected to be part of the criminal gang that has been terrorizing residents of greater Masaka region has been shot and injured by the officers from the Police Flying Squad. The police spokesperson Emillian Kayima has confirmed that Musa Galiwango was shot at around 2:00 am from Rushame in Ntungamo district. The suspect is currently admitted at an undisclosed hospital in Mbarara town. Galiwangos arrest comes just days after his accomplice Mohammed Kiddawalime was killed by a mob at Mukoko Village in Bukulula Sub-County Kalungu district. The duo had broken into the house of one of the residents. They earlier escaped from Masaka High Court on March 1 and eluded re-arrest until they resurfaced that fateful night. On Thursday the leadership of the Uganda Prisons Services and Police in Masaka Sub Region rewarded communities in Kalungu District that killed a murder suspect in a mob on Monday last week. The Shs10m bounty was delivered by Latif Zaake, the Masaka Regional Police Commander. The bounty was promised by Uganda Prisons Service to whoever helped security re-arrest the fugitives following their escape from court. Yes, conventional. Duntroon graduate (class of 84); infantry (parachute) followed by SAS; Middle East command (2011) before being appointed Chief of Army in 2015. But hang on a minute, no, hes not. Masters of Philosophy (Cambridge); Deputy Secretary of the PMs Department, and time heading Operation Sovereign Borders, a task carried out professionally no matter what personal feelings he may have held at the time. The first is that Minister Marise Payne has made choices that are deliberate, informed, and aimed at both cementing reforms in place as well as keeping the process moving. None of the new appointees represent radical choices; on the other hand, none are steady as she goes types either. The excellence of the new military command arrangements probably depends from where you are viewing them. If youve been by-passed, or arent part of the in crowd, the stunning excellence of the appointments probably wont be readily apparent. From outside, however, three things are obvious. A contemporary comments that he hasnt used his period heading the army to change much, and perhaps thats true. Nevertheless, and unlike his predecessor (Australian of the Year) David Morrison, Campbell didnt attempt to make a huge splash nor suddenly embark on wholesale structural reform. He knew doing so risked breaking the organisation, something many feel nearly happened back in the late 90s. Instead hes fostered the careers of individuals who he believed would benefit from wider experience and attempted to give others opportunities outside the service. Has he done enough? Probably not. Nevertheless, without his careful nurturing, the army certainly wouldnt have recovered to the extent it has. After Vietnam it took decades to regain capability; today its a force in being. The announcement of Major General Ric Burr to replace Campbell as army Chief surprised no-one. Burrs also spent time in PM&C but, more significantly, has been the only foreign officer the US has ever trusted to be the deputy commander of its Pacific army. Thats a huge vote of confidence. He really impressed our ally during his Marine Corps Staff College postings; hell have real ideas about how he wants to improve the army further over the next couple of years. Defence Minister Marise Payne Minister Marise Payne has made choices that are deliberate and informed. Credit:AAP Vice Admiral David Johnson switches from joint operations to take over as No.2. His new position is ideal for someone with a demonstrated capacity and ability to keep lots of balls in the air at the same time, always quietly and without fuss. Its a sensible appointment. Its also one that demonstrates Payne has a real feel for nurturing the military. The current Vice Chief, Ray Griggs, was suffering from an insidious whispering campaign about his personal life, directed through the pages of another newspaper. This began the minute it looked as if he might receive another promotion and quickly took on the nature of a vendetta. It was, almost certainly, both vindictive and unnecessary. Those genuinely interested in the forces would do far better to consider how long its really desirable to have individuals sitting at the top of the defence tree rather than trading in salacious gossip. Sir John Monash, widely credited with devising strategies that turned the surge of World War I against the Germans after years of death-dealing stalemate, was the first military commander in 200 years to be knighted on the field of battle. He was so revered by Australians that 300,000 people turned out for his funeral in 1931 and 10,000 returned soldiers led his casket mounted on a gun carriage through the streets to Melbournes Brighton cemetery. He was, however, never elevated to the giddy rank of field marshal. It was a curious omission after King George V had travelled to the Western Front, bearing the honour the king, immensely impressed with Monash's efforts at crushing the Germans at Hamel, Amiens and the Hindenburg Line, had personally upgraded from Knight Commander of the Bath to the more distinguished Knight Grand Cross in the Order of St Michael and St George. Now, as the centenary of the end of the World War I approaches, the final chance of the Monash name being graced with the title field marshal has slid away. Austin, Texas: The parents of children who died in the 2012 massacre at Sandy Hook Elementary School in Newtown, Connecticut have accused conspiracy theorist Alex Jones and InfoWars of defamation and seek damages in excess of $US1 million ($1.28 million). Two lawsuits filed on behalf of Neil Heslin, Leonard Pozner and Veronique De La Rosa allege that Jones and his media organisation spread false information related to the tragedy. InfoWars host Alex Jones arrives at court in Texas. Credit:AP One of the suits also names Jones' employee, Owen Shroyer, as a defendant. Heslin's suit arose from accusations InfoWars made in 2017 that Heslin was lying about holding his son's body and seeing a bullet hole in the child's head. Latest News Average mortgage records $80,000 increase over the year The highest average mortgages can be found in NSW and Victoria NAB announces major change to broker strategy Big Four bank to streamline broker distribution model, creates new head of broker experience role Brokers are invited to access insights, recommendations and marketing tools as part of a roadshow event across the country. Almost 3000 mortgage professionals are expected to register their interest for Peppers 4th Annual National Insights Roadshow, which kicks off in Melbourne on 13 June. The event will visit five major capital cities and forms a significant part of Peppers education offering to the third-party channel. The group has confirmed it will be launching new marketing tools for brokers, the first of a series of templates and guides it plans to unveil this year. Pepper Australias Director of Sales and Distribution, Aaron Milburn, says the event is attracting a diverse group of mortgage professionals. Milburn added: This years roadshow is based entirely on feedback received from last years roadshows we saw brokers asking for insights into economic trends and industry updates, while others requested assistance with marketing strategies and templates specific to non-conforming clients were pleased to have an agenda that covers both. This year were attracting not only a diverse range of brokers but were delighted to have received registrations from aggregator BDMs, back office staff, financial advisers, credit specialists and referral partners. The industry is recognising how alternative lenders can help brokers help their customers more than ever before. With the amount of information on how certain issues are set to impact the lending market, Pepper plans to arm brokers with as much information as possible by providing insights from the markets that have gone through regulatory change already. Specifically, Pepper will run an in-depth session on Comprehensive Credit Reporting from a non-confirming lens incorporating views from ARCA, international markets and Pepper itself. The second session will cover the most topical issues in the current marketplace and provide the top tips that a broker needs to prepare and protect their business. Milburn added: Previous roadshows have included information on the specialist lending market, helping brokers identify and market to non-conforming clients. This year were taking that to the next level with a session from our Group Chief Marketing Officer, Joanne Thrift, who will give attendees an intimate understanding of todays customer and most excitingly, unveil our new marketing toolkit. After the first event in Melbourne the roadshow continues to Adelaide, Perth, Sydney, then Brisbane. For more details on the locations and dates, and to register for an event, visit www.pepper.com.au/broker/insights Related stories: Latest News Average mortgage records $80,000 increase over the year The highest average mortgages can be found in NSW and Victoria NAB announces major change to broker strategy Big Four bank to streamline broker distribution model, creates new head of broker experience role A leading aggregator has highlighted the importance of quality customer data to support brokers in building successful businesses with great customer service. CEO of Choice Aggregation Services, Stephen Moore, said it was necessary for brokers to have strong, in-depth conversations with their clients to obtain a full picture of their needs and deliver the best possible service and outcome. Moore, who is also the Chair of LIXI, the industry Data Standards Board, said collection of the right client data, ongoing data management and security, have never been more important. Speaking at Choices annual Business Development Days, he said: Brokers are in a unique position. Typically, they are closer to their customers than anyone else in the lending market. Not only do they know about hard data e.g. their financial situation, but also soft data, which can be even more important, including things like clients aspirations, their family situation, what is important to them and so on. This combination of hard and soft client data is invaluable. It is the new black. A comprehensive approach to data management can support brokers to deliver the highest quality applications, as well as build more trust with both their customers and lenders. On Comprehensive Credit Reporting (CCR) and Open Banking, Moore said he believes these will have an overall positive impact for customers. He added: A more holistic picture of a customers credit situation will assist to tailor credit to their individual circumstances. It also allows clients to proactively address any credit concerns and, with client permission, brokers have a key role to play here too. We expect Open Banking to further drive lending competition, which will be a positive for customers and brokers. Coupled with their existing knowledge of clients circumstances, brokers will be in the box seat to provide valuable advice to clients in a more efficient way. Held across five major states throughout March, Choices Business Development Days also featured panel discussions with some of Choices leading brokers, in line with Choices ongoing focus on peer-to-peer learning. The events also featured a presentation from Business Futurist Morris Miselowski, who said brokers are Finance Futurists, and advised them to think about their role as assessing and providing for the future with every loan they provide. Mr Miselowski also spoke about changes in the broking sector and encouraged them to future proof their businesses by understanding and leveraging new technologies without forgetting the importance of their human touch. He added: Lets move away from thinking about the rate of change and look at the range of change that surrounds us. The population in Australia is growing, life expectancy is constantly rising, our financial intimacy is growing, were surrounded by technology, artificial intelligence and blockchain, the list goes on. But what remains constant is that were in a peoples business and people love getting advice from a person they can see and trust. Keep humanity at the front and centre of everything you do. Related stories: Latest News Average mortgage records $80,000 increase over the year The highest average mortgages can be found in NSW and Victoria NAB announces major change to broker strategy Big Four bank to streamline broker distribution model, creates new head of broker experience role A report released today shows the progress of a reform which is set to abolish mortgage broker commissions directly linked to loan size. Independent governance expert Ian McPhee AO PSM released the report on April 17 after monitoring the Better Banking Reform Program for the last two years. Major parts of this reform have revolved around changes to the way banks pay their staff, as outlined in the Sedgwick Review completed in 2017, such as removing direct sales incentives and introducing balanced scorecards in each bank. The review set a deadline for these changes to be completed by 2020 however the report suggests banks are already well underway in implementing these reforms. The program, which began in April 2016, is meant to achieve three outcomes better products, better service and better culture. Following the report, Westpac CEO Brian Hartzer reaffirmed the banks commitment to rebuilding customer trust. He said: While we are working towards full implementation of the recommendations in the Sedgwick Review, we are also integrating the recommendations with our existing strategy, to ensure that how we engage with our people and customers is in line with our vision to be one of the worlds great service companies, helping our customers, communities and people to prosper and grow. In addition to implementing the industrys Better Banking Initiatives, we proactively review our products, processes and policies on a regular basis to ensure they serve our customers interests. We have made over 150 changes, including reducing the number of consumer products on offer by more than 50 per cent, cutting transaction fees for 1.3 million customers, offering a low rate credit card, and removing ATM fees. Australian Banking Association CEO Anna Bligh thanked McPhee for his oversight over the last two years providing independent governance advice and monitoring for the ambitious industry reform program. Bligh said: The industry has set a cracking pace on some of the toughest reforms in over a decade, as detailed in Mr McPhees final report, however there is still further work to be done to bed these down. Banks have made a large investment in reform to better meet community expectations, such as changing the way bank staff are paid and improving customer protections under the new Banking Code. Banks are on track to meet the 2020 deadline set by the Sedgwick Review to reform the way they pay their staff including abolishing direct sales incentives and scrapping mortgage broker commissions directly linked to loan size. While this is the final report by Ian McPhee the industry has taken his advice and will be putting in place further arrangements for public reporting. Key initiatives already implemented include, customer advocates within banks to ensure complaints are resolved quickly and fairly; improving protections and awareness of processes for whistleblowers, including best practice industry guidelines; and stamping out poor conduct in the industry by ensuring staff with records of poor behaviour do not simply move around the industry. Related stories: By Moses Kyeyune. The government has not provided funds for political parties in the 2018/19 National Budget. According to Section 14A of the Political Parties and Organizations Act, 2005, the government is mandated to contribute funds towards the activities of political parties or organizations represented in Parliament. However, the Electoral Commission, in its 383billion budget has no reflection of any amount to be given to political parties. While appearing before the committee on Legal and Parliamentary Affairs, the Electoral Commission chairperson, Justice Simon Byabakamaraised concerns over unfunded and underfunded priorities including the National Consultative Forum of Political Parties and Organisations as well as capital development. Sign up for our PoliticsNY newsletter for the latest coverage and to stay informed about the 2021 elections in your district and across NYC A Windsor Terrace man burned himself to death early Saturday morning in Prospect Park, leaving behind charred remains that horrified passersby who started the weekend with a stroll in the green space. Paramedics pronounced 60-year-old David Buckel dead when they found his body on the ground not far from a footpath near the park entrance at 10th Avenue and Prospect Park Southwest, after responding to a 911 call reporting a man on fire rolling around in the grass around 6:30 am, according to photographer Mark Mellone, who overheard the call on a police scanner and rushed to the scene. Parts of Buckels body continued to burn for almost an hour as emergency responders attempted to shield the corpse from park-goers view with a white sheet, according to Mellone, who said he spent the morning warning dog walkers and other visitors about the grizzly sight when he wasnt snapping pictures of it. Police discovered a suicide note in a manilla folder stashed inside a grocery cart near the deceaseds corpse, which cops found just a few blocks away from his Prospect Park Southwest home, authorities said. Buckel described his decision to take his life as a protest against humanitys destruction of the environment in the note, which he also e-mailed to publications including the New York Times before setting himself ablaze, according to a Times report. Pollution ravages our planet, oozing inhabitability via air, soil, water and weather, he wrote. Most humans on the planet now breathe air made unhealthy by fossil fuels, and many die early deaths as a result my early death by fossil fuel reflects what we are doing to ourselves. Buckel also compared his self-immolation to similar suicides by Tibetan activists who ignited themselves in flame in protest of the regions occupation by China, according to a New York Daily News report on the incident. With his last breath: David Buckel, who championed gay rights as the director of the Lambda Legal Marriage Project, burned himself to death in an apparent suicide in Prospect Park on April 14. Lambda Legal Many have chosen to give a life based on the view that no other action can most meaningfully address the harm they see, his note read. The deceased gained public recognition for his work as a civil-rights attorney and champion of LGBTQ causes at national-advocacy organization Lambda Legal, where he once spearheaded its marriage-equality initiative, according to the groups acting director, who described Buckels death as heartbreaking. This is a tremendous loss for our Lambda Legal family, but also for the entire movement for social justice, Camilla Taylor said in a statement. Buckels work for Lambda Legals Marriage Project included presenting arguments that in 2006 led the New Jersey Supreme Court to rule that same-sex couples seeking marriage in the state deserve the same rights as their opposite-sex counterparts, Taylor said. And before that, the attorney in 1999 successfully sued a Nebraska county sheriff for failing to protect a transgender man raped and murdered there years earlier, whose death inspired the Academy Awardwinning film Boys Dont Cry, according to a Gay City News report. Buckel rededicated himself to conservation in recent years, joining the ranks of a local farm in nearby Red Hook where he elevated community composting to an exquisite art form, according to a leader at the growing operation, who described him as a source of inspiration for other green thumbs in a letter mourning his death. Our deepest condolences to his loved ones at this difficult time, said Red Hook Community Farms Saara Nafici. We will continue the work of environmental education, advocacy, and action to honor his life of service. Gone but not forgotten: Mondays heavy rains did not wash away the flowers and candles mourners used to form a makeshift memorial to Buckel, foreground, at the site where he burned himself to death on Saturday. Photo by Mark Mellone Four of Flipkart's investors have reportedly agreed to sell their stakes to Walmart , but the newest and biggest investor, SoftBank, is holding out for a better deal. Citing sources aware of the developments, The Economic Times said that the US retail behemoth has reached an agreement on buying the stakes of New York-based investment firm Tiger Global Management, South African media conglomerate Naspers, venture capital firm Accel and China's Tencent Holdings. The report added that Sachin Bansal and Binny Bansal, the co-founders of the Bangalore-based company , may also sell a part of their stake. These six shareholders collectively hold more than 55 per cent of Flipkart . Walmart would reportedly grab close to 50% ownership if it acquires the stakes of the investors it has reached agreement with. Last August, Japan's SoftBank bought a 20 per cent stake in the country's leading etailer for $2.5 billion through its $100 billion technology-focused Vision Fund. It was the biggest ever private investment in an Indian tech firm at the time. According to the daily, Walmart is believed to have offered a $10-12 billion valuation to purchase the shares held by the Tokyo-headquartered investor. However, the latter is seeking a better price, estimated at $15-17 billion, through the secondary sale of shares. "Discussions with SoftBank are still ongoing ... Most of the others have come aboard. In a deal like this, there are always ebbs and flows, but there is a time factor to consider as well," said the source, adding that the final contours of the transaction are still being worked on and could change on a short notice. Given that the exclusivity period ended a few weeks ago, it is unclear whether SoftBank will continue talks should Walmart manage to clinch a deal with the other shareholders. The report adds that the deal offered by Walmart - which includes a primary investment apart from the secondary share purchase - values Flipkart at about $20-22 billion. That's 67 per cent more than the $12 billion figure given when SoftBank came on board, and truly impressive for a company that was all but written off in 2016 thanks to valuation loss, leadership issues and an aggressive Amazon. The sources also told the daily that Amazon has joined Flipkart's list of suitors and is believed to be in talks with several of its shareholders, including SoftBank. However, regulatory hassles may play party pooper here - after all, given the dominant market share the two entities have in the ecommerce space, any Flipkart-Amazon deal is sure to face close scrutiny of the Competition Commission of India. Both Walmart and Flipkart stand to gain much if this long-speculated deal goes through. To begin with, they get to pool resources to compete against their common enemy, Amazon, in online as well as offline retail channels. Walmart also gets to grab a foothold in India's booming e-commerce industry. It has reportedly tried to enter India for years but has remained confined to a 'cash-and-carry' wholesale business - it currently operates 21 such stores - amid tough restrictions on foreign investment. According to the report, its push into e-commerce comes as Amazon has embraced offline retail, with an affiliate of the Seattle-based company picking up a $27.6 million stake in Indian retailer Shopper's Stop Ltd. Meanwhile, Flipkart stands to not only add financial muscle but also strengthen its supply chain and enhance efficiency in procurement, product assortment and retailing. India's leading etailer, besides, has been looking to open retail stores in India for a long time now but has been waiting for the right investment partner. As such, the partnership between Walmart and Flipkart already seems like a match made in heaven. Furthermore, as the daily has previously pointed out, if Walmart succeeds in its negotiations with Flipkart's existing investors, this will be one of the biggest - not to mention pretty rare - exits in the Indian startup ecosystem. Consider Tiger Global. Back in 2009, it was the second player to bet on Flipkart, ploughing in a whopping $30 million in two tranches. Despite selling shares worth over $500-600 million last year, its remaining stake of around 20 per cent is estimated to be worth around $4 billion currently. Similarly, Accel Partners, which led the Series A round in Flipkart with $1 million, has already raked in $150-200 million from its partial exit last year. And, should the Walmart deal crystalise, it will reportedly see the value of its 5-6 per cent stake swell further. Fortis Healthcare on Monday said its board will meet this week to look at all eligible options as two more parties have entered the fray to acquire the company after its pact with Manipal Health Enterprises. The company's statement comes hours after Malaysia's IHH Healthcare said Fortis has expressed inability to engage with it over its offer to acquire the Indian healthcare firm, citing binding agreements with Manipal Health Enterprises. IHH had last week joined the race to acquire Fortis Healthcare, offering to acquire its shares at up to Rs 160 apiece, higher than Manipal's offer at Rs 155 per share which valued the company at Rs 6,061 crore. The Malaysian firm's offer came a day after Sunil Kant Munjal-led Hero Enterprise Investment Office and Burman Family Office offered to invest Rs 1,250 crore in Fortis at up to Rs 156 per share. The Fortis Board will be meeting this week to look at all eligible options and determine the future course of action that is in the best interests of the company, employees and shareholders, Fortis Healthcare said in a statement. Last week, Fortis has received two binding offers -- one is a revised offer from Manipal Health Enterprises Pvt Ltd (MHEPL) and the second is a joint binding offer from Hero Enterprise Investment Office and Burman Family Office expressing interest in the company, it added. In addition, the company has also received a non-binding expression of interest from IHH Healthcare Bhd, the statement said. Manipal had raised its offer for Fortis to Rs 155 per share by valuing the hospital business higher at Rs 6,061 crore, from Rs 5,003 crore initially. In the letter to the directors of FHL last week, IHH Healthcare Berhard Managing Director and Group CEO Tan See Leng expressed his company's strong interest in Fortis Healthcare Ltd and its affiliates in a suitable manner. Earlier in the day, in a filing on Malaysian stock exchange IHH said, in response to the letter, the Board of Fortis has indicated its inability to engage with IHH as Fortis has entered into binding agreements with Manipal Health Enterprises Pvt Ltd, Manipal Global Health Services and TPG Asia. The company further said, at this juncture, IHH has not entered into any discussions, negotiations or transactions. A merger with a hospital chain such as Manipal might make more sense, said an analyst, adding that more details of the IHH offer were needed. IHH operates healthcare facilities across nine countries via a network of 49 hospitals including Mount Elizabeth and Gleneagles in Singapore. In the letter last week, Leng had said: As on date, based on publicly-available information and our preliminary analysis, we believe a price of up to Rs 160 per Fortis share to be appropriate, subject to satisfactory completion of a due diligence. Leng also hinted at the possibility of IHH making revised counter offer if the other suitors were to revise their bids. Notwithstanding anything in this letter, given the ever changing competitive dynamics, IHH reserves the right to pursue all necessary steps to ensure that the shareholders of Fortis are provided with the opportunity to realise the value inherent in our proposal including the right to revise the indicative offer price in any manner, IHH deems fit, he said in the letter. In March, the Fortis board had approved demerger of its hospitals business, which was to be acquired by Manipal Hospitals and TPG Capital, along with the sale of 20 per cent stake in diagnostics chain SRL Ltd, in a Rs 3,900-crore deal. Shares of Fortis fell about 2 per cent on Monday after the announcement by IHH and ended 2.8 per cent lower. IHH shares ended down 0.33 per cent after trading was halted. The Sensex and Nifty marked their longest winning streak in over three years closing higher for the ninth straight session as consumer-based stocks rose on a normal monsoon forecast by India Meteorological Department (IMD). While the Sensex rose 89 points to 34,395, Nifty closed 20 points higher to 10,548 level. India Meteorological Department (IMD) said on Monday monsoon rains are likely to be 97 per cent of their long-term average in 2018, reassuring farmers ahead of summer planting in a country where only half of the farmland is irrigated. The BSE index which opened nearly 100 points higher marked its longest winning run since early September 2014 after close. Diversified consumer goods manufacturer Hindustan Unilever (HUL) hit its 52 week high level of Rs 1,450 on expectations of a normal monsoon. The stock closed 1.83% higher at 1,445 level. Mahindra and Mahindra, which is among the world's largest tractor maker, rose to its 52 week high of 819 level on BSE. The stock closed 1.05% higher at Rs 809 on BSE. Normal monsoon will bring cheers to the farmers with water available in abundance for their crops. This in turn would spur sales of farm equipment and agricultural products. Mahindra and Mahindra is also engaged in the business of manufacturing and selling farm equipments, agricultural machinery, equipment and other agriculture products. Abhijeet Dey, senior fund manager-equities at BNP Paribas Mutual Fund said, "Markets traded on a volatile note as lacklustre industrial production numbers dampened sentiment. Industrial production grew just 6% in March, compared with 7.2% in the first two months of the year, and 6.8% overall for the quarter. Both the benchmark Sensex and the Nifty finally closed the day with marginal gains. Sectoral performance on the National Stock Exchange (NSE) was mixed. While the PSU banking, media, IT and auto indices traded with losses, the FMCG index registered sharp gains." On the Sensex, top gainers were PowerGrid (2.94%), NTPC (1.99%) and Hindustan Unilever (1.83%) were the top Sensex gainers. Consumer goods stocks led the charge on Dalal Street with the BSE consumer durables index rising 1.05% to 23,038 on expectations of a normal monsoon. The Nifty FMCG index too gained 1% to 27,536 level. The BSE FMCG index too rose 1.05% to 10,846. Jewellery stocks closed higher a day ahead of Akshaya Tritiya, the most auspicious day according to the Hindu calendar. Demand for gold jewellery rises on this day in the market. Jewellery stock Titan Industries hit a fresh 52-week high of 999.95 level on BSE and closed at 998 level, rising 1.55%. PC Jeweller too closed 1.53% higher at 305 level. Sameet Chavan, chief analyst, Technical and Derivatives at Angel Broking said, "It was a day of consolidation for our market as we saw a flat opening followed by some correction and then a gradual recovery throughout the second half to reclaim the 10550 mark. If we look at the index, it's clearly not going anywhere. The real action was seen in individual stocks, which kept lot of traders engaged during the course of action. As far as index view is concerned, we would continue with our recent stance and expect the Nifty to gradually march towards its sturdy wall of 10580 - 10640. We reiterate that it would be an opportunity for short term traders to liquidate longs and remain light on positions. One should expect some consolidation for next couple of days before market giving any kind of directional move. Hence, intraday traders are advised to keep focusing on individual stocks and should rather adopt a proper exit strategy. For the coming session, the support now would be seen at 10500 - 10450 levels." Meanwhile, the Indian rupee fell to its seven-month low on concerns over widening of trade deficit amid heightened geopolitical worries. Foreign institutional investors (FIIs) pulled out over Rs 308 crore and domestic institutional investors selling stocks worth Rs 28.97 crore in the Indian market on Monday also weakened sentiment. The rupee closed at 65.6425 level, down 15 paise over its previous close. Global markets Global shares were mixed Tuesday, with steady China economic growth data supporting sentiment despite simmering trade tensions between China and the US. France's CAC 40 inched up 0.1 percent to 5,319.17 in early trading, while Germany's DAX added 0.3 percent to 12,430.06. Britain's FTSE 100 was down nearly 0.1 percent at 7,191.33. U.S. shares were set to drift higher with the Dow future gaining 0.4 percent to 24,663. The S&P 500 future climbed 0.3 percent to 2,690.20. Japan's benchmark Nikkei 225 edged 0.1 percent higher to 21,847.59. Australia's S&P/ASX 200 was unchanged at 5,841.50. South Korea's Kospi lost 0.2 percent to 2,453.77. Hong Kong's Hang Seng shed 0.9 percent to 30,059.32, while the Shanghai Composite dropped 1.4 percent to 3,066.80. Shares fell in Taiwan and Indonesia, but rose in Singapore. Benchmark US crude added 20 cents to $66.42 a barrel in electronic trading on the New York Mercantile Exchange. It declined $1.17 to settle at $66.22 per barrel on Monday. Brent crude, used to price international oils, rose 13 cents to $71.55 per barrel. 17 Apr 2018, 2:51 PM World Bank forecasts 7.3 per cent growth for India in FY 2018 The World Bank on Monday forecast a growth rate of 7.3 per cent for India this year and 7.5 per cent for 2019 and 2020, and noted that the country's economy has recovered from the effects of demonetisation and the Goods and Services Tax. "Growth is expected to accelerate from 6.7 in 2017 to 7.3 per cent in 2018 and to subsequently stabilise supported by a sustained recovery in private investment and private consumption," the World Bank said in its twice-a-year South Asia Economic Focus. India set to receive average monsoon rains, in boost for poll-bound Modi India is likely to receive average monsoon rains in 2018, the the state-run India Meteorological Department said, raising the possibility of higher farm and economic growth in Asia's third-biggest economy, where half of the farmland lacks irrigation. Monsoon rains, the lifeblood of the country's $2 trillion economy, are expected to be 97 percent of a long-term average, K.J. Ramesh, director general of IMD, told a news conference. Fortis board to take call on Manipal Health, IHH and Hero-Dabur's offers this week Fortis Healthcare on Monday said its board will meet this week to look at all eligible options as two more parties have entered the fray to acquire the company after its pact with Manipal Health Enterprises. The company's statement comes hours after Malaysia's IHH Healthcare said Fortis has expressed inability to engage with it over its offer to acquire the Indian healthcare firm, citing binding agreements with Manipal Health Enterprises. Flipkart to announce new exclusive partnership with 'tech giant' on April 17 E-commerce giant Flipkart is expected to make two big announcements on Tuesday. In a teaser posted on the e-tailer's Twitter page, Flipkart CEO Kalyan Krishnamurthy said, "Long term partnerships have transformed the way India buys mobile phones. We are proud to enter into an exclusive partnership with a 'tech giant' to disrupt the mobile phone landscape in a big way. Get ready for two big announcements soon." While the homegrown online marketplace has not given any names as to who will be its likely 'tech giant' partner, media reports suggest that it could be a partnership with Huawei which is planning to launch the latest P20 series, or a partnership with Motorola to announce the upcoming Moto G6 mid-range series. Facebook must face class action over facial recognition A US federal judge ruled on Monday that Facebook Inc must face a class action lawsuit alleging that the social network unlawfully used a facial recognition process on photos without user permission. The ruling adds to the privacy woes that have been mounting against Facebook for weeks, since it was disclosed that the personal information of millions of users was harvested by the political consultancy Cambridge Analytica. Goodbody Stockbrokers has today warned that the Easter break has resulted in somewhat of a lull in the Brexit noise. However, the financial experts believe that with negotiations set to resume later this week, this is all about to change. Indeed, Goodbody say the talks will step up a gear, with five rounds of negotiations expected over the period running up to the June European Council meeting. Although a calm has emerged, there are still some controversial issues to be ironed out in these negotiations. According to Goodbody, the three key areas of focus for these talks will be: (i) EU-UK relations post-Brexit; (ii) the Brexit withdrawal agreement; (iii) the Irish border. Last December, the UK agreed to the EUs demand for a backstop arrangement on the Irish border that will mean that in the event of no agreement, Northern Ireland will not diverge on trade to the extent that a hard border would be required to protect the integrity of the single market. That political agreement has not yet been put into legal text, but Irish Minister for Foreign Affairs Simon Coveney put down a marker in his comments yesterday on this issue. Speaking in Brussels, he said that if there is not sufficient progress on a wording of the backstop by June, it puts everything at risk, including the withdrawal agreement and the transition period. According to Goodbody Stockbrokers, "Other issues, where the UK and the EU have a common interest (Russia, Syria) appeared to have shifted the attention away from the animosity of the Brexit negotiations over recent weeks. This does not take away from the fact that time is running out to have a withdrawal agreement concluded by October. While we may have a slightly biased view, we believe that the Irish border question is the most important issue remaining in these negotiations." Source: www.businessworld.ie Microsoft has today released research into digital disconnect on over 20,476 employees across 21 EU countries. In Ireland, over 1,000 employees were interviewed across the 25-44 years of age range, with questions focused on the technology they used, as well as their attitudes about their jobs and performance. The research identified culture as the key ingredient for an organisations digital success. Digital Culture is where an organisation encourages and supports technology use to get work done in the most effective way. A strong digital culture has training, access to information, manager encouragement of tech adoption, and has a clear strategic vision from leaders regarding technologys transformative potential. Only 11% of Irish employees feel highly productive in their job and 14% feel highly engaged. While 90% of employees report low innovation in their organisation. The research found that poor digital culture creates disconnected employees who are disengaged from the organisation. Additionally, 93% of employees in Ireland have low to average productivity when there is a weak digital culture. Whereas where there is a strong digital culture, twice as many employees experience high productivity and three times as many employees experience high innovativeness. Only 16.2% of Irish employees interviewed, claimed they use a high amount of technology in their job. Commenting on the research, Commercial Director at Microsoft Ireland, Aisling Curtis said, "One year ago, we said that organisations had two years to transform or risk losing out to competitors. And one year on, that message has been strengthened with this latest research highlighting the need for significant action in Ireland when we consider that a massive 84% of Irish employees believe they work within a weak digital culture." She added, "To combat this, leaders need to be clear on whether their organisation has a set of guidelines for how technology should be used and whether their people have been brought along that journey." Source: www.businessworld.ie Authorities in Inner Mongolia have released a doctor who called a well-known medicinal liquor a poison, after news of his three months in detention provoked national anger over the handling of the case. Police in the Inner Mongolia autonomous region confirmed (link in Chinese) on Sunday that Guangdong province-based doctor Tan Qingdong had been detained for nearly 100 days on suspicion of damaging the reputation of Hongmao Medicinal Liquor, which is sold across the country as an over-the-counter traditional Chinese medicine. The rare cross-provincial arrest was initiated after a complaint by the seller of the product, Inner Mongolia-based Hongmao Pharmaceutical Co. Ltd. in December, Inner Mongolia police said in their initial official Weibo account post. Hongmao Pharmaceutical approached the county public security bureau to complain about a post Tan had published on Chinese social media app Meipian on Dec. 19. Tans post, titled Chinas Mystical Hongmao Medicinal Liquor, Poison From Heaven, urged the elderly not to drink alcohol due to its impact on their heart and blood vessels. He also wrote that some of the 67 listed ingredients of Hongmao Medicinal Liquor are toxic substances commonly found in traditional Chinese medicine, and questioned whether the liquor was really able to improve any of the conditions it claimed to treat, including coronary heart disease and irregular menstruation. Tans post received around 2,000 clicks and cost Hongmao Pharmaceutical over 1.4 million yuan ($223,000) in losses, according to the public security bureau in Liangcheng county in Ulaanchab, Inner Mongolia. Hongmao Medicinal Liquor is advertised, especially toward elderly Chinese, as a multi-purpose health elixir. Bottles of the dark-red liquid sell for around 290 yuan ($46) on Hongmao Pharmaceuticals official store on e-commerce site Tmall. Tans intention was to counter what he saw as harmful, false propaganda by Hongmao Pharmaceutical, which was especially harmful to elderly people who lacked medical knowledge, he said in a statement provided by his attorney. His article had not been written to further any commercial interest, he said. News of Tans detention was met by an immediate backlash from members of Chinas popular Weibo social network. Over 40,000 users reposted the police announcement, including many who added comments in support of Tan and criticizing police handling of the case. User Wuyuesanren said (link in Chinese) his own Weibo post on Hongmao Medicinal Liquor had already received several million views, and asked, When will your esteemed bureau decide to arrest me? On Monday, the Chinese Medical Doctor Association, a national professional organization, called (link in Chinese) for government agencies to avoid criminalizing academic disputes, especially those over drugs. Even state-controlled media outlet Peoples Daily said (link in Chinese) the company must be responsible for how it advertises its product, and should not once more use false health care advertisements to earn profits. Hongmao Pharmaceutical did not respond to Caixins multiple attempts for comment. The official website (link in Chinese) of Hongmao Pharmaceutical claims that its product was first manufactured in 1739, and includes a section on the alleged healing properties of traditional Chinese medicinal liquors. After facing criticism from social media users and state media alike, Inner Mongolia authorities announced (link in Chinese) on Tuesday afternoon that they had found the current facts of the case unclear, and the evidence insufficient, and that Tan could be released on bail. The uproar over Tans arrest is the second high-profile clash between proponents of traditional Chinese medicine and skeptics in recent months. In February, Chinas official National Health and Family Planning Commission cautioned social media followers against using ejiao, a traditional supplement made from boiled donkey hide. After the commission posted the warning, which was later deleted, shares of Shenzhen-listed Dong-E-E-Jiao Co. Ltd., Chinas top ejiao maker, dropped for five consecutive trading days. Hongmao Pharmaceutical has faced both public and official censure in the past. The companys advertisements had been found to be violating laws on 2,630 occasions in 25 provincial-level regions in China, and Hongmao has been ordered to stop selling its products at least 10 times, according to a health publication run by the Peoples Daily. Hongmao Pharmaceutical has also taken heat for its products alleged ingredient list, which includes leopard bone. A Weibo post (link in Chinese) last month by telemedicine startup Chunyu Yisheng called into question the legality of Hongmaos use of leopard bone, and criticized the company for endorsing the commercial use of endangered animal parts. Contact reporter Teng Jing Xuan (jingxuanteng@caixin.com) April 16, 2018 - Ottawa, Ontario - Global Affairs Canada The G7 foreign ministers today issued the following statement: We, the G7 foreign ministers, of Canada, France, Germany, Italy, Japan, the United Kingdom and the United States of America and the High Representative of the European Union, are united in condemning, in the strongest possible terms, the attack that took place against Sergei and Yulia Skripal, using a nerve agent in Salisbury, United Kingdom, on March 4, 2018. A British police officer and numerous civilians were exposed in the attack and required hospital treatment, and the lives of many more innocent British civilians have been threatened. We express our deepest sympathies to them all and our admiration and support for the U.K. emergency services for their courageous response. The United Kingdom has thoroughly briefed G7 partners. We share, and agree with, the U.K.s assessment that it is highly likely that the Russian Federation was responsible for the attack and that there is no plausible alternative explanation. We condemn Russias continued failure to address legitimate requests from the U.K. government, which further underlines its responsibility. We call on Russia to urgently address all questions related to the incident in Salisbury. The Organisation for the Prohibition of Chemical Weapons (OPCW) has now independently confirmed the findings of the United Kingdom relating to the identity of the toxic chemical that was used in Salisbury. Russia should provide full and complete disclosure of its previously undeclared Novichok program to the OPCW in line with its international obligations. This use of a military-grade nerve agent, of a type developed by Russia, constitutes the first offensive use of a nerve agent in Europe since the Second World War and is a grave challenge not only to the security of the United Kingdom but to our shared security. It is an assault on U.K. sovereignty. Any use of chemical weapons by a state party, under any circumstances, is a clear breach of international law and a violation of the Chemical Weapons Convention. It is a threat to us all. Their use is abhorrent, completely unacceptable and must be systematically and rigorously condemned. We, participating states of the International Partnership Against Impunity for the Use of Chemical Weapons, stand together against impunity for those who develop or use these weapons, anywhere, any time, under any circumstances. The G7 is committed to protecting and promoting the rules-based international system. We stand in unqualified solidarity with the United Kingdom. Our concerns are also heightened against the background of a pattern of earlier irresponsible and destabilizing Russian behaviour, including interference in countries democratic systems. We call on Russia to live up to its Chemical Weapons Convention obligations, as well as its responsibilities as a permanent member of the UN Security Council, to uphold international peace and security. In order to bring Russia back into the rules-based international system, we will continue to engage with Russia, as appropriate, on addressing regional crises and global challenges. The G7 will continue to bolster its capabilities to address hybrid threats, including in the areas of cybersecurity, strategic communication and counter-intelligence. We welcome national action taken to constrain Russian hostile-intelligence activity and to enhance our collective security. The G7 will remain closely focused on this issue and its implications. Contacts Media Relations Office Global Affairs Canada 343-203-7700 media@international.gc.ca Follow us on Twitter: @CanadaFP Like us on Facebook: Canadas foreign policy - Global Affairs Canada April 16, 2018 - Ottawa, Ontario - Global Affairs Canada The Government of Canada continues to investigate the potential causes of unusual health symptoms reported in 2017 by some Canadian diplomatic staff and dependants posted to Havana, Cuba. There is a government-wide effort to address this situation, including an ongoing investigation in cooperation with Cuban authorities. The health, safety, and security of our diplomatic staff and their families is our top priority. All members of the Canadian diplomatic family who reported unusual symptoms have received medical testing. In the majority of cases, no additional medical follow-up was required. There have been no new incidents since the early fall of 2017. Diplomatic families who have returned to Canada, however, have continued to experience symptoms. The symptoms include dizziness, headaches and lack of ability to concentrate, amongst others. In some cases the symptoms have appeared to lessen in intensity, before reasserting themselves. In March 2018, the Department received the results of an environmental assessment of our diplomatic staff quarters in Havana, including tests of air and water quality. This assessment did not indicate anything that could point to a cause. More recently we have received information from Canadian medical specialists involved in the evaluation of affected Canadian diplomats and dependants, as well as from American medical specialists studying a cohort of affected US diplomatic staff at the University of Pennsylvania. According to these specialists, medical information raised concerns for a new type of a possible acquired brain injury. Additional research is needed to better understand this. The cause remains unknown but could be human-made. As a result of this ongoing uncertainty, Global Affairs Canada has decided to change the designation of our Embassy of Canada to Cuba to an unaccompanied post. This means that Canadian diplomats posted to Cuba will not be accompanied by their dependants. Arrangements will be made to support our diplomatic staff and their families returning to Canada in the coming weeks, as well as for those families who had expected to be posted to Cuba this summer. At the same time we will be reviewing all of our diplomatic positions in Cuba, with a view to balancing our duty of care to our staff members and their families, with the ongoing need to deliver services to Canadians in Cuba, and to promote and protect Canadian interests there. Canada has a positive and constructive relationship with Cuba and has received close cooperation from the Cuban authorities since health concerns of Canadians serving in Cuba first surfaced in the spring of 2017. While regular Embassy operations will continue, there may be some service delays as the Department manages the departure of dependants in the coming days. There is no evidence to suggest that Canadian travelers to Cuba are at risk. Canadian travelers should continue to check the Government of Canada Travel Advice and Advisories (https://travel.gc.ca/) for the latest updates. Contacts Media Relations Office Global Affairs Canada 343-203-7700 media@international.gc.ca Follow us on Twitter: @CanadaFP Like us on Facebook: Canadas foreign policy - Global Affairs Canada Published On Apr 17, 2018 04:21 PM By Khan Mohd. for Audi Q3 The entry-level cars from Audi will give more options to buyers looking for cars in the price range of Rs 20-30 lakh. Audi India has decided to foray into the entry-level luxury car market with new products positioned below the Audi A3 (its entry-level sedan) and the Q3 (its entry-level SUV). Slated to be available by 2021, we expect the prices of the new models to fall in the Rs 20 lakh-30 lakh bracket. The confirmation comes from Audi Indias head, Rahil Ansari. He reportedly said, In order to gain customer base, we will introduce products in the volume segment, below A3 and Q3, in the next 2-3 years Looking at its global portfolio, Audi has the A1 range (A1, S1, A1 Sportback & S1 Sportback) and the Audi Q2 SUV below the A3 and Q3. These could be the models that can come to India. The luxury carmaker recently hinted at the possibility of an SUV under the Q2 as well but we dont expect it to be revealed before 2020. Audi is readying the new 2019 A1 hatchback, which is expected to be revealed later in 2018. The new A1 is expected to ride on Volkswagen Groups smallest version of the MQB platform - the MQB A0. Interestingly, Volkswagen has already confirmed that this platform will be localised in India and we expect the first of the cars on this modular platform (MQB A0 IN) to hit the Indian market by 2020. Besides the A1, the upcoming sub-Audi Q2 SUV/crossover is also expected to ride on this platform only. Interesting read: BMW plans to launch the X2 in India It remains to be seen whether Audi has plans to locally manufacture its entry-level offerings in India or continue bringing them as CKD units. If it manages local production, the carmaker will have a big advantage over other luxury carmakers as it will be able to manage a near-unbeatable entry price into the world of luxury cars. Audi already enjoys the advantage of being the only luxury carmaker to offer a product in this segment as none of its rivals - Mercedes-Benz, BMW, Volvo and Lexus - offer a product in the A1 range. If localised, expect the entry-level Audi to cost around the Rs 20 lakh mark. If you compound the prices of the A1 range (UK) to Indian rupees, it falls between the Rs 15.50 Rs 26.20 lakh bracket, whereas the Q2 costs Rs 20.5 lakh. At present, Audis most affordable offering in India is the A3 sedan, which falls in the Rs 32 lakh Rs 35.44 lakh price range. Its entry level SUV, the Q3, starts from Rs 33.4 lakh (both prices ex-showroom, Delhi). Recommended: Audi India Announces Week-Long Checkup Camp From April 16 Source Read More on : Q3 Automatic Step 1 Log on to the Chhattisgarh Public Service Commission official website. Step 2 Click Online Application link. Step 3 The list of posts for application will be displayed on the screen. Step 4 Click on the relevant link. The link will be active only from Apr 27, 2018. My story with visual impairment began when I was 27 years old. At the time, she had just passed a... Tajikistan records 84% increase in cement production 17 April 2018 Tajikistan has recorded an 83.5 per cent YoY increase in cement production in the first quarter of this year, rising to 782,400t from 426,400t. The production of cement in 2018 is expected to improve upon the previous year due to new infrastructure projects, increasing exports, and planned residential housing construction, according to Business World. The countrys main export markets are Uzbekistan and Afghanistan. In the 1Q18, exports to Uzbekistan reached 172,000t, while dispatches to Afghanistan rose above 131,000t. Tajikistan has 13 production facilities, with a total capacity of 4Mta. Domestic demand has been reported at approximately 3-3.5Mta. Published under Zero is the name of the game for Centennial goalkeeper American Atheists, one of the most combative organizations dedicated to the promotion of secularism, has terminated its highly visible president, David Silverman, over allegations of financial and sexual misconduct. Silverman, through his lawyer, denied the accusations. American Atheists board announced the move on Friday (April 13) hours before the website BuzzFeed News published a story detailing the allegations of two women who say Silverman, 51, had nonconsensual sexual contact with them. We take our obligation to create safe and welcoming communities for our staff, volunteers, members and supporters very seriously, Nick Fish, American Atheists national program director, said in a statement issued after the BuzzFeed articles publication. We have zero tolerance for the type of behavior alleged in these accounts. We will continue to demand the highest standards and accountability from our leaders, staff, and volunteers. Silvermans attorney called the sexual contact consensual. Mr. Silverman denies any wrong doing and has never had a non-consensual sexual encounter, his lawyer, Sebastian Ionno, told BuzzFeed News. The move to terminate Silverman came two days after American Atheists announced it was placing him on paid leave while it investigated his financial conduct related to the promotion of his 2015 book, Fighting God: An Atheist Manifesto for a Religious World, and the appointment to American Atheists staff of a woman Silverman was allegedly sexually involved with. The two women cited by BuzzFeed News came to American Atheists with their complaints after the organization announced its decision to investigate him. They had approached BuzzFeed News with their allegations earlier. According to BuzzFeed News, one of the two women who the news outlet identified only by an initial said Silverman assaulted her in his hotel room following the American Atheists convention in Memphis, Tenn., in 2015. He physically pressed me to the wall and began to kiss me forcefully, grabbed my breasts, and put his hand into my leggings where there was actual penetration of my vagina, she writes in the complaint delivered to American Atheists along with pictures she says are of bruises she sustained at Silvermans hands. The encounter ended, she recounted, when she made it clear she did not consent. The second allegation relates to a 2012 incident at the annual convention of the Secular Student Alliance, an organization for secular college students, in Columbus, Ohio. Rose St. Clair, then a college student and SSA member who hoped for an internship at American Atheists, related that she met Silverman at a bar, became intoxicated, and accepted his invitation to his hotel room. I dont believe I was in a position to be able to give consent. I was very intoxicated, St. Clair told BuzzFeed. She maintains they had unprotected sex. I felt my interest in working for the organization was used as a way for him to have power so that I would have sex with him, St. Clair said. The news of Silvermans dismissal is a serious second blow to organized atheism, which has long struggled with charges of sexism and discrimination. In February, similarly explosive allegations were made against Lawrence Krauss, a prominent scientist at Arizona State University, best-selling author and popular speaker at atheist and skeptic events. Silverman started with American Atheists in 1996 and became president in 2010. He helped raise the organization, which was started by Madalyn Murray OHair in 1963, to greater visibility than it had enjoyed in decades with billboards in Times Square, lawsuits against Ten Commandments monuments, rallies on the National Mall and frequent appearances on Fox News. Reaction in the atheism community has been glum. Kevin Bolling, the executive director of Secular Student Alliance, said in a statement that SSA fully support(s) the courageous and brave women and men who have come forward to tell their own stories and support and share witness to those who have been deeply affected. Users of social media have not minced words. Some on Twitter have gleefully cheered Silvermans plight, others have sadly lamented it, while still others have been more reflective. Theres an epidemic of sexism, sexual harassment & assault in movement atheism, Kristi Winters, an atheist and feminist activist said on Twitter. Attacking credible accusers isnt a solution, its protecting rape culture. Are atheists good w/out gods? Prove it. Courtesy: Religion News Service Photo courtesy: Wikimedia Commons Publication date: April 17, 2018 Andrew Brunson got his first day in a Turkish court today (16 April) to answer espionage charges. It will be three weeks until he gets his second. The American-born Brunson, pastor of a small Protestant church, told the court he denies any wrongdoing. He is accused of supporting the attempted 2016 coup of the government of Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan by aligning himself with two organisations that the Turkish government considers to be terrorist: the FETO network of Gulen, and the outlawed Kurdistan Workers Party. If convicted, the 50-year-old Brunson faces 35 years in prison. I do not accept the charges mentioned in the indictment. I was never involved in any illegal activities, Brunson told the court, according to Reuters, in the Turkish tongue he speaks fluently after 23 years in the country. The days hearing ended with the court ordering Brunson back to the prison where he was first held after he was detained in 2016, said the American Center for Law and Justice, a Washington D.C. advocacy agency that is supporting the pastors defence. It is a facility where nearly two dozen inmates are held to a cell, the centre said. Instead of being returned to the prison where he had been held most recently, the judge ordered Pastor Andrew to be taken back to an overcrowded and extremely grim prison where he was held initially, said the centres chief counsel, Jay Sekulow. As you can imagine, the news is devastating to Pastor Andrew and his family. The American Center for Law and Justice said todays hearing included secret prosecution witnesses whose voices and appearances were disguised. In a brief statement, the US State Department said prosecutors have no case against the pastor. We have seen no credible evidence that Mr. Brunson is guilty of a crime and are convinced that he is innocent, the statement said. Turkey is a state bound by the rule of law, and we have faith in the Turkish peoples commitment to justice. We hope that the judicial system in Turkey will resolve his case in a timely, fair, and transparent manner. Brunsons wife, Norine, was in the courtroom for todays hearing. Following the courts ruling to continue the trial, she was upset and declined to speak with the media. Also attending were the US Ambassador for Religious Freedom, Sam Brownback, and Thom Tillis, a US senator from Brunsons home state of North Carolina. The American Center for Law and Justice said the 62-page indictment against Bruson accuses him of the supposed crime of Christianization'. Brunsons Turkish lawyer, Ismail Cem Halavurt, told Reuters that prosecutors interpret the pastors religious work as aiding terror organisations. There is evidence that shows Brunson was arrested due to his faith, Reuters quoted Halavurt as saying. Brownback is reported to be in the Turkish capital Ankara tomorrow (17 April) for meetings about the Brunson trial, which is complicating relations between the United States and Turkey, two erstwhile NATO allies. That relationship is going to have difficulty moving forward as long as Andrew Brunson is incarcerated, Brownback told reporters at the trial, according to Reuters. Last September, President Erdogan had suggested publicly to the US that it swap your pastor (Brunson) in exchange for Turkeys demanded US extradition of our cleric (Gulen) to Turkey. But the US judiciary contends that despite 80 boxes of evidence submitted against Gulen, who was once a close Erdogan ally, the files lack the hard, credible evidence required under US laws to extradite a legal permanent resident of the US back to Turkey. Brunson gained his theology PhD from the University of Aberdeen in Scotland in 2001. He leads the small Resurrection Church in Izmir, Turkeys third-largest city, on the Aegean Sea. Not quite three months after the attempted coup, Brunson was detained on 7 October 2016 during an investigation into his residency visa status. Initially told he would be deported within 15 days as a threat to national security, he was later accused by an anonymous witness of being linked with the Gulen movement and conducting missionary activities. He has been held in detention centres and prisons since. In the courtroom during Mondays hearing, he broke down once or twice. Note: This story updates and corrects a previous version in which a verdict was reported to have been reached. The post Turkish court puts trial of US pastor on hold for three weeks appeared first on World Watch Monitor. Photo courtesy: World Witness Publication date: April 17, 2018 Email Whatsapp Menu Whatsapp Google Reddit Digg Stumbleupon Linkedin Comment Welcome to the first Friday the 13th this year. (You can look forward to another one in July.) If you're afraid of today, you might have "paraskevidekatriaphobia" (from the Greek words for "Friday" and "thirteen"). If so, you're not alone. The Stress Management Center and Phobia Institute estimates that seventeen to twenty-one million people in the US are afraid of this day. Some avoid doing business, taking flights, or even getting out of bed. As much as $900 million is lost in productivity as a result. Here's the good news: studies seem to indicate that fewer calamities occur on this day, perhaps because people are more careful or choose to stay home. "Unease and fears of misfortune" I can see why people would feel afraid today. France's President Emmanuel Macron says he has "proof" that the Syrian government used chemical weapons to attack the town of Douma last weekend. According to today's BBC News, Russia is warning the US that retaliatory air strikes in Syria could spark a war between the two countries. Today's Wall Street Journal reports that the White House plans to escalate trade pressure against China. In response, the Chinese are aligning countries against the US, especially in Europe. Meanwhile, according to a survey released yesterday for Holocaust Remembrance Day, 70 percent of Americans say fewer people seem to care about the Holocaust than in the past. Fifty-eight percent believe something like the Holocaust could happen again. That's cause for grave concern. According to the National Institute of Mental Health, 19.1 percent of US adults had an anxiety disorder in the past year. That equates to twenty-four million people. Many of these disorders relate to fears about the future. As you begin what National Geographic calls "the dreaded day [that] continues to inspire unease and fears of misfortune," let's consider a biblical response to fear of the future. The answer may surprise you. The best way to prepare for the future God's word cautions us: "Do not boast about tomorrow, for you do not know what a day may bring" (Proverbs 27:1). This is a command followed by a fact, not an option followed by an opinion. Every day is a gift; none is promised to us. However, we do know what one day will bring: "Nations will fear the name of the Lord, and all the kings of the earth will fear your glory" (Psalm 102:15). One day the One by whom "all things were created" (Colossians 1:16) will return to his creation (Acts 1:11). As C. S. Lewis observed, "When the author walks onto the stage, the play is over." The best way to prepare for the future is to live as though it were today. We are instructed to "seek first the kingdom of God and his righteousness" (Matthew 6:33). To do this, live as if the King you serve was watching you now. Of course, he is, since "no creature is hidden from his sight" (Hebrews 4:13). So, ask yourself all through the day: If I knew my Father was watching me now, would I change anything? If this idea is too esoteric, imagine that your spouse or children or grandchildren could read your mind and watch your actions. What would you change? Every moment is to be spent in this way. To cite C. S. Lewis again, humans have the curious notion that our time is ours. The fact is, you and I can neither make nor destroy a single moment. Every minute is God's gift to us, to be used for his glory and our good. In short, we are to be the people we would be if we knew Jesus was returning today. We're one day closer to that day than ever before in human history. One day you and I will go to him or he will come to us. I don't know that I will meet God today. But I don't know that I will not. "An uncontestable meaning of goodness" In Anna Karenina, Leo Tolstoy described the spiritual awakening of a character named Levin: "My life, my whole life, independently of anything that may happen to me, every moment of it, is no longer meaningless but has an uncontestable meaning of goodness, with which I have the power to invest it." To find "an uncontestable meaning of goodness" in our lives, Jesus calls us to trust the future to his providence and live this day in his presence and purpose. Then we can say with A. W. Tozer, "The only fear I have is to fear to get out of the will of God. Outside of the will of God, there's nothing I want, and in the will of God, there's nothing I fear." Are you in the will of God today? Originally posted Friday at Denison Forum. Email Whatsapp Menu Whatsapp Google Reddit Digg Stumbleupon Linkedin Comment While biblical scholars debate whether it is biblically OK to drink alcohol, there is a widespread perception that it is good to drink alcohol for health reasons. Drinking red wine in moderation, and more recently alcohol, in general, has been advanced as something that can improve one's health. The constant messaging from the alcohol industry has people feeling they must drink two glasses of wine a day to feel healthy. This is a dangerous myth. At our clinics across the country, we have amassed the world's largest database of functional brain scans relating to behavior, totaling more than 140,000 scans on patients from 120 countries. The scans leave no room for doubtalcohol is toxic to the brain, even in small amounts. Just one glass of beer or wine per day can be directly toxic to brain function. The SPECT (Single Photon Emission Computed Tomography) scans of people who drink too much alcohol more than three drinks a week look toxic. Alcohol use negatively affects the brain and body in a number of ways. It is associated with fatty liver disease, peripheral neuropathies (pain and tingling in hands, legs and feet), damage to neurons, especially those in the cerebellum, which is involved in physical and thought coordination, and mood. It interferes with the absorption of vitamin B-1, which predisposes people to serious cognitive problems. Alcohol decreases firing in the prefrontal cortex, the most human and thoughtful part of the brain. It also disrupts sleep. Additionally, alcohol predisposes you to sugar abuse, stimulates your appetite, prolongs the time you sit during a meal and is associated with continued eating even though you feel full. Alcohol exerts substantial influence on the circulation in your pancreas, increasing the production of insulin, which can lead to low blood sugar levels, which worsens your decision-making. And it gets worse. In 2015, the prestigious journal Lancet published a review of 115,000 subjects in which researchers found that although alcohol use decreased the risk of heart attacks, it increased the risk of cancer and physical injuries. Alcohol is a known carcinogen and associated with 5.8% of all cancer deaths. Jurgen Rehm, Ph.D., Director of the Social and Epidemiological Research Department at the Center for Addiction and Mental Health in Toronto, Ontario, Canada, wrote, "Very simply, the cancers that have been determined previously to be caused by alcohol have been confirmed. There is no discussion about whether alcohol causes these cancers. The fact that alcohol is a carcinogen has been clearly confirmed." Furthermore, alcohol affects the brain by reducing nerve cell firing; it blocks oxygen getting into the cell's energy centers; and it reduces the effectiveness of many different types of neurotransmitters, especially those involved in learning and remembering. And a 2008 study appearing in the Archives of Neurology found that people who drink just one to seven drinks per week have smaller brains than nondrinkers, and those who have two or more drinks a day have even more brain shrinkage. When it comes to the brain, size matters! And when it comes to living a healthy light, body, mind and spirit, there are other ways to decrease your risk of heart disease that don't increase your risk of cancer. Email Whatsapp Menu Whatsapp Google Reddit Digg Stumbleupon Linkedin Comment Last week, the Senate and the House grilled Mark Zuckerberg about Facebook's use of data. Maybe someone else should have been on the hot seat, too. This past week saw the most-anticipated theatrical performance in Washington in years, and I'm not talking about "Hamilton" coming to the Kennedy Center in a few months. Facebook founder and CEO Mark Zuckerberg's appearance before Congress was two days of what is sometimes called "political theater;" or, gestures and actions designed to give people the feeling that "something" is being done about a problem without actually doing anything about it. The problem is the outsized influence of Facebook on American life and culture. What started as concern over Russia's use of Facebook to influence the 2016 elections has turned into what one writer called "moral panic over the impact of tech on our wellbeing." Among the reasons I count Zuckerberg's appearance on Capitol Hill as mere theater is that he wasn't the only person who should have been testifying. If we are truly concerned about technology's impact on our wellbeing, we should question ourselves. Let me be clear: I'm not defending Zuckerberg's or any other tech executive's actions. There's plenty to criticize. In his testimony, Zuckerberg was either in denial or disingenuous about the huge role his company plays in our culture. While, he'd have us believe that Facebook is merely a platform that enables people to "connect," anyone who has used Facebook for more than five minutes should know that just isn't true. Facebook anticipates what it thinks you want to see and gives you plenty of it. It filters out what it thinks you don't want to see. To use a fancy word, it "curates" our news and other information. In fact, we'd be hard pressed to think of anything that has more powerfully shaped our culture than Zuckerberg's college creation. It's certainly been more powerful than the Congress questioning it last week. Think about it: What else in the last decade has more powerfully shaped how Americans do relationships, get their news, spend their money, use their leisure time, determine their political positions, and for too many, get their theology than Facebook? But, even more insane is that people are doing this voluntarily. Blaming Facebook for allegedly misleading Americans about what was going on during the 2016 elections is a way of avoiding personal responsibility for our choices about how and where we get our news. And the idea that Congress can somehow "fix" this by regulation? Not if we are our own captors. From the start, people like media theorist Douglas Rushkoff have told us that, "We are not the customers of Facebook, we are the product. Facebook is selling us to advertisers." Specifically, they are selling information about us to advertisers. And we are all too willing to share that information, not only with Facebook, but with the world. Facebook and other social media platforms are more than tools to use, they are worlds we live in. Of course, Facebook could make the controls over what information is shared a lot simpler to manage. But, it's equally true that most people wouldn't bother to use them. In the end, very little, if anything, of substance will come out of Zuckerberg's limited engagement on Capitol Hill. As the New York Times' podcast, "The Daily" noted, Zuckerberg faced some tough questionsespecially from members of the House Energy and Commerce Committee, but the damage done to the company was minimal. In fact, Facebook stock went up 4.5 percent when the congressional play began. Some will stop using Facebook out of privacy concerns, and others will dramatically change how they use it and what they share. But a million federal regulations later, Facebook will still be more powerful in shaping culture than the Congress who imposed them. And many of us will continue to be willing participants. To paraphrase a line from a master of theater, the fault, dear listener, lies not in Facebook, but in ourselves. Originally posted at Breakpoint. Email Whatsapp Menu Whatsapp Google Reddit Digg Stumbleupon Linkedin Comment America's position as the world's innovation leader is in peril. A decade of bad public policy combined with a judiciary that fundamentally misunderstands the importance of intellectual property protection have driven this downward spiral. Fortunately, recent moves in Congress and a change in administration are sending signals that we have a chance to turn the tide. We are ceding important ground to other nations like Germany, England, and even China and we are doing so voluntarily. Indeed, the current innovation crisis is a problem of our own creation. Instead of supporting American inventors and strengthening intellectual property rights, in recent years some in Congress had continued to push for more policy changes that would further discourage innovation and domestic investment. This disturbing trend must be reversed. Why should this be considered a crisis? In 2018, the U.S. Chamber of Commerce's Global Intellectual Property Center (GIPC) released their International IP index. Regarding patent system strength, GIPC ranked the United States 12th globally. This is down from 10th last year and 1st in every edition prior to that. This isn't surprising if you consider that our patent system has been under direct attack by legislators, judges, and foreign nations for years. This, in and of itself, should alarm policy makers in D.C. The decline of our patent system's strength, however, is not inevitable. During the Reagan presidency, we faced a similar situation. Japan was thought to be the leading threat to America's global innovation leadership. Today that threat comes from China and South Korea. The Reagan administration through a commission on industrial competitiveness - took steps to turn this around by making significant changes to strengthen patent protections (and along with property rights protections), reduce regulatory barriers and enhance rules based foreign trading. It's time for us to take steps to protect American innovation again. Fortunately, some members of Congress have begun to take action. Recently, my fellow Ohioan Rep. Steve Stivers (R-OH) joined with Rep. Bill Foster (D-IL) and other members on both sides of the aisle to introduce the STRONGER Patents Act which seeks to strengthen America's weakened patent system and restore our leadership in global innovation. The legislation, which joins a Senate version sponsored by Sen. Tom Cotton (R-AR) and Sen. Chris Coons (D-DE), would "restore patents as property rights, make standards of protections in courts uniform, and protect start-ups from being out-resourced by technology incumbents." These bills would reform the out of control Patent Trial and Appeal Board, which has become known as a "patent death squad" by experts and would strengthen the ability of patent holders to protect their innovations. The STRONGER Patents Act reflects an understanding of the unique challenges inventors face and fully appreciates the important role strong patent protections have in our innovation economy. The barriers American innovators face in maintaining global competitiveness are real but not insurmountable if Congress and the Trump Administration take action. STRONGER addresses the erosion of fundamental property rights by Congress and the courts in recent years and helps swing the pendulum back towards American innovators. In addition to the congressional moves, President Trump recognizes better than anyone that the future of American leadership depends on staying ahead of both our friends and our foes. On trade policy, Trump has challenged conventional wisdom and put China on notice that intellectual property theft will be met with American strength and resolve. In a positive sign, President Trump's newly-confirmed director of the Patent and Trademark Office (PTO), Andrei Iancu, seems to understand that America's patent system is in decline and that the PTO can be a force in reversing this trend. At a recent address to the U.S. Chamber of Commerce's Patent Policy Conference, Director Iancu said, "[a]s a nation, we cannot continue down the same path if we want to maintain our global economic leadership. And we will not continue down the same path. This administration has a mission to create sustained economic growth, and innovation and IP protection are key goals in support of that mission." Our innovation slide can be turned around. Making pro-IP policy a priority would send a signal to the world that we are not going to willingly give up our historic competitive innovation advantage. If we fail to address the nation's slide regarding IP protections, there will be further consequences. We're already seeing inventors trying to obtain patents in countries who have strong patent protection regimes that include injunctive relief for patent holders. And venture capitalists are moving their investment to inventors holding patents in countries who have strong patents. The message? Strong patents spur research, development, innovation, and investment. However, if we continue on the path that the administration and members of Congress supporting STRONGER are beginning to chart, we can be assured that the United States will once again be the best place to innovate. Ken Blackwell is a former Domestic Policy Advisor to the Trump Transition Team, mayor of Cincinnati and serves as a Senior Advisor to Securing America's Energy Future (SAFE). home World Attack on Christian community in Pakistan leaves two people dead At least two people were killed and three more were injured after armed men opened fire at a Christian neighborhood in Quetta, Pakistan. The police stated that the shooting took place as worshippers were about to leave a church in the Essa Nagri area after the Sunday service. The unidentified gunmen immediately fled the scene after the incident, according to Quetta Deputy Inspector General Abdur Razzaq Cheema. The victims were reportedly rushed to the Bolan Medical Complex Hospital (BMC), but two died on the way. Among the injured were a 38-year-old man named Chaudhry Samuel and two girls, 11-year-old Sonia Shakil and 13-year-old Mehwish William. The deceased have been identified as Rashid Khalid and Azhar Iqbal. Relatives of the deceased complained that the hospital did not provide immediate treatment for the patients. "At that time, there was no senior doctor in the hospital. The patients were handled by trainees who did not even know how to treat a bullet wound," said Parvez Masih, a relative of one of the deceased, according to The Express Tribune. BMC Surgeon Dr. Mola Buksh noted that one of the injured girls has been transferred to the Civil HOspital's Trauma Centre so she can receive better treatment. After the incident, some of the victims' relatives protested at Goli Mar Intersection, chanting slogans such as "[d]own with Balochistan chief minister, down with the Balochistan government." Balochistan Home Minister Mir Sarfaraz Bugti denounced the attack and vowed to issue a quick response. The protesters also called on the government to provide protections for residents of Quetta's Christian community. "Why are we coming under attack? Terrorists are freely attacking us but security forces and the provincial government are playing the role of silent spectator," said Amjad Faryad, the uncle of one of the deceased, as reported by The Express Tribune. The attack in Essa Nagri is reportedly the third attack on the Christian community in Quetta in the last four months. Earlier this month, four Christians were killed after gunmen opened fire while they were on a rickshaw traveling on Shah Zaman road. The victims reportedly came from Punjab to visit their relatives in Quetta. The Islamic State claimed responsibility for the attack through the Amaq news agency. The terror group also took credit for an attack in Quetta in December. At least nine people were killed, and 30 were injured after two suicide bombers attacked Bethel Memorial Methodist Church on Zarghoon Road while a service was ongoing. home World China bans online bookstores from selling Bibles after pledging to protect religious freedom The Chinese government has reportedly banned online bookstore from selling copies of the Bible following the release of a white paper that pledges to protect the religious freedoms in the country. The white paper, titled "China's Policies and Practices on Protecting Freedom of Religious Belief," was released by the State Council on Tuesday. Shortly after its release, Chinese internet users began noticing the disappearances of Bibles from online stores. Searches for Bibles yielded no results on major online retailers such as Taobao, Jingdong, DangDang.com and Amazon China, according to Australian Broadcasting Corporation (ABC). While some websites were still able to show listings for the scriptures, users have not been able to add the item to their cart. According to ABC, there has been a surge in the keyword search for "Bible" on Chinese social media platform Weibo the day before internet users began noticing the disappearances of scripture from online stores. One Chinese Catholic lamented that he and his fellow parishioners have no choice now but to smuggle Bibles from Hong Kong, whereas they have previously been able to purchase the scriptures from online retailers. "Now our country is extremely strict about religious control, and you can't buy [the Bible] online," the Catholic, who requested anonymity, told Quartz. William Nee, a researcher at Amnesty International, surmised that the ban was an attempt to "limit the spread of what the Government fears is an alternative belief system." He also noted that there have been recent reports of a crackdown on house churches in Henan province and other parts of China. Although the title of the white paper suggests that religious freedom would be protected in China, it insists that faith communities in the country "should adhere to the direction of localizing the religion, practice the core values of socialism, develop and expand the fine Chinese tradition and actively explore the religious thought which accords with China's national circumstances." Another official document released by China's State Administration for Religious Affairs indicated that there will be a project that is aimed at enhancing "Chinese-style Christianity and theology," which involves reinterpreting and re-translating the Bible. The Chinese government has intensified its crackdown on religion in recent years with new regulations and demolition campaigns on unregistered churches. In September, the government issued a new rule that prohibited religious groups from receiving foreign funds. Nee noted that there has been a surge in religion in China despite the pressure being put on Christians by the government. "The situation for freedom of religion varies greatly form location to location, with some people going to church and holding Bible studies and other activities with little interference, while in other areas the Government is much more hard line," he said, according to ABC. home World China targets church-run kindergartens in crackdown against religion Chinese officials are reportedly conducting raids on kindergartens linked to churches as part of its bid to tighten its grip on religion. China Aid reported on Friday that Beijing officials had conducted a three-day raid on Beatitudes Public Kindergarten, which is run by Aijiabei Church, from March 28 to 31. Security officials reportedly confiscated books and furniture, and prevented teachers and staff from entering the school. "I wanted to enter the kindergarten ... but they turned me away," Zhu Bin, one of the teachers, said, according to China Aid. "Several security guards sat in front of the gate all night long. [Officers] observed the scene from a few cars parked around the kindergarten. Some security guards patrolled in the school. The parents and teachers were outside the kindergarten, trying to retrieve their personal belongings, but the security guards did not let them in," the teacher continued. Prior to the raid, 20 men who were believed to be backed by the government had broken into the school on March 25 and threw away office supplies. The church and the kindergarten are reportedly being evicted by the landlord even though the lease has not expired. The school has already relocated its elementary portion, and the landlord now wants the rest of the church to move out. The landlord has so far refused to compensate the church for the renovation costs to the kindergarten amounting to 400,000 yuan ($63,424.00 USD). Another kindergarten run by a church was raided in the province of Henan last month. The Tian-ai Kindergarten, which is run by Zhifang Church in Weihui parish of Anyang Diocese, was reportedly shut down on March 14. A source from the church told UCA News that officials from the local fire bureau, public security bureau and education bureau had disqualified the kindergarten following an investigation. "Nearby kindergartens which are run much more badly were not seized a only the one run by the church," the source told UCA News. The closure of the Henan kindergarten came just days before a government-backed bishop delivered a speech lauding the Catholic Church's contribution to China. In his speech during a conference at the Pontifical Gregorian University in Rome, Bishop John Baptist Yang Xiaoting of Yulin stressed that the Chinese-backed Catholic church was gaining the support of people because of its social services. Yang, who is recognized by the Vatican, commended the church for having a positive influence in China, noting that it runs nine orphanages, seven homes for handicapped children, 43 kindergartens, 173 schools and several more schools, clinics and hospitals. He argued that the Church must integrate into China's culture so that it would maintain its foundation of religious doctrine. His remarks echo those made by President Xi Jinping, who told the National Congress in February that the expression of religion must be "Chinese in orientation." home World Chinese city orders Christian residents to register with government as crackdown on religion continues Local authorities in a city in China's central Henan province has reportedly told Christians and other religious residents to register with the government. According to China Aid, all residents with religious beliefs in the city of Anyang have been instructed to register with the government. An officer at the Pingyuan Neighborhood Committee noted that believers have been told to bring their "household registration and ID card." "Fill out a form, fill in your name, birth date, address, religious background, when you converted, the religious background of your family members, etc," the officer said, as reported by China Aid. A notice obtained by China Aid states: "Residents who are Buddhists, Taoists, Catholics, (other forms of) Christian, and Muslims should register at the Neighborhood Committee located on the third floor of the Golden Vienna Community as soon as possible." Although the notice, dated April 4, mentioned other government-recognized religions, some have complained that Christians are being targeted. "In the past two months, the government banned all Catholic churches and (Protestant) house churches, and that didn't happen to any other religions," an anonymous Christian told China Aid on Thursday. An employee at the neighborhood committee has said that the participation in the census is not compulsory, according to World Watch Monitor, citing the Global Times. In Lushan County, Christians attending state-run Three Self Churches were reportedly required to attend a conference for ideological reorientation. Church leaders met with local religious affairs bureau officials and were reportedly told to study the county's revised Religious Affairs Regulations. Local officials reportedly demanded that all local churches should hang the Chinese flag. They also reiterated that minors are not allowed to attend church services, and no religious posters are permitted on local buildings. Christian residents have noted that religious activities in villages are being heavily monitored by the government. New branches of the religious affairs bureaus are reportedly being set up in villages and towns, and village officials have been tasked with managing religious activities in their jurisdiction. The government in Henan has also stepped up its campaign against church crosses, with both underground and state-recognized churches being affected by the crackdown. A believer, who only wanted to be identified by his surname Cao, noted that officials had ordered the removal of an outdoor cross of a newly constructed Three-Self Church because it violated regulations. Church-run schools have also been targeted in the campaign. Last month, the government in Anyang shut down a church-run kindergarten, leaving 60-70 children without a school. One local resident complained that other kindergartens that are not run by churches have not been closed. "Authorities pay more attention to kindergartens run by Christians," a local source told World Watch Monitor. home World Christian charities send aid to Syrians following deadly chemical attack Christian charities are working to deliver emergency aid to Syria after the town of Douma was hit with a chemical attack on Saturday, leaving at least 40 people dead. More than 500 people exhibiting symptoms "indicative of exposure to a chemical agent" have been brought to medical centers in Douma on Saturday, according to The Syrian-American Medical Society. Monitoring groups have suspected that the chemicals used in the attack were a mix of Chlorine gas and the nerve agent Sarin. Humanitarian aid group World Help is sending food, medicine and clean water to Syrians who have fled the area. "For seven years, the people of Syria have known no respite from a relentless, cruel and bloody war," said World Help CEO Vernon Brewer, as reported by CBN News. "Right now is their time of greatest need, and the Syrian people desperately need our help. We may not be able to stop the bombs or end the gunfire, but we can certainly deliver aid to people in need and bring hope to those who are hurting and hopeless," he added. Catholic charity Aid to the Church in Need (ACN) is also sending supplies help to the affected families. "The people of Syria have been living through unimaginable pain and suffering for the past seven years, as the conflict has caused terrible devastation," said ACN's John Pontifex, according to Premier. ACN, which has completed 143 aid projects in Syria in the last year, is also offering pastoral help to the survivors. The attack came after government forces resumed operations against the rebels holding Douma following the collapse of a 10-day truce. The Syrian government has tried to deflect the blame for the attacks, saying the reports were invented by the Jaish al-Islam rebels, who have control of Douma. The pro-opposition Ghouta Media Center noted that a barrel bomb containing Sarin was dropped from a helicopter. Medical groups had difficulty reaching victims of the chemical attack due to the shelling that went on until Sunday. On Saturday, U.S. President Donald Trump condemned the gas attack and vowed to carry out a "forceful" response. Douma is the last rebel-held town in eastern Ghouta, which was also hit by a chemical attack in 2013. Last year, more than 80 people were killed following a gas attack in the town of Khan Sheikhoun. An investigation conducted by the U.N. and the Organization for the Prohibition of Chemical Weapons (OPCW) concluded that the Syrian government was responsible for the attack. home World Convicted murderer Eric Menendez now shares Gospel with fellow inmates Erik Menendez, who was convicted along with his brother Lyle of murdering their own parents, has reportedly turned to God and is now sharing the Gospel with fellow inmates. In an interview with ABC News, the brothers' paternal aunt Marta Cano said that Erik had recently asked her to send him some books and told her that he had been teaching religion to a group of inmates. "So, he was really making sure that the prisoners knew that there is a God that loves us. That was marvelous to me because he never got that at home," Cano told ABC News. Lyle, 50, and Erik, 47, were reunited last week after spending more than two decades in separate prisons. The brothers were sentenced to life imprisonment in 1996 after being convicted of the gruesome murder of their own parents in 1989. They reportedly used two 12-gauge shotguns to shoot their parents, Jose and Kitty Menendez, as the couple were watching TV in their Beverly Hills home. During the court proceedings, their attorneys argued that they were sexually and emotionally abused by their father, and neglected by their mother. Leslie Abramson, who represented Erik in court, contended that her client "could not take the worst of it anymore" and asked for help from his brother. The two were initially sent to the same California processing center but were eventually split up, with Erik being sent to a penal institution near Sacramento and Lyle to a penitentiary near Sacramento. Prosecutors, however, asserted that the two brothers had killed their own parents so that they could inherit their wealth. During the reunion last Wednesday, the two brothers reportedly burst into tears when they came face to face at the Donovan Correctional Facility in San Diego. Erik had been incarcerated at the San Diego facility for several years, while Lyle was transferred there in February. Earlier this month, Erik was transferred to the same housing unit where Lyle is being detained. Cano believes that the brothers had killed their parents as a "defense mechanism" and not an "in-cold-blood kind of thing." She contended that her two nephews had matured since their incarceration. "The other good thing is they have been able to mature separately. Sometimes we cling on to somebody else, and we never mature," Cano told ABC News. Cano is hoping that the brothers will eventually be set free despite their life sentences. "You have to leave some things in God's hands, and God takes care of them," she went on to say. home US Court rules in favor of Christian man who refuses to pay taxes because of abortion funding A court has ruled in favor of an Oregon resident who refuses to pay federal taxes because he opposes taxpayer-funded abortions. Michael Bowman, who identifies as a Christian, had refused to file a tax return or pay taxes since 1999, saying the government must provide accommodations for his sincerely held religious beliefs. "I'm not a tax protester. I love my country. I have a duty to my country. I have a duty to my conscience," Bowman said, according to Oregon Live. His refusal has resulted in a federal indictment, claiming he owes back taxes on at least $800,000 of income and that he had falsely claimed that the IRS still owed him several refunds. On Thursday, U.S. District Judge Michael W. Mosman dismissed the felony tax evasion case against Bowman, noting that the government had failed to provide evidence that he tried to conceal or mislead the IRS by cashing his checks instead of depositing them. Bowman, a self-employed software developer from Columbus City, began making changes to his financial transactions after the government withdrew cash from his account in 2012 to make up for unpaid taxes. He began cashing his work checks, leaving only a minimum balance in his bank account through 2014 in order to keep the government from taking money from his account. "Defendant's altered bank behavior removed his income from the reach of taxing authorities and allowed him to avoid payment of assessed taxes," Assistant U.S Attorneys Donna Brecker Maddux and Rachel K. Sowray stated in the original complaint against Bowman, as reported by the Daily Mail. The IRS also contended that Bowman only started citing his religious beliefs after his "'Claim of Right' tax avoidance scheme failed." The indictment claims that Bowman owed $356,857 in taxes he owed from 2012 to 2014 as well as penalties that accumulated in 2000, 2001, 2008 and 2009. Bowman's lawyer argued that there is no crime against cashing work checks, particularly when the checks were disclosed to the IRS. "Cashing a check at your own bank, made out to you, representing income contemporaneously disclosed by employers through 1099 and W-2 forms to the IRS is not 'handling one's affairs to avoid making records," attorney Matthew Schindler stated in the motion to dismiss the charge, according to the Daily Mail. Mosman agreed, saying, "[j]ust cashing checks is not evasion." The case was dismissed by Mosman without prejudice, allowing the prosecutors to seek a new indictment to replace it. Bowman still faces four misdemeanor charges over his willful failure to file tax returns. home Tech Facebook issues apology over removal of ad with image of crucified Jesus Facebook has issued an apology for banning a Catholic university's advertisement that contained an image of Christ on the cross. The advertisement, which features the San Damiano Cross, was posted by the Franciscan University of Steubenville on Facebook on Friday, but it was subsequently removed because the image was flagged as "shocking, sensational, or excessively violent." The post was part of the university's advertisement campaign to promote its online theology programs. The university decried the removal in a blog post, saying: "The San Damiano Cross. Jesus in glory, reigning from his cruciform throne. This is what the monitors at Facebook consider excessively violent, sensational, and shocking. And indeed, the Crucifixion of Christ was all of those things. It was the most sensational action in history: man executed his God." On Wednesday, a Facebook spokesperson apologized for the removal and acknowledged that the image "does not violate our ad policies." The social media giant stated that the advertisement had been officially approved on Monday. Tom Crowe, web communications director for the university, said he believes that the removal was not caused by a Facebook algorithm, but a low-level employee who may have an animosity towards Christianity. "I'll reiterate that I'm not claiming systemic religious bigotry at Facebook, but in this case it seems something like that happened in a one-off situation," he told Fox News. Crowe said that he is hoping that the rejection would remind people to "take another look at the cross and see what God did for us." "Whether it's a return to faith or an investigation of this weird thing called Christianity," he added. He stated in his blog post that the violence suffered by Christ on the cross is a demonstration of his love for humanity. He further argued that it was not the nails that bound Christ to the cross but his love for mankind. The San Damiano Cross is most commonly associated with St. Francis of Assisi, the founder of the Franciscan order and the patron of the university. In an interview with Fox News, Crowe explained that the cross is believed to be the vessel through which God spoke to St. Francis. The icon does not depict Christ in agony, as Franciscans believe that the crucifixion symbolizes his glory and reign. It shows Jesus wearing a garment that is said to have been worn by Jewish priests when they offered sacrifices in the Temple. The image is believed to depict a fulfillment of the old covenant and the sacrifice of the Father, with Jesus as the high priest. home World Fulani Militants surpasses Boko Haram in attacks against Christians Fulani herdsmen in Nigeria's Middle Belt have surpassed Boko Haram this month in the number of attacks carried out against Christians. According to International Christian Concern, the group has carried out 27 attacks in Nigeria in the past months, with the heaviest assaults occurring in Plateau and Taraba states. At least 225 Christians have died and thousands have been displaced from their homes as a result of the deadly raids. ICC noted that out of 27 raids, the militants were only engaged in battle with those attacked six times. Despite the increasing attacks, the Nigerian government has made no attempts to disarm the militants. In contrast, Boko Haram had killed 37 people during the same period, with many of the victims being military personnel. ICC asserted that the victims of Fulani militants were unarmed and defenseless in 75 percent of the cases. The watchdog group has lamented that the attacks by Fulani militants are not receiving as much media attention as those by Boko Haram and other terror groups. "There are several reasons that the West doesn't say much about Fulani-led violence. First is that they already spend a lot of time and effort covering the Boko Haram situation. This is a far more attractive discussion to the West because it has the terrorist designation tied to it. The Fulani have not been designated as such since 2014 when the designation was assigned and then quickly taken away," ICC Regional Manager Nathan Johnson told The Christian Post. Johnson argued that many people in the West believe that the attacks were manifestations of a socioeconomic conflict between the Fulani militants and other farmers. He further noted that the Nigerian government has been unwilling to speak about the attacks. "They do not want to bring attention to this problem as it would attract more negative media aimed at their government. All of these factors combined lead to silence among most Western media outlets," he went on to say. ICC asserted that the violence stems from the Fulani's religious animosity toward Christianity as most of the raids targeted Christian villages. He pointed out that in most of the attacks that took place over the past decade, the militants destroyed churches and pastoral homes. Johnson suggested that Nigerian President Muhammadu Buhari has hesitant to denounce the Fulani attacks because he himself comes from a Muslim Fulani background and the country is split almost evenly between its Muslim and Christian population. home World Navy launches investigation following complaint over Bible at POW/MIA display The U.S. Navy has launched an investigation after a secularist group complained about the presence of a Bible at a display about POW/MIA at the U.S. Naval Hospital Okinawa in Japan. According to Religion News Service, the complaint was filed by the Military Religious Freedom Foundation (MRFF) on behalf of 26 military families in Okinawa. The group contended that the display is a violation of the First Amendment of the U.S. Constitution. "The issue here is that by including a Bible as part of the POW/MIA Display in the public Galley, it signifies two things. First, that this is an official, command-endorsed Display. Second, that the command is endorsing Christianity (versus other major religions or non-religious beliefs) as expressed in the Christian Bible to the total exclusion of any other belief systems or non-belief traditions," the complaint stated, according to Religion News Service. Navy Live noted that the POW/MIA table, also known as the "Missing Man" table, is a tradition that has been observed since the end of the Vietnam War in honor of prisoners of war and missing soldiers. Special items, including a Bible, are usually placed at the table to represent traits and virtues of unknown missing soldiers. The Bible is supposed to represent faith in God and the pledge to the U.S. MRFF President Mikey Weinstein argued that the placard explaining the Bible's presence amounts to evangelization. "The Bible represents the strength gained through faith to sustain those lost from our country, founded one nation under God," the placard stated, as reported by Religion News Service. Weinstein said that MRFF lawyers are still looking into the placard's wording to see if it is in violation of the "Status of Forces Agreement, or the treaty we have with Japan." Mark Stephensen, vice chairman of the National League of POW/MIA Families, contended that the presence of the Bible at the POW/MIA table does not signify bias. "The Bible was always intended to be there. The POWs held in Hanoi vehemently turned to God for comfort and safety and persistence," he said, according to Religion News Service. Stephensen's father, U.S. Air Force Col. Mark Stephensen, was reportedly returned to the U.S. 21 years after his plane went down in Vietnam. He argued that those who are outraged by the display are making a conscious effort to be offended. Weinstein said that a majority of people who complained about the Bible identify as Christians, while others were Jews, Native American, Shintoists, Buddhists and agnostics. He noted that the American Legion does not require a Bible to be included in POW/MIA tables, but its inclusion is recommended by some legion posts. home World Radical Hindu admits trying to kill house church pastor in southern India A radical Hindu who is known for his devotion to the Hindu deity Shiva has confessed to the attempted murder of a house church pastor in India's Andhra Pradesh state. According to Morning Star News, the attempted murder occurred on the night of March 29 when Pastor Madira Koti Reddy was praying and reading the Bible in his room. His wife, Madira Shanti, said that she was in the backyard doing the dishes when she heard her husband scream. The assailant had reportedly entered Reddy's room unnoticed and attacked the pastor with his axe. Police Inspector Koteswara Rao, who was patrolling the area, responded to the incident and immediately rushed the pastor to the hospital. Eleven suspects were initially taken into custody, but one suspect grabbed the attention of the police officers after key witnesses said they saw him walking outside the pastor's house with an axe on the night of the incident. The authorities raided the house of Manne Shiva Narayana, also known as Shivayya, and found the weapon he used against the pastor. "He is a staunch devotee of Shiva," Rao said, according to Morning Star News. "He confessed that he wanted to 'finish' the pastor that night. He said he was offended by the pastor's routine of sharing the gospel in the village," he added. Narayana had reportedly confessed that his attempt to murder Reddy was driven by "hate." The suspect was not known to be affiliated with any Hindu extremist groups, but villagers noted that he is a self-proclaimed Shaiva Sadhu, or a Hindu "holy person." Reddy's son-in-law, John Paul, noted that the pastor had previously told the family about the arguments he had with the suspect about religion. "He was in trouble a couple of times because of boldness in professing Christianity. He was several times confronted by people who opposed him distributing gospel tracts, but he never stopped," John Paul was quoted as saying. Reddy's wife noted that the pastor would often write biblical verses on the walls of other people's houses. Rao said that the police went to the houses where Reddy had written on the walls, but there had been no objections because the area is mainly populated by converts to Catholicism. Shortly after being jailed, Narayana reportedly requested to be transferred to another cell because he objected to the picture of a cross that was drawn by a previous inmate. "We were able to observe in the Shaiva Sadhu high levels of intolerance. He did not want to be even physically present in a room where a cross is drawn on the wall," Rao said, as reported by Morning Star News. Reddy underwent surgery on Friday to repair his right arm. He will reportedly undergo another operation on his left arm sometime this week. Religious rights advocates in India have expressed concern that Hindu extremists have been emboldened by the National Democratic Alliance government's hostile tone against non-Hindus. Christian charity Open Doors has noted that Hindu radical organizations such as the Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP), Rashtriya Swayamsevak Sangh (RSS), Shiv Sena and Vishya Hindu Parishad (VHP) have been the main source of persecution against Christians in the country. India is currently ranked in Open Doors' 2018 World Watch List as the 18th country where Christians experience the most persecution. home US Sutherland Springs church responds to questions about donation spending for mass shooting victims The First Baptist Church of Sutherland Springs has assured its members that it is properly handling the money that has been donated for the victims of the mass shooting in November. Questions about donation spending have been raised after two donors who raised over $1.3 million for victim relief reportedly cut ties with First Baptist. The victims are also asking for more information following the announcement of plans for the construction of a new $3 million church. Lisa McNulty, who lost her daughter in the massacre, said that she has never received any of the money that has been donated for the victims. "This has gotten way out of hand a way out of hand. There's some greed going on, and it's wrong." McNulty said, as reported by Dallas News. Reports have indicated that the church has received at least $3,023,675 from individuals and corporate donors. The fundraising campaign on GoFundMe has reportedly collected more than $1.4 million, while $405,000 was donated to various victims' funds. Another $1 million has been raised for the rebuilding of the church. In a statement, the church's Restoration Committee assured victims that the money that has been allocated for them will not be used for other purposes. "The committee has been deliberate and prayerful, and has coordinated with other groups offering support, to respond to needs and exercise good stewardship and honor the intent of various donors," the letter stated, according to the Baptist Press. "Donations received for victim needs are kept in accounts separate from church operating funds and will only be used for that purpose. We are committed to integrity in the allocation of this money," it continued. The committee is reportedly receiving help in the proper handling the funds from church leaders and members, the Southern Baptists of Texas Convention (SBTC), the North American Mission Board (NAMB), banking officials and community representatives. NAMB has reportedly vowed to help pay for the remaining costs of the construction of a sanctuary and education building at the site. Apart from handling donations for the construction projects, the committee is also responsible for receiving and distributing the money that has been donated to the massacre victims and their families. "Money and in-kind assistance have been received to provide counseling and to meet tangible needs such as handicap access for wounded members, medical supplies, living expenses and legal fees related to probate issues for those with losses. These gifts received to alleviate the needs of victims are being disbursed to directly pay for the needs of the victims," the letter stated, according to Baptist Press. The Restoration Committee pointed out that it has no control over GoFundMe pages that were set up for individual victims. It further noted that a new account has been opened for victim assistance separate from accounts that handle normal church operations. Additionally, a second special account was set up for the donations, so that it can be processed by an independent third party with an independent data record. home US Teacher sues Christian school after she was fired for getting pregnant out of wedlock A teacher is suing a Christian school in Tennessee, alleging that she was fired from her job because of her out-of-wedlock pregnancy. Tabatha Hutson has filed a discrimination lawsuit against Concord Christian School (CCS) in U.S. District Court after her contract was not renewed when it was found that she became pregnant while unmarried. According to WBIR, Hutson, who taught the second grade during the 2016 to 2017 academic year, was called to a meeting with the CCS Principal Leigh Ledet in May 2017 after her pregnancy became evident at 11 weeks. According to her lawsuit, Ledet had asked her during the meeting if she "had anything she needed to tell" the principal. Hutson responded by saying she was "expecting" and that she and her partner were waiting for the results of genetic tests before they make the announcement about her pregnancy. Ledet reportedly stated that she would not renew Hutson's contract for the next school year because of her "out-of-wedlock pregnancy," prompting the teacher to ask whether her termination was due to her work performance. The lawsuit claimed that the principal told her that "work performance played no part in Concord's decision to terminate Ms. Hutson's employment; it was solely due to her pregnancy." Clint Woodfin, who represents the Baptist-based school in court, argued that the school is legally allowed to fire Hutson, citing a 2012 U.S. Supreme Court decision that recognized "ministerial exception" to employment discrimination laws. The high court ruling noted that "[t]he Establishment Clause prevents the government from appointing ministers and the Free Exercise Clause prevents it from interfering with the freedom of religious groups to select their own," as reported by Knox News. Hutson's attorney, James Friauf, contended that Hutson is not a minister, but a kindergarten teacher who was hired because of her knowledge of the school's curriculum. The lawsuit claimed that Ledet had asked Hutson to "'return to the school once things settled down,' i.e., once Ms. Hutson married her partner and gave birth to her child. In the meantime, advised Ledet, Ms. Hutson could 'straighten racks at SteinMart.'" Woodfin contended that Ledet never made the remark and claimed that the principal did specifically mention Hutson's pregnancy as the reason for her termination. The suit, which seeks $2 million in punitive and compensatory damages, further noted that the father of Hutson's child works as a volunteer Sunday School teacher for Concord, but he was not terminated from the position. home World UK mothers launch campaign to oppose plans to set up 'buffer zone' outside abortion clinic A group of mothers has launched a campaign to oppose a council's plan to establish a "buffer zone" outside an abortion clinic in Ealing, west London. The Ealing Council is reportedly considering a proposal to enact a Public Spaces Protection Order (PSPO) outside the Marie Stopes clinic on Mattock Lane in an attempt to prevent pro-life advocates from conducting prayer vigils. According to Catholic Herald, the order would restrict activities such as "[p]rotesting, namely engaging in any act of approval/disapproval or attempted act of approval/disapproval, with respect to issues related to abortion services, by any means. This includes but is not limited to graphic, verbal or written means, prayer or counselling." The buffer zones would also prevent vigil participants from harassing or photographing staff or visitors to the clinic, as well as displaying images or text referring to abortion. A designated area will be set up for pro-life activists, but only four protesters may be present. The protesters will not be allowed to shout any anti-abortion slogans or display posters that are larger than A3 in size, Catholic Herald reported. Mothers who had received help from vigil members had set up the "Be Here For Me" campaign in an effort to oppose the creation of buffer zones that would prevent pro-life activists from offering help to women outside the abortion clinic. The campaign organizers have condemned a report recommending the establishment of the buffer zone, saying it ignores the testimonies of women who were helped by the vigils. They also complained that the report recommended to the Cabinet members that limited weight should be given to the 1,430 submissions made through the Be Here For Me website. "I have personal and direct experience of meeting the pro-life people from the Good Counsel outside the Marie Stopes Clinic on Mattock Lane, Ealing last October when I attended the clinic for a proposed abortion and absolutely refute the Council's allegations that there is any harassment, name calling or signs of intimidation as women either enter or leave the clinic," one anonymous woman said in her submission, according to the Catholic Universe. A mother named Jaceline, who received support outside an abortion clinic, feared that the buffer zones would force many women "into going ahead with abortions they don't want." Clare Carberry, who supports pro-life advocates outside the Ealing facility, said that it will be an "anti-choice move" to deny the offer of help to women in need, and that it encourages people to meet those desperate women and hear their stories. As many as 5,960 people have reportedly signed a petition opposing the creation of buffer zones around the facility. home US US Air Force reverses disciplinary action against colonel who refused to affirm same-sex marriage The U.S. Air Force has decided to reverse the disciplinary actions against a colonel who was suspended after he refused to sign a certificate that would affirm the same-sex marriage of a retiring officer. The Air Force Review Boards Agency announced on Monday that it has reversed the adverse actions against Col. Leland Bohannon, who was previously stripped of command of the Air Force Inspection Agency at Kirtland Air Force Base, New Mexico. Bohannon was also expecting to be promoted to brigadier general, but he was reportedly removed from consideration for a promotion after he was found to be in violation of service regulations. In a letter to Congress on Monday, Air Force Secretary Heather Wilson conceded that Bohannon "had the right to exercise his sincerely held religious beliefs and did not unlawfully discriminate" against the serviceman when he refused to sign the certificate. "The Air Force places a high value on the rights of its members to observe the tenets of their respective religions or to observe no religion at all," she stated, as reported by Christian News Network. Wilson noted that the Review Boards Agency has since agreed to adjust Bohannon's records accordingly. Bohannon had declined to affix his signature to the spouse appreciation certificate in May, but he had willingly signed other documents for the retiring airman. The colonel argued that signing the certificate would "signify his personal endorsement of the same-sex marriage." First Liberty Institute, which represented Bohannon, noted that the colonel applied for religious accommodation so that he would not have to sign the document. However, his request was returned "without action" and an Equal Opportunity complaint was filed against him, accusing him of unlawfully discriminating against the retiring airman. Bohannon was subsequently suspended, prompting him to file an appeal in October. The colonel's lawyers argued in the appeal letter that he was not required to issue a spouse certificate. "Moreover, the instruction does not require the commander to personally sign a certificate, should one be issued," attorney Michael Berry wrote, as reported by Christian News Network. "Yet the MSgt's spouse nevertheless received a signed spouse certificate bearing the signature of a two-star general, far superior than one signed by Col. Bohannon," he continued. Several members of Congress, including Southern Baptist senators Roy Blunt of Missouri, Ted Cruz of Texas and James Lankford of Oklahoma, had written a letter to Wilson in November to support Bohannon's appeal. In a press release on Tuesday, First Liberty General Counsel Hiram Sasser hailed Wilson's decision to reinstate Bohannon. "We are very pleased that Secretary Wilson protected the religious liberty of Col. Bohannon," Sasser said, according to Baptist Press. home World White House tries to improve relations with Turkey to secure release of US pastor The White House is reportedly trying to improve relations with Turkey in an effort to secure the release of American Pastor Andrew Brunson, who has been held in a Turkish prison since October 2016. According to the Wall Street Journal (WSJ), The Trump administration has been trying to avoid potential problems with the Turkish government in anticipation of Brunson's first court hearing this month. Brunson, who has led the Protestant Resurrection Church in Izmir for over two decades, is facing 35 years in prison for his alleged ties to a terrorist group. The American Center for Law and Justice (ACLJ), which represents Brunson, has recently reported that the indictment against the pastor states that he acted as "an agent of unconventional warfare" under the "mask of evangelical church pastor." The relationship between Turkey and the U.S. has been under strain recently due to differences in strategy in Syria. In an apparent attempt to mend its ties with Ankara, the Trump administration has recently urged U.S. lawmakers to drop a legislation that would prevent Turkish officials involved in Brunson's case from visiting the U.S. In February, then-Secretary of State Rex Tillerson reportedly told Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan during a private meeting that U.S. prosecutors have dropped charges against members of the president's security team, who have been accused of beating up protesters when he visited the U.S. last spring. Sen. Thom Tillis, (R.-N.C.) said he believes that Brunson is a political prisoner, but noted that the U.S. is working out how "strike a balance" in maintaining ties with Turkey to secure the pastor's release. Some have raised concerns whether the attempts to appease Turkey would be an effective strategy. "Despite the fact that the Turks have an almost 100 percent track record of responding to sticks, we still feed them carrots. It makes no sense," said an anonymous Senate aide who was familiar with the case. Erdogan had hinted recently that Brunson can be set free after the U.S. deports Pennsylvania-based Turkish cleric Fethullah Gulen. The Turkish government has blamed the cleric for the failed 2016 coup. Last year, a statement from Brunson had urged Trump not to yield to Turkey's demands. "Let the Turkish government know that you will not cooperate with them in any way until they release me," the pastor wrote, according to WSJ. Brunson is expected to go on trial on April 16. The ACLJ has vowed that it will continue to work with U.S. lawmakers and the State Department to secure his freedom and it has also called on the U.N. Working Group on Arbitrary Detention to get involved in the case. Bill Hybels: Evangelical hypocrisy and lessons for us all The news that influential megachurch pastor Bill Hybels is facing accusations of impropriety towards women will be upsetting to many. There will be tens of thousands, who, like me, have benefitted from his global leadership summits over the years. To lots of us, he has been an influential role model, not only in what he has taught but in his gracious manner. There will be plenty of us now worrying and wondering about the truth of the allegations. And for those looking at the Christian faith from the outside, the whole scenario will seem wearily familiar, and reinforces the notion that Christians are simply hypocritical. I am writing this in a Church of England diocese which has been hit by all sorts of child protection controversies. I know well the impact public scandals can have. Hybels, of course, has denied all the allegations, and in the US, as here in the UK, someone is innocent until proven guilty. It is vital to remember that; none of us can fully know what happened. But whatever the truth of these particular accusations, what should we think when we hear the familiar refrain that 'all Christians are hypocrites'? 1. All Christians are hypocrites. Does that surprise you? It should not. The Oxford English Dictionary defines a hypocrite as someone who assumes 'a false appearance of virtue or goodness, with dissimulation of real character or inclinations, especially in respect of religious life or beliefs'. Christians are, by definition, people who recognise that we fall short of the standards we accept as being right and good and true. In one of our Anglican prayers of confession, we admit that 'we have sinned through ignorance, through weakness' and also crucially 'through our own deliberate fault'. To be a Christian is to acknowledge that there is a gap between what we think we should be and, sadly, what we often intentionally choose. 2. Most human beings are hypocrites. This also might seem surprising. But, if we are honest, almost everyone we know well turns out to be someone who sometimes chooses deliberately to act in a way that contradicts what they say they believe. I suppose there may be some instances where people are not hypocritical in the sense that they set themselves no moral aspirations whatsoever, and therefore have nothing to live up to, but in practice, most people do. 3. What we do with our hypocrisy is vital. This is the key thing. If we are Christians, we are to be honest with God, and repent. This is more than a quick 'sorry' to the Lord. Repentance means active change. On her Wartburg Watch website, Dee Parsons cites approvingly the case of an American pastor she knows who 'had an affair, confessed it, stepped down from the pulpit and has led a life of repentance for many, many years. He is an honest hypocrite. In fact, it was he who once said "We are all hypocrites."' I am aware of similar cases in the UK. The alternative is to deny the ways we fall short, and to carry on with what Parsons calls 'dishonest hypocrisy'. 4. Jesus has strong words about hypocrisy. He warns: 'Why do you look at the speck of sawdust in your brother or sister's eye and pay no attention to the plank in your own eye? How can you say to your them, "Let me take the speck out of your eye," when all the time there is a plank in your own eye? You hypocrite, first take the plank out of your own eye, and then you will see clearly to remove the speck from their eye' (Matthew 7: 3-5). We should notice that he is speaking specifically to his own disciples at this point (5:1). He knows what we are like. 5. The hypocrisy of Christians does not invalidate the Christian faith as a whole. As Josh McDowell and Don Stewart have written: 'Christianity stands or falls on the person of Jesus, and Jesus was not a hypocrite. He lived consistently with what he taught.' Mercifully, the Christian faith comes back to Christ, on whom it all depends. Part of a prayer entitled 'Paradoxes' in the devotional work The Valley of Vision is deeply sobering. And it brings a challenge for all of us who call ourselves Christians: 'Of all hypocrites,' it reads, 'grant that I may not be an evangelical hypocrite, who sins more safely because grace abounds, who tells their lusts that Christ's blood cleanses them, who reasons that God cannot cast them into hell, for they are saved, who loves evangelical preaching, churches, Christians, but lives unholily... Give me a broken heart that yet carries home the water of grace.' May that be true for us all. David Baker is a former daily newspaper journalist now working as an Anglican minister in Sussex, England. Find him on Twitter @Baker_David_A. The Rough Guide to Discipleship is a fortnightly series. Church member files lawsuit after claiming pastor's blessing caused brain injuries A pastor in Georgia is facing a court battle after a church member filed a lawsuit claiming that he caused her brain injuries. Yvonne Byrd, a longtime choir member of the Hopewell Missionary Baptist Church, says that in March 2015, Pastor William Sheals knocked her to the floor when he blessed her with his hands during a service. She then claims she hit her head on the steps and lost consciousness. "When Defendant Sheals passed Ms. Byrd, instead of blessing her by touching her on the head as he did other congregants, he pushed her forehead with such force," the lawsuit claimed. "It caused her to fall backward and slam the back of her skull against the hard floor." Byrd also stated in her lawsuit that she has yet to fully recover from mild traumatic brain injury and post-concussive syndrome after spending weeks at the Shepherd Center. Her lawyer claimed that she still has occasional headaches and dizziness, as well as signs of memory loss. The lawsuit cited Sheals for negligence and Byrd is asking the church to pay for her medical expenses. Byrd also claimed a lack of support from the church, saying she had not received an apology from Sheals. The church's insurance company also rejected her request to cover her medical bills. Assistant Pastor Alfred Davis, however, told the Atlanta Journal-Constitution that the church has not yet received a copy of the lawsuit and therefore could not comment on the matter. Sheals has been with Hopewell since the 1980s, when it still had only around 200 members. Today, the church has over 15,000 followers. 'God has a dad's heart': Pope Francis in emotional encounter with boy who's non-believing father died Pope Francis had a moving encounter on the outskirts of Rome yesterday with a young boy whose father had died and who wanted to know if his dad would go to heaven as he was a 'good man' despite being a non-believer. In what has become a routine question and answer session with youngsters, Pope Francis was taking questions at St Paul of the Cross parish when it got to Emanuele's turn. The small boy smiled at the pope as he approached the microphone, but then froze. 'I can't do it,' Emanuele said. A papal aide, Msgr Leonardo Sapienza, encouraged the boy, but the child repeated, 'I can't' and covered his eyes as he cried. Then the pope intervened. 'Come, come to me, Emanuele,' Francis said. 'Come and whisper it in my ear.' After Msgr Sapienza helped the boy up to the platform where the pope was seated, Francis gave him a big hug, patting his head and speaking to him softly while their heads touched and the pair spoke privately to one another before Emanuele returned to his seat. 'If only we could all cry like Emanuele when we have an ache in our hearts like he has,' the pope told the gathering of children. 'He was crying for his father and had the courage to do it in front of us because in his heart there is love for his father.' Pope Francis shared the boy's question with permission. 'A little while ago my father passed away. He was a nonbeliever, but he had all four of his children baptized. He was a good man. Is dad in heaven?' The pope said: 'How beautiful to hear a son say of his father, "He was good". And what a beautiful witness of a son who inherited the strength of his father, who had the courage to cry in front of all of us. If that man was able to make his children like that, then it's true, he was a good man. He was a good man. 'That man did not have the gift of faith, he wasn't a believer, but he had his children baptized. He had a good heart,' Pope Francis said. 'God is the one who says who goes to heaven,' he added. He added that the next step when it comes to answering Emanuele's question would be to think about what God is like. 'What do you think? A father's heart. God has a dad's heart. And with a dad who was not a believer, but who baptized his children and gave them that bravura, do you think God would be able to leave him far from himself?' The pope asked: 'Does God abandon his children? Does God abandon his children when they are good?' 'No!' shouted the children. 'There, Emanuele, that is the answer,' Pope Francis told the boy. 'God surely was proud of your father, because it is easier as a believer to baptize your children than to baptize them when you are not a believer. Surely this pleased God very much.' The pope then encouraged Emanuele to 'talk to your dad; pray to your Dad'. Killer robots in warfare won't bring peace, says Archbishop Allowing the development of killer robots or fully automated weapons of war would never bring peace, according to Archbishop Ivan Jurkovic. The Vatican representative, who is in Geneva to observe conferences with the United Nations this month, also warned that it could lead to dehumanization. Jurkovic attended the April 9 UN conference on Lethal Autonomous Weapons Systems (LAWS). The session brought together government experts to discuss the legal and ethical issues of automated weapon or killer robots. "A world in which autonomous systems are left to manage, rigidly or randomly, fundamental questions related to the lives of human beings and nations," the Archbishop said. "[It] would lead us imperceptibly to dehumanization and to a weakening of the bonds of a true and lasting fraternity of the human family." Jurkovic also advised the experts that relying on a machine during war won't be effective in achieving goals of peace because automated weapons do not have the capacity to make calls or judgments like humans. He further said, "The Catholic principle teaches it is morally acceptable to pursue a good goal that could have an unintended evil effect if and when there is a proportionate or adequate reason for allowing the evil." The Archbishop emphasized that global peace and security are still best achieved through dialogues. Prior to speaking to the LAWS participants, Jurkovic also spoke in a human rights conference about peacemakers like Rev. Martin Luther King, Jr. and Pope Francis, who chose to address issues plaguing the world with non-violence. Jurkovic said that both figures and advocates of human rights believe that violence can only bring more problems and divisions rather than unity. An interest group has also been established to call for the limitations in the development of LAWS, if not ban the systems completely. At least 22 countries have signed up for the Campaign to Stop Killer Robots as of November 2017, but the U.S. and U.K. have yet to joined the call. Muslim, who grew up hating Christians, converts to follow Jesus; Sets up 1st church in 700 years in Islamic-majority town A man who was raised in a family that hated Christians is now sharing the Gospel with residents of a Muslim majority town where there has been no church for about seven centuries. Urim Bogaj had grown up thinking Christians were evil, but he was forced to reexamine his feelings when his aunt converted to Christianity in 1999 and shared the Gospel with him. Bogaj said that he found it difficult to accept the Gospel when her aunt shared it with him when he was just 15. "It was hard to listen to her. To receive what she had to say. We always knew that Christians were serpents. Serpents were evil. I did not want to become a Christian," Bogaj said, according to Global News Alliance. However, as he continued studying the Bible, he eventually became convinced by Christ's message and he converted. Bogaj's entire family was initially stunned by his conversion but they too have now left Islam after he shared the Gospel with them. In an attempt to spread the Gospel further, Bogaj has now planted a church in the town of Malisheve in Kosovo. The church is reportedly the first in the town for about 700 years. "There were challenges. There were different problems. Persecution of every kind," Bogaj said, according to CBN News. "As the first generation of Christians, we need your prayers to pray for us to be standing strong for Christ...to finish the race and go to the end," he added. Kosovo, which is mainly populated by ethnic Albanians, declared independence from Serbia in 2008, but many Serbians opposed the declaration as they consider the former province to be the cradle of Orthodox Christianity. The former Serbian province is predominantly Muslim, but many Orthodox monasteries remain in the country. Last month, The Serbian Orthodox Church expressed plans to change its name to the Serbian Orthodox Church-Pec Patriarchate in an effort to strengthen its link with Kosovo. According to Reuters, the name was derived from the Serbian Patriarchate of Pec which existed from 1346 to 1766 in a Kosovo town of the same name before it was abolished by the Ottoman Turks. The Serbian Orthodox Church continued its relationship with the Pec Patriarchate after Serbia regained its independence in 1879. "Pec remains ... (a testimony) to our past, of patriarchs and archbishops, and no matter what happened, Pec remains the historical center of our church," Church Patriarch Irinej said. At Easter, Irinej called on political leaders to reject Kosovo's independence, even if it meant discarding Serbia's efforts in joining the European Union. Syrian church leaders questions legality of U.S. air strikes Leaders of the Catholic and Orthodox churches in Syria have condemned the air strikes carried out by the U.S. against military compounds in the country and they are also raising questions about the legality of the operation. The air strikes conducted by the U.S., the U.K., and France on Friday targeted three military sites that are suspected of housing chemical weapons. Two of the sites were located in Homs, while one compound was in Damascus, Crux reported. Three Syrian patriarchs have issued a statement denouncing the raids as a "brutal aggression," that violates international law and the U.N. charter. "It causes us great pain that this assault comes from powerful countries to which Syria did not cause any harm in any way," the statement read, as reported by Premier. "The allegations of the USA and other countries that the Syrian army is using chemical weapons and that Syria is a country that owns and uses this kind of weapon, is a claim that is unjustified and unsupported by sufficient and clear evidence. This brutal aggression destroys the chances for a peaceful political solution and leads to escalation and more complications," it continued. According to Crux, the signatories of the statement were Greek Orthodox Patriarch of Antioch and all the East, John X; Syrian Orthodox Patriarch of Antioch and all the East, Ignatius Aphrem II, and Melkite-Greek Catholic Patriarch of Antioch, Alexandria, and Jerusalem, Joseph Absi. The air raids came after the Syrian town of Douma was hit with a chemical weapons attack last week, resulting in the deaths of at least 75 people. U.N. war crimes investigators traveled to Syria on Friday to investigate the attack, just as the U.S., the U.K. and France launched the air raids. The patriarchs lamented the fact that the air strikes took place just before the investigators started the inquiry. They also contended that the raids would give terror groups the "momentum to continue in their terrorism." The patriarchs went on to urge Christian churches in countries that conducted the raids to denounce the attacks and urge their respective governments to "commit to the protection of international peace." Other Syrian Christian leaders have also questioned the reasoning behind the air strikes. Chaldean Catholic Bishop Antoine Audo, of Aleppo suggested that the international community is using the alleged existence of chemical weapons as justification to wage war in Syria. "What they did in Iraq, they're doing now to Syria," he said. Audo went on to suggest that the alleged use of chemical weapons by President Bashar al-Assad was just a ruse by the U.S. and Russia as they struggle to gain more influence. US family pleads for lighter sentence for jailed pastor in China The sons of a pastor who was jailed in China for illegally crossing the border are hoping that the government would consider reducing the sentence of their father in light of his charitable works in the country. The Rev. John Sanqiang Cao was arrested on March 5, 2017 when he crossed the China-Myanmar border on his way back to Yunnan province. Last month, he was sentenced to seven years in prison for "organizing others to illegally cross the border." The pastor has established more than a dozen Bible schools in China and he had been crossing with fellow Christian teachers into Myanmar to provide free education to ethnic Burmese children. Ben Cao, one of the pastor's sons living in the U.S., said he believes that the sentence against his father was harsh considering his humanitarian work. "Nothing my father organized was ever political. It was always just religious or charitable," Cao told the Associated Press (AP). "We hope that China will be merciful, and see that my father's intentions were good," he added. According to China Aid, Cao married an American woman named Jamie Powell and became a resident of North Carolina. But the pastor retained his Chinese citizenship and still flies back to his home country from time to time to work on humanitarian projects. Ben Cao contended that his father always tried to obtain the permission of the authorities for his work. The pastor did not hesitate to turn over a primary school and health clinic that he established to the authorities and did not resist when he was ordered to stop some of his charitable work. Despite his willingness to cooperate with the authorities, Cao has been put under constant surveillance and is regularly questioned about his work. According to Christian rights activist Bob Fu, Cao was frequently summoned by the authorities over his recruitment of Chinese volunteers for the construction of schools in Myanmar's Wa state. "There were no secrets. He always believed that he operated with the government's tacit blessing," Fu said, as reported by AP. A U.S. State Department spokesman has called on the Chinese government to release Cao on "humanitarian grounds," noting that the pastor intends to retire and return to the U.S. after he is freed. Cao's sentencing came after China implemented new religious regulations in February this year. According to the AP, the new regulations include a provision that prohibits Chinese nationals from leaving the country for religious purposes without permission from the government. Those who are found to be in violation of the regulation could be fined up to 200,000 yuan ($31,780). Windrush citizens: May apologises after campaign backed by bishops Theresa May has apologised to Caribbean leaders for the government's treatment of the Windrush generation after a campaign backed by bishops and MPs highlighted their plight. The prime minister said she was 'genuinely sorry' for the anxiety caused by the Home Office for thousands of long-term immigrants who arrived in the UK up to 70 years ago. It came amid reports that many are still being denied access to healthcare and told they may be deported because they do not have proper paperwork. URGENT @ukhomeoffice @theresa_may @AmberRuddHR my office has just received a phone call about the son of Windrush Generation citizen being deported TOMORROW. Halt this deportation and all further deportations immediately. Call my office for more details. Dominic Grieve is the MP. David Lammy (@DavidLammy) 17 April 2018 May told the 12 Caribbean leaders at a meeting in Downing Street she wanted to 'dispel any impression that my government is in some sense clamping down on Commonwealth citizens, particularly those from the Caribbean who have built a life here'. Thousands of people from around the Commonwealth came to the UK after the Second World War to fill a labour shortage. The 1971 Immigration Act ended the free movement between Commonwealth nations that had existed until that point but gave all Commonwealth citizens living in the UK the right to remain. However the Home Office did not keep a record of those given leave to remain meaning they now find themselves having to prove they are legally without having the paperwork to do so. May said: 'Those who arrived from the Caribbean before 1973 and lived here permanently without significant periods of time away in the last 30 years have the right to remain in the UK, as do the vast majority of long-term residents who arrived later. I don't want anybody to be in any doubt about their right to remain here in the United Kingdom.' She said the situation had arisen because of changes she had bought in as home secretary which tried to clamp down on 'health tourism' where those without a right to remain gained access to the NHS and welfare system. 'This has resulted in some people, through no fault of their own, now needing to be able to evidence their immigration status,' she told the foreign ministers and leaders of 12 Commonwealth nations in Downing Street. 'And the overwhelming majority of the Windrush generation do have the documents that they need, but we are working hard to help those who do not.' It comes after several Church of England bishops backed a petition, signed by more than 100,000 people, calling for an amnesty for the Windrush generation. Sarah Mullally, the bishop of London, supported the campaign and Pete Broadbent, the bishop of Willesden, described the Home Office as 'out of control' and inept. The Home Office are out of control. Their ineptitude in record keeping jeopardises hundreds of our people here in London. Please sign the petition. https://t.co/R5dLuIxvRj Pete Broadbent (@petespurs) 13 April 2018 Four other bishops, Michael Ipgrave of Lichfield, Mark Rylands of Shrewsbury, Clive Gregory of Wolverhampton and Geoff Annas of Stafford, also urged their dioceses to sign the petition late last week. 5 minutes with... An Emmanuel-Alfred Beurdeley Bureau du Roi This sublime bureau by Emmanuel-Alfred Beurdeley offered on 20 April in New York is a reproduction of a 1769 piece commissioned by Louis XV. As specialist Casey Rogers explains, it ticks every box for serious collectors of 19th-century furniture King Louis XV of France, Emperor Napoleon III, the fourth Marquess of Hertford and American transport mogul Cornelius Vanderbilt II are just four of the illustrious names attached to this remarkable bureau from the 1890s. It was made by Emmanuel-Alfred Beurdeley, the last in a family line of eminent 19th-century furniture-makers. Maison Beurdeleys speciality was the reproduction of famous 18th-century pieces from before the French Revolution. Such was the quality of these works that often they were mistaken for the originals. On 20 April 2018 a leading example of a so-called Bureau du Roi is offered in The Exceptional Sale in New York. The original was made in 1769 for Louis XV by master craftsmen Jean-Francois Oeben and Jean-Henri Riesener, and delivered to him at the Palace of Versailles, where it again resides. It cost the hefty sum of 62,775 livres, and was kept by the king in his private apartments. The bureau remained at Versailles after the French Revolution unlike the majority of royal furniture, which was sold off until in 1855 it was moved to the study of Empress Eugenie (Napoleon IIIs wife) at the imperial residence, Chateau de Saint-Cloud. The piece was much coveted, and with Napoleon IIIs permission the first copy of it was commissioned by the emperors English friend, the Marquess of Hertford, which now resides in the Wallace Collection in London. A number of other copies followed by the great Parisian cabinetmakers, including Henry Dasson, Emmanuel Zwiener and Francois Linke. Among their patrons were King Ludwig II of Bavaria and Grand Duke Paul of Russia, the youngest son of Tsar Nicholas II. The ormolu mounts are variously marked BY (Beurdeley) to the reverse According to Casey Rogers, Head of 19th Century Furniture & Sculpture at Christies in New York, one of the finest reproductions was made by Beurdeley: The absolute beauty of its construction, the exquisite bronze with their precision chasing and gilding, the flourish of the marquetry decoration on a variety of exotic woods all put Beurdeleys Bureau du Roi head and shoulders above other versions. Its an absolute feast for the eyes. The decoration of the case is a celebration of the Herculean labours, with every inch of the case drenched in mythological iconography. Even now, after seeing it day-in, day-out, Rogers continues, each time I inspect it new details seem to emerge: whether its the lion pelts on the legs or the laurel-festooned clubs of Hercules on the angles. Beurdeley is a name that resonates loudly in the world of furniture, and this is one of the makers standout works Beurdeley was popular in America, and received numerous commissions from Cornelius Vanderbilt II, whose mansion on 57th Street in New York was in the style of a French Renaissance chateau. In 1893 Beurdeley exhibited at the Chicago Worlds Fair, where his Bureau du Roi was given pride of place. It has been suggested that a patron such as Vanderbilt may have purchased it there and then, although not until 1918 is the piece actually recorded in a collection that of the silk baron, Oscar Heineman. Beurdeley exhibited the Bureau du Roi exhibited at the Chicago Worlds Fair in 1893 Investors extended $550,000 to former military members competing in the 2018 Veterans Business Battle at Rice University. Eighteen veteran business owners pitched their ideas to a panel of investors on Friday. The investment offers were extended on Saturday, with additional offers being negotiated. "We know that the investments given so far are only the beginning," Zach Harris, Veterans in Business Association president, said in a news release. "We hope that we have helped these entrepreneurs connect with other veterans on the same journey." RELATED: $2M awarded during 2018 Rice Business Plan Competition CYR3CON, a cyber-security firm based in Phoenix, received a $450,000 investment offer from Scout Ventures, $100,000 of which is already funded. CYR3CON uses deepweb and darkweb information to preempt cyber attacks. Members of Entrepreneurs' Organization-Houston extended $25,000 investment offers to four finalists, with the intent of mentoring and supporting the businesses. They could extend additional funding, too. Those four companies are Cyr3Con, Tenavox, Campaign Partners and Polco. The event was established in 2015 by the Houston chapter of Entrepreneurs' Organization and Rice's Veterans In Business Association, VIBA, an organization for MBA students at the Jones Graduate School of Business. This was the first year the event was hosted by Rice University. In his remarks at the forum the Head of State said that Kazakhstan is among the sparsely forested countries. The area of Kazakhstans forest fund totals 30 million ha or 11% of its territory. According to Kassym-Jomart Tokayev, Kazakhstan is planning to plant 2 billion trees by 2025. A 28-year-old man pleaded guilty Monday to a wire fraud scheme he planned to use in an effort to extort money from his former company, BP America Inc, according to a U.S. Attorney for the Southern District of Texas According to court records, George Koutsostamatis, of Chicago, was a BP employee before he was indicted and arrested in December 2017. The Evelyn Rubenstein JCC looks forward to welcoming the community to celebrate Israel at 70 on April 19 from 4:30 PM-8 PM at the Merfish Teen Center, 9000 S. Rice Ave. This is a free, family and adult friendly event that will include arts and crafts, activities and live music from the band Capaim. An Israeli style torch lighting ceremony will be new to our event this year and will honor members of our community who have made an impact on our connection to Israel. Honorees include: Lori Actor, Rinat Alatin, Marvin Barish, Gabi Braun, Sophie Friedman and Samantha Pokroy, Herut Gez and Miki Plotkin, Consul General Gilad Katz, Rabbi David Rosen, Vicki and Jean Samuels, Benjamin Warren, Sandra Weiner, and Lee Wunsch. A state district court jury in Harris County awarded $33.1 million to a worker who was badly burned in an explosion at a Georgia-Pacific plywood plant in Corrigan, about 20 miles north of Livingston in Polk County. Ralph A. Figgs, a plant supervisor, survived the blast and fire that killed two of his co-workers in 2014. The Harris County jury assigned 51 percent of the blame to AirCon, the company that designed the plant's dust collection system, and 26 percent of the blame to GreCon, the maker of the spark detection system, according to the jury verdict. ConocoPhillips said it's getting promising results from its latest Alaskan oil prospects with the potential to expand in the nation's northernmost state. The Houston-based producer said it successfully drilled six exploration and appraisal wells - three of each - in its recent "Willow Discovery" along Alaska's Western North Slope. The appraisal well results support the company's estimate for at least 300 million barrels of recoverable oil. Dreamstime/HO A former BP economist pleaded guilty to attempting to extort money from the London-based energy company whose U.S. operations are headquartered in Houston. George Koutsostamatis, 28, admitted that when he worked for BP in Chicago he sent an email to BP falsely claiming to possess personal information on BP employees and their families. He also claimed he had infiltrated BP's computers and computer network system and threatened to release the information if he did not receive 125 bitcoins. At that time in June, 125 Bitcoins were worth about $339,000, according to court documents. Oil steadied after the biggest loss in more than a week as OPEC's hints at extending output cuts fanned optimism and investors anticipated a drop in U.S. stockpiles. Futures in New York were little changed after losing 1.7 percent on Monday. Kuwait said the Organization of Petroleum Exporting Countries and allied producers will discuss prolonging an agreement to curb oil output into 2019. Meanwhile, a Bloomberg survey showed U.S. crude inventories probably fell last week after holding below the five-year average over the previous month. Oil surged to a three-year high last week as geopolitical risks including the conflict in Syria and tensions between Saudi Arabia and Iran-backed rebels in Yemen raised concerns over potential supply disruptions in the Middle East. However, record U.S. crude production remains a major worry for OPEC and its partners, who have been battling to clear a global glut by reducing output for the past 15 months. "OPEC and its allies are expected to control their supplies at levels that meet demand even after crude inventories decline," Jun Inoue, a senior economist at Mizuho Research Institute Ltd., said by phone from Tokyo. Additionally, "declining U.S. crude inventories should support oil prices." West Texas Intermediate for May delivery slipped 37 cents to $65.85 a barrel on the New York Mercantile Exchange at 8:52 a.m. local time, after gaining as much as 53 cents earlier. The contract dropped $1.17 to $66.22 on Monday. Total volume traded Tuesday was in line with the 100-day average. Brent for June settlement fell 37 cents to $71.05 a barrel on the London-based ICE Futures Europe exchange. The global benchmark crude traded at a $5.18 premium to June WTI. Yuan-denominated futures for September delivery slid 0.7 percent to 425.1 yuan a barrel on the Shanghai International Energy Exchange, after gaining 0.4 percent on Monday. OPEC and allied producers including Russia will consider maintaining their production limits beyond the end of the year when they meet in June to assess the market, Kuwait Oil Minister Bakheet Al-Rashidi said. Russia said this month the alliance could last " indefinitely." In the U.S., crude stockpiles probably fell by 600,000 barrels last week, according to the median estimate in the Bloomberg survey before government data due Wednesday. Nationwide inventories dropped below the five-year average last month for the first time since 2014. Stocks in Cushing, Oklahoma, the delivery point for WTI futures, probably shrank by 650,000 barrels last week after rising for five weeks through April 6. Other oil-market news: China's crude processing rose to a record on a daily basis in March as refining giants increased activity after the Lunar New Year holidays, according to data released by the National Bureau of Statistics on Tuesday. Brent will climb near $80 a barrel if U.S. President Donald Trump reimposes sanctions on Iran, said Abhishek Deshpande, JPMorgan Chase & Co.'s head of oil-market research and strategy. Production from the Permian Basin, one of the world's most prolific oil plays, is expected to set new records as drillers keep adding more wells. The Dayton City Council voted to censure Councilman Josh Townsend late Monday night after an investigation found that unspecified allegations made against Townsend by a city employee "more than likely occurred." The unanimous vote by three council members came just after midnight with a resolution condemning Townsend's actions. Councilman Alvin Burress left the long meeting early because of work. To censure is a formal, vehement expression of disapproval. "The city of Dayton expects its representatives and employees to treat each other in a professional and courteous manner," and "the City Council of the city of Dayton desires to censure councilperson Josh Townsend for his inappropriate actions," the resolution states. City officials were mum last night on the specific reason for the censure. County Attorney Matthew Poston said on Tuesday morning that he had not received a case file yet from Dayton. The city released a press release in January stating that a city employee had allegedly been the victim of sexual harassment and a hostile work environment at city hall. At the time, no name was announced with the ensuing investigation. City council voted to hire the outside law firm of Thompson and Horton, LLP to conduct the investigation. Monday night, the city council and staff heard details of the three-month long investigation for the first time. City Manager Theo Melancon told the Dayton News in January that no one except those involved in the investigation would know what was going on. "There will be an outside source on that to make sure the investigation isn't going to be tainted," he said at the time. The council removed Townsend from the Dayton Economic Development Corporation on Jan. 15. During Monday's executive session, Thompson and Horton presented their findings and council considered their options. The meeting ended at 12:03 a.m., shortly after the resolution condemning Townsend for his misconduct. Following the meeting, Davis wouldn't comment on whether there was a criminal violation and if charges would be referred to the county attorney or district attorney. The Dayton News has filed an open records request asking for a copy of the complaint and a copy of the investigation summary. Davis said censure was the only recourse allowed under law for the council. Townsend has missed all but two council meetings since the investigation began. He opted not to run for re-election, and his term will end on May 5. Here's the resolution that was read in open council meeting Monday night: Governor Greg Abbott received applause from a crowd of Kingwood residents at Los Cucos Mexican Restaurant Monday night when he announced dredging of the San Jacinto River will begin in two weeks. After the governor authorized funding from the states hazard and mitigation fund to conduct a study of the entire riverbed to figure out what type of sand dredging could be done to alleviate flooding in March, Abbott said that study has now been completed and will be released sometime this week. The study has been completed it will be issued this week. And we have to have the study before you can do this next thing and that is to put it out for contract and get bids on it, Abbott said. We expect it to be dredging in two or three weeks from today. Abbott said the San Jacinto River Authority and the City of Houston is also currently working on making sure the water levels are held at appropriate levels to diminish the possibility of future flooding. The two entities are working to lower water levels on Lake Conroe and Lake Houston. Weve all kind of come to the understanding that the gates on Lake Houston are inadequate. So one of our goals, that we have the money for, is to put new gates on Lake Houston to get the water out faster and better to diminish the possibility of flooding, Abbott said. In a previous Houston Chronicle article Abbott said he and Houston City Councilman Dave Martin witnessed a stunning amount of sand mining operations during a helicopter tour of the river in mid March. He said he was able to understand more comprehensively the way in which sand mining operations contributed sand and silt buildup in the river. Immediately after Abbotts tour of the San Jacinto River, he directed the Texas Commission of Enviromental Quality to undertake an investigation of the sand mining operations to make sure they had a legal permit to be mining sand and doing everything lawfully. Abbott informed the crowd TCEQ has already brought two enforcement actions againt sand mining operations and are still investigating. Theyre going to make sure that every sand mining operation is doing lawfully and not causing unnecessary sand to go to the river, Abbott said. Early voting for Spring Branch ISD Board of Trustees Position 3 begins April 23, and Election Day is May 5. Candidates Minda Caesar and Noel Lezama shared some of their thoughts as they head into the election. After graduating from the University of Virginia, Minda Caesar became a journalist before holding a top position for a start-up software company and then working for IBM. She and her family moved to Spring Branch eight years ago for the good schools, she said. She has one child in college and three children that attend SBISD schoolsone in elementary, one in middle school, one in high school. She serves the community through her local PTA, district committees, the Council of PTAs, Spring Branch Speaks and the Spring Branch Education Foundation. Noel Lezama has lived in Spring Branch for 26 years. His family came to the United States from Nicaragua in 1988 and moved to Spring Branch four years later. He attended SBISD schools and eventually put himself through the University of Houston, debt-free. Today, he owns Noel Lezama Insurance Agency in Spring Branch. He and his wife have a 14-year-old son who attends a SBISD middle school and a 1-year-old son. Lezama volunteers in SBISD schools and his church and is also a lifetime member, captain and scholarship judge with the Houston Livestock Show and Rodeo. Caesar said she believes one of the major issues SBISD currently faces is the area of student performance and outcomes. Right now we do a good job with most of our students, but we need to do a great job with all of our students, she said. I take the districts commitment to every child very seriously, and I think there are many ways we can improve learning for kids across the district, close learning gaps where they exist and help kids take bigger steps when they are ready. She also said problems with school finance are a major concern in that as part of the states recapture, the tax dollars that SBISD sends to Austin are ever-increasing, citing that in 2015 the district sent $8 million to Austin and is expected to send $75 million this year. Lezama said SBISDs biggest challenges are focusing on the its T-2-4 goa, which strives to see its students work toward technical certifications, two- and four-year degrees, as well as budget concerns and the hiring, training and retention of teachers. Too many of our schools struggle with low passing rates. We need to formulate a plan to control the controllable while continuing to advocate for fair funding, Lezama said. I look forward to demonstrating to legislators at the State Capitol what success looks like when education is properly funded. As the primary factor in student success, our teachers should be treated professionally, enjoy more family engagement and receive pay more in line with area rates so that we retain quality teachers. Some of Caesars top priorities if she were elected, she said, would be to better student performance and results by improving curriculum and helping teachers through ensuring they have what they need for the different students in their classes in addition to working with the state on legislation and policies impacting the district, such as school finance and testing and making sure every dollar was being spent wisely. She said she would also work to improve communications and to better involve families in their childrens education. Lezama said he would first look, listen and learn to adapt to being a part of the board as opposed to just watching and that he would then zone in on things that can be controlled and work to make sure that the administration uses its resources effectively toward the districts goals. He said he would focus on student success at schools that are struggling and on developing family engagement, as someone who once faced the challenges himself. In addition, Lezama said he plans to help bridge the communication gap between the school board and members of the underrepresented communities. With her business, communications and volunteer experience, Caesar said she could help the district address the issues it faces and that her family gives her a unique insight into Spring Branch education. Given the nature of the challenges that the district faces, I strongly believe that I can make a difference on the board. My professional experience managing budgets, coupled with my communications experience and the wealth of knowledge about the district that I have gained through my volunteer efforts, is a perfect fit for what the board needs now, she said. I currently have one child in each level of school and I have seen the district end to end. I not only am familiar with the content and curriculum in each grade and how it all fits together, I know what it takes to achieve T-2-4 success today. Lezama also said he would draw from his own his business and volunteer experience and that his own SBISD education would make him an example for the districts students today. I bring authenticity to the message that success is possible with hard work and perseverance. I believe I am a role model for all students, but while some of the students in our schools have other role models in leadership positions, there are few that reflect the 57 percent of our students that are at-risk, Lezama said. I am a successful business owner that is comfortable with budgets, taxes, insurance, hiring, training and communication. As captain of the Go Tejano committee of the Houston Livestock Show and Rodeo, I have been responsible for coordinating and motivating approximately 600 volunteers throughout my tenure. Early voting runs April 23-May 1. Election Day is May 5. For polling locations and more information about the election, visit https://cms.springbranchisd.com/trustees/Home/Elections. To learn more about Minda Caesar, visit www.mindacaesar.com or email minda@mindacaesar.com. To learn more about Noel Lezama, visit www.noellezama.com or email noel@noellezama.com. tracy.maness@hcnonline.com Ruben Salinas, director of nursing at The Vosswood Nursing Center in Houston, was named Director of Nursing of the Year for Life Care Centers of Americas Gulf States Region on Monday, April 9. The award was presented during Life Cares annual Directors of Nursing Meeting held at the companys headquarters in Cleveland, Tennessee. It is given to the director of nursing in each of Life Cares divisions who best demonstrates outstanding qualities in several areas, including customer service ratings, staff development and successful state surveys. While providing excellent nursing care, Salinas was nominated for special acts of dedication in 2017. When Hurricane Harvey slammed into the region, Salinas attempted to drive to the building to take care of the patients. When rapidly rising floodwaters forced him to abandon his vehicle, he had to wait to be transported by emergency personnel. While standing in the waters, he came in contact with several colonies of floating fire ant clusters that left large welts on his entire body. When a rescue team came by, Salinas first request was to go to The Vosswood. The journey, which would normally take half an hour, took five hours. Even after Salinas arrived at the facility, his selfless service continued. The first floor of the building flooded, and Salinas assisted other team members in carrying residents up to the higher floors. During this extreme circumstance, Ruben remained positive, encouraging and always had a sincere smile through it all, said Angel Elkins, senior regional director of clinical services. He is an inspiration to me and the entire Gulf Region. Ruben is a living example of what the honorable nursing profession is all about, said Beecher Hunter, Life Care president. He administers his God-given talents in a spirit of love and compassion to help make the lives of others better. Were proud of him and all of our nursing award winners. Life Care honored seven other division winners and a Company-wide Director of Nursing of the Year, as well as a customer service winner. The Vosswood Nursing Center, located at 815 S. Voss Road, is one of eight skilled nursing and rehab facilities in Texas managed by Life Care Centers of America. Founded in 1976, Life Care is a nationwide health care company. With headquarters in Cleveland, Tennessee, Life Care manages more than 200 nursing, post-acute and Alzheimers centers in 28 states. For more information about Life Care, visit lcca.com. In a city with the world's largest medical center, hospitals, doctors offices and clinics are always on the lookout for trained medical assistants to help deliver quality health care to their patients. The HCC Coleman College for Health Sciences is meeting the demand for medical assisting, which the U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics says is one of the fastest growing careers in the health care industry. Medical assistants are the link between the health care team, says Cynthia Lundgren, director of HCCs Medical Assistant Program. They are multi-skilled and cross-trained to do everything in the office. Food is a big topic in the growing Cy-Fair area as new restaurants are opening along Barker Cypress, U.S. 290, and Jersey Village. Since 2000, the Cy-Fair area has seen more than 273,000 new residents. The number of new residents reflects more residential growth than 21 states around the nation. Cy-Fair ISD projects the largest population growth in the Bridgeland and Towne Lake housing developments. It seems now restaurants are opening to continue with the growth. Recently, the community celebrated the much anticipated opening of the Austin taco staple, Torchys Tacos. The taco spot opened at The Boardwalk at Towne Lake. For the celebration of the restaurant at the beginning of April, according to the restaurants Facebook event page, more than 900 taco lovers confirmed their attendance to welcome the establishment into the Cypress community. Cypress is rich in community involvement and forward thinking, which is a perfect match for the culture that Torchys embodies, said Stacey Floberg, Torchys Tacos director of marketing. We received numerous requests from members of the community to bring a Torchys Tacos to Cypress, and here we are. The Towne Lake Boardwalk, where Torchys Tacos opened, is a development of Caldwell Companies. Waterfront dining, shopping, and office space are blended at the boardwalk. Community members can now eat their tacos with a waterfront view. Its great concept, said Jennifer Symons, Caldwell Companies vice president of marketing. I think they have great brain power and they are a national chain. Their patio and food was just a perfect fit for this cypress market. There are 45 locations of Torchys Tacos in Texas and 53 establishments throughout Texas, Colorado, and Oklahoma. Now, the growing Cypress community joins the list. According to a May 2017 study by the demographics firm Population and Survey Analysts, it is projected that nearly 23,000 new single-family homes are to be built in the Cy-Fair area by 2027. In that decade time span, more than 1,600 new housing units are projected to come from the Towne Lake community. Residential and retail construction are also planned for the next couple years along Highway 290, which means more people frequenting dining establishments. Later this month, on April 25, the Cy-Fair area will welcome another much anticipated food chain, Chick-fil-A. Along U.S. 290 and Jones Road, the popular chicken spot will be the first Chick-fil-A to open in Jersey Village. The area of Jersey Village includes a population of nearly 8,000 people. Glenn Thigpen is the owner of the U.S. 290 and Jones Road Chick-fil-A, and he operates the Beltway 8 and West Road restaurant. I think we will be a community store to serve their needs, Thigpen said. Its along a very high traffic area around Highway 290. We think the construction in that area should be finished in the next year, and theres going to be a revitalization in that area. Amongst the growing list of new restaurants opening in the area, some other new eating establishments in the Cy-Fair area include Catfish Station on Jones Road, Taco Casa on Barker Cypress, NOLA Poboys on FM 529, Maine-ly Sandwiches on Barker Cypress, Jin Korean Barbecue on Barker Cypress, Verna Maes on West Road, and Cypress Trail Hideout, home of Papa Charlies Barbecue located on Hempstead Road. When it comes to teaching about being a public safety dispatcher, the best in Texas can be found in Fort Bend County. Sugar Land Public Safety Dispatcher Amanda Davis was recently recognized as the 2018 Texas Association of Public Safety Communication Officials Trainer of the Year. Davis is a critical part of an important team that has ensured Sugar Land is safer than ever before. The city has the lowest crime rate in 20 years, faster ambulances, improved public safety dispatch, better drainage, safer streets, improved traffic technology and more ambulances and paramedics. Accidents still happen though, even in Sugar Land. With seconds making the difference between life, death and property loss, its often quick decisions of unsung heroes like Davis who play a decisive factor in the outcome of emergencies. Sugar Lands public safety dispatchers quickly size up situations and allocate necessary resources to mitigate calls for help. They also provide critical instructions for callers to follow before help arrives. In addition to serving as a front-line dispatcher for more than nine years, Davis trains new recruits. She standardized presentations and developed curriculum to ensure Sugar Lands dispatchers are prepared to meet the high demands of the job. When citizens call for assistance, theyre the voice on the other end of the line, ready to help 24/7. The nature of a call for assistance determines the type of equipment and personnel needed to respond to an emergency. To ask the right questions, dispatchers need to understand basic operations of police and fire departments. Their ability to size up situations and allocate the appropriate resources during high stress incidents is crucial during emergencies. Training is critical to manage these high-stress situations. Amanda always has great ideas for our training program and can mold her training style to fit any trainees needs, said Public Safety Dispatch Director Shannon Price. She goes above and beyond to see to it that trainees feel welcome and are as comfortable as can be while training with her. She never allows anyone to feel left out and helps to include them in team conversations. Amanda never fails to demonstrate absolute professionalism and care in her role as a trainer and public safety dispatcher. She consistently goes above and beyond the call of duty. Spring ISD unveiled the design for the new middle school it plans to build as part of its $330 million bond that voters approved in 2016. The still unnamed middle school will be located next to Northgate Crossing Elementary School, east of the North Freeway and north of the Grand Parkway. The school is expected to cost $50 million as one of the districts bond projects. The new two-story school will be more than 149,000 square feet on a 32-acre property and have a capacity of 725 students. Originally, the new school was expected to house 500 students, Spring ISD chief operations officer Mark Miranda said. Additional growth could be accommodated after the school is built. Weve developed this to be able to grow and expand. Right now, were seeing in the neighborhood of 300 students that are zoned in that area. We do have the ability, potentially in another bond, to expand, he told the board. Stantec, the architecture firm tasked with designing and building the school, is also building the districts $38 million new stadium. The firm is also undertaking a $2.9 million project to remodel a building the district purchased that will become the new command center for the Spring ISD Police. Scott Klaus, a senior associate with Stantec who presented the plans to the board, said the new middle school was intentionally designed to add more space in the future. Were already thinking ahead of when that next addition might happen. Weve designed this building in such a way that another two-story piece could be placed, he said. The new school will not be in a flood plain and will be built on a slope, which will protect it from flooding, Klaus said. Its a very hilly site, he said. Aside from classrooms, the plans for the new school feature two gymnasiums, band and choir halls, and technology labs. The district plans to hire a principal for the new middle school in January 2019. As part of the 2016 bond, the Spring ISD is converting Roberson Middle School into a ninth grade campus. A replacement campus for Roberson will be built along Veterans Memorial and West Richey Road for $30 million. The two middle schools will be built to alleviate three out of seven middle schools that are over building capacity. Another two additional campuses are also nearing their building capacities, according to the Spring ISD website. Spring ISD has also updated desktop and laptop computers in classrooms and for teachers and purchased 60 new school buses. mayra.cruz@chron.com Missouri City Mayor Allen Owen joined U.S. Sen. Ted Cruz (R-Texas), a member of the Senate Commerce Committee, in a Senate Commerce Committee hearing last week entitled: Are We Ready for the Next Hurricane Season? Status of Preparation and Response Capabilities for 2018. At the hearing, representatives from the U.S. Coast Guard, National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA), and National Transportation Safety Board (NTSB) provided updates on their agencies response to Hurricanes Harvey, Irma and Maria, and their priorities for the upcoming hurricane season. At the hearing, Sen. Cruz introduced Owen as his invited guest to provide a testimony on Missouri Citys Hurricane Harvey recovery efforts. In his comments, Cruz highlighted Owens carrer of public service and what happened during Hurricane Harvey in Missouri City. Mr. Chairman, it is a privilege to have the opportunity today to introduce Mayor Allen Owen of Missouri City, Texas, Cruz said. Mayor Owen has led a life dedicated to public service. He has served as the mayor of Missouri City for the past 24 years, and he was a member of the Planning and Zoning Commission and the City Council. In addition to holding public office, Mayor Owen has worked tirelessly in the community by serving on countless boards and associations such as the Fort Bend Literary Council, the FBI Citizens Academy Alumni Association, and the Fort Bend Womens Center and hes a lifetime vice president and director of the Houston Livestock Show and Rodeo. Mayor Owen has been so active in the community, if I were to read his entire record of community involvement we would run out of time for the rest of the hearing. However, what brings Mayor Owen to this Committee today is August 25, 2017 the day Hurricane Harvey made landfall in Texas. Hurricane Harvey was unlike any storm weve ever seen before. It devastated our Gulf Coast and is considered one of the costliest disasters in United States history. As Harvey made landfall, roads became rivers, winds obliterated entire communities and too many precious lives were lost. Like many Texans, Mayor Owen didnt sit back and wait for help. Mayor Owen helped coordinate 1,300 high water rescues and housed and fed 60 state troopers and 17 National Guardsmen for over a week. He spent an entire week in the citys operations center, with no way to get home. And even though the water has since receded, the work hasnt stopped. Eight months since Hurricane Harvey made landfall, Mayor Owen continues to be an integral part of the rebuilding process in Missouri City. From cleaning out waterlogged houses, to consoling those who were most affected by the devastation, Mayor Owen is a wonderful example of what it means to be a Texan and I am proud that he is here today to help represent the great state of Texas before this Committee. Welcome Mayor. A Fort Worth-area couple was arrested on Sunday, April 15, 2018, and face human trafficking charges after a teen escaped from their Texas home. According to the Star-Telegram, America Anderson, 20, and Devanshu Gupta, 26, allegedly kidnapped the 18-year-old female from California and brought her to their house in Irving where she was forced into prostitution. For decades, a Vidor father posted billboards about his daughter's murder, angry at the lack of progress in the 1991 case. But little changed -- until now, after a movie inspired by the signs, Three Billboards Outside Ebbings, Missouri, was released to high acclaim. The Texas Department of Public Safety on Tuesday announced that it was doubling the routine reward from $3,000 to $6,000 for information that helps solve what happened to James Fulton's daughter, 34-year-old Kathy Page. Page was found dead in her car on May 14, 1991, according to a DPS news release. The car had allegedly been staged so as to mimic an accident. Fulton, 87, had long hoped his billboards would help draw attention to the department's failure to make an arrest. The current billboard posted along I-10, 100 miles east of Houston, alleges that she was murdered by her husband, from whom she was separated. RELATED: Many billboards outside Vidor, Texas, inspired Oscar-winning film Distrustful of local officials, Fulton has said he wanted the Texas Rangers to take on the case. The agency routinely doubles the reward for a different case each month as a public awareness campaign. A new police chief in Vidor has also vowed to do what he can to see it solved. Fulton did win a civil suit against his daughter's husband, Steven Page, in 1999. "Do you find from a preponderance of evidence that Steve Page killed his wife Kathy Page?" the question posed to the jury states, according to court records. The jury members checked "yes". The Chronicle has been unable to reach Page for comment. Messaging on the signs has changed with time, but the emotion behind them stuck with at least one person, Martin McDonagh, who many years after seeing them on a road trip, wrote the film "Three Billboards Outside Ebbing Missouri." McDonagh, who had been unable to track down the billboards when he decided to write the film, said he hoped it might now help bring about change, given the movie's moment in the spotlight. "I really do hope that because of all this press attention because of the film that something might shift in the case, that some kind of justice might finally be served," McDonagh wrote in an email to the Chronicle after the Academy Awards. "In fact, that would be the most important thing to come out of this movie." MORE: 'Three Billboards' writer hopes to see justice in case that inspired movie Among the recognition, Francis McDormand and Sam Rockwell took home Oscars for their roles as leading actress and supporting actor, respectively. Neither mentioned Fulton's story in their speeches. Fulton, meanwhile, did not see the movie. Those with information are asked to call Crimestoppers (1-800-252-8477) or the DPS missing persons hotline (1-800-346-3243). Information can also be submitted online at the Texas Ranger Cold Case website: http://www.dps.texas.gov/TexasRangers/UnsolvedHomicides/Details.aspx?&id=120. Emily Foxhall covers all things Texas for the Houston Chronicle. Follow her on Twitter and send her tips at Emily.Foxhall@chron.com. To learn more about James Fulton, read the full story here. As the whole world rallies around the family as matriarch Barbara Bush enters the sunset of her life, numerous stories are coming out now about her decades in the spotlight. A tweet this week reminded social media users of an important event in Mrs. Bush's tenure as first lady, one of the most heartwarming and human of them all. PREVIOUS: With health failing, former first lady forgoes treatment for comfort care Homelessness, teenage pregnancy, children's education and AIDS were some of the issues that she took on as the first lady starting in 1989 just after her husband's inauguration. A photo circulated by Paul Brandus with West Wing Reports shows Mrs. Bush holding a baby while a 2-year-old child nearby takes their photo with a toy camera. These were two kids at a Washington-area hospice for children with AIDS. This was an age when nothing could be done medically for those with the disease. It was a death sentence and what's worse it came with a mountain of misinformation that only worked to separate those in need from those who might be ignorant of the facts. At a time, Brandus notes, when some were worried about merely touching someone with the disease for fear of contracting it the first lady was treating them like she would have treated her own grandchildren or her own children before them. Princess Diana had done something similar at New York's Harlem Hospital. Like Mrs. Bush, the princess had strived to make sure that the public understood that AIDS wasn't contracted through simple human gestures like hugs and handshakes. Mrs. Bush had toured the same hospital previously. FAMILY COMMENTS: Granddaughter: Barbara Bush is 'a fighter,' in good spirits Along the way Mrs. Bush also understood that it wasn't just the smallest, most innocent victims of the AIDS epidemic who deserved love. A story from 2012, written by former Clinton and Gore staffer Tom Rosshirt, details Mrs. Bush's encounter with people very close to him in the late '80s and early '90s. This was a time, Rosshirt wrote, when people could still be fired if an employer discovered that they had done even volunteer work with AIDS patients. His brother Matt had died of AIDS in Houston. Before he died, a local volunteer named Lou Tesconi had befriended Matt and the family, making frequent visits with the family as Matt's health declined. A short time later at Grandma's House, a Washington, D.C., charity home for infants with AIDS, Tesconi was able to meet Mrs. Bush while she was there on a special visit. He was on a team of AIDS advocates who were tasked with speaking to Mrs. Bush. FACTS ABOUT BARBARA: Things to know about former first lady Barbara Bush Rosshirt wrote that during a briefing behind the scenes he told the first lady that adults with AIDS needed affection and care too. "Mrs. Bush, it is a fantastic thing that you are holding these babies with AIDS." Tesconi told Mrs. Bush. "But the country sees them as innocent and the rest of us with AIDS as guilty. The whole suffering AIDS community needs a collective embrace from you today." Tim Graham/Tim Graham/Getty Images, Getty Images Rosshirt wrote that just then Mrs. Bush walked over and hugged Tesconi. Later at a public press conference she repeated the gesture in front of reporters, embracing a gay man with AIDS for the world to see. Two years later, as Tesconi was dying in a hospital, he received a letter from Mrs. Bush. In the letter, Rosshirt wrote, she told Tesconi that even though he was dying that he should know that his life mattered and that he did great work for those to follow. Mrs. Bush wrote in her 1994 memoir that the Tesconi encounter deeply impacted her. "I especially remember a young man who told us that he had been asked to leave his church studies when it was discovered he had AIDS," she wrote. "His parents had also disowned him, and he said he longed to be hugged again by his mother." "A poor substitute, I hugged that darling young man and did it again in front of the cameras. But what he really needed was family." Professor and historian Nancy Beck Young at the University of Houston told Chron.com this week that what Mrs. Bush did was monumental in the AIDS fight. "Her message to the American people, who in the early days of the AIDS epidemic were afraid to be near those who were sick, was that there was no risk to individuals who had such casual contact," Young said. "This message of compassion at a critical moment in the history of AIDS helped Americans to learn that AIDS was yet another disease to manage and not a death sentence. She brought needed publicity to the problems of those who suffered and helped humanize her husband's presidency." Craig Hlavaty is a reporter for Chron.com and HoustonChronicle.com. The Katy Independent School Districts embattled superintendent said he would like to have a one-on-one meeting with the man who accused him of being his tormentor decades ago while both were junior high students. I just hope at some point we can sit down and not in a big, public forum, Katy ISD Superintendent Lance Hindt said Monday. About 150 people gathered outside Katy ISD headquarters prior to a board of trustees workshop Monday afternoon in a show of support for Hindt, who has denied attacking or even remembering his former classmate, Greg Gay, in a boys bathroom at West Memorial Junior High School more than 35 years ago. Hindt has stated that when he was young and dumb (he) did dumb things. READ ALSO: Rare variety of duck spotted at Katy Prairie Conservancy Another former student has come forward to back up Gays account of the events in the boys bathroom. Hindt said he would like to speak with Gay and piece together a timeline of what actually happened that day. I was only in the building with this individual for less than four months, Hindt said. I was a brand new kid. READ ALSO: Crime Stoppers seeks to help students stay safe at prom Gay, a Katy-area businessman, accused Hindt of the bullying incident during a March 19 board of trustees meeting. Hindt became the focus of criticism when video surfaced showing him appearing to smile and laugh at Gays accusation. The video and story quickly gained national attention. Hindt issued a statement the next day, saying the accusation simply isnt true. He also insisted his initial reaction to Barretts comments was one of shock, not insensitivity or intentional disrespect. Debbie Ellis, a first-grade teacher at Katy ISDs Bryant Elementary, organized Mondays rally for Hindt. Weve seen our superintendent come under a lot of scrutiny, (and) a lot of false accusations, Ellis said. It hurts when people continue to blame you for things that are not true. Ellis said officials with the school and district were not involved in organizing the rally, but many in the crowd appeared to be teachers and other district employees. We want to build a circle around him so he can see how much people care for him, she said. George Espinoza, who works in the Katy ISD communications department, was heading home late Monday afternoon when he saw the crowd forming in support of Hindt. I do appreciate the superintendent. We all do, Espinoza said. Whatever Hindt might have done as a teenager, Espinoza said he has straightened himself out as an adult and a respected educator. Everybody deserves a chance to become better, he said. Its better to have learned early like he did than not at all. The crowd broke into applause when Hindt stepped outside the Katy ISD administrative building. A visibly moved Hindt said he was not surprised when he saw the crowd waiting for him. I know this community. I grew up here, he said. Hindt said he has received other positive feedback from the community after the allegations of bullying were raised in such a dramatic fashion at an earlier school board meeting. I also believe that through controversy comes togetherness. Thats what youre seeing here today, he said. Hindt said he was advised not to comment on a lawsuit more than three decades old that he had seriously injured a man in an assault. Although some have called for his firing, Hindt remains popular with the Katy ISD board of trustees. mike.glenn@chron.com twitter.com/mrglenn Authorities released surveillance photos from a deadly January shooting in east Houston hoping the public can help identify those responsible. Houston Crime Stoppers is also offering a reward up to $5,000 for information leading to the suspects' charge or arrest. POLICE SHOOTING: Two deputy constables wounded in shootout in Atascocita The shooting happened in mid-afternoon Jan. 21 inside a home in the 7800 block of Keller Street, west of Broadway Street just north of the South Loop East in the Pecan Park neighborhood. Two men inside the home allegedly opened fire on a 22-year-old man, police said. The man was shot in the torso and also suffered blunt-force trauma to his head, according to an earlier report on Chron.com. The two men drove away in a silver, four-door passenger car and have not been apprehended. A neighbor who heard the gunshots called 911. Paramedics with the Houston Fire Department rushed the man to an area hospital where he was pronounced dead. DEADLY FLIGHT: 1 dead after Texas-bound jetliner apparently blows engine The first suspect was wearing all black and a black mask. The second suspect was wearing blue jeans and had blood on his hands, police said. Anyone with information about the shooting is urged to call the Houston Police Department homicide division at 713-308-3600 or call Crime Stoppers anonymously at 713-222-TIPS (8477). Jay R. Jordan is a breaking news reporter at Chron.com. Follow him on Twitter at @JayRJordan. For years fluttering, flying black creatures of the night were stars every dusk under the bridge they called home. Thousands of Mexican free-tailed bats would emerge from their rest under the bridge in search of food to the delight of dozens and dozens of onlookers. Hurricane Harvey changed all that. Back in December the Houston Chronicle's Maggie Gordon revisited the colony, ravaged by raging floodwaters that took over Allen Parkway. GORILLA TIME: See what it takes to give a Houston Zoo gorilla a physical exam According to Texas Parks and Wildlife biologist Diana Foss, the colony at one time was home to over 300,000 bats. Less than half had returned in the months after the hurricane. The crew's nightly flight in search of food, once an awe-inspiring festival of guano and flapping wings, was just a skeleton of its former self. Still no less a marvel to watch, the diminished numbers were nonetheless troubling. But according to Foss, the bats are coming back now in full force as spring warms up. Their numbers are increasing. Just as the city has bounced back, so have the bats. "The bats are examples of the 'Houston Strong' motto they survived and are doing extremely well," Foss said Tuesday. "Given some time, the colony will be huge again. The emergence is still really wonderful." ALVIN TRIP: The story behind the Houston-area man who built his own zoo According to Foss, the Mexican free-tailed bats that migrated elsewhere for the winter are back under the Waugh bridge now. "A few stragglers are still arriving," she noted. "Pregnant females will be giving birth to their one pup, starting at the end of May, and going through most of June." Even with diminished numbers, Foss said, that sunset display is still a sight to see. It's an example of wildlife maintaining a status quo even inside a bustling urban area. "They exit the bridge on the east side in short bursts most nights, rather than in long streams across the sky. They're still exciting and well-worth the trip to watch," Foss said. The population of bats is estimated to be around 100,000. How do you count bats? OTTER-LY AMAZING: Otters making a welcome return to Texas waterways "Every number given is always an estimate," Foss told Chron.com. There is a scientific method, requiring expensive equipment and thermal cameras. The thermal camera is attached to a computer that counts each heated blob as it flies by. A cheaper method involves dividing the area under the bridge into quadrants and simply counting. Clipboard, pencil, binoculars and a datasheet are used with one person spotting and counting and relaying information to an assistant. Those counts are done during the day as the bats rest. Foss said there is also another interesting component to the bat sightings. Nature has a way of adding drama to the mix when it can. "Pre-Harvey there was a colony of night herons, along with several hawks, that were catching and dining on bats each night," Foss said. "Those dispersed during the Harvey flooding. But now at least one hawk visits the bats each night. It's all a part of nature the bats try to out-maneuver the hawk and the hawk does its best to zip in and catch a bat dinner." Animal life, as with its human counterpart, is slowly but surely getting back to normal in the wilds of Houston. Just give it time. Craig Hlavaty is a reporter for Chron.com and HoustonChronicle.com. Five years ago, a massive explosion in West, Texas took the lives of fifteen people and injured hundreds more. When a fire broke out at a local fertilizer plant on April 17, 2013, few could have predicted the devastation that would engulf the town. Twenty minutes after catching fire, the West Fertilizer Co. plant exploded with the force a magnitude-2.1 earthquake, an explosive power equivalent to 15,000 to 20,000 pounds of TNT. The town's mayor, Tommy Muska, described the explosion "like a nuclear bomb." The blast destroyed 120 homes and damaged 200 more. Of those killed, 12 were first responders. MAN-MADE: Photos of Texas' worst environmental disasters "Today our prayers go out to the people of West, Texas in the aftermath of last night's deadly explosion at a fertilizer plant," said Barack Obama a day after the explosion. "A tight-knit community has been shaken, and good, hard-working people have lost their lives ... West is a town that many Texans hold near and dear to their hearts, and as residents continue to respond to this tragedy, they will have the support of the American people." In 2016, federal investigators announced that someone had started the deadly fire on purpose, although possible suspects have yet to be named. See some of the most iconic and heartbreaking photos from the West, Texas fertilizer explosion five years ago. Fernando Ramirez is a reporter for Chron.com and the Houston Chronicle. You can follow him on Twitter at @fernramirez93. Brett Coomer, Staff / Houston Chronicle AUSTIN -- Federal Emergency Management Agency officials on Tuesday extended a shelter program for victims of Hurricane Harvey for another month, the latest extension to pay for hotels and other temporary housing for victims of the historic storm. Gov. Greg Abbott said the extension will keep the temporary shelter payments active through June 1 in Houston and other Gulf Coast areas ravaged by the storm and related flooding. Files, Staff AUSTIN -- As the endorsement race continues in the May 22 Democratic gubernatorial runoff, Andrew White has won backing from a party group in rival Lupe Valdez's home county. White announced Monday that the North East Bexar County Democrats has endorsed him in the runoff election over Valdez -- a group he called "one of San Antonio's most dynamic forces for progressive change." Searching for gravitational waves and exploring the physics of black holes and warped space-time is all in a days work for teams of researchers in Australia. This is the type of work conducted by the Australian Research Councils Centre of Excellence for Gravitational Wave Discovery (OzGrav). And its the type of work that couldnt be carried out without the extreme computational power of a supercomputer. In OzGravs case, the computational power is delivered via a new $4 million Dell EMC supercomputer launched at Swinburne University of Technology. The supercomputer, named OzSTAR, delivers an astounding peak performance of 1.2 petaflops, making it one of the most powerful supercomputers in Australia. What does that mean in laymans terms? OzGravs director, Professor Matthew Bailes, explains it this way: In one second, OzSTAR can perform 10,000 calculations for every one of the 100 billion stars in our galaxy.1 Thats the kind of computational power it takes to shift through an unfathomable amount of data coming from giant telescopes to gain insights that help unlock the secrets of the universe. With this type of scientific research, high performance computing (HPC) is an absolute requirement. For example, researchers couldnt begin to model the large-scale structure of the universe or simulate the formation and evolution of galaxies without HPC. We will be looking for gravitational waves that help us learn more about supernovas, the formation of stars, intergalactic gases and more, Professor Bailes says. Its exciting to think that we at OzGrav could make the next landmark discovery in gravitational wave astrophysics and the Dell EMC supercomputer will allow us to capture, visualize and process the data to make those discoveries.2 The OzSTAR supercomputer is based on Dell EMC PowerEdge R740 compute and data-crunching nodes; a Dell EMC H-Series Networking Fabric, which is powered by the Intel Omni-Path Architecture (Intel OPA); and Dell EMC HPC Storage with a Lustre parallel file system. This combination of Dell EMC technologies will deliver the incredibly high computing power required to move and analyze data sets that are literally astronomical in size, says Andrew Underwood, Dell EMCs Australia-New Zealand high performance computing lead, who collaborated with Swinburne on the supercomputer design.3 Brilliant researchers are often only limited by advances in technology, adds Chris Kelly, Vice President, Compute and Networking Solutions, Dell EMC Asia-Pacific. With this new supercomputer, Swinburne and OzGrav will be able to embark on a new era of astronomy that could unlock answers to questions mankind has pondered for centuries. Its an incredibly exciting time for astronomical research.4 For a closer look at technologies used to create HPC solutions that deliver the extreme computational power needed to explore black holes and warped space-time, visit the Dell EMC Go Ahead. Dream Big. site. ___________________________________________________ Making a difference with HPC High performance computing touches virtually every aspect of our lives. HPC is making weather forecasts more accurate, cancer therapies more precise, fraud protection more foolproof and products more efficient. In this series of articles, we explore these and other use cases that capitalize on HPC and its convergence with data analytics to illustrate why HPC matters to all of us. ___________________________________________________ 1 Swinburne University of Technology news releases, Swinburne supercomputer to be one of the most powerful in Australia, March 7, 2018. 2 insideHPC, Dell EMC Supercomputer to Power OzGRav Studies of Black Holes, August 15, 2017. 3 insideHPC, Dell EMC Supercomputer to Power OzGRav Studies of Black Holes, August 15, 2017. 4 insideHPC, Dell EMC Supercomputer to Power OzGRav Studies of Black Holes, August 15, 2017. It was backroom business as usual in Albany over the weekend, and when all was said and done, New Yorks politically ambidextrous Working Families Party had nominated upstart actress Cynthia Nixon to oppose Governor Andrew Cuomo in the November general election. The governor was not amused. How much the WFP nomination will be worth is an open question. The party was badly damaged during the struggle, as is already becoming apparent, but Nixons victory was a well-earned rebuke to Cuomo, and the battle offered rare insight into the transactional nature of politics in the Empire State. Nixon also is challenging Cuomo for the Democratic Partys nomination in the September primary. She had sought the backing of the rhetorically hard-left WFP to solidify her authority to speak for progressive Democrats. Cuomo wanted it precisely to deny Nixon that platform. WFP support was never going to come easily for the governor. Four years ago, in similar circumstances, he bargained an endorsement from party leaders, many of whom preferred progressive gadfly and Democratic primary challenger Zephyr Teachout. With WPF imprimatur in hand, Cuomo promptly reneged on an agreement he had made with the party to broker an end to an internal Democratic feud in the state senate. By declining to do so, he ensured continued Republican control of the body, humiliating his WFP supporters and precluding any realistic hope for an endorsement in 2018. Yet Cuomo was incensed when the WFP refused to come back for a second helping, threatening to punish party supporters if Nixon was nominated and almost certainly instigating the defection of several well-heeled unions from the party. It was an unsubtle display of political power, but whos to say that the WFP didnt have it coming? Founded in 1998 ostensibly as a perch for left-leaning New Yorkers put off by the (relative) moderation of the Democratic Party, the WFP has always talked a lefty game but in practice has been little more than a cats paw for its principal funders, New Yorks public-sector unions. Because New York lets minor parties cross-endorse major-party tickets, the WFP almost invariably offers its line to union-approved candidates in return for union cash delivered directly to WFP accounts, plus fundingoften paid in tax dollarsfor the equally self-interested activist groups that fill out the WFP coalition. The party, including its cadre of deep-indigo true-believers, has contentedly dined at the taxpayers table for two decades without embarrassment. It was Cuomos misfortune to be center stage when Donald Trump was elected president and the WFP finally found progressive religion. Exhibit A in this regard is Nixon. Shes long been a public face for the WFP-affiliated Alliance for Quality Education, itself a lushly funded cats paw for New York State United Teachers, the states largest teachers union. AQE, like NYSUT, defines quality education as more money, and less accountability, for teachers. New Yorks teachers are Americas best paid, and among its least accountable. This is hardly all Nixons doing, but it speaks to her worldview that so much isnt nearly enough. There is some irony in her WFP nomination, though, in that Cuomo has been anticipating a challenge from the left and has busily been reconfiguring his administrations policies and practices to meet it. Cuomos leftward turn has damaged the states already dubious business climate, to say nothing of its overburdened taxpayers. To coopt union opposition, Cuomo promoted New Yorks $15 minimum wage, paid family leave, expanded publicly funded health care, and lavish increases in education aid. His ardor for publicly funded charter schools seems to have cooled in direct proportion to his desire to woo New York Citys United Federation of Teachers. The principal WFP-affiliated unions understand what Cuomo has been up to, even if the party leadership seems not to, which helps explain union defections from the party. It also accounts for talk that the defecting unionsever mindful of a need to keep the gravy flowingwill now form a new party. So Cuomos 2014 WFP double-cross has been repaid in kind. But the partys remaining leadership seems to understand that while the frisson is sweet, it soon will fade. In a meeting [last] week, said WFP director Bill Lipton, the governor was threatening people. Several times, he said, If unions or anyone give money to any of [the WFP-affiliated] groups [that have endorsed Nixon], they can lose my number. Thats no idle threat. Its how politics works in the Empire State. If go-along-to-get-along wasnt invented here, it surely was perfected. The WFP once understood the rules, but it seems to have forgotten them. Now the party stands to get a refresher course from a governor who never forgets slightsor forgives them. Photo: Working Families Party Julie Bentley will leave her role as chief executive of Girlguiding to become chief executive of Action for Children, the two charities announced today. Bentley, who has spent six years at Girlguiding, will step down from her current role in June, and take up the new job on 1 August. She succeeds Sir Tony Hawkhead, who stepped down in February due to ill health after four years in charge. Girlguiding will start the search for a successor, with deputy chief executive Ruth Marvel leading the charity in the interim. Bentley has previously served as chief executive of the Suzy Lamplugh Trust and the Family Planning Association, and has spent most of her working life in the charity sector. She said: I will be very sad to leave Girlguiding, which is a fantastic charity working with hundreds of thousands of girls and young women every year. But after almost six years it felt time to hand over the baton and take on a new challenge myself. Action for Children works with some of the most disadvantaged children and young people in our society. Its work is crucial and it will be an honour to join the trustees and staff and volunteers to take the charity forward. John O Brien, chair of Action for Children, said: Julie Bentley is a fantastic appointment. She will bring with her much valued experience and skills. Action for Children is proud to have her on board to help transform the lives of disadvantaged children across the UK. I know she will help us to make a huge difference to the lives of the children, young people and families we support. We are very grateful to Carol Iddon, managing director of childrens services, who has been acting CEO since Tonys departure. She will continue in that role until the end of July. Val Elliott, interim chair at Girlguiding, said: "Julie has made a hugely valuable contribution during her time in post and Girlguiding has moved forward significantly under her leadership. The board of trustees is sorry to see her leave but we are delighted she has been appointed to such a prestigious position at Action for Children and she goes with our very warm thanks and best wishes." Civil Society Media is hosting its Charity People & Culture conference on 18 September 2018. For more information and to book, click here. Newish LA Weekly editor Darrick Rainey and publisher Brian Calle run what is perhaps the most on-edge paper at this moment in American journalism. In December of last year, Calleformerly the head of the libertarian op-ed pages for the Orange County Registerand a group of investors under the name Semanal Media bought the august alt-weekly, then axed 9 of 13 staff writers and editors in what then Editor in Chief Mara Shalhoup (one of the victims) compared to the sanguinary Red Wedding of Game of Thrones. The layoffs prompted a furious counterattack by former staffers and freelancers, who alleged Calle heads a conservative conspiracy to turn the historically progressive LA Weekly into an alt-right rag. Under the hashtag #BoycottLAWeekly, protesters organized right after the layoffs publicly and loudly, staging a mock funeral outside the LA Weekly building in Culver City, and rolling out a campaign that publicly requests advertisers to pull their money and asks writers, photographers, and artists to stop contributing until Calle and his group are gone. The push has seen success: major LA businesses like Amoeba Records and Angel City Brewery no longer run ads with the Weekly, and the paper canceled two moneymaking food events after restaurants pulled out in support of the boycott. Many former contributors have refused to write for the paper, despite the invites of Raineypromoted just last monthand Calle. ICYMI: The LA Times has a hit The aim of the #BoycottLAWeekly group is to spur Semanal to sell the paper and put it in better hands. We [are] making calls to advertisers and planning to ensure that the city can be covered in a sustainable way in the future, says Jeff Weiss, a former LA Weekly music columnist who has savaged Calle and his crew on Twitter. The [Los Angeles] Times is essential, but one dedicated newspaper covering a constantly evolving and complex metropolis of four million people isnt enough. Were working towards a solution to the problem; Semanal Media is not. But the atmosphere in the newsroom (currently 10 staffers, with one more to come) was relaxed when I visited the LA Weekly offices this past week. The paper is celebrating 40 years this winter, so sales and marketing are slowly starting to think of how to mark the anniversary. Story ideas filled whiteboards; workers cracked jokes with each other or scrolled through their personal Facebook pages as the Thursday afternoon wound down. In one cubicle, a poster read No Koch Hate in L.A.ironic, because boycotters repeatedly mention that Calle once served as a senior fellow at a conservative think tank funded by the right-wing brothers. Just days before, LA Weekly had finally responded to #BoycottLAWeekly with its own hashtag#speaktruthand a snazzy website. A small but aggressive and deceitful group of bullies, the homepage read, is using harassment and intimidation to spread lies about L.A. Weekly. The move immediately drew widespread derision, with Weissone of the more prominent boycotterscalling it in an interview with CJR Sinclair Media run by Gob Bluth. Sign up for CJR 's daily email Rainey, who designed the website, is unapologetic. We felt we needed to fight back. Besides, says the soft-spoken but impassioned 10-year veteran of the paper, this is one strife of many Ive seen. Hes referring, of course, to the papers tumultuous history. Lost in national media accounts of LA Weeklys current civil war is that staff revolts, or former writers trashing the paper, are as certain a Southern California occurrence as the Santa Ana winds. In 1993, LA Weekly management fired popular Editor in Chief Kit Rachlis; staffers yelled at Publisher Michael Sigman for an hour before six editors and writers resigned in protest, leaving a staff of about 25. In 2006, longtime political columnist Harold Meyerson sent a company-wide email announcing his resignation, accusing new ownershipat that time, Phoenix-based New Timesof reducing commentary to drive-by shootings. Even today, the feeling among older generations of LA Weekly writers and editors is that the imbroglio between Calle and #BoycottLAWeekly is too much, too little, too late. I imagine that to the casual observer, says Joe Donnelly, who served as deputy editor from 2002 until 2008 and whom the paper just profiled, whats going on now feels a bit like fighting over who claims the remnants of a once-great building thats been bashed by various wrecking balls for more than a decade. Such thoughts makes the current kids laugh. Ive been literally hearing LA Weekly now sucks since I started at LA Weekly, says Lina Lecaro, who was an 18-year-old intern at the paper when Rachlis was fired in 93, continued as a freelancer since, and just got hired as the papers culture editor. In interviews with people who decided to stay under Calles ownership, theres a clear theme: They see themselves as the torchbearers of the papers legacy under a new regime and in a precarious media landscape. And they resent boycotters for not only ridiculing them for staying at Vichy LA Weekly but also inciting a self-fulfilling prophecy: Scare enough freelancers, cut the flow of content, and the paper cant cover Los Angeles the way it should, which only confirms the boycotters insistence that the paper under Calle now sucks. They want to destroy it and only save it on their terms, says a staffer from the 2000s who currently contributes and requests anonymity. Youre discounting all the people who remained, whove been here four times longer than some of the boycotters. RAINEY HAS WORKED in the alt-weekly business for 20 years as an art director and has no experience as an editor in any capacity. (Full disclosure: Rainey served as digital design paper for Voice Media Group, the papers previous owner, while I was editor of OC Weekly from 2011 until 2016 and thus supervised our look. Most of our interactions were heated arguments about cover images). But former colleagues praise his acumen. Darrick is one of the most talented people Ive ever worked with, says Sarah Fenske, who was LA Weekly editor from 2011 to 2014 and is currently editor at the Riverfront Times in St. Louis. Hes also a native Angeleno with his finger on the citys pulse, which is more than you could have said about me upon my arrival. Rainey and the four other staffers who remained at the time gave Calle and the owners an earfulabout their obvious mistakes the day after the layoffs. Yet not only did Rainey decide to stay, he accepted Calles offer to helm the paper a couple of weeks ago, especially after receiving reassurances that management wouldnt interfere with his story choices. If they tried, that would be a fight, says the self-proclaimed liberal, and I wouldnt stay long in this position. The 51-year-old didnt like all the layoffs, but Theres a disconnect that the boycott people have, he says. We had a corporate budget before; we dont anymore. Nevertheless, at Raineys urging, the paper recently refilled five of the nine positions originally eliminated, although only one of them will be full-time. Theres a start-up mentality right now, he says. Were ready to cover this city the way we used to. But hes having a hard time recruiting more writers because of the boycott. I dont blame anyone who was in this building at all, he says. You get laid off, you should be angry. I have issue with the freelancers. The stuff that you want the Weekly to be, were doing that. And theyre not even allowing people to even try to write. Raineys referring to harassment that some contributors say they have weathered from #BoycottLAWeekly supporters. Most declined to go on the record for fear of further retribution, but one who spoke publicly was photographer Ted Soqui. He has contributed to LA Weekly for nearly 35 years, including iconic pictures of the 1992 Los Angeles riots that the paper had him restage last year for its 25th anniversary. ICYMI: Headlines editors probably wish they could take back Soqui says that as recently as last months March for Our Lives rally, people who realized he was on assignment for LA Weekly blocked his shots, shadowed him, or flat-out told him to leave. I cant remember the last time I felt so unsafe, says Soqui, who stayed on after Rainey assured him he could continue to shoot the protests and streetscapes hes long specialized on. I dont appreciate it. [The boycott] destroys the ability of people to work. Such tactics bother former staffers, including Dennis Romero, a workhorse of a former reporter who Calle says is the one person he regrets not retaining (Calle offered him his job back; Romero declined to join what he called a cauldron of chaos in an interview with CJR). While Romero supports the boycott, he also questions the smear campaign against writers who contribute. Theyre good people stuck in a bad place, Romero says. Its a legitimate ask [for boycotters to ask people not to cross their line], but after the ask, they shouldnt get bullied. CALLE HAS HIT THE SAME points in all of his media interviews about LA Weekly: Hes not the bogeyman for journalisms ills. He didnt technically fire the staffers because VMG did it before they transferred ownership to Semanal. He approved of the #SpeakTruth campaign only after his new food editor called him crying about threats a restaurant had received for doing an event with the paper. His record at the Registerwhere he gave weekly columns to conservative voices but also prominent liberals like Erwin Chemerinsky (originally announced as an investor before he pulled out)speaks for itself. He wouldve hired back everyone who lost their job if he could afford it. Hes a slight man with a habit of checking both his cell phones when someone else is talking. But Calle was startlingly forthcoming with me over a two-hour interview, even though I once named him one of Orange Countys scariest people when I ran OC Weekly. He showed me everything I asked for during our talk: Web traffic figures (lower by half in March compared to last year, although LA Weekly was already on a downward trajectory), Facebook analytics (overall likes are actually up since December by about 1,000), and emails and voicemails to prove his bullying allegations (one tweet by a former editor used an internet catchphrase to joke in a since-deleted tweet that an assistant editor had a punchable face). He also shared with me a December email by Weiss offering to buy LA Weekly at the price Calle paid so Weiss and the buyers could turn it into a nonprofit. This will only get worse, Weiss warned if Calle refused his offer. And I would vastly prefer that we dont turn this into Stalingrad. The 37-year-old wouldnt show me financial numbers that he claims proves LA Weekly was in a financial tailspin when he bought the paper, citing an NDA with VMG. But conversations with other groups who wanted to buy LA Weeklysome which included staffers from years agoconfirm Calles dire talk. He says he has received offers to buy from people that the boycotters would like less than me. And he admits, some days, I ask if it was the right decision. Everyone in this building has been beat and battered. But that has created a team. And thats what keeps people like Lecaro around. Shortly after the layoffs, she wrote a story for OC Weekly titled Why I Cant Stop Writing For LA Weekly (For Now) in which she openly expressed skepticism about the new owners. Four months later, shes a staffer. Ive written for the Weekly more than half of my life, she says. Ive continued to write the same as ever. Theres not this big conservative change that everyone has talked about. I hope that people have an open mind and know that the staff really does care, and that the paper is as good as it can be. RELATED: Newspaper staffers push back against their papers publisher Has America ever needed a media watchdog more than now? Help us by joining CJR today Gustavo Arellano is a columnist for the Los Angeles Times opinion section and the author of 2012's Taco USA: How Mexican Food Conquered America. Going into todays Pulitzers announcement, reporting on Harvey Weinstein looked like a shoo-in for a prize. Investigations into the Hollywood mogul opened a worldwide conversation about the abuse and harassment of women; scalped a whos who list of famous men; and wrested control of a news cycle that, until that moment, had been obsessed with Donald Trump. The only question mark seemed to be over which Weinstein story would win: Megan Twohey and Jodi Kantors work for The New York Times, or Ronan Farrows for The New Yorker. In the end, it was bothin the same categoryas Twohey, Kantor, and Farrow shared in the prize for public service journalism (which also cited other reporters stories about Bill OReilly, Louis C.K., Bill Clinton, and Ford factory workers in Chicago). The Times also shared an award with The Washington Postthe two staffs split the national reporting prize for their work on the Russia investigation, writ largewhile the Post claimed the investigative reporting honor for the effort, led by Stephanie McCrummen and Beth Reinhard, that ultimately derailed Roy Moores Senate campaign in Alabama. These two set off a spark that lit the world on fire CONGRATS to Jodi Kantor and Meghan Twohey on your Pulitzer Prize! pic.twitter.com/ub4DEc03pA Sarah Maslin Nir (@SarahMaslinNir) April 16, 2018 ICYMI: The story of a journalist who became a killer Together, that trifecta channeled the spirit of the 102nd class of Pulitzer winners. Stories that ignited, then fueled, the #MeToo moment were recognized, as were investigative teams at heavyweight outlets that have come to feel less like rivals and more like collaborators in parsing an unceasing torrent of explosive news. And while more male than female journalists were named as prize winners, that gender gap shrinks once Kantor, Twohey, McCrummen, and Reinhards contributions are taken into account. Sign up for CJR 's daily email The Pulitzers were announced for the first time by Dana Canedya long-serving New York Times journalist who became the first woman and first person of color to be named administrator last year. She told CJR at the time that the Pulitzers would bring in new and diverse voices under her watch. In a year that has seen student reporters take the lead in covering the Parkland shooting and subsequent push for gun control, Canedy literally brought fresh faces into the Pulitzer fold, inviting ninth graders from a news literacy program at the Young Womens Leadership School in Queens to watch the announcement. It was a good insight into how everything is decided within the industry, and how getting new reporters and new authors from different backgrounds is a recent thing, but that theres progress occurring, said one of the students, Andrea Tapia, afterward. The biggest buzz in the room came with the final announcement in the letters, drama, and music category, which saw Kendrick Lamar win the music prize for his album Damn. I had this joy when they announced Kendrick Lamar, said Tapia. I feel like theres this growth of the younger generation getting their voice heard. While the Pulitzers still have work to do when it comes to the diversity of recipientsespecially in representing journalists of colorCanedy sees progress in this years crop. I mean, Kendrick Lamar just won a Pulitzer, she told CJR. How is that not progress? Other takeaways: New media: While the awards applauded digital storytelling components in several winning entriesincluding The Arizona Republic and the USA Today Networks use of virtual reality and podcast content in their reporting on the Mexican border wallmost winning parties were traditional newspapers, magazines, and news agencies. BuzzFeed was a runner-up in the international reporting category, and ProPublica and ProPublica Illinois were mentioned for explanatory and local reporting, respectively, though neither outlet won. And the International Consortium of Investigative Journalists wasnt recognized at all for its collaborative Paradise Papers project (though it did win last year with the Panama Papers). Keeping it local: While larger outlets with legions of subscribers seem to be squeezing out local journalism in the mediasphere at large, the Pulitzers have always recognized the best of village, city, and state reporting. This year was no different. Even though administrators announced late last year that Pulitzer rules would no longer limit the breaking news category to local outlets, a local outlet won anyway, with staff at the Santa Rosa Press Democrat honored for their coverage of the California wildfires. Reporters at The Arizona Republic, the Cincinnati Enquirer, the Alabama Media Group, and the Des Moines Register all also won prizes, while Ryan Kelly, a photographer formerly with the Charlottesville Daily Progress, won for his instantly iconic image of the car attack at last summers white supremacist rally in the city. Ryan Kelly of the The Daily Progress in Charlottesville has won the 2018 Pulitzer Prize in Spot News Photography. pic.twitter.com/pVXyDqy5lp NPPA (@NPPA) April 16, 2018 This was never meant to be a prize awarded [solely] to the institutions with the biggest resources, Canedy said. The system worked as it should. A flashier format: Last years announcement was markedly austere: Outgoing Administrator Mike Pride stood behind a lectern and read winners names off a sheet of paper to a below-capacity crowd. This year, people had to be turned away as Canedy spoke from a polished podium under theater lights, framed by branded drapes. There were Pulitzer cocktails1/2 ounce of St. Germain with prosecco and a lemon twistand embossed gold and royal blue napkins. I think they started recording the Pulitzers three years or so ago, and the idea was just to stick a camera in the room and have it be sort of fly-on-the-wall, Canedy told CJR. But everything the Pulitzers does is about quality, and we wanted to increase the quality and have it professionally produced. So I brought in some producers and thats what we did. ICYMI: Journalist behind depressing, viral Trump Jr. tweet speaks The full list of 2018 winners: Public Service: The New York Times, for reporting led by Jodi Kantor and Megan Twohey, and The New Yorker, for reporting by Ronan Farrow: For explosive, impactful journalism that exposed powerful and wealthy sexual predators, including allegations against one of Hollywoods most influential producers, bringing them to account for long-suppressed allegations of coercion, brutality and victim silencing, thus spurring a worldwide reckoning about sexual abuse of women. Finalists: The Kansas City Star Breaking News Reporting: Staff of the Press Democrat, Santa Rosa, Calif.: For lucid and tenacious coverage of historic wildfires that ravaged the city of Santa Rosa and Sonoma County, expertly utilizing an array of tools, including photography, video and social media platforms, to bring clarity to its readers in real time and in subsequent in-depth reporting. Finalists: Staff of Houston Chronicle, Staff of The New York Times Investigative Reporting: Staff of The Washington Post: For purposeful and relentless reporting that changed the course of a Senate race in Alabama by revealing a candidates alleged past sexual harassment of teenage girls and subsequent efforts to undermine the journalism that exposed it. Finalists: Carol Marbin Miller and Audra D.S. Burch of Miami Herald, Tim Eberly of The Virginian-Pilot, Norfolk, Va. Explanatory Reporting: Staffs of The Arizona Republic and USA Today Network: For vivid and timely reporting that masterfully combined text, video, podcasts and virtual reality to examine, from multiple perspectives, the difficulties and unintended consequences of fulfilling President Trumps pledge to construct a wall along the U.S. border with Mexico. Finalists: Michael Kimmelman of The New York Times, Staff of ProPublica Local Reporting: The Cincinnati Enquirer Staff: For a riveting and insightful narrative and video documenting seven days of greater Cincinnatis heroin epidemic, revealing how the deadly addiction has ravaged families and communities. Finalists: Jason Grotto, Sandhya Kambhampati and Ray Long of Chicago Tribune and ProPublica Illinois, Staff of The Boston Globe National Reporting: Staffs of The New York Times and The Washington Post: For deeply sourced, relentlessly reported coverage in the public interest that dramatically furthered the nations understanding of Russian interference in the 2016 presidential election and its connections to the Trump campaign, the President-elects transition team and his eventual administration. (The New York Times entry, submitted in this category, was moved into contention by the Board and then jointly awarded the Prize.) Finalists: Amy Julia Harris and Shoshana Walter of Reveal from The Center for Investigative Reporting, Brett Murphy of USA Today Network International Reporting: Clare Baldwin, Andrew R.C. Marshall and Manuel Mogato of Reuters: For relentless reporting that exposed the brutal killing campaign behind Philippines President Rodrigo Dutertes war on drugs. Finalists: Staff of Associated Press, Staff of BuzzFeed News Feature Writing: Rachel Kaadzi Ghansah, freelance reporter, GQ: For an unforgettable portrait of murderer Dylann Roof, using a unique and powerful mix of reportage, first-person reflection and analysis of the historical and cultural forces behind his killing of nine people inside Emanuel AME Church in Charleston, S.C. Finalists: John Woodrow Cox of The Washington Post, Norimitsu Onishi of The New York Times Commentary: John Archibald of Alabama Media Group, Birmingham, Ala.: For lyrical and courageous commentary that is rooted in Alabama but has a national resonance in scrutinizing corrupt politicians, championing the rights of women and calling out hypocrisy. Finalists: Jelani Cobb of The New Yorker, Steve Lopez of Los Angeles Times Criticism: Jerry Saltz of New York magazine: For a robust body of work that conveyed a canny and often daring perspective on visual art in America, encompassing the personal, the political, the pure and the profane. Finalists: Carlos Lozada of The Washington Post, Manohla Dargis of The New York Times Editorial Writing: Andie Dominick of the Des Moines Register: For examining in a clear, indignant voice, free of cliche or sentimentality, the damaging consequences for poor Iowa residents of privatizing the states administration of Medicaid. Finalists: Editorial Staff of The New York Times, Sharon Grigsby of The Dallas Morning News Editorial Cartooning: Jake Halpern, freelance writer, and Michael Sloan, freelance cartoonist, The New York Times: For an emotionally powerful series, told in graphic narrative form, that chronicled the daily struggles of a real-life family of refugees and its fear of deportation. Finalists: Mark Fiore, freelance cartoonist, Mike Thompson of Detroit Free Press Breaking News Photography: Ryan Kelly of The Daily Progress, Charlottesville, Va.: For a chilling image that reflected the photographers reflexes and concentration in capturing the moment of impact of a car attack during a racially charged protest in Charlottesville, Va. Finalists: Ivor Prickett, freelance photographer, The New York Times Feature Photography: Photography Staff of Reuters: For shocking photographs that exposed the world to the violence Rohingya refugees faced in fleeing Myanmar. (Moved by the Board from the Breaking News Photography category, where it was entered.) Finalists: Kevin Frayer, freelance photographer, Getty Images, Lisa Krantz of San Antonio Express-News, Meridith Kohut, freelance photographer, The New York Times ICYMI: Q&A: Dana Canedy on the future of the Pulitzer Prizes Has America ever needed a media watchdog more than now? Help us by joining CJR today Jon Allsop and Kelsey Ables are the authors of the article. Allsop is a CJR Delacorte Fellow. Find him on Twitter @Jon_Allsop. Ables is an editorial assistant. Update, 2:30 p.m.: A Fox News Channel spokesperson said in a statement to CJR: While FOX News was unaware of Sean Hannitys informal relationship with Michael Cohen and was surprised by the announcement in court yesterday, we have reviewed the matter and spoken to Sean and he continues to have our full support. The outing of Fox host Sean Hannity as an anonymous client of long-serving Trump fixer Michael Cohen was a made-for-TV moment. Unfortunately, it happened in a New York courtroomso no cameras were on hand when a judge ordered yesterday that Hannity be named in the spiraling dispute over last weeks FBI raid on Cohens property, and the criminal investigation into the lawyers alleged silencing of sexual stories about the president. Thirsty news consumers instead relied on reporters who were at court to describe the Hannity bombshell for them. There was a gasp in the room. It was truly shocking, said NPRs Miles Parks. All the air got sucked out of the room. While the money shot wasnt captured on tape, cable news quickly bore down on the story. Even though its not yet clear why Hannity engaged Cohen, many hosts and pundits excoriated Hannity for a clear conflict of interesthes led a vocal and persistent charge against the Cohen raid in the past week, calling it an abuse of attorney-client privilege and an overreach of Robert Muellers Russia probe, without once flagging his legal ties. Not disclosing a business or legal relationship with someone you report on.doesnt sound either fair or balanced, said Anderson Cooper on CNN. The President pushes [Hannitys] TV program, [Hannity] pushes the President, and Michael Cohen seems to whisper in both their ears. ICYMI: Here are 5 things interns should NOT be used for in journalism At 9pm Eastern, Hannity got in front of a camera himself for his regular show on Fox. Hed already (repeatedly) denied that he was a client of Cohens on Twitter as the story unfolded, saying he had merely asked his advice on a real estate matter. On Fox, Hannity reiterated that denial and lambasted the apoplectic reaction of the mainstream media, then quickly pivoted to what he called more important newspraising the precision of US airstrikes in Syria, and tearing into James Comeys Sunday night interview with Clinton sycophant George Stephanopoulos on ABC. Guest Alan Dershowitzwhose own supposed legal advice to Trump has been in the news in recent daysdid veer off-topic to scold Hannity, at least mildly, for not disclosing his Cohen ties. I think it would have been much, much better had you disclosed that relationship, he said. Sign up for CJR 's daily email On the whole, however, Fox was slow to react to the Hannity story. As media reporters asked whether Hannity would face consequences for his undisclosed conflict of interest, PR flacks stayed mum. And speaking on-air as the story broke, Shep Smithwho won plaudits for marking the difference between Foxs news and opinion offerings in a recent Time profilecould only put on a brave face and chuckle about what he acknowledged was an elephant in the room for the network. ICYMI: A pretty bad typo in the LA Times In a recent piece for CJR, my colleague Pete Vernon described how news reporters like Smith, Martha MacCallum, and Chris Wallace have grounded Foxs continued cable dominance. Those reporters have, in recent years, battled to preserve at least a measure of credibility in the face of newsroom sexual assault and conspiracy crises, and the controversies whipped up on air by shouty opinionators like Hannity. With yesterdays revelation in a New York courtroom, the line between real and synthetic scandal hasat least to the glancing eyeblurred, opening a complicated new front in the battle for Foxs soul. Below, more on the HannityCohen story: Fox is not a normal newsroom: CNNs Brian Stelter returned to the old question of whether or not Hannity is a journalist, highlighting Hannitys own contradictory stances on the matter. Hannity operates at Fox News with few rules, Stelter writes. He seemingly says and does whatever he wants, even when it embarrasses his own colleagues. CNNs Brian Stelter returned to the old question of whether or not Hannity is a journalist, highlighting Hannitys own contradictory stances on the matter. Hannity operates at Fox News with few rules, Stelter writes. He seemingly says and does whatever he wants, even when it embarrasses his own colleagues. Its not Deadspins Sinclair video, but: Mother Jones, Newsweek, and others had a crack at compiling all the times Hannity defended Cohen without disclosing their legal relationship. Spoiler: There are a lot. Mother Jones, Newsweek, and others had a crack at compiling all the times Hannity defended Cohen without disclosing their legal relationship. Spoiler: There are a lot. Ad hominem attack: Vanity Fair Fox-watcher Gabriel Sherman reported after the story broke that Hannity hired Cohen to help defend him against left-wing groups, like Media Matters, that aimed to broker an advertiser boycott of his show. (Hannity denies that charge.) Vanity Fair Fox-watcher Gabriel Sherman reported after the story broke that Hannity hired Cohen to help defend him against left-wing groups, like Media Matters, that aimed to broker an advertiser boycott of his show. (Hannity denies that charge.) An embarrassing invasion of privacy? You can read the transcript of the moment Cohens lawyer unveiled Hannitys name here. Other notable stories: From the ridiculous to the sublime, the 2018 Pulitzer Prize winners were announced yesterday. Unsurprisingly, The New York Times and The New Yorker were both honored for their reporting on Harvey Weinstein, splitting the public service prize. The 102nd edition of the awards saw legacy publications dominatebut local news got a big shout-out, too, and Kendrick Lamar won path-breaking recognition. You can read CJRs takeaways here. and were both honored for their reporting on Harvey Weinstein, splitting the public service prize. The 102nd edition of the awards saw legacy publications dominatebut local news got a big shout-out, too, and Kendrick Lamar won path-breaking recognition. You can read CJRs takeaways here. One notable awardee was photographer Ryan Kelly, who was honored for his instantly iconic image of the car attack at last summers white supremacist rally in Charlottesville, Virginia. After he got that picture, Kelly gave an intimate, behind-the-lens account to CJRs Justin Ray. The LA Times s Meg James and Andrea Chang profiled incoming owner Patrick Soon-Shiong, who bought the paper from troubled tronc in February. In one of his first moves as owner, Soon-Shiong will move the Times from its historic downtown offices to new headquarters in El Segundo. s Meg James and Andrea Chang profiled incoming owner Patrick Soon-Shiong, who bought the paper from troubled tronc in February. In one of his first moves as owner, Soon-Shiong will move the from its historic downtown offices to new headquarters in El Segundo. The New York Times has an update on the Report for America program, which aims to put 1,000 journalists in understaffed US newsrooms by 2022, and has already landed three reporters in Appalachia. People are applying for the same reason people want to go into the Peace Corps: Theres an idealistic desire to help communities, and theres a sense of adventure, one of the projects founders told the Times. They want to try and save democracy. New Yorks largest police union last week urged the NYPD to take legal action to stop BuzzFeed publishing a disciplinary records database, citing our members safety. The data was made public Monday. And in the UK, the BBC came under fire at the weekend for its radio reenactment of an infamous anti-immigration speech first delivered 50 years ago by controversial politician Enoch Powell. The broadcaster interwove the speech with expert analysis, but that wasnt enough for some critics. The BBC should absolutely be considering the historical context of Powells speech, its contemporary impact, and its relevance today. But does that require a theatrical rendition of the whole speech, even if its broken up? Or does this imbue what was effectively a racist rant, albeit a historically significant one, the status of an intellectual endeavour deserving close textual analysis? asked The Observers Sonia Sodha. Has America ever needed a media watchdog more than now? Help us by joining CJR today Jon Allsop is a freelance journalist whose work has appeared in the New York Review of Books, Foreign Policy, and The Nation, among other outlets. He writes CJRs newsletter The Media Today. Find him on Twitter @Jon_Allsop. In New Mexico, where cautionary billboards dot the landscape and headlines about drunk driving-related traffic deaths are ubiquitous, its always newsworthy when someone powerful gets popped for driving while intoxicated. Its arguably more newsworthy when they get out of it. But depending on their news sources, New Mexico residents may have come away from a recent DWI story with significantly different ideas of its importanceand wildly different understandings of the reporting that yielded it. The alternative newsweekly Santa Fe Reporter and the online investigative outlet New Mexico In Depth recently co-published DWI on the Rocks, a story that detailed the arrest and subsequent plea deal of New Mexico Oil and Gas Association Executive Director Ryan Flynn. Reporters Jeff Proctor and Justin Horwath found that Flynn had been arrested in May 2017 after an Albuquerque police officer saw Flynns car swerve out of a lane and nearly hit the orange traffic barrels in a blocked-off section of the road. The officer pulled Flynn over andas he would later note in his report of the incident, according to Proctor and Horwaths storyobserved bloodshot eyes, slurred speech, and the smell of alcohol. ICYMI: What a hyperlocal investigative powerhouse looks like Flynn was booked on suspicion of an aggravated DWI after he refused a breathalyzer during his field sobriety test. But within months of his arrest, Flynns DWI charge was dropped. Instead, his attorneys and the Bernalillo County District Attorneys office agreed that Flynn would plead no contest to a count of careless driving. This spared Flynn, described in the story as one of the states most most influential powerbrokers and political insiders, from a DWI conviction and the troubles that come with it in a state that recently led the nation in alcohol-related deaths. Proctor and Horwath laid out the arc of their investigation and their argument for its significance early in their 2,000-word report: Sign up for weekly emails from the United States Project A review by SFR and New Mexico In Depth of dozens of pages of police, court and jail records, courtroom recordings, police body camera video and a handful of interviews illustrates the broad powers prosecutors have in deciding how and whether to proceed on DWI cases. That runs contrary to the narrative pushed by [Bernalillo District Attorney Raul Torrez], a young and newly minted top prosecutor who mounted a successful public campaign for a multi-million dollar increase in taxpayer money to assist his office in prosecuting criminal cases, including DWI prosecutions. In an interview with CJR, Proctor sums up his storys implications. If youre well-connected and youre somebody and you got some power, argues Proctor, the criminal justice system works differently for you than it does for average people. ONE DAY AFTER the Reporter and New Mexico In Depth published DWI on the Rocks, the Albuquerque Journalby far New Mexicos largest newspaper, with editions that span the statepublished its own story about Flynns arrest. Given its considerable clout, the Journal would seem to be in a prime position to follow Proctor and Horwaths story with aggressive accountability reporting of its own. Instead, the Journal story ran at fewer than 500 words. Within that modest space, the Journal arguably downplayed the significance of Flynns plea deal and diminished Proctor and Horwaths work in the process. The Journal gave a sizable portion of its short story to a prepared Flynn statement arguing that he never should have been arrested in the first place, and paraphrased unnamed prosecutors saying they didnt have enough evidence to prove Flynn was drinking on the night of his arrest. Rather than being credited to a staff reporter, the Journal story ran under an anonymous byline: Journal Staff Report. A plea process such as Flynns, according to the Journal, is common in the state, especially with first-time DWI charges. However, the Journal doesnt provide any evidence to back up that statement (though it does note that about 45 percent of DWI cases in Bernalillo County, which includes Albuquerque, are dismissed). In fact, according to available public information, such plea processes are not common in New Mexico. The state chapter of Mothers Against Drunk Driving, for example, monitored 1,700 DWI court cases across New Mexico from July 2016 to July 2017 and found 33 of them were dismissed through plea deals. That total represents just 8 percent of all dismissals MADD tracked for the year. Statewide, fewer than 35 percent of all DWI cases were dismissed during 2016, according to statistics compiled by the New Mexico Administrative Office of the Courts. A spokesman from that office tells CJR those dismissals include plea deals in which DWI charges were dropped but led to a conviction on another charge, as happened with Flynn. THE JOURNAL MADE two more surprising decisions regarding its coverage. The story cited the work by Proctor and Horwath, but claimed in a sentence that Albuquerque police were not included in their report. And, rather than being credited to a staff reporter, the Journal story ran under an anonymous byline: Journal Staff Report. Proctor had previously worked for a decade at the Journal, where he covered criminal justice and crime and earned awards for his coverage of the Albuquerque Police Departments use of force, which the Department of Justice eventually found unconstitutional. Proctor tells CJR he felt flabbergasted and stunned by the Journals story, and by the line that inaccurately suggested a shortcoming in his work. Horwath says no one has challenged any of the facts or conclusions of their report. To the average Journal reader, that sentence about Jeff and I [sic] comes off as conveying a message that we didnt do our jobs, Horwath says, when we in fact had extensive information from the Albuquerque police, including the body camera video and the police report. Neither Proctor nor Horwath were contacted by the Journal for comment before criticism of their work appeared in print. [Disclosure: I previously worked alongside Horwath at the Santa Fe Reporter, and Proctor edited one of my feature stories there last year. While I know both reporters well, I did not participate in their story about Flynn.] The Journal ultimately published a correction atop its Flynn story, which clarified that the pairs story did not include police interviews on the incident instead of police in general. Trip Jennings, the editor of New Mexico in Depth, tells CJR he is satisfied with the papers correction. Karen Moses, the Journals top editor, tells CJR in an email that neither the Santa Fe Reporter nor New Mexico In Depth contacted her with additional concerns after the correction ran. But the correction does not please Proctor and Horwath, who say it still implies they did their job improperly by not including interviews with police. The Journal quoted a police spokesman who said he would let the officers police report speak for itself. Both Proctor and Horwath say they got the same quote from the Albuquerque police spokesman, but left it out of their story and let information from Flynns arrest record do what the spokesman suggested. THE STORY TOUCHED A NERVE with John Fleck, a former longtime Journal science reporter who covered issues like climate change and often reported on Flynn when he headed the state Environment Department. On Twitter, the oft-amiable Fleck lashed out against the story by calling it a cheap hit piece on Horwath and Proctor, a defense of Flynn that left out crucial information, and an ethical embarrassment for the newsroom where I spent the most important 25 years of my life. Second correction appended to Thursday's @abqjournal defense of Republican politico Ryan Flynn, making even clearer how journalistically, ethically indefensible the story was https://t.co/zCT6y8Lwk3 1/n John Fleck (@jfleck) March 2, 2018 But the Journal included none of the actual police report's findings! For all practical purposes, it was the Journal's story that ignored APD's substantive information on the case, not Horwath and Proctor. 5/n John Fleck (@jfleck) March 2, 2018 The Journals several flattering editorials of Flynn, whose politics and background make him a Scott Pruitt-like figure for the state, dont help to combat the perception that the newspaper was, in Flecks words, defending Flynn on its news pages. (Fleck declined to comment to CJR.) Flecks tweets got several likes from the Twitter accounts of reporters at rival newspapers like the Santa Fe New Mexicanthe states second-largest daily newspaperas well as from the New Mexico Foundation for Open Government, a watchdog nonprofit co-founded by former longtime Journal editor Kent Walz. What went wrong on the Journals end? Moses tells CJR, again via email, that Journal editors pursued the Flynn story after seeing Proctor and Horwaths report, and promptly assigned it to a Journal reporter. That reporter, who Moses did not name, then obtained the records needed to cover the salient facts about the May 2017 DWI arrest of Mr. Flynn and the outcome of the case, neither of which we had ever reported. The Journal does not have a formal policy on using the Staff Report byline, Moses adds. But reporters can use it on stories that dont involve a lot of reporting. The reporter who wrote the Flynn story used the staff report byline for the story because we considered it a short, routine story that didnt warrant one, Moses writes. [CJR confirmed the identity of the reporter, who declined to comment for this story.] When a large newspaper inaccurately questions the work of its competitors, such a move could fuel media distrust among journalists as well as the general public. The Journal mentioned Proctor and Horwath by name in its piece so as to give them credit for breaking the Flynn story, according to Moses. Unfortunately, she writes, the Journal did not properly report that [Proctor and Horwaths] original online story included information from police reports. Hence the correction, which Moses says her newspaper made after hearing concerns from the editors of both the Santa Fe Reporter and New Mexico in Depth. The entire episode feeds into a wider perception amongst local critics, many of them journalists themselves, that the Journal tends to defend rather than challenge elements of New Mexicos power structure. During his tenure at the Journal, Proctor says he felt like the newspapers top editors and management were selectively protective of and close to the power structure. Moses, who took the helm of the newspaper last year after Walz stepped down, disputes such characterizations of the Journal. She writes that the Journal stands on its record and cited the newspapers recent awards in investigative reporting and public service from the New Mexico Press Association. A recent Knight Foundation/Gallup survey found that more than 80 percent of respondents believed that journalism is important for holding powerful figures and institutions accountable. When a large newspaper inaccurately questions the work of its competitorsand under an anonymous bylinesuch a move could fuel media distrust among journalists as well as the general public, making accountability reporting even harder. Two weeks after the Albuquerque Journal published the Flynn story, it ran a pointed editorial against DWIs, linking the act of getting behind the wheel after drinking to firing a loaded shotgun toward a busy street. The editorial, titled New Mexico needs tougher DWI penalties, did not mention Flynns plea deal. ICYMI: Free-press lawsuit against New Mexico governor nears its end Has America ever needed a media watchdog more than now? Help us by joining CJR today Joey Peters is a freelance reporter based in Minneapolis. His work has appeared in Public Radio International, NYTimes.com, City Pages, the St. Paul Pioneer Press, MinnPost, Stateline, American City Business Journals and more. No bans on pit bulls allowed, Michigans Senate said on Thursday. The chamber voted 22-13 to prohibit local governments from dictating breed-specific regulations on dogs. The bill now heads to the House for consideration. About 30 of Michigans local governments have some form of breed-specific regulation, which entail outright bans but also methods such as compulsory neutering, additional liability insurance, muzzle requirements for owners of certain dogs. Canines that are perceived as more aggressive mostly pit bulls, but also Rottweilers, German Shepherds and Cane Corsos are most targeted by these breed-specific rules. Among the pack, pit bulls have typically been targeted the most by such ordinances in Michigan. The bill applies to cities, counties and other local government bodies. If it passes, Michigan would join at least 20 other states that prohibit breed-specific legislation. Bill supporters say these rules encroach on dog owners property rights, and that targeting certain breeds is a waste of time in preventing dog bites. The breed is not the strongest predictor of whether or not a dog is going to be dangerous, said Dr. Emily Patterson-Kane, an animal welfare scientist at the American Veterinary Medical Association. You could argue about whether its even a predictor at all. Its that weak. A number of pit bull maulings have made Michigan headlines, such as a December attack that gruesomely injured a child in Kalamazoo. But evidence by the AVMA indicates pit bulls arent necessarily born killers although their upbringing could indicate why some people dislike them, Patterson-Kane said. These are dogs that not very good owners would get because they thought they were macho, she said. Thats part of what tells you its human behavior thats weaponizing dogs. It isnt that the dog is innately a hazard. The AVMA study found when adjusted per capita, pit bulls were not disproportionately dangerous. Patterson-Kane said every era has a different mascot to play the dangerous mutt. In the 1980s, she said, it was the German Shepherd, while during the previous decade people mostly feared Doberman Pinschers. Moreover, maintaining breed-specific legislation could be cumbersome, she said, because dog breeds are so intermixed that there is little consensus on which breeds are actually pit bulls. Sen. Tom Casperson, however, said he voted no Thursday because he hasnt heard complaints from dog owners in his district, which covers areas ruled by breed-specific ordinances. If I had heard a lot of complaints from people it would change my mind, the Republican from Escanaba said. I just havent heard that. It seems like these ordinances are working for my district. Copyright 2021 Associated Press. All rights reserved. This material may not be published, broadcast, rewritten or redistributed. Plymouth Rock Assurance Enters New York State Auto Insurance Market On the heels of its expansion into Pennsylvania, Plymouth Rock Assurance will introduce drivers in the Empire State to its unique product and service offerings like the Crashbusters mobile claims vans, Door to Door Valet Claim Service and its Pledge of Assurance. In 2017, the Plymouth Rock Group of Companies had annual revenues of $1.3 billion from writing and managing auto and home insurance in Connecticut, Massachusetts, New Hampshire, New Jersey and Pennsylvania. Having earned regulatory approval from the New York department of financial services, Plymouth Rocks initial entry into the state was done through the acquisition of 21st Century National Insurance Company and its New York private passenger auto business. State Farm to Sell Headquarters Building in Bloomington, Ill. State Farm says the insurance company plans on selling its 89-year-old original headquarters building in downtown Bloomington. The company made the announcement Monday after State Farm officials met with representatives from the central Illinois city to discuss marketing the property. The brown brick building has about 200,000 square feet and large red letters at the top spelling out State Farm Insurance. The McLean County assessor says its value is just under $9 million. The (Bloomington) Pantagraph reports State Farm moved the last 150 employees from the building at the end of January to other Bloomington facilities. The building once was home to as many as 900 workers. Company officials say the building isnt conducive to its new collaborative workplace model. State Farm spokesman Jim Camoriano says the company has about 15,000 employees based in Bloomington. Chubb Launches Proprietary Online Cyber Risk Index Chubb has launched its Chubb Cyber Index, a new interactive platform that utilizes nearly two decades worth of its proprietary commercial cyber claims data. The Index is designed to highlight a range of cyber threats based on an organizations industry and size. The innovative Index provides users with a simple and immediate means of identifying the leading cyber risks their business may face based on real-world examples of cyber attacks and data breaches. With a user-friendly interface, accessible via desktop or mobile device, users are able to set parameters unique to their company, and view historical trends based on type of threat, size of a company and which industry that company operates within. Along with delivering key intelligence to businesses of all sizes, the Index will be updated biweekly, and ultimately will deliver real-time data. The Index is free to access and can be used at http://www.chubb.com/cybermedia. Ametros Hires VP of Pharmacy and Managed Care, Director of Clinical Solutions to Form Health Navigator Service for Injured Parties Ametros hired Chris Lagnese and Phyllis Ramondetta, RN, BS, CCM, CLCP, MSCC, CLNC, to lead a new service offering, Health Navigator, within Ametros. Ramondetta and Lagnese will be focusing primarily on leading and developing a Health Navigation team to provide injured parties with post-settlement resources to better understand their medical care and treatment, provide opportunities for savings to extend the life of medical funds received from a settlement, and to provide 1-on-1 clinical attention and advocacy after they settle their cases. Ametros provides post-settlement solutions for injured parties to help manage their medical care once they settle, which can include a Medicare Set Aside or any other allocated medical settlement funds related to a workers compensation or liability case. Ametros puts a high focus on providing resources and support so that injured parties can make the most informed decisions possible. The introduction of Health Navigator provides injured parties with more personalized 1-on-1 resources to manage their medical care post-settlement. Chris Lagnese will be Ametros Vice President of Pharmacy and Managed Care and is a pharmacist with more than 25 years of experience managing pharmacy benefit administration and related services. His management and operational experience includes both large pharmacy chain providers as well as pharmacy benefit managers. Most recently, he served as vice president, Sales & Services at TRICAST and is the former director, PBA Pharmacy Product for Change Healthcare/Emdeon. Lagnese brings expertise in group benefits, consumer savings programs and workers compensation. He is a member of the Academy of Managed Care Pharmacy and National Council for Prescription Drug Programs. Lagnese will be focused on diversifying and building Ametros medical networks to continue to provide injured parties (members) with the best prices and discounts on treatments and prescriptions. He will also work to help members identify areas where they could save more on their medical treatments and provide them with resources to help them make more informed choices as they navigate a complicated healthcare world after settlement. Ramondetta will be Ametros director of Clinical Solutions and is a registered nurse and legal nurse consultant with a clinical background in occupational health, case management and catastrophic injury. Before joining Ametros, Ramondetta was a Medical Major case specialist at Travelers Insurance and previously worked for AIG and The Hartford. She is an expert in the field of workers compensation and maintains certifications in Case Management, Life Care Planning, Legal Nurse Consulting and Medicare Set Aside Consulting. Ramondettas expertise in the medical, claim and legal aspects of a case means she is uniquely qualified to provide medical insight for a broad range of cases. Ramondetta will be working to build Ametros in-house team of nurses providing care coordination to Ametros members. She will be focused on providing quality clinical support for injured parties and their families, promoting wellness for Ametros members, and ensuring members fully understand their treatment plans and the options available to them. By providing a team to give insight into medical care and treatment plans and to guide members through complex medical issues, Health Navigator can help reduce the burden on injured parties and allow them to focus on returning to health, while receiving personalized attention with a dedicated in-house nurse. Ametros Health Navigation team will be available to members through online chat, email, and by phone. The Health Navigation team will deliver experienced in-house nursing and pharmacy resources for their members and referral partners, including: Forecasts indicate Colorado could be in for its worst wildfire year since the historic fire seasons of 2012 and 2013, leading Gov. John Hickenlooper and fire officials to warn residents on Friday to do their part to help prevent fires. An abnormally dry winter left the statewide snowpack 68 percent of average, with conditions in the northern mountains better than in the south. Hickenlooper said the state is better prepared than ever to fight wildfires because of increased funding and cooperation in the wake of massive blazes like the 2013 Black Forest Fire in El Paso County destroyed nearly 500 homes, the most by a wildfire in state history. The previous year, the Waldo Canyon Fire also destroyed hundreds of homes. Those and other fires led lawmakers to spend nearly $20 million in 2014 to buy two fire-spotting planes and contract helicopters and single-engine tankers to try to stop fires early before they grow and threaten homes. The fire outlook was released as a storm brought snow to the mountains and plains, but Hickenlooper warned people should not think small bursts of moisture would ease the danger. He urged people to follow fire restrictions, a message echoed by Mike Morgan, director of the Division of Fire Prevention and Control. Were all in this together. We live in the most beautiful state in my opinion in the nation and we have to all do our part to protect that and the quality of life that we enjoy here, Morgan said. Dry, windy weather is blamed for several grass fires this spring, including one that forced the evacuation of the small town of Boone Thursday. Last month a fire ignited by an Army training exercise using live ammunition on Fort Carson spread to private land, destroying two homes. In early April, a wildfire near Grand Junction destroyed at least one home. The winter was dry over much of southern Colorado, and by Thursday the U.S. Drought Monitor classified conditions as a severe or extreme drought. Those are the third- and fourth-worst categories in the five-step scale used by the Drought Monitor, which is operated by federal weather and agricultural agencies. The conditions were caused in part by the second consecutive La Nina year, said Klaus Wolter, a climate scientist with the Cooperative Institute for Research in Environmental Sciences in Boulder. La Nina is a phenomenon caused by a cooling of the central Pacific, changing weather worldwide. In a second-year La Nina, it really tilts the odds toward dry conditions overall, Wolter said in an interview Thursday, before the state issued its fire outlook. Worse, a warm winter caused snow at the lower mountain elevations to melt early, which could worsen the danger because thats where most wildfires occur, he said. Wolter said conditions could improve before the hotter summer months. Im not convinced we have seen our last snow, he said. Its not all doom and gloom. Its just not a good setup. Copyright 2021 Associated Press. All rights reserved. This material may not be published, broadcast, rewritten or redistributed. Tourism and real estate are the biggest growth areas in Abu Dhabi, the chairman of one of the emirate's largest property developers said Monday. "In tourism, we continue to see strong growth numbers. Last year, we grew a little over 10 percent and (this year) we expect to see double-digit growth," Mohamed Khalifa Al Mubarak, chairman of Aldar Properties, told CNBC. "We see strong visitor numbers from China, India and Saudi Arabia and continue to see strong growth from the U.K. and France." Speaking to CNBC's Hadley Gamble in Abu Dhabi, Al Mubarak said that Abu Dhabi had growth opportunities for investors on two main fronts: tourism and real estate. "Compounded with all the other national assets we have the national museum, the Guggenheim, the theme parks, SeaWorld Abu Dhabi is coming, the malls we have this is a fantastic destination and I see that continuing to grow," he said. United Arab Emirates (UAE) real estate developer Aldar Properties was founded in 2005 and is now among the largest developers in the emirate. Amazon CEO Jeff Bezos tweaked President Donald Trump via Twitter on Monday, following two Pulitzer Prize wins by The Washington Post. Bezos praised the reporters at the Post for their reporting that led to "Alabama" and "Moscow," referencing the two story topics that landed the journalism prizes and embarrassed the president. Trump endorsed Roy Moore in the Senate race in Alabama despite accusations against the former judge of improprieties with underage girls, some of which came to light through the Post. The newspaper's coverage won the Pulitzer 's investigative reporting award. Moscow refers to Russia's alleged interference in the 2016 presidential election, which was the subject of numerous reports in the Post and The New York Times, which shared the Pulitzer for national reporting. Tweet Trump has repeatedly attacked Bezos and the two companies he owns, Amazon and the Post, accusing them of dodging taxes or publishing "fake news," among other things. Bezos has largely remained silent in response to Trump's many attacks. But he criticized Trump prior to the 2016 election that Trump's behavior "erodes our democracy," and offered to shoot him into space after Trump accused Bezos of a tax "scam" involving Amazon and the Post. Actress Cynthia Nixon arrives at campaign stop to announce she is running for Governor of New York in Brooklyn, New York, March 20, 2018. New York Gov. Andrew Cuomo (D) has a lot to prove to progressives if he wants to be reelected, let alone make a go at running for the White House in 2020, say Democratic strategists and political observers in the Empire State. Cynthia Nixon's surprise entry into the state's gubernatorial primary has put Cuomo on the defensive with liberals as he seeks to win over progressives in advance of the September primary. Nixon known nationally for her high-profile role as Miranda in the HBO series "Sex and the City" and two subsequent movies is making Cuomo take notice and run further to the left, strategists say. More from The Hill: Senators, state officials to meet on election cybersecurity bill Zuckerberg to meet with European digital chief Rain floods New York subway stations In some ways, it's similar to what happened to Cuomo in 2014, when the progressive Fordham Law professor Zephyr Teachout challenged him and won a surprising 34 percent of the vote. This time, he is facing a more formidable challenger in Nixon and progressives are four years wearier of some of his tactics. "Here comes someone who sounds a lot like Teachout, is emphasizing progressive values and issues, but the difference is, this woman is better connected," said Grant Reeher, the director of the Campbell School of Public Affairs at Syracuse University. "People know her, and he is obviously worried about it and worried he'll lose a significant chunk of the left." Cuomo remains the favorite to win reelection, but Susan Del Percio, a Republican strategist who worked as a special adviser to Cuomo in 2014, said he has reason to be worried. "He is concerned, as well he should be," Del Percio said. "He promised a progressive agenda and didn't do much with it." And if Cuomo is labeled as insufficiently progressive in New York, it could make it that much harder for him to compete in a Democratic presidential primary if he chooses to take the plunge. The Cuomo-Nixon battle is creating tough choices for groups like the Working Families Party, a progressive group that has its own line on the ballot. Cuomo is actively courting the group for its support, according to The New York Times, but some members see him as insufficiently liberal. This week, Bertha Lewis, who co-founded the Working Families Party, gave Nixon an early endorsement, slamming Cuomo's progressive credentials. "He talks a good game," she said of Cuomo, according to the New York Post. Cuomo allies reject the notion that the governor is pivoting left in response to Nixon's candidacy. They say he has long been an advocate for issues like marriage equality, increasing the minimum wage, gun safety laws and combatting sexual harassment "The governor has long been pushing progressive policies long before Cynthia Nixon entered the race," one source close to the governor said, adding that Cuomo's record "is really second to none." Cuomo signed legislation upping the minimum wage in New York and creating a free tuition program at public colleges. "Anyone saying that he's tacking left is a little disingenuous. Take it or leave it, he has a record that really can't be challenged," the source close to the governor said. New York observers saw a recent deal between Cuomo and the Independent Democratic Conference as a sign that the governor sees Nixon as a threat. The Independent Democratic Conference was a group of Democratic senators that since 2011, a week after Cuomo was sworn in as governor, had worked with Republicans to give the GOP a larger majority or in 2012, when Democrats held more Senate seats, an actual majority. The group frustrated liberals for years by effectively denying Democratic leaders control of the Senate when they won a majority in 2012. Last week, Cuomo presided over a ceremony in which the Independent Democratic Conference disbanded and its eight members joined the Democratic conference. Cuomo cast the reunited Democrats as coming together because of President Trump's attacks on progressive values and rejected assertions that it had anything to do with Nixon. He also offered a defense of his record on behalf of progressives. "I'm proud of my record. I think we have the most progressive record in the country, in this state," he said. "When you look at what we passed together with the ladies and gentlemen in this room, our record stands up to any state anywhere." Nixon said Cuomo was at fault for working in the past with the renegade Democrats. "If you've set your own house on fire and watched it burn for eight years, finally turning on a hose doesn't make you a hero," she said in a statement. In addition to his challenge from Nixon, Cuomo also has to contend with the aftermath of corruption charges against a former top aide, Joseph Percoco. The former aide was convicted late last month on three corruption charges and was found guilty on two counts of conspiracy as part of pay-to-play scams. David Birdsell, the dean at the Marxe School of Public Affairs at Baruch College in New York, said the corruption charges only contribute to the pressure on Cuomo. "He's feeling the misfortunes of those close to him and the residue of the choices he's made," Birdsell said. Close observers say the race against Nixon will be a sign of whether Cuomo can be competitive in a 2020 presidential primary. If he emerges bloodied from the fight, he could be written off, say some observers. On the other hand, if he beats expectations it could provide some momentum for a presidential bid. "If he's able to hold Nixon to under 30 percent, that will put some fresh wind behind the sail of his national ambitions," Birdsell said. Netflix's spending priorities are more typical of a media company than a technology one, according to CEO Reed Hastings. "We'll spend over $10 billion on content and marketing and a billion-three on tech," Hastings said on a call with analysts. "So, I mean, just objectively, we're much more of a media company in that way than pure tech. Of course, we want to be great at both. But, again, we're really pretty different from the pure tech companies." It's an interesting admission for the company, whose valuation is approaching $140 billion after reporting strong Q1 earnings on Monday afternoon. That valuation is only about $10 billion less than media giant Disney, despite the fact that Netflix is a significantly smaller business: In the last quarter of 2017 (the last quarter both companies reported), Netflix earned $186 million on $3.29 billion in revenue, while Disney earned $4.4 billion on $15.35 billion in revenue. This relatively high market cap suggests that investors look at Netflix's growth and characterize it more like a tech company than a typical media company. Hastings' embrace of its media company status also stands in stark contrast to Facebook CEO Mark Zuckerberg. (Hastings sits on Facebook's board of directors.) During Zuckerberg's congressional testimony on April 11, the executive was asked if Facebook was a media company because it offered original shows and exclusive broadcasting rights. Zuckerberg said Facebook is a technology company because its primary function was to build products and services for people. Being designated as a media company would also open Facebook to stricter advertising regulations. However, Netflix doesn't have to worry about those regulatory challenges because it doesn't serve ads. "I'm very glad that we built the business not to be ad-supported, but to be subscription," Hastings said. "We're very different from the ad-supported businesses, and we've always been very big on protecting all of our members' viewing. We don't sell advertising. So, I think we're substantially inoculated from the other issues that are happening in the industry and that's great." In the first quarter, Netflix earned 64 cents per share, matching the Thomson Reuters consensus estimate, and slightly beat on revenue of $3.7 billion, topping the $3.69 billion estimate. However, it showed higher than expected growth in subscription additions, welcoming 7.41 million new subscribers, and beat on guidance, sending the stock up more than 6 percent after hours - CNBC's Anita Balakrishnan contributed to this report. Starbucks is about to change how you drink coffee, again. With half of the coffee chain's customers now opting for cold beverages, Starbucks ' latest innovation looks to solve a longtime problem. Customers can order an iced cappuccino or latte, but the drink was missing one key element: the foam. After years of development, Starbucks rolled out Cold Foam nationally on Tuesday. Cold Foam adds a layer of creaminess and natural sweetness to cold beverages, as well as a distinct texture. It will be featured on three of Starbucks' cafe drinks Cascara Cold Brew, Blonde Iced Cappuccino and Cascara Nitro Cold Brew but it can be added to any beverage for 50 cents. Starbucks is hoping the innovation will win over customers and boost sales. The company has struggled over several quarters with weak U.S. sales. The slump, which includes slowing sales of its once popular line of Frappucinos, has left some wondering if the company can stand up to ongoing craft coffee competition and dissipating customer loyalty. Starbucks' new Cold Foam Cascara Cold Brew and Cold Foam Cascara Nitro Cold Brew Source: Starbucks Last year, Starbucks had a brief hit with the limited time Unicorn Frappucinos, which created buzz on social media and drove a rush of customers through the door. But that success was fleeting and other limited-time drinks didn't have the Unicorn's magic. This new offering will be a permanent fixture on Starbucks menu, just like its recent launch of blonde roast espresso, a milder espresso drink. Plastic lids that the company first used when it debuted Nitro Cold Brew in 2016, which are made so that the beverage can be sipped and not slurped with a straw, will be used for all beverages that are served with the Cold Foam. This way, customers can drink the espresso beverage through the foam, the same way they would with the hot version. The Cold Foam also does not dissipate quickly, so it can be tasted in every sip from start to finish. The new foam is made by aerating skim milk, rather than whole milk, until it is smooth and frothy. It comes in two forms, regular, which is just milk, and cascara, milk infused with naturally sweet coffee cherries. Right now, it is only available in nonfat milk because it created the best foam texture, the company told CNBC. Cold Foam has been in development since Starbucks started working with cold brew in 2014. It took the company several years, testing different milk and aeration techniques before it was ready for a mass market launch. Starbucks's new cold beverage lid for Cold Foam drinks Sarah Whitten | CNBC Walmart is close to unveiling an entirely redesigned website as it battles Amazon.com for shoppers' dollars online. The company said Tuesday that a new Walmart.com will roll out to customers as soon as next month. It's been years since the company made such large-scale changes to its website. The new design will be much more personalized, starting on the homepage. Shoppers will soon see top-selling items on Walmart.com based on their locations. They will also see a profile of their local store, telling them if that store has online grocery or easy reorder, for example. "This is another example of us leveraging our unique assets," Marc Lore, president and CEO of Walmart's U.S. e-commerce business, told CNBC. The company operates more than 4,700 stores today, and certain items are more popular in certain cities than others, thereby justifying a more localized experience on the web, he said. With Amazon taking an increasing share of e-commerce growth, it's incumbent on other retailers to compete online and reinvent antiquated platforms. Shoppers are looking for a seamless experience with easy navigation, customized touches and minimal ads in the way of browsing. Few retailers have been able to achieve this entirely even Amazon.com is described as cluttered and sometimes chaotic. Marcato Capital Management's Mick McGuire said that Rayonier Advanced Materials' stock price could triple. With shares currently trading around $20, the manager said he wouldn't be surprised to see the price rallying to $60 over the next few years. Key to this view, he said, is the successful incorporation of recent acquisition Tembec into the company. The 2017 Tembec purchase combined two high purity cellulose businesses and diversified Rayonier's product offerings with integrated forest products. Specialty cellulose is used in the production in a variety of industries, from chemical thickeners and paint to pharmaceuticals. Rayonier, based in Jacksonville, Florida, has a market value of $1.1 billion. McGuire's comments at the 13D Monitor Active-Passive Investor Summit in New York were for the first time the fund manager discussed the investment in a public setting. Marcato owned a 3 percent stake as of the end of last year, according to filings. If the U.S. Supreme Court decides to let states collect sales tax on out-of-state retailers, it would harm small business to the benefit of big companies, like Amazon, anti-tax crusader Grover Norquist told CNBC on Tuesday. The justices heard arguments on the issue Tuesday. South Dakota is asking the court to overturn a 1992 Supreme Court precedent that states can't require retailers to collect sales taxes unless the businesses have a physical presence in the state. Amazon "would be the big winners" if that happened because smaller business would be forced to pay larger companies, like Amazon, to use their software to collect sales taxes for them, said Norquist, president and founder of Americans for Tax Reform. They'd wind up doing that because there are about 10,000 taxing jurisdictions, meaning about 10,000 different rules to follow, he said on "Power Lunch." So many small businesses would have to go on someone else's website that has the appropriate software. "Only really big characters in the market would be able to manage this and smaller people would have to pay for that ability," he said. South Dakota is appealing a lower court decision that favored Wayfair, Overstock.com and Newegg. The appeal is being supported by President Donald Trump's administration. Norquist said what the state wants is akin to taxation without representation. "Politicians just love the idea. They're just salivating at the idea that they can tax businesses in other states that can't vote against them. The workers that they hurt will never be able to vote against them," he said. Norquist thinks the real motive is the ability to go after corporate income tax. If the nation's high court sides with South Dakota, nothing stops states "from exporting corporate income taxes across state lines," he contended. "The fact that you're not in their state won't matter anymore because the Supreme Court would have said, 'we've thrown away the importance of physical presence to whether you can be taxed or not.'" South Dakota depends more than most states on sales taxes because it is one of nine that do not have a state income tax. South Dakota projects its revenue losses because of online sales that do not collect state taxes at around $50 million annually. The state is supported by industry groups representing major retailers that have brick-and-mortar stores that already collect state sales taxes. Norquist argues the best way to protect brick-and-mortar shops is to reduce sales tax in the states, "not taxing somebody else." Reuters contributed to this report. Tesla's manufacturing issues will not improve significantly this year, according one Wall Street firm. Bernstein reiterated its market perform rating on Tesla shares, warning investors the electric-car maker will have difficulty meeting its profit margin forecast. Buzzfeed reported Monday that Tesla is temporarily shutting down production of the Model 3 at its factory in Fremont, California, for a few days. "We believe Model 3 gross margins and build quality are the key investor controversies; we remain skeptical on both fronts," Bernstein analyst Toni Sacconaghi wrote in a note to clients Tuesday. "Another capital raise appears likely, unless Tesla's ... able to materially reign in near-term opex or capex spend." Sacconaghi reaffirmed his $265 price target on Tesla shares, representing 9 percent downside to Monday's close. The analyst said Tesla repeatedly missed its Model 3 production targets over the past year. He doubted the company's ability to reach its 25 percent gross profit margin target for the Model 3. In regard to Tesla's stock price "I would probably take the down side in the near term," Sacconaghi said. "I think there will be worries about fundamental profitability and/or worries about quality at some point over the next six to nine months." Tesla did not immediately respond to a request for comment. Despite most the world's largest technology companies harking from the U.S., Microsoft founder and philanthropist Bill Gates highlighted the contribution made by the developing world in a speech Tuesday. Kenya's "pioneering" M-Pesa digital payments platform "has been a model for dozens of countries around the world," Gates said, speaking at the Commonwealth Heads of Government Meeting in London. "Today the entrepreneurs driving start-ups from Johannesburg, to Nairobi, to New Delhi are young in age and in outlook. The thousands of businesses they're creating are already remaking the future," he said, speaking about the potential of youth more broadly. The combined population of the Commonwealth, a group comprising of the U.K. and its former colonies, is 2.4 billion. Over 60 percent are aged 29 or below. "Time and again, we see that when the private sector looks for opportunities to have a positive impact on people's lives, it can make development faster, cheaper and better," Gates added. Gates also spoke about eradicating malaria, of which "90 percent of the world's malaria burden is in Commonwealth countries." He will attend a meeting Wednesday to assess progress made towards eliminating the disease. If California Republican Rep. Kevin McCarthy becomes the next House speaker, the move could carry significant implications for the nation's most populous state and several major industries, including agriculture and oil. It would also give California's GOP, which produced the likes of Richard Nixon and Ronald Reagan in decades past, a reason to hope for a comeback in a state dominated by Democratic leaders and lawmakers. The party has seen declining voter registration in recent years. "Kevin McCarthy is a skilled politician who has a deep understanding of California political dynamics," said Ron Nehring, a former chairman of the state Republican party. "As speaker, he will be in a position to have even greater impact on California federal and state politics." Major players in the California energy and agriculture industries would likely welcome the lawmaker's ascent. McCarthy, majority leader in the House since 2014, represents a district that includes conservative Kern County and other portions of the Central Valley where agriculture is king and where one of the state's largest oil fields is located. Key agribusiness in his district includes the production of almonds, grapes, cattle and citrus. "Naturally, having a Californian someone who represents an agricultural district, someone who has been our defender for years on various issues like immigration and water would be a tremendous boon to farmers throughout the country and certainly those in California," said Tom Nassif, CEO for Western Growers, a California-based agricultural trade association. Agriculture advocate Nassif, who has known McCarthy for about two decades, credits the lawmaker for reaching bipartisan solutions on federal legislation critical to water needs of California while still protecting the environment. He also said the Republican has been helpful in curbing legislation that is harmful to agribusiness. Experts also say McCarthy winning the speaker post could help California on the trade side, particularly if the trade war with China worsens. Already, there are key U.S. products affected by new tariffs imposed by Beijing, including California wine, almonds and fresh fruit. They also believe the Trump administration's plan to possibly reenter Trans-Pacific Partnership talks could be especially significant for California's agriculture industry. At the same time, the route for California's $77 billion high-speed rail project goes through McCarthy's congressional district and has created construction jobs. He has called it a "boondoggle" and wants it stopped. The project is backed by Democratic California Gov. Jerry Brown and secured about $3.3 billion in federal stimulus funds in 2009. As speaker, McCarthy might make it tougher for the program to get new money from Washington. Energy 'partner' On the energy side, McCarthy has been a critic of the Environmental Protection Agency and Bureau of Land Management rules that impact the energy industry. One California energy executive who didn't want to be identified said McCarthy has been a "partner" and "good friend" of the industry for many years. "Perhaps no industry in America has been more overregulated in recent years than energy," McCarthy said in 2017. In an interview broadcast Sunday on NBC's "Meet the Press," outgoing Speaker Paul Ryan endorsed McCarthy to take the gavel to succeed him. Of course, that also will depend on Republicans holding onto a majority of the House seats in November's midterm election. Polls have consistently showed that voters favor Democrats to take back the majority in the House during this fall's midterm elections. The Democrats need to flip 23 seats to overtake the GOP in the chamber. "We have to make sure a Republican could become speaker in the next Congress," McCarthy said Tuesday on CNBC's "Squawk Box." "So we have a lot of work to do. History goes against us." President Donald Trump greets House Majority Leader Kevin McCarthy, R-Calif., as he arrives at an event to announce that Broadcom is moving its global headquarters to the United States, in the Oval Office at the White House in Washington, DC on Thursday, Nov. 02, 2017. Jabin Botsford | The Washington Post | Getty Images Traditionally, the president's party loses seats in midterm elections during the administration's first term. If the GOP loses the majority, McCarthy would then have to serve as minority leader in order to stand atop Republican ranks in the House. But party operatives are holding out hope for the GOP to hang on. The six-term California congressman is also a staunch ally of President Donald Trump. One GOP insider in Washington, who declined to be named, said Trump holds McCarthy in "very high regard" and values that the California lawmaker endorsed his candidacy for speaker early on. Major GOP fundraiser McCarthy has been a major fundraiser and has provided help to Republican colleagues in vulnerable districts, including some from his home state. In the first three months of the year, McCarthy's campaign raised $8.75 million and nearly $3 million of it went to boost the Republican Congressional Committee. His fundraising ability, particularly his touch with small-business owners, could be especially important this year given the potential Democratic wave. "He's a small business guy who understands business climate," said San Diego businessman John Cox, a Republican gubernatorial candidate. "He understands the role of government in terms of creating regulations that are driving small business out of California." At age 19, McCarthy started out in small business with his own deli and then eventually served in the California state legislature. He was elected to Congress in 2006. Today, he enjoys support from big business, with some of the top contributors in the past year Goldman Sachs and Citigroup, among others, according to OpenSecrets.org. Later this month, McCarthy is expected to hold at least two fundraising events in the Los Angeles area, including one where he is scheduled to be joined by Vice President Mike Pence. The money raised will go to boost a political-action committee's war chest for close House Republican races. "The biggest challenge facing Republicans today is holding the House in November," said Nehring. "You can bet Kevin McCarthy will be laser focused on holding House seats and preserving a Republican majority as well as his own becoming speaker." Republicans in California are eager to see McCarthy get the speaker's post, too, because they believe he could help rejuvenate the state party's political fortunes. That said, there's no guarantee McCarthy will get the speaker position and a wait of several months for leadership elections only adds to uncertainties. All the top elected officials in California government are Democrats, and there's a risk the GOP could lose its chance to have a Republican running for governor of California in the November general election. That's because the state's top-two primary system means only those candidates finishing first or second spot in the June 5 primary can proceed to the general election. Declining Republican registration "Republicans have been suffering mightily in California," said Thomas Holyoke, a political science professor at California State University-Fresno. "Their registration numbers keep declining and even places that were once pretty concentrated with Republicans, like Orange County, are not really the case any longer." Registration of Republicans in the state has fallen since 1997, from 36 percent back then to about 25 percent as of January 2018, according to figures from the state. But McCarthy has been seeking to boost GOP voter turnout and more support for Republican candidates by focusing on some hot-button issues. For example, the House majority leader endorsed a California signature drive led by Cox, the Republican running for governor, to repeal of the state gas tax hike signed into law last year by Gov. Brown. As part of the effort, McCarthy donated $100,000 of his political funds for the campaign to get the anti-tax measure on the November ballot. Sanctuary law critic Also, McCarthy has been a sharp critic of the state's so-called sanctuary state law that bars local and state law enforcement from asking about the immigration status of people during routine interactions. He said it undermines the rule of law. The Trump administration is suing California over the sanctuary law and several local jurisdictions in the state also are challenging it, too. Yet, there's also a possibility the GOP's fight against the sanctuary law and Trump's undocumented immigration crackdown could backfire for Republicans in the state. Experts suggest a previous anti-immigrant campaign two decades ago known as Proposition 187 ended up being a costly lesson for the state's GOP. Proposition 187, a 1994 ballot initiative championed by prominent state Republicans and passed by California voters, was a ban on most social services to undocumented immigrants. Eventually, courts ruled that it was unconstitutional, but it still is considered a polarizing issue that some blame for hurting the state's GOP support among Latinos. A car manufacturing plant in China. Mick Ryan | Getty Images New rules announced by China could benefit the plans of Elon Musk, but hurt at least one investment of American business magnate Warren Buffett. China's state planner said Tuesday that caps on foreign ownership of the China-based manufacture of cars, ships, and aircraft are to be abolished within five years. Since 1994, foreign carmakers have been restricted to a 50 percent share of any local manufacture of cars. However, by the end of this year, any cap on foreign-invested shares for electric and hybrid vehicles are to be lifted. By 2020, restrictions will lift on commercial vehicles and by 2022 foreign firms will encounter no ownership rules for passenger vehicles. Tesla car dealership in Shanghai taken on March 17, 2015. Johannes Eisele | AFP | Getty Images The new policy is seen as a boon to Tesla's plans to build its own plant in Shanghai. That project was thought to be under threat because the U.S. firm did not want to partner with a local Chinese firm. In March, Musk replied to a President Donald Trump tweet to complain about the 25 percent import duty U.S. cars pay to be sold in China. He said "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," he said. Tweet 1 Last week, China's President Xi Jinping vowed to lower tariffs for foreign autos and enforce the legal intellectual property of foreign firms. While the new rules over tariffs and ownership may benefit big foreign auto firms looking to manufacture in China, domestic carmakers could suffer. BYD Company is a Chinese manufacturer of automobiles, buses, forklifts, rechargeable batteries and trucks. It currently has a partnership with German auto firm Daimler to build luxury electric cars. In 2008, MidAmerican Energy Holdings, a subsidiary of Warren Buffett's Berkshire Hathaway, invested about $230 million for a 10 percent stake in BYD. Potentially meaning that Berkshire Hathaway's investment could be negatively affected by the new rules. Shenzhen-listed shares of BYD dropped by more than 2.4 percent Tuesday, with much of that selling recorded after the state planner's announcement. Warren Buffett David A. Grogan | CNBC SHENZHEN, China In a grand hotel ballroom on Tuesday, Huawei executives laid out a soaring vision for the future. The Chinese electronics giant, already the world's biggest supplier of the equipment that powers the wireless age, now wants to provide the digital backbone for artificial intelligence, the internet of things and other transformative technologies. But that future is increasingly looking as if it will not include the United States. Last week, the company laid off five American employees, including William B. Plummer, the executive who was the face of its Sisyphean efforts to win over Washington, according to people familiar with the matter. Huawei has also been dialing back its political outreach in the United States, these people said which could end a decade of mostly fruitless efforts to dispel Washington's accusations that the company has ties to the Chinese government. More from the New York Times: F.C.C. joins push to limit China's telecom reach AT&T drops Huawei's new smartphone amid security worries China's Huawei is at center of fight over 5G's future Huawei's tactics are changing as its business prospects in the United States have darkened considerably. On Tuesday, the Federal Communications Commission is scheduled to vote on a new rule that could effectively kill off what little business the company has in the United States. Although the proposed rule does not mention Huawei by name, it would block federally subsidized telecommunications carriers from using suppliers deemed to pose a risk in American national security. Like other major tech companies, whether American or Chinese, Huawei (pronounced "HWA-way") has been caught in the crossfire as the Trump administration ratchets up efforts to stop China's high-tech ambitions. The two countries are waging a new kind of cold war, and with each increasingly suspicious of the other's technology, winners are chosen based on national allegiances. Huawei's latest moves suggest that it has accepted that its political battles in the United States are not ones it is likely to win. One recent example of reduced communication with Washington came after the discovery in January of security flaws in the microprocessors inside nearly all of the world's computers. A Senate committee wrote to Huawei's founder to ask what the company knew about the vulnerabilities, and how it had been affected by them. Huawei decided not to respond. "Some things cannot change their course according to our wishes," Eric Xu, Huawei's deputy chairman, said at the company's annual meeting with analysts on Tuesday. "With some things, when you let them go, you actually feel more at ease." Huawei's main Chinese rival, ZTE, also hit a roadblock in Washington this week. The Commerce Department said it would ban the much smaller company from buying American components after it made false statements to the government as part of an investigation into possible violations of American sanctions. Yet Huawei's experience also illustrates how little Washington can do to curb Chinese influence in cutting-edge industries throughout the rest of the world. At Tuesday's meeting with analysts, executives at the company, which says it is owned by its employees and not by the Chinese state, emphasized growth opportunities in Europe and Asia. They also described ambitions to further diversify Huawei's business into helping organizations of all kinds not merely wireless carriers, but factories, governments and the police transform themselves through cloud computing and artificial intelligence. "For Huawei, the major challenge is not how we can serve operators better," said David Wang, a company president. Instead, he said, "we have to work harder to cope with wider challenges in all industries." Huawei's troubles in the United States have been mounting since 2012, when a congressional report warned that its gear could be used to spy on Americans or to destabilize American telecom networks. The company spent $1.2 million on lobbying that year. Last year, it spent $60,000 on such efforts. Major American carriers such as Verizon and AT&T have since shunned Huawei. The Commerce and Treasury Departments have subpoenaed it over possible violations of American sanctions on Iran and North Korea. The company's ambitions to become a major smartphone brand it is already the world's third largest, after Samsung and Apple were curtailed when AT&T abandoned a deal this year to sell its handsets. And a bill is before Congress to stop government agencies and contractors from buying Huawei products. The company has said repeatedly that its products pose no security risk and that it complies with the law everywhere it operates. Still, the layoffs last week appear to be an acknowledgment by Huawei that it has failed to clear the political cloud around it. Mr. Plummer, Huawei's vice president of external affairs, had been with the company for almost eight years. He was the most senior member of Huawei's American policy team who was not a Chinese citizen. It is not clear whether he will be replaced. The company's policy operations in the United States are led by a relatively recent arrival, Zhang Ruijun, who took the post nine months ago after working for the company in Mexico and Russia. A Huawei spokesman said in a statement that any layoffs simply reflected an effort to better align resources with "business strategy and objectives." "Any changes to staffing size or structure are simply a reflection of standard business organization," he said. Founded three decades ago, Huawei made $93 billion in revenue last year not much less than Google's parent company, Alphabet, and more than its two main rivals in telecom gear, Nokia of Finland and Ericsson of Sweden, combined. When it comes to the next generation of mobile internet, or 5G, Huawei has invested heavily in technology development. Chinese carriers are likely to deploy such networks more quickly than their American counterparts are, at least in the beginning. But as 5G comes up in the United States, Japan, South Korea and Europe, Nokia and Ericsson will catch up, said Pierre Ferragu, an analyst in New York with New Street Research. Still, Huawei's telecom business could be dampened as other countries, particularly allies of the United States, weigh risks to their national security. The chief executive of a leading wireless provider in South Korea told the newspaper The Korea Herald last month that the company was unsure whether to use Huawei's 5G equipment. In the United States, Huawei customers that would be affected by the F.C.C.'s proposed rule small carriers in rural areas may soon need to find new equipment suppliers. These carriers love Huawei gear, said Carri Bennet, general counsel for the Rural Wireless Association, an industry group for American telecom companies with fewer than 100,000 subscribers. "They just love it," she said. "It works like a charm, the customer service support is awesome," and the price is attractive, she added. The association's members have even elected a Huawei executive, William Levy, to their board. Ms. Bennet said that rather than blacklisting specific manufacturers, Washington should be creating a system for testing telecom gear for security vulnerabilities. "These companies who are reliant on this support, they don't have the funds to overhaul their whole network," she said. "Public safety, getting 911 services, broadband it all just starts falling apart." this year, the country wants to lure tech companies to come back home to list Amid steeply declining initial public offering activity in China this year, there's an ongoing push by the country to lure its tech companies to come back home to list. There were only 35 IPOs in China during the first quarter, according to professional services firm EY. That's a 74 percent decline compared to the same period in 2017, and it only included five tech listings, the study said. Consequently, proceeds reaped from IPOs in the country fell 39 percent year-over-year. The reason for the slowdown, according to EY, is that Chinese companies are finding it more difficult to win regulatory approval. But there's another challenge for China's IPO market: Companies are still drawn to U.S. markets for the prestige even though they aren't always doing so well there. The plan China is now allowing tech companies easier access to domestic investors. Authorities have endorsed the Chinese depositary receipts (CDRs) scheme, which will allow investors to hold a form of shares in firms listed abroad. But the new change will likely benefit only a few companies for now. In its current form, the scheme will cover listed tech firms with a market capitalization of more than 200 billion yuan (about $32 billion), and unlisted tech firms with valuations of more than 20 billion yuan. Based on that, only five listed names may qualify, said Frank Lee, senior investment strategist at DBS Bank: Tencent, Alibaba, Baidu, JD.com and NetEase. Workers distribute express parcels at a logistics centre of China Post during Alibaba Group's Singles' Day global shopping festival on November 11, 2016 in Ganyu, China. VCG | Getty Images Many market watchers, however, predicted the scheme will eventually be extended to the rest of the industry. Still, there may be execution problems, Lee said, as the CDRs are technically not shares. It could be priced differently from shares, and if investors find a way to convert them to equity listed elsewhere, it could lead to a problem of funds flowing out of the country. That would be a problem for Beijing's strict capital controls. "Would CDRs be converted into the underlying shares? If yes, it loops back to the problem of capital control. If no, there may be a huge price difference between the CDRs and the underlying stocks, which will adversely affect demand," Lee said. Launch problems Adding to any execution difficulties is that most companies needing to raise capital fast will likely still find the overall process in the East Asian country too slow compared to in the U.S. In the U.S., it may take between six months to a year for an IPO to be approved, explained EY's Ringo Choi, APAC IPO Leader. In China, however, it could take three to five years, he said, pointing to statistics from 2016. But for tech giants, China has gone out of its way to cut down the notoriously long wait times. Exceptions have been made to fast-track companies such as Foxconn a major supplier for Apple to as brief as between 23 to 40 days, Choi said. "For smaller tech companies, they would still have to go through those long queues and scrutiny before getting approvals. But fast-growing companies need cash, and their investors might be pushing them to list as soon as possible," he said. Meanwhile, the U.S. has been a more attractive environment for investors, with better valuations and a more knowledgeable investor base, experts said. "The largest most liquid capital markets are in the U.S. and investors are familiar with high growth and tech names. Mainland China with its capital restrictions and a slow IPO approval process is not yet a good option for large fast growing tech names," said Kathleen Smith, manager of IPO ETFs at Renaissance Capital. But many Chinese firms have seen their share price struggle after they go public due to fears of a trade war and overly high valuations dampening sentiment, market watchers said. "Unfortunately, these IPOs (ex micro cap) have performed poorly and this poor performance will slow down upcoming Chinese deals," Smith said. "This is a typical pattern: Investors get comfortable with emerging markets, Chinese IPO activity picks up, if returns are good, activity continues, if bad returns, issuance slows," she added. "Right now we are getting headwinds from tariff discussions and we expect to see a slowdown in Chinese issuance." Will the tides turn? As Google employees fret about becoming engaged in "the business of war," Alphabet board member Eric Schmidt thinks the tech industry will likely form a shared set of "AI-principles" to guide how Silicon Valley works with the Department of Defense. Schmidt, chairman of the Department of Defense's Innovation Board, spoke before a hearing of the House Armed Services Committee on Tuesday. He was responding to a question about how to overcome hesitance from the private sector about working with the department on artificial intelligence projects. Since Google revealed in March that it had partnered with the DOD to develop AI to analyze and interpret drone videos, more than 3,000 employees signed a letter urging Google CEO Sundar Pichai to pull out of the initiative, called "Project Maven." Although Google publicly said that the project was scoped for "non-offensive purposes," employees worried that once the technology was built, the military could use it to help launch weapons. Referencing those protests, as well as hesitance from other companies that the DOD has talked to, Elise Stefanik, R-N.Y., asked Schmidt how the department could assuage skepticism from the tech sector. Schmidt declined to talk about Google specifically, and said that he had been removed from any Project Maven deliberations, but predicted that ultimate Silicon Valley would have a collaborative reckoning on how to handle military contracts. "My sense of the industry is that it's going to come to set of agreement on AI-principles what's appropriate and what's not and my guess is that there will be some sort of consensus from key industry players," he said. Google itself is reportedly drafting its own set of ethical principles to guide decision making before expanding Project Maven or taking other contracts. Meanwhile, Google, Amazon, Oracle, and others are all competing for an enormous cloud deal with the DOD. Through the course of his testimony, Schmidt also said that any way that the government could "make it easier" for tech companies to work with it, the better. "If DoD is to become "AIready," it must continue down the pathway that Project Maven paved and create a foundation for similar projects to flourish," he said in his written testimony. Schmidt served as Google's CEO from 2001 through 2011, and as the chairman of Google and its successor company Alphabet until he stepped down from that role in January 2018. He remains on Alphabet's board. Rep. Charlie Dent, R-Pa., announced Tuesday he will leave Congress in the "coming weeks," earlier than expected. Dent, 57, announced last year he will not seek re-election in November. The reason for the timing change was not clear. "After discussions with my family and careful reflection, I have decided to leave Congress in the coming weeks," Dent said in a statement. "Serving the people of the 15th Congressional district has been a tremendous responsibility and the privilege of a lifetime, and I am honored by the trust that so many of my constituents placed in me to represent them in Washington." Dent, a moderate Republican and occasional critic of President Donald Trump, has served in the House since 2005, representing a district between Harrisburg and Easton in east-central Pennsylvania. Under newly redrawn Pennsylvania congressional districts, Dent would have run in a revised 7th District, which has moved in Democrats' favor, according to nonpartisan election handicappers. Dent's new district is considered a possible pickup opportunity for Democrats as they try to flip 23 seats to take a House majority. He is among multiple House Republicans from Pennsylvania who decided not to seek re-election. In a statement, National Republican Congressional Committee Chairman Rep. Steve Stivers of Ohio said the group will "work tirelessly to keep this seat under Republican control." Pennsylvania Republican Party Chairman Val DiGiorgio said the party "will work vigorously to ensure the resources and effort are available to keep this seat red." Pennsylvania's Democratic Gov. Tom Wolf will make a decision on whether to hold a special election to replace Dent once he receives the congressman's official resignation, Wolf's office said in a statement. Under state law, a special election can occur more than 60 days after the governor issues an order about filling the vacancy. A special election would be for the unrevised 15th District. House Speaker Paul Ryan got a "heads up" about Dent's decision to leave Congress, his spokeswoman AshLee Strong told CNBC. She did not say whether the speaker supports the move. Dent showed a tendency to sometimes break with his party on key issues. He voted against a House Republican plan to repeal and replace the Affordable Care Act last year. Dent has criticized Trump's comments about immigrants and the president's remarks about violence at a white supremacist rally in Charlottesville, Virginia, last year. He also introduced a version of a bill to protect special counsel Robert Mueller from possible attempts to remove him. Mueller is investigating Russian efforts to interfere in the 2016 election and whether Moscow coordinated with the Trump campaign. Dent did vote with Republican leaders to approve the tax overhaul signed into law in December. In December, he told CNN that Trump was one of the factors in his decision to retire. CNBC's Brian Schwartz contributed to this report. A single foodborne illness outbreak could cost a restaurant millions, according to a new study from researchers at Johns Hopkins Bloomberg School of Public Health. The report comes just days after the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention warned consumers about eating chopped romaine lettuce that was grown in Yuma, Arizona. The greens are believed to have infected at least 35 people in 11 states. It is also believed to be the cause of a recent string of E. coli food poisoning incidents in New Jersey that was tied to several local Panera Bread locations. "When restaurants have some type of foodborne illness outbreak, it's not really clear how much of a cost it is," Bruce Lee, associate professor of international health at Johns Hopkins Bloomberg School of Public Health, told CNBC. "It hasn't really been quantified before." The findings, which were published over the weekend, puts a price on the cost of foodborne illness outbreaks in the United States, which can range from a couple thousand dollars to millions. Lee and a team of four other researchers simulated a number of different types of outbreaks using common causes like norovirus, E. coli and salmonella to determine how each would financially impact various restaurant categories. The study revealed that the cost of a single foodborne illness outbreak at a fast food restaurant could cost between $3,968 and $1.9 million, depending on the severity of the outbreak, how much the company would have to spend on fines, lawsuits and legal fees as well as the number of employees affected by the incident. At fast casual establishments, restaurants where you order at the counter and seat yourself, the potential financial impact was $6,330 to $2.1 million. Casual dining chains, ones with full-table service, had a cost range of $8,030 to $2.2 million and fine dining chains, upscale venues with full-service waiters, would see a cost between $8,273 and $2.6 million. "Our study shows that a single foodborne illness outbreak can incur substantial costs, enough to compose a large portion of a restaurant's annual profits," the team wrote in the study. "Many of these costs outweigh the costs of various infection prevention and control measures that are available to restaurants." According to the report, these outbreaks can cost restaurants between 10 percent to 5,790 percent of what they spend on marketing each year and between 0.3 percent and 101 percent of their annual revenue. This most recent E. coli outbreak has led Bill Marler, a 20-year veteran of foodborne illness litigation, to bring a suit against Panera and its food processor Freshway. He said that the chopped lettuce from Yuma had been transported to Freshway and then sent to several Panera locations. While Panera is not the only restaurant or grocery store to obtain the contaminated lettuce, it is still liable for distributing the product. Marler explained that Panera's kitchen is just like an automobile factory. While the restaurant may not create the lettuce that it cuts up into its salads, it is responsible when that lettuce is defective. "No one intends to have E. coli in their food," Marler said. Usually, about 15 percent of the people who are exposed to E. coli during an outbreak will end up in the hospital. Right now, that figure is much higher, Marler said. Twenty-two of the reported 35 cases resulted in hospitalizations. Several of those sickened by this E. coli strain have experienced acute kidney failure and at least one has been placed on dialysis, Marler said. He said that this either means that the strain of E. coli is more virulent than others or that it's so early on in the reported of the outbreak that the CDC and FDA haven't identified all of the people who have been sickened. Panera did not immediately respond to CNBC's request for comment. President is reportedly angry about several things these days, from an investigation of a key confidant to a hot new memoir by the FBI director he fired last year. But one top Republican lawmaker says that's not the case. Trump appears unbothered by the criminal investigation of his personal attorney, Michael Cohen, or by the tell-all book by James Comey, House Majority Leader Kevin McCarthy contended on Tuesday. McCarthy, one of Trump's closest allies in Congress and a front-runner to succeed Speaker Paul Ryan as the top Republican in the House, told CNBC's "Squawk Box" that Trump is not letting the recent news "get under his skin" and instead works "24 hours a day" focused on policy. "I was just at dinner the other night with the president. You would not know any of this other stuff is going on," the California lawmaker said. He said the president spoke about Syria, the economy and "Right to Try," a bill to support terminally ill patients gaining access to experimental therapies. House Republican leaders believe they will keep a majority in the chamber in November, and on Tuesday, they pegged their hopes on selling their tax overhaul to voters. Americans have not yet latched on to the tax policy the way GOP lawmakers had hoped ahead of the critical midterm elections. Only 27 percent of Americans call the law passed in December a good idea, while 36 percent think it is a bad idea, according to an NBC News/Wall Street Journal poll released this week. In a January poll, 30 percent of those surveyed thought it was a good idea, while 38 percent said it was a bad idea. However, top Republicans who spoke to CNBC's "Squawk Box" on Tuesday argued that the plan's popularity should improve by November. The GOP has billed the law as its signature achievement during the first year of Republican control of Capitol Hill and the White House. It chops tax rates for corporations and trims taxes on many, but not all, individuals. House Majority Leader Kevin McCarthy, whom Rep. Paul Ryan has endorsed to succeed him as speaker, told CNBC he believes voters will begin to understand the benefits of the law by the midterm elections. He even mused about the possibility of moving tax filing day to November instead of April so it is fresh in voters' minds. While trade relations between the U.S. and China have descended into a relay of tariffs and counter-tariffs, developments to reform trade on the African continent are telling a very different story. "If you start looking much more inwards, and focus within your little population of 40 or 50 million, you lose sight of the big picture," Adan Mohamed, Kenyan minister of industry, trade and co-operatives told CNBC on Monday. Mohamed was referring to a free trade agreement ranging across the African continent that is in the process of being implemented by the African Union. If put into practice, it would form the largest trade bloc in terms of participating member states since the formation of the World Trade Organization (WTO). So far, 44 of the African Union's 55 members have signed on. "So, we really are saying to people within the continent that often see this through the lens of, 'What would this do for us?' and say what scale and opportunity that this could do for Africa as a continent," Mohamed told an audience at the Commonwealth Business Forum in London. He agreed that this situation provided a counterpoint to the tit-for-tat trade tariffs recently imposed by the U.S. and China. Mohamed explained why union was so crucial to Africa. "The biggest opportunity for Africa today is a lack of inward investments that are supposed to be flowing into Africa," he said. "There is no Africa there is Kenya, there is Nigeria, there is South Africa. Each of these countries on their own are not substantial markets in their own right." It is hoped that the African free trade agreement will increase business between countries on the continent, which currently stands at less than 20 percent. The agreement is touted by the African Union as encompassing a market of 1.2 billion people, and a gross domestic product of $2.5 trillion. Mohamed said that the deal would boost intra-African trade. "We're also having to dismantle the legacies of the colonial approach where traditional trade routes have been between the former colonial master and a specific African country." "We believe that we are used as a consumer market of products that are manufactured elsewhere," he added. But, two of the largest and most developed economies in Africa, Nigeria and South Africa, are yet to fully sign up to the deal. The governments are concerned about job security and cheap Chinese goods flooding the market due to decreased intra-continental trade barriers. "I think it is fair to say that a significant agreement of this nature would rattle many people," Mohamed said. South African President Cyril Ramaphosa only signed a precursor to the deal in March, citing the need to consult domestic bodies first. "Anybody else who has issues... I think should be given the opportunity to go through that process," Mohamed said. The idea of a common African currency has also been discussed as part of greater trade integration. "It will be very difficult to implement, and it's an aspirational goal to have," Mohamed said, adding that "it is not a uniquely African issue" but part of any international trade network. The U.S. and China have been engaged in a war of words, each threatening to levy heavy taxes on each other's imports and the tech sector could be staring down the barrel. So far, most information and communication technology has been exempted from the U.S. proposal. But tensions are starting to trickle into tech. U.S. officials on Monday banned American companies from selling to Chinese phone maker ZTE, hinting at further protectionist measures and stripping American chip leader Qualcomm of a key customer. U.S. President Donald Trump chats with Chinese President Xi Jinping in November 2017. Andy Wong | AP Tech sectors with strong links between China and the U.S., like semiconductors, are vulnerable to additional rounds of proposed tariffs. Analysts say it's hard to separate any threats to semiconductors the "brains" and processing power behind everything from smartphones to car consoles from the larger tech industry. "We have been inundated with requests from clients to discuss our views on [semiconductors] as it relates to the escalating trade tensions between the U.S. and China," Credit Suisse analyst John Pitzer wrote earlier this month. "Predicating all the potential moves on a single Chess board is difficult this feels more like 3-D chess." If trade tensions escalate, there are more ways the technology sector could be hurt, analysts told CNBC. Stock market rotation If investors try to hedge their bets against a trade war, technology stocks might not provide the safe haven that traders have come to see it as, since many are already expensive and have hit new all-time highs this year. J.P. Morgan analysts said they are taking a "cautious stance on Tech sector, which has elaborate supply chains, is sensitive to consumer and corporate confidence, and where the adverse trade impact could be material." They added that soaring technology stocks have had "such a dramatic run already." That means investors might take profit and move money to safer bets that have room to grow. "Also in the U.S., valuations do not provide a cushion anymore," the analysts wrote in a research note. "Given the years of outperformance and demanding valuations, we believe that investors should lock the profits in technology sector." Guilt by association The technology sector may see more pressure if industries that use chips such as transportation, machinery or even security cameras fall under higher taxes, Credit Suisse's Pitzer wrote. Dan Harris, author of the China Law Blog, noted that the "guilty by association" motif goes beyond just being associated with a taxed sector. Any American brand that Chinese consumers associate with the trade tensions could have its marketing marred, too. In 2008, for instance, Chinese consumers burned the French flag at protests outside Carrefour retail locations, saying the company was supporting pro-Tibetan independence groups. In 2012, sales of Toyota and Honda tumbled over a territorial dispute between China and Japan. Trade talks between Norway and China were snuffed over political backlash related to the Nobel Prize to jailed dissident Liu Xiaobo. "Every time it's happened, the Chinese government has stirred the pot," Harris said. Harris also said that companies with physical storefronts, like retail and restaurants, are most likely to be hurt by anti-American sentiment. Still, many U.S. technology companies, particularly Apple, get a large chunk of revenue from China. Measures beyond tariffs Harris said China could get stricter on laws other than tariffs as part of a larger crackdown on U.S. companies. For instance, over the past year, China has increasingly tracked and expelled foreign companies, especially American enterprises, that don't have their legal documents sorted out in China. China could also allow American tech companies to stay but make it much more costly and much more difficult to maintain shops in China, said GBH Insights' Dan Ives. U.S. tech giants like Apple and Intel are the most vulnerable to higher infrastructure costs or additional red tape, as huge portions of their supply chains operate in China and are staffed by Chinese workers. Despite the tense rhetoric, though, it's unlikely that Chinese officials would "shoot themselves in the foot" that way, Ives said. Expansion of business-to-business tariffs The tariff proposals so far will impact consumer products most, Ives said, but a new round of proposed tariffs could broaden the risk to include business-to-business sales. China leads the world in consumption of semiconductors, accounting for 40 to 50 percent of global demand, Raymond James' Chris Caso said. Chinese giants like Alibaba, Baidu and Huawei count on American chipmakers for supplies. If China decides to match the U.S. government's proposed tariffs on semiconductors, American firms could lose key customers. "Outside Apple, very few U.S. technology companies from Google, to Facebook, to Microsoft have had success selling in China," he said. "I think it's very possible that the next ratchet up piece of this is going much more into the IP side of things and much more on the B2B." A means to protect IP The may have lashed out against in recent weeks, but at least one portfolio manager remains "very" optimistic about the prospects of the world's second-largest economy. In recent weeks, the U.S. and China traded tariff threats, and on Monday, Washington banned American companies from doing business with Chinese phone maker ZTE, which it said violated U.S. sanction terms. But the long-term view on China remains positive, Sarah Lien, client portfolio manager at Eastspring Investments, told CNBC's"Capital Connection." "We have a very strong positive outlook on China," she said. "We see a lot of investment opportunities in China, and the trade war talk and ZTE and actions that have been taken by the U.S. and the U.K. against Chinese firms that aren't playing by the rules these are just a normal part of ironing out relationships," she said. Eastspring has had an "overweight" position on Chinese assets for a long time, Lien said, adding that she likes the Chinese banks. A new video released by BuzzFeed appears to show former President Barack Obama calling President Donald Trump "a total and complete dips--- " among other outlandish statements but as with many things online, it's not what it seems. The video is not an actual recording of Obama. It's a highly edited video that digitally alters footage of Obama to make his mouth mimic a voice actor's movements. The audio of the speech was recorded by Oscar-winning filmmaker Jordan Peele. The clip eventually shows a split screen of Obama and Peele, revealing the ruse. "This is a dangerous time," Peele says, still impersonating Obama. "Moving forward we need to be more vigilant with what we trust from the internet. It's a time where we need to rely on trusted news sources." Peele and BuzzFeed CEO Jonah Peretti created the PSA to show how easy it is to manipulate videos, furthering the spread of misinformation and fake news. "You Won't Believe What Obama Says in this Video" was created using Adobe After Effects and FakeApp, an application that lets you "faceswap" videos. Peele, who has impersonated Obama before, wrote and performed his script. BuzzFeed used about two minutes of Obama footage with Peele's mouth edited in and 10 minutes of real Obama footage. It ran FakeApp on the clip for a total of 60 hours to fine tune the video. "We've [BuzzFeed] covered counterfeit news websites that say the Pope endorsed Trump that look kinda like real news but because it's text people have started to become more wary," Peretti wrote on BuzzFeed. "And now we're starting to see tech that allows people to put words into the mouths of public figures that look like they must be real because it's video and video doesn't lie!" Disclosure: CNBC parent NBCUniversal is an investor in BuzzFeed. Microsoft president and chief legal officer Brad Smith said on Tuesday that the company is "principled" about the sorts of people it works with. The statement comes on the same day that Microsoft announced it's one of 34 companies that signed the Cybersecurity Tech Accord, a document promising that, among other things, participants won't help governments operate cyberattacks against innocent people or companies. "When it comes to people asking for help from our consultants or other services of that kind, we can pick and choose, we can be principled, and we are," Smith said on CNBC's "Closing Bell." NASA's Orion spacecraft, which is set to launch next year for a journey around the moon, will mark the first time that a deep-space craft has been built using 3-D-printed parts. The space agency wants to conduct a new set of lunar missions, as well as exploration to other destinations including Mars. The Exploration Mission-1 (EM-1) will send Orion, an un-crewed module, on a three-week voyage around the moon. The Orion craft is set to use more than 100 3-D-printed parts jointly engineered by Lockheed Martin, Stratasys, and Phoenix Analysis & Design Technologies. It will be the first time that 3-D parts have been certified for deep space use. Deep space, or outer space, represents the physical universe beyond Earth's atmosphere. Dr. Phil Reeves, vice president at Stratasys Strategic Consulting, said Tuesday that, thanks to the technology, the cost and complexity of space-ready components is tumbling. "Those 100 parts might replace 500 or 600 parts, as the printed technology can be used to create complex geometrical shapes," he said. Reeves highlighted Orion's docking station as an example where a previously complex part will now consist of just six individual 3-D-printed components locked together. North and South Korea are in talks to announce a permanent end to the officially declared military conflict between the two countries, daily newspaper Munhwa Ilbo reported Tuesday, citing an unnamed South Korean official. Ahead of a summit next week between North Korean premier Kim Jong Un and South Korean President Moon Jae-in, lawmakers from the neighboring states were thought to be negotiating the details of a joint statement that could outline an end to the confrontation. Kim and Moon could also discuss returning the heavily fortified demilitarized zone separating them to its original state, the newspaper said. Pyongyang and Seoul have technically been at war since the 1950-1953 Korean conflict ended with a truce and not a peace treaty. Geopolitical tensions have occasionally flared up since the armistice, although to date both countries have managed to avoid another devastating conflict. A successful summit between the Koreas later this month could help pave the way for a meeting between Kim and President Donald Trump. The U.S. president and North Korean leader are poised to hold talks in late May or June, according to the Korean Central News Agency (KCNA). As sliding ratings threaten the political future of Japanese Prime Minister Shinzo Abe, the embattled leader is under pressure to prove that his relationship with President Donald Trump remains robust when the two hold a summit on Tuesday. If Abe, whose reputation at home has been hit by multiple controversies, can prove that the U.S.-Japan alliance is strong in the face of trade tensions and North Korea talks two issues important to Abe's re-election prospects that could strengthen his domestic standing. "Abe wants to return home with concrete evidence that the relationship has stayed out of the rough. The stakes are high for Abe's foreign policy agenda and potentially his political future," advisors at the Center for Strategic and International Studies (CSIS) wrote in a recent note. The two leaders are due to sit down at Trump's Mar-a-Lago resort on Tuesday, and the mood is expected to be vastly different from the pair's last meeting there more than a year ago. Back then, the relationship was at a high point and likened to a "bromance." Now, their special connection appears to have fizzled out. Tokyo is one of the few American allies that hasn't been exempted from Trump's steel and aluminium tariffs. Moreover, the U.S. president's decision to meet with North Korean leader Kim Jong Un without consulting Abe sparked fears of Japan being sidelined during nuclear negotiations an alarming prospect for a country in immediate range of Pyongyang's missiles. A Republican strategist leapt to the defense of President Donald Trump following comments made by former FBI Director James Comey at the weekend. Comey told ABC news Sunday that Trump is "morally unfit to be president." But Jan Halper-Hayes, who was a consultant to Trump's transition team and the former chair of Republicans Overseas, said he is not the only politician with a questionable character. "There are so many in Congress that are morally unfit," she told CNBC's "Squawk Box Europe" Tuesday. "I know a lot of politicians that are morally unfit, and what ideal do we have? I mean really I know that we set these high values and these ideals and there are a lot of people that don't subscribe to high values and still accomplish things," she added. Trump fired Comey last year during an FBI probe into possible ties between alleged Russian meddling in the U.S. election and Trump's 2016 campaign. Both Moscow, Trump and the White House deny any wrongdoing. According to Halper-Hayes, the question people should be asking is whether the lawmakers in office are getting the job done. House Speaker Paul Ryan said Tuesday he has had a good working relationship with President Donald Trump, and he denied that his decision to retire stemmed from his dealings with Trump. The 48-year-old Wisconsin Republican, who pointedly criticized Trump during the 2016 election, said the president's election allowed him to pursue GOP policy priorities. Ryan announced plans last week to retire, months after Congress passed his long-held goal of overhauling the tax system. "Look at what his election got us. It got us, finally, a unified government," Ryan told CNBC's "Squawk Box." "I'm grateful that he has given us this chance with his election to do fundamental tax reform that is a long time in coming that finally got done." When Ryan announced his retirement, some reports suggested he no longer wanted to face questions about the president's erratic behavior. In 2016, Ryan slammed candidate Trump for his comments about a Mexican-American judge as well as his remarks about groping women from 2005 that surfaced just before the 2016 election. A man walks past a 'Stand Up For Steel, Stand Up For America' sign while arriving at the United States Steel Corp. Clairton Plant coke manufacturing facility as emissions rise in Clairton, Pennsylvania. A new poll shows warning signs for Republicans in Pennsylvania, one of the states most critical to determining which party controls Congress after November's elections. With just under seven months until the midterms, Democrats have strong advantages both on the generic congressional ballot in Pennsylvania and in the race to hold on to Democratic Sen. Bob Casey's seat, according to a Muhlenberg College poll. In addition, a majority disapproves of President Donald Trump, and a plurality disapproves of the Republican tax law. Much can change in the months before the elections, and the GOP hopes public opinion of its tax plan can improve and boost the party's midterm hopes. The single poll also does not capture public opinion at the level of specific House districts. Republicans in recent days have pointed to a shrinking lead for Democrats on the national generic ballot, including a Washington Post-ABC News poll that found only a 4 percentage point advantage for Democrats. They have also highlighted an NBC News/Wall Street Journal poll that found 35 percent of Americans think Republicans are better equipped to handle the economy, while only 28 percent said Democrats are more suited. Still, the Pennsylvania survey depicts a challenging environment for Republicans in one of the most important states for their effort to hold on to congressional majorities. ICE Enforcement and Removal Operations unit raid to apprehend immigrants without any legal status and who may be deportable in Riverside. San Diego County's Board of Supervisors voted Tuesday to join the U.S. Department of Justice's legal challenge of California's so-called sanctuary policies aimed at protecting undocumented immigrants. In a 3-1 vote, supervisors for San Diego home to more than 3.3 million residents voted to direct the county counsel to file a friend-of-the-court brief supporting the Trump administration's lawsuit against California's sanctuary law. Board Chair Kristin Gaspar, who was one of the three supervisors voting to file the amicus brief, said the board received hundreds emails in support of the move. Gaspar tweeted Tuesday: "Enough is enough! Governor Jerry Brown needs to follow the laws of our Constitution." However, the supervisor who voted against challenging the California sanctuary law issued a statement criticizing the move. "This is a very divisive issue in the county, and across the state and nation," said Supervisor Greg Cox. "The county joining the lawsuit between the federal and state governments is unnecessary because this is an issue that is properly going to be addressed by the federal courts." San Diego County's action follows neighboring Orange County voting last month to issue a restraining order against the state to halt enforcement of the law. Orange County is California's third-most populous county while San Diego County ranks second after Los Angeles. The fight against the state legislation highlights how some communities in the state are growing weary of the sanctuary law, or state Senate Bill 54, which bars state and local law enforcement officers from asking about the immigration status of people during routine interactions or participating in federal enforcement actions. Critics of the state sanctuary law say it jeopardizes public safety and puts law enforcement officers in the state in a tough spot. They also say it can increase the danger down the line for federal immigration agents. Previously, four other counties in the Golden State Tehama, Kern, Siskiyou and Shasta previously passed non-sanctuary resolutions. Also, the city council of Los Alamitos, a small city in Orange County, on Monday gave final approval to opt out of the sanctuary law, and several other cities in California are considering taking similar actions. Dubbed the "California Values Act," SB 54 bars local jails from detaining undocumented immigrants who have been convicted of a crime past their normal release time at the request of federal agents. Some local law enforcement officials also complain it puts restrictions on their ability to communicate concerns with federal law enforcement authorities about certain undocumented offenders being released on the street. The case against California is being heard in the U.S. District Court for the Eastern District of California in Sacramento. In filing the original lawsuit March 6, the Justice Department also included an accompanying motion for preliminary injunction that could be decided in a matter of months, according to legal experts. Legal experts say the side that ultimately loses will get the ability to file an appeal with the 9th Circuit Court of Appeals, even as the rest of the case moves forward with the lower District Court. There's also a possibility the case could ultimately find its way to the U.S. Supreme Court and then take years to resolve. In all, the U.S. government's suit against the state of California centers on three laws all of which the Trump administration claims "intentionally obstruct and discriminate against the enforcement of federal immigration law." Conspiracy theorist and radio talk show host Alex Jones speaks during a rally in support of Donald Trump near the Republican National Convention, July 18, 2016 in Cleveland, Ohio. Three parents whose children were killed at Sandy Hook Elementary School in 2012 filed a defamation lawsuit on Tuesday against Alex Jones, the right-wing conspiracy theorist who has long claimed the shooting was "completely fake" and a "giant hoax" perpetrated by opponents of the Second Amendment. Mr. Jones, the popular radio show host who also operates the conspiracy theory website Infowars, has questioned for years whether 20 children and six adults died in the school massacre in Newtown, Conn. To bolster his false claims, he often cites news reports and video clips from the hours after the shooting that turned out to be incomplete or based on wrong information. Soon after they buried their children, many Sandy Hook parents started to come under fierce attack by conspiracy theorists who have said they are actors in an elaborate scheme to enact stricter gun control laws. The fringe theories still thrive in small forums online but have reached a far greater audience through Mr. Jones, the most vocal propagator. More from the New York Times: Newtown is 'still so raw,' 5 years after Sandy Hook shooting Remington's bankruptcy stalls ruling in Sandy Hook families' suit Cosby team cites phone records as it tries to discredit accuser The two lawsuits filed on Tuesday represent the first civil action taken by parents accusing Mr. Jones of defamation. One was filed by Leonard Pozner and his former wife, Veronique De La Rosa, and the other was filed by Neil Heslin. Their sons, Noah Pozner and Jesse Heslin, both 6, were killed at Sandy Hook. The suits focus on comments made by Mr. Jones in the past year. In a segment on his radio show called "Sandy Hook Vampires Exposed," which aired on April 22, 2017, Mr. Jones highlighted an interview that Ms. De La Rosa did with Anderson Cooper of CNN after the shooting. While they are standing outside a downtown Newtown building, Mr. Cooper turns his head to face her. During that quick head movement, Mr. Cooper's nose seems to disappear evidence, Mr. Jones said, that the interview with Ms. De La Rosa was conducted in a studio. In reality, the glitch is known as a compression artifact, a distortion that is common in video encoding. Mr. Jones suggests it means they are both actors. "When he turns, his nose disappears repeatedly because the green screen isn't set right," he said. A few months later, in June, Mr. Jones was profiled on NBC's "Sunday Night With Megyn Kelly," which brought up his past comments about Sandy Hook. Ms. Kelly also interviewed Mr. Heslin, who recalled seeing his dead son. "I held my son with a bullet hole through his head," Mr. Heslin told her. But a week later in an Infowars video, Owen Shroyer, who works for the site, argued that it was "not possible" that Mr. Heslin held his dead son because the medical examiner said he showed photographs to the parents to identify their children. "Will there be a clarification from Heslin or Megyn Kelly?" Mr. Shroyer said. "I wouldn't hold your breath." The next month, Mr. Jones replayed part of that Infowars video on his show. "The stuff I found was they never let them see their bodies," Mr. Jones said. "That's kind of what's weird about this. But maybe they did." Both lawsuits were filed in Travis County District Court in Austin, where Mr. Jones lives, broadcasts his show and operates Infowars. The parents are seeking at least $1 million in damages. "The statements were a continuation and elaboration of a yearslong campaign to falsely attack the honesty of the Sandy Hook parents, casting them as participants in a ghastly conspiracy and cover-up," the parents' lawsuits said. The parents are represented by Mark D. Bankston, a Houston lawyer who filed a similar defamation lawsuit this month against Mr. Jones and Infowars after they falsely identified a Massachusetts man as the gunman at Marjory Stoneman Douglas High School in Parkland, Fla. Mr. Jones and Mr. Shroyer did not immediately respond to an email seeking comment on Tuesday morning. Last June, a Florida woman who believes the Sandy Hook shooting was a hoax was sentenced to five months in prison for making death threats against Mr. Pozner in voicemail messages and emails. A group of bipartisan lawmakers on Tuesday asked the Environmental Protection Agency to stop issuing waivers that allow oil refiners to avoid obligations to blend biofuels into gasoline. The 13 senators, led by Iowa Republican Chuck Grassley and Minnesota Democrat Amy Klobuchar, also requested in a letter that EPA provide justification for why the agency has allowed an unusual number of large, profitable refiners to sidestep the biofuels mandate. The letter is the latest salvo in a battle between two pillars of President 's political base over the so-called Renewable Fuel Standard. On one side are farm states, who want to protect corn-based ethanol's role in the nation's energy mix. On the other side are energy companies who says the biofuels rules risk the nation's energy security by threatening to tip refiners into bankruptcy. The Trump EPA has reportedly issued 25 of the "hardship" waivers, usually reserved for small, distressed refiners who cannot meet their obligation to either blend biofuels into petroleum products or purchase credits from competitors who can. The lawmakers also requested a list of refiners who have received waivers since 2016. The EPA has declined to make the names public, saying it would amount to disclosing private company information. The waiver recipients include the smallest refineries operated by energy giants ExxonMobil and Chevron, Reuters reported earlier this month. Three out of ten refineries operated by one of the nation's biggest refiners, Andeavor, have also received exemptions, according to Reuters. "Recent reports indicate dozens of small refiner waivers have been secretly granted to large, multibillion-dollar companies under the guise of the small refinery hardship exemption provision in section 211(o)(9) of the Clean Air Act. This is extremely concerning to us," the senators wrote in a letter to EPA Administrator Scott Pruitt. The senators also want to know whether EPA is forcing other refiners to blend enough biofuel to offset the volumes it has waived in recent months. They also asked EPA to commit to issuing future waivers only during an annual rulemaking process, when the public can comment on proposed exemptions. In response to the letter, EPA spokesperson Liz Bowman said, "Discontinuing the issuance of small refinery hardship waivers would be a violation of the Renewable Fuel Standard; as EPA doesn't have the authority to pick and choose which provisions of the RFS to follow." "The Agency has been both responsive and open about small refinery waivers, while being careful not to violate confidential business information protections," Bowman said in an email. A floor crew pull steel pipe out of a natural gas well in the Barnett Shale of Fort Worth, Texas that is owned by Chesapeake Energy Corporation. Surging U.S. oil supplies may soon struggle to find a buyer, and Morgan Stanley believes that could create winners in the stock and commodity markets. Output from American shale oil fields has pushed U.S. crude production to all-time highs. But Morgan Stanley warns that the nation's shale wells are mostly yielding a type of light oil for which domestic refiners don't have much use. Most American refineries are configured to process heavier crude grades, creating a mismatch with the growing supply of light shale oil being extracted in places like the Permian Basin in Texas. "Our thesis is that the US refining system is close to being maxed-out on the amount of shale oil it can process," wrote Morgan Stanley equity analysts, led by Martijn Rats, the head of the bank's European oil and gas research team. Refiners have compensated by blending the super light shale oil with gunkier grades, but those heavy crudes are in short supply, says Morgan Stanley. Output from heavy crude producers Venezuela and Mexico is falling, and pipeline bottlenecks are keeping it from being shipped from Canada. That means more shale barrels will have to be exported, but Morgan Stanley sees trouble here, too. North Korean leader Kim Jong-un guides a target-striking contest of the special operation forces of the Korean People's Army to occupy islands in Pyongyang on Aug. 25, 2017. Although the expected meeting of leaders of North and South Korea next week has sparked reports that Kim Jong Un may agree to officially end the Korean War, Pyongyang does not view Seoul as an authorized participant in peace talks, a former CIA official told CNBC. After nearly seven decades, the Korean War, which began on June 25, 1950, and lasted for three years, remains officially unresolved. When the war ended, the North agreed to a truce but not a peace treaty. As a result, the North and South have technically remained at war for the last 68 years. "When I met with North Korean officials last year, they said that South Korea is not 'qualified' to participate in peace treaty negotiations because it didn't sign the armistice and didn't have wartime operational control of its forces," Bruce Klingner, senior research fellow of Northeast Asia at the Heritage Foundation, told CNBC. "Technically, South Korea is not a signatory to the armistice and a peace treaty would require UN action," Klingner added. "The previous North Korean position has been for three parties North Korea, China, and the U.S. to sign a final peace treaty." The potential April 27 summit between the two Koreas will be their first face-to-face meeting since 2007. Notably, the two are set to meet in the South Korean village of Panmunjom, which would make Kim the first North Korean leader to cross the 38th parallel since the Korean War. A possible meeting between Kim and President Donald Trump which would be the first between two sitting leaders of North Korea and the United States is also reportedly in the works. However, details of the arrangement are slim. Trump said Tuesday that the Koreas have his "blessing" to try ending their war. One person was killed after a Southwest flight en route from New York to Dallas made an emergency landing in Philadelphia, the airline said on Tuesday, marking the first fatal U.S. commercial plane accident since 2009. Southwest Flight 1380 made the landing at Philadelphia International Airport after its crew reported issues with one of the engines that resulted in damage to the fuselage, or main body of the plane. "We have activated our emergency response team and are deploying every resource to support those affected by this tragedy," Southwest said in a statement. In a recording of the conversation with air traffic control, the pilot can be heard requesting a medical team to tend to injured passengers upon landing. When asked if the plane was on fire, the pilot said no but that part of the aircraft was missing. The passenger's death breaks a nearly decade-long stretch without a fatality aboard a commercial airplane in the U.S., said Robert Mann, an aviation consultant based in Long Island, New York. In 2009, a Colgan Air plane crashed near Buffalo, New York, killing 49 people on board and one on the ground. Southwest said it was the first onboard passenger fatality due to an accident in its history. Southwest Airlines said late Tuesday that it is accelerating its inspections of the engine type that was involved in the incident and that they will likely be completed within 30 days. The tests are ultrasonic inspections of fan blades. Photos released earlier by NTSB appeared to show at least one fan blade missing from the engine involved in Tuesday's incident. Southwest said it "expects minimal disruption to the operation during the course of the inspections." The aircraft involved in Tuesday's incident, a Boeing 737-700, had 144 passengers and five crew members on board, according to Southwest. The plane's engine failed shortly after takeoff, according to local news outlet NBC 10 in Philadelphia. Passengers had rushed to pull a woman who was pulled partly out of the broken window, the Associated Press reported. Facebook user Marty Martinez posted a video of passengers with oxygen masks over their mouths and photos of a blown-out window. @NBCPhiladelphia: #Breaking: @PHLAirport says passengers are being brought into the terminal. http://on.nbc10.com/LgwD6Hy @joeasaprap: What a flight! Made it!! Still here!! #southwest #flight1380 The National Transportation Safety Board and Federal Aviation Administration both said they would investigate the incident. Boeing said it will provide technical assistance. The 737 was powered by two CFM56 engines, according to flight-tracking service FlightRadar24. CFM International, a joint venture between General Electric and France's Safran Aircraft Engines, said in a statement that it "will support the NTSB and Southwest Airlines in determining the cause of the accident," noting that it had sent representatives to the site to help with the investigation. Engines are designed with a covering so that if an engine experiences an explosion or ingests a foreign object, blades do not fly off and damage the fuselage. Such incidents that damage the fuselage are extremely rare, said Richard Aboulafia, vice president at aviation analysis firm Teal Group. The CFM56 engine is among the most commonly used around the world, he added. "This is as close as you get to the textbook definition of a workhorse engine," said Aboulafia. "There are still incidents that can only be described as freak." Wu-Tang Clan is known globally for their lyrical kung fu references, heavy rhythms and songs like, "C.R.E.A.M." Recently they've been in the news because "pharma bro" Martin Shkreli bought what is purported to be one-of-a-kind Wu-Tang Album for a reported $2 million. But in the 1990s, Wu-Tang was a Staten Island rap group rising to fame. And Adolfo LaCola, a star of CNBC's "Staten Island Hustle," was their business operations guy, working closely with Method Man and Ghostface Killah. "Negotiating deals, checking out the contracts ... just dealing the whole business end of the music industry, marketing, promotion you know," LaCola tells CNBC Make It. "That was all me." In 1999, LaCola became the chairman of the board and a co-owner of Ghostface Killah's record label, Stark Enterprises. But for LaCola, the son of Italian immigrants, landing a gig with the hip hop legends began with a dream and a side-hustle he picked up at 13. "We're totally different on Staten Island, we have a different walk, a different talk," LaCola tells CNBC of the often forgotten New York City borough, whose residents have a sometimes rough but scrappy reputation. "We've been hustling since we were in diapers." Indeed, growing up, LaCola remembers often trying to turn a nickle into a dime. He would move whatever he could get his hands on, from hawking fireworks to selling kids in the school cafeteria the homemade sandwiches his family packed him for lunch. But he was the most passionate about DJing. "I was very intrigued [by] how one song bled into the other song on radio," LaCola tells CNBC Make It. "As a kid, my mom bought me one of those plastic record players. She bought me the blue one, [and bought] my sister the red one. "I figured out how to put them together and kind of let one song bleed into the next," he explains. Determined, LaCola scraped together the equipment he would need to produce music himself. "My mom bought me a turntable for Christmas, my sister got me the mixer [and] I won a skate contest in Brooklyn to buy the records, the final turntable, the amp and speakers," he explains. Marjory Stoneman Douglas High School student David Hogg speaks onstage at March For Our Lives on March 24, 2018 in Washington, DC. One of Parkland, Fla.'s most prominent student activists on stopping gun violence has called for a boycott of Vanguard and BlackRock, two of the world's biggest investors in gunmakers. In a post on Twitter on Tuesday, David Hogg remarked on the firms' ownership of gun maker stocks, adding "if you use them, feel free to let them know." Then he added two tags: BoycottVanguard BoycottBlackrock. Tweet Hogg led a successful advertiser boycott of Fox television's Laura Ingraham's show last month after Ingraham publicly mocked his college acceptances. Hogg survived the shooting at a Florida high school in February that left 17 people dead. Since then, he and fellow classmates have led a nationwide protest movement over gun violence. BlackRock and Vanguard, giant managers of exchange traded funds and other passive-style investments, are the biggest owners of publicly traded firearms makers like Sturm Ruger and American Outdoor Brands. That's because these funds track stock indexes that include the stocks of the gun makers. BlackRock recently said it had created new funds that would exclude those stocks for investors that wanted to avoid owning them. The fund manager has also said it is in active conversations with gun makers about their businesses. that the event was "the first time we attacked live Iranian targets both facilities and people." An Israeli F-15 fighter jet Jack Guez | AFP | Getty Images Iran has issued a threat against Israel following last weekend's attack on an Iranian drone base in Syria. "Tel Aviv will be punished for its aggressive action," Iranian Foreign Ministry spokesman Bahram Ghassemi told local press Monday. "The occupying Zionist regime will, sooner or later, receive an appropriate response to its actions." The strike, which killed seven Iranian military advisors from the country's elite Quds Force in the Syrian city of Homs, has been neither confirmed nor denied by Israel's government. But a senior Israeli official admitted to The New York Times that the event was "the first time we attacked live Iranian targets both facilities and people." Amid an already chaotic and internecine war involving numerous parties fighting for their own calculated interests, another conflict is coming into focus: the escalation of clashes between Iran and Israel. Since 2013, Israel has carried out more than 100 airstrikes in Syria, primarily targeting the Iranian-funded Lebanese militia group Hezbollah and military convoys. This hasn't featured heavily in news headlines, however, as Israel prefers to act in the shadows to reduce the pressure on adversaries to respond, and because Russia, with whom it has good relations, has so far tolerated its military actions. But the first months of 2018 have seen Israel broaden its intervention to increasingly target its longtime nemesis, Iran, directly. A shooting war "The only thing more complex than the Syrian civil war would be the Syrian civil war overlaid with an Israel-Iran shooting war," said Henry Rome, Iran researcher at global risk consultancy Eurasia Group. This would inevitably drag the U.S. further into the conflict in support of Israel, while potentially empowering Russia as a mediator due to its relatively good relations with both sides. Israel and Iran's strategic aims in Syria come into direct conflict with one another. Iran seeks a permanent presence in Syria and Lebanon part of what regional experts have called the growing "Shia crescent" of influence in the Middle East as a long-term, strategic objective. And Israel sees an increasing threat in this deepening influence near its borders, which it fears could result in launching posts from which Hezbollah could attack. "There are many Israelis who have felt obliged to plan out a war with Iran, and their political leaders have spoken ominously about that in recent years," former U.S. ambassador to Syria Richard Murphy told CNBC, noting that the threat posed by Hezbollah is "considerable" given the missiles it commands in Lebanon and in supply posts in Syria. Therefore, a major red line for Israel, according to Rome, is the presence of permanent Iranian air, naval, or ground military bases in Syria hence its strike on the drone base. Drone wars The strike came two months after an Israeli F-16 was shot down by Syrian anti-aircraft defenses during an earlier attack on a drone base prompted by an armed Iranian drone entering Israeli airspace in early February. The two Israeli pilots onboard were ejected over Israeli territory and landed in stable condition. This instance underscores just how easily the war could widen, pulling the two adversaries into full-blown conflict over Syria. "Israeli intervention in Syria could easily trigger an escalation of the conflict or a further spillover of violence into the region," Ryan Turner, a senior risk analyst at PGI Group, told CNBC. Free Syrian Army fighters fire an anti-aircraft weapon in a rebel-held area of Aleppo, Syria December 12, 2016. Abdalrhman Ismail | Reuters Top hedge fund managers including Maverick Capital's Lee Ainslie and Hayman Capital's Kyle Bass are defending the industry against concerns that passive funds or artificial intelligence could usurp human management. "The conditions that have perpetuated a multi-year headwind are starting to reverse, with the result being a possible multi-year tailwind for hedge funds," Ainslie said in a wide-ranging paper published Monday. "Looking forwards, we're entering a period where the possibility for alpha generation should be more rewarding and beta (market) exposure will likely be less rewarding." The paper, published by the Alternative Investment Management Association and Aberdeen Standard Investments, sought opinions from leading managers on the future of investing. Hedge funds have fallen out of favor with investors in recent years as basic market-tracking index funds handily outperformed the group during this nine-year bull market. High-profile investors like David Einhorn and Bill Ackman underperformed the market badly in 2017, with net returns of 1.6 percent and negative 4 percent, respectively, versus the historic climb in equities. Ainslie, who founded Maverick in 1993, now oversees approximately $10 billion in assets under management, according to The Wall Street Journal. A former employee of Julian Robertson's Tiger Management, Ainslie is a value investor known for his stakes in technology. "History will end up repeating itself and we'll have some geopolitical risk really enter investment portfolios again accompanied by increased volatility," Bass said. "With the introduction of those two ingredients, our business should thrive, because the passive long-only investors will not do well in that environment in my opinion, and hedge funds will do very well in that environment, on a relative basis." Bass is the founder and managing partner of Hayman Capital Management, where he gained a reputation for betting against subprime mortgages during the financial crisis. Volatility is sometimes seen as a plus for hedge fund managers, who are able to bet against stocks in treacherous market conditions unlike long-only funds. Throughout the recent rise in volatility, hedge funds have managed to outperform the market ever so slightly this year, up 0.35 percent as measured by the HFRI Fund Weighted Composite Index. In comparison, the S&P 500 has added 0.27 percent since January. That tiny outperformance is likely not enough to justify their huge fees, however. "March and the first quarter of 2018 have already defined a significantly divergent financial market and hedge fund performance environment than prior years, with the shift and volatility punctuated by escalation of trade and tariff politics and economics," HFR President Kenneth J. Heinz said in a statement earlier this month. "As most equity markets declined, hedge funds quickly adapted to low and non-correlated exposures across asset classes, and to capital protection and preservation positions, en route to producing a first-quarter gain," he added. "It is likely that these trends will not only continue, but accelerate into mid-year, driving uncorrelated gains and industry capital growth." The advent of artificial intelligence and machine learning was another key topic addressed by hedge fund experts in the paper, though many thought it could be a long time until investors fully trust algorithms with their cash. "It will be tough for technology to truly disrupt investing in the field of financial advice and to usurp the role of the traditional wealth manager unilaterally," said MIT finance professor Robert Merton. "The technology industry narrative appears to underestimate the importance and difficulty of acquiring trust. Technology does not create trust on its own," Merton added. "The incorporation of technology by wealth advisors with the trust asset will actually enhance their business, and not destroy it." President Donald Trump on Tuesday took aim at California Gov. Jerry Brown's decision to limit his state's National Guard troops' mission at the border. "Looks like Jerry Brown and California are not looking for safety and security along their very porous Border," the president tweeted. "He cannot come to terms for the National Guard to patrol and protect the Border. The high crime rate will only get higher. Much wanted Wall in San Diego already started!" TWEET The Democratic governor said he would not permit National Guard troops to fully engage in immigration enforcement on the border. Such a move would run counter to Trump's plan to bolster the military presence at the border as he awaits construction of his long-promised wall. Brown's press office responded to Trump's vitriol Tuesday morning with a tweet of its own, complete with an "eyeroll" emoji. BROWN TWEET The Republican governors of Arizona, New Mexico and Texas are already on board with Trump's National Guard demand and have moved quickly to draw up deployment action plans. On Tuesday, a National Security Council representative, who declined to be named, addressed the matter with a softer tone than the president's. "The Trump Administration is committed to improving our national security by strengthening controls at our southern border," the representative told CNBC. "Until Congress acts on President Trump's common-sense solutions, the National Guard is helping to fill the gap. We remain hopeful that California will accept our help to stop the flow of drugs and gang members across the border into their communities." The Trump administration said Monday that California had rejected the terms for troop deployment set out by the president. "The governor determined that what we asked for is unsupportable, but we will have other iterations," said Ronald Vitiello, U.S. Customs and Border Protection's acting deputy commissioner. Space is a booming business and it's only going to get bigger, said Dylan Taylor, founding partner at Space Angels, a privately held financial services firm that focuses exclusively on the aerospace industry. "Space is the hottest sector right now," Taylor told CNBC's Morgan Brennan during an exclusive interview on Tuesday at the 34th Space Symposium in Colorado Springs, Colorado. The event is the largest gathering of space professionals on Earth, with more than 9,000 people expected to attend. And the industry right now valued around $339 billion is expected to grow to $1 trillion. "If you look at internet of things, if you look at driverless cars, if you look at connecting the next 2 billion people to the internet, that is all enabled by space," Taylor said on "Power Lunch" on Tuesday. "And certainly, collecting data from space, creating products and services around that, that's a huge investment thesis as well." Two categories Taylor recommended for investors looking to get into the space sector are launch, and data or Earth observation. Taylor, who has invested in more than 40 space ventures, recommended companies such as SpaceX and Vector Launch for investing in the category of launch, or "actually getting mass to orbit." The category of data or Earth observation includes things such as optical and infrared imagery of the Earth. "Creating products and services to enable smart cities, the internet of things, driverless cars and things like that," Taylor said. But investing in the unknown is not for the faint of heart, Taylor said. He recommends finding a firm that specializes in early-stage investing or an angel investment group, like his own, that understands the industry. President Donald Trump rejected a fresh round of sanctions set to be imposed against Russia, The New York Times reported. The White House earlier contradicted the ambassador to the United Nations, Nikki Haley, who said there would be sanctions. (NY Times) * US and Britain warn of cybersecurity threat from Russia (NY Times) Trump's administration is seeking to assemble an Arab force to replace the U.S. military contingent in Syria, according to The Wall Street Journal. The details emerged days after the U.S.-led strikes on sites associated with the country. In an op-ed published in USA Today this morning, President Trump said the American people "are winning" and the U.S. economy is "back and roaring." He also said the new tax cut bill is lowering the size of Americans bills. * Today is Tax Day. How to deal if you still haven't filed (CNBC) Trump's re-election campaign paid $93,000 to a law firm to fight back against Michael Wolff's White House tell-all book, "Fire and Fury." The payments were largely in compensation for taking on ex-White House chief strategist Steve Bannon. (CNBC) Sean Hannity addressed the revelation that the unnamed client of Michael Cohen, Trump's longtime personal attorney, was in fact the Fox news host. Hannity said that Cohen has never represented him "in any matter." (CNBC) * Stormy Daniels rips Cohen after court hearing deals blow to president and his fixer (CNBC) Sen. John McCain, who is battling brain cancer, is in stable condition after undergoing surgery for an intestinal infection related to diverticulitis. Cindy McCain, McCain's wife, said that he was "doing well after his surgery." (USA Today) North and South Korea are reportedly in talks to announce a permanent end to the officially declared military conflict between the two countries. A successful summit between the Koreas later this month could help pave the way for a meeting between Kim and Trump. (Munhwa Ilbo) China's economy grew 6.8 percent in the first quarter of 2018, topping the consensus estimate of 6.7 percent year-over-year growth for the quarter. The data marks the third-straight quarter of 6.8 percent growth for the world's second-largest economy. (CNBC) Tesla (TSLA) temporarily suspended production of its Model 3 in what the automaker is calling a planned production pause. The suspension is expected to last four to five days. (BuzzFeed News) CNBC has learned Amazon (AMZN) Business, which sells bulk items to business customers, has shelved its plan to sell and distribute pharmaceutical products after considering it last year. Instead, it is focused on selling less sensitive medical supplies. Walmart (WMT) is close to unveiling an entirely redesigned website as it battles Amazon (AMZN) for shoppers' dollars online. The new design will be much more personalized and is expected to create a "fashion destination" online. (CNBC) Additionally, the Supreme Court will consider whether to let states force out-of-state online retailers to collect sales taxes on purchases. South Dakota, appealing a lower court decision, is being supported by Trump's administration. (Reuters) Facebook's product management director wrote a blog post explaining when the social network and its partners collect your personal information and when it's shared. The company reiterated that it's not selling this information. (CNBC) Not even Fox News knew that conservative commentator Sean Hannity was a client of President Donald Trump's personal attorney Michael Cohen until it was revealed in court Monday and media ethics experts across the political spectrum are calling foul. Hannity is the host of a primetime opinion show on Fox News, as well as a conservative talk radio show. He regularly discusses the president's legal affairs and has often defended Cohen amid his mounting legal conflicts, particularly in the wake of an April 9 raid on the lawyer's office and residence. Hannity, an outspoken Trump supporter who has a warm relationship with the president, never disclosed on air that he received legal services from Cohen. Samuel Freedman, a professor at Columbia University's Graduate School of Journalism specializing in media ethics, said Hannity's omission was "clearly an ethical violation." "It's so blatant, it's not even a hard call," Freedman said, adding that he thinks Fox should cut ties with Hannity over the potential conflict of interest. "I don't think they'll do it, but I think they should fire him," Freedman said. "This is a major breach." It appeared to be a moot point Tuesday, however. Fox News said it still backed Hannity despite learning about his dealings with Cohen on Monday. "While Fox News was unaware of Sean Hannity's informal relationship with Michael Cohen and was surprised by the announcement in court yesterday, we have reviewed the matter and spoken to Sean and he continues to have our full support," the cable channel said in a statement. When CNBC told Freedman that Fox News said it would continue supporting Hannity, he said it was "totally unsurprising." The United States has to make it clear to Russian President Vladimir Putin that there are lines that the U.S. will not allow Russia to cross, former Defense Secretary Leon Panetta told CNBC on Tuesday. "There's no question we're in a new chapter of the Cold War with Russia," Panetta said on "Closing Bell." "There are an awful lot of steps that the Russians are taking to be very aggressive," he said. "Part of it is because they've read weakness into the United States, as well as our allies." Tensions have been escalating between the West and Russia over the civil war in Syria. Last Friday, a U.S.-led airstrike targeted Syria's chemical weapons infrastructure. It came one week after an alleged chemical weapons attack by Syrian President Bashar Assad that killed at least 60 people. Putin, who supports Assad's government, warned Sunday that further Western attacks on Syria would bring chaos to world affairs. Russia's involvement in Syria is just the country's latest act of aggression, suggested Panetta, who also served as CIA director under President Barack Obama and as chief of staff to President Bill Clinton. Russia came under fire for annexing Crimea in southern Ukraine and is accused of meddling in the 2016 U.S. presidential election. In a March interview with NBC News, Putin denied U.S. charges that he was behind the interference in the election which resulted in Donald Trump becoming president. Panetta believes the U.S. needs to show its power, which could open up an opportunity to have discussions with Putin. "The only way you deal with Putin is from strength, not from weakness," he said. On Sunday, Nikki Haley, U.S. ambassador to the United Nations, said new sanctions were coming to punish Russia for its support of Assad's government. However, on Monday, Trump delayed further action, Reuters reported. Trump's top economic advisor, Larry Kudlow, denied there was confusion over the issue. "I think the issue here is we have a set of sanctions and additional sanctions are under consideration but have not been determined," Kudlow, a former CNBC senior contributor, told reporters on Tuesday. Reuters contributed to this report. 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 Barnaby Lenon is chairman of the Independent Schools Council and chairman of governors of the London Academy of Excellence, a state school in East London sponsored by independent schools. He was headmaster of Harrow and has taught at Eton. With the current focus on social mobility, our critics will likely claim that independent schools are part of the problem rather than the solution. However, this ignores the significant work these schools are doing and the work they want to develop to help raise education standards for all children. The Conservative Party has a slightly awkward relationship with independent schools. I have met many MPs who, perhaps understandably, are not fully aware of the part the independent sector plays in the national education system. My message to them is: go and visit independent schools in your constituencies to find out first-hand the role these schools play within local communities. This might include learning about their valuable role as employers, helping to sustain local economies; how they provide transformational boarding school places to disadvantaged and vulnerable children, those who are looked-after and those on the edge of care; and what they are doing to offer more full bursaries to pupils who have been on free school meals. The larger independent schools, in particular, are working to take as many children on greatly reduced or nil fees as they can, widening access. Many headteachers were themselves in receipt of a free place at Direct Grant schools in the 1970s. They came from low-income families and are keen to see their schools return to being the engines of social mobility they were before the Direct Grant was abolished. A visit to an independent school will, no doubt, also include hearing about successful partnerships with state schools. Partnerships are under-reported but, when carried out effectively by schools choosing to work together to achieve clear and specific aims, have the potential to unlock new educational experiences for all involved. Since 1997, I have been engaged by various governments to work up independent and state sector partnership projects. So I know that when governments and oppositions talk about getting independent schools to do more to help the state sector, they are rarely talking about the great mass of independent schools. They are really referring to a relatively small group of larger schools with a reputation for academic success something which was acknowledged in the last Conservative manifesto when it referred to 100 leading schools becoming involved with state school sponsorship. However, its important to understand that these large schools are not typical. The average size of the 2,300-odd independent schools in the UK is about 300 pupils and they are mostly small junior schools. Approximately 500 of them are special schools for children and young people with special educational needs (and less than half are academically selective). The topic of state school sponsorship is an interesting one. In 2012, I helped to set up a state school for sixth formers in the London Borough of Newham the London Academy of Excellence (LAE) supported by six independent schools as well as HSBC. Situated on the border of Newham and Tower Hamlets, two of the most deprived local authority areas in the UK, LAEs intake is fully reflective of the areas diverse social and ethnic mix. More than two-thirds of students are from families that havent sent a child to university before and more than a third are eligible for free school meals. LAE is now one of the highest performing state schools in the UK. In 2017, 60 per cent of A-level grades were A*/A and 99 per cent were A*-C; for the third year running, LAE was placed in the top one per cent of schools for value-added, an achievement which earned it the accolade Sunday Times Sixth Form College of the Year; and applications so far for entry in 2018 are well over 3,000. What exactly did the independent schools do to help, you might ask? They seconded staff without charge, and this helped reduce the cost of both teaching and financial management. They provided experienced teachers who could share teaching resources (many of the LAE teachers were quite new to the profession) and train-up LAE teachers. They checked that the standards expected by LAE staff were right that pupils who were expected to aim for top grades were indeed working at that level. They shared their experience of Oxbridge preparation and tips for completing UCAS forms successfully. It was clearly a successful formula, because last year a second LAE started, this time in Tottenham and supported by ten independent schools. If politicians and influencers were to sit down with the independent and state schools involved in successful sponsorship projects to simply ask what works and what doesnt, they would learn a great deal. These are conversations we want to, and should, be having. Virtually all independent schools are now fully committed to independent-state school partnerships. Not only do all of the young people involved benefit, so too do the staff and teachers taking part who themselves are the focus of partnerships which support training opportunities. Our schools very much want to play a more active role in tackling the issues around teacher recruitment and retention. We firmly believe we could do more. Within the past couple of years, we have seen the green shoots of progress, having partnered with our colleagues in the state sector to help develop pioneering training schemes in shortage subject areas. Were confident that both the National Maths and Physics school-centred initial teacher training (SCITT) and the National Modern Foreign Languages SCITT will grow, and believe given the opportunity independent schools could do more to encourage new talent to join the teaching profession. Every school, regardless of sector, wants to do all it can to help young people learn and develop. By bringing independent and state school leaders to the table with politicians in order to sustain an open dialogue about how to raise education standards, we all stand to learn, and crucially, our children and young people stand to gain. Henry Newman is Director of Open Europe. Reports in the Daily Telegraph and elsewhere suggest the Brexit negotiations are in danger of stalling again, with the EU insisting that new solutions must be offered for the Irish border, and arguing that trade talks will not start properly until after March 2019. Its still clear that both sides want to reach agreement on the withdrawal aspects of Brexit the divorce bits well before the end of Article 50. But the EU now seems keen to defer the more detailed future aspects of the negotiations into the transition, which as Ive long argued, will be an extension of the negotiation period, albeit with the UK outside the EU. Last week, Michel Barnier told a collection of European reporters that the EU would be prepared to respond to a change in the UKs red lines on leaving the Single Market and Customs Union even during the transition. What this means is that the EU is open to a radical re-think on the nature of the UK-EU future partnership, even if that comes after formal exit negotiations conclude in March 2019. The EU has been consistently pressing the UK to soften its Brexit position and this is a further step in that direction. To my mind, this shift makes it more likely that the UK leaves the EU on track at the end of the two-year Article 50 period, but raises the stakes for the Government on crucial upcoming votes on a Customs Union. David Davis has been keen to accelerate progress in the negotiations. He remains bullish that the vast majority of the UKs future relationship with the EU can be locked down within the Article 50 period. In part, its his job to push ahead. But its also because he believes the UKs hand weakens once we start handing over money, paying the so-called divorce bill. Roughly half of that money, according to the OBR will fall due before the end of 2020, and once thats paid the UKs leverage will inevitably diminish. Davis is right to seek to get a move on. The longer the talks drag out, the greater the uncertainty for business. The Government should also press to agree as much as possible during Jean-Claude Junckers term as President of the European Commission which will end in late 2019. Of course these negotiations are highly complex, with much detail yet to be resolved. But its worth noting that the EUs current negotiating mandate starts from the position of a zero-tariff, zero-quota trade deal. In most trade talks, the abolition of tariff and quota lines are the first significant hurdle which has to be cleared. In Brussels last week, I found the mood was far from bleak, with UK officials quietly confident that a reasonable compromise agreement can eventually be reached. As Lord Lamont pointed out at an Open Europe event in that city last Tuesday, the talks have actually progressed remarkably smoothly so far with no serious breakdowns or walk outsyet. At the same event the CDUs Elmar Brok, who chairs the European Parliaments Foreign Affairs Committee, told the audience that the unity shown between the European Parliament, Council and Commission was unprecedented in his career and hes been an MEP since 1980. Its certainly true that Brexit has brought much of the EU27 together. Predictions that the German car industry would speak out to demand a particular Brexit deal have so far proved wide of the mark. Various north-European countries, which relied on the UK as a member to block EU reforms or policies which would have threatened their interests, offer warm words to Brits in private but little public support. Dutch Prime Minister Rutte even preceded a recent speech on the need for EU reforms by taking a pop at the UK and Theresa May for Brexit. Ireland, which promised to be Britains closest ally during the second phase of the talks, is engaged in a tense stand off over its border. Some expect Germany to sweep in and offer some sort of a grand compromise. But, as my colleague Leopold Traugott explained, Germany has failed to respond effectively to many of President Macrons plans for European reform. If Angela Merkel cant sort out the Eurozones issues, will she really be able to solve Brexit? David Cameron learned the hard way that waiting for Merkel to deliver is not always a winning strategy. And since then her hand has been weakened by her electoral setback. Shes no longer quite the figure she was. Meanwhile, new research from our sister organisation in Berlin finds that 65 per cent of Germans back the EU taking a no compromise position during the negotiations. But that shouldnt mean that the UK gives up. We need to keep making the case for a flexible, pragmatic trade arrangement with the UK and the EU that can work for both sides and be sustainable in the long-term. We need to keep pointing out that the EU itself has shown a remarkable flexibility in its existing arrangements with Canada, the Ukraine, Switzerland and so on. There is no single model for third-country relationships. This case needs to be made in Brussels but also directly with individual member states. Our diplomats are busy doing just this. And its not true that the EU has been perfectly united, nor that its negotiating positions have remained static. We have seen some openings, for example on the question of financial services. Earlier in the year, Gentiloni, the Italian Prime Minister, broke ranks and argued that the future deal must include financial services. Brussels initially tried to insist that the UK could only choose between a relationship like Norway or like Canada, but then Charles Michel, the Belgian Prime Minister, called for Canada plus plus and Emmanuel Macron told Andrew Marr that the UK could have something between the full access [of the Single Market] and a trade agreement. If Merkel may not have the capacity or inclination to deliver a compromise, another European leader might. While most leaders seem more interested in the legal complexities and the technical details of Brexit, Macron seems instinctively to understand that Brexit or the question of Britains place in Europe is first and foremost about politics and diplomacy. Interestingly the French are starting to look outside of the framework of the EU as they formulate a new European military crisis force. Its true of course that France sees opportunities from Brexit, not least for Paris as a financial or digital hub. And many French officials are hard-line about protecting the Single Market. But its also true that Macron recognises the strategic importance of the UK. Might he just decide that its worth brokering a way through? CORNWALL, Ontario Hope in Bloom is coming to Cornwall. The Cornwall Chapter of Parkinson Canada will be selling tulips at the Fermented Grape on Brookdale Ave. in Cornwall and at FreshCo on Ninth St. on Friday, April 20, 2018. The money will be going towards Parkinson Canada to support research and support services for those suffering from Parkinsons Disease and their families. Vernon Eccles has suffered from Parkinsons disease since 2011. He and his wife Penny have been involved in the local chapter of Parkinson Canada and say that while the Hope in Bloom fundraiser takes place in other parts of Canada, it has yet to be established in Cornwall, so they decided to help spearhead the project. At first, we didnt know what it was, said Penny Eccles. He took part in a gait improvement course because we knew something was wrong. It was only after going to a neurologist in 2012 that Vernon was diagnosed with Parkinsons Disease, but he and his wife recognized that he had been suffering from the symptoms of Parkinsons for at least a year. I looked up the symptoms of Parkinsons and went down the checklist, tick, tick tick, said Penny. Penny and Vernon hope to sell 60 tulips, each in their own pot during the fundraiser. The tulips will be available at FreschCo just for April 20, but they will be at the Fermented Grape for a full week. Vernon explained that he has a close connection to Cornwall and very fond memories. Vernon trained in Cornwall for his career in business and took his oath of citizenship in Cornwall. Cornwall has always been very kind to me, he said. There are 25 new Parkinsons cases every day in Canada and there are around 300 people living with the disease in the Cornwall area. For those looking for support, they can contact Parkinson Canada who will direct them to the local Parkinsons support group who meet the second Wednesday of every month. CORNWALL, Ontario Ontario Progressive Conservative leader Doug Ford made a brief stop in Cornwall on April 17. The Tuesday morning stop at the Ramada Inn was packed with supporters. The event was hosted by Progressive Conservative MPP for Stormont, Dundas and South Glengarry Jim McDonell. In his address to the crowd, Ford hit many of the campaign messages that he has hit upon across the province. I can tell you that Kathleen Wynne has zero, zero respect for taxpayers, he said. You put your hand in your left pocket and theres Kathleen Wynne, you put your hand in your right pocket and in your other pocket is Justin Trudeau. The government doesnt create jobs, the government creates the environment to create jobs, Ford said to a round of applause from the crowd. The meeting wrapped up with Ford walking around the room shaking hands with supporters. Jim McDonell gave the party leader a gift of cheese from Glengarry Fine Cheese. CORNWALL, Ontario As a result of an ongoing investigation by the Criminal Investigation Division into an incident that occurred in March, 2018, Kyle Delorme, 25, of Cornwall was arrested on April 16, 2018 and charged with the following: Disguise with intent Break and enter Possession of an instrument for breaking into coin operated devices Breach of probation Mischief under $5,000 Theft under $5,000 Throughout the month of March, 2018, it is alleged the man attended numerous businesses in the city of Cornwall and used a bar to gain entry to multiple change machines. The man removed a quantity of money and caused damage to the machines. Police were contacted and an investigation ensued. On April 16, 2018 a member of the Cornwall Community Police Service attended the Cornwall Courthouse as the man was in custody on unrelated charges. He was charged accordingly and remained in custody for a bail hearing. THREATS CORNWALL, Ontario A 24-year-old Iroquois man was arrested on April 16, 2018 and charged with threats. It is alleged on April 11, 2018 the man threatened to harm his ex-girlfriend and an investigation ensued. On April 16, 2018 a member of the Cornwall Community Police Service attended the Cornwall Courthouse as the man was in custody on unrelated charges. He was charged accordingly and remained in custody for a bail hearing. His name was not released as it would identify the victim in the matter. ASSAULT CORNWALL, Ontario A 47-year-old Cornwall man was arrested on April 16, 2018 and charged with assault. It is alleged during an argument on April 16, 2018 the man assaulted his girlfriend and police were contacted to investigate. During the investigation the man was taken into custody, charged accordingly and held for a bail hearing. His name was not released as it would identify the victim in the matter. WARRANT, BREAK AND ENTER CORNWALL, Ontario Amanda Lalonde, 33, of Cornwall was arrested on April 16, 2018 on the strength of a warrant. It is alleged the woman breached her conditional sentence order and a warrant was issued for her arrest. It is also alleged on April 7, 2018, the woman entered the residence of a man known to her without permission and police were contacted to investigate. During a traffic stop on April 17, 2018, police located the woman. She was taken into custody on the strength of the warrant and held for a bail hearing. There were 48 calls for service in the City of Cornwall in the last 24 hours (8 a.m. the previous day to 8 a.m. the day of the release). To see whats happening in your neighbourhood visit our Crime Plot Map. CCPS reserves the right not to post all calls for service in order to protect the identity of the victims. Cisco Systems is bringing a subscription consumption model to another of its legacy product lines, continuing its drive to modernize its offerings and purchasing options in a quickly developing market. This time, the networking giant is offering its routing portfolio on a subscription basis. The offering follows the introduction of its subscription-based Catalyst 9000 series of switches a little less than a year ago. Since then, the Catalyst 9000 family has become the fastest Cisco line to reach $1 billion run rate versus revenue, executives said at the company's Partner Connection Week in Nassau, the Bahamas. David Ito, vice president, solutions practice at Black Box Network Services, a Westlake, Ohio, solution provider that works with Cisco, said offering the routing portfolio by subscription would allow Black Box to remove complexity from customers' environments. [Related: 10 Things Partners Need To Know About Cisco's Intent-Based Networking For IoT] "It starts to remove the hardware complexity of our deployments," Ito said. "In the old school, you've got a router, you've got switches, you've got an edge switch; there are so many different points of failure. Now, the router's going to have a lot more software capability to it and it's going to streamline deployment." "Customers are asking for that," said Kevin McCann, COO of Continental Resources, a Bedford, Mass., solution provider that works with Cisco. "It's another offering to present to them, you just have to makes sure it fits with what their needs are." When done right, the offering could spur Continental's already strong growth with Cisco, McCann said. Continental does about half its business with Cisco, and McCann said that business is growing between 6 percent and 10 percent annually. The subscription offering covers the entire Cisco enterprise routing portfolio, according to Prashanth Shenoy, Cisco vice president of enterprise and IoT networking marketing, including ISR and ASR models, routers included in the Viptela solution Cisco acquired last August, Enterprise Network Compute Systems and vEdge virtual routers. The move follows the introduction of the Catalyst 9000 series of switches, which form the foundation of the San Jose, Calif., company's intent-based networking strategy and have attracted thousands of customers and $1 billion in revenue in less than a year. The move is a nod to the market's demand for flexible, pay-as-you-go consumption models over expensive proprietary hardware. Shenoy explained that the subscription model can be used to provide customers with a cloud-managed option or an on-premises solution. Also, "you have the capability of porting this from one platform to another to provide flexibility of deployment. You pick your hardware or your virtual appliance and you get flexibility of management." Jason Gallo, Cisco global director of partner sales, said offering a subscription model not only gives the customer what it needs, but makes their relationships with partners more stable and longer-lasting. "The addition of these new consumption models and how you can tailor the way the customer wants to consume the technology over a period of time is happening across Cisco, and that makes the partner a lot more sticky. We want to see a return to growth in routing. New software consumption models are something partners are really excited about, and now we have that same set of benefits across the routing portfolio." Cisco Systems has identified more than 168,000 systems that are potentially exposed via its Cisco Smart Install Client, which the U.S. government said is being targeted by Russian state-sponsored hackers. In an alert issued April 16, the U.S. Computer Emergency Readiness Team said Russian hackers are attacking networking devices, network management protocols and the Cisco Smart Install Client that belong to governments, infrastructure providers and businesses. "Russian state-sponsored cyber actors have conducted both broad-scale and targeted scanning of Internet address spaces. Such scanning allows these actors to identify enabled Internet-facing ports and services, conduct device fingerprinting, and discover vulnerable network infrastructure devices," said the April 16 alert, which was based on results of analytic efforts between the Department of Homeland Security, the FBI and the United Kingdom's National Cyber Security Centre. [Related: 10 Things Partners Need To Know About Cisco's Intent-Based Networking For IoT] Russian hackers are leveraging a number of legacy or weak protocols and service ports associated with network administration activities to identify vulnerable devices, extract device configurations, gain login credentials, modify device firmware and operating systems, and copy or redirect traffic through Russian-controlled infrastructure, according to the alert. The protocols being targeted include Telnet, Hypertext Transport Protocol, Simple Network Management Protocol and Cisco Smart Install. Cisco issued its own advisory warning this month regarding its Smart Install Client solution being leveraged to compromise customer devices. "Several incidents in multiple countries, including some specifically targeting critical infrastructure, have involved the misuse of the Smart Install protocol," wrote Cisco Talos, the company's threat intelligence group, in an advisory warning April 5. "We are taking an active stance, and are urging customers, again, of the elevated risk and available remediation paths." Cisco's Smart Install Client is a legacy utility designed to allow zero-touch installation of new Cisco equipment, specifically Cisco switches. The protocol can be abused to modify the TFTP (Trivial File Transfer Protocol) server setting, exfiltrate configuration files via TFTP, modify the configuration file, replace the IOS image and set up accounts, allowing for the execution of IOS commands, according to Cisco Talos. "Although this is not a vulnerability in the classic sense, the misuse of this protocol is an attack vector that should be mitigated immediately," said Cisco. Throughout the end of 2017 and early 2018, Cisco Talos observed attackers trying to scan clients using this vulnerability. During Cisco Talos' investigation, the company identified more than 168,000 systems that are potentially exposed via the Cisco Smart Install Client. "The results were extremely troubling," wrote Cisco Talos in its advisory. However, the team did say it was an improvement from the reported numbers in 2016, when security firm Tenable observed 251,000 exposed Cisco Smart Install Clients. In an interview with CRN, Nirav Sheth, vice president of architectures, solutions and engineering in Cisco's global partner organization, said the company often stays ahead of attacks with its threat intelligence engine and Cisco Talos team. "We see more threats every day than Google sees searches every day via our threat intelligence engine," said Sheth. "However, there are times when potential vulnerabilities may be found externally, for anyone in the industry. When those are brought to our attention -- whether it's Cisco or anybody else -- we're going to act as quickly as possible to address any potential risks or vulnerabilities that are out there and deliver to our customers best-in-class security capabilities." Robert Keblusek, CTO of Sentinel Technologies, a Downers Grove, Ill.-based Cisco partner ranked No. 117 on the 2017 CRN Solution Provider 500 list, said the global networking leader is one of the "biggest targets" for hackers in the world. "If you're going to find a compromise and get into somebody's network and move laterally, which is ideally what an attacker would like to do, then you're going to go after the biggest market share in terms of vulnerability because you can create the biggest impact with your attack," said Keblusek. "They're capturing network traffic. So the potential to directly capture credentials and passwords is pretty high." Sentinel has reached out to its customers following the Cisco Talos report this month, but has yet to find a vulnerable customer. "While we've seen customers regularly running updates on endpoints and servers, we dont see them doing that in switching. So they'll be running very old versions of code," said Keblusek. "It's a good warning to make sure that if you're running a network that's secure, you need to take into consideration your routing, your switching, your foundation infrastructure. It's not a set-it-and-forget it environment. You need to secure it." Cisco customers can determine if a device has been impacted by running the command "show vstack config" that will enable a company to determine if the Smart Install Client is active. The easiest way to mitigate the issue is to run the command "no vstack" on the affected device, according to Cisco Talos. Cisco is strongly encouraging all customers to review their architecture, use the tools provided by Talos to scan their network, and remove Cisco Smart Install Client from all devices where it is not used. VMware Tuesday made a major update to its vSAN software-defined software, including redesignating it as hyper-converged infrastructure. VMware vSAN 6.7, the latest iteration of the software, was unveiled in conjunction with that of VMware vSphere 6.7, the company's hybrid cloud management platform. vSAN is a fast-growing business with over 10,000 customers currently and growing by 100 customers a week, said Lee Caswell, vice president of products, storage and availability for the Palo Alto, Calif.-based company. [Related: 19 Powerful Hyper-Converged Infrastructure Solutions: New Choices From A Narrowing Field Of Vendors] "Hyper-converged infrastructure buyers are really infrastructure buyers," Caswell told CRN. "Most of our customers are trying to get out of managing storage. Software-defined storage sounds like you have to manage things." vSAN, on the other hand, automates that management across on-premises and cloud environments while integrating easily with VMware vSphere and other environments, Caswell said. "We are the only hyper-converged infrastructure offering running in the cloud," he said. "Not connecting to the cloud. Running in the cloud. Our customers are moving to the cloud, and they want all the services they use on-premises to be in the cloud." The semantics of calling VMware vSAN a hyper-converged infrastructure platform instead of a software-defined storage platform makes sense, said Michael Strong, co-owner and chief operating officer at Blue Layer IT, a Lubbock, Texas-based solution provider and VMware channel partner. Software-defined storage does indeed imply a separation of storage and networking, but with hyper-converged infrastructure everything revolves around the virtual machine, Strong told CRN. "You don't look at traditional infrastructure and say, 'Let's create a new VM,'" he said. "You need the LUN, you need to provision the VM and pick out the specifications, and you end up with silos of storage. But with hyper-converged infrastructure, the whole ecosystem is based on the VM." While VMware vSAN can be deployed as a stand-alone offering, it makes sense to be deployed along with vSphere, Caswell said. "In the cloud, they are integrated together all the time," he said. "And because customers expect it to work in the cloud, it integrates with VMware NSX [software-defined networking] to connect public and private clouds." New in VMware vSAN 6.7 is an HTML 5 user interface, Caswell said. "It's a modern front end," he said. "It's a beautiful front end." It's about time VMware adopted HTML 5, Strong said. "That means tremendous security enhancements," he said. "It gives a consistent view across the entire environment, and provides a cohesive interface with vSphere. It's the modern way to go." Also new with VMware vSAN 6.7 is the ability to integrate its performance and capacity monitoring and capabilities with the VMware vCenter management platform, Caswell said. "Partners can now go into individual virtual machines and set up monitoring and alerts as a service for customers," he said. "They can use it to initially ensure vSAN is up and running, and then add other services above the core." The integration of vSAN to vCenter was a long time coming, Strong said. "VMware administrators spend the bulk of their time in vCenter," he said. "That's why so [much] third-party software is written to vCenter. This is eliminating silos. The Holy Grail for admins is everything within a single pane of glass." vSAN 6.7 is also designed to bring more workloads to the platform, with an emphasis on cloud-native applications such as NoSQL databases including Cassandra, Hadoop and MongoDB, as well as to clustered Windows Server environments, Caswell said. "Customers need data resiliency on top of vSAN resiliency," he said. "Now the applications work in parallel instead of against each other." Also new is vSAN ReadyCare, which VMware introduced to improve the support experience in hyper-converged infrastructure environments, Caswell said. VMware is increasing the number of health checks provided by vSAN, and now reporting the health check data through the VMware Analytics Cloud, an artificial intelligence health engine that detects anomalies and reports them proactively to customers, he said. "If a customer has an issue, our tech gets access to the latest alert information," he said. "We've doubled the size of our support staff team to account for the growing number of customers and the new analytics information." The VMware Analytics Cloud "was developed internally, and runs on a lot of internal systems," Caswell said. "We use it to understand the health of our systems. And if we can run on it, others can run on it." All the new capabilities of VMware vSAN 6.7, which is slated to be released in late April or early May, will be available on the vSAN Ready Node appliances several server vendors build by combining their servers with the vSAN software. Those appliances may also include NSX or VMware Cloud Foundation, he said. vSAN 6.7 will also be included on future shipments of Dell EMC VxRail hyper-converged infrastructure appliances, he added. North American cruise capacity is projected to grow nearly 40 percent, from an estimated 14.5 million passengers in 2018 to more than 20 million by 2027, according to the 2018-2019 Cruise Industry News Annual Report. Carnival Corporation has the largest market share today with 43.8 percent for Carnival Cruise Line, which is the single largest brand in the market, alongside Princess, Holland America and Seabourn. Due to more aggressive growth by other companies and new companies entering the market, that market share will shrink to 37.5 percent by 2027. Royal Caribbean is the second largest company with a combined market share of 29.6 percent for its three brands this year, which will grow slightly to 30.6 percent by 2027. Norwegian Cruise Line Holdings will also see its market share grow for is brands, from 15.2 percent this year to 16 percent over the next 10 years. The projections are based on known new ship deployments ,changes and withdrawals. On an annual basis, North American market capacity will be up 6.4 percent this year, 7 percent in 2019, 3.8 percent in 2020, 5.6 percent in 2021, 6.7 percent in 2022 and 5.1 percent in 2023, before it tapers off to a slower growth rate from 2024 through 2027. The fleet will grow from 221 ships and 308,031 berths to 268 ships and 406,271 berths over the 10-year period. About the Annual Report: The Cruise Industry News Annual Report is the only book of its kind, presenting the worldwide cruise industry through 2027 in 400 pages. Statistics are independently researched. See a preview by clicking here. The report covers everything from new ships on order to supply-and-demand scenarios from 1987 through 2027+. Plus there is a future outlook, complete growth projections for each cruise line, regional market reports, and detailed ship deployment by region and market, covering all the cruise lines. Order the 2018-2019 edition today. ExxonMobil has today announced that it will supply fuels that comply with the International Maritime Organizations (IMO) 0.5% sulphur cap in ports in Northwest Europe, the Mediterranean and Singapore. Additional locations will be announced throughout 2018, according to a statement. Our new suite of compliant fuels will include residual and distillate grades. We are at a very advanced stage in the development of these fuels, therefore making us well positioned to help customers meet the reduced sulphur limit ahead of the IMOs 2020 implementation date, said Luca Volta, Marine Fuels Venture Manager, ExxonMobil. Close collaboration with our global manufacturing, research and development teams is crucial to this process. This integrated approach has helped us to develop fuels that not only meet the ISO 8217-2017 specification, but also ensures our customers get the high quality and compliant options they need through our stringent testing protocols and fit-for-use assessments, said Volta. ExxonMobils IMO-compliant fuels are being formulated using proprietary patented technology that can help identify potential compatibility issues during the development process, the company said. We have developed proprietary methods for determining the compatibility of various grades of fuels as well as methods for modifying fuel composition to improve quality, stability and compatibility, said Mike Noorman, Head of Fuels Technology, ExxonMobil Research & Engineering. Our patented technology is helping us to develop products that address the potential hazards vessel operators could face when mixing fuels, said Volta. Rivertrace has launched its SMART ESM monitor at the Sulphur Cap 2020 Conference, Awards and Exhibition being held April 17-18 in Amsterdam, The Netherlands. With the pending sulphur cap regulations in sight, a popular solution for shipowners to ensure compliance is to install an exhaust gas cleaning system (EGCS), also known as scrubbers. Wet scrubber systems use wash water to remove the pollutants from the exhaust gas, and the wash water being discharged must be monitored at all times to ensure it is within the limits set by the regulating body, the company said. The Smart ESM developed by Rivertrace, is a wash water monitor that is suitable for both the inlet and outlet of a wet exhaust gas cleaning system, measuring and recording PAH, Turbidity, Temperature and pH, on open-loop, closed-loop and hybrid scrubber systems. The Smart ESM is fully compliant with MEPC 259(68) and provides reliable information to ensure compliance with the worldwide SOx limits. Mike Coomber, Managing Director of Rivertrace said: We are excited to launch the Smart ESM which is the latest in our innovative range of monitoring products. The 2020 global sulphur limit is an important milestone for our industry and we are delighted that we are able to offer such a positive contribution to ensuring the ongoing compliance to new regulations which will reduce harmful impacts of shipping on the environment. We are working in partnership with a number of OEMs ensuring we supply a complimentary and complete solution. The Smart ESM has a large 10 touch screen display which provides a flexible user interface and data is relayed to the ships main control system via an Ethernet connection and 4-20 mA analogue outputs and has the ability to interact with other systems using Modbus protocols. The monitor provides onscreen graphs showing either live data or historic hourly, daily or weekly figures. Coral Expeditions expanded their cruise offering with the development of a series of themed expeditions in its annual sailing calendar, the company said. General Manager, Mark Fifield explained: As a leader of expedition cruising, our on-board experience is renowned for delivering enjoyment and education to our guests. Our annual series of themed departures continues to develop around pillars of maritime history, natural seasons, arts and culture and regional food and wine. We are excited to continue to be leaders in the market and look forward to working with key curators to deliver this unique offering to our guests. Expedition sailings start with an indigenous art voyage this October to Cape York and Anthem Land. Ports include Yirrkala, Maningrida, Elcho Island and Badu Island. Joined by guest artist and curator, Brian Robinson, guests will learn about song lines and stories that shaped this country. An Australian cuisine cruise is next up, also visiting Cape York and Anthem Land. This Australian Cuisine themed itinerary along Australias remote northern coastline will be hosted by award-winning chef Craig Squires. Expedition guests can look forward to signature menu items, cooking demonstrations and presentations showcasing how unique ingredients can be incorporated into modern dishes at home. During the sailing across coastal Arnhem Land all the way to the Great Barrier Reef, Squires will be hosting cooking demonstrations featuring unique Australian ingredients. Squires will also prepare special menus with locally sourced ingredients from the rich and vast landscapes of this journey. Other sailings include: A Yachtsmans Cruise Sydney to Hobart Race Special | December 2018 Coastal Treks of Tasmania | January 2018 Wildlife and Warriors of West Papua | May 2019 Stamford-based hedge fund Land & Buildings said this week that it would not vote for the CEO-chairman of a major data-center company in its May 3 board election, as it steps up its shareholder activism. As an approximately 3 percent shareholder of Overland Park, Kan.-based QTS Realty Trust, Land & Buildings plans to withhold its votes for QTS Chairman and CEO Chad Williams and William Grabe, chairman of the companys Compensation Committee. The move would send a clear message that failing corporate governance and compensation practices and underperforming earnings would not be accepted, Land & Buildings Founder and Chief Investment Officer Jon Litt said in a statement. Presentations issued in the past week by Land & Buildings and QTS have ratcheted up the tensions. The misleading claims the company made (in its presentation) - and, just as importantly, the facts they did not address - are quite telling, Litt said. QTS response is the latest in a pattern of actions by the company and its Board of Directors to divert shareholders attention away from the manner in which Mr. Williams and the board have created a culture of self-enrichment with absolutely zero accountability - all at the expense of the true owners of the company. A message left Tuesday for QTS was not immediately returned. QTS provides data-center solutions across more than 6 million square feet of owned mega scale data center space throughout North America, according to its website. Many of Land & Buildings misgivings center on QTS executive compensation structure. Williams employment agreement requires the company to nominate him as board chairman and allows him to walk away with more than $8.8 million, if that condition were not met, according to Litt. Mr. Williams and the board wants investors to believe that management compensation is aligned with performance, despite compensation being discretionary, and despite the fact that compensation has risen even in the face (of) shareholder total return underperformance relative to QTS Data Center peers, Litt said. Land and Buildings defines those peers as four real estate investment trusts that own, operate and develop data centers, with a significant U.S. footprint: CyrusOne, CoreSite, Digital Realty Trust and Equinix. On Tuesday, Equinix shares closed around $410, followed by around $105 for CoreSite and Digital Realty Trust and about $51 for CyrusOne. In comparison, QTS shares closed Tuesday around $36, down about 40 percent from a 52-week high of $61.55. In the past couple of years, Land and Buildings has mounted campaigns to shake up the management of other firms, including Hudsons Bay Co., the owner of Saks Fifth Avenue and Lord & Taylor; and Taubman Centers, the company that owns the Stamford Town Center mall. Last month, Litt announced he would again seek a place on the Taubman board. In Taubmans 2017 board election, Litt and an allied professor from the University of Delaware ran unsuccessfully for seats in a proxy contest to shake up Taubmans board. To avoid another proxy contest in this years election, Litt has suggested the company promptly appoint him to the board to show its commitment to listening to shareholders. As of last year, Land and Building held an ownership stake of about 1.5 percent in Taubman, whose portfolio includes 27 shopping centers in the U.S. and east Asia. Taubman announced last November the addition of two new directors, but Litt has questioned the impact of those changes. pschott@scni.com; 203-964-2236; twitter: @paulschott NEW YORK - A federal judge signaled Monday that she is unlikely to grant President Donald Trump's request to let him unilaterally determine what material seized last week from his personal lawyer is privileged, but she indicated that she may appoint an outside attorney to assess the records in an effort to carefully navigate the high-stakes case. The investigation of Cohen - which has pitted the president against his own Justice Department - took another unexpected turn Monday with the courtroom revelation that one of Cohen's legal clients was Fox News commentator Sean Hannity. Hannity played down the relationship, saying he occasionally asked Cohen legal questions but never paid him. On his show Monday night, he described it as a "minor relationship" that had to do with real estate. But the connection between the two men inserted another high-profile, polarizing Trump ally into the drama surrounding the criminal investigation of the president's longtime lawyer. The legal showdown began last week when FBI agents searched Cohen's office, home, hotel room and safe-deposit box, seizing records and documents as part of a probe by federal prosecutors in New York into possible bank fraud and wire fraud. Attorneys for Cohen and Trump have argued that the seizure could lead to violations of attorney-client privilege. At a hearing Monday before U.S. District Court Judge Kimba Wood, federal prosecutors sparred with lawyers for Cohen and a lawyer for Trump, who Sunday night asked the judge to let the president review the seized material before investigators go through it. Last week, Cohen's attorneys asked to review the documents, or have a court-appointed special master do so, to determine what material is protected by attorney-client privilege. Wood did not dismiss Cohen's motion, dealing the government team a setback by keeping open the possibility of having a third party evaluate the seized documents. The judge did not make a decision but said she was considering appointing a special master - not because of legal precedent but in the interest of avoiding the appearance of bias in the politically charged case. Wood said she wanted more information before ruling. "I have faith in the Southern District U.S. Attorney's Office that their integrity is unimpeachable," she said. But she added that to address concerns about "fairness" raised by Trump and Cohen's attorneys, "a special master might have a role here. Maybe not the complete role, but some role." Assistant U.S. Attorney Thomas McKay urged the judge to reject the requests from the president and Cohen. "Just because he has a powerful client doesn't mean he should get special treatment," said McKay, who warned that if the judge gives them an inch, "they're going to take a mile." Trump attorney Joanna Hendon told the judge that the president "is objecting to anyone other than himself making the initial determination of privilege," urging caution over haste. "This is an extraordinary case," she said. "There's tremendous risk that privileged material could not be recognized as such." It is unusual but not unprecedented for criminal investigators to seize documents from a lawyer, and there is a policy in place designed to shield information covered by attorney-client privilege. That procedure involves having a "taint team" - also called a "filter team" - of prosecutors outside the investigation review all the material and separate what is covered by the privilege. A lawyer's communications with a client are not covered by the privilege if they did not involve legal advice or were used to further a crime or fraud. Under the procedure, the taint team would turn over to the case investigators all the material that is relevant and not covered by attorney-client privilege. Wood said Monday that "a taint team is a viable option," but it was unclear how she would ultimately decide to assess the possibly privileged material. The judge asked the government to make digital copies of all the material it had seized and share those files with Cohen's lawyers, who would in turn share relevant information with lawyers for Trump and the Trump Organization. The goal, Wood said, would be to have a sense of how much work would be required of a special master and, therefore, how long that process might take. Over the Trump and Cohen teams' objections, Wood allowed the government's filter team to run mechanical searches on the material collected to determine an estimate of how many documents it thought might be privileged. The masses of reporters outside and inside the courthouse in Lower Manhattan underscored the importance of the case - and the strange circumstance of a Justice Department lawyer squaring off in court against a lawyer for the president to argue about potential evidence in a criminal probe of the president's private attorney. In the course of those arguments, Cohen's lawyers acknowledged that he has had only about three legal clients in the past year and a half - Trump, former Republican National Committee deputy finance chairman Elliot Broidy and a mystery third client whom Cohen initially didn't want to name. Under pressure from the judge, Cohen's legal team eventually revealed that Hannity was the third client - drawing gasps and some chuckles in the courtroom. The firebrand commentator is a close informal adviser to Trump, who has urged the public to watch Hannity's show, during which he regularly attacks the special counsel investigation into Russia's interference in the 2016 campaign. Last week, Hannity criticized the raids on Cohen's office and residences as "an unprecedented abuse of power," never mentioning his relationship with the Trump lawyer. Hannity said Monday that he occasionally turned to Cohen when he had legal questions but that he never paid him to be his attorney. "Michael Cohen has never represented me in any matter," the conservative commentator wrote on Twitter. "I never retained him, received an invoice, or paid legal fees. I have occasionally had brief discussions with him about legal questions about which I wanted his input and perspective." "I assumed those conversations were confidential, but to be absolutely clear they never involved any matter between me and a third-party," Hannity added. McKay's arguments for having a government filter team evaluate the seized material focused on the incentives that each side might have in its analysis of the documents. He noted that the U.S. Attorney's Office would face legal repercussions if it was overly narrow in its determination of privilege. He also argued that the effort to keep Hannity's name from being made public was "a perfect illustration of what will happen if Cohen's proposal carries the day." "If they are going to continue to hide behind overbroad claims of privilege, the process isn't going to work," he said. As he had on Friday, McKay said that the Cohen team's inability to demonstrate its claim "thousands, if not millions" of documents were likely subject to privilege mean that the court should dismiss Cohen's request out-of-hand. Cohen, who is under criminal investigation in possible bank fraud and campaign finance violations, has come under scrutiny by federal prosecutors for his efforts to tamp down negative stories about Trump. In late 2016, he paid adult-film star Stormy Daniels $130,000 in exchange for her agreement not to discuss an alleged sexual encounter with Trump. Last week, it was revealed that Cohen had helped Broidy negotiate a $1.6 million settlement with a former Playboy model who got pregnant after they had an affair. Daniels attended Monday's hearing, telling reporters afterward that "for years, Mr. Cohen has acted like he is above the law." "He has never thought that the little man - or especially, women, and even more, women like me - matter," she said. "That ends now. My attorney and I are committed to making sure that everyone finds out the truth." A letter from Cohen lawyer Todd Harrison filed Monday said that during last week's raids, agents seized "more than a dozen electronic devices and other items that include documents and data regarding topics and issues that have nothing to do with" the material sought in the search warrant. The letter says that from 1996 to 2006, Cohen had hundreds of clients, adding that he did not know if any material from those clients was in the seized files. From 2007 to 2017, Cohen worked as a lawyer for Trump and the Trump Organization. The letter said that in 2017 and 2018, Cohen had "at least ten clients," but seven of those were business consulting clients whose work did not involve legal advice. A federal judge signaled Monday that she is unlikely to grant President Donald Trump's request to let him unilaterally determine what material seized last week from his personal lawyer is privileged, but she indicated that she may appoint an outside attorney to assess the records in an effort to carefully navigate the high-stakes case. The investigation of Cohen - which has pitted the president against his own Justice Department - took another unexpected turn Monday with the courtroom revelation that one of Cohen's legal clients was Fox News commentator Sean Hannity. Hannity played down the relationship, saying he occasionally asked Cohen legal questions but never paid him. But the connection between the two men inserted another high-profile, polarizing Trump ally into the drama surrounding the criminal investigation of the president's longtime lawyer. The legal showdown began last week when FBI agents searched Cohen's office, home, hotel room and safe-deposit box, seizing records and documents as part of a probe by federal prosecutors in New York into possible bank fraud and wire fraud. Lawyers for Cohen and Trump have argued that the seizure could lead to violations of attorney-client privilege. At a hearing Monday before U.S. District Court Judge Kimba Wood, federal prosecutors sparred with lawyers for Cohen and a lawyer for Trump, who Sunday night asked the judge to let the president review the seized material before investigators go through it. Last week, Cohen's attorneys asked to review the documents, or have a court-appointed special master do so, to determine what material is protected by attorney-client privilege. The judge did not make a decision but said she was considering appointing a special master - not because of legal precedent but in the interest of avoiding the appearance of bias in the politically charged case. Wood said she wanted more information before ruling. "I have faith in the Southern District U.S. Attorney's Office that their integrity is unimpeachable," she said. But she added that to address concerns about "fairness" raised by Trump and Cohen's attorneys, "a special master might have a role here. Maybe not the complete role, but some role." Assistant U.S. Attorney Thomas McKay urged the judge to reject the requests from the president and Cohen. "Just because he has a powerful client doesn't mean he should get special treatment," said McKay, who warned that if the judge gives them an inch, "they're going to take a mile." Trump attorney Joanna Hendon told the judge that the president "is objecting to anyone other than himself making the initial determination of privilege," urging caution over haste. "This is an extraordinary case," she said. "There's tremendous risk that privileged material could not be recognized as such." It is unusual but not unprecedented for criminal investigators to seize documents from a lawyer, and there is a policy in place designed to shield information covered by attorney-client privilege. That procedure involves having a "taint team" - also called a "filter team" - of prosecutors outside the investigation review all the material and separate what is covered by the privilege. A lawyer's communications with a client are not covered by the privilege if they did not involve legal advice or were used to further a crime or fraud. Under the procedure, the taint team would turn over to the case investigators all the material that is relevant and not covered by attorney-client privilege. Wood said Monday that "a taint team is a viable option," but it was unclear how she would ultimately decide to assess the possibly privileged material. The judge asked the government to make digital copies of all the material it had seized and share those files with Cohen's lawyers, who would in turn share relevant information with lawyers for Trump and the Trump Organization. The goal, Wood said, would be to have a sense of how much work would be required of a special master and, therefore, how long that process might take. Over the Trump and Cohen teams' objections, Wood allowed the government's filter team to run mechanical searches on the material collected to determine an estimate of how many documents it thought might be privileged. The masses of reporters outside and inside the courthouse in Lower Manhattan underscored the importance of the case - and the strange circumstance of a Justice Department lawyer squaring off in court against a lawyer for the president to argue about potential evidence in a criminal probe of the president's private attorney. In the course of those arguments, Cohen's lawyers acknowledged that he has had only about three legal clients in the past year and a half - Trump, former Republican National Committee deputy finance chairman Elliot Broidy and a mystery third client whom Cohen initially didn't want to name. Under pressure from the judge, Cohen's legal team eventually revealed that Hannity was the third client - drawing gasps and some chuckles in the courtroom. The firebrand commentator is a close informal adviser to Trump, who has urged the public to watch Hannity's show, during which he regularly attacks the special counsel investigation into Russia's interference in the 2016 campaign. Last week, Hannity criticized the raids on Cohen's office and residences as "an unprecedented abuse of power," never mentioning his relationship with the Trump lawyer. Hannity said Monday that he occasionally turned to Cohen when he had legal questions but that he never paid him to be his attorney. "Michael Cohen has never represented me in any matter," the conservative commentator wrote on Twitter. "I never retained him, received an invoice, or paid legal fees. I have occasionally had brief discussions with him about legal questions about which I wanted his input and perspective." "I assumed those conversations were confidential, but to be absolutely clear they never involved any matter between me and a third-party," Hannity added. Cohen, who is under criminal investigation for possible bank fraud and campaign finance violations, has come under scrutiny by federal prosecutors for his efforts to tamp down negative stories about Trump. In late 2016, he paid adult-film star Stormy Daniels $130,000 in exchange for her agreement not to discuss an alleged sexual encounter with Trump. Last week, it was revealed that Cohen had helped Broidy negotiate a $1.6 million settlement with a former Playboy model who got pregnant after they had an affair. Daniels attended Monday's hearing, telling reporters afterward that "for years, Mr. Cohen has acted like he is above the law." "He has never thought that the little man - or especially, women, and even more, women like me - matter," she said. "That ends now. My attorney and I are committed to making sure that everyone finds out the truth." A letter from Cohen lawyer Todd Harrison filed Monday said that during last week's raids, agents seized "more than a dozen electronic devices and other items that include documents and data regarding topics and issues that have nothing to do with" the material sought in the search warrant. The letter says that from 1996 to 2006, Cohen had hundreds of clients, adding that he did not know if any material from those clients was in the seized files. From 2007 to 2017, Cohen worked as a lawyer for Trump and the Trump Organization. The letter said that in 2017 and 2018, Cohen had "at least ten clients," but seven of those were business consulting clients whose work did not involve legal advice. MILFORD A brother and sister who say they have strong and fond childhood food memories tied to West Haven are trying to recreate part of that with the opening of their new Italian-American restaurant and bar. Their chef and his recipes are from their old favorite restaurant the former Lucibellos Restaurant & Catering. Even their mom, a longtime waitress at the West Haven restaurant, has joined the team. The new eaterys name Luci Bs Kitchen and Cocktails is a nod to Lucibellos, said owners Nick Pierelli, 29, of North Branford, and his sister, Alex Pierelli, 25, a local resident and first-grade teacher at Forest Elementary in West Haven. Lucibellos Restaurant and Catering closed, and Nick and Alex missed the tastes, so they decided to give the restaurant business a try, partnering with chef Mark Lynch, one of the Lucibellos nephews, and a former chef there so he could share the family recipes. Lynch, now head chef at Luci Bs, has been dating Alex Pierelli for about two years, and his brother, Dave Lynch, is his assistant in the kitchen The family connections at the new eatery go deep. Mom Kim Pierelli Dabrowski is a full-time waitress at the new place. She worked at Lucibellos for years. Shes got so much experience, she can do anything in the restaurant business, Nick said of their mom, who still lives in West Haven. Even the sibling owners grandparents come in to help clean and prepare, while their aunt has taken the lead in decorating, and doing anything else she can. Although theyve only been open a couple of weeks, customers have begun a tradition of taking their photographs in front of the eat wall decorated with words each custom designed that are synonymous with eating, including: chow, pigout, nosh, delish, graze. The restaurant at 521 New Haven Ave. is spacious, with a bar on one side and casual dining on the other. The decor is an industrial theme freshly painted gray with a metal ceiling and wood tables nicely spread out. Luci Bs drink menu features a variety of craft beers, specialty drinks and wines. Nick Pierelli, who has a Snyders snack route he is in the process of selling, said hes been working seven days a week, 13 hours a day, but its worth it. Just as in his pretzel and chip route, the people keep him going, he said. I like the people. Its the people who keep us going, he said. Pierelli has a bachelors degree in business management from Southern Connecticut State University. Its a good first week. Another element that already makes the restaurant extra special is that Nick Pierelli recently proposed marriage there to his girlfriend, Kayla Worroll, who was surprised and said, Yes. Alex Pierelli works at the restaurant part-time as a waitress and whatever else is needed, but said she has no intention of leaving her teaching job. Mark Lynch is known for his signature stuffed clam appetizer, heaping portions of tasty chicken Parmesan and a special they run featuring porchetta, a pork dish specially seasoned with his special old-world spices. You cant get it anywhere like this, Nick Pierelli said of the porchetta. Lynch, who went on after Lucibellos eatery closed to become chef at the East End Yacht Club in Bridgeport, where he developed a following, quipped, I was taught by my Irish grandmother how to cook Italian. The restaurants steaks are hand-cut at an Italian import company. Residents of the area have been curious about the transformation, stopping in during remodeling, Nick Pierelli said. The space most recently was a bar and prior to that, a Chinese restaurant. Entrepreneur When it comes to 401(k)s and retirement plans, its important to help your employees out as much as possible. Make sure they take the time to learn how the plans can have a positive and outsized impact on their lives down the road. But, dont make it too easy. Dont just hand them brochures and paperwork and walk away. NEW HAVEN Approximately 20 Yale University students were arrested after they refused to leave the financial aid offices during a rally Monday as they demanded Yale remove what they describe as a financial burden for its low-income students on financial aid. The students were given citations for simple trespassing while approximately 50 people in total gathered outside in support to protest Yales policy that requires students on financial aid to make a monetary contribution totaling thousands of dollars even if theyre given a full ride, organizers said. This requirement is called the Student Effort and consists of student employment and a summer income contribution. Only students receiving financial aid need to make the contribution, which can range from $2,800 to $3,350 in student employment for upper-level students. Adding the summer income contribution, upper-level students are required to pay close to $6,000 a year for the total Student Effort. Currently more than half of undergraduate Yale students received a need-based Yale scholarship, according to Yale University spokesman Tom Conroy. A statement by Dean of Undergraduate Admissions Jeremiah Quinlan on Yales financial aid web page reads, If you get into Yale, we feel sure that cost will not be a barrier in your decision to attend. Many students who received financial aid said cost may not prevent them from attending, but it prevents them from fully participating in the Yale experience. An international student from Pakistan, Shaheer Malik was promised a full scholarship to attend Yale, but hes still required to meet the Student Effort requirement, he said. I was promised my familys financial situation would not prevent me from accessing all the amazing things that Yale offers, but when I got here I realized that wasnt the case, Malik said. He said the requirement targets the poorest students under the hardest financial circumstances receiving financial aid. For me it has meant working 10, maybe more, hours shelving books at the library when I should be writing a piece or studying for an exam, shelving the books my peers will use to study and enjoy the Yale experience while I scan bar-codes, he said. Having to work while in school to make the financial contribution means he isnt able to engage in the social activities that Yale promises as part of the university experience, he said. If I couldnt pay, Yale wouldnt spare a second thought about kicking me out, not just of the university, but of the country, he said. It adds this extra division of, Youre not welcome here, youre not part of the same Yale experience that the wealthy people are able to access. The universitys need-blind admissions and need-based financial aid ensure that a Yale education is affordable for everyone, regardless of family background, citizenship, or immigration status, according to the financial aid web page. The university meets 100 percent of demonstrated financial need for all admitted students and families who make $65,000 or less have to make no contribution to the cost of a Yale College education, Conroy said. The university does not include loans in its financial aid packages, but students may take out loans to cover the Student Effort contribution. Students said the financial packages that Yale offers are deceiving. Even if the expected family contribution is nothing, meaning that the university has determined the family cannot afford to pay for school, a student still needs to contribute to their education. Working comes at the cost of missing out on many social activities, student David Diaz said, and creates a divide between students who need to work and make the contribution and those who dont. It creates a campus environment that allows wealthy students to enjoy the full Yale experience while low-income students may miss out because they need to hold a job. Yale has already determined they cannot afford (to pay), but I still need to, Diaz said. To say that my family cant afford it but I should pay it doesnt make sense. Yale invests in it students through significant financial aid. But, like all of our peers, we also ask that students and families invest in this education as well, Conroy said in an email. The opportunity for a student to work during the summer and contribute to the funding of his or her education is considered part of this investment a resource a family has available to help meet its contribution to a students education. The contribution also allows Yale to sustain other important needs of the institution and to offer more financial aid to more students, he said. Yale spent $130 million this year on scholarship aid for Yale College students, which included average need based scholarships of $43,650 to students on aid. Endowment income supported just over the half of the institutional scholarships given to undergraduates. ... In order to sustain aid while meeting the other critical needs of the University, Yale needs to ask the contribution of undergraduates and families, contributions that leave a vast majority of students without debt when they graduate. If Yale eliminated the required contribution, the university may need to end its need-blind admissions policy and it would compromise other aspects of the institution, Conroy said. Hannah Lee said she didnt realize how much time having a job in the lab would take away from her academics when she got campus. She was emotionally and physically exhausted trying to hold a job during finals week last year and it cut into her study time and her sleep, she said. Lee was terrified of losing her job, because it could mean she wouldnt have the resources to stay on campus, she said. Lee, who had a full ride her first year at Yale, said, When you see that zero you think Yale is really welcoming and then to come to campus and find out something else. mdignan@hearstmediact.com In your recently published editorial, Ghost guns present a very real threat, (Hearst Connecticut Media, April 13, 2018) the writer fails on several points, the first of which is when is the piece of metal being formed into a firearm become a firearm? Currently, its when a serial number is punched into the frame. But at some point prior to that, it was only a raw piece of metal. Requiring raw material to be serialized is ridiculous and completely loses any legal credibility. Requiring raw material to be serialized would be legislating intent and intent is not subject to prosecution. Perhaps that chunk of aluminum was going to be a few dozen soda cans? Secondly, what would be the end game of providing serial numbers on firearms? There is not an all encompassing gun registry with a list of registered firearms. The exception is for the semi-automatic, center-fire rifles with detachable magazines and pistol grips that the state government asked for people to register after April 20, 2013, which was estimated to be about 15 percent compliant. There is no official master list of firearms connected to owners. Additionally, many firearms were handed down by family or brought to the state through relocation that the state government has no idea people own. The non-serialized firearms are such a small percentage of overall firearm ownership its honestly considered an insignificant threat. Additionally, many antique firearms highly collectible and valuable do not have a serial number. Adding serial numbers would greatly reduce the value of the item and would serve no purpose of increased safety. Remember, registration leads to confiscation. History has told us this many times before. Ben Sargent Granby For the second time, a federal district court in Virginia dismissed a lawsuit against Northwest Federal Credit Union over unclear website requirements under the Americans with Disabilities Act (ADA). This was an amended complaint; the court dismissed the case in January as it determined that the plaintiff to such a lawsuit did not have standing as he was not eligible for membership and would likely not use the credit unions services. NAFCU filed two amicus briefs in support of Northwests motion to dismiss, for both the original and amended complaint. NAFCU is pleased to see this court continue to recognize that this plaintiff has no standing to sue Northwest Federal Credit Union, similar to the numerous other cases weve seen dismissed in recent months, said NAFCU President and CEO Dan Berger. NAFCU will continue to defend our members against these meritless lawsuits. The court determined that the plaintiff still lacked standing to bring the lawsuit and the amended complaint did not address issues within the original one. In addition, the court reiterated its opinion that a website is not a place of public accommodation, thus certain ADA protections were not triggered. Throughout her 35 years at America First Federal Credit Union in Riverdale, Utah, Sheryl Cox has fought hard to protect credit unions from harmful legislation. Cox, vice president of governmental affairs at the $8.8 billion asset credit union, became politically active in high school. It is a fascinating science that hooked me at a young age, she says. Today, that interest translates into lobbying legislators regarding credit union regulations and taxation, running ad campaigns to raise awareness of legislation affecting credit unions, and engaging credit union members in political outreach. Cox first became politically involved in the credit union space while serving as marketing director at America First Federal. At the time, the credit union was waging a fierce battle with bankers to prevent state taxation and protect the credit unions field of membership. April sure has been an interesting month, and we are only midway through it! In just the last two weeks, the U.S. has seriously sparred with its greatest economic competitor (at least by size of economies), China, and its greatest military competitor, Russia. The President of the United States had the offices of his private attorney raided by the FBI, perhaps pushing the President closer to a constitutional showdown over the fate of Special Counsel Robert Mueller. Additionally, the world has finally woken up to what Facebooks (and Googles) business model isobtaining and selling any information that anybody on the planet would need to sell you somethingand became alarmed. This, of course, produced the time-honored tradition of hauling the CEO de jour, in this case Mark Zuckerberg, in front of Congress to be publicly chastised. I guess they didnt generate $40 billion in revenue last year selling banner ads. Who knew? Whatever the case, specter of potential constraints on some of the biggest companies in the worlds business models should give some pause, no? And yet, despite this flurry of hooks to the body and straight right hands to the head, the financial markets seem to just be brushing it off, absorbing the blows, and moving forward. For the month of April, the S&P 500 is up nearly 1%, high-yield bond spreads are tighter by about 6%, S&P short-term implied volatility as defined by the VIX index has fallen from 21.49 to 17.61, and implied short-term Treasury volatility as measured by the Merrill Lynch MOVE Index has fallen from 56 to 51. The Treasury yield curve has continued to flatten, however, which could be seen as a sign of stress over economic growth. On the other hand, this flattening has, as a long-term trend, been going on since the second half of 2013. Help still available to Ida flooding victims in Pa. What we know Each one of us needs to be mindful of this quote attributed to master strategist Chanakya: Learn from the mistakes of others. You can't live long enough to make them all yourselves. But the Modi government, less than 40 days away from beginning its fifth and final year in office, has apparently not learnt from its own mistakes. This seems to be the moral of the story as an unannounced demonetisation has kicked in with automated teller machines (ATMs) going dry in several states, including Maharashtra, Andhra Pradesh, Telangana, Gujarat, Rajasthan, Uttar Pradesh, Madhya Pradesh and Manipur, apart from poll-bound Karnataka. In Delhi too, people are experiencing dry cash days as ATMs have run out of cash at many places. Image: AP file photo The sudden phenomenon has been rather weird because the cash in circulation today is more than what it was on November 4, 2016 - four days before Prime Minister Narendra Modi announced demonetisation of Rs 500 and Rs 1,000 notes, accounting for over 85 per cent of the total currency in circulation at that time. Currently, the total currency in circulation is a little over Rs 18 trillion, whereas the figure just before demonetisation was Rs 17.97 trillion. The shortage of cash may have erupted due to the following factors: Mismanagement of cash flow by banks. Recalibration of ATMs to support the new currency notes. Logistical issues as while many banks are cash surplus, but their counterparts in semi-urban and rural parts of the country - which have reported cash crunch - are facing depleted or no-cash ATMs. Spurt in demand for cash to make payments for agricultural activities. Cost cutting measures by many banks have resulted in cash vans being sent only once a day to replenish their ATMs as against the recent past practice of at least twice a day. Almost double withdrawals by individuals due to the ongoing festive season. The Union finance ministry as well as the Reserve Bank of India have braced themselves up for tackling this abrupt crisis and are taking counter measures on a war footing. For example, the RBI has directed banks with surplus cash to help other banks facing a shortage of funds and decided to boost circulation if Rs 500 denomination notes within next seven days. Responding to cash crunch finance minister Arun Jaitley tweeted: Have reviewed the currency situation in the country. Over all there is more than adequate currency in circulation and also available with the Banks. The temporary shortage caused by sudden and unusual increase in some areas is being tackled quickly. Arun Jaitley (@arunjaitley) April 17, 2018 Jaitleys deputy SP Shukla went on record saying this: We have cash currency of Rs 1,25,000 crore right now. There is one problem, some states have less currency and others have more. The government has formed a state-wise committee and RBI also formed a committee to transfer currency from one state to other. It will be done in three days. Politics over cash crunch However, the latest cash crunch has triggered a political storm, a characteristic feature of the highly divisive Indian polity. Madhya Pradesh chief minister Shivraj Singh Chouhan gave a political twist to the cash crunch by alleging a conspiracy behind the disappearance of Rs 2,000 currency notes. Chouhan, while speaking at a farmers convention on Monday (April 16), said that Rs 2000 currency notes were missing from the market even as the notes in circulation were more than pre-demonetisation. Sample his statement: The currency worth Rs 15,00,000 crore was in circulation before demonetisation. After this exercise (demonetisation), the currency in circulation increased to Rs 16,50,000 crore. But notes of Rs 2,000 are missing from the market... Where these notes of Rs 2,000 denomination are going, who are keeping them out of circulation? Who are the persons creating shortfall of cash? This is a conspiracy to create problems. The government will act tough on this. The Congress party too was quick to take to Twitter by asking whether it was the Modi government's gross mismanagement or a deliberate move". In another tweet, the Congress said, The people of the country forced to suffer even after 1.5 years of demonetisation show the acute failure of the BJP government. The irrepressible Mamata Banerjee, chief minister of West Bengal and leader of Trinamool Congress, went to the extent of talking of a financial emergency with her following tweet: Seeing reports of ATMs running out of cash in several States. Big notes missing. Reminder of #DeMonetisation days. Is there a Financial Emergency going on in the country? #CashCrunch #CashlessATMs Mamata Banerjee (@MamataOfficial) April 17, 2018 Needless to say the Modi government could have done without this embarrassing situation. This at a time when PM Modi is currently on an official tour in Europe and, domestically speaking, the Karnataka Assembly election is less than a month away. The Opposition, particularly the Congress, will definitely score brownie points on this over the BJP government, a party which while in Opposition used to throw barbs at the Congress-led government of policy paralysis and administrative lapses. This awkward episode will inevitably dent the image of the BJP - The party with a difference. As if the bank frauds were not enough, now the BJP government is not even able to run the banking system properly. Also read: Now, end of Rs 2000 note looks increasingly inevitable When I first started visiting Panghot in Uttarakhand, it was a small nondescript village nestled in the forests of the lower Himalayas. Perched at about 6,500 feet, its market was a tiny kirana (grocery) shop, a dhaba where the family rustled up delicious parathas and instant noodles, and a post-office with a sometime postman. With fewer than 20 households, it did not qualify for a telephone line. Springs flowed freely with the clearest, sweetest water that I actually lugged back home in large cans! The villagers grew their own millets, pulses and vegetables, kept a cow or two for milk, and generally had someone in the family employed in the nearby towns of Haldwani, and Nainital. The winds of change blew into Panghot about a decade ago when tourists chugged up the hill, and discovered this sleepy, unspoiled village. In their footsteps followed the tourism industry and infrastructure resorts and hotels of all manner and hue. The locals cheered initially as their economy grew, land prices hiked and were parcelled off to developers. Trees were felled, buildings sprouted over traditional homes, green fields and grassy meadows; garbage spilled over the hills, and into the streams. The most telling impact was on water. In a meeting with the local people, the women were vociferous against this tourism model, with its gluttonous appetite for natural resources they were dependent on. As winters receded, their taps ran dry, the fields went thirsty and horrors they had to call for water tankers from the plains unheard of, only a few summers ago. Despite Nainital being less visited during the wet season, the lake has the opportunity to refill during the quieter tourist months. Seasonal shortages in water availability are a shared problem across the Himalayas, as peak scarcity coincides with periods of highest demand as tourists seek refuge from the summer heat on the Indian plains during the driest seasons. Photo by Samuel Bourne, Cambridge University Library Mussoorie aglow. Photo: Toby Smith Kempty Falls. Photo: Toby Smith I am reminded of this Himalayan village when I step into New Delhis Jor Bagh Metro station and catch a glimpse of the famous Nainital Lake, once beautiful and pristine, now starved of water. The receding lake, surrounded by peopled mountains and roads, was captured by Cambridge-based photo journalist Toby Smith in May 2017. Less rain, building over streams that fed the lake, active pumping of water and growing demand particularly in the holiday aka tourist season have drained the lake. But Nainital town, points out Smith, and its growing economy depend on the health of its beautiful lake. The photograph is part of the ongoing exhibition Pani, Pahar: Waters of the Himalayas based on a study led by Bhaskar Vira and Eszter Kovacs at the department of geography, Cambridge University. The study explores the changing landscapes and escalating water crisis in the Himalayas, across six small towns in Nepal and India: Bidur, Dhilukhel, Palampur, Rajgarh, Nainital, Mussorrie, (or the towns not visited like Panghot); all distinct entities and geographies but similar in the changes the mountains, and its people, are witnessing. The people of the Himalayas depend on surface water from rivers flowing from the glaciers, and springs, ponds, lakes but such water catchments are being deforested, and the Himalayas are at the forefront of climate change with rapidly shrinking glaciers. The region is also seeing intensive land use with quarrying for stone and sand, logging, building of infrastructure such as dams and roads, urbanisation and tourism. The cumulative impact is shrinking and pollution of water sources that the people traditionally depend on, impacting their lives and livelihoods. Says Vira, The waters of the Himalayas sustain the lives of over half a billion people, and we cannot afford to ignore the pressures on these beautiful, but ecologically fragile landscapes. The photograph exhibition was conceived to bring the issue closer to the people. Viras connections to the Himalayas date back to his childhood. I then went to The Doon School at age 11, and this is when the love for the hills really blossomed I spent six happy years at Doon, and the life there kept us so connected with the surrounding landscapes that this has never really left me, recalls Vira. This was the early 1980s, the time of the Mussoorie Limestone Quarrying case (considered the first case requiring the Supreme Court to balance environmental and ecological integrity against industrial demands on forest resources), the Chipko movement, and the emergence of an environmental consciousness all of which influenced Vira, who went on to specialise in political ecology of forests, water, ecosystem services, and the values of nature for human wellbeing. Says Vira, I strongly believe that our messages about the ways in which our lives are intertwined with the natural world need to use all possible mediums of which the visual is very important. Pictures communicate so much more than just words, they go beyond minds to include hearts, bring places and people alive. Toby Smiths images of mountaincapes and people, their cultures and lives are evocative. They tell a story, invoke a reaction. They are striking yet subtle saying so much more than what is obviously visible, leaving room for interpretation, and introspection. Mussoories nightscape is a spectacular capture: the real story, though, is not the glitter of city lights, but of unchecked development and urban sprawl that has strained the towns resources. During season, school holidays and hot summer months, the number of tourists growing at unwieldy 15 per cent a year exceed the locals by far. A few miles away, the Kempty Falls pours its waters over a sea of bathing tourists. Curio shops, eateries, poorly constructed buildings and hotels, residential complexes crowd the place to capitalise on the falls popularity, jamming roads. The city has come to the mountain, demanding, and taking more than it can afford. In glaring contrast to this mayhem are curated archival prints from the University Library and the Centre for South Asian Studies, which show a sparsely populated Mussoorie bazaar and the green surrounds of the Naini lake. In one image, a set of pipes lies scattered in the fields. Such water pipes carry water over long distances disturbing farm and pasturelands. They change the dynamics of water distribution, at times leading to conflicts as water is taken from one geography and people to others. Pipes are damaged, water wars may ensue. The source of water is another contentious issue in Rajgarh (Himachal) it is drawn from a wildlife sanctuary, depriving its flora and fauna, raising questions about how their needs can be balanced with that of rapidly expanding towns, urban communities and farmers who inhabit the landscape. Solutions can be problems themselves. One panacea to water shortage offered by most governments and aid agencies mega-dams is etched in a photograph of the Tehri dam, one of the largest in recent times. Its development has caused ecological and social havoc, and was bitterly opposed. What the researchers question is not so much the dam building itself, but the engineering mindset, in which humans seek to control nature, rather than working with nature, says Vira, citing the example of a proposal for water to Mussoorie is to pump it 4,000 feet up the mountain, from the Yamuna, rather than relying on gravity-based flows from the surrounding catchment (down the mountain). Smith points out that even local solutions can be complex. North of Palampur (Himachal Pradesh), the Reciprocal Water Access scheme provides for financial upstream hamlets to regulate their forest extraction practices in order to allow for better flow of streams. This serves the downstream villagers well, but the advent cash payment resulted in conflicts within communities over the use of forests, and other such matters. Sitting in gated colonies in Delhi NCR with piped water, such Himalayan realities seem far away, but we cant afford to distance ourselves from the reality of water or from nature. The Yamuna that flows through the capital is sullied; it is one of the most polluted rivers in the world. Delhi NCR is among the most water-stressed regions in the world; the water that flows through our taps, and the AC in our bedrooms is partially powered by dams and hydel-projects across the Himalayas displacing communities, drowning forests and wildlife sanctuaries. The messages are subtle, not in your face. The images are a celebration of the sacred life-affirming waters of the Himalayas, a timely reminder of its vanishing, as we enter another dry season. (The photographs were first displayed in Cambridge university in its Festival of Ideas and India Unboxed programme, and the exhibition [supported the ESPA programme] is currently ongoing till May 6 at the Habitat Centre and June 29 at Jor Bagh Metro station.) Also read: The bird that could have become India's national bird but for that spelling! Being a country that produces a large number of movies in multiple languages, India literally has films on all issues under the sun. In recent times, a film titled Hindi Medium has emerged as a must-watch for parents seeking nursery admission for their children. Those who have experienced the uncertainties and helplessness of the entire process of nursery admission at any private school in Delhi would know that watching the film while going through the admission process is quite like watching Titanic on a sinking ship in the middle of an ocean. It hardly took my wife and I any time to identify with Raj Batra and Mita, the lead characters in this film. And subconsciously, we began wondering whether like the protagonists of the film, we would also ultimately indulge in corruption and unduly try for admission under the quota meant for the economically weaker sections of the society. However, it was impossible for us to relate to the ending of Hindi Medium, in which, despite having their child enrolled at the best private school in Delhi, the protagonists who have a change of heart in a dramatic turn of events get their daughter admitted to a government school. It is true that the nursery admission race had got us deeply frustrated with private schools. But the dominant narrative in favour of private schools and against the government schools was too strong to defy and that too because we were told that we needed to be extra careful about safety because we had a daughter. The government schools dont provide, cant provide safety, right? We had met all the strange requirements of the numerous private schools and had even engaged with the advance admission offers that we received from some schools that were not confident of filling up all their seats through lottery. We were gradually inching towards the day of the announcement of the lottery results. Strangely, we felt no anxiety or excitement about it. We weren't interested in private schooling, but moved towards it as the dominant narrative told us that it was the right thing to do. Our daughter had to be enrolled somewhere. The government schools dont provide, cant provide safety, right? An idea that had begun to grow stronger after all this drama was that when our daughter turns five, maybe we should explore admission at central schools. Even before taking admission, we felt pressured under the reality called "private schooling" and were just not being able to handle it. We would have tried central school admission at the nursery level itself had there been such a provision. And how could we think about educating our child at Sarvodaya schools just because some of them had introduced nursery sections! We were convinced that there must be some limit to experiments! As we deliberated, the D-day of the announcement of the lottery results arrived. Surprisingly enough, our daughter had got shortlisted at about five schools. Of these, two were closer to our place and therefore preferred. She had got admission offers! We should have been celebrating, as many children hadn't even secured the admission offers. But somehow, happiness appeared like an irrelevant emotion. What mattered more was to arrive at an admission decision and somehow get over with the process. Well, our daughter did not get admission at the particular local school that was a preferred choice for many. However, we heard contradictory stories later. We felt pressured under the reality called 'private schooling'. Of the two schools, one was notorious for burdening children with academic pressure, and the other had a "bad reputation" for being a school dominated by Jats! We understood what excessive pressure of education could mean. But we had never thought that it was detrimental for our child to study with children from Jat families. Of course, it appeared so foolish to ask what is wrong about children from Jat families! Those who had shared this nugget of wisdom had already made up their minds! After all, we had internalised a culture of silence while participating in the nursery admission race! Either way, we had made up our minds to opt for one of the two schools as the others were farther. Neighbours with children told us both schools were reputed. The one that looked more impressive in terms of facilities was of course more expensive, and it also did not list on paper many of the recurring fees! While the school was a vibrant place for extra-curricular activities and excursions, it was parents who had to bear the costs. Having been made aware of the possibilities and having consulted our well-wishers, we were not sure of going ahead with this school. Now there was only one option left. We managed to have a conversation with the teacher-in-charge of the nursery and kindergarten section at the second school to understand how much the work pressure would be during the early years. All we wanted to hear was that learning was going to be more driven by joyful activities, would involve little or no formal education, and no writing assignments. Instead, the teacher in-charge assured us, Dont worry. Learning needs of your child will not be compromised. You will find no reason to complain that your child doesn't know as much as children at other schools. She will learn much more than others. We make sure of that. After all, from nursery onwards, our students have four examinations to pass every year. And you have to work hard with us to ensure that your child learns to write soon. You must make the children practise at home. This was in contradiction to what we had imagined. But then, we had already decided not to contradict any school authority, as we did not want to hear the school say if you dont like our system of education, why are you here? Go somewhere else. We know what we are doing. Given we wanted a school near home, we had no other place to go! So, my wife and I meekly listened to the teacher-in-charge, exchanged worried looks, paid the fees, and decided to get ourselves busy with other work to forget the deep helplessness that we felt. Is it for this that we had spent so much time and energy in the last couple of months? There was still about a month left for admission orientation and for classes to begin. The longer the gap, the better for us. We had no doubt that we were in the process of entering a pressure chamber. What made us feel a little better was the idea that we may be able to move out to central school after two years. But then we did not feel too certain that it would be anything different. After all, that school also exists in the same society that makes life the race which our chosen school was catering to. After all, from nursery onwards they have four examinations to pass every year Amidst this dilemma, the construction of a neat-looking institutional building near our house was completed. Soon, we got to know that the building was going to house one among the five ambitious Schools of Excellence envisioned by Delhi government. The admission process for the school's current session was advertised and it did have a nursery section. By then, we were so frustrated with the school where we had got our daughter admitted that we were ready to try any other option. This was a new school and had no reputation, neither good nor bad. We understood the risk of seeking admission here. But then quite contrary to our thoughts, after watching Hindi Medium, we actually went to submit an application at this government school, even though our desperation was of a different nature from the movie. At the same time, we had no big ambition from this school. But, something different happened at the school. After submitting the application form, we wanted to have a conversation with the teaching staff so as to get some idea regarding the nature of education being planned for this school. The teachers were busy at a workshop. The principal was busy too. Yet, she took time out to meet us. We asked her the question that we had been asking at every private school. What is the nature of curriculum and pedagogy that is to adopted at nursery level? The principal began to smile. What curriculum can you have for a three-year-old! We just want to give them an opportunity to have a lot of fun at school so that they love coming here. Writing is going to begin only in class one and that too slowly. If you are one of those parents who want their child to get strictly educated from very early years, we may not be able to cater to your ambitions! she responded. For long, we had been wanting to hear what she had just said. We jumped in to assure the principal that we shared the schools philosophy. We looked at each other with a deep sense of satisfaction and knew that we had finally found the school of our choice. Suddenly, it became clear why education at private schools is what it is. None of the private schools around us is age-old; they don't enjoy an assured clientele and could therefore not experiment with non-conventional modes of learning. Hence, to justify the fees, it becomes essential for the institutions to demonstrate that they make students "learn" something (necessary or unnecessary!) and hence they do not instantly become places where the young ones play and have fun. It is also necessary for private schools to prove that their students are learning "more" than others. Government schools do not have to bother about such competition, as staff salaries do not depend on admission fees. Having found our preferred choice after all these days, we anxiously wanted our daughter to start school. The short distance between our home and the school had put us in the topmost group of applicants. We did not expect too many local residents to apply as our locality is primarily populated by the middle class, who would usually opt to send their children to private schools. Even so, there was uncertainty and this time it was a lottery that we had really wanted to attend. Unfortunately, the date and the time of the lottery coincided with the orientation programme at the private school where we had already secured admission for our daughter. We thought it would be wise to attend it. What if our daughter does not get admission at the government school? Thus, we could not arrive in time for the admission lottery at the government school. So what all did we learn in the orientation programme? We met people from the management, who had the same surname (same family?) They were introduced to us as successful businesspersons first, and then educationists. We were told about Abacus and right brain development programmes that must begin from nursery. By the time we finally managed to reach the government school, the lottery process was over. There was no way to find the results, which were to be announced the next day. Will she make it? And, her name was actually there on the list of selected applicants! Like magic, at the sight of her name on the list, all our hardships and frustrations seemed to vanish. We decided to get our daughter admitted to this School of Excellence. It was not easy. It was impossible to ignore that at a time when everyone, irrespective of their financial wherewithal, wants to move away from government educational institutions, it is perceived that the students of such schools have somehow not been able to make it to private schools. Does that affect the calibre of students, when admission is only decided through lottery? Does that influence the motivation and commitment of the teachers in the long run? Will those enrolled also want to move out the moment they get an offer from a private school? Is it such a bad idea not to have classmates belonging to the affluent middle class? Does the absence of the affluent middle class make a school relatively unsafe? Or, is their safety somewhat guaranteed as the children are not pampered with opulence in their early years? Will our daughter feel a class difference when she moves from her school to her daycare? Will that negatively impact her personality development? Will she undergo any inferiority complex for studying at a government school? Will she blame us later for this decision? Shall we repent this decision later in life? Only time will provide answers to these questions. We can only be patient and watchful and ready to reconsider what we have decided. As for now, we need to secure our daughters childhood and ensure that it is filled with happiness and not the burden of education. We need to ascertain that she remains safe and experiences learning outside formal education. As parents, we are quite confident this can be achieved at the School of Excellence. We felt it is important to take chances instead of feeling anxious about the possibilities of risk. Who knows, may be seeing us taking a chance, others from different social backgrounds so far averse to government schools may decide to take a leap of faith! The school would gradually find students from all social segments. But that is for others to ponder about. As for us, we have finally reached the finish line of the nursery admission race to our satisfaction. Also read: How politicians exploited Kathua rape case should make us sick 49 minutes ago The Latest: 92% of Denvers municipal employees vaccinated DENVER At least 92% of Denvers municipal employees were vaccinated against COVID-19 as of Friday, a day after the citys vaccine mandate took effect in a bid to slow the spread of the virus during the fall and winter, according to a review of city compliance data. Read Article The Bank of New York Mellon pays an annual dividend of $1.36 per share and currently has a dividend yield of 2.62%. The Bank of New York Mellon has been increasing its dividend for 12 consecutive years, indicating the company has a strong committment to maintain and grow its dividend. The dividend payout ratio of The Bank of New York Mellon is 33.92%. This payout ratio is at a healthy, sustainable level, below 75%. Based on earnings estimates, The Bank of New York Mellon will have a dividend payout ratio of 29.44% next year. This indicates that The Bank of New York Mellon will be able to sustain or increase its dividend. View The Bank of New York Mellon's dividend history. The following companies are subsidiares of The Procter & Gamble: "Procter & Gamble Services" LLC, "Procter & Gamble" LLC, Agile Pursuits, Agile Pursuits Franchising, Arbora, Arbora & Ausonia, Arborinvest, Billie, Braun (Shanghai) Co., Braun GmbH, Braun-Gillette Immobilien GmbH & Co. KG, Celtic Insurance Company, Compania Procter & Gamble Mexico, Compania Quimica S.A., Corporativo Procter & Gamble, Cosmetic Products Pty. Ltd., Detergent Products B.V., Detergent Products SARL, Detergenti S.A., Eurocos Cosmetic GmbH, FPG Oleochemicals Sdn. Bhd., Fameccanica Data S.p.A., Fameccanica Industria e Comercio Do Brasil LTDA., Fameccanica Machinery (Shanghai) Co., Fater S.p.A., Fountain Square Music Publishing Co., Gillette (China) Ltd., Gillette (Shanghai) Ltd., Gillette Aesop Ltd., Gillette Australia Pty. Ltd., Gillette Canada Holdings, Gillette Commercial Operations North America, Gillette Diversified Operations Pvt. Ltd., Gillette Egypt S.A.E., Gillette Group UK Ltd, Gillette Gruppe Deutschland GmbH & Co. oHG, Gillette Holding Company LLC, Gillette Holding GmbH, Gillette India Limited, Gillette Industries Ltd., Gillette International B.V., Gillette Latin America Holding B.V., Gillette Management LLC, Gillette Nova Scotia Company, Gillette Pakistan Limited, Gillette Poland International Sp. z.o.o., Gillette Poland S.A., Gillette U.K. Limited, Gillette del Uruguay, Giorgio Beverly Hills Inc., Hyginett KFT, Industries Marocaines Modernes SA, LLC "Procter & Gamble Novomoskovsk", LLL "Procter & Gamble Distributorskaya Compania", Laboratorios Vicks, Liberty Street Music Publishing Company, Limited Liability Company 'Procter & Gamble Trading Ukraine', Limited Liability Company with foreign investments Procter & and Gamble Ukraine, MDVIP, MERCK KGAA NPV, Marcvenca Inversiones, Modern Industries Company - Dammam, Modern Products Company - Jeddah, New Chapter, New Chapter Canada Inc., Olay LLC, Oral-B Laboratories, P&G Distribution Morocco SAS, P&G Hair Care Holding, P&G Industrial Peru S.R.L., P&G Innovation Godo Kaisha, P&G Israel M.D.O. Ltd., P&G K.K., P&G Northeast Asia Pte. Ltd., P&G Prestige Godo Kaisha, P&G Prestige Service GmbH, P&G South African Trading (Pty.) Ltd., PGT Health Care (Zhejiang) Limited, PGT Healthcare LLP, PPI ZAO, PT Procter & Gamble Home Products Indonesia, PT Procter & Gamble Operations Indonesia, Phase II Holdings Corporation, Procter & Gamble (Chengdu) Ltd., Procter & Gamble (China) Ltd., Procter & Gamble (China) Sales Co. Ltd., Procter & Gamble (East Africa) Limited, Procter & Gamble (Egypt) Manufacturing Company, Procter & Gamble (Enterprise Fund) Limited, Procter & Gamble (Guangzhou) Consumer Products Co. Ltd., Procter & Gamble (Guangzhou) Enterprise Management Service Company Limited, Procter & Gamble (Guangzhou) Ltd., Procter & Gamble (Health & Beauty Care) Limited, Procter & Gamble (Jiangsu) Ltd. China, Procter & Gamble (L&CP) Limited, Procter & Gamble (Malaysia) Sdn Bhd, Procter & Gamble (Manufacturing) Ireland Limited, Procter & Gamble (Shanghai) International Trade Company Ltd., Procter & Gamble (Singapore) Pte. Ltd., Procter & Gamble Acquisition GmbH, Procter & Gamble Administration GmbH, Procter & Gamble Algeria EURL, Procter & Gamble Amazon Holding B.V., Procter & Gamble Amiens S.A.S., Procter & Gamble Argentina SRL, Procter & Gamble Asia Pte. Ltd., Procter & Gamble Australia Proprietary Limited, Procter & Gamble Azerbaijan Services LLC, Procter & Gamble Bangladesh Private Ltd., Procter & Gamble Blois S.A.S., Procter & Gamble Brazil Holdings B.V., Procter & Gamble Bulgaria EOOD, Procter & Gamble Business Services Canada Company, Procter & Gamble Canada Holding B.V., Procter & Gamble Chile , Procter & Gamble Chile Limitada, Procter & Gamble Colombia Ltda., Procter & Gamble Commercial LLC, Procter & Gamble Commercial de Cuba S.A., Procter & Gamble Czech Republic s.r.o., Procter & Gamble DS Polska Sp. z o.o., Procter & Gamble Danmark ApS, Procter & Gamble Detergent (Beijing) Ltd., Procter & Gamble Deuttschland GmbH, Procter & Gamble Distributing (Philippines) Inc., Procter & Gamble Distributing New Zealand Limited, Procter & Gamble Distribution Company (Europe) BVBA, Procter & Gamble Distribution S.R.L., Procter & Gamble Eastern Europe, Procter & Gamble Ecuador Cia. Ltda., Procter & Gamble Egypt, Procter & Gamble Egypt Distribution, Procter & Gamble Egypt Holding, Procter & Gamble Egypt Supplies, Procter & Gamble Energy Company LLC, Procter & Gamble Espana, Procter & Gamble Europe SA, Procter & Gamble Export Operations SARL, Procter & Gamble Exportadora e Importadora Ltda., Procter & Gamble Exports, Procter & Gamble Fabricacao e Comercio Ltda., Procter & Gamble Far East, Procter & Gamble Finance (U.K.) Ltd., Procter & Gamble Finance Holding Ltd., Procter & Gamble Finance Management S.a.r.l., Procter & Gamble Financial Investments LLP, Procter & Gamble Financial Services Ltd., Procter & Gamble Financial Services S.a.r.l., Procter & Gamble Finland OY, Procter & Gamble France S.A.S., Procter & Gamble Germany GmbH, Procter & Gamble Germany GmbH & Co. Operations oHG, Procter & Gamble GmbH, Procter & Gamble Grundstucks-und Vermogensverwaltungs GmbH & Co. KG, Procter & Gamble Gulf FZE, Procter & Gamble Hair Care, Procter & Gamble Hellas Ltd., Procter & Gamble Holding (Thailand) Limited, Procter & Gamble Holding France S.A.S., Procter & Gamble Holding GmbH, Procter & Gamble Holding S.r.l., Procter & Gamble Holdings (UK) Ltd., Procter & Gamble Home Products Private Limited, Procter & Gamble Hong Kong Limited, Procter & Gamble Hungary Wholesale Trading Partnership (KKT), Procter & Gamble Hygiene & Health Care Limited, Procter & Gamble Inc., Procter & Gamble India Holdings, Procter & Gamble Indochina Limited Company, Procter & Gamble Industrial - 2012 C.A., Procter & Gamble Industrial Colombia Ltda., Procter & Gamble Industrial S.C.A., Procter & Gamble Industrial e Comercial Ltda., Procter & Gamble Interamericas de Costa Rica, Procter & Gamble Interamericas de Guatemala, Procter & Gamble Interamericas de Panama, Procter & Gamble International Operations Pte. Ltd., Procter & Gamble International Operations SA, Procter & Gamble International Operations SA-ROHQ, Procter & Gamble International S.a.r.l., Procter & Gamble Investment Company (UK) Ltd., Procter & Gamble Investment GmbH, Procter & Gamble Italia, Procter & Gamble Japan K.K., Procter & Gamble Kazakhstan Distribution LLP, Procter & Gamble Kazakhstan LLP, Procter & Gamble Korea, Procter & Gamble Korea S&D Co., Procter & Gamble Lanka Private Ltd. Sri Lanka, Procter & Gamble Leasing LLC, Procter & Gamble Levant S.A.L., Procter & Gamble Limited, Procter & Gamble Manufacturing (Thailand) Limited, Procter & Gamble Manufacturing (Tianjin) Co. Ltd., Procter & Gamble Manufacturing Belgium N.V., Procter & Gamble Manufacturing Berlin GmbH, Procter & Gamble Manufacturing GmbH, Procter & Gamble Manufacturing Mexico S. de R.L. de C.V., Procter & Gamble Manufacturing SA (Pty) Ltd, Procter & Gamble Marketing Romania SRL, Procter & Gamble Marketing and Services doo, Procter & Gamble Maroc SA, Procter & Gamble Mataro, Procter & Gamble Mexico Holding B.V., Procter & Gamble Mexico Inc., Procter & Gamble Middle East FZE, Procter & Gamble Nederland B.V., Procter & Gamble Netherlands Investments B.V., Procter & Gamble Netherlands Services B.V., Procter & Gamble Nigeria Limited, Procter & Gamble Nordic, Procter & Gamble Norge AS, Procter & Gamble Operations Polska Sp. z o.o., Procter & Gamble Overseas India B.V., Procter & Gamble Overseas Ltd., Procter & Gamble Pakistan (Private) Limited, Procter & Gamble Partnership LLP, Procter & Gamble Peru S.R.L., Procter & Gamble Pharmaceuticals France SAS, Procter & Gamble Philippines, Procter & Gamble Polska Sp. z o.o, Procter & Gamble Portugal - Produtos De Consumo, Procter & Gamble Product Supply (U.K.) Limited U.K., Procter & Gamble Production GmbH, Procter & Gamble Productions, Procter & Gamble Productos de Consumo, Procter & Gamble RHD, Procter & Gamble RSC Regional Service Company Ltd., Procter & Gamble Retail Services BVBA, Procter & Gamble S.r.l., Procter & Gamble SA (Pty) Ltd, Procter & Gamble Satis ve Dagitim Ltd. Sti., Procter & Gamble Seine S.A.S., Procter & Gamble Service GmbH, Procter & Gamble Services (Switzerland) SA, Procter & Gamble Services Company N.V., Procter & Gamble Services Ltd., Procter & Gamble Share Incentive Plan Trustee Ltd., Procter & Gamble South America Holding B.V., Procter & Gamble Spol. s.r.o. (Ltd.), Procter & Gamble Sports and Social Club Ltd., Procter & Gamble Sverige AB, Procter & Gamble Switzerland SARL, Procter & Gamble Taiwan Limited, Procter & Gamble Taiwan Sales Company Limited, Procter & Gamble Technical Centres Limited, Procter & Gamble Technology (Beijing) Co., Procter & Gamble Trading (Thailand) Limited, Procter & Gamble Tuketim Mallari Sanayii A.S., Procter & Gamble UK, Procter & Gamble UK Group Holdings Ltd, Procter & Gamble UK Parent Company Ltd., Procter & Gamble Universal Holding B.V., Procter & Gamble Verwaltungs GmbH, Procter & Gamble Vietnam, Procter & Gamble d.o.o. za trgovinu, Procter & Gamble de Venezuela S.C.A., Procter & Gamble de Venezuela S.R.L., Procter & Gamble do Brasil S/A, Procter & Gamble do Brazil, Procter & Gamble do Nordeste S/A, Procter & Gamble-Rakona s.r.o., Progam Realty & Development Corporation, Redmond Products, Richardson-Vicks Real Estate Inc., Richardson-Vicks do Brasil Quimica e Farmaceutica Ltda, Riverfront Music Publishing Co., Rosemount LLC, SPD Development Company Limited, SPD Swiss Precision Diagnostics GmbH, Scannon S.A.S., Series Acquisition B.V., Shulton, Surfac S.R.L., Sycamore Productions, TAOS - FL, TAOS Retail, Tambrands Inc., Temple Trees Impex & Investment Private Limited, The Art of Shaving - FL, The Dover Wipes Company, The Gillette Company, The Gillette Company LLC, The Gillette co., The Procter & Gamble Distributing LLC, The Procter & Gamble GBS Company, The Procter & Gamble Global Finance Company, The Procter & Gamble Manufacturing Company, The Procter & Gamble Paper Products Company, The Procter & Gamble U.S. Business Services Company, This is L., US CD LLC, Vidal Sassoon (Shanghai) Academy, Vidal Sassoon Co., WEBA Betriebsrenten-Verwaltungsgesellschaft mbH, Walker & Company Brands, and iMFLUX Inc.. Capita plc provides consulting, digital, and software products and services to clients in the private and public sectors. It operates through six divisions: Software, People Solutions, Customer Management, Government Services, Technology Solutions, and Specialist Services. The company offers application software and other solutions, such as automation, critical communication system, finance and payment, management information system, workforce management, and education software products and services; and people solutions, including human resources advisory and digitally enabled services comprising learning, resourcing, pensions, and HR outsourcing services. It also provides customer management services, such as customer engagement, remediation, complaints management, collections, and regulated services; and services related to central and local governments. In addition, the company offers technology solutions, including digital IT and connectivity, network, Trustmarque, intelligent communications, cloud, cyber security, robotic process automation, and workplace IT services; and specialist services, such as travel and event, enforcement, insurance, Evolvi, real estate and infrastructure, GL hearn, Page One, Tascor, Optima, and translation and interpreting services. Further, it provides business operations, customer experience, industry-specific, and education services, as well as various digital solutions. The company offers its services to financial services, pensions, retail, telecoms and media, transport, energy and utilities, central and local government, education, defense and security, health and welfare, and justice and emergency services sectors. It operates in the United Kingdom, Ireland, Europe, the United States, India, South Africa, and the United Arab Emirates. The company was formerly known as The Capita Group plc and changed its name to Capita plc in January 2012. Capita plc was founded in 1984 and is based in London, the United Kingdom. Read More The following companies are subsidiares of General Motors: 2140879 Ontario Inc., ACAR Leasing, ACAR Leasing Ltd., ACF Investment, ACF Investment Corp., AFS SenSub, APGO Trust, Adam Opel, Adam Opel GmbH, Aftermarket (UK), AmeriCredit, AmeriCredit Consumer Loan, AmeriCredit Consumer Loan Company Inc., AmeriCredit Financial Services, AmeriCredit Financial Services Inc., AmeriCredit Funding, AmeriCredit Syndicated Warehouse Trust, Annunciata Corporation, Argonaut Holdings, Argonaut Holdings LLC, BOCO (Proprietary), BOCO (Proprietary) Limited, Banco GMAC, Banco GMAC S.A., Baylis (Gloucester), Boco Trust, Boden Brussels, CHEVYPLAN, CHEVYPLAN S.A. Sociedad Administradora de Planes de Autofinanciamiento Comercial, Cadillac, Cadillac Europe, Cadillac Europe GmbH, Carve-Out Ownership, Carve-Out Ownership Cooperative LLC, Chevrolet Deutschland GmbH, Chevrolet Sales (Thailand), Chevrolet Sales (Thailand) Limited, Chevrolet Sales India, Chevrolet Sales India Private Ltd., Chevrolet Sociedad Anonima de Ahorro para Fines Determinados, Controladora General Motors, Controladora General Motors S.A. de C.V., Cruise, DCJ1, DCJ1 LLC, DMAX, DMAX Ltd., Dealership Liquidations, Dealership Liquidations Inc., Delphi Energy and Engine Management Systems UK, Delphi Energy and Engine Management Systems UK Overseas Corporation, EDS (Electronic Data Systems), FAW-GM, Fundacion Chevrolet, G.M.A.C., GCAR Titling Ltd., GM (UK) Pension, GM (UK) Pension Trustees Limited, GM APO Holdings, GM Administradora de Bens, GM Administradora de Bens Ltda., GM Asia Pacific Regional Headquarters Ltd., GM Auslandsprojekte, GM Automotive, GM Automotive Services Belgium, GM CME, GM Canada Holdings, GM Canada Limited, GM Components Holdings, GM Components Holdings LLC, GM Cruise, GM Cruise Holdings LLC, GM Cruise LLC, GM Defense LLC, GM Eurometals, GM Eurometals Inc., GM Europe Treasury, GM Finance, GM Finance Co. Holdings LLC, GM Financial, GM Financial AB, GM Financial Canada, GM Financial Canada Leasing, GM Financial Canada Leasing Ltd., GM Financial Colombia Holdings LLC, GM Financial Colombia S.A. Compania de Financiamiento, GM Financial Consumer, GM Financial Consumer Discount, GM Financial Consumer Discount Company, GM Financial Del Peru, GM Financial GmbH, GM Financial Holdings LLC, GM Financial Insurance Services, GM Financial Mexico Holdings, GM Financial Mexico Holdings LLC, GM Financial Real Estate, GM Financial de Mexico, GM Financial de Mexico S.A. de C.V. SOFOM E.R., GM Financial del Peru S.A.C, GM Global Business Services, GM Global Propulsion Systems -Torino S.r.l., GM Global Purchasing and Supply Chain, GM Global Technology Operations, GM Global Technology Operations LLC, GM Global Tooling, GM Global Tooling Company LLC, GM Global Treasury Centre Limited, GM Holden, GM Holden Pty Ltd., GM Holdings U.K. No.1 Limited, GM Inversiones Santiago Limitada, GM Investment Trustees Limited, GM Korea, GM Korea Company, GM LAAM Holdings, GM LAAM Holdings LLC, GM Mexico Holdings, GM Mobility Europe GmbH, GM PSA Purchasing Services, GM Personnel Services, GM Personnel Services Inc., GM Philippines Inc., GM Plats (Proprietary), GM Regional Holdings, GM Regional Holdings LLC, GM Retirees Pension Trustees, GM Retirees Pension Trustees Limited, GM Subsystems Manufacturing, GM Subsystems Manufacturing LLC, GM Technical Center Korea Ltd., GM Viet Nam Motor Company, GM-DI Leasing, GM-DI Leasing LLC, GMAC - Instituicao Financeira de Credito, GMAC Administradora de Consorcios, GMAC Administradora de Consorcios Ltda., GMAC Banque, GMAC Continental, GMAC Espana de Financiacion, GMAC Holdings (U.K.), GMAC Lease B.V. (aka Masterlease Europe), GMAC Nederland N.V., GMAC Prestadora de Servicios de Mao de Obra Ltda., GMAC Servicios, GMAC UK, GMAC de Venezuela, GMAC-Prestadora de Servios de Mo-de-Obra, GMACI Corretora de Seguros, GMACI Corretora de Seguros Ltda, GMAM Real Estate I, GMCH&SP Private Equity II, GMCH&SP Private Equity II L.P., GMF Australia Pty Ltd, GMF Europe, GMF Europe Holdco, GMF Europe LLP, GMF Floorplan Owner Revolving Trust, GMF Funding, GMF Germany Holdings, GMF Global Assignment, GMF Global Assignment LLC, GMF International, GMF International LLC, GMF Leasing LLC, GMF Leasing Warehousing Trust, GMF Wholesale Receivables, GMGP Holdings, General Motors (China) Investment Company, General Motors (China) Investment Company Limited, General Motors (Thailand), General Motors (Thailand) Limited, General Motors - Colmotores, General Motors - Colmotores S.A., General Motors Advisory Services LLC, General Motors Africa and Middle East, General Motors Africa and Middle East FZE, General Motors Asia, General Motors Asia LLC, General Motors Asia Pacific Holdings, General Motors Asia Pacific Holdings LLC, General Motors Asset Management, General Motors Asset Management Corporation, General Motors Australia, General Motors Australia Pty Ltd., General Motors Austria, General Motors Austria, General Motors Auto, General Motors Auto LLC, General Motors Automobiles Philippines, General Motors Automobiles Philippines Inc., General Motors Automotive Holdings, General Motors Automotive Holdings S.L., General Motors Belgique Automobile NV, General Motors Belgium, General Motors Chile, General Motors Chile Industria Automotriz Limitada, General Motors China LLC, General Motors Daewoo Auto and Technology, General Motors Daewoo Auto and Technology CIS LLC, General Motors East Africa, General Motors Egypt, General Motors Egypt S.A.E., General Motors Espana, General Motors Europe Holdings, General Motors Europe Limited, General Motors Financial Chile, General Motors Financial Chile Limitada, General Motors Financial Chile S.A., General Motors Financial Company, General Motors Financial Company Inc., General Motors Financial International, General Motors Financial Italia, General Motors Financial Suisse, General Motors Financial UK, General Motors Financial of Canada, General Motors Financial of Canada Ltd., General Motors Finland, General Motors France, General Motors GBS Hungary, General Motors Global Service Operations, General Motors Global Service Operations Inc., General Motors Hellas, General Motors Holden Australia, General Motors Holden Australia NSC, General Motors Holden Australia NSC Pty Ltd., General Motors Holden Australia Pty Ltd., General Motors Holdings LLC, General Motors IT Services (Ireland) Limited, General Motors India Private, General Motors India Private Limited, General Motors International Holdings, General Motors International Holdings LLC, General Motors International Operations, General Motors International Operations Pte. Ltd., General Motors International Services Company, General Motors International Services Company SAS, General Motors International Services LLC, General Motors Investment Limited, General Motors Investment Management, General Motors Investment Management Corporation, General Motors Investment Participacoes, General Motors Investment Participacoes Ltda., General Motors Investments, General Motors Investments Pty. Ltd., General Motors Ireland, General Motors Israel, General Motors Israel Ltd., General Motors Italia, General Motors Japan, General Motors Japan Limited, General Motors LLC, General Motors Limited, General Motors Manufacturing Poland, General Motors Nederland, General Motors New Zealand Pensions, General Motors New Zealand Pensions Limited, General Motors Overseas, General Motors Overseas Commercial Vehicle, General Motors Overseas Commercial Vehicle Corporation, General Motors Overseas Corporation, General Motors Overseas Distribution, General Motors Overseas Distribution LLC, General Motors Peru, General Motors Peru S.A., General Motors Poland Spolka, General Motors Portugal, General Motors Powertrain (Thailand), General Motors Powertrain (Thailand) Limited, General Motors Research Corporation, General Motors South Africa, General Motors South Africa (Pty) Limited, General Motors Suisse, General Motors Taiwan, General Motors Taiwan Ltd., General Motors Technical Centre India, General Motors Technical Centre India Private Limited, General Motors Treasury Center, General Motors Treasury Center LLC, General Motors Turkiye, General Motors UK, General Motors Uruguay, General Motors Uruguay S.A., General Motors Venezolana, General Motors Ventures, General Motors Ventures LLC, General Motors Warehousing and Trading (Shanghai), General Motors Warehousing and Trading (Shanghai) Co. Ltd., General Motors de Argentina, General Motors de Argentina S.r.l., General Motors de Mexico, General Motors de Mexico S. de R.L. de C.V., General Motors del Ecuador, General Motors del Ecuador S.A., General Motors do Brasil, General Motors do Brasil Ltda., General Motors of Canada, General Motors of Canada Company, General Motors-Holden's Sales, General Motors-Holden's Sales Pty. Limited, GigaPower LLC, Global Services Detroit, Global Services Detroit LLC, Global Tooling Service Company Europe, Global Tooling Service Company Europe Limited, Go Motor Retailing, Go Trade Parts, Grand Pointe Holdings, Grand Pointe Holdings Inc., Grand Pointe Park Condominium, Grand Pointe Park Condominium Association, H.S.H., Haines & Strange, Holden New Zealand, Holden New Zealand Limited, IBC Pension Trustees, IBC Pension Trustees Limited, IBC Vehicles, Lease Ownership Cooperative, Lease Ownership Cooperative LLC, Lidlington Engineering Company, Lidlington Engineering Company Ltd., Limited Liability Company "General Motors CIS", Master Lease Germany, Maven Drive, Maven Drive LLC, Millbrook Pension Management, Millbrook Pension Management Limited, Monetization of Carve-Out, Monetization of Carve-Out LLC, Motor Repris Automocio, Motors Holding, Motors Holding LLC, Motors Properties, Motors Properties (Trading), Multi-Use Lease Entity Trust, North American New Cars, North American New Cars LLC, Omnibus BB Transportes, Omnibus BB Transportes S. A., OnStar Connected Services Srl, OnStar Egypt Limited LLC, OnStar Europe, OnStar Europe Ltd., OnStar Global Services, OnStar Global Services Corporation, OnStar LLC, OnStar de Mexico, OnStar de Mexico S. de R.L. de C.V., Opel Bank, Opel Danmark, Opel Group, Opel Group Warehousing, Opel Leasing, Opel Norge, Opel Sonderdienste, Opel Southeast Europe, Opel Sverige, Opel Szentgotthard Automotive Manufacturing, Opel Wien, P.T. G M AutoWorld Indonesia, P.T. General Motors Indonesia, PIMS, PIMS Co., PT. General Motors Indonesia Manufacturing, Pan Asia Technical Automotive Center, Pan Asia Technical Automotive Center Company Ltd., Prestadora de Servicios GMF Colombia S.A.S., Rapid Motor Vehicle Company, Reliance Motor Car Company, Riverfront Holdings III Inc., Riverfront Holdings Inc., Riverfront Holdings Phase II Inc., SAIC GM (Shenyang) Norsom Motors Co. Ltd., SAIC GM Dong Yue Motors Company Limited, SAIC GM Dong Yue Powertrain Company Limited, SAIC GM Wuling Automobile Company Limited, SAIC General Motors Corporation Limited, SAIC General Motors Investment Limited, SAIC General Motors Sales Company Limited, SAIC-GMAC Automotive Finance Company Limited, SAIC-GMF Leasing Co. Ltd., Servicios GMAC S.A. de C.V., Shanghai Chengxin Used Car Operation and Management Company Limited, Shanghai OnStar Telematics Co. Ltd., Sherwoods (Darlington) Limited, Sidecar Technologies, Skurrays Limited, Stam-Terberg Autobedrijven B. V., Strobe Inc., VHC Sub-Holdings (UK), Vauxhall Defined Contribution Pension Plan Trustees Limited, Vehicle Asset Universal Leasing Trust, Vickers (Lakeside) Limited, Vision Motors Limited, WRE, WRE Inc., and Zona Franca Industrial Colmotores SAS. Wine Bar George, a 200-seat wine bar scheduled to open at Disney Springs The Landing neighborhood this spring, recently previewed some of its menu items on the Disney Parks Blog. Wine Bar George will offer more than 130 selections by the ounce, glass, and bottle in a range of varietals, vintages, and prices. The venue is overseen by George Miliotes, renown wine expert, native Floridian, and Disney alum. Miliotes is a Master Sommelier one of only 249 in the world and Wine Bar George is the only wine bar in Florida owned by a Master Sommelier. Executive Chef Ron Rupert will be responsible for the culinary side of Wine Bar George. His philosophy in the kitchen is simple. He says, I want to create delicious food that pairs well with wine. I pull flavors from around the world that are relevant that create memories. Here is a sneak peek at some of his dishes: The Big Board a selection of six artisan cheeses and five crafted meats that serves two or more. Grilled Octopus with Lemon Vinaigrette light and refreshing salad with tender pieces of Spanish octopus (a result of grilling then chilling the octopus) with a touch of acidity from the lemon vinaigrette. Crispy Mac & Cheese Bites crispy cheesy bites served with tomato nage and Pecorino. Porchetta Spiced Pork Cheeks served with a creamy three-cheese polenta and an orange gremolata, these small bites are cooked long and slow. Grilled Whole Greek Sea Bass a family-style plate that serves two or more, this light and tender whole fish is served with cannelloni bean ragout and seasonal vegetables. Olive Oil Cake moist cake with a rich olive oil flavor served with candied olives and lemon mascarpone. Wine Bar Georges entire menu, along with the venues opening date, will be revealed in an upcoming Disney Parks Blog post. Post a Comment Deutsche Lufthansa AG operates as an aviation company in Germany and internationally. The company's Network Airlines segment offers passenger services through a route network of 273 destinations in 86 countries. Its Eurowings segment provides passenger services through a route network of more than 210 destinations in 60 countries. The company's Logistics Business segment offers transport services for various cargoes, including living animals, valuable cargo, post and dangerous goods, and temperature-sensitive goods serving approximately 300 destinations in 100 countries. Its Maintenance, Repair and Overhaul Services (MRO) segment provides maintenance, repair, and overhaul services for civilian commercial aircraft serving original equipment manufacturers and aircraft leasing companies, operators of VIP jets, and airlines, as well as develops and manufactures cabin and digital products. The company's Catering Business segment engages in-flight sales and entertainment, in-flight service equipment, and the associated logistics services, as well as consulting services; and operates airport lounges. As of December 31, 2020, it had a fleet of 757 aircraft. Deutsche Lufthansa AG was founded in 1926 and is headquartered in Cologne, Germany. Read More Emerge Energy Services LP (NYSE:EMES) issued its quarterly earnings data on Monday, August, 8th. The oil and gas company reported ($0.95) EPS for the quarter, missing the consensus estimate of ($0.92) by $0.03. The oil and gas company had revenue of $24.83 million for the quarter, compared to the consensus estimate of $25.04 million. Emerge Energy Services had a net margin of 3.39% and a trailing twelve-month return on equity of 21.49%. The business's revenue was down 63.6% on a year-over-year basis. During the same period last year, the company posted $0.12 earnings per share. View Emerge Energy Services' earnings history. The following companies are subsidiares of Illinois Tool Works: A V Co 1 Limited, A V Co 2 Limited, A V Co 3 Limited, ACCU-LUBE Manufacturing GmbH - Schmiermittel und -gerate -, AIP/BI Holdings Inc., Accessories Marketing Holding Corp., Advanced Molding Company Inc., Allen Coding GmbH, Allen France SAS, Alpine Automation Limited, Alpine Engineered Products, Alpine Holdings Inc., Alpine Systems Corporation, Anaerobicos S.r.l., AppliChem GmbH, Arylux Hungary Elektromechanikus Alkatreszgyarto Kft, Avery Berkel France, Avery India Limited, Avery Malaysia Sdn Bhd, Avery Weigh Tronix, Avery Weigh-Tronix (Suzhou) Weighing Technology Co. Ltd., Avery Weigh-Tronix Finance Limited, Avery Weigh-Tronix Holdings Limited, Avery Weigh-Tronix International Limited, Avery Weigh-Tronix LLC, Avery Weigh-Tronix Limited, Avery Weigh-Tronix Properties Limited, Azon Limited, B.C. Immo, Beijing Miller Electric Manufacturing Co. Ltd., Berkel (Ireland) Limited, Berrington UK, Brapenta Eletronica Ltda., Brooks Instrument (Shanghai) Co. Ltd, Brooks Instrument B.V., Brooks Instrument GmbH, Brooks Instrument KFT, Brooks Instrument Korea Ltd., Brooks Instrument LLC, Buell Industries Inc., CAPMAX Logistica S.A. de C.V., CCI Realty Company, CFC Europe GmbH, CS (Australia) Pty Limited, CS (Finance) Europe S.a.r.l., CS Mexico Holding Company S DE RL DE CV, CSMTS LLC, Calvia Spolka z Ograniczona Odpowiedzialnosci, Capital Ventures (Australasia) S.a r.l, Capmax Logistica S.A. de C.V., Celeste Industries Corporation, Coeur, Coeur (Shanghai) Medical Appliance Trading Co. Ltd, Coeur Asia Limited, Coeur Holding Company, Coeur Inc., Compagnie Hobart, Compagnie de Materiel et d'Equipements Techniques-Comet, Constructions Isothermiques Bontami C.I.B., Crane Carrier Company, Despatch Industries, Diagraph Corporation Sdn. Bhd, Diagraph ITW Mexico S. de R.L. De C.V., Diagraph Mexico S.A. DE C.V., Dongguan Ark-Les Electric Components Co. Ltd., Dongguan CK Branding Co. Ltd., Dorbyl U.K. (Holdings) Limited, Duo Fast de Espana S.A.U., Duo-Fast Korea Co. Ltd., Duo-Fast LLC, E.C.S. d.o.o., ECS Cable Protection Sp. Zoo, ELRO (Holding) AG, ELRO Grosskuchen GmbH, ELRO-WERKE AG, Elga Skandinavian AS, Elro Group, Eltex-Elektrostatik-Gesellschaft mit beschrankter Haftung, Envases Multipac S.A. de C.V., Eurotec Srl, FEG Investments L.L.C., Fasver, Filtertek, Filtertek De Mexico Holding Inc., Filtertek De Mexico S.A. de C.V., GC Financement SA, Gamko B.V., Gun Hwa Platech (Taicang) Co. Ltd., HOBART Gesellschaft mit beschrankter Haftung, Hartness International, Hobart (Japan) K.K., Hobart Andina S.A.S., Hobart Brothers International Chile Limitada, Hobart Brothers LLC, Hobart Dayton Mexicana S. de R.L. de C.V., Hobart Food Equipment Co. Ltd., Hobart Foster Belgium, Hobart International (Singapore) Pte. Ltd., Hobart Korea LLC, Hobart LLC, Hobart Nederland B.V., Hobart Sales & Service Inc., Hobart Scandinavia ApS, Hobart Techniek B.V., Horis, ILC Investments Holdings Inc., ITW (China) Investment Company Limited, ITW (Deutschland) GmbH, ITW (EU) Holdings Ltd., ITW (European) Finance Co. Ltd., ITW (European) Finance II Co. Ltd., ITW (European) Finance III Co. Ltd., ITW (Ningbo) Components & Fastenings Systems Co. Ltd., ITW AEP LLC, ITW AOC LLC, ITW Aircraft Investments Inc., ITW Alpha Sarl, ITW Ampang Industries Philippines Inc., ITW Appliance Components EOOD, ITW Appliance Components S.A. de C.V., ITW Appliance Components S.r.l.a, ITW Appliance Components d.o.o., ITW Australia Holdings Pty Ltd, ITW Australia Property Holdings Pty Ltd., ITW Australia Pty Ltd, ITW Automotive Components (Chongqing) Co. Ltd., ITW Automotive Components (Langfang) Co. Ltd., ITW Automotive Japan K.K., ITW Automotive Korea LLC, ITW Automotive Parts (Shanghai) Co. Ltd, ITW Automotive Products GmbH, ITW Automotive Products Mexico S. de R.L. de C.V., ITW Bailly Comte, ITW Befestigungssysteme GmbH, ITW Belgium, ITW Brazilian Nominee L.L.C., ITW Building Components Group Inc., ITW CER, ITW CP Distribution Center Holland BV, ITW CS (UK) Ltd., ITW Canada Inc., ITW Celeste Inc., ITW Chemical Products Ltda, ITW Chemical Products Scandinavia ApS, ITW Colombia S.A.S., ITW Construction Products (Shanghai) Co. Ltd., ITW Construction Products (Singapore) Pte. Ltd., ITW Construction Products AB, ITW Construction Products AS, ITW Construction Products ApS, ITW Construction Products CZ s.r.o., ITW Construction Products Italy Srl, ITW Construction Products OU, ITW Construction Products OY, ITW Contamination Control (Wujiang) Co. Ltd., ITW Contamination Control B.V., ITW Covid Security Group Inc., ITW DS Investments Inc., ITW DelFast do Brasil Ltda., ITW Delta Sarl, ITW Denmark ApS, ITW Dynatec, ITW Dynatec Adhesive Equipment (Suzhou) Co. Ltd., ITW Dynatec GmbH, ITW Dynatec Kabushiki Kaisha, ITW EAE B.V., ITW EAE Mexico S de RL de CV, ITW EF&C France SAS, ITW EF&C Selb GmbH, ITW Electronic Business Asia Co. Limited, ITW Electronic Components/Products (Shanghai) Co. Ltd., ITW Electronics (Suzhou) Co. Ltd., ITW Epsilon Sarl, ITW Espana S.A., ITW FEG Hong Kong Limited, ITW FEG do Brasil Industria e Comercio Ltda., ITW Fastener Products GmbH, ITW Finance Designated Activity Company, ITW Finance Europe S.A., ITW Fluids and Hygiene Solutions Ltda., ITW Food Equipment Group LLC, ITW France Finance Alpha S.A.S., ITW GH LLC, ITW GSE ApS, ITW GSE Inc., ITW Gamma Sarl, ITW German Management LLC, ITW Global Investments Holdings LLC, ITW Global Investments Holdings Y Compania Sociedad en Comandita por Acciones, ITW Global Investments II Inc., ITW Global Investments Inc., ITW Global Tire Repair Europe GmbH, ITW Global Tire Repair Inc., ITW Global Tire Repair Japan K.K., ITW Graphics (Thailand) Ltd., ITW Graphics Asia Limited, ITW Graphics Italy S.R.L. in liquidazione, ITW Great Britain Investment & Licensing Holding Company, ITW Group France (Luxembourg) S.ar.l., ITW HLP Thailand Co. Ltd., ITW Holding Quimica B.C. S.L. Sole Shareholder Company, ITW Holdings Australia L.P., ITW Holdings I Limited, ITW Holdings II Limited, ITW Holdings III Limited, ITW Holdings IV Limited, ITW Holdings IX Limited, ITW Holdings Inc., ITW Holdings UK, ITW Holdings V Limited, ITW Holdings VI Limited, ITW Holdings VII Limited, ITW Holdings VIII Limited, ITW Holdings X Limited, ITW Holdings XI Limited, ITW Hungary Finance Beta Kft, ITW ILC Holdings I Inc., ITW IPG Investments LLC, ITW Imaden Industria e Comercio Ltda., ITW India Private Limited, ITW International Holdings LLC, ITW Invest Holding GmbH, ITW Ireland Holdings Unlimited Company, ITW Ireland Unlimited Company, ITW Italy Finance Srl, ITW Italy Holding Srl, ITW Japan Ltd., ITW Korea LLC, ITW LLC & Co. KG, ITW Limited, ITW Lombard Holdings Inc., ITW Lys Fusion S.r.l., ITW M FILMS II LLC, ITW MH LLC, ITW Meritex Sdn. Bhd., ITW Metal Fasteners S.L., ITW Mexico Holding Company S. De R.L. de C.V., ITW Mexico Holdings LLC, ITW Morlock GmbH, ITW Mortgage Investments II Inc., ITW Mortgage Investments III Inc., ITW Mortgage Investments IV Inc., ITW Netherlands Administration BV, ITW Netherlands Beta B.V., ITW Netherlands Finance Alpha BV, ITW New Universal LLC, ITW New Zealand, ITW Novadan Sp. Z.o.o., ITW PPF Brasil Adesivos Ltda., ITW Packaging Technology (China) Co. Ltd., ITW Participations S.a r.l., ITW Pension Funds Trustee Company, ITW Performance Plastic (Shanghai) Co. Ltd., ITW Performance Polymers & Fluids Japan Co. Ltd., ITW Performance Polymers & Fluids Korea Limited, ITW Performance Polymers & Fluids OOO, ITW Performance Polymers (Wujiang) Co. Ltd., ITW Performance Polymers ApS, ITW Performance Polymers and Fluids Group FZE, ITW Peru S.A.C., ITW Philippines Holdings LLC, ITW Poly Mex S. de R.L. de C.V., ITW Polymers Sealants North America Inc., ITW Pronovia s.r.o., ITW Pte. Ltd., ITW Qufu Automotive Cooling Systems Co. Ltd., ITW Real Estate Germany GmbH, ITW Residuals III L.L.C., ITW Residuals IV L.L.C., ITW Rivex, ITW SMPI, ITW SPG Mexico S. de R.L. de C.V., ITW Simco-Ion (Shenzhen) Co. Ltd., ITW Slovakia s.r.o., ITW Spain Holdings S.L., ITW Specialty Film LLC, ITW Specialty Films France, ITW Specialty Materials (Suzhou) Co. Ltd., ITW Spraytec, ITW Sverige AB, ITW Sweden Holding AB, ITW Test & Measurement Equipment (Shanghai) Co. Ltd, ITW Test & Measurement GmbH, ITW Test and Measurement Italia Srl, ITW Test and Measurement Services Industry and Trade Ltd., ITW Texwipe Philippines Inc., ITW Thermal Films (Shanghai) Co. Ltd., ITW UK, ITW UK Finance Beta Limited, ITW UK Finance Delta Limited, ITW UK Finance Gamma Limited, ITW UK Finance Limited, ITW UK Finance Zeta Ltd., ITW UK II Limited, ITW Universal II LLC, ITW Welding, ITW Welding AB, ITW Welding GmbH, ITW Welding Products B.V., ITW Welding Products Group FZE, ITW Welding Products Group S. DE R.L. De C.V., ITW Welding Products Italy Srl, ITW Welding Products Limited Liability Company, ITW Welding Produtos Para Solgdagem Ltda., ITW Welding Servicios Mexico S. de R.L. de C.V., ITW Welding Singapore Pte. Ltd., ITW de France, ITW do Brasil Industrial e Comercial Ltda., Ideal Molding Technologies LLC, Illinois Tool Works (Chile) Limitada, Illinois Tool Works (ITW) Nederland B.V., Illinois Tool Works Norway AS, Impar Comercio E Representacoes Ltda., Industrie Plastic Elsasser GmbH, Inmobiliaria Cit. S.A. de C.F., Innova Temperlite Servicios S.A. de C.V., Innovacion y Transformacion Automotriz S.A. de C.V., Instron (Shanghai) Ltd., Instron (Thailand) Limited, Instron Brasil Equipamentos Cientificos Ltda., Instron Foreign Sales Corp. Limited, Instron France S.A.S., Instron GmbH, Instron Holdings Limited, Instron International Limited, Instron Japan Company Ltd., Instron Korea LLC, International Leasing Company LLC, International Truss Systems Proprietary Limited, Isolenge - ITW Sistemas de Isolamento Termico Ltda., KCPL Mauritius Holdings, Kester, Kester Components (M) Sdn. Bhd., Kleinmann GmbH, Krafft S.L., Loma Systems, Loma Systems (Canada) Inc., Loma Systems BV, Loma Systems sro, Lombard Pressings Limited, Lumex Inc., Lys Fusion Poland Sp. z.o.o., M&C Specialties (Shenzhen) Co. Ltd., M&C Specialties Co., MAGNAFLUX GmbH, MEHB Holdings Limited, MGHG Property LLC, MOA Enterprises Inc, Manufacturing Avancee S.A., Meritex Technology (Suzhou) Co. Ltd., Meurer Verpackungssysteme GmbH, Miller Electric Mfg. LLC, Miller Insurance Ltd., NDT Holding LLC, NOVADAN APS, Norden Olje AB, North Star Imaging Europe, North Star Imaging Inc., Nova Chimica S.r.l., Orbitalum Tools GmbH, PENTA-91 OOO, PR. A. I. Srl, PT ITW Construction Products Indonesia, Pacific Concept Industries Limited (Enping), Panreac Quimica S.L., Paslode Fasteners (Shanghai) Co. Ltd., Peerless Machinery Corp., Penta Dnepr LLC, Penta Sever OOO, Penta Volga OOO, Polyrey, Premark FEG L.L.C., Premark HII Holdings LLC, Premark International, Premark International LLC, Prolex Sociedad Anonima, QSA Global Inc., Quimica Industrial Mediterranea S.L., Ramset Fasteners (Hong Kong) Ltd., Rapid Cook LLC, Refrigeration France, S.E.E. Sistemas Industria E Comercio Ltda., ST Mexico Holdings LLC, Sealant Systems International Inc., Sentinel Asia Yuhan Hoesa, Shanghai ITW Plastic & Metal Co. Ltd, Simco (Nederland) B.V., Simco Japan Inc., Societe de Prospection et dInventions Techniques SPIT, Speedline Holdings I Inc., Speedline Holdings I LLC, Speedline Technologies GmbH, Speedline Technologies Mexico S. de R.L. de C.V., Speedline Technologies Mexico Services S. de R.L. de C.V., Stokvis Celix Portugal Unipessoal LDA, Stokvis Danmark ApS, Stokvis Holdings S.A.R.L., Stokvis Promi s.r.o, Stokvis Prostick Tapes Private Limited, Stokvis Tapes (Hong Kong) Co. Limited, Stokvis Tapes (Shanghai) Co. Ltd., Stokvis Tapes (Shenzhen) Co. Ltd., Stokvis Tapes (Taiwan) Co. Ltd., Stokvis Tapes (Tianjin) Co. Ltd., Stokvis Tapes BVBA, Stokvis Tapes Benelux B.V., Stokvis Tapes Deutschland GmbH, Stokvis Tapes France, Stokvis Tapes Italia s.r.l., Stokvis Tapes Limited, Stokvis Tapes Limited Liability Company, Stokvis Tapes Norge AS, Stokvis Tapes Oy, Stokvis Tapes Polska Sp Z.O.O., Stokvis Tapes Sverige AB, Stolvis Holdings II S.A.R.L., Technopack Industria Comercio Consultoria e Representacoes Ltda., Teknek (China) Limited, Teknek (Japan) Limited, Teksaleco Ltd., The Miller Group Ltd, Thirode Grandes Cuisines Poligny, Tien Tai Electrode (Kunshan) Co. Ltd., Tien Tai Electrode Co. Ltd., Unichemicals Industria e Comercio Ltda., VR-Leasing Sarita GmbH & Co. Immobilien KG, VS European Holdco BV, Valeron Strength Films B.V.B.A., Veneta Decalcogomme S.r.l., Versachem Chile S.A., Vesta, Vesta (Guangzhou) Catering Equipment Co. Ltd, Vesta Global Limited, Viltronics Soltec, Vitronics Soltec B.V., Wachs Canada Ltd., Wachs Subsea LLC, Weigh-Tronix Canada ULC, Weigh-Tronix UK Limited, Wilsonart International Holdings LLC, Wynn Oil (South Africa) (Pty) Ltd., Wynn's Automotive France, Wynn's Belgium BVBA, Wynn's Italia Srl, Wynn's Mekuba India Pvt Ltd, ZF TRW (Engineered Fasteners and Components), and Zip-Pak International B.V.. Vedanta Ltd. is a natural resource company, which engages in the exploration, extraction, and processing of minerals, oil, and gas properties. It operates through the following segments: Copper, Aluminum, Iron Ore, Power, and Oil & Gas. The Copper segment focuses in custom smelting and also include a copper smelter, a refinery, a phosphoric acid plant, a sulphuric acid plant, a copper rod plant, and three captive power plants. The Aluminum segment comprises refinery and a captive power plant at Lanjigarh and a smelter, a thermal coal based captive power facility at Jharsuguda both situated in the State of Odisha in India. The Iron Ore segment explores, mines, and processes iron ore, pig iron, and metallurgical coke. The Power segment consists 600 MW thermal coal-based commercial power facility at Jharsuguda in the State of Odisha in Eastern India. The Oil and Gas segment involves in the exploration and development and production of oil and gas. The company was founded by Dwarka Prasad Agarwal on June 25, 1965 and is headquartered in Mumbai, India. Read More The following companies are subsidiares of Jones Lang LaSalle: 225 Fitness Inc., 360 Commercial Partners, ACREST, AGL, AMAS Limited, AVM Partners, Advanced Technologies Group Inc., Alaska UK (GP) Ltd, Alkas Consulting, Aoyama Holding Limited, Australian Valuation Solutions, Avenue9, BRG, BRG International LLC, BRG Resource Group ULC, BRG WORKPLACE MANAGEMENT SOLUTIONS (EUROPE) LIMITED, BRG Workplace Management Solutions (India) Private Limited, BRG Workplace Management Solutions (Singapore) Pte. Ltd., Beijing Dazheng Zhongheng Enterprise Consulting Co. Ltd., Beijing Guotai Zhongheng Enterprise Consulting Co. Ltd., Beijing Jones Lang LaSalle Property Management Services Co. Ltd., Big Red Rooster Flow LLC, Bill Goold Realty, Bradford McCormack & Associates, Brune Consulting Management GmbH, Building Services Network Inc., Business Products Group Inc., Business Resource Holdings Inc., CIG III Technoparc Nominee II Inc./Fiduciaire CIG III Technoparc II Inc., CMM Projekt & Office Solutions GmbH, COBERTURA - SOCIEDADE DE MEDIACAO IMOBILIARIA S.A., CTH, Capital Realty LLC, Carolyn House (General Partner) Limited, Charter Oaks Financial Services Inc., Churston Heard Ltd, Claygate Residential (General Partner) LLP , Claygate Residential (Nominee) Limited, CoR Advisors, Cobertura, Colliers Baltimore, ComRef LIM Co-Invest LLC, Corporate Concierge Services Inc., Corporate Concierge Services of Hawaii Inc., Corporate Realty Advisors, Corrigo, Corrigo Incorporated, Credo Real Estate (Singapore), Creston Residential (General Partner) LLP, Creston Residential (Nominee) Limited, DST International Property Services, Dalian Jones Lang LaSalle Services Limited, ECD Energy and Environment Canada, ECD Energy and Environment Canada Ltd., EID (General Partner) LLP, ELPF Lafayette Manager Inc., Eleven Eleven Construction Corporation, Environmental Governance Ltd, Europe Fund III Alberta GP Inc., Europe Fund III GP LLC, FACILITY ASSOCIATES RECRUITMENT LIMITED, FIVE D PROPERTY MANAGEMENT (NSW) PTY LTD, FIVE D PROPERTY MANAGEMENT (NT) PTY LTD, FIVE D PROPERTY MANAGEMENT (QLD) PTY LTD, FIVE D PROPERTY MANAGEMENT (SA) PTY LTD, FIVE D PROPERTY MANAGEMENT (TAS) PTY LTD, FIVE D PROPERTY MANAGEMENT (VIC) PTY LTD, FIVE D PROPERTY MANAGEMENT (WA) PTY LTD, Five D Holdings Pty Limited, Five D Holdings Pty Ltd, Five D Property Management (ACT) Pty Ltd, Fox RPM Corp., GFN Property Investments L.L.C., Guangzhou Jones Lang LaSalle Property Services Company Limited, Guardian Property Asset Management, Guardian Property Asset Management Limited, H Park Germany LP GmbH, H Park Germany Verwaltungs-GmbH, HALL AND KAY FIRE HOLDINGS LIMITED, HFF, HFF Holdings Limited, HFF InvestCo LLC, HFF Partnership Holdings LLC, HFF Real Estate Limited, HFF Securities L.P., HFF Securities Limited, HG2 Limited, HUB PROFESSIONAL SERVICES LIMITED, Halcyon Real Estate, Hall & Kay Fire Services Ltd, Harry K Moore, Hentschel & Company LLC, Hercules Property Manager (Jersey) Limited, Holliday Fenoglio Fowler L.P., Holliday GP LLC, Hunter Facilities Management (HFM), Huntley Mullaney Spargo & Sullivan Inc., Huntley Mullaney Spargo & Sullivan LLC, IFM Services Finland OY, INTEGRAL UK HOLDINGS LIMITED, Inmobiliaria Jones Lang LaSalle Limitada, Integra Realty Resources, Integra Realty Resources - Dallas, Integral, Integral Facility Services Limited, Integral UK, Integrated General Administration Services K.K., J P Sturge Limited, J.L.W. Nominees Limited, J.L.W. Second Nominees Limited, JLL 2002, JLL 2003 Limited, JLL CAMBRIDGE LTD, JLL CMG LLC, JLL Capital Markets AB, JLL Chile Asesorias Inmobiliarias Limitada, JLL Corporate Solutions - Servicos De Conservacao e Manutencao de Imoveis Ltda, JLL Corporate Solutions AB, JLL Corporate Solutions Holdings Inc., JLL Corretagen e Trasacoes Imobiliarias Ltda., JLL Expertises SARLAU, JLL Infrastructure Advisory Pty Ltd, JLL Ingenierie, JLL Investment Scottish Limited Partnership II, JLL Kapitalmarkand Holding AB, JLL Kapitalmarknad AB, JLL Ltd, JLL Macau Limited, JLL Mall Management K.K., JLL Marketplace LLC, JLL Morii Valuation & Appraisal K.K., JLL Mortgage Services Pty Limited, JLL Nevada Inc., JLL Properties LLC, JLL Public Sector Valuations Pty Ltd, JLL Puerto Rico Realty & Co. S. en C., JLL Real Estate Capital Pte. Ltd., JLL Scottish II G.P. L.L.C., JLL Singapore Capital Pte. Ltd., JLL Transaction Services AB, JLL Treasury Support AB, JLL Valuation & Advisory Services LLC, JLL/BWXT Naval Facility Experts LLC, JLLBRR LLC, JLLINT Inc., Jones Lang LaSalle & Compania Limitada, Jones Lang LaSalle (ACT) Pty Limited, Jones Lang LaSalle (B) Sdn Bhd, Jones Lang LaSalle (Barbados) Ltd., Jones Lang LaSalle (Beijing) Consultants Limited, Jones Lang LaSalle (China) Limited, Jones Lang LaSalle (Fiji) Pte Ltd, Jones Lang LaSalle (Geneva) SA, Jones Lang LaSalle (Luxembourg) Secs, Jones Lang LaSalle (NSW) Pty Limited, Jones Lang LaSalle (PNG) Limited, Jones Lang LaSalle (Philippines) Inc., Jones Lang LaSalle (Portugal) - Sociedade de Mediacao Imobiliaria S.A., Jones Lang LaSalle (Puerto Rico) Inc., Jones Lang LaSalle (QLD) Pty Limited, Jones Lang LaSalle (S E) Limited, Jones Lang LaSalle (SA) Pty Limited, Jones Lang LaSalle (Shenzhen) Commercial Consultancy Company Limited, Jones Lang LaSalle (VIC) Pty Limited, Jones Lang LaSalle (WA) Pty Limited, Jones Lang LaSalle (pty) ltd, Jones Lang LaSalle - Central Texas LLC, Jones Lang LaSalle - Front Range LLLP, Jones Lang LaSalle - Northeast Inc., Jones Lang LaSalle - Texas Inc., Jones Lang LaSalle -Sociedade de Avaliacoes Imobiliarias Unipessoal Lda, Jones Lang LaSalle 1. Beteiligungsgesellschaft mbH, Jones Lang LaSalle AG, Jones Lang LaSalle Acquisition Corp., Jones Lang LaSalle Administration B.V., Jones Lang LaSalle Advisory Services Pty Limited, Jones Lang LaSalle Americas (Illinois) L.P., Jones Lang LaSalle Americas Inc., Jones Lang LaSalle Arizona LLC, Jones Lang LaSalle Asia Holdings Limited, Jones Lang LaSalle Asset Management GmbH, Jones Lang LaSalle Australia Pty Limited, Jones Lang LaSalle BV, Jones Lang LaSalle Bangladesh Private Limited, Jones Lang LaSalle Beihai Holdings L.L.C., Jones Lang LaSalle Belgium Holdings LLC, Jones Lang LaSalle Billion Management Services Limited, Jones Lang LaSalle Brokerage Inc., Jones Lang LaSalle Building Operations Private Limited, Jones Lang LaSalle Bulgaria EOOD, Jones Lang LaSalle Capital Investments Limited, Jones Lang LaSalle Charities, Jones Lang LaSalle Co-Investment Inc., Jones Lang LaSalle Co. Ltd., Jones Lang LaSalle Constructions K.K., Jones Lang LaSalle Corporate Appraisal and Advisory Limited, Jones Lang LaSalle Corporate Finance Limited, Jones Lang LaSalle Corporate Property (VIC) Pty Limited, Jones Lang LaSalle Corporate Property Services Pty Limited, Jones Lang LaSalle Dorchester Limited, Jones Lang LaSalle Ecuador S.A. JLL ECUADOR, Jones Lang LaSalle Electronic Sarl, Jones Lang LaSalle Espana S.A., Jones Lang LaSalle Europe Limited, Jones Lang LaSalle European Holdings Limited, Jones Lang LaSalle European Services Limited, Jones Lang LaSalle Expertises SAS, Jones Lang LaSalle Facility Services S.L., Jones Lang LaSalle Finance BV, Jones Lang LaSalle Finance Europe, Jones Lang LaSalle Finance Luxembourg Sarl, Jones Lang LaSalle Finland Oy, Jones Lang LaSalle French Co-Investments Inc., Jones Lang LaSalle Gayrimenkul Hizmetleri Ticaret Anonim Sirketi, Jones Lang LaSalle German Holdings B.V. & Co. KG, Jones Lang LaSalle Global Finance Luxembourg Sarl, Jones Lang LaSalle Global Finance UK Limited, Jones Lang LaSalle Global Finance US LLC, Jones Lang LaSalle Global Holdings BV, Jones Lang LaSalle GmbH, Jones Lang LaSalle Great Lakes Corporate Real Estate Partners LLC, Jones Lang LaSalle Group Finance Luxembourg Sarl, Jones Lang LaSalle Group Holdings BV, Jones Lang LaSalle Group Holdings SNC, Jones Lang LaSalle Group Services spoka z ograniczona odpowiedzialnoscia, Jones Lang LaSalle Guatemala Sociedad Anonima, Jones Lang LaSalle Gutland S.a.r.l., Jones Lang LaSalle Haiti S.A., Jones Lang LaSalle Holding AB, Jones Lang LaSalle Holding BV, Jones Lang LaSalle Holding SAS, Jones Lang LaSalle Holdings Cyprus Limited, Jones Lang LaSalle Holdings Inc., Jones Lang LaSalle Holdings Limited, Jones Lang LaSalle Holdings Y.K., Jones Lang LaSalle Holdings spoka z ograniczona odpowiedzialnoscia, Jones Lang LaSalle Hotels (NSW) Pty Limited, Jones Lang LaSalle Hotels Limited, Jones Lang LaSalle Hotels Participacoes Ltda., Jones Lang LaSalle Hotels S.A., Jones Lang LaSalle IP Inc., Jones Lang LaSalle Innovation Development L.L.C., Jones Lang LaSalle Insurance Services Ltd, Jones Lang LaSalle International Holdings Limited, Jones Lang LaSalle International Inc., Jones Lang LaSalle International Properties Limited, Jones Lang LaSalle Investments LLC, Jones Lang LaSalle Israel Limited, Jones Lang LaSalle Jamaica Limited, Jones Lang LaSalle K.K., Jones Lang LaSalle KFT, Jones Lang LaSalle Kenya Ltd, Jones Lang LaSalle LLP (Kazakhstan), Jones Lang LaSalle Lanka (Private) Limited, Jones Lang LaSalle Laser Ltd, Jones Lang LaSalle Limitada, Jones Lang LaSalle Limited, Jones Lang LaSalle Limited Liability Company, Jones Lang LaSalle Lithuania UAB, Jones Lang LaSalle Ltd (Ireland), Jones Lang LaSalle Ltd., Jones Lang LaSalle Ltda., Jones Lang LaSalle Luxembourg Star Sarl, Jones Lang LaSalle Malta Holdings Limited, Jones Lang LaSalle Malta Limited, Jones Lang LaSalle Management Services Limited, Jones Lang LaSalle Management Services Taiwan Limited, Jones Lang LaSalle Michigan LLC, Jones Lang LaSalle Midwest LLC, Jones Lang LaSalle Misr LLC, Jones Lang LaSalle Multifamily LLC, Jones Lang LaSalle Multifamily Member LLC, Jones Lang LaSalle New England L.L.C., Jones Lang LaSalle Northwest LLC, Jones Lang LaSalle Pension Trustees Ltd, Jones Lang LaSalle Procurement Funding Limited, Jones Lang LaSalle Procurement Ltd., Jones Lang LaSalle Property Consultants (India) Private Ltd, Jones Lang LaSalle Property Consultants Pte Ltd, Jones Lang LaSalle Property Fund Advisors Limited, Jones Lang LaSalle Property Management Pte Ltd, Jones Lang LaSalle Property Management Services LLC, Jones Lang LaSalle Real Estate Advisory Limited, Jones Lang LaSalle Real Estate Brokerage Limited, Jones Lang LaSalle Real Estate Services Inc., Jones Lang LaSalle Receivables Holdings LLC, Jones Lang LaSalle Residential Development GmbH, Jones Lang LaSalle Resources Limited, Jones Lang LaSalle S. de R.L., Jones Lang LaSalle S.R.L., Jones Lang LaSalle S.p.A., Jones Lang LaSalle SAS, Jones Lang LaSalle SE, Jones Lang LaSalle SEA Limited, Jones Lang LaSalle SSC (Philippines) Inc., Jones Lang LaSalle Sarl, Jones Lang LaSalle Saudi Arabia Limited, Jones Lang LaSalle Secs, Jones Lang LaSalle Securities L.L.C., Jones Lang LaSalle Services (Jersey) Limited, Jones Lang LaSalle Services (Malta) Limited, Jones Lang LaSalle Services (Private) Limited, Jones Lang LaSalle Services AB, Jones Lang LaSalle Services AS, Jones Lang LaSalle Services ApS, Jones Lang LaSalle Services B.V., Jones Lang LaSalle Services Bahrain S.P.C., Jones Lang LaSalle Services Gmbh, Jones Lang LaSalle Services LLC, Jones Lang LaSalle Services Lebanon S.A.R.L., Jones Lang LaSalle Services Limited (Nigeria), Jones Lang LaSalle Services Ltd, Jones Lang LaSalle Services S.r.l., Jones Lang LaSalle Services SA/NV, Jones Lang LaSalle Services SAS, Jones Lang LaSalle Services SRL, Jones Lang LaSalle Services Sarl, Jones Lang LaSalle Sociedad Anonima de Capital Variable, Jones Lang LaSalle Sociedad Comercial de Responsabilidad Limitada, Jones Lang LaSalle South Africa (Proprietary) Ltd, Jones Lang LaSalle Strata Management Pty Limited, Jones Lang LaSalle Surveyors (Shanghai) Company Limited, Jones Lang LaSalle Taiwan Limited, Jones Lang LaSalle Technology Services Pte Ltd, Jones Lang LaSalle Trinidad Limited, Jones Lang LaSalle UAE Limited, Jones Lang LaSalle UK FC, Jones Lang LaSalle UK Hanover, Jones Lang LaSalle Vietnam Company Limited, Jones Lang LaSalle d.o.o. (Croatia), Jones Lang LaSalle d.o.o. (Serbia), Jones Lang LaSalle de Venezuela S.R.L., Jones Lang LaSalle of New York LLC, Jones Lang LaSalle of Pennsylvania Inc, Jones Lang LaSalle s.r.o, Jones Lang LaSalle s.r.o., Jones Lang LaSalle sprl, Jones Lang LaSalle spoka z ograniczona odpowiedzialnoscia, Jones Lang Wootton Ltd, Jones Lang Wootton Property Management Services Ltd, KHK Group Limited, Kensington CA LLC, Keystone Partners, King & Co Limited, King Sturge, King Sturge Holdings Limited, King Sturge Management SPRL, LAOF V (General Partner) LLP, LASALLE INVESTMENT MANAGEMENT BV, LAVA (General Partner) LLP, LIC II (General Partner) Limited, LIC Lafayette Manager Inc., LIM Advisory Services S.a r.l., LIM Asia Co-Investments Pte. Ltd., LIM Associates L.L.C., LIM Consejeros S. de R.L. de C.V., LIM Management Mexico S. de R.L. de C.V., LJPF Co-Investments GK, LMF Investments LLC, LPI (Australia) Holdings Pty Ltd, LRA MKP TRS L.P., LREDS II PF L.P., LREDS III Carry Partner L.P., LUKSS I Carry Partner L.P., LUKV Carry Jersey Limited, LUKV/CPP Co-Investment L.P., LaSalle (Shanghai) Industrial Co. Ltd. [ () ], LaSalle - VA Industrial GP LLC, LaSalle AIFM Europe S.a r.l., LaSalle Acquisitions Corp., LaSalle Asia Opportunity II GP LLC, LaSalle Asia Opportunity II Investors GP LLC, LaSalle Asia Opportunity III GP Ltd., LaSalle Asia Opportunity IV GP LTD, LaSalle Asia Opportunity Investors III GP Ltd., LaSalle Asia Opportunity V GP Ltd., LaSalle Asia Recovery L.L.C., LaSalle Asia Venture Co-Investment Trust, LaSalle Aureum Verwaltung GmbH, LaSalle Blooms General Partner Limited, LaSalle CAVA Industrial Carryco LLC, LaSalle CIG III GP Inc., LaSalle CIG IV GP Inc., LaSalle Canada Core Real Property GP Inc., LaSalle Canada Property Fund GP Inc., LaSalle China Logistics Venture GP Ltd, LaSalle China Logistics Venture GP S.a r.l., LaSalle China Logistics Venture SCSp, LaSalle Co-Investment L.L.C., LaSalle Co-Investment Management (General Partner) Limited, LaSalle Direct General Partner Limited, LaSalle EMEA (Scots) Investments GP LLP, LaSalle Euro Growth II S.a.r.l. , LaSalle European Co-invest (Scotland) LLP, LaSalle European Investments L.L.C., LaSalle European Recovery III (GP) LLP, LaSalle French Fund II Co-Investment GmbH, LaSalle French Fund II G.P. L.L.C., LaSalle Fund Management B.V., LaSalle Funds General Partner Ltd, LaSalle Funds Management Limited, LaSalle GPS Holdings LLC, LaSalle Genco G.P. L.L.C., LaSalle German Income and Growth G.P. L.L.C., LaSalle German Retail Venture GP L.L.C., LaSalle Global Partner Solutions Limited, LaSalle GmbH, LaSalle Income & Growth Fund VI Carry L.L.C., LaSalle Income & Growth Fund VI GP L.L.C., LaSalle Income & Growth Fund VI L.P., LaSalle Income & Growth Fund VII Carry L.L.C., LaSalle Income & Growth Fund VII GP L.L.C., LaSalle Income & Growth Fund VIII Carry L.L.C., LaSalle Income & Growth Fund VIII GP L.L.C., LaSalle Investment (Luxembourg) SARL, LaSalle Investment Limited Partnership II-A, LaSalle Investment Management, LaSalle Investment Management (Canada), LaSalle Investment Management (Canada) Inc., LaSalle Investment Management (Jersey) Limited, LaSalle Investment Management (Shanghai) Co. Ltd, LaSalle Investment Management Asia Pte Ltd, LaSalle Investment Management Australia Pty Ltd, LaSalle Investment Management Co. Ltd., LaSalle Investment Management Distributors LLC, LaSalle Investment Management Espana S.L.U., LaSalle Investment Management Hong Kong Limited, LaSalle Investment Management Inc., LaSalle Investment Management K.K., LaSalle Investment Management Kapitalverwaltungsgesellschaft mbH, LaSalle Investment Management Korea Yuhan Hoesa, LaSalle Investment Management Luxembourg SARL, LaSalle Investment Management SAS, LaSalle Investment Management Securities B.V., LaSalle Investment Management Securities LLC, LaSalle Italia SRL, LaSalle Japan Logistics II GP Ltd, LaSalle Japan Logistics III GP Ltd, LaSalle Japan Logistics Investors II GP Ltd., LaSalle Japan Logistik-Immobilienfonds GP SARL, LaSalle Japan Property Fund GP Limited, LaSalle LIC II A G.P. Ltd., LaSalle LIC II A UK LLP, LaSalle LIC II B G.P. LLC, LaSalle Land General Partner Limited, LaSalle Land Trustee Limited, LaSalle Logistics GP LLC, LaSalle Mariner Co-Investment Fund Carryco L.L.C., LaSalle Mariner Co-Investment Fund G.P. L.L.C., LaSalle Medical Office Fund III GP LLC, LaSalle Mexico Advisors Inc., LaSalle Mexico Fund I Investors A G.P. LLC, LaSalle Mexico I (General Partner) LLC, LaSalle Mortgage Real Estate Investors Inc., LaSalle North American Holdings Inc., LaSalle Paris Office Venture General Partner L.L.C., LaSalle Partners (Mauritius) Pvt Ltd, LaSalle Partners International, LaSalle Partners S. de R. L. de C. V., LaSalle Partners Services S. de R.L. de C.V., LaSalle Property Fund GP Holdings LLC, LaSalle Property Fund GP LLC, LaSalle Property Fund REIT Inc., LaSalle RECC GP LLC, LaSalle REDS GP Inc., LaSalle REDS III GP Sarl, LaSalle REDS TSA GP LLC, LaSalle REIT Advisors K.K., LaSalle Ranger Co-Investment Fund G.P. L.L.C., LaSalle Ranger Co-Investment Fund II G.P. L.L.C., LaSalle Ranger Co-Investment Fund III G.P. L.L.C., LaSalle Ranger II Carry L.L.C., LaSalle Ranger III Carry L.L.C., LaSalle Real Estate Debt Strategies II (GP) LLP, LaSalle Real Estate Investment Strategies GP S.a r.l., LaSalle Residential Finance Fund GP Inc., LaSalle Residential Fund III GP Inc., LaSalle Retail Japan-Immobilienfonds GP S.a r.l., LaSalle Salt River Carry L.L.C., LaSalle Special Situations Carry GP LLC, LaSalle Special Situations II Venture GP S.a r.l., LaSalle Student Housing L.L.C., LaSalle Transpennine GP (Scot) LLP, LaSalle UK Property Services Limited, LaSalle UK Ventures (General Partner) Limited, LaSalle UKSS I GP Ltd., LaSalle UKV Co-Investor GP LLC, LaSalle UKVA GP LLC, LaVA Carry (Scotland) L.P., LaVA Feeder (Scotland) LP, Lava II GP S.a r.l., Lead Fast Investments Limited, Lee & Klatskin Associates, Leechiu & Associates, Lexington MKP Management L.P., Light bluu Limited, LodgeTax, MSCI's Global Occupiers business, Maloney Field Services, Martin Potts & Associates, Means Knaus Partners, Merlin UK Property Venture GP Limited, Merritt & Harris Inc., Midosuji Management GK, Morii Appraisal & Investment Consulting, Neo-Swiat, New England - Jones Lang LaSalle LLC, Nextport, Nima Mountaineer AB, Oak Grove Commercial Mortgage, Office Blocks Pte. Ltd., Opex Consulting, Orchid Insurance Limited, Oxford General Partner Limited, P.1 Administracao em Complexo Imobiliarios Ltda., P.2 Administracao em Complexo Imobiliarios Ltda., P.3 Administracao em Complexo Imobiliarios Ltda., PDM International, PDM International (Beijing) Limited, PDM International (Chengdu) Limited, PDM International China Limited, PDM International HK Limited, PDM International Limited, PMX, PT Jones Lang LaSalle, PT. Procon Indah, Pacific Real Estate Partners, Peloton Commercial Real Estate, Primary Capital Advisors, Prime Property Consultants Limited, Procofin, Propell National Valuers Pty Ltd., PropertyLinx Pty Ltd, Quadrant Realty Finance, Rogers Chapman UK Ltd, SBR Continental Europe GP LLC, Sage Capital, Salt River Investors GP LLC, Sandalwood Mall Management Private Limited, Shelter Bay Retail Group, Sovereign Asian Properties Inc., Spaulding and Slye Federal Services LLC, Stessa Inc., Strategic Advisory Group, TETRIS ARQUITECTURA SL - SUCURSAL EM PORTUGAL, TETRIS Arquitectura S.L, Tansei Mall Management Co. Ltd., TeTriSolutions LLC, Tenzing AB, Tetris Amenagement SARL, Tetris Design & Build BV, Tetris Design & Build Romania SRL, Tetris Design & Build Sarl, Tetris Design & Build sprl, Tetris Design and Build (Pty) Ltd, Tetris Design and Build S.R.L (Italy), Tetris Design and Build Sarl, Tetris Poland spoka z ograniczona odpowiedzialnoscia, Tetris Projects GmbH, Tetris Projects Ltd, Tetris SAS, Tetris Tasarm ve Insaat Hizmetleri A.S, The Apartment Group, The Horizon Management Services Limited, The Spargo Corporation, The Standard Group LLC, The Staubach Company, Travis Commercial Real Estate Services, Triangle General Partner Limited, Trinity Funds Management, Trussard Property Consultants, Tetris Design & Build Servicos de Arquitetura Ltda., Tetris Design & Build s.r.o., Utrillo Ltd, ValuD Consulting, Veronique Nocquet, W A Ellis LLP, Washington Partners, Whitetail GP LLC, Wilson Retail Group, Wonderment BV, YY Property Solutions, bluu City Limited, bluu Projects Limited, bluu Regions Limited, bluu Solutions Limited, and bluuco limited. John Wood Group PLC, together with its subsidiaries, provides consulting, project management, and engineering solutions to energy and built environment worldwide. It operates through four segments: Asset Solutions Europe, Africa, Asia, Australia; Assets Solutions Americas; Technical Consulting Solutions; and Investment Services. The company offers operations solutions, including maintenance, modifications, commissioning and decommissioning, and aftermarket services, as well as industrial services, such as painting, insulation, scaffolding, rope access, E&I, asbestos removal, and civil and earthworks services; engineering, procurement, and construction management; plant operations and life extension; technology solutions; supervision and management services; fabrication and inspection services; and construction and field services. It also provides environment and infrastructure solutions comprising environmental studies and compliance, environmental remediation, public infrastructure, and geotechnical and materials services; clean energy solutions; mine planning and design, mineral processing and metallurgy, mineral resources and project assessment services; and automation and control solutions, such as asset protection and facility and process automation solutions, as well as simulation, learning, and virtual systems. In addition, the company offers subsea and export systems, including subsea, umbilical, riser, and flowline design, as well as planning, design, and development of marine terminals and pipelines; and hull and marine services. It serves oil and gas, infrastructure, industrial and manufacturing, mining, power, and government sectors. John Wood Group PLC was founded in 1912 and is headquartered in Aberdeen, the United Kingdom. Read More Nabors Industries Ltd. engages in the provision of platform work over and drilling rigs. It operates through the following segments: U.S. Drilling, Canada Drilling, International Drilling, Drilling Solutions, and Rig Technologies. The U.S. Drilling segment includes land drilling activities in the lower 48 states and Alaska, as well as offshore operations in the Gulf of Mexico. The Canada segment consists of land-based drilling rigs in Canada. The International segment focuses in maintaining a footprint in the oil and gas market, most notably in Saudi Arabia, Algeria, Argentina, Colombia, Kazakhstan, and Venezuela. The Drilling Solutions segment offers drilling technologies, such as patented steering systems and rig instrumentation software systems that enhance drilling performance and wellbore placement. The Rig Technologies segment comprises Canrig, which manufactures and sells top drives, catwalks, wrenches, drawworks, and drilling related equipment, such as robotic systems and downhole tools. The company was founded by Clair Nabors in 1952 and is headquartered in Hamilton, Bermuda. Read More William Lyon Homes (NYSE:WLH) released its quarterly earnings results on Wednesday, November, 6th. The construction company reported $0.37 earnings per share (EPS) for the quarter, beating analysts' consensus estimates of $0.30 by $0.07. The construction company had revenue of $466.90 million for the quarter, compared to the consensus estimate of $487.15 million. William Lyon Homes had a net margin of 3.04% and a trailing twelve-month return on equity of 6.98%. The business's revenue was down 12.7% on a year-over-year basis. During the same period in the previous year, the firm earned $0.68 EPS. View William Lyon Homes' earnings history. Zurich Insurance Group AG is a holding company, which engages in the provision of insurance products and related services. It operates through the following segments: Property and Casualty Regions, Life Regions, Farmers, Group Functions and Operations, and Non-Core Businesses. The Property and Casualty Regions segment provides motor, home and commercial products and services for individuals, as well as small and large businesses on both a local and global basis. The Life Regions segment refers to the comprehensive range of life and health insurance products on both an individual and a group basis, including annuities, endowment and term insurance, unit-linked and investment-oriented products, as well as full private health, supplemental health and long-term care insurance. The Farmers segment includes non-claims administrative and management services to the Farmers Exchanges, which are owned by policyholders. The Group Functions and Operations segment comprises the Group s Holding and Financing and Headquarters activities. The Non-Core Businesses segment includes insurance and reinsurance businesses that the Group does not consider core to its operations and that are therefore mos Read More I thought about this idea of protection and empowerment as I continue to pray about those being impacted by Covid-19. What came to mind first was the song No Weapon by Fred Hammond. Its always been one of my favorite worship songs because it reminds... The Ameo gets the same engine as the Polo without any change to the output. Volkswagen has launched the Ameo with a new 1.0-litre petrol engine, replacing the older 1.2-litre unit. It is the same engine that was introduced with the Polo a month back, in March 2018. The Ameo gets the same engine as the Polo without any change to the output. The 1.0-litre petrol engine makes 76PS of maximum power and 95Nm of peak torque, 1PS and 15Nm lesser than the outgoing 1.2-litre engine. Like the older engine, the 1.0-litre engine is also mated to a 5-speed manual transmission only. With this, the Ameo petrol becomes the least powerful car in its segment, which comprises of the Tata Tigor, Maruti Suzuki Dzire, Ford Aspire and the upcoming Honda Amaze. Other details like the variants, features and prices remain unchanged. The Ameo petrol is still available in five variants - Trendline (Rs 5.5 lakh), Comfortline (Rs 6.14 lakh), Comfortline Plus (Rs 6.44 lakh), Highline (Rs 7.15 lakh) and Highline Plus (Rs 7.45 lakh) (all prices ex-showroom pan-India). At present, Volkswagen dealerships still have stocks of the Ameo 1.2 petrol, but we expect the Ameo 1.0-litre to hit showrooms soon. Volkswagen is also organising a multi-city Ameo roadshow that will travel through 250 cities across India covering over 30,000km, starting from April 14, 2018. The roadshow will commence from Maharashtra in the West, Uttarakhand and Haryana in the North and Karnataka in the South. Since Volkswagen doesnt have as wide a network as Maruti Suzuki or Hyundai, the roadshow is aimed at creating brand awareness. Those who are interested in buying the Ameo will be able to test drive and book the car on the spot. The carmaker will also offer options to finance the car. Source: CarDekho.com The foreign acquisition unit of Oil and Natural Gas Corps (ONGC) has filed an arbitration claim against the government of Sudan in a London court. New Delhi: The foreign acquisition unit of Oil and Natural Gas Corps (ONGC) has filed an arbitration claim against the government of Sudan in a London court, a company official said, seeking to recover dues pending for years from a project hit by the breakaway of South Sudan in 2011. People familiar with the matter in India and Sudan said ONGC had filed a claim for USD 98.94 million, in what they said was a first for the South Asian nations top oil and gas explorer against any government. They declined to be identified because they werent authorised to discuss the matter with media. At the centre of the dispute is ONGCs 25 per cent stake the company acquired in the Greater Nile Oil Project (GNOP) in Sudan in 2003. Other stakeholders include Chinas China National Petroleum Corp with a 40 per cent stake and Malaysias Petronas with a 30 per cent share. Yes, we have filed an arbitration as our dues have been pending for years, said N. K. Verma, managing director of ONGC Videsh Ltd (OVL). Notwithstanding this arbitration we will continue to work with Sudan going forward, he said, declining to provide details on the timing and location of any hearings, or the amount being sought. The current arbitration is only for a part of pending dues that add up to about USD 425 million, sources said, adding ONGC has sued the government as the contracts were backed by sovereign guarantees. ONGC will also file arbitrations for the remaining outstanding amount in due course, said a company official, who declined to be identified. Officials in Sudan said contacts and negotiations with ONGC were being lined up. We have addressed the company (ONGC) to show our commitment to serious negotiation and we (have) set up a committee to determine the time frame to pay back the sum in installments, said Bekheet Ahmed Abdullah, under-secretary for Sudans Petroleum Ministry. Sanctions impact: OVLs stake in the Greater Nile Oil Project (GNOP) comprised Blocks 1, 2 and 4, and the firm also agreed to build a 1,500-kilometre pipeline to Port Sudan on the Red Sea. But in 2011 South Sudan broke away from Sudan, after decades of civil war, and took control of blocks 1A, 1B and a part of block 4. Meanwhile, because of years of trade sanctions imposed on Sudan by the U.S. - only lifted in 2017 - Khartoum found it difficult to secure oil for its refineries, and asked foreign companies including OVL to sell their share of oil from the blocks to the African nation. In 2016, OVL signed a separate agreement with Sudan for the sale of its share of GNOP oil. Sudan has not yet paid USD 90.81 million to ONGC for purchases of oil in 2016 and 2017, according to people familiar with the matter. ONGC Videsh had expected Sudan to clear the dues after lifting of the US sanctions last year. We are committed to pay the money but due to the sanctions imposed on Sudan, we are facing problems in making payment, said Sirajuddin Hamid Yousuf, Sudans ambassador to India. The sanctions were eased on Oct. 12, 2017 but we still cannot have normal banking transactions with India and others, he said. South Korean consumer durables firm Samsung continues to be the most trusted brand in the country followed by Sony and LG, while Tata Group. Mumbai: South Korean consumer durables firm Samsung continues to be the most trusted brand in the country followed by Sony and LG, while Tata Group, the only Indian company to feature in the top five, occupied the fourth slot, a report said. The top three brands retained their last year's position while Tata moved up a place, The Brand Trust Report 2018 said. US-based Apple took the fifth position, losing a spot from last year. PC maker Dell improved by two places to be placed sixth, while auto major Honda took the seventh position. Sportswear major Nike jumped 29 places to occupy the eighth spot, while PC maker Hewlett Packard and carmaker Maruti Suzuki were placed ninth and 10th, respectively. Chinese handset maker Oppo which was ranked 29 in 2017 occupied the 11th place in 2018, Puma climbed 32 places from last year to rank 12 in 2018. Auto firm BMW gained 30 places to take the 15th position, while Google entered the top 20 ranking for the first time, occupying the 18th position from 40 last year. Over 2,450 respondents participated in the survey conducted by TRA Research across 16 cities and its findings have been compiled in The Brand Trust Report 2018. Among India's 1,000 Most Trusted brands, the categories with the maximum brands were food and beverage and FMCG contributing to 25.6 per cent of the total brands in the listings. When compared to last year, 320 new brands made it to the list, 368 brands fell in rank, 307 brands rose in rank, and five brands retained their ranks, it said. In the banking financial services and insurance sector, the country's largest lender State Bank of India emerged as the leader though it is placed 21 in the overall list, while Pepsi was the leader in food and beverage category, occupying the 44th place on the list. Patanjali leads the FMCG category and is placed 13th, improving two places from last year. GST Council in its last meeting had decided to defer reverse charge mechanism (RCM) until June 30. New Delhi: A Group of Ministers (GoM) under Bihar Deputy Chief Minister Sushil Modi will meet tax experts and representatives from industry on the Goods and Services Tax (GST) return simplification, here on Tuesday. Approximately 40 industry and trade bodies, and 20 tax experts are expected to be a part of the meeting. Earlier on Monday, a GoM meeting was held, which deliberated on bringing back reverse charge mechanism. The GST Council in its last meeting had decided to defer reverse charge mechanism (RCM) until June 30. However, some states had insisted that RCM be reintroduced, as it will help tax authorities to plug revenue leakages. The GoM was constituted under Modi last month to iron out issues being faced by businesses under the reverse charge mechanism. Reverse charge mechanism paves way for the recipient of a good or service to pay tax, which is otherwise paid by the supplier. The charge is applicable on a registered dealer, if he/she buys goods from a dealer not registered under the GST. The committee is aiming to bring certain categories of taxpayers such as composition scheme dealers, and certain categories of goods and services under the reverse charge mechanism. Punjab Finance Minister Manpreet Singh Badal, and Kerala Finance Minister Thomas Issac, among others are a part of the GoM. Finance ministry is also suggesting that 75 per cent of bankers agreeing to a resolution at present it is 100 per cent. (Photo: Pixabay) New Delhi: The government is considering a proposal to extend the time limit for bankruptcy resolution process by 180 days over and above the initial 180 days under the Insolvency and Bankruptcy Code (IBC). The Centre feels the current timeline is proving insufficient to arrive at a resolution. The finance ministry is also suggesting that 75 per cent of bankers agreeing to a resolution at present it is 100 per cent is enough for passing the resolution in the committee of creditors (CoC). So, effectively the ministry is calling for a CoC voting cap. The main purpose is quickening the process and go for the right kind of value creation. The changes being proposed will definitely help corporates, bankers and everybody else involved, said sources. The current law allows a maximum 270 days for resolution an initial 180 days and 90 days of extra time on top of that. Top finance ministry officials said this period might be further relaxed by 180 days. So, it will be 180 days for the resolution process and another 180 days to be awarded by the National Company Law Tribunal (NCLT) subject to the proceedings of the case. In short, if changes are incorporated, it will be a full year for any resolution of NPA. Meanwhile, ministry of corporate affairs is reviewing the changes in the IBC. These new changes if incorporated will give NCLT the power to extend insolvency resolution by 180 more days. The finance ministry will send its proposals to MCA for incorporation after detail discussions. Officials said after the Reserve Bank of India (RBI) scrapped many debt resolution mechanisms such as strategic debt resolution (SDR), corporate debt resolution (CDR) and Scheme for Sustainable Structuring of Stressed Assets (S4A), there is stress on the NCLT and banks under the current timeline. The RBI said accounts with aggregate debt of more than Rs 2,000 crore will have to be taken to NCLT within 15 days if a resolution plan does not bear fruit in 180 days. The RBI requires banks to implement a resolution plan within 180 days and in case of non-implementation, lenders are required to file an insolvency application. The RBIs latest data shows that the public sector banks could recover a total of only Rs 15,786 crore in 2016-17 and 2017-18 till December 31 through all recovery channels, including IBC. The total NPA of PSBs stands at Rs 8 lakh crore. The RBI has prepared three lists of defaulters who are in NCLT for resolutions. Not a single big case has been resolved so far. In fact, in the last four fiscals 2014-15, 2015-16, 2016-17 and 2017-18 till December 31 all 21 public sector banks in aggregate could recover only Rs 29,343 crore out of Rs 2.72 lakh crore of bad loans, as per the RBI data. World Bank in its twice-a-year South Asia Economic Focus report said that the growth is expected to accelerate from 6.7 per cent in 2017. (Photo: ANI) New Delhi: The World Bank on Monday noted that the Indian economy has recovered from the effects of demonetisation and the Goods and Services Tax (GST) and predicted a growth rate of 7.3 per cent for the country in 2018. Further, the apex international financial institution forecasted a rate of growth of 7.5 per cent for 2019 and 2020. The World Bank in its twice-a-year South Asia Economic Focus report said that the growth is expected to accelerate from 6.7 per cent in 2017 to 7.3 per cent in 2018, and will subsequently stabilise, supported by a sustained recovery in private investment and private consumption. The report also noted that India should strive to accelerate investments and exports to take advantage of the recovery in global growth. Meanwhile, the bank also acknowledged that disruptions from demonetisation and the implementation of GST led to a setback in the economic activity, and a potentially larger negative effect on the poor and vulnerable. The Finance Ministry may come out with a Rs 10,000-crore follow-on fund offer of the Bharat-22 exchange traded fund (ETF) as it looks to dilute stake in Coal India to meet the minimum public holding norm. New Delhi: The Finance Ministry may come out with a Rs 10,000-crore follow-on fund offer of the Bharat-22 exchange traded fund (ETF) as it looks to dilute stake in Coal India to meet the minimum public holding norm. Besides, the ministry is keen to take the ETF route to sell off government shares held through SUUTI in private companies -- ITC, Axis Bank and L&T, an official told PTI. The government had in November last year launched Bharat-22 ETF comprising shares of 22 companies, including public sector undertakings (PSUs), public sector banks, ITC, Axis Bank and L&T. The fund had garnered bids to the tune of Rs 32,000 crore, although the government retained only Rs 14,500 crore. An official said the ETF route is a safer mode of disinvestment as it shields investors against stock market volatility. "Based on the current composition of the Bharat-22 ETF, the leg room for a follow-on fund offer would be around Rs 10,000 crore," the official added. The state-owned companies or PSUs that are part of the new Bharat ETF-22 include ONGC, IOC, SBI, BPCL, Coal India and Nalco. The other central public sector enterprises on the list are Bharat Electronics, Engineers India, NBCC, NTPC, NHPC, SJVNL, GAIL, PGCIL and NLC India. Only three public sector banks -- SBI, Indian Bank and Bank of Baroda -- figure in the Bharat-22 index. The official said by using the ETF route, the government may dilute about 3.55 per cent stake held in Coal India to comply with the minimum 25 per cent public float requirement as mandated by market regulator Sebi. The government plans to raise Rs 80,000 crore in the current fiscal from disinvestment, lower than over Rs 1 lakh crore raised last year. Prior to the launch of Bharat-22 ETF which has a diversified portfolio, the government had floated the CPSE ETF comprising stocks of 10 bluechip PSUs -- ONGC, Coal India, IOC, GAIL (India), Oil India, PFC, Bharat Electronics, REC, Engineers India and Container Corporation of India. Through the CPSE ETF, the government had raised Rs 11,500 crore in three tranches, with Rs 3,000 crore from the first tranche in March 2014, Rs 6,000 crore from the second tranche in January 2017 and Rs 2,500 crore from the third tranche in March 2017. People in the national capital may face a rise in call drops and slow internet as MCD has sealed 566 mobile towers, industry body TAIPA said on Tuesday. New Delhi: People in the national capital may face a rise in call drops and slow internet as MCD has sealed 566 mobile towers, industry body TAIPA said on Tuesday. There are 11,500 mobile towers installed in Delhi and 1,150 more are required for seamless coverage but they have been pending for the want of permission, it said. Tower and Infrastructure Providers Association (TAIPA) said in a statement that the towers have been sealed "despite the fee deposit of 48 crore rupees lying with municipal corporations". It said the MCD move impacts the overall ease of doing business, development of a robust telecom infrastructure and addressing the growing the data needs of customers. "...suo-moto coercive actions on sealing the mobile towers leads to solemn issues such as slow internet speed, network congestion and call drops etc. The overall regressive act impacts the ease of doing business and forms a misconception that the industry is not making adequate investments," TAIPA Director General Tilak Raj Dua said. MCD and telecom sector players have been at loggerheads over fee to be charged from tower companies for installing and operating sites. Dua said that the telecom tower industry has held numerous meetings with municipal corporations of Delhi to discuss the implementation of mediation settlement and the issues industry have been facing for more than 8 years now. The Delhi tower policy, 2010 was challenged by the telecom industry in Delhi High Court imposing issues such as exorbitant permission fee of Rs 5 lakhs for 5 years and Rs 1 lakh per service provider for sharing and restriction on locations. A mediation settlement on reference of Delhi High Court was signed by the industry with the municipal corporations in January 2017 offering provisions such as deemed approval for 30 days, appointment of nodal officers, documentation as per DoT guidelines, 2013 and fee part was also renegotiated to Rs 1 lakh to 2 lakhs and revised guidelines to be issued in line with DoT advisory guidelines, 2013. "However, even after a year, the mediation settlement has still not been implemented down the line with the municipal corporations and have resulted into the sealing of critical infrastructure amounting to Rs 113 crores approximately and no new permissions have been processed for the installation of telecom infrastructure," the statement said. The industry body said that all the municipal commissioners have issued directions for the implementation of mediation settlement agreement however representatives of various departments down the line are conspicuous in following the same. Non-implementation of mediation settlement and lack of comprehensive tower policy in Delhi is creating knotty situations for the development of a robust telecom infrastructure. It is the high time that the telecom infrastructure need to be treated as the essential critical infrastructure like others such as Roads, Transport and water supplies etc," Dua said. He said that there is an immediate need to notify a comprehensive mobile tower policy for enabling speedy installation of telecom infrastructure in Delhi in order to make the city a world class super-fast internet metropolitan. Sales rose maximum in Noida by 69 per cent during January-March 2018 to 7,933 units compared with the year-ago period. New Delhi: Showing signs of revival, housing sales increased by 33 per cent in nine major cities during the March quarter this year to 80,000 units, according to News Corp-backed realty portal PropTiger. Sales were at 59,936 units in the first quarter of last year. In its latest report 'Realty Decoded', PropTiger said that barring Hyderabad, housing sales have risen in all nine cities during January-March 2018. Sales rose maximum in Noida by 69 per cent during January-March 2018 to 7,933 units compared with the year-ago period, followed by Gurgaon where sales were up by 62 per cent at 1,964 units. "The sales numbers for the past quarter are very encouraging. While it might still be too early to celebrate, these are early indications that things are beginning to look up for the residential real estate sector," Dhruv Agarwala, the CEO of PropTiger, Housing and Makaan, told PTI. Real estate sector, particularly housing, is going through a multi-year slowdown mainly due to high property prices and huge delays in delivery of projects in key Delhi-NCR market. Housing demand and supply got further impacted due to demonetisation and implementation of new real estate regulatory law RERA and the GST during last year. However, PropTiger said sales have improved after a continuous drop in sales for the last four years and therefore raises hopes of a revival in the market. According to the data, Pune witnessed 56 per cent rise in sales to 15,885 units, while in Bengaluru they went up by 46 per cent to 11,706 units. Sales grew by 40 per cent in Mumbai at 25,281 units, 25 per cent in Chennai at 5,075 units and 16 per cent in Kolkata at 3,873 units. In Ahmedabad, housing sales were marginally up at 3,205 units. However, Hyderabad saw 29 per cent decline in sales at 5,077 units during the period under review. "After a stressful 2017, the first quarter of 2018 calendar year has come as a breath of fresh air for the residential real estate industry, rekindling hopes of a revival for the sector during this year," said Ankur Dhawan, Chief Investment Officer, PropTiger.com. The real estate developers were willing to reduce prices to sell their unsold units and improve their cash flows, he said, while hoping that the market to start showing a steady improvement in sales going forward. In this report, the number of Noida includes sales from Greater Noida and Yamuna Expressway. Mumbai includes Navi Mumbai and Thane, while Gurgaon includes Bhiwadi, Dharuhera and Sohna. Singapore-based Elara Technologies is the owner of Housing.com, PropTiger.com and Makaan.com. The company provides digital real estate marketing and transactions services. Elara Technologies formed PropTiger.com in 2011 and later acquired Makaan.com in May 2015 and Housing.com in January 2017 aiming to create India's largest full service online-to-offline real estate platform. While Makaan largely deals in buy-sell of re-sale properties, group company PropTiger helps developers in selling flats available in primary market. Housing.com is a classified platform for both developers and brokers. India's largest private sector bank by consolidated assets, ICICI Bank on Tuesday announced that it has successfully on-boarded over 250 corporates on its blockchain platform. Mumbai: India's largest private sector bank by consolidated assets, ICICI Bank on Tuesday announced that it has successfully on-boarded over 250 corporates on its blockchain platform for domestic and international trade finance, which is the most by any bank in India. With this, leading Indian corporates, including ones from the 'S&P BSE 100 Index', are now undertaking domestic/international trade finance transactions on the bank's custom-made blockchain platform. This initiative marks another milestone in the bank's pioneering role to promote blockchain in the banking industry in the country. In August 2016, ICICI Bank became the first bank in the country and among the first few globally to successfully undertake pilot transactions in international trade finance and remittance in partnership with Emirates NBD. Since then, more than 250 corporates, including the country's leading companies have signed up on the bank's blockchain application to experience a more time and cost efficient and secure way of undertaking domestic and international trade transactions. The usage of blockchain technology simplifies the paper-intensive trade finance process by bringing counterparties on the same platform, enabling decision making in almost real time. It brings in the improved convenience of accurate and quick transactions, eliminating the need to wait for courier of paper documents across cities/countries and verification through trade intermediaries. This is in contrast to the current process wherein counterparties await the receipt of lengthy paper trails to initiate domestic/international trade finance transactions. "ICICI Bank has a rich legacy of leveraging the latest technology to bring in new paradigms in banking. We were the first in the country and among few globally to pioneer cross-border open account trade finance and remittance transactions on blockchain. I am delighted to share that we have scaled up the operations to sign over 250 corporates on our blockchain solution for trade transactions, the maximum for any blockchain solution in the country," said Chanda Kochhar, MD and CEO, ICICI Bank. "In another initiative, we are also collaborating with peer banks and other partners to create a comprehensive ecosystem in the industry using blockchain and evolve common working standards to contribute to even greater adoption of this initiative," she added. The blockchain application created by ICICI Bank digitises the paper-intensive international trade finance process as an electronic, distributed and unalterable ledger, and gives the participating entities including banks the ability to access a single source of information. It enables all the parties - buyers and sellers across domestic and international locations, all branches and locations of ICICI Bank in the country and overseas, to view the data in real time. It also allows them to track documentation and authenticate ownership of assets digitally and execute a trade finance transaction through a series of encrypted and secure digital contracts. Further, it allows each participant to check online the status of the application and transmission of original trade documents through a secure network. As an additional initiative in the blockchain space, the bank also aims to expand the blockchain ecosystem by co-creating another blockchain based system for trade finance in partnership with other banks. To harness the full potential of the technology, this consortium seeks to invite various constituents of trade including buyers, sellers, logistics partners, insurance companies and other authorities on to the blockchain ecosystem for providing an end-to-end digitised trade solution. India and the US on Tuesday decided to set up a joint task force on natural gas with a view to promote strategic and economic interest of the two nations. New Delhi: India and the US on Tuesday decided to set up a joint task force on natural gas with a view to promote strategic and economic interest of the two nations. The two sides, during the ministerial level talks, also reaffirmed their commitment to early and full implementation of their civil nuclear partnership, including the Westinghouse civil nuclear project at Kovvada, said a joint statement here. The statement was issued after Minister of Petroleum and Natural Gas Dharmendra Pradhan and US Secretary of Energy Rick Perry co-chaired the inaugural meeting here on Tuesday of the US-India Strategic Energy Partnership, which President Donald J Trump and Prime Minister Narendra Modi had announced during their June 26, 2017 Summit in Washington, D.C. The statement said the cooperation in this area (nuclear energy) is being pursued through relevant bilateral mechanisms. As a first step in realising the full potential of the Strategic Energy Partnership, the US and India are pleased to announce the US-India Natural Gas Task Force, it added. The task force provides a team of US and Indian industry experts with a mandate to propose, develop, and convey, innovative policy recommendations to the Government of India in support of its vision for natural gas in the economy of India. The work of the task force is expected to advance the strategic and economic interests of both the US and India. The joint statement said that the strategic energy partnership teams will convene soon to further develop action plans for the respective pillars of cooperation. The US and Indian co-chairs will receive reports from the pillar teams on a regular basis. On Tuesday, Perry and Pradhan led a high-level discussion with senior US and Indian government officials that outlined their vision for the strategic energy partnership and key areas of engagement. Under the partnership, the US and India will pursue four primary pillars of cooperation: oil and gas, power and energy efficiency, renewable energy and sustainable growth and coal. Both parties may consider establishing additional pillars of cooperation based on mutual agreement, it said. The strategic energy partnership elevates the role of energy in advancing shared goals, including universal energy access, strengthened energy security and increased energy efficiency. The partnership will create important opportunities for advancing favourable policies and commercial investments in support of these goals, including in natural gas markets. In keeping with the shared objectives to provide a stronger business orientation to our energy cooperation, both sides noted with appreciation the growing investment of Indian companies in the US and the beginning of oil and gas exports from the US to India, the statement. The partnership affirms the strategic importance of energy cooperation to the US-India bilateral relationship and sets the stage for deeper and more meaningful engagements through government and industry channels. As leading global partners, the US and India believe that energy cooperation can serve as a centrepiece in the bilateral relationship, it added. Through the partnership, the US and India collectively seek to enhance energy security, expand energy and innovation linkages across respective energy sectors, bolster our strategic alignment, and facilitate increased industry and stakeholder engagement in the energy sector. During a press conference, responding to a question about the US inking International Solar Alliance (ISA) treaty, Perry said that promotion of renewable energy is more important than signing a document. Earlier, during the ISA founding conference last month, the official had said the US and China are actively participating talks for inking ISA treaty. On the price of gas, Perry said the US and India share a lot of values. He was of the view that some countries can give cheaper gas but it is the long-term relation that matters. A parliamentary panel has called Reserve Bank Governor Urjit Patel on May 17 to answer queries on a spate of banking scams unearthed in the last few months, sources said. New Delhi: A parliamentary panel has called Reserve Bank Governor Urjit Patel on May 17 to answer queries on a spate of banking scams unearthed in the last few months, sources said. The Standing Committee on Finance, headed by veteran Congress leader M Veerappa Moily, on Tuesday raised several queries related to the banking sector with Financial Services Secretary Rajiv Kumar. "We have invited the RBI Governor on May 17. We will be asking him about the scams and other banking regulations," said a source. Former Prime Minister Manmohan Singh, who is member of the Committee, attended the meeting. Patel had recently said that the RBI doesn't have adequate powers to deal with pubic sector banks. "We would like to know what kind of powers the RBI Governor needs," another source said, adding that regulation is an important part and that is why the Governor has been called. The panel, sources said, discussed a spate of banking scams, both in public and private sector banks. When asked if PNB and ICICI Bank issues figured during the meeting, the source said issues related with "all commercial banks, including ICICI Bank" were discussed. The finance ministry officials gave part replies to queries of the lawmakers and they have been given three weeks time to file a complete report on questions. Mumbai: As someone who counts Satyajit Ray as a huge influence, Majid Majidi decided to set his latest film 'Beyond the Clouds' in Mumbai streets, which he believes, are full of incredible heroes trying to lead a life of dignity in the face of struggle. The Iranian director has always been fascinated with Ray's cinematic outlook and how his heroes come from everyday life, something that he feels is missing in Indian cinema today. "Satyajit Ray's films had an effect on me. (They inspired me) to follow a certain interpretation of life. And (I would like) to influence younger generation. In 'Pather Panchali', there is a respect that he has for his hero, even in the poverty. His heroes come from this class of society and they are trying for life," Majidi told PTI in an interview. "Struggling people are my heroes. I am not glorifying poverty, it is bad. (But) I believe that a person has a lot of interior values that we do not see," he adds. The director says it was a dream come true to set one of his films in India, which he believes, is culturally very close to Iran. "I always wanted to make a film in India as it is a dramatic country with dramatic locations. The streets and the alleys of Bombay are full of stories, something that you can't find anywhere else. I always wondered why we do not see such kind of stories in Indian cinema. Apart from Satyajit Ray, Shyam Benegal and Mira Nair, you rarely find these stories in the cinema here." Majidi says he has always been curious to explore other cultures and people and believes one can learn something unique from those one encounters in life. "When I was a child, I always wanted to know what was happening on the other side of the wall. In India, the walls are broken, you see a lot of things. I recently saw an old man on the street trying to take a bath with very little water whereas I had used a lot of water in the hotel. I felt ashamed to have done that. Next day, I tried to use as little water as I could." The director says he feels alive when he is on a film set, crafting his next story. "When I am making a film, I feel I am living. When I am not making a film, I feel I am not living. For me, making films is like breathing. So I want (to continue making films) till I can. It does not mean that I don't like the other part of my life. But it is private, hidden. What will remain for me in the world is what I make and this is the reason I love this part (filmmaking) of my life," he says. Majidi is known for his unique sensitivity in portraying day-to-day life which he imbues with beauty and empathy. His "Children of Heaven", which was remade in India, was nominated for an Oscar in the Best Foreign Language category. "Beyond the Clouds" is the story of Amir (Ishaan Khatter), who is on the run from the cops and finds his estranged sister Tara (Malavika Mohanan), who in a bid to protect her brother lands up in jail. Their entire lives have been clouded by despair but then they find hope, unexpectedly. Majidi wanted an Indian face for his film and found Mohanan perfect for Tara's role. "Malavika's face was very important for me because I wanted an Indian face, especially for international audiences to have this immediate impression that she is from India. "First, we shot the scenes out of the jail, and then after one month, I told her she has to lose weight. She had to be thin for the portion inside the jail and she worked hard to do that." When Majidi first saw the audition footage of Ishaan for "Beyond the Clouds", he liked it and thought of meeting him in person. In the first meeting, the director, however, was not very impressed with the aspiring actor. "The first time I met Ishaan, (he) was (wearing) a sporty T-shirt, (had) muscles and was trying to sit in a very macho way. I looked at him and said, 'Your face is working, but I have a big problem with your body. Tone down your body, reduce the muscles. "Next time, he wore a large T-shirt and sat with a hunch." The film is set to be released in India on April 20. 'Saaho' will be Shraddha Kapoor's first film in South and Prabhas' first Bollywood project as it will be shot in three languages. Mumbai: Bhushan Kumar of T-Series has taken it upon himself to bring a delight to the Hindi-speaking audience of the world. Kumar has joined hands with UV creations, one of the leading production houses in the South, to bring an upcoming film 'Saaho' to the Hindi market. The news was broken on the Internet by Taran Adarsh, an Indian film critic and a trade analyst, from his official Twitter handle. He wrote, " #NewsBreak: Bhushan Kumar joins hands with Prabhas and UV Creations for #Saaho... #Saaho will be presented by TSeries and Bhushan Kumar... Directed by Sujeeth... Will hit the screens next year". #NewsBreak: Bhushan Kumar joins hands with Prabhas and UV Creations for #Saaho... #Saaho will be presented by TSeries and Bhushan Kumar... Directed by Sujeeth... Will hit the screens next year. pic.twitter.com/xVzkcrUowI taran adarsh (@taran_adarsh) April 17, 2018 The film, starring Telugu actor Prabhas a.k.a the 'Baahubali' and Bollywood's Shraddha Kapoor, is being shot in Hindi, Telugu, and Hindi simultaneously. It is being shot at striking locations in, around and outside the country. Apart from Prabhas and Shraddha, the film also stars Neil Nitin Mukesh, Jackie Shroff, Mandira Bedi, Mahesh Manjrekar, and Chunky Pandey in pivotal roles. The ultra-modern action flick will see Prabhas' return to the big screen after the record-shattering 'Baahubali: The Conclusion'. The film is written and directed by Sujeeth and is slated to hit the theaters next year. Mumbai: Actors have to often come across fans of all kinds sweet, sensitive, passionate and some times outright stubborn. Varun Dhawan, who has not given a single flop till date because of his fans, faced one such fan post the release of his latest film October. Reportedly, a 14-year-old girl ran away from her house in Surat to arrive at Varuns residence in Mumbai and was hell-bent on meeting the actor, despite the security asking her to vacate the premises. The girl reportedly created a ruckus and after a few members of the society noticed this, they informed a police official. A police official told Mumbai Mirror, The girl insisted on meeting the actor even though security personnel at the building in Khar told her that Varun Dhawan was not at home. She started shouting from outside the building and created a ruckus when she got to know the security guards were not conveying her messages to his residence. A building resident, who heard the girl shouting, then informed us. Varun, it appears, agreed to meet the fan after being informed about the situation, and explained the consequences of her action. The Keytruda combo also delayed the time until cancer worsened - an average of nine months versus five months for the chemo-only group. (Photo: Pixabay) Chicago: For the first time, a treatment that boosts the immune system greatly improved survival in people newly diagnosed with the most common form of lung cancer. It's the biggest win so far for immunotherapy, which has had much of its success until now in less common cancers. In the study, Merck's Keytruda, given with standard chemotherapy, cut in half the risk of dying or having the cancer worsen, compared to chemo alone after nearly one year. The results are expected to quickly set a new standard of care for about 70,000 patients each year in the United States whose lung cancer has already spread by the time it's found. Another study found that an immunotherapy combo - the Bristol-Myers Squibb drugs Opdivo and Yervoy - worked better than chemo for delaying the time until cancer worsened in advanced lung cancer patients whose tumors have many gene flaws, as nearly half do. But the benefit lasted less than two months on average and it's too soon to know if the combo improves overall survival, as Keytruda did. All of these immune therapy treatments worked for only about half of patients, but that's far better than chemo has done in the past. "We're not nearly where we need to be yet," said Dr. Roy Herbst, a Yale Cancer Center lung expert who had no role in the studies. Results were discussed Monday at an American Association for Cancer Research conference in Chicago and published by the New England Journal of Medicine. The studies were sponsored by the drugmakers, and many study leaders and Herbst consult for the companies. About the Drugs Keytruda, Yervoy and Opdivo are called checkpoint inhibitors. They remove a cloak that some cancer cells have that hides them from the immune system. The drugs are given through IVs and cost about $12,500 a month. Keytruda was approved last year as an initial treatment with chemo for the most common form of advanced lung cancer, but doctors have been leery to use it because that was based on a small study that did not show whether it prolongs life. The new study, led by Dr. Leena Gandhi of NYU's Perlmutter Cancer Center, gives that proof. In it, 616 patients were given chemo and some also received Keytruda. Those not given Keytruda were allowed to switch to it if their cancer worsened. After one year, 69 percent of people originally assigned to Keytruda were alive versus 49 percent of the others - a result that experts called remarkable considering that the second group's survival was improved because half of them wound up switching. How much it ultimately will extend life isn't known - more than half in the Keytruda group are still alive; median survival was just over 11 months for the others. The Keytruda combo also delayed the time until cancer worsened - an average of nine months versus five months for the chemo-only group. That's a big difference for such an advanced cancer, said Dr. Alice Shaw, a Massachusetts General Hospital lung cancer expert and one of the conference leaders. "This is really a pivotal study ... a new standard of care," said Shaw, who has no ties to the drugmakers. Rates of serious side effects were similar, but twice as many in the Keytruda group dropped out because of them. More than 4 percent of that group developed lung inflammation and three patients died of it. The Competition Dr. Matthew Hellmann of Memorial Sloan Kettering Cancer Center in New York led a study testing the Opdivo-Yervoy combo versus chemo in a slightly different group of newly diagnosed advanced lung cancer patients. The study design was changed after it was underway to look at results according to patients' tumor mutation burden - a measure of how flawed their cancer genes are, according to a profiling test by Foundation Medicine. Medicare recently agreed to cover the $3,000 test for advanced cancers. Of 679 patients, 299 had a high number of gene flaws in their tumors. In that group, survival without worsening of disease was 43 percent after one year for those on the immunotherapy drugs versus 13 percent of those on chemo. The immunotherapy drugs did not help people with fewer tumor gene flaws. "We have a tool that helps us determine who are the patients that are most likely to benefit from this combination," Hellmann said. The median time until cancer worsened was about 7 months on the immunotherapy drugs versus 5.5 months for chemo. Serious side effects were a little more common in the chemo group. Another rival, Genentech, recently announced that its checkpoint inhibitor, Tecentriq, improved survival in a study similar to the one testing Keytruda. Details are expected in a couple months. ROME: About 200 aspiring exorcists gathered on Monday for a week-long course in casting out demons - including by cellphone if necessary - amid increased demand for the service among Roman Catholics. Participants, many of them priests, will attend lectures and talks on a range of topics including witchcraft in Africa, how to tell the difference between demonic possession and mental illness, and a step-by-step guide to casting out demons. Cardinal Ernest Simoni of Albania drew strong interest in the first session by citing the use of cellphones in exorcisms. They call me and we speak and thats how I do it, the 89-year-old Simoni told Reuters after his address, explaining how he would read the prayers of exorcism in Latin over the phone just as he would if performing the lengthy rite in person. Although no official figures are available, Catholic Church officials say the number of demonic possessions is on the rise. The number of exorcisms has definitely increased over the years, as the requests to carry out exorcisms has increased, said Professor Giuseppe Ferrari, an organizer of the Course on Exorcism and the Prayer of Liberation at the Vatican-approved Pontifical Regina Apostolorum University in Rome. This course is useful because it prepares the priests who carry out exorcisms to have a complete vision, a multi-disciplined view of the situation, he added. Father Benigno Palilla, an exorcist for the diocese of Palermo, told Vatican Radio in February that he had performed about 50 exorcisms in the past two and a half years. "AUXILIARY EXORCISTS" As well as licensed exorcists, theologians, psychologists, medical doctors, criminologists, and Church historians will also address the course participants. With a nod to U.S. thriller writer Dan Brown, whose novels such as Angels and Demons often concern the Catholic Church, one lecture is entitled Angels and Demons in Sacred Scripture and the Teachings of the Church. Students, who include several dozen women, will receive a certificate, though Ferrari stressed that it would not entitle them to cast out demons. Only priests can perform exorcisms, and only with their bishops permission or a license. Lay Catholics, including women, can be what a course entry called auxiliary exorcists, meaning they can be present at the rite, pray and give moral support to the priest casting out the demon. Simoni, the Albanian cardinal, said exorcisms should only be attempted after doctors are unable to explain the behavior of a person deemed to be demonically possessed. Discernment is important, he said, stressing several times that he only saw himself as the instrument of a higher power. It is Jesus who liberates. It is his power, he said. In all the exorcisms I have done, the Lord has helped me. I am not the great one. TOKYO, Japan: Laughter, sunshine and optimism were the order of the day at the ceremonial Spring Festival sumo tournament held at a controversial war shrine in Tokyo on Monday. As the ancient sport looks to move on from a raft of negative publicity surrounding incidents ranging from assault and bullying to accusations of sexism, there were few signs evident that the recent issues would dampen sumos popularity. Hard core sumo fanatics and tourists alike flocked to the event held at the Yasukuni Shrine, seen by many in Asia as a symbol of Japans past militarism. They were treated to exhibition bouts, preceded by time-honored foot-stamping ceremonies, as well traditional chanting and even a comedy routine explaining the dos and donts of sumo wrestling. One of the more controversial donts within the sport, although not mentioned on Monday, is the tradition that forbids women from entering the ring on the grounds that it is sacred and their presence, considered unclean, would pollute it. Earlier this month, Japan Sumo Association chairman Hakkaku, who led a prayer during a more reflective moment in the shrine, was forced to apologize after several female medics were asked to leave the ring during a tournament near Kyoto. They were expelled by a referee when they attempted to revive local mayor Ryozo Tatami, who had collapsed but later made a recovery in hospital. Many fans leaving the shrine on Monday believe sumo wrestling should be more inclusive, particularly with the next Summer Olympics taking place in Tokyo. We, sumo fans, hope to build up the mood of excitement all together, regardless of gender, as we head towards Tokyo 2020 Olympics, said Takamichi Masui, who had traveled all the way from Mie Prefecture for the festival. Although sumo is a traditional and sacred ritual, I believe that (the female medics incident) was a humanitarian and right thing to do, added sumo fan Hiromi Omori, who stressed that those traditions should be applied on a case-by-case basis. Although rare, female sumo wrestling does occur all over Japan at an amateur level. However, the JSA does not allow women to compete professionally, like their male counterparts. The history of sumo, Japans national sport, can be traced back more than 1,500 years, with its roots in a religious ritual conducted in Shinto shrines to pray for abundant harvests. Fans, fresh from seeing their heroes up close in the Tokyo sunshine, will be hoping this particular ceremony leads to a scandal-free year as sumo looks to rebuild its tarnished reputation. The girl who was attending a wedding function with her parents at a village in Etah was choked to death after being raped by an 18-year-old man from the same village. (Photo: ANI/Twitter) Lucknow: As the country is simmering with anger over the recent cases of rape and murder, another horrific incident has been reported from Uttar Pradesh. An eight year old girl was raped and killed at a village in Etah district of Uttar Pradesh on Monday evening. The girl who was attending a wedding function with her parents at a village in Etah was choked to death after being raped by an 18-year-old youth from the same village. Shockingly, the accused was found lying drunk, right next to the minor's body. According to a report in NDTV, the incident happened at around 1:30 am. The accused, Sonu, lured the child and took her to a semi-constructed house where he allegedly raped her. He later allegedly strangled her to death. The parents of the girls, related to the bride, were busy with wedding ceremony at the time of incident. "He took her inside and raped her and then murdered her. At 1:30 am, some function was on. He took the opportunity to drag her some distance away and rape her," said the eight-year-old girl's father. The accused worked in a tent-house that puts up wedding marquees in the village. Realising that the girl had been missing for a while, people started to look for her and found her body lying next to the drunk accused. Sonu has been charged under the stringent Protection of Children from Sexual Offences (POCSO) Act. "The girl is about eight-nine years old. She was raped and also strangled to death. The accused was nearby, he has been arrested," police officer Akhilesh Chaurasia said. Bengaluru: A two-year-old boy choked to death after he accidentally swallowed a balloon while playing on Monday morning in Hulimavu police limits. The deceased, Nawaz, was the son of Reshma and Abubakar, who works at a garage in Kammanahalli. The couple stayed in Kammanahalli. Around 9.30 am, Nawaz was playing outside their house when he accidentally swallowed a balloon. He returned home after some time and his parents noticed that he was struggling to breathe and immediately rushed him to a nearby hospital. There they learnt that he had swallowed something while he was playing. They rushed him to the Apollo Hospital, but he died while undergoing the treatment. The police advised parents to pay more attention to their children to avoid such incidents. The Hulimavu police have registered a case. Palakkad: A stillborn baby girl was recovered from the closet at the house of an MBBS doctor on Friday at Nattukal here. Local police is in search of a couple who had come to consult the doctor on Wednesday. As the stillborn baby was recovered along with the placenta, the cops are of the view that the baby was delivered in the toilet and left inside the closet with the intention to flush it down the sewer. Dr Abdul Rehman who runs a clinic at Karinkallathani in Nattukal Police Station limit is not a full-time doctor and consults some patients occasionally at his house. He was not at the house on Wednesday and when the flush of the Indian closet got clogged, he asked a plumber to fix it. On Friday, when the plumber used an iron rod to clear the block inside the closet, the head of the newborn came out of it. The body was sent for postmortem to Manjeri Medical College in Malappuram and it was revealed through the postmortem that the baby was stillborn, Nattukal SI M Ragagopal said. The police have filed a case for unnatural death and are conducting the inquiry by focusing on the autorickshaw drivers in the locality to trace the couple who had come to the doctors house on Wednesday. SI said that as of now they had no clue about the persons who dumped the stillborn in the toilet and tried to flush it down. Hyderabad: The world's most popular search engine can become a golden tool for a criminal mind. A Chennai based bank employee, 26-year-old Karthik Raj, unhappy with his financial situation, devised a unique way of making money with little effort. Using Google's super-extensive database and mining prowess, the banker researched upon some of the richest persons in Hyderabad. Despite Google's assistance, it took him a month to draw up a list. The list figured the city's who's who, and included thirty of the city' richest, mostly residing in Banjara Hills, Jubilee Hills and Madhapur areas. Though Raj belonged to Chennai and had little understanding of Hyderabad, he zeroed on to this city because he was a stranger here and therefore, it would be difficult for the police to trap him. A plan of action was made and imprinted in his brain. Thanks to Google, Raj had already estimated the net worth of the people on his list. Accordingly, the plan was put into motion. Raj first sneaked into a builder's residence at Banjara Hills but could not succeed. But the fact that a burglar had entered the house and had attempted robbery was registered and the builder lodged a complaint at the Banjara Hills police station. The police screened the CC footage and the clues provided by the complainant and were well prepared when Raj made his second attempt at burglary. This was at the second house on his list, at Sringar Colony. It was while he was conducting a recce at this house that he was nabbed. Additional Inspector Banjara Hills K Ravi Kumar said the police were able to nab him because of the CCTV footage analysis and the clues given by the complainant. "He carried with him a mask, hand gloves and a knife in case the inmates of the house caught or resisted him." he said. Karthik Raj, the son of a retired army personnel had completed his MBA and had started working for a private bank at Chennai, where he was earning Rs 18,000 per month. He also had two girlfriends, on whom he spent most of his earnings. He planned burglaries in homes of the superrich. After finalizing the list in Chennai, Raj came to Hyderabad 15 days ago and conducted a recce in Jubilee Hills, Banjara Hills and Madhapur areas, travelling in a hired cab. On April 9, he identified a businessman's residence at Banjara Hills, Road No 3. "He jumped over the compound wall and entered the house. With the help of a ladder in the lawn, he climbed up to the balcony of the first floor and entered into a bedroom which was already open. Using the keys hanging onto the almirah he opened it and started rummaging. Alerted by the noise, when the residents woke up and raised an alarm, he fled through the same route through which he had come in", said Mr Ravi Kumar. Raj was arrested when he was checking out his second target. On Sunday, he was sent to remand. A mask and gloves were also seized from his possession. The gang had filmed her semi-clad and threatened her that unless she spent time with them, they would make the video public. (Representational Image) Hyderabad: The additional session judge of Kothagudem Fast Track Court sentenced 14 persons who were involved in the sensational case of sexual assault and filming of a female student, naked in 2009. Of the 14 individuals, 10 were convicted for 10 years while the remaining were convicted for five years. Those convicted were identified as Sk Amar, aged 24 years, Konga Raju, aged 28 years, Vallala Vamshi, aged 24 years,Raj Kamal, aged 19 years, Gade Sudhakar, aged 26 years, Sk Mahamood, aged 24 years, Sk Muktyal, aged 46 years, Sk Baba, aged 21 years, Mohammed Ramjan, aged 22 years, Peddi Phani Kumar, aged 26 years, Namasi Nagaraju, aged 29 years,Gedda Madhu, aged 23 years and Koppula Little Babu, aged 23 years. According to the police, the student, a resident of Kothagudem town, had approached them and lodged a complaint stating that one Sk Amar took her to an isolated place along with a few others and gang raped her. Later, the gang had filmed her semi-clad and threatened her that unless she spent time with them, they would make the video public. Based on the complaint registered, police arrested all the individuals named and remanded them in custody. Gaurav Kumar was arrested from Rohtak's Model Town area on Sunday based on information received by state and central intelligence agencies, Superintendent of Police Pankaj Nain said. (Photo: Representational) Chandigarh: A 23-year-old man, who was honey-trapped by ISI, was arrested from Rohtak for allegedly passing information to the Pakistani spy agency about Indian Army camps he had visited for recruitment tests, police said. Gaurav Kumar was arrested from Rohtak's Model Town area on Sunday based on information received by state and central intelligence agencies, Superintendent of Police Pankaj Nain said. Kumar has been booked under the provisions of the Official Secrets Act and under relevant sections of the IPC. A resident of Ganaur city in Sonepat district, Kumar had befriended two women, who worked for Pakistan's Inter-Service Intelligence, more than a year ago on Facebook, Nain told reporters. "Preliminary investigations revealed that Gaurav was trying to get recruited in the Army for a long time and had been preparing for examinations conducted by the Army," he said. Nain said the two women befriended Kumar after he told them he was working with the Indian Army. After gaining his trust, the women started communicating with him regularly. "They later asked him to work for ISI and provide information about Army camps, while promising to pay him hefty sum for this. He even shared his bank account details with them. He was asked to share photo, video and other details of the military areas," Nain said. "Whenever he went to an Army recruitment camp for a test, he would share with them photos and videos of the camp through social media," he said, adding, Kumar had taken part or visited at least 18 Army recruitment drives. In March, a man who allegedly worked as a spy for the Pakistani intelligence agency was arrested in Amritsar district by the State Special Operations Cell of the Punjab Police. Pakistan-based agencies operate a large number of fake Facebook accounts in the name of young girls who actively try to befriend unemployed young people and retired or serving officials in the armed force and subsequently try to allure them into espionage activities. Investigations were being conducted to identify and track such fake accounts, the SSOC had said earlier. Union Minister Nitin Gadkari has announced development of a new highway alignment between Delhi and Mumbai, the Ministry of Road Transport and Highways said in a statement. (Representational Image) New Delhi: Union Minister Nitin Gadkari on Monday said a new express highway connecting Delhi and Mumbai will be built at a cost of Rs 1 lakh crore. The transport and highways minister also talked about plans to build Chambal expressway that would be connected to the Delhi-Mumbai expressway. The Chambal expressway will benefit states like Madhya Pradesh and Rajasthan. Gadkari has announced development of a new highway alignment between Delhi and Mumbai, the Ministry of Road Transport and Highways said in a statement. "A sum of Rs 1 lakh crore will be spent on this expressway ... Nitin Gadkari outlined major initiatives of his ministry for de-congestion of Delhi NCR. A total of ten projects are underway costing Rs 35,600 crore," it said. About 40,000 commercial vehicles enter Delhi on a daily basis, which cause pollution and congestion in the city state, Gadkari, who is also holding the portfolio of water resources and Ganga rejuvenation, said in the statement. An ambitious scheme of developing Eastern and Western Peripheral Expressways around Delhi was taken up, and the Eastern Peripheral Expressway will be inaugurated by Prime Minister Narendra Modi on April 29. Similarly, to ease traffic in East Delhi, Delhi-Meerut Expressway was envisaged, and its Delhi-Dasna portion will also be inaugurated by the Prime Minister on the same day by a road show. Gadkari informed that work on signal-free corridor from Dhaula Kuan to Airport has been awarded at a cost of Rs 260 crore. He said, eight-lane fully access-controlled Dwarka Expressway is being developed in four packages. While three packages have already been awarded, the work on the expressway is likely to start in a month's time. Total investment on the project is Rs 9,500 crore. Additionally, under improvement of Mahipalpur at Rangpuri, a bypass is being envisaged to connect Dwarka/ NH8, he said. Regarding development of major junctions on NH8 in Gurgaon like the flyover and underpass at IFFCO Chowk, Signature Tower intersection, Rajiv Chowk and Hero Honda Chowk, the minister said the work costing Rs 1,000 crore has been substantially completed. India had moved The Hague-based ICJ in May last after Jadhav, 47, was sentenced to death by a Pakistani military court on charges of espionage and terrorism. (Photo: File) New Delhi: India on Tuesday filed a fresh set of pleadings in the International Court of Justice (ICJ) relating to the case of its national Kulbhushan Jadhav, who was sentenced to death by a Pakistani military court in April 2017 on charges of espionage and terrorism. The second round of written reply by India in the case was in response to the submissions by Pakistan in the ICJ on December 13, 2017, the Ministry of External Affairs (MEA) said. India had moved The Hague-based ICJ in May last after Jadhav, 47, was sentenced to death by a Pakistani military court on charges of espionage and terrorism. A 10-member bench of the ICJ on May 18 had restrained Pakistan from executing Jadhav till adjudication of the case. "In keeping with the Order of the International Court of Justice of 17 January 2018, India today submitted its reply in the court in the case of Kulbhushan Jadhav," the MEA said. It said India remains committed to make all possible efforts to "secure and protect" the rights of Jadhav. Following an order by the ICJ, India had filed its written pleadings in the case on September 13, 2017 and Pakistan submitted its "counter memorial" on December 13 last. "Today, India filed its Reply to Pakistan's submissions to the court. Pakistan has been given time till July 17 by the court to file its response (Rejoinder)," the MEA said. India has been maintaining that the trial of Jadhav by a military court in Pakistan was "farcical". In its statement on Tuesday, the MEA reiterated this stand. Pakistan claims that its security forces arrested Jadhav from restive Balochistan province on March 3, 2016 after he reportedly entered from Iran. However, India maintains that Jadhav was kidnapped from Iran where he had business interests after retiring from the Navy. Jadhav's sentencing had evoked a sharp reaction in India. India had approached the ICJ for "egregious" violation of the provisions of the Vienna Convention on Consular Relations, 1963, by Pakistan in Jadhav's case. Pakistan has repeatedly denied India consular access to Jadhav on the grounds that it was not applicable in cases related to spies. 52-year-old G Somashekhara Reddy is the youngest of Reddy brothers, mining barons for whom the iron ore-rich district of Bellary was home turf. (Facebook Screengrab/ Gali Janardhan Reddy) New Delhi: The second list of 82 candidates released by the BJP on Monday evening for the upcoming assembly elections in Karnataka, contained surprise candidate - Gali Somashekhara Reddy fielded from Bellary City - which drew immediate criticism from the Congress. 52-year-old G Somashekhara Reddy is the youngest of Reddy brothers, mining barons for whom the iron ore-rich district of Bellary was home turf. Talking to NDTV, Karnataka BJP spokesperson Vivek Reddy said that the party has "made a compromise" by fielding him since it wanted to win the Bellary sea. Read: Karnataka assembly polls: BJP releases second list of 82 candidates Mining baron Gali Janardhan Reddy was a minister in the BS Yeddyurappa government, who is leading the BJP campaign in Karnataka. Reddy was removed after massive corruption charges involving illegal mining in 2011. Somasekhara Reddy, who represented Bellary in the assembly, is accused of bribing a judge in the cash-for bail case that involved Janardhan Reddy. He is currently out on bail. Soon after the BJP second list was out, Congress spokesperson Randeep Surjewala tweeted: BREAKING! Amit Shah's prophecy of Yeddyurappa Govt being the 'Most Corrupt' ever in Karnataka is coming true- Janardhan Reddy's brother Somshekar Reddy gets BJP ticket! Krishnaiah Setty is also a BJP candidate, who was accused with BSY in land scam.https://t.co/g24sLWOxnG Randeep Singh Surjewala (@rssurjewala) April 16, 2018 The Congress leader was referring to a recent slip of tongue by BJP president Amit Shah during a meeting in Karnataka. Though Amit Shah had quickly corrected himself, it didn't check the rapid circulation of the video clip on social media, mostly by Congress supporters. Also Read: Amit Shah faux pas, calls Yeddyurappa 'most corrupt' ever, corrects self On Monday, Vivek Reddy said the BJP has "avoided drafting" any candidate convicted of corruption. "Katta Subramanya Naidu and Krishnaiah Shetty were not given any seats in the last assembly elections because they were facing criminal charges. They have now been acquitted," he said, referring to the party's two senior leaders who have been given ticket this time from Shivaji Nagar and Malur. Also Read: BJP campaigning for Cong in K'taka? Amit Shahs translator says Modi wont help poor Regarding Somashekhara Reddy, he said, "I think the party has made one compromise in order to ensure that we win the seat... it is not across the board like Congress... there are 67 complaints against Siddaramaiah". G Janardhan Reddy, who is now out on bail after spending three years in jail, hosted a lavish wedding reception for his daughter in 2016, weeks after the Centre announced demonetisation. Estimates of the costs for the function -- which included replicas of famous temples and 50,000 guests - varied from 30 to 500 crore rupees. It's not just Reddy, the list with 82 names released by the BJP on Monday also has candidates who were acquitted in corruption, forgery, cheating and rape cases. At least two of them had spent quite some time in jail on charges of cheating and forgery. The names that have raised eyebrows are Katta Subramanya Naidu and Krishnaiah Setty who were jailed in land scams but acquitted later. Setty, who will contest from Malur, was BJP's chief ministerial candidate B S Yeddyurappa's companion in jail as he was a co-accused in a multi-crore land scam in 2011. On the other hand, Katta Subramanya Naidu, who has been given ticket from Shivajinagar constituency, was jailed on charges of a land scam involving his firm Itasca in 2011. The charges against Naidu were that as a minister, he knew about an industrial project of the Karnataka Industrial Area Development Authority near Kempegowda International Airport and tried to make a windfall gain by entering into an agreement with the land losers. The party gave ticket to Haratalu Halappa to contest from Sagar constituency. He has been acquitted in a rape case. He was accused of raping his friend's wife in Shivamogga in 2009. The court dismissed the case for want of evidence. M P Renukacharya, who will fight the electoral battle from Honnalli, was accused of sexually harassing a nurse when he was a minister in Yeddyurappa's ministry. The minister later said the nurse withdrew cases against him. The BJP has also given ticket to party-hopper N L Narendra Babu, who was with the Congress. Babu had been hinting at his entry for the past six months. He had even attended the Vishwa Hindu Parishad's Dharma Sansad at Udupi last year. In power from 2008 to 2013, BJP is hoping to unseat the Congress government and stage a comeback. On April 8, the BJP declared its first list of 72 candidates which included its chief ministerial candidate BS Yeddyurappa, and senior leaders KS Eshwarappa and Jagadish Shettar. (With inputs from PTI) Bengaluru: With less than a month for Karnataka Assembly polls, parties have started releasing candidate lists. The released candidature lists have, however, disheartened many politicians whose names did not feature in them. Sashil G Namoshi, a former BJP MLA, is one such name who broke down into tears in the middle of his press conference. The video of a teary-eyed Namoshi has gone viral since then. Shashil G Namoshi, a former MLA, was reduced to tears when he couldn't find his name on the BJP's second list. Namoshi had expected to be fielded by the BJP in the Gulberga constituency for which the party has chosen CB Patil. The list was announced by the BJP on Monday evening. Also Read: Karnataka assembly polls: BJP releases second list of 82 candidates His meltdown was widely captured by various cameras. In the short clip, the politician tries to say something and then visibly crumbles. He is seen keening, his hands covering his face. His supporters can be seen trying to console him, while even members of the media try to calm him down. Namoshi was deputy mayor of Kalaburagi, which used to be known as Gulbarga. He was a member of the Legislative Council for 12 years. He had contested the 2013 Karnataka election from Gulbarga Dakshin as a Janata Dal (Secular) candidate. According to his supporters, he had been expecting to be named the party's candidate in one of the two seats in Gulbarga. In the first list, the BJP named Dattatreya Patil Revur for Gulbarga Dakshin. On Monday, Namoshi's final hope was shattered when someone else was chosen for Gulbarga Uttar. Congress workers too went on the rampage in a party office on Monday for being denied tickets to contest the polls. Partially eaten body of a tourist, who had gone missing and was apparently attacked by a leopard, was found from near a temple in the Motichur range of Uttarakhand's Rajaji Tiger Reserve. (Representational Image) Rishikesh (Uttarakhand): The partially eaten body of a tourist, who had gone missing and was apparently attacked by a leopard, was found on Monday from near a temple in the Motichur range of Uttarakhand's Rajaji Tiger Reserve, police said. The deceased was identified as 56-year-old Tek Chand from Haryana's Palwal district, they said. The body is kept in a mortuary and the postmortem is yet to be conducted, police said. The injuries suggest Chand was killed by a leopard, an official at the Raiwala police station said. Chand along with his elder brother and other family members had gone to Neelkanth on Sunday, police said. On their way back, Chand went into the forests behind the Satyanrayan temple in Raiwala around 4 pm on Sunday, they said. The official said after he did not return, his relatives informed the police and a search was launched. His partially eaten body was found from the forest behind the temple around 10.30 am on Monday. This the seventeenth such incident in the area in three years, he said. Hoardings were put up in the Motichur area warning people of threat from wild animals, but they continue to go into the forests, the official said. S Nihal Singh breathed his last at the National Heart Institute. He was suffering from kidney-related ailments. He would have been 89 later this month. (Photo: Twitter | ANI) New Delhi: Veteran journalist S Nihal Singh passed away in New Delhi on Monday following illness, his family members said. Singh breathed his last at the National Heart Institute. He was suffering from kidney-related ailments. He would have been 89 later this month. "He was ill for quite some time. But he turned critically ill for the past one week," Indu Nihal Singh, his sister-in-law said. He will be cremated in New Delhi on Tuesday, she added. The journalist is survived by four sisters. S Nihal Singh had worked with several leading newspapers including The Indian Express as its editor-in-chief, The Statesman as chief editor and Khaleej Times as editor. He was the founding editor of The Indian Post in 1987. He was awarded the prestigious International Editor of the Year Award in New York for opposing the Emergency imposed by former prime minister Indira Gandhi. He worked as foreign correspondent in Moscow, London, the United States and Indonesia. Singh was the first correspondent allowed to represent an Indian newspaper in Pakistan after the 1965 war, the veteran editor recalled in an interview in 2013. He met Indira Gandhi before leaving for Pakistan and felt she was "rather pessimistic about the likelihood of better relations" between the two countries. "I brought up Kashmir for instance and she said, "What solution can there be on Kashmir considering the Pakistani attitudes?" Singh wrote extensively on both domestic and foreign affairs in his columns after his last stint as an editor with Khaleej Times. His books include "The Rocky Road to Indian Democracy: Nehru to Narasimha Rao", "The Yogi and the Bear: Story of Indo-Soviet Relations" and "The Gang and 900 million: A China Diary". He cast a critical eye on his own profession in "Your Slip is Showing: Indian Press Today" and recalled his life in journalism in "Ink in My Veins". Vice President Venkaiah Naidu expressed his condolences to the members of S Nihal Singh. I am saddened to know about the passing away of veteran journalist, Shri S. Nihal Singh, today. I express my deepest condolences to the members of the bereaved family. May the Almighty grant peace to departed soul. #NihalSingh pic.twitter.com/M0n4NUa0gW VicePresidentOfIndia (@VPSecretariat) April 16, 2018 Congress spokesperson Randeep Singh Surjewala recalled the title of this autobiographical work in his tribute. The Ink shall never dry My deepest condolences on the passing away of veteran journalist & editor,Shri S Nihal Singh In a career spanning several decades,his impeccable integrity & journalistic ethics is a benchmark in todays times. My prayers are with his family & friends. pic.twitter.com/UtlXR4qVO2 Randeep Singh Surjewala (@rssurjewala) April 16, 2018 "In a career spanning several decades, his impeccable integrity and journalistic ethics is a benchmark in today's times. My prayers are with his family & friends," he tweeted. Srinagar: All the nine remaining BJP ministers in the PDP-BJP coalition government in Jammu and Kashmir are reported to have resigned to facilitate a major reshuffle in the Council of Ministers headed by Chief Minister, Mehbooba Mufti. The reshuffle has been necessitated by the resignation of two BJP ministers Choudhary Lal Singh and Chander Prakash Ganga amid controversy over their rallying behind the accused in the Kathua gang-rape and murder. The sources in the BJP said that the six Cabinet ministers and three ministers of state belonging to the party submitted their resignations to the State BJP unit president Sat Paul Sharma to facilitate preparing of a new list of probable ministers ahead of the reshuffle. But Jammu, the winter capital of the State and strong bastion of the BJP, was agog with rumours on Monday evening that the party ministers have resigned to show solidarity with Singh and Ganga. The Cabinet rank ministers from the BJP include Nirmal Singh (Deputy Chief Minister), Bali Bhagat, Chering Dorjey, Sham Lal Choudhary and Abdul Gani Kohli besides Sajad Gani Lone who was inducted into the Council of Ministers from the BJP quota. The ministers of state from the BJP are Sunil Kumar Sharma, Priya Sethi and Ajay Nanda. The PDP has presently eleven Cabinet rank minister including Chief Minister and two ministers of state in the Council of Ministers. Earlier during the day, an official announcement has said that the Chief Minister Mufti has assigned the charge of the departments of Industries & Commerce and Forest, Ecology and Environment to Deputy Chief Minister, Dr Nirmal Kumar Singh. In pursuance of Rule 5 of the Jammu and Kashmir Government Business Rules, I, Mehbooba Mufti, Chief Minister, Jammu and Kashmir do hereby assign the charge of the Departments of Industries & Commerce and Forest, Ecology & Environment to Dr Nirmal Kumar Singh, Deputy Chief Minister in addition to the subjects already assigned to him, an order issued in Jammu read. The Deputy Chief Minister who is a senior BJP leader is presently holding the charge of the Power Development and Housing and Urban Development departments. The charge of the departments of Industries and Commerce and Forest, Ecology and Environment was earlier with Ganga and Lal Singh, respectively. Hyderabad: Poonam Surana of Bowenpally visited five ATMs of various banks and still failed to withdraw any cash as the majority of ATMs in the city run dry. Even in those that have not, Rs 2,000 notes are just not available. With most ATMs displaying No Cash or Temporarily out of Service boards, Telangana and Andhra Pradesh are among the Indian states facing a major cash crunch. City residents say there has been a scarcity of currency since January and cash in ATMs is not replenished for prolonged periods. Also, the non-availability of cash means that many salaried customers have been withdrawing large sums at one go whenever they get a chance. For over 10 days, cash has been scarce in ATMs in Gachibowli, Yousufguda, Jubilee Hill, and Banjara Hills. Some of the ATMs are shut. The problem is not limited to one location, since Ive been facing it at many places. Even at the bank branches, customers should at least be informed of the issue, says Ravi Kiran, a resident of the city. More than half of the ATMs in Mahbub Nagar and Nalgonda have also run out of cash. Another resident, Anita Baig, adds, I visited seven ATMs in Ameerpet, and only two had very little cash. I didnt get the amount I wanted, so I went to the bank and withdrew my entire current account. Says resident Kunal Varzi, When I visited my bank to withdraw a large amount, bank officials requested me to reduce the amount as the bank was running short of cash. Besieged by complaints, a few banks have come forward to acknowledge the problem. ICICI Bank used social media to inform its account holders and said, We regret the inconvenience, the issue is under consideration. However, banks have been unable to provide a reason for the lack of cash in ATMs. While those making online payments and using mobile wallets are yet to feel the pinch, senior citizens, especially pensioners, are suffering. Hyderabad: In a major setback to the ruling TRS, the Hyderabad High Court on Tuesday set aside a resolution passed by the Telangana Assembly expelling Congress MLAs Komatireddy Venkat Reddy and S.A. Sampath Kumar from the membership of the House. On the allegation against the petitioners that they caused bodily harm to the Telangana Legisla-tive Council chairman by throwing headphones at him during the Gove-rnors speech, Justice Rao said, It is made clear that if at all there is any criminal act involved, there is legal recourse to address it on its own merit. On March 12, acrimonious scenes were witnessed in the Assembly as Governor E.S.L. Narasimhan began his address to a joint session of the House. Congress MLAs rushed to the well to protest what they termed the anti-farmer policies of the TRS government, tearing up and hurling copies of the Governors speech. A pair of headphones thro-wn by Venkat Reddy had allegedly struck Legisl-ature Council Chairman Swamy Gouds right eye, and he had to be taken to Sarojini Devi Eye Hospital for treatment. The Telangana Assem-bly passed a resolution on March 15 expelling Venkat Reddy and Sampath Kumar for disrupting the House and causing injury to the Council chairman. The same day, the Assembly Secretariat issued a notification of vacancies in Nalgonda and Alampur. The expelled MLAs moved court, contending that the Speaker had no power or jurisdiction to disqualify them from the House and his action was in violation of the principles of natural justice, in derogation of Rule 17 of the Procedure and Conduct of Business in the Assembly, and ultra vires the provisions of Articles 175 and 176 of the Constitution. They said they were expelled from the House without an opportunity to submit their version of events, and also without a committee being constituted to examine the allegation of causing bodily harm to the chairman. They also told the court that they had requ-ested video footage of the Governors speech, but the legislative secretary had not provided it to them. The judge, who had stayed the notification of the Assembly on March 19, on Tuesday, said judicial review is permissible whenever the court finds a violation of the principles of natural justice. The judge also considered the contention of the petitioners that the Governors speech does not fall within the purview of business of the House. Telangana Advocate General D. Prakash Reddy had resigned from his post as he was unable to furnish the video footage to the court. While referring the various judgments of the Supreme Court in similar cases, the judge observed that the procedure that has been followed by the House is illegal. The judge pointed out that it is crystal clear that the due process of law and opportunity of hearing, which are man-datory, were abdicated in the case by neither giving notice or opportunity to the accused to explain nor supplied any documents or other material The judge held that it was a clear violation of the principles of natural justice and fundamental rights and set aside the very expulsion proceedings covered under the resolution and the consequential notification of notifying the vacancy of assembly segments. The judge made it clear that if the proceedings inside the House are in violation of Constitution provisions such as Articles 14, 19 and 21, it cant escape the judicial scrutiny. Hyderabad: 30-year-old Kasula Pushpalatha delivered a baby girl in an RTC bus in Nalgonda district on Tuesday. Pushpalatha was pregnant with her third child and was due for delivery. On Tuesday, she and her relative boarded the bus from their village in Cintapalli. The bus travelled five kilometres and she started having severe pains. The women in the bus came to her rescue and the bus driver took the bus straight to the government hospital in Marriguda. The child was delivered in the bus but the hospital staff attended to her and transferred her to the labour ward of the hospital. Both mother and child are stable. Hyderabad: The Hyderabad High Courts order setting aside the expulsion of Con-gress MLAs Komati-reddy Venkat Reddy and S.A. Sampath Kumar from membership of the Telangana Assembly has turned a Congress versus Telangana Rashtra Samiti (TRS) battle into one between Assembly and High Court. Whether the High Court order will be implemented remains to be seen, but Assembly secretariat sources say the court cannot interfere in Assembly issues, though it is not yet clear whether the state government will appeal against the court order. Legislative affairs minister T. Harish Rao has refused to react to the order, while Assembly Speaker S. Madhusu-dana Chary has said he will not comment immediately. Mr Harish Rao, however, has had a discussion with Chief Minister K. Chandrasekhar Rao at Pragathi Bhavan, and sources said the CM did not take the issue seriously. Within the TRS itself, there are varying reactions to the order. According to a senior TRS MLA, since the expulsion of the two Congress MLAs is a matter for the Assembly, only the latter can revoke the expulsions. The expelled MLAs must, therefore, wait for a few days since the Assembly Budget Session was adjourned sine die in March, and unless there is an emergency, the state government need not convene the House for six months. This means the Assembly will meet again only in September. Advocate Jandhyala Ravi Shankar, who is representing the expelled MLAs, said the question of whether the Assembly will revoke the expulsions is irrelevant, since the High Court has set aside the notifications of vacancy in the Assembly segments of the two MLAs as well as their expulsions. TRS MLAs, however, said not even the government or the Assembly Speaker are empowered to restore the membership of an expelled MLA, and only the House has the power to do so. Hyderabad: After the High Court judgment to reinstate the expelled Congress MLAs, several Congress leaders, including TPCC chief N. Uttam Kumar Reddy, criticised Chief Minister K. Chandrasekhar Rao. Mr Reddy demanded resignation of the Chief Minister and Assembly Speaker S. Madhusudhana Chary on moral grounds. He said the High Court judgment to restore their membership of the expelled MLAs is a slap on the TRS government. Congress MLA D.K. Aruna demanded Mr Rao to dissolve the Assembly and face the elections immediately. She said if Mr Rao is really a Telanganite, he should resign and has no right to continue as the Chief Minister even for a day. If the Speaker does not react properly, she said people will teach him a lesson in the coming days. Mr Reddy welcomed the High Court judgment and said that the fall of TRS government has started due to its autocratic and undemocratic actions. He said at least from now onwards, Mr Rao should rule according to democratic principles. Former MP V. Hanum-antha Rao said that the Chief Minister has to learn a lesson from the High Court judgment and follow a democratic system to rule the state. AICC general secretary and in-charge of TPCC R.C. Khuntia welcomed the judgment. Opposition leader K Jana Reddy said after expelling the two MLAs and suspending rest of the Congress MLAs, the government had taken the House approval for Panchayat Raj Act that has many loopholes. The anger among dalits against the BJP government at the Centre, which is visible from the nationwide protests against the dilution of the Scheduled Caste and Schedule Tribe (Prevention of Atrocities) Act 1989, may damage the BJPs prospects in 2019. Not only are dalits angry against the dilution of this law, they are also angry due to various incidents of atrocities against dalits in many parts of the country and the governments seeming inability to handle it. Besides other factors, a sizeable chunk of support from dalits had helped the BJP get a majority in 2014. A shift among dalits away from the BJP towards the Congress, particularly in states with a sizeable dalit population, may dampen the electoral prospects of the BJP and may help in a revival of the Congress, though the Congress may still be far from coming anywhere close to defeating the BJP in 2019. Dalits are in sizeable numbers in various states where the BJP did very well in the 2014 Lok Sabha elections as well as in the Assembly polls held after the Lok Sabha elections. Dalits constitute more than 20 per cent of the total voters in states like Haryana (20 per cent), Punjab (32 per cent), Tamil Nadu (20 per cent), Uttar Pradesh (021 per cent) and West Bengal (24 per cent). There are other states where dalits are in sizeable numbers, which include Andhra Pradesh (16 per cent), Bihar (16 per cent), Karnataka (17 per cent), Madhya Pradesh (16 per cent), Odisha (17 per cent), Rajasthan (18 per cent) and Delhi (17 per cent). In most of these states, the BJP did very well either on its own or in alliance with other parties. In Haryana it polled 35 per cent votes, in Punjab it performed very well along with alliance partner Akali Dal, in Uttar Pradesh its voteshare was 42 per cent, in West Bengal it managed to get 17 per cent votes, in Bihar its voteshare was 30 per cent, in Karnataka 43 per cent while it was 54 per cent in Madhya Pradesh and Rajasthan. In Delhi its voteshare was close to 50 per cent. The party couldnt manage to win a large number of seats in Odisha, but it polled over 20 per cent votes. While its true the BJP managed to increase its voteshare not only due to dalit support for the party, one must also recognise that the massive shift in dalit support for the BJP in many states gave the party the decisive edge. The dalits deserted the Congress, for which they have been voting a long time, and backed the BJP in 2014. Findings from studies conducted by the Centre for the Study of Developing Socities over the past several Lok Sabha and Assembly elections indicates that the 2014 Lok Sabha polls saw a decisive shift in dalit votes towards the BJP, a trend which continued even in the Assembly polls held soon afterwards. While in all the Lok Sabha polls between 1996 and 2009, nationally only about 10 per cent of dalits voted for the BJP, in the 2014 Lok Sabha elections, nationally 24 per cent of dalits backed the BJP. The dalit vote for the Congress fell from 27 per cent in 2009 to only 19 per cent in 2014. In some states, the dalit support for the BJP was much more than the average nationwide support. Of the total dalits in the respective states, 70 per cent in Assam, 28 per cent in Bihar, 32 per cent in Gujarat, 20 per cent in Haryana, 43 per cent in MP, 21 per cent in Maharashtra, 47 per cent in Rajasthan, 23 per cent in Uttar Pradesh, 33 per cent in Delhi and 38 per cent in Jharkhand voted for the BJP. Dalit support for the BJP continued even after the 2014 Lok Sabha polls, as large numbers voted for the BJP in sizeable numbers even in the Assembly elections held after the 2014 Lok Sabha polls. With dalits voting for the BJP in such large numbers in the recent past, dalit anger against the government should be a cause of concern for the BJP. It is important to note the country did not see the dalits protest only recently on April 2 against the dilution of the SC/ST Prevention of Atrocities Act, there have been various other protest in the past few years, a clear sign of deep dissatisfaction of dalits with the BJP government. The Una killing in Gujarat last year and the suicide of Rohit Vemula at the Hyderabad University campus had also triggered nationwide protests. There were protests in states like Karnataka, Kerala, Andhra Pradesh and parts of Uttar Pradesh. There are even reports about the police being violent against those who took part in the April 2 protests. There have been instances of the vandalisation of Dr B.R. Ambedkars statue in various areas. All these incidents have certainly angered dalits and the governments inability to control such incidents have made them feel unhappy with the BJP government. This could have implications regarding dalit support for the BJP in the 2019 Lok Sabha elections. A dalit shift away from the BJP will adversely affect its electoral prospects as there is hardly any group which seems to compensate for the loss of this dalit support. No wonder alarm bells are ringing loud for the BJPs leadership. Sensing dalit anger against the dilution of the SC/ST Act, the government was quick to file a review petition in the Supreme Court. With barely a year for the big national election, the government is trying hard to send out signals that it is sincere about the dalit cause. Every year the nation celebrates April 14 as Ambedkar Jayanti, and the government does participate, but this year it appears to have made an extra effort. Prime Minister Narendra Modi and various Central ministers took an active part in many of the celebrations to pay tribute to Dr Ambedkar. Also, BJP MPs visited dalit-dominated areas and garlanded Dr Ambedkars statues amidst other programmes. But do these efforts indicate that the ruling party is really concerned about the uplift of dalits, or are they just gestures on the eve of a major general election? Some are looking at houseflies and maggots for the next generation of antibiotics; the logic being that creatures that live in and feed on decaying organic materials hotbeds of bacteria without getting sick must have incredibly robust immune systems. (Photo: AFP) The superbugs are here to stay; scientists have been warning that bacteria are evolving immunities to commonly used antibiotics and that if this is not checked, these drug-resistant bacteria could cause 10 million deaths by 2050AD. So its no surprise that the world is scrambling for a solution: some are looking at houseflies and maggots for the next generation of antibiotics; the logic being that creatures that live in and feed on decaying organic materials hotbeds of bacteria without getting sick must have incredibly robust immune systems. Others are also looking at the insect kingdom but with a very different approach: taking cicadas as their research subjects, Australian scientists have discovered that the wings of these noisy critters are highly resistant to bacteria not because of some chemical they excrete but because of their very design. Cicada wings are covered in tiny spikes one thousandth of the thickness of a human hair; when bacteria or other microbes try to land on the wings they are impaled upon the spikes, which puncture their cell wall causing a quick and possibly painful death. Scientists are now planning to mimic the design of cicada wings to create anti-microbial surfaces that by virtue of their design, are resistant to bacteria. Possible applications include using this to create pathogen-proof hospital beds, bacteria-resistant paint and even coatings for artificial joints. This is the fascinating field of biomimetics or biomimicry, where designs that exist in nature are used to solve human problems. Its been around longer than you think; take Velcro, which is used to fasten everything from shoe straps to bags and much more. The inspiration for this now common product came when, in the 1940s, a man called George de Mestral was walking his dog in the Swiss mountains and found that his pants, and his dogs fur, were both covered in burrs. An engineer and entrepreneur, he examined the burrs under a microscope and found that their tiny hooks fit perfectly into the equally tiny loops of the fabric and decided to create a product that mimicked this design. And thus the ubiquitous Velcro was born. Observing nature also made the bullet train better; when Japanese designers were looking at ways to redesign the shape of the train so as to avoid a sonic boom when it reached its top speed, one engineer, who was an avid birdwatcher, recalled that the kingfisher can dive into water at high speeds without causing much of a splash and decided to design the nose of the bullet train along the lines of the kingfishers bill. The rest, as they say, is history. If in the future you live in a building that can stay cool in a scorching summer without air conditioning, youll have to thank the humble termite and its mound-building skills. These mounds, which can reach up to five metres, stay cool thanks to an ingenious system of opening and closing vents and are providing architectural inspiration for a rapidly warming world. And while driving to this building if you never get a flat tyre, then please salute the honeybee and its honeycomb, the hexagonal shapes of which are inspiring a new generation of tyres that dont need air (and thus can never go flat) and can even survive an IED attack. Want to live not just by, but on the water? Well thanks to research on fire ants and the incredible way they stay afloat by linking together and forming rafts with their bodies that may too one day be possible. The possibilities are endless: bone is stronger than steel on an ounce-by-ounce basis and if mimicked can provide a lightweight and durable building material. The same goes for eggshells and a host of other materials. It goes far beyond simply mimicking design, and researchers are also focusing on mimicking abilities like that of the axolotl salamander which can regenerate its limbs. If scientists crack this secret, it could potentially lead to a world where humans could also regrow lost limbs. While this may be decades away, there is also work being done on copying the sonar and echolocation system used by bats to enable blind persons to see using canes mimicking the bats abilities. And then of course, why simply mimic nature when you can hack it? Spider silk already has one of the highest tensile strengths of any substance, and now scientists have figured out how to make it even stronger by feeding spiders graphene one of the strongest materials known to man and thus taking spider silk to a whole other level. Millions of years of evolution have provided workable models all around us, waiting to be discovered and harnessed. The danger is that at the rate at which we are losing biodiversity and likely causing the extinction of species that we havent even discovered yet, we are losing those parts of the world that may just make this world a better place to live in. By arrangement with Dawn I write this with a sense of loss and not having worked with him also with a measure of detachment, the quality for which the insightful commentaries of Surendra Nihal Singh, who passed away in New Delhi on Monday, were widely admired. On April 30, he would have been 89. Nihal, as many much younger journalists could take the liberty to call him without causing any offence to this cosmopolitan, wrote till the end. He was a distinguished columnist of this newspaper and of some others toward the latter part of his very distinguished career. Nihal Singh grew up as a journalist in the Statesman, in those days viewed as the high watermark of English journalism in India and the pointed quality of its political coverage, and rose to be its editor. Along the way he had been the newspapers political correspondent whom everybody loved to read, and its correspondent in Rawalpindi (then Pakistans capital), Kuala Lumpur and Moscow, where he wasnt a favourite of Communist Russia. Nor did his despatches endear him to Indian Communists, although after the end of the Cold War Nihal grew critical of the role of the sole remaining superpower and its allies. This brought democrats of all stripes flocking to read him. After the Statesman, Nihal Singh edited the Indian Express, the shortlived Indian Post, and subsequently Khaleej Times in Dubai. Especially at the old Statesman, his colleagues old and young remembered him as an ideal team leader. Many marvelled at the speed with which he rendered his elegant editorials. No one saw him talking down to junior colleagues. These are the reasons why the news of his passing deeply saddened all those who knew him. In his disposition, Nihal Singh was a thoroughgoing liberal and a democrat of the old British school, which basically meant he wasnt garrulous, did not hold forth, and was extremely fair-minded. H.K. Dua, who worked with Nihal at Indian Express and later edited a number of famous publications before his nomination to the Rajya Sabha, says this fine editor and gentleman had a horror of befriending those in authority and he knew the value of dissent in a democracy. As a young political journalist, once when I was out on a limb, I showed the gumption to phone the venerable Mr Nihal Singh, a complete stranger, for a job. He was then editing Indian Post. Gracious as always, he called me over for tea. I said to him straight out that if he had any hesitations hiring people well-disposed toward the Left, then I had better not waste his time. He laughed gently and assured me he had got many Naxal radicals to write for the Statesman, and hired some in his time! They were all first class, he didnt fail to add. The job was mine. He was kind to say that hed seen some of my stories in my last newspaper. Its another matter I did not eventually join. Many years later, when for a time I was associated with the South Asia Free Media Association, I saw Nihal as an authoritative presence, though he held no office. I specially recall a session in Lahore, attended by many eminent Indians and Pakistanis, which he chaired. The acuteness of his observations, and the non-ornamental charm of his speaking style, won him many admirers, and furthered the cause of normal relations between India and Pakistan. This former pipe-smoker and handsomely attired gentleman had operated on one lung for many years. He had begun to look pale for some time and his visits to the India International Centre became less frequent. But his memory will remain strong for those who had the good fortune to know him. Nihal, Adieu! India's Permanent Representative to the UN Ambassador Syed Akbaruddin said that the "results reflect, yet again, the broad support and many friends India has amongst UN members." (Photo: Twitter | @AkbaruddinIndia) United Nations: India has won an election to a crucial non-governmental organisation committee in the UN after garnering the highest number of votes besides getting elected by acclamation to other subsidiary bodies in five separate polls. The UN's Economic and Social Council (ECOSOC) held elections to a number of its subsidiary bodies on Monday. The ECOSOC focusses on advancing the three dimensions of sustainable development economic, social and environmental. Following the elections, India's Permanent Representative to the UN Ambassador Syed Akbaruddin said that the "results reflect, yet again, the broad support and many friends India has amongst UN members". India topped the election to the Committee on Non-Governmental Organizations. In one round of secret balloting, the Council elected Bahrain, China, India and Pakistan in the Asia Pacific States category and Brazil, Cuba, Mexico and Nicaragua (Latin American and Caribbean States) to serve a four-year term beginning on January 1, 2019. India got the highest number of votes at 46, followed by Pakistan (43), Bahrain (40) and China 39. Iran lost the elections, having got only 27 votes. The Council elected by acclamation 11 other nations to serve the same four-year term. The Committee on Non-Governmental Organizations is a standing committee of ECOSOC and its main tasks include consideration of applications for consultative status and requests for reclassification submitted by NGOs and consideration of quadrennial reports submitted by NGOs in General and Special categories. India was also elected by acclamation to the Commission on Population and Development for a term beginning April 16, 2018, and expiring in 2021. Under its terms of reference, the Commission is to assist the Council by arranging for studies and advising the Council on population issues and trends, integrating population and development strategies and population and related development policies and programmes. The Council elected India and Kuwait (Asia-Pacific States) by acclamation to the Commission for Social Development, filling outstanding seats for a four-year term beginning on the date of election. The Commission's purpose was to advise ECOSOC on social policies of a general character and, in particular, on all matters in the social field not covered by the specialised inter-governmental agencies. India was among the 17 members elected by acclamation to the Commission on Crime Prevention and Criminal Justice. The elected members, to serve a three-year term beginning on January 1, 2019 and expiring on December 31, 2021 include Algeria, Burkina Faso, Nigeria and Swaziland, Iraq, Iran, Kuwait, Thailand, Belarus, Brazil, Cuba, Mexico Austria, France, Turkey and the United States. The Commission acts as the principal policymaking body of the UN in the field of crime prevention and criminal justice. Its mandate includes improving international action to combat national and transnational crime and the efficiency and fairness of criminal justice administration systems. India was among 14 nations elected by acclamation by the Council to the Executive Board of the United Nations Development Programme (UNDP), United Nations Population Fund (UNFPA), United Nations Office for Project Services (UNOPS). The elected members will serve three-year terms beginning January 2019. For the Executive Board of the United Nations Entity for Gender Equality and the Empowerment of Women (UN-Women), the Council elected by acclamation 16 members, including India, for a three-year term beginning January 2019. US intelligence agencies in 2017 accused Russia of interfering in the 2016 election with a hacking and propaganda campaign supporting Donald Trumps campaign for president. (Photo: File) Washington: The United States and Britain on Monday accused Russia of launching cyber attacks on computer routers, firewalls and other networking equipment used by government agencies, businesses and critical infrastructure operators around the globe. Washington and London issued a joint alert saying the campaign by Russian government-backed hackers was intended to advance spying, intellectual property theft and other malicious activities and could be escalated to launch offensive attacks. It followed a series of warnings by Western governments that Moscow is behind a string of cyber attacks. The United States, Britain and other nations in February accused Russia of releasing the NotPetya virus, which in 2017 crippled parts of Ukraines infrastructure and damaged computers across the globe, costing companies billions of dollars. The Kremlin did not immediately respond to a request for comment. But Russias embassy in London issued a statement citing British accusations of cyber threats from Moscow as striking examples of a reckless, provocative and unfounded policy against Russia. Moscow has denied previous accusations that it carried out cyber attacks on the United States and other countries. US intelligence agencies in 2017 accused Russia of interfering in the 2016 election with a hacking and propaganda campaign supporting Donald Trumps campaign for president. Last month the Trump administration blamed Russia for a campaign of cyber attacks that targeted the U.S. power grid. American and British officials said that the attacks disclosed on Monday affected a wide range of organizations including internet service providers, private businesses and critical infrastructure providers. They did not identify victims or provide details on the impact of the attacks. When we see malicious cyber activity, whether it be from the Kremlin or other malicious nation-state actors, we are going to push back, said Rob Joyce, the White House cyber security coordinator. Relations between Russia and Britain were already on edge after Prime Minister Theresa May blamed Moscow for the March 4 nerve agent poisoning of former Russian spy Sergei Skripal and his daughter Yulia in the city of Salisbury. This is yet another example of Russias disregard for international norms and global order - this time through a campaign of cyber espionage and aggression, which attempts to disrupt governments and destabilise business, a British government spokesman said in London. Britain and the United States said they issued the new alert to help targets protect themselves and persuade victims to share information with government investigators so they can better understand the threat. We dont have full insight into the scope of the compromise, said US Department of Homeland Security cyber security official Jeanette Manfra. The alert is not related to the suspected chemical weapons attack in a town in Syria that prompted a US-led military strike over the weekend targeting facilities of the Russian-backed Syrian government, Joyce said. Shortly after the announcement, the White House said Joyce would leave his post and return to the US National Security Agency. US and British officials warned that infected routers could be used to launch future offensive cyber operations. They could be pre-positioning for use in times of tension, said Ciaran Martin, chief executive of the British governments National Cyber Security Centre cyber defence agency, who added that millions of machines were targeted. Nikolay Kudashev, a career diplomat and specialist on South East Asia, was appointed Russia's Ambassador to India in August 2017. (Photo: Twitter | @RusEmbIndia) New Delhi: The Russian envoy to India, Nikolay Kudashev, said Monday that Pakistan has taken "serious measures" to curb terror financing and shown the desire to be a part of global and regional efforts to fight the menace. His remarks come as ties between Russia and Pakistan appear to grow. In September 2017, the two countries held a two-week long military exercise - DRUZBA 2017 - focusing on counter-terrorism operations to boost bilateral defence ties. Mr Kudashev, however, said it would not be correct to say that Russia was getting closer to Pakistan as Moscow's relations with New Delhi "are unique and second to no one". Responding to a question on whether Russia sees Pakistan as a reliable partner to address its interest in Afghanistan, the envoy said the integrity of Pakistan was growing. "The credit must be given to Islamabad. After this country joined the SCO (Shanghai Cooperation Organisation), it started taking serious measures to curb the financing of terror... The integrity of Pakistan is growing and there is no reason to deny its wish, its desire to be part of regional and global efforts to fight terror," Mr Kudashev said in his address at the Ananta Aspen Centre's Ambassador Series in New Delhi. Russia is a key strategic partner of India and its major supplier of defence equipment. India has been maintaining that Pakistan is the "global epicentre of terrorism". But Mr Kudashev said the problems in Afghanistan would be impossible to solve without taking on board every neighbouring country. "This logic also guides us towards further developing relations with Pakistan, which is, on the other hand, Russia's historic and important regional partner as well. These ties are not emanating from the regional balance of power equations, but growing on their own merits," he said. "Importantly, we don't look at the situation in the region from the point of view of bilateral disputes, which we are not in a position to interfere or take sides," he said. Kudashev, a career diplomat and specialist on South East Asia, was appointed Russia's Ambassador to India in August. On China's ambitious Belt and Road Initiative, he said Russia was ready to cooperate with China on BRI, saying it views the controversial project from an economic perspective. The BRI aims to link Asian and European markets through a maze of rail, road and shipping networks. The China-Pakistan Economic Corridor is a part of BRI and India opposes CPEC as it runs through Pakistan-occupied Kashmir. Replying to another question, Mr Kudashev hoped that major defence deals, including the one to deliver the Kamov helicopters to India, should be sealed after Indian Defence Minister Nirmala Sitharaman's visit to Russia this month. Asked about the Russian response to air strikes on it ally Syria by the US, France and the UK, he said there would be a response but within the framework of the international law. The move to ban these IP blocks is a response to Telegram moving some of its infrastructure to Amazon Web Services and Google Cloud servers over the weekend to skirt the initial ban and provide service to Russian users. Moscow: Roskomnadzor, Russias telecommunications watchdog, banned today over 1.8 million IP addresses belonging to Amazon and Googles cloud infrastructure. The IP ranges account for 1,835,008 IPs. The move to ban these IP blocks is a response to Telegram moving some of its infrastructure to Amazon Web Services and Google Cloud servers over the weekend. Roskomnadzor banned the Telegram instant messaging client inside Russias border on Friday, after the messaging company refused to hand over customers encryption keys to the FSB, Russia's main intelligence service. By moving servers to Amazon and Google servers, Telegram was able to skirt the initial ban and provide service to Russian users over the weekend. Many users ridiculed Roskomnadzors decision on social media, and for good reasons, as the move to mass-ban so many IP addresses had secondary repercussions, as it also blocked many legitimate web services. Users reported many online games, mobile apps, and cryptocurrency services going dark over the course of the day. Meanwhile, Britain and the United States on Tuesday released a rare joint statement warning of malicious cyber activity carried out by Russia. The technical alert was issued by the UK's National Cyber Security Centre, the US Federal Bureau of Investigation and department of homeland security. The targets of this malicious cyber activity are primarily government and private-sector organisations, critical infrastructure providers and the ISPs supporting these sectors, the statement said. It warned everyone from internet service providers to home office customers to heed the warning, after the government agencies found cyber attacks targeting devices such as internet routers. Russian state-sponsored actors are using compromised routers to conduct spoofing man-in-the-middle attacks to support espionage, extract intellectual property, maintain persistent access to victim networks and potentially lay a foundation for future offensive operations, the UK and US warned. They cited cyber security research organisations and other governments as providing evidence of such attacks, without providing details of their timing or scale. Social networking giant Facebook has chosen poll-bound Karnataka to launch its first concerted effort towards a crackdown on fake news. Ahead of the May 12 state Assembly elections, news stories shared by Facebook users on the platform will be fact-checked by a certified team, making this the California-based companys first third-party fact-checking programme in India. Individual users and page admins will be notified if they try to share, or have shared in the past, a story that has been determined as false. Pilot project Facebook has partnered with BOOM, a Mumbai-based independent, digital journalism initiative founded by journalist Govindraj Ethiraj, for the pilot project in the state. We chose Karnataka where elections are coming up and news flow is more during this time, a Facebook spokesperson said. Third-party fact-checking is part of our ongoing effort to combat fake news. The company wants to gradually scale up the initiative, which went live in Karnataka on Monday evening. India is now among the select countries where Facebook runs a fact-checking project. The others include France, Italy, the Netherlands, Germany, US, Mexico, Indonesia and the Philippines. Facebook has 217 million users in India. Apparently, Facebook has been able to reduce the distribution of stories rated as false by 80%. Once a fact-checker rates a story as false, Facebook will show it lower in the news feed, significantly cutting down its distribution. This, in turn, stops the hoax from spreading and reduces the number of people who see it, the spokesperson explained. Pages and domains that repeatedly share false news will have their ability to monetise and advertise removed. The initiative is part of Facebooks larger confidence-building measures following the outrage over how Cambridge Analytica, a British political consulting firm, reportedly obtained data of 87 million users in a bid to assist the election campaign of Donald Trump. This conversation started before the Cambridge Analytica episode. In fact, our discussion with Facebook on Karnataka is at least three months old, said Ethiraj, who also founded IndiaSpend, a journalism nonprofit. We have an agreement to focus more on Karnataka, giving us the freedom to do what we want. There has been fairly high misinformation in and around Karnataka that we have debunked already, he said, citing the specific example of news reports on postcard.news, whose founder Mahesh Vikram Hegde was recently arrested. Can a man convicted in one state be lodged in prison in another state where there is no case against him and is such imprisonment legal? These were the posers put to the Delhi government by the Delhi High Court on Tuesday during the hearing of a plea of Jagtar Singh Hawara, convicted for conspiring to assassinate former Punjab chief minister Beant Singh, claiming that his incarceration in Tihar Jail was illegal as he has not been convicted of any crime in the national capital. A bench of Justices Vipin Sanghi and P S Teji issued a notice to the Delhi government and asked them to indicate in their response why he has not been shifted to a prison in Punjab. The bench, however, dismissed as "completely misconceived" an application moved by Hawara, through advocate Mehmood Pracha, seeking his release from Tihar Jail. Pracha, appearing for Hawara, claimed that his client was in illegal detention at Tihar Jail, where he has been lodged since May 2016. The contention was rejected by the court which said the detention was "not illegal". The Delhi government, represented by standing counsel (criminal) Rahul Mehra, told the court that Hawara was not shifted to Punjab as there were intelligence inputs that attempts would be made to free him during the transit. Initially, Hawara was lodged in Tihar Jail, while a case against him was pending trial in Delhi. However, by the time he was acquitted in the case here, he was convicted in the Beant Singh assassination case leading him to remain jailed here, Mehra said and added that in view of this factual position, his detention here was not illegal. The bench listed the matter for hearing on May 28. Besides seeking his release from Tihar Jail, the habeas corpus plea moved on behalf of Hawara seeks that he should be produced before the court. It also claimed that the trial in the cases against him in Punjab were stalled due to his imprisonment here. The claim has been refuted by the Delhi government which has said that trial in those cases were proceeding via video conferencing. A woman professor of an autonomous college in Tamil Nadu was on Monday arrested for reportedly luring four girl students to compromise on their morality to give sexual favours to a top official even as Governor Banwarilal Purohit ordered a detailed inquiry into the incident. Nirmala Devi, associate professor with Devanga Arts College in Aruppukottai in Virudhunagar district affiliated to Madurai Kamaraj University (MKU), was taken into custody by police, after a day-long drama during which the teacher locked herself inside her residence and refused to come out. After hours of high drama, the locks of Nirmala's house were finally broken with the help of her relatives at around 7 pm following which she was arrested. Police booked Nirmala under sections 370 (trafficking of persons), 511 (punishment for attempting to commit offences punishable with imprisonment for life or other imprisonments) of the IPC and 67(A) (punishment for publishing or transmitting of material containing sexually explicit act) of the IT Act. She (Nirmala Devi) has been secured. We will produce her before a local court on Tuesday after completing the preliminary investigation. She has been arrested based on a complaint filed by the college secretary and principal, V Mathi, Additional Superintendent of Police, Virudhunagar District, told DH. Minutes after the arrest, Purohit, in his capacity as the Chancellor of MKU, announced that he has set up a high-powered enquiry committee headed by former bureaucrat R Santhanam to go into certain immoral happenings in a college without any prejudice so that the guilty don't escape without punishment. In a bid to control the damage, MKU also constituted a five-member high-level committee to probe the allegations by the girl students. Opposition parties quickly lapped up the issue to target the government and demanded a court-monitored probe by the Central Bureau of Investigation (CBI). The political leaders also wanted to know who was the top official and asked the government to ensure that his identity is disclosed and he is also brought to justice. In the audio clip that went viral, Nirmala is heard asking the students to grab the opportunity to do certain things secretly for a top official. Though the students are heard expressing their disinterest in the proposal, the professor looked unperturbed and continues to convince them by flaunting her connections. Though Nirmala was suspended from her post in the third week of March after the students filed a complaint with the college administration, there was no forward movement on the complaint till the audio clip was shared on social media on Sunday. The incident has come as yet another blot on the higher educational institutes in Tamil Nadu, which are already under a thick cloud of corruption with two former vice-chancellors of reputed universities being booked on graft charges. Dissatisfaction among Congress and BJP ticket aspirants and their followers for not getting tickets to contest the Assembly polls on May 12 in Karnataka, marked the day on Tuesday. Davanagere Followers of MLA H P Rajesh who was denied the Jagalur ticket staged a protest at the Jayadeva Circle in Davanagere on Tuesday. Thousands of supporters who arrived from Jagalur, burnt tires at the Gandhi Circle to vent their anger. They staged a dharna in front of district in-charge minister S S Mallikarjun's house. Bagalkot Followers of industrialist Sangamesh Niranige on Tuesday, staged a protest in Jamakandi, Bagalkot demanding that the BJP ticket be given to their leader. Sangamesh is former minister Murugesh Nirani's brother. He was an aspirant for the Jamakandi ticket. Dramatic events occurred when one protester tried to commit suicide by jumping off a multi-storied building while another poured kerosene on himself and tried to self-immolate. Both were stopped from committing suicide by others. Thousands had gathered at the Desai Circle in the town to witness this drama. The BJP Jamakandi ticket has been given to former MLA Srikanth Kulkarni. The Congress Jamakandi ticket has been given to Pushpa Lakshmana Swamy. Raichur In the Maski Assembly constituency, Mahadevappa Gowda Patil's supporters staged a protest because he was not given the BJP ticket. The protest was held at Maski town. Ballari In Kudlagi, Congress workers burnt tires at the Madakari circle protesting against the giving of the party ticket to Gujjal Raghu. The BJP is planning to paint the Congress as "anti-Hindu" by latching on to the latest Mecca Masjid bomb blast case verdict, acquitting Hindutva activists, while seeking to put the top UPA chairperson Sonia Gandhi and Congress president Rahul Gandhi in the line of fire. Apart from focussing on the alleged attacks on Hindutva cadre, the saffron party will raise the "Congress-defaming Hindu" pitch more prominently by arguing that its opponent's efforts during the UPA regime to raise the issue of "saffron terror" had come to nought with the latest court verdict. For the second consecutive day, the BJP trained its guns at the Congress, especially at party chief Rahul and Sonia, saying they should apologise for defaming Hindus "globally". It cited a United States cable made public by 'WikiLeaks,' which purportedly quotes Rahul telling the then US ambassador that saffron terror was a bigger threat than the Lashkar-e-Taiba (LeT). 'Cong anti-Hindu' "Of course, we will raise these issues during the Karnataka campaign. We will tell people how the Congress is trying to prove that there is saffron terror and how it defamed the whole Hindu community," a senior leader said. Prime Minister Narendra Modi and BJP president Amit Shah had earlier raised the issue of murders of Hindutva activists in the state and accused the Siddaramaiah government of targeting them. At a press conference here on Tuesday, BJP spokesperson Sambit Patra said the Congress party was taking the Hindu community for granted. "If Congress considers India to be its own, then Sonia and Rahul must apologise to the whole country for defaming the great Hindu religion by trying to prove there was something called saffron terror," he said. Referring to the US cable, Patra said this showed the mindset of Rahul towards Hindus. "His party has always taken Hindus for granted," he said. SALT LAKE CITY Sen. Mike Lee continues to question the authority President Donald Trump cites to justify the U.S. missile strike on Syria last week. "While the president has the authority under the War Powers Act to respond when the U.S. is under attack or in imminent danger, such circumstances did not exist with regard to Syria," the Utah Republican said Monday. "Promoting regional stability, mitigating humanitarian catastrophe and deterring the use of chemical weapons might be important foreign policy goals, but if they are to be pursued with military force, a president must first seek congressional authorization." No president, no matter party or political ideology, has the right to start a war, Lee said. The United States and European allies struck Syrian research, storage and military targets in retaliation for a suspected chemical attack near Damascus that killed more than 40 people. "The purpose of this military action was to degrade the Syrian military's ability to conduct further chemical weapons attacks and to dissuade the Syrian government from using or proliferating chemical weapons," Trump wrote in a letter to congressional leaders Sunday. Trump wrote that he acted pursuant to his constitutional authority to conduct foreign relations and as commander-in-chief in the vital national security and foreign policy interests of the United States. Specifically, he said the air strikes were to promote the stability of the region, deter the use and proliferation of chemical weapons, and to avert a worsening of the region's current humanitarian catastrophe. "The United States will take additional action, as necessary and appropriate, to further its important national interests," Trump wrote. Lee said last week the president should ask Congress before using military force in response to Syria's use of chemical weapons. Rep. Mia Love also has weighed in. The Utah Republican is one of 88 lawmakers to sign a letter urging the president to secure approval from the U.S. House and Senate before taking any further action. "We owe it to our men and women in uniform," she said in a tweet. The letter acknowledges that Trump has the authority to act in emergencies. But in the absence of a direct threat to the U.S. and without prior approval from Congress, the letter states, military engagement in Syria threatens the separation of powers. Contributing: Annie Knox SALT LAKE CITY Utah lawmakers will hold a veto override session Wednesday to reconsider bills giving the legislative branch more power that Gov. Gary Herbert nixed after the 2018 Legislature. SB171 allowed the Legislature to intervene in lawsuits filed against the state and allocates $700,000 a year for three new attorneys, a paralegal and a legal secretary. HB198 required the Utah Attorney General's Office to provide legal opinions to lawmakers upon request. The legislation stems from the fight lawmakers had with Herbert last year over how to conduct the special election to replace former U.S. Rep. Jason Chaffetz, R-Utah. They butted heads over a legal opinion on the issue legislative leaders sought from the attorney general who refused to turn it over, citing the governor as his client. The governor's office called the two measures unprecedented and said they strain the constitutional balance between the branches of state government. The curious keep coming. They turn onto a gravel road 10 miles east of Waco and pass through a black gate leading to a rural complex where David Koresh leader of an apocalyptic religious sect known as the Branch Davidians and 75 followers perished in a firestorm on April 19, 1993. That came after six Branch Davidians and four federal agents earlier died amid a flurry of gunfire in the governments initial Feb. 28, 1993, raid on the 77-acre Mount Carmel property. I was just really curious about seeing this memorial and seeing whats out here, said Eric Williams, a Seattle film producer who made it a point to visit the site during a leisure trip to Texas. Nearby, a woman snapped a picture of a monument listing the names of Koresh and the other 81 Branch Davidians including 18 children ages 10 or younger who lost their lives in the 51-day federal standoff that ended in a nationally televised inferno. Twenty-five years after the siege, interest in what happened outside Waco and whos to blame remains immense. Evidence of that can be seen in the spate of recent television specials coinciding with the anniversary from ABCs Truth and Lies: Waco to the Paramount Networks six-part miniseries Waco to the Smithsonian Channels documentary Waco: The Longest Siege. The Waco Tribune-Herald, the local newspaper that launched a seven-part investigative series on The Sinful Messiah the day before the Feb. 28, 1993, raid, has published the articles online for the first time. I think people would like for it to go away, but I dont think it has, said Bill Pitts, a longtime religion professor at Baylor University in Waco. He said that just a few weeks ago, when he took a group of church history students to England, he stepped into a cab and the taxicab driver asked us where we were from, and so we told him. And he said, Oh, I remember that, and he went on with the story of the Waco tragedy, Pitts said. Other longtime residents say the popularity of Waco-based home-improvement experts Chip and Joanna Gaines of Fixer Upper fame has given this Central Texas city of 130,000 halfway between Dallas and Austin a more positive image. Its definitely faded, Chelsa Brindley Ressetar, director of advancement for a college-prep school in Waco, said of her hometowns association with the Branch Davidians. I dont think you can brand a city based on an event that happened outside the town. I dont think that was fair, added Ressetar, who was a teen working as a store clerk when she first heard Blackhawk helicopters headed to the Mount Carmel complex. Some dubbed Koresh the wacko from Waco, a term the Rev. George Johnson remembers hearing when hed travel out of town after the siege. At some point, people realized how silly that was, said Johnson, who served 25 years as senior pastor of Wacos St. Paul African Methodist Episcopal Church and is now the presiding elder for the denominations district that includes Central Texas. A new Davidian church Still, many out-of-towners flock to the Branch Davidian site. On a recent weekend, pastor Charles Pace said he counted 100 cars that came through the gate. A sign near the entrance requests $5 donations from each car to maintain the property, of which Pace serves as trustee. They (the visitors) need closure because they cant believe what the government did, but they also cant believe that David Koresh claimed to be God, said Pace, a Branch Davidian who greets visitors at a small church on the Mount Carmel site and teaches that the fire was Gods judgment on Koreshs apostate leadership. Pace said he confronted Koresh about his blasphemous claims in 1984. But Koresh refused to repent of his teachings, said Pace, who was leading a small house church in Gadsden, Ala., at the time of the 1993 standoff. Pace said he returned to the Mount Carmel site in 1997 and later renamed the church The Branch, The Lord Our Righteousness after what he describes as the purification that took place. He said he lives on the property with his wife, daughter, son-in-law and youngest son. Asked how many people attend the church constructed years after the fire, Pace replied: I dont have a number because its basically a cyber-church. I put studies online, and people will look at them. Some will write me and ask questions, and I will give them answers or make another study. I dont know what the number is. Thats all up to the Holy Ghost. The few Branch Davidians who survived the fire and still live in the Waco area including Clive Doyle and Sheila Martin do not associate with Pace. Texas Monthly recently reportedthat those survivors even now believe that Koresh was not a crazed cult leader, or a delusional narcissist, or even merely a gifted interpreter of scripture, but a genuine prophet of God. Religious scholars, however, make a distinction between Koreshs followers seeing him as a messianic figure in the end times and believing he was the actual Messiah (as in Jesus). Who started the fire? As noted in the book Why Waco?: Cults and the Battle for Religious Freedom in America by James D. Tabor and Eugene V. Gallagher, federal officials spent months planning the Feb. 28, 1993, raid on the Branch Davidian complex. At the time of the raid, 123 people including 43 children were inside the multistory building where Koresh lived with followers, including multiple wives and children he was accused of physically and sexually abusing. The concerns of the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives, known as ATF, were based on allegations that the group a distant offshoot of the Seventh-day Adventist Church possessed illegal firearms materials and was possibly converting AR-15 semiautomatic rifles into machine guns. Shortly after 9 a.m. that Sunday, an 80-vehicle convoy including two cattle trailers pulled by trucks and loaded with 76 heavily armed agents raced up to the property and halted in front as agents stormed the center, Tabor and Gallagher wrote. Overhead, two Blackhawk helicopters arrived almost simultaneously. A shootout ensued that left four ATF agents and six Branch Davidians dead. Thus began the standoff, which would last seven weeks and attract worldwide attention. FBI agents called to Mount Carmel after the failed raid can hardly be expected to have packed their Bibles, the Why Waco? authors suggested in the 1995 books opening. In retrospect, it would not have been such a bad idea. More than two decades later, Tabor a religion professor at the University of North Carolina at Charlotte said he remains completely uncertain about who started the fire that claimed so many lives. On the morning of April 19, 1993, federal agents used tanks to inject tear gas into the Branch Davidian building in an effort to force Koresh and his remaining followers to surrender. But at about noon, fire broke out in multiple locations in the building. Agents alleged that the sect had started the blaze, while survivors blamed the government for igniting the inferno. Regardless of the fires cause, Tabor faults the FBIs tactical experts for failing, in his view, to understand Koreshs apocalyptic theology, based on the Book of Revelation texts about the Seven Seals and the Lamb, a mysterious figure with seven horns and seven eyes who would open those seals in the Last Days. The FBI delivered to David the apocalypse that he expected to come in Israel in 1995, Tabor told Religion News Service a statement the professor first made in a 1995 congregational hearing on what went wrong in Waco. I dont believe anything David taught, OK? Tabor added. But its important to understand what he taught. And the plan was very simple. They believed that God would gather 144,000 people before the end. They would be armed and trained to go to Israel, and they would fight side by side with the Israelis in the Battle of Armageddon. That was their crazy idea. But the FBI refused to view the Branch Davidians as sincere believers convinced through deep Bible study that Koresh was a final prophet, Tabor said. Instead, agents portrayed the sects members as brainwashed victims and characterized Koresh as a cult leader, the professor said. I dont think anybody understood their theology, responded Bob Ricks, who served as the FBIs main media spokesman throughout the standoff. We tried to get as many experts as we possibly could. Ricks, now director of the Oklahoma State Bureau of Investigation, bristles at conspiracy theories tying the FBI to the sieges deadly end. The FBI never fired a shot the last day. We did not start any fires, Ricks said at his Oklahoma City office. There have been multiple independent investigations, and they know that we did not do that. If you believed your government was that vile and corrupt I mean, how could you even support a government of that nature? I dont think he was a madman, the law enforcement official said of Koresh. I think probably the best description of him is a master manipulator. I dont believe he suffered from a true psychosis that some people tried to ascribe. Did he believe he was Christ? Ricks added. I think it was to his benefit to believe that and that he was able to get his people to follow him by believing that. All the power, prestige, special benefits that he got by being the so-called Sinful Messiah would dissipate if he were not. Baylor professor Pitts, who was familiar with the Branch Davidians before the raid, said questions remain about whether the ATF while seeking a budget renewal saw the sect as a nice target for a decisive kind of show. If thats the case, then that was not a good thing, Pitts said at his Baylor office, stacked wall to wall with books. But the Branch Davidians also have problems of legitimacy from the standpoint of the ordinary public, especially with Koresh taking the wives of his members and having sex with them and saying that he was siring the 24 elders who are going to be the judges in heaven, the professor added. So there again, did he really believe that? Or was he using that as a ruse for his own self-gratification? President Donald Trump declared mission accomplished after a joint force of U.S., British and French forces on Saturday attacked three sites in Syria linked to chemical weapons. But it is unclear what that mission is or how the American people can measure its success. That said, it's not too late to create a specific and strategic U.S. policy toward Syria. French Prime Minister Edouard Philippe said the attack sent a clear message to Syrian President Bashar Assad and would dissuade him from launching any more such attacks on his own people. But even the Pentagon acknowledged Assad retains enough such facilities to continue brutal attacks on civilians. For its part, Russia complained bitterly about the attacks but appeared uninterested in taking any real action. Assads position does not appear to be threatened in any way, despite U.N. Ambassador Nikki Haleys statement to CNN a year ago that the administration thinks it's necessary to remove him. Trump, like his two most recent predecessors, has no defined objectives in Syria, which makes measuring success there impossible. And while the presidents decision to include Britain and France in Saturdays attack was an admirable display of multinational resolve, an important subtext to Trumps decision is the question of constitutional authority. Sen. Mike Lee, R-Utah, said before the strike that congressional approval would be necessary, under the Constitution, before launching an attack. He responded afterward by reiterating his concerns, saying no president has the authority to begin a war on his own. He is correct. The War Powers Resolution of 1973 clarifies the Constitution by allowing presidents to take unilateral action only if the U.S. has been attacked or faces some other sort of imminent national emergency. Otherwise, he is to consult Congress. Writing for The Atlantic, the University of Baltimores Garrett Epps called Trumps declaration that he would continue military responses to any future Syrian chemical attacks about as gross a violation of the Constitution as I can think of. Were not sure about that characterization. Previous presidents have shown a similar disdain for the Constitutions expressly written delineation of war powers namely, that Congress has power to declare war and the president acts as commander in chief of the armed forces with power to, when authorized, wage war. But this trend toward ignoring Congress is a troubling one. President Bill Clinton launched attacks on Kosovo in 1999 despite a lack of congressional authorization. Likewise, Congress challenged the Obama administration after its military intervention in Libya. More to the current point, President Barack Obama later sought congressional approval for military involvement in Syria but was rejected. A Republican-controlled Congress then passed a bill expressly defining what the secretary of defense was authorized to do in Syria, adding, Nothing in this section shall be construed to constitute a specific statutory authorization for the introduction of United States Armed Forces into hostilities or into situations wherein hostilities are clearly indicated by the circumstances. That didnt stop Obama from sending troops to Syria, nor has it kept Trump from maintaining them there and launching attacks. The reason the Constitution gives Congress the power to initiate war is clear. The United States is a republic. Acts of war put American lives at risk and could result in retaliatory attacks. The peoples representatives, not one single leader, must make decisions concerning such things. At the least, Congress now should initiate discussions on Syria, deciding whether the president is authorized to continue future military involvement or should be required to stop. To not do so would be to abdicate an important constitutional power. No one should minimize the brutality of Assads attacks on his own civilians. Nor should anyone misunderstand concerns about Russian influence in Syria. But U.S. objectives should be clearly defined and its use of force clearly backed by the deliberative power of the peoples representatives. Correction: An earlier version of this editorial misstated that President Bill Clinton launched attacks on Kosovo in 1991. Clinton took office in 1993, and the attacks occurred in 1999. NIBLEY, Cache County While efforts to arm school teachers have made headlines in recent years, a far broader fight back approach to school safety now appears to be gaining traction among the Utah charter schools. The Utah Association of Public Charter Schools recently brought on YouTactical founder Dave Acosta to conduct training sessions around the state centered around a program that teaches educators to, among other things, defend their students from active shooters with their bare hands. We said, 'Look, heres an opportunity for us to take a real expert with Dave Acosta and bring him into the schools and talk in different ways about what schools can do today to improve the school safety for their students,' said Royce Van Tassell, the association's executive director. As an association, were not going to take a position on what the right solution is. Every school is a little bit different and thats one of the things that makes Dave a great partner. He provides a variety of options depending on what works. Roughly two dozen administrators and teachers gathered at Thomas Edison Charter Schools South in Nibley Friday to learn from Acosta. How many people can a bad guy shoot in five minutes if nobody interferes? Acosta asked the group. If nobody interferes, its a lot of people. Let me just say that. The educators also watched and practiced techniques to disarm would-be active shooters in scenarios that featured handguns and AR-15 rifles. I think that it gives us the upper hand, said Shem Smith, principal of Thomas Edison North charter school. I think thats really what will keep (students) safe. Among the attendees was Utah State Board of Education member Terryl Warner, who represents District 1. About a month-and-a-half ago, Rep. (Mike) Kennedy, R-Alpine, created the Utah School Safety Commission, and one of the things that were looking at is some sort of run-hide-fight type program for students and educators and paraprofessionals and administrators, so I think this is really an excellent program, said Warner, who sits on the commission. I think it needs to be left up to a local decision-making process with a local board. Obviously Thomas Edison was really interested in it and they chose to proceed with this, but I think its something that we could see. Weve got to look at doing a number of things. Whether public school districts ever adopt a program like Acostas is unknown, but he believes all schools should consider the training. We need to change or shift the culture, Acosta said. Do something. Its that simple. Van Tassell said other regional training sessions have taken place in or are planned at other locations at both ends of the state, and have been made possible by a grant that allows the association to provide training on a regular basis. Charter schools are usually a little bit smaller and therefore a little bit more nimble, Van Tassell said. I think thats why weve been able to pull this together so quickly. Our hope, though, is that all of public education is able to address these pressing issues. Editor's note: Deseret News and Church News writers are chronicling the ministry of LDS Church President Russell M. Nelson as he and other church officials travel to Europe, Africa and Asia. Tad Walch reports today from Kenya. NAIROBI, Kenya To listen Monday to an LDS Church president's voice in person for the first time, East African Mormons traveled hundreds of miles in dust-covered buses, bouncing and swaying over dirt roads, broken streets and omnipresent speedbumps that keep speeds under 50 mph. They received a message tailored for eastern Africa, where many tribes continue to insist that grooms or their families provide a dowry or pay a price for a bride. "That's not the Lord's way," President Russell M. Nelson told about 2,000 Kenyans and other Africans Monday night inside a large, oval, wooden event center styled after traditional huts in Nairobi, Kenya. "The Lord's way is to be married in the temple, for time and all eternity, with your children sealed to you." He added that if he'd had to pay for his wife, "I would have missed five children, because only with my last five was I out of debt." President Nelson also said tithing can break cycles of poverty in poor nations and families. "We preach tithing to the poor people of the world because the poor people of the world have had cycles of poverty, generation after generation," he said. "That same poverty continues from one generation to another, until people pay their tithing." The law of the tithe was followed by ancient peoples as taught by Old Testament prophets. LDS faithful believe God restored the law and its blessings for those who follow it by giving one-tenth of their income to the church. Many Africans began saving money and planning their travel more than a month ago to attend what was billed here as a special devotional. It also was the third stop on President Nelson's first international trip since he became the church's leader in January. He set his watch on the podium and spoke without notes, declaring that those in the audience are pioneers. "You folks are pioneers right here in Kenya. You might not think of yourself as pioneers, but you're just as much pioneers now as Brigham Young and the Saints were, following the martyrdom of the Prophet Joseph Smith." His 35-minute address was worth 16 hours of rough travel, said Palaasi Charles, 49, of Jinja, Uganda. "Oh, much so. Much so," said Charles, part of a group of 29 Ugandans who left Jinja by bus at 2 p.m. Sunday and arrived in Nairobi at 6 a.m. They spent the day on a nearby lawn watching and photographing warthogs and baboons and waiting in line to secure seats closest to the podium. "I wish I'd come with my family," said Charles, a first counselor in the Jinja LDS Stake presidency. He said he will return home and relay the special devotional's messages to his family and the Mormon congregations in his area. "I will share with them the importance of us having temple recommends," he said, "that tithing is going to break the cycle of poverty, the importance of educating our children and doing away with dowry as part of our culture." He and others are looking forward to construction of an LDS temple in Nairobi, announced in April 2017. Church leaders have not announced the temple site yet. "I don't know how long it will take to build that temple," President Nelson said, "but let's have a little contest: See if you can build your lives to be ready and your ancestral documentation to be ready for when the temple comes." He said it is easier for church leaders to build a temple than it is for them to build a people ready for the temple. Global Missionary Tour Follow the Deseret News as we chronicle President Russel M. Nelson's travels through seven countries around the world.He also emphasized the importance of prophets, the Book of Mormon, the Restoration of the priesthood, family and worshipping Jesus Christ. He said one of the great lessons of his 93-year life is that people are God's children and he speaks to them. "It's no different for you than it is for me," he said. "You can get personal revelation for your own circumstances, just as naturally as I can for my circumstances. You get it for your family and yourself, and I get it for the whole church." A total of 67 members of four LDS branches in the Eldoret area 200 miles northwest of Nairobi met at 9 p.m. Sunday, but their bus did not show until 12:30 a.m. They arrived at 7 a.m. and began a 10-hour wait for the meeting. "We've been planning and preparing to make this trip since we learned he was coming," said Jane Malakwen, a food package maker and second counselor in the Sosiani Branch Relief Society. "We didn't sleep, but we are not tired. We are full of energy to see the prophet. "It's a once-in-a-lifetime opportunity. He is the second prophet to come here in the history of the church." Late LDS Church President Gordon B. Hinckley visited in 1998 and 2005. Another speaker on Monday night, Elder Jeffrey R. Holland of the Quorum of the Twelve Apostles, also encouraged east Africans to prepare for the temple. He asked them to qualify, receive and carry the temple recommend required for entrance, even before the temple is built. He also asked them to begin recording their family histories and to attend the temple in Johannesburg, South Africa "as often as the circumstances and the finances and transportation will allow." "Nothing will bless you more," he said, "nothing will unite your family more, nothing will bless your children more, nothing will bless your ancestors more. Quite frankly, there is nothing that will bless you in any way more than your attendance at the temple, a place of peace, a place of revelation, a place of joy, a place of comfort, a place of purity, all the best things in life." Malakwen made the bumpy trip from Eldoret to Nairobi in part to see Sister Nelson, who said, "My experience over the years has taught me that being in the presence of a righteous African woman and a righteous African man is to be in the presence of spiritual royalty." Sister Nelson also said the Book of Mormon prophet Nephi built a boat, LDS Church founder Joseph Smith oversaw construction of circular Nauvoo Temple windows and President Nelson pioneered heart surgery by living "not after the manner of men," a Book of Mormon phrase. "We need to live our lives, build our marriages, increase our means of livelihoods by increasing our knowledge and skills according to the way the Lord would show us, not after the manner of men." Nephi, Joseph Smith and President Nelson instead followed eternal laws, she said. "Think about something you need," she added. "What would make your life better right now? What are the eternal laws that govern that blessing? What eternal law would you need to live so that you could receive that blessing?" The eternal law that governs finances is tithing, Sister Nelson said. Then she said dowry and bride price are manners of men. She relayed a message from one of her African friends, and said "You, the Saints of Kenya, could set an example of joyfully freeing our young people from the chains of this practice and thus begin living 'not after the manner of men.'" Sister Patricia Holland paid tribute to the Nelsons. She said Sister Nelson's experience as a nurse and a therapist honed a maternal instinct that bolsters everyone around her. "In fact, she has more confidence in us than we have in ourselves," Sister Holland said. She said President Nelson is a strong man, but never harsh: "He is one who is of the Savior's gentleness and the Savior's compassion." The evening was a dream come true, said Sister Laourich Acii, a 23-year-old Ugandan serving in the faith's Kenya Nairobi Mission. "In a short duration," added James D'Souza, who lives on the outskirts of Nairobi, "he taught us so much." FARMINGTON A Layton military couple awarded $10,000 worth of free groceries within days of appearing in court on theft charges has pleaded guilty. Nicholas Mannino, 37, and his wife, Stephanie Mannino, 34, were each charged in 2nd District Court last year with a single count of theft, a second-degree felony. Nicholas Mannino pleaded guilty to the charge Thursday, while his wife entered a guilty plea on April 5. According to court documents filed as the Manninos entered their respective plea deals, the two admitted that while Stephanie Mannino was working as a cashier at Kohl's department store in Layton in December 2016, her husband brought merchandise through her register that she either failed to ring up or rang up and then deleted. Nicholas Mannino then left the store with the merchandise. When Stephanie Mannino was interviewed, she "admitted they had been stealing from the Kohl's store since the end of November 2016" and that "they had stolen over $5,000 worth of merchandise," plea documents state. Law enforcement recovered the merchandise from the family's home and verified it was worth more than $5,000. As part of her plea deal, Stephanie Mannino is eligible to have the conviction reduced two steps, down to a class A misdemeanor, if she successfully completes probation. The plea deal states that if she is sentenced to jail, she will serve no more than 60 days. Nicholas Mannino was ordered to pay full restitution in the case and is also eligible for a two-step reduction of his conviction if he completes probation, according to his plea deal. He may serve a stipulated 30-day jail sentence "depending on full acceptance of responsibility," plea documents state. An additional note on the plea form indicates that no charges will be filed in connection with an unspecified fraud investigation as part of the deal. A sentencing hearing is scheduled for May 31. Almost nine months after the charges were filed and within days of a scheduled court appearance in the case, the couple was honored in November with $10,000 worth of free groceries from Operation Homefront, an organization that "assists military families during difficult financial times," according to its website. At the time the Manninos were selected for the grocery award, the website stated that applying to the program did not typically include a criminal background check. Nicholas Mannino received several awards while serving as an infantryman in the U.S. Army for six years. He retired in 2007 as a corporal. Stephanie Mannino is a member of Hearts of Valor, a support program for caregivers of wounded, ill or injured service members, and was nominated for the assistance. Local media was invited to meet the Manninos as they were presented the award and shopped for groceries. In a statement released when the Deseret News reported on the couple's criminal case, Operation Homefront officials said they were "saddened" to learn about the charges. "We selected this family of eight as they were struggling to get by on a very limited disability income and we felt they would benefit greatly from this basic support made possible through the extraordinary generosity of our long-time partner Eckrich," the statement said. Because the charges were pending at the time, officials said they would wait until the case was concluded before determining whether to award the remaining funds in the grocery giveaway. Flipkart has made two big announcements which it was teasing through its 'BigOnFlipkart' campaign. The first announcement is Flipkarts Customised for India three year strategic partnership with Asus under which the two companies aim to co-create products and bring the latest technology suited for India, and will bring the most inclusive affordability program, which is yet to be detailed. The second big announcement by the online retailer was in tandem with the newly announced Asus partnership. While we were expecting the launch of the latest Asus Zenfone 5 in India, Asus announced that its Zenfone Max Pro will be announced launched on April 23 at 12:30PM. Alongside the smartphone, Flipkart will also be announcing the value-added service, which was supposed to be made public today. Flipkarts VP of mobiles, Ajay Veer Yadav also announced some metrics regarding the ecommerce platform's at todays event. He said that the online retailer grew more than 60 percent last year and also claims that one in every four smartphones purchased in India is sold by Flipkart. The online retailer aims to capture 40 percent of the smartphone market share in the country by 2020. Flipkart will now be the primary sales channel for Asus Zenfones and as mentioned above, the Asus Zenfone Max Pro will be the first device to launch in India under the partnership. Its not known whether this is the Asus Zenfone 5 Max, which the company was supposed to unveil at the MWC 2018. The upcoming Zenfone Max Pro smartphone will be powered by the Qualcomm Snapdragon 636 chipset. It should be noted that the Asus Zenfone 5 Max (M1), which was detailed by the company in a press release comes with either Snapdragons 425 or 430 SoC with up to 3GB RAM and 32GB internal storage. Asus could be launching a new variant of the device or it could be a new smartphone altogether. Nothing else regarding the specs of the device is known yet. ASUS CEO, Jerry Shen said at the event,As a core pillar of our consumer centric strategy in India, we see tremendous opportunity in creating products and services that address Indias special market needs. With Flipkarts partnership, we aim to gain more insights about Indian consumers needs which can help us develop even more suitable products for the Indian market. Flipkarts unparalleled distribution reach and marketing strengths will help ASUS build strong awareness for our innovative high value products and reach consumers across India. We strongly believe this collaboration will provide both companies better opportunity to provide delightful propositions to Indian consumers. Commenting on the announcement, Flipkart CEO, Kalyan Krishnamurthy, said, "Flipkart has driven the adoption of smartphones in India, and grown the market, through innovations and a deep sense of knowing what consumers want. With this partnership with Asus, we're multiplying those efforts by collaborating to leverage our individual strengths -- data-driven research & insights, and technological prowess -- to build smartphones truly customised for India. Asus is a trusted brand worldwide with a 3 decade global legacy in technology and innovation. Ultimately, we want the latest smartphone technology to be affordable and accessible to everyone, but, while we're at it, we also want to ensure Indian consumers get smartphones with features they most want. Speaking of the Asus Zenfone 5 Max (M1), it features a 5.5-inch HD+ IPS display with a 1440 x 720p resolution with a thin-bezel design and a taller 18:9 display aspect ratio. It doesnt come with a notch on the top of its display like the Zenfone 5Z and the Zenfone 5. In the camera department, the device features a 13MP+8MP dual-rear camera setup with f/2.0 aperture and PDAF support and on the front, it comes with an 8MP camera with f/2.2 aperture lens and support for face unlock as well. The device runs on Zen UI 5.0, based on Android Oreo. It is powered by 4000mAh battery, which the company claims can deliver up to 36 hours of 3G talk time, up to 23 hours of web browsing on Wi-Fi and up to 16 hours of video playback. Asus also claims that users can double the battery life of the phone via the company's PowerMaster power management app. In terms of connectivity, the smartphone features 802.11b/g/n dual-band Wi-Fi, Wi-Fi Direct, LTE, Bluetooth 4.0, a Micro-USB card slot, and triple slots with two for dual SIM configuration with 4G + 3G standby and a dedicated slot for MicroSD card. Zenfone 2 Price in India updated on 9th Apr 2019 Zenfone 2 Price In India Starts From Rs.13998 The best price of Zenfone 2 is Rs.13998 on Amazon.This Mobile Phones is expected to be available in 64GB variant(s). OnePlus is soon going to unveil its flagship smartphone, the OnePlus 6. The company has been teasing the smartphone and some of the features it might come with, but alongside the specifications and hardware, it has also introduced the Swedish artist Hampus Olsson, who lives in Goa and designs wallpapers for the companys smartphones. He also designs websites, games, apps, illustrations, branding, and fashion. OnePlus Co-founder Carl Pei met him at a weekend market in Goa and after seeing some of his artwork, Olsson was hired for designing the official wallpapers for the OnePlus 2, and he has been making the wallpapers for all new OnePlus phones ever since, including the upcoming OnePlus 6. Olsson is also designing wallpapers for the OnePlus 6 and he says, With the OnePlus 6 wallpapers, I've brought with me what I've learned along the way. The new wallpapers feature a clean, fluid style with mountainous depths... if I were to compare the new wallpapers with the first ones I made for OnePlus, I would say the new ones are more vibrant, and hold a better, more suitable composition to reveal...Well, I won't spoil the rest. Suffice to say there are exciting things to come. The launch date of the OnePlus 6 is not known yet but the company has already unveiled some specs of the device. Its confirmed to come with a notch and will be powered by the Qualcomm Snapdragon 845 SoC. It will come with 8GB RAM and 256GB storage, which will be the first for the smartphone manufacturer. OnePlus received a lot of flak when it announced the inclusion of a notch on the OnePlus 6 and it soon announced that there will be a compatibility mode on the device, which will hide the notch whenever the phone is in landscape mode. The mode can also be set for individual apps and is said to work flawlessly with over 1000 top apps on the Play Store. The OnePlus 6 is also said to come with gesture support, which could allow users to swipe up and hold from the right or left for multitasking, swiping from the left to go back a menu and more. There could also be an added feature of drawing symbols for booting to apps directly. The company has also hinted that the OnePlus 6 could also be IP67 or IP68 certified waterproof or water-resistant. OnePlus CEO, Pete Lau also recently posted the first official camera samples captured from the smartphone. He showcased the daylight and bokeh performance of the camera on the smartphone and unsurprisingly, the meta-data from the images was removed so that no details of the devices camera can be identified. Adani Ports to provide LNG re-gasification services to IOC at Dhamra Adani Ports and Special Economic Zone (APSEZ) has signed a long-term agreement with state-run Indian Oil Corporation (IOC) to provide Liquefied Natural Gas (LNG) regasification services at its upcoming LNG import terminal at Dhamra in Odisha. Adani Ports, part of port infrastructure developer Adani Group, said under the 20-year contract, it will provide LNG regasification services to the state-run refiner on a use or pay basis. Adani has started construction at Dhamra LNG terminal and the project will be commissioned in mid 2021. The terminal will be of strategic importance for gas supply to Bangladesh and Myanmar. As per the contract, IOC has booked 3 million tonnes per annum (MTPA) regasification capacity spread over 20 years. IOC plans to supply the gas to its refineries in Paradip in Odisha and Haldia in West Bengal. We are pleased to partner with Indian Oil by signing this long-term agreement. India lacks adequate LNG import infrastructure at present and I am confident that this project will play a key enabling role for increasing gas consumption in that part of the country. In fact, the terminal will play a strategic role in gas supply to Bangladesh and Myanmar as well, said Karan Adani, CEO, APSEZ. The foundation stone of the project was laid and construction started in July last year. Larsen & Toubro has won the contract to set up the tankages for gas storage. The terminal is expected to be commissioned during the second half of 2021. The Dhamra LNG import terminal will have an initial capacity of 5 MTPA, expandable up to 10 MTPA. Initially, it will have two full containment type tanks of 180,000 m3 capacity each. It will be first of its kind in India and second LNG terminal on the east coast after IOCs Ennore terminal in Tamilnadu. It will have a jetty capable of handling a wide range of LNG supply vessels, including the largest Q-max fleet from Qatar. The terminal will be capable of reloading LNG to service proximate markets via the marine route and will also have truck loading gantries to help grow the nascent but exciting LNG by truck market. Fortis board to meet on Thursday, mull 'all eligible options' Fortis Healthcare on Monday said its board will meet this week to look at all eligible options as two more parties have entered the fray to acquire the company after its pact with the Manipal Health Enterprises-TPG consortium. The company's statement came hours after Malaysia's IHH Healthcare said Fortis has expressed inability to engage with it over its offer to acquire the Indian healthcare firm, citing binding agreements with Manipal Health Enterprises (See: IHH out of race for Fortis as board refuses to weigh offer ). On the other hand, Fortis Healthcare stated that "the Board of Directors of the Company have not yet made a decision". IHH had last week joined the race to acquire Fortis Healthcare, offering to acquire its shares at up to Rs160 apiece, higher than Manipal's offer at Rs155 per share which valued the company at Rs6,061 crore. In the last one week, Gurugram-based hospital chain received three offers - a revised offer from MHE, a joint bid from Hero Enterprise Investment Office-Burman Family Office, and a non-binding expression of interest from IHH Healthcare. The Fortis Board will be meeting on Thursday to look at all eligible options and determine the future course of action that is in the best interests of the company, employees and shareholders, the Fortis Healthcare statement said. A source told DNA Money that Fortis Healthcare has dismissed the Malaysian offer and the company is only delaying an announcement in order to eventually state that Manipal-TPG offer is best suited for all the stakeholders. "As Fortis Healthcare has signed a binding agreement, it is under legal constraint," said the source. Last week, Fortis has received two binding offers -- one is a revised offer from Manipal Health Enterprises Pvt Ltd (MHEPL) and the second is a joint binding offer from Hero Enterprise Investment Office and Burman Family Office expressing interest in the company, it added. Meanwhile, proxy advisory firm Institutional Investor Advisory Services (IiAS) has stated that Fortis Healthcare shareholders need an objective and independent decision-making body to advise its board on the company's sale. As reported by PTI, all the three options have different consequences for the future of Fortis and taking the right call will now be crucial. IiAS believes the current board can get additional support in assessing the three bids and come to a decision on the complex sets of pulls and pressures without waiting for board expansion. As per the report, "Shareholders need a decision-making body that is objective, independent, and has a historical association with the promoter group or their companies." In the letter to the directors of FHL last week, IHH Healthcare Berhard managing director and group CEO Tan See Leng expressed his company's strong interest in Fortis Healthcare Ltd and its affiliates. But at this juncture, IHH has not entered into any discussions, negotiations or transactions, the company said. IHH operates healthcare facilities across nine countries via a network of 49 hospitals, including Mount Elizabeth and Gleneagles in Singapore. In March, the Fortis board had approved demerger of its hospitals business, which was to be acquired by Manipal Hospitals and TPG Capital, along with the sale of 20 per cent stake in diagnostics chain SRL Ltd in a Rs3,900-crore deal. Government to invest Rs100,000-cr in a new Delhi-Mumbai expressway The centre has announced plans to build a new expressway connecting Mumbai and Delhi that will be aligned to pass through the states of Madhya Pradesh and Rajasthan. Union minister of road transport and highways and shipping Nitin Gadkari said the new express highway connecting Delhi and Mumbai will be built at a cost of Rs1,00,000 crore. A sum of Rs 1 lakh crore will be spent on this expressway Nitin Gadkari outlined major initiatives of his ministry for de-congestion of Delhi NCR. A total of ten projects are underway costing Rs35,600 crore, he said. Gadkari also said plans are afoot to also build a Chambal expressway connecting the Delhi-Mumbai expressway. The Chambal expressway will benefit states like Madhya Pradesh and Rajasthan, he said. About 40,000 commercial vehicles enter Delhi on a daily basis, which cause pollution and congestion in the city state, Gadkari, who also holds the water resources and Ganga rejuvenation portfolios, said in the statement. He said the government has taken up an ambitious scheme of developing Eastern and Western peripheral expressways around Delhi, adding that the Prime Minister Narendra Modi will inaugurate the Eastern peripheral expressway on 29 April. The prime minister will also inaugurate the Delhi-Dasna portion of the Delhi-Meerut Expressway, which has been envisaged to ease traffic in East Delhi. Besides, Gadkari said, work on signal-free corridor from Dhaula Kuan to New Delhis Indira Gandhi International Airport has been awarded at a cost of Rs260 crore. Similarly, he said, an eight-lane fully access-controlled Dwarka Expressway is being developed in four packages. Three packages of the project work have already been awarded, and work on the expressway is likely to start in a months time, he added. Total investment on the project is Rs 9,500 crore. Additionally, a bypass is being envisaged to connect Dwarka/NH8 for improvement of Mahipalpur at Rangpuri, he said. Regarding development of major junctions on NH8 in Gurugram like the flyover and underpass at IFFCO Chowk, Signature Tower intersection, Rajiv Chowk and Hero Honda Chowk, the minister said, the work costing Rs1,000 crore has been substantially completed. ATMs run dry in many states; Jaitley vows quick response Responding to alarm over ATMs running out of cash or not working in many states, finance minister Arun Jaitley today conceded a "temporary shortage in some areas" and said it was being "tackled quickly". Several major states are once again facing a serious cash crunch in a problem similar to the after-effects of demonetisation in early 2017. Problems have been reported from Karnataka, Maharashtra, Andhra Pradesh, Rajasthan, Uttar Pradesh, Madhya Pradesh, Bihar, Gujarat and Telangana. Several major states are once again facing a serious cash crunch in a problem similar to the after-effects of demonetisation in early 2017. Problems have been reported from Karnataka, Maharashtra, Andhra Pradesh, Rajasthan, Uttar Pradesh, Madhya Pradesh, Bihar, Gujarat and Telangana. Many have tweeted about not getting cash at ATMs in Delhi too, in a reminder of long queues and non-functioning machines after demonetization in November 2016. People are once again leaving empty-handed with no cash in ATM machines. Reserve Bank of India officials reportedly said that the problem is due to a huge demand during the sowing season and the situation would normalize in couple of days. Jaitley said he had reviewed the currency situation and there was more than enough in circulation and in banks. "Overall there is more than adequate currency in circulation and also available with the banks. The temporary shortage caused by sudden and unusual increase in demand in some areas is being tackled quickly," he said. Minister of State for finance Shiv Pratap Shukla had earlier given a time-frame of three days to resolve the problem. "We have cash currency of Rs1,25,000 crore now. Some states have less currency and others have more. The government has formed state-wise committees and the RBI has also formed a committee to transfer currency from one state to other," he said. Officials of the Reserve Bank of India, who held a meeting with finance ministry officials, said cash was back in demand. "Earlier it was around Rs3,000 per withdrawal, now it is Rs5,000," an official said, according to NDTV. People are also hoarding cash, said NDTVs sources in the RBI. "Currency in circulation has not grown despite growth in the economy after demonetisation. Currency in circulation on 4 November 2016 was Rs17.74 lakh crore. Currency in circulation now stands at Rs18.04 lakh crore," they said. State Bank of India chairman Rajnish Kumar said the problem is largely in Andhra Pradesh, Telangana, Karnataka and parts of North Bihar. "We will increase the circulation of 500 notes within 5 to 7 days," he said. The SBI chief said it was wrong to call it a currency shortage. "One reason could be that the procurement season has come and the payment to farmers has gone up. In Maharashtra and Mumbai, there is no cash crunch as far as SBI is concerned," Kumar told NDTV. In Hyderabad, many said they have been unable to withdraw cash since Monday. "We have visited several ATMs since yesterday but it is the situation everywhere," said one of the residents. A person in Varanasi told news agency ANI, "ATM Kiosks are not dispensing cash. We have visited 5-6 ATMs since morning. We need to pay for the admission of children (to schools) and groceries." The Congress has questioned whether the situation was the result of "gross mismanagement or a deliberate move". "Modiji has destroyed the banking system. Nirav Modi fled with Rs30,000 crore and the PM didn't utter a word. We were forced to stand in queues as he snatched 500 and 1,000 rupee notes from our pockets and put them in Nirav Modi's pocket," party chief Rahul Gandhi quipped. CPM general secretary Sitaram Yechury tweeted that ATMs are dry but "the only party flush with cash is the BJP". In line with these premises, Dudler narrates his building as an urban landscape strictly connecting with its surroundings. The Heidenheim Library certainly relates to the citys materials its contemporary beige brickwork being a direct reference to the ancient local castle and volumes the diverse heights of the block hinting at the complexity of ordinary fabric in the historic centre. Still, a certain lack of spatial and visual permeability on the ground floor is somehow bewildering, as it seems to inappropriately stress the compact and fortress-like appearance of a building whose ambition is, rather, to become a meeting and sharing space. The average price of houses sold in Dundalk rose slightly month-on-month to the end of February, according to the latest Residential Property Price Index figures released by the Central Statistics Office. In the year to February, the average price of a house sold in the Dundalk Eircode area (A91) was 192, 452. That is up from 190,714 from the 12 months to January, representing an increase of 0.9%. That follows an almost 4,000 increase in the average figures between December 2017 and January. The mean prices for household dwellings and split into areas determined by Eircode in the latest RPP Index figures, released by the Central Statistics Office last week. The current figure for average house prices in Dundalk now sits at at it's highest point since the Central Statistics Office started releasing the figures via Eircode. In January 2017, the average house sale price in the Dundalk area was 158,706 - and that figure has steadily risen in the last 13 months, to the tune of 33,746 across that period. The Dundalk figure pales in comparison to neighbouring Drogheda who saw their average price for a household dwelling sold in the year to this February rise by almost 5,000 to 229,103. The average house price in Carrickmacross 161,279 while in Castleblayney, the mean stood at 122,578 - both of these figures are down from the January prices. Local areas see house prices much lower than in Dublin and towns on the commuter belt such as A63 Greystones (420,876) and A98 Bray (391,787). The least exepensive Eircode area to buy property in over the last 12 months, to February this year, was F35 Ballyhaunis with a mean price of 74,611. The Residential Property Price Index (RPPI) is designed to measure the change in the average level of prices paid by households for residential properties sold in Ireland. The RPPI specifically excludes non-household purchases, non-market purchases and self-builds (i.e where the land is purchased separately). Iconic is as good a word as any to describe McCuskers of Earl Street especially when talking about it's stunning shop front, a modern-day link to yesteryear. McCuskers been part of Dundalk life for so long that its current proprietors have been unable to pinpoint exactly when it first opened it was at some point between 1898 and 1903. Either way, it is a well over a century old and the business has enjoyed the kind of longevity few can dream of. First opened by Peter McCusker, it has remained a fixture on Earl Street throughout the 20th century and to this day. Over the years, the small newsagents has also been home to a bookmakers, a hairdressers and a small library. It has never been a licensed premises, but that didnt stop McCuskers being known for years as the pub with no beer. We used to open on a Sunday morning, Paddy McCusker recalls. It was great craic. It was mainly men coming in for the papers. The average day, theyd come in for an hour. It was like a Mens Shed. It wouldnt be a days work at all. The heartbeat of the shop is Barbara McCusker, Paddys wife and for 36 years the face customers were greeted with as they came in for newspapers, groceries or latterly, gifts. It was a real drop-in shop. People would come in from the country and they couldnt be hawking stuff around town with them so they would leave it here, Barbara says. Wed put seats out for the older people and thered be a cup of tea, all that kind of thing. It really is a home from home for me and probably for the customers too. It felt like that for many especially regular patrons who were in no hurry to go home. However, once McCuskers installed their first phone line, the shop became less of a safe haven for some husbands out collecting the Sunday papers. Once we got the phone in, the wives would be ringing, Paddy recalls. Tell him his dinners ready! came the orders down the telephone. McCuskers will close its doors for the final time on Saturday, April 28th. Barbara started helping in the shop at just 21, soon graduating to running McCuskers full time. It has been a part of her life every day since. Its very emotional, she says about the prospect of no longer taking her place behind the counter on a daily basis. People are coming in and reminiscing. They are nearly more emotional than me. Im trying to hold myself together. I have very mixed feelings about it. I dont want to let it go. Its almost like somebody theyve lost, Barbara continues. You build up a bond with people. I would consider a lot of the customers friends now. They tell you things they might not tell other people. The shop has been in the McCusker family since the very beginning. After Peters death, eldest daughter Margaret took over, before handing the reins to her younger brother, Paddy. With help from Paddys wife, Kathleen, the shop continued to thrive as one of the towns most beloved businesses. Paddys death led to Kathleen taking on help in the form of Barbara, Paddy Jnrs future wife. Thirty-six years later, fresh from moving from a office job to a seemingly temporary position in retail, Barbaras love for her work and her time in the shop is evident every time she speaks. I had every intention of going back to the office. It was a whirlwind and it was a learning curve for me. I had guidance from Paddys mother and from Paddy.I didn't think Id still be here 36 years later, she says. But I loved it, and I still love it. For many, both young and old, McCuskers is a treasure trove of delights. What makes it stand out from the usual newsagent fare is its range of Irish gifts, something Barbara drove and developed over the years. The shops deals with up to 25 suppliers and this is not bluff, as Paddy puts it. These are gifts you wouldnt find in a garage or supermarket. Back in the 1980s, wed get a lot of American tourists, Barbara (below) recalls. We were known as the Irish shop. Visitors came from all over Australia to Iceland, New Zealand to Russia but alas the flow has slowed to a trickle and next week the door will close for good. We really want to thank the people of Dundalk, Paddy says. And our staff. We're proud of Dundalk, we really are. We decided things can't go on forever. The time is right. So how did McCuskers stay the course for so long? The joy of it, Barbara says. Pick up your copy of the new look Dundalk Democrat, in shops this week. With a fresh, new look and great sections including Dundalk Life and All Our Yesterdays - plus the best sports section around - don't miss your chance to read the Dundalk Democrat. Available in all good shops and newsagents. Instantly delete email threats with 365 Threat Monitor With 365 Threat Monitor, scan all emails as they reach your users' mailboxes to detect ransomware, phishing and spam. Get real-time phone alerts, real-time security breach updates and delete threats instantly with just one click - for free! Learn More. YouTube intends to ramp up its efforts to combat conspiracy mongers, perhaps in response to the rash of conspiracy videos that trended following the school shooting in Parkland, Florida, last month. Among other things, YouTube will supply links to relevant Wikipedia pages and other credible websites to provide viewers with a counter narrative, according to CEO Susan Wojcicki, who revealed the plans earlier this week during a panel discussion at SXSW. YouTube plans to roll out additional features pointing to third-party information sources over the next few months. The Wikimedia Foundation welcomed the move, but noted that it had not entered a formal partnership with YouTube and had not received any advance notice of the plan. "We are always happy to see people, companies and organizations recognize Wikipedia's value as a repository of free knowledge," said Samantha Lien, spokesperson for the Wikimedia Foundation. Wikipedia is freely licensed for reuse by anyone, and its mission is to facilitate sharing of that content, she told TechNewsWorld. Wikipedia is based on the contributions of hundreds of thousands of volunteer contributors. She added that they encourage others who share Wikipedia's content to give back. Like-Minded People Thousands of videos have been uploaded to YouTube by conspiracy theorists, noted John Paolillo, associate professor of informatics at Indiana University. They share some common threads, he told TechNewsWorld, as many of them come from survivalists, gun rights activists, InfoWars, the Russian propaganda channel RT, and libertarian commentators. "Conspiracy theory videos are posted and reposted and seem almost immune to disappearing," Paolillo remarked. "There are thousands upon thousands of these, and reliably identifying them is not that simple. It's likely that YouTube will face a severe backlash from certain users who may see the crackdown on these sites as a conspiracy. Difficult Task Like Facebook, YouTube faces an enormous challenge in trying to weed out fake news, conspiracy videos, and other types of hate speech or misinformation, observed Rick Edmonds, media business analyst at Poynter. While some Wikipedia entries may not be accurate, there is a method in place for policing information and promptly updating problematic posts, he told TechNewsWorld. YouTube is one of the key enablers of "micro-propaganda," noted Jonathan Albright, research director at the Tow Center for digital journalism, in a recent post on Medium. YouTube was inundated with conspiracy theories following the Parkland shooting, suggesting that the incident had been faked and that survivors who spoke out after the shooting were so-called "crisis actors." A data set of more than 250 videos were returned from a search of "crisis actor," Albright noted. In that data set, 20 percent of the videos were related to mass shootings, false flags and crisis actors. The other 80 percent were related to historical, religious or government conspiracies. It was imperative that YouTube take additional steps, including optional filters and human monitors, to monitor its pages for this kind of disinformation, Albright wrote. Conspiracy videos are part of a wider trend in social media. Fake news, hate speech, hoaxes and other misinformation have been proliferating on Facebook, Twitter, YouTube and Google. After taking a beating over the proliferation of fake news during the 2016 presidential campaign, Facebook recently announced that it would de-emphasize news coverage in Trending Topics in favor of more posts from friends and family members. CEO Mark Zuckerberg has come under severe criticism for being too slow to recognize Facebook's increasing role and responsibility as a digital publisher, while established media outlets have suffered mightily. The lion's share of digital advertising has been gobbled up by Facebook and Google, leading to severe economic distress for the journalism industry. David Jones has been an ECT News Network reporter since 2015. His areas of focus include cybersecurity, e-commerce, open source, gaming, artificial intelligence and autonomous vehicles. He has written for numerous media outlets, including Reuters, Bloomberg, Crain's New York Business and The New York Times. Email David. Instantly delete email threats for Office 365 With the free app, 365 Threat Monitor, scan all emails as they reach your users' mailboxes to detect ransomware, phishing and spam. Get real-time phone alerts + security breach updates and delete threats instantly with just one click. Download now! The European Union, the UK Information Commissioner, and United States lawmakers have ratcheted up the pressure on Facebook over a user data scandal that threatens to engulf the company. The president of the European Parliament, Antonio Tajani, summed up the stakes in a tweet on Tuesday: We've invited Mark Zuckerberg to the European Parliament. Facebook needs to clarify before the representatives of 500 million Europeans that personal data is not being used to manipulate democracy. Antonio Tajani (@EP_President) March 20, 2018 The EU and the UK on Monday announced separate investigations into reports that Cambridge Analytica harvested the information of 50 million Facebook users without their consent, as part of a data analytics project for the 2016 Trump campaign. A number of U.S. lawmakers also have begun demanding answers from Facebook CEO Mark Zuckerberg and other prominent Silicon Valley executives, amid a growing uproar over the reports, which surfaced last week. Allegations of misuse of Facebook user data is an unacceptable violation of our citizens' privacy rights. The European Parliament will investigate fully, calling digital platforms to account. #CambridgeAnalytics #CambridgeAnalyticaFiles Antonio Tajani (@EP_President) March 19, 2018 In the UK, where Cambridge Analytica is based, an investigation is also under way. "A full understanding of the facts, data flows and data uses is imperative for my ongoing investigation," said UK Informational Commissioner Elizabeth Denham. "This includes any new information, statements or evidence that may have come to light in recent days." Ahead of the Story Facebook late last week suspended Cambridge Analytica and its parent company, Strategic Communication Laboratories Group, following disclosures that they had obtained personal information of more than 50 million Facebook users in violation of the company's terms of service. "Protecting people's information is at the heart of everything we do, and we require the same from people who operate apps on Facebook," said Paul Grewal, deputy general counsel at Facebook. "If these reports are true, it's a serious abuse of our rules." Aleksandr Kogan, a University of Cambridge professor, in 2015 violated Facebook's platform policy and lied to the company after passing data along to SCL/Cambridge Analytica with a personality prediction app he created called "thisisyourdigitallife," Facebook asserted in a post explaining its position. The app, which was downloaded by about 270,000 Facebook users, basically harvested information not only from those users, but also from friends of those users, in order to create sophisticated profiles based on their likes, preferences, and other information gleaned from their online activity, according to Facebook. After the 2015 violation, Facebook removed the app from the site and got certification from Kogan and SCL/Cambridge Analytica -- and also from Christopher Wylie of Eunoia Technologies, another third-party firm that got the data -- that they had destroyed all the information obtained through the app, according to Facebook. Following its suspension, Cambridge Analytica maintained that it had contracted with Global Science Research to obtain the data in accordance with the UK Data Protection Act, and that it had deleted any data obtained through GSR after learning of the violation of Facebook's terms of service. Cambridge Analytica issued a statement claiming that it had worked with Facebook to ensure its satisfaction with the measures taken, and that it not breached any terms of service knowingly. It also provided a signed statement confirming deletion of all the improperly harvested data. The company added that no data obtained from GSR was used as part of the services it provided the 2016 Trump campaign. The company later denied a report on Channel 4 in the UK that it had offered to set up "honeypots" to entrap politicians in scandals. Christopher Wylie, a whistleblower and former Cambridge Analytica employee, said in multiple media interviews and on Twitter that Facebook had suspended his account for blowing the whistle on its involvement in this activity. Suspended by @facebook. For blowing the whistle. On something they have known privately for 2 years. pic.twitter.com/iSu6VwqUdG Christopher Wylie (@chrisinsilico) March 18, 2018 Hearings Demanded Sens. Amy Klobuchar, D-Minn., and John Kennedy, R-La., have asked Sen. Chuck Grassley, R-Iowa, chair of the Senate Judiciary Committee, to hold hearings with testimony from major technology executives from Facebook, Twitter and Google. Sens. John Thune, R-La., Roger Wicker, R-Miss., and Jerry Moran, R-Kan., fired off a letter to Zuckerberg and SCL Group CEO Nigel Oaks asking for a briefing and additional information regarding how user data was shared. Thune chairs the Committee on Commerce, Science and Transportation, and Wicker and Moran chair two of its prominent subcommittees, with oversight of consumer data issues. Facebook has been under fire since the 2016 general election for spreading fake news that was designed to influence voter behavior, particularly in certain key states. President Trump won the Electoral College with narrow victories in three states, despite having lost the popular vote to Hillary Clinton. "This has particular resonance for politicians and regulators, both in the U.S. and Britain, who think Facebook has been lackadaisical in policing misuse of the platform," Rick Edmonds, media business analyst at Poynter, told the E-Commerce Times. The Federal Trade Commission has failed to enforce a consent order from 2011 in which Facebook pledged to protect the privacy of user data, said Marc Rotenberg, executive director of the Electronic Privacy Information Center. "Facebook should never have disclosed this data to a third party," he told the E-Commerce Times, "but the FTC dropped the ball. It simply failed to enforce its own legal judgment." David Jones has been an ECT News Network reporter since 2015. His areas of focus include cybersecurity, e-commerce, open source, gaming, artificial intelligence and autonomous vehicles. He has written for numerous media outlets, including Reuters, Bloomberg, Crain's New York Business and The New York Times. Email David. Instantly delete email threats with 365 Threat Monitor With 365 Threat Monitor, scan all emails as they reach your users' mailboxes to detect ransomware, phishing and spam. Get real-time phone alerts, real-time security breach updates and delete threats instantly with just one click - for free! Learn More. Many Facebook members reportedly have shuttered their accounts in the wake of reports that Cambridge Analytica, a voter profiling company working for Donald Trump's presidential campaign, harvested data from 50 million users, unbeknownst to them. The data firm used the information to develop techniques that formed the basis of its work for Trump's campaign, according to a report published in The New York Times last weekend. Cambridge Analytica bought the data from a researcher who told Facebook he was collecting it for academic purposes, according to the Times. Facebook has suspended Cambridge Analytica, as well as one of its founders, Christopher Wylie, and the researcher, Aleksandr Kogan. However, the firm still has the profile data, according to the NYT story. It's not me. It's you. Indignation over Facebook's role in the data leak has mushroomed since the appearance of the Times story, and some users have taken to Twitter to announce their liberation from the social network. i locked down all app access a long time ago..now i'm clearing my posts, unliking and leaving groups. Facebook will be a shell holding just my email address for friends to contact me..and this picture has been around for a while, you were warned!! #DeleteFacebook pic.twitter.com/xI2yWxDohl iain (@PlasterAndPixel) March 20, 2018 I deleted Facebook New Year's Eve 2014. It was the best decision I've made and I can safely say I do not miss it. Life is so much better without it. #DeleteFacebook Craig (@CEdwardsEsq) March 20, 2018 Tempted to #DeleteFacebook but because I haven't read a scintilla of small print or terms and conditions since I joined, I'm afraid they'll unplug the fridge or have changed the locks on the house or that it turns out they legally own our children. Colm O'Regan (@colmoregan) March 19, 2018 Meanwhile, Jarrod Alonge pointed out the irony of users of one social network announcing their divorce from another for selling their data. Lol @ all these #DeleteFacebook people, as if Twitter didn't also collect and sell your personal data on a massive scale. Jarrod Alonge (@JarrodAlonge) March 20, 2018 Losing Youth Appeal Facebook has been in hot water before over allegations of privacy intrusion and misuse of members' data. It weathered those storms, so it remains to be seen if this latest misstep will cause an exodus of users. However, Facebook appears to be caught up in some disturbing trends. For example, it lost 2.8 million U.S. users under 25 years old last year, eMarketer reported. "A lot of the younger generation are no longer using Facebook," said Vincent Raynauld, an assistant professor in the department of communication studies at Emerson College. "They're turning to platforms like Instagram and Snapchat. So this is not only about their current user pool -- It's about their future user pool," he told TechNewsWorld. "Scandals like this are not going to help Facebook seduce this new generation of users," Raynauld added. Gray Hair Flight Since users under the age of 25 have grown up in an age when sharing data has been a fact of life, the Cambridge Analytica affair isn't likely to accelerate their departure from Facebook, suggested Jason Sarfati, an attorney with Joseph Greenwald & Laake, and a member of the International Association of Privacy Professionals. However, that may not be the case for older users. "Older users, particularly those that grew up before the advent of social media, are likely to begin abandoning Facebook at higher numbers," Sarfati told TechNewsWorld. "Facebook users hailing from Generation X and earlier have always maintained a stronger sense of personal privacy," he added. "Stories like these only confirm their wariness of social media." Many Facebook users will choose not to cut the cord. "Facebook has a big problem, but I don't think users will leave in numbers,"said Elizabeth Lampert, president of Elizabeth Lampert PR. "Facebook is now a part of the everyday culture of millions. There is a lack of another great platform or superior competition," she told TechNewsWorld. "Facebook has connected people in such ways," Lampert said, that "it would be hard to replicate the relationships that users have established and keep people connected in the way that it has." Protect Yourself For users who do stay on Facebook, there are ways to bolster privacy protection. Picking your way through Facebook's privacy settings and tightening down what you want to share and protect is a first step, recommended Charles King, principal analyst at Pund-IT. Deleting the Facebook app from phones and tablets, and instead signing in through a browser, offers some protection, he told TechNewsWorld. "It's a hassle, and FB will try to lure you back to the app, but many will find the process worthwhile," King said. "Many of the users whose information ended up in the hands of Cambridge Analytica had zero restrictions placed on their information, despite having the ability to do so using Facebook's pre-existing security settings," Sarfati pointed out. "These users simply did not take the time to review their settings." John P. Mello Jr. has been an ECT News Network reporter since 2003. His areas of focus include cybersecurity, IT issues, privacy, e-commerce, social media, artificial intelligence, big data and consumer electronics. He has written and edited for numerous publications, including the Boston Business Journal, the Boston Phoenix, Megapixel.Net and Government Security News. Email John. Instantly delete email threats with 365 Threat Monitor With 365 Threat Monitor, scan all emails as they reach your users' mailboxes to detect ransomware, phishing and spam. Get real-time phone alerts, real-time security breach updates and delete threats instantly with just one click - for free! Learn More. CEO Mark Zuckerberg on Wednesday broke Facebook's mysterious silence following news of several investigations into Cambridge Analytica's access to personal data belonging to 50 million Facebook users. Facing the wrath of everyone from U.S. and European regulators to shareholders, customers and employees, Zuckerberg conceded that Facebook must make several changes in how it protects data if it expects to be taken seriously in the future, and it pledged to take those necessary steps. "We have a responsibility to protect your data, and if we can't we don't deserve to serve you," he wrote in a post on his own Facebook page. "I've been working to understand exactly what happened and how to make sure this doesn't happen again." Facebook earlier this week announced the suspension of Strategic Communication Laboratories and its Cambridge Analytica political data firm for harvesting the personal information of those 50 million Facebook users without their permission. The data gathering was accomplished by leveraging research that a former Cambridge professor, Aleksandr Kogan, had performed with Facebook's approval. Using his "thisisyourdigitallife" app, Kogan sent quizzes to more than 270,000 Facebook members. He then harvested personal data from millions of their friends as well. Kogan passed that information to Cambridge Analytica, which then used it to target voters during the U.S. 2016 presidential election campaign, on behalf of Donald Trump. Zuckerberg acknowledged that Kogan was given permission to conduct the quiz, but added that he had violated Facebook policy by passing on the data to a third party. Zuckerberg also said that after Facebook deleted the app, Kogan, Cambridge Analytica and Christopher Wylie -- the former Cambridge Analytica employee who blew the whistle on the incident -- had reneged on a certification they gave to Facebook that they would delete the millions of data records. New Protocols In a related post on Wednesday, Facebook promised to take steps to prevent any recurrence of this type of activity. The company said it would investigate all apps that have had large amounts of access to customer data, conduct full audits, and ban them if it should find violations. It also plans to implement the following changes: Facebook will disclose to members if their data has been misused by an app. Facebook will turn off an app's access to users who haven't used it in more than three months. Facebook will restrict Facebook login data to the user's name, profile photo and email address. Facebook will encourage members to manage the apps they use. In addition, Facebook will expand its bug bounty program, which rewards people who report security vulnerabilities or misuse of data. Several leading House and Senate committee leaders have fired off letters to Facebook seeking answers on its data policies. Zuckerberg, Facebook COO Sheryl Sandberg and other executives have been urged to appear on Capitol Hill. Arrangements for a staff briefing are under way, according to Frederick Hill, spokesperson for Sen. John Thune, who chairs the Commerce Committee. Heavy Fallout Several customer and investor lawsuits related to the data controversy already have been filed against Facebook. Maryland customer Lauren Price filed a potential class action suit against Facebook and Cambridge Analytica in U.S. District Court in Northern California, which alleges that the failure to safeguard her private data and failure to disclose constitute negligence and violation of California's unfair competition law. Facebook, Zuckerberg and CFO David Wehner are named in Yuan v. Facebook, an investors lawsuit alleging failure to disclose. "We are committed to vigorously enforcing our policies to protect people's information," said Paul Grewal, Facebook's deputy general counsel. "We will take whatever steps are required to see that this happens." The UK's Information Commissioner's Office has been seeking a warrant to enter the offices of Cambridge Analytica, which failed to respond to an earlier request to hand over documents to that office, confirmed spokesperson Helen Booth. Cambridge Analytica on Tuesday announced that it suspended CEO Alexander Nix, naming Alexander Tayler as interim CEO. Nix was suspended after the airing of an undercover report by Channel 4 in the UK, which included hidden camera footage of Nix making statements regarding the firm's use of sex workers to ensnare politicians. The company's board ordered an independent investigation into the comments. Mozilla has launched a petition to get Facebook to change its app permissions. "Individuals' security and privacy on the Internet are fundamental and must not be treated as optional," Mozilla said in a statement provided to the E-Commerce Times by spokesperson Jenifer Boscacci. "With our petition to Facebook we're sending a clear message to the company, take users' privacy more seriously." The Electronic Privacy Information Center has filed a Freedom of Information Request with the Federal Trade Commission, which has launched an investigation into the data disclosures to Cambridge Analytica, to find out if Facebook complied with a 2012 consent order that required it to report to the commission on whether it was maintaining proper privacy controls over data. EPIC and other privacy groups had filed a complaint with the FTC over a previous data leak, which led to an agreement that compelled Facebook to maintain tight controls over third-party data disclosures. Following Zuckerberg's public comments, EPIC Executive Director Marc Rotenberg told the E-Commerce Times that "it's no longer for Facebook to decide what happens next." David Jones has been an ECT News Network reporter since 2015. His areas of focus include cybersecurity, e-commerce, open source, gaming, artificial intelligence and autonomous vehicles. He has written for numerous media outlets, including Reuters, Bloomberg, Crain's New York Business and The New York Times. Email David. A team of scientists on board the Greenpeace Esperanza ship have documented the existence of a rhodolith field where French company Total intends to drill for oil, 120km off the northern coast of Brazil. The finding proves the existence of a reef formation in the area and invalidates Total's Environmental Impact Assessment (EIA), which states the closest reef formation is 8 kilometers (approximately 5 miles) away from one of the oil blocks. "Now that we know the Amazon Reef extension overlaps with the perimeter of Total's oil blocks, there is no other option for the Brazilian government but to deny the company's license to drill for oil in the region," said Thiago Almeida, Greenpeace Brazil campaigner. "To learn the Amazon Reef extends beyond our expectations was one of the most exciting moments of my research about this ecosystem," said Fabiano Thompson, oceanographer and professor at Rio de Janeiro Federal University. "The more we research about the Amazon Reef, the more we find. We still know so little about this fascinating new ecosystem and the knowledge obtained so far indicates any oil drilling activity could seriously harm this unique system." Rhodoliths are calcareous algae that work as a habitat for fish and other reef creatures. Its presence confirms the Amazon Reef extends further than previously expected, as revealed in the scientific magazine Frontiers in Marine Science. The paper, based on footage of the reef captured in January 2017 during Greenpeace's first expedition to the region, estimates the Amazon reef to be 56,000 square kilometers (approximately 22,000 square miles)almost six times larger than previous scientific estimates. "In 2017, I had an opportunity to explore the Amazon Reef for the first time, and was floored by the diversity of habitat types and the beauty of this unique area," said Greenpeace USA oceans campaign director John Hocevar. "The more we learn about what lies beneath the surface, the harder it is to imagine sacrificing our oceans to offshore drilling. There is just too much at stake." The paper also indicates this larger reef could be a marine biodiversity corridor linking the South Atlantic ocean to the Caribbean, with a faunal overlap from both places leading to high species richness. The paper confirms the presence of typical Caribbean fish species in the reef, such as the Blue Chromis (Chromis cyanea). The most abundant scleractinian coral species recorded was the Ten-ray Star Coral (Madracis decactis), a species that is usually found from the Gulf of Mexico to south of Brazil. Total has applied for a license to drill for oil in the Amazon Reef region and operations could start as early as this year. Greenpeace is calling on the oil giant to cancel its project. A spill in the region could be devastating to a biome that scientists have barely studied and to coastline communities that depend on a healthy ocean for their way of life. The Brazilian government's decision is due in the next few weeks. By Elliott Negin Two Colorado counties and the city of Boulder are suing ExxonMobil and Suncor Energy, Canada's largest oil company, to hold them responsible for climate change-related damage to their communities. The lawsuit, filed Tuesday in a state district court by Boulder, Boulder County and San Miguel County, is seeking compensation for damage and adaptation costs resulting from extreme weather events. New York City and eight coastal California cities and counties, including San Francisco and Oakland, have filed similar lawsuits against ExxonMobil and other oil and gas companies, charging that they have injured their communities under common law. The Colorado suit is the first by an inland county or municipality. "Climate change is not just about sea level rise. It affects all of us in the middle of the country as well," said Boulder County Commissioner Elise Jones. "In fact, Colorado is one of the fastest warming states in the nation." Oil Industry Knew About Threat 50 Years Ago The 1,300-square-mile San Miguel County sits in the southwest corner of the state on the Utah border. About a third of the county's 8,000 residents live in Telluride, a well-known ski resort town. Boulder, 25 miles northwest of Denver, is the county seat of the 740-square-mile Boulder County and home to nearly a third of the county's 319,000 residents. The three communities have been ravaged by costly climate-related extreme weather events, including wildfires and flash floods, according to the 100-page complaint. Likewise, each community has launched initiatives to curb carbon emissions and adapt to a changing climate. The Colorado communities contend that ExxonMobil and Suncor were aware that their products caused global warming as early as 1968, when a report commissioned by the American Petroleum Institute (API), the U.S oil and gas industry's premier trade association, warned of the threat burning fossil fuels posed to the climate. Subsequent reports and memos prepared for API and its member companies came to similar conclusions. Regardless, ExxonMobil and Suncor not only continued to produce and market fossil fuel products without disclosing their risks, the complaint charges, they also engaged in a decades-long disinformation campaign to manufacture public doubt and confusion about the reality and seriousness of climate change. The plaintiffs want the two oil giants to "pay their share of the damage" caused by their "intentional, reckless and negligent conduct." That share could amount to tens of millions, if not billions, of dollars to help cover the cost of more heat waves, wildfires, droughts, intense precipitation, and floods. "Our communities and our taxpayers should not shoulder the cost of climate change adaptation alone," said Boulder Mayor Suzanne Jones. "These oil companies need to pay their fair share." Higher Temperatures Hurt Ski Industry, Agriculture Over the last four decades, wildfires in the Rockies have been happening with greater frequency. According to a 2014 study by the Union of Concerned Scientists (UCS) and the Rocky Mountain Climate Organization (RMCO), the region experienced nearly four times as many wildfires larger than 1,000 acres between 1987 and 2003 than between 1970 and 1986. Rocky Mountain trees also are being ravaged by bark beetles. Over the last 25 years, the UCS-RMCO report found, beetles have killed trees on regional forest land nearly equal in acreage to the size of Colorado itself. Heat and drought are taking a toll, too, exacerbating tree mortality. If global warming continues unabated, the region likely will become even hotter and drier, and the consequences for its forests will be even more severe. The average temperatures in Colorado have increased more than 2 degrees F since 1983, according to a 2014 University of Colorado Boulder study, and are projected to jump another 2.5 to 5 degrees F by mid-century. That would have a devastating effect on the Colorado economy, which relies heavily on snow, water and cool weather. A 2017 study by the Natural Resources Defense Council and Protect Our Winters found that low-snow winters and shorter seasons are already having a negative impact on the state's $5-billion ski industry, the largest in the country. Rising temperatures and drought, meanwhile, threaten the state's $41 billion agricultural sector. ExxonMobil and Suncor Are Major Carbon Emitters Both ExxonMobil and Suncor have substantial operations in Colorado. Since 1999, ExxonMobil has produced more than 1 million barrels of oil and 656 million metric cubic feet of natural gas from Colorado deposits, according to the complaint, and ExxonMobil subsidiary XTO Energy currently produces 130 million cubic feet of natural gas per day from more than 864 square miles across three Colorado counties. There are also at least 20 Exxon and Mobil gas stations in the state. All told, the company's production and transportation activities in Colorado were responsible for more than 420,000 metric tons of global warming emissions between 2011 and 2015, according to the complaint. Suncor gas stations, which sell Shell, Exxon and Mobil brand products, supply about 35 percent of Colorado's gasoline and diesel demand. Suncor, whose U.S. headquarters is located in Denver, also owns the only oil refinery in the state, which produces 100,000 barrels of refined oil per day. According to the complaint, Suncor's Colorado operations were responsible for 900,000 metric tons of carbon emissions in 2016 alone. Besides their Colorado facilities, the two companies are partners in Syncrude Canada, the largest tar sands oil developer in Canada. Tar sands oila combination of clay, sand, water and bitumenproduces roughly 20 percent more carbon dioxide emissions per barrel than regular crude oil. ExxonMobil and Suncor are among the 90 fossil fuel producers responsible for approximately 75 percent of the world's global warming emissions from fossil fuels and cement between 1988 and 2015, according to the Climate Accountability Institute. Over that time frame, the two companies' operations and products emitted 20.8 gigatons of carbon dioxide and methane. "Based on the latest scientific studies, the plaintiffs in Colorado, as well as in California and New York City, can now show the direct connection between carbon emissions and climate-related damages," said Kathryn Mulvey, climate accountability campaign director at UCS. "Given these companies' significant contribution to climate changeand their decades of deception about climate scienceit is long past time that they should be held accountable for the damage they have caused." Elliott Negin is a senior writer in the Communications Department at the Union of Concerned Scientists. Username: Password: or Register Thread Rating: 2 Vote(s) - 3 Average 1 2 3 4 5 Israel continues to wag the dog for Middle Eastern wars conspiracyparty Registered User User ID: kaput 04-17-2018 09:24 PM Posts: 1,025 Post: #1 Israel continues to wag the dog for Middle Eastern wars Advertisement Buchanan rightly identified a number of prominent Jewish officials and journalists closely tied to the Israel Lobby as the principal driving force behind the rush to go to war. Buchanan is still a powerful voice arguing against the war fever in its 2018 manifestation, which is all too similar to the hysteria prevailing in 2003. But if he were writing his article today, even though those demanding war are pretty much the same people with the same names including Podhoretz, Krauthammer, Kristol, Kagan, Brooks and Boot, he would have to broaden his purview to ask Whose Wars? as it is no longer a simple case of going after one third-world autocrat and overthrowing him, we are now instead being urged to attack Syria, Iran and even nuclear superpower Russia due to Moscows support of Damascus and its friendship with Tehran. Lest there be any confusion, the same country keeps surfacing as a central player in the lead-up to Americas regime-change wars, which now have included an illegal attack on Syria, the second such intervention in the past year. That nation is Israel. Israels fingerprints are all over American interventionism, reflecting Jewish power in the United States and the presence of a plethora of well-funded Israel-centric lobbies, think tanks and media outlets. Just last week, the only persistent voice in the mainstream media who, prior to Trumps cruise missile attack, asked why on earth the United States should be contemplating a major power confrontation that could end life on this planet as we know it over Syria, where Washington has no vital interests, was Tucker Carlson of Fox News. His memorable monologue blasting the talk show generals who have no idea of what is really happening skewered the pretexts for war being bandied about in spite of the lack of any actual threat directed against the United States or a vital national interest is a model for what the Fourth Estate should be doing but isnt. Carlson later followed up with an interview of Senator Roger Wicker of Mississippi. He asked what might be an American national interest that would mandate military involvement in Syria. Wicker hardly hesitated before responding, If you care about Israel, you have to be interested in whats going on in Syria. Israel indeed. And Israel is not at all shy about what it wants to happen, namely a war in Syria targeting both Damascus and Tehran, leading to a much bigger war with the Iranians. Fought by Uncle Sam, to be sure, as Jewish lives are far too precious to waste. Israel has also been busy at creating a pretext for using Syria as a stepping stone to Iran itself. The Associated Press is reporting comments by Yossi Cohen, head of Mossad, who claims to be 100 percent certain that Iran remains committed to developing a nuclear bomb, which is the old weapons of mass destruction ploy used to jumpstart the Iraq War. More recently, Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu congratulated the U.S., the U.K, and France for bombing Syria, an operation that was coordinated in advance with Israel by National Security Advisor John Bolton. Netanyahu went on to assert that Syrian president Bashar al-Assad must understand that his provision of a forward base for Iran and its proxies endangers Syria, an analysis of the situation which is, of course, self-serving bullshit. http://www.unz.com/pgiraldi/whose-wars/ In March 2003, Pat Buchanan wrote a groundbreaking article entitled Whose War? in opposition to the Bush Administration fueled growing hysteria over Saddam Husseins alleged weapons of mass destruction which was producing demands for an armed intervention to disarm him.Buchanan is still a powerful voice arguing against the war fever in its 2018 manifestation, which is all too similar to the hysteria prevailing in 2003. But if he were writing his article today, even though those demanding war are pretty much the same people with the same names includinghe would have to broaden his purview to ask Whose Wars? as it is no longer a simple case of going after one third-world autocrat and overthrowing him, we are now instead being urged to attack Syria, Iran and even nuclear superpower Russia due to Moscows support of Damascus and its friendship with Tehran.Just last week, the only persistent voice in the mainstream media who, prior to Trumps cruise missile attack, asked why on earth the United States should be contemplating a major power confrontation that could end life on this planet as we know it over Syria, where Washington has no vital interests, was Tucker Carlson of Fox News. His memorable monologue blasting the talk show generals who have no idea of what is really happening skewered the pretexts for war being bandied about in spite of the lack of any actual threat directed against the United States or a vital national interest is a model for what the Fourth Estate should be doing but isnt. Carlson later followed up with an interview of Senator Roger Wicker of Mississippi. He asked what might be an American national interest that would mandate military involvement in Syria. Wicker hardly hesitated before responding, If you care about Israel, you have to be interested in whats going on in Syria.Israel indeed. And Israel is not at all shy about what it wants to happen, namely a war in Syria targeting both Damascus and Tehran, leading to a much bigger war with the Iranians. Fought by Uncle Sam, to be sure, as Jewish lives are far too precious to waste.Israel has also been busy at creating a pretext for using Syria as a stepping stone to Iran itself. The Associated Press is reporting comments by Yossi Cohen, head of Mossad, who claims to be 100 percent certain that Iran remains committed to developing a nuclear bomb, which is the old weapons of mass destruction ploy used to jumpstart the Iraq War.More recently, Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu congratulated the U.S., the U.K, and France for bombing Syria, an operation that was coordinated in advance with Israel by National Security Advisor John Bolton. Netanyahu went on to assert that Syrian president Bashar al-Assad must understand that his provision of a forward base for Iran and its proxies endangers Syria, an analysis of the situation which is, of course, self-serving bullshit. (This post was last modified: 04-17-2018 09:26 PM by conspiracyparty .) Krampus Registered User User ID: 1337 04-17-2018 09:46 PM Posts: 10,188 Post: #2 RE: Israel continues to wag the dog for Middle Eastern wars They are just maintaining the military machine with the lucrative weapons contracts! It's easier to fool people than to convince them that they have been fooled. Mark Twain LoP Guest lop guest User ID: 1337 04-17-2018 10:13 PM Post: #3 RE: Israel continues to wag the dog for Middle Eastern wars King James Bible And I will turn thee back, and put hooks into thy jaws, and I will bring thee forth, and all thine army, horses and horsemen, all of them clothed with all sorts of armour, even a great company with bucklers and shields, all of them handling swords: They are being drawn in by hate. LoP Guest lop guest User ID: 1337 04-17-2018 10:14 PM Post: #4 RE: Israel continues to wag the dog for Middle Eastern wars The banksters are hap-happ-happy! conspiracyparty Registered User User ID: 1337 04-18-2018 04:00 AM Posts: 1,025 Post: #5 RE: Israel continues to wag the dog for Middle Eastern wars bump Pasta Lover Registered User User ID: 1337 04-18-2018 04:19 AM Posts: 9,463 Post: #6 RE: Israel continues to wag the dog for Middle Eastern wars What ever happened Charles Krauthammer? He was on Fox every day. One day last year, poof. I never saw him again. He is severely paralyzed so weenie no worky. Couldn't have been sexual. (This post was last modified: 04-18-2018 04:20 AM by Pasta Lover .) LoP Guest lop guest User ID: 1337 04-18-2018 06:04 AM Post: #7 RE: Israel continues to wag the dog for Middle Eastern wars The table is being set for what has been disclosed to occur for millennium. conspiracyparty Registered User User ID: 1337 04-18-2018 09:33 PM Posts: 1,025 Post: #8 RE: Israel continues to wag the dog for Middle Eastern wars last bump LoP Guest lop guest User ID: 1337 04-18-2018 10:06 PM Post: #9 RE: Israel continues to wag the dog for Middle Eastern wars https://i.imgur.com/JtczWI4.jpg 30 odd year old news, but what is stated then, still holds true now. LoP Guest lop guest User ID: 1337 04-18-2018 10:07 PM Post: #10 RE: Israel continues to wag the dog for Middle Eastern wars Seems France and UK also like to wag the dog for their own relevancy. The U.S. Food and Drug Administration is advising consumers not to eat recalled shell eggs produced by Rose Acre Farms' North Carolina facility in Hyde County. Rose Acre Farms voluntarily recalled more than 206 million eggs after FDA testing determined that the eggs were connected to 22 reported cases of salmonella infections traced back to the farm. The FDA said the eggs reached consumers in Colorado, Florida, New Jersey, New York, North Carolina, Pennsylvania, South Carolina, Virginia, and West Virginia through retail stores and restaurants via direct delivery. The eggs are sold under multiple brand names, including Coburn Farms, Country Daybreak, Food Lion, Glenview, Great Value, Nelms and Sunshine Farms. The potentially contaminated eggs have the stamp "P-1065 with the Julian date range of 011 through date of 102 printed on either the side portion or the principal side of the carton or package," the FDA said. You can also check out the list of affected products here. "The voluntary recall was a result of some illnesses reported on the U.S. East Coast, which led to extensive interviews and eventually a thorough FDA inspection of the Hyde County farm, which produces 2.3 million eggs a day. The facility includes 3 million laying hens with a USDA inspector on-site daily," the FDA said. The recall is the largest in the U.S. since 2010, when an Iowa farm recalled 550 million eggs due to a salmonella outbreak, according to Food Safety News, There were 1,939 reported salmonella infections likely associated with that outbreak. Michael Pollan, author of The Omnivore's Dilemma, frequently comments about the true costs of such large-scale, high-risk food-production plants, and why it may be worth it to pay more for our eggs. "We all like cheap food. But when we're spending billions to deal with a salmonella outbreak, it isn't really as cheap as it seems," Pollan told CNN's Sanjay Gupta back in 2010. "I buy farmer's market eggs," Pollan also told CBS News that same year. "They cost more, but are a better product in every way, including taste andbecause they come from small flocks that get to spend time outdoorsare safer as well. You'll spend 50 cents an egg instead of 13, but this is definitely a case of you get what you pay for." According to the CDC, shell eggs may become contaminated with salmonella through the laying process, once the eggs are laid, through poultry feed or bedding. Eggs can also become contaminated from the droppings of poultry. The prevalence of salmonella is lower in live organic chicken than in conventionally raised live chickens, a 2010 study found. Salmonella can cause fever, diarrhea, nausea, vomiting and abdominal pain. In some cases, it can result in fatal infections, especially in young children, frail or elderly people, and others with weakened immune systems. If you are a health-conscious/environmentally minded egg eater, here's a handy reminder on the best eggs. Basically, you want to seek out: Pastured > Omega-3 > Organic > Free Range/Cage Free > Conventional. Consumers who have purchased the eggs involved in the latest outbreak are urged to immediately discontinue use of them and return them to the place of purchase for a full refund. Anyone with questions may contact the company at (855) 215-5730 between the hours of 8 a.m. to 5 p.m. Eastern Standard Time. By Katie O'Reilly Those who love to recreate outdoors make for staunch environmental advocates. Last week, consumer co-op REI announced plans that should make it easier for its adventurer members to find products that support their values. By the fall of 2020, REI will sever its business relationships with any of its 1,000-plus suppliers that don't meet stringent new requirements in areas including environmental impact, chemical usage, animal welfare, and labor safety and fairness. The move is among the most comprehensive efforts to advance sustainability in the retail sector. The outdoors-equipment retailer has already supplied to its vendors a 12-page document detailing the new sustainability standards. Some go into effect immediately, while others are more ambitious and aspirational and won't be mandatory for a couple of years. The new sustainability standards are almost encyclopedic in their range. By the end of 2020, wool products sold at REI must be sourced from humanely treated sheep. Sunscreens won't contain coral-reef-bleaching components. The making of down products must never involve the live-plucking or force-feeding of animals. REI will retail only those jackets that haven't been treated with long-chain fluorocarbons. And REI will expect each brand that it sells to have a manufacturing code of conduct that formally guarantees fair, non-discriminatory labor practices. "The goal is to establish better ways of doing business and help raise the bar across the entire industry," said Matt Thurston, REI's director of sustainability. It's also to render the consumer shopping experience more straightforward, and streamline the glut of labels that consumers encounter while trying to shop conscientiously. Thurston said REI's new standards clearly outline preferred third-party certifications and favor some, such as Blue Sign, Fair Trade USA and Forest Stewardship Council (FSC), over others. "When you end up with so many labels and stickers on all these different brands, we call it the 'Nascar effect,'" Thurston said. "Everyone's tracking toward progress, but it can just make things more challenging for the consumer. If consumers learn to look for the best certifications, those labels become that much more powerful." REI is training its employees to be able to plainly explain the sustainability labels to customers, and a new consumer landing page details the ways in which the new supplier standards stand to affect the shopping process. Already, REI customers shopping online can filter their search by sustainability attributes. For example, one can search the REI ecosystem for "women's down sleeping bags" and then filter results using "responsibly sourced down" or seek out children's apparel made from "organically grown cotton" or men's outerwear that is "fair trade." REI has spent the better part of the past two years collaborating behind the scenes with more than 60 brand partners, of various sizes and product categories, to co-develop the standards. Thurston said, "We wanted to learn which practices would be most impactful on the ground, the most credible vehicles for advancing them, and figure out what would most effectively drive positive change." Theresa Conn, supply chain and sustainability coordinator for New Hampshire's NEMO Equipment, works for one of the brands that helped REI develop its new rules. "These standards weren't pulled out of thin air," she said. "It's a gathering of best practices from the outdoor industry. It's a great guiding light, whether you're a big brand wondering what actions will have the most meaningful immediate impact in your supply chain, or a smaller brand that maybe has lots of energy and excitement but doesn't know where to start." According to Conn, the new REI standards have already spurred NEMO to change the chemistry of the DWR (Durable Water Repellent) used in its sleeping bags. This isn't just a PR ployit turns out there's more than idealized thinking behind REI's new standards. "Our findings have confirmed that the products with the most sustainability attributes are the ones that tend to perform best once out in the world," Thurston said. "They have the best sales, most recommendations, and are purchased by the most loyal REI customers. So we want to give all our partners access to the resources, best practices, and guidance to creating more sustainable productsbecause it's more impactful if you can bring others along for the journey." REI executives are also well aware that, based on the changes today's consumers are seeing in the broader socio-political landscape, shoppers are placing ever-greater value on corporate social responsibility. "We're definitely seeing a swing toward these values, particularly among younger, American customers," Thurston said, adding that he hopes the co-op's new standards inspire retailers beyond the outdoor sphere to take a stance in environmental stewardship. "While our approach won't necessarily be appropriate for every sector, the model is quite universal." Reposted with permission from our media associate SIERRA Magazine. The chair of the Senate Environment and Public Works Committee is seeking details about U.S. Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) chief Scott Pruitt's use of four different agency email addresses. The Hill reported that Sen. John Barrasso, R-Wyo., sent a letter Friday to Pruitt asking him to "confirm that the EPA does in fact search all your official email accounts when responding to [Freedom of Information Act] requests?" The multiple email addresses were first reported last week by the Washington Post. Sens. Jeff Merkley, D-Ore., and Tom Carper, D-Del., have also written the EPA's inspector general, asking him to investigate Pruitt's multiple emails. Merkley and Carper wrote: "We write to share our deep concern over Administrator Pruitt's reported use of multiple email accounts ... It is imperative that there be an investigation into whether the agency has properly searched these email addresses for responsive documents in response to Freedom of Information Act (FOIA) requests." "Evading federal records requests by using multiple emails fits Pruitt's pattern of deception and smoke and mirrors to a T," said EWG President Ken Cook. "It's standard operating procedure by any shady operator to try to keep one step ahead of the authorities and those he's fleeced." "Only government officials with some serious dirty dealings would move between multiple email accounts," Cook added. "Between his four email accounts and his $43,000 private phone booth, Pruitt is taking all the appropriate steps to keep lawmakers, journalists and the prying eyes of taxpayers from learning what he's been up to since becoming the head of EPA." According to The Washington Post's report and the letter from lawmakers to the EPA inspector general, the email addresses Pruitt has used while head of the agency include: [email protected], [email protected], [email protected] and [email protected]. By Jeff Turrentine Scott Pruitt's long record of misdeeds and malfeasance finally seems to have caught up with him. Whether his numerous scandals, recently making headlines, will cost him his job as head of the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) is still an open question. President Trump has been tweeting his support of his EPA administrator, doing whatever he can to dispel growing rumors of an imminent firing or an abrupt resignation. But given the drip-drip-drip of near-daily revelations, it's safe to assume that news editors already have their Pruitt postmortems written, copyedited and ready to publish at a moment's notice. In this administration, a statement of support from the White House shouldn't be taken as a sign that one's job is safe. (Indeed, it's often an ominous prelude to termination. Just ask H. R. McMaster or Rex Tillerson.) Meanwhile, there's another big EPA story that's deserving of our attention but getting far less of it. Thursday, a slim majority of senators approved Andrew Wheeler to be the EPA's deputy administratorthe person who could end up running the agency should the current administrator suddenly decide (as so, so many Washingtonians before him have decided) that he really wants to spend more time with his family. If you're hoping Wheeler could represent some sort of departure from Pruitt's (literal) scorched-earth agenda, he wouldn't. While it may be impossible to imagine anyone worse than Pruitt to lead our nation's environmental policy, plenty of individuals could be just as bad. And as he's shown us on numerous occasions, President Trump has a sixth sense for ferreting these people out and putting them on the executive-branch payroll. So who is Andrew Wheeler? And what is it about his particular career trajectory that makes the White House, energy-company executives and assorted climate deniers think he's a perfect fit for the Trump-era EPA? Well, for starters, his most recent job was as an energy lobbyist. His biggest clients included Murray Energy Corporation, which proudly bills itself as the largest coal mining company in America, and whose CEO, Robert E. Murray, vigorously fought the Obama administration's attempts to reduce carbon emissions and strengthen environmental and public health laws. Shortly after Trump took office, Murray, an unabashed climate denier, presented Vice President Mike Pence with a ridiculously pro-coal "action plan" that called for doing away with the Clean Power Plan, withdrawing from the Paris climate agreement, eliminating federal tax credits for renewable energy, andyeshalving the EPA's workforce. In his spare time, Wheeler serves as the vice president of the Washington Coal Club, a powerful yet little-known federation of more than 300 coal producers, lawmakers, business leaders and policy experts who have dedicated themselves to preserving the uncertain future of our dirtiest fossil fuel. Wheeler clearly loves coal, but he's also made time to lobby the U.S. Department of the Interior to open portions of the Bears Ears National Monument to uranium mining. It gets worse. Before joining his current K Street lobbying firm, Wheeler worked as a legislative aide to Oklahoma Senator Jim Inhofe. Inhofe is without question the most virulent climate denier on Capitol Hilla man who regularly refers to the science of climate change as "the greatest hoax" ever perpetrated on the American people and who told one radio interviewer that educating schoolchildren on the basics of climate science was tantamount to "brainwashing." When Wheeler's nomination was announced last year, Inhofe effusively praised the decision, saying that "there is no one more qualified than Andrew to help Scott Pruitt restore EPA to its proper size and scope." In that same statement, Inhofe referred to Wheeler as his "close friend"; indeed, the two are close enough that Wheeler thought it perfectly appropriate to organize a fund-raiser for Inhofe last May, an act that many believe crossed ethical lines. The line on Wheeler from people in the know is that he's essentially Scott Pruitt's ideological twinbut that his many years as a Washington insider have endowed him with a political savvy that Pruitt sorely lacks. Were the increasingly embattled Pruitt to leave, few believe that this replacement would deviate from Pruitt's path of rolling back protections, propping up the moribund coal industry and putting energy company profits ahead of public health. From all accounts, Wheeler doesn't appear to be a paranoid, self-aggrandizing morale destroyer with a highly developed taste for taxpayer-funded first-class travel. He has more friends than enemies in Washington and seems unlikely to shoot himself in the foot or otherwise self-destruct. In the end, that might actually make Wheeler even more dangerous than Pruittnot less. In a speech Sunday night, British Prime Minister Theresa May announced her government would earmark 61.4 million towards cleaning the world's oceans of plastics, Resource reported Monday. The announcement came the night before the start of the 2018 Commonwealth Heads of Government meeting from April 16 to 20. May hoped to encourage other Commonwealth countries to join the Commonwealth Clean Oceans Alliance (CCOA) through which the funds will be directed. The CCOA was established by the UK and Vanuatu to tackle plastic pollution. So far, Ghana, New Zealand, and Sri Lanka have also decided to join, May announced in Sunday's speech. "This week we will look closely at how we can tackle the many threats to the health of the world's oceans, including the scourge of marine plastic pollution," May said, as the Independent reported. May further called plastic pollution "one of the most significant environmental challenges facing the world today." The fund will be divided in three parts: 25 million towards researching the science and economics of marine plastic pollution, 20 million to prevent plastic and other pollutants from industry in developing countries from reaching the ocean, and 16.4 million to improve waste management in the UK so that plastics don't enter the ocean through rivers. May also hopes to encourage the 52 countries in the Commonwealth to join the UK in banning microbeads and restricting plastic bag use. "The UK public has shown passion and energy in the fight against plastic waste, and I believe the Commonwealth is uniquely placed to further this transformative action," May said Sunday. The UK has taken a leadership role in the last year in raising awareness of the ocean plastic problem and taking action. In January, famous British naturalist Sir David Attenborough won the Impact Award at the UK's National Television Awards for his 2017 BBC series Blue Planet II, which called particular attention to the issue of ocean plastics, the Independent reported. In 2017, Attenborough described a particularly devastating scene of a young albatross being fed. "There is a shot of the young being fed and what comes out of the beak of the adult? Not sand eels, not fish, and not squid, which is what they mostly eat, but plastic. It's heartbreaking. Heartbreaking," he said. The series so moved Queen Elizabeth II that she moved in February to ban plastic straws and bottles on all royal properties, including public cafes. But the UK isn't the only country mobilizing around the problem. The focus of Earth Day 2018 is ending plastic pollution by Earth Day of 2020, which will mark the day's 50th anniversary. (Photo: UNHCR)Syrian women and children recently displaced from East Aleppo take shelter at the nearby Al-Mahalij industrial zone in late 2016. The World Council of Churches has joined Pope Francis urged the international community to find a way to break the cycle of violence in Syria calling for a just and sustainable peace through a political solution. The April 16 statement came two days after the United States, France and the UK carried out missile strikes following a suspected Syrian government chemical weapons attack. "A just and sustainable peace for all Syrians can only be brought about through a political solution," the WCC statement reads. "It is intolerable that atrocities are still being perpetrated against civilians." Pope Francis had the day before in his Sunday balcony words at St, Peter's said, "I am deeply troubled by the current world situation," the Pope said, "in which, despite the instruments available to the international community, there is still difficulty in agreeing to a common action in favor of peace in Syria and other regions of the world." Francis said, "While I continue to pray unceasingly for peace, and invite all people of good will to do the same, I renew my appeal to all those with political responsibilities to ensure that justice and peace prevail." Two days earlier on April 14, the patriarchs of for the Greek Orthodox, Syriac Orthodox, and Greek-Melkite Catholic Churches condemned the airstrikes on Syria. According to the statement the patriarchs "condemn and denounce the brutal aggression that took place this morning against our precious country Syria by the USA, France and the UK, under the allegations that the Syrian government has used chemical weapons." The patriarchs said the airstrikes are a "brutal aggression" and "a clear violation of the international laws and the UN Charter." They said it was an assault on a sovereign country and member of the UN and it was unjustified. Their statement also says that such aggression would "destroy the chances for a peaceful political solution and lead to escalation and more complications, while encouraging terrorist organizations and giving them momentum to continue in their terrorism." In its statement the WCC noted that the U.N. Security Council has repeatedly failed to adopt sufficiently strong and consistent measures to put an end to atrocities in Syria. The UNSC it said has failed to implement a durable ceasefire, to ensure respect "for international law and accountability for all those who have committed war crimes and crimes against humanity, including the use of chemical weapons." Washington Whenever U.S. Supreme Court Justice Stephen G. Breyer is asked about his father, he typically slips the Omega watch from his left forearm and shows off the inscription. Irving G. BreyerLegal AdvisorSFUSD1933-1973From Your Friends. The elder Breyer was legal counsel to the San Francisco Unified School District for those 40 years, serving from the depths of the Great Depression until the era when the citys school system grappled with desegregation. He loved the job, Justice Breyer said in a rare interview that offered insight into his family history and into a little-known, but influential, facet of local school administration. He started in the city attorneys office. He went over [to the school board] for [what was supposed to be] three weeks. He stayed for 40 years. Last year, this Education Week reporter was in San Francisco and came across a public notice in the newspaper of an upcoming school board meeting in the Irving G. Breyer Board Meeting Room. The citys school board had renamed the room in honor of the longtime legal counsel shortly after Irving Breyers death from cancer in 1979 at age 70. The meeting-room reference was a reminder of an indelible influence on Justice Breyer, who will turn 80 in August and reach his 25th anniversary on the Supreme Court next year. So the justice was asked by Education Week if he would be willing to reflect on his fathers career in education law and his inspiration to his sons to pursue the law. (Charles R. Breyer, the justices only sibling, is a 76-year-old federal district judge in San Francisco, now on senior, or semiretired, status.) Where Is City Hall? The interview took place in late March, with a hearty blaze roaring in the fireplace in the justices chambers as Washingtons winter refused to yield to spring. Irving Breyer loved San Francisco politics, the justice said. He would have friends who lived down the peninsula or across the Bay, and I could never understand why they did, Breyer said. Why didnt they live in the city? The city was where things happened. His father used to say, If youre going to be the legal adviser to the school board, ... the first thing you have to know is the answer to a geography question, the justice said. And people would say, What do you mean, a geography question? What question? He said, Where is City Hall? The San Francisco district enrolled about 106,000 students in 1933, compared with 80,000 when Irving Breyer retired in 1973 and 60,000 today. It is independent of but closely tied to the contiguous city government. Irving Breyer no doubt knew where City Hall was. His father, Samuel T. Breyer, was a member of the citys board of supervisors in the early 1930s. (It is part of San Franciscos storied lore, however, that Samuel Breyer had to give up his seat when he was convicted in 1934 of grand theft in the arrangement of a bank loan.) Justice Breyer says his father was lucky to have a job during the Depression, and he repeated advice from his father that he often mentions in public appearances: Stay on the payroll. In 1936, after Irving Breyer had served as legal adviser to the school system for some three years, a question arose about whether the position was part of the civil-service system. Irving Breyer took the civil-service test and placed first in the list of eligibles for the position of law clerk with the school department, the San Francisco Chronicle reported at the time. Irving Breyer was prominent enough in the city that on Aug. 16, 1938, the Chronicle ran a short item reporting the birth the previous day of a 6-pound-12-and-a-half-ounce son to Mrs. Irving Breyer. Irving Breyer quipped to the paper that the birth of his first son, Stephen, was well-timed. This shows Im doing right by my job, the new father said. School starts today, you know. Mrs. Irving Breyer was the former Anne A. Roberts, who hailed from St. Paul, Minn. Their son Charles, who was born in 1941, said in a telephone interview that his and Stephens mother was active in the League of Women Voters and for a group that promoted the United Nations. She took a more global and liberal view of politics and what government could do than their father, Charles Breyer said. Much of the Breyer boys upbringing has been well-documented. They attended public schools, including the prestigious Lowell High School. Anne Breyer, who died in 1971, was concerned about Stephens bookishness and made sure that her sons joined the Boy Scouts and that Stephen spent a summer abroad, in France. Justice Breyer speaks frequently of studying government in school and going to Sacramento to observe the state legislature in action. In debate, his Lowell High team competed against the nearby St. Ignatius College Prep School team that included Edmund G. Jerry Brown Jr., who would go on to become California governor in two very different eras. (Brown, a few months older than Stephen Breyer, leaves that office for good in early 2019.) Charles Breyer said that when he and his brother reached high school age, their father would discuss some of the school districts work at the dinner table. Thats when we became aware of the enormous pressures he was under, Charles Breyer said. He had a single client. ... The client was a seven-member school board, each with their own agendas and ambitions. A Range of Thorny Issues In his 40 years as legal counsel, Irving Breyer helped steer the system through the mundane and the unusual. Some of his actions reflect the work of a government lawyer seeking to guide his client on thorny issues, some that were reflective of their era. In 1955, the San Francisco Chronicle reported that Irving Breyer took issue here yesterday with [California] Attorney General Edmund G. Browns opinion banning prayers from public school classrooms. If a prayer is nonsectarian and nondenominational, there is no legal reason why it cannot be spoken or sung in the classroom, Irving G. Breyer advised the Board of Education. The elder Brown, known as Pat, was the father of Jerry Brown, and would himself become California governor from 1959 to 1967. And public school prayers would not be prohibited by the U.S. Supreme Court until the early 1960s. In 1956, Irving Breyer defended the school board when it sought to dismiss an instructor at the City College of San Francisco (which was under the boards auspices) for refusing to testify before the U.S. House Un-American Activities Committee about whether he had been a member of the Communist Party. The school boards position was that the California education code at that time required a loyalty oath (which the instructor had signed) and that anyone who refused to answer legislative questions about matters such as Communist Party membership was subject to dismissal for insubordination. The California Supreme Court ruled that the instructor had to be accorded greater due process to determine his reasons for refusing to answer the House committees questions. In the 1960s, Irving Breyer helped advise the San Francisco system and others around the state, through the California School Boards Association, in an era when teachers asserted and won their right to bargain collectively with their employers. And beginning in the 1960s and extending into the early 1970s, the legal counsel faced his biggest challengethe desegregation of the San Francisco schools. Throughout the 1960s, civil rights groups pressed the school system to address widespread de facto segregation of black students. San Francisco school administrators, and sometimes special commissions, conducted studies and proposed various remedies. But it took a lawsuit and a 1971 order from a federal district judge to begin the desegregation of the citys elementary schools and a separate case for its secondary schools. Desegregation efforts and their ensuing controversies continued in San Francisco well after Irving Breyer retired from the school system in 1973. You Work It Out Stephen Breyer was established on the East Coast by that time, teaching at Harvard Law School and working at various times for the U.S. Department of Justice, for the Senate Watergate Committee, and as a senior staff member for the Senate Judiciary Committee under the leadership of Sen. Edward M. Kennedy, the Massachusetts Democrat. He was nominated by President Jimmy Carter to the U.S. Court of Appeals for the First Circuit, in Boston, and served there until he joined the Supreme Court in 1994. Breyer said he doesnt have a great recollection of the specific controversies his father faced on the job. But I can tell you his character was to try to work things out, Breyer said. When I worked with Senator Kennedy, he kept saying, Work it out. Work it out. And that was familiar to me because that was generally my fathers attitude toward most of the problems. You do your best. You work it out. Charles Breyer, who was a longtime assistant district attorney in San Francisco and worked in private practice before being nominated by President Bill Clinton to become a federal district judge in 1997, said his father was very much a pragmatist. My brother is accused of being a pragmatist on the court. That comes from our upbringing, he said. Justice Breyer was reminded, during the interview in his chambers, of some of the votes he has cast and opinions he has written in cases involving school districts. While the justice has ruled both for and against school boards and administrators during his long tenure, the proposition was put forth that he has perhaps felt the influence of his father, the veteran school district lawyer. In particular, Justice Breyer was reminded of his concurring opinion in a 2007 case in which the court upheld the discipline of a student who had displayed a banner with the phrase BONG HiTS 4 JESUS at a school event. Breyer concurred in the judgment in part and dissented in part, saying he would have only upheld qualified immunity for the principal and school board, who were the targets of the students suit over the discipline, and not ruled on the question of First Amendment protection for the banner. On a broader point, he expressed worry in the opinion that the more detailed the Supreme Courts supervision of school discipline becomes, the more such disputes will make their way from the schoolhouse to the courthouse. Yet no one wishes to substitute courts for school boards, or to turn the judges chambers into the principals office, the justice wrote. In the interview, Breyer did not suggest his fathers position led him directly to sympathize with school administrators. But he also did not discount the more subtle effect his father and his career in education law may have had on him. Of course people are influenced by their families, by where they went to school, Breyer said. Theres no way you escape your own background. So, if you say, What influence? I dont know, he continued. Its just a question of outlook. Im sure what I got from him, which is very important and which misleads people sometimes, is to listen to what the other person says. Listen to it. And then having listened to it, you take it into account. Thats absolutely Senator Kennedy, and its also, I think, my father. It can mislead people because they think you agree with them. You dont necessarily agree with them, but you do want to find out what they think. Principals sit in a very difficult position when it comes to educational technology. They face pressures about what digital learning approaches to take and what tech products to buyfrom the central office, education companies, teachers, parents, and students. Some will embrace their choices, while others will question themor in some cases, even try to undermine them. Thats why many ed-tech experts say that the success of digital learning initiatives often hinges on the principals ability to find the right balance among all the various groups in a school community. But, ultimately, principals also must make tough decisions based on the best interests of students. Whether [the technology is] for learning or its for teaching, we want to look at it, we want to explore it, and if its something that we find is useful, then well actually put the money into it, said Brad Currie, the director of planning, research, and evaluation for the Chester school district in Morris County, N.J., who helped his district implement a 1-to-1 computing program while he was vice principal of Black River Middle School there. To get a sense of where the pressure points are around some core ed-tech issues, the Education Week Research Center conducted a nationally representative survey of 500 principals, assistant principals, and school deans. The survey found the greatest pressure was largely coming from vendors and the central officenot teachers, parents, or students. Regarding the personalized-learning movement, for instance, 55 percent of principals felt mild to strong pressure from technology companies to welcome the movement, and 46 percent felt such pressure from district leaders. Technology companies also topped the pressure-cooker list when principals were asked if they felt pressure to reject or accept computer science education, with 47 percent of principals feeling mild or strong pressure from them to do so. District leaders were second, with 39 percent of principals citing such pressures. Winston Sakurai, the principal of the upper school grades 7-12 Hanalani Schools, a private Christian school in Hawaii, said some technology companies have gotten more creative and aggressive in trying to get his attention. In the old days, they just sent mailers or catalogs with their product pitches. Now, its emails from tech companies asking, Are you interested in this? Can we set up a phone call? Can we set something up? he said. A few times, education company marketers have called his secretary directly insinuating that they had already talked to him and that he was interested in getting more information about the product, even though he had never said so. The tactics have gotten a little bit aggressive, he said. I think it could be frustrating to some people. Part of the reason for the aggressive outreach is that its easier to find and contact principals, he said. But, he added, tech companies are also probably facing stiff competition from a glut of free resources that are now available to schools, including Khan Academy, video lessons on YouTube, and free open-sourced curriculum crafted by teachers. Other survey results and follow-up interviews with principals and district administrators also reveal interesting perspectives on the leadership roles of principals around issues related to personalized learning, screen time, computer science skills, and access to technology. They include: Two years after the Obama administration launched its Computer Science for All initiativeaimed at ensuring that students at every grade level have access to computer science coursesonly 7 percent of principals and school leaders surveyed said teaching the subject was central to their schools mission and operations. Nearly a third said computer science for all was not on their radar screens. Slightly more than half the principals surveyed described personalized learning as a promising idea or a transformational way to improve public education. Another 31 percent said it was one of many school improvement strategies available to them. Nearly two-thirds of all principals believed students are getting the right amount of screen time in school, while 17 percent believed students were getting too much. Jethro Jones, the principal of Tanana Middle School in Fairbanks, Alaska, found some of those results surprising. I think that anybody who is not seeing [personalized learning] as a transformational way to improve public education doesnt understand what it can be, said Jones, who hosts a weekly podcast, Transformative Principal, in which he interviews principals who are making a difference in their schools. Truly personalized learning is the way that deep, meaningful, memorable learning has always happened. Sign up to get Education Weeks latest ed-tech news in your inbox. In the digital age, personalized learning has evolved to include individualized-learning plans for students, continual assessments, and ongoing feedback loops. Schools have also redesigned learning spaces to allow students to work at their own pace, in small groups, or individually. Its about giving kids what they need, when they need it, and being aware enough of whats going on in their lives and what their skills are to be able to give them extra support, he said. Technology allows us to do it at scale, but technology does not allow us to do it, period. Theres an important distinction there that you dont have to have technology to personalize learning for your kids. Brian Partin, the president of the National Association of Elementary School Principals, similarly said that personalized learning gives educators an opportunity to provide differentiated supports for students. He, too, was surprised that more of his colleagues do not have as positive a view of personalized learning as he does. In Tennessees Kingsport City school district, where Partin worked as a middle school principal before going on leave to serve as the NAESP president, the movement to personalize learning is the result of expectationshe hesitates to use the word pressure"at the state and local levels. It grew from the need to implement more rigorous state college and career standards, the districts mission statement to graduate globally competitive citizens, student input, and support from community leaders, he said. Local businesses have also been part of the discussion to ensure that students have access to meaningful computer-science-based learning experiences, beginning in elementary and continuing through high school. When you are talking about ensuring college-and-career readiness for all students, a big part of that is making sure that they are technically ready to enter either the workforce or college, because so much of what we do in the workforce and throughout college has that need for a good, solid understanding of computer science, Partin said. Students are also a central part of the conversation in Kingsport and other districts. They provide feedback to school administrators through surveys and by participating in student-advisory panels and student councils. (In the Education Week Research Center survey, 31 percent of principals felt mild or strong pressure from students to embrace personalized learning, and 32 percent felt such pressure from students to embrace computer science education.) While 30 percent of principals said that computer science for all was not on their radar screens, the Chester districts Currie said thats his districts passion. Chesters adoption of a computer science initiative predates the Obama administration initiative. Programs for students have accelerated in recent years as free resources have become more readily available through websites such as Code.org, he said. Chesters employment of computer science for all was a result of a change in the districts strategic plan, as well as support from the board of education, district leadership, and parents, Currie said. It involved extensive research, visits to schools that were early adopters, professional development for teachers, physical redesigns of learning spaces to include makerspaces, and the addition of after-school clubs offering students opportunities to learn how to code. We never felt any pressure from any ed-tech company to do this, said Currie, who was the National Association of Secondary School Principals 2017 National Assistant Principal of the Year. But he doesnt think its a bad thing if a company were to approach him about a product. I am actually approaching companies saying, Hey, I have this need; how can you help us out with that need? he said. I dont know if thats the case [everywhere]. I am always looking for new and exciting ways to make teaching fun with technology. 2018-04-17 Maeci The Italian Embassy and Cultural Institute in Prague will launch the first attempt to map Italian researchers and scientists working in the Czech Republic. The initiative will be launched on the First Day of Italian Research in the World, which will be held on 17 April in the Biology Park of the Research Centre of the SantAnna University Hospital in Brno and on 26 April on the premises of the Italian Embassy in Prague. The two events will be attended by Italian scientists and researchers who will share their personal and working experience in the Czech Republic. The aim of the events is to create a databank which can serve as a working instrument for major Italian researchers in order to establish contacts and cooperation efforts with the different Czech departments and institutions that host Italian researchers in their laboratories. I am particularly happy of having opened a new form of cooperation between the scientific institutions of the two Countries said Ambassador Aldo Amati and above all to be able provide a personal profile of the numerous Italian brains who work in the Czech scientific community. The two events are held under the patronage of the Academy of Science of the Czech Republic. Username: Password: or Register Thread Rating: 2 Vote(s) - 3 Average 1 2 3 4 5 Page: 1 2 3 ISRAEL PLANNING FOR DIRECT RETALIATORY ATTACK FROM IRAN The Ghost Of LOP Registered User User ID: kaput 04-17-2018 09:55 PM Posts: 41,574 Post: #1 ISRAEL PLANNING FOR DIRECT RETALIATORY ATTACK FROM IRAN Advertisement Israel believes the attack will come in the form of precision-guided missiles or armed drones from a base in Syria, directly by the IRGC not by proxies as done before under the command of Quds Force commander Maj.-Gen. Qassem Soleimani. Read more: http://www.jpost.com/Arab-Israeli-Confli...ria-550073 I am so confused !!! Israel is preparing for a crossborder attack from the Revolutionary Guard Corps, in response for a strike allegedly carried out by the Jewish state against an Iranian operated airbase in Syria which killed seven IRGC soldiers.Israel believes the attack will come in the form of precision-guided missiles or armed drones from a base in Syria, directly by the IRGC not by proxies as done before under the command of Quds Force commander Maj.-Gen. Qassem Soleimani.Read more:I am so confused !!! LoP Guest lop guest User ID: 1337 04-17-2018 09:59 PM Post: #2 RE: ISRAEL PLANNING FOR DIRECT RETALIATORY ATTACK FROM IRAN Poor little Israel! engineering Banned User ID: 1337 04-17-2018 10:01 PM Posts: 5,299 Post: #3 RE: ISRAEL PLANNING FOR DIRECT RETALIATORY ATTACK FROM IRAN So if Iran launches an attack against Israel from inside Syria remember I was the one who said it would happen weeks ago. You can visualize this entire train wreck from start to finish by letting go of all the hate and bias. 12117 lop guest User ID: 1337 04-17-2018 10:03 PM Post: #4 RE: ISRAEL PLANNING FOR DIRECT RETALIATORY ATTACK FROM IRAN IRAN IS THE ONLY COUNTRY WITHOUT A ROTHSCHILD BANK 1110.00 Manifest Alchemy User ID: 1337 04-17-2018 10:03 PM Posts: 13,447 Post: #5 RE: ISRAEL PLANNING FOR DIRECT RETALIATORY ATTACK FROM IRAN I would guess they are already planning summary execution protocols for Disney World patrons standing in long, hot lines. "The Precipitant has a smaller place in reality, thus it is mortal." https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=8uMCQrAxylM https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=0619bdpOolA LoP Guest lop guest User ID: 1337 04-17-2018 10:03 PM Post: #6 RE: ISRAEL PLANNING FOR DIRECT RETALIATORY ATTACK FROM IRAN engineering Wrote: (04-17-2018 10:01 PM) So if Iran launches an attack against Israel from inside Syria remember I was the one who said it would happen weeks ago. You can visualize this entire train wreck from start to finish by letting go of all the hate and bias. LoP Guest lop guest User ID: 1337 04-17-2018 10:04 PM Post: #7 RE: ISRAEL PLANNING FOR DIRECT RETALIATORY ATTACK FROM IRAN Shakespeare Wrote: (04-17-2018 10:03 PM) IRAN IS THE ONLY COUNTRY WITHOUT A ROTHSCHILD BANK They're gonna have one now. They're gonna have one now. LoP Guest lop guest User ID: 1337 04-17-2018 10:07 PM Post: #8 RE: ISRAEL PLANNING FOR DIRECT RETALIATORY ATTACK FROM IRAN LoP Guest Wrote: (04-17-2018 10:04 PM) Shakespeare Wrote: (04-17-2018 10:03 PM) IRAN IS THE ONLY COUNTRY WITHOUT A ROTHSCHILD BANK They're gonna have one now. Archangel Michael User ID: 1337 04-17-2018 10:12 PM Posts: 14,103 Post: #9 RE: ISRAEL PLANNING FOR DIRECT RETALIATORY ATTACK FROM IRAN LoP Guest Wrote: (04-17-2018 10:04 PM) Shakespeare Wrote: (04-17-2018 10:03 PM) IRAN IS THE ONLY COUNTRY WITHOUT A ROTHSCHILD BANK They're gonna have one now. NOPE....screw those leeches making us buy the bankers two houses to get one for ourselves. The problem with parasites like usury banking, is it is a life sucking thing. NOPE....screw those leeches making us buy the bankers two houses to get one for ourselves.The problem with parasites like usury banking, is it is a life sucking thing. Archangel Michael User ID: 1337 04-17-2018 10:29 PM Posts: 14,103 Post: #10 RE: ISRAEL PLANNING FOR DIRECT RETALIATORY ATTACK FROM IRAN https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=AxSWVkPfVc8 Plus, Iran IS NOT going to strike Israel unless Israel keeps pushing the issue. They can get ready and wait as much as they want. Iran has not launched any wars in hundreds of years. You really don't want to let that kitty out of the bag. LoP Guest lop guest User ID: 1337 04-17-2018 10:30 PM Post: #11 RE: ISRAEL PLANNING FOR DIRECT RETALIATORY ATTACK FROM IRAN The Ghost Of LOP Wrote: (04-17-2018 09:55 PM) Israel is preparing for a crossborder attack from the Revolutionary Guard Corps, in response for a strike allegedly carried out by the Jewish state against an Iranian operated airbase in Syria which killed seven IRGC soldiers. Israel believes the attack will come in the form of precision-guided missiles or armed drones from a base in Syria, directly by the IRGC not by proxies as done before under the command of Quds Force commander Maj.-Gen. Qassem Soleimani. Read more: http://www.jpost.com/Arab-Israeli-Confli...ria-550073 So that means they will attack Saudi Arabia. Bible states they will change course and attack the house of Saud. Israel thinks they will be attacked but it happens a little later. So that means they will attack Saudi Arabia. Bible states they will change course and attack the house of Saud. Israel thinks they will be attacked but it happens a little later. LoP Guest lop guest User ID: 1337 04-17-2018 10:31 PM Post: #12 RE: ISRAEL PLANNING FOR DIRECT RETALIATORY ATTACK FROM IRAN LoP Guest Wrote: (04-17-2018 10:30 PM) The Ghost Of LOP Wrote: (04-17-2018 09:55 PM) Israel is preparing for a crossborder attack from the Revolutionary Guard Corps, in response for a strike allegedly carried out by the Jewish state against an Iranian operated airbase in Syria which killed seven IRGC soldiers. Israel believes the attack will come in the form of precision-guided missiles or armed drones from a base in Syria, directly by the IRGC not by proxies as done before under the command of Quds Force commander Maj.-Gen. Qassem Soleimani. Read more: http://www.jpost.com/Arab-Israeli-Confli...ria-550073 So that means they will attack Saudi Arabia. Bible states they will change course and attack the house of Saud. Israel thinks they will be attacked but it happens a little later. An all out attack. An all out attack. LoP Guest lop guest User ID: 1337 04-17-2018 10:39 PM Post: #13 RE: ISRAEL PLANNING FOR DIRECT RETALIATORY ATTACK FROM IRAN Archangel Wrote: (04-17-2018 10:29 PM) Plus, Iran IS NOT going to strike Israel unless Israel keeps pushing the issue. They can get ready and wait as much as they want. Iran has not launched any wars in hundreds of years. You really don't want to let that kitty out of the bag. you obviously haven't read or understood Ezekiel....Russia and its cohorts Iran and Syria will launch an attack against Israel.....this time GOD himself will intervene on Israel's behalf.....Iran, Russia, and Syria will encounter the wrath of GOD himself and their armies will be destroyed. It called the Gog/Magog war. you obviously haven't read or understood Ezekiel....Russia and its cohorts Iran and Syria will launch an attack against Israel.....this time GOD himself will intervene on Israel's behalf.....Iran, Russia, and Syria will encounter the wrath of GOD himself and their armies will be destroyed.It called the Gog/Magog war. LoP Guest lop guest User ID: 1337 04-17-2018 10:46 PM Post: #14 RE: ISRAEL PLANNING FOR DIRECT RETALIATORY ATTACK FROM IRAN LoP Guest Wrote: (04-17-2018 10:39 PM) Archangel Wrote: (04-17-2018 10:29 PM) Plus, Iran IS NOT going to strike Israel unless Israel keeps pushing the issue. They can get ready and wait as much as they want. Iran has not launched any wars in hundreds of years. You really don't want to let that kitty out of the bag. you obviously haven't read or understood Ezekiel....Russia and its cohorts Iran and Syria will launch an attack against Israel.....this time GOD himself will intervene on Israel's behalf.....Iran, Russia, and Syria will encounter the wrath of GOD himself and their armies will be destroyed. It called the Gog/Magog war. "God" could have stopped the Holocaust with one swipe of His mighty hand. But he didn't. Why not. "God" could have stopped the Holocaust with one swipe of His mighty hand.But he didn't.Why not. LoP Guest lop guest User ID: 1337 04-17-2018 10:50 PM Post: #15 RE: ISRAEL PLANNING FOR DIRECT RETALIATORY ATTACK FROM IRAN It'll take the shape of Israel going in hard on Hezbollah citing defense concerns with Iran retaliating as part of the "Axis of Resistance". Then who knows? Advertisement NEW YORK...April 17, 2018 -- Ben-Gurion University of the Negev (Beer-Sheva, Israel) and University of Washington (Seattle) researchers have developed a new generic method to detect fake accounts on most types of social networks, including Facebook and Twitter. According to a new study in Social Network Analysis and Mining, the new method is based on the assumption that fake accounts tend to establish improbable links to other users in the networks. "With recent disturbing news about failures to safeguard user privacy, and targeted use of social media by Russia to influence elections, rooting out fake users has never been of greater importance," explains Dima Kagan, lead researcher and a researcher in the BGU Department of Software and Information Systems Engineering. "We tested our algorithm on simulated and real-world data sets on 10 different social networks and it performed well on both." The algorithm consists of two main iterations based on machine-learning algorithms. The first constructs a link prediction classifier that can estimate, with high accuracy, the probability of a link existing between two users. The second iteration generates a new set of meta-features based on the features created by the link prediction classifier. Lastly, the researchers used these meta-features and constructed a generic classifier that can detect fake profiles in a variety of online social networks. "Overall, the results demonstrated that in a real-life friendship scenario we can detect people who have the strongest friendship ties as well as malicious users, even on Twitter," the researchers say. "Our method outperforms other anomaly detection methods and we believe that it has considerable potential for a wide range of applications particularly in the cyber-security arena." The Ben-Gurion University researchers previously developed the Social Privacy Protector (SPP) to help users evaluate their friends list in seconds to identify which have few or no mutual links and might be "fake" profiles. ### Other researchers who contributed are Dr. Michael Fire of the University of Washington (former Ben-Gurion U. doctoral student) and Prof. Yuval Elovici, director of the Telekom Innovation Labs@BGU, director of Cyber@BGU and a member of the BGU Department of Software and Information Systems Engineering. The Washington Research Foundation Fund for Innovation in Data-Intensive Discovery and the Moore/Sloan Data Science Environment Project at the University of Washington supported this study. Click here to watch a video about the team's current and recent social media research. About American Associates, Ben-Gurion University of the Negev American Associates, Ben-Gurion University of the Negev (AABGU) plays a vital role in sustaining David Ben-Gurion's vision: creating a world-class institution of education and research in the Israeli desert, nurturing the Negev community and sharing the University's expertise locally and around the globe. As Ben-Gurion University of the Negev (BGU) looks ahead to turning 50 in 2020, AABGU imagines a future that goes beyond the walls of academia. It is a future where BGU invents a new world and inspires a vision for a stronger Israel and its next generation of leaders. Together with supporters, AABGU will help the University foster excellence in teaching, research and outreach to the communities of the Negev for the next 50 years and beyond. Visit vision.aabgu.org to learn more. AABGU, which is headquartered in Manhattan, has nine regional offices throughout the United States. For more information, visit http://www.aabgu.org. NASA astronaut David Wolf to address some of the nation's leading eye physicians and surgeons on the dangers of space flight to vision WASHINGTON, D.C. - April 17, 2018 -- The hazards of space flight are well known: freezing temperatures, the vacuum of space, radiation, isolation. But there's a lesser-known risk getting the attention of researchers - a possible danger to vision. Retired NASA astronaut David Wolf, M.D., will provide insight into how space flight affects the eye on Thursday, April 19, when he gives the keynote address during a conference attended by many of the nation's leading eye physicians and surgeons, hosted by the American Academy of Ophthalmology in Washington, D.C. One of the few people on Earth who know what it's like to leave it, Dr. Wolf logged 168 days in space over four separate space shuttle missions, including 128 days aboard the Russian Mir space station. He also led the spacewalk team that constructed the International Space Station. Dr. Wolf will discuss his experience, including the ways space flight changes the structure of the eye. Many astronauts have experienced worsening eye sight after their missions, some for years after returning to earth. The leading theory is that microgravity causes a mild but persistent pressure rise in the head. This increase in pressure stimulates the eye to reshape, causing visual impairment. Researchers are now using the same imaging techniques that ophthalmologists use every day to find solutions to the damaging effects of space travel on vision. This research is critical as the U.S. prepares for longer spaceflights to the International Space Station, moon, asteroid belt or Mars. In February, Vice President Mike Pence appointed Wolf to serve on the new Users Advisory Group for the National Space Council. The group is sponsored by NASA and reports to the National Space Council on a range of issues. It will give direction on U.S. space policy. Dr. Wolf served as a U.S. Air Force senior flight surgeon in the Air National Guard (1983 to 2004), achieving the rank of Lt. Colonel. An electrical engineer and inventor, he pioneered the development of modern medical ultrasonic image processing techniques, and has been awarded 17 U.S. patents. He also received the NASA Exceptional Engineering Achievement Medal in 1990, and was named NASA Inventor of the Year in 1992. In 2011, Wolf was inducted into the Space Foundation's Space Technology Hall of Fame for his work in developing the bioreactor, a device that enables the growth of tissue, cancer tumors and virus cultures outside the body in space and on earth. ### About the American Academy of Ophthalmology The American Academy of Ophthalmology is the world's largest association of eye physicians and surgeons. A global community of 32,000 medical doctors, we protect sight and empower lives by setting the standards for ophthalmic education and advocating for our patients and the public. We innovate to advance our profession and to ensure the delivery of the highest-quality eye care. Our EyeSmart program provides the public with the most trusted information about eye health. For more information, visit aao.org. About Astronaut David Wolf, MD EE As a Medical Doctor (Indiana U.), Electrical Engineer (Purdue U.), Military Officer (LTC Ret USAF ANG), and former NASA Astronaut (168 days, 4 missions, 7 Spacewalks); Dr. David Wolf now directs this multi-disciplinary background to two start-up companies in the medical field directed at resolving the constriction in the pipeline of "Pharmaceutical Molecule Discovery" and the other utilizing Regenerative Medicine techniques originally developed in NASA laboratories under his direction and which has generated several successful spinoff biotechnology companies. Dr. Wolf was engaged in patent portfolio strategy (he has 17 U.S. Patents), technology transfer to the private sector, and now further developing the next advances as a clinical medical regenerative tissue treatment. Dr. Wolf is a dual appointed Professor of Aeronautics and Aerospace Engineering and BioEngineering at Purdue University (visiting). As an Astronaut, Dr. Wolf was Chief of the Astronaut Office Extravehicular Mobility Branch overseeing "spacewalk" training through real time execution for much of the construction of The International Space Station. He is an active public speaker on risk management of critical operations in resource limited environments as well conveying the energy of our Space Program. He is an Advisor to Vice President Mike Pence for civil, national security, and commercial "Space" and sits on the National Space Council (User's Panel). For more please visit http://www.AstronautDavidWolf.com. #WeBelieveInAstronauts After being discharged from the hospital, an older person often is admitted directly to a skilled nursing facility (SNF). SNFs specialize in the skilled care we need to recover properly. These facilities also provide the additional rehabilitation we may need before returning home. However, experts have raised concerns about the uneven quality of SNF services, the substantial differences among them, and how they are used in different parts of the country. A transfer from an SNF to a long-term care facility, for example, is considered a failure to achieve the goals of SNF care. Most older people view a move to a long-term care facility as a step in the wrong direction. In a new study, researchers decided to examine the role that SNFs play with regard to older adults' placements in long-term care facilities. Their study was published in the Journal of the American Geriatrics Society. The researchers studied the role of SNF quality and how it affected older adults' risks of transitioning to long-term care facilities. They also looked at whether any aspects of skilled nursing were linked with an older adult's risk of entering long-term care facilities. The research team focused specifically on whether the quality ratings of SNFs (available to the public, free of charge, here) helped predict long-term care placements. The researchers used information from a variety of Medicare and other qualified sources that included data on more than 500,000 people aged 65 and older. The researchers learned that a person's risk of eventual placement in long-term care nursing homes varied a great deal based on the SNF where they received care. Older adults in SNFs with higher quality ratings had significantly lower risks for placement in long-term care facilities. The researchers concluded that learning more about the processes in place at specific SNFs might help explain variations in care and could help guide future efforts. Eventually, these efforts may help older adults successfully return to the community following hospitalization. This summary is from "Clinical Investigation: Variation among skilled nursing facilities in patients' risk of subsequent long-term care residence." It appears online ahead of print in the Journal of the American Geriatrics Society. The study authors are James S. Goodwin, MD; Shuang Li, PhD; Addie Middleton, PhD, PT; Kenneth Ottenbacher, PhD, OTR; and Yong-Fang Kuo, 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. A new paper suggests that tumor cells may develop resistance to potential Ras inhibitors; the study shows how cells are capable of surviving even in the total absence of Ras genes if another gene, Erf, is also lost One of the most constant and exhaustive searches in cancer research is for a treatment aimed specifically at the Ras family of genes, the most common oncogenes and those that initiate many of the most lethal tumours. However, the results of this hypothetical treatment may be far less positive than speculated due to a manuscript published in the Genes & Development journal by the Genomic Instability Group at the Spanish National Cancer Research Centre (CNIO). The study shows how cells are capable of surviving even in the total absence of Ras genes if another gene, Erf, is also lost. Discovered in 1982 - by Mariano Barbacid's group, among others (who is also participating in this study) -, alterations in Ras genes were the first mutation described in cancer. This was a paradigm-shifting discovery, since for the first time revealed that tumours are initiated by mutations in our own genes, thereby raising hope that if inhibitors for these mutated genes were created, cancer could be cured. "It is the base of personalised medicine", explains Oscar Fernandez-Capetillo, leader of this work. Ras, the Holy Grail of targets to fight cancer In addition to being the first oncogene ever described, mutations in Ras genes are the most common and those that initiate the most lethal tumours: e.g. lung, pancreas or colon. Therefore, developing a RAS pharmacological inhibitor has frequently been described as the search for the "Holy Grail" in the battle against cancer, in which billions have been invested and its highest exponent lies in 'The Ras Initiative', launched in 2013 by the US National Institutes for Health (NIH). However, achieving an inhibitor for RAS proteins is complicated due mainly to their three-dimensional structure, similar to a sphere, which makes it difficult to generate pharmaceuticals that inhibit their activity. As an alternative to treating these tumours, pharmaceuticals have been developed that attack the other members of the Ras route, such as inhibitors of MEK, RAF, EGFR... "Personalised medicine, in spite of being a good idea and having success stories, has its Achilles heel in the fact that tumours do not only have one mutation, but dozens or even hundreds of them, so while treatments generally work for a limited time, tumours invariably end up developing resistance due to another mutation", highlights Fernandez-Capetillo. Although therapies against the RAS route constitute an important part of current antitumoral strategies, the search for RAS inhibitors continues "despite the fact that it is not clear if tumours are not going to be capable of developing resistance to these treatments", highlights Sergio Ruiz, co-leader of the study. "In our work, we show that it is even possible to develop teratomas (a type of germinal tumour) lacking all RAS genes, if the tumour also lacks ERF expression", he adds. ERF loss rescues the effects of RAS deficiency The main role of RAS proteins consists of translating external growth signals (nutrients, growth factors, etc.) into proliferating responses within the cell. When RAS proteins are eliminated in mouse stem cells, these remain in a sort-of suspended state: they do not grow, they do not differentiate into other cell types and are not capable of forming tumours. Cristina Mayor-Ruiz, first author of the study, initially observed that certain tumour cells the authors were working with were capable of growing even in the absence of serum, if the gene Erf was also eliminated. Fernandez-Capetillo explains "For me, this discovery was the origin of the project as it made us speculate that if cells can grow with hardly any nutrients upon eliminating ERF, this could even allow the growth of RAS-free cells". This hypothesis turned out to be true: eliminating ERF allows mouse embryonic stem cells to grow, differentiate and even generate tumours in total absence of RAS genes. The study also explains the mechanism by which ERF restricts the action of RAS proteins. In the absence of RAS, ERF is recruited to the regulating areas ("enhancers") of multiple genes, modulating their function, which ultimately limits cell growth. "ERF is a kind of brake that limits the consequences of RAS activation", indicates Cristina Mayor-Ruiz. "The message is not good, but its knowledge is important for cancer research and the so frequently mentioned personalised medicine", sums up Fernandez-Capetillo. "Although a perfect inhibitor of RAS is finally achieved, tumours may be capable of becoming resistant to the treatment accumulating mutations in genes like ERF". In fact, recent studies have found ERF mutations in cancer patients, indicating that such situation may indeed exist in the clinic. Therefore, Fernandez-Capetillo's group is now exploring whether mutations in ERF can account for the resistance to personalised therapies against inhibitors of the RAS route. ### Firms that belong to diversified business groups can better exploit growth opportunities, thanks to the ability to draw on the group's skilled human capital, according to new research from Cass Business School. Insurance Between Firms: The Role of Internal Labor Markets shows that corporate networks of companies controlled by a common owner are better able to respond to positive shocks (but also to withstand adverse shocks) when compared to their stand-alone rivals. Diversified business groups make up the largest part of many economies in continental Europe, China and India amongst others. Examples of such groups include Samsung, Virgin and Tata, which all operate in multiple regions and industries. Leading financial service organisations such as Citigroup and HSBC are also structured as groups, with a holding company controlling a network of legal entities operating in different countries. The research finds that business groups run their internal labour markets, reallocating workers across member firms (subsidiaries) in response to both positive and adverse shocks. Co-author Dr Giacinta Cestone, Cass Business School, said the research confirmed that internal labour markets are vital for organisational growth. "Faced with a new expansion opportunity, for example following a major competitor's exit, group-affiliated subsidiaries heavily rely on their group's internal labour market to hire managers, engineers, and other skilled human capital. "Group subsidiaries which are geographically closer to the bulk of the group's human capital become more productive and gain more market share after the positive shock, when compared to member firms that are less well placed to attract the group's talent," she said. "Access to the group's internal labour market thus mitigates human capital constraints, which helps explain the paper's second finding that group-affiliated firms expand their market share more than their stand-alone peers after a positive shock. "Internal labour markets operate as a mutual insurance mechanism across member firms in diversified business groups, allowing them to mitigate firing and hiring costs when workforce adjustments are called for. This may contribute to explaining the groups' unique ability to thrive in the face of hurdles and opportunities. Internal labour markets also appear to provide job security to corporate groups' employees," she added. In light of the authors' results, geographically diversified groups with a presence in both UK and Continental Europe can rely on their internal labour market to better respond to the hurdles and opportunities of Brexit. If devoid of frictionless access to the common market, such groups can swiftly move valuable human capital to their EU subsidiaries, whilst smaller UK-only based companies would not be in a position to respond as promptly to the challenge. Funded by the Axa Research Fund and the Leverhulme Trust, this research is unique because it examines firm-level data (profits, productivity, leverage), combined with data on workers' movements and, uniquely, each business group's precise structure. The data covers the universe of French firms (both private and listed), comprising balance sheets and income statements. A database of matched employer-employee information (based on mandatory employer reports of the earnings and the position of all employees subject to payroll taxes) allowed the researchers to follow all French workers as they moved from one firm to another. The research was carried out by Dr Giacinta Cestone, Cass Business School, London and colleagues from CREST-ENSAE (France), Bocconi University (Italy), and Universita' della Svizzera Italiana (Switzerland). Read the report The report is published in the ECGI Working Paper series and can be read here. ### Report authors Dr Giacinta Cestone, Cass Business School Professor Chiara Fumagalli, Bocconi University Professor Francis Kramarz, CREST (ENSAE), Paris Professor Giovanni Pica, Universita della Svizzera Italiana (USI) Media enquiries Amy Ripley, Senior Communications Officer, Cass Business School M: +44 (0) 7794 053 384 E: amy.ripley@city.ac.uk Notes to Editors Cass Business School, which is part of City, University of London, is a leading global business school driven by world-class knowledge, innovative education and a vibrant community. Located in the heart of one of the world's leading financial centres, Cass has strong links to both the City of London and the thriving entrepreneurial hub of Tech City. The Large Hadron Collider will be entirely upgraded, and ALICE, one of its four major experiments, will be equipped with a new particle detection system comprising 88,000 units of the SAMPA chip A Brazilian chip will be used to upgrade the detection system used in ALICE (A Large Ion Collider Experiment), one of the four major experiments at the Large Hadron Collider (LHC), the world's most powerful particle accelerator, located on the Franco-Swiss border. The chip is called SAMPA and was designed at the University of Sao Paulo's Engineering School (Poli-USP) in Brazil. SAMPA has been tested in several countries and analyzed by an international group of experts. It passed with flying colors and received the green light for large-scale fabrication. Taiwan-based TSMC will produce all 88,000 units required to upgrade ALICE. "The new chips will be used to instrument two of ALICE's detectors: the TPC [Time Projection Chamber] and the MCH [Muon Chamber]," says Munhoz , associate professor with habilitation at USP's Physics Institute (IFUSP) and one of the leading researchers behind the chip's development. "The TPC tracks the charged particles produced in the LHC. The MCH specifically measures muons." It is worth recalling here that the muon is an elementary particle similar to the electron, also with an electric charge of ?1e and a spin of 1/2, but with 200 times its mass. The muon is classified as a lepton. The development of SAMPA had the support from the Sao Paulo Research Foundation - FAPESP via the Thematic Project "High-energy nuclear physics at RHIC and LHC" and two regular projects, "Design of a signal acquisition and digital processing ASIC for the time projection chamber of the ALICE experiment" and "Development of scientific instrumentation for the ALICE experiment at LHC-CERN"". Wilhelmus Adrianus Maria Van Noije, formerly Full Professor and now Senior Professor at Poli-USP, and Marco Bregant, a professor doctor at IFUSP, also played a role in leading SAMPA's design. Understanding SAMPA's role in ALICE Munhoz explained how the TPC works and SAMPA's role in the device. The TPC is ALICE's main detection system. It basically consists of two concentric cylinders, the larger of which is 5 m in length and 5 m in diameter. The region between the two cylinders is closed at both ends and filled with gas. The particle beams that are destined to collide travel along channels inside the smaller cylinder, where the environment is predominantly vacuum. The ion collisions produce thousands of particles, which pass through the wall of the inner cylinder, ionize the gas atoms, and pass through the outer cylinder before being absorbed. A large electric potential difference is applied between the closed ends. This knocks electrons off the gas molecules, then the electrons are driven to either end of the cylinder. The positions of the charges are determined, and from these, the paths and nature of the particles produced in the collisions are identified. To determine the positions of the hits and the incident charge values, the ends of the cylinder are covered with grids comprising more than 500,000 pads or channels. Each set of 32 channels will be instrumented with a SAMPA chip. The MCH works somewhat differently, but the principle is the same. SAMPA optimizes the process scanning twice the area "The job done by each chip is to read out the incident charges, transform the readout into a voltage signal, convert the signal from analog to digital, perform internal digital processing, and send the information to external processors," says Munhoz, who coordinates the FAPESP-funded Thematic Project. "All the chips operating together will produce those famous images of collisions showing jets of thousands of particles, each of which follows a specific path." SAMPA will replace the current generation of chips used in ALICE. In the existing configuration, two chips are needed for each set of 16 channels: one only reads out charges and generates the corresponding voltage signal, while the other converts the analog signal into bits and performs digital preprocessing of the bits. With much more compact electronics, one SAMPA chip will perform both operations and process 32 channels instead of 16. Once the chips have been produced in Taiwan, they will be tested one by one in Sweden. They will be installed in ALICE in 2019-20, when the entire LHC will undergo an upgrade to increase the rate of collisions between lead nuclei by a factor of 100. "This itself makes SAMPA necessary because the existing equipment wouldn't be able to handle such a huge increase in the collision rate," Munhoz said. "Today, ALICE is operating at 500 collisions per second. In 2021, it's expected to operate at 50,000 collisions per second. The scientists foresee that this will increase the probability of rare events such as the production of heavier quarks or the formation of light-element antinuclei." Unveiling the properties of plasma The main focus of ALICE is the study of quark-gluon plasma, which is formed when very high levels of energy break the bonds between quarks and gluons so that they are no longer confined in hadrons (protons, neutrons, mesons) and move about freely. "Two decades ago, no one knew whether such plasma really existed," Munhoz said. "In the mid-2000s, with the first experiments performed at RHIC at Brookhaven National Laboratory in the US, the scientific community became convinced that quark-gluon plasma could be produced in the laboratory. We're now entering a phase of greater precision, in which we're looking for more accurate measurements in order to achieve a deeper understanding of the properties of this plasma. The increased frequency of collisions in the LHC should make this possible." According to Van Noije, FAPESP's support has been fundamental in bringing the project to fruition. He expects the development of SAMPA in Brazil to effectively contribute to future measurements by ALICE, enabling the international scientific community to obtain much more data and a deeper understanding of the fundamental nature of matter and, by extension, of the universe itself. ### 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. We know more about the surface of the moon that we do about the bottom of the ocean. The sea floor is an alien landscape, with crushing pressure, near-total darkness, and fluids wafting from cracks in the Earth's crust. It's also home to some weird animals that scientists are only just getting to know. Case in point: deep-sea expeditions and drones have revealed a giant group of octopuses and their eggs in a place where they shouldn't be able to survive. "When I first saw the photos, I was like 'No, they shouldn't be there! Not that deep and not that many of them," says Janet Voight, associate curator of zoology at the Field Museum and an author of a new study on the octopuses published in Deep Sea Research Part I. Nearly two miles deep in the ocean, a hundred miles off the Pacific coast of Costa Rica, scientists during two cruises a year apart used subsea vehicles to explore the Dorado Outcrop, a rocky patch of sea floor made of cooled and hardened lava from an underwater volcano. Geochemists explored the outcrop in a tiny submersible vehicle, hoping to collect samples of the warm fluids that emerge from cracks in the rocks; they didn't count on finding dozens of octopuses huddled around the cracks. The octopuses were an unknown species of the genus Muusoctopus--pink, dinner-plate-sized creatures with enormous eyes. Up to a hundred of them seemed to occupy every available rock in a small area. That in itself was strange--Muuscoctopus are normally loners. Stranger still was that nearly all of the octopuses seemed to be mothers, each guarding a clutch of eggs. And this nursery was situated alongside the warm fluid issuing from the cracks in the outcrop. It doesn't make sense for deep-sea octopuses to brood eggs in warm water like this: it's suicide. Deep sea octopus live in cold, nearly invariant temperatures. Exposure to higher temperatures jump-starts their metabolism, making them need more oxygen than the warm water can provide. The octopuses that the scientists observed (both in-person and via hours of video footage from an ROV) showed evidence of severe stress, and they could only guess that the 186 eggs that were attached to the rocks leaking warm, low oxygen fluid had it worse. None had any sign of a developing embryo. All in all, not a great place to start an octopus family. However, the sheer number of what the scientist think are doomed octopuses and their eggs suggest that there's a better, healthier habitat nearby. The team suspects there must be more octopuses living inside crevices in the rocks, where the water is cool and rich in oxygen. The crevices could be such a good environment for egg-brooding that the booming population has to spill over into the dangerously warm region outside, like a gentrifying neighborhood expanding into a rougher part of town. "Octopus females only produce one clutch of eggs in their lives. In order for this huge population to be sustained, there must be even more octopuses to replace the dying mothers and eggs that we can see," says Voight. "My coauthors, Geoff Wheat and Anne Hartwell, know about basalt and how an outcrop like this is made. Odds are it has hollow areas where other females nurture their eggs to hatching. They are analogous to the boomers who have all the good jobs, while the millennials wait, seeking just one little piece of the cool rock." Voight notes that there's evidence for the unseen population: the scientists observed octopus arms emerging once in a while from cracks in the rock. The study doesn't just shed light upon deep-sea biology; it also illustrates the collaborative nature of science. "This project was a cohesive dynamic of three scientists from different research backgrounds coming together to investigate a fascinating observation," says Hartwell, the paper's lead author and an oceanographer affiliated with the University of Akron and the University of Alaska Fairbanks. "The focus of [our] expeditions to Dorado Outcrop was to study a cool hydrothermal system. In doing so, we discovered this fascinating congregation of brooding octopuses," says Wheat, a geochemist at the University of Alaska Fairbanks. "To maximize the scientific return of the expeditions, we shared the video with deep-sea biologists, whose research led to this publication. This is only the third hydrothermal system of its type that has been sampled, yet millions of similar environments exist in the deep sea. What other remarkable discoveries are waiting for us?" "These surprising observations show us how a deep-sea animal reproduces," says Barbara Ransom, a program director in the National Science Foundation's Division of Ocean Sciences, which funded the research. "The findings were serendipitous. The researchers saw something unusual and stopped to find out what was happening. Unexpected discoveries like this one can dramatically change our understanding of how the oceans work." "To my knowledge there had been no reports of octopuses at this or comparable depths off between southern California and Peru. Never would I have anticipated such a dense cluster of these animals at 3000 meters depth, and we argue that the numbers of octopuses we see are simply the surplus population," says Voight. "What else is down there that we can't even imagine? I want to find out." ### Astrophysicists at Goethe University Frankfurt answer this question by computing images of feeding non-Einsteinian black holes: At present it is hard to tell them apart from standard black holes FRANKFURT. One of the most fundamental predictions of Einstein's theory of relativity is the existence of black holes. In spite of the recent detection of gravitational waves from binary black holes by LIGO, direct evidence using electromagnetic waves remains elusive and astronomers are searching for it with radio telescopes. Astrophysicists at Goethe University Frankfurt, and collaborators in the ERC-funded project BlackHoleCam in Bonn and Nijmegen have created and compared self-consistent and realistic images of the shadow of an accreting supermassive black hole - such as the black-hole candidate Sagittarius A* (Sgr A*) in the heart of our galaxy - both in general relativity and in a different theory of gravity. The goal was to test if Einsteinian black holes can be distinguished from those in alternative theories of gravity. Not all of the light rays (or photons) produced by matter falling into a black hole are trapped by the event horizon, a region of spacetime from which nothing can escape. Some of these photons will reach distant observers, so that when a black hole is observed directly a "shadow" is expected against the background sky. The size and shape of this shadow will depend on the black-hole's properties but also on the theory of gravity. Because the largest deviations from Einstein's theory of relativity are expected very close to the event horizon and since alternative theories of gravity make different predictions on the properties of the shadow, direct observations of Sgr A* represent a very promising approach for testing gravity in the strongest regime. Making such images of the black-hole shadow is the primary goal of the international Event Horizon Telescope Collaboration (EHTC), which combines radio data from telescopes around the world. Scientists from the BlackHoleCam team in Europe, who are part of the EHTC, have now gone a step further and investigated whether it is possible to distinguish between a "Kerr" black hole from Einstein's gravity and a "dilaton" black hole, which is a possible solution of an alternative theory of gravity. The researchers studied the evolution of matter falling into the two very different types of black holes and calculated the radiation emitted to construct the images. Furthermore, real-life physical conditions in the telescopes and interstellar medium were used to create physically realistic images. "To capture the effects of different black holes we used realistic simulations of accretion disks with near-identical initial setups. These expensive numerical simulations used state-of-the-art codes and took several months on the Institute's supercomputer LOEWE," says Dr. Yosuke Mizuno, lead author of the study. Moreover, expected radio images obviously have a limited resolution and image fidelity. When using realistic image resolutions, the scientists found, to their surprise, that even highly non-Einsteinian black holes could disguise themselves as normal black holes. "Our results show that there are theories of gravity in which black holes can masquerade as Einsteinian, so new techniques of analyzing EHT data may be needed to tell them apart," remarks Luciano Rezzolla, professor at Goethe University and leader of the Frankfurt team. "While we believe general relativity is correct, as scientists we need to be open-minded. Luckily, future observations and more advanced techniques will eventually settle these doubts," concludes Rezzolla. "Indeed, independent information from an orbiting pulsar, which we are actively searching for, will help eliminate these ambiguities," says Michael Kramer, director at the MPI for Radio Astronomy in Bonn. Heino Falcke (professor at Radboud University), who 20 years ago proposed using radio telescopes to image the shadow of black holes, is optimistic. "There is little doubt that the EHT will eventually obtain strong evidence of a black-hole shadow. These results encourage us to refine our techniques beyond the current state of the art and thus make even sharper images in the future." ### FRANKFURT. Two Advanced Grants of the European Research Council (ERC) have been awarded to researchers at Goethe University Frankfurt. The sociologist Professor Thomas Lemke is researching the social impacts of cryobiology, i.e. the freezing and long-term preservation of organic material. The biochemist Professor Robert Tampe wants to unravel the winding pathways of the immune system inside the cell. "Cryosocieties" project explores "suspended life" Cryobiology has seen an enormous upturn over the last decades. More and more types of tissues and cellular material can be frozen, stored and thawed again without any detectable loss of vitality. Today, cryobiological practices are not only an important infrastructural prerequisite for many medical applications and a significant driver for innovations in the life sciences but also represent important options for personal family planning decisions as well as for the preservation of global biodiversity. "In our 'Cryosocieties' project, I want to investigate the impact of cryopreservation on our understanding of life, starting with the hypothesis that cryobiological practices produce a specific form of life that I call 'suspended life'. They keep many vital processes in a suspended state between life and death, in which biological substances are neither completely alive nor completely dead," explains Professor Thomas Lemke from the Institute of Sociology. The aim of the project, which lies at the interface between biology, sociology and technology, is to study how cryopreservation practices alter temporal and spatial relationships and configurations as well as our understanding of life and death, health and illness, (in)fertility and sustainability. In three different scenarios, Lemke and his team will investigate how "suspended life" is produced in current cryopreservation practices. These sub-projects deal with the freezing of umbilical cord blood as preparation for later regenerative therapies, the cryopreservation of egg cells for reproductive purposes and the setting up of cryobanks for the preservation of endangered or already extinct animal species. Immune defence in the cell Although the immune system is one of the most complex systems in the human body - with many different types of immune cells as well as transport and messenger molecules - pathogens and cancer cells manage to outwit it over and over again. Herpes and smallpox viruses, for example, have developed ingenious strategies to attack specific pathways in the body's immune system. A virus that has penetrated the cell is normally disassembled in a kind of molecule shredder (proteasome) and then transported to the cell's surface where it is presented to the T cells of the immune system. Herpes and smallpox viruses manage, however, to remain hidden in the cell by attacking the transport molecule that is supposed to carry them to the surface. What is known so far is that small pieces of proteins (peptides) from the proteasome are processed by a large macromolecular complex and many helper molecules in preparation for their journey to the cell's surface. This is known as the peptide-loading complex and sits in the endoplasmic reticulum, the "cell's engine room". In this highly folded system of membrane-enclosed cavities, proteins are produced, folded, checked and prepared for their journey to the cell's surface. Professor Robert Tampe from the Institute of Biochemistry explains the project: "My goal is to study the antigen processing mechanism in detail. With this research, we are setting off along one of the thorniest paths in the life sciences because we're dealing with large molecules with different assemblies which are moreover relatively rare in intercellular membranes." However, since his research group has succeeded in recent years in shedding light on some important structures in the peptide-loading complex and their functions, he is well prepared for the new project. "We expect that our work will have a considerable influence on many areas of the life sciences, especially in the field of cancer research as well as infectious and autoimmune diseases," says Tampe. ### Baltimore, MD, April 17, 2018 - Balancing risk to achieve a high performing investment portfolio is a challenge for the most seasoned investment manager. Student teams around the world have shown they are more than ready for the challenge, with a group of students from The Hebrew University of Jerusalem, Israel successfully using operations research (O.R.) and analytics to create a competitive equity portfolio to win the second annual O.R. & Analytics Student Team Competition. This competition, run by INFORMS, the leading international association for operations research and analytics professionals, was created to challenge students to apply their considerable talent to develop solutions to some of the biggest challenges facing our world today. The problem and funding for the 2018 competition was provided by Principal a leading international retirement savings and asset management company with millions of customers in more than 80 countries. Eight teams comprised of both graduate and undergraduate O.R. and analytics students from around the world competed in this year's competition. They each used the same data sets and software options to develop an equity portfolio optimization framework that improves the balance between risk and return on investment. In addition, the students were required to maintain a diverse portfolio that was fully invested at all times. "The O.R. & Analytics Student Team Competition is unique in its ability to highlight the incredible talent of the next generation of young O.R. and analytics professionals," said Melissa Moore, executive director of INFORMS. "By challenging students with complex, real-world problems, the competition provides them with valuable experience that will set them apart from their peers." "Our team is thrilled for the opportunity to not only compete against so many talented teams, but to challenge ourselves in ways that will better prepare us for the future," said Adina Marciano, student team leader. "This competition has shown us that we have the solid educational foundation necessary to launch successful careers." In addition to the team from The Hebrew University of Jerusalem, seven other universities were finalists in the 2018 competition: Hankuk University of Foreign Studies, Republic of Korea Ozye?in University, Turkey Queen's University, Canada Universidad de los Andes, Colombia University of Belgrade, Serbia University of Bern, Switzerland University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill, U.S. The winning team was announced at the 2018 INFORMS Business Analytics Conference, in Baltimore, MD, following a final oral presentation by each finalist team. Prior to the conference, finalists were selected by a panel of industry and academic experts based on each teams' use of the full analytics process, from framing the problem to methodology selection, data use, model building, and quantitative analysis. "Principal is proud to support this year's O.R. & Analytics Student Team Competition, and highlight the essential role that data management plays in addressing the many complex problems of financial investing and management," said Joseph Byrum, Chief Data Scientist, Principal Financial Group. ### For more information about the INFORMS O.R. & Analytics Student Team Competition, visit http://connect.informs.org/oratc/home. About INFORMS With 12,500 members from nearly 90 countries, INFORMS is the largest international association of operations research (O.R.) and analytics professionals and students. INFORMS provides unique networking and learning opportunities for individual professionals, and organizations of all types and sizes, to better understand and use O.R. and analytics tools and methods to transform strategic visions and achieve better outcomes. Visit http://www.informs.org or @informs. Username: Password: or Register Thread Rating: 2 Vote(s) - 3 Average 1 2 3 4 5 Page: 1 2 3 Trump is winning thats why the left is unraveling LoP Guest lop guest User ID: kaput 04-17-2018 10:49 PM Post: #1 Trump is winning thats why the left is unraveling Advertisement It must be working. How else to explain how nuts the lefts been acting of late? https://www.washingtontimes.com/news/201...ts-unrave/ President Donald Trump rode into office on the wings, in part, of a promise to clean up the Deep State, drain the swamp and boot from places of influence those whove worked behind the scenes to undo Americas greatness, one unconstitutional usurpation at a time.It must be working. How else to explain how nuts the lefts been acting of late? Spiddy Registered User User ID: 1337 04-17-2018 10:51 PM Posts: 18,026 Post: #2 RE: Trump is winning thats why the left is unraveling This the same Trump that just bombed Syria or are there two of them? As democracy is perfected, the office of president represents, more and more closely, the inner soul of the people. On some great and glorious day the plain folks of the land will reach their heart's desire at last and the White House will be adorned by a downright moron. H.L. Mencken 1920. Lexar7 lop guest User ID: 1337 04-17-2018 10:54 PM Post: #3 RE: Trump is winning thats why the left is unraveling Trump is an idiot and even his base is realizing that. He betrayed us on several fronts- He didnt drain the swamp he brought the everglades to Washington. Damrod lop guest User ID: 1337 04-17-2018 10:54 PM Post: #4 RE: Trump is winning thats why the left is unraveling Damrod lop guest User ID: 1337 04-17-2018 10:54 PM Post: #5 RE: Trump is winning thats why the left is unraveling Lexar7 Wrote: (04-17-2018 10:54 PM) Trump is an idiot and even his base is realizing that. He betrayed us on several fronts- He didnt drain the swamp he brought the everglades to Washington. Lexar7 lop guest User ID: 1337 04-17-2018 10:59 PM Post: #6 RE: Trump is winning thats why the left is unraveling Damrod Wrote: (04-17-2018 10:54 PM) Lexar7 Wrote: (04-17-2018 10:54 PM) Trump is an idiot and even his base is realizing that. He betrayed us on several fronts- He didnt drain the swamp he brought the everglades to Washington. link to image: http://i66.tinypic.com/kf1s3d.jpg No baiting anyone dude. I was a huge Trump supporter but after he betrayed us on nearly every level I can admit I was duped. Even Ann Coulter who wrote the book "In Trump we trust" and supported him wholeheartedly thinks we were betrayed- As does Michael Savage who recently said "Trump bombed his base" All we have to say right now is that he "is better than Hillary"- And thats sad. An honest person can change their view based on new information and others 'stay the course' with blind support due to sunk cost fallacy and ego- Afraid to admit they were duped. Not everyone who disagrees is trolling- Not everything that doesnt fit your world view is 'fake news'. No baiting anyone dude.I was a huge Trump supporter but after he betrayed us on nearly every level I can admit I was duped.Even Ann Coulter who wrote the book "In Trump we trust" and supported him wholeheartedly thinks we were betrayed- As does Michael Savage who recently said "Trump bombed his base"All we have to say right now is that he "is better than Hillary"- And thats sad.An honest person can change their view based on new information and others 'stay the course' with blind support due to sunk cost fallacy and ego- Afraid to admit they were duped.Not everyone who disagrees is trolling- Not everything that doesnt fit your world view is 'fake news'. Damrod lop guest User ID: 1337 04-17-2018 11:02 PM Post: #7 RE: Trump is winning thats why the left is unraveling Lexar7 Wrote: (04-17-2018 10:59 PM) Damrod Wrote: (04-17-2018 10:54 PM) link to image: http://i66.tinypic.com/kf1s3d.jpg No baiting anyone dude. I was a huge Trump supporter but after he betrayed us on nearly every level I can admit I was duped. Even Ann Coulter who wrote the book "In Trump we trust" and supported him wholeheartedly thinks we were betrayed- As does Michael Savage who recently said "Trump bombed his base" All we have to say right now is that he "is better than Hillary"- And thats sad. An honest person can change their view based on new information and others 'stay the course' with blind support due to sunk cost fallacy and ego- Afraid to admit they were duped. Not everyone who disagrees is trolling- Not everything that doesnt fit your world view is 'fake news'. I get called a Trump supporter all the time but I really don't give a big sh*t anymore. I just like to make the lefturdian's heads explode. I wasn't happy the first time they bombed Syria and I damn sure ain't happy about this latest one. That was NOT what we voted for. Bah...like it matters. They were going to have this conflict no matter who got in office. It was just postponed a little bit with Trump. I get called a Trump supporter all the time but I really don't give a big sh*t anymore. I just like to make the lefturdian's heads explode.I wasn't happy the first time they bombed Syria and I damn sure ain't happy about this latest one.That was NOT what we voted for.Bah...like it matters. They were going to have this conflict no matter who got in office. It was just postponed a little bit with Trump. Lexar7 lop guest User ID: 1337 04-17-2018 11:08 PM Post: #8 RE: Trump is winning thats why the left is unraveling Damrod Wrote: (04-17-2018 11:02 PM) Lexar7 Wrote: (04-17-2018 10:59 PM) No baiting anyone dude. I was a huge Trump supporter but after he betrayed us on nearly every level I can admit I was duped. Even Ann Coulter who wrote the book "In Trump we trust" and supported him wholeheartedly thinks we were betrayed- As does Michael Savage who recently said "Trump bombed his base" All we have to say right now is that he "is better than Hillary"- And thats sad. An honest person can change their view based on new information and others 'stay the course' with blind support due to sunk cost fallacy and ego- Afraid to admit they were duped. Not everyone who disagrees is trolling- Not everything that doesnt fit your world view is 'fake news'. I get called a Trump supporter all the time but I really don't give a big sh*t anymore. I just like to make the lefturdian's heads explode. I wasn't happy the first time they bombed Syria and I damn sure ain't happy about this latest one. That was NOT what we voted for. Bah...like it matters. They were going to have this conflict no matter who got in office. It was just postponed a little bit with Trump. I agree- And that sad. I really thought we were getting something different. I gave him a year and even though I wasnt happy about the first Syria bombing I was willing to give him the benefit of the doubt and see what he does domestically and if he refrains from further attacks. I had fully given up on seeking political solutions since both sides were so corrupt- But I came out and supported Trump and gave him my vote in hopes that he really was an outsider who would elicit change. He's been a disaster. I could take the insane twitter meltdowns and the lack of professionalism if we were seeing real change in immigration and a return towards nationalist policies- He was merely globalism/neo-conservatism repackaged as populism and I fell for it. I agree- And that sad. I really thought we were getting something different.I gave him a year and even though I wasnt happy about the first Syria bombing I was willing to give him the benefit of the doubt and see what he does domestically and if he refrains from further attacks.I had fully given up on seeking political solutions since both sides were so corrupt- But I came out and supported Trump and gave him my vote in hopes that he really was an outsider who would elicit change.He's been a disaster. I could take the insane twitter meltdowns and the lack of professionalism if we were seeing real change in immigration and a return towards nationalist policies- He was merely globalism/neo-conservatism repackaged as populism and I fell for it. LoP Guest lop guest User ID: 1337 04-17-2018 11:25 PM Post: #9 RE: Trump is winning thats why the left is unraveling Lexar7 Wrote: (04-17-2018 11:08 PM) Damrod Wrote: (04-17-2018 11:02 PM) I get called a Trump supporter all the time but I really don't give a big sh*t anymore. I just like to make the lefturdian's heads explode. I wasn't happy the first time they bombed Syria and I damn sure ain't happy about this latest one. That was NOT what we voted for. Bah...like it matters. They were going to have this conflict no matter who got in office. It was just postponed a little bit with Trump. I agree- And that sad. I really thought we were getting something different. I gave him a year and even though I wasnt happy about the first Syria bombing I was willing to give him the benefit of the doubt and see what he does domestically and if he refrains from further attacks. I had fully given up on seeking political solutions since both sides were so corrupt- But I came out and supported Trump and gave him my vote in hopes that he really was an outsider who would elicit change. He's been a disaster. I could take the insane twitter meltdowns and the lack of professionalism if we were seeing real change in immigration and a return towards nationalist policies- He was merely globalism/neo-conservatism repackaged as populism and I fell for it. Yes Obama has been a disaster. 1,366 well sourced examples of Barack Obamas lies, lawbreaking, corruption, cronyism, hypocrisy, waste, etc. https://danfromsquirrelhill.wordpress.co...obama-252/ Yes Obama has been a disaster. 1,366 well sourced examples of Barack Obamas lies, lawbreaking, corruption, cronyism, hypocrisy, waste, etc. LoP Guest lop guest User ID: 1337 04-17-2018 11:25 PM Post: #10 RE: Trump is winning thats why the left is unraveling 1) Carried out military interventionism in Libya without Congressional approval In June 2011, U.S. Congressman Dennis Kucinich (D-Ohio) said that Obama had violated the Constitution when he launched military operations in Libya without Congressional approval. In April 2014, Ralph Nader said that Obama should be impeached for his actions in Libya. Lexar7 lop guest User ID: 1337 04-17-2018 11:30 PM Post: #11 RE: Trump is winning thats why the left is unraveling LoP Guest Wrote: (04-17-2018 11:25 PM) Lexar7 Wrote: (04-17-2018 11:08 PM) I agree- And that sad. I really thought we were getting something different. I gave him a year and even though I wasnt happy about the first Syria bombing I was willing to give him the benefit of the doubt and see what he does domestically and if he refrains from further attacks. I had fully given up on seeking political solutions since both sides were so corrupt- But I came out and supported Trump and gave him my vote in hopes that he really was an outsider who would elicit change. He's been a disaster. I could take the insane twitter meltdowns and the lack of professionalism if we were seeing real change in immigration and a return towards nationalist policies- He was merely globalism/neo-conservatism repackaged as populism and I fell for it. Yes Obama has been a disaster. 1,366 well sourced examples of Barack Obamas lies, lawbreaking, corruption, cronyism, hypocrisy, waste, etc. https://danfromsquirrelhill.wordpress.co...obama-252/ Yes, and I'm sure theres a thread to discuss Obama. This is exactly what I said in a previous post- The only thing we can say about trump is that he is better than Hillary would have been- And I'll add, better than Obama. However, is that what we voted for? So he's better than X is all we really have to say? Thats not good enough. Not for me. I was done voting for the 'lesser of two evils' since the mid 1990s- Yes, and I'm sure theres a thread to discuss Obama.This is exactly what I said in a previous post- The only thing we can say about trump is that he is better than Hillary would have been- And I'll add, better than Obama.However, is that what we voted for? So he's better than X is all we really have to say? Thats not good enough. Not for me.I was done voting for the 'lesser of two evils' since the mid 1990s- LoP Guest lop guest User ID: 1337 04-17-2018 11:58 PM Post: #12 RE: Trump is winning thats why the left is unraveling This is exactly what Trump voters voted for. Though most of them were and still are too ignorant to realize it. I started a thread the day he won the election but it was wiped with the purge. "Countdown to Draft and War with Iran" that is exactly what is in store. Maybe not the draft. But probably so, because Iran has 90 million paramilitary. LoP Guest lop guest User ID: 1337 04-17-2018 11:59 PM Post: #13 RE: Trump is winning thats why the left is unraveling yes the left is imploding.......... LoP Guest lop guest User ID: 1337 04-18-2018 12:00 AM Post: #14 RE: Trump is winning thats why the left is unraveling Lexar7 Wrote: (04-17-2018 11:30 PM) LoP Guest Wrote: (04-17-2018 11:25 PM) Yes Obama has been a disaster. 1,366 well sourced examples of Barack Obamas lies, lawbreaking, corruption, cronyism, hypocrisy, waste, etc. https://danfromsquirrelhill.wordpress.co...obama-252/ Yes, and I'm sure theres a thread to discuss Obama. This is exactly what I said in a previous post- The only thing we can say about trump is that he is better than Hillary would have been- And I'll add, better than Obama. However, is that what we voted for? So he's better than X is all we really have to say? Thats not good enough. Not for me. I was done voting for the 'lesser of two evils' since the mid 1990s- Obama told Israel to go Golly Gee Wilikers themselves every chance he got. He was bad. But not as bad as Trump. Time will show you this Obama told Israel to go Golly Gee Wilikers themselves every chance he got. He was bad. But not as bad as Trump. Time will show you this Lexar7 lop guest User ID: 1337 04-18-2018 12:06 AM Post: #15 RE: Trump is winning thats why the left is unraveling LoP Guest Wrote: (04-18-2018 12:00 AM) Lexar7 Wrote: (04-17-2018 11:30 PM) Yes, and I'm sure theres a thread to discuss Obama. This is exactly what I said in a previous post- The only thing we can say about trump is that he is better than Hillary would have been- And I'll add, better than Obama. However, is that what we voted for? So he's better than X is all we really have to say? Thats not good enough. Not for me. I was done voting for the 'lesser of two evils' since the mid 1990s- Obama told Israel to go Golly Gee Wilikers themselves every chance he got. He was bad. But not as bad as Trump. Time will show you this Yeah Trump does look like Israels bit*h- perhaps you're right. As of now Obama stands as the all time worst president in my lifetime but Trump may very well surpass him once all is said and done. I will say for certain that with Trump this hurts a whole lot more because I never expected much from Obama/Bush nor Clinton but I was hopeful with Trump. Yeah Trump does look like Israels bit*h-perhaps you're right. As of now Obama stands as the all time worst president in my lifetime but Trump may very well surpass him once all is said and done.I will say for certain that with Trump this hurts a whole lot more because I never expected much from Obama/Bush nor Clinton but I was hopeful with Trump. Advertisement A study headed by IRB Barcelona provides the first direct evidence of beta-amyloid dimers (two proteins joined together) in patients with Alzheimer's disease and points to the potential of these molecules as biomarkers. The most widely used biomarkers for the early detection of Alzheimer's disease (AD) are currently the concentrations of beta-amyloid and phosphorylated Tau in cerebrospinal fluid. However, it has been observed that not all individuals with alterations in these biomarkers develop the disease. In this regard, intense research efforts are being channelled into finding new biological markers that can provide information about the different stages of the disease and allow its early detection, and thus facilitate its management. A study headed by researchers at the Institute for Research in Biomedicine (IRB Barcelona) and the Institut Europeen de Chimie et Biologie (IECB) in France proposes that the presence of two beta-amyloid molecules bound together (beta-amyloid dimers) could provide a new biomarker for AD. In search of new markers for Alzheimer's disease Molecular research into AD had already established a correlation between the concentration of beta-amyloid dimers and the onset of the disease. But the nature of these dimers has been hotly debated because it was not known whether the two beta-amyloid molecules that form the dimer were linked by a chemical bond or not. This information is important because if this chemical bond is not present, the dimer can be broken when manipulating the samples during lab analysis, thereby hindering accurate measurement of its concentration. Headed by researcher Natalia Carulla, currently group leader at IECB, the team at IRB Barcelona and IECB has studied the chemical and structural properties of beta-amyloid dimers in close collaboration with IRB Barcelona's Mass Spectrometry Facility, managed by Marta Vilaseca. Postdoctoral fellow Aurelio Vazquez de la Torre and Senior Research Officer Marina Gay, the two first authors of the study, which was published in Analytical Chemistry, demonstrate that the bonds between the two beta-amyloid molecules are covalent, meaning that the molecules are held together by chemical links that are very strong and impossible to break during brain extraction. These findings were achieved using brain tissue samples from two patients with AD and a control. The researchers conclude that the beta-amyloid dimers are covalently linked in the brains of subjects with AD and that therefore they emerge as potential biomarkers of the disease, as well as therapeutic targets. "We have confirmed the potential of these dimers as biomarkers. We have found that the dimers are preserved during the tissue extraction procedure used in the lab and are consequently identical to those in the brains of patients with AD. Furthermore, we have developed a robust and sensitive method that allows us to study the dimers in any biological sample," explain Aurelio Vazquez de la Torre, a member of Natalia Carulla's team, and Marina Gay, who works in the Mass Spectrometry Platform. In this regard, these researchers have fine-tuned the techniques that have allowed the identification and characterisation of the dimers. "Because we can't work with the brains of living subjects, we now need to determine whether these dimers are present in the cerebrospinal fluid of individuals with Alzheimers disease and then perform clinical trials to associate their presence with the stage of AD. We propose that it is now feasible to validate the dimers as biomarkers for this disease," says Carulla. ### Reference article: Aurelio Vazquez de la Torre, Marina Gay, Silvia Vilaprinyo-Pascual, Roberta Mazzucato, Montserrat Serra-Batiste, Marta Vilaseca, Natalia Carulla Direct Evidence of the Presence of Cross-Linked A Dimers in the Brains of Alzheimer's Disease Patients Anal. Chem. (2018) doi: 10.1021/acs.analchem.7b04936 Listeria costaricensis is the official name given to the new bacterial species described by investigators from the Costa Rican Institute of Technology (TEC) and the WHO-collaborating center on Listeria at Institut Pasteur. Listeria is a bacterial genus comprising 18 species. Two of them are pathogenic to humans and animals, upon consumption of contaminated food. Listeria monocytogenes, the best characterized pathogenic species, can cause gastroenteritis, septicemia and central nervous system infection, mostly in immunocompromised individuals, as well as fetal and neonatal infection. While the new species Listeria costaricensis is non-pathogenic, its characterization will nonetheless increase our understanding of the pathogenic potential of Listeria. "The discovery of Listeria costaricensis will allow comparisons with pathogenic Listeria species, in order to better understand the behavior and adaptations of these bacterial pathogens," explained TEC biotechnologist Kattia Nunez. Listeria costaricensis was isolated from water collected at an industrial drainage area in the Costa Rican province of Alajuela, after three years of sample collection and research. "In Costa Rica, there have been few studies on microbiological diversity. Our recent finding reflects the biodiversity of Costa Rican soils and suggests that this Central American country is a fertile environment for this type of research," added Javier Pizarro-Cerda, Research Director at the Institut Pasteur, who participated in the study and now heads the Yersinia Research Unit. For Marc Lecuit, head of Biology of Infection Unit at Institut Pasteur and French National Reference Center for Listeria (page in French), this collaboration illustrates the public health and scientific dimensions of the activities of the WHO-collaborating center on Listeria, which assists colleagues from around the world on the characterization of Listeria isolates. Listeria costaricensis has been registered in the microorganism collections of the Institut Pasteur in Paris and in the DSMZ, in Germany; its description was published in the International Journal of Systematic and Evolutionary Microbiology (30.01.2018, Vol. 68: 844-850). Following this discovery, the Institut Pasteur and TEC, who have been engaged in informal collaborations since 2013, signed a cooperation agreement to facilitate the continuation of collaborative work between the two institutions. ### Morris Animal Foundation has awarded a $775,000 grant to the University of Pennsylvania to test a vaccine that could improve longevity and quality of life for dogs with the deadly bone tumor, osteosarcoma. The research team will conduct clinical trials to evaluate a novel immunotherapy treatment which combines a molecule expressed by cancer cells with a modified live form of the bacteria Listeria monocytogenes. A pilot study demonstrated this combination elicited a powerful, targeted immune response directed against osteosarcoma cells in patients suffering from this type of cancer. "This could be an incredible breakthrough in the fight against osteosarcoma, a highly aggressive and deadly cancer," said Dr. Kelly Diehl, Senior Scientific Programs and Communications Adviser at Morris Animal Foundation. "For the last 50 years, Morris Animal Foundation has been funding cancer studies, and this is one of the largest, single grants we have ever awarded. The results of the pilot study were so compelling, that we knew we had to support this research team and their progression to a clinical trial." The vaccine supplements standard osteosarcoma treatment of amputation and chemotherapy by attacking cancer cells that have spread to other organs. The vaccine was created by removing harmful genes from the Listeria bacteria and then attaching markers of osteosarcoma cells. The bacteria serves as a delivery system to introduce the cancer marker to the patient's immune system and instruct it to eliminate the tumor cells that express this marker. After receiving the vaccine, the patient's immune system attacks the weakened bacteria, discovers the cancer cell marker, and then seeks out and destroys the cancer cells remaining in the body that were previously unrecognized by the immune system. "We know that the traditional standard-of-care treatments we use for osteosarcoma are not effective at eliminating all tumor cells because, despite standard of care, the majority of dogs still die from metastatic disease," said Dr. Nicola Mason, Associate Professor of Medicine at the University of Pennsylvania School of Veterinary Medicine. "This immunotherapeutic approach is very promising as it induces a patient's own immune system to combat cancer cells, wherever they may be, from within." Researchers tested the vaccine in a pilot study with 18 dogs. Those that received the vaccine lived more than twice as long as the historical, matched, control group, with median survival times of 956 days compared to 423 days. The current prospective, controlled, clinical trial, funded by Morris Animal Foundation and performed through the Comparative Oncology Trials Consortium at the National Institutes of Health, will evaluate this novel immunotherapy in 80 dogs at 11 of the top, university-based veterinary centers across the United States. The study will compare the immune responses and progression free and overall survival of immunized dogs to a group of dogs that received standard of care alone. The study also will address the ability of the immunotherapy to retard metastatic disease in enrolled patients that develop metastatic disease prior to their scheduled receipt of the immunotherapy. Osteosarcoma is the most common primary bone tumor in canine patients. It is estimated to occur in more than 10,000 dogs annually, most often in larger breeds, and kills more than 85 percent of its victims within two years. This is often due to the cancer's ability to metastasize to other parts of the body, even after the original tumors were treated. This study is the most recent in a series of osteosarcoma research projects funded by Morris Animal Foundation following the launch of an osteosarcoma initiative by the Foundation in 2015 to fight metastatic disease in osteosarcoma. ### Other osteosarcoma research projects funded by the Foundation include: Metabolic drivers of osteosarcoma tumors Evaluating the effectiveness of oral rapamycin and an adjunct therapy Establishing a stand-of-care control group for osteosarcoma treatment studies Predicting chemotherapy drug response for dogs with osteosarcoma Looking for new targeted therapies for dogs with osteosarcoma Understanding why and how canine osteosarcoma spreads About Morris Animal Foundation Morris Animal Foundation's mission is to bridge science and resources to advance the health of animals. Founded by a veterinarian in 1948, we fund and conduct critical health studies for the benefit of all animals. Learn more at morrisanimalfoundation.org New biomarker is 98 percent effective at distinguishing benign from malignant lung tumors, report investigators at the Medical University of South Carolina in the journal Chest Every year, health care providers in the United States discover more than 1.6 million lung nodules in patients. Many are "incidentally detected," meaning they are found during evaluation for an unrelated cause (for example, a chest X-ray after a fall). Although 75 to 85 percent of these incidentally detected nodules turn out to be benign, they can pose a diagnostic dilemma for providers. Patients with high-risk nodules may require more invasive testing such as biopsy or even surgery to remove the nodule. However, when there's a low-to-moderate probability of cancer -- anywhere from 5 to 65 percent -- providers may debate who should be monitored with serial PET or CT scans and who should undergo potentially complex diagnostic tests. Recently, researchers at the Medical University of South Carolina (MUSC) participated in a multicenter clinical trial to evaluate the accuracy of a blood test, or "biomarker," that measures the levels of two proteins in a patient's plasma, LG3BP and C163A, integrated with clinical predictors of cancer, such as age, size of the nodule and other nodule characteristics. These proteins are common predictors of lung cancer. In the study, the biomarker was 98 percent effective at distinguishing benign from malignant nodules. Gerard A. Silvestri, M.D., M.S., a lung cancer pulmonologist at the MUSC Hollings Cancer Center who holds the George C. and Margaret M. Hillenbrand Endowed Chair in thoracic oncology, led the study. Results were reported in an article published online in the journal Chest on March 1, 2018. The biomarker works like this: If a patient has less than a 50 percent chance of having cancer and the test result is negative for the integrated classifier, it's likely not cancer. The biomarker can offer the provider confidence in a diagnosis and treatment plan. "It serves as a 'rule out' test for those with low-to-moderate risk," says Silvestri. "The biomarker is a tool to help calculate the general risk of cancer and present a patient with recommendations and options. It can push people out of indeterminate risk and into low-risk -- without having to undergo invasive and potential risky procedures." Biopsies and surgeries can be complicated in an organ as delicate as the lung. "Think of your lung as a two-liter bottle of soda, and the nodule as a pea in the center of it," explains Silvestri. "During a biopsy, for example, the lung could collapse and need a tube to expand it. Our goals for this biomarker are to help calculate the risk of cancer, present the patient with options and recommendations and avoid subjecting patients with benign disease to expensive, unnecessary and intrusive procedures." Even if biomarker results are negative, patients will need ongoing CT scans to monitor a lung nodule. "A low-risk tumor will be followed with serial imaging. After two years of CT scans being performed periodically and without evidence of growth, we can say it's benign," Silvestri says. This research is part of the Pulmonary Nodule Plasma Proteomic Classifier (PANOPTIC) study, a clinical trial of 685 patients 40 years old or older, with newly discovered lung nodules 8 to 30 millimeters in diameter as shown on a recent (fewer than 60 days old) CT scan. If the biomarker's results in the PANOPTIC study had been used to direct care (they were not), 40 percent fewer procedures would have been performed on patients with benign nodules. The next step in bringing this test to the clinic would be to conduct a "clinical utility" study to show how using this biomarker might affect physician and patient behavior. "Anything to provide physicians with more confidence in how they would manage patients would be helpful," Silvestri says. "The goal of this research, and other research like this, is to quickly evaluate and treat patients with cancerous nodules, while never exposing patients who don't have cancer to invasive costly and sometimes risky procedures." ### The study was funded by Integrated Diagnostics, Inc. but The sponsor had no role in the design of the study, the collection and analysis of the data, or the preparation of the manuscript. About MUSC Founded in 1824 in Charleston, The Medical University of South Carolina is the oldest medical school in the South. Today, MUSC continues the tradition of excellence in education, research, and patient care. MUSC educates and trains more than 3,000 students and residents, and has nearly 13,000 employees, including approximately 1,500 faculty members. As the largest non-federal employer in Charleston, the university and its affiliates have collective annual budgets in excess of $2.2 billion. MUSC operates a 750-bed medical center, which includes a nationally recognized Children's Hospital, the Ashley River Tower (cardiovascular, digestive disease, and surgical oncology), Hollings Cancer Center (a National Cancer Institute designated center) Level I Trauma Center, and Institute of Psychiatry. For more information on academic information or clinical services, visit musc.edu. For more information on hospital patient services, visit muschealth.org. About MUSC Hollings Cancer Center The Hollings Cancer Center at the Medical University of South Carolina is a National Cancer Institute-designated cancer center and the largest academic-based cancer research program in South Carolina. The cancer center comprises more than 120 faculty cancer scientists with an annual research funding portfolio of $44 million and a dedication to reducing the cancer burden in South Carolina. Hollings offers state-of-the-art diagnostic capabilities, therapies and surgical techniques within multidisciplinary clinics that include surgeons, medical oncologists, radiation therapists, radiologists, pathologists, psychologists and other specialists equipped for the full range of cancer care, including more than 200 clinical trials. For more information, visit http://www.hollingscancercenter.org Children in sub-Saharan African settings with uncomplicated fever may be safely managed with conditional, rather than universal, 3-day follow-up with a community health worker (CHW), according to two cluster-randomized, community-based non-inferiority trials published this week in PLOS Medicine. The trials, conducted by Luke C. Mullany of the Johns Hopkins Bloomberg School of Public Health, Baltimore, Maryland, United States, and Karin Kallander of Malaria Consortium, London, United Kingdom and the Karolinska Institutet, Stockholm, Sweden, and their colleagues, suggest that current World Health Organization (WHO) guidance for these children could be reconsidered. The WHO's integrated community case management (iCCM) guidelines recommend that all children presenting with uncomplicated fever and no danger signs return for follow-up on day 3 following the initial consultation on day 1. Such fevers often resolve rapidly, however, and previous studies suggest that expectant home care for uncomplicated fever can be safely recommended. In the two trials, conducted at sites in the Democratic Republic of the Congo (DRC) and in Ethiopia, each with approximately 4000 participants, results suggest that conditional follow-up is non-inferior to universal follow-up for these children. In Mullany and colleagues' primary analysis in DRC, failure at day 8 (caregiver-reported fever, malaria, diarrhea, pneumonia, or decline of health status) was similar (difference: -0.7%, 95% CI: ??, 4.1%) in the conditional follow-up group (n = 188, 9.7%) compared to the universal follow-up group (n = 230, 10.4%). In Kallander and colleagues' analysis in Ethiopia, failure at day 8 was also similar (difference: ?3.81%, 95% CI ??, 0.65%) in the conditional follow-up group (n = 16, 0.8%) compared to the universal follow-up group (n = 90, 4.6%). The primary result from Kallander and colleagues' trial in Ethiopia meets the pre-specified non-inferiority criterion, while Mullany and colleagues' trial results from the DRC suggest that any difference in failures is small. Additional trials in other sub-Saharan African settings are needed to establish generalizability. However, taken together, the current results provide evidence relevant to formulation of WHO recommendations. Kallander and colleagues state, "Allowing CHWs to advise caregivers to bring children back only in case of continued symptoms might be a more efficient use of resources in these settings." ### Research Article - Mullany et al. Funding: This study was funded by the United States Agency for International Development under Translating Research into Action, Cooperative Agreement No. GHS-A-00-09-00015-00. The funder was involved in the design and conceptualization of the study but had no role in data collection and analysis, decision to publish, or preparation of the manuscript. Competing Interests: The authors have declared that no competing interests exist. Citation: Mullany LC, van Boetzelaer EW, Gutman JR, Steinhardt LC, Ngoy P, Barbera Lainez Y, et al. (2018) Universal versus conditional day 3 follow-up for children with non-severe unclassified fever at the community level in the Democratic Republic of the Congo: A cluster-randomized, community-based non-inferiority trial. PLoS Med 15(4): e1002552. https://doi.org/10.1371/journal.pmed.1002552 Author Affiliations: Department of International Health, Johns Hopkins Bloomberg School of Public Health, Baltimore, Maryland, United States of America International Rescue Committee, Kalemie, Democratic Republic of the Congo Malaria Branch, Division of Parasitic Diseases and Malaria, Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, Atlanta, Georgia, United States of America International Rescue Committee, New York, New York, United States of America In your coverage please use this URL to provide access to the freely available paper: http://journals.plos.org/plosmedicine/article?id=10.1371/journal.pmed.1002552 Research Article - Kallander et al. Funding: This study was made possible by the support of the U.S. President's Malaria Initiative under the United States Agency for International Development's Translating Research into Action (TRAction) Project, Cooperative Agreement No. GHS-A-00-09- 00015-00. The funder was involved in the design and conceptualization of the study but had no role in data collection and analysis, decision to publish, or preparation of the manuscript. Competing Interests: The authors have declared that no competing interests exist. Citation: Kallander K, Alfven T, Funk T, Abebe A, Hailemariam A, Getachew D, et al. (2018) Universal versus conditional day 3 follow-up for children with non-severe unclassified fever at the community level in Ethiopia: A cluster-randomised non-inferiority trial. PLoS Med 15(4): e1002553. https://doi.org/10.1371/journal.pmed.1002553 Author Affiliations: Malaria Consortium, London, United Kingdom Department of Public Health Sciences, Karolinska Institutet, Stockholm, Sweden Sachs' Children and Youth Hospital, Stockholm, Sweden Malaria Consortium, Addis Ababa, Ethiopia Health Metrics, Sahlgrenska Academy, University of Gothenburg, Gothenburg, Sweden School of Public Health, Faculty of Health Sciences, University of the Witwatersrand, Johannesburg, South Africa Malaria Branch, Division of Parasitic Diseases and Malaria, Center for Global Health, US Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, Atlanta, Georgia, United States of America In your coverage please use this URL to provide access to the freely available paper: http://journals.plos.org/plosmedicine/article?id=10.1371/journal.pmed.1002553 Berger, known for his pioneering discoveries related to early human and hominin evolution, will be part of Museum's new Center for the Exploration of the Human Journey; one of his "underground astronauts" will serve as director of new Center DALLAS (April 17, 2018) - The Perot Museum of Nature and Science in Dallas has formed a partnership with internationally renowned paleoanthropologist Dr. Lee Berger, whose groundbreaking work has rewritten the way early human and hominin evolution is understood. Berger recently dominated world headlines in science with his discovery of Homo naledi, a new species of human relative, which garnered cover stories in Time, National Geographic, Scientific American and more. A National Geographic Explorer-in-Residence and professor of paleoanthropology at the University of the Witwatersrand in South Africa, Berger also was recognized as one of the 100 most influential people in the world by Time Magazine in 2016. (See complete bio at end of release.) Berger's alliance with the Perot Museum is part of a new strategic focus on human origins called the Center for the Exploration of the Human Journey, for which he will serve as the Center's Distinguished Science Advisor. The Center will focus on supporting, curating and disseminating the dynamic research developed by Berger and his team of more than 160 scientists working around the world. The Museum also will act as a knowledge and expertise communications hub for paleoanthropology, a "gateway science" to all other biological sciences. "Dr. Lee Berger is one of the most innovative names in anthropology today, so this is an enormous win for the Perot Museum of Nature and Science," said Dr. Linda Silver, the Eugene McDermott Chief Executive Officer of the Perot Museum of Nature and Science. "While we have the privilege to affiliate with one of science's most dynamic leaders, the Museum, in turn, will be the key conduit to bring the science of the human journey - its process and the outcomes - to the public." Berger was introduced to Museum leaders by one of its founding donors, Lyda Hill, who has been a long-time supporter of Dr. Berger's groundbreaking work in the field of paleoanthropology. He was the very first National Geographic Explorer to speak at the Perot Museum. Joining Berger in this endeavor will be his colleague, Dr. Becca Peixotto, a research scientist who has been named director of the Center for the Exploration of the Human Journey. Peixotto gained fame as one of six scientists - dubbed the "underground astronauts" - who all happened to be women. They excavated the bones of Homo naledi from a deep cave complex in the Rising Star Cave System, near Johannesburg, South Africa. Piexotto, who completed her Ph.D. in archaeology at American University a year ago, will move to Dallas and serve on a full-time basis at the Museum. She will assume her duties in May. "I'm excited to collaborate with the Perot Museum of Nature and Science and help guide their new Center for the Exploration of the Human Journey," said Berger. "In a few short years, the Perot Museum has demonstrated a quest for excellence and a desire to innovate, which is in sync with my team's goals. The opportunity to share our learnings with visitors and educators, inspire young minds and even create a field school in South Africa is powerful, and I look forward to the partnership." As part of the partnership, Berger will support the Museum's work and initiatives, providing them access to his field sites in South Africa and collaborating on numerous programs that will be launched in the future. These projects include the development of temporary exhibits featuring authentic fossil material and hosted exclusively at the Perot Museum; design of virtual reality and augmented virtual reality experiences that showcase Dr. Berger's field sites (the first pilot of which will be unveiled in the Museum's newly transformed Being Human Hall in mid-May); creation of online access to content for teachers, students and the general public; delivery of teacher professional-development and school programs; and implementation of public education programs including hands-on, in-depth workshops for the Perot Museum's BioLab. Long-term plans include the development and implementation of a field school and museum travel programs to South Africa. "The alliance with Dr. Lee Berger, supporting our strategic focus on centers of excellence, will position the Perot Museum as a global leader in the exploration of what it means to be human. More importantly, our ability to engage audiences on the relevant discoveries and scientific process will no doubt power our mission to inspire the next generation of scientists, thinkers and explorers," said Hernan J.F. Saenz, III, Chairman of the Perot Museum Board of Directors. The Perot Museum of Nature and Science opened in late 2012 and has since welcomed more than 5.5 million people, reached 1.2 million students through field trips and educational programs, engaged 90,000 North Texans through community outreach and awarded $2 million in school financial aid. Designed by 2005 Pritzker Architecture Prize Laureate Thom Mayne and his firm Morphosis Architects, the Museum has been lauded for its artistry and sustainability. It is considered the top cultural attraction in Dallas/Fort Worth and is a Michelin Green Guide three-star destination. For images and photo credits, go to https://bit.ly/2H418RN. ### About the Perot Museum of Nature and Science The top cultural attraction in Dallas/Fort Worth and a Michelin Green Guide three-star destination, the Perot Museum of Nature and Science is a nonprofit educational organization located in the heart of Dallas, Texas, with campuses in Victory Park and Fair Park. With a mission to inspire minds through nature and science, the Perot Museum delivers exciting, engaging and innovative visitor and outreach experiences through its education, exhibition, and research and collections programming for children, students, teachers, families and life-long learners. The 180,000-square-foot facility in Victory Park opened in December 2012 and is now recognized as the symbolic gateway to the Dallas Arts District. Future scientists, mathematicians and engineers will find inspiration and enlightenment through 11 permanent exhibit halls on five floors of public space; a children's museum; a state-of-the art traveling exhibition hall; and The Hoglund Foundation Theater, a National Geographic Experience. Designed by 2005 Pritzker Architecture Prize Laureate Thom Mayne and his firm Morphosis Architects, the Victory Park museum has been lauded for its artistry and sustainability. To learn more, please visit perotmuseum.org About Lee Berger Lee R. Berger Ph.D. D.Sc. FRSSAf ASSAf is an award-winning researcher, explorer, author and speaker. He is the recipient of the National Geographic Society's first Prize for Research and Exploration, the Academy of Achievement's Golden Plate Award, and was the 2016 National Geographic Society's Rolex Explorer of the Year. His work has brought him recognition as a Fellow of the Royal Society of South Africa, Royal Geographical Society, Explorers Club and the South African Academy of Sciences and prominent advisory positions including the Chairmanship of the Fulbright Commission of South Africa, the Senior Advisory Board of the Global Young Academy and the Centre of Excellence in PalaeoSciences of South Africa among many others. His explorations into human origins on the African continent, Asia and Micronesia for the past two and a half decades have resulted in many new discoveries, including the discovery of two new species of early human relatives - Australopithecus sediba and Homo naledi. He is the author of more than two hundred scholarly and popular works and his work has been featured three times on the cover of Science and has been named the top 100 science stories of the year by Time, Scientific American and Discover Magazine on numerous occasions. He is Director of both the Malapa site and Rising Star excavations, the latter resulting in the discovery of the largest primitive hominin assemblage in history. He is also the Division Director of Palaeoanthropology in the Evolutionary Studies Institute at the University of the Witwatersrand. He holds a Ph.D. in palaeoanthropology and a Doctor of Science in the same field. What happens when researchers and social media combine forces in the name of science? A rare wildflower from the US and a team of Twitter-savvy botanists tell us a tale of symbiosis between science and modern technology. While hunting for the Pennsylvania state-endangered golden corydalis on steep 350-foot cliffs for a new episode of his YouTube video series, "Plants are Cool, Too!" in the heat of summer 2017, Bucknell University Professor Chris Martine and team stumbled across some interesting specimens of the enigmatic coral-bell genus Heuchera. Posting an image of this find on Twitter, little did Martine (@MartineBotany) know that one casual Tweet of a bumblebee on what he thought was Heuchera americana would not only stir a heated discussion among fellow botanists, but also lead to the unexpected-for-this-region record of the rare and globally imperiled Appalachian endemic Heuchera alba. The first to recognize the rare species on the tweeted image was Ryan Folk (@ry_folk), Florida Museum of Natural History. Surprised by this record, possibly the first for Pennsylvania, Martine tagged his fellow twitter-savvy botanist and plant conservation specialist with the Pennsylvania Natural Heritage Program at the Western Pennsylvania Conservancy, Scott Schuette (@mossman2000). The continuing discussion revealed that a another possible state record of H. alba was recently posted by Schuette himself on citizen science biodiversity observations tool iNaturalist.org. After examining specimens they collected while rappelling along the cliffs, the team turned to historical collections held at the Wayne E. Manning Herbarium (BUPL) at Bucknell University to further science-proof their Twitter-fueled discovery. What they learned was that local botanists had been misidentifying this species for over a century. Armed with new data on the habitat preferences of H. alba, the researchers discovered seven more populations of the rare plant that represent a significant range expansion for a species previously known only from small populations in the mountains of Virginia and West Virginia. The new observations and inferences, along with tips for how others might also locate and protect more populations of H. alba, is now published in the open access journal PhytoKeys. The Twitter identification of this species in Pennsylvania is an exciting outcome that provides a model for the sorts of strides we can make when botanists embrace a combination of modern and classical approaches to discovery and collaboration. "Importantly, this discovery is not just a cool showcase for how science and modern communications outlets can work together, it also gave us key information on the status of H. alba that can guide future conservation efforts," says Martine on the scientific value of this discovery. Martine features Schuette and study co-author Jason Cantley, of San Francisco State University, in the latest episode of "Plants are Cool, Too!", where viewers can learn more about the steep cliffs inhabited by H. alba and the efforts of local volunteers to preserve them. ### Original Source: Schuette S, Folk RA, Cantley JT, Martine CT (2018) The hidden Heuchera: How science Twitter uncovered a globally imperiled species in Pennsylvania, USA. PhytoKeys 96: 87-97. https://doi.org/10.3897/phytokeys.96.23667 A team of researchers from the National Institute of Informatics (NII) in Tokyo and NTT Basic Research Laboratories (BRL, Nippon Telegraph and Telephone Corporation) in Japan have published an explanation of how quantum systems may be able to heat up by cooling down. The paper appeared recently in Physical Review Letters in February of 2018. "Heating by cooling sounds rather counter-intuitive, but if the system has symmetries, decay could mean many things," says Kae Nemoto, a Professor in the Principles of Informatics Research Division at NII which is part of the Inter-University Research Institute Corporation Research Organization of Information and Systems (ROIS). Nemoto and her team examined a double sub-domain system coupled to a single constant temperature reservoir. Each sub-domain contained multiple spins--a form of angular momentum carried by elementary particles such as electrons and nuclei. The researchers considered the situation where the spins within each sub-domain are aligned with respect to each other but the sub-domains themselves are oppositely aligned (for instance all up in one and all down in the second). This creates a certain symmetry in the system. As time progresses, the components of the subdomain decay in a process called relaxation. "Usually, we expect both domains to decay to the reservoir temperature; however, when the two domains coupled with a reservoir maintain a certain symmetry, the decay process can apparently heat the smaller domain up, even beyond the high temperature limit," Nemoto said. The researchers can control the domains to some extent, while the reservoir is actually a much larger, unknown entity that can be characterized by macroscopic parameters, such as temperature. They use this system to predict new dynamics and explore the multiple levels of thermalization, such as the decay in one subdomain exciting the components of another subdomain. "Cooling processes can now heat a subsystem up," Nemoto said. "Our case is mathematically rather simple, but it indicates the rich dynamics caused by quantum dissipative processes." Since not all systems have symmetry, Nemoto and her team would like to further examine the complex interactions between the subdomains and reservoir. "We will investigate more of these counter-intuitive decay dynamics and show when and how exactly we can see these dynamics," Nemoto said, noting that these effects could be used to design and control quantum systems. ### The team for this project was Yusuke Hama, a postdoctoral research fellow at NII, William Munro, a senior distinguished scientist at NTT Basic Research Laboratories (also a visiting professor at NII) and Kae Nemoto. This work was supported in part by Japan's Ministry of Education, Culture, Sports, Science and Technology, as well as Japan's Society for the Promotion of Science. Global Research Center for Quantum Information Science National Institute of Informatics The Global Research Center for Quantum Information Science at the National Institute of Informatics brings together computer scientists, physicists, mathematicians and engineers to establish the foundations of quantum information science and technology while exploring the advantages a quantum world could provide. Our center provides the opportunity and environment for researchers from different backgrounds to collaborate effectively with each other. New researchers are always welcome to join these activities. About the Research Organization of Information and Systems (ROIS) The Research Organization of Information and Systems (ROIS) is a parent organization of four national institutes (National Institute of Polar Research, National Institute of Informatics, the Institute of Statistical Mathematics and National Institute of Genetics) and the Joint Support-Center for Data Science Research. It is our mission to promote integrated, cutting-edge research that goes beyond the barriers of these institutions, in addition to facilitating their research activities, as members of inter-university research institutes. The coordination of these institutions, facilitated by ROIS, will contribute to opening new areas of research and performing integrated transdisciplinary research. This framework will allow a holistic approach to the complex issues of life, earth, environmental and social sciences, including the generation of large scale and heterogeneous data from observations, measurements and experiments, knowledge extraction from these data, discovery of scientific truths, technological advancements in database construction and implementation. We will also widely share with the community, the outcomes, resources and research platforms necessary for new frontiers of research. Informatics methodologies utilized to elucidate complex systems, research and development related to advanced usage of databases and networks, in addition to operation of databases and networks will also enable us to serve as an information platform that will support rapid and effective development of research both in Japan and abroad. Gosselies, Belgium - April 17, 2018: OncoDNA ("OncoDNA or "the Company"), the healthcare technology company that collates and translates complex cancer biomarker data to make precision medicine a reality, is pleased to announce the publication of a study in the journal Oncotarget evaluating the utility of OncoDNA's comprehensive biomarker analysis and interpretation services in clinical settings. The study, published online today and titled "The clinical impact of using complex molecular profiling strategies in routine oncology practice", found that combining advanced, comprehensive testing of cancer biomarkers with OncoDNA's proprietary cancer treatment knowledge database can enable oncologists to make better treatment decisions for their patients. This is because OncoDNA's testing combines immunohistochemistry, next generation sequencing (NGS), and other tests including inherited heart condition testing, DNA methylation, and microsatellite instability (MSI) testing, rather than the industry standard of NGS testing alone. The study analysed samples from 1,057 late-stage and advanced grade cancer patients from over 30 different countries on four continents between January 2015 and January 2016 for whom at least one standard of care treatment had already failed. Samples were analysed either by the sequencing of a solid biopsy only - with either a hotspot panel or comprehensive panel including more than 400 genes - or the study of biomarkers determined by immunohistochemistry and other biomolecular tests, or a combination of both. In order to assess the utility of tumour profiling in clinical practice, the study also analysed the therapeutic decisions made by oncologists after receiving OncoDNA's tumour analysis and treatment recommendation. Overall, OncoDNA's treatment recommendation was followed in 60.4% of cases and in 99% of the cases that did not follow the recommendation the cited reason was drug unavailability or cost, not clinical consideration. The vast majority of treatment decisions (93.4%) were made based on OncoDNA's combination of tests rather than NGS alone. This is a substantial increase on NGS testing alone, which will typically yield a treatment recommendation in only 30% of cases. For the cases in which OncoDNA's treatment recommendation was followed, 27% of patients had an overall survival of >12 months, a significant improvement for late-stage patients, who normally have a life expectancy of no more than six months. Jean-Pol Detiffe, Chief Executive Officer of OncoDNA, said: "This dataset demonstrates the utility and power of OncoDNA's proprietary, living database and our holistic approach to genomic and molecular profiling. For oncologists, the study suggests our testing and analysis products could represent the best way to make informed therapeutic decisions in clinical practice. Not only were OncoDNA's recommendations followed in the majority of cases, but the study also suggests that our comprehensive testing and analyses could represent the best approach for obtaining useful molecular insight, while reducing physicians' exposure to irrelevant aberrations. As we continue to expand our business through Europe and beyond, these results will help raise awareness of the benefits of our product offering among oncologists and further the healthcare industry's ability to prescribe precision medicine." ### About OncoDNA OncoDNA is a private, oncology-focused healthcare technology company that combines advanced, comprehensive testing of all clinically relevant cancer biomarkers (DNA, RNA and protein profiles) from both solid and liquid biopsies with a proprietary cancer treatment knowledge database called OncoKDM that continuously 'learns' from cutting-edge, validated, scientific and medical advances. This one-stop-shop analysis and interpretation service gives oncologists actionable results to enable the selection of treatments tailored to an individual patient's cancer profile. OncoDNA also works in collaboration with the biopharma industry to develop and deliver the treatments of tomorrow by assisting with design, enrolment and assessment of clinical trials as well as increasing access to approved precision medicines. The company is based in Gosselies, Belgium, and employs c. 55 employees in four countries. Contact OncoDNA+32 (0) 71 18 35 0 Jean-Pol Detiffe, CEO Jean-Francois Laes, CSO Three Texas Tech University Health Sciences Center El Paso (TTUHSC El Paso) faculty members were honored recently with the 2018 Tinsley Harrison Award for the best original manuscript published in The American Journal of the Medical Sciences (AJMS, December 2016). Irene Sarosiek, M.D., professor in the Department of Internal Medicine, was the lead writer of the article, titled "Gastric pH and Therapeutic Responses to Esomeprazole in Patients with Functional Dyspepsia: Potential Clinical Implications." The report was the culmination of years of teamwork in completing a study designed by Dr. Sarosiek's husband, Jerzy Sarosiek, M.D., Ph.D., associate chairman for research in the Department of Internal Medicine. In addition to the Sarosieks, TTUHSC El Paso Professor Richard McCallum, M.D., was a contributing author of the article. The study looked at treatments for patients with functional dyspepsia, or patients who are feeling stomach pain with no obvious cause, like an ulcer or erosion in the stomach. They would also make sure the patients did not have a gastric infection with Helicobacter pylori, one of the leading causes of ulcer-like symptoms. The investigators examined the role of patients' own gastric acid secretion in the development of functional dyspepsia symptoms not related to Helicobacter pylori. In order to diminish gastric acid secretion and relieve symptoms of dyspepsia, the patients were treated with either the active drug esomeprazole or a placebo in a randomized, double blind, placebo-controlled clinical trial. "The concept of the whole study was designed and driven by my husband's thinking," Dr. Irene Sarosiek said. "The study, which started in 2004 at the University of Kansas School of Medicine, was very challenging. It was hard to recruit patients and very hard to conduct. But at the same time, the results that we got from the study were beyond our expectations." An important part of the design of the study was that, after treatment, subjects were tested on things that could be objectively measured, like stomach acid levels. One of the surprising results was that in some subjects taking a placebo, not only was less pain reported, but their stomach acid levels went down, too. "So if a patient believes he or she is getting the drug, somehow the mind is having a measurable impact on gastric acid secretion," Dr. Jerzy Sarosiek said. Among the patients who received a dose of esomeprazole, relief of symptoms was reported in more than 70 percent, compared to 30 percent in the placebo group. In yet another unique aspect of the study, the patients who didn't report relief were then given a second dose. "With a double dose of esomeprazole, the number of subjects achieving relief increased to above 80 percent," Dr. Jerzy Sarosiek said. "A double dose of placebo also increased relief from 30 percent to close to 60 percent. This is the first study showing additive effects of two doses of placebo in relieving symptoms of dyspepsia in patients with stomach problems. Nobody had studied a double dose of placebo in patients with functional dyspepsia before." The award was created in memory of Tinsley Harrison, M.D., one of the founders of the Southern Society for Clinical Investigation. Drs. Irene and Jerzy Sarosiek and Dr. McCallum accepted the award at the society's annual meeting in February in New Orleans. Dr. Irene Sarosiek said she hopes the award inspires the faculty, staff and students at TTUHSC El Paso and shows them what is possible when all the minds at the university work together. "We feel very honored to get this award, and we want people on campus to know that, together, we can do work that is recognized nationally," she said. "We are a team at TTUHSC El Paso, and together we can do things that are amazing." ### For more information about Drs. Jerzy and Irene Sarosiek, and Dr. Richard McCallum, visit the department's webpage. Despite the great successes of targeted cancer drugs and the promise of novel immunotherapies, the vast majority of people diagnosed with cancer are still first treated with chemotherapy. Now a new study by UCSF researchers using techniques drawn from computational biology could make it much easier for physicians to use the genetic profile of a patient's tumor to pick the chemotherapy treatment with the fewest side effects and best chance of success. "Since 95 percent of cancer patients still get chemo, we realized we could make a major impact on cancer treatment by helping clinicians prescribe the right chemotherapy drug," said Sourav Bandyopadhyay, PhD, a professor of bioengineering and therapeutic sciences in UCSF's Schools of Pharmacy and Medicine and senior author on the new study. Chemotherapies are potent toxins delivered into the bloodstream to kill tumor cells throughout the body by damaging DNA in rapidly dividing cells. However, these poisons can also do significant harm to other dividing cells such as those found in the stomach lining and in hair and nail follicles, as well as the blood and immune stem cells in the bone marrow. In addition, cancer cells' susceptibility to these agents varies widely, and tumors often develop resistance to drugs that initially seem effective. There are more than 100 chemotherapy agents in wide use, but oncologists have very little information to guide their decisions about which of these drugs to use in a given patient. These decisions are typically guided by the drugs' average historical success rate for different types of cancer, rather than any understanding of how the chemotherapy drug will interact with the genetic profile of a specific tumor. "We know very little about how gene mutations in tumor cells can change how a tumor might respond or not to certain chemotherapy drugs. Mapping these sorts of connections could make it possible to optimize which drugs patients get based on their tumor genetics," said Bandyopadhyay, a member of the UCSF Helen Diller Family Comprehensive Cancer Center and the Quantitative Biosciences Institute. Now -- in a paper published online April 17, 2018 in Cell Reports -- Bandyopadhyay's lab has systematically mapped connections between 625 breast and ovarian cancer genes and nearly every FDA approved chemotherapy for breast or ovarian cancer. Led by Hsien-Ming "Kevin" Hu, PhD, Bandyopadhyay's group developed a high-throughput combinatorial approach that allowed them to perform 80,000 experiments in laboratory dishes in a matter of weeks. The authors said their results, which they have made publicly available, constitute an invaluable resource to help clinicians predict which chemotherapies will be most effective against tumor cells with particular genetic mutations, and how to rationally combine therapies to prevent cancers from developing resistance. "We're trying to take a systems view of chemotherapy resistance," said Bandyopadhyay. "With rarer mutations in particular there aren't enough patients for large clinical trials to be able to identify biomarkers of resistance, but by considering all the different potential genetic factors that have been identified together in one study, we can robustly predict from experiments in laboratory dishes how cancers with different genetic mutations will respond to different treatments." The team began by identifying hundreds of genes frequently mutated in human cancers: 200 implicated in breast cancer, 170 linked to ovarian cancer, and 134 involved in DNA repair, which is compromised in many types of cancer. They then mimicked the effects of such mutations in lab dishes by systematically inactivating each of these cancer-associated genes in healthy human cells, creating 625 different perturbations that mirrored distinct genetic mutations seen in real breast and ovarian cancers. The researchers then exposed cells from each of these lines to a panel of 31 different drug treatments -- including 23 chemotherapy compounds approved by the FDA for breast and ovarian cancers, six targeted cancer drugs, and two common drug combinations. An automated microscopy system monitored the cells' health and recorded which groups of cells were killed, which survived, and which developed resistance when exposed to a particular treatment. The resulting "map" of gene-drug interactions allowed the researchers to accurately predict the responses of multiple human cancer cell lines to different chemotherapy agents based on the cell lines' genetic profiles and also revealed new genetic factors that appear to determine the response of breast and ovarian tumor cells to common classes of chemotherapy treatment. As a proof of principle, the researchers collaborated with Clovis Oncology, a biotech company based in Boulder, Colorado, which is running a clinical trial of drugs known as PARP inhibitors in patients with stage II ovarian cancer. Based on their gene-drug interaction map, the researchers predicted that mutations in two genes, called ARID1A and GPBP1, could contribute to ovarian cancer's ability to develop resistance to this class of drugs. Results from the clinical trial bore out these predictions: patients with these mutations were significantly more likely to develop resistance. Bandyopadhyay's team has deposited the trove of data generated in the new study in a database maintained by the National Cancer Institute so that other researchers can mine it for information about drug combinations and derive new biological insights about the basis for chemotherapy's success or failure. The lab is also working with the Breast Oncology Program at UCSF to make this data part of an adaptive clinical trial called I-SPY, which lets researchers identify the most effective therapies based on patient molecular profiling, and is collaborating with members of the UCSF Institute for Computational Health Sciences (ICHS) to put these and other public data into a centralized database that clinicians can access through an app to help make the most appropriate treatment decisions. In future, Bandyopadhyay says, better understanding how chemotherapy agents impact specific biological pathways should allow drug trials to focus on patients who are more likely to respond to the drugs being tested and enable clinicians to identify targeted or combination therapies for patients with a genetic predisposition to resistance. ### Other authors on the study included Xin Zhao, PhD, Swati Kaushik, PhD, Antoine Barthelet, Kevin K. Lin, PhD, and Khyati N. Shah, PhD, of UCSF; and Lilliane Robillard, PhD, Andy D. Simmons, PhD, Mitch Raponi, PhD, and Thomas C. Harding, PhD, of Clovis Oncology. The study was funded by the NCI (U01CA168370), the UCSF Program for Breakthrough Biomedical Research (PBBR) and the UCSF Breast Oncology SPORE development award. Conflict of Interest Statement: Co-authors Robillard, Simmons, Raponi, and Harding are employees of Clovis Oncology. About UCSF: UC San Francisco (UCSF) is a leading university dedicated to promoting health worldwide through advanced biomedical research, graduate-level education in the life sciences and health professions, and excellence in patient care. It includes top ranked graduate schools of dentistry, medicine, nursing and pharmacy; a graduate division with nationally renowned programs in basic, biomedical, transitional and population sciences; and a preeminent biomedical research enterprise. It also includes UCSF Health, which comprises three top-ranked hospitals, UCSF Medical Center and UCSF Benioff Children's Hospitals in San Francisco and Oakland, and other partner and affiliated hospitals and healthcare providers throughout the Bay Area. Please visit http://www.ucsf.edu/news. Follow UCSF ucsf.edu | Facebook.com/ucsf | YouTube.com/ucsf Infants in some of the world's poorest regions are vulnerable to a common worm parasite infection and their treatment should become a priority, according to a study. Regular testing and treatment of pre-school children for snail fever - known as schistosomiasis or bilharzia - would reduce the spread of the disease, while promoting childhood health and development, experts have found. The parasite, which is carried by freshwater snails, mainly infects people in sub-Saharan Africa. Once diagnosed, treatment with a cheap, readily available drug is usually effective. Common symptoms include abdominal pain or blood in the urine. In children, it can cause stunted growth and learning difficulties. Infection acquired in childhood can cause bladder cancer and liver damage, or impact on reproductive health, in adults. Until now, pre-school children have not been routinely tested for nor treated for the condition, as the health impact of childhood infection has not been well understood. In the first long-term study of the disease in this age group, researchers at the University of Edinburgh and collaborators in Zimbabwe monitored 1500 children aged from six months to five years old over the course of a year. Their research showed that children could contract an infection within their first year of life, and develop symptoms within three months. The study also highlighted for the first time that infected children are at risk of malnutrition and stunted growth. Treatment of the infection with the drug Praziquantel, was shown to reverse symptoms. The study, funded by Wellcome and Thrasher Research Fund, was published in the BMJ Global Health. Professor Francisca Mutapi of the University of Edinburgh's School of Biological Sciences, who led the study, said: "We now know there is no such thing as snail fever without symptoms, and young children can get infected by snail fever very early in their lives." Derick Osakunor, of the University of Edinburgh's School of Biological Sciences, who took part in the project, said: "Our findings show that young children can develop clinical disease quickly, but existing diagnosis methods and treatments are effective in under-fives, which is welcome news for managing cases of infection in young children." ### His Royal Highness, as Chancellor of the University of Huddersfield, was received by Lieutenant-General Shaikh Rashid bin Abdullah Al Khalifa, Bahrain's Minister of Interior LECTURERS from the University of Huddersfield will train Bahraini police officers in the latest crime scene investigation techniques. The University is home to a multi-disciplinary Secure Societies Institute (SSI), and this has led to its selection by Bahrain's Royal Academy of Policing to provide an MSc course in Security Science. Ten lecturers from Huddersfield will pay two-week visits to the Gulf state, teaching subjects that include forensic science and how to gather and present evidence at crime scenes. Other key topics include cyber-crime, investigative psychology and criminology. There are already 26 officers enrolled on the course, which will be delivered by staff from three of the University of Huddersfield's academic schools - Human and Health Sciences, Applied Sciences and Computing and Engineering. The Chancellor of the University of Huddersfield, His Royal Highness The Duke of York, KG, visited the Bahrain's Interior Ministry at the inauguration of the course. His Royal Highness was received by Lieutenant-General Shaikh Rashid bin Abdullah Al Khalifa, Minister of Interior, who thanked the Chancellor for his visit and praised the high standard of education offered by the University of Huddersfield and its co-operation with the Royal Academy of Police in introducing the masters programme. The programme was designed to meet the requirements of the Royal Academy of Police students and has been introduced as part of the Academy's efforts to expose its officers to international police experiences, improve their leadership skills and enable them to solve security issues effectively and at an advanced level. His Royal Highness and the Minister also met the officers attending the programme. ### The Hobby School of Public Affairs at the University of Houston has received a $200,000 grant from the National Science Foundation to support an ongoing survey of Houston-area residents in the aftermath of Hurricane Harvey. The first round of questioning in the survey began three months after the historic storm, and early results found almost one-third of residents reported serious flood damage to their homes. The project is designed to follow the same set of respondents in Harris, Fort Bend, Brazoria and Montgomery counties over five years to determine both how individuals and neighborhoods recover and the level of support for policies to prepare for future disasters. The grant is part of a major effort by the NSF to rapidly fund projects related to hurricanes Harvey and Irma; a separate effort will support work related to Hurricane Maria. The Hobby School project, "Hurricane Harvey: Experiences, Recovery and Future Policies," will provide scientifically valid information on the impact of the storm, as well as attitudes about proposed public policy solutions. "The grant from the National Science Foundation will be instrumental in allowing our researchers to continue following the panel of respondents over time," said Jim Granato, executive director of the Hobby School. "It will help us learn more about communicating the risk of potential weather disasters to residents and identifying gaps in emergency services, as well as gathering data on what mitigation measures are supported by the public." Although researchers will follow the same group of people over time - using both cell phones and landlines - new groups will also be added as the project continues. New questions will also be added to reflect recovery and mitigation efforts. Over time, the survey will offer valuable insight into the physical, financial and behavioral toll of the storm, said Renee Cross, senior director of the Hobby School. "By documenting how residents responded after the hurricane as well as in the ensuing months and years, we can focus on policy solutions to better prepare the region for future natural disasters," she said. Pablo Pinto, director of the Center for Public Policy at the Hobby School, said researchers continue to meet with regional elected officials and other policymakers, both to share results as they become available and to gather input for future questions. "Our early results found significant support for policy interventions aimed at mitigating the impact of future events, such as the construction of a new reservoir and restrictions on building in the flood plain," he said. "Support for higher taxes to pay for those measures was mixed." Analyses of responses from the different waves of the panel will inform public debate and guide policymakers as they continue to implement solutions, Pinto said. ### The United States Department of Agriculture (USDA) National Institute of Food and Agriculture has awarded UH health education professor Norma Olvera $297,385 to train the next generation of Hispanic obesity educators. It's a good pick. Olvera has spent decades working to reduce obesity-related diseases among underserved communities in Houston. "An increased prevalence of childhood obesity in the Hispanic population has resulted in a critical need for nutrition and health educators serving this population," said Olvera. "The focus of the project is consistent with the USDA's food safety, nutrition and health priority area to increase mentoring, recruitment and retention of undergraduate students into educational and experiential learning programs that promote proper nutrition." Olvera and her team members, Tracey Ledoux, associate professor of health and human performance, Consuelo Arbona, professor of counseling psychology, and Monica D. Thompson, executive director of University Career Services, will recruit 36 Hispanic and first-time-in-college students to become paid interns. To apply click here. "Our aim is to increase awareness of, preparation for and entry into community nutrition and public health careers among Hispanic undergraduate students," said Olvera, a veteran professor in the College of Education. For the three-year project, the interns will be recruited from three major Hispanic-serving institutions: UH, UH-Downtown and Houston Community College. Keeping up with Olvera When not researching or recruiting, Olvera might be found at a 5K race, alongside a chef at a cooking class or coordinating a healthy food-shopping demo, all activities played out as part of the UH BOUNCE program she created. BOUNCE is the perfect lively verb/acronym for Behavior Opportunities Uniting Nutrition, Counseling & Exercise aimed primarily at children. BOUNCE is an evidence-based and research-driven platform through which Olvera will offer the program's internships. Interns will participate in sessions on how to design, develop and evaluate community-based health programs, assist as facilitators and evaluators of the BOUNCE intervention objective, and be provided career and professional development training for community nutrition and public health careers. Students who complete the 15-week course will demonstrate increased entry-level community nutrition and public health programming knowledge and skills. "By the end of the 15-week internship, students will have formulated a career plan that identifies next steps to pursue employment and/or additional education in the field of community nutrition and public health," said Olvera. Through her work, Olvera has found that it is often the youngsters who make the difference in their communities, starting at home. "One of the reasons I created BOUNCE is that I noticed long ago that children were leading their parents in making changes in the home. The children who wanted to eat healthier or be more active would ask their parents to help them and that would prompt parents to make different choices," said Olvera. It was a natural fit, she said, to begin targeting more and more children with intervention and education. Now she's targeting them to become educators. "One person can create a ripple effect far beyond their family into the community when they share their knowledge and create programs designed to help young people make better choices," she said. ### ANN ARBOR--Most of the roughly 15.5 million cancer survivors in the U.S. receive chemotherapy, and roughly 65 percent develop some degree of the chemotherapy-induced nerve damage known as peripheral neuropathy. Peripheral neuropathy simply means nerves outside of the brain and spinal cord are affected, and symptoms include numbness and tingling in extremities, and in about 30 percent of patients, pain. Neuropathy can drastically diminish quality of life--and in extreme cases, may necessitate chemotherapy dose reductions. Unfortunately, neuropathy often goes underreported and untreated, said Ellen Lavoie Smith, associate professor at the University of Michigan School of Nursing. This happens because clinicians and researchers don't have a valid, standardized way to measure symptoms or the effectiveness of neuropathy treatments. Right now, the drug Cymbalta (duloxetine) is the only drug FDA-approved to treat painful neuropathy symptoms. Some doctors and nurses ask patients about neuropathy, or whether they have symptoms of numbness and tingling, and others don't. "If we don't have a reliable measurement tool, we can't know if the interventions are effective or not," Smith said. "Historically, it's possible that we've discounted treatments and said they are ineffective based on poor measurements." Smith's lab wanted to find a better way to quantify neuropathy symptoms and treatment efficacy. "The ultimate goal is to use a measurement tool in research and clinical settings that has been thoroughly tested and found to be reliable and valid. We believe we have that now," she said. The neuropathy measurement tool Smith examined in her research is a questionnaire developed in Europe and owned by an international research network. It's a patient-reported outcome measure called the European Organisation for Research and Treatment of Cancer Quality of Life Questionnaire Chemotherapy-Induced Peripheral Neuropathy Scale (QLQ-CIPN20).37. Findings suggest that with minor revisions, it could be universally adopted in both labs and doctors' offices to help researchers and clinicians quantify and treat this painful condition. Six previous publications provide evidence supporting the tool's effectiveness. However, two studies provide conflicting evidence about the instrument's validity, and another study suggests that minor revisions could improve that. Some researchers use the questionnaire now, but for a variety of reasons it's not used in the clinic with cancer patients, Smith said. "The next step is for researchers worldwide to consider using the same tool, because then the results from one researcher can be compared directly with results from the next," she said. ### Study 1 (in the journal Cancer Control) Study 2 abstract (in the journal Cancer Nursing) (PHILADELPHIA) - Researchers from the Perelman School of Medicine at the University of Pennsylvania, along with the Institute for Health Research at Kaiser Permanente Colorado, Kaiser Permanente Hawaii, the Henry Ford Health System in Detroit, and Marshfield Clinic Health System in Wisconsin, have received a five-year, $15.5 million National Cancer Institute (NCI) grant to improve lung cancer screening. Specifically, the focus will be on improving the effectiveness of screening, and increasing the delivery of screening in populations that experience disparities in early diagnosis, treatment, and mortality for this deadly cancer. The funding will establish the Center for Research to Optimize Precision Lung Cancer Screening (CPLS), one of three specialized cancer screening research centers under the Population-based Research to Optimize the Screening Process II (PROSPR II) initiative by the Healthcare Delivery Research Program at NCI. The center will develop a shared model data for a lung cancer screening data repository to conduct research on developing and testing ways to prevent underuse, overuse, and misuse of screening for lung cancer nationally. The new center, co-directed by Chyke Doubeni, MD, chair of Family Medicine and Community Health, and Debra P. Ritzwoller, PhD, of Kaiser Permanente, joins scientists from five health systems contributing to the NCI-funded Population-Based Research to Optimize the Screening Process II (PROSPR II) Initiative for lung, colon, and cervical cancer. PROSPR II promotes research focused on evaluating and improving cancer screening. "Lung cancer disparities present an urgent public health crisis in most communities across the United States," said Doubeni. "We've seen some hope in low-dose computed tomography screening to reduce the risk of lung cancer and also as an opportunity to promote smoking cessation treatments, but many questions remain about the best way to optimize the delivery of screening in our communities. I look forward to the collaborative work by these diverse institutions to tackle these issues in depth and develop best practices for improving the delivery and effectiveness of screening." Lung cancer is the highest cause of cancer deaths in the United States, taking the lives of an estimated 154,050 people annually. When performed in a timely manner, screening can find lung cancer at more treatable stages. In addition to Doubeni, the interdisciplinary research team at Penn includes Mitchell Schnall, Anil Vachani, Despina Kontos, Katherine Rendle, Jason Roy, Fran Barg, and Michael Horst. ### Penn Medicine is one of the world's leading academic medical centers, dedicated to the related missions of medical education, biomedical research, and excellence in patient care. Penn Medicine consists of the Raymond and Ruth Perelman School of Medicine at the University of Pennsylvania (founded in 1765 as the nation's first medical school) and the University of Pennsylvania Health System, which together form a $7.8 billion enterprise. The Perelman School of Medicine has been ranked among the top medical schools in the United States for more than 20 years, according to U.S. News & World Report's survey of research-oriented medical schools. The School is consistently among the nation's top recipients of funding from the National Institutes of Health, with $405 million awarded in the 2017 fiscal year. The University of Pennsylvania Health System's patient care facilities include: The Hospital of the University of Pennsylvania and Penn Presbyterian Medical Center -- which are recognized as one of the nation's top "Honor Roll" hospitals by U.S. News & World Report -- Chester County Hospital; Lancaster General Health; Penn Medicine Princeton Health; Penn Wissahickon Hospice; and Pennsylvania Hospital - the nation's first hospital, founded in 1751. Additional affiliated inpatient care facilities and services throughout the Philadelphia region include Good Shepherd Penn Partners, a partnership between Good Shepherd Rehabilitation Network and Penn Medicine, and Princeton House Behavioral Health, a leading provider of highly skilled and compassionate behavioral healthcare. Penn Medicine is committed to improving lives and health through a variety of community-based programs and activities. In fiscal year 2017, Penn Medicine provided $500 million to benefit our community. Heart disease is the leading cause of death for both men and women, according to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC). In the U.S., one in every four deaths is a result of heart disease, which includes a range of conditions from arrhythmias, or abnormal heart rhythms, to defects, as well as blood vessel diseases, more commonly known as cardiovascular diseases. Predicting and monitoring cardiovascular disease is often expensive and tenuous, involving high-tech equipment and intrusive procedures. However, a new method developed by researchers at USC Viterbi School of Engineering offers a better way. By coupling a machine learning model with a patient's pulse data, they are able to measure a key risk factor for cardiovascular diseases and arterial stiffness, using just a smart phone. Arterial stiffening, in which arteries become less elastic and more rigid, can result in increased blood and pulse pressure. In addition to being a known risk factor for cardiovascular diseases, it is also associated with diseases like diabetes and renal failure. "If the aorta is stiff, then when it transfers the pulse energy all the way to the peripheral vasculature - to small vessels - it can cause end organ damage. So, if the kidneys are sitting at the end, the kidneys get hurt; if the brain is sitting at the end, the brain gets hurt," said Niema Pahlevan, assistant professor of aerospace and mechanical engineering and medicine. Checking for a pulse By measuring pulse wave velocity, which is the speed that the arterial pulse propagates through the circulatory system, clinicians are able to determine arterial stiffness. Current measurement methods include MRI, which is expensive and often not feasible, or tonometry, which requires two pressure measurements and an electrocardiogram to match the phases of the two pressure waves. The novel method developed by Pahlevan, Marianne Razavi and Peyman Tavallali uses a single, uncalibrated carotid pressure wave that can be captured with a smart phone's camera. In a previous study, the team used the same technology to develop an iPhone app that can detect heart failure using the slight perturbations of your pulse beneath your skin to record a pulse wave. In the same fashion, they are able to determine arterial stiffness. "An uncalibrated, single waveform - that means that you eliminated two steps. That's how you go from an $18,000 tonometry device and intrusive procedure to an iPhone app," Pahlevan said. "It's very easy to operate," added Razavi, who is the director of biostatistics for Avicena LLC, the startup company developing the app. "I actually taught my kid to do it." Instead of a detailed waveform required with tonometry, their method needs just the shape of a patient's pulse wave for the mathematical model, called intrinsic frequency, to calculate key variables related to the phases of the patient's heartbeat. These variables are then used in a machine learning model that determines pulse wave velocity (PWV) and, therefore, arterial stiffness. Validation To validate their method, they used existing tonometry data collected from the Framingham Heart Study, a long-term epidemiological cohort analysis. Using 5,012 patients, they calculated their own PWV measurements and compared them with the tonometry measurements from the study, finding an 85 percent correlation between the two. But more importantly, they needed to determine whether their method could be used to predict cardiovascular disease. "What the clinician wants to know is whether or not you're helping them to improve outcome," Pahlevan said. "And we showed that it is as predictive as the actual tonometry." Through a prospective study using 4,798 patients, they showed that their PWV measurement was significantly associated with the onset of cardiovascular diseases over a ten-year follow up period. Their study was published in Scientific Reports in January. Bringing AI to medicine "A lot of people have tried to bring machine learning to medical devices, but pure AI by itself doesn't work," Pahlevan said. "When you get a high correlation, you can be missing all of the diseased patients because, in medicine, the outliers are the cases you want to capture - they're the important ones." The reason their machine learning method is able to capture clinically significant outcomes is due to their intrinsic frequency algorithm, which is the mathematical analysis used to calculate physically relevant variables relating to the patient's heart and vascular function. The main variables represent the heart's performance during the contraction phase (systole) and the vasculature's performance during the relaxed phase (diastole). Developed just three years ago during Pahlevan's postdoctoral work, the team plans on expanding on the intrinsic frequency algorithm so that it can be applied to a number of other applications, such as detecting silent heart attacks. ### Pahlevan is a faculty member at the USC Michelson Center for Convergent Bioscience. The Michelson Center brings together a diverse network of premier scientists and engineers under one roof, thanks to a generous $50 million gift from orthopedic spinal surgeon, inventor and philanthropist Gary K. Michelson, and his wife, Alya Michelson. At the Michelson Center, scientists and engineers from the USC Dornsife College of Letters, Arts and Sciences, USC Viterbi School of Engineering and Keck School of Medicine of USC are working to solve some of the greatest intractable problems of the 21st century in biomedical science, including a fundamentally new understanding of the cell and new approaches for cancer, neurological and cardiovascular disease. USC Viterbi School of Engineering Engineering Studies began at the University of Southern California in 1905. Nearly a century later, the Viterbi School of Engineering received a naming gift in 2004 from alumnus Andrew J. Viterbi, inventor of the Viterbi algorithm that is now key to cell phone technology and numerous data applications. One of the school's guiding principles is engineering +, a term coined by current Dean Yannis C. Yortsos, to use the power of engineering to address the world's greatest challenges. USC Viterbi is ranked among the top graduate programs in the world and enrolls more than 6,500 undergraduate and graduate students taught by 185 tenured and tenure-track faculty, with 73 endowed chairs and professorships. http://viterbi.usc.edu/? this news is not available Privacy Settings This site uses functional cookies and external scripts to improve your experience. Which cookies and scripts are used and how they impact your visit is specified on the left. You may change your settings at any time. Your choices will not impact your visit. NOTE: These settings will only apply to the browser and device you are currently using. When she made the move to Switzerland as a young adult, discovering the countrys cuisine and writing a cookbook helped dual citizen Andie Pilot feel at home in a place at once foreign and familiar. Pilot, now 34, was a child living near Calgary when she first tasted a grilled cheese sandwich at a friends house. In true North American fashion, it was a slice of processed cheddar cheese between two pieces of white Wonder bread. When she got home, she asked her mother to make her one. My mom got out her rye bread, dipped it in white wine and put some gruyere cheese on it, Pilot remembers. Instead of turning up her nose at this Swiss-inspired version of the sandwich, Pilot says she became aware of a whole other world of food. As she grew up, exploring more European recipes helped her decide to train as a pastry chef, after which she decided to take advantage of her Swiss citizenship to move to the country and try to find work in a bakery. In the country of her ancestors, she began to discover all kinds of interesting recipes. She found she needed a place to keep track of them all and share them with friends back in Canada who kept asking her how to make things like fondue or Christmas cookies. So her blog, Helvetic Kitchen, was born. Today, it contains dozens of recipes illustrated with attractive photos, from the very traditional Swiss Birchermuesli to Pilots own twists on Swiss ingredients, such as Toblerone mousse or Ovomaltine ice cream sandwiches. A non-foreign foreigner Having spent her childhood summers visiting her mothers family in eastern Switzerland, Pilot knew aspects of Swiss life well, like how to get around by train or what to shop for in the stores. But she didnt grow up speaking a national language and says she mostly felt like a tourist during those annual visits. It made for an often-challenging experience during her early months as a Swiss permanent resident. There were times, especially around getting a job and feeling secure, that were really scary for me, she recalls. Working as a pastry chef proved too difficult because Swiss bakeries were only prepared to offer her an apprenticeship or internship at first not enough to make a living. So Pilot began teaching English and sharing her love of food with her students by making it a discussion point in class. Food was such a great topic to talk about because people have such strong opinions about it and everyone wants to share their familys recipes, she says. Looking back, she thinks having that common conversation point helped her feel at home in Switzerland, even as she struggled with learning German and getting up the confidence to speak it. If someone had told me at the time not to worry about being shy or making mistakes, that would have been good advice, she says. Tasting Switzerland Pilot originally moved to Switzerland intending to stay a year. Today, she is settled in long-term with her Swiss husband and one-year-old daughter, living across the street from a field of cows among the rolling hills of the Emmental region. Her mother, who left Switzerland for Canada in the 1960s, has also just moved in nearby and is going through the process of re-integrating in her homeland. As her lexicon of recipes grew, the blogger decided to take them from the virtual space to the physical in the form of a cookbook. She approached a few publishers and chose her favourite recipes from the blog to put into book form, complete with short stories about each one and small illustrations she did herself. The cookbook version of Helvetic Kitchen came out in December 2017. Pilot continues to learn about her now-home country through its food, taking regular culinary-inspired trips to different regions of Switzerland to try several versions of a recipe before perfecting it for her blog. Her next project involves a series of drink recipes. Pilot also draws inspiration from old, regional cookbooks and more contemporary favourites like Betti Bossi (Switzerlands Betty Crocker). Sometimes my family gets sick of having the same meal or dessert over and over, she says of the many times she re-creates a dish before deciding which recipe to publish. Culinary history Just as important as perfecting each recipe is telling the story behind it. Some are contemporary, like how Pilot got ahold of a Swiss ski legends mothers recipe for cholera, a pot pie-like specialty from canton Valais. Others come from history, such as the story of canton Glaruss schabziger cheese, which dates back to a ninth-century monastery. When prompted, Pilot struggles a bit to think of a typically Canadian dish (poutine? maple syrup?). The food of the country where she grew up comes from, as she puts it, a great mix of people who have immigrated to Canada and opened restaurants. Switzerland, on the other hand, has countless deep-seated culinary traditions that also go hand-in-hand with the many cultures to be found within its borders. There are all these little pockets of different traditions and language in such a compact place, Pilot says of her chosen home. The idea that all of these places manage to exist together harmoniously in such a small area is really wonderful. Recipe: Zigerhorali (macaroni and cheese from Glarus) Ingredients: 400 g (4 cups) macaroni Big knob of butter 1 tbsp flour 500 ml (2 cups) milk 100 g (3.5 oz) Schabziger cheese, grated 250g (2 cups) Gruyere or other hard cheese, grated Nutmeg, salt, pepper 3 tbsp breadcrumbs More butter for topping Preheat oven to 200 Celsius / 400 Fahrenheit Butter a large 2.5-litre (10 cup) baking dish Bring a big pot of salted water to a boil, and once its boiling add the pasta. One the pasta is cooked, strain into a colander. Put the empty pot back on the stove over medium heat. Add the butter and as soon as it is bubbling, add the cheeses. Stir until everything is creamy and uniform. Add nutmeg, salt and pepper to taste. Add the pasta back to the pot and give everything a good stir. Pour the pasta into the buttered baking dish. Sprinkle with breadcrumbs and stud with bits of butter. Bake for about 10-15 minutes, or until the breadcrumbs are crisp and lightly browned. Serve with applesauce and fried onions Serves about 4 people. Inspired by people like an Iraqi Catholic priest who has saved thousands of ancient manuscripts from destruction by Jihadists, nine cities around the world are now working together to protect cultural heritage. Human beings are linked by blood and tears and not by religion, said Father Michaeel Najeeb at the signing in late March of the Geneva Declaration in the splendour of the Heynard Palace that houses the Geneva town hall. This Catholic priest, a refugee in Erbil, Iraqi Kurdistan, knows what he is talking about. For 25 years I have been saving heritage and also people, he says.You cannot save people without saving their history. Father Najeeb has managed to save some 8,000 manuscripts from destruction, including some dating from the 13th century, and 40,000 documents, including the first books written in ancient Mesopotamia. Working first from his native city of Mosul, he managed to save precious documents from the destructive rage of Islamic State when it invaded the town in June 2014. That was a risky venture which ended in him fleeing to Erbil. It is there he continues his work of preservation. Given their significant symbolic value, heritage, as well as the knowledge and practices associated with them, are prime targets during internal or international conflicts, says the Geneva Declaration on human rights and cultural heritage. Their destruction targets individuals, communities, and even whole peoples, at the heart of their identity, and aims at removing traces of their existence from a specific territory. Mayor of Mosul Zuhait Mohsin Al Al-Aaraji also testified to this. Daesh [Islamic State] had a programme to methodically destroy the cultural heritage of Mosul, he reminded people at the signing of the Declaration. It first targeted architectural heritage, the mosques, the churches everything that reflected the citys past radiance. Mosul, Timbuktu and Diyarbakir Since the liberation of Mosul last summer, Zuhait Mohsin Al Al-Aaraji has set to work to rebuild his city, including its cultural heritage. So how can the Geneva Declaration help? We can benefit from the experience of other towns with similar experiences and we can speak with mayors of cities from all around the world, he says. Another signatory to the Declaration is Timbuktu, in northern Mali, known as the City of 333 Saints. Its mausoleums were attacked in 2012 by Jihadists from AQMI and Ansar Dine, during their occupation of the town. One of their leaders, Ahmad Al Faqi Al Mahdi, was arrested and tried by the International Criminal Court (ICC). In September 2016 he was sentenced to nine years in jail for destruction of cultural heritage as a war crime. This was a first in the history of international justice. The mausoleums have now been restored with funding from UNESCO. These monuments, they are the life, the roots of the people, said mayor of Timbuktu Aboubacrine Cisse. So their reconstruction is a renewal of life. Such destruction can also be the work of states, says Fatma Sik, a former co-mayor of Sur municipality in Turkeys majority Kurdish region of Diyarbakir. She stresses that some 100 historic buildings in Sur were destroyed by Turkish forces during clashes with Kurdish fighters. Sik was co-mayor of Sur but was removed from office in 2016 by the Turkish authorities, along with dozens of her Kurdish colleagues, when fighting resumed between the army and Kurdish rebels of the PKK. She now lives in Switzerland. International partnership The promoters of the Declaration aim to develop the cities alliance and link the protection of cultural heritage with the various communities living there. These vestiges of the past are essential resources that enable people to exercise their cultural rights, to develop their creative spirit and their capacities for resistance, and to communicate across differences by sharing their respective memories in order to live together and build a joint future, according to the Declaration. Those behind the Declaration say preserving cultural heritage is not just an issue for countries in conflict. Destruction, whether legal or illegal, is also the consequence of unsustainable development policies which fail to take into account peoples aspirations or human rights, says the Declaration. So the signatory cities of the developed North (Geneva, Strasbourg, Lund and Vienna) and of the South have put themselves on an equal footing, unlike the paternalistic spirit of some international initiatives to preserve cultural heritage. That, in any case, is the hope of Geneva mayor Remy Pagani, initiator of the declaration. Outgoing UN High Commissioner for Human Rights Zeid Raad al-Hussein also hailed this innovative approach, adding his signature to the Declaration. Adapted from French by Julia Crawford Madrid's conservative regional president said Tuesday she was giving up a masters degree she is suspected of obtaining fraudulently and may never even have passed, sparking derision on social networks. Cristina Cifuentes has been caught in a media storm over accusations she got the 2011-2012 law diploma from Madrids King Juan Carlos University (URJC) without taking all the required exams and rarely attending lectures. The university rector himself admitted the document attesting she had passed it was a re-construction of the original, with two professors signatures faked, sparking a probe. I hereby inform you of my decision to GIVE UP using the degree issued by the King Juan Carlos University, Cifuentes, of the ruling Popular Party (PP), said in a letter to the rector Javier Ramos that was published in Spanish media. The opposition wants Cifuentes, 53, to resign over the scandal, but for now, Prime Minister Mariano Rajoy has not withdrawn his support for her. Her decision instead to give up the degree sparked huge derision on social networks, with the hashtag #YoRenuncio (#IGiveUp in Spanish) a worldwide trend on Twitter. If Cristina Cifuentes can give up a masters which the URJC cannot ascertain she did, I give up on the Nobel Peace Prize, tweeted @_23Sergio. #IGiveUp my Oscar. Its the academys fault for not being clear if I have it or not. Damn you. All my hopes down the drain, joked @JosepLCardo. In her letter, Cifuentes who maintains she passed the degree said she had always acted in accordance with the law and within the academic leeway established by the university. But she apologised for those who may have felt offended by the special treatment she was given, including not having to go to class for a masters degree that requires students to be present. After revelations over her masters, other conservative and left-wing politicians have been called out over the validity of their degrees. It emerged, for instance, that another senior PP member, Pablo Casado, had written on his CV that he had a postgraduate degree from Harvard University that turned out to be a four-day course in Aravaca, a Madrid district. Such was the derision that Netflix Spain posted on Twitter a picture of its popular series Stranger Things, replacing the name of its fictional town Hawkins, where odd going-ons happen, with Aravaca. A schoolteacher was kidnapped last week in northern Burkina Faso, security sources said Tuesday as a jihadist group said he was snatched because he spoke French to his pupils. Gunmen snatched the teacher on Thursday from a primary school in the northern town of Nassoubou, the security sources and a local official said. The Islamic State in the Great Sahara (EIGS), based at the border between Burkina Faso and Mali, told AFP that it had carried out the kidnapping. An EIGS spokesman who gave his name as Hammar said the teacher was abducted for speaking French to his pupils, vowing that all those who teach in French (will be) fought. He also said EIGS was behind the weekend murder of the mayor of the nearby Koutougou department of Soum province, accusing him of collaborating with the government of the former French colony. Burkina Faso President Roch Marc Christian Kabore condemned the cowardly and despicable murder in a tweet. The EIGS is led by Adnane Abou Walid Sahraoui, formerly of Al-Qaeda in the Maghreb (AQMI). The troubled Sahel region of the West African country has been the target of numerous jihadist attacks since 2015, including the kidnapping of local officials. Last month a former municipal councillor was abducted in Lassa village, also in Soum, by gunmen on motorcycles. He was released several days later. According to official figures, 80 jihadist attacks have occurred in northern Burkina Faso over the past three years, leaving 133 dead. The capital Ouagadougou has also come under attack, most recently in March when eight soldiers were killed and 85 people wounded in twin attacks on the countrys military headquarters and the French embassy. The European Commission on Tuesday backed the opening of formal membership talks with Albania and Macedonia as the EU looks to expand into the Balkans and grow for the first time in years. The announcement comes a month ahead of a key summit in Sofia when the leaders of six Balkan nations will be given fresh hope that some could become members by 2025. EU diplomatic chief Federica Mogherini said the commission, the executive arm of the EU, recommended that member states open accession negotiations with Albania and with the former Yugoslav Republic of Macedonia. But she stressed that any prospective members must make sweeping reforms to secure their entry to the club, which currently counts 28 countries as members although Britain is set to leave next year. European Commission President Jean-Claude Juncker put all enlargement on hold four years ago, and the Balkans states have become increasingly impatient. Montenegro and Serbia are the frontrunners to join, having already started the formal membership process, with Albania, Bosnia, Kosovo and Macedonia lagging behind. In February the EU unveiled its new strategy for the region, which aims to give membership to some states by 2025 but insists they must first resolve all border rows. These include a bitter and long-running dispute between Macedonia and EU-member Greece over its name, which Athens insists refers to its own northern province. Mogherini told reporters at the European parliament that Montenegro and Serbia have progressed well with their reforms, adding that maintaining and deepening the current reforms must continue in all areas. These areas are the rule of law, human rights, democratic institutions and public administration as well as ensuring economic competitiveness. Bulgaria, which currently holds the EUs rotating presidency, has warned it is now or never for expanding the European Union into the Balkans as concerns grow about Moscows influence in the blocs eastern backyard. EU foreign ministers on Monday backed "all efforts" to stop Syria using chemical weapons, after weekend strikes by Britain, France and the US, but called for renewed efforts to find a political solution to the seven-year war. The 28 ministers condemned the military offensive, backed by Russia, that the Syrian government is waging against rebels and called for an immediate ceasefire to allow humanitarian access. US, French and British missiles destroyed suspected chemical weapons development and storage sites in Syria on Saturday in response to an alleged chemical attack in the town of Douma which killed at least 40 people. In a statement after talks in Luxembourg, EU foreign ministers unequivocally blamed President Bashar al-Assads regime for the Douma attack and gave implicit backing to Saturdays Western military action. The Council understands that the targeted US, French and UK airstrikes on chemical weapons facilities in Syria were specific measures with the sole objective to prevent further use of chemical weapons and chemical substances as weapons by the Syrian regime to kill its own people, the statement said. The Council is supportive of all efforts aimed at the prevention of the use of chemical weapons. French Foreign Minister Jean-Yves Le Drian said the EU was united at a very serious moment in wanting to prevent and dissuade against any use of chemical weapons. Germanys powerful Chancellor Angela Merkel declared the strikes necessary and appropriate, but other EU members have been keen to avoid any step that could lead to further escalation. Johnson stressed the strikes were not an attempt to change the tide of the war in Syria or to have regime change or to get rid of Bashar al-Assad. The day before the strikes Russian President Vladimir Putin warned during phone talks with his French counterpart Emmanuel Macron against ill-considered and dangerous actions in Syria which could lead to unpredictable consequences. Russian role Ministers discussed ways to apply pressure to get Russia to drag the Assad government to meaningful negotiations on the future of his country. You have to see it, whether you like it or not: without Russia you wont be able to solve this conflict, German Foreign Minister Heiko Maas said as he arrived for Mondays talks. Washington has said it will impose new sanctions on Russia over the Douma attack, targeting companies that supplied Syria with equipment related to chemical weapons, but the EU is not yet ready to follow suit. An EU diplomat told AFP that it would be possible to add Russians or Iranians to the Syrian sanctions list, but the idea is not yet being discussed at the level of foreign ministers. Some European governments are wary of provoking an angry response from Russia, which among other things remains a key supplier of gas to the EU. Moscow has been keen to exploit fissures within the EU that were laid bare by the response to the poisoning of former Russian spy Sergei Skripal and his daughter in England. All 28 EU leaders signed up to a statement blaming Russia for the poisoning at a summit in Brussels last month, but only after intense lobbying by Britain, France and Germany. Afterwards, 18 EU countries followed Britains lead and expelled Russian diplomats from their territory, six took the more limited step of recalling their own ambassadors, and three did nothing. No military solution Next week the EU hosts a major conference in Brussels on the future of Syria aimed at gathering financial pledges for humanitarian aid and boosting a floundering UN-led peace process. In their statement ministers said the momentum of the current situation should be used to reinvigorate the process to find a political resolution of the Syrian conflict. The EU insists there can be no military solution to the war in Syria, which has killed over 350,000 people, and has repeatedly called for the UN-led talks in Geneva to be given fresh impetus. But privately some European diplomats already acknowledge that the Assad regimes military campaign is likely to succeed and they should begin planning for the next stage. Chancellor Angela Merkel's conservative party on Monday pushed back against plans for deeper eurozone integration, just days before French President Emmanuel Macron is to visit Berlin to discuss his ambitious reform proposals. After a meeting of top brass, Merkels Christian Democratic Union (CDU) party criticised Macrons flagship idea of creating a eurozone budget and voiced scepticism about plans to expand the EUs bailout fund. Any reforms have to be in the European and in the German interest, CDU secretary-general Annegret Kramp-Karrenbauer told reporters. She said a separate eurozone budget as envisaged by Macron, which could be used to finance investments or in case of crises, was not a priority at a time when the wider European Union was already grappling with the challenges of Brexit. I dont think it makes sense to focus on a common budget for the single currency, she said, noting that the remaining 27 EU member states still had to find a way to plug the multi-billion-euro gap left in the blocs budget by Britains departure. Were of the opinion that the first priority is to deal with the issue of the European Union budget, she added. The comments came after talks between the CDU and their CSU Bavarian sister party which is even more sceptical about the French-inspired reform drive which many fear could translate into a transfer of German taxpayer money to troubled economies. In a joint paper released by lawmakers from both parties Monday, they gave only cautious backing to plans to expand the European Stability Mechanism into a European Monetary Fund that can act as lender of last resort in a crisis. Although such a fund is seen as one of Macrons least controversial proposals, the German document nevertheless said it could only support it if national parliaments, and not the European Commission, had the final say over how the money was spent. It also said the disbursement of aid would have to be tied to strict conditions, and the creation of the fund itself would require an EU treaty change that would have to be agreed by national MPs. The German objections are likely to slam the brakes on Macrons reform drive, and threaten to scupper hopes of any concrete progress being made at an EU summit in June. Merkel, who has voiced support for the French ideas but has stayed vague on details, is due to hold talks with Macron on Thursday. The will to find a common way forward is still there, German government spokesman Steffen Seibert told reporters in Berlin. Foreign Ministers of the Group of Seven industrialized nations on Monday called on Russia to come clean about a nerve agent attack on a former spy in Britain, calling it "a threat to us all." We call on Russia to urgently address all questions related to the incident in Salisbury, they said in a joint statement. The G7 nations urged Russia to provide a full and complete disclosure of its previously undeclared Novichok program to the OPCW in line with its international obligations. Novichok is a group of deadly chemical compounds reportedly developed by the Soviet government in the 1970s and 80s. The G7 statement comes after Western nations expelled more than 150 Russian diplomats in a coordinated action against Moscow in support of Britain, and Russia retaliated with similar moves. Britain has blamed Moscow for the assassination attempt on former Russian spy Sergei Skripal and his daughter in the English town of Salisbury in March. After conducting its own tests, the Organisation for the Prohibition of Chemical Weapons (OPCW) on Thursday confirmed Britains findings about the substance used in the attack. The foreign ministers of Britain, Canada, France, Germany, Italy, Japan and the United States, as well as the European Union, said they are united in condemning, in the strongest possible terms the attack in Salisbury. They also said they agree with Britains assessment that it is highly likely that the Russian Federation was responsible for the attack and that there is no plausible alternative explanation. Any use of chemical weapons by a state party, under any circumstances, is a clear breach of international law and a violation of the Chemical Weapons Convention, they said. It is a threat to us all. Their use is abhorrent, completely unacceptable and must be systematically and rigorously condemned. Russian government-sponsored hackers are compromising the key hardware of government and business computer networks like routers and firewalls, giving them virtual control of data flows, Britain and the United States warned Monday. The operation was to support espionage, extract intellectual property, maintain persistent access to victim networks and potentially lay a foundation for future offensive operations, Washington and London said in a joint statement. Whoever controls the routing infrastructure of a network essentially controls the data flowing through the network. The US Department of Homeland Security said the hacking was part of a broad operation dubbed Grizzly Steppe, which DHS says comprises concerting cyberattacks by Moscows civilian and military intelligence agencies. The router hacking operation has targeted both government and private sector groups, and the key providers of network infrastructure and internet services serving them. The announcement came in an unprecedented joint alert that underscored closer cooperation between Western governments fighting what they say is an ongoing, multifaceted hacking and online disinformation campaign by Moscow. The alert came from the Britains National Cyber Security Centre, DHS and the US Federal Bureau of Investigation. In came after more than one year of separate warnings over the attempted hacking of key infrastructure like power and water utilities in Western countries. The two sides did not give any examples of systems that had been broken into, but said those compromised risked losing data, identities, passwords and even control of their own systems. Critical network components targeted The hacking effort goes to the critical components of a computer network: the routers, switches and firewalls designed to safely and accurate deliver data from one computer to another. Taking over a router virtually would give a hacker the ability to manipulate, divert or stop any data from going through it. In an operation like an electric power plant, the hacker could shut down the service or physically damage a plant. A hacker could also potentially lay a foundation for future offensive operations, the joint alert said. The current state of US and UK network devices, coupled with a Russian government campaign to exploit these devices, threatens our respective safety, security, and economic well-being, it said. Both countries have accused Moscow of concerted efforts to use social media to interfere with public affairs, particularly with the British Brexit referendum and US presidential election in 2016. Russia on Tuesday rejected French accusations it is blocking access to the site of a suspected chemical attack in Syria and called on Western countries to "stop manipulating public opinion" on the issue. It is unclear why the French foreign ministry is speaking in the name of the OPCW (Organisation for the Prohibition of Chemical Weapons). If the inspectors experienced problems, they would make a statement on this issue, Russian foreign ministry spokeswoman Maria Zakharova said. Earlier on Tuesday the French government said it was highly likely evidence would disappear from the site of a suspected chemical attack in Syrias Douma before weapons experts arrived. Zakharova called the accusation very surprising, saying that Russia had supported the inspection. The US and Britain have also voiced concerns that Moscow might have tampered with evidence on the site. We call on Western countries who took part in the illegitimate bombing of Syria to stop manipulating public opinion and interfering in the work of international organisations, Zakharova said. The Kremlin on Monday dismissed claims that Russia and Syria were blocking access to the site as groundless. The US, Britain and France fired around 100 missiles at three suspected chemical facilities in Syria on Saturday, saying they had proof the government of President Bashar al-Assad was behind the Douma attack. Viktoria Skripal, a relative of poisoned ex-Russian spy Sergei Skripal and his daughter Yulia, denied having links to security services in an interview to Russian media on Tuesday. Sergei and Yulia Skripal were found slumped on a bench in the English city of Salisbury last month, sparking a bitter diplomatic crisis between Moscow and London, who say a nerve agent developed in Russia was used on the pair. What security services? I have not been in touch with anyone from the security services, Viktoria told liberal radio station Ekho Moskvy. The only thing I did was to go to the Investigative Committee to confirm that Yulia had flown (to Britain), she said. Earlier this month Russian state television aired an audio recording said to capture a phone conversation between Viktoria and Yulia Skripal that aroused suspicion of Viktorias links to Russian authorities. Viktoria Skripal, who was recently denied entry to Britain, said she plans to contact the UN if UK authorities repeatedly refuse to issue her a visa to the country. I will write to the UN, she said. The Russian embassy in London called the decision to deny Viktoria Skripal entry to the UK disappointing and politically motivated. After being discharged from hospital on April 10 more than a month after she was poisoned, Yulia Skripal issued a statement through British police in which she distanced herself from her cousin and refused Russian consular assistance. I thank my cousin Viktoria for her concern for us, but ask that she does not visit me or try to contact me for the time being, the statement added. Her opinions and assertions are not mine and they are not my fathers, the statement said. But Viktoria Skripal said Tuesday she did not consider the statement published by British police to be genuine. Do you think I should see a statement written in formal language and believe it? No. It was not even a video address. Why should I believe it? she told Ekho Moskvy, adding she believes British authorities are purposefully not showing images of her relatives. Viktoria Skripal added that her uncle was not barred from entering Russia but feared doing so. He was not stripped of his Russian citizenship. He said I will not fly to Russia, they wont even let me off the plane, she said. Yulia Skripal is kept in a secret location following leaving hospital. She was visiting her father when the March 4 nerve agent attack on her and her father took place in the English town of Salisbury. Sergei Skripal, 66, remains in hospital, though he is improving rapidly and no longer in a critical condition, doctors said in their last update on April 6. Russia's UN ambassador on Tuesday dismissed as "untimely" a push by the United States, France and Britain at the United Nations to establish a new chemical weapons investigation in Syria and re-energize peace efforts. The three allies on Saturday presented a draft Security Council resolution just hours after carrying out military strikes on three targets they said were linked to Syrias chemical weapons program. Asked about the proposed resolution, Russian Ambassador Vassily Nebenzia told AFP that it was untimely, indicating Moscow was not ready to engage with the West on Syria after the military strikes. First they have to undo what they did a few days ago, Nebenzia said, referring to the military action. The draft resolution would set up a new inquiry to identify perpetrators of chemical attacks in Syria, push for the full dismantling of Syrias chemical stockpiles, call for a ceasefire and demand that Syria engage in peace talks. During a Security Council meeting called by Russia to discuss the situation in Raqa, Nebenzia said the Wests military action on Saturday had set back efforts to advance political talks. Its hard to imagine that after everything that has occurred, the Syrian authorities feel any enthusiasm about discussing the political solution in their country at the request of the Western troika, he said. If the goal is to force a Syrian president, under a hail of bombs, to sit at the table of negotiations this goal is simply unrealistic, he added. A first round of negotiations on the draft resolution was held on Monday, but diplomats said Russia did not engage in discussions and no date has been set for a vote on the measure. Going to take time Western diplomats said they were ready to allow time for negotiations to make every effort to bring Russia on board. The resolution is being discussed but we are not looking for quick progress on this, British Ambassador Karen Pierce told reporters. We need to chart a path back to the political process and I think we all know this is going to take time. Russia has used its veto 12 times at the Security Council to block action targeting its Syrian ally. International investigators of the Organisation for the Prohibition of Chemical Weapons (OPCW) were on Tuesday on the ground in the Syrian town of Douma, where dozens were killed in a suspected chemical weapons attack on April 7. The OPCW team can determine whether chemical agents were used as a weapon but it does not have a mandate to identify the perpetrators of chemical attacks. The Security Council in 2015 set up such a mechanism for attribution, but Russia in November killed off the panel, known as the Joint Investigative Mechanism (JIM), when it vetoed the renewal of its mandate. The JIM had determined that Syrian forces were responsible for the use of sarin in an attack in April last year in Khan Sheikhun. Addressing the council, the Russian ambassador said re-establishing a panel no longer makes sense when Washington and its allies have already determined who is guilty. The war in Syria entered its eighth year last month, with diplomacy deadlocked over the way forward to end the conflict that has killed more than 350,000 people and forced millions to flee. British Prime Minister Theresa May on Tuesday told former colonies anti-gay laws once imposed by her country "were wrong then, and they are wrong now". The premier raised discriminatory legislation affecting same-sex couples, women and girls, in an address to Commonwealth leaders in London. I am all too aware that these laws were often put in place by my own country. They were wrong then, and they are wrong now, she said in a speech to the biennial Commonwealth Heads of Government Meeting (CHOGM). As the UKs prime minister, I deeply regret both the fact that such laws were introduced, and the legacy of discrimination, violence and even death that persists today, she added. Same-sex marriage is legal in Britain, but many countries have held onto legislation imposed by their former colonial rulers. Globally 72 countries criminalise same-sex relationships, according to a 2017 report by the International Lesbian, Gay, Bisexual, Trans and Intersex Association. The organisation pinpoints British colonial-era legislation still being used in Commonwealth members including Uganda, Malaysia and Singapore. Britains premier said her government would back plans to scrap such laws: The UK stands ready to support any Commonwealth member wanting to reform outdated legislation that makes such discrimination possible. Mays speech was met with applause, but her criticism of other countries laws could cause a further rupture to the summit which has already been hit with a scandal over emigres to Britain. The prime minister apologised to Caribbean leaders after her government threatened to deport some of the hundreds of thousands of people who moved to Britain from the region in the 1950s and 1960s. Those who did not get their papers in order are now being treated as illegal as part of the governments crackdown. But following a backlash May has written to each of the Caribbean countries affected outlining how Britain intends to rectify the situation. The row has cast a shadow over the summit, which the UK government had hoped would be an opportunity to promote trade with Commonwealth countries, ahead of Britain leaving the European Union next year. From: Ad Council For Immediate Release: Dateline: New York , NY Monday, April 16, 2018 In New York City, there are few large-scale cultural events that New Yorkers look forward to as much as the Bathtubs Over Broadwa y Not everyone has a job where they are required to flip through old records, but as a writer on Late Night with David Letterman, this was Steve Youngs norm. Little did he know that what started as segments for Daves Record Collection would set him off on a journey through a part of media history that rarely gets the spotlight: industrial musicals. From the 1950s all the way through the 1980s, it wasnt uncommon for major companies like General Electric, McDonalds, Ford and Xerox to put on the razzle dazzle at their big sales meetings with Broadway-style productions. Think Lipton on the Move, Lucite, You and 72, and Everythings Coming Up Citgo. follows Young as he dives into this world of off-off-off Broadway meets corporate America that gave performers like Florence Henderson, Martin Short, and Chita Rivera their start. Into The Okavango The greater Okavango River Basin is the largest freshwater wetland in southern Africaand the main source of water for a million people. Its delta, located in northern Botswana, is one of Africas richest places for biodiversity, and home to the worlds largest remaining elephant population as well as lions, cheetahs and hundreds of species of birds. And now the water that fuels this ecosystem is under threat. To protect the delta, National Geographic Explorer Dr. Steve Boyes and an international team of scientists, filmmakers, and African guides banded together on a journey from Angola to Namibia to Botswana to protect the Okavango watersheds source rivers forever. Every Act of Life With credits including Ragtime, Kiss of the Spiderwoman and Master Class, award-winning playwright Terrence McNally has had an illustrious career. All the while, McNally has fought for LGBTQ rights, beaten addiction, and used his talent in the arts to transform society. Full of rare footage and photos, If you can score tickets to the premiere, youll be rewarded with a post-screening conversation with director Jeff Kaufman, playwright Terrence McNally, actor/director Joe Mantello, and actors F. Murray Abraham, Christine Baranski, Nathan Lane, and Chita Rivera moderated by New York Magazine writer-at-large Frank Rich. The American Meme The rise of social media stars as powerful influencers has sped up exponentially over the years to what some now call a fever pitch and others call just the beginning. They have millions of followers, work with top brands and, frankly, are brands of their own. But when theyre not inviting the world into their #NoFilter lives, even the likes of Paris Hilton, the Fat Jew, and Emily Ratajkowski put the selfie stick down. In Tribeca Immersive A steadily growing portion of the Tribeca program over the years, the virtual and augmented reality content is best in class at this festival. Between Tribecas Virtual Arcade and newly added Cinema360, viewers can experience 25 exhibits that dance around the intersection of compelling storytelling and cutting-edge technology under one roof. Try the Vacation Simulator, or hear directly from victims and survivors of atomic bombings and nuclear arms testing in The Day the World Changed, or step into the powerfully immersive, large-scale, multi-sensory installation Hero that explores humanity in our modern era of civilian warfare. For more information on these and other films playing at Tribeca, visit The post In New York City, there are few large-scale cultural events that New Yorkers look forward to as much as the Tribeca Film Festival (April 18-29). And why shouldnt we? It has everything! Pioneering new takes on world cinema, VR, attitude-changing documentaries, celebrities, eye-opening panels, free family-friendly events, and so much more. Two weeks packed with this much content can be daunting, so weve pulled together a list of the movies were most excited about.Not everyone has a job where they are required to flip through old records, but as a writer on Late Night with David Letterman, this was Steve Youngs norm. Little did he know that what started as segments for Daves Record Collection would set him off on a journey through a part of media history that rarely gets the spotlight: industrial musicals.From the 1950s all the way through the 1980s, it wasnt uncommon for major companies like General Electric, McDonalds, Ford and Xerox to put on the razzle dazzle at their big sales meetings with Broadway-style productions. Think Lipton on the Move, Lucite, You and 72, and Everythings Coming Up Citgo. This documentary follows Young as he dives into this world of off-off-off Broadway meets corporate America that gave performers like Florence Henderson, Martin Short, and Chita Rivera their start.The greater Okavango River Basin is the largest freshwater wetland in southern Africaand the main source of water for a million people. Its delta, located in northern Botswana, is one of Africas richest places for biodiversity, and home to the worlds largest remaining elephant population as well as lions, cheetahs and hundreds of species of birds. And now the water that fuels this ecosystem is under threat.To protect the delta, National Geographic Explorer Dr. Steve Boyes and an international team of scientists, filmmakers, and African guides banded together on a journey from Angola to Namibia to Botswana to protect the Okavango watersheds source rivers forever. In this documentary , Director Neil Gelinas uses his extensive background filming in the wild to bring audiences a stunningly photographed tale of passion and conservation.With credits including Ragtime, Kiss of the Spiderwoman and Master Class, award-winning playwright Terrence McNally has had an illustrious career. All the while, McNally has fought for LGBTQ rights, beaten addiction, and used his talent in the arts to transform society.Full of rare footage and photos, this new documentary about his life features interviews with and performances by Angela Lansbury, Audra McDonald, Larry Kramer, Nathan Lane, Edie Falco, F. Murray Abraham, Billy Porter, Tyne Daly, Chita Rivera, John Slattery, Rita Moreno, and Christine Baranskijust to name drop a fewas well as the voices of Bryan Cranston as John Steinbeck and Meryl Streep as McNallys high school English teacher.If you can score tickets to the premiere, youll be rewarded with a post-screening conversation with director Jeff Kaufman, playwright Terrence McNally, actor/director Joe Mantello, and actors F. Murray Abraham, Christine Baranski, Nathan Lane, and Chita Rivera moderated by New York Magazine writer-at-large Frank Rich.The rise of social media stars as powerful influencers has sped up exponentially over the years to what some now call a fever pitch and others call just the beginning. They have millions of followers, work with top brands and, frankly, are brands of their own. But when theyre not inviting the world into their #NoFilter lives, even the likes of Paris Hilton, the Fat Jew, and Emily Ratajkowski put the selfie stick down.In American Meme , the stories behind these larger-than-life images get revealed: the ultimate cost and inevitable backlash each has experienced from media and fans alike as their empires have taken off.A steadily growing portion of the Tribeca program over the years, the virtual and augmented reality content is best in class at this festival. Between Tribecas Virtual Arcade and newly added Cinema360, viewers can experience 25 exhibits that dance around the intersection of compelling storytelling and cutting-edge technology under one roof.Try the Vacation Simulator, or hear directly from victims and survivors of atomic bombings and nuclear arms testing in The Day the World Changed, or step into the powerfully immersive, large-scale, multi-sensory installation Hero that explores humanity in our modern era of civilian warfare. These projects will transport you into another world.For more information on these and other films playing at Tribeca, visit www.tribecafilm.com/filmguide The post What to Watch: Tribeca Film Festival 2018 appeared first on AdLibbing.org When Mikayla Johnson checked her email during a school talent show, she got the kind of news that shattered her focus in the best way possible. If youve ever seen a swarm of bees, and they scatter suddenly and then come back to the hive, it was like that, said Mikayla, a junior in the Edgewood Fine Arts Academys theater program. The email in question alerted the 17-year-old actress that she had won a Young Masters Award from the Texas Cultural Trust and the Texas Commission on the Arts. Fifteen young artists from across the state are selected every other year to receive the $10,000 cash awards. Mikayla applied at the suggestion of her theater teacher, Claudia Casso. I was kind of shocked because I didnt think I was going to get it, said Mikayla, who lives in Floresville. The awards ceremony was held in Austin on Monday. The evening included a discussion with San Antonio-based visual artist Cruz Ortiz, as well as performances by Joe Ely, Dallas Black Dance Theatre and the vocal ensemble Conspirare. The Young Masters program was created in 2002 to recognize 8th- through 11th-graders who have demonstrated artistic excellence in film, music, theater, dance, media and the literary and visual arts. Each student is given $10,000 over two years $5,000 per year to spend on specialized training so they can sharpen their skills and improve their chances of being accepted into highly competitive college arts programs. This really gives these students a leg up, said Heidi Marquez Smith, executive director of the trust, which may be best known for presenting the Texas Medal for the Arts awards. We think these children are going to be the Texas legends of tomorrow. Mikayla plans to spend her award money on a weeklong program at the New York Film Academy this summer and then two weeks with the Houston Shakespeare Conservatory. The Young Masters award is just one of the honors shes earned of late. She won a slot in the International Thespian Festival in Nebraska this summer on the strength of her performance at the Texas Thespian Festival last fall. And she is one of the finalists for the Joci Awards, the Las Casas Foundations performing arts scholarship competition. The finals are May 20 at the Charline McCombs Empire Theatre. Mikayla may have been surprised by the Young Masters award, but Michaela M. Steele, director of Edgewood, wasnt. Steele, who has been at the school for about a year, said she has been struck by Mikaylas talents every time shes seen her onstage. Shes watched her give commanding performances as Aslan the lion in a school staging of The Lion, the Witch and the Wardrobe, and as Audrey II, a manipulative plant with a taste for blood, in Little Shop of Horrors. Shes very unique and quite a special talent, Steele said. Mikayla, who said she was bitten by the theater bug when she played Jacob Marley in a fifth-grade production of A Christmas Carol at Bonham Academy, isnt sure where she wants to go to college. Wherever she goes, she plans to double-major in theater and computer science, the latter a practical choice her parents encouraged to make sure shell be able to support herself no matter what. Shes hopeful shell be able to do that as an artist. Im here to tell stories, she said. I love telling stories. dlmartin@express-news.net | Twitter: @DeborahMartinEN AUSTIN Fox Business veteran Neil Cavuto was serious and intent in a recent televised interview as Gov. Greg Abbott ran down the list of issues on which he agrees with President Donald Trump. New tariffs on Chinese goods: China has been a trade abuser for a long time, Abbott told a national audience on the Tuesday afternoon show. Deployment of the National Guard to the U.S. border with Mexico: This is a gap filler until Trump builds his wall. Trumps disputed proposals to change the North American Free Trade Agreement: An even better NAFTA will result. Then, Cavuto asked: Quite often, the talk is youre the presidents favorite governor? Abbott just beamed, declining to give a direct answer. Hes doing great, the 60-year-old Republican said of Trump, hinting at how close he and the president are. Just talked to him yesterday. Giving such an embrace of Trump would be dangerous words in many parts of the country at a time when the president is a lightning rod for voter anger. Top Republican officials in many states are openly distancing themselves from any connections with their commander-in-chief and his myriad legal and political problems as they try to survive a predicted blue wave of Democratic turnout in the November elections. Related: Governor says another 1,000 Texas Guardsmen headed to border Not so much in Texas. This is a Red State where Trump remains popular among most Republicans and even some Democrats, a state that he won in 2016 by a slimmer margin that Republican Mitt Romney had four years before. And while political consultants for both parties agree he will be a drag on Texas Republicans in November, the growing question is just how much. Fact: For the first time in a decade, Texas Republicans are having to worry about the vote drag their president could have on elections, much as Democrats suffered through eight years of Barack Obama, whom Texas Republicans loved to hate. Trump wont be as much of an effect as he is in some northern states, but he will have impact here, said Mark Jones, a Rice University political science professor who has been monitoring the Trump effect in Texas races for months. In some of the down ballot races in Texas, the strategy youre seeing is a modest embrace of Trump. ... Republicans with strong brands like Abbott are not going to tarnish themselves by agreeing with him. Even so, Abbott confidantes privately acknowledge he likely will be re-elected by a slimmer margin than four years ago, when he beat Democratic rising star Wendy Davis by 20 points. They blame Trump. Its not a question about whether there will be a Trump drag in Texas, the only question right now is how big it will be and how many Republican incumbents will be in trouble, said Harold Cook, a political consultant who is a former executive director of the state Democratic party. If youre a member of Congress or state Senate or House incumbent who has a credible Democratic opponent, and youre in districts that went for Trump less than 7 or 8 points, you better be out working your ass off to get re-elected. The Trump Dance, as some GOP political consultants call it, has several different steps this year in Texas. Sticking with Trump Abbott has continued to remain aligned with Trump on a variety of political issues, most of which poll high in the issues Texans care about: border security, immigration reforms and economic growth. So have Lt. Gov. Dan Patrick and most other statewide elected Republicans, with some like Land Commissioner George P. Bush and Agriculture Commissioner Sid Miller touting their Trump support to fend off Republican primary challengers. Not so much for congressional and legislative candidates, especially those in areas like Houstons 7th Congressional District and in Dallas, where Democrats have been on the rise. Read more: Abbott calls cross-border activity disturbing and dangerous Recently touring his West Houston district to detail how he was pressing hard to get additional federal recovery funding for victims of Hurricane Harvey, longtime Republican U.S. Rep. John Culberson was accompanied by Democratic U.S. Rep. Al Green, who earlier this year was pushing to impeach Trump. Trumps name seldom came up, if at all, as Culberson talked with constituents at some stops, though he noted that the administration was supporting expedited resources to the Bayou City. Better to leave that one alone, leave Trump out of it in this district at this time, said Monica Dubermaier, a Houston Republican and small-businesswoman who said she refused to vote for Trump in 2016 but supports Culberson for re-election. Mr. Trump is a lightning rod. In fact, Trumps scheduled May 14 appearance at a Houston fundraiser for the National Republican Senatorial Committee which is trying to get Republicans elected in the fall is oddly being seen as a gift by Democrats. Were hoping Ted Cruz goes and takes a picture with Trump. That would motivate Democrats to turn out and vote, said Manny Garcia, deputy executive director of the Texas Democratic Party. Trump is ruining the Republicans brand. Hell be a massive drag in November. In the 23rd Congressional District in West Texas, a vast political area thats bigger than 23 states, incumbent Republican Will Hurd has made no bones about his disagreements with Trump on a variety of issues, especially building a wall along the Mexican border. Hurds is one three Texas congressional districts that consultants and political scientists are watching closely to see how the Trump effect will play out for incumbent Republicans. Culberson and U.S. Rep. Pete Sessions, R-Dallas, are the other two. He is smart to be doing that, focusing on his district, said Ramon Salinas, a 53-year-old San Antonio contractor who voted for Hurd two years ago but not for Trump. People dont like Trump, especially Texicans like me. My advice to Mr. Hurd, who I think has done a good job, is to stay as far away from Donald Trump as possible. An Abbott supporter, he says he is unconcerned by the governors closeness with the president. As long as he doesnt start acting like him, as long as he thinks for himself, Im still with him, he said. Greg Abbott is not a Donald Trump, sir. My kids future Half a state away, in the Dallas suburb of Plano, long branded a staunchly conservative GOP zone that Attorney General Ken Paxton calls home, Neesha Norris, a politically active single mom who operates her own software startup, predicts that a number of Republican incumbents in state legislative seats could face defeat this fall because of Trump. His bad behavior has people paying attention to politics. And now that we are, were questioning a lot of the things that have been going on in Austin, said Norris, who said she sits up late at night at her dining room table, after her kids are put to bed and business details for the next day are organized, updating herself on the latest political news. Im concerned about my kids future. For the first time, Im paying attention to what our politicians are doing. And I dont like a lot of it, especially Trump." Related: In drafting border plan, Trump uses road map drawn by Bush and Obama In the past, she voted Republican. This year is different. Im not so sure, she said. From the time Barack Obama was elected president in 2008, Devon Mathis watched as conservative Republicans came together to block his proposals they considered too liberal, then mobilized two years later to gain control of both the U.S. Senate and House and 29 of the nations 50 governorships. It was a rout, said the retired Houston sales executive, who labels himself a conservative blue dog Democrat with a red stripe who has voted for conservative Republicans in statewide races for years because he thinks his own party has become too liberal. This year, he thinks the same thing may happen to Republicans in Texas. The reason is Trump. He is a polarizing character whos gonna get the Democrats out in force, Mathis said. Republicans who dont like Trump may stay home, especially the women who think hes a sexist pig, as people used to say. The same thing will happen that got the Republicans out against Obama. Just wait and see. Democratic candidates up and down the ticket agree, invoking Trumps name any time they can, to make a point that Trump is the CEO of the Republican Party. If you dont like him, then you also should vote against the Texas Republican incumbents who support him, they argue. Democrats Lupe Valdez and Andrew White, in a May 22 runoff contest for the chance to challenge Abbott, have invoked Trumps name to highlight GOP policies in Texas they say are wrong-headed. Democrat Mike Collier punches away at Patrick for much the same thing. So far, Abbott and other statewide Republican incumbents dont seem to care. But GOP party officials from Houston to Dallas to Austin and San Antonio openly acknowledge they could have a problem if their partys faithful stay at home in November. Its quite clear there are a number of Democrats motivated by their hatred of the president, said James Dickey, the state Republican Party chair. Its absolutely critical that everyone on our side turns out and votes ... because the risk is that this could be the inverse of 2010, when Republicans were very concerned about things President Obama was doing and turned out. Despite that, he quickly notes that Texas Republicans posted a record primary turnout in March, a good sign for November. But we are not taking anything for granted, he quickly adds. Trump an issue Brandon Rottinghaus, a political scientist at the University of Houston, said that even though Republicans outnumber Democrats in a state where legislative seats are gerrymandered to protect Republican incumbents, the GOP still has reason for concern. And should Trump continue generating controversy in coming months, I expect the Trump Dance will get more intense, even in Texas, he said. If theres a meltdown in Washington and Republicans start pulling away from Trump in large numbers, then that could become a problem here. Until then, Trump will be an issue in a few races. Related: Trump tweets support for more top Texas Republicans And thats where Abbott could come in, some political observers predict, to help carry some fellow Republicans to victory with his statewide, door-knocking, grass-roots campaign network. After all, he is a popular governor with a strong political brand whose internal polls show that about 59 percent of Texas voters currently want to see him re-elected, the ninth-most popular CEO in the state. For their part, Abbott insiders say Trump is not the problem, but rather its a lack of enthusiasm by the Texans who voted for him when it comes to turning out in November. But as Abbott himself explained to Cavuto, he expects that most Texans at least most Texas Republicans will focus on the improving economy under Trump, rather than his pyrotechnic governing style. As we get closer to November, in Texas certainly, people will begin to see more money in the pocketbooks. ... More people have jobs. Unemployment will remain low. The types of things that lead people to favor a particular party, or going to line up with the Republican Party, because you will see policies passed that make life better for people because of the leadership in place. mike.ward@chron.com twitter.com/chroniclemike The stepfather of three Houston children who presumably plunged off a California cliff to their deaths last month joined with black community members on Monday in anguish over the childrens out-of-state adoption by a mother who was behind the wheel when the family perished. "Im going to be honest, why did they let her take these kids out of the state of Texas?" stepfather Nathaniel Davis said before a prayer vigil held for the children. "It wasn't right. They shouldnt have taken the kids away from us like they did. Authorities in California are still investigating the March 26 incident which has gripped and horrified people across the nation. A car carrying a family of eight ran off a 100-foot cliff that day, and the bodies of Sarah and Jennifer Hart, both 39, and three of the couple's adopted children were recovered soon after. Their other three children were also believed to be in the car but have not been found. Three of the six children in the Harts care who were thought to be in the car that day were Sierra, Jeremiah and Devonte, a group of siblings who were adopted from Harris County in 2009. The discovery that the adoptive children were from Texas has prompted a renewed call for reform of the states foster system, which was ruled broken in 2015 by a U.S. district judge who demanded the Texas Department of Family and Protective Services overhaul how it oversees foster services for thousands of children in long-term care. A total of 21 bills aimed at addressing issues with the foster system passed through the Texas Legislature in 2017. But Monday outside the Harris County Family Law Center, the Coalition for the Preservation of the Black Family and about a dozen supporters argued that more needs to be done, and that the state unnecessarily and unfairly separates black families in the foster system. We need to spend more time and more money strengthening the family not on the court system that keeps them [apart] from those families, said Deloyd Parker, executive director of the S.H.A.P.E. Community Center, which serves the Houston African-American community. Right now we have misplaced priorities. Spokesmen with the state agency declined to comment on specifics of the case because of confidentiality reasons and re-issued a statement sent when news organizations first reported that the Hart children were adopted out of Texas. "In any adoption, we try to look at absolutely everything to ensure that it is a good match that the child or children are getting a permanent and loving home," the statement reads. "A typical adoption includes trial visits, and at least a six-month placement with the adoptive parents. During that time, for out-of-state adoptions, the child welfare agency in that state would be monitoring the family and reporting back to us, and we in turn report it to the judge overseeing the case. The judge reviews all the information on the adoptive parents and decides to approve, or deny, or ask for more information." READ ALSO: Woman who drove SUV with family off cliff was drunk, police say Now Playing: Authorities investigating the California crash say it is a possibility that three of the six children in the Hart family may not have been killed. Elizabeth Keatinge (@elizkeatinge) has more. Video: Buzz 60 The process to remove the Houston children from the custody of their biological mother began in 2006. Court records show that the mother had a history of drug abuse and that one of the children had suffered multiple bone fractures in her care. Her parental rights were terminated, according to the records. An aunt, Houston resident Priscilla Celestine, sought custody of the children -- Sierra, Devonte and Jeremiah and one other sibling, records show. A Houston-based appeals court denied her request in 2010 because she had let the boy's biological mother see the children, in violation of a judicial order barring visitation. According to the court records, the children lived with Celestine for about five months before they were placed in foster care. The Harts then adopted the three siblings in 2009, while they were living in Minnesota. The Harts had previously adopted Abigail, Hannah and Markis - all siblings from Colorado County in 2006. The Harts did not adopt the fourth Houston sibling removed from Celestines care. That fourth sibling is currently incarcerated and doesn't know his siblings are possibly dead, Davis said. The stepfather said he and his wife the Houston childrens biological mother looked after the three siblings until they were put into the foster system. While his wife struggled with drug abuse, she was a loving and good parent, Davis said. My wife, she always had been nice to our kids, Davis said. Wed never turn our back on those kids. Since the crash, a slew of allegations has surfaced about the Hart womens treatment of their adopted wards in Minnesota, Washington and Oregon. Sarah Hart pleaded guilty in 2011 to domestic assault in Minnesota. An Alexandria police report obtained last week shows that one of the daughters told authorities in 2008 one of her mothers bruised her with a belt, months before one of the adoptions was finalized. And in March, neighbors in Woodland, Wash., contacted child welfare workers with concerns about the children not having enough food to eat. Washington authorities had visited the Harts home days before the crash. California law enforcement officials are investigating whether the crash was intentional. Sondera Malry, a member at large of the Association of Black Social Workers, said too many families have been wrongly separated through the foster system, and that the Hart children are the latest to be placed in a worse situation than the one they left. "This story is an age-old story," Malry said. "We have been struggling with trying to keep our children with our families for many, many years. This is not new. But this is so tragic that these particular children were taken even out of the Harris County area, out of a system right here in Texas all the way into another state and then were brutally disregarded in terms of their life needs. This should never have been, she said. While interstate adoptions are still uncommon, roughly 300 to 400 foster children living in Texas are adopted each year from across state lines, the San Antonio Express-News reported. This is genocide, said Pamela Muhammad, attorney for the Coalition for the Preservation of the Black Family. The Houston family was shattered by callous and wanton disregard, under the pretext of using the law as a tool to separate us from our loved ones. Muhammad said the coalition is committed to providing the black community tools to prevent the separation of families through the foster system. Weve got to give them a fight because our children are worth it, Muhammad said. We are here in prayer, were praying for strength that we can fight this battle, and were praying for this family that has suffered this loss. St. John Barned-Smith contributed to this report. An undocumented mother of four from Laredo was detained Sunday by U.S. Border Patrol agents as she brought her 4-year-old special needs son, a U.S. citizen, to University Hospital for orthopedic surgery on his broken arm. San Antonio attorney Gerardo Menchaca said Monday that the woman, Silvia Macuixele, originally from the Mexican state of Oaxaca, was detained and fingerprinted at a checkpoint north of Laredo on Interstate 35 as she accompanied her son in an ambulance. Agents then followed the ambulance to San Antonio shortly after 3:30 a.m. Sunday. Menchaca said an incredibly nice agent stayed with Macuixele, who was not in handcuffs, when she arrived at University and then remained in her sons room even while she conferred with her attorney, despite Menchacas protests. She was prevented from contacting her family or leaving the hospital room, and then was taken back to Laredo with her speech-impaired son by agents and released on her personal recognizance early Monday. The federal agency had been informed by a Laredo hospital that Macuixele, who had been twice deported in 2008, would be in transit in the ambulance, said Priscilla Martinez, the immigration coordinator for Workers Defense Action Fund, an immigration advocacy group that assisted the mother. A statement released Monday by the Border Patrols parent agency, U.S. Customs and Border Protection, said Macuixele is to appear before a federal immigration judge, who will rule on her immigration status and determine her eligibility for relief or removal from the United States. Martinez said Macuixele has reported to law enforcement incidents of domestic abuse by an ex-husband in Laredo and might seek a visa accommodation due to that. The episode recalled the case of 10-year-old Rosa Maria Hernandez, who six months ago gained national attention after being detained by immigration agents who followed her from Laredo to Corpus Christi as she traveled in a private vehicle to seek emergency gallbladder surgery. The Border Patrol acted very differently this time than they did in the Rosa Maria case, and were happy about that, Martinez said. But were still not pleased that the Border Patrol was in the room with the mom and dont think that was needed at all. We will continue to work with the Department of Homeland Security to modify those situations. The Department of Homeland Security generally avoids enforcement actions at sensitive locations such as schools, places of worship, political rallies and hospitals, and requires they be approved by supervisors or constitute an emergency situation. The policies are meant to ensure that officers and agents exercise sound judgment when enforcing federal law at or focused on sensitive locations, reads the policy, (and) to enhance the public understanding and trust, and to ensure that people seeking to participate in activities or utilize services provided at any sensitive location are free to do so, without fear or hesitation. Menchaca said DHS has unofficially encouraged hospitals to notify the agency when its undocumented patients or guardians might be in transit to seek treatment. I dont mind that in one respect, he said. Because in an emergency it might help them get processed more quickly through a checkpoint and that agents on the scene who can see the crying baby or the hysterical mother can exercise their discretion in allowing passage rather than sending such decisions to Washington and perhaps waiting for hours. Bruce Selcraig is a San Antonio Express-News staff writer. | BSelcraig@express-news.net Monday's episode of Ellen features a South Texas high school and record-breaking donation. Rockport-Fulton High School's beloved "gold gym" was one of the many structures destroyed by Hurricane Harvey in August. In a preview for the episode, Ellen DeGeneres announces a $1 million donation, in partnership with Lowe's Heroes program, to rebuild. In Rockport, gathered students cheer as confetti falls. RELATED: San Antonio native, Navy serviceman reunited with girlfriend on Ellen "It really is the biggest gift we've ever given," Ellen says in the preview. "I know that your gym was more than just a gym to all of you. It was important to your entire community." According to the Corpus Christi Caller Times, Aransas County ISD, which the high school is a part of, suffered $55 million in damages. Madalyn Mendoza is a digital reporter for mySA.com. Read more of her stories here.| mmendoza@mysa.com | Twitter: @MaddySkye Of all 11 members of City Council, Greg Brockhouse would seem the most likely to give his full-throated support for all three of the fire unions recently delivered scorched-earth petitions to amend the city charter. Spoiler alert: He does not. All would drain power from municipal government, making it easier to put city ordinances to a public vote; barring the city from going to court over labor agreements; and capping the city managers salary at 10 times that of the lowest-paid full-time city employee. Before Brockhouse was elected last year to represent District 6, he worked as a consultant for both the fire and police unions, launching broadsides against city initiatives and officials as both organizations fought for leverage in contract negotiations. And no official received more of Brockhouses well-compensated ire than City Manager Sheryl Sculley. The San Antonio Police Officers Association, for instance, paid Brockhouse $5,000 a month for more than two years, in part to push back against Sculleys assertion that public-safety costs could completely consume the citys general-fund budget by 2031. To deflect the issue, Brockhouse worked with a marketing firm to produce TV ads excoriating Sculleys salary. More from Chasnoff: Chasnoff: LaHood has become a 'lame duck' New from City Hall, one blared, City Manager Sheryl Sculley is already the highest paid city manager in Texas. Soon, shell be making more than even the president of the United States. Brockhouses disdain for Sculleys compensation the city managers base pay increased to $475,000 this year even predates his association with the unions. You can go as far back to 2013, when I ran for city council, Brockhouse said. Ive talked about it in 2012 and 2013. My concern with the city managers compensation has nothing to do with the police officers and firefighters. I was opposed to that before I had any relationship with SAPOA or the firefighters. And yet, Brockhouse has serious reservations about the fire unions determination to cap a future city managers salary. Last week, as fire union president Chris Steele held a press conference outside City Hall arguing for the amendments, Brockhouse told me he supported the two other potential changes to the charter (making it easier to put ordinances to a public vote and barring the city from going to court over labor agreements). And he stressed that he had no problem with the unions collection of signatures calling for a November charter-amendment election. I support their right to do exactly what theyre doing, Brockhouse said. Brockhouse, though, was uncomfortable with the proposed amendment that would cap the city managers salary and limit the tenure of the citys top employee to eight years. (The change would not affect Sculleys own salary; it would take effect after her departure.) My concerns are: Are we going to be able to attract quality talent? Brockhouse said then. On Monday, Brockhouse elaborated: He wants more facts. For instance, he doesnt know exactly how much the lowest-paid full-time city employee earns. (Thats $29,640 a year, according to city spokesman Jeff Coyle. Maintenance workers and library aides are among those who earn that amount.) Capping the city managers salary also could hamper negotiations with potential hires, Brockhouse said. I would want flexibility as an elected official to make the right hire, he said. Read more: Fire union files petitions for San Antonio charter-amendment election Maybe the problem is Steele doesnt respect elected officials not even Brockhouse. Outside City Hall, Steele referred to the entire council as 11 people who dont represent properly the citizens. When I brought that up to Brockhouse, the typically loquacious councilman seemed at a loss for words. Yeah, he said. Yeah, I mean I, you know, I respect that organization and I respect Chris. And he has his feelings about it. I disagree with it. I think what hes trying to say is, the council as a whole doesnt represent the city of San Antonio. Brockhouse added, Im part of the body. Im part of the city council. bchasnoff@express-news.net FAIRFIELD A 20-year-old Fairfield University student was charged with fourth-degree sexual assault after police said he fondled a female student asleep in a dorm Sunday morning. Julio G. Roque, of Syosset, N.Y., was also charged with third-degree burglary. A student at the Gonzaga Hall dormitory reported the incident early Sunday morning. She said she and her boyfriend were asleep in her bed, and her roommate was asleep in her own bed, according to the report. The female told police she was awakened by a man grabbing her bare breasts, and when she confronted him, the assailant fled. Neither the boyfriend or roommate immediately woke up, according to the report. The female student said she put on a shirt and ran into the hallway, but could no longer see the man. Roque denied the females account to police, and said he had gone to the dorm room to look for her boyfriend. He said he opened the door and only looked in the room, but never touched her. Roque apparently lives in the same dorm, but on a different floor, police said, and the complainants boyfriend said he was acquainted with Roque, according to the report. Bond was set at $20,000 and Roque is scheduled to appear March 4 at state Superior Court in Bridgeport. by Brendan Tuma | Padres Correspondent | Mon, Apr 16th 7:01pm EDT San Diego Padres first baseman Eric Hosmer (back) will return to the lineup on Monday versus the Los Angeles Dodgers. (Kevin Acee on Twitter) Fantasy Impact: Hosmer has missed two games with back tightness, but it's not longer an issue. The $144 million man is batting .288 with one homer here in the early part of 2018. by Ryan Patti | Lakers Correspondent | Tue, Apr 17th 1:04am EDT Wayne Ellington provided 11 points on 3-for-10 shooting (3-for-8 from long range, 2-for-2 at the stripe), one rebound, one assist and a steal in 20 minutes in Miami's 113-103 win against the 76ers. by Brad Richter | 76ers Correspondent | Tue, Apr 17th 2:07pm EDT Joel Embiid's status for Game 3 on Thursday in Miami is still uncertain as he has not been cleared to rejoin the team on the court. (Jessica Camerato on Twitter) Fantasy Impact: Embiid vented some frustration after the Sixers' Game 2 loss with his desire to get back on the court. With the Sixers losing on Monday it could put a little more pressure on the team to get their star center on the floor in Miami for Game 3 but that will ultimately be up to the Sixers' medical team. The UKs largest independent cheese producer is inviting dairy farmers to join their global alliance to fulfil international orders. Currently trading in over 160 countries worldwide, the export side of Wyke Farms has seen solid growth. The business is now looking for dairy farmers based within a 50-mile radius of their Bruton, Somerset based dairy to join them. Wyke Farms plans to increase milk production by 25m litres through farmer partnerships in Gloucestershire, Somerset, Wiltshire, Devon and Dorset. Predicting global middle class growth and a subsequent food revolution from the East, Managing Director Rich Clothier is inviting local milk producers to take part. He comments: By 2030 the average Chinese person is likely to be wealthier than the average American and 300 million Indians will join the middle classes. Only by joining and excelling in world trade can we build stability into the dairy sector. Wyke contract: April milk price 27.65p/litre (4% butterfat, 3.3% protein), down 1p/litre from March. Simple pricing schedule, no balancing charges and no expansion restrictions. For further information on how to be involved contact: Andrew Gaskell, Milk Procurement Director, Wyke Farms Ltd 01749 812 424 andrew.gaskell@wykefarms.com A livestock haulier is to be suspended from operating HGVs at the end of this month for not paying enough attention to safety and licensing standards. Fife-based Andrew Adams and partners, trading as A&Y Adams and Sons, wont be able to operate any of their four vehicles for six weeks from 30 April, following a decision by Scotlands Traffic Commissioner Joan Aitken. In a written decision issued after a public inquiry in Edinburgh, Miss Aitken said: On 18 August 2017, the operator sent out a vehicle on to the public roads of Scotland in a very dangerous condition. But for the most fortunate checking of this vehicle by the Driver and Vehicle Standards Agency (DVSA) there would have been a significant wheel loss incident, of that I am in no doubt. If ever a case showed the value of DVSA roadside checking, this is one. This decision gives me the opportunity to highlight the very serious practical contribution made by DVSA Vehicle Examiners to road safety in Scotland. The Traffic Commissioner added that the partnership had been dangerously ignorant about what had to be done and what must not be done to ensure wheel security. Competent manager She also criticised the firms failure to make sure they had a professional competent transport manager a legal requirement. The individual appointed to that role, John Barr, hadnt been performing the role but the business didnt notify the Traffic Commissioner or find someone to replace him. The regualtor said the blame for what had happened on the licence lay with Mr Barr, who did not attend the inquiry, although she noted that Andrew Adams knew the arrangement was casual and not thorough. Mr Barr lost his repute on the day of the inquiry and was disqualified from acting as a transport manager indefinitely. Miss Aitken ordered the suspension of the licence held by Andrew Adams and partners with effect from 30 April 2018 at 23:59 for a minimum of six weeks. The suspension will be removed when the Commissioner is satisfied as to the requirements of professional competence, the identity of the partners and financial standing. A new type of imaging system for use in agriculture, designed to be far less expensive than existing technology and to increase crop yield, is being developed. Academics and the farming industry have teamed up to develop a new type of hyperspectral imaging (HSI) system. The UK government-funded collaboration has the potential to introduce an affordable spectral imaging technology to help agricultural businesses monitor and maximise crop production in fields and greenhouses. The sensors in development are expected to be up to 90% cheaper than equivalent equipment currently on the market. They have the potential to make high resolution spectral imaging technology significantly more accessible to the agricultural sector and beyond. The teams HSI system, which is being manufactured by Wideblue, uses linear variable optical filters to disperse light reflecting from plants into specific wavelengths and colours. The new university technology aims to provide boost to agricultural sector This spectral image data is subsequently captured and analysed using sophisticated data processing software to provide a number of key indicators to farmers on the conditions of crops. Monitoring crops It is anticipated that adopting the technology will allow farmers to monitor various crop attributes including plant health, hydration levels and disease indicators. As a result, it is envisaged that farmers will be able to: optimise the impact of fertilisation; save water by employing more efficient irrigation methods; and, critically, spot diseases and infestations at an earlier stage, allowing them to avoid blights. Combined, the expected benefits of adopting the equipment could have a significant impact on overall crop yield while freeing up additional resource for farmers to concentrate on other priorities. The consortium of universities and research centres have applied for a patent on the overall low cost hyperspectral imaging camera technology. 'Global scale' Professor Des Gibson, from the University of the West of Scotland (UWS) said that while similar technology has been available in the agricultural sector for some time, it has always been the matter of cost. In the long term we would like to make the product available on a global scale, particularly in countries such as China, where agricultural investment in greenhouse crop production is quickly becoming the most common method of farming in the agricultural sector, Professor Gibson said. Russell Allison of grain millers and agricultural merchants Galloway & MacLeod project partner and technology end user said: As technology develops, it is important that agriculture utilises this to full benefit, helping improve input efficiency and maximise returns per hectare. This is where the new HSI camera comes into play. Initial cost is lower than similar products on the market, making the technology accessible to a wider range of farms. Moreover, it is anticipated that the camera will bring far more benefits, through earlier management decisions, than currently achievable on growing crops. A farmer in Perthshire has had to use the last resort by shooting a dog dead following a livestock worrying incident on his farm. Police Scotland confirmed the incident happened in the Forteviot area on Sunday (15 April). The farmer and pet owner were described as "very upset". The farmer reported the incident to the police following the shooting. A spokesman for Police Scotland said: Police Scotland can confirm they are aware of reports of gunshots in the Forteviot area earlier today. Officers have carried out enquiries and confirm that the shots have been as a result of an animal being killed. We are not looking for any other person and there is no risk to the public. Under the Dogs (Protection of Livestock) Act 1953, if a dog worries sheep on agricultural land, the person in charge of the dog is guilty of an offence. The Act considers sheep worrying to include attacking sheep, chasing them in a way that may cause injury, suffering, abortion or loss of produce or being at large in a field or enclosure in which there are sheep. To protect their livestock, the farmer has the right to kill the offending dog. Previous cases Last month, a Cotswolds farmer shot a Husky dead after it chased and attacked dozens of sheep, killing one lamb in the process. A Welsh farmer shot a dog dead which ran havoc on his land and savaged six of his sheep last summer. And in June last year, a Wiltshire farmer shot dead a dog which ran havoc and savaged two of his sheep. The farmer said the whole incident had been 'deeply upsetting'. A further two farmers shot dead loose dogs attacking their livestock in 2017. A farmer from Aberdeenshire shot dead a dog which killed two of his sheep, and a farmer from Fife shot dead a loose dog which attacked his livestock. A farmer from Hertfordshire said due to the recent rises in sheep worrying cases, he said that he won't 'hesitate in shooting in future'. Next Story : Highlights from the Femina Wedding Show, Coimbatore All rape trials in India are conducted in-camera. In an in-camera trial, the entire trial takes place inside a courtroom to which access to people is restricted. Access is allowed only to people related to the trial, explains Rahul Thakur, advocate, who has filed a PIL against revealing all the details to the media before the charge sheet is filed. These would include the magistrate, the survivor (who is referred to as the prosecutrix or Miss X in all court documents), the accused, their lawyers (if there is more than one accused), witnesses, if available, police officials involved in the investigation, court clerk and social worker. The survivor is also allowed to shield herself from the accused (by standing behind a curtain)the reason for this is to prevent her from undergoing further trauma on coming face to face with the accused, he explains. Triveni Acharya, president, Rescue Foundation, agrees that the in-camera trial is a good idea. In-camera trials are extremely beneficial for rape survivors because they are there to ensure privacy. I have observed that girls who have undergone this kind of trauma are embarrassed and confused in the courtroom. Sometimes they even change their statements because they are scared to put their points across clearly. Criminal lawyer Seema Adate adds, If the girl is not in the city or state where the trial is taking place, she can even attend via video conferencing.In an ideal world, an in-camera trial doesnt just help the survivor but also speeds up the legal process and ensures that justice is served with minimal disruption of the life of the survivor. However, in India, the manner in which rape trials are conducted is a matter of grave concern on many levels that are not addressed or fixed by an in-camera trial.Breach of privacy is a huge concern. An in-camera trial doesnt necessarily ensure that the identity of the accused is withheld. The trial itself is conducted in a courtroom, and not in a special ante chamber, which means that there is a sizeable number of people involved in the case present. The details of the rape case, such as the timing and the court room, are put up on the notice board along with other cases. Even a small thoughtful move like ensuring theres a separate entrance for the survivor so that she doesnt have to meet other people when she goes to court can go a long way in making her feel at easebut the system isnt built to be gender sensitive.How can you expect gender sensitivity, when just one per cent of the judiciary is female? And even among those women, very few choose to practise criminal law, points out Rahul. In Pratiksha Baxis book Public Secrets Of Law: Rape Trials In India, she describes the scenario in detail, says Kavita Krishnan, secretary of the All India Progressive Womens Association. In an in-camera trial, the survivor is often the only woman in a room full of men. Even if all of them are not hostile towards her, the very fact that they are laughing, joking and seemingly comfortable with each other alienates her. Also, the in-camera trial is supposed to help protect the identity of the survivor as well as ensure that the details divulged in court are not leaked outside. And yet, all of the details find their way to the media, through sources, she says.At the age of 19, Seema* was gang-raped by four of her classmates. When Seema and her parents decided to seek justice, they had no idea what a rape trial would entail. Seema broke down repeatedly during her trial, where she had to face the accused every day and answer questions that made her relive her trauma. Seema, her mother and a social worker were the only three women in the courtroom. Surrounded by menthe judge, the lawyers and the accusedSeema felt alienated and humiliated repeatedly. Her image was splashed on televisionand although it was blurred, the images of those accompanying her were not, making her identity easy to guess. It became impossible for the young girl to go back to her college and focus on her studies. Seemas parents were ostracised. Is it any surprise then that Seema and her entire family turned hostile? Seema went on to try to finish her education in another city, reveals the social activist who helped the family through the trial.The biggest problem, say social activists, is the fact that an already traumatic trial is prolonged through repeated adjournments, often for trivial reasons concocted by the defence lawyers. And this is why rape survivors are reluctant to approach the police and the courts. A rape trial can be conducted and finished in just seven days, says Rahul, provided there are no other pending cases in court, which, is of course, never the case. However, post the Delhi gang-rape, there has been a sea change in the way the judicial system deals with rape cases and dispenses justice.A noticeable gap in Indian law is that there is no protection accorded to transgender persons or men against sexual violence. Particularly in situations of custody, such as police stations, jails, caste atrocities, men and people from the transgender community are subjected to heinous violence and abuse. It is high time the law addressed this.The expanded definition of rape in our law acknowledges the womans right to bodily integrity. And yet, it excludes marital rape from the list of crimes. This is an incongruity that the law must address.Vrinda Grover says this is the time to strike out for real change.Vrinda is a lawyer, researcher, and human rights and womens rights activist based in New Delhi. As a lawyer, Vrinda has appeared in landmark human rights cases and represented many women and child survivors of domestic and sexual violence. She has also contributed to the drafting of laws, including the Criminal Law (Amendment) Act, 2013.Violence against women is the silent genocide taking place in India. We have a long history of pervasive sexual violence across regions, class and caste. Post the December 2012 Delhi gang-rape, there has been a visible shift in the attitude of women. Women no longer believe that they invite sexual violence upon themselves. Instead, they are speaking up and complaining to the authorities. And with the Criminal Law (Amendment) Act, 2013, we have managed to get the attention of the Centre and the state governments too. No wonder then, that there is a backlash, and claims that false cases are being filednews of which, of course, people with an agenda are interested in blowing out of proportion. It is important to not feed this kind of discourse. We need to focus on the challenges and on how we can better implement rape laws in the country.We are dealing with a situation where there is pervasive sexual violence, from sexual harassment to rape, across the country. However, women are now coming forward and demanding justice. It is the responsibility of the judicial system to ensure justice, in a manner that is dignified and does not retraumatise them or abandon them. Unfortunately, now that the new law for rape is codified, the government and states think that their job is over. Whereas the fact is, their job has just begun. We have a very hostile legal system. There is no one to help a survivor navigate this quagmire. Despite this, we find that women are able to depose in court, when they receive support, from family, friends or NGOs. But this support is not institutionalised and so many rape survivors have to cope with the system alone.The National Legal Services Authority (NALSA), which works under the direct supervision of the Supreme Court, has a paralegal volunteer scheme to assist vulnerable and marginalised sections access justice. This system needs to be strengthened the paralegals must be accredited and paid a salary, not just a token honorarium. Paralegals can be the crucial link that holds the survivors hand in her journey through the criminal justice system.Then there is the matter of the environment inside the courtroom the rape survivor should be able to testify without fear or shame. Sporadically, efforts are made in this direction. For instance, I represented the Swiss tourist who was gang-raped in Datia, MP, in 2013, where the legal system responded promptly and sensitively. As the rape survivor was scared to return to Datia to give evidence, a judicial officer in Delhi was appointed as a Commission to record her testimony and she identified the accused through video conferencing, in a room constituted as a court in Delhi. While complying with fair trial requirements, she was treated with care. All these arrangements are in compliance with the law. Why is it that these legal mechanisms are not available for ordinary women and only brought in during extraordinary circumstances? We know that even in the Mumbai Shakti Mills gang-rape case, the gang-rape survivor had requested for video conferencing. She was clearly emotionally too fragile to confront the accused men. So why wasnt she given this legal option?According to the Supreme Court and the guidelines issued by the Union Ministry of Health And Family Welfare, the two-finger test is unlawful and declared irrelevant to trial. And yet, I find that the test continues with doctors recording that the woman is habituated to sexual intercourse. Recently, I was in Bhubaneshwar, Odisha, conducting a workshop with government doctors and they disclosed that it is the police officers who requisition this test asking for the information. Clearly there is an urgent need for the union ministry guidelines to be adopted by each state.The new Criminal Law (Amendment) Act, 2013, asks for the setting up of fast-track courts in the country and states that a rape trial must be completed in two months. But in practice, delays are endemic in all cases including rape trials. Who does the delay benefit? Obviously the accused, in such cases. Unless the number of trial courts and judicial officers is increased, the rule on fast-track courts is a non-starter. And this requires the government to increase budgetary allocations to the judicial system.The Law Commission report and repeated Supreme Court judgments have said that there should be a Victim-Witness Protection Programme in India. But in reality, the victim-witness has to fend for herself. Let us take the example of the Muzaffarnagar communal violence in September 2013. During the riots, six Muslim women were gang-raped in Fugana village. Their entire family targeted, they were forced to flee their ancestral village and relocate to a new ghetto in rural UP. Even in this difficult circumstance, they lodged an FIR and gave statements to the police. But with no witness protection programme in place, they face daily threats and intimidation from the accused who are socially, economically and politically influential. We have filed a dozen complaints with the police about these threats. The Supreme Court has deputed two police constables for their safety. Witness protection, however, cannot be reduced to two constables. Much more comprehensive measures need to be envisaged.The rape of Dalit women is the most systemic violation in the country. And here, the accused enjoy absolute impunity, due to their caste, class and social privileges reinforced by political patronage. Unless you challenge this impunity, sexual violence will continue. And I dont see the government taking any steps to curb this. This is evident in conflict areas, whether it is Kashmir, the northeast or Chattisgarh. Wherever there is militarisation, sexual violence against women escalates.Whether it is the exercise of male privilege or the entitlement that dominant communities and castes accord to themselves over womens bodies; or it is the boys will be boys attitude, or prioritisation of the morale of the armed forces over the freedom and dignity of womenyou cannot challenge these selectively. You have to raise your voice against all these violations at the same time. Bias, contempt and prejudice stalk women from the police station to the court room. Let us recognise this institutional bias and then put in measures to remedy it. Right now, there is a determination in the people, particularly among women. It is a very important moment for change, and thats where hope lies. Ruhi Singh's Mauritius Adventure Doesn't Ruhi Singh look so fabulous in her pink outfit? We'll give anything just to be there, folks! Perfect Time For A Holiday It's a prefect time to be holidaying in Mauritius and Ruhi Singh is doing just that. The Gang! Ruhi Singh is seen relaxing by the beach along with her friends and the picture looks so perfect and peaceful, right? Ohh La La! Ruhi Singh shares a throwback picture from her previous holiday and she's seen chilling with other girls on the yacht. Globetrotter Ruhi Singh Even before holidaying in Mauritius, Ruhi Singh visited Hong Kong and spend a good number of days in the city. She shared a lot of pictures on her Instagram handle as well. Last Seen On The Silver Screen Ruhi Singh was last seen in the movie Ishq Forever in 2016 alongside Krishna Chaturvedi and the film ended up being a flop. On The Work Front Ruhi Singh has no Bollywood films lined up currently and we hope to see her sooner or later on the silver screen. Web Series She is working on a web series named Spotlight 2, directed by Vikram Bhatt. The web series also stars Karan Grover and Femina Miss India 2015 contestant Aditi Arya. Shahid Has A Philosophical Side To Him Unknown To Many Ishaan said, "He is like a sage sometimes. He has a philosophical side to him that a lot of people are not exposed to, where he says things like, Beta, come let me tell you about life'. So, he imparts a lot of wisdom and shares his experience." Ishaan Got This Piece Of Advice From Him "Mostly, it's me listening, while sometimes he is interested in listening to my perspective about things, too. One of the most significant things my brother told me was to always be honest, as that will translate on camera. He says, Chase honesty and authenticity. Be sincere in the moment. Try and find an honest moment rather than achieving a certain kind of effect'. Actors can become technically sound, but honesty always translates even if you are not doing a lot of things on camera." Shahid A Dominating Elder Sibling? Ishaan Has This To Say He likes to use the experience card a lot. His closing line is Vadda kaun?' when he doesn't win an argument (laughs!). However, he is not overtly dominating. We come from a very liberal family. He has strong opinions, but he doesn't always share them, unless I am seeking his views. I have watched his films repeatedly and have learnt a lot by observing him. Since I am close to him, I know where a certain emotion is coming from." Ishaan On Comparisons With Elder Brother Shahid "I strongly believe that your work speaks for itself. I would never compare myself with him. If others do, they have a right to their opinion and freedom of choice. It will be unfair to pit me against my brother as he is somebody with 15 years of experience. There is no way I can perceive him as competition, as he is family. I don't find any sense in these comparisons." Ishaan Never Felt Nervous About Acting He shared, " I have been passionate about dancing and acting as long as I can remember. It was a natural progression to make it my passion, pursue it, learn more about it and develop myself as a performer. However, I was not influenced to pursue acting. It was entirely my decision. Both my brother and mother are actors and dancers. Of course, my mom, who is a Kathak exponent, is the most established dancer amongst the three of us. The fact that my family is so accomplished translates into more responsibility for me. However, I have never felt nervous about it; instead, it has always been about eagerness and curiosity. There was so much to achieve, while discovering myself as an actor. It was only later that I realised that I am very comfortable in front of the camera and feel at home on the set." Majid Majidi Wouldn't Have Cast Him Had He Known About His Filmi Lineage, Says Ishaan "Karan Johar sir wanted to meet me (for 'Dhadak') and the one way he could do that was through my brother. Perhaps, he saw some videos or footage of mine on social media and thought that I was of an eligible age to be a part of the kind of films that he wanted to make. It was his decision not to audition me for his project. Majidi sir did not know about my background when he cast me. In fact, it would have hampered my chances had he known about it because he wasn't keen on casting anybody who brought any kind of baggage to the part. I got 'BTC' on the basis of the audition and I feel that have I earned the part. I am glad my journey has begun this way," the actor told the leading daily. In Other News, Ishaan recently wrapped up Shashank Khaitan's Dhadak co-starring Janhavi Kapoor. The film is an official remake of the Marathi blockbuster 'Sairat'. You do not have to be an economist to know that the only way to save Air India is to pull it out of the clutches of the government which throttled the carrier ever since that black day when Morarji Desai dumped JRD Tata and ordered Air Chief Marshal PC Lal to take over If there had been that much love for the venerable Maharaja and his fleet, perhaps Air India would not have been mauled over the years by successive governments who treated it like their personal fiefdom. With an $8 billion debt and rising, the mismanaged airline isnt exactly triggering a stampede to its door. Now that it is on a ventilator, we still want to save it by laying down conditions. Only Abu Dhabi-based Etihad has moved up the field of contenders but if it means facing a political fallout with RSS chief Mohan Bhagwat getting emotionally chauvinistic about the national carrier, even the few left in the race might balk at the increased risk factor and the hectoring from the Hindu right-wingers that will create a security problem. We have already seen it with fizzy drinks and fries, why not with flights. Who needs the headache? Jet Airways followed Indigo in backing off its bid and despite global interest in the sale, it isnt gaining much traction. Bids expressing interest are open till 14 May and it is believed government will announce a victor within a fortnight. You do not have to be an economist to know that the only way to save the airline is to pull it out of the clutches of the government which throttled the carrier ever since that black day when Morarji Desai dumped JRD Tata and ordered Air Chief Marshal PC Lal to take over. Till then Air India was arguably the finest airline in the world and the Maharaja the symbol of a first class carrier. We met the day JRD had just been told in the rudest way possible that he was no longer Chairman of Air India. But he kept his appointment. He talked about the decency of Air Chief Marshal Lal in calling him from Kolkata to say that Prime Minister Morarji Desai had ordered him to take over Air India from JRD and would that be fine by him and the former Air Chief asked for permission. I told the Air Marshal he must follow orders, JRD said, But that does not mean I have to like it. Nor do we have to continue to see the unending slide of a once proud global ambassador. Between a series of managing directors appointed wily-nily, unions that fell apart after the 1974 Indian Pilot Guild strike failed because of lack of staying power, the blatant shifting of power to the ministry with the Aviation Secretarys out office serving as an ad hoc reservation centre for VIPs, an eclipsing of image by playing politics between Indian Airlines and Air India, the latters hierarchy incapable of understanding the cultural mindset of New Delhi vis-a-vis a more westernised Mumbai-based entity, the ever-decreasing affection for its unpredictability and a shabby fleet, the Maharaja was dethroned. International economists Pravin Krishna and Vivek Dehejia had this to say; in fact, the only qualification required to realise that Air India is ripe for disinvestment is to have flown it in recent months or years. Flights are routinely delayed, the equipment is old and mouldering, and the prospect of good service depends upon the whims of the flight attendant who happens to be assigned to you. The airline has come to be seen, with ample justification, as a platform through which politicians and officials enjoy the perks of office, at everyone elses expense. Briefly, no one else really wants to fly Air India. What Bhagwat has failed to grasp is the Marshal Maclughan concept of a global village. There is now no real percentage in labelling airlines as flag carriers or emissaries of the nation. They are just another business and should be run as a business. Point then is, does government have the fiat to do business or should it stay out of the market and only govern? The answer is not blowing in the wind, it is in our face: Privatise. Several airlines have shed patriotic fervor, among them British Airways. That self-indulgence has become passe. But no one will come with a cheque in hand if we get all huffy about keeping it in Indian hands. When KLM and Air France merged, they retained their identity even though they were now one. What should be done with Air India is sell it to the highest bidder with the codicil that it will not lose its physical identity. Instead, rescued from government misuse, it will fly high again. Whether Indian-owned or foreign, nobody cares any more. ATMs across the country are running dry and the government now says it needs three days to fix the problem. ATMs in several cities across the country, operated by both state-run and private banks, are reportedly running dry. The problem seems to have affected ATMs in cities and towns across Andhra Pradesh, Telangana, Karnataka, Madhya Pradesh, Maharashtra, Rajasthan and Uttar Pradesh, according to media reports. One reason for this could be that cash withdrawals at some bank branches and their ATMs are much higher than deposits made at those branches -- all amid regional elections. An email sent to the Reserve Bank of India (RBI), on Tuesday, seeking response on the reported cash shortage, remained unanswered when this report was published. Commenting on the cash crunch, Finance Minister Arun Jaitley assured hassled customers that the government will resolve the problem 'quickly'. Minister of State (MoS) for Finance SP Shukla said the Centre needs three days to fix the problem. Separately, State Bank of India (SBI) Chairman Rajnish Kumar told CNBC-TV18 that there is sufficient cash in the system. #CashlessATMs -- From MP to Andhra Pradesh & UP to Uttarakhand, citizens across the nation are complaining about the cash crunch as ATMs go dry. Here's a ground report. pic.twitter.com/GNy1eXTVAW News18 (@CNNnews18) April 17, 2018 Troubled customers tweeted about the non availability of cash at ATMs. ATMs are running out of cash. I got 5 empty ATMs before finding the 6th one with cash and it was inside a bank. This is in Delhi !Totally terrible situation! Chalo Sab start hojaye line main khade hone k liye. #NoCashinAtms #NoCash #AtmsDried Shiva Chadha (@ChadhaShiva) April 17, 2018 Cash Crunch Realty check One of the most busiest place Paharganj - ICICI ATM now allowing withdrawal more than 4000, PNB all 2 ATMs have no cash, Bank of Baroda has No cash. Kotak & Bank of India dispensing cash. pic.twitter.com/GXACVDs3UR ASHUTOSH MISHRA (@ashu3page) April 17, 2018 Jharkhand is facing severe cash crunch. Most of the ATMs are not working since 15 days now. No one knows where has all the cash gone. Neither FM nor PM is available. No one in Govt willing to tell where has all 2000 and 500 notes gone. https://t.co/16QHQ592tb Dr Ajoy Kumar (@drajoykumar) April 17, 2018 West Bengal Chief Minister Mamata Banerjee, on Tuesday, said the situation reminded her of the demonetisation days. Seeing reports of ATMs running out of cash in several States. Big notes missing. Reminder of #DeMonetisation days. Is there a Financial Emergency going on in the country? #CashCrunch #CashlessATMs Mamata Banerjee (@MamataOfficial) April 17, 2018 Communist Party of India member Sitaram Yechury too took to twitter to express his angst. ATMs were empty in November 2016. ATMs are empty now. And the only party flush with cash is the BJP: the people suffer. Sitaram Yechury (@SitaramYechury) April 17, 2018 MoS for Finance Shiv Pratap Shukla said: "We've cash currency of Rs 1,25,000 crore right now. There is one problem that some states have less currency and others have more. Government has formed state-wise committee and RBI also formed committee to transfer currency from one state to other. It will be done in three days." We've cash currency of Rs1,25,000 cr right now. There is one problem that some states have less currency&others have more.Govt has formed state-wise committee & RBI also formed committee to transfer currency from one state to other. It'll be done in 3 days: SP Shukla, Mos Finance pic.twitter.com/Xm4b4NhMqu ANI (@ANI) April 17, 2018 Earlier, referring to reports of ATMs running out of cash at some places in his state, Madhya Pradesh Chief Minister Shivraj Singh Chouhan claimed that Rs 2,000 notes were vanishing from the market, and alleged that there is a 'conspiracy' behind their disappearance. Addressing a farmers' convention, Chouhan said: "The currency worth Rs 15,00,000 crore was in circulation before demonetisation. After this exercise [demonetisation], the currency in circulation increased to Rs 16,50,000 crore. But notes of Rs 2,000 are missing from the market." Several states have faced cash shortages despite the fact that currency flows are now at the pre-demonetisation level. A recent analysis by the RBI has found that the rate of cash withdrawals were far more than cash deposits at banks in states like Andhra Pradesh, Bihar, Karnataka, Maharashtra, Rajasthan, Uttar Pradesh, Madhya Pradesh, and Telangana, according to a report in the Business Standard. According to RBI data, currency in circulation as on 6 April was Rs 18.17 lakh crore. Bank run In March, the government's Financial Resolution and Deposit Insurance (FRDI) bill triggered a bank run in two southern states. Thanks to a fear of losing their hard earned money, because of a bail-in clause in the FRDI Bill, people in Andhra Pradesh and Telangana queued up to withdraw fairly large amounts from their bank accounts. The salaried, who typically withdraw only Rs 5,000 to Rs 10,000 in the first few weeks of any month, were seen queuing up to draw the entire amount from ATMs immediately after their salary was credited, reported The Times of India. ATMs ran dry immediately after the demonetisation drive was announced, on 8 November, 2016, as people rushed to pull out as much cash as possible. With inputs from agencies Key shareholders of Indian e-commerce player Flipkart have reportedly agreed to sell their stake to US retail giant Walmart. Key shareholders of Indian e-commerce player Flipkart have agreed to sell their stake to US retail giant Walmart, a media report quoted people aware of the development as saying. According to The Economic Times, Walmart has reached an agreement on buying the stakes of Tiger Global Management, Accel, Naspers and Tencent Holdings. However, Japans SoftBank Group, which owns roughly one-fifth of Flipkart via its Vision Fund, is reportedly holding out for a better price. Flipkart also counts eBay and Microsoft Corp among its investors. Discussions with SoftBank are still ongoing Most of the others have come aboard. In a deal like this, there are always ebbs and flows, but there is a time factor to consider as well, the person aware of the development was quoted as saying by the newspaper. Last week, Reuters reported that Walmart Inc was likely to reach a deal to buy a majority stake in Flipkart by the end of June in what could be the US retail giants biggest acquisition of an online business. Walmart has completed its due diligence on Flipkart and has made a proposal to buy 51 percent or more of the Indian company for between $10 billion to $12 billion. A deal with Flipkart will fuel Walmarts battle with Amazon.com, for a bigger share of Indias e-commerce market, which Morgan Stanley estimates will be worth $200 billion in a decade. Local media have reported that Amazon is exploring a possible counter offer for Flipkart. Walmart will buy both new and existing Flipkart shares, with new shares expected to value the Bengaluru-based firm at least $18 billion, unnamed sources said. The price for existing shares would value the firm at about $12 billion With inputs from Reuters As opposed to an average cash demand of about Rs 20,000 crore a month, 'in the first 13 days of April itself there was a demand of Rs 45,000 crore New Delhi: Amidst reports of a cash crunch and empty ATMs, Finance Minister Arun Jaitley on Tuesday sought to assuage fears, saying "there is more than adequate currency in circulation", even as the government blamed "unusual demand" for shortages in some areas. "Have reviewed the currency situation in the country. Overall there is more than adequate currency in circulation and also available with the banks. The temporary shortage caused by 'sudden and unusual increase' in some areas is being tackled quickly," Jaitley tweeted. "There is no cash crunch in the country. There is around Rs 18 lakh crore currency supply now, which is close to the circulation during the demonetisation period. We keep Rs 2.5-3 lakh crore more currency in stock for excess demand," said S.C Garg, Economic Affairs Secretary. He said there was unusually high demand for currency in the last couple of months. As opposed to an average demand of about Rs 20,000 crore a month, "in the first 13 days of April itself there was a demand of Rs 45,000 crore", he said. "In the last few days we have pumped cash into the system to meet the demand. We still have a reserve of Rs 1.75 lakh crore." Garg attributed this sudden cash demand to localised phenomenon. "This unusual spurt in demand is seen more in some parts of the country like Andhra Pradesh, Telangana, Karnataka, Madhya Pradesh and Bihar," the Finance Ministry said in a statement on Tuesday. It said the government, along with the Reserve Bank of India (RBI), has taken all steps to meet this unusual demand. "We had adequate reserves of currency notes which have been used to meet fully the extraordinary demand generated so far. We continue to have in stock adequate currency notes of all denominations, including of Rs 500, 200 and Rs 100 to meet any demand," the statement said. "The government would like to assure all the people that there has been adequate supply of currency notes which has met entire demand so far. The government would also like to assure that it would be supplying adequate currency notes to meet even higher levels of demand if such demand were to continue in the coming days/months," it added. The statement further said the government is taking all steps to ensure that ATMs are supplied with cash and to get non-functional ATMs working at the earliest. Reacting to the situation, West Bengal Chief Minister Mamata Banerjee on Tuesday said it reminds her of the demonetisation days. She also asked whether a "financial emergency" was going on in the country. Shivalik Mercantile has 25 branches in Uttar Pradesh and in several states across the country. The RBI has certified Shivalik as a multi-state cooperative bank. Not many people know that the Jan Dhan (peoples wealth) scheme, the pride of Prime Minister Narendras Modi financial inclusion drive, was launched two decades ago by a cooperative bank in Saharanpur, Uttar Pradesh. Their aim was no different from Modis: to draw the rural populace into the banking system. While its new incarnation has used shock tactics like demonetisation and Aadhaar with questionable results, the original Jan Dhan has enrolled and benefitted lakhs of rural folk using just the quality of its services as advertisement. Back in 1998, India was still coming to terms with the new economic reforms. Industry had seen controls dismantled and was beginning to feel the impact of foreign competition. Banking remained the preserve of the state, although the first private banks, with their marked customer focus, had begun to make their presence felt in the big cities. It made a dynamic engineer, working with Hindustan Aeronautics in Bangalore, wonder why Indias rural poor couldnt access similar high-quality banking services. When Yashvir Gupta floated the idea of starting a cooperative bank, his family and friends were not amused. 250,000 accounts with his bank today But Gupta, born in the small hamlet of Ambehta in Saharanpur district, was not easily discouraged. He quit his well-paid job and, with the help of some well-wishers, set up Shivalik Mercantile Cooperative Bank on September 5, 1998. The bank initially operated from the garage of his home on Ansari Road and it was here that the idea of Jan Dhan germinated. Guptas objective was to help connect poor villagers to banking services and to create awareness about the value of saving. He organised a small team of volunteers who reached out to villagers on Saharanpurs periphery. The awareness campaign was extraordinarily successful. Since there was no minimum balance required, villagers could open an account with just one rupee. Soon hundreds of villagers, whod never been inside a bank, had become account holders with Shivalik. Once the Ansari Road pilot project began to show results Shivalik took wings and, in 2002, the banks first branch opened in Gangoh town. Another followed in Haqiqat Nagar in Saharanpur, above which the banks administrative offices were set up. Currently, Shivalik has 25 branches in Uttar Pradesh, including two in Lucknow, and in several states across the country. The Reserve Bank of India (RBI) has certified Shivalik as a multi-state cooperative bank. Shivalik is among the fastest growing banks in Madhya Pradesh, with branches in Indore, Dhar, and Khargaon. In keeping with the times, Shivalik swiftly set up ATMs and cash-deposit machines at all its branches much before other banks did. Today, with over 250,000 account holders, Shivalik is among the most aggressive cooperative banks in the country. The total deposit held by the bank has gone up from Rs 381.98 lakh in 2000 to Rs 916.97 crore in 2017 and the net profit has risen from Rs 3.74 lakh to Rs 10.02 crore between the same period. In 2017, Shivalik Mercantile Banks total business was worth Rs 1,467 crore. Staff trained to bank economic last mile Shivalik Banks CEO & managing director Suveer Kumar Gupta, too, is an engineer who quit a well-paid job with Tata Consultancy Services to help Yashvir Gupta run banking operations. Suveer says the bank is planning to open branches in Dehradun and Haridwar and one more in Delhi this year. Though a cooperative bank in structure, Shivalik functions on the lines of public and private banks. To serve its poorest customers, those classified by the government as being below the poverty line (BPL), the bank has formed 8,000 groups, each with 15-20 women, to which it provides loans without any surety. Suveer said the bank operates 350 micro ATMs, which the staff take to remote villages to open accounts and to provide deposit and withdrawal facilities to account holders. Shivalik Banks ATMs never run dry, claims Suveer, pointing out that when banks have remained closed for four or five days in a row due to holidays, Shivaliks staff have replenished their ATMs with cash. Shivalik Bank prides itself on its staff-selection process, which it describes as fully transparent and one that adheres to the norms and guidelines set by the RBI. The bank has over 400 employees, mostly young men and women, trained to cater to the needs of often illiterate, rural customers and to deal with their problems as they arise. According to Suveer, in association with Life Insurance Corporation of India (LIC), Bajaj Allianz, ICICI Lombard, HDFC Insurance and Oriental Insurance, Shivalik also offers a variety of insurance products tailored to his customers needs and budgets. Through its banking services, Shivalik has done so much to transform the lives of Indias poor. But chairman Yashvir Gupta believes in doing more direct social and philanthropic work and as far away as possible from the media glare. He has established a girls school in his paternal village Ambehta, built a waiting hall at the bus stand for the benefit of travelers and even donated land to the police department to improve security for the local populace. This is just one more way Yashvir has found of returning the peoples wealth to the people. (Mahesh Kumar is a Saharanpur-based freelance writer and a member of 101Reporters.com, a pan-India network of grassroots reporters.) Shivraj Chauhan didnt take the names of potential hoarders of Rs 2,000 notes, but one can assume that the chief minsters ire is aimed at political rivals. Who is hoarding Rs 2,000 currency notes, asked Madhya Pradesh Chief Minister Shivraj Singh Chouhan on Monday. This is a conspiracy to create problems and the state government will take strict action on it. We are also in touch with the centre over the issue," Chouhan said, speaking at gathering of farmers at Shajapur district. Chauhan didnt take the names of potential hoarders of Rs 2,000 notes, but one can assume that the chief minsters ire is aimed at political rivals. If that is the case, Chauhan has just shot his boomerang at the wrong target. Else, he has misunderstood the post-demonetisation plan worked out between the Narendra Modi-government and the Reserve Bank of India (RBI) for gradual withdrawal of the Rs 2,000 currency notes from the system. These high value notes were introduced shortly after demonetisation to normalise the cash situation when the economy was feeling the pain of cash crunch. However, these notes didnt do well as these high-value bills created problems in normal transactions as there wasn't enough change to go around. Considering this, the RBI may have decided to stop the printing and circulation of these notes, said a State Bank of India (SBI) research report in December last year. Lets look at how the SBI report arrived at this conclusion. It first cited the information given by the Ministry of Finance in the Lok Sabha that the RBI has printed 16,957 million pieces of Rs 500 notes and 3,654 million pieces of Rs 2,000 notes as on 8 December. The total value of such notes translates into Rs 15,787 billion. It takes into account another set of data (from RBI) which is the currency in circulation on the same date (8 December) and subtracts the value of small value notes up to March 2017 provided in the RBI annual report from it (Rs 16,825 billion-Rs 3,501 billion). Thus, it arrives at the value of high denomination notes in circulation at Rs 13,324 billion as on 8 December. Now, taking the difference of the value of total printed high denomination currency as on 8 December (Rs 15,787 billion) and the total value of high denomination notes in circulation, the SBI arrives at a figure of Rs 2,463 billion, which may have been printed by the RBI but not supplied in the market. According to the report, even this Rs 2,463 billion may be on the lower side. As a logical corollary, as 2,000 denomination currency led to challenges in transactions, it thus indeed seems that the RBI may have either consciously stopped printing the 2000 denomination notes/or printing in smaller numbers after initially it was printed in ample amount to normalise the liquidity situation. This also means that the share of small currency notes in total currency in circulation now may have touched 35 percent in value terms, the report said. From the very early stage of demonetisation, it appeared that the idea was to eventually phase out Rs 2,000 notes. These bills were easy tools for both the government and the RBI to infuse a large amount of cash into the system within a minimum time. This was necessary since after the demonetisation exercise there was a severe cash-drought in all quarters of the economy, paralysing the rural and informal economy in particular. It wasnt feasible for the government mints to do this job with smaller denomination notes. Hence, Rs 2,000 bills took an avatar as an easy solution. Its role is more or less done now with smaller denomination notes entering the financial system. There were enough hints from the very beginning that the Rs 2,000 note will meet an early death. In December 2016, a month after demonetistation, the RSS ideologue S Gurumurthy had said that launching Rs 2,000 notes was a stop-gap arrangement for the immediate period post-demonetisation. "In the short time of two months you do not have time to print Rs 500 and Rs 1000 notes. This 2000 rupee note must be phased out ... Demonetisation is not a one-stop solution for black money. This requires a very major agenda... The nation is rebooting," Gurumrthy was quoted as saying. To sum up, killing high value pink notes was the RBI plan post-demonetisation and political rivals have very little role to play in it. Shop owners dumped the swipe machines and reverted to cash sales owing to repeated transaction failures. An innovative project to change how Indians financially transact, launched with much fanfare in a model village in Prime Minister Narendra Modis parliamentary constituency Varanasi, has died a quiet death. Not long after the 8 November 2016 demonetisation bombshell, that overnight rendered high-denomination banknotes worthless, state government and bank officials distributed card-swipe machines to a few shopkeepers in sleepy Misirpur and publicized it widely. By February 2017, as many as 21 out of the villages 35 shops had enthusiastically embraced point-of-sale (PoS) machines. Misirpur, with a population of 4,400, was declared the countrys first village to have gone cashless. But eleven months later, shop owners have dumped the swipe machines and reverted to cash sales. Their reasons range from poor connectivity, frustration over arbitrary bank charges and the experience of repeated transaction failures. Got no jobs or money, but an ATM card Seventy-year-old Asha Dadi, became an overnight celebrity when she became the first person in the village to opt for a cashless transaction. Asha, who lost her husband five years ago, earns Rs 100 to Rs150 a day selling pakori. She accuses bank officials of deducting Rs 600 from her account without even telling her why. She says that most of the villagers do not have ATM cards and those who do prefer not to use them out of fear of incurring transaction charges. Asha points out that PoS machines will only be used when these shops have proper network connectivity and prospects of doing more business. When handing out swipe machines to shop-keepers, bank staff had claimed they would immediately benefit, but no such thing has happened. In fact, the shop-keepers have lost money because the banks have charged them for transactions, she says. Asha alleges that bank officials got forms filled by villagers for issuing ATM cards but not all applicants got them. When villagers go to the bank seeking information, bank officials brush them off. Asha Dadi is not the only one who is bitter about the experience with cashless transactions. Rajkumar Verma, who runs a chemist shop, asks a more basic question: When people dont have jobs, nor any money in their bank accounts, whats the point of having an ATM card? How and why should they use it? Verma flips through the five registers lying on the shop counter and points to the names entered in the pages, saying all of them bought medicines on credit. When medicines are bought on credit, then talk of cashless transactions would mean something else, right? he laughs. Vermas neighbour, the tailor, says it's meaningless to describe the village as cashless. A year ago, bank people gave us swipe machines but not a single customer has come to me with an ATM card to make a payment. Of what use are these machines? he asks, saying it would be better if the banks took them back. Lack of awareness sunk initiative Gaon Pradhan (village chief) Kailash Yadav is frankly mystified, saying he doesnt even know what a cashless transaction is. None of his three daughters, one of whom is a graduate, knows what a swipe machine is. Yadav admits he hasnt yet used the cashless-transaction facility, but diplomatically adds that he plans to. Its a good scheme and the banks should re-start and re-implement it. Bank of Baroda had taken the lead to promote the benefits of cashless transactions in Misirpur. But it seems that, due to the callousness and indifference on the part of government departments, the project has stalled. The banks manager, Manish Pathak, denies the facility has been abandoned saying some shop-keepers are still using PoS machines. He admits to complaints of unnecessary deductions and says the bank is trying to address the problem by reimbursing claimants. He believes the scheme could not be implemented successfully due to illiteracy and a lack of awareness among villagers but is confident that, through sustained efforts, they can overcome whatever problems have been encountered. Pathak informs that the bank has issued 1950 ATM cards to villagers of Misirpur and 2590 Jan Dhan accounts have been opened by the villagers so far at the only branch in their vicinity. Through the implementation of BHIM, a digital payment app for smartphones, a thumbprint-identification system, as well as by replacing the old swipe machines with new devices, hes sure they will, one day, realise the promise of a cashless Misirpur. (Saurabh Sharma is a Lucknow-based freelance writer and Amit Singh is a Varanasi-based freelance writer. Both are members of 101Reporters.com, a pan-India network of grassroots reporters.) Commerce and Industry Minister Suresh Prabhu said the US is India's important trading partner and the latter has a large trade surplus with it New Delhi: The government on Tuesday said it is working with the US to resolve all trade issues even as America has decided to review India's eligibility to enjoy duty-free access for certain products under a tax benefit scheme. The US has also added India to its watch list of countries alleging questionable foreign exchange policies. Besides, it has dragged India to WTO's dispute settlement mechanism challenging Indian export incentive schemes. Commerce and Industry Minister Suresh Prabhu said the US is India's important trading partner and the latter has a large trade surplus with it. "We have special relation with the US, which is multi-faceted, multi dimensional and also very strategic. We are working with the US to address the trade issues," he told reporters here. He said that over four million Indians are living in the US and it is one of the major markets for goods and services exports. "In a situation like this, the US has taken certain unilateral actions. So we will follow the rules of WTO (World Trade Organisation) as well as we will talk to them. We are completely in the control of situation," he added. Prabhu said that the assistant US Trade Representative (USTR) was here last week and "we are in touch with the US at all levels". On the issue of imposing high duties on steel and aluminium by the US, he said India's exports of these two commodities to America is not significant. "I can assure you one thing that the only guiding principle for engagement with the US is to protect India's commercial interest in its entirety," he added. As many as 3,500 Indian products from sectors such as chemicals, medical devices and engineering get duty free access to the US market under the Generalized System of Preferences (GSP), introduced in 1976. The review can impact exports of those 3,500 Indian products to the US market as removal of duty benefits would make those items uncompetitive. According to the USTR, the total US imports under GSP in 2017 was $21.2 billion, of which India was the biggest beneficiary with $5.6 billion, followed by Thailand ($4.2 billion) and Brazil ($2.5 billion). The bilateral trade between the countries has increased to $64.52 billion in 2016-17 from $62.11 billion in the previous fiscal. It's not the first time, however, that the NIA's probe has been found wanting. There have been several cases in the past when the NIA's investigation has failed to yield convictions. On Monday, the National Investigation Agency (NIA) special court in Hyderabad acquitted all five people accused in the 2007 Mecca Masjid blast case due to lack of evidence. The NIA has said it will examine the court's judgment after it gets a copy of it, and will then decide future course of action. It's not the first time, however, that the NIA's probe has been found wanting. There have been several cases in the past when the NIA's investigation has failed to yield convictions. Here's a brief look at previous cases which have gone against the NIA. 2006 Malegaon blasts: A series of bomb blasts hit Maharashtra's Malegaon town in September 2006, killing 37 and injuring over 100. In all, nine Muslim men were accused and arrested by the Maharashtra anti-terrorist squad (ATS), of which one died in an accident in 2001. However, after a long trial that spanned nearly 10 years, a special court acquitted all nine men, saying there was no evidence to prove their guilt and they were used as "scapegoats". As reported by Hindustan Times, the NIA took over the probe in 2011, and arrested four people linked to a Hindu extremist outfit. However, the NIA later told the court that it had no evidence against the nine accused. 2008 Malegaon blasts: Exactly two years later, Malegaon was again the scene of terror attacks, as another blast ripped through the town and killed seven persons. The ATS arrested Sadhvi Pragya Singh Thakur in connection with the attack, and said it was her bike which was used to plant the bomb. However, as reported by India Today in May 2017, the NIA filed a supplementary chargesheet in the case stating that evidence against Sadhvi could not be established and even alleged that the ATS' investigation was wrong. Finally, after over nine years, charges under the Maharashtra Control of Organised Crime Act (MCOCA) against Sadhvi Pragya and Lieutenant-Colonel Shrikant Purohit were dropped by a special NIA court in December 2017. And there may be more to NIA's track record with Hindu extremists than meets the eye. Special public prosecutor Rohini Salian, who appeared for the NIA in the 2008 Malegaon blast case, revealed that the agency told her "to go soft" after the new NDA government took over at the Centre, as reported by The Hindu. "An NIA officer approached me immediately after the change of government and told me in person to go soft. On 12 June, he approached me for the second time and said I would no longer be appearing in the case," Salian was quoted as saying in June 2015. Referring to the NIA's approach towards the case after taking over the probe from the Maharashtra ATS, Salian said the accused got bail "by default" because no chargesheet was filed against them. "All three got bail by default, because the NIA did not file a chargesheet against them. They have not put in a single paper in court after taking over. What case we have all what the ATS has done?" she asked. 2007 Ajmer blasts case: In October 2007, Rajasthan's Ajmer Dargah was rocked by a blast, killing three persons. While a foreign hand was initially suspected, the blame soon shifted to Hindu extremists. Swami Aseemanand was accused of masterminding the attack, while senior RSS functionary Indresh Kumar's name also cropped up during investigations. As reported by India Today, RSS functionary Bhavesh Kumar then accused several Congress leaders of pressuring him to name RSS leaders' involvement in the case. However, the NIA's investigation suffered a massive blow when 24 witnesses the testimonies of many of whom were critical to the case turned hostile. As reported by Hindustan Times, among those who turned hostile was Jharkhand agriculture minister Randhir Singh and Govardhan Singh, even as assistant public prosecutor Ashwini Sharma said the case would be difficult to prove if three or four more witnesses turned hostile. Eventually, with 26 witnesses turning hostile, the court acquitted Aseemanand and six others in the case. With inputs from agencies Questions are also being raised about vanishing Rs 2,000 notes with Madhya Pradesh chief minister Shivraj Singh Chauhan calling it a conspiracy. New Delhi: Almost one-and-half months before the currency crisis exploded causing much distress to the aam aadmi, the Andhra Pradesh government had warned the Reserve Bank of India (RBI), Ministry of Finance and the State Bank of India (SBI) about the lurking threat. Top sources said the Andhra Pradesh chief secretary Dinesh Kumar had written a communique on 9 March, 2018 about the currency crunch in certain pockets of the state and subsequently the Centre asked the RBI to take appropriate action. When contacted Kumar confirmed that he had written the letter to all three RBI, finance ministry and SBI. "We were facing currency crisis in certain rural areas so I wrote a letter to resolve it. That was almost one and half months ago," Kumar told Firstpost. Why did the RBI not act? This may sound cliche in the mid of ATMs running dry but a senior RBI official at its Mumbai-based head office refused to respond to the query saying the government has already issued a statement and RBI is not in a position to reply to the Andhra Pradesh chief secretary's letter. Another RBI official at its regional centre in Hyderabad on the condition of anonymity said they had several rounds of meeting on Monday as well as Tuesday to ensure that currency chest are operating as per the norms. Firstpost has learnt that the state of Telangana had also warned about currency crisis in certain areas of the state in March. A missive, sources said was sent to RBI and the finance ministry. Subsequently, a communique was sent from Jharkhand as early as last week. Despite repeated attempts, the chief secretaries of both the states were not available for the comment. However, an official from the RBI regional office in Patna said a letter was issued to all the banks last month to ensure that all the branch have enough cash and ATMs are refilled regularly. "We had received complaints in March that ATMs in two bordering areas of BiharKatihar and Purneaare running dry so issued a directive to the banks to ensure enough cash. I can assure you that all the currency chest have sufficient money and on an average, there is eight to 10 remittance from the chest," he told Firstpost requesting anonymity. Questions are also being raised about the vanishing of Rs 2,000 notes with Madhya Pradesh chief minister Shivraj Singh Chauhan calling it a conspiracy. Chauhan had indicated that some people are keeping the highest denomination note to create a crisis. Who are hoarding the Rs 2,000 notes? A senior officer closely monitoring a hawala case cracked by Rajasthan Anti-Terror Squad (ATS) said there could be massive illegal network behind the vanishing Rs 2,000 notes besides other issues at the RBI and banks' level. The Rajasthan ATS after a sustained two-months long surveillance on one of the modules had seized Rs 4 crore that was going to Ahmedabad from Delhi. The officer disclosed that out of the seized money Rs 3 crore were in Rs 2,000 notes. He further said that Bhilwara was the nodal point for the module that was operating an illegal transaction of huge cash in the four states of Delhi, Rajasthan, Gujarat and Madhya Pradesh. We have been able to nab just one module but intelligence input suggests there are several modules operating in other states as well. We have roped in the Income Tax Department as well as other agencies to unearth the entire chain. More details may come out after the interrogation of some suspects picked up by the agencies," the officer further said. A poverty-stricken woman in Bihar's Gaya district sold her cow to construct a toilet at her house. Tetri Devi, in her late 60s, sold the cow which was the only source of livelihood for her family. Patna: A poverty-stricken woman in Bihar's Gaya district sold her cow to construct a toilet at her house. Tetri Devi, in her late 60s, sold the cow which was the only source of livelihood for her family. "After I found it impossible to get government funds to construct a toilet, I had no option but to sell my cow for Rs 14,000," said Tetri, a resident of Tewarichaak village, about 140 kilometres from Patna. Contrary to the Swachh Bharat Abhiyan's promise to construct toilets on a large scale in Bihar, Tetri, a BPL category person, has been living in a small house constructed under the Indira Awas Yojna, along with her ailing husband, son and daughter-in-law without a toilet for years. According to the woman, when she approached the block level officials for funds, they ignored her. "My daughter-in-law is a Class X pass and she is fully aware of a toilet's importance in one's house. She has insisted time and again to construct a toilet. But we either ignored her or cited a shortage of money for its construction. "But recently she offered to sell her jewellery to raise money to construct the toilet. I refused her offer and decided to sell my cow instead. "It is a shame for a woman to defecate in the open and a toilet in every home is a must," Tetri said. Admitting that the decision was a tough one, Tetri said: "I strongly felt that constructing a toilet is more important than providing milk to my ailing husband." Block Development Officer Parnav Kumar Giri said that Tetri was an example and an inspiration for others. "We will felicitate her at a function for her unique effort soon," Giri added. The officer said the government allocates Rs 12,000 to a beneficiary only after an entire village ward or panchayat become open-defecation free (ODF). But in her case a special recommendation has been made to pay her the amount, Giri added. Earlier this year, another woman sold four of her goats to construct a toilet at her house in Rohtas district. There were also reports of women leaving their in-laws' house due to a lack of a toilet. Millions in Bihar still practice open defecation and not a single district has been declared ODF so far. Opposition parties on Tuesday slammed the government over cash crunch in ATMs and banks in several parts of the country New Delhi/Amethi/Kolkata: Opposition parties on Tuesday slammed the government over cash crunch in ATMs and banks in several parts of the country, saying the "terror of note ban" has returned to haunt the people and dubbed the situation as a "financial emergency". On the back foot, the government attributed the cash shortage to an unusual spurt in demand in last three months, and Finance Minister Arun Jaitley said the "temporary shortage" in certain states is being "tackled quickly" and that there is "more than adequate" currency in circulation. Currency shortage was reported from several parts of Andhra Pradesh, Telangana, Madhya Pradesh, Chhattisgarh, Bihar and poll-bound Karnataka, among other states. Several ATMs in the national capital also saw long queues and soon ran out of cash. In his Lok Sabha constituency Amethi, Congress President Rahul Gandhi said the "terror of note-ban" has again gripped the country and accused Prime Minister Narendra Modi of destroying the banking system with his demonetisation decision. The Congress chief also took to Twitter to attack Modi, alleging he "snatched" the Rs 500/1000 currency notes from the pocket of every Indian and "gave" it to Nirav Modi, but was neither speaking a word about it nor facing Parliament. Nirav Modi, an accused in the alleged Rs 12,700-crore scam at state-run Punjab National Bank, has been absconding. In Kolkata, West Bengal Chief Minister Mamata Banerjee said the cash crunch was a reminder of the demonetisation days. "Seeing reports of ATMs running out of cash in several states. Big notes missing. Reminder of Demonetisation days. Is there a Financial Emergency going on in the country?" she said in a tweet. CPM leader Sitaram Yechury said, "ATMs were empty in November 2016. ATMs are empty now. And the only party flush with cash is the BJP: People suffer." Referring to the government's demonetisation decision in November 2016, when the government had announced withdrawal of the then Rs 500/1000 notes and subsequently introduced new Rs 2,000 notes, Yechury said the country is still paying the price of "a sudden midnight Firman (order) of demonetisation". In a series of tweets, he said the demonetisation did not kill terrorism and it did not kill corruption or fake currency either. "But it has certainly killed the Indian economy. The cash crisis tells us how Modi's demonetisation disaster is still wreaking havoc," he added. In a statement, the Finance Ministry acknowledged there has been an unusual spurt in currency demand in the country in last three months, but did not give specific reasons. It has also decided to ramp up the supply of new Rs 500 notes, even as reports suggested that Rs 2,000 notes, which was easier to hoard, were particularly impacted by the shortage. While currency supply increased by Rs 45,000 crore in the first 13 days of April, "unusual spurt in demand" was seen more in some parts of Andhra Pradesh, Telangana, Karnataka, Madhya Pradesh and Bihar, the ministry said. Minister of State for Finance Shiv Pratap Shukla said the government has formed state-wise committees and the issue would be resolved in next 2-3 days. Besides, the RBI has also formed a committee to transfer currency from cash-surplus states to the others, he said. Countering the government's stand, Yechury said, "This government which still has not been able to count the demonetised currency is asking us to trust its Jumla that there is no cash crunch." "After the demonetisation disaster where goalposts were repeatedly shifted and deadlines changed, no one trusts the Modi government anymore," the Left leader tweeted. Firebrand student leader Kanhaiya Kumar also took swipe at Jaitley, saying, "Dear Finance Minister, cashless economy does not eman cashless banks and cashless ATMs. We hope you understand." Congress leader Ashok Gehlot said, "Modi government has ruined the banking system of the country and people have lost their faith in it." DMK leader MK Stalin on Tuesday wrote to Prime Minister Narendra Modi for an appointment on behalf of political parties, farmers associations, traders' groups and labour unions to appraise him of the Cauvery water dispute. Chennai: DMK leader MK Stalin on Tuesday wrote to Prime Minister Narendra Modi for an appointment on behalf of political parties, farmers associations, traders' groups and labour unions to appraise him of the Cauvery water dispute. "Through this letter, we seek an appointment to meet and apprise you of the sentiments prevailing in Tamil Nadu and urge you to intervene in this issue immediately," Stalin wrote. He said the Supreme Court had on 15 February directed the Centre to frame a scheme within six weeks so that the final award delivered by the Cauvery Water Disputes Tribunal, which has the status of a decree, is effectively put into operation, and the decades-long dispute is resolved once and for all. Stalin said that at an all-party meeting chaired by Tamil Nadu chief minister K Palaniswamy, three resolutions were passed of which one was to meet the prime minister to explain the prevailing situation and seek his intervention in constituting the Cauvery Management Board (CMB). "Furthermore, the Tamil Nadu Legislative Assembly passed a unanimous resolution on 15 March demanding the immediate formation of the CMB. We believe that this unanimous resolution reflects the aspirations and sentiments of the seven-and-a-half crore people of Tamil Nadu. "It is fair to say that the people of Tamil Nadu have given up hope that the current (state) government will effectively represent their voice or ensure that their rights are protected. "Therefore, I seek an appointment with you at which all party leaders from Tamil Nadu can apprise you of the looming agricultural crisis in the state, as well as the outpouring of public sentiment because of the non-implementation of the Supreme Court judgment," Stalin said. The DMK leader also urged Modi to direct the Ministry of Water Resources to withdraw a clarification petition pending before the apex court immediately and set up the CMB without waiting for the upcoming Assembly elections in Karnataka. In the Indian democracy, politicians in power are the new 'kings' as the principle of rule of law is routinely trampled upon by our rulers. Editor's Note: As the Indian Republic turns 70, Tufail Ahmad begins a journey through the country to examine the working of democracy at the grassroots level. Inspired by the French author Alexis de Tocqueville, who toured America and wrote Democracy in America, the authora former BBC journalist and now senior fellow at the Washington-based Middle East Media Research Institutewill examine how sociological realities of India and the promise of democracy interact with each other in shaping the lives of the Indian citizen. This report is the fourth in a series called "Democracy in India". In the Indian democracy, politicians in power are the new 'kings' and above the law. The principle of rule of law that the state is governed not by rulers but by the law, no one is above the law and the law must prevail irrespective of which political party comes to power is routinely trampled upon by our rulers. The principled view of the rule of law was expressed by Shwetambri Sharma, the only female member of the special investigation team (SIT) which probed the Kathua rape case when she said: "as an officer I had no religion and my only religion was my police uniform." Such instances when the rule of law, or at least a certain stage of it in some cases, prevails are rare. Politicians, once in power, consider themselves as kings. On 10 April, it emerged that the Yogi Adityanath government has decided to withdraw a rape and abduction case against the former minister Swami Chinamayanand, filed by a girl who had sent many years at his ashram in Haridwar. In December 2017, the Yogi government also withdrew several cases against the chief minister as well as other others including a Union minister. Clearly, the new kings of India ministers, chief ministers and other peddlers of power view themselves as above the law. The problem is not about the BJP governments only. Almost any political party in power does the same thing. Sometimes, the rule of law is flouted by the party in power to please the presumed vote-banks. In 2012, when the Congress government was in power in Rajasthan, noted author Salman Rushdie was not allowed to attend the Jaipur Literature Festival after some Muslim groups threatened him. His trip, though kept secret, was revealed by someone. He was not even permitted by the police to address the festival audience via video conference. The Congress party in power felt Rushdie's video address could have displeased its Muslim voters in Rajasthan. The police, the judiciary and the executive act under the influence of the parties in power, and also under the ideological influence of religious and caste stripes. In the lynching and murder of Pehlu Khan by cow vigilantes in Alwar's Behror area on 1 April, 2017, almost all the accused are out on bail. Such instances send a signal that to get arrested for a religious cause is just a minor nuisance, as the party in power will ultimately help the accused. This effectively means that a political-and-governance culture, originating from ruling parties, shelters criminals at the cost of the country's rule of the law. Maulana Mohammad Anas Qasmi and Maulana Muhammad Amjad Qasmi, respectively the imam of Jama Masjid and the principal of Jamia Ashraful Uloom madrassa, both in Alwar, note that Vasundhara Raje enjoys reputation as an impartial chief minister even among Muslim voters in Rajasthan, but Hindu organisations like Hindu Shakti Vahini which became active in recent years in Mewat region are undermining her. Barkat Ali, a contractor in Alwar, says that competitive politics has increased in the country and parties are using caste and religion to the maximum to get votes. In such a political culture, religious organisations tie the hands of chief ministers. During the Jat protests for reservation in jobs and the violence in Haryana over the arrest of Gurmeet Ram Rahim, the rule of law machinery was badly mauled by protesters because they found protection in the political culture of the party in power. "Why is it that these protesters caused much damage mainly in Haryana, and not in Punjab?" asks Shailendra Singh, a professor at RD Girls College at Bharatpur. His point is that somewhere the elected political leaders are at fault. In the case of violent protests by Karni Sena, which demanded a ban on the movie Padmaavat, it was the BJP government of Madhya Pradesh and Rajasthan which sent a signal to the protesters that they were behind them by going to the Supreme Court in their support. In both Kathua and Unnao rape cases, the complicity of parties in power was visible to the people. Interviewed in Jaipur, a senior officer of the Rajasthan police service, says that the hastakshep intervention or interference in the nation's rule of law occurs in all branches of government such as judiciary, police and executive. He points out that the Central Bureau of Investigation (CBI) is being used for revengeful purposes by political parties in power. This is the message also reaching the masses. In 2013, the Supreme Court observed that the CBI is a caged parrot. However, the officer also says that policemen live by their own code of ethics and while they might help someone at the behest of political authority, they would not save a murderer. A fundamental issue with the rule of law is the culture of governance that has evolved over many years. The police officer says that every official in the police, judiciary or executive is busy saving his pratistha (dignity) and does not want to make decisions. For example, in the recent Black Buck poaching case, he points out that the judge could have freed or granted bail to the Bollywood actor Salman Khan, but it is almost certain that the lower court judge would pass the buck, leaving the issue to be decided by a higher court. Similarly, officials in government and police departments, instead of making decisions on merit, simply leave the matter for senior officials to decide. A senior IPS officer in Jaipur, speaking on the condition of anonymity, says that the three main agencies which enforce the rule of law police, prosecution and defence, and judiciary are under pressures of a different kind. He says that in 1972, police and prosecution were separated as per international norms. But ever since, there is no feeling of pride in prosecution and good people do not join. With regard to defence teams, most of the defence lawyers believe in managing the court and go dead slow until a manageable judge comes along. The officer is of the view that even as per our existing, shoddy and low standards of investigation, the prosecution of cases is possible. However, both the prosecution and defence lawyers have developed a culture of managing the case or the court. The police's perspective is that despite the rise in pay and perks of judges, the corruption and nepotism in the judiciary have risen to unimaginably highly levels, adversely affecting the rule of law in the country. An associated issue is also the promotion of such judges who have not decided a criminal case. "Unless advocates who have practised criminal cases are promoted to become judges, how can courts be expected to decide on the intricacies of the law?" the police officer wonders, adding that there is a high ratio of advocates who deal with income tax and service rules cases becoming judges in high courts. This leads to declining expertise in high courts. Many times, judges are not deciding appeals in criminal cases due to lack of knowledge and experience, he says, and for the fear that their judgements will be struck down by the Supreme Court. Similarly, a judge with no experience of the trial stage cannot be expected to deliver good judgements in high courts. The health of the Indian democracy in next few decades will get better or further damaged depending on whether or not reforms are introduced. As of now, the police officer's views indicate that there is a need for systemic reforms in police and judiciary. These are achievable in short-term and in a time-bound manner. However, the rule of law will remain under pressure insofar as the role of political parties is concerned. There is an urgent need to introduce a comprehensive constitutional amendment regarding the role of parties. Such an amendment should form the basic framework of the Constitution of India. Until then, is there hope for change? Professor Singh is of the view that for now the Supreme Court and the Election Commission of India are the only institutions that can affect some change in a positive direction. Read Part 1: BJP, Congress prioritise community over individual, use caste and religion to enslave citizens Read Part 2: Use of religion by ruling parties overwhelms secular character of Indian State Read Part 3: Caste and politics continue to collide, sometimes violently, in a cyclical struggle for power Read Part 5: Cities are drivers of democratic change, secure rights and liberties of individuals Read Part 6: Despite caste and religious divisions, our democratic journey reflects silent revolution Read Part 7: Country's polity vastly unaccountable to citizens despite relative success of democratic process Read Part 8: Strong democratic process engendering surplus of free speech, empowering communities The author is touring India to write a series on the workings of democracy. He is a senior fellow at the Middle East Media Research Institute, Washington DC. He tweets @tufailelif Based on the report from the university, Purohit, in his capacity as the chancellor, had ordered for inquiry by a high powered committee, the statement said. Tamil Nadu governor Banwarilal Purohit said that he has not even seen face of the suspended assistant professor Nirmala Devi, who has been arrested on charges of luring four of her girl students to extend sexual favours to senior university officials. "I do not know the lady... I am above politics. Strict action will be taken if someone is found guilty. We will get to know only after an inquiry," Governor Purohit was quoted as saying by NDTV. Purohit said this at a press conference after some political parties questioned his action in ordering a probe into the matter. Earlier, DMK working president MK Stalin and PMK leader S Ramadoss had said that the governor of the state, who is also the chancellor of the university, did not have the power to govern or probe malpractices in the colleges affiliated to the university. On Monday, Governor Purohit had ordered a high-level inquiry into the matter by a retired IAS officer, R Santhanam. However, with political parties demanding a CBI probe into the alleged attempt at the trafficking of college students for sexual activities by a professor, the Tamil Nadu Police chief on Tuesday ordered the transfer of the case to the Crime Branch-Crime Investigation Department (CBCID). Considering the importance of the case, the Tamil Nadu Director General of Police (DGP) ordered to transfer the case from Arupukkottai Police Station in Virudhunagar district to the CBCID, a government statement said. On the other hand, the Madurai Kamaraj University said it had decided to scrap its proposal to set up a five-member committee to probe the alleged sexual trafficking complaint. In a statement, Madurai Kamaraj University vice-chancellor PP Chellathurai said: "The university is keen that all details with regard to the incident be inquired into without any bias. Hence the proposal to form an internal committee in the university has been withdrawn." "The high powered inquiry by R Santhanam, IAS (retd), ordered by the Chancellor will commence forthwith for which the university will be rendering all necessary assistance," he said. Based on the report from the university, Purohit, in his capacity as the chancellor, had ordered for inquiry by a high powered committee, the statement said. Nirmala Devi, who taught at the Devanga Arts College in Aruppukottai, was at the centre of a storm after audio clips of her talks with some students suggested that they yield themselves to keep the "higher-ups" in the Madurai Kamaraj University happy so that the college keeps getting facilities. Devi had allegedly made the overtures to a group of girls a month ago and had already been suspended, but she was arrested only on Tuesday after the clips went viral on social media. A report from Arupukottai said Devi was being interrogated at the local all-women police station and police have seized three mobile phones used by her. The revenue divisional officer also held an enquiry with the assistant professor, police said. The assistant professor has been booked under IPC sections 370 (Buying or disposing of any person as a slave) and 511 (Punishment for attempting to commit offences punishable with life or other imprisonment), besides under the Information Technology Act. In the audio, Devi is heard saying that the girls adjust with some officials, "for getting 85 percent mark and money," in what is seen as a suggestion for sexual favours. She, however, has denied sexual angle to her advice and claimed she had made it "in the right spirit" and not with any hidden motive or agenda. Stalin told reporters that only a vice-chancellor of a university could set up an inquiry committee and not the governor in the capacity of the chancellor. "It is not known why the governor as the chancellor acted in this manner. There seems to be some confusion. Only a high court-monitored CBI probe will bring out the truth," he said. PMK leader S Ramadoss also said committees appointed by Purohit and Chellathurai were not legally valid. "Governor Purohit is only a Chancellor of the university. He does not have the power to govern or probe malpractices in the colleges," Ramadoss said, adding only the college management had the power to take action against a professor found to be misguiding the students to take a wrong path. "A shadow of suspicion is on all the top officials of the university and hence Chellathurai can face an inquiry committee but can't set up one," the PMK leader said. Ramadoss said the accused professor's mobile phone call records should be checked to determine others involved. With inputs from PTI PARIS (Reuters) - France said on Tuesday it was very likely that evidence was disappearing from the location of a suspected poison gas attack in Syria and it called for international inspectors be given full and quick access to the site. PARIS (Reuters) - France said on Tuesday it was very likely that evidence was disappearing from the location of a suspected poison gas attack in Syria and it called for international inspectors be given full and quick access to the site. U.S., British and French forces pounded Syria with air strikes early on Saturday in retaliation for the suspected April 7 chemical weapons attack in Douma, which they blame on Syrian President Bashar al-Assad's government. Inspectors from the Organisation for the Prohibition of Chemical Weapons (OPCW) travelled to Syria last week to inspect the site, but have yet to gain access to Douma, which is now under government control after rebels withdrew. "As of today, Russia and Syria still refuse to give inspectors access to the site of the attack," the French foreign ministry said in a statement. "It is very likely that proof and essential elements are disappearing from this site." Relief organisations say dozens of men, women and children were killed in the attack. "It is essential that Syria finally gives full, immediate and unfettered access to all of the OPCW's demands, whether to visit sites, interview people or consult documents." U.S. Ambassador Kenneth Ward on Monday said at an OPCW meeting in The Hague that Russia may have tampered with the evidence. "It is our understanding the Russians may have visited the attack site," he said in comments at a closed-door meeting which were obtained by Reuters. "It is our concern that they may have tampered with it with the intent of thwarting the efforts of the OPCW Fact-Finding Mission to conduct an effective investigation," he said. (Reporting by Ingrid Melander; Editing by Sudip Kar-Gupta and Richard Balmforth) This story has not been edited by Firstpost staff and is generated by auto-feed. The health ministry , in a proposal to amend existing rules, pushed to bring stem cells and cell-based products under legal regulations The Ministry of Health and Family Welfare, in a proposal to amend the Drugs and Cosmetics Act 1940, is pushing to bring stem cells and cell-based products under legal regulations: A move scientists have termed as long overdue. The ministry defined the category of stem cells and their derivatives that would be termed a drug, and would thereby have to follow the protocols mandated for any drug development, The Times of India reported. The notification, dated 4 April, said stem cells and products which are substantially altered, amounting to a change in biological characteristics, will be treated as a drug and will hence have to seek the regulators approval before coming to the market. The role of the Central Drugs Standard Control Organisation (CDSCO), under the health ministry, will be central in this case. It is the national regulatory body for Indian pharmaceuticals and medical devices, and serves parallel function to the European Medicines Agency of the European Union, the PMDA of Japan, the Food and Drug Administration (FDA) of the United States and the Medicines and Healthcare products Regulatory Agency of the United Kingdom. In other words, CDSCO is responsible for regulating and licensing pharmaceuticals or new biological drug entities. Speaking to Firstpost over email, Deputy Director-General of the Indian Council of Medical Research (ICMR), Dr Geeta Jotwani, said that the notification was part of a review exercise by the CDSCO. "CDSCO was in process for comprehensive review of Drugs and Cosmetics Act, 1940, on the directions of Parliament. This is part of that exercise (that the) ministry/CDSCO has brought this amendment", she said. Although ICMR has been at the forefront of the process bringing in regulations in stem cell use, and has compiled reports regarding guidelines for such research, the government body was reportedly not consulted by the ministry before the notification was sent out. Responding to these reports, Jotwani said, "ICMR will be reviewing and deliberating the draft notification in consultation with the experts in the field and also in light of National Guidelines for Stem Cell Research-2017, which was released by Honble Ministry of Health and Family Welfare. The recommendation or outcome of the same will be communicated to the ministry in due course". Dr Sanjay Kumar, a senior researcher at the Centre for Stem Cell Research (CSCR), told Firstpost that government regulations in this sector are currently virtually absent, a fact taken advantage of by many who "milk the poor by settling on their own prices and practices". The notification, however, does not touch upon the use of autologous stem cells, where the individuals own stem cells are collected and minimally treated before infusing it back into the patient. "I think they will slowly rope in autologous stem cells into the regulations as well. There are some genuine cases where you can actually improve medical conditions of people by using autologous stem cells, going by what we observe at the centre. But not all people are ethical, scientifically or otherwise, and some want to make a quick buck: They are maligning the entire process. Sometimes, as scientists, we should also take part of the blame because we have hyped up the notion that everything can be cured by stem cells. Many of the patients are critically ill and desperate for medical treatment, and they are the ones who the crooks in the business target," Kumar said. He added that government regulations will not hamper research. "Whichever institution has robust stem regulations usually have a strong IRB (institutional review board). In CSCR, 30 to40 people are present in every IRB meeting. So regulation does happen in different capacities even now, and are absolutely necessary too. Regulations will not come in the way of research in any way: Now the process will be a little longer but that's alright because every institution needs to have regulations," he said. Regulations around the world Having worked in several countries for his research, Kumar says India is one of the only nations yet to bring in regulations for use of stem cells. "The United States is the strictest in this regard and has multiple stages of regulations in place. All advanced countries already have strict regulations in place, except India and China," he said. In the United States, FDA's Center for Biologics Evaluation and Research regulates human cells, tissues, and cellular and tissue-based products intended for implantation, transplantation, infusion or transfer into a human recipient, including hematopoietic stem cells. A National Library of Medicine report says that China has one of the most unrestrictive stem cell policies in the world. In Japan, while the government allows scientists to conduct stem cell research for therapeutic purposes, there are no formal guidelines. South Koreas reputation as a leader in stem cell research suffered a blow in 2006 when it was discovered that the countrys leading biomedical researcher, Dr Hwang Woo-suk, falsely claimed that he was the first scientist to clone human embryonic stem cells for the purpose of clinical trials, a Pew Research Centre report stated. Despite the scandal, the South Korean government continues to promote therapeutic cloning for stem cell research, although reproductive cloning is forbidden. The report added that Germany has one of the most restrictive policies for human embryonic stem cell research, due in part to the history of unethical medical experiments conducted by the Nazi regime during World War II. However, in April 2008, German Parliament authorised the use of imported stem cell lines produced before 1 May, 2007, to better facilitate the study of stem cell therapy. While Mexico has a flourishing stem cell industry, it does not have formal regulations, a fact criticised by the international community. Mexican doctors currently use stem cells to treat foreign patients, including Americans, who suffer from ailments such as cerebral palsy, autism, and paralysis. As part of its biggest combat exercise in three decades, the Indian Air Force (IAF) is carrying out massive drills involving its frontline fighter jets to test its capability to dominate the entire extended area of the Indian Ocean Region. New Delhi: As part of its biggest combat exercise in three decades, the Indian Air Force (IAF) is carrying out massive drills involving its front line fighter jets to test its capability to dominate the entire extended area of the Indian Ocean region. IAF's Sukhoi and Jaguar fighter aircraft, equipped with the potent Brahmos and Harpoon anti ship missiles, showcased their strategic reach and capability to carry out any sort of operations over the area as part of the pan-India exercise "GaganShakti". The IAF said it is effectively exercising its maritime war fighting concepts on both the Western and Eastern seaboards, adding the drill is also aimed at containing any "misadventure" by any adversary in India's area of interest in the Indian Ocean Region. The Chinese Navy has been trying to expand its influence in critical sea lanes around India. "Air dominance over the entire extended area of the Indian Ocean region in support of the Indian Navy is being demonstrated by employment of combat enablers like the FRA (Flight Refueling Aircraft) in conjunction with our maritime fighter forces of the Su-30 and Jaguar class jets carrying potent long distance anti shipping weaponry", it said. The 'Gaganshakti exercise, which began on April 8, is IAF's biggest combat exercises in the last three decades. The exercise is being carried out to check IAF's operational preparedness with a focus on dealing with any possible security challenges from China and Pakistan. "Missions have been flown in the initial phase to address both near and in depth targets over the Western Sea Board utilising Su-30 and Jaguar fighter aircraft equipped with the potent Brahmos and Harpoon Anti ship missiles respectively", the IAF said. It said the Su-30 aircraft have also showcased its strategic reach by operating from the eastern most air bases on the peninsula and engaging maritime targets well out into the western seaboard. It said the focus has now shifted to addressing targets over the eastern sea board right upto the Mallaca Straits. "Such demonstrations of extended reach utilising potent standoff weapons in joint coordinated operations with the Indian Navy has adequately showcased the IAF's ability to support the Indian Navy in order to dominate the Indian Ocean Region", the IAF said. Almost the entire assets of the IAF including its fighter squadrons have been part of the two-week long 'Gaganshakti' exercise. India has called for an impartial and objective investigation by the OPCW into the alleged use of chemical weapons in Syria recently. The Hague: India has called for an impartial and objective investigation by the Organisation for the Prohibition of Chemical Weapons (OPCW) into the alleged use of chemical weapons in Syria recently. The demand was made by the ambassador to Holland and Permanent Representative of India to OPCW Venu Rajamony at the 58th meeting of the Executive Council of the OPCW convened on Monday to discuss allegations regarding the use of chemical weapons in Douma, Syria. Stating that the alleged use, if true, is deplorable, Rajamony pointed out that the use of chemical weapons anywhere, at any time, by anybody, under any circumstances, cannot be justified and the perpetrators of such abhorrent acts must be held accountable. He said any use of chemical weapons is in complete disregard of humanity and is reprehensible and contrary to the provisions of the Chemical Weapons Convention as well as accepted international norms. He commended the OPCW for its prompt deployment of the fact-finding mission to Douma and expressed appreciation to the director-general and OPCW staff for their commitment to the aims and work of the organisation, often in challenging circumstances. Security forces on Tuesday launched a cordon and search operation in the Tral area of Pulwama district in Jammu and Kashmir following information Srinagar: Security forces on Tuesday launched a cordon and search operation in the Tral area of Pulwama district in Jammu and Kashmir following information about the presence of militants there. The cordon and search operation was begun at Seer in Tral area on Wednesday evening after security forces got information about the presence of militants in the area, a police official said. He said the searches were going on but so far security forces have not been able to track down the militants. In a meeting with Chief Minister Mehbooba Mufti on Tuesday, Jammu and Kashmir Governor NN Vohra voiced support for day-to-day trial of the Kathua rape and murder case, an official spokesperson said. Jammu: In a meeting with Chief Minister Mehbooba Mufti on Tuesday, Jammu and Kashmir Governor NN Vohra voiced support for day-to-day trial of the Kathua rape and murder case, an official spokesperson said. Vohra also discussed with Mufti issues relating to the long-pending elections to the urban local bodies and panchayats, the spokesperson said. The governor stressed the importance of ensuring that the prosecution of the Kathua rape and murder case proceed on a day-to-day basis and no one must be allowed to disturb law and order under any circumstances, the spokesperson added. The body of an eight-year-old girl, belonging to the Bakarwal nomads, was recovered from a forest on 17 January, a week after she went missing while grazing horses. On 23 January, the government had handed over the case to the crime branch of the state police which formed a special investigation team (SIT) and arrested eight people in connection with the case. The trial in the case began on Monday. Former Jammu and Kashmir minister Choudhary Lal Singh on Tuesday took out a rally from Jammu to Kathua reportedly in support of the rape accused. Former Jammu and Kashmir minister Choudhary Lal Singh took out a rally from Jammu to Kathua on Tuesday, reportedly demanding a Central Bureau of Investigation (CBI) probe and a narco test in the Kathua rape case. #BREAKING -- Former J&K minister Lal Singh backs Kathua accused, demands narco test and CBI inquiry in the case | @saahilmenghani with more details #KathuaHorror pic.twitter.com/6qUyB0vGhP News18 (@CNNnews18) April 17, 2018 This comes just a day after the eight people accused of raping and killing the eight-year-old girl pleaded not guilty and asked the judge for a narcoanalysis test. Seven out of the eight accused were produced before district and sessions Judge Sanjay Gupta on Monday. The judge asked the state crime branch to give them copies of the chargesheet and fixed 28 April as the next date of hearing. Special police officer Deepak Khajuria, who is alleged to have repeatedly raped the child, told reporters from the police van that he was also demanding a narco test, also known as the "truth test", and a CBI probe. Singh and Chander Prakash Ganga, BJP ministers in the Jammu and Kashmir coalition government, had tendered their resignations after facing criticism for their participation in an event supporting the accused in the Kathua case. Singh later said that his participation in the rally was meant to defuse the situation. "We had gone to defuse the situation created due to migration one and half months back. We told them they should go back. Abdul Gani Kohli (minister) was sent to the house of the victim, so that an ugly situation was not created," he had said. With inputs from agencies A section of lawyers from an organisation named 'Lawyers for Democracy and Rule of Law' took out a silent protest, walking peacefully from the Supreme Court of India to the office of the Bar Council of India. Those accused of raping an eight-year-old girl in Kathua are not humans but demons and it's shameful to support them, said advocate Ashok Arora, while addressing a gathering of legal professionals in Delhi who took out a silent march demanding strict action against a section of lawyers in Jammu for allegedly violating the professional code of conduct. The Jammu High Court Bar Association, along with other local Bar associations, had called for a Jammu bandh on 11 April, alleging the police was targeting the Dogra Hindu community by filing a chargesheet against a few members of the community. They also demanded an enquiry by the Central Bureau of Investigation (CBI) into the Kathua rape and murder case. "The most dangerous situation in the world is one where people stand for injustice done to a child. We are ashamed that some of the lawyers sided with rapists and murderers in Jammu," Arora said. A section of lawyers from an organisation named 'Lawyers for Democracy and Rule of Law' took out a silent protest, walking peacefully from the Supreme Court of India to the office of the Bar Council of India. Som Dutt Sharma, who led the procession, said men in saffron can't be above the law. "People with saffron flags are not the authority to decide about who is guilty and who is not," he said, adding that a nation-wide protest will be organised to demand action against the lawyers, saying they not only tried to protect the accused in the Kathua murder case but also threatened her lawyer and attempted to prevent the police from filing a chargesheet. Shalu Nigam, an advocate participating in the march, said it was "shocking" to see the lawyer representing the victim's family being harassed. "Being the member of a certain religious group does not allow anyone to infringe upon the rights of others," she said. Significantly, the Bar Council of Jammu and Kashmir was also criticised for its inaction against lawyers who allegedly sided with the accused. "The council should have immediately sprung into action against the Bar associations, and taken disciplinary action against defaulting fellow members. But it appears that it is hands in glove with the unruly lawyers," Sharma added. Nandita Rao, another protesting lawyer, said professional ethics were intentionally flouted to send across a communal message. "The lawyers know that there is always a legal remedy to any legal problem. If they truly felt that people are being wrongly accused in the case, the lawyers could have approached the court. But instead of doing that, they called for a bandh and threatened the victim's lawyer. They did this to send across a threat that people of their community can't be indicted," she said. However, when the march ended at the Bar Council of India office, they found the gates were shut from inside, barricades were put up, and it was heavily guarded by the police. A group of lawyers went inside the Bar Council of India office and handed a memorandum demanding strict legal action against the lawyers for flouting professional ethics. The lawyers also submitted a list of alleged violation of code of ethics by a section of lawyers in Jammu. They further claimed the police had to submit the chargesheet at the residence of the presiding officer of the court, since lawyers were preventing it from being filed at the police station. Alleging further professional misconduct, the memorandum alleged that BS Salathia, the president of the Jammu Bar Association, also threatened Deepika Singh Rajawat, the victim's lawyer, for pursuing the case. An eight-year-old girl was abducted, raped and murdered in Rassana village in Hiranagar tehsil of Kathua district in January. The girl's body was recovered on 17 January, a week after she went missing while grazing horses in the forest. The Crime Branch of the Jammu and Kashmir Police probed the case and filed the main chargesheet against seven persons and a separate chargesheet against a juvenile accused in a court in Kathua district last week. A BJP leader on Tuesday said the condition of Goa chief minister Manohar Parrikar, undergoing treatment for a pancreatic ailment in the USA, was improving, but he would travel to his home state only after doctors allow him to. Panaji: A BJP leader on Tuesday said the condition of Goa chief minister Manohar Parrikar, undergoing treatment for a pancreatic ailment in the USA, was improving, but he would travel to his home state only after doctors allow him to. Last week, Goa BJP general secretary Sadanand Tanavade had said that Parrikar is likely to return next month. "The chief minister is responding well to treatment and is on the path of recovery. Parrikar would head back to Goa after doctors treating him in the US allow him to," BJP leader and Curchorem MLA Nilesh Cabral told a press conference. Cabral rubbished statements made recently by some Congress leaders that no medical update was being provided by the BJP-led Goa government on the condition of the former defence minister. "The CMO has been issuing statements time and again about his health. I have spoken to him (Parrikar) seven times in the last one-and-half months and every time I called, he had attended the call. I can assure you that he is getting well," said Cabral. The MLA lost his cool when a reporter suggested that updates about Parrikar's health be ideally given by a medical practitioner and not by any party leader. "...The way you are asking, it seems that you (media) don't want him (Parrikar) to return," he said. A delegation of Congress leaders yesterday called on state governor Mridula Sinha at Raj Bhavan and demanded that the state government give regular updates about Parrikar's health. Parrikar, who complained of stomach pain on 14 February this year, was admitted to Lilavati Hospital in Mumbai the next day. He was discharged on 22 February and presented Budget in the Goa Assembly on the same day upon return. Later, he was again admitted to Lilavati Hospital on 5 March, from where he was taken to the US. A cabinet advisory committee, consisting of senior ministers, has been authorised to take decisions in his absence. If Judge K Ravinder Reddy's judgment in the Mecca Masjid case wasn't surprising enough, his resignation within hours of delivering the verdict, was even more startling If Judge K Ravinder Reddy's judgment in the Mecca Masjid blast case of 2007, acquitting all accused wasn't surprising enough, his resignation from the post of the IV Additional Metropolitan Sessions Judge within hours of delivering the verdict, was even more startling. The verdict meant that even 11 years after the terror attack at the most holy place of worship for Muslims, no one knew who planted the bombs. No one quite knew the reasons behind Reddy's dramatic decision to quit either. But the timing of his resignation led to speculation over whether his decision had anything to do with the verdict, and conspiracy theories flew thick and fast. In his resignation letter, Reddy cited "personal reasons" for his decision. He urged that his resignation be accepted and proceeded on leave for 15 days. Reddy's four-page letter, also sent to the Acting Chief Justice of the Hyderabad High Court Ramesh Ranganathan, also reportedly referred to the delay in the bifurcation of the judiciary even four years after the formation of Telangana. In 2016, Reddy was at the forefront of the agitation by the judiciary in Telangana over the issue as the Telangana Judges Association president and was also suspended on disciplinary grounds. He had led the agitation by over 100 judges against provisional allocation of judicial officers between Andhra Pradesh and Telangana. But these reasons hardly sound convincing and even if they were true, did not merit resigning soon after such an important verdict. But maybe that was precisely the intention. Judge Reddy perhaps wanted people to connect the dots. But in light of other revelations, this may be just a red herring. On 11 December, 2017, M Krishna Reddy, a businessman from Hyderabad filed an affidavit in the high court accused the judge of "corrupt practices" and asked the court to probe them. The affidavit points out that in a case relating to forgery of documents to stake a claim to property, the accused was granted anticipatory bail out of turn. This, despite the accused being denied anticipatory bail on three previous occasions. "The curiosity shown by the learned judge in taking up the bail petition on a war-footing, itself is sufficient to arrive at a conclusion that he was eager and highly interested to dispose of it, for reasons best known to him," the affidavit said. It also pointed out that the judge was only in charge of the court for two days, during which he granted bail without referring to the counter filed by the prosecution. But would this complaint have been enough to provoke Judge Reddy to put in his papers? Perhaps, given the overdrive by the Anti-Corruption Bureau (ACB). In the past month, the ACB has arrested three judges who presided over lower courts in three separate cases of corruption. Lawyers practicing in the high court say this is part of the Chief Justice's insistence on probity among the judges and taking a very serious view of any allegation of corruption against any of them. The three cases were in fact sent to the ACB after an initial inquiry by the high court, although one does not know if Reddy's case based on the 2017 complaint too had been investigated. The judges arrested by the ACB include M Gandhi of the labour court, Radhakrishna Murthy who is the first additional metropolitan sessions judge in Hyderabad and S Madhu, first additional junior civil judge in Jagtial. Property worth Rs 3.57 crore were recovered from Gandhi and he has been denied bail. Madhu was arrested for allegedly forcing two advocates to pay Rs 60,000 as a bribe to acquit their clients. Murthy was accused of accepting Rs 7.5 lakh to grant bail to an accused in a narcotics-related case. But does quitting help Judge Reddy's case? Not really, because if the corruption charges against him are found to be prima facie true, the ACB will be asked to proceed against him like it did in the other three cases. This has led to speculation over whether he was nudged to put in his papers. But it is the larger question that is worrying. If there is any evidence of corruption found against Judge Reddy, it would cast a shadow on the Mecca Masjid verdict he delivered on Monday. A judge has to be seen as absolutely non-corrupt and immune to any sort of influence. If it is proved that he could be influenced to grant anticipatory bail to an accused in a petty property-related case, his verdict in the Mecca Masjid case that has larger political and social implications would also come under a cloud. Lawyers familiar with the arguments made in the Mecca Masjid case, however point out that it would be too early to jump the gun. They point out that the prosecution did not present strong enough arguments to nail the five accused and Judge Reddy would have found it difficult to convince himself that those in the dock had indeed carried out or masterminded the terror plot. There is also speculation that Judge Reddy quit in order to join Telangana Jana Samiti, a political party recently formed by Professor M Kodandaram, who led the Telangana movement along with K Chandrasekhar Rao. Kodandaram and KCR fell out after the formation of Telangana and the professor is now one of the most bitter critics of the chief minister. Kodandaram however denied he even knew the judge, leave alone the possibility of Judge Reddy joining his party. The Indian embassy in Nepal's Biratnagar was attacked late on Monday, damaging a wall, according to reports. The Indian embassy in Nepal's Biratnagar was attacked late on Monday night, damaging a wall, media reports said. Two youths on a motorcycle reportedly planted the bomb. #BREAKING -- Indian embassy in Nepals Biratnagar attacked yesterday, west side wall damaged. 2 people on motorcycle planted the bomb. Sources say, possible role of ISI behind the attack and also say that they are planning attacks on other Indian embassies also pic.twitter.com/5HNLcvpYCh News18 (@CNNnews18) April 17, 2018 There is no confirmation on any injuries yet, CNN-News18 reported. The report quoted sources as saying that Pakistan's Inter-Services Intelligence (ISI) may be behind the attack, and that they are planning attacks on other Indian embassies as well. Superintendent of Police Arun Kumar BC said the office wall on the west side was slightly damaged in the explosion, according to Dainik Nepal. Investigating officers suspect that cadres of a local political group have caused the blast. The party had called a general strike in Biratnagar on Monday. The security around the blast site has been upped after the incident. Meanwhile, security sources in New Delhi citing inputs from Nepal said a small explosion took place at Biratnagar at the Indian Embassy consulate office. This is a temporary office which had been set up during floods in Nepal and north Bihar and continues to function since then. The explosion happened at around 8:20 pm and caused a hole in the compound wall. No one was in the office at the time of the incident, sources said. With inputs from PTI Narendra Modi called Sweden its natural partner in Make in India project, saying Stockholms increasing contribution in Indias development a proud moment for all of us Prime Minister Narendra Modi called Sweden India's natural partner in Make in India project, saying Stockholm's increasing contribution in India's development was "a proud moment" for all of us. The prime minister was making a joint statement with his Swedish counterpart Stefan Lofven at Stockholm on Tuesday. This is Modi's maiden visit to Sweden and he is also the first Indian premiere to visit the country in the last 30 years. After holding bilateral talks with Lovfan, Modi said that India's relationship with Sweden was "a perfect match". He also thanked the Swedish prime minister and the people of Sweden for their warm welcome. Modi said the duo, in their talks, focused on how Sweden can help India in its development journey. The two sides have agreed an innovation partnership and a Joint Action Plan, he said. Modi said India and Sweden have agreed to strengthen their defence and security cooperation, including in areas of defence production and cyber security. "Defence cooperation is the biggest pillar in our relations. Sweden has been our valuable partner in this sector for years. We have now mutually decided to increase our cooperation this sector, particularly in the field of cyber security, the prime minister added. Recalling Stockholms contribution in Make in India project, the prime minister said ,"Sweden has been a strong contributor to our 'Make in India' program. Swedish Prime Minister Stefan Lofven himself led a big delegation to the Mumbai summit in 2016. It is a proud moment for all Indians, to see immense co-operation from Sweden". Modi also said that Sweden's contribution in development of India will be a win-win situation for both the countries. "The most important theme of our talks was how increasing Swedens investment in India will be a win-win situation for both the countries. We also stressed on increasing co-operation in terms of innovations, investments and start-ups. It will be honour for New Delhi to encourage Sweden's co-operation". On his part, Swedish prime minister lauded India "global power" and said the two countries are a "perfect match". There has been an intensification of cooperation in areas such as green technology and smart cities. Lofven said India and Sweden have agreed to work on a security agreement. A press update on the Government Offices of Sweden official portal said: "Areas of expertise including the environment, renewable energy, health, research and innovation are at the heart of the discussions on Sweden and Indias continued bilateral cooperation." The article also mentioned the increasing bilateral trade between the two countries, adding that it paved the path for increased growth. Modi arrived in Stockholm on Tuesday, the first leg of his five-day foreign tour which will also take him to the UK where he will attend the Commonwealth Heads of Government Meeting (CHOGM). He is first Indian premier to visit the Nordic nation in 30 years. Swedish Prime Minister Stefan Lofven received Modi at the airport. Modi and Lofven also travelled together in the same vehicle from the airport to the hotel. In afternoon, he called on Swedish King Carl XVI Gusta , and they exchanged views on strengthening bilateral cooperation across several sectors. Later he will interact with top business leaders and chart out a future roadmap of cooperation in sectors such as trade and investment, science and technology, clean energy and smart cities. India and Sweden will also jointly organise the India-Nordic Summit in Stockholm on Tuesday. The summit will also be attended by the prime ministers of Finland, Norway, Denmark and Iceland. From Sweden, Modi will travel to the UK where he will also attend the CHOGM, besides holding bilateral talks with his British counterpart Theresa May. He will have a brief stopover at Berlin, Germany, on 20 April on his way back home. With inputs from agencies India's Prime Minister Narendra Modi headed for London after meetings in Stockholm with counterparts from Finland, Denmark, Iceland and Norway even as the brutal rape and killing of a child in Kashmir continues to headline the Modi and India story in world media. India's Prime Minister Narendra Modi headed for London after meetings in Stockholm with counterparts from Finland, Denmark, Iceland and Norway even as the brutal rape and killing of a child in Kashmir continues to headline the Modi and India story in world media. Modi's trip to Stockholm is the first bilateral visit by an Indian premier to the Nordic nation in 30 years. Modi signed off in Sweden with an address to the Indian diaspora at Stockholm University before winging to the UK. Modi repeated many of the themes that have headlined his speeches to the Indian diaspora in other foreign lands too. "Many of you left India years ago. You might recall, one had to wait for days for LPG gas cylinder. Now suppliers call and ask can we deliver a cylinder? Modi told a huge audience at Stockholm University late Tuesday. While protests refuse to die down in India over women's safety and the rape and murder of a child in Kathua, Kashmir, Modi spoke about women's empowerment in Stockholm. "There used to just slogans about Garibi Hatao. Now empowerment is a tool especially for women who have been poverty stricken", he said. He asked Indians in Nordic countries to give back to the idea of a 'New India' before heading to London where he will first meet with Foreign Secretary Boris Johnson. Looking forward to welcoming Prime Minister @narendramodi of India to the UK tonight for his second official visit. Well be focusing on greater tech collaboration, building on our deep ties of culture and kinship that make us natural partners pic.twitter.com/emGKqVUXEx Boris Johnson (@BorisJohnson) April 17, 2018 Protests and rallies over the Kathua and Unnao rape cases in India are likely to coincide with Modi's visit to the UK. This is Narendra Modi's second bilateral visit to the U.K. in three years, ahead of the Commonwealth Heads of Government Meeting (CHOGM). We have one embassy in Sweden but we have more than one ambassador. Each one of you is our ambassador. If you have your heart in innovation come be a part of enterprise of New India: PM Narendra Modi to Indian diaspora in #Sweden. pic.twitter.com/LUKmio60h2 ANI (@ANI) April 17, 2018 During his Sweden visit, Modi met Danish Premier Lars Lokke Rasmussen and held talks on renewing and enhancing cooperation. The two leaders exchanged documents in areas related to animal husbandry, dairy farming and urban development. Prime Minister Modi also had an "excellent meeting" with his Finnish counterpart Juha Sipila. The two leaders discussed enhancing cooperation in trade and investment, renewable energy, space, waste management, start-up and education, External Affairs Ministry spokesperson Raveesh Kumar said. "Fruitful discussions with PM of #India @narendramodi in Stockholm. Recalled our first meeting in Mumbai in 2016 and had concrete negotiations how to promote our cooperation further in energy, space, education", Sipila tweeted. Modi also met Iceland Premier Katrin Jakobsdottir and "reviewed the full range of India-Iceland relations during their meeting", the Indian PMO said.. "We deliberated on ways to boost economic and people-to-people relations between our nations," Modi said after the meeting. "PM urged Icelandic companies to look at India as an investment destination in geothermal energy and strengthen cooperation in education, tourism and culture," Kumar said of the meeting between the two leaders. Later, Modi also met his Norwegian counterpart Erna Solberg. "Had a wonderful meeting with Prime Minister Erna Solberg. There is immense potential to boost relations with Norway especially in areas such as innovation, trade and clean energy," Modi said after the meeting. "A wonderful meeting between PM @erna_solberg of Norway and PM @narendramodi. India values the deep-rooted friendship with Norway," a tweet on the PMO Twitter handle said. Earlier in the day, Modi held delegation-level talks with his Swedish counterpart Stefan Lofven on a wide range of issues. Prime Minister Narendra Modi called on Swedish King Carl XVI Gustaf in Stockholm on Tuesday, and they exchanged views on strengthening bilateral cooperation across several sectors Stockholm: Prime Minister Narendra Modi called on Swedish King Carl XVI Gustaf on Tuesday, and they exchanged views on strengthening bilateral cooperation across several sectors. Modi arrived in the Swedish capital on Monday, making it the first bilateral visit by an Indian premier to the Nordic nation in 30 years. Swedish Prime Minister Stefan Lofven received Modi at the airport. Modi and Lofven also travelled together in the same vehicle from the airport to the hotel. They will hold bilateral meetings, and Modi will later also meet leaders of four other Nordic nations. "10 engagements in 10 hours- a hectic day begins for PM @narendramodi in Stockholm! Call on King of Sweden, bilateral meeting with @SwedishPM & 4 Nordic countries' leaders, roundtable meeting with Swedish CEOs, call by Leader of Opposition, India-Nordic Summit and Community event," external affairs ministry spokesperson Raveesh Kumar tweeted. "Royal start to the day! PM @narendramodi called on His Majesty the King Carl XVI Gustaf of Sweden. Leaders exchanged views on strengthening bilateral cooperation across several sectors," Kumar said. Modi is on the first leg of his five-day foreign tour which will also take him to the UK where he will attend the Commonwealth Heads of Government Meeting (CHOGM). Earlier, ahead of his visit, Modi said in New Delhi that he was looking forward to deepening bilateral engagement with both countries in a number of areas including trade, investment and clean energy. Modi had said he and Lofven would interact with top business leaders of both countries and chart out a future roadmap of cooperation in sectors such as trade and investment, science and technology, clean energy and smart cities. India and Sweden will also jointly organise the India-Nordic Summit in Stockholm on Wednesday. The summit will also be attended by the prime ministers of Finland, Norway, Denmark and Iceland. From Sweden, Modi will tonight travel to the UK where he will also attend the CHOGM, besides holding bilateral talks with his British counterpart Theresa May. He will have a brief stopover at Berlin, Germany, on 20 April on his way back home. Modi thanked Sweden prime minister Lovfen and the Swedish people for extending him a warm welcome. Indian Prime Minister Narendra Modi met his Swedish counterpart Stefan Lofven and the two leaders addressed the press jointly after holding bilateral talks. The two countries decided to strengthen their defence and security cooperation, and agreed on an innovation partnership for a "win-win" outcome. The prime minister thanked Lovfen and the Swedish people for extending him a warm welcome. He also said that Sweden remains a valued partner in India's Make in India initiative as he hoped that bilateral ties between the two nations will touch new heights. Here is the full text of Modi's speech. Your Excellency, Prime Minister Stefan Lofven, Friends from Media! This is my first visit to Sweden. The Prime Minister of India is visiting Sweden after a gap of nearly three decades. I express my heartfelt gratitude to Prime Minister Lofven and the Swedish government for our warm reception and honor in Sweden. During this visit, Prime Minister Lofven has organized India's Summit along with other Nordic countries. I also express my heartfelt gratitude for this. In India's Make in India mission, Sweden has been a strong partner since its inception. In 2016, in the Make in India program in Mumbai, Prime Minister Lofven himself participated with a very big Business Delegation. The most prominent program of Make In India outside India was also held in Sweden in October last year. It is a matter of great happiness and pride for us that Prime Minister Mr. Lofven himself participated in it. I believe that the most prominent theme in our conversation today was how Sweden can do a win-win partnership with India under the opportunities created by India's development. As a result, today we have agreed on an Innovation Partnership and Joint Action Plan. Innovation, Investment, Start-ups, Manufacturing etc. are our main dimensions of partnership. With them, we are also focusing on many topics like renewable energy, urban transport, waste management, which are the topics related to the quality of life of the people of India. On topics related to trade and investment today, Prime Minister Lofven and I will also discuss with Sweden's leading CEOs. Another key pillar of our bilateral relations is our defense and security cooperation. Sweden has been India's partner for a long time in the defense sector. And I believe that in the future, in this area, especially in defense production, many new opportunities will be created for our cooperation. We have decided to strengthen our security cooperation, especially cyber security cooperation. We agree on one thing, it is that the importance of our relations are also at the regional and global stage. We have very close cooperation on the international stage, and will continue even further. Today we have exchanged views in detail about the developments taking place in Europe and Asia. In the end, I would once again like to thank Prime Minister Lofvenfrom my heart. Thank you very much. Prime Minister Narendra Modi on Monday arrived in the capital of Sweden, the first bilateral visit by an Indian premier to the Nordic nation in 30 years Prime Minister Narendra Modi arrived in the capital of Sweden Stockholm on Monday, making the first bilateral visit by an Indian prime minister to the Nordic nation in 30 years. Swedish prime minister Stefan Lofven received Modi at the airport. Modi is on the first leg of his five-day foreign tour which will also take him to the United Kingdom where he will attend the Commonwealth Heads of Government Meeting (CHOGM). In a special gesture exuding warmth and hospitality, PM @narendramodi and @SwedishPM are traveling together in the same vehicle from the airport to the Hotel. pic.twitter.com/S20UhtsZ4h Raveesh Kumar (@MEAIndia) April 16, 2018 In Sweden, Modi is scheduled to hold extensive talks with Lofven and his government, besides attending an India-Nordic Summit. The summit holds significance, given India's strong economic ties with at least four of the five Nordic nations: Here is the schedule for Wednesday (all times are Indian Standard Time): -2 pm: Meeting with King of Sweden Carl XVI Gustaf at the Royal Palace -2.30 pm: Meeting with the prime minister Lofven at his home in Sagreska -3.20 pm: Short walk of the two leaders from Sagerska to Rosenbad -4.45 pm: Signing of Agreements Venue Rosenbad -5.05 pm: Press statements -5.30 pm: Prime ministers participate in Sweden-India Business Day -7 pm: Bilateral meetings with Nordic prime ministers -9.15 pm: IndiaNordic Summit: "Shared values, mutual prosperity" -11 pm: Community Event at Stockholm University, entry by invitation -12 am: Depart for London Ahead of his visit, Modi said in New Delhi he was looking forward to deepening bilateral engagement with both countries in a number of areas including trade, investment and clean energy. "India and Sweden share warm and friendly ties. Our partnership is based on democratic values and commitment to an open, inclusive and rules-based global order. Sweden is a valuable partner in our development initiatives," Modi had said in a departure statement on Sunday night. With PTI inputs A special SIT court on Tuesday reserved its order on an application seeking to make former IPS officer Rahul Sharma and former investigating officer P L Mall accused Ahmedabad: A special SIT court on Tuesday reserved its order on an application seeking to make former IPS officer Rahul Sharma and former investigating officer PL Mall accused in the 2002 Naroda Gam riot case. Special SIT judge MK Dave is likely to pronounce the order on 14 May. Some of the accused in the case have filed an application that Sharma and Mall be made accused. Sharma, who had collected call detail records of ministers and bureaucrats during the 2002 post-Godhra riots to pinpoint their locations, didn't submit the original CD of this data to the probe agencies, while Mall failed to arrest Sharma for this "destruction of evidence", the application alleged. Sharma submitted a duplicate CD as evidence which did not contain some vital call details which would have been in favour of the accused, the accused persons' lawyer said. Sharma, who argued himself, said in his defence that the application was erroneous, as it was because he submitted the CD to the riots inquiry commission that the existence of the CD came to light. Eleven Muslims were killed by a mob in the Naroda Gam locality of Ahmedabad on 28 February, 2002, a day after the Godhra train carnage. In 2009, the SIT filed a charge sheet in the case against 83 persons, including former Gujarat minister and BJP leader Maya Kodnani. Union minister Nitin Gadkari on Monday said a new express highway connecting Delhi and Mumbai will be built at a cost of Rs 1 lakh crore. New Delhi: Union minister Nitin Gadkari on Monday said a new express highway connecting Delhi and Mumbai will be built at a cost of Rs 1 lakh crore. The transport and highways minister also talked about plans to build Chambal expressway that would be connected to the Delhi-Mumbai expressway. The Chambal expressway will benefit states like Madhya Pradesh and Rajasthan. Gadkari has announced the development of a new highway alignment between Delhi and Mumbai, the Ministry of Road Transport and Highways said in a statement. "A sum of Rs 1 lakh crore will be spent on this expressway... Nitin Gadkari outlined major initiatives of his ministry for de-congestion of Delhi NCR. A total of ten projects are underway costing Rs 35,600 crore," it said. About 40,000 commercial vehicles enter Delhi on a daily basis, which cause pollution and congestion in the city state, Gadkari, who is also holding the portfolio of water resources and Ganga rejuvenation, said in the statement. An ambitious scheme of developing Eastern and Western Peripheral Expressways around Delhi was taken up, and the Eastern Peripheral Expressway will be inaugurated by Prime Minister Narendra Modi on 29 April. Similarly, to ease traffic in East Delhi, Delhi-Meerut Expressway was envisaged, and its Delhi-Dasna portion will also be inaugurated by the prime minister on the same day by a roadshow. Gadkari informed that work on signal-free corridor from Dhaula Kuan to Airport has been awarded at a cost of Rs 260 crore. He said, eight-lane fully access-controlled Dwarka Expressway is being developed in four packages. While three packages have already been awarded, the work on the expressway is likely to start in a month's time. Total investment in the project is Rs 9,500 crore. Additionally, under improvement of Mahipalpur at Rangpuri, a bypass is being envisaged to connect Dwarka/ NH8, he said. Regarding development of major junctions on NH8 in Gurugram like the flyover and underpass at IFFCO Chowk, Signature Tower intersection, Rajiv Chowk and Hero Honda Chowk, the minister said the work costing Rs 1,000 crore has been substantially completed. Opposition parties have slammed the Yogi Adityanath government for the 'sudden spurt' in rape cases in Uttar Pradesh. In light of the recent rape case of a minor in Uttar Pradesh's Etah, opposition parties have slammed the Yogi Adityanath government for the "sudden spurt" in rape cases. An eight-year-old girl was raped and murdered in Uttar Pradesh's Etah district in the early hours of Tuesday morning. The incident in western Uttar Pradesh comes at a time when the Yogi government is fighting public anger over the rape of a teenager allegedly by a ruling party MLA in Unnao. Slamming the ruling Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) government in the state, Samajwadi Party spokesperson and MLC Sunil Singh Sajan said, "I simply fail to understand why the law and order in the state has deteriorated so much after the BJP has come to power in UP. On the one hand, the government claims that encounters are going on in the state and on the other, the crime ratio has surged in the state. The BJP had claimed that as soon as they come to power, the law and order of UP will improve. But, going by the sudden spurt of incidents, I feel that even the minor girls are not all safe in the state," he said. The Congress too attacked the BJP government on the incident. UP Congress spokesperson Ashok Singh said, "It is an irony that criminal elements are roaming freely in the state, and UP has become virtually the number one state in the country going by the spurt of rapes and other crimes.Congress will soon launch a mass movement across the state to highlight the surge in crime in the state." The BJP, however, said the party does not believe in saving criminal elements. "Unlike the past state governments which used to shield criminal elements, the BJP believes in ensuring that swift action is initiated against criminals. The police in UP is working without any dabaav (pressure) and prabhaav (influence). FIRs which were not registered in the previous state governments' regime are now being immediately registered." With inputs from PTI Pakistan on Tuesday rejected Indian allegations of 'attempts to incite Indian pilgrims' on the issue of 'Khalistan.' Islamabad: Pakistan on Tuesday rejected Indian allegations of "attempts to incite Indian pilgrims" on the issue of 'Khalistan.' India on Monday summoned Pakistan's Deputy High Commissioner in New Delhi and lodged a strong protest over attempts to raise the Khalistan issue during the visit of Sikh pilgrims to that country, while asking Islamabad to immediately cease all such activities aimed at undermining India's sovereignty and territorial integrity. Reacting to New Delhi's action, Pakistan's Foreign Office (FO) said, "By spreading such falsehoods, India has chosen to deliberately stoke further controversy around the visit of Sikh pilgrims, currently attending the Baisakhi and Khalsa Janamdin ceremonies in Pakistan." It said Pakistan welcomes Hindu and Sikh pilgrims from all over the world, including India. Pakistan has made arrangements to extend maximum facilitation to the visiting Sikh pilgrims during their visits to sacred places in Pakistan, the FO said. It said the Sikh community has been protesting against the Government of India for screening a controversial movie in India, which hurts their religious sentiments. "These protests had started in India and other parts of the world before the Sikh Yatrees arrived in Pakistan," the FO said. In view of the charged situation and the explicit refusal of the Sikh Yatrees to meet Indian officials, the Indian High Commissioner cancelled his visit on 14 April, 2018, the FO said. "Indian attempts to distort the truth and obfuscate facts are unethical and regrettable," it said. "No amount of Indian propaganda could succeed in turning this right into a wrong," it claimed. India should respect the international and inter-state norms, respect all religions, especially minorities, and refrain from indulging in pointless provocation which only vitiates an already charged environment to the detriment of all, the FO said. Delhi Police on Tuesday filed a chargesheet against four people for allegedly misbehaving and stalking Union minister Smriti Irani in 2017, media reports said. The Delhi Police on Tuesday filed a chargesheet against four people for allegedly misbehaving and stalking Union minister Smriti Irani in 2017, media reports said. The final report was filed before Metropolitan Magistrate Snigdha Sarwaria who took cognisance of the charge sheet and put up the matter for 15 October. The four youths, identified as Sitanshu, Karan, Avinash and Amit, were booked on charges of stalking, criminal intimidation and intention to insult the modesty of a woman. "I take cognisance of the offence as mentioned in the charge sheet. Considering the overall facts and circumstances of the cases, there is sufficient material on record to issue summons against the accused," the judge said, noting that the accused were on bail. In April 2017, the drunk students allegedly followed Irani's car in Lutyens' Delhi, after which they were detained by the police. Acting on the complaint, police intercepted the car in which the four youths were travelling. The students, in the age group of 18-19 years, had been detained at Chanakyapuri police station. "Their medical examination has confirmed the presence of alcohol in their blood. They were returning from a friend's birthday party in south Delhi and were roaming in the area for fun," the police had said. With inputs from PTI Congress president Rahul Gandhi, on Tuesday, said the 'terror of noteban' has once again gripped the country due to the reported shortage of cash in several states and accused prime minister Narendra Modi of destroying the country's banking system with his demonetisation decision New Delhi: Congress president Rahul Gandhi, on Tuesday, said the "terror of noteban" has once again gripped the country due to the reported shortage of cash in several states and accused prime minister Narendra Modi of destroying the country's banking system with his demonetisation decision. The Congress chief, who is in his Parliamentary constituency Amethi, took to Twitter to attack Modi, alleging he "snatched" the Rs 500 and Rs 1000 currency notes from every Indian's pocket and "gave" it to Nirav Modi, but was neither speaking a word about it nor facing the Parliament. "Modi ji has destroyed the banking system of the country," Gandhi said on the reported cash crunch in some ATMs. He alleged that Narendra Modi did not speak a word "after Nirav Modi fled the country with Rs 1,000 crore". "The prime minister has not uttered a single word after he made the entire country stand in a queue, snatched Rs 500 and Rs 1000 currency notes from your pocket and put it in Nirav Modi's pocket. He fears standing in Parliament too," he said. The terror of noteban has gripped the country again as the cash in various banks has gone dry, Gandhi alleged and used the hashtag "CashCrunch" with his tweet in Hindi. "Understand the deceit of Noteban, your money in Nirav Modi's pocket. Modiji's 'Mallya maya', the terror or noteban is again spreading. The country's ATMs are again empty, what has been done to the country's banks," he tweeted. Congress communications in-charge Randeep Surjewala also took a dig at the prime minister, saying "while the 'saheb' is enjoying abroad, the country's people are looking for cash in banks". Several parts of Andhra Pradesh, Telangana, Madhya Pradesh, Bihar and poll-bound Karnataka have reported shortage of currency and ATMs running low, which the government on Tuesday attributed to unusual spurt in demand in last three months. Finance Minister Arun Jaitley said the "temporary shortage" in certain states is being "tackled quickly" and that there is "more than adequate" currency in circulation. Congress leader Jaiver Shergill said that news is pouring in from Bihar, Rajasthan, Telangana, and Jharkhand that there is no money in the country's banks. "The Congress party demands that the money that the Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) has earned from cleaning off the banks should be returned and the ATMs should be made operational," he said. "BJP and friends have stolen the country's money, that's why there is no money in the country's ATMs," he alleged. Besides the Aadhaar Act does not authorise any kind of data analysis, he said, adding the UIDAI has 'simple matching algorithms' which give answers like 'yes' or 'no' after it receives a request for Aadhaar authentication from a requesting entity. New Delhi: The Cambridge Analytica data leak controversy found mention in the Supreme Court, which red flagged the threat of probable misuse of citizens' information by entities which were getting Aadhaar details authenticated by the UIDAI. A five-judge constitution bench headed by Chief Justice Dipak Misra, hearing clutch of petitions challenging Aadhaar and enabling 2016 law, referred to the Cambridge Analytica controversy and said these are not "imaginary apprehensions" and, in the absence of robust data protection law, the issue of misuse of information becomes relevant. "The real apprehension is that elections are swayed using data analytics. These problems are symptomatic of the world we live in," the bench, also comprising Justices AK Sikri, AM Khanwilkar, DY Chandrachud and Ashok Bhushan, said. "Please do not bring Cambridge Analytica into this. The UIDAI simply does not have the learning algorithms like Facebook, Google to analyse details of users," senior advocate Rakesh Dwivedi, appearing for Unique Identification Authority of India (UIDAI) and the Gujarat government, said. Besides the Aadhaar Act does not authorise any kind of data analysis, he said, adding the UIDAI has "simple matching algorithms" which give answers like 'yes' or 'no' after it receives a request for Aadhaar authentication from a requesting entity. The bench, which posed several searching questions, asked the lawyer why the authorities were allowing private entities to use the Aadhaar platform for various purposes and referred to the legal provision to this effect. "Why are words 'body corporate or any person' used in section 57 of the Act. It breaks the nexus of the Act with the Consolidated Fund of India... What is the point of involving private parties in the Aadhaar infrastructure," the bench asked. Dwivedi responded by saying that "it does not allow any 'chaiwala' or a 'panwala' to become a requesting entity under the Act. It is a limited exercise. The UIDAI will not approve anyone to become an requesting entity (RE) unless it is satisfied that the particular entity needs to use facility of authentication." He also referred to private companies like Reliance venturing into the defence sector and said at some point in time, the court will have to decide the aspect where private firms were dealing with public functions of the state, which are currently being carried out by public sector companies. Dwivedi also dealt with the persistent allegation that the people were being given a number identity as was done by dictator Adolf Hitler in Germany. "Hitler counted citizens to identify Jews, Christians etc. Here, we do not seek details like caste, creed and religion from the citizens," he said, adding that the history of numbers began in India and "numbers are beautiful and fascinating". He also urged the bench not to give in to the "hyper phobia" against the Aadhaar created by the petitioners opposed to the "inclusive scheme" of the government based on a law and the proper infrastructure. "Lobbies favouring smart cards do not want this scheme to succeed as they are opposed to Aadhaar," the senior lawyer said, adding there have been efforts from many quarters to ensure that this scheme, which is more secure and works offline, does not work. The bench then referred to the provisions of the Aadhaar Act and said the misuse of information at the end of UIDAI may not happen, but there could be possibility of misuse or commercial abuse of information by private entities involved in Aadhaar authentication. To this, the lawyer said the Aadhaar Act provided enough data protection to citizens and contained provisions to punish the offenders for any breach and moreover, the core biometric details cannot be shared by UIDAI. "No data protection law can provide hundred percent protection. The test should be 'reasonable, fair and just'," he said, adding that "aggregation, analysis or transfer of data" is not allowed under the statute. The lawyer also referred to uncertainties faced in life and said nothing was 100 per cent secure as people died in air travel and accidents on the highways. He then referred to the fact that documents like passport, PNR and boarding passes of airlines contain numbers only and it does not mean that identity of an individual is lost. He said biometric details do not contain genetic data and they are not intrusive and they are used in instant digital authentication of Aadhaar holder. "Aadhaar is not just an exercise to provide benefits and weed out fakes but also to bring the service providers face to face with the beneficiaries. That is the revolutionary aspect of Aadhaar," he said. "Aadhaar is not the panacea for all evils but the problems that were occuring on account of fake identity documents will be solved," he said. The bench took note of the plea that Aadhaar cannot be struck down solely on the ground that it is "probabilistic". However, it said, "If probability leads to deprivation of fundamental rights, then there should be safeguards in place to ensure that this deprivation does not happen. There should be an administrative machinery in place to ensure no genuine beneficiary is deprived." The advancing of arguments remained inconclusive and would resume tomorrow. Sushma Swaraj will visit China on Saturday to participate in the foreign ministers meeting of the SCO during which she will hold talks with China's Wang Yi. Beijing: External Affairs Minister Sushma Swaraj will visit China later this week to participate in the foreign ministers meeting of the Shanghai Cooperation Organisation (SCO) during which she will also hold talks with her Chinese counterpart Wang Yi. Swaraj, who will be arriving in China on 21 April, is expected to meet Wang on 22 April. She is scheduled to take part in the SCO foreign ministers' meeting on 24 April, official sources said. This will be their first meeting after Wang has been elevated in March to be the state councillor, which makes him the top diplomat in the Chinese hierarchy. He will hold the dual posts of the state councillor and foreign minister. After her China visit, she will travel to Magnolia. Swaraj and Defence Minister Nirmala Sitharaman are visiting China virtually around the same time. Sitharaman is due to take part in the SCO defence ministers' meeting on 24 April. The SCO meetings are a prelude to the June summit of the eight-member grouping in which India and Pakistan have become new members. Prime Minister Narendra Modi is expected to take part in the SCO summit to be held in the Chinese city of Qingdao in June. Foreign and defence ministers of Pakistan are also expected to attend the 24 April meetings. The SCO is comprised of China, Kazakhstan, Kyrgyzstan, Russia, Tajikistan, Uzbekistan, India and Pakistan. Visits by Swaraj and Sitharaman are taking place as India and China have stepped up high-level exchanges to defuse tensions following 2017's Doka La standoff. On 13 April, National Security Advisor Ajit Doval met Yang Jiechi, Director of China's Foreign Affairs Commission and member of the ruling Communist Party of China, in Shanghai during which the two sides held in-depth talks on improving the relations. Both sides also held the 11th Joint Economic Group meeting and the fifth Strategic Economic Dialogue (SED). India and China also held working mechanism meeting on border affairs and cross border rivers. Commenting on the meetings, Chinese foreign ministry spokesperson Hua Chunying told the media on Monday that bilateral ties have seen sound momentum and all round cooperation this year. British prime minister Theresa May made a statement in parliament to justify her decision to join US-led air strikes alongside France against Syria's chemical weapons stockpiles. British prime minister Theresa May told restive lawmakers on Monday that military airstrikes on Syria were right both legally and morally, and she accused Syria and its ally Russia of attempting to cover up evidence of a deadly chemical weapons attack. May faced down her domestic critics as France's premier defended the "proportionate" response to the use of chemical weapons. European Union foreign ministers united to say they understood the need for the airstrikes and called for a new push for a political solution to the war in Syria. British Royal Air Force jets joined American and French warplanes and ships in hitting targets in Syria on early Saturday in response to a reported chemical attack by the Syrian government in the town of Douma. The British government is not legally bound to seek the parliament's approval for military strikes, although it is customary to do so, and many lawmakers expressed anger that they were not consulted. May told legislators in the House of Commons that seeking their approval would have been impractical, both because the parliament was on a spring break until Monday and because some of the intelligence behind the decision was classified. "We have always been clear that the government has the right to act quickly in the national interest," May said, calling the military action "not just morally right but also legally right." "We cannot allow the use of chemical weapons to become normalized, either within Syria, on the streets of the UK, or elsewhere," May said linking the chemical attack in Syria with the poisoning of a former Russian spy and his daughter in March with a military-grade nerve agent in the English city of Salisbury. Syria and Russia have both denied that Syrian government forces carried out the Douma gas attack, suggesting it may have been staged to implicate them. May said the presence of helicopters and the use of barrel bombs pointed the finger of blame squarely at the government of Syrian president Bashar Assad. She accused Syria, aided by Russia, of trying to block an investigation into the gas attack by the international chemical weapons watchdog. "The Syrian regime has reportedly been attempting to conceal the evidence by searching evacuees from Douma to ensure samples are not being smuggled from this area. And a wider operation to conceal the facts of the attack is underway, supported by the Russians," she said. Ahmet Uzumcu, director-general of the Organization for the Prohibition of Chemical Weapons, said on Monday that the organization's team "has not yet deployed to Douma," two days after arriving in Syria. He said Syrian and Russian officials who met the OPCW team in Damascus told them "that there were still pending security issues to be worked out before any deployment could take place." In Britain's House of Commons, much of Monday's scheduled business was scrapped for an emergency debate on the airstrikes that stretched late into the evening. But the after-the-fact debate without a binding vote did not satisfy angry opposition lawmakers. Jeremy Corbyn, leader of the main Opposition Labour Party, called the airstrikes "legally questionable" and accused May of "following Donald Trump's lead." Corbyn said May should remember she "is accountable to this Parliament, not to the whims of the US president. May denied acting at the behest of the US. "We have not done this because Trump asked us to do so," May said. "We have done it because we believe it was the right thing to do and we are not alone." French prime minister Edouard Philippe also justified the military action in a speech on Monday to the National Assembly, France's lower house of parliament. Philippe told lawmakers that France's "riposte" was "proportionate" and sent a strong, clear message to dissuade Syria's government from using chemical weapons. He said the joint action of the US, Britain and France was aimed at placing a prohibitive cost on the use of chemical weapons and degrading Assad's ability to use them. Some French Opposition leaders have criticized the strikes, saying they were not legitimate. Under the French Constitution, the government must inform the parliament, but a vote is requested only if a military intervention is expected to last more than four months. In Luxembourg, the foreign ministers of the 28 EU countries called for a political breakthrough involving regional players to put Syria on track to a peaceful solution for its seven-year conflict. The ministers said the EU "understands" the need for the coordinated US, French and British airstrikes following the suspected 7 April chemical attack. They insisted it was executed with "the sole objective to prevent further use of chemical weapons and chemical substances as weapons by the Syrian regime to kill its own people." EU foreign policy chief Federica Mogherini said the EU wants to use a major meeting on Syria in Brussels next week to give impetus to UN peace efforts following Saturday's airstrikes. "There is the need to give a push to the UN-led process," Mogherini said. More than 70 delegations are expected at the 24-25 April donor conference for Syria in Brussels. Like any other 17-year-old, she should have been hanging out with her friends sharing selfies and talking about the next movie they could watch in the nearest mall. But this 17-year-old dressed in an orange kurta and black churidar, face half-covered by a dupatta, finds herself caught in a maelstrom from which there is no escape. Editor's note: This is the first in a three part series of ground reports from Unnao and nearby villages. These articles will examine the culture of fear and repression that is pervasive in the region, and which is typified by the rape of the 17-year-old girl in June 2017. Unnao: Like any other 17-year-old, she should have been hanging out with her friends sharing selfies and talking about the next movie they could watch in the nearest mall. But this 17-year-old dressed in an orange kurta and black churidar, face half-covered by a dupatta, finds herself caught in a maelstrom from which there is no escape. She's so tired, she can barely speak. "My mouth is completely dry. I need to rest for a while. I have just lost my father and continue to be terrorised by how he was beaten to death by the vidhayaks brother and his associates". The 'vidhayak' she is referring to is Kuldeep Singh Sengar, the BJP MLA from Bangarmau located in the Unnao district of Uttar Pradesh. Sengar is a muscleman politician who has built his reputation on fear, finance and caste. His brothers operate as his 'hit men' and his younger brother Atul is known for exercising both muscle and money power. Atul is said to have directed his supporters to thrash the girls father on 2 April. Her father was beaten so badly that when he was brought to the Unnao district hospital, he had eighteen abrasions on his body according to the hospitals medical report. This adolescent lies down on the double bed of a large, high ceiling room with peeling plaster. Her aunt is next to her. There are four uniformed police women sitting on chairs next to the bed. They're with the survivor 24x7. The survivor accused Sengar of raping her on 4 June, 2017. Which led to a series of events that culminated in the death of her father on 8 April, 2018. Her traumatic story once again highlights the extent to which women and adolescents, especially girls, continue to be exploited by powerful sections of our society. She is given to fainting and her blood sugar levels are being constantly monitored. Her ordeal began ten months ago. "I went to the vidhayaks house along with my aunt. He raped me while she stood guard outside". The aunt she is referring to is Shashi Singh, wife of the army jawan Harpal Singh. Harpal was not in the village when this incident occurred. The survivor further alleged that she was abducted by three village boys: Shubhan Singh, son of Shashi and Harpal Singh, his driver Naresh Tiwari and Brijesh Yadav. She said she would have been "sold" for a large amount of money but for the fact that her mother filed a complaint which was registered on 20 June, 2017. Her mother is sitting in the next room of the guest house, along with her late husbands brother and her aged and ailing mother-in-law. She's grief-stricken and completely shattered. "I cannot understand what is happening. I came to this village as a young bride two decades ago", she lamented. "I have four daughters and one four-year-old son. When my daughter went missing, I filed a complaint at the Makhi thana on 20 June, 2017". The girl was recovered the next day and on the basis of her statement she gave on 22 June that she had been raped, all three boys: Shubham Singh, Naresh Tewari and Brijesh Yadav were arrested. The survivor alleges the police at the Makhi station refused to file an FIR against Sengar, who is feared in this area. She asked, "When they were scared to file an FIR, where is the question of them giving me a medical examination?" Once Sengar and his brothers heard about her determination to file the FIR, they began to exert a great deal of pressure on the family. The youngest of the three brothers in the family had already shifted to Nangloi, Delhi, some years ago because he wanted to distance himself from this incestuous village politics. "We had good relations with Sengar and his brothers. His house is opposite ours. Our daughters have studied in his school", said the survivor's late father's brother. In fact, the survivor's sisters continue to study in this intermediate college run from Sengar's property, in which two temples are also located. The college has buses parked inside the compound. Some air conditioners are also visible. "The police began putting pressure on our family following these charges and so on 30 June, my niece shifted to Delhi to stay with us. My brother also moved out of the village", said the survivor's uncle. The survivor's grandmother, who fainted when she saw her son allegedly being beaten by Sengar's goons on 2 April said, "It was during Holi. My medicines had finished. I'd asked my son to bring them to Makhi. He also wanted to buy a bicycle for his son, who'd been asking for one". The family, who are Rajputs, reacted strongly. The survivor and her mother went to Lucknow to attend the janata durbar of Chief Minister Adityanath Yogi. They also filed an application demanding a court investigation. On 22 August, 2017, Sengar received a copy of the girl's complaint which arrived to Unnao by post. The arrival of the letter was the turning point. Relations between the two families further deteriorated. Once, the young folk of the family called Sengar 'Dadu'. The MLA would also refer to the survivor's grandmother as 'Amma' but all that was in the past. Sengar had projected himself as a strong Thakur (Rajput) leader in the region and managed to keep Thakur votes united in Unnao. He was in no mood to tolerate dissent. The fact that the survivor's father printed posters depicting Sengar as a ten-headed Ravana and distributed them in Makhi only worsened relations between the families. Sengar wanted the FIR withdrawn and even told the family that he'd help 'arrange the girl's marriage' if they did. Unnao district jail superintendent AK Singh said the survivor's father was handed over to the police after he was allegedly beaten by four supporters of Sengar and some unidentified associates. The survivor's father was first taken to the district hospital and then sent to the jail next day around 7.30 pm. On 5 April, the survivor's father complained of stomach ache and vomiting. The district hospital physician came to the jail on 6 April and gave him medicine. Her father was taken to district hospital on 7 April. Blood, urine and ultrasound tests were conducted. Everything was found normal and he was brought back to jail the same evening, Singh claimed. "On 8 April, her father again complained of abdominal pain and vomiting. His blood pressure was also very low, so the jail doctor asked us to take him to the district hospital. He was admitted there around 8.45 pm but he died around 3.45 am on 9 April", Singh added. The survivor and her mother left for Lucknow. There, she attempted to self-immolate outside Adityanath's residence. Her mother summed up the situation. "Look at the price my family is paying. We will never be able to return to Makhi. There is no man with us to protect us now", she said, sobbing softly. She added, "If they wanted to punish us, they could have cut off an arm or even my husband's ears. I would have taken care of him for as long as he lived. But what did they do? They sent back his body. Now, I have the responsibility of these four girls and my young son. Who is going to share this burden with me?". Click here to read Part II Fear and loathing grips Makhi as families of survivor, accused trade charges Click here to read Part III Medical records, case timeline exposes 'cover-up' in death of rape survivor's father A CBI court sent Unnao rape case accused BJP MLA Kuldeep Singh Sengar's brother Atul Singh and five others to police custody for four days on Tuesday, ANI said. A CBI court, on Tuesday, sent BJP MLA Kuldeep Singh Sengar's brother Atul Singh and five others to police custody for four days in connection with the Unnao rape case, ANI said. Sengar, Atul and the others are charged with murder and assault of the rape survivor's father, apart from facing charges of gang-raping a minor under the stringent POCSO (Protection of Children from Sexual Offences) Act. According to The New Indian Express, a fourth FIR was lodged in connection with the case on Tuesday. Meanwhile, the CBI plans to reopen the original FIR registered in June last year in connection with the case to find out why Sengar was not probed then, The Times of India reported. The Unnao rape survivor recorded her statement under Section 164 of Code of Criminal Procedure (CrPC) before the special CBI court on Monday. On 14 April, the CBI made the second arrest in the case as it took into custody Shashi Singh, the survivor's relative who allegedly took the girl to Sengar on the day of the crime, officials said. A special court in Lucknow sent Sengar, the prime accused in the case, to seven-day CBI custody. In her complaint to Uttar Pradesh police, now part of the CBI FIR, the survivor's mother alleged that it was Shashi who lured her daughter and took her to Sengar's residence, where he raped her. After a massive public outrage over the inaction of the Uttar Pradesh police, the case was handed over to the CBI on 12 April. The agency took over the investigation in three cases related to the alleged rape of the 17-year-old girl by the BJP MLA. Within hours of taking over the investigation, the CBI brought Sengar, who had remained untouched by the state police, to its office in Lucknow, where he was questioned for nearly 16 hours before being taken into custody. With inputs from PTI Narendra Modi needs an urgent plan to take friendly fire from the maverick Hinduvta face ahead of the Lok Sabha elections next year. As it appears, Narendra Modi and BJP have enough problems to deal with ahead of 2019 parliamentary elections. The party cant clearly think of 2019 as a cakewalk now -- an idea it used to have in the first half of this governments term. If those problems, highlighted by the opposition parties, were not enough, there is friendly fire coming from BJPs own camp. In a tweet, BJP leader Subramanian Swamy has supported RSS Mohan Bhagwats demand to scrap Air India stake sale calling it losing the family silver and also asked Jayant Sinha to be dropped. I welcome RSS sarsangh chalak Mohan Bhagwat's timely warning on Air India family silver sale. My advice to Namo: Put off the proposal to post 2019 poll. Also drop Jayant Sinha Subramanian Swamy (@Swamy39) April 17, 2018 How damaging can Swamys latest salvo be to the Modi government? First, lets look at Swamys target -- Jayant Sinha. Remember, the BJPs maverick leader has been gearing up against Sinha for a while now. In June 2017, Swamy said Sinha should be kept out of the Air India stake sale process. "I would like MoS (Minister of State) for Civil Aviation Jayant Sinha to recuse himself from the process of Air India's disinvestment as there is a conflict of interest," BJP's Rajya Sabha MP and a known economist Swamy had told IANS last year. "He has in the past worked with foreign companies which might be hired to evaluate Air India's assets or other companies which might be interested in buying a stake in the airline. He should recuse himself from this situation," Swamy was quoted as saying. Swamy indeed has a point here. Prior to his plunge into politics, Sinha had worked with a few foreign institutions in certain profiles that can be used by critics to raise charges of conflict of interest. Sinha has worked in the past as a management consultant and investment fund management professional. On another occasion, Swamy cited Sinhas wifes official position at Infosys, to which the computer programming of GSTN was outsourced by the Modi government for Rs 600 crore, of which Rs 400 crore has already been paid to them. Incidentally, the then Minister of State (MoS) for Finance Jayant Sinhas wife was made a Director of Infosys just after the contract was signed, Swamy said. Sinha is relatively a lightweight among Modis ministers but considered as one of the promising talents in the area of finance in particular. Unlike his father, Yashwant Sinha who is now spearheading the rebellion against Modi within BJP, Jayant has been a loyal figure to Modi and hence a direct attack against him cannot go unnoticed by the BJP top brass. Swamys second salvoon Air India stake saleis even more damaging. A lot rides on the successful disinvestment of the ailing national carrier and this is a litmus test to understand this governments resolve to carry forward the much-needed disinvestment agenda, where it hasnt made any notable progress yet. When a senior leader, who is also a face of RSS hardline Hindutva ideology, joins the rebel group to challenge the government on critical issues ahead of an election year, that should send warning signals to the BJP top brass. Swamy has proved time and again why he isnt someone who can be ignored. Arguably, he played a key role with his sustained attack on globally renowned economist and former RBI governor Raghuram Rajan that eventually led to Ranjans exit from the central bank after his first stint. Will Jayant Sinha be another Rajan in Swamys scheme of things? The more important question is how severe the damage to BJP will be ahead of 2019. Already, there is a great deal of resentment and anti-incumbency fanning out against the Modi administration particularly with respect to unemployment, post demonetisation/GST economic chaos, governments approach to deal with minorities and women issues and agrarian distress among others. Swamy will be doing greater damage to Modi and his team if he joins the rebel camp with a full-fledged attack on key policies such as Air India divestment. Modi would urgently need a plan to take friendly fire from the maverick Hinduvta face. Top sources in the BJP said that the decision was taken at a core group meeting, chaired by party vice president Avinash Rai Khanna, at the party headquarters in Jammu. Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) asked all its ministers in the Jammu and Kashmir government to resign but Chief Minister Mehbooba Mufti rushed to clarify that the BJP is not pulling the plug, reported PTI. BJP asks its ministers in Jammu and Kashmir government to resign to bring in new faces in CM Mehbooba Mufti's Cabinet: party sources. Press Trust of India (@PTI_News) April 17, 2018 The official version is that a reshuffle has been in the works for some time now but clearly, the political stakes have changed dramatically after protests over the horror of an 8-year-old being raped and murdered in Kathua. Sources said BJP strategist Ram Madhav told local BJP ministers to send in their resignations during meetings last week when two ministers quit the Mehbooba Mufti government. Mehbooba Mufti's People's Democratic Party (PDP) has been in power with BJP support. The BJP has 25 legislators in the 89-seat Jammu and Kashmir Assembly; PDP, the largest group, has 28 legislators. Forest Minister Lal Singh and Industries Minister Chandra Prakash Ganga quit last week after outrage brutal rape and murder over their speeches supporting the prime accused in the rape and murder. Both ministers spouted praise for the prime accused at a rally organised by Hindu Ekta Manch on 1 March. Singh and Ganga were asked to resign on 14 April as protests broke out across India's cities over two rape cases that were at once brutal and chilling. Sources said the en-masse resignation of BJP ministers came after a meeting chaired by party vice president Avinash Rai Khanna in Jammu. PDP sources told IANS the resignations of the BJP ministers are a prelude to a BJP rejig in the state legislature. Any intra-party resistance to a complete makeover melted away as protests against the rape, torture and murder of an 8-year-old child stunned and galvanised Indians to march on the streets demanding justice. PTI reported that several party leaders were lobbying for fresh faces in the Mehbooba cabinet even as some in the party were in the favour of giving the two former ministers a second chance. In a meeting of party leaders headed by national general secretary Ram Madhav on Sunday in Jammu, both Singh and Ganga were reportedly they could make a comeback if an internal party probe found they went to Kathua "to secure the interests of the party and the government". Those in contention for cabinet berths include Speaker Kavinder Gupta, RS Pura MLA Dr Gagan Bhagat and Kathua MLA Rajeev Jasrotia. The party is also considering inducting BJP state president Sat Sharma, who is completing his three-year term in December. A final decision will likely be taken only after a thumbs up from Amit Shah. Both the alliance partners the BJP and the PDP had separate meetings in Srinagar and Jammu on Saturday to discuss the political fallout after the Kathua murder. There are three vacancies in the council of ministers after the PDP last month removed its finance minister Haseeb Drabu unceremoniously. With inputs from agencies BJP president Amit Shah will attend several programmes and address a rally in Congress leader Sonia Gandhi's constituency Rae Bareli on 21 April. New Delhi: Taking his party's fight against the Congress to the Gandhi family's home turf, BJP president Amit Shah will attend several programmes and address a rally in Congress leader Sonia Gandhi's constituency Rae Bareli on 21 April, a senior party leader said on Tuesday. Though Shah will be in Rae Bareli, party workers from neighbouring areas, including Congress president Rahul Gandhi's constituency Amethi, will be attending the programmes, the leader said. Shah, who is scheduled to address a big political rally, will also hold meetings with party workers to review the BJP's preparedness for the 2019 General elections, a senior party leader said on condition of anonymity. Though it swept Uttar Pradesh in the 2014 General elections, the BJP lost both Rae Bareli and Amethi to the Congress. The party, under Prime Minister Narendra Modi and Shah, has been making a determined bid to wrest Amethi from Rahul. It pitted Union minister Smriti Irani against the Gandhi scion in Amethi in the last Lok Sabha elections. Irani, who has been regularly visiting Amethi and has taken various developmental initiatives there, is likely to be the party's candidate from the constituency in the next General elections as well. The BJP on Tuesday alleged that Rahul Gandhi had defamed Hindu 'globally' as it cited a telegram sourced from Wikileaks to back its demand. Launching a fresh attack against the Congress over the use of term "saffron terror", the Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) on Tuesday accused party president Rahul Gandhi of defaming Hindus "globally", and cited a telegram sourced from Wikileaks to back its demand for an apology. "If Congress considers India to be its own, Sonia and Rahul must apologise to the whole country for defaming the Hindu religion by trying to prove that there was something called 'saffron terror'," BJP spokesperson Sambit Patra said at a press conference on Tuesday. Citing a telegram sent by the then US Ambassador Tim Roemer to the US Department of State, Patra claimed that Rahul made the anti-Hindu remarks during a dinner event on 20 July, 2009. "First, the meeting is explained. Then it's written that in a candid conversation with the ambassador, Rahul responded to a query about Lashkar-e-Taiba (LeT) and its threat to India, and said that 'there was evidence about some support for the group among some Muslim communities'. But he warned about the larger threat of radicalised Hindu religious groups to the country. (By this, Rahul means) the risk of a home-grown extremist front reacting to terror attacks coming to Pakistan was a growing concern and one that needs attention," he said. "This shows the mindset of Rahul Gandhi towards Hindus. His party has always take Hindus for granted," Patra said, adding that the telegram is a classified document. Patra said that Rahul is not an unimportant person and his comments matter. "The dinner was extremely important, in which Rahul was seated besides the US ambassador. Remember this is not a casual conversation, but an extremely important conversation. Though he may have been the then general-secretary, he was the most important person number two (After Sonia Gandhi) in the party. His words had meaning, his words had mass," he said at the press conference. Patra further accused Rahul of considering Hindu extremism and Narendra Modi, then the Gujarat chief minister, to be bigger threats than the LeT. He emphasised that Rahul's comments in the 2009 event had come a year after the 26/11 Mumbai terror attack, which was masterminded by the LeT. He demanded that Rahul address the matter publicly. "You think that Hindus will finish this country? LeT has been accused, most notably for the Parliament attack and the Mumbai attack. In many countries, LeT is banned. Today you will have to answer this," Patra said. The BJP spokesperson further claimed that former UPA home minister Shivraj Patil had refused to talk about the "saffron terror" row and had directed a reporter to instead question former finance minister P Chidambaram about it. "If everybody thinks that Chidambaram has the answers, then why doesn't he conduct a press conference? Rahul Gandhi and Chidambaram should collectively hold a press conference and should debunk if they think what the BJP has said is wrong in any way," Patra said. The BJP demands an apology from Rahul Gandhi ji, Sushil Kumar Shinde ji and P Chidambaram ji for using the term 'saffron terror'. You can't take Hindus for granted. We believe in development of all, appeasement of none: Sambit Patra,BJP pic.twitter.com/AKFvsCGWOH ANI (@ANI) April 17, 2018 The BJP's renewed attack on the Congress comes a day after a special anti-terror court acquitted right-wing activist Swami Aseemanand and four others in the 2007 Mecca Masjid blast case. On Monday, Patra had said people would teach the Congress a lesson in the Karnataka Assembly polls as they had in the 2014 Lok Sabha elections when it was reduced to 44 seats. "For its appeasement politics, the Congress targeted and defamed Hindus and the country for merely some votes. That conspiracy has been exposed. The Congress has been exposed like never before," he had said after the verdict came in. However, the Congress rejected that Rahul or any other party functionary had ever used the term "saffron terror" and that its political rivals were leveling baseless allegations. "Show me a video or a sound byte wherein Rahul Gandhi or any other Congress functionary is seen using the term 'Bhagva aatankwad' (saffron terror). There is no such thing as saffron terror," Congress spokesperson PL Punia said. With inputs from agencies Accusing central government ministers of running Goa in the absence of Chief Minister Manohar Parrikar, the AAP on Tuesday claimed that the BJP-led coalition government in the coastal state was 'dysfunctional' and virtually non-existent. Panaji: Accusing central government ministers of running Goa in the absence of Chief Minister Manohar Parrikar, the AAP on Tuesday claimed that the BJP-led coalition government in the coastal state was "dysfunctional" and virtually non-existent. "The state ministers are clueless about what is happening. Local ministers have become bystanders and that all dealings are made during the visits by these central ministers, whether it is about Goa's land or rivers," Aam Aadmi Party General Secretary Pradeep Padgaonkar told reporters in Panaji. Padgaonkar was referring to the vists of Union Minister for Road Transport, Highways, Shipping Nitin Gadkari and Union Minister for Civil Aviation Suresh Prabhu over the last one month, when they discussed state-related issues in presence of local ruling legislators and made several key announcements related to the iron ore mining ban and taxi operator-related issues at Goa's Dabolim International Airport. The Opposition, as well as civil society, has been claiming that governance and administration has come to a standstill in the absence of the ailing Chief Minister, who is currently undergoing advanced treatment for pancreatic cancer at a New York facility. Parrikar, who holds over 20 ministerial portfolios, has been unable to attend office since 15 February. Parrikar had appointed a three-member ministerial committee to take decisions related to day-to-day administrative affairs. The AAP also accused the state government of playing cosy with the influential casino lobby, for agreeing to consider a reduction of casino licence fees, while at the same time increasing fees for essential services and government licence processes. "The common man is already reeling under steep increase in fees of basic essential services such as obtaining land records in Form 1 and 14, survey plans, inspection of survey plans, partition and conversion charges. But the government instead of reducing these fees, is considering reducing casino licence fees," Padgaonkar added. Former VHP leader Pravin Togadia begins his indefinite fast in Ahmedabad in support of his demands, including construction of a Ram Temple in Ayodhya. Former Vishwa Hindu Parishad (VHP) leader Pravin Togadia began his indefinite fast in Ahmedabad on Tuesday in support of his demands, including construction of a Ram temple in Ayodhya. The 62-year-old Hindutva leader, who quit the post of VHP's international working president last week after his nominee Raghav Reddy lost a key organisational poll, launched the fast outside the state VHP headquarters in the Paldi area at 12 pm with some Hindu saints and supporters. Togadia had earlier said his hunger strike would be aimed at the welfare of Hindus and to draw attention to his demands. These included construction of a Ram Temple at Ayodhya, a nation-wide ban on cow slaughter, enforcement of the common civil code and resettlement of displaced Kashmiri Pandits. Earlier, Togadia was to sit on fast at GMDC Ground, but the police denied permission after which the venue was earlier today shifted to outside the VHP headquarters. "We were denied permission by the police to go ahead with fast at GMDC Ground so we had to change the venue," said former VHP city president Raju Patel. The surgeon-turned-firebrand leader had launched a scathing attack on prime minister Narendra Modi after he quit VHP, a right-wing outfit with which he had been associated with for decades. Togadia quit the right-wing organisation after former Himachal Pradesh governor V S Kokje was elected VHP international president defeating his nominee Reddy on last Saturday. Modi and Togadia, both of whom hail from Gujarat and started out as Rashtriya Swayamsevak Sangh (RSS) volunteers, drifted apart in the last decade with Modi's rise. Togadia had made a sensational claim last month, saying a Rajasthan Police team had come here to "abduct" him and he feared he could be eliminated in a "fake encounter". During the long-drawn tussle within the state BJP between Modi (before he became prime minister) and former chief minister Keshubhai Patel, Togadia was believed to have backed the latter. The former VHP leader belongs to the Patel community. Togadia recently met Patidar quota agitation leader Hardik Patel, who had campaigned against the BJP in the 2017 Gujarat Assembly elections. The Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) on Monday released its second list of candidates for the Karnataka Assembly election to be held on 12 May Bengaluru: The Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) on Monday released its second list of candidates for the Karnataka Assembly election to be held on 12 May. The second list containing 82 names, adding on to the 72 names announced in the first list on 9 April, has left many candidates yearning for clarity in the process of distribution of tickets. The party is yet to finalise candidates for the remaining 70 Assembly seats. The names on the second list include G Somashekara Reddy (Bellary City), brother of tainted mining baron G Janardhan Reddy, former tainted ministers like Katta Subramanya Naidu (Shivajinagar), Murugesh Nirani (Bilgi), and MP Renukarcharya (Honnali), who was sacked by the party leadership during its previous tenure. While Naidu and his son were arrested in connection with a land-grabbing case during the BJPs previous tenure, Nirani, who held the medium and large-scale industries portfolio during BS Yeddyurappa's tenure as chief minister, lost his sugar factory when it was seized by the government because it had been pilfering electricity. However, he is also one of the financiers of the BJP. Somashekhar Reddy is also facing charges of offering bribe to Justice Pattabhiram of the Hyderabad CBI court in order to get bail for his brother Janardhan. BJP has, however, maintained suspense over the ticket from Harapanahalli segment, where former minister and another Reddy brother G Karunakar Reddy is a strong aspirant. The saffron party has not altered its spread of candidates in North Karnataka much, except a few changes like Anil Menasinakai replacing Shrishailappa Biradar in Gadag, Saibanna Borband to contest from Gurumitkal in place of Girish Mattenanavar, and Rajagopal Reddy being replaced by Chandrakanth Patil in Kalaburagi constituency. Menasinakai had contested from the BSR Congress of B Sriramulu in 2013. Mahesh Tenginakai is a new face in the Kalaghatagi seat of Dharwad district instead of MC Nimbannanvar, who had contested as a member of Yeddyurappa's KJP against mining baron and labour minister Santosh Lad, who was then with BJP, but is now with the Congress. District committees ignored? There was disappointment in many districts, including a few in North Karnataka, Old Mysuru and Malnad, as the BJP appears to have ignored the absence of anti-incumbency against the Siddaramaiah government in Karnataka this time. In many key constituencies, party workers expressed their disappointment and suspicion that the Central committee did not consider recommendations of the district committees seriously before finalising the candidates. Among the incidents that expose this tendency are nomination of Umanath Kotian from Moodbidri constituency in Dakshina Kannada district against the district committees choice of Jagadish Adhikari. Kotian had lost against Congress heavyweight Abhayachandra in 2013 by 4,000 votes. In another case, re-fielding MP Renukacharya from Honnali constituency has left workers perplexed, as he was caught in a sleaze video scandal after the 2008 elections. In Indi taluk of Bijapur, the nomination of district vice-president Dayasagar Patil came as a rude shock for former JD(S) MLA Ravikant Patil, who was the frontrunner for the ticket after having moved to the BJP recently. However, local BJP workers asserted that Ravikants allegedly "rowdy image" is to blame for the snub from the party higher-ups. The BJP has selected Vasudeva Murthy, who defected from the JD(S), to contest from the Shantinagar Assembly segment represented by Congress incumbent NA Haris whose son Mohammad Nalapad is in judicial custody for assaulting son of a Bengaluru businessman. Murthy had lost to Haris by a margin of 20,205 votes in the 2013 Assembly elections. Congress is yet to announce its candidate for Shantinagar, but Nalapads infamous incident is expected to help the BJP candidate. Political analysts opine that Shantinagar will be a cakewalk for the BJP if Congress renominates Haris. But, Haris has been known for his work in the constituency, garnering appreciation from even TV Mohandas Pai. Another interesting contest is on the cards between the BJPs Katta Subramanya Naidu and Minister for Urban Development R Roshan Baig in the Shivajinagar segment of Bengaluru, which is represented by Baig. This tussle goes back to 1994 when Naidu, contesting on a BJP ticket, had lost the seat to Baig, who was in the JD(S) then, by 8,678 votes. In 1999 and 2004, Naidu won Shantinagar by defeating Congress candidates K Govindaraj and Haris, respectively. But Baig returned to win Shivajinagar in 2008 and 2013 against BJP candidate Nirmal Surana. Naidu had been shifted to Hebbal in 2008 where he defeated Congress candidate HM Revanna. BJP's Nandiesh Reddy will face a tough task in KR Puram given the pro-development image of Congress candidate Byrathi Basavaraj in the constituency. S Ravindra is pitted against Minister for Housing M Krishnappa in Vijayanagar. A Ravi is contesting against minister for agriculture Krishna Byregowda from Byatarayanapura assembly segment. Kumar Bangarappa got a ticket to contest from Soraba. NL Narendra Babu, who defected from the Congress, has been chosen to contest from Mahalakshmi Layout. RSS keeps Belagavi disciplined However, one district that hasnt voiced any dissatisfaction with the two lists of BJP is Belagavi, where party workers and leaders have accepted the list of candidates so far. This discipline has been attributed to the presence of highly-motivated RSS leaders monitoring the situation. According to the RSS leadership, over 5,000 members of the saffron front and associated fringe groups will be arriving in the state batch-by-batch to polarise the Hindu votes. The last 15 days will be crucial for both major parties in the state. In a surprise move, the BJP has allowed a husband-wife couple industrialist Annasaheb Jolle and Nippani MLA Shashikala Jolle to contest the elections. While Annasaheb will contest from Chikkodi-Sadalaga constituency, Shashikala will defend Nippani. It would be a first in the BJPs history that the party is fielding a husband-wife duo in the same election from different constituencies. Annasaheb will fight against sitting Congress MLA Ganesh Hukkeri, son of MP Prakash Hukkeri, who is a five-time MLA and has been a minister twice. Ganesh, who won Chikkodi by-election when his father had to resign to contest 2014 General Election, is said to be prioritising development work in the area with complete authority. The Hukkeri family is also involved in the movement demanding district status to Chikkodi. The Jolle family is from the Linagayat community and owns educational institutions and factories. Ramanna Lamani, who got a ticket from the Shirahatti segment in Gadag, is dogged by a controversial audio clip of his conversations with women that went viral recently. Despite being against his candidature for this reason, the district committee had forwarded his name, as he is known for having a way with the local electorate. While BJP and Congress prepare for a faceoff, the third player, JD(S) is left with the Deve Gowda family alone as several of their close confidantes like Zameer Ahmed Khan have moved to other two parties. ASV Datta, who used to be the socialistic face of the JD(S) is enjoying quiet days in his comfort zone of Malnad. M Raghuram, Y Maheshwara Reddy, Basavaraj Marlihalli, Lakshmi Bhavge, Shankar Gouda, Sadiq Nawaz, Tamanna Naseer and S Patil have contributed to this article. All are members of 101Reporters.com, a pan-India network of grassroots reporters The Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP), on Monday, announced its plans to launch a campaign blitzkrieg in Karnataka with prime minister Narendra Modi expected to hold sixteen rallies in eight days starting 29 April, according to reports The Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP), on Monday, announced its plans to launch a campaign blitzkrieg in Karnataka with prime minister Narendra Modi expected to hold sixteen rallies in eight days starting 29 April, according to reports. With the party facing a tough challenge in the state and most predictions indicating a hung Assembly, the BJP appears to be relying on Modi's charisma to push its 'Congress Mukt' campaign in Karnataka. Modi will address the first of his rallies at Kolar in southern Karnataka, and then hold another rally in Raichur on 29 April. The prime minister will then proceed to address two rallies in Bellari and Belagavi on 1 May. He will hold two more rallies on 3 May in Chamarajanagar and Udupi. Modi is also expected to address public rallies in Jamakhandi and Bengaluru on 5 May, Kalaburgi and Hubballi on 6 May, Shivamonga and Tumkuru on 7 May and Mangaluru and Bengaluru the next day. The prime minister is also scheduled to hold two more rallies on 9 May for which the venues are yet to be finalised. The party announced its second list of candidates for the Karnataka Assembly elections, which are scheduled for 12 May, 2018, on Monday. The list comprises of 82 names. According to CNN-News18, no Muslim or Christian candidate has been given a ticket by the BJP. Earlier, the BJP had announced the first list of 72 candidates who will contest the high-stakes Karnataka assembly polls. The party's chief ministerial candidate BS Yeddyurappa is slated to contest from Shikaripura. After releasing candidate list for Karnataka polls, the Congress is planning to shift its communication department to Bengaluru to amplify its campaign. After releasing its list of candidates contesting the upcoming Karnataka Assembly election, the Congress is in the process of shifting its communication department to Bengaluru in order to amplify its campaigning and discourse. The social media team will also accompany the communication departments team in the run-up to the election. Taking a cue from its experiment in the Gujarat election, which saw the party register an impressive performance, the Congress is hoping to replicate the same in Karnataka, albeit with improvisations. Besides AICC communication department in-charge Randeep Singh Surjewala, Mumbai-based national convener, communication, Priyanka Chaturvedi and national media coordinator Sanjeev Singh will camp at the state capital for almost a month. The AICC communication team, that will basically function out of Bengaluru, is quite small in size and is headed by Surjewala. Besides these three, a core team will work alongside the party's social media team and the communication department of the Karnataka Pradesh Congress Committee (KPCC). The team Surjewala: As the head of communications, he's completely in charge of planning, strategy development, finalising the daily schedule of spokespersons and panellists for news channels, briefing his team members and media communicators, monitoring 'war room' activities, deciding subjects for press conferences and what should be communicated to the media. Chaturvedi: She will work alongside Surjewala to bring national leaders, who are popular in Karnataka, to come for interactions with the voters and media. Reaching out to the media to set up interviews, interactions, to building a narrative, issuing press releases, training party spokespersons, ensuring prompt and swift dissemination of information and managing the war room fall under the purview of her responsibility. Singh: The right-hand man of Surjewala, he will be responsible for all backroom operations, follow-ups, ensuring proper implementation of the day's plan as finalised by the department's head and overseeing coordination with the media. Divya Spandana: Film actor-turned-politician, Spandana is the head of Congress' social media team and will be a part of the core communication team for Karnataka. The communication team will guide the Karnataka team and ensure micro-level communication in the local language right from press releases to TV bytes. "We've learnt lessons from the Gujarat election. The Congress performed well due to its campaign and communication strategy in Gujarat. However, there were shortcomings, which have now been taken care of. Improvisation has been done in communication strategy. This time, the local press and vernacular media will be addressed in Kannada. All communication will be in English, Hindi and Kannada," a Congress source told Firstpost. Karnataka is the first state where, as an experiment, the Congress has selected spokespersons, panellists, content writers, media experts, etc, for the state and district levels, after a series of screening sessions. These selected candidates will address press conferences, act as party spokespersons and panellists on television debates. Special training workshops will be conducted for these 70 to 80 candidates in various modules on how to respond to questions, tackle rant media, address a press conference, participate in a debate and panel discussion, and improve response time. According to a KPCC source, the party has identified issues like rape and women's safety, attacks on Dalits and other local and hyper-local issues to be taken up during the campaign. "The objective is to have an aggressive campaigning and take the BJP head on. Besides the usual media, we'll aggressively go for social media campaigns and take up issues relevant to the state. It's only the Siddaramaiah government that can provide safety and security to women and Dalits, and not the BJP," the source added. This development has escalated the rift between the Centre and the state government and will only further complicate Arvind Kejriwals job as Delhi chief minister. Escalating the rift between the Delhi government and the Centre, the Ministry of Home Affairs (MHA) on Tuesday sacked nine advisors to various departments of the state government on the grounds that their appointments were not sanctioned by the Centre. The Delhi government denied the charge and termed the move as an attempt at sabotage. In the order issued Tuesday, the MHA said these posts on which the appointees are officiating are not in the list of posts approved for the ministers and the chief minister. It further said no prior approval of the Centre had been taken for creation of these posts, which is a requirement as per law. The order further clarified, Services under the NCT of Delhi is a subject reserved for central government as per the Constitution Therefore, creation of posts by Delhi cabinet for accommodating these appointees is void ab-initio, being done by an agency not competent under the law to do so. The advisors sacked after the order are: Amardeep Tiwary (media advisor to law minister), Prashant Saxena (consultant in the office of Minister of Power, PWD, Health, Industries), Rajat Tiwary (aide-de-camp, office of Minister of Power, PWD, Health Industries and Home), Atishi Marlena (advisor to deputy chief minister), Raghav Chaddha (advisor to the finance minister), Ram Kumar Jha (logistics advisor in the office of minister GAD) Dinkar Adeeb (OSD to minister home/pwd/power/) and Arunodoy Prakash (media advisor to deputy chief minister). The order triggered an immediate reaction from the Delhi government. Deputy Chief Minister Manish Sisodia said four of the nine officials are not working in the Delhi government and another four are working at the posts created by earlier governments. Sisodia also alleged the order was issued to oust Atishi Marlena, advisor to deputy chief minister, who is looking after the implementation of education schemes envisaged by the Delhi government. She is an Oxford graduate and a Rhodes Scholar working with the Delhi education department at a salary of Re 1 month. She is the one looking after schemes such as Buniyaad to educate kids from the poorer section, Sisodia said. He added that the Centre wanted Marlena out of the job so that changes in the education department can be stopped. Taking a swipe at the Centre, Raghav Chadha tweeted: Impressive diversionary tactics by the MHA, at the behest of BJP. To divert attention from spate of rapes, cash crunch etc. an opportune time to rake up non issues with AAP like retrospective sacking for a post I held for 45days in 2016 for a paltry sum of Rs.2.50/- Raghav Chadha (@raghav_chadha) April 17, 2018 Chadha also tweeted his appointment letter. This development has escalated the rift between the Centre and the state government and will only further complicate Arvind Kejriwals job as Delhi chief minister. Significantly, this is only one of many examples of a decision taken by the Delhi government being overturned by another authority. In December, Lieutenant-Governor Anil Baijal decided to withhold a much publicised bill to regularise 15,000 guest teachers passed by the Delhi government. On the same day, the Delhi High Court stayed the government circular on fee hikes in private schools. A day prior to that, the Appellate Authority stayed the government order cancelling the license of Max Hospital in Shalimar Bagh. The government had cited the negligence of hospital doctors and the institution repeatedly defying its orders as grounds for cancelling its licence. Prior to this, 14 bills passed by the Delhi Assembly were rejected by the Centre, which caused a major rift. tech2 News Staff In 2017, a BBC report found that drug dealers were selling drugs and attracting customers with the help of Instagram and Snapchat. In 2018, WhatsApp is being used to do the same where these drug dealers show customers the photographs of the products that they're peddling. These include ecstasy pills. But British Police has now busted a drug ring using nothing but a photograph from the WhatsApp message used to peddle drugs. According to a BBC report, the South Wales police had got a tip-off regarding drug sales at Kenfig Hill area. Here, the police recovered large quantities of gorilla glue, a kind of cannabis, from the house leading to the eventual arrest of drug dealers Joe Thomas and Aaron McKay. While browsing McKay's phone, the police found a picture of a packet of ecstasy. This was held in someone's hand. The details to buy that packet included the address details which led the cops to the house of a couple. But the fingerprints of the couple did not match with the person behind the photograph. Fingerprints of the suspect, in the photograph, though visible, were not enough for identification. The police used technology at their disposal to amplify the image of the part of the finger that was visible in the photograph. The police did try to search it with the national database but they found no clue. Since the couples fingerprints did not match, the details of the messages showed links to their son Elliot, 28. Not only did the fingerprints match with Elliot, but it also led to the conviction of ten other people linked to the drug ring. According to the South Wales police, this method of convicting drug dealers was a first. The investigation made them realise that they need to update themselves with monitoring social media more thoroughly. Considering the fact that the means of communication have been changing since the advent of social media and messaging apps, cops have a new platform to monitor their anti-narcotic operations now. Reuters Elon Musks Boring Co said on Monday it raised $112.5 million in equity, with 90 percent coming from Musk himself, as the company seeks to build underground tunnels for its hyperloop transportation project. In a regulatory filing, the company listed 31 unnamed investors as participants in the funding round. Besides Musk, the rest of the investors were early Boring employees, according to the company. Musk, who also leads electric vehicle maker Tesla Inc and rocket company SpaceX, is seeking to revolutionize transportation by sending passengers packed into pods through an intercity system of giant, underground vacuum tubes known as the Hyperloop. Forbes magazine estimates Musks net worth at $19.3 billion. The funding comes about five months after Musk said Boring Co would compete to fund, build and operate a loop to connect downtown Chicago with OHare Airport. Musk earlier sold Boring Co hats and flamethrowers to raise funds. The company says tunnel-digging projects can cost as much as $1 billion per mile, but its goal is to lower these costs by a factor of 10 or more. In October, the Maryland Department of Transportation gave conditional approval to the construction of a tunnel from Baltimore to Washington for the project by issuing a utility permit. Last month, six Democratic members of Congress from Maryland and Washington wrote to Maryland Governor Larry Hogan seeking information about the states support for the proposed Hyperloop Project, including the regulatory standards that will apply. While the Hyperloop is an exciting project that has the potential to transform transportation along the entire U.S. East Coast, it is also a project that would utilize a wholly new technology and could have significant impacts on our constituents, the members wrote. Raj Vedam Editors note: Did you know that your activity on the internet is constantly being monitored to construct online personas of you? Did you know that your digital persona is being used by a host of online agents to influence your online activity, showing you stories that you like, or that camera that you have wanted to buy, or that vacation that you would like to take? This is the first of a two-part series that examine how the innocuous use of personas can be subverted for more insidious purposes. Following the US Senate Hearings, Facebook CEO, Mark Zuckerberg declared that he will "ensure fair elections in India", and instantly had the entire Indian population wondering if our Election Commission job had finally been outsourced to Facebook! Was this an empty affirmation or does it have a basis in reality? Way back in more innocent times or so it seemed in 2006 I took part in the Netflix Prize Challenge and became deeply aware of the massive potential there is to learn the persona of just about anybody based on seemingly randomised data and powerful collaborative filtering algorithms and the power of Big Data. In 2006, when movies were distributed via DVDs rather than streaming, Netflixs business interest was to improve the accuracy of its movie recommendation algorithm, Cinematch, and brilliantly resorted to crowd-sourced research. It offered a million dollars to the researcher who could come up with the best recommendation algorithm that exceeded Cinematch by at least 1o percent in predicting how a set of users would rate a set of movies that they had not seen. That singular event spurred enormous research interest in peer recommendation algorithms and spurred new development of collaborative filtering and peer recommendation systems over the past decade, with startling consequences for today. With the convergence of technologies such as face-recognition using deep learning networks and quantitative personas on individuals, even a few years back it was clear that only privacy laws prevented retailers from video-tagging you upon entry to a store and luring you into every department and every goodie that they know you want (and in many cases, even you don't know that you want!) The Big Data behemoths who have for years been trawling your digital trail, know all there is to know about you. With companies such as Google, Facebook, Yahoo, internet service providers, phone-service providers, and with many social media companies, there is no place to hide anymore. Activate Lightbeam, for example, on the Firefox browser and see who is gathering your digital trail debris when you visit any website. If you think you are being smart and are hiding your digital trail by activating privacy guards, blocking advertisements and unwanted cookies, and using anonymous browsing, there is still no place to hide due to the pervasive nature of data generation and agglomeration. If you use a smartphone, or have done a Google search, or have any social media account, or a free email account, or use a credit card, or borrow books from a library, or shop online, or subscribe to magazines, or just walk around with a switched-off phone in your pocket that is enough to build a digital dossier on you. You can bet it exists in digital warehouses from Palo Alto to Shanghai. We are prolific data-generators without our knowledge in most instances, of value to various companies around the world. Even if you think you are safe because you are NOT a prolific data generator, avoiding social media and such, be utterly terrified that the power of large-scale collaborative filtering can with utmost ease "fill in the blanks" about you, given billions of bits of data from millions of others with whom you share the world! If you slept during probability and statistics class and missed that lecture on how averaged data from all distributions tend towards the normal in the limit, this is a good time to brush up and appreciate why this math even works at a high-level of modelling. Estimating information from "incomplete" data but with massive datasets occupies an esoteric niche where diverse streams such as information-theory, the much vaunted P=NP?, data-compressibility, filtering, systems theory, statistics, stochastic systems, AI, algorithms all join and build a deeply invasive digital avatar of you and millions of data-generators. Such digital avatars are frighteningly accurate in predicting your response to a variety of stimuli of great value to online retailers, and of course, people interested in controlling you. Recently Americans were shocked that its elections could have been influenced by foreign powers and spurred scrutiny of the entire social media ecosystem and how fake profile influencers could have caused such a deep attack on its democratic institutions. Attention also focused on a scandal in which the data analytics company Cambridge Analytica was implicated with having had access to 87 million Facebook users, without their permission, using grey ware apps. The New York Times reports that Stanford University and Cambridge University were able to develop models of people based on their likes on Facebook. Such models were able to score a persons openness, conscientiousness, extraversion, agreeableness and neuroticism, and were adept at predicting life outcomes such as substance use, political attitudes and physical health. The methods developed are reportedly able to get acceptable accuracy with as little as 70 likes, and with 300 likes are quite accurate. The newspaper further reports that Cambridge Analytica approached the research centre at Cambridge University for access to this model, but was refused, after which it turned to a professor at that university, who developed an app thisisyourdigitallife which was capable of harvesting such information from users and their unsuspecting friends. Some people think that by providing incorrect data (or noise) to online forms, they become immune to such machine-learning. However, the power of these new algorithms is to address precisely that given noisy and incomplete but large data-sets, how do we deduce/construct/estimate information-content? So when the Facebook CEO states he will "ensure fair elections in India", it is NOT a statement of arrogance it is an honest admission of the POWER that they have to sway elections, and the propensity for malicious parties to hijack that knowledge for furthering their agendas. The demonstrated outcome in the USA elections shows that a disruptor is capable of gathering the data and has the means to control the outcome. It boils down to knowing what triggers a person, and how to exploit that vulnerability. And a digital persona tells them exactly that. The issue at stake goes beyond Facebook users who can be swayed by planted stories. Social media companies such as Facebook, Instagram, WhatsApp, Twitter and others are in the business of data-consolidation, aggregation, inferences and retailing that data to buyers. One can imagine how knowledge of deeply invasive data of a large section of the population can swing electoral outcomes with great efficiency. Some claim that the digital divide in India makes us immune to such manipulation, and anyway, gift-pushing politicians know exactly how to sway the vote in villages. It does not matter that the vast majority of villagers don't have social media they have digital phones and leave digital signatures behind which can be used to build big-data based personas. Today the biggest information-vendors don't work in isolation they do commerce in data between themselves, allowing large-scale consolidation of personas. Today social media companies are on top of all that and more, sitting as they are on the biggest collection of data photos, messages, "likes", "emoticons", stories read, and much more. We will examine this in greater detail in the second part tomorrow. The author is an electrical engineer who works with modelling, simulation and optimisation technologies. He holds a masters degree in Electrical engineering from Indian Institute of Science in Bengaluru, and a doctoral degree in Electrical Engineering from Oregon State University. Reuters The French government is building its own encrypted messenger service to ease fears that foreign entities could spy on private conversations between top officials, the digital ministry said on 16 April. None of the worlds major encrypted messaging apps, including Facebooks WhatsApp and Telegram, a favorite of President Emmanuel Macron, are based in France, raising the risk of data breaches at servers outside the country. About 20 officials and top civil servants are testing the new app which a state-employed developer has designed, a ministry spokeswoman said, with the aim that its use will become mandatory for the whole government by the summer. We need to find a way to have an encrypted messaging service that is not encrypted by the United States or Russia, the spokeswoman said. You start thinking about the potential breaches that could happen, as we saw with Facebook, so we should take the lead. The US social network, which bought WhatsApp in 2014, has drawn heavy criticism since it acknowledged that information about many millions of users wrongly ended up in the hands of political consultancy Cambridge Analytica. The French governments encrypted app has been developed on the basis of free-to-use code found on the Internet and could be eventually made available to all citizens, the spokeswoman said. She declined to give the names of either the codes or the messaging service. Fond of Telegram Macrons inner circle, now government advisers or ministers, have grown fond of the Telegram app, which they used to plot his rise to power and his presidential election campaign in 2017. Macron, an economy minister in the previous Socialist administration, wanted at the time to use an encrypted messaging service that even his rivals in the last government could not crack, a close adviser to Macron told Reuters. Since then, most of his lawmakers have joined the app and the president himself can often be seen online on Telegram, sometimes in the early hours of the morning. But privacy concerns started growing in early 2018, and security tools from French security firm Thales installed on officials work smartphones prevented the use of either WhatsApp or Telegram. Telegram was set up by a Russian entrepreneur who has come into conflict with the authorities. Russias state telecommunications regulator said on 16 April that it had begun blocking access to Telegram after the company refused to comply with an order to give state security access to its users secret messages. Both WhatsApp and Telegram promote themselves as ultra-secure because all their data is encrypted from start to finish. WhatsApp relies on open industry standards created by the developers behind Signal, a rival messaging app, while Telegram relies on its own, home-grown encryption techniques. Reuters Google told Reuters on 16 April that it would resume accepting ads from US addiction treatment centres in July, nearly a year after the Alphabet Inc unit suspended the lucrative category of advertisers for numerous deceptive and misleading ads. Treatment centres now will be able to run ads after being vetted by Portland, Ore. firm LegitScript, Google said. Interest in treatment for abuse of opioids and other prescription drugs has soared in recent years amid what authorities have described as a nationwide epidemic. Scammers found that Google ads were an easy way to defraud treatment-seekers in an industry in which regulations vary greatly by jurisdiction, authorities and patient advocacy organizations have said. Google suspended alcohol and drug treatment advertising on search pages and millions of third-party apps and websites in the US in September, the week after tech publication The Verge posted a lengthy story about scams. Google expanded the prohibition globally in January. The move cut off at least $78 million annually worth of advertising in the US alone, research firm Kantar Media estimated. Most advertisers can buy ads through Google with few hurdles to clear. But Google has adopted additional vetting for locksmiths, garage-door repairers, drug makers, and online pharmacies following public pressure. Google has said it also will begin seeking more documentation from political advertisers this year. The addiction treatment rules apply to in-person facilities, crisis hotlines, and support groups. LegitScript will evaluate treatment providers beginning on 16 April on 15 criteria, including criminal background checks and license and insurance verification. They must also provide written policies and procedures demonstrating a commitment to best practices, effective recovery, and continuous improvement, according to LegitScript, which will charge $995 upfront and then $1,995 annually for vetting. The National Association of Addiction Treatment Providers and the National Center on Addiction and Substance Abuse support the standards, John Horton, chief executive of LegitScript, said in an interview last week. A vetting process for sober-living houses and non-US treatment centres has yet to be set, he said. Horton acknowledged the extra step may frustrate rehab centres. Its unfortunate, but this is one way the market gets cleaner and people get the help they deserve, he said. Marcia Lee Taylor, chief policy officer of the Partnership for Drug-Free Kids, to whom Google has donated advertising space, said earlier efforts to certify treatment services have failed because there was no business incentive to answer all these invasive questions. Tying access to the worlds biggest online advertising system to certification makes applying worthwhile, Taylor said. The new rules do not affect free business listings on Google Maps, which also have been susceptible to fraud. Google said it is continuously developing ways to combat Maps spammers. Press Trust of India Space agencies of India and France have been holding discussions to work on inter-planetary missions to Mars and Venus, a French source said. This comes almost a month after the two sides agreed on a joint statement for an enhanced space cooperation. The Indian Space Research Organisation (ISRO) and French National Space Agency (CNES) had agreed to work together on autonomous navigation of rovers on Moon, Mars, and other planets, and aero-braking technologies for planetary exploration. "Venus is under-explored compared to Mars. This is why we want to concentrate on Venus. ISRO has confirmed this priority for them. Discussions are going on for the future Indian Mars mission," said a CNES official. India has already undertaken two successful inter-planetary missions, Chandrayaan-I to Moon and Mangalyaan to Mars. It is likely to send Chandrayaan-II this month, another mission for exploring the Moon, through which a rover would be landed on Earth's only natural satellite. ISRO also has plans to send another mission to Mars and Venus. In particular, CNES could provide support to ISRO for the navigation of future moon rovers while the two will jointly work on the models to study Mars and Venus atmospheres, the CNES official said. CNES could be involved in the definition of the scientific goals and preparatory studies for the future planetary missions of ISRO and both agencies will study the possibility of embarking French science instruments on board the future interplanetary (Moon, Mars, and asteroids) Indian missions, the official said. Venus is Earth's closest neighbour just like Mars. US space probe Mariner 2s flew by Venus on 14 December 1962. Since then more than two dozen missions have been undertaken to explore the planet. Yet, Venus remains an enigmatic puzzle for scientists. Its surface is shrouded in a perpetual cloud cover and what makes Venus so different from Earth has not been easy to understand. Indo-French cooperation is very robust in nature and is more than six decades old. India had been using the French facilities for sending its heavy satellites into the orbit. When India was grappling with technological assistance following nuclear tests in 1974, it was France that helped India. tech2 News Staff Xiaomi is ready to launch a new device, the Mi 6X in the market. Reports have pointed out that the Mi 6X is the successor of Xiaomi Mi A1, an Android One-powered smartphone that the company launched last year in the Indian market. A recent report suggests that Mi A1 has been discontinued without any particular reason from the company. One reason behind the discontinuation of the smartphone could be because of the upcoming Mi A2/6X. The images and the launch date of the Mi 6X have been spotted on Chinese microblogging website Weibo. According to a report on GizmoChina the company is expected to be launched on 25 April in China. The new leaked images showcase five colour variants of the upcoming smartphone. The five colour variants in question include Cherry Powder, Red Flame, Sand Gold, Glacier Blue and Black Stone. The images reveal that 6X comes with a unibody metal design with a vertically placed dual-camera on the top left corner and the fingerprint scanner aligned to the centre in the top half of the back of the device. The design looks similar to the Xiaomi Redmi Note 5 Pro smartphone that the company launched earlier this year. As reported earlier the smartphone is expected to come with 5.99-inch full-screen display. Earlier reports suggest that the smartphone will come with 4 GB RAM and 64 GB internal storage. It is expected to pack Snapdragon 626 SoC while running Android 8.0 Oreo along on a 2,910 mAh battery. A2 is expected to come with a 20 MP and 8 MP sensors arranged in a dual camera setup on the back of the device along with a 20 MP camera sensor on the front. Following Mi A1, Xiaomi is expected to sport Android One in Mi A2. Xiaomi has not revealed any official details about the device including the launch date or specifications. The report mentions that the smartphone is expected to be priced around 1,499 Yuan (around $238). tech2 News Staff Samsung's current budget-oriented J-series smartphone lineup comprises the Galaxy J2, J5 and the J7, but findings from a new report suggest that the company could add the Galaxy J6 into the fray as well. The US FCC has been spotted publishing a report of what is likely going to be the Galaxy J6 (SM-J600F). Now, we have previously seen Samsung bring down a few of its flagship S-series features to its mid-premium A-series offerings. It now seems like the new Galaxy J6 will also get an 18.5:9 aspect ratio screen, which is the mark of Samsung's Infinity Display. The FCC did not publish schematics but screenshots shared by the regulatory body do mention the dimensions of the phone. As noted by GSMArena in a report, the Galaxy J6 measures 146.3 x 67.0 mm and the screen has a diagonal of 5.6 inches. The screenshots also reveal that it will be a dual-SIM device. This is also not the first time that Samsung has been spotted testing the Galaxy J6. A report by GSMArena in February found the smartphone listed on the popular benchmarking platform, Geekbench, where it was spotted with the Exynos 7870 chipset, which also powers the Galaxy J5 (2017). The Galaxy J6 can also be expected to come with Android Oreo 8.0 and 2 GB of RAM onboard. Reuters The United States and Britain on Monday accused Russia of launching cyber attacks on computer routers, firewalls and other networking equipment used by government agencies, businesses and critical infrastructure operators around the globe. Washington and London issued a joint alert saying the campaign by Russian government-backed hackers was intended to advance spying, intellectual property theft and other malicious activities and could be escalated to launch offensive attacks. It followed a series of warnings by Western governments that Moscow is behind a string of cyber attacks. The United States, Britain and other nations in February accused Russia of releasing the NotPetya virus, which in 2017 crippled parts of Ukraines infrastructure and damaged computers across the globe, costing companies billions of dollars. The Kremlin did not immediately respond to a request for comment. But Russias embassy in London issued a statement citing British accusations of cyber threats from Moscow as striking examples of a reckless, provocative and unfounded policy against Russia. Moscow has denied previous accusations that it carried out cyber attacks on the United States and other countries. US intelligence agencies last year accused Russia of interfering in the 2016 election with a hacking and propaganda campaign supporting Donald Trumps campaign for president. Last month the Trump administration blamed Russia for a campaign of cyber attacks that targeted the US power grid. American and British officials said that the attacks disclosed on Monday affected a wide range of organizations including internet service providers, private businesses and critical infrastructure providers. They did not identify victims or provide details on the impact of the attacks. When we see malicious cyber activity, whether it be from the Kremlin or other malicious nation-state actors, we are going to push back, said Rob Joyce, the White House cyber security coordinator. Relations between Russia and Britain were already on edge after Prime Minister Theresa May blamed Moscow for the March 4 nerve agent poisoning of former Russian spy Sergei Skripal and his daughter Yulia in the city of Salisbury. This is yet another example of Russias disregard for international norms and global order - this time through a campaign of cyber espionage and aggression, which attempts to disrupt governments and destabilise business, a British government spokesman said in London. Britain and the United States said they issued the new alert to help targets protect themselves and persuade victims to share information with government investigators so they can better understand the threat. We dont have full insight into the scope of the compromise, said US Department of Homeland Security cyber security official Jeanette Manfra. The alert is not related to the suspected chemical weapons attack in a town in Syria that prompted a US-led military strike over the weekend targeting facilities of the Russian-backed Syrian government, Joyce said. Shortly after the announcement, the White House said Joyce would leave his post and return to the US National Security Agency. US and British officials warned that infected routers could be used to launch future offensive cyber operations. They could be pre-positioning for use in times of tension, said Ciaran Martin, chief executive of the British governments National Cyber Security Centre cyber defence agency, who added that millions of machines were targeted. Reuters The United States and Britain on 16 April accused Russia of launching cyber attacks on computer routers, firewalls and other networking equipment used by government agencies, businesses and critical infrastructure operators around the globe. Washington and London issued a joint alert saying the campaign by Russian government-backed hackers was intended to advance spying, intellectual property theft and other malicious activities and could be escalated to launch offensive attacks. It followed a series of warnings by Western governments that Moscow is behind a string of cyber attacks. The United States, Britain and other nations in February accused Russia of releasing the NotPetya virus, which in 2017 crippled parts of Ukraines infrastructure and damaged computers across the globe, costing companies billions of dollars. The Kremlin did not immediately respond to a request for comment. But Russias embassy in London issued a statement citing British accusations of cyber threats from Moscow as striking examples of a reckless, provocative and unfounded policy against Russia. Moscow has denied previous accusations that it carried out cyber attacks on the United States and other countries. US intelligence agencies last year accused Russia of interfering in the 2016 election with a hacking and propaganda campaign supporting Donald Trumps campaign for president. Last month the Trump administration blamed Russia for a campaign of cyber attacks that targeted the US power grid. American and British officials said that the attacks disclosed on 16 April affected a wide range of organisations including internet service providers, private businesses and critical infrastructure providers. They did not identify victims or provide details on the impact of the attacks. When we see malicious cyber activity, whether it be from the Kremlin or other malicious nation-state actors, we are going to push back, said Rob Joyce, the White House cyber security coordinator. Relations between Russia and Britain were already on edge after Prime Minister Theresa May blamed Moscow for the 4 March nerve agent poisoning of former Russian spy Sergei Skripal and his daughter Yulia in the city of Salisbury. This is yet another example of Russias disregard for international norms and global order this time through a campaign of cyber espionage and aggression, which attempts to disrupt governments and destabilise business, a British government spokesman said in London. Britain and the United States said they issued the new alert to help targets protect themselves and persuade victims to share information with government investigators so they can better understand the threat. We dont have full insight into the scope of the compromise, said US Department of Homeland Security cyber security official Jeanette Manfra. The alert is not related to the suspected chemical weapons attack in a town in Syria that prompted a US-led military strike over the weekend targeting facilities of the Russian-backed Syrian government, Joyce said. Shortly after the announcement, the White House said Joyce would leave his post and return to the US National Security Agency. US and British officials warned that infected routers could be used to launch future offensive cyber operations. They could be pre-positioning for use in times of tension, said Ciaran Martin, chief executive of the British governments National Cyber Security Centre cyber defense agency, who added that millions of machines were targeted. A hotline between South Korean president Moon Jae-in and North Korean leader Kim Jong-un for a direct dialogue is likely to be set up later this week, a senior Blue House official said on Tuesday. Seoul: A hotline between South Korean president Moon Jae-in and North Korean leader Kim Jong-un for a direct dialogue is likely to be set up later this week, a senior Blue House official said on Tuesday. Im Jong-seok, chief of staff for Moon, told a press briefing that the hotline was due to be installed around Friday as talks had already been held twice on that issue, Xinhua news agency reported. He said that the exact date of the first Moon-Kim conversation via the telephone was yet to be decided. Moon and Kim agreed to hold their first face-to-face meeting on 27 April at the border village of Panmunjom. They decided to establish a direct hotline and have the first telephone talks before the summit takes place. If necessary, Im said that the possibility was always open for Chung Eui-yong, chief of the National Security Office of the Blue House (Presidential House), or Suh Hoon, head of the National Intelligence Service (NIS), to visit Pyongyang before the inter-Korean summit. As special emissaries for Moon, Chung and Suh met Kim in Pyongyang in early March when the two Koreas agreed to hold the third-ever inter-Korean summit in late April. Im said communication channels with North Korea through South Korea's intelligence agency were always open. He added that many issues would be discussed between the two sides during the second round of working-level talks for security, protocol and media coverage for the Moon-Kim summit. The working-level dialogue is set to be held on Wednesday in Panmunjom. The French government plans to strip Syrian President Bashar as-Assad of his Legion d'Honneur, France's most prestigious award, days after participating in airstrikes against suspected chemical weapons sites in Syria. Paris: The French government plans to strip Syrian President Bashar al-Assad of his Legion d'Honneur, France's most prestigious award, days after participating in airstrikes against suspected chemical weapons sites in Syria. "The Elysee confirms that a disciplinary procedure for withdrawing the Legion d'Honneur (Legion of Honour) is underway," Macron's office said on Monday. Assad was decorated with the Legion's highest rank of Grand Croix (Great Cross) by former president Jacques Chirac in 2001, shortly after taking power following the death of his father Hafez al-Assad. Only a French president, who by tradition is the top-ranking Legion member, can decide to withdraw the distinction from a foreigner. About 3,000 people are granted the distinction each year, including 400 foreigners recognised for their "services rendered to France" or for defending human rights, press freedom or other causes, according to the Legion's website. Assad has been accused of a series of chemical attacks on his own people during the brutal civil war which has torn Syria apart since 2011. He has become a pariah for Western powers while maintaining the support of Russian President Vladimir Putin, whose military intervention in the conflict gave Assad the upper hand against rebel Opposition groups. Putin himself is also a recipient of the Legion's Grand Croix, decorated by Chirac in 2006. It is not the first time President Emmanuel Macron has stripped a foreigner of France's highest honour, having moved to withdraw the award from Hollywood mogul Harvey Weinstein after a series of accusations of sexual harassment and rape. Macron had already signalled he planned to crack down on Legion d'Honneur handouts, surprising many in July by awarding just 101 to mark Bastille Day instead of the customary 500-600. Former president Francois Hollande drew critics' ire by granting the honour to Saudi Arabia's previous crown prince Mohammed bin Nayef in 2016 despite a sharp increase in death sentences by Saudi courts, a punishment France has long deemed inhumane. In 2010, France made it easier to take back the award, created by Napoleon, from foreigners who have committed "dishonourable acts". Lance Armstrong lost his after the seven-time Tour de France winner was found to have used performance-enhancing drugs, and fashion designer John Galliano's was pulled in the wake of an alcohol-fuelled volley of anti-Semitic slurs. French citizens are automatically stripped of the Legion of Honour if convicted of crimes leading to prison sentences of at least one year. Foreign Ministers of the Group of Seven industrialised nations called on Russia to come clean about a nerve agent attack on a former spy in Britain Ottawa: Foreign Ministers of the Group of Seven industrialised nations on Tuesday called on Russia to come clean about a nerve agent attack on a former spy in Britain, calling it "a threat to us all." "We call on Russia to urgently address all questions related to the incident in Salisbury," they said in a joint statement. The G7 nations urged Russia to provide a "full and complete disclosure of its previously undeclared Novichok programme to the OPCW in line with its international obligations." Novichok is a group of deadly chemical compounds reportedly developed by the Soviet government in the 1970s and 80s. The G7 statement comes after Western nations expelled more than 150 Russian diplomats in a coordinated action against Moscow in support of Britain, and Russia retaliated with similar moves. Britain has blamed Moscow for the assassination attempt on former Russian spy Sergei Skripal and his daughter in the English town of Salisbury in March. After conducting its own tests, the Organisation for the Prohibition of Chemical Weapons (OPCW) on Thursday confirmed Britain's findings about the substance used in the attack. The foreign ministers of Britain, Canada, France, Germany, Italy, Japan and the United States, as well as the European Union, said they "are united in condemning, in the strongest possible terms" the attack in Salisbury. They also said they agree with Britain's assessment "that it is highly likely that the Russian Federation was responsible for the attack and that there is no plausible alternative explanation." "Any use of chemical weapons by a state party, under any circumstances, is a clear breach of international law and a violation of the Chemical Weapons Convention," they said. "It is a threat to us all. Their use is abhorrent, completely unacceptable and must be systematically and rigorously condemned." Iraq sentenced a French woman to life in prison for belonging to the Islamic State group, the latest in a series of court rulings since the country's defeat of Islamic State. Baghdad: Iraq sentenced a French woman to life in prison for belonging to the Islamic State group, the latest in a series of court rulings since the country's defeat of Islamic State. Djamila Boutoutaou, a 29-year-old of Algerian origin, told a Baghdad court that she had left France with her husband, a rapper. She said she thought they were going on holiday but "when I arrived in Turkey I discovered that my husband was a jihadist". She said she was forced by her husband to join Islamic State and live in the "caliphate" that the jihadists proclaimed in 2014 straddling Syria and Iraq. Her husband was killed near the former jihadist stronghold of Mosul, northern Iraq, and her son died in bombardment, Boutoutaou said. Two Russian women, both holding children in their arms, were also sentenced to life in prison at the same hearing. Iraq declared victory in December against Islamic State, which at one point controlled a third of the country. The Iraqi anti-terrorism law empowers courts to convict people who are believed to have helped Islamic State even if they are not accused of violence. In January, an Iraqi court condemned a German woman to death after finding her guilty of belonging to Islamic State. A court the following month sentenced another French woman to seven months in jail for entering Iraq illegally but ordered her release on time already served. Several dozen Turkish women have been sentenced to death under Iraqi anti-terrorism laws. Iraq has executed 13 people, including 11, convicted on charges relating to 'terrorism', the justice ministry said on Monday. Iraq: Iraq has executed 13 people, including 11 convicted on charges relating to "terrorism", the justice ministry said on Monday. They included individuals responsible for car bombings, "killings of security forces personnel" and kidnappings, it said in a statement, without specifying dates, locations or other details of the attacks. The executions are the first since the beginning of the year in Iraq, which according to rights group Amnesty International put to death at least 111 people in 2017. On 15 December, 38 people sentenced under Iraq's terrorism law were hanged in the country's Nasiriyah prison. Three months earlier, 42 others were hanged at the same prison. Iraq faces regular criticism from diplomats and rights groups over death sentences handed down almost daily under its terror laws. Some 20,000 people were arrested during a years-long offensive by Iraqi forces battling to retake swathes of the country from the Islamic State group. Many have been sentenced to death but not yet executed. A Malaysian shaman who drew widespread ridicule by trying to locate flight MH370 using coconuts and a 'magic' carpet announced today he will run in elections next month. Ipoh: A Malaysian shaman who drew widespread ridicule by trying to locate flight MH370 using coconuts and a "magic" carpet announced he will run in elections next month. Ibrahim Mat Zin known by his nickname "Raja Bomoh", which translates as "King of Shamans" will contest a parliamentary seat in northern Perak state as an independent candidate. After Malaysia Airlines flight MH370 disappeared in 2014 with 239 people aboard, Ibrahim launched a bizarre attempt to find the jet at Kuala Lumpur International Airport, from where it had set out. He conducted a series of rituals, one involving bamboo binoculars and another using two coconuts and what he described as a magic carpet, which he claimed could weaken the "spirits" that were holding the missing plane. Despite his best efforts and a major multinational search in the Indian Ocean, that was the most expensive in aviation history the Boeing jet remains missing. Announcing his candidacy in the city of Ipoh, the 68-year-old recounted how he "just held up two coconuts and became an instant global star. I am contesting for the sake of the people. I will help the people with financial support from my salary if I win." But he is likely to find as little success in politics as he did in his ill-fated hunt for MH370: He is running against Deputy Prime Minister Zahid Hamidi, one of the most powerful figures in government. Following the assassination of North Korean leader Kim Jong-un's brother at Kuala Lumpur airport last year, Ibrahim conducted a ritual on a beach, supposedly to protect Malaysia from any attack launched by Pyongyang. Authorities were disturbed enough by his antics to briefly detain him. The 9 May poll will be a tough test for Prime Minister Najib Razak's coalition, which has governed Malaysia for six decades. Najib has been battling allegations huge sums were looted from state fund 1MDB, and also faces a tough challenge from veteran ex-leader Mahathir Mohamad, 92, who is the opposition's prime ministerial candidate. Najib and 1MDB deny any wrongdoing. Mauritius President Ameenah Gurib-Fakim, who has been embroiled in a financial scandal, resigned on Saturday, her lawyer said Port Louis, Mauritius: Mauritius President Ameenah Gurib-Fakim, who has been embroiled in a financial scandal, resigned on Saturday, her lawyer said, just days after she refused to stand down. Gurib-Fakim, Africa's only female head of state, submitted her resignation in the "national interest," her lawyer Yousouf Mohamed told reporters, adding that it would take effect on 23 March. She has vowed to fight the accusations that she used a bank card provided by an NGO to make personal purchases, including jewellery and luxury goods worth at least 25,000, according to local newspaper l'Express. Prime Minister Pravind Jugnauth announced earlier this month that Gurib-Fakim had agreed to resign, with a date set for her departure after last Monday's ceremony celebrating the Indian Ocean archipelago nation's 50 years of independence. But on Wednesday, a statement from the presidency lashed out at "weeks of attacks and false allegations" and said Gurib-Fakim planned to clear her name and would not resign. Gurib-Fakim, whose role is mostly ceremonial, is a scientist and biologist of international renown, and in 2015 joined the London-based Planet Earth Institute (PEI) to try to develop scientific capacity in Africa. The presidency said that in May 2016, she received a credit card to pay for travel and logistical expenses linked to her role but inadvertently used it for unrelated expenses. Gurib-Fakim said she immediately informed the PEI and paid back the amount, as well as all expenses paid by the PEI for her missions. A bomb went off outside the office of the Indian consulate in Nepal's Biratnagar last night but no one was injured in the 'minor explosion', officials said. A bomb went off outside the office of the Indian consulate in Nepal's Biratnagar last night but no one was injured in the "minor explosion", officials said. A spokesperson for the Ministry of External Affairs Raveesh Kumar said Indian embassy in Kathmandu was in touch with the Nepal government over the incident and that the security authorities in that country were investigating the matter. "A minor explosion took place along the rear boundary wall of the camp office of the embassy of India at Biratnagar, Nepal at about 8.15 pm on 16 April. No one has been injured in the incident," Kumar said. Sources in the security establishment in New Delhi said the explosion caused a hole of around 1 feet by 1.5 feet in the wall of the consulate towards the secluded rear side of the office building. They said no one was in the office at the time of the explosion. The camp office of the consulate was set up during the floods in Nepal and north Bihar. A senior officer of Nepal police said it was investigating to find out who caused the blast, according to Kathmandu Post. Investigating officers suspect that cadres of a local political group have caused the blast. The party had called a general strike in Biratnagar yesterday. The security around the blast site has been upped after the incident. Biratnagar is the industrial capital of Nepal and 6 kilometres north of the border of Bihar. Myanmar's president Win Myint, who took office last month after his predecessor suddenly resigned, said the pardons would be granted on humanitarian grounds during the Buddhist new year festival known as Thingyan Yangon: Myanmar's president, on Tuesday, announced pardons for more than 8,500 prisoners, including three dozen jailed in political cases, as part of an annual amnesty marking the country's traditional new year. President Win Myint, who took office last month after his predecessor suddenly resigned, said the pardons would be granted on humanitarian grounds during the Buddhist new year festival known as Thingyan. The amnesty was extended mostly to drug offenders, as well as more than 50 foreigners and 36 political prisoners, according to a breakdown posted on Facebook by government spokesman Zaw Htay. Aung Myo Kyaw, spokesman for an NGO that helps political prisoners, welcomed the amnesty but called for the release of at least eight more prisoners of conscience who remain in jail. Around 200 others in Myanmar are facing trials linked to political activities, said spokesman Aung Myo Kyaw from the Assistance Association for Political Prisoners. "The government can help them by cancelling the cases from the courts," he told AFP. Myanmar has freed thousands from its jails since a military junta ceded power in 2011 after five decades of brutal repression. Hundreds of political prisoners were released shortly after the civilian government of former democracy activist Aung San Suu Kyi took office in 2016 following a sweeping election victory. But, hopes of a new era of free expression have been dampened by a surge in prosecutions under a online defamation law in recent years. The arrest of two Myanmar journalists working for Reuters has raised global alarm over worsening media freedoms in the fledgling democracy. The reporters, Wa Lone and Kyaw Soe Oo, face up to 14 years in prison under the Official Secrets Act, which bars possessing classified documents. They were arrested in December while reporting on Myanmar security officers' role in the extrajudicial killings of 10 Rohingya men in Rakhine state, where troops are accused of waging an ethnic cleansing campaign against the Muslim minority. By Abraham Achirga and Afolabi Sotunde ABUJA (Reuters) - Nigerian police fired teargas at hundreds of Shi'ite Muslim protesters on Tuesday during a second day of clashes in the capital Abuja over the imprisonment of their religious leader, Reuters witnesses said. The protesters are demanding the release of Ibrahim Zakzaky, leader of the Islamic Movement of Nigeria (IMN), held in jail without charge since December 2015, when security forces killed hundreds of members in a crackdown on a group estimated to have three million followers By Abraham Achirga and Afolabi Sotunde ABUJA (Reuters) - Nigerian police fired teargas at hundreds of Shi'ite Muslim protesters on Tuesday during a second day of clashes in the capital Abuja over the imprisonment of their religious leader, Reuters witnesses said. The protesters are demanding the release of Ibrahim Zakzaky, leader of the Islamic Movement of Nigeria (IMN), held in jail without charge since December 2015, when security forces killed hundreds of members in a crackdown on a group estimated to have three million followers. The teargas flooded the Wuse Market area of Abuja at midday on Tuesday, the Reuters witnesses said. On Monday police fired bullets to try and disperse the protesters, and organisers said at least one demonstrator had been killed and several others injured. The crackdown on the IMN and the detention of its leader have drawn accusations that President Muhammadu Buhari's government is abusing human rights. The IMN, which has held regular peaceful protests in Abuja in recent months, says Zakzaky must be freed after a court ruled that his detention without charge was illegal. The crackdown has sparked fears that the IMN could become radicalised, just as the Sunni Muslim militant group Boko Haram turned into a violent insurgency in 2009 after police killed its leader. (Reporting by Abraham Achirga and Afolabi Sotunde; Writing by Paul Carsten; Editing by Gareth Jones) This story has not been edited by Firstpost staff and is generated by auto-feed. The United Nations Security Council has failed to prevent the Rohingya refugee crisis a Rohingya lawyer said at a UNSC debate. United Nations: The United Nations Security Council (UNSC) has failed to prevent the Rohingya refugee crisis, and the 15-member body must refer sexual violence and other crimes against the ethnic group to the International Criminal Court, a Rohingya lawyer said at a UNSC debate. "Where I come from, women and girls have been gang-raped, tortured and killed by the Myanmar army, for no reason other than for being a Rohingya," Razia Sultana said on behalf of non-governmental organisations during a Security Council open debate on prevention of sexual violence in conflict. The debate, addressed by Deputy Secretary-General Amina Mohammed and Special Representative of the Secretary-General on Sexual Violence in Conflict Pramila Patten was held as the Council prepares for a visit later this month to Myanmar and its neighbouring Bangladesh, which hosts hundreds of thousands of Rohingya refugees. Sultana urged the Council members to meet with women and girl survivors during the visit. Since August last year, more than 6,70,000 Rohingya have fled Myanmar. "This is the fastest refugee movement since the Rwanda genocide," Sultana said. "However, the international community, especially the Security Council, has failed us. This latest crisis could have been prevented if the warning signs since 2012 had not been ignored," she added. This year's United Nations Secretary-General's report on sexual violence in conflict lists the Myanmar military for the first time. She said the Council must refer the situation in Myanmar to the International Criminal Court, the world's top criminal court, without delay. "The Myanmar military is listed for the first time in this year's Secretary General's report on sexual violence in conflict. In light of this and the ongoing impunity of the army, the Security Council must refer the situation in Myanmar to the International Criminal Court without delay for the horrific crimes committed against the Rohingya as well as for violations against other ethnic groups," she said. Sultana said her own research and interviews provide evidence that government troops raped well over 300 women and girls in 17 villages in Rakhine state. With over 350 villages attacked and burned since August 2017, this number is likely to be only a fraction of the total. "Girls as young as six were gang-raped," she said. Mohammed told the Council that this year, in Myanmar and many other conflict situations, the threat and the act of sexual violence has, once again, been used as a "tactic to advance military, economic and ideological objectives." "And, once again, it has been a driver of massive forced displacement," she added. "Let us intensify our efforts to end the horrific litany of sexual violence in a conflict so that women, girls, men and boys have one less burden to bear as they work to rebuild shattered lives." A decade ago, the Council adopted the groundbreaking resolution 1820, which elevated the issue of conflict-related sexual violence onto its agenda, as a threat to security and impediment to peace. It seeks to "debunk the myths that fuel sexual violence," and rejects the notion of rape as an "inevitable byproduct of war" or mere "collateral damage". Since then, the issue has been systematically included in peacekeeping missions. But "it is clear that words on paper are not yet matched by facts on the ground. We have not yet moved from resolutions to lasting solutions," Patten said. "It is a travesty and an outrage that not a single member of the Islamic State of Iraq and the Levant (ISIL) or the Boko Haram has yet been convicted for sexual violence as an international crime," she said. As for recommendations, she called on the international community to establish a reparations fund for survivors of conflict-related sexual violence, while stressing the need for a more operational response to stigma alleviation, as well as the need to marshal sustained funding for the gender-based response. A concept note circulated in advance of this meeting asked delegates to share national experiences regarding specific measures taken to prevent conflict-related sexual violence, particularly long-term initiatives focused on women's empowerment, advancing gender equality, and ensuring that perpetrators of sexual violence were brought to justice. The note also posed several other discussion questions, including one about how the Council when establishing and renewing the mandates of UN peacekeeping and political missions, as well as relevant sanctions regimes can more effectively promote gender equality, the empowerment of women in conflict and post-conflict situations, and accountability for sexual violence crimes. A clean-up operation in the British city of Salisbury where a former Russian spy was poisoned began Tuesday, with officials saying the nerve agent used was delivered in 'liquid form' and small quantities. London: A clean-up operation in the British city of Salisbury where a former Russian spy was poisoned began Tuesday, with officials saying the nerve agent used was delivered in "liquid form" and small quantities. The attack on ex-double agent Sergei Skripal and his daughter Yulia on 4 March in Salisbury has damaged relations between Moscow and the West. The environment ministry, which is in charge of the clean-up, said an area of the cemetery in Salisbury where Skripal's wife and son are buried was re-opened on Tuesday. But nine other sites, including a pub and a restaurant the Skripals visited shortly before collapsing, remain closed off. Counter-terror police are gradually handing the sites over to specialist cleaning teams. The work is expected to take several months. Around 190 specialist military personnel are supporting the operation. Suspected sites are tested, items which may have been contaminated are removed for chemical cleaning and then re-testing, the department said. The environment ministry's chief scientific advisor Ian Boyd said: "Thanks to detailed information gathered during the police's investigation, and our scientific understanding of how the agent works and is spread, we have been able to categorise the likely level of contamination at each site. "Meticulous work is required." The Skripals were found slumped on a bench in Salisbury, having earlier visited a pub and a restaurant. Sergei Skripal, 66, remains in the city's hospital, though he is improving rapidly and no longer in a critical condition, doctors said in their last update on 6 April. Yulia Skripal, 33, has been discharged and is continuing her recovery in a safe house. The Group of Seven industrial powers condemned the attack "in the strongest possible terms" on Tuesday. They agreed it was "highly likely" that Russia was responsible and there was "no plausible alternative explanation". Moscow vehemently denies any suggestion of involvement. Should Involuntary Fliers Be on Commercial Flights? A regularly scheduled flight by Swiss airline Edelweiss turned nearly turned into a diplomatic situation. When passengers discovered that one flyer was being removed to Morocco, escorted by police officers, they turned on their cameras to film the situation. The incident took place in February 2018, when the man flew from Morocco to Zurich Airport (ZRH) on an Edelweiss flight. Although the flyer was supposed to connect forward to Asia, police suggest he purposefully missed the flight and did not request asylum. As a result, he was ordered back to Morocco aboard Edelweiss, because he did not have a visa to enter Switzerland. Police say he refused to leave on his own, forcing a police escort back to his native country. When other passengers boarded the flight, they reported hearing noises: At first I thought it had to be a toddler, but then I realized: The voice was far too deep, says one of the passengers, named Miriam. The Swiss weekly Schweiz am Wochenende reports, When they reached their seat in the second-back row, they saw where the calls came from. A man sat bent over between two men who later revealed themselves as police officers. One of the officers had his arm around him. Miriam could not tell if he was pushing the man down or if he was patting him on the shoulders. Then she saw the shackles. And the man was still screaming. Miriam recorded the scene with her smartphone. You can hear the man scream loud and with high cadence. Miriam asked the two officials what was going on. They answered that the man did not take the chance to travel without police escorts The passenger said that the planes crew informed her the man had turned down the chance to travel without a police escort. They added that she and her partner were welcome to deplane if they felt uncomfortable. A flight attendant offered the young couple that they could get out if they felt unwell. The offer infuriated me. Not I felt uncomfortable, but obviously this involuntary passenger, says Miriam. The other passengers leafed through the duty-free catalog, demonstratively simulating normalcy, Miriam recalls. She herself became loud and made the other passengers aware of the situation. I found it unbearable to simply ignore a person screaming for help, she says. After several other passengers complained, police removed the man from the flight without further incident. It is unclear when he was returned to his native country. Swiss flights are being increasingly used as a method to remove passengers from the country. According to data pulled by thelocal.ch, one-third of all commercial airline bookings made from Switzerland are reportedly for the purpose of deportation. Of the 7,147 passengers deported in 2017, 78 percent were either accompanied by the police to the airport, had a police escort on the plane, or traveled in restraints. Only those that are uncooperative enough to have to be gagged and bound are placed on special flights. But now that passengers are complaining about going on holiday with passengers in distress, do you think these practices will change? [Photo: Shutterstock] Two months ago, General Motors (NYSE:GM) announced plans to permanently close one of its four assembly plants in South Korea. The company also strongly hinted that additional restructuring actions would be necessary to get GM Korea back to profitability. Since then, the situation has escalated. General Motors has said it is willing to invest more money in its South Korean affiliate to keep the latter out of bankruptcy, but only if the local labor union makes big concessions, the Korea Development Bank invests additional capital in the company, and the government offers significant tax breaks. Recent developments make it seem very unlikely that all of these pieces will come together in time to save GM Korea. The situation is untenable GM has been consistently unprofitable in South Korea for many years thanks to a combination of high costs and a poor product mix. (GM Korea has historically focused on exports of smaller vehicles, which tend to carry razor-thin margins and have fallen out of favor with car buyers.) In its most recent fiscal year, GM Korea reported a staggering loss of $1.1 billion. Some of the financial problems have been self-inflicted. General Motors has steadily retrenched outside of its core markets of North America and China in recent years. This entailed exiting numerous countries where GM had been selling vehicles imported from South Korea. Thus, it should be no surprise that GM Korea's production and sales have fallen by nearly half since 2013. The result was low factory utilization: a recipe for big losses. However, the union's intransigence has also contributed to the current crisis. Periodic strikes, constant demands for higher wages and benefits, and resistance to productivity enhancements caused costs to spiral out of control. Even with stronger sales and a better product mix, it's not clear that GM Korea could be profitable with its current cost structure. All sides are dragging their feet Publicly, GM has expressed a commitment to turning its Korean business around. However, it has also set a deadline of April 20 -- this Friday -- for striking agreements with the other stakeholders. This isn't an arbitrary deadline. GM Korea is supposed to make severance payments on April 23 to workers who have recently accepted buyouts, but it doesn't have the cash to do so. The parent company is unwilling to commit more money to South Korea without firm deals to get GM Korea back on track. Additionally, talks with the union have broken down. Earlier this month, a group of workers (including some union negotiators) ransacked the GM Korea CEO's office after he stated that the company didn't have the money to pay bonuses due on April 6. General Motors responded by demanding additional security measures for future bargaining sessions, which the union refused to allow. Finally, the Korea Development Bank doesn't expect to be ready to decide about making further investments in GM Korea until early May. South Korean government officials have also stated that state support would only be possible if GM Korea had a clear path to long-term survival. The government doesn't have much choice in this matter, given the public's lack of sympathy for either GM Korea or its employees. What's the point of staying in Korea, anyway? It's possible that the looming April 20 deadline will encourage all of the interested parties to compromise, leading to an eleventh-hour agreement. However, I think it's unlikely any such effort will succeed. The simple fact is that GM Korea has no clear reason for existence. General Motors' domestic sales volume in South Korea is plunging and will likely fall below 100,000 units this year. That makes the South Korean market too small to support local manufacturing without a large export business. Meanwhile, there's no good business reason for maintaining an export hub in a high-cost country that's far from its primary markets. Rebuilding GM Korea's production volume would almost certainly entail ramping up exports to the Americas, but it would be cheaper to build those vehicles in the U.S., Canada, Mexico, and South America. Barring a stunning change in the union's attitude -- including a willingness to accept reductions in benefits and to improve productivity -- the dismantling of GM Korea could begin within a week. A gang of masked men with a machete terrorised a family in Scotland while stealing cash, jewellery and a Range Rover from their farmhouse. The family, who live at Castlehill Farm in the Kittochside area of East Kilbride, were woken up at 4am on Saturday (14 April) to the sound of smashing glass. The 55-year-old man, 56-year-old woman and their 26-year-old son went downstairs to find four men, who threatened them with violence and demanded they hand over their money and valuables. See also: How to stop thieves stealing your Land Rover One of the men had a machete and used it to strike the older man in the leg. The family were then held in an upstairs bedroom while the suspects ransacked the property. They took a sum of cash, jewellery and car keys before leaving the farmhouse and joining another man who was waiting outside in a black Nissan Qashqai. They also stole a black Range Rover and damaged the front of the vehicle while leaving the scene, which they abandoned in the Mount Vernon area. One of the men is described as being in his early 20s with a local accent, and was wearing a grey hoodie. The rest of the men also had local accents and were wearing dark clothing with scarves and balaclavas covering their faces. Officers were called to the property at about 4.30am after the suspects left. Left traumatised Detective Sergeant Alan MacDonald from Cambuslang CID said: This group of despicable individuals completely terrorised this family and made threats of extreme violence, which made them genuinely fear for their lives throughout the ordeal. They have been left absolutely traumatised and it is vital that we trace the criminals responsible for this abhorrent incident. DS MacDonald has appealed for anyone in the area at the time of the incident who may have noticed a black Nissan Qashqai or black Range Rover to get in touch. He also urged anyone with a dashcam who was driving in the area at about 4.30am to contact police, as they may have captured footage of the suspects making off from the scene. Anyone with information can contact Cambuslang CID by calling 101 and quoting incident number 0782 of Saturday 14 April 2018. Alternatively, call Crimestoppers anonymously on 0800 555 111. 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. The United States, France and the United Kingdom have attacked government military installations in Syria. The action was justified as retaliation for the alleged use of chemical weapons by President Bashar al-Assad forces against the rebels in Douma, especially if it discourages the regime from using toxic gas again. The use of chemical weapons is banned globally, although many countries still produce or stockpile such material. The Assad regime pledged two years ago that it would destroy its entire chemical arsenal. International inspections appeared to indicate that this was done. Unfortunately, a chemical attack against rebel-held territory took place and the French intelligence services declared they had obtained proof that the Syrian government was responsible. Russian and Iranian support has allowed President Assad to first resist ISIS and then reconquer most of the country from various rebel groups. Most of these rebels were radical and violent, too, fighting among themselves almost as much as against the government. They have shown no eagerness to conclude a peace that would have deprived their warlords, who are often little more than bandits, of power. This has only magnified the bloodshed and atrocities. A half million Syrians have been killed, while millions more have lost their homes or been forced to flee the country. As the situation has evolved, it appears the only way to end the killing odd as it may seem to many is to allow the government in Damascus to regain control of the country. This could also be an acceptable solution for the Kurds, as long as the Syrian government concedes sufficient autonomy to them. The Syrian population has suffered terribly in this war and desperately needs peace. Assads victory might bring a peace of sorts to Syria, while increasing the influence of his sponsors Iran and Russia Attacking rebel-held territory with chemical weapons is a cruel, terrible way to shorten the war. It remains unacceptable, however, even when its purpose is to end the fighting. That is why the three Western powers intervened. A victory by the Damascus government might bring a peace of sorts to the country. It will, however, increase enormously the influence in the region of its sponsors Iran and Russia. Iran will be able to extend its influence along the Shia belt from Iraq into Syria and southern Lebanon, where its proxy Hezbollah has its home base. Tehran would also gain access to the Mediterranean. This is perceived in Israel as an existential threat. But the interests of the U.S., Turkey and Saudi Arabia are also disturbed by such Iranian expansion, and they have every reason to try to contain it. Moscow becoming dominant in Syria is against Western interests, but it is also a direct threat to Turkey in the southeastern and eastern Mediterranean. Moscow is already Ankaras potential political rival in the Black Sea area, the Caucasus and the Balkans. Equally problematic to Ankara could be a more autonomous Kurdish area in northern Syria, backed by Damascus and enjoying indirect support from Moscow. The terrible truth is that for the U.S., Israel, Turkey and Saudi Arabia, geopolitically, peace in Syria while maintaining the Assad regime is detrimental. However, in the existing constellation, peace can only be achieved with Syrias present government. Honor 10 photo and TENAA listing emerge online News oi-Abhinaya Prabhu With just a couple of days left for its unveiling, here we have come up with fresh information about the Honor 10. Lately, we have been coming across leaks regarding a new smartphone called Honor 10. This smartphone is said to feature a display notch as the iPhone X. We have also seen leaked renders tipping that it might arrive in a new Twilight color variant, which looks pretty attractive. As its launch is nearing, we have come across latest information regarding its device. Honor 10 is expected to be unveiled on April 19. With a couple of days left for its unveiling, we have come across a leaked hands-on photo of the device in high-quality via GizmoChina. The photo as seen in the image above shows that there will be a high screen-to-body ratio with a display notch as seen on the Huawei P20. TENAA listing In a related piece of news via Playfuldroid, the Honor 10 has received TENAA certification in China before its announcement. This certification database shows a list of specifications of the upcoming smartphone. It also reveals that the device will be available in four variants - COL-TL00, COL-TL10, COL-AL00 and COL-AL10. The Honor 10 will boast of a 5.84-inch display with a resolution of 2280 x 1080 pixels. The key specifications include a 2.36GHz octa-core processor, which is speculated to be the in-house Kirin 970 SoC and Android 8.1.0 Oreo. The COL-AL10 is said to be available in two variants - 4GB+64GB and 6GB+128GB. The COL-AL00 will have 4GB RAM and 64GB storage space while the COL-TL10 will have 6GB RAM and 128GB storage space. The high-end model is said to be the COL-TL00 with 4GB/6GB RAM and 128GB storage space. The previously leaked rear panel of the smartphone revealed the blueish purple gradient color. And, it clearly showed the dual-camera setup with the two lenses positioned horizontally at the top left corner of the rear panel. The TENAA listing tips that there could be a 24MP selfie camera and a dual-camera comprising of 16MP and 24MP sensors at the rear. From the leaked invite, it is believed that the Honor 10 could be unveiled for the global markets at an event in London on May 15. The invite's caption tipped that there could be AI photography capabilities as well. Following this, a set of photos claimed to have been clicked using the Honor 10 surfaced online. These photos showed that there could be support for semantic image segmentation mode. Top features of Honor 7X Though we have a few leaked specifications, none of these details have been confirmed officially by the company. With what we know, we can expect the Honor 10 to be an affordable flagship model and believe that it might fare well in terms of competition from other brands such as Motorola and Xiaomi. Best Mobiles in India Engineer sets sights on the stars with 1.3m Research Chair A University of Glasgow engineer is aiming for the stars after being named as a new Royal Academy of Engineering Chair in Emerging Technologies. Professor Colin McInnes, the Universitys James Watt Chair, Professor of Engineering Science, was selected for the rarely-presented honour to support the development of a wide range of innovative new space-based technologies. As Royal Academy of Engineering Chair in Emerging Space Technologies, he will benefit from 1.3m in funding to advance new projects from fundamental research through to technology development with commercial impact. The Royal Academy of Engineering Chair in Emerging Technologies scheme provides world-leading engineers with long-term support for emerging areas of research which are likely to be of economic and social benefit to the UK. The scheme issues awards to academics only intermittently, with the most recent presented in 2012. Funding for the scheme comes from the UK Governments National Productivity Investment Fund. A total of 10 new Chairs were announced in universities across the UK by the Royal Academy of Engineering today. Professor McInnes award, which will run until 2028, will help drive forward the development of new projects ranging from clouds of intelligent sensors to ultra-large gossamer structures fabricated in-orbit. Prof McInnes said: Im delighted to accept the role of Chair in Emerging Technologies, and Im most grateful to the Royal Academy of Engineering for their support. Ive dedicated much of my career to space-related research and Im very much looking forward to the challenges of the next 10 years in the role of Royal Academy of Engineering Chair in Emerging Space Technologies. By devising, developing and demonstrating new space technologies across a range of length-scales, Prof McInnes programme of research will challenge the boundaries of current thinking to deliver the radical new ideas needed to support the satellite applications of the future. These include enhanced space weather services for the digital economy, new terrestrial energy services and the long-term utilisation of space resources. The programme of research will integrate simulation, laboratory-scale development and technology demonstration as appropriate. As part of their appointment, the Chairs will develop Centres of Excellence in their areas of emerging technology, building and maintaining contacts with industry and other partners to accelerate commercialisation. Professor Dame Ann Dowling OM DBE FREng FRS, President of the Royal Academy of Engineering, said: Emerging technologies offer enormous opportunities for the UK, both economically and socially, but often their potential is not widely recognised until it is championed by a visionary individual. The ten researchers who have been appointed as Chairs in Emerging Technologies are global leaders in their fields, seeking to transform their pioneering ideas into fully commercialised technologies with important and widespread applications. The UK has a rich history of championing disruptive technologies from the development of the steam engine to the invention of optical fibre communications. Early stage technologies offer enormous potential for the UK to continue this legacy and its vital that we invest in both the technology, and the people behind it, to remain competitive in the global marketplace. The ten Chairs were selected by a panel of Fellows of the Academy, led by AI and open data pioneer, Sir Nigel Shadbolt FREng FRS. The best in new French filmmaking is being showcased over five days at the 14th annual Focus on French Cinema. The festival, sponsored by the Alliance Francaise of Greenwich, is split between three cities. The first three days, Friday, Arpil 27 to Sunday, April 29, take place at the Bow Tie Cinemas in Greenwich. The event moves to the Avon Theatre in Stamford on Monday, April 30, and then ends Tuesday, May 1 at the French Institute Alliance Francaise in Manhattan. GREENWICH A new survey is asking town residents over the age of 45 about their perception of the community and use of available services. The survey, issued by the town Commission on Aging as part of its goal of making Greenwich an age-friendly community, is open until May 15. Since it went live on Sunday, more than 600 surveys have been completed and about 900 have been opened and at least partially filled out, said Lori Contandino, director of the commission, . The data this survey generates will enable us to understand what residents perceptions are and what their experiences are with a variety of different things here in town, Contandino said Monday. We want to hear about their perceptions of town sidewalk integrity and personal safety and their experience with transportation options. The questions focus on eight areas including housing, civic participation, social opportunities and transportation. We need to look at what the perception is and then what is the true state of affairs, Contandino said. The survey is for people 45 or older because they might have parents in town and can talk about their experiences. Additionally, Contandino wants to hear from people in that age range about growing older in the community. You dont want to arrive at your retirement to find the community you reside in doesnt have the attributes that support not only aging in community but maximizing your independence as you get older, Contandino said. The survey is part of the Age Friendly Greenwich initiative the commission has taken on as part of a national program with AARP and the World Health Organization. A work group from Columbia Universitys Mailman School of Public Health Administration is helping to administer the the survey. Faculty adviser Lee Hirsch said the work group took the template for the survey from AARP and revised it to make sure it got the kind of response the town needed. We added detail and ease to the survey, Hirsch said. The team did a lot of research in what would be the best response level for a statistically valid finding and were really pleased with the response so far. Were going gangbusters. The survey will result in an action plan which Contandino said will be brought to the Board of Selectmen in the fall and will contain suggested changes for improving services. As part of the process, Contandino said there will be listening sessions with residents as well as community walkabouts at which people can personally examine areas of concern. The online survey is available at www.surveymonkey.com/r/agefriendlygreenwich. There is a printed version, in English and Spanish, available at Greenwich Library and its Cos Cob and Byram branches, the Perrot Memorial Library, the Bruce Museum, Town Hall, the Greenwich Senior Center and The Nathaniel Witherell. Five survey takers will be chosen at random to receive a $100 gift card through the Friends of the Greenwich Senior Center a 501(c)(3). Clearly we want to get as many responses as possible because that would give us a voice of a larger cross-section of residents, Contandino said. All personal information in the survey will be kept confidential, she said. kborsuk@greenwichtime.com GREENWICH An investigation has found that two former teachers at Greenwich Country Day School sexually abused at least eight students during their time at the school from the late 1960s through the 1990s, school officials have announced. Headmaster Adam Rohdie sent an email informing families and faculty Friday of the findings in a report filed by a law firm hired by the school, Shipman & Goodwin LLP. Peter French, who taught at GCDS from 1961 to 1999, and Jim Arden, who taught from 1970 to 2001, allegedly engaged in inappropriate sexual contact of children at the private school, Rohdie said. Its investigation began after allegations were lodged last September, he said. French engaged in inappropriate sexual contact with at least five students from the 1960s through the 1980s, Rohdie said in the email. Shipman interviewed Mr. French and confronted him with the evidence against him, and he admitted that he had engaged in inappropriate sexual conduct with students, Rohdie said. GCDS has reported Mr. French to the Department of Children and Families, as well as to law enforcement in the community where he currently resides. The name of that community was not available Tuesday. Shipman also found that Arden, who died in 2016, abused at least three students during his tenure, he said. While this undertaking is incredibly painful, we hope that our recent efforts to investigate past abuse and our subsequent sharing of these findings can help bring some comfort to victims of past abuse, Rohdie said. Such conduct is unconscionable, and no child should ever be exposed to it at a school or anywhere else. Greenwich Country Day, founded in 1926, is a coeducational private school with 900 students enrolled in preschool through ninth grade. It is located on 92 acres in central Greenwich. President George H.W. Bush, actress Bryce Dallas Howard and Olympic rowers and social media pioneers Cameron and Tyler Winklevoss are among the schools alumni. Arden was a science teacher at Greenwich Country Day for 31 years. He founded The Jim Arden Foundation after his retirement, dedicated to helping homeless children in Tanzania get an education and an enhanced quality of life. During his teaching days, Arden led trips with his Country Day seventh- and ninth-grade students to Africa for 25 years. French was also a science teacher at Greenwich Country Day. Theres no question. I would say this is true of independent schools as a whole: Theyre significantly different institutions than they were 30 years ago, and the reporting standards, the training, the processes put in place, are all much more vigilant in terms of how we think about protecting children, Rohdie told Greenwich Time on Tuesday. And I think that we clearly know today a lot more than I think they knew years ago, and as a result I think our schools are much safer places. Rohdie, who has been at the school for 14 years, said he did not know the two teachers. The headmaster said alumni of the school came forward as part of the investigation. We know that no action that we take today will erase the deep pain caused, but we do hope that our commitment, now and in the future, to confront all such behavior, may bring some healing, Rohdie said. This report also allows me, once again, to offer my deepest personal apologies and to apologize on behalf of the school, and to offer our help and support to the survivors of misconduct. Rohdie said the school now adheres to formal policies and procedures to prevent such incidents. Every member of our faculty and staff receives training sessions on boundary issues, sexual harassment prevention, and mandatory reporting, he said. All staff hired at the school undergo background checks by third-party agencies, Rohdie said. Rohdie offered his contact information for anyone who wants to share additional information, or who has questions or concerns. He can be contacted by phone at 203-863-5650 or email at arohdie@gcds.net. Morgan Rueckert, a partner at Shipman investigating the case, can be contacted by phone at 860-251-5821 and email at mrueckert@goodwin.com. jturiano@greenwichtime.com; T: @jturianoGT; IG: @greenwichgreen Today, the U.S. is the worlds largest consumer of hemp products. But because of the federal prohibition imposed on cannabis and hemp, the U.S. is importing an estimated $100 million of hemp products each year. That $100 million could soon be going back to American farmers and businesses, thanks to the recent introduction of the Hemp Farming Act of 2018 by Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell (R-KY). The bill, announced by McConnell and supported by a bipartisan group of senators, would legalize hemp as an agricultural commodity and remove it from the list of controlled substances. This isnt the first time McConnell or one of his colleagues has introduced such a bill. Actually, its the sixth -- similar bills were introduced in 2005, 2007, 2009, 2013 and most recently 2015, only to be stalled each time in congressional committees that couldnt see the difference between hemp and marijuana (or choose not to). This bill has a real chance of finally passing because of its potential for job creation and economic growth. But why is hemp illegal in the first place? After all, America was built on hemp, an industrial crop which contains tiny amounts of THC, the chemical compound in cannabis that produces psychoactive effects. Several Founding Fathers grew hemp. Cultivation of hemp was mandated by law in the Massachusetts, Virginia and Connecticut colonies. Beginning in 1631, hemp was legal tender for paying taxes in many of the American colonies and remained so for state taxes until the early 1800s. In 1937, federal prohibition of cannabis as we know it today began with the Marihuana Tax Act. Some believe that the anti-cannabis campaign was a joint effort by Andrew Mellon, William Randolph Hearst and Pierre Du Pont to protect their business interests in petrochemicals, paper, cotton and nylon, all of which faced serious competition from hemp alternatives. Others believe that the crusade against cannabis was fueled by racism and the desire to demonize Mexican immigrants. In either case, the plant should never have been outlawed. By virtually every measure, prohibition of cannabis with high THC commonly known as marijuana and the variant with no recreational drug potential commonly known as hemp has cost the U.S. economy billions of dollars in missed business opportunities and wasted resources spent unsuccessfully fighting the so-called war on drugs. In 1938, Popular Mechanics called hemp the billion-dollar crop. Thats about $17 billion of purchasing power today Resuming cultivation of hemp, Americas original cash crop, is a multibillion-dollar opportunity. You can bet entrepreneurs will be lining up. Here are some business opportunities associated with each part of the plant: Hemp seeds Hemp seeds may very well be the worlds first, and perhaps, best superfood. They provide up to 75 percent more protein than a similar amount of flax or chia seeds and contain all 20 amino acids. Theyre filled with healthy fatty acids including omega-3 and omega-6. Theyre also high in fiber, iron, phosphorus, potassium, calcium, zinc, vitamin E and magnesium -- basically everything you need for a nutritious meal or snack. It didnt take long after U.S. consumers accepted kale as a superfood for the leafy green to take off. The same thing could easily happen to hemp seeds once more American farmers are allowed to cultivate and sell the crop. For perspective on the potential business opportunity, consider that Canadian farmers exported $45 million worth of hemp seed to the U.S. in 2016, making as much as $300 per acre, per season, farming industrial hemp. Thats five to 10 times as much as what our farmers in the Midwest are currently making for growing GMO wheat, corn and soy. Related: Cannabis Medicinals Sales Expected to Reach $2 Billion by 2020 Hemp oil Hemp oil is quickly becoming a commonly used ingredient in many cosmetics such as body lotions, soaps and shampoos. Even modest daily usage of hemp oil, whether it is ingested or applied to the skin, has been shown to lead to improvements in skin quality, stronger fingernails and even thicker hair. Hemp oil that is full of cannabidiol (CBD), a cannabinoid with neuroprotectant, antioxidant and other therapeutic qualities, generated $130 million in sales in 2016 and is projected to reach $350 million by 2020. Related: Can Marijuana Replace Lost Steel Jobs? Pennsylvania Town Has High Hopes. Fabrics and bioplastics Bast is the outer fiber of the hemp stalk, and just about anything can be made from it -- clothing, rope, rugs or plastic. It also blends well with cotton, silk, rayon, linen, wool and other fibers, which makes it both versatile and recyclable. Henry Ford once constructed a hemp plastic car that ran on hemp fuel. It was lighter than steel, but 10 times as resistant to breaking. Hemp fibers can also be used to make paper that is stronger than most of todays paper while using a method that is more environmentally friendly than the traditional chemical-intensive process of taking wood and turning it into pulp. Building materials The inner fibers of the hemp stalk, called hurds, are known for their low density and high absorbency, which means they can be mixed with plaster or lime to make cheap and efficient building materials. This absorbency also makes it a great bed or surface for animals that minimizes dust, fungal spores and odors. Compared to concrete, hempcrete weighs about 90 percent less, uses significantly fewer petrochemicals, is virtually fireproof and, unlike concrete, allows moisture to pass through, reducing mold and mildew problems. In terms of sustainability, hempcrete sequesters carbon, whereas the cement industry is one of the worlds leading producers of CO2. Related: 9 Business Ideas for People Looking to Cash in on the Marijuana Boom Soil decontamination A growing body of evidence suggests that hemp roots can remove toxins from soil and water better than practically any other plant. Hemp has been proven to absorb heavy metals from soil, including zinc, cadmium, lead and arsenic. Hemp has been used to detoxify the soil around the site of the Chernobyl nuclear disaster. Hemp could help address climate change, since it absorbs four times more carbon dioxide than trees while growing in just a fraction of the time. Certainly, there is no shortage of opportunities to commercialize hemp. But until hemp is treated as an industrial crop that can grow freely, businesses wont thrive. Many states have already taken steps to legalize and jump-start their local hemp economies, but the industry wont scale until the federal government passes legislation that protects farmers and entrepreneurs from archaic and nonsensical narcotics regulations. Until then, this is a great time for entrepreneurs to start planting the seeds of their hemp ventures. Related: John Boehner Succeeded in Politics Opposing Marijuana but in Retirement Has Joined the Medical Marijuana Industry Hemp Is the Multibillion-Dollar Cannabis Opportunity Few Have Heard About A Tale of Neighboring Countries and Their Very Different Legal-Marijuana Banking Systems Copyright 2018 Entrepreneur.com Inc., All rights reserved Meizu recently set an official unveiling date for its upcoming Meizu 15 lineup. The new smartphone trio will make its debut on April 22 at the Wuzhen Internet International Conference Center in Wuzhen, China, at 7:30 P.M. The list of new devices includes the regular Meizu 15, as well as its Meizu 15 Lite and Plus siblings. The Meizu 15 will be the company's first release of 2018 and a special flagship, personally designed by founder, Jack Wong. The Meizu 15 promises a marriage of old and new, like a full-metal body, ultra-slim bezels, and a dual-rear camera with a ring flash, while still retaining a familiar physical home button. The historical setting of Wuzhen - an ancient Chinese water town with charming canals dating back to the 1300s, seems only fitting for the overall theme of the event and the Meizu 15 design language - reliving and reshaping classic styles. The invitation itself even packs a three-piece rotating ring, inscribed with the text: "Relive the Time, Reshape the Classic". So, we expect an extensive historical overview to accompany the introduction of the modernized classic design as well. As far as current rumors go, the Meizu 15 Lite will feature a 5.46 IPS LCD, FullHD display, 3 GB, 4 GB or 6 GB RAM and 32 GB, 64 GB or 128 GB of storage, an unnamed octa-core chipset, 3,000mAh battery and a single 12MP, PDAF snapper on the back. Meizu 15 The regular Meizu 15 tops that with an AMOLED panel of the same size and resolution and a dual 12MP + 20 MP camera setup, also complete with PDAF and a quad-LED flash. Last, but definitely not least, the Meizu 15 Plus is expected to bring a 5.95-inch, 2560 x 1440 pixel AMOLED to the table, a more-powerful 2.5GHz octra-core chipset and a larger 3,430 mAh battery. All the while, likely, retaining the dual camera setup of the regular model. These are the best offers from our affiliate partners. We may get a commission from qualifying sales. ZTE sub-brand nubia is getting ready to enter the 'gaming smartphone' arena with its upcoming device called Red Magic. This will be made official on April 19, but in the meantime here are a couple of leaked pictures showing it. Blurry as the first image may be, you can still make out the handset's unique design. That might be a multicolor LED strip on the back. The fingerprint sensor is under what looks like a single camera on the rear, and the whole body of the phone is angled so that it's easier to hold in landscape when gaming. That's a theme that Xiaomi's recently unveiled Black Shark went with too. The Red Magic seems to have a red button towards the top of the right side, above the volume and power keys. We assume that will be related to gaming in some way too. The 18:9 screen has pretty small bezels. Past rumors talked about the Red Magic sporting the Snapdragon 845 chipset at the helm, but now that the US government has banned Qualcomm from selling components to ZTE we're not sure what will happen. Maybe the Chinese company has already secured enough of those for the Red Magic, or perhaps it will swap out the SoC for another one. Either way, the handset should get 8GB of RAM. Source (in Chinese) | Via Samsung has launched a new color variant for the Galaxy Note8 in India, the Orchid Gray, a light shade of gray with a touch of purple in it. The color joins the existing Midnight Black and Maple Gold variants sold in India. Apart from the new color, Samsung is also offering a cash back offer for those purchasing from Paytm Mall. Customers will get INR 10,000 ($152) as cash back, which will be added to their Paytm account. The phone is priced at INR 67,900 ($1034). The new color variant is going on sale starting today, April 17. Apart from the new color, the phone is identical to the other variants. Source There really is no time for rest on today's buzzing mobile scene. It hardly seems like a month has passed since Samsung unveiled the Galaxy S9 and Galaxy S9+. Units are still practically hot off the production lines and good deals are only starting to creep in. Regardless, as per a recent industry insider report, the Korean giant has already moved on to the Galaxy S10. So much so, in fact, that the final design for then next flagship pair is allegedly already finalized. If you were hoping for some extravagant re-imagining to commemorate the anniversary, you might be disappointed to learn that, apparently, it will use the same overall "Infinity Display" design, introduced with the S8 and carried over to the S9. So, no revolutionary foldable display. At least not on the mass-market Galaxy S10 flagship, that is. Also, no notched display, for now, which could have been, surprisingly, even more-polarizing among fans. The industry insider source, claiming to have the scoop, seems to be in the loop about the "Infinity Display" module itself, since some alleged diagonals were also provided - 5.8 inches for the S10 and 6.3 inches for the S10+. If we take these at face value and assume they are not rounded up, then the new S10 pair will be slightly larger than the current S9 generation, by 0.03 and 0.08 inches, respectively. If that turns out to be the case, we can only assume that Samsung managed to further slim down the top and bottom chins on the front of the device, in favour of more display real estate. The report also claims that the Galaxy S10 will introduce an in-display fingerprint reader - a logical step, considering the growing adoption of the tech throughout the industry. A new 3D sensing camera is apparently also on the Galaxy S10 feature list. As per the source, the module in question is currently under joint development by Israeli 3D camera solution company Mantis Vision and camera maker Woodgate. Samsung Galaxy S9+ The new "Infinity Display" panel production schedule is reportedly set for November this year. This means, there is little to no chance for the specification to change at this point. Unfortunately, that doesn't really booster the credibility of the leak in the first place. Perhaps, we can get a few hints as to where Samsung is taking its display science once the Galaxy Note9 and it's larger Super AMOLED panel make an official appearance later this year. Source (in Korean) Haiti - Agriculture : State of Food Security in the Country (April 2018) In its latest bulletin on Haiti of April 2018, FEWS NET's "Famine Early Warning Systems Network" indicates that "preparations for the spring campaign are proceeding normally across the country, including plowing. Farmers are waiting for the first rains for sowing. In addition, the markets are well supplied with local products (banana, roots and tubers, beans) but their prices remain high; those of imported products, on the other hand, show relative stability. The Northeast Plains and the Highlands have difficulty recovering from the climatic shocks of recent months. This has affected the last autumn and winter seasons during which some households had zero production. On the other hand, in the Northwest and Nippes, above-normal rains in January disrupted winter crop development, affecting farm labor income. Plantations that were due to mature in February were almost destroyed (Baie de Henne, Bombardopolis, Mole Saint Nicolas, Jean Rabel etc...) This situation will be monitored in future updates. The North-East and Haut-Plateau are in crisis Phase 3 of the Integrated Food Security Phase Classification (IPC) because of the climatic shocks mentioned, the rest of the country being in Stress and Minimal (Phases 1 and 2 of the IPC), the food security conditions described in February are the same." Learn more about the Integrated Food Security Phase Classification (IPC) : Phase 1 : Usually adequate and stable food access with moderate to low risk of sliding into Phase 3, 4, or 5. Phase 2 : Moderately / Borderline Food Insecure Borderline adequate food access with recurrent high risk (due to probable hazard events and high vulnerability) of sliding into Phase 3, 4, or 5. Phase 3 : Acute Food and Livelihood Crisis Highly stressed and critical lack of food access with high and above usual malnutrition and accelerated depletion of livelihood assets that, if continued, will slide the population into Phase 4 or 5 and / or likely result in chronic poverty. Phase 4 : Humanitarian Emergency Severe lack of food access with excess mortality, very high and increasing malnutrition, and irreversible livelihood asset stripping. Phase 5 : Famine / Humanitarian Catastrophe Extreme social upheaval with complete lack of food access and / or other basic needs where mass starvation, death, and displacement are evident HL/ SL/ HaitiLibre By Vasia Orion | Published on 2018/04/16 Move over or be knocked over by the combined charisma of Choi Min-soo and Lee Hye-young-I, as we get a first look into what their antagonists in "Lawless Lawyer" are all about. We have stills as well as additional character information painting a grim picture for our heroes. Advertisement Lee Hye-young-I takes on the role of Cha Moon-sook, a member of the Constitutional Court hiding her greed behind the mask of a saint. She is a figure filled with pride, who sits on top of the law and justice in the city. She is one of the most powerful women of that law, and she has the respect and trust of the citizens. She sounds like quite the force to be reckoned with. The production has commented that Lee Hye-young-I makes perhaps the biggest transformation yet with her two-faced character. They hope audiences will look forward to her acting, and the charisma which will bring everyone to their knees with one look. I'm already kneeling in praise after her brilliant work in "Mother - Drama", so I can definitely believe that statement. Choi Min-soo plays Ahn Oh-joo, a man who went from being a fish market gangster to living the life as the CEO of a conglomerate. Being well-versed in life at the very bottom of society, he has turned into a horrifying man who will even manipulate maternal love for his ambitions. He sounds like a swell lad, but I also wonder if he is a smart one. Does he become powerful through his own efforts, or did someone above him need a "legitimate goon"? The photos seen here depict the character during his fish market days 18 years ago. The actor is reportedly paying great attention to all the details of his performance, such as his facial expressions, eyes, and even finger and mouth movements, since this is a character much more villainous and machismo-fueled than his previous roles. I trust both actors with this work, and I look forward to a woman as a villain and a rougher Evil Rich Dude than we're used to. Who needs fake annoying laughter and polite backstabbing when the man can probably break someone in half? Let's just hope it won't be our leads. "Lawless Lawyer" begins airing on May 12th, on tvN. Written by: Orion from 'Orion's Ramblings' Sources (1) (2) Christian Sorensen poses for a photo this morning at Havre High School. In the background runs his movie "Virtually Home" that was selected Best in the West in a statewide contest held by Triangle Communications. A Havre High School senior received a check for himself and a technology grant for the school after winning a Montana-wide video contest. Christian Sorensen, 18, was awarded a $500 prize after his short film, "Virtually Home," won the Best in the West video contest. The contest, run by Triangle Communications, asked students to submit a film on the topic, How do you use technology every day? The entries were then posted on the website to be voted on by the public. The video with the most votes was awarded the prize. The award is another for Sorensen, who was one of two Havre High students whose films were screened at the Flathead Lake International Cinemafest last year. Sorensen's film about bullying and a film by foreign exchange student Maria Maranova of Kazakhstan were selected to be screened at the festival. The video that Sorensen made this year that won Best in the West was a four-minute short film about the impact of technology on some people. The video, in which Sorensen stars, is about a person who stays home and lives his life through his phone and computer, but while filming a video the power goes out. The boy goes from hysterical to starting to appreciate the world without technology. At the end of the short film, the power suddenly goes back on and his technololgical life goes back to normal. Sorensen said the video is about some people's "need for (electrical) power" in their life and "how some (people) are so dramatic about it." He said he decided to make this video because he has seen so many people reliant on technology. He added that the character in the film is loosely based on himself. "I find myself going to technology," Sorensen said, "but I want to be involved (in the outside world) also." Sorensen said he likes to be involved in school. Along with making the videos for the Montana Behavioral Initiative club, he said he is a student tutor. At home, he said, he enjoys working on his YouTube channel, Shadow Sniper Films, which he uses for displaying his short films as well as product reviews. Sorensen said he plans to go to Montana State University in Bozeman where he has been accepted to the School of Film and Photography. He said he would like to be an independent filmmaker in the future. Along with the check Sorensen received, Havre High School received a $1,500 technology grant. Angela Allestad of Triangle Communications, who presented Sorensen and the school with their checks Friday, said there are few restrictions on the grant; it can be used on anything technology related. Havre High School Principal Michael Haugen said the school is appreciative of the grant and are proud of Sorensen who is "immensely talented in technology and film." Haugen added that Sorensen contributes to the school because "he shares his talents with the high school through his recording and production of MBI club videos." Haugen said he is not sure what the school will do with the technology grant. He said he will go through central administration office before a purchase decision is made. Sorensen's contest-winning video can be viewed on Triangle Communications' YouTube channel at https://youtu.be/H_FHCvOezEE/. Flood warning in effect till April 26; Milk River flooding near Harlem 12:30 p.m. Hill County Commission Chair Mark Peterson said the commission declared the county a disaster at 11:25 this morning. That could help the county government and residents access alternative funding to help pay for the damage caused by flooding, he said. In Blaine County, the government this afternoon released a statement that Milk River and its tributaries are flooding throughout that county and issued a list of roads that are closed due to flooding: Highland Road Yantic Road Hall Road North of Red Rock River Road New Hope Road Merrel Road west of Holly Tangen Bridge to the intersection of the New Hope Road Paradise Valley Road south of the Eight Mile intersection. Dead River Road near Harlem 11 a.m. With massive amounts of snow yet to melt in the region, National Weather Service has implemented a flood warning for Blaine and Hill counties through next week with flooding reported at Battle Creek just west of Chinook and the Milk River near Harlem. The high level of snowpack in the region - Havre is just short of setting a record for snowfall for the winter - is leading to higher-than-usual amounts of flooding, and Weather Service is predicting that won't end any time soon. Snowmelt is accumulating in fields and valleys, filling creeks and flooding roads in the region. Weather service did not have any flood advisory or warning in effect for Chouteau County, but an advisory that includes Liberty as well as Blaine and Hill is in effect for poor drainage areas through 9:45 a.m. Friday. Mark Weber, public information officer for the Blaine County government, said a debriefing of Blaine County officials would start this morning at 11 a.m. and more details will be released after the debriefing. Watch for more on http://www.havreadailynews.com and on the Havre Daily News Facebook page. Weber said updates will be posted on the Blaine County Health Department's Facebook page at https://www.facebook.com/blainecountyhealthdepartment/. That Facebook page reported Monday that 30 Mile Creek north of Harlem was at flood stage and that water was crossing Montana Secondary Highway 231 between Harlem and Turner. Hill County Commissioner Mike Wendland said flooding is occurring in many parts of Hill County. "We've had so many roads, the water is going over them and made a mess of them," he said. Wendland said a lot of water is coming down the Sage Creek drainage, crossing under U.S. Highway 2 near Gildford and eventually flowing into Big Sandy Creek. "Sandy Creek is definitely at flood stage," he said. He said yesterday he saw water flowing over U.S. Highway 2 between Kremlin and Gildford, but it was down by this morning. The Weather Service flood warning reports that at 8:30 this morning the Milk River near Harlem was at 22.4 feet with the flood stage 21 feet, with the level expected to rise and agricultural producers warned to move livestock if necessary. Weather Service predicted that the river will continue rising to near 23.8 feet by Thursday early afternoon then begin a gradual fall. At 23, escape routes for livestock may be cut off, it said. Flooding of culverts and some county bridges also is expected with thousands of acres of irrigation land flooding. Battle Creek near Chinook was at 10.5 feet this morning with 10 feet the flood stage. The creek will fall below flood stage overnight, the warning predicts, but is expected to rise above flood stage again Sunday, then fall back below flood stage next Tuesday. Havre Daily News/Ryan Welch Justin Miller uses a tractor to move gates from a flooded pasture Monday near Gildford. The gates will be used to help hold cows that had to be moved late Friday early Saturday as rising water hit his pastures. Weather Service reports that stream and river levels through the region are expected to remain at or near flood stage for the next several days, and that increased releases from Fresno Reservoir west of Havre could increase flood levels as well. Wendland said water releases have increased at Fresno but water was not going over the spillway as of this morning. The U.S. Bureau of Reclamation Current Reservoir Data for Fresno Reservoir web page reported that at 10 this morning the reservoir was at 2,574.62 feet, up from the daily data report for Monday which listed it at 2,573.9 feet. The page reported that as of Monday the reservoir's active conservation pool was 92.7 percent full with its flood control pool zero percent filled. The reservoir's inflow was 6,107.7 cubic-feet-per-second with its outflow 1,248 CFS, the page reported. The warning for the Milk River near Harlem is in effect until further notice, while the warning for Battle Creek is in place until next Tuesday. Students look at farm equipment April 20, 2017, to see what look for when in need of repair during the Ninth Annual TekNoXpo at Montana State University-Northern. The university is again holding the event, showing high school students from around the state different fields of technology Thursday at Northern. High school juniors and seniors throughout Montana will be in Havre Thursday to take part in Montana State University-Northern's 10th annual TekNoXpo. Northern's Montana Career Pathways and Dual Enrollment Perkins Coordinator Holly Haas, who oversees the event, said TekNoXpo offers high school students a chance to learn about degree programs at Northern through a series of hands-on activities. As of Monday 165 students have registered to take part in TekNoXPo, but Northern can accommodate about 280 Haas said. Students taking part in this year's TekNoXpo will come from schools in Havre, North Star, Harlem, Chinook, Hays, Turner, Rocky Boy's Indian Reservation, Big Sandy, Geraldine, Fort Benton. Great Falls, Glasgow, Stanford, Belt, Plains and Thompson Falls, Haas said. She said students will sign up to participate in one of four groups. The Gold Group will take part in agriculture machine technology, precision agriculture and automotive technology. The Maroon Group will take part in metal manufacturing, welding and inspection; plumbing and electrical technology; and engineering and design. The Blue Group will take part in diesel industry, equipment rodeo, advanced biofuels and business, Haas said. The Green Group will consist of activities in nursing, physics, biology and criminal justice. Haas said the equipment rodeo in the southwestern parking lot will include skidsteers, and back hoes that the students will use in feats of operation skills. Students are scheduled to arrive on campus at 8 a.m, Haas said. Though students typically register and sign up for the group that they want to be in ahead of time, students can also sign up at the event as long as they have a signed risk and consent form. Haas said after students arrive, they will meet in the Armory Gymnasium where they will be greeted. At 8:45 a.m. students will break off into their respective groups to take part in activities. At 12:30 p.m., everyone will meet up behind the new Diesel Technology Center for a barbecue, Haas said. Students are then scheduled to board their buses and depart campus at 2 p.m. Sponsors this year include General Electric, Wartzilla, Torgerson's, Tilleman Motor Co., Tractor & Equipment Co., Lakeside Excavation, Modern Machinery and Patrick Construction. Online registration is open and will continue through Wednesday, Haas said. She added that people can learn more and register at http://msunteknoxpo.weebly.com/. Clarice H. (Mangel) Jones, 86, was born March 18, 1932, at the family farm of her parents, Helga and Robert Mangel near Comertown, Montana. God granted her wish to love, live and die at her home of 55 years at 800 9th Street. She passed in her sleep in the early morning of April 4, 2018, with immediate family, friends, hospice, and Angel Care by her side 24/7. Clarice requested her remains to be cremated. Clarice attended school in Comertown for six years and finished her schooling in Westby, Montana, where she graduated high school in spring of 1950. She started the nursing program at Northern Montana College in Havre, Montana the fall of 1950. She soon met Robert E. Jones at a local Armistice dance and they were married on dad's birthday June 2, 1951. Robert had recently returned to Havre after serving in the U.S. Army in Europe, WW II. Robert worked as an engineer on Great Northern/BNSF for 45 years and Clarice was a stay-at-home mother and raised six kids. They divorced after 25 years of marriage and Clarice never remarried. Robert passed March 11, 1988. Clarice eventually returned to NMC to receive her LPN in 1977 and worked at the local hospital, nursing home and Golden Triangle Mental Health Center. Clarice also attended massage therapy school in Kennewick, Washington, and became a certified therapist in 1985 and practiced out of her home for several years. Clarice's biggest enjoyment in her full life was her family, home and close friends. She loved to dance and taught all her kids to dance too. Her other passions were homemaker, scrap booking, piano, card playing, flowers, needle work, dolls collecting, making doll clothes and TV polka party on Saturday nights. Clarice had a reputation of being a very detailed and accomplished seamstress. Whatever Clarice set her mind to, she mastered and perfection reigned. Clarice had a strong moral compass, a giving heart, and was a patriot and faithful practicing Christian. She had an infectious laugh and girly silliness about her in lighter moments that everyone loved. Once Clarice touched your life with her big soft hands she left an unforgettable impression of passion, humor and affection. She had a great memory and shared many stories of her younger life and family history that she captures in a fantastic family album she created for her six kids. Clarice was the youngest of 13 half- and full brothers and sisters and was the last family member to pass. Clarice Mangel and Robert E. Jones had six children together, all of whom survive her, and 13 great-gandchildren living across Montana and Colorado, Brian R. Jones, Lacy, Skylar, Courtney, Aurora, Col .; Charleen Anderson (late Gary), Tyson, Seth (deceased); Myrna Morse (late Babe) Brandon, Havre, Mt .; Brad Jones (Merry), Derryck, Levi, Amanda Kay, Belgrade, Mt .; Lorrie Picard (Joe), Jassen, Vanessa, Joely, Aubrey, Bainville, Mt .; Calvin Jones, Emily, Carson. Clarice fought a long and hard battle to the end, was a great: matriarch, life example, mother and will be greatly missed by her family and friends. God has gained a fearless compassionate believer of an Angel to look over her loved ones. A special "Thank You" from Mom and the Jones family to: Mikell, Diane, Mavis for their TLC, Love, friendship and services to Clarice all these years and most recently Angel Care (Angela, Brittney, Destiny, etc.), Bear Paw Hospice (Jan, Jessica, Ila, Charleen, etc.) Lincare and Sloan. Memorial services will be April 21, 2018, at 2 p.m. at Fifth Avenue Christian Church, 2015 Fifth Ave ,. Havre, Mt 59501 (406)-265-7337 Condolences for the family may be left at http://www.hi-linefuneralservices.com Donations can be made in her memory to: Meals on Wheels Program, North Central Senior Citizens Center 2 Second St. West, Havre MT 59501. As we move further away from the governors rejection of CoreCivics offer, I believe it is imperative that Montanans understand the true nature of the deal our governor inexplicably refused to take with the private U.S. prison operating company. CoreCivics final offer was for a two-year contract extension at a daily rate of $75.48 per inmate. Given that the state can house up to 600 prisoners in Shelby, the maximum total value of the contract extension would have been approximately $33 million. In exchange for this new daily rate, CoreCivic agreed to surrender $35.7 million of the previously collected use fees, provide a 24/7 infirmary, provide new programming designed to address recidivism, provide quarterly human rights training for their staff, and to accept an accelerated labor union formation process known as card check neutrality. The new programming requirements included cognitive behavioral therapy, Native American programming, sex offender treatment, methamphetamine addiction treatment, parenting skills classes, and expanded vocational rehabilitation opportunities. CoreCivic also agreed to achieve a GED attainment rate on par with our public prison. Given that CoreCivic was willing to surrender $35.7 million at signing to receive a maximum of $33 million in future revenue, why did Governor Bullock choose to leave many essential services unfunded by walking away from the deal? I dont know but I can examine the truthfulness of the public statement he made at the time his team broke off negotiations. On April 4, in response to a question of why the offer had been rejected, the governor said, Where it leaves us is, we sure as hell shouldnt be entering into a contract that increases 15 percent for the private-prison providers at the same time that were cutting services all across the state. How CoreCivics request for a $3.48 increase to the daily rate became a 15 percent deal breaker is a mathematical mystery. Considering that the existing contract pays $72.00 per inmate day, the actual increase was on the order of 4.8 percent. And much, if not all, of this increase was due to the states request for additional services. Next, the governor said that he is against raising prison fees while essential services are being cut. If true, this would be a very noble position to take. Unfortunately, it is patently false. Jan. 25, our governor signed a contract amendment raising the daily rate at the Dawson County Correctional Facility by almost $3 per inmate day. The new daily rate at Dawson is now higher, at $79.21 per inmate day, than CoreCivics offer and Dawson does not provide programming at their facility. From enigmatic math to a false attempt at nobility, the Governors stubbornness on this issue is as inconceivable as it is indefensible. Montanans have a right to hear why the Governor wont mitigate crippling budget cuts with the $20.7 million available from a contract extension. At present, I can only surmise that his desire for new taxes surpasses his need to protect Montanans - and that is a scheme that is bad for all of us. Rep. Rob Cook, R-Shelby Candidate for PSC District #1 Community diversion and re-entry programs rehabilitate offenders, save state tax dollars, and prevent mass incarceration. These programs help drug and non-violent offenders obtain treatment and get a job, rather than emerge from prison as hardened criminals. That much is clear. Its also clear that American Indians, compared to our non-native peers, are disproportionately imprisoned in Montanas correctional system. Indeed, Native people constitute around 7 percent of Montanas population but account for 21 percent of the states inmates. As legislators representing the majority of Montanas Indian population, we work hard to find a balance in the law that keeps us safe and holds offenders accountable, while preventing mass incarceration and human rights abuses. In light of the widely-reported human rights violations against Indian inmates, we were surprised during the recent special session to hear some of our Republican colleagues boast about the supposedly great management of the private prison in Shelby. This prison is operated by CoreCivic, previously known as Corrections Corporation of America, and is based in Tennessee. We know prison isnt supposed to be a fancy vacation, but this corporation has a well-documented history of hiring inadequate staff, abusing inmates, and not cooperating with law enforcement during investigations. In 2009, the Department of Corrections and Governors Office visited the Shelby prison seven times and conducted more than 40 interviews to investigate human rights abuses of Native American inmates. This investigation revealed that prison staff epeatedly antagonized Native inmates and violated their religious and human rights, including strip searching Native inmates attending sweat lodge ceremonies for three straight months. CoreCivic claimed that the searches were supposed to prevent contraband smuggling, but no contraband was ever found. In FY 2009, CoreCivic failed to address 206 of 220 formal inmate complaints. But despite all of this, many of our Republican colleagues continue to support the prison pipeline and praise CoreCivics management of the Shelby prison. Now CoreCivic is holding $30 million of Montana taxpayer money hostage and will only return it to Montanans if its contract for the Shelby prison is renewed. Worst of all, Republicans are prioritizing the needs of this corporation over the best interests of Montanans. During the special session, they passed bills that put our state in an impossible position: either renew the prison contract or face even deeper cuts to critical health services that have already been implemented. For our Montana communities, the false choice between a prison debilitating our people and further cuts to already underfunded programs is despicable. Subsequently, the Governors decision to walk away from negotiations with CoreCivic last week is a necessary one.The prisons final offer included an almost 15 percent increase in the daily rate for our state, costing Montana more money while our other community providers of mental health and disability services were cut. The idea that we would raise rates for private prisons while being forced to cut rates for providers who deliver services to vulnerable Montanans borders on ludicrous. We need real, long-term solutions to our states budget woes. We refuse to be held hostage by private prison companies who abuse prisoners and send our tax dollars to out-of-state corporate shareholders. Montanas taxpayers can no longer afford mass incarceration. We can do better than CoreCivic. During the next Legislative Session, we will again stand up for investing Montanas resources into diversion programs here in Montana, as well as assisting Montana sheriffs and counties in addressing their unmet needs, rather than sending those valuable resources to Tennessee. Submitted by the following members of the Montana American Indian Caucus: Rep. Shane A. Morigeau, D-Missoula; Sen. Lea Whitford, D-Cut Bank; Rep. George Kipp III, D- Heart Butte; Rep. Susan Webber, D-Browning; Rep. Jonathan Windy Boy, D-Box Elder; Rep. Sharon Stewart-Peregoy, D-Crow Agency; Sen. Frank Smith, D-Poplar Rep. Rae Peppers, and Rep. Bridget Smith. "HR is an industry focused on the success of others and the professionals behind the scenes can sometimes go unacknowledged" said event organiser Emma Marrett. "The Australian HR Awards are a rare opportunity to celebrate the achievements of the HR team, from the individuals making a difference to the companies embracing wide scale initiatives" Marrett said. Categories for the awards recognise hard work and excellence across all stages of careers, from the Rising HR Star of the Year, to the HR Director and Champion CEO driving strategies from the top. 2018 is also continuing last years expanded categories in the team and company awards which affirm the successes of small, medium and large companies of different sizes, as well as those operating in the public or non-profit sector. The awards also highlight efforts in improving development, health, diversity and other areas of outstanding HR accomplishment. The call for nominations is currently underway for this years event. Visit the event website for a full list of available categories and to make your nominations. Nominations close Friday 4 May. First-of-its-Kind Study Maps Links Between 625 Genes and 31 Different Chemotherapy Treatments Despite the great successes of targeted cancer drugs and the promise of novel immunotherapies, the vast majority of people diagnosed with cancer are still first treated with chemotherapy. Now a new study by UCSF researchers using techniques drawn from computational biology could make it much easier for physicians to use the genetic profile of a patients tumor to pick the chemotherapy treatment with the fewest side effects and best chance of success. Since 95 percent of cancer patients still get chemo, we realized we could make a major impact on cancer treatment by helping clinicians prescribe the right chemotherapy drug, said Sourav Bandyopadhyay, PhD, a professor of bioengineering and therapeutic sciences in UCSFs Schools of Pharmacy and Medicine and senior author on the new study. Chemotherapies are potent toxins delivered into the bloodstream to kill tumor cells throughout the body by damaging DNA in rapidly dividing cells. However, these poisons can also do significant harm to other dividing cells such as those found in the stomach lining and in hair and nail follicles, as well as the blood and immune stem cells in the bone marrow. In addition, cancer cells susceptibility to these agents varies widely, and tumors often develop resistance to drugs that initially seem effective. There are more than 100 chemotherapy agents in wide use, but oncologists have very little information to guide their decisions about which of these drugs to use in a given patient. These decisions are typically guided by the drugs average historical success rate for different types of cancer, rather than any understanding of how the chemotherapy drug will interact with the genetic profile of a specific tumor. We know very little about how gene mutations in tumor cells can change how a tumor might respond or not to certain chemotherapy drugs. Mapping these sorts of connections could make it possible to optimize which drugs patients get based on their tumor genetics, said Bandyopadhyay, a member of the UCSF Helen Diller Family Comprehensive Cancer Center and the Quantitative Biosciences Institute. Now in a paper published online April 17, 2018 in Cell Reports Bandyopadhyays lab has systematically mapped connections between 625 breast and ovarian cancer genes and nearly every FDA approved chemotherapy for breast or ovarian cancer. Led by Hsien-Ming Kevin Hu, PhD, Bandyopadhyays group developed a high-throughput combinatorial approach that allowed them to perform 80,000 experiments in laboratory dishes in a matter of weeks. The authors said their results, which they have made publicly available, constitute an invaluable resource to help clinicians predict which chemotherapies will be most effective against tumor cells with particular genetic mutations, and how to rationally combine therapies to prevent cancers from developing resistance. Were trying to take a systems view of chemotherapy resistance, Bandyopadhyay said. With rarer mutations in particular there arent enough patients for large clinical trials to be able to identify biomarkers of resistance, but by considering all the different potential genetic factors that have been identified together in one study, we can robustly predict from experiments in laboratory dishes how cancers with different genetic mutations will respond to different treatments. The team began by identifying hundreds of genes frequently mutated in human cancers: 200 implicated in breast cancer, 170 linked to ovarian cancer, and 134 involved in DNA repair, which is compromised in many types of cancer. They then mimicked the effects of such mutations in lab dishes by systematically inactivating each of these cancer-associated genes in healthy human cells, creating 625 different perturbations that mirrored distinct genetic mutations seen in real breast and ovarian cancers. The researchers then exposed cells from each of these lines to a panel of 31 different drug treatments including 23 chemotherapy compounds approved by the FDA for breast and ovarian cancers, six targeted cancer drugs, and two common drug combinations. An automated microscopy system monitored the cells health and recorded which groups of cells were killed, which survived, and which developed resistance when exposed to a particular treatment. The resulting map of gene-drug interactions allowed the researchers to accurately predict the responses of multiple human cancer cell lines to different chemotherapy agents based on the cell lines genetic profiles and also revealed new genetic factors that appear to determine the response of breast and ovarian tumor cells to common classes of chemotherapy treatment. As a proof of principle, the researchers collaborated with Clovis Oncology, a biotech company based in Boulder, Colorado, which is running a clinical trial of drugs known as PARP inhibitors in patients with stage II ovarian cancer. Based on their genedrug interaction map, the researchers predicted that mutations in two genes, called ARID1A and GPBP1, could contribute to ovarian cancers ability to develop resistance to this class of drugs. Results from the clinical trial bore out these predictions: patients with these mutations were significantly more likely to develop resistance. Bandyopadhyays team has deposited the trove of data generated in the new study in a database maintained by the National Cancer Institute so that other researchers can mine it for information about drug combinations and derive new biological insights about the basis for chemotherapys success or failure. The lab is also working with the Breast Oncology Program at UCSF to make this data part of an adaptive clinical trial called I-SPY, which lets researchers identify the most effective therapies based on patient molecular profiling, and is collaborating with members of the UCSF Institute for Computational Health Sciences (ICHS) to put these and other public data into a centralized database that clinicians can access through an app to help make the most appropriate treatment decisions. In future, Bandyopadhyay says, better understanding how chemotherapy agents impact specific biological pathways should allow drug trials to focus on patients who are more likely to respond to the drugs being tested and enable clinicians to identify targeted or combination therapies for patients with a genetic predisposition to resistance. Other authors on the study included Xin Zhao, PhD, Swati Kaushik, PhD, Antoine Barthelet, Kevin K. Lin, PhD, and Khyati N. Shah, PhD, of UCSF; and Lilliane Robillard, PhD, Andy D. Simmons, PhD, Mitch Raponi, PhD, and Thomas C. Harding, PhD, of Clovis Oncology. The study was funded by the NCI (U01CA168370), the UCSF Program in Breakthrough Biomedical Research (PBBR) and the UCSF Breast Oncology SPORE development award. Conflict of Interest Statement: Co-authors Robillard, Simmons, Raponi, and Harding are employees of Clovis Oncology. UC San Francisco (UCSF) is a leading university dedicated to promoting health worldwide through advanced biomedical research, graduate-level education in the life sciences and health professions, and excellence in patient care. It includes top-ranked graduate schools of dentistry, medicine, nursing and pharmacy; a graduate division with nationally renowned programs in basic, biomedical, translational and population sciences; and a preeminent biomedical research enterprise. It also includes UCSF Health, which comprises top-ranked hospitals, UCSF Medical Center and UCSF Benioff Childrens Hospitals in San Francisco and Oakland and other partner and affiliated hospitals and healthcare providers throughout the Bay Area. This new discovery has identified how the bacterium that causes pneumonia replicates within our immune system during the initial stages of infection. Antimicrobial therapy kills or inhibits the growth of bacteria so the research could lead to better prevention of life-threatening infections like pneumococcal septicaemia. The research is published in Nature Microbiology . Pneumonia is one of the leading causes of mortality by infectious disease and is more common in certain at-risk groups of people, such as the very young or the elderly. Antimicrobial therapy that targets specific cells in the immune system could prevent sepsis and life-threatening disease in people with pneumonia, new research by Nottingham and Leicester scientists has shown. The team of scientists from the University of Leicesters Department of Genetics and Genome Biology worked with immunologist Dr Luisa Martinez-Pomares from the University of Nottinghams School of Life Sciences. They found that shortly after initial infection, the bacterium Streptococus pneumoniae (pneumococcus) replicates within a certain subset of immune cells in our bodies a subset of splenic macrophages before causing invasive and often fatal disease. This intracellular replication protects the bacterium from being killed by other immune cells and also from the activity of the most commonly used antibiotics, including those recommended for community acquired pneumonia in the UK. The research also shows that antimicrobial therapy, specifically targeted to abort this phase of intracellular replication, can prevent the occurrence of pneumococcal septicaemia, which is common in many patients suffering from pneumonia. Dr Martinez-Pomares said: Having previously identified the spleen as a hideout for the important pathogen Streptococcus pneumoniae, our group set to identify where within this organ the bacteria was located. Macrophages are immune cells essential for the fight against infection but, unwittingly, they can provide a safe environment for pathogens to evade killing. We observed S. pneumoniae replicating within a subset of splenic macrophages called metallophilic macrophages in two different organisms. Based on these observations it appears that metallophilic macrophages, which are normally involved in promoting immunity, might represent the weak link in the fight against pneumococcal infection. Excitingly these results have important implications for the treatment of pneumococcal disease as antimicrobials targeting intracellular bacteria proved effective in preventing pneumococcal septicaemia. Leading the work, Professor Marco Oggioni from the University of Leicester and Leicester Hospitals, said: Understanding infections is important in determining how best to treat an infection. Our work shows that we can treat potentially deadly infections more effectively using antibiotics that are already available. By discovering the mechanism of how and where bacteria initiate disease, we think we can give a strong message to the medical community to stimulate the revision of currently used therapies and this could potentially result in a reduction of disease burden and mortality in the UK and elsewhere. The team conducted its experiments on a variety of different organisms using confocal microscopy. This allowed them to tag and visualise different immune cells as well as the infecting bacteria. As part of this work the team also developed a new model using the surplus spleens of pigs processed for food production. This allowed for them to study infection in a model highly related to humans but without the need to infect a living animal. The research, which was funded as part of a collaboration with the University of Oxford, involved Professor Peter Andrew from the University of Leicesters Department of Infection, Immunity and Inflammation and Professor Chris Bayliss from the University of Leicesters Department of Genetics and Genome Biology, the hepatobiliary and pancreatic surgeon Ashley Dennison from Leicesters Hospitals, the immunologist Luisa Martinez-Pomares from the University of Nottingham and the expert in bacterial pathogenesis Richard Moxon from the University of Oxford. The study was funded through a Medical Research Council grant: MR/M003078/1. The paper, Intracellular replication of Streptococcus pneumoniae inside splenic macrophages serves as a reservoir for septicaemia will be published in the journal Nature Microbiology and is available here. Latino community on edge over ICE busts, protesters say Demonstrators protest arrests by ICE of several people over the past three days. The Latino community in Henderson County was plunged into fear and apprehension by ICE officers detention of several people over the past three days, demonstrators outside ICEs Hendersonville office said. Related Stories Immigration and Customs Enforcement officers made the arrests starting Saturday in the Piedmont and the mountains, according to multiple media reports. ICE arrested approximately a dozen unlawfully present foreign nationals across Western North Carolina today, ICE spokeman Bryan Cox told Carolina Public Press on Saturday. The majority of those arrested have criminal convictions beyond their immigration status or illegally reentered the United States after a previous deportation. But an Asheville-based organization that advocates for Latinos, CIMA (Companeros Inmigrantes de las Montanas en Accion), said it had received reports of checkpoints, raids and ICE officers patrolling in plainclothes. CIMA said it had warned people to avoid areas were the ICE activity had been reported. "We are against the intrusion of our neighborhoods by ICE and will be protecting and defending all of our people from detainment and deportation," CIMA said in a statement. "Current efforts from community members include: fundraising money to financially support those affected, verifying different reports of ICE activity and building a plan to ensure communities know their rights and are able to protect themselves and their families. CIMA and other organizations, including True Ridge, El Centro of Henderson, said they had contacted the Henderson County Sheriffs Department to ask for transparency on their collaboration with ICE. Lori Hernandez, one of the protesters standing at the corner of Sixth Avenue West and Justice Street, said she had contacted the sheriffs office about whether the agency was participating in the arrests. She said Maj. Frank Stout checked three times and called her back to tell her that he had no reports of sheriffs deputies making arrests in cooperation with ICE. Stout confirmed that in a news release late Monday night. "The Henderson County Sheriffs Office has not participated in any of the recent Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) operations in western North Carolina," he said. "The 287g jail enforcement model under which the Henderson County Sheriffs Office operates applies only in the jail. This means a person must first be arrested by local law enforcement on criminal charges and be brought to the jail before any 287g activity takes place. This is the only time the documented or undocumented status of an offender is able to be checked by any member of the Sheriffs Office or the Detention Facility. The Sheriffs Office was not asked, nor have they participated in any of the detaining/arrests of targeted criminals in the recent ICE efforts. The 287g program is designed to increase the safety and security of our community by apprehending and removing undocumented criminal offenders." That statement notwithstanding, the ICE activity had already spilled over into a contentious sheriff's race. The Latino advocacy activists say they plan to attend Tuesday night's campaign forum to raise questions about the arrests and the candidates' positions on aiding ICE. The Sixth Avenue demonstration, in a biting wind with temperatures in the low 40s, was peaceful. A Department of Homeland Security police officer stood behind the protesters. The officer, who did not work for ICE, said he was sent to the scene to protect the federal office against the potential of a threat. ICE leases the building from the owner. Protesters held signs that said, This is Us. Our community, our friends, our neighbors, our families," and Respect Existence or Expect Resistance. Dublin City Council plans a major expansion of its 30kph speed limits this year and ultimately hopes to extend it to cover all residential streets in the entire city by 2020. However, the council's transport committee chairman, Ciaran Cuffe, said he wants to see more enforcement of the 30kph limits by gardai. The third phase of the plan will see the reduced limit extended to include 12 new areas on the southside and another 19 on the northside. South of the River Liffey, the areas include Harold's Cross, Rathmines, Ranelagh, Inchicore and Ballsbridge. Meanwhile, among the new areas north of the river are Cabra, Phibsborough, Glasnevin, North Wall, East Wall, Artane, Coolock, Killester and Clontarf. Pilot Dublin City Council also plans to introduce a pilot scheme where a periodic speed limit of 30kph would be introduced outside schools on main roads at times when children are arriving and leaving school. Speaking to the Herald yesterday about the proposals, Cllr Cuffe stressed that the limits will be for residential streets, not the main roads. "We've introduced the 30kph limit in most of the inner city and we're starting to move it out to the inner suburbs," said the Green Party councillor. "By 2020 we hope to cover the entire city. This is on residential roads, not on the main roads. "Any streets where children are being brought up should be made safer. "It will be good for older people, kids and families." However, he said that gardai need to put more resources into enforcement of the 30kph speed limits. "We're dependant on An Garda Siochana for enforcement and the Road Safety Authority (RSA) to get the message out," he said. "I think a year on [from the introduction of the 30kph residential limit] I'd like to see the guards and the RSA put more effort into the issue. We need more help from the guards. "It's important that they're out there and have a presence, and are not just policing the long, straight roads but on the residential roads too." A garda spokesman said: "Local garda management closely monitors the allocation of all resources... to ensure optimum use is made of garda resources, and the best possible garda service is provided to the public. "Senior garda management is satisfied that an adequate policing service continues to be delivered and that current structures in place meet the requirement to deliver an effective and efficient policing service to the community. Advocating "This situation is continually reviewed," he added. A spokesperson for the RSA said: "The RSA has been advocating for the rollout for 30kph speed limits not only in residential areas, but specifically in our towns and cities across the country for a number of years now." The spokesperson said the RSA had also brought over experts from the UK to advise road engineers, policy makers and elected representatives at local and national level. "Therefore, the RSA has been very active at promoting and advocating for the deployment of 30kph speed limits nationally and we would use this opportunity to renew our call for local authorities to extend 30kph speed limits across our urban centres to a greater degree," the spokesperson added. The proposals will be brought before the transport committee on Thursday and will then go before the full city council, before a public consultation is held. A boy of 15 has been sent forward for trial to the Central Criminal Court accused of attempting to murder a woman in a knife attack in Dun Laoghaire. He remains at the Oberstown detention centre where, apart from court appearances, he has been since bail was refused on December 26 last year after garda objections. The teenager, who has not made any renewed bail application, was originally charged with assault causing harm to the woman and production of a knife during the alleged assault at the Seafront, Dun Laoghaire, on December 23. The woman, who was 25 and of Irish-Malaysian descent, was found at around 3.20pm on the date of the incident. She was taken to hospital after suffering serious injuries, including a horizontal laceration to her neck. The case was upgraded last month when an additional charge of attempted murder - which carries a possible life sentence - was brought. Flicking Yesterday, the boy faced his 10th hearing when he appeared at the Dublin Children's Court and was served with a book of evidence by Detective Garda Daniel Treacy. The youth, dressed in runners, a hoodie, T-shirt and tracksuit bottoms, was accompanied to the hearing by his parents and his lawyer, Aisling Mulligan. His mother sat beside him flicking through the book of evidence during the hearing. A State solicitor told Judge John O'Connor the Director of Public Prosecutions (DPP) consented to the matter being returned for trial to the Central Criminal Court on all three charges in the book of evidence. Judge O'Connor gave the youth the standard warning that he must notify the prosecution within 14 days if he intended to use an alibi in his defence, and that names and addresses of witnesses would have to be provided. He explained that an alibi was used to show a person was not in a particular place at the time of an offence. The accused, who has not yet indicated how he will plead, spoke briefly, at first to greet the judge and then to confirm he understood the alibi warning issued to him. Judge O'Connor then acceded to the DPP's application and ordered that the boy be returned for trial to the present term of the Central Criminal Court. His first appearance at that court is expected to be within the next month. Interviews Legal aid was granted for the defence. The judge also directed that copies of recorded garda interviews with the boy would be provided to the defence. Earlier, the court had been told there was a "quite extensive file" which was unusually complex and involved 109 witnesses. Due to the nature of the new charge, a bail application could only be heard in the High Court. Previously, the boy's solicitor told the Children's Court a number of issues were being attended to, and based on information from the boy's psychiatrist, these were best dealt with in his current setting. During another hearing on January 25, the defence said the teen was undergoing treatment and that the parents had "severe concerns for his personal safety". The defence said it would be brought to the judge's attention if there was an alternative to being in the detention centre. A fugitive on the run for 15 months after fleeing trial for murder was expected to arrive back in Dublin overnight. Dean Evans was one of three men charged with killing dissident republican Peter Butterly. Just days before he was due to face trial in January 2017, he vanished with his girlfriend, Stacey Roche. She had previously been the girlfriend of Real IRA chief Alan Ryan (32) who was shot dead in 2012. Shot The Special Criminal Court in Dublin issued a warrant for the arrest of Evans (27), of Grange Park Rise, Raheny, after he failed to appear for trial. He was arrested last week in a flat the couple shared in Fuengirola, Spain, after a joint operation between gardai and Spanish authorities. Ms Roche was not arrested. Last night, he was due to be flown under escort to Dublin and immediately remanded in custody. The process to have Evans tried in the Special Criminal Court will then resume. In his absence, Edward McGrath (35) and Sharif Kelly (46) were both tried for the murder of Butterly (35), who was shot in the car park of the Huntsman Inn, Gormanston, Co Meath, on March 6, 2013. Kelly, of Pinewood Green Road, Balbriggan, and McGrath, of Lanndale Lawns, Springfield, Tallaght, were both sentenced to life in prison for the killing. Detective Inspector William Hanrahan, of the Special Detective Unit, told prosecuting counsel Paul O'Higgins that Evans had signed on in accordance with his bail conditions at Raheny Garda Station the Sunday before the trial was to begin. Evans had been granted bail to travel to Spain in the summer of 2016. Garda had opposed the move, arguing that the strength of evidence against him and the seriousness of the crime made him a potential flight risk. He spent two weeks in Spain before returning to Ireland but fled the country before the trial was due to begin. After learning that Evans had been arrested in Spain, Butterly's widow, Eithne, told the Herald: "I always knew that he would be located some day, and now I am glad that he will face trial for murdering Peter." Last year, another five men were also charged in connection with the murder. Their trials are scheduled to take place in October at the Special Criminal Court. Taximan Barry Burns gives the thumbs up as he leaves court A Dublin cab driver, who was successfully prosecuted for cocaine dealing from his car, can have his taxi licence restored and carry on working, a judge has ruled. An action brought by taxi driver Barry Burns (43), of Bath Road, Balbriggan, Co Dublin, was opposed by Garda Superintendent Thomas Murphy, of the Dublin region traffic department, which includes the carriage office. Supt Murphy said hair follicle tests last year showed Burns's drug use was "off the scale" and put it to him that he was "a danger to a the public". However, Burns described that claim as "pure vendetta" and insisted he had stayed off drugs since he was prosecuted. Burns had been stripped of his taxi licence following that prosecution but was then allowed to hold on to it and work provisionally, pending the outcome of his appeal, heard by Judge Deirdre Gearty at Dublin District Court. Undercover Giving her ruling yesterday, Judge Gearty said she was restoring his licence. Barrister Patrick Jackson told the judge that in February 2015 Burns was stopped in a car in possession of 70 of cocaine. On a date in February the following year, undercover gardai made four calls to his phone and later that day Burns provided them with seven deals of cocaine, worth about 550. In December 2016, he was prosecuted for possessing drugs for his own use. The second incident led to a more serious charge for having cocaine for sale or supply. He pleaded guilty to the charges from the outset. Those charges were struck out and he was spared a criminal conviction after he had gone to counselling, provided samples to show he was off drugs and donated 1,000 to charity. Since the prosecution, he continued to go to drug testing, Burns said. All 106 urine samples had been negative. Provo Parks and Recreation named best in the nation Thousands of men, women and children not all from Provo have taken advantage of the parks, trails and high-tech recreation center the city has to offer. Now the nation is giving back to Provo in the form of a gold medal. Provo City Parks and Recreation was recently named the best in the country and was honored with the prestigious Grand Plaque in the National Gold Medal Awards for Excellence in Park and Recreation Management from the American Academy for Park and Recreation Administration (AAPRA), in partnership with the National Recreation and Park Association (NRPA). With ... Is the Mummers Parade happening in Hagerstown this year? We'll see Local COVID numbers have Alsatia Club members wondering whether they should reconsider this year's Mummers Parade. A decision is expected by Oct. 8. Shriya Pilgaonkar says she doesnt let long gaps in her acting career affect her work decisions. The actor debuted with the 2016 film, Fan, but shes in no hurry to work on a film just for the sake of staying relevant and in the limelight. Instead, Shriya believes that every project has its own destiny and not everything will go according to your plans. My instinct and gut guide me very strongly. I look at my career as a 50-year-long one and not a 5-year stint. So, I am not afraid of waiting. I want to be part of projects where I can showcase my growth as an actor. We need to realise that not everyone can take the path to overnight success. Take actors such as Rajkummar Rao and Vicky Kaushal they have built their work and profile over the years to get to where they are. The most important thing is to be steady and consistent, says Shriya. The actor is currently shooting for Anubhav Sinhas Abhi Toh Party Shuru Hui Hai, and she says working with the director has been a unique experience. Anubhav sir has a lot of clarity. It reflects in the treatment of the script and the atmosphere on the sets. His vision and communication has been crystal clear from the beginning, and that makes working really fun for all of us. It is like an actual party on the sets, says Shriya. The film is being shot in Lucknow, and the actor adds that the entire team bonded over Lucknows cuisine. The film also features Pankaj Tripathi, Saurabh Shukla, and Vinay Pathak, among others. Speaking about her co-stars, the actor says, It was such an enriching experience to be working with them. It is interesting to see them interact and be open to learning even at the level they are at. It pushes you to do better. I used to take mental notes of what all they would say or do and come back to my room and write it down in my diary. I remember Pankaj sirs statement: A closeup shot shows your soul, not your eyes. Abhishe Bachchan often accompanied his father and Bollywood superstar Amitabh Bachchan to Kashmir where the legendary actor has shot for many films. Now, when Abhishek is shooting for one of his films in Kashmir, all those memories are coming back. Abhishek Bachchan is shooting for Anurag Kashyaps Manmarziyan in Kashmir. He said, It is nostalgic for me because I have come here when my father used to shoot his films here. It is truly a heaven on earth and I am very happy to be back. It is still as beautiful as it used to be. Kashmir was once the favourite shooting location for Bollywood films but things changed with the beginning of insurgency in the 1990s. Things have changed with a number of directors such as Kabir Khan, Vishal Bhardwaj, Imtiaz Ali and now Kashyap exploring the location. Read: This is how Salman Khan helped Bobby Deol in getting physique, career back I am very sure that they will start coming back. In the past couple of years, we have seen a fair amount of films coming from all over India to shoot in Kashmir and I think that trend will grow, said Abhishek. I think the kind of production help you get over here, the facilities are fantastic. We have shot so many films; Indian film industry has shot so many films in Kashmir. I have done a fair bit of shooting up in Leh. This is the first time I have done a shooting around Srinagar and Sonamarg, he added. The release date of Manmarziyan isnt declared yet. The Aditya Birla Group is in talks with buyout firms to sell stakes in promoter entities that control Idea Cellular Ltd to raise more than $1 billion, part of which will be used to pay down regulatory dues of the telecom operator ahead of a merger with Vodafone India Ltd, two people directly aware of the development said. The stake sale transaction is being structured in this way to maintain the total shareholding of the promoter entities in Idea Cellular at the current level, one of the two people cited above said, requesting anonymity. The promoter group of Idea Cellular consists of seven entities, including Aditya Birla Group chairman Kumar Mangalam Birla, owning a combined 42.57% stake. The groups flagship company Grasim Industries Ltd owns 23.14% in Idea and Birla TMT Holdings Pvt. Ltd owns 6.51%. The overall size of the deal is expected to be more than $1 billion, said the second person cited above, also requesting anonymity. Emails seeking responses from Idea Cellular and Aditya Birla Group did not elicit a response until press time on Monday. In January, Aditya Birla group had said that it would invest Rs3,250 crore in Idea Cellular to strengthen its balance sheet. The equity infusion is expected to increase Aditya Birla Groups stake in Idea Cellular to 47.2%. Vodafone Indias parent also plans to invest nearly Rs9,350 crore as part of the merger conditions, Mint reported. The proposed capital raising by Idea, the sale of its standalone towers to American Tower Corp. and the potential sale of its 11.15% stake in Indus Towers Ltd will further augment the firms long-term capital resources, Idea had said in a statement. Mint had also reported in February that Idea Cellular and Vodafone India, whose merger will create Indias largest telecom operator, will invest Rs 60,000 crore in infrastructure to meet surging demand for data. Meanwhile, The Economic Times reported earlier this month that the telecom department is likely to ask Vodafone India and Idea Cellular to collectively pay nearly $3 billion in dues relating to a mix of pending licence fees, spectrum usage charges and one-time spectrum charges before clearing their merger. According to the report, Vodafone Indias licence fee and spectrum charge dues are roughly Rs5,532 crore while the one-time spectrum charge due is about Rs3,600 crore. Ideas total licence fee and spectrum usage charge dues are close to Rs7,625 crore and its one-time spectrum charge dues is Rs2,113 crore. The International Monetary Fund (IMF) on Tuesday said India should address labour market rigidities to create more jobs and undertake financial sector reforms to improve governance in public sector banks to contain downside risks to its medium-term growth prospects. In its bi-annual World Economic Outlook, IMF kept its growth projections for India unchanged at 7.4% for 2018-19 and 7.8% for 2019-20, holding that economic activity will be lifted by strong private consumption as well as fading transitory effects of demonetisation and implementation of the Goods and Services Tax. Over the medium term, growth is expected to gradually rise with continued implementation of structural reforms that raise productivity and incentivise private investment, it added. The IMFs forecast came after the World Bank, in its bi-annual South Asia Economic Focus report released on Sunday, said the economy had recovered from the adverse impact of note ban and GST and is projected to grow by 7.3% in 2018 and 7.5% in 2019. According to the IMF, global growth is projected to pick up to 3.9% this year and next, supported by strong momentum, favourable market sentiment, accommodative financial conditions, and the domestic and international repercussions of expansionary fiscal policy in the US. Over the medium term, global growth is projected to decline to about 3.7% due to a shift toward inward-looking policies that harm international trade and a potential further buildup of financial vulnerabilities that could give way to rapid tightening of global financial conditions, it warned. Over the medium term, Chinas growth is expected to gradually slow to 5.5% from 6.6% in 2018 with continued rebalancing from investment to consumption. However, rising non-financial debt as a share of GDP and the accumulation of vulnerabilities weigh on the medium-term outlook, IMF added. IMF said while acceleration in Indias growth in the medium term will offset to Chinas gradual slowdown, an important challenge for India is to enhance inclusiveness. The main priorities for lifting constraints on job creation and ensuring that the demographic dividend is not wasted are to ease labor market rigidities, reduce infrastructure bottlenecks, and improve educational outcomes, it said. The multilateral lending institution said the balance sheet vulnerabilities in India pose a downside risk to its medium-term growth prospects, requiring policy action. The corporate debt overhang and associated banking sector credit quality concerns exert a drag on investment in India. The recapitalization plan for major public sector banks announced in 2017 will help replenish capital buffers and improve the banking sectors ability to support growth. However, recapitalization should be part of a broader package of financial reforms to improve the governance of public sector banks, and banks debt recovery mechanisms should be further enhanced, it said. The World Bank, in its report, said Indian recovery will lift South Asia as a region and make it the worlds fastest growing again, possibly even widening the lead over East Asia and the Pacific. It will drive South Asia growth to 6.9% in 2018 and 7.1% in 2019. South Asia had lost the lead as India decelerated for about five quarters, and now it is clear that India is bouncing back, the Banks chief economist for South Asia Martin Rama said in an interview. The acceleration of growth that we see in the region is not necessarily that all countries in the region are doing much better, its a mixed picture, but given the size of India, Indias bouncing back is driving the growth, he added. But job creation is a concern. Despite growth, India is not creating enough jobs. India must create 8.1 million jobs a year to maintain its employment rate, which has been declining largely due to women leaving the job market, the World Bank said. The decline on account of women dropping out is happening in areas that are borderline between urban and rural (and) as farming jobs disappear and other types of jobs do not appear, said Rama. Indias economy grew by an estimated 6.7% in 2017 as per the World Banks estimates (there are several counts, including one by India) and is forecast to grow by 7.3% in 2018, and 7.5% in both 2019 and 2020. I am very confident that India can deliver growth rates in the range of 7 to 8% for quite some time without much work, just keeping good policies (but) the question is can it do more? said Rama. The Uttarakhand high court on Tuesday asked the state government to come up with a detailed notification on urban local body elections by April 23. While hearing a petition filed by the state election commission (SEC), the bench of justice Sudhanshu Dhulia issued the directive and fixed April 24 as the next hearing. Sanjay Bhatt, advocate for SEC, told the court that the poll panel had sought a proper direction from it over the election. The government assured the high court that it will issue notification for the civic polls by May 12. The state was to hold civic poll in April but it was deferred after the high court quashed the BJP governments notification to expand the municipal areas. The last urban local body poll in the state was held in April 2013. In a letter to the state election commission earlier this month, urban development secretary RK Sudhanshu said: Despite addressing related matters on priority and in a time-bound manner, the notification (for civic polls) can be issued only on May 13. The department said delimitation and reservation of municipal wards will be carried out from April 9 to May 12 after which notification for the polls can be issued. The BJP government has been accused of not being serious about holding civic body polls in the state on time. Chief minister Trivendra Singh Rawat on Tuesday said Thailands food processing industry and Uttarakhand farmers could mutually benefit from each other. I hope following mutual discussions between our representatives and captains of industry in this country (Thailand), a strong partnership will emerge, which will benefit both sides, said Rawat, who is on a two-day visit to Thailand. Speaking at a seminar in Bangkok on the possibility of investment in Uttarakhands food processing sector, he said the state was emerging as one of Indias key investment destinations. The state is an ideal destination for investment owing to investment friendly policies being pursued by the government, Rawat said. Besides, its excellent climate and availability of a live and highly productive industrial ecosystem also make the mountain state an investment-friendly destination. Uttarakhand had carved out an identity of its own owing to the environment of ease of doing business in the state, he said. Besides, time bound and hassle-free services are available through a single window system introduced for setting up industries. Power tariffs charged from industries are the lowest compared to other states in India, the chief minister said. The availability of ample land in developed areas along with investor-friendly attitude of people and excellent law and order system were other plus points. The atmosphere of political stability in the state is another positive point for industrial investment, Rawat aid. Besides, infrastructural facilities like two mega food parks, four industrial estates and availability of sufficient labour force were other pluses. Uttarakhand plans to develop vertical townships equipped with all modern facilities to rehabilitate the people who will be displaced by the proposed Pancheshwar dam, if Uttar Pradesh did not return its assets. Being a mountain state that has 70% of its geographical area under forests, Uttarakhand has hardly any land left to relocate about 31,000 families likely to be displaced by the mega dam -- a joint project of the India and Nepal governments. The dam will occupy 9100 hectares of land in three hill districts of Almora, Champavat and Pithoragarh, according to officials. Irrigation and flood control minister Satpal Maharaj said the state had no land either to rehabilitate the oustees of the proposed dam or carry out compensatory afforestation in lieu of trees that would be lost to its water. We hope our land currently under the Uttar Pradesh irrigation department will be returned to us, so we can relocate the oustees, Maharaj said. (In case things do not materialise), as a last resort, we might develop vertical townships equipped with all modern facilities to rehabilitate the people who will be displaced owing to the proposed dam, he said adding, vertical townships occupy less space. The minister hoped that the Centre would prevail upon the UP irrigation department to return Uttarakhand its land and other assets. We need our land back as we dont have space that we need to carry out compensatory afforestation, he said. (If that doesnt materialise) the Centre would have to purchase land for us, so we may rehabilitate oustees of the dam or carry out afforestation. The issue relating to most disputed assets between the two states remains unresolved after Uttarakhand was carved out of Uttar Pradesh in 2000. Maharaj blamed the state bureaucracy for the contentious issue lying unresolved even 17 years after the states formation. The reason for the distribution of most assets lying unresolved is that the state bureaucracy failed to make its case properly. he said. The lacuna persisted not only under our government but also under all the previous dispensations. As a result, Maharaj said, We are maintaining canals under the possession of the UP irrigation department but we cant remove kiosks etc illegally built on them because that property (canals) doesnt belong to us. Besides, a large number of canals, the UP government also has under its possession the vast tracts of our land where we could rehabilitate the oustees of the proposed Pancheswar dam. Politically, however, Maharaj pointed out that efforts were on to ensure that the UP government hand over to us all our assets. In that connection, he recently called on UP chief minister Yogi Adityanath. I reasoned with him that if his (UP) government returns our land we will rehabilitate the oustees of the (proposed) Pancheshwar dam, Maharaj said. That will pave the way for the construction of the dam and, once it is complete, UP will also start getting its share of water from the reservoir, the irrigation minister said. Similarly, the issue was also discussed with Union water resource minister Nitin Gadkari. In a recent meeting with him, I sought his mediation for an early resolution of the disputed assets and he assured that he would mediate between the two sides, Maharaj said. Aware that her parents had been allegedly bribed in order to compel her to change her statement in court in a gang rape case, a 15-year-old victim approached the police with Rs 5 lakh they had accepted as advance, Delhi police said. The police were surprised that the girl chose to trust them over her parents. The girl came with a wad of notes and said it was Rs 3 lakh. But when we counted, it was Rs 4.96 lakh, MN Tiwari, deputy commissioner of police (outer), said. Tiwari said the girls parents were booked under the Juvenile Justice Act and for criminal intimidation, threatening someone to give false evidence and criminal conspiracy. We arrested the girls mother. Her father is on the run. We are also looking for the people who were facilitating this crime, the DCP said. The girl lives with her parents in Prem Nagar, Aman Vihar in Delhi. Her parents run a small business in the neighbourhood. The girl had gone missing on August 30 last year after which a kidnapping case was registered at the Aman Vihar police station, the DCP said. She returned home a week later and alleged that two men, including a local property dealer, had kidnapped her. She said she was allegedly taken to multiple places such as Noida and Ghaziabad where she was repeatedly gang raped before being let off a week later. On her complaint, the police registered a case of gang rape and arrested the two accused men. They were recently let off on bail. Some people known to the accused had approached her parents and offered Rs 20 lakh to get the girl change her statement in court. Recently, they had given Rs 5 lakh cash as advance payment. The girl was aware of it, said an investigator. The parents had allegedly been pressuring the girl to change her statement. But the girl refused to oblige, resulting in frequent quarrels with her parents. On April 10, her parents were away in court when the girl decided to report the matter to the police. She knew that the money was hidden under the bed. She picked up the cash and without counting it, reached the Prem Vihar police chowki, said the officer. The girl has been handed over to the Child Welfare Committee (CWC), which sent her to a childrens home. The strike by the US, Britain and France on facilities in Syria that produce chemical weapons, which used more than 100 Cruise missiles, will do little to alter the situation in the West Asian country, which has been mired in a bloody civil war that has claimed more than half a million lives over the past seven years. The strike, as the Western allies have pointed out, was a one-off aimed at deterring President Bashar al-Assad from using chemical weapons against his own people. It followed the death of some 40 people in a suspected chemical attack in Douma. Clearly, such a strategy hasnt worked in the past. Just a year ago, US President Donald Trump carried out a strike with 59 Cruise missiles after a chemical attack killed more than 80 people. The red lines established by the US and its allies havent really deterred the Assad regime. More important, the Western powers, especially the US, appear to have no real strategy to cope with the complex situation in Syria or to force an end to the fighting. Top US leaders appear divided on how long the 2,000-odd American troops in Syria sent to assist in the fight against the Islamic State will remain in that country. The picture is further complicated by the presence of Russian mercenaries, Iran-backed militias and President Vladimir Putins unconditional support for Assad. The fighting has already triggered one of the worst humanitarian crises and largest refugee movements in recent decades, with Turkey and Lebanon alone having taken in more than one million Syrians each. In contrast, the US which says it is acting to protect Syrias civilian population has taken in just 11 Syrian refugees this year, down from 790 during the same period last year. Even more damning is that fact that the deal brokered by the US and Russia in 2013 to destroy Syrias stock of chemical weapons clearly hasnt worked. As things stand now, the war in Syria is largely about those who want Assad to remain in power, and those who dont. Assad, thanks to the support from Russia and Iran, appears to be winning. India, with its growing security ties with the US and long-standing strategic relations with Russia, finds itself in a difficult position. India has deplored the use of chemical weapons but also called for dialogue and negotiations to end the suffering of the Syrian people but it knows that a regime change, which some Western powers appear to be pushing for, isnt the real solution. The Calicut University has declared results of its B.Com and BBA fifth semester regular, supplementary, improvement examination, which was held in November 2017. The results for MA Philosophy third semester and previous year MA Philosophy (distance) have also been announced. Students who appeared for the eighth semester B Tech examination held in June 2016 can also check their results at the universitys official website: universityofcalicut.info Heres how to check the results: Log onto to www.universityofcalicut.info and click on the examination results tab. You will be directed to the results page. Click on the course you want to check the result for. Enter the register number and the Captcha code. Get the result. The Union HRD Ministry has decided to establish an online national network to list all the scientific, technical, analytical and research equipment available in universities across the country to help legitimate users access them. The University Grants Commission (UGC) has written to all the universities and higher educational institutions in the country, asking them to furnish information about the existing facilities. The government has planned to establish an online national network that lists all the scientific, technical, analytical, research equipment and facilities procured with funds provided by its agencies and installed in academic research and development organisations across the country, the UGC communication to the institutes read. Through the network, it is proposed that the custodians of such equipment and facilities will provide access to researchers and other legitimate users, so that they can utilise the facilities for their academic or non-academic research and development work through an online reservation system, according to the communication. The admit card for the Uttar Pradesh State Entrance Examination (UPSEE) to be held on April 29, 2018, will be available to candidates from April 20 on UPSEEs official website: upsee.nic.in The entrance examination for degree level engineering institutions and other professional colleges in Uttar Pradesh is conducted under the supervision of Dr. A.P.J. Abdul Kalam Technical University Uttar Pradesh, Lucknow. The downloaded admit cards are to be used by the candidates as hall ticket for entry into the entrance examination centre. Candidates should check their details such as roll number, name, fathers name, category, name and address of examination centre allotted on their admit card. If a candidate is unable to dowload their admit card, they should call the helpline number 1800-180-0161 (10:00 AM to 5:00 PM) as given on the website. Or write to upsee2018helpdesk@aktu.ac.in Note: Candidates must keep the admit cards carefully and take it to the examination centre. A man was booked for allegedly sexually assaulting a five-year-old girl in a private colony under the jurisdiction of Sector 9A police station. A case was registered against the accused under Section 10 of the POCSO Act. The police said the matter is being probed and the accused will be nabbed soon. The girl, a resident of Sector 7, was found bleeding from her private parts by her mother. When she was asked about the matter, she said that a neighbour had inserted his fingers into her private parts, which caused the injury. The girls mother immediately lodged a complaint against the man and a case was registered. The accused is a Nepali national and works in the city. In another incident, a Delhi resident alleged that a resident of Gurugram allegedly raped her after lacing her drink with intoxicants in February. She said the man had recorded explicit videos of her and used them to blackmail her. A case was registered at the Sector 50 police station. The woman said she came in touch with the man, who is a resident of Sector 46, on Facebook and they became friends. They also went out sometimes but she decided to sever relations with him after some time. She said the man, however, continued to pester her and she arranged to meet him in Sector 46 of Gurugram on February 21. She said he took her to a PG accommodation, laced her drink with intoxicants and subsequently raped her. A case has been registered against the man and the facts are being verified, Ravinder Kumar, PRO, Gurgaon police, said. In another incident, a 35-year-old woman, working as a sanitation worker with a government agency, alleged that a man from whom she had taken money on loan raped her in December 2017 and is forcing her to submit to his advances. A case under Section 376 of IPC was registered at Sector 9A police station against the accused. The police said the matter is being probed. A case of stalking was also registered at the New Colony police station under Section 354-D of the IPC after a 23-year-old woman complained to the police that an unidentified man had been calling her repeatedly and asking her to marry him. Despite repeated warnings, the man continued to send messages and call her, which had caused a lot of mental tension and harassment, she said. The matter is under probe and the accused shall be nabbed soon, Kumar said. Diabetes patients, take note: If you delay your breakfast, you are exposing yourself to more chances of having a higher Body Mass Index (BMI), which will eventually lead to obesity and many more complications. A recent study by the University of Illinois at Chicago says that an evening person has higher body mass indices among individuals who have Type II diabetes, and the reason for this is that they delay having breakfast in the morning. Read: Mothers obesity may trigger early puberty risk in daughters Obesity has been associated with those who sleep late and get up late, however, research had been lacking in connecting this phenomenon with people who have Type II diabetes. Researchers who were led by Sirimon Reutrakul, wanted to find out if having a morning or evening preference in those with Type II diabetes meant more chances of a higher BMI. Reutrakul and other researchers spoke with 210 non-shift workers based in Thailand with Type II diabetes for the study. There was a questionnaire where they were asked about their waking up and sleeping time, what time they exercised and when would they do activities such as reading or working during their day. The average sleep duration was 5.5 hours/night and participants consumed 1,103 kcal/day. They had an average BMI of 28.4 kg/m2 (considered overweight) and 97 participants had evening preference while 113 preferred the morning. Those who preferred the morning would have breakfast between 7 a.m. and 8:30 a.m., while those who slept late would have it between 7:30 a.m. and 9 a.m. Later breakfast time is a novel risk factor associated with a higher BMI among people with Type 2 diabetes, said Reutrakul. It remains to be investigated if eating breakfast earlier will help with body weight in this population. The studys findings were published in the journal Diabetic Medicine. With inputs from ANI Follow @htlifeandstyle for more Thousands of fans queued outside Marina Bay Sands Convention Centre to meet their favourite superheroes -- Iron Man star Robert Downey Jr and Doctor Strange actor Benedict Cumberbatch -- making it one of the grandest Marvel red carpet events. The stars were promoting their much-awaited film, Avengers: Infinity War in the city, Marvels biggest ever superhero project, and the red carpet event was a proof of the curiosity surrounding the movie as thousands of fans from places such as the Philippines, Russia, Vietnam, India, Malaysia, Taiwan and Korea waited for hours to get a glimpse of the actors. Benedict Cumberbatch signs autographs on the red carpet. (REUTERS) The first to arrive to the event was one half of the director duo Russo brothers, Joe Russo. The filmmaker, who along with his brother played an important role in giving Marvel superhero films a new dimension, was joined by his wife and two daughters at the red carpet. Russo, who has become popular among fans after Captain America: The Winter Soilder and Captain America: Civil War received a warm welcome from fans as he clicked pictures and gave autographs. Robert Downey Jr. dances on stage upon arrival at the Marvel's Avengers: Infinity War red carpet fan event in Singapore. (AP) He was followed by Guardians of the Galaxy star Karen Gillian, better known to fans as Nebula. The Scottish actor made a dazzling entry tn the red carpet in a shimmery golden dress amid chants of Nebula from fans. Cumberbatch was the third to arrive for the event charmed fans by giving autographs and clicking selfies. The biggest star of the evening was Downey Jr, who was welcomed by a thunderous applause from the crowd. The actor has been playing Tony Stark for the past 10 years and his connect with the fans was quite visible as fans, wearing Iron-Man armour and carrying big posters of RDJ, tried their best to get his attention and he enthusiastically responded, frequently stopping to give autographs and pose of selfies. In a heartwarming moment, Cumberbatch came to the aid of a young fan by bringing a handmade poster to Robert Downey Jr for his autograph. Karen Gillan and Robert Downey Jr. share a laugh during Marvel's Avengers: Infinity War red carpet fan event in Singapore. (AP) RDJ had also invited kids from Make-A-Wish foundation, whom he declared honorary Avengers. The actor paid a surprise visit to the foundation yesterday. All children involved are currently battling critical illnesses. Soon after meeting their fans the stars made their way to the stage with Russo welcoming them. While Gillian came on the stage with fireworks in the background, Cumberbatch made the Doctor Strange like entry through a portal-like gateway. With the Iron Man theme music playing in the background Downey Jrs welcome on stage was as grand as his superhero persona. This has to be the coolest ever fan event, Downey Jr, who was in the city for the first time, said. Karen Gillan takes a selfie with fans on the red carpet during a fan event for Marvel Studio's Avengers: Infinity War movie. (REUTERS) Russo said he decided to come back to city after he saw the love fans here had for Marvel movies during his last visit two years ago for with Captain America: Civil War. The event concluded with Russo making a special request to fans to switch on their LED wrist bands and raise their hands as he said Avengers assemble. The fans were treated to a surprise with a giant image of the last Infinity Stone, the last of the stones that the supervillain Thanos is seeking in the movie. As the stars posed for the final time, the Marina Bay was lit up with red and blue lights. Film director Joe Russo and executive producer Trinh Tran greet fans during Marvel's Avengers: Infinity War red carpet fan event in Singapore. (AP) Avengers: Infinity War also featuring Chris Hemsworth, Mark Ruffalo, Chris Evans, Scarlett Johansson, Don Cheadle, Tom Holland, Chadwick Boseman, Paul Bettany, Elizabeth Olsen, Anthony Mackie, Sebastian Stan, Danai Gurira, Letitia Wright, Dave Bautista, Zoe Saldana, and Chris Pratt, releases on April 27 in India. (This story has been published from a wire agency feed without modifications to the text. Only the headline has been changed.) Follow @htshowbiz for more All the 114 militants of a Hmar militant outfit, who had laid down arms on April 13, have received Rs 3 lakh each as part of the rehabilitation package, a senior Home department official said. The surrender of the Hmar Peoples Convention (Democratic) leaders and cadres followed the signing of the memorandum of settlement by the Mizoram government and the outfit in Aizawl on April 2 last. The surrendered militants have returned to their respective villages, the official said. The Hmar rebels had laid down 45 weapons, including four sniper rifles, one grenade launcher, nine AK assault rifles, one M-16 carbine assault rifle and 13 double-barrel guns. They had also surrendered 2,892 rounds of ammunition, launcher shells and five radio sets on April 13. The surrendered weapons were handed over to state Home Minister R Lalzirliana. A 7-year-old girl was allegedly raped and murdered by a 19-year-old man early on Tuesday during a wedding in Uttar Pradeshs Etah, police said, in the latest incident of sexual assault on a minor amid an outrage over the gangrape and murder of an 8-year-old in Jammus Kathua. Police said the accused Sonu, who uses one name, was arrested and booked under sections 302, 376 of the Indian Penal Code (IPC). He was also charged under the stringent Protection of Children from Sexual Offences (POCSO) Act, they added. He was sent to 14-day judicial custody. Sonu took the girl away when her family members were busy during a wedding ceremony to an under-construction house and raped her and later killed her to avoid being identified, police said. Pankaj Mishra, the in charge of Kotwali Nagar police station of Etah, said he was arrested from the spot of the crime. The 7-year-old girl was attending a wedding function in front of Galla Mandi of Etah city last night (Monday night) but was found missing at about 1am on Tuesday, Mishra said. A search was conducted by the family members attending the function and she was found dead in an under-construction house nearby, he said. Sonus father provides tents for wedding functions and has a shop in Kotwali Nagar area, he added. The post-mortem report revealed the girl died because of asphyxia and strangulation. Irate members of the girls family blocked a road and demanded that the accused be handed over to them. The district administration pacified the family members and assured them of strict action against the accused after which they called off the protest. Etah district magistrate Amit Kishore said a compensation of Rs 10 lakh under Mahila Samman Fund has been handed over to the family by the district administration. Child sexual abuse has been in focus after the gang-rape and murder of the 8-year-old girl in Jammu and Kashmirs Kathua district hit the headlines. The incident also comes as the body of an unidentified minor girl was found in Gujarats Surat 11 days ago and police said on Sunday it had 86 injury marks and that she may have been tortured and raped before being killed. The girl believed to be between nine and 11 years old was strangled, they said. According to government figures, a child is sexually abused every 15 minutes in India. The National Crime Records Bureau report for 2016 shows a sharp spike in cases of rape against children with an increase of such incidents by over 82% as compared to 2015. The data also shows that Uttar Pradesh tops the list in crime against minors, with around 15% share of total crime against children in the country. Impressed by a cobblers originality in marketing his shop as a hospital for injured shoes, industrialist Anand Mahindra expressed an interest in investing in his startup on Tuesday. The business magnate claims to have received the image on WhatsApp, but is unaware about the source. It has been retweeted 1,500 times and liked by over 6,400 people. This man should be teaching marketing at the Indian Institute of Management... pic.twitter.com/N70F0ZAnLP anand mahindra (@anandmahindra) April 17, 2018 The image features a cobbler sitting outside his hospital, with a prominent banner that lists Dr Narseeram as the on-duty doctor. The notice, written in Hindi, encapsulates the features of a hospital, including timings of the OPD, and even boasts of a German technique used for the treatment of the said hurt shoes. The hospital will remain open from 2pm to 6 pm, informs the banner. Mahindra was so impressed by the clever advertising that he originally tweeted the picture saying the cobbler should be teaching marketing at the premier Indian Institute of Management. Mahindra showed an interest in investing in the cobblers start-up Got it on whatsapp. No clue who or where he is or how old this pic is. If anyone can find him and hes still doing this work Id like to make a small investment in his startup. https://t.co/A8kdJTvAN1 anand mahindra (@anandmahindra) April 17, 2018 Mahindra is an active Twitter user and had said that he was willing to provide seed capital to create a professionally managed and regulated social media networking company, in the wake of the Cambridge Analytica and Facebook data leak row. Beginning to wonder if its time to consider having our own social networking company that is very widely owned & professionally managed & willingly regulated. Any relevant Indian start-ups out there? If any young teams have such plans Id like to see if I can assist with seed capital, read the tweet. A couple from Andhra Pradesh has claimed that the minor found raped and murdered in Surat is their daughter, Gujarat police said on Tuesday. The couple has come with Aadhaar card of the victim. Police have started the procedure for their DNA test to establish their claim, said Surat commissioner of police Satish Sharma. Police are verifying their claim. The couple is from Prakasam district and has claimed their daughter went missing in October 2017, said police. The body of the girl, believed to be between nine and 11 years old, was found with as many as 86 injury marks in a field at Pandesara in Surat city limits on April 6. Having gone through around 8,000 complaints related to missing children from Gujarat and other states, Surat police had pasted posters in multiple languages across the city and on trains to Odisha and West Bengal. The area where the body was recovered is an industrial belt and has a significant population of migrant workers. Case tests police When police sub-inspector NJ Panchal of Pandesara police station received a phone call from a man in Ahmedabad a week ago, he thought he had the first clue about the minors identity. The caller told him the girl in the posters that the police had put up resembled his niece, whom he had not met or interacted with for many years. The man said he was involved in a fight with his brother and hadnt spoken to him or his family in years. He still wouldnt speak to his brother, but was concerned about his niece, said Panchal. When Panchal called up the mans brother, a Surat resident, he was told that the girl was by his side at home. The investigation was back to square one. The case has raised the hopes of parents of many missing children. Police have had to convince many of them that the murdered girl could not be their child, and dealing with emotional distress has proved tough. KB Jalla, station house officer (SHO) of Pandesara police station, said, I have lost count of how many parents have called us up thinking the murdered girl is their missing child. Apart from the landline phone number of Pandesara police station, the posters of the girl also carry the mobile phone numbers of SHO Jalla and SI Panchal. Panchal said, Another couple called to say that their three-year-old daughter had gone missing. It took me a lot of effort to convince them that this girl was at least nine years old. The callers include some parents whose children went missing five years ago. The calls have been coming from states such as Maharashtra, Odisha, West Bengal, Madhya Pradesh and Andhra Pradesh. Many of these parents have heard of this case through the media and havent seen the pictures of the girl. Police have been asking callers to send pictures of their missing children through WhatsApp, and are sending them pictures of the Surat victim after ascertaining that its not the same girl. This leaves the parents with hope that their children may still be alive. Some of these callers already assume that it is their child. A woman called from Andhra Pradesh and began speaking in Telugu, wailing all the while. It took me a lot of time to communicate to her to give the phone to someone who could speak Hindi or English, said Panchal. In at least half-a-dozen cases where the image of the murdered girl appeared similar to those shared by callers, police called them to Surat. The BJP ruled governments of Madhya Pradesh, Rajasthan and Chhattisgarh on Tuesday withdrew directives issued to implement the Supreme Court order on the new procedure for registration of cases and arrest under the Scheduled Castes and Scheduled Tribe (Atrocities) Act. Chief ministers of the three states said the circular to enforce the SC order was issued without their knowledge and their respective state governments will also file a review petition in the Supreme Court. The Centre and Kerala government have already filed a review petition, while the Tamil Nadu government on Tuesday decided to file a similar petition. The BJP ruled states decided to revoke the circular issued by police headquarters was following a nudge from the BJP top brass, which is trying to portray that it had nothing to do with the SC order that led to April 2 Bharat Bandh call by Dalit organisations, in which 11 persons were killed in different parts of the country. Agencies quoted officials sources saying that the Centre had kept an Ordinance ready to annul the order of the court, depending on the outcome of its petition. The court on March 20 had laid down guidelines to prevent the alleged misuse of the Scheduled Castes and the Schedule Tribes (Prevention of Atrocities) Act. In Raipur, Chhattisgarh Chief Minister Raman Singh said, Our state has been always sensitive towards SCs and STs and hence the order (April 6) has been taken back. We will appeal against decision of Supreme Court just like the Centre. The Congress had, however, made a political issue out of it saying that the directive showed BJP governments bias towards the SC and ST communities. It is clear from this order that the BJP is indulging in double speaking and deceit towards the SC/ST community in the state, said Congress spokesperson PL Punia on Monday. In Jaipur, the home department in a statement said Chief Minister Vasundhara Raje had directed to revoke the order and the state government be made a party in the review petition filed by Centre in the Supreme Court against dilution of SC/ST law. Earlier, Raje told media persons that the orders were issued without her knowledge and said the state government is committed towards the welfare of SC and ST. The Tamil Nadu government also announced that it will move the apex court. The decision was arrived at a meeting chaired by Chief Minister K Palaniswami with his cabinet colleagues, including his deputy O Panneerselvam, an official release said. Indicating that more states will move the apex court, home ministry officials said state governments are with the Centre on the issue of recalling the Supreme Court order. The Centre has made it abundantly clear that there should be no dilution of the SC/ST Act. It has filed a review petition in the Supreme Court for recall of its order. As far as states are concerned, they are also on board. They are in touch with the Centre and many of them are taking steps. Some have already announced that they will associate with the Centre, a home ministry official said. (With agency inputs) Amid reports that a large number of ATMs have run out of cash in several states and jibes from the opposition, union finance minister Arun Jaitley has said there is enough currency in circulation and that a temporary shortage in some places is being tackled quickly. Have reviewed the currency situation in the country. Over all there is more than adequate currency in circulation and also available with the Banks. The temporary shortage caused by sudden and unusual increase in some areas is being tackled quickly, the minister tweeted on Tuesday as the hashtags ATM and cash crunch trended on Twitter, with people complaining that they have had to come away from ATMs without cash and some of them comparing the situation to what happened after demonetisation in November 2016. Union minister of state for finance SP Shukla told news agency ANI that there is a problem that some states have less currency and others have more, promising that it will be solved in three days with both the government and the Reserve Bank of India working to transfer currency from one state to other. Read| Temporary problem to no cash crunch: How govt responded to empty ATMs reports There are reports of ATMs running dry from states like Delhi, Uttar Pradesh, Telangana, Gujarat, Chhattisgarh, Bihar and Madhya Pradesh. Chhattisgarh chief minister Raman Singh said his state like many other states, has been affected by a cash crunch. The situation will be resolved as soon as possible. The opposition was quick to attack the government, with the Congress conducting a poll on Twitter that asked whether ATMs running out of cash was just gross mismanagement by modi government...or...a deliberate move. Congress president Rahul Gandhi said Prime Minister Narendra Modi had destroyed the banking system. Nirav Modi fled with Rs 30,000 crore and the prime minister did not utter a word. We were forced to stand in queues as he snatched Rs 500-1,000 notes from our pockets and put it in Nirav Modis pocket, Gandhi told ANI. CPM leader Sitaram Yechuary tweeted, ATMs were empty in November 2016. ATMs are empty now. And the only party flush with cash is the BJP: the people suffer. Read | Cash crunch 2.0 draws comparison to demonetisation on social media Puneet Sharma, a Lucknow trader compared the situation to that after the government announced demonetisation in November 2016. Bank ATMs are running dry. We are facing a situation similar to the government had scrapped 500- and 1000 rupee notes that triggered a cash shortage, he said. Many ATMs across Lucknow, the capital of Uttar Pradesh, have no cash including two right next to the RBI office in Gomti Nagar. In the states Varanasi, a resident said, We have visited five-six ATMs since morning. We need to pay for the admission of children and purchase groceries and vegetables. Residents in Madhya Pradesh capital Bhopal said many ATMs have had no cash for 15 days. The states chief minister Shivraj Singh Chuahan said yesterday at a meeting of farmers that currency notes of Rs 2,000 denomination were missing from the market. He alleged a conspiracy to create a shortage of cash in the state, where assembly elections will be held later this year, by keeping the highest denomination notes out of circulation. A senior officer of the State Bank of India in Bhopal, who asked not to be named, told Hindustan Times, Hoarding of notes is taking place in a large number especially of Rs 2,000 denomination notes. This has resulted in notes of lower denominations in ATMs being taken by people instead in a good number and ATMs running dry. SBI is facing a major problem because payment under many government schemes is made through the bank. A cash crunch in ATMs across several states became the latest flashpoint between the government and the Opposition, which cited it as an instance of financial mismanagement, even as finance Minister Arun Jaitley clarified on Tuesday the problem was temporary. West Bengal chief minister Mamata Banerjee asked whether the country was facing a financial emergency. In a tweet, she stated: Seeing reports of ATMs running out of cash in several States. Big notes missing. Reminder of #DeMonetisation days. Is there a Financial Emergency going on in the country? Congress President Rahul Gandhi, who is touring his constituency, too upped the ante on Twitter, stating that the terror of note-ban had once again been repeated. Tweeting in Hindi he said all ATMs are cashless, what has the government done to the banking system. Understand the deceit of Noteban, your money in Nirav Modis pocket. Modijis Mallya maya, the terror or noteban is again spreading. The countrys ATMs are again empty, what has been done to the countrys banks, Gandhi tweeted. There have been reports of currency shortages in at least seven states Assam, Gujarat, Eastern Maharashtra, Madhya Pradesh, Bihar, Andhra Pradesh and Telangana. The Congress party also hit out at the government, saying this was the fallout of its demonetisation move. In a statement, the government said there had been an unusual demand for currency in the last three months in the states such as Andhra Pradesh, Telangana, Karnataka, MP and Bihar. The currency supply increased by ?45,000 crore in the first two weeks of April, it said. Jaitley said there was more than adequate currency in circulation and the temporary shortage in certain states was being tackled quickly. Overall there is more than adequate currency in circulation and also available with the Banks. The temporary shortage caused by sudden and unusual increase (in demand) in some areas is being tackled quickly, Jaitley said. Communist Party of India (Marxist) general secretary Sitaram Yechury wrote on twitter: ATMs were empty in November 2016. ATMs are empty now. And the only party flush with cash is the BJP: the people suffer. He added that the country was paying the price of demonetization of November 2016. Minister of state for finance Shiv Pratap Shukla said the government had formed a committee to assess the situation. The government has set up state-wise committee and RBI has also formed a committee to transfer currency from one state to another ... It (the shortage) will be solved in 2-3 days, he said. The Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) on Tuesday questioned the Congress for giving a ticket for Karnataka assembly polls to a lawyer who had represented billionaire jeweller Nirav Modis uncle Mehul Choksi, both accused in the Punjab National Bank (PNB) fraud, in a cheating case in the state high court in 2016. The in-charge of BJPs national information and technology cell, Amit Malviya, used the hash-tag #CongressWithNirav on Twitter and asked why lawyer HS Chandramouli was given ticket from Madikeri while it was denied to chief minister Siddaramaiahs legal advisor and party spokesperson Brijesh Kalappa, who hails from the area. Malviya tweeted, What is so special about HS Chandramouli, lawyer of Nirav Modis uncle Mehul Choksi, that Congress gave him a ticket from Madikeri while denying one to Brijesh Kalappa, Siddaramaiahs legal advisor and party spokesperson? Rahuls friends over CMs aide? #CongressWithNirav. The trigger for this tweet was Kalappas cryptic message on Twitter on Monday: I have never represented Mehul Choksi nor have I been given the party nomination. Chandramouli was Choksis advocate when he moved the Karnataka High Court in 2016 against the state government and SV Hariprasad, a city-based businessman who had filed the complaint of cheating against Choksi. Nirav Modi and Choksi are among the accused in the scam related to alleged cheating of the Punjab National Bank to the tune of about $2 billion. Kalappa, a Congress loyalist, has been a ticket aspirant since 2009 but without any success. In an emotional post on Facebook, Kalappa said, I have been denied Lok Sabha ticket 2009 and 2014, Rajya Sabha ticket in 2014, 2016, 2018 and now assembly. He said, I will swallow the ignominy of being ousted from the race by a person who joined the party in 2016, got a legislative council ticket the same year, lost and the same person now bags the assembly ticket for Madikeri. In a wry remark, he said he would try his luck in gram panchayat election next time. Someone in my party is clearly telling me to seek nomination for a constituency befitting my status. But those FB friends I love and respect - dont shed tears for me. After so many disappointments, I am entitled to use Rajesh Khannas immortal words, Pushpa, I hate tears. Kalappa highlighted the branding of some persons as unelectable for denying them ticket time and again. Many of us in the INC too have made the mistake of calling people unelectable - those same persons have more than proved us wrong, totally wrong! I am a victim of one such campaign, why? Because I wear normal clothes, eat at small places, dont travel with a retinue, am honest, down to earth. The Congress is facing severe backlash from many party strongmen, loyalists and sitting MLAs who have been denied ticket for the May 12 assembly polls.The supporters of ticket aspirants went on the rampage at several places in Karnataka on Monday. (This story has been published from a wire agency feed without modifications to the text. Only the headline has been changed.) Jammu and Kashmir appeared headed for a Cabinet reshuffle, with reports saying on Tuesday that the Bharatiya Janata Party had asked its ministers in the ruling coalition with the Peoples Democratic Party to submit their resignations. A BJP office-bearer in New Delhi said the resignations in the Mehbooba Mufti-led government would lay the groundwork for a long-pending reshuffle. There is no threat to the coalition government, the leader said on condition of anonymity. He said a decision on the resignations was taken last week, when the partys general secretary and key interlocutor with the PDP, Ram Madhav, travelled to the state at the peak of a controversy following the rape and murder of an eight-year-old in Jammus Kathua. The BJPs leaders in the state, however, did not confirm the development. Mehbooba Mufti has already accepted the resignations of two BJP ministers who had participated in a rally in support of the people arrested in connection with the rape-murder. With the resignations, the number of ministers in the state government came down to 22, including nine from the BJP. The Kathua incident has again strained the ties between the BJP and PDP, which became unpopular in the state after forming a governing alliance with the saffron party in 2015. The Jammu and Kashmir CM told the BJP that for the coalition to survive, the two ministers would have to quit, a close aide of Mehboobas said last week. The state unit of the BJP was unhappy about the resignations but had to comply with a directive straight from Prime Minister Narendra Modi, said a party leader. One of the complaints of the state unit was that Mehbooba had not acted on the Cabinet reshuffle despite the BJP pressing for it. There are three vacancies in the council of ministers in the state, as the PDP had last month removed its finance minister Haseeb Drabu after his controversial remark that Kashmir was not a political issue. Reports had said in February that the reshuffle was being planned to bring fresh faces in the government in order to battle the anti-incumbency factor. A bomb went off outside the office of the Indian consulate in Nepals Biratnagar last night but no one was injured in the minor explosion, officials said. Spokesperson in the Ministry of External Affairs Raveesh Kumar said Indian embassy in Kathmandu was in touch with the Nepal government over the incident and that the security authorities in that country were investigating the matter. A minor explosion took place along the rear boundary wall of the camp office of embassy of India at Biratnagar, Nepal at about 20:15 hours on April 16. No one has been injured in the incident, Kumar said. Sources in the security establishment in New Delhi said the explosion caused a hole of around 1 feet by 1.5 feet in wall of the consulate towards the secluded rear side of the office building. They said no one was in the office at the time of the explosion. The camp office of the consulate was set up during the floods in Nepal and north Bihar. A senior officer of Nepal police said it was investigating to find out who caused the blast, according to Kathmandu Post. Investigating officers suspect that cadres of a local political group have caused the blast. The party had called a general strike in Biratnagar yesterday. The security around the blast site has been upped after the incident. Biratnagar is the industrial capital of Nepal and 6 km north of the border of Bihar. Social media users on Tuesday reacted sharply to reports that ATMs are running out of cash in several states, comparing the problem to demonetisation in 2016 and criticising the government. As reports of ATMs running dry came in, finance minister Arun Jaitley tweeted that the problem was temporary and caused by sudden and unusual increase in demand. #CashCrunch was the top trending hashtag on Twitter India at the time the story was published, with people asking ATMs had run dry and the authorities explaining the problem. Sample some reactions: It's everywhere now.. #CashCrunch looks planned. Looks like big announcement coming soon.. (@NanaKaSpot) April 16, 2018 #demonitisation anniversary celebration starts early by d govt.. #CashCrunch ashfaque nabi (@AshfaqueNabi) April 17, 2018 #CashlessATMs India goes cashless again. I suggest, make a habit of it.#CashCrunch Ashish kumar (@Ashish963499) April 17, 2018 Chalo, Fir se Paytm karo! How dare you not get the paytm KYC done? #ATM #CashCrunch Stuti Mishra (@StuteeMishra) April 17, 2018 The government stepped in to assure citizens that they had reviewed the currency situation. Over all there is more than adequate currency in circulation and also available with the banks, tweeted Jaitley. Have reviewed the currency situation in the country. Over all there is more than adequate currency in circulation and also available with the Banks. The temporary shortage caused by sudden and unusual increase in some areas is being tackled quickly. Arun Jaitley (@arunjaitley) April 17, 2018 However, the opposition was not happy and criticised the Centre, saying PM Modi had destroyed the banking system. Seeing reports of ATMs running out of cash in several States. Big notes missing. Reminder of #DeMonetisation days. Is there a Financial Emergency going on in the country? #CashCrunch #CashlessATMs Mamata Banerjee (@MamataOfficial) April 17, 2018 Modi Ji has destroyed the banking system. #NiravModi fled with Rs 30,000 crore & PM didn't utter a word. @RahulGandhi on #cashCrunch | ANI pic.twitter.com/AkG3WjHDrf Hindustan Times (@htTweets) April 17, 2018 The Delhi Police has filed a charge sheet against four Delhi University students for allegedly misbehaving with and stalking union minister Smriti Irani in 2017. The final report was filed before Metropolitan Magistrate Snigdha Sarwaria who took cognisance of the charge sheet and put up the matter for October 15. The four youths, identified as Sitanshu, Karan, Avinash and Amit, were booked on charges of stalking, criminal intimidation and intention to insult the modesty of a woman. I take cognisance of the offence as mentioned in the charge sheet. Considering the overall facts and circumstances of the cases, there is sufficient material on record to issue summons against the accused, the judge said, noting that the accused were on bail. In April 2017, the police had alleged that the drunk students had followed Iranis car in Lutyens Delhi, following which they were detained. Acting on a complaint, the police had intercepted the car in which the four youths were travelling. The students, in the age group of 18-19 years, were detained at the Chanakyapuri police station in the diplomatic enclave here. The incident had occurred near the US embassy, the police had said. It had claimed that the medical examination of the accused had confirmed the presence of alcohol in their blood. The Hyderabad police registered a case against a woman journalist for allegedly drawing a cartoon on her Facebook page insulting the devotees of Lord Rama and hurting the sentiments of the Hindus. Following a complaint filed by Hindu Sanghatan president and advocate Kashimshetty Karuna Sagar on Monday, the Saidabad police registered the case against Swathi Vadlamudi, a journalist working with an English daily under Section 295 (a) of the Indian Penal Code (Deliberate and malicious acts, intended to outrage religious feelings of any class by insulting its religion or religious beliefs). Swathi, who draws cartoon in the social media as a hobby, drew a cartoon and posted it on her Facebook page on April 10, expressing her anguish over the sensational Kathua and Unnao rape incidents. In the cartoon, Sita is seen telling Lord Rama: I am glad, I was kidnapped by Ravan and not by your bhakths. The cartoon went viral in the social media with thousands of likes and hundreds of shares on various platforms like Facebook, Twitter and WhatsApp. Sagar took serious exception to Swathis cartoon. There is nothing wrong in expressing her anger at Kathua incident and in fact, we, too, share her feelings. But where is the need draw Hindu gods into the incident? How does it bring justice to the rape victims? Assuming that a Hindu had committed the crime somewhere in Kathua, how is it justified to blame millions of devotees of Lord Rama? he said. He said he had lodged a complaint against her and also another woman Durga Malathi from Kerala, who also made a similar comment against Hindu gods in the social media. Saidabad Inspector K Sattaiah said he had asked the complainant to produce the evidences against the accused. We shall send notices to the accused and then, proceed with the cases legally, he said. Swathi said she had chosen the cartoon to express her views and it was her fundamental right to do so. The cartoon has received thousands of likes and comments appreciating my expression. At the same time, it also received a lot of vulgar, cheap and abusive comments against me in different social media platforms. Now, somebody has filed a case against me. I am yet to get any notice, she said. The Hindu Mahasabha president said he had received threatening calls from some unknown persons after filing the complaint with the police against Swathi. I also brought it to the notice of the police, he said. Telangana Union of Working Journalists president Allam Narayana and secretary Kranthi Kiran condemned the registering of case against the journalist for posting a cartoon in the social media. It is nothing but infringing upon the freedom of expression of a journalist, they said and demanded that the case be withdrawn immediately. The stage is set for one of the most dramatic and politically sensitive meeting of the Communist Party of India (Marxist) CPI(M) where its general secretary Sitaram Yechurys policy as well as the post may come under fire from his detractors in the party. The 22nd Party Congress will begin in Hyderabad on Wednesday amid the raging debate over political alliance with the Congress an issue that has virtually divided the comrades. Kerala, Andhra Pradesh, Tamil Nadu and some other states are opposed to the idea while West Bengal and a section of the Tripura have been backing a pact. While debate over party lines is very common in the largest Communist party, the attack against Yechury may reach an alarming level. A section of the party thinks Yechury may be replaced and pointed out the ele- ctoral defeat in Tripura, digression of the West Bengal unit during the 2016 assembly election from the stated party line and dwindling strength of the party under his regime as reasons. The West Bengal unit, which played a key role in elevating Yechury as the general secretary, stands solidly behind him and some Bengal leaders have threatened to revolt if he is replaced before his second term gets over. He is still the most acceptable Left face in the country and one of the most important Opposition leaders. Yechurys presence can attract youngsters, a leader, who didnt want to be named, said. The draft political resolution, which would come under intense debate in the Party Congress, clearly identifies the BJP, which is in power today and given its basic link to the RSS, is the main threat. The political line has its roots during the era of Harkishan Singh Surjeet when the CPI(M), for the first time, shifted from the theory of maintaining equal distance from both the Congress and the BJP to identify the saffron outfit as the primary threat. The draft resolution, however, states that the Congress represents the interests of the bourgeoisie and landlords and the- refore, we cannot have a tactical line which treats them as allies or partners in a united front. While Yechury faction has lost the battle to push the line of alliance in the last central committee meeting in Kolkata (by 55-31 vote) a leader in his camp cautioned that the war is not over. We will again push the line for adjustment with the Congress in the CPI(M) Party Congress. They need to understand the need for greater Opposition unity to take on the formidable BJP, said a leader. NCP leader DP Tripathy, who was an active SFI worker earlier, said, The CPI(M) needs to do an honest self-criticism. When there are talks about broadest united front against the BJP, the Left cant sit back and say they will not come with the Congress. The first list of candidates announced by the Congress on Sunday threw up five father-children duos who will battle it out in the crucial May 12 assembly elections in Karnataka. Two such pairs have contested previously and three debutants have been fielded alongside their fathers. The most prominent among them are Siddaramaiah and his son Yathindra, who will contest from the neighbouring constituencies of Chamundeshwari and Varuna, which the chief minister vacated for his son. State home minister Ramalinga Reddys daughter Soumya will contest from the Jayanagar constituency, which is next to the BTM Layout constituency, currently held by her father. Reddy was a five-time legislator from the Jayanagar constituency from 1989 to 2008 before it was split into Jayanagar and BTM layout constituencies after delimitation in 2008. Reddy won the two subsequent elections from BTM Layout. Reddy said while speaking to the Hindustan Times that he was confident that his daughter would win the Jayanagar seat. I had previously won from there, so I definitely know the constituency. Besides, the BJP legislator has anti-incumbency against him, he added. Law minister TB Jayachandras son Santhosh is set to contest from the Chikkanayakanahalli constituency in Tumakuru district, while his father will once again contest from the Sira seat. The father-son duos of M Krishanappa and Priya Krishna, and Shamanur Shivashankarappa and SS Mallikarjun have been fielded once again. Krishna was the richest MLA in the previous election with declared assets of Rs 911 crore. Shivashankarappa and his son, who are Lingayats, had opposed their own party-led state governments move to recognise the sect as a separate religious minority. The Congress leadership has come under fire for giving tickets to sons and daughters of senior leaders, bypassing the earlier one family-one ticket norm followed in some states, including Punjab. Working president of the partys Karnataka unit Dinesh Gundu Rao said the decisions to give tickets were all taken keeping the likelihood of victory in mind. In the case of really tall leaders, their families, too, become politically prominent. So these people are connected with their constituencies and the people there. Hence, we picked them because we feel they are likely to win, Gundu Rao said. In the case of Yathindra, it had already been announced that he would contest from Varuna. In fact, our discussions were more centred on trying to find the chief minister a seat to contest from, he said. In selecting Santhosh and Soumya we have actually posed them a challenge. In Chikkanayakanahalli, our candidates lost deposits in the past four elections, and there hasnt been a Congress legislator from that constituency for 40 years, said Gundu Rao, whose father was a former chief minister of the state. In Jayanagar, after the constituency was split in 2008 and her father shifted to the BTM Layout constituency, the BJP has won the two subsequent elections, he said. Gundu Rao, while explaining the decision on other debutants whose family members are senior party leaders, said in the case of Roopa Shashidhar, former Union minister KH Muniyappas daughter, too, the constituency was not a safe seat as the party had not won there in the last few contests. The spouses of two recently deceased sitting legislators have also been fielded. Former minister Qamarul Islams wife K Fatima will contest from his erstwhile constituency of Kalaburagi Uttar. Kirtana Rudre Gowda, the wife of YN Rudresh Gowda who died recently, is contesting from Belur. In the first list of 218 candidates for the 224 seats released by the ruling party, 103 of the 122 sitting MLAs have been given the tickets. Karnataka is one of the three states where it is still in power and the Bharatiya Janata Party is pushing for a comeback in the southern state ahead of the Lok Sabha elections next year. A win for the Congress would come as a huge boost not just for the party but also Rahul Gandhi, who took over as the party chief in December and has been aggressively taking on the Modi government in public as well as social media. The Congress won 122 out of 224 seats in the last assembly polls held in 2013. The Narendra Modi government is considering a more rapid tightening of norms than previously planned for bad loan resolution by making applicable the current 180-day timeline for the resolution of large Non Performing Assets (above Rs 2,000 crore) to smaller ones (above Rs 100 crore) too, according to a government official familiar with the matter who asked not to be identified. The original plan was to do this gradually over a two year period. The government has been under pressure from opposition parties over the seeming rot in the banking system -- including bad loans (which the National Democratic Alliance has pointed out, largely stems from loans issued during the previous United Progressive Alliance era), and frauds. In February, the Reserve Bank of India, the banking regulator, scrapped several debt restructuring schemes and said in a statement that in cases where the banking sectors aggregate exposure is over Rs 2,000 crore in large accounts that have been classified NPAs, banks have to implement a resolution programme within 180 days, failing which they have to launch insolvency proceedings singly or jointly,under the Insolvency and Bankruptcy Code 2016 (IBC) within 15 days from the expiry of the said timeline. RBIs intent at the time was to crack down on both NPAs and restructured loans. The banking system has around Rs 10 trillion of stressed assets, according to some estimates. Of this, approximately Rs 7.7 trillion is NPAs and the rest, restructured loans, where a resolution process has been launched. But stretching the threshold to Rs 100 crore, if that number is true seems to be a classic instance of overkill, a banking sector analyst said, asking not to be identified because he says he doesnt want to be seen to be condoning defaults. The reduction of the threshold may happen earlier than expected, an official said. Still, the move, if it happens, will not be unexpected. In the February statement itself, RBI said that it could announce a similar resolution deadline for accounts with aggregate exposure between Rs 100 crore and Rs2,000 crore , over a two year period. When that happens, smaller loans, and more companies will be on the radar of lenders. Declaring a loan default as an insolvency means banks will be allowed to seize assets like it had done in the Kingfisher airline episode. To be sure, a significant chunk of the NPAs in the system are from large defaulters. For instance, the 12 largest account for a fourth of gross NPAs. The latest move comes amid the fierce political criticism against the government following the fraud at two public sector banks: Punjab National Bank and UCO Bank. Public sector banks account for 70% of the Indian banking industry and their gross Non-Performing Assets have increased by over 4,54,000 crore between March 2015 and June 2017, according to government data, forcing the government and RBI to rethink their strategy. A village panchayat in Haryanas Sonepat district has barred girls from using mobile phones and wearing jeans as it makes them elope with boys. Prem Singh, the sarpanch of Ishapur Kheri villagein the heart of khaplandhad ordered this diktat around a couple of months ago during a panchayat, but has got active now to ensure that the ban is implemented. The sarpanch said three college-going girls from the village had eloped with boys two years ago against their familys wishes, bringing shame to the entire village. It was found that those three girls used to keep mobile phones and wear modern clothes, he said. When they (girls) use mobile phones, they get in touch with boys and make plans to run away with them. By wearing modern clothes like jeans, they attract unnecessary attention, Singh said, while talking to HT. The sarpanch said he has two daughters, both of whom are married. He also has a granddaughter in Class 9, who is only allowed to use a simple phone for calling facility under her parents guidance. The decision of the sarpanch has been appreciated by many villagers. After what happened in the village, it is a good step. We have a daughter in Class 10, but we have not given her mobile phone, said Surender Singh, a panch in the village who works in government service. Ishapur Kheri village has a population of over 5,000. However, Divyam Malik, 23, whose elder sister from the village has gone to study in the US, has slammed the panchayat order. We were not even aware of this diktat until recently when the sarpanch came here to interact with our family. Of course, we are not going to follow it. Today, everything happens on the internet. How can we expect girls not to use it? he asked. Another panchayat member in the village, Anil Singh, said he had quit the panchayat after the sarpanch ordered this diktat. I told him he is regressive. But he continues with his agenda, he said. Announcing such diktats has been common in this part of Haryana that has influence of khap panchayats, who have in the past blamed jeans and chowmein for incidents of rape. India will restart negotiations this month with the new regime in Nepal on setting up the 6480 MW Pancheshwar multi-purpose hydro-electric project. The governing body meeting of the Pancheswar development authority which has members of both India and Nepal, is likely to be held on April 25, followed by meeting of experts next month, said an official in the Union water resources ministry who did not want to be named. The Indian delegation for the Pancheswar development authority meeting will be headed by UP Singh, secretary water Resources, while the group of experts meeting will be headed by chairman of the central water commission, Maqsood Hussain. The governing body meeting is scheduled to be held in Kathmandu while the date and venue for the experts group meeting is yet to be decided. All the contentious issues like benefit water sharing will be discussed in the two meetings, the official said. Pancheswar, a multi-purpose project conceived under 1996 Mahakali treaty between India and Nepal, got a fillip when Prime Minister Narendra Modi visited Nepal in 2014. A Pancheshwar development authority was set up consequently formed to finalise the project. The water resources ministry official said five meetings of the governing body of Pancheshwar development authority have been held so far, the last of which was about eight months ago. The detailed project report of Pancheshwar multi-purpose project was submitted in November 2016 to the Pancheswar development authority and the governments of the two countries. Officials say New Delhi was waiting for the new regime to settle in Nepal before restarting the negotiations. Some clauses of the treaty, like water allocation and power purchase still do not seem to be completely resolved. The project is expected to submerge 11,600 hectares of mountain area out of which 7,600 hectares are in three districts of Uttarakhand while the rest is in Nepal. The public hearings for the project in Uttarakhand were held In August 2017, but the contentious issues in the detailed project report (DPR) with Nepal remained unresolved in the meeting held during the then Prime Minister Sher Bahadur Deubas visit to India last August. The water resources ministry official mentioned above said some headway was made during the visit of Deubas successor KP Oli earlier this month. The project is to come up near the Pancheshwar temple, 2.5 km downstream of the confluence of the Mahakali and Sarju rivers. The project will have two dams for India and Nepal working in tandem. Tripura chief minister Biplab Kumar Deb has given a new spin to the evolution of modern communication technology, saying that the Internet is not something new but existed even during the Mahabharata period. Deb was speaking at a Regional Workshop on Computerisation and Reforms at Pragna Bhawan in Agartala on Tuesday. Elaborating, Deb said episodes of the 18-day epic war in Kurukshetra were relayed by narrator Sanjay to the blind king Dhritarashtra with the help of internet technology. Yeh desh wo desh hai, jisme Mahabharat mein Sanjay ne bethke Dhritarashtra ko yudh me kya ho raha tha bol raha tha. Iska matlab technology tha, internet tha, satellite tha... (This is the country where the episodes of the Mahabharat war were narrated to Dhritarashtra by Sanjay. This means technology was there, Internet was there, satellite was there..., Deb said in his speech. Deb then added that technology was invented more than thousand years ago and that the National Informatics Centre (NIC) was just using it. I congratulate the NIC for their jobs but you people didnt discover technology. It was discovered much earlier. Even the European countries can claim that they have invented the technology but in reality, the technology was ours. Many of our Microsoft engineers are working in USA and other countries. My country is rich in culture, he said. Expressing his gratitude to Prime Minister Narendra Modi for focussing on digitisation, Deb said the entire country became familiar with the world of technology only after he (Modi) assumed power. Our prime minister himself is active on social networking sites and he asks the MPs and even chief ministers about their status and comments on these sites. We are lucky enough to get a guardian-like prime minister, Deb said. In reference to digitisation of the Public Distribution System (PDS), the chief minister said it would ensure transparency in distribution of food items through the ration card system. Till date, 97.72% ration cards in the state have been linked with Aadhaar cards, the chief minister claimed. Technology should not be limited to rich people only. It should be made accessible by the poor too. The poor will benefit with digitisation of PDS, he added. The newly-elected BJP government has declared that it plans to make Tripura a model state in the next three years. In the early 1990s, then Congress-led government at the Centre introduced the Look East Policy, a novel concept that aimed to turn the countrys Northeast into the gateway to the Asia-Pacific region, and help build stronger ties with Indias extended neighbourhood. The policy remained Indias pivot for successive governments, including the first National Democratic Alliance regime led by BJP veteran Atal Bihari Vajpayee from 1999 to 2004. While dividends of the Look East policy can be put up for debate, the Narendra Modi government, riding high on its landslide victory in the 2014 parliamentary elections, had different plans altogether for the oil-rich and tea-growing region, located at a strategic junction of China, Bangladesh, Bhutan and Myanmar. Addressing the East Asia Summit in the Myanmarese capital of Nay Pyi Taw, Prime Minister Narendra Modi told the audience comprising several world leaders, including then US President Barrack Obama, that his government had accorded high priority to turn Indias Look East policy into the Act East policy. And somewhere between the erstwhile Look East policy and the re-branded Act East approach lies the journey the northeastern states have taken since the BJP came to power at the Centre. Joined to the mainland with a thin strip of land called the Chickens Neck, the Northeast remained for most part since Independence as the land of insurgencies and exotic tribes. Successive governments responded to the armed rebellions with brute force that left communities alienated and angry. And it was this sense of alienation that two policies tried to address in the development-deprived region. The (Act East) policy serves two purposes for the government. Stronger trade and business ties with other South East Asian countries and development opportunities to the north-east states. And development is the best anecdote to insurgency, a senior home ministry official said requesting anonymity. Multiple home ministry officials HT spoke to agreed that militancy in the northeast is on the decline and that government data supports this fact. From 1,024-odd insurgency-related incidents across the region in 2012, the number came down to 308 in 2017. Taking credit for the improving security scenario, junior home minister Kiren Rijiju who himself hails from Arunachal Pradesh told Parliament recently that in 2017 insurgency-related incidents declined by 63% since 2014, the year the BJP came to power at the Centre. Rijijus claim must be taken with a pinch of salt. Last week, the National Socialist Council of Nagalim (Isak-Muivah) which leads the oldest-running insurgency in the country accused Rijiju of vitiating the environment of negotiation, after the minister said the outfit had dropped sovereignty in the ongoing political talks with the Centre. HT could not reach Rijiju for his comments on the issue despite repeated attempts. The BJP-led governments confidence in solving the decades-old impasse lies in a framework agreement signed between the NSCN (I-M) and the Centre in August, 2015, aimed at building consensus for the modalities of the final Naga peace accord. Terms of the agreement are under wraps despite repeated attempts by opposition parties to force the government to reveal details. On the contrary, it is the NSCN-IM which is keen on keeping the agreement a secret and we are respecting their demand, said a home ministry official. The NSCN-IMs frustration over the delay in finding a permanent solution was evident recently when the outfit backed a call by civil society groups for boycotting the assembly polls in Nagaland. The issue was later resolved and the BJP went on to form the government in the state by aligning with the Nationalist Democratic Peoples Party. However, finding a permanent solution to the impasse will be one of the biggest challenges for the government. Then there are other issues as well, such as the implementation of the 1985 Assam Accord and other agreements with militant outfits of Assam the United Peoples Democratic Solidarity (UPDS) and Dima-Halam-Daogah (DHD). Several militant outfits also continue to be active, though their strengths have been severely dented. In Assam, for instance, the main militant group is ULFA (Independence) which has been limited to northern parts of the state. In Arunachal Pradesh and Manipur, active militant groups such as the United National Liberation Front (UNLF), Peoples Liberation Army (PLA), Kangleipak Communist Party and so on have been suffered irreversible losses, a senior paramilitary official. Official data shows that more than 830 suspected militants have been killed since 2012. Several militant groups are also holding talks with the government. Insurgency, though, is not the only issue facing the Northeast. The home ministry admits that the situation in the region continues to be fragile the region is rife with inter-state border disputes, ethnic tensions and movements opposing immigration, both internal and external. The terrain, the state of socio-economic development and historical factors such as language, ethnicity, tribal rivalry, migration, control over local resources and a widespread feeling of exploitation and alienation have resulted in a fragile security situation in the north eastern states, said an official internal document seen by HT. This has resulted in violence and diverse demands by various Indian insurgent groups (IIGs). The demands vary from sovereignty in some cases to independent state or homeland or simply better conditions for ethnic groups, the document added. Internal security expert Gurmeet Kanwal, who retired as a brigadier, said the lack of coordination between states and central government in the past was one of the main reasons behind the situation in Northeast. The nature of the problem in Northeast is a political one besides being an internal security issue. A coherent approach with inter-government and departmental coordination is the only way forward, Kanwal said, adding the stakeholders in the states must be kept in the loop while framing policies for the region. In Assam, illegal migration from Bangladesh has been a sensitive issue for decades, dividing people on religious and linguistic lines and sparking one of the worst communal flare-ups in the country, in the small hamlet of Nellie in Morigaon district, where more than 2,000 Muslims were killed by ethnic tribals on February 18, 1983. Unofficial count put the number of dead at more than 10,000. The Centres move to amend the Citizenship Act that would give Indian citizenship to Hindu migrants from Bangladesh has riled many in the state, including the BJPs ruling partner the Asom Gana Parishad. Another point of friction is the ongoing process to update the National Register of Citizens, with one section accusing the state government of conspiring to leave out genuine Indian citizens on the basis of their religion. Nationalistic groups claim that names of illegal migrants are being included in the NRC, defeating the very utility of the process. The NRC updation process involves enlisting the names of those persons or their descendants whose names appear in any of the electoral rolls up to 1971, the 1951 NRC or any of the admissible documents. The first draft of the NRC was published in December-end as per the Supreme Court directive, with the second draft expected to be published later this year. Migration has been a vexed issue in other states too, including Tripura, where the BJP managed to displace the Left government after more than two decades. About 35,000 Bru tribals are staying in six relief camps in Tripura for about 17 years after they fled their villages in Mizoram following ethnic clashes in October 1997. Their repatriation remains elusive with several groups in Mizoram opposed to their resettlement. Similarly, a settlement over granting Indian citizenship to at least one lakh 000 Chakma and Hajong refugees from Bangladesh, staying in Arunachal Pradesh for more than 50 years, is another issue that could have serious ramifications for the state. A large number of Rohingya Muslims, arrested in different states and kept in detention centres after they fled from Myanmar, could also pose a problem for the government owing to the sensitive nature of the issue. Prime Minister Narendra Modi on Tuesday held bilateral meetings with his counterparts from Finland, Denmark, Iceland and Norway and discussed ways to enhance ties with these Nordic countries in key areas such as trade and investment, and renewable energy. Modi met the leaders of the four Nordic countries on the sidelines of the India-Nordic Summit in Stockholm. Prime Minister Modi met Danish Premier Lars Lokke Rasmussen and held talks on renewing and enhancing cooperation. The two leaders expressed their mutual desire to take the relationship forward, External Affairs Ministry Spokesperson Raveesh Kumar said. After the bilateral meeting between Modi and Rasmussen, documents were exchanged between the two sides in areas of animal husbandry, dairying and urban development. Glad to have met Prime Minister Lars Lokke Rasmussen of Denmark. Our talks were productive and extensive, aimed at strengthening relations between our countries, Modi tweeted after the meeting. Prime Minister Modi also had an excellent meeting with his Finnish counterpart Juha Sipila. The two leaders discussed enhancing cooperation in trade and investment, renewable energy, space, waste management, start-up and education, Kumar said. Prime Minister of Finland, Mr. Juha Sipila and I met in Stockholm today. We had excellent discussions on deepening avenues of cooperation between India and Finland, Modi said in a tweet. Sipila also tweeted about the meeting, saying, Fruitful discussions with PM of #India @narendramodi in Stockholm. Recalled our first meeting in Mumbai in 2016 and had concrete negotiations how to promote our cooperation further in energy, space, education. Furthering India-Finland friendship...Prime Minister @juhasipila and PM @narendramodi had wide-ranging talks on expanding bilateral cooperation in areas such as science and energy, a tweet on the PMO Twitter handle said. Modi also met Iceland Premier Katrin Jakobsdottir on the sidelines of the India-Nordic Summit. We deliberated on ways to boost economic and people-to-people relations between our nations, Modi said after the meeting. PM urged Icelandic companies to look at India as an investment destination in blue economy and geothermal energy and strengthen cooperation in education, tourism and culture, Kumar said of the meeting between the two leaders. The two leaders reviewed the full range of India-Iceland relations during their meeting, the PMO said. Later, Modi also met his Norwegian counterpart Erna Solberg. Had a wonderful meeting with Prime Minister Erna Solberg. There is immense potential to boost relations with Norway especially in areas such as innovation, trade and clean energy, Modi said after the meeting. A wonderful meeting between PM @erna_solberg of Norway and PM @narendramodi. India values the deep-rooted friendship with Norway, a tweet on the PMO Twitter handle said. Prime Minister Modi had an engaging interaction with Premier Solberg on trade and investment, shipping and port-development, blue economy, renewable energy, health, IT and green transport solutions, Kumar said. Earlier in the day, Modi held delegation-level talks with his Swedish counterpart Stefan Lofven on a wide range of issues. The Nordic countries comprise Denmark, Finland, Iceland, Norway and Sweden. Prime Minister Narendra Modi on arrived late Monday night in the capital of Sweden, the first bilateral visit by an Indian premier to the Nordic nation in 30 years. Swedish Prime Minister Stefan Lofven received Modi at the airport. This is the first bilateral visit by an Indian premier to the Nordic nation in 30 years. Modi is on the first leg of his five-day foreign tour which will also take him to the UK where he will attend the Commonwealth Heads of Government Meeting (CHOGM). Here are the live updates: 10:00pm: Prime Minister Narendra Modi meets leaders of Nordic countries, in Stockholm. 6pm: Prime Minister Modi, along with Swedens PM Stefan Lofven, met children of Indian diaspora in Stockholm. 5.30pm: India and Sweden have agreed to strengthen defence and security cooperation, reports PTI news agency. 5.25pm: India and Sweden to work on a security agreement, Swedish PM Stefan Lofven says after talks with PM Narendra Modi. 5.10pm: India and Sweden have agreed on an innovation partnership and a joint action plan: PM Modi. 5.09pm: Sweden has been a strong contributor in Indias Make in India campaign. Swedish PM led a big delegation to the Mumbai summit in 2016, says PM Modi. 5.08pm: This is my first visit to Sweden and a visit by an Indian PM after a gap of nearly 30 years: Prime Minister Narendra Modi in Stockholm 5.07pm: I would like to commend the Indian govt and its strong focus on innovation as a key to progress and prosperity: Swedish PM Stefan Lofven. 5.05pm: PM Narendra Modi and his Swedish counterpart Stefan Lofven issue press statements in Stockholm. 4.56pm: Prime Minister Narendra Modi and his Swedish counterpart Stefan Lofven witness signing and exchange of Joint Innovation Partnership and announcement of adoption of the Joint Action Plan: ANI 3.23pm: The ministry of external affairs said that PM Modi and PM Lofven had a productive exchange of views on bilateral and regional issues. 2.45pm: PM meets Swedish Prime Minister Stefan Lofven in Stockholm. 2.16pm: PM Modi meets Carl XVI Gustaf(King of Sweden) in Stockholm and exchanged views on strengthening bilateral cooperation across several sectors. 7.30am: PM Modi met the Indian diaspora, including students from the KTH Royal Institute of Technology of Sweden, outside a hotel minutes after arriving in the country. 7:15am: PM Modi arrived in Stockholm and thanked Prime Minister Stefan Lofven for the warm welcome at the airport. Scripting history! PM @narendramodi arrives in Stockholm on a first bilateral visit by an Indian PM in 30 years to a warm and personal welcome by @SwedishPM Stefan Lofven at the airport and to participate in the first ever India-Nordic Summit. pic.twitter.com/leAsRMGKT3 Raveesh Kumar (@MEAIndia) April 16, 2018 PM Modis itinerary in Sweden: The prime minister will hold bilateral talks with his Swedish counterpart on Tuesday. Modi said he and Lofven would also interact with top business leaders of both countries and chart out a future roadmap of cooperation in sectors such as trade and investment, science and technology, clean energy and smart cities. India and Sweden will on Tuesday co-host the first ever India-Nordic Summit, where, apart from Modi and Lofven, the Prime Ministers of the other four Nordic countries of Denmark, Finland, Iceland and Norway will also be present. Modi will hold separate bilateral meetings with the leaders of the other four Nordic countries on the sidelines of the summit. The prime minister said he would also call on King of Sweden Carl XVI Gustaf. (With agency inputs) Under attack from the BJP for virtual washout of the recent Budget session of Parliament, Congress president Rahul Gandhi on Tuesday hit back, saying Prime Minister Narendra Modi has the time to travel all over the country, but could not spare 15 minutes for Lok Sabha. The Prime Minister is travelling across the country but he does not have 15 minutes to give a speech in the Lok Sabha, Rahul Gandhi told reporters in an informal chat on the second day of his three-day visit to his Parliamentary constituency of Amethi. 15 minute de dein , khare nahi ho payenge Lok Sabha mein (He will not be able to face the Lok Sabha even for 15 minutes, he will not be able to answer our queries), Rahul said. Its a case of direct theft in the Rafale deal... Rs 45,000 crore have been given to his (Modis) industrialist friend, he said, referring to the Indo-French inter-governmental pact inked in September 2016 for buying 36 off-the-shelf Dassault Rafale twin-engine fighters for the Indian Air Force. The Congress president said, Jobs were snatched but the Prime Minister did not speak a word on it. He (Modi) refers to Nirav Modi as Nirav and Mehul Choksi as Mehul bhai and this is a fact... whose achhe din (good days) have come... Modi ji had said good days would come for the people but the reality is achhe din have come for only 15 people like Nirav Modi and Mehul Choksi, while for the farmers, labourers and the poor, these are bad days, he said. Nirav Modi fled with the countrys money, but the PM did not utter a word... he took out the Rs 500 and Rs 1000 notes from the pockets of the common man in the name of demonetisation and put them in the pocket of Nirav Modi. On Friday, Prime Minister Narendra Modi decided that the two Jammu and Kashmir (J&K) ministers Lal Singh and Chander Prakash Ganga in the eye of a storm for participating in a rally defending the Kathua rape accused had to go, said two leaders familiar with political developments that led up to the resignation. The PM and the BJPs national leadership, including home minister Rajnath Singh, party president Amit Shah, partys general secretary (organisation) Ram Lal, and general secretary in charge of J&K affairs Ram Madhav, then spent the day in overruling the concerns and objections of the state unit. By that evening, both ministers had sent their resignations to the party state unit chief, which was forwarded to CM Mehbooba Mufti the next day. Meanwhile, Jammu and Kashmir governor NN Vohra on Monday accepted the resignations of both the ministers. Leaders involved with the developments reconstructed the sequence of events from Friday . None of them wished to be identified. With the details of the Kathua charge sheet generating widespread political and public outrage last week, Modi decided that the continuation of the ministers in the J&K government was untenable. On Friday, he called a party leader and conveyed the decision. The PM categorically said the ministers must go. The PMs decision was based on the fact that the party must not be seen as defending rape accused, nor of communalising an issue and crime as heinous as rape. Earlier in the week, Mufti had met both the PM and home minister Singh to convey concerns about the situation in Jammu due to the incident and had informally conveyed the need for action. The state unit of the BJP was unhappy at the PMs decision and communicated its concerns to the leadership. It suggested that this would demoralise the party rank and file; and this was a deliberate conspiracy by the Mehbooba Mufti government, which had done little to address BJPs concerns, said a leader who was in communication with them. State leaders also emphasised that this case was three months old and there was nothing against the party leaders; that there were NIA cases against Mehboobas own ministers but little action had been taken against them; and any such action in response to pressure from the media and Mehbooba would hurt the party electorally, he added. The objections were overruled. While recognising that it may harm us, the partys national leadership was clear. It had to keep in mind the bigger picture, the larger interest. No one was comfortable with the party being seen as associated with rape accused. It was also wrong to communalise the issue, said one of the persons familiar with the backroom developments ahead of the resignations. After intense parleys between Singh, Shah, Ram Lal and Ram Madhav, everyone agreed that the PMs decision had to be implemented immediately. The two ministers were told they could send their resignation to the state unit chief instead of the CM. The same evening, the PM used his speech on the occasion of the inauguration of the Ambedkar National Memorial to publicly condemn the incident and promise justice. Madhav, who was in Singapore, returned late on Friday evening and went to Jammu on Saturday morning. The probe into the case of a female faculty member of a college allegedly advising students to extend sexual favours to some university officials in return for higher marks and money was on Tuesday transferred to Tamil Nadu Crime Branch Police. Assistant professor Nirmala Devi was arrested on Monday on a complaint by the college and a womens forum after an audio clip of her purported conversation with students went viral on social media on Sunday. Devi of Devanga Arts College in Aruppukottai in Virudhunagar District, about 500 km from Chennai, was alleged to have made the overtures to a group of girls a month ago and had already been suspended. DGP TK Rajendiran issued the order transferring the case from Aruppukottai Town police station to the CB-CID wing considering the importance of the case, a police release said in Chennai. A report from Arupukottai said Devi was being interrogated at the local all-women police station and police have seized three mobile phones used by her. The revenue divisional officer also held an enquiry with the assistant professor, police said. The assistant professor has been booked under IPC sections 370 (Buying or disposing of any person as a slave) and 511 (Punishment for attempting to commit offences punishable with life or other imprisonment), besides under the Information Technology Act. In the audio, Devi is heard saying that the girls adjust with some officials, for getting 85% mark and money, in what is seen as a suggestion for sexual favour. She, however, has denied sexual angle to her advice and claimed she had made it in the right spirit and not with any hidden motive or agenda. State governor Banwarilal Purohit has constituted a high powered enquiry under retired IAS officer R Santhanam to probe the matter. Purohit ordered the probe in his capacity as the chancellor of Madurai Kamaraj University (MKU), to which the Devanga Arts College is affiliated to. Meanwhile, MKU on Tuesday said its proposal to form an internal committee to probe the matter is withdrawn in view of the governor appointing Santhanam to look into it. A release from MKU said Purohit had formed the one-man committee based on a report from the vice-chancellor PP Chellathurai. The enquiry will commence forthwith for which the university will be rendering all necessary assistance, it said. (This story has been published from a wire agency feed without modifications to the text. Only the headline has been changed.) Simultaneous elections for the Lok Sabha and state assemblies will require amendments to the Constitution as well as radical changes to the existing electoral laws and the conduct of the business rules of the LS and state assemblies, the Law Commission of India decided in its meeting on Tuesday. Listing out possible recommendations in its draft working paper, titled Simultaneous Elections Constitutional and Legal Perspectives, the panel agreed upon a number of legislative changes necessary for implementing the process of holding simultaneous elections, a top official said. The changes cannot happen without complete political consensus, he added. Opting for a wider debate on the issue, the panel decided to invite suggestions from the people as well as stakeholders from political parties, academia, and constitutional experts among others. It was unanimously resolved that the commission, before finalising the report, should seek public opinion, Justice BS Chauhan, chairman of the commission, said. The commission has set a deadline of May 8 for submitting responses. The changes listed in the draft include: amending the Constitution by a special majority in Parliament and ratification by more than half of the states; amending the Representation of the People Act, 1951; doing away with anti-defection law and parts of Schedule X of the Constitution that lays down the rules of disqualification of legislators, in case of a hung House. The anti-defection law does not allow party legislators to go against the party whip. The recommendations also speak of doing away with the no-confidence motion in the Lok Sabha and the state assemblies with a constructive vote of no confidence. In the event of a mid-term poll, the new House should only be for the remainder of the term, the commissions draft suggests. No confidence motion, if passed, will curtail the term of the Lok Sabha/state assembly abruptly, the draft reasons. The panel is of the view that a constructive vote of no confidence (allowing Parliament to withdraw confidence from a head of government only if there is a motion of confidence in a successor) will prevent early curtailment of term. The proposals also suggest amending the election laws to include the phrase simultaneous elections. A constitutional expert consulted by the commission and the government on the subject, who did not want to be named, said, Not all these suggestions are feasible. The leader of the majority party should be elected Prime Minister or Chief minister in a House by the members through consensus, it suggests. This will potentially provide stability to the government and, in turn, to the Lok Sabha/assembly, one of the proposals says. Chauhan said the panel will study the suggestions and comments that come in before finalising its proposals to the Centre. Union Minister Nitin Gadkari has said a new express highway connecting Delhi and Mumbai will be built at a cost of Rs 1 lakh crore. The transport and highways minister also talked about plans to build Chambal expressway that would be connected to the Delhi-Mumbai expressway. The Chambal expressway will benefit states like Madhya Pradesh and Rajasthan. Gadkari has announced development of a new highway alignment between Delhi and Mumbai, the ministry of road transport and highways said in a statement. A sum of Rs 1 lakh crore will be spent on this expressway ... Nitin Gadkari outlined major initiatives of his ministry for de-congestion of Delhi NCR. A total of ten projects are underway costing Rs 35,600 crore, it said. About 40,000 commercial vehicles enter Delhi on a daily basis, which cause pollution and congestion in the city state, Gadkari, who is also holding the portfolio of water resources and Ganga rejuvenation, said in the statement. An ambitious scheme of developing Eastern and Western Peripheral Expressways around Delhi was taken up, and the Eastern Peripheral Expressway will be inaugurated by Prime Minister Narendra Modi on April 29. Similarly, to ease traffic in East Delhi, Delhi-Meerut Expressway was envisaged, and its Delhi-Dasna portion will also be inaugurated by the Prime Minister on the same day by a road show. Gadkari said work on signal-free corridor from Dhaula Kuan to Airport has been awarded at a cost of Rs 260 crore. He said, eight-lane fully access-controlled Dwarka Expressway is being developed in four packages. While three packages have already been awarded, the work on the expressway is likely to start in a months time. Total investment on the project is Rs 9,500 crore. Additionally, under improvement of Mahipalpur at Rangpuri, a bypass is being envisaged to connect Dwarka/ NH8, he said. Regarding development of major junctions on NH8 in Gurugram like the flyover and underpass at IFFCO Chowk, Signature Tower intersection, Rajiv Chowk and Hero Honda Chowk, the minister said the work costing Rs 1,000 crore has been substantially completed. Hyderabad high court on Tuesday revoked the expulsion of two Congress lawmakers from Telangana from the state assembly and restored their membership terminated on charges of alleged unruly behaviour in the House. The court, however, did not bar the Telangana Rashtra Samithi government from taking criminal action against Komatireddy Venkat Reddy and SA Sampath Kumar, if the allegations against them of causing injury to the Legislative Council chairman were proved. Telangana assembly speaker S Madhusudhana Chary expelled Venkat Reddy and Kumar on March 13 for the rest of the term for allegedly misbehaving in the House the previous day when governor ESL Narasimhan was addressing the joint session of the assembly and council. The ruling Telangana Rashtra Samithi produced a video clip in which Venkat Reddy, who represents Nalgonda constituency, was seen throwing headphones at the podium and alleged that it hit Legislative Council Speaker K Swamy Goud, sitting beside the governor, resulting in an injury to his eye. The Telangana government issued a gazette notification within hours of their expulsion, notifying the two vacancies in the assembly and requested the Election Commission of India to conduct by-elections for the vacant seats. The two lawmakers moved the high court, challenging their expulsion. Venkat Reddy said he had not intentionally thrown the headphone and that the Legislative Council chairman was not hurt. The TRS members produced only one-side visuals of me throwing the headphone. There are no visuals as to where the headphone fell. Though there were at least two cameras focussing only on the podium, the TRS members did not produce any evidence to show that the headphone had indeed hit Swamy Gouds eye, he said. The high court, which took up the case, asked the Election Commission not to notify the vacancies till further orders. However, Venkat Reddy and Kumar were not allowed to cast their vote in the Rajya Sabha elections held on March 21. During the hearings, the high court called for the visuals of the entire assembly proceedings of the day. But the counsel for the government could not produce any footage despite repeated adjournments. Advocate general D Prakash Reddy, who argued the case for the government, resigned from his job reportedly for not committing before the court that he would produce the visuals. The high court, as a result, gave the judgement on Tuesday in favour of the two Congress leaders. It also struck down the gazette notification on the vacancies of the two seats and said Venkat Reddy and Kumar would continue as MLAs for the rest of their term. Venkat Reddy said he was happy with the high courts verdict and that it clearly exposed the conspiracy the TRS government hatched to demoralise the Congress party. We were expelled for no fault of ours, he said. Telangana Pradesh Congress Committee president Capt N Uttam Kumar Reddy demanded that chief minister K Chandrasekhar Rao and assembly Speaker S Madhusudhana Chary resign from their seats on moral grounds, following the court verdict. Telangana legislative affairs minister T Harish Rao, who moved the expulsion motion, refused to comment. In two clever tweets, the Indian Navy on Tuesday sent a subtle but powerful message to the Chinese navy: You are being watched in the Indian Ocean region or IOR. At a time the Indian Air Force is rehearsing war-time manoeuvres over the IOR under Exercise Gaganshakti 2018 with its Sukhoi-30 and Jaguar aircraft armed with anti-ship weaponry, the navy put out a tweet, along with photos of Chinese warships, welcoming the Peoples Liberation Army Navy to the IOR. The Indian Navy, on its official Twitter handle tweeted, #MaritimeDomainAwareness @indiannavy extends a warm welcome to the 29th Anti-Piracy Escort Force (APEF) of PLA(N) in Indian Ocean Region (IOR). Happy Hunting. The task force left the Chinese port of Zhoushan on April 4 for the Gulf of Aden to carry out anti-piracy missions off the Somali coast. It consists of 700 officers and soldiers, dozens of special operation soldiers, and two helicopters on board, according to a report on the PLAs official website. It is no secret that the deployment of Chinese naval units in the IOR is closely monitored by the navy, but it is perhaps the first time that the latter has taken to Twitter to drive home the message. In a second tweet half an hour later, the navy put out a map of the IOR reinforcing how a fleet of 50 combat-ready Indian warships was carrying out round-the-clock surveillance of the area. #MissionBasedDeployments From Persian Gulf to Malacca Straits & from Northern Bay of Bengal to Southern Indian Ocean to East coast of Africa @indiannavy with 50 ships on vigil 24X7 keep our Area of Responsibility (AOR) safe Anytime, Anywhere Everytime, the navy tweeted. #MissionBasedDeployments From Persian Gulf to Malacca Straits & from Northern Bay of Bengal to Southern Indian Ocean to East coast of Africa @indiannavy with 50 ships on vigil 24X7 keep our Area of Responsibility (AOR) safe. @indiannavy Anytime, Anywhere Everytime @nsitharaman pic.twitter.com/rxmBAed5Sa SpokespersonNavy (@indiannavy) April 17, 2018 It was in October 2017 that navy chief Admiral Sunil Lanba gave his stamp of approval to the mission-based deployment pattern to position combat-ready warships and aircraft along critical sea lanes of communications and choke points in the IOR. Lanba ordered the scaling up of the navys maritime footprint amid growing sightings of Chinese naval assets, including submarines, destroyers and intelligence-gathering vessels, in the IOR. The tweets were meant to send the message that every Chinese move in the IOR is being duly noted, said a senior navy officer. Navy officials said anti-piracy patrols and freedom of navigation were the reasons cited by China for its rising presence in the IOR, an area of strategic significance for India and the playground for the latest leg of ongoing Gaganshakti-2018 mock war. Extensive missions would be flown by the Su-30 and Jaguar in conjunction with the navys P-8I (submarine hunter planes) using long-range weapons to refine and practice offensive and defensive tactics against maritime targets, an IAF spokesperson said. BJP lawmaker Choudhary Lal Singh, who has drawn controversy for attending a rally in support of eight men accused of raping and murdering an 8-year-old girl, on Tuesday gave speeches in a dozen places in Kathua district to drum up support for his demand that the Central Bureau of Investigation (CBI) probe the crime. A disinformation campaign was launched by the media. We, the Dogras of Jammu were projected as pro-rapists. No one bothered to hear the grievance of the people. They are demanding a CBI probe and the accused demanded a narco test. Is it a crime? said Singh in Kootah Morh in Kathua district, where the girl was murdered in January. Singh and BJP leader Chander Prakash Ganga had to resign as ministers of the Mehbooba Mufti government on Friday after it emerged that they had in March attended a rally organised by Hindu Ekta Manch, a radical organisation which says accused in the Kathua crime are innocent. Singh said he attended the rally to defuse the situation in Kathua and he didnt support the accused. The media created a false perception of the entire incident. We want justice for the girl. She was our daughter and therefore a CBI probe becomes indispensable, he told journalists. Singhs motorcade and speeches in towns along the Jammu-Pathankot drew crowds as he criticised chief minister Mehbooba Mufti and said the state polices investigation in the Kathua murder couldnt be trusted. If she has a conscience she should have resigned. She still has the time to save her image, he said. The girl from the Bakarwal tribe, a nomadic community of Muslim cattle grazers, was abducted while grazing her familys horses near her home in January. The police said in its charge sheet she was held captive in a temple, sedated and raped repeatedly for a week before being bludgeoned to death because the main accused wanted to scare the Bakarwals and make them move out of the village. All the eight accused pleaded not guilty on Monday in the principal district and sessions court in Kathua. The Uttar Pradesh Sunni Wakf Board on Tuesday told the Supreme Court that the continuous use of Taj Mahal for annual Muslim events vests the ownership rights of the iconic monument with it. The Board, which was asked earlier by the court to produce documentary evidence to show it owned the Taj Mahal, however, could not provide the same. Senior advocate Salman Khurshid appeared for the board before a bench led by Chief Justice Dipak Misra and defended the claim saying that even in Fatehpur Sikri, the mausoleum and mosque co-exist with the fort. While the fort is under the Archaeological Survey of India, the mausoleum and mosque are managed by the wakf board. The bench told ASI to consider registering Taj Mahal in the boards name, without ownership rights. It told ASI counsel, ADN Rao, to explore the possibility, despite a stiff opposition from him. The court fixed July 27 as the next date of hearing. The bench is hearing ASIs ap- peal against the Wakf Board Tribunals July 2005 decision ordering that the Taj be registered as the latters property. There is a stay on the order. Defending the board, Khurshid said just because the ASI is managing Taj Mahal does not mean it is the owner. Management and right to manage do not give it the title to ownership. Nobody owns it. Ownership is with the Almighty, Khurshid remarked. The court was told that annual Urs and Ramzan events are held at the monument, which ASI permits. Rao cautioned the bench from giving ownership to the board. The plea cannot be entertained. Tomorrow someone will claim ownership of Red Fort, Fatehpur Sikri. These types of claims will continue..., he submitted. When the CJI commented that the board should not complain if the ASI was permitting limited activities in the precincts of the monument, Khurshid responded: Its our right and not a concession from them. The CJI said We can ask them (ASI) to continue with the facilities, but the moment you say right, then the problem arises. A local court in Jodhpur on Tuesday allowed Bollywood actor Salman Khan, out on bail in a 1998 blackbuck poaching case, to travel to the US, Canada and Nepal over next three months. Judge Chandra Kumar Songara of the district and sessions court granted the permission soon after a plea was filed by Khans counsel Mahesh Bora. We moved an application seeking courts permission to allow Khan to visit abroad. The actor is proposed to visit Nepal in May. He also has to perform at promotional events in the US and Canada in June and July, respectively. The court has granted permission for the trip to the three countries, Bora told reporters. Earlier, the court of chief judicial magistrate, Jodhpur, had on April 5 sentenced Khan to five years in jail after finding him guilty of poaching two blackbucks in 1998. The actor spent two nights in jail before he was granted bail on April 7. Granting the bail, the district and sessions court judge, Ravindra Kumar Joshi, had asked the actor not to leave the country without the courts permission. Salman was granted bail on a personal bond of Rs 50,000. The actor has started shooting for Ali Abbas Zafars Bharat, which will also feature Priyanka Chopra. National Bank for Agriculture and Rural Development (NABARD) has extended a total credit support of Rs 14,690 crore to Rajasthan government, banks and state public sector units and corporations through its financial interventions for the development of agriculture and rural economy during 2017-18, a growth of nearly 15% compared to last year, officials said. Addressing a press conference on Tuesday, NABARD chief general manager AK Singh said that during 2017-18, NABARD provided financial assistance of Rs 12,240 crore as refinance to banks for supplementing the financial resources of the banks in Rajasthan. Replying to a query, he said that there has been no impact of farm loan waiver on NABARD as it was a refinancing agency, but NABARD will ensure that the fresh credit line should not choke due to debt waiver and that cooperative banks and rural banks had adequate resources. The Rajasthan government had waived off loans of up to Rs 50,000 taken by farmers from the cooperative banks. Singh said the recovery position of cooperative and rural banks will become clearer by June 30, as agriculture sector credit cycle is from July to June. NABARD disbursed concessional loan of Rs 1,851.29 crore to the Rajasthan government for rural infrastructure development fund (RIFD) and sanctioned financial assistance of Rs 196.32 crore towards completion of Narmada Canal Project under long-term irrigation fund (LTIF) and released Rs 101.45 crore under this scheme during 2017-18, he said. Singh said there was an increased focus on the digital banking and the goal moving forward was that all the transactions are in digital mode. More than 25 lakh farmers will be given accident insurance for Rs 10 lakh between April 1, 2018, and March 31, 2019. Cooperative minister Ajay Singh Kilak said according to the chief ministers announcement of Rs 10 lakh accident insurance to farmers, the Raj Cooperative Personal Accident Insurance scheme has been implemented. He said all farmers taking short-term crop loan in 2018-19 from cooperative banks will be provided social security by compulsorily taking accident insurance. He said that in the current financial year, more than 25 lakh farmers are being given interest-free crop loan of Rs 16,000 crore and they will be included in accident insurance scheme. Kilak said compared to other states, Rajasthan is giving the maximum amount of accident insurance to farmers. Kilak said farmers toil in tough conditions and produce crops for the country. Therefore it is the governments responsibility to provide security to farmers and their families. So accident insurance of Rs 10 lakh is being given at an annual premium of Rs 188.80 per annum. Cooperative registrar and principal secretary Abhay Kumar said that if the farmer, who has taken the loan, dies or becomes disabled they will get the insurance benefit. He said that if the insured farmer becomes permanently disabled in the eye, hand or leg then Rs 5 lakh will be given. In case of disability of two parts of the body or death, Rs 10 lakh insurance benefit will be given. He said that from 2014-18 farmers have been given insurance claims of Rs 34.43 crore by paying a premium of Rs 17.14 crore. Two sisters, one of them a minor, were found shot dead in a field outside a village in Etawah Tuesday morning, further sullying Uttar Pradeshs unenviable reputation as the topper in crime against minors in the country. Police said both were shot more than once. One of the girls was 19 years old, the other was 14. The girls had left their house to answer natures call on Monday night and did not return. The family first informed the local police and then mounted a search in and around the village. Ram Kishore Shakya, the father of the girls is a farmer in Kailamau village, about 190 km from Kanpur. The bodies were discovered in an open field early Tuesday morning. I have no idea why my daughters were killed. We have no rivalry with anyone. I learnt about their deaths as we were searching for them, police quoted Shakya as saying. Police denied that the girls were raped but said an autopsy will establish whether they were sexually assaulted. We are investigating the two murders and a forensic team is working at the site, said Jitendra Srivastava, additional superintendent of police (crime). Police suspect a country made pistol was used in the shootings. The double murder comes on the heels of the alleged rape and murder of a seven-year-old girl by a 19-year-old man late on Monday during a wedding in Etah. More than a week after private medical colleges in Maharashtra refused to participate in the Common Admissions Process (CAP) for postgraduate seats, it has now come to the fore that more than 50% seats in these institutes have been allotted to students. As per information shared by Directorate of Medical Education and Research (DMER), private colleges confirmed admissions to 208 seats out of 400. For now, 192 seats remain vacant in private medical institutes and these figures can change if more institutes choose to admit students in the coming days. If not, then we will publish a second list for admissions minus these 192 seats, said Dr Pravin Shingare, director, DMER. HT had earlier highlighted that 11 private institutes refused to admit students even after Maharashtra-Common Entrance Test (MH-CET) cell allotted students to each of the 400 seats in the first CAP round. The five institutes to participate in the admissions process were Kashibai Navale College in Pune, Bombay Hospital and Medical Research Centre in Mumbai, Sancheti Institute for Orthopedics and Rehabilitation in Pune, Sanjeevan Medical Foundation ENT Post-Graduate Training Institute in Miraj and Swastiyog Pratishthan in Miraj. Controlling fees will affect the quality of education and we dont want that. Therefore, we requested to be exempted from admissions for time being because it makes no sense to go by the current fee structure, said Kamal Kishore Kadam, president, Association of Management of Unaided Private Medical and Dental Colleges. More than a month ago, FRA had sent out a notice to all private medical and dental institutes in the state, asking them to stick to common fees for all their seats, including those under the management and NRI quotas. The institutes had threatened to boycott admissions season if they were not allowed to charge three times and five times the regular fees for management and NRI quotas. After a series of meetings, the FRA had decided to allow private institutes to charge continue charging three and five times the regular fees for both the quotas for the year 2018-19. However, two weeks ago these institutes sought permission for all their quota seats, which constitutes 50% of the total seats (50% is merit seats), to be charged at five times the regular fees. TAIPEITaiwans president Tsai Ing-wen reassured residents that the island was secure Tuesday, a day before China is set to hold live-fire drills in the narrow strait that separates the two. Tsai spoke to reporters as she left for Swaziland, one of Taiwans few remaining international allies that has not been wooed away by an ascendant Beijing as cross-strait relations deteriorate. Chinese officials have suggested Wednesdays military exercise is a warning to pro-independence advocates in Taiwan as Beijing steps up its rhetoric against any challenges to its sovereignty. China sees self-ruling Taiwan as part of its territory to be brought back into the fold and has not ruled out reunification by force. Tsai said Monday she had told national security officials to closely monitor the surrounding situation. Please rest assured that we have the confidence and determination to safeguard the countrys security, she said at Taoyuan International Airport. Tsai added that maintaining a peaceful status quo across the strait was her governments mission. Although a fully fledged democracy, Taiwan has never formally announced independence from the mainland and Beijing has warned of military action if it ever did. Tsais Democratic Progressive Party is traditionally pro-independence and her newly appointed premier William Lai is a long-standing independence advocate.When asked if the upcoming military exercise was directed at Lai, Chinas Taiwan Affairs Office director Liu Jieyi said on Monday it was an action to safeguard the sovereignty and territorial integrity of our motherland. Beijing has stepped up military patrols around the island and used diplomatic pressure to isolate Taiwan internationally since Tsai took office in May 2016, as she refuses to accept both sides are part of one China. China has chipped away at Taiwans dwindling number of allies, with Swaziland one of the few not to have been convinced to give up official recognition of the island as a country. On her four-day trip to Africa, Tsai will take part in celebrations marking the 50th anniversary of Swazilands independence and the establishment of diplomatic ties with Taiwan. Observers say Wednesdays planned drills also serve as a signal to Washington, which sent aircraft carrier USS Theodore Roosevelt through the disputed South China Sea last week. The region has become a potential flash point, with the United States saying Chinas aggressive activities in the area pose a threat to freedom of navigation. Washington is also Taiwans most powerfulthought unofficialally and its biggest arms supplier. Relations have warmed between Washington and Taipei in recent months, including the passage of a bill last month that promotes visits by officials at all levels. It was a weak copy cat act, shadow of the original, yet the public interview of chief minister Devendra Fadnavis by Shiv Sena MP and editor of Saamana , Sanjay Raut, ended up revealing much more than was said on the surface. Raut was no Raj Thackeray and Fadnavis not a match to Sharad Pawar who had been in complete control of both interview and interviewer at his alma mater in Pune a few weeks ago. Fadnavis and Raut were in conversation at the Lokmat Maharashtrian of the Year awards last week, and both could be seen attempting to keep their animosity towards each others parties strictly under check. Yet when Fadnavis said Sena chief Uddhav Thackeray could have been the Maharashtra chief minister had he not broken the alliance in 2014, it was obvious that things had come full circle with the BJP. For it was not the Shiv Sena that broke the alliance but the BJP which pushed its allys back to the wall and did its darnedest to destroy the Shiv Sena at a time when Narendra Modis graph was at its peak and the party felt they needed no one or nothing to come to power on their own. Today, with allies dropping off one after the other and the partys currency at an all-time low, the BJP is making overtures to the Shiv Sena again. For it is obvious that even if the Sena keeps its head above water on its own in 2019, the BJP, which is already doing very badly at several by-elections in the state and elsewhere, is likely to be devastated. Fadnavis gave himself away by making a reference to so-called secular parties more than once in all likelihood the Congress and the NCP are coming together again for the 2019 polls and this time the BJP needs the Shiv Sena more than the other way round. But now it is Uddhav Thackerays turn to send them packing and it is no wonder he refused to meet state finance minister Sudhir Mungantiwar who has been entrusted with the task of restarting talks for the alliance. Mungantiwar is no Pramod Mahajan and the BJP today is in desperate need of a facilitator like him, not just in Maharashtra but also the Centre. I remember during the 1998 elections when L K Advani had sensed that the BJP would win big, the party had similarly tried to push Bal Thackeray against the wall on the seat sharing formula. They never dreamt Thackeray would call off the alliance but when, at a public meeting in Aurangabad, he announced that the Sena would teach Kamlabai a lesson, BJP leaders panicked. Kamlabai was a clear reference to the BJP party symbol, the lotus, and that brought Mahajan and Gopinath Munde hotfooting to Matoshree. They had to cool their heels for hours in the waiting room as Thackeray was said to be resting to shore up his energies for the campaign ahead. Advani who realised his mistake in pushing Thackeray too far, fared no better as his rest proved more important to the Sena supremo than any BJP leader. Mahajan knew he needed some desperate measure so he sent an SOS to Atal Behari Vajpayee who flew down from Delhi. Only then did Thackeray give up the pretence of resting and thats how Mahajan, Munde and Advani got a look-in again at Thackerays residence. The Sena supremo drove a hard bargain taking several prized seats, particularly in Thane, from the BJP - handing his ally a few duds elsewhere in the state in return! Then, as now, the BJP had felt that the Sena was not just growing in Maharashtra at its expense but also severely limiting its growth. The old guard of the BJP, though, having burnt their fingers once with Thackeray, were twice shy about pushing him too far again. The alliance was finally broken not just by Modi but also by the younger guard like Fadnavis and Nitin Gadkari who underestimated Uddhav Thackeray. According to one Sena ideologue in the know, they had fully expected to win more than 160 seats out of 288 in the assembly in 2014 and restrict the Sena to under 25. But when they couldnt do that in 2014 despite a massive wave, they know they cant do it now with much anti-incumbency both in the state and at the centre. After a generational shift, the BJP has blinked first - again! Can Uddhav Thackeray be his father - or more? The state government has decided to set up a single window system to provide all the permissions required for shooting of movies, documentaries, commercials, music albums and corporate films. It has also decided to provide all the required permissions within 15 working days. The facility will be available only for Mumbai as of now. The decision was taken in the state cabinet meeting on Tuesday. There were complaints about delay in securing permissions from different government departments, due to which the process was becoming a tough task for producers. Considering the concerns, the state government has decided to bring it under the Ease of Doing Business initiative. Further, the Maharashtra Film, Stage and Cultural Development Corporation Limited (MFSCDCL) has set up a website www.maharashtrafilmcell.com on which online application can be made for obtaining permissions. The MFSCDCL has linked 14 various government departments to provide the required permissions within a specific time period, said a senior official from the state cultural affairs department. The Syria crisis and the Nirav Modi fiasco has apparently cast a shadow on the sale of gold and diamond jewellery in the upcoming Akshaya Tritiya Festival on April 18, said jewellers in the city. Akshaya Tritiya is one of the major festivals when people consider it auspicious to buy gold and diamond jewellery. The subdued sentiment has forced jewellers to come up with various schemes such as luxury cars for winners, free making charges and other discounts. The Syrian crisis has increased the gold rate. Moreover, after the Nirav Modi fiasco, people are reluctant to buy diamond jewellery. We are seeing people inquiring about diamonds but ultimately settling for gold, said Kumar Jain, vice president, Mumbai Jewellers Association (MJA), After the Syrian bombing, gold prices breached Rs32,000 per 10 grams. Orra, one of the leading brands is offering upto 25% off on diamond jewellery. Both TBZ and Tanishq are giving discounts on making charges. Palak Jewellers is offering free equivalent amount of silver on the gold purchased while Umedmal Trilokchand Zaveri is offering 25% discount on making charges. Pankaj Kothari, owner, Palak Jewellers in Parel, said the rise in gold prices has decreased the capacity of people to buy. People who used to buy 5 grams of gold coins will now settle for 2 to 3 grams. This affects our business, said Kothari. Maharashtra clocks a daily sale of approximately Rs175 crore which peaks to Rs350 crore on festive days. However, there are indications of low sales this time. India is the largest market for gold trade and the worlds second largest importer. The bullion trade sector has been going through a rough phase in the past three years. In March-April 2016, the 45-day countrywide strike to protest the levy of excise duty had crippled sales considerably. Before that demonetisation had also played spoiler as people resisted buying gold. As University of Mumbai (MU) continues to struggle to declare results for law examinations, law college principals, university and state government officials met on Monday to discuss the possibility of holding first and second-year exams at college-level. The proposal was tabled at the meeting, attended by education minister Vinod Tawde, by some of the principals. Although sources said Tawde favours the proposal, he asserted that the final decision will taken by the universitys academic council and other bodies. LLB is the only programme where all the semester examinations are evaluated through the universitys on-screen assessment system . Some principals asked why cant these exams be conducted by colleges, just like regular courses, said Murlidhar Kurhade, dean, faculty of humanities, who was present at the meeting. Currently, varsity conducts all the semester examinations of three-year LLB and last three years examinations of five-year LLB courses. However, it only conducts the final year examinations for the other undergraduate (UG) courses while the first two years tests are conducted by the colleges. Bachelor of Engineering (BE) course is another exception, where the first year examinations are also conducted by the university. The university provides uniform question papers for exams taking place in colleges, but the assessment is done at college-level. The move is aimed at reducing the assessment burden of MU, which adopted the on-screen marking system last year, causing a delay and problems in declaring results. It took time for the university to remove the glitches in OSM. The assessment mess has spilled over and caused other problems. Some people are not comfortable with the on-screen assessment," said a principal, who attended the meeting. As many as 48 law colleges are affiliated to MU.Till last Thursday, the varsity had assessed only 51,000 out of 74,000 answer sheets of three-year and five-year LLB examinations held last year. According to varsity officials, answer sheets of law faculty take longer for assessment than other faculties, as most of the teachers in law colleges are professional lawyers, who teach on clock-hour or temporary basis. Srividya Jayakumar, principal, Thane law College, said the move has its own drawbacks. Unless the MU tightens its academic audit, having colleges conduct the examinations is not safe. Colleges may take these exams lightly, and assessment standards may deteriorate. Law courses can't be compared with courses like BA and BSc, as it's a professional course. The varsity needs to put in place a uniform schedule and other safeguards, before allowing colleges to conduct exams," she said. Unrecovered dues from electricity bills of agricultural pumps has reached Rs22,891 crore in the state. Despite the amnesty scheme proposing the waiving of the penalty and interest amount which amounts to Rs9,712 crore the government has been able to recover the dues only from 8% of the farmers in the past four months. The amnesty scheme was launched in November last year. The recovery of the dues has become a headache for the government amid the discontent among farmers over the agrarian crisis. The state government supplies electricity for agricultural use at a subsidised rate of Rs1.50 per unit by cross-subsidising it through higher rates for residential and commercial customers. The electricity dues led to rise in losses of the state-owned Maharashtra State Electricity Distribution Company Limited, the power distribution company. To reduce the losses the company began disconnecting the connections with unpaid dues late last year, leading to uproar among the farmers. Chief minister Devendra Fadnavis had to intervene and roll back the decision. According to the data collated by the energy department of the state government, the highest dues are from two districts in Western Maharashtra. Farmers in Solapur owe Rs2,557 crore while the dues from Ahmednagar district amount to Rs2,483 crore. This is followed by Jalgaon (Rs1,792 crore), Aurangabad (Rs1,539 crore) and Nashik (Rs1,267 crore). Around 38.73 lakh farmers owe the outstanding dues. We announced to waive off the penalty and the interest, which collectively amounts to Rs9,712 crore of the total dues. Despite this, only 8% of the farmers paid the dues over past four months. We are appealing the farmers to come forward to make the payment. Average dues from the farmers ranges from Rs5,000 to Rs10,000, said Chandrashekhar Bawankule, state energy minister. The dues from the other categories of the consumers, including residential, commercial and industrial, amount to Rs3,392 crore. A 19-year-old was arrested for conniving with his 21-year-old brother and cheating people by offering them extra loan amount and taking money for documentation. Omkar Korde, a commerce student, used to go to the residence of the victims to collect money for documentation from them as per the directions of his brother Akash Korde, who is yet to be arrested. We received a tip-off on April 13 on calls made by fraudsters to customers who had taken loan from a finance company, said an officer from Amboli police station. They used to call the customers using the companys data that was leaked possibly by an insider. They used to tell them that as their record of repayment was good, the firm had decided to given them an additional loan of Rs2 lakh, he added. If the customers agree for a top-up loan, they used to tell him that Rs6,000 was needed to process the documentation. The victims are mostly those who depend on loan for a big purchase. Akash used to get the details of the customers and call them. Omkar was told to collect the money from their house, added the officer. The police said Omkar has said he had cheated two people. A police informer received a call about the loan and alerted the cops. A team was formed comprising senior inspector Bharat Gaikwad and sub-inspector Nilesh Dhamne. Akash used to work with the same finance company and we suspect that he could have used his contacts to get the list of customers. He called up the officers investigating the case, boasting how he would get his brother out of custody, added the officer. Police suspect that the duo could have cheated more people. Apart from Akash, we are also looking for the person who shared the companys database with them, added the officer. Mumbai: Psychiatric ailments, diabetes, hypertension and dog bites are the common reasons for Mumbaiites to seek help at citys civic run hospitals, claimed a recent study by doctors from Brihanmumbai Municipal Corporation (BMC). For the first time, the BMC doctors studied disease patterns of patients who visited BMCs three-level healthcare facilities of 175 dispensaries, 15 peripheral hospitals and four tertiary care hospitals. The survey was done using data compiled between October 2015 and September 2017. From tertiary hospitals KEM Hospital, Parel, Lokmanya Tilak Municipal General Hospital, Sion, BYL Nair Hospital, Mumbai Central and Dr RN Cooper Municipal General Hospital, Vile Parle data of 5.59 lakh patients was studied. The study revealed psychiatric ailments followed by diabetes, hypertension and dog bites were the leading diagnosis at these facilities. At peripheral hospitals, where data of 5.26 lakh patients was studied, the common diagnosis included fever, diabetes, hypertension, dog bites and psychiatric problems. Dr Seema Bansode, professor and head of community medicine, Lokmanya Tilak Municipal General Hospital, Sion, and main researcher, said it is evident that lifestyle diseases are on the rise. However, because this is the first time data has been analysed on such a scale big scale, there are no comparative figures from previous years, she added. Number of patients with psychiatric diseases at tertiary hospitals is high because they are referred from smaller hospitals. But large number of diabetes and hypertension cases are common across healthcare facilities, Bansode said. In the dispensaries, where data of 62.74 lakh patients was studied, the common diagnosis was for acute respiratory illness, fever, diarrhoea, diabetes and hypertension. Dr Avinash Supe, director of medical education and major BMC hospitals, said this is for the first time that such a study has been undertaken. Based on this data, we will now plan which services need to be expanded, what drugs need to be included and manpower in which departments needs to be increased, Dr Supe said. It is again that time of the year, when your parents will ask you to buy gold. Akshaya Tritiya, considered an auspicious day to buy gold, pulls millions of Indians every year to jewellery stores across the country. But a reality check on gold prices is important before you decide to buy it. Though gold prices have surged in the past one year, the returns have been extremely low in the last few years. In fact, gold has given a negative return in the last five-year period. According to Bloomberg data, MCX gold has given a return of 3.74% for three years. Had you left the money in your saving account, you would have got a similar return. Meanwhile, five years returns stood at -0.37%. Despite dismal returns, if you still want to buy gold just because it is auspicious to buy on Akshaya Tritiya, there are ways to buy it for as low as a cost of a candy. In the last one year, MMTC-PAMP India, a joint venture between PAMP SA Switzerland and MMTC Ltd, has partnered with fintech companies and brokerage firms such as PhonePe, Paytm and Motilal Oswal to provide digital gold. Read more: Fall in gold prices perks up demand ahead of festive, wedding seasons in Asia We primarily were into business-to-business space. This was one of the steps to move into business to consumers. We started with Paytm last year, said Vibha Sarin Prabhakar, chief operating officer-retail operations, MMTC-PAMP India Pvt. Ltd, who has sold about 500 kg gold digitally in the last one year. After we got a positive response, we moved to other partner. In future we will do more partnerships to increase marketshare. We would look to continue with similar e-wallet companies, she said. BUYING GOLD FROM DIGITAL PLATFORMS? HERES WHAT YOU SHOULD KNOW You can buy and sell gold online FROM WHERE? Motilal Oswal, Paytm and PhonePe have partnered with MMTC-PAMP, which offers 24K gold with 99.9% purity PhonePe has also partnered with SafeGold which offer 24K gold with purity of 99.5% The fintech companies and brokerage firms are only platforms to sell and buy gold. You can leave the gold in the MMTC-PAMP vault for 5 years without any extra cost. When you want to redeem, you can either sell it on the platform and get the money or redeem it in physical formgold or coins. THE PURCHASE You can buy gold unit as low as 0.1gm To buy, you can use netbanking, credit card, debit card and UPI According to the rules, you have to do a KYC to buy gold above Rs50,000 and provide PAN if the purchase crosses Rs2 lakh When you buy gold from these platforms it will be held in MMTC-PAMP vault THE COSTS When you buy gold on these platfroms, there is no extra cost other than the price of gold and 3% of goods and services tax (GST) The buy and sell price of gold is always different. Buy price is always higher. However, when you redeem it in the form of physical gold, you have to pay making charges, transaction cost and delivery charges According to Paytms website, making charges for 1 gram of physical gold is Rs374, for 2gm it is Rs404 and Rs708 for 10gm REMEMBER Financial planners suggest you should look to invest in gold only if you want to diversify your portfolio Experts recommend an exposure of 5-10% in gold. Hence, if you are not planning for gold, first evaluate your asset allocation and then invest. The state government is hopeful of a uniform electricity tariff structure in Mumbai for people with consumption of up to 300 units. The state has convened a meeting next month with distribution companies supplying power in the city and the proposal for uniformity in tariff rate may be discussed with them. Energy minister Chandrashekhar Bawankule said on Tuesday the government will request companies to file a tariff petition with the Maharashtra Electricity Regulatory Commission (MERC) for uniformity. He said uniformity of tariff for consumers with usage of fewer than 100 units has already been brought and the endeavour will be to bring it further for consumers with usage of up to 300 units per month. As we announced earlier, the tariff rate for consumers with less use of power has been equal for consumers of all three companies in the city. We will request companies to submit a proposal to the MERC for such uniformity, Bawankule said. Besides the BMC-run utility BEST, Tata Power Company and Reliance Energy supply electricity to about 50 lakh consumers in the city. According to an official from the energy department, The proportion of domestic and industrial/commercial consumers of all three distributors is different, making the cross subsidy formula difficult to implement. Expert Pratap Hogade said, The minister has been making empty promises. The multi-year tariff has been passed by MERC to be forced until March 2020. The companies are unlikely to move for mid-term review of tariff just for uniformity. Even if they do, how are they going to adjust their losses due the changes in the rate. The Ghaziabad police arrested five people on Monday including one of the two sharp shooters who allegedly attacked journalist Anuj Chaudhary outside his house on the evening of April 8 at Rajapur. Four of the accused named in the FIR who were arrested in day, spilled the beans about the two shooters who were hiding in Loni following which the police launched a late night raid on the hideout. The two shooters tried to flee the spot on a motorcycle which had no number plates. They were warned to stop near Ator Nagla but they opened fire on police team and injured Sihani Gate station house officer, Vinod Pandey. In retaliation, the police also opened fire and one of the two bikers sustained a bullet injury on his leg. The other accused fled the spot leaving the motorcycle and efforts are on to nab him at the earliest, said Vaibhav Krishna, senior superintendent of police, Ghaziabad. Rohit Yadav, one of the accused who was injured in the shootout with the police is from Kasganj and residing temporarily in Loni. Police said he has a murder case against him and had been booked under the Gangster Act. Krishna said that prime conspirator, Shekhar Chaudhary, who is presently in Dasna jail, had allegedly hired two shooters for Rs 7 lakh to kill Anuj Chaudhary. The victims wife was recently elected as a councillor on Bahujan Samaj Party ticket during the recent local body elections. The case is fallout of long standing rivalry between the victim and the prime conspirator Shekhar since 2003. Shekhar and shooter Rohit Yadav were lodged in Dasna jail. Yadav got bail around six months back. Shekhar allegedly planned from jail to get rid of the victim and his cousin Yogender delivered initial amount of Rs 5 lakh to the two shooters near Diamond Palace (Kavi Nagar), in February, SSP Krishna said. On the day of the incident, the victim along with several men was walking towards his house when the men arrived on a motorcycle and opened fire. The victim sustained severe injuries after three bullets hit his abdomen and arm. He is recuperating at a hospital in Ghaziabad and stated to be stable. The four other accused arrested in connection with the case include Shekhars son Vishal, brother Bobby, Vikas and Yogender alias Tunda. The police have seized the Pulsar bike used by the two shooters and also the licensed revolver of the victim which was taken away by the accused after the attack. Posted Tuesday, April 17, 2018 6:00 am On March 27, Rogersville TOPS - MO 1234 held a TOPS Reunion at the Rogersville Church of Christ. TOPS (Take Off Pounds Sensibly) is an international, nonprofit weight loss organization. The guest speaker was TOPS Missouri Queen Karen Chaffin from Lebanon. She shared her weight-loss journey of losing 73 pounds to reach her goal. She accomplished this because of the support of her TOPS chapter and by cutting down portion sizes, drinking plenty of water and cutting out sweets. If you are interested in an affordable weight loss support group, please call 417-693-9036. Our TOPS chapter meets from 5:45 p.m. Tuesday evenings at Rogersville Church of Christ. First visit is free. For more information about TOPS or other TOPS chapters near you, visit TOPS.org. Explanations of the Donald Trump phenomenon often start with conservatives versus liberals, the rural-urban split, or perhaps race and immigration. All those play a role, but the accumulation of evidence is validating a hypothesis from New York Times columnist Ross Douthat: a big and very fundamental split in American electoral politics today is between different understandings of sex and gender relations. A recent poll by the Pew Research Center, Millennial Women, defined the group as those born between 1981 and 1996, favour Democrats by an extraordinarily large 47% points. Millennial men also lean Democratic, but the gap is much smaller, only 8% points. Because the Democratic Party has not had huge national triumphs as of late, the obvious inference is that the Republican Party is doing something to turn off those millennial women. I view the national-level Republican Party, at least in its current incarnation, as putting forward a vision of strong sexual dimorphism. That is, the underlying presumption is that men and women are very different, and theres a belief that in terms of norms, behaviour and the law, men and women should be very different. The symbols emanating from the White House reflect this vision. The Trump cabinet and advisory teams have been well-stocked with traditional white men in business suits. There doesnt appear to have been much deliberate attempt to pursue gender balance. Trumps manner projects an older American vision of masculinity; he even married a fashion model. His broader patterns of behaviour with women are well-known, and very far away from being gender egalitarian. This framework also explains why Trump has stuck with his (now slightly eased) transgender ban in the military. It would have been easy enough to let this announced policy slip away into oblivion, given how much else is going on, but the idea of reaffirming traditional male-female gender distinctions, and punishing those who challenge them, has a natural appeal in his worldview. In short, the Trump administration is projecting a symbolic and rhetorical vision of an earlier America where people fit into traditional gender roles. It is no surprise that millennial women, who have unparalleled opportunities for education and autonomy, are mostly responding negatively. Older white men, of course, are much more likely to be Trump supporters. In a recent symposium, the Weekly Standard correspondent Christopher Caldwell suggested that the Democrats have become the party of sexual morality. Thats insightful, but I dont think it is quite the right description either. Those on the left are more likely to criticise the sexual behaviour of powerful white men, as seen in the #MeToo movement. But when it comes to moralising about the behaviour of single mothers, or discussing the social costs of the large numbers of births out of wedlock, it is still conservatives who are taking the lead. The debate on abortion plays out a similar logic, where the value of autonomy for women is opposed by an alternative vision of responsible motherhood and the sanctity of the family and the foetus. The centrality of gender to current American politics surfaces even when the topic is race. A recent study by Raj Chetty, Nathaniel Hendren, Maggie R Jones and Sonya R Porter considers the mobility prospects of black Americans, including those from well-off families. The most striking result is that black daughters from well-to-do families do fine, but the sons do not. In other words, our race failings are gender failings too. Looking at gender also helps explain why at least some aspects of American politics seem to have become more polarised, with no apparent end in sight. Women have a higher level of education and influence than ever before, and that gives them a greater voice in politics. It has also created a backlash among many men. All of a sudden, there is a new clash of visions that had previously been suppressed. Youll find similar clashes around the world, even in Norway. One implication is that a lot of recently arrived immigrants may find themselves less opposed to the Republican Party than many Democratic strategists had been expecting. Not all of those individuals will have the gender egalitarian sympathies of the well-educated women who were born and grew up in the US. So how will this turn out? There is a tendency on the progressive left to think that enlightenment eventually arrives, and that egalitarian visions will outcompete the attempts to ramp up gender dimorphism. Im not so sure. Im struck by recent research that in wealthier economies, men and women tend to show greater personality differences, and that women are less likely to pursue STEM degrees. If we wished to give this story a Shakespearean close, it could be said that politics and sex are two topics that usually surprise us. Tyler Cowen is professor of economics, George Mason University Bloomberg View The views expressed are personal In the aftermath of last weekends United States-led missile strikes against alleged chemical weapons sites in Syria, the Russians say nothing has really changed. Analysts close to the Kremlin say that Moscow will continue to back the increasingly successful military campaign to restore all of Syria under the control by Bashar al-Assads government, as well as to pursue the peace process, excluding the US and its allies, which it initiated with Iran and Turkey last year. They say the Kremlin has become convinced that the US has no coherent endgame for Syria, and that the missile strikes and continued occupation of about a third of Syrian territory by the US and its local allies have no purpose other than to play the role of spoiler. Fortunately, the exchange of warlike declarations last week, in which Moscow hinted that it would hit back at US warships in the Mediterranean Sea if any Russian lives were endangered by US missiles, and US President Donald Trumps tweet asking Russia to get ready, appears to have been mostly theatrical posturing. Its clear that US and Russian military deconfliction teams co-ordinating in Syria worked together to ensure that Russian air defences were switched off on the night of April 13 and no cruise missile trajectories came near any Russian asset in Syria. Russias official reaction is to denounce these strikes as illegal and wrong, says Pavel Zolotarev, deputy director of the official Institute of USA-Canada Studies. They came just before a team of inspectors from the Organization for the Prohibition of Chemical Weapons was to begin its work at the site of the alleged chemical weapons attack in Douma. The fact that US leaders werent ready to wait for inspectors to do their job indicates they wanted to make a military statement, and didnt want it to be clouded by whatever the inspectors might find. Luckily, the Pentagon and Russian ministry of defence were in close contact, and made certain there would be no complications. So, the strikes had a mostly political and symbolic character. Yet they have introduced new tensions into the US-Russia relationship, which was already very bad, he adds. A top Russian military official now suggests that Moscow may equip Syria with its second-to-latest anti-aircraft system, the S-300, to deter future strikes by the US and its allies. A few years ago, taking into account a pressing request from some of our western partners, we abandoned the supplies of the S-300 missile systems to Syria. Considering the latest developments, we deem it possible to get back to discussing this issue, said Lt Gen Sergei Rudskoi of the Russian general staff. This new source of acrimony comes amid a widening storm of tensions between Russia and the West. The row with Britain over Russias alleged involvement in the nerve agent poisoning of former double agent Sergei Skripal and his daughter continues to boil. Mutual rounds of diplomatic expulsions have slashed the physical infrastructure of ties to the bone, leaving Russia and the US almost incapable of carrying out normal contacts. The larger question about Syria is whether Russia and the US can co-operate in the endgame, to bring a lasting political settlement to the brutal, seven-year-long civil war. Experts say that the Russian-led Astana Process, which bypasses the US, is not going well. The military situation in Syria is far better than it was a year ago. But, despite these meetings with Turkey and Iran, a political settlement looks no closer, says Fyodor Lukyanov, editor of Russia in Global Affairs, a leading Moscow-based foreign policy journal. Russias relationship with these two partners, Turkey and Iran, is very difficult, as are the relations between them. Putin puts a lot of effort into trying to keep his relations with [Turkish president Recep Tayyip] Erdogan on track, but its clearly very hard to do. Turkey issued a statement supporting US missile strikes, while Iran appears disappointed with Russias failure to deter them, Lukyanov says. Its becoming clear that there can be no workable settlement for Syria without direct agreement and cooperation between the US and Russia, says Vladimir Sotnikov, an independent West Asia analyst. That means the stalled Geneva peace talks on Syria, in which the US and its allies are full participants, will have to be revived. Things are certainly more complicated in the wake of these strikes. Russia is now worried that they may be repeated at any moment, he adds. But communication is still going on between us and the Americans in Syria its actually quite effective and so there is hope that this dismal picture can be changed for the better. Fred Weir is a Moscow-based senior journalist The views expressed are personal The local police have booked a 19-year-old man under the Protection of Children from Sexual Offences (POCSO) Act for penetrative sexual assault on his 13-year-old cousin that left her pregnant. Police said the boy, resident of Unnao, Uttar Pradesh, was a distant relative of the victim. The sexual assault took place when the girls family, also natives of Uttar Pradesh, visited Unnao for a wedding in February. The boy took her to the nearby fields where he sexually assaulted her, a police official investigating the case said. The girl narrated the incident to her family, who lodged a complaint with the police. Cops on Monday took the victim for medical examination that revealed she was six weeks pregnant. Police said a team will be sent to Uttar Pradesh to arrest the accused, who has been booked under Section 4 (penetrative sexual assault) of the POSCO Act. The charge, if held guilty, can invite jail time from seven years to life imprisonment. A local court will on Tuesday take up the anticipatory bail plea of Lt Col BS Sandhu (retd), owner of Forest Hill Resort and Worldwide Immigration Consultancy Services (WWICS), who is named in the murder of a 28-year-old CTU staffer. Besides, police will move a fresh plea on Tuesday, seeking directions to record the voice of Gurdeep Bains, an employee of the resort, who is accused of murdering the victim, Abhishek Guleria. Bains had refused to give his voice samples a week ago. Sandhu was summoned by the police on March 27 to join investigation after three employees of the resort liasoning officer Gurdeep Bains, his assistant Tarsem Singh and security in-charge Balwinder Singh, currently in judicial custody, had told investigators that they had found Gulerias body in the tank of the resorts sewage treatment plant, following which they informed Sandhu. The trio had claimed that it was on Sandhus behest that they had wrapped the body and dumped it on the Pinjore-Baddi road on the night of March 22. During investigation, police stumbled upon a voice recording on Bains mobile phone, allegedly of a conversation between Bains and the Lt Col. Thereafter, police had moved an application before a Kharar court seeking permission to take Bains voice sample to match it with the voice in the recording. However, Bains had refused to give his voice samples. Pakistans deputy high commissioner Syed Haider Shah on Tuesday said their government is considering the Indian authorities request to develop a religious corridor between Dera Baba Nanak in Gurdaspur and Kartarpur Sahib in the neighbouring country. Shah said this on the sidelines of convocation at Guru Nanak Khalsa College for Women, Ludhiana. Gurdwara Kartarpur Sahib is built on the historic site where first Sikh master Guru Nanak had settled with his followers. Shahs statement came a day after the ministry of external affairs (MEA) summoned him to lodge a protest against alleged attempts by Islamabad to raise the Khalistan issue when Sikh pilgrims from India are visiting the country. We are considering Indias request to develop a corridor between the two religious sites, he said while talking to HT. Sikhs bodies have been demanding a religious corridor for several decades. In August last year, a parliamentary standing committee headed by former Union minister Shashi Tharoor in its report presented in the Lok Sabha had said, The committee visited Dera Baba Nanak and came across the long-pending demand of people for establishment of an exclusive corridor from the Indian side to Gurdwara Kartarpur Sahib through which pilgrims can pay homage without any visa or passport. Dera Baba Nanak MLA Sukhjinder Randhawa said, We apprised the standing committee of Sikhs demand and it will be a welcome step if governments of both the countries develop the religious corridor. Sikhs will be celebrating the 550the Parkash Purab of Guru Nanak Dev and a procession should be taken out from Nankana Sahib passing through Sultanpur Lodhi, Dera Baba Nanak and culminating at Kartarpur Sahib, Randhawa said. The realty investment market in Asia is growing in more ways than one. While core markets such as Hong Kong, Singapore, Japan and China continue to hold strong, even in tough years for the realty segment, there are also new markets emerging, in countries such as Cambodia, Vietnam and the Philippines, catering to buyers across budgets. Asia is a dynamic market for both commercial and residential real-estate, says Somil Agrawal, a senior director at realty consultancy Cushman & Wakefield India. Across the region, changing demographics, rapid urbanisation and growing economies are making the region an attractive destination for real-estate investment. Rapid improvements in infrastructure promise to boost these markets further. While core markets in developed economies such as Singapore, China and Japan have a timeless appeal, Agrawal adds, new markets are attracting mid-segment buyers with their relatively low entry points and promise of short- and long-term gains. A recent report titled The rise of alternative real-estate in Asia-Pacific by realty advisory JLL states that that the region offers alternative sectors such as data centres, student housing and aged-care to invest in. There is a growing number of options here as a result, says Rohit Hemnani, head of alternatives for Asia-Pacific at JLL. This is among the factors driving the growth of investment in Asia. Tokyo, for instance, is home to 1.5 million undergraduate students but is only now starting to build student housing to global standards, says Hemnani. Similarly, there are data centres coming up in Indonesia and senior housing across the region. Equally important, prices are relatively low in these emerging markets and appreciation rates, relatively high. A report released last month by realty consultancy Knight Frank found that commercial property in this region continued to see rates appreciate even in troublesome 2017, particularly in cities such as Manila (capital of the Philippines), Jakarta (the capital of Indonesia) and Phnom Penh (Cambodias capital). Manila saw growth in 2016 too, a rough year for real-estate worldwide. And in Phnom Penh, entire new business districts are being built to meet growing demand. It also helps that Asian currencies have stabilised or appreciated against the US dollar, says Neeraj Sharma, director at the Grant Thornton realty consultancy. As these countries improve on the business sentiment index, yields in the commercial segment have improved significantly. Different strokes For the retail investor, the second-homes markets offer promise too. A beach property in Thailand or Cambodia comes at a relatively low price tag and has scope for excellent returns even in a few years, says Pankaj Kapoor, CEO, Liases Foras, a real-estate consultancy Cities such as Taipei in Taiwan and Kuala Lumpur in Malaysia have seen an increase of 5% in office rental rates over the past year, says Nicolas Holt, head of research for Asia-Pacific at Knight Frank. Every country has a different risk profile, adds Agrawal of Cushman & Wakefield. Due to a strong focus on development in emerging countries, for instance, these markets tend to have excess supply, especially in residential development. Norms vary too. Residential projects in the Philippines and Thailand have a threshold on foreign ownership while in Vietnam and Indonesia, foreigner investors can own limited real-estate assets and get shorter land tenures. Telugu actor Sri Reddy came into national spotlight after she decided to strip on a street to protest against casting couch in the Telugu film industry. The actor stripped in front of the Telugu Film Chambers of Commerce and claimed the industry bigwigs hire female actors from outside the two Telugu states because they put up with the industrys demands. She alleged, The reason is simple. Heroines from other states would go to any extent to satisfy the big people in Tollywood, whereas the local artistes are not so bold. This protest took place on April 7. Sri Reddy went on to accuse the Movie Artistes Association (MAA) of denying her membership. She said, I will make it a big issue at the national and international level, if my demands are not met. Here is a timeline of everything that happened consequently. April 8 The industry did not take the protest in the right spirit and came together to condemn Sri Reddy. They also asked why the actor did not file a formal complaint. On April 8, MAA organised a press conference where actor Meka Srikanth said, She has appeared on several TV channels and commented a lot on Twitter and Facebook. Her act has come as a rude shock to many younger generation stars in the film industry and created a fear among them. Actor Sivaji Raja asked why would director Teja hire her for two films if the industry was against hiring Telugu female actor? He said, Talented director like Teja has given her two film offers. Today, she is saying there are no offers for Telugu girls. Having starred in those movies, she has gone nude in public for cheap publicity. If we give membership to her, many other actresses will follow in her footsteps. MAA has some rules and regulations and everyone has to follow them and work hard day and night. On the same day, an executive meeting was held by MAA members. Actor Naresh said, We held an executive committee meeting this morning to discuss the issue of suspending her. The association has the right to suspend her as she has insulted both the industry as well as media with her publicity gimmick. April 10 Sri Reddy, in an interview to News 18, claimed that producer Suresh Babus son sexually exploited her. Later, while talking to a local Telugu news channel, Sri Reddy released pictures of herself with Abhiram Daggubati, Suresh Babus younger son. This is Suresh Babus son Abhiram and I havent revealed his name anywhere so far. Abhiram! Dont you feel ashamed? You know how you behaved in the studio. Everyone asked for proof, so here is the proof. See this photo, which clearly shows him kissing my face. Now start a rally. Let all Dalit and women associations come forward, fight and give me justice. Because of men like this, many lives are being ruined, she said. April 11 Sri Reddy released screenshots of Whatsapp chat messages with directors, comedians and scriptwriters from the industry. After speculations claimed that one of the conversations was between the actor and director Kona Venkat, the filmmaker said, Im shocked with some allegations made by one actress against some film personalities including me.. I demand the government to conduct through police investigation in these allegations and punish whoever are guilty.. Truth must prevail. legal action follows!! Its really pity that film industry and film personalities have become soft target to many people who are trying to gain cheap publicity... I definitely support taking Telugu artists in our films.. In Geethanjali u find only Telugu artists. But this is unacceptable. I condemn it. April 12 Sri Reddy alleged that she would also reveal names of powerful NRIs if action was not taken in the case. The National Human Rights Commission on April 12 took suo motu cognisance of the case and served notices to the Telangana government and the Union ministry of information and broadcasting. This notice was served based on the media reports that noted that there was no redressal panel or committee to address sexual harassment at work place for the film industry. After the notice, the Telugu Film Chamber of Commerce decided to form CASH - Committee against Sexual Harassment -- in accordance with the Vishaka Guidelines (in which the Supreme Court gave the first formal mandate against sexual harassment at the workplace; the law -- The Sexual Harassment of Women at Workplace (Prevention, Prohibition and Redressal) Act -- came into effect in 2013) in production houses that are registered with the said film chamber. It also decided to set up a sexual harassment redressal panel. The organisation also lifted the ban on Sri Reddy, imposed by the MAA, resulting in victory for Sri Reddy. Follow @htshowbiz for more ott:10:ht-entertainment_listing-desktop Mahesh Babus forthcoming political drama Bharat Ane Nenu, which features him in the role of a chief minister of a state, has been cleared by Central Board of Film Certification (CBFC) with U/A Certificate and without a single cut. The Siva Koratala-directed film is gearing up for release worldwide this Friday (April 20). If the industry grapevine is anything to go by, a whopping Rs 3 crore is being spent only on the promotions of the film. After a grand pre-release event which took place recently, the buzz intensified and as many as 300 hoardings have been put up in Hyderabad alone to promote Bharat Ane Nenu. This is unprecedented for the Telugu film industry. At the pre-release event last week, Mahesh said he had qualms about playing a chief minister. I was initially scared, but Sivas story was so inspiring that I didnt want to miss this opportunity. I believe this is my finest performance ever. Srimanthudu was a turning point in my career and I see Bharat Ane Nenu as another major turning point. Bharat Ane Nenu marks the Telugu debut of Kiara Advani and it also stars Tamil actor Sarath Kumar, who will be seen as Maheshs father in the film. Originally slated to release on April 27, the makers recently advanced the release to April 20 to avoid clash with superstar Rajinikanths Kaala, which is slated to hit the screens on April 27. Follow @htshowbiz for more ott:10:ht-entertainment_listing-desktop Love her or hate her, ignore Sri Reddy you cant. The gutsy actor, who stripped in public to protest the issue of casting couch in Telugu film industry and industry bigwigs preferring girls from other states over Telugu female actors, has opened up a veritable can of worms. On Sunday, Hyderabad saw a round table that featured female actors who appear in character roles or are junior artistes. NGOs and advocates come together to discuss the problems faced by them while working in the said industry, reports Deccan Chronicle. The women, who work in the Telugu film industry, shared their experiences of sexual exploitation and bad working conditions. Dubbed Sexual and financial exploitation of women in Telugu Film Industry, the round table saw an actor, who didnt want to be identified and covered her face with a dupatta, about the problems faced during outdoor shoots. The Indian Express quoted her as saying, During the outdoor shootings, the filmmakers dont even arrange toilet facilities. Recounting the unfair treatment meted out to small-time artistes, she explained how they are forced to change clothes in the open. The actor went on to express how they are denied roles even after they agree to sleep with powerful men from the industry. In Telugu industry, Telugu actors dont get opportunities. They promise roles in films and sleep with us. And next day, they avoid us saying there are far away somewhere for some shoot, The Indian Express quoted her as saying. Deccan Chronicle quoted another junior artist named Shruti who explained how they are denied roles as they are dark-skinned and fat. We are denied roles because we are dark skinned and fat, by the same men and coordinators who slept with us promising us a role in their movies. Our leaders speak about Swachh Bharat, but artistes like us have to relieve ourselves in the open during shootings because there are no washroom facilities for us during the shoots. Another harrowing experience was that of transgender actor Sana Rathod. She explained how a director she approached for a role asked her to strip just to see how a transgender looked like. Quoting her, Indian Express wrote: I went for an audition for a part in Telugu serial Madhurani Saniveshalu. The director asked me to take off my clothes because he wanted to see the body of a transgender. If transgenders are not spared, why will these men leave women artistes alone? There was considerable distress at the silence from the industry over the issue. Actor Apoorva, who resigned from Movie Artistes Association (MAA) in protest against their treatment of Sri Reddy, was livid at industrys silence over the issue. She was quoted by Indian Express as saying, Why are the big heroes of the industries not speaking in support of so many women who are crying? Will they only fight for women in reel-life? Sri Reddy, who was present at the round table, didnt mince words either. The News Minute quoting her, said, Behind all the glitz of the movie world and the makeup, there is a lot of distress, suffering, and sexual exploitation. Despite my attempts to address the issues since over a month, there hasnt been any response from the elders of this industry. Instead, attempts were made to gag dissent and it backfired with so many of us coming forward to speak about our sufferings. Meanwhile, actor Pawan Kalyans advised Sri Reddy to go to police, instead of sensationalizing the issue by speaking to TV channels was slammed from all quarters. Meera Sanghamitra, national convener of National Alliance of Peoples Movements, said that every that person who has remained silent, ought to be held equally responsible as well. Our heroes are a very obvious display of problematic hypermasculinity and heroism on screen. Lets talk about the utter lack of humanity. Every person who hasnt spoken about this is either committing the crime or abetting the crime. Every person who has the privilege and is not speaking out is responsible, the News Minute reported. As part of the discussion, those gathered demanded that there should be a proper mechanism in place to protect members of film fraternity from sexual harassment and at least 10 days of work in a month for Telugu artistes, the Indian express added. Follow @htshowbiz for more ott:10:ht-entertainment_listing-desktop Posted Tuesday, April 17, 2018 4:00 am Marshfield Christian School (MCS) hosted its annual Chili Supper and Spring Talent Show Saturday, April 7, at Marshfield Church of the Nazarene. The evening began with a dinner in the fellowship hall, where guests enjoyed a variety of chilis and soups, along with desserts and refreshments. They could also view student artwork on display out in the foyer. The talent show took place in the sanctuary following the dinner. Student performances varied from singing, dancing and playing an instrument. According to Susan Ivie, MCS administrator, the first talent show started in 2010 as a Christmas program. We were trying to figure out how we wanted to run the program, said Ivie. I think the Lord gave me the idea of having students present their talents back to Jesus as a gift to him because the talents come from him anyway. That is how it got started. We have changed the time of the year just because Christmastime is so busy, but it has turned out really well and gives the kids an opportunity to do things they might not do otherwise. She added that students are required to participate in the talent show, but if they do not want to be on stage, then they are allowed to bake a dessert or create artwork. About 250 people were in attendance for the event. MCS raised $1,692 from the chili supper, which will go to benefit the school. MCS, established in 2008 by Ivie, provides quality Christian education and training based upon a firm foundation of Gods word. The school implements the Accelerated Christian Education (ACE) curriculum, where the focus is on the learning, not the teaching. It is individualized, so students will be placed where they will successfully accomplish their work and can work at their own pace. The Kapil Sharma-Preeti Simoes saga seems to be far from over. Ali Asgar, Dadi and Nani of Comedy Nights With Kapil and Kapil Sharma Show, went to meet the comedian recently after hearing of his bad health. Kapil, who recently returned to television with Family Time With Kapil, has again taken a break, allegedly due to depression. Speaking to ABP, Asgar said that he went to meet Kapil after ex-girlfriend Preeti urged him to do so. I heard Kapil is suffering from depression, I felt very bad. We all are with Kapil and will always be there for him. Preeti also called me that Kapil is not well and has apparently not even left his room for days. When I reached his office, Kapil was lying down. He was close to tears when he saw me and could not even speak. It is clear that he is missing all of us, especially Preeti. He is like a child who wants something but is not able to articulate it. Asgar said. Kapil Sharmas team, however, refuted Asgars claims and said Kapil is not in the country so Asgar could not have met him Kapil Sharma and Preeti Simoes. Earlier, talking to Times of India, Ali had said, I was out of India for the entire month, so I wasnt even aware what was going on. It is only when we meet old people who has worked with us on the show or through media reports that we get to know that he is on heavy medications. I just pray for his health and want him to get well soon. All this fighting is leading nowhere and nobody is getting benefited. We all have to work towards finding a solution. Talking about the reports of Kapils family trying to stop him from working with his old team, Ali replied, If this is true, I feel really sad for him because Kapil is not going to benefit from this. He will be at the losing end after all work is more important.Today, we all are here because of our work. We have shared such a great relationship with each other and I would not want to ruin it. I will always think well of him. Earlier, Preeti and Neeti were accused of hampering Kapils career and his mental well being by the comedians friend, Firangi director Rajiev Dhingra. He talked to Mumbai Mirror and said, Preeti is responsible for driving Kapil into depression, she harassed me as well and tried to instigate him against me. As soon as she learnt that he was marrying his girlfriend Ginni (Chatrath), she vowed to destroy him and turn his friends against him. All the controversies in Kapils life happened only in the last one year after Preeti vowed to destroy him. While Neeti had defended her and her sister in a social media post, Preeti had spoken to Hindustan Times. She said in the interview, My biggest concern is his mental health, which has deteriorated drastically in the past few months. Ive spoken to him many times, he has messaged me and visited me and Ive realised that hes not the same man that he was a year ago. Its not just depression.. it could be bipolar disorder or schizophrenia. Hes getting suicidal thoughts. Ive seen a very different him. His face has changed, his eyes have changed. He switches topics when he is talking. He repeats the same things 10 times when he speaks to me. Whoever has doing this to him, I really want to say, give up, move out, and take him to a rehab and give the poor man a chance to live. Kapil Sharmas team, however, refuted Asgars claims and said Kapil is not in the country so Asgar could not have met him. As a part of Mr. Kapil Sharmas team, we would like to emphasise that recent stories doing the rounds that Mr. Sharma has met Mr. Ali Asgar and has written Ms Preeti Simoes name on his hand, are completely false. We are equally shocked to hear about this ourselves and are surprised that Mr. Asgar, whom Mr. Sharma has always considered a friend, would make such hurtful statements. In fact, Mr. Sharma and his fiancee, Ginni are currently travelling together, an official statement from Kapils spokesperson said. A pressure cooker bomb went off close to Indias camp office at Biratnagar in eastern Nepal on Monday night though there were no reports of casualties, police said on Tuesday. According to superintendent of police Arun Kumar BC of Morang district, the blast damaged the outer wall of the camp office. He said there had been repeated calls from various quarters for the evacuation of the office, which he contended India was operating without permission from the Nepal government. No group claimed responsibility for the blast but it is suspected a Maoist faction led by Netra Bikram Chand, known for its anti-India rhetoric, could be behind the attack. In New Delhi, an external affairs ministry spokesperson said there was a minor explosion along the rear boundary wall of the camp office. The spokesperson added: Our embassy in Kathmandu is in touch with the government of Nepal. The security authorities in Nepal are investigating the matter. After devastating floods in the Koshi river in 2008 damaged some highways, Nepal had requested India to provide transit facilities for cargo and passengers till the roads were repaired. To assist the movement of vehicles via Indian territory from Biratnagar to Birgunj, India had set up the camp office. The closure of the camp office has been on the agenda of every Nepalese prime minister visiting India. There have also been calls from different quarters to remove the office. Canadas National Security Advisor has walked back the explosive allegation that rogue elements in the Indian establishment had planted Jaspal Atwal, a man convicted of attempting to assassinate a visiting minister from Punjab, to embarrass Prime Minister Justin Trudeau during his trip to India in February. In public testimony before the House of Commons public safety and national security committee, NSA Daniel Jean said it was definitely not the government of India. He claimed to never having raised a conspiracy theory. What I said is that there was coordinated efforts to try to misinform and I said these were either private people it was definitely not the government of India, and, if it was people from India, they were acting in a rogue way, he said. Jeans appearance before the committee and his remarks, however, may have given fresh legs to the Atwal controversy. The original version of the rogue elements theory had been reported in Canadian media - based on a briefing by an unidentified senior government office, later revealed to be Jean - and it had been supported by Trudeau in the House of Commons. Following Jeans briefing, opposition leader Andrew Scheer asked Trudeau to withdraw that statement and apologise to the Indian government. Former British Columbia premiere Ujjal Donsajh was unsparing in his criticism of Jean: From my perspective Mr Jean should have tendered his resignation, he said, noting that some of what he said in his testimony contradicts what those briefed had reported. Two Canadian journalists, David Akin of Global News and John Ivison of National Post, pointed out that the India allegation was baked into what Jean had told them anonymously. He has absolutely no credibility. He tried to do the governments bidding, which is unacceptable for a NSA. An NSA should speak truth to power and he only spoke for the power, Dosanjh said. Among those closely tracking the testimony was Atwal, the person at the centre of the controversy. Soon after it concluded, he called Hindustan Times and said his position, that he was not an agent of India and that the Canadian government had been lying in the matter, had been vindicated. Ive been saying from day one, India has nothing to do with this, I have nothing to do with this, he said. Atwal reiterated he was willing to appear before the committee to give his version of events. Ill reveal everything, he asserted. Jean spoke of the faux pas that was committed when a Liberal Party MP from British Columbia, Randeep Sarai, invited Atwal to two official receptions in honour of Trudeau in Mumbai and New Delhi. After the controversy erupted, the second invitation was rescinded. Jean said there was coordinated misinformation to make the matter a lot bigger by fabricating false stories and his effort was to debunk that exercise. What I said is that we had concerns that this seems to be coordinated misinformation by actors possibly to exacerbate the faux pas the fact that an invitation that shouldnt have been made had been made in order to reinforce the notion that Canada is complacent on the risk of extremism, a perception that has been brought at times by Indian intelligence services and one that we do not share, he said. Jean said he had called and emailed his Indian counterpart Ajit Doval as the controversy erupted and Canada takes the relationship with India very seriously and strives to be good security partners. The rogue element charge was strongly refuted by the external affairs ministry, and Trudeau subsequently affirming it to be true has led to a fresh low in India-Canada relations in recent weeks. An Afghan official says at least six civilians were shot and killed by gunmen in western Ghor province on Tuesday morning. The victims were all ethnic Hazaras, a Shia minority in Afghanistan that is frequently targeted by Sunni extremists in different parts of the country. Iqbal Nezami, spokesman for the provincial police chief, said four other civilians were wounded after their vehicle was attacked near Faroz Koh, the provincial capital. Nezami said the Hazaras were travelling from Herat, another western province, to Ghor when they came under attack. No one claimed immediate responsibility for the attack. Both the Taliban and Islamic State are active in Ghor and have previously claimed attacks in the province. Chemical weapons inspectors in Syria will be permitted to visit the site of an alleged chemical attack on Wednesday, Russia has said. The international team has been in the country since Saturday, but has not been allowed to visit Douma, the BBC reported. The attack on April 7, prompted military strikes on Syrian government targets by the US, Britain and France a week later. Syria and its ally Russia deny any chemical attack took place - with Russia calling it a staged thing. Early on Tuesday, Syrian state media said the countrys air defences had responded to a missile attack over the western city of Homs. The missiles targeted Shayrat air base, it said - but did not say who fired the missiles, the BBC report added. Another report, from the pro-Iranian Hezbollah militia, said that Syrian air defences had intercepted three missiles targeting Dumair military airport, north-east of here. The French government said on Tuesday that it is highly likely that evidence would disappear from the site of a suspected chemical attack in Syria before weapons experts arrive in the area. Accusing Russia and Syria of denying access to experts dispatched to probe the alleged poison gas attack in Douma on April 7, the French foreign ministry said: It is highly likely that evidence and essential elements will disappear from the site, which is completely controlled by the Russian and Syrian armies. Russia has denied trying to obstruct the investigation and said inspectors from the Organisation for the Prohibition of Chemical Weapons (OPCW), who arrived in Damascus on Saturday, are due to visit Douma on Wednesday. Russian military police officers check a weapons factory left behind by members of the Army of Islam group, in the town of Douma, the site of a suspected chemical weapons attack, near Damascus. (AP) In a statement, the French foreign ministry said it was essential that Syria give full, immediate and unimpeded access to all the OPCWs requests, whether relating to sites to visit, people to interview or documents to consult. The warning came as the US ambassador to the OPCW, Ken Ward, voiced fears that Moscow might already have tampered with evidence at the site. Russian foreign minister Sergei Lavrov rejected the allegation, telling the BBC: I can guarantee that Russia has not tampered with the site. Lavrov charged that it was the United States, France and Britain who were standing in the way of the investigation by ordering air strikes in the blink of an eye before the OPCW team had a chance to do their work. The three Western powers fired around 100 missiles at three suspected chemical facilities in Syria on Saturday, saying they had proof that the government of President Bashar al-Assad was behind the Douma attack. Addressing the European Parliament in Strasbourg on Tuesday, French President Emmanuel Macron said the strikes aimed to defend the honour of the international community in the face of Syrias suspected violation of the UN Chemical Weapons Convention. The New York Times and The New Yorker won the Pulitzer Prize for public service on Monday for explosive reporting that brought down Harvey Weinstein and spawned a cultural watershed on the issue of sexual harassment. The prestigious prize was awarded to the Times team led by Jodi Kantor and Megan Twohey and New Yorker contributor Ronan Farrow, for reports that disgraced the Hollywood mogul and sparked an avalanche of accusations against other powerful men. Since the Times and New Yorker articles last October, more than 100 women have publicly accused the producer of misconduct ranging from sexual harassment to rape, sparking the #MeToo movement that has seen a string of influential men lose their jobs and reputation. Weinsteins marriage has ended, he has been under police investigation in London, Los Angeles and New York, hit by a litany of civil lawsuits and his former production company has been forced to file for bankruptcy. Farrow, 30, is the son of actress Mia Farrow and film director Woody Allen, and something of a prodigy who has previously fronted his own television show, worked in Afghanistan and Pakistan for late US diplomat Richard Holbrooke, and formerly advised then Hillary Clinton on global youth issues when she was secretary of state. New York Times staff writers Jodi Kantor and Megan Twohey (left) address colleagues after the team they led won the 2018 Pulitzer Prize for Public Service in the newsroom in New York, NY. (NYT handout via Reuters Photo) The former Rhodes scholar, who graduated from Yale Law School at just 21, has sided with his sister Dylans claims that Allen molested her when she was seven. Allen has repeatedly denied the allegations. So so so proud, tweeted Mia Farrow minutes after her sons award was announced. Ronan Farrow paid tribute to his co-winners and The New Yorker. This moment gets called a reckoning, but we just started telling the truth about old abuses of power. Thanks to all who keep doing so, he wrote on Twitter to his nearly half a million followers. The 102th edition of the Pulitzer Prizes were announced at Columbia University in New York by administrator Dana Canedy at a time when the US news media still under assault from the White House for peddling fake news. Canedy praised the winners but also counselled the media to do more to improve trust with a sceptical public and to work harder to include more varied gender and racial perspectives. Most trying of times The Washington Post won the Pulitzer in the investigative category for relentless reporting seen as having influenced the outcome of the 2017 Senate race in Alabama, revealing Republican candidate Roy Moores alleged past sexual harassment of teenage girls. Moores opponent Doug Jones won the race last December, becoming Alabamas first Democratic senator in 25 years and dealing a humiliating blow to President Donald Trumps Republican administration. The New York Times and The Washington Post shared the national reporting prize for furthering understanding of Russian interference in the 2016 election, and the connections between Russian actors and the Trump campaign, his transition team and administration, Canedy said. Winners uphold the highest purpose of a free and independent press even in the most trying of times, she announced. These courageous, inspiring and committed journalists and their news organizations are undaunted in their mission in support of the fourth estate. US film producer Harvey Weinstein attending the De Grisogono Party on the sidelines of the 70th Cannes Film Festival in Antibes, France. (AFP File photo) It is a mandate that has been under a seemingly relentless assault of late but that remains central to a healthy democracy, she added. Reuters won the 2018 prize in international reporting for coverage of Philippine President Rodrigo Dutertes war on drugs. Reuters also won in the feature photography category for its coverage of the Rohingya crisis. The prize for breaking news photography went to Ryan Kelly of The Daily Progress for a chilling image that captured the moment of impact by a car at a racially-charged protest in Charlottesville, Virginia that left one woman dead last August. The Pulitzer for fiction went to Andrew Sean Greer for Less about growing older and love. The history prize was awarded to The Gulf: The Making of An American Sea, and the prize in drama for Cost of Living by playwright Martyna Majok. Philippines Monday said one Filipina house worker has been admitted to hospital in the Saudi southwestern city of Jizan after her employer allegedly forced her to drink bleach. Philippines foreign ministry identified the house worker as Agnes Mancilla. She was whisked unconscious to hospital where she underwent emergency abdominal surgery, the ministry added. We are working closely with authorities in Jizan to make sure that justice will be given to Agnes Mancilla, it added in a statement. Her employer, a Saudi woman, was arrested by police. Her identity has not been disclosed. Mancilla is in stable condition though still seriously affected the statement added. The Filipina citizen has been working in the kingdom since 2016 and has faced abuses from her lady employer who was only known for refusing to pay Mancillas salary, according to Edgar Badajos, the Filipino consul in the Saudi city of Jeddah. There are hundreds of thousands of Filipinas working across the Middle East. In January Manilla slammed the Arab host countries and Kuwait in particular for abusing Philippines citizens working there as maids. President Rodrigo Duterte in February issued a ban on the deployment of the Filipinas to the Arab countries, sent charter flights to Kuwait to fly out several thousands of its people living in the Gulf country. The two countries further fell out after a 29-year old Filipina worker was found stuffed in a freezer in an abandoned apartment. She had apparently been in the freezer for over one year. Syrian anti-aircraft defences shot down missiles fired at the Syrian air base of Shayrat in Homs province late on Monday and another base northeast of the capital Damascus, Syrias state television and pro-Iranian Hezbollah media said. State television showed pictures of a missile that was shot in the air above the air base only days after a US, British and French attack on Syrian targets in retaliation for a suspected chemical attack on the city of Douma on the outskirts of Damascus. State television did not mention three missiles that were fired at Dumair military airport, northeast of Damascus, that pro-Iranian Hezbollahs media service reported were intercepted by Syrian air defences. Opposition sources say Dumair airport is a major air base used in a large-scale military campaign waged by the Syrian army with Russian firepower that regained eastern Ghouta, a rebel enclave on the outskirts of Damascus. A Pentagon spokesman said there was no US military activity in that area at this time. Asked about the missile attack, an Israeli military spokesman said: We dont comment on such reports. Shayrat air base was targeted last year in a US cruise missile attack in response to a chemical attack that killed at least 70 people, including children, on the rebel-held town of Khan Sheikhoun. Israel has struck Syrian army locations many times in the course of the conflict, hitting convoys and bases of Iranian-backed militias that fight alongside Syrian President Bashar al- Assads forces. A boy gestures as he holds stacks of bread in Douma. (Reuters) Israel has long said Iran was expanding its influence in a belt of territory that stretches from the Iraqi border to the Lebanese border, where Israel says Iran supplies Hezbollah with arms. Hezbollah and other Iranian-backed militias have a large military presence in Syria and are well entrenched in central and eastern areas near the Iraqi border. Deputy Hezbollah leader Sheikh Naim Qassem told pro-Syrian government television channel al Maydeen he expected a reaction to the death of at least seven Iranian military personnel during a missile strike earlier this month on the T-4 airfield near Homs, which Iran blamed on Israel. The deliberate Israeli slaying of Iranians in the T4 base will have a response but we dont know its nature or its details, Qassem said in the television interview. The heavily armed and Tehran-backed Shiite movement has been a vital military ally of President Bashar al-Assad in the seven-year-old Syrian war. Hezbollah, which last fought a major war with Israel in 2006, has however said it would not open a new front against its arch-foe from Lebanon. Qassem said the powerful militia did not fight in all the main battles in Syria but was present in any area that was needed. He did not elaborate. Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu said after the US, British, and French strikes in Syria his country will continue to move against Iran in Syria. US President Donald Trump is reported to have scrapped a plan to impose sanctions on Russia for its support of the Syrian government, reversing an earlier announcement made by his ambassador to the UN Nikki Haley. We are considering additional sanctions on Russia and a decision will be made in the near future, White House press secretary Sarah Huckabee Sanders said in a statement on Monday. The president has been clear that hes going to be tough on Russia, Sanders told reporters on a flight to Florida, where Trump was on Monday. But at the same time, hed still like to have a good relationship with them. But thats going to be determined by whether or not Russia decides if they want to be a better actor in this process or not. In an interview to CBS on Sunday, Haley had said that Syria-related Russia sanctions were coming and treasury secretary Steve Mnuchin would announce them on Monday, if he hasnt already. More specifically, Haley had said the plan was to sanction companies that were dealing with equipment related to Syrian President Bashar al-Assad and chemical weapons use. While some news reports, citing unidentified officials, said Haley might have misspoken, others indicated there was indeed a plan on the menu of follow-up steps to the April 14 air strikes, but Trump was not ready to execute them and had not given his final authorisation. Trump wants to work with Russia and has been reluctant to publicly criticise President Vladimir Putin. Disregarding advice from aides, he congratulated Putin for his victory in elections most Americans believe were a sham, and even invited him to the White House for talks. But Trump has also announced two rounds of economic sanctions against Russia and ordered the expulsion of 60 Russian diplomats, joining allies Britain, France and others in a coordinated retaliation to the poisoning of a former Russia spy and his daughter in Britain. However, his decision to publicly reverse an announcement by Haley has revealed deep schisms in his national security team, in which John Bolton has recently been added as national security adviser. Bolton, a known foreign policy hawk, has advocated a more extensive and ruinous strike on Syria, while defence secretary James Mattis has pushed for restraint and limited action, according to The Wall Street Journal. Rumors about the death of Libyas strongman, renegade general Khalifa Haftar have been denied, still he is reportedly in coma in a Paris hospital after suffering a severe stroke during a visit to Jordan. The news of the Hafter being hospitalised sent shockwaves in Libya prompting analysts to predict an exacerbation of mayhem in the war torn country where forces loyal to Haftar have asserted control in much of the eastern territories. The 74-year-old general is backed by Egypt, the UAE, and Russia as he represents himself as a stabilizing force in Libya who could be relied on to confront Islamist factions in the countrys east. Western powers have showed openness to engaging in talks with Haftar for Libyas stability despite his disagreements with the UN-backed government in Tripoli. Observers say that if Gen Haftar were permanently incapacitated one of his sons might try to take up his mantle but that other elements of his coalition especially local factions from eastern Libya might go their own way. Haftars Libyan National Army, largely based in the east of Libya, has been making steady military progress, but has been criticized for using brutal methods in a country overcome by civil war almost ever since the toppling of Kadhafi in 2011. Princess Lalla Hasnaa represented King Mohammed VI at the official inauguration ceremony of Qatar National Library (QNL), on Monday in Doha. The ceremony was chaired by Emir of Qatar Sheikh Tamim bin Hamad al-Thani, who commemorated the event by placing the librarys one-millionth book, a rare 843-year-old manuscript copy of Sahih Al Bukhari, on the shelves of QNL, local media reported. The first book on the shelves of QNL was placed by Sheikha Moza, Chairperson of Qatar Foundation, in December 2016. The inauguration of Qatar National Library invokes a great sense of historical pride and belonging to the Arab world, which pioneered writing, transcription, and libraries in Mesopotamia 5,000 years ago, Sheikha Moza said in an opening address. The library was established to be a treasury of written history and a medium for the transfer of knowledge between different cultures, she said. We aspire to make this library a modern mechanism to revive the Arabic language and to re-establish its presence as a marker of civilization. Through a new interpretation of our heritage, we can restore the days when Arabic was the universal language of the Middle Ages. When it was synonymous with science and culture, and a source of pride. It was a well-known fact: You speak Arabic, then you are educated, she said, adding that the library will essentially be an institution of reference for Arabic and Islamic heritage and a platform for spreading contemporary intellectual and literary thought. Princess Lalla Hasna and the other guests toured the different sections of the library before taking part in a dinner banquet hosted by the Emir of Qatar in honor of the attending delegations. Supplier News 17 April 2018 ALICE has been selected by multi-generational owned luxury properties, The Woodside Hotel Group, to enhance their internal communication, concierge operations, and guest engagement, across seven of their ten stunning properties in Northern California. ALICE is the hospitality industry's leading operations technology, connecting every department of the hotel with one platform for all staff communication and guest requests. ALICE recently acquired concierge software provider GoConcierge to augment its technology and customer service offering. Before ALICE, the Woodside Hotel Group used various methods of communication and task delegation, including pre-shift stand up meetings, spreadsheets, and radios to communicate internally and entrust each task had been completed. Wanting to standardize the group hotel operations and communication, Adam Knight, Vice President of Operations, acknowledges the Woodside Hotel Group was looking for "a single platform to manage guest engagement and employee work flow that was user friendly and easily plugged into each environment." Immediately, hotels such as Bodega Bay Lodge, Napa Valley Lodge, and Indian Springs saw the benefits of ALICE to help implement concierge duties for when a concierge is not present on site. With ALICE's logbooks, action items such as itinerary creation, lost and found inquiries, package management, and special amenity requests are now easily managed for the entire team to execute. Priding themselves on providing personalized and sincere customer service for their guests, the Stanford Park Hotel and Lafayette Park Hotel and Spa use ALICE's guest messaging tools to communicate with their guests. ALICE's automated messaging functionality makes it easy for hotels, such as those within the Woodside Hotel Group portfolio, to quickly send text messages before, and during a stay, and after their guests check out. Prior to ALICE, Woodside had various systems in place to keep track of hotel performance, which meant aggregating data was labor intensive. Now, the Woodside can seamlessly communicate data-driven results to the wider team. By having hard data at their fingertips, senior management can pinpoint areas of improvement and set key performance indicators against different metrics. "We are able to affirm that our speed of service score has increased nearly 18% since introducing the ALICE platform," Knight emphasizes. "Our associates get up to the minute, relevant information that makes it easier and more efficient to do their jobs and in turn, provide a higher level of guest service." Supplier News 17 April 2018 ReviewPro presents Guest Messaging Hub, a real-time communication platform that can be used to interact with guests from the messaging service they prefer, without having to download an app. It was designed in response to the fast-growing trend in private messaging use, and also answers the need from ReviewPro's hotel clients for an efficient, seamless, and fully integrated messaging system for guests to connect directly with hotel staff. The Guest Messaging Hub has been beta tested by a leading luxury brand and has been pre-sold into some of ReviewPro's biggest clients. High demand is expected as the industry sees a trend for private messaging apps taking over as the preferred method of communication. "Adopting messaging systems for hotel guests is critical as they expect their problems resolved immediately and while still on property. The Guest Messaging Hub offers a simple dashboard and easy-to-use interface for hoteliers to respond to guests' needs and prevent any inconveniences becoming potential negative online reviews," says RJ Friedlander, CEO of ReviewPro. The Guest Messaging Hub allows guests to interact with the hotel or brand via the messaging service they already use (SMS, Facebook Messenger, Twitter, with WhatsApp and WeChat coming soon). ReviewPro clients can receive and respond to guest messages via the device from which they habitually access the ReviewPro app. Messages can be grouped together by service type (Facebook and Twitter together for example), or specific hubs for specific groups (corporate or VIP clients etc.). The tool allows guests to voice concerns while still on property, and have them addressed quickly by the hotel, leading to an enhanced guest experience. Guest satisfaction generates positive online sentiment, which has been proven to boost profits in terms of ADR, occupancy, and RevPAR. Supplier News 17 April 2018 LONDON, UK -- The Direct Booking Summit, the only industry event dedicated to the Direct Booking Movement, is coming to Singapore on 27-28 February 2019. Hundreds of hoteliers will meet to network, strategize and learn from their peers at the inaugural Asia-Pacific edition of the summit, hosted by Triptease. Direct Booking Summit: Asia-Pacific will focus in on the region-specific challenges faced by hoteliers in the Asian market, such as an OTA-heavy distribution landscape and the struggle to compete in a mobile-first world. Triptease, summit host and pioneer of the Direct Booking Movement, explained their decision to run a third event in Singapore: "Asia-Pacific is a very unique market, and one that is growing and changing very quickly at the moment. The opportunities and challenges for hoteliers are very different to those in the Americas and Europe. It was clear to us that we needed to create an event specifically for hoteliers in Asia." In just two years, the Direct Booking Summit has become one of the industry's must-attend events. It brings together hoteliers from across the board, whether up-and-coming independent properties or world-leading groups, to drive the Direct Booking Movement forward. "We loved everything! We had two very productive days, we are definitely implementing new strategies and ideas at our property to maximize guestsatisfaction and hotel revenue. I look forward to next year." - Julissa Quiroz of Fortune House Hotel on the Direct Booking Summit: Americas 2017 Previous speakers and delegates have come from Hyatt, The Leading Hotels of the World, Deutsche Hospitality, Sonesta, Kempinski Hotels, trivago, Kalibri Labs, McKinsey & Company, ReviewPro and The Guestbook. Confirmed speakers for 2018's European edition in Amsterdam include Best Western UK, WorldHotels and Europe Private Hotels Collection. In 2018/19, the summit comprises three two-day conferences. The first in the series is dedicated to the European, Middle East and African markets and takes place in Amsterdam on June 27 and 28 2018. Dallas follows on the 3-4 October 2018. The inaugural Direct Booking Summit: Asia-Pacific takes place on 27-28 February 2019. Tickets for Singapore are available now via Eventbrite. Triptease is offering a 50% discount for early registrants. Press Release 17 April 2018 Madrid, Spain -- The 63rd meeting of the UNWTO Regional Commission for the Americas, organized by the World Tourism Organization (UNWTO) and the National Tourism Secretariat of Paraguay (Asuncion, 12-13 April 2018), highlighted the importance of advancing towards greater gender equity in tourism so that the sector can deploy its full potential in favour of sustainable development. "Women's Empowerment in the Tourism Sector" was the central theme of this edition of the International Seminar, held alongside the other ministerial meetings. Advertisements Tourism policies, the role of education, as well as ways to promote greater levels of leadership by women, were the topics addressed in the framework of the goal of achieving gender equality in tourism. As a sector that is constantly growing on par with or outpacing the global economy, and accounting for up to 10% of the world's employment, tourism is ideally positioned to contribute to greater gender equality and the empowerment of women. "We participate directly and indirectly in almost all areas of the economy and society. Our strength as an economic sector also obliges us to assume social responsibility," said the UNWTO's Secretary-General. Zurab Pololikashvili also recalled that "the active participation of men and women" is necessary "to advance the economic empowerment of women and their greater presence in decision-making positions". Latin America and the Caribbean lead the world with the highest percentage of female employment in tourism, although this is concentrated in service and administrative positions (62%), as compared to professional and managerial levels (36%), with women earning between 10% and 15% less than their male counterparts. However, there are almost twice as many women entrepreneurs in tourism than in any other sector (51%). Paraguay, host country of the 63rd meeting of the CAM, is an example of the better employment, entrepreneurship and leadership opportunities that tourism can offer to women, as highlighted by the Minister of Tourism of Paraguay, Marcela Bacigalupo, citing the example of the country's more than 200 tourism inns, 95% of which are managed by women. "This initiative was born from a need to generate economic development, and it not only served to generate a source of income for women, but also to awaken faith in the tourism potential of Paraguay," she said. The seminar featured practices promoted in the region to showcase tourism products and projects led by women, as well as case studies that show how destinations can be more competitive through the introduction of gender equality policies and investment in projects for the empowerment of women. The 64th Meeting of the UNWTO Regional Commission for the Americas will be held in Guatemala during the second quarter of 2019. Supplier News 17 April 2018 PITTSBURGH -- Aptech Computer Systems announced Miami-based MDM Hotel Group implemented the Execuvue Hospitality Business Intelligence System to automate data gathering, performance reporting and analysis for its portfolio of hotels. MDM is a respected developer that operates full service Marriott and independent properties and commercial businesses in South Florida. Aptech is the leading provider of business intelligence, budgeting and forecasting, and enterprise accounting hotel software systems. Click here for more on Aptech's products and services. Cam Troutman, Aptech vice president, said, "MDM Group is a dynamic operator that is literally revitalizing much of South Florida. Marriott International awarded MDM its 2016 Partnership Circle Award for being the top owner and franchise company. Aptech congratulates MDM Group's management and property teams for their effort and is grateful to be a MDM technology provider." MDM utilizes Aptech's full suite of financial hotel software solutions. In addition to selecting Aptech's Execuvue Business Intelligence System, MDM Group also employs Aptech's Targetvue Budgeting and Forecasting, and Enterprise Back Office Accounting for its five hotels. MDM Hotel Group owns and operates some of Miami's most renowned hotel properties including the JW Marriott Marquis Miami in the heart of downtown, Hotel Beaux Arts Miami, JW Marriott Miami on Brickell Avenue, the Miami Marriott Dadeland, Courtyard Miami Dadeland as well as the planned Marriott Marquis Miami Worldcenter Hotel & Expo Center currently under development. Aptech Computer Systems is both an IBM and Prophix Business Partner offering Execuvue web-enabled Business Intelligence, Targetvue Budgeting and Forecasting, and PVNG Enterprise Accounting systems that are 100% hospitality specific. Aptech is the only company that provides a complete suite of financial management and analysis solutions for the hotel industry. About MDM Group Founded in 1990, MDM Group's vision has been driven by a desire to bring the highest quality amenities and brands to underserved urban markets including what is the neighborhood around Dadeland Mall, Brickell Avenue and most recently, Miami's downtown core. Soon it will embark on another game changing project, the development of the Marriott Marquis Miami Worldcenter Hotel & Expo Center within the Miami Worldcenter project in the Park West area of downtown Miami. For more information visit www.mdmusa.com. About Aptech Computer Systems, Inc. Aptech Computer Systems, Inc., based in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania, is the only provider of a fully integrated enterprise accounting, business intelligence and planning ecosystem to the hospitality industry. All of its clients are companies like yours, which own or manage hotels. Its solutions help customers at both the corporate and property levels understand their financial and operational data for faster goal achievement. The company is renowned for introducing business intelligence into the hotel industry, and offers a solid resource of hospitality professionals. Aptech is an IBM Software Value Plus partner and Premier Solution Provider, as well as a Prophix Premier Business Partner. Incorporated in 1970, Aptech's state-of-the-art back office, true business intelligence and enterprise planning solutions are 100% hotel specific. Solutions include PVNG, Execuvue, and Targetvue. Clients comprise over 3,500 properties - including large chains, multiple-property management companies and single-site hotels. Execuvue is registered to Aptech Computer Systems, Inc. All other trademarks are owned by their respective holders. For more information please visit www.aptech-inc.com. In celebration of Derek Jeter's jersey retirement ceremony at Yankee Stadium last year, Jordan Brand released an extremely limited run of "RE2PECT" sneakers and apparel, including a navy suede Air Jordan 11. Next month, Jordan Brand reportedly has plans to drop another navy suede "RE2PECT" Air Jordan 11, although this time it'll come in low-top form and it will be more available than the 2017 release. The kicks feature a completely suede upper accompanied by a white midsole and a translucent outsole. The special edition kicks also include "RE2PECT" written across the tongue and Jeter's #2 on the heel, as well as a "2" on the insole of the right shoe and "RE2PECT" on the left insole. According to reports, the Derek Jeter Air Jordan 11 Lows are expected to release on May 18 for $200 a pop. Check out the early images below and stay tuned for a list of retailers that will have the kicks in stock next month. With Gucci Mane and Young Thug fighting to sign Gunna earlier this year, the YSL rapper is on a quick ascension to fame. Collaborating with Young Thug and staking his claim as the next up out of Georgia, Gunna Gunna is no stranger to working with Atlanta's Lil Baby. As they have worked together a handful of times, it shouldn't be a surprise to see Gunna and Lil Baby team up once again for the brand new "Sold Out Dates." A booming 808 blares over an original beat by trap music's standards, laced with guitar loops and appearing more acoustic when compared to much of today's rap. The track is expected to appear on Gunna's forthcoming Drip or Drown 2 EP. With the success of Drip Season 3, we're looking forward to where Gunna path leads him, with "Sold Out Dates" promising a bright future for him. Quotable Lyrics: Addicted to sex, I gotta get laid My jacket Off-White, don't mean that it's beige I clean that real nice, I don't got a maid Ape in the night, I'm still rocking Bape The term "Fake News" has always been around, but it's definitely heightened in use since Donald Trump became president in America. I'm sure if we ran through his numerous tweets, one in every five would have him declaring the term because of an article that wasn't in his favour. Aside from Donald's use of the term, we can't deny that we are living in a time where more than ever, we need to stay vigilant about credible sources on the internet. Jordan Peele and former president 'Barack Obama' agree with the importance of not falling for Fake News as they've just released a PSA on the matter. "Were entering an era in which our enemies can make it look like anyone is saying anything at any point at time even if they would never say those things, 'Barack' says in the video below. So, for instance, they could have me say things like, I dont know, Killmonger was right! Or, Ben Carson is in the sunken place! Or, how bout this: simply, President Trump is a total and complete dipshit. The screen then splits in the video and we see that it's actually Jordan voicing Barack because it's just a digitally manipulated version of the former president (insert wide-eyed emoji). This is a dangerous time. Moving forward, we need to be more vigilant with what we trust from the internet Stay woke, bitches, Jordan/Barack ends the video. Watch below. One of the greatest parts of Twitter's history has been Kanye West's streams of consciousness. Ever since joining the social media giant, Kanye has been sharing his ideas on a wide scale, tweeting in spurts about whatever he so well pleases. Ranging from calling out Jimmy Kimmel to announcing tentative album names for The Life of Pablo, Ye will go down as one of the greatest to use Twitter to its full capacity. Returning to social media last week, West's use of the app had been tame, sharing some photos of a likely upcoming Yeezy 1050 boot, as well as some neck tattoos that Gosha Rubchinskiy designed for him. We've now gotten our first semi-rant since he has returned to Twitter, marking a special occasion. While it is not as long as one of his classic streams of consciousness, Kanye went public about his thoughts on creativity and distractions, sending out five consecutive posts on the matter. The Chicago artist started off, "As a creative your ideas are your strongest form of currency," before noting that your ability should be protected "at all costs." Hinting at a possible writer's block, Ye wrote "Distraction is the enemy of vision," before giving people advice on keeping creative control during contractual negotiations. Ending with a vague post, Kanye has many fans enamored by his seemingly never-ending wisdom, noting, "Sometimes you have to get rid of everything." The Yeezus rapper is bound to continue his thoughts later but, for now, we're left to think about our own creative processes by way of Kanye. Welcome back to the Twitterverse, Ye. We missed you. The G7 Leaders have condemned in the strongest possible terms the use of chemical weapons in attacks in Eastern Ghouta, in Syria and voiced support to the airstrikes launched by the United States, the United Kingdom and France in response to the April 7 attack. In a statement released Tuesday (April 17) by the leaders of the G7, made up of Canada, France, Germany, Italy, Japan, the United Kingdom, the United States of America and the European Union, said they are united in condemning in the strongest possible terms, the use of chemical weapons in the April 7 attack in Eastern Ghouta, Syria. We fully support all efforts made by the United States, the United Kingdom and France to degrade the Assad regimes ability to use chemical weapons and to deter any future use, demonstrated by their action taken on April 13, the statement said. This response was limited, proportionate and necessary and taken only after exhausting every possible diplomatic option to uphold the international norm against the use of chemical weapons, the G7 leaders said, adding that the use of chemical weapons is a breach of the Chemical Weapons Convention and constitutes a threat to international peace and security. The repeated and morally reprehensible use of chemical weapons by the Assad regime in the past has been confirmed by independent international investigators, they recalled, condemning what they called this deliberate strategy of terrorizing local populations and forcing them into submission. Syrias possession of chemical weapons and their means of delivery are illegal under UN Security Council Resolution 2118 and the Chemical Weapons Convention, the statement noted, adding that the G7 members stand together against impunity for those who develop or use these weapons, anywhere, anytime, under any circumstances. We remain committed to a diplomatic solution to the conflict in Syria. We commend and support UN Special Envoy de Misturas efforts towards an inclusive and credible political transition in accordance with UN Security Council Resolution 2254 and the Geneva Communique, the G7 statement concluded. The organization for the Prohibition of Chemical Weapons (OPCW) dispatched a team of experts to Syria on Saturday to investigate whether chemical weapons were actually used in the April 7 attack on Douma that killed at least 70 civilians. But so far, the OPCW experts could not access the site. The USA and other Western countries are accusing Russia and Syria of blocking the chemical inspectors to have time to tamper with evidence on the site of the attack. Michael Blackson and Kevin Hart were once embroiled in a dispute over some malicious comments the former made about the latter during a particularly trivial moment in his life. The What Now star endured a public scandal after photographic evidence revealed that he had cheated on his wife who was pregnant with their third child together. Hart released a video lamenting his serious flub before the incriminating images were even released, but this did not stop Blackson from making light of his friend's wrongdoing with a few comedic jabs. Blackson released a video commenting on the situation in an amusing manner, telling the comedian to deny he had ever cheated on his wife even if the images prove otherwise. Hart was not humoured by the African-born jokester, equating him to a desperate Instagram model looking for likes. However, the two are putting the past behind them and calling a truce. The two were spotted at the 76ers game Monday night and appeared to be in good spirits. Georgia Reign, Blackson's girlfriend, posted an image on Instagram of the pair with a caption that reads "BOTH KINGS are welcomed in Wakanda, They're good." The image has since been deleted for unknown reasons, but is still available to view here. The two long-time friends have worked past their hardship and reinstated their inimitable bond. Vans is going to the moon and beyond with their latest sneaker collab. According to reports, a multi-sneaker NASA x Vans collection is in the works, featuring classic silhouettes like the Vans Old Skool, Vans SK8-Hi and Vans Slip-on. The NASA x Vans Old Skool features an all-white, astronaut-inspired construction complete with NASA branding, a shuttle mission tag on the grey tongue and a removable American flag patch on the heel. There's also a similarly styled Old Skool in an orange spacesuit colorway. Other kicks that will reportedly be included in this space-themed collection include Space Voyager/Black and Space Voyager/True White/Marshmallow colorways of the Sk8-Hi 46 MTE, and a Sk8-Hi MTE in Space Voyager/True White/Black." Additionally, there's also a "Galaxy/Black" Vans Slip-On in the works as well as a backpack and duffel bag. Vans has not yet announced release details for this upcoming project but rumors suggest the kicks will arrive in October. South Carolina's Lee Correctional Institution is regarded as the "most dangerous prison" in the state. Several violent outbursts have occurred within the penitentiary's confines, including the injuring of two guards in 2015, as well as the death of three inmates during separate incidents throughout 2017. However, a recent prison brawl has resulted in the death of seven detainees, while injuring another seventeen more. ABC News reports that these deadly disputes commenced around 7:15pm on Sunday in multiple housing units at the maximum-security facility, continuing onwards until 3:00am after State Law Enforcement Division agents were able to successfully safeguard the premises. No guards were wounded as a result of these altercations, which was carried out via knives. The coroner Larry Logan revealed to the Associated Press that it "appears most of the seven were killed by stabbing or slashing." Logan also details "others may have been beaten, but autopsies will be needed to confirm what caused their deaths." It looks like Too Short might finally be in the clear after a woman accused him of raping her back in 2016. TMZ reports that the L.A. County District Attorney's office has rejected the case, citing insufficient evidence to make a case. Teana Louis originally sued the Bay Area rapper claiming he sexually assaulted her multiple times between June and October of 2016. However, Short was adamant Teana made the whole thing up just to get into his pockets. In fact, the last we heard about the case was last month when Too Short provided several texts to the court allegedly proving his innocence and that the two engaged in consensual sex. In one of the texts, Short's accuser writes, "Baby I wish you were here right now, just talking to u on the phone makes me wet, which obviously doesn't look to be the words of a rape victim. As previously mentioned (above), the D.A. said there wasn't enough evidence to show she [Teana Louis] didn't consent to their sexual encounters, so they rejected the case. Well keep you posted if anything changes, but for now it appears Too Short is in the clear with this allegation, which is great news. [Via] Golden State Warriors forward Draymond Green was hit with a flagrant foul 1 in last night's 116-101 victory over the San Antonio Spurs, but he says he isn't the only one who should've been penalized. Green was tangled up with Spurs forward Davis Bertans late in the fourth and he used his right elbow to free himself, which sent the 6'10 big man to the floor and led to the flagrant 1. According to Green, Bertans should have also received a flagrant for his role in the incident. "I think it was a little bit of a flop," Green told the media after the Warriors' Game 2 victory, according to ESPN. "I don't even know if I hit him, but if I did -- I'm not saying I didn't, I don't know -- but if it's going to be a flagrant foul, shouldn't it be a double flagrant? Like, I can just get grabbed around my neck? I'm not going to sit up here and say I did nothing. I've got to get someone off my neck, though. If you're going to penalize me, then why not penalize both? That's really my only thing." That said, Draymond didn't seem at all concerned with the flagrant. "Nah, I don't care. It is what it is," Green responded, per ESPN. "Life goes on. There's more important things in life than worrying about a flagrant point. Maybe it'll get rescinded. I got choked, put in a chokehold like I was in the WWE or something. So it might get rescinded. Who knows?" The Warriors lead the series 2-0 as the two teams now head to San Antonio for Games 3 & 4. Game 3 is scheduled for Thursday at 9:30pm ET. WASHINGTON - Growing up in Midland, John Northington looked out over the flat, featureless landscape and saw oil country ready and waiting to be drilled. A fourth generation oil worker who advises energy companies like Exxon Mobil and EOG Resources as a consultant in Washington, Northington equated oil with American industriousness and prosperity. Still does. But as President Donald Trump opens vast swaths of the West to energy production, Northington worries the administration is going too far, recalling a trip to northeast Utah in the 1990s and the stunning beauty of the desert and the mesas rising around him. The guy I was traveling with threw two spares in the back of a truck because if you blow a tire out there, theres nobody to call. It was incredible to me. Id never been in a place so open. No telephone lines, no houses around. You feel like youre on another planet, he said. There are some places too special, you dont need to try and produce from. Since taking office last year, Trump has undertaken an unprecedented sale of the nations public lands to energy companies, auctioning an amount of acreage that environmentalists say is unlike anything in the modern era while pulling back regulations designed to protect Americas western wilderness. Oil and gas companies from Texas and beyond are buying access to lands in the Rocky Mountains and the high plains of Wyoming and Montana that many viewed as off limits during more than a century of American conservation efforts. Last year, the Department of Interior put almost 12 million acres of federal land on the block, more than double what was auctioned at the peak of the George W. Bush administration, according to leasing data compiled by the Natural Resources Defense Council. And now the administration is opening up drilling in some of the countrys most beloved and remote wilderness. RELATED: Trump moves to unlock Alaska oil RELATED: ConocoPhillips sees more promise in Alaskan oil Already in 2018, Trump administration has sold off parcels just outside Dinosaur National Monument on the Colorado-Utah border, a canyon that President Woodrow Wilson protected in 1915 after the discovery of thousands of fossils there. Likewise, parcels in between Canyonlands National Park and Hovenweep National Monument in southeast Utah, framed by striking sandstone formations and historic Native American dwellings, were auctioned to oil and gas companies despite objections from the National Park Service. Just outside Grand Canyon National Park, a ban on uranium mining enacted to keep radioactive pollution from flowing into the Colorado River is under review by Interior for possible reversal. And despite a bipartisan deal years in the making to protect the greater sage grouse, a threatened species of bird that resides in the western high plans, the Trump administration has dramatically increased the amount of acerage available for drilling in its territory, according to analysis by The Wilderness Society. These moves follow Trumps decision to dramatically shrink the boundaries of the Bears Ears and Grand Staircase-Escalante national monuments in Utah, making more land available for drilling and mining. With the admnistration considering similar actions at two more monuments in California and Nevada, even Republicans question whether Trump is turning the Interior Department into a vehicle for producing oil. Managing federal lands is supposed to be a balancing act, said Lynn Scarlett, the former deputy interior secretary during the George W. Bush administration, now global chief policy officer at The Nature Conservancy. With Bears Ears and Grand Staircase shrinking, which have some energy and mineral resources, it means certain areas that would have not have been open for leasing and development are now fair game. Heather Swift, a spokeswoman for the Interior Department, denied the administration was prioritizing energy over conservation and other land uses. She cited Secretary Ryan Zinkes decisions to preserve the corridors of lands through which migrating wildlife travel and set aside thousands of acres in New Mexico, as wilderness area. Everything is carefully determined on a case by case basis, Swift said. The idea that the only thing the department is doing is energy is patently false. The Breaks The push to put more oil and gas wells on federal lands - part of Trumps energy dominance strategy - follows decades of regulation designed to reduce the impact of oil companies, ranchers, lumber jacks and motorized ATVs on Americas wilderness. Those regulations have put a significant number of potential oil and gas fields out of bounds, said Kathleen Sgamma, president of industry group Western Energy Alliance. At the height of the fracking boom - from 2006 to 2015 - natural gas production from federal land declined, even as production on private land almost doubled, according to the Congressional Research Service. Every year [the federal government] comes up with more designations that restrict access, Sgamma said. The Upper Missouri Breaks, a rocky stretch of the Missouri River, is a popular destination for Montana hikers and hunters on the trail of elk and deer. Declared a national monument by former president Bill Clinton, the area was first mythologized by Lewis and Clark on their expedition to map the western United States in the early 1800s. The bluffs of the river rise to a height of from 2-to-300 feet and in most places nearly perpendicular, Capt. Meriwether Lewis wrote in his journal. So perfect indeed are those walls that I should have thought that nature had attempted here to rival the human art of masonry. RELATED: Do oil companies really want to drill in ANWR? In March, the Interior Department auctioned a 200-acre parcel on the boundary of the monument to Lonewolf Energy, a small oil and gas company in Billings, Mont. Natural gas deposits underlie the area, but recent administrations have been reluctant to allow drilling there, said Trent Sizemore, founder and CEO of the company. The leases they were offering [in March] were nominated 11 to 12 years ago, he said. Just because I might get to lease something, that doesnt mean I can drill anywhere I want. Leases come with a lot of stipulations. But the listing of land in the Upper Missouri was too much for Whit Fosburgh, who penned a letter of support for Interior Secretary Ryan Zinke during his confirmation. Fosburgh, head of the Theodore Roosevelt Conservation Partnership, which lobbies to protect habitat on behalf of hunters and fishermen and counts a former vice president of the oil services giant Schlumberger as its chairman, said he worried the administration was abandoning its mission to protect federal lands. I drive a car and heat my house, he said. I dont have anything against oil and gas development, but where we get frustrated is hearing expand oil and gas over everything else. Bargain basement prices So far, the only thing that has slowed development of some of the countrys most wild and pristine land has been depressed natural gas prices. With gas prices at historic lows - a consequence of abundant gas flowing from shale fields in Texas and Pennsylvania - drilling on federal lands, which carry increased costs relative to private leases, hasnt been so attractive. Of almost 12 million acres put up for auction last year, fewer than 800,000 acres received bids. That has meant considerable bargains. Lonewolf Energy, for example, paid just $2 an acre - the federal minimum - for its 200 acre lease in Montana, which is good for 10 years. The company doesnt expect to develop the land anytime soon, but should oil and gas prices pick up, new wells could be drilled, Sizemore said. We bought it because no one else was bidding, he said. I paid peanuts for all the leases I bought that day. RELATED: Trump seeks historic expansion of offshore drilling With bidding interest so low, budget hawks say, auctioning so many leases is neither good business nor good policy, ultimately benefiting private interests while delivering tiny returns to U.S. taxpayers who own the land. The nonpartisan Taxpayers for Common Sense said in an October report that speculators were swooping in to buy leases with no intention of drilling, looking to flip leases at a profit if the market improves. So far, large companies, household names like Exxon Mobil and BP, have largely stayed away from leasing in wilderness areas that could arouse controversy, said Northington, the oil consultant and a member of the National Petroleum Council, which advises the federal government on oil and gas policy. The fear among oil majors and big independents, he said, is the rapid expansion of drilling on public lands will provoke a public backlash and tougher regulations when the next president takes office. There is a tacit acknowledgment that a lot of what the administration is doing is backfiring on the industry and (oil and gas companies are) going to pay the price, Northington said. As of yet, there isnt the momentum to publicly say so. Limits Conservation groups have long found ways to delay and block efforts to extract resources from federal lands, whether natural gas in Utah or timber in Oregon. Activists will try to turn public opinion against drilling by protesting lease sales - as they did on the National Mall earlier this month under a cutout of a 10-foot tall oil pump jack - and file lawsuits that can tie up projects for years. But these days, they are straining to stay on top of which parcels of land are on the block. Theres this fire sale mentality. And its happening so fast, its a little dizzying to keep up, said Bobby McEnaney, a senior deputy director at the Natural Resources Defense Council. Were hearing about leases all over the West. Theyre entertaining the ideas of leasing in places that had never been leased before. Conservationists, however, have had some notable wins. In March, Zinke deferred a lease sale near New Mexicos Chaco Canyon - the site of Native American ruins dating back a millennia - after protest by local tribes. And Zinke stopped another oil and gas auction for lands outside Zion National Park in Utah following a public outcry. State officials there have long argued that federal control of so much land represents an unfair economic burden on their state, but those controls have also preserved a natural landscape that supports a major tourism industry, with visitors from around the globe flocking to Utahs famed national parks and monuments. The preservation of this unique experience is important to the surrounding communities, Utah Gov. Gary Herbert, a Republican, wrote to the Interior Department in May to oppose the leases near Zion. Their economy is dependent upon recreation and tourism. Zinke, a former Montana congressman and Navy SEAL, speaks often of his commitment to conservation, describing himself as following in the tradition of President Theodore Roosevelt - who put 230 million acres across the West under federal protection. Zinke keeps a bust of Roosevelt in his office overlooking the National Mall. But that didnt stop the Interior Department from last year announcing an oil and gas lease sale for 120 acres on the boundary of Theodore Roosevelt National Park in North Dakota, drawing protests from conservationists. The sale was ultimately deferred in December without explanation. james.osborne@chron.com Twitter: @osborneja An earlier version of this story incorrectly identified the governor of Utah. He is Gary Herbert. The Harvard Business School Alumni Angels on Monday evening will launch its first Houston chapter at an event at Station Houston, an effort to bring together Harvard-affiliated angel investors and local startup companies. The group, called the HBS Houston Alumni Angels, says its goal is to provide a forum for investors to mentor early stage businesses in Houston, where venture capital projects outside of the oil and gas industry have been sparse. WASHINGTON - Nearly the entire U.S. coastline - from Alaska to Florida to New England - would be opened to offshore drilling under a proposal by the Trump administration, a dramatic shift from previous administrations that limited offshore oil and gas production primarily to the Gulf of Mexico. Interior Secretary Ryan Zinke said Thursday that up to 90 percent of the Outer Continental Shelf, which begins roughly three miles off the U.S. mainland, is under consideration for oil and gas lease sales beginning next year and extending through 2024. That includes almost the entire Pacific and Atlantic coastlines, as well as the Eastern Gulf of Mexico. "This is the largest number of lease sales ever proposed," Zinke said. "If you look at the last eight years the opportunity to generate revenue through responsible energy development took a backseat to, in many cases, special interest groups." The move marks a victory for the offshore oil and gas industry, largely centered in Houston, which has lobbied for years to drill in the Atlantic and Arctic Oceans. Most of the world's biggest oil companies, including Exxon Mobil, Chevron and Royal Dutch Shell, have a major presence in Houston, as do firms specializing in offshore drilling and services, including TechnipFMC, National Oilwell Varco, McDermott International and Transocean. Vast stores of oil and gas are believed to lie beneath the ocean floors of the Arctic and Atlantic. And while test wells have turned up little hard proof as of yet, the areas represent potential new frontiers for an industry eager to expand its reserves. "The plan announced today is a long-term commitment to securing our energy future, and would help cement America's role as an energy superpower, creating jobs and contributing to our economy," said Karen Harbert, president of the U.S. Chamber of Commerce's Global Energy Institute. RELATED: Arctic oil and gas development dealt blow by Obama President Donald Trump's effort to advance his plan for U.S. "energy dominance" by expanding offshore drilling faces a number of challenges, particularly low oil prices that have significantly curtailed offshore exploration. Many oil companies are focusing investments in lower-cost and higher-margin shale projects in West Texas and other onshore fields. Crude settled Thursday at $62.01 a barrel, well below prices in 2008, when oil companies spent tens of billions of dollars competing for drilling rights in the Arctic Ocean. Earlier this year, a federal lease sale in the Gulf of Mexico drew what Trump officials conceded Thursday was less than stellar interest from oil companies. "We do not control the price of oil," said Interior Deputy Assistant Secretary for Land and Minerals Management Kate MacGregor. "The price of oil is very hard to predict." The proposal released Thursday was only a draft, beginning a monthslong process in which Trump is expected to face strong opposition from environmentalists as well as residents and political leaders in coastal states. Florida Governor Rick Scott, a Republican, said Thursday he had already reached out to Zinke to get his state removed from the drilling plan. When former President Barack Obama considered expanding offshore drilling into the Atlantic Ocean in 2015, protests erupted up and down the Eastern Seaboard as environmentalists clashed with pro-business politicians - including some Democrats - eager to attract the economic boost of oil and gas drilling. Obama ultimately used his presidential authority to ban drilling in the Atlantic. Trump's plan would open a much more extensive stretch of coastline to drilling, unlike anything that has ever been proposed by a U.S. president, Republican or Democrat, said Niel Lawrence, an attorney with the Natural Resources Defense Council, an advocacy group. "This is an out-and-out declaration of war on America's coasts and the people who use and depend upon them," Lawrence said. Already environmental lawyers are fighting the Trump administration in Alaska federal court, where they filed suit earlier this year to block Trump's move to reverse Obama's protections against drilling in the Arctic and Atlantic Oceans. At stake are some of the world's most pristine marine environments in Alaska's Beaufort and Chukchi seas, both of which are slated to be opened up for auction next year under Trump's drilling plan. The offshore industry, meanwhile, is still trying to clean up its image after the 2010 explosion of the Deepwater Horizon drilling rig, which left eleven people dead and spilled over 3 million barrels of oil into the Gulf of Mexico. "We are continuously developing and improving safety standards, programs, new technologies and best practices to protect our workers, the environment and marine life," said Erik Milito, upstream director at the American Petroleum Institute, the industry trade group. Under Trump's proposal, the Interior Department would hold 47 lease sales between 2019 and 2024, including 19 off the coast of Alaska, seven in the Pacific region, 12 in the Gulf of Mexico, and nine in the Atlantic region. Three Stanford medical and graduate students are among the 30 people awarded 2018 Paul and Daisy Soros Fellowships for New Americans, which support graduate study for immigrants to the United States and their children. Each of the Soros Fellows, who were selected from 1,766 applicants, will receive as much as $90,000 for tuition and living expenses in support of graduate education. Samuel Kim is in the MD-PhD program. Born in New Jersey to immigrant parents from South Korea, Kim attended Princeton University, where he developed a technology to study epigenetics by combining chemical synthesis with CRISPR/Cas9 genome targeting. At Stanford, Kim is working to understand unexplored elements of genome structure and to develop and deploy the necessary technologies to propel epigenomics into the clinic to address incurable diseases and provide personalized patient care. Kim will use the fellowship award to support his work toward an MD and a PhD in biomedical sciences. The stainless-steel cart Cuchara uses for tableside service has gotten such a workout that its wheels have been replaced twice. Its used as a tequila cart, a cocktail cart, a hot chocolate cart. Its been a traveling taco dispenser, a flaming crepes vehicle, a deliverer of churros. And when Ana Beaven, the owner of the Montrose Mexican restaurant, can secure mini grasshoppers from Oaxaca, she places a scale on the cart for tableside guacamole so customers can see their server weighing the crunchy bugs before they are scattered on avocado mash. Weve done a lot with that poor cart, Beaven said. Its like part of our family. Cuchara has been creating festive tableside presentations since it opened in 2012. So have other Houston restaurants some, such as Damians and Brennans, have been tossing Caesars and igniting Bananas Foster tableside for decades. But lately it appears were entering a new era of tableside service, with another generation of restaurants falling hard for the pomp of dining-room theatrics in all of their throwback glory. A few examples: At Mastros Steakhouse, Dover sole is deboned before diners eyes. Maison Pucha Bistro in the Heights mixes Wagyu steak tartare with mustard, capers, Worcestershire sauce and egg yolk from an organized cart. Le Colonial, a Vietnamese restaurant in River Oaks, now carves, slices and stuffs whole roasted duck into steamed buns at the table. La Tables Texas long-bone Akaushi rib-eye is ignited in cognac. And Quattro in the Four Seasons hotel downtown assembles tiramisu from house-made ladyfingers, mascarpone, espresso and Marsala wine in the dining room. I think its social-media driven, said Arthur Mooradian, regional director of Del Friscos Restaurant Group, whose Houston steakhouse has started slicing its 32-ounce dry-aged, double-bone rib-eye on a cutting board in front of customers. The guests love it. Its one of those things where (the rib-eye) leaves the kitchen and someone sees it and then has to have it, too. It has a snowball effect. And thats surely the point: Restaurants creating excitement are creating revenue. There was a time when tableside service was common practice. Restaurants specializing in continental cuisine, once the epitome of fine dining, often employed gueridon or trolley service, where food was cooked, finished and served tableside. As dining habits changed in the 60s and restaurant-going went from special occasion to more everyday affairs, trolley service was seen as old fashioned. Few restaurants opted to hang onto tableside glory days of swirling the pasta in a cheese wheel, mashing up garlic and anchovies in a big wooden bowl for salad and setting bananas on fire with a good glug of rum. Some restaurant professionals say the trend first resurfaced in a big way last year with the debut of The Grill in New York, where much of the menu is prepared tableside by waiters wearing Tom Ford suits. Indeed, the uptick locally dovetails with whats happening nationally: Old School Tableside Service is Making a Comeback, announced Food & Wine in a recent article. Industry magazine Restaurant Business also noted that flashy new presentations were gaining ground, in our see-it-share-it-want-it Instagram era. Bloomberg food editor Kate Krader thinks the renaissance could be a backlash to the casual hipster/farm-to-table dining trend that has gripped the country for years. A certain kind of new fine dining is back, and one of the aspects of that is tableside, Krader said. It makes you feel special and adds another dimension to the meal. Robert Del Grande, who will soon offer a whole roasted chicken for two carved tableside at his Cafe Annie restaurant, equates tableside presentation with distinctly American notions of the fanciest dining day of the year: Thanksgiving. You know, the big show of the father carving the turkey, he said. It was all part of tradition and theatrics. Xochi, Hugo Ortega and Tracy Vaughts Oaxacan restaurant downtown, has garnered national acclaim for its new ideas about presenting almost ancient flavors and foods. Its Mexican hot chocolate service, where a server froths the drink in a pitcher using a molinillo, a Mexican tool handcrafted from wood, has proven to be a hit with diners, Vaught said. Maybe it has to do with the classics coming back, Vaught said of the tableside trend. Its fine with me, I think its fun. But I dont think of food as being trendy. I think of it as being delicious, beautiful or nourishing. I dont think about trends. Not all things were meant to be tableside, Vaught added. She recalls the restaurants efforts to develop a seafood-soup presentation using hot rocks dipped into hollowed-out gourds. It sputtered up, and those rocks were red hot, she said. We found it to be too unstable and too scary to do tableside. Last year when Chris Shepherd opened his unusual One Fifth restaurant five different concepts over five years in the same space he employed one of the most classic tableside gestures, the Caesar salad. It married well with the restaurants first iteration as a steakhouse. It was so popular that tableside has continued at One Fifths current Romance Languages incarnation, with a strip steak au poivre. Im going to try to do tableside at every restaurant, said Shepherd, who remembers watching Julia Child flambe dishes on The French Chef back in the day. It brings more to the experience for the diner when they see something done right in front of them. It touches all the senses. Thats a dining experience to me, creating a memory. Shepherd is itching to get his hands on a French duck press, considered the most spectacular of all tableside implements a heavy, expensive, almost medieval device that turns a roasted duck carcass and organs into pulverized, liquefied juices that are then made into a sauce for the roasted duck breast. Fine-dining standby Tonys uses a brass duck press tableside to serve its 14-day dry-aged roasted duck breast glossed with a sauce made with morel mushrooms. The restaurants 26-year-old chef de cuisine, Austin Waiter, also offers a seared foie gras dish that is finished tableside with a flame of reserve bourbon and Tahitian vanilla bean and plated on a bed of rhubarb and toasted farro with a Sauternes sauce. We want it to be a show. We want to bring everyone in, Waiter said. People are more into seeing how their food is prepared, not just whats put down in front of them on a plate. Tableside is more interactive. greg.morago@chron.com twitter.com/gregmorago Few writers have as an interesting career as William Vollmann. In addition to winning the National Book Award for 2005's "Europe Central," he was on the front lines in Afghanistan's war with the Soviet Union in the 1980s. In the 1990s, he went to the North Pole for two weeks while writing about Franklin's quest for the Northwest Passage. In 2008, he began cross-dressing while trying to understand "what it means to be female." In his latest work, "No Immediate Danger" (Viking; 624 pp.; $40), he went to Japan following the Fukushima Reactor meltdowns and took radioactivity readings in the country's ghost towns. He discussed his writing and adventures. Q: In "No Immediate Danger," you address the book to readers of the future rather than to a contemporary audience. Why? A: My previous book, "The Dying Grass," addressed the war between the Cavalry and Chief Joseph, and it was also the time when the buffalo were almost wiped out on the plains. It was sad for me to read about, but at the same time, I didn't feel any urgency because the story was over. I do feel urgency on the crisis that we are currently heading into, but I know there is little I can do about it. Therefore, it's kind of relaxing to think of the whole thing as a done deal. It's written as though all we can do is look back and think, "Hm, why did those people in the early-21st century do what they did?" Q: How do you think we'll be perceived by future generations? A: I think what we've been doing is fundamental not just to human nature, but to biology in general. You can't really blame a tree for wanting to grow taller and crowding out other trees. You can't blame humans for wanting to improve their lives and their children's lives. That's kind of the tragedy of it. I interviewed a couple of nice folks in the oil industry, and they both said, "Bill, we're proud of what we've done. We don't want to be thought of as people who did a dirty job." Now, I'm a voracious consumer of all forms of energy, so where would I get off saying how terrible they are, if I use their oil? I have to accept that. Q: Your books, including this one, are dense and heavily researched. How many people do you anticipate will read and understand this book? A: I imagine very few, which is the case with all of my books. But you know, Gandhi once said that we have to scrupulously avoid the desire and concern for results. All we can do is hope for the best. If it helps, that's great. But even if we know it probably won't help, it doesn't let us off the hook for not doing our best. I won't be too disappointed if no one reads my book; but I would have been disappointed if I hadn't written the book. NEW NONFICTION: In "Feel Free," the wide-ranging mind of Zadie Smith goes to work Q: Your work is frequently characterized by on-the-ground journalism. Why is that important to what you are trying to do? A: When I was in college, I took a psychological profiling test, and I was delighted to find out that I was I the absolutely lowest percentile for tolerance of authority. I've been proud to be that way, and it's kind of an American virtue. So, what can I say about the nuclear disaster in Fukushima? I actually can say some things because I've been there, I've educated myself on it and I've taken readings on the radioactivity and correlated them with other evidence. If nothing else, I did my homework, and I have an informed opinion. Q: Your participatory journalism has given you informed opinions on many things, whether it's battle zones, arctic areas, and also cross-dressing. Can you tell us about Dolores? A: I was in Japan on a previous book, in which I wrote about geishas and Kabuki actors. It was an incredible art form, and it is very strange to think of old men with big Adam's apples, singing in these deep voices, somehow representing beautiful women by wearing a mask and kimono. I think, "What exactly is a woman?" The only answer I could arrive at was that she is someone who performs femininity. In my area, San Francisco, there are many trans women or what they call "t-girls," and many of them are marginalized. They suffer, particularly the street prostitutes. I believed they deserved understanding, and to understand them I cross-dressed and went out amongst them as Dolores. I thought poor old Dolores would look a little better than she did, but she is really a very wrinkled old bag. Having gone through that stage, I now keep her clothes and such in storage. Q: Are other people relieved? A: Well, my daughter got a big kick out of it. The book of Dolores came out when she was in high school so I think that she had a lot of fun shocking the other students. NEW NONFICTION: What's a meaningful life? Steven Pinker knows. Q: Tell us about some of your other participatory forays in journalism. A: I wrote about the seven continents over the last thousands of years in my Seven Dream Series and part of that involved the Franklin Expedition. The crew was trying to find the Northwest Passage. Their ships got trapped in the ice, and they gradually went insane from lead poisoning. I wanted to experience a little bit of what they did, and I went up to the North Magnetic Pole. I had a plane drop me off, and I tried to make the best of it. When I first got there, my glasses froze, and I couldn't see through them the entire time I was there. Also, my sleeping bag didn't keep me as warm as it said it would. It was like crawling in a frozen shrimp. There were ice crystals in my sleeping bag. I got frostbite on a couple of fingers. Q: I think you had an unfortunate encounter with fire? A: Yes, I sure did. I scorched my eyebrows off. Q: Returning to your latest book, "No Immediate Danger," you quote the Unabomber. But it's also true that the FBI considered you a leading suspect in the Unabomber case. A: Yes, and I recommend to you, that if you are interested in where your tax dollars are going, then you should look at your FBI file and see what preposterous baloney they say about it. It's actually quite fun. Q: What else would you like us to think about? A: I am frightened about the way that "Red" and "Blue" State people seem to be more distant and angry with each other. I am worried that the two sides will write each other off, and things will only get worsenot only in climate change, but for all kinds of things. Mike Yawn is the Director of the Center for Law, Engagement, And Politics at Sam Houston State University. Sign up for the Gray Matters newsletter. It's actually quite fun. MD Anderson Cancer Center has been selected for a leading role in a new federal initiative to advance the reach of treatment that uses the body's immune system to fight cancer. As part of a $215 million public-private partnership announced by the National Institutes of Health Thursday, MD Anderson will receive funding to help identify and test chemical signatures in the body that officials hope will predict which patients will benefit from immunotherapy, a new frontier of cancer treatment pioneered by the Houston research hospital's Jim Allison. "We have seen dramatic responses from immunotherapy, often eradicating cancer completely for some cancer patients," Dr. Francis S. Collins, director of the NIH, said in a statement. "We need to bring that kind of success and hope for more people and more types of cancers, and we need to do it quickly. A systematic approach like (this partnership) will help us to achieve success faster." The partnership is the first initiative announced under the Trump Administration involving the Cancer Moonshot, the federal effort to accelerate cancer research initiated by President Barack Obama and led by Vice President Joe Biden. Dramatic responses from immunotherapy followed Allison's discovery that a protein on the immune system acts as a brake instead of an accelerator. He subsequently developed a drug to free the brake, unleashing the immune system to attack the cancer. The breakthrough revitalized the field and led to the identification of other brakes and development of other drugs. Suddenly, a subset of patients with cancers that typically kill in less than a year began beating the disease. However, a majority of patients do not yet benefit from the approach. As part of the initiative's attempt to change that, MD Anderson will get $11 million over five years to conduct tumor analysis and immune monitoring in immunotherapy clinical trials conducted by multi-institutional networks. Such analysis and monitoring aims to identify biomarkers that could guide future treatment. "We want to improve immune monitoring to better understand the mechanisms that lead tumors to respond to or resist treatment so we can develop new, better strategies for patients," said Dr. Ignacio Wistuba, MD Anderson's chair of translational molecular pathology and the principal investigator of its piece of the partnership. The NIH is providing $160 million of the funding and 11 pharmaceutical companies are contributing $1 million a year over five years. The companies are AbbVie, Amgen, Boehringer Ingelheim, Bristol-Myers Squibb, Celgene Corporation, Genentech, Gilead, GlaxoSmithKline, Janssen/Johnson & Johnson, Novartis, and Pfizer. MD Anderson is one of four centers selected to conduct tumor analysis and monitoring. The others are Dana-Farber Cancer Institute in Boston, Stanford Cancer Institute in California and the The Tisch Cancer Institute at Mount Sinai in New York. HIALEAH, Fla. - "Are there any Hispanics in the room?" President Donald Trump grinned. "No, I doubt it," he said with a chuckle, but he knew there were. His was a rhetorical question. On stage with him here at Bucky Dent Park were Sen. Marco Rubio, R-Fla., and Rep. Mario Diaz-Balart, R-Fla., Labor Secretary Alexander Acosta, the only Latino cabinet member, and several local Hispanic business leaders. The crowd, filled with dozens of Cuban- and Venezuelan-Americans who populate South Florida, cheered. For Trump, the latest in a series of roundtable events to sell his tax cut measure to the public a day before Tax Filing Day served an ulterior purpose - to appeal to the sliver of crucial Hispanic voters in this important swing state who are most receptive to the policies of a president who has alienated large swaths with his anti-immigration message. "For Hispanics, we have the lowest level ever recorded," Trump said of unemployment rates, reading from a notecard. "I'm really proud of it." Trump's visit to this district about 13 miles northwest of Miami came ahead of his two-day summit with Japanese Prime Minister Shinzo Abe that begins at Mar-a-Lago on Tuesday. It served as a way for the president to tout his biggest legislative achievement, the Republican tax cut bill passed in December that the GOP hopes will give them a political boost as many Americans see a dip in their tax bills. Polls show that a majority of the public remains skeptical of the tax bill, but Trump's events have featured local business leaders extolling the virtues, saying they've granted bonuses to employees and invested in their businesses. The event here Monday was no different, but the wrinkle came because the people on stage with Trump told of their personal journeys as immigrants who arrived in the United States seeking opportunity. Maximo Alvarez, the president of Sunshine Gasoline Distributors, came from Havana in 1961 as one of 14,000 children fleeing the Castro regime. Sitting next to Trump, he called the United States the "most generous country in the world" and thanked Trump for "restoring the capacity for people like me to start a business in the trunk of our car to become a very prominent country." Alvarez teared up as he added: "If I gave everything I had today, it would only be 10 percent of what I was given when I came to this country of ours." As Alvarez wiped from behind his glasses, Trump stood and applauded and reached out to grab his hand. The scene might have come as a surprise given Trump's strong anti-immigration rhetoric; in addition to his pledges to build a border wall and his administration's tougher enforcement posture against undocumented immigrants, Trump has sought to press Congress to support lowering legal immigration levels. Yet in this part of South Florida, many voters are supportive of Trump because of his tough rhetoric on Cuba and the regime of Nicolas Maduro in Venezuela. The president has denounced human rights violations in both countries, as have Rubio and Diaz-Balart, and the Trump administration has levied economic sanctions on Caracas. Attending the Summit of the Americas in Trump's absence last week, Vice President Mike Pence met in Lima, Peru, with four Venezuelan opposition leaders. "Here there's gratitude toward the president," Diaz-Balart said in an interview, "gratitude that the policy of appeasing of the Castro dictatorship, and to some degree the Chavez-Maduro dictatorship - those days are over. Why? Because here there's no misunderstanding that you don't hurt anti-American dictatorships by helping to fund them more. You don't hurt them by legitimizing them. You hurt them by diplomatically and economically pressuring them and by helping the opposition and that's what this administration's been doing." John Bolton, Trump's hawkish new national security adviser who was among the president's aides in the crowd, drew a standing ovation when the president introduced him. Some in the audience pumped their fists. "Thank you for John Bolton," Rubio told Trump. "It's a bad day for Maduro and Castro, and a great day for the cause of freedom." The Hispanic unemployment rate fell to 4.7 percent last year, a historic low that it had not been at in more than a decade, according to Pew Research Center. Trump, who had attempted to roll back regulatory provisions from the Obama administration, has taken credit for the economy, though it had been improving in the final years of President Barack Obama's tenure. But by and large, Hispanic voters have largely disapproved of Trump. A new Washington Post/ABC News poll showed that 81 percent disapprove of his job performance, with just 16 percent who approve. In another sign that Trump was eager to improve his standing among Hispanics, the president was scheduled to do an interview with Univision, a major Spanish-language network. Elena Dolinski, 51, a native Venezuelan who has lived in the United States for 15 years, became a citizen last year and said she remained open to Trump's message after listening to him at the tax event. But she added: "I think that the beauty of this country is the diversity that we have. We have an example today on this panel. Most of those people are immigrants." Immigration agents knocking at the door? Now, theres an app for that, too. United We Dream, the largest national immigrant youth-led organization, has officially launched a smartphone application that added yet another tool for the protection of undocumented immigrants utilizing high tech and online social communications. The app, called Notifica, allows undocumented immigrants to activate a plan if they come in contact with immigration law enforcement authorities or find themselves at risk of being detained. The users can previously prepare a set of automatic messages to alert - with one click - family members, lawyers, and others if they or someone they care about have an encounter with immigration enforcement authorities. The tool was developed last year and distributed on a small scale, and is now available for the public on Google and at Apple apps stores. Smartphone applications to deal with arrests by immigration agents are evolving in an era of stepped-up enforcement on the southern border, as well as inside that nation. RELATED: The futures of 'Dreamers' still left up in the air The current sociopolitical context of enforcement has increased fear and anxiety in the immigrant community, regardless of citizenship status, said Jodi Berger Cardoso, a professor at the University of Houstons Graduate College of Social Work, who specializes in exposure to trauma and psychosocial stress among related to migrations. We have witnessed in Texas and across the United States the increase in Immigration and Customs Enforcement raids in local communities, including schools, she said. Adrian Reyna, director of Membership and Technology Strategies for United We Dream, said that when something actually happens, most people dont know what to do at that moment. The app was designed precisely to have a plan of action at your fingertips, explained Reyna. Once Notifica is downloaded to a phone, the user can create personalized messages for predetermined family members and others they would want to inform in the event of an encounter with law enforcement. For example, one message could be forwarded to a lawyer warning about an arrest in progress, or to a family member with instructions to call an advocate from a legal defense group. Damaris Gonzalez, who is enrolled in DACA along with her two sisters, says she and her family are installing the app on their phones. My mom doesnt have documents, so I want to make sure that we are prepared and know what to do if something happens, said Gonzalez, an organizer with United We Dream. MORE: 'Dreamers' could lose more than their jobs if immigration program dies Gonzalez, who was brought to the U.S. illegally in 1985 when she was nine years old, considers that Notifica will make it easier for my family to contact me in the case, God forbid, something may happen. Supporters of strong anti-illegal immigration policies, however, see initiatives like the creation of this app as tools to evade the law. I am not surprised by the app, said Marri Velasquez, a Republican activist from Houston who co-founded the Hispanics for Trump group. Its like fugitives, always running around trying to find the new thing they use Nexdoor.com, and other network groups to alert each other. There is always going to be another protection; another cover-up; but this is not going to change anything, Velasquez said. Contemporary tools like Notifica, however, are in demand among immigrant communities, and not only for undocumented residents. United We Dream said that Notifica and the Texas hotline are designed to help immigrant families under an increasing threat of criminalization as the (Donald) Trump administration carries out its mass detention and deportation agenda. Arrests in the interior of the country by ICE, the arm of the Department of Homeland Security in charge of deportations, increased 42% since the inauguration of President Donald Trump on January 20 until the end of the fiscal year on September 30, compared to the same period in 2016, according to Pew Research Center using ICE data. Houston, with 13,565 arrests, was the city with the second largest number of ICE arrests nationwide following Dallas with 16,520 during the 2017 fiscal year. However, the rate of the annual increase was much lower in Houston, with only 5%, compared to 71% in Dallas. IMMIGRATION: For a Houston family, ICE shatters the life they knew Immigrant populations often experience a sense of powerlessness to protect themselves, and in particular, their children from immigration enforcement tactics, as well as racial and ethnic profiling, said Berger Cardoso. Policies such as the Texas SB-4 law raised concerns among human rights advocates for the potential of becoming a tool for racial profiling. It allows police officers to request immigration status documents when they stop people. Notifica includes information and guidance about the rights of immigrants and tips on what to do in different scenarios. It is an initiative of the UWDs National Defense Network Program that has also developed other projects such as the Texas Immigrants Rights Hot Line [1 (888) 507-2970], which provides information and referrals to legal services in Texas. Reyna said that UWD is already working on version 2 of Notifica, which will include the ability to use more languages. Currently, it employs Spanish and English but will be upgraded later this summer with language features in Vietnamese, Korean and Chinese. Another feature that will be included is the ability to determine the location of where a person is being held in detention. A feature now in development that Reyna said could be helpful to immigrants when added to Notifica is a tool like a heat map that could allow people to monitor the level of risk in a specific location at any given time. In general terms, we all try to find ways to survive in our life, and this is not different, said Luis Zayas, dean of the Steve Hick School of Social Work at the University of Texas at Austin. Under the current aggressive immigration enforcement its natural for these communities under such scrutiny to use the technology for communication that we have today, explained Zayas, also the author of the book Forgotten Citizens: Deportation, Children, and the Making of American Exiles and Orphans. A similar app that is in development now is RedadAlertas, aiming to quickly spread immigration rides alert that would be verified and distributed using raid rapid response networks. It is planned for mid-2018, according to the app website. But already in use among immigrant communities are applications like Arrived and Immigo that provide information and services targeted to immigrants. Perhaps the most notable potential technological breakthrough would be one called Bienvenidos that could be available this year. Its website says that it will provide real-time information about the best immigration routes to cross the U.S.-Mexico Border. olivia.tallet@chron.com Twitter: @oliviaptallet WASHINGTON - President Donald Trump on Monday put the brakes on a preliminary plan to impose additional economic sanctions on Russia, walking back a Sunday announcement by U.S. Ambassador to the United Nations Nikki Haley that the Kremlin had swiftly denounced as "international economic raiding." Preparations to punish Russia anew for its support of Syrian President Bashar Assad's government over the alleged chemical weapons attack in Syria caused consternation at the White House. Haley said on CBS News' "Face the Nation" that sanctions on Russian companies behind the equipment related to Assad's alleged chemical weapons attack would be announced Monday by Treasury Secretary Steven Mnuchin. But as officials in Moscow condemned the planned sanctions as overly punitive, Trump conferred with his national security advisers later Sunday and told them he was upset the sanctions were being officially rolled out because he was not yet comfortable executing them, according to several people familiar with the plan. Administration officials said the economic sanctions were under serious consideration, along with other measures that could be taken against Russia, but said Trump had not given final authorization to implement them. Administration officials said Monday it was unlikely Trump would approve any additional sanctions without another triggering event by Russia, describing the strategy as being in a holding pattern. Sometime after Haley's comments on CBS, the Trump administration notified the Russian Embassy in Washington that the sanctions were not in fact coming, a Russian Foreign Ministry official said Monday. The Trump team decided to publicly characterize Haley's announcement as a misstatement. White House press secretary Sarah Huckabee Sanders said in a statement Monday: "We are considering additional sanctions on Russia and a decision will be made in the near future." Privately, another White House official said Haley got ahead of herself and made "an error that needs to be mopped up." But other administration officials expressed skepticism that Haley had merely misspoken. They said Haley is one of the most disciplined and cautious members of the Cabinet, especially when it comes to her public appearances. She regularly checks in with Trump personally to go over her planned statements before she sits for television interviews. Haley issued no clarifying statement on Sunday after news organizations, including The Washington Post, reported prominently that the new sanctions would be announced Monday based on her comments to CBS. Asked Monday morning why it had taken 24 hours for the administration to walk back Haley's comments, one White House official said only that there had been confusion internally about what the plan was. The sanctions were developed in recent weeks as part of a ready menu of potential military and economic measures for Trump to enact to strike back at Assad's government and his Russian patrons, according to a senior administration official. In early March, following a relatively small scale chemical weapons attack in Syria, Trump was upset there was not a ready set of options, so then-national security adviser H.R. McMaster prepared a series of measures that were not enacted. But the late-March poisoning of a former Russian spy on British soil led the Trump administration to trigger the first round of the economic sanctions on that menu and to expel 60 diplomats in coordination with the European allies. The chemical attack by Assad in Douma in early April set off a debate in the White House about whether the United States should trigger another round of economic sanctions to punish Russia. The president seemed to refer to those measures in his speech announcing strikes on the Assad regime last Friday night in which he promised to respond with "all instruments of our national power: military, economic and diplomatic." But it was unclear to officials whether Trump wanted to hit Russia with the next set of options on the sanctions menu or wait for another attack, according to the senior administration official. Some officials said the misunderstanding could have been the result of Haley's tendency to speak directly with the president, sometimes outside of the normal policy process. "She'll usually talk to the president without the rest of the White House and get her remarks cleared directly," said the administration official. "Often we don't know about them." Early in the Trump administration there were conflicts between Haley's team and the president on Russia. Shortly after Trump's inauguration, Haley delivered a speech at the United Nations that recommitted the White House to the Obama administration's policy on sanctions related to Russian aggression in Ukraine. The speech was cleared by David Cattler, then a senior official on the National Security Council, but the remarks frustrated Trump, who demanded to know who had approved them. "Lots of people got yelled at - some by the president," said a U.S. official at the United Nations. Cattler, in turn, was pushed out of his job a couple of weeks later in a reorganization of the NSC by McMaster. White House officials said Trump has been impressed with Haley lately, particularly her remarks about Syria over the past week, and stressed Monday that the president holds her in high regard. In the absence of a permanent secretary of state, Haley has been the face of American diplomacy, playing an especially prominent role over the past week as the Trump administration responded to the attack in Syria. Haley said Sunday on CBS, "You will see that Russian sanctions will be coming down. Secretary Mnuchin will be announcing those on Monday, if he hasn't already. And they will go directly to any sort of companies that were dealing with equipment related to Assad and chemical weapons used. And so I think everyone is going to feel it at this point. I think everyone knows that we sent a strong message, and our hope is that they listen to it." The Russians were listening. After Haley's comments, Kremlin press secretary Dmitry Peskov told reporters in Moscow that the sanctions were a U.S. ploy to oust Russia from international markets and constituted "undisguised attempts of unfair competition." "The sanction campaign against Russia is truly assuming the nature of an obsessive idea," Peskov said, according to the Interfax news agency. "We still do not see these sanctions as lawful. We see them as going against international law." Peskov added, "Certainly, this cannot have any relation to and cannot be motivated by considerations of the situation in Syria or any other country . . . I would call this international economic raiding rather than something else." But after the Kremlin got word through Russia's embassy in Washington that the sanctions would not be coming, there was a subtle shift in Moscow toward a less confrontational tone, even as officials continued to slam U.S. sanctions as veiled attempts at gaining economic advantage. Russian lawmakers were crowing Friday that they were going to make the United States pay for already imposed sanctions, potentially by blocking American imports or U.S.-Russian aerospace cooperation or allowing Russians to violate U.S. intellectual property rights. Russia, one top lawmaker promised, was going to "hit the Americans in the gut." But on Monday, senior lawmakers in the lower house of parliament, the State Duma, decided to hold off until May 15 before considering any counter-sanctions against the United States. Speaker Vyacheslav Volodin said the Duma needed to meet with experts and the business community first. Deputy Foreign Minister Sergei Ryabkov also urged calm. "Let's first wait until these sanctions are implemented," Ryabkov said in reference to possible new U.S. sanctions, Interfax reported. "We have to see what will be announced, at what scale, and who or what will become the targets of these sanctions." - - - Troianovski reported from Moscow. The Post's Shane Harris, John Hudson and Ashley Parker contributed to this report. U.S. regulators Thursday approved a second drug that frees the immune system to attack tumors, a game-changing new approach to treating cancer pioneered by a Houston scientist. The drug, Merck's Keytruda (pembrolizumab), belongs to a modality known as immunotherapy, which long tantalized cancer doctors but is finally beginning to take its place alongside surgery, radiation and chemotherapy, cancer treatment's historic pillars. The new immunotherapy drugs are approved only for melanoma, the most deadly form of skin cancer, but are showing great promise in clinical trials involving a host of cancers. "This is a good day for melanoma patients and, potentially, for lots of other future cancer patients, too," said Jim Allison, an M.D. Anderson Cancer Center immunologist who discovered a brake on the immune system that prevents it from attacking tumors, then translated the finding into a drug that unleashes the system. "This approval by the Food and Drug Administration shows it understands this class of drugs works and that they want to accelerate patients' access to them." The FDA granted accelerated approval for Keytruda ahead of schedule and following only early-stage clinical trials, a sign of the growing excitement about the class of drugs. Allison's drug, Yervoy (ipilimumab), was approved for the advanced melanoma in 2012, following many years of trials. Dr. Antonti Ribas, a professor at UCLA's Jonsson Comprehensive Cancer Center and the lead investigator of the most important Keytruba trial, said the new drug "builds on Allison's paradigm-shifting work" and represents the start of "a new era." He said Keytruda appears to work even better, with greater efficacy and less side effects. Keytruda was approved for melanoma patients who did not benefit from Yervoy, about 75 percent of those with advanced stages of the disease. FDA approval in 2015? Keytruda targets a different brake than the one identified by Allison, an immune inhibitor called Programmed Death receptor (PD-1). It also targets a related protein on the tumor, PD-L1, which the cancer uses to evade disease-fighting cells. Numerous other pharmaceutical companies, including Bristol-Myers Squibb, AstroZeneca and Genentech, have anti-PD-1 drugs in the pipeline, as well as others that aren't in clinical trials yet. Bristol-Myers Squibb's drug, Nivolumab, should come up for FDA approval sometime in early 2015. Dr. Patrick Hwu, chairman of melanoma medical oncology at M.D. Anderson, said "pretty much every advanced melanoma patient should have one of the anti-PD-1 drugs at some point in their therapy, they work so well." He said more than 100 M.D. Anderson melanoma patients thus far have received Keytruba through clinical trials. Hwu added he thinks all advanced melanoma patients would benefit from receiving Keytruba upfront, though it's doubtful insurance companies will now cover the drug that early, given the FDA's indications for its use. Ribas said it will likely take later-stage, randomized clinical trials before insurance companies cover Keytruda as upfront treatment. The drug sells for an average of about $12,500 a month for most patients. It's typically given every three weeks for about six months. Hwu somewhat downplayed the cost of the drug, noting its durability means most patients won't need follow-up treatment like they often do with other cancer drugs. Keytruda and Yervoy appear to prime the immune system to forever recognize and attack the tumor. Hopes for survival rate Keytruda's average overall survival rate hasn't been determined yet - expected to be the drug's most impressive statistic - because most study participants are still being followed. But a Merck study found that a third of 600 patients benefited from the drug. Anti-PD-1 drugs are also showing positive results in trials involving at least 20 tumor types, including lung, bladder, head and neck, ovarian and gastric cancer. Melanoma is diagnosed in about 76,100 Americans a year, about 5 percent of all new cancers in the U.S. Nearly 10,000 die annually, according to the National Cancer Institute. Decked out in black tie, Jim Allison stood on the red carpet in Silicon Valley. It was unfamiliar territory for the small town boy from South Texas who'd become a scientist and spent his research career on what many considered a lost cause, the study of the immune system's cancer-fighting potential. But he always believed that's where the action would be, and now here was Facebook CEO Mark Zuckerberg saying Allison's breakthrough "will change lives for generations to come." For that, late night television host Conan O'Brien handed him the 2014 Breakthrough Prize in Life Sciences award, which includes a $3 million check. Allison had become a rock star. There'd been something fiercely independent in him since high school, where he battled creationist teachers. There'd been an extraordinary run of cancer deaths in his family, not least his 45-year-old mom, that convinced him there had to be better treatment than radiation and chemotherapy. And there'd been that wild, creative streak that once led to him blowing a harmonica with Willie Nelson. Video: Cancer researcher plays music, too Whatever the source of his genius, Allison, chairman of immunology at M.D. Anderson Cancer Center, is credited today with one of the most important breakthroughs in cancer history, the discovery that finally frees the immune system to attack tumors - a dramatic departure from the existing models of treating the disease. Allison did it - made the discovery, then translated it into a drug - in a climate that for a time wasn't exactly welcoming. The achievement has recently earned Allison the Economist magazine's 2013 Innovations Award in Bioscience; the National Foundation for Cancer Research's 2014 Szent-Gyorgyi Prize for Progress in Cancer Research; and just last week, Canada's Gairdner International Award. On Monday, he will be presented the American Association for Cancer Research's G.H.A. Clowes Memorial Award for outstanding recent accomplishments in basic cancer research. M.D. Anderson President Dr. Ronald DePinho thinks Allison's work will ultimately win the Nobel Prize. "By creating this brilliant approach that treats the immune system rather than the tumor, Jim Allison opened a completely new avenue for treating all cancers that's the most exciting and promising area of cancer research today," DePinho says. Bearded and scraggly haired, Allison, 65, insists he never set out to cure cancer. Rather, he describes his motivation as "the selfish desire to be the first person on the planet to know something, preferably something important." "It can be hard to go against the system," says Allison, "but sometimes you have to do it for progress to be made." Six months before his red carpet moment in Mountain View, Calif., Allison found himself arriving late to Chicago's famed Arie Crown Theater, site of an immunotherapy session at the American Society of Clinical Oncology's 49th annual meeting. For years, he'd been going to such gatherings at the scholarly conference. Historically, they'd been sparsely attended. A series of high-profile flops and disappointments had been responsible for that. Long a Holy Grail of cancer research, the idea of enlisting the immune system to fight cancer over time became a forgotten stepchild, seemingly forever out of reach. But this session promised to be different. It concerned the tangible progress flowing from Allison's breakthrough. Allison and Dr. Patrick Hwu, an M.D. Anderson colleague, barely had to set foot in the theater's lobby to know cancer immunotherapy's moment had arrived. Faced with standing-room-only crowds on the floor level, they scrambled for the best remaining seats in the nosebleed section, where they gazed out on 4,000 doctors who'd come from around the world to hear how the immune system was saving the lives of patients whose cancers historically meant a death sentence. "Wow," Allison said to Hwu, taking in the view. "This is amazing." The doctors had come because of a flash of brilliance by Allison that deciphered which molecules on the surface of T cells function as catalysts and which one functions as the brake. *** Allison grew up in a town, Alice, that furnished the ideal stage for his first clash with the Establishment. Its high school didn't teach evolution. The son of a country doctor who'd hoped he'd follow in his footsteps, Allison was an advanced enough student to chafe at the idea of a science curriculum influenced by religious-minded teachers. Even then, he recalls, he knew evolution is to biology as Newton is to physics. How could a biology class omit its most fundamental tenet? So Allison did what any future maverick scientist would do: He refused to take the class. Fortunately for Allison, his father was on the school board. A compromise was reached to allow him, then a senior, to satisfy the requirement by taking the University of Texas-Austin's freshman biology course by correspondence. A rebel was born. Allison's childhood in Alice, an agricultural and oil center 40 miles west of Corpus Christi, was otherwise quiet, a classic rural Texas existence of the '50s and early '60s. Descendant of a long line of Texans and youngest of three brothers, he was bookish, outdoorsy, an Eagle Scout and straight A student who loved dissecting frogs. Still, it was a youth not without tragedy. He was 11 years old when his mother died. She'd been seriously sick with lymphoma for some time, but he had no idea when his father called him to her bedside, stopping him from heading to the local swimming pool with some buddies, that this would be the last time. She died as he held her hand. Allison remembers walking out of the house and wandering aimlessly, trying to comprehend things. No one ever told him much about his mother's illness, certainly not that she had cancer. That only came later. The family cancers would keep coming. He lost an uncle to melanoma, another to lung cancer. Years later, his brother would die of prostate cancer, a cousin of ovarian cancer. None, he says, were pretty. It was all a motivating force, he says, but emphasizes he never considered curing cancer his purpose. "If I had, I'd never have found the immune system's brake," says Allison, who was diagnosed with prostate cancer and successfully treated by prostatectomy in 2005. "Because of my family history, I always had in the back of my mind that if my research uncovered something that might help, I'd make the leap. But I always knew the key was figuring out how things work, finding the right button to push." The hardest thing was that his breakthrough didn't come soon enough to save his brother. He'd ignored significant joint pain, only to ultimately learn it was advanced prostate cancer. He made it eight years, but by the end, 2005, he was comatose from the morphine. Allison was at his bedside, too, when he died, holding his hand. At 16, Allison graduated from high school and went to UT, where he quickly lost interest in going on to medical school, soured, first, by all the memorization it would require, then by the realization that doctors have an inordinate amount of responsibility. "As a scientist you make mistakes all the time that's how you learn," says Allison. "But a physician has to be right all the time, or there are consequences to the patient. I prefer the scientist's life get an idea, devise an experiment, learn if it checks out or not. You only have to be right sometimes." After completing his undergraduate studies and Ph.D. at UT, Allison went to Scripps Clinic and Research Foundation near San Diego for his postdoctoral fellowship. Some of his most lasting memories there didn't involve science. *** Allison describes himself as "always kind of doodling on the harmonica," but it was during his post-doc nights in mid-'70s southern California that he became more serious, more skilled. For a couple of years he played regularly with Clay Blaker and the Texas Honky Tonk Band, the front man of which would go on to write half a dozen songs recorded by George Strait. The stars aligned for his stint with Willie Nelson. He'd wangled an invitation to a party Nelson's label threw to celebrate the Red Headed Stranger album going platinum and, when Nelson asked Allison if he knew anywhere he could pick some music the next night, Allison didn't hesitate to volunteer it was Talent Night at the Stingaree bar where he played. That night Allison picked up Nelson, his drummer and bass player in his Volkswagen bus and, after Nelson took the stage, Allison joined him for Blue Eyes Crying in the Rain. Over the years, Allison bumped into Nelson a few times and each time he'd remind him of the night. "He'd say, 'I remember it like it was yesterday," then add, 'What's your name again?' " laughs Allison. For all his love of music, though, Allison had no illusions. Asked by Blaker to accompany the band when it left southern California to play Texas clubs, Allison opted to keep his day job. He returned to Texas a year after completing his post-doc. He showed up at M.D. Anderson's new science campus in Smithville, asked for a job and, easy as that, procured a biochemist position. He was the institution's sixth hire. By then, the mid-'70s, Allison already was keenly aware of cancer immunotherapy's checkered history. In the 1890s, a New York doctor claimed several successes inoculating cancer patients with cultures of microbes, an idea that came to him after he discovered one seemingly terminal patient's tumor had shrunk to nothing after her immune system fought off a strep infection. But his results couldn't be reliably reproduced and the approach never took off. Cancer immunotherapy resurfaced In the 1960s, when some prominent scientists proposed that one reason people have an immune system is to protect against cancer. The idea was all the rage for a time, but when early mice experiments didn't show benefits, it fell out of favor. "Tumor immunology had such a bad rap," says Allison. "People would say to me, 'don't do tumor immunology it'll ruin your reputation.' " In the ensuing years, cancer immunotherapy made some strides, but they were frequently undermined by hype, sometimes by the scientists themselves. Allison was struck that nobody really knew what they were doing. He set out to be the scientist who did. Allison had free rein at Smithville to study the immune system, then in its research infancy. He'd become fascinated following an undergraduate experiment he conducted that showed mice cured of leukemia had acquired an immune response that rejected his attempts to inject new tumors; he'd become even more interested as he learned of the immune system's complexity, the communication and coordination it calls upon to recognize and eliminate any pathogen, all without causing damage to healthy tissue. Allison was most interested in T cells, the little-understood immune system soldiers that "do all the killing." What about cancer disarms them, Allison wondered. Why do they so efficiently attack virus-infected cells but not get the necessary signals to attack tumors? In the next decade, Allison's work laid important basic science groundwork. He identified, first, T cells' ignition switch, a receptor that has to recognize proteins on tumor cells; then the gas pedal, a co-stimulatory molecule necessary to activate the T cells. They would provide key insights that helped facilitate the big discovery still to come. In that time, the University of California-Berkeley came recruiting. It was no easy decision for Allison, who loved the life he was leading weekends watching his favorite Texas music acts in Austin, weekdays able to hike and canoe on 18 wooded acres of land he'd bought within walking distance of the Smithville campus. He dithered for two years, before finally deciding as much fun as he was having, it was time to make the move. It took a former adviser telling him if he passed the job up, he'd put up his feet 10 years later thinking he could have been a contender. The heavyweight bout would come sooner than expected. *** By the '90s, the race was on. Numerous immunology labs were looking for molecular signals to rally T cells into action and nothing looked so promising as a protein, CTLA-4, newly discovered by a team of French researchers. CTLA-4, which protrudes from T cells' surface, turned out to resemble the structure of the "gas pedal" Allison described so it seemed logical it was an activation signal. But when Allison tried binding molecules with CTLA-4 like he'd done with the "gas pedal" protein, he got an opposite effect: it inhibited T cell proliferation. Could it be a brake, not a gas pedal? So while most everyone else was looking for evidence that CTLA-4 turned on the immune system, Allison designed a study based on the novel hypothesis that CTLA-4 turned it off: he implanted mice with cancer cells and treated some of them with an antibody that blocked CTLA-4 in essence, taking the brake off the immune system. Allison was astounded by the initial data his research fellow showed him at the end of November 1995 - while all the untreated mice had died, 90 percent of the cancers of the treated mice had disappeared. In Allison's mind, a follow-up experiment to reproduce the results needed to be done immediately, but there was a problem: his assistant was headed off to a European vacation, and Berkeley would soon be closing for Christmas. Allison didn't want to wait until the school break was over. He instructed the student to inject tumors into a new bunch of mice, including a control group that didn't get the antibody, before he left for vacation. Allison would come in during the break and monitor the mice himself, unaware which was the control group and which group got the treatment, a truly blinded study. Allison took the measurements every other day during December and, for a short while, the results were the source of despair. All the tumors were continuing to grow. But at about the third week, things began to change. In half of the mice, the cancers first stopped growing, then started shrinking, then disappeared. In March 1996, the journal Science published Allison's research: Blocking CTLA-4 enhances anti-tumor responses. "Everyone thought I was crazy," says Allison. Uncowed, Allison took the finding and determined to apply it to cancer. He developed an antibody that worked great in mice, but for two years couldn't find a company to fashion a human version, most still gun-shy about cancer immunotherapy because of the field's past failures, most still convinced the future of cancer treatment involved molecular targets on tumors, not the immune system itself. Finally, a small New Jersey company named Medarex took the plunge, sublicensing the patent and manufacturing a drug called ipilimumab (ippy for short), the first of a new class of drugs called immune checkpoint inhibitors. The company would ultimately be acquired by Bristol-Myers Squibb for $2.4 billion. Ippy was tested, successfully, in human patients for the first time in 2001, but results from its first large-scale trial weren't so good. There was little impact at 12 weeks, the point at which chemotherapy is typically assessed, so it was declared a failure. It took a second large trial for ippy's prospects to gain momentum, after clinicians noticed some tumors that were unaffected or even larger at 12 weeks had shrunk; years later, some patients were thriving. It turns out that the immune system sometimes took time to rev up, but once it did, its effects last, unlike other cancer therapies. Clinicians says that's immunotherapy's great advantage its long-term retention once it recognizes a foe. *** Sharon Belvin burst into tears the September 2006 day she was introduced to Allison. Now employed at New York City's Memorial Sloan Kettering Cancer Center he'd left Berkeley in 2004 so he could work closely with doctors and make sure his discovery wasn't mishandled Allison was cajoled into dropping what he was doing and stopping by the office of Dr. Jedd Wolchok, his clinical partner. There was Belvin, the first patient he'd ever met who had received his drug. She'd been diagnosed, at 22, with Stage 4 melanoma, words she says are "impossible to hear and not think death" even if her doctor was cagey enough not to give her a prognosis. Just the fact that she couldn't hold a conversation without gasping for air told her all she needed to know about the disease's progression. In the next year, when nothing stopped the spread of Belvin's cancer from her chest and lungs to her brain, Wolchok offered her ippy. Desperate, she jumped at the chance. Infused through a vein every three weeks over three months, ippy quickly shrunk Belvin's tumors and had her walking again. A year later, the day Wolchok summoned the man responsible for the life-saving drug, she'd just got the news she was in remission. It wasn't just Belvin who got teary-eyed. Allison and her husband choked up too. After a moment, all embraced in a group hug. "That's the reason you do this work," says Allison, still moved by the memory. "It's not about the awards, it's about the difference made in people's lives." Eight years later, Belvin, 32, and Allison remain in touch, typically bumping into each other once or twice a year at cancer advocacy functions. "What can I say?" says Belvin. "He gave me back a life." It would take ten years of trials, trials involving 6,500 patients, before the FDA gave approval and ippy was marketed as Yervoy. Allison still shakes his head at how long it took to get a life-saving drug available to patients. "James had a nose for what would work and a stubbornness to stick to his guns and push it through," says Hwu, chairman of M.D. Anderson's department of melanoma medical oncology. "Without that, this approach wouldn't exist today." Allison's drug was approved in 2011 by the U.S. Food and Drug Administration for the skin cancer melanoma, one of the nastiest of tumors. No previous treatment ever made a meaningful dent in the advanced disease's five-year death rate of more than 95 percent, but the latest statistics show nearly a quarter of all melanoma patients who have received the drug live at least three years, after which point none die of the disease. *** For a time, Allison loved the New York experience, living in a triplex on Manhattan's Upper East Side, enjoying Central Park and the Metropolitan Museum of Art. But the charm eventually wore off, so relentless was the pace. "I'm not a New Yorker," he says. Dr. John Mendelsohn, then president of M.D. Anderson, began wooing him to Houston, promising that the famed cancer hospital could provide an even larger platform for his work. When Mendolsohn retired in 2011 without a formal offer and was replaced by DePinho, M.D. Anderson's current president, Allison wondered whether the moment had passed. He couldn't help remembering how DePinho, a decade earlier, goaded him during a taxi ride to a meeting in Italy that immunotherapy would never work. But even before taking office, DePinho pushed hard to pick up the recruitment, telling Allison that it was imperative to engage the immune system to beat cancer, making immunotherapy a linchpin of M.D. Anderson's ambitious "Moon Shots" initiative to cure some of the most deadly tumors. Allison accepted in late 2012, a year after the Cancer Prevention and Research Institute of Texas approved a $10 million grant for his recruitment. M.D. Anderson invested an additional $30 million to bolster its immunotherapy research capabilities, which enables Allison to design clinical trials across a variety of tumor types, using ippy by itself or combining it with other checkpoint inhibitors and with chemotherapy or targeted therapy. It also provides Allison access to freshly removed tumors, which he can analyze to gauge the drug's effect and understand how it works, much like he did with mice. Allison says he has no plans to retire, despite old friends asking him "what the hell he's doing still working." Unable to imagine just sitting around, Allison says he wants to bring immunotherapy's benefits to more patients. Still, after years of following his own path, Allison is clearly enjoying the good life. He tools around in a Porsche convertible, whose vanity license plate bears the characters CTLA4. He says he might buy a sailboat. But in other ways, he remains a child of the '60s. He once suggested the FDA place an "h" at front of ippy upon learning that was his drug's name. The shaggy haired harmonica player -- a bouncer at a music joint once assumed he was part of Willie Nelson's band still surfaces regularly, only now he plays with bands made up of scientists. "I'm a king bee, baby," Allison sings in his gravelly voice. He stops, wails on his harmonica, then finishes the lyric, "buzzin' around your hive." The blues classic is an Allison signature song, one he played last June at Chicago's House of Blues a couple nights after the ASCO immunotherapy presentation. That was his national band, called the Checkpoints, after his big discovery. He also plays in harmonica for the Checkmates, a new band of M.D. Anderson doctors. Hwu, who plays keyboards for both bands, describes Allison's harmonica style as "from the gut," a characterization the immunology chair says is really just a euphemism for the fact he can't read music. Allison, self-taught, says he once started a book on reading music, but couldn't stick with it, bored playing the scales. These days Allison never finds himself bored. When not in his lab, he is wildly in demand on the lecture circuit, travelling constantly Shanghai, Tokyo, Kyoto, Australia, St. Petersburg to evangelize about cancer immunotherapy's promise. The speaking engagements come not just because of Allison's drug but because his discovery blasted open the door for cancer immunotherapy. Scientists have since discovered eight other immune system brakes and developed a few corresponding pharmaceuticals now in clinical trials, one of which combined with Yervoy in the trial presented at the ASCO meeting to bring advanced melanoma patients' 1 1/2-year survival rate to 80 percent. The National Institutes of Health in 2011 began funding a network of 27 centers' immunotherapy trials. Every major pharmaceutical company is investing heavily. Because the target is the immune system rather than the tumor, immune checkpoint drugs are expected to work on all sorts of cancers. Besides melanoma, Allison's drug and the others in clinical trials already have had success against cancers of the lungs, colon, kidney, breasts, ovaries, pancreas and prostate. "There's a sense of paradigms shifting," Science magazine wrote in an article that declared cancer immunotherapy the Breakthrough of the Year for 2013. "Immunotherapy marks an entirely different way of treating cancer by targeting the immune system, not the tumor itself. Oncologists, a grounded-in-reality bunch, say a corner has been turned and we won't be going back." For all the excitement, there are still questions about Yervoy. Researchers have no idea why it benefits some people but not others. Because releasing the brake facilitates an all-out attack by the immune system, it can cause serious side effects colitis, skin rashes, impaired pituitary function that have to be managed. And the drug price is an exorbitant $130,000, an amount Allison calls obscene. Still, years of skepticism about cancer immunotherapy have now faded, scientists say. Allison notes that even James Watson, the Nobel Prize-winning co-discoverer of DNA's structure and one-time immunotherapy skeptic, recently told him, "'This is going to do it.'" ATLANTA - Former President Jimmy Carter, who has been undergoing treatment for cancer that was removed from his liver but had spread to his brain, said Sunday that he was free of the disease. "My most recent MRI brain scan did not reveal any signs of the original cancer spots nor any new ones," the former president said in a statement. Carter, 91, announced in August that tests showed four small melanoma spots on his brain, a common site where the disease spreads. He said then that in addition to radiation, he would be treated with infusions of Keytruda, a newly approved immunotherapy that takes a brake off the immune system. The approach was pioneered by Houston scientist Jim Allison. Carter's two-sentence statement followed reports that he had shared the good news with a Sunday school class at Maranatha Baptist Church in Carter's hometown of Plains, Ga. "I went to the doctors this week for the second time," Carter said in a video posted on Twitter by NBC News. "The first time I went for an MRI of my brain, the four places were still there but they were responding to the treatment. And when I went this week, they didn't find any cancer at all. So I have good news." Carter smiled slightly as people in the congregation responded with applause. "So a lot of people prayed for me, and I appreciate that," Carter said. Carter's statement said he will continue to receive regular doses of Keytruda, which targets a natural brake whose function is to rein in the immune system but is exploited by cancer cells. Allison, chairman of immunology at M.D. Anderson Cancer Center, identified the first such brake and developed drug treatment, known as immunotherapy, that is now considered to be the new frontier in cancer treatment. Carter in August became its most high-profile patient. Carter's grandson, Jason Carter, told The Associated Press in a text message that his grandfather on Friday "told me that the doctors couldn't find any cancer in his most recent scan." Jill Stuckey, a Maranatha Baptist Church member, said in a phone interview that after Carter's comments she went into the church's back hallways to spread the word to members. "Our prayers have been answered," Stuckey, a close friend of the Carters, said. "I can't think of a better Christmas present." It's not clear what other scans Carter's medical team at Emory University's Winship Cancer Institute have performed. A spokesman didn't return messages on Sunday and Carter only mentioned a brain scan. Dr. Len Lichtenfeld, deputy chief medical officer for the American Cancer Society, said doctors evaluating melanoma patients will use scans of other body parts beyond where the disease has been found to ensure it has not spread. "For today, the news cannot be better," Lichtenfeld said. "Circumstances may change over time or he may be in a situation where it does not recur for many years or at all." He expects Carter's doctors will continue "close surveillance" for any new cancer growth or recurrence in his brain and continue doses of the immunotherapy drug as long as Carter handles it well. Houston Chronicle reporter Todd Ackerman contributed. Namibia will now compensate families of people killed by wild animals including crocodiles and hippos with up to $8,297. About nine people were killed by wild animals in 2016, and six in 2017, data from the ministry of environment and tourism showed. Earlier this year, four people have been killed, three by crocodiles and the other by a hippo in the southern African nation. Statistics provided by the ministry also showed that 930 livestock were killed by wild animals in 2016, while 1,421 were killed last year. So far this year, 187 livestock have been killed by wild animals. According to the environment minister, Pohamba Shifeta, the new policy is aimed at assisting the family of a victim with funeral expenses, and to re-establish themselves. Also, the intention of the policy is not to pay for the exact value of livestock or crops lost, but to offset losses caused to communities or farmers. Families of people who are killed by crocodiles and hippos while swimming and bathing in rivers will not get any compensation. The new human-wildlife conflict policy also makes provision for the establishment and implementation of technical solutions to mitigate human-wildlife conflict. As schools and districts across the country search for ways to stop the next spate of campus violence before it happens, Katy ISDs trustees considered Wednesday whether to hire a security company to screen public social media posts to look for potential threats against its schools. The board will vote on whether to sign a $243,000 three-year contract with Social Sentinel at their regular board meeting later this month. At a work session on Monday, Superintendent Lance Hindt said. No Katy ISD data is shared with Social Sentinel, Superintendent Lance Hindt said at a work session on Monday. I think this can be a resource for us to identify potential concerns and address them proactively instead of reactively. Social Sentinel, based out of Vermont, is one of many technology firms doing some form of social media scanning or monitoring at universities and lower level grade schools, especially in the wake of school shootings. Critics have raised privacy concerns, but Social Sentinel says it does not monitor the social media accounts specific students or staff members, and it does not have access to any private posts or messages. Instead, CEO and Founder Gary Margolis said the service screens billions of public social media posts through an algorithm. The software compares posts against a library of about 450,000 terms that could indicate potential violence and flags any that mention schools or school districts using the service. If a post is flagged, Social Sentinel sends a copy of the post to school administrators, who then decide how to proceed. Social media has become the primary source of communication for an entire generation, so we set out to find a very respectful way to provide some insight similar to the way schools will send out a playground monitor, Margolis said. Still, Grace Kingsley, a 17-year-old senior at Taylor High School, worried system could miss threats that lack a specific school name or inaccurately flag a non-violent post as a threat. It just seems like there are loopholes, Kingsley said. If their accounts are private, like mine, youll miss so much. Robert Faris, an associate professor of sociology at UC-Davis who studies students use of social networks, said there is a pattern of public threats made online, particularly by young men. There is some indication that some of these troubled individuals, who are almost always boys, are having issues surrounding masculinity that has been challenged in some way, Faris said. Part of it is making this kind of aggressive front as a way to address what they might feel are shortcomings. They want to accomplish something with those public threats. Faris said once people realize a third-party firm is trawling through posts in search of threats, however, some troubled students may refrain from making public posts. It could drive these kinds of posts underground, Faris said. A system based on people expressing concerns about the people they know, their actual friends, would be more likely to have information that might be relevant to threats. Sarah Montgomery, Graces mother, said she would like more evidence that the system works before the board approves the nearly quarter-million-dollar contract. I dont think the board quite understands how it works, Montgomery said. It seemed like a vague discussion. Before the workshop began, about 150 people gathered in the parking lot to express support for Superintendent Lance Hindt, who has been at the center of a media firestorm after a former classmate accused Hindt of attacking him when both attended West Memorial Junior High School more than 35 years ago. Hindt has denied attacking the classmate and said Monday he would prefer to meet with his accuser in private rather than have the incident dissected publicly. Hindt said he would like to speak with Gay and piece together a timeline of what actually happened that day. I was only in the building with this individual for less than four months, Hindt said. I was a brand new kid. The 31 marked graves inside Old Imperial Farm Cemetery are rusted and crumbling, markers of a time that Reginald Moore believes Sugar Land hopes to forget. The 58-year-old has spent nearly two decades telling anyone who will listen about the old cemetery in Fort Bend County and how nearby areas may contain the graves of people who were part of the convict leasing system in Sugar Land. The statewide program, initiated shortly after slavery was outlawed more than 150 years ago, allowed prisoners, primarily African-Americans, to be contracted out for labor. He relentlessly pushed city and school officials to study the open area near the cemetery and urged them not to build nearby. He watched anxiously as Fort Bend ISD began construction last year on a technical center within a mile and pleaded with them to conduct an archaeological survey first. Now, city and school officials seem to be listening. Fort Bend ISD Superintendent Charles Dupre notified Moore this month that some 22 graves have been found on the construction site. Since the phone call, a school district official said, theyve turned up more graves at the work site, thought to be 100 to 200 years old. Its indisputable, said Moore, who serves as guardian of the Old Imperial Farm Cemetery. Theyve been trying to hide this history for years, and now we can finally hold them accountable for the atrocities that happened that they didnt want to be exposed. The school district is building its James Reese Career and Technical Center at University Boulevard and Chatham to offer advanced junior- and senior-level courses. Construction was halted on part of the site where the remains were found, but will continue in other areas. The gated cemetery, which includes the 31 marked graves for prisoners and guards, sits on land that was once part of the Imperial State Prison Farm. But Moore believes its just part of a larger graveyard that includes the remains of those who were part of the convict leasing system. These people were used, abused, neglected and taken advantage of without any recognition, said Moore. I feel like it was an atrocity and somebody had to speak up for them. Leasing out convicts Moore discusses the history with passion as he stands inside the chain-link fence of the cemetery, talking fast and running words together. Purple and yellow flowers sprout out from the ground around the aged cemetery tombs. Many of the people buried here were men in their 20s and 30s, with dates of death ranging from 1912 to 1943. Wearing a Martin Luther King Jr. shirt and a blue Department of Corrections hat, he recalls how he became intrigued with the history when he served as a correctional officer for four years in the mid-1980s at Jester I and III Units, located in unincorporated Fort Bend County. Before he discovered the cemetery off U.S. 90, he immersed himself in city history, reading about how shortly after slavery ended, Sugar Land plantation owners Littleberry Ambrose Ellis and Edward H. Cunningham in 1878 leased out convicts for labor through the state of Texas. The state would eventually gain control over the inmates five years later. However, Ellis and Cunningham were profitable in the convict-leasing business and oversaw roughly 1,000 convicts, most of whom were African-American, according to Caleb McDaniel, an associate professor of history at Rice University. Even though the system changed, the people remained the same. Cunningham and Ellis were former Confederates, slaveholders, said McDaniel. So the same people are looking for ways to exploit black labor in the aftermath of slavery. Moore, a Houston native and an alum of Jack Yates High School in Third Ward, also learned about the more than 5,200 acres that Texas purchased in 1908. The Imperial State Prison Farm was built here and more than 400 inmates were housed on the property, according to a historical marker that sits in front of the cemetery. This was still a very racially stratified system, where black convicts were doing the same kind of work (that) enslaved people had done, said McDaniel. African-Americans were also over-represented in the harshest kinds of convict labor outside the walls of the penitentiary, whereas white convicts more often worked inside the walls. Its history in the making Crews discovered human remains on the construction site about a month ago, but the school district did not learn it was a historic cemetery until the first week in April, according to district spokeswoman Amanda Bubela. However, Moore had a feeling for years that the area near the cemetery could contain other remains. The cemetery he oversees mostly contains white men, so he suspected African-American prisoners were buried elsewhere. He fought with Sugar Land city officials about developing in the area, which was formerly plantation land, and urged them not to go through with the plans. When he learned that the school district was building a technical center, he asked that 1 to 2 acres be set aside for a memorial to educate others about the convict-leasing system in Sugar Land. Jay Jenkins of the Texas Criminal Justice Coalition has helped Moore push for a memorial at the technical center. He attended the meeting that Moore had with the superintendent last year and wrote a letter following up on his behalf. Jenkins and Moore said they still are unsure whether the school district will allow the memorial. Reggie was looked at by members of the school district, it seemed like, as a nuisance, and all hes been trying to do is get recognition for those bodies that are buried in the ground, Jenkins said. School district officials said theyve had an archaeologist on the construction site from the beginning, according to a statement issued Friday. Leah Brown, a spokeswoman for the Texas Historical Commission, said the school district will expand its search to the remaining construction site area. Its definitely a once-in-a-career experience that were living right now, Dupre said. Its history in the making. I know the historical commission, the archaeologists that have been working with us are so eager to get all of these bodies exhumed and to be able to really study these people and put it all into the context of our city and countys history. For now, the history of the bodies remains a mystery. Brown of the Texas Historical Commission said it will take time to determine how long the bodies have been there depending on the condition of the remains and the site itself. There are a variety of ways archaeologists can study human remains to pinpoint a time frame. Further examination will likely shed more light on who these people were and their stories, she wrote in an email. Moore is unsure whether the district will allow him to play a part in helping uncover the history he worked so hard to find, but hes not giving up. Said Moore: I just dont know how to quit. A pedestrian on train tracks north of downtown Houston was struck and killed by a train Monday afternoon, authorities said. Houston police were called out to the Amtrak station in the 900 block of Washington Avenue shortly before 3:30 p.m. They discovered a pedestrian on the tracks had been struck and killed. WASHINGTON The Environmental Protection Agency violated the law when it installed a soundproof phone booth for the administrator, Scott Pruitt, at a cost of roughly $43,000, a congressional watchdog agency ruled Monday. The congressional agency, the Government Accountability Office, said in a report that the EPA had not notified Congress as required before spending more than $5,000 on office equipment. In a separate report Monday, the EPAs inspector general published records showing that Pruitts chief of staff signed off on hires and thousands of dollars in raises for political appointees under a provision of a clean water law. That report was part of an ongoing audit of salaries and hiring practices at the agency. The EPA said the secure phone booth was necessary to make and receive phone calls and to discuss sensitive information, including classified telephone calls up to the top secret level. The agency paid about $24,000 for the phone booth and more than $20,000 to install a drop ceiling, remove closed-circuit television equipment and pour concrete around the booth, according to agency contracts. The GAO said it was not taking a position on whether or not the installation of the privacy booth was necessary, but was focusing only on the violations of two laws: the Antideficiency Act, which is designed to prevent spending that has not been budgeted, and the Financial Services and General Government Appropriations Act, which limits the amount political appointees may spend on office item to $5,000. Auditors wrote that the EPAs failure to comply with a governmentwide statutory requirement that an agency notify the appropriations committees before it spends more than $5,000 for the office of a presidential appointee was a violation of the law and should be reported to Congress and the president. In an eight-page letter to lawmakers, Thomas H. Armstrong, the GAOs general counsel, said the agency did not send advance notice to Congress when it paid $43,238.68 from its Environmental Programs and Management budget to pay for the installation of the soundproof booth. The GAO reports its findings to Congress but has little enforcement power of its own. Sen. Tom Udall, D-N.M., who requested the investigation along with three other members of Congress, said Pruitt was blatantly breaking laws and ethics rules that protect taxpayers from government waste, fraud and abuse in order to help himself to perks and special favors. Sen. John Barrasso, R-Wyo., chairman of the Environment and Public Works Committee, which has jurisdiction over the EPA, also criticized the agency, while not identifying Pruitt by name. It is critical that EPA and all federal agencies comply with notification requirements to Congress before spending taxpayer dollars, Barrasso said in a statement. EPA must give a full public accounting of this expenditure and explain why the agency thinks it was complying with the law. Liz Bowman, a spokeswoman for the EPA, said in a statement, EPA is addressing GAOs concern, with regard to congressional notification about this expense, and will be sending Congress the necessary information this week. The GAO report noted that federal laws would not have blocked EPA from purchasing the phone booth, and Bowman said that the accountability office had recognized the need for employees to have access to secure telephone lines to handle sensitive information. The other report Monday, from the EPAs own inspector general, an independent office within agency, did not draw any conclusions as to whether Pruitt or his chief of staff, Ryan Jackson, violated laws in using the Safe Drinking Water Act of 1974 to hire officials and award raises. Rather, it provided more than 80 pages of requests for personnel action showing that Jackson, often with the signed authorization of Pruitt, handled most of the paperwork associated with the employees. Arthur A. Elkins Jr., the EPA Inspector General, indicated that more may be coming from his office regarding agency hiring practices, and said the report Monday was merely to alert officials to certain factual information while our audit continues. A spokesman for the EPA, Jahan Wilcox, said in a statement that Pruitt did not determine his appointees salaries or raises. That, he said, is done by the EPA chief of staff, White House liaison and career human resource officials. Salaries are based on work history, and any increases are due to either new and additional responsibilities or promotions, Wilcox said. Salary determinations are made to avoid disparities among positions of equivalent or similar responsibilities, to the extent possible. He said that the agency would continue to provide information to the inspector general for any further inquiries. Three parents whose children were killed at Sandy Hook Elementary School in 2012 filed a defamation lawsuit Tuesday against Alex Jones, the right-wing conspiracy theorist who has long claimed the shooting was completely fake and a giant hoax perpetrated by opponents of the Second Amendment. Jones, the popular radio show host who also operates the conspiracy theory website Infowars, has questioned for years whether 20 children and six adults died in the school massacre in Newtown, Conn. To bolster his false claims, he often cites news reports and video clips from the hours after the shooting that turned out to be incomplete or based on wrong information. Soon after they buried their children, many Sandy Hook parents started to come under fierce attack by conspiracy theorists who have said they are actors in an elaborate scheme to enact stricter gun control laws. The fringe theories still thrive in small forums online but have reached a far greater audience through Jones, the most vocal propagator. The two lawsuits filed Tuesday represent the first civil action taken by parents accusing Jones of defamation. One was filed by Leonard Pozner and his former wife, Veronique De La Rosa, and the other was filed by Neil Heslin. Their sons, Noah Pozner and Jesse Heslin, both 6, were killed at Sandy Hook. The suits focus on comments made by Jones in the past year. In a segment on his radio show called Sandy Hook Vampires Exposed, which aired April 22, 2017, Jones highlighted an interview that Veronique De La Rosa did with Anderson Cooper of CNN after the shooting. While they are standing outside a downtown Newtown building, Cooper turns his head to face her. During that quick head movement, Coopers nose seems to disappear evidence, Jones said, that the interview with De La Rosa was conducted in a studio. In reality, the glitch is known as a compression artifact, a distortion that is common in video encoding. Jones suggests it means they are both actors. When he turns, his nose disappears repeatedly because the green screen isnt set right, he said. A few months later, in June, Jones was profiled on NBCs Sunday Night With Megyn Kelly, which brought up his past comments about Sandy Hook. Kelly also interviewed Heslin, who recalled seeing his dead son. I held my son with a bullet hole through his head, Heslin told her. But a week later in an Infowars video, Owen Shroyer, who works for the site, argued that it was not possible that Heslin held his dead son because the medical examiner said he showed photographs to the parents to identify their children. Will there be a clarification from Heslin or Megyn Kelly? Shroyer said. I wouldnt hold your breath. The next month, Jones replayed part of that Infowars video on his show. The stuff I found was they never let them see their bodies, Jones said. Thats kind of whats weird about this. But maybe they did. Both lawsuits were filed in Travis County District Court in Austin, Texas, where Jones lives, broadcasts his show and operates Infowars. The parents are seeking at least $1 million in damages. The statements were a continuation and elaboration of a yearslong campaign to falsely attack the honesty of the Sandy Hook parents, casting them as participants in a ghastly conspiracy and cover-up, the parents lawsuits said. The parents are represented by Mark Bankston, a Houston lawyer who filed a similar defamation lawsuit this month against Jones and Infowars after they falsely identified a Massachusetts man as the gunman at Marjory Stoneman Douglas High School in Parkland, Fla. Jones and Shroyer did not immediately respond to an email seeking comment Tuesday morning. In June, a Florida woman who believes the Sandy Hook shooting was a hoax was sentenced to five months in prison for making death threats against Leonard Pozner in voicemail messages and emails. M.D. Anderson Cancer Center and five other institutions will collaborate to advance the development of cancer immunotherapy under a new alliance funded by the largest-ever contribution toward what's considered the great new hope to treat the dreaded disease. Silicon Valley entrepreneur Sean Parker, the first president of Facebook, is giving $250 million to create the Parker Institute for Cancer Immunotherapy, a partnership of renowned scientists, clinicians and industry leaders who will attempt to better harness the body's defenses to attack malignant tumors. The institute's formation is being announced Wednesday in Los Angeles. "We are at an inflection point in cancer research and now is the time to maximize immunotherapy's unique potential to transform all cancers into manageable diseases, saving millions of lives," Parker, 36, president of the Parker Foundation, said in a statement. "We believe the creation of a new funding and research model can overcome many of the obstacles that currently prevent research breakthroughs." The institute will bring together most of the top scientists in the field, including M.D. Anderson's Jim Allison and the University of Pennsylvania's Dr. Carl June. Both men have done pioneering work in immunotherapy, giving life to an area long considered a lost cause. Craig Hartley/Freelance All told, the institute will include 300 immunotherapy researchers and 40 laboratories among its six leading cancer centers. Besides M.D. Anderson and Penn, the partnership includes Memorial Sloan Kettering Cancer Center in New York City; the University of California, San Francisco; Stanford; and UCLA. Allison, who co-discovered an immune system brake and developed a drug that removes it to unleash a patient's defenses to attack cancerous tumors, will direct the institute's research at Houston's M.D. Anderson. He said the emphasis on uniting people with different interests and expertise should yield key new insights and that its stable funding will allow the pursuit of risky projects. Move follows others The announcement comes two weeks after former New York Mayor Michael Bloomberg and other philanthropists unveiled plans to give $125 million to the Kimmel Cancer Center at Johns Hopkins University for an immunotherapy institute, and a few months after billionaire entrepreneur and oncologist Dr. Patrick Soon-Shiong said he's developing a coalition to speed production of immunotherapies to fight cancer. Vice President Joe Biden's $1 billion national Moonshot effort, announced earlier this year, also is making immunotherapy a priority. "There have been other cancer therapies that attracted significant funding, particularly from pharmaceutical companies, but I've never seen anything this big," said Dr. Otis Brawley, chief medical officer for the American Cancer Society. "Given the number of good ideas that don't get funded, $250 million is huge." Immunotherapy has great potential because it has produced lasting results in some patients with difficult-to-treat cancers - lung, melanoma, kidney cancer - that have spread to other organs, something few other treatments have achieved. Most notable, it appears to have successfully treated the cancer of former president Jimmy Carter, diagnosed with melanoma that had spread to his brain. More Information By the numbers $250 million Sean Parker's donation will create the Parker Institute for Cancer Immunotherapy. 300 Number of immunotherapy researchers at new institute. 40 Number of laboratories among six cancer centers. See More Collapse But the therapy is still in its early stages of development. For all the buzz about its arrival as a new pillar of cancer treatment, immunotherapy is only helpful in a fraction of patients, mostly in just a few cancers. Scientists are still trying to understand why some patients get better but most don't. It is those limitations that Parker Institute researchers want to overcome. "The question is, how do you get immunotherapy on steroids?" said Dr. Jeffrey Bluestone, the immune system brake's co-discoverer and the CEO and president of the Parker Institute in San Francisco. "Instead of curing 30 percent of people with melanoma, how do we get it to help 80 percent of people with all cancers? But once you have success like immunotherapy has had, it becomes an engineering challenge - how do you amplify it, enhance it, exploit it?" Interest in immune system Bluestone said the genesis of the initiative came from Parker's personal interest in the immune system, because of his own asthma and allergies and auto-immune disease in his family. Visiting cancer centers some years ago because a friend had been diagnosed with the disease, he came to think that engaging the immune system to attack cancer was a better way to fight the disease than treatment that targets the tumor, Bluestone said. Parker, who also co-founded the file-sharing service Napster, declined to be interviewed before Wednesday's announcement. He was portrayed by Justin Timberlake in the 2010 movie The Social Network, a film about the start and early days of Facebook. Parker, a billionaire, launched the Parker Foundation last June with $600 million in seed money, though he'd already been an active donor to health causes. He pledged $5 million in 2012 to Stand Up to Cancer and the Cancer Research Institute to create an immunotherapy dream team and $24 million in 2014 to create the Sean N. Parker Center for Allergy Research at Stanford. In December, he gave a $10 million grant to create the Sean N. Parker Autoimmune Research Laboratory at UCSF. Each of the six centers in the Parker Institute for Cancer Immunotherapy will get $10 million to $15 million to get started. The investment will continue to increase annually. Allison said the institute's priorities will be: developing novel approaches to modify the immune system's T cells to enhance their function and then developing a new generation of more effective T cell therapies; improving the rates of lasting responses and broadening the use of immunotherapies by better understanding why some patients respond so well, some respond only to relapse and some don't respond at all; and conducting DNA sequencing and immune system monitoring to identify new immunotherapy targets. T-cell research included The institute will also fund research into the type of immunotherapy June pioneered at Penn - isolating T cells taken from a patient's blood, then genetically engineering them to recognize and kill cancer when they're reinjected in the patient;and the development of therapeutic cancer vaccines, which stimulate the immune system to fight cancer or stop its recurrence. M.D. Anderson has been actively involved in vaccine research. "We're very excited to see the field we pioneered catching on and getting the resources needed to help more and more patients," said Jill O'Donnell-Tormey, CEO of the Cancer Research Institute in New York, a 63-year-old organization dedicated to funding and advocating immunotherapy. "This initiative should reap great benefits, but people need to remember that science isn't linear; there are jumps and stops and failures and successes. Immunotherapy's made everyone stand up and take notice, but it's still at the start." An employee who called police to the downtown Philadelphia Starbucks where two black men were arrested last week is no longer working there, Starbucks said Monday, as the companys chief executive apologized for the reprehensible episode. We can confirm that she is no longer at that store, a spokeswoman said, declining to name the employee or provide further details. The chief executive, Kevin R. Johnson, said in an interview with ABCs Good Morning America that what happened to the men was wrong, and that he wanted to meet with them personally to apologize. Its my responsibility to understand what happened and what led to that, and ensure that we fix it, Johnson said. He said that the company was reviewing its guidelines, which can differ among its 28,000 stores worldwide, and that it would invest in unconscious bias training. The company instructs employees to call police in certain situations, such as those involving threats or disturbance, Johnson said. In this case, none of that occurred, he said. It was completely inappropriate to engage the police. Johnson made the remarks as demonstrators filled the store, on 18th and Spruce streets in Philadelphias Center City, on Monday morning. Footage posted on social media showed protesters holding placards and chanting slogans against the company and the police action. On Thursday, the two men asked to use the coffee shops restroom. An employee refused the request because the men had not bought anything, officials said. They sat down, and they were eventually asked to leave. When they declined, an employee called police. Some of what happened next was recorded in a video that has been viewed over 10 million times on Twitter and that was described by Johnson as very hard to watch. Police officers surrounded the men and escorted one of them out of the Starbucks in handcuffs. The other soon followed. The men, who have not been identified, were arrested on suspicion of trespassing. But Starbucks did not want to press charges and the men were later released, Commissioner Richard Ross Jr. of the Philadelphia Police Department said in a recorded statement Saturday. The prosecutors office in Philadelphia reviewed the case and declined to charge the men because of a lack of evidence that a crime was committed, Benjamin Waxman, a spokesman for the office, said. A longer video of the episode shows police talking with the men for at least four minutes before a white man, Andrew Yaffe, joins them. He informs police that the people they were about to take into custody were not trespassing and were meeting him there. The episode goes to the heart of how the company has modeled itself, with campaigns that address racial and social issues and promote its image as a community meeting place for customers to linger. In 2015, the company encouraged its baristas to write the words Race Together on coffee cups as a way of promoting discussion and unity. Many were skeptical of the effort, pointing out that Starbucks own leadership was predominantly white. Brian Yarbrough, an equity analyst with Edward Jones, said the company might feel less of an impact on sales because Johnson took direct steps to address the episode, including expressing publicly that it was committed to investigating and conducting training. But, he added, they need to make swift decisions. AUSTIN -- Gov. Greg Abbott is continuing to mix it up with his expected Democratic rival Lupe Valdez over immigration and border issues, even before she wins her party's nomination. And she's firing right back at the incumbent Republican. After a speech Monday night to the Kingwood Tea Party, Abbott blasted Valdez's views on the state's ban on sanctuary cities by saying they are "locked in a battle for an aspect of Texas ideology" that dates back a disagreement they had three years over compliance with federal immigration policy. Valdez was the Dallas County sheriff then, and she and Abbott feuded over whether her department should turn over undocumented immigrants who were in her jail. Valdez and Abbott also jousted over border and immigration issues earlier this month as the governor worked with President Donald Trump's administration over a new round of National Guard deployments. "I think she embodies the Obama approach, which is more open borders, obviously not enforcing the ban on sanctuary cities," Abbott said in an interview with the Texas Tribune after his Kingwood speech -- in comments that presaged the upcoming gubernatorial campaign. "We went through a big legislative process to make sure that Texas would pass a ban on sanctuary cities. If Lupe is elected, she will eviscerate that ban on sanctuary cities, and all these concerns that so many Texans have will be threatened." Valdez is in a May 22 runoff with Houston entrepreneur Andrew White, a contest that Abbott said he thinks Valdez is likely to win to become the Democratic nominee to face him in the November general election. Valdez has said she opposes the state-passed ban on sanctuary cities, and has been critical of President Trump for sending National Guard troops to the border to curb illegal border crossings and smuggling activity. "Every time she comes out and starts talking about ways that are antagonistic to the Texas perspective on making sure that we ban sanctuary cities, secure our border, I'm going to challenge her on it," the Tribune quoted Abbott as saying. On Tuesday, Valdez said she does plan "to eviscerate SB4" -- the ban on sanctuary cities -- and branded Abbott's position "a backwards approach." "It's back to business as usual with Greg Abbott spewing his fear-based open borders nonsense," she said. "I've spent 42 years working in law enforcement, working to keep Americans safe, I know what smart security looks like and this isn't it. Demonizing immigrants, and spreading fear and hatred is exactly the wrong approach." "I understand why Governor Abbott would rather spend his time sowing division than talking about his failed leadership," Valdez said. "He'd rather beat his chest and spread fear than explain why under his leadership we've seen an endless assault on our schools, we've seen Texas remain the most uninsured state in the nation, and we've seen opportunity for everyday Texans disappearing -- all while his special interest donors keep getting handouts. Her parting shot: "If he wants to talk about what is "antagonistic to the Texas perspective," it isn't our common sense and smart approach to security, it's his shameful policies that serve the very few at the expense of the everyday Texan. For a campaign that hasn't even started yet, this one is already getting lively. Mike Ward, the Houston Chronicle's Austin Bureau chief, covers Texas politics and the governor's office and the executive branch, along with criminal justice and ethics issues. Follow him on Twitter @ChronicleMike and send him story tips at Mike.Ward@Chron.com. AUSTIN Gov. Greg Abbott is sending his top aide to reform operations at the Health and Human Services Commission after state auditors discovered a new set of contracting errors at the agency responsible for vetting contracts on services affecting the states most vulnerable Texans. Abbotts office said Monday that former Houston-area state Sen. Tommy Williams will head efforts to fix the problems at the agency, which has been riddled with major procurement issues and contracting problems some that came to light as recently as last week. History has shown the governor has no patience for mistakes like this. The governor believes the current situation at HHSC is unacceptable, and as hes done in the past, hes going to take action to make sure changes happen quickly, Abbott spokesman Matt Hirsch said via text message. Williams job is to reinforce a sense of urgency to fix the problems and get the agency back on track to focusing on serving the needs of Texans. The Texas State Auditors Offices reported Monday that it found weaknesses in procurement at HHSC and the Department of State Health Service, finding HHSC inaccurately calculated final evaluation scores for five vendors and failed to verify vendors reported qualifications in bidding for a more than $10 million project for collecting vital statistics. $30 billion in spending The errors involve a contract for the development and maintenance of the Texas Electronic Vital Events Registrar, awarded to Genesis Systems Inc. on June 1, 2016. The registrar system, which is expected to include online reporting a collection of vital statistics like births and deaths, is expected to go live in January 2019. HHSC oversees some of the biggest state contracts that affect critical services for low-income families and severely disabled Texans. The agency itself spends more money than any other agency, totaling more than $30 billion in spending for the 2018 fiscal year, according to the state comptroller. Texas HHSC alone spends more money than some 45 entire state governments spend in a year. Its the second time in two weeks officials have found errors in how the commission awarded multimillion-dollar contracts. Last week, HHSC canceled five contracts to administer the Childrens Health Insurance Program for low-income youth in South Texas and rural counties after discovering errors in the bid scoring process. Three HHSC officials associated with the botched procurement were fired, though the agency declined to identify them. Abbott said the mistakes were unacceptable and he called on the commissions inspector general and the state auditors office to investigate. ALSO: Gov. Abbott answers Speaker Straus concerns over enterprise fund Williams began work at the agency Monday morning, said Hirsch, and will continue as long as it takes to get this right. Williams, who once represented The Woodlands in the Texas Senate, served as chairman of the Senate Transportation and Homeland Security Committee and was a member of the Finance Committee. Williams will not replace Charles Smith, executive director of Texas Health and Human Services, Hirsch said. Despite calls for increased oversight of the commissions contracting practices, a job posting this month seeking a new deputy associate commissioner for procurement says the work will be performed under minimal supervision with considerable latitude for the use of initiative and independent judgment. Hearing scheduled Over the weekend, House Speaker Joe Straus, R-San Antonio, sent an email blast to supporters doubling down on his criticism of the commissions contracting issues. I am especially troubled by problems at the states Health and Human Services Commission (HHSC), he wrote. The Commission oversees billions of dollars worth of contracts with private companies that help deliver critical health care services, such as the Medicaid program for children from low-income families. But the Commissions process for awarding contracts, also known as procurement, is broken. He noted the House Appropriations Committee is set to have a review of HHSC contracting practices at a hearing Wednesday. This is deeply concerning to us. Our integrity and credibility is central to our agency mission and cannot be compromised, said Carrie Williams, a commission spokeswoman. We are working in lockstep with auditors and procurement experts and welcome every ounce of scrutiny. We absolutely have to get this right. RELATED: Fired managers claim Health and Human Services leadership 'lashed out' at them While the commission admitted fault, it called the audit misleading to suggest that errors resulted in increased state costs. Although the agency did increase the value of the contract by about $2 million, according to the agencys response, the term of the contract was amended, milestones were changes, and data sets and maintenance requirements were added. Therefore, a comparison of costs of the original contract to the amended contract is not an apples-to-apples comparison, read the report. The commission has been plagued by several recent contracting issues. A state audit earlier this year revealed the commission inappropriately allowed a health benefits contractor to pay millions of dollars in bonuses and incentives. The commission last year quit contracting with a Medicaid transportation company accused of owing the state more than $5 million in profit-sharing payments, known as experience rebates. Allie Morris contributed to this report. andrea.zelinski@chron.com twitter.com/andreazelinski South African President Cyril Ramaphosa on Monday appointed a team of business and finance experts to seek $8 billion in investment to boost the economy of Africas most industrialized nation. The team is composed by former finance ministers, Trevor Manuel and Pravin Gordhan, the special economic adviser to the president, Trudi Makhaya, former Treasury Director General Lungisa Fuzile, ex-Deputy Finance Minister Mcebisi Jonas and former Standard Bank chief executive Jacko Maree. The envoys would travel to Europe, Asia and across Africa to build an investment book to help plug a substantial shortfall of foreign and local direct investment, Ramaphosa said. Speaking about why the government was targeting 100 billion rand rather than a much larger sum, Ramaphosa indicated that we are modest because we want to over-achieve. Ramaphosa, 65, was sworn in as head of state earlier this year after Zuma reluctantly resigned on orders of the ruling ANC. Ramaphosa said his government was committed to policy certainty and consistency, in contrast to his predecessor, who was criticized for policy shifts. He called for a radical path of socio-economic transformation based on growth, jobs and tackling inequality. The OECDs latest Interim Economic Outlook has revised South Africas growth rate expectations for 2018 and 2019 upward, on the back of positive sentiment around the economy and changes to the political landscape. The OECD has revised the expected GDP growth rate upward to 1.9% in 2018, and 2.1% in 2019. The National Treasury, however, anticipates growth of 1.5% in 2018, rising to 2.1% in 2020. The more the west and the world reaches out to Iran in an attempt to reintroduce it to the international community, the more Iran finds itself under pressure at home to sustain its revolution, a revolution that is built around creating and fighting off great Satanic enemies, be they real or imagined, in order to sustain its theocratic legitimacy. The effects of this pressure has also been reflected by Iran's increasing belligerent, interventionist, and antagonistic behavior since the signing of the Nuclear deal, where it has on numerous occasion harassed US patrols (to the extent that US warships had to fire warning shots towards revolutionary guard warships), to holding US sailors hostage and embarrassing the US government, to the continuous inflammatory and contradictory remarks made by Khamenei and his inner circle against the west and the Unites States, all of which is meant to sustain the hatred and fanaticism that fuel the legitimacy of the Iranian theocracy and the revolution that is being exported regionally at an unprecedented level, leaving exceptional carnage and destruction in its wake. The United States of America, better known in Iran as the "Great Satan", the quintessential bogyman, and according to the Iranian theocracy the global patron of global terrorism, has served Iran very well in the past. It provided the all-encompassing enemy that could be blamed for all Iran's ills and failures to the Iranian people, while providing the religiously cloaked narrative that fueled regional recruitment of militias based on religious and sectarian ideals as part of a divine holy mission to defeat this Great Satan; be it in Hezbollah in Lebanon, the Shia militias in Iraq, Syria, and Yemen, in addition to breeding sectarian hate in the Kingdom of Bahrain and elsewhere. However in order to save face in the international community as part of the current approachment, America it seems can no longer serve the role of the "Great Satan", as that will be inconsistent and contradictory to the international re-approachment that is taking place. But Iran cannot dispense with the role of the Great Satan altogether, as it is a lynchpin of the theocracy's governing strategy, so the search has been on for a new player to fill this role, and based on Iran's Foreign Minister latest Op-ed in the New York times, it seems that they have settled on a replacement for America to play the role of the great Satan; Saudi Arabia and what he has dubbed as Wahhabism as the new international patron of global terrorism. Truth be told, it is an intelligent attempt by Iran to seize the opportunity to ride a wave of international, albeit targeted, criticism that is being hurdled at Saudi Arabia as some groups attempt to understand and rationalize the reasons for the uptick in global terrorism, including Islamic inspired terrorism. Such a simple approach to assign blame to a single group for a global phenomenon is very convenient for Iran and fits a well-established pattern, yet it does not add up. The fact is that the so called Wahhabism that Mr. Zarif is alluding to has been around for over 300 years, and Islamic inspired terrorism is only a recent phenomenon. Where was the so called Wahhabi influence of inspiring global jihad during the duration of the Arab-Israeli conflict, which is amongst the dearest causes to every Muslim and Arab citizen? It does not exist because the connection and oversimplification is a fallacy. Global terrorism is inspired by many factors least of which is any religious doctrine. Politics is usually the primary culprit. There is no doubt that there are concerns when it comes to the role of Saudi Arabia, direct or indirect, in promoting a strict interpretation of Islam, and its implications on how some people are interpreting Islam today. Human rights and women's rights are causes for concern. Global financing of Islamic charities and organizations leaves room for better monitoring and accountability. However despite any role that Saudi Arabian funding, or wars launched by the United States and the west's in the region, and the collapse of Middle Eastern governments have contributed to regional instability and the ensuing global uptick in Islamic inspired terrorism, none of them will whitewash the fundamental role that Iran has and continues to play in fermenting hatred and spreading destruction and chaos in the region. Iran is not, cannot and should not be allowed to play the victim once again as it assigns blame to another "Great Satan". Iran is a critical culprit and instigator of the upheaval taking place in the Middle East and indeed an instigator of sectarianism that has torn the Arab and Muslim world apart and fueled religious extremism. The Sunni-Shia divide that the world knows today was birthed by the 1979 Iranian Revolution led by Ayatollah Khomeini, who clearly and for the record stated that Iran had the responsibility to export the Shia revolution, which has since become a key tenant of their constitution and foreign policy. Since the establishment of the Shia theocracy in Iran, they have relentlessly created and supported Shia militant groups and proxies that have sowed discord in Muslim communities along sectarian lines with devastating impact. Their evolving success in this regard ranges from the power of Hezbollah (amongst its oldest creations) in Lebanon and its sectarian stranglehold on the country that has paralyzed its progress, to the setting up of Iraqi militia's that have successfully neutralized and undermined national state institutions and which been blamed for so many coalition deaths in Iraq over the past decade and hampered national unity and progress. They created and supported Shia militias in Syria to prop up and support the Alawite regime in Damascus, which allowed and directly fueled the establishment of a counter extreme Sunni militias such as ISIS and AL Nusra to stand up to Shia expansionism, thereby transforming a Syrian national revolution into a sectarian conflict that has torn the country apart. Iran has actively supported Houthi rebels in Yemen that undermined the legitimate national government and further created sectarian divisions to a point where Yemen is becoming a failed state threatening the entire world. It should not be surprising that we are seeing a resurgence of Al Qaeda in Yemen, as the Shia expansionism provides the required fuel to prop up the Sunni -extremism narrative for recruitment. Iran has also been extremely active in supporting Shia protests and militants in Bahrain to further institutionalize the sectarian divide in the country and create the conditions for further strife...and the list goes on. In fact Iran has such a strong interest in promoting sectarian strife that they have been working with extreme Sunni groups such as Al Qaeda and the Taliban as per the leaked documents by WikiLeaks in July 2010. Therefore when Mr. Zarif talks about the causes of global Islamic terrorism and extremism and tries to assign blame to everybody but Iran, be it America and now Saudi Arabia or the so called Wahhabism as the new Great Satan, the world cannot ignore the facts and the clear track record Iran enjoys in paving the way for this destructive global phenomenon and their crucial role and responsibility in solving or addressing it. Creating a new "Great Satan" will not absolve Iran or address the primary reason why Islamic sectarian fundamentalism is on the rise. The Islamic faith is innocent from inspiring global terrorism - who isn't innocent are the political theocratic regimes that thrive on fanning sectarian religious conflict to sustain their legitimacy. Solving this global challenge requires forward thinking and requires real action - not simply assigning blame on others and playing victim. Indeed Saudi Arabia is not without its challenges and much work needs to be done to address some of its glaring criticisms. However that is exactly what Saudi Arabia is doing, it has taken ownership of its challenges and set out a broad and dare I say courageous reform program that aims to address social, economic and political issues that will further allow Saudi Arabia to play a constructive and positive role in both region and the world and in serving the Islamic faith. If anything, Iran must follow Saudi Arabia's example and launch their own comprehensive reform program, and to do so in as transparent a manner that Saudi Arabia has. This will require real leadership and real courage from Iran, but most importantly it will require Iran to rid itself and the world of its self-perpetuating Shia revolution and its mandate of exporting it throughout the world. Rather than focusing on creating a new "Great Satan" to justify their shortcoming and create more smoke and mirrors for the Iranian people and the international community to cover up their destructive sectarian agenda, Iran should focus on launching a "Great Reform Program" along the lines of Saudi Arabia's vision 2030 that will allow its citizens to thrive and actively participate in the world based on universal values and norms including respecting the sovereignty of other faiths, people and nations. _______________________ Dr. Majid Rafizadeh is an American political scientist, business advisor, best-selling author, and the president of the International American Council on the Middle East. Harvard-educated, Rafizadeh serves on the advisory board of Harvard International Review. He is a board member of several significant and influential international and governmental institutions, and he is native speaker of couple of languages including Arabic and Persian. He also speaks English and Dari, and can converse in French, Hebrew. More at Harvard. You can sign up for Dr. Rafizadeh's newsletter for the latest news and analyses on HERE. You can also order his books on HERE. You can learn more about Dr. Rafizadeh on HERE. You can contact him at Dr.rafizadeh@post.harvard.edu or follow him at @Dr_Rafizadeh. In an unprecedented move, a 23 member bi-partisan group of senior former US officials signed a critical letter and delivered it to President Donald Trump. The letter suggested new policy options regarding the Islamic Republic of Iran and the need for the US to open up a meaningful channel of communication with the Iranian opposition, namely the coalition, National Council of Resistance of Iran (NCRI). This is something that has never been done under any other administration. The letter is signed by senior former US officials including Rudy Giuliani, Joseph Lieberman, Patrick Kennedy, General Hugh Shelton (a former chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff under President Bill Clinton) to name a few. It explains that revised policies toward Iran are needed because Iran has used every opportunity since its establishment to scuttle US foreign policy objectives and damage US national, geopolitical, economic and strategic interests with the assistance of its proxies. More importantly, the officials urge Trump to cooperate with Iran's opposition, as other countries are doing the same "Bush publicly credited the resistance [NCRI]. It is time to end the fundamentalist regime's undue influence over US policy and establish a channel of dialogue with the NCRI, as many other governments have done, consistent with the longstanding US diplomatic practice of dialogue with political opposition groups worldwide." For Iranian leaders, the NCRI is a serious threat to their hold on power. They fear foreign governments' cooperation with the NCRI because it would put significant pressure on the ruling clerics and tip the balance of power against them. Iranian leaders fear that Iranian opposition might inspire the disaffected youth in Iran to protest against the government. Khamenei has repeatedly shown that his main concern is such infiltrations. Iranian leaders fear the soft power of oppositional groups more than the military and hard power of foreign governments. More fundamentally, an Iran without the current ruling clerics in power would be a powerful US ally, rather than being an enemy sworn to consistently strive to damage US security and national interests. An Iran without the ruling clerics in power would fundamentally shift the regional and global balance of power in favor of the US. _____________________ For more details and nuances, you can read full version on Here. You can sign up for Dr. Rafizadeh's newsletter for the latest news and analyses on Here. Harvard-educated, Dr. Majid Rafizadeh is an American political scientist, president of the International American Council on the Middle East, business advisor, and best-selling author. He serves on the advisory board of Harvard International Review. Dr. Rafizadeh is frequently invited to brief governmental and non-governmental organizations as well as speak, as a featured speaker, at security, business, diplomatic, and social events. He has been recipient of several fellowships and scholarships including from Oxford University, Annenberg, University of California Santa Barbara, Fulbright program, to name few He is regularly quoted and invited to speak on national and international outlets including CNN, BBC World TV and Radio, ABC, Aljazeera English, Fox News, CTV, RT, CCTV America, Skynews, CTV, and France 24 International, to name a few. . He analyses have appeared on academic and non-academic publications including New York Times International, Los Angeles Times, CNN, Farred zakaria GPS, The Atlantic, Foreign Policy, The Nation, The National. Aljazeera, The Daily Beast, The Nation, Jerusalem Post, The Economic Times, USA Today Yale Journal of International Affairs, Georgetown Journal of International Affairs, and Harvard International Review. He is a board member of several significant and influential international and governmental institutions, and he is native speaker of couple of languages including Persian, English, and Arabic. He also speaks Dari, and can converse in French, Hebrew. More at Harvard. You can also order his books on HERE. You can learn more about Dr. Rafizadeh on HERE. You can contact him at Dr.rafizadeh@post.harvard.edu or follow him at @Dr_Rafizadeh. Hoping that the Iranian government would suddenly become a constructive, responsible, and rational member of the international community on its own is unrealistic. Fundamental changes from within the Iranian government, that would alter the revolutionary principles, are inconceivable. This is because the ruling clerics' theocratic constitution has confined Iran with such unbending legal and social restrictions that change is made impossible, and the political establishment of the ruling clerics is becoming more and more incompatible with the standards, rules and international laws of the international community. In addition, according to the Islamic Republic's constitution, people do not have the right to change the fundamentals of the constitution; only the Supreme Leader has such a right. Many politicians, policy analysts, and scholars have been arguing for a long time, since 1979, that the Islamic Republic of Iran will change for the better honoring its own citizens and the rules of the international community. However, history has forcefully shown that their arguments have repeatedly failed. There exist ample reasons why moderating the Iranian government and a change in the Iranian government from a Shiite theocracy toward a democratic system of governance would be conducive and beneficial not only to the Iranian people, but also for the regional and global stability, peace and security.Instead of delving into these reasons, which are evident and explicit, the major question to address would be: what are some effective and non-violent approaches to channel such democratic reform in Iran? Some critical approaches include standing with the Iranian youth, pressure from international community, focusing on Iran's human rights, violations of international laws and suppression of religious and ethnic minorities as well as human rights groups, providing Iran's opposition with social media and technologic assistances, and supporting oppositional groups. _____________________ For more details and nuances, you can read full version on Here. You can sign up for Dr. Rafizadeh's newsletter for the latest news and analyses on Here. Harvard-educated, Dr. Majid Rafizadeh is an American political scientist, president of the International American Council on the Middle East, business advisor, and best-selling author. He serves on the advisory board of Harvard International Review. Dr. Rafizadeh is frequently invited to brief governmental and non-governmental organizations as well as speak, as a featured speaker, at security, business, diplomatic, and social events. He has been recipient of several fellowships and scholarships including from Oxford University, Annenberg, University of California Santa Barbara, Fulbright program, to name few He is regularly quoted and invited to speak on national and international outlets including CNN, BBC World TV and Radio, ABC, Aljazeera English, Fox News, CTV, RT, CCTV America, Skynews, CTV, and France 24 International, to name a few. . He analyses have appeared on academic and non-academic publications including New York Times International, Los Angeles Times, CNN, Farred zakaria GPS, The Atlantic, Foreign Policy, The Nation, The National. Aljazeera, The Daily Beast, The Nation, Jerusalem Post, The Economic Times, USA Today Yale Journal of International Affairs, Georgetown Journal of International Affairs, and Harvard International Review. He is a board member of several significant and influential international and governmental institutions, and he is native speaker of couple of languages including Persian, English, and Arabic. He also speaks Dari, and can converse in French, Hebrew. More at Harvard. You can also order his books on HERE. You can learn more about Dr. Rafizadeh on HERE. You can contact him at Dr.rafizadeh@post.harvard.edu or follow him at @Dr_Rafizadeh. The top priority of world leaders gathered at the 71st session of the United Nations General Assembly (UNGA 71), was combating global terrorism. The United Nations is a platform that can rally global and multi-lateral support, cooperation and efforts for counterterrorism. Although other topics were discussed, the critical question of the day shared by many nations was, as a global community, how could we battle terrorism? A constructive, multilateral and modern approach is needed to battle modern methods of terrorism conducted by state or non-state actors. Action needs to be taken, however the most non-productive approach would be to make accusations or play the blame game. It wastes time, incites rivalries, and only feeds the very violence that we are trying to overcome. For instance, Iran's approach of pointing fingers at everyone- except for the Iranian government, Iran's Revolutionary Guard Corps (IRGC), its staunchest ally Assad, and its proxies- is not a solution. It is a simplistic, short-sighted approach that can only lead to failure. In his UNGA speech, President Rouhani blamed the world powers for terrirosm. Such behavior strengthens animosity between countries at a time when the entire global community needs to work together to stop further bloodshed. The countries that Iran is demonizing and blaming for all acts of global or domestic terrorism are the US, the UK, and Saudi Arabia, among others. Contradicting this is the fact that each of these countries has contributed various resources in the battle against terrorism whether Iran agrees with it or not. Again, the issue is not as simplistic as the Islamic Republic attempts to project it. Let's take one country- The Kingdom- that Iran is vehemently blaming, for example. All the points and data that Crown Prince Mohammed bin Nayef gave at his speech on Wednesday at the United Nations General Assembly, are factually correct whether Iran disagrees with it or paint it differently. For example, to combat radicalism, according to Prince Mohammed bin Nayef his country "has launched Mohammed bin Nayef Counseling and Care Center and its top clerics have been issuing religious edicts prohibiting terrorism or joining terror groups. Saudi has been attacked by terrorists more than 100 times...[Riyadh] is now part of 12 international agreements to fight terrorism," and it heads in "partnership" with the United States and Italy a group combating ISIS funding. Addressing underdevelopment is crucial as well as "the kingdom ranked the third country worldwide in terms of providing humanitarian relief and development assistance, having provided over the past four decades about $139 billions in aid." According to the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace: "In only a few years' time, Saudi Arabia's soft strategy to combat extremism and terrorism [under the supervision of Prince Mohammed Bin Nayef] has generated some very promising results." According to the Washington-based Saudi American Public Relation Affairs Committee, SAPRAC, Prince Muhammad Bin Nayef's efficacious strategy in combatting terrorism made him a target for assassinations by terrorists. For more detailed efforts of Mohammad bin Nayef's initiatives, one can read this report. These efforts were applauded by President Barack Obama who stated "I can say that, on a personal level, my work and the U.S. government's work with Crown Prince bin Nayef, on counterterrorism issues has been absolutely critical not only to maintaining stability in the region but also protecting the American people". Further illustrated by the comments of the former Director General of the CIA Leon Panetta: "Mohammed bin Nayef plays an indispensable role protecting the kingdom founded by his grandfather. As intelligence chief, he decimated al-Qaeda in Saudi Arabia, penetrating plots, cracking down on funding and promoting deradicalization." The US, the UK, and Saudi Arabia are not perfect when it comes to many issues which still need improvement. I explained more in this article. Nevertheless, at least, they are taking concrete steps and donating millions of dollars to the fight against terrorism; For example, according to Muhammad bin Nayef and several other resources including the United Nations, "The Kingdom also provided resources to the United Nations' counter terrorism center, including funds of over $100 million". This demonstration can be an inspiration to other countries to join in this fight as well. Instead of making accusations or placing blame, Iran would be better served by demonstrating what it has offered to the fight against terrorism, such as the amount it has donated, what programs it may have in place, and any other concrete approaches Iran may have initiated. If there is to be any progress made to battle global terrorism, it has to be a multilateral and unified effort. The focus should be on the establishment of a new comprehensive, locally and internationally coordinated counter-terrorism strategy. Action is needed. Not after trivial vendettas have been settled, not after Iran has pointed a finger in every direction but at itself, but right this second. In my humble opinion, I believe the most comprehensive plan would be a one that concentrate on tacking the ideology of the terrorist groups, the poverty on global scale, the underdevelopments in many parts of the world, and application of affective social media. Alongside this multi-front strategy, "inter-faith and inter-cultural dialogue must guide efforts to eliminate incitement". Every nation and government can contribute to this instructive plan to overcome global terrorism by achieving unification of all forces. _______________________ Dr. Majid Rafizadeh is an American political scientist, president of the International American Council on the Middle East, business advisor, and best-selling author. Harvard-educated, Rafizadeh serves on the advisory board of Harvard International Review. He is regularly quoted and invited to speak on national and international outlets including CNN, BBC World TV and Radio, ABC, Aljazeera English, Fox News, CTV, RT, CCTV America, Skynews, CTV, and France 24 International, to name a few. Dr. Rafizadeh is frequently invited to brief governmental and non-governmental organizations as well as speak, as a featured speaker, at security, business, diplomatic, and social events. He has been recipient of several fellowships and scholarships including from Oxford University, Annenberg, University of California Santa Barbara, Fulbright program, to name few. He analyses have appeared on academic and non-academic publications including New York Times International, Los Angeles Times, CNN, Farred zakaria GPS, The Atlantic, Foreign Policy, The Nation, The National. Aljazeera, The Daily Beast, The Nation, Jerusalem Post, The Economic Times, USA Today Yale Journal of International Affairs, Georgetown Journal of International Affairs, and Harvard International Review. He is a board member of several significant and influential international and governmental institutions, and he is native speaker of couple of languages including Persian, English, and Arabic. He also speaks Dari, and can converse in French, Hebrew. More at Harvard. You can sign up for Dr. Rafizadeh's newsletter for the latest news and analyses on HERE. You can also order his books on HERE. You can learn more about Dr. Rafizadeh on HERE. You can contact him at Dr.rafizadeh@post.harvard.edu or follow him at @Dr_Rafizadeh. The mainstream and predominant narrative depicts Iran and Assad as fighting forces against the Islamic State. Nevertheless, does ISIS actually serve the interest of ruling politicians in the Islamic Republic and Syria? Did Damascus and Tehran contribute in giving birth to ISIS? Iran and its staunchest ally the Syrian government have been designated by the US State Department as state sponsors of terrorism. A new report by the SAPRAC ( the Saudi American Public Relations Affairs Committee) titled " Germany and Saudi Arabia: The Alliance in Counter-Terrorism" sheds light on the nuances, complexities and interconnectedness between ISIS, Iran and Syria. The German weekly news magazine Der Spiegel has also reported on the complete restructuring of the terrorist organization "Daesh", containing the name of the organization's founder as well as its the real leader as well as his strategy. In addition, the report reasserts President Obama's message that Riyadh has been instrumental in cooperating withe US and countering terrorism "That's how intelligence collected with Saudi Arabia helped us stop a cargo plane from being blown up over the Atlantic. These partnerships work." as well as the historical facts that Riyadh has been victim of terrorism for many years. So, the question remains whether we should continue to believe in the dominant narrative spread by some media outlets or wether we need to analyze the facts more closely. Based on the latest developments, is not reasonable to believe that the Islamic State is indeed benefiting Assad to stay in power and assisting Iran by justifying Iran's Revolutionary Guard Corps' (IRGC) regional adventurism and interventionist actions? _______________________ Dr. Majid Rafizadeh is an American political scientist, business advisor, best-selling author, and the president of the International American Council on the Middle East. Harvard-educated, Rafizadeh serves on the advisory board of Harvard International Review. An American citizen, he is originally from Iran and Syria, lived most of his life in Iran and Syria till recently. He is a board member of several significant and influential international and governmental institutions, and he is native speaker of couple of languages including Arabic and Persian. He also speaks English and Dari, and can converse in French, Hebrew. You can sign up for Dr. Rafizadeh's newsletter for the latest news and analyses on HERE. You can also order his books on HERE. You can learn more about Dr. Rafizadeh on HERE. You can contact him at Dr.rafizadeh@post.harvard.edu or follow him at @Dr_Rafizadeh. A considerable amount of analysis has been dedicated to Iran's geopolitical, strategic, and military relationships with Syria. Nevertheless, the shifting economic nexus between Tehran and Damascus has been subjected less to scholarly work, policy analysis, or media attention. The changing paradigm in Tehran-Damascus economic ties can have significant long-term implications for Iran's geopolitical and economic influence in the region. Iran's financial, arms, military and energy assistances as well as investments in infrastructure remain mostly in the form of credit lines and loans. But how would Syria pay back if the Alawite state is removed from power? Tehran's plan is a long-term and enduring one that can pay off very well if the Syrian war ends with Assad or without him. We can make the analogy that Iran's economic agenda is somewhat similar to its plan in Iraq, after US invasion. But one critical difference is that Iran is also increasingly getting paid back via contracts in Syrian real state by buying Syrian lands. This gives Iran considerable amount of power over Syria in the long-term. The additional shift is that the investments are not only done with Assad, but also with many Shiite militia groups. Even If the war ends, Iran will be single most important player in Syria economically. The nuclear deal has definitely made Iran's economy stronger as well. This in return has increased Iran's economic influence in Syria, as it has also benefited Assad as well. Larger infrastructure and energy projects will be more likely on the horizon. Almost every year, Iran is signing a new contract with Syria for nearly over a billion dollars of credit line. These agreements are believed to increase Iran and Syria's annual trade volume to $5 billion. Allaedin Boroujerdi stated previously that the recent agreements were "a firm response" to the United States and its Western allies "investing billions of dollars to change the political structure of the Syrian government." Iran has also gained the dominant role in Syria's economy since trade between Syria and Turkey and other regional players have significantly shrunk. Even in the midst of the Syria civil war, Iran's economic influence in Syria has exponentially increased contrary to common perceptions. In the long-term, if the Syrian war ends with Assad or without him, Iran would be the most dominant player in Syria economically and geopolitically. This also suggests that due to the above-mentioned factors, Iran cannot afford any peace plan that will lead to the removal of the Alawite state from power. ______________________ For more details and nuances you can read full versionon Here. You can sign up for Dr. Rafizadeh's newsletter for the latest news and analyses on HERE. Dr. Majid Rafizadeh is an American political scientist, president of the International American Council on the Middle East, business advisor, and best-selling author. Harvard-educated, Rafizadeh serves on the advisory board of Harvard International Review. He is regularly quoted and invited to speak on national and international outlets including CNN, BBC World TV and Radio, ABC, Aljazeera English, Fox News, CTV, RT, CCTV America, Skynews, CTV, and France 24 International, to name a few. Dr. Rafizadeh is frequently invited to brief governmental and non-governmental organizations as well as speak, as a featured speaker, at security, business, diplomatic, and social events. He has been recipient of several fellowships and scholarships including from Oxford University, Annenberg, University of California Santa Barbara, Fulbright program, to name few. He analyses have appeared on academic and non-academic publications including New York Times International, Los Angeles Times, CNN, Farred zakaria GPS, The Atlantic, Foreign Policy, The Nation, The National. Aljazeera, The Daily Beast, The Nation, Jerusalem Post, The Economic Times, USA Today Yale Journal of International Affairs, Georgetown Journal of International Affairs, and Harvard International Review. He is a board member of several significant and influential international and governmental institutions, and he is native speaker of couple of languages including Persian, English, and Arabic. He also speaks Dari, and can converse in French, Hebrew. More at Harvard. You can also order his books on HERE. You can learn more about Dr. Rafizadeh on HERE. You can contact him at Dr.rafizadeh@post.harvard.edu or follow him at @Dr_Rafizadeh. Iranian authorities reacted with anger towards the leaking of the secret agreement. This shows that how maintaining the secrecy of the deal was crucial for the Islamic Republic. According to Press TV, the spokesman for the Atomic Energy Organization of Iran (AEOI), Behrouz Kamalvandi pointed out "the parts [of the document] published were confidential and were supposed to remain so". The AEOI head, Ali Akbar Salehi stated "We do not intend to make this plan known to the public and (IAEA)'s action is a breach of promise," The nuclear agreement is partially like the Sykes-Picot agreement when it comes to secrecy, the untold truth and disingenuity. A secret agreement, obtained by the Associated Press, reveal that Iran's nuclear deal would not only lift constraints on Iran's nuclear program after the nuclear deal, but it will also do so before the deal expires as it makes it easier for Iran to achieve its nuclear ambitions. According to the secret agreement, the deal would pave the way for Iranian leaders to advance their nuclear capabilities at a higher level and even be capable of reducing the break out capacity from one year to six months long before the nuclear agreement ends. The Obama administration has not made this document public yet. A diplomat who works on Iran's nuclear program shared the secret document with The Associated Press. He asked for anonymity since he was not allowed to release the documents. "The diplomat who shared the document with the AP described it as an add-on agreement to the nuclear deal. But while formally separate from that accord, he said that it was in effect an integral part of the deal and had been approved both by Iran and the US, Russia, China, Britain, France and Germany, the six powers that negotiated the deal with Tehran." Big Secret Pay Off This document suggests that Iran can install thousands of centrifuges, five times more than what it posses currently, as well enrich uranium at much higher pace, long before the agreement expires. According to the Associated Press: "Centrifuges churn out uranium to levels that can range from use as reactor fuel and for medical and research purposes to much higher levels for the core of a nuclear warhead. From year 11 to 13, says the document, Iran can install centrifuges up to five times as efficient as the 5,060 machines it is now restricted to using." "Those new models will number less than those being used now, ranging between 2,500 and 3,500, depending on their efficiency, according to the document. But because they are more effective, they will allow Iran to enrich at more than twice the rate it is doing now," says the report. The Associated Press adds: "The document also allows Iran to greatly expand its work with centrifuges that are even more advanced, including large-scale testing in preparation for the deal's expiry 15 years after its implementation on Jan. 18.... The document is the only secret text linked to last year's agreement between Iran and six foreign powers. It says that after a period between 11 to 13 years, Iran can replace its 5,060 inefficient centrifuges with up to 3,500 advanced machines. Since those are five times as efficient, the time Iran would need to make a weapon would drop from a year to six months." More importantly, this document and the rest of the nuclear agreement still do not explain what are the rules on Iran's nuclear proliferation after the 13 years are. The only interpretation would be that since there is no restriction indicated, then Iran will be free to do what it desires when it comes to its nuclear program, installing advanced centrifuges, enriching uranium, and obtaining a nuclear bomb. Sen. Tom Cotton, R-Ark., told reporters at the Republican National Convention "I can just say that it would not be surprising to me at all to see those restrictions in the nuclear deal lifted within 10 years or Iran violating them in the meantime....Remember, we did a similar deal with North Korea and they detonated a nuclear device only 12 years later." Sanctions and nuclear reliefs At the anniversary of the nuclear agreement, July 14th, President Barack Obama pointed out that the nuclear deal has helped in "avoiding further conflict and making us safer." The latest developments in the Middle East show that the nuclear agreement has created more tensions, conflicts as it has made Iran's military more interventionist, and aggressive in the region. The deal has definitely increased the number of conflicts and instabilities in the region. Iran has also become more emboldened in breaking diplomatic and international norms. President Obama has ignored the new revelation downplaying it, or dodging any question linked to it. State Department spokesman Mark Toner pointed out in a Monday press briefing that "as to any alleged document, I just can't speak to it at this point in time." Advertisement The good news for the Iranian government is that it is becoming financially and economically more powerful in the meantime, thanks to the tens of billions of dollars released to Tehran, and thanks to the lifting of four rounds of UN Security Council's sanctions that allows the Iranian regime and Iran's Revolutionary Guard Corps (IEGC) to sell oil and do business freely in the international market. The secret agreement highlights the fact that significant restraints on Iran's nuclear program will be lifted before the expiration of the nuclear deal and it would shockingly allow Iran to install more advanced nuclear components than it ever possessed, which would "legally" and much more easily allow Iranian leaders to obtain nuclear weapons if they chose to do so. Meanwhile, the nuclear deal is helping Iran financially and economically to prepare itself. As some of the Iranian authorities have repeatedly said on the state media outlets - they have not given away anything on the nuclear program, and this appears to be accurate. These shortcomings need to be addressed adequately. _____________________ Dr. Majid Rafizadeh is an American political scientist, business advisor, best-selling author, and the president of the International American Council on the Middle East. Harvard-educated, Rafizadeh serves on the advisory board of Harvard International Review. An American citizen, he is originally from Iran and Syria, lived most of his life in Iran and Syria till recently. He is a board member of several significant and influential international and governmental institutions, and he is native speaker of couple of languages including Arabic and Persian. He also speaks English and Dari, and can converse in French, Hebrew. You can sign up for Dr. Rafizadeh's newsletter for the latest news and analyses on HERE. You can also order his books on HERE. You can learn more about Dr. Rafizadeh on HERE. You can contact him at Dr.rafizadeh@post.harvard.edu or follow him at @Dr_Rafizadeh. This post first appeared on Al Arabiya. Guinea-Bissaus President Jose Mario Vaz on Monday appointed Aristides Gomes as Prime Minister, a decree read on state-run media said. The move comes days after the summit of ECOWAS leaders in Togo during which Vaz agreed to honor a 2016 deal brokered by the regional body to end a prolonged political crisis in the West African nation. Talks mediated by Guinean President Alpha Conde and Togolese counterpart Faure Gnassingbe in October 2016 had called for naming a new Prime Minister and forming a unity government. Under the ECOWAS deal, Vaz was to name a Prime Minister in consensus with the rival faction. The crisis erupted when President Jose Mario Vaz sacked then Prime Minister Domingo Simoes Pereira. In February ECOWAS slapped 20 Guinea-Bissau politicians and businessmen with sanctions, including travel bans and asset freezes, accusing them of undermining efforts to resolve a prolonged political crisis. Veteran politician Aristides Gomes a member of the PAIGCs central committee who served as prime minister from 2005 to 2007 was chosen by representatives of the party during the summit in Togo, the president said. The number of Western citizens being detained and thrown in Iran's political jail, Evin prison, is increasing. Most of those being targeted are from Western countries (Europeans or Americans), who have Iranian ethnicity. Even the State Department has acknowledged the increasing threat "Iran has continued to harass, arrest, and detain US citizens, in particular dual nationals." Many believed that Iran would open up politically and socially after rejoining the global financial system and after sanctions were lifted. Rowhani encouraged the Iranian Diaspora to visit Iran without fear. Iranian authorities use dual citizens as pawns for extracting economic concessions or receiving political and financial gains and can also use them to swap prisoners. This year, Iran swapped 4 Iranian-Americans for seven Iranian prisoners in the US. In addition, a report revealed that "the Obama administration secretly organized an airlift of $400 million worth of cash to Iran" when four Iranian-Americans were released. Iran can also use dual citizens to put pressure on Western countries to give Tehran geopolitical or economic points such as ignoring the IRGC's military adventures, turning a blind eye on Iran's breaches of international laws and testing of ballistic missiles, or not imposing penalties on Iran. The hardliners are also sending a message to the moderates that the nuclear agreement does not mean more political and social liberalization. From a trade perspective, the hardliners want to keep the country closed to competition so that the IRGC and the office of the Supreme Leader, Ayatollah Khamenei, maintains monopoly over the wealth and financial system. The Iranian government is also sending a message to the West and to the Iranian people that the Islamic Republic will not only target and arrest prominent and influential people, but also ordinary citizens such as Mr. Shahini. Iranian authorities are more concerned about Western cultural infiltration among the youth than anything else. _____________________ You can read more of the article on Al Arabiya English. Dr. Majid Rafizadeh is an American political scientist, business advisor, best-selling author, and the president of the International American Council on the Middle East. Harvard-educated, Rafizadeh serves on the advisory board of Harvard International Review. An American citizen, he is originally from Iran and Syria, lived most of his life in Iran and Syria till recently. He is a board member of several significant and influential international and governmental institutions, and he is native speaker of couple of languages including Arabic and Persian. He also speaks English and Dari, and can converse in French, Hebrew. You can sign up for Dr. Rafizadeh's newsletter for the latest news and analyses on HERE. You can also order his books on HERE. You can learn more about Dr. Rafizadeh on HERE. You can contact him at Dr.rafizadeh@post.harvard.edu or follow him at @Dr_Rafizadeh. The tension between Israel and Iran appears to be heightening. Hossein Salami, deputy commander of Iran's Revolutionary Guard Corps (IRGC), recently said: "Hezbollah has 100,000 missiles that are ready to hit Israel to liberate the occupied Palestinian territories if the Zionist regime repeats its past mistakes." He added: "Today, the grounds for the annihilation and collapse of the Zionist regime are [present] more than ever." Salami warned that if Israel made the "wrong move," it would come under attack. A few weeks ago, a senior adviser to the IRGC's elite Quds Force, Ahmad Karimpour, said Iran could destroy Israel "in less than eight minutes" if Supreme Leader Ali Khamenei gave the order. Rhetoric and Iran's Military Capabilities There are several reasons why Iran's repeated anti-Israel statements may be pure rhetoric. They are most likely meant as a type of psychological warfare, because Iran cannot afford direct conflict with Israel. Although Iran is larger geographically and in terms of population, its military capacity is inferior. Even regarding missile capabilities, which Iranian generals boast about, Israel's are greater in range and number. What fundamentally changes the balance of power is Israel's nuclear capacity. It is widely believed to have some 200 nuclear warheads that can be used with intercontinental ballistic missiles, as well as nuclear-armed submarines. As such, Iran's policy toward Israel is to not strike first, as doing so would be suicidal for the ruling political establishment, whose main objective is to maintain power. It would be more effective to fight Israel via its Lebanese Shiite proxy Hezbollah. Tehran's repeated boasting about IRGC capabilities is aimed at invoking nationalist sentiment among the public, because Iranian leaders know that the overwhelming majority of Iranians are dissatisfied with the hardliners and the political establishment. Kazem, 29, PhD student majored in public health, pointed out "I would like to see a regime change in Iran, but I want Iran, ruled by any government even the current clergies, to be stronger than any country in the region including Israel. Iran should be the most powerful nation in the region militarily, technologically and economically as it was under Shah era or thousands of years of the Persian empire". In addition, IRGC attempts to maintain and increase the budget allocated to it by showing that it is an indispensable and a must-have force to protect Iranians. This method has been successful, as polls have repeatedly shown that many Iranians who oppose the political establishment still favor their country becoming a nuclear power or being more powerful than any other country in the region. Finally, Khamenei and senior cadre of IRGC are appealing to the nationalistic sentiments of Iranians to win their votes by showing that IRGC is a must-have force to protect Iranians and project Iran's prowess. They are also recalibrating the domestic balance of power, making it clear that they are the final decision-makers. They are appealing to their hardline social base by showing it that they continue to prioritize the values of the 1979 revolution (such as opposing Israel and the US) over other issues, including national interests. And, they are sending a message that the nuclear agreement does not mean Iran would make fundamental changes in its socio-political and socio-economic policies. _____________________ Dr. Majid Rafizadeh is an American political scientist, business advisor, best-selling author, and the president of the International American Council on the Middle East. Harvard-educated, Rafizadeh serves on the advisory board of Harvard International Review. An American citizen, he is originally from Iran and Syria, lived most of his life in Iran and Syria till recently. He is a board member of several significant and influential international and governmental institutions, and he is native speaker of couple of languages including Arabic and Persian. He also speaks English and Dari, and can converse in French, Hebrew. You can sign up for Dr. Rafizadeh's newsletter for the latest news and analyses on HERE. You can also order his books on HERE. You can learn more about Dr. Rafizadeh on HERE. Advertisement You can contact him at Dr.rafizadeh@post.harvard.edu or follow him at @Dr_Rafizadeh. This post first appeared on Al Arabiya. Iran's Supreme Leader, Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, who enjoys the final say on Iran's domestic and foreign policies, has repeatedly labeled any opposition to his rule and policies (including those by Iran's reformists and supporters of the Green movement) as "Fitna" or "Monafeghin". The term "Fitna" comes from an Arabic verb that means to "seduce, tempt, or lure." Khamenei uses these words to describe those who divide Muslims, endanger Islam, prioritize their own interests over Islamic duties, or those who desire to change the political establishment of the Islamic Republic. "Fitna" is Khamenei's "red line" that no individual should cross. But if pursuing policies and rhetoric that divide, rather than unify, Muslims is "Fitna" for Khamenei, doesn't his own recent actions, incendiary rhetoric, and remarks make him a "Fitna" and "monafegh" as well? For example, Khamenei decided to prevent Iranians from performing the Hajj and he seems to be inciting the Muslims to back him to achieve his political ambitions. The he Hajj is supposed to be a symbol of unity between all Muslims. But why has Khamenei felt the urge to issue such provocative remarks? Geopolitically speaking, Khamenei's actions fall right in his and IRGC's regional hegemonic ambitions as well as their attempts to tip the regional balance of power in their favor. This also suggests that Khamenei gives priority to his political interests over Muslims' holy duties. On the other hand, religiously speaking, Khamenei does not consider himself to be only the Imam (leader) of the Iranian people or the Shiite community. From his perspective and the modern theory of Shiite theology (velayate faqih), Khamenei views himself as the leader of the Umma (all Muslims). Many Shiite theologians still oppose Khomeini's and Khamenei's perception. Finally, Khamenei's incendiary remarks also suggest that Iran's increasing application of hard power and bullying is ratcheting up rather than being moderated, most significantly since the United States reached an agreement with Iran on the nuclear program. _______________________ For more details and nuances you can read full versionon Here. Dr. Majid Rafizadeh is an American political scientist, business advisor, best-selling author, and the president of the International American Council on the Middle East. Harvard-educated, Rafizadeh serves on the advisory board of Harvard International Review. An American citizen, he is originally from Iran and Syria, lived most of his life in Iran and Syria till recently. He is a board member of several significant and influential international and governmental institutions, and he is native speaker of couple of languages including Arabic and Persian. He also speaks English and Dari, and can converse in French, Hebrew. You can sign up for Dr. Rafizadeh's newsletter for the latest news and analyses on HERE. You can also order his books on HERE. You can learn more about Dr. Rafizadeh on HERE. You can contact him at Dr.rafizadeh@post.harvard.edu or follow him at @Dr_Rafizadeh. Surprisingly, Iran's moderates, who use "softer" tone, have joined other Iranian leaders including the hardliners to criticize US elections and both the Republican and Democratic candidates: Hillary Clinton and Donald Trump. If the US did similar thing during Iran's presidential elections, Iranian leaders and Ayatollah Khamenei would most likely call the action interference in their domestic affairs by the "Great Satan". But the question is why Rouhani is lashing out at Clinton who was the Secretary of State under Obama administration and contributed in Iran's nuclear agreement which led to the lifting of economic sanctions? Iran's moderates are looking for an American president who significantly pivots towards Iran, distance Washington from Iran's rivals, and preferably ignores Iran's geopolitical and strategic ambitions. Mr Obama significantly shifted Washington's Middle East policy by pivoting towards Iran and moving away from Washington's long-standing regional allies. The underlying reason behind tensions with Tehran is not the nuclear agreement but their opposition on several key regional issues. The Obama administration did not completely position itself on the opposite spectrum of Iran when it came to Israel, Saudi Arabia and Syria. This caused relationships between Iran and the US to improve. What had made Mr Obama and Hassan Rouhani's increasing diplomatic ties possible in the first place was the relative convergence of policies on the three points: one, Mr Obama's lenient position on the nuclear agreement, which led to the lifting of four rounds of sanctions against Iran. Two, his administration increasing tensions with Iran's regional rivals. Three, his soft tone on Iran's proxies. By criticizing Clinton and Trump, Iranian leaders are sending a signal to the next US president that he/she needs to follow the footsteps of President Obama, that he/she should favor appeasement policies towards Iran, significantly pivot towards Tehran, and take a softer stance on Iran's regional objectives. For Iranian leaders across the political spectrum (moderates, reformists and hardliners), it would be ideal if the character and policies of the next US President resemble that of President Obama. ______________________ Dr. Majid Rafizadeh is a businessman, political scientist, philanthropist, and president of the International American Council on the Middle East. Harvard-educated, Rafizadeh serves on the advisory board of Harvard International Review. He is regularly quoted and invited to speak on national and international outlets including CNN, BBC World TV and Radio, ABC, Aljazeera English, Fox News, CTV, RT, CCTV America, Skynews, CTV, and France 24 International, to name a few. Dr. Rafizadeh is frequently invited to brief governmental and non-governmental organizations as well as speak, as a featured speaker, at security, business, diplomatic, and social events. He has been recipient of several fellowships and scholarships including from Oxford University, Annenberg, University of California Santa Barbara, Fulbright program, to name few. He analyses have appeared on academic and non-academic publications including New York Times International, Los Angeles Times, CNN, Farred zakaria GPS, The Atlantic, Foreign Policy, The Nation, The National. Aljazeera, The Daily Beast, The Nation, Jerusalem Post, The Economic Times, USA Today Yale Journal of International Affairs, Georgetown Journal of International Affairs, and Harvard International Review. He is a board member of several significant and influential international and governmental institutions, and he is native speaker of couple of languages including Persian, English, and Arabic. He also speaks Dari, and can converse in French, Hebrew. More at Harvard. You can sign up for Dr. Rafizadeh's newsletter for the latest news and analyses on HERE. You can also order his books on HERE. You can learn more about Dr. Rafizadeh on HERE. You can contact him at Dr.rafizadeh@post.harvard.edu or follow him at @Dr_Rafizadeh. Ideologically speaking, Iran's hardliners, primarily Supreme Leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei and senior officials of the Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps (IRGC) who enjoy the final say in Iran's domestic and foreign policies, have made it clear that Iran will not change the core pillars of its religious and revolutionary establishment: Anti-Americanism or hatred and animosity towards the "Great Satan" and the "Little Satan", Israel. Supporters of Ayatollah Khamenei and the IRGC enthusiastically shouted "Death to America" in response to a recent speech that Khamenei gave, applauding the 1979 hostage-taking and takeover of the US Embassy in Tehran. In his latest public speech to thousands of people, which was televised via Iran's state TV, Khamenei made it clear that Trump's presidency will cause "no difference" to Iran-US relationships. Militarily, strategically and geopolitically, Tehran's core pillars of damaging US national interests, and scuttling US foreign policy objectives will remain intact. Khamenei and IRGC are sending a strong message that Iran will neither alter its core religious and revolutionary pillar of anti-Americanism, nor change its foreign policy and military objectives of damaging US interests. Iran's policy towards the "Great Satan" will remain as it has been since the establishment of the Islamic Republic of Iran in 1979. This article was originally published by Gatestone Institute. For more details and nuances, you can read full version on here. _____________________ You can sign up for Dr. Rafizadeh's newsletter for the latest news and analyses on Here. Harvard-educated, Dr. Majid Rafizadeh is an American political scientist, president of the International American Council on the Middle East, business advisor, and best-selling author. He serves on the advisory board of Harvard International Review. Dr. Rafizadeh is frequently invited to brief governmental and non-governmental organizations as well as speak, as a featured speaker, at security, business, diplomatic, and social events. He has been recipient of several fellowships and scholarships including from Oxford University, Annenberg, University of California Santa Barbara, Fulbright program, to name few He is regularly quoted and invited to speak on national and international outlets including CNN, BBC World TV and Radio, ABC, Aljazeera English, Fox News, CTV, RT, CCTV America, Skynews, CTV, and France 24 International, to name a few. . He analyses have appeared on academic and non-academic publications including New York Times International, Los Angeles Times, CNN, Farred zakaria GPS, The Atlantic, Foreign Policy, The Nation, The National. Aljazeera, The Daily Beast, The Nation, Jerusalem Post, The Economic Times, USA Today Yale Journal of International Affairs, Georgetown Journal of International Affairs, and Harvard International Review. He is a board member of several significant and influential international and governmental institutions, and he is native speaker of couple of languages including Persian, English, and Arabic. He also speaks Dari, and can converse in French, Hebrew. More at Harvard. You can also order his books on HERE. You can learn more about Dr. Rafizadeh on HERE. You can contact him at Dr.rafizadeh@post.harvard.edu or follow him at @Dr_Rafizadeh. Iran's supreme leader Ali Khamenei said that the result of the US election made "no difference" to the Islamic republic despite president-elect Donald Trump's aggressive stance. "We have no judgement on this election because America is the same America...We have no concerns. Thank God, we are prepared to confront any possible incident." he told people during a public speech, broadcast on state television. Iran is trying to play good cop-bad cop with Trump; the same game they played with Obama. The moderates, such as Rouhani, Zarif and Sadegh Kharrazi who spoke to the Financial Times recently, are offering a Persian carpet or an olive branch, which is "strategic cooperation" with the US in the Middle East. Sadegh Kharrazi is a relative of Iran's Supreme Leader, Ayatllah Ali Khamenei, and is the leader of the moderate political party, Neday-e Azadi. But will Iran succeed at its deception? Iran's tactical shift is aimed at: 1. Preventing the US under a Trump presidency to tilt towards Israel rather than Tehran. 2. Fending off any hurdles that might affect Iranian leaders' rising revenues and trade with West 3. Making Washington turn a blind eye to IRGC military activities, and financial and military supports for Shia proxies in several countries. 4. Finally tipping the regional balance of power in favor of Iran and continuing to suppress domestic opposition and violations of human rights without any criticisms from Washington. Iran is playing its hand well. But what is critical for Washington to realize is that the words of the so-called "moderates" in Iran, are simply empty words because they do not enjoy the final say in Iran's politics. More fundamentally, Iran can never become a strategic ally of the US. Over three decades, Iran has invested billions of dollars and resources in nurturing proxies and military institutions which aim at damaging US national security, scuttling US and its allies' foreign policy objectives. Finally, Iranian leaders' political establishment survive on having America as an enemy and on keeping the US the "Great Satan". Iran needs to have a "Great Satan" in order to suppress domestic opposition and blame the US for all its problems. _____________________ For more details and nuances you can read full versionon Here. You can sign up for Dr. Rafizadeh's newsletter for the latest news and analyses on HERE. Harvard-educated, Dr. Majid Rafizadeh is an American political scientist, president of the International American Council on the Middle East, business advisor, and best-selling author. He serves on the advisory board of Harvard International Review. Dr. Rafizadeh is frequently invited to brief governmental and non-governmental organizations as well as speak, as a featured speaker, at security, business, diplomatic, and social events. He has been recipient of several fellowships and scholarships including from Oxford University, Annenberg, University of California Santa Barbara, Fulbright program, to name few He is regularly quoted and invited to speak on national and international outlets including CNN, BBC World TV and Radio, ABC, Aljazeera English, Fox News, CTV, RT, CCTV America, Skynews, CTV, and France 24 International, to name a few. . He analyses have appeared on academic and non-academic publications including New York Times International, Los Angeles Times, CNN, Farred zakaria GPS, The Atlantic, Foreign Policy, The Nation, The National. Aljazeera, The Daily Beast, The Nation, Jerusalem Post, The Economic Times, USA Today Yale Journal of International Affairs, Georgetown Journal of International Affairs, and Harvard International Review. He is a board member of several significant and influential international and governmental institutions, and he is native speaker of couple of languages including Persian, English, and Arabic. He also speaks Dari, and can converse in French, Hebrew. More at Harvard. You can also order his books on HERE. You can learn more about Dr. Rafizadeh on HERE. You can contact him at Dr.rafizadeh@post.harvard.edu or follow him at @Dr_Rafizadeh. Syria is one of the worst catastrophic humanitarian tragedies of our generation. Iran's role in Syria has significantly impacted the direction, magnitude and longevity of the conflict. Nearly half a million people have been killed including thousands of children in Aleppo and other cities, and almost half of the population is displaced. Its role has evolved over the five years since the uprising began. With experience of cracking down on its own popular uprising in 2009-2010, Iran provided the Syrian government with technical support, social-media monitoring systems, surveillance, intelligence, military troops, and advisory support. To further bolster Assad, Tehran trained and oversaw the creation of the National Defense Forces, a domestic militia comprising tens of thousands of regime loyalists. However, the regime still faced critical challenges in maintaining control over major territories, so Iran summoned Shiite militias from across the region to fight in Syria, adding to the sectarian element of the war. Tehran implored Russia to forge a military partnership to help the IRGC and Syrian troops gain ground. As the nuclear deal was reached, IRGC senior cadre became more involved and public about their role in Syria. Assad is increasingly dependent on Iran militarily and financially, and Tehran does not see a viable alternative to the Alawite-dominated state that would preserve its interests in Syria. Iran cannot afford to lose Syria, so it is using Assad to tip the balance of power against other regional powers and strengthen the Shiite axis. Any fundamental change in Syria's political structure will directly and significantly threaten Iran's national security. Tehran's role will continue to deepen. This will further militarize, radicalize and widen the conflict. A reformist presidency in Iran will not change the status quo. Though Iranian policy on Syria is formed by the supreme leader and senior IRGC officials, Iranian politicians across the spectrum agree on that policy. Moderate President Hassan Rouhani declared in June 2015 that Tehran would back Assad "until the end of the road." ______________________ For more details and nuances you can read full versionon Here. You can sign up for Dr. Rafizadeh's newsletter for the latest news and analyses on HERE. Dr. Majid Rafizadeh is an American political scientist, president of the International American Council on the Middle East, business advisor, and best-selling author. Harvard-educated, Rafizadeh serves on the advisory board of Harvard International Review. He is regularly quoted and invited to speak on national and international outlets including CNN, BBC World TV and Radio, ABC, Aljazeera English, Fox News, CTV, RT, CCTV America, Skynews, CTV, and France 24 International, to name a few. Dr. Rafizadeh is frequently invited to brief governmental and non-governmental organizations as well as speak, as a featured speaker, at security, business, diplomatic, and social events. He has been recipient of several fellowships and scholarships including from Oxford University, Annenberg, University of California Santa Barbara, Fulbright program, to name few. He analyses have appeared on academic and non-academic publications including New York Times International, Los Angeles Times, CNN, Farred zakaria GPS, The Atlantic, Foreign Policy, The Nation, The National. Aljazeera, The Daily Beast, The Nation, Jerusalem Post, The Economic Times, USA Today Yale Journal of International Affairs, Georgetown Journal of International Affairs, and Harvard International Review. He is a board member of several significant and influential international and governmental institutions, and he is native speaker of couple of languages including Persian, English, and Arabic. He also speaks Dari, and can converse in French, Hebrew. More at Harvard. You can also order his books on HERE. You can learn more about Dr. Rafizadeh on HERE. You can contact him at Dr.rafizadeh@post.harvard.edu or follow him at @Dr_Rafizadeh. "You [Iranian officials] will be in the future etched in the annals of history as criminals. The greatest crime committed under the Islamic Republic, from the beginning of the Revolution until now, which will be condemned by history, is this crime [mass executions] committed by you." Ayatollah Hossein Ali Montazeri warns the Islamic Republic in an audio disclosed recently. Montazeri's son, Ahmad, a moderate cleric, posted the audio on his website but was ordered by the intelligence to remove it. In reference to one of the worst mass executions in the modern history of the Middle East, being carried by the government officials, Montazri stated that "So, now, without their having carried out any new activities (the prisoners), we execute them. This means that all of us screwed up, our entire judicial system is wrong". He talks about a 15 years old girl being executed because she liked her brother who was also executed. Amnesty International estimates that in the summer of 1988, the overall number of people executed were 4,500. Some estimates reach as high as over 30,000 people. He adds "In Esfahan, a pregnant woman was among them [those massacred]. In Esfahan they executed a pregnant woman.... [In clerical jurisprudence] one must not execute a woman even if she is a mohareb (enemy of God). "I reminded [the Supreme Leader] of this, but he said they must be executed. In the month of Moharram, at least in the month of Moharram, the month of God and the Prophet, it shouldn't be like this. At least feel some shame before Imam Hussein. Cutting off all meetings and suddenly engaging in such butchery, dragging them out and Bang! Bang!!! Does this happen anywhere in the world? ..." Montazeri's audio points to one of the worst crimes against humanity committed in modern history and it continues to occur. It points to the means that the government uses to control the population and silence opposition. It also points to the interconnectedness of Shiite Islam, power and authoritarianism, and it points to the dominance of the IRGC, intelligence, Khamenei and their loyalists. For more details and nuances you can read full version on Here. _______________________ Dr. Majid Rafizadeh is an American political scientist, business advisor, best-selling author, and the president of the International American Council on the Middle East. Harvard-educated, Rafizadeh serves on the advisory board of Harvard International Review. An American citizen, he is originally from Iran and Syria, lived most of his life in Iran and Syria till recently. He is a board member of several significant and influential international and governmental institutions, and he is native speaker of couple of languages including Arabic and Persian. He also speaks English and Dari, and can converse in French, Hebrew. You can sign up for Dr. Rafizadeh's newsletter for the latest news and analyses on HERE. You can also order his books on HERE. You can learn more about Dr. Rafizadeh on HERE. You can contact him at Dr.rafizadeh@post.harvard.edu or follow him at @Dr_Rafizadeh. If politics were like sports, the losers would take their losses graciously; but Washington politics are not like sports. Some still appear to have a difficult time at accepting the results of the presidential election, but they should not act like an attorney who lost his case before the judge, and walks outside seeking to relitigate it in front of the public and the media. They should not be in the pounding table and yelling stage, but they should understand that the case is closed. Some are even heavily criticizing potential Cabinet nominees even before the President-elect Donald Trump has picked any specific individual for the key White House positions. For example, Daniel Benjamin, a former Coordinator for Counterterrorism at the State Department, recently posted an article in regard to the potential Cabinet nominees as well as a grassroots Iranian organization. We should adequately and meticulously analyze the politics, facts, and the law. The Politics On politics, the 2016 elections are over: Donald Trump won. Republicans control the White House, Senate, and the House of Representatives, and the decades-old policy of appeasement of the Islamic Republic of Iran has received a major blow. Therefore, let's just get over it. The Facts On Nov. 23, Benjamin launched a broadside against the People's Mojahedin Organization of Iran/Mujahedeen-e-Khalq (PMOI/MEK); it is the largest and best-organized Iranian opposition movement within the National Council of Resistance of Iran (NCRI), which acts as the parliament-in-exile. He criticized a number of former U.S. officials including Mayor Rudy Giuliani for their support for the MEK. In a recent article, he said, "With Giuliani, as perhaps with Gingrich and others, the attraction to the MEK may be more grounded in plain old greed than foreign policy." Nevertheless, there exists robust evidence, gathered by U.S. officials, confirming that the mainstream MEK was not responsible for the killing of U.S. citizens in Iran. Rather, those assassinations were the work of a breakaway Marxist-Leninist faction, known as Peykar, which hijacked the movement after the arrest and execution of the leaders of the MEK and killed both the MEK members who resisted the hijacking of their organization and several Americans in Tehran. Upon being released from prison during the 1979 Revolution, after serving 8 years of his life term, MEK leader "[Massoud] Rajavi had to rebuild the organization, which had been badly battered by the Peykar experience," said Patrick Clawson in a Council on Foreign Relations interview. He is an Iran scholar and director of research at The Washington Institute for Near East Policy. The Law In March 2012, the Treasury Department seemed to suspect that advocates of the MEK were providing material support for a Foreign Terrorist Organization (FTO). The Department began to issue subpoenas to distinguished former U.S. officials who advocated on behalf of the MEK. But Treasury ended its inquiry about a year after the courts and Secretary of State Hillary Clinton delisted the MEK in September. Treasury cited no violations of any laws, either by the Iranian-Americans who were organizing the conferences or the speakers who appeared at these events. So, there is no legal leg on which anyone can make the case that advocates of the MEK were or are in violation of the law, which prohibits providing material support to a listed organization. And, more fundamentally, one is innocent until proven guilty. Mr. Benjamin wrote that the MEK "inclusion on the FTO list underscored a central principle of U.S. counterterrorism policy, namely, that the target of terrorist violence is irrelevant, and the killing of innocents to advance a political agenda is always wrong." But according to a report by Dr. Kenneth Katzman, Specialist in Middle Eastern Affairs, at the Congressional Research Service, State Department reports on international terrorism till 2011 did not assert that MEK ever targeted civilians purposely. And most importantly the European Court and the United States ruled in favor of the MEK. Therefore, getting the politics, facts, and the law correctly is critical. The Way Forward First, based on politics, facts, and law, refrain from falling back; rather let us look forward together. Second, the future lies with those who lose gracefully and those who win humbly, as Clinton and Trump have done so well. Advertisement Third, former Camp Liberty residents of MEK held under strenuous conditions by the Iraqi Government are now in Albania and other European countries. The US thanked Albania for resettling members of MEK, "U.S. Secretary of State John Kerry has used a visit to Albania to thank the government for resettling members of an Iranian opposition group known as the Mujahedin e Khalq, or MEK" The real debate, however, is over the U.S. policy on Iran. On the one hand, those who favor the policy of appeasement wish to follow in the footsteps of President Obama. But they are on their way out, with little chance for having any substantial impact at least for the next four years. On the other hand, there are those who favor holding the Iranian regime accountable for its hostility and terrorism against the United States and its allies in the region. They have also called for imposing additional sanctions for Iran's abysmal human rights record, and its involvement in terrorism. They are also on the record that they like to see democratic change in Iran by relying on the Iranian people. For its part, we cannot escape the fact that the MEK appears to be the single most important internal player that can facilitate the democratic change in Iran, as they have demonstrated their extraordinary ability to organize. That explains all the criticisms and attacks on the MEK as well as on those who espouse a favorable view about the MEK, including dozens of senior bipartisan former government officials, such as Mayor Rudy Giuliani, Speaker Newt Gingrich, Governors Howard Dean, Ambassador John Bolton, Secretary Tom Ridge and Governor Edward Rendell. The proponents of the appeasement policy should realize that the tide is turning, they won't succeed in resisting it. _____________________ You can sign up for Dr. Rafizadeh's newsletter for the latest news and analyses on HERE. Harvard-educated, Dr. Majid Rafizadeh is an American political scientist, president of the International American Council on the Middle East, business advisor, and best-selling author. He serves on the advisory board of Harvard International Review. Dr. Rafizadeh is frequently invited to brief governmental and non-governmental organizations as well as speak, as a featured speaker, at security, business, diplomatic, and social events. He has been recipient of several fellowships and scholarships including from Oxford University, Annenberg, University of California Santa Barbara, Fulbright program, to name few He is regularly quoted and invited to speak on national and international outlets including CNN, BBC World TV and Radio, ABC, Aljazeera English, Fox News, CTV, RT, CCTV America, Skynews, CTV, and France 24 International, to name a few. . He analyses have appeared on academic and non-academic publications including New York Times International, Los Angeles Times, CNN, Farred zakaria GPS, The Atlantic, Foreign Policy, The Nation, The National. Aljazeera, The Daily Beast, The Nation, Jerusalem Post, The Economic Times, USA Today Yale Journal of International Affairs, Georgetown Journal of International Affairs, and Harvard International Review. He is a board member of several significant and influential international and governmental institutions, and he is native speaker of couple of languages including Persian, English, and Arabic. He also speaks Dari, and can converse in French, Hebrew. More at Harvard. You can also order his books on HERE. You can learn more about Dr. Rafizadeh on HERE. You can contact him at Dr.rafizadeh@post.harvard.edu or follow him at @Dr_Rafizadeh. Deputy Crown Prince and Defense Minister, Prince Mohammed bin Salman, who according to the New York Times "has moved quickly to revolutionize his country's economy in ways that offer tantalizing hints at even broader reforms", is now establishing and spearheading "a new comprehensive, locally and internationally coordinated counter-terrorism strategy" based on a recently published report. President Obama hosted Mohammed bin Salman in June, 2016 and discussed U.S.-Gulf Cooperation Council (GCC) as well as expressed appreciation for Saudi Arabia's efforts in combatting ISIS and contributing to the campaign against ISIS. The report by Salman Al-Ansari, Founder & President of the Washington DC-based Saudi American Public Relation Affairs Committee (SAPRAC) sheds light on multi-faceted and modern approach to counter terrorism. The new strategy and tactical shift incorporates several facets including the establishment of a coalition of Muslim countries to eliminate any form of terrorism. Accordingly and intriguingly "While the strategy is centered around conventional methods of countering terrorism, such as monitoring, tracking down and eliminating terrorist threats, it will do so by focusing on eradicating any terrorist cyber-presence, combatting extremist ideologies, and establishing a coalition of Muslim countries that will aim to eliminate any form of terrorism that claims to operate under the name of Islam. As the focal points of the Deputy Crown Prince's strategy, these particular aspects are emphasized in order to carry out and implement preemptive measures to not only prevent the occurrence of terrorism on Saudi Arabian soil, which is already surrounded by political turbulence and unrest, but the occurrence of terrorism anywhere in the world as well. However, even before this new strategy has been put into effect, Saudi Arabia has already been participating in an international coalition to combat terrorist organizations, chief of them being ISIS. In fact, ever since the International Coalition to Combat ISIS was formed under the leadership of the United States, Saudi Arabia has been an active member since day one. Saudi Arabia started out by participating heavily in the coalition's military operations that were launched in September 2014, with air strikes that targeted areas controlled by ISIS within Syrian and Iraqi territories. In fact, the total number of offensive sorties carried out by Saudi Arabia's Air Force up to July 25th, 2016 is 254 sorties. Saudi Arabia displayed its commitment to the International Coalition's military air campaign against ISIS even further by sending its Special Operation Forces to assist with the coalition's efforts. Additionally, on April 25th, 2016, Saudi Arabia carried out a massive military offensive against Al-Qaeda in the Arabian Peninsula (AQAP) that eliminated more than 800 Al-Qaeda militants in Al-Mukalla, paving the way for a legitimate Yemini government to liberate Hadhramaut's capital from Al-Qaeda's grip." Based on the study, in addition, Saudi Arabia's participation in the United States-led global coalition constitutes a strategic aspect in the battle against ISIS. This occurs "by taking away every excuse for ISIS to claim that it is engaged in a war exclusively against the West, or what they often refer to as "Christian Crusaders". There are also deeply embedded reasons as to why the Kingdom's contributions makes this global coalition uniquely positioned to defeat ISIS, as Saudi Arabia is home to the two holiest sites in Islam, Mecca and Medina, effectively making Saudi Arabia the de facto leader of the Arab and Islamic world. ISIS has targeted Saudi Arabia more than 20 times in order to discourage them from continuing to be active participants in the global coalition to combat it. This is because ISIS knows for a fact that the Kingdom's inclusion in this coalition greatly reduces the chances of ISIS resuming their recruitment efforts under the pretext of confronting those whom they refer to as "infidels". Recently, given the significant resources and capabilities that terrorist groups have been able to acquire, the current Saudi administration has recognized the need to adapt to the threats that these terrorist elements represent. It also believes that a new tactical approach must be implemented as part of a strategy that not only aims to encircle terrorist groups and completely impede their movements, but also to thoroughly cut off their sources of financial income. Some of the ways that will be used to monitor their movements include tracking their recruitment strategies that utilize online social media platforms, such as Facebook and Twitter, or by keeping a close eye on extremist groups that encourage Saudis to commit to fundamentalism, which is subsequently used as a gateway to push Saudi youth towards extremism and intolerance." Accordingly, the nuances of the three-pronged approach are "As such, the Deputy Crown Prince pushed for three main directions towards the strategy that focus on tackling terrorism through multiple fronts that include (but are not limited to) digital, ideological and military fronts. Three centers have been established that take on each respective front, which are: "1. The establishment of a specialized center called the "Digital Extremism Observatory" (DEO) that aims to monitor and track every possible online presence created by terrorist groups, whether it's social media accounts, survey sites or webpages created by these groups to promote their ideologies and goals. Even Twitter recognized the importance of keeping terrorists from accessing and abusing social media platforms, as they have shutdown nearly 250,000 Twitter accounts associated with terrorist groups and activities. Some of the center's efforts include frustrating any attempt to exploit any online platform that could be used for either recruitment or spreading extremist ideologies. It does so by enlisting the help of experts in online monitoring and data analysis, in order to develop a detailed map of intelligence information that can be provided to local or international authorities if requested. The center also has a dedicated team of specialists that respond swiftly to any attempt by terrorists to spread their ideology or to employ any of their digital recruitment strategies. This is all done under a framework of cooperation between the Kingdom and the global community for the purpose of collaborating effectively towards thwarting any terrorist operation that could be carried out using these platforms. Examples of such operations that relied heavily on online social networking sites include those that occurred in France and Britain. In addition, the terrorist group Al-Qaeda used several online media platforms on February 14th, 2003 to broadcast incendiary propaganda against the Kingdom titled "Between the Band of Horsemen". Elements of the terrorist organization consequently used this propaganda piece as one of the steps towards an infamous terrorist operation known as the "Pearl Harbor of Arabia", which occurred on May 2003. It targeted a residential compound in the Saudi capital Riyadh, killing eight Americans, Australians and many Westerners, as well as a number of Saudi security guards." The second front to counter terrorism focuses on the establishment of an ideology research and advocacy center. It aims to "not only confront extremist ideologies, but also to promote a more moderate and welcoming version of Islam that is based on the religion's principles of tolerance and coexistence with others, no matter what their religion, belief or nationality. The center has just recently been established, and is currently being led and supervised by the former Minister of Justice and head of the Supreme Judicial Council, Dr. Mohammed Al-Issa. The Deputy Crown Prince assigned this responsibility to Dr. Al-Issa due to his other position as secretary general of the Muslim World League, where he also counters extremist ideologies and promotes a more moderate version of Islam. The league is recognized by the United Nations as an Observer in consultative status with the Economic and Social Council (ECOSOC). In addition, the league's membership includes 60 Islamic states, and is known for being moderate and open to other cultures. It also utterly rejects all forms of extremism and terrorism. The center also plays a major role in efforts to quell any extremist religious discourse, as well as in pushing for new blood into some religious institutions in order to suppress and erase any aspect related to extremism and intolerance towards others. This responsibility has been fulfilled by Dr. Al-Issa during his tenure as Minister of Justice, by enforcing laws and regulations that contributed greatly to isolating and excising any extremist element that might hide and operate within these institutions or use them as a means to spread extremism or supporting fundamentalist ideologies. Dr. Al-Issa also toured the United States in January 2012 as part of his commitment to communicate with the international community, where he emphasized the Kingdom's centrist, moderate approach and its principle of tolerance towards others. Dr. Al-Issa was also keen on stressing the importance of combatting extremist ideologies during meetings with several U.S. officials, as well as his personal concern and goal to refute any excuse or justification for terrorists to conduct attacks in the name of Islam." The establishment of the "Islamic Military Counter Terrorism Coalition" is the third front which includes "40 Muslim countries that will work within international conventions and laws in order to complement the regional and international efforts that are already underway for confronting terrorism in all of its manifestations. Additionally, it was recently announced that a joint operations center for the coalition has been created in Riyadh in order to unify, support and coordinate the efforts of all willing countries that want to offer help and assistance in combatting both physical and digital forms of terrorism. The Deputy Crown Prince faces what is possibly the most foreboding and relentless form of terrorism that Saudi Arabia and the world has ever seen. While it has been argued that Saudi Arabia hasn't been doing enough to publicize its counter-terrorism efforts to the international media, one can also argue that the country's current administration has formulated a far more comprehensive and methodical approach to fighting terrorism that aims to root out extremism wherever it may manifest by any means possible, whether its digitally, ideologically or militarily." In closing, the three-pronged approach include establishing an ideology research and advocacy center, and a specialized center called the "Digital Extremism Observatory" (DEO), as well as forming the "Islamic Military Counter Terrorism Coalition", which includes 40 Muslim countries. These are the multi-faceted fronts that include, but are not limited to, digital, ideological and military facets. _______________________ Related stories, You can sign up for the newsletter for the latest news and analyses on HERE. Dr.Rafizadeh@Post.Harvard.edu Georgian Official Says Spray Used Against Asian Bug in Abkhazia is Dangerous By Gvantsa Gabekhadze Vakhtang Kolbaia, who takes a symbolic position of the head of the Government of Autonomous Republic of Abkhazia, of the region which is now under Russias control, says that the spray used against the Asian Stink Bug by the local, Russia-controlled, de facto leadership of Abkhazia, carries serious threats to human health.The spray is particularly dangerous for kids and must not be used inside the houses. The spray has been studied by professionals and it can be used only for agricultural lands and other open areas, Kolbaia said.Kolbaia, who acts under the Georgian government, has appealed to the people living in the occupied territory to meet the mandatory rules and do not let using the spray inside closed areas, where they have to live, work or walk on a daily basis.Last month Russia decided to pay Abkhazians 1,000 Russian Rubles ($17.5, Gel 42.44) per kilogram of Asian stink bugs, which devastated nearly the whole nut and mandarin harvest in Georgias Russian-backed, breakaway region of Abkhazia.The offer from the Russian side is one of the measures for combating the invasive pest, which started to multiply very fast this spring.Based on the latest figures from the occupied region, more than 80 kilograms of bugs have already been collected and killed.Georgian media reports that last year the de facto authorities of Abkhazia spent around 25 million Russian Rubles ($4.3 million) in the fight against Asian stink bugs, but without any tangible success, as the pest has doubled in the region this year.Brown Marmorated bugs were first reported in Georgia in 2015 and devastated nearly the whole nut harvest in the western regions of the country.De facto Abkhazian side claims the bugs spread to the breakaway region from Georgia. Iran Constitution's article 146 stipulates "The establishment of any kind of foreign military base in Iran, even for peaceful purposes, is forbidden." Nevertheless, Iranian leaders appear to have violated this crucial article. No foreign power has used Iran's soil and territories as a base for military operations since the second World War. But, this week, according to Reuters, Russia revealed that it has used Iran's territory, Hamadan air base, as a military base to bomb Syria. Iran immediately responded with fury, first denying the move, and later calling Russia's move as a publicizing tactic and "betrayal of trust." Although Iran might appear to be sending a message to its rivals that Russia is still with Iran rather than with them, the revelation of this military deal by Moscow is a considered a blow to the Islamic Republic's nationalistic slogan of "independence". That is why Iran attempted to keep it the deal quiet but Russia had different calculations. The fact that Russia has set military feet in Iran for the first time since 1917, is an indication of the notion that Russia remains the indispensable global power. President Obama and his administration appear to, as usual, deny that they knew anything about this military action in order no to deal with this issue and in order not to criticize Iran. Russia is also sending several messages to other Middle Eastern countries that Moscow is a more reliable partner than the United States; that Moscow comes to the assistance of its allies and friends by cooperating with regional nations, by using advanced military equipment, and by launching military strikes to defeat whoever endangers the power of its allies. Finally, since Iran cannot afford to lose Assad, its staunchest ally, Tehran is doing everything it can, even violating its own Constitution and ideals - by allowing foreign countries use its soil for military purposes - in order to keep Assad in power. For more details and nuances you can read full on Here. _______________________ Dr. Majid Rafizadeh is an American political scientist, business advisor, best-selling author, and the president of the International American Council on the Middle East. Harvard-educated, Rafizadeh serves on the advisory board of Harvard International Review. An American citizen, he is originally from Iran and Syria, lived most of his life in Iran and Syria till recently. He is a board member of several significant and influential international and governmental institutions, and he is native speaker of couple of languages including Arabic and Persian. He also speaks English and Dari, and can converse in French, Hebrew. You can sign up for Dr. Rafizadeh's newsletter for the latest news and analyses on HERE. You can also order his books on HERE. You can learn more about Dr. Rafizadeh on HERE. You can contact him at Dr.rafizadeh@post.harvard.edu or follow him at @Dr_Rafizadeh. It is no longer a secret that Saudi Arabia is undergoing a massive economic transformation. This transformation is so essential to Saudi Arabia's security and stability, that it is taking every measure possible to make sure that it succeeds. What is not yet known, however, is that Saudi Arabia is also taking a new approach in its relentless efforts to combat strains of extremism that are continuously threatening both local, regional, and global stability. What makes this approach novel is that it confronts extremism to where it really matters: the ideological and intellectual battlefield. By examining the issue closely, and based on several reports, at the forefront of this effort appears to be the current Secretary General of the Muslim World League and a member of the Saudi Council of Senior Scholars, a key figure, an up and coming star in the Saudi religious establishment: Dr. Mohammed Al-Eissa. In addition, He oversees the day-to-day operations of the Ideological Warfare Center (IWC), which aims to confront the roots of extremism and promote the true understanding of Islam. According to a new report prepared by the Saudi American Public Relation Affairs Committee (SAPRAC), Dr. Al-Eissa recently welcomed representatives of different sects "along with the Vatican delegate in this spirituality focused meeting, where the values of respect, tolerance and openness towards other religions and sects were emphasized". There were some others in the religious establishment who would not participate in this gathering unless they "would act as debaters or opposers..". The report states that the Secretary General of the Muslim World League has stressed that "Islam warned against the forceful imposition of views, and that Islam has coexisted peacefully with other religious in the past. This has set the tone of the religious dialogue to that of politeness and respect for the other side's humanity and dignity." A concise overview is given, in the report, of the current Secretary General of the Muslim World League's efforts to emphasize Islam's values of peace, tolerance, and coexistence, all of which are antithetical to the fundamentalist view of Islam that extremists are using to further their terrorist activities. Accordingly, Al-Eissa is the main figurehead for promoting the true version of Islam, which encourages peace, tolerance and coexistence. Finally, while critics may suggest that these values are also incompatible with the predominant and traditional Saudi religious establishment, nevertheless, one should look at the issue more meticulously as it has become clear that Saudi Arabia is taking the ideological war against extremism seriously, especially through the narrative that the current Secretary General of the Muslim World League, Al-Eissa, brings to the fore; an accepting, welcoming, and pluralistic narrative. _____________________ You can sign up for Dr. Rafizadeh's newsletter for the latest news and analyses on Here. Harvard-educated, Dr. Majid Rafizadeh is an American political scientist, president of the International American Council on the Middle East, business advisor, and best-selling author. He serves on the advisory board of Harvard International Review. Dr. Rafizadeh is frequently invited to brief governmental and non-governmental organizations as well as speak, as a featured speaker, at security, business, diplomatic, and social events. He has been recipient of several fellowships and scholarships including from Oxford University, Annenberg, University of California Santa Barbara, Fulbright program, to name few He is regularly quoted and invited to speak on national and international outlets including CNN, BBC World TV and Radio, ABC, Aljazeera English, Fox News, CTV, RT, CCTV America, Skynews, CTV, and France 24 International, to name a few. . He analyses have appeared on academic and non-academic publications including New York Times International, Los Angeles Times, CNN, Farred zakaria GPS, The Atlantic, Foreign Policy, The Nation, The National. Aljazeera, The Daily Beast, The Nation, Jerusalem Post, The Economic Times, USA Today Yale Journal of International Affairs, Georgetown Journal of International Affairs, and Harvard International Review. He is a board member of several significant and influential international and governmental institutions, and he is native speaker of couple of languages including Persian, English, and Arabic. He also speaks Dari, and can converse in French, Hebrew. More at Harvard. You can also order his books on HERE. You can learn more about Dr. Rafizadeh on HERE. You can contact him at Dr.rafizadeh@post.harvard.edu or follow him at @Dr_Rafizadeh. When it comes to the Middle East, the Islamic Republic of Iran is the linchpin and epicenter of many tensions and conflicts across the region. As an Iranian official stated, Iran dominates four Arab capitals. Countering Iran's military would lead to significant changes reducing the regional conflicts. The Trump administration should pursue firm policies in countering Iran's militaristic, hegemonic and ideological ambitions. In the eight years of Barack Obama's presidency, Washington was hesitant to take robust stance against the Islamic Republic. It goes without saying that these appeasement policies have turned the regional tensions into conflagration. The creation of concepts such as "moderates" versus "hardliners" is a fallacy. In Iran, authorities do not use these concepts. Iran's politicians across the political spectrum might use different means but they try to achieve the same objectives: preserving the political establishment of the Islamic Republic, Velayate Faqih (the Supreme Leader) and the revolutionary principles of 1979. Trump should observe and learn the bitter lessons derived from the two terms of the Obama administration. Iranian leaders learned that hardball tactics plays well with the US. Anti-Americanism and Anti-Semitism increased. Trump administration should take a three-pronged approach toward the Iranian government. Regionally speaking, Washington needs to hold Iran accountable for any aggression, anti-US and anti-Israeli rhetoric. Washington should take legal action when Iran violates UN security resolution such as test firing ballistic missiles or breaching the arms embargo.The US should stand with its Middle Eastern allies to counter the IRGC expansion of its stranglehold in the region and should drive the IRGC forces out of foreign territories. Financing of Iran's proxies and delivery of arms to them should be countered appropriately. Domestically speaking, the US needs to publicly condemn Iran's increasing human rights violations. With regards to the nuclear agreement, the US should not solely rely on the IAEA to inspect Iran. Since Russia and China will support Iran, the US should take unilateral proportionate action such as re-imposing Obama's repealed sanctions on Iran. ______________________ For more details and nuances you can read full versionon Here. You can sign up for Dr. Rafizadeh's newsletter for the latest news and analyses on HERE. Harvard-educated, Dr. Majid Rafizadeh is an American political scientist, president of the International American Council on the Middle East, business advisor, and best-selling author. He serves on the advisory board of Harvard International Review. Dr. Rafizadeh is frequently invited to brief governmental and non-governmental organizations as well as speak, as a featured speaker, at security, business, diplomatic, and social events. He has been recipient of several fellowships and scholarships including from Oxford University, Annenberg, University of California Santa Barbara, Fulbright program, to name few He is regularly quoted and invited to speak on national and international outlets including CNN, BBC World TV and Radio, ABC, Aljazeera English, Fox News, CTV, RT, CCTV America, Skynews, CTV, and France 24 International, to name a few. . He analyses have appeared on academic and non-academic publications including New York Times International, Los Angeles Times, CNN, Farred zakaria GPS, The Atlantic, Foreign Policy, The Nation, The National. Aljazeera, The Daily Beast, The Nation, Jerusalem Post, The Economic Times, USA Today Yale Journal of International Affairs, Georgetown Journal of International Affairs, and Harvard International Review. He is a board member of several significant and influential international and governmental institutions, and he is native speaker of couple of languages including Persian, English, and Arabic. He also speaks Dari, and can converse in French, Hebrew. More at Harvard. You can also order his books on HERE. You can learn more about Dr. Rafizadeh on HERE. You can contact him at Dr.rafizadeh@post.harvard.edu or follow him at @Dr_Rafizadeh. A resolution (H.Res. 159) was recently introduced in the U.S. Congress in reference to one of the worst mass executions of political prisoners since WWII by the Islamic Republic of Iran. The House Homeland Security Chair, Mike McCaul, introduced the resolution, which was cosponsored by the House Foreign Affairs Committee Chair Ed Royce, Ranking Member Eliot Engel, and Rules Committee Chair Rep. Peter Sessions. The resolution came as Hassan Rouhani, president of a government that ranked as the world's top executioner per capita, was addressing the 71st Session of the United Nations General Assembly. In the run-up to his speech, the Associated Press reported that thousands of protesters gathered outside the United Nations protesting Iran's human rights abuses, executions, and the 1988 massacre of more than 30,000 prisoners. The speakers included former Democratic vice presidential candidate and Senator Joe Lieberman, and Sir Geoffrey Robertson, former Head of UN war crimes tribunal for Sierra Leone who wrote a report on Iran 1988 massacre published on the United Nations Arts Initiative. The resolution introduced in Congress "condemns the Government of the Islamic Republic of Iran for the 1988 massacre of political prisoners and [calls] for justice for the victims." It adds that "over a 4-month period in 1988, the Government of the Islamic Republic of Iran carried out the barbaric mass executions of thousands of political prisoners and many unrelated political groups. ... [A]ccording to a report by the Iran Human Rights Documentation Center, the massacre was carried out pursuant to a fatwa, or religious decree, issued by then Supreme Leader Ayatollah Ruhollah Khomeini, that targeted the People's Mojahedin of Iran (PMOI), also known as the Mujahedeen-e-Khalq (MEK);" The resolution quotes one of Iran's own senior former officials, who said the 1988 massacre was ''the greatest crime committed during the Islamic Republic, for which history will condemn us." Accordingly, in 1988, the Islamic Republic executed the thousands of prisoners, primarily affiliated with the main opposition movement Mujahedin-e Khalq (MEK), due to their political beliefs. The victims were buried in mass graves in Iran after they were shot or hung in matter of a few months. According to a November 2, 2007, report by Amnesty International, ''between 27 July 1988 and the end of that year, thousands of political prisoners [in Iran], including prisoners of conscience, were executed in prisons nationwide." The resolution adds that "Those personally responsible for these mass executions include senior officials serving in the current Government of Iran; ... [P]risoners were reportedly brought before the commissions and briefly questioned about their political affiliation, and any prisoner who refused to renounce his or her affiliation with groups perceived as enemies by the regime was then taken away for execution," H.Res. 159 noted. Accordingly, the victims included "thousands of people, including teenagers and pregnant women, imprisoned merely for participating in peaceful street protests and for possessing political reading material, many of whom had already served or were currently serving prison sentences." The congressional resolution states, "[P]risoners were executed in groups, some in mass hangings and others by firing squad, with their bodies disposed of in mass graves." According to Amnesty International, ''the majority of those killed were supporters of the PMOI [MEK], but hundreds of members and supporters of other political groups . . . were also among the execution victims.'' Based on the Congressional resolution, "The later waves of executions targeted religious minorities, such as members of the Baha'i faith, many of whom were often subjected to brutal torture before they were killed." It add "The families of the executed were denied information about their loved ones and were prohibited from mourning them in public". The resolution mentions that "in a recently disclosed audiotape, the late Hussein Ali Montazeri, a grand ayatollah who served as Khomeini's chief deputy, noted the regime's efforts to target the MEK and said that the 1988 mass killings were ''the greatest crime committed during the Islamic Republic, for which history will condemn us'." A report by Amnesty International has concluded ''there should be no impunity for human rights violations, no matter where or when they took place. The 1988 executions should be subject to an independent impartial investigation, and all those responsible should be brought to justice, and receive appropriate penalties'' According to the resolution, "The current Supreme Leader Ali Khamenei was reportedly aware of, and later publicly condoned the massacre." The Montazeri audiotape was disclosed by Ayatollah Hossein Ali Montazeri's son, Ahmad, a moderate cleric, who posted the confidential audio of his father on his website but was ordered by the intelligence to remove it. Montazeri states in the tape, "You [Iranian officials] will be in the future etched in the annals of history as criminals. The greatest crime committed under the Islamic Republic, from the beginning of the Revolution until now, which will be condemned by history, is this crime [mass executions] committed by you." Ironically, all those people to whom Montazri is addressing and warning in the audio, all of those who were involved in these crimes, appear to enjoy high positions currently. Mostafa Pourmohammadi was a representative of the intelligence ministry to the notorious Evin prison, and he was appointed by the so-called moderate president Hassan Rowhani to be justice minister. Ebrahim Raeisi was a public prosecutor and is appointed to be the head of Astan Quds Razavi, which has billions of dollars in revenues. Advertisement One of Iran's current officials is Rouhani's justice minister Mostafa Pourmohammadi. Recently, after the release of a tape in which the Islamic Republic's no. 2 official was heard condemning the crime, Pourmohammadi defended the commission of the massacre and said he is "proud" to have carried out "God's commandments" in killing the political opponents. Hussein Ali Nayeri was a judge and is now the deputy of the Supreme Court of Iran. In his memoir, Montzari writes that he told Nayeri to stop the executions at least in the month of Moharram religious holidays, but Nayeri said according to BBC: "We have executed so far 750 people in Tehran... we get the job done with [executing] another 200 people and then we will listen to whatever you say." What is crucial to point out is that realistically speaking, these people are only few of those who were involved in such large scale crimes against humanity. They have been awarded more senior positions, power, and money. Montazeri advised the ruling politicians that "Beware of 50 years from now, when people will pass judgment on the leader (Khomeini) and will say he was a bloodthirsty, brutal and murderous leader." It's worth noting that the revelation of this mass execution was pointing to only one summer of the 37-year history of the Islamic Republic. What else is hidden there that we are not aware of? The writings, messages and audio from Iran's ex-heir Supreme Leader highlight the systematic methods that the officials of the Islamic Republic use to oppress the opposition. Executions or brutal punishments against the opposition have become the cornerstone of Iran's political establishment as Iran ranks top in the world when it comes to executions per capita. The Islamic Republic's 1988 massacre and Montazeri's audio point to one of the worst crimes against humanity committed in modern history and it continues to occur. It points to the means that the government uses to control the population and silence the opposition. It points to the interconnectedness of the government and repression, and it points to the dominance of the Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps (IRGC), intelligence, Khamenei and their loyalists. It is incumbent on human rights organizations, the United Nations, and the International Criminal Court (ICC) to conduct rigorous investigations and bring those who have committed and continue to commit these crimes - and more likely who currently serve in high positions in Iran - to justice. Calls to bring these people to justice are increasing. No individual or institution that commits crimes against humanity should live comfortably without being held accountable. Finally, it is incumbent on the Congress and everyone who wanted to be on the right side of justice to follow up with the following points mentioned in the recent Congressional resolution: "1. condemn the Government of the Islamic Republic of Iran for the 1988 massacre, and for denying the evidence of this manifest set of crimes against humanity; 2. urge the Administration and United States allies to publicly condemn the massacre, and pressure the Government of Iran to provide detailed information to the families of the victims about their loved ones and their final resting places; and 3. urge the United Nations Special Rapporteur on the human rights situation in Iran and the United Nations Human Rights Council to create a Commission of Inquiry to fully investigate the massacre and to gather evidence and identify the names 15 and roles of specific perpetrators with a view towards bringing them to justice." _______________________ Dr. Majid Rafizadeh is an American political scientist, president of the International American Council on the Middle East, business advisor, and best-selling author. Harvard-educated, Rafizadeh serves on the advisory board of Harvard International Review. He is regularly quoted and invited to speak on national and international outlets including CNN, BBC World TV and Radio, ABC, Aljazeera English, Fox News, CTV, RT, CCTV America, Skynews, CTV, and France 24 International, to name a few. Dr. Rafizadeh is frequently invited to brief governmental and non-governmental organizations as well as speak, as a featured speaker, at security, business, diplomatic, and social events. He has been recipient of several fellowships and scholarships including from Oxford University, Annenberg, University of California Santa Barbara, Fulbright program, to name few. He analyses have appeared on academic and non-academic publications including New York Times International, Los Angeles Times, CNN, Farred zakaria GPS, The Atlantic, Foreign Policy, The Nation, The National. Aljazeera, The Daily Beast, The Nation, Jerusalem Post, The Economic Times, USA Today Yale Journal of International Affairs, Georgetown Journal of International Affairs, and Harvard International Review. He is a board member of several significant and influential international and governmental institutions, and he is native speaker of couple of languages including Persian, English, and Arabic. He also speaks Dari, and can converse in French, Hebrew. More at Harvard. Advertisement You can sign up for Dr. Rafizadeh's newsletter for the latest news and analyses on HERE. You can also order his books on HERE. You can learn more about Dr. Rafizadeh on HERE. You can contact him at Dr.rafizadeh@post.harvard.edu or follow him at @Dr_Rafizadeh. Page Content Montreal and Lagos, 17 April 2018 Addressing African aviation and government leaders at the Airports Council Internationals (ACIs) 2018 Africa Regional Conference in Lagos, Nigeria, ICAO Council President Dr. Olumuyiwa Benard Aliu highlighted yesterday that the continents rapidly-expanding air traffic can only be sustained and optimized through the continued development and modernization of local aviation infrastructure, particularly at airports. The industry here generates very positive impacts on tourism and trade, directly and indirectly supporting 6.8 million jobs and generating 72.5 billion dollars in Gross Domestic Product (GDP), President Aliu said. But due to the more recent and effective focus on air transport liberalization, many African hub airports are now expected to exceed their capacity by 2020. The ACI Conference was declared open by the Secretary to the Government of the Federation of Nigeria, Mr. Boss Gida Mustapha, in the presence of over 280 participants from 47 Countries and numerous international organizations. Also present were CEOs from the aviation industry (airports, airlines, air navigation service providers, manufacturers, etc.) and members of the Nigerian Senate and House of Representatives and other senior government officials. In delivering his keynote address at the opening of the Conference, the ICAO Council President also noted that airport modernization and capacity is a key reason why ICAOs Global Plans are designed to establish globally-harmonized aviation objectives and requirements in support of the worldwide modernization which is now underway. He stressed that ICAOs goal in this respect is to ensure there are no constraints of infrastructure capacity, technology and financial resources for aviation development, and noted that ICAOs World Aviation Forum events are specifically designed to address these concerns and bring project planners and financers together. Another key development priority stressed by President Aliu was that related enhancements in human capacity development, through improved education and training, should be seen as directly supportive of the sustainability of any new infrastructure project or new capacity being considered. From a more operational standpoint, he drew attention to the fact that airport facilities are much more than just impressive new terminal buildings, and that ICAO remains concerned that many African airports are seeking to attract international flights without the requisite certifications. More attention must continue to be paid to the airside safety priorities at Africas airports, he said, including international airport perimeter fencing, taxiway and runway safety, effective fire services, and better wildlife management, he remarked. The President concluded by focusing upon the important aviation security role of airports today, and the many new innovations which are helping them to operate with less noise and emissions than in the past. During his mission in Lagos, President Aliu met with Nigerias Minister of State for Aviation, the Honourable Hadi Sirika, to discuss the States progress on the development of aviation infrastructure and related partnerships subsequent to ICAOs World Aviation Forum event which was conducted in Abuja, Nigeria, last November. Minister Sirika briefed President Aliu on recent investments made in upgrading the Nigerian aviation training school in Zaria, an ICAO-endorsed Regional Training Centre of Excellence, and the need and means to promote the facility to greater regional benefit was also discussed. He also spoke to CEOs of local aviation agencies regarding safety, security, passenger facilitation, and environmental performance priorities, and in discussions with ACIs Director General, Ms. Angela Gittens, he applauded her organizations successful APEX-in-Security programme while noting further collaborative opportunities for the two Organizations. He also expressed his deep appreciation to DG Gittens for ACIs determined support to-date of ICAOs No Country Left Behind assistance and capacity-building priorities. Resources for Editors About ICAO A specialized agency of the United Nations, ICAO was created in 1944 to promote the safe and orderly development of international civil aviation throughout the world. It sets standards and regulations necessary for aviation safety, security, efficiency, capacity and environmental protection, amongst many other priorities. The Organization serves as the forum for cooperation in all fields of civil aviation among its 192 Member States. ICAO and the United Nations Sustainable Development Goals The ICAO AFI Plan The ICAO AFI SECFAL Plan Contacts Anthony Philbin Chief, Communications aphilbin@icao.int +1 514-954-8220 +1 438-402-8886 (mobile) Twitter: @ICAO William Raillant-Clark Communications Officer wraillantclark@icao.int +1 514-954-6705 +1 514-409-0705 (mobile) Twitter: @wraillantclark LinkedIn: linkedin.com/in/raillantclark/ Margvelashvilis Delivers a Lecture in Abu Dhabi By Vladimer Napetvaridze On 10-11 April, the President of Georgia Giorgi Margvelashvili visited United Arab Emirates. He held the meetings with government officials and members of the royal family. At the end of the visit, Margvelashvili visited the Center for Strategic Studies of Emirates and delivered a public lecture, where he focused on Georgia's security and its role for the international community.The President stated that the main purpose of Georgia is to make more friends and allies who are interested in the security and protection of this small country, allies who realize the strategic importance of Georgia.He noted reasons why Georgia must be an interesting country for other states: "we will attract partners from the East and West, and at the same time we will increase the number of countries interested in stability. In 2019 we will implement a project, which will start in Baku and complete in Italy and Greece.This project will provide additional energy opportunities in Southern Europe. This means that Georgia will have more supporters and more friends, stated Margvelashvili.Besides the transit functions of Georgia, Margvelashvili mentioned a potential of the country as a trading hub. He stated that supports free trade, and despite the small number of population in Georgia, investing here means to invest in the market, which has free trade with Europe, Turkey, the former Soviet Union Member States and with China. Therefore, Georgia could be a gateway which connects global economies.According to Giorgi Margvelashvili, while discussing the future for partnership and opportunities, everybody must mention the threats Georgia is facing. "These challenges are very important for a small country with an important geopolitical location. Georgia which is located at the crossroad is looking for a mechanism to protect its security.Georgia's challenges are new decisions that are not based on the rule of law, but the current power games in the region. I represent a country whose 20% is occupied by a neighbor, nuclear state, which violates all the mandates of international law and logic of history and economics, as the occupation of Georgia has brought nothing to Russia.Margvelashvili also said that Russian aggression is not only Georgia's problem. This is an example of how the privileged country occupies territories of its neighbor which has no nuclear weapons or a big enough army to defend itself. Similar precedent will create an unstable international political environment in the future.The visit of the President to the United Arab Emirates is an important step for Georgian diplomacy and the process of raising awareness about threats of imperialism.Georgia's position to become an important partner for other countries to maintain its security is rational and logical. The geographical location of Georgia gives an opportunity to consider the country as an alternative source of gas and oil transit in Europe. This fact increases the political significance of Georgia. On one hand Russia doesn't want Georgia to become a member of NATO and on the other- Western countries don't want Georgia to be under Russian influence and give Russia an opportunity to increase its imperialist ambitions.For a country like Georgia, the main guarantor of security should be international community. At the moment, Georgia has no military potential to cope with the aggression from the north. Russia ignores international norms and regulations, therefore, diplomacy and international relations to increase the international importance of the country must become one of the main instruments for Georgia to defend itself. Both U.S. and U.K. intelligence agencies issued warnings on Monday of Russian cyberattacks that could target government offices, small businesses, and individuals, according to The New York Times. While both governments have been aware of the possibility of Russian computer attacks for decades, yesterday's announcement was an attempt to call attention to vulnerabilities. Russians have been targeting routers--the hardware that allows communication between local home networks (read: personal computers and connected devices) and the internet. They're attempting to either seek control of the device or to hack into homes and small businesses, Ciaran Martin, the chief executive of Britain's National Cyber Security Center, told the Times. But the threat may just be that, a threat. Officials were unsure of the extent of Russia's penetration of Western computer networks or the Kremlin's intent. One explanation offered by officials suggests that Russia could just be infiltrating systems as leverage in a coordinated attack down the road--that is, theft may not be the main goal, according to the Times. Russia, for its part, denied the allegations. "We consider these accusations and speculations as striking examples of a reckless, provocative, and unfounded policy against Russia," according to an email sent to Forbes from the Russian embassy in London. "We are disappointed by the fact that such serious claims have been made publicly, without any proof being presented and without any attempt by the United Kingdom to clarify the situation with the Russian side in the first place." Kremlin spokesman Dmitry Peskov said Tuesday the accusations were "unsubstantiated and have no value," according to news agency Interfax. Even so, it's wise to be cautious. The agencies offered guidance for individuals and businesses to ensure their networks are secure. Among other things, the advice included suggestions on making passwords more secure and better protecting devices. Nobody likes paying taxes. It's unpleasant when you can't quite reap the full rewards of your labor. Of course, taxes are necessary and pay for important stuff, but it's hard to remember that when you hand your money over to the IRS. But it's not all bad! In fact, taxes can remind you of all that you have. Maybe a change in attitude is all you need. Here are tips to make Tax Day a little more fun: 1. Count Your Blessings, and Your Deductions Think of all the great things you can deduct! And think about what those deductions mean. Donations? They mean you have excess wealth! Business expenses? They mean you have a job! Children? They mean you have someone genetically predisposed to love you! 2. Be Glad You're Not John Paulson, Who Owes $1 Billion The Wall Street Journal reported that hedge fund manager John Paulson owes $1 billion in taxes. And that's on top of about $500 million he already paid last year! Paulson made a fortune when he shorted the U.S. housing market in 2007, and deferred payment on his taxes as long as possible. He'll probably need a lottery-sized check to fit all those zeros. 3. It's a Sign Spring Is Coming Tax Day itself may feel rainy, but remember that dreary April showers bring beautiful May flowers! The middle of April is a time when the last cold winds of winter ease, and the signs of summer inch out. So think of Tax Day as a payment to Mother Nature to hurry it along! 4. You Can Communally Redirect Your Anger Toward the IRS Nothing brings people together like hating on the IRS every April. So have a celebration of this shared moment at work. Play darts with the IRS logo, with the eagle's eye as center. Have a tea party in honor of King George III, the mad, tyrannical taxer of the American Revolution. 5. Do Something Fun With Your Refund Everyone loves a refund. It feels like free money, even if it's not. So do something nice for yourself with it. Treat yourself to a nice dinner or take a weekend trip with a friend. Fix that home issue that's been nagging you. Or save it and have a more fun retirement! 6. Remember Above All--It Means You Made Money! If you're just getting wind of the latest race-related debacle, it involves two black men arrested at a Starbucks in Philadelphia last Thursday. The short version: They came in, asked to use the restroom, and were denied access because they hadn't shown their patronage and ordered anything. They then sat down to wait for a third party meeting them there -- Andrew Yaffe, who is white. According to The New York Times, "they were eventually asked to leave, and when they declined, an employee called the police." (That employee no longer works for the store.) The problem? No crime was committed, even though they were cuffed and hauled away for suspicion of trespassing. "What did they get called for?" asked Yaffe upon arriving, referring to the police. "Because there are two black guys sitting here meeting me?" Even the prosecutor's office that reviewed the case later admitted there was "a lack of evidence that a crime was committed" and declined to charge the men. Sensing the urgency of a racial profiling situation quickly spiraling out of control, Kevin R. Johnson, the chief executive of Starbucks, did what every good leader does when faced with a PR crisis. He sprung into action, on a Saturday. Here are three things he did right that were textbook leadership. 1. He genuinely apologized as his first course of action Not only did Starbucks issue a company apology on Twitter Saturday afternoon, Johnson personally released a statement later in the day in which he called the situation a "reprehensible outcome." "I'm writing this evening to convey three things," said Johnson. "First, to once again express our deepest apologies to the two men who were arrested with a goal of doing whatever we can to make things right." On Sunday, Johnson again apologized to the two men via a video posted on the official Starbucks website. "I want to begin by offering a personal apology to the two gentlemen who were arrested in our store," he stated. "What happened in the way that incident escalated, and the outcome, was nothing but reprehensible--and I'm sorry." He added, "I want to apologize to the community in Philadelphia, and to all my Starbucks partners. This is not who we are, and it's not who we're going to be. We are going to learn from this and we will be better for it." Johnson even went as far as saying he hoped to meet the two men in person to offer a "face-to-face apology." 2. He admitted fault and took ownership of the problem "Starbucks stands firmly against discrimination or racial profiling," Johnson said. "Regretfully, our practices and training led to a bad outcome -- the basis for the call to the Philadelphia Police Department was wrong. Our store manager never intended for these men to be arrested and this should never have escalated as it did." Here was the clinching statement that elevated his leadership: "These two gentlemen did not deserve what happened, and we are accountable. I am accountable." (Emphasis mine.) With the public outcry of discrimination getting louder each day and others calling for the store manager's job, Johnson acknowledged a potentially deeper and systemic management issue that places the blame squarely on his shoulders. Demonstrating the leadership strength of humility and redirecting the media's attention on him, Johnson stated: "Now there's been some calls for us to take action on the store manager," said Johnson. "I believe that blame is misplaced. In fact, I think the focus of fixing this: I own it. This is a management issue, and I am accountable to ensure we address the policy and the practice and the training that led to this outcome." 3. He pledged to take action and fix the problem at all cost Johnson vowed to investigate and to "make any necessary changes to our practices that would help prevent such an occurrence from ever happening again." While that can be merely lip service by an executive to assuage tension and anger, and protect the brand, Johnson instantly put the wheels of change in motion by scheduling meetings with city officials. "Now, today I've been on the phone--with the mayor, with the police commissioner, and other leaders in the community. I'm looking forward to spending the next two days meeting and visiting with them personally," said Johnson in his company video statement. He added, "And you have my commitment: We will address this. And we will be a better company for it." Being a nice, pleasant person on the job makes for a better working environment and will garner you fans among your co-workers, but a new study says there is another good reason to be nice at work: it'll help you sleep at night. This is exciting for me because I've embraced sleep and I do everything I can to encourage my staff to be more rested for work, as it increases productivity and is better for overall health. The study, which comes from the University of Iowa, says that people who behave badly at work are more likely to suffer from insomnia on those days. Looking at three other studies that had sampled nearly 600 workers from the United States and China, researchers found that poor behavior at work led to ruminative behavior in the evening, which led to trouble falling and staying asleep. In other words, when people are jerks at work, they dwell on it that night, causing them to have difficulty sleeping. In two of the studies, employees' at-work behavior and sleep patterns were tracked over 10 workdays while in the other study, people were asked to recall various incidents of personal workplace behavior -- both good and bad -- and took note of how they slept on the nights they were asked to recall the different types of behaviors. The researchers noted that with lack of sleep becoming more of a concern for the general public and employers alike, it would be a good idea to take steps to address how employees' own behavior can affect their sleeping patterns. They recommend promoting good behavior at work, which will theoretically cut down on instances of poor behavior and let people sleep better at night, increasing their productivity, which ultimately increases the productivity of the company. So, in the interests of getting your employees to behave better towards each other at work so nobody is losing any sleep, here are four strategies I've found that you can use to facilitate good behavior: 1. Explain the "why." One suggestion from the researchers themselves is to not only tell workers what behavior is unacceptable, but also thoroughly explain the underlying logic of why it is unacceptable from a moral perspective so workers fully understand why they are not to do something. People tend to be more receptive to rules and guidelines if they know why they are in place. This is something I've been experimenting with in my own businesses. I don't want to sound condescending, but it's true: Leading is a bit like parenting. As any parent knows, kids don't respond well to "because I said so." They prefer to know the reasoning behind the various laws governing their lives. Employees do, too. 2. Hire the right people. The best way to create a culture, including one of mutual respect and positivity, is to hire people who will fit into this culture. If you end up hiring people who are not nice, but who perform their jobs well, you may need to make a decision on what you value more. I always try to gauge how pleasant a person is during the job interview, which isn't always easy, as they are obviously on their best behavior during that time. What I like to do is get feedback from some long-term employees who I trust about the new recruits and their overall attitude. 3. Break bread together. I've previously written about how free lunch at work can be good for increasing creativity among employees. It can also be good for building team chemistry, especially if you mix up the seating arrangements to avoid employees constantly sitting with the same co-workers. Try doing something fun like seating tables by birth month or zodiac sign to get employees mixing and meeting co-workers who they might not normally get the chance to mingle with. At my businesses, we have a monthly potluck, which allows employees to show of their culinary (or grocery shopping) skills and share a little of their culture, as well. 4. Promote the benefits of relaxation. Helping people to relax will just make them more pleasant to be around. You can do this as an employer by including massage therapy in your health benefits package and encouraging people to use it. Also encourage people to use their vacation time, even if they just stay around their home. Time away from work replenishes the spirit and allows people to get away from each other for a bit, which does wonders for relationships. We always encourage our employees to take their vacation time because they deserve that break from work. Today marks the 165th anniversary of the birth of Vincent van Gogh (1853-90), one of the worlds most popular and distinctive painters. The Dutchmans style is instantly recognisable and his most famous works Sunflowers (1887), Cafe Terrace at Night (1888) and The Starry Night (1889) are among the most revered in the world, attracting crowds to galleries for more than 100 years and appealing as readily to connoisseurs as they do to the merely curious. Van Gogh himself lived a turbulent and itinerant life, roaming the Low Countries and the meadows of southern France with an easel strapped to his back and that ever-present pipe clamped between his peeling, sunburnt lips and loose teeth, a red-headed stranger on a mission to document the manmade hardships and God-given splendour of rural existence. Taking inspiration from Jean-Francois Millet and the novels of Emile Zola, his first works capture the toil, dejection and consolations of the miners, weavers, reapers, tillers, peat-cutters, labourers and farmhands he encountered. They reveal a huge compassion for their subjects, the period exemplified by the ruddy vitality of The Potato Eaters (1885) dining together by lamplight. The Potato Eaters (1885) A living embodiment of the tortured artist archetype, Van Gogh was known for his irascible temper and restlessness and famously severed a sliver of his own ear with a cutthroat razor in the midst of a manic depressive episode in Arles, Provence. His subsequent self-portrait, complete with bandage, today hangs in Londons Courtauld Gallery. He spent time in a number of psychiatric institutions, notably at Saint-Remy where he painted his fellow inmates, before finally losing faith in the hope that he might ever be cured of the madness and despair that hounded him and taking his own life. Despite being just 37 when he fatally shot himself in the chest in a wheat field outside of Auvers-sur-Oise, northwest of Paris, Van Gogh left behind more than 1,900 paintings and sketches an astounding body of work and remains a figure of enormous fascination. Perhaps the greatest clue to his peculiar character is revealed through the letters he sent to his devoted younger brother Theo (1857-91), who supported Vincent financially and emotionally throughout his life and steered him towards painting following false starts in England and as a Protestant missionary to the coalminers of Borinage in Belgium. It was Theo, a successful art dealer, who first brought his erratic sibling to Paris in 1886 and introduced him to the leading lights of the Post-Impressionist movement in Montmartre, men like Paul Gauguin, Camille Pissarro and Henri de Toulouse-Lautrec, whose taste for Japanese prints and vibrant use of colour emboldened Vincent to follow suit and free himself from the murk and shadows inherited from his countryman Rembrandt. Congregation Leaving the Reformed Church in Nuenen (1884) (Reuters) Vincent wrote 663 letters to his brother over the course of his life, with 39 of Theos replies surviving. The latters widow, Johanna van Gogh-Bonger, spent many years compiling them after both men had passed away and finally published a collection in 1914. Her work was instrumental in securing Vincents legacy. The letters between them, written with wry, stormlit eloquence as critic Julian Bell observes, almost always find Vincent either appealing to Theo for money or thanking him for the gift of a 50 franc note. Recommended Two Van Gogh Sunflowers shown together at National Gallery for first Vincent, four years older, had shaped Theos tastes in art and literature during their childhood growing up as parsons sons in Zundert and he continued to offer friendly advice in adult life: I must recommend that you start smoking a pipe. It does you a lot of good when youre out of spirits, as I quite often am nowadays. The correspondence is always affectionate and often earthily humorous as Vincent reflects on the world as he finds it. The love between two brothers is a great support in life. That's an age-old truth. Let the fire of love between us not be extinguished but let instead the experience of life make that bond even stronger. Let us remain upright and candid with each other. Let there be no secrets, as things stand today, Vincent writes. Joking about their sister Wilhemina, he says: She has neither drunk nor led a wild life, and yet we know a photograph of her in which she has the look of a madwoman. On being fired from his first job with Goupil & Cie the same firm where Theo himself would forge his career having alarmed one customer too many with his intensity and zeal, Vincent laughs off the disappointment with a shrug: When an apple is ripe, all it takes is a gentle breeze to make it fall from the tree. The letters are lined with descriptive passages that reveal the extraordinary eye for detail Vincent would later bring to the canvas: The ground and the piles of timber in the yard were drenched, and the sky reflected in the puddles was completely golden due to the rising sun, and at five oclock one saw all those hundreds of workers looking like little black figures fanning out on all sides. They also commonly feature shaded pencil sketches of his latest project, with Vincent explaining to Theo his intentions for the piece then underway. He tells him the dank palette of The Potato Eaters is designed to evoke, the colour of a good dusty potato, unpeeled of course. Of The Night Cafe (1888) and the harlots and absinthe it houses, he writes: I have tried to express the terrible passions of humanity by means of red and green. The Night Cafe (1888) (Rex) Vincents frankness about self-doubt and the creative process is sometimes staggering: You dont know how paralysing it is, that stare from a blank canvas that says to the painter you cant do anything. The canvas has an idiotic stare, and mesmerises some painters so that they turn into idiots themselves. But however meaningless and vain, however dead life appears, the man of faith, of energy, of warmth, and who knows something, doesnt let himself be fobbed off like that. He steps in and does something, and hangs onto that, in short, breaks, violates - they say. I want people to say of my work, 'That man feels deeply, that man feels subtly', despite my so-called coarseness or perhaps precisely because of it, he writes. Taken together, the letters illuminate Van Goghs working life, motivations and personality to a degree no biography could hope to approach. They also reveal this brittle, brilliant mans dependence on his brother, whose unwavering support speaks of a deeply felt fraternal love as well as a profound fear for Vincents future, an almost unbearably moving subtext to their exchanges. Vincents own terror at his increasingly fragile grasp on reality is perhaps betrayed by the compulsive way he went about recording the world around him, setting out into the countryside every morning beneath a beating sun in pursuit of the essence of being. For all the striking chrome yellows and cobalt blues, the sunshine and warmth that backlight his compositions, darkness is rarely far away. The Starry Night (1889) (Rex) The Starry Night depicts the view from his hospital room, a cold fact that jars with the fantastic, dreamlike vision he conjures. In Wheatfield with Crows (1890), often presumed to be his final painting, the birds hover over the crops as pests, persistent stabbing intrusions of thick black, manifestations of the artists own torment. Even the Sunflowers series contains a sad story. They were painted to decorate Gauguins room when he came to stay with Van Gogh at Arles, emblems of his excitement at this high poets arrival before their relationship soured so badly. When Vincent could live with himself no longer and reached for his revolver on 27 July 1890 perhaps having come to feel he was a burden to Theo, now supporting a young family he did not die immediately and staggered home, bleeding profusely, to the Auberge Ravoux inn where he was attended by two doctors who fought gallantly to save his life. Theo was sent for and arrived from Paris to find Vincent smoking peacefully in bed awaiting the end. His final words, whispered to his brother through a cloud of tobacco, are simply devastating: The sadness will last forever. Vincents funeral took place at Auvers-sur-Oise on 30 July. Surrounded by his artworks and brushes, mourners placed sunflowers and yellow dahlias on the coffin, his friend Emile Bernard recalling later that, It was... his favourite colour, the symbol of the light that he dreamed of as being in peoples hearts. Neither Theo nor Vincents physician, Dr Paul Gachet, were able to complete their eulogies for tears. It was his first exhibition. Portrait of Dr Gachet (1890) (Wikiart.org) Theo, inconsolable after Vincents death and blaming himself for having somehow failed him, was taken ill with syphilis and passed away in Utrecht just six months later. He was buried there but later exhumed and laid to rest beside Vincent in France. He was just 33. Far more than the patron to a more famous sibling, Theo was an important tastemaker in his own right at Goupil, immediately recognising the importance of the Impressionists and investing astutely on behalf of his employers. Not that they appreciated it. His boss, Leon Boussad, a man Theo considered a rat, told his successor in 1891 that the deceased had accumulated appalling things by modern painters which had brought the firm discredit, according to historian John Rewald. Boussad was referring to works by Degas, Gauguin, Toulouse-Lautrec, Monet, Pissarro and Odilon Redon when he said this. Theo may never have realised his dream of opening a gallery of his own, but his invaluable contribution ensured his brothers tragic life was not in vain. A statue of the two brothers by Russian sculptor Ossip Zadkine today stands in their hometown of Zundert, celebrating their special bond. These days Vincent van Gogh is a one-man culture industry, remarkable considering that he sold only one painting in his lifetime, The Red Vineyard (1888), and that to a friends sister. Art historian Lucrezia Walker points out that Londons National Gallery, which paid 1,300 for Sunflowers in 1924, sells countless items of Van Gogh merchandise in its gift shop and has made more than 2m from the sale of postcards of that painting alone. Amsterdams Van Gogh Museum meanwhile sees tourists queueing around the block on a daily basis. Its director, Axel Ruger, attributes the enduring nature of its subjects appeal to the romance of the unrealised promise. Kirk Douglas played the tortured painter in the 1956 biopic Lust For Life (MGM) The artists career has been brilliantly dramatised on screen in Vincente Minnellis Lust For Life (1956), starring a tigerish Kirk Douglas, and in Robert Altmans Vincent & Theo (1990), which focused more closely in on the fraternal relationship. He has been memorialised in song by Don McLean and Jonathan Richman, both offering highly personal, sensitive responses to his legacy: They would not listen/They did not know how/Perhaps theyll listen now... More recently, Nicholas Wrights play Vincent in Brixton (2003) documented the artists early days in London while both Benedict Cumberbatch and Mark Rylance have played him for the BBC. Last years film Loving Vincent, told his story in the worlds first animated feature to be entirely hand-painted in oils, an extraordinary labour of love worthy of the man himself. South Korean actress Choi Eun-hee - who was once kidnapped by North Korea in the 1970s and forced to create propaganda films before escaping - has died. Her family confirmed news that the actress had passed at 92 from a chronic disease. "My mother passed away when she went to hospital for kidney dialysis [Monday] afternoon," the actress son, director Shin Jeong-gyun, told Yonhap News Agency. Recommended Night Court actor Harry Anderson dies aged 65 In 1947, Choi began acting and became one of the three most-popular stars in South Korea during the 1960s and 1970s. Her films caught on with movie fans and even reached Kim Jong Il, whose father Kim Il Sung was the dictator of North Korea during the era. Because Kim Jong Il loved Hollywood films, he made his agents kidnap Choi in 1978. She was then taken back to North Korea. While searching for Choi, Shin Sang-ok - the actress' ex-husband - was also kidnapped while searching for the star. Choi and Shin were kidnapped for eight years and forced to star in 17 movies. The actress even received a Best Actress award at the Moscow Film Festival for one of the movies made during her captivity called Sault. Films Choi starred in during her time in exile included one based on a play made by Kim Il Sung and a North Korean interpretation of Godzilla. The couple even tried to trick Kim Jong Il into confessing he kidnapped them in a recording, reports the South China Morning Post. Access unlimited streaming of movies and TV shows with Amazon Prime Video Sign up now for a 30-day free trial Sign up In 1986, the duo were trusted enough to travel to Vienna, Austria where they escaped to the US embassy for political asylum while promoting their movies, reports the BBC. After 10 years of exile, the estranged couple finally went back to South Korea. North Korea has always denied holding Choi and Shin hostage, alleging that the couple travelled to Pyongyang for sanctuary. The 2016 documentary The Lovers and the Despot told Choi and Shin's story. Choi also wrote a biography called Confessions. There was clearly a great deal of confidence in the screenplay for Iron Man 3 writer Drew Pearce's directorial debut, which is being distributed by Warner Bros, and stars an eclectic and talented cast that includes Jodie Foster (taking her first acting role since Elysium), Sterling K. Brown, Jeff Goldblum, Sofia Boutella, Zachary Quinto, Charlie Day and Atlanta breakout Brian Tyree Henry. Revolving around a secret, members-only hotel frequented by criminals, the plot brings to mind that of John Wick, though Hotel Artemis shows a personality very much of its own in the first trailer (above), which you'll be delighted to hear sees Goldblum declare: "I guess my ballroom days are over, baby!" The official synopsis is as follows: 'Jean Thomas, aka The Nurse (Jodie Foster) is the manager of the Hotel Artemis, an ultra-exclusive, members-only hospital hidden in a hotel redolent of faded 20s glamour. Tough, sharp and utterly fearless, The Nurse treats an assortment of assassins, gunrunners, thieves and gangsters in an unexpected state-of-the-art emergency room capable of providing a new liver with a 3-D printer or injecting a patient with nanobots that heal from the inside out. With the help of her towering assistant Everest, The Nurse wrangles some of the most dangerous criminals in the world, from sultry French assassin Nice and international arms dealer Acapulco, to bank robbers Waikiki and his brother Honolulu. 'One night, as a violent riot rages on the streets of Los Angeles, legendary crime boss Orian Franklin, aka Niagara, arrives needing immediate treatment after a failed attempt on his life. Niagaras sudden arrival creates a violent clash among the criminals in the hospital, with one patient having a particularly deadly motive for checking into the hotel. The Nurse makes a decision that could jeopardize the future of the ER and everyone in it. Now the safest place for criminals in the city has become the most dangerous.' Hotel Artemis opens in cinemas 20 July, 2018. Kendrick Lamar has won a 2018 Pulitzer Prize for his fourth studio album DAMN. The Pulitzer board called Lamar's 2017 record "a virtuosic song collection unified by its vernacular authenticity and rhythmic dynamism that offers affecting vignettes capturing the complexity of modern African-American life." Lamar is the first artist to win for a hip-hop album and for any music that doesn't fall under the genres of classical or jazz. Recommended Harvey Weinstein and Trump Russia investigations win 2018 Pulitzers Since its inception in 1943, the Pulitzer for music has usually gone to classical music: either operas or symphonies. Even Pulitzers for jazz weren't awarded until 1997 when musician Wynton Marsalls received a nod - 32 years after Duke Ellington was denied the prize by the board. It wasn't until 1983 - 40 years since the Pulitzers began - that a woman received an award. No African American took home an award until 1996. Lamar was nominated for 'Album of the Year' at the 2018 Grammys, but Bruno Mars took home the award for 24K Magic. The rapper took home the Grammy for 'Best Rap Album' at this year's ceremony. Last year Bob Dylan won the Nobel Prize for Literature, which also intersected with his career in mainstream music. He received a $900,000 prize during a private reception in Sweden. Time is not an issue for Roger Waters, the 74-year-old former Pink Floyd bassist in the middle of an astonishing 151-date-long world tour. Hes not scared of age, exhaustion or the expectations of the 17,000 Barcelonan fans staring back at him. As the Palau Sant Jordi fades to black, the enormous screen behind Waters and his band comes to life. Psychedelic animations, pulsating red floodlights and thick smoke signal an unsurprisingly epic start. Bigger is better, and Waters bass growls loudly as the projections behind consume every inch of visible space. For the Us + Them tour, Waters has collated a thematic emporium of Pink Floyds greatest moments (rather than paying tribute to any one specific album) playing back-to-back belters like Breathe, The Great Gig in the Sky and Welcome to the Machine. The songwriter limits inclusions of solo material, performing only four of his own tracks across the whole night. The stadiums enthusiasm for the better-known anthems is incomparable. Another Brick in the Wall ends the first half of the show as 12 local school kids join the band onstage, the word RESIST adorning every one of their ill-fitting band t-shirts. During the first half, theres a feeling of distance in the room increases. Waters cares little for ad-hoc crowd interaction, the stage aesthetics increasing the space between the musicians and devoted audience. That changes soon enough as the infamous Battersea Power Station of Animals prestige is lowered into the crowd as Waters returns for the second half with a ferocious determination. If the judgement of capitalist Britain in the 1970s felt accessorily relevant to the album, mocking Donald Trump today in Pigs (Three Different Ones) looks like fate. Garish caricatures of the US president haunt the screens, lyrics such as Hey you, Whitehouse/Ha, ha, charade you are! rewarded with the urgency of modern indignation. Come Us + Them, the song this tour takes its name from, raw footage of contemporary activism, from Black Lives Matter protests to images of refugees around the world, projects out. Despite Waters relentless political agenda, his performance can feel uneven, fluctuating between a cinematic big-screen experience underscored by 2D-like musicians and violent societal uproar against f**king warmongering a***holes. Waters, after all, is no front-man. Theres a distinct lack of tangible emotion between the musician and his fans. At times, the band feel like stand-ins for their own performance, puppets to the visceral concepts theyve created, unfolding on a huge scale right before them. Yet. theres a moment where Waters stops singing and playing, overwhelmed by the response to Brain Damage into Eclipse. The passionate applause and cheering is shattering. Considering a lifetime of influence on a people craving change and revolt, he addresses the Spanish audience with great intent. You dont have a nuclear weapon. Thats a really, really good thing. The EUs top court has ruled that increased logging in Polands Bialowieza forest violates environmental laws. Bialowieza forest is a Unesco World Heritage site, but in 2016 former environment minister Jan Szyszko tripled its logging limits. Since then, environmental groups have been fighting against the decision, pointing out the rich animal and plant life found in the ancient forest including Europes largest herd of bison. The ruling on Tuesday came into force immediately, meaning Poland must hastily reverse decisions that allowed the logging. If this is not done, the government could be fined up to tens of millions of euros. Scientists across Europe warned the increase in logging would be harmful, but the Polish government initially argued it was necessary to prevent bark beetle infestation. When the move was made to escalate operations in the forest, environmental lawyers ClientEarth, together with six other organisations, filed a complaint to the European Commission. ClientEarth chief executive James Thornton said: This is a huge victory for all defenders of Bialowieza Forest. Hundreds of people were heavily engaged in saving this unique, ancient woodland from unthinkable destruction. We warned that the increased logging would breach EU law even before the minister officially authorised it. From a legal perspective, the case has been as clear as day from the beginning it was very obvious that the law was being broken." The case saw Mr Szyszko dismissed from him position in March, and Poland has said it will respect the courts ruling. As the courts verdict is valid immediately, the government will have to act fast to avoid the Commission launching a legal case over non-compliance, which could result in significant fines. Recommended Colombian government ordered to protect Amazon rainforest The minimum penalty is 4.3 million, but usually in such cases fines are much higher. This is a great win for the Polish people who consider the Biaowieza Forest an intrinsic part of our heritage. But the actions and legal violations that led to the ruling are an important reminder that our efforts cannot stop here. The Biaowieza national park must be extended to protect one of the last natural forests in Europe," said Dariusz Gatkowski, biodiversity specialist at WWF-Poland. This is not the end of our fight. The ruling is just on paper for now: we need to see concrete action. First, the decisions that allowed logging must be withdrawn, said Mr Thornton. Then, the Polish government should also consider enlarging the national park so it encompasses the whole of Bialowieza Forest. This is the only way to guarantee that devastation of the forest will not happen again. We believe that this World Heritage site and one of the last primeval forests in Europe deserves it. A woman has shared the itemised invoice she received in the mail from a date she ghosted - and people are divided. Amanda Burnett, from Indianapolis, Indiana, went on a date with a man before deciding to stop texting him and ultimately ghost him after she realised they werent compatible. However, not long after, Burnett, 23, received a $40 itemised invoice of everything she had eaten and drunk during the date. Recommended Tinder date asks to be refunded for the drink he bought In addition to the invoice, Burnetts date sent a text that read: And to avoid additional penalty or fines, have the invoice paid, otherwise it will be turned into a collection agency. Burnett, outraged by the incident, posted the entire exchange to Twitter and Instagram alongside the caption: A guy just mailed me a bill for our dinner a few weeks ago because I didnt text him back I cant make this sh*t up. On the invoice, Burnett has been charged for a $10 Moscow Mule, a $10 beer, and pulled pork tacos which set her date back $14.50. Burnetts scorned date also added an additional seven per cent sales tax of $2.56, a $1.99 processing fee, and a $0.47 fee for shipping and handling. In total, Burnetts bill came out to $39.52 (25). But rather than receiving sympathy, many people have sided with the man she ghosted - even going as far to accuse Burnett of looking for a free meal or lacking common courtesy. Cant say I dont blame him, wrote one person on Twitter. Another said: Wow this woman has no morals and cant afford to pay for her own meal. Others pointed out that this is why it is better to split the bill on the first date. This is why you split the bill on first dates, or better yet, meet for coffee. For the adults in the room, it is also a good rule of thumb to let the person know if you wont be seeking a second date. If you think thats mean, ghosting/ignoring someone is much worse. Be respectful, responded one person. Overall, most people defended the date, who many believed deserved at least a text back. However, there are some who believe she did nothing wrong by ignoring the date after she realised the relationship wasn't going anywhere - and that she owes him nothing. Sending an invoice is a really petty move, tweeted one person. Faced with the backlash, Burnett has since deleted the tweet and made her social media accounts private - but not before responding to her former date to f**k off. The charcoal trend has been around for quite some time, with many people turning to the ingredient to cleanse their skin with detoxifying face masks and to supposedly leave them with superbly whitened teeth. However, a certain charcoal activated vegan croissant has been dividing opinion on Twitter, with one describing the culinary creation as madness. Earlier today, author Amy Charlotte Kean shared a photo of her discovery on Twitter, writing: I feel like this might be a bit much, even for East London. In the picture, the croissant is accompanied by a label which states: Tastes better than it looks! More than 100 people have commented underneath Keans initial tweet, with many expressing their disbelief over the modernised pastry. This madness has to stop now, one person wrote, with another commenting: I dont get that It tastes better than it looks! note. Guys, it looks like that because you put effing charcoal in it. "Thats your fault. On the website for Coco di Mama, the Italian food and coffee establishment that sells the croissant, it states that the croissant is made without butter, as it's made using sunflower margarine, soy and barley flour, activated charcoal/carbon, sugar and lemon flavouring. The charcoal in the croissant helps to detoxify any poisons or toxins in your body, for example, alcohol, the website states. While some may find the croissants appearance slightly off-putting, others have revealed that they find the taste quite pleasant. It was surprisingly nice, one person wrote on Instagram. Although Ive now worked out the way they make a vegan croissant taste good is to lace it with sugar #peakhipster. A number of people have posted photos on Instagram of charcoal croissants that theyve tried in Bangkok. Charcoal croissant from a bakery in Bangkok. Just tastes like a normal but delicious croissant, one person wrote. The New York Attorney General has launched an investigation into 13 major cryptocurrency exchanges trading bitcoin and other digital currencies. The office of General Eric Schneiderman sent a letter to Coinbase, Gemini, Bit Trust and other exchanges, requesting more facts for investors and traders in this emerging market. The Virtual Markets Integrity initiative could bring about tighter regulation for cryptocurrency exchanges. With cryptocurrency on the rise, consumers in New York and across the country have a right to transparency and accountability when they invest their money, said Attorney General Schneiderman. "Yet too often, consumers dont have the basic facts they need to assess the fairness, integrity, and security of these trading platforms. Our Virtual Markets Integrity Initiative sets out to change that, promoting the accountability and transparency in the virtual currency marketplace that investors and consumers deserve. A questionnaire sent to each exchange requests information about trading policies and procedures, basic operation and fees, as well as controls to prevent money laundering and hacks. Although the initiative is designed to protect the interests of New York residents who trade cryptocurrency with these exchanges, the international nature of the businesses means the outcome of the probe could have wide-reaching consequences. The investigation comes just a day after International Monetary Fund (IMF) boss Christine Lagarde called for an even-handed approach to regulation in the cryptocurrency space. Ms Lagarde explained the global benefits of bitcoin and other cryptocurrency in an official blog on the IMF's website, saying that sensible regulatory measures could help realise the potential of digital currencies and their underlying technology. Just as a few technologies that emerged from the dot-com era have transformed our lives, the crypto assets that survive could have a significant impact on how we save, invest and pay our bills, Ms Lagarde wrote. An important initial step will be to reach a consensus within the global regulatory community on the role crypto-assets should play. Because crypto-assets know no boundaries, international cooperation will be essential. Facebook has to face a class action lawsuit over claims that it was using facial recognition on people's photos without their permission. The decision brings yet more troubles to Facebook as it deals with a range of privacy and data abuse scandals. The problems have been mounting for weeks, ever since it became clear that the platform had been giving up users' data to developers without them necessarily knowing. That has led to a range of new scrutiny, including people realising that Facebook appears to be tracking their phone calls and who they message. How to stop Facebook from revealing everything about you Show all 9 1 /9 How to stop Facebook from revealing everything about you How to stop Facebook from revealing everything about you Lock your profile down If you havent done this already, do it now. In Settings, hit the Privacy tab. From here, you can control who gets to see your future posts and friends list. Choose from Public, Friends, Only Me and Custom in the dropdown menu. How to stop Facebook from revealing everything about you Limit old posts Annoyingly, changing this has no effect on whos able to see your past Facebook posts. Instead, on the Privacy page, you have to click on Limit Past Posts, then select Limit Old Posts and finally hit Confirm on the pop-up. How to stop Facebook from revealing everything about you Make yourself harder to find You can stop completely random people from adding you by selecting Friends of Friends from the dropdown menu in the Who can send you friend requests? section of the Privacy page. Its also worth limiting who can find your Facebook profile with your number and email address. At the bottom of the page is the option to prevent search engines outside of Facebook from linking to your profile. How to stop Facebook from revealing everything about you Control access to your Timeline You can limit who gets to post things on your Timeline and who gets to see posts on your Timeline too. In Settings, go to Timeline and Tagging and edit the sections you want to lock down. How to stop Facebook from revealing everything about you Block people When you block someone, they wont be able to see things you post on your Timeline, tag you, invite you to events or groups, start conversations with you or add you as a friend. To do it, go to Settings and Blocking. Annoyingly, you have to block people on Messenger separately. You can also add friends to your Restricted list here, which means theyll still be friends with you but will only be able to see your public posts and things you share on a mutual friend's Timeline. How to stop Facebook from revealing everything about you Review tags One of Facebooks handiest privacy features is the ability to review posts youre tagged in before they appear on your Timeline. Theyll still be visible on the News Feed while theyre fresh, but wont be tied to your profile forever. In Timeline and Tagging, enable Timeline review controls. How to stop Facebook from revealing everything about you Clean up your apps You can view a list of all of the apps youve connected to your Facebook account by going to Settings and Apps. The list might be longer than you expected it to be. Its worth tidying this up to ensure things you no longer use lose access to your personal information. If you dont want to log into websites and apps with your facebook account, scroll down and turn Platform off. How to stop Facebook from revealing everything about you Change your ad preferences You can view a list of everything Facebook thinks youre into and tinker with your ad preferences by going to Settings and Adverts. A lot more information is displayed on the desktop site than the app, so wed recommend doing this on a computer. How to stop Facebook from revealing everything about you Download your data Facebook lets you download all of the data it has on you, including the posts youve shared, your messages and photos, ads youve clicked on and even the IP addresses that are logged when you log in or out of the site. Its a hell of a lot of information, which you should download to ensure you never over-share on the social network again. Now, in another blow, US District Judge James Donato has given the go-ahead for a major lawsuit over the way the sites' facial recognition tools work. He ruled in San Francisco federal court that a class action was the most efficient way to resolve the dispute over facial templates. Facebook said it was reviewing the ruling. "We continue to believe the case has no merit and will defend ourselves vigorously," the company said in a statement. Mark Zuckerberg says that Facebook obtaining information from phone calls is a 'conspiracy theory' Lawyers for the plaintiffs could not immediately be reached for comment. Facebook users sued in 2015, alleging violations of an Illinois state law about the privacy of biometric information. The class will consist of Facebook users in Illinois for whom Facebook created and stored facial recognition algorithms after June 7, 2011, Donato ruled. That is the date when Facebook launched "Tag Suggestions," a feature that suggests people to tag after a Facebook user uploads a photo. In the U.S. court system, certification of a class is typically a major hurdle that plaintiffs in proposed class actions need to overcome before reaching a possible settlement or trial. Additional reporting by Reuters The destruction of 1,500-year-old Buddhist statues at the hands of the Taliban in 2001 has sparked a virtual reality conservation project that now has the backing of Google. The Open Heritage project aims to recreate historical monuments around the world in virtual reality in order to digitally preserve landmarks in the event theyre destroyed by war, natural disaster or gradual erosion. Initially started by the non-profit CyArk, the project received support from Google Arts & Culture to bring the collections of heritage sites online. With modern technology, we can capture these monuments in fuller detail than ever before, including the colour and texture of surfaces and the geometry captured by laser scanners with millimeter precision in 3D, Chance Coughenour, program manager of Google Arts & Culture, said in a blogpost. These detailed scans can also be used to identify areas of damage and assist restoration efforts. After watching the Bamiyan statues in Afghanistan being destroyed on TV, CyArk founder Ben Kacyra began digitally recording monuments so that they could be preserved for future generations. Since founding CyArk in 2003, the non-profit has now recorded over 200 monuments on all seven continents. By sharing them in virtual reality, Kacyra hopes to convey the scale and wonder of the landmarks. We strive to share this data in powerful ways, including truly immersive experiences in virtual reality that convey the power of these places, transporting users that may never have a chance to experience them and inspiring others to make the journey, CyArk explains on its website. Famous landmarks already mapped by CyArks technology include the Parthenon in Greece, Chichen Itza in Mexico, Petra in Jordan, Mount Rushmore National Memorial in the United States and the Sydney Opera House in Australia. Opponents of euthanasia have expressed concern at the creation of a suicide machine, which has been developed by Dr Philip Nitschke. The well-known advocate of individuals right to die has regularly caused controversy by assisting what he calls rational suicides. Having developed machines in the past that could be used by individuals to inject themselves with lethal doses of barbiturates, Dr Nitschke says he is now close to finalising a new device which uses nitrogen gas to cause death. He says the idea for the invention was sparked by conversations in 2012 over the case of British man Tony Nicklinson, who suffered from locked-in syndrome the result of a severe stroke in 2005 that had left him unable to speak or move. Mr Nicklinson fought a long, and ultimately unsuccessful, court battle in a bid to allow his doctors legally to assist his suicide. In search of assisted suicide options, his lawyer reached out to Dr Nitschke, who began to consider how it would be possible for an individual whose movements were limited to blinking might be able to trigger death without the need for help by others. The resulting device is intended to offer people the option of peacefully ending their life without assistance, in a way that is, according to Dr Nitschke, effective and dignified. Death shouldnt be something you do hidden away in a back room somewhere, Dr Nitschke told The Independent. The Sarco suicide machine is being developed by the non-profit Exit International. (Exit International) The machine works by filling a capsule with nitrogen, which induces hypoxic death to the occupant. While Dr Nitschke argues that death comes without discomfort, he accept that there is still opposition to his methods, in part for historical reasons. Gas may never be an acceptable method for assisted suicide in Europe due to the negative connotations of the Holocaust, said Dr Nitschke, who serves as the director of Exit International the non-profit organisation developing the machine. Some have even said that its just a glorified gas chamber. Once the hypoxiation process is complete, the biodegradable capsule can then be detached from the machines base in order to serve as the deceased persons coffin. Terry Pratchett interview on assisted dying The futuristic design of the Sarco short for sarcophagus has raised concerns that it is glamourising suicide. A virtual reality experience of the Sarco was on display on 14 April in Westerkerk church in Amsterdam for the citys annual Funeral Expo, which prompted worries among the churchs board about how the machine would be received. "We will not and cannot support any suggestion of using such equipment," Jeroen Kramer, President of the Westerkerk church board, told The Independent. "Westerkerk will never support people by offering equipment as promoted by Dr Nitschke and we seriously wonder whether this contributes to a thorough and careful discussion around this issue." Dr Nitschke said members of the board also thought the technology and futuristic design would attract a younger audience, even though that is not the aim of the design. Despite these reservations, the VR display proved popular with attendees at the funeral fair. Countries where assisted suicide and euthanasia are legal Show all 9 1 /9 Countries where assisted suicide and euthanasia are legal Countries where assisted suicide and euthanasia are legal USA Assisted Suicide is legal in the states of California, Hawaii, Colorado, Oregon, Washington and Vermont Getty Countries where assisted suicide and euthanasia are legal The Netherlands Human euthanasia is legal Getty Countries where assisted suicide and euthanasia are legal Belgium Human euthanasia is legal Getty Countries where assisted suicide and euthanasia are legal Colombia Human euthanasia is legal Getty Countries where assisted suicide and euthanasia are legal Luxembourg Human euthanasia is legal Getty Countries where assisted suicide and euthanasia are legal Switzerland Assisted suicide is legal Getty Countries where assisted suicide and euthanasia are legal Germany Assisted suicide is legal Getty Countries where assisted suicide and euthanasia are legal Japan Assisted suicide is legal Getty Countries where assisted suicide and euthanasia are legal Canada Assisted suicide is legal Getty Virtual reality offers a way for people to experience their own virtual death, Dr Nitschke said. People seemed to be really interested in this. Current assisted suicide methods tend to involve pushing a switch or pressing a plunger, but such activity is impossible for many of those seeking assisted suicide due to physical incapacity. Mr Nicklinsons condition meant his only way of communicating was through blinking and eye movements. Email correspondence from his lawyer to Dr Nitschke, seen by The Independent, sought to see if a machine could be triggered by blinking commands. While he may have needed some help to get into the machine, the actual action that initiated the flow of gas could be controlled by Tony, Dr Nitschke said. Denied by UK law the right to end his life through assisted suicide, Mr Nicklinson died just a week after the legal process came to an conclusion, after refusing food and fluids. The first fully-functional Sarco device is set to be built later this year in the Netherlands, before being shipped to Switzerland where assisted suicide is legal. Dr Nitschke plans to develop a 3D-printable version of the machine. Beyond the terminally ill who are seeking options for a dignified way to end their life, the Sarco is also intended to open up the conversation about death and euthanasia without the underlying connotations of fear and shock. The largest ever study into genes and hair colour has discovered that women are more likely to have blonde hair than men. In a bid to understand the genetic roots of hair colour, scientists analysed data from 300,000 people who gave DNA samples to UK Biobank, 23andMe and the International Visible Trait Genetics Consortium. They focused solely on people of European descent because their hair colour is more variable than African, Asian or Native American hair, which is typically black. The international scientific team found a total of 124 genes that play a major role in determining human hair colour and, unexpectedly, discovered that women were twice as likely to be naturally blonde than men. In comparison, they also revealed that men were three times as likely as women to have black hair. It's a mystery and it's intriguing because it wasn't what we were looking for, Prof Tim Spector, joint lead author, from Kings College London, told the BBC. We thought it was a bias but it wouldn't go away and it's found in every sub-group of every population we saw. Hair Oils Show all 7 1 /7 Hair Oils Hair Oils Kerastase, Elixir Ultime Hair Oil, 27.65 lookfantastic.com Hair Oils Ouai, Hair Oil, 24 feelunique.com Hair Oils Aesop, Shine Hair Oil, 23 selfridges.com Hair Oils Rodin, Luxury Hair Oil, 56 net-a-porter.com Hair Oils Lee Stafford, Argan Oil, 11.99 boots.com Hair Oils Caudalie, Divine Oil, 18 cultbeauty.co.uk Hair Oils Aussie Miracle Oil Reconstructor, 6.66 boots.com Study authors say they are unsure as to why there are so many more blonde women than men but that the data opens up a whole new area of research which should be explored. We thought it might have something to do with the attraction of women for darker skinned men and vice versa - but we don't think the genes are any different, Spector explained. We think the genes are being expressed differently - so for some reason the blonde genes that may be there at birth are persisting in females and disappearing in males. Interestingly, scientists also say that their findings, which are published in Nature Genetics, could boost treatments for a number of different diseases. As the largest ever study on pigmentation, they believe that the data will help to improve understanding of diseases like skin, testicular, prostate and ovarian cancers, as well as a persons chances of having Crohns and other forms of bowel disease. 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 Netflix continued its run of growth with a first quarter of 2018 that yielded a better-than-anticipated 7.4m new subscriptions. The companys all-important indicator of paid subscriptions increased beyond its own forecast, suggesting that the streaming services aggressive strategy of adding new original content has paid off. It reaped some $3.6 bn (2.5bn) in revenue in the first quarter of the year, according to a newly released earnings report, an increase of 43 per cent over a year ago. Netflixs stock price has soared this year, avoiding the sharp declines that have hit the technology industry. Shares rose more than six per cent in after-hours trading following the earnings reports release. Analysts have been bullish on its future prospects, noting a surge of original programming that has helped the company tap into a worldwide pool of potential users. We continue to believe long term subscriber growth and profitability will exceed current consensus expectations as Netflix realises the global scale benefits that come from its subscriber base, distribution network and content library, Goldman Sachs analyst Heath Terry wrote in a note earlier this month. Netflix Originals 2017: All the films and TV shows to look out for Show all 14 1 /14 Netflix Originals 2017: All the films and TV shows to look out for Netflix Originals 2017: All the films and TV shows to look out for A Series of Unfortunate Events: season 1 Starring: Neil Patrick Harris, Malina Wiessman, Will Arnett, Cobie Smulders, Patrick Warburton Release date: Out now Netflix Originals 2017: All the films and TV shows to look out for Riverdale: season 1 Starring:KJ Apa, Lili Reinhart, Camila Mendes, Cole Srpuse, Madchen Amick Release date: New episodes every Friday Netflix Originals 2017: All the films and TV shows to look out for iBoy Starring: Bill Milner, Maisie Williams, Miranda Richardson Release date: Out now Netflix Originals 2017: All the films and TV shows to look out for Santa Clarita Diet: season 1 Starring: Drew Barrymore, Timothy Olyphant, Nathan Fillion, Patton Oswalt Release date: 3 February Netflix Netflix Originals 2017: All the films and TV shows to look out for Ultimate Beastmaster Hosted by: Terry Crews Release date: 24 February Netflix Originals 2017: All the films and TV shows to look out for Love: season 2 Starring: Gillian Jacobs, Paul Rust, Claudia O'Doherty Release date: 10 March Netflix Netflix Originals 2017: All the films and TV shows to look out for Iron Fist: season 1 Starring: Finn Jones, Jessica Henwick, David Wenham, Rosario Dawson Release date: 17 March Netflix Originals 2017: All the films and TV shows to look out for Sense8: season 2 Starring: Toby Onwumere, Doona Bae, Jamie Clayton, Tuppence Middleton Release date: 5 May Netflix Originals 2017: All the films and TV shows to look out for House of Cards: season 5 Starring: Kevin Spacey, Robin Wright, Neve Campbell, Joel Kinnaman Release date: 31 May Netflix Originals 2017: All the films and TV shows to look out for Dear White People: season 1 Starring: Antoinette Robertson, Brandon P Bell, Logan Browning Release date: TBC Netflix Originals 2017: All the films and TV shows to look out for Okja Starring: Jake Gyllenhaal, Tilda Swinton, Lily Collins, Steven Yeun, Giancarlo Esposito Release date: TBC Netflix Originals 2017: All the films and TV shows to look out for Wet Hot American Summer: Ten Years Later Starring: Elizabeth Banks, Paul Rudd, Janeane Garofalo, Bradley Cooper, Amy Poehler, Alyssa Milano, Jai Courtney Release date: TBC Netflix Originals 2017: All the films and TV shows to look out for Master of None: season 2 Starring: Aziz Ansari Release date: TBC Netflix Originals 2017: All the films and TV shows to look out for Stranger Things: season 2 Starring: Winona Ryder, David Harbour, Finn Wolfhard, Millie Bobby Brown Release date: TBC Earlier this year, Netflix executives announced that they intended to offer some 700 original series and 80 original movies in 2018. In its earnings release, the company noted its expanding roster of unscripted and internationally produced content. New on Netflix - April 2018 The ramp-up has left Netflix with a persistent shortfall of free cash. The company estimated it would remain in the negative for several more years as at rapidly grows its spending on original content, saying it would continue to raise debt as needed. One of the UKs biggest investors has ramped up its efforts to make companies do more on gender balance, executive pay and climate change. Legal & General Investment Management (LGIM), which manages more than 1 trillion for its clients, said that it had voted against 215 UK pay deals in 2017 - 40 per cent more than in the year before. The fund manager said it had voted for 95 per cent of climate-related proposals last year compared to just 21 per cent on average among a group of its peers. Recommended Why your bank could hold the key to closing gender pay gap LGIM also promised to vote against the appointment of male chairs to large UK companies boards if women did not make up at least a quarter of members. The report from LGIM comes as companies approach the annual general meeting season, which gives shareholders a chance to express their concerns. Huge fund managers such as LGIM can use their clout to influence how companies are run. Sacha Sadan, director of corporate governance at Legal and General Investment Management, said: Due to the media spotlight on failures in corporate stewardship, it can seem as though many companies are not doing a good job addressing ESG [Environmental, Social and Governmental] matters. In fact the vast majority of companies are making significant progress - we simply believe there is more to be done Executive pay, diversity and corporate governance have become increasingly prevalent issues in the wake of a number of recent scandals as well as the UKs first compulsory round of gender pay reporting earlier this month. Mr Sadan said gender diversity is of great importance to us. He added: We have seen how a lack of diversity of thought can create problems for long-term returns in many sectors. And with companies facing significant changes in technology and society, they need to be challenged before making big investment decisions." London has fallen out of the top ten most expensive cities in the world for business travel, thanks to a strengthening euro, new research has found. The UK capital was overtaken by Monaco, Basel and Paris this year, dragging it down to sixth place in Europe from third the year before. All of the UK locations included in the list compiled by data and software company ECA International dropped down the rankings. Recommended Inflation falls in February as transport and food prices decline Aberdeen fell from 13th to 39th in the European rankings in two years, partly due to a downturn caused by lower oil and gas prices. Simon Franklin, daily rates manager at ECA International said: Whilst the price of business travel to London has remained relatively static over the past few years, the strong performance of the euro in the past year has seen costs in other cities such as Paris and Monaco overtake the UK capital. The researchers calculated the average costs for hotel accommodation, meals, drinks, laundry, taxis and daily essentials. New York remained the most expensive business travel destination in the world, while Geneva was the most expensive in Europe for the fourth year in a row, as Swiss cities dominated the top ten. On average, the total cost of a standard business trip to Geneva was 554 per day, compared to 448 in London, according to the research. Swiss cities once again dominate the most expensive places for business trips in Europe, with five different locations in the top ten, said Mr Franklin. Switzerland has always been an expensive nation for business travel, and this year is no different as the Swiss franc has performed very strongly. Top 10 most expensive cities for business travel Starbucks has said it will close all 8,000 of its US stores for the afternoon of 29 May while it conducts what it called racial bias training in light of the recent arrest of two black men who were waiting in one the coffee giants Philadelphia locations. Late last week, the two men entered the store wanting to use the bathroom. An employee, whose identity has not been made public, called the police after they saw the men waiting at a table for a friend. without ordering anything. The two were then arrested for trespassing as their friend arrived, with video of it going viral. No formal charges were filed and the employee in question is no longer working at the store. The training for the close to 175,000 employees nationwide has been designed to address implicit bias, promote conscious inclusion, prevent discrimination and ensure everyone inside a Starbucks store feels safe and welcome, a statement from the company read. Starbucks CEO Kevin Johnson said: Closing our stores for racial bias training is just one step in a journey that requires dedication from every level of our company and partnerships in our local communities. He had also called the incident that had triggered the move reprehensible and met with the two men in Philadelphia to apologise in person. Mr Johnson has not said if the employee was punished for her actions. Id like to have a dialogue with [the two black men arrested] so that I can ensure that we have the opportunity to really understand the situation and show some compassion and empathy for the experience they went through. Finally, as were working to solve this, Id like to invite them to join me in finding a constructive way to solve this issue, he told ABC. What do people think of Starbucks charging 5p for coffee cups? The incident also sparked protests outside of the store and on social media, where #BoycottStarbucks had been trending. The training is going to be developed with assistance from civil rights experts like former US Attorney General Eric Holder, president of the NAACP Legal Defence and Education Fund Sherrilyn Ifill, Bryan Stevenson who is the founder and executive director of the Equal Justice Initiative, president of policy organisation Demos Heather McGhee, and CEO of the Anti-Defamation League Jonathan Greenblatt. The panel of experts will also review measures after the training, according to the company statement. 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 Earlier this week, Starbucks began a review of its training and practices to make important reforms where necessary to ensure our stores always represent our mission and values by providing a safe and inclusive environment for our customers and partners, the company said. The Seattle, Washington-based chain with 25,000 stores worldwide also said the training materials will also be made available for other firms to use. Earlier this week, a Facebook video of a similar incident which took place at a Torrance, California location in January surfaced that showed a black man being asked to leave the store after complaining a white customer had been given the code to use the bathroom before ordering, but he had not. The company said it is aware of the video as well. Philadelphia Mayor Jim Kenney said in a statement that the citys Commission on Human Relations will look into other reported instances at the Centre City area store. The PCHR has received informal complaints about the specific Starbucks location since the matter arose, the commission said. Any information regarding these complaints are part of our current investigation, and thus are deemed confidential. Twenty years ago, on 15 April 1998, Pol Pot, the leader of Cambodias genocidal government during the late 1970s, died in his sleep at the age of 73. Born Saloth Sar, Pol Pot was never held accountable for the crimes committed during the three years, eight months and 20 days his Khmer Rouge government subjected the Cambodian population to a reign of terror. Almost 2 million people, one-fourth of the countrys population, perished during this time from starvation, disease and execution. In the search for truth and justice, many Cambodian survivors have looked to the UN-assisted tribunal currently in progress in the capital city Phnom Penh. Convened in 2006, the tribunal has sentenced the head of the main Khmer Rouge torture centre to life in prison. The tribunals second trial is nearing completion and is expected to result in life sentences for two additional high ranking Khmer Rouge leaders as well. At that point, the tribunal will mostly likely close its doors, and the UN-appointed judges and lawyers will go home. The tribunal is a classic example of justice delayed is justice denied. For the past 30 years, I have studied the legal, political and literary responses to the Cambodian genocide. It is the literary responses accounts written by survivors themselves that show how in breaking their silence and in speaking on behalf of those who died, they were able to seek justice and healing. The Killing Fields Two important texts, Haing Ngors A Cambodian Odyssey, published in 1987, and Vann Naths A Cambodian Prison Portrait, published 11 years later, reveal the extraordinary events that led to their writing and publication, as well as the authors reasons for recording their literary testimony. An accidental Hollywood star, Haing Ngor used his status to tell the world about the crimes of the Khmer Rouge (AP) Before the Khmer Rouge took power on 17 April, 1975, Haing Ngor was a successful gynecologist at a medical clinic in Phnom Penh. During the genocide, Ngor was arrested and severely tortured by the Khmer Rouge on three separate occasions. Each time, Ngors wife Huoy nursed him back to health from the brink of death. Ironically, near the end of the genocide, Huoy died in childbirth, because Ngor lacked the simple medical equipment to save her and their first child. Cambodia confronts its past as Khmer Rouge killer awaits court's verdict Show all 6 1 /6 Cambodia confronts its past as Khmer Rouge killer awaits court's verdict Cambodia confronts its past as Khmer Rouge killer awaits court's verdict 419882.bin NIC DUNLOP/ PANOS Cambodia confronts its past as Khmer Rouge killer awaits court's verdict 419881.bin NIC DUNLOP/PANOS/ Andrew Buncombe Cambodia confronts its past as Khmer Rouge killer awaits court's verdict 419883.bin NIC DUNLOP/ PANOS Cambodia confronts its past as Khmer Rouge killer awaits court's verdict 419884.bin NIC DUNLOP/ PANOS Cambodia confronts its past as Khmer Rouge killer awaits court's verdict 419885.bin NIC DUNLOP/ PANOS Cambodia confronts its past as Khmer Rouge killer awaits court's verdict 419886.bin NIC DUNLOP/ PANOS Ngor was able to survive the genocide. He was given refugee status by the American government and resettled in Long Beach, California, which has the largest population of Cambodians in the United States. However, he continued to be racked by guilt over not being able to save Huoys life. In the early 1980s, the first film about the Cambodian genocide, The Killing Fields, was made based on the book by New York Times war correspondent Sydney Schanberg, who reported on the Vietnam War from Phnom Penh. In casting the role of Dith Pran, Schanbergs Cambodian translator, Ngor was selected out of a crowd at a Cambodian wedding in Los Angeles. Despite no previous acting experience, Ngor won the 1985 Academy Award for best supporting actor. Ngors instant fame from winning the Oscar transformed him from an anonymous survivor into the worlds most prominent witness of the Cambodian genocide. Two years later, Warner Books published his 500-page literary testimony, A Cambodian Odyssey, which describes the conditions of extremity under the Khmer Rouge and specifically chronicles his relationship with Huoy, from the time they met prior to 1975 until her tragic death during the genocide. Bearing witness to Huoys senseless death was essential to Ngors process of healing. His newly acquired status as an Oscar-winning actor provided him with the platform to affirm the truth of the Khmer Rouges crimes. By identifying the victims and perpetrators of the genocide, he attempted to fulfill his responsibility to Huoy and his family members who died. In the books introduction, Ngor states: I have been many things in life: a medical doctor a Hollywood actor. But nothing has shaped my life as much as surviving the Pol Pot regime. I am a survivor of the Cambodian holocaust. Thats who I am. Prison Portrait The second book to highlight is A Cambodian Prison Portrait, written by Vann Nath, a painter by trade before the Khmer Rouge takeover in 1975. During the genocide, Nath was arrested and sent to Tuol Sleng prison, where approximately 15,000 people were forced to confess to bogus crimes under torture and subsequently executed. Nath was spared execution at the last moment in order to paint portraits of Pol Pot. Vann Nath with his depiction of the atrocities inside Tuol Sleng (AP) Within a year, the Khmer Rouge regime was removed from power by Vietnamese forces, and Tuol Sleng was transformed into a museum to show the world the atrocities that took place there during the genocide. As one of only seven prisoners known to have survived Tuol Sleng, Nath was asked to paint the scenes of torture and execution he had witnessed to be displayed at the museum. Deeply traumatised by his year in captivity at Tuol Sleng, Nath later tried to rebuild his shattered life and opened a small coffee shop in downtown Phnom Penh. Two humanitarian workers who frequented the coffee shop befriended Nath and convinced him to tell his story, resulting in the writing and publication of Prison Portrait, in 1998. In 2009, Nath also served as a primary witness at the UN-assisted tribunal during the trial of Duch, the Tuol Sleng prison chief, who was eventually sentenced to life in prison. Similar to Ngor, informing the world of the conditions at Tuol Sleng fulfilled a deep responsibility to speak on behalf of those who suffered and died under the Khmer Rouge. By publishing their personal accounts, as I found in my research, survivors attempt to fulfill a deep responsibility to speak on behalf of those who died. In doing so, they begin to assert some control over the traumatic memories that haunt their lives. These writers act against forgetting in the hope that the world will never allow another Pol Pot to try to silence the voice of the people. George Chigas is a senior lecturer in Cambodian studies at the University of Massachusetts Lowell. This article first appeared on The Conversation (theconversation.com) Diamonds found inside a meteorite have revealed the story of a lost planet from the era in which our solar system was first formed. The unusual composition of the Almahata Sitta meteorite immediately drew the attention of scientists after it plummeted to Earth in 2008, crash-landing in Sudans Nubian Desert. Examination of its structure has now provided the first physical evidence for a theory about how the planets of the solar system including Earth came to be. Recommended Nasa reveals new picture of Jupiter like nobody has ever seen The analysis revealed the meteorite is a fragment of one of the building blocks of which they are thought to be constituted. Before you end up with the nine planets, you had a population of larger bodies a few thousands of kilometres in size Mercury to Mars size I would say that were populating the solar system, Professor Philippe Gillet, a geophysicist at the Ecole Polytechnique Federale de Lausanne (EPFL), told The Independent. These proto-planets were colliding into each other, forming the planets we know today. These were the building blocks. This is the theory, but what scientists have been missing before now is the evidence to support it. Remnants of those early planets have never been found. Because we had collisions you should find some remnants of that, said Prof Gillet, explaining what led him and his team to the Almahata Sitta meteorite. Nasa's most stunning pictures of space Show all 30 1 /30 Nasa's most stunning pictures of space Nasa's most stunning pictures of space Solar Flare An image from Nasa's Solar Dynamics Observatory (SDO) shows a 200,000 mile long solar filament ripping through the Sun's corona in September 2013 Nasa Nasa's most stunning pictures of space Nasa Celebrates 50 Years of Spacewalking For 50 years, NASA has been "suiting up" for spacewalking. In this 1984 photograph of the first untethered spacewalk, NASA astronaut Bruce McCandless is in the midst of the first "field" tryout of a nitrogen-propelled backpack device called the Manned Maneuvering Unit (MMU) Nasa Nasa's most stunning pictures of space A Hubble Cosmic Couple The spectacular cosmic pairing of the star Hen 2-427 more commonly known as WR 124 and the nebula M1-67 which surrounds it ESA/Hubble & NASA Nasa's most stunning pictures of space Veil Nebula Supernova Remnant Nasa's Hubble Space Telescope has unveiled in stunning detail a small section of the Veil Nebula - expanding remains of a massive star that exploded about 8,000 years ago Nasa's most stunning pictures of space The Soyuz TMA-15M rocket launch The Soyuz TMA-15M rocket launches from the Baikonur Cosmodrome in Kazakhstan on Monday, Nov. 24, 2014, carrying three new astronauts to the International Space Station. It also took caviar, ready for the satellite's inhabitants to celebrate the holidays Nasa Nasa's most stunning pictures of space Earth from the ISS From the International Space Station, Expedition 42 Flight Engineer Terry W. Virts took this photograph of the Gulf of Mexico and U.S. Gulf Coast at sunset Nasa Nasa's most stunning pictures of space Black Hole Friday Nasa celebrated Black Friday by looking into space instead sharing pictures of black holes Nasa Nasa's most stunning pictures of space NuSTAR X-rays stream off the sun in this image showing observations from by NASA's Nuclear Spectroscopic Telescope Array, or NuSTAR, overlaid on a picture taken by NASA's Solar Dynamics Observatory (SDO) Nasa Nasa's most stunning pictures of space Cassiopeia A c A false colour image of Cassiopeia A comprised with data from the Spitzer and Hubble Space Telescopes and the Chandra X-Ray observatory Nasa Nasa's most stunning pictures of space Orion Capsule splashes down The Orion capsule jetted off into space before heading back a few hours later having proved that it can be used, one day, to carry humans to Mars Nasa Nasa's most stunning pictures of space Earth Observations From Gemini IV in 1965 This photograph of the Florida Straits and Grand Bahama Bank was taken during the Gemini IV mission during orbit no. 19 in 1965. The Gemini IV crew conducted scientific experiments, including photography of Earth's weather and terrain, for the remainder of their four-day mission following Ed White's historic spacewalk on June 3 Nasa's most stunning pictures of space Frosty slopes of Mars This image of an area on the surface of Mars, approximately 1.5 by 3 kilometers in size, shows frosted gullies on a south-facing slope within a crater. The image was taken by Nasa's HiRISE camera, which is mounted on its Mars Reconaissance Orbiter Nasa Nasa's most stunning pictures of space Yellowstone from space NASA astronaut Reid Wiseman shared this image of Yellowstone via his twitter account Nasa Nasa's most stunning pictures of space Saturn This near-infrared color image shows a specular reflection, or sunglint, off of a hydrocarbon lake named Kivu Lacus on Saturn's moon Titan Nasa Nasa's most stunning pictures of space Worlds Apart Although Mimas and Pandora, shown here, both orbit Saturn, they are very different moons. Pandora, "small" by moon standards (50 miles or 81 kilometers across) is elongated and irregular in shape. Mimas (246 miles or 396 kilometers across), a "medium-sized" moon, formed into a sphere due to self-gravity imposed by its higher mass Nasa Nasa's most stunning pictures of space Solar Flare An X1.6 class solar flare flashes in the middle of the sun in this image taken 10 September, captured by NASA's Solar Dynamics Observatory Nasa Nasa's most stunning pictures of space Large Magellanic Cloud galaxy An image of the Large Magellanic Cloud galaxy seen in infrared light by the Herschel Space Observatory. Regions of space such as this are where new stars are born from a mixture of elements and cosmic dust Nasa Nasa's most stunning pictures of space Mars Rover Spirit Nasa's Mars Rover Spirit took the first picture from Spirit since problems with communications began a week earlier. The image shows the robotic arm extended to the rock called Adirondack Nasa Nasa's most stunning pictures of space Morning Aurora From the Space Station Nasa astronaut Scott Kelly captured this photograph of the green lights of the aurora from the International Space Station Nasa/Scott Kelly Nasa's most stunning pictures of space Launch of History - Making STS-41G Mission in 1984 The Space Shuttle Challenger launches from Florida at dawn. On this mission, Kathryn Sullivan became the first U.S. woman to perform a spacewalk and Marc Garneau became the first Canadian in space. The crew of seven was the largest to fly on a spacecraft at that time, and STS-41G was the first flight to include two female astronauts Nasa's most stunning pictures of space A Fresh Perspective on an Extraordinary Cluster of Galaxies Galaxy clusters are often described by superlatives. After all, they are huge conglomerations of galaxies, hot gas, and dark matter and represent the largest structures in the Universe held together by gravity Nasa's most stunning pictures of space Hubble Sees a Galactic Sunflower The arrangement of the spiral arms in the galaxy Messier 63, seen here in an image from the Nasa Hubble Space Telescope, recall the pattern at the center of a sunflower ESA/Hubble & NASA Nasa's most stunning pictures of space Pluto image Four images from New Horizons Long Range Reconnaissance Imager (LORRI) were combined with colour data from the Ralph instrument to create this enhanced colour global view of Pluto Nasa's most stunning pictures of space Fresh Crater Near Sirenum Fossae Region of Mars The HiRISE camera aboard Nasa's Mars Reconnaissance Orbiter acquired this closeup image of a "fresh" (on a geological scale, though quite old on a human scale) impact crater in the Sirenum Fossae region of Mars. This impact crater appears relatively recent as it has a sharp rim and well-preserved ejecta Nasa's most stunning pictures of space Hubble Peers into the Most Crowded Place in the Milky Way This Nasa Hubble Space Telescope image presents the Arches Cluster, the densest known star cluster in the Milky Way NASA & ESA Nasa's most stunning pictures of space An Astronaut's View from Space Nasa astronaut Reid Wiseman tweeted this photo from the International Space Station on 2 September 2014 Nasa's most stunning pictures of space Giant Landform on Mars On Mars, we can observe four classes of sandy landforms formed by the wind, or aeolian bedforms: ripples, transverse aeolian ridges, dunes, and what are called draa Nasa's most stunning pictures of space Expedition 39 Landing A sokol suit helmet can be seen against the window of the Soyuz TMA-11M capsule shortly after the spacecraft landed with Expedition 39 Commander Koichi Wakata of the Japan Aerospace Exploration Agency (JAXA), Soyuz Commander Mikhail Tyurin of Roscosmos, and Flight Engineer Rick Mastracchio of NASA near the town of Zhezkazgan, Kazakhstan (NASA/Bill Ingalls) Nasa's most stunning pictures of space Jupiter's Great Red Spot Viewed by Voyager I Jupiter is the largest planet in the solar system and perhaps the most majestic. Vibrant bands of clouds carried by winds that can exceed 400 mph continuously circle the planet's atmosphere Nasa's most stunning pictures of space Chandra Observatory Sees a Heart in the Darkness This Chandra X-Ray Observatory image of the young star cluster NGC 346 highlights a heart-shaped cloud of 8 million-degree Celsius gas in the central region Upon examining the astronomical body, the researchers found signs in its mineral structure that suggested a remarkable origin story. We have in our hands the remnants of one of these planets that were populating the solar system just before the end of its formation, he said. The rock belongs to a rare class of meteorites known as ureilites, which have long been thought to have ancient origins. Work by Prof Gillet and his colleagues has now provided the first evidence these bodies are in fact left over from proto-planets. In making this discovery, the team led by graduate student Farhang Nabiei has substantiated the existence of these lost planets long predicted by planetary formation models. The results of this analysis were published in the journal Nature Communications. 3D flyover of Jupiter's North Police in Infrared released by NASA To arrive at their conclusion, the scientists used electron microscopes to zoom in on the crystal structures of tiny diamond clusters embedded in the meteorite. Ureilites are very rich in carbon, and many of them are very full of diamonds and we were trying to understand the mechanisms that formed these diamonds, said Prof Gillet. Generally, these kinds of clusters can be formed when the material is subjected to sharp shocks of temperature and pressure a fairly unremarkable finding for a body such as this one. Recommended Artificial intelligence helps track down alien life However, the scientists noticed that within the meteorite were larger chunks of diamond, which would take much longer to form. Examination of imperfections found within the diamonds allowed the scientists to determine the exact conditions in which they came to be. These imperfections, they tell us a lot about the pressure and temperature history of the body, said Prof Gillet. The scientists found the diamonds had been created under enormous pressures above 20 gigapascals, indicating they were formed inside a large planet-like body from the first 10 million years of the solar system. As other fragments from the solar systems early days came together to form planets, collided with the sun or were ejected into the wider galaxy, the Almahata Sitta meteorite remained nearby for billions of years before finally crashing down to Earth a decade ago. Parts of Salisbury contaminated with nerve agent will be sealed off behind high-security barriers for months while they are made safe, officials have revealed. The restaurant and pub visited by Sergei Skripal and his daughter Yulia after they were poisoned will be surrounded by semi-permanent hoarding for the work, while cordons could widen in other areas. Around 190 specialist military personnel from the Army and RAF will support the operation, which is expected to cost millions of pounds. At a briefing in Salisbury city hall, a Department for Environment, Food & Rural Affairs (Defra) official revealed that the nerve agent was delivered in a liquid form and spread around the city by infected people. In this instance, direct contact is required for a person to be poisoned only a small proportion of the material is transferred and the substance is diluted in each secondary and tertiary contact, he added. The class of nerve agent does not produce significant vapour or gas, and can only move between sites by direct transfer by a contaminated person or item. Zizzi restaurant was visited by Sergei Skripal and his daughter before they were poisoned (Reuters) The official confirmed that novichok doesnt just disappear, meaning that if the substance was detected in the ongoing police investigation it will still be present. The primary site of contamination is Mr Skripals house and eight other sites are believed to have been contaminated, including Zizzi restaurant and The Mill pub which the former double agent visited with his daughter, police and ambulance stations and Detective Sergeant Nick Baileys home. Salisbury city centre visibly quieter days after Russian spy attack Public Health England (PHE) reassured members of the public that the risk to health remained low, and said sites would be chemically cleaned and retested before being reopened. Defras chief scientific adviser Ian Boyd, who is chair of the decontamination science assurance group overseeing the work, said: Our approach is based on the best scientific evidence and advice to ensure decontamination is carried out in a thorough and careful way. Our number one priority is making these sites safe for the public, so they can be returned to use for the people of Salisbury. Thanks to detailed information gathered during the polices investigation, and our scientific understanding of how the agent works and is spread, we have been able to categorise the likely level of contamination at each site and are drawing up tailored plans. Meticulous work is required and we expect it will be a number of months before all sites are fully reopened. Defra officials said there are currently no plans to destroy any affected buildings, including Mr Skripals house, where police believe he was poisoned with novichok smeared on the door handle. Investigators are still working at the home and The Mill pub, but all other sites have been released by the Metropolitan Police for decontamination work to begin. UK ambassador to UN: Russia's request to play part in Salisbury nerve agent probe like arsonist investigating own fire' Officials said they have a clear understanding of how the chemical works and is spread, and will be using a caustic cleaner to break it down and remove all traces before a panel approves Testing is able to detect levels of novichok 100,000 times smaller than an acute dose, and contamination is said to be low in most areas. Public service sites, including two ambulance stations, will prioritised, followed by closed off areas of The Maltings shopping district. Representatives from Wiltshire Council said they wanted Salisbury to return to normal as soon as possible, and are supporting local businesses to mitigate a slump in tourist numbers. The London Road cemetery was to become the first site to be reopened on Tuesday after testing found no decontamination present. Government agencies hope all decontamination work will be completed by the end of the year. Skripal attack aftermath in pictures Show all 15 1 /15 Skripal attack aftermath in pictures Skripal attack aftermath in pictures Scene of attack Members of the emergency services in hazard suits fix the tent over the bench where Sergei and Yulia Skripal were found unconscious on a park bench in Salisbury in March 2018. Getty Skripal attack aftermath in pictures Victim - Sergei Skripal The retired Russian colonel and former double agent for MI6 was in a critical condition in hospital for more than two months after being exposed to novichok in Salisbury. He was given refuge in the UK after being jailed in Moscow for treason. Mr Skripal came to Britain as part of a high-profile spy swap in 2010 in which four men were exchanged for ten Russian "sleeper agents" in the US. In this image he is speaking to his lawyer from behind bars in Moscow in 2006. AP Skripal attack aftermath in pictures Victim - Yulia Skripal Yulia Skripal was struck down by a novichok poison alongside her father Sergei. Facebook Skripal attack aftermath in pictures Scene of attack A police officer stands guard outside a branch of the Italian chain restaurant Zizzi where the pair dined at before falling ill. It was boarded off whilst investigators worked on the building and later found traces of the chemical weapon within it. AFP/Getty Skripal attack aftermath in pictures Scene of attack Large areas of central Salisbury were cordoned off by police following the discovery of the Skripals. Traces of nerve agent were also found in The Mill pub. PA Skripal attack aftermath in pictures Victim - Nick Bailey Detective Sergeant Nick Bailey, rushed to the aid of the Russian ex-spy and his daughter who were targeted with a nerve agent. He was hospitalized after aiding them and didn't leave until three weeks after the attack. Wiltshire Police/Rex Skripal attack aftermath in pictures Police investigation - Skripals home Police believe they were poisoned at home, and detectives found the highest concentration of novichok on the front door of Mr Skripals house. Getty Skripal attack aftermath in pictures Theresa May visits scene of attack Britain's Prime Minister Theresa May spokes with Wiltshire Police's Chief Constable Kier Pritchard near where the Skripal's were found. Britain expelled 23 Russian diplomats over the nerve agent poisoning and suspended high-level contacts, including for the World Cup on March 14. Theresa May told parliament that Russia had failed to respond to her demand for an explanation on how a Soviet-designed chemical, Novichok, was used in Salisbury. AFP/Getty Skripal attack aftermath in pictures Skripal days before attack Sergei Skripal days before he was exposed to Novichok, that has left him fighting for life. ITV News Skripal attack aftermath in pictures Police investigation - military involvement British soldiers were deployed soon after the attack to help a counter-terrorism investigation into the nerve agent attack. One of the places they were asked to help out with was Skripal's home and it's surrounding. They were asked to remove a vehicle connected to the agent attack in Salisbury, from a residential street in Gillingham. AFP/Getty Skripal attack aftermath in pictures Police investigation Personnel in protective coveralls and breathing equipment cover an ambulance with a tarpaulin at the Salisbury District Hospital. AFP/Getty Skripal attack aftermath in pictures Police investigation The investigation extended to the grave of Sergei Skripal's son Alexander in London Road cemetery. Getty Skripal attack aftermath in pictures Police investigation The Counter Terrorism Policing Network requested assistance from the military to remove a number of vehicles and objects from Salisbury. EPA Skripal attack aftermath in pictures Home Secretary visits scene of attack Home Secretary Amber Rudd visited the scene of the nerve agent attack at the Maltings shopping centre on 9 March. Getty Skripal attack aftermath in pictures Yulia Skripal speaks for the first time Yulia Skripal, speaking for the first time, said she felt lucky to have survived the nerve agent attack in Salisbury which left her fighting for life. Ms Skripal said her life had been turned upside down by the assassination attempt. But the Russian national added she hoped to return to her homeland one day, despite the Kremlin being blamed for the attack. Reuters Alistair Cunningham, chair of the recovery coordinating group at Wiltshire Council, said residents will see more military and civic personnel wearing protective clothing moving around the city to carry out the work. This is being taken seriously Defra, the Ministry of Defence and other agents in government are putting in all of the resources required to make sure the work is done thoroughly, he told The Independent. Its not a quick fix its a proper clean, and that should be a reassurance. Ms Skripal, 33, has been released from hospital but said she was still suffering the effects of the nerve agent, while her 66-year-old father remains in a serious condition. The government accused Russia of culpability in the attack after identifying novichok as the weapon used analysis that was confirmed by international inspectors with the Organisation for the Prohibition of Chemical Weapons (OPCW) and said the countrys intelligence agencies had been spying on the Skripals for at least five years. The class of nerve agents was created by the former Soviet Union, but Vladimir Putins government has denied ever developing it and also said all chemical stockpiles was destroyed. The Kremlin has denied any involvement in the attack on Mr Skripal, who moved to England following a high-profile spy swap in 2010, but it has sparked the expulsion of Russian diplomats by Britain and its allies. In a joint statement issued on Tuesday, the foreign ministers of G7 countries, said it was highly likely that the Russian Federation was responsible for the attack and that there is no plausible alternative explanation. We call on Russia to urgently address all questions related to the incident in Salisbury, added the ministers, representing countries including the US, UK, Canada, France, Germany, Italy and Japan. Any use of chemical weapons by a state party, under any circumstances, is a clear breach of international law and a violation of the Chemical Weapons Convention. It is a threat to us all. In the wake of a technical alert about malicious Russian cyber activity issued by British and American security services, the G7 said it would protect the rules-based international system. We stand in unqualified solidarity with the United Kingdom, the statement said. The G7 will continue to bolster its capabilities to address hybrid threats. Tensions have worsened further in the wake of an alleged chemical attack by Bashar al-Assads forces on the rebel stronghold of Douma in Syria, sparking British, American and French air strikes on Russias ally. The identity used by a police mole who infiltrated a campaign group which backed the fight for justice for Stephen Lawrence has been revealed. David Hagan, referred to as HN81, was named on the Undercover Policing Inquiry website as having joined groups including Movement for Justice. It is understood that this is the first time Lawrences father, Neville, has been told of the name. Neither he nor Lawrences mother, Doreen, commented on the publication. The officer infiltrated the group in the late 1990s, at around the time the public inquiry began into the events surrounding Lawrences death in Eltham, south-east London, in April 1993, staying as a member for two or three years. During the inquiry, he met with the then acting detective inspector Richard Walton, who was working on Scotland Yards final submissions to the probe. Mr Hagan is said to have passed on information to DI Walton, including the separation of Lawrences parents. In 2014, a damning report on undercover policing by barrister Mark Ellison QC alleged that DI Walton obtained information pertaining to the Lawrence family and their supporters, potentially undermining the inquiry and public confidence. UK news in pictures Show all 50 1 /50 UK news in pictures UK news in pictures 30 September 2021 The centrepiece One Thousand Springs by Japanese artist Chiharu Shiota is seen ahead of the beginning of the Japan Festival, a celebration of the countrys plants, art and culture running from 2-31 October, at Kew Gardens in London PA UK news in pictures 29 September 2021 The family of Betty Campbell unveil the bronze sculpture of her during the unveiling of the statue in Central Square, Cardiff, of Betty Campbell, Wales' first black headteacher PA UK news in pictures 28 September 2021 A sign referring to the lack of fuel is placed at the entrance to a petrol station in London AP UK news in pictures 27 September 2021 Police officers detain a protester from Insulate Britain occupying a roundabout leading from the M25 motorway to Heathrow Airport in London PA UK news in pictures 26 September 2021 Labour Party leader Sir Keir Starmer watches the Arsenal v Tottenham Hotspur match at The Font pub in Brighton PA UK news in pictures 25 September 2021 Scottish pro-independence supporters hold a march and rally outside the Scottish Parliament in Edinburgh, Scotland Getty Images UK news in pictures 24 September 2021 Police officers remove two protesters from the top of a tanker, as Insulate Britain block the A20 in Kent, which provides access to the Port of Dover in Kent. The environmental activists have moved location after been banned from campaigning on the M25 motorway in London PA UK news in pictures 23 September 2021 Gabriella, the seven year old daughter of imprisoned British-Iranian Nazanin Zaghari-Ratcliffe, joins in a game on a giant snakes and ladders board in Parliament Square, to show the ups and downs of her mothers case to mark the 2,000 days she has been detained in Iran AP UK news in pictures 22 September 2021 A new sign hangs on the Millicent Fawcett statue after it was altered by CrackTheCrises coalition activists to highlight the climate crisis as a feminist struggle in Parliament Square in London EPA UK news in pictures 21 September 2021 Gabriella Diment prepares a monumental bronze patinated fibreglass wall sculpture depicting household cavalry soldiers on horseback which is expected to be sold for 12,000-18,000 when it goes up for auction at Summers Place Auctions in Billinghurst, Kent PA UK news in pictures 20 September 2021 Florist Judith Blacklock puts the finishing touches to a floral carousel installation in Halkin Arcade, which she has designed with Neill Strain for the Belgravia in Bloom festival, running from September 20-26, in London PA UK news in pictures 19 September 2021 Bubbles surround Manchester Uniteds Cristiano Ronaldo before the match against West Ham at London Stadium Action Images/Reuters UK news in pictures 18 September 2021 Children take part in the Settrington Cup Pedal Car Race as motoring enthusiasts attend the Goodwood Revival, a three-day historic car racing festival in Goodwood, Chichester, Reuters 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 The Independent Office for Police Conduct found that DI Walton would have faced disciplinary proceedings over the meeting had he not been allowed to retire in 2016. Neville Lawrence launched a legal battle to stop him leaving the force, but this was unsuccessful. UNESCO Approves Iraqi Bill to Rehabilitate War-torn Mosul Facilities UNESCO has approved an Iraqi bill to revive educational, cultural and archaeological sites in Mosul city, the Iraqi ambassador to UNESCO was quoted as saying Tuesday. "The draft resolution came upon an initiative by UNESCO director-general Audrey Azoulay following a meeting with members of the Arab Group at UNESCO to revive Mosul facilities, which were destroyed by Islamic State militants during their capture of the city," Ambassador Mahmoud al-Mullakhalaf told IKH News website. The Iraqi diplomat stressed that several member states, including Japan, Italy, the European Union, Sweden, Spain and the UAE, expressed their readiness to contribute to the reconstruction of relics in Iraq. Several archaeological sites in Iraq suffered grievous damage at the hands of the Islamic State group, which declared a caliphate in the summer of 2014 from Mosul city. After capturing the second largest city of Mosul, the IS group released a series of videos, showing its members smashing artifacts at Mosul Museum and blowing up parts of the site of the Assyrian capital of Nimrud. Several activists, officials and historians condemned IS at the time for the destruction of the ancient Assyrian archaeological sites, while UNESCO described the act as a war crime. The constituency office of immigration minister Caroline Nokes was sealed off on Tuesday after police discovered a suspicious substance nearby. After forensics officers investigated the incident, which occurred late on Tuesday morning at a conservative club in Romsey, Hampshire Police announced it was not hazardous and there was no risk to the public. The scare came amid a government scandal which has seen Ms Nokes, who was not in the office at the time, come under increasing pressure over the treatment of Britain's Windrush residents. Earlier this week, the minister appeared to admit that some British citizens were deported to the Caribbean in error. Interviewed by ITV News about deportations, she replied: There have been some horrendous situations that as a minister have appalled me. Asked how many, she replied: I don't know the numbers but what I am determined to do... is say we'll have no more of this. Theresa May apologises to Caribbean diplomats following Windrush deportations A statement by Hampshire Police on the incident in Romsey said: "We have been called to Market Place, Romsey, following the discovery of a suspicious substance." "Officers are currently at the scene with colleagues from Hampshire Fire and Rescue Service and South Central Ambulance Service to deal with this incident. "An address has been evacuated as a precaution." UK news in pictures Show all 50 1 /50 UK news in pictures UK news in pictures 29 September 2021 The family of Betty Campbell unveil the bronze sculpture of her during the unveiling of the statue in Central Square, Cardiff, of Betty Campbell, Wales' first black headteacher PA UK news in pictures 28 September 2021 A sign referring to the lack of fuel is placed at the entrance to a petrol station in London AP UK news in pictures 27 September 2021 Police officers detain a protester from Insulate Britain occupying a roundabout leading from the M25 motorway to Heathrow Airport in London PA UK news in pictures 26 September 2021 Labour Party leader Sir Keir Starmer watches the Arsenal v Tottenham Hotspur match at The Font pub in Brighton PA UK news in pictures 25 September 2021 Scottish pro-independence supporters hold a march and rally outside the Scottish Parliament in Edinburgh, Scotland Getty Images UK news in pictures 24 September 2021 Police officers remove two protesters from the top of a tanker, as Insulate Britain block the A20 in Kent, which provides access to the Port of Dover in Kent. The environmental activists have moved location after been banned from campaigning on the M25 motorway in London PA UK news in pictures 23 September 2021 Gabriella, the seven year old daughter of imprisoned British-Iranian Nazanin Zaghari-Ratcliffe, joins in a game on a giant snakes and ladders board in Parliament Square, to show the ups and downs of her mothers case to mark the 2,000 days she has been detained in Iran AP UK news in pictures 22 September 2021 A new sign hangs on the Millicent Fawcett statue after it was altered by CrackTheCrises coalition activists to highlight the climate crisis as a feminist struggle in Parliament Square in London EPA UK news in pictures 21 September 2021 Gabriella Diment prepares a monumental bronze patinated fibreglass wall sculpture depicting household cavalry soldiers on horseback which is expected to be sold for 12,000-18,000 when it goes up for auction at Summers Place Auctions in Billinghurst, Kent PA UK news in pictures 20 September 2021 Florist Judith Blacklock puts the finishing touches to a floral carousel installation in Halkin Arcade, which she has designed with Neill Strain for the Belgravia in Bloom festival, running from September 20-26, in London PA UK news in pictures 19 September 2021 Bubbles surround Manchester Uniteds Cristiano Ronaldo before the match against West Ham at London Stadium Action Images/Reuters UK news in pictures 18 September 2021 Children take part in the Settrington Cup Pedal Car Race as motoring enthusiasts attend the Goodwood Revival, a three-day historic car racing festival in Goodwood, Chichester, Reuters 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 Romsey Town Council tweeted: "Due to an ongoing incident in the Market Place Romsey involving all blue light services there are roads obstructed by emergency service vehicles please avoid area for the time being." On Tuesday, Theresa May apologised to Caribbean leaders over the treatment of members of the Windrush generation, some of whom have lived in Britain since the 1940s. At talks in No 10, the prime minister said she was "genuinely sorry" for the anxiety that had been caused and that she wanted to dispel the idea that the government was seeking to clamp down on citizens from the region. A Government guide given to Jamaican deportees advises them to fake a local accent to help them stay safe. Try to be Jamaican, it says. Use local accents and dialects (overseas accents can attract unwanted attention). The advice emerged after the Government admitted some people who had lived in the UK for decades could have been deported in error. The instruction booklet, entitled Coming Home to Jamaica was first published in 2013 by the Foreign and Commonwealth Office (FCO) and was updated in 2015. The leaflet is accompanied by a DVD and is given to all Jamaican nationals about to be deported from the UK. Despite living and working in the UK for decades, many immigrants who arrived from Commonwealth countries as children in the 1950s and 1960s have been told they are in the country illegally. Home secretary Amber Rudd on Monday apologised for the wrong and appalling treatment of the so-called Windrush generation and said she was concerned the Government sometimes loses sight of individuals. David Lammy, the Labour MP who asked an urgent question on the controversy, blamed the policies and far right rhetoric introduced by the current prime minister, adding: This is a day of national shame. Let us tell it like it is. If you lay down with dogs, you get fleas, and that is what has happened with this far right rhetoric in this country, he said. UK news in pictures Show all 50 1 /50 UK news in pictures UK news in pictures 29 September 2021 The family of Betty Campbell unveil the bronze sculpture of her during the unveiling of the statue in Central Square, Cardiff, of Betty Campbell, Wales' first black headteacher PA UK news in pictures 28 September 2021 A sign referring to the lack of fuel is placed at the entrance to a petrol station in London AP UK news in pictures 27 September 2021 Police officers detain a protester from Insulate Britain occupying a roundabout leading from the M25 motorway to Heathrow Airport in London PA UK news in pictures 26 September 2021 Labour Party leader Sir Keir Starmer watches the Arsenal v Tottenham Hotspur match at The Font pub in Brighton PA UK news in pictures 25 September 2021 Scottish pro-independence supporters hold a march and rally outside the Scottish Parliament in Edinburgh, Scotland Getty Images UK news in pictures 24 September 2021 Police officers remove two protesters from the top of a tanker, as Insulate Britain block the A20 in Kent, which provides access to the Port of Dover in Kent. The environmental activists have moved location after been banned from campaigning on the M25 motorway in London PA UK news in pictures 23 September 2021 Gabriella, the seven year old daughter of imprisoned British-Iranian Nazanin Zaghari-Ratcliffe, joins in a game on a giant snakes and ladders board in Parliament Square, to show the ups and downs of her mothers case to mark the 2,000 days she has been detained in Iran AP UK news in pictures 22 September 2021 A new sign hangs on the Millicent Fawcett statue after it was altered by CrackTheCrises coalition activists to highlight the climate crisis as a feminist struggle in Parliament Square in London EPA UK news in pictures 21 September 2021 Gabriella Diment prepares a monumental bronze patinated fibreglass wall sculpture depicting household cavalry soldiers on horseback which is expected to be sold for 12,000-18,000 when it goes up for auction at Summers Place Auctions in Billinghurst, Kent PA UK news in pictures 20 September 2021 Florist Judith Blacklock puts the finishing touches to a floral carousel installation in Halkin Arcade, which she has designed with Neill Strain for the Belgravia in Bloom festival, running from September 20-26, in London PA UK news in pictures 19 September 2021 Bubbles surround Manchester Uniteds Cristiano Ronaldo before the match against West Ham at London Stadium Action Images/Reuters UK news in pictures 18 September 2021 Children take part in the Settrington Cup Pedal Car Race as motoring enthusiasts attend the Goodwood Revival, a three-day historic car racing festival in Goodwood, Chichester, Reuters 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 Ms May introduced so-called hostile environment policies in 2012 that demanded extra documentation from people who often arrived in the UK several decades ago. Some adults have been threatened with deportation to countries they left as children and have not returned to since. Others are feared to have already been deported. Although anyone living in the UK continuously since before 1 January 1973 is legally entitled to live in the UK, some people have struggled to provide documentation of their right to reside in the UK. The Migration Observatory at Oxford University estimates that some 50,000 Commonwealth-born people in the UK, who arrived before 1971, may not yet have regularised their residency status. The nerve agent used to poison Sergei Skripal and his daughter Yulia in Salisbury was delivered in a liquid form, the government has said. Nine sites in the Wiltshire city were potentially contaminated following the 4 March attack, carried out with a "very small amount" of a military-grade novichok, an official from the Department for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs (Defra) revealed. The highest concentration was found at the Russian former spy's house, he told a press briefing in Salisbury. Recommended Police to place high security barriers in Salisbury for months to come In this instance direct contact is required for a person to be poisoned - only a small proportion of the material is transferred and the substance is diluted in each secondary and tertiary contact, the official added. The class of nerve agent does not produce significant vapour or gas and can only move between sites by direct transfer by a contaminated person or item. The official confirmed that novichok doesnt just disappear, meaning that if the substance was detected in the ongoing police investigation it will still be present. Contaminated parts of the city will be sealed off behind high security barriers for months as work continues to make the city safe. Skripal attack aftermath in pictures Show all 15 1 /15 Skripal attack aftermath in pictures Skripal attack aftermath in pictures Scene of attack Members of the emergency services in hazard suits fix the tent over the bench where Sergei and Yulia Skripal were found unconscious on a park bench in Salisbury in March 2018. Getty Skripal attack aftermath in pictures Victim - Sergei Skripal The retired Russian colonel and former double agent for MI6 was in a critical condition in hospital for more than two months after being exposed to novichok in Salisbury. He was given refuge in the UK after being jailed in Moscow for treason. Mr Skripal came to Britain as part of a high-profile spy swap in 2010 in which four men were exchanged for ten Russian "sleeper agents" in the US. In this image he is speaking to his lawyer from behind bars in Moscow in 2006. AP Skripal attack aftermath in pictures Victim - Yulia Skripal Yulia Skripal was struck down by a novichok poison alongside her father Sergei. Facebook Skripal attack aftermath in pictures Scene of attack A police officer stands guard outside a branch of the Italian chain restaurant Zizzi where the pair dined at before falling ill. It was boarded off whilst investigators worked on the building and later found traces of the chemical weapon within it. AFP/Getty Skripal attack aftermath in pictures Scene of attack Large areas of central Salisbury were cordoned off by police following the discovery of the Skripals. Traces of nerve agent were also found in The Mill pub. PA Skripal attack aftermath in pictures Victim - Nick Bailey Detective Sergeant Nick Bailey, rushed to the aid of the Russian ex-spy and his daughter who were targeted with a nerve agent. He was hospitalized after aiding them and didn't leave until three weeks after the attack. Wiltshire Police/Rex Skripal attack aftermath in pictures Police investigation - Skripals home Police believe they were poisoned at home, and detectives found the highest concentration of novichok on the front door of Mr Skripals house. Getty Skripal attack aftermath in pictures Theresa May visits scene of attack Britain's Prime Minister Theresa May spokes with Wiltshire Police's Chief Constable Kier Pritchard near where the Skripal's were found. Britain expelled 23 Russian diplomats over the nerve agent poisoning and suspended high-level contacts, including for the World Cup on March 14. Theresa May told parliament that Russia had failed to respond to her demand for an explanation on how a Soviet-designed chemical, Novichok, was used in Salisbury. AFP/Getty Skripal attack aftermath in pictures Skripal days before attack Sergei Skripal days before he was exposed to Novichok, that has left him fighting for life. ITV News Skripal attack aftermath in pictures Police investigation - military involvement British soldiers were deployed soon after the attack to help a counter-terrorism investigation into the nerve agent attack. One of the places they were asked to help out with was Skripal's home and it's surrounding. They were asked to remove a vehicle connected to the agent attack in Salisbury, from a residential street in Gillingham. AFP/Getty Skripal attack aftermath in pictures Police investigation Personnel in protective coveralls and breathing equipment cover an ambulance with a tarpaulin at the Salisbury District Hospital. AFP/Getty Skripal attack aftermath in pictures Police investigation The investigation extended to the grave of Sergei Skripal's son Alexander in London Road cemetery. Getty Skripal attack aftermath in pictures Police investigation The Counter Terrorism Policing Network requested assistance from the military to remove a number of vehicles and objects from Salisbury. EPA Skripal attack aftermath in pictures Home Secretary visits scene of attack Home Secretary Amber Rudd visited the scene of the nerve agent attack at the Maltings shopping centre on 9 March. Getty Skripal attack aftermath in pictures Yulia Skripal speaks for the first time Yulia Skripal, speaking for the first time, said she felt lucky to have survived the nerve agent attack in Salisbury which left her fighting for life. Ms Skripal said her life had been turned upside down by the assassination attempt. But the Russian national added she hoped to return to her homeland one day, despite the Kremlin being blamed for the attack. Reuters The primary site of contamination is Mr Skripals house and eight other sites are believed to have been contaminated, including the Zizzi restaurant and The Mill pub the former double agent visited with his daughter, police and ambulance stations and Detective Sergeant Nick Baileys home. Public Health England (PHE) reassured members of the public that the risk to health remained low and said sites would be chemically cleaned and retested before being reopened. The cemetery where the remains of Mr Skripal's wife and son are buried was found not to be contaminated and has reopened to the public. Police have said previously that the highest concentration of the nerve agent was found on the former double agent's front door. The 66-year-old and his daughter, 33, were left fighting for life following the suspected assassination attempt and were initially feared to have little chance of survival. But their conditions have improved and Ms Skripal has since been discharged from hospital. Her father remains in hospital in a stable condition. Russia claim trace of Western-made nerve agent seen in UK samples The Maltings shopping centre and a Zizzi restaurant where the Skripals dined on the day they fell ill are among the nine locations identified as requiring "some level of specialist cleaning", said Defra. Three of the contaminated sites are in the city centre. Public Health England stressed the risk to the public was low. "All remaining potentially contaminated sites will remain secured and the current scientific assessment is that the remainder of Salisbury is safe for residents and visitors," said Defra. Twenty-one people received medical treatment for exposure to the novichok in the days following the attack. Several were police officers, including DS Bailey, who fell seriously ill and was treated in intensive care before being discharged two weeks later. Four independent laboratories have concluded the chemical used in the attack was a novichok-class nerve agent, which were originally developed by the Soviet Union, the Organisation for the Prohibition of Chemical Weapons said last week. Their conclusions match that of UK scientists at the Porton Down defence laboratory, which the government said proved Moscow was culpable for the attack after allegedly spying on the Skripals for at least five years. The Foreign Office said there was no alternative explanation about who was responsible only Russia has the means, motive and record, and demanded the Kremlin give answers. Russia continues to deny any involvement in the attack. The UK is the worlds biggest exporter of legal cocaine and heroin, new figures show, prompting campaigners to call on the government to regulate the drugs trade. According to a new report, the UK exported 57kg of legal cocaine in 2016, far ahead of the next biggest exporter, the Netherlands, which shipped out 13.7kg the same year. Britain also imported 330kg of legal cocaine in 2016, about 83 per cent of global demand, and accounted for almost half of cocaine consumption for medical purposes (90kg). More than a tonne of heroin was legally produced around the world in 2016, of which more than half was manufactured in the UK. It exported 535kg of the opioid about 85 per cent of global exports. Switzerland was the biggest importer. Steve Rolles, senior policy analyst at Transform, a pro-regulation think tank, says the data shows the legalisation and regulation of drugs can and does work. People often say How would you legalise these drugs?. You can just go, Well the legal production of these drugs already exists, he told The Independent. Man suspected of swallowing drugs wins stand-off with police after refusing to use toilet for 47 days All this carnage associated with the illegal cocaine and heroin market is unnecessary we can show there are these legal markets that arent associated with any of these problems of terrorism and crime and violence, stabbings on the streets of London and all the rest of it. Heroin is still used as a painkiller in Britain, often as a paediatric nasal spray, while cocaine is sometimes used as a local anaesthetic for minor ear, nose and throat surgery. Because cocaine and heroin have been part of our medical history for an awfully long time, they are just still part of the pharmacopoeia and still in relatively common use, Mr Rolles said. The emergence of the UK's legal drug trade figures comes as the risks associated with the illegal cocaine and heroin trade appear to be worsening. An investigation by Vice revealed that the number of in-patients in UK hospitals with a primary diagnosis of "mental and behavioural disorders due to use of cocaine" has risen 90 per cent in the last four years. Meanwhile, government figures showed the number of people who suffered heroin-related deaths more than doubled between 2012 and 2016. (National Crime Agency & ONS) (National Crime Agency & ONS) With the UKs legal heroin and cocaine there is no deforestation and toxic aerial spraying; no funding for paramilitary or terrorist groups; no enrichment of violent cartels; no exploitation of impoverished drug couriers; no street dealing and gang violence; and no adulterated drugs or sharing of dirty needles in back streets, Mr Rolles said. These problems are entirely created by prohibition, and they disappear when these drugs are strictly regulated and taxed. Drug prohibition doesnt get rid of drugs - it just hands the market to criminals and makes it vastly more dirty and dangerous. We know what effective regulation looks like - we only have to look at our world-beating legal industry. We have a choice: we can leave the trade in the hands of organised criminals and unregulated dealers, or we make them available through doctors, pharmacists or licensed retailers. Theres no third option where heroin and cocaine magically disappear. World's 10 deadliest street drugs Show all 10 1 /10 World's 10 deadliest street drugs World's 10 deadliest street drugs Whoonga Whoonga is a combination of antiretroviral drugs, used to treat HIV, and various cutting agents such as detergents and poisons. The drug is widely available in South Africa due to South Africas high rate of HIV sufferers, and is believed to be popular due to how cheap it is when compared to prescribed antiretrovirals. The drug is highly addictive and can cause major health issues such as internal bleeding, stomach ulcers and ultimately death Getty World's 10 deadliest street drugs Scopolamine Scopolamine is a derivative from the nightshade plant found in the Northern Indian region of South America (Ecuador, Colombia and Venezuela). It is generally found in a refined powder form, but can also be found as a tea. The drug is more often used by criminals due its high toxicity level (one gram is believed to be able to kill up to 20 people) making it a strong poison. However, it is also believed that the drug is blown into the faces of unexpecting victims, later causing them to lose all sense of self-control and becoming incapable of forming memories during the time they are under the influence of the drug. This tactic has reportedly been used by gangs in Colombia where there have been reports of people using scopolamine as way to convince victims to rob their own homes World's 10 deadliest street drugs Heroin Founded in 1874 by C. R. Alder Wright, heroin is one of the worlds oldest drugs. Originally it was prescribed as a strong painkiller used to treat chronic pain and physical trauma. However in 1971 it was made illegal under the Misuse of Drugs Act. Since then it has become one of the most destructive substances in the world, tearing apart communities and destroying families. The side effects of heroin include inflammation of the gums, cold sweats, a weak immune system, muscular weakness and insomnia. It can also damage blood vessels which can later cause gangrene if left untreated World's 10 deadliest street drugs Crack cocaine Crack cocaine first came about in the 1980s when cocaine became a widespread commodity within the drug trafficking world. Originally cocaine would have attracted a high price tag due to its rarity and difficulty to produce, but once it became more widespread the price dropped significantly. This resulted in drug dealers forming their cocaine into rock like shapes by using baking soda as a way of distilling the powder down into rock form. People were doing this because it allowed for them to sell cocaine at a lower quantity and to a higher number of people. The side effects of crack cocaine include liver, kidney and lung damage, as well as permanent damage to blood vessels, which can often lead to heart attacks, strokes, and ultimately death World's 10 deadliest street drugs Crystal meth Not just famous because of a certain Walter H White, but also because it is one of the most destructive drugs in the world. First developed in 1887, it became widely used during the Second World War when both sides would give it to their troops to keep them awake. It is also believed that the Japanese gave it to their Kamikaze pilots before their suicide missions. After the war crystal meth was prescribed as a diet aid and remained legal until the 1970s. Since then it has fallen into the hands of Mexican gangs and has become a worldwide phenomenon, spreading throughout Europe and Asia. The effects of crystal meth are devastating. In the short-term users will become sleep depraved and anxious, and in the long-term it will cause their flesh to sink, as well as brain damage and damage of the blood vessels World's 10 deadliest street drugs AH-7921 AH-7921 is a synthetic opioid that was previously available to legally purchase online from vendors until it became a Class A in January 2015. The drug is believed to have 80% of the potency of morphine, and became known as the legal heroin. While there has only been one death related to AH-7921 in the UK, it is believed to be highly dangerous and capable of causing respiratory arrest and gangrene World's 10 deadliest street drugs Flakka Flakka is a stimulant with a similar chemical make-up to the amphetamine-like drug found in bath salts. While the drug was originally marketed as a legal high alternative to ecstasy, the effects are significantly different. The user will feel an elevated heart rate, enhanced emotions, and, if enough is digested, strong hallucinations. The drug can cause permanent psychological damage due to it affecting the mood regulating neurons that keep the minds serotonin and dopamine in check, as well as possibly causing heart failure World's 10 deadliest street drugs Bath salts Bath salts are a synthetic crystalline drug that is prevalent in the US. While they may sound harmless, they certainly arent the sort of salts you drop into a warm bath when having a relaxing night in, they are most similar to mephedrone, and have recently been featured throughout social media due to the zombification of its. The name comes from the fact that the drug was originally sold online, and widely disguised as bath salts. The side effects include unusual psychiatric behaviour, psychosis, panic attacks and violent behaviour, as well as the possibility of a heart attack and an elevated body temperature World's 10 deadliest street drugs Purple Drank One of the more unusual drugs around at the moment, purple drank was popularised in 90s hip hop culture, with the likes of Jay Z and Big Moe all mentioning it in their songs. It is a concoction of soda water, sweets and cold medicine, and is drunk due to cold medicines high codeine content, which gives the user a woozy feeling. However it can also cause respiratory issues and heart failure World's 10 deadliest street drugs Krokodil Krokodil is Russias secret addiction. It is believed that over one million Russians are addicted to the drug. Users of krokodil are attracted to the drug due to its low price; it is sold at 20 a gram while heroin is sold for 60. However, krokodil is considered more dangerous than heroin because it is often homemade, with ingredients including painkillers, iodine, lighter fluid and industrial cleaning agents. This chemical make-up makes the drug highly dangerous and likely to cause gangrene, and eventually rotting of the flesh According to the International Narcotics Control boards report, Peru is the only country in the world legally exporting coca leaf the plant which contains the cocaine alkaloid. The US is the only country which imports Perus coca leaf about 133 tonnes in 2016 which is uses to extract flavouring agents and manufacture the drug as a by-product. The UK and other countries are then able to import the finished product from America. The suspended boss of Cambridge Analytica is facing an official summons after refusing to appear before a committee of MPs investigating the Facebook data breach scandal. The committees chair reacted angrily after Alexander Nix claimed an investigation by the information commissioner meant the controversy was sub judice. Damian Collins said: We have taken advice and he is not charged with any criminal offence and there are no active legal proceedings. There is therefore no legal reason why Mr Nix cannot appear. The committee is minded to issue a formal summons for him to appear on a named day in the very near future. The refusal came as the Digital, Culture, Media and Sport Committees inquiry into the scandal was told that the misuse of voters personal data was rife during the Brexit campaign. A former Cambridge Analytica employee alleged that the group Leave.EU may have also used data from the insurance businesses run by its funder Arron Banks, to target potential Brexit supporters. Facebook data row: What is Cambridge Analytica? It may also have broken electoral law because work was done by Cambridge Analytica that was not paid for and because data from UK citizens appeared to have been processed abroad, Brittany Kaiser said. In written evidence, Ms Kaiser, Cambridge Analyticas former director of programme development, said: I now think that there is reason to believe that misuse of data was rife amongst the businesses and campaigns of Arron Banks. If the personal data of UK citizens who just wanted to buy car insurance was used by GoSkippy and Eldon Insurance for political purposes, as may have been the case, people clearly did not opt in for their data to be used in this way by Leave.EU. The biggest issues facing UK on leaving EU Show all 8 1 /8 The biggest issues facing UK on leaving EU The biggest issues facing UK on leaving EU Post-Brexit immigration workers sorting radishes on a production line at a farm in Norfolk. One possible post-Brexit immigration scheme could struggle to channel workers towards less attractive roles - while another may heighten the risk of labour exploitation, a new report warns. PA The biggest issues facing UK on leaving EU Customs union A key point in the negotiations remains Britain's access to, or withdrawal from, the EU customs union. Since the referendum there has been hot debate over the meaning of Brexit: would it entail a full withdrawal from the existing agreement, known as hard Brexit, or the soft version in which we would remain part of a common customs area for most goods, as Turkey does? No 10 has so far insisted that Brexit means Brexit and that Britain will be leaving the customs union, but may be inclined to change its position once the potential risks to the UKs economic outlook become clearer. Alamy The biggest issues facing UK on leaving EU Northern Ireland-Irish border Though progress was made last year, there has still been no solid agreement on whether there should be a hard border between Northern Ireland and the Republic of Ireland. To ensure borderless travel on the island, the countries must be in regulatory alignment and therefore adhere to the same rules as the customs union. In December, the Conservative Partys coalition partners, the DUP, refused a draft agreement that would place the UK/EU border in the Irish Sea due to its potential to undermine the union. May has promised that would not be the case and has suggested that a specific solution would need to be found. Getty The biggest issues facing UK on leaving EU Transition period Despite protests from a small number of Conservative MPs, the Government and the EU are largely in agreement that a transitional period is needed after Brexit. The talks, however, have reached an impasse. Though May has agreed that the UK will continue to contribute to the EU budget until 2021, the PM wants to be able to select which laws made during this time the UK will have to adhere to. Chief negotiator Michel Barnier has said the UK must adopt all of the laws passed during the transition, without any input from British ministers or MEPs. EPA The biggest issues facing UK on leaving EU Rights of EU citizens living the UK The Prime Minister has promised EU citizens already living in the UK the right to live and work here after Brexit, but the rights of those who arrive after Brexit day remains unclear. May insists that those who arrive during the transition period should not be allowed to stay, whereas the EU believe the cut-off point should be later. Getty The biggest issues facing UK on leaving EU Future trade agreement (with the EU) Despite this being a key issue in negotiations, the Government has yet to lay out exactly what it wants from a trade deal with the EU. Infighting within the Cabinet has prevented a solid position from being reached, with some MPs content that "no deal is better than a bad deal" while others rally behind single market access. The EU has already confirmed that access to the single market would be impossible without the UK remaining in the customs union. Getty The biggest issues facing UK on leaving EU Future trade agreements (internationally) The Government has already begun trying to woo foreign leaders into prospective trade agreements, with various high profile state visits to China, India and Canada for May, and the now infamous invitation to US President Donald Trump to visit London. However the UK cannot make trade agreements with another country while it is still a member of the EU, and the potential loss of trade with the world's major powers is a source of anxiety for the PM. The EU has said the UK cannot secure trade deals during the transition period. EPA The biggest issues facing UK on leaving EU Financial services Banks in the UK will be hit hard regardless of the Brexit outcome. The EU has refused to give British banks passporting rights to trade within the EU, dashing hopes of a special City deal. However according to new reports Germany has suggested allowing trade on the condition that the UK continues paying into the EU budget even after the transition period. Getty I have similar concerns about whether Ukip members consented to the use of their data. Mr Nix was asked to make a second appearance before the fake news inquiry after telling it, in February, that Cambridge Analytica did not have or use Facebook data. It was then revealed that the personal information of at least 87 million people was harvested from Facebook by a company with a deal to share it with the London-based communications firm. Mr Collins demanded Mr Nix, who was suspended from his role as chief executive, return to be quizzed on a number of inconsistencies in your evidence to us. He warned that giving false statements to a select committee is a very serious matter and urged Mr Nix to explain his comments. The information commissioner said: We have written to Mr Nix to invite him to be interviewed by our investigators. Our investigation is looking at whether criminal and civil offences have been committed under the Data Protection Act. In her evidence, Ms Kaiser said she believed the number of people whose data was harvested from Facebook was much greater than the 87 million acknowledged. And she claimed Cambridge Analytica, which she left in 2012, had created several of its own Facebook quizzes designed to harvest data from individuals. They included a sex compass quiz, which would tell Facebook users what their personal preferences were, and a music personality quiz. Almost two-thirds of the British public believe Jeremy Corbyns Labour party has a problem with racism or religious prejudice, a new poll has revealed. An exclusive survey for The Independent found 61 per cent of people thought Labour had an issue, with Ukip the only other party receiving a comparable score. A majority of people questioned by BMG Research also believed Mr Corbyn had handled claims of antisemitism badly, with the party becoming subject to protests from the Jewish community and Israels Labour Party severing ties with the leaders office. The Labour leadership may take some comfort in the polls finding that almost a third of people also believed claims of antisemitism have been exaggerated to damage Mr Corbyn. It came as the House of Commons debated antisemitism on Tuesday, with one Labour MP saying it has become more commonplace, conspicuous and corrosive within her party. The poll asked a weighted sample of more than 1,500 people to what extent, if at all, they believed four parties had a problem with racism and/or religious prejudice. For Labour, almost a fifth of people, 19 per cent, said the party had a considerable problem, while 21 per cent said it had somewhat of a problem and a further 21 per cent, a small problem. Corbyn: We will not tolerate anti-Semitism or other racism It means a total of 61 per cent of people thought the party had a problem with racism and/or religious prejudice to some degree, with 12 per cent saying it had no problem at all and 27 per cent saying they did not know. Of the other parties, only Ukip scored worse, with a total of 67 per cent of people believing it had some degree of problem. However, a higher proportion of people, around 35 per cent, thought Ukips problem to be considerable, 19 per cent said it had somewhat of a problem and 12 per cent, a small problem. Only 8 per cent said Ukip had no problem at all and 12 per cent said they did not know. When it came to the Conservatives, those believing the party had some degree of problem amounted to 55 per cent with 11 per cent believing it to be considerable, 20 per cent saying it had somewhat of a problem and 24 per cent saying it had a small one. Some 17 per cent said the Tories had no problem and, 28 per cent did not know. The Liberal Democrats were seen as least prejudiced, with 43 per cent saying the party had some sort of problem only 4 per cent considerable 21 per cent saying it had no problem at all and 35 per cent saying they did not know. Members of the Jewish community protest against antisemitism in the Labour Party (AFP/Getty) (AFP) Speaking during the House of Commons debate, Labours Liverpool Wavertree MP, Luciana Berger, said people have accused her of being a paid-up Israeli operative, a traitor and an absolute parasite, and told her to get out of the country and go back to Israel, after she spoke out about antisemitism. Saying her party urgently needs to address this issue publicly and consistently, she went on: We have a duty to the next generation. Denial is not an option. Prevarication is not an option. Being a bystander who turns the other way is not an option. The time for action is now. Enough really is enough Labour MP Luciana Berger Prevarication is not an option. Being a bystander who turns the other way is not an option. The time for action is now. Enough really is enough. The Independents poll found that more than half of people questioned believed Mr Corbyn had handled the issue badly to some extent, with 25 per cent saying he had dealt with it quite badly and 27 per cent, very badly. In comparison, only 21 per cent thought he had handled it well 16 per cent thinking he dealt with it quite well and just six per cent, very well. Some 27 per cent did not know. Anti-semitism protesters shout 'Corbyn Out' during demo at Labour HQ Labours Ruth Smeeth read a sample of abuse she received, saying: My fan base has shown scant regard for appropriate parliamentary language so I apologise in advance. Hang yourself you vile treacherous Zionist Tory filth, youre a cancer of humanity, Ruth Smeeth is a Zionist she has no shame and trades on the murder of Jews by Hitler who the Zionists betrayed, Ruth Smeeth must surely be travelling first class to Tel Aviv with all that slush, after all shes complicit in trying to bring Corbyn down. The Stoke-on-Trent North MP, who wept in the chamber, went on to tell colleagues it was truly heartbreaking that she had to stand in Parliament Square to protest against the antisemitism that was engulfing parts of her party. Tony Blair says the people around Jeremy Corbyn dont take antisemitism seriously But the BMG poll also suggested that around a third of the public believe there is a political element to the scandal that has dogged the Labour party for weeks. Some 32 per cent agreed to some extent with the statement, the problem of antisemitism is exaggerated to damage Jeremy Corbyn and the Labour leadership. A total of 28 per cent disagreed with it, 20 per cent did not know and 20 per cent neither agreed nor disagreed. A Labour Party spokesperson said in response to the poll that the party was committed to challenging antisemitism in all its forms, adding that Mr Corbyn had asked Labours new general secretary to make tackling antisemitism in the Labour Party her number one priority. The spokesperson also said the leader would meet the Board of Deputies and the Jewish Leadership Council to listen to their concerns and discuss how to best root out antisemitism. In the Commons debate, shadow communities secretary Andrew Gwynne said much more work needs to be done on antisemitism, adding: No political party has the monopoly on vice or virtue but we will put our house in order. Mr Corbyns party has been embroiled in an on-going furore since the leader gave his backing to an antisemitic London mural, something he later retracted and apologised for. Protests against Labour antisemitism Show all 14 1 /14 Protests against Labour antisemitism Protests against Labour antisemitism Protesters clashed during the demonstration Reuters Protests against Labour antisemitism Members of the Jewish community hold a protest against Labour party leader Jeremy Corbyn and antisemitism in the Labour Party AFP/Getty Protests against Labour antisemitism Protesters hold placards and flags during a demonstration, organised by the British Board of Jewish Deputies for those who oppose antisemitism, in Parliament Square Reuters Protests against Labour antisemitism Hundreds of people gathered in Parliament Square to protest against antisemitism in the Labour Party EPA Protests against Labour antisemitism Labour MP Luciana Berger speaks during the protest PA Protests against Labour antisemitism A protester blows through a shofar during the demonstration Getty Protests against Labour antisemitism Members of London's Jewish community protest in support of Labour leader Jeremy Corbyn outside parliament EPA Protests against Labour antisemitism Labour MP John Mann speaks during a protest against antisemitism PA Protests against Labour antisemitism People protest against antisemitism in the Labour Party as Jewish community leaders have launched a scathing attack on Jeremy Corbyn, claiming he has sided with antisemites again and again PA Protests against Labour antisemitism Labour politicians Stella Creasy and Chuka Umunna leave after attending the demonstration Getty Protests against Labour antisemitism A pro-Jeremy Corbyn protester holds a placard during a counter-protest Getty Protests against Labour antisemitism A support of the Labour Party hold up a placard during the demonstration Reuters Protests against Labour antisemitism Jeremy Corbyn supporters during the demo Reuters Protests against Labour antisemitism A protester holds up a sign reading For the many, not the Jew AFP But two Jewish groups organised a protest to highlight a series of allegations of antisemitism by Labour members, with the party facing a backlog of disciplinary cases. MPs who attended the rally then faced criticism from Mr Corbyns supporters; film director Ken Loach called for them to be expelled from the party. Soon after came the resignation of Christine Shawcroft from the partys national executive committee when it emerged she had stepped in to defend a council candidate accused of Holocaust denial. She was also head of the NECs dispute panel, responsible for overseeing disciplinary hearings into cases of alleged antisemitism in the party. With the row escalating the chairman of the Israels Labour Party wrote to Mr Corbyn, accusing him of having shown hostility to the Jewish community and of failing to adequately address antisemitism. BMG interviewed a representative sample of 1,562 adults living in Great Britain between 10 and 13 April. Data are weighted. BMG are members of the British polling council and abide by their rules Europe is in a state of civil war and is afflicted with a fascination with the illiberal, the president of France has said as he urged member states to pull together and preserve the European Unions unique model. Laying out his vision for the future of the EU at the European parliaments seat in Strasbourg, Emmanuel Macron said there was a context of division and indeed doubt within Europe. Mr Macron told MEPs that France would be happy to increase its contribution to the EUs budget in order to strengthen Europe-wide sovereignty, but that rebates for member states would have to be scrapped and new funding streams found for the EU institutions. Brexit continues. It is still being discussed and worked on, here I would pay tribute to the work being performed by Michel Barnier, he told MEPs. But there is doubt in a number of European countries. Month after month were seeing views and sensibilities emerge which call into certain fundamental There seems to be a sort of European civil war. National selfishness and egotism seems to take precedence over what brings us together. There is a fascination with the illiberal, and thats growing all the time. So Europe has an ever greater responsibility. The French president said it would be the worst possible mistake to give up on the European social model and integration of the continent, describing nationalism as a deadly tendency which might lead our continent into the abyss. There seems to be a sort of European civil war. National selfishness and egotism seems to take precedence over what brings us together. Emmanuel Macron He argued that the EU was a unique model in the world and a treasure which we have made come alive and kept alive for 70 years. Lets compare Europe with some of the other powers, which some are fascinated by because they are allegedly efficient, he said. Where else in the world are there these same requirements: financial, diplomatic, geopolitical, economic; this obligation to respect minorities, equality of women, respect for private life? Where else is this so developed in the world with this level of vitality and strength? Yes, there are divisions between countries and within this hemicycle [where MEPs sit], but over and above these divisions this democratic model brings us together. It is unique in the world. The French president called for an extension of democratic debate about Europes future and said events should be held with European citizens about the future of the continent. He also called for urgent reform of the eurozone and economic union. Mr Macron is the fourth EU national leader to address the European Parliament in a series of addresses on the future of the bloc; previous leaders include Leo Varadkar, the Irish prime minister. Mr Macron received a standing ovation for his address. 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 Responding to the speech, Jean Claude Juncker, President of the European Commission, told MEPs: We agree. I fully agree with what the president has just said. I want to begin by expressing my emotion and friendship when it comes to seeing the French president expressing himself in the way that he has. The true France is back. He continued: Together we need to ensure that the gaps that divide Europe, between east and west, for example, are closed. We need to rediscover a joint ambition. Europe cant simply be used to divide people and set people against each other. Europe is one whole. Theresa May will strengthen the UK's digital defences through a 15m online security pact with Commonwealth allies amid warnings over the growing threat of cyber warfare from Russia. Leaders from the 53-nation bloc are expected to sign the world's largest cyber declaration, pledging to join forces to combat criminals and hostile actors engaged in potentially devastating cyber attacks, and to support smaller nations to raise their security standards by 2020. It comes after UK and US intelligence agencies issued an unprecedented joint alert on the threat of "malicious cyber activity" by Russian state-sponsored hackers, as tensions with Moscow deepen over airstrikes in Syria. Speaking ahead of an official meeting with Commonwealth leaders, Ms May said: Cyber security affects us all, as online crime does not respect international borders. I have called on Commonwealth leaders to take action and to work collectively to tackle this threat. Our package of funding will enable members to review their cyber security capability, and deliver the stability and resilience that we all need to stay safe online and grow our digital economies. The Commonwealth plays a pivotal role in shaping the future for many of its members. "We have put security on the agenda for the first time so we can work together and build a safer future both for Britain, and for the 2.4 billion people around the world who live in the Commonwealth. The prime minister will hold high level-talks on Wednesday with Australian prime minister Malcolm Turnbull, New Zealand's Jacinda Ardern and Canada's Justin Trudeau - the other members of the so-called "Five Eyes" group along with the US. Russian hackers have been mounting attacks on millions of devices around the world to spy, harvest data and build networks, UK and US intelligence agencies warned on Monday, with a joint alert on the threat of "malicious cyber activity" backed by the Kremlin. The National Cyber Security Centre (NCSC), along with the FBI and the US Department of Homeland Security, issued a statement to say Kremlin actions threaten "our respective safety, security and economic well-being". UK news in pictures Show all 50 1 /50 UK news in pictures UK news in pictures 29 September 2021 A sign referring to the lack of fuel is placed at the entrance to a petrol station in London AP UK news in pictures 27 September 2021 Police officers detain a protester from Insulate Britain occupying a roundabout leading from the M25 motorway to Heathrow Airport in London PA UK news in pictures 26 September 2021 Labour Party leader Sir Keir Starmer watches the Arsenal v Tottenham Hotspur match at The Font pub in Brighton PA UK news in pictures 25 September 2021 Scottish pro-independence supporters hold a march and rally outside the Scottish Parliament in Edinburgh, Scotland Getty Images UK news in pictures 24 September 2021 Police officers remove two protesters from the top of a tanker, as Insulate Britain block the A20 in Kent, which provides access to the Port of Dover in Kent. The environmental activists have moved location after been banned from campaigning on the M25 motorway in London PA UK news in pictures 23 September 2021 Gabriella, the seven year old daughter of imprisoned British-Iranian Nazanin Zaghari-Ratcliffe, joins in a game on a giant snakes and ladders board in Parliament Square, to show the ups and downs of her mothers case to mark the 2,000 days she has been detained in Iran AP UK news in pictures 22 September 2021 A new sign hangs on the Millicent Fawcett statue after it was altered by CrackTheCrises coalition activists to highlight the climate crisis as a feminist struggle in Parliament Square in London EPA UK news in pictures 21 September 2021 Gabriella Diment prepares a monumental bronze patinated fibreglass wall sculpture depicting household cavalry soldiers on horseback which is expected to be sold for 12,000-18,000 when it goes up for auction at Summers Place Auctions in Billinghurst, Kent PA UK news in pictures 20 September 2021 Florist Judith Blacklock puts the finishing touches to a floral carousel installation in Halkin Arcade, which she has designed with Neill Strain for the Belgravia in Bloom festival, running from September 20-26, in London PA UK news in pictures 19 September 2021 Bubbles surround Manchester Uniteds Cristiano Ronaldo before the match against West Ham at London Stadium Action Images/Reuters UK news in pictures 18 September 2021 Children take part in the Settrington Cup Pedal Car Race as motoring enthusiasts attend the Goodwood Revival, a three-day historic car racing festival in Goodwood, Chichester, Reuters 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 Some efforts are aimed squarely at the UK government, and vital services such as the NHS, which was struck by a devastating ransomware attack last year. Foreign Secretary Boris Johnson warned that the UK must "take every possible precaution" to defend itself from Russia following speculation the Kremlin was planning to retaliate with cyber warfare over airstrikes on Syria, its ally. The UK joined a US-led coalition to mount an attack on a military facility near Homs, after intelligence suggested chemical weapons were being kept on site. Theresa May has won a second symbolic vote on her decision to launch airstrikes after another day of fraught parliamentary debate on Syria. The prime ministers advisers believe the result shows she has successfully navigated difficulties arising from her move to push ahead with a military operation without first consulting MPs. But Jeremy Corbyn used the debate to demand that the House of Commons take back our control of decisions to launch any military action, with a new War Powers Act. The development came as inspectors were set to finally make it to the site of the alleged Douma chemical weapons attack on Wednesday, with Ms May accusing Moscow of preventing the scientists from doing their work. Ahead of the Commons vote on Syria, Ms May told MPs that coming to parliament before undertaking military action would compromise the effectiveness of our operations and safety of British servicemen and women. She attacked the suggestion of a War Powers Act, claiming it would remove vital flexibility from situations which are by definition unpredictable. She went on: Making it unlawful for Her Majestys Government to undertake any such military intervention without a vote would seriously compromise our national security, our national interests, and the lives of British citizens at home and abroad. Syria bombing: EU 'understands' recent airstrikes but calls for 'urgent' resumption of peace talks And, for as long as Im prime minister, that will never be allowed to happen. She concluded by saying that after two days of debate no one could doubt her commitment to be held accountable by parliament, and also that the tone of the debate had been supportive to the strikes. A vote related to the Syria action was already won by the government on Monday, though it was not on a substantive motion one that explicitly seeks to approve the action or not. The motion of Tuesdays vote, which stated the Commons has considered parliaments rights in relation to the approval of military action by British forces, was also neutral in tone. But Mr Corbyn called on his own MPs to vote against it, despite Labour having called the debate, to show opposition over how they believe the government sidelined parliament in relation to the military action. Before the motion was passed by 317 to 256, Mr Corbyns speech was met with bad tempered heckling from Tory MPs, who consistently tried to intervene while the Labour leader was talking. Kenneth Clarke criticises Theresa May for failure to consult parliament over Syria bombing Speaker John Bercow gave warnings to Conservative backbenchers such as Alec Shelbrooke and Mark Harper during the course of the debate. Outlining his proposed War Powers Act, the Labour leader said it was for the Commons to take matters into its own hands and take back our control. He added: Theres no more serious issue in decisions made by parliament on matters of war and peace, and the government taking planned military action. That convention was established in 2003, it was enshrined in Cabinet in 2011, and the then the foreign secretary gave every indication that he supported the principle of parliamentary scrutiny and parliamentary approval of such a major step. Syria air strikes: How events unfolded Ive outlined the caveats that are there in a case of overriding emergency, but I do think it is very important that the House of Commons, as one of the oldest parliaments in the world, holds the government to account. Earlier in the day the prime minister accused Moscow of preventing inspectors for the Organisation for the Prohibition of Chemical Weapons (OPCW) from reaching Douma. Russian officials at OPCW headquarters in The Hague later said arrangements were being made for the inspectors to travel to the site on Wednesday. Russian foreign minister Sergey Lavrov has flatly denied that Russia had tampered with the evidence, and insisted there is no proof that chemical weapons had even been used in Douma. Douma chemical attack: Syria war in pictures Show all 13 1 /13 Douma chemical attack: Syria war in pictures Douma chemical attack: Syria war in pictures A child receiving oxygen through respirators following an alleged poison gas attack in the rebel-held town of Douma AP Douma chemical attack: Syria war in pictures A child is treated in a hospital in Douma White Helmets Douma chemical attack: Syria war in pictures An image grab taken from a video released by the Douma City Coordination Committee shows unidentified volunteers spraying a man with water at a make-shift hospital following an alleged chemical attack AFP/Douma City Coordination Committee Douma chemical attack: Syria war in pictures People cover their faces after an alleged chemical attack in Douma EPA Douma chemical attack: Syria war in pictures A medical worker giving a toddler oxygen through respirators following an alleged poison gas attack in the opposition-held town of Douma. Syrian Civil Defense White Helmets via AP Douma chemical attack: Syria war in pictures An image grab taken from a video released by the Douma City Coordination Committee shows unidentified volunteers spraying a girl with water at a make-shift hospital following an alleged chemical attack AFP/Douma City Coordination Committee Douma chemical attack: Syria war in pictures A child is treated in a hospital in Douma White Helmets/Handout via Reuters Douma chemical attack: Syria war in pictures Injured victims of an alleged chemical attack in Douma EPA Douma chemical attack: Syria war in pictures An image grab taken from a video released by the Douma City Coordination Committee shows unidentified volunteers spraying a man with water at a make-shift hospital following an alleged chemical attack AFP/Douma City Coordination Committee Douma chemical attack: Syria war in pictures A Syrian man mourns after an alleged chemical attack Alamy Douma chemical attack: Syria war in pictures People stand in front of damaged buildings, in the town of Douma, the site of a suspected chemical weapons attack, near Damascus, Syria AP Photo/Hassan Ammar Douma chemical attack: Syria war in pictures Rubble lines a street in Douma, at the site of a suspected chemical weapons attack AP Douma chemical attack: Syria war in pictures Rubble fills a street in Douma, the site of a suspected chemical weapons attack, near Damascus AP The Russian ambassador to Ireland warned that his country is losing the last bit of trust it had with the West, describing this as a very dangerous development. Speaking at a press conference in Dublin, Yury Filatov suggested the strikes were intended to impede the investigation so nobody would know the truth, adding that experts have not yet found any traces of chlorine or any other toxic agents. As far as we can see there was no attack, he said. Not a single local resident was able to confirm that a chemical attack had actually taken place. Mr Filatov said the suspected chemical attack had definitely been staged, and that the images had been fabricated. The News in Brief 1,542 Georgian citizens requested asylum in France in 2017 A total of 1,542 Georgian citizens applied for asylum in France in 2017, which is a doubled figure compared to the one from last year. The information was reported by the French Office for the Protection of Refugees and Stateless Persons (OFPRA). Georgian citizens say that basic motive for seeking asylum is their political prosecution by the ruling party Georgian Dream. Ethnic conflicts, activities of the occupation forces, sexual harassment, domestic violence and fear of repeated punishment in human dignity conditions are among the motives for requesting the asylum. There have also been raised applications from businessmen who complain about criminal actions by political forces, OFPRA report says. Education Ministry Says changes Are Coming into Play Deputy Minister of education and Science, Lia Gigauri says that classes will be reduced by 5 minutes for the second graders from a new academic year and students will have new, more interesting and improved curriculum. Gigauri stated on Wednesday that the new national curriculum will be introduced from the first to 6th grades, which will include less tiring lessons. This year, a new national curriculum will be introduced from the first to 6th grade. It is also important that we will have renewed manuals with absolutely different methodological approach, she said. Gigauri says that the new curriculum will help pupils develop logical and critical thinking and there will be only a few tasks which should be learned by heart. (By Messenger Staff) Theresa May has urged Commonwealth nations to overhaul outdated anti-gay laws and said the UK deeply regrets its role in the legacy of violence and discrimination. The prime minister drew cheers and applause when she told delegates at the Commonwealth heads of government meeting (CHOGM) that nobody should face discrimination or persecution because of who they are or who they love. Campaigners have urged Ms May to intervene over the colonial-era legislation affecting millions of LGBT+ people, as same-sex relations are still illegal in 36 Commonwealth countries. However she failed to mention the Windrush controversy during the speech a row over the possible deportation of British citizens who came to the UK as children as early as the 1940s. Speaking at the event in London, Ms May said: I am all too aware that these laws were often put in place by my own country. They were wrong then and they are wrong now. Thousands march against Donald Trump in LGBT rights parade Show all 8 1 /8 Thousands march against Donald Trump in LGBT rights parade Thousands march against Donald Trump in LGBT rights parade AP Thousands march against Donald Trump in LGBT rights parade AP Thousands march against Donald Trump in LGBT rights parade AP Thousands march against Donald Trump in LGBT rights parade AP Thousands march against Donald Trump in LGBT rights parade AFP/Getty Images Thousands march against Donald Trump in LGBT rights parade AP Thousands march against Donald Trump in LGBT rights parade AFP/Getty Images Thousands march against Donald Trump in LGBT rights parade AP As the United Kingdoms prime minister I deeply regret both the fact that such laws were introduced and the legacy of discrimination, violence and death that persists today. As a family of nations we must respect one anothers cultures and traditions but we must do so in a manner consistent with our common value of equality a value that is clearly stated in the Commonwealth Charter. Nobody should face discrimination or persecution because of who they are or who they love and the UK stands ready to help any Commonwealth member wanting to reform outdated legislation that makes such discrimination possible. The move was welcomed by campaigners, but pressure remains on Commonwealth leaders to take action. Human rights campaigner Peter Tatchell said: This statement of regret cannot be easily dismissed and disparaged by Commonwealth heads of government. It acknowledges the wrongful imposition of anti-LGBT legislation by the UK, shows humility and helpfully highlights that current homophobic laws in the Commonwealth are mostly not indigenous national laws. They were exported by Britain and imposed on colonial peoples in the nineteenth century. The Prime Ministers regret for Britains imposition of anti-gay laws valuably reframes the LGBT issue in a way that it is likely to provoke less hostility in Commonwealth countries. Earlier, Bishop Victor Gill, from Trinidad and Tobago, accused Britain of bullying smaller countries into liberalising laws around same-sex relations. The son of a Windrush-generation immigrant is planning to leave the UK tomorrow amid threats of deportation, despite ministers' reassurances that no one with the right to stay in the UK will be removed, an MP has said. Ruth Williams, 75, said she felt "betrayed" by Britain after the Home Office twice turned down applications for her 35-year-old son, Mozi Haynes, to remain in the country. Amid rising anger over a government clampdown on Windrush-era immigrants who do not have UK paperwork, ministers assured MPs on Monday that they were not aware of any deportations and that no one would be removed from the country if they had a right to remain. Ms Williams is understood to have cancer and said she relies heavily on her son for support. Recommended Theresa May apologises to Caribbean leaders over Windrush scandal "I feel betrayed and a second class citizen in my own country," she said. "This makes me so sad and the Home Office must show some compassion. "I am unwell and almost 75, I live on my own and I need my son to stay here. I need my family around me and I cant face being alone. He has applied to the Home Office and been refused twice." According to his mother, Mr Haynes applied for British citizenship in 2016 but was rejected, despite Ms Williams having lived in the UK almost permanently since arriving from St Vincent and the Grenadines in 1959. Mr Haynes said he had bought a ticket back to that country amid fears he would be deported. He told LBC: "Every knock on the door, you think they're coming to get you; every car that pulls up outside, you think it's them. "I've been living in this hostility - it's the only world I know. I love Britain, its been my home for so long, I don't really know anything else, but it is hostile." UK news in pictures Show all 50 1 /50 UK news in pictures UK news in pictures 30 September 2021 The centrepiece One Thousand Springs by Japanese artist Chiharu Shiota is seen ahead of the beginning of the Japan Festival, a celebration of the countrys plants, art and culture running from 2-31 October, at Kew Gardens in London PA UK news in pictures 29 September 2021 The family of Betty Campbell unveil the bronze sculpture of her during the unveiling of the statue in Central Square, Cardiff, of Betty Campbell, Wales' first black headteacher PA UK news in pictures 28 September 2021 A sign referring to the lack of fuel is placed at the entrance to a petrol station in London AP UK news in pictures 27 September 2021 Police officers detain a protester from Insulate Britain occupying a roundabout leading from the M25 motorway to Heathrow Airport in London PA UK news in pictures 26 September 2021 Labour Party leader Sir Keir Starmer watches the Arsenal v Tottenham Hotspur match at The Font pub in Brighton PA UK news in pictures 25 September 2021 Scottish pro-independence supporters hold a march and rally outside the Scottish Parliament in Edinburgh, Scotland Getty Images UK news in pictures 24 September 2021 Police officers remove two protesters from the top of a tanker, as Insulate Britain block the A20 in Kent, which provides access to the Port of Dover in Kent. The environmental activists have moved location after been banned from campaigning on the M25 motorway in London PA UK news in pictures 23 September 2021 Gabriella, the seven year old daughter of imprisoned British-Iranian Nazanin Zaghari-Ratcliffe, joins in a game on a giant snakes and ladders board in Parliament Square, to show the ups and downs of her mothers case to mark the 2,000 days she has been detained in Iran AP UK news in pictures 22 September 2021 A new sign hangs on the Millicent Fawcett statue after it was altered by CrackTheCrises coalition activists to highlight the climate crisis as a feminist struggle in Parliament Square in London EPA UK news in pictures 21 September 2021 Gabriella Diment prepares a monumental bronze patinated fibreglass wall sculpture depicting household cavalry soldiers on horseback which is expected to be sold for 12,000-18,000 when it goes up for auction at Summers Place Auctions in Billinghurst, Kent PA UK news in pictures 20 September 2021 Florist Judith Blacklock puts the finishing touches to a floral carousel installation in Halkin Arcade, which she has designed with Neill Strain for the Belgravia in Bloom festival, running from September 20-26, in London PA UK news in pictures 19 September 2021 Bubbles surround Manchester Uniteds Cristiano Ronaldo before the match against West Ham at London Stadium Action Images/Reuters UK news in pictures 18 September 2021 Children take part in the Settrington Cup Pedal Car Race as motoring enthusiasts attend the Goodwood Revival, a three-day historic car racing festival in Goodwood, Chichester, Reuters 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 Mr Haynes' case was brought to light by Labour MP David Lammy, whose office is in contact with the family. Mr Lammy, who asked an urgent House of Commons question on Monday on the issue of Windrush immigrants, said the home secretary, Amber Rudd, should resign over the issue. He said: This is a national disgrace. What is going on in the Home Office makes me ashamed of our great country. "The prime minister must act urgently to halt this deportation and all other Windrush deportations. Heads must roll over this and the home secretary and immigration minister must consider their positions." Mr Haynes is believed to be a constituent of Conservative MP Dominic Grieve, the former attorney general. Mr Grieve told The Independent he was not aware of the case until today but is looking into the matter. Theresa May apologises to Caribbean diplomats following Windrush deportations On Tuesday, Theresa May apologised for the "anxiety" caused by the government clampdown. Windrush-generation immigrants were given the right to remain in the UK indefinitely but many were not issue with formal paperwork, meaning they struggle to prove their legal rights. The issue came to light when new government rules forced people to provide paperwork in order to access free healthcare and the right to work. Many of those who have been unable to do so lost their jobs, their access to the NHS and in some cases were told they faced being deported. On Tuesday, Theresa May apologised for the way many Windrush immigrants have been treated. Addressing leaders at the Commonwealth Heads of Government Meeting, Ms May said: "I want to dispel any impression that my government is in some sense clamping down on Commonwealth citizens, particularly those from the Caribbean. "I take this issue very seriously. The home secretary apologised in the House of Commons yesterday for any anxiety caused. And I want to apologise to you today. Because we are genuinely sorry for any anxiety that has been caused." Ms Rudd had already apologised for the "appalling" way that some Windrush immigrants had been treated, telling MPs the Home Office had "become too concerned with policy and strategy - and loses sight of the individual". Proof that could have spared members of the Windrush generation from the threat of deportation was destroyed by the Home Office under Theresa May, it has been revealed. Thousands of landing cards recording dates of arrival in the UK were thrown away, despite staff warnings that it would be harder for Caribbean-born residents to establish their right to be in the UK. The files were discarded in October 2010, when the current prime minister was home secretary, a former Home Office employee revealed. Recommended Theresa May apologises to Caribbean leaders over Windrush scandal Labour MP David Lammy said the disclosure deepened the scandal of the treatment of the Windrush generation just hours after Ms May gave a personal apology. This revelation from a whistleblower reveals that the problems being faced by the Windrush generation are not down to one-off bureaucratic errors, but as a direct result of systemic incompetence, callousness and cruelty within our immigration system, he said. It is an absolute disgrace that the Home Office has destroyed these documents and then forced Windrush-generation migrants to try and prove their status, threatening them with deportation and stripping them of their rights. This was no accident and the orders to destroys records must have come from somebody at the top of the department. On Monday, the home secretary Amber Rudd admitted to appalling cases of people denied health treatment, stripped of their jobs and faced with deportation to countries they left as children decades ago, and have never returned to. Those affected lacked documents to prove to the Home Office under tough new rules, introduced by Ms May that they had the right to be in the UK. Windrush generation: threat of deportation from UK Show all 15 1 /15 Windrush generation: threat of deportation from UK Windrush generation: threat of deportation from UK The ex-troopship 'Empire Windrush' arriving at Tilbury Docks from Jamaica, with 482 Jamaicans on board, emigrating to Britain. Getty Windrush generation: threat of deportation from UK Jamaican immigrants being welcomed by RAF officials from the Colonial Office after the ex-troopship 'Empire Windrush' landed them at Tilbury. PA Windrush generation: threat of deportation from UK Alford Gardner who arrived in Britain in 1948 on the first Windrush ship to dock in Tilbury, Essex, speaking at his home in Leeds PA Windrush generation: threat of deportation from UK Alford Gardner in Leeds shortly after he arrived in Britain in 1948 on the first Windrush ship to dock in Tilbury, Essex PA Windrush generation: threat of deportation from UK Gardner was 22 years old when he boarded the ship in Kingston, Jamaica, with his brother Gladstone before they and hundreds of Caribbean migrants called on to rebuild post-war Britain disembarked the ship in Tilbury Docks PA Windrush generation: threat of deportation from UK Alford Gardner (right), during his RAF service in 1947 PA Windrush generation: threat of deportation from UK The son of Ruth Williams, a Windrush-generation immigrant, wants to the leave the country after threats of deportation. According to his mother, Mr Haynes applied for British citizenship in 2016 but was rejected, despite Ms Williams having lived in the UK almost permanently since arriving from St Vincent and the Grenadines in 1959. Ruth Williams, 75, said she felt "betrayed" by Britain after the Home Office twice turned down applications for her 35-year-old son, Mozi Haynes, to remain in the country. Ms Williams is understood to have cancer and said she relies heavily on her son for support. PA Windrush generation: threat of deportation from UK The British liner 'Empire Windrush' at port in 1954. Getty Windrush generation: threat of deportation from UK Ruth Williams, 75, with her British passport. "I feel betrayed and a second class citizen in my own country," she said. "This makes me so sad and the Home Office must show some compassion. "I am unwell and almost 75, I live on my own and I need my son to stay here. I need my family around me and I cant face being alone. He has applied to the Home Office and been refused twice." PA Windrush generation: threat of deportation from UK From the top, hopeful Jamaican boxers Charles Smith, Ten Ansel, Essi Reid, John Hazel, Boy Solas and manager Mortimer Martin arrive at Tilbury on the Empire Windrush in the hope of finding work in Britain. Getty Windrush generation: threat of deportation from UK Jamaicans reading a newspaper whilst on board the ex-troopship 'Empire Windrush' bound for Tilbury docks in Essex. Getty Windrush generation: threat of deportation from UK After half a century in Britain, Anthony Bryan decided it was time to go abroad. But the decision set off a nightmare that saw him lose his job, detained twice and almost deported to Jamaica. AFP/Getty Windrush generation: threat of deportation from UK Jamaica-born Anthony Bryan poses outside his home in Edmonton, north London. Now 60 and a grandfather, Bryan thought the issue could be resolved swiftly, as he legally moved to Britain with his family as part of the Windrush generation of Caribbean migrants after World War II. In 1948, the ship Windrush brought the first group of migrants from the West Indies to help rebuild post-war Britain, and many others followed from around the Commonwealth. A 1971 law gave them indefinite leave to remain, but many never formalised their status, often because they were children who came over on their parents' passports and then never applied for their own. AFP/Getty Windrush generation: threat of deportation from UK Three Jamaican immigrants (left to right) John Hazel, a 21-year-old boxer, Harold Wilmot, 32, and John Richards, a 22-year-old carpenter, arriving at Tilbury on board the ex-troopship 'Empire Windrush', smartly dressed in zoot suits and trilby hats. Getty Windrush generation: threat of deportation from UK Newly arrived Jamaican immigrants on board the 'Empire Windrush' at Tilbury in 1948. Getty But the former employee, speaking to The Guardian, said the landing card records, dating back to the 1950s, had been stored in the basement of a government tower block. In October 2010, the Home Office decided to destroy the cards, when its base in Croydon was closed and the staff were moved to another, smaller site, he said. Yet, a persons arrival date was potentially crucial proof because the 1971 Immigration Act gave people who had already moved to Britain indefinite leave to remain. From around 2013 onwards, after Ms Mays hostile environment crackdown, the number of requests from people wanting to know their arrival date from the Caribbean began to increase, the ex-staff member said. Every week or two, someone would say: Ive got another one here, he said. People were writing to say: Ive been here 45 years, Ive never had a passport, Ive never needed a passport. Now Im being told Im not British, because there is no record of me. Because it was no longer possible to search in the archive of landing cards, people would be sent a standard letter that would state: We have searched our records, we can find no trace of you in our files. The Home Office acknowledged that the cards were discarded, but insisted it was done to comply with data protection laws, which required that such records were not kept for longer than is necessary. A spokeswoman also said they did not provide any reliable evidence relating to ongoing residence in the UK or their immigration status. It would be misleading and inaccurate to suggest that registration slips would therefore have a bearing on immigration cases whereby Commonwealth citizens are proving residency in the UK, she added. Controversial radio host Alex Jones has been sued by the parents of several Sandy Hook shooting victims over his claims that the 2012 massacre was staged. Three parents who lost children in the mass shooting sued the InfoWars host for defamation, claiming his comments on the incident caused them mental stress and anguish, as well as damage to their reputations. Our clients have been tormented for five years by Mr Jones ghoulish accusations that they are actors who faked their childrens deaths as part of a fraud on the American people, said attorney Mr Bankston, who has also sued Mr Jones for falsely identifying the gunman in a school shooting in Parkland, Florida. Recommended Inforwars sued for defamation after misidentifying Florida gunman He added: Enough is enough. Mr Jones a celebrity in far-right media circles for his bombastic, often unverified reporting has suggested since 2013 that the shooting at Sandy Hook Elementary may have been faked by the government and covered up with the help of the victims families. He responded to the suits with a video statement on Tuesday night, in which he claimed he was merely playing devil's advocate when he called the shooting "a hoax" and "completely fake". He said he did believe that children had died at Sandy Hook, but that it was the result of police standing down. The victims' parents, he added, were being "used" by the media. "Theyre being manipulated by the Democratic party, by the big media, to be part of the news cycle, to say, 'Alex Jones is fake news' [] to set the president, as they admit, to de-platform everybody and kill the First Amendment," he said. Alex Jones stokes conspiracy theory that Michelle Obama is secretly a man One of the plaintiffs in the lawsuit is Veronique De La Rosa, the mother of a Sandy Hook victim, who Mr Jones has long claimed was a participant in a staged interview with CNNs Anderson Cooper. He said in 2014 that her interview was conducted in a studio, in front of a blue screen, and doctored to look as if it was shot on location. The next year, he circulated a conspiracy theory about Ms De La Rosa's son, whose photo was seen at a vigil for victims of a school attack in Pakistan. The photo was part of a tribute to children lost in school attacks around the world, according to the lawsuit. Mr Jones repeated his claims about Ms De La Rosa last year, in a broadcast titled Sandy Hook Vampires Exposed. He claimed her interview must have been staged because of a moment in which Mr Coopers nose seems to disappear. The moment is in fact the result of motion compensation video compression, and does not occur in high-quality videos of the interview. Sandy Hook elementary school shooting 2012 Show all 5 1 /5 Sandy Hook elementary school shooting 2012 Sandy Hook elementary school shooting 2012 con0.ap.jpg AP Sandy Hook elementary school shooting 2012 Connecticut.jpg AP Sandy Hook elementary school shooting 2012 con1.reut.jpg REUTERS Sandy Hook elementary school shooting 2012 con2.reut.jpg REUTERS Sandy Hook elementary school shooting 2012 obama.reut.jpg REUTERS That same year, Mr Jones spoke out about another of the plaintiffs, Neil Heslin, who lost his son in the shooting. Mr Heslin had told NBCs Megyn Kelly about how he held [his] son with a bullet hole through his head". Mr Jones responded by airing a segment in which a reporter claimed that this was not possible, because coroners had said victims were originally identified by their photos, not their bodies. Will there be a clarification from Heslin or Megyn Kelly? the reporter, Owen Shroyer, asked. I wouldnt hold your breath. So now theyre fuelling the conspiracy theory claims. News reports from the time show the victims bodies were ultimately released to funeral homes. Mr Bankston filed the suits on behalf of Mr Heslin, Ms De La Rosa, and her ex-husband Leonard Pozner in Travis County District Court in Texas on Monday. He said the families had been deeply hurt by Mr Jones's comments, which he called "the most disgusting act of defamation in the history of American media". In all our years of helping families who have lost loved ones under horrific circumstances, we have never seen victims subjected to this kind of malicious cruelty, he said. Their pain is unfathomable. Stories are shared in many ways. They are recounted in books and magazines. They are read aloud around the campfire at night. They are randomly dispensed from stand-alone kiosks, doled out on strips of paper like supermarket receipts. Wait, what was that last one? Leave it to the French, with their love of Voltaire and Simone de Beauvoir, to revive literature in the era of hot takes, fast news and smartphone addiction. Short Edition, a French community publisher of short-form literature, has installed more than 30 story dispensers in the United States in the past year to deliver fiction at the push of a button at restaurants and universities, government offices and transportation hubs. Francis Ford Coppola, the film director and winemaker, liked the idea so much that he invested in the company and placed a dispenser at his Cafe Zoetrope in the North Beach neighbourhood of San Francisco. Last month public libraries in four cities Philadelphia; Akron, Ohio; Wichita, Kansas and Columbia, South Carolina announced they would be installing them too. There is one on the campus at Penn State. A few can be found in downtown West Palm Beach, Florida. And Short Edition plans to announce more, including at Los Angeles International Airport. Everything old is new again, said Andrew Nurkin, deputy director of enrichment and civic engagement at the Free Library of Philadelphia, which is one of the libraries that got funding from the John S and James L Knight Foundation to install the dispensers. We want people exposed to literature. We want to advance literacy among children and inspire creativity. Heres how a dispenser works: it is shaped like a cylinder with three buttons on top indicating a one minute, three minute or five minute story. (Thats how long it takes to read). When a button is pushed, a short story is printed, unfurled on a long strip of paper. The stories are free. They are retrieved from a computer catalogue of more than 100,000 original submissions by writers whose work has been evaluated by Short Editions judges and transmitted over a mobile network. Offerings can be tailored to specific interests: childrens fiction, romance, even holiday-themed tales. Scott Varner, executive director of strategic communications for Columbus City Schools in Ohio, said his district will have a total of five kiosks, the first two of which were installed in December. Stories are divided into two categories: young readers and everybody else. We want to build excitement around reading, he said. Especially among families. Short Edition gets stories for its catalogue by holding writing contests. It is holding one for students and faculty at Penn State called New Beginnings. Mr Varner asked if the company might hold a contest for stories about Columbus by local students and they are considering it, he said. It would be great to have 10th graders writing stories for third graders, he said. Short Edition, which is based in Grenoble and was founded by publishing executives, set up its first kiosk in 2016 and has 150 machines worldwide. We want to create a platform for independent artists, like the Sundance Institute, said Kristan Leroy, export director at Short Edition. The dispensers cost $9,200 (6,400) plus an additional $190 per month for content and software. The only thing that needs to be replaced is paper. The printed stories have a double life, shared an average of 2.1 times, said Ms Leroy. The idea is to make people happy, she said. There is too much doom and gloom today. Digital artist creates imaginary world using Photoshop Show all 15 1 /15 Digital artist creates imaginary world using Photoshop Digital artist creates imaginary world using Photoshop Justin Peters / SWNS.com Digital artist creates imaginary world using Photoshop Justin Peters / SWNS.com Digital artist creates imaginary world using Photoshop Justin Peters / SWNS.com Digital artist creates imaginary world using Photoshop Justin Peters / SWNS.com Digital artist creates imaginary world using Photoshop Justin Peters / SWNS.com Digital artist creates imaginary world using Photoshop Justin Peters / SWNS.com Digital artist creates imaginary world using Photoshop Justin Peters / SWNS.com Digital artist creates imaginary world using Photoshop Justin Peters / SWNS.com Digital artist creates imaginary world using Photoshop Justin Peters / SWNS.com Digital artist creates imaginary world using Photoshop Justin Peters / SWNS.com Digital artist creates imaginary world using Photoshop Digital artist creates imaginary world using Photoshop Justin Peters / SWNS.com Digital artist creates imaginary world using Photoshop Justin Peters / SWNS.com Digital artist creates imaginary world using Photoshop Justin Peters / SWNS.com Digital artist creates imaginary world using Photoshop Justin Peters / SWNS.com The first dispenser in the United States was at Mr Coppolas San Francisco cafe in 2016. At the time, the director said the stories had the allure of classic manuscripts. Id like to see the city of San Francisco put them everywhere so that while waiting for a bus or marriage licence or lunch, you could get an artistic lift, free of charge, he said. That hasnt happened yet. Mr Nurkin, of the Free Library of Philadelphia, has high hopes for his city. We are interested in finding sites to engage audiences who arent necessarily coming to the library, he said. So much so, the library is considering installing dispensers at the Family Court Building and the Philadelphia International Airport. Its like a literary magazine, he said. You dont know what you are going to get. Who knows? Maybe you press a button and get a story written by your neighbour. The New York Times Hundreds of people have been rescued from a flood-stricken Hawaiian island after storms triggered mudslides and knocked out power and water supplies. At least 152 people were airlifted to safety by emergency helicopters after becoming trapped on Kauai following heavy rainfall, while 121 others were taken away on jet skis, boats and buses. It is not known when people will be able to return because eight landslides have blocked the main highway on the islands north shore, authorities have warned. Recommended Mudslides and flash flooding trigger state of emergency in Hawaii Hawaii governor David Ige declared a state of emergency after flash floods ripped homes from their foundations, forced families to clamber onto roofs for safety, and damaged roads. The floods followed on from what is thought to have been a record deluge of rainfall on Saturday. At this time, it is still too early to estimate the extent of storm damage and costs, said Kauai mayor Bernard Carvalho. Dozens of homes and businesses in the North Shore area and other parts of the island have been damaged, and right now we are focusing on relief and search and rescue efforts. Emergency crews working to rescue people who were stranded were helped by a let up in rain on Monday. Forty people, mostly tourists, had been stuck since Saturday night at a Red Cross shelter in an elementary school in the North Shore town of Hanalei. Plans to airlift them out of the school, which was surrounded by water, were abandoned because severe weather grounded helicopters, said Coralie Matayoshi, CEO of American Red Cross at Hawaii. On Sunday night another 21 people made their way on boats and jet skis to the shelter, which briefly ran out of food and water. By the afternoon floodwaters had receded enough for a bus to take them to another shelter, the Red Cross said. An estimated 30 campers were stranded in the Napali Coast State Wilderness Park on Monday. State parks officials were coordinating with county and state emergency workers about prioritising rescue missions. Mr Carvalho and Mr Ige assessed damage and rescue needs by helicopter on Monday. While we have a long road to recovery ahead of us, we are incredibly grateful for everyone who has stepped to the plate to help in one way or another, Mr Carvalho. There were no reports of major injuries. At least two houses in North Shore were completely washed off their foundations, county spokeswoman Sarah Blane said. The houses were vacant, she said. The Red Cross said volunteers knew of four destroyed homes in Wainiha, and there are probably more homes damaged in Koloa, on the south side, based on aerial photos. Its definitely the worst storm in recent memory, Ms Blane said. World news in pictures Show all 50 1 /50 World news in pictures World news in pictures 30 September 2020 Pope Francis prays with priests at the end of a limited public audience at the San Damaso courtyard in The Vatican AFP via Getty World news in pictures 29 September 2020 A girl's silhouette is seen from behind a fabric in a tent along a beach by Beit Lahia in the northern Gaza Strip AFP via Getty World news in pictures 28 September 2020 A Chinese woman takes a photo of herself in front of a flower display dedicated to frontline health care workers during the COVID-19 pandemic in Beijing, China. China will celebrate national day marking the founding of the People's Republic of China on October 1st Getty World news in pictures 27 September 2020 The Glass Mountain Inn burns as the Glass Fire moves through the area in St. Helena, California. The fast moving Glass fire has burned over 1,000 acres and has destroyed homes Getty World news in pictures 26 September 2020 A villager along with a child offers prayers next to a carcass of a wild elephant that officials say was electrocuted in Rani Reserve Forest on the outskirts of Guwahati, India AFP via Getty World news in pictures 25 September 2020 The casket of late Supreme Court Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg is seen in Statuary Hall in the US Capitol to lie in state in Washington, DC AFP via Getty World news in pictures 24 September 2020 An anti-government protester holds up an image of a pro-democracy commemorative plaque at a rally outside Thailand's parliament in Bangkok, as activists gathered to demand a new constitution AFP via Getty World news in pictures 23 September 2020 A whale stranded on a beach in Macquarie Harbour on the rugged west coast of Tasmania, as hundreds of pilot whales have died in a mass stranding in southern Australia despite efforts to save them, with rescuers racing to free a few dozen survivors The Mercury/AFP via Getty World news in pictures 22 September 2020 State civil employee candidates wearing face masks and shields take a test in Surabaya AFP via Getty World news in pictures 21 September 2020 A man sweeps at the Taj Mahal monument on the day of its reopening after being closed for more than six months due to the coronavirus pandemic AP World news in pictures 20 September 2020 A deer looks for food in a burnt area, caused by the Bobcat fire, in Pearblossom, California EPA World news in pictures 19 September 2020 Anti-government protesters hold their mobile phones aloft as they take part in a pro-democracy rally in Bangkok. Tens of thousands of pro-democracy protesters massed close to Thailand's royal palace, in a huge rally calling for PM Prayut Chan-O-Cha to step down and demanding reforms to the monarchy AFP via Getty World news in pictures 18 September 2020 Supporters of Iraqi Shi'ite cleric Moqtada al-Sadr maintain social distancing as they attend Friday prayers after the coronavirus disease restrictions were eased, in Kufa mosque, near Najaf, Iraq Reuters World news in pictures 17 September 2020 A protester climbs on The Triumph of the Republic at 'the Place de la Nation' as thousands of protesters take part in a demonstration during a national day strike called by labor unions asking for better salary and against jobs cut in Paris, France EPA World news in pictures 16 September 2020 A fire raging near the Lazzaretto of Ancona in Italy. The huge blaze broke out overnight at the port of Ancona. Firefighters have brought the fire under control but they expected to keep working through the day EPA World news in pictures 15 September 2020 Russian opposition leader Alexei Navalny posing for a selfie with his family at Berlin's Charite hospital. In an Instagram post he said he could now breathe independently following his suspected poisoning last month Alexei Navalny/Instagram/AFP World news in pictures 14 September 2020 Japan's Prime Minister Shinzo Abe, Chief Cabinet Secretary Yoshihide Suga, former Defense Minister Shigeru Ishiba and former Foreign Minister Fumio Kishida celebrate after Suga was elected as new head of the ruling party at the Liberal Democratic Party's leadership election in Tokyo Reuters World news in pictures 13 September 2020 A man stands behind a burning barricade during the fifth straight day of protests against police brutality in Bogota AFP via Getty World news in pictures 12 September 2020 Police officers block and detain protesters during an opposition rally to protest the official presidential election results in Minsk, Belarus. Daily protests calling for the authoritarian president's resignation are now in their second month AP World news in pictures 11 September 2020 Members of 'Omnium Cultural' celebrate the 20th 'Festa per la llibertat' ('Fiesta for the freedom') to mark the Day of Catalonia in Barcelona. Omnion Cultural fights for the independence of Catalonia EPA World news in pictures 10 September 2020 The Moria refugee camp, two days after Greece's biggest migrant camp, was destroyed by fire. Thousands of asylum seekers on the island of Lesbos are now homeless AFP via Getty World news in pictures 9 September 2020 Pope Francis takes off his face mask as he arrives by car to hold a limited public audience at the San Damaso courtyard in The Vatican AFP via Getty World news in pictures 8 September 2020 A home is engulfed in flames during the "Creek Fire" in the Tollhouse area of California AFP via Getty World news in pictures 7 September 2020 A couple take photos along a sea wall of the waves brought by Typhoon Haishen in the eastern port city of Sokcho AFP via Getty World news in pictures 6 September 2020 Novak Djokovic and a tournament official tends to a linesperson who was struck with a ball by Djokovic during his match against Pablo Carreno Busta at the US Open USA Today Sports/Reuters World news in pictures 5 September 2020 Protesters confront police at the Shrine of Remembrance in Melbourne, Australia, during an anti-lockdown rally AFP via Getty World news in pictures 4 September 2020 A woman looks on from a rooftop as rescue workers dig through the rubble of a damaged building in Beirut. A search began for possible survivors after a scanner detected a pulse one month after the mega-blast at the adjacent port AFP via Getty World news in pictures 3 September 2020 A full moon next to the Virgen del Panecillo statue in Quito, Ecuador EPA World news in pictures 2 September 2020 A Palestinian woman reacts as Israeli forces demolish her animal shed near Hebron in the Israeli-occupied West Bank Reuters World news in pictures 1 September 2020 Students protest against presidential elections results in Minsk TUT.BY/AFP via Getty World news in pictures 31 August 2020 The pack rides during the 3rd stage of the Tour de France between Nice and Sisteron AFP via Getty World news in pictures 30 August 2020 Law enforcement officers block a street during a rally of opposition supporters protesting against presidential election results in Minsk, Belarus Reuters World news in pictures 29 August 2020 A woman holding a placard reading "Stop Censorship - Yes to the Freedom of Expression" shouts in a megaphone during a protest against the mandatory wearing of face masks in Paris. Masks, which were already compulsory on public transport, in enclosed public spaces, and outdoors in Paris in certain high-congestion areas around tourist sites, were made mandatory outdoors citywide on August 28 to fight the rising coronavirus infections AFP via Getty World news in pictures 28 August 2020 Japanese Prime Minister Shinzo Abe bows to the national flag at the start of a press conference at the prime minister official residence in Tokyo. Abe announced he will resign over health problems, in a bombshell development that kicks off a leadership contest in the world's third-largest economy AFP via Getty World news in pictures 27 August 2020 Residents take cover behind a tree trunk from rubber bullets fired by South African Police Service (SAPS) in Eldorado Park, near Johannesburg, during a protest by community members after a 16-year old boy was reported dead AFP via Getty World news in pictures 26 August 2020 People scatter rose petals on a statue of Mother Teresa marking her 110th birth anniversary in Ahmedabad AFP via Getty World news in pictures 25 August 2020 An aerial view shows beach-goers standing on salt formations in the Dead Sea near Ein Bokeq, Israel Reuters World news in pictures 24 August 2020 Health workers use a fingertip pulse oximeter and check the body temperature of a fisherwoman inside the Dharavi slum during a door-to-door Covid-19 coronavirus screening in Mumbai AFP via Getty World news in pictures 23 August 2020 People carry an idol of the Hindu god Ganesh, the deity of prosperity, to immerse it off the coast of the Arabian sea during the Ganesh Chaturthi festival in Mumbai, India Reuters World news in pictures 22 August 2020 Firefighters watch as flames from the LNU Lightning Complex fires approach a home in Napa County, California AP World news in pictures 21 August 2020 Members of the Israeli security forces arrest a Palestinian demonstrator during a rally to protest against Israel's plan to annex parts of the occupied West Bank AFP via Getty World news in pictures 20 August 2020 A man pushes his bicycle through a deserted road after prohibitory orders were imposed by district officials for a week to contain the spread of the Covid-19 in Kathmandu AFP via Getty World news in pictures 19 August 2020 A car burns while parked at a residence in Vacaville, California. Dozens of fires are burning out of control throughout Northern California as fire resources are spread thin AFP via Getty World news in pictures 18 August 2020 Students use their mobile phones as flashlights at an anti-government rally at Mahidol University in Nakhon Pathom. Thailand has seen near-daily protests in recent weeks by students demanding the resignation of Prime Minister Prayut Chan-O-Cha AFP via Getty World news in pictures 17 August 2020 Members of the Kayapo tribe block the BR163 highway during a protest outside Novo Progresso in Para state, Brazil. Indigenous protesters blocked a major transamazonian highway to protest against the lack of governmental support during the COVID-19 novel coronavirus pandemic and illegal deforestation in and around their territories AFP via Getty World news in pictures 16 August 2020 Lightning forks over the San Francisco-Oakland Bay Bridge as a storm passes over Oakland AP World news in pictures 15 August 2020 Belarus opposition supporters gather near the Pushkinskaya metro station where Alexander Taraikovsky, a 34-year-old protester died on August 10, during their protest rally in central Minsk AFP via Getty World news in pictures 14 August 2020 AlphaTauri's driver Daniil Kvyat takes part in the second practice session at the Circuit de Catalunya in Montmelo near Barcelona ahead of the Spanish F1 Grand Prix AFP via Getty World news in pictures 13 August 2020 Soldiers of the Brazilian Armed Forces during a disinfection of the Christ The Redeemer statue at the Corcovado mountain prior to the opening of the touristic attraction in Rio AFP via Getty World news in pictures 12 August 2020 Young elephant bulls tussle playfully on World Elephant Day at the Amboseli National Park in Kenya AFP via Getty Some residents said it was worse than Hurricane Iniki, the most powerful hurricane to strike the state, which claimed six lives in 1992. The National Weather Service recorded 28.1 inches of rainfall in Hanalei between 2am on Saturday and 2am on Sunday before its rain gauge broke. The record rainfall for a 24-hour period in Hanalei was set in 2012 at 28.5 inches. Its highly likely that the record was broken by heavy rainfall after the gauge stopped recording, said meteorologist Chevy Chevalier. The weather service is trying to determine why the gauge stopped recording, he added. Kevin Kaleiohi, who lives in Hanalei, told Hawaii News Now: Ive lived here all my life and this storm was pretty gnarly. Another local, Flora Quick, was rescued from her rooftop by someone on a jet ski after the rainwater flooded her house. When the water comes in, it just only takes a few seconds, she said. Thats when I decided, OK, Im going to climb up. She said the water rushing around her house was so powerful she felt the buildings foundations move. Jeff Culverhouse, manager and partner of a Hanalei shopping centre, said every shop was filled with four to six inches of water and thick mud on Monday. The place is a freaking mess, to say the least, he added. The Supreme Court has ruled to restrict mandatory deportation of immigrants convicted of some crimes, just as President Donald Trumps administration is looking to increase them. In a 5-4 ruling, the court said the wording of the statute requiring the removal of non-citizens who commit certain felonies was unlawfully vague, a ruling that could limit the Trump administrations ability to step up the removal of immigrants with criminal records. Mr Trumps appointee to the court, conservative judge Neil Gorsuch, joined the courts four liberal justices in siding with convicted California burglar James Garcia Dimaya, a legal immigrant from the Philippines. Recommended Retired Supreme Court Justice calls for repeal of Second Amendment The ruling concerns a provision of immigration law that defines a crime of violence. In the US federal criminal code, a crime of violence includes offences in which force either was used or carried a substantial risk that it would be used. Such a conviction would make someone eligible for possible deportation and helps to speed up the process. Both the Obama and Trump administrations have defended the principle with Mr Trump pushing for more violent offenders to be removed from the country. In 2015, a federal appeals court in San Francisco struck down the provision as too vague, which increased the risk of arbitrary or discriminatory enforcement in violation of the US Constitution, and the Supreme Court agreed. The appeals court based its ruling on a Supreme Court decision from 2015 that voided a similarly worded part of another law regarding longer custodial sentences for criminals. 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 Supreme Court Justice Elena Kagan wrote that the 2015 decision tells us how to resolve this case. Dimaya came to the United States from the Philippines as a legal permanent resident in 1992 at age 13 and lived in the San Francisco Bay area. Federal authorities ordered Dimaya deported after he was convicted in two California home burglaries, in 2007 and 2009, though neither crime involved violence. He received a two-year prison sentence for each conviction. In 2010, the Obama administration brought removal proceedings against Dimaya. The Justice Departments Board of Immigration Appeals refused to cancel his expulsion as his convictions counted as an aggravated felony under the Immigration and Nationality Act, which authorises removal of non-citizens who have been convicted of some violent crimes and that aggravated felony as a crime of violence. In joining the four liberal judges, Justice Gorsuch was continuing the jurisprudence of Justice Antonin Scalia, who also sided with liberals when it came to the vagueness of statutes used to convict criminal defendants. Mr Gorsuch was appointed to the Court in the wake of the Justice Scalias death in 2016. Only eight justices heard the case last term after Justice Scalias death, and in late June, the court announced it would re-hear arguments in its current term, likely so that Justice Gorsuch could break a possible tie. With her platinum blonde hair and a cherubic smile, Lois Riess looks in photos like what she is a 56-year-old grandmother from small-town America. And that, authorities say, makes her even more dangerous. For the past three weeks, police say, Ms Riess has led them on a nationwide pursuit from the Minnesota worm farm where they found her husband shot to death last month; to Florida, where they suspect Ms Riess befriended and killed a woman who looks like her to steal her identity and finally to Texas, where police fear she may find her next target. She smiles and looks like anyones mother or grandmother, but shes calculating, shes targeting and shes an absolute cold-blood killer, Carmine Marceno, a deputy sheriff Lee County, Florida, told NBC News in Florida, after authorities lost her trail. Ms Riess and her husband, David Riess, were well known and well-liked by the 2,000 or so other residents of Blooming Prairie, Minnesota, according to the Minneapolis Star Tribune. They were both regulars for lunch at the local Servicemens Club, nearly 100 miles south of Minneapolis. Mr Riess owned and operated a farm for fishing bait Prairie Wax Worms. Concerned that Mr Riess had not been seen in more than a week, the Minneapolis Star Tribune reported, one of his business partners asked police to look for him. Officers did and found him dead of gunshot wounds at the worm farm on 23 March, the sheriff of Dodge County told the newspaper. It was unclear how long hed been dead. Ms Riess had left town by then. According to the Minneapolis Star Tribune, police suspect she forged her dead husbands signature before his body was found, transferred nearly $10,000 (7,000) into her account and headed to a casino across the Iowa border. NBC News reported Ms Riess had a gambling addiction. She had left Iowa by the time police tracked her there in late March, the Minneapolis Star Tribune wrote. State officials began to post her photos on Facebook, urging anyone who saw her to call 911 and not go near her, as she was believed to be armed and dangerous. From Iowa, police believe, Ms Riess drove to Lee County, Florida. There, they said, she met a woman named Pamela Hutchinson, 59, with a similar shade of light-blonde hair. She befriended this woman. The woman probably gave her some sob story, Ms Hutchinsons cousin Daniele Jeffreys later told WTVR. My cousin went out helping the world... Shes just giving to a fault. To her death. On 5 April, the two women were recorded on surveillance camera at the Smokin Oyster Brewery in Fort Myers, sharing a laugh. According to the Minneapolis Star Tribune, another surveillance camera photographed Ms Riess at Ms Hutchinsons condo in the same city. On 9 April, police found Ms Hutchinson shot to death at her condo in the same city. Another surveillance camera photographed Riess at the building. Ms Hutchinsons uncle told WTVR shed been shot through the heart. World news in pictures Show all 50 1 /50 World news in pictures World news in pictures 30 September 2020 Pope Francis prays with priests at the end of a limited public audience at the San Damaso courtyard in The Vatican AFP via Getty World news in pictures 29 September 2020 A girl's silhouette is seen from behind a fabric in a tent along a beach by Beit Lahia in the northern Gaza Strip AFP via Getty World news in pictures 28 September 2020 A Chinese woman takes a photo of herself in front of a flower display dedicated to frontline health care workers during the COVID-19 pandemic in Beijing, China. China will celebrate national day marking the founding of the People's Republic of China on October 1st Getty World news in pictures 27 September 2020 The Glass Mountain Inn burns as the Glass Fire moves through the area in St. Helena, California. The fast moving Glass fire has burned over 1,000 acres and has destroyed homes Getty World news in pictures 26 September 2020 A villager along with a child offers prayers next to a carcass of a wild elephant that officials say was electrocuted in Rani Reserve Forest on the outskirts of Guwahati, India AFP via Getty World news in pictures 25 September 2020 The casket of late Supreme Court Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg is seen in Statuary Hall in the US Capitol to lie in state in Washington, DC AFP via Getty World news in pictures 24 September 2020 An anti-government protester holds up an image of a pro-democracy commemorative plaque at a rally outside Thailand's parliament in Bangkok, as activists gathered to demand a new constitution AFP via Getty World news in pictures 23 September 2020 A whale stranded on a beach in Macquarie Harbour on the rugged west coast of Tasmania, as hundreds of pilot whales have died in a mass stranding in southern Australia despite efforts to save them, with rescuers racing to free a few dozen survivors The Mercury/AFP via Getty World news in pictures 22 September 2020 State civil employee candidates wearing face masks and shields take a test in Surabaya AFP via Getty World news in pictures 21 September 2020 A man sweeps at the Taj Mahal monument on the day of its reopening after being closed for more than six months due to the coronavirus pandemic AP World news in pictures 20 September 2020 A deer looks for food in a burnt area, caused by the Bobcat fire, in Pearblossom, California EPA World news in pictures 19 September 2020 Anti-government protesters hold their mobile phones aloft as they take part in a pro-democracy rally in Bangkok. Tens of thousands of pro-democracy protesters massed close to Thailand's royal palace, in a huge rally calling for PM Prayut Chan-O-Cha to step down and demanding reforms to the monarchy AFP via Getty World news in pictures 18 September 2020 Supporters of Iraqi Shi'ite cleric Moqtada al-Sadr maintain social distancing as they attend Friday prayers after the coronavirus disease restrictions were eased, in Kufa mosque, near Najaf, Iraq Reuters World news in pictures 17 September 2020 A protester climbs on The Triumph of the Republic at 'the Place de la Nation' as thousands of protesters take part in a demonstration during a national day strike called by labor unions asking for better salary and against jobs cut in Paris, France EPA World news in pictures 16 September 2020 A fire raging near the Lazzaretto of Ancona in Italy. The huge blaze broke out overnight at the port of Ancona. Firefighters have brought the fire under control but they expected to keep working through the day EPA World news in pictures 15 September 2020 Russian opposition leader Alexei Navalny posing for a selfie with his family at Berlin's Charite hospital. In an Instagram post he said he could now breathe independently following his suspected poisoning last month Alexei Navalny/Instagram/AFP World news in pictures 14 September 2020 Japan's Prime Minister Shinzo Abe, Chief Cabinet Secretary Yoshihide Suga, former Defense Minister Shigeru Ishiba and former Foreign Minister Fumio Kishida celebrate after Suga was elected as new head of the ruling party at the Liberal Democratic Party's leadership election in Tokyo Reuters World news in pictures 13 September 2020 A man stands behind a burning barricade during the fifth straight day of protests against police brutality in Bogota AFP via Getty World news in pictures 12 September 2020 Police officers block and detain protesters during an opposition rally to protest the official presidential election results in Minsk, Belarus. Daily protests calling for the authoritarian president's resignation are now in their second month AP World news in pictures 11 September 2020 Members of 'Omnium Cultural' celebrate the 20th 'Festa per la llibertat' ('Fiesta for the freedom') to mark the Day of Catalonia in Barcelona. Omnion Cultural fights for the independence of Catalonia EPA World news in pictures 10 September 2020 The Moria refugee camp, two days after Greece's biggest migrant camp, was destroyed by fire. Thousands of asylum seekers on the island of Lesbos are now homeless AFP via Getty World news in pictures 9 September 2020 Pope Francis takes off his face mask as he arrives by car to hold a limited public audience at the San Damaso courtyard in The Vatican AFP via Getty World news in pictures 8 September 2020 A home is engulfed in flames during the "Creek Fire" in the Tollhouse area of California AFP via Getty World news in pictures 7 September 2020 A couple take photos along a sea wall of the waves brought by Typhoon Haishen in the eastern port city of Sokcho AFP via Getty World news in pictures 6 September 2020 Novak Djokovic and a tournament official tends to a linesperson who was struck with a ball by Djokovic during his match against Pablo Carreno Busta at the US Open USA Today Sports/Reuters World news in pictures 5 September 2020 Protesters confront police at the Shrine of Remembrance in Melbourne, Australia, during an anti-lockdown rally AFP via Getty World news in pictures 4 September 2020 A woman looks on from a rooftop as rescue workers dig through the rubble of a damaged building in Beirut. A search began for possible survivors after a scanner detected a pulse one month after the mega-blast at the adjacent port AFP via Getty World news in pictures 3 September 2020 A full moon next to the Virgen del Panecillo statue in Quito, Ecuador EPA World news in pictures 2 September 2020 A Palestinian woman reacts as Israeli forces demolish her animal shed near Hebron in the Israeli-occupied West Bank Reuters World news in pictures 1 September 2020 Students protest against presidential elections results in Minsk TUT.BY/AFP via Getty World news in pictures 31 August 2020 The pack rides during the 3rd stage of the Tour de France between Nice and Sisteron AFP via Getty World news in pictures 30 August 2020 Law enforcement officers block a street during a rally of opposition supporters protesting against presidential election results in Minsk, Belarus Reuters World news in pictures 29 August 2020 A woman holding a placard reading "Stop Censorship - Yes to the Freedom of Expression" shouts in a megaphone during a protest against the mandatory wearing of face masks in Paris. Masks, which were already compulsory on public transport, in enclosed public spaces, and outdoors in Paris in certain high-congestion areas around tourist sites, were made mandatory outdoors citywide on August 28 to fight the rising coronavirus infections AFP via Getty World news in pictures 28 August 2020 Japanese Prime Minister Shinzo Abe bows to the national flag at the start of a press conference at the prime minister official residence in Tokyo. Abe announced he will resign over health problems, in a bombshell development that kicks off a leadership contest in the world's third-largest economy AFP via Getty World news in pictures 27 August 2020 Residents take cover behind a tree trunk from rubber bullets fired by South African Police Service (SAPS) in Eldorado Park, near Johannesburg, during a protest by community members after a 16-year old boy was reported dead AFP via Getty World news in pictures 26 August 2020 People scatter rose petals on a statue of Mother Teresa marking her 110th birth anniversary in Ahmedabad AFP via Getty World news in pictures 25 August 2020 An aerial view shows beach-goers standing on salt formations in the Dead Sea near Ein Bokeq, Israel Reuters World news in pictures 24 August 2020 Health workers use a fingertip pulse oximeter and check the body temperature of a fisherwoman inside the Dharavi slum during a door-to-door Covid-19 coronavirus screening in Mumbai AFP via Getty World news in pictures 23 August 2020 People carry an idol of the Hindu god Ganesh, the deity of prosperity, to immerse it off the coast of the Arabian sea during the Ganesh Chaturthi festival in Mumbai, India Reuters World news in pictures 22 August 2020 Firefighters watch as flames from the LNU Lightning Complex fires approach a home in Napa County, California AP World news in pictures 21 August 2020 Members of the Israeli security forces arrest a Palestinian demonstrator during a rally to protest against Israel's plan to annex parts of the occupied West Bank AFP via Getty World news in pictures 20 August 2020 A man pushes his bicycle through a deserted road after prohibitory orders were imposed by district officials for a week to contain the spread of the Covid-19 in Kathmandu AFP via Getty World news in pictures 19 August 2020 A car burns while parked at a residence in Vacaville, California. Dozens of fires are burning out of control throughout Northern California as fire resources are spread thin AFP via Getty World news in pictures 18 August 2020 Students use their mobile phones as flashlights at an anti-government rally at Mahidol University in Nakhon Pathom. Thailand has seen near-daily protests in recent weeks by students demanding the resignation of Prime Minister Prayut Chan-O-Cha AFP via Getty World news in pictures 17 August 2020 Members of the Kayapo tribe block the BR163 highway during a protest outside Novo Progresso in Para state, Brazil. Indigenous protesters blocked a major transamazonian highway to protest against the lack of governmental support during the COVID-19 novel coronavirus pandemic and illegal deforestation in and around their territories AFP via Getty World news in pictures 16 August 2020 Lightning forks over the San Francisco-Oakland Bay Bridge as a storm passes over Oakland AP World news in pictures 15 August 2020 Belarus opposition supporters gather near the Pushkinskaya metro station where Alexander Taraikovsky, a 34-year-old protester died on August 10, during their protest rally in central Minsk AFP via Getty World news in pictures 14 August 2020 AlphaTauri's driver Daniil Kvyat takes part in the second practice session at the Circuit de Catalunya in Montmelo near Barcelona ahead of the Spanish F1 Grand Prix AFP via Getty World news in pictures 13 August 2020 Soldiers of the Brazilian Armed Forces during a disinfection of the Christ The Redeemer statue at the Corcovado mountain prior to the opening of the touristic attraction in Rio AFP via Getty World news in pictures 12 August 2020 Young elephant bulls tussle playfully on World Elephant Day at the Amboseli National Park in Kenya AFP via Getty The dead womans purse had been emptied out, sheriffs investigators said. Her identification, credit cards and car keys were gone. So was her car. The search for Ms Riess was now a multistate and federal matter. More public advisories went out, with more photos of the grandmotherly woman and the car she was believed to be travelling in, which was now the car of the woman police think she killed. The vehicle was spotted near Corpus Christi, Texas, this month, Florida authorities announced at a news conference last Friday. Her current whereabouts are unknown. The obituary for Mr Riess was published last week and mentioned his children and grandchildren, but not his wife. Pure evil, Ms Hutchinsons cousin told WTVR. Thats really the only thing that could resonate with my system... its just evil that flowed through. In Florida, the deputy sheriff told NBC he had never seen a killing like it. This is the first time in my career Ive seen someone steal someones identity and target them for the way they look in order to murder them, Mr Marceno said. And he worries it wont be the last. I suspect Riess at some point in time will have no resources and she will become more desperate, Mr Marceno said, and may kill again. The Washington Post One person has been killed after a Southwest Airlines flight was forced to make an emergency landing in Philadelphia after the jet's engine exploded west of the city and caused depressurisation in the cabin. Authorities did not immediately detail who may have been killed. A woman was reportedly pulled partway out of the plane after a piece of shrapnel from the engine smashed into the plane. One individual was taken to hospital, while as many as seven others were treated for minor injuries. The plane landed safely after the incident, and firefighters could be seen responding to the scene while some people exited the aircraft on crutches. The National Transportation Safety Board, which was dispatched following the emergency landing, later said that investigators were looking into the matter as an "engine failure" event. Passenger Marty Martinez, who posted a video showing passengers with oxygen masks as the plane descended, told CBS News that "there was blood everywhere". "First there was an explosion, and then, almost immediately, the oxygen masks came down and probably within a matter of 10 seconds the engine hit a window and busted it wide open," Mr Martinez continued. Officials say that the descent from the time of the initial failure west of Philadelphia until it landed at the airport, southeast of the city's downtown happened in "a fairly rapid manner", and information provided by FlightRadar24 showed the plane dropped from 30,000 feet to 13,000 feet in five minutes. The whole descent took about 15 minutes. Southwest Airlines engine explosion: in pictures Show all 15 1 /15 Southwest Airlines engine explosion: in pictures Southwest Airlines engine explosion: in pictures Jennifer Riordan died after being partially sucked out of a shattered plane window following an engine explosion. Reuters/AP Southwest Airlines engine explosion: in pictures Tammie Jo Shults, hero pilot of Southwest 1380, kept calm and saved her passengers. Kristopher Johnson via Reuters Southwest Airlines engine explosion: in pictures Marty Martinez, left, appears with other passengers after a jet engine blew out on the Southwest Airlines Boeing 737 plane. Marty Martinez via AP Southwest Airlines engine explosion: in pictures The window that was shattered after a jet engine of the Southwest Airlines airplane blew out at altitude Marty Martinez via AP Southwest Airlines engine explosion: in pictures A National Transportation Safety Board investigator examines damage to the engine. NTSB via AP Southwest Airlines engine explosion: in pictures Jennifer Riordan, a 43-year-old mother-of-two. Facebook/Jennifer Riordan via Reuters Southwest Airlines engine explosion: in pictures The Southwest Airlines jet sits on the runway at Philadelphia International Airport after it was forced to land with an engine failure. AFP/Getty Images Southwest Airlines engine explosion: in pictures Pennsylvania Game Commission employees recover a piece of the Southwest Airline engine covering that landed in Penn Township, Berks County. AP Southwest Airlines engine explosion: in pictures Tammie Jo Shults was hailed a hero by passengers. Southwest Airlines engine explosion: in pictures The window that was shattered. Marty Martinez via AP Southwest Airlines engine explosion: in pictures A National Transportation Safety Board investigator photographs a Southwest Airline engine covering that landed in Penn Township AP Southwest Airlines engine explosion: in pictures The exploded engine of Southwest Airlines flight 1380 during the flight from a passenger's window. Cassie Adams via Reuters Southwest Airlines engine explosion: in pictures US Navy Lieutenant Tammie Jo Shults in front of a Navy F/A-18A in 1992. US Navy/Handout via Reuters Southwest Airlines engine explosion: in pictures Damage to the Southwest Airlines plane after Jennifer Riordan died when the jet blew an engine at 32,000ft. PA Southwest Airlines engine explosion: in pictures Emergency personnel monitor the damaged engine. Reuters The plane, which was travelling from New York City To Dallas, was a part of the fleet owned by Southwest Airlines, one of the world's safest airlines that boasts of zero previous deaths from crashes since starting operations in Texas in 1971. After the engine failure, passengers began posting pictures and videos of the damaged engine on the left hand side of the jet. One passenger, a woman, was partially ... was drawn out towards the out of the plane... she was pulled back by other passengers, Todd Bauer, a man who said he was the father of the female passenger who was partially sucked out of the plane, told NBC in a phone interview. Another passenger told CNN that a piece of the plane's engine had acted like shrapnel, smashing into the plane and causing serious injury. "We left LaGuardia heading to Dallas and we were west of Philly when we lost the left side engine and diverted to Philly," that passenger said. "Shrapnel hit the window, causing a serious injury; no other details about that, several medical personnel on the flight tended to the injured passenger." One passenger told the network the plane touched down somewhat normally, all things considered. It definitely was a stable landing, Kristopher Johnson said. When we finally landed it was relatively smooth. Kind of a typical landing. Southwest released a statement acknowledging the emergency landing, and said they were working with passengers and crews regarding the incident. 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 We are aware that Southwest flight #1380 from New York La Guardia (LGA) to Dallas Love Field (DAL) has diverted to Philadelphia International Airport (PHL). We are in the process of transporting customers and crew into the terminal. The aircraft, a Boeing 737-700, has 143 Customers and five Crewmembers onboard, the statement read. We are in the process of gathering more information. Safety is always our top priority at Southwest Airlines, and we are working diligently to support our customers and crews at this time. The airline, based in Dallas, is likely soon to overtake Delta to become the carrier that flies the highest number of domestic passengers. The Philadelphia airport remained open, but a Twitter account warned passengers to expect delays. A Southwest Airlines jet has made an emergency landing in Philadelphia after a piece of its engine broke off mid-flight and smashed a window, leading to a depressurisation that pulled a woman partly out of the cabin, according to family speaking to reporters. The plane landed safely after the incident, and firefighters could be seen responding to the scene while some people exited the aircraft on crutches. One person was taken to a nearby hospital with reported head trauma, and seven others were treated for minor wounds. One person was later confirmed to have died, though it was not immediately clear if it was the woman who was transported to the hospital. Passengers posted pictures of the damaged engine online, and one passenger, Marty Martinez, posted a live video on his Facebook page after the engine part damaged the window. The grainy footage showed one man putting a yellow oxygen mask on amid the chaos. One passenger, a woman, was partially ... was drawn out towards the out of the plane... she was pulled back by other passengers, Todd Bauer, the father of the female passenger who was partially sucked out of the plane, told NBC in a phone interview. Recommended NAACP issues advisory for travellers on American Airlines The plane was flying from New Yorks LaGuardia Airport on its way to Dallas. Another passenger told CNN that a piece of the planes engine had acted like shrapnel, causing a serious injury and forcing the plane to divert from their position west of Philadelphia. We left LaGuardia heading to Dallas and we were west of Philly when we lost the left side engine and diverted to Philly, they said. Shrapnel hit the window causing a serious injury; no other details about that, several medical personnel on the flight tended to the injured passenger. 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 But another passenger told the network the plane touched down normally. It definitely was a stable landing, Kristopher Johnson said. When we finally landed it was relatively smooth. Kind of a typical landing. Southwest released a statement acknowledging the emergency landing, and said they were working with passengers and crews regarding the incident. We are aware that Southwest flight #1380 from New York La Guardia (LGA) to Dallas Love Field (DAL) has diverted to Philadelphia International Airport (PHL). We are in the process of transporting customers and crew into the terminal. The aircraft, a Boeing 737-700, has 143 Customers and five Crewmembers onboard, the statement read. We are in the process of gathering more information. Safety is always our top priority at Southwest Airlines, and we are working diligently to support our customers and crews at this time. Southwest is statistically the worlds safest airline. Since starting operations in Texas in 1971, no passenger has been killed in a crash. The airline, based in Dallas, is likely soon to overtake Delta to become the carrier that flies the highest number of domestic passengers. The Philadelphia airport remained open, but a Twitter account warned passengers to expect delays. A judge has rejected Donald Trump and his personal lawyer Michael Cohen's requests to vet documents seized by the FBI, before prosecutors are allowed to see them. However, officials would not be allowed to immediately view documents seized during raids on Mr Cohens office, home and hotel room, Judge Kimba Wood ruled at a federal court in New York. Instead, she indicated that an independent lawyer could be appointed to check for records protected by attorney-client privilege, possibly with specific regards to Mr Cohen's communications with the US president. . Prosecutors argued that they will not violate attorney-client privilege, because they have set up a so-called filter team of unrelated investigators to review Mr Cohens electronic devices and documents first. Judge Wood also denied a request made by Mr Trumps lawyers for a temporary restraining order against the Department of Justice. The order would have prevented prosecutors from reviewing the files at all. The decision is a blow to the US president, who has called the FBI raids a total witch hunt and claimed they show attorney-client privilege is dead. Judge Kimba also forced Mr Cohen to reveal he had Fox News host, Sean Hannity, a well known Trump supporter, as a client. Mr Hannity has denied he was ever been represented by, or paid for services provided by Mr Cohen, who is the subject of a criminal investigation focused on his private finances and business interests. Colbert couldn't contain his joy over Sean Hannity being named as Trump lawyer Michael Cohen's mystery client While Judge Wood has not yet formally ruled on who would get access to the documents pertaining to Mr Trump first, she said she had faith in Southern District prosecutors, whose integrity is unimpeachable. The raids were widely seen as a major development for the president and his ongoing legal concerns. However, they were not conducted as a part of special counsel Robert Mueller's investigation into Russian meddling in the 2016 presidential election. Information leading to the raids was, however, reportedly provided by Mr Mueller's team. The seized documents reportedly include recordings between Mr Cohen and a lawyer for Stormy Daniels, the former adult actor who was paid $130,000 (91,000) in 2016 to keep quiet about her alleged affair with the US president. The warrant signed before the raids indicate federal prosecutors were seeking information related to the Daniels payment, as well as correspondence related to any efforts by Mr Cohen to suppress the disclosure of the alleged affair between Mr Trump and Playboy model Karen McDougal. 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 The warrant also indicated Mr Cohen is being investigated for bank fraud, wire fraud, and campaign finance issues. Outside the courthouse, Ms Daniels lawyer said the disclosure of Mr Hannity's connection to Mr Cohen showed that anyone who has been in contact with the lawyer should be worried. "I said last Friday and this weekend that Michael Cohen was radioactive, and anybody who has been associated with him in the past 20 years should be very concerned... about what secrets of theirs are in these documents," Michael Avenatti said. "The president has trusted Mr Cohen as his fixer for years." An attorney for Stormy Daniels, the adult film actress suing Donald Trump, has predicted the presidents longtime attorney will be indicted in the next 90 days. "From what Ive heard and from what Ive seen, theres no question that Michael Cohens going to be charged," attorney Michael Avenatti told MSNBC's Morning Joe. "Its only a question of when. And I think it's going to be in the next 90 days." His prediction came just over a week after FBI agents raided the offices of Mr Cohen, who has served as Mr Trump's personal fixer for more than a decade. Agents were seeking information on payments to Ms Daniels and one other woman, among other things, according to the New York Times. Mr Avenatti, who is representing Ms Daniels in her suits against Mr Trump and Mr Cohen, called the information obtained in the raid significant, and said the investigation into Mr Cohen had taken on an enormous amount of momentum in recent days. He also predicted that Mr Cohen would choose to give up information on Mr Trump, rather than face a full jail sentence. Egged on by host Joe Scarborough, the attorney claimed Mr Trump had stiff armed Mr Cohen by leaving him behind in New York after he was elected. 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 Based on my experience with white collar criminal investigations and prosecutions, the likelihood of [Mr Cohen] not rolling over is very, very slim, Mr Avenatti said. He added: You think Michael Cohens wife is going to advise him to take a 20-year bullet for the president? I doubt it. Representatives for Mr Cohen did not immediately respond to a request for comment. Mr Cohen's attorney, Stephen Ryan, has previously called the raid "completely inappropriate and unnecessary". "It resulted in the unnecessary seizure of protected attorney-client communications between a lawyer and his clients," Mr Ryan told USA Today. "These government tactics are also wrong because Mr Cohen has cooperated completely with all government entities, including providing thousands of non-privileged documents to the Congress and sitting for depositions under oath." Donald Trump rages over search of his lawyer Michael Cohen's office, describing it as a 'break-in' Mr Cohen has admitted to paying Ms Daniels $130,000 out of his own pocket, though he disputes the actress account that the payment was hush money to keep her silent about an affair with Mr Trump. The president has denied the affair occurred. Ms Daniels real name Stephanie Clifford attended Mr Cohens court hearing on Monday, where the attorney argued that the documents seized in the raid should be protected by attorney-client privilege. A federal judge denied his request to designate which documents should be available to investigators, according to the Associated Press. Speaking to reporters outside the courtroom, Ms Daniels gave an ominous statement in which she claimed Mr Cohen never thought that the little man, or especially women and even more, women like me mattered. My attorney and I are committed to making sure that everyone finds out the truth and the facts of what happened, she said, and I give my word that we will not rest until that happens. The phrases Impeach Trump and Theres a Rapist in the White House were projected in lights on to the facade of the Trump International Hotel in Washington, DC. Care2, a social network of 45 million people, beamed the messages above the entrance of the building located just a few minutes walk from the White House as part of Sexual Assault Awareness Month and in light of the 20 women that have accused President Donald Trump of sexual misconduct. The president has denied all allegations of wrongdoing. The charity also planned on projecting Trump Is a Serial Sexual Assaulter, Groper-in-Chief and Morally Unfit above the hotel entrance, the last of which mimics former FBI Director James Comeys quote about the president from a recent interview. The group has also updated a petition it started last year to impeach the president, a call echoed by some members of Congress as well, like Representatives Maxine Waters, Al Green, and Betty McCollum. Currently, the petition has 350,000 signatures. Care2 said in a statement the goal of projecting the messages on his hotel was to honour "the survivors of Trumps predatory behaviour". None of the women's allegations have been proven in a court. It brings attention not only to his survivors but to all survivors that this is a problem, that we cannot allow these predators in power to remain in power, and that when the election comes up we hope people remember this and people remember the survivors, and that we have the power to take them down, Care2 strategist Lacey Kohlmoos told Newsweek. The group is not the first to use this method of opposing the president. In December 2017, Washington DC-based advocacy group Human Rights Campaign, partnered with artist Robin Bell for the temporary installation as a declaration from the LGBTQ community, the group had said. The words foetus, entitlement, diversity, transgender, vulnerable,evidence-based, and science-based were briefly seen beamed on the front of the hotel. The seven words Trump 'banned' a health agency from using were projected onto his hotel The US Centers for Disease Control (CDC) was told by Trump administration it could not use those seven words in its 2019 budget documents. A CDC analyst told the Washington Post those in the agency could not believe the limits placed on it by the administration. It was very much, Are you serious? Are you kidding, said the analyst. The Post had reported that it was not a total ban on using all the seven terms. Instead of science-based or evidence-based, the suggested phrase is CDC bases its recommendations on science in consideration with community standards and wishes, the person said. In other cases, no replacement words were immediately offered, the newspaper reported. Less than a week after the Republican governor of Vermont signed the first significant gun control package in state history into law, officials have used the new restrictions to stop a school shooting plot suspect from holding on to his guns. After Governor Phil Scott signed the package which includes a ban on high capacity magazines, raising the age to buy a gun in the state, and a provision that makes it easier for police to remove guns from people who appear to pose a threat a judge in the state signed a so-called extreme risk prevention order that said 18-year-old Jack Sawyer poses an extreme threat of physical harm to himself and others, and therefore cannot possess a firearm. Prosecutors say that Mr Sawyer kept a diary with the title Journal of an Active Shooter, and that he had created a detailed plan for a shooting at Fair Haven Union High School with the goal of killing more people than any other school shooting in American history. Mr Scott who has been generally well received by Americas gun lobby, the National Rifle Association, before said that he was inspired in part to sign the new gun control legislation because of Mr Sawyers alleged plan, which was foiled two months ago. The new laws also come in the months after the shooting at Marjory Stoneman Douglas High School in Parkland, Florida, which has resulted in an ongoing national debate about gun control and violence in the United States. But, the Vermont Supreme Court has recently ruled that Mr Sawyer cannot be held without bail, leading to questions about whether state prosecutors will be able to go forward with charges against the 18-year-old, and whether he will be kept locked up until trial. The extreme risk order could keep him from obtaining a firearm if he is eventually released. March for Our Lives in pictures Show all 13 1 /13 March for Our Lives in pictures March for Our Lives in pictures Demonstrators chant during the protest for gun legislation and school safety AP March for Our Lives in pictures Trevon Tre Bosley, 19, of Chicago, the brother of Terrell Bosley who was killed in 2006 in a case of mistaken identity, speaks during the rally AP March for Our Lives in pictures Marjory Stoneman Douglas High School student Delaney Tarr speaks at the rally AFP/Getty March for Our Lives in pictures Protestors line the streets in Washington Getty Images March for Our Lives in pictures People arrive for the March For Our Lives rally against gun violence in Washington, DC AFP/Getty March for Our Lives in pictures Protestors carrying placards in Washington AFP/Getty March for Our Lives in pictures Protestors hold up placards in Washington AFP/Getty March for Our Lives in pictures Schoolchildren wear targets ahead of the rally Getty March for Our Lives in pictures Attendees congregate in preparation for the march Getty March for Our Lives in pictures Students brought a host of innovative placards AFP/Getty March for Our Lives in pictures The movements main demand is the banning of assault rifles Getty March for Our Lives in pictures Since the Florida shooting, students have called for urgent gun reform AFP/Getty March for Our Lives in pictures In the wake of the Florida attack, President Donald Trump called for teachers to be armed AFP/Getty He has been charged with aggravated attempted murder, attempted first degree murder, and aggravated assault with a weapon. The court noted that Mr Sawyer had not actually committed those crimes just prepared to do so. In response to those rulings, and the uncertainty around them, the community around Fair Haven Union High School is on edge. People are frustrated, they are nervous, theyre scared, Mark Gutel, a cafe owner, told the Associated Press. Because thats a serious crime, it was a serious threat a credible threat. The high school itself is ramping up security, eyeing Mr Sawyers potential release. When contacted for comment, School Superintendent Brooke Olsen-Farrell referred The Independent to letters she sent to students and their families, noting the increased security. The school has undergone security audits in all of its buildings, will deploy more law enforcement during school hours, will implement swipe-card access, and is restricting access to the school. Police have shot and killed a 26-year-old black man in a packed car outside of a Walmart in what his family say was an overly aggressive police response that led to an unnecessary death. Police in Barstow, California killed Diante Yarber, a father of three, earlier this month after attempting to stop the vehicle he was in. A report from Barstow police says that Mr Yarber was wanted for questioning in a stolen vehicle case, and that he struck two patrol cars before an officer opened fire. Dozens of gunshots can be heard in a shaky video recorded by a witness of the shooting. Mr Yarber is said to have been unarmed at the time of the shooting, which also injured a young woman in the vehicle. Recommended Sacramento PD announce new body cam rules after Stephon Clark death The police took him away for no reason, Brittany Chandler, the mother of one of Mr Yarbers children, told the Guardian. The police should be held accountable for this They are sick people for them to be able to shoot someone down in broad daylight. Previous reports from the police and local media in March indicate that Mr Yarber had been sentenced to four years probation last year for child abuse or endangerment, and resisting or obstructing an officer, according to court records. He was also sentenced to more than a year in prison in August of 2011 for pointing a shotgun at a group of people, and then shooting overhead, other records show. Mr Yarber was taken into police custody in mid-March on felony charges for possessing a firearm, but managed to escape from custody at the time. The shooting is the latest police involved shooting of black men to spark outrage locally and across the country after northern California police shot and killed Stephon Clark weeks ago. Mr Clark was standing in the backyard of his grandmothers home when police, responding to a 911 call in the neighbourhood, shot him. He was reportedly holding only a cell phone. 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 An attorney for the Yarber family said that the 26-year-old was not armed at the time, and that the car which police contend rammed into a first patrol car while reversing, before accelerating into a second posed no risk to officers. They saw a car full of black people sitting in front of a Walmart, and they decided that was suspicious, Lee Merritt, the attorney, told the Guardian. They just began pouring bullets. Its irresponsible. Its dangerous. Its mind boggling, the use of force. Mr Merritt continued to say that he believed Mr Yarber was trying to shield the other occupants of the car when he was killed. The other victim, a 23-year-old woman, was initially taken into the back of a police car, but was later airlifted to receive medical attention. Mr Yarber was reportedly driving the car of his cousin, and the vehicle had not been reported stolen. Four elephants including a young calf were killed after a herd was hit by a train while they walked across the tracks. The animals were trekking through the Bagdihi forest range when they were struck at an unmanned level crossing at 3.30am. It's thought the herd had travelled 12.5 miles from a wildlife reserve and three cranes were used to move the bodies from the tracks, in India. Locals gathered at the scene to pray and leave floral tributes to the animals, which Hindus believe are a living incarnation of the god Ganesh. Jharsuguda divisional forest officer Sushant Kumar said: All the four elephants were killed in the impact of collision. 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 Although there was no elephant movement in the area for the past three to four months, the railway authorities were duly informed to reduce train speed in that section. Besides, they were also requested to follow guidelines including making continuous hooting along the stretch. SWNS The first known epidemic of drug-resistant typhoid is spreading in Pakistan, raising fears that more diseases worldwide are heading towards being untreatable. The typhoid superbug, which is resistant to five types of antibiotics, has infected at least 850 people since 2016. Experts fear it could radiate globally, replacing weaker strains of the disease, The New York Times reported. There is only one oral antibiotic left that is effective against the strain, but with just one more genetic mutation, doctors would be powerless to fight it, say researchers. It is the latest sign the world could be heading towards a return to a pre-antibiotic era, following increasing worldwide concern about widespread overuse of the drugs. Without antibiotics, simple illnesses and common infections would become deadly. The World Health Organisation has previously described antibiotic resistance as a global health emergency. This isnt just about typhoid, Dr Rumina Hasan, a pathology professor at the Aga Khan University in Pakistan, told the paper. Antibiotic resistance is a threat to all of modern medicine and the scary part is were out of options. Four deaths have been reported so far, according to Pakistans National Institute of Health Islamabad. At least one travel-related case has been detected in the UK. Researchers from Britains Wellcome Sanger Institute who analysed the genetics of the new typhoid strain found it had mutated and acquired an extra piece of DNA to become resistant to multiple antibiotics. Pakistani researchers say poor infrastructure, low vaccination rates and overpopulated city centres all contribute to the spread of typhoid, which is common in the country. 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 Typhoid is a highly contagious infection contracted by consuming contaminated foods or drinks. Symptoms include nausea, fever, abdominal pain and pink spots on the chest. Untreated, it can be fatal. About 21m people contract typhoid each year, and about 161,000 die, according to the World Health Organisation. The only remaining effective drug against the disease is Azithromycin. The European Commission has said it wants to open talks with Albania and Macedonia to allow the two countries to join the European Union. EU foreign affairs chief Federica Mogherini said the two countries had made significant progress in implementing the reforms demanded by Brussels and that they could join their neighbours Montenegro and Serbia, which are already in negotiations. The move comes ahead of a major EU summit in Sofia next month to discuss the Western Balkan countries relationship with the union, and the week a pro-EU president was elected in Montenegro. Ms Mogherini suggested that Bosnia and Kosovo, two other countries in the region that want to join, had more work to do before talks could start with them but did not rule out their future accession, stating that the Western Balkans are Europe, and will be part of the European Unions future. Over the past year and beyond partners from the region have delivered very important reforms across the board and have modernised their economies. Out of six Western Balkan partners, two, Montenegro and Serbia, have progressed well in the negotiations, she said. Today the Commission recommends that the Council decides to open accession negotiations with Albania and with the Former Yugoslav Republic of Macedonia. the Western Balkans are Europe, and will be part of the European Unions future Federica Mogherini We are also working towards an opinion on Bosnia and Herzegovinas application, and with the Kosovo authorities, we are working towards further progress on the basis of the stabilisation and association agreement we have. She added: I have to say that over the last three years we have seen results that were clearly considered impossible to be achieved when we started our mandate. Ms Mogherini said she would be travelling to the region on Tuesday evening to meet with national leaders there. The European Commission has produced seven individual reports on the Western Balkan countries and Turkey, and their prospects for accession to the EU. All have said they want to join. The High Representative for Foreign Affairs said membership would be conditional on the continuation of reforms. World news in pictures Show all 50 1 /50 World news in pictures World news in pictures 30 September 2020 Pope Francis prays with priests at the end of a limited public audience at the San Damaso courtyard in The Vatican AFP via Getty World news in pictures 29 September 2020 A girl's silhouette is seen from behind a fabric in a tent along a beach by Beit Lahia in the northern Gaza Strip AFP via Getty World news in pictures 28 September 2020 A Chinese woman takes a photo of herself in front of a flower display dedicated to frontline health care workers during the COVID-19 pandemic in Beijing, China. China will celebrate national day marking the founding of the People's Republic of China on October 1st Getty World news in pictures 27 September 2020 The Glass Mountain Inn burns as the Glass Fire moves through the area in St. Helena, California. The fast moving Glass fire has burned over 1,000 acres and has destroyed homes Getty World news in pictures 26 September 2020 A villager along with a child offers prayers next to a carcass of a wild elephant that officials say was electrocuted in Rani Reserve Forest on the outskirts of Guwahati, India AFP via Getty World news in pictures 25 September 2020 The casket of late Supreme Court Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg is seen in Statuary Hall in the US Capitol to lie in state in Washington, DC AFP via Getty World news in pictures 24 September 2020 An anti-government protester holds up an image of a pro-democracy commemorative plaque at a rally outside Thailand's parliament in Bangkok, as activists gathered to demand a new constitution AFP via Getty World news in pictures 23 September 2020 A whale stranded on a beach in Macquarie Harbour on the rugged west coast of Tasmania, as hundreds of pilot whales have died in a mass stranding in southern Australia despite efforts to save them, with rescuers racing to free a few dozen survivors The Mercury/AFP via Getty World news in pictures 22 September 2020 State civil employee candidates wearing face masks and shields take a test in Surabaya AFP via Getty World news in pictures 21 September 2020 A man sweeps at the Taj Mahal monument on the day of its reopening after being closed for more than six months due to the coronavirus pandemic AP World news in pictures 20 September 2020 A deer looks for food in a burnt area, caused by the Bobcat fire, in Pearblossom, California EPA World news in pictures 19 September 2020 Anti-government protesters hold their mobile phones aloft as they take part in a pro-democracy rally in Bangkok. Tens of thousands of pro-democracy protesters massed close to Thailand's royal palace, in a huge rally calling for PM Prayut Chan-O-Cha to step down and demanding reforms to the monarchy AFP via Getty World news in pictures 18 September 2020 Supporters of Iraqi Shi'ite cleric Moqtada al-Sadr maintain social distancing as they attend Friday prayers after the coronavirus disease restrictions were eased, in Kufa mosque, near Najaf, Iraq Reuters World news in pictures 17 September 2020 A protester climbs on The Triumph of the Republic at 'the Place de la Nation' as thousands of protesters take part in a demonstration during a national day strike called by labor unions asking for better salary and against jobs cut in Paris, France EPA World news in pictures 16 September 2020 A fire raging near the Lazzaretto of Ancona in Italy. The huge blaze broke out overnight at the port of Ancona. Firefighters have brought the fire under control but they expected to keep working through the day EPA World news in pictures 15 September 2020 Russian opposition leader Alexei Navalny posing for a selfie with his family at Berlin's Charite hospital. In an Instagram post he said he could now breathe independently following his suspected poisoning last month Alexei Navalny/Instagram/AFP World news in pictures 14 September 2020 Japan's Prime Minister Shinzo Abe, Chief Cabinet Secretary Yoshihide Suga, former Defense Minister Shigeru Ishiba and former Foreign Minister Fumio Kishida celebrate after Suga was elected as new head of the ruling party at the Liberal Democratic Party's leadership election in Tokyo Reuters World news in pictures 13 September 2020 A man stands behind a burning barricade during the fifth straight day of protests against police brutality in Bogota AFP via Getty World news in pictures 12 September 2020 Police officers block and detain protesters during an opposition rally to protest the official presidential election results in Minsk, Belarus. Daily protests calling for the authoritarian president's resignation are now in their second month AP World news in pictures 11 September 2020 Members of 'Omnium Cultural' celebrate the 20th 'Festa per la llibertat' ('Fiesta for the freedom') to mark the Day of Catalonia in Barcelona. Omnion Cultural fights for the independence of Catalonia EPA World news in pictures 10 September 2020 The Moria refugee camp, two days after Greece's biggest migrant camp, was destroyed by fire. Thousands of asylum seekers on the island of Lesbos are now homeless AFP via Getty World news in pictures 9 September 2020 Pope Francis takes off his face mask as he arrives by car to hold a limited public audience at the San Damaso courtyard in The Vatican AFP via Getty World news in pictures 8 September 2020 A home is engulfed in flames during the "Creek Fire" in the Tollhouse area of California AFP via Getty World news in pictures 7 September 2020 A couple take photos along a sea wall of the waves brought by Typhoon Haishen in the eastern port city of Sokcho AFP via Getty World news in pictures 6 September 2020 Novak Djokovic and a tournament official tends to a linesperson who was struck with a ball by Djokovic during his match against Pablo Carreno Busta at the US Open USA Today Sports/Reuters World news in pictures 5 September 2020 Protesters confront police at the Shrine of Remembrance in Melbourne, Australia, during an anti-lockdown rally AFP via Getty World news in pictures 4 September 2020 A woman looks on from a rooftop as rescue workers dig through the rubble of a damaged building in Beirut. A search began for possible survivors after a scanner detected a pulse one month after the mega-blast at the adjacent port AFP via Getty World news in pictures 3 September 2020 A full moon next to the Virgen del Panecillo statue in Quito, Ecuador EPA World news in pictures 2 September 2020 A Palestinian woman reacts as Israeli forces demolish her animal shed near Hebron in the Israeli-occupied West Bank Reuters World news in pictures 1 September 2020 Students protest against presidential elections results in Minsk TUT.BY/AFP via Getty World news in pictures 31 August 2020 The pack rides during the 3rd stage of the Tour de France between Nice and Sisteron AFP via Getty World news in pictures 30 August 2020 Law enforcement officers block a street during a rally of opposition supporters protesting against presidential election results in Minsk, Belarus Reuters World news in pictures 29 August 2020 A woman holding a placard reading "Stop Censorship - Yes to the Freedom of Expression" shouts in a megaphone during a protest against the mandatory wearing of face masks in Paris. Masks, which were already compulsory on public transport, in enclosed public spaces, and outdoors in Paris in certain high-congestion areas around tourist sites, were made mandatory outdoors citywide on August 28 to fight the rising coronavirus infections AFP via Getty World news in pictures 28 August 2020 Japanese Prime Minister Shinzo Abe bows to the national flag at the start of a press conference at the prime minister official residence in Tokyo. Abe announced he will resign over health problems, in a bombshell development that kicks off a leadership contest in the world's third-largest economy AFP via Getty World news in pictures 27 August 2020 Residents take cover behind a tree trunk from rubber bullets fired by South African Police Service (SAPS) in Eldorado Park, near Johannesburg, during a protest by community members after a 16-year old boy was reported dead AFP via Getty World news in pictures 26 August 2020 People scatter rose petals on a statue of Mother Teresa marking her 110th birth anniversary in Ahmedabad AFP via Getty World news in pictures 25 August 2020 An aerial view shows beach-goers standing on salt formations in the Dead Sea near Ein Bokeq, Israel Reuters World news in pictures 24 August 2020 Health workers use a fingertip pulse oximeter and check the body temperature of a fisherwoman inside the Dharavi slum during a door-to-door Covid-19 coronavirus screening in Mumbai AFP via Getty World news in pictures 23 August 2020 People carry an idol of the Hindu god Ganesh, the deity of prosperity, to immerse it off the coast of the Arabian sea during the Ganesh Chaturthi festival in Mumbai, India Reuters World news in pictures 22 August 2020 Firefighters watch as flames from the LNU Lightning Complex fires approach a home in Napa County, California AP World news in pictures 21 August 2020 Members of the Israeli security forces arrest a Palestinian demonstrator during a rally to protest against Israel's plan to annex parts of the occupied West Bank AFP via Getty World news in pictures 20 August 2020 A man pushes his bicycle through a deserted road after prohibitory orders were imposed by district officials for a week to contain the spread of the Covid-19 in Kathmandu AFP via Getty World news in pictures 19 August 2020 A car burns while parked at a residence in Vacaville, California. Dozens of fires are burning out of control throughout Northern California as fire resources are spread thin AFP via Getty World news in pictures 18 August 2020 Students use their mobile phones as flashlights at an anti-government rally at Mahidol University in Nakhon Pathom. Thailand has seen near-daily protests in recent weeks by students demanding the resignation of Prime Minister Prayut Chan-O-Cha AFP via Getty World news in pictures 17 August 2020 Members of the Kayapo tribe block the BR163 highway during a protest outside Novo Progresso in Para state, Brazil. Indigenous protesters blocked a major transamazonian highway to protest against the lack of governmental support during the COVID-19 novel coronavirus pandemic and illegal deforestation in and around their territories AFP via Getty World news in pictures 16 August 2020 Lightning forks over the San Francisco-Oakland Bay Bridge as a storm passes over Oakland AP World news in pictures 15 August 2020 Belarus opposition supporters gather near the Pushkinskaya metro station where Alexander Taraikovsky, a 34-year-old protester died on August 10, during their protest rally in central Minsk AFP via Getty World news in pictures 14 August 2020 AlphaTauri's driver Daniil Kvyat takes part in the second practice session at the Circuit de Catalunya in Montmelo near Barcelona ahead of the Spanish F1 Grand Prix AFP via Getty World news in pictures 13 August 2020 Soldiers of the Brazilian Armed Forces during a disinfection of the Christ The Redeemer statue at the Corcovado mountain prior to the opening of the touristic attraction in Rio AFP via Getty World news in pictures 12 August 2020 Young elephant bulls tussle playfully on World Elephant Day at the Amboseli National Park in Kenya AFP via Getty The European Council, which is made up to the 28 EU leaders and next meets in June, would have to sign off the European Commissions recommendation for it to become official. Other than the Balkan states, Turkey has also been a candidate country since 1999 but talks have stalled and effectively stopped, with several EU leaders saying they would not permit Turkey to join. A Frenchman has become the first person in history to undergo two full face transplants. Jerome Hamon, 43, left hospital last week for the first time since the groundbreaking surgery that has led his countrys media to dub him the man with three faces. I feel very well in myself, he told reporters, adding he was adjusting to his new identity. Mr Hamon suffers from neurofibromatosis type 1, a genetic disorder that caused disfiguring tumours on his face. In 2010 he underwent the worlds first full facial graft that included tear ducts and eyelids. The procedure was a success, but five years later he was prescribed antibiotics for a common cold which were incompatible with the immunosuppressant drugs he was taking to lower the risk of the transplant being rejected. His body began to reject the new face in 2016 and in November surgeons were forced to remove it. Unable to see, hear or speak, Mr Hamon lived in a room at Georges-Pompidou hospital in Paris for two months before a new donor the face of a 22-year-old who recently died - was found. He underwent the unprecedented surgery on 15 and 16 January this year. Surgeon Laurent Lantieri next to a screen showing different stages of his patient Jerome Hamons surgery (AFP/Getty Images) The operation was carried out by Professor Laurent Lantieri, a hand and face transplant specialist who had performed Mr Hamons initial surgery eight years earlier. Mr Hamon underwent three months of special blood treatment to fend of the increased risk of rejection, and the procedure appears to have been a success. Today, we know that a double transplant is feasible, its no longer in the field of research, Professor Lantieri told Le Parisien. Mr Hamon does not yet have full control of his features, but he is optimistic about the future. Last week he left the hospital for a weekend to visit his family in Brittany. If I hadnt accepted this new face it would have been terrible, he told AFP news agency. Its a question of identity... But here we are, its good, its me. Bernard Cholley, the hospitals professor of anaesthesia and intensive care, said medics were amazed by [Mr Hamons] courage, overwhelmed by his strength and character. He added: He never complained. We felt we were dealing with someone exceptional. A broken spine, signs of electric torture, asphyxiation, knife wounds and rape these were just a few of the grim and unexpected findings of an official medical report into the death of a Russian inventor in pretrial custody. Valery Pshenichny, 56, was jailed in January after being accused of embezzling 100m rubles (1.1m) in a defence contract to develop 3D submarine models. Just three weeks later, his body was found hanging from an improvised lace noose in his St Petersburg prison cell. Prison authorities initially insisted it was suicide, but friends of the businessman sensed something was up. Perhaps he had been driven to a heart attack, they suggested, and then denied treatment. The strong and clear headed inventor was not an obvious candidate to take his own life. His wife also wondered how a lace appeared inside the prison from a hoodie she couldnt remember. Recommended Trump halts plans for new sanctions on Russia Surprisingly, authorities have agreed foul play was involved, and have signalled a dramatic departure in their investigation by reportedly collecting DNA samples from prison guards. The apparent brutality of Pshenichnys case has already brought comparisons with another Russian prison scandal, the death of lawyer Sergei Magnitsky in November 2009. The lawyer had called out a massive VAT ruse conducted by tax officials but was instead imprisoned for his troubles. He died in pretrial custody in excruciating pain after being deliberately and repeatedly denied medical treatment. Magnitskys boss, the exiled billionaire Bill Browder, has since accused a number of high ranking officials in the Russian government of being directly responsible for his death. Like Sergei Magnitsky, Pshenichnys problems began when he accused another of fraud. In this case, it was a former business partner, Andrei Petrov, who the entrepreneur accused of stealing company money. A criminal case and arrest followed in 2016. But in the course of the ensuing trial, Mr Petrov successfully managed to turn the tables. It was, instead, Valery Pshenichny who was found guilty of fraud and inflating the cost of a defence contract. 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 Friends have described Pshenichny as a Russian Elon Musk. His work in 3D modelling was groundbreaking and had potential application in the remote repair of submarines. The disputed multimillion ruble contract he signed with the ministry of defence to was expected to be followed by contracts in the oil and gas industry. Pshenichny had reportedly even prepared a patent application, but he would die before ever having a chance to submit it. According to lawyer Larissa Fon-Arev, the entrepreneur was given early hints that he would see out his days in prison. When state investigators arrived at his home on 16 January to conduct a search, they were accompanied by security service agents, she told The Independent. Recommended Telegram to be blocked in Russia over encryption argument They asked him to take a good look at his suits," she said. "He was told he wouldnt need them anymore, save for his coffin. Just before his death, Pshenichny also passed letters to his wife, Natalya, indicating he had been the subject of extortion. The notes urged her not to pay anything, Ms Fon-Arev revealed. Suspicious deaths in custody are not altogether rare in Russias corrupted justice system. What is unusual is for official investigations to return with anything other than a whitewash. In this case, they seem to have worked without interference from prison officers, the activist Zoya Svetova told The Independent. This is generally unheard of, but it might simply mean the officers were in overdrive and had become complacent. Ms Fon-Arev said that she hoped the medical report would eventually lead to convictions and justice for Pshenichnys family. This death happened in a closed government institution, with my client defenceless against a state that was supposed to protect him, she said. I cant let myself think there wont be a proper investigation and trial. @alextdaugherty Sen. Marco Rubio has hired Michael Needham, the CEO of a conservative political organization that once battled with the Florida Republican over his support of a comprehensive immigration bill, as his new chief of staff. "Mike brings a wealth of policy, political and management experience that will greatly complement our offices mission of serving the people of Florida and leading the effort to modernize the conservative movement in the 21st century," Rubio said in a statement. "Mike understands and shares these goals, and I look forward to his contributions." Needham, 36, was the CEO of Heritage Action for America, a conservative organization that pushed Republican lawmakers on a litany of issues including opposing comprehensive immigration reform and supporting the 2013 government shutdown over Obamacare funding. Needham will serve as Rubio's top advisor and oversee his staff of dozens in Washington and in various offices throughout Florida. Rubio's former chief of staff Clint Reed was fired in January for violating "policies regarding proper relations between a supervisor and their subordinates." Frances foreign ministry has said it is very likely that proof has disappeared from the location of a suspected poison gas attack in Syria, adding it was essential that international inspectors be given full access to the site. Inspectors from the Organisation for the Prohibition of Chemical Weapons (OPCW) travelled to Syria last week to inspect the site, but did not gain access to Douma, which is now under government control after revel forces withdrew, until Tuesday afternoon. It is very likely that proof and essential elements are disappearing from this site, the foreign ministry said in a statement. It follows a row between the US and UK, on one hand, and Moscow on the other, over inspectors access to Douma. Theresa May has accused Russia of blocking the OPCW from travelling to the area, while Kenneth Ward, the US envoy to the body, voiced fears the location may have been tampered with. Russias foreign minister, Sergei Lavrov, strongly denied any tampering had taken place while other Russian officials said inspectors had not been able to visit Douma because of Saturdays air strikes, and because they lacked the correct permits. I can guarantee that Russia has not tampered with the site, Mr Lavrov told the BBC. Douma chemical attack: Syria war in pictures Show all 13 1 /13 Douma chemical attack: Syria war in pictures Douma chemical attack: Syria war in pictures A child receiving oxygen through respirators following an alleged poison gas attack in the rebel-held town of Douma AP Douma chemical attack: Syria war in pictures A child is treated in a hospital in Douma White Helmets Douma chemical attack: Syria war in pictures An image grab taken from a video released by the Douma City Coordination Committee shows unidentified volunteers spraying a man with water at a make-shift hospital following an alleged chemical attack AFP/Douma City Coordination Committee Douma chemical attack: Syria war in pictures People cover their faces after an alleged chemical attack in Douma EPA Douma chemical attack: Syria war in pictures A medical worker giving a toddler oxygen through respirators following an alleged poison gas attack in the opposition-held town of Douma. Syrian Civil Defense White Helmets via AP Douma chemical attack: Syria war in pictures An image grab taken from a video released by the Douma City Coordination Committee shows unidentified volunteers spraying a girl with water at a make-shift hospital following an alleged chemical attack AFP/Douma City Coordination Committee Douma chemical attack: Syria war in pictures A child is treated in a hospital in Douma White Helmets/Handout via Reuters Douma chemical attack: Syria war in pictures Injured victims of an alleged chemical attack in Douma EPA Douma chemical attack: Syria war in pictures An image grab taken from a video released by the Douma City Coordination Committee shows unidentified volunteers spraying a man with water at a make-shift hospital following an alleged chemical attack AFP/Douma City Coordination Committee Douma chemical attack: Syria war in pictures A Syrian man mourns after an alleged chemical attack Alamy Douma chemical attack: Syria war in pictures People stand in front of damaged buildings, in the town of Douma, the site of a suspected chemical weapons attack, near Damascus, Syria AP Photo/Hassan Ammar Douma chemical attack: Syria war in pictures Rubble lines a street in Douma, at the site of a suspected chemical weapons attack AP Douma chemical attack: Syria war in pictures Rubble fills a street in Douma, the site of a suspected chemical weapons attack, near Damascus AP France, the UK and the US hit Syria with retaliatory air strikes after blaming Bashar al-Assads regime for the alleged chemical attack in Douma on 7 April. Both Ms May and Emmanuel Macron have faced criticism over the action, with MPs in Britain preparing for a second Commons debate on the issue this afternoon. Additional reporting by agencies Close Syria bombing: EU 'understands' recent airstrikes but calls for 'urgent' resumption of peace talks Chemical weapons inspectors have entered Douma, the location of the alleged poison gas attack on 7 April, according to Syrian state media. The UK and US had accused Russia and Syria of blocking the Organisation for the Prohibition of Chemical Weapons (OPCW) team from the area, which Russia denied. Moscow had previously said it would grant the inspectors access on Wednesday, after suggesting any delay was due to Saturdays joint air strikes and a lack of proper permits an assertion denied in turn by the UN. On Tuesday, France said it was very likely that evidence was disappearing from Douma while inspectors waited in Damascus to be allowed in. Please allow a moment for the live blog to load British MPs on Tuesday held a second emergency debate on the use of Britains armed forces in Saturdays air strikes. Jeremy Corbyn and others have criticised Theresa May for not giving parliament a vote on military action, but the prime minister defended the bombings as a limited, targeted strike on a legal basis that has been used before designed to disrupt Syrias chemical weapons capability. Syria bombings: US, UK and French military air strikes wreckage Show all 13 1 /13 Syria bombings: US, UK and French military air strikes wreckage Syria bombings: US, UK and French military air strikes wreckage The wreckage of the Scientific Studies and Research Centre in the Barzeh district, north of Damascus, which was targeted by the US, UK and France air strikes. AFP/Getty Syria bombings: US, UK and French military air strikes wreckage A Syrian soldier films the damage of the Syrian Scientific Research Center surrounded by papers and rubble. AP Syria bombings: US, UK and French military air strikes wreckage Firefighrers extinguish smoke that rises from the damage. The Pentagon says none of the missiles filed by the U.S. and its allies was deflected by Syrian air defenses, rebutting claims by the Russian and Syrian governments. AP Syria bombings: US, UK and French military air strikes wreckage The wreckage of part of the Scientific Studies and Research Centre compound . AFP/Getty Syria bombings: US, UK and French military air strikes wreckage Part of a building collapsing, surrounded by the wreckage. AFP/Getty Syria bombings: US, UK and French military air strikes wreckage Further damaged to the Scientific Studies and Research Centre compound. AFP/Getty Syria bombings: US, UK and French military air strikes wreckage Lt. Gen. Kenneth McKenzie, the director of the Joint Staff at the Pentagon, also says there also is no indication that Russian air defense systems were employed early Saturday in Syria. AP Syria bombings: US, UK and French military air strikes wreckage A Syrian soldier sprays water on the wreckage. AFP/Getty Syria bombings: US, UK and French military air strikes wreckage Syrian state news agency SANA reported several missiles hit a research centre in Barzeh, north of Damascus, "destroying a building that included scientific labs and a training centre". AFP/Getty Syria bombings: US, UK and French military air strikes wreckage A Syrian soldier films the damage. AP Syria bombings: US, UK and French military air strikes wreckage Damage to the Scientific Research Center building that was hit by the strikes. EPA Syria bombings: US, UK and French military air strikes wreckage The Scientific Studies and Research Centre was one of the targeted buildings by the US, UK and France. AFP/Getty Syria bombings: US, UK and French military air strikes wreckage Further damage to the centre. EPA The Government won the support of MPs at a symbolic vote on the issue of whether it should consult parliament before taking military action in Syria. The 317 to 256 vote went against a call by Mr Corbyn to protest Ms Mays decision to launch strikes against Syria without first seeking approval. Upcoming talks between North Korea and South Korea should seek to formally end the decades-old Korean War with a peace treaty, a South Korean official said - an outcome Donald Trump endorsed as his administration prepares for an unprecedented summit with North Korean leader Kim Jong-un. The conflict that fractured the Korean Peninsula in the 1950s ended in a truce rather than the signing of a peace treaty. A recent thaw in relations between the two countries is fuelling hopes of an enduring detente - and a more definitive end to the war than a 1953 armistice has provided. A peace treaty should be signed in the inter-Korean summit so that we can build peace and ensure peaceful coexistence, South Korean cultural minister Do Jong-When told reporters, according to the Financial Times. In remarks to reporters, Mr Trump said South Korea has plans to meet with North Korea to see if they can end the war and threw his weight behind the effort. Subject to a deal, they would certainly have my blessing and they do have my blessing to discuss that, Mr Trump said. The planned inter-Korean summit builds on a sustained diplomatic overture from Pyongyang that reversed tense months of weapons tests and belligerent rhetoric. North Korea: A road trip on the edge of the Chinese border Show all 20 1 /20 North Korea: A road trip on the edge of the Chinese border North Korea: A road trip on the edge of the Chinese border People have their picture taken with North Korea in the background, in Tumen, China. In the Chinese city of Dandong, signs of neighbouring North Korea are pervasive. REUTERS North Korea: A road trip on the edge of the Chinese border A North Korean woman is photographed from the Chinese side of the Yalu River near the town of Changbai, China as she walks between houses in the North Korean town of Hyesan. A week-long road trip along China's side of its border with North Korea revealed stark contrasts between China's bright towns and North Korea's dark villages. REUTERS North Korea: A road trip on the edge of the Chinese border North Korean souvenirs are displayed for sale on the banks of the Yalu River in Dandong in Liaoning province, China. In the Chinese city of Dandong, signs of neighbouring North Korea are pervasive. Reuters North Korea: A road trip on the edge of the Chinese border A large screen, which faces North Korea, broadcasts propaganda videos on an island on the Yalu River between North Korea and China, in the town of Linjiang in Jilin province, China. A week-long road trip along China's side of its border with North Korea revealed stark contrasts between China's bright towns and North Korea's dark villages. REUTERS North Korea: A road trip on the edge of the Chinese border A piece of clothing is used to make a gap in barbed wire near the closed bridge over the Yalu River on the Chinese side of the border with North Korea between towns of Ji'an and Linjiang, China. A week-long road trip along China's side of its border with North Korea showed places where it is porous. Reuters North Korea: A road trip on the edge of the Chinese border A tourist uses binoculars to look across to North Korea from a tower built on the Chinese side of the border between Russia (L), China (C) and North Korea (R) near the town of Hunchun in China. Reuters North Korea: A road trip on the edge of the Chinese border North Koreans are photographed from the Chinese side of the border as they stand next to the freezing Yalu River near the town of Linjiang, China. On a road trip along China's side of its border with North Korea, reporters found a group of North Koreans diving in the Yalu river who the Chinese locals said were searching for gold. REUTERS North Korea: A road trip on the edge of the Chinese border Women participate in a group dance exercise close to the Yalu River which runs between China and North Korea, in the town of Linjiang in Jilin province, China. A week-long road trip along China's side of its border with North Korea revealed stark contrasts between China's bright towns and North Korea's dark villages. REUTERS North Korea: A road trip on the edge of the Chinese border A sign reading, "Take the initiative to preserve order along the border," stands in a field at the border between China and North Korea just outside Dandong, Liaoning province, China. Reuters North Korea: A road trip on the edge of the Chinese border A couple prepare for a wedding photography session on a boat which takes tourists on sightseeing tours from the Chinese side of the Yalu River, close to the shores of North Korea, near Dandong, Liaoning province, China. In the Chinese city of Dandong, signs of neighbouring North Korea are pervasive. REUTERS North Korea: A road trip on the edge of the Chinese border Tourists travel on a boat taking them from the Chinese side of the Yalu River for sightseeing close to the shores of North Korea, near Dandong, Liaoning province, China. In the Chinese city of Dandong, signs of neighbouring North Korea are pervasive. REUTERS North Korea: A road trip on the edge of the Chinese border North Koreans are photographed from the Chinese side of the border as they stand next to the freezing Yalu River near the town of Linjiang, China. On a road trip along China's side of its border with North Korea, reporters found a group of North Koreans diving in the Yalu river who the Chinese locals said were searching for gold. REUTERS North Korea: A road trip on the edge of the Chinese border Women walk across a bridge from an island on the Yalu River, dividing North Korea and China, in the town of Linjiang in Jilin province, China. A week-long road trip along China's side of its border with North Korea revealed stark contrasts between China's bright towns and North Korea's dark villages. REUTERS North Korea: A road trip on the edge of the Chinese border A North Korean soldier and locals are photographed from the Chinese side of the border north of Dandong, China as they stand on the banks of the Yalu River, north of Sinuiju, North Korea. A week-long road trip along China's side of its border with North Korea revealed stark contrasts between China's bright towns and North Korea's dark villages. REUTERS North Korea: A road trip on the edge of the Chinese border North Korean girls are photographed from the Chinese side of the border as they collect water from the frozen Yalu River near Linjiang, China. A week-long road trip along China's side of its border with North Korea revealed stark contrasts between China's bright towns and North Korea's dark villages. REUTERS North Korea: A road trip on the edge of the Chinese border A man looks through binoculars towards North Korea on the Broken Bridge over the Yalu River that connects the North Korean town of Sinuiju and Dandong in Liaoning Province, China. In the Chinese city of Dandong, signs of neighbouring North Korea are pervasive. REUTERS North Korea: A road trip on the edge of the Chinese border North Koreans are photographed from the Chinese side of the border as they stand next to the freezing Yalu River near the town of Linjiang, China. On a road trip along China's side of its border with North Korea, reporters found a group of North Koreans diving in the Yalu river who the Chinese locals said were searching for gold. REUTERS North Korea: A road trip on the edge of the Chinese border North Korean fishermen are seen as a Chinese flag flutters from the Broken Bridge as the sun sets over the Yalu River between the North Korean town of Sinuiju and Dandong in Liaoning Province, China. In the Chinese city of Dandong, signs of neighbouring North Korea are pervasive. REUTERS North Korea: A road trip on the edge of the Chinese border North Koreans are photographed from the Chinese side of the border as they stand in the freezing Yalu River near the town of Linjiang, China. On a road trip along China's side of its border with North Korea, reporters found a group of North Koreans diving in the Yalu river who the Chinese locals said were searching for gold. REUTERS North Korea: A road trip on the edge of the Chinese border Women, photographed from the Chinese side of the border, are seen through binoculars fixed on a building on the Chinese side of the border for sightseers to look across to North Korea, as they cross the bridge from Namyang in North Korea towards the town of Tumen in China, Reuters After North Korea carved out a space for dialogue by dispatching athletes to South Korea for the Winter Olympics - along with Mr Kim's sister - and then followed up with additional meetings between North Korean and South Korean leaders, Mr Kim conveyed to Mr Trump an extraordinary invitation to meet. The American president has accepted the face-to-face encounter, which Mr Kim floated as part of an effort to denuclearise the Korean peninsula, according to a South Korean official. Mr Kim also pledge to halt new weapons tests. Donald Trump says he 'believes' North Korea leader Kim Jong Un about peace talks Mr Trump told reporters the US was engaging in direct talks at very high levels with Pyongyang, saying North Korea is coming along and predicting a summit by June. But he left open the possibility the effort collapses, in keeping with his administration both hailing the opportunity for a diplomatic breakthrough and continuing to project wariness about Mr Kims motives. Well be having discussions with Kim Jong Un very soon, Mr Trump said. That will be taking place probably in early June or before that assuming things go well. Its possible things wont go well and we wont have the meetings and well just continue to go on this very strong path we have taken. National Security Council official Matthew Pottinger reiterated to reporters that Mr Trumps aim for talks with Mr Kim was the permanent denuclearisation of North Korea but did not comment specifically on South Korea potentially seeking a peace treaty. I would just say that the US and South Korea are as much aligned and coordinated on their summit as we are on a US summit, he said. Leaders in Seoul and Pyongyang have embraced the possibility of warmer relations. Recently elevated South Korean president Moon Jae-in rose to office in part by vowing to repair ties with North Korea. And Pyongyang has issued calls for unity, sending a rare announcement to all Koreans earlier this year exhorting them to smash obstacles to reunification and to promote contact, travel, cooperation between North and South Korea. Syrian anti-aircraft defences shot down missiles that hit the Syrian air base of Shayrat in Homs province late Monday night, Syrian state television said. State television showed pictures of a missile that was shot in the air above the air base only days after a US, British and French attack on Syrian targets in retaliation for a suspected chemical attack on the city of Douma on the outskirts of Damascus. A Pentagon spokesman said there was no US military activity in that area at this time. Shayrat airbase was targeted last year in a US cruise missile attack in response to a chemical attack that killed at least 70 people, including children on the rebel held town of Khan Sheikhoun. Israel has struck Syrian army locations many times in the course of the conflict, hitting convoys and bases of Iranian-backed militias that fight alongside Syrian President Bashar al Assad's forces. Asked about the missile attack, an Israeli military spokesman said, We don't comment on such reports. Syria bombings: US, UK and French military air strikes wreckage Show all 13 1 /13 Syria bombings: US, UK and French military air strikes wreckage Syria bombings: US, UK and French military air strikes wreckage The wreckage of the Scientific Studies and Research Centre in the Barzeh district, north of Damascus, which was targeted by the US, UK and France air strikes. AFP/Getty Syria bombings: US, UK and French military air strikes wreckage A Syrian soldier films the damage of the Syrian Scientific Research Center surrounded by papers and rubble. AP Syria bombings: US, UK and French military air strikes wreckage Firefighrers extinguish smoke that rises from the damage. The Pentagon says none of the missiles filed by the U.S. and its allies was deflected by Syrian air defenses, rebutting claims by the Russian and Syrian governments. AP Syria bombings: US, UK and French military air strikes wreckage The wreckage of part of the Scientific Studies and Research Centre compound . AFP/Getty Syria bombings: US, UK and French military air strikes wreckage Part of a building collapsing, surrounded by the wreckage. AFP/Getty Syria bombings: US, UK and French military air strikes wreckage Further damaged to the Scientific Studies and Research Centre compound. AFP/Getty Syria bombings: US, UK and French military air strikes wreckage Lt. Gen. Kenneth McKenzie, the director of the Joint Staff at the Pentagon, also says there also is no indication that Russian air defense systems were employed early Saturday in Syria. AP Syria bombings: US, UK and French military air strikes wreckage A Syrian soldier sprays water on the wreckage. AFP/Getty Syria bombings: US, UK and French military air strikes wreckage Syrian state news agency SANA reported several missiles hit a research centre in Barzeh, north of Damascus, "destroying a building that included scientific labs and a training centre". AFP/Getty Syria bombings: US, UK and French military air strikes wreckage A Syrian soldier films the damage. AP Syria bombings: US, UK and French military air strikes wreckage Damage to the Scientific Research Center building that was hit by the strikes. EPA Syria bombings: US, UK and French military air strikes wreckage The Scientific Studies and Research Centre was one of the targeted buildings by the US, UK and France. AFP/Getty Syria bombings: US, UK and French military air strikes wreckage Further damage to the centre. EPA While Israel has declined to confirm or deny reports of strikes in Syria, it is widely believed to be engaging in a shadow conflict with Iran in the violence-wracked nation. Reuters If you're looking for a cheap beach holiday this summer, you should head to Bulgaria and Turkey, according to the 12th annual Post Office Travel Money Holiday Costs Barometer. The ranking looked at the price of nine typical holiday items a cup of coffee, a bottle of local beer, a Coca-Cola, a glass of wine, a bottle of water, suncream, insect repellent, a two-course lunch for two, and a three-course evening meal for two with a bottle of house wine in order to produce a total cost for a holiday in each European beach destination. While the ranking doesn't include the cost of flights or accommodation, it gives an idea of the total cost of purchases UK tourists are likely to make in each popular beach spot. Scroll down to see the 18 cheapest beach holiday destinations in Europe, ranked in ascending order by the total cost of typical holiday expenses. 18. Sorrento, Italy 122.65 ($174.90). Cup of coffee: 1.78 Bottle of local beer: 2.68 Coca-Cola: 2.23 Glass of wine: 2.68 Bottle of water: 0.89 Suncream: 8.92 Insect repellent: 7.14 Two-course lunch for two: 32.11 Three-course evening meal for two with a bottle of house wine: 64.22 Find the best places to stay in Sorrento 17. Ibiza, Spain 117.91 ($168.14). Elevated view on the beautiful cove of Cala Vadella, located at the western side of Ibiza (Getty/iStock) Cup of coffee: 1.34 Bottle of local beer: 3.12 Coca-Cola: 2.23 Glass of wine: 3.57 Bottle of water: 0.80 Suncream: 17.75 Insect repellent: 8.83 Two-course lunch for two: 16.05 Three-course evening meal for two with a bottle of house wine: 64.22 Find the best places to stay in Ibiza 16. Limassol, Cyprus 116.71 ($166.43). Cup of coffee: 2.68 Bottle of local beer: 2.68 Coca-Cola: 1.78 Glass of wine: 3.12 Bottle of water: 0.76 Suncream: 12.04 Insect repellent: 6.33 Two-course lunch for two: 23.10 Three-course evening meal for two with a bottle of house wine: 64.22 Find the best places to stay in Limassol 15. Nice, France 113.91 ($162.44). Cup of coffee: 1.43 Bottle of local beer: 3.12 Coca-Cola: 3.12 Glass of wine: 2.68 Bottle of water: 0.27 Suncream: 9.99 Insect repellent: 6.24 Two-course lunch for two: 26.76 Three-course evening meal for two with a bottle of house wine: 60.30 Find the best places to stay in Nice 14. Majorca, Spain 108.43 ($154.62). Cup of coffee: 1.34 Bottle of local beer: 2.23 Coca-Cola: 2.23 Glass of wine: 3.57 Bottle of water: 0.49 Suncream: 13.38 Insect repellent: 4.46 Two-course lunch for two: 26.76 Three-course evening meal for two with a bottle of house wine: 53.97 Find the best places to stay in Mallorca 13. Porec, Croatia 106.29 ($151.57). Porec Croatia Cup of coffee: 1.36 Bottle of local beer: 2.23 Coca-Cola: 2.48 Glass of wine: 3.47 Bottle of water: 0.74 Suncream: 7.43 Insect repellent: 4.96 Two-course lunch for two: 22.30 Three-course evening meal for two with a bottle of house wine: 61.32 Find the best places to stay in Porec 12. Lisbon Coast, Portugal 101.23 ($144.35). Cup of coffee: 0.62 Bottle of local beer: 1.78 Coca-Cola: 1.78 Glass of wine: 3.57 Bottle of water: 1.78 Suncream: 6.24 Insect repellent: 7.14 Two-course lunch for two: 26.76 Three-course evening meal for two with a bottle of house wine: 51.56 Find the best places to stay in Lisbon 11. Halkidiki, Greece 100.34 ($143.09). Cup of coffee: 3.12 Bottle of local beer: 4.46 Coca-Cola: 2.68 Glass of wine: 4.46 Bottle of water: 0.89 Suncream: 13.38 Insect repellent: 5.35 Two-course lunch for two: 26.76 Three-course evening meal for two with a bottle of house wine: 39.24 Find the best places to stay in Halkidiki 10. Sliema, Malta 98.60 ($140.60). Cup of coffee: 1.34 Bottle of local beer: 2.23 Coca-Cola: 1.78 Glass of wine: 3.21 Bottle of water: 1.25 Suncream: 11.24 Insect repellent: 2.89 Two-course lunch for two: 26.76 Three-course evening meal for two with a bottle of house wine: 47.90 Find the best places to stay in Silema 9. Zadar, Croatia 98.13 ($139.93). Cup of coffee: 1.49 Bottle of local beer: 2.11 Coca-Cola: 2.11 Glass of wine: 3.10 Bottle of water: 0.74 Suncream: 9.29 Insect repellent: 4.96 Two-course lunch for two: 17.34 Three-course evening meal for two with a bottle of house wine: 56.99 Find the best places to stay in Zadar 8. Corfu, Greece 91.23 ($130.09). (Shutterstock) Cup of coffee: 2.23 Bottle of local beer: 2.94 Coca-Cola: 1.78 Glass of wine: 3.12 Bottle of water: 0.89 Suncream: 7.14 Insect repellent: 6.24 Two-course lunch for two: 21.41 Three-course evening meal for two with a bottle of house wine: 45.48 Find the best places to stay in Corfu 7. Paphos, Cyprus 88.49 ($126.19). Cup of coffee: 2.68 Bottle of local beer: 2.05 Coca-Cola: 2.23 Glass of wine: 3.39 Bottle of water: 0.24 Suncream: 7.84 Insect repellent: 5.49 Two-course lunch for two: 20.51 Three-course evening meal for two with a bottle of house wine: 44.06 Find the best places to stay in Paphos 6. Costa Blanca, Spain 83.58 ($119.19). Cup of coffee: 1.34 Bottle of local beer: 1.78 Coca-Cola: 1.34 Glass of wine: 3.12 Bottle of water: 0.49 Suncream: 13.38 Insect repellent: 4.46 Two-course lunch for two: 21.41 Three-course evening meal for two with a bottle of house wine: 36.26 Find the best places to stay in Costa Blanca 5. Crete, Greece 81.35 ($116.01). Cup of coffee: 2.23 Bottle of local beer: 2.23 Coca-Cola: 2.23 Glass of wine: 2.68 Bottle of water: 0.45 Suncream: 6.24 Insect repellent: 1.96 Two-course lunch for two: 21.41 Three-course evening meal for two with a bottle of house wine: 41.92 Find the best places to stay in Crete 4. Costa del Sol, Spain 71.55 ($102.03). Cup of coffee: 1.25 Bottle of local beer: 2.23 Coca-Cola: 1.69 Glass of wine: 2.23 Bottle of water: 0.35 Suncream: 4.41 Insect repellent: 2.76 Two-course lunch for two: 16.05 Three-course evening meal for two with a bottle of house wine: 40.58 Find the best places to stay in Costa del Sol 3. Algarve, Portugal 68.24 ($97.31). Cup of coffee: 0.62 Bottle of local beer: 0.98 Coca-Cola: 1.16 Glass of wine: 1.11 Bottle of water: 0.18 Suncream: 4.45 Insect repellent: 5.16 Two-course lunch for two: 15.88 Three-course evening meal for two with a bottle of house wine: 38.70 Find the best places to stay in Algarve 2. Marmaris, Turkey 56.88 ($81.11). Marmais, Turkey Cup of coffee: 1.40 Bottle of local beer: 2.21 Coca-Cola: 1.30 Glass of wine: 2.23 Bottle of water: 0.24 Suncream: 6.68 Insect repellent: 1.86 Two-course lunch for two: 9.31 Three-course evening meal for two with a bottle of house wine: 31.65 Find the best places to stay in Marmaris 1. Sunny Beach, Bulgaria 43.44 ($61.95). Cup of coffee: 0.71 Bottle of local beer: 0.71 Coca-Cola: 0.95 Glass of wine: 1.19 Bottle of water: 0.38 Suncream: 2.38 Insect repellent: 2.38 Two-course lunch for two: 8.56 Three-course evening meal for two with a bottle of house wine: 26.18 Find the best places to stay in Sunny Beach Read more: How much the best paid workers in 20 professions earn Seven outdated mens style rules that you can now ignore 16 skills that are hard to learn but will pay off forever Read the original article on Business Insider UK. 2018. Follow Business Insider UK on Twitter. At least 40,000 passengers have been left stranded by the latest Air France strike, with a similar number likely to be affected tomorrow. The management have warned the stoppages are putting the companys future in danger. Pilots, cabin crew and ground staff working for the French airline are on their eighth day of industrial action in a bitter pay dispute. They are demanding a 6 per cent rise this year, while the airline is offering 2 per cent. Some flights linking Heathrow, Manchester and Edinburgh with Paris Charles de Gaulle have been cancelled, along with about 150 other short- and medium-haul flights. At least 24 long-haul departures from Paris CDG have been grounded, with passengers to Tahiti, Singapore, Hong Kong, Tokyo, Los Angeles and Miami among those affected. With the corresponding inbound services on Tuesday, more than 40 long-haul links will be cancelled. The airline is also warning that some flights that do depart may not be able to accommodate all the booked passengers, due to a shortage of cabin crew. The strike continues on Wednesday, in which a similar number of passengers are expected to find their travel plans wrecked. Talks earlier this week failed to reach an agreement. However, Air France management is proposing a final agreement for signature up to Friday 20 April 2018 at midday. World news in pictures Show all 50 1 /50 World news in pictures World news in pictures 30 September 2020 Pope Francis prays with priests at the end of a limited public audience at the San Damaso courtyard in The Vatican AFP via Getty World news in pictures 29 September 2020 A girl's silhouette is seen from behind a fabric in a tent along a beach by Beit Lahia in the northern Gaza Strip AFP via Getty World news in pictures 28 September 2020 A Chinese woman takes a photo of herself in front of a flower display dedicated to frontline health care workers during the COVID-19 pandemic in Beijing, China. China will celebrate national day marking the founding of the People's Republic of China on October 1st Getty World news in pictures 27 September 2020 The Glass Mountain Inn burns as the Glass Fire moves through the area in St. Helena, California. The fast moving Glass fire has burned over 1,000 acres and has destroyed homes Getty World news in pictures 26 September 2020 A villager along with a child offers prayers next to a carcass of a wild elephant that officials say was electrocuted in Rani Reserve Forest on the outskirts of Guwahati, India AFP via Getty World news in pictures 25 September 2020 The casket of late Supreme Court Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg is seen in Statuary Hall in the US Capitol to lie in state in Washington, DC AFP via Getty World news in pictures 24 September 2020 An anti-government protester holds up an image of a pro-democracy commemorative plaque at a rally outside Thailand's parliament in Bangkok, as activists gathered to demand a new constitution AFP via Getty World news in pictures 23 September 2020 A whale stranded on a beach in Macquarie Harbour on the rugged west coast of Tasmania, as hundreds of pilot whales have died in a mass stranding in southern Australia despite efforts to save them, with rescuers racing to free a few dozen survivors The Mercury/AFP via Getty World news in pictures 22 September 2020 State civil employee candidates wearing face masks and shields take a test in Surabaya AFP via Getty World news in pictures 21 September 2020 A man sweeps at the Taj Mahal monument on the day of its reopening after being closed for more than six months due to the coronavirus pandemic AP World news in pictures 20 September 2020 A deer looks for food in a burnt area, caused by the Bobcat fire, in Pearblossom, California EPA World news in pictures 19 September 2020 Anti-government protesters hold their mobile phones aloft as they take part in a pro-democracy rally in Bangkok. Tens of thousands of pro-democracy protesters massed close to Thailand's royal palace, in a huge rally calling for PM Prayut Chan-O-Cha to step down and demanding reforms to the monarchy AFP via Getty World news in pictures 18 September 2020 Supporters of Iraqi Shi'ite cleric Moqtada al-Sadr maintain social distancing as they attend Friday prayers after the coronavirus disease restrictions were eased, in Kufa mosque, near Najaf, Iraq Reuters World news in pictures 17 September 2020 A protester climbs on The Triumph of the Republic at 'the Place de la Nation' as thousands of protesters take part in a demonstration during a national day strike called by labor unions asking for better salary and against jobs cut in Paris, France EPA World news in pictures 16 September 2020 A fire raging near the Lazzaretto of Ancona in Italy. The huge blaze broke out overnight at the port of Ancona. Firefighters have brought the fire under control but they expected to keep working through the day EPA World news in pictures 15 September 2020 Russian opposition leader Alexei Navalny posing for a selfie with his family at Berlin's Charite hospital. In an Instagram post he said he could now breathe independently following his suspected poisoning last month Alexei Navalny/Instagram/AFP World news in pictures 14 September 2020 Japan's Prime Minister Shinzo Abe, Chief Cabinet Secretary Yoshihide Suga, former Defense Minister Shigeru Ishiba and former Foreign Minister Fumio Kishida celebrate after Suga was elected as new head of the ruling party at the Liberal Democratic Party's leadership election in Tokyo Reuters World news in pictures 13 September 2020 A man stands behind a burning barricade during the fifth straight day of protests against police brutality in Bogota AFP via Getty World news in pictures 12 September 2020 Police officers block and detain protesters during an opposition rally to protest the official presidential election results in Minsk, Belarus. Daily protests calling for the authoritarian president's resignation are now in their second month AP World news in pictures 11 September 2020 Members of 'Omnium Cultural' celebrate the 20th 'Festa per la llibertat' ('Fiesta for the freedom') to mark the Day of Catalonia in Barcelona. Omnion Cultural fights for the independence of Catalonia EPA World news in pictures 10 September 2020 The Moria refugee camp, two days after Greece's biggest migrant camp, was destroyed by fire. Thousands of asylum seekers on the island of Lesbos are now homeless AFP via Getty World news in pictures 9 September 2020 Pope Francis takes off his face mask as he arrives by car to hold a limited public audience at the San Damaso courtyard in The Vatican AFP via Getty World news in pictures 8 September 2020 A home is engulfed in flames during the "Creek Fire" in the Tollhouse area of California AFP via Getty World news in pictures 7 September 2020 A couple take photos along a sea wall of the waves brought by Typhoon Haishen in the eastern port city of Sokcho AFP via Getty World news in pictures 6 September 2020 Novak Djokovic and a tournament official tends to a linesperson who was struck with a ball by Djokovic during his match against Pablo Carreno Busta at the US Open USA Today Sports/Reuters World news in pictures 5 September 2020 Protesters confront police at the Shrine of Remembrance in Melbourne, Australia, during an anti-lockdown rally AFP via Getty World news in pictures 4 September 2020 A woman looks on from a rooftop as rescue workers dig through the rubble of a damaged building in Beirut. A search began for possible survivors after a scanner detected a pulse one month after the mega-blast at the adjacent port AFP via Getty World news in pictures 3 September 2020 A full moon next to the Virgen del Panecillo statue in Quito, Ecuador EPA World news in pictures 2 September 2020 A Palestinian woman reacts as Israeli forces demolish her animal shed near Hebron in the Israeli-occupied West Bank Reuters World news in pictures 1 September 2020 Students protest against presidential elections results in Minsk TUT.BY/AFP via Getty World news in pictures 31 August 2020 The pack rides during the 3rd stage of the Tour de France between Nice and Sisteron AFP via Getty World news in pictures 30 August 2020 Law enforcement officers block a street during a rally of opposition supporters protesting against presidential election results in Minsk, Belarus Reuters World news in pictures 29 August 2020 A woman holding a placard reading "Stop Censorship - Yes to the Freedom of Expression" shouts in a megaphone during a protest against the mandatory wearing of face masks in Paris. Masks, which were already compulsory on public transport, in enclosed public spaces, and outdoors in Paris in certain high-congestion areas around tourist sites, were made mandatory outdoors citywide on August 28 to fight the rising coronavirus infections AFP via Getty World news in pictures 28 August 2020 Japanese Prime Minister Shinzo Abe bows to the national flag at the start of a press conference at the prime minister official residence in Tokyo. Abe announced he will resign over health problems, in a bombshell development that kicks off a leadership contest in the world's third-largest economy AFP via Getty World news in pictures 27 August 2020 Residents take cover behind a tree trunk from rubber bullets fired by South African Police Service (SAPS) in Eldorado Park, near Johannesburg, during a protest by community members after a 16-year old boy was reported dead AFP via Getty World news in pictures 26 August 2020 People scatter rose petals on a statue of Mother Teresa marking her 110th birth anniversary in Ahmedabad AFP via Getty World news in pictures 25 August 2020 An aerial view shows beach-goers standing on salt formations in the Dead Sea near Ein Bokeq, Israel Reuters World news in pictures 24 August 2020 Health workers use a fingertip pulse oximeter and check the body temperature of a fisherwoman inside the Dharavi slum during a door-to-door Covid-19 coronavirus screening in Mumbai AFP via Getty World news in pictures 23 August 2020 People carry an idol of the Hindu god Ganesh, the deity of prosperity, to immerse it off the coast of the Arabian sea during the Ganesh Chaturthi festival in Mumbai, India Reuters World news in pictures 22 August 2020 Firefighters watch as flames from the LNU Lightning Complex fires approach a home in Napa County, California AP World news in pictures 21 August 2020 Members of the Israeli security forces arrest a Palestinian demonstrator during a rally to protest against Israel's plan to annex parts of the occupied West Bank AFP via Getty World news in pictures 20 August 2020 A man pushes his bicycle through a deserted road after prohibitory orders were imposed by district officials for a week to contain the spread of the Covid-19 in Kathmandu AFP via Getty World news in pictures 19 August 2020 A car burns while parked at a residence in Vacaville, California. Dozens of fires are burning out of control throughout Northern California as fire resources are spread thin AFP via Getty World news in pictures 18 August 2020 Students use their mobile phones as flashlights at an anti-government rally at Mahidol University in Nakhon Pathom. Thailand has seen near-daily protests in recent weeks by students demanding the resignation of Prime Minister Prayut Chan-O-Cha AFP via Getty World news in pictures 17 August 2020 Members of the Kayapo tribe block the BR163 highway during a protest outside Novo Progresso in Para state, Brazil. Indigenous protesters blocked a major transamazonian highway to protest against the lack of governmental support during the COVID-19 novel coronavirus pandemic and illegal deforestation in and around their territories AFP via Getty World news in pictures 16 August 2020 Lightning forks over the San Francisco-Oakland Bay Bridge as a storm passes over Oakland AP World news in pictures 15 August 2020 Belarus opposition supporters gather near the Pushkinskaya metro station where Alexander Taraikovsky, a 34-year-old protester died on August 10, during their protest rally in central Minsk AFP via Getty World news in pictures 14 August 2020 AlphaTauri's driver Daniil Kvyat takes part in the second practice session at the Circuit de Catalunya in Montmelo near Barcelona ahead of the Spanish F1 Grand Prix AFP via Getty World news in pictures 13 August 2020 Soldiers of the Brazilian Armed Forces during a disinfection of the Christ The Redeemer statue at the Corcovado mountain prior to the opening of the touristic attraction in Rio AFP via Getty World news in pictures 12 August 2020 Young elephant bulls tussle playfully on World Elephant Day at the Amboseli National Park in Kenya AFP via Getty The airline said: This final draft agreement ensures general salary increases for 2018 (an additional measure), 2019, 2020 and 2021, within the framework of a growth pact for the future. It includes proposals that are both strong and economically sustainable. The proposal would boost the earnings of the lowest-paid workers by more than two per cent. The management warned: The continuing strike action is having serious consequences for the company, its customers and staff. It is financially destructive for the airline and its staff and is putting the companys future in danger. The cost of nine days of strikes has been put at 220m (190m). Under European passengers rights rules, no compensation is payable, but the airline is required to provide meals and accommodation to disrupted travellers, and buy flights on rival airlines if necessary. The worlds Most Instagrammable Hotel is in the Maldives, according to Luxury Travel Advisor magazine. Despite recent violence and a state of emergency in the Indian Ocean archipelago, the title went to the Anantara Kihavah Maldives Villas. It offers 80 private pool villas some on stilts over the water, others on a pristine stretch of private beach. Guests are invited to snorkel some of the worlds most treasured reefs within a Unesco World Biosphere Reserve. They can dine at any of four restaurants, with the possibility of an underwater dining experience. Karl Webster, cluster director of PR and communications for the property, said: The underwater restaurant, Sea and the recently launched overwater bar, observatory and night sky viewing deck known as Sky, helps position Anantara Kihavah as a breathtaking property to photograph and show off to friends through social channels. It really does have that wow factor. A double room starts at 1,173 per night, including breakfast but no other meals. In addition, guests are obliged to take the resorts seaplane transfer from the international airport, costing 802 return when shared, or 11,234 if exclusive. The resort is 30 minutes by air from Male, the capital. The Foreign Office warns of possible anti-government protests in the city and elsewhere. A number of opposition politicians have been jailed amid considerable political turmoil. A state of emergency was lifted last month. Exercise caution and avoid any protests or rallies, warns the FCO adding: There are no reports that outlying islands, resorts or Male International Airport have been affected. The US State Department says: Exercise increased caution in Maldives due to terrorism and civil unrest. Mr Webster said: There is now and was no impact on domestic or international travel as all developments were confined to an isolated area in Male. The safety of our guests is paramount and as such I would also like to stress that there is no indication whatsoever that there is any impact on guests safety. In second place in the contest was a property in Ubud, Bali: Mandapa, A Ritz-Carlton Reserve. Bali high: Mandapa, A Ritz-Carlton Reserve, near Ubud (Mandapa, A Ritz-Carlton Reserve) It was just ahead of Viceroy Los Cabos, in San Jose del Cabo, near the tip of the Baja Peninsula in south-west Mexico. Curiously, this resort has yet to open. The Foreign Office says: There has been a rise in drug-related crime in Baja California Sur, including Los Cabos. You should take extra care when travelling to these areas. Last in the top quartet was another Mexican property, the Hotel Matilda in San Miguel de Allende, north-west of Mexico City. In an era of increasing ideological polarisation, many people are trying and struggling to understand the minds of those holding opposing views. We often look to age, gender or education to explain divisions. We analyse campaign strategies and the language politicians use to win our support. My colleagues and I at the University of Cambridge chose to turn to cognitive psychology for more answers. In a study of over 300 UK citizens, we tested participants tendencies towards cognitive flexibility their ability to adapt to change and cognitive persistence, which reflects a preference for stability and uniformity. The biggest issues facing UK on leaving EU Show all 8 1 /8 The biggest issues facing UK on leaving EU The biggest issues facing UK on leaving EU Post-Brexit immigration workers sorting radishes on a production line at a farm in Norfolk. One possible post-Brexit immigration scheme could struggle to channel workers towards less attractive roles - while another may heighten the risk of labour exploitation, a new report warns. PA The biggest issues facing UK on leaving EU Customs union A key point in the negotiations remains Britain's access to, or withdrawal from, the EU customs union. Since the referendum there has been hot debate over the meaning of Brexit: would it entail a full withdrawal from the existing agreement, known as hard Brexit, or the soft version in which we would remain part of a common customs area for most goods, as Turkey does? No 10 has so far insisted that Brexit means Brexit and that Britain will be leaving the customs union, but may be inclined to change its position once the potential risks to the UKs economic outlook become clearer. Alamy The biggest issues facing UK on leaving EU Northern Ireland-Irish border Though progress was made last year, there has still been no solid agreement on whether there should be a hard border between Northern Ireland and the Republic of Ireland. To ensure borderless travel on the island, the countries must be in regulatory alignment and therefore adhere to the same rules as the customs union. In December, the Conservative Partys coalition partners, the DUP, refused a draft agreement that would place the UK/EU border in the Irish Sea due to its potential to undermine the union. May has promised that would not be the case and has suggested that a specific solution would need to be found. Getty The biggest issues facing UK on leaving EU Transition period Despite protests from a small number of Conservative MPs, the Government and the EU are largely in agreement that a transitional period is needed after Brexit. The talks, however, have reached an impasse. Though May has agreed that the UK will continue to contribute to the EU budget until 2021, the PM wants to be able to select which laws made during this time the UK will have to adhere to. Chief negotiator Michel Barnier has said the UK must adopt all of the laws passed during the transition, without any input from British ministers or MEPs. EPA The biggest issues facing UK on leaving EU Rights of EU citizens living the UK The Prime Minister has promised EU citizens already living in the UK the right to live and work here after Brexit, but the rights of those who arrive after Brexit day remains unclear. May insists that those who arrive during the transition period should not be allowed to stay, whereas the EU believe the cut-off point should be later. Getty The biggest issues facing UK on leaving EU Future trade agreement (with the EU) Despite this being a key issue in negotiations, the Government has yet to lay out exactly what it wants from a trade deal with the EU. Infighting within the Cabinet has prevented a solid position from being reached, with some MPs content that "no deal is better than a bad deal" while others rally behind single market access. The EU has already confirmed that access to the single market would be impossible without the UK remaining in the customs union. Getty The biggest issues facing UK on leaving EU Future trade agreements (internationally) The Government has already begun trying to woo foreign leaders into prospective trade agreements, with various high profile state visits to China, India and Canada for May, and the now infamous invitation to US President Donald Trump to visit London. However the UK cannot make trade agreements with another country while it is still a member of the EU, and the potential loss of trade with the world's major powers is a source of anxiety for the PM. The EU has said the UK cannot secure trade deals during the transition period. EPA The biggest issues facing UK on leaving EU Financial services Banks in the UK will be hit hard regardless of the Brexit outcome. The EU has refused to give British banks passporting rights to trade within the EU, dashing hopes of a special City deal. However according to new reports Germany has suggested allowing trade on the condition that the UK continues paying into the EU budget even after the transition period. Getty We found that people who displayed higher cognitive flexibility were less likely to support authoritarian and nationalistic ideologies. They were also more likely to think the UK should remain in the EU. Those who exhibited tendencies towards cognitive persistence were more likely to endorse conservative and nationalistic attitudes. They, in turn, were more likely to support Brexit. Adapting to change We measured cognitive flexibility by asking participants to complete tests which assessed their cognitive information processing styles. These tests do not make any reference to politics or ideologies. In one test, participants were presented with four cards featuring different geometric figures of various colours and shapes. The participants were asked to match a fifth card from a separate deck to one of these four cards. There were multiple potential rules for matching the cards. They could be matched according to the colour, number, or shape of the geometric figures. At the start of the task, participants learnt an initial rule for classifying the cards (for example, according to colour). But after learning the rule, the classification rule suddenly changed (for example, they now needed to match the cards according to shape). This allows us to measure how easily individuals adapt to change. Do they quickly change their responses to the new rule (which is indicative of flexibility)? Or do they tend to persist with the previously learnt rule (which is a marker of persistence)? Across multiple behavioural measures, we found a link between mental flexibility and nationalistic ideology. We asked participants about their support for immigration, the European Union, free movement of labour, and access to the EU single market. We found that cognitive flexibility and tolerance for uncertainty were related to support for flexible immigration and fluid national borders. Cognitive persistence was linked to opposition to immigration and free movement of labour. A similar pattern emerged when we asked participants about the extent to which they agreed with the statement: The government has a right to remain in the EU if the costs of Brexit are too high. We found that the belief that the UK government ought to be flexible in its implementation of Brexit in light of potential costs was positively correlated with cognitive flexibility. Psychologically flexible individuals appear to evaluate policies in more flexible, context-dependent ways. Our ideological stances may therefore be tied to our general psychological adaptability to change. Head and heart These findings suggest that we dont just vote with our hearts, we also vote according to our cognitive style. In fact, the results imply a parallel between our cognitive preferences and our ideological preferences. The flexibility with which we process non-political and non-emotional information reveals how flexibly we process ideological arguments. Our study points to general trends and tendencies rather than the psychological characteristics of any particular individual. Its important to remember that the reasons behind why we vote the way we do are varied, idiosyncratic and complex. Cognitive flexibility is only one piece of an intricate puzzle. But understanding the psychological processes that underpin our ideologies and voting choices will help us to better understand each other. Thats a crucial step towards bridging the echo chambers and ideological gaps that often divide our families, our communities and our world. Leor Zmigrod is a PhD candidate for the department of psychology at the University of Cambridge. This piece originally appeared on the Conversation The sub-species is found in dense mountain forests, and is threatened due to illegal hunting, logging, disease and loss of habitat, rendering them now critically endangered. Mountain bongos are only found in Kenya, in their natural habitat in the Aberdares Mountains, Mt. Kenya, Mau Forest, Cherengani and Ol Doinyo Eburu forests with only 108 left in the wild presently. An organisation, Bongo Surveillance Project (BSP), has been instrumental in efforts to bring in bongos from zoos around the world to restock Kenyas forests. Efforts to save the threatened creature began in 2004. Mountain bongo populations in the Aberdares had significantly declined over the years drawing the attention of the then senior warden Aberdare national park, John Muhanga. He was concerned that he could not easily spot them as was the case in the past and thus wanted to verify if there were any bongos still in existence, says Mike Prettejohn, founder of Bongo Surveillance Project. Having previously been involved in hunting the bongos for trophies in his early days before the trade was banned in Kenya in 1976, Mike understood the behaviour of the animals. A group of highly trained trackers came on board to monitor the bongos and remove snares in the ecosystem. There were few remnant groups in existence within the park. Using camera traps and GPS we were able to monitor bongos to prove that they were surviving, says Mike. Mountain bongos are elusive animals and until recently little was known about them. Use of camera traps in identifying and GPS to monitor tracking has proved effective. By studying the pictures collected, we are able to determine the number of bongos and monitor and protect them, says Christian Lambrechts, Chief Executive Director at Rhino Ark, a Kenyan conservation organisation. It supports BSP through funding and protection of bongo natural habitat by fencing forests. The few that remain in the wild in Kenya are under threat due to human activities in the forest. From the Aberdares, the community-led programme later expanded to areas with remaining suitable habitats in Mau, Ol Doinyo Eburu, Cherengani range and Mt. Kenya forests. Well-trained local guides help in tracking, monitoring sightings and taking note of illegal forest activities. Small breeding populations in some of these areas pose a genetic challenge. There are places with less than 15 bongos. Due to their vulnerability they could easily disappear in the next couple of years, says Christian. To avert possible extinction of the species, bongo survival has been boosted through efforts to breed them in captivity. In 2004, 18 bongo antelopes were repatriated from zoos in the US to Mount Kenya Wildlife Conservancy to rebuild the dwindling populations. That number has significantly grown to over 70 increasing hope of survival for the bongos. Another aspect of bongo survival is awareness creation among local communities. BSP is working with 19 schools near the mountains ecosystem to educate them about the importance of conserving forests, and protecting wildlife. We encourage them to plant trees because well-conserved forests come with numerous other benefits besides protecting these endangered species, says Mike. The students are helping spread the message to the communities. Visit www.mountainbongo.org for more information. This article is reproduced here as part of the Giants Club African Conservation Journalism Fellowships, a programme of the charity Space for Giants and supported by the owner of ESI Media, which includes independent.co.uk. It aims to expand the reach of conservation and environmental journalism in Africa, and bring more African voices into the international conservation debate. Read the original story here Zachary Mutai stares blankly at the empty enclosure that was once home to Sudan at Ol Pejeta Conservancy in Kenyas Laikipia region. Mutai looks sad as he receives guests who have come to pay tribute to Sudan, the last male Northern White Rhino. He was head keeper of Northern Whites at the conservancy, and had spent the last eight years with Sudan before his death in March. James Mwendwa, his colleague who has been taking care of Sudan for the past four years, is also lost for words. The emptiness and sadness at at the conservancy is evident from the forlorn look of most warders. Clearly the wild has lost a giant. Waking up to an empty enclosure is heartbreaking, Mutai says. Passing next to his pen as I attend the remaining two females is even worse, everything seem so different without Sudan here. We were best of friends for almost eight years since he was brought in from Dvur Kralove Zoo in the Czech Republic in December 2009. I miss him terribly. When Ol Pejeta Conservancy and the Dvur Kralove Zoo announced Sudans death, the photo that was released was iconic image of Sudan and Mutai, his buddy and caretaker. In the photo that went viral globally, Mutai is pictured squatting and playfully stroking Sudan by its horn. That was the last photo I took with Sudan alive. It was on a Sunday when he miraculously woke up after several days of being unwell. It was after a short period of rain when he woke up and walked to the females den. It was his last miraculous visit. He went back to his enclosure minutes later. Then his health deteriorated, Mutai says. Sudan was suffering from age-related complications that led to degenerative changes in muscles and bones combined with extensive skin wounds. The veterinary team from the Dvur Kralove Zoo, Ol Pejeta and Kenya Wildlife Service decided to euthanise him, when it was obvious he could no longer wake up. His condition worsened significantly in the last 24 hours; he was unable to stand up and was suffering a great deal, Ol Pejeta said in a press statement. Just like he won the heart of Mutai, Sudan made friends across the world as his plight became known. He was gentle. He was loved by many. He was just like a human being, you talk to him and he responds. Most rhinos are friendly like that. We know when they are not feeling well, when they are happy and when they are just naughty, Mutai says. Because you become so attached to them; when they die, its heartbreaking. For the last four years, Sudan became a best friend, Mr Mwendwa says. During the last month, Sudan was kept under Intensive Care Unit where he was on 24-hour care by a veterinary officer. At some point, he was too sick and looked like he was expressing pain, more so like he was crying and at the verge of giving up. It was distressing to witness these low moments especially when he struggled to wake up, Mutai recalls. The situation, he says, was agonising. During those final days, it was intense. I did not want Sudan to die in my presence. I wanted to hide the emotions and the pressure I was feeling. I knew, in case anything happened to him, there would be so many calls from all over the globe given that he had won so many hearts, he says. Though Mutai witnessed the death, he has not taken time off work yet. He is still on hand to answer questions from Sudans friends. It has been hectic, we receive video calls, emails chats and calls all over the world and everyone wants answers, he says. Others come here physically to find closure. It is so sad, it is just like losing a loved one. The interesting thing about Sudans death is that, like most prophets he was never celebrated at home. I realised Sudan was so popular overseas than in Kenya. Whereas Kenyans were wondering who Sudan was, the international community was swift in giving glowing tributes, Mr Mwendwa says. With the death of Sudan, the global conservation community is hopeful that the In Vitro fertilisation being planned for will save the species from extinction. In the meantime, Sudans candlelight continues to glow. This article is reproduced here as part of the Giants Club African Conservation Journalism Fellowships, a programme of the charity Space for Giants and supported by the owner of ESI Media, which includes independent.co.uk. It aims to expand the reach of conservation and environmental journalism in Africa, and bring more African voices into the international conservation debate. Read the original story here For picture posts from 2010 and earlier, see the Earlier Picture Posts Page Here in the wild where most vegetation sprouts naturally and wildlife roam freely, a deliberate effort has been taken by El Karama to plant grass as fodder to sustain cattle within the ranch and in the surrounding pastoralists villages during the dry season. The ranch has partnered with Northern Rangelands Trust, which supports more than 30 community conservancies in northern Kenya, to grow grass in 400-acre portion of land to provide fodder banks as a coping strategy during drought. The project is aimed at mitigating the effects of drought, which has been recurring in the area. Once mature, the grass, planted in October, will feed cows within the ranch and be sold to the neighbouring pastoralist communities at an affordable price, says Steven Kipketer, who is in charge of the fodder project in El Karama. Recommended Life sentence for ivory possession urges Kenyan minister Last year, Laikipia was one of the counties that was worst affected by drought that hit Kenya, with the phenomenon being declared a national disaster. Members of the predominantly pastoralist community in the area, which is surrounded by several ranches and conservancies, bore the brunt of the harsh dry conditions. Owing to conservation efforts by the surrounding ranches and conservancies, the area had some pasture. But invasion of cattle from other areas where pasture had been depleted due to widespread drought regenerated into conflict leading to massive loss of livestock and wildlife, says Peter Mwangi Wangari, the local chief. According to Wangari, drought in the area is increasingly frequent over the past decade owing to massive deforestation and population growth increasing pressure on resources. Due to population increase, people have settled on areas that were once wildlife habitats pushing them to ranches and conservancies. Logging of trees for charcoal burning has further made the area vulnerable to drought, says Wangari. Fodder banks in El Karama provide hope that even if the drought recurs, pastoralists have a place they can source feeds for their livestock. Locals are being encouraged to adopt better cattle breeds and reduce pressure on grazing lands. Grazing committees between the community and ranches have effectively helped coordinate grazing during dry seasons. The ranch has adopted conservation agriculture in growing the grass to protect the natural surroundings where livestock and wildlife co-exist harmoniously. We are careful about how we cultivate our land. We incorporate diverse conservation agriculture techniques such as zero-tilling and water banking. There is no use of chemicals as they may affect insects and harm the environment, says Michael Nicholson, El Karama Ranchs general manager. Rhodes grass, which is drought-resistant is thriving well in the semi-arid even under hot conditions. The grass is twice as nutritious compared to bush grass and is four times dense, thus a better breed. The move to plant fodder comes against the backdrop of a Food and Agriculture Organisation Global Early Warning Early Action report on Food Security and Agriculture 2018, which predicts that there will be limited pasture regeneration in Kenya between January and May 2018 owing to below average short rains in October- December 2017. The report recommends emergency livestock support including provision of feeds and support of quick growing fodder for feed production. This article is reproduced here as part of the Giants Club African Conservation Journalism Fellowships, a programme of the charity Space for Giants and supported by the owner of ESI Media, which includes independent.co.uk. It aims to expand the reach of conservation and environmental journalism in Africa, and bring more African voices into the international conservation debate. Read the original story here So much had been trailed in advance of James Comeys over-hyped interview on ABC News at the weekend that when it actually aired there wasnt much left to surprise me beyond the over-edited woodenness of the whole thing. Instead of visceral, Comey came across as viscous. Still, I did stick with it. I may yet read the book that formally hit the shelves on Tuesday. How often do you have a just-fired FBI director calling the sitting president morally unfit for office or speculating that the oddly pale hue of the bags under his eyes must come from wearing goggles on his tanning bed. (Did he have one installed in the White House? Where is it plugged in?) Yet, one thing did grab my attention. Having spent the best part of the hour with George Stephanopoulos explaining his disdain for Trump, he then posited that those who want him impeached are barking up the wrong tree. Pardon, what? If Trump is so rotten, so unable to separate lies from the truth, shouldnt the country get rid of him at the earliest opportunity? Lets remember first that talk of impeachment is very much alive and well. Though the most recent polls have shown a slight narrowing of the advantage that Democrats hold going into the crucial midterm elections this November, it still seems more likely than not that they will wrest control of the House of Representatives from the Republicans. Conceivably the Senate too. The Republicans are under no illusions about the peril they face. When the speaker of the house himself, Paul Ryan, announces months in advance that he wont be running for re-election you know things must be dire. You dont flee before youre sure your goose is cooked. Regaining the majority in the lower chamber would free the Democrats to approve articles of impeachment against Trump. That was the fate of Bill Clinton at the end of 1998 after he had been hounded for years by a special prosecutor. The Democrat majority in the Senate meant he kept this job. So Trump had better hope the Senate doesnt fall into enemy hands too. But the cogs of impeachment are big and scary. Once they start grinding, the whole country begins to shudder and shake. Nothing else of any great significance gets done on Capitol Hill. Voter polarisation worsens. So how wise would it be to engage them, really? Tom Steyer speaks during the 'People's State of the Union' event one day ahead of Donald Trump's State of The Union Speech to Congress, in Manhattan, New York (REUTERS/Darren Ornitz) No one aches for it more than Tom Steyer, the billionaire environmental philanthropist who to Democrats is what the Koch brothers are to Republicans. Nowadays he is singularly focused on on making impeachment happen. More than 5 million have signed up to his Need-to-Impeach petition and he has burned cash running TV ads all over the land making his dump-Trump pitch. In a couple of weeks he starts a series of townhall-style meetings in Iowa, the state that always has an outsized role, in part to pressure David Loebsack, an Iowa congressmen who was the only Democrat not to support a non-binding impeachment resolution earlier this year. Those who condemn Trump but do not back their words with action are enabling the damage he is inflicting on our country, Steyer said this week. Representative Loebsack should explain why he is acting against his constituents wishes by voting no on impeachment. The people of Iowa deserve elected leaders who refuse to back down on our shared principles. Does the Democrat leadership love Steyer for devoting himself to the issue? No, they really do not, because they know it could sow dangerous division in their own ranks in the run-up to November. The activist wing of the party and members of Resist would be fired up, but more moderate Democrats as well as Independents who might otherwise be infuriated by Trump and whose support they need will find the prospect of an impeachment fight thoroughly unappealing. In the meantime, if impeachment is a central plank of the Democratic platform Republicans would find themselves with an unexpected opportunity to energise their base. Theyd call them to the ramparts to prevent what they will characterise as an approaching coup. Fundraising for their candidates could go through the roof and so might Republican turnout on election day. Thats a summary of why the Steyer path may not be strategically smart. But the Comey case is different and altogether more interesting. In 2016, America committed a form of self-harm when it chose Trump over Hillary Clinton. Razoring itself at the ballot box. To understand and to heal, voters must make the difficult and steep journey out of that bad place all by themselves. To get rid of Trump through impeachment would let them off the hook, he offered. People in this country need to stand up and go to the voting booth and vote their values. You cannot have, as president of the United States, someone who does not reflect the values that I believe Republicans treasure and Democrats treasure and Independents treasure. That is the core of this country. Thats our foundation. And so impeachment, in a way, would short circuit that. Of course this would mean eschewing the chance of removing Trump (and his tanning paraphernalia) from the White House early. But even putting aside the strategic risks of pushing for impeachment too keenly, there is something convincing about this part, at least, of what Comey is telling us. Its a bit like having bad colds and those medicines that in the end never really work. Its always better to let them run their miserable course and build your immunity against catching the next one. You hope. Theresa May could hardly have been surprised that some MPs would react with fury at being denied the chance to approve the air strikes in Syria before the event. Last week, she took a calculated decision to avoid a Commons vote she could not be certain of winning. While she has the constitutional right to deploy UK forces, she knew full well she was tearing up the convention since the 2003 Iraq War for parliament to approve most military action. In her Commons statement on Monday, Ms May insisted that she needed to act quickly while parliament was on its Easter break, and in a way that did not compromise the security of UK forces. But this will fool no one. After Donald Trump advertised the attacks on Twitter, of course there was plenty of time to recall MPs for an emergency session if Ms May had wanted to. She argued that parliaments job was to hold me to account and pointedly rejected requests from MPs to guarantee them a say before any further action if the Assad regime uses chemical weapons again. The prime minister made a powerful case for intervening to prevent the normalisation of the use of such weapons, telling the Commons that we cannot wait to alleviate further humanitarian suffering. But there was a hole in her argument: the number of people killed in Syria by chemical weapons is estimated at 1,900, while about 400,000 are thought to have been killed by conventional weapons. She did little to set out a blueprint for the future in Syria, beyond yet another attempt at the United Nations to secure a ceasefire. Ms May tried to dispel Jeremy Corbyns doubts about the legality of her action by justifying it on humanitarian grounds. But there is another way she could tackle the humanitarian crisis in Syria. It is two and a half years since we saw the heartbreaking photograph showing the body of Alan Kurdi, a three-year-old Syrian refugee, washed up on a beach as his family tried desperately to get to Europe. The image pricked the conscience of most of the world. This newspaper secured almost 400,000 signatures on a petition that, for a time, appeared to change the previous Conservative governments policy towards refugees. Sadly, however, the effect on the political debate proved temporary. Angela Merkels brave actions notwithstanding, the EU as a whole failed woefully to live up to its promises to accept Syrian refugees amid rising support for right-wing populists. UK news in pictures Show all 50 1 /50 UK news in pictures UK news in pictures 26 September 2021 Labour Party leader Sir Keir Starmer watches the Arsenal v Tottenham Hotspur match at The Font pub in Brighton PA UK news in pictures 25 September 2021 Scottish pro-independence supporters hold a march and rally outside the Scottish Parliament in Edinburgh, Scotland Getty Images UK news in pictures 24 September 2021 Police officers remove two protesters from the top of a tanker, as Insulate Britain block the A20 in Kent, which provides access to the Port of Dover in Kent. The environmental activists have moved location after been banned from campaigning on the M25 motorway in London PA UK news in pictures 23 September 2021 Gabriella, the seven year old daughter of imprisoned British-Iranian Nazanin Zaghari-Ratcliffe, joins in a game on a giant snakes and ladders board in Parliament Square, to show the ups and downs of her mothers case to mark the 2,000 days she has been detained in Iran AP UK news in pictures 22 September 2021 A new sign hangs on the Millicent Fawcett statue after it was altered by CrackTheCrises coalition activists to highlight the climate crisis as a feminist struggle in Parliament Square in London EPA UK news in pictures 21 September 2021 Gabriella Diment prepares a monumental bronze patinated fibreglass wall sculpture depicting household cavalry soldiers on horseback which is expected to be sold for 12,000-18,000 when it goes up for auction at Summers Place Auctions in Billinghurst, Kent PA UK news in pictures 20 September 2021 Florist Judith Blacklock puts the finishing touches to a floral carousel installation in Halkin Arcade, which she has designed with Neill Strain for the Belgravia in Bloom festival, running from September 20-26, in London PA UK news in pictures 19 September 2021 Bubbles surround Manchester Uniteds Cristiano Ronaldo before the match against West Ham at London Stadium Action Images/Reuters UK news in pictures 18 September 2021 Children take part in the Settrington Cup Pedal Car Race as motoring enthusiasts attend the Goodwood Revival, a three-day historic car racing festival in Goodwood, Chichester, Reuters 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 At a time when the UK aspires to show leadership, it would enhance the countrys reputation it if shouldered a greater burden of the refugee crisis caused by the seven-year Syrian war. At least 6.1 million Syrians are internally displaced, while another 5.6 million have fled abroad, meaning that more than half the pre-war population has been displaced, according to the UNHCR. With such huge numbers involved, clearly a crucial step in the ultimate resolution of the conflict is to persuade Bashar al-Assad to accept that these people have a right of safe return. But we have seen how much he can be trusted; and there can be little doubt that some Syrians will have a valid claim to refugee status abroad. We should be planning for this now. The UK has provided generous financial support of almost 2.5bn, largely to neighbouring countries such as Lebanon, Jordan and Turkey. Ms May said that this had helped hundreds of thousands of people, and was the most effective way to act. But the government stood aloof from the United Nations resettlement scheme, promising only to accept 20,000 Syrian refugees by 2020. At the time David Cameron announced that, there were as many Syrian refugees arriving on Greek islands every day as the UK is taking each year. So far, some 10,500 have been accepted on to the Vulnerable Person Resettlement Scheme and it appears to be working well. But this is a drop in the ocean. Sadly, Ms May rebuffed calls by Mr Corbyn and Ian Blackford, the SNP leader at Westminster, for the government to do more especially by helping children. The 2020 target date should be brought forward and the medium-term goal on numbers doubled to 40,000. For those who baulk at any refugee number with multiple zeroes, it is worth remembering the value of immigration of all kinds to the UK. Few here would be so foolish as to refuse to acknowledge the contribution of the Windrush generation, as evidenced in the cross-party outrage expressed in the Commons at the suggestion that some of those who came here 50 years ago have recently been deported. As the image of Alan Kurdi faded in peoples memories, media attention moved on to the 700,000 Rohingya Muslims who fled from Myanmar to Bangladesh. It took a suspected chemical weapons attack of horrific proportions in Douma to turn the spotlight back to Syria. It should not have done. The world should never forget Alan Kurdi; nor the many like him whose faces we never saw. The great misconception about centrism is that it splits the difference between extremes of hard left and far right, and that, in doing so, accepts aspects of both those extremes. That to be centrist on the environment is somehow halfway between climate change denial and the overwhelming global scientific consensus that climate change is real when, in fact, a centrist would be firmly in the latter camp. The word centrism in the UK has been transformed by supporters of Jeremy Corbyn from meaning the politics of the moderate, common ground, into a term of abuse, much in the same way liberal migrated into a slur by right-wing Republican backers of Donald Trump. Lets hear it then for the original centrist papa himself, Emmanuel Macron, who has delivered the sort of speech he should have been shouting from the rooftops of the Elysee from the moment he was elected president nearly a year ago. Macron defeated the racist, far right candidate, Marine Le Pen, by a margin of two to one on a platform of centrism and consensus building. He promised to bring unity in France and, as he hinted during his campaign, reform to the European Union. His election was a victory for liberalism over fascism, for community harmony over anti-immigration, for centrism over populism. During the presidential contest, after 2016 had ushered in Brexit and Trump, it no longer seemed impossible that Front National candidate Le Pen could win a frightening thought for a country with a living memory of Nazi occupation. So when Macron did triumph, he acknowledged the symbolism of his victory had ramifications beyond Frances borders. But, with anti-immigrant sentiment still flourishing in Europe, this is something he should have repeated over and over during the past year. The biggest issues facing UK on leaving EU Show all 8 1 /8 The biggest issues facing UK on leaving EU The biggest issues facing UK on leaving EU Post-Brexit immigration workers sorting radishes on a production line at a farm in Norfolk. One possible post-Brexit immigration scheme could struggle to channel workers towards less attractive roles - while another may heighten the risk of labour exploitation, a new report warns. PA The biggest issues facing UK on leaving EU Customs union A key point in the negotiations remains Britain's access to, or withdrawal from, the EU customs union. Since the referendum there has been hot debate over the meaning of Brexit: would it entail a full withdrawal from the existing agreement, known as hard Brexit, or the soft version in which we would remain part of a common customs area for most goods, as Turkey does? No 10 has so far insisted that Brexit means Brexit and that Britain will be leaving the customs union, but may be inclined to change its position once the potential risks to the UKs economic outlook become clearer. Alamy The biggest issues facing UK on leaving EU Northern Ireland-Irish border Though progress was made last year, there has still been no solid agreement on whether there should be a hard border between Northern Ireland and the Republic of Ireland. To ensure borderless travel on the island, the countries must be in regulatory alignment and therefore adhere to the same rules as the customs union. In December, the Conservative Partys coalition partners, the DUP, refused a draft agreement that would place the UK/EU border in the Irish Sea due to its potential to undermine the union. May has promised that would not be the case and has suggested that a specific solution would need to be found. Getty The biggest issues facing UK on leaving EU Transition period Despite protests from a small number of Conservative MPs, the Government and the EU are largely in agreement that a transitional period is needed after Brexit. The talks, however, have reached an impasse. Though May has agreed that the UK will continue to contribute to the EU budget until 2021, the PM wants to be able to select which laws made during this time the UK will have to adhere to. Chief negotiator Michel Barnier has said the UK must adopt all of the laws passed during the transition, without any input from British ministers or MEPs. EPA The biggest issues facing UK on leaving EU Rights of EU citizens living the UK The Prime Minister has promised EU citizens already living in the UK the right to live and work here after Brexit, but the rights of those who arrive after Brexit day remains unclear. May insists that those who arrive during the transition period should not be allowed to stay, whereas the EU believe the cut-off point should be later. Getty The biggest issues facing UK on leaving EU Future trade agreement (with the EU) Despite this being a key issue in negotiations, the Government has yet to lay out exactly what it wants from a trade deal with the EU. Infighting within the Cabinet has prevented a solid position from being reached, with some MPs content that "no deal is better than a bad deal" while others rally behind single market access. The EU has already confirmed that access to the single market would be impossible without the UK remaining in the customs union. Getty The biggest issues facing UK on leaving EU Future trade agreements (internationally) The Government has already begun trying to woo foreign leaders into prospective trade agreements, with various high profile state visits to China, India and Canada for May, and the now infamous invitation to US President Donald Trump to visit London. However the UK cannot make trade agreements with another country while it is still a member of the EU, and the potential loss of trade with the world's major powers is a source of anxiety for the PM. The EU has said the UK cannot secure trade deals during the transition period. EPA The biggest issues facing UK on leaving EU Financial services Banks in the UK will be hit hard regardless of the Brexit outcome. The EU has refused to give British banks passporting rights to trade within the EU, dashing hopes of a special City deal. However according to new reports Germany has suggested allowing trade on the condition that the UK continues paying into the EU budget even after the transition period. Getty His speech, finally, to the European Parliament in Strasbourg on Tuesday was much needed for Europe today. The controversy over Radio 4s broadcasting of Enoch Powells Rivers of Blood speech, to mark its 50th anniversary, is a reminder of how openly, undeniably racist that address was and, rightly, it was condemned from across the political spectrum at the time. But today, such hatred has crept into our politics more insidiously; it hides in the wide skirts of populism, is given credence by mainstream politicians including as we are reminded with the Windrush scandal this week Theresa May, who as home secretary four years ago said she wanted to make Britain a hostile environment for illegal immigrants. In Hungary, Viktor Orban has just won a third term landslide based on an anti-immigration, anti-EU campaign, while nationalist parties are also in power in Poland and Austria. In his speech, Macron warned that the EU faces a civil war between liberal democracy and the authoritarian right, and that there is a fascination with the illiberal that is growing all the time. Nationalism will lead Europe into the abyss. We see authoritarianism rising all around us. The response should not be authoritarian democracy but the authority of democracy, the French president said. I don't want to belong to a generation of sleepwalkers that has forgotten its own past. This was his key line because, with nationalism and anti-immigrant rhetoric now mainstream in parts of the EU, sleepwalking is exactly what the bloc, forged from a desperate need to keep totalitarianism at bay in Europe after the Second World War, is at risk of doing. With the term centrism so derided and distorted in meaning, it is easy to mock Macron for his youthful arrogance he is still just 40. He has a vision to reform the EU, not to extinguish its core purpose but to modernise it so fewer countries seek to follow Britain out of the door. His decision to place France at the centre of Western military action against Assad over the chemical attack in Douma earlier this month means he will never be celebrated by the Corbynite left in this country. Yet that is a pity. German chancellor Angela Merkel, for more than a decade the defender of the moderate centre ground in Europe, has been severely weakened by last years elections and her failure to express concern at Orbans re-election. Theresa May is taking Britain, once the great bulwark against European fascism, out of the picture altogether thanks to Brexit. To anyone who refuses to sleepwalk, who refuses to forget Europes past, cast aside your misconceptions about centrism, because Macron is now at the frontline against creeping nationalism in Europe. The graves were red mounds of earth, run into each other by wind and the rain. There was a freshly dug set, one of them no more than four feet long. It was of a little girl called Hania, the youngest of a family of five who were the most recent to die in the village. None of them were killed by chemical weapons. The deaths had been delivered by conventional weapons: missiles, fired from a Syrian regime warplane a fairly regular occurrence in the area at the time, adding to the lethal toll of 100,000 in the uprising which had lasted for two and half years at the time. This was in September 2013, in Aleppo Province on the eve of American airstrikes, due to come after Bashar al-Assad had crossed Barack Obamas red line by carrying out a chemical attack on Ghouta. The Americans are going to bomb now because of Ghouta? What about the thousands that Bashar had been killing, my family, so many other families gone? asked 74-year-old Abdurahman al-Shibi, Hanias grandfather, as he placed wildflowers on the graves. But he was glad something was being done at last. They going to do something to really help us now, America, Europe. I really hope they do. The expectation of the raids led to high excitement among opposition activists and rebel fighters. The moderates among them (there were still quite a few left at the time) believed that the West had seen the error of abandoning them, and a counter-offensive could be launched not just against the regime, but the extremists of Jabhat al-Nusra and the newly arrived Isis who were taking over their revolution. Douma chemical attack: Syria war in pictures Show all 13 1 /13 Douma chemical attack: Syria war in pictures Douma chemical attack: Syria war in pictures A child receiving oxygen through respirators following an alleged poison gas attack in the rebel-held town of Douma AP Douma chemical attack: Syria war in pictures A child is treated in a hospital in Douma White Helmets Douma chemical attack: Syria war in pictures An image grab taken from a video released by the Douma City Coordination Committee shows unidentified volunteers spraying a man with water at a make-shift hospital following an alleged chemical attack AFP/Douma City Coordination Committee Douma chemical attack: Syria war in pictures People cover their faces after an alleged chemical attack in Douma EPA Douma chemical attack: Syria war in pictures A medical worker giving a toddler oxygen through respirators following an alleged poison gas attack in the opposition-held town of Douma. Syrian Civil Defense White Helmets via AP Douma chemical attack: Syria war in pictures An image grab taken from a video released by the Douma City Coordination Committee shows unidentified volunteers spraying a girl with water at a make-shift hospital following an alleged chemical attack AFP/Douma City Coordination Committee Douma chemical attack: Syria war in pictures A child is treated in a hospital in Douma White Helmets/Handout via Reuters Douma chemical attack: Syria war in pictures Injured victims of an alleged chemical attack in Douma EPA Douma chemical attack: Syria war in pictures An image grab taken from a video released by the Douma City Coordination Committee shows unidentified volunteers spraying a man with water at a make-shift hospital following an alleged chemical attack AFP/Douma City Coordination Committee Douma chemical attack: Syria war in pictures A Syrian man mourns after an alleged chemical attack Alamy Douma chemical attack: Syria war in pictures People stand in front of damaged buildings, in the town of Douma, the site of a suspected chemical weapons attack, near Damascus, Syria AP Photo/Hassan Ammar Douma chemical attack: Syria war in pictures Rubble lines a street in Douma, at the site of a suspected chemical weapons attack AP Douma chemical attack: Syria war in pictures Rubble fills a street in Douma, the site of a suspected chemical weapons attack, near Damascus AP I recall Jamal Shamoun, a young commander talking about how the regime would be forced to stop its barrel bombing; foreign jihadists would be chased out and a settlement reached among Syrians. He would be able to return to his former life of an engineer in Aleppo. I can go back to building things again, instead of destroying them, he reflected. I tried to warn against raising expectations the airstrikes were unlikely to be followed by anything much else. But people were convinced there would be real Western commitment changing the tide of the conflict. At the end, of course, there were no Western airstrikes. The Obama administration, which had been uneasy about embarking on it, eagerly seized on a Russian guarantee that Bashar al-Assad would dispose of his chemical arsenal. David Cameron, meanwhile, had lost the Commons vote to authorise military action. The French, who had been as vocal about the need to bomb as they have been this time after the Douma attack, prudently decided they would not go ahead on their own. The rebels were bitterly disappointed and angry. They felt betrayed by the West once again. I recall Yusuf, a fighter in Jamals group whose father and brother had been killed by regime forces, in tears, as he vowed to join Isis and have nothing more to do with the US or Europe. It was not just the regime which was relieved by the US decision. Isis and Jabhat al-Nusra were convinced that they, too, would be targeted in the bombing. We watched from a distance as they moved their fighters, weapons and prisoners out of their bases, some of the convoys heading for the porous Iraqi border. Assurances were sought from other rebel groups that they would not take advantage of the situation to grab territory. Isis and al-Nusra returned and, funded and armed by their wealthy Gulf patrons, grew in size and reach, recruiting from other rebel militias and attacking those which resisted. There was Western backing for some of the dwindling number of moderate rebel groups, with training camps in Turkey and Jordan, but most of these projects ended in failure paltry numbers of those trained actually did any fighting inside Syria; others handed over their weapons to the extremists after crossing the border. Syria bombing: EU 'understands' recent airstrikes but calls for 'urgent' resumption of peace talks Jamals group were part of a coalition which fought and lost against Isis as the rebels turned on each other. Some of his comrades died, others fled. He briefly joined the group Ahrar al-Sham as they appeared to be the best hope in combating Isis. But he became disillusioned quickly with their increasing embrace of Salafism and sought refuge in Turkey. In 2014 the Assad regime supposedly moved the last of its chemical weapons out of the country. John Kerry, the secretary of state at the time, proclaimed this as a triumph of diplomacy. We stuck a deal where we got 100 per cent of the chemical weapons out, he said. Kerry was wrong; chemical attacks continued, with the regime and the rebels blaming each other for them. Opposition fighters, dominated by hardline Islamists, were taking ground. In September 2015 a beleaguered Syrian regime appealed to Moscow for intervention, warning that Damascus itself was now under threat. Unlike the Wests half-hearted efforts, Vladimir Putins move was swift and robust with airstrikes and a dispatch of troops. President Assad was saved. The US and UK, which had fuelled the rebellion at its inception by demanding that Assad must go, now just watched from the sidelines as the regimes Russian and Iranian backers won back ground. Aleppo became the symbolic prize it had been in 2012, when I spent five weeks on the ground while the rebels almost captured Syrias largest city and commercial centre. But the Western support they had expected at the time did not arrive, and the rebel campaign ended with a frontline splitting the city in two. It became apparent that the opposition would not be able to withstand the regime siege and the assault which would follow. Jamal and his companions in Turkey knew this, but a group of them decided it was their duty to go and join the last stand at Aleppo. Three of them were killed. Two others, including Jamal, were part of the rebel convoy allowed to leave under a deal when the city fell. After a brief time in Idlib, one of the few opposition enclaves left, one which had effectively passed under the control of Jabhat al-Nusra now calling themselves Jabhat Fatah al-Sham they drifted back to Turkey. Last year, in response to another gas attack on the town of Khan Shekhoun, the new president, Donald Trump, ordered an attack on a Syrian airbase. 58 cruise missiles were fired, destroying a handful of aircrafts. The US presidents national security advisor, lieutenant general HR McMaster, maintained there would be a big shift on Assads calculus as it was the first time the United States has taken direct military action. But, as the chemical attack on Douma showed, no such shift has taken place. The attack, and the Trump presidency, was greeted with optimism by the rebels. After years of Obama inaction, they believed Trumps aggressive rhetoric about the Syrian regime would be followed by more direct action. Nothing much happened, but the disappointment this time among the opposition was more muted. Plans by Jamal and his companions to move back across the border were quietly abandoned. Twice as many missiles were fired this time following Douma. But just how much damage was done is a matter of dispute. The regime had been moving out equipment and stockpiles and evacuating personnel for days after Trumps boasting tweet,the missiles are coming..., removing the element of surprise from the operation. The airstrikes are unlikely to stop President Assads ability to carry out chemical attacks on civilians. The American military seem to accept that. Lieutenant general Kenneth McKenzie, of the Joint Staff in the Pentagon, said: I would say theres still a residual element of the Syrian programme that is out there ... I am not going to say they are going be unable to continue to conduct a chemical attack in the future. Recommended Donald Trump has accomplished nothing by bombing Syria But the general held they will think long and hard about it. And that may turn out to be the case. The Russians should be able to persuade the regime to desist, especially now it has almost won the civil war. The only rebel-held place of any note left to take back is Idlib, where an assault is likely later this year. A new Western plan, led by Emmanuel Macrons government, is being formed for Idlib after the last air strike: a supposed diplomatic initiative to stop the regimes Russian and Iranian-backed operation from taking place. Foreign minister Jean-Yves Le Drion declared, France is ready to work towards this To begin with a ceasefire which is really respected this time. The one currently blocking the process is Bashar al-Assad himself; its up to Russia to put pressure on him. The regime offensive, backed by Russia, will almost certainly go ahead. Syrian rebels in Turkey show no great inclination to join in the defence of Idlib where rival factions are fighting each other as they had done in Aleppo. The announcement of yet another Western plan is greeted with derision by Jamal and his friends. They had seen it all before. The killings, they say, will continue with or without chemical weapons. He runs, he tumbles, he zig-zags, spins 360 degrees, before finally eventually planting his feet. Some times, Donald Trump performs so many policy pirouettes it feels like watching gymnastics; yet often, his behaviour can appear so vaulting, so reactive and so seemingly impulsive, it is more akin to political parkour. Over the weekend, the USs UN Ambassador Nikki Haley appeared on television to warn that Russia was to be hit with new sanctions a statement that had presumably been agreed in advance with the White House as part of the USs response to the alleged chemical attack in Syria www.instagram.com/p/BYp9pIahixW/ You will see that Russian sanctions will be coming down, Mr Haley told CBS. [Treasury Secretary Steve] Mnuchin will be announcing those on Monday if he hasnt already, and they will go directly to any sort of companies that were dealing with equipment related to Assad and chemical weapons use. But on Monday, it emerged Trump had decided to halt the triggering of the sanctions. White House Press Secretary Sarah Huckabee Sanders said the administration was still considering the issue and a decision would be made in the near future. What had caused Trump to perform the about-turn? There was no answer. Earlier, this month it was the issue of withdrawing the 2,000 US troops operating in Syria. I want to get out, I want to bring the troops back home, I want to start rebuilding our nation, he said. Then there was the alleged gas attacks the multi-nation airstrikes and the claim by French leader Emanuel Macron that Trump had been persuaded to keep the troops there for the long term. This week, the White House said Trump still wanted to get the troops out as soon he could. Boston Dynamics showcases robot Atlas performing impressive parkour Then there was the matter of Trans-Pacific Partnership, an Asia trade agreement entered into by Barack Obama to help counter Chinas growing influence. Trump decried the TPP on the campaign trail and he formally withdrew the US from it within days of taking office. But last week, amid a mounting trade war with China, Trump said in an 11.15pm tweet that the US could try and rejoin the TPP if it was offered a deal that was substantially better than hammered out by his predecessor. And so it goes, from withdrawing troops from Afghanistan to gun control, to an immigration deal for young people who entered the US without documents and whether or not be believes China is manipulating its currency, Trump has been all over the place on issues large and small. Experts say this is probably because Trump believes a free-wheeling, react-to-the-moment approach served him well in business and during his campaign for the presidency. I think that Trump rules with his gut, said Donna Hoffman, professor of political science at the University of Northern Iowa. He thinks it served him well in business. And maybe if did work well it he New York real estate market, but that is not necessary going to work for governing. Hoffman said there were several downsides to Trumps flip-flopping. His own staff often did not know where they were supposed to be on any issue and frequently found themselves being undercut, something former Secretary of State Rex Tillerson was a victim of more than once. Moreover, the USs traditional allies, especially those in Europe, were unsure as to whether the president was genuine in his support for institutions such as Nato. Such was Trumps apparent disdain for Nato when he visited European leaders in the spring of 2017, German chancellor Angela Merkel said Europeans had to rely on themselves. The times in which we could completely depend on others are, to a certain extent, over, she told an election rally in Munich last May. Ive experienced that in the last few days. We Europeans truly have to take our fate into our own hands. Hoffman said some Trump supporters believe this uncertainty pays off. She said she was recently at an event where she was told that Trumps swerving and sometimes wild comments on Twitter, or even at the UN General Assembly, had resulted in North Korean leader Kim Jong-un agreeing to talks after years of stalemate. It was not her opinion, she said, but plenty shared it. 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 Other commentators on Trump have said his first remark on any particular comment is frequently an opening gambit or offer, as if he were still in the world of Manhattan property speculation. It is something to get the conversation started, and something from which he is willing to back away or drop, if it suits him. In the aftermath of the of the high school shooting at Parkland, Florida, that killed 17 people and the impassioned and eloquent demand for gun law reform by the students who survived the ordeal, Trump hinted he was on their side. At a meeting with senators during which he said he wanted to see a comprehensive bill, Trump mocked senators for being too afraid of the powerful National Rifle Association, a gun industry lobbying group that contributed $30m to his campaign. Some of you people are petrified of the NRA. You cant be petrified. You cant be petrified, he said. As it was, Trumps bluster came to little. A couple of days later, after meeting NRA officials in the Oval Office, the president declared he was no longer going to push for either universal background checks or an increase in the age-limit for buying certain weapons. Not much political support (to put it mildly), he said in a tweet. Yet if Trump is so willing to give up those positions, what does it say about his core beliefs? He does not have core beliefs. That is one of the main differences between Pence and Trump, said Christina Greer, associate professor of political science at Fordham University in New York. Pence has core beliefs, which trio might not agree with, but which he has stuck to. Trump does not. That is why the last person in the room who speaks to him, wins the debate. And thats why you have people working for him clamouring to be the last person in the room. The Irish dairy industry continues to be the EU leader in terms of investment in milk processing facilities. When taking into consideration the volume of milk produced in the country, Ireland leads the way, having invested 1.2c per litre per year over the three years 2015, 2016 and 2017. The UK sits second in this table, well ahead of other main milk producing nations in the EU. According to analysis undertaken by Promar for AHDB in the UK, since the end of quotas, major investment in processing in Ireland is now close to 400m. Ireland, the Netherlands and Denmark invested heavily in processing assets on the run up to the end of milk quotas (March 2015). These countries have since recorded significant increases in milk production, justifying the heavy investment. Between 2014 and 2017, Irish milk production increased 29pc, the Netherlands rose 15pc and Denmark 7pc. Among the major investments in recent years, Glanbia invested 235m at the companys milk processing plants at Virginia (Co Cavan), Ballyragget and Belview (Co Kilkenny). Further between now and 2020 it plans to invest between 250 and 300 million to facilitate an expected 30pc growth in milk from Glanbia Irelands 4,800 farmer suppliers. Dairygold has also invested 162.1m in the business over the last five years primarily across its four processing sites (Clonmel Road and Castlefarm in Mitchelstown, Mogeely and Mallow). Meanwhile, Arrabawn have also increased their overall processing with a 6m investment. The growth in supplies to the mid-west dairy will see milk volumes hit 500m litres by 2020. Kerry Group and Lakeland Dairies said they had no plans for further spending in new processing facilities in 2018-19, however, both dairies pointed out that significant investment had been made in stainless steel over the last number of years. It was a similar story at Carbery. A spokesperson said the West Cork processor has sufficient capacity for the next few years. However, she said the company was assessing medium and longer-term manufacturing requirements. Demand for meat in China has quadrupled over the last 30 years. However, beef consumption would be considered relatively low at 4kg per person per year, compared to 19kg per person in Ireland. However, there has been steady growth in consumer demand for beef, as the middle class has higher disposable income and there is increased urbanisation. Figures show beef imports to China have increased from under 100,000 tonnes in 2012 to around 700,000 tonnes last year. It is expected to double by 2020. Frozen boneless beef accounts for around 80pc of imports. Total Irish agri-food trade exports to China reached 974m last year, and it is now Irelands third-largest market overall. Dairy exports have led the way, valued at 667m, while pigmeat exports were more than 100m. However, seafood and other food and drink exports are also growing. How much beef will Ireland export? Both processors and Agriculture Minister Michael Creed were reluctant to put a figure on export levels. However, it has been signalled as a very significant beef market, particularly with a middle class whose appetite for beef is growing. After the BSE ban was lifted three years ago, then-Agriculture Minister Simon Coveney signalled that the market could be worth 100m in its infancy. Which products have been approved and would you expect this to expand? Initially the approval is for frozen, boneless beef. However, the Agriculture Minister has signalled that it may be possible to expand the range of products over time. Processors are eager to get access for on-the-bone beef, plus the valuable fifth quarter, or offal. When is the first consignment of beef expected to depart for China? The department is completing the final technicalities to allow trade to begin in the coming weeks. The normal transport time for a container shipment to China is about six weeks. However, the approved plants may have some other technicalities to deal with, which could include the testing requirements. How many applications for access to the Chinese market were there? In total there were 25 applications for access to the Chinese market. What does it mean for the remaining plants that submitted applications? The first three Irish plants to be approved are the Goodman-owned ABP Clones, in Co Monaghan, Slaney Foods, in Co Wexford, and Foyle Meats, in Co Donegal. A further five factories were also audited, and work will continue to ensure the approval of ABP Nenagh, Kepak Clonee, Liffey Meats, Dawn Meats Charleville and Kildare Chilling. The other plants out of the 25 that applied have yet to be audited. The department said that officials will continue to work towards access for all applicants. Irelands latest deal to get beef into China is welcomed by industry, but its success can only be judged by the return to farmers. This year is the year of the dog in the Chinese calendar and the next time it will come around again will be 12 years time 2030. Twelve years is a long time and could see a hugely different economic landscape for the Irish agri-food sector. With Brexit looming on the horizon its putting a big black cloud over our most profitable beef market and where around 50pc of our beef currently goes. Any hindrance to that market would be a disaster for Irish beef exports and has the potential to destroy our beef sector. Quite simply, if there are additional costs or barriers or a lack of regulatory alignment for Irish beef going into the UK after Brexit happens, which is due to happen in less than 12 months, it could simply mean Irish beef going into the UK will have to find a new home. And we dont have enough other markets built up to take that surplus beef. The former agriculture minister Simon Coveney said in 2015 that the US market for Irish beef could be worth 100m yet were no where near the colour of that three years on. Last year, less than 8m worth of Irish beef found a home in the US. He also said back in 2015 that Irish beef exports to China could be worth 100m and that he expected Irish beef to be in China by that autumn. The three-year delay to todays announcement simply shows how difficult and slow it is to get into new markets. Its easy for ministers to throw out potential top-line figures, but achieving them is another thing and as for farmers seeing any impact on beef prices, well thats anyones guess but I imagine youd struggle to find a beef farmer in the country who expects the price of beef to rise anytime soon. And thats key. Will there be any price improvement? Weve heard for years how profitable the agri-food sector is, how important it is to the economy and how much growth potential it has. Six successive years of growth in the value of agri-food exports have yet to translate into any real increase in farm incomes. But, where has the value been felt? The primary producers in this instance beef farmers have some of the lowest incomes in the agri sector. Being the first European country to gain access to China for its beef is a great achievement, but farmers are entitled to be cynical too. If there is any takeaway from this Chinese deal it has to benefit farmers directly to be judged a success. Burglars who target family homes face tougher sentences of not less than two years and up to more than 10 years in prison. The Court of Appeal is expected to deliver a landmark judgment on burglary which, it is hoped, will bring consistency to sentencing and increase the tariffs for raiders who target residential homes. In a rare move, the Director of Public Prosecutions asked the three-judge Court of Appeal to set guidelines on sentencing for burglaries and to treat residential burglary as a "special case". Lawyers for the DPP are seeking no lower than two years in prison for anyone caught burgling a home and a two-to-10 year sentence generally for the same offence. Irish Prison Service statistics, provided to the Court of Appeal, show that 75pc of prisoners sent to prison for burglary and related offences are serving sentences of two years or less. Most burglary offences are dealt with in the District Court where the maximum term of imprisonment is two years. The submission was made in the case of two cousins who were jailed for a fatal burglary at the home of 62-year-old John O'Donoghue at Toomaline, Doon, Limerick, on December 15, 2016. Michael Casey (34), with an address at Clonlong Halting Site, Southill, in Limerick, and David Casey (23), with an address at Carragh Park, Belcamp, Dublin 17, were given three-and-a-half year jail terms for that and a number of other burglaries at Limerick Circuit Criminal Court in December 2016. The Court of Appeal found the men's sentences to be too lenient and fresh sentences will be handed down on Tuesday. In a supplemental submission, counsel for the DPP, Thomas O'Malley BL, said he was asking the court to bring consistency to sentencing for burglary offences "out of recognition of the undeniable social problem caused by residential burglaries". Mr O'Malley, who wrote the book considered to be the authority on sentencing in Ireland, said residential burglaries were a "serious social problem" in Ireland, particularly in isolated rural areas and where the home was occupied by the elderly, infirm or disabled. The Irish courts have long resisted setting rules or guidelines for sentencing in specific crimes believing instead that the discretion of individual judges should not be restricted. However, in recent years guidelines have been set for serious assaults and for possession of firearms offences. Mr O'Malley said it was already well recognised that residential burglary was "as much an offence against the person as an offence against the property" and sometimes more so. In some instances, little or no property may be taken but, typically, the victim will continue to "endure a sense of fear and insecurity for quite a long time to come". He said the impact on victims was "multi-faceted". A single burglary in a rural area often created a "ripple of fear" throughout that community leading other people in the area to "live in permanent fear or dread". By their nature, he said, residential burglaries damaged entire communities and ways of life. People felt at risk in their own homes, the place they should feel most secure, and it could cause some to make life-changing decisions such as moving into sheltered accommodation. As the courts have often acknowledged, Mr O'Malley said residential burglary amounts to an infringement of the right to the inviolability of the dwelling as protected by Article 40.5 of the Constitution. Mr O'Malley submitted that prison sentences for residential burglaries should "never" be set at a tariff of two years or less and that in most cases, the sentence should be between two to 10 years. Identifying four broad ranges for burglary (nought-two years, two-five years and five-10 years and more than 10 years for the most serious cases), Mr O'Malley submitted that residential burglary "by virtue of its inherent gravity and its attested impact on victims, should never fall into the lowest range" or be treated with a sentence of less than two years. He submitted that most residential burglaries should fall into the second or third range (two-10 years) and that "those with exceptionally serious aggravating factors might fall into the fourth (range)". After all, the maximum sentence for burglary, which is set by the Oireachtas rather than the courts, is 14 years imprisonment, he said. According to the Central Statistics Office, a total of 18,438 "burglary and related offences" were reported in 2016. The previous year (2015) there were 26,261 reported "burglary and related offences" and during the previous decade, the number always exceeded 20,000. However, statistics on sentencing were difficult to compile because there were so many variables related to the nature of the crime but also the manner in which the offender met the charge. For example, an unwritten rule of sentencing in Ireland is that judges generally give criminals 25pc off the sentence they would have given had the case been fought in a trial. Mr O'Malley said a close examination of earlier judgments on burglary revealed "such a diversity of circumstances" that it was "very difficult to draw any reliable conclusions". He said it was "extremely difficult, if not impossible" to access reliable statistical data on sentencing practices. Most official reports offer little concrete information on sentencing practices or the precise nature of the offence. Mr O'Malley said the most helpful sources for data were Annual Reports of the Irish Prison Service which set out statistics on committals to prison. According to the Irish Prison Service's reports, there were 319 prisoners serving sentences for burglary or related offences in Irish prisons, in 2016. This accounted for about 10pc of the total number of serving prisoners (3,077) on November 30, 2016. Of these 110 (34.5pc) were serving sentences of less than two years. 137 (43pc) were serving sentences of two to 5 years. 55 (17pc) were serving sentences of five to 10 years and 17 (5.3pc) were serving sentences in excess of 10 years. Between 2013 and 2016, there were 1,276 committals to Irish prisons for burglary and related offences. Of these, 948 (74.3pc) were for periods of less than two years. 275 committals (21.5pc) were for periods of two to five years. 46 committals (3.6pc) were for periods of five to 10 years and seven committals (0.54pc) were for more than 10 years. Mr O'Malley said about 75pc were given short prison sentences (less than two years). About 20pc received sentences of two to five years and about 4pc received sentences of five to ten years. Existing Tesco Bank customer accounts will be migrated to the Avantcard platform Avantcard has reached an agreement with Tesco Bank to acquire the UK retail giant's Irish credit card portfolio, subject to regulatory approval. Existing Tesco Bank customer accounts will be migrated to the Avantcard platform when the integration is complete. It is expected that the transition to the new credit card will be carried out in autumn, underpinned by a comprehensive communication plan. Based in Leitrim, Avantcard has been servicing customers in Ireland for over 20 years. Avantcard arrived in Ireland in 2012, when it bought the MBNA credit card business. Last year, the consumer finance firm re-entered the Irish market with a fresh digital and customer-service-led approach in a bid to acquire new customers. The company also has an office in Dublin and employs approximately 200 people in Ireland. Managing director Chris Paul said that Avantcard's strategy is to be a leading consumer finance provider in Ireland by 2020. "This will be achieved through ongoing product innovation, continuing investment and strategic partnerships," he said. Will Curley, director of transactional banking at Tesco Bank, said that they believe that their customers will be well served by Avantcard's strong digital servicing platform. "Our priority now is to work closely with Avantcard to ensure a seamless transition for our customers to their new credit card provider", he said. In 2017, Avantcard partnered with Chill Money, acting as issuer and servicer for its loans and credit cards. The UK's Breedon Group has confirmed that it is to buy Northern Ireland building materials group Lagan for 455m (527m) on a cash- and debt-free basis. Breedon is the UK's largest independent construction materials group and employs about 2,300 people, while Lagan supplies construction materials and contract surfacing in Ireland and the UK. Meanwhile Lagan has a cement plant in Kinnegad county Westmeath, nine active quarries, 13 asphalt plants and nine ready-mixed concrete plants. The acquisition will be financed by a combination of a new 150m term loan, a new 350m revolving credit facility, which replaces Breedon's existing 300m revolving facility and a 170m equity placing. "Over the last eight years we have pursued a successful buy-and-build strategy which has established Breedon as the largest independent construction materials business in the UK and the acquisition of Lagan is another strategic step for us," Peter Tom CBE, Breedon's chairman, said. "We believe it has the potential to add significantly to the group's performance and prospects and we are looking forward to working with our new colleagues to deliver further value for our investors." The acquisition enables Breedon to enter the "attractive" Irish construction market and provides "significant opportunities" to expand upstream though the aggregates business in Ireland and downstream through the asphalt and ready-mixed concrete operations, a statement from Breedon said. At the year ended 31 December 2017 Lagan generated revenues of 249m, while it had earnings before interest, taxation, depreciation and amortisation of 46m. Breedon expects to achieve annual cost synergies of approximately 5m by the third full year following the completion of the deal. Commenting on the announcement of the deal, Kevin Lagan, chairman of Lagan thanked staff for the role that they played in the growth of the company. "I wish them every success as they enter an exciting new chapter with Breedon, who I am confident will build on that success, supporting the development of the business in the years ahead." The annual volume of goods passing through Dublin Port is expected to rise to 77.2 million gross tonnes in 2040, compared to 2.9 million tonnes in 1950 Dublin Port will expand at a faster than expected pace over the next 20 years as population growth boosts volumes passing through the country's main goods gateway, the semi-state company behind the port said. However, growth will have to be accommodated without a physical expansion beyond the existing docks - ruling out reclamation or a major move. In a revised masterplan published yesterday, Dublin Port Company said Ireland's biggest port - now needs to expand based on an assumption of 3.3pc annual growth in volumes between 2010 and 2040. That's higher than the 2.5pc annual growth pencilled in back in 2012. "The past and projected growth to 2040 is in large part due to the growth in the country's population," the revised masterplan noted. Dublin Port Company said that the annual volume of goods through the gateway is expected to rise to 77.2 million gross tonnes in 2040, from 2.9 million tonnes in 1950. The current masterplan was first published in 2012. Since then, two major elements of the plan have got underway. They are the 277m Alexandra Basin Redevelopment scheme and the development in a so-called "inland port" on a 44-hectare site near Dublin Airport. Expand Close Eamonn O'Reilly / Facebook Twitter Email Whatsapp Eamonn O'Reilly The Alexandra project, set to be completed by 2021, will improve the port's capacity for large ships by deepening and lengthening three kilometres of the port's seven kilometres of berths. Dublin Port Company expects to invest 1bn in capital over the next decade. CEO Eamonn O'Reilly, pictured, said that the masterplan continues to be informed by extensive public and stakeholder consultation. He added that the updated masterplan takes account of "strong economic growth and significant policy changes in recent years". Dublin Port Company had originally envisaged expanding eastwards into Dublin Bay. But that controversial element of the masterplan was abandoned by the semi-state company last year, having been refused permission seven years earlier to reclaim 21 hectares of the bay. "Given the high growth rates projected and the need to cater for this growth without further expansion into Dublin Bay, Dublin Port Company will only bring forward development projects which are consistent with the principles of proper planning and sustainable development and which can be objectively demonstrated not to adversely affect the environment in all its facets," it noted yesterday. It added that the "great unknown" in terms of planning for infrastructure development is the level of future growth. "If the projected 27-fold increase in port volumes over in the 90 years to 2040 were to repeat itself thereafter, then port volumes would rise to an implausible two billion gross tonnes," it noted. "Our development plans are framed against the inevitability that there will, at some point, be a decoupling of port volume growth from economic growth." It added: "It is implausible that there would be another 27-fold increase over the 90 years from 2040 to 2130. Therefore, Dublin Port Company believes that growth will slow down at some point in the future." Last year, volumes passing through Dublin Port rose 4.3pc to a new record of 36.4m gross tonnes. Volumes through the port are up 30.1pc since 2013. Last year imports rose 3.9pc to 21.5m gross tonnes, and exports were 4.9pc higher at 14.9m tonnes. Containers and freight trailers account for 83pc of all cargo transiting the port. Other elements of the masterplan include improved facilities for cruise ships to develop that business, and also a single terminal for use by all of its ferry operators. The port's role as petroleum storage facility is also expected to diminish as climate change policies take effect. Dublin-based personal healthcare firm Integumen, listed on London's AIM, is planning to raise 7.5m (8.7m) as it buys Galway-based firm Cellulac, which has developed products to make biodegradable plastic used in the cosmetics, nutritional food and healthcare sectors. Cellulac is owned by investors including Gerard Brandon, once the chief executive of Irish wound-care firm Alltracel. Integumen's non-executive chairman is Tony Richardson, previously a CEO of Alltracel. Upon completion of the deal, which will constitute a reverse takeover, Mr Brandon will become chief executive of Integumen, whose name will be changed to Cellulac. Mr Richardson is also chief executive of drug-development firm Venn Life Sciences, which owns about a quarter of Integumen. Integumen, which floated on the Alternative Investment Market in London last year, said the proposed acquisition of Cellulac will enable it to enter the "highly attractive bio-materials and nutritional food sector, complementing its existing personal care business". The Integumen board said that it has previously recognised the need to expand its revenue-generating activities through product acquisitions. It said that it is also in the process of undertaking a "small debt or equity raise", in association with Cellulac, to pay on-going transaction costs and to increase its financial resources. The company has also approved a cost-reduction and cost-deferral programme with the aim of saving about 40,000 a month. The 7.5m that Integumen plans to raise is significantly more than the 1.8m (2m) it raised last year in its flotation, which at the time gave the fledgling company an 8.2m market capitalisation. Its current market capitalisation is just 1.9m. Integumen said yesterday that following the acquisition of Cellulac, the enlarged group will focus on biodegradable plastic ingredients, cosmetics and human grade food supplements. It will also have a portfolio of products in oral care, medical and cosmetics. Cellulac has 35 shareholders, including Mr Brandon and investors from Austria, Germany and Poland. Investors in the company also include a number of Galway-based backers such as Patrick Walsh, the founder of the company. Cellulac was spun out of NUI Galway. Dublin-based Shire, a London-listed rare diseases specialist that is a potential takeover target for Japan's Takeda Pharmaceutical is selling its oncology business for $2.4bn (1.9bn). The sale to unlisted French drugmaker Servier suggests there is value locked up within Shire's portfolio - despite a dismal share price performance in the past two years - as its management braces for a possible $50bn bid battle with Japan's biggest drugmaker. Shire is a global pharmceutical business, with its tax base in Ireland. Shire said yesterday it would consider returning proceeds from the sale to shareholders through a buyback and that further selective disposals of non-strategic assets were possible. The divestment of the cancer business may be a deterrent for Takeda, since oncology was one of the areas it had highlighted as driving the case for a Shire deal, along with gastrointestinal medicine and neuroscience. Still, given the small contribution of the cancer business to Shire's overall profits, Deutsche Bank analysts said this was unlikely to be a deal-breaker. A Takeda spokesman declined to comment. Shire was at pains to point out that it started exploring the sale of oncology in December and commenced the disposal process in January, during which it identified multiple possible US, European and Japanese buyers. Takeda's interest in Shire was made public only at the end of last month. Under UK takeover rules, Takeda has until April 25 to announce whether or not it will bid for Shire, which has a market value of around $47bn. Buying Shire would be transformational for Takeda but would be a huge financial stretch, since the company is worth around $10bn more than the Japanese group. Shire also had debt of around $19bn as of the end of 2017. The drugs industry has seen a surge in deal-making this year as large players look for promising assets to improve their pipelines, but a Takeda-Shire transaction would be by far the biggest yet. Two sources with direct knowledge of the matter said last week that Takeda had sounded out its major creditors for loans to fund a potential Shire bid. Shire CEO Flemming Ornskov said the sale of the oncology business to Servier demonstrated the value embedded in Shire as shares in the company rose 0.5pc in early trading. (Reuters) Smurfit Kappa shareholders are braced for a fresh offer from International Paper after weeks of deadlock between the two parties. Investors in Europe's largest box maker remain convinced its larger US suitor will stump up the extra cash to take the bid closer to the key 40-a-share valuation, widely seen as a catalyst for engagement. The confidence is rooted largely in the extensive groundwork undertaken by International Paper, which has so far set out its case to both sets of shareholders, as well as the credit ratings agencies. Source said the agencies have published brief notes arguing in favour of the Memphis-based group's ability to reduce its borrowings down to three times earnings in the years after any deal. As one investor pointed out, it "beggars belief" that International Paper would walk now, given the amount of time and capital expended. He claimed the company had done everything it needed to do in terms of explaining the deal to the market. "Only the price falls short," he said. According to this sizeable investor in Smurfit, International Paper possesses the firepower to improve the bid. His views were echoed by two other shareholders, who maintain the Dublin-based packaging firm will come under pressure if it rebuffs a near 40-a-share offer. While the event-driven funds are the keenest on a merger, longer-term stakeholders have also expressed their desire for an exit at this valuation. This is partly because of fears the sector, which is notoriously cyclical, is due for a correction after 2019 as new players pump in additional production capacity. One stakeholder argued valuations in the industry had hit a peak. Yet despite the undimmed optimism of some Smurfit shareholders, International Paper has repeatedly stressed "it does not see a way forward" following the rejection of its last cash-and-shares offer, which was pitched at 37.54 a share. The improvement in the group's share price since then has lifted the offer to closer to 38.50. There is little sign of a softening either from Smurfit's board, even as some investors start to pressure the group to enter negotiations with its US rival. One investor warned the Irish firm to avoid "playing too many games". "We are at the top of the cycle in this space so we want a deal but at the right price. We don't want the board to play too many games and this all to fall apart," he said. Dorothy Thompson has been appointed as an independent non-executive director and chair-designate of Tullow Oil. Ms Thompson will officially join the board following the conclusion of the groups Annual General Meeting on April 25. It is anticipated that Ms Thompson will succeed current chairman and Tullow Oil founder Aidan Heavey as chair at the conclusion of a board meeting scheduled for July 20. Mr Heavey will retire from the board at the same time. Commenting on the announcement, Mr Heavey said that Ms Thompson, 57, has exactly the right mix of leadership, managerial, operational and financial experience that Tullow needs. "I look forward to working closely with Dorothy during the transition period until she takes over as chair in July and I will follow Dorothy and Tullow's progress over the next few years with much interest," Mr Heavey said. Ms Thompson, who is also currently a non-executive director of the Court of the Bank of England and the NYSE-listed Eaton Corporation, has previously spent 12 years working as chief executive of international power and energy trading company Drax Group. Prior to her role at Drax, Ms Thompson managed InterGen's European power business, was head of project finance at PowerGen and worked at CDC Capital Partners, the private sector arm of the British Government's aid programme. Ms Thompson, who holds a BSc and an MSc in Economics from the London School of Economics, also has experience working in emerging markets, including a period working in the Commercial and Industrial division of the Bank of Botswana. "I am very pleased to be joining Tullow as the company emerges from the recent downturn in a strong position following the significant progress it has made over the past two years," Ms Thompson said. "I am looking forward to working with Paul [McDade] and the board as we focus on delivering the full potential of the company's world class portfolio and the return to value enhancing growth." The announcement was welcomed by Paul McDade, CEO of Tullow Oil, who described her experience as being "exceptionally valuable as we work together to position Tullow for growth in what remains an uncertain environment in our sector." "While Tullow is well-positioned with a balanced set of production, development and exploration assets, we will need to ensure that the company not only delivers on the potential of its current assets but also seeks out new opportunities for growth," Mr McDade said. 'Apple outlined situations in which information was leaked to the media, including a meeting earlier this year where Apple's software engineering head Craig Federighi told employees that some planned iPhone software features would be delayed.' Stock photo: Reuters Apple has warned employees to stop leaking internal information on future plans and raised the spectre of potential legal action and criminal charges, one of the most-aggressive moves by the world's largest technology company to control information about its activities. The company said in a lengthy memo posted to its internal blog that it "caught 29 leakers", last year and noted that 12 were arrested. "These people not only lose their jobs, they can face extreme difficulty finding employment elsewhere," Apple added. The company declined to comment on Friday. Apple outlined situations in which information was leaked to the media, including a meeting earlier this year where Apple's software engineering head Craig Federighi told employees that some planned iPhone software features would be delayed. Apple also cited a yet-to-be-released software package that revealed details about the unreleased iPhone X and new Apple Watch. Leaked information about a new product can negatively impact sales of current models, give rivals more time to begin on a competitive response, and lead to fewer sales when the new product launches, according to the memo. "We want the chance to tell our customers why the product is great, and not have that done poorly by someone else," Greg Joswiak, an Apple product marketing executive, said in the memo. The crackdown is part of broader and long-running attempts by Silicon Valley technology companies to track and limit what information their employees share publicly. Firms like Google and Facebook are pretty open with staff about their plans, but keep close tabs on their outside communications and sometimes fire people when they find leaks. Facebook executive Sheryl Sandberg last week talked about her disappointment with leakers. In 2016, Google fired an employee after the person shared internal posts criticising an executive. The employee filed a lawsuit claiming their speech was protected under California law. In messages to staff, tech companies sometimes conflate conversations employees are allowed to have, such as complaining about working conditions, with sharing trade secrets, said Chris Baker, an attorney with Baker Curtis and Schwartz, PC, who represents the fired Googler. "The overall broad definition of confidential information makes it so employees don't say anything, even about issues they're allowed to talk about," he said. "That's problematic." Apple is notoriously secretive about its product development. In 2012, chief executive Tim Cook pledged to double down on keeping the company's work under wraps. Despite that, the media has continued to report news on the firm to satisfy demand for information on a company that's become a crucial part of investment portfolios, many of which support public retirement funds for teachers and other essential workers. In 2017, Apple held a confidential meeting with employees in another bid to stop leaks. Since then, publications, including Bloomberg News, published details about the iPhone X and other products. Bloomberg The creators of Ireland's first true crime podcast 'West Cork' are to release more episodes after they received new information about the Sophie Toscan de Platier case. Sam Bungey and Jennifer Forde confirmed today that hundreds of people got in touch and new information was made available to them following the release of the 13-episode series. Although reluctant to give a completion date for the next instalment, Bungey and Forde told Today FM's 'Dermot & Dave' that they've had retired detectives from America, as well as local people from west Cork get in touch. The popular series, which made it into Time magazine's 50 best podcasts in the world, tells the story of Sophie Toscan du Plantier, a French film producer, who was found dead outside her holiday home near Schull, County Cork, on the night of December 23 1996. Journalist Ian Bailey was arrested twice in relation to the murder; however, he was not prosecuted for the crime and he has always protested his innocence. He has since taken cases against the State. "If people hadnt talked, there would have been no podcast," Forde told the programme this morning. "In many ways, this isnt our story to tell, its the story of the people who lived it so its important that it should be, as far as possible, in their voices." The cast of Orange Is The New Black (Netflix) Have we arrived at peak Netflix already? Has it really been just five years since Netflix transformed from a company that streams TV series and films to a company that makes TV series and films? It feels like its been an awful lot longer than that. This might have something to do with the sheer volume of content its currently producing. Its enormous. The first fruit of its bold foray into production was, of course, House of Cards, which is due back in the autumn, minus Kevin Spacey, for a truncated, eight-episode final season. Expand Close Robin Wright takes centre stage in trailer for House of Cards season 6 / Facebook Twitter Email Whatsapp Robin Wright takes centre stage in trailer for House of Cards season 6 This is surely not the way Netflix would have wished to wrap up what used to be regarded as its flagship show. Mind you, even before the sexual assault allegations (which have since become the subject of several police investigations) against Spacey hit the headlines, House of Cards had already slipped into something close to self-parody. Nevertheless, the series will always be remembered as a game-changer for Netflix, as well as for its effect, for better or worse, on how we watch television. Expand Close The cast of Orange Is The New Black (Netflix) / Facebook Twitter Email Whatsapp The cast of Orange Is The New Black (Netflix) Netflix and the binge-watch culture it popularised is the reason why that most traditional of broadcasters, the BBC, is increasingly making its series available as online boxsets on its iPlayer streaming platform. Hard Sun, Requiem and The City & The City are among the series that were made available to viewers in the UK, in full, on the iPlayer, immediately after their first episodes had been broadcast in the old-fashioned way. Expand Close Black Mirror / Facebook Twitter Email Whatsapp Black Mirror The trickle that began with House of Cards soon turned into a flood. In 2016, Netflix produced an estimated 126 original series or films more than any network or cable channel in the USA. Whether it intends to or not, its moving closer and closer every year to monopolising the market in large-scale, big-budget series. It took another significant step forward last year when it set up its own production house, Netflix Studios. Expand Close Hemlock Grove / Facebook Twitter Email Whatsapp Hemlock Grove Video of the Day This allows it to self-produce some of its own original content, rather than partnering with outside production companies, which is how it operated up to that point. The rate at which Netflix has evolved is mind-boggling. But when a broadcaster expands this fast, when its hunger for more and more new content becomes voracious, it follows that quantity is going to eclipse quality sooner or later. Expand Close FRIENDS FROM COLLEGE / Facebook Twitter Email Whatsapp FRIENDS FROM COLLEGE Netflix is generally regarded as having raised the bar for prestige, event television and, in the process, forced other broadcasters, both cable and terrestrial, to up their own games. The titles inevitably invoked to support this view are Orange is the New Black, Stranger Things, Black Mirror (which Netflix lured away from Channel 4 with the promise of a bigger budget and bigger star names) and The Crown, arguably now Netflixs signature series. Expand Close Fuller House on Netflix / Facebook Twitter Email Whatsapp Fuller House on Netflix Theyre all, in their own wildly different ways, brilliant. But we run the risk of letting their brilliance blind us to the fact that Netflix has produced more than a few Netflops. Eli Hostel Roths gory horror series Hemlock Grove earned the dubious honour of being the first series Netflix cancelled, due to basement-level viewing figures. Netflix waved the chequebook in A-lister Naomi Wattss face to star in the dreary, silly Gypsy, then decided to wave goodbye to it after six episodes. Haters Back Off, which was spun out of some short YouTube sketches, got the wish contained in its title: viewers backed off. There are many more the thoroughly obnoxious Girlboss; the vapid Friends from College; the feeble sitcom revival Fuller House, which makes The Big Bang Theory look as radical as Monty Python; the pretentious twaddle The OA and then countless more after those. When you have to wade through acres of dross like this, not to mention expensive, overblown misfires like Altered Carbon, to get to the good stuff, you have to wonder if the streaming giant hasnt grown too gigantic too fast. We might just have hit peak Netflix. Six people, five men aged 27 to 31 and one woman aged 24, were arrested on suspicion of Money Laundering offences The planned searches were carried out by the Garda National Drugs & Organised Crime Bureau at a number of addresses Six people were arrested and approximately 250,000 was seized during raids in the greater Dublin area this morning. The operation was conducted as part of ongoing investigations into money laundering activities of a criminal organisation suspected of drug trafficking offences in Ireland, Australia and New Zealand. The planned searches were carried out by the Garda National Drugs & Organised Crime Bureau at a number of addresses. Six people, five men aged 27 to 31 and one woman aged 24, were arrested on suspicion of Money Laundering offences. They are currently detained at various Dublin Garda stations under the provisions of Section 50 of the Criminal Justice Act 2007 and Section 4 of the Criminal Justice Act 1984. Assistant Commissioner John ODriscoll of Special Crime Operations said; "This is further evidence of the enhanced level of co-operation that An Garda Siochana, and Special Crime Operations in particular, have engaged in, in recent times with a view to tackling the organised crime gangs that operate at an international level. Expand Close Six people, five men aged 27 to 31 and one woman aged 24, were arrested on suspicion of Money Laundering offences / Facebook Twitter Email Whatsapp Six people, five men aged 27 to 31 and one woman aged 24, were arrested on suspicion of Money Laundering offences "This investigation is supported by the other Bureaus within Special Crime Operations, local Detective Units from the DMR North Division and the Australian Federal Police." GARDAI are treating the death of a new-born baby whose body was found in the boot of a parked car in Co Offaly as a tragedy. The revelation came as in a separate and unrelated development the body of a new-born baby was found in the boot of a car parked near Derrys Altnagelvin Hospital. The discovery came after the teenage mother, from Donegal, went into the Derry hospital immediately after giving birth and raised the alarm. In Offaly, gardai are treating the discovery of a new-born babys body in Birr on March 29 as a tragedy. It is understood the baby was stillborn. A source told the Irish Independent the body was discovered in the boot of the parked car some time after the baby was born. The remains were taken to the Midland Regional Hospital (MRH), Tullamore, for a full post-mortem examination. The babys death came to light after the mother attended hospital for treatment for medical complications arising from childbirth. It is understood the woman was in a very distressed condition. The location of the baby then became known. The Office of the State Pathologist was informed and a post-mortem examination was carried out on the infant at MRH on April 1. Offaly Coroner Mr Brian Mahon was also notified of the death. However, as the babys death was deemed to be a stillbirth it will not be the subject of a full coroners inquest. Gardai confirmed they are investigating the sudden death of the infant. It is understood the incident is being treated as a tragedy. The investigation will be directed by the findings of the full post-mortem examination report. The initial indications are that the infants death was due to natural causes. Gardai have not disclosed the gender of the baby or the age of the mother involved. The mother has been receiving counselling supports since the incident came to light. Meanwhile, the PSNI are similarly treating the discovery of a babys body in a parked car at Derrys Altnagelvin Hospital as a tragedy. The baby is believed to have been delivered several weeks prematurely and was stillborn. The baby was found in a car parked just a short distance from the entrance to the hospitals foetal assessment unit. The babys mother, who is in her late teens, was very distressed at the scene. She subsequently disappeared from the hospital. Staff were deeply concerned for her welfare and notified the PSNI. The teenage mother was located nearby a short time later. She received immediate medical treatment and psychological support. A post-mortem examination is scheduled to be carried out on the baby. The PSNI warned that, given the circumstances involved, it would be inappropriate to make any further comment. The nature of their investigation will also be determined by the full post-mortem examination findings. The young mother is receiving ongoing medical and counselling support. A 100m export market for frozen Irish beef in China may be just the tip of the iceberg as consumption is growing rapidly among the expanding Asian middle class. Ireland's meat processors and Agriculture Minister Michael Creed highlighted the strong potential of the changing consumers' appetites in the Far East, where beef imports are expected to double by 2020. After years of negotiations and inspections, Ireland has become the first European beef exporter to secure access to China. "For beef, the door has now been opened and there is a real opportunity for the industry to build on this," said Mr Creed, who is travelling with a trade mission to the massive SIAL food exhibition in Shanghai next month. So far three Irish beef processing factories - the Goodman-owned ABP Clones in Co Monaghan, Slaney Foods in Co Wexford, and Foyle Meats in Co Donegal - have been approved to ship frozen boneless beef after meeting the criteria following strict audits. Meat Industry Ireland (MII), which represents the country's valuable processing industry, described it as an "important breakthrough" after years of intensive efforts. However, farm lobby groups say it must deliver monies to farmers on the ground, as beef farmers struggle with low incomes. It also is being viewed as a potential 'safety net' for the industry. With Brexit looming, efforts have been made to diversify into new markets. Currently 50pc of Ireland's 2.5bn beef exports go to the UK. MII's Cormac Healy said the first group of plants was expected to be in a position to begin trade with China in the very near future. However, work was still continuing to open up the new market to a further five plants which have already been audited including ABP Nenagh, Kepak Clonee, Liffey Meats, Dawn Meats Charleville and Kildare Chilling. In total there are 25 plants throughout Ireland that have sought access to the market. Processors and Mr Creed were reluctant to set a firm figure on the potential value of lucrative contracts to the region. Mr Creed insisted he was "not going to put a figure on how much Ireland will export to China". However, his predecessor Simon Coveney had estimated the market could be worth around 100m a year after the lifting of the BSE ban by Chinese authorities in 2015. The Goodman-owned ABP has already signed a 50m three-year deal to supply beef to Chinese restaurant chain Wowprime that was awaiting access to get the green-light. ABP said it looked forward to beginning the contract and "pursuing" other opportunities that may arise in the market. The processors also said they would continue to push for access for other products such as meat on the bone plus the valuable 'fifth quarter', or offal. Bord Bia's Tara McCarthy said it has been actively planning for this access through its Shanghai office and it was testimony to the "reputation" of Irish beef. Total Irish agri-food exports to China have more than doubled over the last five years as they moved close to a billion euro last year. Dairy exports have led the way, with pigmeat also taking a slice of the market. However, the Irish Farmers' Association (IFA) said to capture a substantial market share in the Chinese beef market, it is very important that eligibility is secured for all Irish beef products and not just frozen boneless beef, and that all export beef plants are cleared. IFA beef chair Angus Woods highlighted the low income levels on beef farms, as the lobby group pointed out it must deliver for farmers. Pat McCormack, president of the farm group ICMSA, said it must "benefit the people producing the actual food". "New markets without better margins for the producers were ultimately of little benefit." Former CEO of Anglo Irish Bank, David Drumm pictured outside the Dublin Circuit Criminal Court. Photo: Collins Courts THE Governments bank guarantee scheme at the height of the 2008 financial crisis was met with near euphoria by the market, the trial of former Anglo CEO David Drumm has heard. On the day the State stepped in, Irish Life and Permanent agreed to increase the value of a multi-billion euro circular deal with Anglo Irish Bank because all deposits were by then copperfastened by the guarantee anyway. ILPs then-Group Treasurer David Gantly was giving evidence today in Mr Drumms trial. Mr Drumm (51) is pleading not guilty at Dublin Circuit Criminal Court to conspiring to defraud by dishonestly creating the impression that Anglo's customer deposits were 7.2bn larger than they really were in September 2008. He is alleged to have conspired with Anglos former Finance Director Willie McAteer and head of Capital Markets John Bowe, as well as ILPs then-CEO, Denis Casey, and others. The transfers were routed through Irish Life Assurance (ILA), back to Anglo where they were then treated as customer deposits, which are a better indicator of a banks health. Mr Drumm also denies false accounting, by providing misleading information to the market. Today, the jury was played a taped phone call between Mr Gantly and Anglos former head of liquidity Ciaran McArdle on March 28, 2008 in which they discussed how the transaction that month would work. I dont know, Ciaran, whether we need to make a few different payments just so it doesnt look very obvious, Mr Gantly said at one point in the call. Mary Rose Gearty SC, prosecuting, asked to whom it was not to look obvious. Just to junior staff, Mr Gantly replied. He told Ms Gearty he considered it to be a circular transaction. Mr Gantly told Mr McArdle the call is out with Gerry Keenan, meaning he would contact Mr Keenan, CEO of Irish Life Investment Managers (ILIM) about the proposal later in the day. The jury heard ILIM managed ILAs funds investment. A call between Mr Gantly, ILP liquidity manager Paul Kane and Mr McArdle on September 15 was then played. In it, Mr Gantly said he had been talking to Matt about a kind of five billion number and to keep it nice and easy and simple he suggested if we were to do a billion on different days. He spoke about taking the cash on one day and giving it back to you through ILIM the next day. So theres a days difference in the start date to the end date, Mr McArdle said. They then discussed doing a repo deal, or an agreement for the sale and repurchase of bonds. Mr Kane expressed worry about how much collateral they would have. Mr Gantly told Ms Gearty they had decided a repo was not going to work and stuck to the transaction as originally discussed. On September 16, 2008, Anglo's head of treasury Matt Cullen was heard in a phone call with Mr Bowe. In it, Mr Cullen said he had spoken to Mr Gantly, who had told him four or five billion was not going to be a problem. So look, if we ask for six, I think they will do it, Mr Cullen was heard saying. He said Mr Gantlys exact words had been: you might as well be hung for a sheep as a lamb. Ms Gearty asked Mr Gantly if he had used that expression. It was a flippant, throwaway remark but I did use it, he said. He explained that he was talking in the context of having to go and get the amount approved. In cross-examination, Mr Gantly told Brendan Grehan SC, defending, that the 2008 global financial crisis was a systemic event the like of which had never been seen. It got to the stage where other banks were depositing 240bn with the European Central Bank overnight, as a safe haven. Mr Gantly said the ECB was seen as a lender of last resort and the Central Bank of Ireland was uncomfortable when it was used. Mr Grehan asked Mr Gantly and the jury to look at an email exchange between ILIM CEO Gerry Keenan and ILP Group Finance Director Peter Fitzpatrick on March 28, 2008. I have lined up here to do the Anglo deposit on Monday, Mr Keenan said. Clearly its size is way outside our limits with them so we need formal approval. This is my formal approval, Mr Fitzpatrick replied. To be absolutely clear, this is something which the Central Bank is encouraging us to do, along with the other players in the banking sector and at 30 June we will be beneficiaries of this kind of support. Mr Grehan asked if it was a case of loose lips sink ships. It was a need to know basis, yes, Mr Gantly said. Mr Grehan asked if everybody in the sector at the time was cognisant that rumour, innuendo and gossip of any kind could affect confidence in an institution. Referring to the run on Northern Rock in the UK, Mr Gantly said: absolutely that is the case, yes. You wouldnt want word to filter out into the street about a transaction, Mr Grehan said. I think that is fair to say, Mr Gantly replied. Only the number of people needed to be involved were involved, he agreed. Mr Grehan said if looked at in isolation, the transaction with Anglo did not have a commercial rationale, but in terms of the relationship between the two institutions, it had a clear rationale. The reference to beneficiaries in Mr Fitzpatricks mail actually came to pass to the tune of 3.3bn in the form of a repo deal between Anglo and ILP. This was in advance of ILPs financial end of half year in June 2008. Mr Gantly agreed with this and that the June transaction was to take that amount off the ECB funding on ILPs books. He agreed it was implicit that ILP would reciprocate for Anglo in September and a matching figure would be made available. Reciprocity in banks was nothing unusual. Mr Gantly agreed that at some stage in August the figure became 5bn and after Lehman Bros collapsed in the US, it became 6bn. The flippant hung for a sheep or a lamb was about whether the figure was four or five billion after three billion had been agreed. There was near euphoria in the Irish market when the Governments guarantee scheme covering deposits in six financial institutions was announced on September 30, Mr Gantly said. When Anglo asked to increase the deal, this was done as all deposits were copperfastened anyway. Another transaction was started in December but it was halted as the Central Bank was then querying the September transaction. There was a lot of publicity and unease at the time around businessman Sean Quinns stake in Anglo, as well as the Maple 10 issue hitting the news. The issue of former Anglo Chairman Sean Fitzpatricks directors loans was also in the public domain. The decision not to proceed with the December transaction was taken at board level, Mr Gantly said. In November, the Financial Regulator and the Central Bank got the six banks together to discuss the issuing of bonds for sale to raise funds, Mr Grehan said. It was stated that all the banks should support each other. Mr Gantly agreed this meant the banks would club together to buy each others bonds. Mr Grehan then referred to the Bank of Englands intervention in Northern Rock, which was intended to calm the market but led to a run on the bank. Around the same time in October 2008, BOE gave a secret emergency loan of 62 bn to HBOS and RBS banks. The market was only made aware 13 months later after a parliamentary question. The jury was shown a Bank of England document from November 24, 2009 which explained why the bank decided to limit disclosure. In most cases confidence can best be sustained if the banks support is disclosed only when the conditions that gave rise to potentially systemic disturbances have improved to a point when the disclosure itself should not be a cause of such disturbance, it stated. Mr Gantly agreed the September transactions did not become controversial at all until around January 2009. The trial continues before a jury and Judge Karen O'Connor. Independent News & Media (INM) is taking a legal action in a bid to halt the appointment of inspectors to investigate a range of corporate governance issues at the company. The President of the High Court, Mr Justice Peter Kelly, said that if the country's largest media group succeeds in its judicial review proceedings, it would deal "a knockout blow" to the application by the corporate watchdog for the appointment of inspectors. The move by INM came as the judge heard the Office of the Director of Corporate Enforcement (ODCE) was concerned the company's affairs had been conducted in "an unlawful manner" and "for an unlawful purpose". Neil Steen SC, for the ODCE, said there were concerns actions had taken place that were unfairly prejudicial to some shareholders in INM. The court heard there were also concerns persons connected with the management of INM's affairs had been guilty of misfeasance. The ODCE fears the range of "potentially unlawful conduct" that may have taken place within the company is "extensive". Mr Steen said ODCE director Ian Drennan believed there was a "compelling public interest" for inspectors to be appointed. Yesterday's hearing was initially expected to deal with an application for the appointment of barrister Sean Gillane SC and solicitor Robert Fleck as inspectors with wide-ranging powers of investigation. However, the court heard INM, which publishes the Irish Independent, filed an affidavit shortly before the hearing opposing that application. Lawyers for the media group also indicated they wanted a judicial review of the decision by the ODCE to seek the appointment of inspectors. Mr Drennan wants inspectors to investigate a range of issues, including a major suspected data breach, where IT back-up tapes were provided to a third party service provider on the instructions of then INM chairman Leslie Buckley. Sale He also wants them to examine concerns voiced in protected disclosures to INM and the ODCE by former INM chief executive Robert Pitt and in a protected disclosure to INM by its chief finance officer Ryan Preston. These concerns related to alleged pressure Mr Buckley brought to bear for INM to pay a higher price than INM's advisers recommended for Newstalk, a radio station owned by INM's major shareholder Denis O'Brien. Mr Pitt also had concerns over a proposed success fee for a company owned by Mr O'Brien in connection with the sale of INM shares in an Australian media group, APN. According to his notice of motion, Mr Drennan also wants the inspectors to examine the consideration of the payment of a fee to INM director Paul Connolly in connection with the APN transaction. It says he also wants the inspectors to look into whether Mr Buckley unlawfully disclosed "inside information" to third parties, including but not limited to Mr O'Brien and his spokesman James Morrissey, within the meaning of EU market abuse regulations between March 2016 and January 2017. Shane Murphy SC, for INM, said his clients were objecting to the appointment of inspectors, given the impact it would have on the company. Mr Murphy also said INM should have been given notice of the ODCE's intention to seek inspectors, as well as an opportunity to make submissions before the application was brought. The barrister said INM believed its rights to fair procedures and natural and constitutional justice were breached. He said the company wanted a court order quashing the ODCE decision to seek the appointment of inspectors. Mr Murphy told Mr Justice Kelly both sides had agreed that a judicial review and the ODCE application could be heard together over three days in May. However, the judge rejected this idea, saying the judicial review should be held first. He set May 9 as a date for hearing of an application for leave to have such a review. The judge said that if the judicial review was unsuccessful, the application for the appointment of inspectors would be heard at the start of the next legal term, which begins in mid-June. A judge has rejected an Injuries Board assessment of 38,500 damages for a six-year-old boy "ploughed into" and knocked down as he dashed across a road just under three years ago, deeming it inadequate. Judge Terence OSullivan in the Circuit Civil Court said Tuesday that Mousaab Boutahars case should go to trial. He had for a period been "in plain sight" of the motorist who struck him at a pedestrian crossing at Blackthorn Avenue, Sandyford, Co Dublin, in May 2015. The judge said the child could not be held liable on contributory negligence. "We cant just run into people who happen to be making a mistake, particularly children," he said. Barrister Maeve Cox, who appeared with Aisling OLeary of John OLeary Solicitors for the boy, said she felt he would succeed on liability but said she would leave acceptance or otherwise of the assessment in the hands of the court. Ms Cox said Mousaab was with his mum and four siblings at the crossing when his older brother decided to cross disputedly against a red light to a traffic island in the middle of the road. Mousaab, whose family live at Cluain Shee, Aikens Village, Sandyford, decided he would follow him but hesitated and decided to turn back when his mother had called to him. This was when the Fiat Punto car had struck him. "The child was thrown onto the bonnet of the car and fell to the ground," Ms Cox told the court. "He had then been taken by ambulance, with full spinal precautions, to the accident and emergency department of Crumlin Hospital where he had x-rays, CT and ultrasound scans of his cervical spine, femur, pelvis, chest, abdomen, brain and neck." All had been found to be normal but his right leg had been put in a full plaster cast and he had been detained in hospital for three days. He had started walking again after several days but his leg was "externally rotated." Later it had been noted his right leg was 1.5cm longer than the left but would gradually equalise. Mousaab sued, through his father Noureddine Boutahar, the motorist involved in the collision, Laura King of The Courtyard, Foxrock, Dublin, who was fully insured. Ms Cox said the boys father considered the 38,500 assessment on the light side and felt the matter should go ahead to trial. Judge OSullivan said he agreed and added that whatever the colour of the traffic lights at the time it was in clear daylight in the month of May when the accident happened and his brother had crossed the road before the car ploughed into him. He said both children must have been visible for some time. The judge refused the assessment and was told that proceedings would now be issued to allow the case to go to trial. A man accused of the murder of Peter Butterly, and who failed to turn up for his trial but was recently arrested in Spain, has appeared today at the Special Criminal Court. Dean Evans (25), of Grange Park Rise, Raheny, Dublin failed to appear for his trial in January last year for the alleged murder of Mr Butterly (35), who was shot dead outside The Huntsman Inn, Gormanstown, Co Meath on March 6, 2013. The court had issued a bench warrant for Mr Evans' arrest. Detective Sergeant William Archibald told prosecution counsel Caroline Cummings BL today that Mr Evans was arrested on April 5 in Spain on foot of a European Arrest Warrant and that he consented to his surrender to Ireland. Expand Close Victim Peter Butterly / Facebook Twitter Email Whatsapp Victim Peter Butterly The court heard that the detective arrested Mr Evans on Monday night in Dublin airport after the accused man had arrived back from Spain. Det Sgt Archibald said that he cautioned the accused, who made no reply. Three other men are due to face trial this October for the alleged murder of Mr Butterly. They are Kevin Braney (43), with a last address at Glenshane Crescent, Tallaght, Michael McDermott (58), of Riverdale House, Garrymore, Ballinagh, Co. Cavan and Frank Murphy (58), of McDonough Caravan Park, Triton Road, Bettystown, Co. Meath. Mr Justice Tony Hunt, presiding at the three-judge court, said that the "obvious way of dealing with" Mr Evans would be to include him in that trial. The judge said there was "no reason" the public should pay for two trials because of "somebody who didn't turn up the first time". Mr Evans was remanded in custody until April 24 when his case is listed for mention again. A man who harassed and terrified his former girlfriend, breaking down her apartment door and sending her hundreds of messages in the course of a few days, has been jailed for one year. Colin Brady continued to harass his victim and breached his bail conditions 46 times by getting in touch with her after he was charged, Dublin Circuit Criminal Court heard today. His former girlfriend felt in fear for her life, suffered from extreme anxiety and still looks over her shoulder when leaving her home. Brady (44) with an address in Rathmullen Park, Drogheda, Co Louth, pleaded guilty to one count of harassing the woman at her home in Dublin 1, between September 21 and November 2 last year. Sentencing Brady, Judge Martin Nolan said he had obviously terrified his victim. He undermined her and caused her severe difficulties, the judge said. He must have known this and he still continued. He handed down a three-year sentence but suspended the final two years on a number of conditions, including that Brady stay away from his victim. He backdated the sentence to when Brady went into custody last November. He was also ordered him to pay the cost of the broken front door. Garda Emma Brady told Derek Cooney BL, prosecuting, that she was called to the apartment block on September 25 last year after the victim arrived home to find her front door had been broken. She called gardai in fear that Brady was inside. He was not at the scene. However, the victim showed gardai a number of messages he had sent her in the preceding days. The court heard the pair had started a relationship a few months previously, but that Brady quickly became possessive and controlling, particularly when he was drinking. He started looking at her phone and accused her of looking at other men when they were out together. The couple travelled to Rome but got into an argument and the victim ended up changing hotels and organising a different airplane seat for the journey home. As far as the woman was concerned, the relationship was over. However, the man barraged her with messages, sending her 275 text, Whatsapp and voice messages over the course of three days. He was also seen on CCTV footage hanging around outside her apartment building a number of times in the middle of the night. Brady was arrested and charged in mid-October. He appeared in court and was ordered to have no contact with the victim and to stay out of Dublin 1. However, between October 29 and November 2 last year, Brady sent the victim a number of messages asking if they could meet. As a result, he was arrested again and taken into custody. Brady has seven previous convictions in Ireland, including larceny and criminal damage. He has one conviction for robbery in the UK, where he was jailed for eight years in 2004. In a victim impact statement handed up to court, the woman said she never experienced such fear before. At one point she felt she was in danger of losing her life. She was out of work without pay for months as a result of the stress and anxiety and she still cries constantly, she said. Defence barrister, Carol Doherty BL, said her client is extremely remorseful for his actions and apologised to gardai. She said he has an alcohol problem which exacerbated his offending behaviour. He has no wish or desire to contact this lady ever again, she said. For all the dramatis personae present in courtroom number four yesterday, it was an absent actor, businessman Denis OBrien, that provided the most dramatic moment in yesterdays highly anticipated application, by the Office of the Director of Corporate Enforcement (ODCE), to have inspectors appointed to investigate the affairs of Independent News and Media (INM). Shortly after Neil Steen, senior counsel for the ODCE, began to outline the reasons for director Ian Drennans application to appoint inspectors, INM provided a striking aside of its own. That was when INMs senior counsel, Shane Murphy, told High Court President Mr Justice Peter Kelly that not only was Irelands largest media company opposing the appointment of inspectors, but that it wanted to judicially review the very decision by the ODCE to ask the courts to appoint inspectors in the first place. As the prospect of an attempted knockout by INM of the corporate law enforcement regulators decision to appoint inspectors dawned in a packed courtroom number four, one by one lawyers for parties also seeking to get hold of Mr Drennans legal papers, rose to make their voices heard. The parties, the court heard, were largely present due to extraordinary unremitting publicity concerning the application which involved extracts from affidavits being published, a situation Judge Kelly described as a dangerous exercise as it involved navigating between contempt and defamation. Those seeking access included the Data Protection Commissioner whose office, led by Commissioner Helen Dixon, may have a starring role in the investigation of a suspected data breach at INM. Represented, too, were Robert Pitt, INMs former CEO and Ryan Preston, INMs chief financial officer, both of whom made protected disclosures which in turn prompted the ODCEs year-long investigation. Journalist Sam Smyth, a former INM employee and one of 19 people whose data may have been accessed as part of the alleged data breach, was present in court to hear his solicitor Simon McAleese, whose eponymous law firm formerly worked for INM, seek access to court papers on his behalf. Access to court papers was also sought on behalf of Red Flag, the PR firm chaired by former INM CEO Gavin OReilly, which is being sued by Mr OBrien. Access to court papers was sought by Red Flag, its CEO Karl Brophy, himself a former INM executive and Mandy Scott, who now works at Red Flag but who previously worked as personal assistant to Mr OReilly and Mr Brophy. Leslie Buckley, INMs former chairman who resigned last month, was not represented in court. But in advance of the hearing, Mr OBriens long-term business associate said he would robustly challenge all allegations relating to his tenure as chair of INM. Although Denis OBrien was not present or formally represented in courtroom number four yesterday, it was a letter INMs largest single shareholder (Mr OBrien owns 29.9pc of the company) wrote to ODCE director Ian Drennan on April 6 last that, in many ways, dominated yesterdays proceedings. The letter, read out in full, accused Mr Drennan of leaking details of the ODCEs application to have inspectors appointed to INM to the media. The court heard Mr OBrien wrote to Mr Drennan telling him he intended to hold him fully and personally responsible for what he alleged were breaches of duty. The ODCE robustly denied that it had been involved in any media leaks, stating that the papers had been served on INM and its current directors as required by the rules of court. INMs unexpected decision to apply for leave to judicially review the ODCE (rather than seeking to narrow the terms of reference for any inspection) could, if it succeeds, deliver a knockout blow to the ODCEs application and have major implications for other regulators. Judge Kelly was not convinced the two issues, the ODCEs application and INMs move to judicially review the ODCE, should travel together INM's bid to halt the ODCE will be heard separately and by another judge. But the stage has been set for yet another court drama that looks set to run a long and costly course. Ireland urged caution over military escalation in Syria by the US, France and UK during a meeting of foreign ministers in Brussels. The airstrikes were launched without a UN resolution and therefore bypassed international law on military intervention. Tanaiste and Minister for Foreign Affairs Simon Coveney said he was "vocal" about Irish concern. However, he said there was "a lot of support for France and Britain" and the action was endorsed by "virtually" all EU states. Mr Coveney acknowledged that a UN resolution would not have been possible because thus far each of the 12 resolutions on Syria, including those calling for investigations into serious war crimes, have been "vetoed by Russia". He said that he "can understand why military action took place". Meanwhile, former Irish ambassador to the UN David Donoghue warned of deepening violence and the impact it may have on the refugee crisis. Mr Donoghue said emphasis needs to be put on the "root cause of displacement; a primary root cause of the crisis is conflict". He is now working alongside World Vision and other NGO'S in promoting the Sustainable Development Goals - the list of 17 global principles agreed to by every country in the world, aimed at ending poverty, inequality, climate change and promoting peace. A six-year-old boy had a lucky escape when his terrified mother threw herself on top of him as three gunmen stormed her west Dublin home and fired shots into their bedroom. The capital's latest shocking gun attack happened at around 10.30pm on Sunday, when three men burst into the west Dublin property intent on murdering a man who has close links to the 'Mr Flashy' gang in a bitter Finglas feud. Gardai have not made any arrests in relation to the handgun attack at the house in Mulhuddart, during which three shots were fired. However senior sources have told the Herald that the "attempted murder bid" is linked to a bitter feud which has been ongoing for almost a year. "How someone has not been murdered yet is simply a miracle," a senior source said. "An innocent woman and her young child were lucky not to be injured in this blatant feud-related attack. "The intended target, who does not live in the property, was not in the house at the time. "He is linked to the drug-dealing gang centred around the individual that is being referred to as 'Mr Flashy'." The house was unoccupied yesterday following the shooting. Sources said a group of three men arrived at the property and started banging on the door, claiming to be armed gardai. When they were not let in they kicked in the front door and started searching the house, calling out for a man. The innocent woman (32) was asleep upstairs with her young child in the same bed, and when she heard shots she lay terrified on top of her child to protect him. The gang then came up the stairs and fired a shot through the bedroom door and into the bathroom before fleeing. While nobody was physically injured in the attack, the innocent woman and child were said to be traumatised after the shooting. Gardai are hoping that CCTV footage in the area may help identify the attackers. Detectives are working on the theory that the sinister gun attack is just the latest instalment in a bitter feud that the female resident has absolutely no involvement in. The attempted murder bid happened less than four days after nine shots were fired at a house that was previously linked to an on-the-run hitman for the Kinahan cartel. That property, which has been vacant from time to time, has been used as an HQ for a dangerous Finglas gang which has links to the cartel. It was fire-bombed and shot at in a sinister attack last November. The gun attack at the property at Ratoath Drive, Finglas, is being investigated as part of a bitter criminal feud in the area, which has links to the wider Hutch/Kinahan feud that has now claimed up to 18 lives. This new round of feud violence is being led by a Hutch-aligned Finglas drug dealer who has been at war with 'Mr Flashy' and his gang of thugs. The gang warfare took yet another twist yesterday evening when the drug dealer was shot in the hand. Mountjoy gardai were made aware of the development when the gangster went to the Mater Hospital at around 5pm with a bullet lodged in his hand. The most prominent theory being probed last night was that the convicted criminal may have actually shot himself but by last night gardai had not identified a crime scene. The gangster is refusing to co-operate with the investigation and was still being treated last night for non life-threatening injuries, which were inflicted by a handgun. The latest round of violence broke out after the Hutch mob-linked 30-year-old dealer had a brick was thrown through his window. In a revenge attack, graffiti targeting a 29-year-old jailed member of the rival 'Mr Flashy' crew was sprayed on walls in the Cardiffsbridge Road area, calling him a 'Cryba' or cry baby - which sources said wrongly implied he was co-operating with garda investigations into the feud. With tensions increasing, gardai operating in the Finglas and Blanchardstown areas have been warned by their superiors not to approach senior gang members involved in the feud without armed back-up because of the gangsters' easy access to firearms. On the night of April 5, officers raided a property in Mulhuddart and discovered a loaded handgun, a small quantity of ammunition and around 10k of cocaine. The target of that operation was a small-time criminal who is linked to the 'Mr Flashy' side of the feud - and it is understood the firearm was to be used as part of the dangerous dispute. GOAL has announced the appointment of a new CEO Irish charity GOAL has announced the appointment of Siobhan Walsh as their new Chief Executive Officer. Ms Walsh has more than 25 years' experience in the set-up, development and management of Non-Governmental Orginsations (NGOs). The Limerick woman was the Executive Director of Concern Worldwide for 17 years. She has spent the last five years focusing on areas such as strategy development, business development and marketing, and has worked with a diverse range of businesses and not-for-profits. Speaking of her new appointment, Ms Walsh said she was delighted to be joining GOAL. For the past four decades, the dedicated people of GOAL have worked tirelessly to help the most vulnerable people affected by war, natural disaster and extreme poverty. Together with its loyal support base of donors and partners in Ireland, the UK and the USA, they have made an extraordinary difference to the lives of millions of people across the globe. GOALs track record in tackling poverty is to be admired and I am delighted to be joining this dynamic and passionate network of people committed to making a difference in the world, added Ms Walsh. Chairperson of GOAL, Anne OLeary, has warmly welcomed the appointment of Ms. Walsh. Expand Close Celine Fitzgerald, general manager of international aid charity Goal. Photo: Damien Eagers / Facebook Twitter Email Whatsapp Celine Fitzgerald, general manager of international aid charity Goal. Photo: Damien Eagers After a very robust recruitment process that yielded an extremely strong pool of candidates, I am very pleased with this outcome. Siobhan has a wealth of experience at senior executive level and is exceptionally well-qualified to take on this critical position leading one of Irelands most important and well-established international humanitarian organisations." Ms Walsh will replace Celine Fitzgerald, who has led GOAL as General Manager since November 2016. Ms Walsh will officially take up her new role as CEO on July 2, 2018. University College Hospital Galway have denied claims that patients were moved from the emergency department ahead of a visit by Taoiseach Leo Varadkar last week. On RTE Raidio na Gaeltachta on Monday, a man claimed that patients in the A&E were moved out of the A&E and hidden in advance of the visit. on Thursday April 12. However, a spokesperson for the hospital denied patients were moved in preparation for the Taoiseach's visit, saying that last week was "an extremely busy week with a high number of patients attending the Emergency Department". Speaking to Coilin O Neachtain on Adhmhaidin on RTE RnaG on Monday, Padraig Mac Donncha from Connemara described arriving at A&E on Thursday. When the doors opened, my goodness, theres no telling how many people were there. It was absolutely full, with people lining the wall and out to the front door ... Youre talking easily over 100 people. Ive been there many times, day and night, and it was the worst Id ever seen it. Next thing, I was sent down to a short stay ward. That itself was heaving. There were people in there in wheelchairs... Anywhere they could put people, they were there, hidden. I cant understand why it was done, why the Taoiseach wasnt given an accurate picture... it was disgraceful." He went on to allege that after Mr Varadkar left, the patients were moved back in to the emergency department. In response to a query from Independent.ie a spokesperson for UCHG outlined the patient numbers over the course of last week: "In relation to patient accommodation over the course of the week - patients were not moved from the ED in preparation for Taoiseach's visit. University Hospital Galways Emergency Department was extremely busy last week with a high number of patients attending the Emergency Department since Monday 09 April. "The full capacity protocol was in place all week. "On Monday six escalation beds were opened on St. Patricks ward and a further six overflow beds on Tuesday in the Acute Medical Assessment to accommodate patients awaiting admission from the ED. "On Tuesday, April 10, there was a further increase in the number of people presenting to the Emergency Department and by 8pm there were 26 patients awaiting admission in the ED and we had 13 on ward trolleys with over a 100 in total in the ED department at that time. "On Tuesday as part of the hospitals escalation plan, additional trolleys were placed on wards as we would always do bringing this to a total of 19 trolleys in addition, this included using two beds on St. Finbars ward (orthopaedic ward), elective beds to accommodate two trauma orthopaedic patients from the ED for Tuesday night only. "The Emergency Department was extremely busy again on Wednesday morning, 11 April with 58 patients awaiting admission. The situation however improved throughout the day due to increased focus on discharges as part of the hospitals escalation plan and focused effort on Wednesday to deal with the 58 on trollies. "On Thursday, 12 April there were 18 patients awaiting admission in the Emergency Department with seven patients accommodated on ward trolleys. "At 8am on Friday morning there were 19 patients awaiting admission in the ED and 12 patients accommodated on ward trolleys." Galway TD Catherine Connolly, who was at the event on Thursday, also spoke on Adhmhaidin on RTE RnaG about it. I walked through the hospital on Thursday, and I noticed that it was quiet. I got calls then afterwards, to tell me that it was all a pretence, that there were patients there but that they had been hidden. Theres something, and I dont like to use the word rotten, but theres something rotten here. "The Taoiseach was in Galway and it didnt suit to show him the honest truth of the situation. The only segregated post-primary school in the country for Travellers is set to close this June. The school, St Thomas' in Clonshaugh in Dublin, has 33 students from the Travelling community enrolled but will close in 10 weeks. Speaking on Liveline to Joe Duffy today, a teacher in the school John White called the decision "unreasonable" and the impact now will be these students falling out of the education system. "We have people in fifth year and third year," he said. "They are going to cut loose and finish off education because they won't feel comfortable going into a new school." The school was set up in Booterstown in 1981 and moved to Clonshaugh in 1983. Though it has an open-door policy only children from the Travelling community currently attend, according to Mr White. According to a statement from the Department of Education the closure is implementation of a policy introduced in 2006 to end segregation in schools. Mr White said that while he wasn't arguing for segregation, he felt for the students it was "such a shame, such an injustice". "We are telling them that we are closing and off you boys go," he added. "It doesn't feel right to me." Anne McDonagh, whose son attends the school told Joe Duffy she was "very disappointed and shocked" by the news. "I was informed on Thursday or Friday last week. I am very disappointed and shocked. My son did well in Junior Cert and I was pushing him to do his Leaving Cert. The plan was for him to do the Leaving Cert, maybe go to university, get a job. "Now he has told me he is not going to finish education in another school. All his friends go to St Thomas'. He is being separated from his school, his friends, his teachers." The school's principal Bernie McCloskey said that Travellers are 50 times less likely to do the Leaving Cert compared to the settled community and that while she was aware of the Department's policy towards segregated schools, she was shocked at the manner in which they carried it out. "There should be a phasing out so that the students in the Leaving Cert will be looked after and everything can be done to support them. "We were shocked there was no phasing out process or a discussion with the stakeholders." In a statement the Department of Education said: "The Department is committed to improving educational outcomes for members of the Traveller and Roma communities. "St Thomass Clonshaugh is a school with Special School designation dating from a period when separate education provision for members of the Traveller community was the norm. "The phasing out of segregated education provision for Traveller children began in 2006 in accordance with Government policy which was developed in consultation with Traveller representative groups. "St Thomass is currently the only remaining education centre for segregated post-primary provision for Traveller students in the country. "The Department of Education and Skills has been engaging with the Patron of St Thomas for many years to progress the transfer of its student cohort to the mainstream school system in line with this agreed national policy. "It is important to note that, as with all schools under private patronage, the decision in relation to school closure, amalgamation etc. rests with the patron." In a statement the patron of the school, the Dublin Diocese, said: "The department informed the patron in March last that given the departmental inclusion policy on Traveller education and following an inspection carried out by them at the end of last year, they considered the arrangements for and delivery of education provision at St Thomas were not appropriate to meet the educational needs of the current school cohort. "The department informed the Diocesan education offices that it proposed to transfer relevant supports (grants) for St Thomas to the mainstream school system with effect from the end of current school year. The department also requested that no further pupils be enrolled with immediate effect and that they would not consider applications for funding. "The Diocesan education department sought assurances that the current leaving cert students would be able to finish their studies this year. I understand the education welfare services of Tusla will secure places for the current school student population in mainstream post primary schools for September 2018." The incident occurred in the Tawnies Crescent area of Clonakilty this morning. Photo credit: Google Maps A MIDDLE-aged man was slashed in the back after an early morning street row in Cork. The man, who is in his 40s, suffered a slash wound to his back after a dispute with three other men dramatically escalated in the Tawnies area of Clonakilty in west Cork shortly after 1am today. Gardai have described the three men who attacked the middle-aged man as aged in their 20s. All were of slim to medium build and one was wearing a distinctive blue jacket. All fled the scene on foot after the older man was injured. The middle-aged man was rushed by ambulance to Cork University Hospital (CUH) where he is in a stable condition with non-life threatening injuries. He is expected to be discharged within 24 hours. Gardai have appealed for public assistance for their investigation and urged anyone who saw suspicious activity or three young men fleeing the Tawnies area to contact them. Gardai will also be checking CCTV security camera footage from premises in the area for clues as to the identity of the culprits. It is understood the middle-aged man was walking home after being out socialising in Clonakilty when the incident occurred. A man in his late 70s who had never spoken to his daughter has told Liveline of his delight after the RTE Radio 1 programme helped them find each other. William Edward Hayes told Joe Duffy today about a phone call he had this morning with his long-lost daughter. "I've never known anything like it," he said. "I got a call from my daughter, living in London. What a conversation we had, absolutely brilliant." Mr Hayes appeared on Monday's Liveline where he explained that he was resident of an institution, John Reynolds home in Lytham St Anne's, in the 1950s. From the age of 12 he was sexually abused by an Irish nun and when she became pregnant she left the order and he left the school. The nun returned to Ireland, gave birth to the child, a girl, and returned to the UK, while the baby girl was adopted. Mr Hayes appealed for anyone who had any information to help find his child to get in touch with Liveline. According to the show, the nun passed away in 2002 but her family recognised the story. As they has already been reunited with the child given up for adoption they asked her if she was willing to speak to her father. She agreed and the father and daughter spoke on the phone for the first time this morning, where he found out she had been searching for him for 20 years. "We got on like a house on fire," Mr Hayes said who also learned that he had some grandchildren he was not aware of and the family were planning a reunion as soon as possible. "I feel as though I could run there now," he told Liveline. "We are both a bit elevated. I never experienced anything like it." In a statement read out on the show, the Sisters of the Franciscan Missionaries of St Joseph who ran the school Mr Hayes attended said: "We are desperately sad that abuse took place to Mr Hayes while he was placed under our care. "The Franciscan Missionaries of St Joseph have offered our sincere and unreserved apology for the abuse he suffered while resident at the John Reynolds Home and all the subsequent pain and trauma which followed the actual abuse. "There is no place for abuse in the Church and along with every other agency caring for children and vulnerable adults we now have stringent safeguarding policies which aim to prevent any possible recurrence of what happened to Mr Hayes." A Commission on the Future of the Media should be established to ensure media independence and diversity, the Social Democrats have said. Co-leaders Catherine Murphy and Roisin Shortall are seeking cross-party support for the body which would be made up of experts, representatives from media outlets and the National Union of Journalists. The move comes on the back of an alleged data breach at Independent News and Media (INM) which was the subject of a court hearing yesterday. The Office of the Director of Corporate Enforcement (ODCE) is seeking to appoint High Court inspectors to investigate corporate governance issues at INM. Among the accusations is that email records, including some belonging to journalists, were taken off site and interrogated by third parties in 2014. Speaking outside Leinster House today, Ms Murphy said this is a very serious issue for our democracy and profession of journalism. She said a commission would help secure the future of good journalism. "We know what we dont want but we dont know what we do want," the Kildare TD said, adding that there is a concern around media plurality. The controversy over INM, which is the publisher of Independent.ie, is set to dominate the Dail agenda today when it returns from its Easter break. Sinn Fein leader Mary Lou McDonald said the issue is of "very, very deep concern" and her party will consider supporting the establishment of a commission. However, the Dublin Central TD said she would not "rush to conclusions". Fianna Fail leader Micheal Martin is also expected to raise the issue with Taosieach Leo Varadkar today. Unheard tapes of Spike Milligan, set to air to mark his 100th birthday, revealed how his Irish father was friends with George Orwell. In a new BBC documentary, Inside Out, Milligan's daughter Jane and his pal, Michael Palin, talk fondly of their memories of the comic, known as one of the most influential humorists of the last century, to mark the centenary of his birth. His daughter, who was gifted hundreds of audio tapes of her father taken by his biographer in the 1980s, said the recordings contained new information about the friendship between her Irish grandfather, Leo Milligan, who was born in Sligo, and the Animal Farm author, when they were both stationed in Burma when Spike Milligan was a child in the 1920s. "I know my Dad's history but did not know when his Dad was stationed in Burma that my grandfather was friends with George Orwell, who was in the Burmese police," said Jane Milligan. In the tapes, Spike Milligan recalled meeting Orwell, as well, as a child when the literary giant used to travel to his family home in Burma around the time he was writing his novel, Burmese Days. "I didn't know who he was, I have a certain feeling in the back of my head, that he brought the manuscript to talk with my father about it because my father was very knowledgeable about the military law affairs in India," he said in the tapes. "Orwell hadn't been out there that long in the Burmese police. "He used to come at the weekend. He used to catch the bus from Rangoon. Orwell would get off and he would say: 'Are you in, Milly?'" Spike Milligan is known as the grandfather of modern comedy, but his struggle to get his first break are captured in the new BBC documentary in tapes of previously unheard interviews recorded between 1980 and 1985. He may have been friends with the Beatles and Prince Charles, but The Goon Show star, who held an Irish passport, said in the tapes that he didn't have natural confidence like many of the comics of his generation. "I had no confidence. I didn't have what (Peter) Sellers, (Harry) Secombe and (Michael) Bentine had - complete and utter confidence that they were the best. "I was brought up with a mother and father who said don't make trouble. "Well, in this profession if you don't make trouble you don't get the best for your art form," he said. His daughter Jane said she decided to release the tapes recorded by his biographer Pauline Scudamore on the day which would have marked his 100th birthday. 'Spike Milligan: Inside Out' is on BBC Radio 4 tomorrow , at 11.30am The Ulster Rugby Supporters' Club (URSC) has asked fans to consider five options as a response to the sackings of Paddy Jackson and Stuart Olding. The group has surveyed the fanbase in the aftermath of the two players being let go, giving people a number of responses to how they view the move. These options range from backing the decision and moving on from the saga to boycotting the team's upcoming match on Saturday. A section of fans have expressed their anger after the IRFU and Ulster Rugby revoked the players' contracts with immediate effect. The five choices given to fans were as follows: Pleased they are gone, they have brought disgrace to Ulster Rugby. See you on Saturday; Move on, we are a Supporters' Club and we support the club not individual players. See you on Saturday; Disappointed, but not surprised by the outcome. URSC to write to IRFU/Ulster expressing same; Appalled at the outcome - protest at the Glasgow game. See you outside on Saturday; Appalled at the outcome. Boycott Glasgow game. Won't see you on Saturday. It comes as the Ulster Rugby CEO Shane Logan said the province and the IRFU did not envisage the players playing for club or country again. Mr Logan insisted sponsorship money did not have any impact on the club's decision. Jackson (26) and Olding (25) were both acquitted of the rape of the same woman at a party in Jackson's home in June 2016. Jackson was also unanimously acquitted of sexual assault. "No sponsor including Bank of Ireland drove the decision," he told the Press Association. "We have taken on board everybody's views right across society, right across our supporter group, our sponsor group, our players, clubs, volunteers, we are part of society. "But at the end of the day, having looked at all those things, the decision was based on alignment with what it is we stand for, in particular the value of respect. "The players themselves admitted in their own statements that they were way short of what was expected of them. "I think we were all shocked because I don't think what subsequently emerged was in line with what we knew of them or indeed how we expect any of us to behave. "We waited quite deliberately with the IRFU before trying to adjudicate or weigh the facts and what had happened post trial." French club Clermont have ruled themselves out of the running to sign Jackson after being linked with the out-half. Meanwhile, four groups that help victims of sexual crime have written to the Lord Chief Justice and the head of the Department of Justice in Northern Ireland to ask for a review of how those that they help are dealt with by the courts. The groups - Victim Support NI, Nexus NI, Women's Aid and the Men's Advisory Project - have taken out a full page advert in today's 'Belfast Telegraph'. How private are your social media privacy settings? And how sure are you that your smart speakers aren't absorbing household information, as well as pumping out sound? As you interact online, you may be feeling less and less sure that your personal data, and that of your family, is secure. This week has seen Facebook CEO Mark Zuckerberg give testimony at a congressional hearing, while the social media giant started rolling out its damage limitation measures in the face of the Cambridge Analytica scandal. Users among the reported 87 million accounts that had their details trawled will see a link appear at the top of their news feed, directing them to remove apps they no longer need. If your data was improperly used, Facebook will share a 'protecting your information' link and explain that a website a Facebook friend used was able to steal information about you. Meanwhile, Amazon has sparked concerns with its plans to programme Alexa, a voice-controlled virtual assistant used in the Echo smart speakers, to eavesdrop on owners' conversations in order to build profiles of their likes and dislikes, which could be mined for ads and product recommendations. All of this is happening as a result of a growing trend to get consumers to reveal as much as possible about themselves online. But who's interest is this really in, and how can you make sure you don't give away more than you should? Protect your log in details "If you look at online privacy and ask 'what's the worst thing that could happen?', for most people it's losing money or having private information posted publicly for all the world to see," says Michele Neylon, whose company Blacknight Services specialises in internet security. "In both of those cases, the key to it not happening is being very careful about the information you put out there." For example, many social media sites encourage you to share information that can be used to put together a picture of who you are. Information like your birth date, names of family members, phone numbers, email addresses and more can be used to build up a digital picture of a person. This in turn can be used to impersonate you to gain access to banking and other online services. So think carefully before giving this information out. Find out how much the internet knows about you In the wake of the Cambridge Analytica scandal, many people have reassessed their Facebook security settings and which apps they've given access to. It's possible to find out what other online services have on file about you too. Take Google as an example. Go to takeout.google.com to download a complete copy of your data and prepare to be surprised. If you use Google's many products, such as Maps, Gmail, Search and Google Drive, you'll discover that you leave a massive digital footprint as you do so. Google knows which videos you've watched online, where you've been, what you've searched for, what files you've stored online and what's in them. If you choose to, you can delete this information. Turn off open smartphone settings Modern smartphones contain wireless features that allow you to send and receive files between devices. Mostly found on Apple's iPhone devices, this feature is great for swapping pictures between friends but it can be a liability if it's set to be accessible to just anyone. For example, it's not unheard of for women in public places to get a notification that someone is sending them an unsolicited file, only to open it and find an explicit image. To prevent this, on an iPhone go into Settings, General and Airdrop and set your restrictions to Contacts Only. The Internet of Things? It's increasingly common for internet connectivity to be built into all sorts of devices from coffee machines to fridges to toasters. Called the Internet of Things (IoT), this trend is seeing more and more of the world around us become plugged into the internet. Along with the benefits that come with this - such as being able to turn your lights and home heating systems on remotely - there are also liabilities. One major issue is that most IoT devices don't have anywhere near the same security measures built into them that our smartphones and desktop devices have. Many can be easily hacked. Do you really need an internet connected fridge? If you can do without it, perhaps you should. Protect old email addresses Most of us have several email addresses we've used at different times in the past, and it's easy to forget about them. But if you used them to sign up for online services and those service providers have been caught up in hacking scandals, then your details could have been compromised. In 2016, internet company Yahoo announced it had lost the personal data of three billion users, including their real names, email addresses, dates of birth and telephone numbers. In 2014, the online auction site Ebay lost the information of 145 million users, again including names, addresses, dates of birth and encrypted passwords. If you want to see if your data has been caught up in any of them, there's an easy way to check. Visit a site like hacked-emails.com and enter your email address. You may be surprised at how many hacked lists your details have found their way on to. Get a password manager "Passwords are a massive problem with people who aren't tech-savvy - they tend to use the same password for all their online sites, which means that if one of them gets compromised, a thief can try that password on lots of other sites and more often than not, they'll get lucky," says Michele. A solution is to use a password manager application such as LastPass or 1Password that generates and stores a complicated and difficult to crack password for each of the sites you use on your phone or computer. Be more suspicious According to Michael Conway, director of IT security company Renaissance, older people who are typically thought of as being uncomfortable with technology can actually have an advantage when it comes to online privacy. "Many younger people think nothing of agreeing to all sorts of terms and conditions when they want to use a website or an app - to them that seems normal. But older people stop and think a lot more," he said. "When they're asked probing personal questions about their background or job, they are more inclined to ask, why do you need to know? Why should I put in my date of birth? Why should I put in my mother's maiden name?'" Update your software regularly Conway recommends always using software that is up to date. If you're not comfortable updating software yourself, then get a trusted friend or family member to do it for you. "Don't give away any confidential information online that you wouldn't do on the phone and remember that if something looks or sounds too good to be true, it probably is," he says. Curate your kids' digital legacy It's natural to want to share pictures of your kids, but you should think twice before uploading them to the public internet. It's one thing to send photos via email or WhatsApp to a private family group, it's a different thing to upload them to a Facebook or Instagram page. Why? For a start, facial recognition algorithms can now identify people from their pictures so they start to have a digital footprint from the first picture. Is it really fair to allow commercial organisations to start collating data on your kids before they're old enough to choose to have accounts of their own? My four children have all come down with scarlet fever. I had thought that was an old-fashioned disease that people didn't really get any more. Should I be worried? My GP says they are experiencing a high volume of cases in our area of north Dublin. Why is it so prevalent now? My dad had it as a child and spent a week in an isolation ward; why is it that doctors are not so worried about it today? Also, my children had the disease a year ago and I had thought that you could only get it once. Why does it recur and should I prepare to have this as a yearly event? At the same time, myself and my husband got searing sore throats, cold sores, and were coughing blood. Is this related to the scarlet fever bacteria? Scarlet fever was indeed common in Victorian times and pre-antibiotics it was a serious and often deadly disease. It is still around today but thankfully, due to the availability of antibiotic treatment, it is rarely a serious condition once diagnosed and treated appropriately. There has been a particularly high incidence of scarlet fever infection in the UK and Ireland in recent months. It is caused by a bacterial infection due to streptococcus A. Symptoms include a very red, sore throat and fever (38C or above). The scarlet part refers to a red rash that often appears. It has a typical sandpaper feel. Skin may be bright red, especially in the creases of the underarm, elbow, and groin. The tongue classically becomes red and swollen. There may be a whitish coating, which fades to show a red bumpy tongue often called a strawberry tongue, as it resembles the surface of this fruit. There may also be swollen glands in the neck. Other possible symptoms include headache and body aches with nausea, vomiting or abdominal pain. Streptococcus tonsillar infection is usually quite obvious on physical examination. There can be swollen tonsils with large collections of pus. There is often a very distinctive smell off the breath called strep halitosis. If the infection is in doubt, your GP can take a throat swab. Scarlet fever requires antibiotic treatment. Penicillin in its basic form is very effective but treatment is required for 10 days to fully eradicate the infection. It is important to take the antibiotic as prescribed. With appropriate antibiotic therapy, complications are thankfully rare, but they can occur and it is important to seek review if your child gets better and then worse again. Rheumatic fever (an inflammatory disease that can affect the heart, joints, skin, and brain) is a rare but serious complication of scarlet fever. Post-infectious inflammation of the kidneys is another complication. This usually settles without long-term problems once treated early, avoiding more chronic kidney damage. Ear infections, pneumonia and skin infections are other possible complications. It is important to stay home for the first 24 hours of antibiotic treatment to reduce the chance of passing the infection to others. Scarlet fever is highly contagious. Infections often travel quickly through families, creches and schools. Scarlet fever is most common in children aged five to 15 but it can also occur in adults. It can reoccur because it is a bacterial infection, so these can infect more than once. However, reinfection doesn't always occur so there is no need to be concerned this would be an annual event. Your symptoms of severe sore throat may indeed have been scarlet fever. Some people with a throat or pharyngeal infection may cough up some blood due to severe irritation of the lining of the throat area but it is important to state that coughing up blood is never normal - you should talk to your GP about this. Antibiotics treat the infection. Meanwhile the pain of scarlet fever may be eased by simple painkillers, gargling with salt and water and by drinking warm drinks or eating cooling foods such as yogurt and ice pops. Q. My seven-year-old daughter is on her third course of antibiotics this winter. What should I do to counteract the side effects as I hear they destroy healthy gut bacteria and influence mood in children? Dr Nina replies: The best way to avoid complications and side effects of antibiotics is to use them only when absolutely necessary. Most coughs, colds and sore throats occur due to viruses and antibiotics will not help in this case. There is a serious overuse of antibiotics worldwide. Our antibiotic use is amongst the highest in Europe. Antibiotics are a group of medicines that kill bacteria. When used correctly, they can be lifesaving, because when the right antibiotic hits a certain bug it works quickly to kill it. Antibiotics are usually very well tolerated and used appropriately are quite safe. There are possible side effects. Severe allergic reaction to antibiotics can be life threatening. Diarrhoea from antibiotics can cause dehydration and destroy healthy gut bacteria, which aid with digestion and well-being. Antibiotics can interact with other medication, making them less effective. It is very important to only take antibiotics that have been prescribed for a specific illness by your doctor. However, if you have been prescribed an antibiotic it is really important that you take it as directed and complete the entire course, even if you feel better after a day or two. Taking probiotics when you are taking an antibiotic may help reduce the chance of antibiotic related upset significantly. These bugs, commonly referred to as good bacteria, are live micro-organisms; either the same or similar to those found in the body, that scientific research has found to be beneficial to health. Probiotics are considered generally safe but may not be suitable for those with reduced immune systems or in the elderly and they may interact with some medication. Their production is unregulated so strength and purity of brands may differ. If you have any health queries for Dr Nina Byrnes, please email drnina@independent.ie. Please note that Dr Nina cannot enter into individual correspondence Fancy visiting a chocolate maker's factory in Clonakilty? How about hiking the Cliffs of Moher, or strolling Connamara's 'quaking' bogs? Those are just three of some 60 new adventures offered by Airbnb hosts in an expansion of its 'Experiences' offering to Cork, Galway and beyond. Airbnb Experiences, which first launched in 2016 before coming to Dublin last May, are immersive activities crafted and led by local experts. This week, the home-sharing giant announced the nationwide expansion of that offering, with over 60 new 'Experiences' in Cork, Galway and other regions, meaning some 160 are now offered in total throughout Ireland. Expand Close Airbnb CEO Brian Chesky launches Trips / Facebook Twitter Email Whatsapp Airbnb CEO Brian Chesky launches Trips Irish 'Experiences' range from sailing in a traditional Galway Hooker (from 103pp) to a hike (50pp) or couples' photo-shoot on the Cliffs of Moher (175pp) or a honey-farming experience with a beekeeper in Myrtleville, Co. Cork (30pp). People want to experience a place like the locals do, and the expansion of Experiences across Ireland is a reflection of that," explained Aisling Hassell, Ireland Site Lead and Global Head of Customer Experience at Airbnb. Airbnb has rapidly expanded since its launch in California a decade ago, moving beyond room and house-shares to offer not just 'Experiences', but restaurant reservations in the US, with plans to offer flight booking tools in the future, too. The super-brand has been embroiled in short-term regulatory battles ranging from New York to Barcelona and Paris, but continues to grow apace - with 22,800 Irish listings clocking 1.2 million arrivals last year, according to its Irish Insights Report. The expansion of Airbnb Experiences will help to boost tourism outside of Dublin by attracting more people to rural and regional Ireland to experience the many fascinating cultural activities this country has to offer," commented Minister of State at the Department of Transport, Tourism and Sport, Brendan Griffin. Airbnb is also calling on Irish hosts that would like to create "a unique and exclusive Experience" to submit ideas on airbnb.ie/ireland-experiences. Read more: What do you get when you play country music backwards? You get your wife, your dog and your truck back. Country music has been the butt of jokes for decades, a genre comedian Billy Connolly once described as needing only "a Granny, a wheelchair and a cliff" to make a Number 1 hit. Nowadays, however, the jokes are backfiring as those simple songs about 'down home' values have become the hottest thing in show business. The Dubs might have Sam, but the lads and lassies from the rural heartland are winning a whole other contest on the dancefloors of Coppers these days. With a slew of talented, sexy performers tempting a generation to turn their backs on pubs and clubs in favour of a night's jiving to toe-tapping dance tunes, country music has successfully tweaked its personality at the crossroads of 2015. For tens of thousands, country is a way of life. With a dress code where Stetsons and stilettos make perfect bedfellows, those songs about 'heartache and mom' have inspired a passion for dancing not seen since the 1950s. All across the country, dance venues are heaving like it was the Showband era all over again. Country music is more social, say its fans, with alcohol playing only a minor role. Knowing how to dance is an absolute necessity, and those too shy to shift to Cotton-Eyed Joe or the Boot-Scootin' Boogie are guaranteed a lonesome hoedown holding the coats. Unlike the cellars of Harcourt Street where a desultory shoe shuffle will suffice, country ladies expect a maximum of enthusiasm from their partners. As a result, classes from Glanmire to Glenties are packed to the rafters as country wannabes come dancing to a bluegrass beat. For anyone who hadn't noticed the signs of the current country renaissance, last weekend's Late Late Show bore eloquent testimony - attracting an audience of over 700,000 (its highest of the year). Packing the sofas with old-time heroes and sharp-suited young guns, Tubs played host to heartland idols like Daniel O'Donnell, Mike Denver, Declan Nerney and Nathan Carter. Underlining its status as the hottest ticket in town, when a Midlands radio station ran a competition for two seats, the flood of entries crashed their system. Big Tom, universally lauded as "the man who started it all", made a rare appearance to sing his seminal hit, Four Country Roads, with the gentle Castleblaney legend saying: "There are people out there who've been following me since the 1960s. I never forgot them, and they haven't forgotten me." And proving that it's not just Puff Daddy and Justin Bieber who like to blow their loot on exotic wheels, the big man from Monaghan did admit to partying with the best of them when it comes to dream machines. But it's not about Ferraris or Bentleys for Big Tom. No sir, it's tractors - 20 of them, in fact. Down where it really matters, a Massey Ferguson smokes a Maserati any day. Country music never really went away, its followers maintain, and disasters like last year's non-event Garth Brooks concert concerns served only to underline its enormous audience across the country. No matter that it didn't happen in the end - 400,000 queued days for tickets, and would again tomorrow without a shred of scold on the superstar's head. With an ever-ready "Yee Haw!" and an open wallet, country folk always stand by their men - and especially when they're Friends In Low Places. Simon Power, promoter of the successful Cowboys and Heroes festival at Leitrim's Drumcoura City, was inspired by the cancelled concerts, saying: "When I saw that one in 10 people in Ireland had bought tickets to Garth Brooks, I knew there was serious potential for a festival, a dedicated place of its own its own." The saga even inspired a play by Fiona Looney, 'Are You There Garth? It's Me, Margaret'. And while he may not yet have audiences quite as big as Garth or Wee Daniel, Nathan Carter ably ticks all the boxes needed to achieve legendary status in 2015. Good looking? Yes, Ma'am. Modest? You bet. Talented? Number 1 single with Wagon Wheel, ditto the album. Sex Appeal? Hold my bag, I'm sweatin'. A cute user of social media, with over 60,000 followers on Facebook, Carter knows his market and how to push its buttons, explaining: "Country music performers and the audience were a more mature age group for a long time. "I'm younger and putting a slightly different sound out there that the new generation likes." Lisa McHugh, heralded by many as 'Ireland's next Queen of Country', is similarly attuned to her fan base, saying: "Young people make up three-quarters of my audience, they see dancing as another way of keeping fit." As the ultimate gauge of just how big country has become, the one performer with possibly even more pulling power than Garth at Croker recently admitted to having an inner outlaw of his own - because Ed Sheeran wants to make a country album. "Country music is some of the best-written music in the world, so sure, I'm open to making a country record," he said recently. Look out, Garth - a new gunslinger just hit town. Eva Longoria is honored with star on The Hollywood Walk of Fame on April 16, 2018 in Hollywood, California. (Photo by Alberto E. Rodriguez/Getty Images) Kerry Washington attends Eva Longoria's Hollywood Star Ceremony Post-Luncheon on April 16, 2018 in Beverly Hills, California. (Photo by Alberto E. Rodriguez/Getty Images) Kerry Washington attends Eva Longoria's Hollywood Star Ceremony Post-Luncheon on April 16, 2018 in Beverly Hills, California. (Photo by Alberto E. Rodriguez/Getty Images) Reese Witherspoon attends Eva Longoria's Hollywood Star Ceremony Post-Luncheon on April 16, 2018 in Beverly Hills, California. (Photo by Alberto E. Rodriguez/Getty Images) Eva Longoria attends her Hollywood Star Ceremony Post-Luncheon on April 16, 2018 in Beverly Hills, California. (Photo by Alberto E. Rodriguez/Getty Images) Reese Witherspoon attends Eva Longoria's Hollywood Star Ceremony Post-Luncheon on April 16, 2018 in Beverly Hills, California. (Photo by Alberto E. Rodriguez/Getty Images) Eva Longoria attends a ceremony honoring her with the 2,634th Star on the Hollywood Walk of Fame on April 16, 2018 in Hollywood, California. (Photo by Alberto E. Rodriguez/Getty Images) Eva Longoria attends a ceremony honoring her with the 2,634th Star on the Hollywood Walk of Fame on April 16, 2018 in Hollywood, California. (Photo by Alberto E. Rodriguez/Getty Images) Eva Longoria and Victoria Beckham attend a ceremony honoring Eva Longoria with the 2,634th Star on the Hollywood Walk of Fame on April 16, 2018 in Hollywood, California. (Photo by Alberto E. Rodriguez/Getty Images) Eva Longoria and Jos Bastn attend a ceremony honoring Eva Longoria with the 2,634th Star on the Hollywood Walk of Fame on April 16, 2018 in Hollywood, California. (Photo by Alberto E. Rodriguez/Getty Images) Eva Longoria and Jos Bastn attend a ceremony honoring Eva Longoria with the 2,634th Star on the Hollywood Walk of Fame on April 16, 2018 in Hollywood, California. (Photo by Alberto E. Rodriguez/Getty Images) Eva Longoria Honored with a Star on the Hollywood Walk of Fame Eva Longoria and Victoria Beckham attend a ceremony honoring Eva Longoria with the 2,634th Star on the Hollywood Walk of Fame on April 16, 2018 in Hollywood, California. (Photo by Alberto E. Rodriguez/Getty Images) Times Up co-founder Eva Longoria dedicated her star on the Hollywood Walk of Fame to women and Latino communities. The actress and philanthropist was joined by speakers Anna Faris, Felicity Huffman and Ricky Martin, as well as friend Victoria Beckham, at the Los Angeles ceremony on Monday. Expand Close Eva Longoria poses on the Hollywood Walk of Fame in Los Angeles, California, U.S., April 16, 2018. REUTERS/Monica Almeida / Facebook Twitter Email Whatsapp Eva Longoria poses on the Hollywood Walk of Fame in Los Angeles, California, U.S., April 16, 2018. REUTERS/Monica Almeida Expand Close Eva Longoria Honored with a Star on the Hollywood Walk of Fame / Facebook Twitter Email Whatsapp Eva Longoria Honored with a Star on the Hollywood Walk of Fame Longoria, 43, recounted how she moved to the city 20 years ago and dreamed of one day having a star. I feel like Im still a little girl from Corpus Christi, Texas, who had a really big dream, a heavily pregnant Longoria said. Expand Close Eva Longoria and Jos Bastn attend a ceremony honoring Eva Longoria with the 2,634th Star on the Hollywood Walk of Fame on April 16, 2018 in Hollywood, California. (Photo by Alberto E. Rodriguez/Getty Images) / Facebook Twitter Email Whatsapp Eva Longoria and Jos Bastn attend a ceremony honoring Eva Longoria with the 2,634th Star on the Hollywood Walk of Fame on April 16, 2018 in Hollywood, California. (Photo by Alberto E. Rodriguez/Getty Images) I just want to say as a woman and a Latina I represent a lot of communities and I want to tell all those communities that this isnt my star this is our star. The actress is expecting her first child, reported to be a boy, with her husband, businessman Jose Baston. Expand Close Reese Witherspoon attends Eva Longoria's Hollywood Star Ceremony Post-Luncheon on April 16, 2018 in Beverly Hills, California. (Photo by Alberto E. Rodriguez/Getty Images) / Facebook Twitter Email Whatsapp Reese Witherspoon attends Eva Longoria's Hollywood Star Ceremony Post-Luncheon on April 16, 2018 in Beverly Hills, California. (Photo by Alberto E. Rodriguez/Getty Images) Faris said she instantly recognised Longoria as a force of nature when they met on the set of Overboard last year. Expand Close Eva Longoria Honored with a Star on the Hollywood Walk of Fame / Facebook Twitter Email Whatsapp Eva Longoria Honored with a Star on the Hollywood Walk of Fame Video of the Day She also paid tribute to Longoria as an inspiration as a producer and an entrepreneur, adding: Anything you set your mind to, you accomplish. Desperate Housewives co-star Huffman said: She is kind to everyone and she is hopeful for the world. And in these times when cynicism is confused with wisdom, clarity and reason, Eva stands with her feet firmly planted in courage faith and compassion. Eva provides the light for so many of us she actually is the light. Martin said the greatest attribute of the incredible woman is her kindness and work off camera. Expand Close Eva Longoria Honored with a Star on the Hollywood Walk of Fame / Facebook Twitter Email Whatsapp Eva Longoria Honored with a Star on the Hollywood Walk of Fame Among her activism, Longoria was one of the leading Hollywood women to launch the Times Up initiative in the wake of the Harvey Weinstein scandal. The anti-sexual harassment and assault initiative aims to tackle inequality in all workplaces and has a defence fund for women to fund legal battles. Other stars to attend the revealing of the 2,634th star on the Hollywood Walk of Fame were Melanie Griffith and William H Macy. Broadcaster Mairead Ronan has announced she's expecting her third child. The RTE presenter (37) welcomed baby daughter Eliza in 2016 with husband Louis Ronan. She has an 11-year-old son Dara from her first marriage, whom she says is "absolutely mad" about his little sister. Ronan announced the news on Instagram, accompanying a picture of her magazine cover with Irish Country, saying: "Had so much craic shooting with this gang. Honest interview along with the pics including the news that Im - again. (Well I couldnt really hide it anymore)." Her eldest son must surely be thrilled with another new arrival on the way. She previously said of his devotion as a big brother, "He is such a good kid. My dad used to say you could rear him on a mountain - he just rows in with everything. And, he loves Eliza. "Just yesterday I was calling him to put his shoes on. I got so frustrated I went looking for him, only to find him lying on the bed with her, cooing." Congratulations! Newquay Zoo has welcomed the first tapir born in the UK this year to its park. The baby, which hasnt yet been given a name, was born on Mothers Day (March 11) and has already started to eat solid food. Keeper Tracey Twomey said: At the moment she loves carrot and apple, but shes not so keen on parsnip she chews it up and then spits it all out! The young tapir can be seen in her paddock at Newquay Zoo with her parents, Emily and Al, and will be allowed into the field when she grows up. Twomey said: Emily and Al have both been amazing with the baby; for first-time parents theyve really taken it all in their stride and have been very attentive, while still letting her explore. CUTENESS ALERT! We have an exciting new arrival a baby tapir has been born and its the first in the UK this year. First-time parents Al and Emily have taken to parenthood, but are having a problem that many human parents will recognise she wont eat her vegetables! pic.twitter.com/oZ5dymIBqn Newquay Zoo (@NewquayZoo) April 16, 2018 The tapir, along with her parents, shares an enclosure with Johnson the capybara. Twomey said: The baby is confident, she enjoys spending time with both mum and dad and also with Johnson the capybara, who she loves to cuddle up with! She is amazing and definitely knows how to steal peoples hearts shes just too cute! Native to Brazil, tapirs come from the same family as zebras and horses. The babies are born with stripes and spots on their coats to help keep them camouflaged, but then grow out of their colours. Asifa Bano: Was raped and murdered after going missing Eight Hindu men accused of the gang rape and killing of an eight-year-old Muslim girl in India-administered Kashmir state pleaded not guilty yesterday. Asifa Bano's battered body was found in a forest in January, a week after she went missing while grazing her family's ponies. Police say the accused men planned the child's kidnapping for over a month as part of a plan to scare her Muslim nomadic tribe away from the area. Police said Asifa was sedated and held captive at a Hindu temple where she was repeatedly raped before being strangled and bludgeoned to death. The court instructed the investigators to make sure that the accused men had copies of all the charges they faced before the next hearing on April 26. The case has led to protests across the country and came to national prominence last week when thousands of members of a Hindu radical group, Hindu Ekta Manch, or the Hindu Unity Platform, marched in support of the accused men. Hundreds of lawyers from the local bar association also tried to prevent police from entering a court complex to place their investigation before a judge and said the accused men were all innocent. Six men, including two police officers, are accused of being directly involved in the attacks on the girl. One of those policemen also allegedly joined in the search for her body. Two other policemen were arrested for attempts to destroy evidence. At least two lawmakers from India's ruling Hindu nationalist Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) also spoke out in support of the accused. The case highlights the increasing religious polarisation in India since the BJP swept to power in 2014. Disgust over the horrific crime led to protests in cities across India over the past few days, with anger fuelled by support for the accused initially shown by ministers from Prime Minister Narendra Modi's party. The protests have also focused on another rape incident allegedly involving a BJP lawmaker in the crime-ridden, most populous, poor northern state of Uttar Pradesh. More rallies demanding action against rapists and violence against women were expected yesterday in the capital and Ahmedabad, the capital of Modi's home state of Gujarat. Rape Asifa Bano, from a nomadic community that roams the forests of Kashmir, was drugged, held captive in a temple and sexually assaulted for a week before being strangled and battered with a stone in January, the police said. According to the charge sheet the kidnapping, rape and killing of Asifa was part of a plan to drive the nomads out of Kathua district in Jammu, the mostly Hindu portion of India's only Muslim majority state. The alleged ringleader, retired bureaucrat Sanji Ram, looked after a small Hindu temple where the girl had been held captive and assaulted. Two of those on trial were police officers who are accused of being bribed to stifle the investigation. A lorry carrying released prisoners park near the gate at Insein prison (Thein Zaw/AP) Burmas president Win Myint has granted amnesty to more than 8,500 prisoners. At least three dozen political prisoners are believed to be among those being released to coincide with the countrys traditional New Year. It was granted to 8,490 Burmese citizens and 51 foreigners and a statement from presidential spokesman Zaw Thay said those released included the aged, people in ill health and drug offenders. None was individually named. The releases were to take place at prisons nationwide. Expand Close A prisoner walks out of the gate at Insein prison (Thein Zaw/AP) / Facebook Twitter Email Whatsapp A prisoner walks out of the gate at Insein prison (Thein Zaw/AP) Relatives and friends of those held waited Tuesday outside the gates at Insein Prison, in the northern outskirts of Rangoon, where it was expected that more than 300 prisoners, including eight political detainees, would be released. As they came through the gate, the released prisoners looked excited, though many were reluctant to be interviewed. One of those freed was Saw War Lay, a member of the Karen ethnic minority who was arrested in 2006 and is serving a life sentence for his connection with the Karen National Union ethnic rebel group. I really would like to say many thanks to the president. And I wish he will be successful in his peace process, he said, referring to government efforts to reach an agreement with all the ethnic minorities to end decades of conflict. But I am so sad for those prisoners who (are) still inside. Two Christian pastors from the Kachin minority were freed from a prison in Lashio, in northern Burma, in a more recent and high-profile case. Last year, Pastor Dumdaw Nawng Lat, 65, was sentenced to four years and three months in prison and Baptist youth leader Langjaw Gam Seng, 35, was sentenced to two years and three months for allegedly providing support to an ethnic armed group and defaming the military. In the aftermath of a government offensive in northern Burma, they had helped journalists report on a Catholic church that was destroyed in an airstrike in November 2016. Expand Close A prisoner, centre, is welcomed by his relatives and colleagues after he was released (Thein Zaw/AP) / Facebook Twitter Email Whatsapp A prisoner, centre, is welcomed by his relatives and colleagues after he was released (Thein Zaw/AP) Combat in the area still continues. We are here with both of them and the whole Baptist community is very happy to have them back, lawyer Brang Di said by phone. Everyone is praying for them and encouraging them. Although called an amnesty, the action appeared to actually be a mass pardon, meaning it would cover only prisoners who had already been convicted of crimes. Two Reuters reporters, Wa Lone and Kyaw Soe Oo, facing a high-profile freedom of the press trial for possessing secret official documents would not be covered under the action. One of the journalists lawyers, Khin Maung Zaw, said his understanding was that the president was only pardoning convicted criminals. Expand Close Burma's president Win Myint (Aung Shine Oo/AP) / Facebook Twitter Email Whatsapp Burma's president Win Myint (Aung Shine Oo/AP) Win Myint became president last month, after his predecessor, Htin Kyaw, stepped down because of illness. The release of political prisoners was a priority of Aung San Suu Kyis National League for Democracy party when it took over power from a pro-military government in March 2016. Ms Suu Kyi is the countrys de facto leader, holding the specially created post of State Counsellor. Constitutional rules prohibit her from serving as president because her two children are British, as was her late husband. When Ms Suu Kyis government took power in 2016, it made it a priority to release political prisoners detained during military rule, freeing almost 200 within a month. However, critics of Ms Suu Kyis government say it also has pursued politically motivated prosecutions, citing cases against land rights activists and journalists. China will allow full foreign ownership of carmakers in five years, ending restrictions that helped to fuel its trade dispute with US President Donald Trump as it promotes electric car development. The change would scrap rules that require global carmakers to work through state-owned partners, an arrangement that forces them to share technology with potential competitors. It was unclear whether that might mollify Mr Trump, who has threatened tariff hikes on 150 billion US dollars of Chinese goods in response to complaints Beijing pressures foreign companies to hand over technology. The step reflects growing official confidence in Chinas young but fast-growing carmakers and a desire to make the industry more flexible as Beijing promotes development of electric cars. Expand Close Chinese President Xi Jinping had hinted restrictions would be eased (Naohiko Hatta/AP) / Facebook Twitter Email Whatsapp Chinese President Xi Jinping had hinted restrictions would be eased (Naohiko Hatta/AP) Carmakers had been waiting for details since President Xi Jinping announced in a speech last week that ownership restrictions would be eased and auto import duties reduced. Some private sector analysts saw Mr Xis promise as an attempt to placate Mr Trump, but Chinese officials said the plans had nothing to do with the trade dispute. Tuesdays announcement coincided with a Commerce Ministry order to importers of US sorghum to post bonds to pay possible anti-dumping duties in a separate dispute. It said preliminary results of a trade probe found US sorghum, a grain used as animal feed and in alcohol distilling, was sold at improperly low prices that hurt Chinese farmers. Following a five-year transition period, all ownership restrictions will be liftedChina's National Development and Reform Commission Limits on foreign ownership of electric vehicle producers will be eliminated this year, the Cabinets planning agency said. That will be followed by a similar repeal for makers of commercial vehicles in 2020 and passenger vehicles in 2022. Following a five-year transition period, all ownership restrictions will be lifted, said the announcement by the National Development and Reform Commission. Until now, global carmakers such as General Motors and Volkswagen have been allowed to own no more than 50% of a joint venture with a Chinese partner and were limited to two ventures. Expand Close A Geely car (PA) / Facebook Twitter Email Whatsapp A Geely car (PA) Carmakers complied because they gained access to Chinas populous market, which passed the United States in 2009 as the worlds biggest by number of vehicles sold. Sales of sedans, SUVs and minivans last year totalled 24.8 million units, about 55% of which were American, European, Japanese and Korean brands. Independent domestic brands such as Geely, which owns Swedens Volvo Cars, SUV maker Great Wall and electric car brand BYD Auto are developing technology and increasing exports. Geely has bought a nearly 10% stake in Daimler AG, becoming the German carmakers biggest shareholder and gaining leverage to push for technology sharing. State-owned Dongfeng Motor Group, which has joint ventures with Nissan Motor and other brands, bought a 14% stake in Frances PSA Peugeot Citroen in 2014. Female trainee barristers in Britain have been told they will lose points in their exams if their skirts are too short or their bras are on show. Guidance given to students taking the bar professional training course at BPP University in London sets out a schedule of point deductions for infringements including "too much shirt undone", "short skirts (women)" and "colourful socks (men)". The list of "offences of professional conduct" itemises the point penalties for students if they are not properly dressed during their advocacy assessment, a mock court situation which tests their knowledge of legal process and courtroom terms and behaviour. Colourful socks lose a male advocate a point, while wearing a skirt above the knee would cost a female two points, according to the list, which is given to students as part of an advocacy manual. The most costly infringement is for a female trainee whose bra is showing, resulting in the loss of three points, as would wearing boots with a short skirt. This outfit choice is "an inappropriate combination for court", the guidance, leaked to the blog Legal Cheek, adds. The university is not the only one to warn students they could be penalised for their dress. The University of the West of England's guidance says trainee barristers could lose two points for "unkempt hair" and five points for wearing trainers. Dana Denis-Smith, the founder of the First 100 Years project, which highlights women's achievements in law, said the BPP guidance showed how "prescriptive" the legal profession is. "I still know women barristers who wouldn't dare to go to court without wearing a skirt, even though we've had about 30 years of women being allowed to wear trousers. This whole courtroom environment remains quite old-fashioned." In one law firm, she said, she knew of guidelines in the past for women dictating the colour of their tights, limiting them to thin beige styles and forbidding them from wearing thick, opaque tights. "I don't think it's just the legal profession, I think it's an issue around the professions. What is the image of being 'professional'? That needs to be redefined, but nobody is redefining it at the moment." But, she added, the restrictions for men were equally limiting. "I felt equally bad about the men - I was thinking 'wow you really are over the top'. I think it's meant to be almost more restrictive to drum home the point that justice is important, you've got to take it seriously." Alongside barrister training, the law school trains solicitors for top firms including Allen & Overy, Herbert Smith Freehills and Clifford Chance. A spokesman said the list was "indicative guidance only to the sort of dress and behaviour which could adversely affect the advocate in court". "Our students dress conservatively and smartly for their advocacy classes and... for the assessment, and this is good preparation for practice." A UK landlord who offers free accommodation in return for sex has insisted he is not doing anything illegal. The man, whose identity was concealed, said he did not see anything wrong with a friends with benefits arrangement with his tenants as long as both parties are aware of what they are signing up to. During the appearance on ITVs This Morning, the man, who was previously married and has children, said he was strict about the age of those who came to live with him and said he did not respond to 15, 16 and 17-year-olds who got in contact with him. The interview followed a This Morning investigation which claimed 250,000 women were being offered free or discounted rent in exchange for sexual favours in the UK. The home owner, who said he had already had three long-term arrangements, said: Im very forward and honest and I dont tell lies. I have been married and I have a family. But I find that modern day relationships do not work and if they do they only work for a short period of time. Most females lie. The same as most males do, he said. They are working to an agenda whereas I dont, Im very honest, Im very upfront. The landlord, who has young daughter, said there are a lot of 15, 16 and 17-year-olds who contact me on a regular basis but said he was not interested. He said his children knew about his renting arrangements, that he was looking for fun and was very privileged and that he worked very hard. He said he spends three, four or five days with someone before he decides whether they are suitable to live with, but there is no physical contact during this time. More than a fully-stocked fridge, I offer them a life. I have had three long-term partners that have all had their own businesses, their own family, they are still in touch with me. They still all talk to me. Im not a pervert ... Its an arranged relationship. The man, who said he was offering tenants an opportunity to improve their life and was not looking for someone vulnerable, insisted he had a fantastic life and he just wanted to share it. ITV Presenter Holly Willoughby suggested that part of the so-called arrangement involves breaking the law. She said: But when someone offers accommodation in return for sex they are causing another person to have sex in return for payment, a breach of the sexual offence act provides a maximum sentence of seven years. But the man insisted he was doing nothing wrong. Its an arrangement between two adult human beings. Im not looking for a sixteen-year-old, an eighteen-year-old, I want someone of my own age. Im not looking for somebody thats vulnerable, and if somebody is vulnerable, I wouldnt be interested. Last year then Justice Secretary, David Lidington, said rent-for-sex offers may breach the Sexual Offences Act. An offence is committed when a person offers accommodation in return for sex, as they are inciting/causing another person to have sex with them in return for payment, he told Hove MP Peter Kyle in a letter. Viewers have condemned the landlord for his comments and arrangements on Twitter. If he thinks hes doing nothing wrong, why isnt he showing his face? People his own age? Laughable! said one woman on Twitter. This is AWFUL. The women do it because they are desperate and these men are preying on that and using their power. Sick. #ThisMorning, added another. Says hes not looking for vulnerable people but is advertising that he can offer them a whole life, not just an apartment. Sounds like hes trying to appeal to people who are struggling to me, chimed in one more. Rent-for-sex adverts have appeared on websites like Craigslist for a number of years. A BBC Three documentary in February saw an undercover reporter discover huge amounts of online adverts for rooms across the UK that come at a sexual rather than financial cost. Housing charity Shelter has said the adverts were expressly targeting homeless women and seeking to exploit the UKs housing crisis. It said: This isnt just in bad taste or creepy. It is a dangerous attempt to establish deeply exploitative relationships off the back of homelessness. Campaigners say renting rooms for sexual favours is seen as a growing issue and a consequence of a housing situation where young people are forced to pay extortionate amounts to find somewhere to live. The problem has become particularly pronounced in university towns where young women are targeted by rogue landlords. People stand in front of damaged buildings, in the town of Douma (Hassan Ammar/AP) International inspectors have entered the Syrian town where an alleged chemical attack was carried out earlier this month, following delays by Syrian and Russian authorities. The fact-finding mission from the Organisation for the Prohibition of Chemical Weapons is investigating reports that government forces launched an April 7 chemical attack in the final stages of their campaign to retake the town from rebels. The alleged gas attack, which Syrian activists say killed more than 40 people, prompted punitive US, British and French airstrikes. Syria and its ally Russia deny any chemical attack took place, and Russian officials have accused Britain of staging a fake chemical attack. Expand Close Rubble fills a street in Douma (Hassan Ammar/AP) / Facebook Twitter Email Whatsapp Rubble fills a street in Douma (Hassan Ammar/AP) Prime Minister Theresa May says Syria and Russia, whose forces now control the town east of Damascus, are trying to cover up evidence. Journalists were allowed access to the suspected attack sites on Monday, but the OPCW said Syrian and Russian authorities blocked the inspectors. The Associated Press spoke to survivors and witnesses who described being hit by gas. Several said a strange smell started spreading and people screamed: Its chlorine! Its chlorine! The US and France say they have evidence that Syrian President Bashar Assads forces used poison gas in the attack, but they have not provided any evidence, even after Saturdays punitive missile strikes. Douma was the last rebel-held town near Damascus, and the target of a government offensive in February and March that killed hundreds of people and displaced tens of thousands. Hours after the alleged chemical attack, the rebel faction that controlled the town, the Army Of Islam, relented and was evacuated along with thousands of residents. The site visit came hours after reports of more international air strikes on Syrian military installations. The Syrian military later said a false alarm set off air defence systems early Tuesday, retracting earlier reports of a pre-dawn outside aggression on its airfields in the central Homs region and a suburb of Damascus. The Pentagon denied any American military activity in the area. Expand Close Ministry of Defence handout photo of a RAF Tornado coming into land after striking Syria in response to the alleged chemical attack (Cpl L Matthews/PA) / Facebook Twitter Email Whatsapp Ministry of Defence handout photo of a RAF Tornado coming into land after striking Syria in response to the alleged chemical attack (Cpl L Matthews/PA) There was no comment from Israel, which frequently carries out airstrikes in Syria but rarely acknowledges them. Explosions were heard in the areas of the two bases, according to the Britain-based Syrian Observatory for Human Rights, which monitors the conflict through a network of sources inside the country. But it said no missiles landed inside the bases. Earlier this month, four Iranian military personnel were killed in an airstrike on Syrias T4 air base, also in Homs. Syria and its main allies Iran and Russia blamed Israel for that attack. Israel did not confirm or deny the allegations. The lack of access to Douma has left unanswered questions about the attack earlier this month. OPCW director-general Ahmet Uzumcu said Syrian and Russian officials cited pending security issues in keeping its inspectors from reaching Douma. The team has not yet deployed to Douma, Mr Uzumcu told an executive council meeting of the OPCW in The Hague on Monday. Donald Trump may have obstructed justice and is "morally unfit to be president", according to James Comey, the former FBI director. In his first interview since being fired by Mr Trump, Mr Comey said it was possible the Russians have compromising material on the US president. Mr Comey portrayed Mr Trump as a serial liar who treats women like "meat" and acts like a mafia boss. However, Mr Comey fell short of calling for impeachment, saying that such a move would let the American people "off the hook". Instead he urged them to get out and vote. Mr Comey was speaking to ABC News to plug his new book, 'A Higher Loyalty', which paints an excoriating picture of the president he served under for four months. Mr Trump pre-empted the interview on Twitter by saying Mr Comey was the "worst FBI director in history" and questioning his integrity. Mr Comey headed up the FBI under Barack Obama and initially continued to work under Mr Trump before being fired in May last year. Mr Comey recounted a meeting with Mr Trump in the Oval Office on February 14, 2017, in which he believes obstruction of justice may have taken place. Mr Trump asked all those present including Mike Pence, the vice president, and Jeff Sessions, the attorney general, to leave the room except for Mr Comey. "I didn't know what was going to happen next, but I knew that whatever it was, it was really, really important that I remember everything that was said," Mr Comey said. Mr Comey recalled that Mr Trump urged him to drop an investigation into Michael Flynn, his former national security adviser whose connections with the Russian ambassador were under scrutiny. He recalled Mr Trump saying: "He's a good guy, I hope you can let it go." Mr Comey said his response was simply "he's a good guy". Asked what he was thinking at the time, Mr Comey said: "He's asking me to drop the criminal investigation of his, now former, national security adviser." Asked if Mr Trump was "obstructing justice", Mr Comey responded: "Possibly. I mean, it's certainly some evidence of obstruction of justice." The comment is significant as obstruction of justice is one of the grounds for bringing impeachment charges against a sitting president. It is also an area that Robert Mueller, the special counsel, is believed to be investigating. Mr Comey was clear that he considered Mr Trump to be "morally unfit" to lead the country, citing his comments on the white nationalist protests in Charlottesville, Virginia. Asked if Mr Trump was unfit to be president, Mr Comey said: "Yes. But not in the way I often hear people talk about it. "I don't buy this stuff about him being mentally incompetent or early stages of dementia. He strikes me as a person of above average intelligence who's tracking conversations and knows what's going on. I don't think he's medically unfit to be president. I think he's morally unfit to be president. "A person who sees moral equivalence in Charlottesville, who talks about and treats women like they're pieces of meat, who lies constantly about matters big and small and insists the American people believe it, that person's not fit to be president of the United States, on moral grounds." Mr Comey declined to rule out the possibility that the Russians had some compromising material on Mr Trump. Asked if he thought "the Russians have something on Donald Trump", Mr Comey replied: "I think it's possible. I don't know. "These are more words I never thought I'd utter about a president of the United States, but it's possible." Mr Comey also did not rule out lurid claims that Mr Trump once asked prostitutes to urinate on each other while in a hotel in Russia - something contained in a dossier compiled by Christopher Steele, an ex-MI6 agent, and repeatedly denied by the president. Addressing whether the incident actually happened, Mr Comey said: "It's possible, but I don't know." Mr Comey declined to back calls for Mr Trump to be impeached, saying instead that it was up to the American people to vote with their values. "Impeachment is a question of law and fact and politics," Mr Comey initially said to a question on the subject. Two-thirds of members in the House of Representatives and then the Senate would need to approve impeachment for it to come into effect. Pushed again over whether Mr Trump should be impeached, Mr Comey said: "I'll give you a strange answer. "I hope not because I think impeaching and removing Donald Trump from office would let the American people off the hook. "People in this country need to stand up and go to the voting booth and vote their values." Mr Comey also warned Mr Trump off firing Mr Mueller, the man leading the Russia election meddling investigation, and urged politicians to react if he does. "It would, I hope, set off alarm bells that this is his most serious attack yet on the rule of law," Mr Comey said, saying that was above the usual party politics. He added: "It would be to the everlasting shame of partisans if they were unable to see that higher level and to protect it." Mr Comey expressed some doubts over the way he handled the Hillary Clinton email scandal but he stuck to his most controversial decision. Daily Telegraph, London Telegraph Media Group Limited [2021] Stormy Daniels is escorted past waiting media on her way to court. Photo: Getty Images As adult-film actress Stormy Daniels looked on, a federal judge yesterday ordered US President Donald Trump's longtime personal lawyer Michael Cohen to cough up the name of a client he had hoped to keep secret at a court hearing: Fox News personality Sean Hannity, an outspoken champion of the president. Hannity later said that he had never paid for Cohen's services or been represented by him, but had sought confidential legal advice from him. Cohen, Trump's fiercely loyal and pugnacious lawyer, was in Manhattan federal court to ask the judge to limit the ability of federal prosecutors to review documents seized from his offices and home last week as part of a criminal investigation. The investigation has frustrated the White House as it has spread to enfold some of Trump's closest confidantes. The unexpected naming of Hannity made him only the latest outsized media personality to be drawn into the investigation's cast of unlikely supporting characters. Another, the stripper and actress Daniels, sat in the back of the gallery's public courtroom as part of her efforts to keep attention on her story, relating to what she says is a past affair with Trump. Daniels is engaged in a separate civil legal fight over $130,000 (105,000) she received in a 2016 agreement arranged by Cohen to stop her from discussing a sexual encounter she says she had with Trump a decade earlier. Expand Close Stormy Daniels puts her shoe back on after passing though a security screening. Photo: Reuters / Facebook Twitter Email Whatsapp Stormy Daniels puts her shoe back on after passing though a security screening. Photo: Reuters Photographers knocked over barricades outside the courthouse as they scrambled to get pictures of Daniels, whose real name is Stephanie Clifford, arriving dressed in a lavender suit. Inside, she quietly took a seat in the public gallery with her lawyer. Cohen has argued that some of the documents and data seized from him under a warrant are protected by attorney-client privilege or otherwise unconnected to the investigation. But Judge Kimba Wood rejected his efforts to mask the identity of Hannity, a client Cohen had said wanted to avoid publicity. "I understand if he doesn't want his name out there, but that's not enough under the law," Wood said, before ordering a lawyer for Cohen to disclose the name. Hannity is a conservative television host known for passionately advocating for Trump on his Fox News show, and sometimes receiving public praise from Trump in return. Expand Close Fox News personality Sean Hannity. Photo: Getty Images / Facebook Twitter Email Whatsapp Fox News personality Sean Hannity. Photo: Getty Images Cohen has asked the court to give his own lawyers the first look at the seized materials so they can identify documents that are protected by attorney-client privilege. A lawyer for Trump, Joanna Hendon, asked in a filing on Sunday to be allowed to review documents that in any way relate to the president, which she described as being seized amid a "highly politicised, even fevered, atmosphere." A person familiar with the raids said last week that the information Federal Bureau of Investigation agents were seeking included information about payments to Daniels. The hearing ended yesterday with no ruling on who gets to filter the seized documents. A man and a boy ride a motorbike in the city of Douma, near Damascus, where the Syrian regime launched a chemical attack last weekend. Photo: Reuters/Omar Sanadiki Donald Trump reportedly considered a strike three times bigger than the one actually launched on Syria - potentially including targeting Russian air defence systems, but was dissuaded by James Mattis, his defence secretary. The Pentagon presented Mr Trump with three options for how to respond to the chemical attack by the Syrian regime in Douma on April 7. A first, and most cautious, option consisted of a limited strike on Syrian chemical weapons facilities, while a second also included military command posts. The third option would have devastated Bashar al-Assad militarily and could have targeted Syrian-based Russian air defence capabilities as part of that, according to a report in The Wall Street Journal. Such a strike would have been three times the size of the military action that was eventually carried out by the US, UK and France in the early hours of last Saturday in which a total of 105 missiles were launched at Syrian targets. Over several days of intense planning meetings with his top national security advisers last week, Mr Trump was said to have asked about hitting both Russian and Iranian targets if that was required to hurt Assad militarily, The Wall Street Journal reported. He and Nikki Haley, the US Ambassador to the United Nations, were said to have been pushing for a more robust strike. However, having laid out the three options Mr Mattis, according to the report, urged caution and suggested the third one could lead to an escalation by Russia or Iran. The strike that ultimately happened reportedly drew from the first two options. That decision was seen as confirmation of the elevated standing of Mr Mattis within the US administration. Asked whether Mr Trump had been pushing for proposals that included hitting Russian and Iranian targets in Syria, Sarah Huckabee Sanders, the White House press secretary, said "a number of options" had been, and still remain, on the table. She said: "We're not going to get into any other options that were on the table. We're going to continue to keep a number of options on the table if Syria and Russia and Iran don't show to be better actors in this process." Meanwhile, Mr Trump dismissed claims by Syria and Russia that some US missiles were shot down. He said: "We had well over 100 missiles. They didn't shoot one down. Their equipment didn't work too well... every one [of ours] hit its target, not one shot down." John Bolton, Mr Trump's new national security adviser who is considered to be a hawk, was said to have pushed for the toughest response possible, but not to have advocated the third option, believing it could draw the US further into a conflict in Syria. The three Syrian targets ultimately chosen were involved in the "research, development and deployment" of chemical weapons, the Pentagon said. One was a scientific facility near Damascus and the other two were chemical weapons storage sites near Homs, one of which had been used as a military command post. The strike involved more than double the number of missiles used in the US air strike on Syria in April 2017. In a separate development, the White House yesterday appeared to row back from imminent Russia sanctions announced at the weekend by Ms Haley. Ms Sanders said: "We are considering additional sanctions on Russia and a decision will be made in the near future." That statement came as The Washington Post reported that Mr Trump had felt "misled" into expelling 60 Russian diplomats over the Salisbury spy poisoning. He was reportedly furious when he discovered Germany and France were expelling only a handful of Russians, and was surprised that the US was matching the total EU figure. The paper quoted a source saying "a lot of curse words" were used by the president. It also reported that Mr Trump pushed backed against British Prime Minister Theresa May when asked to act over the phone. "Why are you asking me to do this," he reportedly asked the Prime Minister over expulsions. "What's Germany going to do? What about France?" The White House declined to directly deny Mr Trump was unhappy over the expulsions. A British source said they did not recognise the account of the phone call. A Southwest Airlines plane sits on the runway at the Philadelphia International Airport after it made an emergency landing in Philadelphia, on Tuesday, April 17, 2018. (David Maialetti/The Philadelphia Inquirer via AP) A Southwest Airlines plane sits on the runway at the Philadelphia International Airport after it made an emergency landing in Philadelphia, on Tuesday, April 17, 2018. (David Maialetti /The Philadelphia Inquirer via AP) A Southwest Airlines plane sits on the runway at the Philadelphia International Airport after it made an emergency landing in Philadelphia, on Tuesday, April 17, 2018. (David Maialetti /The Philadelphia Inquirer via AP) A federal investigator has said that one person died after a plane with engine failure made an emergency landing in Philadelphia. National Transportation Safety Board Chairman Robert Sumwalt said that the engine of the Southwest Airlines jet will be shipped for a detailed examination. The Federal Aviation Administration says the flight from New York to Dallas made an emergency landing after the crew reported damage to one of the engines, as well as the fuselage and at least one window. Philadelphia's fire chief says that one person was taken to the hospital in critical condition and seven were treated for minor injuries. The jet has made an emergency landing in Philadelphia after a piece of its engine broke off mid-flight and smashed a window, leading to a depressurisation that pulled a woman partly out of the cabin, according to family speaking to reporters. The plane landed safely after the incident, and firefighters could be seen responding to the scene while some people exited the aircraft on crutches. One person was taken to a nearby hospital with reported head trauma. Nine others were said to have been injured, but it was not immediately clear if they were taken to hospital. Passengers posted pictures of the damaged engine online, and one passenger, Marty Martinez, posted a live video on his Facebook page after the engine part damaged the window. The grainy footage showed one man putting a yellow oxygen mask on amid the chaos. "One passenger, a woman, was partially...was drawn out towards the out of the plane...[she] was pulled back by other passengers," Todd Bauer, the father of the female passenger who was partially sucked out of the plane, told NBC in a phone interview. The plane was flying from New York's LaGuardia Airport on its way to Dallas. Another passenger told CNN that a piece of the plane's engine had acted like shrapnel, causing a serious injury and forcing the plane to divert from their position west of Philadelphia. "We left LaGuardia heading to Dallas and we were west of Philly when we lost the left side engine and diverted to Philly," they said. "Shrapnel hit the window causing a serious injury; no other details about that, several medical personnel on the flight tended to the injured passenger." But another passenger told the network the plane touched down normally. "It definitely was a stable landing," Kristopher Johnson said. "When we finally landed it was relatively smooth. Kind of a typical landing." Southwest released a statement acknowledging the emergency landing, and said they were working with passengers and crews regarding the incident. "We are aware that Southwest flight #1380 from New York La Guardia (LGA) to Dallas Love Field (DAL) has diverted to Philadelphia International Airport (PHL). We are in the process of transporting customers and crew into the terminal. The aircraft, a Boeing 737-700, has 143 Customers and five Crewmembers onboard," the statement read. "We are in the process of gathering more information. Safety is always our top priority at Southwest Airlines, and we are working diligently to support our customers and crews at this time." Southwest is the world's safest airline. In more than 1.5 billion flights since it started operations in Texas in 1971, no passenger has been killed in a crash. The airline, based in Dallas, is likely soon to overtake Delta to become the carrier that flies the highest number of domestic passengers. The Philadelphia airport remained open, but a Twitter account warned passengers to expect delays. Zookeepers in the Czech Republic have turned to a puppet in an effort to save the critically-endangered Javan green magpie. Officials saved one egg after the parents threw a second out of their nest. The magpie chick which hatched a month ago is being kept in a box and fed using a puppet that imitates a parent bird. Expand Close A keeper closes a box after feeding an endangered Javan green magpie (Petr David Josek/AP) / Facebook Twitter Email Whatsapp A keeper closes a box after feeding an endangered Javan green magpie (Petr David Josek/AP) Prague zoos bird keeper Antonin Vaidl says the puppet is being used to ensure the bird will be capable of breeding, which it will not be if it gets used to people. Mr Vaidl said the puppet does not have to be a perfect imitation of an adult bird because the baby responds to certain signals, such as a red beak, black patches around the eyes and a bright green background. New Delhi, Apr 17 (IBNS): Minister of Commerce & Industry Suresh Prabhu launched the FIEO GlobalLinker- a digital platform for MSME exporters to digitise their businesses and join a global community of growing businesses in New Delhi on Tuesday. The Minister congratulated Federation of Indian Export Organisations (FIEO) for coming out with the interesting idea. He said that this initiative will help in expanding India's multi-focused export strategy and also aid in connecting art and artisans to the market. Minister also informed that at least 300 Geographical Indications will be registered very soon, which will give a major boost to exports. FIEO GlobalLinker is setup with a view to make the business growth of SMEs simpler, more profitable and enjoyable. It is a growing global network currently comprising over 140,000 SME firms, who are seeking business collaboration and growth opportunities through the use of their electronic business card and digital profiles created on the platform. Many young people in Australia are not meeting healthy physical activity and nutrition guidelines, with lifestyle risk factors differing between males and females, suggests a new study by the Melbournes Baker Heart and Diabetes Institute. The study looking at data from the Australian Health Survey aimed to identify the sex differences in risk factors for chronic disease during childhood (59 years), adolescence (1017 years) and emerging adulthood (1825 years). Sex differences in nutrition and physical activity appeared to emerge in adolescence. Among 1017 year olds, females were almost twice as likely as males to meet daily fruit and vegetable recommendations. In emerging adults (1825 years), females were less likely to be overweight and more likely to meet physical activity recommendations. Baker Institute researcher Dr Sarah Dash said the findings suggest that from adolescence onwards, females appear to exhibit lower lifestyle-related risk than males. The sex differences observed in this study may be a reflection of gender-based sociocultural expectations, such as expectations on female body composition, or traditional roles around food preparation, said Dr Dash. Because health behaviours established when we are young often track into adulthood, its important to understand when these sex differences emerge, in order to target sex-specific public health strategies that account for sociocultural factors. Dr Dash said the results shows us that sex differences in healthy behaviours may start to appear when young people begin to gain a bit of independence. Its important to consider social and cultural factors that may influence health behaviours in young men and women at this age. Early life is an important window of opportunity, given that individual risk and protective behaviours are often established and refined during this age period. If we dont pay attention to lifestyle habits at this age it can increase our risk for to chronic diseases such as diabetes and cardiovascular disease later in life. The findings were published in the International Journal of Environmental Research and Public Health. Stockholm, Apr 17 (IBNS): Prime Minister Narendra Modi reached Sweden as he commenced his two -nation tour on Monday. He was welcomed to the nation by Swedish Prime Minister Stefan Lofven. Modi will attend the first ever India-Nordic Summit in the country. Landed in Stockholm. I thank Prime Minister Stefan Lofven for the warm welcome at the airport. @SwedishPM pic.twitter.com/nJuqebdiOr Narendra Modi (@narendramodi) April 16, 2018 Modi is the first Indian Prime Minister to visit the nation in 30 years. MEA spokesperson Raveesh Kumar tweeted: "Scripting history! PM @narendramodi arrives in Stockholm on a first bilateral visit by an Indian PM in 30 years to a warm and personal welcome by @SwedishPM Stefan Lofven at the airport and to participate in the first ever India-Nordic Summit." Before leaving for Sweden and the UK, Prime Minister Narendra Modi on Sunday said he is hopeful that the visits to the two nation will be useful in enhancing our engagement with these countries. "I am confident that these visits to Sweden and UK will be useful in enhancing our engagement with these countries," Modi said prior to his visit to Sweden. He will be visiting the United Kingdom to attend the Commonwealth Heads of Government Meeting. He is visiting the two nations between Apr 17-20. Apart from these two nations, he will also visit Germany on Apr 20 briefly. "At the suggestion of German Chancellor Angela Merkel, Prime Minister Narendra Modi will be making a brief stopover in Berlin on 20 April after completing his visits to Sweden and the United Kingdom. During his visit, PM will meet Chancellor Merkel and the two leaders will exchange views on a number of bilateral, regional and global issues," read a statement issued by the MEA. "This will be the first meeting between the two leaders since Chancellor Merkel began her fourth term on 14 March 2018," it said. Image: Raveesh Kumar Twitter page Kathmandu, Apr 17 (IBNS): A bomb blast occurred outside the Indian consulate office in Biratnagar area of Nepal on Monday, media reports said on Tuesday. According to local media reports, the wall on the premises of the consulate was damaged due to the blast. No casualty has been reported so far. Morang SP Arun Kumar BC told The Kathmandu Post the blast in the open space behind the building caused minor damage to the wall. Police said they have started investigating the cause of the blast. Investigating officers suspected cadres of Netra Bikram Chands Communist Party of Nepal to have caused the blast, reported The Kathmandu Post. The party had called a general strike in Biratnagar on Monday. Security has been beefed up in the area following the blast. Image: Wikimedia Commons New Delhi, Apr 17 (IBNS) : As ATMs ran dry in many states across the country, Union Finance Minister Arun Jaitley on Tuesday alleyed the fear of cash crunch, citing sudden and unusual increase of withdrawals as the reason for the temporary shortage of cash.. Have reviewed the currency situation in the country. Over all there is more than adequate currency in circulation and also available with the Banks. The temporary shortage caused by sudden and unusual increase in some areas is being tackled quickly, Jaitley tweeted. He added that there was adequate currency in circulation and with the banks and that the situation would be tackled quickly. According to media reports, at least seven states have complained about ATMs going dry. People from Karnataka, Maharashtra, Andhra Pradesh, Rajasthan, Uttar Pradesh, Madhya Pradesh and Telangana have said that ATMs in their areas either do not have cash or are not functioning, NDTV reported. Union minister of state for finance SP Shukla has been quoted news agency ANI as saying that there is a problem that some states have less currency and others have more, promising that it will be solved in three days with both the government and the Reserve Bank of India working to transfer currency from one state to other. Reacting to the situation, the opposition blamed the Government. The Congress conducted a poll on Twitter that asked whether ATMs running out of cash was just gross mismanagement by modi government...or...a deliberate move. Congress president Rahul Gandhi said Prime Minister Narendra Modi had destroyed the banking system. Nirav Modi fled with Rs 30,000 crore and the prime minister did not utter a word. We were forced to stand in queues as he snatched Rs 500-1,000 notes from our pockets and put it in Nirav Modis pocket, Gandhi told ANI. CPM leader Sitaram Yechuary tweeted, ATMs were empty in November 2016. ATMs are empty now. And the only party flush with cash is the BJP: the people suffer. Jodhpur, Apr 17 (IBNS) : After getting bail in the blackbuck poaching case in which he was sentenced to five years' imprionsment, Bollywood superstar on Tuesday also received permission from the court to travel abroad, reports said. Judge Chandra Kumar Songara of the Jodhpur District and Sessions Court allowed him to travel to the US, Canada and Nepal from May 25 to July 10, after the actor's plea. However, Salman Khan has not clarified the reason behind his requirement to travel abroad. The 52-year-old actor was sentenced to five years in jail for killing two blackbucks in 1998 in Kankani village, near Jodhpur in Rajasthan, during the shooting of a multi-starrer, "Hum Saath Saath Hain". His co-actors Saif Ali Khan, Tabu, Neelam Kothari and Sonal Bendre, who were in the SUV that the "Dabangg" actor was driving during their alleged late night hunting outing, were, however, acquitted by the Jodhpur sessions court. Salman Khan walked out of the Jodhpur Central Jail on April 7 after spending two nights there. Jorhat, Apr 17 (IBNS): Vice President of India M. Venkaiah Naidu said that innovative practices must come into farm sector to make it sustainable and profitable. He was addressing the inauguration of year long Golden Jubilee Celebrations of Assam Agricultural University, in Jorhat, Assam on Tuesday. The Governor of Assam, Jagadish Mukhi, the Minister for Agriculture, Assam, Shri Atul Bora and other dignitaries were present on the occasion. The Vice President said that achieving self sufficiency in the pulses and oilseed sector is challenge before the country. "I am sure that with the dedication demonstrated by our agriculturists and the cutting edge research being conducted in our laboratories, we will achieve self sufficiency even in these two crops soon, he added. The Vice President said that India needs to respond effectively to the changing needs of our farm sector for a sustained food security. The Vice President said that fewer people than earlier are now opting for agriculture. "We need highly skilled and motivated human resources, persons who will think out of box and institutions that will foster innovation," he added. The Vice President called on scientists and governments to encourage farmers to diversify and take up allied activities like poultry, dairy and fisheries adding that increase only production may not encourage people to join farming. He further said that there a big unmet demand for dairy and meat products in the entire north eastern region and there is a need to turn this challenge into an opportunity. Farmers who toil on the farms should be empowered with knowledge, financial credit, warehousing and insurance facilities and we need to re-think and revitalize agricultural education and research, he added. Following is the text of Vice President's address: "It is indeed a great pleasure for me to be a part of the Golden Jubilee year celebration programme of Assam Agricultural University. It is a joyous moment that marks fifty years of glorious journey of this institution. I have been informed that this was the only agricultural university for the entire NE region till the year 1988 when the Central Agricultural University was established. Even with that university in place now, Assam Agricultural University still continues to welcome students not only from the region but also from the country and overseas. It is heartening to know that students from 7 different countries are pursuing their higher studies in this university and that the students from this university are availing foreign fellowships enabling them to study in 6 European universities. I am happy to note that this university has developed as many as 113 different crop varieties, 2 animal varieties and 1 poultry breed in the last 50 years. I am delighted at the rapid progress being made by this university making it one of the top 100 institutions of India. What is most remarkable is the fact that the University has opened its doors to the farming community and is working hand in hand with the farmers supporting them in their efforts to augment productivity and profitability. I complement and congratulate each one of you for your contribution to the growth of agriculture sector over the last five decades. However, we in this country, have a long and arduous journey ahead to be undertaken in collaboration with all stakeholders. There are numerous challenges we need to collectively address in our country. You must build on your past achievements and address these new challenges and tap into newer opportunities. We, as a country, have come a long way from being food deficient country six decades back to a country that has achieved substantial home grown food security. One of our challenges now is to achieve self sufficiency in the pulses and oilseed sector. I am sure that with the dedication demonstrated by our agriculturists and the cutting edge research being conducted in our laboratories, we will achieve self sufficiency even in these two crops soon. All of us are aware that for our sustained food security, we need to respond effectively to the changing needs of our farm sector. These needs are emerging out of contemporary realities like climate change, fatigued soil health, diminishing water resources and endangered bio-diversity. Most significantly, the farming profession is becoming increasingly uneconomical and, therefore, unattractive. Fewer people than earlier are now opting for agriculture. In order to meet these challenges effectively, we need highly skilled and motivated human resources, persons who will think out of box and institutions that will foster innovation. Over the last decade and half, the agriculture sector in Assam is marching ahead slowly but steadily. Presently, I believe it is growing at around 5 percent. Rice production increased from 3.8 million tonnes in 2001-02 to 5.2 million tonnes in 2016-17. This is still far below its potential of 12 million tonnes. Similarly, pulses production increased from 0.85 lakh tonnes to 1.08 lakh tonnes and Oilseed from 1.56 lakh tonnes to 2.15 lakh tonnes during the same year. While the state is self sufficient in rice, special efforts are needed for increasing production of oilseeds and pulses. I understand that wheat is not a popular crop with farmers of this state. The production is only 0.34 lakh tonnes though there is a demand for around 6 lakh tonnes. Apparently, a great scope exists in the wheat sector. The university, state government and the farmers have to work collaboratively to realize the potential. Sisters and Brothers, We need to not only increase production but also encourage farmers to diversify and take up allied activities like poultry, dairy and fisheries. There is apparently a big unmet demand for dairy and meat products in your State as well as the entire north eastern region. I am told that there is about 60 percent milk deficiency, 80 percent egg deficiency and around 70 percent meat deficiency in Assam itself. We need to turn this challenge into an opportunity. I am happy that the government led by your Chief Minister, Sri Sarbananda Sonowalji, has planned to focus on animal husbandry and revitalize it. This is, in my view, the need of the hour. Farmers should be encouraged to diversify and take up allied activities to cushion them against uncertain and uneven returns from farming. Along with supplementation of farm income, farmers should be given the encouragement and technical know- how to grow horticultural crops like fruits, vegetables, spices and plantation crops like areca nut, and floriculture. I recognize that some significant progress has already been made in this direction in your State. Your land is the Sonar Assam, the golden Assam, a land of fertile lands, adequate rainfall and rich bio-diversity. These rich natural resources must be used optimally and sustainably to generate wealth. The farmers who toil on the farms should be empowered with knowledge, financial credit, warehousing and insurance facilities. They need to be provided the know-how and do-how to improve the farm productivity. Thats what the universities are expected to provide. We need to ensure that they do so even more efficiently in the years to come. We need to re-think and revitalize agricultural education and research. Sisters and Brothers, Knowledge makes all the difference. The educational institutions must generate new ideas, extend the frontiers of scientific knowledge and search for practical solutions to challenging problems. You must equip farmers with these knowledge, insights and products. You must dialogue with farmers, discover new products and practices and disseminate new insights and knowledge. This process of dialoguing, discovering and disseminating is a continuous pathway to excellence and greater professional heights. There have been many advances in farming practices like precision farming, vertical farming, hydroponic/ aeroponic farming and robotic farming. We must see if these innovations can be tried out in your state and in the regional context. We must also simultaneously examine and re-discover promising practices that the farmers are already adopting on their farms. Sisters and Brothers, India has a great heritage of agricultural science and has been the originator of path breaking discoveries over the last millennium. We have a responsibility to continue this scientific tradition. Young agricultural scientists will have to be encouraged to research and innovate. The universities must nurture young talent and mentor the students. Adequate opportunities for learning from the field and the ability to communicate research findings to the farming community must be an integral part of the curriculum. Our mother earth is a treasure house, a truly remarkable source of our sustenance. We must have the knowledge and wisdom to use this treasure for our livelihood and well being. We must protect and preserve, rejuvenate and renew our natural resources. Agricultural universities like yours have an important role to play in making farming attractive, innovative and sustainable. You have been doing wonderful work in the last 50 years. I wish you many more successful years ahead in the service of the farming community and humanity at large. May your efforts be crowned with greater successes as you stretch your arms towards perfection and excellence. Jai Hind!" Chennai, Apr 17 (IBNS): A Tamil Nadu professor, who has been accused of asking for sexual favours on behalf of college officials for academic degrees, has been arrested, media reports said. Nirmala Devi (46) of Devanga Arts College has been arrested in less than 24 hours after the matter came to public. The students had informed the college about the matter a month ago. It was on Monday the students had approached the police. Nirmala Devi is allegedly close to Tamil Nadu Governor Banwarilal Purohit, who is also the Chancellor of the University. Purohit had ordered an inquiry into the matter through a bureaucrat on Monday. An audio clip has circulated on social media in which the professor was heard offering good financial and academic supports in return of sexual benefits. New Delhi, Apr 17 (IBNS): The U.S. Embassy in New Delhi on Tuesday said it is recommending travelers across India to apply early for U.S. visas due to heavy demand. "At this time, applicants across India may wait 30 days or more for a visa interview appointment to become available and the Embassy expects this wait time to continue for at least the next few months. Mission Indias nonimmigrant visa workload is one of the largest in the world, processing over a million visas a year. In the last five years, the demand for visas to travel to the United States has increased by over 60 percent," read an official statement issued by the embassy. "The U.S. Embassy and our four Consulates are constantly working to improve service and meet demand, but applicants should be aware that the summer is a peak travel season and there will be delays in getting visa appointments. Travelers should apply early to avoid potential delays," it said. Applicants are also reminded to beware of scams and fraud, the Embassy said. "The only way to get a U.S. visa is through official channels. Someone can either apply and have an interview at a U.S. Embassy or Consulate, or if they have had a visa before and meet certain criteria, they may qualify to have their visa renewed. Anyone claiming they can guarantee a visa in exchange for a fee is attempting to defraud you. Applicants should be smart and apply the right way," it said. Consular sections in Mission India are currently only able to expedite visa appointments for cases involving genuine emergencies. Image: WIkimedia Commons Guwahati, Apr 17 (IBNS): After arresting Commissioner of Income Tax (Audit) along with Income Tax officer, Chartered Accountant, the Central Bureau of Investigation (CBI) is now preparing to arrest few more top businessmen in Assam in connection with alleged tax evasions. A top source of CBI said that, the premier investigating agency has accessed several vital documents of tax evasions in the region and a team of 40 sleuths of the CBI has been investigating a case of tax evasion. The CBI team is preparing to quiz at least two dozen top businessmen who were allegedly involved in tax evasions, the top source said. The top source also said that, apart from the businessmen, few more Income Tax officials are also under scanner. Among the top businessmen who are under scanner of the premier investigating agency, few are Guwahati based, the top source said. On the other hand, the CBI court in Guwahati on Tuesday sent four persons including Commissioner of Income Tax (Audit) Dr Swetabh Suman, Income Tax officer Pratap Das to 3-day CBI custody, who were arrested in connection with a case of tax evasion and criminal conspiracy in Assam. On April 13 last, the premier investigating agency arrested Dr Swetabh Suman, Commissioner of Income Tax (Audit), Guwahati, Income Tax officer Pratap Das, Chartered Accountant Ramesh Goenka and Pranjal Sarma in connection with the case. CBI had registered a case against the arrested Commissioner of Income Tax, Income Tax Officer (Audit) Pratap Das along with Advocate and Chartered Accountants Ramesh Goenka, Amit Goenka and Jorhat based businessman Suresh Agarwala. According to the CBI officials, during the year 2017-18, the Commissioner of IT agreed to show undue favours to the Jorhat based businessman by passing a favourable order in an appeal arising out of assessment done in respect of M/S Win Power Infra Pvt Ltd Director Suresh Agarwala's one shell company and Swetabh Suman by abusing official position made attempts to obtain illegal gratification to the tune of Rs 50 lakh for himself and Pratap Das through the Chartered Accountants. An FIR was registered against them. The CBI had also conducted search operations in Guwahati, Jorhat, Nagaon, Delhi, Noida, Shillong, Hojai and some other places and seized Rs 40 lakh and some other incriminating documents. Swetabh Suman was earlier booked by the CBI in a disproportionate assets case in 2005 as he was allegedly threatening witnesses and tampering with evidence. (Reporting by Hemanta Kumar Nath) Kolkata, Apr 17 (IBNS): At least five people were killed in Kolkata, five persons died in adjacent Howrah city and two more deaths were reported from West Bengal's Hooghly and Bankura districts after two thunderstorms with very heavy downpour hit several districts of the state including its capital Kolkata on Tuesday late evening. The first storm with velocity of 84 km per hour rumbled through the state capital at around 7:42 pm. while another thunderstorm, which touched a maximum speed of 98 km per hour, hit the city after just 13 minutes. Portion of several buildings collapsed and many trees were uprooted due to the gusty wind at different locations in Kolkata, throwing city's traffic out of gear. Due to the thunderstorm, train, metro rail and flight services were disrupted for hours while internet, cable TV service and mobile networks have been hit. The nor'westers and rain dragged the mercury down instantly by about 9 degrees. However, police, Disaster Management Group (DMG) personnel and Kolkata Municipal Corporation (KMC) staffers are currently continuing rescue efforts at several locations in the city. (Reporting by Deepayan Sinha) Toronto, Apri 17 (IBNS) With a splash of Bollywood dance and song numbers and a strong message of women empowerment, the International Film Festival of South Asia (IFFSA 2018) was flagged off at the Living Arts Centre, Mississauga on April 12, offering to the Greater Toronto Area (GTA) cine-lovers a choice of over 150 films and 50-plus events to feast on from May 10 to 21. The BMO (Bank of Montreal) IFFSA Toronto 2018 Official Launch at the Living Arts Centre was colourful and musical with young local dancers performing to the popular Bollywood numbers and making a statement against violence towards women. Women empowerment is indeed the theme of the festival which was inaugurated by Brampton Mayor Linda Jeffrey (above), Brampton councillors like Gurpreet Dhillon, Martin Medeiros and Jeff Bowman among others. This year's opening film is The Song of Scorpions, made by the internationally renowned director and writer Anup Singh. Starring Irrfan Khan, Golshifteh Farahani and Waheeda Rehman, the film has been called one of the most poetic and inspirational of contemporary world cinema. The film tenderly touches upon the fundamental motives behind human behaviour: love, vengeance and the sense of wonder. Anup Singh along with producer Shahaf Peled will be attending the North American premiere. The full lineup of this years festival was unveiled at a colourful launch of the event, though the screenings will be from May 10 to 21 promising 12 days of continuous excitement and food for thought. Widely recognized as the Voice of South Asian Cinema in Canada, IFFSA 2018s impressive program reflects the rich diversity of South Asian cinema, as well as the future of South Asian filmmaking, with cutting-edge filmmakers bringing their acclaimed films. One of the films chosen this year is Indian film made in Kurmali language titled 'Death Certificate ' directed by Rajaditya Banerjee and produced by Toronto based Anuradha Chatterjee, Kamini Singh and Anju Malhotra. "It is an absolute honour for us that our film has been chosen by IFFSA, the largest South Asian film festival in not just Canada but also North America," promoter of the fim Anuradha Chatterjee told IBNS Canada. Image: Toronto based producers of Death Certificate- Anuradha Chatterjee, Kamini Singh and Anju Malhotra- at IFFSA 2018 launch Sanal Kumars 2017 Hivos Tiger award winner Sexy Durga, an unpleasant impressionistic mood piece meant to draw attention to the degradation of women and mans cruelty to man, will have its Special Premiere at a VIP screening in downtown Toronto. Roya Sadats Afghan feminist drama A Letter To The President focuses on corrosive misogyny that pervades all levels of the social system. The film was selected as the Afghan entry for the Best Foreign Language Film at the 90th Academy Awards. Devashish Makhijas revenge saga AJJI bitterly and scathingly looks at the ongoing struggle with violence against women and turns a grim light on the institutional and cyclical poverty, inequality, indifference and entitlement. Hansal Mehtas biographical crime thriller OMERTA starring Rajkumar Rao, Bornila Chatterjees vengeance drama The Hungry starring Naseeruddin Shah and Dipesh Jains In The Shadows starring Manoj Bajpayee are the other thought-provoking films that are making their premiere at the festival. Ere Gowdas BALEKEMPA, a gentle tale of secret desires, has already made a splash around the world after winning the FIPRESCI Award at the 2018 IFFR. Mostofa Sarwar Farookis Bengali film DOOB NO BED OF ROSES is second Irrfan Khan starrer premiering at the festival. In collaboration with CAMH, the festivals social impact segment will be showcasing a series of films depicting stories of survival, hope and courage around mental health. Besides the short films by young female survivors of mental health, feature presentation The Boy With Top Knot will be making its North American Premiere. IFFSA 2018 line up also includes Shoojit Sarkars October, Pankaj Batras Sajjan Singh Rangroot and Vijay Kumar Aroras Harjeeta which all are premiering at the festival before their worldwide release. The festival will close with Rima Dass internationally acclaimed feature Village Rockstars which depicts the rock n roll dreams of a moppet which are motivated by larger issues, like rebellion and empowerment. In addition, the festival also announced a series of glamorous galas, receptions, concerts and industry events. Titans of South Asian cinema including Anurag Kashyap, Hansal Mehta, Anup Singh and Mostofa Farooki will be present at the festival offering great learning opportunities through workshops, masterclasses and talks. (Additional reporting and images by Sujoy Dhar) Kabul, Apr 17 (IBNS): At least six passengers were shot dead by unidentified gunmen in Afghanistan's western Ghor province on Tuesday, media reports said. The gunmen reportedly abducted two others. The incident occurred on the Ghor-Herat highway in Brak Khana area of Ferozkoh, media reports said. An eyewitness, Haji Mohammad, told Pajhwok Afghan News two individuals in military uniforms stopped a vehicle carrying passengers from Herat to Ghor. The gunmen then opened fire on the passengers, killing six people, said the eyewitness. Meanwhile, in another incident, at least 16 Taliban militants and a policeman were killed during a clash between the two units in Afghanistan's Ghazni province, reports said on Tuesday. The incident took place on Monday. Additionally, 13 Taliban militants and three policemen were injured in the clash. Law enforcement officers also confiscated five bikes and a vehicle belonging to the said militant outfit. The Taliban has not yet commented on the report. Paris, Apr 17 (IBNS): Canadian Prime Minister Justin Trudeau will end his French tour on Tuesday after addressing the national assembly of the country, media reports said. Trudeau will be the first Canadian Prime Minister to address the French national assembly. He is likely to speak about rising nationalism, xenophobia and populism, the most serious concerns in France, report said. A day ago, both the countries pledged to fight against climate change which has emerged as a major challenge to all countries across the globe. US President Donald Trump, however, recently pulled his country out of the Paris Accord, which was signed by majority countries. Paris Accord is an agreement within the United Nations Framework Convention on climate change which was signed in 2015 to control the emission of green house gases. After ending his French trip, Trudeau will head towards Britain. He is scheduled to meet Britain Prime Minister Theresa May and Queen Elizabeth. The government will build a new expressway connecting Gurugram with Mumbai passing through the countrys two most backward districts Mewat in Haryana and Dahod in Gujarat in the next three years, highways minister Nitin Gadkari said on Monday. The project would cost about Rs 60,000 crore, sources said. The expressway will reduce the existing distance of 1,450 km by road to about 1,250 km and will bring down the travel time to about 12 hours. Currently, it takes at least 24 hours to cover the stretch between Delhi and Mumbai through NH-8. bccl/representational image Gadkari said the work on this stretch will start by December and will be completed in the next three years, while speaking at a TOI event on Give Gurugram its Due. The expressway will begin from Rajiv Chowk in Gurugram. It will be built on the existing alignment up to the Sohna bypass and from there it will be greenfield (new) alignment till Vadodara, said a highway ministry official. Gadkari said the work for the Vadodara-Surat stretch of the expressway has been awarded and the tenders for the Surat-Mumbai stretch will be out soon. bccl/representational image This entire expressway will bring development to the undeveloped regions and hinterland in Rajasthan, Haryana and Madhya Pradesh to spur growth and some backward areas will also shine like Gurugram. Industrial and commercial development will generate jobs. We are now looking at building highways on new alignment rather than just expanding the existing stretches to decentralise development, he said. TOI on March 4 had first reported how the highways ministry will focus more on building greenfield roads rather than keep on expanding the existing ones. bccl/representational image Gadkari said the Delhi-Mumbai Expressway will provide connectivity to the proposed Chambal Expressway and a dozen more cities, including Jaipur, Kota, Sawai Madhopur, Ujjain, Godhra and Ahmedabad. There is also a proposal to have the provision for a high-speed rail corridor along the Gurugram-Vadodara stretch. The minister said work will start at 40 locations simultaneously so that the new expressway becomes operational. Since the expressway will pass through unexplored regions and backward areas, the expenses for land acquisition will be less. The land acquisition expenses for the Gurugram-Vadodara stretch is likely to be in the range of Rs 5,000 crore to Rs 6,000 crore, which is almost one-third of what National Highway Authority of India would have spent for getting land for building the Delhi-Jaipur Expressway. bccl/representational image Sources said the highways ministry recently reworked its plan to extend the earlier proposed Delhi-Jaipur Expressway up to Vadodara. Since we have already started work on the Vadodara-Mumbai stretch, building the Gurugram-Vadodara corridor will make the travel smooth from Delhi up to Mumbai. Delhi-Mumbai highway carries about 15% of the countrys total cargo traffic and this is likely to grow. So, the need for a greenfield expressway was felt, said a ministry official. Whether it's Yulin festival or people butchering dogs for pleasure, each incident breaks our heart. Activists and dog lovers alike have been fighting against odds to put an end to such heinous crimes. Their effort recently saved a dog from a meat trade in China. afp There is still a long way to victory but this incident makes us feel hopeful nonetheless. Recently, at a meat vendor's shop at Kunmings Xiaobanqiao Market, animal lovers paid the vendor to release the dog that was being prepared for a certain death. One of the rescuers Xu told MailOnline that a dozen of volunteers raised 14,450 yuan (1,612) to purchase the golden retriever among 20 other dogs. pear video/youtube Also read: Visually Impaired Indian Man In Tears After Commuters Refuse To Give Seats To Him & Guide Dog Associated with Kunmings Sanhe Animal Protection Centre, the volunteers had visited the market while looking for a lost pet when they stumbled upon the caged dogs. One golden retriever among them seemingly burst into 'tears of gratitude'. However, according to vet Wang Zaigo, the dog had undergone an eye checkup which may have been the reason behind its tears. Also read: This Dog Saying 'I Love You' To His Human Friend Is Making People Lose Their Calm Seventeen of the total rescued dogs have found adoptive owners and that's what matters the most. Kudos to the volunteers who are rescuing dogs from a trade that knows no mercy towards animals. Telugu actress Sri Reddy's semi nude protests against casting couch went onto become the highlight in today's industry. It became an eye opener for many, who were only lashing out the Harvey Weinstein scandal. Twitter Bollywood may not have opened up so far but regional cinema is now seeing many actresses revealing unfortunate incidents that have taken place while they started out. Sri Reddy opened up about how she was sexually exploited by many producers and directors. She claimed that she was also denied membership of the Movie Artistes Association (MAA) despite having acted in three films. The actress also alleged that several people in the industry demanded obscene pictures from her in exchange for roles in movies. And now another Telugu actress has come forward to support of her and narrated her own incident. Sandhya Naidu said something unbelievable. Most of the characters I get are that of a mother or an aunty. They call me amma at the shooting spot in the morning and ask me to come and sleep with them at night, The actress has been in the industry for 10 years now. One of them asked me what I was wearing and if it is transparent, added Sandhya. Twitter Apart from Sandhya, artist Sunitha Reddy also said, We have to change clothes outdoors and relieve ourselves outdoors. While the managers ask us to use the caravans of the stars, we are not allowed and are treated like worms. They used crude language and ask us not to lurk around. Justice for Asifa has become a household campaign and people are not only talking about it but have come on the streets as well. Unnao rape case, too, has been able to shake the peoples conscience about how high and mighty can get away after committing a crime as big as rape. Unnao rape accused BJP MLA Kuldeep Singh Sengar has been arrested by CBI after people protested and the issue became a political headache for the ruling BJP and CM Yogi Aditynath. Now the accused MLA has been sent to CBI custody for seven days. Here is the timeline of the Unnao case which has once again provided fodder to a notion that if you are rightly placed, law just cant give justice to the victim. June 2017: Minor girl in Unnao district in Uttar Pradesh alleged rape by BJP MLA Kuldeep Singh Sengar, his brothers and others. June 2017 - April 2018: The victims family accused they police refused to lodge their FIR. The family approached the court and hearing is going on. April 3, 2018: The fight between girls family and accused and his goons left the victims father injured. Two complaints filed, each by both sides, but police acts only on one complaint and arrests the victims father and lock him up. April 8, 2018: Girl tried to set herself ablaze in front of CM residence in Lucknow and accused him of shielding the MLA. April 9, 2018: The victims father died in hospital after he was brought to hospital, after vomiting abdominal pain. The police were accused of beating him and six policemen, including the station officer of the area, were suspended. Police arrested four men accused of assaulting girls father and these were associates of MLA Sengar. April 10, 2018: The autopsy report shows 14 injuries on girls fathers body. April 11, 2018: The UP government ordered the police to handover the case to CBI. April 12, 2018: After getting the case, the CBI arrested the accused MLA and charged him with minors rape. April 15, 2018: the CBI gets seven-day custody of the MLA Kuldeep Singh Sengar. The accused MLA has said that he will come out clean of all the charges. Let's see, if he does. Kathua rape victim Asifa Bano's lawyer Deepika Singh Rajawat said that she fears for her life and she may get raped or murdered. She was speaking at the 'Not In My Name' protest organised at Parliament Street in Delhi on Sunday. "Today, I don't know, I am not in my senses. I can be raped, I can be killed and maybe they won't allow me to practice in court. They (have) isolated me, I don't know how I can survive," Deepika said. Speaking on the state of affairs in Jammu, she said that she is fighting for the little girl because she too is the mother of a daughter. She told that she fears for the life of her daughter and her family. BCCL She added that she has been called anti-Hindu, anti-national and boycotted socially. Deepika also said that she would be approaching the Supreme Court to demand security for herself and her family. "I will tell this to the Supreme Court. I am feeling bad and it's really unfortunate. You can well imagine my plight. But, I will stand for justice and we would seek justice for the eight-year-old girl," she concluded. Deepika Singh Rajawat and Bakharwal lawyer and activist Talib Hussain, spearheading the movement of justice for Asifa, yesterday flew down to Delhi for the protest. In connection with the case, two First Information Reports (FIRs) have been filed: one against eight people for allegedly being involved in the crime and another has been filed against a group of lawyers which had allegedly stopped the police from filing chargesheet against the eight accused. BCCL The gangrape and murder of the eight-year-old girl, who belonged to a nomadic Muslim community, took place in the Kathua district in January. After being missing for a week, her body was found on January 17. The chargesheet has revealed gory details about the crime and has led to a massive public outcry across the country. Deepika and Talib, both called for public unity and demanded protests must go in till justice is served. First Kathua, then Unnao and then many others, Indias image have taken a serious jolt globally after a spree of rape incidents have come to fore across India in last few weeks. The outrage is genuine and it ought to be since rapes and crimes against women have made the life of the average Indian women, even the kids as young as four or five tough as the fear of being harassed has become perpetual. India too has plenty of laws to address the issues, but despite laws, the crime against women is on increase and there is no solution to this on the horizons. Sweden shows us the way as the European country has taken a series of measures to ensure the women remain safe and the safety of women dont become a law and order issue which is a big problem in India presently. Here are all the steps that Sweden has taken to improve law and order situation and safety of women. 10-year-long strategy In order to address the issues of violence against women, the Sweden government formulated a 10-year-old strategy to deal with the issues at multiple levels which include preventive initiatives, stronger protection and support, more effective law enforcement, work environment investments and awareness-building measures. On 1 January 2017, a ten-year strategy to prevent mens violence against women including honour-related violence, oppression, prostitution and human trafficking for sexual purposes came into being. The strategy, which contains a package of measures, is intended to guide central government steering in this area and has a particular focus on developing efforts to prevent violence. In total, the Government is setting aside around SEK 1.3 billion for efforts to counteract men's violence against women in 20172020, read the government portal. Formation of gender equality agency In 2018 January, the government formed an agency which will supervise the gender equality in the country which would help in curbing the exploitation of women rights which often results in crime against women. The agency will work with follow-up, analysis, coordination, knowledge and support for achieving the Government's gender equality policy goals. One of the sub-goals is that men's violence against women must stop and that women and men, girls and boys must have the same right and access to physical integrity, says portal. Strong legislation for consent Consent matter the most and the absence of it leads to violence against women. To make sure that women have the freedom to be sure that they want to get into any kind of relationship with anybody, the government proposed to the council new sexual offence legislation thats based on consent in 2017 December. In the legislative proposal, the Government, therefore, proposes introducing new sexual consent legislation based on the obvious: sex must be voluntary. Accordingly, convicting a perpetrator of rape will no longer require that violence or threats were used, or that the victim's particularly vulnerable situation was exploited. The Government also proposes introducing two new offences, 'negligent rape' and 'negligent sexual abuse', with a maximum prison sentence of four years. The negligence aspect focuses on the fact that the other person did not participate voluntarily, the press release says. Other Proposals by government Below are other proposals the Government is referring to the Council on Legislation for consideration: 1. Increasing the minimum penalty for gross rape and gross rape of a child from four to five years imprisonment; 2. Enhancing the protection provided under criminal law concerning sexual offences against children where the perpetrator displayed negligence with regard to the child's age. One of the aims of these amendments is to avoid the problem of excessive emphasis being placed on the child's physical development; and 3. Providing support to victims of sexual offences at an earlier stage of the process. When a preliminary investigation on a sexual offence is initiated, a request for a counsel to represent the injured party is to be made immediately. It is proposed that the legislative amendments enter into force on 1 July 2018. Investment to enhance polices ability Apart from protecting the whistleblower and victim who report such crimes, the government has also made a huge investment to make police agiler and capable make citizens feel secure. reuters The Government is implementing a historic investment through additional funding to the Swedish Police Authority of just over SEK 9.8 billion over the period 20172020. Assignments in the appropriation directions to the Police and the Swedish Prosecution Authority allow the Government to follow how these authorities are working to develop their working methods for investigating rape and other sexual offences, plans Sweden. Sexual harassment information at schools Sexual harassment education has to be must in school so that even children can know about good and bad touch. It has been learnt that in over 90 percent of the cases, the victim is known to the harasser which again shows that it was a breach of trust that lead to sexual assault. reuters The Children's Welfare Foundation Sweden is receiving SEK 500,000 from the Government to disseminate information and support materials on sexual harassment to all compulsory and upper secondary schools, The teacher's guide "Dags att prata om" [Time to talk about] has been launched for schools to improve their ability to talk to children about sexual abuse. How did two 500-pound bombs of World War II land up under the ground in a village in Kalyanis Hanskhali nearly 100 km from Kolkata? Military historians believe they could have been part of the arsenal stored at Roosevelt Town or Roosevelt Nagar. Till 1945, Kalyani was called Roosevelt Nagar. On Saturday, while digging in the Chhoto Chutria village in Hanskhali, workers came across the two cylinders, each 50-inch long and nearly 38 inches in diameter. After cleaning them, it was realised they were bombs. Army experts have taken charge of the bombs. Roosevelt Town used to be a large US Army base encompassing nearly 45 villages. Some say the town was also used by the US Army Air Force (USAAF) for Over the Hump Operations and the China-Burma-India (CBI) theatre. toi In fact, it was US president Franklin D Roosevelt who ordered troops to provide logistics support to Chinas Chiang Kai-Shek to help in the war against the entrenched Japanese in the Burma theatre. These operations went on between 1942 and 1945, after which the US troops left India. In the early 50s, the West Bengal government under chief minister Bidhan Chandra Roy decided to set up a satellite township at Kalyani. Even today, some of the structures built by the US Army can be found in Kalyani, a serving officer noted. afp/representational image While little is known of what kind of aircraft did operate, if they did, from Roosevelt Town, it is recorded that the USAAF flew on a regular basis from the Ropyal Air Force (RAF) air base at Kanchrapara, only a few km from Kalyani. The USAAF used B-25 Mitchell aircraft from this base that was quite capable of carrying 500-pound bombs. We cant be sure how the base layout was in 1942-45. Maybe bombs used to be stored where they were recovered from on Saturday. It is also possible these are duds used for practice runs, another officer said. Corn Higher into Weekend Barchart - Fri Oct 1, 4:43PM CDT Friday s finish saw the board 4 3/4 to 6 cents in the black on the day. For the week, December corn futures traded with a 24 1/2 cent range and a net 16 3/4 cent gain. December was a net 2 1/2 cents... ZCZ21 : 541-4s (+0.88%) ZCPAUS.CM : 5.1834 (+0.48%) ZCH22 : 549-6s (+0.96%) ZCZ21 : 541-4s (+0.88%) Soybeans Red into Weekend Barchart - Fri Oct 1, 4:43PM CDT Soybean futures closed the last trade day of the week with 5 1/4 to 9 1/2 cent losses. For the week, November soybean futures gave back 37 1/2 during a 55 cent range week. During the month of September,... XRX21 : 644.25s (+0.86%) RSX21 : 903.10s (+1.07%) ZSX21 : 1246-4s (-0.76%) ZSPAUS.CM : 11.9884 (-0.92%) ZSF22 : 1256-4s (-0.71%) ZSX21 : 1246-4s (-0.76%) Livestock Report Walsh Trading - Fri Oct 1, 3:33PM CDT Hogs consolidate gains while cattle markets weak Grain Spreads: KC/Chicago Wheat Walsh Trading - Fri Oct 1, 2:55PM CDT Wheat Leads Chart of the Day: Choice Hotels: Few Vacancies Barchart - Fri Oct 1, 2:42PM CDT The Barchart Chart of the Day belongs to the hotel operators Choice Hotels International (NYSE: CHH ). I found the company by sorting Barchart's All Time High list first by the highest number of... CHH : 133.41 (+5.57%) Natural Gas Prices Tumble as Supply Concerns Temporarily Ease Barchart - Fri Oct 1, 2:06PM CDT November Nymex natural gas (NGX21 ) on Friday closed down -0.248 (-4.23%). Nov nat-gas prices on Friday posted sharp losses on negative carry-over from Thursday when weekly EIA nat-gas inventories rose... NGX21 : 5.619s (-4.23%) With the exception of Hannover Re, they recorded losses on their property and casualty (P&C) (re)insurance underwriting, but positive contributions from life and health (re)insurance, and solid investment returns more than offset these, explained the credit rating agency in a new report, which cited robust solvency positions. According to Fitch Ratings, the four reinsurers have capital positions in excess of regulatory minimums and at or above their stated optimal ranges. Capital management strategies were also unchanged. Commenting on the report, the credit rating agency noted: SCOR maintained its share buy-back plan, while Munich Re and Swiss Re announced increases to theirs of up to 1 billion and CHF1 billion, respectively, and Hannover Re maintained its special dividend payments. All four said they would still have capital available to invest in growth opportunities or for further returns to shareholders. The continued abundance of capital in the sector, helped by capital influx from insurance-linked security investors, makes significant rate rises unlikely. Fitch Ratings also shone a spotlight on the increased appetite for mergers and acquisitions, citing the possibility of SoftBank acquiring a 10% stake in Swiss Re as the biggest potential deal among the European reinsurers. Related stories: Edmund is an insurtech which is filling a very real need the capability for Australian SMEs to quickly and efficiently buy a very comprehensive cyber insurance policy, said Joel Pridmore, head of financial lines and business development Asia, at Munich Re Syndicate at Lloyd's. Edmund has made cyber insurance fast, easy, and simple. But Edmunds innovation extends beyond that to incorporate cutting edge insurance protection, such as Social Engineering Fraud cover, for new and real threats that local businesses are facing in 2018. Smith said the Australian Cyber Security Centres 2017 Threat Report revealed a 15% rise in reported cyber security incidents in 2016-17 to 47,000 from the previous year, and warned that 60% of all targeted attacks this year will be against SMEs. Australian SMEs recognise this risk to their business, but have found insurance solutions difficult to find, understand, and buy, Smith said. We continue to see growth in threats such as ransomware and malware attacks in Australia and there are a number of security measures businesses should have in place to protect themselves. Cyber insurance provides complementary protection for example in the event of a ransomware attack businesses can be covered for the costs to recover from the ransomware event, loss of profit, and litigation associated with the loss of personal or commercial information. Smith also cautioned against an unprecedented volume of social engineering attacks, or business email compromise, which are causing a real strain on SME cashflows. According to the Australian Cybercrime Online Reporting Network (ACORN), over 2016 to 2017, social engineering attacks rose by 230% from the previous year. "These attacks occur when criminals pretend to be customers, suppliers, or senior individuals within businesses and trick staff into paying/transferring large sums of money into the attackers bank accounts, Smith said. The issue with these attacks is that most SMEs are not insured for this and recovery of the stolen funds from the banks is largely not viable. Edmund has teamed up with KPMG to provide the critical emergency response capability that Australian SMEs need to recover quickly from a cyber threat or breach. Related stories: Austen is a veteran of over 30 years in the insurance industry and has significant knowledge of start-up management. He began his career as a company underwriter for F.R. White, now Liberty Syndicate Management Ltd, before relocating to Asia in 1995. He established Arthur J Gallaghers Asia operation in 1999 before helping set up Talbot Syndicate in Singapore in 2007, and Nexus Underwriting Asia in Hong Kong in 2015. The opening of the Hong Kong MGA is NuVus first foray into Asia and is part of its expansion plans, both in Hong Kong and worldwide. NuVu also has an office in Madrid, Spain. There has been significant growth and success in the MGA space globally, and this is set to continue as more and more underwriters look to MGAs to control their own destiny, Austen commented. Being in Hong Kong will broaden the scope and reach of NuVu Underwritings distribution partnerships as well as create diversity to our existing portfolio. Hong Kongs position as a major insurance hub in the Asia-Pacific region makes it the ideal location to launch NuVu Underwriting as part of the next phase of our growth strategy, added HWI International Group director Steven Rudduck. Related stories: Another 26 counts of an indictment returned in October were dismissed as part of a plea agreement. According to the indictment, the purpose of the conspiracy was to profit via the filing of false insurance claims and the sale of unreported tobacco. In late 2014 and early 2015, Muse caused insurance indemnity payments to be made; $6,144 to one tobacco grower, $139,456 to a second, and $23,651 to a third a total of $169,251. The indictment said that the claims falsely inflated the amount of tobacco losses suffered by the producers. Muse was also employed as a seasonal worker at Clays Tobacco Warehouse, in addition to her duties as an insurance agent. The indictment said that Muse helped obtain policies for her client farmers. The farmers, at the urging of and with help from Muse, filed false claims. Through the ruse, the farmers were paid twice for each pound of tobacco first through the false crop claim, and also through the sale of unreported tobacco. Muse profited from the scheme by collecting the original insurance commission, as well as retaining and expanding the business of her crop insurance clients and securing business for the tobacco warehouse she worked for. Related stories: As part of the deal CBA principal Dean Howard will join NFPs Canada division as managing director of group benefits and retirement. He will report to NFP Canada president Marty Shaw. In addition, CBAs senior management team composed of Rob Crofts, Mike Werbowecki, Alecia Henderson and Katherine Rapp will continue to report to Howard in their current roles. Were excited to welcome Dean, an accomplished industry leader, and his team to the NFP family, commented Shaw. This acquisition completes our retirement suite of services and further enhances our benefits capabilities as a result of CBAs defined benefit actuarial team and administration platform. We look forward to combining our expertise and offerings to provide a more comprehensive set of services to our customers and prospects. We cant wait to connect with NFPs expansive platform in Canada and provide new additions to the offerings for our clients, said Howard. Howard commented that the deal allows his team to tap into NFPs deep roots and expertise in the area. Our clients will benefit from enhanced services and capabilities, he added. Related stories: One day after the 11-year anniversary of the Virginia Tech shooting, the tragedy is seen by many as the defining moment for when universities started thinking about how they could mitigate the risk of active shooter events. Since then, the entire emergency preparedness profession, especially in higher education, has grown, said David Bujak, emergency preparedness manager at the University of Rochester and UR Medicine. Before the massacre, emergency measures at colleges and universities were limited to preparing for earthquakes on the west coast, but the event influenced institutions to take a step back and determine how they could be best prepared for future shootings. Recent tragedies at schools in the US have likewise highlighted the need to be ready when an event like this occurs, but the debate around how best to do that is ongoing in the higher education sector. Its always a balance and its always a challenge between not just money and how much it costs to do all that, but just in terms of what kind of atmosphere do you want to have at your school, at your hospital, at your shopping mall, explained Bujak. And I think were just getting driven more and more by the perception that we need to get a little stricter and a little tougher. The emergency preparedness manager has firsthand experience with shootings. He was working at Florida State University when an alumnus entered the campus library in 2014 and, deterred by turnstiles, walked back outside and began firing at students. In this case, the presence of a physical barricade stopped the assailant for a few moments, but many institutions are wary of going too far and turning their campuses into something akin to US army posts. When it comes to higher education or even K-12, no-one really wants to become Fort Knox. You could put up fences, you could put up doors and security guards and metal detectors, but is that really the direction we want to go? One, its cost-prohibitive, and two, its not an environment thats conducive to students and learning, said Bujak, though he added that some targeted physical measures could work. Everyones looking at locks and cameras and security guards and yes, even the turnstiles would take a bit of money and certainly you wouldnt do that in every building on a college or K-12 campus, but you could at least identify your highest population concentration, such as libraries and cafeterias. That can help mitigate the risk a little bit. Some schools are also easier to lockdown than others. Campuses in the southern US might have 10 buildings spread out over several blocks while a northern campus could house most of its administrative and academic services in a couple of buildings with only a few points of entry. As demand for active shooter policies grows and organizations become more attuned to the risk, Bujaks advice to universities hoping to make their campuses safer is to also look at customer service. If youre a large campus with a public university, thats just physically impossible to accomplish, and thats where we have to start looking towards other I call them service initiatives or cultural initiatives to get the entire campus community away from what can we do to lock this place down and more in terms of what can you do to help identify these situations? He recommends that frontline staff be trained to make eye contact with anyone entering a building, and interacting with them through a simple greeting. If someone gives them the cold shoulder or acts in a way thats a cause for concern, that staff member can raise an alert. Everybody walking through the door cant be suspicious, said Bujak. Related stories: Mississippi may be thought of as conservative small-government state, but the states consumers pay higher taxes on their insurance products than in all but two other states. Unfortunately, under a bill just signed by Gov. Phil Bryant, the Legislature will take fees currently charged to bolster the states Wind Pool and quietly shift them to the general fund. Under SB 2467, which Bryant signed April 13, a 3 percent surcharge currently added to the cost of specialized surplus lines policies would be redirected from the Mississippi Windstorm Underwriting Association to the treasury, with special carve-outs for items like new fire trucks and the State Crime Lab. Those are perfectly reasonable projects, but theres no reason that insurance consumers, specifically, should foot the bill alone. The Wind Pool is smaller than it used to be and now has a healthy surplus. It probably no longer needs the extra revenue. But thats why lawmakers should have just let the tax expire, as it was currently scheduled to do in July 2021. Topics Mississippi Kentucky will make the biggest changes to its workers compensation system in decades. The legislation backed by business groups but opposed by organized labor groups was passed by both the Kentucky Senate and House of Representatives and signed by Gov. Matt Bevin on March 30. It has been more than 20 years since the workers compensation system underwent significant change. House Bill 2 is designed to help contain underlying costs and improve the states workers compensation system, said Jeffrey Junkas, assistant vice president, state government relations for PCI. HB 2 makes changes impacting medical expenses and benefits. It also takes steps to address the opioid crisis with an evidence-based pharmaceutical formulary and medical treatment guidelines to ensure timely delivery of appropriate medical care to injured workers. Additionally, the bill increases the maximum compensation rates for employee temporary total disability, permanent total disability, and permanent partial disability benefits, improves access to vocational rehabilitation services and makes improvements in the dispute resolution system. The new 15-year benefit cap from the date of injury applies to certain workers filing claims for permanent, partial disability because of on-the-job injuries. The bill would allow those injured workers to make recertification filings that, if approved, would let them continue receiving benefits. According to The Associated Press, Senate President Robert Stivers a Manchester Republican said the bill would promote a very fair process. It does things for the injured worker and it gives certainty to the industry for what their costs and liabilities would be, he said. Minority Floor Leader Ray Jones denounced the bill as anti-worker. He said the recertification process puts the burden on injured workers to show they need to keep receiving medical benefits. Opponents also said theres no justification for the changes because workers comp premiums have been dropping. Topics Workers' Compensation Kentucky A Pflugerville, Texas, landscape company pleaded guilty March 21 to misrepresenting its payroll so it could pay less for workers compensation coverage, according to the Texas Department of Insurance. Jammers Groundscapes entered the plea in a Travis County District Court and was ordered to pay $400,000 to Texas Mutual Insurance Co., the workers compensation carrier. The conviction resulted from a Texas Mutual investigation. The Texas Department of Insurance, Division of Workers Compensations (DWC) prosecution unit obtained the conviction. The DWC prosecution unit is embedded in the Travis County District Attorneys Office and was created during the 85th Texas Legislature. Workers compensation premiums are based on an employers payroll, job classification codes, and the employers past losses which are used to estimate future losses. Manipulating or misrepresenting one or more of these factors to get lower rates is premium fraud. From 2009 to 2015, Jammers Groundscapes defrauded Texas Mutual by concealing payroll associated with a related company that didnt carry workers compensation insurance. This misrepresentation of payroll resulted in a lower workers compensation policy premium. When dishonest companies commit premium or payroll fraud, they can put their employees coverage at risk, Tim Riley, DWCs deputy commissioner of Compliance and Investigations, said in TDIs announcement. Its also a way dishonest businesses can gain a business advantage over ethical companies that are paying the full cost of their premiums. Topics Texas Workers' Compensation Fraud A Delaware lawmaker and his wife, who serves as Wilmingtons city treasurer, are continuing their fight in a long-running legal battle stemming from a home-improvement contract. A judge was to hear arguments Monday on the citys motion to dismiss a lawsuit filed by state Rep. Charles Potter Jr. and his wife, Velda. The Potters are asking the court to issue a writ forcing city licensing officials to take action against a contractor they hired for home repairs several years ago. The Potters have lost legal battles against the contractor in Superior and Chancery court, and twice in the Delaware Supreme Court. They now claim city officials have failed to hold the contractor responsible for building code violations based on a 2014 licensing board decision, and a roof inspection last year. Copyright 2021 Associated Press. All rights reserved. This material may not be published, broadcast, rewritten or redistributed. Topics Legislation Plymouth Rock Assurance Corporation (PRAC) is entering the New York insurance market with its acquisition of 21st Century National Insurance Company (National). PRAC previously brought its insurance portfolio to Pennsylvania in August of last year. This comes after the New York State Department of Financial Services (DFS) approved an application by PRAC and Plymouth Rock Group of Companies to acquire National from certain Farmers Insurance Group affiliates. As a native New Yorker, Ive wanted to bring our company to New York for a very long time, said Hal Belodoff, president of the Plymouth Rock Group of Companies, in a company press release. National is a property and casualty insurance company domiciled in New York and licensed in 40 states. The 21st Century Companies are members of the Farmers Insurance Group of companies and use their employee agents to sell and service their products. In 2017, gross written premium was $603 million. With annual revenues of $1.3 billion, Massachusetts-based Plymouth Rock Group of Companies offers auto and home insurance in Connecticut, Massachusetts, New Hampshire, New Jersey and Pennsylvania. Following the acquisition, National is now a wholly-owned subsidiary of PRAC, with Plymouth Rock Company Incorporated as the ultimate controlling entity. PRAC will reinsure and service the remaining New York in-force business of two of Nationals former affiliates as part of the transaction. Under the terms of the acquisition agreements, PRAC is required to re-name National following a transitional period, National spokesperson Luis Sahagun told Insurance Journal in an email. PRAC is currently in the process of filing for a name change for National with DFS, said a spokesperson for Plymouth Rock. The specific terms of the transaction, including the purchase price, are confidential. As part of a previously announced strategy, Farmers Insurance is sunsetting the 21st Century Companies brand in 48 states, including New York, Sahagun added. The 21st Century Companies continue to actively offer private passenger automobile insurance in California and Hawaii, as well as acting as servicing carriers for Assigned Risk automobile insurance, he said. Farmers Insurance, through its Farmers brand and through its Bristol West and Foremost affiliates, will continue to actively market automobile insurance across New York State, according to Sahagun. The Plymouth Rock Group is in the process of submitting information to DFS for other applications to expand further into the New York auto and homeowners insurance markets through other affiliates. We intend to offer a broadly competitive product for auto insurance customers across the entire state of New York, the Plymouth Rock spokesperson said. In addition, we have applied for a license to offer home insurance. PRAC intends to sell both direct and through agents, the spokesperson stated, adding that while the company is not using this acquisition of National as part of an immediate expansion plan, it is open to expanding into other states given the right opportunity. We just launched in Pennsylvania last year and in New York this year, so I think well have our hands full for the time being, the spokesperson said. But you can never say never. If the right opportunity presents itself, we would consider it. Topics Mergers Trends New York Agribusiness Market New Markets Pennsylvania The United States and Britain on Monday accused Russia of launching cyber attacks on computer routers, firewalls and other networking equipment used by government agencies, businesses and critical infrastructure operators around the globe. Washington and London issued a joint alert saying the campaign by Russian government-backed hackers was intended to advance spying, intellectual property theft and other malicious activities and could be escalated to launch offensive attacks. It followed a series of warnings by Western governments that Moscow is behind a string of cyber attacks. The United States, Britain and other nations in February accused Russia of releasing the NotPetya virus, which in 2017 crippled parts of Ukraines infrastructure and damaged computers across the globe, costing companies billions of dollars. The Kremlin did not immediately respond to a request for comment. But Russias embassy in London issued a statement citing British accusations of cyber threats from Moscow as striking examples of a reckless, provocative and unfounded policy against Russia. Moscow has denied previous accusations that it carried out cyber attacks on the United States and other countries. U.S. intelligence agencies last year accused Russia of interfering in the 2016 election with a hacking and propaganda campaign supporting Donald Trumps campaign for president. Last month the Trump administration blamed Russia for a campaign of cyber attacks that targeted the U.S. power grid. American and British officials said that the attacks disclosed on Monday affected a wide range of organizations including internet service providers, private businesses and critical infrastructure providers. They did not identify victims or provide details on the impact of the attacks. When we see malicious cyber activity, whether it be from the Kremlin or other malicious nation-state actors, we are going to push back, said Rob Joyce, the White House cyber security coordinator. Relations between Russia and Britain were already on edge after Prime Minister Theresa May blamed Moscow for the March 4 nerve agent poisoning of former Russian spy Sergei Skripal and his daughter Yulia in the city of Salisbury. This is yet another example of Russias disregard for international norms and global order this time through a campaign of cyber espionage and aggression, which attempts to disrupt governments and destabilize business, a British government spokesman said in London. Britain and the United States said they issued the new alert to help targets protect themselves and persuade victims to share information with government investigators so they can better understand the threat. We dont have full insight into the scope of the compromise, said U.S. Department of Homeland Security cyber security official Jeanette Manfra. The alert is not related to the suspected chemical weapons attack in a town in Syria that prompted a U.S.-led military strike over the weekend targeting facilities of the Russian-backed Syrian government, Joyce said. Shortly after the announcement, the White House said Joyce would leave his post and return to the U.S. National Security Agency. U.S. and British officials warned that infected routers could be used to launch future offensive cyber operations. They could be pre-positioning for use in times of tension, said Ciaran Martin, chief executive of the British governments National Cyber Security Centre cyber defense agency, who added that millions of machines were targeted. (Reporting by Jim Finkle and Doina Chiacu; additional reporting by Estelle Shirbon in London, John Walcott and Makini Brice in Washington and Jack Stubbs and Maxim Rodionov in Moscow; writing by Will Dunham; editing by James Dalgleish) Topics USA Cyber London Uk Russia A Facebook official apologized to Indonesian members of parliament on Tuesday during a five-hour grilling at a public hearing on issues ranging from the misuse of personal data to the oversight of content by the social media giant. Facebook has been hit by revelations that data of some 87 million users were improperly accessed by political consultancy Cambridge Analytica, which worked on U.S. President Donald Trumps election campaign. Indonesians are among the worlds biggest users of Facebook and authorities in the Southeast Asian country have demanded answers from the company on how personal data of its citizens was shared with Cambridge Analytica. In a statement read out at the hearing, Facebooks head of public policy in Indonesia said that 1,096,666 people in Indonesia may have had their data shared, or 1.26 percent of the global total, after 748 people took an app-based personality quiz. I truly apologize for thisI hope our answers can satisfy you, Ruben Hattari told MPs from a parliamentary committee. At the hearing, Simon Milner, Facebooks Asia-Pacific vice president of public policy, said the company had deleted the app developed by academic Aleksandr Kogan and ordered Cambrige Analytica to delete any data it may have helped harvest. Some of the MPs also focused on allegations that Facebook users personal data was used in online campaigns to play a role in Trumps 2016 election victory. Can you convince me that what happened in the U.S. wont happen here in this year of regional elections? asked Evita Nursanty, an MP from the Indonesian Democratic Party of Stuggle (PDIP), referring to a series of upcoming local elections. Another MP, Junico BP Siahaan, also from the PDIP, said that if Facebook could not control hoax news then Indonesia should have the right to close it. Roy Suryo, an MP from the Democratic Party, said at the hearing that parliament and the government were in the process of making a new law on data privacy protection. Tell Mark Zuckerberg Indonesia will implement a new law on protection of data privacy and Facebook must abide by it, said Suryo, referring to the chief executive of Facebook. Indonesian police are investigating whether Facebook breached a government decree on privatedata protection and a law on electronic information and transactions. Breaches of the law can include criminal sanctions with a maximum penalty of up to 12 years in jail or a fine of 12 billion rupiah ($870,000). Communications Minister Rudiantara has also said he wants more information from Facebook on how data sharing affected people in the country. The minister told Reuters on Monday he had sent a second warning letter to Facebook over the issue. Facebook said in an emailed statement last week: We are strongly committed to protecting peoples information, and we intend to make all the same privacy controls and settings available everywhere. The company said it would continue to work with privacy and information commissioners, and authorities, in Indonesia. (Additional reporting by Agustinus Beo Da Costa; writing by Ed Davies; Editing by Nick Macfie) Related: A Brookings County, South Dakota, jury has awarded a girl more than $34,000 after she was attacked by a dog that had been declared vicious by county authorities twice before. The Argus Leader reports the award consists of $29,208 in compensatory damages and $5,000 in punitive damages from the dogs owner, Doyle Johnson, who is the mayor of Sinai. The girl was 12 when she was attacked in March 2015 by an English setter who bit her multiple times and left 17 wounds that put her in the hospital. The girls attorney says he thinks she deserves far more damages than what the jury awarded. Johnson says he feels the outcome is fair. He says the dog has been euthanized. Copyright 2021 Associated Press. All rights reserved. This material may not be published, broadcast, rewritten or redistributed. Topics South Dakota Facebook Inc. may have to pay a real price for claims it invaded users privacy: billions of dollars. A federal judge ruled Monday that millions of the social networks users can proceed as a group with claims that its photo-scanning technology violated an Illinois law by gathering and storing biometric data without their consent. Damages could be steep a fact that wasnt lost on the judge, who was unsympathetic to Facebooks arguments for limiting its legal exposure. The case dates back to 2015, long before Facebook became mired in controversy over revelations that millions of its users private information fell into the hands of British consulting firm Cambridge Analytica. Its rare for consumers to win class-action status in privacy cases. In Facebooks history, most such cases dont get that far. Facebook has for years encouraged users to tag people in photographs they upload in their personal posts and the social network stores the collected information. The company has used a program it calls DeepFace to match other photos of a person. Alphabet Inc.s cloud-based Google Photos service uses similar technology and Google faces a lawsuit in Chicago like the one against Facebook in San Francisco federal court. Illinois Law Both companies have insisted in court that gathering data on what you look like isnt against the law, even without your permission. But under the Illinois Biometric Information Privacy Act of 2008, the companies could be fined $1,000 to $5,000 each time a persons image is used without consent. Shawn Williams, a lawyer for the users, said its not clear yet whether the lawsuit might prompt changes in the way Facebook uses biometric data. As more people become aware of the scope of Facebooks data collection and as consequences begin to attach to that data collection, whether economic or regulatory, Facebook will have to take a long look at its privacy practices and make changes consistent with user expectations and regulatory requirements, he said. Facebook said its reviewing the ruling. We continue to believe the case has no merit and will defend ourselves vigorously, spokeswoman Genevieve Grdina said in an emailed statement. History of Privacy Claims The company seems to believe that the lawsuit should be pursued by individuals, not as a group, because damages could amount to billions of dollars, U.S. District Judge James Donato wrote in the ruling. The company argued each individual user could be aggrieved differently, and must prove that they suffered an actual injury beyond a privacy right. Nonetheless, the judge said substantial damages are not a reason to decline class certification, because he could reduce them at a later stage of the litigation. The class of users approved by Donato dates back to June 2011, when Facebook had an Illinois user base of more than 6 million people, according to lawyers for the plaintiffs. Although many individuals may not have had enough tagged photos to generate a face template in Facebooks database, in January 2011 (i.e., before Facebook implemented tag suggestions for all users) the average user was tagged in 53 photos, far more than the 10 needed to generate a face template, according to a December court filing. Privacy advocates have said the billions of images Facebook is thought to be collecting could be even more valuable to identity thieves than the names, addresses, and credit card numbers now targeted by hackers. While those types of information are mutable even Social Security numbers can be changed biometric data for retinas, fingerprints, hands, face geometry and blood samples are unique identifiers. When Facebook Chief Executive Officer Mark Zuckerberg testified in Congress last week over the Cambridge Analytica scandal, Illinois Senator Richard Durbin accused the company of trying to water down the states biometric privacy law. Im afraid Facebook has come down to the position of trying to carve out exceptions to that, the Democrat said, according to a transcript of the April 11 hearing. I hope youll fill me in on how that is consistent with protecting privacy. The Illinois residents who sued argued the 2008 law gives them a property interest in the algorithms that constitute their digital identities. The judge has agreed that gives them grounds to accuse Facebook of real harm. Facebook, which got the case moved to San Francisco from Illinois, argued the users hadnt suffered a concrete injury such as physical harm, loss of money or property; or a denial of their right to free speech or religion. Courts have struggled over what qualifies as an injury to pursue a privacy case in lawsuits accusing Facebook and Google of siphoning users personal information from emails and monitoring their web-browsing habits. Suits over selling the data to advertisers have often failed. Donato has ruled that the Illinois law is clear: Facebook has collected a wealth of data on its users, including self-reported residency and IP addresses. Facebook has acknowledged that it can identify which users who live in Illinois have face templates, he wrote. Donato previously rejected Facebooks argument that the case had to be dismissed because the attempt to enforce Illinois law runs afoul of its user agreement that requires disputes to be resolved under the laws of California, where its based. The case is In re Facebook Biometric Information Privacy Litigation, 15-cv-03747, U.S. District Court, Northern District of California (San Francisco). Copyright 2021 Bloomberg. Topics Lawsuits Illinois Glatfelter Public Practice (GPP), a division of Glatfelter Insurance Group, has expanded its Independent School Bus Contractor insurance program to eight additional states, bringing the total number of states it is available in to 22. This specialized program, which was previously available in fourteen states, is now also available in California, Idaho, Indiana, Minnesota, Missouri, Oregon, Washington and Wisconsin. According to President Mark McCrary, the addition of these states allows Glatfelter to offer the specialty program, written on A.M. Best A Rated admitted paper, to agents clients and prospects in these new states. Glatfelter Public Practice (GPP) offers insurance for educational and public entities, including proprietary property and liability insurance coverage, as well as program management, risk management, educational services and responsive claims service. Part of Glatfelter Program Managers, a specialist of niche insurance markets, GPP offers two programs designed specifically for educational institutions. Topics Education Contractors April 17 marked the fifth anniversary of the fertilizer plant explosion that claimed 15 lives in the town of West, Texas. Despite a lengthy investigation by state and federal officials, no one has been arrested and charged with setting the fire that led to the blast, the Insurance Council of Texas reports. Texas State Fire Marshals Office (SFMO) and the Alcohol, Tobacco and Firearms (ATF) determined the fire was intentionally set in the seed storage room of the West Fertilizer Plant. The fire ultimately caused the explosion that rocked the facility and the Central Texas town on April 17, 2013. Firefighters from the West Volunteer Fire Department and numerous surrounding fire departments rushed to the plant in an attempt to douse the blaze. The fire spread to another storage site containing 30 tons of ammonium nitrate. The plant exploded killing 10 fire fighters, two first responders and three civilians. More than 200 residents were injured. Nearby homes, an apartment complex, a nursing home, two schools and vehicles were destroyed. Debris from the explosion that resulted in a mushroom cloud over the small farming community was found a half mile away. Insured losses totaled $100 million. The Associated Press previously reported that the facility carried only $1 million in liability coverage from United States Fire Insurance Co. of Morristown, N.J. Fire investigators were at the explosion site for a month and continued working on the investigation conducting tests and following up leads for more than a year before announcing that the fire was incendiary, meaning it was intentionally set. Following the explosion, Adair Grain Inc., which owned the facility, was was cited for serious safety violations by OSHA for exposing workers to explosion or fire hazards and for its unsafe handling and storage of ammonium nitrate and anhydrous ammonia. The company also was hit with numerous lawsuits, some of which have been settled, including one brought by the town of West. Reward Offered A Texas Advisory Council on Arson (ATAC) announced that it would offer a $1,000 reward to anyone whose phone call leads to the arrest of the person or persons involved with starting the fire. The Texas Arson Hotline is answered seven days a week, 24-hours a day and every caller remains anonymous. Those with information are asked to call 1-800-4 FIRE 45 (1-800-434-7345). Other awards have been offered by ATF and McClennan County. Someone knows who started this fire and we need to put this horrible event behind us, said Tim Oates, ATAC chairman and Coppell Fire Marshal. One phone call to the Texas Arson Hotline could do it. The Insurance Council of Texas (ICT) provides the administrative support in keeping ATAC operational on a daily basis. ICT staff members also publish and distribute the ATAC newsletter and work closely with the SFMO in responding to calls from the Texas Arson Hotline. Source: ATAC, ICT, Associated Press Related: Topics Texas The family of a Native American man fatally shot by police who mistook a cellphone for a gun has filed a federal lawsuit against the city of Lakewood, Wash. and police involved in the 2015 shooting. The Seattle Times reported that the complaint by Daniel Covarrubias family says the Lakewood police department used the same aggressive police tactics that led to the 2013 shooting death of an unarmed African-American man and resulted in a $15.3 million civil-rights verdict. Covarrubias family had filed a $15 million tort claim against the city in January, hoping the city would settle the case before they filed suit in U.S. District Court in Tacoma. The citys attorney Stewart Estes did not respond to an email and call from The Seattle Times seeking comment. Copyright 2021 Associated Press. All rights reserved. This material may not be published, broadcast, rewritten or redistributed. Topics Lawsuits Washington Law Enforcement The tricks behind a disappearing act that magician David Copperfield performed for years in Las Vegas were revealed in court last week, the start of trial in a civil case brought by a British tourist who claims he slipped, fell and was injured after he was randomly selected from the audience to participate in the show. Attorneys for tourist Gavin Cox, Copperfield, the MGM Grand casino-resort, which hosts the show, and others detailed the route that randomly selected audience members follow during the trick in which Copperfield supposedly makes them disappear from a platform on stage and gets them to reappear in the back of the theater. Cox was injured along the route in a 2013 show. Attorney Benedict Morelli, who represents Cox and his wife, told the jury during opening statements that the illusion known as the Thirteen was an accident waiting to happen and obviously dangerous. He added that his client was never warned about a possible injury if he participated in the illusion. Quite the contrary, he and possibly all of the other participants had an expectation of safety, Morelli said. So, Mr. Cox (said) OK. I guess Im going to be OK. Why would David Copperfield, who is so famous, select me and not protect me? Cox filed the lawsuit in 2014 months after he was randomly selected to participate in the final trick of Copperfields show on Nov. 12, 2013. Attorneys described how Cox sat on a platform on stage and later followed a route that took him through hallways and an outdoor area near a door that would have led him back inside. But it was at that point when he hit the floor. Morelli argued that the audience doesnt get to see the chaos going on behind the scenes, where people are hurried. He said a confluence of events caused his client to fall and be injured running in a dark area, following an unknown route, encountering an unknown incline, and dust and debris due to construction in the area. MGM Grands attorney Jerry Popovich told the jury that Cox simply missed a step when he fell and did not slip. He explained that the site where the accident happened, about 22 feet before reaching the door to re-enter the casino, is essentially level with only a 1-degree drop. Popovich said that 10 minutes before Cox went down, Copperfield had walked through that same area as part of another illusion that did not involve audience participation. He said Copperfield would have notified staff if he had noticed any problem in the route. Mr. Cox did not slip, he tripped, Popovich said. Cox in his lawsuit argues he has spent more than $400,000 on medical care and treatment. He, his wife and sons were in the courtroom. So was Copperfield. The attorneys for Copperfield and MGM Grand sought to keep opening statements, closing arguments and other portions of the trial in which the details of the magicians illusions were discussed closed to the public and the media. They argued that those are considered trade secrets, but Coxs attorney argued people other than Copperfield, including former audience participants, know what is involved in carrying out the trick. The judge sided with the plaintiffs. Copyright 2021 Associated Press. All rights reserved. This material may not be published, broadcast, rewritten or redistributed. Topics Nevada More than 100 people were airlifted from Kauais north shore and taken to a shelter after a weekend storm. Emergency officials are advising people who want to evacuate that its unknown when theyll be able to return because of landslides blocking highway access. Heavy rains let up on Monday, which allowed emergency workers to rescue people stranded by flooding. There are no reports of major injuries. The American Red Cross says there are at least four destroyed homes in Wainiha and probably more homes damaged in Koloa, based on aerial photos. The National Weather Service recorded 28.1 inches of rainfall in Hanalei between 2 a.m. Saturday and 2 a.m. Sunday. Copyright 2021 Associated Press. All rights reserved. This material may not be published, broadcast, rewritten or redistributed. Topics Windstorm IRELAND:Gardai investigate stabbing in Cork, man rushed to hospital. IRELAND: Gardai investigating a criminal gang in Ireland with links to a cocaine dealing operation in Australia have made a number of arrests. IRELAND: Republic of Ireland footballer Darren Gibson has been told he faces jail after admitting a second drink-drive charge in less than three years. IRELAND: Country music singer Big Tom has died at the age of 81. WORLD: Update: Investigators allowed to visit alleged attack site in Syria tomorrow SPORT: Brian O'Driscoll says the IRFU had no option but to part company with Paddy Jackson and Stuart Olding ... SOME DISTRACTION CULTURE: Harry Styles review: Boyish charm, Dublin accents and old-time influences VIRAL: Videos of people dancing in cow sheds has taken the internet by storm. SHOWBIZ: People share their best memories of Irish country legend Big Tom By Ann O'Loughlin Businessman Sean Dunne has told the High Court his main residence in 2013 and beyond was a house in Connecticut, US, from which his wife and family were "hounded" by the media. When counsel for his Irish bankruptcy official put to him the house had been empty and agents for the US trustee administering his bankruptcy there had observed it had no furniture, Mr Dunne said he "didn't need furniture to live in a house". He said he has, on occasions, lived without furniture, adding he had previously stayed in tents in African townships. He has co-operated with the official in charge of his Irish bankruptcy, he told Ms Justice Caroline Costello. Mr Dunne said his wife Gayle and their family had to leave their Connecticut home in 2013 because they were being "hounded by the media" shortly after he was adjudicated a bankrupt. He believed private investigators working for his creditors had leaked the address to the media. Ulster Bank petitioned the High Court in 2013 to have Mr Dunne adjudicated bankrupt here after he had defaulted on some 164m loans. The following month, Mr Dunne filed for bankruptcy in Connecticut when he claimed to have debts of $1bn and assets of $55m. Arising out of that application, a US bankruptcy trustee was appointed by a US court. The Irish bankruptcy proceedings continued and in July 2013 the High Court here adjudicated Mr Dunne bankrupt. He was due to exit bankruptcy here in July 2016 but his bandruptcy has been continued pending the outcome of a applicaton by his bankruptcy official, Chris Lehane, to extend it over alleged non co-operation with Mr Lehane's efforts to administer the bankruptcy. The extension application opened last week and Mr Dunne began his evidence on Tuesday before Ms Justice Caroline Costello. He said he had given, through the US trustee in bankruptcy, "de facto cooperation" to Mr Lehane and denied he had not co-operated with the process. Mr Dunne said he believed in 2013 that his bankruptcy, adjudication and estate were all to be vested in the US but he was adjudicated bankrupt in Ireland. He said the US trustee and his lawyer went "behind my back" and changed the rules without telling him. Under cross-examination on sworn statements he has provided in opposition to the extension application, he rejected an assertion by Mark Sanfey SC, for Mr Lehane, he had never provided the official assignee with his address. After a transcript of his June 2016 interview with Mr Lehane was put to him, he said, following his bankruptcy adjudication in 2013, his primary place of residence was a property at Stillman Lane, Greenwich, Connecticut and he lived in America. He said he provided an address and had always turned up when required. He had looked at the Irish bankruptcy regulations and could not find any requirement to inform the official assignee of the place where he was living. He said, due to media harassment, his family left the property in August, September 2013 but he continued to spend time there. He also spent time with his son in New York as well as in Ireland and England. When counsel said it was important for the official assignee to know where a bankrupt is living as part of the bankruptcy process Mr Dunne asked if it mattered where he lived and what was the relevance to his creditors. "If I lived in Windsor Castle, does that mean I have access to the Queen's money?" he said. He said the house in Connecticut was rented out in early 2017 and recently he spends more time in Ireland and the UK compared to the US. The hearing continues. Update 6.20pm: Many students will become homeless if student accommodation rent hikes go ahead. That is the warning from Dublin City University students who have been protesting outside the Dail this afternoon. The Shanowen Square development is putting prices up by 27% for the next academic year, meaning many students will have to pay 9,000. Sending all support to #ShanowenShakedown outside Dail Eireann today. This protest is bigger than one university. This is a national issue that allows the vulnerable to be exploited. Education is becoming unfordable. We need legislation pic.twitter.com/H5p4rTpHVW Niall Behan (@BehanNiall) April 17, 2018 USI President Michael Kerrigan says enormous price hikes are happening nationwide. He said: "Up to 9,000 for a nine-month lease isn't just happening in DCU it is happening across the country and there is nothing being done about it. "This is a demonstration to further highlight the stress that students and their parents are being put under." DCU students are protesting outside the Dail after Shanowen announced 27% rent hikes for accommodation next year #ShanowenShakedown pic.twitter.com/1GJAaAHcse Stephen Murphy (@StephenMNews) April 17, 2018 Update 3.15pm: 'We are the future of the country, yet we are being cashed out of our education' - DCU students protest against accommodation hikes Students from Dublin City University have been protesting outside the Dail this afternoon against student accommodation rent hikes. Shanowen have put prices up by 27% to 9,000 for the next academic year, which many students say they cannot afford. They are calling on the Government to introduce rent caps for student accommodation to stop further increases. Podge Henry Vice President for Welfare and Equality with DCU Students' Union says students are being cashed out of their education. He said: "I know students who are working full-time jobs and trying to do a full-time degree as well, they are finding it stressful and difficult as it is paying this year's rent. "Imagine what it is going to be like next year when they won't be able to afford to. I know one student who is taking a year out so he can build up money to pay for his accommodation for his final year of college because he doesn't want the stress. "That's not right, you can't have that for students. We are supposed to be the future of the country, yet we are being cashed out of our education." Earlier: DCU students to protest 27% rent hikes at student accommodation DCU students will be protesting outside the Dail dressed as cattle today, claiming the Government see them as nothing more than cash cows. It is to highlight 27% rent hikes at the Shanowen student accommodation site near the university. Students have already staged a sleepout and a petition against the proposed increases has amassed around 18,000 signatures. They are calling on the Government to introduce legislation to protect students from unfair rent hikes. - Digital Desk By Alison O'Riordan A judge has said a large fight between two neighbouring families in Clondalkin was a disgrace and a distasteful affair. Members of the McDonagh family initiated the attack on the OReilly family when they arrived at their home armed with a sickle, two hurleys and a baton, Dublin Circuit Criminal Court heard. The incident occurred after words were exchanged between members from the two families at a local shopping centre. Martin McDonagh Snr (aged 49), his wife Ellen McDonagh (aged 45), their daughters Nora McDonagh (aged 20) and Helen McDonagh (aged 19) and daughter-in-law Shannon Sherlock (aged 20) pleaded guilty to violent disorder at Old Castle Drive, Clondalkin in Dublin, on November 19, 2016. Garda Ronan OMalley told Grainne ONeill BL, prosecuting, that there were ongoing difficulties between the two families at the time. The court heard Martin McDonagh Snr had a sickle, Ellen McDonagh and Helen McDonagh had hurleys and Shannon Sherlock had a baton when they arrived at the entrance to the O'Reilly's house on the day in question. Nora McDonagh was unarmed, the court heard. Having viewed the CCTV footage, Judge Martin Nolan said there was a large amount of attempts by the McDonaghs to hit the O'Reilly family but no serious injuries were inflicted. He noted people could have been injured and it was a terrible way to deal with the argument. He said it was for good reason that the OReilly family had since relocated to another housing estate, but both families were getting on with their lives now and there has been no difficulty since. The judge imposed two-year suspended sentences on each of the women and a four-year suspended sentence on Martin McDonagh Snr, whom he said had a remarkably modest record. The court heard that Martin McDonagh Snr has 13 previous convictions, mostly for road traffic matters, and none of the women had any previous convictions. People need to learn to control themselves, and it is not a good idea to be drinking whiskey early in the morning, Judge Nolan said. Keith Spencer BL, defending Martin McDonagh Snr, said his client employed a sickle only to threaten the OReilly family and there was no evidence that he had caused any injury with the weapon. Mr Spencer said Martin McDonagh was a law-abiding citizen when he was not drinking but had drunk whiskey that morning. He attended his parents' grave and pledged he would not drink again and he has not drunk, Mr Spencer said. Martin McDonagh Snr accepted he set a bad example to his eight children and offered an apology to the OReilly family, the court heard. Kenneth Kerins BL, defending Nora McDonagh, said she was unarmed but participated in the event as a sense of duty to her family and was remorseful about that. Mr Kerins, also defending Ms Sherlock, said she had a baton on her more for display, had got caught up in the moment and is now due to give birth this week. Solicitor Simon Fleming, for Helen McDonagh, said he was not seeking to justify his clients involvement and Riannagh Morris BL, defending Ellen McDonagh, said the mother-of-eight was not an experienced fighter and she regretted the incident. Northern Ireland's local government auditor is to hold a review after a dinner hosted by North Antrim MP Ian Paisley. It will focus on 1,500 paid by Mid and East Antrim Borough Council for a table at the event attended by Michael Gove. The Electoral Commission has also said it was aware of the matter and was considering it in line with its enforcement policy. A statement from the Northern Ireland Audit Office said: "We are aware of that particular issue and will specifically review that transaction as part of our audit procedures when we come to review the accounts." Mr Gove is a senior Conservative and the UK's Environment Minister. The DUP is propping up Theresa May's minority Government at Westminster on key votes. Antrim Council has said the money was paid to Tullyglass Hotel, Ballymena, where the dinner was held and not to the DUP. A Mid and East Antrim Borough Council spokeswoman said the council received an invitation to a North Antrim Annual Business and Community dinner hosted and facilitated by Mr Paisley, with Mr Gove as special guest. She added: "Elected members at full Council in August 2017 agreed to purchase this table and the event was attended by elected members from different political parties, senior officers and representatives from the agri-food sector across the Borough. "Council was requested to make payment to The Tullyglass Hotel and did so via electronic payment. No money was exchanged between Council and the DUP." - Press Association Cork composer Bernard Geary returns to his hometown to hear one of his pieces performed at the choral festival, writes Cathy Desmond Cork is gearing up to welcome the annual influx of choirs and dance troupes from Ireland and overseas to the biggest event on the countys cultural calendar. Some 3,500 choristers are expected to converge in a series of events in 60 venues across the city and county this week. Bernard Gearys celebration of Cork was commissioned for the opening of Cork 800 in 1985, marking the anniversary of the founding of the city. The work is based on texts drawn from the writings of Edmund Spenser, Sean O Faolain, Father Prout, and an anonymous 14th-century poet. Father Prout was the poet Francis Sylvester OMahony the composer felt that a work written in praise of Cork would hardly be complete without a reference to some lines from The Bells of Shandon. Tomas O Canainn, reporting on a New Years Eve Gala at City Hall in this paper on January 2, 1985, said: The concert featured a new composition by Bernard Geary, In Praise of a City and Corkonians gave it the biggest welcome of the evening. Sung by Mary Hegarty and two childrens choirs, O Canainn said the work alternated brass fanfares with quiet pastoral music and effective orchestration. He recommended that the work, with its stirring climactic finale, should be heard again soon. Bernard Geary chuckles when reminded of the occasion as he looks forward to hearing the second performance of the work after a gap of 33 years not exactly soon, he concurs, adding that it is always easier to secure a first performance than get a second run of new work. He is softly spoken and although he has been living in Dublin for nearly five decades, he has lost none of his Cork lilt. In the intervening years he has been busy combining a career in post-primary teaching in Dublin with performing and composing. Despite an illustrious career, he is modest and self-deprecating. Ive been very lucky to have had many commissions. I love the work and I like writing to a deadline, he says. Talking about his early experiences, it seems there was a good dollop of serendipity in finding his way into music in his late teens. Early childhood was spent in Gurranabraher where his parents ran a grocery shop. He taught himself to play piano. At 16 years of age, I could play Scenes that are Brightest with two or three fingers and a funny left hand. One day a man came into the shop and said, why dont you learn the organ down in St Marys and you could get a projectionist job in the Savoy? Well it planted a seed in me. His parents approached George Brady who was the organist in St Marys Church on Popes Quay. He took him on and there was no stopping him. He recalls they bought him a new piano and a bicycle to get him out of the house. Geary went on to UCC where he was encouraged in his early compositions by Aloys Fleischman. He recalls his professors formal manner. I was always Mr Geary even when he invited me to conduct the Cork Symphony Orchestra. I am very proud to be on the same programme as Professor. For this occasion, he was persuaded to reorchestrate the score for concert band and redo the choir parts for adult voices, something he says was straightforward with modern music technology. On revisiting the work, Geary says it is quite sentimental music. It is all about Cork and looking at it now, even though my harmonic grammar has changed and my style is more contemporary, I believe it is well written and people will like it, he says. The Opening Gala Concert at City Hall tomorrow features Aloys Fleischmanns Clares Dragoons (Owen Gilhooly, tenor), and Bernard Gearys In Praise of a City (Mairead Buicke, soprano) Key changes After more than five years, Cork Choral Festival manager Sinead Dunphy moves on to join the team at the citys jazz festival. She was pitched an awkward curveball in her final season with Ed Sheerans gigs at Pairc Ui Chaoimh scheduled during the festivals traditional bank-holiday slot. Cork just isnt big enough to simultaneously hold both events, so the Choral Festival moved to this week. Dunphy says the festival were surprised when the Sheeran gigs were announced last summer. With it came the inevitable problems of losing numerous international groups despite flights and accommodation already booked but also having to reprogramme our Gala Concert programme. 2019 and 2020 are already under way for us and we would hope that the GAA and Pairc Ui Chaoimh will respect the longevity and cultural importance of the Cork International Choral Festival and work with us for all organisations to be able to do their best for the Cork region by planning events that work side by side rather than against each other. Cork International Choral festival highlights Thursday, 8pm A gala concert in Cork City Hall with internationally renowned Swedish group Solala and Ardu Vocal Ensemble. Ardu used to compete here until they turned professional. Friday, 10.30pm The Tenebrae Consort will perform in the Cathedral of St Mary and St Anne, following Tenebraes recent Grammy nomination. Saturday, 12.15pm: The Big Sing will take place in Cork City Hall and everyone is invited to come along and learn how to sing together as part of a choir created by the audience. Saturday, 1.30pm A concert of contemporary choral music in St Fin Barres Cathedral with Chamber Choir Ireland includes the Sean ORiada Prize winning composition by Donal Sarsefield Saturday, 3pm and 8pm Fleishmann International Gala afternoon and evening concerts, which features hundreds of international voices in Cork City Hall. Sunday, 8pm Closing Gala Concert with the international choirs in Cork City Hall. Lots of fringe events include concerts in The Freemasons Hall and Triskel Arts Centre; Afternoons in the Atrium of the Clayton Hotel. Andrea Mara and Pat Fitzpatrick debate cursing in front of children. Cursing is therapeutic, satisfying, pleasing, even necessary at times, just not in front of the kids, writes Andrea Mara A few years ago, sitting down after dinner, my then five-year-old counted the number of people around the table (five) then counted the number of muffins on the plate in the centre of the table (four). Ah, fuck, she said under her breath, shaking her head miserably. My husband and I nearly fell off our chairs. Its not a word either of us had ever heard the kids say, and its not one we use in front of them. Ever. Hearing the unexpected expletive come out of her mouth, it was impossible to keep a straight face. I buried my head in my hands and faked a coughing fit to cover up, wondering if I should say something to her. Eventually, on the assumption that drawing attention to it would make swearing all the more appealing, I decided to say nothing. Though Im very fond of a good expletive, I still dont curse in front of the kids. To me, cursing is therapeutic, satisfying, pleasing, even necessary at times. Its something I do under my breath on a bad day and it makes me feel better. Its something I do out loud (but not too loud the kids are asleep upstairs) when Im ranting to my husband about something I saw on Twitter. Its something I do when I hurt myself and, in fact, research from Keele University shows that cursing can help reduce pain; though I suspect muttering quietly so the kids cant hear takes some of the good out of it. Its not just solo-swearing that appeals a well-placed fuck off can show just the right amount of surprise/awe/shock when a friend is regaling me with a story, and swearing can even be a form of bonding you know youve gelled with the mothers from the school when you can go for a drinks and curse at will, school-gate and daytime decorum left well and truly behind. However, it has never been something I do loosely; swear words are for emphasis and meaning, and they lose that emphasis and meaning when theyre overused. To me, cursing should have purpose, not pepper every conversation to the point that the curser doesnt even realise its happening any more. Thats what I want for my children: To grow into adults who can curse occasionally and purposefully, as needed. They dont need to hear me do it to get there, theyll find their own way. If I swear in front of them, I fear (perhaps unjustly, but Im not willing to risk it) that theyll swear too quickly and easily, taking all the good out of it. Maybe theyve already started, quietly out of earshot. I still remember my first foray into bad language when I was about eight or nine. I was sitting with my friend Sarah in my bedroom in Carrigaline, each of us daring the other to say it, then in unison we shouted Shit! (The resulting euphoria was short-lived as, in our excitement, the volume went up, and my mother caught us.) Of course, wanting my children to grow up with a proper appreciation of occasional swearing isnt the only reason I dont curse in front of them, theres a societal expectation that kids dont curse and, rightly or wrongly, Im not about to put my head above the parapet and send my kids into school talking about their fucking homework and their bastard lunches. (Cheese again? For fucks sake!) Also, I dont want my kids to curse in front of other parents. A word that sounds funny from the mouth of a five-year-old doesnt have the same effect when the child is eight or 10 and sitting at someone elses dinner-table. Right now, they know that cursing is exceptional, not commonplace. On the very rare occasion they hear a swear-word, its followed by pretend you didnt hear that. Of course, the underlying message is this: Its OK to curse if youre a grown-up and youve just stood on Lego again, but not if youre five and worried about the number of muffins. Not only do we curse in front of the kids, we curse at them, and regularly, just to make sure they know we are serious, says Pat Fitzpatrick Heres my question for people who dont curse in front of their kids. Why would you decide to give up one of lifes great pleasures, just when you need it the most? Heres the thing about the word fuck. Its unambiguous. It means, this is serious. It means if you do that again, Im going to go ballistic. As Billy Connolly pointed out, no one ever wrote fuck off, he hinted. Thats why I curse at my kids. Not only do we curse in front of the kids in our house, we curse AT THEM, regularly, to make sure we make ourselves clear. Ours kids are five and three. I shout ah for fucks sake at least once a day, usually around 6.30pm, when I turn my back for two minutes and they thrash the front room. Everyones a winner with ah for fucks sake. The kids get the message that room-thrashing is off the menu for another day; I get to leave off some steam, which is vital now that slapping is a no-no. Ive tried sounds like curses but they dont work at all. Saying feck instead of fuck is like pointing a water pistol at a battleship. Youre not fooling anyone, particularly the kids, who just find it funny. It reminds me of my grandmother, who used to say Jaysu Chrust when she was cross, because she was afraid of committing a venial sin. (Or was that upgraded to a mortal? It always seemed to depend on who you asked.) Anyway, if youre not going to bother with the full fuck, I wouldnt bother at all. Another important reason here is transparency. Irish people curse all the time and were really good at it. Trying to hide this from your kids is a terrible way to prepare them for adult life. Were wondering if we should tell them about oral sex at the age of 10, while still saying feck if they do something wrong. Kids pick up on these things, and guess what, this makes them curse even more. I grew up in 1970s Ireland, when cursing in front of children was as bad as joining the RUC. This didnt stop us kids from cursing in front of ourselves. One of my earliest memories is standing in front of a group of boys in Kinsale saying fuck, fuck, fuck a hundred times, until somebody wet their pants. It might have been me, come to think of it. I dont know why we think cursing is a bad thing. (Fucking is often just a word Irish people use in place of very.) There is definitely a class element in all this, a notion that middle-class people dont curse. Anyone who thinks this has obviously never been to rugby match. But mainly, I blame the puritanical Americans. Your average Yank reckons that saying dammit will put her on a highway to hell. (Mind you, theyre very comfortable talking about their fannies in public, but thats another days work.) We seem to have taken on this American mindset. Its probably got something to do with reading all their parenting books and watching too much Dr Phil. Whatever it is, its totally unsuitable for life in Ireland. As I said earlier, Irish people are incredibly good at cursing. Wed be the best in the world if it wasnt for the fucking Scots. There is an honesty in our cursing that allows people to see what were really thinking. The upshot is we think non-cursers have something to hide, that they cant be trusted. In short, people who cant curse properly are at a disadvantage in Irish life. Why would you want to impose that on your kids? HAVE YOUR SAY An Irish Examiner investigation published last month revealed that three grave plots in St Finbarrs cemetery in Cork City contain the remains of at least 21 children some of which were buried as late as 1990. Conall O Fatharta argues that the failure by state agents to investigate the deaths raises wider questions about the terms of reference of the Mother and Baby Homes Commission WHEN the Mother and Baby Homes Commission was set up in 2013, the limitations of its terms of reference were well flagged but quickly dismissed. An Irish Examiner investigation last month revealed infant burials as late as 1990 in unmarked graves in a Cork City cemetery and has laid these limitations bare. As a result, the Department of Children and Youth Affairs is unable to answer a very straightforward question in relation to these burials namely: Will all of the burials discovered in the three plots be investigated? On the face of it, it seems the obvious answer is yes. All of these children are representative of the cohort of infant deaths that the commission is charged with investigating. They were all born to unmarried mothers, were destined for adoption, died, and were buried in unmarked graves. All but one of the deaths are in plots owned by a formerly State-accredited adoption agency St Annes Adoption Society, which closed in 2003 and by the St Patricks Orphanage, which operated as a nursery for St Annes Adoption Society. Neither institution is listed as institutions under the commissions remit. However, of the 21 infant deaths uncovered during the Irish Examiner investigation, just five of those children were linked to an institution which falls under the remit of the commission: Bessborough Mother and Baby Home. While all of the deaths are indicative of the same issue, involve the same cohort of women and their children, the same lived experience, only the five that are linked to a mother and baby home which is under investigation can be examined. The Irish Examiner raised this point with the department and asked if it would seek to extend the commissions terms of reference to include St Annes Adoption Society. In response, the department simply restated the commissions terms of reference, pointing out that it is required to investigate the relationships between mother and baby homes and other key institutions and organisations these include childrens homes; orphanages; and adoption societies. It stated that it was, therefore, not accurate to suggest that St Annes Adoption Society was outside the terms of reference. However, in the next breath it stated that the deaths can be examined in so far as they relate to the children who were resident for a time in the named institutions. As a result, the department said it had no plans to further extend the terms of reference of the commission. Of course, this is the very point that was put to the department in the first place. Outside of the five burials linked to Bessborough, none of the other children in these plots were resident in a named institution. Yet they are part of the very same system and the very same cohort of people that the commission is investigating. However, according to the terms of reference as stated by the department, they are excluded as they do not relate to a listed mother and baby home. The Irish Examiner then put a direct follow-up question to the Department of Children: Will the commission investigate all of the burials in the St Annes Adoption Society and St Patricks Orphanage society plots? It responded by stating it was not in a position to address the question raised as it does not hold the records of the specific adoption society or burial plot. The Irish Examiner then offered to provide the information confirming the accuracy of its investigation and confirmed via Cork City Council, Tusla, and through accessing birth and death certificates in the General Registration Office. The department replied within eight minutes advising to contact the commission directly. The same question had already been put to the commission. A response was issued eight days later: The commission has advertised for people to come forward to provide any information about burials from Bessboro. We are following all possible leads. We do not announce our intentions in advance in respect of any aspect of the investigation. Bessborough In preparation for the investigation, the Irish Examiner sought to confirm a number of details pertaining to the deaths with Tusla which holds the records for St Annes Adoption Society. After examining the relevant records, it responded to these queries the following month. However, the Tusla press office also advised that, in future, it would be most appropriate for further queries of this nature to be submitted via the FoI process which is more suitable for queries as extensive as this. However, when the Irish Examiner sought the relevant material under FoI following publication, Tusla refused the requests, stating that the material predates the commencement of the FoI Act, known as the effective date. This reasoning had been used to refuse a previous request by this newspaper and failed on appeal to the Office of the Information Commissioner. It had never previously been used by Tusla in relation to requests by this reporter for information on mother and baby homes. All of this serves to highlight the wider problem with the commission and its terms of reference and goes right to the very heart of the Governments deliberate or wilful ignorance of the issue. This is a scandal that cannot be limited to examining simply mother and baby homes and issues in so far as they relate to mother and baby homes. You cannot limit the experience of unmarried mothers and their children simply to those women who went through the mother and baby homes system. The issue is not one of individual institutions but rather one of how unmarried women and children were treated in a sprawling network of interlinking institutions, which included registered adoption agencies, private agencies, industrial schools, maternity hospitals, and in many cases private citizens. Under the current commission, these other institutions are only examined in terms of specific links to mother and baby homes. That ignores a whole swathe of people and severely limits the inquirys capability to investigate the real elephant in the room that of illegal adoption. Take the case of Tressa Reeves, for example. The Irish Examiner first wrote about Tressa in 2010. She was an English woman born to Irish parents. In 1960, at the age of 20, she became pregnant. Unmarried at the time, she was sent to Ireland to stay in a private nursing home in Dublin along with other young women in the same predicament. She gave birth to her son in 1961 and baptised him alone in her room. She called her son Andre because she felt the name would be unusual enough that she would be able to find him again. Just hours after giving birth, he was placed in the care of a religious-run adoption agency, St Patricks Guild in Dublin. In its offices, she signed consent forms which, she presumed, would allow for her son to be legally adopted. However, in 1997, more than 30 years later, she discovered the agency had allowed for her son to be illegally adopted. In short, a couple seeking a child was given the baby boy by the agency to register as if he was born to them. No formal adoption order was ever made. It took another four years for St Patricks Guild to inform Tressa that Andres birth was falsely and illegally registered through the nursing home where she gave birth. This had the effect of removing all legal evidence that Tressa ever had a child and was done without her knowledge or consent. Her son would have no idea that he was even adopted. Even though the Adoption Act of 1952 was introduced to ensure such activity did not occur, St Patricks Guild admitted to Tressa that it allowed other children to be placed in the same way, including another boy to the same family that took Andre. Despite this, St Patricks Guild remained a fully accredited adoption agency through the Adoption Authority of Ireland until it closed in 2014. Tressas experience mirrors that of thousands of other women, many of whom went through Irelands mother and baby homes. However, because she was not in one of these institutions, her cases and others like hers will not be examined by the commission. The illegal adoption of her son will also not be examined. Both will have to wait for their apology. Adoption and the scale of illegal adoption is one of the key areas being examined by the commission, but only adoptions linked to the 15 listed mother and baby homes under the terms of reference for the inquiry. Remarkably, St Patricks Guild, which has been making headlines in this regard for decades, is not a listed institution under the terms of reference. Campaigners have repeatedly called for the agency to be included in the inquiry, but these calls fell on deaf ears in Government. This was all the more remarkable a decision when the Irish Examiner revealed in April 2015, just two months after the commission was set up, that the Department of Children was informed by the Adoption Authority of Ireland in 2013 that St Patricks Guild had knowledge of several hundred illegal birth registrations. The revelation was contained in a note of a meeting between the Adoption Authority and representatives with the department and the General Register Office. St Patricks Guild is aware of several hundred illegal registrations but are waiting for people to contact them; they are not seeking the people involved, read the note. Must consider how revelations of this sort would affect a family unit. Given that the department was to set up an inquiry tasked with examining these very arrangements two years later, it seems extraordinary that it would exclude St Patricks Guild. The Government has repeatedly resisted calls by adoption campaigners for an audit of all adoption files held in the State so that the full scale of illegal adoptions and birth registrations can be uncovered. It has said an audit of adoption records would yield little useful information, as there would be little, if any, supporting information in relation to these arrangements on the files. However, a note of a meeting between two nuns from St Patricks Guild and representatives of Tusla, also obtained by the Irish Examiner, revealed that with regard to records on illegal birth registrations that the agency held, full details are available on the majority of cases. And year after year, this newspaper has revealed more and more aspects of this scandal coming directly from these files which have little useful information in them. So whether it is infant deaths or illegal adoption, the mother and baby homes inquiry will only scratch the surface of a scandal. Politicians of a certain age fear the ghosts of tribunals past, writes Michael Clifford There was a time when the mere appearance of a politician before a long-running inquiry into corruption at Dublin Castle was dreaded by the denizens of Leinster House. Just being photographed with a tight smile either entering or leaving the inquiry carried with it a stain of guilt by association. Best to stay a mile away. Politicians, in general, have little to fear from the Disclosures Tribunal, but one senses that old fears, however groundless, are resurrected as the cameras in the castle yard hove into view. Yesterday, three high- profile political figures gave evidence. Micheal Martin was there to answer questions about his walk-on role in the Maurice McCabe story. In 2014, following a meeting between the two men, the complaints of Garda malpractice that Sgt McCabe had been trying to highlight were finally addressed. The ultimate outcome was the OHiggins commission, which in 2016 largely upheld the complaints. Of more interest to the tribunal was a meeting the Fianna Fail leader had with one of his TDs, John McGuinness, in February 2014. The TD thanked his leader for raising Sgt McCabes malpractice claims in the Dail as Mr McGuinness was, by that stage, of the belief that the Cavan-based sergeant was somebody of substance. Mr Martin confirmed that on that occasion, Mr McGuinness had told him of the meeting he had had the previous evening with the then Garda commissioner in a carpark, where Martin Callinan told him Sgt McCabe was a child abuser. This was entirely false, and the tribunal is examining whether such allegations were generated in an attempt to smear Sgt McCabe. Micheal Martin: Questioned over meeting with TD John McGuinness. The meeting between Mr Martin and Mr McGuinness provides the latter with a near-contemporaneous account of the conversation with Mr Callinan, the substance of which the former commissioner denies. In response to questioning, Mr Martin said he did not tell anybody else what Mr McGuinness had revealed. When a person is accused of child abuse and it gets into the public domain, its very hard to put it back, he said. The second witness was former Labour Party leader and minister, Pat Rabbitte. His time in the witness box was not as comfortable. He was asked about a statement he made on RTEs Prime Time about something that had been said to him by a retired garda about Sgt McCabe after a radio programme in 2014. What emerged at the tribunal was that the retired garda he had referenced was his driver when he served in cabinet. Mr Rabbitte admitted he had been reluctant to drag into the tribunal the driver, John Kennedy, with whom he had a close working relationship. But once the tribunal asked him to identify his source, he complied. Mr Rabbitte said the driver warned him about Sgt McCabe after he had praised the Garda sergeant on the radio. He [Mr Kennedy] wanted to warn me in my own best interests about wading into a controversy when rumours on the grapevine suggested he [McCabe] might not be a man of the character I said he was, Mr Rabbitte testified. The driver said Sgt McCabe couldnt be trusted and that his own colleagues believed that he couldnt be trusted with children. Mr Rabbitte also said that further verification could be sought from his private secretary at the time, whom he told about the remarks. Pat Rabbitte: His time in the witness box was not as comfortable. Mr Kennedy denies saying any such thing. In the afternoon he gave evidence that he had never said this horrible thing I was alleged to have said about Sgt McCabe which has upset my family deeply. There is an obvious chasm between the two mens recollection. Mr Kennedy is put out that Mr Rabbitte would say what he had said. At the outset of his evidence, the former driver described that he and the former minister got on very well, but he could be grumpy. He didnt talk much in the mornings. Mr Justice Peter Charleton made a point of informing Mr Kennedy that he accepts that if the exchange took place, it was not in the nature of malicious gossip but a confidential discussion. The third political figure to give evidence was Housing Minister Eoghan Murphy. He was in and out in 15 minutes, having quickly raked over his time in the public accounts committee in 2014 where Sgt McCabes complaints of penalty points abuses were heard. Eoghan Murphy: In and out in 15 minutes, questioned about time on PAC in 2014. The last witness for the day was the former secretary general of the Department of Justice, Brian Purcell. He told the tribunal he had no knowledge of a smear campaign against Sgt McCabe. He certainly did have a close working relationship with the commissioner of the day, Mr Callinan. The pair exchanged texts before and after Mr Callinans appearance at the PAC. Well done exceptional performance under fire, the sec gen wrote to the commissioner minutes after the PAC meeting concluded. There were also texts a few weeks later when a protest was held outside Mullingar Garda Station in support of Sgt McCabe. The texts mention a few well-known figures who were present. You can judge a man by his friends, wrote Mr Purcell. Some shower Brian, replied Mr Callinan. The closeness of the relationship between the respective office holders is a matter that will surely come under the microscope in the current attempts to reform how An Garda Siochana operates. Martin Cullinane was in his girlfriends apartment in Passage West when he realised that the two boys, understood to be brothers aged around six and seven, had got into difficulty. My girlfriends apartment is on the first floor so her balcony overlooks the water, Mr Cullinane told Neil Prendeville on Red FM. We heard a bit of commotion and when I looked through the window I saw two little boys in the water. There didnt seem to be anybody else around, there were another two boys on the pier screaming. So I ran downstairs and dived in. The first guy was only about five metres out and he was actually preventing me getting to the second fella so I had to bring him back first. Mr Cullinane said a man who arrived on the pier helped pull the first boy out of the water. Then I went back over the other guy, he said. He was further out but he was lifeless and there was all kind of foam coming out of his mouth. He got back to the pier where the man pulled both of them out of the water. At this stage, Mr Cullinane said the boy was having difficulty breathing. He said he cannot remember if the water was cold. Running down the stairs and out the apartments, by the time I got to the water I was so pumped with adrenaline that you dont feel much of anything, he said. That night I went back upstairs, had a shower, and opened a beer. Another caller to the show, Brian, said he arrived on the pier and put one of the boys in the recovery position, where he got sick, before the emergency services arrived. He paid tribute to Mr Cullinane. If he wasnt in the water to help them, that child wouldnt be with us today, said Brian. Mr Cullinane said he called Cork University Hospital to check on the boys progress, and was told they were sitting up and eating tea and toast. Local councillor Marcia DAlton said she will raise the issue of quayside railings in Passage West at the next municipal district meeting. It has emerged that the number of sex crimes recorded by gardai annually between 2003 and 2016 was overstated in 12 out of the 14 years examined. In 2003, the figure reported was 26% higher than the reality. That does not necessarily mean there were fewer crimes committed, however. Rape crisis workers say it more likely means an inflated impression has been given of the number of sexual offences that victims actually report. The under-reporting of sexual offences has been a long-running concern, with those working in the field estimating that only one in 10 rapes are reported to gardai. The latest discrepancies follow the discovery of serious under-recording of homicides and failures to properly capture incidents of domestic violence. Orla OConnor, director of the National Womens Council of Ireland (NWCI), said problems with the collection and analysis of data around domestic and sexual violence amounted to a crisis. Our criminal justice system is failing to support women, and failing to hold perpetrators to account, because we do not collect or analyse data in an effective manner, she said. We urgently need our state services An Garda Siochana, Tusla, the HSE, the courts services, and the CSO to come together to record data accurately, and importantly to share the data and subsequent analysis. Our current system is archaic and not fit for purpose. The discrepancies were discovered by the Central Statistics Office which has recently completed a review of all crime statistics from 2003 and 2016. Crime and justice statistician Sam Scriven stressed that the CSO had not reviewed individual cases and reclassified them but had corrected them where there was duplication or where changes should have been made as an investigation progressed. Over time, as an investigation goes on, new evidence may come to light that affects how a crime or incident may be classified so there are valid reasons why datasets vary, he said. Mr Scriven pointed out that the discrepancies were much smaller in more recent years. However, he said there were ongoing concerns over the quality of data captured by gardai and this was the reason the latest figures for 2017 were published last month with the warning that they were released under reservation. The Garda press office said: The publication of the crime statistics, how they are compiled and the designation of such statistics is a matter for the CSO. We are continuing to work to ensure the CSO can remove the under reservation designation from the crime statistics so that all stakeholders including An Garda Siochana has a comprehensive view of crimes levels across all categories. An Garda Siochana has a dedicated national section with highly trained professionals dedicated to the investigation of sexual crime. We have begun introducing such bureaus at a divisional level which will further enhance the investigation of sexual crime at a local level. However, Ms OConnor said further improvements in data collection were needed so that relationships between perpetrators and victims and gender details were recorded. Fianna Fail councillor Ken OFlynn broke ranks with his party last night and tabled a motion calling for the traffic initiative to be suspended in the immediate interests of jobs, confidence, and the national image of Cork. The motion, which will be discussed at a full council meeting next Monday, emerged after a lengthy meeting of the councils roads committee and ahead of a traders meeting on the issue tomorrow night. The Fianna Fail leader on the council, Terry Shannon, said the motion does not represent the view of his partys members, who had agreed to wait until a full progress report is presented by officials to next Mondays full council meeting. He said officials were asked last night to consider a park and ride bus stop on the citys main street to help offset the impact of the car ban, to consider a city centre shuttle bus service to boost footfall, and to extend the package of parking incentives. Officials are also due to report back on the suggestions next Monday. Earlier, several members of the councils Fianna Fail group went on a walk-about in the city and met traders to discuss the issue. Mr Shannon said it is clear that traders need to be supported. I accept the concerns of traders. We have to listen to them and identify how do we mitigate the problems, he said. Im glad city management have introduced some of the parking initiatives that we, as councillors, have been calling for for some time. They appear to be working, but we need to be flexible, and consider extending them. The issue of a shuttle bus, and bringing the park and ride bus into St Patricks St were suggested last night. We must remain committed to traders, especially the family-owned, Cork-owned businesses. However, three weeks into the 3pm-6.30pm car ban, which is designed to improve bus journey times, controversy is still raging. The Cork Business Association (CBA) wants the ban scrapped and has invited traders to attend a meeting in the city centre tomorrow night to discuss the issue. City council chief executive Ann Doherty has asked for the car ban to be given three months to bed in and has introduced a parking incentives package to support traders. Cork Chamber also said it needs more time before its impact can be fully assessed. The CBA said traders can not afford to wait three months, and has warned that jobs are now at risk. The Green Party in Cork says that, despite the controversy, it still believes the afternoon car ban is the right thing to do. The partys representative in Cork North Central, Oliver Moran, said several small fixes could help, including fixing real-time bus information signs, extending the bike share scheme to the Black Ash park and ride, and the installation of more floral displays in the city. Several big picture suggestions also emerged following a public meeting it organised last week, including: A weekend-only car ban; Hiking parking charges in the suburbs to address the current bias towards suburban shopping centres; A waterbus from Horgans Quay to the Lower Harbour and shuttle bus service from the train station to St Patricks St. The meeting also called for a retail strategy for the city centre, a grant scheme for conversion of over-shop floors to residential spaces, the elimination of charges for businesses with outdoor seating in compliance with planning, and a new bus ticketing system to allow multi-trip connection rides. Its July 2016 Rebuilding Ireland housing strategy set a target of having beds for an extra 7,000 students in purpose-built student accommodation (PBSA) by the end of 2019. The target is almost identical to the number of bed spaces in PBSA schemes where work was already underway or planning permission had been granted by last summer. According to a new progress report on the National Student Accommodation Strategy, which was published by the Department of Education last July, 5,260 bed spaces are already completed or are due for completion by the end of this year. Up to the end of March, it says, 2,687 PBSA spaces had been completed, and another 5,482 are under construction. Planning permissions exist for another 8,636 bed spaces and applications are in place for nearly 1,000 more. Most construction is taking place in Dublin, where around 12,500 of the 33,000 bed spaces in existing PBSA developments last summer were located. That is expected to reach 18,000 by the end of 2019. In Cork, around 3,000 additional bed spaces could be added to existing stock in purpose-built schemes, if large projects currently the subject of planning applications come to fruition in addition to those already under construction or which have secured planning permission. A development due to be ready by September will provide 190 bed spaces at Western Rd near University College Cork. Construction began in November at the former Beamish & Crawford site on a 413-space city centre project. BAM Property Ltd was asked last week for revised drawings in relation to its plans to add 42 more beds in an extra floor. While the majority of PBSA spaces are built by private developers, Education Minister Richard Bruton said his Department will work with colleagues in the Department of Housing, Union of Students in Ireland, third-level colleges and industry to ensure that availability of accommodation is not seen as a barrier to accessing education. He said: The growth of the student accommodation sector not only delivers benefits to higher education institutions in attracting and retaining students but also plays an important part in addressing the national accommodation shortage. Despite the increasing availability of PBSA bed spaces, the extra provision is not expected to keep pace with growing demand from rising numbers of Irish and international students attending third-level colleges here. The strategy published by Mr Bruton last summer projected the excess of demand over available places in purpose-built developments would grow by more than 2,000 by 2019 to 25,750, although this is expected to drop back to 21,000 by 2024. Since the Dail went into recess, there has been a reluctance by politicians to comment on the matter, but many have signalled they are ready to raise it under the cover of privilege this week. Taoiseach Leo Varadkar is set to come under intense pressure to examine the INM scandal as Fianna Fails Micheal Martin and Sinn Feins Mary Lou McDonald are expected to grill him over the breach. Mr Martin said he is deeply concerned about what is emerging in relation to the INM data breach and that he wants specific answers from Mr Varadkar on what is happening. Mr Varadkar and Communications Minister Denis Naughten have said the alleged data breach scandal at INM is very concerning. The Taoiseach said: I do have concerns. Of course, I do. Im concerned anytime somebodys personal emails or electronic information is accessed by anyone. For our democracy to function, we need to have an independent press and we need to have a diversity of press ownership as well and Im a great believer in that because democracy cant function without a strong and independent media. Ms McDonald said she will also raise the INM data breach issue in the Dail, adding that the matter should be of serious concern to the public. Meanwhile, two central figures of Facebook in Ireland are going before a Dail committee meeting today to answer questions on controversies surrounding the multibillion-dollar company. Joel Kaplan, the vice president of public policy at Facebook, and Niamh Sweeney, the head of public policy for Facebook in Ireland, will be quizzed by the TDs and senators on the joint committee of communications, climate action and environment. Facebook has said up to 45,000 of its users in Ireland could have had some of their information improperly shared with Cambridge Analytica. It is likely that Mr Kaplan and Ms Sweeney will be asked questions about how confidential users data was treated by the social media site. As well as questions on data protection, the committee is also likely to ask how much data has already been taken from Irish users without their knowledge or permission and who has that data now. Fianna Fail TD James Lawless, who sits on the committee, predicted that the Facebook bosses will also be asked about transparency in political advertising. It is illegal to produce any election literature without clearly marking its origin and publisher. However, Facebook ads are often very difficult to source. Facebook is being watched closely in Ireland. Helen Dixon, the data protection commissioner, will also be attending the committee meeting today. Two weeks ago, she said that her office is actively supervising Facebook in cleaning up its act and ensuring users data is protected. It was unveiled yesterday to mark the 50th anniversary of the opening of what was then Irelands tallest building, at 64.3 metres, a record it held until 2008. More than 500 people attended the event, including a number of retired staff who reminisced on a specially commissioned video about moving into the building. Opening the exhibition, the Mayor of County Cork, Declan Hurley, said that County Hall was built to serve the people of Cork, but it also became a building which was now a cherished part of the environment of Cork. The exhibition, in the foyer area, tells the story of the building designed by then-county architect Patrick McSweeney. Mr Hurley and council chief executive Tim Lucey also unveiled a commemorative plaque to mark the occasion. Mr Lucey spoke of the changes which had occurred over the 50 years within the tower, adding that the principle of public service had remained the same. Kathleen Desmond and Brenda OConnor at the 50th anniversary celebrations of the opening of the County Hall, on the Carrigrohane road yesterday. Picture: Eddie OHare Cork County Hall was built to provide a single destination for service provision, he said. We continue to provide services in the way that suits the people we are here to serve. We are now online and able to transact with the people of Cork 24 hours a day, seven days a week. We are all working together to add value and provide a high quality of life while ensuring the countys sustainable future growth. It was said 50 years ago that this County Hall belonged to the people of Cork. It continues to belong to the people of Cork and will continue to be a building which delivers for the people of Cork well into the future. Mr Lucey said he first arrived for work in the building in 1982, little imagining at that stage his progression to the councils top job. Angela Collins who climbed down the county hall at the 50th anniversary celebrations of the opening of the County Hall, on the Carrigrohane road yesterday. Picture: Eddie Mr Hurley, meanwhile, noted how Patrick MacSweeney had said at the official opening that the success of those at County Hall would be judged by present and future generations. There was immense pride in Cork County Hall in 1968. That pride remains and if anything has increased. I am confident that future generations will continue to take pride in this building, which is much more than a building. It represents the people of Cork and I, for one, take great pride in that. Irelands Steeplejack Angela Collins OMahony. reaches the top of the County Hall.June 16, 1985. winner of the Great Race Lee Fields June 16th 1985 Prior to 1968, council staff were spread throughout the county and council meetings took place in the Courthouse on Washington St. The building took three years to construct at a cost of 500,000. When completed, County Hall was a high-rise solution, designed as a single, elegantly proportioned, vertical block with a textured surface of precast concrete tracery which eliminated the need for scaffolding during construction. Throughout the years the original distinctive concrete facade became severely eroded. In 2010, it was replaced as County Hall was given a multi-million euro makeover which included adding a 17th floor for the Vertigo restaurant. This increased the buildings height to 67 metres. The allegations touch on three areas: 1) It is alleged former INM chief executive Robert Pitt was put under pressure by ex-chairman Leslie Buckley to buy the national broadcaster Newstalk at an inflated price. Newstalk is a private company owned by the most significant shareholder in INM, businessman Denis OBrien. Mr Buckley has long been a lieutenant of Mr OBrien and was his nominee on the INM board. Following an expensive tussle with the media firms previous owner Tony OReilly, Mr OBrien wrestled and secured a significant stake of just under 30% in INM. The controversial acquisition of Newstalk didnt proceed, but as the row flared inside INM in late 2016, Mr Pitt used a whistleblowing law to approach the States governance enforcer, the Office of the Director of Corporate Enforcement. Mr Pitts protective disclosure led to a year-long preliminary investigation by the ODCE and formed the basis of its application to the High Court by ODCE director Ian Drennan. The ODCE wants the court to appoint inspectors who can investigate the matters thoroughly. Apart from the furore over the proposed Newstalk acquisition, there are two other allegations that touch on potentially serious matters concerning Mr OBrien and INM, which, as a listed firm, has public shareholders around the world. 2) In late 2014, a copy of emails and data of INM computers going back many years was provided, with the alleged approval of Mr Buckley, to a surveillance firm called Trusted Data Solutions and shared with a number of other firms and parties. It is alleged the bill for any work involving the search of the information on the computers was subsequently paid for by an Isle of Man-based company, Blaydon, which is allegedly linked to Mr OBrien. The emails of 19 people with links to INM, including former and existing employees and journalists, as well as lawyers who worked for the Moriarty Tribunal, were signalled out under the alleged data hack. Some of the 19 people whose information was allegedly breached have complained they were never informed about the matter. In early April, the States data watchdog, the Data Protection Commissioner, said it was investigating the allegations of a data breach. 3) The third area of the ODCEs initial investigation involves INM and Mr OBrien and their sale of shares in Australian media firm APN three years ago. Mr Pitt questioned an invoice from Island Capital for fees related to work the advisory firm said it had done for INM in the sale of INMs stake in APN. Island Capital was owned by Mr OBrien. APN was one of the international ventures pursued by Tony OReilly when he controlled INM. Such ventures came unstuck when the global crisis struck in 2007, but by 2015 both INM and the now new INM significant shareholder, Mr OBrien, thought it opportune to sell down their stakes in APN. For INM, the sale of its 18% realised over 121m and, in short shrift, the media firm had shifted from indebted crisis to clear all its debts and went on to start building up large cash reserves. In a separate transaction and at the same time in March 2015, Mr OBrien sold his 12% in APN, a stake he had built in previous years through his private company Baycliffe. The dispute over any payment for the Island Capital invoice raged for several months at the media firm with different views taken in the dispute. Main players Denis OBrien Denis OBrien Mr OBrien turns 60 on Thursday. He acquired a significant part of his wealth by winning the States mobile phone licenses in the mid-1990s, a business he subsequently built out and sold at a huge profit. The circumstances surrounding the States competition for the licence was the subject of the Moriarty Tribunal, which reported seven years ago. In 2001, Mr OBrien lost out to Tony OReilly, who then controlled INM, in the bidding war with huge international hedge funds to buy out Eircom, under a hugely leveraged transaction. Mr OBrien went onto found Digicel, a Caribbean and Pacific mobile firm with sales in over 30 regions, which, like many telecoms, grew by taking on substantial borrowings. At $6.5bn (5.27bn), Digicels debt is enormous. In a major setback to plans to pay down around $1bn of that debt burden, he pulled an initial public offering, or sale of shares, in Digicel on the New York Stock Exchange in late 2015. It raised the major question of whether he has missed the boat to pay down a large chunk of Digicels debt and fight off competitors in its home patch. At the time, Mr OBrien said Digicels revenues were healthy and the company did not need funding. Digicel is in the early stages of a process of refinancing a hefty chunk of its debt. Mr OBriens stake in INM, of just under 30%, came about after a tense battle with Mr OReilly. Mr OBrien spent around 500m in buying the INM shares. At 30m, his INM stake is currently worth only a fraction of that investment after a plunge in the companys share price. Leslie Buckley He has long been an adviser to Mr OBrien and has helped run his mobile phone firms. He resigned from INM in recent weeks. In a statement on April 6, he said: I am appalled at the widespread circulation and sharing of the ODCEs court document containing the most serious and damaging of allegations relating to my tenure as chairman of INM plc. I believe that due process and fair procedures have been completely and wholly disregarded in this instance. I have consistently maintained a position of not commenting in the midst of an ongoing statutory process, but on this occasion, I am compelled to do so. I will continue to co-operate fully with the ODCE and will robustly defend my position against each and every allegation. I am advised to reserve my position. Robert Pitt He was poached over three years ago as the new boss at INM from Tesco in the Czech Republic. The 47-year-old was the first boss of a prominent stock market-listed firm to use Irish whistleblowing law. He had also worked in Beijing and with PwC in the Czech Republic. After agreeing on a severance payment, he resigned from INM in October 2017. The INM board The board of the media firm said last week (on April 11) that it was investigating a data security incident at the firm that occurred in 2014 and that it was co-operating with the Data Protection Commissioner. The data security incident involved a number of INMs backup tapes, containing backup copies of electronic data stored on INMs servers as at 2014, being provided to a third party service provider on the instructions of the then-chairman of INM. The INM board only became aware of this incident in August 2017 and promptly notified the Data Protection Commissioner on learning of the matter at that time, it said. The statement also said: INM has now seen documentation in the context of the ODCE court application which suggests that the data may have been restored and searched more extensively and for a different purpose. INM does not know whether any such searches were in fact undertaken or for what purpose but based on the limited information currently available to INM it seems possible that they were. Shareholders in INM INM shares have lost 38% of their value in the past year and it is valued on the stock market at little more than 110m. With at least 91m in the bank, the company has no debt. That means investors are concerned the costs associated with any new investigation led by court-appointed inspectors could be very costly for the firm. Last November, the Ombudsman, Peter Tyndall, published a scathing a report into the scheme, which found that the Department of Justice had wrongly refused some Magdalene laundry survivors access to redress payments. The report made a number of recommendations, the key one being that the department fully reconsider, with a view to accepting, the applications of women who worked in one of the listed Magdalene laundries but who were recorded as having been admitted to a training centre or industrial school in the same building, attached to or located on the grounds of the laundry. However, the 862,748,424 estimated annual cost of harmful drinking is only one measure of the damage caused. A new report lays bare the hidden misery of dealing with problem drinking from the perspective of those left to pick up the pieces at home, at work, and in their neighbourhoods. Commissioned by the HSE and compiled from a survey of 2,000 people, the report, The Untold Story: Harms Experienced in the Irish Population due to Others Drinking, found that the majority of Irish people (61%) have a heavy drinker in their lives. It also found that: Most of those people, and 44% of the overall general public, were directly negatively affected or harmed in some way by that persons drinking; Half of all people (51%) were disturbed or frightened by a strangers drinking in the past 12 months; One in six parents and guardians (16%) reported that a child in their care was directly negatively affected by someone elses drinking; One in seven workers (14%) were either prevented from doing their job properly because of someone elses drinking or had to work longer hours to make up for that persons absenteeism. The report authors put figures on the economic costs that stem from drinking in terms of chronic illness, emergency care, crime, road accidents, absenteeism, damage to personal items, the drain on family finances and costs to the health services. However, their main concern is the harder-to-calculate costs of stress, anxiety, fear, depression, disturbed sleep, harassment, verbal and psychological abuse, loss of security, and damage to family life that comes with having to live with or deal with problem drinkers. For many children, having a heavy drinker in their lives routinely means suffering verbal abuse and criticism, witnessing violence in the home, or being deprived of basic comforts because the family income is wasted on drink. Robin Room, professor of alcohol policy research at University of Melbourne, described the report as one of the most detailed ever carried out on the subject. The focus to date has been on the harm suffered by the drinker, said Prof Room. What has been missing from the picture is the burden imposed on others. He noted that what the report shows is that harms to others from drinking are at least as widespread as the harms to drinkers themselves and are of comparable magnitude. Eunan McKinney, head of communications with Alcohol Action Ireland, said the findings provide a clear insight into the scale of alcohol harm to others. For too long, the harms experienced has been passively disregarded, he said. This report demonstrates not only the tangible impacts on the many but also the significant psychological impacts felt today and harboured for the future. Disabilities Minister Finian McGrath said he believes next months referendum will be carried 60% to 40%. I believe it will be 60- 40, he told the launch of intellectual disability group Inclusion Irelands support for repealing the Eighth Amendment. I know from my own constituency, Dublin Bay North, that would be the kind of view that I am getting. But can we be complacent? Absolutely not, we cannot be complacent it will be a tough debate, it will be a long campaign over the next couple of weeks. However, Cora Sherlock of the LoveBoth campaign said Mr McGrath sounded very over-confident in his prediction of a win. Its possible he feels by talking up the proposal and its chances of success, his prediction will come to pass, said Ms Sherlock. In reality, whats more likely to happen is that as more and more people begin to realise that repeal means unrestricted abortion for a baby up to three months in the womb, they will see that this proposal discriminates against vulnerable children, and they will vote no. There is nothing inclusive about abortion. On the contrary, every abortion ends the life of a baby and directly targets a vulnerable person who is deserving of protection. Cora Sherlock of the LoveBoth campaign Mr McGrath said he is aware of women with disabilities who have had to go to England for an abortion. The reality is that it goes on all the time, he said. Particularly those who are parents of daughters with intellectual disabilities where they are involved in decision-making and capacity issues. The bottom line is it is the parents, the GP, and the people directly involved with that young adult with intellectual disability make the decisions. Yes, there are very tragic cases where they go to England. There has been issues of abuse in certain centres, its under the radar, but the bottom line is the GPs, the families, are saying: Why should they be forced to travel over the England in crisis situations? Inclusion Ireland has joined with the Together For Yes campaign to highlight the need for abortion care for women with disabilities. Paddy Connolly, CEO of Inclusion Ireland, said the Eighth Amendment creates inequalities for people with a disability, adding that they need access to sexual and reproductive healthcare just like everyone else. To date, the voice of persons with disabilities has been largely absent from the public conversation on reproductive rights and people with intellectual disabilities need accessible information to engage in the debate, said Mr Connolly. Disabilities Minister Finian McGrath risked causing fresh division within the Fine Gael-Independent Alliance coalition as Fianna Fail finance spokesman Michael McGrath said a clear picture of how much more people may have to pay must be revealed by the Budget. In recent days, Mr Donohoe said he is considering raising the local property tax as part of a new system due to be introduced in 2020. While Mr Donohoe said he believes any increases will be moderate and affordable, concerns have been raised over the specific level of increase planned, fuelled by surging house prices. Mr Donohoe said at the weekend any increases will be moderate, theyll be affordable and theyll be well understood by people in advance of that, but declined to outline what the increase may involve. However, yesterday, Finian McGrath said he is strongly opposed to any property tax increase and that extra costs would put people already struggling under unnecessary added pressure. From my point of view, I dont see it as a property tax, I have always had concerns about a home tax. I have no problems about taxing property and wealth, but when it comes to a persons individual home I would be very much opposed to any increase in that because people in houses and people trying to buy a house and people there already are under enough pressure,he said. Michael McGrath insisted any changes must be made clear before the October budget in order to give people a chance to adapt. He said people cannot afford increases of hundreds of euro in 2020, adding that he believes changes to existing local property tax rates could limit the impact on ordinary people. I think its important to give people certainty as soon as possible in relation to property tax. It will be 2020 before any changes come into effect as a result of re-evaluation next year, but its very obvious to us we allow people to move up several bands given the very significant property price increases since 2013. Its not acceptable people looking at an increase of several hundred euro in their property bill. We need to have certainty by Budget time. Paschal Donohoe indicated this review by August, so we want to have a clear picture in property tax by October, Mr McGrath told Newstalk radio. Meanwhile, it has emerged that a State scheme to incentivise companies to build affordable homes has yet to pay out any money since it began in November 2015. The Development Contribution Rebate Scheme allowed developers to apply for a refund of development levies if they were building more than 50 units and selling them for less than 300,000 in Dublin and 250,000 in Cork. Journalists from The Advocate and Out Traveler, the biggest and among the most influential gay publications in the US part of a stable which boasts almost 8m unique online monthly visitors and almost 3m print readers sampled the citys offering over the weekend, along with journalists from the UKs Diva Magazine. Savas Abadsidis, a senior editor with The Advocate and Out Traveler, said it was his first time in Ireland, and he would be recommending the city to his readers. The people and the food have been fantastic, he said. Our focus used to be on the gay circuit travel but now our focus is on gay family travel, particularly lesbian couples. They are looking for places of safety, places of tolerance and hospitality, an area of the world where they will be accepted. And Cork has been welcoming and safe. The trip was organised and led by Ursula Morrish from Visit Cork, a city and county council initiative, in association with the local LGBT organisations. It follows a visit in March by Swiss gay publication, Display Magazine. The visit pitched Cork as ideally located between the Wild Atlantic Way and Irelands Ancient East, and included stops at the English Market, Victorian Quarter, Nano Nagle Place, and the Quay Co-Op, which was established in 1982 as a radical and alternative community project by a collective of gay, feminist, lesbian, environmental, and other groups. The group visited the Crawford Art Gallery, the Jameson Experience in Midleton, Garnish Island, Fota Wildlife Park, Kinsale, Sovereign Sailing in Kinsale, the Titanic Experience, and Blarney. The delegation, which stayed at the Montenotte Hotel, dined in restaurants including Jacobs on the Mall, Rachels, Jacques, Hayfield Manor, the Ivory Tower, and Eccles Hotel. They also sampled the citys nightlife at Reardens, Chambers, and attended the Linc (Lesbians in Cork) Summer Party. They also met the first openly gay Fine Gael TD, senator Jerry Buttimer and his husband, Conchobar. Former Mr Gay Ireland Konrad Im, who joined the media group over the weekend, said he was proud to show off his city. These press visits are a great way to show off this impressive history and show to the rest of the world how inclusive and diverse we are, he said. Meanwhile, Cork City Councils social inclusion group is seeking Rainbow City status for the city this summer as an LGBT friendly city. The vote was proposed by the mayor of Kerry, Cllr John Sheahan, and passed unanimously. A formal letter, offering the condolences of the council, will now be issued. Joy Few, 64, and her partner, Normand Larose, 62, both with addresses in Phoenix, Arizona, died when their pony and trap plunged into a rocky ravine, two miles from Kate Kearneys Cottage, at about 2pm on Monday of last week. Ms Few, a research supervisor at a hospital in Phoenix, and Mr Larose, who worked in construction in Phoenix, were on holiday with Ms Fews daughter, Tonya Tier, and her husband, Bill Walthers, and their children, Caitlin, 15, and Gavin, 8. The family were travelling in three traps on the famous lakes-and-pony tour and were about two miles from Kate Kearneys Cottage, at the end of the route, when the accident occurred. A book of condolence was opened in the town hall in Killarney and hundreds of people have signed it. The mayor of Killarney, Niall Kelleher, yesterday said the book will be given to gardai to be forwarded to the family of the deceased. The narrow road that runs through the Gap of Dunloe has been a tourist attraction since Victorian times. It is a public road and it comes under the remit of the county council. A decision on introducing bylaws to license jarvey carriages may be taken when the garda investigation and inquests are concluded, a council spokesman indicated yesterday. However, no such decision will be taken until then. A small portion of the roadway is national park, and the majority is a public road, under the governance of Kerry County Council. Supt Flor Murphy, of Killarney gardai, said investigations into the tragedy are continuing. He said all witnesses and potential witnesses, including the driver of the horse and trap, will be interviewed to piece together what had occurred. The driver of the trap, a man in his 40s from Kilgarvan, jumped clear and avoided injury, but was taken to University Hospital Kerry, where he was treated for shock. The relatives have now returned to the US with the ashes of the deceased. A garda officer assigned to the family continues to liaise with them, Supt Murphy said. Tuesday, April 17th, 2018 (8:47 am) - Score 5,797 Another day, another security scare. A joint statement by the FBI, DHS and UK NCSC has warned that the Russian Government are now actively conducting malicious cyber activity with the aim of compromising network infrastructure devices such as switches, firewalls and even home broadband routers etc. The Technical Alert TA18-106A includes further details and notes that the targets of this malicious cyber activity are primarily government and private-sector organisations, critical infrastructure providers, and the Internet Service Providers (ISPs) supporting these sectors. The alert warns that network device vendors, ISPs, public sector organisations, private sector corporations and small-office/home-office (SOHO) customers are the main targets. Apparently Russian state-sponsored actors (no.. not bad movie actors) are using compromised routers to conduct spoofing man-in-the-middle attacks to support espionage, extract intellectual property, maintain persistent access to victim networks, and potentially lay a foundation for future offensive operations. The notice goes on to state that this activity has been reported to the U.S. and UK governments by multiple sources, including private and public-sector cyber security research organisations and allies. Ciaran Martin, CEO of the UK National Cyber Security Centre, said: Russia is our most capable hostile adversary in cyberspace so tackling them is a major priority for the National Cyber Security Centre and our U.S. allies. This is the first time that in attributing a cyber attack to Russia the U.S. and the UK have, at the same time, issued joint advice to industry about how to manage the risks from the attack. It marks an important step in our fight back against state-sponsored aggression in cyberspace. For over twenty years, GCHQ has been tracking the key Russian cyber attack groups and todays joint UK-U.S. alert shows that the threat has not gone away. The UK government will continue to work with the U.S., other international allies and industry partners to expose Russias unacceptable cyber behaviour, so they are held accountable for their actions. Many of the techniques used by Russia exploit basic weaknesses in network systems. The NCSC is leading the way globally to automate defences at scale to take away some of those basic attacks, thereby allowing us to focus on the most potent threats. In the language of Fear Uncertainty and Doubt (FUD) we should probably put this into some practical context because, as any experienced IT bod already knows, your computer and networking hardware will come under frequent attack from almost the moment you go online. Often this occurs without you even knowing about it, unless you closely monitor your network traffic. Most of the time its automated botnets that are scanning global IP address ranges for known vulnerabilities to exploit and on other occasions youll simply be passing by an infected web page, clicking a bad email link or installing a dodgy app. As a general rule all of our connected devices are at a constant risk and this is the reason why we all (hopefully) have firewalls, anti-virus, encryption and should be keeping our systems up-to-date with security patches. Put another way, individual residential home broadband ISP or mobile internet users are arguably at much greater risk from your common run-of-the-mill hacker types or virus infections. The Russian government is probably the least of your concerns and as always, regardless of who is trying to screw up your online day, the best protection is always a strong defence and up-to-date software/hardware. Australia's second biggest telco Optus is unwilling to comment on what it characterises as "rumour and speculation" that it will be moving all customers of its Virgin Mobile subsidiary to its own platform and retiring the brand. An Optus spokesperson told iTWire in response to a request for comment that, "At Optus, we continually review our business model to ensure were working in the best way possible to meet our customer's needs and achieve our goals." However, industry sources said that the talk that Optus was beginning the migration of Virgin Mobile customers to the Optus brand were more than just a rumour. And, they added, after that the Virgin Mobile brand would cease to exist in Australia. The Optus spokesperson added: "Optus does not comment on rumour and speculation." The spokesperson also indicated that even if there were such changes afoot, they would not be canvassed in the media. "While we dont have any changes to announce today, if there are changes, our priority is to talk directly with our employees first, and anyone who might be affected by any proposed changes," the spokesperson said. Given that Virgin Mobile sells through more than 73 retail outlets, including flagship stores in Perth, Sydney, Adelaide, Canberra, Melbourne and Brisbane, as well as via telesales and online, closure would mean that hundreds of jobs would go. Mobile malware that has been christened Roaming Mantis has been found to be hijacking DNS settings on routers and redirecting users to malicious websites leading to the installation of trojanised applications. Researcher Suguru Ishimaru from security firm Kaspersky Lab said the malware had been seen in Japan in March. "According to our telemetry data, this malware was detected more than 6000 times, though the reports came from just 150 unique users (from 9 February to 9 April)," he wrote in a blog post giving details of the malware. "Of course, this is down to the nature of the malware distribution, but it also suggests a very painful experience for some users, who saw the same malware appear again and again in their network. More than half of the detections were observed targeting the Asian region." The Roaming Mantis malware used the simple, but efficient, trick of DNS hijacking. Explaining this, Ishimaru said if a user tried to access a website through a compromised router they would be sent to a malicious website which still showed the URL of the legitimate site that the user had tried to access in the first place. After this, a pop-up for a bogus update for the Chrome browser showed up on the user's mobile. Once the user clicked OK on this, the trojanised application was downloaded and installed. The aim was to steal the user's credentials, including those for two-factor authentication, give the attacker control over the Android device in question. Given the available clues, Ishimaru said that it looked like the attacker had a financial motive and was not overly sophisticated insofar as his/her technical skills were concerned. "Our research revealed that the malware contains Android application IDs for popular mobile banking and game applications in South Korea," Ishimaru said. "The malware is most prevalent in South Korea, and Korean is the first language targeted... Based on our findings, it appears the malicious app was originally distributed to South Korean targets. Support was then added for Traditional Chinese, English and Japanese, broadening its target base in the Asian region." The man leading the push for the resignation of auDA chief executive Cameron Boardman and three directors of the organisation, including board chair Chris Leptos, claims the main issue facing auDA, the change of domains to .au, "looms over our heads like an approaching storm". Jim Stewart, the chief executive of StewArt Media, said in a letter that a recent newsletter by an individual he characterised as the new "independent" chair, was "frighteningly naive and uninformed and provided no confidence that the man at the top, nor the CEO for approving the publication, know what they are talking about." Stewart's letter came in the wake of an article in Fairfax Media that detailed the findings of a review commissioned by Boardman in 2016 by an advisory group, PPB, which alleged financial irregularities in the past, but before a report about a federal government review, the results of which are set to be made public today. Last week, Leptos said that the practices of several former auDA directors had been referred to the police in Victoria. Dissension in the ranks of auDA, the body that administers the Australian domain namespace,earlier this month when Stewart led a call for the ouster of Boardman, Leptos and directors Sandra Hook and Suzanne Ewart. The main issue that has riled members is the decision by auDA to effect changes in domains from .com.au and similar suffixes to .au, a move for which auDA has produced neither a business case nor an explanation that is logical. Leptos disclosed last week that the necessary letters to request a Special General Meeting for this purpose had been submitted and the needed resolutions proposed. In what he called his 150-day report, Leptos briefly referred to this request saying he would advise the membership further "once the logistics for the meeting have been confirmed". In Stewart's letter, he quoted this recent statement by Leptos: "The auDA board recognises that .au domains are being challenged on one flank by global domains such as .com, and on the other flank by commercial platforms such as mobile apps, Amazon, Facebook, Twitter and whatever comes next. To maintain and promote the operational stability and utility of the .au namespace in this environment we will need to provide a stateof-the-art service offering, and a twentyfirst-century governance structure." He said this made no sense. "Saying that .au domains are being challenged by global domains and flanked by commercial platforms such as mobile apps, Amazon, Facebook, Twitter just doesnt make sense," Stewart wrote. "Using this argument to support the introduction of direct AU registrations shows a disturbing lack of understanding and ignorance of how the Internet is used for business." Stewart pointed out that domain suffixes such as .com.au, .gov.au, .edu.au, .org.au, were used for Australian organisation Internet addressing for things such as websites and email. "It makes no sense to say they are competing against Amazon and Twitter. Domain names are simply addresses. Amazon is a business that provides many different services including hosting," he said. Many .com.au sites were hosted on Amazon, Stewart said, but were in no way competing with Australian domain names. "It's like saying Wagga Wagga is competing with David Jones Department Store," he said. "Twitter is a live open messaging service one to one or one to many. How it is in any way competing with .au domain names is a mystery known only to auDA." He also cited a number of other points made in the same newsletter: A commitment to a $12 million multi-year investment in co-operative marketing to promote the benefits of the .au namespace; this, Stewart described as "a $12 million spin job to make a donkey look like a race horse makes $11,000 at Disneyland look like a drop in the ocean by comparison. Just show us the business case for introducing .au domains." A reduction of at least 10% in the wholesale fee for domain registrations and renewals: "Its been reported that auDA have reduced the costs of registering a domain by 60% with a new supplier. We only get 10%? Clever move I guess when you think that every organisation with a domain name will now need two to protect their security and competitive advantage and members are doubling their revenue." Co-ordination with federal agencies to secure the .au namespace from external threats: "At least they are cognisant of the threats although it is impossible to protect Australian businesses from the increased threat of authentic looking domain names," he said. Stewart said the only thing he wanted to see was a business case for the switch to .au. "Quite simply, I understand why it makes sense for the auDA members who sell domain names. It will double their revenue. However, I cant see a single benefit for the average Australian business." If you know of a new business venture coming to the Summerville area, contact Monica Kreber at mkreber@journalscene.com. Reddit Email 29 Shares Haley Bobseine | (Informed Comment) | After almost a decade of multiple postponements stalling the national political process and depriving citizens of their right to vote, Lebanese parliamentary elections will be held next month under a new legal framework. Passed in June 2017, the new election law replaces the majoritarian system with multi-member proportional representation dividing Lebanon among 15 districts whereby voters can cast their votes for both a list competing in their district and a candidate from the list in their subdistrict. A list of electoral law reforms including out-of-country voting, pre-printed ballots to reduce potential for vote-buying, and proportional representation theoretically upping independents chance of success are touted by political elites as reformist steps forward as they maneuver to maintain Lebanons stability amid years of unprecedented regional turbulence. Through further promises to fight corruption, unemployment, and to finally deliver on basic services, elites are signalling to national and international observers that they are turning a new page. But barring some exceptions, its business as usual. Reports of alleged vote buying, improper use of ministerial posts for electoral purposes, campaign finance violations, and charges of bribery mount. The electoral commission body overseeing elections is felt by some to lack impartiality and independence and the power to enforce penalties of violations directly. Even the new electoral law is, in essence, a law created for and by the traditional political elite. Plans unveiled at recent international donor conferences are unlikely to come to fruition without genuine structural reforms. And elites arent interested. Even with the erosion of March 8 and 14 political blocs and shifting political alliances, traditional elites remain in agreement- maintain the system that keeps them in power and benefitting from its spoils. Efforts to safeguard the status quo while attempting to appear to meet voters demands is perhaps no more apparent than in the example of the interplay between politicians and constituents of marginalized (yet not uncoincidentally electoral contested) communities pushing for the passage of a general amnesty law ahead of the elections. A closer analysis provides a lense from which to more broadly understand elites manoeuvring to maintain electoral power while paying lip service to marginalized communities they continually fail to serve. Reporting on the general amnesty draft law has mostly been confined to the local press. As background, the first draft law was proposed by Justice Minister Salim Jean Jreissati approximately 8 months ago. A more recent draft was reportedly circulated amongst ministers last month. Although the draft has not been made public, rendering its exact content unknown, Lebanese rights organization Legal Agenda detailed the draft laws supposed content in an article last month. Legal Agenda reported at the time that the draft law amnesties Lebanese, Palestinian, and foreigners of all misdemeanors with the exception of violations related to construction, consumer protection, [theft of] antiquities, and corruption. Amnesty for criminal offenses is reportedly more complicated but in short, may include the following: those sentenced or awaiting trial on drug charges including taking and offering drugs but excludes those facilitating, growing, or selling drugs (mostly Shia fugitives and detainees from Baalbek and Hermel); for membership in an armed group but not those facing or convicted on charges for killing or trying to kill others, including members of the Lebanese Armed Forces (mostly Islamist fugitive and detainees from Tripoli, the North, and Saida); and for some former Christian members (and their family members) of the Southern Lebanese Army (SLA) who fled abroad. (This article will focus mostly on the Sunni and Shia communities calling for the general amnesty due to their greater public engagement on these issues among other reasons). In response to the article, Lebanese Justice Minister Jreissati tweeted What the media is circulating on the subject of general amnesty concern the media itself and its sources of news only, and does not concern the Ministry of Justice, which does not have the right to disclose the content of any draft amnesty law. Rumors over the drafts current form and likelihood it will pass, if at all, vary daily. Seeking to secure votes in contested districts ahead of elections, namely in Sunni majority areas in the North and South and Shia majority areas of Baalbek and Hermel to the east, representatives from major political parties including Sunni Future Movement and Shia Hezbollah have come out in public support of the amnesty. Some promise it will pass soon. After years of instability, voters are now increasingly focusing on bread and butter issues and elites failure to deliver. Voters discontent with the governments performance since the last parliamentary elections in 2009 means elites have little to show to convince voters to give them their vote- instead they are filling the void by busying marginalized communities with promises of a general amnesty. But last months reports that the general amnesty may exclude significant numbers of fugitives and detainees fueled further discontent. For more than a year detainees families have organized along sectarian lines arranging sit-ins, protests, and closing roads with burning tires demanding that the amnesty be passed. Most vow to continue until the amnesty is passed. Despite the fractured nature of advocacy along mostly sectarian lines, in separate interviews, more than twenty lawyers, activists, and detainees family members from these two communities expressed agreement- their respective communities deserve justice and the general amnesty is the only way to get it. Rights organizations have long documented Lebanons broken criminal justice system detailing unfair trials, arbitrary arrests, lengthy pre-trial detentions, poor conditions in confinement, overcrowding, and illtreatment. Family members of detainees separately gave similar accounts when describing their relatives experience with the system, often alleging violations in passing as if they are barely of note. Others highlighted the severe economic consequences lengthy pre-trial detention of family bread winners has on poor families. One father from the Biqaa said With my son detained I dont even have money to pay for transport to visit him in prison. To them, the provision of justice is just one more service the government fails to provide. Ongoing delays on electricity, corruption, and waste disposal reforms fail to give needed credibility to Lebanons political elites. Adding to the injustice are realities of economic marginalization. Some Sunni communities in Tripoli and Akkar suffer from high rates of unemployment and low levels of development, despite some of Lebanons wealthiest elites calling this area home. Residents in Baalbek and Hermel also complain of high levels of unemployment and underdevelopment. Some residents attribute it to the governments failure to provide them with an alternative source of income and livelihoods after drug cultivation was outlawed in the 1990s. In fact, its exactly these hollow track records of success that candidates are trying to fill with promises of a general amnesty. And this solution is one which doesnt chip away at their place in the system the way anti-corruption reforms may. With little else to concede to voters, they dont have much to exchange for votes. Candidates from contested districts therefore frequently express support for the passage of an amnesty law during speeches, campaign events and even televised political debates. Some interviewees also alleged that candidates or their supporters made home visits to undecided voters in their area, attempting to secure their votes with the promise of passing the amnesty. In predominately Sunni areas in the north and south, Future Movement MPs frequently endorse the amnesty with some promising that it will pass soon. Future Movement MP Bahia Hariri, who is facing tough electoral competition in the southern city of Saida, told family members of Islamist detainees last month that she is optimistic that the amnesty will include at least some Islamists arrested after the 2013 clashes. From the predominately Shia east, Hezbollah MP Hussein al Hajj Hassan from Baalbek Hermel district said in March that the enactment of the amnesty law will remain fundamental to our bloc and we will make efforts to achieve this. Hezbollah MP Nawar al Sahili, also from the area, said the amnesty needs to happen. Even Hezbollah Secretary General Hassan Nasrallah called for the passage of the amnesty for those who deserve it. The electoral stakes in these communities are high. In the draft law described by Legal Agenda last month, between the Sunni, Shia, and Christians, up to 70,000 people with criminal files could benefit, including more than 30,000 people in Baalbek and Hermel alone. Legal Agenda estimated this to be approximately one fourth of the voters in the area. Adding to their grievances, many have been arrested or are wanted on the basis of contact documents, or anonymous civilian reports to intelligence bodies claiming that someone is causing security threats. Although a unanimous decision by the Council of Ministers cancelled the contact documents in 2014, security forces continue to carry out arrests on this basis. Contact documents never followed any judicial procedure, allegedly violating the personal freedoms of the pursued people. Including relatives and supporters calling for an amnesty in support of their oppressed community, the number of potential proponents (read potential voters) soar. As an example, according to Legal Agendas assessment of Ministry of Interior numbers, there are 186,920 Sunni voters in Akkar and 285,000 Sunni voters in Tripoli Miniyeh-Danniyeh districts. Local activists report there is strong support for the amnesty in both areas. It is exactly in these districts where elites are facing electoral competition. Absent other objective barometers, the 2016 municipal elections revealed several new political trends. Results showed an erosion of support for Sunni Prime Minister Saad al Hariris and his Future Movement party amid a rise of adversaries to his right, such as Former Justice Minister Ashraf Rifi, who is trying to capitalize on Sunni discontent to make electoral gains in Tripoli. Rifi also publicly called for the passage of the general amnesty law. For their part, Hezbollahs margin of victory was narrowed by fierce competition in some areas, including from regional tribal leaders in the Biqaa and Hermel. The economic crisis has further forced it to cut back its social services to the Shia community, allegedly potentially affecting its popular appeal ahead of elections. This is evident, for example, in one message recently sent via social media to communities in Hermel. The message, assumed to be from Hezbollah, reads that other candidates are going house to house offering poor families money to buy votes but they are unaware that these homes are supported by Hezbollah without condition or restrictions in war and in peaceand that 100 from the Saed (Hezbollah Secretary General Hassan Nasrallah) is better than 50,000 from another. Divided Communities Despite expressing similar grievances in support of the amnesty law, the three communities remain divided along sectarian lines and rarely coordinate. Many viewed the others with suspicion or as not worthy of an amnesty. In sectarian systems, where spoils of the system are often viewed as zero-sum game, fear that one group would be granted amnesty at the expense of their own is palpable. Indeed several Shia interviewees recalled the 2005 amnesty which amnestied Christian Lebanese Forces Party Leader Samir Geagea and two Salafi Sunni groups involved in clashes with security forces, noting that their community saw no benefit from that amnesty. We deserve the amnesty this time around, its our turn, not theirs, one mother of a detainee from Baalbek told me. Some Shia interviewees painted the Islamists as anti-army terrorists but their own as mostly innocent victims of an unfair system that provides them neither justice nor economic respite. One mother who lost a son in the battle against extremist Sunni groups in the north-eastern town of Arsal rejected potential plans to join Islamist mothers in amnesty protests saying she cant coordinate with groups who may have supported extremist groups who killed her son, underscoring the sometimes deadly manifestation of sectarian divisions. For their part, some Sunni Islamist interviewees saw the Shia detainees as immoral drug lords but their own as innocent victims of an unfair justice system in a region increasingly marginalizing Sunnis. Both generally saw the Christians as Zionist traitors. In contrast, a Christian lawyer representing the SLA families lamented that his clients endured punishment for crimes they didnt even commit during their childhood. Most saw fault in others but shrugged off suggestions that most members of their own community bare responsibility for crimes committed. One Lebanese legal expert remarked that such sentiments surrounding the amnesty charade revealed immaturity on the part of the government, political parties, and the people for not taking responsibility for their own actions. Indeed, when news surfaced that the amnesty might not be passed, it was usually the other sects leaders who are to blame. When news is positive, it was attributed to their own sectarian leader. Although when pressed, they tend to admit all are to blame. Sectarian elites generally maintain power by presenting themselves as gatekeepers for justice and services for their sect. Constituents therefore look to political leaders, not the system, to solve their problems. According to a survey conducted by Lebanese Adyan Foundation 73.7% of young voter respondents considered Lebanese voters to be sectarian in general in their voting habits and that is a strong link between political parties and sectarian realities. Still several women from both communities expressed solidary with each other, noting they suffered from the same system. One mother from Hermel expressed sympathy with the mothers of Islamist detainees but worried how public coordination with other groups during protests may appear. What if someone chants something against the Saed? (Hezbollah Secretary General Hassan Nasrallah) This could be an issue, she said indirectly implying that this may cause tensions with her community if she joined in such protests. Fed up with elites playing on their nerves and using a fake amnesty to laugh at them many interviewees threatened not to vote unless the amnesty is passed before the election. No votes without something in return, weve suffered enough under Hariri, one mother from Tripoli said. Others urged their friends to boycott the election unless the amnesty is past with one saying people who vote arent sensible and are without mercy for the suffering of our men inside prison. A mother from Hermel said We are coordinating with them for the war and now they lie to usthere is no amnesty. We give 3-4 martyrs every few days to Syriathey never give us anything. But communal and sectarian ties are a means for self-assertion, security, and self-preservation, and some say they have no other choice to support their leaders. They see the fate of their leaders directly tied to their access to services as a community. Im not happy with the situation but I cant not vote even though Im upset there hasnt been an amnesty yet. We (Hezbollah supporters) are being attacked from all angles by candidates in other districts. We need to stand up for ourselves and vote, one woman from Baalbek said. One Sunni activist from Saida promised to support Hariri even though he thinks the amnesty wont happen before the elections. He alleged that a former head of the Internal Security Forces was responsible for past detainee abuses. Why would I think he cares now about detainees? Hariri and the Future Movement faced losses in 2016 municipal elections and we need to help him now, he said. Dissenting Voices Not everyone wants an amnesty law. In fact, some are ardently opposed. The Lebanese government previously passed other amnesties including in 1958, 1967, 1991, and 2005. Indeed, elections and new political phases are often accompanied by calls for a new amnesty. The most notorious is the 1991 General Amnesty law which granted militia leaders and their members immunity from war crimes following the end of the civil war in 1989 with the signature of the Taif Agreement peace deal. Some warlords turned politicians are still serving in government today. The 1991 amnesty is viewed by many as having a detrimental impact in addressing the legacy of past conflict. During interviews several Lebanese civil society leaders and human rights activists therefore rejected the amnesty. While some sympathized with detainees grievances, they ultimately view a potential amnesty as further entrenching Lebanons impunity problem and undermining judicial authority and the rule of law. Most saw retrials as the preferred solution. Some denounced politicians efforts to support the amnesty as an abuse of power ahead of the elections. Others countered that an overly broad amnesty could result in the release of dangerous criminals whove committed serious crimes such as murder and kidnapping. Family members of slain Lebanese soldiers in particular have spoken out against the amnesty. Still others cautioned that the solution is not so black and white. One international legal expert warned that amnesties are often misunderstood, even by civil society groups. Although determination of an amnestys acceptability is not possible before accessing a copy of its text, people shouldnt be so quick to rule them out. The 2013 Belfast Guidelines on Amnesty and Accountability offer guidelines for amnesty standards and acceptability including standards of exceptional nature, legal justification and benefits, and managing its broadness and vagueness. For example, in particular situations corrective amnesties releasing offenders to avoid furthering burdening an already overwhelmed judicial system may be acceptable. One Lebanese legal expert denounced what he called some civil society activists blind idealism. He noted that the system doesnt have the capacity, for example, to retry thousands of detainees held on minor drug charges and suffering under terrible conditions of confinement while rubbing shoulders with hardened criminals. Saying that prisons hardly play the rehabilitative role they claim to have anyway he urged for the passage of a limited amnesty for less serious crimes on humanitarian grounds. Indeed another Lebanese lawyer representing detainees from the Biqaa noted that the intense overcrowding in prisons and snail-paced processing of some files alone gives support to pro-amnesty voices. Moreover, the Lebanese penal code already provides for the issuance of general amnesties, so why not use it? He argued in favor of the amnesty law as a basis from which to relaunch advocacy efforts to address systemic failures in the criminal justice system. Electoral Outlook Despite cause for pessimism, the proportional electoral law is untested, new terrain. Independent lists and candidates are hoping to breathe new life into the system. Shifting traditional political alliances have led to unexpected shake-ups with some parties competing against each other in one district and together in another. In this new electoral environment, candidates are negotiating district by district, putting more of an emphasis on lists than party loyalties, resulting in a campaign driven by electoral gains rather than campaign alliances. How this plays out in the post-election environment remains to be seen. Still, elites are keen on saving the system and want to squash any counternarratives that may destabilize their power in government. And the international community isnt protesting, reportedly prioritizing stability above all else. A Lebanese political and electoral analyst warned that even if independent candidates get elected, the weight of the confessional system will prove too much to bear and they will be forced to align with traditional parties or be pushed out. Others are not so pessimistic saying that shifting realities on the ground are making way for new members and rules in the government, even if not in this election, but for the next. On April 16 Justice Minister Jreissati and Parliament Speaker Berri indicated that the amnesty law will only pass after political consensus is reached following the elections. Candidates who promised its passage before the elections may suffer at the ballot box. As some of the most vocal champions of the general amnesty law, this could negatively affect Hariri and the Future Movement the most. When asked what constituents would do if the amnesty is never passed a Lebanese journalist scoffed What they always do! They will take to the streets, protest and burn some tires and then they will go home and forget about it. What can they do? Amnesty or not, new government ministers or not, without criminal justice system reforms and accountability, Lebanese citizens will continue to suffer from a broken system. Despite todays news, activists and detainees family members continue to anxiously scan social media, hoping that tomorrows news may reverse todays as it often does in Lebanon. Many remain pessimistic but hope that just for once, the elites will prove them wrong. Haley Bobseine is an independent writer, researcher, Arabist and analyst with more than 8 years field experience in the Middle East. She holds a BA/MA in Modern Middle East History from Brown University. Twitter: @haleybobseine - Bonus video added by Informed Comment: Al Jazeera English from last summer: Lebanese parliament passes new electoral law Reddit Email 261 Shares By Juan Cole | (Informed Comment) | The problems at Fox Cable News go way beyond Sean Hannity. But he is a major problem. For him to go on air and defend attorney Michael Cohen numerous times without so much as mentioning that Cohen is his legal adviser is the height of journalistic corruption. Nor is it only Fox that hides the financial and personal interests of its celebrity commentators from the public. In 2008, in a story that is unremembered and unheeded, The New York Times blew the whistle on a Pentagon scam to place ex-officers on CNN as Iraq War and security commentators, while never disclosing their ongoing ties to the US military or their ties to companies making money off the war. There is no reason at all to believe that CNN has cleaned up its act. Fox is guilty of the same sort of interlocking directorates strategy in news provision. The information system in the United States is mostly broken. 24 hour cable news is just a pretext for earning advertising dollars and therefore mostly presents infotainment or cheap panel debates (mostly by partisans or people without any obvious credentials or special knowledge). A handful of corporations own all of the major television news outlets. Even at the level of more trusted local stations, Sinclair has been buying them up and using onerous contracts with the anchors to force them into reciting pro-Trump propaganda. Fox Cable News is a project of far rightwing Australian-origin billionaire Rupert Murdoch to push television news in the United States in the direction of white nationalism, white grievance, romanticism about the business class, defense of neocolonialism, and punitive attitudes toward workers and the dissident middle class. It has a firm editorial line, which is set in explicit memos to on screen presenters. Its stars have been serial sex abusers like Roger Ailes and Bill OReilly. Hannity has emerged as the last Great White Hope among the bullies of cable news, and that he is corrupt and dishonest should come as no surprise. What to do about all this? Most of the people reading this dont watch Fox anyway (and by the way there are some excellent reporters employed by this corporation and the local stations are often quite good). The only thing that has been shown to work is a consumer boycott of advertisers. That is what got rid of the odious OReilly. Note that I am not calling for a boycott of Hannity advertisers because I dislike him personally or because I disagree with his politics. He has revealed himself to be corrupt and dishonest with his viewers on a basic level that should be unacceptable even in a generally corrupt company like Fox Cable News. Of course, ideally, the Democratic Party would be planning for a reform of the FCC once it takes back over Congress. The poor things dont seem to realize that the Reagan dissing of the Fairness Doctrine was one of the trucks that ran over the Democrats after 1981. But in the short term, it is up to us. The lists I could find for advertisers on Hannity were old, from last year when people were disgusted by his support for that kooky right wing nutjob Judge Roy Moore. [Update: A kind reader sent a current list of Fox advertisers]. This is different, because it speaks not to political views or values, about which we can disagree, but to professional ethics. No one should be on air who speaks about subjects on which they have personal interests, and who does not disclose them. We must boycott. Bonus video: The Late Show with Stephen Colbert: Sean Hannity Forgot To Mention Something Jimmy Kimmel Live: Sean Hannity is Michael Cohens Mystery Client Vancouver, British Columbia--(Newsfile Corp. - April 17, 2018) - Bluestone Resources Inc. (TSXV: BSR) (OTCQB: BBSRF) ("Bluestone" or the "Company") is pleased to announce initial drill results from its Cerro Blanco Gold project in Guatemala, where the Company is carrying out resource definition drilling concurrent with its feasibility study planned for completion by the end of 2018. The Company currently has a total of five drill rigs operational on the project. Three drill rigs are stationed within the underground development primarily carrying out in-fill drilling. Two portable drill rigs are drilling from surface targeting deeper and peripheral extensions to mineralized veins. Gold and silver mineralization at Cerro Blanco is associated with epithermal quartz-adularia veins and vein swarms that sit immediately below a silicified cap that forms a low-lying hill. The Cerro Blanco project consists of 3.2 kilometers of underground development, including two underground declines from surface (North and South Ramps). Prior to the acquisition of Cerro Blanco by Bluestone in 2017, a total of 155,500 meters were drilled in 522 holes by previous operators. All Figures referred to in this press release including location of drill holes, drill sections and photos can be accessed by clicking HERE. Underground Drilling Fan drilling is underway at specific locations throughout the north, south and central areas of the underground development (see FIGURE 1). Drilling is designed primarily to provide additional information within key areas of the resource model and validate previous historical drilling. A total of 2,030 meters in 14 holes have been completed to date. Average hole depth is 150 meters and a minimum of 4,000 meters of underground drilling is planned. Assay results from six holes have been received and are presented in Table 1 below. Epithermal mineralization at Cerro Blanco is associated with chalcedony-adularia-calcite veins with very minor pyrite. Highest precious metal grades are associated with dark colloform-banded chalcedony (quartz) and adularia often with black ginguro banding comprising of mainly acanthite (a silver sulphide mineral) and fine-grained pyrite. Visible gold is rarely observed with a hand lens but is commonly viewed with a microscope. Selected core photos are shown in FIGURE 6. Significant broad intervals of gold and silver mineralization were intercepted in drill holes UGCB18-71, 73 and 76 within the North Ramp area, where individual higher-grade vein intervals occur, e.g. 5.8 g/t Au and 18.6 Ag over 34.5 meters (29.2 meters true width, UGCB18-76) and 5.5 g/t Au and 17.2 g/t Ag over 27.7 meters (23.1 meters true width, UGCB18-71). Wall rocks adjacent and in between individual veins are invariably silicified with lower-grade zones of stockworks and brecciation. Surface Drilling A total of 5,875 meters in 22 holes have been drilled to date, with an average hole depth of 270 meters targeting the deeper extensions to veins requiring better definition within the resource block model. Assay results from 14 holes have been received and are presented in Table 2. Best intercepts included 5.3 meters of 16.0 g/t Au and 29.1 g/t Ag from 164.27 meters depth in CB18-390. CB17-376 targeted the down-dip extension of the vein system drilled in UGCB18-71, and intercepted various structures including 2.5 meters of 17.1 g/t Au and 33 g/t Ag from 221.9 meters depth (see FIGURE 3). Darren Klinck, President & CEO commented, " These initial results from the surface and underground drilling programs correspond very well with the previously announced underground sampling results, and the combined programs are achieving their objective of solidifying our confidence in the resource model." He added, "Having access to the deposit via the previously completed underground development for drilling and sampling has proven to be a real game-changer for our team, allowing us to better understand the subtleties of the deposit which will be key as we advance through mine planning and other aspects of the Feasibility Study." The silicified cap in the upper part of the Cerro Blanco deposit is approximately 100 meters thick from surface and comprises a sequence of plant-rich sandstones, conglomerates, phreatic breccias and thin sinter horizons (Salinas Group) showing widespread chalcedony and clay alteration. The cap represents the preserved palaeosurface of the mineralized system, typical of deposition in a hot springs environment and hosts significant, low-grade disseminated gold mineralization, e.g. 92.1 meters of 0.41 g/t Au from 9.9 meters depth (CB17-375) and 61.0 meters of 0.49 g/t Au from 17.5 meters depth (CB17-376). Some of the gold-bearing veins that make up the bulk of the high-grade gold deposit at Cerro Blanco do penetrate through the Salinas rocks to surface, but the majority are hosted in an underlying sequence of volcaniclastics and sedimentary rocks (Mita Group). Assay results for the upper low-grade silica cap are pending for the majority of the holes drilled. Table 1: Underground Drilling Results HOLE ID FROM (m) TO (m) CORE INTERVAL (m) EST. TRUE WIDTH (m) Au g/t Ag g/t UGCB18-71 0.00 27.69 27.69 23.07 5.5 17.10 incl. 9.3 17.0 7.72 6.43 15.4 50.07 and 24.7 25.7 1.00 0.83 7.0 5.80 UGCB18-72 30.8 31.8 1.00 0.92 3.6 9.40 73.6 75.7 2.05 1.87 3.8 16.36 88.1 90.0 1.87 1.72 7.6 23.49 UGCB18-73 6.00 23.0 17.0 15.14 5.1 17.23 incl. 13.20 16.85 3.65 3.57 19.3 59.42 and 13.20 23.00 9.80 8.82 7.9 26.88 37.19 43.13 5.94 5.58 5.2 10.33 48.3 49.28 0.98 0.80 4.0 10.90 72.59 73.59 1.00 0.88 5.4 7.70 105.93 106.93 1.00 0.89 8.4 31.40 UGCB18-74 37.62 41.23 3.61 3.32 9.0 28.53 54.4 56.39 1.99 1.81 21.3 63.40 70.1 71.1 1.00 0.97 4.2 15.70 73.15 74.15 1.00 0.94 8.0 56.40 79.5 80.5 1.00 0.91 4.4 35.80 84.5 85.5 1.00 0.98 3.8 46.20 87.17 88.18 1.01 0.97 3.6 24.20 UGCB18-75 45.72 51.22 5.5 5.45 7.34 60.92 Incl. 45.72 47.24 1.52 1.52 12.9 76.77 UGCB18-76 12.61 47.1 34.49 29.21 5.83 18.59 Incl. 12.61 16.53 3.92 3.32 26.8 84.42 and 20 23.5 3.50 2.96 8.1 23.11 and 35.85 43.0 7.15 6.28 7.5 19.40 Notes: Intervals in bold are cited in the text of the news release. A top-cut of 140 g/t Au as per PEA was applied Table 2: Surface Drilling Results HOLE ID FROM (m) TO (m) CORE INTERVAL (m) EST. TRUE WIDTH (m) Au g/t Ag g/t CB17-375 No significant results CB17-376 105.0 106.0 1.0 0.98 3.2 5.0 129.2 130.2 1.0 0.97 4.1 4.0 195.1 199.1 4.0 3.82 5.6 4.5 221.9 224.4 2.5 2.42 17.1 33.0 241.2 243.3 2.1 2.00 6.5 6.0 247.3 248.3 1.0 0.98 4.1 4.0 CB17-377 278.8 280.1 1.3 1.27 4.2 10.0 284.2 284.8 0.7 0.70 3.7 10.0 CB17-378 No significant results CB17-379 186.1 187.2 1.1 1.00 3.1 5.0 CB17-380 183.1 184.1 1.0 1.00 11.0 7.7 CB17-381 185.8 186.5 0.7 0.60 7.6 11.1 CB18-382 No significant results CB17-383 256.8 257.8 1.0 0.97 5.3 4.0 CB18-384 101.5 102.5 1.0 0.98 7.7 143.0 231.0 233 2 1.98 6.6 6.8 236.0 237.0 1.0 1.00 5.2 4.0 CB18-386 243.8 246.47 2.63 2.60 5.1 5.6 CB18-390 95.45 97.54 2.09 2.00 4.8 31.2 164.27 169.57 5.30 5.10 16.0 29.1 CB18-391 No significant results CB18-392 108 109 1.00 0.98 5.9 56.5 109 110 1.00 0.96 5.6 60.3 Notes: Intervals in bold are cited in the text of the news release. A top-cut of 140 g/t Au as per PEA was applied. Underground drilling is ongoing and additional results will be reported when received. Assay results from the drill program will be incorporated into the new resource estimation planned for mid-2018. About Cerro Blanco Cerro Blanco is a classic hot springs-related, low sulphidation epithermal gold-silver deposit. Mineralization occurs within composite veins of chalcedony, quartz, adularia and calcite which are hosted in altered sequence of volcaniclastic and sedimentary rocks. The current resource has a footprint of 800 meters x 400 meters between elevations of 300 meters and 500 meters above sea level. It occurs at the south end of a north-south corridor of hydrothermal alteration, about five kilometers long and one kilometer wide, which has potential for discovery of additional mineralization. This corridor has several other gold targets currently under investigation. The current resource comprises both high- and low-angle veins of colloform-banded chalcedony with minor adularia, dark grey bands of silver sulphides and bladed calcite replacement textures. These textures are all classic indicators of boiling fluids that deposited gold and silver. Quality Analysis and Quality Control Assay results listed within this release were performed by Inspectorate Laboratories ("Inspectorate"), a division of Bureau Veritas, which are ISO 17025 accredited laboratories. Logging and sampling is undertaken at site at Cerro Blanco by Company personnel under a QA/QC protocol developed by Bluestone. Samples are transported in security sealed bags to Inspectorate, Guatemala City, Guatemala, for sample preparation. Sample pulps are shipped to Inspectorate Laboratories in Vancouver, BC, Canada or Reno, NV, USA, and assayed using industry-standard assay techniques for gold and silver. Gold and silver were analyzed by a 30-gram charge with atomic adsorption and/or gravimetric finish for values exceeding 3 g/t Au and 100 g/t Ag. Analytical accuracy and precision are monitored by the analysis of reagent blanks, reference material, and replicate samples. Quality control is further assured by Bluestone's QA/QC program, which involves the insertion of blind certified reference materials (standards) and field duplicates into the sample stream to independently assess analytical precision, and accuracy of each batch of samples as they are received from the laboratory. A selection of samples is sent to ALS Chemex Laboratories in Vancouver for check analysis and additional quality control. Qualified Person David Cass, P.Geo., Vice President Exploration, is the designated Qualified Person for this news release within the meaning of National Instrument 43-101 and has reviewed and verified that the technical information set out above in this news release is accurate and therefore approves this written disclosure of the technical information. About Bluestone Resources Bluestone Resources is a mineral exploration and development company that is focused on advancing its 100%-owned Cerro Blanco Gold and Mita Geothermal projects located in Guatemala. The Cerro Blanco Gold project economics, as disclosed in the Company's Cerro Blanco Preliminary Economic Assessment which is available at www.sedar.com, and updated mineral resource estimate for Cerro Blanco, indicate a robust project with an expected nine-year mine life producing 952,000 ounces of gold and 3,141,000 ounces of silver. Initial capital expenditures estimated in the PEA to fund construction and commissioning is estimated at US$170.8 million with all-in sustaining cash costs (as defined per World Gold Council guidelines, less corporate general and administration costs) estimated to be US$490 per ounce of gold produced. The Company trades under the symbol "BSR" on the TSX Venture Exchange and "BBSRF" on the OTCQB. On Behalf of Bluestone Resources Inc. "Darren Klinck" Darren Klinck | President, Chief Executive Officer & Director For further information, please contact: Bluestone Resources Inc. Stephen Williams | VP Corporate Development & Investor Relations Phone: +1 604 646 4534 This email address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it. www.bluestoneresources.ca Cautionary Language The PEA is preliminary in nature, it includes inferred mineral resources that are considered too speculative geologically to have the economic considerations applied to them that would enable them to be categorized as mineral reserves, and there is no certainty that the PEA will be realized. Mineral resources that are not mineral reserves do not have demonstrated economic viability. The Exchange nor its Regulation Services Provider (as that term is defined in the policies of the TSX Venture Exchange) accepts responsibility for the adequacy or accuracy of this release. Forward Looking Statements This press release contains "forward-looking information" within the meaning of Canadian securities legislation and "forward-looking statements" within the meaning of the United States Private Securities Litigation Reform Act of 1995 (collectively, "forward-looking statements"). All statements, other than statements of historical fact, that address activities, events or developments that Bluestone Resources Inc. ("Bluestone" or the "Company") believes, expects or anticipates will or may occur in the future including, without limitation: the proposed timeline and benefits of the Feasibility Study; statements about the Company's plans for its mineral properties; Bluestone's business strategy, plans and outlook; the future financial or operating performance of Bluestone; capital expenditures, corporate general and administration expenses and exploration and development expenses; expected working capital requirements; the future financial estimates of the Cerro Blanco Project economics, including estimates of capital costs of constructing mine facilities and bringing a mine into production and of sustaining capital costs, estimates of operating costs and total costs, net present value and economic returns; proposed production timelines and rates; funding availability; resource estimates; and future exploration and operating plans are forward-looking statements. These forward-looking statements reflect the current expectations or beliefs of the Company based on information currently available to Bluestone and often use words such as "expects", "plans", "anticipates", "estimates", "intends", "may" or variations thereof or the negative of any of these terms. All forward-looking statements are made based on the Company's current beliefs as well as various assumptions made by them and information currently available to them. Generally, these assumptions include, among others: the ability of Bluestone to carry on exploration and development activities; the price of gold, silver and other metals; there being no material variations in the current tax and regulatory environment; the exchange rates among the Canadian dollar, Guatemalan quetzal and the United States dollar remaining consistent with current levels; the presence of and continuity of metals at the Cerro Blanco Project at estimated grades; the availability of personnel, machinery and equipment at estimated prices and within estimated delivery times; metals sales prices and exchange rates assumed; appropriate discount rates applied to the cash flows in economic analyses; tax rates and royalty rates applicable to the proposed mining operation; the availability of acceptable financing; anticipated mining losses and dilution; success in realizing proposed operations; anticipated timelines for community consultations and the impact of those consultations on the regulatory approval process. Forward-looking statements are subject to a number of risks and uncertainties that may cause the actual results of the Company to differ materially from those discussed in the forward-looking statements and, even if such actual results are realized or substantially realized, there can be no assurance that they will have the expected consequences to, or effects on, Bluestone. Factors that could cause actual results or events to differ materially from current expectations include, among other things: risks and uncertainties related to expected production rates, timing and amount of production and total costs of production; risks and uncertainties related to ability to obtain or maintain necessary licenses, permits, or surface rights; risks associated with technical difficulties in connection with mining development activities; risks and uncertainties related to the accuracy of mineral resource estimates and estimates of future production, future cash flow, total costs of production and diminishing quantities or grades of mineral resources; risks associated with geopolitical uncertainty and political and economic instability in Guatemala; risks and uncertainties related to interruptions in production; the possibility that future exploration, development or mining results will not be consistent with the Company's expectations; uncertain political and economic environments and relationships with local communities; risks relating to variations in the mineral content within the mineral identified as mineral resources from that predicted; variations in rates of recovery and extraction; developments in world metals markets; risks related to fluctuations in currency exchange rates; as well as those factors discussed under "Risk Factors" in the Company's Amended and Restated Annual Information Form. Any forward-looking statement speaks only as of the date on which it was made, and except as may be required by applicable securities laws, Bluestone disclaims any intent or obligation to update any forward-looking statement, whether as a result of new information, future events or results or otherwise. Although Bluestone believes that the assumptions inherent in the forward-looking statements are reasonable, forward-looking statements are not guarantees of future performance and accordingly undue reliance should not be put on such statements due to their inherent uncertainty. There can be no assurance that forward-looking statements will prove to be accurate, and actual results and future events could differ materially from those anticipated in such statements. Highlights include 30,550 ozs of Gold Production THUNDER BAY, ON, April 17, 2018 /CNW/ - PREMIER GOLD MINES LIMITED ("Premier" or "The Company") (TSX:PG) is pleased to announce its first quarter production results for 2018. Premier remains focused on creating a low-cost, mid-tier gold-producer through its two producing gold mines; South Arturo and Mercedes, and through future mine development opportunities at McCoy-Cove in Nevada and Hardrock in Ontario (Greenstone Gold JV) where permitting and development initiatives are ongoing. Q1 - 2018 Production Highlights: Gold production of 30,550 ounces Silver production of 59,826 ounces Gold production from South Arturo during the quarter has already exceeded annual guidance, as a result of a decision by Barrick (the operator) in January to accelerate the processing of the Phase 2 ore stockpile. At Mercedes, the Company expects full year production to be weighted toward the second half of 2018 after modifications to the mine plan are realized at the new Diluvio deposit to account for slight differences in the orebody geometry versus the original plan (model). The Company remains on-track to meet or exceed its consolidated full-year production guidance of 85,000-95,000 ounces of gold. Table 1 below provides a summary of production results by mine site and consolidated ounces sold. Table 1 Q1-2018 Consolidated Preliminary Production Results for Q1 2018 MINE Gold Production (ounces) Silver Production (ounces) Mercedes, Mexico 15,009 57,370 South Arturo, Nevada 15,541 2,456 Consolidated Production 30,550 59,826 Gold Ounces Sold 29,275 66,210 "Premier's operational production was strong in the first quarter, beating expectations with additional ore being processed at the low-cost South Arturo mine," stated John Begeman, Executive Chairman of Premier. "In addition to our strong and safe performance, 2018 is an exciting year for the Company as we ramp-up the development of three additional projects in Premier's portfolio including two new mine developments at South Arturo". South Arturo Mine, Nevada The South Arturo Mine, a joint venture operated by Barrick Gold Corporation ("Barrick"), has delivered exceptional results since achieving commercial production. Processing of ore stockpiled from the Phase 2 open pit will continue in the second quarter with production in Q1 having already exceeded guidance for the year. Future production opportunities are being advanced with the development of two additional deposits planned in 2018. The Phase 1 open pit is scheduled to begin construction in Q2 and the El Nino underground mine in the second half of the year. Additionally, in an effort to advance a potential "Phase 3" open pit opportunity, drilling to expand mineralization, and continued metallurgical and geotechnical characterization will be completed. Mercedes Mine, Mexico Work at the Mercedes Mine continues to focus on developing new deposits to increase flexibility, productivity, and reduce costs. Modifications to the mine plan at Diluvio during the first half of 2018 to account for unexpected changes in the orebody geometry, include multiple sub-levels and more vertical stope development. As a result, the annual gold production guidance for Mercedes will be weighted towards the second half of the year. The development of an access drift is underway from the Lagunas mine workings to the higher grade Marianas deposit along strike. Definition drilling at Marianas is expected to begin in the second half of the year to upgrade resources and move them into the mine plan. Exploration and resource definition drilling continues to be a priority with surface and underground programs underway. Additional contract mining services are being evaluated in order to expedite the mine development. Q1 2018 financial results and conference call details: Full financial results for the three months ended March 31, 2018, will be released before market open on May 9, 2018 and a conference call with senior management will be held at 10:00am EDT. Details for the conference call and webcast can be found below and will be accessible on the Company's website. Toll Free (North America): 1-888-231-8191 International: 1-647-427-7450 Conference ID: 6857329 Q1 2018 financial results Webcast Link Click Here Q1 2018 financial results Conference Call Replay The conference call replay will be available from 1:00pm EDT on May 9, 2018 until 11:59 pm EDT on May 16, 2018. Toll Free Replay Call (North America): 1-855-859-2056 International Replay Call: 1-416-849-0833 Passcode: 6857329 Investor Day May 15, 2018: Premier would like to cordially invite all analysts, investors and interested people to an investor day to highlight exploration and development initiatives completed by the Company to date and discuss plans for the remainder of the year. The meeting will be held Tuesday May 15, 2018 at 10:00am EDT at the Toronto Board of Trade, 1 First Canadian Place. For those that cannot attend in person a webcast and conference call dial-in are available. Details for the conference call and webcast can be found below and will be accessible on the Company's website. Toll Free (North America): 1-888-231-8191 International: 1-647-427-7450 Conference ID: 4262118 Investor Day Webcast Link Click Here Investor Day Conference Call Replay The conference call replay will be available from 3:00pm EDT on May 15, 2018 until 11:59 pm EDT on May 22, 2018. Toll Free Replay Call (North America): 1-855-859-2056 International Replay Call: 1-416-849-0833 Passcode: 4262118 Premier Gold Mines Limited is a gold-producer and respected exploration and development company with a high-quality pipeline of precious metal projects in proven, accessible and safe mining jurisdictions in Canada, the United States, and Mexico. Stephen McGibbon, P. Geo., Executive Vice President, Corporate and Project Development, is the Qualified Person for the information contained in this press release and is a Qualified Person within the meaning of National Instrument 43-101. This Press Release contains certain information that may constitute "forward-looking information" under applicable Canadian securities legislation. Forward-looking information includes, but is not limited to, statements about strategic plans, including future operations, future work programs, capital expenditures, discovery and production of minerals, price of gold and currency exchange rates, timing of geological reports and corporate and technical objectives. Forward-looking information is necessarily based upon a number of assumptions that, while considered reasonable, are subject to known and unknown risks, uncertainties, and other factors which may cause the actual results and future events to differ materially from those expressed or implied by such forward-looking information, including the risks inherent to the mining industry, adverse economic and market developments and the risks identified in Premier's annual information form under the heading "Risk Factors". There can be no assurance that such information will prove to be accurate, as actual results and future events could differ materially from those anticipated in such information. Accordingly, readers should not place undue reliance on forward-looking information. All forward-looking information contained in this press release is given as of the date hereof and is based upon the opinions and estimates of management and information available to management as at the date hereof. Premier disclaims any intention or obligation to update or revise any forward-looking information, whether as a result of new information, future events or otherwise, except as required by law. VANCOUVER, British Columbia, April 17, 2018 (GLOBE NEWSWIRE) -- First Mining Gold Corp. (First Mining or the Company) is pleased to announce the infill drilling results, comprising 13 drill holes, from its diamond drill program within Zone 1 (See Tables 1 and 2) at First Minings 100% owned Goldlund Gold Project (Goldlund), located near the town of Sioux Lookout in northwestern Ontario, Canada. Drilling Highlights: Hole GL-17-136 intersected 72.0 metres of 6.26 grams per tonne gold including 1.05 metres of 367 grams per tonne gold and 2.0 metres of 21.96 grams per tonne gold Hole GL-17-139 intersected 68.0 metres of 0.62 grams per tonne gold including 2.0 metres of 10.26 grams per tonne gold Hole GL-17-135 intersected 76.0 metres of 0.43 grams per tonne gold including 2.0 metres of 5.86 grams per tonne gold Hole GL-17-138 intersected 18.0 metres of 0.61 grams per tonne gold including 2.0 metres of 4.36 grams per tonne gold and 27.0 metres of 0.58 grams per tonne gold including 2.0 metres of 3.19 grams per tonne gold Hole GL-17-140 intersected 12.0 metres of 1.41 grams per tonne gold including 2.0 metres of 5.75 grams per tonne gold Note: Assaying for the 2017/2018 Goldlund drill programs is being done by SGS Canada Inc. (SGS) at their laboratories in Red Lake, ON. and Burnaby, BC. Reported widths are drilled core lengths; true widths are unknown at this time. Assay values are uncut. The 2017/2018 drilling campaigns at Goldlund have been designed to accomplish four primary objectives: Convert Inferred Mineral Resources within the resource area (Zones 1, 5 and 7) into the Indicated Mineral resource category; Test drill deeper exploration targets within Zone 7; Identify and add additional mineralization within areas that are adjacent to the current resource boundary; and Test drill additional exploration targets within other areas (outside of the current resource boundary) within the Goldlund Gold Property. The 13 drill hole results (Figure 1) presented in this news release represent infill holes which targeted mineralization in Zone 1. While twelve out of the thirteen holes intersected gold mineralization, this latest round of drilling was limited in extent in order to avoid intersecting historic underground workings. Areas of Zone 1 had previously been mined and therefore contain several levels of existing underground workings. Accordingly, these latest holes had to be positioned to avoid drilling through existing levels or stopes, and we believe that some of the holes may not have reached the key mineralized zones which occur closer to the footwall of the zone. During this latest drill campaign, Zone 1 mineralization has also been encountered at depths greater than intersected in earlier drilling, for example in hole GL-17-115 (previously reported in the Companys news release dated February 8, 2018), where gold mineralization was encountered at depths from 578 to 622 metres (44 metres of 0.78 g/t gold, including 2 metres of 5.11 g/t gold and 2 metres of 4.11 g/t gold). Jeff Swinoga, President and Chief Executive Officer of First Mining, stated, These Phase 2 infill drill holes have been very promising, with most of the holes having intersected gold mineralization, and were designed to provide greater confidence in the gold mineralization at Goldlund which is currently confined within a strike length of only three kilometres. Our next exploration program at Goldlund will entail drilling several underexplored areas of the property along strike. Given that the total strike length of the Goldlund property is estimated to be approximately 50 kilometres, we are very excited to see if these exploration efforts will support our belief that gold mineralization continues along strike at Goldlund. The 2018 Phase 2 drill program at Goldlund has thus far been partially successful in achieving its objectives and the drilling is now complete, with assays for the remaining 11 holes still pending. Additional drilling in the same area will require a more precise 3D model of the historic underground workings to improve drill hole placement and orientation. During the summer of 2018, First Mining plans to broaden its exploration activities to other regional targets on the Goldlund property that are outside the current resource boundary. Gold observed during the current drilling program at Goldlund occurs both as fine disseminations in quartz vein stockworks and as more discrete larger grains up to 2 mm spatially associated with pyrite in the quartz veins. Calaverite, a gold telluride mineral, has been noted occasionally in higher grade intervals on fracture surfaces in the quartz veins. Higher grade gold distribution in the granodiorite dike is often, but not always, associated with zones of more intense quartz stockworking and potassic alteration. Figure 2 below displays a cross-section of the geology and gold mineralization for drill holes GL-17-117, GL-17-115 (results reported in the Companys earlier release dated February 8, 2018) and GL-18-136 to GL-18-138. Table 1. Drill Hole Assay Results from Goldlund Hole ID From (m) To (m) Length (m) Au g/t GL-17-122 GL-17-122 no significant mineralization GL-17-129 GL-17-129 272.0 296.0 24.0 0.40 inc 272.0 274.0 2.0 3.82 and 312.0 334.0 22.0 0.29 inc 330.0 332.0 2.0 1.07 GL-17-130 GL-17-130 165.0 171.0 6.0 0.32 and 362.0 374.0 12.0 0.25 GL-17-131 GL-17-131 25.0 41.5 16.5 0.29 inc 25.0 27.0 2.0 1.00 and 93.0 102.6 9.6 0.47 inc 93.0 95.0 2.0 0.92 and 158.0 165.0 7.0 0.28 GL-17-132 GL-17-132 216.0 220.0 4.0 0.53 GL-17-133 GL-17-133 325.0 337.0 12.0 0.17 GL-17-134 GL-17-134 149.0 150.4 1.4 1.37 and 215.0 277.0 62.0 0.15 inc 273.0 275.0 2.0 1.08 GL-17-135 GL-17-135 214.0 290.0 76.0 0.43 inc 214.0 218.0 4.0 1.17 and inc 272.0 274.0 2.0 5.86 and 322.0 324.0 2.0 3.67 GL-17-136 GL-17-136 158.0 230.0 72.0 6.26 inc 170.0 204.0 34.0 13.01 and inc 180.95 182.0 1.05 367.00 and inc 202.0 204.0 2.0 21.96 GL-18-137 GL-18-137 256.0 346.0 90.0 0.34 inc 262.0 264.0 2.0 1.19 and inc 292.0 296.0 4.0 1.37 and inc 330.0 332.0 2.0 4.33 and inc 344.0 346.0 2.0 3.02 GL-18-138 GL-18-138 330.0 348.0 18.0 0.61 inc 338.0 340.0 2.0 4.36 and 374.0 401.0 27.0 0.58 inc 376.0 380.0 4.0 1.13 and inc 394.0 396.0 2.0 3.26 GL-18-139 GL-18-139 302.0 370.0 68.0 0.62 inc 308.0 310.0 2.0 10.26 and inc 334.0 340.0 6.0 1.21 and inc 338.0 340.0 2.0 2.27 and inc 366.0 368.0 2.0 1.20 GL-18-140 GL-18-140 208.0 220.0 12.0 1.41 inc 212.0 214.0 2.0 5.75 and inc 216.0 218.0 2.0 2.24 and 318.0 380.0 62.0 0.32 inc 318.0 322.0 4.0 1.33 and inc 338.0 340.0 2.0 1.96 Assaying for the 2017/2018 Goldlund drill programs is being done by SGS at their laboratories in Red Lake, Ontario and Burnaby, BC. Prepared samples are analyzed for gold by either Bulk Leach Extractable Gold (BLEG) assay techniques or by lead fusion fire assay with an atomic absorption spectrometry (AAS) finish. Multi-element analysis on the mineralized zones is also being undertaken by two-acid aqua regia digestion with ICP-MS and AES finish. Figure 1. Plan Map: Table 2. Drill Hole Locations Hole ID Azimuth Dip Final Depth (m) UTM East UTM North Section GL-17-122 0 -90 263 546700 5527250 546700E GL-17-129 0 -90 368 546800 5527290 546800E GL-17-130 0 -90 401 546800 5527270 546800E GL-17-131 0 -90 206 546850 5527365 546850E GL-17-132 0 -90 225 546850 5527345 546850E GL-17-133 0 -90 413 546850 5527305 546850E GL-17-134 0 -90 332 546900 5527350 546900E GL-17-135 0 -90 365 546950 5527380 546950E GL-17-136 0 -90 245 547000 5527440 547000E GL-18-137 0 -90 377 547000 5527410 547000E GL-18-138 0 -90 401 547000 5527380 547000E GL-18-139 0 -90 386 547050 5527435 547050E GL-18-140 0 -90 395 547100 5527450 547100E Figure 2. Cross-Section through the Goldlund Project: QA/QC Procedures The QA/QC program for the 2017/2018 drilling programs at Goldlund consists of the submission of duplicate samples and the insertion of certified reference materials and blanks at regular intervals. These are inserted at a rate of one standard for every 20 samples (5% of total) and one blank for every 30 samples (3% of total). The standards used in the 2017/2018 program consist of 5 different gold grades ranging from 1 to 9 g/t, and are sourced from CDN Resource Laboratories in Langley, BC. Blanks have been sourced locally from barren granitic material. Field duplicates from quartered core, as well as coarse or pulp duplicates taken from coarse reject material or pulverized splits, are also submitted at regular intervals with an insertion rate of 4% for field duplicates and 4% for coarse or pulp duplicates. Additional selected duplicates are being submitted for screened metallic fire assay analysis and to an umpire lab for check assaying. SGS also undertake their own internal coarse and pulp duplicate analysis to ensure proper sample preparation and equipment calibration. Dr. Chris Osterman, P.Geo., COO of First Mining, is the qualified person for the purposes of National Instrument 43-101 Standards of Disclosure for Mineral Projects (NI 43-101) and he has reviewed and approved the scientific and technical disclosure contained in this news release. ABOUT THE GOLDLUND PROJECT The Goldlund deposit is situated within a land package of approximately 280 square kilometres (28,000 hectares) referred to as the Goldlund Gold Project. The Property has a strike-length of over 50 kilometres in the Wabigoon Subprovince. Goldlund is an Archean lode-gold project located in northwestern Ontario, approximately 60 kilometres from the township of Dryden. The claims that make up the land package cover the historic Goldlund and Windward mines. On January 9, 2017, the Company announced an initial mineral resource estimate for Goldlund that was prepared by WSP Canada Inc. in accordance with NI 43-101. At a 0.4 g/t Au cut-off grade, the Goldlund deposit contains pit constrained Indicated Mineral Resources of 9.3 million tonnes at 1.87 g/t gold, or 560,000 ounces of gold. At a 0.4 g/t gold cut-off grade, the Goldlund deposit contains pit constrained Inferred Mineral Resources of 40.9 million tonnes at 1.33 g/t gold, or 1,750,000 ounces of gold. The technical report for this resource estimate, which is titled Technical Report and Resource Estimation Update on the Goldlund Project and is dated February 7, 2017, is available under the Companys SEDAR profile at www.sedar.com, and is also available on the Companys website at www.firstmininggold.com. ABOUT FIRST MINING GOLD CORP. First Mining Gold Corp. is an emerging development company with a diversified portfolio of gold projects in North America. Having assembled a large resource base of seven million ounces of gold in the Measured and Indicated categories and five million ounces of gold in the Inferred category in mining friendly jurisdictions of eastern Canada, First Mining is now focused on advancing its assets towards production. The Company currently holds a portfolio of 25 mineral assets in Canada, Mexico and the United States. For further information, please contact Jeff Swinoga, President and CEO at 604-639-8854, or Derek Iwanaka, Vice President of Investor Relations at 604-639-8824, or visit our website at www.firstmininggold.com. ON BEHALF OF FIRST MINING GOLD CORP. Keith Neumeyer Keith Neumeyer Chairman Cautionary Note Regarding 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 and United States securities legislation including the United States Private Securities Litigation Reform Act of 1995. These forward-looking statements are made as of the date of this news release. Forward-looking statements are frequently, but not always, identified by words such as "expects, "anticipates, "believes, plans, projects, "intends, "estimates, envisages, "potential, "possible, strategy, goals, objectives, or variations thereof or stating that certain actions, events or results "may", "could", "would", "might" or "will" be taken, occur or be achieved, or the negative of any of these terms and similar expressions. Forward-looking statements in this news release relate to future events or future performance and reflect current estimates, predictions, expectations or beliefs regarding future events and include, but are not limited to, statements with respect to: (i) the estimated amount and grade of Mineral Resources at Goldlund; (ii) future exploration activities by First Mining on other regional targets on the Goldlund property that are outside the current resource boundary; and (iii) the potential for exploration upside at Goldlund. All forward-looking statements are based on First Mining's or its consultants' current beliefs as well as various assumptions made by them and information currently available to them. The most significant assumptions are set forth above, but generally these assumptions include: (i) the presence of and continuity of metals at Goldlund at estimated grades; (ii) the capacities and durability of various machinery and equipment; and (iii) success in realizing proposed drilling programs. Although the Companys management considers these assumptions to be reasonable based on information currently available to it, they may prove to be incorrect. By their very nature, forward-looking statements involve inherent risks and uncertainties, both general and specific, and risks exist that estimates, forecasts, projections and other forward-looking statements will not be achieved or that assumptions do not reflect future experience. We caution readers not to place undue reliance on these forward-looking statements as a number of important factors could cause the actual outcomes to differ materially from the beliefs, plans, objectives, expectations, anticipations, estimates assumptions and intentions expressed in such forward-looking statements. These risk factors may be generally stated as the risk that the assumptions and estimates expressed above do not occur as forecast, but specifically include, without limitation: (i) risks relating to variations in the mineral content within the material identified as Mineral Resources from that predicted; (ii) general risks related to exploration drilling programs; (iii) developments in world metals markets; (iv) risks relating to fluctuations in the Canadian dollar relative to the US dollar; (v) managements discretion to refocus the Companys exploration efforts and/or alter the Companys short and long term business plans; and (vi) the additional risks described in First Mining's Annual Information Form for the year ended December 31, 2017 filed with the Canadian securities regulatory authorities under the Companys SEDAR profile at www.sedar.com, and in First Minings Annual Report on Form 40-F filed with the SEC on EDGAR. First Mining cautions that the foregoing list of factors that may affect future results is not exhaustive. When relying on our forward-looking statements to make decisions with respect to First Mining, investors and others should carefully consider the foregoing factors and other uncertainties and potential events. First Mining does not undertake to update any forward-looking statement, whether written or oral, that may be made from time to time by the Company or on our behalf, except as required by law. Cautionary Note to United States Investors This news release has been prepared in accordance with the requirements of the securities laws in effect in Canada, which differ from the requirements of U.S. securities laws. Unless otherwise indicated, all resource and reserve estimates included in this news release have been prepared in accordance with National Instrument 43-101 Standards of Disclosure for Mineral Projects ("NI 43-101) and the Canadian Institute of Mining, Metallurgy, and Petroleum 2014 Definition Standards on Mineral Resources and Mineral Reserves. NI 43-101 is a rule developed by the Canadian Securities Administrators which establishes standards for all public disclosure an issuer makes of scientific and technical information concerning mineral projects. Canadian standards, including NI 43-101, differ significantly from the requirements of the United States Securities and Exchange Commission ("SEC), and mineral resource and reserve information contained herein may not be comparable to similar information disclosed by U.S. companies. In particular, and without limiting the generality of the foregoing, the term "resource does not equate to the term "reserves. Under U.S. standards, mineralization may not be classified as a "reserve unless the determination has been made that the mineralization could be economically and legally produced or extracted at the time the reserve determination is made. The SEC's disclosure standards normally do not permit the inclusion of information concerning "measured mineral resources, "indicated mineral resources or "inferred mineral resources or other descriptions of the amount of mineralization in mineral deposits that do not constitute "reserves by U.S. standards in documents filed with the SEC. Investors are cautioned not to assume that any part or all of mineral deposits in these categories will ever be converted into reserves. U.S. investors should also understand that "inferred mineral resources have a great amount of uncertainty as to their existence and great uncertainty as to their economic and legal feasibility. It cannot be assumed that all or any part of an "inferred mineral resource will ever be upgraded to a higher category. Under Canadian rules, estimated "inferred mineral resources may not form the basis of feasibility or pre-feasibility studies except in rare cases. Investors are cautioned not to assume that all or any part of an "inferred mineral resource exists or is economically or legally mineable. Disclosure of "contained ounces in a resource is permitted disclosure under Canadian regulations; however, the SEC normally only permits issuers to report mineralization that does not constitute "reserves by SEC standards as in-place tonnage and grade without reference to unit measures. The requirements of NI 43-101 for identification of "reserves are also not the same as those of the SEC, and reserves reported by the Company in compliance with NI 43-101 may not qualify as "reserves under SEC standards. Accordingly, information concerning mineral deposits set forth herein may not be comparable with information made public by companies that report in accordance with U.S. standards. Vancouver, British Columbia--(Newsfile Corp. - April 17, 2018) - Lupaka Gold Corp. (TSXV: LPK) (FSE: LQP) ("Lupaka Gold" or the "Company") is pleased to provide a development update on the Company's 100% owned Invicta Gold Development Project ("Invicta Project" or "Invicta"). Highlights: Main access road construction is 65% advanced, completion expected in May 2018 Operations team substantially in place, rehabilitation of the 3400 Level approximately 50% complete 3430 Level cross-cut completed, continuity and consistency of hanging wall split and footwall zones confirmed between 3400 and 3430 Levels 8,000 tonnes of mineralized development material to be toll processed in May Project remains on track and on budget, commercial production at 350 tonnes per day (tpd) expected to be reached in the third-quarter of 2018 (Q3/18) Fully financed for the development of Invicta (refer to February 13, 2018 news release) "With our operational team now substantially in place, the development and rehabilitation of Invicta has rapidly advanced and the Company is well positioned to reach commercial production, at 350 tonnes per day, during the third quarter of 2018. While continuing to rehabilitate and develop the Invicta mine, 8,000 tonnes of mineralized development material will be sent for processing and evaluation at regional toll milling facilities in May, the proceeds of which will offset development costs. The 3430 Level cross-cut has been completed and the continuity and consistency of the hanging wall and footwall veins has been confirmed from the 3400 Level up to the 3430 Level. Sublevel preparation for mining of the footwall vein between the 3400 and 3430 Levels is progressing well. We are pleased to report that overall, the project remains on time and on budget." Will Ansley, President and CEO of Lupaka Gold Road Construction Progress Upgrades to the 28 kilometre main access road, from the paved highway to the Invicta Project, are approximately 65% advanced. The upgrade work includes widening the road from four meters to approximately six meters, construction of four by-passes to circumvent communities and difficult portions of the road where numerous switchbacks occurred, the development of borrow pits to obtain road surfacing materials, improving the road surface to allow 30 tonne haulage trucks and heavy machinery to travel, and the installation of berms and drainage ditches. Along with the reduction of traffic within the communities and increasing the efficiency of hauling, one of the main and most important benefits of these improvements is increasing safety conditions. Heavy rainfall, thick fog, and a delay in obtaining the explosives licence initially impeded road upgrade productivity; approximately 20% of the length of the road requires blasting prior to removal with excavators. During December and January the advance rate of road construction was approximately 150 meters per day, however, the current rate is in the range of 300 meters per day. Depending on precipitation levels, the Company is targeting completion of the road project in May 2018. Invicta Development and Rehabilitation Update Development and rehabilitation work at Invicta is progressing well and the Company anticipates it will commence production from the 3400 Level at a rate of 350 tpd in Q3/18. Recruitment of the key operations team personnel was completed in Q1/18 which included the Director of Operations, Mine Manager, Chief Geologist, Superintendent of Production & Mine Planning, and other related technical personnel. The operations team is overseeing and directing the mining and road contractors, as well as preparing the mine development and production plans. During the second quarter of 2018, the Invicta camp facilities will be expanded from 65 people to allow for up to 130 persons. Figure 1 Invicta Development Plan (3D Oblique Long Section) Several enhancements have been made to the initial mine plan as outlined in the March 2018 Preliminary Economic Assessment ("PEA"). As illustrated in Figure 1 above, two vertical material transport raises originally contemplated in the PEA have been eliminated, resulting in a savings of approximately US$250,000, through the use of draw points on the 3400 Level. The 3400 Level will be the main haulage level for mineralized material and a decision has been made to increase the dimension of 120 metres of the 3400 Level from 3.5 metres ('m') wide x 3.0 m high to 4.5 m wide x 4.0 m high in order to allow access of 30 tonne haulage trucks, which can then haul directly to the processing plant. Small mineralized material storage chambers will be constructed underground to ensure a continuous flow of mineralized material from the mine to the plant. Mineralized material will be loaded into the waiting trucks from the underground stations on 3400 Level and travel directly to the process plant, thereby eliminating the need to construct and operate a reloading platform 26 kilometres from the mine. The investment in widening the 3400 Level is budgeted to be approximately US$500,000, however, direct haulage (avoiding the use of a reload station) will lower future operating costs and payback on the investment is estimated to be approximately one year. Furthermore, increasing the dimensions and haulage capacity of the 3400 Level allows Lupaka to more easily increase the mines output in future years above the current plan of 350 tpd. Other efforts on the 3400 Level includes replacing and enhancing the existing ground support systems, installation of services, refuge and vehicle bypasses, and a ventilation system that includes two raises (2.0 m x 2.0 m) which will provide a continuous flow of fresh air to the 3400, 3430 and future sublevels, as well as providing secondary egress points. Approximately 90 meters of the required 180 metres has been rehabilitated on the 3400 Level, and development of the first ventilation raise has commenced. The 3430 Level cross-cut was completed advancing a total of 149 m, intersecting the hanging wall split at 133 m and the footwall zone at 142 m. Mineralization in both zones is visually consistent containing coarse grains of chalcopyrite, sphalerite, and galena, with the mineralization 30 metres below on the 3400 Level. Evaluation of Toll Milling Facilities Approximately 8,000 tonnes of mineralized development material will be sent to regional toll milling facilities for processing in May, at different throughput levels, in order to assess the suitability and optimal recoveries available from the plants. Approximately 2,000 tonnes of mineralized development material is currently stockpiled on surface. Josnitoro Project The Josnitoro joint venture agreement ("JV") with Hochschild Mining plc required the Company to obtain a community agreement for exploration by March 2018. Lupaka was unable to obtain a community agreement and requests for an extension with Hochschild were unsuccessful, resulting in termination of the JV. As the focus for the Company continues to be the advancement of Invicta into production, no significant activities were performed on the JV, and there were no carrying costs associated with the property. Neither the TSX Venture Exchange nor its Regulation Service Provider (as the term is defined in the policies of the TSX Venture Exchange) accepts responsibility for the adequacy of this news release. About Lupaka Gold Lupaka is an active Canadian-based company focused on creating shareholder value through discoveries and strategic development of its assets in some of the most prolific mining regions of Peru. Invicta Gold Development Project 100% owned, the Company's flagship project is an advanced stage gold-copper polymetallic underground deposit located approximately 120 kilometres north of Lima. Over $12 million of capital has been spent by previous owners on development and infrastructure at Invicta, and management expects to commence potential production in the second half of 2018 by using third-party mining contractors and utilizing the existing adit and workings. The Invicta project is fully permitted and community agreements are in place. The potential underground operation will be focused on underground extraction of Indicated Mineral Resources and Inferred Mineral Resources from the Atenea vein within close proximity to the existing 3400 Level adit (up to 130 metres above the 3400 Level). Invicta's approved EIA allows for mine production of up to 1,000 tpd, although the current mining plan is targeting 350 tpd. Cautionary Note Regarding the Invicta Production Decision The decision to commence potential production at the Invicta Gold Project and the Company's plans for a mining operation as referenced herein (the "Production Decision and Plans") are based on economic models prepared by the Company in conjunction with management's knowledge of the property and the existing estimate of Indicated and Inferred Mineral Resources on the property, supplemented by the 2018 PEA. The Production Decision and Plans were not based on a preliminary economic assessment, a pre-feasibility study or a feasibility study of mineral reserves demonstrating economic and technical viability. Accordingly, there is increased uncertainty and economic and technical risks of failure associated with the Production Decision and Plans, in particular the risk that mineral grades will be lower than expected, the risk that construction or ongoing mining operations are more difficult or more expensive than expected, the risk that the Company will not be able to transport or sell the mineralized material it produces to local custom toll mills on the terms it expects, or at all; production and economic variables may vary considerably, due to the absence of a detailed economic and technical analysis according to and in accordance with NI 43-101. FOR FURTHER INFORMATION PLEASE CONTACT: Will Ansley, President & C.E.O. This email address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it. Tel: (416) 862-5257 or visit the Company's profile at www.sedar.com or its website at www.lupakagold.com Qualified Person The technical information in this document has been reviewed and approved by Dan Kivari, PEng., Director of Operations of the Company, and a Qualified Person as defined by National Instrument 43-101. Mr. Kivari has verified the scientific and technical information, including sampling, analytical and operational data underlying the information or opinions contained in this news release. Cautionary Statements Regarding Forward Looking Information All statements, trend analysis and other information contained in this press release relative to anticipated future events or results constitute forward-looking statements. All statements, other than statements of historical fact, included herein, including, without limitation, statements relating to improvements in the road to the Invicta Project and its anticipated benefits and the timing of completion of the improvements, the timing of the commencement of potential production from the Invicta Project and the generation of cash therefrom, the anticipated methods of production, the receipt of and anticipated use of proceeds of the PLI Financing, the Company's plans and intentions for Invicta, mineral resource estimates, are forward-looking statements. Forward-looking statements are based on assumptions, estimates and opinions of management at the date the statements are made that the Company believes are reasonable, including: that the repayment of the PLI Financing is consummated on the anticipated terms, that the supplies, equipment, personnel, permits, and local community approvals required to conduct the Company's planned pre-production and development activities will be available on reasonable terms, that the Company will be able to comply with the delivery and other obligations in the PLI Financing Agreement, that results of exploration activities will be consistent with management's expectations and that the Company will not experience any material accident, labour dispute, or failure of equipment and with respect to the planned mining operations at Invicta; that pre-production mine development can be completed in the time and for the cost projected; that the Company will be able to obtain funding for planned production expenses; that mineralization at Invicta will be of the grades and in the locations expected; that the Company will be able to extract and transport mineralized rock efficiently and sell the mineralized rock at the prices and in the manner and quantities expected; that permits will be received on the terms and timeline expected and that other regulatory or permitting issues will not arise; that mining methods can be employed in the manner and at the costs expected and that such methods yield the results the Company expects them to. However, forward-looking information 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 the forward-looking information. Such risks, uncertainties and other factors include, among others: all of the risks described in this news release; failure of the PLI Financing to complete on the proposed terms or at all, including due to the Company's inability to complete the conditions precedent, the risk that actual results of exploration and development activities will be different than anticipated; that the Company will not be able to comply with the delivery or other obligations in the PLI Financing Agreement and the risk that PLI will enforce its security over the Company's assets, including its mineral properties; that cost of labour, equipment or materials will increase more than expected; that the future price of gold will decline; that the Canadian dollar will strengthen against the U.S. dollar; that mineral resources are not as estimated; unexpected variations in mineral resources, grade or recovery rates; risks related to shipping mineralized rock; the risk that local mills cannot or will not buy or process mineralized rock from the planned production for the prices expected or at all; risk of accidents, labour disputes and other risks generally associated with mineral exploration; unanticipated delays in obtaining or failure to obtain community, governmental or regulatory approvals or financing; and all of the risks generally associated with the development of mining facilities and the operation of a producing mine, as well as the risks described in the Company's annual information form, which is available on SEDAR at www.sedar.com. Although the Company has attempted to identify important factors that could cause actual actions, events or results to differ materially from those described in forward-looking information, there may be other factors that cause actions, events or results to not be as anticipated, estimated or intended. There can be no assurance that forward-looking information will prove to be accurate, as actual results and future events could differ materially from those anticipated in such statements. Readers are cautioned not to place undue reliance on forward-looking information due to the inherent uncertainty thereof. Lupaka Gold does not undertake any obligation to update forward-looking statements except as required by applicable securities laws. Investors should not place undue reliance on forward-looking statements. Bungling, distortion and diplomatic doublespeak have hollowed out the deal to repatriate Rohingya from Bangladesh to Myanmar, with refugees refusing to return to a homeland that remains perilously insecure. We will have to stay here for a long period, maybe generations, Ali, a Rohingya refugee and father-of-six, told AFP from the Kutupalong mega-camp on Bangladeshs side of the border. In November Myanmar agreed to take back around 750,000 Rohingya from Bangladesh which hosts around one million of the Muslim minority driven out by waves of state violence stretching back to 1978. Yet so far, Myanmar has signed off just 675 names from a Bangladeshi list of 8,000 refugees, citing discrepancies in the verification forms proving their residency in Rakhine state. Months have elapsed, but no one has crossed back under the deal. A family of five was repatriated over the weekend from a wedge of no-mans land between the neighbours. Their return was swiftly pilloried as a PR stunt by rights groups and labelled not meaningful by Bangladeshs home minister. Whatever we say, they (Myanmar) agree, Asaduzzaman Khan told AFP. But they have not been able to create grounds for trust that they will take back these people. Myanmar does not want its Rohingya, denying them citizenship and classifying the minority as Bengalis who have seeped over the border illegally. It forced around 750,000 out in two major army operations in October 2016 and August 2017. The UN describes the August crackdown, ostensibly a kickback against Rohingya militant attacks, as ethnic cleansing. Under pressure, Myanmar agreed to take back those who can prove prior residence. Bangladesh wants swift, large-scale returns to ease pressure on the teeming camps in its Coxs Bazar district and salve domestic disquiet that one of Asias poorest countries is saddled with a huge refugee crisis. Yet the refugees listed by Dhaka do not even know they have been volunteered to return to a country where they allege widespread atrocities. We did not try to ascertain approval from them, a senior Bangladesh official told AFP on condition of anonymity. Dhaka has also muddied its side of the bargain. Under the repatriation agreement, the head of each Rohingya family must list the address of his or her father, mother and spouse in Myanmar. But those details were inexplicably omitted from the forms submitted to Myanmar, the official told AFP. With no new names planned for scrutiny, the process is at a standstill. Reluctant hosts For the Rohingya, return is the ultimate aim but only on condition of guaranteed safety and crucially citizenship, a red line to Myanmar authorities who stripped them of that status in 1982. With the monsoon looming they are bedding in for the long haul. The makeshift Kutupalong mega-camp is taking on permanent features as hulking drainage pipes are dug into hillsides and bamboo shacks are upgraded with concrete. But Bangladesh does not publicly air long-term settlement in its camps as an option. Dhaka has drawn an outcry by threatening to move up to 100,000 people to a flood-prone island in the Bay of Bengal. It says its biometric register of a million refugees should clear the way for large-scale returns, if the urgency is matched by the other side. But Myanmars sincerity is in shreds. On a first visit to the camps last week, a Myanmar official implored Rohingya to return to a changed country, where destroyed villages are being rebuilt and work awaits. Please come back first and taste it. Then, if you all feel satisfied, more can return, Social Welfare Minister Win Myat Aye told Rohingya leaders. But with villages razed, choking controls on movement in place and communal hatred still sharp, the UN says conditions inside Rakhine are not conducive for repatriation. Refugees are also well versed in the machinations of Myanmars bureaucracy, after generations trapped on a carousel of forced exile and short-lived return. We wont go back without citizenship and security theres no point, they will force us out again, said Mohammad Sadek, 24, a resident of Kutupalong. Over decades Myanmars army has rehashed history, rubbing out the Rohingyas legal status and spewing Islamaphobic rhetoric across the overwhelmingly Buddhist country. The identity card offered to returning Rohingya calls them Bengalis in effect making holders complicit in renouncing their own ancestral claims in Rakhine. Myanmar will likely allow a token number to return, says Francis Wade author of Myanmars Enemy Within. But the vast majority of Rohingya in the camps will likely live out their days there as will their children. Camps here, camps there In the impasse, Myanmars army has been busy. Bulldozers have levelled the remains of hundreds of Rohingya villages, while transit centres and temporary camps for returnees have sprung up. The army has added new bases while Rakhine Buddhists are being lured to the far north to rebalance the states demography. Independent access to Rakhine remains impossible. Somewhere between 400,000-500,000 Rohingya are left in Myanmar. Of those, around a quarter languish in IDP camps in from previous rounds of violence. We wont go back to live in camps there, said Rohingya refugee Mohammad Ihaya, 23. Its better to be in camps here. sj-sa/apj/ssm/aph/sls 169 Shares Share It is well known that smoking cigarettes negatively impacts health and leads to an increased risk of stroke, heart disease, lung cancer and death. No one debates this anymore. But it wasnt always this way, and it didnt come easily. In the 1940s, almost half of the population in the United States smoked, and the tobacco industry was subsequently incredibly powerful and politically active. It spent millions of dollars on politicians for their campaigns and the lobbyists who used to persuade them. In 1939, Dr. Ochsner and Dr. Debakey proposed smoking was a responsible factor in the development of cancer. Over the next two decades, research and evidence began to mount about the ill effects of cigarettes. People were dying. And Big Tobacco responded. They passionately questioned every piece of medical literature, claiming the science wasnt clear. They formed their own research groups. They spent more money in Washington. When the evidence about the effects of second-hand smoke came out, they touted smokers rights, claimed the research was false, and, yes, spend more money in Washington. Despite all these efforts, we are now a country with only 15% of adults as smokers. Smoking is banned on all flights. Not only can you not smoke inside most buildings now, many places regulate where you can smoke outside of buildings. How did this happen? Science. Physicians and researchers studied the effect of nicotine and cigarettes until the answer became so clear, Big Tobacco lost all credibility with their cries of fake science. No amount of lobbying and no amount of money could hide the truth. And armed with this truth, Congress took action. In 1965, Congress required warning labels on all packages of cigarettes. In 1987, Congress led to the smoking ban on airlines. Yes, people still smoke. But we, and Congress, have made it hard for them to do so. As physicians, we talk to our patients about what smoking does to their health. We create programs to help people stop smoking. We inform, educate and treat our patients with nicotine addiction. As a government, we have increased taxes on cigarettes, forced smokers to sit outside and imposed fines on violators of smoking bans. And these efforts have worked. There has been a significant reduction in the use of cigarettes in this country, and we are a healthier nation for that. Research, medical evidence, and science led to legislation which collectively led to an improvement in this countrys health despite an incredibly powerful lobbyist. We have done it before, and need to do it again with gun violence. But as physicians and researchers, our hands are tied. Gun violence and sepsis kill approximately the same number of people in this country every year, but gun violence has 0.7% of the amount of funding sepsis has. Gun violence is the least researched cause of death in this country and not just by a small amount. Gunshot wounds are a medical diagnosis, the same as diabetes. And think about how the health of this country would be affected if the sugar industry, through legislation, prevented us from studying diabetes? The Dickey Amendment, which led to a 96 percent drop in funding for CDC firearm injury prevention has to be repealed. Research into prevention of gun violence not only needs to be allowed, it needs to be encouraged and funded. It took almost 30 years for Congress to place warning labels on packs of cigarettes after Dr. Ochsner and Dr. Debakey first proposed the link between cigarettes and lung cancer. In that time, millions of people died while being lied to by tobacco lobbyists. How many more children have to die before Congress takes action to let us study how and why a child leaves for school in the morning and doesnt come home? What ended the debate about the world being flat vs. round? Science. What ended the debate about whether or not smoking was bad for you? Science. What can end the debate about how best to reduce and end gun violence in this country? Science. The time for firearm injury prevention is now. The time to study the risk factors for gun violence and develop effective prevention strategies is now. The time for science is now. Jamie Coleman is a trauma surgeon who blogs her self-titled site, Dr. Jamie Coleman. Image credit: Shutterstock.com 671 Shares Share Shortly after the publication of Independent practice: Both nurse practitioners and physicians should be outraged, the nurse practitioner (NP) leadership responded with a press release, denouncing the concerns that were cited, calling them rhetoric. But in contrast to this criticism from the political end of the NP spectrum, I was inundated by emails from working NPs across the country in support of the article. Since the NP leadership requested a response, I cant think of a better one than to present them with the words of their own constituents. In fact, in reading these comments, they may find that they themselves are the ones out of touch with the realities of health care delivery today. Take Ryan in Pennsylvania, for example. He felt so strongly about the article that he was compelled to write me: I am a young NP and have long been an outspoken opponent against independent practice. There is certainly enough work for all of us, and it scares and angers me that schools and professional NP societies are tarnishing our reputations in the changes they pursue. Or Pam, an acute care NP, who wrote, I read your article and so appreciated your approach to the issue and agree with many of your points. I, too, have patient safety first at the heart of my practice and do not believe independent practice is the ideal. I also agree that we are now pushing unqualified and largely clinically unsupervised nurses through cyber-programs that have no interest in failing a poorly prepared candidate. In their press release, the leadership argues that NPs are being held back by physicians, and are particularly critical of collaborative agreements, decrying them as financial vehicles designed to profit physicians. But many NPs wrote to me expressing their appreciation for such arrangements. Newer NPs recognize that there is much still to learn like Ryan, who wrote: I enjoy the collaborative nature of practicing under a physician and believe the strengths of an NP or PA are best utilized in that format. The strength of an intelligent person is knowing ones limits. Or Brian, a last-semester FNP/AGACNP student who has been an emergency department and intensive care nurse for a decade, who wrote: The fact of the matter is that I dont want to practice without a doc. This isnt an ego game, and I feel that many NPs (along with our professional organizations) are making it into such. But even the most seasoned NPs value a relationship with a physician, like Sherry, who wrote, As a veteran nurse of 34 years and an acute care NP for 11 years, I am fortunate to be in a wonderful collaborative practice at a community hospital in the suburbs of Chicago. I never take for granted the value of the physicians who dedicated their lives to medical school. I consider myself to be an old nurse with sharp physical assessment skills, a drive to always push myself to know more, but I will never believe my training is equal to a physician. Keep up your fight for the safety of all mankind, for some day we will occupy those critical care beds too. Mary, a self-described old NP with 20 years experience one of the first NPs in central Louisiana, pointed out the value of working with physicians. I agree and appreciate you voicing the reality of the difference in MD versus NP training. I feel that I had excellent university-based training, but it could never be equated to a residency. I feel I was trained to supplement/extend the physician care, not take its place. Carol, a family NP in Tennessee with almost 30 years of nursing experience before becoming an NP was very clear. I do not want complete autonomy; I do want collaboration with my physician cohorts. The press release had little response to one of the biggest concerns listed in my article: the decreased quality of NP education. This is something that working NPs and students wrote me about. Mary, the NP from Louisiana, wrote: I am appalled at the NP schools requiring no RN experience for admission. I was an RN for 23 years and still found the shift to NP a total paradigm shift. Pam, the ACNP from Illinois has seen this with her own eyes. When I began my program, there was a 22-year old girl who had not yet even sat for her RN licensure. I was astounded. Citing a colleague who recently graduated from the direct entry Vanderbilt program, Carol, the FNP from Tennessee wrote: Every nurse and non-nurse that can fog a mirror wants to go to NP school and can just about get accepted by one if the money is right. Doug, a DNP student, agreed: I refer to these online programs as fly-by-night practitioner programs I hate to see nurses with no experience or 1-2 years with a BSN and very little work experience allowed into NP or DNP programs. Unfortunately, this is what is happening. And M.R., a FNP student who is currently attending an online program writes: I could not agree with you more. Most of the [online] colleges will never match medical school training and hours dedicated to becoming a physician. My son is attending medical school. As a mother of a med student and as an RN trying to obtain my NP certificate, I understand your views. The NP press release concluded with a call to work together to increase access to health care. Perhaps they should take their cue from Sherry, ACNP, who wrote: Thank you for expressing your outrage with the state of health care with the projected shortage of physician providers. It is terribly unfortunate to watch the profession of nursing mass-produce nurses, and then allow these novice nurses to enter advanced practice programs that have limited curriculum to prepare them to care for patients without supervising physicians, much less independently. The NP leadership would be well-served to listen to its constituents, who are gravely suffering under their policies. As Carol lamented: The NP status meant something at one time; no more. I sincerely wish I had remained an RN. I feel like I must struggle for my identity now. Your concerns are valid, and you are not alone. Physicians, nurses, and patients working together can make a difference in health care. The author received permission to use each quote cited in the article. Rebekah Bernard is a family physician and the author of How to Be a Rock Star Doctor: The Complete Guide to Taking Back Control of Your Life and Your Profession. She can be reached at her self-titled site, Rebekah Bernard, MD. Image credit: Shutterstock.com Please allow ads as they help fund our trusted local news content. Kindly add us to your ad blocker whitelist. If you want further access to Ireland's best local journalism, consider subscribing to our ePaper and/or free daily Newsletter . Support our mission and join our community now. Audrey Young writes: There was a time when Leader of the Opposition used to be called the worst job in politics. That was before Simon Bridges got it. There hasnt been a happier Opposition Leader. The Government has had three miserable weeks out of the past four, mired in misfortune of its own making, including ministerial mishaps involving Clare Curran and Shane Jones, positioning on Russia, and hasty transport announcements. It is unusual to have an Opposition Leader so happy and a PM so clearly unhappy. But the lesson of the past few weeks is clear: the Opposition is capable of capitalising on its weaknesses and that constitutes a very successful start for Bridges. It was one thing for Bill English to say there has never been a stronger Opposition- numerically he was right. It is quite another to actually function strongly or competently. But it has, and from the top. It has been a fairly seamless transition for Bridges who has been in job only 47 days after a five-way contest for the job. Bridges has benefited from low expectations. Most observers are surprised that he has taken to the job so confidently. It doesnt mean he will be able to compete with Ardern for popularity. He is a more polarising figure. Justin Trudeau was very popular also. His biggest challenge is not to be liked but to be noticed by voters, and then to present himself as a strong alternative. Fortuitously, two of the Governments biggest issues of the day, roads and oil and gas, Bridges knows backwards as a former Transport Minister and former Energy Minister. And agree or disagree with him, they have given him a platform to speak with some knowledge and authority. Both issues will have a long running life in the term of this Government and both are defining issues. Not least they will both be crucial to Nationals bid to undermine New Zealand First as self-proclaimed champions of the regions. I think NZ First have shown themselves to be the Judas of the regions. In the days leading up to Mondays press conference, both had variously suggested former Health Minister Jonathan Coleman had been responsible for leaky buildings at Middlemore and that desperate health boards had been using their capital expenditure on operational expenditure (pretty much a sackable offence). In the absence of any supporting facts, Ardern decided to call the situation at Middlemore emblematic, a label which seems to mean it can still be used for political purposes even if it is not true. Indeed. Share this: Facebook Twitter LinkedIn More Reddit Pinterest Print Tumblr By Jacco Zwetsloot There are several unknowns in the lead-up to the Moon-Kim summit, but one of them is what kind of relationship North Korea really wants to have with the South. This is closely related to the question of what Kim Jong-un really wants. What are his end goals? Is it simply to ensure the stability of his system, and to ensure that North Korea survives as a separate country? Or is it to seek some form of unification with the South, whether that takes the form of a confederation or something else? These are top-level, big-picture issues. But it's important to also bear in mind things closer to the ground. For instance, it is important to take practical steps to build confidence and trust between the two Koreas. And perhaps these smaller steps can be indicative of Kim Jong-un's true attitudes and intentions, and might lead to bigger and better things. Therefore, I recommend President Moon Jae-in propose to Chairman Kim Jong-un a postal exchange, to begin before the end of this summer. It is a little-known or -remembered fact that there was a regular inter-Korean mail service until the outbreak of the Korean War. Each month a train would take mail from Seoul Station up across the 38th parallel to Haeju in the North. As far as I know, it has never been tried again, nor did previous presidents Kim Dae-jung and Roh Moo-hyun speak publicly about wanting to negotiate such a service with Pyongyang. So why try it now? Every year the number of people with relatives on the other side of the inter-Korean border dwindles. Separated families who remember a time before the Korean War are now in their 80s. Despite 18 rounds of divided family reunions, most still haven't had a chance to meet their long-lost spouses, siblings, children and so on. Due to the tremendous logistical and other costs of organizing reunions that look great on camera (but are so fleeting one might wonder if they cause more suffering than joy), it is unlikely enough rounds could ever be held to get all the separated families together. And that is assuming the current friendly atmosphere continues. This is why a postal exchange could be a low-key and logistically easy way to enable many Koreans from both sides of the DMZ to communicate. Vous etes confrontes a une infestation par la puce, la punaise de lit ? Voici plusieurs actions qui sont a mettre en uvre pour faire [] Kathmandu, April 17: The Indian embassy in Nepal's Biratnagar was attacked on Monday night, damaging a wall. As per various media reports, two people on motorcycle planted the bomb. No injuries have been reported so far. Superintendent of Police Arun Kumar BC said the office wall on the west side was slightly damaged in the explosion, according to Dainik Nepal. Security has been beefed up, following the attack. The role of ISI is suspected to be behind the attack and also said that they are planning attacks on other Indian embassies also. However, The Kathmandu Post reports that the investigating officers suspect cadres of Netra Bikram Chands Communist Party of Nepal to have caused the blast. The party had called a general strike in Biratnagar on Monday. In the past, there have been several instances when the Indian embassy in foreign locations have been attacked. Last year, a rocket landed inside Indian embassy in Kabul. No casualties were reported then. However, the 2008 bombing of Indian embassy killed 58 people and wounded 141. (The above story first appeared on LatestLY on Apr 17, 2018 09:50 AM IST. For more news and updates on politics, world, sports, entertainment and lifestyle, log on to our website latestly.com). New Delhi, April 17: In a new twist to the semen-balloon controversy, Forensic Science Laboratory confirmed that the balloons did not contain semen. The report stated that no semen could be detected on the exhibit which was submitted in connection with the case of semen-filled balloons being thrown at two students of Lady Sri Ram College on the eve of Holi in February. Two students of Lady Sri Ram College s had alleged that balloons with sticky substance were thrown at them on February 28. The students believed that balloons were filled semen. The girls filed complaint against the girl who allegedly threw these balloons. The girl who threw balloon was then asked to issue a written apology. Many people raised doubt of having balloons filled with semen. After the incident one of the girls told ANI, The balloons that were thrown at us had some kind of gooey material coming out of them. We have taken a written apology from the family of the girl who threw these balloons. We need to change the mindset of people who say that throwing balloons at someone is merely a mark of celebrating Holi. It is very inappropriate. After the news went viral anti-government voices condemned the action blaming government for its ideology of Hindutva. Many organisations also staged protests against this act. While Nupur Sharma, spokesperson of Bharatiya Janata Party had raised questions on the allegation by the students of Lady Sri Ram College. (The above story first appeared on LatestLY on Apr 17, 2018 11:26 PM IST. For more news and updates on politics, world, sports, entertainment and lifestyle, log on to our website latestly.com). Paediatric Cardiac team at SL Raheja Hospital A Fortis Associate performed the rare ROSS procedure to cure a five-year-old's congenital heart defect (CHD) recently. The procedure involves replacement of diseased aortic valve with the patients own pulmonary valve. This is an extremely technical procedure and requires clinical precision to achieve optimal results. The team of doctors that performed this rare procedure was led by Dr. Vijay Agarwal, Director- Head, Pediatric Cardiac and Transplant Surgery, SL Raheja Hospital A Fortis Associate. Master Soham Wagmare was diagnosed with CHD involving structural problems in his heart, in 2014. However, with financial constraints and lack of appropriate medical advice, no treatment was done to correct the defect. In 2017, when the patient was diagnosed with dengue and was treated at a local nursing home, his condition worsened. He was brought to the SL Raheja Hospital A Fortis Associate, under the care of Dr. Bhushan Chavan, Pediatric Cardiologist, at the hospital, for a cardiac evaluation. After clinical assessment, it was revealed that the patient had bicuspid aortic valve(BAV), a condition that results in formation of two leaflets or cusps instead of normal three, with aortic regurgitation or leakage. Under the leadership of Dr. Vijay Agarwal, a detailed treatment plan was drawn up and ROSS procedure was decided to be performed to correct this defect. Speaking on the case, Dr. Vijay Agarwal, Director- Head, Pediatric Cardiac and Transplant Surgery, SL Raheja Hospital-A Fortis Associate, said, We decided to perform ROSS procedure on Soham, as for children of this age, a suitable sized valve is not readily available. As the patients own Pulmonary Valve is used to replace the diseased valve, there is no rejection and it helps the body to respond swifter, as against implanting a foreign object. The need for blood thinning agents is also eliminated, helping the recovery process. Bicuspid aortic valve (BAV), a hereditary condition, with arotic regurgitation occurs in only two percent of the population. Out of which, a mere one percent of patients develop problems. Most babies with this condition have no symptoms, and the problem is not diagnosed until they are adults. Some people never find out that they have this problem. Severe risks like developing heart failure, swelling of the feet, breathless bouts, infection of the valves also known as Infective Endocarditis, pneumonia and swelling of the body are a sign of the heart function getting weaker, are involved while living with this condition. The survival time frame of this condition depends on the complications involved, each case is different from the other. (The above story first appeared on LatestLY on Apr 17, 2018 02:38 PM IST. For more news and updates on politics, world, sports, entertainment and lifestyle, log on to our website latestly.com). Toyota's performance offensive could include a hot-rodded Corolla Hatch, according to a recent report. "We see in the future - it's not impossible we could get a really nice Corolla or another type of car, and if that opportunity arose through our Gazoo Racing development we would put our hand up for it, said Sean Hanley, the vice president of Toyota Australia's sales and marketing department, in an interview with Australian website Motoring. Details remain few and far between; the regular model hasn't gone on sale yet. However, the steroid-injected Corolla Hatch would likely compete in the same segment as the Volkswagen GTI; we can't imagine a full-blown Ford Focus RS rival. Though this is pure speculation, it could arrive with a turbocharged four-cylinder engine tuned to deliver between 200 and 250 horsepower, front-wheel drive and a six-speed manual transmission. Expect bigger brakes and suspension modifications, too. Unveiled a few weeks ago at the New York auto show, the all-new Toyota Corolla Hatch will reach showrooms in the coming months. Don't expect to see the hotter variant of it at launch. Hanley told Motoring the model won't arrive until 2020 at the earliest, assuming it receives the green light for production. It's too early to tell whether we'll see it in America. It would make sense, but Toyota chose not to sell the Yaris GRMN on our side of the pond. Photography by Ronan Glon. The construction company that is due to finish two schools in Portlaoise has a reasonable chance of survival. The High Court has confirmed the appointment of an examiner to building contractors the Sammon Group which got into difficulty over the devastating collapse of UK construction giant Carillion. The Irish group, which is involved in several major school building projects in Ireland sought the protection of the courts is owed some 8m by an entity involving Carillion. Earlier this month Mr Michael McAteer of Grant Thornton Ireland as interim examiner to the Co Kildare based Sammon Contracting Group and related companies Sammon Contracting Ireland Ltd and Miceal Sammon Woodcraft Ltd. The court was satisfied to appoint Mr McAteer after an independent expert's report stated the companies have a reasonable prospect of surviving if certain steps are taken. These steps include the examiner putting together an agreement scheme of arrangement with the group's creditors. If that scheme, which Mr McAteer has up to 100 days to put together, is approved by the High Court it will allow the group continue to trade as a going concern. The matter returned before Ms Justice the High Court on Monday when Ms Justice Miriam O'Regan confirmed Mr McAteer as examiner of the firms. There were no objections to the application. The group, which employs more than 216 people, won the contract to build the Holy Family Junior and Senior primary schools in Portlaoise. While the schools are largely complete the snag list remains to be signed off. The school's board of management has yet to pay the balance due to Sammon. The companies were also hired by an entity that included Carillion to build several education facilities in Ireland. These include the construction of schools in Carlow, Kells, Co Meath, Wexford and two in Bray Co Wicklow. Other separate projects the group is working on include the Maynooth Educational Campus. It is also working on projects in Cork, Shannon Airport, Waterford and Dublin. Seeking Mr McAteer's appointment last month barrister Ross Gorman Bl for the group said it was hired to build five schools and the Institute for education by an SPV that included Carillion known as 'Inspired Spaces.' That contract was worth approximately 87m to the group, counsel said. His client was paid on a monthly basis after works commenced in 2016. However the collapse of Carillion with debts of over 1.5Bn has had "a devastating and immediate impact" on the companies, counsel said. Payments from the SPV to the Sammon companies ceased last December, counsel said adding it was owed 8m by the SPV. As a result, the group has been unable to pay its suppliers and subcontractors working on those projects. The impact of Carillion had contaminated the group's other projects, the court also heard. The court heard the group is confident that following a successful examinership it will be in a position to complete its contracts on time and return to profitability. Eleven houses that were built during the boom and left as a ghost estate have finally been finished and opened to families on the social housing list in Laois. The houses in Cluainin estate in Mountrath were bought by Oaklee Housing as partially completed units in a receiver sale in November 2015. Acquiring and restoring eleven unfinished houses has cost over 1.3 million. The combination of funding came from the Housing Finance Agency, the Capital Advance Leasing Facility (CALF) via the Housing, Planning and Local Government and with the support of Laois County Council. Oaklee Housing carried out significant repair and structural work to bring the Cluainin estate homes up to scratch and this week keys were handed over to a number of local families. It has taken over two years to bring these homes up to standard for social housing tenants. Some damage was caused by vandalism over the years and a number of windows were boarded up. Sharon Cosgrove is the Chief Executive of Oaklee Housing. The handover of these homes is a welcome step towards meeting housing need and is welcome news for those on the housing list. "The unfinished units required significant investment and work to bring the homes up to the high standards required. Our contractor has worked diligently and professionally and we are very pleased with the quality of the finished accommodation. Oaklee Housing continues to play its part to help meet delivery targets in the Rebuilding Ireland programme. The completion and allocation of these homes is a good example of how we are working in partnership with local authorities, government agencies and developers to advance the delivery of homes for those in housing need," she said. In January 2017, Brian Stanley TD called for answers on the length of time it was taking for the houses to be finished. In a statement to the Leinster Express at the time Oaklee said the delay was down to 'critical issues'. Following the purchase of the units, an architect was appointed to oversee the completion, and detailed inspections revealed a number of critical issues with the 'as constructed' timber frame units. The delay in allocating these properties is unfortunate, however, Oaklee must ensure tenant safety and compliance with the building control legislation, it said. Tipperary-based contractor Leetherm Construction completed remedial works on the homes in Mountrath, which includes a mix of two and three-bedroom semi-detached houses and townhouses. Laois County Council nominated households to the accommodation which will be managed by Oaklee Housing. Established in 2001 Oaklee Housing is one of Irelands leading social housing providers managing 900 homes. At the end of January 2018 there was a total of 1,800 on the housing waiting list in Laois. From left: Donal Brennan, Director of Services, Laois County Council; Sharon Cosgrove, CEO Oaklee Housing; Joseph and Luke Murphy, Doreen Chambers, residents; Nicholas Barrtt, Oaklee Housing; Chris White, Oaklee Housing; and Michael Rainey, Housing Officer Laois County Council. Picture by Kevin Byrne Photography. Doreen Chambers (centre) receives the keys to her new home at the Cluainin estate in Mountrath, County Laois from Sharon Cosgrove, CEO Oaklee Housing and Michael Rainey, Housing Officer Laois County Council. Picture: Kevin Byrne Photography. Sinn Fein TD Brian Stanley at the Cluinin Housing Estate in Mountrath in January 2017. Mass goers in Laois received a pro-life pastoral message from Bishop Denis Nulty last weekend, outlining his views on the question of removing the right to life of the unborn child from the Constitution of Ireland and warning that it could lead to an "era of eugenics". Bishop Nulty, who hit the headlines in relation to this message this week, stated that repealing the Eighth Amendment to allow for abortion in Ireland could pave the way for the introduction of eugenics. As part of his pro-life message, he warned that repealing the Eighth Amendment would create an abortion culture, with serious implications for those with disabilities. Last weekend, copies of his messaged entitled Supporting a Culture of Life were distributed at mass in the 56 parishes of the Diocese of Kildare and Leighlin which serves over 200,000 Catholics. The diocese covers parts of Laois, Kildare, Offaly, Kilkenny, Wicklow and all of County Carlow. It was delivered throughout the dioceses to priests serving mass last weekend. It states that: I believe that a culture that permits abortion cannot be separated from a culture that seeks full control over the gift of life. In recent years, I have the sense that we are walking with our eyes closed into an era of eugenics, unwilling to look where we are going but still continuing on. I know I am not alone in thinking this. Catholic Communications Officer Emma Sisk confirmed that more messages will be delivered at masses throughout Laois ahead of next months Referendum. The bishop, in collaboration with the Council of Priests, have agreed that appropriate speakers can be considered by local priests to address a congregation. The purpose of the speakers is always to complement the teaching role of priests, she said. All content is discussed in advance with a priority given to sensitivity around language and tone. The Diocese of Kildare and Leighlin has a great tradition of inviting expert and experienced speakers to address Masses and other parish celebrations on important issues. Mass goers in Kildare received a pro-life pastoral message from Bishop Denis Nulty last weekend, outlining his views on the question of removing the right to life of the unborn child from the Constitution of Ireland and warning that it could lead to an "era of eugenics". Bishop Nulty, who hit the headlines in relation to this message this week, stated that repealing the Eighth Amendment to allow for abortion in Ireland could pave the way for the introduction of eugenics. As part of his pro-life message, he warned that repealing the Eighth Amendment would create an abortion culture which could lead to the era of eugenics, with serious implications for those with disabilities. Last weekend, copies of his messaged entitled Supporting a Culture of Life were distributed at mass in the 56 parishes of the Diocese of Kildare and Leighlin which serves over 200,000 Catholics. The diocese covers parts of Kildare, Laois, Offaly, Kilkenny, Wicklow and all of County Carlow. It was delivered throughout the dioceses to priests serving mass last weekend. It states that: I believe that a culture that permits abortion cannot be separated from a culture that seeks full control over the gift of life. In recent years, I have the sense that we are walking with our eyes closed into an era of eugenics, unwilling to look where we are going but still continuing on. I know I am not alone in thinking this. Catholic Communications Officer Emma Sisk confirmed that more messages will be delivered at masses throughout Kildare ahead of next months Referendum. The bishop, in collaboration with the Council of Priests, have agreed that appropriate speakers can be considered by local priests to address a congregation. The purpose of the speakers is always to complement the teaching role of priests, she said. All content is discussed in advance with a priority given to sensitivity around language and tone. The Diocese of Kildare and Leighlin has a great tradition of inviting expert and experienced speakers to address Masses and other parish celebrations on important issues. The Principal of St Paul's school in Monasterevin has appeared before the Joint Committee on Education and Skills in the Dail this afternoon. The lapse in time between the announcement of the construction of new schools and the time at which their construction is completed was on the agenda of the Committee on Education and Skills today at 3.30pm, Tuesday, 17 April 2018. Also appearing before the Committee were officials from Department of Education and Skills and Representatives from Ballinteer Educate Together National School; Whitecross National School, Julianstown. St Pauls Principal, Brian Bergin described the delays in the building process as frustrating to date. Mr Bergin spoke of how the initial hopes of a new school in 2005 gradually turned to frustration, anger and despair due to the long waiting process. He asked if the Department of Education could expedite the time frame of March 2021 for the new school at Moore Abbey. He also wanted to know what role did the State play in choosing the site at Moore Abbey and why is there on going legal issues around procurement of the site. "How can we expedite this?," he asked. He also asked why the site reduce by 50 per cent despite the size of the project increasing in terms of pupil size. And why the Department of Education does not have a dedicated contact per school in terms of communication. He said the impact on staff was like being on a roller coaster with delay after delay, adding that staff has grown in the school from 25 to 44 since 2005, while student intake has increased by 100 per cent and space to work is now 'a difficultly'. "We have converted a store room for refugees while they are on an orientation programme in the town," he said. "The staff and students are wonderful but it is embarrassing when they come back to the school and say you won't believe what they have - the other local schools in our area." He added that the issues for St Paul's relates back to the site, which came with lots of problems, and a lack of a dedicated project manager from the Department of Education. "I feel like the project manager - we don't have a dedicated project manager at the Department of Education - I feel like one but I am powerless. I have been told to be thankful (by the Department of Education) you are on a list - how many lists to we need to be on? I am getting emotional now - it has been hell. Managing expectations of this has been difficult. We feel neglected and that's really sad. How could it be better? If all the state agencies come together to identify sites that don't cause the problems that ours did. The DES can expedite our project by giving it full attention and resources it requires." Committee Chair Fiona OLoughlin, TD said that the situation in St Paul's is like teaching in a third world, adding that what is needed is equity and fairness and a school to be delivered within a certain period of time. She added that recommendations will be made to the Minister for Education. Kildare-based company Profile Systems are to become grade 1 sponsors at this years Punchestown Festival as they celebrate 40 years in business. The Profile Systems Champion Novice Hurdle is one of the feature races on festival Friday, April 27, and boasts an impressive list of former winners including Nichols Canyon, Vautour and Asian Maze. Based in Naas and 100% Irish owned, Profile Systems are industry leaders in the distribution of doors and windows systems to the domestic and commercial market. The company represents the worlds leading brands in uPVC and aluminium products. 2018 marks a very special anniversary for the company who will celebrate in style at Punchestowns brand new Corinthian Restaurant on the day of the Profile Systems race. Looking forward to the occasion Peter Kenny, Profile Systems MD said: We very much look forward to marking the 40th anniversary of the company at the Punchestown Festival where we wanted to thank our International suppliers and business partners for their support and loyalty over the years. We are delighted to be able to support such a prestigious national event and one that is so important to the local community. Head of Sponsorship at Punchestown, Janet Creighton commented on the announcement: It is a pleasure to welcome Profile Systems to the Punchestown festival as they celebrate 40 years in business. It is especially poignant as the company is a local one and we really do appreciate their support and will make sure that this party is one they and their guests will remember for many years to come! The Profile Systems Champions Novice Hurdle is an extremely prestigious race and one befitting such a successful company. The 2018 Punchestown Festival takes place from Tuesday 24 to Saturday 28 April. The trial of a man who is accused of 29 counts of sexual assault against his daughter has heard allegations from her that he would pull her pajamas down while she slept and that she would allegedly wake to find that he was digitally penetrating her. The trial opened before Judge Sean O Donobhain at Naas Circuit Court this morning, Tuesday, April 17. The defendant has denied all of the charges against him. The charges allegedly relate to a period of almost two years which was more than a decade ago although one of the charges alleges that a sexual assault occurred more recently, in 2013. The victim was a young teenager at the time. Counsel for the prosecution Paul Murray lead the alleged victim, who is now a young woman, through her evidence. In harrowing evidence, where the woman was frequently in distress, she outlined a number of occasions when she was watching her favourite television programme and would fall asleep, before waking to find her father allegedly feeling her genital area with his hand, and inserting his fingers into her. On one occasion she alleged that she had fallen asleep in the sitting room of the house and woke to find him licking her genitals and penetrating her with his tongue. The woman found it hard to speak during her evidence, on occasion asking the prosecuting counsel if it was necessary to keep giving precise details of what had allegedly occurred. He replied that unfortunately it was, but she was reassured that she could take a break if she wished. The jury also heard evidence that the defendant would treat the alleged victim differently, buying her expensive gifts. Cross examination of the alleged victim has begun and will resume in the morning. Counsel for the defendant has tried to establish precise details of dates, which has proven difficult given the passage of time. It is alleged that the man, who cannot be identified to protect the identity of his daughter, the alleged victim, was in a relationship with her mother for some time, but that has now ended. The couple had bought a house in County Kildare just prior to the period that the alleged assaults began. It is alleged that all but one of the alleged assaults occurred there. Read more: Man faces 29 charges of sexual assault on daughter in Kildare court Residents affected by the route likely to be taken by the final ring road around Naas have organised a public meeting for the end of the month. Kildare County Council have publicised three route options. Two of these are similar and start near the entrance to Naas Racecourse and exit at Blessington road. A third route, known at 6, will start further up the Dublin Road and takes a wider berth around the racecourse, before exiting at a point closer to the Oak Glade residential area on the Blessington Road. The meeting has been called by residents living in up to 10 estates in the town affected by the planned road. Residents of three areas close to the Dublin road the Gallops, Kingscourt and Racecourse Gate have complained about the route, saying that residents will be impacted by the effects of passing traffic, including lorries. They also say that people living in areas like Ballycane, Elmwood and Sundays Well will be affected. A statement from organisers said that Naas councillors and Kildare North TDs will be invited to the meeting in the Osprey Hotel Naas, at 7.30 pm on Monday, April 30. They say it has been called to facilitate discussion on the negative impacts proposed route options 1 and 2 of the Naas Inner Relief Road will have on various residential areas of Naas. An awareness campaign in relation to this open meeting regarding route options 1 and 2 is currently underway in the various estates and It is expected that the meeting will be well attended. It will provide an opportunity for the politicians to engage with and listen to the concerns and reservations of the electorate. At present, a decision is awaited as to the preferred route for the Naas Inner Relief Road, the residents statement added. SEE ALSO: 1,000 homes will be hit by new Naas ring road route SEE ALSO: Residents opposition to massive housing plan in Maynooth A new primary school is virtually certain to open in Brannockstown, Naas replacing Brannoxtown National School. A public meeting has been called for the school tomorrow (Wednesday) at 8.30pm. Its been organised by Save Our School Brannoxtown (SOSB), a local group campaigning to ensure that primary school education continues in the area. The archdiocese of Dublin confirmed the closure of the primary school in Brannoxtown last week. The school effectively closed for the first time in over 133 years some four months ago, after the last remaining three pupils left six months ago. SOSB had highlighted the decline in pupil numbers which it said fell from 87 in 2011 to none by last December. This level of decline is phenomenal and disconcerting. The decline cannot be blamed on demographics. Between 2011 and 2016 the population of children aged 5-12 in the Newbridge/Kildare/Kilcullen area, which includes Brannockstown, grew at 154% of the States population growth rate of 3.78%. Indeed Brannoxtown School had been heavily supported by the attendance of children from outside the village, the group said in December. They added that generations of local residents have been educated there and the school has been at the centre of village life for well over a century. Most of the pupils who left the school transferred to schools in Halverstown, Kilcullen and Two Mile House. According to Conor OToole of SOSB, the school will only be closed for a short period of time and not the foreseeable future, which was a major concern. Its understood that the patron will invite interested parties to tender for the running of the school. The new school could be run by Kildare Wicklow Education Training Board (which already administers a primary school in Naas). Alternatively it could be a gaelscoil or an educate together school. Annette ODonnell, a representative of the archdiocese said it had been decided to close and divest the school because there were no applications for admission for the forthcoming academic year. Divesting is process whereby a school building no longer required by a patron, such as the Catholic church, is taken over by another patron body. This process is overseen by the Department of Education which will determine the level of interest from other patron providers. Given the level of interest in maintaining a school in the area, its more than likely a new patron will emerge shortly. SEE ALSO: 1,000 homes will be hit by new Naas ring road route SEE ALSO: Twelve Kildare nominees for Godolphin Irish Stud and Stable Staff awards The High Court yesterday confirmed the appointment of an examiner to building contractors the Sammon Group which got into difficulty over the devastating collapse of UK construction giant Carillion. The Irish group, which is involved in several major school building projects in Ireland, sought the protection of the courts and is owed some 8m by an entity involving Carillion. Earlier this month, Michael McAteer of Grant Thornton Ireland was appointed as interim examiner to the County Kildare-based Sammon Contracting Group and related companies Sammon Contracting Ireland Ltd and Miceal Sammon Woodcraft Ltd. Sammon has premises in Kilcock. The court was satisfied to appoint Mr McAteer after an independent expert's report stated the companies have a reasonable prospect of surviving if certain steps are taken. These steps include the examiner putting together an agreement scheme of arrangement with the group's creditors. If that scheme, which Mr McAteer has up to 100 days to put together, is approved by the High Court it will allow the group continue to trade as a going concern. The matter returned before Ms Justice the High Court on Monday when Ms Justice Miriam O'Regan confirmed Mr McAteer as examiner of the firms. There were no objections to the application. The group, which employs more than 216 people, was hired by an entity that included Carillion to build several education facilities in Ireland. These include the construction of schools in Carlow, Kells, Co Meath, Wexford and two in Bray Co Wicklow. Other separate projects the group is working on include the Maynooth Education Campus. It is also working on projects in Cork, Shannon Airport, Waterford and Dublin. Seeking Mr McAteer's appointment last month, barrister Ross Gorman BL, for the group, said it was hired to build five schools and the Institute for education by an SPV that included Carillion, known as 'Inspired Spaces'. That contract was worth approximately 87m to the group, counsel said. His client was paid on a monthly basis after works commenced in 2016. However, the collapse of Carillion with debts of over 1.5Bn has had "a devastating and immediate impact" on the companies, counsel said. Payments from the SPV to the Sammon companies ceased last December, counsel said, adding it was owed 8m by the SPV. As a result, the group has been unable to pay its suppliers and subcontractors working on those projects. The impact of Carillion had contaminated the group's other projects, the court also heard. The court heard the group is confident that following a successful examinership it will be in a position to complete its contracts on time and return to profitability. HOMES and businesses on the south side of Newcastle West will finally get high-speed broadband, according to the chairman of the Newcastle West Municipal District, Cllr Michael Collins. All four technical cabinets enabling this will be commissioned as and from this Wednesday, Cllr Collins has been told. Up to now, people in Knockane, Cullinagh, on the Old Cork Road and along the main road were only getting between two and six megabytes (mb) as compared to up to 100mb in the town centre, he said. If you wanted to stream a film or games, you would need at least 15mb. Now, the affected households will get an average of 40/50mb, according to Cllr Collins. This is to be welcomed, he continued. It took a long time for the company involved to act but when we went after them, they did respond. With the support of the local authority, of the people of the town and of the media, it is a good result. Businesses will be among the first to benefit from improved broadband, the Newcastle West councillor said. And he cited one company which will now be able to connect all its different sections through an online network. Up to now, he said, that company would have had to use faxes. The company eir, when contacted, did not confirm the commissioning date. Meanwhile, broadband connectivity remains an issue in other towns and villages around West Limerick as well as in more rural areas. According to the official figures, some 65,000 homes and businesses in Limerick are receiving high-speed broadband, out of a total of 97,222 postal addresses. A story published in the Limerick Leader last month told of how in households in Glin which have been or are being connected by Eir, the actual speeds provided are not sufficiently high for business purposes. However, communications specialist with Eir, Aoife Casey told the Limerick Leader at the time: In Glin, there are 400 premises that can access speeds of up to 100Mb/s today. LIMERICKs medieval quarter is to get a huge boost after councillors approved plans by Treaty City to open a micro-brewery in Nicholas Street. At this months metropolitan meeting, members approved plans to lease numbers 24 and 25 in the street to the citys very own beer company, which has its operations centre at the Ballysimon Road. The company plans to open a scaled down version of its offering of its products, targetting tourists by offering tours. Council bosses will be carrying out pre-letting works at 24 and 265 Nicholas Street in the coming weeks. This will be followed by the commercial fit out and installation of brewing equipment. The move has led to calls from councillors to do more with Nicholas Street, which has many vacant shop units. Cllr James Collins, Fianna Fail, said: Buses are dropping tourists at City Hall. Between the Cathedral and King Johns Castle we have a medieval street. Unfortunately there are currently many vacant buildings in Nicholas Street. The council own some, many others are privately owned. Im asking the council to make space available to artists, sculpturs, musicians, traditional craftspeople, food producers, and craft butchers to bring a vibrancy back to the street. Fellow Fianna Fail councillor Jerry ODea suggested Contact Studios, which is currently homeless after being asked to leave St Josephs Hospital, could move in there. #Limerick is set to get a new tourist attraction as we have approved the leasing for a new micro-brewery on Nicholas Street - @TreatyCityBrew #thisislimerick https://t.co/cpWSC2VBnZ pic.twitter.com/R1Dbrd9C46 April 16, 2018 Nice to hear of something new opening on #Limerick's Nicholas Street - best of luck to @TreatyCityBrew with this as the street really needs it. https://t.co/mDobEgeRQq Seamus Ryan (@meanderingtripe) April 16, 2018 Fine Gael councillor Marian Hurley said the late Barney Sheehan would have loved to have been a part of this. He always had a great wish for Nicholas Street to be developed. This would be a good legacy to him. Cllr Cian Prendiville said: Nicholas Street has been ignored for too long. It has huge potential. But Sinn Fein councillor Seighin O Ceallaigh said: I feel disappointed at a lack of information. For all I know, we could be giving it to them for free to use as a storeroom. Council architect Maria Donoghue confirmed Treaty City would be paying an annual lease which reflects the location. Council director Seamus Hanrahan said significant sums of money have been invested to bring the buildings to a stage where they will be let. The brewery, he added, will be an anchor tenant for Nicholas Street. The revitalisation of Nicholas Street is a key element of the new City and County Council tourism strategy and the arrival of Treaty City brewing is an important element of this work, not just for Nicholas Street, but the whole of Kings Island and Limerick city, he said. Treaty City owner Stephen Cunneen said: Were looking forward to expanding into Nicholas Street and well play our part in the rejuvenation of this street. THE picturesque village of Lough Gur is a small community where everyone knows one another, but there is only one face that has become a local legend, Michael Quinlan. Even when he is simply walking into Reardons Bar, cars passing by honk their horns as drivers wave and patrons greet him heartily. Everyone stops to talk or say hello to this long-time pillar of the community. At 80-years-old, Michael Quinlan has worn many hats throughout his life whether as a teacher, history enthusiast, actor, tour guide, archaeologist, and most recently, as an author. Like it is for many, his life has been a mix of hardships and happiness. Born in Cork on July 11, 1938, he was only eight-years-old when his father died. Inspired by his fathers involvement in the War for Independence, he developed a lifelong passion for history. Michael graduated from St Patricks College in 1957. Two years later, his grandmother found an advertisement for the position of a principal at the primary school in Lough Gur. Although he was not very eager at first, he dutifully applied. In October of that year, he began his role as principal, a career which would ultimately span decades. Lough Gur is a special place for Michael, not only because it has been his home for 37 years and the place where he raised his family, but because of the local history that runs deep in this areas veins. I was very lucky to find a place to work in that is so steeped in history and archaeology like Lough Gur, he said. Michael first began his writing career by composing diary entries every day for over 20 years. Each entry was 300 words long. His hobby grew into bigger written works. He has published six works including novels, biographies, and a novella. Michaels latest historical novel titled, Here (Lough Gur) & There (Australia) was launched in February 2018. According to Quinlan, Here and There is a sequel to Sissy OBriens famed book The Farm by Lough Gur: The Story of Mary Fogarty which was published in 1937. Mr Quinlan was inspired by Sissy OBriens book because it incorporates social history, folklore, and local history. While Michaels sequel is based on true historical events, he used creative license to craft the story. In fact, the main character, James Quinlan, is based on the authors own granduncle who went to Australia. This blend of fact and fiction is what Michael affectionately calls faction. He described his passion for writing by quoting Seamus Heaney, The moment of writing is a moment of joy and unexpected reward. His deep love of the past led to him obtaining a Masters degree in Archaeology from the University of Leicester in 2004. He worked on sites in Egypt and sites in Coonagh, and the Nenagh bypass site. During an excavation at St Johns Church in Knockainey, he made the discovery of a lifetime when he came upon an intricate and ancient stone altar. His love of writing and history inspired a trilogy of books: A Place of Dreams The Lough Gur People, The Sun Temple, and The Sun Shield of Lough Gur. He said about his writings, Ill never be famous, but I have gotten great satisfaction out of it. Michael has had three goals throughout his life: to finish a novel; to establish historical tour guides known as the Lough Gur Guides; and to edit all his diary entries up to 1989. This local legend has accomplished all these goals and so much more. He helped make Lough Gur a tourist area through restoring the Patrickswell Church and establishing the Honey Fitz Theatre. This theatre is a landmark of Lough Gur and was named in honour of President John F Kennedys great-grandfather who lived down the road. The theatre was so historically significant that Patricia Lawford and Jean Kennedy even attended the opening ceremony in 1994. Michael also helped establish the Poetry Society, the Dramatic Society, the Historical Society, and many summer festivals that brought tourists pouring into the area. After retiring, he spent a few years in Belize teaching poor children and volunteering. During his 80 years, Michael has had many exciting adventures and tales to share. However, when describing his greatest accomplishment in life, he simply named two, Family is first of all. Place is the second thing. Lough Gur is a great community. Copies of Here and There can be purchased at Beechinors Shop, Holycross, Bruff and Lough Gur Interpretive Centre or by contacting Michael Quinlan at 0872739199. TWO women were caught on video attempting to remove a referendum poster on the same street in Limerick, where a man was seen ripping down Repeal posters. The video, which was posted on a Facebook page 2FairInfo shows one woman pulling down a Save The Eighth poster and folding it over, in an effort to remove it from Thomas Street. In the video, the woman approaches the man taking the video, saying: What the f*** are you filming, c***? When the woman walked away, she turned to the man again: What are you filming? He replied: No, its a public space, I am filming the street. The two women are then seen walking from the poster, which was not taken from the pole following the altercation. This video was taken before this Tuesdays video. On a Facebook post, 2FairInfo stated: I am from the country where we never needed a feferendum [sic] to allow someone to make hard choices. If I could vote I would be only in support, but two things made me to do this. 1. Nobody should attempt to used deceipt to win. 2. A man from another camp was cought removing pro choice posters. I just wanted to show that this time it was a different camp that tried to remove the poster and that this time it were two ladies, and in adition [sic] one was violent and called me C word. Lets see how far this message will travel and would it be acknowedged [sic] by the local media as the other event did. Apr 16, 2018, 11 AM A letter card written aboard RMS Titanic in 1912 and mailed from Ireland will be auctioned April 21 by Henry Aldridge and Son in England. By Michael Baadke An upcoming auction in England is offering numerous artifacts of the doomed luxury liner RMS Titanic, which sank in the North Atlantic Ocean on April 15, 1912. The April 21 auction by Henry Aldridge & Son includes a wide range of items, such as a publicity booklet, photographs and picture postcards of Titanic and other vessels, the liners chart room key with brass tag, menus, glassware and silverware, and much more. The Titanic memorabilia makes up most of the 240 lots of the Saturday sale. There are also several items of interest for the postal history collector. One of these is a postal facing slip that was recovered from the body of Oscar Scott Woody, a 41-year-old postal clerk from the United States who was working in the ship's mailroom and perished in the disaster. The 3-inch by 5-inch buff-colored slip is stamped O.S. Woody and TITANIC and marked with the ships trans-Atlantic postal cancellation. The postal facing slip is listed by the Aldridge firm with an estimate of 15,000 to 20,000 (roughly equivalent to $21,500 to $28,655 in the week prior to the auction). Bidding opens at 9,000 ($12,900). Another postal item on offer is a rare Titanic letter card written on board and posted with original one penny stamp and crisp Queenstown postmark. The cryptic message on the letter card (which includes the admonishment, My wife is in England. Do not write to her) was written onboard by Henry Beauchamp, a second-class passenger who also died in the sinking. The letter card features a bold color imprint of the White Star Line burgee and is franked with what appears to be the re-engraved 1-penny red King George V stamp issued Jan. 1, 1912 (Great Britain Scott 154). Connect with Linns Stamp News: Sign up for our newsletter Like us on Facebook Follow us on Twitter The ship departed from Southampton on Englands southern coast at noon on April 10, 1912, heading across the English Channel to dock at Cherbourg, France, where more passengers boarded. At 11:30 a.m. on April 11, Titanic arrived at Queenstown, Ireland, the ships final port of call before heading west across the North Atlantic to its intended destination, New York City. Beauchamps letter card, addressed to London, was mailed at Queenstown on the 11th and was struck with a London receiving postmark the following day. Like the Woody facing slip, the Titanic letter card also carries an estimate of 15,000 to 20,000. A few other items of correspondence and postcards are included in this auction, which is posted on the auction firm's website. The Aldridge and Son firm also reports that live Internet bidding is available through the-saleroom.com or invaluable.com. For additional information contact Henry Aldridge and Son, Unit 1, Bath Road Business Centre, Bath Road, Devizes, Wiltshire, SN10 1XA, England. Apr 17, 2018, 8 AM Swiss Post is issuing a semipostal stamp May 17 to honor its national philatelic exhibition, Naba Lugano 2018. The exhibition is held every six years in different Swiss cities. The United Nations Postal Administration reproduces photographs of the city of Lugano on a pane of 10 stamps issued for the Swiss national philatelic exhibition. The labels depict the emblems of the United Nations and the exhibition. By Denise McCarty The United Nations Postal Administration and Swiss Post will each issue stamps May 17, the opening day of Switzerlands national philatelic exhibition. The stamps are not a joint issue, however. The Naba Lugano 2018 stamp show will take place May 17-20 at the Centro Esposizioni in Lugano, Switzerland. Scenes of this city in the southern canton of Ticino are included on both the U.N. and Swiss issues. The 1-franc+50-centime semipostal stamp from Swiss Post pictures the wrought iron gates of the Villa Ciani on the left side and a man viewing a philatelic exhibit on the right. The gates and the villa are part of Ciani Park built by the Ciani family in the middle of the 19th century. The city purchased the villa and park in 1912. The same gates are shown on one of the 10 Naba Lugano stamps from the UNPA. The stamps are denominated 1.50fr for use from the U.N. post office at the Palais des Nations in Geneva, Switzerland, and are being issued in a pane of 10 stamps and 10 labels. The second stamp from the bottom on the right depicts the gates of villa overlooking Lake Lugano (also known as Lake Ceresio) and Monte San Salvatore. Starting in the upper left, the first stamp in the UNPA pane shows a panoramic view of Lugano with the tower of San Lorenzo Cathedral in the foreground. Continuing down the left side of the pane, the second stamp features the Salita Chiattone steps, and the third stamp shows the Church of St. Mary of the Angels (Chiesa Santa Maria degli Angioli). Two pedestrian street scenes, Via Cattedrale and Via della Posta, complete the left side of the pane. The stamp in the top right represents modern Lugano, showing a bank building designed by the Swiss architectural firm Camponovo. Pictured next is the Villa Saroli, located in a botanical park in the middle of the city. The citys art and cultural center, Lugano Arte e Cultura or LAC, combines modern architecture with that of the former Palace Hotel and a Franciscan convent. Part of the center, including the facade of the hotel, is shown on the third stamp on the left. The final stamp depicts the William Tell monument on the lakefront promenade in front of the entrance to Ciani Park. Vincenzo Vela sculpted this monument in 1856. Five of the 10 labels in the UNPA pane show the U.N. emblem, and the other five depict the logo of the Naba Lugano exhibition. The logo features the Villa Ciani gates and Monte San Salvatore. Monte San Salvatore is shown again in the photograph reproduced in the selvage of the stamp pane. The U.N. emblem and show logo are included in the upper left and right, respectively. According to an inscription in the lower left of the pane, the photographs are by Roberto Leber. Connect with Linns Stamp News: Sign up for our newsletter Like us on Facebook Follow us on Twitter The Swiss stamp was designed by Fabienne Angehrn, and offset-printed by Gutenberg AG of Liechtenstein in sheets of 16. The 50c surtax on this stamp will be used to promote philately and help finance the exhibition. Visit the Swiss Posts online shop. For more information about the UNPA stamp pane, visit the website. Joanne Marie Kirkpatrick Sales passed on Easter, April 1, 2018 on her favorite holiday. She was born in Sanitarium, California on May 23, 1934, daughter of Clyde Kirkpatrick and Lorraine Elizabeth Ballentine. She attended Saint Helena schools, making lifelong friends, graduating from High School in 1952 and continuing on to San Francisco State College. In 1955 Joanne began working as a secretary for Judge Louis D. Vasconi in his insurance business. September 22, 1957 she married John M. Sales and began a new career. Her daughter Jennifer Anne was born in 1959 and her son James Michael followed in 1962. During the adolescence of her children Joanne worked part time and served as a board member and Treasurer of the St. Helena chapter of the American Red Cross. Joanne enjoyed serving on various election boards continuously until finally retiring in 2014. The League of Women Voters of Napa County is hosting two election forums -- one on Wednesday, April 25. at the Up Valley College campus, 1088 College Avenue, St. Helena, and the other on Wednesday, May 2, at the Napa Valley Unitarian Universalist Church, 1625 Salvador Ave., Napa. The forums will educate voters about the candidates and issues in the upcoming primary election. Learn about the new Voters Choice Act in Napa County and meet the two candidates running for District 3s Board of Supervisors seat: incumbent Diane Dillon and Cio Perez. There will also be a panel of proponents and opponents for Measure C: Watershed and Oak Woodland Protection as well as pro and con arguments for Measure D: Heliport Ban, and Regional Measure 3: Bay Area Traffic Relief Plan, and five state propositions. The forums are free and open to the public. They start at 7 p.m. Bring your questions. Pieces of the silver treasure that belonged to the legendary Danish King Harald Bluetooth, who brought Christianity to Denmark and whose name inspired modern Bluetooth technology. A medieval treasure trove that belonged to the legendary King Harald Bluetooth the Danish ruler who inspired the name for Bluetooth technology was recently unearthed on a German island by a 13-year-old and an amateur archaeologist, according to news sources. The duo made the unexpected discovery while hunting for riches with metal detectors on Rugen, Germany's largest island, in the Baltic Sea. When a silvery glint caught their eye, they thought it was a piece of tin foil, but a closer look revealed that it was a piece of silver, The Guardian reported. After more digging, with help from professional archaeologists, the team uncovered remarkable artifacts, including braided necklaces, pearls, brooches, a Thor's hammer (a representation of a mythical weapon forged by dwarves), rings and up to 600 chipped coins, including more than 100 that date to Bluetooth's era. [Photos: Viking-Age Fortress Unearthed in Denmark] "This trove is the biggest single discovery of Bluetooth coins in the southern Baltic Sea region and is therefore of great significance," the lead archaeologist, Michael Schirren, told the German news outlet DPA, according to The Guardian. Amateur archaeologist Rene Schon and 13-year-old treasurer hunter Luca Malaschnitschenko first unearthed the hoard in January, and recently joined a regional archaeology group to excavate about 4,300 square feet (400 square meters) to see what other treasures lay buried in the soil. Archaeologists believe the riches belonged to the Danish king Harald Gormsson, more commonly known as "Bluetooth," who ruled from about A.D. 958 to 986, and likely earned his nickname because of a discolored tooth, according to The Guardian. Bluetooth is known for bringing Christianity to Demark in the 10th century. He's also credited with uniting swathes of modern-day Norway, Germany, Sweden and Denmark under his rule. This feat inspired Intel's Jim Kardach to name the tech service in honor of Bluetooth in 1997, given that "the new technology that would unify communications protocols like King Harald had united Scandinavia," according to Tom's Hardware, a Live Science sister site. The oldest coin uncovered at Rugen dates to A.D. 714, while the youngest is a penny from A.D. 983. These dates indicate that the treasure was likely buried in the late 980s, when Bluetooth lost a battle against his rebellious son, Sweyn Forkbeard. After losing power, Bluetooth fled to Pomerania, a region that includes parts of modern northeast Germany and western Poland, according to USA Today. He died a year later in A.D. 987. This is hardly the only archaeological treasure discovered by amateurs wielding metal detectors. In 2015, a man in England stumbled across a Roman-era grave that contained mosaic glassware, coins and hobnails from a pair of shoes, Live Science previously reported. And just last year, two amateurs with metal detectors discovered four gold torques dating to more than 2,000 years ago in central England, Live Science reported. Original article on Live Science. Tesla founder and CEO Elon Musk just paid a rare compliment to his own species, calling humans "underrated" on Twitter last week. What brought about this somewhat underwhelming accolade? Musk had directed Tesla to adopt advanced automation as the assembly line for Tesla's new sedan, the Model 3 electric car. But now that Tesla is behind in making the cars, its customers on the waiting list are grumbling. "Yes, excessive automation at Tesla was a mistake," Musk wrote in the April 13 tweet. "To be precise, my mistake. Humans are underrated." [Super-Intelligent Machines: 7 Robotic Futures] The Model 3 is Tesla's first midpriced, mass-produced electric car, according to CBS News. Its more affordable price tag, starting at $35,000, prompted many people to preorder it, and the company responded by saying it would produce 5,000 new cars each week. However, the actual output has been much lower. At the end of March, Tesla hit a production pace of 2,000 cars per week, according to USA Today. Part of the reason for the production delay is the technology at the plant, in Fremont, California, Musk said. In fact, the Model 3 assembly line is seen as one of the most robot-heavy car plants on the planet, CBS News reported. "We put too much new technology into the Model 3 all at once," Musk told Gayle King, a co-host at "CBS This Morning." See more Musk added that instead of speeding up Model 3 production, the robots actually slowed it down. "We had this crazy, complex network of conveyor belts and it was not working, so we got rid of that whole thing," he said. Now, Musk has directed the company to suspend Model 3 production for the second time in recent weeks. The temporary halt will help Tesla "to improve automation and systematically address bottlenecks in order to increase production rates," the company told USA Today. Musk said he was sleeping at the Model 3 factory so he could get more work done. The couch there is so narrow, he ended up sleeping on the floor one night, he told CBS. We have to agree with Musk here: Humans may be underrated, but sleeping on the floor certainly isn't. Original article on Live Science. There's a scene in "Sweet Country" in which a character is shown wandering the Australian Outback, on the brink of hopelessness. At that moment, we're expected to share that character's despair. That's a big demand for any audience, but in this case, director Warwick Thornton ("Samson and Delilah") earns that response, combining sensitive direction with strong performances and unflinching visuals to create a western of epic proportions. Though set in 1920s Australia, the tale has a moral force beyond time and place. Events are set in motion by Harry (Ewen Leslie), an embittered, racist World War I veteran who asks his preacher neighbor, Fred (Sam Neill), if he can borrow the services of a laborer for help on his ranch. That laborer, Sam (Hamilton Morris), is aboriginal; Fred treats him with respect, insisting they are equals, so the man of God balks at helping someone who does not share his views. Eventually, Fred agrees, sending Sam to the ranch with Sam's wife and niece. After an alcohol-fueled act of violence by Harry, Sam shoots Harry in self-defense, then flees. "Sweet Country" is concerned with the fallout of that violence. Seen through Thornton's lens, the Outback is a more pitiless landscape than the American West, yet he frames it elegantly, as if to show why settlers might have been drawn there. His direction also includes a technique that is startling, even bizarre: After shooting from one character's perspective, he then jump-cuts forward in time. Although it is not always clear whether these future events are actual or imaginary, the effect is powerful, showing us how unspoken prejudice infects this loose community of ranchers and lawmen. Bryan Brown, the veteran Australian character actor, plays one of those lawmen, in a role that recalls his appearance in the 1980 Australian classic "Breaker Morant," which also dealt with the question of real-world justice. This shrewdly observed story asks another question: Is civilization possible in a nation where discrimination has such deep roots? In "Sweet Country," the answer arrives with a tough fatalism. If the movie's outlook is less than hopeful, it nevertheless suggests that there is still time to learn from our mistakes. --- Four stars. R. At area theaters. Contains violence, including rape, bloody images and coarse language throughout. In English and the aboriginal language of Arrernte, with some subtitles. 113 minutes. Ratings Guide: Four stars masterpiece, three stars very good, two stars OK, one star poor, no stars waste of time. I am hearing that it is an issue and does remain an issue, said Sue Gallagher, city attorney for Santa Rosa. Raising rental rates or sales prices by more than 10 percent within 30 days of an emergency or state-declared disaster is illegal in California. On Monday, Gov. Jerry Brown extended the disaster protections through Dec. 4, 2018, meaning rents and home prices cannot be increased more than 10 percent from what they were before Octobers wildfires. Browns previous extension was set to expire Wednesday. Theres the best of humanity coming out in this fire, and theres also some of the worst of it, said Sonoma County Supervisor Shirlee Zane. You see greed. Shame on people that price-gouge. Theyre trying to make a buck on the back of people who have suffered severely. I hope the D.A. goes after every single one of them. Those convicted of violations face up to a year in jail and fines up to $10,000. The law also prohibits landlords from evicting residents in order to raise rent and doesnt allow retaliation if a resident reports an illegal price increase. Still, Sonoma County officials said some residents are afraid to come forward, especially undocumented immigrants. People need to be reminded that they shouldnt be afraid to come forward and talk to us because if they dont report the problems, we cant help them, said Ronit Rubinoff, executive director of the nonprofit group Legal Aid of Sonoma County, which is helping residents with price gouging issues. If someone is asserting a legal right, and they are retaliated against, the law protects them. You are actually safer if you complain to an agency than if you dont say anything. Air Traffic: A Memoir of Ambition and Manhood in America By Gregory Pardlo Knopf. 253 pp. $26.95 --- Where autobiographical writing by black men is concerned, perhaps no figure looms as large as James Baldwin's stepfather, David Baldwin. In the immortal "Notes of a Native Son," James Baldwin painted an indelible portrait of the man, an itinerant Harlem preacher. He could be "chilling" and "indescribably cruel," Baldwin wrote, and "certainly the most bitter man I have ever met; yet it must be said that there was something else in him, buried in him, which lent him tremendous power and even, a rather crushing charm." David Baldwin's large shadow threatens to obscure any number of fathers appearing in similar books in the years since the explosive arrival of "Notes" in 1955. We could turn, for instance to "Bourgeois Blues," by Jake Lamar, "Losing My Cool," by Thomas Chatterton Williams or to Gregory Pardlo's riveting new book, "Air Traffic." By no means the only recent works in this vein, these books contain complex and entirely plausible portraits of fiercely intelligent African-American fathers. For each of these men, self-awareness sometimes makes them painfully cognizant of their limitations. In some cases they ran up against the tight contours of a race-obsessed society; in other instances, their boundaries were self-imposed. In Pardlo's telling, addiction played a pivotal part in his father's decline and eventual death in 2016. Gregory Pardlo Sr.'s career and life had begun to fall apart many years before. In 1981, President Ronald Reagan fired 11,345 members of PATCO, the union of air traffic controllers, and banned them from federal employment for life. A controller as well as a labor organizer, Pardlo Sr. hurtled toward the ground without a parachute. (As Pardlo notes, President Bill Clinton lifted Reagan's ban in 1993). Although Pardlo believes his mother was the brains of the family, it was his father's overbearing personality that dominated their household in Willingboro, N.J. At home, Pardlo writes, "my dad's language was often dismissive, hostile and unpredictable." The elder Partlow eventually found other jobs, but "there was a wounded quality he never quite shook." Just as James Baldwin worried "that the bitterness which had helped to kill my father could also kill me," Pardlo made a similarly troublesome observation about his father. "I'd learned at a young age to adjust for the self-aggrandizement in my father's narratives. Problem was, so much of the way I interpret the world has come from the way he interprets it." Perhaps unsurprisingly, Pardlo has also struggled with alcoholism, and so has his younger brother, a gifted musician who briefly enjoyed a taste of commercial success. "Alcoholism was the Muzak of our familial dysfunction," Pardlo notes. While immersed in efforts to overcome his own demons and his father's troubling influence, the author endured a brief stint in college, washed out of the Marine Corps and stumbled through a short-lived marriage. While managing his grandfather's bar, he arrived at a breakthrough of sorts: "Money, power, and geography hadn't worked for me. Language had given me a semblance of escape." Newly determined, he returned to school in hopes of remaking himself "as a cosmopolitan artist with a magical blue passport." By 1998, he was a 30-year-old junior in college. Here it would probably be helpful to mention that the author is now a celebrated poet, who won a Pulitzer Prize for his work in 2015. That fact might explain the frequent emergence of a phrase or metaphor that sparkles with lyricism and imaginative muscle. "I heard the sliding glass door open like a the lid on a can of baked beans," for instance, or "I stared up at clouds bright as teeth in a black light nightclub." Amid such gems, Pardlo doesn't dwell on his extraordinary climb; instead he refers often to the precariousness of this ascent. "There can be no happily ever after for a recovering drunk like me," he writes. "Relapse can seduce me with the confidence that I've 'got my drinking under control' or that I'm 'getting better.'" Pardlo's journey from aimless job-hopper to successful writer and partner in a fruitful second marriage isn't so much described in detail as employed as a launchpad for philosophical musings. About 100 pages from the end, the book shifts from a more or less seamless narrative to a series of stitched-together observations and mini-essays on race, black art and the perils of parenting. While his thoughts on these and other subjects are perceptive and provocative, they seldom are as intriguing as the tale of his own meanderings. He eschews a straight line, he tells readers, because his experience has been anything but. He writes, "And so I keep searching, not entirely knowing what it is I'm looking for." Pardlo shares these reflections in prose that seems powerful and effortless. At the same time, he often writes as if holding something in reserve, perhaps stockpiling memories and experiences to be examined in future essays, poems and memoirs. Let's hope so. --- Asim is a former editor and columnist at The Washington Post. His next book, "We Can't Breathe: On Black Lives, White Lies and the Art of Survival," will be published in October. The weathers turning hot, schools winding down and wha-a-at? you still havent registered your kid for summer camp? No need to panic yet. There are still plenty of openings at most of the popular camps around town. But be aware, theyre filling up fast and many will be wait list-only by the time opening dates arrive. Parents new to the summer camp routine should know that programs early in the summer tend to fill up first. So do those for the littlest campers. So dont wait to sign up. Also, you usually dont have to be a member of the camps parent organization, such as the Jewish Community Center, Witte Museum or the Boy and Girl Scouts, to sign up. Most are happy to let you join, and will apply the membership fee to your camp registration. Click through the slideshow above for information youll need to decide which program best fits your kid. Be sure to check the website for more need-to-know details. For example, not all camps are open to all ages, most are closed on the Fourth of July or even the entire week of the Fourth, and several offer sibling discounts and after-school care. Barshop Jewish Community Center About 10 percent of the JCCs 90 or so camps already have a wait list and most will eventually sell out. Themed (drone flying, fashion design) and traditional camps are available for one or four weeks and are open to all, including who arent already members and who are not Jewish. May 29-Aug. 24, for first through 10th grades One-week camps, $160-$350 members, $210-$400 nonmembers; four-week camps, $665-$685 members, $740-$760 nonmembers jcccampsanantonio.org, 210-302-6859 rmarini@express-news.net | Twitter: @RichardMarini Napa Fire put out a debris fire Sunday morning inside an underground chamber beneath the Maxwell bridge on Imola Avenue. The blaze occurred in a Caltrans bunker that had been occupied by homeless people, said Fire Capt. Laurel Chamness. The fire required the response of two engines, with firefighters donning breathing apparatus to climb down into the chamber, Chamness said. They used an extinguisher to put out the blaze, which emitted a column of smoke, she said. This was the second fire in this vault in recent weeks. The department put out another debris fire on March 29. People are breaking off a door lock to gain access to the chamber, Chamness. Caltrans is working on a plan to strengthen the lock, she said. No one was in the chamber when the fire department responded at 9:30 a.m. Sunday, Chamness said. The time of year that San Antonio has been waiting for is here. It's time to Fiesta! Whether you belong to a family filled with generations of party-goers or are experiencing the city's biggest celebration for the first time, there are classic must-attend events that are the pinnacle of the Fiesta experience. In October 2017, Attorney General Jeff Sessions announced that pursuing the Mara Salvatrucha, a Salvadoran gang also known as MS-13, was a priority for our Organized Crime Drug Enforcement Task Forces. Drugs are killing more Americans than ever before, in large part thanks to powerful cartels and international gangs and deadly new synthetic opioids like fentanyl, Sessions told the International Association of Chiefs of Police on Oct. 23. He concluded that perhaps the most brutal of these gangs is MS-13. SEE ALSO: How does the M-13 work? President Donald Trump also cites MS-13 to justify his administrations crackdown on illegal immigration from Latin America. In his 2018 State of the Union address, Trump threatened to destroy the group, which is responsible for a spate of brutal, high-profile murders in Boston, Long Island, Virginia and beyond. Theres a problem here and its not just MS-13s violent ethos. Its that the Trump administration is getting this gang all wrong. Pool/Getty Images I spent three years at American Universitys Center for Latin American and Latino Studies chronicling the MS-13s criminal exploits for the National Institute of Justice. Our study proves that MS-13 is neither a drug cartel nor was it born of illegal immigration. That misconception is fueling failed U.S. policies that, in my assessment, will do little to deter MS-13. MS-13 is no Yakuza The Trump administration is not the first administration to mischaracterize MS-13, which conducts vicious but rudimentary criminal activities like extortion, armed robbery and murder across Central America, Mexico and the U.S. In 2012, the Obama-era Treasury Department put the group on an organized crime kingpin list with the Italian mafia Camorra, the Mexican criminal group the Zetas and the Japanese mob known as the Yakuza. That designation gave the group a rarefied status in the underworld, which must have pleased its leadership. But our research found that MS-13 is hardly a lucrative network of criminal masterminds. Instead, it is a loose coalition of young, often formerly incarcerated men operating hand to mouth across a vast geographic territory. MS-13 was born in Los Angeles in the early 1980s, when scores of Salvadorans, many of them fleeing the countrys civil war, arrived to California. Like other Latino immigrant groups, the new arrivals formed a youth gang of the sort proliferating in L.A. at the time. Then as now, MS-13 acted as a surrogate family for its members, though not a benign one. MS-13 created a collective identity that was constructed and reinforced by shared experiences, particularly expressions of violence and social control. It has since spread to at least a half-dozen countries on two continents and has become a prime source of destabilizing violence, particularly extortion, in Central American countries like El Salvador and Honduras. Inept at drug dealing What MS-13 has not done is establish any real foothold in the international drug trafficking market. Its not for lack of trying. Our study found that MS-13 leaders have made several attempts to get into the business of running illicit drugs. In the early 2000s, one MS-13 boss named Nelson Comandari tried to use the gangs national criminal infrastructure to establish a drug distribution network. Comandari was well positioned to do it. He was powerful in L.A., had underworld family connections from El Salvador to Colombia and enjoyed strong ties to the feared Mexican Mafia, a U.S.-based prison gang with connections to Mexican cartels. Yet within a few years Comandari was frustrated. MS-13 members turned out to be inept at drug smuggling and resistant to the whole idea. Our research found that the gang frowns upon those who put their personal business above the collectives. Comandari eventually went into the drug business on his own and was captured along the Texas-Mexico border in 2006. A few years later, one of Comandaris former lieutenants also tried to establish an international distribution pipeline between MS-13 and the Mexican drug cartel La Familia. The deal was thwarted by U.S. law enforcement in 2013. Subsequent efforts have gotten nipped even sooner. In 2015, a midlevel MS-13 leader named Larry Naverete spelled Navarrete in some federal documents began smuggling small loads of methamphetamine into the U.S. via an MS-13 member operating from Tijuana. Within two years, police on each side of the border had captured Navarete, who was operating from the California State Prison System, and his Mexican partner. Why MS-13 fails at drug trafficking One reason MS-13 has failed so roundly at becoming a drug cartel is that it is more of a social club than a lucrative criminal enterprise. Its members benefit from the camaraderie and support that comes with membership not the heaping monetary rewards that never arrive. Entrepreneurs who hope to leverage its network for their personal financial gain see the same strong resistance that scuttled Comandaris plans. Perhaps more critically, MS-13 is a decentralized organization with no clear hierarchy. The gang is broken into local cells called cliques or clicas in Spanish that are more loyal to each other than to the various leadership councils that operate around Central America and the U.S. Put simply, it has no leader. So what looks on paper like a tremendous built-in infrastructure for moving illicit products across borders is actually a disparate, federalized organization of substructures with highly local, even competing, interests. Finally, MS-13 is mostly about immediate gratification. It helps members eke out a living and get some perilous criminal thrills. Thats why extortion is a staple. Complex supply chains? Not so much. Failed US policies These findings suggest that the U.S. could fight MS-13 by better protecting the vulnerable young Latino kids who become its recruits funding social and educational programs in immigrant neighborhoods, for example, or financing more early childhood intervention programs. SEE ALSO: Strangers in their own homelands Instead, the Trump administration has used MS-13 as a foil to push its political agenda. To justify imposing draconian immigration restrictions, Trump and Sessions link MS-13s crimes to the issue of illegal immigration. Their rhetoric suggests that the group is staffed with undocumented migrants, thus proving that migrants are dangerous. In fact, statistics confirm that immigrants commit crimes at far lower rates than native-born U.S. citizens. Conflating the gang with the sophisticated cartels currently waging a bloody war in Mexico likewise serves the administrations goal of tightening border controls. It makes MS-13 seem like a foreign invader, not a homegrown threat. I suspect this rhetoric may also help Trump make the case that the U.S. should impose longer jail sentences for drug trafficking-related crimes. What harsh law enforcement tactics aimed at ending immigration and breaking up drug cartels wont do is address the real problems posed by MS-13 and other very violent, very American street gangs. *** Steven S. Dudley is a Senior Fellow at the Center for Latin American and Latino Studies, American University This article was originally published on The Conversation. For tips, comments or to pitch a story, write to Olivia P. Tallet. Colonie Two undergraduate students at Siena College are looking to expand a customized book-of-the-month service they launched last year. Inky's Bookshelf, created by senior Simon Bruno and junior Mikayla Lansing, is intended to help people find new books to read based on their interests. People snap a photo of their bookshelf and submit it online along with a brief survey, and the pair hand-pick a new title to send them each month. "We were seeing a one-size-fits-all model, and we wanted people to be able to read what was optimal for them," Bruno said. The service costs $15 per month, a price point similar to other subscription services. Book of the Month costs $14.99 a month and customers choose from five books. Some subscriptions are tailored for certain genres, like OwlCrate, which ships a young adult fiction book along with items like jewelry and toys to customers for $29.99 per month. Others include additional goodies, like Book Bath Box, which sends bath items corresponding to a certain theme along with books and other products every three months. After each shipment from Inky's, subscribers are invited to fill out a survey with their feedback. The bulk of the business's customers are not Capital Region residents, and while they won't disclose subscriber figures, Bruno said they will ship out their 400th book this month. So far, only one person has sent a book back. Inky's started out as a platform for people to submit their poetry and participate in contests and then grew into a subscription service for poetry books. Eventually Bruno and Lansing decided to expand it to include a range of genres and subjects. They get the books through a partnership with a distributor and keep them in Bruno's car, house, his mother's house and space at Siena. The packaging materials are created by a company in California. Both love reading; Bruno enjoys nonfiction, while Lansing likes fiction and true crime. Beyond helping people find books that align with their interests, the education reading provides was another piece of the inspiration behind Inky's. "The human mind really flourishes through creativity, curiosity and diversity of thought," Bruno said. "When you're conforming something, it reduces the individuality." Working with the Stack Center for Innovation and Entrepreneurship at Siena helped them troubleshoot and create a business plan for Inky's, Bruno said. The center's interim executive director, Daniel Robeson, said he liked the idea behind Inky's because it involved technology and reading. "It's got science and cutting-edge technology, but at the base it's about people who love to read," Robeson said. "The project really allows Simon and Mikayla to be 360 players." Students at the center come up with a wide range of ideas, but the common threads between projects that succeed are the energy, discipline and persistence of the students behind them, he said. "The students never give up," Robeson said. Bruno and Lansing are now working to scale the business. They've won several competitions, including first place and a $1,000 prize at the Capital Region Bu-siness Plan Competition earlier this month, which has provided funding for the business. On April 27 they will compete with students from across the state for cash prizes during the final stage of the annual New York State Regional Business Plan Competition. If they take home a prize, the funds would be used to develop software to help determine book recommendations based on customer data, build their subscriber base, increase their marketing efforts and work on the shipping component of the business. The software in particular, which Bruno is in the process of building with a partner, will help streamline the curation process and analyze customers' interests and habits. "We're trying to adapt the idea of a book club for the 21st century," Bruno said. One of the biggest challenges the pair has faced is balancing classes and homework with working on Inky's. After graduating this spring, Bruno plans to start working on the business full-time and to hire several other employees this summer. "So far we've been bootstrapping," he said. miszler@timesunion.com 518-454-5018 After deliberating for three hours on Monday, jurors in the 49th District Court handed down a verdict in the trial of a Laredo man accused of shooting his 19-year-old friend and neighbor in 2015. Michael Molina, 26, was found not guilty in the death of Rodolfo Rudy Garza. Joey Tellez, Molinas attorney, said he was happy that his client was vindicated. By the same token, we still realize that somebody lost their life, and it was a tragedy for Rudy and his family, Tellez said. Obviously, Michael would like to put it in the past. Were glad the jury came to the correct decision. READ MORE: Update: Medical examiner presents Laredo teen's manner of death Prosecutors respect the jurys decision in this case, said Webb County District Attorney Isidro Chilo Alaniz. Our office will continue to prosecute cases and seek justice for victims and their families, Alaniz said. During the week-long trial, the defenses main argument was that Garza died by suicide. They presented evidence showing that Garza had expressed suicidal thoughts to his girlfriend via text message and posted on Facebook that he was going to take a bottle of Xanax on the day of his death. In his closing argument, Tellez doubled down on the suicide defense. He said the prosecution was trying to find someone to blame for Garzas tragic death. The hardest part is being in denial of your sons manifestations, of his suicidal thoughts, Tellez said. Melissa Diaz is in denial. Unfortunately, some people dont want to accept the fact there is a real probability that their son took his own life. READ ALSO: Deputy cries as he describes San Antonio children tied up like dogs Tellez pointed to the testimony of Garzas family, who admitted that they tampered with evidence by hiding a phone that Garza used to sell drugs. He said it was possible that they could have also hidden the gun that killed Garza. Supposedly theyre worried about Rudys marijuana and Xanax dealing, Tellez said. If you truly believe your son was murdered, you dont care about misdemeanors. Additionally, Tellez said the prosecution never presented a motive to show why Molina would want to kill Garza. A man does not shoot his best friend for no reason, he told jurors. It doesnt happen. Not like that ... There is no evidence whatsoever to show they got in a fight over a girl, argued over money or drugs. And theyre here saying Michael intentionally shot at his best friend with the intention to kill him. That is ludicrous. Assistant District Attorney Rene Benavides said that the notion of suicide was inconsistent with the evidence. READ ALSO: Date set for murder trial of Laredo man who allegedly killed 1 Benavides pointed to the fact that neither Garzas family nor the police found a weapon near Garzas body and that the expert witness testimony showed that he had an intermediate gunshot wound. Everything in this case shows beyond a reasonable doubt that the only person that shot Rudy Garza was Michael Molina, he told the jury in his closing argument. We dont need to show motive. Melissa Diaz, Garzas mother, found him with a gunshot wound to the head the night of July 3, 2015. Garza died the next day in San Antonio. Diaz testified that she saw her son sitting in their backyard porch that night. Later in the evening, Diaz said she heard a loud noise but thought it was the Fourth of July fireworks. Molina had been at their house earlier that day, she said. The dispatch call was initially reported as a suicide, LPD officers testified. During the 911 call presented to the jury as evidence, Diaz told the operator that her son had shot himself. After she realized that there was no gun within sight, Diaz said that someone shot him. Police found a .22-caliber pistol that matched the characteristics of the bullet that killed Garza. They also found a drop of Garzas blood on Molinas pants. The medical examiner who performed Garzas autopsy testified that he was not able to determine whether his death was an accident, a suicide or a homicide. Joana Santillana may be reached at 956-728-2528 or jsantillana@lmtonline.com 1 Syrian refugees: The number of Syrian refugees admitted to the U.S. after fleeing their war-torn homeland has plummeted to just 44 since the first of October down from around 6,000 in the same period a year ago, according to the Refugee Processing Center, run by the U.S. State Department. The United States, which traditionally took in the largest number of refugees, has scaled back its resettlement program under the Trump administration. The U.S. has welcomed more than 20,000 Syrian refugees since 2011, including around 2,000 since President Trump took office. However, since November, admissions have nearly screeched to a halt, with only 11 Syrian refugees getting in. 2 Alex Jones lawsuit: The parents of children who died in the 2012 massacre at Sandy Hook Elementary School in Newtown, Conn., have accused conspiracy theorist Alex Jones and InfoWars of defamation and seek damages in excess of $1 million. Two lawsuits filed on behalf of Neil Heslin, Leonard Pozner and Veronique De La Rosa allege that Jones and his media organization spread false information related to the tragedy. Heslins suit arose from accusations InfoWars made in 2017 that Heslin was lying about holding his sons body and seeing a bullet hole in the childs head. The pair of lawsuits marks the third to be filed against Jones and his company in recent weeks. Marcel Fontaine is suing Jones for more than $1 million after he used an image of Fontaine that portrayed him as the shooter who killed 17 students and staff at Marjory Stoneman Douglas High School in Parkland, Fla., in February. Student stabbing suspect in custody BINGHAMTON A student suspected in the stabbing death of a 19-year-old freshman on Binghamton University's main New York campus is in custody. Police didn't release any information about the student suspect at a news conference Monday evening. Police earlier in the day released photos of the suspect wearing dark clothes and a hooded sweatshirt. Multiple police agencies on Monday searched for the killer of engineering student Joao Souza. The Brazilian native was attacked Sunday night in a residence suite on the campus in Binghamton near the Pennsylvania state line. University officials say investigators believe the attack was not a random act and Souza was targeted. The stabbing occurred around 10:30 p.m. Sunday at the state university. The school canceled classes Monday due the "tragic event." Counseling was being offered to students and staff. Overloaded power strips caused blaze NEW YORK Authorities say overloaded power strips sparked the deadly Trump Tower fire in New York City that sent flames and thick, black smoke pouring from windows of the president's name-sake skyscraper. The New York Fire Department on Monday said the April 7 fire in a 50th-floor apartment on Manhattan's Fifth Avenue was accidental, caused by "sequenced power strips powering multiple components." Sixty-seven-year-old Todd Brassner died after being pulled from the apartment, which did not have sprinklers or a smoke alarm. Brassner was an art collector who spent time with Andy Warhol. The 58-story tower opened in 1983 at a time when building codes did not require the residential section to have sprinklers, a requirement Donald Trump once fought against as a real estate developer. He later changed his views. Associated Press No one at last months meeting of the Board of Administrators of the California Public Employees Retirement System ever said money counts for more than lives, but there were serious questions about priorities after that board voted 9-3 to hang onto its stash of stocks in gun retailers. Voting about the same time when millions of teenagers and their adult supporters staged massive pro-gun control marches in cities across the state and nation, Californias largest stock investor chose to hang onto those holdings despite pleas from Democratic state Treasurer John Chiang that it divest from companies selling assault rifles. The states leading retirement board rejected Chiangs appeal on grounds stated by board member Bill Slaton, an appointee of Gov. Jerry Brown who is also president of the Sacramento Municipal Utility District, the second-largest municipal utility in the state. We obviously have a significant (assault weapon) problem in this country, said Slaton. We have found engagement is a better alternative in order for us to accomplish something in this area. Translation: the pension board believes its prime job is to maximize investment returns rather than attempting tactics that might save lives. Photo provided FFA members from Triopia traveled to Springfield for Illinois Agriculture Legislative Day, which brings together farm, agricultural commodity organizations and other diverse agriculture interest groups at the state Capitol. The group delivered baskets filled with agricultural products and specialty lunches for legislators. The purpose of the baskets was to remind lawmakers about the multiple facets agriculture has in the lives of their constituents and the impacts their choices make on the world of agriculture. The White House said Monday that President Donald Trump still intends an early exit for U.S. troops in Syria, as French President Emmanuel Macron attempted to walk back his suggestion that he had convinced Trump to keep them there for the "long term." Macron's remarks on Sunday had hinted at a major policy shift for Trump, who had said he wanted a U.S. departure from Syria "very soon." But "our policy hasn't changed," White House spokeswoman Sarah Huckabee Sanders said, and Trump remains focused on defeating the Islamic State and on getting countries in the Persian Gulf to pick up the financial and military burden of Syria stabilization in the future. The United States, France and Britain have all offered official justifications for their joint military strike on Syrian chemical weapons sites last weekend, as well as their own version of what it means for Syria's civil war. In London, British Prime Minister Theresa May rejected political criticism that she acted on Trump's "whims" and said that her decision to send Royal Air Force warplanes to attack Syrian targets was not done as a favor to the U.S. president. "We have not done this because President Trump asked us to do so," May told the House of Commons on Monday. "We have done it because it is in our national interest to do so." Averting an "overwhelming humanitarian catastrophe is permissible under international law," May said. Macron and Trump also have cited the preservation of international law against the use of chemical weapons, although Trump has said his constitutional powers to protect "U.S. interests" provided authority to order the strikes without congressional consultation. Russia, Syrian President Bashar al-Assad's main backer, has said that an alleged chemical attack on April 7 in the Damascus suburb of Douma did not happen, and that it was a provocation staged by anti-Assad rebels. May said British confidence that the Syian government was responsible for the chemical attack, which killed dozens of civilians, was based on "a significant body of information - including intelligence." U.S. Defense Secretary Jim Mattis also alluded to unspecified "intelligence" that reached him last Friday and convinced him that the Syrian government was indisputably responsible for the attack. In both cases, the reference was based on electronic intercepts acquired by France and passed on to the United States and Britain, U.S. officials said. U.S. intelligence agencies declined to comment on the reported intercepts. Although the administration has said its twofold strategy in Syria is to defeat the Islamic State and create conditions for a political settlement of Syria's civil war, it has also said its own direct involvement only concerns the former. On Sunday, Macron said that despite Trump's pledge to disengage from Syria, "we convinced him that it was necessary to stay there long-term." That brought a quick denial from the White House and a Monday attempt by Macron to at least partially backtrack. Speaking at a news conference during a visit to New Zealand, Macron said defeating the militants remains the military objective for France and the United States, and that the mission would end on "the day" that is accomplished. "I did not say" that either country "would remain militarily engaged in Syria in the long term," he said. But Macron added that "I'm right to say that the United States of America - because it decided to carry out this intervention with us - fully realized that our responsibility went beyond the war on Daesh," the Arabic term for the Islamic State, "and that we also have a humanitarian responsibility on the ground and a long-term responsibility to build peace." Trump remains unpopular in Britain and France. Both Macron and May are anxious not to appear subservient to the president, even as they try to convince him of the value of their alliance. That value, they hope, will pay dividends next month, when Trump must decide whether to drop out of the Iran nuclear deal to which all of them - along with Germany, Russia and China - are signatories. He was against it until he was for it. Republican John Boehner, the former Speaker of the House, once said he was unalterably opposed to marijuana legalization. But the meaning of unalterable seems to have altered. This month, he joined the advisory board of Acreage Holdings, among the largest cannabis companies in the United States with cultivation, processing and dispensary operations. The company operates in 11 states with headquarters in New York City. My thinking on cannabis has evolved, Boehner said in a tweet. Related: A Tale of Neighboring Countries and Their Very Different Legal-Marijuana Banking Systems Veterans, Research Boehner is joined on the Acreage Holdings advisory board by William Weld, the governor of Massachusetts from 1991 to 1997. Unlike the Ohio congressman who was Speaker of the House from 2011 to 2015, Weld has long supported legalization of marijuana. In a joint statement, the two advocated for marijuana being de-scheduled. Thats a reference to cannabis currently being a Schedule I drug under federal law, the harshest level possible. The pair focused on three issues involving marijuana. Veterans: They noted a study that found 20 percent of veterans self-medicate with marijuana to deal with post-traumatic stress syndrome. Yet the VA does not allow its doctors to recommend its usage, they wrote. Research: Marijuanas status as a Schedule I drug prevents the amount of research the pair said is needed to determine the potential for marijuana in treating medical conditions. Opioids: The pair also advocated for more research into marijuana as an alternative to prescription opioids in light of the opioid epidemic blamed for an estimated 115 deaths per day. Related: How to Stand Out From the Crowd: Entrepreneurial Lessons from Jeff the 420 Chef Not Alone Former powerful politicians often end up on the boards of large companies. For example, in the years since he left office, Boehner has served on the boards of tobacco company Reynolds American Inc. and the law firm Squire Patton Boggs US LLP. But while his appointment to the Acreage Holdings board contradicts his earlier stance on marijuana, Boehner is not alone among Republicans in supporting marijuana legalization. A Gallup survey from 2017 found a majority of Republican voters favor legalizing marijuana. Theres also a nonprofit organization called RAMP (Republicans Against Marijuana Prohibition) that advocates legalizing marijuana and ending the cannabis black market. On its site, the group states that they represent all Republicans who oppose the inhumane and unjust practice of imprisoning people for using the cannabis plant. All this runs contrary to the Trump Administration. Attorney General Jeff Sessions has rescinded Obama-era rules that protected states where marijuana is legal from interference by the federal government. President Trump has remained mostly silent on the issue since taking office. Related: Baby Boomers Support Medical Marijuana but Skeptically Follow dispensaries.com on Twitter to stay up to date on the latest cannabis news. Related: John Boehner Succeeded in Politics Opposing Marijuana but in Retirement Has Joined the Medical Marijuana Industry Hemp Is the Multibillion-Dollar Cannabis Opportunity Few Have Heard About A Tale of Neighboring Countries and Their Very Different Legal-Marijuana Banking Systems Copyright 2018 Entrepreneur.com Inc., All rights reserved Even liberals who will never forgive Comey for his actions during the election don't think he's dishonest. On the other hand, we all know that Trump is not simply a liar but is also one of history's most profligate liars. Does that mean that we can be 100 percent sure that Trump is the one not telling the truth? No, but given who the two men are, and that Comey made notes of their conversations and contemporaneously told colleagues about what had transpired between him and the president, the evidence weighs heavily in Comey's favor. That is, unless you believe that even at that time, Comey was thinking, "I'll write up some fake notes of a conversation that never happened, then lie to other people in the FBI about it, just in case Trump ever fires me and I want to become his public antagonist." Even so, as Comey correctly pointed out when George Stephanopoulos asked him whether his conversations with Trump constituted obstruction of justice, he can only provide part of the answer: "Possibly. I mean, it's certainly some evidence of obstruction of justice. It would depend and - and I'm just a witness in this case, not the investigator or prosecutor, it would depend upon other things that reflected on his intent." If you believe Trump, then it doesn't matter because the conversation never happened. But if you believe Comey, as I think most reasonable people would, then he has provided an important set of facts that have to be dealt with - by prosecutors, by Congress, and by the voters. That's true whether you think Comey is an admirable person or not. Paul Waldman is a senior writer at The American Prospect. He wrote this for The Washington Post. Martin J. Whitman, who made "safe and cheap" a value-investing mantra during more than two decades managing the Third Avenue Value Fund, has died. He was 93. He died Monday, according to a statement from Third Avenue Management in New York. No cause was given. As founder of what is now Third Avenue Management, Whitman created the Third Avenue Value Fund in 1990 and managed it until relinquishing the role in early 2012. During that time, the fund had an average annual total return of 12 percent, compared with 9 percent for the S&P 500 Index. In 1990, he was named Morningstar's mutual fund manager of the year. The fund, and the firm, struggled during and after Whitman's final years in management. More than a dozen managers and analysts departed from 2012 through 2015. The firm's assets, which reached $26 billion in 2006, sunk to $8 billion at the end of November 2015, right before the firm shut down its Focused Credit Fund. By the end of that year, losses and redemptions caused assets to fall to $6.3 billion. For a May 2015 article, Barron's asked Whitman what it might take for investors to return to Third Avenue. "Beats me," he said. Whitman distinguished his style of investing from that of Benjamin Graham and David Dodd, considered the fathers of value investing. Where Graham and Dodd "give primacy to forecasting" cash flows and earnings, Whitman said he based his decisions almost exclusively on balance sheets. He viewed equity holdings "as permanent or semi-permanent commitments, subject only to a risk-arbitrage exception." "Value investing entails buying what is safe and cheap," Whitman wrote in his 1999 book on the subject. Third Avenue's major holdings under Whitman included Forest City Enterprises Inc., Japanese holding company Toyota Industries Corp., and Henderson Land Development Co., a Hong Kong builder. "We're pretty much buy-and-hold. We don't trade," Whitman said in a 2005 interview with Bloomberg Television. "Value investing means you're price-conscious more than outlook-conscious." As chief investment officer from 1991 to 2003, and co-chief until 2010, Whitman also oversaw Third Avenue Management's small-cap value, real-estate and international-value funds. When Whitman wrote "The Aggressive Conservative Investor" in 1979, he called his strategy "the financial-integrity approach." That description evolved over the years to "the safe and cheap approach." He had $63 million of his own money in the value fund as of 2004, when U.S. regulators called on fund managers to disclose how their own interests align with those of shareholders. "He is the king of due diligence, spending an enormous amount of time collecting and analyzing information before pulling the trigger on any transaction," Eugene Isenberg, former chairman of Nabors Industries Ltd., wrote in a forward to one of Whitman's books. From 1991 to 2011, Whitman was a director of Nabors, a contractor for onshore oil and natural-gas drilling rigs based in Hamilton, Bermuda. Whitman endured a huge loss in the 1990s betting on Japan's recovery from recession. Having "made a small fortune in the 1980s by cannily buying shares in troubled savings and loan institutions in America," Whitman saw similar promise in Japan, Gillian Tett wrote in her 2003 book, "Saving the Sun: A Wall Street Gamble to Rescue Japan from Its Trillion-Dollar Meltdown." In 1997 Whitman bought 46 million shares of Long-Term Credit Bank of Japan, a stake of almost 2 percent, and "bombarded the LTCB management with letters recommending restructuring plans," Tett wrote. After the bank "brushed him off," he flew to Tokyo to confront management directly. The collapse of the bank saddled Whitman with a $46 million loss. Unbowed, he told an investment conference in 1998 that his portfolio had turned a "small profit" since entering the Japanese market. Whitman turned to distressed corporate bonds in 2009, finding "huge, huge opportunities" and increasing, to 35 percent from 10 percent, the amount of distressed debt his funds could hold. In 2009, his final year as manager, the Third Avenue Value Fund returned 44 percent, compared with the 26 percent gain by the S&P 500, including dividends. Martin Jacob Whitman was born Sept. 30, 1924, in New York City and was raised in the Bronx. As part of his U.S. Navy service during World War II, he was stationed at an ammunition depot in Hastings, Nebraska, where, he recalled, he saw black sailors mistreated due to the color of their skin. Later in life he provided scholarships for African-American and Latino students to attend college and law school, the Wall Street Journal reported. Whitman used the G.I. Bill to obtain an undergraduate degree in business administration from Syracuse University, followed by and a master's in economics from the New School of Social Research. He began his career as a security analyst at Shearson, Hammill & Co. in 1950. He developed his investing approach while working in the family office of William Rosenwald, son of a founder of Sears Roebuck. He founded M.J. Whitman & Co., a brokerage, in 1974 and, a decade later, led a takeover of Equity Strategies Fund, the predecessor to Third Avenue Funds. In 2002, he sold 60 percent of Third Avenue Management to Affiliated Managers Group Inc. He was an adjunct lecturer, adjunct professor and distinguished fellow in finance at the Yale University School of Management from 1972 to 1984 and 1992 to 2008. Syracuse University named its school of management after Whitman, a major donor and frequent lecturer. He raised three children with his wife, Lois, a lawyer who founded the children's rights division at Human Rights Watch. --- Bloomberg's Christopher Condon contributed. A Maryland man pleaded guilty Monday to bribing a public official to steer more than $2.2 million from the U.S. Department of Veterans Affairs to a fraudulent information technology school with services for disabled veterans, federal authorities said. Albert Poawui, 41, of Laurel, Maryland, owned Atius Technology Institute, a non-accredited information technology school, the Department of Justice said in a statement. In 2015, Poawui and a vocational counselor at VA agreed Poawui would pay a 7 percent cash kickback for VA payments to Atius, ostensibly for vocational training for disabled veterans, the statement said. Between 2015 and 2017, VA paid Atius more than $2.2 million, according to the statement, for inflated invoices that showed veterans attending classes for 32 hours per week when the program offered only six hours weekly. One VA counselor received more than $155,000 for participating in the kickback scheme, prosecutors said, and another was involved as well. Another employee of Atius also helped Poawui conceal the scheme after VA initiated an audit, according to prosecutors. In a statement, Curtis Cashour, a VA spokesman, said the agency "does not tolerate this sort of behavior, and any employee found to have engaged in any such activities will be held swiftly accountable." "The VA employee at the center of these allegations has been fired for reasons unrelated to this investigation," the statement said. "The second employee referenced no longer works for VA. VA has cooperated fully throughout this investigation." The kickback was made to a program counselor with the Vocational Rehabilitation and Employment program at VA, prosecutors said. As described in the case against Poawui, the program aids disabled veterans with education and employment-related services, and program counselors advise veterans about which schools to attend and facilitate payments for tuition and necessary supplies. The federal investigation is ongoing, according to prosecutors who on Monday did not identify the other conspirators in the scheme. Poawui pleaded guilty before U.S. District Judge John Bates of the District of Columbia, the Justice Department statement said. He will be sentenced at a future date. JERSEYVILLE Murder suspect Roger W. Carroll has been transferred to the Jersey County Jail, where he is being held pending an arraignment in Jersey County on a first-degree murder and other charges in the 2010 death of Bonnie Woodward. Carroll was being held without bond in the Madison County Jail since March 22 when his bond was revoked in a 2010 obstruction of justice case related to Bonnie Woodwards stepdaughter, Heather Woodward. The younger Woodward later appeared at the East Alton Public Library. That case is pending. Carroll was charged Thursday with two counts of first-degree murder and a count of concealment of a homicidal death in Jersey County. He is accused of shooting Woodward, 48, and burning her remains in a remote location in Jersey County. He was also charged Thursday in Madison County with aggravated kidnapping in the disappearance of Woodward, of East Alton. His bond in the most recent Madison County case was set at $1 million, but he is being held without bail after he was charged March 5 in Jersey County with unlawful restraint and domestic battery for allegedly grabbing, jerking and dragging his wife, Monica D. Carroll, while using a stun Taser on her head. The unlawful restraint charge alleges he locked her in a laundry room after using the Taser several times on the head and neck. Bail was set at $10,000 in that case. Madison County Lead Assistant States Attorney Jennifer Mudge has been appointed a special prosecutor in the Jersey County murder and concealment cases. Those cases will be heard before a Jersey County judge in that county. Carroll, 52, who listed an address of 901 East Prairie, Jerseyville, as of March 22, is represented by Curt Dawson of Edwardsville in Madison County. As of Monday, no attorney had put in an appearance in behalf of Carroll in the Jersey County cases. As of March 22, Mudge filed an application to revoke Carrolls bail in the 2010 obstruction case because he had been charged March 5 with felony unlawful restraint. Carroll has been granted several delays in his 2010 case. Dawson in 2010 filed several routine motions in the obstruction of justice case. In one pleading he asked the court to preserve audio and video recordings of Carroll and other material witnesses. He claimed some of the records may contain evidence favorable to his client. He specifically asked for audio and video made of Monica Carroll at the Alton Police Department. Monica Carroll has not been charged with any crime. Authorities said Thursday the body was found with the help of several agencies, including people from Alton police, Illinois State Police and Jersey County deputies. They said officers, and even prosecutors, searched the mud near a tributary of Piasa Creek near Grange Hall and Crystal Lake roads. Woodward was last seen talking to a man in the parking lot of the Eunice Smith Nursing Home in Alton, where she had been a longtime employee. Her vehicle was found on the lot with its windows down. Carroll had been a person of interest at the time. Authorities said Thursday Carroll lured Woodward into his vehicle from the nursing home parking lot. Reach reporter Sanford Schmidt at 618-208-6449. PARIS - Speaking alongside the flag-draped coffin of a police officer killed in a terrorist attack in southern France, President Emmanuel Macron last month lay blame on "underground Islamism" and those who "indoctrinate on our soil and corrupt daily." The attack added further urgency to a project already in the works: Macron has embarked on a controversial quest to change Islam in France - with the goal of integration but also preventing radicalization. He has said that in the coming months he will announce "a blueprint for the whole organization" of Islam. And those trying to anticipate what that will look like are turning their attention to Hakim El Karoui, a leading voice on how Islamic traditions fit within French culture. It's hard to miss that the man who appears to have Macron's ear on this most sensitive of subjects cuts a similar figure. Like the president, El Karoui is an ex-Rothschild investment banker with an elite social pedigree who favors well-tailored suits, crisp white shirts and the lofty province of big ideas. The latest of those ideas is this: that the best way to integrate Islam within French society is to promote a version of the religion "practiced in peace by believers who will not have the need to loudly proclaim their faith." But if El Karoui is the model for how Macron envisions merging Islamic traditions and French values, the reform effort may end up stumbling along a rough road. "He's disconnected from everyday Muslims, and he has legitimacy on the question only because he happens to be named Hakim El Karoui, and that's it," said Yasser Louati, a French civil liberties advocate and Muslim community organizer. Since 2015, more than 230 people in France have been killed in terrorist attacks, most of them perpetrated by French and European nationals affiliated with or inspired by the Islamic State. Meanwhile, as many as 1,910 French nationals have gone to wage jihad in Iraq and Syria, according to the Soufan Center, which studies radicalization. France has agonized over how to intervene - what might work and what the government's proper role should be. Already, there have been missteps. In 2016, the government opened the first of 13 planned "deradicalization centers" in a converted chateau in the Loire Valley, where at-risk youths volunteered for an immersive program in French culture and history. But the approach came under criticism for being too nationalistic, for taking the youths out of their homes and communities, and for relying on questionable science. Then locals began to protest having suspected terrorists next door. The Loire center closed in 2017, the concept declared "a total fiasco." Macron has pursued an aggressive security policy. He permanently enshrined portions of an emergency security provision into French law last year. And he has continued a crackdown on mosques and imams associated with Salafism, an ultraconservative interpretation of Islam. But he also seems invested in a broader, more cultural change to French Islam that transcends the question of national security. Since the 1980s, French presidents have attempted the same, but to no avail. The 40-year-old Macron is determined to succeed where others have failed. And he seems to be particularly intrigued by the ideas of El Karoui. The son of a Tunisian Muslim father and a French Protestant mother, as well as a nephew of a former Tunisian prime minister, El Karoui identifies himself as a French Muslim. But he is not overtly religious. El Karoui is in many ways the embodiment of the modern French elite - for some Muslims, perhaps too much so. In line with the strict interpretation of French secularism known as laicite, he opposes religious displays such as the veil - which he sees as a political tool that reinforces inequality between men and women and therefore runs counter to the core French value of egalite. It wasn't until after the 2015 Charlie Hebdo attack, involving French Muslim suspects, that El Karoui began to research and write about Muslims in France - a fragmented community of about 4.5 million, although the exact figure is unknown, given the French government's refusal to collect official statistics on race, ethnicity or religion. The sum of his various stances are on display in a recent book, "L'Islam, Une Religion Francaise," an intervention that delighted much of the French elite because of El Karoui's call for Muslims themselves to take charge of their own community. "We need your mobilization," he writes in his conclusion. "It is by committing yourselves that Islam will naturally become a French religion." With a Macronian flair for procedure, he has approached the project as one might expect of someone with a background in finance. He has sought to quantify "Islamic consumption" in France and the "market share" of secular Muslims versus the Islamic State and Muslim Brotherhood. He writes about certifying halal produce "along the entire value chain." He is particularly interested in financial flows and wants to limit foreign support of mosques and imams - a proposal that Macron's recent statements suggest he may ultimately embrace. "We made a strategic error in the past, when it was decided that Muslims were foreigners, and that Islam should therefore be funded by foreign states," El Karoui said in an interview at his Paris office. He noted that Islam is the second-most-practiced religion in France and that the vast majority of Muslims in France, about 75 percent, are French-born. And yet money from Algeria, Morocco and Turkey supports the vast majority of French mosques and imams. "The idea of foreign financing has become completely insane," he said. He proposes funding French Muslim communal life through several domestic sources instead. El Karoui's proposals have alienated some among France's more observant Muslims and those fighting Islamophobia. He has been criticized for accepting that radicalization is primarily a Muslim problem, which should be addressed within the ranks of the community. Yet many convicted terrorists have not been particularly religious. Of particular issue was a 2016 study he conducted through the Institut Montaigne: "A French Islam is Possible," which, among other things, examined a link between Muslims and radicalization. The study was criticized on technical grounds: Some argued that its sample sizes were inconclusive, while others insisted that it asked leading questions. "He has a pragmatic approach, and he wants to identify the issues and provide solutions," said Marwan Muhammad, a former director of the Collective Against Islamophobia in France (CCIF) and an anti-discrimination activist. "But what he defines as 'radical' has nothing to do with Islam." El Karoui deflects the criticism, saying: "Among the biggest problems in the Muslim world, in the Arab world, is the incapacity to face the problem. It's always the fault of someone else. 'It's not our fault; it doesn't exist; it's a conspiracy; it's Israel's fault.' But what is the reality?" He is less interested in other documented sources of Muslim alienation and radicalization, such as discrimination that may limit educational and employment opportunities, or France's prison system, where Muslims are disproportionately represented. He is also reluctant to revisit first principles, such as the idea that the veil is a threat to the foundation of the French Republic. "That's a political reality," he said when pushed on the subject while speaking in the United States last year. "And we will not change France." For a number of prominent French scholars, the idea of the state attempting to regulate an entire religion, to stop a small minority of extremists, is a losing battle. They also see it as a quasi-monarchical aspiration that has no place in a country committed to secularism. "An apparent source of inspiration is the centralized integration of the Jews by Napoleon, but Napoleon was able to achieve that because he was the head of an authoritarian state," said Olivier Roy, an expert on French Islam and a professor at the European University Institute in Florence. In 1808, Napoleon established by decree an organization known as the Consistoire Central Israelite, a body intended to serve as a central organizing authority for Jewish religious practice throughout France. A version of the organization survives today. "It was the same with Louis XIV and 'Gallicanism,' " Roy said, referring to the view that French kings - not the pope in Rome - should have ultimate authority over the control of the Catholic Church, as a means of control over the people. "That was normal at the time, but because the king was invested with divine right." "A secular state," he added, "has no legal right to intervene in a religion. That would be unconstitutional. We hear so often talk about the formation of imams, about the idea of an Islam that accepts 'the values of the French Republic' - but what are those, exactly?" For others, what must also be addressed is what they see as the structural hypocrisy of the French state, which promises equality for all, but which often polices the way certain citizens can live their lives, as the recent controversies over the veil and the "burkini" swimsuit suggest. French Muslims "have no place in public life," said Dounia Bouzar, an author and deradicalization specialist. "We have to have communal liberty in the public space," she said. It's not what it looks like. That's the refrain from Sean Hannity, after lawyers for President Donald Trump's personal attorney, Michael Cohen, revealed in court on Monday that the Fox News host is one of only three clients that Cohen represented this year and last. Cohen's previous work included arranging a $130,000 payment to prevent porn star Stormy Daniels from talking publicly about her alleged affair with Trump. And Cohen's work for the other client on his shortlist, Republican fundraiser Elliott Broidy, included negotiating a $1.6 million settlement with a former Playboy model who got pregnant when she and Broidy had an affair. So what it looks like, of course, is that Cohen could have similarly helped Hannity silence a woman who might have told an embarrassing story. That is not the case, Hannity insisted on his radio show. "I tell you why they're going nuts," Hannity said of the media. "They're assuming - because I guess he did some type of work for some Republican guy - they're figuring, 'Oh, he must've done a big settlement case for Hannity.' That's not - no, that's not what happened. Ever." "Not one of any issue I ever dealt with Michael Cohen on ever - ever - involved a matter between me and any third party," Hannity added. Hannity's denial is a bit confusing. Hannity sought Cohen's legal counsel only on matters involving Hannity and himself? It is also unclear why, if Cohen's work for Hannity was innocuous, the two men sought to keep their relationship secret. In a letter to the court Monday morning, Cohen's lawyers said his third recent client, besides Trump and Broidy, wished to remain anonymous. "As to the one unnamed legal client, we do not believe that Mr. Cohen should be asked to reveal the name or can permissibly do so," the letter said. A federal judge disagreed. But there is an even bigger hole in Hannity's explanation: Why, as he railed against FBI raids of Cohen's office, home and hotel room last week, did Hannity not disclose to viewers and listeners that his communications with Cohen could have been among the materials seized? "We have now entered a dangerous phase," Hannity said on TV on the day of the raids, without mentioning any potential danger to himself. A Fox News spokeswoman did not respond to an inquiry on this point. Instead, the network issued the following statement, attributed to Hannity: "Michael Cohen has never represented me in any matter. I never retained him, received an invoice, or paid legal fees. I have occasionally had brief discussions with him about legal questions about which I wanted his input and perspective. I assumed those conversations were confidential but, to be absolutely clear, they never involved any matter between me and a third party." On the radio, Hannity did not directly address his lack of disclosure but hinted at a possible defense - that he did not consider himself a formal client of Cohen's. That Cohen's attorneys included Hannity's name on a list of clients presented in court "just shows that Michael was doing his due diligence and being totally thorough about anybody that he might have had attorney-client privilege with," Hannity told listeners. Hannity made further comments that appear to be somewhat inconsistent with the statement he issued through Fox News. He said that he might have paid Cohen a small fee, after all, and said he did not merely assume that their conversations were privileged but rather sought assurances. "I might have handed him 10 bucks [and said,] 'I definitely want your attorney-client privilege on this,' " Hannity said on the radio. "Something like that. I requested that privilege with him when I would ask him: 'Well, this just came up. What do you think about this? What do you think about that?' " As a commentator, Hannity need not be neutral. But as a self-described "opinion journalist," he could reasonably be expected to divulge a conflict of interest such as the one involving Cohen. Potomac, Maryland, businessman David Trone has poured $3 million of his personal fortune this year into his quest to succeed Rep. John Delaney, D-Md., while state Del. Aruna Miller, D-Montgomery, received far more in individual donations than any of her Democratic primary opponents. With 10 weeks remaining before the June 26 primary, Trone has $1.5 million in the bank, according to the latest campaign finance reports. That's about $600,000 more than Miller and more than $1 million more than state Sen. Roger Manno, Montgomery, Trone's chief competitors among the eight candidates vying for the party's nomination. Miller raised $325,000 from individual donors since the beginning of January, twice as much as Trone and 10 times as much as Manno, according to the finance reports. But Trone, the owner of a large chain of liquor stores, stayed ahead in terms of cash on hand, writing a $1 million check to his campaign at the end of February, then another for $2 million three weeks later. In total, Trone has spent $5.2 million so far on his campaign in the 6th District, which encompasses portions of Montgomery County and stretches to Western Maryland. In his first bid for Congress in 2016, Trone used more than $13 million of his own money before losing in the 8th District Democratic primary to then-state Sen. Jamie Raskin. In another potentially competitive congressional race in Maryland, Rep. Andy Harris, R, reported that he has $1.3 million in his campaign account. Jesse Colvin, the leading Democrat vying to challenge him, has $332,348. The 6th District seat opened when Delaney announced that he was leaving Congress to run for president in 2020. The leading Republican candidate is Amie Hoeber, a defense contractor who is seeking the seat for the second time. She raised $127,000 in the first three months of 2018, according to campaign filings, and has a total of $119,854 in her campaign account. Among the Democrats, Nadia Hashimi, a pediatrician who is running for the first time, raised $61,515 since January and has just over $300,000 in her campaign account. Hashimi has loaned her campaign $225,000. Miller has recently been the target of attacks by Maryland's Republican Party, which portrayed her in two mass mailings as weak on crime and undocumented immigrants. The delegate has been endorsed by Emily's List, which contributed $108,000 to her campaign, according to her latest filing. Another progressive group, ActBlue, gave her nearly $20,000. Miller has $941,481 in her campaign account. She has raised a total of $1.1 million. Manno, who has $274,397 in his campaign account, has received $15,965 from ActBlue, as well as contributions from several unions, including $5,000 from the United Auto Workers. Manno loaned his campaign $72,000 on December 31, according to his report. Trone's latest finance report shows that he has spent more than $4 million on the race overall, including $20,000 a month to rent office space. Since the beginning of January, his campaign paid $361,000 to Canal Partners to purchase television and radio advertising; $351,000 to AMS Communications for direct mail; $228,000 to AL Media for digital advertising; $244,000 to Siegel Strategies for political consulting; and $200,000 to Organizing Montross Group for field work. The candidate also has paid $22,500 to Martin-Lauer Associates, which is listed as a "fundraising consultant" on the report. Trone drew $164,000 in individual contributions since the beginning of January. In total, he has collected $354,431 in individual contributions, or less than 10 percent of what he himself has given his campaign. At DSA 2018, the tri-service defence exhibition currently held in Kuala Lumpur - Malaysia, South African company MILKOR unveiled its MN Centurion high-speed interceptor craft. At DSA 2018, the tri-service defence exhibition currently held in Kuala Lumpur - Malaysia, South African company MILKOR unveiled its MN Centurion high-speed interceptor craft. Milkor high-speed interceptor craft The Milkor high-speed interceptor craft is a 12m stepped hull, hydrofoil-assisted catamaran design with lightweight composite structure and a reduced radar signature. Designed and configured for multi-role operations, it is ideally suited for long endurance missions. The command and control bridge is shock-mitigated, ballistic-protected and airconditioned able to house the crew in safety and comfort. The high-speed interceptor craft houses an array of surveillance equipment, communications equipment and weapons giving it a full spectrum of capabilities for any inshore or offshore operation. Milkor designs, manufactures and offers after sales service for Naval and Commercial requirements. The high-speed interceptor craft with its hydrofoil-assisted stepped hull design is able to achieve a high interception speed whilst retaining stability and control. This design also enables a high lift to drag ratio at top speed increasing fuel efficiency and endurance. The command and control bridge houses world class communications and surveillance equipment, along with its reduced radar signature hull, giving this craft the advantage for surveillance patrol, counter-piracy, and asset protection missions. It remains the heart of this craft providing the comfort of an airconditioned shock-mitigated cabin for rough conditions. With ballistic protection and armoured glass, the crew is able to remain secure under threat allowing full attentiveness to the mission. The company plans to showcase the first prototype during AAD defense exhibition in South Africa in September 2018. The vessel has a length of 12 meters, a beam of 4;8 meters and a displacement of 10 tons. It can reach a top speed of 54 knots. It is fitted with a 40mm AGL by ST Kinetics (under a stealth cupola) at the bow and a secondary 20mm RWS. The vessel can also be configured to operate as an Unmanned Surface Vehicle. The company plans to showcase the first prototype during AAD defense exhibition in South Africa in September 2018. Milkor is a South African defence company which was established in 1981 as an original designer and manufacturer of the hand held 40mm Multiple Grenade Launcher weapon systems. Over the past 36 years, Milkor has supplied in excess of 60,000 weapons to more than 60 countries worldwide to military and law enforcement ranging for lethal to less-lethal. NEWARK, OH, April 17, 2018 So much informationand misinformationfloods our airwaves daily that the historical roots of contemporary problems are easily lost. This is why historians like Alcira Duenas, Ph.D., associate professor of Latin American history at The Ohio State University at Newark, struggle to restore their field to the service of truth, peace and humanity. Without an understanding of past relations, it is impossible for the public to make the best decisions for future ties between our nation and the rest of the hemisphere. Duenas will talk about the importance of Latin American history as part of the Faculty Talks Outside the Box lecture series. She will show why Latin American history matters by discussing how a historical perspective on current events involving Latin America is crucial in order to avoid distortions rendered as truth. The talk will take place on Tuesday, April 24 at 11 a.m. in the Norman R. and Alethea E. Sleight Community Room # 264 of the John. L. and Christine Warner Library and Student Center, 1219 University Drive, at The Ohio State University at Newark. During Faculty Talks Outside the Box, Ohio State Newark professors discuss recent research in their fields as it relates to our community. All talks are free and open to the public. The Ohio State University at Newark offers an academic environment thats inclusive of diversity, challenging but supportive with world-renowned professors and access to Ohio States more than 200 majors. Its where learning comes to life. Research, study abroad and service learning opportunities prepare students for their careers in ways they never expected. Police have made 16 arrests and expect 24 more in a joint operation that focused on an apartment building near downtown. The coordinated raid was executed sometime Tuesday morning at the Cattleman's Square Apartments at the corner of Houston and Frio Streets, next to the VIA Centro Plaza. "This building, this area was a scourge on the city," said San Antonio Police Chief William McManus. "And now hopefully we've made an impact on that." The investigation began in February, when the San Antonio Police Department's Narcotics Unit obtained evidence indicating two criminal organizations were selling drugs there. McManus declined to identify the organizations. RELATED: SAPD: Officer hospitalized in head-on collision with fleeing suspect found sleeping behind wheel It included San Antonio police, the Texas Department of Public Safety, city code compliance and Haven for Hope. "This was an effort to clean up this area that's been plagued with this kind of activity for a long time," McManus said. In total there were 55 warrants issued for 32 defendants on charges including delivery and possession of cocaine, methamphetamine, marijuana and synthetic marijuana. Eight of those were arrested this morning and an additional eight were arrested on other charges, including one accused of indecency with a child. McManus said authorities expect to arrest the remaining suspects in the coming days. Authorities are now working with Code Compliance to shut the building down, McManus said. Councilwoman Shirley Gonzales said she commutes through the area on a daily basis and often saw criminal activity being conducted in broad daylight. "I'm glad to see finally the result of a very dangerous operation, and I hope, a successful one," she said. 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 Border Patrol agents discovered $743,000 of marijuana in a SUV that was driven into the Rio Grande Sunday night, according to a news release from the agency. Agents saw multiple people loading up the car with bundles of marijuana near Escobares, officials said. Approval of curriculum standards for a high school Mexican-American studies course could have been a watershed moment for the Texas State Board of Education. Instead the conversation among a group that has gained a less than favorable national reputation for its nonacademic-based votes quickly became about the course title. A member objected to what he called hyphenated Americanism. Mexican-American studies will now be formally known as Ethnic Studies: An Overview of Americans of Mexican Descent. Like many of the SBOEs votes in the past, the focus on this issue quickly shifted from the states more than 5 million public school students 52 percent Latino to political ideology. FOR OUR SUBSCRIBERS: State Board of Education strips 'Mexican-American Studies' name from elective David Bradley, R-Beaumont, proposed the last-minute name change because he finds hyphenated Americanism to be divisive. Not all members of the SBOE were on board with the name change, but they went along with the proposal to secure passage of the curriculum standards for the class. As someone who identifies as Mexican-American, your experience is unlike my experience. Im asking you to be inclusive, SBOE member Marisa Perez-Diaz, D-San Antonio, told Bradley. Regrettably, this hyphen-phobia will create more divisiveness than any adjective before the word American could have generated. Ethnic studies programs have been at the center of controversies for a long time, but they are finally making it into the public school curriculum. Texas is only the latest state to consider expanding its public school class offering to include ethnic studies. Such courses are offered in California and Indiana. Connecticut, Tennessee and South Dakota are considering adding ethnic studies. RELATED: Board of Education member denounces "Mexican-American Studies" name-change as "discrimination" The SBOEs vote on curriculum standards for Mexican-American studies has been long overdue. Research indicates such courses improve student outcomes through higher grades, better performance on standardized tests and increased graduation rates. It also enhances critical thinking skills. The board is on the right course with its votes to consider expansion of ethnic studies in Texas classrooms to include Native American, African-American, Latino and Asian-Pacific Islander studies. In its future deliberations on these courses, we urge the SBOE to keep its focus on the students and not the hyphens. Hyphens dont make anyone less American. Emory President Claire E. Sterk offered brief remarks and mingled with attendees at the 2017 Employee Council Town Hall. The Employee Council invites all Emory employees to attend this years gathering, now known as the Spring Leadership Social. The Emory University Employee Council Spring Leadership Social (formerly the Employee Council Town Hall) is Monday, April 23, from 11:30 a.m. until 1 p.m. at the Goizueta Foundation Center, room 525. All employees are welcome. Participants are asked to RSVP to Benjamen Nforneh, benjamen.nforneh@emory.edu This year's format will be a mix and mingle with Emory President Claire E. Sterk and members of her senior leadership team. During the event, employees will be invited to engage in dialogue with the president and the presidents leadership group. Employee Council leaders hope that this year, with the many new faces on the presidents leadership team, conversations will center around the councils 2017-18 theme: How to prosper and thrive as an Emory employee. The Employee Council has spent the past seven months hearing from leaders, faculty and peers on ways employees can flourish in both their personal and professional lives when they have a deeper understanding of the impacts that core components have on their lives. Some of the core component topics discussed in the councils monthly meetings include: health wellness mindfulness movement diversity and inclusion vulnerability, resilience and adaptability how place sustains us The Employee Council is looking forward to discussions around these topics and also gathering information from some of the newer members of the presidents leadership team on their backgrounds and why they chose Emory. Established to facilitate communication between Emory employees and the university administration, the Employee Council serves as an advisory body to the president. 1 Afghan violence: An Afghan official says at least six civilians were shot and killed by gunmen in western Ghor province. Iqbal Nezami, spokesman for the provincial police chief, said that four other civilians were wounded after their vehicle was attacked near Faroz Koh, the provincial capital, on Tuesday. The victims were all ethnic Hazaras, a Shiite minority in Afghanistan frequently targeted by Sunni extremists. No one immediately claimed responsibility for the attack. Both the Taliban and militants from the rival Islamic State are active in Ghor and have previously claimed attacks in the province. 2 Ex-leader indicted: Romanian prosecutors on Tuesday formally indicted former President Ion Iliescu for crimes against humanity over his role in deaths that occurred during the anti-communist revolution. Iliescu, 88, appeared at the general prosecutors office to hear the charges against him. He didnt comment. Iliescu came to power during the 1989 revolt in which Communist leader Nicolae Ceausescu was toppled and executed. Prosecutors said Tuesday that Iliescu, who gained control of the military during the uprising, had failed to prevent numerous situations where people were needlessly killed. More than 1,100 people died during the uprising, the vast majority after Ceausescus ouster when Iliescu had taken power. As our community grows, and with the influx of tourists each holiday, ensuring your organisation or small business can be found online easily is critical for capturing attention. The good news is, the tools are available. Manage your Google listing If your business is not coming up in Google Maps or Google Search, or the information is out of date, youre missing out. To update this yourself, open a Google Business account (https://business.google.com) then click Info on the menu. Now you can update your address, contact details, hours and more. Update your Google photos Have you changed the signage outside your store? Or updated the interior? In Google Business, click the Photos link. Here you can add new photos, videos or even a 360-degree shot, which you can take with your smartphone. These new images will appear when people search for your business, helping create a great first impression. Hows your website? Speaking of first impressions, a professional website is critical for creating a great online presence. Relying on a Facebook page, which does not come up well in Google Search, is a poor substitute. Google may also penalise you if your website is old and doesnt work well on mobile devices. The good news is that you can build a website yourself if you have some ability with words and photos and an eye for layout. Google offers a free tool under Google Business, and there are other online services too. Or, you can hire an agency to take care of this for you. Make the most of Google search With a good website in place, its important to get as many visitors to it as possible. When people search for your goods or services, theyll find you on Google through either Paid Search (SEM) or Organic/Free Search (SEO). SEM gets your business into the four paid slots at the top of Googles search results. For this, youll need an AdWords account (https://adwords.google.com) and a daily budget. You can do this yourself, though it gets complicated quickly, or you can outsource it to an agency. SEO is free, but takes time and effort to develop. It comes down to many factors, including how well your website is built, if its mobile-friendly, the content, its relevance to visitors and many other details. You can open an account Google Webmasters account at https://www.google.com/webmasters/tools and start exploring. Grant Henderson, Free Range Media www.freerangemedia.co.nz Tech & Science, Local News, Business & Finance By Long Island News & PR Published: April 17 2018 Virtual Markets Integrity Initiative Seeks to Improve Transparency and Accountability of Major Cryptocurrency Trading Platforms to Protect Virtual Currency Investors. New York, NY - April 17, 2018 - Today, New York Attorney General Eric T. Schneiderman launched the Virtual Markets Integrity Initiative, a fact-finding inquiry into the policies and practices of platforms used by consumers to trade virtual or crypto currencies like bitcoin and ether. As part of a broader effort to protect cryptocurrency investors and consumers, the Attorney Generals office sent letters to thirteen major virtual currency trading platforms requesting key information on their operations, internal controls, and safeguards to protect customer assets. As the letters explain, the Initiative seeks to increase transparency and accountability as it relates to the platforms retail investors rely on to trade virtual currency, and better inform enforcement agencies, investors, and consumers. With cryptocurrency on the rise, consumers in New York and across the country have a right to transparency and accountability when they invest their money. Yet too often, consumers dont have the basic facts they need to assess the fairness, integrity, and security of these trading platforms, said Attorney General Schneiderman. Our Virtual Markets Integrity Initiative sets out to change that, promoting the accountability and transparency in the virtual currency marketplace that investors and consumers deserve. Virtual or crypto currency trading platforms match buyers and sellers of virtual currencies. Sometimes referred to as exchanges, these platforms are a key point of entry into the virtual currency market for professional and retail investors alike. They serve as repositories for sensitive personal information and custodians of vast sums of virtual and government-issued (or fiat) currency. Ensuring that enforcement agencies, investors, and consumers have the information they need to understand the practices and the risks on these platforms is critical, given reports of the theft of vast sums of virtual currency from customer accounts, sudden and poorly explained trading outages, possible market manipulation, and difficulties when withdrawing funds from accounts. Often, the platforms lack the basic market protections of traditional investing platforms. Moreover, the extent of disclosures to customers about trading rules, internal controls, and other basic practices varies from platform-to-platform, making it difficult or impossible for prospective users to evaluate the actual risks of trading on a particular platform. The Initiative stems from the Attorney Generals duty to protect consumers and ensure the fairness and integrity of the financial markets. Before trading on a new platform, sophisticated investors routinely demand robust disclosures, allowing them to assess the platforms operations and the adequacy of its policies and internal controls. The questionnaire delivered to the virtual currency platforms asks for similar information so that average investors can better understand the risks and protections. The questionnaires ask the platforms to disclose information falling within six major topic areas, including (1) Ownership and Control, (2) Basic Operation and Fees, (3) Trading Policies and Procedures, (4) Outages and Other Suspensions of Trading, (5) Internal Controls, and (6) Privacy and Money Laundering. Among other areas of interest, the questionnaires request that platforms describe their approach to combating suspicious trading and market manipulation; their policies on the operation of bots; their limitations on the use of and access to non-public trading information; and the safeguards they have in place to protect customer funds from theft, fraud, and other risks. The Attorney Generals office will analyze the responses, compare them across platforms, and at the conclusion of this process, present what it learned to the public. The Investor Protection Bureau of the Office of the Attorney General sent letters to the following virtual currency trading platforms: (1) Coinbase, Inc. (GDAX); (2) Gemini Trust Company; (3) bitFlyer USA, Inc.; (4) iFinex Inc. (Bitfinex); (5) Bitstamp USA Inc.; (6) Payward, Inc. (Kraken); (7) Bittrex, Inc.; (8) Circle Internet Financial Limited (Poloniex LLC); (9) Binance Limited; (10) Elite Way Developments LLP (Tidex.com); (11) Gate Technology Incorporated (Gate.io); (12) itBit Trust Company; and (13) Huobi Global Limited (Huobi.Pro). The full text of the letters sent to the trading platforms can be found below. The questionnaire is available here We write on behalf of the New York State Office of the Attorney General (OAG) to request the participation of [company] in OAGs Virtual Markets Integrity Initiative, which seeks to protect the interests of New York residents who trade virtual currency and related investment products. OAG is asking major virtual currency trading platforms (often referred to as exchanges) to respond to a questionnaire addressing key aspects of their operations, including their fee structure, their internal controls, and the measures they take to safeguard funds in customer accounts. Through this Initiative, OAG seeks to increase transparency and accountability in the virtual currency marketplaceand better inform the actions of enforcement agencies, investors, and consumers in this space. As you know, bitcoin, ether, and other virtual currencies have captured the imagination of millions of people worldwide. Representing a technological advance, a medium of exchange, and an investment opportunity all at once, virtual currencies are inspiring innovators, entrepreneurs, and investorsand are fueling an increasingly diverse ecosystem of companies and applications. But virtual currency is also a highly speculative sector, featuring significant volatility, instability, and risk. Moreover, published reports indicate the sector has attracted fraudsters, market manipulators, and thieves. As the States chief law enforcement agency, OAG is responsible for protecting consumers and investors from these bad actors and ensuring the fairness and integrity of New Yorks financial markets.[3] See, e.g., N.Y. Exec. Law 63(12); N.Y. Gen. Bus. Law 349; N.Y. Gen. Bus. Law 352. As with other emerging sectors, the challenge with virtual currency is to prevent fraud and other abuses, safeguard market integrity, and protect individual investorswithout stifling legitimate market activity or innovation. OAGs Virtual Markets Integrity Initiative seeks to advance these objectives by promoting meaningful transparency, accountability, and the opportunity for government agencies, consumer advocates, and investors to compare the policies, procedures, and protections of virtual currency platforms. Sophisticated investors routinely require privately-owned trading venues on which they are considering trading to furnish robust disclosures about their operations, policies, and internal controls so that they can evaluate the risks of trading on a given platform. The enclosed questionnaire asks [company] to supply similar information, for the benefit of not only professional investors and financial firms, but all consumers who may trade virtual currency on platforms, so that they better understand their operations and the associated risks. The topics set forth in our questionnaire address fundamental aspects of your operations or issues that have already attracted significant public attention. Indeed, many may be covered in your web disclosures or regulatory filings. They range from your platforms basic trading rules, to the policies and safeguards you have implemented to prevent conflicts of interest, fraud, and illegality; address the operation of bots; and protection of customer assets from theft and other risks. We will review and assess your responses, compare them with those of other platforms, and disclose certain information in a publicly accessible format.[4] As part of this disclosure, we will identify any platforms that decline to provide meaningfully complete responses. We kindly ask that you provide detailed and clear responses for each topic, as well as a contact from whom we can seek supplemental information, as necessary. Please complete the enclosed questionnaire and return your responses to our attention no later than May 1, 2018. In the event you have any questions or concerns, please do not hesitate to reach out to us. Sincerely, Simon G. Brandler, Senior Advisor & Special Counsel Nature & Weather, Local News, Politics By Long Island News & PR Published: April 17 2018 Several strong and unprecedented recent winter storms resulted in significant shoaling of Moriches Inlet. Patchogue, NY - April 17, 2018 - Today, Congressman Lee Zeldin (R, NY-1) announced that the Commander of the U.S. Army Corps New York District, Colonel Thomas Asbery, just received the needed Emergency Declaration from Army Corps of Engineers North Atlantic Division Brigadier General William Graham, granting Rep. Zeldins request to perform emergency dredging of the Today, Congressman Lee Zeldin (R, NY-1) announced that the Commander of the U.S. Army Corps New York District, Colonel Thomas Asbery, just received the needed Emergency Declaration from Army Corps of Engineers North Atlantic Division Brigadier General William Graham, granting Rep. Zeldins request to perform emergency dredging of the Moriches Inlet. With this emergency declaration, the process of coordinating funding and permits will be initiated and expedited so dredging vessels can begin working on the Moriches Inlet as soon as possible. The emergency declaration allows for expedited coordination with the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service regarding the listed endangered bird species, Piping Plover; the National Marine Fisheries Service regarding relevant fisheries species, the United States Coast Guard Sector Long Island; the New York State Department of Environmental Conservation, and the State of New York Department of State. The expedited coordination is needed to comply with several federal and state laws as well as help identify suitable placement location for the 300,000 cubic yards of sand that is clogging the inlet. Several strong and unprecedented recent winter storms resulted in significant shoaling of Moriches Inlet. This inlet provides critical access to the Atlantic Ocean and has allowed some boats to bypass the shoaling problems of Moriches Bay. The threat of a closure of the inlet would deal a major blow to marine related businesses across eastern Suffolk County and present a danger to boaters safety. Last month, Rep. Zeldin was joined by local electeds, small businesses, boaters and fishermen in calling for an emergency dredge of Moriches Inlet during which Congressman Zeldin joined local fisherman to survey the inlets dangerous navigation conditions first-hand. The approval of this request and the continued efforts to bring about an emergency dredge of Moriches Inlet is great news for our coastal economy, commercial and recreational fisherman and all those whose livelihoods rely on the vitality of our communities waterways, said Congressman Lee Zeldin. With fishing season fast approaching, I look forward to continuing to work with the Army Corps of Engineers and all those affected by the deteriorated state of the Moriches Inlet to complete this emergency dredge as soon as possible. "We appreciate the team effort to have quickly received the needed Emergency Declaration from our higher Headquarters to address this issue," said Col. Thomas Asbery, commander, New York District. "I'd like to thank Rep. Zeldin and our partners at the local, state, and federal level for their support in helping to address this challenge. We look forward to performing the work to restore Moriches Inlet to its federally authorized depth in the near future, which will make it safe and usable for the residents of Long Island." Local News, Business & Finance, Politics By Long Island News & PR Published: April 17 2018 New community development program creates incentives for long-term investments in low-income communities. Long Island, NY - April 17, 2018 - U.S. Representative Kathleen Rice is calling for eligible communities in New Yorks fourth congressional district to be designated as Opportunity Zones, which will incentivize long-term investment of private capital in low-income communities. The Tax Cuts and Jobs Act of 2017 established a new community development program that provides tax incentives for investors to re-invest in low-income urban and rural communities that have been designated as Opportunity Zones. Communities are eligible to be designated as Opportunity Zones if they have an individual poverty rate of at least 20% and a median family income of no more than 80% of the median family income in the surrounding area. In a recent letter to New York Governor Andrew Cuomo, Rice noted that participating in the program would bring significant investment to long under-served communities and spur economic growth throughout Long Island. Eligible communities in New Yorks fourth district include the Village of Hempstead, which the Census designates as having severe economic distress, as well as Freeport, Long Beach, and New Cassel. Governor Cuomo has until Friday, April 20, to nominate eligible communities to be designated as Opportunity Zones. There are a number of eligible areas of the 4th Congressional District that would greatly benefit from being designated, Rice wrote. The area that could most benefit is Hempstead, which has severe economic distress census tracts. The Hempstead area is ready for increased investment in the people who live and work there. Designating the other eligible tracts in NY-4 would also help Long Island as a whole prosper. Freeport has made transit-oriented development and downtown revitalization a priority in order to help retain both younger and older residents. As Long Beach continues to recover from Superstorm Sandy, it is looking at how it can use the land in the eligible tract more deliberately and efficiently that is, more resilient to flooding and also adding resources the community needs, such as parks, child care, and employers. New Cassel, which you designated in 2015 as a Brownfield Opportunity Area, is actively working to improve quality of life and increase economic opportunity. Local News, Crime By Long Island News & PR Published: April 17 2018 Ramel Parker of Islip, 22, and two un-named minors, would sell unsuspecting victims iPhone boxes filled with rice, cops say. SCPD arrested Ramel Parker of Islip, 22, and two un-named minors, for am iPhone scam. Albany, NY - April 17, 2018 - Suffolk County Police today arrested three people on April 16, 2018 for a scam during which they sold a sealed Apple iPhone 8 that was actually a box containing only rice in Suffolk County Police today arrested three people on April 16, 2018 for a scam during which they sold a sealed Apple iPhone 8 that was actually a box containing only rice in North Babylon After receiving several complaints about a scam on the app Letgo, First Precinct Crime Section officers conducted an undercover operation and arranged to meet a person at McDonalds, located at 1510 Deer Park Avenue, to purchase an iPhone 8 for $300.00. After the purchase was complete, officers discovered that the sealed box contained a package of rice wrapped in tinfoil and arrested the person, a 17-year-old male of Brooklyn, at approximately 1:25 p.m. Ramel Parker, 22, of Islip , and a male, 17, of West Babylon , who were connected with the scam and located in a vehicle nearby at approximately 1:50 p.m. and were arrested. Officers recovered three iPhone boxes containing rice and tinfoil, a bag of rice, an industrial sealer, heat gun, roll of clear plastic wrap, baggies and box of tinfoil in the car. The 17-year-old of Brooklyn was charged with Petit Larceny, Possession of Burglars Tools, and Resisting Arrest. Parker was charged with Petit Larceny, Possession of Burglars Tools, Criminal Possession of Marijuana, Aggravated Unlicensed Operation 2nd Degree and an outstanding New York City warrant. The 17-year-old of West Babylon was charged with Petit Larceny, Possession of Burglars Tools and Criminal Possession of Marijuana. Parker and the 17-year-old of Brooklyn will be held overnight at the First Precinct and are scheduled to be arraigned at First District Court in Central Islip on April 17, 2018. The 17-year-old of West Babylon was released on bail. Police are asking anyone who might have been a victim of this scam to contact First Precinct Crime Section officers at (631) 854-8126. by April 17, 2018 Over the past few years, programmatic ad buying has emerged as one of the most important, impactful, and at the same time controversial forms of media buying in the advertising industry. While marketers are hard pressed to deny its effectiveness among consumers and its overall marketplace influence, they still have reservations about the complicated, fast-moving process. As such, some advertisers have moved their programmatic buying operations in-house rather than use a media buying agency. In fact, late last year, the Association of National Advertisers (ANA) released a study showing that more than one-third of respondents (35%) expanded their in-house programmatic media buying capabilities and reduced the role of external agencies that previously performed that function. The 35% figure marked a notable increase from a 2016 ANA/Forrester report that found only 14% of ANA marketers were reducing the role of their external agency as a result of in-house expansion. advertisement advertisement Jake Davidow, previously head of programmatic buying for JPMorgan Chase & Co. and now head of digital marketing for Chase Home Lending, played a key role in the decision to bring the companys programmatic in-house. Davidow, who will address the topic at the upcoming ANA Advertising Financial Management Conference in Hollywood, Fla., April 29 - May 1, offers a preview of his presentation. Q. JPMorgan Chase recently brought its programmatic buying team in-house. Why did you do it and how has it worked out? A. We brought our search marketing efforts in-house in 2013 because we felt there was a case to be made for the efficiency of running things internally, and the results we realized over the next three years blew past all expectations. We had control over our data and full accountability, which created a level of transparency that allowed for really honest conversations about what was working and what wasnt. In three years our account production through search has surged and weve been able to do some exciting things across the company that would never have been possible before. So, as programmatic began to become a more important part of our buying mix, we made the decision to replicate what we had done with search, knowing it would probably work just as well. Transparency within the industry is murky at best with a supply chain that is rooted in obscurity, so bringing programmatic in-house became a risk mitigation exercise as well as cost/efficiency play. Q. What was the primary challenge you faced in bringing the programmatic buying function in-house? A. Ad fraud, viewability, and brand/reputation risk are daily challenges. Its so easy for bad actors to cheat their way around in this space, so its a constant battle to stay in front of them. Creating our whitelist went a long way to protecting us from the brand risk of our ads showing up on fake news and/or hate sites. Weve also taken significant steps in building our own algorithm that allows us to advertise on YouTube in a way that is safe for us, too. Q.What do you think about viewability, and are current viewability measurement standards as prescribed by the Media Rating Council satisfactory? A. I think the focus on viewability obfuscates the reason why we use programmatic ads in the first place. The promise of being able to target an individual with a message, ensuring you serve the right product to the right person at the right time, is the holy grail of marketing. By focusing on viewability metrics we enter into the wrong conversation, because even if someone sees your ad it does not mean that they noticed it or that it resonated with them. One hundred percent viewability should be table stakes. However, unfortunately for the industry, a lot of advertisers treat it as a KPI, or rather as an outcome instead of a requirement. The right conversation we all want to be having is what was the impact the ad had on the person who saw it? What did it cause people to do? Did we sell more, less, or the same when we spent our budgets on programmatic ads? Q. Do you think more companies will continue to bring programmatic ad buying in-house, and should they? A. I dont think there is a one-size-fits-all approach to this. There are some really strong agencies out there with incredibly talented teams who are delivering on the promise of programmatic media. Additionally, something you wont hear people talk about is just how good agencies are at taking care of business on the back end. I can tell you firsthand that there is a huge effort involved in small day-to-day things like paying publishers/platforms/tech companies, enforcing viewability standards, staying on top of emerging trends, etc. Agencies handle the operational aspects seamlessly and that piece alone is reason enough for a lot of companies to continue to use agencies for their programmatic buying. Ultimately, companies are going to do whats right for them and I think the agency model will continue to hold value for most. by Laurie Sullivan @lauriesullivan, April 17, 2018 Google stopped alcohol and drug treatment advertising from serving up in search engine queries in the U.S. last September, but on Monday the company said that it will begin accepting those advertisements from U.S. addiction treatment centers in July. The practice was stopped to suspend advertising for deceptive and misleading ads. Google told Reuters that treatment centers will have the option of running ads that have been vetted by Portland, Oregon firm LegitScript, a verification and monitoring service for online pharmacies. A vetting process, however, for sober-living houses and non-U.S. treatment centers has not been set. Evidently, the process will not be too cumbersome for legitimate centers. Marcia Lee Taylor, chief policy officer of the Partnership for Drug-Free Kids, told Reuters that while efforts to certify treatment services have failed in the past, tying access to the worlds biggest online advertising system to certification makes applying worthwhile. advertisement advertisement In September 2017, Google said it would set guidelines for addiction treatment centers that want to run search advertisements after it began pulling ads and restricting the use of some keywords. At that time, Tami McBrady, vice president of media at the digital agency Nina Hale, told Search Marketing Daily that the policies could serve as a framework for rehabilitation center advertising guidelines. by Laurie Sullivan @lauriesullivan, April 17, 2018 Microsoft and Facebook are leading an initiative to improve the security, stability and resilience of cyberspace -- as well as to aid any country that falls victim to cyberattacks. The companies call the initiative Cybersecurity Tech Accord. The agreement, announced Tuesday and signed by more than 30 companies, including Cisco, Dell, HP, Nielsen, Nokia, Oracle and others, comes as U.S. and U.K. intelligence agencies issued a joint warning about Russian cyberattacks on the internet infrastructure. The infrastructure covers banking, healthcare, shopping, online search, cloud services for advertisers and more. We called on the world to borrow a page from history in the form of a Digital Geneva Convention, a long-term goal of updating international law to protect people in times of peace from malicious cyberattacks, wrote Brad Smith, president at Microsoft, in a blog post. But as we also said at RSA last year, the first step in creating a safer internet must come from our own industry, the enterprises that create and operate the worlds online technologies and infrastructure. advertisement advertisement Some of the biggest names in tech advertising -- Apple, Amazon, and Google -- are not present in the accord. Ironically, Apple and Google have traditionally taken a stance to protect consumer data, especially when government entities require it for law enforcement. The companies that signed the accord made commitments to make a stronger defense against cyberattacks, protecting all consumers globally regardless of the motivation for the online attacks. The companies also pledge to help developers use their technology to protect companies, which may include working on new security practices and features. The goal is to work together in order to establish partnerships with the industry, civil society and security researchers to improve technical collaboration, coordinate vulnerability disclosures, share threats and minimize the potential for malicious code to be introduced into cyberspace. It also means not helping governments that launch cyberattacks and protect against tampering or exploiting their products and services through technology development, design and distribution. by Melynda Fuller , April 17, 2018 The 2018 Pulitzer awards were announced yesterday, recognizing the best work in the fields of journalism, literature and music. Following the receipt of an ASME for her story A Most American Terrorist: The Making of Dylann Roof, Rachel Kaadzi Ghansah was again honored for her GQ profile of domestic terrorist Dylann Roof, who murdered nine people inside the Emanuel AME Church in Charleston, S.C. She was awarded the Pulitzer for feature writing. Much like the ASMEs, the Pulitzers also focused on the stories that led up to the #MeToo movement and the downfall of Harvey Weinstein, with duel recognition in the category of public service going to Jodi Kantor and Megan Twohey for their work in The New York Times and Ronan Farrow, who reported on the Weinstein scandal for The New Yorker. advertisement advertisement The Washington Post took home the Pulitzer for investigative reporting for its stories on the Alabama senate race and uncovering Roy Moores past sexual harassment of teenage girls. USA Today has been overlooked for many years, but took home a 2018 Pulitzer for its work with the staff of the Arizona Republic, one of the papers in its stable of titles, for "The Wall," a story centered on the creation of the border wall between the U.S. and Mexico. The piece, which used text, video, podcasts and virtual reality to examine the creation of the wall from multiple angles, was so successful, the company has been working in a similar vein ever since. It is producing pieces exploring the history year of 1968, including the assassination of Martin Luther King Jr. and Muhammad Alis Vietnam War protest. Other winners in the journalism category include The Press-Democrat in Santa Rosa, California, for breaking news reporting, The Cincinnati Enquirer for local reporting, and The New York Times and the Washington Post for national reporting. A full list can be found at the Pulitzer website. by Steve McClellan @mp_mcclellan, April 17, 2018 Omnicom Group reported a 1.2% first-quarter revenue gain to $3.269 million with organic revenue growth of 2.4%. Organic revenue strips out the impact of M&A activity and currency fluctuations. Geographically, North America was the weakest link, turning in an organic revenue decline of 0.1%. But Europe was up a robust 9.7%, while the UK posted a 3.1% increase. Net income was up 9.2% to $264.1 million. Pivotal Research senior analyst Brian Wieser characterized the companys Q1 results as generally satisfactory versus expectations, although not meaningfully so. He continues to rate the holding companys stock a hold. Wieser noted, as he has in the past, that assessing Omnicoms operating results versus competitors remains challenging because of pass-through activities recorded as revenues. In addition to the companys trading desk, Accuen, pass-through or principal-based activities include revenue streams associated with company operations, such as Icon (barter) and OmNet, a proprietary trading service for traditional media. by Laurie Sullivan @lauriesullivan, April 17, 2018 Andrew Chen left Google, where he was a lead product manager from the local search unit, to forge a new path at Mapbox helping engineers. The company licenses maps to software developers to better understand consumer desires. Mapbox, which competes with Google, OpenStreetMap and other software mapmakers to provide data for mobile apps, told Reuters on Tuesday that Chen will serve as head of product for maps and search. The company provides the data to Snap, DoorDash, and MasterCard, among others. Mapbox Chief Executive Officer Eric Gundersen told Reuters that the company has less live traffic information and fewer details on 'social' places such as bars than Google. Chen joined Mapbox in March, according to his LinkedIn profile. He spent five years and six months at Google as lead product manager for local search. Prior to his time at Google, Chen was at Simply Hired working as director of product management for over three years. He also founded a startup job site for startups called CoNotes in February 2007. advertisement advertisement In a LinkedIn recommendation, Uri Kogan called Chen an idea machine, with the executional ability and willpower to match. FastCompany calls Mapbox a favorite mapping tool among developers thanks to its focus on letting developers customize the mapping data it provides. The one thing lacking, per FastCompany, is abundant live traffic information and point-of-interest information for social places, such as bars, when compared to Google," which could explain the reason for hiring Chen. by Ray Schultz , April 17, 2018 As expected, the U.S. Supreme Court has dismissed the case of U.S. vs. Microsoft over government access to emails stored overseas, stating that passage of the CLOUD Act last month has rendered it moot. The High Court stated, simply, that no live dispute remains between the parties over the issue. As per standard practice, todays ruling vacates a lower judgment and requires that the case be dismissed. Passed last month as part of the U.S. spending bill, and signed into law by President Trump, the CLOUD Act (Clarifying Lawful Overseas Use of Data Act) allows law enforcement to access emails and other digital data, even when stored overseas, through the use of search warrants. Microsoft supported the bill. As argued before SCOTUS last month, the Department of Justice contended that Microsoft should disclose emails needed in a drug investigation that are stored in the cloud in Ireland. Microsoft disagreed. advertisement advertisement The Justices seemed to lean toward the DOJs view, with Chief Justice John Roberts saying: The statute focuses on disclosure. And disclosure takes place in Washington, not in Ireland. A District Court had held Microsoft in contempt for refusing to comply fully with the warrant, todays ruling states. The Court of Appeals for the Second Circuit vacated that ruling. The Second Circuit is now required to order the District Court to dismiss the case. A RAST test or radioallergosorbent test is a way of testing a persons blood to see if they have any allergies. This test checks their blood for specific lgE antibodies to find out what substances they may be allergic to. Allergies can be a mild annoyance or a life-threatening condition. Allergy tests allow a person to find out what substances they are allergic to so that they can plan ahead and avoid those allergens. The RAST test is an alternative to the skin prick test. The skin prick test determines how a persons skin reacts to specific allergens. In this article, we look at which allergies a RAST test can test for, the procedure, and interpreting the results. We also compare the effectiveness of RAST tests with that of skin tests. What is a RAST test? Share on Pinterest A medical professional will take a blood sample for a RAST test. The RAST test is a blood test that is used to see if an individuals blood contains antibodies for a specific substance, such as peanuts or pollen. These antibodies are called immunoglobulin E, or IgE antibodies. If a persons blood contains lgE antibodies that are specific to a certain substance, it means they are allergic to that substance. These antibodies cause the rashes, itching, sneezing, and other symptoms that a person experiences when they come into contact with an allergen. The name RAST was originally a brand name, but experts say it is now commonly and incorrectly used to describe any lab test for allergens. According to the Guidelines for the Diagnosis and Management of Food Allergy in the United States, the original RAST test method is now outdated. Instead of RAST tests, a doctor is more likely to order a different blood test called ELISA, which stands for enzyme-linked immunosorbent assay. RAST test vs. skin test Different kinds of allergy tests are available, but the most commonly used is a skin or pinprick test. In a skin test, small amounts of different allergens are placed on an individuals skin, usually with a pinprick. People who are allergic to these substances will develop itchy hives at these sites, while others without allergies will not. The differences between the skin test and the RAST or ELISA blood tests are as follows: Speed of the procedure . Skin tests are faster than blood tests. A skin test can take place in the doctors office, but in a RAST or ELISA test, the medical professional must send a blood sample to a laboratory for testing. . Skin tests are faster than blood tests. A skin test can take place in the doctors office, but in a RAST or ELISA test, the medical professional must send a blood sample to a laboratory for testing. Speed of results . Reactions to a skin test typically develop within 15 minutes, whereas it can take between a few days and 2 weeks to get the results of a RAST test. . Reactions to a skin test typically develop within 15 minutes, whereas it can take between a few days and 2 weeks to get the results of a RAST test. Accuracy . Skin tests may be more sensitive than blood tests, though both methods are considered accurate for diagnosing allergies. It may be more difficult to interpret accurately skin test results on people with darker skin, and skin tests may be affected by medications while blood tests are not. . Skin tests may be more sensitive than blood tests, though both methods are considered accurate for diagnosing allergies. It may be more difficult to interpret accurately skin test results on people with darker skin, and skin tests may be affected by medications while blood tests are not. Safety . Although it is rare, a person can develop a serious reaction to an allergen used in a skin test. There is no risk of this with a blood test, such as RAST or ELISA. . Although it is rare, a person can develop a serious reaction to an allergen used in a skin test. There is no risk of this with a blood test, such as RAST or ELISA. Cost. A skin test costs less than a RAST or ELISA test to process, which may be a consideration for some people. In some cases, a persons doctor may recommend a blood test instead of a skin test. These cases can include: testing infants or young children, as blood tests require only one needle prick while skin tests require more avoiding the risk of a strong allergic reaction to a powerful allergen allowing individuals to stay on medication that could interfere with a skin test minimizing the risk of making an existing skin condition, such as psoriasis or eczema, worse What can RAST test for? Share on Pinterest RAST and ELISA can test for pet allergies and food allergies. Blood tests like RAST and ELISA can test for a range of allergies, including food allergies, drug allergies, seasonal allergies, and pet allergies. Along with diagnosing current allergies, blood tests can be used as part of the testing and treatment process that doctors use to test the progress of allergies in young children. The presence and changes of lgE antibodies in the blood help a doctor to determine the progression of allergies, what allergy professionals call the allergic march, that starts in infancy and progresses through childhood. Doctors tended to avoid skin tests for infants, however. Researchers suggest that using blood testing procedures to diagnose allergies early in a persons life can provide the following benefits: the ability to start allergy intervention treatment earlier avoidance of dangerous reactions to food allergens in infants the potential to prevent the development of asthma a reduction in outbreaks of eczema RAST test procedure The RAST test procedure is fairly straightforward and does not require any preparation. After a person speaks to their doctor, a medical professional will take a blood sample, usually from the individuals arm. This blood is then sent to a laboratory, where it is subjected to a battery of tests that look for antibodies that have developed in response to specific allergens. Accuracy of results According to Food Allergy Research & Education (FARE), 5060 percent of blood and skin prick tests will yield some false positives for food allergies, meaning the test will show that a person is allergic to something when they are not. If a blood test finds that a person has antibodies for a specific allergen, it is likely that they have an allergy to the substance, but it is not definite. More tests may be needed. For example, a RAST test may show that an individual is allergic to a food, such as chickpeas, only because it is in the same family as another food, for example, peanuts, that really do provoke an allergic response. Also, the level of antibodies in the blood is not necessarily linked to the number of times an individual has been exposed to the allergen or how severe or mild those reactions may have been. If an individual tests positive for a specific antibody, which is called a positive specific-IgE test, this result indicates that they have probably been exposed to the allergen. But it does not say for sure that the individual is allergic to the substance. The likelihood of false positive results makes it that much more important for doctors to review RAST test outcomes in the light of an individuals overall medical history, particularly how much exposure they may have had to the allergen in question. When should you get an allergy test? Share on Pinterest Symptoms of an allergy may include itchy eyes, hives, and asthma. Allergies are very common, affecting more than 50 million people in the United States. Many people could, therefore, benefit from allergy testing to get proper treatment. Allergies can affect the whole body. Key symptoms to watch out for include: abdominal pain asthma eczema hives itchy eyes nasal congestion Also, female biology creates unique risk factors for heart attack, as some diseases that increase risk, such as polycystic ovary syndrome (PCOS), are not present in male biology. Women are less likely to survive their first heart attack than men. This may be because the symptoms differ between the sexes. Women are more likely to have a silent heart attack or display unusual symptoms. A heart attack is a life-threatening event caused by a disruption in the blood flow to the heart. Knowing the female-specific symptoms of a heart attack could help a person seek medical attention sooner, which may save their life. Share on Pinterest Chest pain is the most common symptom of a heart attack. Many people expect a heart attack to come on suddenly. But research suggests that women experience symptoms for several weeks before a heart attack. A study published in 2003 of 515 women who had experienced a heart attack, reports 80 percent of women had at least 1 symptom at least 4 weeks before their heart attack. Symptoms may be constant or come and go, and they may also disrupt sleep. It is vital for a woman who experiences any of these symptoms to seek help immediately, as heart attacks can be fatal, regardless of whether symptoms are mild or severe. Eight of the symptoms of a possible heart attack are: 1. Chest pain The most common symptom of heart attack in both males and females is chest pain or discomfort. It may be described as: tightness pressure squeezing aching However, women can experience a heart attack without having any chest discomfort. Some 29.7 percent of the women surveyed in the 2003 study experienced chest discomfort in the weeks before the attack. Also, 57 percent had chest pain during the heart attack. 2. Extreme or unusual fatigue Unusual fatigue is often reported in the weeks leading up to a heart attack. Fatigue is also experienced just before the event occurs. Even simple activities that do not require much exertion can lead to feelings of being exhausted. 3. Weakness Feeling weak or shaky is a common acute symptom of a heart attack in a female. This weakness or shaking may be accompanied by: anxiety dizziness fainting feeling lightheaded 4. Shortness of breath Shortness of breath or heavy breathing without exertion, especially when accompanied by fatigue or chest pain, may suggest heart problems. Some women may feel short of breath when lying down, with the symptom easing when they are sitting upright. 5. Sweating Excessive sweating without a normal cause is another common heart attack symptom in women. Feeling cold and clammy can also be an indicator of heart problems. 6. Upper body pain This is usually non-specific and cannot be attributed to a particular muscle or joint in the upper body. Areas that can be affected include: neck jaw upper back or either arm The pain can start in one area and gradually spread to others, or it may come on suddenly. 7. Sleep disturbances Share on Pinterest Difficulty getting to sleep and unusual waking may be issues before a heart attack. Almost half of women in the 2003 study reported issues with sleep in the weeks before they had a heart attack. These disturbances may involve: difficulty getting to sleep unusual waking throughout the night feeling tired despite getting enough sleep 8. Stomach problems Some women may feel pain or pressure in the stomach before a heart attack. Other digestive issues associated with a possible heart attack can include: Advertisement Studies have shown that a lack of oxygen in tumor cells changes how cells function, contributing to cancer growth. Low oxygen, or hypoxia, is a major challenge in treating some cancers because it is common in a majority of malignant tumors.Tumor cells are starved of oxygen, causing them to become resistant to conventional treatments such as radiation and chemotherapy. This can lead to a need to increase radiation doses or chemotherapy concentration, which often adversely affects patients. The nanobubble shells disintegrate inside the tumor cells, increasing the cellular oxygen levels. The release of oxygen inside the hypoxic cells destabilizes the hypoxia-driven pathways and inhibit tumor growth, said Bhandari."Normal cells are two to three times more receptive to cancer therapies compared with hypoxic cells," he said.Early testing published in the journalsandshows that the oxygen nanobubbles are effective in significantly delaying tumor progression and improving survival rates in clinical trials. The nanobubbles can be guided precisely to a tumor using an ultrasound beam, which can lead to better efficacy while using a 50 percent lower concentration of a chemotherapeutic drug."The ability to precisely steer oxygen nanobubbles offers considerable promise for a wide range of biomedical applications," said Bhandari.Bhandari believes the oxygen nanobubbles could be particularly effective against brain cancer, bladder cancer and certain sarcomas that are most common in bones, muscles, tendons, cartilage, nerves, fat and blood vessels.Bhandari, who earned a doctorate in biological engineering from Purdue in 2017, also believes the oxygen nanobubbles can be more effective at treating wounds than a hyperbaric chamber or topical oxygen therapy because the nanobubbles can be more precisely targeted.Bhandari is continuing to look at other wound-healing applications, saying the method could be used to treat complications from diabetes and other illnesses.He plans to begin his cancer studies in dogs initially because nearly half of all dogs die of cancer. He said he will be dealing only with naturally occurring cancer in dogs and hopes those studies will help advance and speed the research into human cancers. He said he has been working with Purdue's College of Veterinary Medicine.The oxygen nanobubbles also act as contrast agents for ultrasound imaging, allowing researchers to create highly sensitive, highly reliable detection agents to monitor therapy. Bhandari started Samara Biotech in 2015, taking the name from a winged seed that allows the wind to carry it further from the parent. He said in Eastern philosophy it also connotes the circle of life.The Purdue Office of Technology Commercialization filed a patent on the technology. The Purdue Foundry and the Purdue Research Foundation have been working with Bhandari to commercialize his research."We're looking for potential strategic partners," Bhandari said. "We want to get the word out that there is a new technology that been evaluated quite well for a lot of different applications and we're looking for more."Samara Biotech also plans to seek federal and private funding as it continues its research.Source: Eurekalert Advertisement One study, to be published in the peer-reviewed journal Epidemiology, investigated the association between state-level search queries on Google with primary and secondary syphilis cases -- the earliest and most transmissible stages in the sexually transmitted infection -- that were subsequently reported in these states.For this study, the researchers compiled data for 25 keywords and phrases (such as "find sex" and "STD") collected on Google Trends from Jan. 1, 2012, to Dec. 31, 2014. They also obtained weekly county-level syphilis data from the CDC covering the same time period for all 50 states, merged that data by state and collated them with the weekly Google Trends data they had collected.The research incorporated a type of statistical computer science model called machine learning, which can look through large amounts of data to find patterns and predict those patterns. This artificial intelligence-based machine looked at the relationship between people's syphilis-related searches on Google and actual rates of syphilis over a period of time. After learning that pattern, it tested whether it could accurately predict future syphilis cases by using just the syphilis-related Google search terms.Researchers found that the model predicted 144 weeks of syphilis counts for each state with 90 percent accuracy, allowing them to predict state-level trends in syphilis before they would have occurred.Researchers from the institute found the same held true with Twitter. In a study published in Preventive Medicine, they took county-level Twitter data from May 26 to Dec. 9, 2012, amounting to 8,538 geo-located tweets. As with the Google Trends analysis, the researchers compiled a list of words associated with sexual risk behaviors.They reviewed weekly county-level cases of primary and secondary syphilis and early latent syphilis (infection within the previous 12 months, with no symptoms evident) that likely occurred over the previous 12 months. The cases were from the 50 states and Washington, D.C., and were reported to the CDC from 2012 to 2013. The 2012 data were included because a county's previous syphilis rates are likely to predict future rates, and they wanted to determine how the Twitter-based method would perform matched with the previous year's data.They found that counties having higher risk-related tweets in 2012 were associated with a 2.7 percent jump in primary and secondary and a 3.6 percent boost in early latent syphilis cases in 2013.By comparison, counties that reported higher numbers of syphilis cases in 2012 were associated with increases of 0.6 percent and 0.4 percent of primary/secondary and early latent syphilis cases, respectively, in 2013, suggesting that the Twitter-based model performed as well as simply using previous year's syphilis data. This is important because Twitter data are extremely inexpensive and suggest that social media data are low-cost alternatives for predicting syphilis.Both studies have certain limitations. For the Google paper, they include the likelihood that many primary and secondary syphilis cases are not reported; the findings were biased toward Google users, who account for about 64 percent of search engine users; and the Google Trends data are a random sampling of all data and not the full dataset, which might have affected how the model worked.In the Twitter study's case, data were based on Twitter users, which is a select sample of people; the researchers reviewed data only for 2012 and 2013, when data from a longer time span would be needed to develop appropriate public health responses; and some areas with high numbers of syphilis cases may have had public health messaging via social media that contained relevant keywords that were captured in the data the researchers examined.Source: Eureka alert The Kathua case of J&K in which an 8-year-old was brutally raped and murdered by a priest and his accomplices has made news all over the world. The horrific murder has put the limelight back on women's safety in India as protests in major cities erupted in the wake of these killings. Last evening though, pictures of activists protesting the brutal crime at the Istanbul airport went viral on social media. In those pictures men can be seen wearing t-shirts with these quotes: Women are not worthy as cows in India #JusticeforAsifa Twitter And another one that says: Women! Let India be your last country to visit, as it's your graveyard #JusticeforAsifa Twitter While the pictures generated a lot of buzz on social media, people were quick to point out that they seem photoshopped. If you look closely, the wrinkles in the t-shirt of the man shown right here end abruptly and a rectangular white box can also be seen. Twitter While the crimes against women in India have been increasing for the past two decades, the Kathua case has jolted the younger generation into action. And even though these pictures seem photoshopped and may be used to malign India's reputation internationally, what we really need to ask our selves is whether the message on these t-shirts really that far from the truth? If you happen to own an iPhone X and love to take pictures, we've probably found the best cover for your smartphone. Not only does it protect your phone, it can even turn your iPhone's camera into a DSLR type camera. Smartphone cameras are getting better and better with each year and lugging around a DSLR camera doesn't seem like a viable option anymore. The company makes cases for older iPhone models as well i.e. iPhone 8/8Plus and iPhone 7/7Plus. Ztylus Say hello to the Ztylus Revolver M Series iPhone Lens Kit yes it's got a pretty long name. The case was a CES Innovation Award Honoree for 2016 and 2018 and comes with a variety of useful things for your iPhone. For starters, the entire kit includes a case, six different lenses that can be attached to the case and a screen protector. The case lets you switch out lenses with ease and some of the lenses include macro, super macro, telephoto, wide-angle and fisheye. These lenses are probably everything you need to take pictures and take your Instagram game to the next level. Ztylus If you are an Android user, you don't need to feel left out as the company also makes the same covers for Samsung Galaxy S9, S9 Plus, Note 9 and Huawei Mate 10 Pro. Currently, all the cases are on sale and the good news is, the company ships all of their products to India! Here's a sample picture of a flower taken using the case: Ztylus You can have a look here for more information or watch the video below: BAD AXE The victim of a gruesome and bloody beating showed no sympathy to her assaulter when she confronted him in court Monday morning before he was carted off to prison. Sorry, Im done defending you Chad, the victim told Chad Larry Leavine during his sentencing in Huron County Circuit Court. I thought when you truly love someone, you build them up not bring them down. Leavine, 37, of Ubly, was charged with single counts of assault with intent to do great bodily harm less than murder, possession with intent to deliver marijuana, and resisting/obstructing a police officer. He pleaded no contest to all counts Feb. 6. On Dec. 2, the Ubly Police Department was contacted regarding an assault at a Bingham Township home. There, police learned that Leavine used an AR-15 semi-automatic rifle to beat the victim his girlfriend, according to a police report. The victim was left with a fractured skull and nose and several bruises on her face. When the officer tried to arrest Leavine, he resisted. During a search of the Bingham Township homes property, police also discovered 11 mason jars filled with marijuana. At Monday's hearing, Leavine continuously apologized in Judge Gerald M. Prills courtroom as he read from a prepared letter. I hope you (victim) can find it in your hear to forgive me. Maybe not right now, but somewhere down the road, Leavine began saying. I enjoyed and looked forward to spending time with you, but not all relationships are perfect. Leavine said in 2016, he and the victim both started using cocaine and drinking. In the two weeks leading up to the incident, the two were using cocaine and drinking more than usual, he said. He said he blacked out from drinking and cocaine use prior to the incident. This is a nightmare, an emotional Leavine said. "I wish I could make this go away. I love you with all of my heart. Leavine apologized to the victims family members and his own family. I have found God in my life, he said in reference to recent Bible courses hes taken. I know we can make bad choices. Were only humans. Following Leavine's statements, the victim rose from the court's seated area and confronted Leavine, telling him he almost cost her life. The victim told Prill the two didnt always have the healthiest relationship and it started with Leavines verbal abuse. You stripped me of my dignity and now my trust, she said. In September, the victim said Leavine blackened both of her eyes and she was forced to wear sunglasses to pick her children up from a family member's home so nobody questioned anything. Do I want you to sit in a cage like an animal? No, but youre a criminal now, she said. You always said I need therapy and now I do. Because of you. Now, its your turn to have someone control you, she added. Leavine was sentenced to three years six months with a maximum of 10 years in the states prison system for the beating. He was sentenced to 365 days in jail for the marijuana and resisting charges. All sentences will run concurrently and in each file, Leavine received credit for 86 days served. Leavine was represented by Bad Axe-based attorney Elizabeth Weisenbach. Photo courtesy of Robin Frisella EAST HAMPTON The next meeting of the East Hampton Art Association will feature a demonstration by Master Pastelist Robin Frisella of New Hampshire, at the East Hampton Community Center, 105 Main St., on April 25 at 7 p.m. Frisellas work has garnered numerous national and regional awards. She is a juried member of the Copley Society of Boston and a signature member of the Pastel Society of New Hampshire. In October 2016, she received the designation of Master Pastelist from the Pastel Society of America. MIDDLETOWN Jesse Lewis died a hero Dec. 14, 2012, in the Sandy Hook shooting that killed the 6-year-old and 25 other people in one of the worst mass murders in American history . He was a kindergartner at the Newtown elementary school who had written I love you on the frost settled on his mothers car window that very morning, his mother Scarlett Lewis said during her visit Friday at Wilbert Snow School. She was there to explain and observe her Choose Love Enrichment Program in action in the classroom. I believe that he had a spiritual awareness, and has really given me a platform to spread all of this, she said. He wrote nurturing, healing, love [spelled phonetically: Norturting Helinn Love] on the chalkboard. These words are not in the vernacular of a 6-year-old and were phonetically spelled because Jesse was in first grade and just learning to write, Lewis wrote. That became the basis of her program, a downloadable curriculum for parents, educators and children in public schools from pre-K to 12th grade. Choose Love is a proactive and preventive mental health initiative that cultivates a safe school environment. It teaches students to identify and manage their emotions and make a conscious choice to be kind in the face of anger, Lewis said. It is based on Jesses courage because he saved six of his classmates lives before losing his own that day, Lewis told a group that included state Sen. Len Suzio, state Rep. Matt Lesser, Middletown Schools Superintendent Michael Conner, kindergarten teacher Lorrie Tine, School Readiness Grant Assistant Sheila Daniels and school readiness coordinator Dawn Dubay. When the shooter stopped to reload, in a true act of courage and love, Jesse yelled to his classmates to run while he stayed by his teachers side, his mother wrote on the Choose Love website. Lewis referenced the March 2015 Sandy Hook Commission Report, which explained the circumstances leading to the shooting and how to prevent such a tragedy in the future. The results sparked her to create the initiative, she said. They basically said if social/emotional learning had been in the schools, the tragedy might not have happened, Lewis said. I erroneously thought everyone in the teaching field was waiting for this report so they could implement these things. They really werent. Thats when she realized it was time to lead this initiative in Connecticut, said Lewis, who wore a green rubber bracelet with the words Compassion in Action = Choose Love, which she distributed to those gathered. I think focusing on the student is the right thing, Suzio said. Youre focusing on the human aspect. I see both sides of the issue when it comes to guns. The truth is, if people didnt have these issues, the guns themselves wouldnt be a problem. Its been 20 years since Columbine, Lewis replied. Lets address the cause which is really anger, disconnection, isolation, pain and suffering, lack of resilience. Thats the cause: Whats the solution to that? The solution is teaching kids how to handle themselves and how to overcome. Everything starts with courage in our entire life the courage to be an upstander rather than a bystander, the courage to do the right thing, the courage to tell the truth. Healing means forgiveness, and love is compassion in action, Lewis said. It leads you to how you can choose love. The Sandy Hook massacre began with an angry thought in Adam Lanzas head, she added. He was a little boy without the tools and skills to handle his anger, which then escalated, she said. Its never a snap. Its a long, slow steady burn of pain, neglect, isolation, disconnection. Theres no mass murder gene. That means it could have been stopped any step along the way. The program was developed by educators, early childhood development specialists, counselors and child psychologists in Connecticut. After hearing from Lewis and attending a workshop, Tine told participants following the observation she couldnt wait to implement Choose Love in her classroom. It changed everything. It changed my whole life, she said, pointing to some of the features, like atapping solution, where children start their day in circle formation and tap out their stress; meditation and yoga. Tine viewed the materials as a starting point but she wanted to craft an approach tailored to her 5- and 6-year-old students. I went deep and broke the curriculum down even more, she said, telling the group about a conflict between two boys over building blocks. One of my little boys, who doesnt say too much, he walked right over and grabbed the child who was angry. He said come take a walk with me. I see youre getting angry. Lets take a deep breath together. Now, she added, I have some behavior problems in my class but you wouldnt know who it is. Lewis said even with things like shooter protocols, metal detectors, bullet-proof glass and locks on doors, none of that proactively prevents a student from wanting to harm an educator. The only thing that is to teach them to cultivate relationships, resilience and conflict resolution. Even the teachers are asked to keep a journal that describes their feelings and what they do or should do when nonproductive thoughts enter their mind. I think the allure of your program is its a proactive program youre starting and youre helping from the start. Youre setting the tone, youre planning the seed, youre helping to nurture children, Daniels added. For information, visit jesselewischooselove.org. MIDDLETOWN Wesleyan University has received a $1 million, four-year grant from the Andrew W. Mellon Foundation to support operations at the Center for Prison Education. The grant will allow CPE to expand its advanced course offerings, recruit new faculty, and bolster its partnership with Middlesex Community College and the Connecticut Department of Corrections, according to a press release. Since 2009, CPE has offered accredited Wesleyan courses to students at the Cheshire Correctional Institution, a maximum security prison for men. In 2013, the program expanded to offer the same coursework to students at York Correctional Institution for women. Courses range from English to biology to philosophy, and have the same rigor and expectations as courses on Wesleyans Middletown campus, the release continues. The Center for Prison Education is a wonderful example of the commitment by Wesleyan students and faculty to serving our broader community through the transformative power of the liberal arts, Wesleyan President Michael S. Roth said in a prepared statement. CPE has made a powerful difference in the lives of incarcerated people one Ive seen firsthand when Ive lectured at the Cheshire prison. This generous grant from Mellon will enable CPE to have an even greater impact, particularly for those students who decide to continue their education beyond our program. CPE serves 72 students; nearly 130 have taken courses since the programs inception. CPE is the longest running college-in-prison program in the state, and the only to offer a liberal arts-style education, according to the university. Approximately 50 Wesleyan students volunteer in the program each semester, working on site at Cheshire or York study halls, or on campus filling research requests and serving as project assistants. Connecticuts prison population is over 14,000, a staggering incarceration rate of 400 inmates for every 100,000 residents, CPE Program Manager Noah Barth said in the release. Studies have suggested that inmates who participate in post-secondary education while in prison are nearly 50 percent less likely to re-offend with even better results for those who graduate. The grant will allow CPE to recruit new faculty, and to increase the number of intermediate- and upper-level courses offered in areas including math, the humanities, and social sciences. In 2016, CPE joined in a partnership with Middlesex Community College, which allows students to take a mix of courses rostered at either institution and to earn an associates degree. The partnership also enables CPE to harness MxCCs experience in working with non-traditional students, and makes it easier for students to transfer into four-year colleges in the Connecticut State Colleges and Universities system after release. The grant will support a new program coordinator position, who will take the lead on facilitating the partnerships with MxCC and the Connecticut Department of Corrections. The grant will also fund faculty stipends for teaching, as well as instructional materials, supplies, and laptops equipped with academic research resources for student use. CPE is funded by a combination of foundation grants, individual donations, and federal funding through the Second Chance Pell Experiment. HARTFORD Hundreds of people with HIV/AIDS, alongside advocates and activists, will converge on the state capitol for a rally and to meet with their legislators on Wednesday, April 18 at 11 a.m. for the 18th Annual AIDS Awareness Day sponsored by AIDS Connecticut. A number of public officials have been invited to address the rally including Governor Dannel P. Malloy; Lieutenant Governor Nancy Wyman; State Comptroller Kevin Lembo; Vickie Veltri, Executive Director of the new Office of Health Strategy; and Mark Ojakian, President of CSCU. Speakers include people living with HIV, and Shawn M. Lang, Deputy Director of AIDS CT. In recognition of the impact and disparities of HIV/AIDS on the Black community, AIDS Connecticut has partnered with Planned Parenthood of Southern New England to host a panel discussion as a part of the days events. This will take place at 2 PM, in the Old Judiciary Room at the Capitol. The conversation will be anchored by former Pres. Obama appointee and Executive Director of the White House Initiative on Educational Excellence for African Americans David J. Johns, who is now serving as Executive Director of the National Black Justice Coalition, a civil rights organization dedicated to the empowerment of Black lesbian, gay, bisexual, transgender, queer and same gender loving (LGBTQ/SGL) people, including people living with HIV/AIDS. Joining as moderator, nationally renowned celebrity blogger, columnist, cultural critic, news editor and the face of Black Twitter Ms. Jamilah Lemieux will bring her style of culture and light to an often difficult subject. Rounding out the panel AIDS CTs Associate Director of Prevention, LaToya Tyson, will be joined by Andre Lloyd McGuire, Chair, Ryan White Planning Council; Dr. Linda K. Barry, Assoc. Professor, Dir. of Multicultural and Community Affairs, UConn School of Medicine; Mark Jenkins, Founder/CEO Greater Hartford Harm Reduction Coalition; and Kamora Herrington, Mentoring Program Coordinator at True Colors. Participants will be wearing red t-shirts with HIV+? Get Tested! printed on them to encourage everyone to get tested and know their status. Advocates are rallying to raise awareness about HIV/AIDS in our state, the importance of the services that are available, the impact of stigma and urging legislators to protect funding for AIDS housing and other services. Over the past decade, the number of people living with HIV/AIDS has doubled, yet funding has never kept pace, said Shawn M. Lang, Deputy Director with AIDS CT. In CT, 21,273 have been diagnosed with HIV, and there are 10,818 people known to be living with HIV. Silent auction items needed CROMWELL The Cromwell High School (CHS) Music Boosters will be hosting their largest fundraiser of the year to support the CHS Music Program- the 3rd Annual Jazz Cabaret & Silent Auction on June 2. The Booster Club is accepting contributions for the silent auction and welcomes all donations including but not limited to photography sessions, dance classes, TV, printers, mini fridge, fire pit, yard games, gift baskets, gift cards and any other item you may consider a family or student enjoying! For more information on silent auction donations or tickets to this years Jazz Cabaret and Silent Auction event being held Saturday, June 2 at CHS, contact Paula Emanuele at 860.202.1234 or via email at paula.emanuele@snet.net. Portland announces Memorial Day plans Portland's Memorial Day will be held on Sunday, May 27, rain or shine. Sgt. Daniel Clark, The Singing Trooper will return to commerate the day. The parade will assemble at Victoria Road at 1:30 p.m. Floats should assemble at 12:30 p.m. Step- off will be at 2 p.m. The procession will stop for a brief ceremony at the Civil War monument on Bartlett Street, it will continue down Main Street as usual. A reviewing stand will be stationed at the Brownstone Intermediate School. The parade will then turn left on Waverley Avenue, left onto East Main Street, and right onto Fairview Street, ending at Veterans Memorial Park. The theme for this years float competition is: Memorial Day remembers those who died serving in the United States military. It commemorates those who died in the defense of our national ideals. Our ideals of freedom, justice, and equal rights for all have been challenged many times since then, and thousands of Americans have given their lives in many parts of the world to secure those same ideals and insure for their children a lasting peace. Details about parking and road closures for the day will be announced in the weeks ahead. Registration Forms may be picked up at 32 East Main Street, Portland, CT. For further details, contact Sara Sterry Rutter - Parade Organizer - at 860-342-2815 or 860-250-2041 or Email ssterryrutter@yahoo.com Additional information will be posted on Facebook. Bell Town U.S.A. event set in East Hampton EAST HAMPTON Bell collectors and enthusiasts from around New England will gather in Bell Town U.S.A. on Saturday, April 28. The New England Chapter of The American Bell Association International welcomes all who collect or love bells to attend its 111th semiannual meeting on Saturday, April 28. The gathering will take place at the Bethlehem Evangelical Lutheran Church at 1 East High Street in downtown East Hampton, Connecticut. Doors open at 9:15 a.m. Socializing and admiring bells, lunch, a special program about bell toys and a walking tour of Bell Town will highlight the day. Members and visitors bring their bells, socialize, share their stories and learn about the many unique bells around the world, said chapter chairman Kevin Harkins. Some folks even plan to attend the ABA.s international convention in Florence, Indiana in July, Harkins said. The April 28 event will feature guest speaker Robert K. Watrous who has penned several articles in the associations international magazine, The Bell Tower. Watrous will talk about bell toys. Jay Hansen, East Hamptons city historian will lead a walking tour of Bell Town U.S.A. at 3:30 p.m. East Hampton has been the home of several bell manufacturing companies since the 1800s. Registration includes morning coffee and pastry, and a lunch of salad, macaroni and cheese, cold cut sandwiches and light desert offerings. The cost is $17 if received by April 23 or $22 at the door. Make check payable to, NECABA, and mail to: Marie Varian, P.O. Box 2, Sebasco Estates, ME. 04565. For more information about the New England Chapter American Bell Association visit americanbell.org or call, 860 886-0762. Less than three days after leading strikes on Syria, the U.S. underlined its security interests in the region by sending 1,800 Marines from the Iwo Jima Amphibious Ready Group (ARG) into neighboring Jordan. The Marines and 1,500 sailors from the ARG, led by the amphibious assault ship Iwo Jima, will participate with the Jordanian Armed Forces in the 11-day Eager Lion joint training exercise to demonstrate "their collective ability to plan and project presence in a coalition environment," according to a Marine Corps news release. Col. Farrell Sullivan, commander of the 26th Marine Expeditionary Unit based in Camp Lejeune, North Carolina, said the exercises would exemplify the U.S. "investment to a critical strategic partnership between two allies who share common regional security goals." The ARG includes the Iwo Jima, the dock landing ship Oak Hill and the transport dock New York. "This exercise," Sullivan said, "will allow us to demonstrate how we can project combat power" in coordination with the Jordanians, who share a troubled border to the north with Syria and host nearly a million refugees from the seven-year-old civil war. The Jordanian government, which is wary of antagonizing the Hezbollah militias in Syria and Lebanon, was mostly silent on the standoff weapons strikes by the U.S., France and Britain early Saturday morning local time that hit three suspected chemical weapons production and storage facilities in Syria. In a statement Monday, Jordanian government spokesman Mohammed al-Momani called for an end to Syria's civil war while avoiding mention of the airstrikes. "Continued violence will only lead to more violence, conflict, fighting and displacement whose victim is the Syrian people," he said. The missile strikes also called into question the continuing U.S. resolve to keep at least 2,000 U.S. troops in eastern Syria to support the mostly-Kurdish Syrian Democratic Forces in the campaign to defeat the last remnants of the Islamic State of Iraq and Syria (ISIS). President Donald Trump said earlier this month that the U.S. troops would be leaving "very soon," but that was before the April 4 attacks on the town of Douma east of Damascus, killing at least 40. The U.S. and its allies said the attack was carried out with chlorine and possibly the nerve agent sarin. Syria and its Russian and Iranian backers said the chemical weapons charges were fabricated. French President Emmanuel Macron said Sunday that he "convinced" Trump of the need to remain in Syria before the strikes at about 9 p.m. EDT Friday. "Ten days ago, President Trump said the USA's will is to disengage from Syria. We convinced him that it was necessary to stay," Macron said, during a two-hour televised interview with several French media outlets. Aboard Air Force One en route to Florida Monday, White House Press Secretary Sarah Sanders said Trump's commitment to keeping troops in Syria was conditional. Despite Macron's remarks, "Our policy hasn't changed," she said. "We're still committed to defeating ISIS. The president also wants the people in the region, our Gulf partners, to step up and do more, and he wants them to take on some of the financial responsibility of all of the military provided there in the region." -- Richard Sisk can be reached at Richard.Sisk@Military.com. Days after announcing that the one-star director of Marine and Family Programs had been placed on administrative leave an investigation into comments he made at a town hall-style meeting, the Marine Corps said Monday that he was removed from his post and reassigned. Brig. Gen. Kurt Stein was placed on leave April 11 after an anonymous complainant alleged he had made inappropriate remarks at an all-hands meeting at Quantico, Virginia, five days before. According to an exclusive report by USA Today, Stein allegedly called allegations of sexual harassment against a Marine officer "fake news" and dismissed them using other crude language. The allegations in question were made by two female civilian employees of the Marine Corps and previously reported by USA Today. A Marine Corps news release Monday stated that Marine Corps Commandant Gen. Robert Neller had reviewed an investigation into Stein's alleged remarks and determined that he had lost confidence "in Stein's ability to lead this particular organization." "Leaders are responsible for establishing an environment conducive to mission accomplishment," Neller's spokesman, Lt. Col. Eric Dent, said in a statement. Stein, a Marine Corps aviator who has flown more than 100 combat missions and logged some 4,500 flight hours, became director of Marine and Family Programs in November 2016. The department oversees numerous counseling and prevention services, including programs designed to prevent against sexual assault and assist survivors. Stein is the second general in two months to be removed from his post by Neller himself; in February, Brig. Gen. Norman Cooling, legislative assistant to the commandant, was suspended amid allegations he had created a hostile work environment. Headed by Neller, Marine Corps leadership has been working aggressively to root out leadership and cultural issues that work to create a permissive environment for harassment, disrespect and misogyny. In the wake of a scandal a little over a year ago in which it was discovered that some active duty Marines were using a closed Facebook group to share nude photos of female service members without their consent, the service has begun multiple lines of effort to change the culture. Neller made Assistant Commandant Gen. Glenn Walters head of a task force to address gender bias, harassment and social media misconduct. He was later made an equal-opportunity "talent manager" for the Marine Corps. Walters revealed in late 2017 that a number of Marine Corps unit commanders had already been removed from their posts for reasons related to an improper command climate regarding women. -- Hope Hodge Seck can be reached at hope.seck@military.com. Follow her on Twitter at @HopeSeck. The Tennessee Air National Guard is investigating a video that shows one of its members using a dinosaur hand puppet during a re-enlistment ceremony. The video posted Saturday to the Facebook group Air Force amn/nco/snco shows Master Sgt. Robin Brown and an unidentified officer participating in the ceremony. Brown recites the enlistment oath while manipulating the puppet to mouth along with the words as she speaks them. The video had more than 2 million views as of early Tuesday. Air National Guard Director Lt. Gen. L. Scott Rice responded Monday on his official Facebook page, saying he was "shocked and dismayed" by the video. "Many of you have seen and commented to me about the recent Facebook post of an Airman in our beloved Air National Guard, taking the re-enlistment oath while using a dinosaur hand puppet," he wrote. "I understand your outrage and frustration. I'm equally shocked and dismayed by this event that mocks such a cherished and honorable occasion. The oath of office or enlistment not only signifies our commitment to our nation, but pays respect to our fellow service members and to those who came before us." Rice added that Tennessee National Guard leadership is investigating the footage. Air Force regulations covering ceremonies state that "unit commanders will honor all re-enlistees through a dignified reenlistment ceremony." Along with blasting the inclusion of the puppet, commenters online criticized the officer administering the oath for not having it memorized and for not raising his right hand. Brown's profile on the military's Defense Visual Information Distribution Service shows she worked in public affairs. The Air National Guard's 118th Wing website said she served in community relations for the Tennessee Joint Force Headquarters. This article by Crispin Burke originally appeared on Task & Purpose, a digital news and culture publication dedicated to military and veterans issues. This past Friday, an AH-64 Apache helicopter crashed during a training mission at Fort Campbell, Kentucky, the latest in a slew of deadly mishaps from across the services in the past week. The accident comes on the heels of a damning report from the Military Times, documenting an alarming rise in accidents stretching back over four years. The Army, for its part, has seen relatively constant accident rates over the past four years, according to its official safety magazine, Flightfax, with accident rates between FY2013 and 2017 hovering between 0.72 and 1.52 Class A accidents per 100,000 flying hours -- far lower than anything Army Aviation has seen since it began tallying accidents in the early 1970s (p. 123). (Note: A fact sheet published the Army Safety Center appears to portray a very different picture, suggesting that Class A mishaps were actually much higher in 2017 than reported in Flightfax, at 3.4 accidents per 100,000 flight hours. However, the fact sheet is so riddled with errors and inconsistencies it should probably be dismissed.) Aviation is in a state of malaise across the armed forces, with nearly all of the services reporting problems with maintenance, training, and pilot retention. I've identified two potential culprits common to both of the services and a third unique to Army Aviation. First, the services as a whole are simply not dedicating enough man-hours to maintenance. During the War on Terror, it was relatively simple for a deployed combat aviation brigade to keep aircraft in the air -- service members, augmented by a small army of contractors, could work around the clock, seven days a week, with few distractions. As a result, a typical brigade could fly well over 100,000 hours during a one-year deployment. That's hardly the case at home, where service members must do the lion's share of work. Our Army maintainers are hard workers, there's no doubt about that. But a Soldier cannot dedicate as many hours to maintenance in an average day as a contractor. In a typical year, there are just 256 days available for a Soldier to fix aircraft, after taking into consideration holidays, weekends, and other events. Now take away thirty days each year for leave, and a few more days due to the demands of PCS moves, NCO development schools, and training for additional duties. Now subtract days for Soldiers who may be ETSing, on sick leave, or taken from their units for duties such as gate guard or staff duty. When you're finished, the average Army maintainer might only be able to turn wrenches on aircraft for less than two hundred days in a calendar year. Now consider that on any given day, at least four hours are dedicated to physical training, morning hygiene, breakfast, and lunch, meaning that it takes a twelve-hour duty day to perform eight hours of maintenance. Now subtract the daily distractors -- medical appointments, mandatory training, weapons cleaning, and command inventories. Don't forget formations, safety briefings, area beautification, and of course, "mandatory fun." Making matters more difficult is that the Army envisions future wars to look much different from those in Iraq and Afghanistan, with Army Aviation operating from tents in open fields instead of well-stocked forward operating bases. That means that Army maintainers must also devote countless hours to convoy training, weapons qualification, and setting up tents. Anecdotes are not data, but one aircraft maintainer estimated, in a recent Stars and Stripes article, that he only performed about twelve hours of actual maintenance in a week. I suspect he may be the norm, rather than the exception. Again, maintainers are routinely working full 12-hour duty days, but much of their time is devoted to tasks not involving aircraft maintenance. This, in turn, drives a second problem: fewer man-hours devoted to maintenance mean fewer flyable aircraft, and fewer flyable aircraft mean that pilots are flying fewer hours, especially non-deployed units. Less training, in turn, can equal more mistakes. All four services have reported that pilots are struggling meet their flying hour minimums. This has become most apparent in the Marine Corps' F/A-18 community, which has struggled with poor maintenance statistics, fewer flight hours allocated for training, and an increase in accidents. A third problem, unique to the Army, stems from the Aviation Restructuring Initiative, which, among other things, divested the Kiowa Warrior helicopter and replaced it with additional Apache helicopters culled, in part, from the National Guard. Experienced OH-58D Kiowa Warrior pilots suddenly became inexperienced Apache pilots. This, coupled with an increase in the number of brand-new Apache lieutenants and warrant officers graduating from Fort Rucker (where the AH-64 qualification course was shortened) means that there are too few senior Apache pilots to train too many junior pilots. As a RAND Corp study into the US Air Force discovered, this causes senior pilots to consume flying hours which would have ordinarily been used to train new aircrews. Many experienced AH-64 pilots are currently attending multiple rotations at the Combat Training Center -- in some cases, three month-long rotations in eight months -- because they are the only ones qualified to participate in the demanding training. Meanwhile, new pilots are left at their home station with few instructor pilots around to help train them. This is a problem which will eventually take years to fully resolve. Where do we go from here? For starters, we must find a way to apply more man-hours to fixing aircraft. Part of the solution may involve hiring contractors to supplement the work our crew chiefs are doing. In the meantime, leaders must do their part to allow maintainers to work in peace -- every non-maintenance related task we ask of our crew chiefs has a second-order effect with regards to the number of flight hours our pilots can fly. Though there is nothing inherently wrong with training maintainers on convoy operations, we must understand that Army Aviation can never be both fully Army and fully Aviation. Reconciling the two may require our community to do some serious introspection. Finally, we must do something to alleviate the burden on our overworked AH-64 community and allow them to focus on training new aircrews. We might be wise to implement a "dwell time" program with regards to aircrews -- no pilot should participate in more than two CTC rotations in a calendar year (to include O/C augmentation). If this means less AH-64 participation at the JRTC, so be it. The AH-64 community must be allowed the opportunity to stop, take a breath, and work on building the force of the future. Crispin Burke is a military officer. His views are his own and not those of the DoD. More articles from Task & Purpose: Are Honor Flights Actually About Making Us Feel Better? The Best Way for Transitioning Vets to Answer Tell Me About Yourself' 3 Military Behaviors That Don't Work In The Civilian Workplace ROCK ISLAND ARSENAL, Ill. -- A scheduling coincidence and delayed paperwork led to the rare occasion of father-daughter simultaneous promotions March 30 at the U.S. Army Sustainment Command Headquarters, Building 390. Chief Warrant Officer 4 Jeff Lein was promoted to chief warrant officer five (CW5) and his daughter, Spc. Kaitlin Reyes, was promoted to sergeant. "It's overwhelming -- I'm very proud to have two members of our family promoted on the same day," said Lein, senior food advisor, Installation Logistics Directorate, ASC. Lein said being promoted together was particularly meaningful because it was the first time he had the opportunity to experience a military recognition ceremony with his daughter. Lein had missed her graduation from Advanced Individual Training and Airborne School because of mission-related activities. "It means a lot, almost like a passing of the torch," said Lein, who has been in the Army for 26 years. "I'll be getting out in a couple of years, and she's just starting her military career." A three-year veteran, Reyes re-enlisted for another three years during the ceremony. "I was supposed to be promoted last month, but my paperwork was delayed," said Reyes, who had already planned to attend her dad's promotion. "I'm blessed to be able to do this." Reyes was headed to a new logistics position at the Headquarters and Headquarters Company, Group Support Battalion, 5th Special Forces Group, Fort Campbell, Kentucky. In his speech, Lein reminisced and said he was proud of his daughter. "Seems like just yesterday you were donning a parachute rig to help me train up for jumpmaster school, and now you're planning to attend [my last promotion ceremony]," he said. "I wish you the best of luck in your career, and perhaps in 20 years I'll be up here helping pin on your final rank." Both Lein and Reyes said they originally joined the Army for the civilian higher education benefits, but stayed for the Army community and to serve their country. As a food technician, Lein said he deployed and moved a lot during his career, placing a heavy burden on his family. Lein deployed multiple times in support of Operation Enduring Freedom in Afghanistan and Operation Iraqi Freedom in Iraq. "When I was a junior officer at the height of the (OEF/OIF) wars, the Army deployed warrant officers to oversee the massive feeding missions for Soldiers," said Lein. "They sent the food technicians -- some more than others." Lein's wife, Deanna, said she was grateful for his career and proud of her family. "It makes you proud to know they are serving their country, something a lot of people won't step up to do," she said. "They do some crazy stuff I wouldn't want to do -- like jumping out of airplanes. I'm proud of them." Lein thanked Maj. Gen. Duane Gamble, commanding general, ASC, for hosting the ceremony. Gamble said it is important for ASC to support personnel and their families. Lein also thanked Gamble's protocol team for making special accommodations to include his daughter in the ceremony. "My daughter was planning to fly up here for my promotion, and two days after scheduling the flight she called me and said 'I made rank the same day as you,'" he said, continuing that he then asked Gamble if Reyes could be added to his ceremony. Lein also thanked his colleagues, mentors and his two other younger children for supporting him through his career, and he thanked them for attending this special event. "It's rare for active-duty family to be promoted on the same day," said Lein. "I don't know the stats on that, but it's got to be an extremely low probability for something like this to occur during the span of a military career." White House and Pentagon officials have said that Islamic State fighters have been "on the run" for some months now. But military commanders on the ground are seeing new pockets of movement in a handful of areas in Syria, which has led to an uptick in coalition airstrikes, an official said Tuesday. Army Col. Ryan Dillon, spokesman for Operation Inherent Resolve, said that officials hope to get members of the U.S.-backed Syrian Democratic Forces to move back from the Afrin region and help push pockets of ISIS fighters away from towns along the Euphrates River Valley. "We have seen ISIS elements coming back and attacking, with success, pro-regime forces," Dillon said during a televised briefing at the Pentagon. To combat the movements, since January, there has been an uptick in strikes, Dillon said. These have been coupled with "obstacles" coalition forces have established in the area to "contain ISIS in these areas." Dillon did not elaborate on what sort of deterrences have been placed in the region. "Over this time it has also allowed us to do some serious, deliberate target planning," he said. The fighters have concentrated in Syria's eastern areas surrounding the river, such as Hajin, north of Abu Kamal, and in limited areas near Deir Ezzor toward the river's eastern tributary, mainly in Dashisha, Dillon said. Related content: "That is where ISIS in eastern Syria is concentrated, and that's where we're going after them," he said. Separately, there have been ISIS fighters spotted in neighborhoods south of Damascus, Dillon said. In the wake of Saturday's strikes against a Syrian chemical weapons lab outside of Damascus and two equipment facilities outside Homs, strikes against ISIS have not slowed, he said. Dillon said the coalition has had a slowdown point in retaking various territories since a large amount of SDF fighters left for the Afrin region in January. "There really has been no gain of ... significant territory since the departure of many of those fighters that have left to go towards Afrin," Dillon said. As a result, the coalition has become more dependent on aircraft. "Are we going to see more Syrian Democratic Forces come back and reconstitute combat power in these areas?" Dillon said. "It's something that we are urging and trying to get to to build up that combat power and start to push again in these areas and take ground." In March, the U.S. announced a "pause" in ground operations against ISIS in the middle Euphrates River Valley (MERV) as SDF units moved to attempt to recapture the border town of Afrin. Afrin has been a point of contention between Turkey and Kurdish fighters. The Kurds -- or fighters of the People's Protection Units (YPG), which is the dominant force in the SDF -- held the town until Turkey began an offensive earlier this year to rid the town of their presence. Turkey considers the YPG, allied with the PKK (Kurdish Workers Party), to be a terrorist organization. The YPG played the leading role in retaking Manbij from ISIS, which set the stage for the major victory of the war against ISIS in Syria -- the taking of the so-called ISIS "caliphate" in Raqqa. Dillon on Tuesday said that U.S. advisers, alongside partner forces, still remain on Syria's northern border in Manbij given that ISIS could see a weak point and reconcentrate in the area at a future time. "Just because ISIS is not flying their black flag, doesn't mean they're not a threat," Dillon said. --Richard Sisk contributed to this report. -- Oriana Pawlyk can be reached at oriana.pawlyk@military.com. Follow her on Twitter at @oriana0214. For the first time in five years, all three components of the Air Force achieved both their recruiting goals and end strength... An F-22 Raptor suffered a mishap last week after it skidded on its belly following a takeoff at Naval Air Station Fallon, Nevada. Shortly after takeoff, the the stealth fighter, from the 90th Fighter Squadron in the 3rd Wing at Joint Base Elmendorf-Richardson, skidded to a stop, damaging the front end of the aircraft, JBER spokeswoman Keisha K. Lafayette told Military.com on Tuesday. "We can confirm that the aircraft was later hoisted into a position where the landing gear could be extended and locked," Lafayette said in an email statement. "The aircraft was then towed to a position where damage and repairs can be evaluated." The pilot was unharmed and was able to egress the aircraft safely, Lafayette said. As first reported by The Drive, the F-22 was at Fallon to participate in the Navy's strike fighter tactics instructor program, also known as 'Topgun.' "The cause of the incident is still under investigation and it is not known at this time whether a landing gear, engine malfunction, or any other mechanical issue were factors in the incident," Lafayette said. Lafayette did not say whether additional Raptors remain at Fallon to continue training. A cost estimate of the damages was not provided. According to posts on the public Facebook group Air Force Amn/nco/snco, which is popular within the Air Force but isn't officially run by the service, initial photos of the accident showed a potential engine flameout, which caused the Raptor to skid. Related content: "Appears to have been a left engine flameout when the pilot throttled up to take off," the post said. How the group obtained the photos was not specified. "By the time [the pilot] realized the engine was dead, he had already been airborne for a few seconds and raised the gear. The jet [bounced] for around 1,500 feet, and then slid for about 5,000 feet," the Facebook post said. The latest incident underscores a recent uptick in aviation mishaps across the U.S. military. The Air Force recently launched an investigation into an uptick of "Class C" mishaps to understand whether the lower-grade incidents are leading to fatal accidents. "We've got our safety professionals digging into it, and seeing if there is a noticeable trend that we have in our Class C mishaps," Vice Chief of Staff Gen. Stephen "Seve" Wilson said on April 9 during the Future of War conference. The service's investigation comes on the heels of an in-depth Military Times report showing that military aviation accidents have increased significantly over the last five years across all services. Just in the month of April, there have been several more serious aviation mishaps, including a fatal Army AH-64E Apache helicopter crash in Kentucky; a fatal F-16 Thunderbirds crash in Nevada; a non-fatal AV-8B Harrier jet crash in Djibouti; a non-fatal a CH-53 Super Stallion helicopter hard landing in Djibouti; and separately, a fatal CH-53E helicopter crash in California. -- Oriana Pawlyk can be reached at oriana.pawlyk@military.com. Follow her on Twitter at @oriana0214. Dozens of flights from Ethiopia's capital, Addis Ababa have been delayed after air traffic controllers went on strike. It's not clear yet why the workers have downed their tools. I am aboard KQ flight 401 to Nairobi, which has now been delayed by more than an hour and the pilot had just announced its not clear when we will take off. Industrial strikes are very rare in Ethiopia - which is one of the continent's fast growing economy. But poverty levels in the country remain high and salaries and wages of public servants comparatively low compared to other countries. Ethiopia's new Prime Minister Abiy Ahmed on Monday met the business community in the country and pledged to institute reforms that would make the country's economy more robust. He said he would institute austerity measures that would cut down on expenses on foreign travels which he said cost the country millions of dollars. He also spoke about the country's biting foreign currency shortage and the fight against corruption. But he assured investors that Africa's second most populous country was open to business. Mr Abiy took over the reins of power at the start of this month after the abrupt resignation of his predecessor Hailemariam Desalegn who quit after nearly three years of anti government protests. BBC Editor's note: On April 19, U.S. Air Forces Central Command released new information contradicting its previous statements about the F-22 in Syria. "U.S. Air Force F-22 Raptors played an integral role in protecting ground forces during and after the multinational strikes against Syrian chemical weapons production facilities on the morning of April 14," AFCENT spokesman Mark Graff said. He did not provide any additional details about how many F-22s had participated in the overwatch mission, or in what regions of Syria they had operated. The F-22 Raptor is fast developing a reputation as the aircraft that gets left behind during combat ops. The Air Force fifth-generation stealth fighter was not flying alongside a pair of B-1B Lancer bombers that dropped missiles on Syrian targets. Nor was it conducting overwatch in the area as the bombers for the first time deployed the Joint Air-to-Surface Standoff Missile-Extended Range in combat during Saturday's strikes against a chemical lab and two equipment facilities, according to U.S. Air Forces Central Command. "Among the options considered, leveraging the B-1B to launch stand-off weapons from outside Syrian airspace was the preferred [course of action] for a number of reasons, including minimal risk to aircrew and aircraft, and the precise destructive capability of the JASSM-ER," spokesman Lt. Col Damien Pickart told Military.com on Monday. While British Tornado and Typhoon and French Rafale and Mirage fighters participated in the strike, Defense News reported over the weekend that F-22s weren't present. Instead, Marine Corps EA-6B Prowler electronic warfare aircraft provided support. (The B-1 itself also has some signal jamming capabilities). Some F-15C Eagles and F-16C Fighting Falcons were reportedly spotted as a part of the mission as well, according to The Aviationist. Related content: Pickart said the F-22 had remained an option for the strike. But ultimately, it was the JASSM-ER's time to shine. "The F-22A was available, but wasn't required for the operation as planned," he said. "That said, the F-22 is well suited for the defensive counter air mission it continues to conduct over Syria, protecting coalition and partners forces on the ground and in the air." The F-22 missed out on previous combat opportunities last year. In separate incidents in June, F-15 Strike Eagles and an F/A-18 Super Hornet had encounters with adversarial aircraft. On June 8 and again on June 20, Air Force F-15Es shot down Iranian-made Shaheed drones over At Tanf as the unmanned aerial vehicles approached or dropped munitions near U.S.-backed forces on the ground. On June 18, a Navy F/A-18E Super Hornet conducted the U.S. military's first air-to-air kill involving a manned aircraft in nearly two decades when it downed a hostile Su-22 Fitter south of Taqbah. "We put the F-22s in the highest-threat areas as much as we can, but they can't be there 24/7," Brig. Gen. Charles Corcoran, commander of the 380th Expeditionary Wing, Al Dhafra Air Base, United Arab Emirates, told Military.com later that month. The 380th houses the F-22 mission for the Middle East. "Nobody's sad about not getting a kill," said Corcoran, himself an F-22 pilot. "We're happy that everyone's doing their job." Officials told Military.com the F-22 isn't necessarily showcasing its role as an air-to-air fighter in the conflict. Instead, the twin-engine jet is doing more deconfliction of airspace than dog-fighting. The plane has the ability to identify other aircraft, down to the airframe, and detect surface-to-air missiles and relay their existence to other friendly forces while maintaining a low-observable radar profile. The Raptor finally made its combat debut in Afghanistan on Nov. 19, conducting a ground-attack mission to pummel suspected drug labs in the country with small diameter bombs. Some criticized the use of such a high-end fighter for the role, but at the time, ground commanders and Air Force counterparts applauded the Raptor's employment. The Raptor "was used because of its ability to deliver precision munitions, in this case, a 250-pound bomb, small-diameter, that causes the minimal amount of collateral damage," Army Gen. John Nicholson, commander of the NATO-led Resolute Support mission and U.S. Forces Afghanistan, said at the time. The Air Force, meanwhile, has somewhat shifted its position and endorsed the view that perhaps hitting drug labs is meant for light-attack aircraft such as the A-29 Super Tucano. Speaking at the Heritage Foundation in March, Air Force Secretary Heather Wilson made the case for the service's ongoing light attack experiment, "rather than taking out narcotics facilities in Afghanistan" fifth-gen fighters "like the F-22" can skip out on such missions and instead prepare for the high end fight against adversaries like Russia and China. Similarly in February, Wilson told audiences the same thing during a Mitchell Institute breakfast. "We should not use F-22s to destroy a narcotics factory in Afghanistan," she said, according to Breaking Defense. -- Oriana Pawlyk can be reached at oriana.pawlyk@military.com. Follow her on Twitter at @orianapawlyk. Brittnay McCall is one spouse among thousands who had her loved one's blue star changed to gold when her husband, U.S. Army Sgt. Daniel McCall, was killed in action on Oct. 30, 2007, while serving in Operation Iraqi Freedom. Since 2001, approximately 2.5 million U.S. military members have served in support of combat operations. When Soldiers and Airmen deploy, their Families send them off with tears, hugs and kisses. They return to their homes without their loved one but with a blue star flag to hang in their place. It's a tradition that dates back to World War I and has carried through to today's current military conflicts. When a service member dies in combat, their blue star is replaced with a gold one. Every year since World War II, the United States honors Gold Star Spouses by recognizing them and their loved one's sacrifice on April 5, known as Gold Star Spouses Day. U.S. Army Sgt. Daniel McCall and his wife, Brittnay, in an undated photo. Daniel was killed in action in Iraq in 2007. (Courtesy of Brittnay McCall) Baring the title of Gold Star Spouse is not easy, nor is it a title McCall would have ever asked for. "To hold the title of Gold Star Spouse is as equally devastating as it is proud. There is a very fine line between honoring being a Gold Star Spouse and just being a Gold Star Spouse," McCall said. "It is important to not let the title define who we are as spouses, but rather honor being a Gold Star Spouse by carrying on the legacy of Daniel and his sacrifice ." McCall focuses on moving forward as opposed to moving on after her life-changing loss, which is how she ended up working as a Survivor Outreach Services coordinator for the Ohio National Guard. "I felt it was so important to have people be part of this program who truly understood what Families went through and could relate and help them in any way possible," McCall said. "Some of the most important people who helped me along my journey in the beginning stages had experienced something similar." The Survivor Outreach Services program works to ensure Family members, known as survivors, are taken care of after the loss of their loved one. Survivor outreach coordinators, like McCall, are connected with survivors throughout all phases, to help them deal with their grief on their own timeline most importantly, but also to update them on changes in health care benefits, scholarship possibilities and financial assistance. They also connect them with other survivors, coordinate events or work with community partners to provide them additional support. "Knowing that you have helped someone in their darkest days, that you were able to help them get through those days and get them to see there are brighter days ahead, is a rewarding feeling," McCall shared. "The most rewarding part though is the connections with each individual -- learning their story and learning about their loved ones so that you feel like you knew them as well." Every Gold Star Spouse copes with the loss of their loved one in their own way. It is an unfathomable task, and one that can never be completed because coping with loss is a lifelong journey according to McCall. Across the Department of Defense, almost 7,000 service members have died since 9/11, creating thousands of Gold Star Spouses and Families. The Ohio National Guard has lost 15 of its own. Army Sgt. Daniel McCall was killed in action in 2007. (Courtesy of Brittnay McCall) For McCall, coping with her loss is an everyday journey, not just on April 5. She says she lives her life to honor her husband's service and sacrifice to the country he loved, and to help others through the emotional journey of losing a loved one like she did more than 10 years ago. "Grief is a roller coaster, there are ups and downs, they come at you unexpectedly and you never know how long the highs and lows may last," McCall shared when asked what advice she would give to someone dealing with loss. "Embrace each day and you will hopefully get to a point where your memories bring you joy rather than tears." I like big binders and I cannot lie. Knowing everything is categorized in one place gives me this overwhelming sense of calm. The only thing better than a subject-specific binder of calming goodness is one I do not have to organize for myself. Tell me what to stick in there, universe, and let's get this party started. And that's why I was so into this military kid school binder when it was sent to me a few years ago. And now one of the authors has worked to make it even better, by offering a companion book that not only walks you through putting together the binder to make your kid's transitions as smooth as possible, but gives you help with all the transition periods that might impact your student. "Season of My Military Student," written by Amanda Trimillos and Stacy Allsbrook-Huisman, also offers another handy feature that might be especially helpful to older students moving between states: a guide to the Interstate Compact on Educational Opportunity for Military Children, better known as simply the Interstate Education Compact. Signed by all 50 states and the District of Columbia, that compact is supposed to make school transitions easy. But states often don't have the staff to help the school districts understand the compact or how it should be used. And that can mean military parents are left to fend for themselves. But this new book is designed to offer help with that issue -- and that's a good thing. This book isn't the end of the line for this author pair. Officials at their publisher, Elva Resa, told me that later this year they'll also be releasing an Action Guide to go along with their new book which will include among other things, pre-printer binder pages. These people clearly speak my language. You can preorder Seasons of My Military Student today. Everyone uses email. Whether its a cover letter, a note asking someone for an informational interview, or a thank you note for spending time over coffee talking about job prospects, youre going to have to email someone. But consider for a moment that like all things military, the way we communicate via email is vastly different than how the civilian world communicates. We tell veterans to follow up with an email but once in front of the keyboard, many vets are left wondering what exactly they should write. Danny Rubin has the answer. He is the author of Wait, How Do I Write This Email: Game-Changing Templates for Networking and the Job Search. He wrote the book because military or not, most people know to send an emailthey just dont know how to craft it, or what it should include. To make things harder, the military uses email very differently. Acronyms, liberal use of the cc line and putting addressees in rank order are just some ways its different. So we sat down with Danny and asked about some of the questions veterans face when staring at the blank screen and wondering what to write. Here is his very wise advice: Military.com: What made you write Wait, How Do I Write This Email? Doesnt everyone write emails? Danny Rubin: In 2012, I started a blog called News To Live By in which I highlighted the career advice "hidden" in the news headlines. I covered all kinds of topics like health, money, politics, life hacks and communication tips. I wrote a blog post in 2013 called "Five Email Templates for Awkward Work Situations" that played off of an email gaffe story in the news. The post began to generate about 100 organic views a day off of Google searches. I was confused. Why the sudden interest in my random post? Then, the light bulb went off. People were searching Google for help with email templates and they would find my work. So I pivoted. I began to only focus on step-by-step writing templates for networking, the job search and LinkedIn. I wrote 75 blog posts on the topic over the next 18 months, which generated one million organic views to my blog. That's when I knew I had to turn my collection of email guides into a book. Flash forward to spring 2018 and my book, Wait, How Do I Write This Email?, which is now supported by the Association for Career and Technical Education, which oversees all vocational training in the US. FedEx Office locations nationwide also carry the book. Yes, everyone writes emails. And because they do, my book gains relevance each day. The book is a product people need but wasn't available. I now solve a specific, niche problem. It's much better than a blog (News To Live By) that tried to be all things to all people. Business lesson #274. Military.com: You go into detail about how important being able to successfully communicate via email is in a job search, so you think candidates are losing out on opportunities because they are making mistakes? Danny Rubin: Job candidates fail via email in two ways: 1) Job candidates only focus on themselves 2) Job candidates are too vague when they describe their own accomplishments. Deeper explanation: 1) When you write an employer for the first time, your email must contain information about the business where you want to work. Visit the company's blog or Recent News page and learn about past projects and successes. Incorporate what you learned into your message. If you want people to take an interest in you, then you must first take and interest in them. 2) Too many candidates write lines like, "I am an energetic, motivated and passionate professional who..." blah blah blah. You must focus on the details that make you exceptional. How can you quantify your success (eg: dollar amounts, number of people you manage)? Stay away from generic language. Share your unique story and include a link to a portfolio or other URL that helps you shine. The details always make the difference. Military.com: Why is this information so helpful to military members who are moving into the civilian sector and trying to find a new career? Danny Rubin: As military members moving into the civilian sector, remember: you have a story no one else can share. You have experiences, hardships and triumphs unlike anyone else in the job market. But if you only tell employers you're "hardworking and motivated," then you lump yourself in with the masses. Share the details of your duties while in military service. Give a clear example of how you pushed through a challenge. Let employers visualize how hard you work in crunch time. Once you start to tell your story, doors will open. Military.com: What are the three biggest mistakes people make in email when they are looking for a job? Danny Rubin: 1) People only focus on themselves and don't spend time discussing the company's recent successes. The "ME ME ME" approach falls flat. 2) People are too vague about their own successes and instead lean on adjectives like "motivated" and "energetic." 3) People write the same generic email to every employer, which is inauthentic and a turn-off. Make the email customized every single time. There are no shortcuts in the job search, so don't go looking for them. Military.com: What is the single most important thing you should do with your email? Danny Rubin: Prove you spent time learning about the employer's background and/or the company's recent successes. You must give before you get. Military.com: How to sign off on an email is hotly debated. What are your thoughts about what sign-off should be used in what situations? Danny Rubin: Every situation is different, but if you write an employer to request, for example, an informational interview, you're always safe with: "Thanks for the consideration" or "Thanks so much." I would not use V/R because many employers in the civilian world don't know what that means. On my blog, THE TEMPLATE, I discuss proper closing lines for different work-related situations. Military.com: Finally, military style and format when it comes to email is different (using acronyms, signing off with V/r or making sure the precedence in the to line follows military protocol) than how civilian businesses use email, how long does it take to understand how to write emails in a non-military style and should someone ever use military jargon when they are emailing? What if they know the person they are emailing is also a veteran? Danny Rubin: Yes, the writing style in the military differs from the civilian world. For starters, do NOT use abbreviations unless you spell out what they mean. The right way: I worked on Project ABC (then in the parenthesis write out what "ABC" means). You will then want to write one more sentence that explains what Project ABC was all about. NEVER assume the reader understands the work you have done to this point even another veteran. Start from scratch with everyone. Yes, you should leverage your military experience in the job search, but you must go out of your way to explain what everything means. Not-so-shameless plug: If you want to know how to write 100 different job search writing situations in civilian language, then buy my book! That's the exact problem I solve. Like I said at the top, it's always better to have a niche. Business lesson #274. Songwe Hill REE Project (Songwe Hill carbonatite), Phalombe, Southern Region, Malawii Key This section contains information provided by the site operator. About Mkango Resources Ltd Mkango Resources Ltd. (TSX-V / AIM: MKA) is a Canadian dual TSX-V and AIM listed mineral exploration and development company focused on rare earth elements (REE) and associated minerals in the Republic of Malawi, a country whose hospitable people have earned it a reputation as "the warm heart of Africa" Please click here to visit our website. Social Responsibility Mkango has begun implementing a successful early-stage social responsibility program, which is focused on empowerment, education, reducing poverty and hunger. Read our Social Responsibility Report Mkango Resources Ltd. (TSX-V / AIM: MKA) is a Canadian dual TSX-V and AIM listed mineral exploration and development company focused on rare earth elements (REE) and associated minerals in the Republic of Malawi, a country whose hospitable people have earned it a reputation as "the warm heart of Africa"Mkango has begun implementing a successful early-stage social responsibility program, which is focused on empowerment, education, reducing poverty and hunger. Select Mineral List Type Standard Detailed Gallery Strunz Dana Chemical Elements Detailed Mineral List: Andradite Formula: Ca 3 Fe3+ 2 (SiO 4 ) 3 Reference: Dixey, F., Campbell-Smith, W., & Bisset, C. B. (1937). The Chilwa Series of Southern Nyasaland: Bull. geol. Surv. Nyasaland, 5. Garson, M. S. (1965). Carbonatites in southern Malawi. Geol. Surv. Malawi. Bull, (15). Garson, M. S., & Walshaw, R. D. (1969). The geology of the Mlanje area. Bulletin, Geological Survey of Malawi, 21. Andradite var. Melanite Formula: Ca 3 Fe3+ 2 (SiO 4 ) 3 Reference: Dixey, F., Campbell-Smith, W., & Bisset, C. B. (1937). The Chilwa Series of Southern Nyasaland: Bull. geol. Surv. Nyasaland, 5. Garson, M. S. (1965). Carbonatites in southern Malawi. Geol. Surv. Malawi. Bull, (15). Garson, M. S., & Walshaw, R. D. (1969). The geology of the Mlanje area. Bulletin, Geological Survey of Malawi, 21. Ankerite Formula: Ca(Fe2+,Mg)(CO 3 ) 2 Reference: Broom-Fendley S, Brady A, Horstwood M, Wall F, Gunn G, Dawes W, Andersen J (2014) The Songwe-Hill Carbonatite, Malawi: new mapping, geochemistry and U-Pb dating. 21 st meeting of the International Mineralogical Association. p 195 'Apatite' Formula: Ca 5 (PO 4 ) 3 (Cl/F/OH) Reference: http://www.mkango.ca/s/songwe.asp; Sam Broom-Fendley, Aoife E. Brady, Frances Wall, Gus Gunn, William Dawes (2017): REE minerals at the Songwe Hill carbonatite, Malawi: HREE-enrichment in late-stage apatite. Ore Geology Reviews, 81, 23-41.; Broom-Fendley S, Brady A, Horstwood M, Wall F, Gunn G, Dawes W, Andersen J (2014) The Songwe-Hill Carbonatite, Malawi: new mapping, geochemistry and U-Pb dating. 21 st meeting of the International Mineralogical Association. p 195 Dixey, F., Campbell-Smith, W., & Bisset, C. B. (1937). The Chilwa Series of Southern Nyasaland: Bull. geol. Surv. Nyasaland, 5. Garson, M. S. (1965). Carbonatites in southern Malawi. Geol. Surv. Malawi. Bull, (15). Garson, M. S., & Walshaw, R. D. (1969). The geology of the Mlanje area. Bulletin, Geological Survey of Malawi, 21. Baryte Formula: BaSO 4 Reference: http://www.mkango.ca/s/songwe.asp; Sam Broom-Fendley, Aoife E. Brady, Frances Wall, Gus Gunn, William Dawes (2017): REE minerals at the Songwe Hill carbonatite, Malawi: HREE-enrichment in late-stage apatite. Ore Geology Reviews, 81, 23-41. 'Bastnasite' Formula: (Ce/Nd/Y/REE)(CO 3 )F Reference: Dixey, F., Campbell-Smith, W., & Bisset, C. B. (1937). The Chilwa Series of Southern Nyasaland: Bull. geol. Surv. Nyasaland, 5. Garson, M. S. (1965). Carbonatites in southern Malawi. Geol. Surv. Malawi. Bull, (15). Garson, M. S., & Walshaw, R. D. (1969). The geology of the Mlanje area. Bulletin, Geological Survey of Malawi, 21. 'Biotite' Formula: K(Fe2+/Mg) 2 (Al/Fe3+/Mg/Ti)([Si/Al/Fe] 2 Si 2 O 10 )(OH/F) 2 or Simplified: K(Mg,Fe) 3 AlSi 3 O 10 (OH) 2 Reference: Dixey, F., Campbell-Smith, W., & Bisset, C. B. (1937). The Chilwa Series of Southern Nyasaland: Bull. geol. Surv. Nyasaland, 5. Garson, M. S. (1965). Carbonatites in southern Malawi. Geol. Surv. Malawi. Bull, (15). Garson, M. S., & Walshaw, R. D. (1969). The geology of the Mlanje area. Bulletin, Geological Survey of Malawi, 21. Calcite Formula: CaCO 3 Reference: Sam Broom-Fendley, Aoife E. Brady, Frances Wall, Gus Gunn, William Dawes (2017): REE minerals at the Songwe Hill carbonatite, Malawi: HREE-enrichment in late-stage apatite. Ore Geology Reviews, 81, 23-41.; Broom-Fendley S, Brady A, Horstwood M, Wall F, Gunn G, Dawes W, Andersen J (2014) The Songwe-Hill Carbonatite, Malawi: new mapping, geochemistry and U-Pb dating. 21 st meeting of the International Mineralogical Association. p 195 Dixey, F., Campbell-Smith, W., & Bisset, C. B. (1937). The Chilwa Series of Southern Nyasaland: Bull. geol. Surv. Nyasaland, 5. Garson, M. S. (1965). Carbonatites in southern Malawi. Geol. Surv. Malawi. Bull, (15). Garson, M. S., & Walshaw, R. D. (1969). The geology of the Mlanje area. Bulletin, Geological Survey of Malawi, 21. Dixey, F., Campbell-Smith, W., & Bisset, C. B. (1937). The Chilwa Series of Southern Nyasaland: Bull. geol. Surv. Nyasaland, 5. Garson, M. S. (1965). Carbonatites in southern Malawi. Geol. Surv. Malawi. Bull, (15). Garson, M. S., & Walshaw, R. D. (1969). The geology of the Mlanje area. Bulletin, Geological Survey of Malawi, 21. 'Feldspar Group' Reference: Broom-Fendley S, Brady A, Horstwood M, Wall F, Gunn G, Dawes W, Andersen J (2014) The Songwe-Hill Carbonatite, Malawi: new mapping, geochemistry and U-Pb dating. 21 st meeting of the International Mineralogical Association. p 195 Fluorapatite Formula: Ca 5 (PO 4 ) 3 F Reference: Sam Broom-Fendley, Aoife E. Brady, Frances Wall, Gus Gunn, William Dawes (2017): REE minerals at the Songwe Hill carbonatite, Malawi: HREE-enrichment in late-stage apatite. Ore Geology Reviews, 81, 23-41. Fluorite Formula: CaF 2 Reference: Sam Broom-Fendley, Aoife E. Brady, Frances Wall, Gus Gunn, William Dawes (2017): REE minerals at the Songwe Hill carbonatite, Malawi: HREE-enrichment in late-stage apatite. Ore Geology Reviews, 81, 23-41.; Broom-Fendley S, Brady A, Horstwood M, Wall F, Gunn G, Dawes W, Andersen J (2014) The Songwe-Hill Carbonatite, Malawi: new mapping, geochemistry and U-Pb dating. 21 st meeting of the International Mineralogical Association. p 195 Dixey, F., Campbell-Smith, W., & Bisset, C. B. (1937). The Chilwa Series of Southern Nyasaland: Bull. geol. Surv. Nyasaland, 5. Garson, M. S. (1965). Carbonatites in southern Malawi. Geol. Surv. Malawi. Bull, (15). Garson, M. S., & Walshaw, R. D. (1969). The geology of the Mlanje area. Bulletin, Geological Survey of Malawi, 21. 'K Feldspar' Reference: Broom-Fendley S, Brady A, Horstwood M, Wall F, Gunn G, Dawes W, Andersen J (2014) The Songwe-Hill Carbonatite, Malawi: new mapping, geochemistry and U-Pb dating. 21 st meeting of the International Mineralogical Association. p 195 Dixey, F., Campbell-Smith, W., & Bisset, C. B. (1937). The Chilwa Series of Southern Nyasaland: Bull. geol. Surv. Nyasaland, 5. Garson, M. S. (1965). Carbonatites in southern Malawi. Geol. Surv. Malawi. Bull, (15). Garson, M. S., & Walshaw, R. D. (1969). The geology of the Mlanje area. Bulletin, Geological Survey of Malawi, 21. Nepheline Formula: Na 3 K(Al 4 Si 4 O 16 ) Reference: Broom-Fendley S, Brady A, Horstwood M, Wall F, Gunn G, Dawes W, Andersen J (2014) The Songwe-Hill Carbonatite, Malawi: new mapping, geochemistry and U-Pb dating. 21 st meeting of the International Mineralogical Association. p 195 Dixey, F., Campbell-Smith, W., & Bisset, C. B. (1937). The Chilwa Series of Southern Nyasaland: Bull. geol. Surv. Nyasaland, 5. Garson, M. S. (1965). Carbonatites in southern Malawi. Geol. Surv. Malawi. Bull, (15). Garson, M. S., & Walshaw, R. D. (1969). The geology of the Mlanje area. Bulletin, Geological Survey of Malawi, 21. Orthoclase Formula: K(AlSi 3 O 8 ) Reference: Dixey, F., Campbell-Smith, W., & Bisset, C. B. (1937). The Chilwa Series of Southern Nyasaland: Bull. geol. Surv. Nyasaland, 5. Garson, M. S. (1965). Carbonatites in southern Malawi. Geol. Surv. Malawi. Bull, (15). Garson, M. S., & Walshaw, R. D. (1969). The geology of the Mlanje area. Bulletin, Geological Survey of Malawi, 21. Parisite-(Ce) Formula: CaCe 2 (CO 3 ) 3 F 2 Reference: Sam Broom-Fendley, Aoife E. Brady, Frances Wall, Gus Gunn, William Dawes (2017): REE minerals at the Songwe Hill carbonatite, Malawi: HREE-enrichment in late-stage apatite. Ore Geology Reviews, 81, 23-41. Pyrite Formula: FeS 2 Reference: Broom-Fendley S, Brady A, Horstwood M, Wall F, Gunn G, Dawes W, Andersen J (2014) The Songwe-Hill Carbonatite, Malawi: new mapping, geochemistry and U-Pb dating. 21 st meeting of the International Mineralogical Association. p 195 'Pyrochlore Group' Formula: A 2 Nb 2 (O,OH) 6 Z Reference: Dixey, F., Campbell-Smith, W., & Bisset, C. B. (1937). The Chilwa Series of Southern Nyasaland: Bull. geol. Surv. Nyasaland, 5. Garson, M. S. (1965). Carbonatites in southern Malawi. Geol. Surv. Malawi. Bull, (15). Garson, M. S., & Walshaw, R. D. (1969). The geology of the Mlanje area. Bulletin, Geological Survey of Malawi, 21. 'Pyroxene Group' Reference: Dixey, F., Campbell-Smith, W., & Bisset, C. B. (1937). The Chilwa Series of Southern Nyasaland: Bull. geol. Surv. Nyasaland, 5. Garson, M. S. (1965). Carbonatites in southern Malawi. Geol. Surv. Malawi. Bull, (15). Garson, M. S., & Walshaw, R. D. (1969). The geology of the Mlanje area. Bulletin, Geological Survey of Malawi, 21. Quartz Formula: SiO 2 Reference: Broom-Fendley S, Brady A, Horstwood M, Wall F, Gunn G, Dawes W, Andersen J (2014) The Songwe-Hill Carbonatite, Malawi: new mapping, geochemistry and U-Pb dating. 21 st meeting of the International Mineralogical Association. p 195 Strontianite Formula: SrCO 3 Reference: http://www.mkango.ca/s/songwe.asp; Sam Broom-Fendley, Aoife E. Brady, Frances Wall, Gus Gunn, William Dawes (2017): REE minerals at the Songwe Hill carbonatite, Malawi: HREE-enrichment in late-stage apatite. Ore Geology Reviews, 81, 23-41. 'Synchysite' Formula: Ca(Ce/Nd/Y/REE)(CO 3 ) 2 F Reference: http://www.mkango.ca/s/songwe.asp Dixey, F., Campbell-Smith, W., & Bisset, C. B. (1937). The Chilwa Series of Southern Nyasaland: Bull. geol. Surv. Nyasaland, 5. Garson, M. S. (1965). Carbonatites in southern Malawi. Geol. Surv. Malawi. Bull, (15). Garson, M. S., & Walshaw, R. D. (1969). The geology of the Mlanje area. Bulletin, Geological Survey of Malawi, 21. Synchysite-(Ce) Formula: CaCe(CO 3 ) 2 F Reference: Sam Broom-Fendley, Aoife E. Brady, Frances Wall, Gus Gunn, William Dawes (2017): REE minerals at the Songwe Hill carbonatite, Malawi: HREE-enrichment in late-stage apatite. Ore Geology Reviews, 81, 23-41. Xenotime-(Y) Formula: Y(PO 4 ) Reference: Sam Broom-Fendley, Aoife E. Brady, Frances Wall, Gus Gunn, William Dawes (2017): REE minerals at the Songwe Hill carbonatite, Malawi: HREE-enrichment in late-stage apatite. Ore Geology Reviews, 81, 23-41. Zircon Formula: Zr(SiO 4 ) Reference: Broom-Fendley S, Brady A, Horstwood M, Wall F, Gunn G, Dawes W, Andersen J (2014) The Songwe-Hill Carbonatite, Malawi: new mapping, geochemistry and U-Pb dating. 21 st meeting of the International Mineralogical Association. p 195 Gallery: References Sort by Year (asc) Year (desc) Author (A-Z) Author (Z-A) Sam Broom-Fendley, Aoife E. Brady, Frances Wall, Gus Gunn, William Dawes (2017): REE minerals at the Songwe Hill carbonatite, Malawi: HREE-enrichment in late-stage apatite. Ore Geology Reviews, 81, 23-41. Broom-Fendley, S., Heaton, T., Wall, F., & Gunn, G. (2016). Tracing the fluid source of heavy REE mineralisation in carbonatites using a novel method of oxygen-isotope analysis in apatite: The example of Songwe Hill, Malawi. Chemical Geology, 440, 275-287. Broom-Fendley S, Brady A, Horstwood M, Wall F, Gunn G, Dawes W, Andersen J (2014) The Songwe-Hill Carbonatite, Malawi: new mapping, geochemistry and U-Pb dating. 21 st meeting of the International Mineralogical Association. p 195 Documents Title (click to view) Year Author Technical Report 2012 MSA Group External Links Other Regions, Features and Areas containing this locality This page contains all mineral locality references listed on mindat.org. This does not claim to be a complete list. If you know of more minerals from this site, please register so you can add to our database. This locality information is for reference purposes only. You should never attempt to visit any sites listed in mindat.org without first ensuring that you have the permission of the land and/or mineral rights holders for access and that you are aware of all safety precautions necessary. Carbonatite deposit that lies on the north-facing slopes of Songwe Hill (990 m).Located approximately 70 km from the former capital, Zomba.Songwe Hill is interpreted as a volcanic vent that is expressed as a steep-sided hill approximately 800m in diameter. Information from surface mapping and drill core indicates that the vent complex consists of a multi-phase intrusion characterised by diverse carbonatites and breccias. The carbonatite is best exposed along the north-eastern slope of Songwe Hill. The vent complex cuts the western end of the large Mauze nepheline syenite intrusion, but the external contacts on the western and northwestern sides of the vent are hidden beneath recent surficial eluvial deposits.The principal lithologies that comprise the Songwe Hill vent complex are carbonatite, fenite and breccia. The carbonatites are dominantly grey calcic carbonatites, although subordinate ferro-carbonatites are present. The fenites comprise dominantly K-feldspar rocks and appear to form an aureole around the carbonatite. They are interpreted to have formed through metasomatism related to the carbonatite intrusion. The breccias range from clearly abraded pebble-sized fragments (pebble dykes) to angular blocks that are metres in diameter and include significant volumes of breccia in which the fragments appear to have undergone little or no movement.The principal zone of REE mineralisation outcrops along the northeastern slope of Songwe Hill. REE mineralisation is present in carbonatites, fenites and breccias, which are exposed intermittently over a surface area of approximately 350m by 100m. The REE mineralisation is untested to the northeast and southwest beyond the limits of the present drilling and below the deepest vertical intersection of approximately 350m below the surface of Songwe Hill and there is additional regional exploration potential in the Songwe and other carbonatites. The mineralised body is interpreted to be a carbonatite plug with essentially sub-vertical margins. In plan view, it is elongated in a northeast-southwest direction.The dominant REE-bearing minerals are synchysite and apatite. The apatite is anomalously enriched in the HREO's compared to apatites in most carbonatite deposits. The REE mineralisation is closely associated with strontianite and baryte and is interpreted to have formed through sub-solidus hydrothermal alteration following the carbonatite intrusion. Mineral List Regional Geology The Union Beach Mine is (was) one kilometre west of the Coromandel town-site, the main shaft just above the high water mark at the base of the hill bordering McGregor Bay. What remains is uncertain, but most is likely to have been covered over by Long Bay Road, and a boat builder's yard at the site.The mine was originally the Green Harp, prospected by two brothers in the early 1870's. A rich find of gold was reported, and the mine was sold to the Green Harp Gold Mining Company, floated to develop it, only to discover the deposit had been salted. By this stage the brothers had sailed to Fiji.The Union Beach Gold Mining Company was floated in Auckland in 1873, to take over the Green Harp Gold Mining Company, Coromandel Beach Gold Mining Company, and Venus Gold Mining Company, and their respective leases. Another controversy erupts in 1874, when the underground mine manager is accused of stealing gold from the mine. The shareholder meeting called is advised the local paper making the accusations had withdrawn the comments, however this appears to be untrue. Several directors were replaced.Subsequently the man in question, James Stewart, states he has discovered gold in pipeclay on the Ohinemuri River. An investigation of the site finds no gold. Meanwhile Stewart sells the gold, coincidently the same value as the gold missing from the Union Beach Mine. He then flees to Sydney.In 1877, the company takes over the 15 stamp New Zealand lease battery nearby to crush its own ore. The company discovered a rich leader, proving the salting of the mine was unnecessary. For a time the mine yielded rich specimen stone in the upper levels, however by the late 1870's, the mine was idle for periods, and subject to forfeiture claims.In 1885, the mine and battery is reported idle, the company awaiting final liquidation. By this stage 200 000 ounces of gold has been extracted from the mine. The mine briefly became the Telephone, before the London based Coromandel Gold Mining Company took over the mine in 1886. As well as the Union Beach claim, the neighbouring United or Palmerston, and Golden Pah claims were included within the Coromandel company's lease. They sank a new shaft on a section called the Blagrove Block. Their intention was the explore the deposit at depth, with prior mining only reaching a depth of 180 feet.By 1895, the Old Hauraki Gold Mining Company owned most of the leases in the area, which it had let to tributers. Rich stone was found by the tributers in the old Union Beach workings, and when the tributer's agreement reached an end, the company took over the mine again to work itself. For a short time it also found rich gold at a deeper level than the tributers, with one 40 tonne crushing as an example yielding 1606 ounces of gold. The last information found for this operation was 1911.1 valid mineral. This geological map and associated information on rock units at or nearby to the coordinates given for this locality is based on relatively small scale geological maps provided by various national Geological Surveys. This does not necessarily represent the complete geology at this locality but it gives a background for the region in which it is found. Click on geological units on the map for more information. Click here to view full-screen map on Macrostrat.org Data and map coding provided by Macrostrat.org, used under Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 License This page contains all mineral locality references listed on mindat.org. This does not claim to be a complete list. If you know of more minerals from this site, please register so you can add to our database. This locality information is for reference purposes only. You should never attempt to visit any sites listed in mindat.org without first ensuring that you have the permission of the land and/or mineral rights holders for access and that you are aware of all safety precautions necessary. References This page contains all mineral locality references listed on mindat.org. This does not claim to be a complete list. If you know of more minerals from this site, please register so you can add to our database. This locality information is for reference purposes only. You should never attempt to visit any sites listed in mindat.org without first ensuring that you have the permission of the land and/or mineral rights holders for access and that you are aware of all safety precautions necessary. Ammoniomathesiusite About AmmoniomathesiusiteHide This section is currently hidden. Click the show button to view. Classification of AmmoniomathesiusiteHide This section is currently hidden. Click the show button to view. IMA status: Approved Approval year: 2017 First published: 2019 Nickel-Strunz 10th (pending) ed.: 7.DF. 7 : SULFATES (selenates, tellurates, chromates, molybdates, wolframates) D : Sulfates (selenates, etc.) with additional anions, with H 2 O F : With large and medium-sized cations Physical Properties of AmmoniomathesiusiteHide This section is currently hidden. Click the show button to view. Lustre: Vitreous Transparency: Transparent Colour: pale yellow to greenish-yellow Streak: pale yellow Hardness: 2 on Mohs scale Tenacity: Brittle Cleavage: Distinct/Good excellent on {110} and good on {001}. Fracture: Step-Like Density: 3.672 g/cm3 (Calculated) Optical Data of AmmoniomathesiusiteHide This section is currently hidden. Click the show button to view. Type: Uniaxial (-) RI values: n = 1.653(2) n = 1.609(2) Max Birefringence: Image shows birefringence interference colour range (at 30m thickness) and does not take into account mineral colouration. = 0.044 Surface Relief: Moderate Pleochroism: Visible Comments: O = green-yellow, E = colourless; O > E Chemical Properties of AmmoniomathesiusiteHide This section is currently hidden. Click the show button to view. Crystallography of AmmoniomathesiusiteHide This section is currently hidden. Click the show button to view. Crystal System: Tetragonal Class (H-M): 4/m - Dipyramidal Space Group: P4/n Cell Parameters: a = 14.9405(9) A, c = 7.1020(5) A Ratio: a:c = 1 : 0.475 Unit Cell V: 1,585.30 A (Calculated from Unit Cell) Z: 2 Morphology: prisms X-Ray Powder DiffractionHide This section is currently hidden. Click the show button to view. Powder Diffraction Data: d-spacing Intensity 10.57 A (46) 7.10 A (62) 6.41 A (100) 4.71 A (27) 3.575 A (25) 3.460 A (26) 3.340 A (35) 3.226 A (44) Comments: From Type Description. Geological EnvironmentHide This section is currently hidden. Click the show button to view. Type Occurrence of AmmoniomathesiusiteHide This section is currently hidden. Click the show button to view. Synonyms of AmmoniomathesiusiteHide This section is currently hidden. Click the show button to view. This section is currently hidden. Click the show button to view. 7.DF. Aldridgeite (Cd,Ca)(Cu,Zn) 4 (SO 4 ) 2 (OH) 6 3H 2 O Mon. 2/m : B2/b 7.DF. Chromschieffelinite Pb 10 Te6+ 6 O 20 (OH) 14 (CrO 4 )(H 2 O) 5 Orth. 2 2 2 : C2 2 2 1 7.DF. Alcaparrosaite K 3 Ti4+Fe3+(SO 4 ) 4 O(H 2 O) 2 Mon. 2/m : B2/b 7.DF. Bairdite Pb 2 Cu2+ 4 Te6+ 2 O 10 (OH) 2 (SO 4 ) H 2 O Mon. 2/m : P2 1 /b 7.DF. Carlsonite (NH 4 ) 5 Fe3+ 3 O(SO 4 ) 6 7H 2 O Tric. 1 : P 1 7.DF.05 Uklonskovite NaMg(SO 4 )F 2H 2 O Mon. 7.DF.10 Kainite KMg(SO 4 )Cl 3H 2 O Mon. 2/m : B2/m 7.DF.15 Natrochalcite NaCu 2 (SO 4 ) 2 (OH) 2H 2 O Mon. 2/m : B2/m 7.DF.20 Metasideronatrite Na 2 Fe(SO 4 ) 2 (OH) H 2 O Orth. mmm (2/m 2/m 2/m) 7.DF.20 Sideronatrite Na 2 Fe(SO 4 ) 2 (OH) 3H 2 O Orth. 2 2 2 : P2 1 2 1 2 1 7.DF.25 Despujolsite Ca 3 Mn4+(SO 4 ) 2 (OH) 6 3H 2 O Hex. 6 m2 : P 6 2 c 7.DF.25 Fleischerite Pb 3 Ge(SO 4 ) 2 (OH) 6 3H 2 O Hex. 6/mmm (6/m 2/m 2/m) : P6 3 /mmc 7.DF.25 Schaurteite Ca 3 Ge(SO 4 ) 2 (OH) 6 4H 2 O Hex. 6/mmm (6/m 2/m 2/m) : P6 3 /mmc 7.DF.25 Mallestigite Pb 3 Sb5+(SO 4 )(AsO 4 )(OH) 6 3H 2 O Hex. 6 : P6 3 7.DF.30 Slavikite (H 3 O+) 3 Mg 6 Fe 15 (SO 4 ) 21 (OH) 18 98H 2 O Trig. 3 : R 3 7.DF.35 Metavoltine Na 6 K 2 FeFe 6 (SO 4 ) 12 O 2 18H 2 O Trig. 7.DF.40 Lannonite Mg 2 Ca 4 Al 4 (SO 4 ) 8 F 8 24H 2 O Tet. 4/m : I4/m 7.DF.40 Vlodavetsite AlCa 2 (SO 4 ) 2 F 2 Cl 4H 2 O Tet. 4/m : I4/m 7.DF.45 Peretaite Ca(SbO) 4 (SO 4 ) 2 (OH) 2 2H 2 O Mon. 2/m : B2/b 7.DF.50 Gordaite NaZn 4 (SO 4 )(OH) 6 Cl 6H 2 O Trig. 3 : P 3 7.DF.55 Clairite (NH 4 ) 2 Fe 3 (SO 4 ) 4 (OH) 3 3H 2 O Tric. 7.DF.60 Arzrunite Cu 4 Pb 2 (SO 4 )(OH) 4 Cl 6 2H 2 O (?) Orth. 7.DF.65 Elyite Pb 4 Cu(SO 4 )O 2 (OH) 4 H 2 O Mon. 2/m 7.DF.70 Lautenthalite PbCu 4 (SO 4 ) 2 (OH) 6 3H 2 O Mon. 2/m : P2 1 /b 7.DF.70 Yecoraite Fe3+ 3 Bi 5 (Te6+O 4 ) 2 (Te4+O 3 )O 9 9H 2 O 7.DF.75 Riomarinaite Bi(SO 4 )(OH) H 2 O Mon. 2/m 7.DF.80 Dukeite Bi3+ 24 Cr6+ 8 O 57 (OH) 6 3H 2 O Trig. 3m : P3 1c Fluorescence of AmmoniomathesiusiteHide This section is currently hidden. Click the show button to view. In UV light: fluoresces bright yellowgreen under a 405 nm laser Other InformationHide This section is currently hidden. Click the show button to view. Health Risks: No information on health risks for this material has been entered into the database. You should always treat mineral specimens with care. References for AmmoniomathesiusiteHide This section is currently hidden. Click the show button to view. Internet Links for AmmoniomathesiusiteHide This section is currently hidden. Click the show button to view. Localities for AmmoniomathesiusiteHide This section is currently hidden. Click the show button to view. symbol to view information about a locality. The symbol next to localities in the list can be used to jump to that position on the map. This map shows a selection of localities that have latitude and longitude coordinates recorded. Click on thesymbol to view information about a locality. Thesymbol next to localities in the list can be used to jump to that position on the map. Locality ListHide This section is currently hidden. Click the show button to view. Janchevite About JancheviteHide This section is currently hidden. Click the show button to view. Classification of JancheviteHide This section is currently hidden. Click the show button to view. IMA status: Approved Approval year: 2017 First published: 2018 Physical Properties of JancheviteHide This section is currently hidden. Click the show button to view. Lustre: Adamantine Colour: Orange-red Hardness: 2 on Mohs scale Tenacity: Brittle Cleavage: Distinct/Good Distinct on {001} Density: 8.16 g/cm3 (Calculated) Chemical Properties of JancheviteHide This section is currently hidden. Click the show button to view. Crystallography of JancheviteHide This section is currently hidden. Click the show button to view. Crystal System: Tetragonal Class (H-M): 4/mmm (4/m 2/m 2/m) - Ditetragonal Dipyramidal Space Group: I4/mmm Setting: I4/mmm Cell Parameters: a = 3.9591(5) A, c = 22.6897(3) A Ratio: a:c = 1 : 5.731 Unit Cell V: 355.65 A Z: 1 X-Ray Powder DiffractionHide This section is currently hidden. Click the show button to view. Powder Diffraction Data: d-spacing Intensity 3.889 A (24) 3.501 A (31) 2.979 A (86) 2.833 A (25) 2.794 A (100) 1.992 A (26) 1.988 A (49) 1.649 A (46) Comments: From Type Description. Type Occurrence of JancheviteHide This section is currently hidden. Click the show button to view. Synonyms of JancheviteHide This section is currently hidden. Click the show button to view. Other InformationHide This section is currently hidden. Click the show button to view. Health Risks: No information on health risks for this material has been entered into the database. You should always treat mineral specimens with care. References for JancheviteHide This section is currently hidden. Click the show button to view. Internet Links for JancheviteHide This section is currently hidden. Click the show button to view. Localities for JancheviteHide This section is currently hidden. Click the show button to view. symbol to view information about a locality. The symbol next to localities in the list can be used to jump to that position on the map. This map shows a selection of localities that have latitude and longitude coordinates recorded. Click on thesymbol to view information about a locality. Thesymbol next to localities in the list can be used to jump to that position on the map. Locality ListHide This section is currently hidden. Click the show button to view. Posted by Mark Williams | April 16, 2018 Vehicles Affected: Approximately 800 model-year 2017 Toyota Tacoma pickup trucks built at Toyota Motor Manufacturing de Baja California between Oct. 12 and Oct. 17, 2017 The Problem: During the manufacturing process, the oil galley in the rotor for the brake booster vacuum pump assembly may have been improperly machined possibly resulting in a sudden loss of brake assist. Loss of brake assist could increase the risk of a crash and injury. The Fix: Toyota will notify owners May 31 and dealers will replace the brake booster vacuum pump for free. What Owners Should Do: Toyota will begin notifying owners May 31. Owners can call the automaker at 888-270-9371, the National Highway Traffic Safety Administration Vehicle Safety Hotline at 888-327-4236 or visit NHTSA's website to check their vehicle identification number and learn more. Need to Find a Local Dealer for Service? Go to Cars.com Service & Repair to find your local dealer. To check other recalls and to schedule a free recall repair at your local dealership, click here: Toyota Tacoma. Manufacturer image 10:27 Tamil Nadu Governor Banwarilal Purohit walked straight into another controversy when after addressing a press conference at the Raj Bhavan in Chennai he responded to a woman's journalist question by patting her cheek. The press conference had just concluded when the journalist Lakshmi Subramanian, who works with the Week, asked the governor a question at the venue of the crowded press conference, when it had almost ended. The upset journalist tweeted this open letter about what happened. "Governor Banwarilal Purohit, I am angered and agitated. You didn't answer my questions, but you decided to patronisingly, and without my consent, pat on my cheek as a reply. To you, it might be a mark of appreciation, and a "grandfatherly" gesture, as you replied to several questions during the hour-long press conference on sexual allegations against you. But to me, it was an uninvited gesture as I wanted only answers and not a pat on my cheek. It was a day of news reports on the professor Nirmala Devi issue. As a journalist, I too wrote on the politics and the controversies surrounding the case. And, when there was a press communique from the governor's office saying he will meet the press at 6 pm, I too set out with our Manorama TV crew to pose a few questions to Banwarilal Purohit on the issue. I was sitting right on the first row throughout the press conference. I had three to four questions to him over allegations of sexual misconduct, and the reports over a home ministry enquiry against Banwarilal Purohit. To these, he replied with much anger, dubbing them, "nonsense and baseless allegation." The press conference went on and there were so many questions on the allegations surrounding Raj Bhavan, and his excellency Governor Banwarilal Purohit himself. When a scribe asked him if he should appoint a committee when the professor, in her recorded audio conversation, drops his name, his face turned red, and all that he said was, "I haven't even seen her face." During the entire press conference, it seemed that Banwarilal Purohit wanted to reiterate the fact that he is the highest authority of the state as per constitution. To questions on his authority to appoint the one-man committee under retired IAS officer R. Santhanam, he said he has acted as per the existing guidelines under Universities Act. The press conference was almost over. And when he got up from his chair, a TV reporter quickly managed to grab his attention and asked him about how much progress he had in learning Tamil. Purohit had earlier spoke about his interest in learning the language. He was happy to answer the question. "Thamizh oru inimaiyana mozhi (Tamil is a very sweet language)," he said. I was standing next to him. "Who is your Tamil teacher," I asked him. Standing next to me was my friend Lavanya Natarajan of News 7, who also had the same question. Banwarilal Purohit didn't reply, but moved a step forward. My next question to him was the one that he had refuse to answer earlier. "Sir, you said you are satisfied with the government's performance. Are you satisfied when it comes to the performance of universities too," I asked him. He didn't hear me at all. Instead, he patted on my left cheek and got away. It was a crowded press conference, and I was transfixed for a moment by that gesture. Lavanya tried to console me. I rushed to the washroom and washed my face several times. When I narrated my ordeal on Twitter, many trolled me. But there were many who supported me too. And I sincerely thank them. I want to say, yes I am agitated. Many may ask me to dismiss the entire episode saying, 'may be, this was a pat of appreciation' or 'a grandfatherly gesture'. But to me, Banwarilal Purohit is the governor of a state, and I am a journalist whose responsibility is to ask the right questions. I expect answers, not a pat on my cheek. An act like this moments after he dismissed a barrage of questions about allegations of sexual misconduct against him, to me, is unprofessional behaviour. And, it is completely uncalled for to touch a strangera womanwithout her consent." New York Times chief Washington correspondent to share thoughts on current political landscape by Pete Rosenbery CARBONDALE, Ill. Carl Hulse, the chief Washington correspondent for the New York Times, will visit SIU Carbondale later this month and discuss the present state of politics in the nations capital. Considered one of the nations leading authorities on congressional issues, Hulse will present Washington Politics in the Age of Trump on April 23. The lecture is at 6 p.m. in the SIU School of Laws Hiram H. Lesar Auditorium. The event, sponsored by the Paul Simon Public Policy Institute, is free and open to the public. Media Advisory Reporters, photographers and news crews are welcome to cover the lecture. To arrange for interviews or for more information on the event, contact Cary Day, Paul Simon Public Policy Institute marketing and communications coordinator, at 618/453-4008 or cbryant7@siu.edu. Will provide insight on congressional issues Carl is one of the most experienced and best informed reporters in Washington, John Shaw, Simon Institute director, said. Carl will be able to explain as well as anyone is able to explain what is happening in Washington during this time of enormous political disruption. During his visit at SIU, Hulse will meet with journalism students and Simon Institute ambassadors. Has been with New York Times for more than 30 years Hulse has been in his present position since 2016. He is managing editor of First Draft, a daily political newsletter within NYTimes.com. He is also author of On Washington, a regular and widely read New York Times column chronicling developments in the nation's capital from the perspective of a longtime expert in politics and policy. Hulse was previously Washington editor for The Times, directing all facets of Washington coverage of the White House and executive branch, Congress, the courts and the Pentagon from 2011 to 2014. Grew up in Illinois Hulse, who is from Ottawa, has a deep understanding of Illinois, John Shaw, institute director, said. After graduating from Illinois State University, Hulse began his full-time journalism career at the LaSalle-Peru News-Tribune in January 1977. Hulse also worked for the Kankakee Daily-Journal and the Fort Lauderdale Sun-Sentinel prior to becoming a correspondent and later Washington bureau chief for a regional group of community papers then owned by the New York Times in 1986. Hulse was appointed the newspapers night editor in 2001 and went to Capitol Hill a year later. Health care organization honors three students by Pete Rosenbery CARBONDALE, Ill. Three Southern Illinois University Carbondale students recently were honored by the Mid-America Healthcare Executives Forum (MHEF) for their academic excellence, volunteerism, leadership and involvement in health care activities. Vicki L. Brown, a junior in health care management; Payton Hilton, a senior in management with an emphasis on health care enterprises, and Christopher Grace, a graduate student pursuing a Master of Health Administration degree are the three recipients this year. Bart Millstead, senior vice president and chief operating officer with Memorial Hospital of Carbondale and past MHEF president recently presented the awards on behalf of the organization. Brown and Grace were chosen by the School of Allied Healths Health Care Management program faculty and administration and Hilton was selected by the College of Business Department of Management faculty and administration. Brown has been a physical therapist assistant for 25 years A 1992 graduate of the Southwestern Illinois College Physical Therapist Assistant program, Brown has practiced in acute care hospitals, outpatient clinics, long-term care facilities and home health. I am thrilled and honored to be recognized by the MHEF, Brown said. I feel that this is an excellent opportunity to network with leaders in healthcare management and to further broaden my knowledge and management skills. Brown has a 4.0 GPA and she recently became the first SIU health care management student appointed to the 12-member Illinois Rural Health Association board for a two-year term. She expects to graduate in 2019 and continue her education at SIU, either by pursuing a masters degree in public health or applying to the physicians assistant program. Brown said she is very passionate about providing quality medical care to her patients. She is confident she will excel in health care management and have the ability to run an efficient, productive facility that provides quality care and compassion to patients. A native of Coulterville, Brown and her husband, Scott, have two daughters and a stepdaughter. Her oldest daughter, Katie Little, graduated from SIUs social work program in May 2017. Another daughter, Emily, will be attending SIU this fall, majoring in art. Grace will complete his masters degree in August I am honored to be recognized by the Mid-America Health Care Executive Forum, said Grace, the son of Karen and Steve Grace of Ava. I will used this award to advance my career and become an ambassador for both the Health Care Management and Masters of Health Administration programs. Grace is a student member of the American College of Healthcare Executives. He earned his bachelors degree from SIUs Health Care Management program in May 2016. That year, he also received the Association of University Programs in Health Administration Bugbee-Falk Award. He has a 4.0 GPA. Grace started his career as a certified pharmacy technician and then transitioned as an employee health coordinator with Southern Illinois Healthcare. After being promoted to 401(k) benefits specialist, Grace has moved into a role as financial analyst for the 340B drug pricing program and pharmacy. Hilton has always had an interest in the health care field Hilton, from La Porte City, Iowa, said she has always been interested in health care. She worked as a certified nursing assistant for a couple of years before deciding she wanted to further pursue her education. Hilton will graduate in May and plans to return to Iowa to work in the health care field. She also plans to pursue a masters degree. Im very thankful for this award, Hilton said, crediting Pete Mykytyn, a professor in the management program in the College of Business with encouraging her to apply. Its really awesome that Mid-America Healthcare Executives Forum participates in several charitable events throughout Southern Illinois as well as awards scholarships to college students in health administration programs. Hilton said she visited SIU Carbondale in summer 2016 and fell in love with the campus. I really like the relatively small campus, she said. Also, I like that most of my classes are small enough so the professors and students know who you are. SIU students earn Mid-America Healthcare Executive Forum honors Three Southern Illinois University Carbondale students earned Mid-America Healthcare Executives Forum honors. Payton Hilton, a senior in management, receives her award from Bart Millstead (left) senior vice president and chief operating officer with Memorial Hospital of Carbondale and past MHEF president. Millstead also presented awards to Vicki L. Brown, a senior in health care management and Christopher Grace, a graduate student who is pursuing a Masters of Health Administration degree. (Photos by Steve Buhman and Russell Bailey) Vicki Brown Vicki Brown Chris Grace Chris Grace SIU unveils impressive new boathouse by Rebecca Renshaw CARBONDALE, IL Southern Illinois University Carbondale will unveil an impressive renovation of the Campus Lake boathouse on April 28. Alumnus Ralph Becker contributed $1 million to renovate the popular boathouse, a focal point of Campus Lake for more than six decades. Construction workers have put the finishing touches on the project just in time for this years 45th annual Cardboard Boat Regatta, which is returning to Campus Lake this year. The structure sits at the starting point for the race. The SIU Foundation will host a dedication celebration of the boathouse, located at 1493 Douglas Drive on campus, at 10:30 a.m. Saturday, April 28. The 45th Annual Great Cardboard Boat Regatta will be held at 1 p.m. that day. This boathouse holds many sentimental memories for our alumni, and I am pleased to say that it will create many more lasting memories for our students and those to come, said Jim Salmo, CEO of the SIU Foundation and vice chancellor for alumni relations. Ralph Beckers vision Becker, who will attend the dedication with his family, was one of the pioneers of the universitys radio-television program. He is a 1955 SIU graduate and an Alumni Achievement Award recipient. Becker and his wife, Jane, live in Winston-Salem, North Carolina, and have been generous supporters of SIU. Beckers philosophy is that once a goal has been achieved, one should work hard and set additional goals. I want to challenge everyone to give back to others, and to what is important to them, Becker said. It is extremely important to challenge others to do bigger and better than what I am able to accomplish. That is the only way progress will be made. Xanadu on the lake Generations of SIU students, staff and community members have flocked to the boat house to enjoy a variety of outdoor experiences. One of the most popular was moonlight canoeing. Each month, when the moon was full, students and community members enjoyed a free canoe or paddleboat ride across the lake. The boathouse has also been home to weddings, receptions and countless celebrations. The renovated facility will include event space for a variety of purposes, including classroom and social activities. Many other events such as the Great Cardboard Boat Regatta were hosted at the boat house for over 40 years. Due to the draining and cleaning of the lake, the regatta was temporarily moved to a different location. Thanks to the restoration of the lake and the added benefit of a renovated boat house, the race is back where it all began. Fraud live bse live nse live Volume Todays L/H More RN Bhaskar Once is happenstance. Twice is a coincidence. Three times is an enemy action. -- James Bond (Ian Fleming's novel Goldfinger) The markets are in a tizzy. Believers in a concept called India are dismayed. The latest scams surrounding Punjab National Bank (PNB) and ICICI Bank have actually shaken the faith of many who believed that India was beginning to cleanse itself of the rot that had corroded the economy in the past. The governments claim each time a scam has taken place is that the law will take its own course. There is invariably a lot of sound and fury signifying nothing. Almost all the culprits go scot-free. And as a hoarding put up near Churchgate around 2005 clearly showed India remains a land of scams. They become bigger with each passing year. And the law is never allowed to take its course. When it involves government officers or ministers, permission to investigate is not given by the government. When it comes to judges, impeachment proceedings are not embarked upon. In the Harshad Mehta case, impeachment proceedings were embarked upon by the government. But on the appointed day, most politicians stayed away from Parliament. That made the proceedings infructuous. In the case of another chief justice of the apex court, where there were serious charges of amassing assets beyond known sources of income, the enquiries were suddenly silenced. Consider one more modus operandi that appears to be common to three of the biggest scams in the recent past. In the Harshad Mehta case, money was illegitimately obtained through the use of fake BRs (Bankers Receipts). These were receipts given by banks when a treasury bill was deposited with a bank to borrow money against the financial instrument. What was missing as an online database that could allow banks to know if the instrument had been pledged with another bank, or whether the BR existed at all. Had a centralised database been made available, no fake BR could have found its way to any bank, and no BR could have been presented twice to different banks. Hindsight is supposed to make one wiser. Yes! But fast forward to five years ago, and you have the National Spot Exchange (NSEL) scam. Warehouse receipts were issued for grain that wasnt even there. All that was needed was a centralised database, which could have let everyone know how much of grain was actually stored in each warehouse. The database would have told one if a particular quantity of grain had been sold, or pledged, or if the warehouse receipt itself had been mortgaged. Once again the centralised database for universal access was missing. As James Bond would have said, Maybe twice is coincidence. Both scams took place in the age of the internet where online access to centralised web-based databases is quite a simple process. Yet nobody bothered! Then take the case of the LoUs (letters of understanding). The Reserve Bank of India (RBI) had made it clear that LoUs could not be used for advancing money. Guidance ignored. All LoUs were to be backed by a margin of over 100% of the amount mentioned. Once again, this rule was ignored. But more serious was the fact that the same LoUs were pledged more than once and fake LoUs began doing the rounds just like fake BRs did almost two decades ago. Now either Indian bureaucrats dont learn from mistakes, or are trained to look the other way. In any professionally run organisation, when a mistake happens once, it is a learning curve. A second recurrence is a case for the person being put on the watchlist. A third repetition calls for dismissal. The government hasnt dismissed anyone. The CBI hasnt filed charge-sheets against any officer for ignoring this basic rule. Even linking the SWIFT communication vehicle to the Central Banking System was ignored. And Infosys, which provided the software, was supposed to have covered all loopholes. Shouldnt the system engineer who certifies the soundness of the platform have alerted people to the dangers of the SWIFT not being linked to the CBS? And why was the RBI silent about the absence of a central database of LoUs or LCs or any other instrument that could have been pledged? This was the third time a central database was being ignored. Doesnt this not warrant classification as enemy action? Whose enemy? Enemy of the people, obviously. Or have various authorities, over the years, slept with the enemy? live bse live nse live Volume Todays L/H More Anglo-Swedish drugmaker AstraZeneca on Tuesday said it will be investing around Rs 600 crore over the next 5 years in India. The announcement was made following a meeting between the companys Executive Vice President for International Region, Leon Wang, and Prime Minister Narendra Modi, during the latters visit to Sweden, where the two countries signed a joint declaration on innovation partnership for a sustainable future. The investment commitment will span across AstraZenecas diverse footprint in India with an aim to strengthen its manufacturing, clinical operations, patient safety & regulatory science, IT services and commercial operations. Furthermore, this investment will support scientific data generation, quality manufacturing, science talent development and collaborative development of innovative solutions to improve the standard of care of non-communicable diseases in India. The commitment also aligns closely with the Indian governments initiatives to create a stronger business, innovation, and healthcare environment such as Skill India, National Health Policy and Ayushman Bharat, AstraZeneca said in a statement. AstraZenecas strategy in India is to address the growing burden of non-communicable diseases. The company invests in many initiatives and programmes such as the Young Health Programme, Early Action in Diabetes & Healthy Lung for early action in awareness, prevention, detection and holistic management of non-communicable diseases. At present, AstraZeneca has a workforce of over 4000 employees in India spanning manufacturing, sales and marketing, clinical operations, IT services, digital services and global medicines development. The company recently announced expansion of its Global Technology Centre (GTC) in Chennai, now employing more than 2,000 employees. GTC is AstraZenecas first insourced IT facility. AstraZenecas manufacturing facility in Bengaluru has a sophisticated production facility designed to meet the most stringent international standards, conforming to World Health Organisation cGMP (current Good Manufacturing Practices) norms. AstraZeneca also has a sizeable clinical operation and is expanding its global medicines development unit that focuses on patient safety and regulatory science in India. Shares of AstraZeneca rose 4.11 per cent to close at Rs 994.55 on BSE, the benchmark Sensex gained 0.26 per cent to end at 34,395.06 points. Robert Shiller, one of three American scientists who won the 2013 economics Nobel prize, attends a press conference in New Haven, Connecticut October 14, 2013. Shiller, along with Eugene Fama and Lars Peter Hansen, won the 2013 economics Nobel prize on Monday for research that has improved the forecasting of asset prices in the long term and helped the emergence of index funds in stock markets, the award-giving body said. REUTERS/Michelle McLoughlin (UNITED STATES - Tags: BUSINESS SOCIETY SCIENCE TECHNOLOGY) - GM1E9AF05XZ01 Nobel Prize winner economist Robert Shiller, who, in the past, has regarded bitcoin as a representative of whole cryptocurrency market as a bubble, seems to be going through a change of heart. Talking to CNBC, the economist who correctly predicted the housing crisis in the US suggested that cryptocurrency was more a psychological experiment than an instrument of serious investment. "I'm interested in bitcoin as a sort of bubble. It doesn't mean that it will disappear, that it'll burst forever. It may be with us for a while," Shiller, professor of economics at Yale University, said on Thursday. "To me, it's interesting as another example of faddish human behaviour. It's glamorous," he added. Earlier, Shiller had completely denounced the cryptocurrency market and said that bitcoin was the best example of bubble happening currently. The best example right now is bitcoin. And I think that has to do with the motivating quality of the bitcoin story. And Ive seen it in my students at Yale. You start talking about bitcoin and theyre excited! And I think, whats so exciting? You have to think like humanities people. What is this bitcoin story? he had said in September last year. The writer of best-selling book Irrational Exuberance on market manias around the world then had said that bitcoin bubble will burst very much like the Tulip mania of the 17th century. Tulip mania was the first recorded speculative bubble of the world when rates of Tulip bulbs in the Netherlands had climbed to astronomical heights only to collapse in a couple of months. In last five days, the price of bitcoin has surged by over $1,000. At the time of writing this piece, it was trading at $8,018.45 with market cap standing at over $136 billion. Several parts of Andhra Pradesh, Telangana, Madhya Pradesh, Bihar and poll-bound Karnataka have reported shortage of currency and ATMs running down, which the government today attributed to unusual spurt in demand in last three months. Finance Minister Arun Jaitley said the "temporary shortage" in certain states is being "tackled quickly" and that there is "more than adequate" currency in circulation. Jaitley, who has been away from office since April 2 due to kidney ailment, said he has reviewed the currency situation in the country. "Overall there is more than adequate currency in circulation and also available with the Banks. The temporary shortage caused by 'sudden and unusual increase' (in demand) in some areas is being tackled quickly," he said in a tweet. The government is checking with banks and the Reserve Bank of India to ensure adequate supply of currency. A statement by the finance ministry confirmed reports of cash shortages and some ATMs running dry of cash or becoming non-functional in some parts of the country. "There has been unusual spurt in currency demand in the country in last three months," it said. While currency supply increased by Rs 45,000 crore in the first 13 days of April, "unusual spurt in demand" was seen more in some parts of Andhra Pradesh, Telangana, Karnataka, Madhya Pradesh and Bihar, it said. Minister of State for Finance Shiv Pratap Shukla said the government has formed a committee to address the problem of currency shortage in certain states and the issue would be resolved in next 2-3 days. "The Government has set up state-wise committee and RBI has also formed a committee to transfer currency from one state to other because for money transfer you need the permission of the RBI. It (the shortage) will be solved in 2-3 days," he said. RBI report shows that the currency in circulation in the country has reached the pre-demonetisation level of about Rs 17 lakh crore. "The Government of India with the Reserve Bank of India have taken all steps to meet this unusual demand. We had adequate reserves of currency notes which have been used to meet fully the extraordinary demand generated so far," the finance ministry statement said. "We continue to have in stock adequate currency notes of all denominations, including of Rs 500, Rs 200 and Rs 100 to meet any demand," it added. The government said there has been adequate supply of currency notes to meet entire demand. "The government would also like to assure that it would be supplying adequate currency notes to meet even higher levels of demand if such demand were to continue in the coming days/months." Also, steps are being taken to ensure that ATMs are supplied with cash and non-functional ATMs normalised at the earliest. SBI Chairman Rajnish Kumar said it would not be correct to state that there is a currency shortage in the country. There has been an "imbalance" due to the crop procurement season, when demand for currency goes up. Cars drive past a closed compressed natural gas (CNG) station in Buenos Aires July 11, 2007. A recent cold snap in Argentina has driven up demand for gas, forcing the government to restrict supplies to thousands of Argentine businesses and cut back exports to Chile. REUTERS/Santiago Pandolfi (ARGENTINA) - RTR1RQO1 India and the US today decided to set up a joint task force on natural gas with a view to promote strategic and economic interest of the two nations. The two sides, during the ministerial level talks, also reaffirmed their commitment to early and full implementation of their civil nuclear partnership, including the Westinghouse civil nuclear project at Kovvada, said a joint statement here. The statement was issued after Minister of Petroleum and Natural Gas Dharmendra Pradhan and US Secretary of Energy Rick Perry co-chaired the inaugural meeting here today of the US-India Strategic Energy Partnership, which President Donald J Trump and Prime Minister Narendra Modi had announced during their June 26, 2017 Summit in Washington, D.C. The statement said the cooperation in this area (nuclear energy) is being pursued through relevant bilateral mechanisms. As a first step in realising the full potential of the Strategic Energy Partnership, the US and India are pleased to announce the US-India Natural Gas Task Force, it added. The task force provides a team of US and Indian industry experts with a mandate to propose, develop, and convey, innovative policy recommendations to the Government of India in support of its vision for natural gas in the economy of India. The work of the task force is expected to advance the strategic and economic interests of both the US and India. The joint statement said that the strategic energy partnership teams will convene soon to further develop action plans for the respective pillars of cooperation. The US and Indian co-chairs will receive reports from the pillar teams on a regular basis. Today, Perry and Pradhan led a high-level discussion with senior US and Indian government officials that outlined their vision for the strategic energy partnership and key areas of engagement. Under the partnership, the US and India will pursue four primary pillars of cooperation: oil and gas, power and energy efficiency, renewable energy and sustainable growth and coal. Both parties may consider establishing additional pillars of cooperation based on mutual agreement, it said. The strategic energy partnership elevates the role of energy in advancing shared goals, including universal energy access, strengthened energy security and increased energy efficiency. The partnership will create important opportunities for advancing favourable policies and commercial investments in support of these goals, including in natural gas markets. In keeping with the shared objectives to provide a stronger business orientation to our energy cooperation, both sides noted with appreciation the growing investment of Indian companies in the US and the beginning of oil and gas exports from the US to India, the statement. The partnership affirms the strategic importance of energy cooperation to the US-India bilateral relationship and sets the stage for deeper and more meaningful engagements through government and industry channels. As leading global partners, the US and India believe that energy cooperation can serve as a centrepiece in the bilateral relationship, it added. Through the partnership, the US and India collectively seek to enhance energy security, expand energy and innovation linkages across respective energy sectors, bolster our strategic alignment, and facilitate increased industry and stakeholder engagement in the energy sector. During a press conference, responding to a question about the US inking International Solar Alliance (ISA) treaty, Perry said that promotion of renewable energy is more important than signing a document. Earlier, during the ISA founding conference last month, the official had said the US and China are actively participating talks for inking ISA treaty. Another bone of contention between the RBI and the government has been the latter's suggestion to start a payments regulator outside the purview of the RBI. (Image: Reuters) live bse live nse live Volume Todays L/H More A parliamentary panel has called Reserve Bank Governor Urjit Patel on May 17 to answer queries on a spate of banking scams unearthed in the last few months, sources said. The Standing Committee on Finance, headed by veteran Congress leader M Veerappa Moily, today raised several queries related to the banking sector with Financial Services Secretary Rajiv Kumar. "We have invited the RBI Governor on May 17. We will be asking him about the scams and other banking regulations," said a source. Former Prime Minister Manmohan Singh, who is member of the Committee, attended the meeting. Patel had recently said that the RBI doesn't have adequate powers to deal with pubic sector banks. "We would like to know what kind of powers the RBI Governor needs," another source said, adding that regulation is an important part and that is why the Governor has been called. The panel, sources said, discussed a spate of banking scams, both in public and private sector banks. When asked if PNB and ICICI Bank issues figured during the meeting, the source said issues related with "all commercial banks, including ICICI Bank" were discussed. Recap bonds for bank recapitalisation | Acting on its plan announced in October 2017, the central government issued recap bonds worth Rs 88,000 crore in Januarythe first instalment of committed Rs 2.11 lakh crore. This was prompted by banks that were reeling under NPAs and were short when it came to meeting their capital adequacy and provisioning targets. Amid news reports of a cash crunch from some parts of the country, Reserve Bank of India (RBI) clarified that there is sufficient cash in RBI vaults and currency chests. However, with ATMs facing shortage of cash, RBI has ramped up printing of notes in all the four presses, it said. It has been reported in a section of the media that there is shortage of currency in certain parts of the country. It is clarified at the outset that there is sufficient cash in the RBI vaults and currency chests. Nevertheless, printing of the notes has been ramped up in all the 4 note presses, RBI said in a statement. In the last few weeks, many ATMs have gone dry in states including Telangana, Andhra Pradesh, Karnataka, north Bihar, Maharashtra, Madhya Pradesh and parts of Delhi. The government and RBI officials had met and attributed the shortfall to unusual demand for cash in a few states and instructed banks to improve their cash management. Earlier in the day, Finance Minister Arun Jaitley assured that there was more than adequate currency in circulation and plenty was available with banks. Have reviewed the currency situation in the country. Over all there is more than adequate currency in circulation and also available with the Banks. The temporary shortage caused by sudden and unusual increase in some areas is being tackled quickly, Jaitley wrote on micro blogging site Twitter. According to RBI, The shortage may be felt in some pockets largely due to logistical issues of replenishing ATMs frequently and the recalibration of ATMs being still underway. RBI is closely monitoring both these aspects. However, as a matter of precaution, RBI is taking steps to move currency to areas which are witnessing unusually large cash withdrawals, the banking regulator added. An estimated 10-12 percent of the total ATMs are facing cash crunch. The government estimates the situation will normalise in the next week. RBI and government have formed committees in states to ensure adequate stock of currency. The supply of Rs 500 and Rs 200 notes will be stepped up in the next few days, officials said. Iron & Steel | Imports from China, 2019: 4 percent. (Image: Moneycontrol) live bse live nse live Volume Todays L/H More Nearly a year after the Reserve Bank of India sent out the first list of companies for insolvency proceedings, the banks have finally got a reason to smile, a haircut of 55 per cent notwithstanding. Electrosteel Steels has become the first of the 12 companies from the list to get a green signal from the National Company Law Tribunal (NCLT) on its resolution plan. The NCLT on Tuesday approved the resolution plan presented by Vedanta Resources. "We have got our first success. NCLT has approved the resolution plan submitted by Vedanta Ltd. for Electrosteel SteelsWe are quite happy with this," an executive from the banking sector told Moneycontrol. Vedanta Ltd will now have to get the CCI (Competition Commission of India) approval, which they had applied about 10 days back. The approval should be through quickly in the next 2-3 weeks. Bankers will be receiving the order in the next couple of days. A few days back, the Insolvency resolution professional was fined 1/10th of the fees for neglecting the claims of the operational creditors. The resolution plan was earlier cleared by the Committee of Creditors, consisting of Electrosteel's lenders. The company was referred to the NCLT after accumulating Rs 13,000 crore in debts, including interests. State Bank of India had the highest exposure, at Rs 5,000 crore. In January, Vedanta Resources had emerged as the highest bidder for the stressed company, beating competition from Tata Steel and Renaissance Steel India Ltd. The Anil Agarwal-led company had bid about Rs 4,500 crore. RBI's first list, called the dirty dozen, also includes Essar Steel, Monnet Ispat, Bhushan Steel and Bhushan Steel & Power. The European Union today followed China in complaining to the World Trade Organisation (WTO) over US tariffs on steel and aluminium imports. "Having a substantial interest as an exporter in this case, the European Union requests consultations with the United States" to agree "safeguards", the EU said in a statement published on the world trade body's website. US President Donald Trump sparked fears of a trade war in March when he decided to impose steep tariffs on steel and aluminium imports, primarily to target China, but also EU countries. Brussels said in the document the aim of the discussions would be to "exchange views and seek clarification regarding the proposed measures" and to reach "an understanding on ways to achieve" protection, as set out in the WTO's Agreement on Safeguards. The EU said it wanted to hold the consultations "as soon as possible". A European Commission source told AFP: "The discussions between the EU and the US are currently ongoing. Contacts continue at several levels, notably on the issue of global overcapacity in the steel and aluminium sectors. Walmart has come close to buying at least 55 per cent stakes in Flipkart. The key shareholders of the homegrown e-commerce giant have come aboard to sell their holding stakes, except SoftBank. The Japanese strategic investor and the biggest shareholder in Flipkart is holding out of the deal as it seeks a better price. Investors in the Bengaluru-based company, including New York-based investment firm Tiger Global Management, South African media conglomerate Naspers, venture capital firm Accel and Chinas Tencent Holdings, have agreed to sell their stakes to Walmart. Along with them, Flipkart founders Sachin Bansal and Binny Bansal may also sell a portion of their stakes in the company, reported The Economic Times citing its sources. These investors together hold 55 per cent of the companys stake. However, it is yet to reach an agreement with Flipkarts biggest investor SoftBank that holds 20 per cent of its overall stakes. The Tokyo-headquartered investor had invested USD 2.5 billion in the shopping portal in August last year through its USD 100 billion Vision Fund. It has been offered to sell its shares in USD 10-12 billion, but the company is seeking a better price, estimated at USD 15-17 billion, through a secondary sale of shares, said people aware of the development in talks with the publication. Although the deal with SoftBank is yet to finalise, Walmart would be close to half of the ownership if it acquires the stakes of the investors it has finalised agreements with, said the report. live bse live nse live Volume Todays L/H More Akash Jain Gruh Finance Ltd, subsidiary of HDFC is jointly promoted by HDFC & AKFED, established on July 21, 1986, it commenced in 1988 from Ahemedabad, Gujarat. Gruh Finance has been recognized by National Housing Finance Bank (NHB) for its refinance facility. It has a network of 175 retail offices across 12 states of the country. The company is a major beneficiary in the pickup of affordable housing segment which will improve its AUM growth. We believe Gruh Finance is a quality company with robust financials. However, in terms of valuations of P/BV of 21x, it is grossly expensive. The company registered strong Q4FY18 earnings due to fall in provisions. Provisions for bad loans dropped 94 percent to Rs 1.4 crore on sequential basis. Standalone net profit for the quarter ended March 2018 stood at Rs 130.5 crore, which grew by 18 percent over a year-ago. Revenue from operations on standalone basis grew by 16 percent year-on-year to Rs 484.3 crore in January-March quarter 2018. Historically, the company has enjoyed premium valuations owing to its robust asset quality with negligible gross NPAs. Gruh Finance has recommended the issue of bonus shares in the ratio of 1:1 (i.e. 1 equity share of Rs 2 each for each equity share held as on the record date to be fixed for the purpose) to the shareholders of the company. The board also recommended dividend of Rs 3.30 per share of face value of Rs 2 each for the financial year ended March 31, 2018. : The author isice-president, Equity Research at Ajcon Global Services. The views and investment tips expressed by investment experts on moneycontrol.com are their own, and not that of the website or its management. Moneycontrol.com advises users to check with certified experts before taking any investment decisions. Markets - Image: Reuters The S&P BSE Sensex rose for the 9th consecutive day in a row on Tuesday for the first time since January 2015. The Nifty50 holds above 10500 levels for the second consecutive day in a row. The Nifty Bank and the Nifty Midcap Index closed with gains of 0.1 percent each. HDFC, ITC & ICICI Bank were the top index gainers. Finally, the market breadth turned in favour of advances with the advance-decline ratio at 1:1. Jewellery stocks remained in focus and Titan Company closed at a record high ahead of Akshaya Tritiya. Sectorally, the S&P BSE power index rose 1.2%, followed by the S&P BSE Realty index which gained 1.2%, and the S&P BSE FMCG index rose 1.05%. The S&P BSE IT index dropped 0.3%, followed by the S&P BSE Auto index which fell 0.2%, and the S&P BSE Healthcare index which was down 0.21%. The S&P BSE Midcap index rose 0.2%, and the S&P BSE Smallcap index rose 0.28%. Top Sensex gainers include names like Power Grid (up 2.9%), NTPC (up 1.99%), HUL (up 1.8%), ICICI Bank (up 1.5%), and ITC (up 1.2%). Top Sensex losers include names like Wipro (down 1.5%), followed by Adani Ports (down 1.2%), Sun Pharma (down 1.27%), Infosys (down 0.7%). Stocks in news: Ramky Infrastructure: Ramky Infrastructure share price rose 7 percent after receiving a provisional completion certificate for the project in J&K. Its subsidiary Srinagar Banihal Expressway had received the project 'rehabilitation, strengthening and four laning of Srinagar to Banihal, section of NH-1A on DBFOT (Annuity) basis in Jammu & Kashmir under NHDP-Phase-II from National Highways Authority of India (NHAI). Bajaj Electricals Ltd: Bajaj Electricals share price rose 5.6 percent on bagging of orders for rural/urban electrification projects in Uttar Pradesh. The engineering & project business unit of the company has bagged orders for ten rural/urban electrification projects. It hit a 52-week high of 699.90 in intraday trade today. Jewellery Stocks rallied: Jewellery makers like Tribhovandas Bhimji Zaveri (up 4.7 percent), Titan Company (up 1.5 percent), PC Jeweller (up 1.5 percent), Vaibhav Global (up 1.2 percent), and Renaissance Jewellery (1.2 percent) were seeing buying interest ahead of Akshaya Tritiya day tomorrow. Consumption stocks on buyers' radar: United Breweries rose 2.7%, Parag Milk Foods jumped over 4 percent while Jubilant Foodworks gained a percent. ITC closed with gains of 1.2%. Porinju Veliyath, Equity Intelligence India in an interview with CNBC-TV18 said that consumption theme is something which can make money for investors in the near future and there are stocks which can generate 15-20 percent CAGR in a safe way. Ramky Infrastructure Ltd: Ramky Infrastructure share price rallied 7 percent intraday after receiving a provisional completion certificate for the project in J&K. M&M Ltd: Mahindra & Mahindra entered the coveted Rs 1 trillion market capitalisation club in an intraday trade after its share price hit a fresh 52-week high on the BSE. CLSA has maintained its Buy call on M&M and raised its target price to Rs 960 per share from Rs 910 earlier. Its rural demand outlook improved with the normal monsoon forecast. The stock rose 1.05%. In Other News: The Finance Ministry may come out with a Rs 10,000-crore follow-on fund offer of the Bharat-22 exchange-traded fund (ETF) as it looks to dilute stake in Coal India to meet the minimum public holding norm. Capricorn Food Products India, an integrated food processing company, has received markets regulator Sebi's go-ahead to float an initial public offering. The dues by scam-hit PNB's big wilful defaulters grew to Rs 14,904.65 crore in February, up 2.1 percent from the previous month, according to the bank data. These wilful defaulters, who have taken loans of Rs 25 lakh and above, had total outstanding of Rs 14,593.16 crore in January. Cash Crunch: Nearly one and a half years after the cash crisis that gripped the nation in the wake of Prime Minister Narendra Modi's sudden demonetisation announcement, parts of the country have again been haunted by a shortage of currency. For the last few weeks, South Indians states including Telangana and Andhra Pradesh have reportedly seen ATMs go dry. They are now joined by Bihar, Uttar Pradesh, Chhatisgarh, Gujarat, Delhi and Madhya Pradesh, as people in these states are said to be returning home empty-handed from ATMs. "The cash crunch is a localised phenomenon largely confined to states like Delhi, Karnataka, Maharashtra, Andhra Pradesh, Telengana, Gujarat, Rajasthan. For the country as a whole, there is adequate currency in circulation and in banks," Dr. VK Vijayakumar Chief Investment Strategist at Geojit Financial Services told Moneycontrol. "This localised shortage can be addressed quickly by moving cash from places where there is cash more than necessary to meet the demand," he said. Global Update: European markets were higher, tracking modest overnight gains after data showed China's economy grew slightly more than anticipated in Q1CY18. Germany's DAX, Britain's FTSE and France's CAC were up 0.3-0.9 percent at the time of writing this article. Asian markets ended lower as investors digested the release of a raft of China data. China's Shanghai Composite ended down 1.4 percent and Hong Kong's Hang Seng declined 0.83 percent. The Sensex might have lost just three percent in the quarter-ended March but nearly 400 stocks in the BSE 500 index slipped up to 62 percent in the same period. Implementation of Long-Term Capital Gains Tax (LTCG) and banking woes domestically, coupled with global trade war fears, geopolitical tensions in West Asia, fall in global liquidity, Fed rate hike as well as rising crude oil prices weighed on sentiment. Apart from global headwinds, aggressive political posturing by opposition parties, led by their victory in the UP bypolls, also added to the market worries, experts said. The broader market was the worst hit with the BSE Smallcap index falling a little over 11 percent and the BSE Midcap index declining a little over 10 percent in the same period. The larger fall was in individual stocks such as JBF Industries (down 62%), followed by Vakrangee (down 47%), Kwality (down 46%), Hindustan Construction Company (down 45%), Punjab National Bank (down 44%), Unitech (down 42%) and Bank of India (down 39%). Sanjay Kumar, CIO, PNB MetLife, said the equity market has been in consolidation mode over the last couple of months due to global as well as domestic cues. The Nifty has declined by about four percent in Q1 of 2018, in-line with the emerging market pack, amid lingering domestic and global uncertainty. We expect markets to remain rangebound in the near-term, he stated. Going forward, he sees headwinds in the form of monetary policy normalisation by global central banks, particularly the US Fed, increasing fears of a global trade war and consequent risk-off sentiment, triggering potential foreign capital outflows. However, not everything can be attributed to global factors. For example, JBF Industries has been in a downtrend since February after it reported its earnings for the quarter-ended December. For the first nine months (April-December) of FY18, it posted a net loss of Rs 43.7 crore as compared to a net profit Rs 24.5 crore during the same period last year. The company, which produces polyester-based products, posted a net loss of Rs 16.3 crore in Q3FY18 against a net profit of Rs 3.5 crore year-on year. On the other hand, shares of Vakrangee have been under pressure in 2018 after a media report suggested back in February that the company was being probed by market regulator Sebi for possible price manipulation. The company plans to create India's largest last-mile retail points-of-sale network. It also want to potentially enable every Indian to seamlessly benefit from the governments financial inclusion plan. The management said in a written response that it has not received any communication either from the stock exchanges or Sebi. Despite this the stock continues to languish. March quarter gainers: Though the BSE 500 was dominated largely by bears in the March quarter, nearly 100 stocks rose up to 39 percent compared to a three percent fall in the Sensex. Stocks which managed to beat the benchmark index include Venkys India, HEG, NIIT Technologies, Jubilant FoodWorks, Firstsource Solutions, V-Mart Retail, MindTree, Tech Mahindra and IDBI Bank. The good news supporting the markets is that the micros have turned positive with clear signs of healthy growth in Q3 corporate earnings, market watchers said. Market participants are eagerly awaiting Q4 and FY18 results to further reaffirm the improving trend in earnings growth. Consensus earnings estimates are factoring in an over 20 percent annual growth rate in Sensex earnings over FY18 to FY20, Sharekhan said in a research note. Though the revision in earnings of some banks and other adjustments could lead to some downward revision in estimates going forward, the healthy growth in earnings would definitely support equity markets, it added. April 17, 2018 / 10:43 PM IST 22:11 China's Fosun Group has made a non-binding bid for Fortis and has bought Gland Pharma from PE firm KKR, according to CNBC-TV18. The Fosun Group is one of China's largest privately-owned investment conglomerates. They invest in sectors like pharmaceuticals, real estate, financial services, infrastructure and hospitality. Narendra Modi live bse live nse live Volume Todays L/H More In a first bi-lateral visit by an Indian premier to a Nordic nation in 30 years, Prime Minister Narendra Modi on Tuesday arrived in Stockholm, where he was received by his Swedish counterpart Stefan Lofven. Scripting history! PM @narendramodi arrives in Stockholm on a first bilateral visit by an Indian PM in 30 years to a warm and personal welcome by @SwedishPM Stefan Lofven at the airport and to participate in the first ever India-Nordic Summit. pic.twitter.com/leAsRMGKT3 Raveesh Kumar (@MEAIndia) April 16, 2018 PM Modi's visit to the India-Nordic Summit is likely to strengthen ties with Sweden and increase bilateral trades between the two nations countries. He is on the first leg of his five-day tour which will also take him to the UK where he will attend the Commonwealth Heads of Government Meeting (CHOGM). Here's a look at India-Sweden ties so far: The bilateral ties between India and Sweden go back to the 1940s. Several companies have engaged in trade leading to the establishment of bilateral trade of more than USD 2.2 billion as of 2016. Indian ties with Sweden reached new heights after the then President of India visited Sweden in 2015, followed by the Swedish Prime Minister Stefan Lofven's visit to India in 2016 for the Make in India Week in Mumbai. Former Prime Minister Fredrik Reinfeldt also visited India in November 2009 for the India-EU Summit and bilateral talks. Political ties Several inter-governmental Agreements or MOUs in the areas including sustainable development, education, health, space, identified defence, infrastructure, urban development, education, S&T, environment, railways and energy has been signed between the two countries. During former president Pranab Mukherjee's visit, six MOUs in important areas, including sustainable urban development; micro, small and medium enterprises; visa exemption for diplomatic passports; polar and ocean research; ageing and health; and pharmaceutical products and 15 agreements between educational institutions, were signed. An India-Sweden Business Leaders Roundtable was created in February 2016 during the visit of the Swedish Prime Minister to India, with CII and Sweden-India Business Council as its coordinating agencies. The first Roundtable took place on 11 November 2016 in New Delhi. Strategic and Defence Cooperation Both the countries signed an MoU for defence cooperation in 2009, under which an India-Sweden Joint Working Group was established with a focus to promote Make in India programme in defence sector and to identify more areas for cooperation in research and development for coproduction. After visits of prominent defence heads from either countries, India and Sweden noted the scope for further enhancing bilateral defence cooperation to a higher level. The Swedish side expressed its willingness to work with India under Make in India initiative and to pursue defence equipment cooperation. Economic and Commercial relations India is Sweden's 19th largest export market and third largest trade partner after China and Japan in Asia. The main Swedish exports to India are pharmaceuticals, paper and pulp products, chemicals, engineering products and telecom equipment, while the main items of Indian exports are chemical products, food products, and semi manufactured and manufactured goods. Indian companies such as Aditya Birla Group, Wipro and Bharat Forge are among the other major investors in Sweden. According to rough estimates, the cumulative Indian investment in Sweden is in the range of USD 700-800 million. Similary, Swedish companies including Atlas Copco, Sandvik, Alfa Laval, Volvo, Astra Zeneca, SAAB, have invested in India. Cultural and Educational Relations Indian music, dance, art, literature, films and cuisine are promoted in Sweden by local associations and the Embassy with the support of the Indian Council of Cultural Relations. Several Swedish universities have established links with Indian educational institutions and regularly send students to India for different programmes. The establishment of Chairs on India Studies at major Swedish Universities Lund (now discontinued), Gothenburg and Uppsala have given an impetus to the academic interest in India. Prime Minister Narendra Modi today invited top Swedish firms to invest in India and said stronger bilateral business relations would augur well for the people of the two countries. Modi, who held talks with his Swedish counterpart Stefan Lofven earlier in the day, was welcomed by children in traditional Indian costume on his arrival at the Stockholm City Hall here to attend the Roundtable Meeting with Swedish CEOs. "Stronger business relations between India and Sweden augur well for the people of our nations. Met a group of leading Swedish CEOs at the roundtable in Stockholm," Modi tweeted after he and Premier Lofven interacted with top Swedish business leaders. Prime Minister Modi exhorted top Swedish CEOs to invest in India and participate in flagship initiatives, External Affairs Ministry Spokesperson Raveesh Kumar said. "Sweden remains a valued partner for the @makeinindia initiative. PM highlighted the various investment opportunities in India," a tweet on the PMO handle said. Carsten Gronblad, Sweden's trade commissioner to India, said around 30 CEOs or representatives of firms participated in the meeting. "One of the main message from the speakers was that they consider India as a very strategic market and that they would like to partner India meeting certain challenges. "If we look at Swedish investments, they are increasing over the last few years. Swedish companies have committed to invest USD 1.1 billion in India over the next two years," he told PTI. The companies from Sweden have already invested USD 1.5 billion in India over the last three years, Gronblad said. This cumulative investment in India over a span of five years is more than that had been done over the last 20 years, he noted. The major investors would be the likes of Ikea, AstraZeneca and Volvo trucks, he said. Charles Frump, MD of Volvo Car India, who attended the meet, said Volvo shared their vision of electrified vehicles with Prime Minister Modi and stated how it was in line with the Indian government's vision. One of the key feedbacks from companies participating was how red-tape can be further reduced, Frump said. Juvencio Maeztu, CEO IKEA Group, and Hakan Buskhe, CEO Saab, were among the top business leaders who attended the roundtable. Sweden has a long history of investments in India. Many of the major Swedish companies such as Ericsson and Swedish Match (WIMCO) entered India even before it became independent. Since then, numerous other Swedish companies such as Atlas Copco, Sandvik, Alfa Laval, Volvo, Astra Zeneca and SAAB have invested in India. Though the bilateral trade fell to USD 1.9 billion in 2016-17, as compared to about USD 2.17 billion in 2015-16, Swedish investments and other economic activities in India have been on the rise. India's exports to Sweden amounted to USD 710 million, while India's imports from the nordic country totaled USD 1,160 million in 2016-17. live bse live nse live Volume Todays L/H More Akash Jain The Indian market for snacks is expanding and turning itself inside out to keep in step with an expanding set of consumers, who are not only eating healthy and munching local, but are also increasingly choosing branded over unbranded fare. Leveraging the trend is Indore-headquartered Prataap Snacks that has in the past eight years transformed itself from a single-product company to one with multiple branded savouries in its portfolio. The company has moved quickly to position its Yellow Diamond brand as a home grown challenger to rivals such as PepsiCo (Frito-Lay), Parle and Balaji. The Company has grabbed reasonable share in the Extruded Snacks space through its product innovations. The Company witnessed revenue CAGR of 27 percent over FY13-17. The Company has a big opportunity of Rs 22,000 crore in the organised snacks market in which it can grow esily at 18-20 percent rate amiodst competition. The company is putting efforts on improving margin-profile of the Namkeens portfolio. The companys entry in to the sweet snacks category through the launch of Yum-Pie needs to be tracked closely as well. It can possibly get some traction on account of pricing strategy and focus on tier 2 cities/hinterland, just as in the case of savoury segment. This category is otherwise getting contested by large players like Lottee and ITC, particularly, in tier 1 cities. However, at the current market price of Rs 1419 (P/E of 95x on trailing 12 months EPS), the stock already discounts the growth story and is too expensive. There is no comfort on the valuation front. : The author isice-president, Equity Research at Ajcon Global Services. The views and investment tips expressed by investment experts on moneycontrol.com are their own, and not that of the website or its management. Moneycontrol.com advises users to check with certified experts before taking any investment decisions. The Supreme Court on Tuesday directed the embattled real estate developer Amrapali Group to submit a detailed business plan in relation to six projects three where construction is complete and three where substantial work has been done. The next date of hearing has been fixed for April 25. The realtor was also ordered to submit a proposal for the auction of its lands to pay off dues to authorities and other lenders and a third proposal to shift people from category C projects where work had not yet taken off, sources present at the hearing said. Ranjit Kumar, the lawyer representing the real estate company, presented the chart or schedule of construction for projects and said that if they were allowed to finish the projects as per schedule with buyers receivables, they will be able to deliver on time. He also claimed that there was enough unsold inventory and if the Supreme Court allowed the co-developer to step in, the projects would take off again to which Justice UU Lalit said that the chart did not clarify how the group would get the money as the court would not want the buyers to pay up immediately. The apex court made it clear that it would want the buyers to make payment through the court and not to the builder directly, said legal sources present at the hearing. Give a concrete proposal, divide projects in three categories A and B. Prove your bonafide by taking up three projects in each of these categories, complete the work and take the money from the court, the bench said. The developer was also asked to submit a proposal on how it intends paying Noida Authority, Greater Noida Authority and the banks. Justice Lalit also asked the realtor to submit a proposal on the land that can be auctioned to pay off all the lenders, including authorities and banks, creditors and also give a details of all the financiers and creditors so that "an order can be passed keeping that in mind, says Advocate Kumar Mihir, representing the homebuyers. The intention of the court is to first see from where the developer raises its finances and how it plans to complete the projects. The court intends to test their commitment to finish projects within the stated timeline and ensure that it meets those deadlines, says Shwetabh Sinha, advocate, who was present at the hearing. When Noida Authority raised its objections with regard to their dues, it was rebuffed by the court that said it had no right to object to the dues because it too was in hand in glove with the realtor, he says. Last week, the Supreme Court had asked real estate major Amrapali Group to provide details of the money it had collected from the homebuyers and how much it had invested in its housing projects. It had wanted to know from the builder details of the outstanding amount which was to be paid by the homebuyers to it and how much more fund was required to complete the projects. The bench comprising Justices Arun Mishra and UU Lalit observed that "Few facts are still missing. How much money remains to be paid project-wise? Please give a chart. How much money has been invested in projects, how much was collected, how much money is required." It had asked Amrapali to prepare a chart dividing project into A, B and C categories. Category A projects where people are currently residing, category B where projects are in advance stage of construction and category C where projects are in a nascent stage of construction. Court has asked the realtor to submit a proposal for shifting home buyers from projects where no work has started. Last week it had also asked the group to submit a proposal on the total amount it owes development authorities and other lenders. At the last hearing on March 27, the Supreme Court had directed Amrapali Group to convene a joint meeting with Noida and Greater Noida Authority representatives, homebuyers, legal counsels and lenders on March 31 and submit its report on the status of projects and the amount required to complete them by April 6. The real estate developer, Noida Authority and Greater Noida Authority have submitted their respective reports in court. Homebuyers had pointed to discrepancies in the report Last year, Bank of Baroda had filed an insolvency petition before the National Company Law Tribunal (NCLT) after Amrapali had failed to repay a loan of Rs 56 crore. The move caused panic among homebuyers as, according to them, their investment would not be protected under the insolvency and bankruptcy code as the NCLT would give preference to banks before buyers. In September 2017, a group of homebuyers from Noida filed a plea in the Supreme Court seeking protection of their investment. In January, buyers in five other stuck housing projects in Greater Noida also filed similar pleas. The apex court clubbed all the pleas and began the hearing. vandana.ramnani@nw18.com A bushel of soybeans are shown on display in the Monsanto research facility in Creve Coeur, Missouri, July 28, 2014. Monsanto engineers designed a chipper to shave a tiny tissue sample off a seed to analyze the seed's genetics. If the sample is positive for desirable genetic traits, the seed is still viable so a breeder can plant it in a field test and use it in the breeding process to create more seeds of its kind. Picture taken July 28, 2014. 20 of 25 Monsanto Stand Alone Picture Package. REUTERS/Tom Gannam (UNITED STATES - Tags: ENVIRONMENT FOOD SCIENCE TECHNOLOGY AGRICULTURE) - RTR42TJN Angel Commodities' report on Soybean NCDEX May Soybean settled lower on Monday on anticipation of normal monsoon prediction by IMD. However, due to steady demand in physical market and millers are unsure about increase demand for meal exports. The Govt. is taking up the issue with China to remove restrictions on Indian soymeal trade. However, as per SOPA, India is likely to export 90,000 tonnes soymeal in April, down around 20% from 111,800 tn a year ago, mainly due to less demand from major importers. The arrivals in the physical market have been higher during first 15 days in April at 1.27 lt compared to 1.24 lt last year for same period. According to data released by SEA, soymeal exports for Apr - Mar, rose 26.2% on year at 11.56 lt due to firm demand from EU particularly France and Germany. Meanwhile, trade body, SOPA cuts soybean production by nearly 10 lt to 83.5 lt for 2017/18 crop. Outlook Soybean futures are expected to trade sideways to lower on mixed fundamentals of higher tariff value for soyoil and improved demand for crushing. However, normal rains in the coming monsoon season may have bearish impact on prices. For all commodities report, click here Disclaimer: The views and investment tips expressed by investment experts/broking houses/rating agencies on moneycontrol.com are their own, and not that of the website or its management. Moneycontrol.com advises users to check with certified experts before taking any investment decisions. Read More Delhi University is all set to welcome new students to its institution as the registration process for undergraduate admissions for this academic session will begin from next week, reports The Times of India. However, this year the University has eliminated separate registration for entrance-based undergraduate programmes. This means there will be single-point registration and aspirants can register through the centralised admission portal for all courses. Single-point registration will ensure that all the data are centrally located and the admission committee has access to them at one place, a DU official told the paper. The first cutoff is likely to come out in the second week of June. Before single point registration the university had a separate registration process for entrance-based undergraduate courses. The process used to start from the first week of April. But the change in process led to the delay of the entire registration process for two weeks this year. According to DU officials, the admission committee took its time to ensure the issues faced by aspirants were resolved. After last years experience we are ensuring that the admission portal is more student-friendly. With the state Board declaring results, the committee at Delhi University is planning to start the registration process for merit-based courses. The registrations for merit-based courses will continue till June...by then, all the education Boards would have declared their results. However, the registration for the entrance-based programmes would get over by the third week of May. The dates for the entrance exam are likely to be declared by the first week of May, the paper quoted official as saying. A source in the DU admission committee told TOI, The student can register first and can contact us in case she/he faces any issue. Since the registration period is pretty long, the aspirant can wait till the issue is resolved before making payment. The admission portal will also allow the committee to track the number of seats filled and withdrawals in real time. image for representation Sweden has inspired India to consider holding simultaneous elections to Parliament and state assemblies in India. The European economic and innovation powerhouse, besides Belgium and South Africa, holds elections to country and municipal councils along with its general elections (elections to Riksdag), every four years in September, which is a driving force for the emergence of the concept of organizing polls together in India, reported The Economic Times. General elections to the Riksdag, regional/county council assemblies and municipal councils in Sweden take place on the same day. The polls occur under a proportional electoral process, which means that the parties are given a number of representatives in the elected assembly that is proportional to their share of the vote. Sweden also follows a system of referendum like some other European countries. It is divided into two categories advisory referendums and referendums on a matter of fundamental law which is applicable to the entire country. As explained by the publication, an advisory referendum is not binding and allows political leaders to make a decision that contradicts the result of the referendum, whereas the latter is held in conjunction with a Riksdag election and is always binding. The next elections in Sweden is to be held this year. In the past few months, President Ram Nath Kovind and Prime Minister Narendra Modi have pitched the idea of simultaneous polls. Frequent elections not only impose a huge burden on human resources but also impede the development process due to promulgation of the model code of conduct, the President had said during his maiden address to the joint sitting of the two Houses of Parliament. PM Modi was in Sweden on Tuesday as a part of his five-day foreign tour, which will also take him to the UK where he will attend the Commonwealth Heads of Government Meeting (CHOGM). It has been the first bilateral visit by an Indian premier to the Nordic nation in 30 years. The year 2017 saw a decline in the number of Indian citizens wanting to become citizens of other countries, with the number dropping to 92,000 from 1.15 lakh in the previous year. The drop in the number is mainly concentrated in countries where Indians are traditionally known to go, according to rough estimates by the Ministry of External Affairs, reported Times of India. Norway, Belgium and Sweden were among the preferred choices of counties by Indians, over USA, UK, Canada and Australia this is just an estimate since the absolute numbers are not comparable. A drop of 12 percent was observed in Indians desiring US citizenship in 2017 compared to 2016. The number was 30 percent in the UK, 9 percent in Australia and a whopping 55 percent in Canada. The numbers skyrocketed in Sweden with 160 percent rise in Indians wanting to be citizens, and Norway saw a 218 percent jump. The high percentage was due to numbers being in three digits, compared to the five-digit numbers in other countries. Experts think that the current trend is that of Indians settling in smaller but developed countries, and this will continue for some years. Other factors contributing to this shift are the political climate in India and building pressure from natives in countries where Indians would usually go to, like USA and UK. Saju James, partner and managing director at an immigration services firm, told TOI, It wont be that people going to the US or UK will reduce. Job opportunities there are still very lucrative and lots of Indians, especially the young, will continue to go there in search of opportunities. That said, the number of people wanting to go to countries like Sweden and Norway, among others, will also increase and that trend is here to stay. Sweden had 25,719 Indians out of which 10,370 were Persons of Indian Origin (PIO) and 15,349 were Non-Resident Indians (NRI) in 2017. In Norway, there were 12,300 PIOs and 7718 NRIs. People are demanding more than just job opportunities, like the standard of living and social security, says Vikram Shroff from a law firm. Countries that encouraged migrants, including Indians, are now pushing for stricter immigration laws. Countries with relatively lesser population are sensing this opportunity and welcoming talented migrants. Prime Minister Narendra Modi today called on Swedish King Carl XVI Gustaf and exchanged views on strengthening bilateral cooperation across several sectors. Modi arrived here in the capital of Sweden yesterday, the first bilateral visit by an Indian premier to the Nordic nation in 30 years. Swedish Prime Minister Stefan Lofven received Modi at the airport. Modi and Lofven also travelled together in the same vehicle from the airport to the hotel. He will also hold bilateral meetings with his Swedish counterpart Stefan Lofven and leaders of four other Nordic nations. "10 engagements in 10 hours- a hectic day begins for PM @narendramodi in Stockholm! Call on King of Sweden, bilateral meeting with @SwedishPM & 4 Nordic countries' leaders, roundtable meeting with Swedish CEOs, call by Leader of Opposition, India-Nordic Summit and Community event," External Affairs Ministry spokesperson Raveesh Kumar tweeted. "Royal start to the day! PM @narendramodi called on His Majesty the King Carl XVI Gustaf of Sweden. Leaders exchanged views on strengthening bilateral cooperation across several sectors," Kumar said. Modi is on the first leg of his five-day foreign tour which will also take him to the UK where he will attend the Commonwealth Heads of Government Meeting (CHOGM). Earlier, ahead of his visit, Modi said in New Delhi he was looking forward to deepening bilateral engagement with both countries in a number of areas including trade, investment and clean energy. Modi had said he and Lofven would interact with top business leaders of both countries and chart out a future roadmap of cooperation in sectors such as trade and investment, science and technology, clean energy and smart cities. India and Sweden will also jointly organise the India-Nordic Summit in Stockholm tomorrow. The summit will also be attended by the prime ministers of Finland, Norway, Denmark and Iceland. From Sweden, Modi will tonight travel to the UK where he will also attend the CHOGM, besides holding bilateral talks with his British counterpart Theresa May. He will have a brief stopover at Berlin, Germany, on April 20 while on his way back home. Congress president Rahul Gandhi on Monday attacked the BJP government for denying loan waiver to farmers. "The government has waived Rs 2.5 lakh crore loans of five capitalists, but cannot waive loans of farmers. Finance Minister Arun Jaitley has denied help to farmers stating there is no policy for this," Gandhi said at a meeting with farmers in Jainabganj in his Amethi parliamentary constituency. He also alleged that promises made by the BJP were not being met and that the people will give the party a befitting reply in the 2019 general election. At another gathering at Thauri-Kotwa, the Congress president said he would continue to work for the needy whether his party was in power or not. Listing the development works carried out by him in his parliamentary constituency, he alleged that the present government was neglecting the interests of the people of Amethi. Later, Gandhi addressed school students at an event. Gandhi is on a three-day visit to Amethi and Raebareli in Uttar Pradesh. Amethi is represented by Gandhi in Parliament, while his mother and former Congress president Sonia Gandhi is the MP from Raebareli. Answer: Taj Mahal. The researchers concluded that: The Taj was a monument to love, but was also equally a project driven by ego. As Shah Jahan says, my beloved deserves a tomb that befits her and my love for her, and resources at my command will be used for that purpose. As history notes, the end of Taj Mahal's construction almost coincided with the beginning of Shah Jahan's fall. (Image: Reuters) Taj Mahal belongs to India and Sunni Waqf Board has no claim over it, said YH Tucy, who claims to be the great grandson of last Mughal Emperor Bahadur Shah Zafar. He has said that the board has no claim over Babri Masjid land either and while supporting construction of Ram Mandir in Ayodhya. In an interview with news agency IANS, Tucy said there was no deed in favour of the Board. Remember Emperor Shah Jahan has not written a deed in favour of Waqf he said. Lashing out on Waqf for claiming to own the monument, Tucy called it a big land grabber and alleged it for raising communal disharmony to gain media attention. They do not have even chairs and tables in their offices, how can they manage the Taj? They just want media attention and for that create differences among Hindus and Muslims, he said. He further said that Taj Mahal is a national treasure and no one had a right to play politics on the name of it. Tucy also mentioned of his pending case in Supreme Court of India. As the direct descendant of Mughals, my case is pending in the Supreme Court for appointment as Mutavvli, I will give these properties to the Indian government, he told IANS. Oroville residents look at the Feather River after an evacuation order was lifted for communities downstream from the Lake Oroville Dam in Oroville, California, U.S. February 14, 2017. REUTERS/Jim Urquhart - RC1E02309EC0 An inter-agency search and rescue team has recovered two more bodies of an Indian American family who were feared drowned in a California river some 10 days ago, US officials said today. The bodies have been identified of that of Sandeep Thottapilly, 41, and his daughter Saachi, nine, who along with his wife, Soumya, 38, and son Siddhant, 12, went missing 10 days ago. They were driving from Portland, Oregon to San Jose in Southern California. The bodies of Sandeep and Saachi were recovered yesterday inside the vehicle, a Honda Pilot, which was recovered from about 4-6 feet of river water, the police said. Last week, the rescue team had found the body of a woman, later identified to be that of Soumya, and remains of the vehicle and the belongings of the Thottapilly family. "At approximately 11:30 AM a boating team noticed a gasoline smell emitting from the water approximately 1/2 mile north of the reported crash site (downstream). The searchers began to probe the water and located a vehicle submerged approximately 4-6 feet beneath the water," California's Mendocino County Sheriff's Office said in a statement. Soon thereafter, search divers entered the water and were able to feel what they believed to be a person inside of the vehicle. Visibility was extremely poor and divers noted the vehicle was encased in a large amount of sediment from the river current, a media release said. Recovery efforts continued for several hours and at approximately 6:30 PM the vehicle was partially removed from the Eel River by use of a tow truck. This provided searchers the ability to conduct a visual inspection of the inside of the vehicle. "Searchers subsequently recovered the bodies of Sandeep Thottapilly and Saachi Thottapilly from inside the vehicle," the Sheriff Office said adding that the autopsies are expected to be performed this week as part of the coroner's investigation into the incident. Another search operation is being conducted around the Eel River in an attempt to locate Siddhant Thottapilly who still remains missing. According to the San Jose Police Department, the Thottapilly family was supposed to have arrived to visit a friend in the San Jose area on April 6 but did not make it as scheduled. The family was last heard from in the town of Klamath, Del Norte County, on April 5. The family was officially reported as missing to the San Jose Police Department on April 8. Sandeep grew up in Surat city in Gujarat and settled down in the US over 15 years ago. Addressing a press conference in Stockholm on Tuesday, Prime Minister Narendra Modi said Sweden has always been a significant contributor to the 'Make In India' initiative. Modi talked extensively on how Sweden was actively involved in the indigenous Make In India scheme, adding that it was a matter of pride and joy that the Prime Minister of Sweden, Stefan Lofven, was part of a business delegation that visited Mumbai in 2016; and that outside India, a grand programme on Make In India was organised by Sweden in October 2017 of which PM Lofven himself was a part. Throwing light on the talks regarding bilateral relations between India and Sweden, Modi said an extensive discussion was held where various developmental plans were chalked out. He said, " In conclusion to this, we have today agreed on an innovation partnership and Joint Action Plan. Innovation, investment, start-ups, manufacturing, etc are the key aspects of our partnership. In addition, we are also focusing on renewable energy, urban transport, waste management and other issues which are associated with the quality of life of Indian citizens." Modi also said that he, along with Prime Minister Lofven, will meet renowned CEOs from Sweden and have deliberations with them on subjects related to trade and investment. Prime Minister Modi created history today by being the first Indian premier to visit the Nordic nation in 30 years. India and Sweden will co-host the first-ever India Nordic summit, which will also be attended by the Prime Ministers of Denmark, Finland, Iceland and Norway. Internet | Internet is a fascinating place. What started off as an effective way to connect inter-departmental computers in the US in the 60s rapidly snowballed into a complex and complicated network of computers and servers connecting the whole world. Theres a sea change in the way the world uses internet now. You may look at the timer on the microwave and think 60 seconds is too long, but the same 60 seconds arent much on the internet check out how. (Image: Reuters) Twitter | About 8,000 tweets are sent in one second. So, by the time you finished reading this, about 24,000 tweets have already been sent. (Image: Reuters) Instagram | About 839 Instagram photos are uploaded every second on the internet. (Image: Reuters) Tumblr | There are about 1,364 Tumblr posts in a second on the social networking website. (Image: Reuters) Skype | 3,085 Skype calls are placed in a second on the web. (Image: Reuters) Traffic on Internet | In a second the internet witnesses about 55,618 GB (55 Terabyte approx) of data traffic. (Image: Reuters) Google Search | About 66,365 queries are placed on Google search each second. (Image: Reuters) YouTube | About 73,411 videos are viewed on YouTube in a second. Astonishing, isn't it? (Image: Reuters) A survey report conducted among Amazon employees in the UK has revealed some shocking working conditions in the warehouses run by the retail giant. The survey report prepared by a community working for workers in the UK, Organise, shows that 74 percent employees fear taking bathroom breaks so that they do not fall short of the targets and thus avoid warning points. [Targets] have increased dramatically. I do not drink water because I do not have time to go to the toilet, the report quotes an unnamed employee. The survey conducted during February and March 2018 reveals that 55% of employees have suffered from depression since working at Amazon and 57% have been a lot more anxious since starting as an Amazon employee. Everyone fears for their jobs. Honestly, I never knew this is how this company is, I would never have left my previous job. Amazon fulfilment centre is a terrifying place to work, the report quotes another unnamed employee. About 50 percent employees said they have lost weight after starting work at the Amazon warehouses. Few of them even said they have contemplated committing suicide. Source: organise.org.uk The report said that nearly three-fourths of the employees at one warehouse feel that targets have been increased. A few weeks ago they increased the target by 5 percent. Since they increased the target, it became more impossible to hit the target, another employee said. Some employees suggested a drop of 15 percent in the target for them. Members of Organise visited Amazon HQ in London to deliver a petition demanding that Amazon drop all warehouse targets by 15 percent or come up with a fairer target system for the workers. The petition was delivered on behalf of almost 4,000 petition signers made up of Amazon employees and members of the Organise community, the community said on its website A bomb went off outside an Indian consulate office in Nepal's Biratnagar, damaging the wall of the premises, a media report said today. Morang SP Arun Kumar BC said the blast took place last night in an open space behind the building that caused minor damage to the wall. Police said they are investigating to find out on who caused the blast, Kathmandu Post reported. Investigating officers suspect that cadres of a local political group have caused the blast. The party had called a general strike in Biratnagar yesterday. The security around the blast site has been upped after the incident. Meanwhile, security sources in New Delhi citing inputs from Nepal said a small explosion took place at Biratnagar at the Indian Embassy consulate office. This is a temporary office which had been set up during floods in Nepal and north Bihar and continues to function since then. The explosion happened at around 8:20 pm and caused a hole in the compound wall. No one was in the office at the time of the incident, sources said. Biratnagar is the industrial capital of Nepal and 6 km north of the border of Bihar. Afghanistans militant group Taliban has refused to participate in the upcoming parliamentary election in the country citing foreign occupation by US-led NATO forces. It urged the war-ravaged nation to boycott the fake exercise being staged in the country. The insurgent group made the statement on Sunday that its "top most priority is to liberate the country and the nation from the occupation and restore, like all other rights [for Afghans], the right to do politics and freely elect their leaders," reported the Voice of America. The Talibans statement is in response to Afghanistans President Ashraf Ghanis call to participate in the October 20 election. On Saturday, Ghani had reiterated his invitation to the insurgent group as the Taliban did not formally respond to an earlier call. "We ask the Taliban to act as a political party and participate in the elections while utilising the prevailing opportunity and the peace offer," Ghani said. Ghani made his first offer of unconditional peace talks in February. The move was widely welcomed by domestic and international partners of Afghanistan. The latest overture was rejected by Taliban saying that it "believes Afghanistan is still occupied" by thousands of foreign forces and "all major political and military decisions are taken by the occupiers." The Taliban also asked their fellow countrymen to boycott the election and "focus their energies" on expelling foreign forces from the country. The report said that it was not clear from the statement by Taliban that it has also rejected Ghanis offer to indulge in the peace talks. In 2018, the hostilities and fatalities have increased. In the first three months of the year, more than 700 civilian deaths have been reported due to escalated hostilities between NATO and Taliban. Monid also ignored the pleas of various parties within the industry to look into the alleged untoward behaviour. We were on a conference call with various FSCO people and we talked about all the red flags, continued Butler. We talked about the insane amount of commission being paidin our business it typically ranged from 50 basis points to 100 basis points, half a percent to 1%; these guys were being paid 8%, being spread out between mortgage brokers and brokerages. Thats 800 basis points. If you read their mortgage document, what the consumer was buying, the consumer was allowing their position on the mortgage to go from second to fifth, so in other words it automatically allowed other lenders being involved and consumers interests being constantly postponed. Ive never even seen that in a mortgage document in my life, and Ive been doing this for 25 years. It said you may not stay in second position. Never saw that before. Also suspicious was the provenance of Fortress Reals funds. Butler notes the company held a few black tie galas to recruit investors, which are pricey affairs, and still managed to pay out exorbitant 800-basis-point commissions. He wonders where the money came from. Butler suspects up to half of investor monies were used to recruit even more investors. Citigroup reported net income of $4.6 billion, an increase of 13%, driven by the higher revenues and a lower effective tax rate, partially offset by higher expenses and cost of credit. Our first quarter results demonstrate strength and balance across our franchise and position us well for the rest of the year, Citi CEO Michael Corbat said. We grew revenue across both our institutional and consumer businesses and delivered solid, client-led revenue gains in areas we have been investing in such as Citibanamex, TTS, Equities, and the Private Bank. Corbat also said the company has improved on its return of capital during the quarter as it returned more than $3 billion in capital to common shareholders. He also said Citigroup remains on tracks to meets previous commitments of returning at least $60 billion over the 2017, 2018, and 2019 cycles, subject to regulatory approval. While market conditions have been uneven so far this year, our first-quarter results show our ability to deliver for both clients and shareholders and we look forward to sustaining this momentum for the balance of the year, Corbat said. Five years ago, 1 in 5 Midland ISD students was not receiving a quality education, according to student achievement data. Implementing a similar ratio, Midland ISD officials report that of the 26,000 students in the district today, 5,000 sit in low-quality seats. At Tuesdays school board meeting, trustees will look at its three-year, high-quality growth plan, which is expected to add 1,200 high-quality seats in the first year, 1,400 in the second year and 1,600 in the third. The plan is part of the transformation of the district toward a system of great schools theory of action. A transition toward the System of Great Schools means central administration grants more autonomy to higher-performing campuses, empowers partners to make choices, creates performance contracts with campuses, annually evaluates performance of and demand for schools and makes strategic decisions regarding growing access to high-performing schools and addressing low performers, according to the district. This transition to a system of great schools was a key part of the superintendent search, which brought Orlando Riddick to Midland, as is indicated in the transformation overview that will be discussed today. With the boards selection of Orlando Riddick as superintendent of Midland ISD in summer of 2017, the foundation for transformation was forged, the overview states. The transformation overview also provides a timeline beginning with Riddick assuming the role of superintendent -- including the design of new schools and re-imagining of existing schools to support MISDs most at-need students. Site visits and conversations have taken place to help narrow down the 30 applications for partners wanting to help the district execute its academic improvement strategies. Midland ISD is applying for Senate Bill 1882 funding and Texas Education Agency grants to support these partnerships. The potential slate of partners, according to the district, include Midland College, AVID, Houston Education Leadership Partners, Young Womens Preparatory Network, Legacy Traditional Schools, TNTP, Project Lead the Way, No Excuses U and Code to the Future. Whole school models being considered include the districts first internal transformation school -- Houston College Preparatory Elementary. According to the overview, the foundation of the school will be a college preparatory learning environment with college-going atmosphere, increased expectations and a collaborative environment between parents, teachers, the community and students. AVID (Advancement via Individual Determination) strategies incorporate inquiry-based learning, a student-centric instruction based on organization, study skills communication and self-advocacy. AVID becomes a way of life for students and staff, according to the overview. San Jacinto Junior High, according to the district, is undergoing transformational efforts through the redesign of Houston. For the first time, sixth-graders (current Houston fifth-graders) will be on a junior high campus. As SJ begins to develop its model using AVID, the school will investigate college preparatory models to prepare students for the dual-credit/AP pathway at Midland High and Lee High as well as preparing interested students for Early College High School at Midland College. At least four other whole school programs will be part of the information the board receives in the transformation overview. The programs will undergo planning in 2018-19 and begin operating in 2019-2020. The first program is from Legacy Traditional Schools, and Midland would be its first Texas campus. Saxon Math and Spalding Language Arts are part of the curriculum, and the model being considered is for kindergarten through eighth grade. The Young Womens Preparatory Network is another program. Its a STEM-based sisterhood that promotes the core values of college readiness, responsible leadership and wellness life skills. Currently there are eight YWPN campuses across the state; 68 percent of students across the network are from economically disadvantaged homes. The model is for grades six through 12. The initial year would feature sixth- and seventh-grade classes of 100 girls each. The Midland ISD Newcomer Center would serve recent immigrants in grades two through 12. After one or two years of engaging in intensive language immersion strategies, students would be transferred to their neighborhood campus. The campus would house 100 to 150 students each and focus on language, instruction and opportunities for newcomer students. The MISD Honor Program will provide a kindergarten through 12th-grade school with a vision of a three-tiered model encouraging students to become active, compassionate and lifelong learners, and to understand that diversity of opinions leads to a stronger depth of knowledge. Individual programs include Code to the Future, which is a computer science immersion program for kindergartners through eighth-graders, and Project Lead the Way, which creates more intentional and intergrade STEM pathways. High school restructuring programs include expanding and cultivating college and career academies at existing campuses, deepening Early College work and a multi-disciplinary culinary/hospitality and tourism program at Midland High. Information about talent partnerships, cross-campus efforts, potential future partnerships are also part of the transformation overview. More than a dozen prisoners at the Wynne Unit in Huntsville are on hunger strike in response to a lockdown amid a rash of feces-throwing incidents, according to the Texas Department of Criminal Justice. Seventeen of the 156 inmates on lockdown started refusing food on Friday, and are being regularly checked by medical staff. News of the hunger strike comes less than a day after a seven-hour jailhouse brawl in South Carolina that killed seven and became the worst prison riot in a quarter century, according to the Associated Press. In Texas, the latest disciplinary lockdown began March 23 in response to an uptick in infractions, including verbal abusiveness toward officers and "chunking," or throwing bodily fluids. READ MORE: 10-day hunger strike ends at North Texas prison One inmate tossed feces at a guard after the lockdown, and a number of prisoners tossed feces wrapped in newspaper out into common areas while the unit was on medical restriction and there were no janitors. The alleged bad behavior comes less than a week after an Telford Unit inmate was hit with a life sentence in response to a chunking incident. "The offenders say they are protesting a lockdown of their housing area for disciplinary reasons," said spokesman Jeremy Desel. The prisoners locked down at the 2,625-inmate Wynne Unit are all G4 classification, which can often mean they've had a history of disciplinary violations. In late December, a group of about 45 inmates at the Allred Unit in north Texas went on hunger strike, citing complaints over recreational time and food portions and temperature. The action ended in early January, though it wasn't clear if anything was done to address the complaints. An Air Force general has dismissed all accusations against a former basic training instructor who military prosecutors had been preparing to re-try in a case involving alleged rapes decades ago at Joint Base San Antonio-Lackland. The decision ended a long legal saga that included time in a military prison for Master Sgt. Michael Silva, who was freed following a July 2017 appeals court ruling that overturned his 2015 conviction. As the general court-martial convening authority, Brig. Gen. Heather Pringle ended the case against Silva because a recent appellate ruling changed the statute of limitations that applied to two of the charges three specifications and because the victim in the third specification declined to participate in a retrial, the Air Force said Monday. Silva, then 44, had been sentenced to 20 years in prison at a trial in January, 2015 in San Antonio, after a jury of officers and enlisted personnel convicted him of raping a recruit twice at Lackland in 1995 and of raping his then-wife who also had served in the military in Wyoming in 2007. Silva did not respond to a request for comment sent to his wife, who forwarded a statement issued Tuesday by his attorney for the re-trial, Richard V. Stevens, who said he was grateful and relieved that Mike and his family can now try to move forward from this difficult time. Silva was assigned last fall to the the 802d Force Support Squadron at Lackland. The Air Force said Silva remains a member of the 502nd Air Base Wing, and added, We have no information about what decisions he has made about his future service. The ruling on the statute of limitations earlier this year by the Court of Appeals for the Armed Forces marked the second time an appeals court ruling broke in Silvas favor. The first one, in the summer of 2017, freed him from the U.S. Disciplinary Barracks in Kansas, where he had been serving his sentence. Following that decision, Pringle, who commands Joint Base San Antonio and the 502nd Air Base Wing, had ordered Silva to stand trial again. But the military appeals court ruled in February that all rape charges in the armed forces have a statute of limitations of five years, two lawyers familiar with military law said. The two oldest rape incidents for which Silva was convicted, involving the recruit, occurred when it was still an offense that had no statute of limitations. But they clearly exceed the statute of limitations under the new ruling, the Air Force said. It happens, said retired Army lawyer Geoffrey Corn, a professor at South Texas College of Law in Houston. Thats what rule of law means. And I think its an important point to remember that sometimes people who may be factually undeserving can benefit from the law because thats how we make sure that those who were deserving of the benefit get it in the future. Its the hardest thing for most non-lawyers to come to grips with. The Air Force, in a set of written answers Monday to questions it received last week, said it wasn't concerned that the resolution of the case might discourage future victims from reporting abuse. We worked very closely with the victims during this entire process. The government supported and fought for the victims at both the trial and appellate level. Victims should feel confident that if they come forward, the government and Special Victims Counsel will protect their rights, the statement said. In addition, we actively encourage sexual assault survivors to report incidents as a way to access support and restorative care. The Air Force said the victim in the 2007 case, a former wife, did not want to testify at a new trial. Silva initially was charged with raping three women, but the jury found him not guilty of the earliest alleged attack, in North Carolina in the early 1990s, involving a woman to whom he also was married. He maintained his innocence throughout the proceedings at Lackland, expressing sorrow to the Air Force, his family and the jury in a statement at the end of the trial but not to the women he was accused of assaulting. When Air Force appeals judges overturned Silvas conviction, it was the second reversal of a verdict stemming from an extended scandal at Lackland, which, starting in 2011, saw 35 basic training instructors investigated for assaults and harassment of 69 recruits and technical training students. The scandal led to a commander-directed investigation and sweeping changes in Air Force basic training. Of the 30 trials conducted over several years, only two other sentences were as harsh as the one given to Silva, the son of an Army sergeant major. One man, a recruiter, got 27 years. The other, a Lackland basic training instructor, committed suicide in prison after getting a 20-year sentence. In throwing out Silvas convictions, the Air Force Court of Criminal Appeals cited a decision in United States vs. Hills, a 2016 ruling by the Court of Criminal Appeals for the Armed Forces, to rule that the judge undermined Silvas presumption of innocence by allowing the jury to consider the testimony of all three of his alleged victims when considering guilt on each specification. Prosecutors conceded that the judge erred but argued it was harmless. The appeals judges disagreed, stating that the judge's instruction played directly into one of the strengths of the prosecution's case: that the women had no connection with each other. In fact, with regard to Mike's first trial, the Appellate Court found that the trial prosecutor hammered on the improper argument, and the Appellate Court detailed many of the weaknesses in the prosecution's evidence and case that were overcome by the prosecutor using the improper argument, Stevens said in his statement Tuesday. The Court of Appeals for the Armed Forces decision in February, the final blow to prosecution efforts to bring Silva to trial, reversed the panels own previous 1998 ruling exempting rape from the five-year statute of limitations in Willenbring v. Neurauter. Congress had granted exceptions to the statute of limitations in death-penalty cases in military law in 1986, even though the Supreme Court had ruled nine years earlier that death was an unconstitutional punishment for raping an adult woman. The theory was because you were charged for a crime that occurred back then and because back then death was an authorized penalty for rape, then there was no statute of limitations to the charge, Corn said. At the time the (Uniform Code of Military Justice) allowed death as the maximum punishment for rape of a female. Don Christensen, president of Protect Our Defenders, an advocacy group for military victims of assault and sexual assault, called the ruling unfortunate. A former Air Force judge, he said the appeals judges had been aware for the past decade of prosecutors trying some rape cases under the old assumption that there was no statute of limitations, and that it had actually affirmed the practice before ruling against it this year. Silva is a very, very, very lucky man, Christensen said of the two appeals rulings that have affected his case. My concern is that (Silvas supporters) will be saying all this proves he was innocent, proves he was railroaded. No, all this proves is that he twice has benefited from (judges) changing their mind on the status of the law. sigc@express-news.net Morgan County deputies investigating a report about a suspicious vehicle ended up finding 150 pounds of what is described as high-grade marijuana. Authorities say the cannabis has a street value of more than $400,000. Fire destroyed a semitrailer full of pig skins Tuesday at Illinois Route 104 and Waverly Road. Waverly Fire Chief Glen Brown said an unidentified truck driver apparently fell asleep and drove into the concrete abutment of a Norfolk Southern Railroad viaduct north of Route 104. After striking the abutment, the southbound truck went across Waverly Road and came to rest in a field on the east side of the road. The truck was engulfed in flames when we arrived about 1:15 a.m., Brown said. New Berlin and Loami firefighters assisted. A farmer brought a tractor to the scene to pull the skids of pig skins apart so firefighters could extinguish them. Firefighters were on the scene for about four hours. The Illinois Senate Transportation Committee has advanced legislation prompted by a Greene County accident that is designed to help authorities add safety markings to dangerous roads. Under existing law, only proceeds from motor fuel taxes can be used to pay for road striping. The amount of fuel tax proceeds going to local road authorities is diminishing, reducing the amount of striping work that can be done. State project dollars and federal pass-through funds cant be used for those projects. Legislation by sate Sen. Sam McCann, R-Plainview, would change that. The marking and striping of roads is obviously a safety issue, and federal and state project funds are supposed to make roads safer, McCann said. This bill just allows those dollars to be used for striping dangerous, unstriped roads. Senate Bill 2267 would allow state and federal funds to be used, with the approval of the Illinois Department of Transportation, to pay for striping projects on roads where striping did not previously exist. We have lots of road authorities that dont have enough motor fuel tax funding to pay for their striping projects, yet they have state project funds or federal pass-through dollars that could be paying for the work, McCann said. It just makes sense to let local road authorities work with the state to improve the safety and visibility of their roads. The legislation resulted from community feedback following the death of Lynn Jason Turner in a car accident near White Hall. The accident occurred when Turners vehicle crossed into the opposite lane on an unstriped road in heavy fog. If drivers cant see where the road and its lanes begin and end due to bad weather, you have a dangerous situation, McCann said. This proposal cuts red tape and improves public safety at no additional cost, which is a win-win-win for everyone. The legislation passed the committee with unanimous support and now goes to the full chamber for a vote. During the Democratic Weekly Address, Senator Sheldon Whitehouse (D-RI) discussed the tax bill and stated, workers are not seeing the benefits of the huge tax cuts that went to the companies they work for. Whitehouse was Tuesdays KVML Newsmaker of the Day. Here are his words: Hi, Im Senator Sheldon Whitehouse from Rhode Island. The folks I talk to in my state often tell me theyre frustrated with the situation in Washington. They tell me it seems like the big money is in charge, that they dont get a fair shot. They see a Congress and administration that cater to big corporations and wealthy political donors, instead of working on smart policies to help people get ahead or making real investments that grow our economy and create jobs. Well, as Americans go online and line up at the post office this weekend to file their tax returns, many feel that the tax system has been rigged to favor billionaires and special interests. The massive tax giveaway Republicans just pushed through Congress and President Trump signed into law late last year is proof positive. It turns Tax Day into payday for the most well-off, delivering enormous giveaways to the wealthy and well-connected. The Koch Brothers are among the biggest funders of the Republican Party, and they appear to have reaped billions of dollars off of this tax bill, so much that they even threw a five- hundred-thousand-dollar tip to House Speaker Paul Ryans (R-WI) political fund as a gesture of appreciation. But workers are not seeing the benefits of the huge tax cuts that went to the companies they work for. Only a fraction of the savings corporations won in the tax bill is showing up in employees paychecks. So what are corporations using that money for? Well, a lot of it is buying back their own stocks. In total, since the Republicans passed their tax bill, corporations have spent more than 235 billion, thats billion with a B, billion dollars buying back stock. That is a staggering 37 times as much as they have spent on workers bonuses or wage increases. Now thats great for big shareholders, and it jacks up CEO compensation, because it jacks up share prices, but its not much help for workers. Instead of simplifying the tax code, the Republican tax bill makes the international tax system more complex, and it evens offers special low tax rates to companies that move jobs and assets overseas. Thats just wrong. Not only is the Republican tax bill unfair to working families, its also blowing a hole in the federal budget. Republicans told us their tax cuts for the top earners would magically pay for themselves, but this week, the nonpartisan Congressional Budget Office estimated the deficit will balloon to nearly 1 trillion dollars next year, and keep growing over the coming years. The Trump GOP tax bill alone will add nearly two trillion dollars to our nations deficit over the next 10 years. Whats up next? Republicans are not even trying to hide the fact that theyre going to use the huge deficit they created as an excuse to go after Medicare, Medicaid, and Social Security Well, not on our watch. Democrats believe the tax code should be fair for all workers. We believe in investing in our communities, in the roads and schools and tech infrastructure that help build a strong workforce and move our economy forward, and we believe that Social Security and Medicare and Medicaid have to be there, particularly, for the men and women who have paid into them over a lifetime of hard work. Were working hard to keep the President and Republicans in Congress accountable to you, the taxpayers, not just the wealthy and well-connected, who run the dark money in our politics and get paid back through tax breaks. The Newsmaker of the Day is heard every weekday morning at 6:45, 7:45 and 8:45 on AM 1450 and FM 102.7 KVML. While Lone Star Brewery has sat vacant for more than two decades, it remains an iconic part of the Alamo City. Photographer Richard Woody got a first-hand look inside the building, located near Southtown where it has stood unused since 1996. "I go all over the place and I have a special passion for historic places," Woody said, of his March 2018 trip to the brewery. "San Antonio has a lot to offer for someone like me." RELATED: Photos show the abandoned Windsor Park Mall before the Rackspace transformation Lone Star Brewery has been the site of drama for years with four failed revitalization projects leaving local graffiti artists plenty of time to take to the space with paint. Graffiti is all over the brewery, which sits on 35 acres, according to Woody's photos. Additionally, it appears much of it is in need of revamping. In March 2018, the brewery's owner avoided foreclosure on the property by refinancing its debt. Click through the slideshow for a peek inside the brewery. And to read more about the stops and starts in the revitalization efforts head over to our subscriber site, ExpressNews.com. Staff writer Richard Webner contributed to this report. | Kelsey Bradshaw is a digital reporter for mySA.com. Read more of her stories here.| kbradshaw@express-news.net | Twitter: @kbrad5 WASHINGTON The Internal Revenue Service had an unexpected message for procrastinators who waited until Tuesday to make their annual Tax Day payments through the agencys website: Come back on Dec. 31, 9999. An outage, which began Tuesday morning and was unresolved by midday, crippled a crucial part of the tax collection agencys website that allows taxpayers to make their payments directly through their bank accounts instead of paying fees that come with using debit or credit cards. Those seeking to make a payment were greeted with the message: This service is currently unavailable. The website said it was undergoing a planned outage beginning on Tax Day that would last until Dec. 31, 9999. The error message also said tax payments were still due despite the glitch. Taxpayers should continue filing their tax returns as they normally would, said Bruce Friedland, an IRS spokesman. It was unclear what caused the outage. Acting IRS Commissioner David Kautter said at a congressional hearing on Tuesday that a number of IRS systems were unavailable and that the agency was working to fix the problem. The problem is, electronic filing is the most popular way to file. And the IRS offered no immediate solution but said the returns will be processed when feasible. Its unclear how many people were impacted Tuesday but, by comparison, about 5 million tax returns were filed on the final day of last years tax season. The IRS snafu also caused problems for popular third-party tax preparers such as Turbo Tax and H&R Block. Both said that they will hold onto customer tax returns and file them as soon as the IRS system reopens. Tax day falls on April 17 this year because April 15 was a Sunday and April 16 was Emancipation Day, a holiday in Washington, D.C. IRS Acting Commissioner David Kautter testified during a House Oversight Hearing Tuesday that a number of systems are down at the moment and that the agency is working to resolve the issue. Trumps top economic adviser Larry Kudlow offered a deadpan reaction when asked about the failure. The IRS is crashing? Sounds horrible. Really bad, he said during a briefing with reporters in West Palm Beach, Florida. I hope it gets fixed. The IRS typically recommends that taxpayers use electronic filing to avoid common mistakes. Online filing is quicker than dropping something in the mail when the site works, of course. The crash was reminiscent of the problems that plagued the Affordable Care Acts online health insurance exchange under President Barack Obama. It came on a day when President Donald Trump and his top advisers were trumpeting the $1.5 trillion tax cut passed by Congress late last year. Treasury Department officials had no comment, but the IRS acknowledged that the agencys systems are experiencing technical difficulties. The outage comes as Republican lawmakers have been mulling legislation to restructure the IRS after years of depleted budgets for the agency. The passage of the new tax law has put an additional strain on the IRS as it attempts to issue new guidance and regulations to clarify lingering questions about the tax code overhaul Trump signed into law. The failure of the IRS website drew fierce criticism on social media, with taxpayers berating the agency. Republicans have been trying to sell the new tax law to the public as a major success ahead of Novembers midterm elections. Treasury Secretary Steven Mnuchin traveled to New Hampshire with Ivanka Trump, the presidents daughter and senior adviser, on Tuesday to hail the success of the tax overhaul. The Associated Press contributed to this report. A San Francisco woman who attempted to use a ride-hailing service to get home from a bar early Saturday got into an unknown vehicle that drove her to Sonoma, where she was beaten and sexually assaulted by two men, authorities said. The 24-year-old woman was leaving Brunos in the Mission District when she tried to catch a ride just before closing time, according to the Sonoma County Sheriffs Office. A vehicle arrived its not clear if the car was associated with a ride-hailing service and the woman got in to find a man driving and another man in the back seat, officials said. Though she owns a list of accolades for roles as an actress, producer, director and philanthropist and, now, a newly minted star on the Hollywood Walk of Fame, Eva Longoria still feels "like a little girl from Corpus Christi." The Desperate Housewives alum's career was honored on Monday with the 2,634th star on the famed walkway. Anna Farris, Felicity Huffman and Ricky Martin were on hand to help Longoria unveil her star at 6906 Hollywood Boulevard. Contributed / Griffin Hospital Griffin Hospital is offering a free talk that breaks down the ABCs of Zzzs on May 15 at 6 p.m. in the hospitals Meditation and Learning Center, 130 Division St., Derby. Registered Polysomnographic Technologist Jackie Hoyle will present Better Sleep for Better Health, a discussion about the health risks of getting too little sleep, tips for getting better sleep, and warning signs of sleep apnea. The League City Regional Chamber of Commerce is preparing for this year's Athena Leadership Awards. On Friday, May 11, the chamber will recognize an exemplary female leader who lives in the Greater Houston Area and is known for her community contributions. The event will be held at the Lakewood Yacht Club. Athena International is a woman-founded and governed organization that honors female leaders noted for their community contributions and empowerment of other women. More than 500 cities in America have hosted Athena Award Programs, in addition to six which were held outside the U.S. Named after the Greek goddess of wisdom, the Athena Leadership Awards have been hosted by the chamber for the past five years. "We are proud to sponsor an event like the Athena leadership awards," said Steve Paterson, president and CEO of the chamber. "It gives us an opportunity to recognize women in our region who demonstrate business leadership, philanthropic leadership, and entrepreneurship, and are providing support for other aspiring women in business and in these other sectors. Through this recognition program, we are able to bring a stronger presence to the community on the critically important role women play in today's world. Media coverage in the past couple of years has helped greatly." The 2017 recipient, Amy Killgore, serves as a drug education and prevention specialist for Clear Creek Independent School District. "Women are nominated by the membership of the Chamber of Commerce," said Paterson. "We received 10 nominations last year. Each nomination is accompanied by an essay explaining why the person being nominated is worthy of being bestowed the Athena Leadership Award. The nominations and essays are forwarded to Athena International for review and judging. The committee at ATHENA selects the awardee." Notable women who have received Athena International's Global Award include American political scientist and diplomat Condoleezza Rice, founder of the USA Network Kay Koplovitz and an Associate Justice of the Supreme Court of the United States Ruth Bader Ginsburg. The League City award will highlight a local woman who typifies the idealistic principles of the Athean Program, described as living authentically, learning constantly, advocating fiercely, acting courageously, fostering collaboration, building relationships, giving back and celebrating. They also are "fierce advocates for what they believe and committed to enriching their communities." During the May 11 event, attendees will enjoy a luncheon, guest speakers, networking opportunities and a special program honoring nominees. This event is just one of the ways that The League City Regional Chamber works to support local businesses, professionals and leaders, as well as facilitate community interaction and networking. "We strive to provide training programs and membership benefits for all members of the Chamber of Commerce," said Paterson. "By providing programs and working committees, which encourage networking and relationship building with other women of like interests and position, we hope to encourage mentoring among women in business. Although many companies provide internal leadership and mentoring programs for women in business, there are very few in the general business space, and that holds true for our region of Houston," said Paterson. "Because of this void the League City Regional chamber of commerce is looking to launch the ATHENA NextGen program later this year. This is a curriculum-based leadership and mentoring program, structured on the eight principles of the ATHENA organization, are designed to give women the leadership skills they need in today's business world. We are excited about being able to offer this program as a first here in Texas." Tickets are $55 and tables are available from $650 to $800. The Lakewood Yacht Club is at 2322 Lakewood Yacht Club Drive. At the May 11 event, a VIP champagne reception and spotlight tables will be from 11-11:30 a.m. with luncheon and award ceremony from 11:30 a.m.-1:30 p.m. For more information, or to nominate a woman of distinction, go to www.leaguecitychamber.com/athena-leadership-awards-luncheon-of-the-bay. NASA wants Americans to be able to travel faster, possibly faster than the speed of sound. Imagine if you could fly from New York to Los Angeles in two hours. While NASA says this is possible with supersonic flight, it's currently too loud. With supersonic flight, an airplane causes the air around it to react with a shock wave, which is perceptible on the ground as a very loud sonic boom. Because these noises can be disturbing to communities down below, NASA's Commercial Supersonic Technology Project is working on a new test plane, the Low Boom Flight Demonstration X-plane, which will allow quieter supersonic flight. NASA researchers hope their test flights and resulting community response can help lawmakers determine whether commercial passenger and cargo flights can reach supersonic speeds over land in the future. In November 2018, NASA will run a series of test flights with a different plane, creating the quieter sonic boom sound in the Galveston area with flights of the NASA F/A-18 aircraft. The flights will take off from Ellington Airport in the Clear Lake area, and will feature a series of supersonic dive maneuvers off the coast, NASA said in a press release. The test flights will help researchers determine how best to collect community response data from future supersonic flights of the piloted Low Boom Flight Demonstration X-plane, which is under construction now. The X-plane is slated to begin testing of its supersonic technology in 2022. Community response test flights are planned for 2023 - 2025. More information about November's research flights with the F/A-18 aircraft will be released during a Tuesday press conference. A booth called "Creative Nottingham" displays cultural cases from British companies during the 2018 China (Ningbo) Cultural Industrial Fair from April 13 to 16 in Ningbo, Zhejiang province. [Photo/chinadaily.com.cn] Ningbo's rapidly growing cultural and creative industries have been attracting more and more exchanges and cooperation with companies from its British sister city, Nottingham. This year, during the 2018 China (Ningbo) Cultural Industrial Fair (NBCIF) from April 13 to 16, a delegation of cultural and creative companies from Nottingham demonstrated their expertise and successes in film, TV, and other cultural sectors to Chinese people. These companies are not just from Nottingham, but also from areas around the city, according to Robert Dixon, head of Business Growth and International Strategy, Nottingham City Council. "15 representatives from a number of different businesses involved in film production, video games and art services attended the fair," Dixon explained. The UK was the first country in the world to put forward the idea of developing creative industries and also the first to implement public policies facilitating their development. Today, creative fields make up the second largest sector in the UK, the largest being financial services. Ningbo in East China's Zhejiang province has been rapidly developing its cultural and creative industries in recent years. In 2017, the total value added of the city's creative sector reached 71.67 billion yuan ($11.41 billion), accounting for 7.27 percent of its total GDP, said Lin Daji, deputy director of the Publicity Department of the CPC Ningbo Municipal Committee, at the Ningbo-Nottingham Cultural and Creative Industries Forum on April 13. In his speech, Lin called on all parties to work together to expedite the cultural development of Ningbo and Nottingham. "Nottingham and the UK are strong in design and creativity, while China has different cultural strengths," said the official, who is quite optimistic about the two cities' cultural ties. In terms of what he thinks have the most potential for cooperation in the future, Dixon said technology, digital design and mobile phones are worth exploring. Darren Barker, a member of the British delegation, is the founder of Barker Langham, a London-based cultural consulting firm specializing in the conceiving, strategic planning and development of cultural heritage projects in Europe, the Middle East, Africa, Asia and the Americas. This marks the first time Barker has come to China, and he chose Ningbo as the entrance point into the Chinese market. "Ningbo's cultural and creative industries are emerging and I hope to have conversations with people here and see whether people would like to work with us," said Barker. In his view, there's a connection between the UK and Ningbo, and he believes he's starting in the right place. GUILFORD A 92-year-old Florida man reported missing here has been found. The Police Department received a request Monday at about 4:30 p.m. for a welfare check on an elederly woman in the area of the Guilford Center. It was determined that the woman had been dropped off at that location about 30 minutes before by her husband, Paul Lancaster. The couple had been headed to Maine from Florida, to visit family. Investigation led police to believe that Lancaster thought they had arrived in Maine, and dropped his wife off so that he could meet with a friend in a nearby town. Details on what happened next are sketchy, but Guilford police say Lancaster was successfully located this morning by police in the Town of Newburgh, N.Y. WASHINGTON - The Senate has a blueprint for an upcoming debate on fresh terms for the U.S. military's campaigns against extremist and terrorist groups after a bipartisan pair of senators on Monday released a long-awaited proposal to replace the current authorizations for use of military force with new legislation. Senate Foreign Relations Committee Chairman Bob Corker, R-Tenn., joined with Sen. Tim Kaine, D-Va., one of Congress' most vocal advocates for a new AUMF, to draft the proposal authorizing operations against al-Qaida, the Taliban, the Islamic State and affiliated groups. Their legislation would replace the 2001 and 2002 authorizations Congress approved to greenlight the wars in Afghanistan and Iraq - legislation many lawmakers argue has been inappropriately stretched and strained in the years since to cover military engagements that were never envisioned under the original authorizations. "For too long, Congress has given Presidents a blank check to wage war," Kaine said in a statement accompanying the announcement of the legislation. "Our proposal finally repeals those authorizations and makes Congress do its job by weighing in on where, when, and with who we are at war." Sen. Jeff Flake, R-Ariz., a co-sponsor of the new proposal, pointed out that only 22 senators and fewer than 150 House members who voted to approve the 2001 AUMF are still in Congress today. But Congress has faced pushback from successive administrations that have argued against any new AUMF that might restrict the president's authority to conduct military operations as deemed necessary. The new proposal appears to take some of that into consideration, authorizing the executive branch "to use all necessary and appropriate force against al-Qaida, the Taliban, the Islamic State in Iraq and Syria (ISIS), and designated associated forces." It does not cover operations against nation-states, such as recent strikes against targets in Syria to retaliate for an alleged chemical weapons attack. The new legislation stipulates that the president must notify Congress about any new forces he designates as falling under the auspices of the AUMF within 48 hours of engaging them in hostilities. Congress would then have a 60-day window to object - or, if they miss that window, tacitly approve the designation. The authorization does not expire, as previous proposals endorsed by Kaine and Flake would have, forcing Congress to reassess its authorization every few years. Instead, the legislation would give Congress the opportunity to review the authorization every four years, by requiring the president to submit periodic proposals to Congress to amend its terms. In each case, Congress would also have 60 days to weigh in on the proposals. In a statement, Corker said he hoped the proposed authorization "will ultimately strike an appropriate balance of ensuring the administration has the flexibility necessary to win this fight while strengthening the rightful and necessary role of Congress." But it is unlikely to get through the committee review process without considerable debate. The Senate Foreign Relations Committee is expected to take up the legislation the week of April 23, and already, senators on the panel have expressed skepticism that lawmakers can strike a middle ground on the issue. Senators in favor of restricting the president's war-making authority have expressed particular concern about the lack of a sunset, or expiration, for the legislation. "Without some meaningful way to cut off the AUMF, I think ... it would be hard to get the necessary votes to get this to the finish line," senior panel member Sen. Benjamin Cardin, D-Md., said last week. The proposal currently has six co-sponsors from the 21-member committee. Neither congressional leaders nor the administration have yet weighed in on, much less endorsed, the proposal. But during his confirmation hearing last week, secretary of state nominee Mike Pompeo - who agitated for a new AUMF while a member of Congress - offered his support for lawmakers' efforts to produce a new authorization. "I do believe that it is important that we achieve that," Pompeo told the Senate foreign relations panel. Though he said that he believed the current authorization "works ... I would welcome working alongside you to achieve, I think you used the term refresh, AUMF." WESTPORT A middle school student ready to bite into a lunchtime treat Tuesday made a shocking discovery instead. A Coleytown Middle School seventh-grader found a one-inch steel bolt in a muffin purchased at the schools cafeteria, according to Westport Superintendent of Schools Colleen Palmer. The student did not bite into the muffin and did not ingest any of the muffins, Palmer wrote in an email to parents Tuesday afternoon. These muffins are sold in the cafeterias of both middle schools and at our high school. They are not served at our elementary schools. There were no other reported incidences with any other muffins or food products. After noticing the bolt, the student reported it to a staff member who then relayed the information to the Coleytown principal, kitchen manager and the director of dining services, Palmer wrote. All remaining muffins in the middle schools and high school were collected and are being held for review, Palmer said, adding the vendor was contacted and plans made to break down all equipment used to prepare the muffins to determine which machine the bolt came from. Westport schools did not release the name of the company that provides the district with muffins. Until this issue is fully resolved, all muffins will be sourced from another bakery, Palmer said, noting she has no information to believe any other individual encountered a foreign object in their muffin. Palmer did not respond to muliple requests for additional information on the incident, and Westport Schools Director of Dining Services Deborah VanCoughnett did not disclose the name of the muffin vendor. Chartwells is Westport Public Schools dining services provider. svaughan@ hearstmediact.com; 203-842-2638; @SophieCVaughan1 Justin Papp contributed reporting to this story. More than a year into his administration, President Donald Trump still won't let go of primary-campaign grudges against foreign policy-minded Republicans who want to serve. And as qualified and patriotic Republicans watch how Trump treats those who do sign up, fewer and fewer are willing to come aboard. That dynamic hurts both Trump and our national security. There are plenty of good jobs available. National security adviser John Bolton opened several opportunities in just the past few days - by cleaning house at the top of the National Security Council staff. Mike Pompeo, the nominee to become secretary of state, promised senators at his confirmation hearing last week that he would fill dozens of vacant diplomatic posts as soon as possible. Even at the Pentagon, plenty of top positions are still open. Some of the vacancies are because of the slow confirmation process. Some are the result of infighting within the administration. But during interviews with administration officials and outside Republicans, a theme emerges: This White House makes it too difficult to serve, and treats those who do shabbily. The latest example is the case of Jon Lerner, a deputy to Nikki Haley, the U.S. ambassador to the United Nations. After months of searching, Vice President Mike Pence asked Lerner to serve as his new national security adviser, splitting his time between Pence and Haley. The somewhat unusual arrangement made sense because Lerner has connections to both teams. Since he was already serving as a national security official in the Trump administration, he should have been a controversy-free choice. I first reported Lerner's new gig on Thursday evening. On Sunday evening, Axios reported Trump was "furious" when he found out about Pence tapping Lerner. Apparently, Trump was told Lerner had been involved in crafting anti-Trump ads for the Club for Growth and other GOP donors during the primaries. Reportedly, the vice president called Trump from Peru and successfully reassured him that Lerner was on the team. But after the Axios story came out, the internet outrage began. Fox Business Network anchor Lou Dobbs tweeted: "Pence Needs to Reverse This Now: Pence, Kelly and Haley Promote a Never Trumper - Pence's Outrageous National Security Appointment," with a link to the Axios piece. Before the night was over, Pence's office said Lerner was "withdrawing from coming on board" as Pence's national security adviser, though he would remain in his role working for Haley. Lerner did not want to be a distraction, officials said, and the vice president's team wanted to avoid any drama. According to Maggie Haberman of the New York Times, the Lerner fiasco was partially due to miscommunication inside the White House. Chief of Staff John F. Kelly was informed about Lerner's selection, but not about his previous anti-Trump advocacy. Around Washington, Republicans saw it as the latest example of Trump prioritizing political purity over national security staffing needs. "This is a person who, whatever he said in 2016, has loyally served the administration for 15 months," said one former senior GOP foreign policy official. "By reversing a formal decision, it makes it look like the vice president can't choose his own staff." That spells trouble for Pompeo and Bolton as well, as they both work to compile lists of Republican foreign policy hands who can pass vetting and are willing to sign on. "The message to a generation of Republicans who are between 30 and 50 years of age is that there is no place for them in this administration," the former official said. It doesn't take past "Never Trump" activities to warrant shoddy treatment. Now former homeland security adviser Tom Bossert was one of the earliest and most loyal Trump White House officials. He went out of his way to defend Trump, even after the troubling events of last summer in Charlottesville. But on April 10, Bossert was given no warning before being asked to resign, three administration officials told me. What particularly irked many inside the White House, two officials told me, was that Kelly had pledged during multiple staff meetings that there would be no staff purges as Bolton and National Economic Council chairman Larry Kudlow came on board. But that didn't prevent Bolton from giving Bossert a pink slip. "Kelly made this overarching promise that no heads were going to roll," a senior White House official said. A White House spokesperson didn't respond to a request for comment. "It's disrespectful," the official said about Bossert's dismissal. "It harms morale and it makes it more difficult to hire people when a good guy gets treated that way." Former national security adviser H.R. McMaster was supposed to be the example of the official who could leave the Trump administration with his dignity intact. There was a succession plan that included giving him a fourth star, but Trump discarded it and McMaster resigned ahead of schedule. Before that, Secretary of State Rex Tillerson was told he was fired while sitting on the toilet during a trip to Africa, a humiliating detail that Kelly himself leaked to White House reporters. Former Bush official Victor Cha went through months of vetting before the White House decided not to nominate him to be ambassador to South Korea, without telling him why they changed their mind. Former Bush official Elliott Abrams was offered the job of deputy secretary of state, but Trump pulled the rug out at the last minute. The list goes on and on. Even in this environment, there are many Republican foreign policy hands eager to serve and willing to buy into Trump's agenda, despite the risks. Many are in various stages of security vetting and have no idea where they stand. Some have been blocked by the White House personnel office, which is still scouring every candidate's social media for signs of Never Trump activity. In Bolton and Pompeo, Trump has chosen experienced professionals, but he is setting them up for failure if they are not allowed to make their departments work. The president and the White House must stop seeing the foreign policy establishment as an enemy, do away with its purity tests and black lists, and get down to the business of filling the ranks - both in the interest of advancing Trump's agenda and for the sake of the country. A San Antonio pediatrician testified Tuesday that two children who in 2016 were bound and tied like animals, were beaten, each struck well over 100 times, and the injuries and complications put the siblings at risk of death. Deandre Dorch, 38, is on trial, accused of two counts of injury to a child-serious bodily injury by omission. He was charged after a 4-year-old boy and his 3-year-old sister were found restrained by dog chains and leashes in the backyard of the home he shared with his girlfriend, Porucha Phillips, 36. Their six children also lived at the home in the 8100 block of Chipping in the Camelot II subdivision on the Northeast Side. The couple told deputies they were watching the two siblings for their friend, Cheryl Reed, 32, whom they knew from California, where they lived before coming to San Antonio. Reed told deputies that she had left her children in Phillips care. Defense attorney Edward Bravenec said his client is not guilty because, as the breadwinner of the family, he worked as a bartender at night and slept most of the day. Prosecutors allege Dorch knew the children were being beaten by Phillips and Reed, and did nothing to stop it. Dr. James L. Lukefahr, director of the Center for Miracles at The Childrens Hospital of San Antonio and an expert in child abuse, told the jury there was clear evidence that they were being repeatedly and intentionally injured. As prosecutor Karl Alexander displayed photographs taken from the night in April 2016 when the children were hospitalized, Lukefahr walked the jury through eacspecific injuries he documented on each child. He examined the children the day after they were found and continued checking them for six months. Lukefahr said each child had extensive bruising in looped shapes on their faces, arms, legs, front and back torsos. In addition, the boy had hair missing, likely from being pulled out; and the girl had dependent edema swelling in her legs and feet from being restrained in a way that she could neither sit nor stand. The swelling was pretty dramatic behind the knees, shins and calves, Lukefahr said. It was very significant April 29, (2016), it had improved by May 13 but was still there, but was gone in October. Lukefahr said radiologists did numerous examinations and took several X-rays of one of the girls arms, which initially was believed to have been broken in two places, but the arm was not fractured. The doctor said the children also had hypothermia, from being left outside for what Lukefahr believed was a bare minimum 18 to 24 hours, most likely longer. Also Tuesday, the jury heard from Alex Garcia, chief meteorologist for FOX 29, who testified that San Antonio was under a severe thunderstorm warning or watch the week of April 25-29, and that parts of the Alamo City had received rain each day and at some points hail more than 2 inches in diameter. Tuesday morning, the jury saw and heard Dorchs reaction after an investigator told him a child was tied like an animal in his backyard so tightly, her arm broke in two places. Thats (expletive) up, Dorch told Bexar County Sheriffs Sgt. Shawn Tobleman in a two-hour videotaped interview conducted as a follow-up about a week after the children were found. I dont know about that, Dorch said. At the beginning of the interview, he is talkative and tells the detectives that he is an active dad who bathes his children, cooks a breakfast of oatmeal or cereal, and makes sure they have ample space to play in the house. He told detectives he had bathed the children before he went to work the day authorities were called to the house. As the interview progressed about the tied-up children, Dorch appeared to evade or ignore the questions and repeatedly asked how he could make sure his family was able to get his six children, who were taken along with the two sibling who belonged to Reed, from Child Protectives Services. When Tobleman told him about the siblings being tied up and injured, Dorch responded: All that stuff, I dont know. I dont watch the news. If I got caught up in it, I couldnt stay focused with my kids. Dorch is the first of three adults to go to trial in the case. In October, Phillips pleaded guilty to two counts of injury to a child-serious bodily injury and was sentenced to 50 years in prison on each count. The sentences will run concurrently. Reed is in jail, awaiting trial. The case is being heard in Felony Impact Court, with visiting Judge Laura Parker presiding. Dorch faces 99 years to life in prison, and if convicted, has elected to be sentenced by the judge. Elizabeth Zavala is a San Antonio Express-News staff writer. Read more of her stories here. | ezavala@express-news.net | @elizabeth2863 In a 5-4 decision Tuesday, the Supreme Court struck down a provision of U.S. law requiring the deportation of immigrants convicted of some violent crimes. The court found that part of the Immigration and Nationality Act was unconstitutionally vague as to the definition of the crimes, a provision that was used by immigration authorities as grounds to deport immigrants. The 96-page ruling was a setback for President Trumps administration effort to get tougher on immigrants. It was also noticeable because the tie-breaking vote came from Trumps own conservative appointee, Neil Gorsuch, who sided with the high courts more liberal justices in invalidating the provision. Its going to make it much tougher for them to deport people, said San Antonio immigration attorney Bob Shivers. Thats good news for people who are in deportation proceedings. The question is: How about all those people in the past who got deported? San Antonio immigration lawyer, Simon Azar-Farr, said the decision is friendly to immigrants facing potential deportation. The reason is that it demands more precision and more consistency in the law than the haphazard fashion in which it was being applied previously, Azar-Farr said. Previously, there was a tendency by some courts to look at the individual facts of an aliens criminal record, which created for subjective assessments. Sometimes an offense may have occurred two decades ago and the facts are no longer available. He said there were situations when some immigrants were convicted of the same crime but one was deported and one was not. The Department of Homeland Security said in a statement Tuesday that the ruling significantly undermines its efforts to remove aliens convicted of certain violent crimes. The decision does not, however, interfere with the government's ability to deport people who are convicted of clearly violent crimes, including murder and rape, as well as drug trafficking and other serious offenses, observers noted. The ruling is limited to a category of crimes that carry a prison term of more than a year, but do not otherwise comfortably fit in a long list of aggravated felonies that can lead to deportation, according to observers. Though the Trump administration defended the law, it was actually the Obama administration that sought to deport James Garcia Dimaya, a legal immigrant from the Philippines who was convicted in two separate home burglaries in California in 2007 and 2009. Tuesdays decision upheld a 2015 lower court ruling that said the provision requiring Dimayas deportation created uncertainty over which crimes may be considered violent, risking arbitrary enforcement in violation of the Constitution. The majority opinion was written by Justice Elena Kagan, who was joined by Justices Ruth Bader Ginsburg, Stephen Breyer and Sonia Sotomayor. The opinion said that a conviction for an aggravated felony, which includes a crime of violence, virtually guarantees deportation for an immigrant, no matter how long he or she has lived in the United States. In its analysis, the high court found that interpretation of what a crime of violence is was left to a Justice Department body that interprets immigration law, and that ambiguity in the provision created confusion in lower courts. Does car burglary qualify as a violent felony? Kagan wrote. Some courts say yes, another says no. Kagan mentioned other examples including rape, evading arrest and trespassing in which courts have also been divided. In his concurring opinion, Gorsuch agreed that the law could not be left in place and wrote that no one should be surprised that the Constitution looks unkindly on any law so vague that reasonable people cannot understand its terms and judges do not know where to begin in applying it. In 2010, the federal authorities sought to deport Dimaya. The Board of Immigration Appeals, an administrative body that is part of the Justice Department, refused to cancel his removal because the relevant law defined burglary as a crime of violence. The San Francisco-based 9th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals ruled in 2015 that the definition as applied to legal immigrants was so vague that it violated their rights to due process of law under the U.S. Constitution. The appeals court relied on a decision that same year by the Supreme Court, which found that a similar provision in a federal criminal sentencing law was overly broad. The high court initially heard arguments in January 2017 when it was one justice short, leading to a 4-4 decision. The court decided last June after Gorsuch replaced the late Antonin Scalia to have the case re-argued. That happened in October, at the start of the courts current term. Guillermo Contreras is a San Antonio Express-News staff writer. Read more of his stories here. | gcontreras@express-news.net | @gmaninfedland A 15-year veteran of of the Bexar County Sheriff's Office has been indicted in connection to a 2016 sexual assault case, officials announced Tuesday. Leonard Lopez, 47, was placed on administrative duty after his arrest. He had been on administrative duty since deputies learned of the allegations. Defenders of the 58-year-old man arrested on five charges of child sex assault are adamant he was a loving father figure who took pains to avoid even the appearance of impropriety while his alleged victims say he led a double life and abused for years several of the more than 180 children he was assigned to care for as a foster parent in Bexar and Medina counties. A representative of the agency that placed children in his care say Miguel Briseno was lauded by foster children and won awards. Law enforcement officials said that as they closed in on filing charges, Briseno threatened victims. The two stories being told about Briseno reflect the disagreement among the women who passed through his home - and the surprise expressed by many in the community who interacted with him. RELATED: Sheriff: S.A.-area man accused of sexually assaulting 5 foster children took in 180+ girls "I have three kids, and I will swear on each of my kids' lives that he did not do this," said 21-year-old Jessica Rose, who lived with the Briseno's from about 2011 to 2013. "I feel so strongly about this that I would put my children's life on the line. It makes me sick to my stomach, because of all the foster parents that have sexually abused me, he's the only one that took care of me." Another one of his former foster daughters agreed to speak with mySA only on the condition she remain anonymous. According to Briseno's affidavit he called several of his alleged victims as law enforcement closed in on him and threatened to have his son kill them if they came forward. Even though Briseno is now behind bars in the Medina County Jail with a $500,000 bond, the woman said she was still scared of retaliation. "I'm not knocking people that say he 'radiated love,'" she said. "I'm not knocking that. But it doesn't change that he's a monster. Looks can be deceiving." RELATED: 26-year-old woman allegedly killed man after he slapped her mom The accusations Briseno was first verified to receive foster children into his Von Ormy home in 2002 by the child-placing agency Therapeutic Family Life, according to Child Protective Services. Court documents say he sexually assaulted three girls in Bexar County while living in Von Ormy. Briseno assaulted the first alleged victim sometime in late 2005 or early 2006. The victim, who lived in the home from August 2005 to April 2008, said she often went out to a red garage at Briseno's Von Ormy home to watch him work on cars. After about six months he allegedly started hitting on her. One day, he raped her in the garage, the affidavit says. According to the victim, Briseno raped her once or twice a week for three and a half years until she left the home. A second victim said about three months into her stay with Briseno, from April 2006 to September 2009, he "came on to her" at a Super S Market in Somerset, Texas, and touched her inappropriately. RELATED: Officials ID San Antonio woman struck and killed by train while passed out on tracks According to his arrest affidavit, Briseno later raped the girl on a couch while they were watching a movie and his sleeping wife sat in a different chair. In a third incident, he allegedly forced himself onto her in a bedroom. The second victim told investigators that Briseno would often use her nicotine addiction against her, promising her cigarettes or extra money for her allowance if she had sex with him. The third victim from Bexar County told investigators she stayed with Briseno from March 2007 to June 2010, during which time he allegedly had sex with her in the back of a moving van that was being driven by the second victim. Authorities say he sexually assaulted two more girls after he moved to Divine, Texas, in Medina County, though the circumstances surrounding those assaults are currently unknown. RELATED: Former patients mourn Universal City physician assistant slain in home invasion An earlier charge Briseno was previously arrested in April 2013 on a charge of solicitation to commit sexual assault of a child after one of his foster daughters told authorities he had sexually assaulted her. He would later plead guilty to a reduced charge of attempted assault. Medina County Sheriff Randy Brown said authorities had difficulty securing credible testimony from Briseno's foster daughters, which contributed to the reduced sentence. Following his arrest, Child Protective Services stopped all foster placements into his home, according to Mary Walker, a representative of CPS. He was verified with the child-placement agency Refuge House San Antonio until 2016. However Michele Gorman, executive director of Refuge House, said the Briseno home was closed out of their system in 2015, and that after the 2013 allegation surfaced, they immediately stopped placements to the home and removed all the girls from Briseno's care. RELATED: Friends, court records tell different story of man gunned down in West Side driveway Briseno, who Gorman said attended several of her training sessions and was a bit of a jokester, was investigated by Residential Child Care Licensing, a regulatory agency that enforces Texas Department of Family and Protective Services standards, at least twice between 2009 to 2013 for inappropriate behavior with a foster child. No wrongdoing was discovered in either investigation. Gorman said the latest allegations came as a shock to herself and her organization. She said the foster girls who passed through Briseno's care always gave favorable reviews and that the Brisenos had even won awards for being an excellent foster family. "There were no red flags," she said. "They did everything they were supposed to. They did their training on time. The girls never said anything. As a matter of fact, they said the opposite, that they were the most amazing foster parents they had ever had. CPS would call us and ask to place others in their home. They had a waiting list. [The Brisenos] had a great reputation with CPS. "Nobody wanted to leave," Gorman added. RELATED: Gunmen at large after killing 1, hospitalizing 1 in Northeast Side shooting, police say Law enforcement authorities discovered Briseno was considering fostering more children with his wife in the weeks leading up to his arrest this year. Brown said he was attempting to move his foster parent license into his wife's name in order to do so, though Gorman said that would've been impossible, as foster parents have to jointly register to foster children. Sheriff Brown told mySA on Thursday that more than 180 girls have passed through the Briseno home, leading authorities to believe there are numerous other potential victims. Since news broke of Briseno's arrest on Wednesday, at least one other victim has contacted authorities and accused him of abusing her. "If you've stayed at that house, if you were a foster child [in Briseno's care], please contact us," he said. "Whether you feel something inappropriate happened or not, we'd still like to talk to you." Victims are asked to call 210-335-8477 if they have any information on Briseno's alleged abuse. RELATED: Convicted child molester arrested again after he was allegedly caught sexually assaulting child Foster daughters react Seven women have gone on record with mySA since Briseno's arrest to defend him against the accusations. All of them said their time at the Briseno home was completely devoid of any abuse. Some describe Briseno as the true victim in the case. "The accusations are ridiculous," said 21-year-old Virginia Trujillo, who lived with Briseno in 2010 and again in 2012. "I don't believe it one bit." Crystal Rosales, a 27-year-old woman who lived with Briseno from 2005 to 2008, also doubted the victims' claims and was upset that they've put her father through such an ordeal. The comments echo Jessica Rose's sentiments, who said she personally knew some of the accusers, whom she claimed were well known drug addicts with mental health issues. "What needs to be taken into consideration is the credibility of the girls. For every one of them saying he raped her, there are 15 saying he didn't," she said. RELATED: Converse man arrested for allegedly beating children with belt, 'switch' Rose and other foster daughters said they feel so strongly about the accusations because the Bresino's household was strictly regulated. The girls' days were scheduled from sun up to sun down, and Bresino was never allowed to be with fewer than four girls, multiple former foster daughters said. Their home in Devine was even separated between the girls' section and the actual Bresino family quarters. The girls were not allowed to cross the boundary between the two without express permission, they said. "It's just not possible," Rose said. "These people gave up their life to raise children they owed nothing to. His sons weren't even allowed in their own home because of the girls." That Briseno was described by law enforcement as a "potential hazard" who threatened to have his sons kill victims who came forward was also doubted by multiple former foster daughters, including Trujillo, who said Briseno's son, Mike, would never come to their side of the home out of respect for them. "It's ridiculous to be honest," said 26-year-old Tina Ramos, Crystal Rosales' sister who stayed with the Brisenos in Devine, Texas, for a few months between 2007 and 2008. "The girls that are making the accusation are probably ones that didn't get their way when living with my dad. My dad would never have threatened them with [his sons] Mike and Richard." RELATED: Man allegedly walks into S.A. middle school girl's bathroom, shoves 8th grader into stall door Neither of Briseno's sons were available for comment on Friday. Selena De La Cruz, 21, lived with the Briseno's from 2009 to 2010. She said Briseno always had four or more girls with him to avoid "wild" accusations. "He is an amazing man who doesn't deserve this," De La Cruz said in a Facebook message. "It boiled my blood to see something like this about someone who took me in. If I didn't know him, I would have believed it, but I know him. I lived with him. I never had a dad, and he filled that void with love and understanding and acceptance. He is not the man that they are making it look." The one former foster daughter who believes the victims' accusations against Briseno, and who requested to remain anonymous, lived in the Briseno home for a few months in 2007. She said Briseno intelligently picked and chose who he could trust, and who he could abuse. She said she never directly saw anything inappropriate, but "the signs were there." Specifically, she often saw him hide things from his wife, and treat certain girls differently from others. "He always rubbed me the wrong way," she said. "I never had a dad, but he was the next best thing. He was, but I feel like it was also a show. He was putting on a front for everyone." RELATED: Tay-K 47, who rapped about life on the lam, charged in fatal shooting at San Antonio Chick-fil-A The investigation The case against Briseno involves the Bexar County Sheriff's Office, the Medina County Sheriff's Office and the Texas Rangers. Representatives from Child Protective Services said they will assist law enforcement in their investigation in any way they can. "The descriptions of the alleged incidents are sickening," said Mary Walker, a CPS spokeswoman. Sheriff Randy Brown said law enforcement plans on investigating the companies who placed the girls into the Briseno's home at such staggering rates. He said authorities plan on investigating other members of the Briseno family as well. Briseno will soon be moved to the Bexar County Jail, where he will be booked on three sexual abuse of a child charges. In the meantime, his former foster daughters said they're reaching out to lawyers and every news outlet they can to defend their father from the accusations against him. Text "NEWS" to 77453 for breaking news alerts from mySA.com cdowns@mysa.com | Twitter: @calebjdowns SAN ANTONIO - A motorcyclist is dead after another driver cut in front of a bus and struck him Monday night on the Northwest Side. San Antonio Police Department Sgt. Daniel Gonzalez said the motorcyclist, between 50 and 60 years old, was struck at about 10:15 p.m. in the 3900 block of the Northwest Loop 410 access road. At the risk of being unfriended by members of Congress, there was a lot not to Like about the legislative branchs assault last week on a certain social media site. Facebook CEO Mark Zuckerberg sat for hours over two days in separate hearings before House and Senate committees. The 33-year-old took questions from dozens of lawmakers including many senior citizens who didnt seem to understand how the site works. Im going to tell you what the Facebook hearings were really about. But first, we have to be clear on what they were not about. RELATED: Is Facebook really changing? Or just trimming its data haul? The hearings were not about the privacy of Americans, who voluntarily relinquish that privacy when they choose to open a Facebook account and then choose to post personal data on their page to seek the approval of family, friends and complete strangers. As Zuckerberg told lawmakers, Facebooks users call the shots as to who sees what if for no other reason than that they can vote with their delete button and leave the site. They choose what to reveal and to whom. Nor were the hearings about the need for Zuckerberg to apologize for the fact that a Republican presidential candidate successfully used in 2016 much the same data-collection methods that were successfully used by a Democratic presidential candidate in 2008 and 2012. The Republicans essentially beat the Democrats at their own game. And nor were the Facebook hearings about getting closure on the 2016 election. That wont happen. Neither Hillary Clinton nor President Trump will let the election go. Now congressional Democrats suggest that the reason that young people, African-Americans, Latinos, working-class whites and probably some members of the Obama administration didnt vote for Clinton was because a sinister third party hijacked their Facebook data and created anti-Hillary propaganda. RELATED: Commentary: Mark Zuckerberg has a long history of 'I'm sorry' Speaking of apologies, Democrats need to apologize to the American people for the original sin of picking as their presidential nominee such a flawed, unappealing and unelectable candidate. After all, does anyone really believe that we would be here at this exact spot if Clinton had been elected because she remembered that there are voters in Ohio, Michigan, Pennsylvania and Wisconsin? And what if Clinton had won the election and done so in part because of successful mining of Facebook data? Democratic lawmakers would be giving Zuckerberg a medal or at least a thumbs-up emoji. I miss the ol days when lackluster presidential hopefuls whether they were Democrats like Michael Dukakis and John Kerry, or Republicans like John McCain and Mitt Romney owned up to their failures. Nowadays, losers blame everyone from the FBI to the Russians to the media to Facebook. These hearings were about what most things in Congress are usually about: power and money. Zuckerberg has plenty of both, and the lawmakers want their slice. And they will shame, flatter, threaten and arm-twist to get it. As for power, Zuckerberg has an audience of more than 2.2 billion monthly users and the ability to call together a couple dozen of Silicon Valleys top technology leaders at a summit to discuss best practices something that, by the way, more than one lawmaker asked him to do to advance their pet causes. As for money, Forbes and Bloomberg both put Zuckerbergs net worth at about $70 billion. He lost an estimated $15 billion due to the Cambridge Analytica scandal. But he made back $3 billion after his first day of congressional testimony. Politicians need money like an opioid addict needs pills. So each time one of them told Zuckerberg during the hearings that he or she looked forward to following up with him, that couldve been the signal. The bite is coming. This was no shake up. This was a shakedown. At least Tony Soprano did it with more style. Again, we started this. We made Zuckerberg rich and powerful. All because of our insatiable need to share stuff and show off our perfect relationships, vacations, children and cuisine. For some people, its not about sharing but stirring. They like to know theyre having an effect on other people. That reminds me. After this column runs, Ill probably post it on Facebook. Hope you Like it. ruben@rubennavarrette.com In 2013, after Syrian dictator Bashar Assad crossed President Barack Obamas red line and used chemical weapons on innocent civilians, a U.S. official told the Los Angeles Times that Obamas retaliatory strike would likely be just muscular enough not to get mocked but not so devastating that it would elicit a response from Iran and Russia. In the end, Obama backed away from even such a small, feckless strike. On Friday, Trump carried one out. Trump deserves credit for acting (now twice) when Obama wouldnt. He also deserves credit for getting U.S. allies to join us when Obama couldnt. But lets be clear: Friday nights strikes were just muscular enough not to get mocked. As a result, they did more damage to the United States credibility on the world stage than they did to the Assad regime. KRISTOF: Obama's approach to Syria failed The U.S.-led strike did not hit a single airplane, airfield or delivery system, and it left Syria with chemical weapons capabilities. Even at the sites we did hit, the Syrians had plenty of time to move equipment and chemical stockpiles. There were no reported casualties on the ground, suggesting that the regime had evacuated the targets. The Syrians know that they won. The Washington Post reports that on the streets of Damascus, there was jubilation as government supporters realized that a more expansive assault would not materialize. Retired Gen. Jack Keane, former vice chief of staff of the Army, said the Syrians had good reason to celebrate. The response is very weak in my judgment, he said. It should have been decisive, it should have been consequential, he continued. Keane said Assad made a bet with his chemical attack and won. As Keane explained, Assad wanted to take out one of the last remaining rebel strongholds in the Damascus suburb of eastern Ghouta, which was holding out despite a brutal, nonstop bombing campaign by the Russians. Assad calculated that he could use chemical weapons to crush the resistance, achieve a military victory and then absorb what he expected to be a limited U.S. strike. So, he launched his chemical strike. Hours later, the rebels capitulated. And just as Assad predicted, the U.S. response was limited leaving his air power, his command-and-control, and his chemical weapons capability largely intact. Assad was not punished. Quite the opposite his attack played out just as he had hoped and predicted. Mission accomplished. THIESSEN: Trump should not withdraw from Syria Far from being chastened, the U.S. response will embolden Assad, Russia and Iran. And it will embolden other U.S. adversaries as well. What lesson did North Korea likely take from Trumps weak actions in Syria? That the Trump administration is easily intimidated and risk-averse. The reason we didnt take out all of Assads chemical weapons capability is that we were intimidated by Russia. Instead of warning the Russians to evacuate, and telling them we would not be responsible for what happened to their personnel if they failed to do so, we specifically designed our strikes to avoid even the remote possibility of provoking Moscow. The lesson that North Korean leader Kim Jong Un takes is that if Trump wont take out Syrian airfields because were afraid of Russias response, then hes definitely not going to strike Kims nuclear and ballistic missile program and risk a North Korean artillery barrage on Seoul. FRIEDMAN: To keep U.S. leverage, keep threatening Syria This is a major setback to the Trump administrations efforts to stop North Korea from developing the capability to threaten U.S. cities with nuclear missiles. The only way the United States can persuade North Korea to peacefully give up its pursuit of these weapons is if Kim believes Trumps threat of military force is credible. News reports indicate that Trump wanted a more robust response but faced resistance from Defense Secretary Jim Mattis, the same man who has resisted giving Trump robust military options for North Korea. If accurate, Mattis did the president a great disservice by scaling down his desired Syrian response. If Trump had taken no action, it would have been worse but not by much. Because when you carry out strikes just muscular enough not to get mocked, you are projecting weakness and weakness is provocative. Re: Foster kids suffering as state appeals, Editorial, April 5: I enjoyed this editorial. I was surprised these kids did not have a court-appointed special advocate. I was a CASA volunteer for many years in San Antonio, Oklahoma City and Kansas City. I had to give it up because I could no longer drive a car, but it was a very rewarding experience. One of my cases involved four siblings placed in four different cities. Once a month, I would pick up three of the children and take them to visit the fourth child. It would take me all day. The foster mom had room for all the children to spend the night, while I stayed at a motel. The next day, I would return the three children to their foster homes. They were so glad to see each other. They were very sad when the visit ended, but were very happy when I told them I would be doing the visits once a month. I did the visits until they were returned to their mother. Joyce Bogan Art of the deal I have no sympathy for anyone who voted for Donald Trump out of pure greed, bigotry or dogma. But I do feel a little sorry for my good Republican friends who are starting to realize that, at best, they will come out of their bargain with the devil with singed eyebrows smelling like sulfur. John Browning, Castle Hills Trumps Jesus I really miss Jesus. I dont mean the one who punches tickets for believers to enter paradise. I mean the one who stopped the mob about to stone a woman caught in adultery. Im also thinking of the Jesus who fed a hungry crowd by getting a boy to share his lunch of bread and fish. As shown in the story of the good Samaritan (a despised religious minority), this Jesus had little use for those who considered personal piety and obedience to religious law more important than serving people in need. He also had a few choice words for authorities who criticized him for healing people on the Sabbath. Now, where is the Jesus who tells these folks that its OK to send refugees back to countries where the government is trying to kill them? And how about the Jesus who approves of sending families back to places where cartels want to recruit their children into prostitution and drug smuggling? I guess he must also be the one who thinks its more important to prevent abortions than to take care of needy children after they are born. I cant find this Jesus anywhere in the New Testament, no matter how hard I look, but evangelical Trump supporters seem to like him a lot. Steven Botts Sans immigrants Ask President Donald Trump the following question: Where would the U.S. be if every person not born here would have to return to his or her native country? I believe the president would find the U.S. in quite a bit of trouble. Ann Dwyer Political diversion Once again, Donald Trump and company attack immigrants to distract the American public from his legal and political troubles. Trump requested that states send National Guard troops to the border to stave off this so-called invasion. Gov. Greg Abbott announced that he will send at least 1,000 troops. Why is our governor so willing to acquiesce to this blatant politically motivated attack on immigrants, not to mention the wasteful resources that can better be utilized on other needs such as education or hurricane relief to devastated areas of Texas? Texas should follow Oregon Gov. Kate Browns lead and refuse to engage in this wasteful, vindictive and vicious attack on a made-up boogeyman that exists only in Trumps mind. Just shameful. Felix Gonzalez On the right track Im 12 years old, and I think there is an ongoing issue with guns in schools. I dont think that the presidents idea to arm teachers is the best idea. I think that it would be better if schools just had better security. I also think that it is a good idea to outlaw assault rifles designed for war, not public use. I also think that the students who are speaking out all over the country are on the right track and I support their efforts. Christopher Ball Ah, a solution Re: Ration ammo, Your Turn, April 8: Every now and then the Express-News prints a letter that is so stupefying that it garners disbelief. Such is the case with this letter, which proposes we cut down on gun violence by rationing ammo. Following this illogic, we should be able to cut down on auto accident deaths by rationing gasoline and on obesity-related deaths by rationing food. Why didnt we think of this before? Liam Harvie Playing dead? The far-right NRA supporters are trying to dismiss the brave, young survivors of the Marjory Stoneman Douglas school massacre who spoke so elegantly at the March for Our Lives on March 24 by saying they were just paid actors. I wonder if these people also think the 17 students killed in the massacre were paid actors. Edgar Hillenbach Bryan Steffy/WireImage It's a shame recording artist and reality TV star Tamar Braxton and music executive Vincent Herbert weren't able to sell their gorgeous Calabasas, CA, estate when they put it on the market for $15 million in October 2017. The luxe mansion is now available as a rental for a whopping $85,000 a month. A timely sale might have alleviated the drama facing the couple, who are in the midst of an acrimonious divorce. Liens totaling nearly $450,000 were filed on their property by a nanny who was awarded a claim for unpaid wages, a limousine company that's claiming unpaid services, a financing corporation, and a bank, according to The Blast. Rapid Recovery Center from Mainstreet Health is bringing a model of post-acute care to San Antonio that will set a new standard for how patients heal and rehabilitate after surgery or serious illness and it starts with medical care that takes the services of a traditional skilled nursing facility to the next level. Set to open in spring 2018 at 6035 Eckhert Road, Rapid Recovery Centers approach to post-acute care features purpose-built design and hotel-like hospitality, but it is physician-led care and an embrace of technology that make the organization a perfect partner for hospitals, accountable care organizations, physician groups and managed care payers. Rapid Recovery Centers mission aligns closely with that of acute-care organizations because we want to deliver the right treatment to every patient, every time, and help them recover as quickly and safely as possible, says Mark Fritz, President of Mainstreet Health for Arizona and Texas. Our facility is purpose-built to admit higher-acuity patients than typical skilled nursing facilities. That wouldnt be possible without near-daily physician coverage that will include internal medicine physicians and a variety of specialists. Physicians Lead the Way Along with a group of outstanding attending physicians, RRCs Medical Director, Iliana A. Grever, MD, will manage patients medical care on a daily basis with assistance from an onsite nurse practitioner. She will also address any changes in status that occur. Specialists representing pulmonology, cardiology, physical medicine and rehabilitation (PM&R), and pain management will be on hand up to six days a week to provide disease-specific care. PM&R physician Alasdair Goldstein, MD, Regional Director for Rehabilitation Services at Baptist Health System, will focus on helping patients overcome functional barriers to discharge. While Dr. Grever and RRCs other outstanding attending physicians manage the medical side of things, I will lead the physical therapists in helping patients make functional gains and solve the issues that keep them from going home, Dr. Goldstein says. In spinal cord injury patients, for example, one such issue may be managing bowel and bladder function. If thats not a problem, we may need to address how to navigate the bathroom with only one functioning arm. For total joint replacement patients, we will work on safety, balance and strength to reduce their risk of falls. San Antonio MD News The Right Place for Pulmonary Patients Providing piped-in hospital grade oxygen and having on-site care by pulmonologists will enable some patients to discharge from the hospital sooner. Most skilled nursing facilities cannot provide care for individuals who need high-flow oxygen because they use oxygen concentrators, Dr. Grever says. Rapid Recovery Center will have 33 rooms equipped with piped-in oxygen capabilities. That will allow us to admit more and increasingly complex pulmonary patients earlier and wean them off of supplemental oxygen at our facility. Dr. Goldstein will coordinate with pulmonary services to offer a pulmonary rehabilitation program. Patients with congestive heart failure, chronic obstructive pulmonary disease and other long-term, lung-related issues will learn to expend energy efficiently and navigate life with oxygen lines, which can be tripping hazards. A Healing Environment When the first patients arrive at Rapid Recovery Center, they will find a natural light-filled facility designed to support their return to everyday functioning and satisfying quality of life in every detail. A variety of amenities will make them feel at home, including: 105 all-private suites with full baths, flat-screen TVs and complementary Wi-Fi An outdoor courtyard for relaxation, socializing and dining A quick-service bistro A salon for hair styling, cutting, coloring, manicures and pedicures Chef-prepared meals to enjoy en-suite or in the full-service restaurant Evening socials, including happy hours Gourmet coffees and teas Rapid Recovery Centers purpose-built design encompasses more than hospitality features that promote comfort it also includes elements to keep patients safe and support them as they build the strength and skills necessary to thrive at home. Patient suites, for example, feature adaptive bathrooms to accommodate individuals with physical deficits. Each of Rapid Recovery Centers three floors includes a therapy gym with equipment specifically chosen to allow patients to engage in more exercise at their own pace than is typical in skilled nursing facilities. Ideal for Bundled Payments Rapid Recovery Center is well positioned to provide efficient, cost-effective care to joint replacement patients and others involved in bundled payment programs. In a bundled payment plan, a hospital may be responsible for the cost of, say, a knee replacement patients care for 30, 60 or even 90 days after surgery, Dr. Goldstein says. The hospital and the surgeon want to ensure the patient recovers in a facility where he wont get sick and bounce back to the hospital, and where length of stay is efficient and quality of care is high. Rapid Recovery Center is not a traditional skilled nursing unit, which is typically a wing of a nursing home that is focused on residential care, Dr. Goldstein continues. Rapid Recovery Center is going to admit only patients who need skilled services, so they will stake their success on patients functional improvements, as well as preventing complications and hospital readmissions. A hallmark of Rapid Recovery Centers model is an individualized approach to length of stay that prioritizes functional readiness for discharge rather than brevity. An appropriate length of stay for a patient recovering from a stroke will be longer than a patient whos had knee replacement, in most cases, Fritz says. To set the right length-of-stay expectations for patients, families and referring physicians, our staff will take into account the unique elements of each case. Choosing the best post-acute care provider is critical to a patients recovery. At Remedy Partners, weve worked with more than 1,000 providers in bundled payment models and we are looking forward to exploring a collaboration with Rapid Recovery Center, says Melanie Gittiban, Vice President of Partner Services at Remedy Partners. We are encouraged by Mainstreets leadership, which is focused on providing a quality clinical experience for the patients they serve with a focus on community re-entry. With the help of technology, however, trends can emerge and inform future decisions about care. Rapid Recovery Center will use the domo analytics platform to predict the likelihood of hospital readmission, based on diagnoses and comorbidities, and adjust patients management plans to do everything possible to prevent bounce-back. Domo will also allow surgeons, primary care physicians and other referring clinicians, as well as our own case managers, to access dashboards with the customized information they need about their patients, Fritz says. With these dashboards, external clinicians will have complete insight as to whats going on with their patients. Technologically Speaking The use of technology to enhance the safety, efficiency and efficacy of care will be a defining characteristic of Rapid Recovery Center. Our EHR will allow internal and external physicians to monitor patients lab results in real time and enter orders at a moments notice, ensuring changes in medication or care take effect promptly. When I go on rounds, Ill be able to call up patient information on a tablet and hold each individuals medical record in my hand at the bedside, Dr. Grever says. That will make it much easier for me to manage patients. Seamless Transitions The transitions from hospital to post-acute care and post-acute care to home are often fraught with gaps on the continuum of patient recovery, but they do not have to be. Rapid Recovery Center will take steps to ensure that those transitions do not throw patients off track. San Antonio MD News When patients arrive at Rapid Recovery Center, they will face no lag time before they are able to continue or begin a course of medication, as the facility will have a medication dispensing system stocked with more than 400 of the most commonly ordered medications including schedule II medications. On discharge day, patients can choose to leave Rapid Recovery Center with a 30-day supply of their medications, eliminating a major reason for post-discharge hospital admissions failure to obtain necessary prescriptions in a timely manner. An Economic Engine Rapid Recovery Center will be a boon to San Antonios economy. The facility will employ approximately 180 people and help support pharmacies, medical suppliers, food service companies and other healthcare-associated businesses in the community. Picking up a prescription at a drugstore can be a difficult task for some patients who leave a post-acute care facility, Fritz says. At Rapid Recovery Center, we will give patients the option to leave with a months supply of the drugs they need, so all theyll have to worry about is going home and getting settled and continuing their recovery. Discharge planning will begin at admission. Many patients will need some degree of additional care, such as home health nursing or physical therapy, after leaving Rapid Recovery Center, and our staff will begin arranging those services right away. A select group of home health providers will have an office at Rapid Recovery Center where they can work with the RRC staff to arrange for in-home rehabilitation, nursing care, durable medical equipment and other services after discharge, Dr. Grever says. Rapid Recovery Center will follow up on patients at home for up to 90 days in an effort to prevent hospital readmissions. The Future Is Now From an array of amenities to purposeful design and technology to clinical care excellence, Rapid Recovery Center will introduce San Antonio to the future of post-acute rehabilitation, one patient at a time. San Antonio MD News Hospital lengths of stay have decreased tremendously, and a lot of care that used to take place in hospitals now happens elsewhere, Dr. Goldstein says. Skilled nursing facilities, today and in the future, have to provide a much higher level of care than they did just a few years ago. Rapid Recovery Center is not your grandfathers skilled nursing facility. RRC has made it a point to forge relationships with hospital physicians, case managers and C-Suite executives. Often, theres a big divide between the physicians who treat patients in the hospital and those who see them in a skilled nursing facility. That wont be the case at Rapid Recovery Center. The San Antonio facility will be the latest of four Rapid Recovery Centers in Arizona and Texas to begin welcoming patients, with eight more slated to open in 2018 and 2019. For more information about Rapid Recovery Center and a list of locations, visit rapidrecoverycenter.com. Editors Note: This content is made possible by San Antonio MD News. It is not written by and does not necessarily reflect the views of The San Antonio Express-News' or mySanAntonio.com's editorial staff. Learn more about our advertising products at www.hearstmediasanantonio.com. Each year, the list of treatment options for patients with heart problems becomes longer and more sophisticated. Finding the right treatment means finding the right providers a choice that also is becoming more complex. University Health Systems Heart and Vascular Institute, or HVI, is dedicated to making that choice a little easier, says John Calhoon, MD, Chair of Cardiothoracic Surgery at UT Health San Antonio and Medical Director of the Heart and Vascular Institute at University Hospital. Cardiologists, surgeons and highly trained staff work together to find the best course of treatment, in keeping with the patients own goals and desires. We operate as a team, Dr. Calhoon says. Our surgeons are co-located with our cardiologists. Patients for cardiology and surgery are in the same unit. I think that proximity, that moment-to-moment, day-to-day discussion of cases whether a cardiac case requires surgical or medical expertise exists here at the HVI. The biggest example of teamwork might be our valve clinic, where a patient with valve disease might see a cardiologist and a surgeon in the same setting at the same time, says Edward Sako, MD, PhD, Division Chief of Adult Cardiac Surgery at UT Health. Then well have a conference to get consensus on the best option, including TAVR (transcatheter aortic valve replacement) or other percutaneous methods. Cardiologists with a wide range of specialties and research interests are critical to that team approach. You dont go to a cardiologist these days, Dr. Calhoon says. You go to a heart team with a wide variety of expertise. That includes specialists in rhythm disorders, arterial disease, heart tumors, valve disorders, rehabilitation and more. The fact that the HVI is an academic program that trains other physicians is an advantage. Being a program that develops new and better treatments through research and innovation also is an advantage. The intravascular stent, developed in the 1980s by Julio Palmaz, MD, Ashbel Smith Professor of Radiology at UT Health, is considered one of the major medical advances of all time. It is but one chapter in the long and storied history of the heart program. But those arent the only advantages, according to Dr. Calhoon. To be good at teaching, you make sure youre staying abreast of the evidence, Dr. Calhoon says. But thats just part of our mission. Our mission is to be as patient-friendly as anyone around, and our vision is to make decisions based on research or evidence. We make them with an eye toward value, and we make them as a team. Advanced Care Under the direction of Shah-Hinan Ahmed, MD, Clinical Chief of Cardiology at University Hospital and Associate Professor of Medicine at UT Health, and Steven Bailey, MD, past chief of the Division of Cardiology at UT Health, University Health Systems Heart and Vascular Institute has been quick to evaluate and adopt many advanced procedures such as TAVR. The technique allows a new aortic valve to be placed within a diseased valve while the patients heart is still beating. While TAVR was initially approved for patients considered too sick or frail for traditional open-heart valve replacement surgery, its use has gradually expanded. Anand Prasad, MD, is Director of the Cardiac Catheterization Laboratory at University Health System and Freeman Heart Association Endowed Professor in Cardiovascular Disease at UT Health. His clinical interests include helping patients with heart and kidney disease, including those with diabetes and chronic kidney disease needing coronary or peripheral angiograms. He is cofounder of the annual Cardio Renal Connections Meeting (cardiorenalconnections.org) in San Antonio, which brings together clinicians, researchers and others to discuss the challenges of caring for patients with heart, vascular and kidney disease. Dr. Prasad has helped develop and test technology to limit acute kidney injury in patients undergoing these procedures and teach patients and practitioners about the risks of kidney disease in heart patients. He was the first nationally to use DyeVert Plus, a device that offers a safer way for patients with kidney problems to undergo heart catheterizations. The contrast dye used in those procedures can be toxic, and the new technology allows doctors to measure precisely and reduce the amount of dye they use for the first time. Another area of focus for Dr. Prasad is treating patients with ventricular failure and shock. He plans to develop a center of excellence for treating patients in cardiogenic shock a common, hard-to-treat condition with a high mortality rate. One of his tools is the Impella catheter, a pencil-thin, motor-driven heart pump that can be threaded via catheter through the groin to pump blood from the weakened left ventricle. Congenital heart disease is another area of focus at the HVI. John Calhoon, MD, Chair of Cardiothoracic Surgery at UT Health San Antonio and Medical Director of the Heart and Vascular Institute at University Hospital, who is board-certified in congenital cardiac surgery, works with pediatric and adult colleagues to offer expert care to both children and adults with congenital heart problems. One of the teams newest members is Jayasree Pillarisetti, MD, a cardiologist specializing in electrophysiology and Assistant Professor of Medicine at UT Health. She works with Manoj Panday, MD, Associate Professor of Medicine at UT Health, to provide a range of diagnostic and treatment options for those with arrhythmias such as atrial fibrillation and other electrical problems in the heart. The vascular program, led by Mark Davies, MD, PhD, Chief of the Division of Vascular and Endovascular Surgery at UT Health, offers advanced treatments for all sorts of vascular diseases and works closely with the heart team. We make our decisions the way you make your decisions for your family, Dr. Calhoon says. Have I got the right team on it? Am I using the right information? Whats the best value? And we make that decision after listening to you and then explaining your options plainly. New State-of-the-art Facilities In September, Bexar County Commissioners Court and the Bexar County Hospital District Board of Managers approved a financing plan to build new, state-of-the-art facilities for the HVI on the first floor of University Hospitals Sky Tower, which opened in 2014. The new facilities, to be located in 43,000 square feet of shell space, are part of a $390 million expansion that also will include a new 250-bed Women and Childrens Tower to be built alongside University Hospital. The new HVI, which should be complete in late 2019, will include four to five catheterization labs, 28 cardiology treatment rooms, and 30 prep and recovery beds. Inpatient rooms for both cardiology and cardiothoracic surgery will remain on the ninth floor of the Sky Tower. Marc Feldman, MD, who holds the Joaquin G. Cigarroa, Jr., M.D. Distinguished Chair at UT Health, is Medical Director of the Cardiac Care Unit at University Hospital. The hospitals dedicated cardiac and vascular integrated operating rooms are on the second and third floors of the Sky Tower and include multiple high-resolution video displays and touch screen controls. One is a hybrid surgical suite combining the functions of an operating room and cath lab in one room. The Health System has its own cardiac rehabilitation center located at its Robert B. Green Campus near downtown, led by William Campbell, MD, a cardiologist and Clinical Associate Professor of Medicine at UT Health. San Antonio MD News University Hospital, named best hospital in the San Antonio area for the seventh year in a row by U.S. News & World Report, is rated as high performing in heart bypass surgery and heart failure treatment by the magazine. The program also was recognized with a 2017 Mission: Lifeline STEMI Receiving Center Silver Achievement Award from the American Heart Association. In January, University Health System earned accreditation as a Chest Pain Center with Primary PCI (percutaneous coronary intervention) by the American College of Cardiology. That accreditation means patients who arrive with chest pain are quickly evaluated and treated if need be, with the goal of preventing heart attacks in the first place, says HVI Executive Director Sara Hansen. The big part of the accreditation is early heart attack care, Hansen says. The goal is to get people here before they have a heart attack. We have a chest pain observation unit in the Emergency Department. If patients have certain symptoms, abnormal labs or a history of heart problems, theyll get a workup to determine whether theyll be discharged home or admitted to the hospital. Community education teaching people to understand the signs and symptoms of a heart attack and to seek help immediately is one of the responsibilities of an accredited Chest Pain Center. University Hospital is part of a communitywide heart alert system of care to get those having a heart attack into the cath lab rapidly. One of the most important things when youre having acute coronary trouble is to go to a place that has people who are available to get a catheter into you and open up your arteries as quickly as possible, Dr. Calhoon says. For more information about the Heart and Vascular Institute at University Health System, Call 210-64-HEART or visit universityhealthsystem.com/services/cardiovascular. Other links you might find useful: www.UniversityHealthSystem.com Facebook: @UniversityHealthSystem Twitter: @UnivHealthSys Instagram: @universityhealthsytem Editors Note: This content is made possible by San Antonio MD News. It is not written by and does not necessarily reflect the views of The San Antonio Express-News' or mySanAntonio.com's editorial staff. Learn more about our advertising products at www.hearstmediasanantonio.com. The price of bread has gone up by 11 percent from $0.90 (90 cents) to $1.00. Unlike the last time when only Bakers Inn increased the price of bread, this time all three major bakeries, Bakers Inn, Lobels and Proton have been uniform in increasing the prices. The bakeries have also phased out what they used to term the Family Loaf or the Super Loaf. These loaves used to retail for $1 in the past and were very popular with consumers because they had more slices than the normal loaves. The government is yet to communicate its official position on the matter. The last time that Bakers Inn tried to increase the price of bread, Minister of Industry, Commerce and Enterprise Development Mike Bimha called for an urgent meeting with the bakers and ordered them to revert back to the old prices. Pindula Breaking News via Email Loading... Related Zimbabwe Latest News - A former deputy governor of Plateau state, Pauline Tallen, says before Muhammadu Buhari came into power, there were bombings in various parts of Nigeria - She says the president has the constitutional right as a Nigerian to seek re-election - According to her, Nigeria would have been overrun by Boko Haram if not for Buhari President Muhammadu Buharis election in 2015 saved the country from being overrun by Boko Haram insurgents, a former minister of state for science and technology, Pauline Tallen, has said. Tallen, who is a past deputy governor of Plateau state made the statement after receiving an award for courageous woman of substance and patriotic leadership by a news magazine at her Rayfield home in Jos, Daily Trust reports. READ ALSO: EFCC recovers N216m From Swiss Golden She said: Without his coming, not just the northeast, we would have been over-run by Boko Haram. People dont remember that security is important, we were having bombs in various parts of this country. The former minister described Buharis recent declaration to seek re-election as a welcome development, noting that the president had the constitutional right as a Nigerian to seek re-election. God chooses leaders and if we are to be sincere and look at events, if God did not want President Buhari to be there, there is no way he would have defeated an incumbent president who had all the resources at his disposal. If God wants him to continue and complete the assignment He has given to him, then he will," she said. PAY ATTENTION: Read the news on Nigerias #1 news app Meanwhile, Governor Rochas Okorocha has said that he will succeed President Muhammadu Buhari when the position of the presidency is zoned to the southeast. The Cable reports that Okorocha spoke on Monday, April 16, when he hosted some political stakeholders at the state government house in Owerri. The Imo state governor expressed optimism that like 2015, President Buhari will win the election in 2019. President Buhari on 2019 presidential election: will you vote for him? | Legit.ng TV Source: Legit - A primary school dropout has been arrested for practicing medcine in Lagos - The 39-year-old dropout owned a clinic at Mushin, Lagos state - He has allegedly been practicing medicine for four years The Lagos state police command has arrested a 39-year-old fake medical practitioner, Abdulrahman Mohammed, for allegedly owning a clinic and practicing medicine for four years without any license. Mohammed, who dropped out of primary school, reportedly has a clinic in Idi-Araba area, Mushin, Lagos state where he administered intravenous injections to patients and prescribe drugs for ailments, The Punch reports. The Lagos state commissioner of police, Edgal Imohimi, while parading the suspect on Monday, said: On April 14, around 12am, detectives from the Area D Command, Mushin, arrested a native of Ran village, in the Gamboru Ngala local governmentarea of Borno state, for operating as a medical doctor whereas his education stopped at primary school level, even though there is no certificate to authenticate that claim. READ ALSO: No death in Shiite Abuja protest, police arrest 115 members Further investigations into the activities of Mohammed, who had been impersonating a medical doctor for the past four years, revealed that he had been administering intravenous injections, conducting medical tests on his patients and taking their urine and blood samples. The suspect confessed that he bought his drugs from Idumota Market. Exhibits recovered from him include blood pressure monitors manual and electronic syringes, drip packs both saline and sugar solutions, among others. The suspect will be charged to court as soon as investigation is over. Abdulrahman Mohammed. Photo source: Punch Mohammed, however denied practicing medicine and claimed he was only a chemist who prescribed drug for people. He said: I stopped school after primary six. I started selling drug and injections in 2014, but I dont give people injections or drips. Some people came to check their blood pressure. If a customer says he has a headache, I can sell Panadol to him. I buy my drugs at Idumota. Nurses come to buy from me. PAY ATTENTION: Read the news on Nigerias #1 news app Legit.ng earlier reported that a 42-year-old man confessed to endangering the lives of several people by administering drug to them by mere guesswork. The fake doctor identified as John Anopuem, confessed to giving drugs without prescriptions, to patients who may have died as a result. Admitting that he prescribed the drugs by merely guessing, he also said he couldn't tell the exact number of patients he had catered to, stating that sometimes the drugs worked and other times it may have harmed them. The Imo-state indigene who ran a drugstore at Seriki Aro street, Ikeja, Lagos, confessed after he was arrested, and some of his drugs were picked as exhibits. How I make over 100k monthly - graduate shoemaker. Legit.ng TV Source: Legit - The use members of the Peace Corps of Nigeria has been banned in Jigawa state - Sarki Baba, the permanent secretary, special service directorate, in Dutse, with the backing of the state government, issued a statement on Monday, April 16, to that effect - In the statement, Baba remarked that any ministry, department or agency caught engaging the services of the Peace Corps will be sanctioned The government of Jigawa state has ordered all its Ministries, Departments and Agencies (MDAs) to end the use of the services of the members of the Peace Corps of Nigeria (PCN). The directive is contained in a statement issued by Sarki Baba, the permanent secretary, special service directorate, in Dutse on Monday, April 16. It also warned all the 27 local government councils in the state against employing the PCN members, Premium Times reports. READ ALSO: EFCC accuses Uche Secondus of receiving N250m from Dasuki It was remarked in the statement that some MDAs were still making use of the corps even after President Muhammadu Buhari had declined assent to the bill that set it up. The statement read: The Jigawa State Government has banned ministries, departments and agencies and local government councils against dealing with the Peace Corps of Nigeria. The government has observed that some ministries and agencies are still patronising the corps despite the presidential rejection of the bill establishing it. "So all MDAs and local government council should take note that henceforth, earring government institutions will be sanctioned." PAY ATTENTION: Get the Latest Nigerian News Anywhere 24/7. Spend less on the Internet! The bill, though have scaled through some scrutiny by the legislature, has been turned down by the presidency. Meanwhile, Legit.ng reported that the Nigeria Police Force (NPF) had insisted on the proscription of the activities of the PCN describing the group as illegal. In a series of tweets on Tuesday, January 16, the police said the operation of the Peace Corps remains illegal and accused it of engaging in crime. What is working well and what needs improvement in Nigeria? On Legit.ng TV Source: Legit.ng - The Borno state police command diffused bomb found on a female suspect - The suspect was sighted behind Bakassi IDP camp and apprehended - The force spokesperson called on members of the public to report any suspicious movement in their localities to security agencies The Borno police command on Tuesday, April 17, confirmed the arrest of a female bomber at the Bakassi Internally Displaced Persons (IDPs) camp in Maiduguri. Edet Okon, police public relations officer in a statement in Maiduguri said the bomber was arrested by men of the Explosive Ordinance Disposal ( EOD ) team, on Tuesday at about 6.50 am while lurking around the Internally Displaced Persons ( IDPs ) camp. READ ALSO: Nobody will read my biography because of my past - Babangida He said that policemen condoned off the area, diffused the bomb and apprehended the suspect, The News Agency of Nigeria (NAN) reports. The police spokesman added that the suspect is in police custody. Okon said: On Tuesday, at about 6:50 a.m., a female bomber was sighted behind Bakassi IDP camp in Maiduguri metropolis. On sighting the bomber, conventional policemen alongside the EOD team swung into action and cordoned the area, to prevent escape of the bomber into the city. The suspect, one Zara Idriss was rendered safe, arrested and is now in custody. Okon called on members of the public to go about their normal activities without fear and to report any suspicious movement in their localities to security agencies. He reiterated the commands commitments to protect lives and property in the state. PAY ATTENTION: Read the news on Nigerias #1 news app Meanwhile, a former minister of state for science and technology, Pauline Tallen, has said President Muhammadu Buharis election in 2015 saved the country from being overrun by Boko Haram insurgents. Tallen, who is a past deputy governor of Plateau state made the statement after receiving an award for courageous woman of substance and patriotic leadership by a news magazine at her Rayfield home in Jos, Daily Trust reports. The former minister described Buharis recent declaration to seek re-election as a welcome development, noting that the president had the constitutional right as a Nigerian to seek re-election. Exclusive: Freed Dapchi Girl Recounts Her Ordeal with Boko Haram (Nigeria Breaking News) Legit.ng TV Source: Legit.ng - Nigerians no longer have confidence in the military, according to the chairman of the Taraba State Council of Chiefs, Dr Shekarau Masa Ibi - He made the statement when he received the army probe panel investigating allegations of military collusion with armed bandits - The military was accused of colluding with armed bandits in the attacks on residents of Taraba and other parts of the country The Aku Uka of Wukari and chairman of the Taraba State Council of Chiefs, Dr Shekarau Masa Ibi (Kuvyo II), on Monday, April 16, told an army probe panel that Nigerians had lost confidence in the military. The panel investigating allegations of military collusion with armed bandits in the attacks on residents of Taraba and other parts of the country, was received by the monarch, Punch reports. Legit.ng notes that the monarch said: It is a known fact that the citizens of Nigeria have lost confidence in the military, in spite of their track record of successful peace missions in other parts of the world. I want to remind you members of the panel that Nigerians who are crying for justice are expecting much from you, so also the armed forces who are looking up to your report to help them to restore our citizens' confidence in the Nigerian military. As an umpire, Nigerians expect you to be just and fair in your assignment, and only a fair, just and transparent report of your panel can restore the lost image of the military. The chairman of the probe panel, Major General Joseph Nimyel (retd.), had earlier sympathised with the Aku Uka over the loss of lives and destruction of property as a result of the crisis in the area. According to him, the probe panel was in the state to investigate allegations of collusion levelled against the military by General Theophilus Danjuma, adding that findings would be sent to the army headquarters in Abuja, the Taraba state government and the federal government with a view to helping the authorities in their future dealings. PAY ATTENTION: Install our latest app for Android, read best news on Nigerias #1 news app Meanwhile, Legit.ng previously reported that the Taraba government said that it no longer had confidence in the federal government security apparatus deployed to the state. The government's position was made known by the senior special adviser to the Taraba state governor on media and publicity, Dan Bala Abu, who spoke to journalists on Friday, March 30. Abu said that although there was relative peace now in Taraba, the state government did not have confidence in the security apparatus of the federal government to maintain peace and security in the state. Should Nigerians pick up arms to defend themselves against herdsmen? - on Legit.ng TV Source: Legit.ng - Pastor Tunde Bakare of Latter Rain Assembly has said that he would still be Nigeria's president - He made the disclosure on Sunday, April 15, in Lagos while playing host to the publisher of Sahara Reporters, Omoyele Sowore - The fiery cleric said that Sowore would also lead the country Tunde Bakare, serving overseer of the Latter Rain Assembly church, has said that he and Omoyele Sowore, a presidential aspirant, will lead Nigeria. The Cable reports that Bakare said this when Sowore paid a visit to his church. Legit.ng gathered that while introducing him to the congregation, Bakare described the Sahara Reporters publisher as an uncompromising non-conformist rebel with a cause. READ ALSO: Presidency allegedly reveals how ex-NEMA boss Sani Sidi, 7 other directors looted N1.5bn He said though they both have their eyes on the seat of the president, they would, in turns, lead the country. He said: The problem that I have is that Sowore wants to be president and I want to be president. One of us will have to knock each other. Well, everybody say, turn by turn. I will fulfill my own turn and he will do his own turn. It is not his first time here by the way. Many people dont know this guy had fought lions and bears and battles just to ensure there is good governance in our country and I am so happy that people like him are thinking of contributing their meaningful quota while it is yet day. If people will not gather together to shake the system, the system will remain unshaken. But now they are afraid because we are coming from the east, from the west, from the north, from the south, from outside invading this country to say enough is enough. During a service in his church on April 8, Bakare had said a tender plant from the north will replace President Muhammadu Buhari, whom he has repeatedly criticised. The reason things are going haywire in Nigeria today is because God is preparing a tender plant from the side of the north. Once this president is out, another tender plant is entering. It will be clear to us that God preserved us for 30 years, preparing us for what he has prepared for us, he had said. PAY ATTENTION: Read the news on Nigerias #1 news app Bakare was Buharis running mate in the 2011 presidential election. They ran on the platform of Congress for Progressive Change (CPC). Meanwhile, Legit.ng had previously reported that a Lagos-based Christian cleric, Pastor Tunde Bakare has denied reports that he wanted to run for Nigeria's presidential seat in 2019. In tweets of his sermon on Sunday, January 14 at his Latter Rain Assembly in Ogba area of Lagos state, the pastor said his message from God was misinterpreted. Buhari to Contest for Presidency in 2019! - on Legit.ng TV Source: Legit Theresa May, Prime Minister of the United Kingdom, has called for inclusiveness in same-sex partnership in all countries within the Commonwealth, urging the member countries to overhaul marriage laws. While speaking at the first joint forum at Commonwealth Head of Government Meetings (CHOGM) in Westminster on Tuesday, April 17, the prime minister declared that "nobody should face discrimination or persecution because of who they are or who they love..." Her speech in part: I am all too aware that these laws were put in place by my own country; they were wrong then and they are wrong now. READ ALSO: Nobody gives me credit for conducting the freest election in Nigeria - Babangida "As the United Kingdom's Prime Minister I deeply regret both the fact that such laws were introduced and the legacy of discrimination, violence and death that persists today. "As a family of nations we must respect one another's cultures and traditions but we must do so in a manner consistent with our common value of equality - a value that is clearly stated in the Commonwealth Charter. "Nobody should face discrimination or persecution because of who they are or who they love and the UK stands ready to help any Commonwealth member wanting to reform outdated legislation that makes such discrimination possible." Legit.ng previously reported that Nigeria's President Muhammadu Buhari held talks on NigeriaBritish relations with Prime Minister, Theresa May, at 10, Downing Street, London. PAY ATTENTION: Read the news on Nigerias #1 news app This was contained in a tweet by Twitter handle of Personal Assistant to the President on new media, Bashir Ahmad on Monday, April 16. He further disclosed that at the end of his bilateral meeting with the British prime minister, President Buhari thanked her for Britains efforts at the training of the Nigerian Armed forces in fighting Boko Haram. Can you marry from another tribe? - on Legit.ng TV Source: Legit - The sum of $162 million was reportedly withdrawn from the federation account for the purchase of helicopters without the National Assembly's approval - Three key federal government officials have been summoned by the Senate to give explanation on the issue - he matter to the Senate committee on appropriations to report back in a week The Nigerian Senate has summoned three key federal government officials to provide explanation on a critical issue. The officials summoned are the minister of defence, Brigadier-General Masur Dan Ali; the CBN governor, Godwin Emiefiele; and minister of fiance, Kemi Adeosun. The summon is due to the news that $16 million was withdrawn from the federation account to buy helicopters without the approval of the National Assembly. READ ALSO: Edo lawmaker scores President Buhari low on security, economy The issue was brought to the Senate by Senator Sam Anyanwu (PDP, Imo) who cited Order 43, and made reference to section 80, 2 and 3 of the Constitution. He informed the Senate that in March 2018 $162million was withdrawn to buy helicopters without the approval of the National Assembly. Deputy Senate president, Ike Ekweremadu, who is presiding over the Senate today, Tuesday, April 17, referred the matter to the Senate committee on appropriations to report back in a week. Meanwhile, Senator Danjuma Goje (APC, Gombe) has dismissed the social investment programme of the federal government tagged - N-Power, as a failure. In a series of tweets by the senator seen by Legit.ng on Friday, April 6, Goje said many people are complaining that they have not seen impact of the programme considering the magnitude of funds involved. His words: I am from Gombe, I represent Gombe Central. I am yet to see one single boy who came to tell me that he has benefited from his N500 billion. Many other Nigerians are saying the same thing. N500 billion for 36 states is about N13 billion. If we spend N13 billion in one year in Gombe state, there is no way I would not have known, other people will also know." PAY ATTENTION: Install our latest app for Android, read best news on Nigerias #1 news app EXCLUSIVE: Be patient with President Buhari, Femi Adesina tells Nigerians on Legit.ng TV Source: Legit.ng - Peoples Democratic Party women leader has accused Governor Ayodele Fayose of threatening her life because she refused to support his preferred candidate Kolapo Olusola - The women leader, Felicia Arise, in Ilupeju Ward 2, Oye local government has petitioned police over the matter - Arise said she has not committed any offence to warrant being punished by the governor Peoples Democratic Party (PDP) women leader in Ilupeju Ward 2, Oye local government Felicia Arise on Monday, April 16, alleged threat to her life by some loyalists of Ekiti state Governor Ayo Fayose. The Nation reports that Arise, in a petition to the commissioner of police Ibrahim Chafe claimed that her life was being threatened for her refusal to support Governor Fayoses preferred candidate Kolapo Olusola. READ ALSO: Festus Keyamo appointed as spokesperson for 2019 Buhari campaign In the petition, Arise said she was being victimised for supporting former minister of state for works, prince Dayo Adeyeye. According to the petition by her lawyer, Sule Longe Arise said she had not committed any offence to warrant being punished. PAY ATTENTION: Read the news on Nigerias #1 news app She said the governors loyalists also pronounced her removal as the wards women leader, saying the purported action is illegal, unconstitutional, null, void and of no effect whatsoever. Meanwhile, Legit.ng had reported that some women of the PDP decried the growing suffering experienced by the masses. The women condemning the leadership style of the All Progressives Congress (APC) said power must come back to the PDP in 2019. The national expanded caucus meeting of the PDP in Abuja on Monday, July 17, the national coordinator of women solidarity group Rita Audu, said her team are set to mobilize party members in preparation for the 2019 election. PDP women lament on the state of the nation: We are suffering - on Legit.ng TV: Source: Legit.ng - A former commissioner for information and strategy in Lagos, Opeyemi Bamidele, has urged governorship aspirants in Ekiti to vote only their choices in the Saturday, May 5 primary - Bamidele declared that his is the best man to be the next governor based on what he has achieved in the past in political offices - He remarked that both APC leaders and member will play major roles in his administration, if he is elected Opeyemi Bamidele, a governorship aspirant in the All Progressives Congress (APC) in Ekiti state, has appealed to delegates to refuse being bought over by politicians, but to vote only their choice of candidate in the partys coming primary. Bamidele, who is also the former commissioner for information and strategy in Lagos, said that APC's victory over the Peoples Democratic Party (PDP) should be uppermost in the minds of the delegates, the Punch reports. READ ALSO: Saraki offsets N49.4million salary arrears of 220 Kwara traditional chiefs He remarked that any money offered them by aspirants should be regarded as a gesture of generosity and not a ploy to buy their conscience ahead of the primary. Bamidele said that based on his performance in political offices held in the past, he is the right man for the job. He urged the delegates to consider the pedigree of all aspirants and what they have achieved in the past as public officers, appealing to the leadership of the party to ensure a free, fair and credible primary. He objected to the call made by some to former governors not to participate in the primary, explaining that it was their constitutional right if they believed they were best suited to handle the state's mantle of leadership. Enjoining party leaders to ensure cohesion in the party, Bamidele promised to carry all members along if they voted for him as the APC standard bearer in the state governorship election. PAY ATTENTION: Get the Latest Nigerian News Anywhere 24/7. Spend less on the Internet! He further said that the party and its leaders would play a major role in his government if elected, adding that he understood perfectly the role of the party in modern democracy and would pursue common interest of everyone. Meanwhile, Legit.ng reported that Prince Dayo Adeyeye, an ex-minister of state for works, had said that all the governorship aspirants on the platform of the Peoples Democratic Party (PDP) in Ekiti had resolved to form a force against Governor Ayodele Fayose's candidate for the state's primary. The governor has named his deputy Kolapo Olusola, as his preferred candidate for the election which has been slated to take place on Saturday, May 5. APC official tells why his party could be voted out in 2019 - On Legit.ng TV Source: Legit Newspaper - Delta's former governor, Dr Emmanuel Uduaghan, said he was the first government official to visit the creeks and discuss with Tompolo - Uduaghan said the insecurity in the Niger Delta region does not need only military enforcement - According to him, we must have an enforcement body that includes the community; especially the youths since they know the terrain The former governor of Delta state, Emmanuel Uduaghan, has said the military, as an enforcement organisation, was not a permanent solution to the problems in the Niger Delta as it was not very familiar with the terrain. Uduaghan, who spoke with selected journalists including Legit.ng in Lagos, explained that engagement and effective laws that affect the people of the region were necessary to bring lasting peace. The former governor said his advice was as a result of his experience as governor for eight years handling affairs in Delta state especially at the height of militancy. He recalled that as the secretary to the Delta state government and later governor, he was the first official to personally visit the creeks. He said as governor, he also made some attempts to engage Government Ekpemupolo, better known as Tompolo, in peace talks while also absorbing some ex-militants to reach out to their colleagues in the creeks. He revealed how he also got traditional and religious leaders to assist in quelling security issues in the state adding that this paid off. READ ALSO: Breaking: Festus Keyamo appointed as spokesperson for 2019 Buhari campaign I was the first state government official to enter into creeks to meet ex-militant chief, Government Ekpemupolo alias Tompolo in the heart of the Niger Delta as SSG to start negotiating peace with him. I did it severally when I was the governor of Delta state. At one of the outings, it was even the soldiers that pointed AK-47 at me when I was coming back. Sometimes, I would come back at night from negotiating peace, so I know the place in and out. I have been there in the day and at night, in fact, at one of them, I was sitting on a chair with about 20 of the boys with their guns, they were drinking, and we were there for three hours negotiating peace. I know the challenges; let me just say this, what we did and what the government has been doing is having what I call two boxes in managing the problems. So, when the thing is really happening, it requires mobilizing the young people to show them the terrain or to prevent the crisis. PAY ATTENTION: Read the news on Nigerias #1 news app For us to move forward, we must have an enforcement body that includes the community; especially the youths in the community, since they know the terrain. It is easier for people in that area to try and carry out enforcement or execute security challenges; it is easier for people in that area to know those who are involved in illegal bunkering. There are two parts to it, there is the part of genuine agitation, which has now been mixed with criminality and the criminality seems to have overshadowed the genuine agitation," he explained. He commended President Muhammadu Buhari for sustaining the agricultural revolution of the administration of Goodluck Jonathan. Concerning his ambition for the Senate, Uduaghan said he wants to represent Delta South district in 2019 because of his desire to pursue quality legislation that will lead to the end of the crisis in the Niger Delta region. I have not declared but I have decided to run. The official declaration is going to be very soon," Uduaghan said while noting that even though he was instrumental to the emergence of the incumbent senator, James Manager, 15 years ago, he withdrew from the race in 2015 to ensure that peace reigned in the state. Despite the pressure from the good people of Delta South in 2015, I decided to step down, but looking at the horizon now, the issues that caused the security challenges that made me to shelve my ambition in 2015 are no longer there. He argued that he had the capacity for the Senate, adding: I was commissioner for four years under Chief James Ibori and I was close to him. I knew what he was doing in terms of peace issues. We had the other box of enforcement; that is, using the military, the army, the police, navy, etc. One will think that with the two boxes, that would be enough to deal with the problems, but they are still there and re-occurring in different forms, some criminality and some genuine agitation; we still have the Niger Delta Avengers bursting pipelines; sometimes, we have those hijacking boats and sometimes ethnic quarrels. To deal with it, we need the local people to be involved in the security arrangement and that will require legislation. The waterway security committee I put up for instance, there is no law backing it up, so we need to put up laws that will help us in moving forward in solving the Niger Delta crisis. Uduaghan noted that there were lots of projects abandoned in the Niger Delta, and that specific laws were needed to revamp these projects. He lamented that since the crises in the Niger Delta, nobody has been prosecuted or brought to book. Nobody has been prosecuted so far. First of all, you cannot catch them and the people that are supposed to catch them dont know how to catch them. I am going there to put up an enforcement body of people who know them and can get them and take them to court. If we are not serious of law and order in the Niger Delta, we will continue to have crisis. READ ALSO: EFCC accuses Uche Secondus of receiving N250m from Dasuki A lawmaker is to make law and that will be my cardinal point. Also, there is the issue of attracting things to your area. There are very few people in the National Assembly that I dont know. I have the capacity to attract things to my area more than anybody on the field today. Also, Nigeria has invested in me. Being in government for 16 years is a lot of investment. I think I should pay back by going to serve at the national level, he explained. Legit.ng earlier reported that Emmanuel Uduaghan recently said he wouldn't disappoint his constituency and would not be one of those senators who brings and shares Keke NAPEP once a year. Uduaghan, who made this statement when Delta South Grassroots Movement, paid him a solidarity visit, said he would not go into the Senate to sleep and be unproductive. What does Nigeria need right now? (Nigerian Street Interview) | Legit.ng TV Source: Legit.ng - Some lawmakers in the Senate has reacted to the generally ugly situation of insecurity in the country - Senator Solomon Olamilekan Adeola (Lagos-west) has urged the federal government to sack all service chiefs and security heads in the country - Adeola remarked that President Muhammadu Buhari needs people with fresh minds and new ideas to tackle security issues in Nigeria Senator Solomon Olamilekan Adeola, the senator representing Lagos west, has urged the presidency to sack all the service chiefs and heads of security in the country. Adeola noted that President Muhammadu Buhari needs new ideas from fresh minds to end frequent killings in the Nigeria. He said this in response to an instance cited by Senator Suleiman Asonya Adokwe, representing Nasarawa south constituency, Vanguard reports. READ ALSO: Breaking: Anger in APC as members in Delta slam Saraki over Omo-Ageges suspension Senator Adokwe drawing the attention of the Senate to the crisis in the southern district of Nasarawa by armed militia, said that the armed militia are occupying four out of five local government areas in the above stated district. Adokwe said: Several dead bodies and wounded individuals were found as a result of the crisis. A number of senator responded to the issues raised by Adokwe. Senator Philip Gyunka said: This act is barbaric. This is disheartening, seeing people killed. Some people have been identified as the killers, We cannot fold our hands and do nothing about it. We should urge the Federal Government to face up to these people. Senator Dino Melaye remarked thus: I am disturbed that month after month, we are still talking about security infrastructure. If people keep dying, who are we reviving the economy for? We want to see a working security programme. In response, Senator Marafa Kabir said: Even if the herdsmen are the ones killing fellow Hausas, we should give them the names they deserve and not identify them by religion or tribe as this causes division. Let the Federal Government stand up to these people. Senator Emmanuel Bwacha: People are dying in their numbers, judgement is waiting for everybody if we dont take this matter seriously. Senator Ben Murray Bruce in his opinion said: There is a complete failure in leadership. Some bandits use weapons from the army, navy to attack civilians. I am worried about the security of our nation and our people. PAY ATTENTION: Get the Latest Nigerian News Anywhere 24/7. Spend less on the Internet! Senator James Manager opined: With the way we are conducting ourselves, it is guaranteed that democracy will not survive. Pay attention to Nigeria Senator @benmurraybruce We are getting tired of rising up to observe a minute silence for lost lives. These killings have to end, we need to end these crises. At length, the Senate resolved to do the following: urge President Muhammadu Buhari to order the armed forces and other security personnel to come to the aid of Nigerians and restore peace throughout the country and mandate the House's ad-hoc committee on the review of the security infrastructure to investigate security-related issues. Meanwhile Legit.ng reported that the Taraba government had said that it no longer had confidence in the federal government security apparatus deployed to the state. The government's position was made known by the senior special adviser to the Taraba state governor on media and publicity, Dan Bala Abu who spoke to journalists on Friday, March 30. Do churches need armed security guards? On Legit.ng TV Source: Legit - A closed door meeting is currently going on between ex-president Olusegun Obasanjo and Chief Olu Falae - Chief Falae is the national chairman of the Social Democratic Party - The meeting is going on at the Olusegun Obasanjo Presidential Library, Abeokuta, Ogun state Nigeria's former president, Olusegun Obasanjo, is currently holding a closed door meeting with national chairman of Social Democratic Party (SDP), Chief Olu Falae, at the Olusegun Obasanjo Presidential Library, Abeokuta, the Ogun state capital. The SDP chairman arrived Obasanjos penthouse around 12pm and went straight into the meeting, Independent reports. Legit.ng notes that other attendees include a two time governorship candidate in Ogun state, Gboyega Nasiru Isiaka; a former spokesperson to ex-president, Goodluck Jonathan, Doyin Okupe; a governorship aspirant of SDP in the state, Sina Kawonise, amongst others. READ ALSO: Citizens no longer have confidence in the Nigerian military - Monarch It was reported that some chieftains of SDP including one Chief Majekodunmi who arrived the venue of the meeting, were prevented by the security operatives from accessing the meeting. PAY ATTENTION: Install our latest app for Android, read best news on Nigerias #1 news app Meanwhile, Legit.ng previously reported that a renowned lawyer and senior advocate of Nigeria, Festus Keyamo, lashed out at former president, Olusegun Obasanjo, in the aftermath of his letter to President Muhammadu Buhari asking him not to seek re-election in 2019. Obasanjo had said the All Progressives Congress had failed the country while also accusing the Peoples Democratic Party (PDP) of corruption and incompetence. He suggested the formation of a coalition for Nigeria which he believes will solve the problem being encountered in the nation. Consider rest - Obasanjo to Buhari - on Legit.ng TV Source: Legit - Baba Yusuf and Segun Agbaje, representing Borno and Ekiti states for second term among others have been sworn in as new Resident Electoral Commissioners - INEC chairman Mahmood Yakubu expressed confidence that the new RECs would contribute to the commissions determination to make 2019 general elections the best in the country - Yakubu advised the new commissioners to maintain openness and consultations, as well as be firm and courageous in carrying out their new assignments The Independent National Electoral Commission (INEC) has sworn in seven new Resident Electoral Commissioners (RECs) bringing the total number of serving RECs in the commission to 33. News Agency of Nigeria (NAN) reports that the new RECs are Baba Yusuf and Segun Agbaje, representing Borno and Ekiti states for second term. Others are Uthman Ajidagba, Kwara; Yahaya Bello, Nasarawa state; Emmanuel Hart, Rivers; Mohammed Ibrahim, Gombe and Cyril Omorogbe, Edo. READ ALSO: Zamfara governor Yari goes spiritual over 'very disturbing' killings by bandits, armed herdsmen Performing the ceremony on Tuesday in Abuja, INEC Chairman, Mahmood Yakubu, expressed confidence that the new RECs would contribute to the commissions determination to make 2019 general elections the best in the country. He said: ''With the track records of service in the academia, public service and private sector, it is gratifying to note that the new RECs made positive contributions to the society in various ways. I am equally delighted to note that some of you have managed elections at national level as RECs. ''I am confident that you will bring to bear on your new assignments, the experience of the recent past that will contribute to our determination to make the 2019 general elections our best elections in Nigeria.'' Yakubu advised the new commissioners to maintain openness and consultations, as well as be firm and courageous in carrying out their new assignments. The chairman disclosed that in addition to the Ekiti and Osun governorship elections, the commission would be conducting four bye-elections this year to fill vacancies. These, according to him, include Takum state constituency in Taraba, Lokoja/Koton-Karfe Federal Constituency in Kogi, Bauchi South Senatorial District, and Kastina North Senatorial District in Kastina State. The INEC boss reassured newly registered voters in the ongoing nationwide Continuous Voter Registration (CVR) of getting their Permanent Voter Cards (PVCs) before the 2019 general elections. He added that ''We have consistently reassured the public that for those who registered in 2017, their PVCs would be available for collection in the first week of May 2018. Those who registered in the first quarter of this year, that is between January and March, as well as those who are registering right now in the second quarter of this year, would collect their cards thereafter. PAY ATTENTION: Read the news on Nigerias #1 news app Yakubu also reassured the public and those who applied for replacement of their PVCs that their cards would be available for collection before the 2019 general elections. He said: ''For those who registered in Ekiti and Osun in 2017 and 2018, priority attention was given to the production of their PVCs, such that all the cards would be available ahead of the July 14 and Sept. 22 governorship elections.'' Responding on behalf of the new RECs, Segun Agbaje, representing Ekiti state, pledged the new commissioners readiness to justify the confidence reposed in them. He said: ''By the grace of God, we shall finish well. He expressed confidence in the leadership of Yakubu, saying with your style of leadership, we would not be surprised if 2019 elections turned out to be the best elections in the country. Meanwhile, Legit.ng had reported that twenty-one new political parties were registered by the INEC ahead of the 2019 general elections. The commission in a press statement on Thursday, December 14, disclosed the names of the new parties among which is All Blending Party (ABP) and Justice Must Prevail Party (JMPP). Legit.ng special report on Anambra governorship election - on Legit.ng TV: Source: Legit - Chief Olu Falae had a closed-door meeting with former president Obasanjo - Falae said the meeting was to discuss the affairs of the nation - According to him, the affairs of Nigeria are greater than the political ambition of anybody The national chairman of the Social Democratic Party (SDP), Chief Olu Falae, has explained that he visited former president, Chief Olusegun Obasanjo, to discuss affairs of the nation with him. The Punch reports that Falae spoke after his two-hour meeting with Obasanjo in Abeokuta on Tuesday, April 17. READ ALSO: Festus Keyamo appointed as spokesperson for 2019 Buhari campaign The former secretary to the government of the federation described Obasanjo as his former boss and that the affairs of the nation were greater than any persons political ambition. He said: "I am here to visit Papa Olusegun Obasanjo, former head of military government and former President of Nigeria who was my boss when I was the permanent secretary at the presidency. I have to come to see him about the affairs of Nigeria. The affairs of Nigeria are greater than the political ambition of anybody. So I came here to exchange views with Baba. PAY ATTENTION: Install our latest app for Android, read best news on Nigerias #1 news app Legit.ng had reported that Nigeria's former president, Olusegun Obasanjo, was holding a closed door meeting with Falae, at the Olusegun Obasanjo Presidential Library, Abeokuta, the Ogun state capital. The SDP chairman arrived Obasanjos penthouse around 12pm and went straight into the meeting, Independent reports. Legit.ng notes that other attendees include a two time governorship candidate in Ogun state, Gboyega Nasiru Isiaka; a former spokesperson to ex-president, Goodluck Jonathan, Doyin Okupe; a governorship aspirant of SDP in the state, Sina Kawonise, amongst others. It was reported that some chieftains of SDP including one Chief Majekodunmi who arrived the venue of the meeting, were prevented by the security operatives from accessing the m Consider rest - Obasanjo to Buhari - on Legit.ng TV Source: Legit - The federal government blamed the soot experienced in Port Harcourt on the activities of some of the residents - It said it has tasked the Ministry of Environment to look into the problem - It noted that it can cause health hazard in the affected communities The federal government said the soot, currently being experienced in Port Harcourt and its environs, was caused by activities of illegal oil refiners, bunkers and burning of tyres. Peter Idabor, director general of the National Oil Spill Detection and Response Agency (NOSDRA) disclosed this at the beginning of a Joint Activation and Drill Exercise in Port Harcourt, on Tuesday, April 17. He further attributed the development to activities in abattoirs and kpo-fire (a slang used to describe illegal oil bunkering business) operators who carry out their illicit activities at night. In Port Harcourt, there are over 100 abattoirs and many of these abattoirs use rubber tyres to roast animals while others burn them to extract copper wires. Another source of the soot is the heating of asphalt (used for roads) and burning of stolen petroleum products by security agencies," he said. READ ALSO: Dont be ashamed to seek for help - Ekweremadu sends message to President Buhari National Oil Spill Detection and Response Agency.Credit: NAN Idabor said the Ministry of Environment and its affiliated bodies had already held several meetings with law enforcement agencies and other stakeholders to end the soot. We have agreed that instead of setting ablaze tankers caught with stolen petroleum product; that it is better to retire the crude oil back to the refineries and oil companies. We felt that rather than dispose the petroleum products into the environment that it is best to store them in refineries he said. Idabor said a committee, set up on the orders of Vice President Yemi Osinbajo, had adopted the Harmonised Standard Operating Procedure to deal with recovered stolen petroleum products. He said that soot particle was 2.5 micron in size that could only be seen through high-powered microscopic lens. He said that the particles could not be prevented from entering homes and offices. The soot particle is then inhaled and after sometimes becomes an irritant and the individual starts coughing. After persistent cough, a wound is created inside the lungs," he said. Idabor said the Ministry of Environment was planning to hold one-day retreat in Port Harcourt on April 27 to address the challenges associated with this. He said agencies under the ministry, Rivers government, oil companies and members of the Armed Forces and other stakeholders would attend the retreat. The NOSDRA boss advised residents to use nose mask to reduce impact of the soot on their health. PAY ATTENTION: Read the news on Nigerias #1 new app Meanwhile, the Nigerian Navy said it discovered six new illegal refineries with combined capacity to refine four million litres of crude oil daily in Alakiri, Asari Toru local government area of Rivers state. Leadership reports that that the executive officer of the Nigerian Navy Ship (NNS) pathfinder Port Harcourt, Capt. Victor Choji, disclosed this while destroying one of the illegal refineries on Friday, March 30, in Alakiri, Asari-Toru. Aliko Dangote invites IT billionaire Bill Gates to Nigeria | - on Legit.ng TV Source: Legit.ng The Los Angles Times Pulitzer-Prize-winning reporter Mike Hiltzik confirmed our reporting on the misrepresentations and discrepancies in the resume of recently-hired CalPERS Chief Financial Officer Charles Asubonten and called on the board to investigate. If you managed to miss the series, you can find the links to them at the end of this post. But what is particularly surprising about his article, Questions about new CalPERS CFOs background and experience should be taken seriously by the pension fund, is that the CEO Marcie Frost and Asubonten spoke together to Hilzik on the phone and yet did not deny any of the issues raised in our series (to be clear, talking around a problem does not amount to disproving or denying it). Hiltzik may have covered more points with them than he discussed in his article; I pinged Hiltzik to congratulate him on the piece and he mentioned not being able to cover certain discrepancies due to space constraints. It is even more surprising that Frost decided to act as her own flack rather than get a professional involved when neither she nor Asubonten have disputed any of the facts presented in our series of articles (and bear in mind, they had more than a week between when I e-mailed the board with a detailed outline of most of the misrepresentations and when I launched the series. I urge you strongly to read Hiltziks article in full, but in case you are time pressed now, here are the high points. Frost and Asubonten effectively admitted to resume discrepancies. Hiltziks story focused on two of Asubontens major claims. One was that he was responsible for what he stated was a 70% CAGR increase in the stock price of Palabora Mining Company. Hiltzik confirmed what we had found, that the stock price was in the upper 40s when Asubonten joined versus the 20s that he had put on his resume, and never fell that low the entire time he was there. Hiltzik also questioned the premise that any mid-level manager could have the impact that Asubonten asserted that he had. He also mapped Palaboras stock price against the price of copper, showing that the commodity price moves alone largely explained changes in Palaboras stock price. The second major claim that Hilzik investigated was one that both Asubonten and later CalPERS made, that he had been the managing director of a private equity firm. Frost in attempting to defend Asubonten admits that our assessment was accurate, that Asubonten was never a private equity professional, as in employed in an asset management firm that was investing money on a discretionary basis. Frost stated that Asubontens company was a consulting firm. As we pointed out more than once, consultants to investors, including very prestigious ones like McKinsey, BCG, and even ones whose business is primarily that of consulting to investors like Houlihan Lokey never call themselves private equity firms. Even worse, Frost said that per Hiltzik, her understanding was that Asubontens firm was a consulting firm that advised international investors. That strongly suggests that even in the face of the controversy over Asutontens truthfulness, Frost has made no effort to make any independent verification of the questionable claims on his resume, and on top of that, is trying to rationalize ones that clearly were misleading. Hiltzik observed that CalPERS parroting of Asubontens dodgy private equity firm claims would probably not pass muster with the SEC if CalPERS were a public company. Asubonten made a new claim that does not match up against public information. Marcie Frost told JJ Jelinic that Asubonten admitted to a period of unemployment, which we had assumed was after he was terminated from Palabora Mining Company at the end of 2009 through at least the end of 2010, since according to the suit he filed against Palabora in South Africa, he was looking for a job then. This is what Asubonten told Hiltzik: He said the employment gap on his resume covered a period in which he was working with a consortium on an ultimately unsuccessful effort to buy the copper mining company. That does not hold water. As you can see on the resume embedded at the end of the post, at the top of the second page, he depicts himself as having been involved in his private equity activities staring in 2010 to 2012. Asubonten told the Los Angeles Times that that employment gap was occupied by working with unsuccessful bidders to buy Palabora. But Palabora was not put up for sale until early September 2011. Moreover, having participated in mergers and acquisitions at Goldman, later running a mergers and acquisitions business, and subsequently worked regularly with investors, typically on the buy side, it is clear that Palaboras majority owners Rio Tinto and Anglo American put the company up for auction, which is how companies are sold to get the best price. Mind you, virtually all divisions of large companies are sold via auction. The only time a seller, particularly a seller that is a public company, might deviate from that practice is if a public sale could damage the value of the asset, if there were some critical senior executives who might bolt in the event of a public sale and would therefore have a major say on who the new company owners would be. or there were competitive considerations. None of these would apply to a relatively small, non-strategic operation like Palabora. It is similarly inconceivable that Rio Tinto would have been engaged in any serious discussions with potential buyers prior to putting the company up for sale. Its too well demonstrated that auctions yield the best price for corporate seller to engage in a preliminary time-wasting exercise when a property eventually be sold publicly in a highly structured process. Similarly, any serious buyers would know theyd at best be setting up a public sale if they were to approach a possible seller. Thus, the usual practice among possible purchasers is simply to let a potential seller to be sure to include them in any future buyer solicitation rather than put any energy into putting together an offer. Having said all of that, it is credible that Asubonten did get himself a consulting assignment with one of the groups that was kicking Palaboras tires. As a former CFO of the unit, Asubonten could present himself as having inside information about the operation and knowing its cost structure particularly well. But even with established clients (as in they know my price and terms and have accepted my standard agreement), Ive never had it take less than a week and a half to firm up arrangements on an assignment. So charitably, the earliest Asubonten could have been engaged to work on a purchase of Palabora would have been mid September 2011. That leaves a full 20 1/2 months of unemployment in 2010 and 2011. Hiltzik dings the board for behaving childishly and shirking its duties. From the close of his article: the board has shown itself to be one of our less impressive public bodies. Just a year ago, as I reported, the board was bogged down in intramural bickering and attacks on one of its most tough-minded members, J.J. Jelincic. As recently as last month, this behavior surfaced again, when board President Priya Mathur locked board member Margaret Brown out of CalPERS premises over what appeared to be a minor infraction. Moreover, according to a letter sent to Mathur last Friday by James Moody, an attorney for Brown, and reported by Webber, Mathur or CalPERS staff under her direction have been diverting mail addressed to Brown at CalPERSand apparently to other board members as welland in at least some cases not sharing its contents with the addressee. All this suggests that the CalPERS board members need to be given something serious to work on so they have less time to act childishly. A good place to start would be to inquire just how one of the systems most important executives was recruited and hired, and whether hes everything his CEO says he is. Since as Hilzik points out, neither Marcie Frost nor the board seem inclined to ask the questions they ought to be asking about Asubonten, CalPERS beneficiaries and California taxpayers need to give them a nudge Here are the members of the Senate Standing Committee on Public Employment and Retirement: Here are the members of the Assemblys Public Employees, Retirement, and Social Security Committee: And here are the contact details for the two elected state officers who also sit on CalPERS board: Mr. John Chiang California State Treasurer Post Office Box 942809 Sacramento, CA 94209-0001 john.chiang@treasurer.ca.gov (916) 653-2995 Ms. Betty Yee California State Controller P.O. Box 942850 Sacramento, California 94250-5872 b.t.yee@sco.ca.gov (916) 445-2636 Naked Capitalism reader have have an impact when snail or e-mailing California state officials on CalPERS matters. I hope youll rise to the occasion again. If any of the legislators above represent your district, I would write them expressing your concerns about governance at CalPERS. Or you could write all the members of both committees and tell them you have friends and family in their districts and plan to call their attention to the festering problems at CalPERS. If you are a CalPERS beneficiary, be sure to mention that. If CalPERS cant respond properly to the LA Times saying that its CFOs resume doesnt add up, and is not even allowing board members to get its own mail (link to our post yesterday), how can it possibly be up to the challenge of handling its underfunding crisis? Tell them the board governance is so clearly inadequate that they need to create an inspector general for CalPERS to provide badly-needed supervision. Copy Yee and Chiang, who as statewide officials are also sensitive to constitutent letters. Thanks so much for your interest and efforts! _____ Executive Summary: New CalPERS CFO Charles Asubontens Misrepresentations and Discrepancies in His Resume and Form 700 Misrepresentations and Inconsistencies in CalPERS CFO Charles Asubontens Resume CalPERS CFO Charles Asubontens Form 700 Violation and His Unduly Mysterious Private Equity Firm Why Charles Asubonten Is Not Qualified to Be Chief Financial Officer and What His Hiring Says About CalPERS Yves here. But Trump wants the headlines above all! By Stefan Legge, Senior Researcher and Lecturer in Economics, University of St.Gallen, Piotr Lukaszuk, PhD Candidate, University of St.Gallen, and Simon Evenett, Professor of International Trade, University of St. Gallen. Originally published at VoxEU While the Trump administrations proposed tariff increases on Chinese imports have grabbed the headlines, few realise that other trading partners have also raised tariffs on Chinese trade. This column examines the effects of the EU removing China from its General System of Preferences in 2012. As a result of the move, $242 billion worth of EU imports from China were subject to higher tariffs, raising EU customs revenue by an estimated $4 billion. Trade policy is grabbing the headlines to a degree not seen for years. US President Trump announced possible tariff increases on Chinese imports totalling $160 billion (Keynes and Bown 2018). However, few realise that other trading partners have raised tariffs on Chinese trade as well. Findings by the Global Trade Alert document a sharp increase in the share of Chinese exports facing tariff increases from 2014, predating the election of President Trump (Evenett and Fritz 2017: 64). Assessments of trade policy dynamics can be skewed by loud and transparent policy changes while hidden forms of policy intervention go unremarked. In this column, we document two observations that have been neglected in the current debate. First, the EU raised tariffs on products from China between 2013 and 2015 when it removed the country from the General System of Preferences (GSP). Second, the EU might face a conflict of interest with respect to lower tariffs since customs duties constitute a sizeable share of the overall EU budget. Following our estimates, the removal of China from the GSP resulted in about $4 billion of additional customs revenue. This is substantial if we compare it, for example, to the cost of Brexit which amounts to the UKs net contribution of roughly $12 billion in 2016. Promoting China and Charging Higher Tariffs To understand how the EU increased tariffs on Chinese products, first we recall that members of the WTO agreed to a most-favoured nation (MFN) principle. Simply put, this principle states that whatever tariff schedule a country determines applies to all WTO members. Hence, the EU cannot charge higher tariffs on goods, for example, from China than from the US. The two permitted departures from this principle are free trade agreements (FTA) and the General System of Preferences (GSP). The latter is a formal system of exemption from the general rules of the WTO to lower tariffs for poor countries, without also reducing tariffs for rich countries. Importantly, each country unilaterally decides which countries and products can benefit from GSP with other countries and products facing MFN tariff rates. In the case of the EU, in 2013 China qualified for GSP with about 60% of its exports to the EU benefitting from lower tariffs. However, in December 2012 the EU announced the removal of GSP benefits for Chinese products in most sectors starting from 1 January 2014, as they were deemed competitive on the European market. Moreover, China was removed entirely from the list of GSP beneficiaries in the following year as it no longer satisfied the condition of being classified by the World Bank as a lower-middle-income country for three consecutive years (Art. 4.1(a) of the EU regulation 978/2012).1As a result, Chinese exports to the EU were then subject to higher MFN duties. Descriptive statistics show that EU MFN duties were on average 4.2% in 2017. As for the EU GSP schedule, the average is given by 1.96%. It should be noted that over 98% of EU imports from China face MFN tariff rates below tariff peaks, that is, below 15%. In terms of tariff lines, only 102 out of 4,626 products exported by China (at the 6-digit HS code level) face such tariff peaks. Compared to the 25% tariff rates recently announced by the Trump administration for over 1,300 tariff lines, the EUs move on China was much smaller only 17 MFN tariff lines are equal to or above 25% (affected products are seafood, wine, and tobacco). Figure 1 Accumulated EU Imports from China for GSP and MFN In Figure 1, we show cumulative EU imports from China on the vertical axis. The figure shows that under GSP about 70% of imports were duty-free, while under MFN only 38% face a zero tariff. To further illustrate the difference between GSP and MFN as well as which sectors are most relevant in the bilateral trade, we show GSP and MFN duties in Table 1 for the industries with the largest EU imports from China. Table 1 GSP and MFN tariffs for the EUs largest imports from China When restricting the data set to products (6-digit HS codes) with more than $100 million worth of EU imports from China, we find large tariff increases of up to 12 percentage points for video recording or reproducing apparatus, ball bearings, or parts of ball or roller bearings. Particularly noteworthy is the increase from zero to 6.5% for the $2.5 billion worth of articles of plastics (code 392690). In total, there are 480 products with more than $100 million and 34 products with more than $1 billion worth of imports that faced a tariff increase. Overall, based on 2015 data, $242 billion of EU imports from China faced a tariff increase. This quiet tariff increase exceeds the scale of President Trumps far more public threat to raise tariffs on $160 billion of Chinese imports. Raising Revenue for the EU Budget We reckon that the removal of China from the list of GSP-qualified countries had a significant fiscal effect. Lacking actual tariff revenue data, we use tariff rates reported by the WTO combined with import values from UN Comtrade to estimate how much the EU collected in import duties from Chinese products. The dataset used for this analysis covers about 4,600 products (6-digit HS codes) for which we know the import value as well as the MFN and GSP ad valorem tariff.2Given that EU imports from China are stable in the years 2011 to 2016 at around $400 billion, we concentrate on import data from 2013 the last year before Chinese imports were affected by the GSP withdrawal. Using this dataset and average ad valorem duties, we calculate that the EU would have collected $6.1 billion if all imported Chinese products benefitted from available lower GSP tariffs and about $12.9 billion if the MFN schedule applied to all imports. Using minimum and maximum duties within 6-digit HS codes, we find a lower and upper bound of GSP customs revenue of $5.5 and 6.8 billion, while for MFN the revenue is between $11.1 and $14.8 billion. The estimated effect of removing China from the GSP of $6.8 billion (or between $4.3 and $9.3 billion) likely overstates the true effect. Rules-of-origin might have prevented utilising GSP so that reduced tariff rates are applied to only a fraction of imports. Nilsson (2011) finds that about 81.6% of EU imports from GSP-eligible countries utilised the GSP, while Keck and Lendle (2012) document a utilisation rate of 63% for imports from China. Taking into account these qualifications, how important was the removal of China from the GSP for the EU budget? In 2016, total EU revenue was 132.2 billion, of which customs duties accounted for 15.2%, or 20.1 billion. While tariff revenue is relatively small for rich countries today, the EU is more dependent on such revenue. For a comparison, customs and other import duties as percent of tax revenue are about 1.9% in the US. Typically, the poorer a country, the higher this share. The EUs share of 15.2% aligns it with developing countries like Cambodia or Burkina Faso.3Notably, EU import duties are collected by member states, which keep 20% to cover administrative costs and pass 80% on to the EU.4Figure 2 shows a sizeable increase in total EU customs revenue when China was removed from the GSP. Figure 2 Total customs revenue collected by the EU between 2007 and 2016 When interpreting the 2013 to 2015 increase in tariff revenue from about 20 to 25 billion, one must examine whether other changes in the EUs trade policy played a major role. To our knowledge this was not the case since the EU-Korea free trade agreement came into force in January 2015 but had been provisionally in effect since July 2011. Taking this into account and assuming a 70% utilisation of GSP, the switch from GSP to MFN for imports from China raised about $4 billion for the EU budget. Looking forward, the contribution of customs revenue to the EUs budget may reduce the blocs incentive to liberalise trade, especially in light of revenue losses following Brexit. The March 2018 recommendation by the European Commission to impose an interim tax on the revenues of foreign internet giants is another warning of a growing commercial policy-budget nexus. With a suggested tax rate of 3%, the Commission expects this imposition to raise 5 billion euros from foreign companies.5Yet another reason to expect a less open EU trade policy in the years to come. Endnotes [1] On 20 November 2012, the EUs GSP reform came into force. It reduced the number of GSP beneficiaries to about 80 countries, while expanding the number of affected tariff lines (regulation 978/2012). Shortly after, the Commission announced regulation 1213/2012in which it reduced the number of country-specific sectors eligible for GSP. China was the country mostly affected by these changes coming into force on 1 January 2014. Finally, China was fully removed from the list of GSP-eligible countries by regulation 1421/2013on 1 January 2015. [2] We exclude tariff lines (i.e. 6-digit HS codes) for which duties are not ad-valorem. This constitutes 136 commodities which account for less than 1 percent of all EU imports from China. [3] Data from the World Bank on Customs and other import duties (% of tax revenue) to be found here. [4] The Official Journal of the European Union, published on June 6, 2014 states that Member States are to retain, by way of collection costs, 20 % of the amounts collected by them. It can be found here. [5] For details see https://ec.europa.eu/taxation_customs/business/company-tax/fair-taxation-digital-economy_en See original post for references On April 1, Easter Sunday, Katelyn Reilly and myself (Maria Hayes) travelled to Lourdes with Group 203 with The Irish Pilgrimage Trust and we returned home on April 7. As part of our Transition Year Programme, Katelyn and myself wanted to do something totally out of our comfort zones. This was most certainly a brilliant opportunity for us to go and help some children in need and also to make lifelong friends. I can easily say that we have achieved both of those things. The week in Lourdes could only be described as magical, there is something about the place, atmosphere and people there that make it a special place. The masses were long but were not drawn out because there was so many songs to keep everyone entertained. Everything was done for the guests. For example, one priest wore a green, white and orange Mohawk wig all week long, even during masses. It was people like this that made the week feel magical as you got to see the child come out in everyone. I can go on and on about my experience in Lourdes but I can still not explain the feeling there. It must be experienced in person for one to truly understand the magic in Lourdes. Written by Maria Hayes (Transition Year) Motor insurance company Axa has confirmed that it is to close an office branch in Clonmel by the end of the year. There are four full time employees and one part time in the Clonmel branch. In a statement Axa said in recent years like other financial service businesses in Ireland, Axa has seen a pronounced switch by customers away from branches in favour of telephone and online channels. This increased customer preference for online and mobile service has meant a reduction in demand for branch visits in some locations. In June of 2017 Axa confirmed that it had completed a review of its multi-channel model including how its branch network should be transformed to more effectively reflect changing customer preferences now and for the future. Amongst the proposals set out to staff at that time was a reduction in the number of branches located in the Republic of Ireland and Northern Ireland. The branch in Clonmel was identified as one of the branches that would close as fewer customers are choosing to use the branch to do their business with Axa in favour of phone and online services. "The closure is expected to take effect towards the end of this year. In the coming months all customers of the branch will be contacted by Axa directly and will receive advice and information on how the company will continue to provide excellent customer service, by phone to its Irish 24-hour Axa staffed customer service centre,through its smart phone friendly website and through neighbouring branches including its branch in Thurles" said an Axa spokesperson. We will work closely with staff and customers to deal with these changes with care and sensitivity. We will continue to deliver excellent customer service in 24 branches throughout Ireland while providing service options that reflect the needs and preferences of our customers in Clonmel the spokesperson added. As an international organisation, NATO is characterised by diversity. People from different backgrounds and cultures, work styles and ways of thinking work here. This is reflected in the Alliances internship programme, which offers opportunities in a variety of fields, including communications, finance, human resources, international relations, IT, law and political science. The 16th cycle of the programme opened on 16 April 2018 for placement in 2019. Students should monitor our job portal regularly, as we will be publishing more vacancies every day. Each vacancy will be opened for 4 weeks. Enriching and professional What are the benefits of a NATO internship? We asked some recent interns for their thoughts. Michaela had completed a Masters in International Security and in European Union External Relations and Diplomacy Studies, when she took up her NATO internship with the Protection of Civilians Section in the Operations Division. Working at NATO Headquarters has been enriching for a young professional in terms of understanding the internal functioning of the Alliance, she says. Building on previous skills and expertise, there is a possibility to be well integrated into policy processes, participation in external events and missions as well as in terms of interaction with other relevant actors in specific fields such as the EU, the UN, the ICRC and relevant NGOs. The experience also allowed Michaela to make new contacts. Working at NATO has been an excellent opportunity to expand my network of professional contacts and friends, she tells us. Describing his internship as the best experience I ever had, Giuseppe tells us, I had the opportunity to apply my professional skills and engineering background to [working on] the new NATO Headquarters, working with a qualified team, with tasks that were getting me directly inside the action of the project a real and professional internship. As an intern in the Public Diplomacy Division, Lea was able to put her background in journalism to good use. During the internship I could experience public diplomacy in all its facets, whether it was a press conference, the production of media content or face-to-face engagement with important stakeholders, Lea explains. The internship provided me with a deeper understanding of the complex political challenges and possible communication measures to face them, she adds. Dilara worked in the Emerging Security Challenges Division. It was the most unique and rewarding professional experience I have ever had. As a cyber defence policy intern, I had the distinct pleasure of having worked with team members who made me realise, every single day, that my efforts contributed directly to the Alliances enhanced cyber defence policy initiatives that will lead NATO to engage in implementing the cyber-related decisions taken in Warsaw. A wealth of opportunities The range of possible thematic orientations is broad: graduate students of aeronautics, engineering, graphic design, journalism, law enforcement, library science, or translation, might also find a unique opportunity to gain international experience in the field of peace and security. Knowledge of Russian or Arabic is especially welcome. Although some interns stay on at NATO after the internship to complete ongoing assignments or to take up full-time employment, many move on to other international organisations. Whatever their long-term ambitions, NATO interns gain invaluable experience as they strive to achieve them. To apply or learn more, visit the NATO Internship Programme page. (Natural News) Water, when contaminated, can sometimes cause disease even death. This is what a small Eastern North Carolina community in the Atlantic found out too late. The community, which has less than 600 residents, tested positive for cancer-causing chemicals perfluorooctane sulfonate and perfluorooctanoic acid (PFOA). These are used to make products more stain-resistant, waterproof, and nonstick. They are found in household products like cookware, carpets, food packaging, and clothes. The Navy, in an effort to protect the residents, is now providing bottled water to the area. And just to make sure the water is safe, it is testing more than 250 wells near the Marine Corps Outlying Landing Field Atlantic. Thats not the only problem this part of North Carolina is facing. Its also dealing with air and water pollution issues from GenX, a chemical the company Chemours created to replace PFOA. Chemours spilled GenX into the Cape Fear River for years. The river supplies drinking water to residents from Fayetteville to Wilmington. In 2016, the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) limited the amount of the chemicals in drinking water, saying that it brought problems like low birth weight, early puberty, cancer, and liver, immune, and thyroid disease. In a 2016 document, the Defense Department named 393 installations known or are suspected of being contaminated with cancer-causing chemicals. This included six North Carolinas Fort Bragg, Cherry Point, Charlotte Air National Guard Base, Seymour Johnson Air Force Base, and Stanly County Airport. This prompted the government to spend over $800,000 to look into the problems in these areas. The issue is not limited to North Carolina alone. The Navy is conducting tests and cleanup at Whidbey Island Naval Air Station near Seattle, at the former Warminster Naval Air Warefare Center and the former Naval Air Station Willow Grove near Philadelphia and other facilities all over the U.S. (Related: Now Detroit is dealing with toxic chemicals in the drinking water.) The Department of Defense said that as of August 31, 2017, the military departments tested over 2,600 groundwater wells in 90 installations for the presence of harmful chemicals. Heather Babb, a Department of Defense spokesman, said in an e-mail that 1,621 of these 2,600 groundwater wells were positive for PFOS/PFOA. The harmful effects of water contamination can put you and your familys health at risk. So its wise act and check water contamination before it claims more lives. Heres what you can do: Never pour fat from cooking or any other type of fat, oil, or grease down the sink. Have a fat jar handy to collect the fat and solid waste. Dont pour household chemicals or cleaning agents down the sink or toilet. Refrain from flushing pills, liquid, or powder medications, tissues, wrappers, dust cloths and other paper items down the toilet bowl. Throw them in a wastebasket. Save on power and water by turning on the dishwasher only you have a full load. Never dispose pesticides, herbicides, fertilizers, motor oil, or other automotive fluids into the sanitary sewer or storm sewer systems. Theyll end up in the river. These preventive measures may be simple. But they can prevent disease, or even save lives. Read CleanWater.news to learn more. Sources include: NewsObserver,com Simsbury-CT.gov (Natural News) A new study indicates that cocaine is now so prevalent in society that ten percent of those who have never even used the drug actually have traces of it on their hands. The study, which was carried out by researchers at the University Surrey, involved testing the fingerprints of 50 drug free volunteers and an additional 15 volunteers who had taken cocaine or heroin in the past 24 hours. The researchers found that of the fingerprints taken from the 50 drug-free volunteers, roughly 13 percent contained traces of cocaine, and one percent contained a metabolite of heroin. Its clear that fingerprint testing is the future of drug-testing, said Mahado Ismail, lead author of the study. There are many factors that set fingerprint testing apart its non-invasive, easy to collect and you have the ability to identify the donor by using the sample. Believe it or not, cocaine is a very common environmental contaminant, explained Dr. Melanie Bailey, Lecturer in Forensic Analysis at the University. It is well known that it is present on many bank notes. Even so, we were surprised that it was detected in so many of our fingerprint samples. Dr. Bailey added that they have found a way to tell the difference between someone who had come into contact with environmental contaminants and someone who was a genuine drug user. By establishing a threshold for significance on a fingerprint test, we can give those tested the piece-of-mind of knowing that whatever the result of the test may be, it was not affected by their everyday activities or shaking hands with someone that had taken drugs. (Related: The TSA has been caught in a massive $100 million cocaine cover-up). But while the researchers at University Surrey are confident that they can make a distinction between people who had come into contact with environmental contaminants and real drug users, others are still quite concerned. What would happen if you were apprehended by authorities and they found traces of cocaine on your fingerprints, even though you had never sold or used the drug? What if the standards that University Surrey came up with to be able to tell the difference between a victim of environmental contaminants and a real drug user failed, and an innocent person was wrongly convicted of a crime he or she never committed? (Related: Snorting cocaine makes you six times more likely to suffer from a stroke.) This hypothetical scenario has happened in the past. Back in 2015, for instance, a bus driver in the U.K. by the name of Alan Bailes won a claim for unfair dismissal after failing a drug test because he handled banknotes that had traces of cocaine on them. While this was certainly an unfortunate occurrence, it really shouldnt have come as a surprise to the people of Britain. According to a study conducted by the Forensic Science Service, nearly all banknotes in the country are contaminated with cocaine within two weeks of entering circulation. Notably, the old cotton banknotes are notorious for picking up substances, which is one of the main reasons why the Bank of England is phasing them out and replacing them with plastic notes. Even though this study was carried out in Britain, concerns over cocaine and illegal drug use remain high in the United States as well, especially as our border remains open and illegal immigrants continue to traffic drugs into the country from Mexico. In January, for example, ICE reported that a 46-year-old illegal alien from south of the border was sentenced to 12 years in federal prison for smuggling cocaine into the United States after having been deported once before. Another illegal immigrant, 37-year-old Giovanni Montijo-Dominguez, was also charged by criminal complaint with cocaine trafficking. Sources include: Telegraph.co.uk Dailymail.co.uk ICE.gov (Natural News) In a bid to protect its prime tourist destinations, the Thai government has decided to enforce stricter measures in these areas, in particular, banning unfriendly activities to prevent further damage to the environment and marine wildlife. The ban, which will take effect in July, will cover Koh Samui, Koh Tao, and Koh Phangan in Surat Thani province. According to Department of Marine and Coastal Resources chief Jatuporn Burutphat, the protections will last for two years and may be renewed. In an article published in the Bangkok Post, the measures included no anchoring at a coral reef, a ban on feeding marine animals, no catching fish, no construction that has harmful results on marine and coastal resources, no [wastewater] discharges, and no sea walker activity. The ban will also favor the use of buoys to moor boats, instead of having to anchor in the sea. The measure isnt new in Thailand, as this is the second time that such as ban was enacted by the department under the Marine and Coastal Resources Management Promotion Act which was established to regulate activities that could be harmful to marine and coastal resources. In 2016, the government enacted a similar measure in closing the Koh Khai islands, a popular tourist destination off the coast of Phuket. At the time, the closure was spurred by a report from the Phuket Marine Biology Centre, which stated that tourist activities and building developments have severely damaged the areas natural resources. All these activities negatively impact the marine ecosystem and cause a deterioration in natural resources. They must be stopped, said Department of Marine and Coastal Resources regional chief Watcharin Na Talang. This could not have come at a better time: According to government estimates, the marine ecological system on the three islands in particular, those around coral reefs has significantly declined. The islands are home to 25,310 rai (4,049.6 hectares) of coral reef and 9,495 rain (1,519.2 hectares) of seagrass, as well as rare species including the endangered Irrawaddy dolphins, Chinese white dolphin, and Brydes whale. Eight more species of whales call these islands home, as well as turtles and dugongs. However, there isnt an effective system on wastewater and garbage management, despite it being a tourist attraction. In Koh Tao alone, around 30 tonnes (around 33.07 US tons) of garbage are produced in a day, according to the department. Koh Samui, one of the most famous beaches in Thailand, is worse off: 250,000 tonnes (275,577.83 tons) of garbage have accumulated waiting for proper disposal as the incineration plant has been out of commission for over eight years. Koh Phangan, on the other hand, produces 7,300 tonnes (8,046.81 tons) of waste a year. How you can help You dont have to be a government official to make a difference. You can help keep beaches clean by: Cleaning up before you leave. Beaches all over the world are teeming with junk tourists leave behind them. Make it a habit to put your trash in reusable cloth bags that you can bring home with you. Leaving plastic lying on the coast could potentially hurt marine wildlife once it reaches them even killing them. Beaches all over the world are teeming with junk tourists leave behind them. Make it a habit to put your trash in reusable cloth bags that you can bring home with you. Leaving plastic lying on the coast could potentially hurt marine wildlife once it reaches them even killing them. Volunteering as a wildlife monitor. A wildlife monitor is in charge of watching out for turtles, birds and other species of interest in a particular section of the beach and is also tasked with protecting them from poachers who may want to take them away or threaten their lives. Too busy to join the campaign? You can donate funds, supplies, equipment, food, and drinks to wildlife monitors. (Related: Does being green make you happy? Research suggests engaging in eco-friendly behavior makes us feel good about ourselves.) Beaches and islands are pockets of paradise that restore our energy when the stress of life gets in the way. Lets take care of their natural beauty before it becomes too late. Sources include: BangkokPost.com News.com.au IUCNRedlist.org Care2.com (Natural News) As a publicly traded company, social media giant Facebook has certain obligations and responsibilities to closely monitor what crosses its platform in order to prevent illicit and illegal activity. But the company has been utterly failing in this regard, with one of the latest examples being its allowance of pages on the site that operate black market sales of endangered wildlife body parts. A screenshot thats been making the mainstream media rounds shows buckets of tiger teeth being offered for sale, which represents an illegal activity. Conservation and wildlife preservation groups quickly took notice, and immediately filed complaints with the federal Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) asking that action be taken to stop it. The complaint states that these illegal sales not only violate the law, but also Facebooks own policies as they pertain to allowable activity on the social network. Facebook has yet to respond to requests for comments about this issue, though Mark Zuckerberg, Facebooks CEO, has been busy lately testifying about other problems with the site, including its flagrant disregard for user privacy. A copy of the complaint, which was captured by The Associated Press (AP), reveals that it was initially filed by an undercover informant represented by the National Whistleblower Center (NWC), a nonprofit legal advocacy group. The identify of this informant, who captured video of face-to-face meetings with wildlife traffickers doing business over Facebook, remains confidential for the protection of this individual. When questioned about whether or not the complaint prompted the SEC to initiate an investigation, the federal agency also refused to comment. But its pretty clear at this point that Facebook is complicit in these crimes based on the simple fact that its done nothing, and continues to do nothing, to try to stop them. Facebook is not an innocent bystander to these crimes, says Stephen Kohn, executive director of NWC. Facebook sold advertisements on the very pages (on which) the illegal ivory was being marketed. Facebook joins wildlife protection coalition while quietly allowing wildlife to be exploited on its platform Whats even more outrageous is Facebooks recent joining of the Global Coalition to End Wildlife Trafficking Online, which was organized by Google and the World Wildlife Fund. Along with 20 other technology companies, Facebook is taking a stand against illegal wildlife trafficking but only in word, as opposed to deed. At the same time that Facebook has been paying lip service to saving the animals, an AP reporter was able to see scores of internationally banned wildlife products for sale on Facebook, both in public and private Facebook groups. Most of these are apparently based in Southeast Asia. Among the items for sale are belts made from what appeared to be the fur of Bengal tigers, a critically endangered species of which there are only about 2,500 still living in the wild. Also for sale on Facebook are horns collected from black rhinos, another very rare species thats heavily targeted by poachers throughout Africa. Only about 5,000 of these animals still remain. As illegal traders attempt to engage in the sale of such items, they often use Facebook services like Messenger, WhatsApp, and even Instagram to seal the deal. This means that pretty much the full suite of Facebook software is facilitating this illegal underground trade ring, and the company has yet to take any formidable steps to try to stop it even though its gone way overboard in trying to suppress free speech. Trafficking investigators say they have seen no drop off in the illegal products offered for sale on Facebook after prior public pledges by the company to crack down, reports Yahoo News. They are calling on federal security regulators to force Facebook to immediately freeze accounts being used by illegal traffickers and cooperate with international law enforcement to identify the individuals involved for prosecution. Read FacebookCollapse.com for more coverage of the decline of Facebook. Sources for this article include: Yahoo.com NaturalNews.com (Natural News) T.J. Miller, who plays the fictional character Weasel in Marvels Deadpool, was arrested at LaGuardia Airport early last week for allegedly calling in a fake bomb threat. According to the Hollywood Reporter, a press release stated that Miller was arrested for allegedly intentionally conveying to law enforcement false information about an explosive device on a train traveling to Connecticut. The outlet reports that the alleged bomb threat was made back in March. The former Silicon Valley star made an appearance before U.S. District Judge Jeffery A. Meyer in New Haven, Connecticut on Tuesday and was released on a $100,000 bond. If found guilty, the 36-year-old actor could potentially face of a maximum prison sentence of five years. This is hardly the first time that Miller has had trouble with the law. In December of 2016, the Deadpool star was arrested and charged for allegedly slapping an Uber driver over an argument about President Donald Trump. According to TMZ, Miller settled the dispute last month. With each passing day, it becomes increasingly obvious that Hollywood really is like a different planet, whose inhabitants feel as though the law doesnt apply to them. They are too rich and too famous, you see, to be bothered by the rules of society like the rest of us and when it comes to politics, Hollywood stars think that theyre all-knowing, all-seeing oracles. Recently, actor Rob Reiner took to Twitter and questioned why Republicans who love the country refuse to stand up to President Trump, who Reiner describes as a childish sociopathic liar for criticizing the mainstream media. Democracy is being tested. The rule of law and the press are under attack by a childish sociopathic liar, the All In The Family star wrote on Thursday. Congressional checks and balances have been obliterated. All it would take is one principled Republican, not on the way out, to stand up for the love of country. This is exactly why Hollywood actors and actresses should stick to entertaining us instead of lecturing us on politics. With this single post on social media, Reiner exposed himself as someone who doesnt understand what the rule of law actually is, what the conservative republicans actually stand for, and how American politics work in general. (Related: Hollywood celebrities have discovered that they have no real influence over the voters.) For example, President Trump hasnt been hostile to the rule of law; as a matter of fact, he has been extremely cooperative thus far with Robert Mueller and his phony investigation into so-called Russia collusion during the 2016 presidential election. Included in the rule of law is the idea that justice will be fairly and equally applied to all citizens of the United States, and in the case of President Trump, it most certainly has not been fairly applied. (Related: Please, Hollywood shut down completely while Trump makes America great again.) Furthermore, as Breitbart News pointed out, President Trump has not taken any steps to prevent the mainstream media from doing its job, unlike his predecessor Barack Obama. For instance, in 2013, Leonard Downie Jr., of the Washington Post called Obama the most closed, control-freak administration he had ever covered throughout his career in journalism, adding that the former president had prosecuted more whistleblowers under the 1917 Espionage Act than all of the presidents that came before him combined. Youll notice that Reiner never mentioned this (and probably never will) and instead focused all of his attention on how the childish, sociopathic Donald Trump criticizes the media. Hollywood really is an entirely different world, whose people often think they are above everybody else both legally and intellectually. Its a place where the lowest forms of humanity are put on full display, and liberalism reigns supreme. Follow more news on the Left cult at LeftCult.com. Sources include: Breitbart.com TMZ.com The remains of an MCAS Miramar-based Marine killed in a helicopter crash while training near El Centro returned to San Diego on Saturday. Gunnery Sgt. Derik R. Holley was killed on April 3 along with three other Marines: Lance Cpl. Taylor J. Conrad, 1st Lt. Samuel D. Phillips and Capt. Samuel A. Schultz. Holley, 33, and his crewmates were aboard the CH-53E Super Stallion when it went down for unknown reasons. The Marines were training to land in unimproved terrain, according to military officials. Holley was originally from Dayton, Ohio, but met wife in San Diego and started a family here. His body arrived at Lindbergh Field around 6 p.m. Patriot Guards then led the procession from the airport to Greenwood Mortuary in Mountain View. USMC If theyre going to sacrifice that for our country were definitely going to honor them, said Lorenzo Lizarraga, region captain in the Southern California Patriot Guard. Even though we didnt know the individual, he put on a uniform just like we did. The guards wanted to honor Holley, who made the ultimate sacrifice serving his country. "Im 74 years old and Im standing in the flag line sometimes with a tear in my eye, Lizarraga said. A memorial service for Holley is scheduled for Tuesday at MCAS Miramar. Tesla CEO Elon Musk's net worth is over $19 billion, according to Forbes, but people saw how hard he has been working to deliver the Tesla Model 3 cars, and they want to buy him a couch. An online crowdfunding campaign has raised over $3,600 to buy Musk a new couch after it was reported that Musk slept on the floor of the company's Fremont factory because the couch was too narrow. Musk talked to "CBS This Morning" host Gayle King last week and said he's under a lot of stress to get the Model 3 production on track. "I'm sleeping on the factory floor, not because I think that's a fun place to sleep. You know. Terrible," Musk said. He said he doesn't have time to "go home and shower." The money to get Musk a new couch was raised by over 200 people in one day, according to the GoFundMe page. Ben Sullins, the creator of the campaign, said that he has contacted Tesla and he's awaiting their reply. If Musk doesn't respond or chooses not to accept the couch, Sullins said he'll hold a vote to donate the money to charity. Sullins, who lives in San Diego, is a YouTuber whose channel "Teslanomics" talks about Tesla and other electric vehicles. He told NBC Bay Area that he started the crowdfunding campaign as a joke after he saw the "CBS This Morning" interview with Musk. Sullins said GoFundMe put the funds on hold and got in contact with him to make sure he won't "pocket" the money. Initially, Sullins didn't have a plan with what to do with the money. "I'm hoping Tesla will respond with a charity suggestion or hope Tesla will match the money," Sullins said. If not, Sullins said he plans to pick a charity or an association that will support the Electric Vehicles community in some way. San Francisco police are searching for a 23-year-old man wanted for felony animal cruelty after he was seen on video forcefully slamming a four-month-old puppy onto the floor. The puppy, named Prince, did not survive his injuries, police said. Police have identified San Francisco-resident Delos Pierre Gallon as the suspect. He is also wanted on suspicion of domestic violence and kidnapping. Gallon has a prior arrest for firearms violations and should be considered dangerous, police said. WARNING: Some viewers may find this video disturbing. Surveillance video shows a man forcefully slamming a puppy onto the ground in San Francisco. The incident appears to have started with an argument between Gallon and a female victim in a store on Turk Street. Police said Gallon threw canned goods at the victim and then grabbed her puppy, a Cocker Spaniel, from the arms of another person. Video shows Gallon then slamming the puppy onto the store floor. Anyone who sees Gallon should call 911. Anyone with information on the incident should contact SFPD at 415-575-4444. A renegade boater who dropped anchor in San Francisco's Aquatic Park last year is now gone. But not without a fight that frustrated many locals. Bryan Pennington's trimaran on Monday sat at the end of the Hyde Street commercial dock after it was towed there over the weekend. "I tied up to a mooring ball to be able to go and retrieve my anchor and the mooring ball drifted to shore," Pennington said. He said someone cut his anchor line, and someone did scrawl and move the boat on the side of his trimaran. Locals said Pennington has been anchored in Aquatic Park since last September, blocking swimming lanes and refusing to leave. In addition, the president of a local swimming club claims Pennington has been polluting the Bay. "It basically became a cesspool," Dolphin Club President Reuben Hechanova said. Pennington denies dumping his waste into the Bay, but admist he has been here long past the 30-day limit. For seven months, the Dolphin Club and the West End Rowing Club have been trying to get Pennington evicted. The struggle reached a peak this weekend after police boarded the boat to stop it from drifting. Pennington reportedly became belligerent. Pennington told NBC Bay area local laws do not apply and police had no right to order him to move. "I'm from the planet," Pennington said. "Not San Francisco, not California -- from the planet." The folks at the Dolphin Club do not understand why it would take seven months to remove Pennington's yacht. The water is controlled by the San Francisco Maritime National Historical Park. "I think it's kind of unprecedented, so we're charting unfamiliar waters," said Lynn Cullivan with the SF Maritime Historical Park. "But we'll get the chart done and in the future we'll know what to do." Pennington has been cited and arrested multiple times. He is due in court later this month. Tesla temporarily halted production of its Model 3 sedan at its Fremont plant, the company confirmed Monday. The stoppage, first reported by Buzzfeed, will last about three to four days to "improve automation" in the factory, a spokesman for the Palo Alto-based company said. During the pause, workers are expected to use vacation days or stay home without pay. In a tweet Friday, Musk blamed himself for excessive automation at Tesla's plant and said "humans are underrated." However, Tesla on Monday referred to a statement released in February regarding planned downtime in the Model 3 production schedule, which still applies, the company said: "Our Model 3 production plan includes periods of planned downtime in both Fremont and Gigafactory 1. These periods are used to improve automation and systematically address bottlenecks in order to increase production rates. This is not unusual and is in fact common in production ramps like this." A Tesla spokeswoman also referred to a statement released during its first quarter report, saying, "We were able to double the weekly Model 3 production rate during the quarter by rapidly addressing production and supply chain bottlenecks, including several short factory shutdowns to upgrade equipment." As a Southwest Airlines jet hurtled 32,000 feet over suburban Philadelphia, a rare engine explosion caused a passengers window to burst, partially pulling the woman sitting next to the opening out of the plane. Fellow passengers frantically worked to yank her back inside the airliner as it depressurized and quickly descended thousands of feet per minute, according to several passengers. The frightening ordeal played out Tuesday morning onboard Southwest flight 1380 as it headed for Dallas. The Boeing 737-700 was about 20 minutes into its journey from New Yorks LaGuardia Airport when the engine failure occurred. The plane, carrying 144 passengers and five crew, diverted to Philadelphia International Airport where it made an emergency landing at 11:20 a.m. Passengers described hearing a loud explosion from the left engine one of two onboard before debris peppered the fuselage and shattered that window. "The plane dropped immediately," said Matt Tranchin, who was sitting three rows behind the broken window. "Plane smelled like smoke. Ash was all around us." The woman, identified as Jennifer Riordan of Albuquerque, New Mexico, was pulled out of the plane up to her waist her blood splattering other windows, passengers said. "You hear the pop and she was sucked out from the waist up," one passenger told NBC Nightly News. "There was blood on the windows...her arms were actually out of the airplane and her head was out of the airplane." Eric Zilbert, another passenger, said "several heroic gentlemen" pulled Riordan back into the plane and immediately performed CPR. Tranchin said she was covered in blood. Peggy Phillips, a nurse, said she and another passenger performed about 20 minutes of CPR on the victim. "It just wasn't going to be enough," Phillips said. The pilot, speaking to air traffic control via the radio, asked for paramedics to meet the airplane to help injured passengers. "We have a part of the aircraft missing," the pilot, Tammie Jo Shults, said. Asked whether the plane was on fire, she responded: "No, it's not on fire but part of its missing. They said there is a hole and someone went out." Once the plane touched down in Philadelphia, firefighters doused it with fire-retardant foam to smother a small fire and gas leak coming from the engine, Philadelphia Fire Commissioner Adam Thiel said. Passengers shared photos of major damage to the plane's left engine. The engine inlet was shredded, with metal bent outward. The pane of a window just behind the left wing was missing. TV station KOAT in Albuquerque first identified Riordan, a resident of the city, on Tuesday afternoon. Her children's school, Annunciation Catholic School, sent an email to the school community breaking the news of her passing and asking for prayers. Her death is the first on board fatality in Southwest's 51 year history. On Wednesday, the Medical Examiner revealed Riordan died from blunt force trauma to the head, neck and torso. Her death was ruled an accident. Philadelphia fire officials said seven passengers were treated on the tarmac for minor injuries. The plane was traveling around 500 mph when the incident happened, according to a tracking tool on Flight Aware, and descended by more than 3,000 feet per minute until the pilots leveled out around 10,000 feet. Arthur Wolk, an aviation expert, said that is a modest rate of descent and indicated the pilot had control of the aircraft. Still, passengers were horrified by the turbulent incident. Tranchin, a 34-year-old from Dallas, said he spent 15 minutes calling family to say he loved them. "My wife is in her third trimester. Were expecting our first child. It was one of those things when you dont want to terrify your family, but if you do go down, you dont want to not say goodbye," he said. Another terrified passenger posted a live video to his Facebook page during the ordeal. The grainy footage shows a man attempting to secure his yellow oxygen mask while updating loved ones following his feed. "Something is wrong with our plane! It appears we are going down! Emergency landing!! Southwest flight from NYC to Dallas!!" Facebook user Marty Martinez wrote. He then added, "We are bracing for landing!!" Once the plane touched down on Philadelphia International Airport's runway 27, the passengers erupted into applause and thanked the crew. Todd Baur, the father-in-law of another passenger, described the crew as "incredible," saying that the pilots and flight attendants acted quickly and calmly. Alfred Tumlinson, who was sitting in the rear of the plane, heaped praise on them. "The crew and the pilotthat lady has the nerves of steelat this point you dont know where youre going you dont know where youre going to end up, you just have to keep everybody calm," he said. National Transportation Safety Board chairman Robert Sumwalt and a team of investigators landed in Philadelphia Tuesday afternoon to inspect the aircraft. During a Tuesday night press conference, Sumwalt said a part of the plane's engine covering was found in Bernville, Pennsylvania, about 70 miles west of Philadelphia. He also said one of the engine's fan blades was separated and missing. The blade was separated at the point where it would come to the hub and there was evidence of metal fatigue, according to Sumwalt. The engine a CFM56 is widely used in commercial aviation and is designed to prevent debris from breaking off the engine and flying into the body. The engine will eventually be detached from the plane and taken to an off-site facility for study. Sumwalt said the NTSB investigation will take an estimated 12 to 15 months. The manufacturer of the engine put out a service bulletin in the fall, telling all airlines to inspect the fan blades after a similar incident involving another Southwest flight. Officials with the airline checked Flight 1380 on Sunday. The FAA is expected to order mandatory inspections soon. The plane's flight recorders have also been secured and will be returned to the NTSB's headquarters near Washington, D.C. immediately, he said. Southwest Airlines CEO Gary Kelly released a video statement Tuesday evening sending condolences to the family of the deceased passenger and thanking the crew for their actions. I am immensely grateful there are no other reports of injuries but truly this is a tragic loss, he said. This is a sad day and our hearts go out to the family and loved ones of the deceased customer please join us in offering our thoughts and prayers and support to all those affected by today's tragedy. This is not the first time a Southwest plane had a major issue recently. In February, a cabin fire forced Southwest passengers to deplane before their flight took off from John Wayne Airport in Orange County, California, and San Jose. The fire believed to be in the Boeing 737's auxiliary power unit caused the plane's emergency chutes to deploy to evacuate 139 passengers and five crew members. A few minor injuries were reported, but no one was transported to hospitals. In 2016, a Southwest Airlines flight traveling from New Orleans to Orlando diverted to Pensacola when an engine blew out mid-flight. No injuries were reported, but the plane sustained extensive damage similar to what happened Tuesday: the engines inlet was torn away revealing additional damage to the fuselage, wing, winglet and tail stabilizer. Scientists working on new ways to battle the erosion that threatens Louisiana's coastline have a dramatic new tool: a massive replica of the lower Mississippi River. The Louisiana State University's Center for River Studies is home to the newly opened Lower Mississippi River Physical Model, a 10,000-square-foot (930-square-meter) reproduction of nearly 200 miles (322 kilometers) of the lower Mississippi from the town of Donaldsonville northwest of New Orleans to the Gulf of Mexico. The model will help experts study one of the most important rivers in North America and how sediment from it can be used to fight coastal erosion. "Not only can we model the flows and the water stages of the water levels in the Mississippi River, we can also model or simulate the transport or the movement of the Mississippi River sand down the river, and we can do all that in roughly one hour to replicate one year on the river," said Clint Willson, the LSU professor who heads the Center for River Studies. Louisiana is in a race to protect and rebuild its fragile coastline from decades of erosion while also facing rising seas from climate change. It's estimated to have lost 2,000 square miles (5,180 square kilometers) of coastline since the 1930s, according to Rudy Simoneaux of the state's Coastal Protection and Restoration Authority. That's about the size of Delaware. To fight back, Louisiana developed a plan that relies in part on slicing channels or diversions at various locations into the levees that keep the Mississippi River in its course and letting some of the sediment in the river into the rapidly eroding wetlands to rebuild land. The idea, said Simoneaux, is to "put the river back to work to rebuild what it once built on its own." The Delta region of southeastern Louisiana was built over centuries on sediment that washed down the river. But levees built along the river to prevent flooding mean the sediment basically washes into the Gulf. As part of its efforts to study the sediment diversions, the CPRA created the $18 million model and Center for River Studies, replacing an older, smaller river model that was decommissioned in 2009. The new model, housed just a stone's throw from the actual Mississippi River, is designed to help researchers answer such questions as: How does opening one diversion affect the river's flow? How do the diversions affect the dredging done by the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers? How do multiple diversions along the river affect each other? "What you do in one place has an impact on another, and so the idea of looking at larger-scale impacts or larger-scale processes is critical to looking at what the potential impacts are or the unintended consequences of projects, and so a model of this scale allows you to do that," said Willson. The model was made of high density foam panels strong enough for people to walk on. Data about the dimensions and shape of the Mississippi River and surrounding topography were put into a computer and then used to cut the panels. The panels, combined with the steel cables and jacks underneath, weigh about as much as one of the 737 jets flown by Southwest Airlines, Simoneaux said. When visitors walk into the second floor to look down onto the model, they can feel the moisture coming from the roughly 6,000 gallons (33,710 liters) of water floating on the model that replicate the river, the Gulf of Mexico and the various lakes and bayous along the coast. Tiny particles of plastic injected into the water mimic the sediment coursing through the Mississippi River. And they can raise the water level to replicate rising seas. Officials are hopeful that lessons learned at the center can be shared with other countries and regions struggling with similar problems as Louisiana. "An image like this model tells the story in a way that is way more powerful than a slide show, than a numerical modeling," said Justin R. Ehrenwerth, who heads the Water Institute of the Gulf, a Baton Rouge-based research organization that studies and helps coastal areas affected by problems like rising seas and subsidence. Associated Press reporter Stacey Plaisance contributed to this report. Click the photo to write a caption and have a chance to win a free subscription to the Norfolk Daily News. The White House scrambled Monday to walk back U.N. Ambassador Nikki Haley's weekend announcement that new economic sanctions against Russia are imminent, but stressed the penalties are still being considered. Haley created a firestorm Sunday when she said the new sanctions would be imposed by the Treasury Department on Monday, when, in fact, no such announcement was planned, according to two officials familiar with the matter. In a statement, White House press secretary Sarah Huckabee Sanders tried to clarify the situation, but her explanation created more confusion and led to suggestions that President Donald Trump had personally intervened to halt the sanctions from taking effect Monday. "We are considering additional sanctions on Russia and a decision will be made in the near future," Sanders said in a statement. The two officials, who were not authorized to discuss private administration deliberations publicly and spoke on condition of anonymity, said Haley had misspoken when she said on CBS' "Face the Nation" that Treasury Secretary Steven Mnuchin would announce the sanctions Monday "if he hasn't already." Haley said the sanctions would target those who are enabling Syrian leader Bashar Assad's government to continue using chemical weapons. The two officials said the administration had no plans to announce Syria-related sanctions on Russia this week, although they noted that two entities were hit with such penalties last month in a largely overlooked portion of a sanctions package that dealt mainly with Russian interference in the 2016 presidential election and hacking. After Haley's comments, some in the administration suggested the sanctions now being considered could be rolled out Monday. But others said it would be wiser and more effective to wait for a period longer than three days after the U.S., British and French infuriated Russia with their missile strikes on Syria on Friday. The officials could not say when the new sanctions would be announced. Meanwhile, President Donald Trump continued to hail the missile attack as perfectly carried out. Trump tweeted "Mission Accomplished" on Saturday after U.S., French and British warplanes and ships launched more than 100 missiles nearly unopposed by Syrian air defenses. While he declared success, the Pentagon said the pummeling of three chemical-related facilities left enough others intact to enable the Assad government to use banned weapons against civilians if it chooses. Trump's choice of words recalled a similar claim associated with President George W. Bush following the U.S.-led invasion of Iraq. Bush addressed sailors aboard a Navy ship in May 2003 alongside a "Mission Accomplished" banner, just weeks before it became apparent that Iraqis had organized an insurgency that would tie down U.S. forces for years. Later Sunday, Trump sent a letter to congressional leaders informing them in writing of his decision to order the strike. Under the War Powers Resolution, the president must keep Congress informed of such actions. The nighttime assault on Syria was carefully limited to minimize civilian casualties and avoid direct conflict with Russia, but confusion arose over the extent to which Washington warned Moscow it was coming. The Pentagon said it gave no explicit warning. The U.S. ambassador in Moscow, Jon Huntsman, said in a video, "Before we took action, the United States communicated with" Russia to "reduce the danger of any Russian or civilian casualties." After a video showing police arrest two black men at a Philadelphia Starbucks went viral, outrage continued to grow, with protests reaching Chicago. Nonprofit organization The Black Star Project announced plans to boycott Starbucks in Chicago beginning Wednesday. The group planned to organize roughly a dozen people at each of 10 locations across the city to distribute materials shedding light on the issue of racial discrimination. The boycott comes less than a week after police officers handcuffed and removed two men from a Philadelphia Starbucks on Thursday, an incident captured on video that quickly spread on social media. Authorities said officers were called to the store after the men, who have not been publicly identified, remained in the Starbucks after they asked to use the restroom, but were denied because they hadn't bought anything and refused to leave. They were later released after the company declined to press trespassing charges. Widespread outrage prompted Starbucks CEO Kevin Johnson to issue an apology, calling the video "very hard to watch" and promising to "be better." The Black Star Project planned to stage boycotts to help people understand privilege as it relates to corporate America, the organization said in a statement. The Starbucks locations where protesters will gather include the following Chicago stores: at 200 West Adams, 25 East Washington, 231 South LaSalle, 21 South Clark, 227 West Monroe, 444 North Michigan Avenue, 35th and State Street, 71st and Stony Island, 55th and Woodlawn and 4355 North Sheridan Road. A new poll says that Wrigley Field has been chosen as the top building in state history. The list was announced in the State Journal-Register as part of the ongoing Illinois Top 200 project, where buildings inspired by sports, the Illinois prairie and religious sites are among some of the most significant places residents chose in celebration of the state's 200th birthday. Every two weeks until Illinois' birthday on Dec. 3, the Illinois 200 project will conduct online polls for residents to vote for their favorite and most significant people, places and things in the midwestern state. Although the reasoning behind the results is unclear, Wrigley Field ranked No. 1. The iconic Chicago spot, which was once occupied by a seminary, has been home to the Chicago Cubs since 1916. Not to mention, the stadium also managed to acquire some of its fame due to numerous appearances in movies, plays and songs throughout the years. See Inside Some of the Newest Restaurants Near Wrigley Field Springfields Dana-Thomas House came in second. The landmark was designed in 1902 and it showcases architect Frank Lloyd Wrights most complete work on early prairie houses, given that this building contains the largest collection of site-specific, original Wright art glass and furniture, according to the official site. The Bahai House of Worship in Wilmette came in third. The Bahai faith has a total of nine houses of worship around the world and the oldest, which opened in 1953, is located in Illinois. The building is 138 feet high. Heres a look at the top 10 buildings in Illinois that made the list: 1. Wrigley Field 2. Dana-Thomas House 3. Bahai House of Worship 4. Willis Tower (originally known as Sears Tower) 5. Robie House 6. Tribune Tower 7. John Hancock Center 8. Farnsworth House 9. Jarrot Mansion 10. Fort de Chartres Powder Magazine This Illinois Top 200 project is a joint initiative of the Abraham Lincoln Presidential Library and Museum, The State Journal-Register and the Illinois Bicentennial Commission. Authorities in Indiana confiscated more than 78 pounds of marijuana at a traffic stop Monday morning. Indiana State Police said a trooper in Hancock County noticed a black SUV around 11 a.m. weaving outside the traffic lanes while patrolling Interstate 70. The trooper discovered an estimated street value of $250,000 worth of marijuana inside the vehicle. An Indiana Officer did not shy away from having some fun with this case on Twitter. Sgt. John Perrine wrote "somebody's 4/20 celebration is canceled #WeWillCatchYou ." [[480045203, C]] Christian Elie, 51, of Elbert Colorado was driving the 2017 Ford Expedition and was accompanied by 42-year-old Austin Johnson of Indianapolis, police said. [[480024953, C]] Officials said both men were arrested and transported to the Hancock County Jail on preliminary drug charges. Troopers will work with the Hancock County Prosecutors Office to determine formal charges. The investigation was still ongoing as of Tuesday afternoon. A Michigan man has been charged with sexually assaulting a woman at a hotel in the Loop while he was in town to celebrate a friends birthday. Tyler Wilkin, 23, of Holton, Michigan, faces a felony count of criminal sexual assault, according to the Cook County States Attorneys Office. On Friday, Wilkin was part of a group that came to the city and booked a room at Hampton Inn, 22 W. Monroe, to celebrate a birthday, prosecutors said. The group of five went out drinking Saturday night and Wilkin and others bought the woman drinks and she became intoxicated, prosecutors said. When the group returned to their shared hotel room about 4:30 a.m. Sunday, the woman went to sleep fully clothed on one of the beds, prosecutors said. At some point during the night, she awoke to find she was no longer wearing her underwear and was being sexually assaulted by Wilkin. Prosecutors said the woman had previously made it clear to Wilkin she was not interested in a sexual relationship with him. The woman yelled, alerting the others in the room, prosecutors said. One person stayed with the woman to console her, while the others took Wilkin from the room and confronted him. Wilkin initially denied sexually assaulting the woman to his friends, but he later admitted to the assault and to knowing she was intoxicated and sleeping. A condom was recovered, prosecutors said. Wilkin also made admissions while in police custody. His bail was set at $100,000 at a court appearance Monday at the Leighton Criminal Courthouse. He was scheduled back in court April 23. Prosecutors are deciding whether school officials should be charged for failing to report a substitute teacher over allegations of his involvement in a "fight club" at Montville High School, according to an Associated Press report. Police said cellphone videos show 23-year-old Ryan Fish, of Bozrah, encouraging students as they slap each other in a classroom at Montville High School. Fish was fired in October, but police were not notified until two months later. Superintendent Brian Levesque has said he did not alert police because he knew of only one fight and thought it was an isolated incident. A spokesman for the Office of the Chief States Attorney responded to NBC Connecticut with a statement when asked if the office would be making a determination about whether to prosecute school officials in Montville. The Department of Children and Families referred a matter involving compliance with the mandated reporter law in Montville to this agency. The matter was referred to the Office of the States Attorney in New London, which has jurisdiction over all criminal matters in the Town of Montville. We do not comment on any pending investigation, the statement says. Fish has denied facilitating the fights. "I didn't know what they were doing, to be honest with you," Fish said when asked if he allowed students to fight in his classroom. He pleaded not guilty to charges including reckless endangerment. "I am so sorry. Because I'll be totally honest, I was just trying to reach the kids. I thought these kids were just being rambunctious. I just thought they needed an out," Fish said after a court appearance. "If I had known what it was doing to the kids I would have done something completely different." Connecticut is about to receive funds from the federal government to help keep elections safe. Connecticut was one of 21 states that were hit by hackers 2016. Secretary of the State Denise Merrills office said the hack was unsuccessful and the states firewalls caught the attack in progress, but there was cause for alarm. Now the federal government is stepping up to help states prevent that from happening again. Voting results and machines were not impacted by the attempted hack as no voting tabulation system is connected to the internet in Connecticut. The attempted hack was made public in September 2017 and Secretary Merrill said at the time, This successful defense of the integrity of our online voter registration system is good news for Connecticut, but it underlines the threat posed by foreign agents seeking to disrupt U.S. elections and sow the seeds of doubt in the integrity of our electoral process. Merrill also called on Congress to investigate Russian attempts at election meddling. Really, the system in question is the voter registry itself. Its the names, its the data. Its not the voting process itself, Merrill said on Monday. With that in mind, the state has been awarded $5 million to be used for election security. At a meeting Monday, state officials met with security experts, the National Guard and the Department of Homeland Security to discuss election safeguards. Local election managers said the moves are needed to renew the publics trust. We want to make sure that the public feels our elections are safe and secure and if they start getting the impression that theyre not then democracy is in trouble, Sue Larsen (D), the South Windsor registrar of voters, said. Merrill said voter information has become the most popular topic in messages to her office. Ive had hundreds of emails, phone calls. Everyones concerned, she said. Preparations for the November election have been underway since the 2016 election, with state officials exploring beefing up the states firewalls to prevent future cyberattacks. In happier times. Photo: Nicolas Asfouri/AFP/Getty Images China lobbed another volley in the Sino-U.S. trade battles on Tuesday. The country imposed an extremely steep tariff 176.8 percent on sorghum, an American-made cereal grain that is used as a cattle feed and sweetener for baijiu, the popular Chinese liquor. After conducting an investigation, China concluded that the U.S. was dumping sorghum on the Chinese market, hurting its domestic producers. China imports about $1 billion a year worth of the grain from the U.S. Sorghum is mainly produced in the American South, in regions that voted heavily for President Trump. Despite the aggressive tactic, talk of a full-blown trade war has died down slightly in the last few days, as President Trump has focused his Twitter attention more on James Comey than sparking unnecessary economic disasters. And, though the Trump administrations steel-and-aluminum tariffs on China have gone into effect, more than $100 billion of additional duties the president has threatened are still in the planning stages. (China has announced a list of American products it would impose tariffs on if Trump pulls the trigger.) Chinese president Xi Jinping also announced in a speech last week that he would further open the country to foreign auto manufacturers, a concession that was seen as a possible win for Trump, a sign that trade tensions between the countries might yet be allayed. On Tuesday, China announced some specifics of that plan, including getting rid of foreign ownership limits for electric-car makers this year. Hartford police have arrested a suspect in a murder and said authorities apprehended Luis Quinones-Aponte, 32, of Groton, at Bradley Airport when he returned to Connecticut after fleeing to Puerto Rico. Quinones-Aponte is accused of shooting Eduardo Anes in the chest. Officers found Anes with a single gunshot wound when they responded to his Henry Street home on Saturday, Feb. 24 after shot spotter detected five gunshots. Anes was transported to Hartford Hospital, where he was pronounced dead a short time later, according to police. Investigators identified Quinones-Aponte as the suspect in what they believe was a drug-related slaying and learned that hed fled to Puerto Rico, police said. Then, detectives learned that Quinones-Aponte was returning to Connecticut on Monday and a team responded to Bradley International Airport and took him into custody. Bond for Quinones-Aponte was set at a $1 million for the charges of murder, conspiracy to commit murder and criminal possession of a firearm. He will be arraigned today. Police continue to investigate and ask anyone with information to call Major Crimes Division Lieutenant Paul Cicero at 860-757-4179 or the Hartford Police Department confidential tip line at 860-722-TIPS (8477). Get ready for more sneezing and itchy eyes. The pollen count for grass and trees is spiking in North Texas. "We are seeing a lot of allergies come through now," said Donna Barsky, who owns Texas Star Compounding Pharmacy. "People who are not raised here, may not realize these are allergies or allergens that they are reacting to." Barksy said she's been busy lately making custom, personalized allergy medications to ease suffering. "These are all allergens," Barsky said pulling out two plastic bins full of about 75 viles labeled 'elm mix', 'red mulberry', and more. "If somebody develops an allergy here (in North Texas), it's probably in this box." "Once I start seeing the yellow pollen on the cars, I cringe," said Eddie Althaus. "Because I know it's coming." Althaus is an allergy sufferer and said his allergies have been especially bad lately. "It's horrible," Althaus said. "A lot of fungus in the air...everything is starting to bloom," explained Barsky. "It's like putting us in a Ziplock bag, zipping us up, and we're breathing it all." Right now it's grass and trees. Next will be mites and molds. What to Know Flight 1380 was headed from LaGuardia to Dallas with 149 people on board when the flight suffered catastrophic engine failure. Passengers report a woman was partially pulled out of the airplane and that nearby passengers pulled her back into the cabin. NTSB officials confirm one fatality. Philadelphia FD said a dozen other passengers were evaluated and none required hospitalization. A passenger on-board a Southwest Airlines flight to Dallas died Tuesday morning when a catastrophic engine failure apparently sent shrapnel into the aircraft, shattering a window and causing the plane to suddenly depressurize at more than 30,000 feet, officials say. The passenger, identified as Jennifer Riordan, was a bank executive with Wells Fargo and mother of two from New Mexico. The coroner said late Wednesday afternoon that Riordan, who was partially pulled from the plane as it depressurized, was killed by shrapnel that was hurled through her window and that she died of blunt impact trauma of head, neck and torso. News of Riordan's death was first shared by the assistant principal of the Albuquerque Catholic school attended by her two children. In an email to parents, assistant principal Amy McCarty wrote that "the family needs all the prayers we can offer." Jennifer Riordan and her husband Michael Riordan were profiled in 2015 by KOB-TV in Albuquerque about how they each managed their high-profile careers as well as their marriage and children. The flight, Southwest Airlines Flight 1380 from LaGuardia to Dallas Love, with 149 people on board, was climbing through 32,500 feet at about 10:03 a.m., according to data from FlightAware, when passengers reporting hearing what sounded like a series of explosions. That noise apparently came from the port-side engine which sent debris shooting into the aircraft's wing and fuselage. The debris also shattered a window, causing the plane to suddenly and violently depressurize. NBC 5 News The crew quickly descended and diverted to Philadelphia International Airport, advising airport officials they had an engine failure, a possible fuel leak and injured passengers on board. Upon arrival, the aircraft was immediately surrounded by firefighters who doused a small engine fire and boarded the aircraft. Though it's not immediately clear what caused the engine damage, aerial video from WCAU-TV in Philadelphia showed the engine cowling shredded and ripped away as well as major damage to the engine. In a press conference Tuesday night, the NTSB announced that one of the fan blades was missing from the engine and that investigators had found metal fatigue where the fan blade attached to the hub. Officials also said that a part of the engine cowling was found about 70 miles northwest of Philadelphia. Investigators with the NTSB examine the engine and wing of a Southwest Airlines 737-700 that made an emergency landing Tuesday, April 17, 2018 after a catastrophic engine failure that left one passenger dead. The undersea search zone for the missing Malaysia Airlines jet has been expanded, NBC News reported. The NTSB is now dispatching a team to Dallas to review inspection and maintenance records at Southwest's headquarters. Southwest CEO Gary Kelly also has told the NTSB that the company will start conducting enhanced inspections on the entire fleet immediately. Passengers who were on-board the Southwest Airlines jet that was forced to make an emergency landing after an engine malfunction, talk about what they witnessed inside the plane. Passengers who were on-board the Southwest Airlines jet that was forced to make an emergency landing after an engine malfunction, reunite with family members at Dallas Love Field Airport. Passenger Killed; Seven Others Treated for Injuries In a news conference Tuesday afternoon, Philadelphia airport officials confirmed one passenger was critically injured but refused to say anymore about the person's condition. Philadelphia Fire Commissioner Adam Thiel confirmed a dozen others were evaluated, though only seven required treatment and none required hospitalization. Following the airport news conference, NTSB Chairman Robert Sumwalt confirmed one of the passengers died. The death is the first passenger fatality in a U.S. airline accident since 2009. Riordan was a vice president of community relations for Wells Fargo bank. She was the wife of Michael Riordan, who until recently served as the chief operating officer for the city of Albuquerque. The New Mexico Broadcasters Association said on social media Riordan was a graduate of the University of New Mexico and former board member. Dallas-based Southwest Airlines said late Tuesday morning they were working to gather more information about what happened both on-board and with the engine. "Safety is always our top priority at Southwest Airlines and we are working diligently to support our customers and crews at this time," Southwest said. A passenger on-board a Southwest Airlines flight to Dallas died Tuesday morning when a catastrophic engine failure apparently sent shrapnel into the aircraft, shattering a window and causing the plane to suddenly depressurize at more than 30,000 feet, officials say. Customer's Death is a 'Tragic Loss': Southwest CEO Southwest Airlines CEO Gary Kelly posted a video statement on YouTube Tuesday afternoon where he confirmed the death of a passenger as a "tragic loss." "This is a sad day and on behalf of the entire Southwest family I want to extend my deepest sympathies for the family and the loved ones of our deceased customer. They are our immediate and primary concern and we will do all that we can to support them during this difficult time and the difficult days ahead," said Kelly. "I am immensely grateful there are no other reports of injuries, but truly this is a tragic loss." Please see below a statement from the Captain and First Officer of Flight 1380. pic.twitter.com/RjoCpucGGS Southwest Airlines (@SouthwestAir) April 19, 2018 Passengers Pull Woman Back Inside Aircraft Following Engine Failure Todd Baur, the father-in-law of a passenger on the flight, spoke with NBC 5 late Tuesday morning. Reciting his daughter-in-law's account of the ordeal, Bauer said after the engine failure an injured female passenger was partially pulled from the aircraft and that nearby passengers had to pull her back inside the cabin. Amanda Bourman said she was seated near the back and was asleep when she heard a loud noise and oxygen masks dropped from the ceiling. She said the plane was fairly quiet because everyone was wearing a mask, while some passengers were in tears and others shouted words of encouragement. "I just remember holding my husband's hand, and we just prayed and prayed and prayed," said Bourman. "And the thoughts that were going through my head of course were about my daughters, just wanting to see them again and give them a big hug so they wouldn't grow up without parents." A Southwest Airlines flight headed for Dallas with 148 people on board made an emergency landing at Philadelphia Tuesday after a major problem with an engine apparently compromised the aircraft's fuselage. "Everybody was crying and upset," she said. "You had a few passengers that were very strong and they kept yelling to people, you know, `It's OK, we're going to do this."' As the plane descended, one terrified passenger, Marty Martinez, began broadcasting live on Facebook fearing the aircraft was going to crash. Photographs and broken, grainy video posted by Martinez showed the oxygen masks had been deployed and a shattered window in the main cabin. "Something is wrong with our plane! It appears we are going down! Emergency landing! Southwest flight from NYC to Dallas!" Facebook user Marty Martinez wrote. He then added, "We are bracing for landing!" Bourman said that everyone started yelling to brace for impact when the plane started to land. Everyone clapped and praised the pilot after she set the aircraft down. Afterward, Bourman said she saw first responders using a defibrillator to help a woman who had been removed from the plane. A Southwest Airlines flight bound for Dallas Love Field landed safely in Philadelphia Tuesday after the jet violently depressurized when a piece of an engine flew into and broke a window, the relative of a passenger told NBC 5. FAA, NTSB Investigating Engine Failure John Goglia, a former NTSB member, said investigators will take the Southwest engine apart to understand what happened and will look at maintenance records for the engine. "There's a ring around the engine that's meant to contain the engine pieces when this happens. In this case it didn't. That's going to be a big focal point for the NTSB -- why didn't (the ring) do its job?" Goglia said "We're pushing the engines to produce as much power as possible," he said. "We're right on the edge. Sometimes they fail, and that's why the containment ring is there." In August 2016 a titanium fan blade separated from an engine on one of Southwest's Boeing 737-700s and sliced a hole in the fuselage above the left wing. That flight, too, experienced depressurization and made an emergency landing though the damage didn't penetrate the cabin. Before Tuesday, Southwest had never had an accident-related fatality of a passenger, although a young boy died in 2006 when a Southwest jet skidded off a runway at Chicago's Midway Airport, crashed through a fence and collided with the boy's family's car. Southwest CEO Gary Kelly said at a news conference in Dallas Tuesday that there were no problems with the plane or its engine when it was last inspected April 15. The FAA and the NTSB are investigating Tuesday's incident. Boeing said Tuesday they are aware of the incident and are ready to assist in the investigation if needed. Southwest has about 700 planes, all of them 737s, including more than 500 737-700s like the one involved in Tuesday's emergency landing. It is the world's largest operator of the 737. The Boeing 737 is the best-selling jetliner in the world and has a good safety record. Credit: Marty Martinez via Storyful Check back and refresh this page for the latest update. As this story is developing, elements may change. A deputy constable was wounded after a shootout in a Houston suburb early Tuesday morning, officials say. The Precinct four deputy responded to a disturbance call in the northeast Harris County suburb of Atascocita and was confronted by an armed man who began opening fire, investigators said. Deputies returned fire, shooting the man at least 22 times, investigators said. The man was transported to a hospital. His condition has not been released. The wounded deputy constable, identified as Christopher Gaines, was airlifted to a hospital with gunshot wounds in his legs, authorities said. A picture tweeted by the Precinct 4 Constable showed Gaines lying on a hospital bed before being taken into surgery. Our Deputy that was shot and is stable condition at Hermann DT, is Deputy Christopher Gaines a 2 year Deputy with our office, assigned to our East District Patrol Division out of Humble. Please keep him in your Prayers ! Mark Herman, Harris County Constable Precinct 4 (@Pct4Constable) April 17, 2018 A second deputy was transported to a hospital with minor injuries, according to authorities. The gunman's identity was not released. The investigation is ongoing. Check back for the latest on this developing story. Dallas City Council Members Monday learned 10 non-profit groups are well behind on plans to use federal housing money to build affordable single family homes. The new questions on use of federal money come under two big clouds hovering over the non-profit housing groups. A federal investigation on past use of the money is thought to be nearing completion and a new city housing policy is scheduled for adoption that would direct the money away from neighborhoods those agencies serve. Councilman Lee Kleinman said the money approved by the City of Dallas two years ago for the 10 groups that have fallen behind schedule should have been reprogrammed Monday. They pull early development fees out of the city but they dont actually perform at all, Kleinman said. We need 20,000 affordable units in this city. Between those ten projects, there werent even 100 units. Former Dallas City Council Member Diane Ragsdale called Kleinmans suggestion grossly irresponsible. Ragsdale runs one of the non-profit groups, Inner City Community Development Corporation (ICDC), which focuses on the area near Fair Park. She said some of the homes her agency planned are behind schedule but city red tape was partly to blame. There is significant progress going on in every possible way, Ragsdale said. We just simply need the city to step up as well and help us forward. The 21 houses ICDC is building will sell to first time home owners for around $105,000 but they cost around $140,000 to build, Ragsdale said. The federal housing money from the city makes up the difference. Ragsdale said the real problem is too little funding for neighborhoods where decent affordable housing is desperately needed. Its so grossly unfair that we who work in the most disenfranchised neighborhoods continue to get beat upon and beat upon and beat upon, Ragsdale said. Thats why people feel that in many ways, the city does not really want these neighborhoods to improve. Her agency could see future taxpayer funding eliminated by the new proposed Dallas housing policy. It would direct public funding to areas where more progress is already evident to increase the chance that additional tax money would be effective in attracting private investment. It could have the opposite effect in her area. It would stop the momentum we have begun, Ragsdale said. At the same time, results are expected soon from an ongoing investigation by the US Department of Housing and Urban Development that started two years ago when former city officials were unable to document spending of $29 million worth of federal housing money. Kleinman said the new policy was developed and new officials put in place after past problems surfaced. Its cronyism. Its non transparent. Its back office deal making, he said. Ragsdale denies any improprieties involving her group. The Dallas City Council Housing and Economic Development Committee Monday refused Kleinmans request and send the issue of funding all 10 non-profit groups on for a future vote of the full City Council. But Kleinman said the Committee also asked that results of the federal investigation be provided to the City Council before a final decision on completing the funding for these unfinished projects. A City Council vote on the new housing policy is planned next month. A legal fight over what should happen to records the FBI seized from President Donald Trump's personal attorney took a surprise twist Monday when the lawyer, Michael Cohen, was forced to reveal a secret that he had also done legal work for Fox News host Sean Hannity. The disclosure came as a New York judge disappointed a lawyer for Trump by letting prosecutors proceed with the cataloguing of evidence including multiple electronic devices that were seized in raids while a system is set up to ensure that records protected by attorney-client privilege aren't disclosed to investigators. Lawyers for Cohen and prosecutors both had reason to claim success after three hours of arguments before U.S. District Judge Kimba Wood, who said she may appoint a special master, a neutral lawyer, to help decide which materials should stay confidential. Wood denied a request by Trump's lawyer, Joanna Hendon, that the president and Cohen get the first crack at designating which documents should be off-limits to investigators. Hannity's name emerged after the judge pressed Cohen to divulge the names of the clients he's worked with since the 2016 election, whose privileged communications might be contained within his files. Cohen's legal team said he had just three clients in 2017 and 2018. One was Trump. Another was Elliott Broidy, a Trump fundraiser who resigned from the Republican National Committee on Friday after it was revealed that he paid $1.6 million to a Playboy Playmate with whom he had an extramarital affair. The Playmate became pregnant and elected to have an abortion. Cohen's lawyers resisted revealing the name of the third client, saying it would be embarrassing and unnecessary. Plus, the client had specifically asked for privacy and requested that they appeal any demand to divulge his name. But Wood pressed on. "I understand he doesn't want his name out there, but that's not enough under the law," she said, after hearing legal arguments from Robert Balin, a lawyer for five news organizations including The Associated Press. When the name was announced, there were gasps and some laughter in a courtroom packed with journalists. A few of them raced from the courtroom. Cohen's lawyers did not detail the type of legal work he did for Hannity. On his radio show, Hannity said Cohen was never involved in any matter between him and any third party. "Michael never represented me in any matter," Hannity said. "I never retained him in any traditional sense. I never received an invoice. I never paid a legal fee. I had brief discussions with him about legal questions where I wanted his input and perspective." Later he added on Twitter the legal advice he got from Cohen was "almost exclusively about real estate." Hannity addressed the controversy twice during his television show Monday night, brushing off criticism from lawyer Alan Dershowitz who told him, "you should have disclosed your relationship with Cohen when you talked about him on the show." Hannity replied that the relationship was minimal and that he had a right to privacy. "It had to do with real estate and nothing political," Hannity told Dershowitz. He gave a lengthier explanation at the end of his show, saying Cohen "never represented me in any legal matter." He called Cohen a great attorney, but said none of their discussions ever included a third party and were centered on real estate. Hannity, an outspoken supporter of Trump, has been a fierce critic of special counsel Robert Mueller, who is looking into Russian interference in the 2016 U.S. presidential election. Monday's hearing began with an appearance by porn actress Stormy Daniels, who was swarmed by photographers and nearly fell as she was hustled into the courthouse, a scene that captured the sensational atmosphere around the case. The last to enter court, she was among the first to leave. While in court, she smiled several times as she observed the proceedings from a folding chair near the back of the room. Outside afterward, she said Cohen has acted like he's above the law and that she and her lawyer are committed to making sure everyone learns the truth. The April 9 raid on Cohen sought information on a variety of matters, including a $130,000 payment made to Daniels, who alleges she had sex with a married Trump in 2006. At stake is an investigation that could uncover the inner workings of Trump's longtime fixer and image protector. People familiar with the probe told the AP that agents were seeking bank records, records on Cohen's dealing in the taxi industry, Cohen's communications with the Trump campaign and information on payments made in 2016 to two women who say they had affairs with Trump, former Playboy model Karen McDougal and the porn star Daniels, whose real name is Stephanie Clifford. Lawyers for Cohen filed papers Monday saying investigators "took everything" during the raids, including more than a dozen electronic devices. Assistant U.S. Attorney Thomas McKay said in court that the government took images of the contents of most electronic devices, leaving them behind after the raids, and that cataloguing evidence might be delayed because some devices must be sent to an FBI laboratory to "decrypt" because they require code words. Prosecutors say that material should be reviewed by a team of Justice Department lawyers independent from the investigation who could identify records that should remain confidential. That team, they said, could provide the documents to Trump and other Cohen clients for their own review. Trump, who was in Florida on Monday, said all lawyers are now "deflated and concerned" by the FBI raid on Cohen. "Attorney Client privilege is now a thing of the past," he tweeted Sunday. "I have many (too many!) lawyers and they are probably wondering when their offices, and even homes, are going to be raided with everything, including their phones and computers, taken. All lawyers are deflated and concerned." Two state officials deny an Associated Press report that California has rejected a plan by the federal government to send National Guard troops to the border. The report said California had rejected the federal government's initial plans to send the state's National Guard troops to the border because the work is considered too closely tied to immigration enforcement. Both a spokesperson for Governor Jerry Brown's office and a commander with the California National Guard told NBC 7 the report is "inaccurate." Acting U.S. Customs and Border Protection Deputy Commissioner Ronald D. Vitiello said Brown has determined that some tasks federal officials want the state's National Guard to perform at the U.S.-Mexico border are "unsupportable." Vitiello made the comments to reporters in Washington Monday after two U.S. officials told The Associated Press said terms of the federal government's initial plans for sending National Guard troops to the border because the work is considered too closely tied to immigration. California National Guard Lt. Col. Tom Keegan told NBC 7 that state officials have not rejected the plan since a memorandum was sent to the federal government. "State officials have not rejected anything since the Governor responded to the federal government last Wednesday," Keegan said. "The federal government has not yet responded. The next step is for the federal government to respond by signing the Memorandum of Agreement." The AP report said California told federal officials last week it will not allow its troops to fix and repair vehicles, operate remotely-controlled surveillance cameras and perform other tasks under a Trump plan to send troops to the border. The U.S. officials discussed the status of ongoing negotiations on condition of anonymity because they were not authorized to discuss the matter, the AP report said. The Los Angeles Police Department said Monday that detectives were still seeking a motive for why a 28-year-old man allegedly set fire to Studio City music studio, killing two people inside. Twenty-eight-year-old Eferem Zimbalist Demery of Los Angeles was arrested on suspicion of murder for allegedly starting a Saturday morning fire at Top Notch Recordings. The blaze killed two men and critically injured two other victims - a 20-year-old male and a 15-year-old girl - in addition to causing minor injuries to a fifth person, said LAPD Homicide-Robbery Division Capt. William Hayes. DeVaughn Cemar Carter, 28, of Los Angeles, and Michael Pollard, 30, were pronounced dead at the scene. Demery knew both victims and was friends with at least one of them, Hayes said. Detectives believe a dispute between Demery and the men is what led Demery to set the fire, but they are still trying to determine the nature of the dispute, Hayes said. At least 15 people were inside when the fire broke out, he said. Carter and Pollard were in the same room when the blaze erupted, while the two critically injured victims were in other areas of the studio, Hayes said. Firefighters were dispatched at 6:54 a.m. Saturday to 3779 N. Cahuenga Blvd. and had the greater alarm fire out within 28 minutes of their arrival, LAFD spokeswoman Amy Bastman said. Paramedics rushed one gravely injured victim to Cedars-Sinai Medical Center and the other to Providence Saint Joseph Medical Center in Burbank, she added. The third injured victim was evaluated, but not taken to a hospital. Using forensic evidence, surveillance video and witness interviews, detectives determined the cause of the fire to be arson, LAPD Deputy Chief Justin Eisenberg said. "Our investigators have determined this fire was intentionally started using an accelerant," he said. Police believe Demery went to a Chevron gas station across from the music studio, where he purchased gasoline to speed up the fire, Hayes said. After purchasing the gas, Demery entered the studio, poured it in a hallway near the room where the two deceased victims were staying, and ran out of the building through a rear exit, Hayes said. According to Hayes, the studio is open to the public 24 hours a day. Shad Rabbani, the leasing agent for the building, told the Los Angeles Times that it houses independent producers and studios "They have a lot of clients and it's 24/7, so I have no idea who is coming and who is going out," Rabbani said. Songwriter and artist L.A. Pryce said he had worked all night in one of the studios, fallen asleep and was awakened by a friend, the newspaper reported. "My boy was like, 'Yo wake up. Smell That?' So I opened the door. It's just blacked out smoke," Pryce told the paper. "And then I see flames. I broke for the door and got out. I lost everything, hard drive, computer, everything's gone." Demery was arrested by a California Highway Patrol officer after committing a traffic infraction, Eisenberg said. He has a prior criminal record for burglary and selling counterfeit goods, Eisenberg added. Demery is being held without bail at the Van Nuys Criminal Court. His arraignment is scheduled for Tuesday. A further investigation by firefighters will determine if the studio was in violation of any building codes, Hayes said. The 20-year-old man and 15-year-ol girl remain hospitalized in critical condition, Eisenberg said. Twenty-eight-year-old Eferem Zimbalist Demery of Los Angeles was charged Tuesday with five felony counts in relation to a fire that left two people dead. Demery faces two counts of murder, two counts of attempted murder and one count of arson of a structure. In addition, the felony complaint includes allegations of multiple murders and the charging document references the defendant's alleged use of gasoline as an accelerant. Demery was originally scheduled to be arraigned on Tuesday, but the arraignment was postponed until May 17. The blaze at Top Notch Recordings killed two men, critically injured two other victims and caused caused minor injuries to a fifth person, according to LAPD Homicide-Robbery Division Capt. William Hayes in a press briefing held on Saturday. DeVaughn Cemar Carter, 28, of Los Angeles, and Michael Pollard, 30, were pronounced dead at the scene. Demery knew both victims and was friends with at least one of them, Hayes said. Detectives believe a dispute between Demery and the men is what led Demery to set the fire. In the same press briefing, LAPD Deputy Chief Justin Eisenberg said, "Our investigators have determined this fire was intentionally started using an accelerant." Police allege that Demery went to a Chevron gas station across from the music studio to purchase the gasoline that he used to speed up the fire. Hayes said that Demery entered the studio, poured the gasoline in a hallway near the room where the two deceased victims were staying and fled the scene through a rear exit. Demery was arrested by a California Highway Patrol officer after committing a traffic infraction on Saturday, according to the police captain. Eisenberg added that the accused has a prior criminal record for burglary and selling counterfeit goods. Approximately 15 people were inside when the fire broke out according to investigators. Carter and Pollard were in the same room when the blaze erupted, while the two critically injured victims were in other areas of the studio, Hayes said. A male in his 20's and a female juvenile, 15, remained hospitalized in critical condition according to Eisenberg. Inmates armed with homemade knives fought each other for about seven hours over territory and money, leaving seven of them dead in the worst U.S. prison riot in a quarter-century, officials said Monday. An inmate who witnessed the violence told The Associated Press that bodies were "literally stacked on top of each other." At least 17 prisoners were seriously injured at Lee Correctional Institution, South Carolina prisons chief Bryan Stirling said. The first fight started in a dorm about 7:15 p.m. Sunday and appeared to be contained before suddenly starting in two other dorms. Cellphones helped stir up the trouble, and state officials urged the federal government to change a law and allow them to block the signals from prisoners' phones. "These folks are fighting over real money and real territory while they're incarcerated," Stirling said at a news conference. No prison guards were hurt. Stirling said they followed protocol by backing out and asking for support. It took several hours to restore order, but once a special SWAT team entered, the inmates gave up peacefully, he said. The prisoner who saw the riot exchanged messages with AP on the condition of anonymity because he is not allowed to have a cellphone and fears retribution from other inmates. He said he saw several attackers taunt a rival gang member who was badly injured. "I just saw three dead on the sidewalk outside of my unit. One guy is still alive and breathing, but just barely," the inmate said. The riot was the latest violence in the South Carolina prisons system, where at least 13 other inmates have been killed by fellow prisoners since the start of 2017. It was the most inmates slain in a single riot in the U.S. since nine prisoners and a guard died in 1993 at the Southern Ohio Correctional Facility, said Steve Martin, a consultant who helps the federal government monitor prison systems. The inmate who spoke to AP said that many cell door locks were already broken before the riot and that he and other prisoners roamed around freely at the prison in Bishopville, located 40 miles east of Columbia. Hours after the violence started, no correctional officers or medical personnel attended to the dead or dying, he said. "The COs (corrections officers) never even attempted to render aid, nor quell the disturbance," he said. "They just sat in the control bubble, called the issue in, then sat on their collective asses." Stirling said the response teams entered as fast as they could. "We gathered as many people as we could, as quickly as we could and went in as soon as we thought it was safe for our staff," he said. The inmate told AP that he knew at least two of the slain men well. He said he saw an inmate trying to get up before he "started into that 'death rattle' people often hear about, but never experience firsthand." Most of the slain inmates were stabbed with homemade knives or slashed, while the remainder appeared to have been beaten, Lee County Coroner Larry Logan said. Stirling said an investigation would determine if any other type of weapon was used. The slain were serving anywhere from 10 years to life in prison and their crimes ranged from murder to burglary to trafficking crack cocaine. They youngest was 28 years old while the oldest was 44. The injured inmates required medical attention outside the prison, which made it more difficult for authorities to restore order, Stirling said. The coroner said when he arrived it was a chaotic scene of fighting everywhere. Logan said the state-run Lee Correctional Institution, like most other South Carolina prisons, is struggling to find enough workers, but he doesn't believe anything could be done once things got that far out of control. "If everybody has an uprising, you are always going to be understaffed," Logan said. The maximum-security facility in Bishopville houses about 1,500 inmates and there were 44 guards there when the first fight started. "It's an incredibly bad day in South Carolina," said Sen. Gerald Malloy, whose district includes Lee Correctional. "We failed. That's it." Two officers were stabbed at Lee Correctional in 2015. More recently, an inmate held a guard hostage for 90 minutes in March and another killed a fellow prisoner in February. The deaths at Lee are the most in any South Carolina prison in recent years. Four inmates were killed last year by a pair of prisoners at Kirkland Correctional Institution. Gov. Henry McMaster commended Stirling's response and said he was outraged the state can't jam cellphone signals in prisons. "There are prisons around the country -- state prisons, federal prisons all - that would be safer with this jamming," he said. Stirling said officials planned to meet next month with the cellphone industry to talk about solutions, but "until that's done, the folks that are incarcerated are going to continue their criminal ways from behind bars." Associated Press writers Jeffrey Collins and Christina Myers in Columbia contributed to this report. Michael Cohen exits the U.S. District Court Southern District of New York on April 16, 2018. Photo: Drew Angerer/Getty Images When the stakes are high and time is of the essence, judges are often reluctant to rule from the bench. Theyd much rather adjourn for the day, retreat to their chambers, and at least have some time to reflect on the facts and the law before making someones life miserable. U.S. District Judge Kimba Wood, a three-decade veteran of the federal courthouse in Manhattan, was having none of that. During a too-long-by-half hearing in the fast-moving case of Michael Cohen Donald Trumps personal lawyer and errand boy now under criminal investigation she ruled on the spot on two matters that have captured Americas imagination. The first one, and the one that grabbed all the headlines, had to do with the mystery of whether Cohen is even a lawyer at all. Very early on Monday, following accusations by federal prosecutors that hes no more than a glorified strategist and business dealer for Trump meaning hes not a real lawyer and thus not entitled to invoke attorney-client privilege over private communications and records the FBI seized from him his own lawyers filed a court document with Wood disclosing that Cohen does, in fact, have some legal clients. Cohen told the court that since Trump won the White House and he quit the Trump Organization to focus on a solo practice, hes had three clients in all: the president, disgraced Republican fundraiser Elliott Broidy, and an enigmatic, unnamed client who, Cohens lawyers insisted, would be embarrassed and suffer harm if his name became public. The client, who turned out to be Sean Hannity, had instructed Cohen to not dare make his identity public. But Cohens legal team cited no law or authority for that proposition that somehow the attorney-client relationship allows a lawyer to keep his clients identity a secret during the course of a legal proceeding. Instead, Stephen Ryan, Cohens lead attorney, pointed to some atmospheric appearance of fairness standard to protect Hannity from becoming the talk of the town, plus some weak-sauce legal-ethics rules. Not good enough. Thats not in accord with the law in this circuit, Wood chastised Ryan. Later in the hearing, she offered a stinging rebuke of his teams misuse of precedent: Its not that youre bad people. Its just that youve miscited the law at times. Desperation setting in, Ryan offered a compromise. I can give you the name right now in a sealed envelope, he told Wood, as if attempting to keep it from the public record as long as possible. But that was still not good enough: I am directing you to disclose the name now, Wood ordered. Hannitys name had barely left the lawyers lips when those gathered in the courtroom and in an overflow room nearby let out either a gasp or a laugh or both. The moment was so surreal, it may go down as one of the finest courtroom reveals in the history of the Southern District of New York, which already has quite a history as it is. The Fox News host, for his part, is reportedly not taking the disclosure well. Whats remarkable about the Cohen case, which in the span of a week has consumed Trump and his longtime fixer, is that its not even a real criminal case to begin with at least not in the traditional sense. Because federal prosecutors are still conducting their investigation and have yet to file charges, the case is known informally by the controversy that kicked it all off: In the Matter of Search Warrants Executed on April 9, 2018. That was also the subject of Mondays hearing, which was designed to weigh whether Cohen and Trump, who last week was given permission by Wood to intervene in the dispute, are entitled to stop the U.S. Attorneys Office of the Southern District of New York an arm of the federal government from sifting through files contained in Cohens lawyer files, electronic devices, a safety-deposit box, and other effects. Thats the second issue Wood was called to rule on. Mind you, the government got its hands on all this stuff through lawful methods. That means that for each location searched or smartphone seized, federal prosecutors had to convince a federal magistrate judge that there was probable cause to believe that Cohen was engaging in criminal activity and that only through furtive execution of search warrants as the Feds did with an early-morning raid of Paul Manafort would the government would be able to gather evidence and build its case. The implication being that any other, more solicitous investigatory method, or a heads-up to Cohen that he was under investigation, wouldve driven him to withhold or even destroy vital evidence. The element of surprise helped federal agents do their work without compromising the larger probe. Nobody other than federal investigators knows what Cohen may be trying to hide. But if Stormy Danielss visit to the Manhattan federal courthouse on Monday signals anything, it is that theres a strong likelihood that Cohens questionable methods in setting up clandestine hush payments to women who claim to have gotten intimate with Trump may have broken a few federal laws. And if somehow Cohen coordinated any of this activity with then-candidate Trump to benefit him electorally but without duly reporting it to the Federal Election Commission, more laws may have been broken. Because evidence of criminality between lawyer and client renders meaningless any claim of privilege between the two, it shouldnt matter that its the nations chief executive trying to claim its protection. The only thing that makes this case unusual is that one of the clients is the president, said Thomas McKay, the assistant U.S. attorney sticking it to Cohen and Trump. To McKay, this case is just like any other white-collar investigation involving shady lawyers and clients, where courts have found that federal prosecutors may rummage through their private communications, using special procedures, if it is shown that the discussions were nothing but scheming and conspiring to break the law no carve-outs for presidents. If that is true, McKay warned, then that is true in every single case. Which is to say, any third party who learns that their lawyers office has been raided would be able to challenge the raid in federal court and drag out sensitive law-enforcement investigations. Now that would be unprecedented. Neither Trump nor Cohen got away with it. Wood denied both of their motions to allow them, and not the prosecution, to screen the seized material for privileged content. Youre not going to take away what the government has, Wood declared. She later suggested that the side with the better argument and maybe even reputation was the government lawyers shes seen in action in her courtroom for the past 30 years. I have faith in the Southern District U.S. Attorneys office. Their integrity is unimpeachable, she said. Wood did ask the government to hand over copies of everything in its possession to the other side so that they could all together come to an agreement efficiently and speedily as to what is and isnt fair game for prosecutors to use in their potential case against Cohen. Down the line, she may even appoint a neutral arbiter, also known as a special master, to sift through all the documents. And since all of this will take time, Trump and Cohen did win a little: They managed to put the brakes ever so slightly on the governments aggressive moves against one of the presidents closest advisers. This may only be a Pyrrhic victory in the end if what prosecutors have on Cohen is truly damning or if its proven that very little of his client work is really legal client work. Whatever the case, rest assured that the mere fact that Trump felt the need to retain counsel in this case, just as he struggles to find a decent criminal-defense lawyer to guide him in the broader Russia investigation, should give you a sense of where his priorities lie. The CEO of Starbucks reiterated Monday that the arrest of two black men inside one of the coffee chain's Philadelphia stores is "reprehensible and wrong," and said he hopes to meet them to discuss a constructive solution. "First, Id like to apologize to them in person, and Id like to have a dialogue with them to ensure that the opportunity to really understand the situation and show some compassion and empathy for the experience they went through," Kevin Johnson, who flew to Philadelphia Sunday, said on "Good Morning America" Monday. "And finally, as we work to solve this, I'd like to invite them to join me in finding a constructive way to solve this issue." Starbucks spokesman Reggie Borges confirmed to NBC News that the two men agreed to meet with Johnson on Monday. Stewart Cohen, the attorney representing the men, said he hoped the conversation will be "productive." We hope to have productive conversations with the hope that something productive for the community can come out of this, he said outside his Center City law office. The meeting happened in private Monday, a Starbucks spokesperson confirmed to NBC News. Johnson is also met Monday with Philadelphia Police Commissioner Richard Ross and Mayor Jim Kenney. The arrests, which occurred Thursday, were captured on video that quickly gained traction on social media. Video shows several police talking quietly with two black men seated at a table. After a few minutes, officers handcuff the men and lead them outside as other customers say they weren't doing anything wrong. The men had reportedly been waiting for a friend. Police responded to the Starbucks store after an employee called 911 to report the men were trespassing, said Ross. He said officers were told the men had come in and asked to use the restroom but were denied because they hadn't bought anything. He said they then refused to leave. A Starbucks spokeswoman said the store where the arrests occurred has a policy that restrooms are for paying customers only. In the video, no Starbucks items are visible in front of either of the men. Starbucks sells itself as a community gathering spot as much as a coffeehouse, a welcoming place with comfortable chairs for lingering, trendy music and Wi-Fi. That's one reason the arrest of two black men who were sitting in a Starbucks struck a nerve for so many: They were doing exactly what people do at most any of the chain's 28,000 stores worldwide. 23-year-old fashion model Lindsey Wixson is trading in her high heels and the runway for a potter's wheel and a new business. Johnson noted that while different regions put in some slightly different guidelines of scenarios in which police should be called, like if there are threats and disturbances, "in this case none of that occurred. It was completely inappropriate to engage the police." He said the incident has given the company an opportunity to provide employees with clarity on Starbucks' guidelines and training in "unconscious bias." "Starbucks was built as a company that provides a warm welcoming environment for all customers, that didnt happen in this case, that I know," Johnson said. "So it's my responsibility to ensure that we review everything." Asked if the worker will face any disciplinary actions, Johnson said while it's easy to blame one person, his responsibility is to look at the broader circumstances, including the type of training the employee received, that led to the decision to call police and ensure "this never happens again." "I will fix this," Johnson said in a video message posted on the company's website Monday. Meanwhile, about two dozen chanting protesters returned to the Center City Starbucks for another day of demonstrations. "We don't want this Starbucks to make any money today. That's our goal," said Abdul-Aliy Muhammad, one of the protest's organizers and co-founder of the Black and Brown Workers Collective. The protesters gathered outside the store in the pouring rain before 7 a.m., while inside it looked like business as usual. However, most people drinking coffee at the tables were regional leaders for the company's corporate side. Just before 7:30 a.m., the protesters moved inside and stood in front of the counter, some holding banners reading "End Stop and Frisk," chanting slogans like, "A whole lot of racism, a whole lot of crap, Starbucks coffee is anti-black." Speeches decried police brutality and gentrification. Starbucks regional vice president Camille Hymes attempted to talk to the protesters, but was shouted down. The location was closed after the protests with the store's shades drawn. The store was open for business Tuesday morning. Starbucks at 18th and Spruce is closed, shades drawn and employees locked inside, as outrage continues over the arrest of 2 black men there last week @NBCPhiladelphia pic.twitter.com/IDlKbj9pua Alicia Victoria Lozano (@aliciavlozano) April 16, 2018 Over the weekend, demonstrators called for the firing of the employee who contacted police. On Monday afternoon, the coffee chain said the manager no longer works at that location. Police haven't released the names of the men who were arrested and later released after the district attorney's office said there was lack of evidence that a crime had been committed. An investigation is underway after a Delaware man accused members of a University of Delaware fraternity of calling him a homophobic slur, attacking him and breaking his leg during an off-campus day party. Rancel Valdez told NBC10 he was attending a party hosted by a University of Delaware frat Friday. Valdez said he was waiting for a friend to come out of the bathroom when a frat brother walked up to him and told him to leave. When Valdez told him he was waiting for his friend, the frat member allegedly called him a homophobic slur and pushed him from behind as he walked away. "They were just being rude, telling me to leave, calling me names," Valdez said. Valdez said more members of the frat began to attack him and ultimately broke his leg. I didnt even look their way or nothing, Valdez said. They all just came to me. Valdez was treated at the hospital and told NBC10 hell miss work for the next month due to his injuries. He didnt even do anything wrong that day, said Erica Bundsehuh, who attended the party with Valdez. I ran over. Im trying to pull these kids off. Literally felt like it wasnt stopping because they were getting pulled off and then someone else would just come over. Newark Police and the University of Delaware Police are investigating the incident. This kind of reprehensible behavior is not tolerated at the University of Delaware, University of Delaware President Dennis Assanis said in a released statement. We will take all appropriate measures in the student conduct process to ensure any offenders are held accountable for their actions. Police are not investigating the incident as a hate crime at this time. If you have any information on the incident, please call Newark Police at 302-366-7111. A real estate agent in the North Bay faced charges after she allegedly raised a Novato property's monthly rent more than 10 percent, to $9,000, after the devastating wildfires in neighboring counties, according to the state Attorney General's Office. California Attorney General Xavier Becerra on Monday filed three misdemeanor charges against Melissa Missy Echeverria for allegedly raising the monthly rent from $5,000 to $9,000 on a property on Blanca Drive in Novato. The blazes prompted Gov. Jerry Brown to declare a state of emergency on Oct. 9, and price gouging during a state of emergency is illegal in California. "There are some unscrupulous individuals who engage in price gouging, taking advantage of those who are already suffering," Becerra said in a statement released Monday. "Its wrong, its unconscionable, and its illegal." After initially offering the property for $9,000 on Oct. 12, Echeverria lowered the offering to $7,000 on Oct. 13 then to $5,800 on Oct. 16, according to the complaint. Each of the subsequent offerings, while lower, still were in violation of the gouging law. The price gouging law also applies to those who sell food, emergency supplies, medical supplies, building materials and gasoline, as well as repair or reconstruction services, emergency cleanup services, transportation, freight and storage services, hotel accommodations and rental housing, the Attorney General's Office said. Violators are subject to prosecution that could result in a one-year jail term and/or a fine of up to $10,000. They also could face civil penalties, the Attorney General's Office said. Vending machines can be used to sell everything from beverages to condoms and one Southern California believes their technology could mean fewer lines and more business for recreational marijuana shops. GreenSTOP has developed what it's labeled as the first four-person kiosk designed specifically for marijuana dispensaries. Other companies have developed a vending machine using the same technology as those found in a workplace lunchroom but GreenSTOP, run by two men with strong ties to San Diego, is looking at breaking the mold when it comes to how many customers can be served in a neighborhood dispensary. San Diego native James Edwards, who attended Mission Bay High School, has partnered with former San Diego State University student Tim Island to launch the Manhattan Beach-based company. He said an average marijuana dispensary will have five to six employees or budtenders who answer questions from customers. However, an issue arises when the time comes to pay. They have bottlenecking, he explained, meaning multiple customers are in line waiting for one register. The GreenSTOP technology will create a kiosk that is self-serve and allows multiple users to shop, select and buy from the dispensarys stash. It can even incorporate reviews of the products from credible sources. The current business model is to rent the kiosks to dispensaries and take a percentage of sales. Edwards and Island said they have a large interest list but theyre discussing the companys potential with investors and their legal team before entering into contracts. The plan is to launch in Los Angeles by the end of 2018 with the potential of kiosks in San Diego County in 2019, Edwards said. The kiosks are not affiliated with any dispensaries in San Diego County under the same name. Ahead of a vote to decide if San Diego County will throw its support behind a lawsuit against Californias so-called "Sanctuary" laws, supporters and opponents rallied to sway opinion. The San Diego County Board of Supervisors is scheduled to consider Tuesday joining the Department of Justices lawsuit against the state of California over laws that limit police collaboration with immigration enforcement agents. At least a dozen local governments statewide, including Escondido, have voted to either join or support the lawsuit or create resolutions that oppose the states position. About 50 people were expected to deliver a public testimony to the board before the board's vote. Outside the meeting, demonstrators showed their support for Calfornia's current immigration laws. The same group demonstrated outside County Supervisor John Horns district office in North County on Monday. Simultaneously, an opposition group composed of some city leaders, including Escondido Mayor Sam Abed and San Marcos Mayor Jim Desmond gathered in North County to urge the board to support the Trump Administrations lawsuit. The group believes Californias sanctuary laws are unconstitutional. "This is an issue, ultimately, of shielding criminals and putting them back in the community when we should be shielding our neighborhoods," former politician Carl DeMaio said. "The public safety should be whats driving this discussion not some cheap attempt to divide us among racial lines." While in Washington, D.C. Tuesday for a National Press Club event, Gov. Brown addressed critics of his immigration policies saying, "it's time to just chill." "They are human beings. They have families," the governor said, adding that they do important jobs that are integrated into the state's economy. He said there was nothing in current laws that stops any local officials from notifying immigration agents of a person's release. Immigration has been a hot topic across the country since President Donald Trump campaigned in 2016 on promises of tougher enforcement and a wall on the U.S.-Mexico border. Under Democratic leadership, California has enacted a series of laws in recent years aimed at helping immigrants, including issuing driver licenses regardless of legal status and assisting with tuition at state universities. After Trump was elected, lawmakers passed the measure to limit police collaboration with federal immigration agents. Immigrant and civil rights advocates applauded the measure, known as SB54, as a way to encourage immigrants to report a crime to police without fearing deportation. Critics said it would make it too hard for federal agents to find and deport ex-convicts who are a danger to communities. "We feel that San Diego as a county has an obligation to uphold state law and we hope that they also uphold the value of families and keep families safe and together," Adriana Jasso, with American Friends Service Committee, said. The board is expected to vote on whether to support the lawsuit during a closed session Tuesday afternoon. What to Know California is home to an estimated 2.3 million immigrants without legal authorization Under SB54, police cannot ask people about their immigration status or participate in federal immigration enforcement actions Jail officials may transfer inmates to federal immigration authorities only if they have been convicted of certain crimes The San Diego County Board of Supervisors voted to join the Department of Justices lawsuit against the state of California over laws that limit police collaboration with immigration enforcement agents. The California Values Act or Senate Bill 54 took effect January 1 and sets limits on how much local police can help federal immigration authorities. The measure was dubbed a sanctuary state bill because it sought to expand so-called sanctuary city policies that have long been in place in some of California's biggest cities, including Los Angeles and San Francisco. The San Diego County Board of Supervisors voted 3 to 1 in favor of joining the lawsuit with yes votes from Supervisors Dianne Jacob, Kristin Gaspar, and Bill Horn. The board released the following statement Tuesday afternoon: The United States of America v. The State of California, a case alleging that a state law that limits cooperation with federal immigration officials is preempted by federal law, by a vote of 3-1, with Supervisors Jacob, Gaspar, and Horn voting Aye and Supervisor Cox voting Nay and Supervisor Roberts absent, authorize County Counsel to file an amicus brief supporting the position of the United States at the first available opportunity, which is likely to be on appeal. Supervisor Greg Cox voted against filing the brief. He released a written statement saying he believes the problem lies in Washington, D.C. "We need leaders in both parties to finally come up with comprehensive immigration reform," Cox said. He added he felt joining the lawsuit was unnecessary. "The Boards vote is a largely symbolic move that will create fear and divisiveness in our region, waste taxpayer funds and create distrust of law enforcement and local government within many communities," Cox said. Those that are representing us in Sacramento do not represent the people, said Jacob when she briefed the media on today's vote. Our state legislature is out of touch. Gaspar said the board received more than 800 pieces of correspondence supporting the decision however she admitted the board did not cross-reference to make sure the emails were from residents of San Diego County. Both Gaspar and Jacob repeatedly said the decision was based on maintaining public safety and keeping criminals out of the region. Ron Roberts, who had said he was opposed to joining the suit, was absent from the meeting. The ACLU of San Diego and Imperial Counties responded to the board's vote, calling it "troubling" and ignorant. Our Board of Supervisors decision to align with the Trump lawsuit against the State of California is troubling for many reasons: It disregards our shared values and common destiny as Californians; it ignores the recommendations of law enforcement experts, including Sheriff Bill Gore and former San Diego Police Chief David Bejarano...," the statement read in part. The ACLU also said the DOJ's lawsuit was without merit and "seeks to undermine our states constitutionally-protected authority to allocate limited state resources to priorities that ensure the safety and well-being of all California residents and communities." The statement ended with a call for the board to rescind its decision and instead "stand with San Diego County and stand with California." A statement from the San Diego County Sheriff's Department was also released Tuesday, saying the department would continue to comply with the California Values Act. "The Sheriff's Department has and will continue to comply with the Trust, Truth and California Values Acts. My deputies work hard to make our communities safe and we want to ensure all of our residents feel comfortable reporting crimes or coming forward as witnesses to criminal acts. Law enforcement at all levels in the San Diego region has a strong culture of cooperation. The Sheriff's Department will continue to comply with state law and will closely follow the federal lawsuit against the State of California where this level of cooperation will ultimately be determined." The San Diego Organizing Project called the decision harmful. "Our faith community will work tirelessly to elect true representatives who understand that we are better and stronger together, said board member Gloria Morales-Palos. "Today's action was the very definition of leadership," U.S. Rep. Duncan Hunter (R) 50th District said. Senator Toni Atkins (D-San Diego) said she was "disappointed" in the board's decision and said the state's bills were designed to protect public safety. Im disappointed in the Board majority for taking this misguided action. These bills were carefully crafted to be legal and constitutional, and to protect public safety. SB 54 does not shield violent and dangerous criminals from deportation, and it does not prevent federal immigration authorities from doing their job. Weve worked hard to bring our undocumented immigrant communities out of the shadows and into society because research shows it makes our state safer and more prosperous for all. I firmly believe California is on the right side of history and I stand by our commitment to these laws. The Orange County Board of Supervisors voted last month to join the lawsuit, while the Huntington Beach City Council voted recently to file its own suit. Officials with the city of Escondido voted 4-1 on April 4 in support of the Trump administration's lawsuit against California's "sanctuary state" status. Earlier Tuesday, dozens of people signed up to speak to the supervisors before the scheduled vote took place in closed session. Check back for updates on this developing story. Missouri Attorney General Josh Hawley, left, is recommending a whole new set of criminal charges against embattled Governor (and fellow Republican) Eric Greitens. Photo: Missouri Attorney Generals Office; AP Missouri governor Eric Greitens has looked very much like a political dead man walking for a while. A report released last week by a special committee of the Republican-controlled legislature made the self-described outsider and family values pol look more like someone who might manage to give sexual predators a bad name: Greitens allegedly assaulted and blackmailed a woman he was having an affair with on the brink of his notably sanctimonious 2016 gubernatorial campaign. He now faces a trial for felony invasion of privacy, probable impeachment proceedings, and multiple calls for his resignation, as much from Republicans as from Democrats. And now, one of those Republicans calling for him to step down, Attorney General Josh Hawley, is tossing a new log on the fire thats consuming Greitenss governorship, as St. Louis Public Radio reports accusing him of breaking campaign-finance laws: Attorney General Josh Hawley is asking the St. Louis circuit attorney to file criminal charges against Gov. Eric Greitens for allegedly illegally obtaining a fundraising list from a charity he founded for political purposes. This particular matter stems from Greitens successful 2016 campaign for governor. It involves how his campaign received a fundraising list from the Mission Continues, a veterans charity that Greitens help found before he ran for office. Hawley announced on Tuesday that his office had evidence that Greitens illegally obtained that fundraising list. This is not a new allegation; it dates back to an October 2016 Associated Press story noting how many donors to Greitenss charity were showing up as donors to Greitenss campaign. Now, though, Hawley is recommending criminal charges for the crossing of campaign-finance-law lines. And worse yet from the governors point of view, the prosecutor with jurisdiction over these matters is the same one trying to send him to the hoosegow for the privacy and blackmail charge, St. Louis circuit attorney Kim Gardner. Greitenss whole strategy on that front is to accuse Gardner of being a godless liberal stooge of George Soros (who contributed to groups that supported Gardners campaign to become the first African-American circuit attorney in her city) whos performing a political hit on the doughty governor. Its inconvenient that his fellow Republican Hawley, who will more than likely be the GOPs nominee to try to take down Democratic U.S. senator Claire McCaskill, is apparently now in league with the evil Gardner. You have to wonder how Greitens thinks hes going to evade the political Grim Reaper. Its not like hes got a lot of friends: Why Greitens refuses to step down, explained by a Missouri Republican I spoke with last week: Hes a classic sociopath. Im not saying that ironically; he is literally not a balanced, normal personality."https://t.co/tr0I44HYnn Ella Nilsen (@ella_nilsen) April 17, 2018 To say its getting ugly in Jefferson City is an understatement. And youd have to figure that Hawley and other Missouri Republicans facing voters this November would just love to throw their governor under a fast-moving bus headed anywhere else. Christopher Jackson and his longtime girlfriend Shadella McDowney died early Sunday in Capitol Heights after their car crashed into a utility pole. "He helped everybody," said Jacksons sister, wiping away tears. "Whatever you needed, he helped you." Jackson, 35, and McDowney, 34, had three children together. Jacksons family said he was a devoted father and McDowneys partner for nearly two decades. "Happy-go-lucky" is how Jackson's mother, Alice Jackson, described the couple. Alice Jackson saw her son on Saturday night. He went to the store for her and told her, "I'll see you later," she told News4. The couple went to a party in Fort Washington later that night with McDowney's brother. He remembered the last words he said to his sister. "I love you. Call me when you get home. I'll see you tomorrow," he recalled. Officers responded to the crash at the intersection of Boundary and Opus avenues in Capitol Heights, Sunday at about 2:30 a.m. The pair was pronounced dead at the scene. Now, the family is left with memories. "I have faith, and thats whats holding me up," Jacksons mother said. Police said its unclear what caused Jackson to lose control of the car. Several neighbors lost power for more than 24 hours because the utility pole was damaged in the crash. Jacksons cousin set up a GoFundMe page to help support their three young children. Text of President Donald Trump's address Friday night regarding airstrikes on Syria, As provided by the White House: My fellow Americans, a short time ago, I ordered the United States Armed Forces to launch precision strikes on targets associated with the chemical weapons capabilities of Syrian dictator Bashar al-Assad. A combined operation with the armed forces of France and the United Kingdom is now underway. We thank them both. Tonight, I want to speak with you about why we have taken this action. One year ago, Assad launched a savage chemical weapons attack against his own innocent people. The United States responded with 58 missile strikes that destroyed 20 percent of the Syrian Air Force. Last Saturday, the Assad regime again deployed chemical weapons to slaughter innocent civilians this time, in the town of Douma, near the Syrian capital of Damascus. This massacre was a significant escalation in a pattern of chemical weapons use by that very terrible regime. The evil and the despicable attack left mothers and fathers, infants and children, thrashing in pain and gasping for air. These are not the actions of a man; they are crimes of a monster instead. Following the horrors of World War I a century ago, civilized nations joined together to ban chemical warfare. Chemical weapons are uniquely dangerous not only because they inflict gruesome suffering, but because even small amounts can unleash widespread devastation. The purpose of our actions tonight is to establish a strong deterrent against the production, spread, and use of chemical weapons. Establishing this deterrent is a vital national security interest of the United States. The combined American, British, and French response to these atrocities will integrate all instruments of our national power -- military, economic, and diplomatic. We are prepared to sustain this response until the Syrian regime stops its use of prohibited chemical agents. I also have a message tonight for the two governments most responsible for supporting, equipping, and financing the criminal Assad regime. To Iran, and to Russia, I ask: What kind of a nation wants to be associated with the mass murder of innocent men, women, and children? The nations of the world can be judged by the friends they keep. No nation can succeed in the long run by promoting rogue states, brutal tyrants, and murderous dictators. In 2013, President Putin and his government promised the world that they would guarantee the elimination of Syria's chemical weapons. Assad's recent attack and today's response are the direct result of Russia's failure to keep that promise. Russia must decide if it will continue down this dark path, or if it will join with civilized nations as a force for stability and peace. Hopefully, someday we'll get along with Russia, and maybe even Iran but maybe not. I will say this: The United States has a lot to offer, with the greatest and most powerful economy in the history of the world. In Syria, the United States with but a small force being used to eliminate what is left of ISIS is doing what is necessary to protect the American people. Over the last year, nearly 100 percent of the territory once controlled by the so-called ISIS caliphate in Syria and Iraq has been liberated and eliminated. The United States has also rebuilt our friendships across the Middle East. We have asked our partners to take greater responsibility for securing their home region, including contributing large amounts of money for the resources, equipment, and all of the anti-ISIS effort. Increased engagement from our friends, including Saudi Arabia, the United Arab Emirates, Qatar, Egypt, and others can ensure that Iran does not profit from the eradication of ISIS. America does not seek an indefinite presence in Syria under no circumstances. As other nations step up their contributions, we look forward to the day when we can bring our warriors home. And great warriors they are. Looking around our very troubled world, Americans have no illusions. We cannot purge the world of evil, or act everywhere there is tyranny. No amount of American blood or treasure can produce lasting peace and security in the Middle East. It's a troubled place. We will try to make it better, but it is a troubled place. The United States will be a partner and a friend, but the fate of the region lies in the hands of its own people. In the last century, we looked straight into the darkest places of the human soul. We saw the anguish that can be unleashed and the evil that can take hold. By the end of the World War I, more than one million people had been killed or injured by chemical weapons. We never want to see that ghastly specter return. So today, the nations of Britain, France, and the United States of America have marshaled their righteous power against barbarism and brutality. Tonight, I ask all Americans to say a prayer for our noble warriors and our allies as they carry out their missions. We pray that God will bring comfort to those suffering in Syria. We pray that God will guide the whole region toward a future of dignity and of peace. And we pray that God will continue to watch over and bless the United States of America. Thank you, and goodnight. Thank you. Two top Boston hospitals say they plan to hire more minority doctors and make their facilities more welcoming for minority patients. The Boston Globe reports Tuesday that the Dana-Farber Cancer Institute plans to hire a leader for diversity programs and to require all faculty and administrative leaders to complete a bias awareness workshop. It has also has set diversity goals in its 2018 strategic plan. Massachusetts General Hospital officials say they are hiring a new chief diversity officer as well as more minority physicians, evaluating department heads and senior leaders on whether they have achieved diversity goals, and promoting the hospital in Boston's minority communities to draw more black and Latino patients. Just eight of Dana-Farber's 359 doctors are black. About 3 percent of Massachusetts General's 2,349 doctors are black. Police in Brentwood, New Hampshire are warning about a phone scam targeting the charities of one of their fallen officers. Chief Ellen Archieri said a resident reported that someone called pretending to be affiliated with the Stephen Arkell Memorial Scholarship Fund. "It's revictimizing the situation all over again," said Archieri. The incident is causing the Brentwood community to have to relive the pain of Arkell's death all over again. "Officer Arkell was dispatched to a domestic, went into the residence and he was shot and killed," Archieri said. Now, the charity set up in Arkell's honor is allegedly being used by phone scammers. "A woman speaking in a foreign accent, thanking this resident for past donations to the Arkell foundation and that he has won a trip to Walt Disney World," Archieri said. At that point the person hung up the phone suspecting the call was bogus. The Arkell charity gives scholarships to students at Exeter High School, Arkell's alma mater, and hosts an annual 5K race in his honor. "It appears that we have a group or certain individuals trying to capitalize on the misfortune of the loss of a very dedicated police officer," said Archieri. The Chief said the department will not allow the scammers to tarnish the legacy of Officer Arkell, which is why they are getting the word out to prevent it from happening to anyone else. Archieri said if you receive a similar call, report it to the police and if necessary the Federal Communications Commission. "Stephen Arkell was a very dedicated police officer and a very dedicated community member to the town of Brentwood and we continue to honor him every year and we honor him every day that we go out and put this uniform on," Archieri said. The 4th annual Stephen Arkell Community 5K will happen on May 12, the anniversary of his death, at 10 a.m. in Brentwood. A fatal crash involving a vehicle submerged in a river in Barrington, Rhode Island is under investigation. Officers responded New Meadow Road just before 11:30 p.m. Monday where police said a vehicle had somehow hit a telephone pole and flipped over into the Barrington River. Fire officials said an off-duty firefighter and two police officers removed the driver from the submerged vehicle. The name of the victim was not made public. The exact cause of the crash remains under investigation. A stretch of Interstate 93 in the White Mountains of New Hampshire was briefly closed after high winds blew three tractor-trailers, right over on Monday afternoon. State police shut the highway down in Franconia Notch around 4 p.m. due to hazardous wind conditions. Lincoln police said the closure included the north and southbound lanes. State police responded just before 2:30 p.m. after reports of two tractor-trailer rollovers. When troopers were dealing with those crashes, a third truck tipped over and landed on a cruiser with a trooper inside. No one was injured. A stretch of the highway was closed, but has since reopened. Police are urging the use of caution in the area. The state Department of Transportation said that there are three trucks rolled over due to the high winds. The guardrails were reportedly heavily damaged. Photos tweeted out by NHDOT showed three tractor trailers on their sides, with one over the guardrail and off the road. Nine Vermont police officers are now free from criminal prosecution, following the shooting death of a robbery suspect by law enforcement outside Montpelier High School in mid-January. Nate Giffin, 32, died after a hail of police gunfire January 16. His death was the subject of two just-completed external probes of law enforcement actions that day, conducted by Vermont Attorney General T.J. Donovan and Washington County States Attorney Rory Thibault. This shooting was justified, Donovan announced Tuesday morning. The announcement cleared Michael Philbrick of the Montpelier Police Department and Vermont State Police members Lyle Decker, Cory Lozier, Eugene Duplissis, Christopher Brown, Charlie Winn, David White, Isaac Merriam, and Brandon Degree. Giffin was suspected of robbing a credit union across from Montpelier High School, then fleeing behind the school while students were inside learning. With the kids and staff in lockdown, police surrounded Giffin, first trying to talk him down. Newly-released video from a police dash camera shows Giffin pointing a B.B. gun at officers, who thought at the time from its realistic design that it was an actual pistol. Troopers also heard shouted threats and saw Giffin move toward them, Donovan noted. Donovan and Thibault determined it was a reasonable response to shoot Giffin, because police believed he could have killed or badly injured them. Giffin was struck by seven bullets from responding officers, according to the report. The troopers and the officers were responding to a dynamic situation, responding to threats as this unfolded, Donovan told reporters. This has been a very traumatic experience for many in Montpelier and certainly there are a lot of things that can be done in the future to help both the community heal and to take lessons away from this particular incident, Thibault added. Vermont State Police also announced Tuesday that new tools and training are on their way, which may change the way troopers respond to tense situations like the one outside Montpelier High School in January. Were always learning from every situation were involved in, said Col. Matt Birmingham, the commander of the Vermont State Police. Birmingham announced a new emphasis on less-than-lethal approaches in certain cases, like plastic bullets, beanbags, or long-range pepper spray. The force also has retained a consultant to advise them on policies that could help to resolve dangerous situations more safely. Although were going to work on expanding our non-lethal capabilities, non-lethal options are not always appropriate in every situation, Birmingham said. Vermont State Police will also add new cameras to the uniforms of the tactical team and atop the teams armored vehicle, the force said. Thibault and Donovan applauded the moves aimed at improving the tactical team for any future crises. Thibault also said Tuesday that an arrest warrant has just been issued for a man accused of helping Nate Giffin in the credit union robbery before the fatal shooting. The suspect is Joshua Preston, who Thibault said has ties to Johnson. Preston has been on escape status from the Vermont Corrections Department since the day after the robbery, according to Thibault. At the press conference announcing the decision to not charge the officers criminally, Thibault, Donovan, and Birmingham expressed their condolences to the family of Nate Giffin. Those sentiments were echoed by Montpelier Police Chief Tony Facos and by Montpelier Mayor Anne Watson. We wish that this were not the way his life ended, Mayor Watson said of Giffin, adding that there was more to him than simply the high-profile way in which he died. The Barre-Montpelier Times Argus reported in January that at a vigil remembering the life of Giffin, several community members recalled him as a kind person who fell into the tragic throes of opioid addiction. Californias unions are backing insurgent left-bent Senate candidate Kevin de Leon, while their New York counterparts are sticking with the status quo and Andrew Cuomo. Photo: Jessica Kourkounis/Getty Images; Drew Angerer/Getty Images Last week at the behest of Governor Andrew Cuomo, the rupture between the progressive Working Families Party and progressive unions intensified, with two powerful SEIU and CWA locals withdrawing support for the WFP on the eve of its endorsement of Cuomo rival Cynthia Nixon. The action dramatized the lengths to which the labor movement in New York will go to stay on good terms with Cuomo, whose record has mixed important progressive accomplishments with centrist politics that most unions dislike. At about the same time, interestingly enough, the California affiliate of the AFL-CIO has displayed its independence from the Democratic political establishment by endorsing state senate leader Kevin de Leons insurgent campaign against veteran U.S. senator Dianne Feinstein. Since it required a two-thirds vote of delegates to its state convention, the California Labor Federations backing of de Leon was a self-conscious protest against Feinsteins habitually centrist instincts, and a sign of a strong leftward breeze in Golden State politics (the CLF also endorsed gubernatorial front-runner, Lieutenant Governor Gavin Newsom, who has carved out a strong progressive profile in his latest campaign). On paper, de Leon is a more conventional candidate than Cynthia Nixon: He is, after all, a party legislative leader, not an outsider activist and celebrity like the Sex and the City star. But hes as big an underdog as Nixon. The most recent major public poll in California showed him trailing Feinstein by a 42-16 margin, with two-thirds of self-identified Democrats supporting the incumbent. Worse yet, de Leon is struggling to raise the massive amount of money needed for a viable California statewide campaign; Feinstein presently has an astounding 20-1 lead in cash on hand. But as the veteran observer of California progressive politics Harold Meyerson observes, there are a couple of explanations for the gap in the audacity levels being shown by New York and California unions. To some extent, it reflects the two states electoral systems and the lay of the land in the Feinstein-de Leon and Cuomo-Nixon competitions. There are no viable Republicans running in the California Senate race, so thanks to the the states top-two primary system, the two Democrats will face each other both in the June primary and again in the November general election. That gives de Leon a lot more time (theoretically) to catch up with Feinstein. But more importantly, theres no risk of Democrats losing the seat. While its unlikely Nixon would continue to campaign against Cuomo if he defeats her in the Democratic gubernatorial primary in September, theres a chance shed continue to use her WFP ballot line to go after the incumbent and provide an opening for some yet-to-be-identified strong GOP candidate. Meyerson argues, however, that the most important difference between the two challenges to the status quo and how unions perceive them involves the personalities of the incumbents: California labor may not be entranced by Feinstein, but neither they nor anyone else fear her. Cuomo, by contrast, governs by fear. As his war on New Yorks Mayor Bill de Blasio and his betrayal and harassment of the WFP make clear, he seeks to stamp out any rival or potential rival, even when he could turn them into occasional allies. That made all too credible his threats to cast the unions that already support him out into the cold unless they cut off their support for groups that backed Nixon in the Democratic primary. Personalities aside, Cuomo is a governor with the power (as well as the willingness) to confer tangible benefits on his friends and make life difficult for his enemies. Dianne Feinstein is just one of a 100 bloviators in the Senate. But Meyerson believes that the very traits that make Nixons description of Cuomo as Andrew the Bully effective have succeeded in keeping labor in his camp. Indeed, he compares the New York governor to the title character in the satirical film The Death of Stalin, in which the dictator paralyzed his subjects in fear even as he lay dying: Im not equating Cuomo to Stalin, at least when it comes to the substance of their policies and their methods of enforcing them. But the paranoia and vindictiveness of the man on the Kremlin floor and the man in Albanys governors mansion have inspired fear and insecurity not just among their critics but among their supporters as well. Thats why, for all the buzz about Nixon, it would be foolish to bet against Cuomos success this year. But if Cuomo ever falls from power, a lot of the people currently supporting his reelection will abandon him like a broken-down subway car. Ivanka Trump and Treasury Secretary Steven Mnuchin took their tax overhaul tour to New Hampshire on the deadline to file federal income taxes. The pair was in Derry at a town-hall discussion moderated by former Gov. John H. Sununu on Tuesday. Ivanka Trump said Tax Day is usually nothing to celebrate, but that most Americans will be much happier the next time the filing day rolls around. Trump has been traveling the country to promote the sweeping rewrite of the U.S. tax code her father, President Donald Trump, signed last year. While the president and Republican allies have billed the tax law he signed as a victory for the middle class, Democrats depict the $1.5 trillion package as a payout to the GOP's largest donors. The audience at the event, held at the Derry Opera House, was almost entirely Republican, including many small business owners, hand picked to give testimonials. "This tax cut is a breath of fresh air for me because now I can hire more employees, I can bring in another line, I can expand my services," Magaret Culp said. Questions at the event were prescreened. Sununu: The question was, On tax day next year, are we really going to be able to file our taxes on a postcard? Mnuchin: "Nick, you will be able to." "Anything that makes tax policy simpler for the little guy, doesnt have a team of lawyers and accountants on hand, is a better system," said New Hampshire small business owner Bob Burns. But Wyatt Ronan with NAH Democratic Party Communications disagrees. "Thats not what most Americans think. Sixty-seven-percent of Granite staters dont think that this tax bill is going to help them." Democrats protested outside the event. "This whole tax bill is a big lie," said Ken Hajjar. "Its being paid for on a credit card." But inside, Republicans were sold on the promoted reforms. There are real offsets and thats why across the country you see that the average amount of savings for a family of four is $2000," Ivanka Trump said. "So this is real." Attendees were reminded to make sure that their taxes were filed by the end of Tuesday, but at least one prominent member of the Trump administration will not be doing that. The President has filed an extension. Mnuchin declined to comment on the president filing for a tax return extension but said in general, individuals and businesses have that option and the IRS just wants people to pay and follow the law. The IRS website to make payments was down Tuesday but Mnuchin said officials would make sure taxpayers get extensions and are able to file once the system comes back up. Ivanka Trump's visit comes less than a month after her father visited Manchester to unveil his nationwide plan on how to battle opioids. During that visit, the president singled out the city of Lawrence, Massachusetts, as a significant source of the drugs pouring into New Hampshire, citing a Dartmouth College study. Life needs stimulation. However, overstimulation can cause exhaustion and illness. During specific sensitive periods early in life, stress can even affect later mental health. Accumulating evidence points towards an important role of epigenetic mechanisms in the mediation of these long-term effects. But researcher struggle to find a clear connection between early life experiences and later mental health disparities. Vanessa Lux, research fellow at the Department of Genetic Psychology, Ruhr Universitat Bochum (RUB), now proposes that the observed epigenetic programming effects are not the result of an overstimulated stress system alone. "Most researchers looked at the stress system. Our dual-activation hypothesis proposes that in addition to the stress system the sensory systems also contribute to epigenetic changes. According to our model, glucocorticoids prime the epigenetic machinery for change while neural activation coordinates the programming mechanisms," says Lux. But this neural activation is not only present in stress related networks. Lux argues that when a stressor is perceived, the sensory networks are also activated and may also be involved in epigenetic modifications. Dr. Lux summarized the existing evidence for her model in a thematic review that was recently published online in Current Genomics (Volume 19, 2018). The review shows that early life stress modifies epigenetic regulation of stress related genes through two pathways - neural activity and glucocorticoid exposure - and that the stress also impacts how the sensory systems develop. "This is not really a surprise. Stress is perceived through the senses. The more difficult question is, what epigenetic modifications are established in the sensory networks by the stressors and how this impacts mental health later in life", Dr. Lux says. Currently, researchers have not paid much attention to the epigenetic modifications in the sensory networks. And this despite the fact, that the period early in life, which researchers think is the most vulnerable for the impact of stress on later mental health, is also a sensitive period of sensory development. Dr. Lux wants to change this: "We just started a series of experiments at the RUB to investigate the related epigenetic mechanisms. With our dual-activation hypothesis, we assume that the interplay between epigenetic programming effects in stress-related and in sensory networks contributes to the diverse symptomatology we see in mental health patients who experienced early life stress. The effects on the sensory networks should therefore be included in bottom-up characterizations of clinical diagnoses." The research might also inspire new treatments for stress induced sensory dysfunctions such as tinnitus, hearing loss, visual impairment, or loss of sight. But other mental health patients will also profit. As Lux points out in her paper, people with severe mental illness often experience sensory dysfunctions. Knowing that there is a molecular link between the sensory systems and the stress system would encourage healthcare practitioners to take these sensory dysfunctions more seriously in their clients and consider appropriate therapeutic measures. At the end, a deeper insight into how our senses connect with the stress system would teach us all to better distinguish between healthy stimulation and where the stress begins, and address the resulting health problems more effectively. Engineered human immune cells can vanquish a deadly pediatric brain tumor in a mouse model, a study from the Stanford University School of Medicine has demonstrated. The study, published online April 16 in Nature Medicine, represents the first time a severe brainstem cancer, diffuse intrinsic pontine glioma, has been eradicated in mice with the tumor. DIPG affects a few hundred school-age children across the country each year and has a median survival time of only 10 months; there is no cure. In mice whose brainstems were implanted with human DIPG, engineered immune cells known as chimeric antigen receptor T cells -- or CAR-T cells -- were able to eliminate tumors, leaving very few residual cancer cells. "I was pleasantly surprised with how well this worked," said Michelle Monje, MD, PhD, assistant professor of neurology and a senior author of the study. "We gave CAR-T cells intravenously, and they tracked to the brain and cleared the tumor. It was a dramatically more marked response than I would have anticipated." When the brains of the mice were examined via immunostaining after treatment, the animals had, on average, a few dozen cancer cells left, compared with tens of thousands of cancer cells in animals that received a control treatment. "As a cancer immunotherapist, what gets me really excited is when you take an established tumor and you make it disappear," said Crystal Mackall, MD, professor of pediatrics and of medicine and the study's other senior author. "In animal studies, we can often slow the growth of a tumor, shrink a tumor or prevent tumors from forming. But it isn't so often that we take a tumor that's established and eradicate it -- and that's what you want in the clinic." However, some mice experienced dangerous levels of brain swelling, a side effect of the immune response triggered by the engineered cells, the researchers said, adding that extreme caution will be needed to introduce the approach in human clinical trials. 'Hiding in plain sight' To begin the research, the scientists screened human DIPG tumor cultures for surface molecules that could act as targets for CAR-T cells. In CAR-T therapies now used in humans, some of the patient's own immune cells are removed, engineered to attack a surface antigen on the cancer cells, and returned to the patient's body, where they target the cancer cells for destruction. Cell surface antigens are large molecules sticking out from a cell that help the immune system determine whether the cell is harmless or harmful. Monje's team identified a sugar molecule, GD2, which is abundant on the surface of DIPG tumors in 80 percent of cases. Excess expression of the sugar is caused by the same mutation that drives the growth of most DIPG tumors, known as the H3K27M mutation, the team found. Scientists have known for decades that GD2 levels on some other forms of cancer are very high, but its discovery on this tumor came as a surprise, Mackall said, adding, "It was hiding in plain sight, and we didn't know." Mackall's team had already designed a way to make CAR-T cells that attack the GD2 sugar; similar anti-GD2 CAR-T cells are now being tested in clinical trials in a few other cancers. In a dish, Mackall's CAR-T cells killed cultured DIPG cells that carry the H3K27M mutation. If the cultured cells were genetically modified to stop expressing the target sugar, the CAR-T cells no longer worked. Other CAR-T cells that were tuned to different molecular targets also did not kill the DIPG cancer cells. Next, the team tested the GD2 CAR-T cells in mice whose brainstem was implanted with human DIPG tumors, an experimental system that Monje's lab pioneered. Seven to eight weeks after the tumor was established, each mouse received one intravenous injection of GD2 CAR-T cells or, as a control treatment, an injection of CAR-T cells that react to a different target. The cells are able to cross the blood-brain barrier. In the mice that received GD2 CAR-T cells, the DIPG tumors were undetectable after 14 days, while mice receiving the control treatment had no tumor regression. After 50 days, the animals were euthanized and their brains examined. Using immunostaining, the researchers counted the remaining tumor cells; the mice treated with GD2 CAR-T cells had a few dozen remaining cancer cells per animal, while each control mouse had tens of thousands of cancer cells. In the GD2 CAR-T treated animals, the residual cancer cells did not express GD2, suggesting that these remaining cells were not vulnerable to the immune therapy and might be able to cause the cancer to recur. Risky to use near thalamus Gliomas occurring in the spinal cord and thalamus of children also exhibit the H3K27M mutation and were found to similarly express very high levels of GD2. The research team also tried the GD2 CAR-T therapy in mice with human spinal cord and thalamic tumors implanted in their respective anatomical locations. Spinal cord tumors were effectively cleared by the GD2 CAR-T cells. However, some animals with thalamic tumors died from the CAR-T treatment. The inflammatory response generated by the immune cells caused brain swelling, which is particularly risky near the thalamus, a structure buried deep inside the brain, the researchers reported. "While this strategy is very promising for a disease with few therapeutic options, it's crucially important to keep in mind that these tumors are located in precarious neuroanatomical sites that just do not tolerate much swelling -- and those regions are already expanded by tumors," Monje said. "With any effective clearing of a tumor by the immune system, by definition there is inflammation, which means there will be some degree of swelling. It's a dangerous situation." The team plans to move the CAR-T treatment into human clinical trials, but will build as many safeguards as possible into the trial to minimize risks to people who participate, Monje said. "I think this is something we can bring to the clinic soon, but it needs to be done very carefully," she said. "These CAR-T cells are extremely potent," Mackall said, noting that a therapy that uses CAR-T cells to treat pediatric leukemia was approved by the Food and Drug Administration in 2017. "In leukemia, that potency is the reason this has been a transformative therapy, but it is also the major cause for toxicity. It's very difficult to find a cancer medicine that works but doesn't have a down side." Because the CAR-T cells do not eradicate all cancer cells, the researchers think the immune therapy will need to be combined with other treatments. Monje's team is also studying chemotherapy drugs to treat DIPG. "I don't think one strategy is going to cure this extremely aggressive and deadly cancer," Monje said. "However, I think CAR-T immunotherapy is part of the puzzle of DIPG treatment in a way that I'm quite hopeful about." 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. While antibiotics have greatly reduced the dangers of ear infections, serious neurological complications, including hearing loss, facial paralysis, meningitis and brain abscess still occur, according to an article in the journal Current Neurology and Neuroscience Reports. The article was written by Loyola Medicine otolaryngologists Michael Hutz, MD, Dennis Moore, MD, and Andrew Hotaling, MD. It describes the symptoms, diagnosis and management of the neurologic complications of acute and chronic otitis media (middle ear infection). Otitis media occurs when a cold, allergy or upper respiratory infection leads to the accumulation of pus and mucus behind the eardrum, causing ear ache and swelling. In developed countries, about 90 percent of children have at least one episode before school age, usually between the ages of six months and four years. Today, secondary complications from otitis media occur in approximately 1 out of every 2,000 children in developed countries. The potential seriousness of otitis media was first reported by the Greek physician Hippocrates in 460 B.C. "Acute pain of the ear with continued high fever is to be dreaded for the patient may become delirious and die," Hippocrates wrote. The deadliest complication of otitis media is a brain abscess, an accumulation of pus in the brain due to an infection. The most common symptoms are headache, fever, nausea, vomiting, neurologic deficits and altered consciousness. With modern neurosurgical techniques, most brain abscesses can be suctioned or drained, followed by IV antimicrobial treatment for six to eight weeks. During the past 50 years, mortality worldwide from brain abscesses has decreased from 40 percent to 10 percent and the rate of full recovery has increased from 33 percent to 70 percent. Other complications include: Bacterial meningitis: Symptoms include severe headache, high fever, neck stiffness, irritability, altered mental status and malaise. As the infection spreads, the patient develops more severe restlessness, delirium and confusion. Treatment is high-dose IV antibiotics for 7 to 21 days. Acute mastoiditis: This is an infection that affects the mastoid bone located behind the ear. It must be treated to prevent it from progressing to more serious complications. Treatments include IV antibiotics and placement of a drainage tube. Hearing loss: Permanent hearing loss is rare, occurring in about 2 out of every 10,000 children who have otitis media. Facial paralysis: Prior to antibiotics, this debilitating complication occurred in about 2 out of 100 cases of otitis media. Since antibiotics, the rate has dropped to 1 in 2,000 cases. It should be treated as an emergency. About 95 percent of otitis media patients who develop facial paralysis recover completely. "Antibiotic therapy has greatly reduced the frequency of complications of otitis media," Drs. Hutz, Moore and Hotaling wrote. "However, it is of vital importance to remain aware of the possible development of neurologic complication. . . . In order to reduce morbidity, early deployment of a multidisciplinary approach with prompt imaging and laboratory studies is imperative to guide appropriate management." Dr. Hutz is a resident, Dr. Moore is an assistant professor and Dr. Hotaling is a professor emeritus in Loyola Medicine's department of otolaryngology. Their paper is titled, "Neurological Complications of Acute and Chronic Otitis Media." Loyola Medicine is recognized for its expert, clinically integrated team for otolaryngologyhead and neck surgery. The team has extensive experience in managing all aspects of ear, nose and throat conditions, and is committed to providing the best clinical care, education and research. Source: https://www.loyolamedicine.org/ He said, she said. Photo: Jim Watson/AFP/Getty Images On Sunday, Nikki Haley informed the United Nations that our government was preparing sanctions against Russian companies complicit in Syrias chemical weapons program. On Monday, the White House announced that the U.N. ambassador had misspoken. We are considering additional sanctions on Russia and a decision will be made in the near future, Sarah Huckabee Sanders said in a statement. But reporting from the New York Times and Washington Post suggests that Trump has already decided against imposing a new round of sanctions, absent a new provocation from Moscow. It is unclear whether Haley misinterpreted some message from her higher-ups, or whether the president intervened to kill a plan hed previously approved. Last Wednesday minutes after one member of the Fox & Friends morning crew argued that, What we should be doing is telling the Russians, every Syrian military base is a target and if youre there, it is your problem Trump suddenly adopted a hawkish posture toward Putins regime. The president warned Russia to Get ready for a missile strike, and admonished its government for partnering with a with a Gas Killing Animal. Its conceivable that Trump could have green-lit new sanctions while in that feverish frame of mind, only to subsequently decide that he couldnt stay mad at Vlad. Regardless, the incident provides the international community with one more bit of confirmation that when high-ranking American Cabinet officials announce foreign policy measures, theres no reason to assume that they speak for the U.S. government. And yet, Trumps recent humiliation of Haley notwithstanding, the administrations Russia hawks have generally gotten the upper hand on the Putin-puppet-in-chief. Since Trump took office, the U.S. has provided lethal aid to anti-Russian forces in Ukraine, expelled dozens of Russian diplomats, and imposed devastating sanctions against major Russian companies and oligarchs. The president expressed reluctance about or outright opposition to many of these measures, according to the Washington Post, but ultimately gave way to his advisers. Trumps bizarrely pro-Putin rhetoric combined with his habit of intervening conspicuously on the Kremlins behalf in policy disputes may be giving Americans a distorted sense of their governments actual policy toward Moscow. A Washington Post-ABC poll released Tuesday finds that 68 percent of the public supports tougher Russia sanctions. And yet, the sanctions already in place have proven tough enough to disrupt global commodities markets. Earlier this month, the United States imposed sanctions on several Russian oligarchs, officials, and businesses which it accused of abetting the Kremlins interference in Western democracies. Among those penalized was Rusal, one of the largest aluminum producers in the world. The United States has frozen all assets that the metal giant was keeping in American institutions, prohibited Americans from doing business with the corporation and pledged to slap sanctions on any foreign individual or firm that does business with Rusal. The impact of all this has been profound. Rusal had provided 7 percent of the worlds alumina, the raw material for aluminum production. Now, with the company sidelined, global aluminum prices have surged to a six-year high, while Rusals share price has plummeted by 56 percent. And the precedent that Americas gutting of the Russian corporation has set that the U.S. is prepared to destroy Russian firms in the blink of an eye, even at a cost to the global economy threatens to jeopardize other Russian firms access to foreign capital. Former World Bank economist Branko Milanovic argues that Russias position is now analogous to that of the Soviet Union in the 1920s, when the international communitys refusal to recognize its revolutionary government forced the fledgling empire to pursue an isolationist economic policy (at grave cost to the Russian peasantry). What current sanctions, and those that may yet come (as for example on Gazprom), show is that Russia is now at the same crossroads at which it was in the early 1920s. Its access to Western markets, technology and capital is all but cut off. It is true that there are nowadays other sources for all three, including in China. But the breadth of sanctions is such that Chinese actors, if they themselves plan to do business or raise money in the United States, will too avoid doing business with Russian entities. So Russian industry will be left to grow, if it can, using only domestic resources, which compared to global resources, are small and inadequate (given how Russias relative economic and population role in the world has declined). Autarky is thus preordained. Putin has thus, through a series of tactical successes, brought to Russia a comprehensive strategic defeat from which neither him, nor the governments that succeed him, will be able to extricate the country. Milanovics assessment may prove too dire. But theres little doubt that, for all of Trumps bizarre gestures of affection for his Russian counterpart, this presidency is not going how Putin hoped. As journalists keep reminding us, Trump has alienated very few of his 2016 supporters but the Kremlin is (almost certainly) one. The popular ASRA Coags app has just been updated to combine the latest regional anesthesia/acute pain medicine and chronic pain medicine drugs, procedures, and interventions. ASRA Coags 2.0 has combined the previous ASRA Coags Regional and ASRA Coags Pain apps into one handy tool and is available for iOS and Android devices. The app has been praised for being thorough and easy to use, and it provides yet another safeguard to double check interactions. "This app is amazing. My procedure nurses love it as they can cross check any individual procedure with any anticoagulant or antiplatelet medications," tweeted Samer Narouze, MD, PhD, shortly after the app's release. In the first 24 hours, nearly 7,100 people had updated the app. The basis for the information in ASRA Coags 2.0 are guidelines just published in the American Society of Regional Anesthesia and Pain Medicine's journal Regional Anesthesia and Pain Medicine. Regional Anesthesia in the Patient Receiving Antithrombotic or Thrombolytic Therapy: American Society of Regional Anesthesia and Pain Medicine Evidence-Based Guidelines (Fourth Edition) Interventional Spine and Pain Procedures in Patients on Antiplatelet and Anticoagulant Medications (Second Edition) ASRA has also released an updated ASRA LAST 2.0 app, based on the ASRA Checklist for Treatment of Local Anesthetic Systemic Toxicity, which provides an algorithm for physicians to manage a local anesthetic systemic toxicity (LAST) event during during administration of local anesthetic. The app could potentially be a life-saver as it walks the practitioner through the steps to rescue a patient experiencing this life-threatening event. Source: https://www.asra.com/ Giving opioids to animals to quell pain after surgery prolongs pain for more than three weeks and primes specialized immune cells in the spinal cord to be more reactive to pain, according to a new study by the University of Colorado Boulder. The authors say the paradoxical findings, if replicated in humans, could have far-reaching implications for patient pain management and add a new wrinkle to the conversation about the national opioid epidemic. "This indicates that there is another dark side of opiates that many people don't suspect," said senior author Linda Watkins, a professor in the Department of Psychology and Neuroscience. "It shows that trauma, including surgery, in combination with opiates can lead to chronic pain." For the study, Watkins and co-author Peter Grace, then an assistant research professor at CU Boulder, performed exploratory abdominal surgery, or laparotomy, on male rats. A similar procedure is done tens of thousands of times annually in the United States in humans, and opiates are routinely used after surgery. "Opiates are really effective for acute pain relief. There is no drug that works better. But very little research has been done to look at what it is doing in the weeks to months after it's withdrawn," said Grace, now an assistant professor at MD Anderson Cancer Center in Houston. In one experiment, half the rats were given the equivalent of what would be a "moderate" dose of morphine in people for seven days postsurgery. Half were given a saline solution. In another experiment, the rats were given morphine for eight days and then tapered off by day 10. In a third, the animals were given morphine until day 10 and then it was abruptly withdrawn. Before and after the treatments, the researchers measured the animal's sensitivity to touch as well as activity of genes that express inflammatory proteins in the spinal cord. They found that rats given morphine experienced postoperative pain for more than three weeks longer. The longer they received morphine, the longer their pain lasted. And gradual tapering made no difference. "This tells us that this is not a phenomenon related to opioid withdrawal, which we know can cause pain. Something else is going on here," Grace said. Watkins describes that something as a "one-two hit" on specialized immune system cells called glial cells in the central nervous system. The first hit, the surgery, stimulates what she calls the "not me, not right, not OK" receptor, Toll-like receptor 4 on the cells, igniting the release of a cascade of inflammatory proteins and "priming" them to be on guard for a second hit. Morphine, which also stimulates that receptor, is the second hit. "With that second hit, the primed glial cells respond faster, stronger and longer than before, creating a much more enduring state of inflammation and sometimes local tissue damage," she said. In a previous study, published in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences in 2016, the researchers showed that just a few days of treatment with opiates to treat peripheral nerve pain, such as sciatica, could exacerbate and prolong pain for months in animals, in part by increasing expression of inflammatory genes. A few small studies in humans have associated postsurgical opioid administration with chronic pain as much as one year later. "An unusually high number of people end up with postoperative chronic pain. This new study lends insight into one explanation for that," Watkins said. The researchers, acknowledging that animal studies cannot directly translate to humans, are now calling for more clinical studies on opioids and chronic pain. More than 50 million U.S. adults experience chronic pain, according to the National Institutes of Health. Watkins is also studying novel compounds that could be given with opioids to mute the exaggerated immune response they are believed to trigger, as well as alternative painkillers, including cannabinoids, for pain. "There is surely a dark side in terms of addiction when it comes to opioids, but this is a very different idea--that we think we are treating the pain with these drugs and we may actually be prolonging it," she said. Source: https://www.colorado.edu/today/2018/04/16/opioids-after-surgery-can-paradoxically-prolong-pain Colon polyps from patients with Lynch syndrome, a hereditary condition that raises colorectal cancer risk, display immune system activation well before cancer development, according to research from The University of Texas MD Anderson Cancer Center. The preclinical research challenges traditional models of cancer immune activation and suggests immunotherapy may be useful for colorectal cancer prevention in certain high-risk groups. The findings, published in JAMA Oncology, will be presented today at the American Association for Cancer Research Annual Meeting 2018 in Chicago by Kyle Chang, graduate research assistant. Immune checkpoint inhibitors targeting PD-1, such as pembrolizumab and nivolumab, have been successful in treating colorectal cancers with deficiencies in DNA mismatch repair (MMR). These tumors accumulate large numbers of genetic mutations and mutant proteins, or neoantigens, which are thought to stimulate an immune response, making them more susceptible to checkpoint blockade therapy. "Our question was how this worked in premalignancy," said senior author Eduardo Vilar-Sanchez, M.D., Ph.D., assistant professor of Clinical Cancer Prevention and Gastrointestinal (GI) Medical Oncology. "Can we apply checkpoint inhibitors or checkpoint inhibitor strategies to prevent MMR-deficient colorectal cancer?" Lynch syndrome (LS), which is caused by inherited mutations in MMR, provides the perfect context in which to study early immune activation and explore the potential use of checkpoint inhibitors in a prevention setting, explained Vilar-Sanchez. Over 1 million people in the U.S. are affected by LS, the most common hereditary colorectal cancer syndrome. In the study, the researchers analyzed gene expression to characterize the immune profile in 11 polyps and three early-stage tumors from 14 patients with LS. As a control, the researchers also analyzed 17 polyps from patients with Familial Adenomatous Polyposis (FAP), a hereditary colorectal cancer syndrome which does not exhibit MMR deficiencies. The resulting profiles revealed increased expression of several markers of immune activation, including CD4 T-cells, proinflammatory molecules and checkpoint molecules, such as PD-L1 and LAG-3, in LS polyps compared to FAP polyps. However, contrary to traditional models of immune activation, the observed immune profiles were independent of the rate of mutations or neoantigens present in the sample. "To our surprise, our findings don't follow the standard model. The majority of premalignant lesions do not have an excessive increase in mutations or neoantigens," said Vilar-Sanchez. "However, we observed there is already immune activation, meaning the activation precedes the development of the mutations." The findings suggest a baseline level of immune activation exists in precancerous polyps, which may prime them for susceptibility to checkpoint blockade, explained Vilar-Sanchez. Future work will be necessary to clarify the mechanism by which this immune activation occurs, as the current study was observational in nature. The researchers hope to initiate clinical studies to investigate the use of checkpoint blockade strategies for preventing colorectal cancer in high-risk groups, such as those with LS. "Lynch syndrome patients have a strong immune activation in the colon, and that immune activation can be exploited for preventive purposes," said Vilar-Sanchez. "I think our data provide the information needed to launch studies to use checkpoint inhibition in the setting of prevention." Amaravati: Mauryas, Satavahanas, Pallavas, Vijayanagara empire and many more have previously laid their claims to the ancient city of Amaravati in Andhra Pradesh. Today, Telugu Desam Party (TDP) president and Andhra Pradesh chief minister N Chandrababu Naidu is claiming to resurrect this ancient seat of power in modern-day India. In re-building Amaravati, or the the place for immortals, Naidu claims to be creating Indias Singapore, a city known worldwide for its planning and high tech infrastructure. Naidu, who has been chief minister for 14 years (in undivided Andhra Pradesh and the rest after bifurcation), walked out on his ally, the ruling Bhartiya Janata Party (BJP), last month over broken promises. By refusing to grant a Special Status to the state, the Centre, he alleged, had backed out on what was promised to it on the floor of the Parliament. I have built Cyberabad, what have they built?; Naidu asked the BJP just after the messy divorce during the budget session of Parliament as he accused his erstwhile poll ally of not providing requisite resources for his dream project. The Ambition Naidu has pegged Amaravati as the Singapore of India. A Greenfield capital city of 217 square kilometres, Amaravati is being developed near Vijayawada along the Krishna River and expects to house close to 3.5 million people by 2050. The Chief Minister is never tired of speaking on the Land Pooling System, a model relied on by his government for acquiring land from the farmers. Amaravati is part of a greenfield project for which farmers were asked to pool their land with the promise of a return of an average 30% of the developed land to the original owners. The government says that close to 35,000 acres of land were given voluntarily for development. The cost of the project, according to a few official estimates, is around Rs 45,000 crores. There is another set of estimates by the APCRDA which peg the expenditure to be over Rs 1 lakh crore. So what all will this expenditure bring to Amaravati? Naidu promises the new capital city to be aesthetically appealing with state of the art architecture. Dr Sreedhar Cherukuri, the commissioner at APCRDA, Amravatis design is inspired by many famous cities world over. For instance, like Amsterdam, all major roads in Amaravati will have waterways. It is being planned as a green and blue city with more than 50% being green cover and close to 10-15% as water cover. It will have a dense green cover like New Yorks Central Park. Real-time governance, biometric details of all residents (with the use of blockchain technology) are also part of the project. Cherukuri says the city will have nine thematic regions; knowledge, tourism, sports, electronics, health, finance, media and government. State officials added that while individually some of the infrastructure could be seen in a few parts of India, it was for the first time that sectors were being integrated. On The Ground The city is now in phase 1 of its development which includes government complexes and houses for officials. This phase 1, according to official estimates, comes at an expense of nearly Rs 43,000 crore, out of which about Rs 3,000 crore has been spent and 53% of phase 1 has been completed. The government has time and again lauded itself on the pace at which the city is being developed, ever since the project officially started 40 months ago. A visit to the phase 1 area Amaravati will show housing complexes at various levels of construction. The number of apartments under construction for government employees stands at 3,840 and there are 186 bungalows top judiciary and administration, including ministers and bureaucrats. Temporary buildings of the Secretariat and the Assembly stand tall with state of the art facilities and so do two varsities, SRM University and Vellore Institute of Technology. Additionally, substantial progress has been made in developing a Real Time Governance (RTG) Centre. With facial recognition in place (the government said that the feature has helped nab culprits in the state), censor enabled street lights across the district and a 24*7 call centre to address residents concerns, the system, according to Balaji Adivishnu, director at RTGC, has achieved global acclaim. The Long Road Ahead Questions have however arisen on whether farmers whose lands have been acquired for Amaravati have been adequately compensated under LPS model. There are many like Anumolu Gandhi, a prominent activist who has taken the government to court over the scheme. Gandhi owns about 82 acres of land in Lingayapalem. His land in the village, he said, is worth Rs 4.25 crores but the government announced the value as Rs 10 lakh. Farmers are confused. The government is only creating an environment of expectations, Gandhi said. His concerns were voiced by another farmer, Kudasarao, who did not give up his land as part of land pooling. He points to the land opposite his own, which is "now with the government and is dry and barren. People have left their agricultural practices and are doing odd jobs." "I did not give my land which is about 1 acre because I get income from it all through the year, Kudasarao explained. His farms flowers for sale throughout summer, winter and monsoon thus ensuring that he earns money 365 days a year. Not just farmers, but former chief secretary IYR Krishna Rao has slammed the Naidu governments project in his book, Whose Capital, Amaravathi?, Rao has called the LPS a sham. Resistance to LPS and the project, in general, continues till date and the opposition in the state has taken to it too. YSR Congress chief Jagan has called the scheme as land fooling. In the past, he has said that the government had taken away chunks of land from the farmers and given it to corporates at questionable prices. There has been no dearth of controversy regarding the temporary Secretariat too, which is one of the few completed structures at present. Many are questioning why over Rs 1 crore was spent on a transitional government complex. Paucity of funds has been a topic of debate, especially now that Naidu is out of the National Democratic Alliance's (NDA) fold. With or without the money, Amaravati is Naidus trump card. His announcement that basic infrastructure will be completed in the city by the end of 2018 could very well be the clarion call for 2019. (The reporter was in Amaravati at the invitation of the Andhra Pradesh government.) New Delhi: As reports of non-availability of cash at ATMs across the country kept coming in through the day, Reserve Bank of India (RBI) in a statement on Tuesday clarified that there is no shortage of currency. The central bank noted logistical issues and non-replenishment of ATMs as the reason behind the cash crunch. However, former Finance Minister P. Chidambaram lashed out at RBI saying the shortage was caused due to arbitrary control on cash supply. It has been reported in a section of the media that there is shortage of currency in certain parts of the country. It is clarified at the outset that there is sufficient cash in the RBI vaults and currency chests, said RBI in its statement issued on Tuesday. Chidamabaram asked for the reason behind the shortage in a tweet: If RBI has injected sufficient cash, it is obliged to tell the people why there is a cash shortage. The central bank explained, The shortage may be felt in some pockets largely due to logistical issues of replenishing ATMs frequently and the recalibration of ATMs being still underway. However, Chidambaram was not convinced. He said that cash supply must grow at the same rate as the economy. The cash shortage may be because cash supply has been arbitrarily reduced. A government is obliged to provide as much cash as the people need at any given time. Government or RBI cannot arbitrarily control the supply of cash, said the former finance minister. A government is obliged to provide as much cash as the people need at any given time. Government or RBI cannot arbitrarily control the supply of cash. P. Chidambaram (@PChidambaram_IN) April 17, 2018 Complaints of cash shortage started pouring in from across the country, including New Delhi, Maharashtra, Gujarat, Karnataka, Andhra Pradesh and Rajasthan. While some complained of ATMs running dry, some said ATMs were simply not working, leading to fears of cash crunch of the kind seen in the immediate days of demonetisation. Finance Minister Arun Jaitley, after a major outrage on social media, said the shortage was short term. Temporary shortage of currency in some areas is being tackled. There is more than adequate currency in circulation, Jaitley said. Jaitley said in a tweet that he has reviewed the currency situation in the country. "Overall there is more than adequate currency in circulation and also available with the banks. The temporary shortage caused by 'sudden and unusual increase' (in demand) in some areas is being tackled quickly," Jaitley said. MoS Finance SP Shukla said the RBI has formed a committee to transfer currency to states. We have cash currency of Rs 1,25,000 crore right now. There is one problem that some states have less currency and others have more. The government has formed state-wise committee and the RBI too has formed a committee to transfer currency from one state to other. It'll be done in three days, Shukla said. The Centre has also ramped up production of currency. "We print about 500 crore of Rs 500 notes per day. We have taken steps to raise this production five times. In the next couple of days, we will have supply of about Rs 2500 crore of Rs 500 notes per day. In a month, supply would be about Rs 70000-Rs 75000 crore," said economic affairs secretary Subhash Chandra Garg. The RBI added, Further, as a matter of abundant precaution, RBI is also taking steps to move currency to areas which are witnessing unusually large cash withdrawals. Nevertheless, printing of the notes has been ramped up in all the 4 note presses. The government is trying to get non-functional ATMs normalised at the earliest, said the Department of Economic Affairs. "Government of India would like to assure that there have been adequate supply of currency notes which have met entire demand so far. It would also like to assure it would be supplying adequate currency notes to meet even higher demand in coming days/months," said Department of Economic Affairs. New Delhi: Complaints have been pouring in from across the country, including New Delhi, Maharashtra, Gujarat, Karnataka, Andhra Pradesh and Rajasthan, of ATMs running dry or simply not working, leading to fears of cash crunch of the kind seen in the immediate days of demonetisation. Complaining on Twitter, many said banks had started setting withdrawal limits, but these claims could not be immediately verified. In Hyderabad, ATMs are out of cash. Local SBI branch has set a 5,000 withdrawal limit. A senior citizen was requesting 20,000 & thanked the clerk profusely when she finally relented. The clerk said that there's a rumor that the RBI is withholding cash because of IPL betting Anamika (@AnaMyID) April 13, 2018 Where is the currency going? Why are ATMs dry in Hyderabad? Why is this happening? Where has the cash disappeared? Someone please investigate the mystery of the vanishing currency! @HiHyderabad @Paul_Oommen @tweetsakshi @RishikaSadam @CoreenaSuares2 @Ashi_IndiaToday Sunitha Simon (@sunitha_simon) April 17, 2018 ATMs are running out of cash. I got 5 empty ATMs before finding the 6th one with cash and it was inside a bank. This is Bangalore. Totally terrible situation! Sushant Sinha (@sushantsinha) April 16, 2018 With residents from several states taking to social media, Finance Minister Arun Jaitley said the shortage was temporary. Temporary shortage of currency in some areas is being tackled. There is more than adequate currency in circulation, Jaitley said. Jaitley said in a tweet that he has reviewed the currency situation in the country. "Overall there is more than adequate currency in circulation and also available with the Banks. The temporary shortage caused by 'sudden and unusual increase' (in demand) in some areas is being tackled quickly," Jaitley said. Have reviewed the currency situation in the country. Over all there is more than adequate currency in circulation and also available with the Banks. The temporary shortage caused by sudden and unusual increase in some areas is being tackled quickly. Arun Jaitley (@arunjaitley) April 17, 2018 Taking a dig at the Centre over the issue, Congress president Rahul Gandhi said that Prime Minister Narendra Modi has destroyed the banking system of the country. He (PM Modi) can take a tour of the entire nation, but he cant stand in Parliament for 15 minutes. There is clear theft of Rs 45,000 crore in the Rafael deal, which PM has given to one of his industrialist friends. The employment has been snatched away from the HAL and people in Bengaluru. PM Modi addresses Nirav Modi by his first name Nirav and calls Mehul Choksi as Mehul Bhai, Gandhi said. ATM #CashCrunch Rahul Gandhi (@RahulGandhi) April 17, 2018 MoS Finance SP Shukla said the Reserve Bank of India (RBI) has formed a committee to transfer currency to states. We've cash currency of Rs 1,25,000 crore right now. There is one problem that some states have less currency and others have more. The government has formed state-wise committee and the RBI too has formed a committee to transfer currency from one state to other. It'll be done in three days, Shukla said. Speaking to CNBC TV-18, SBI Chairman Rajnish Kumar said, The situation is a little imbalanced in certain pockets of geography. There is sufficient cash in the system. Currency in circulation is at Rs 18.29 lakh crore. Officials from the Finance Ministry are said to have held a meeting with the RBI to manage the situation. In Lucknow, cash crunch was reported in Hazratganj, Gomti Nagar, Indira Nagar, Alambagh and Aliganj areas. A guard at an SBI ATM in Gomti Nagar told News18 that cash was refilled in the machine on Monday night, but the ATM ran out of the currency by morning. Similar complaints were reported from Varanasi as well. "Marriage season is coming up and cash is needed. The situation will become more or less like demonetisation if cash crunch is not dealt with soon, a private bank customer in Lucknow told News18. The issue had taken political overtones on Monday with Madhya Pradesh Chief Minister Shivraj Singh Chouhan claiming that Rs 2,000 notes were vanishing from the market. Alleging a "conspiracy" behind it, Chouhan said his government would take tough action. "The currency worth Rs 15,00,000 crore was in circulation before demonetisation. After this exercise (demonetisation), the currency in circulation increased to Rs 16,50,000 crore. But notes of Rs 2,000 are missing from the market, Chouhan had said at a farmers convention. "Where these notes of Rs 2,000 denomination are going, who are keeping them out of circulation? Who are the persons creating shortfall of cash? This is a conspiracy to create problems. The government will act tough on this," he said. CPM leader Sitaram Yechury tweeted on Tuesday that BJP was flush with cash, while the people suffer. My bad? Photo: Drew Angerer/Getty Images When Nikki Haley announced an American sanctions policy on Russia that didnt exist, it was merely because she was personally confused. Thats the unconvincing story, according to National Economic Council director Larry Kudlow, who for some reason weighed in on this major foreign-policy miscommunication to a journalist. NEWS: Why did Trump block additional Russia sanctions after Nikki Haley announced them? Larry Kudlow -- Trump's top economic adviser -- says Haley's "momentary confusion" is to blame. Adds "Steve Mnuchin in Treasury will tell you the same thing. They're in charge of that." Geoff Bennett (@GeoffRBennett) April 17, 2018 Ah, life in the Trump White House. Haley had announced on Meet the Press Sunday that the sanctions, which were meant to punish Russian companies for supporting Syrias chemical-weapons program, would be officially rolled out the next day. The hawkish U.S. ambassador to the U.N. is not known to veer off message, or for imprecision of language. But when Monday morning rolled around, no sanctions were forthcoming. Instead, multiple outlets reported, a familiar pattern had emerged. Against the wishes of his national-security advisers, President Trump had backed off on punishing Russia for fear of well, we dont know exactly what. We are considering additional sanctions on Russia and a decision will be made in the near future, White House press secretary Sarah Huckabee Sanders said in a statement on Monday. Either Amb @nikkihaley made a terrible blunder (less likely) or she had her legs cut out from under her. Either way this will severely undermine her effectiveness since fellow Ambs cant take her word as US policy.@JohnJHarwood https://t.co/82efhGr3YY Keith Michael Harper (@AmbHarper) April 17, 2018 Trumps reluctance to cross Vladimir Putin, clashing against his advisers uniform desire to discipline him, underscored the point that there are two diametrically opposed Russia policies coming out of the White House at the same time. As Eric Levitz writes, Russia hawks have claimed plenty of victories against their boss: the U.S. has imposed crippling sanctions (just not the ones that were to be announced Monday), expelled diplomats, and armed Ukrainian forces, among other policies. Even Trump had seemed to come around on a more aggressive approach recently, expressing an ill-considered wish to punish Russia over the Syrian chemical-weapons attack. But just as quickly as it went away, Trumps baseline reluctance to offend Putin seems to have returned. No wonder the White House cant get its policies straight. UPDATE: Haley offered a memorably disdainful response to Kudlows comments later on Tuesday. With all respect, I dont get confused, she said in a statement. Kudlow then called Haley to apologize. Lucknow: Dr Kafeel Khan, often hailed as the "hero" of the BRD Medical College tragedy in Uttar Pradesh last year that killed over 60 children dead, is languishing at the Gorakhpur prison and his health is deteriorating, said his wife. He has been booked over charges of attempt to murder". In a statement given to a news agency on Tuesday, wife of Dr Khan said, "My husband's health is deteriorating. Doctors have said that the case must be referred to Lucknow, but it the jail administration is not executing the orders. I fear for my husbands life.' In December last year, Khan's mother, Nuzhat Parveen had met Uttar Pradesh CM Yogi Adityanath during a Janta Darbar held in Gorakhpur and demanded justice for her son. Nuzhat Parveen told Yogi Adityanath that her family was going through a difficult time and that the CM must help them. "My son was arrested over the BRD Medical College incident while he was doing his duty because a conspiracy was hatched against him. I have requested CM Yogi Adityanath and he has assured me to look into the case," said Nuzhat Parveen, who was performing Hajj when over 63 children died at the state-run Baba Raghav Das Medical College in Gorakhpur in August 2017. The Gorakhpur Police have dropped charges of corruption and private practice against Dr Kafeel Khan, who is one of the nine accused in the BRD Medical College case that left many dead allegedly due to oxygen shortage in the childrens ward. Khan, the head of the encephalitis ward and an assistant professor at the paediatrics department, was removed from the post of the nodal officer at the National Health Mission in the wake of deaths that rocked the state and the Yogi government. Khan has been charged under Sections 120-B, 308 and 409 of the IPC by the office of DG Medical Education for collecting oxygen cylinders from his private hospital. New Delhi: In a repeat of the Kathua gang-rape and murder case, an eight-year-old was raped and strangled in Uttar Pradeshs Etah district on late Monday evening. The accused has been arrested and further investigation is underway. Sonu Jatav, who was given the task of putting up tents for the marriage ceremony lured the girl, raped her and subsequently killed her, Superintendent of Police Akhilesh Chaurasia said. "After this, the accused fled from the spot. The body of the girl was found in an under-construction house in the vicinity of the marriage venue. A rope was found tied around the neck of the girl,"he said. The girl was rushed to the district hospital, where she was declared brought dead. The body of the girl has been sent for post-mortem. "On the basis of complaints filed by the family members, police have arrested Sonu Jatav," he said. Eight-year-old girl allegedly killed after being raped in Etah. Case registered, accused arrested. Further investigation underway pic.twitter.com/gG1GiGYzKs ANI UP (@ANINewsUP) April 17, 2018 Just last week, a child was also raped and murdered in Gujarat's Surat. Noida: A 10-year-old girl was allegedly raped by her alcoholic father in Uttar Pradeshs Mahoba district, barely 160 km from Unnao the district which recently hit headlines over a rape case. According to police, the mother of the girl alleged that her husband, who is an alcoholic, had raped her daughter when she had left her alone with him on Saturday. A medical exam has confirmed that the girl was, in fact, raped and Mahoba Police have registered an FIR based on the mothers complaint. The accused had gone into hiding on Sunday, after the FIR was registered. He was finally arrested in the city on Monday. Police said the woman, a mother of three, took two of her children with her when she went to a field in a nearby village to work. The second of her three children, a 10-year-old girl, was left at home with the father. When the woman returned home, she found out from her daughter that she had been raped by her own father. Jitendra Kumar Dubey, Mahobas Circle Officer (City), confirmed the news and told News18, The incident took place in Subhash Nagar area of Mahoba city on Saturday. The girls mother is a farm labourer and would often leave behind children with their father when she would go out to work. A day after the incident, she came to the Mahoba Kotwali police station with her daughter and filed the complaint. Mahoba Kotwali station officer Vikramjit Singh said, A case has been registered against the father under section 376 (rape) of the Indian Penal Code (IPC) and the Protection of Children from Sexual Offences (POCSO) Act. The girl has been sent to Mahoba district hospital for medical treatment. The accused is in custody and is being questioned. On Monday, an eight-year-old was raped and strangled in Etah district. The incident took place during a wedding when parents of the girl were busy and a teen lured the minor to a half-built house and allegedly raped her. These are the latest in a string of cases of violence against minor girls across India. While CBI is investigating Unnao girls allegations against BJP MLA Kuldeep Singh Sengar, eight lawyers were named in an FIR for obstructing policemen while filing chargesheet in Kathua rape case. Meanwhile, body of an unidentified minor girl was found in Gujarat's Surat with 86 injury marks. New Delhi: Just days after it was revealed that electoral bonds carried a serial number invisible to the naked eye, the central government on Tuesday confirmed that there were in built security features in the bonds, but that those features were not accessible to anybody, including the government. The Quint reported that the hidden serial numbers on the electoral bonds were present to track down the link between donors and political parties. The government, however, has quashed the allegations and said that the Random Serial Number present on the bonds were not linked to any party transaction nor could they be used for tracking the transactions. It also added that the State Bank of India does not share the serial number with anybody, including the government and users. The purchaser is allowed to buy electoral bond (s) only on due fulfillment of all the extant KYC norms and by making payment from a bank account. The bond does not carry the name of payee or any other details by which the buyer can be identified. Likewise no detail of political party depositing the bonds is noted on the electoral bonds. Thus, any particular bond cannot be identified or associated with any particular buyer or political party deposit, the statement read, further stating that the security features were present to eliminate chances of forgery or presentation of fake bonds". This number is not noted by the SBI in any record associated with buyer or political party depositing a particular electoral bond. It is, thus, not linked to any party transaction when the bank issues a bond to the buyer. As such the number is not being used or can be used to track the donation or the buyer, the government said. An electoral bond, issued in multiples of Rs 1000, Rs 10,000, Rs 1 lakh, Rs 10 lakh and Rs 1 crore, is available at special branches at the State Bank of India. The bond is a bearer instrument similar to the promissory note and people can donate the bonds to their party of choice which can then be cashed in by the respective political party within two weeks time. The electoral bond scheme was announced by the government during the 2017 Budget with an aim to keep an account of donations that every political party receives. New Delhi: In an effort to reach out to the Dalit community, Union Minister Ram Vilas Paswan on Tuesday told PTI that the government will move Supreme Court for quota in promotion for scheduled tribe. A bench headed by Chief Justice Dipak Misra had earlier said that a five-judge Constitution bench would examine the need to relook at its 2006 verdict in the M Nagraj case. The verdict had said that the creamy layer exclusion principle, applicable in grant of quota to Other Backward Classes (OBCs), cannot be applied to Scheduled Castes and Scheduled Tribes for promotions in government jobs. It will take some time to constitute a bench, the bench had said when lawyers Naresh Kaushik and Suyash Mohan Guru mentioned the matter and sought early setting up of the larger bench to deal with the issue. The apex court had earlier tagged several petitions on the issue of grant of quota to SC/ST employees in promotions including the one filed by the Madhya Pradesh government against the high court decision declaring the MP Public Service (MPSC) Promotion Rules, 2002 as ultra virus to the Constitution. A two-judge bench of the apex court had referred a batch of petitions to the CJI for consideration of the issue by a larger bench. The M Nagaraj verdict had in 21006 ruled out the application of creamy layer exclusion principle for SC-ST employees. The bench, while referring the matters to the CJI, had also referred to earlier verdicts of 1992 Indra Sawhney and others versus Union of India (popularly called Mandal Commission verdict) and 2005 E V Chinnaiah versus State of Andhra Pradesh which had dealt with creamy layer exclusion principle for OBCs. The apex court had then said that clarity was required on the application of creamy layer principle in a situation of competing claims within the same races, communities, groups or parts of SC/ST communities notified by the President under Articles 341 and 342 of the Constitution. Bengaluru: After his younger brother Gali Somashekhara Reddys name figured in BJPs second list, an elated Gali Janardhana Reddy declared in a meeting of his close aides that they are back in business and the second innings would be good for them. A few minutes later, he called up many important leaders in state BJP and thanked them for giving three tickets to Reddy clan, claim his close circles. Just a month ago, there were serious doubts over Reddys political future and the BJP high command had maintained a total silence over offering them any role in the Karnataka Assembly elections. Two weeks later BJP national president Amit Shah declared in a press meet that BJP has nothing to do with Reddys. It was being seen as the end of road for Reddys and a shocked Reddy clan huddled to discuss their future. Some of them even started sending feelers to Congress and JDS to remain relevant in state politics. But their close friend and Bellary MP B Sriramulu worked behind the scenes and managed to persuade the party high command to give one more chance to them. Sriramulu is considered a strong tribal leader in Karnataka and wields a lot of influence in three districts Chitradurga, Bellary and Raichur, bordering Andhra Pradesh. The BJP does not want to lose seats by continuing to shun the Reddys, say party insiders. Along with G Somashekhara Reddy, their close associate Sanna Fakkirappa has also got BJP ticket from Bellary rural. Somashekhara Reddy will be contesting from Bellary City against Congress sitting MLA Anil Lad, whom he had defeated by a slender margin of 1000 votes in 2008. The ruling Congress has strongly reacted to BJP fielding Reddy clan in the Assembly elections. Congress spokespersons, including Randeep Singh Surjevala and Priyanka Chaturvedi, have attacked the BJP questioning their commitment corruption free Karnataka. But the Reddy clan does not seem to be worried about such things. After spending almost four years in Hyderabad and Bengaluru jail in connection with the Rs 50,000-crore mining scam, Gali Janardhana Reddy had almost disappeared from public life. The Supreme Court also made life tough for him by banning Reddys entry to hometown Bellary. Except Sriramulu, his entire clan was out of power and Reddys enemies had regained the last territory in the last 5-6 years. Certainly the Reddy clan was staring at a bleak future. But the sudden developments in the last two weeks have once again brought them back to mainstream politics. The Reddy brothers, who propelled the BJP to its first ever win in a southern state with their money and muscle power in 2008, became persona non-grata in just five years. After the then Lokayukta Justice N Santosh Hegde indicted them in the mining scam, the CBI sent them to jail and Janardhana Reddy had to cool his heels in Hyderabad and Bengaluru prisons for almost four years. During the 2013 Assembly elections, the once-feared Reddy was in jail and his mining empire was in a shambles. He was even suspended from the BJP and his close confidante B Sriramulu had floated his own party called BSR Congress which had won three seats in that election. By 2014, the two breakaway factions of the state BJP Yeddyurappas KJP and BSR Congress returned to the parent party and helped the Lotus symbol win 17 out of 28 Lok Sabha seats from the state. But the BJP was not ready to touch the infamous Reddy brothers Janardhana and Somashekhara even with a barge pole after that. After his release from jail, Janardhana Reddy had maintained that he was still with the BJP. But the state BJP had clarified that he was not part of it. The first signals of a rapprochement appeared in November 2016. Reddy had arranged a Rs 500 crore-mega wedding for his daughter at Bengaluru Palace and all top BJP leaders had attended it. Even the Income Tax department did not bother to find out how Reddy had arranged Rs 500 crore just a week after demonetisation. Bellary MP B Sri Ramulu was also named in the suspicious death of his close aides driver and alleged conversion of Rs 100 crore demonetised notes into new currencies. But the concerned agencies chose to ignore that, giving enough credence to theories that the BJP was cozying up to Reddys with Assembly polls in mind. The Supreme Court has barred Janardhana Reddy from entering his hometown Bellary and gagged him from talking to the media. The Supreme Court has once again dismissed his plea requesting the apex court to allow him return to Bellary, just two weeks ago. Janardhana Reddy has now set up a base for himself near Chitradurga and Bellary district borders during the elections. From a farm house he will be overseeing the electioneering in Bellary. One of his aides told News18 that Reddy had assured the BJP that he will bring BJP back to power in Karnataka through Bellary. Unlike in the past, Janardhana Reddy wont be visible much in public and is expected to confine himself to backroom maneuvering and deals for the BJP he said. The BJPs CM face and former chief minister BS Yeddyurappa seems to have forgotten everything the Reddys did to him during his regime. Even though he is not meeting him in public, he is not averse to the idea of using the Reddys to win some seats in the elections, claim state BJP sources. When News18 asked him about Reddys, Yeddyurappa defended giving tickets to Reddy clan. The state BJP general secretary and MLA CT Ravi has defended tainted Reddys once again working for the BJP. Speaking to News18, he said, There are 224 Assembly seats in the state. Every seat is important. The Reddys are helping us in some seats. There is nothing wrong in it. Reddy brothers have a personal reason to side with the BJP because of the Siddaramaiah governments decision to reinvestigate the iron ore export scam even after the CBI closed the case. The Congress engineered the defection of two Reddy loyalists during party president Rahul Gandhis visit to Bellary two weeks ago. It has also unnerved the Reddy camp. It fears that if the Congress retains power, it can spell doom for their family. In the crucial battle for Karnataka, both BJP and Reddys are fighting for their survival. It is a case of two together, two alone for the same cause. The return of the Reddys is likely to alter Karnataka politics once again irrespective Assembly election results. New Delhi: The Law Commission of India has proposed holding simultaneous state and general elections and has sought public opinion on its recommendations regarding the same. The panel has sought public opinion on its proposed recommendations on the feasibility of holding simultaneous elections in the country and has proposed a series of Constitutional and other amendments to the Representation of Peoples Act, 1951, and Rules of Procedure to carve the way for One Nation, One Poll. After a full commission meeting at the Law Commission on Tuesday, Chairman Justice BS Chauhan released a list of recommendations for holding simultaneous elections and another draft prepared by the commission. Prime Minister Narendra Modi has made no secret of his desire to hold simultaneous state and general elections on grounds that a continuous electoral cycle disrupts governance. President Ram Nath Kovind, too, stressed on the need to hold simultaneous polls to the Lok Sabha and state assemblies. The commission has recommended a two-phased election process for the simultaneous election process and made it clear on Tuesday that the Constitution foresaw that the elections to the legislatures of various states and the Centre will not always be concurrent. However, putting an end to the debate of whether Constitutional amendments were required or not for holding simultaneous polls, the commission suggested that amendments would have to be made in the Constitution, Representation of Peoples Act, 1951 and rules of procedure of Lok Sabha and those of the state legislative assemblies. The commission further suggested that a definition of simultaneous elections should also be added to Section 2 of the 1951 Act and proposed that the Vote of No Confidence be replaced with a Constructive Vote of no Confidence by amending the rules of procedure and conduct of business of Lok Sabha and a new rule in the form of rule 198 a be added. Article 75 of the Constitution states that the Prime Minister must enjoy the support from the majority of the members of Lok Sabha to continue in the office. However, the commission has stated that an alternative to tide over the premature dissolution of the house of people could be that the members while moving on no confidence motion may also put forward an option for forming an alternative government. This could hold good for Lok Sabha as well as state assemblies. Next, the law panel has decided that in order to prevent a stalemate in the Lok Sabha or assembly in case of a hung House, the rigour of anti-defection law laid down under paragraph 2 of Clause 1 of the 10th schedule of the Constitution be removed as an exception. The 10th Schedule to the Indian Constitution, that is popularly referred to as the Anti-Defection Law was brought in by the 52nd Amendment to the Constitution in 1985. Defection has since been defined as the act to abandon a position or association, often to join an opposing group. The Law Commission further deliberated that when no single political party is able to secure a majority to stake claim to form the government, a hung Parliament or assembly arises leading to a stalemate. Hence, the commission prescribes that in order to avoid the premature dissolution of the house or state assembly and to advance the idea of simultaneous elections, the members of the house may sit together and decide on the leader of the house can form a government. It further points that it can become workable only if the anti-defection law is set aside. However, the commission has also raised a question that can the rigour of schedule 10 to the Constitution be diluted only for the formation of a stable government? The Law Commission further notes that for simultaneous polls and post-midterm elections, the new Lok Sabha or assembly shall work only for the remainder of the term of the previous Lok Sabha or assembly and not for a fresh term of five years. It has also proposed certain amendments to Section 14 and 15 of the Representation of Peoples Act, 1951, so that the statutory limit of six months for the issuance of notification of general elections be appropriately extended as this would provide the flexibility required to position states either in one group or the other as one-time measure to conduct one election. According to the recommendations, in the first phase, elections to the state legislatures which are scheduled to go to polls in 2019, which is also the year for the General Elections, can be held together. The rest of the states that will be going to elections around the same time as the 20124 Lok Sabha elections can be synchronized with the 2024 General Elections by appropriately extending the terms of the respective assemblies. Thereafter simultaneous elections can be held after every five years. Thereafter simultaneous elections can be held after every five years. Another option is to hold the 2019 General Elections along with assembly elections of the formatter group of states and after 30 months hold elections with the latter group of states. Thereafter elections could be held every two and a half years. The commission has noted that all these suggestions will require amendment to the constitution as well as the Representation of the People Act 1951. However, to avoid such amendments from being challenged on the ground of not having obtained ratification by majority of the states, the commission has proposed a list questions to be deliberated upon and ratified by the majority of the states. The commission has fixed May 8 as the last date to receive recommendations and suggestions on the report and recommendations. New Delhi: Echoing the sentiments of the traumatised family of eight-year-old Kathua girl, who was gang-raped and murdered, the National Conference president Farooq Abdullah said that we all feel that the trial must be shifted out to somewhere else. He also said that a special session of the state Assembly be convened to introduce death penalty for such heinous crimes. The Supreme Court had on April 13 taken strong note of some lawyers obstructing the judicial process in the Kathua gang-rape and murder case and initiated a case on its own record, saying such impediment "affects the dispensation of justice and would amount to obstruction of access to justice". While listening to the plea filed by Kathua victim's family regarding the shifting of the case to Chandigarh, the apex court issued notice to the Jammu and Kashmir state government and sought a reply on the same. The court further ordered to provide security to the Kathua victim's family and the lawyer. "They prevented even the chargesheet to be presented in the court. Therefore, not only that family but we all feel that the trial must be shifted out to somewhere else, where they can get justice," said Abdullah. According to the chargesheet filed by the crime branch, the abduction, rape and killing of the girl was part of a carefully planned strategy to remove the minority nomadic community from the area. The young victim, from a minority nomadic community, was allegedly held in captivity in a small village temple in Kathua district for a week in January this year. During that time she was kept sedated and sexually assaulted before being bludgeoned to death. There has also been a demand that the case behanded over to the CBI as the state police have not given a good account of themselves. "Crime branch is one branch - it doesn't say Jammu or Kashmir or Ladakh. Therefore, those who demand CBI probe do not trust the police...I think the trial should begin. It should be moved out and automatically you will see that the truth will come out," said Abdullah. On being asked about the perception that his own party did not do enough to raise the issue on the streets of Kashmir or in the Assembly, Abdullah shot back with "go and get the records from the Assembly". "We raised it in the Assembly. Go and get the records of the Assembly, it was raised and we asked the government to immediately look into this before it blows up. Nothing was done, everybody was silent. Now that the government of India is speaking the whole world is talking about it," said Abdullah. Abdullah pointed out that one of the ministers, Lal Singh, who has now resigned for attending a rally in support of the rape accused in the case, has said that he was ordered by the president of his party to join the march that took place in Kathua. "Why is this polarisation taking place. Why is the nation being divided on the communal lines just to win elections. It's not the question of who, those people who want to win elections on communal basis are trying to divide the nation," said Abdullah. Abdullah said there is a clear attempt to drive a wedge between Jammu and the Kashmir valley and blamed the PDP-BJP government of being behind it, but he underscored the plural nature of the state and said the state belongs to everyone. "Yes it has been done, this PDP-BJP govt has made sure of it, they have divided it so much so that you want to appoint a Muslim officer in Jammu, they wouldn't allow, they won't bow down. Whereas this state belongs to everyone Muslims, Hindus, Sikhs, christians, Buddhists," said Abdullah. In the early 90s, Jaime Levy, a punk-rock hacker chick from Los Angeles, marched into the Tisch Building at NYU without an appointment. The move was part bombast, part desperation: She wanted to join the universitys Interactive Telecommunications Program, but didnt think she could have gotten an interview if she tried. She wandered around the fourth oor until someone led her to the office of Red Burns, the programs venerable chair, a bristly redheaded matriarch some called the Godmother of Silicon Alley. Jaime was intimidated, but she had only two days in the city, so she told Burns she wanted to tell stories using computers. Burns took a shine to Jaime a kid with only a skateboard and an Amiga to her name and gave her a full ride. Jaime spent her years at NYU experimenting with interactive media. For her masters thesis, she combined the do-it-yourself ethos of punk with the emerging possibilities of desktop publishing, producing an electronic magazine, Cyber Rag, on oppy disk. With color-printed labels Krazy Glued onto each issue, Cyber Rag looked the part of a punk-rock fanzine. Loaded onto a consumer Mac, its stories came to life with images pilfered from the Village Voice, the Whole Earth Review, Mondo 2000, and Newsweek, collaged together onscreen as though theyd been xeroxed by hand. Cyber Rag was the first publication of its kind, built with Apple HyperCard and MacPaint. Along with her animations, Jaime added edgy interactive games (in one, you chase Manuel Noriega around Panama), hacker how-tos, and catty musings about hippies, sneaking into computer trade shows, and cyberspace. After grad school, Jaime moved back to Los Angeles and renamed her magazine Electronic Hollywood. Although she had a day job as a typesetter, she distributed Electronic Hollywood to indie book and record stores, where they routinely sold out. The novelty got her national media attention, which she leveraged into mail-order sales. After her magazines were featured in an issue of Mondo 2000, the cybercultures magazine of record, she was ooded with orders and fan mail. Although she made only ve issues, she sold more than 6,000 copies at six bucks a pop not bad for disks that cost less than 50 cents to produce. Photo: Courtesy of Jaime Levy When Jaime nally moved back to New York, she became Silicon Alleys rst real celebrity, a poster girl for a new generation of 20- something media titans ready to reboot the world. With peroxide-blonde hair, she was the self-styled Kurt Cobain of the Internet, and a hacker through and through; in her loft, a TV screen doubled as her Mac monitor, and a ashing red light, the kind usually reserved for the hearing-impaired, signaled incoming calls over the din of her stereo. Anyone who was anyone in the emerging tech counterculture had copies of Cyber Rag and Electronic Hollywood even Billy Idol, the British rock star, was a fan. Idol loved Jaimes oppies and decided he needed one for his album, Cyberpunk. They worked out a deal: For $5,000, Jaime would make Billy Idol an interactive oppy disk of his own. He just really wanted to party with me, Jaime remembers. One night, at Los Angeless infamous Club Fuck, they got so wasted that Billy threw her across the table and broke her arm. I was supposed to be animating his disk. I had to, like, do the whole thing with my non-mouse hand. Idols album opped, but Jaime kept her rep as savvy netizen. She got a straight job, commuting to White Plains to do bonehead interface design at IBM in her baggy plaid shirts, she was often mistaken for a janitor. A co-worker at IBM showed her Mosaic, the rst browser for navigating the World Wide Web. She experienced it as a conversion: Her electronic magazines were websites, before websites existed, with hypertext navigation and pages of sound, video, and text. Once the browser came out, I was like, Im not making xed-format anymore. Im learning HTML and that was it. She quit her day job. Around that time, Jaime started hosting parties in her Avenue A loft. She called them CyberSlacker parties, updating the Gen-X honoric for the wired generation. CyberSlacker was the rst of the Silicon Alley parties. Within a few years, the ush of dot-com money in New York would turn the Flatiron district into a bacchanal of rare proportions. Multi-million-dollar start-ups with names like Razorsh and DoubleClick burned their IPO money on go-go dancers and vodka pyramids as their CEOs became celebrities, their risque party pictures leaping from the Silicon Alley Reporter to Page Six. The most infamous of the Alley parties were funded by an early web-streaming company, Pseudo, whose CEO, Josh Harris, was notorious for bringing together tech socialites, hungry entrepreneurs, artists, musicians, and New York club kids in increasingly extravagant environments. Josh Harris always says he didnt copy me, says Jaime, who would never have his resources, but its impossible that he didnt. Many people saw the web for the rst time in Jaimes loft, on a Mac II her hacker friend Phiber Optik set up with a 28.8K internet connection. As avant-garde guitarist Elliott Sharp performed live, and another friend, DJ Spooky, played house tracks, Jaimes guests gathered around the Macs small screen. At the top of 1994, there were fewer than 1,000 websites in the world, mostly personal home pages. These converts would call themselves the early true believers, counting the year of their arrival online as a mark of status, the way the rst punks claimed 1977. Soon after the bubble popped, a New York Magazine story about Jaime and her peers nailed the time line: Nineteen ninety-ve is cool. Nineteen ninety-six or early 1997 is all right. Anything after that is not. Two thousand makes you a real loser a suit, a kid just out of college, a ftyish businessman looking for one last hurrah and another hundred million dollars. Photo: Courtesy of Jaime Levy In 1995, a software company called Icon CMT tapped Jaime, then at the height of her fame, to be the creative director of a new online magazine called Word. The budget was good, or at least more than nothing, which is what Jaime had in the Cyber Rag days, and it was early days: Jaime had the opportunity to set a standard for what publishing could do with this new medium. The last thing she wanted was for Word to feel trendy, like Billy Idols failed foray into cyberpunk. Thanks to Jaimes initial mandate for interactive design and some choice early hiresincluding art director Yoshi Sodeokathe site came to define the possibilities of online publishing. Here are a few things you might have found on Word.com, circa 1998: Words chat bot, Fred the Webmate, a pixelated, misanthropic New Yorker you could talk to by typing questions (Fred was damaged, with sexual issues he often alluded to but never addressed, and if pressed, he claimed to have been recently laid off by a large new media company). An interactive game in which the objective is to pop zits. Meaningless interactive toys, like a cartoon microwave you drag a dog into. At least one rst-person account from someone who got a coffee enema. The formula worked: By 1998, Word was logging 95,000 daily page views, and 1 million to 2 million hits a week. When the New York Times ran its first article explaining the web browser to its readers, it used Word.com as an example. At the tail end of 1996, Jaime Levy threw her last CyberSlacker party. In the escalating fever of the dot-com boom, it was hard for her to stay centered. She wandered away from Word after a year and a half to pursue freelance contracts on her own. Not long after, in a business move only possible at the height of the bubbles speculative delirium, Word was bought for $2 million by a holding company that specialized in the production of industrial-grade sh meal. Jaime had assumed that when she left the magazine, shed nd another high-paying creative gig, but the landscape had changed. As she tried to scrap together freelance gigs, her annual salary plunged. She spent a year designing Malice Palace, a dystopian chat room based in a postapocalyptic version of San Francisco, decorating it with images of burned-out tech companies, radioactive burritos, and zombie drug pushers. To her great misfortune, she founded her own company, a digital production studio called Electronic Hollywood, on the eve of the stock-market crash. Something was coming to a head, she remembers. It had already been too many years of too much money for no business model, no return on investment. At 34, Jaime moved back to Los Angeles. She got an apartment in Silver Lake and a car. She started over. The stink of the crash was on her, and when she started applying for jobs again, she omitted from her resume her tenure as the CEO of a dot-com. Instead, she told interviewers that shed been a front-end designer at her own company. Photo: Portfolio/Penguin When Zapata, the sh-meal processing company, finally shut down Word, it did so very quickly. Jaime had stolen a backup the last time she was in the building, but she got fucked up and left it on the subway. At this point, Word has been off-line far longer than it was ever online. Jaime Levys oppies are sitting in her home office, although shes getting them restored and hopes to show them in a museum someday. But her work is just as important as the fortunes made and lost in the feverish speculation that transformed the web from an academic swap session to the beating economic and cultural heart of our world. She didnt get rich, and much of what she built has been erased in the slow erosions of the web or else is bound to media inaccessible to anyone but digital archivists with the means to replay them. This makes her achievements difficult to remember, but it doesnt make them any less significant; her efforts are artifacts, as the web is a dynamic artifact, an endless conversation writing over itself again and again in the soft echo of the boom. *Adapted from Broad Band: The Untold Story of the Women Who Made the Internet (Portfolio, 2018). Broad Band author Claire L. Evans will appear in conversation with Jaime Levy and Stacy Horn, the founder of EchoNYC, an early social network, at the New Museum on Thursday, April 19, at 7 p.m., presented by Rhizome.org. For more info and tickets, click here. New Delhi: Photographs showing Laskhar-e-Toiba chief Hafiz Saeed with Sikh militant leader Gopal Singh Chawla emerged in Lahore giving credence to the fact that Pakistan is inciting Khalistan sentiment. CNN-News18 has accessed the ISI-Khalistan blueprint, which includes not just barring Indians, but being hand-in-glove with Pakistani terrorists, fuelling anti-India sentiment, backing global Khalistanis and giving them ISI support. Pakistan, however, denied India's allegations. "By spreading such falsehoods, India has chosen to deliberately stoke further controversy around the visit of Sikh pilgrims, currently attending the Baisakhi and Khalsa Janamdin ceremonies in Pakistan," said a statement from Pakistan Foreign Office. India on Monday summoned Pakistan's Deputy High Commissioner in New Delhi and lodged a strong protest over attempts to raise the Khalistan issue during the visit of Sikh pilgrims to that country, while asking Islamabad to immediately cease all such activities aimed at undermining India's sovereignty and territorial integrity. Gopal Singh Chawla, under instructions from top Pakistani authorities, recently stopped Indian officials from entering Gurudwara Panja Sahib on April 14 (Baisakhi day). Ministry of External Affairs (MEA) said a group of around 1,800 Sikh pilgrims were on a visit to Pakistan from April 12 under a bilateral agreement on facilitating visits to religious shrines. In a statement, the MEA also said the Indian High Commissioner, who was to greet Indian pilgrims on the occasion of Baisakhi, was compelled to return when he was en route to Gurdwara Panja Sahib. According to reports, the Sikh militants also placed posters of Sikh Referendum 2020 in Parikarma of Gurudwara Panja Sahib. The Ministry of External Affairs (MEA), in a statement described it, as an "inexplicable diplomatic discourtesy" in violation of the Vienna Convention. New Delhi: Even as crime against girl child continues to hit national headlines, a 15-year-old Delhi girl has alleged that her parents tried to suppress her gangrape case after striking a deal with the accused for Rs 20 lakh. According to the FIR, the girl, who lives in Outer Delhis Aman Vihar, was abducted and gangraped by two persons, Sunil Shahi and Chandrabhushan, in September last year. The accused were arrested following victim's complaint. However, after coming out on bail from judicial custody, the accused made a deal with the victims parents and promised to pay them Rs 20 lakh if they changed their statements in the court. The parents agreed to the deal and asked the girl to change her statement, which led to an argument between the two and the parents allegedly threatened their own child of dire consequences. On April 8, the girl said that the accused arrived at their house and handed over Rs 5 lakh to her parents instead of the promised amount, and warned them that if the girl didnt change her stand, they would rape her again. Next morning, when the victim's parents went out for some work, the girl took the bribe money and went to Aman Vihar police station to register an FIR under relevant sections of the IPC and Juvenile Justice Act against all the accused, including her parents. Deputy Commissioner of Police, Outer District, M N Tiwari, said that the matter is being investigated and a police team has been formed to arrest the girls father. According to the 2016 National Crime Records Bureau (NCRB) data, Delhi reported 33% (13,803 out of 41,761 cases) of all the cases of crimes against women and 5,453 cases of kidnapping and abduction (48.3 per cent), while crimes against children went up by a whopping 13%, from 94,172 in 2015 to 1,06,958 in 2016. The NCRB is yet to release the statistics for the rate of crime against children in India in the year 2017. Stockholm: Prime Minister Narendra Modi on Tuesday arrived in the capital of Sweden, the first bilateral visit by an Indian premier to the Nordic nation in 30 years. Swedish Prime Minister Stefan Lofven received Modi at the airport. Modi is on the first leg of his five-day foreign tour which will also take him to the UK where he will attend the Commonwealth Heads of Government Meeting (CHOGM). "Scripting history! PM @narendramodi arrives in Stockholm on a first bilateral visit by an Indian PM in 30 years to a warm and personal welcome by @SwedishPM Stefan Lofven at the airport and to participate in the first ever India-Nordic Summit," Ministry of External Affairs spokesperson Raveesh Kumar tweeted. Scripting history! PM @narendramodi arrives in Stockholm on a first bilateral visit by an Indian PM in 30 years to a warm and personal welcome by @SwedishPM Stefan Lofven at the airport and to participate in the first ever India-Nordic Summit. pic.twitter.com/leAsRMGKT3 Raveesh Kumar (@MEAIndia) April 16, 2018 Modi and Lofven also travelled together in the same vehicle from the airport to the hotel, he said. In a special gesture exuding warmth and hospitality, PM @narendramodi and @SwedishPM are traveling together in the same vehicle from the airport to the Hotel. pic.twitter.com/S20UhtsZ4h Raveesh Kumar (@MEAIndia) April 16, 2018 Earlier, ahead of his visit, Modi said in New Delhi he was looking forward to deepening bilateral engagement with both countries in a number of areas including trade, investment and clean energy. "India and Sweden share warm and friendly ties. Our partnership is based on democratic values and commitment to an open, inclusive and rules-based global order. Sweden is a valuable partner in our development initiatives," Modi had said in a departure statement last night. The two prime ministers will hold bilateral talks on Tuesday. Modi said he and Lofven would also interact with top business leaders of both countries and chart out a future roadmap of cooperation in sectors such as trade and investment, science and technology, clean energy and smart cities. The prime minister said he would also call on King of Sweden Carl XVI Gustaf. India and Sweden will also jointly organise the India-Nordic Summit in Stockholm tomorrow. The summit will also be attended by the prime ministers of Finland, Norway, Denmark and Iceland. From Sweden, Modi will later tomorrow travel to the UK where he will also attend the CHOGM, besides holding bilateral talks with his British counterpart Theresa May. Chennai: Tamil Nadu Governor Banwarilal Purohit on Tuesday denied any association with the professor who was arrested this morning for allegedly advising students "to adjust with some officials" at Madurai Kamaraj University in return for higher marks and money. Nirmala Devi, of Devanga Arts College, had claimed she she was close to the Governor, who is the chancellor of the university. I have not seen her face till date. What are you talking. It is nonsense, baseless (on how he is being questioned by the home ministry on sexual harassment cases against him), said the Governor to reporters this evening. The woman though can be heard bragging in the audio clip that "you know how close I was to the Governor". "Certain incidents happen. Governor is not a grandfather. You know how close I was to the Governor. I can now be more liberal, but people outside won't know. If I tell you who it is, you will give me answer faster. They will maintain secrecy and privacy to that level," Nirmala Devi can be heard boasting in the audio clip. The Governor said that the guilty will be brought to book and admitted that there was some mistake on the part of Vice chancellors office. "The guilty has to be punished. We have set up a one-man committee. Strict action will be taken against whoever is guilty. There was some mistake on the part of VC's office, said the Governor The Governor though ruled out the CBI inquiry into the matter. "State government cannot interfere in matters of universities. After receiving the report from the committee, we will see if we should transfer the case to the CBI. If it (CBI probe) is needed, I will be the first to order," said the Governor. The Governor, who is the Chancellor of Madurai Kamaraj University, had on Monday evening set up a 'high powered' enquiry committee to look into certain 'immoral happenings' surrounding the lecturer. Student Organisations too had staged a protest on Tuesday outside Anna University demanding a thorough investigation and said that the Governor step down. While the state government maintained that the accused will be brought to book, the opposition parties demanded a CBI inquiry into the incident. MK Stalin, working president, DMK said: "It is confusing that Governor has ordered for an inquiry in Nirmala Devi's case. Only a CBI inquiry under the supervision of the Madras High Court will bring out the truth." Police sources said Nirmala's phone had pictures of students and also contacts of senior officials and were looking at the links of people who were involved in the racket. Students and parents of Devanga Arts College at Aruppukkottai in Virudhunagar district, the college where Nirmala worked as Assistant Professor, staged a protest demanding the arrest of the professor. The professor had locked herself up the whole of Monday and was arrested by the police officers who forced themselves in after 7pm and took her away. Before she was arrested, Nirmala said: "I am ready to clarify. I don't know who spread the message and as time has passed things have gone haywire. I had clarified that I was the one who spoke in the recording, but I want to clarify that it is not what I said. The students have interpreted the message in a wrong manner. I dont have anything else to say." On Sunday, a 19-minute audio conversation of Nirmala talking to students went viral. In the audio clip, Nirmala is alleged to have said, "For some opportunity, something needs to be done secretly. You will get financial and academic support. You should do it without anyone knowing about it. It is upto you to do it with or without the knowledge of your parents. We can plan accordingly. We can open a bank account and deposit the money that comes in." New Delhi: The Centre on Tuesday stepped in quickly to allay fears of a possible cash crunch with ATMs running dry or not working in several states and said that all steps are being taken to ensure that ATMs are supplied with cash. "We print about 500 crore of Rs 500 notes per day. We have taken steps to raise this production five times. In the next couple of days, we will have supply of about Rs 2500 crore of Rs 500 notes per day. In a month, supply would be about Rs 70000-Rs 75000 crore," said economic affairs secretary Subhash Chandra Garg. The government is trying to get non-functional ATMs normalised at the earliest, said the Department of Economic Affairs. "Government of India would like to assure that there have been adequate supply of currency notes which have met entire demand so far. It would also like to assure it would be supplying adequate currency notes to meet even higher demand in coming days/months," said Department of Economic Affairs. With residents from several states taking to social media, Finance Minister Arun Jaitley said the shortage was temporary. Temporary shortage of currency in some areas is being tackled. There is more than adequate currency in circulation, Jaitley said. Officials of the finance ministry had held a meeting with the Reserve Bank of India (RBI) last Thursday, to take stock of the situation afterwhich RBI has directed banks with surplus cash to help other banks facing a shortage of funds. There is a mismatch of demand and supply of cash, said RBI. RBI officials say that the currency in circulation in the country as on April 6 has reached the pre-demonetisation level of about Rs 17 lakh crore. Bureaucrats are unofficially saying that rumours around FRDI bill is the possible reason behind people massive debits. SBI Chairman Rajnish Kumar said it was owing to geographical factors. "Yes, this is a temporary situation which is mainly due to geographical factors. There is one solution for it that a proper cash management system be maintained. In the next week, things will start coming back to normalcy. There is a department which monitors situations like this. This is not new. RBI has been given an indent to increase the flow of Rs 500 notes in the system," said SBI Chariman Rajnish Kumar Sinha Sinha also said one reason is that procurement season has come and the payment to farmers have gone up. Boney Kapoor and late Sridevi Kapoor's younger daughter Khushi is a star in the making. From sporting cool outfits at the airport, flaunting her designer wear at various star-studded B-town bashes to taking the glam quotient up with her inimitable fashion sense at every given occasion, Khushi Kapoor is a fashionista on the rise. Recently, Khusi, who graduated from the Dhirubhai Ambani International School in Mumbai, attended her prom night looking stunning in an embellished Falguni and Shane Peacock gown, much like we could never have imagined. The prom, nothing like the farewell parties that we attended when we graduated, was a glamourous and grand event. Khushi looked perfect in her gorgeous semi-sheer gown that featured a thigh-high slit and a feather twist at the trail, a signature of the designer duo. Khushi rounded off her look with perfect makeup, a dash of red on the lip and left her tresses open in beach waves. Take a look. A post shared by Tanya Ghavri (@tanghavri) on Apr 13, 2018 at 2:48pm PDT Sanjay and Maheep Kapoor's daughter Shanaya Kapoor too graduated from the same school and attended the prom night looking as gorgeous as ever. Dressed in a sparkly greyish-black dress, Shanaya looked like a dazzling diva. Take a look. What do you think about their looks? Tell us in the comments section below. Carolina Blue in Barcelona. Photo: Maya Venkova/Courtesy of Carolina Blue Dont waste your time browsing the souvenir stores of Las Ramblas or flitting between the bland chains of Passeig de Gracia. To guide you through Barcelonas homegrown shopping scene, we asked costume designer and stylist Charlotte Chadwick to share her favorite fashion finds; interior designer Marta Castellano-Mas to go hard on the home goods front; and Chef Raul Balam of Moments to tell us where to find the citys choicest cheeses and more. For luxe vintagewear Le Swing and Blow Le Swing is especially good for vintage accessories, sunglasses, costume jewelry, bags, and silk scarves. Owner Renier Guerra has an amazing eye for detail, whether its a pair of vintage YSL sunglasses or a quirky little brooch hes picked up on his travels. Downstairs theres a small, eclectic collection of vintage clothing and shoes. And the styling on the window mannequins is perfect shopping inspiration! A few minutes walk from Le Swing is sister store Blow; here youll find a curated selection of vintage couture and luxury footwear. The designer list on the door starts at Alaia and ends at Yohji Yamamoto, with everything in between all very much depending on the day and where Renier has been on his shopping travels. There are great non-designer pieces, too. Charlotte Chadwick For chic, handcrafted chapeaus Les Catherinettes Artisan milliner Gema Galdon creates womens and mens hats for every occasion, using all types of materials from antique dressmakers trimmings to the reworked raffia of a chair seat and the end result is always sublimely elegant. The hats are displayed alongside some of the traditional tools used in their creation, and the effect is a bit like going to a very delicate sculpture exhibition. Her workshop is in the back, so you can always ask her to make something just for you. Charlotte Chadwick Le Fortune. Photo: Dominique Besanson/Courtesy of Le Fortune For cool designer togs Le Fortune This boutique is an oasis of serenity and good taste among the hustle and bustle of Barri Gotic; youd never know you were just a few minutes walk from Las Ramblas. It carries imported labels Nordic, French, Australian and a great selection of minimalist jewelry and accessories. The owner, Gabi Pujol, also designs and makes her own range of limited-edition pieces from fabrics sourced on her trips to Paris. Charlotte Chadwick For repurposed garments Mercantic This antique market and exhibition space in Sant Cugat is 45 minutes from central Barcelona on the train, but well worth the trip especially on the weekends, when there is live music, street food, and a bit of a party atmosphere. Theres a vintage fest on the first Sunday of each month; local designers interested in sustainable fashion are regulars there. Renee Jablonski and Monica Nanti (of Short & Ney and ALDO Barcelona) do some nice, modern takes on patchwork, embroidery, printing, and computer-plotted beading in their reworked garments. Charlotte Chadwick Antique Boutique. Photo: Courtesy of Antique Boutique For one-of-a-kind vintage and custom furnishings Antique Boutique I love this store! Its the best option when I look for mid-century pieces; I especially adore the brass mirrors here. Apart from original furniture, they sell pieces they make to measure, but always with the 50s aesthetic. Marta Castellano-Mas For an eclectic mix of home goods Carolina Blue This is a small shop located in Ciutat Vella, the old part of the city. The owner is a young and energetic woman who also restores the furniture she sells. This store is very special because it mixes different styles and very different themes with great discretion. The furniture, Scandinavian accessories, plants and flowers, jewelry, clothes, and art all of it flows together in such a beautiful way because everything is placed just so, with such care and love. Marta Castellano-Mas Ganiveteria Roca. Photo: Esteve Vilarrubies/Courtesy of Ganiveteria Roca For artisan-quality knives Ganiveteria Roca This is one of the oldest cutlery shops in Catalonia. It combines the artisan part (polishing and repairing) with the sale of modern products. I also love the personalized and professional service they give me whenever I visit them. Raul Balam For wine and cheese La Teca of Vila Viniteca The wine store was founded in 1932 by the Vila family, and this is their grocery next door where you can find ham, conservas, pasta, olive oil plus a wide variety of the highest-quality cheeses from all over the world. I buy my cheese here and, in fact, the cheese we serve at Moments is always bought in this store. I look for the artisanal raw goats milk cheese Caprine Corullon, made seasonally and with limited production by a woman cheesemaker in Castilblanco de los Arroyos, north of Seville. She learned one of the oldest ways of making cheese while in France and she makes her exceptional product with the utmost delicacy and passion. Raul Balam New Delhi: The Supreme Court on Monday refused to stay the release of regional film "Nanak Shah Fakir" based on the life of the first Sikh Guru, Guru Nanak Dev, saying the Constitution allows filmmakers to make any movie as long as it does not impinge on secularism. Refusing to interfere with its last week's order directing the states to ensure that no obstruction was caused in the release and screening of the film, a bench of Chief Justice Dipak Misra, Justice A.M. Khanwilkar and Justice D.Y. Chandrachud said: "As long as the film does not denigrate Sikhism and it only seeks to glorify Guru Nanak Dev we will not interfere..." After the earlier apex court order, the film released on Friday (April 13). The court's Monday order came on a plea by the Shiromani Gurdwara Parbandhak Committee (SGPC) which contended that there could not be any portrayal of Sikh Gurus, their immediate family members and the Panj Pyaras by any mortal beings. As senior counsel R.S. Suri, appearing for the film's producer Harinder S. Sikka, said the producer and the SGPC representatives should meet and see what more can be done, the court asked the SGPC counsel to consider the offer and directed the next hearing on May 8. The court also noted that "Nanak Shah Fakir" has got the National Integration Award in the category of regional films. Appearing for the Sikh body, senior counsel P.S. Patwalia, referred to a 2003 resolution of the SGPC, which was reiterated in 2015, that there cannot be a depiction of Sikh Gurus by any living being. Chief Justice Misra said "let the character playing Guru Nanak not take credit for it and let it be an abstract person", adding that once a film has been certified by the Central Board of Film Certification, the court can't interfere. Justice Chandrachud said no religion can say that "only our book would portray our religion and stop everyone from writing about it. This would encroach into secularism". As long as the film does not denigrate Sikhism and Guru Nanak Dev's portrayal is venerated and as an abstract man, he said, "we can't interfere". The Constitution protects filmmakers to make films, the court said, as long as it does not impinge on secularism -- the basic philosophy of the Constitution. Senior counsel Ram Jethmalani, who was present in the court and was asked to give his views, said any religious injunction against the release of a film should be backed by legal sanction. If the injunction is purely religious, the court has to ensure that the right of the filmmaker is not violated, he said. Describing the latest position of the SGPC as a summersault, senior counsel Suri said the film was approved by a committee of five eminent people who praised it. He said in deference to the suggestion by the committee, Guru Nanak "is shown as light and his teachings are being narrated by one of his Muslim disciples Bhai Mardana". New Delhi: Days after two BJP ministers quit the Mehbooba Mufti government in the aftermath of the Kathua rape case, the party, according to sources, has asked all its ministers to quit the government and prepare for a reshuffle in the ranks. On Sunday, Jammu and Kashmir Chief Minister Mehbooba Mufti accepted the resignations of Lal Singh and Chander Prakash Ganga, who had participated in a rally supporting the accused in the rape and murder case of an eight-year-old Muslim girl in Kathua. However, the latest resignations have nothing to do with the Kathua rape case and party sources clarified that the move does not mean that they are pulling out of the PDP-BJP government in the state. According to the sources in the BJP, the decision was taken at a core group meeting, chaired by party Vice President Avinash Rai Khanna, at the party headquarters here. "All BJP ministers have resigned ahead of a Cabinet reshuffle and this does not in any way mean the BJP has pulled out of the government," the source said. Sources in the Peoples Democratic Party (PDP) told IANS the resignations of the BJP ministers is a prelude to the BJP's reconstitution of their part of the council of ministers without any bearing on the continuation of the coalition government in the state. The BJP leaders said the party wants to bring in new faces in the cabinet and work for the people of the state. The state can have a maximum of 25 ministers, including the chief minister, out of which 14 portfolios are with the PDP and the remaining with the BJP. According to top state government sources, the reshuffle is likely to take place on April 20. New Delhi: The BJP on Tuesday said Congress leaders Rahul Gandhi and Sonia Gandhi should apologise for defaming Hindus "globally" and cited a telegram sourced from WikiLeaks to back its demand. The BJP's renewed attack on the Congress comes a day after a special anti-terror court acquitted rightwing activist Swami Aseemanand and four others in the 2007 Mecca Masjid blast case in Hyderabad. "If Congress considers India to be its own, then Sonia Gandhi and Rahul Gandhi must apologise to the whole country for defaming the great Hindu religion by trying to prove that there was something called saffron terror'," BJP spokesperson Sambit Patra said at a press conference. He showed a telegram sourced from Wikileaks quoting a conversation during the former Congress-led UPA government between then US ambassador and Rahul Gandhi. According to the transcript of the conversation, Rahul Gandhi said saffron terror was a bigger threat than the Lashkar-e-Taiba. "This shows the mindset of Rahul Gandhi towards Hindus. His party has always take Hindus for granted," Patra said. On Monday, Patra said people would teach the Congress a lesson in the Karnataka Assembly polls as they had in the 2014 Lok Sabha elections when it was reduced to 44 seats. "For its appeasement politics, the Congress targeted and defamed Hindus and the country for merely some votes. That conspiracy has been exposed. The Congress has been exposed like never before," he had said after the verdict came in. New Delhi: A month after the Delhi High Court restored 20 AAP MLAs to the Assembly after being disqualified over the Office of Profit row, nine top advisers to the Delhi government, including senior leader Atishi Marlena, were sacked by the Union Home Ministry on Tuesday, saying the appointments were not sanctioned by the Finance Ministry. Launching a scathing attack on the Centre over the issue, Deputy CM Manish Sisodia said that the Narendra Modi government's order was a "conspiracy to derail" the "education revolution" in Delhi. Since no BJP government has been able to deliver anything in education and health sectors, the Centre is trying to paralyse the AAP government, he alleged, adding his adviser Atishi Marlena, who was playing a "vital role" in improving the education system, has been "targeted". Marlena, who was an adviser to Delhi Deputy CM Manish Sisodia, was sacked along with Raghav Chadha, adviser to the Delhi Finance Minister, Arunoday Prakash, media adviser to Deputy CM, Amardeep Tiwari, media adviser to Law Minister and Rajat Tiwari, adviser to PWD Minister. Posts on which the appointees are officiating are not in the list of posts approved for the Ministers and Chief Minister of Govt. of NCT of Delhi. Further, no prior approval of the Central Government has been taken for creation of said posts in which these persons have been appointed on co-terminus basis, a part of the order by the MHA on Tuesday read. Chadha defended himself by posting a picture of his terms of appointment that showed that he was drawing only a salary of Re 1. Where exactly is the MHA sacking me from? Here are the terms of appointment for those who wish to see. Thanks, Chadha tweeted. He added, Impressive diversionary tactics by the MHA, at the behest of BJP. To divert attention from spate of rapes, cash crunch etc. an opportune time to rake up non issues with AAP like retrospective sacking for a post I held for 45 days in 2016 for a paltry sum of Rs.2.50/-. The removal order has been cleared by L-G Anil Baijal. Bhopal: In an interesting development in the election year, Madhya Pradesh Chief Minister Shivraj Singh Chouhan has hinted at a change of guard in the BJP's state unit. The development caused a flutter among leaders of the ruling Bharatiya Janata Party. Nandu Bhaiya (BJP MP head Nandkumar Singh Chauhan) has urged me to relieve him of his responsibilities in the party so that he could focus on his parliamentary constituency (Khandwa), CM Chouhan told the media at Khargone on Tuesday. I have urged him to continue on his post and lets see whether he accepts my request, he added giving ample hints that change of guard was imminent. Earlier in the day, Chouhan had claimed that situation on party state president would be clear by Wednesday morning. Fueling the speculations further, the BJP has convened three crucial meetings on Tuesday. In the first one, party office-bearers met. The second meeting would comprise members of core committee that includes union minister Narendra Singh Tomar, a frontrunner for the post of state president, and the third one is a cabinet meeting to be chaired by CM Chouhan at CM House late evening. Congress took a dig at BJP as soon as the CMs remarks were reported in media. The party state head has failed to fulfill the tasks assigned by the party high command time and again so the party is concerned about assembly elections, Congress spokesperson Bhupendra Gupta told News18. Rajnish Agrawal, the BJP spokesperson shot back saying the Congress should better take care of its own affairs. On possible removal of Chauhan, he claimed that BJP was a cadre-based party and party high-command decides which person should shoulder which responsibility. However, party insiders have claimed that party high command was taking internal feedback on Chauhan for long and the reports were not too encouraging as Chauhans hold on the party was not up to the mark. Interestingly the party seniors were seen fighting on public platforms on several occasions and several leaders kept embarrassing the party with their unrestrained remarks. Besides, successive defeats in last four by-polls namely Ater, Chitrakoot, Mungaoli and Kolaras also did not go in Chauhans favour. Plus, in the 19 municipal polls held in last few years, the Congress managed to give tough fight to the BJP which also set alarm bells ringing for the party. Chauhans irresponsible statements also put the party on sticky wicket more often than not. Meanwhile, those in the contention for the post include CM Chouhans close aide and the home minister Bhupendra Singh, cabinet ministers Lal Singh Arya, Narottam Mishra, Rajendra Shukla, union minister Kailash Vijayvargiya and union minister Narendra Singh Tomar who once made a promising pair with CM Chouhan in MP politics. Given his proximity with the party chief Amit Shah, Narottam Mishra is considered frontrunner for the post. In the wake of Dalit resentment and violent protests during Bharat Bandh, the party could well choose Lal Singh Arya who represents this community. However, possible removal of the state president barely six months before assembly polls indicate that all was not well in Madhya Pradesh BJP, said a political analyst from MP who did not want to be named. Voters pose outside a polling booth in Karnataka. People were seen standing in queues to cast their votes in the early hours itself, factoring in that the temperature may go up later in the day. Also, it has been raining in different parts of south interior Karnataka for the last couple of days during the evening hours. Senior citizens were seen in good numbers standing in queues at various polling stations to cast their votes early. State BJP chief and party's chief ministerial candidate B S Yeddyurappa, and Pradesh Congress Committee G Parameshwara were among the first to cast votes in Shikaripura in Shivamogga and Yaggere in Tumakuru respectively. Former prime minister HD Deve Gowda along with wife Chennamma cast their votes at Paduvalahippe in Hassan district. Film actors Ramesh Arvind, Ravichandran, also scion of Mysuru royal family Yaduveer Krishnadatta Chamaraja Wadiyar were among the prominent personalities to cast their votes early today. There are reports about delay in polling due to some technical issues with the electronic voting machines (EVMs) from different parts of the state. Election for the Jayanagara seat in Bengaluru has been countermanded following the death of BJP candidate and sitting MLA BN Vijaykumar. The Election Commission has also deferred the polls for Rajarajeswari Nagar constituency to May 28 after a massive row erupted over a large number of voter ID cards being found in an apartment. Suspecting something fishy, both Congress and BJP have pointed accusing fingers at each other in the matter. "Today people of Karnataka are standing in queues to create history & show the nation the way to liberal, progressive, peaceful & compassionate politics & governance. I thank them for their support & wish them well," Chief Minister Siddaramaiah tweeted. Over 2,600 candidates are in the fray-- more than 2400 men and and over 200 women. The total voters including service electors according to the 2018 final rolls are 5,06,90,538, of whom 2,56,75,579 male voters, 2,50,09,904 female and 5,055 transgender voters. Officials said 58,008 polling stations have been set up across the state, of which 12002 have been designated as "critical", with over 3,50,000 polling personnel on duty. Police have made elaborate security arrangements for the smooth conduct of polls that will go on till 6 pm. "82,157 people have been deployed for poll duty that includes DSPs, home guards and civil defence, and forest guards and watchers," Karnataka DGP Neelamani N Raju said. This also includes about 7,500 personnel from states like Andhra Pradesh, Telangana, Maharashtra, Chattisgarh, Kerala and Goa, she said, adding, central forces have been deployed. One among the interesting aspects of this election is that four candidates who have served as Chief Minister of Karnataka are in the fray-- Chief Minister Siddaramaiah (Chamundeshwari and Badami), B S Yeddyurappa (Shikaripura), H D Kumaraswamy (Chennapatna and Ramanagara) and Jagadish Shettar (Hubli-Dharwad Central.) A Nigerian billionaire, also United Bank of Africa (UBA) boss Tony Elumelu has revealed that he spoke to Uganda President Yoweri Museveni on the need to be considerate when considering taxes that could cripple entrepreneurs in the name of generating revenues for government. Elumelu was responding to a students question when he spoke at Makerere University last week. Students asked how it was possible to start and succeed in business when from the time you register it, tax body is on your door looking for taxes. UBA boss Tony Elumelu (R) with President Museveni What I can say is that if youre an entrepreneur, you must comply [with tax obligation], he said. But I spoke to President Museveni and he said he would look into it. This comes at a time when government as proposed a couple of tax measures that are likely to come into force in July this year. They include taxes on mobile money, airtime, and social media platforms that some small entrepreneurs use to market their products. The taxes add on other challenges like expensive electricity that have seen at least three quarters of Ugandan starts not see their fifth anniversary. Elumelu was on an East African tour. From Uganda, he went to Nairobi where he also met President Uhuru Kenyatta. Through his foundation, the Tony Elumelu Foundation (TEF), at least 300 Ugandans have been given seed capital to grow their business ideas. The foundation pledged $100 million in support of over 10,000 entrepreneurs on the African content for a period of 10 years since 2014. The programme has since support more than 3,000 entrepreneurs through funding, mentoring and advocacy. This year, at least 128 Ugandans will receive support from the programme. At Makerere University, Elumelu told students not to look at access to money as the only way that can enable them to start a business. He said having a clear idea that serves a purpose was more important and money would come later. Dont kill your entrepreneurship ambition because you dont have money, Elumelu said. Capital is an issue but ideas are more important. He said for the entrepreneurs just starting, commercial banks should be the last source they run to because they are heavily regulated and demand huge collateral that young entrepreneurs usually dont have. People should consider other sources of capital like families and friends. Entrepreneurs dont have to start big just little money and your idea, he said. Elumelu is also the founder and chairman of Heirs Holdings Ltd, an African proprietary investment company, with interests in power, oil and gas, and financial services among other things in twenty African countries. amwesigwa@observer.ug Ahmedabad: Former VHP leader Pravin Togadia began his indefinite fast on Tuesday in support of his demands, including construction of a Ram Temple in Ayodhya. The 62-year-old Hindutva leader, who quit the post of VHP International Working President last week after his nominee Raghav Reddy lost a key organisational poll, launched the fast outside the state VHP headquarters in the Paldi area after 12 pm with some Hindu saints and supporters. Togadia had earlier said his hunger strike would be aimed at the welfare of Hindus and to draw attention to his demands. These included construction of a Ram Temple at Ayodhya, a nation-wide ban on cow slaughter, enforcement of the common civil code and resettlement of displaced Kashmiri Pandits. The surgeon-turned-firebrand leader had launched a scathing attack on Prime Minister Narendra Modi after he quit the VHP, a right-wing outfit with which he had been associated with for decades. Earlier, Togadia was to sit on fast at GMDC Ground, but the police denied permission after which the venue was earlier on Tuesday shifted to outside the VHP headquarters. "We were denied permission by the police to go ahead with fast at GMDC Ground so we had to change the venue (located around 5km away)," said former VHP city president Raju Patel. Togadia quit the right-wing organisation after former Himachal Pradesh Governor V S Kokje was elected VHP international president defeating his nominee Reddy on last Saturday. Modi and Togadia, both of whom hail from Gujarat and started out as Rashtriya Swayamsevak Sangh volunteers, drifted apart in the last decade with Modi's rise. Togadia had made a sensational claim last month, saying a Rajasthan Police team had come here to "abduct" him and he feared he could be eliminated in a "fake encounter". During the long-drawn tussle within the state BJP between Modi (before he became PM) and former chief minister Keshubhai Patel, Togadia was believed to have backed the latter. The former VHP leader belongs to the Patel community. Togadia recently met Patidar quota agitation leader Hardik Patel, who had campaigned against the BJP in the 2017 Gujarat Assembly elections. The Philippines government criticised on Monday Facebook's choice of two independent online news platforms to help fight the spread of fake news, saying they are biased against President Rodrigo Duterte. Facebook said last week it would partner with VERA Files and Rappler IQ to launch a third-party, fact-checking programme aimed at preventing the spread of false news on the social media platform in the Philippines. But Duterte has accused Rappler, which has a reputation for its investigative reporting and its tough questioning, of trying to undermine his government, perhaps with the help of U.S. spies, and the Securities and Exchange Commission has rescinded its operating licence for violating foreign ownership rules. Also Read: Facebook Must Face Class Action Over Facial Recognition: US Judge Rappler continues to operate pending an appeal. "We would also like to register our protest at the choice of fact-checkers by Facebook and this will be on the agenda when we finally get to sit with them soon," Loraine Badoy, assistant secretary at the Presidential Communications Operations Office, said in a statement. Research has shown Filipinos to be among the most active social media users in the world, spending on average more than four hours a day on platforms like Facebook. Duterte, a former mayor from outside of the sphere of national politics, tapped into social media to help him win a 2016 election by a huge margin. Last year, lawmakers began an inquiry into the proliferation of what they saw as fake news on the internet. Duterte spokesman Harry Roque welcomed Facebook's desire to counter fake news, but he noted some people had complained that "the chosen police of the truth are sometimes partisan themselves". Also Read: SpaceX to Build New Rocket in Port of Los Angeles A Facebook spokeswoman did not comment on the government's protest and referred Reuters to a statement last week announcing the partnership with Rappler and VERA Files. "Partnering with third-party fact-checking organisations, is one of the ways we hope to better identify and reduce the reach of false news that people share on our platform," Clair Deevy, Facebook's director for community affairs for Asia Pacific, said last week. There was no immediate comment from Rappler. Ellen Tordesillas, president of VERA Files, said "non-partisanship and fairness are among the requirements for an international fact-checking network accreditation". VERA Files and Rappler IQ are the only two Philippine-based members of an international fact-checking network at the Poynter Institute, a journalism school in the United States. Privacy concerns have swamped Facebook since it acknowledged last month that information about millions of users wrongly ended up in the hands of political consultancy Cambridge Analytica, a firm that has counted U.S. President Donald Trump's 2016 electoral campaign among its clients. Also Watch: Xiaomi Mi A1 First Impressions Review | The Android One Delight Google told Reuters Monday it would resume accepting ads from U.S. addiction treatment centres in July, nearly a year after the Alphabet unit suspended the lucrative category of advertisers for numerous deceptive and misleading ads. Treatment centres now will be able to run ads after being vetted by Portland, Ore. firm LegitScript, Google said. Interest in treatment for abuse of opioids and other prescription drugs has soared in recent years amid what authorities have described as a nationwide epidemic. Scammers found that Google ads were an easy way to defraud treatment-seekers in an industry in which regulations vary greatly by jurisdiction, authorities and patient advocacy organizations have said. Also Read: NASA, Space X Delays Launch of Planet-Hunting 'TESS' Satellite Google suspended alcohol and drug treatment advertising on search pages and millions of third-party apps and websites in the U.S. in September, the week after tech publication The Verge posted a lengthy story about scams. Google expanded the prohibition globally in January. The move cut off at least $78 million annually worth of advertising in the U.S. alone, research firm Kantar Media estimated. Most advertisers can buy ads through Google with few hurdles to clear. But Google has adopted additional vetting for locksmiths, garage-door repairers, drug makers and online pharmacies following public pressure. Google has said it also will begin seeking more documentation from political advertisers this year. Also Read: Facebook Must Face Class Action Over Facial Recognition: US Judge The addiction treatment rules apply to in-person facilities, crisis hotlines and support groups. LegitScript will evaluate treatment providers beginning Monday on 15 criteria, including criminal background checks and license and insurance verification. They must also provide "written policies and procedures demonstrating a commitment to best practices, effective recovery and continuous improvement," according to LegitScript, which will charge $995 upfront and then $1,995 annually for vetting. Also Read: US, UK Say Russia Targets Internet Hardware For Espionage The National Association of Addiction Treatment Providers and the National Center on Addiction and Substance Abuse support the standards, John Horton, chief executive of LegitScript, said in an interview last week. A vetting process for sober-living houses and non-U.S. treatment centres has yet to be set, he said. Horton acknowledged the "extra step" may frustrate rehab centres. "It's unfortunate, but this is one way the market gets cleaner and people get the help they deserve," he said. Marcia Lee Taylor, chief policy officer of the Partnership for Drug-Free Kids, to whom Google has donated advertising space, said earlier efforts to certify treatment services have failed because there was no "business incentive to answer all these invasive questions." Tying access to the world's biggest online advertising system to certification makes applying worthwhile, Taylor said. The new rules do not affect free business listings on Google Maps, which also have been susceptible to fraud. Google said it is continuously developing ways to combat Maps spammers. Also Watch: Xolo Era 3X Review: Ease-of-Use is The Biggest USP SpaceX has chosen to manufacture its planned big, new rocket in the Port of Los Angeles, Mayor Eric Garcetti announced Monday in his annual state-of-the city speech. The mayor said its a vehicle that holds the promise of taking humanity even deeper into the cosmos than ever before. The city Board of Harbor Commissioners will vote Thursday on whether to lease 19 acres to SpaceX for the manufacturing site. The commissions staff has recommended approval of an initial 10-year term, with two 10-year options, at an annual rent of approximately $1.38 million. While SpaceX calls its existing rockets Falcons, CEO Elon Musk simply refers to the planned new rocket as the BFR. Also Read: US Bans American Companies From Selling to Chinese Phone Maker ZTE Its intended to serve all purposes, from missions into Earth orbit and out to the moon and Mars. Musk has said he aspires to launch his first cargo missions to Mars in 2022. Musk also proposes to use the BFR for high-speed trips from point-to-point on Earth, such as New York to Shanghai in 39 minutes. SpaceX, based in the Los Angeles suburb of Hawthorne, already uses the Port of Los Angeles for missions that recover Falcon 9 first-stage boosters on a floating platform in the Pacific and when it recovers supply capsules that parachute into the ocean after missions to the international space station. Also Read: Nokia X Spotted in an Advertisement; April 27 Launch Expected SpaceX has called the Port of Los Angeles home to our west coast recovery operations since 2012 and we truly appreciate the City of Los Angeles continued partnership, Gwynne Shotwell, SpaceX president and COO, said in a statement. As announced today by Mayor Garcetti, the Port will play an increasingly important role in our mission to help make humanity multi-planetary as SpaceX begins production development of BFR our next generation rocket and spaceship system capable of carrying crew and cargo to the Moon, Mars and beyond. The agenda for this weeks Harbor Commission meeting says the SpaceXs new operation in the port would be a research, design and manufacturing facility for rockets and spacecraft. The rockets, once complete, would be too large for reasonable transport by road and thus must be transported by barge or ship, necessitating that the facility be water adjacent, it says. The facility would have potential to employ 700 people. Also Watch: Xolo Era 3X Review: Ease-of-Use is The Biggest USP Need a profile picture? Take a selfie. In front of the Eiffel Tower? Selfie! Just bumped into a superstar at your local supermarket? Unlikely, but if you did, selfie! With the last few weeks witnessing the opening of a Museum of Selfies in California, it's clear that selfies aren't going anywhere, despite the announcement they would be banned on the red carpet at the next Cannes film festival, so it's important to anyone even the slightest bit vain to look half decent on them. Also Read: Facebook Must Face Class Action Over Facial Recognition: US Judge Most of us aren't big influencers on Instagram or Snapchat, so spending a small fortune on apps and filters isn't what we're looking for, but if you're looking for a way to up your selfie game with a couple of free apps that freshen up your look and let you play around with a few stickers, read on. Retrica: Discover Yourself For those using Instagram, this will seem similar with filters, stamps and the chance to discover interesting people and lives. But the selection is new and the app has embraced swipe to the right' for the filter feature, speeding up the selection process. Also, creating your own GIFs and collages is very simple with this popular app. According to their website 350,000,000 have downloaded the app and 80,000,000 photos are taken per day. B612: Beauty & Filter Camera A beauty and filter app with over 1500 stickers, as well as drawing effects that can be made as you film a video. Some apps may focus on filters that create a vintage or grunge look, however B612 seems more focused on flawless glowing skin. Users can adjust the beauty effect as they take the photo, rather than after, plus there is a slimming down feature. Yes, those holiday photos need not give away how much turkey's been eaten, simply drag and reshape your face. Also Read: SpaceX to Build New Rocket in Port of Los Angeles Snapseed A photo editor developed by Google for those looking to take things to the next level. The app has many options that can be applied to selfies, such as the portrait filter. Then if you click on the tools tab, additional tweaks can be made. Click 'Healing' to blur an unwanted spot or 'Glamour Glow' if you want 5 additional filter options for a dramatic look. It may come across as a tool for photography enthusiasts but once a few simple hacks have been mastered, the app can create subtle yet very flattering alterations to your selfie. A good one for serious users. Selfshot: Front Flash Camera This is a very simple, yet very effective app. When the natural lighting around you isn't great, or the room isn't lit up, this is a camera you're probably going to find useful. Once opened, you will see yourself in a small box in the corner, much like when using video chat, then the rest of the screen is brightly lit. The bright screen lights up your face so you can snap a selfie or put on lipstick even in a dark nightclub. YouCam MakeUp For anyone in need of a little colour, whether it be hot red lips or some eyeshadow, this is a good start. If at home in your pyjamas and suddenly you have a need for a glamour shot, forget going to the bathroom and getting the beauty kit out, instead have a Magic Selfie Makeover. Some of the makeup may not pass off as realistic, however, there are several options that will. All of the apps mentioned above are available for both iOS and Android. Most of them require you to login in with either Facebook or an email. Also Watch: Xolo Era 3X Review: Ease-of-Use is The Biggest USP Amman: Syrian anti-aircraft defences shot down missiles fired at the Syrian air base of Shayrat in Homs province late on Monday and another base northeast of the capital, Damascus, Syria's state television and pro-Iranian Hezbollah media said. State television showed pictures of a missile that was shot in the air above the air base only days after a U.S., British and French attack on Syrian targets in retaliation for a suspected chemical attack on the city of Douma on the outskirts of Damascus. State television did not mention three missiles that were fired at Dumair military airport, northeast of Damascus, that pro-Iranian Hezbollah's media service reported were intercepted by Syrian air defences. Opposition sources say Dumair airport is a major air base used in a large-scale military campaign waged by the Syrian army with Russian firepower that regained eastern Ghouta, a rebel enclave on the outskirts of Damascus. A Pentagon spokesman said there was no U.S. military activity in that area at this time. Asked about the missile attack, an Israeli military spokesman said: "We don't comment on such reports." Shayrat air base was targeted last year in a U.S. cruise missile attack in response to a chemical attack that killed at least 70 people, including children, on the rebel-held town of Khan Sheikhoun. Israel has struck Syrian army locations many times in the course of the conflict, hitting convoys and bases of Iranian-backed militias that fight alongside Syrian President Bashar al- Assad's forces. Israel has long said Iran was expanding its influence in a belt of territory that stretches from the Iraqi border to the Lebanese border, where Israel says Iran supplies Hezbollah with arms. Hezbollah and other Iranian-backed militias have a large military presence in Syria and are well entrenched in central and eastern areas near the Iraqi border. Deputy Hezbollah leader Sheikh Naim Qassem told pro-Syrian government television channel al Maydeen he expected a reaction to the death of at least seven Iranian military personnel during a missile strike earlier this month on the T-4 airfield near Homs, which Iran blamed on Israel The deliberate Israeli slaying of Iranians in the T4 base will have a response but we dont know its nature or its details, Qassem said in the television interview. The heavily armed and Tehran-backed Shiite movement has been a vital military ally of President Bashar al-Assad in the seven-year-old Syrian war. Hezbollah, which last fought a major war with Israel in 2006, has however said it would not open a new front against its arch-foe from Lebanon. Qassem said the powerful militia did not fight in all the main battles in Syria but was present in any area that was needed. He did not elaborate. Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu said after the U.S., British, and French strikes in Syria his country will continue "to move against Iran in Syria." New York: Donald Trump's legal battle with his own Justice Department led to an extraordinary courtroom showdown on Monday between his personal lawyer, one of America's most prestigious prosecution offices and a lavender-clad porn star fueling the media circus. The high-stakes hearing before a federal judge in downtown Manhattan, centered on a technicality, almost descended into a farce when the name of Trump's favorite Fox News anchor was suddenly revealed as another purported client of Michael Cohen. Cohen, the president's long-time personal lawyer and fixer, is under criminal investigation by the FBI. Last week, agents confiscated documents in a raid on his home, hotel room, office and a safety deposit box. They also seized two cellphones. His legal team and Trump who denounced the raid as a "witch hunt" sought a restraining order that would prevent prosecutors from reviewing the material until the president can decide if any of it should be protected by attorney-client privilege. US District Judge Kimba Wood denied the request but agreed that Cohen's legal team should have access to the documents, instructing prosecutors to scan any material not already in electronic form into an accessible database. How long that will take is not immediately clear. Wood also asked lawyers for both Cohen and Trump to come up with names for a "special master" who she could potentially appoint to comb through the documents first. For now, the US attorney's office in Manhattan agreed not to examine any of the material, pending a final decision from the judge. Wood otherwise forced Cohen's lawyer to reveal the name of a previously undisclosed client, who could also be affected by attorney-client privilege concerns. FOX HOST ANGRY Sean Hannity was said to be that client the Fox News host Trump is known to admire and speak with by telephone, and whose television show is currently the most watched in US cable news. The revelation was met with gasps and laughter in court, but Hannity himself furiously denied any such relationship. "Michael Cohen has never represented me in any matter. I never retained him, received an invoice, or paid legal fees. I have occasionally had brief discussions with him about legal questions about which I wanted his input and perspective," he tweeted. "I have no personal interest in this proceeding, and, in fact, asked that my de minimis discussions with Michael Cohen, which dealt almost exclusively about real estate, not be made a part of this proceeding." Some of the documents seized by the FBI reportedly relate to a payment of $130,000 that Cohen admits making to Stormy Daniels, who claims she had a one-night stand with Trump a decade ago. The president has denied any knowledge of the payment to secure Daniels's October 2016 signature on a hush agreement preventing her from talking about the liaison. The porn star, real name Stephanie Clifford, is fighting to quash the agreement. She was whisked into court past an enormous media scrum, squeezing into a spot in the back at the last minute. "For years, Mr. Cohen has acted like he is above the law," she told reporters, dressed in a pale purple skirt suit and black blouse, after the 2.5-hour hearing. "That ends now. My attorney and I are committed to making sure that everyone finds out the truth and the facts of what happened." 'DANGER TO THE PRESIDENT' Her publicity-hungry lawyer Michael Avenatti added: "Michael Cohen was radioactive... I think there is a significant danger to the president. "The president trusted Mr. Cohen with his inner-most secrets and I think the chicken are about to come home to roost," Avenatti said. The Justice Department says Cohen has been under investigation for months for criminal conduct largely centered on his "personal business dealings" but court papers have been redacted, leaving the specifics under wraps. Prosecutors say they are looking for evidence of crimes, "many of which have nothing to do with his work as an attorney." The raid on Cohen's home and office came as special counsel Robert Mueller's probe intensifies its focus on the president's inner circle. Mueller's team is examining possible collusion between Trump's 2016 election campaign team and Russia, as well as allegations of corrupt behavior by Trump campaign lieutenants and of White House efforts to obstruct the investigation. Islamabad: Two Pakistanis were killed when Iran's border security forces fired at a group of people allegedly trying to enter the country illegally, according to a media report. On April 12, a group of 15 Pakistanis belonging to different cities of Pakistan tried to illegally enter Iran, Express Tribune reported. The Iranian Border Force fired on the people who crossed the border, killing two. Iranian force then arrested five people, while the remaining eight disappeared after crossing the border, it said quoting Pakistani authorities. According to reports, Iranian authorities have handed over the bodies and arrested people to Pakistan Levies Force. Levies officials shifted the bodies to the District Head Quarter Hospital in Gwadar. The deceased were identified as Shahzeb Khan Wali, 27 and Omar Sadiq, 27, both belonging to Bannu area of Khyber-Pakhtunkhwa province. Those who were arrested were also moved to Gwadar. The arrested included Wahid Khan, Shah Fayyaz Khan and Saifullah Khan from Khyber-Pakhtunkhwa, Muhammad Sagar belonging to Karachi and Muhammad Maqam from Jhang. This is the second incident in a month involving Pakistanis trying to illegally enter Iran. In March, two Pakistani youths, who were illegally going to Turkey to travel from Iran, were killed by the Iranian forces. Every year thousands of people from Pakistan and Afghanistan illegally travel to Iran to find a job in Europe. Last year, 20 people from Punjab were killed by a banned organisation in Turbat after they were kidnapped. London: The nerve agent used to poison former Russian spy Sergei Skripal and his daughter at his home in southern England last month was delivered in a liquid form, British officials said on Tuesday. Skripal, 66, who as a colonel in Russian military intelligence betrayed dozens of agents to Britain's foreign spy service, was found slumped unconscious on a bench in the city of Salisbury along with his daughter Yulia on March 4. Britain has blamed Russia for the attack which the authorities said was carried out using a Novichok form of nerve agent. Moscow denies the accusation and says Britain is trying to whip up anti-Russian hysteria. In a briefing to media on Tuesday, the Department for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs (Defra) which is handling a clean-up operation in Salisbury said a very small amount of Novichok was used with the substance delivered in a liquid form. Police have said they believe the poison had been applied to the front door of Skripal's modest home as that was where the highest concentration of the toxin had been detected. After weeks of treatment, Yulia Skripal, 33, was discharged from hospital a week ago. Her father remains in hospital, although he is no longer in a critical condition, and both are still receiving treatment for the effects of the poisoning. Defra said nine sites, including three in Salisbury city centre, needed some level of specialist cleaning but some areas which had been sealed off since the poisoning were being reopened to the public. "Thanks to detailed information gathered during the polices investigation, and our scientific understanding of how the agent works and is spread, we have been able to categorise the likely level of contamination at each site and are drawing up tailored plans," said Defras Chief Scientific Adviser Ian Boyd. The Organisation for the Prohibition of Chemical Weapons (OPCW) has confirmed Britain's analysis that a highly pure type of Novichok, developed by the Soviet Union in the 1970s and 80s, had been used in the attack on the Skripals. The signing of the project framework agreement between government and the Albertine Graben Refinery Consortium (AGRC) for the $4 billion oil refinery was a great relief to the Energy Ministry as it races towards the country's first oil by 2020. Sources at the ministry of Energy and Mineral Development indicate that it took a lot of behind the scenes negotiations that would at times involve President Yoweri Museveni on side, and the United States government officials through its embassy in Kampala. The oil refinery deal was signed last week The US embassy was, according to sources, eager to see the conclusion of the deal in order to fight off Chinese firms still interested the multi-billion dollar deal in case the negotiations with AGRC failed. Over 40 companies had expressed interest in the deal which was initially estimated to cost $3 billion but now projected to cost up to $4 billion. The negotiations between the government represented by the ministry of Energy, National Oil Company and AGRC commenced in August 2017 when the parties agreed on the core project terms. The selection process started in January 2017. At the time, it was anticipated that Chinese firm Guangzhou DongSong Energy Group which had scored highly during the second search would take the deal. URN did not independently establish whether Guangzhou DongSong Energy Group was still in Uganda from the time the Group was dropped from the deal. The then ministry of Energy permanent secretary, Dr Stephen Isabalija, however, announced that the Albertine Graben Refinery Consortium (AGRC) made up of General Electric (GE) Oil and Gas, YAATRA Ventures LLC, Intracontinental Asset Holdings Ltd (IA) and Saipem SpA had clinched it. The project framework agreement with AGRC should have been signed within months after they had agreed on the core terms. A source indicated that Chinese firms have quietly tried to find their way back into the deal backed by some government officials that have preferred working with China. Uganda's oil and gas sector is one of the sectors promoted by the US Commercial Service of the Department of Commerce. The 2017 US commercial country guide on Uganda pointed the $10 billion infrastructure required to develop Uganda's oil reserves as one the opportunities for the American in Uganda. This explains why the signing of the agreement did not only excite ministry of Energy officials but the US Embassy as well. US ambassador Deborah R. Malac called a select number of journalists to the embassy. Key on the on the topics was the Albertine Graben Refinery Consortium (AGRC) deal. She says her embassy was quite pleased with the signing of the agreement between the government of Uganda and the Albertine Graben Consortium which she said was put together by a US-led company. "In particular, the the Albertine Graben Refinery Consortium presents the opportunity for project financing, financed by the private sector which doesnt contribute to Ugandas debt burden. As many of you know, were all watching with some concern, the government borrowing that is going on. So this is one more, it showcases a model and an opportunity to do things differently, still address the infrastructure needs and other needs in the economy," sais Malac. Malac said the AGRC which includes General Electric, one of the largest global companies with over one hundred years of existence made the American firm competitive. The almost year-long negotiations have centred on financing arrangements, risk mitigation measures among others. The consortium now has the rights and licenses to develop and manage the refinery as lead investor in a joint venture partnership with the Ugandan government. One of the sticky issues under the back and forth related to regulations on the consortium itself and other related laws. Under the Petroleum (Exploration, Development and Production) Act, joint ventures may be licensed to participate in a range of petroleum-related business undertakings provided there is, within such a joint venture, participation by the Ugandan government or a company that is at least 48 per cent Ugandan-owned. Ambassador Malac revealed that agreeing on the regulations was not as easy as envisaged at the time when they agreed on the core project terms. "Some of the concepts that were brought in terms of this project financing - private sector debt and private capital equity markets is a new model in many ways for Uganda. So, there is not much expertise in the ministry of Finance, in the ministry of Energy about how you handle it. This is not the same as government debt - borrowing from China Exxim [bank] or borrowing from the World Bank, hiring a contractor who is gonna go out and do your project. It is very different concept, a very different legal framework." she added. She revealed that it had to take an education process to help the government team to understand how it worked. That she said could have partly delayed it. "...the reality is, it is much faster than it has happened in some other places. Each business proposal, each project that comes forward when youre doing a private sector negotiation is different. Some can take a long timewe say 15 months but it has been just a little bit under that. But you know, there was time when nothing was happening when both sides wanted to go and do something else and then had to come back." Joint ventures have become popular especially among the US refinery companies because of their competitive edge. The companies there look to joint ventures, alliances, and other combinations to try to improve performance. It is anticipated that the joint venture arrangement will help the companies under the consortium and the government financing mobilisation for the project. Malac alluded to the fact that funding into the consortium will not be borrowed from other governments or loan money that will have to be paid back. The private sector companies under the joint venture are expected to go to the capital markets, find investors and share the risk of building and operating the refinery. More details about the deal between the governments with the consortium remain guarded with the Energy ministry, National Oil Company lawyers as well as the US embassy reluctant to disclose the details. Ambassador Malac said the non-disclosure is a globally established practice. "This [non-disclosure] is very common when private companies are negotiating because you dont want your competitor to steal your information, to steal your intellectual property, to take what you're trying to do and propose. It is not an effort to hide anything in the sense that youre doing something bad, the point is, you have done all your research about the market, you have done all your research about what you want to build about, about your proposal, about what needs to be done. And you understand how it will work and that is your product that you bring to the government and say this what we can do and how we can do it together. But I can assure you that, there was nothing untold on the part of our companies that were involved in these negotiations." Malac added. Ugandan National Company, executive director, Josephine Wapakabulo could not be reached for more details regarding the sharing arrangements. Crude oil reserves in Uganda are estimated at about 6,500 million barrels. The refinery to be based in Hoima is expected to process between 50,000 to 60,000 barrels per day. Sony TV had shared a promo which shows singer and judge Neha Kakkar falling on the stage while dancing on Indian Idol 11 sets with host Aditya Narayan. Reportedly, a contestant had requested Neha to come on the stage and dance. Neha accepted the request and while dancing with Aditya, he accidentally dropped her, post which Neha was seen bursting out in laughter. A pet owner kisses her pet, a Bearded Dragon, after it was blessed by a Catholic priest during a tradition in remembrance of the Patron Saint of Animals, Saint Francis of Assisi in Manila. (Image: Reuters) That Venom: Let There Be Carnage post-credits scene could connect to this wild comic book event Venom: Let There Be Carnage may have a surprising comic book connection - with big ramifications Kelly Clarkson Is Awarded the $10.4 Million Montana Ranch in Divorce From Brandon Blackstock A judge gave Kelly Clarkson the reins to the $10.4 million Montana ranch where her estranged husband, Brandon Blackstock, has been living since their split. The... David Lee Roth announces retirement: 'I am throwing in the shoes' Van Halen frontman and rock icon David Lee Roth announced that he is retiring after performing a number of shows in Las Vegas. Princess Beatrice names first child Sienna Elizabeth Sienna Elizabeth is Queen Elizabeth IIs 12th great-grandchild. Wind and rain weather warning issued for parts of Scotland and England Heavy rain and strong winds could bring flooding, travel disruption and power outages to parts of England and Scotland over the weekend. Military drivers mobilised to deliver fuel to petrol stations Military drivers will be deployed to deliver fuel to forecourts from Monday as the crisis at the pumps continues. UK-based Germans among groups targeted to fill shortage of lorry drivers Thousands of Germans living in the UK have received letters from the Government asking them to drive lorries to help ease the fuel crisis even if they have not... What Canada's ambassador to China was doing at the White House Canada's ambassador to China was in an unusual setting on Friday: the White House. The visit happened without fanfare. It comes amid a broad rethink in... 'Cruel Intentions' Series Heads To IMDb TV IMDb TV is bringing us a new Cruel Intentions television series. According to TVLine, the new series pilot will be written by Phoebe Fisher and Sara Goodman,... Pundit names perfect scenario to ensure West Ham talisman stays put The Hammers are flying in Europe and a strong run will have benefits in the long run. I know Ive annoyed Pep Guardiola but I like him, says Jurgen Klopp Liverpool manager Jurgen Klopp knows he has a tendency to annoy Manchester City counterpart Pep Guardiola but insists he does not do it deliberately. Joe Biden visits Capitol in bid to thrash out deal on infrastructure bill President Joe Biden pledged at the Capitol to get it done as Democrats strained to rescue a scaled-back version of his 3.5 trillion US dollar... Ozy announces it is shutting down, following bombshell New York Times report "It is therefore with the heaviest of hearts that we must announce today that we are closing Ozy's doors," the company's board of directors wrote. Steve Jobs' Daughter Eve Jobs Makes Her Runway Debut at Paris Fashion Week Eve Jobs, the youngest daughter of the late Apple CEO Steve Jobs, just made her runway debut at Paris Fashion Week! The 23-year-old model wore a neon-green top... Helicopter and plane collide midair in Arizona; 2 killed CHANDLER, Ariz. (AP) A helicopter and a single-engine plane collided in midair Friday near a suburban Phoenix airport, sending the helicopter crashing into a... Military drivers to deliver fuel from Monday as temporary HGV visas extended Military tanker drivers are to be deployed to deliver fuel to forecourts across the country from Monday amid continuing supply issues at filling stations. Michael Spavor thanks Canada, world, asks for privacy after Chinese prison release Michael Spavor is thanking Canadians and the world for their support one week after his 1,020-day ordeal in Chinese prison came to an end. The debt ceiling deadline has prompted questions about whether Social Security checks will go out. Here's what we know Congress faces an Oct. 18 deadline to extend the debt ceiling. Here's what that could mean for Social Security checks if that does not happen. CIBC Is the New Costco Mastercard Partner: What Does This Mean for You? Here are the facts on CIBC's new Costco Mastercard -- and what we hope to see... Pundit salutes Arsenal for resolving transfer calamity with top signing Mikel Arteta and Arsenal have been praised for responding to a transfer nightmare by bringing in a solid replacement Michael Spavor 'overjoyed' to be reunited with his family in Canada In his first public statement since returning to Canada, Michael Spavor says he is "overjoyed" to be reunited with his family. Military began monitoring COVID-19 in early 2020 but still failed to predict pandemic's path, documents show Newly-released documents show the Canadian military was concerned enough about the initial spread of COVID 19 to begin monitoring and planning for a response in... Scarlett Johansson, Disney Settle Lawsuit Over 'Black Widow' Release Watch Video Scarlett Johansson and the Walt Disney Co. on Thursday settled her lawsuit over the streaming release of Black Widow, bringing a swift end... Contagious Delta means more people need to be vaccinated to reach herd immunity: Tam Dr. Theresa Tam, the chief public health officer, says the Delta variant is moving the goalposts on the rate of vaccination to reach herd immunity from COVID-19. PM accused of 'callousness' for heading to Tofino instead of reconciliation events Prime Minister Justin Trudeau is facing a backlash over his decision to fly to British Columbia to spend time with his family on the first National Day of Truth... Trump privately called French President Emmanuel Macron 'a wuss guy' and '120 pounds of fury,' book says Trump condemned the "bad and untrue things" in Grisham's book, claiming she's "very angry and bitter" over her split from his former aide Max Miller. Feds have no single-shot Johnson & Johnson vaccine doses to give to provinces Some provinces in Western Canada are looking for doses of Johnson & Johnson's single dose Janssen vaccine in an effort to boost vaccine uptake, but the federal... Northern Ireland Protocol could in principle work, Prime Minister says The Northern Ireland Protocol could in principle work, the Prime Minister has said, but it will be a case of fixing it or ditching it. 3 1 of 3 Mike Casey / Contributed photo Show More Show Less 2 of 3 Mike Casey / Contributed photo Show More Show Less 3 of 3 The rising career of Storrs-raised and Hartford-educated Mike Casey informs the rest of Connecticut about the quiet potency of the Hartford jazz scene. But the sax player/composer also has an affinity for Old Lymes Side Door Jazz Club, where he recorded his first album, The Sound of Surprise: Live at the Side Door. Now living in Philadelphia, Casey will return to the Side Door with his trio that includes Matt Dwonszyk on acoustic bass and Corey Garcia on drums Friday, April 27. Theyll play music from that album and his new one, Stay Surprising: Live at the Side Door, also recorded there on the same night as the first album in 2016. The sophomore album is being released track by track from April 10 (when West End was released, the title referring to the Hartford neighborhood where he lived for four years) through the final cut in the fall. The government has not provided funding for a referendum on the extension of the presidential term of office from the current five to seven years. At least Shs 263 billion is required by the Electoral Commission to conduct the referendum in the financial year 2018/2019. The need for a referendum arose out of constitutional amendments that were approved by parliament in December 2017. EC chairperson Simon Byabakama They included the extension of the term of office for all elective positions from five to seven years and lifting the cap on the presidential age. Although the decision was finalised for legislators and local government leaders, the extension of the presidential term, requires approval from the rest of the population. President Yoweri Museveni assented to the Act days after it had been passed by the 10th parliament. But, despite the ongoing Constitutional court battle in Mbale challenging the amendments, the Electoral Commission is seeking an allocation of Shs 263.4 billion for a possible referendum. EC chairperson, Justice Simon Byabakama told the Legal and Parliamentary Affairs committee of parliament that the money is not catered for in the next financial year's budget. Byabakama had appeared to present the commission's budget for the coming financial year 2018/2019. According to the Electoral Commission, the required money will enable them fund activities such as printing ballot papers and sensitizing voters among other electoral activities. A referendum is provided for under Article 225(1) of the Constitution, which directs that parliament shall by law make provisions for the right of citizens to demand the holding by the Electoral Commission of a referendum, whether national or in any particular part of Uganda, on any issue. Meanwhile, besides the funds sought to prepare for the referendum, the Electoral Commission also seeks another Shs 13.39 billion to conduct general election activities ahead of the next general elections. "It was earlier approved that the Commission conducts its general election activities in a phased manner in 3 financial years. The first phases of demarcation of electoral areas and re-organization of polling stations should start in the financial year 2018/2019. This will not be achieved without the provision of funds." said Byabakama. DANBURY One of Danburys oldest businesses celebrated its 75th anniversary with Gov. Dannel P. Malloy and other local officials this week. Malloy and leaders of the Schaeffler Group recognized the milestone birthday of the long-time ball bearing manufacturer Barden Corp., which the Schaeffler manufacturing group has owned for 17 years. The governor touted the companys decades in the city and its recent $55 million investment in its Park Avenue plant as a testament to a resurging manufacturing sector across the state. Connecticut is for the first time in 50 years seeing manufacturing growth, in part based on the last 7 1/2 years concentration on advanced manufacturing and an understanding that we are an expensive place to have a facility; that some costs are higher here than they for instance in the Palmetto State, as was mentioned, Malloy said, referencing the companys facilities in South Carolina. The state, and Danbury in particular, have helped feed the companys workforce needs through advanced manufacturing programs at Henry Abbott Technical High School and Naugtuck Valley Community College, Malloy said. Weve certainly turned that around to make sure were a better supplier of the workforce thats necessary, he said. You, on the other hand, are the ones who allow those jobs to be in our state and its our obligation to meet you halfway to make sure you have the available workforce to make the greatest products. Georg F. W. Schaeffler thanked Malloy, Mayor Mark Boughton and state Sen. Michael McLachlan for helping develop those programs and the apprenticeship partnerships that send local grads to the local facility. Schaeffler is the groups chairman of the groups supervisory board and son of its German namesake, Ing. E. h. Georg Schaeffler. The Danbury facility manufacturers high-precision bearings for aviation, space and defense industry clients including NASAs Mars exploration rovers and the recently completed 20-year mission of the Cassini space probe, Schaeffler said. Despite decades of declining manufacturing jobs, the Schaeffler Group finished a $55 million improvement at the facility atop the hill overlooking the city and Danbury Fair mall, he added. In January, the number of manufacturing jobs in Connecticut reached its highest total since 2011 at 163,200, according to data from the state Department of Labor. Thats only a marginal increase, though, and still a little more than half the number of manufacturing jobs in the state 30 years ago. Yet manufacturing remains one of the biggest employment sectors in Danbury. There are more than 5,400 manufacturing workers in the city as of late last year, or about 12 percent of the workforce, according to the data. Thats behind only education and health services, at 20 percent of workers, retail at 14 percent, and professional services at almost 13 percent in Danbury, according to the data. Boughton recalled Schaeffler Group and Barden as stalwarts for the Danbury economy. People have choices where they can invest their money, where they can spend their money, and they have chosen our community, Boughton said. You could go somewhere else and those conversations have happened over the years, even while Ive been mayor, and each and every time this organization has come back and said, We want to stay in Danbury. Schaeffler agreed and hoped the company will get to celebrate even more major anniversaries with the city. Congrats to the Danbury team on 75 years of extraordinary achievement, he said. I look forward to a future of growth and success as Danbury continues to flourish as a viable engineering and manufacturing location for the next 75 years. zach.murdock@hearstmediact.com RIDGEFIELD The state Department of Energy and Environmental Protection and the USDA-Natural Resources Conservation Service will host an informational meeting to discuss rehabilitating the Norwalk River Great Swamp Dam in Ridgefield. DEEP, with the help of NRCS, is developing a plan to rehabilitate the dam so it meets current safety, performance and design criteria. The dam provides flood protection to both Redding and Ridgefield and enhances habitat for wetland wildlife, according to a release. NEWTOWN The defamation lawsuits filed this week against conspiracy theory extremist Alex Jones by parents who lost children in the Sandy Hook shootings represent an escalation in the families years-long fight against major crime deniers. For the first time, families are seeking millions of dollars in civil damages from the Texas man, who has called the worst crime in modern Connecticut history staged, synthetic, manufactured, a giant hoax and completely fake with actors, with inside job written all over it. Although the two defamation cases filed in a Houston district court on Monday deal with specific statements Jones made about two Sandy Hook parents in 2017 on his web-based program InfoWars, the cases cite what the families lawyers call a long history of harassing the Sandy Hook families with defamatory lies. This heartless and vile act of defamation re-ignited the Sandy Hook false flag conspiracy and tore open the emotional wounds that plaintiff has tried so desperately to heal, reads one of the lawsuits. This conspiracy theory, which has been pushed by InfoWars and Mr. Jones since the day of the shooting, alleges that the Sandy Hook massacre did not happen, or that it was staged by the government and concealed using actors, and that the parents or the victims are participants in a horrifying cover-up. The lawsuits come two weeks after a Massachusetts man sued Jones for defamation for falsely identifying him as the shooter in the Valentines Day massacre of 17 students and staff at a Florida high school. The Florida shooting was the deadliest school shooting in the United States since the Sandy Hook shooting of 26 first-graders and educators in 2012. Neil Heslin, the father of slain student Jesse Lewis, and Leonard Pozner and Veronique De La Rosa, the parents of slain student Noah Pozner, are seeking more than $1 million in damages. Jones is accused of saying on his program that Heslin was lying about the circumstances of his sons tragic death for a nefarious and criminal purpose, when Heslin appeared with NBCs Megyn Kelly last summer, according to Heslins lawsuit. In the second lawsuit, Jones is accused of saying on his program that De La Rosa was an actor in a faked interview with CNNs Anderson Cooper used to cover up the truth about Sandy Hook, Pozner and De La Rosas lawsuit reads. Jones did not respond to a request for comment on Tuesday. Although families that lost loved ones in the Sandy Hook shootings have been harassed by lone extremists in the past, Jones became the focus early last year after the election of Donald Trump, when Jones bragged the new president had called to thank him for his support. In response, the Newtown Board of Education wrote to Trump for his help to stop Jones and other hoaxers like him. The White House did not respond. Then in June, Jones made headlines again in Newtown when he was booked to speak with Kelly on a prime time Sunday night show. The homegrown nonprofit Sandy Hook Promise took the lead in calling for NBC to cancel the show to keep Jones extremist views from gaining prime time exposure. Sandy Hook Promise dropped Kelly as the emcee of its Washington, D.C. gala, but Jones went on as scheduled. An attorney representing some of the families said Jones has weaponized his radio show to publish false and defamatory statements about our clients; chief among them that they are actors perpetuating a massive fraud on the American public by faking the deaths of their loved ones. The defamation lawsuits filed this week noted the case of Lucy Richards, a Sandy Hook conspiracy theorist, who was sentenced to five months in prison in June for sending threats to Pozner and Heslin. There are no alternative facts, Senior U.S. District Judge James Cohn told Richards at her sentencing. As part of her sentence, Richards was barred from viewing a list of conspiracy websites, including InfoWars, the lawsuits said. Does this sound familiar to you? I saw on LinkedIn that an acquaintance who is more than a decade younger than I am has made it big as a successful startup founder. She just closed a big second round of funding. The same day, my alumni magazine came in the mail with an article on one of my high school classmates who is now interim mayor of San Francisco. I simultaneously felt happy for both her and him, but also experienced a pang of anxiety. I wondered whether Im doing everything within my power to ensure my entrepreneurial endeavors are successful. Are you? This ultimate guide will help you to do just that, featuring four simple but often overlooked tips for becoming a successful entrepreneur. 1. Develop a network of trustworthy mentors. The two biggest challenges for an entrepreneur are time and money. During the early days of a new business youll have too little of both valuable resources, but a network of mentors with relevant experience can help you to succeed anyway. First, what if youre feeling lost or confused about your direction? Learning from business leaders who have faced similar challenges to those you are dealing with can help you to accelerate your learning. This will help you save valuable time in reaching solutions that might otherwise have been far harder to discover. Second, a network of well-connected people can make it easier for you to get your foot in the door when attempting to meet with investors. In many cases, the best venture capitalists tend to meet with entrepreneurs who are referred to them via people they trust. Remember that mentorship isnt something that can be forced. Dont ask just any business acquaintance to become your mentor. Treat it like any other close relationship. Put effort into getting to know the person in order to form a real connection. If it appears that a connection is there, over time a valuable mentor-mentee relationship will flourish. Related: Why Entrepreneurs Need Mentors and How to Find Them 2. Learn the wants and needs of customers. This is still the biggest mistake I see with founders. Dharmesh Shah is a good example of someone well known to obsess over the wants and needs of customers. Hes the founder and CTO of Hubspot, a marketing automation company worth upwards of $3 billion. Though the company is less than 11 years old, it has disrupted the digital marketing world thanks to a user-friendly platform. Shah has a habit of bringing a teddy bear named Molly into important meetings. The bear represents one of Hubspots key customers, and is evidence that focusing on the wants and needs of users is one of the most important jobs of any entrepreneur. Take the time to speak with prospects and customers over the phone and in person. Focus on learning about them as an individual and not just as a user within your industry. Related: The 3 Essentials Customers Want Most 3. Learn to analyze data and build financial models. Its never been easier or more important to use data to make informed business decisions. As an entrepreneur it is never too early to rely on data to determine what your next business move should be. But in order to make data-driven decisions, you must first invest in collecting the data across various touch points along the customer journey. Website analytics, product usage behavior, social media growth and overall business trends are a few of the areas you should consider monitoring on a regular basis to understand the health of your startup. Once collected, you can use this data to build models to help you take better strategic decisions. But building models that work well isnt as simple as learning a few formulas. Consider taking a business analytics course like those offered by online learning platforms like Coursera. Investing a few weeks in familiarizing yourself with data collection, analysis and visualization will go a long way in preparing you to compete against stiff competition. Related: How Big Data Analytics Is Solving Big Advertiser Problems 4. Get comfortable negotiating, otherwise the answer is always no. Maybe the biggest difference between working for a large organization and working for yourself as an entrepreneur is that every dollar that is spent comes out of your own pocket. For many people, negotiating feels uncomfortable or unnecessary, but if you fail to negotiate as a small-business owner, youre essentially robbing yourself of money that could otherwise be reinvested in your business. As they say, if you dont negotiate, the answer will always be no. With that in mind, get comfortable negotiating. Never settle for the terms offered by the other party until you get them to sweeten the deal in some way. Many MBA programs, like those offered by Harvard and Stanford, feature access to online lectures about the art and science of negotiating that can be accessed for free. Take this lecture by Harvard Professor Deepak Malhotra. While the lecture is ostensibly about negotiating a job offer, the principles detailed in the video can be applied to a variety of settings. Related: 10 Tips to Negotiate Like a Boss Stepping out of the safe confines of corporate America and into the fast lane of entrepreneurship can be frightening. After all, a life as an entrepreneur can be far less predictable and far more isolating. Youll be forced to take a series of challenging business decisions alone. Remember that success is ephemeral, even for the most successful of us. No one stays on top forever. Not Tiger Woods. Not Barack Obama. Not Donald Trump. No one. Have the perspective to know that all entrepreneurs go through difficult periods when they cant seem to make the right business choices. But by building a network of professionals who are ready to lend you advice and access, and by investing in yourself to acquire new skills, youll be setting yourself up for entrepreneurial success. Related: 4 Insanely Easy but Overlooked Tactics to Advance Your Entrepreneurial Career Success Comes to Entrepreneurs Who Stop Sabotaging Themselves With Stress What Is the Definition of Entrepreneurship? Copyright 2018 Entrepreneur.com Inc., All rights reserved A few weeks ago, I wrote a post about nine influential women in blockchain who received a lot of praise and positive feedback. So I decided to write a follow-up post with a new list. The latest tech boom has revolved around blockchain and cryptocurrencies. And while this brand-new field is still heavily dominated by men, women are quickly closing in and making big names for themselves. The blockchain space, in fact, is the perfect place for women who want to make a big impact to get involved. Related: Here Are the Best Tech Companies for Women to Work Here are eight women currently crushing it in the blockchain and crypto space and serving as inspiration for budding female techs and entrepreneurs. 1. Piper Moretti is the CEO of The Crypto Realty Group. Her company specializes in real estate transactions using cryptocurrency. Moretti is a licensed international luxury realtor at Christies International Luxury Real Estate, one of the worlds largest luxury real estate brokerages, and she has a passion for the crypto space. She helps clients find or sell property, using cryptocurrency, anywhere throughout Los Angeles (and beyond). 2. Manju Mohan is the co-CEO and co-founder of Ionixx Technologies, a company that helps businesses turn their ideas into reality using technology. Ionixx focuses on mobile and web technologies that help digitize businesses. One of its services is working with companies on developing strategic approaches to implement blockchain technologies. One of its most recent projects revolved around applying blockchain technology to the process of educational certificate verification for businesses and recruitment managers. Related: This Tech Founder Was Often the Only Woman in the Room When She Started Her Company. Here's Her Advice for Young Entrepreneurs. 3. Mihriban Ersin Tekmen is co-founder/ COO at Colendi. Colendi is a cross-border decentralized credit-scoring platform using Blockchain technology to provide a secure and democratic service for the fintech world, and transforming the definition of banking. She is also the co-founder of Fintechtime, an independent publication that offers the latest news, insights and analysis of the global fintech market. 4. Shadan Azali is vice president of investor relations for Dispatch Labs, a business-ready blockchain protocol that empowers industries to create scalable, secure and decentralized peer-to-peer applications. Prior to joining Dispatch Labs, Azali led corporate philanthropy initiatives at Ally Bank and the Bank of America. Azalis role straddles two fields that traditionally lack female representation: finance and technology. However, she publicly expresses hope that the combination of more women stepping into leadership roles and the continual support and mentorship for young girls entering math and computer science programs will bring more opportunities for women in technology. 5. Elizabeth McCauley, a member of the board of directors at the Bitcoin Foundation and advisor at the BitGive Foundation and Coin Congress, got her introduction to blockchain and crypto while working as an assistant in the U.S. House of Representatives. During that time, McCauley was involved in the adoption of bitcoin in the United States. 6. Maxine Ryan is the COO and co-founder at Bitspark, the worlds first cash-in, cash-out blockchain remittance platform. She developed her passion for bitcoin while pursuing a degree in international relations in Australia. Ryan's interest in blockchain and cryptocurrency was so intense that she dropped out of school just six months before graduation to pursue her dream. Shortly thereafter, she returned to Hong Kong and launched her business. 7. Rachel Wolfson is a blockchain guru and journalist who writes for Bitcoin magazine and has contributed to Forbes, Dataconomy Media, Elite Daily and more. Wolfson also serves as board advisor for a blockchain-based supply-chain management company and as board observer for a number of other blockchain companies. She was recently named by Next Web as one of the top five women working to change the world of crypto. 8. Emily Arth is the VP of operations at Constellation. Having worked as the right-hand aide to the CEO of a $300 million company -- North American Power -- Arth is a powerhouse of corporate leadership and management. Driving operational excellence and organization at Rakugo, Arth brings years of experience that will drive growth and success. Related: Recruiting and Retaining Female Tech Talent Is a Challenge -- Here's How We Did It These women (among many others) are making a big impact in the blockchain and crypto space as well as forging a path to help other women get involved. Just because the number of women in technology-related fields has always been dramatically lower than that of men doesnt mean that things will stay that way. Blockchain technology is poised to disrupt many industries in the coming years, and women will play a big role in the revolution. Related: Have Blockchain Tech Investors Found the Holy Grail? 8 Influential Women Making Headlines in Blockchain GOeureka and Blockchain-Based Service Providers Reshape the Internet Copyright 2018 Entrepreneur.com Inc., All rights reserved HARTFORD Attorney General George Jepsen on Tuesday said the lack of federal approval for a third casino in East Windsor means it would be "imprudent" to proceed with the project. The opinion is likely to renew interest in stalled legislation that calls for bids to instead build a casino in Bridgeport. MGM Grand International has expressed interest in a waterfront casino in the states largest city. In response to questions from House Speaker Joe Aresimowicz, Jepsen said, because the federal Bureau of Indian Affairs has not published a decision regarding revisions to tribal compacts on the federal register, the joint venture between the Mashantucket Pequot and Mohegan Indians to build an East Windsor casino is not formally approved. "Therefore, it is our opinion that the federal approval condition has not been satisfied," Jepsen said. Both the state and the tribes believe BIA has approved the plans because it took no action when changes to the compact were submitted to the agency, and believe that constitutes approval. Both sides have sued BIA over failure to publish that approval on the federal register. "To take action on the assumption that the state and the tribes will succeed in the ongoing litigation would be highly imprudent," Jepsen said, referring to building the planned casino. The Pequots and Mohegans pay the state 25 percent of the slot revenue earned at the Foxwoods and Mohegan Sun casino resorts. The East Windsor casino would also pay slot revenue to the state. The third casino is being built to stem competition from a $1 billion MGM Grand casino under construction in Springfield, Massachusetts. bcummings@ctpost.com A 66-year-old woman who was sickened by E. coli is suing Panera Bread Co. after apparently eating contaminated romaine lettuce at a restaurant in New Jersey. Louise Fraser first experienced abdominal pain within days of eating at a restaurant in Somerset County, according to a federal complaint. Then came bloody diarrhea and vomiting that sent her to the emergency room on March 25. She was diagnosed with hemolytic uremic syndrome, a life-threatening illness that happens to a small number of people infected with Escherichia coli and can lead to kidney failure. The Food and Drug Administration has not identified specific farms or companies that grew, supplied and distributed the contaminated products. But according to Fraser's lawsuit, filed Tuesday in federal court in New Jersey, Ohio-based Freshway Foods Inc. supplied contaminated lettuce to Panera Bread. A spokeswoman for Freshway Foods, which Fraser also sued, said she cannot comment on pending litigation. Panera Bread's media office has not responded to an email requesting for comment. Fraser's lawsuit comes amid an E. coli outbreak that has spread to several states and sickened dozens of people. Federal officials say the outbreak was caused by bagged and pre-chopped romaine lettuce grown in the Yuma, Arizona, region, near the border to Southern California, and distributed to retailers and restaurants across the country. According to the complaint, Fraser, of Flemington, New Jersey, was hospitalized for more than two weeks and underwent multiple blood transfusions, among several treatments. "I wouldn't wish this on my worst enemy," Fraser told NJ.com. She did not return a call Tuesday. Her attorney, Bill Marler, said a possible link was identified between Panera Bread and E. coli cases from multiple counties. A spokeswoman for New Jersey's health department did not comment on questions about Panera Bread, but county officials told NJ.com that they're investigating a cluster of E. coli cases that are potentially linked to local Panera Bread restaurants. Marler said he expects the number of reported illnesses nationwide to grow as officials investigate how romaine harvested from the Yuma region made it to retailers and restaurants around the country. "This stuff went everywhere. It's conceivable that we may be seeing the beginnings of a fairly significant outbreak," Marler told The Washington Post Sunday. "They've linked it to Yuma because that's where romaine this time of year is grown. It's unclear how it made it from Yuma. . . . What we don't know is the sort of supply chain in between." Romaine lettuce is sometimes packed in the fields and shipped directly to restaurants or grocery stores. But other times, Marler said, the vegetables are taken to a central processing plant, where they're packed under different brands before they're sent to retailers. The latter situation could make identifying the specific origin of contaminated vegetables more difficult, Marler said. Last week, Fresh Foods Manufacturing, based in Freedom, Pennsylvania, recalled 8, 757 pounds of prepackaged salad products over fears that they may have been contaminated with E. coli. The recalled items were labeled "Great to Go by Market District" and were shipped to retailers in Indiana, Ohio, Pennsylvania and West Virginia. Though officials say no E. coli-related illnesses have been tied to the Fresh Foods recall, 35 people from 11 states were reportedly sickened last month; 22, including three suffering from kidney failure, have been hospitalized, according to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. No one has died. Health officials said these people became ill between March 22 and March 31. The majority of them reported that they ate romaine lettuce within a week before they became sick. Many said they ate salads with romaine lettuce at restaurants, and these businesses told health officials that they used store-bought chopped romaine lettuce. The highest number of illness was reported in Idaho and Pennsylvania, with eight and nine cases, respectively. Seven were reported ill in New Jersey. The others were in Washington state, Missouri, Illinois, Michigan, Ohio, New York, Virginia and Connecticut. Health officials in Montana and Arizona also said they each have confirmed cases of E. coli infections. But the CDC, as of its latest announcement last week, has not linked those cases to romaine lettuce from Arizona, a spokeswoman said. Retailers and restaurants, such as Walmart and Del Taco, have warned customers who may have bought recalled products and removed all salad items from their locations. E. coli are a type of bacteria found in undercooked beef, raw milk, soft cheeses made from raw milk, raw fruits and vegetables, and contaminated water. Most E. coli bacteria are not harmful, but one type known as E. coli O157: H7 produces a toxin called Shiga, which destroys red blood cells, causes kidney failure and bloody diarrhea. Other kinds of E. coli cause urinary tract infections, respiratory illness and pneumonia. Health officials said children under the age of 5, seniors older than 65 and those with weak immune systems are most vulnerable. So far, the outbreak has sickened people ages 12 to 84. E. coli outbreaks associated with leafy green vegetables is not new. The complaint filed on Fraser's behalf lists nearly 20 outbreaks from 1993 to 2011 that mostly involved romaine lettuce. In 2006, a nationwide outbreak involving contaminated baby spinach sickened more than 200 people. Other products, such as flour and nut-free substitute for peanut butter, have been at the center of E. coli outbreaks in recent years. In 2015, Chipotle Mexican Grill, a restaurant chain popular for its promise to offer high-quality and sustainably sourced food, found its reputation tarnished after 60 people from 14 states were sickened with E. coli. HOUSTON As schools and districts across the country search for ways to stop the next spate of campus violence before it happens, Katy ISDs trustees considered Wednesday whether to hire a security company to screen public social media posts to look for potential threats against its schools. The board will vote on whether to sign a $243,000 three-year contract with Social Sentinel at their regular board meeting later this month. At a work session on Monday, Superintendent Lance Hindt said. No Katy ISD data is shared with Social Sentinel, Superintendent Lance Hindt said at a work session on Monday. I think this can be a resource for us to identify potential concerns and address them proactively instead of reactively. Social Sentinel, based out of Vermont, is one of many technology firms doing some form of social media scanning or monitoring at universities and lower level grade schools, especially in the wake of school shootings. Critics have raised privacy concerns, but Social Sentinel says it does not monitor the social media accounts specific students or staff members, and it does not have access to any private posts or messages. Instead, CEO and Founder Gary Margolis said the service screens billions of public social media posts through an algorithm. The software compares posts against a library of about 450,000 terms that could indicate potential violence and flags any that mention schools or school districts using the service. If a post is flagged, Social Sentinel sends a copy of the post to school administrators, who then decide how to proceed. Social media has become the primary source of communication for an entire generation, so we set out to find a very respectful way to provide some insight similar to the way schools will send out a playground monitor, Margolis said. Still, Grace Kingsley, a 17-year-old senior at Taylor High School, worried system could miss threats that lack a specific school name or inaccurately flag a non-violent post as a threat. It just seems like there are loopholes, Kingsley said. If their accounts are private, like mine, youll miss so much. Robert Faris, an associate professor of sociology at UC-Davis who studies students use of social networks, said there is a pattern of public threats made online, particularly by young men. There is some indication that some of these troubled individuals, who are almost always boys, are having issues surrounding masculinity that has been challenged in some way, Faris said. Part of it is making this kind of aggressive front as a way to address what they might feel are shortcomings. They want to accomplish something with those public threats. Faris said once people realize a third-party firm is trawling through posts in search of threats, however, some troubled students may refrain from making public posts. It could drive these kinds of posts underground, Faris said. A system based on people expressing concerns about the people they know, their actual friends, would be more likely to have information that might be relevant to threats. Sarah Montgomery, Graces mother, said she would like more evidence that the system works before the board approves the nearly quarter-million-dollar contract. I dont think the board quite understands how it works, Montgomery said. It seemed like a vague discussion. Before the workshop began, about 150 people gathered in the parking lot to express support for Superintendent Lance Hindt, who has been at the center of a media firestorm after a former classmate accused Hindt of attacking him when both attended West Memorial Junior High School more than 35 years ago. Hindt has denied attacking the classmate and said Monday he would prefer to meet with his accuser in private rather than have the incident dissected publicly. Hindt said he would like to speak with Gay and piece together a timeline of what actually happened that day. I was only in the building with this individual for less than four months, Hindt said. I was a brand new kid. Mike Glenn contributed to this report. The Constitutional court hearing into the consolidated petition challenging the amendment of the Constitution to remove the age limits resumed today morning at Mbale High court in eastern Uganda. The petition before a panel of five judges led by deputy chief justice Alfonse Owiny-Dollo, Remmy Kasule, Elizabeth Musoke, Cheborion Barishaki and Kenneth Kakuru. MP Betty Nambooze takes oath before cross-examination. Photo: @882SanyuFM The petition challenging last year's constitutional amendments by parliament, which among others, lifted the presidential age limits as well as extended the term of office for members of parliament, presidency and local governments by two years. According to the petitioners, the executive and parliament breached the Constitution by withdrawing funds from the consolidated fund to finance a private member's bill that led to the amendment. The petitioners are also questioning the legality of the amendment process, arguing that parliament's rules of procedure were flouted when strangers believed to be presidential guards invaded the House and violently evicted MPs opposed to the amendments. Today's court session began with the cross-examination of Mukono Municipality MP Betty Nambooze on the rules of procedure by the respondents led by the deputy attorney general Mwesigwa Rukutana. Nambooze was asked if she's aware of the fact that parliamentary rules state that the speaker of parliament shall at all times be heard in silence, which the respondents to the petition argue was not the case on September 27, 2017 - when MPs opposed to the amendments filibustered forcing the speaker to suspend plenary. Nambooze said MPs are allowed to raise points of procedure during sessions. She seemed to suggest that is what MPs were doing before speaker Rebecca Kadaga suspended 25 MPs and the House for 30 minutes. The MPs were accused by the speaker of violating House rules. When asked whether she vacated the House immediately as directed by the speaker. She said she didn't, "because there was no opportunity because we were under siege" by "strangers." She was asked by Justice Kasule how the Constitutional court should interpret that "strangers" had entered the House. Nambooze said anybody who's not an MP and has not been officially introduced to the House, is regarded as a stranger. When asked if what she voted was a reflection of the desires of her constituents, Nambooze said it was because she lives in her constituency and there had public debates about the amendments but that her position would have been more firm, if she had consulted. She said she wasn't able to consult because she'd been hospitalised due to the brutality meted to her by the "strangers" believed to be presidential guards. At this point, Justice Kakuru asked her now that she'd not consulted if she had returned the Shs 29 million consultation money that was given to every MP. Nambooze produced to court her explanatory note she wrote to the clerk of parliament on December 20, 2017 when she reportedly wrote and indicated that she had written a cheque on December 19, 2017 to refund the consultation money. Justice Kakuru put it to Nambooze whether she had evidence that the money was indeed returned back to parliament or it was just a gimmick to fool the public. Nambooze said she wasn't sure if the money had been transferred back to parliament's accounts or not but said she hadn't received any protestations from the clerk. Nambooze raised her "disappointment" that the hansard had not captured her protestation to the speaker when she questioned the legality of the amendments despite participating in the process herself. She was asked by Justice Kasule if this "disappointment" had been captured in her affidavit but said only learnt that her statements were not captured by the hansard yesterday evening. During the re-examination by petitioners' lawyer, Erias Lukwago, Nambooze was asked why she, and other MPs did not vacate the House immediately as directed by the speaker. "Before the speaker could leave the chambers, soldiers had entered the house. In particular, I saw them grab Ssemuju Nganda and Muwanga Kivumbi yet these two had not been part of the [suspended] 25 [MPs]. Women, I believe to be presidential guards came towards me and I fell down..." she said. To this, Justice Owiny-Dollo said the "compliant" MPs "werent given the opportunity to comply." Also in the witness stand today is permanent secretary ministry of Finance and secretary to the treasury (PSST) Keith Muhakanizi to answer questions on the financial implications of the amendments. Cabinet has directed the Uganda Communications Commission (UCC) to ease the process of acquiring new or replacing lost sim cards. Earlier this month, UCC issued strict guidelines on how a new sim card would be acquired. The guidelines that received massive criticism within Ugandan and beyond included production of a police letter, payment of Shs 1,000 in the bank (including bank charges of Shs 2500), a letter from National Identification Registration Authority (NIRA) validating that the sim card holder has a valid national ID card, passport photographs among others. Col Shaban Bantariza The poorly thought through cumbersome process would take about 3 weeks, and the most bizarre bit of the process, was that all Ugandans across the country had to travel to the NIRA head offices at Kololo Airstrip in Kampala to acquire NIRA letters. Now, cabinet has directed NIRA to set up 50 sim card registration centres and provide 50 biometric card readers to UCC so as to ease the process of registration. Col Shaban Bantariza the deputy director Uganda Media Centre says the decision followed a public outcry on the hustle of replacing lost sim cards. "Those sim card readers will not be reading every detail on your ID. They will be only for synchronisation of identityWhen you come to the registration centre and say I want a sim card - of course they give you a form, you fill it up and you present your national ID. The question is, is that identity card yours or not yours and does NIRA agree or recognise that thats you and thats your authentic identity card. That is what the sim reader will do and will only be limited to that," said Bantariza. UCC executive director, Godfrey Mutabazi was last week quoted saying it would take six days for a person to replace a sim card. With the new process, Bantariza said it could even take a single day for the process to be completed. Asked whether 50 registration centres are enough to cover the whole country, Bantariza said more will be set up if necessary. It is believed the bizarre guidelines were as a result of the kidnap and murder of 28-year-old Susan Magara last month. Her kidnappers reportedly used up 17 different sim cards to communicate with her family to demand for $1 million ransom. HAMDEN Residents and organizations hoped to foster connection Tuesday at Hamden High School, as the annual Business & Community Expo organized by the Hamden Regional Chamber of Commerce was held. Chamber President Nancy Dudchik said she hoped vendors and attendees came away from the day with fresh relationships. (I would like) them to take away, if they walked around and met somebody that they didnt know was here in town, or they met somebody that helps them, whether for their home, for their business, said Dudchik. (This is) a time where people are looking for resources with a Google search. This makes face-to-face interaction, and get to know the person behind the business and thats what we want to accomplish. For Kelly Ciccone, owner of Kellys Cone Connection and Lynette Weaver Rosenberger, owner and baker with The Cupcake Chick, the event provided that opportunity. (I wanted to be here) just to come out and meet people in the community, and show them what our goods are, and they can taste whatever they like, said Ciccone, a town native. Weve got a very good response everyones been very nice.... (Ill take away) new relationships, friendships, meeting nice people. It was a chance to network, Weaver Rosenberger said a key to spreading the word about her business. A lot of people have been by, and they loved my samples, said Rosenberger, a Hamden resident. Its been a pretty good day. Jennifer Santos of the Eye Center of Southern Connecticut and Gloria Richardson of the Hamden Rehabilitation & Health Care Center were out to promote specific aspects of their businesses Lasik and ocular plastics at the doctors office, the quality of the staff and services available at the newly refurbished center. Richardson, in addition to discussing the services available at the rehab center, said she was struck by the range of businesses and organizations around here and pleased by the annual collection of suits to be donated. All of these agencies and facilities here its all wonderful, and its all in one place, said Richardson. I am enjoying being here... Im an actress, I love people, and this is just wonderful. Mary Ann Rasch, a North Haven resident, said she comes every year. This time around, she said she found a new camp for her grandchildren, including her grandson, Nicky Church, who collected swag from the vendors. I enjoy hearing about the different businesses, and I learned today a lot about camps for the children opportunities that I wasnt even aware of, said Rasch. Theres always something new Im learning here, so I enjoy it. Doris Snyder, a Hamden resident, said she comes every year as well, and enjoys the free samples. I just like coming here, said Snyder. This was the 14th iteration of the event, Dudchik said and expanded, this year, to help further benefit the community. In addition to partnering with Save-A-Suit, which has collected gently-used suits at the expo for the past five years, goods were collected for a series of other nonprofit and charitable groups, Dudchik said. I think it brings a community awareness about what the needs are, and so were proud to have a townwide initiative once a year to have a day to donate, said Dudchik. It was really nice to be able to have that. Not only can you come to see our businesses, but we created an expo with a purpose... as a chamber, were not only here for our businesses we are part of the community, and we want to support them in the best ways that we can. william.lambert@hearstmediact.com Law enforcement agencies in the US and UK have accused Russia of attempting to hack routers on a global scale. The United States Computer Emergency Readiness Team (US-CERT) has released an alert today entitled Russian State-Sponsored Cyber Actors Targeting Network Infrastructure Devices. Apparently, millions of network devices have been targeted. 4 Reviews , News , CPU , GPU , Articles , Columns , Other "or" search relation. 3D Printing , 5G , Accessory , AI , Alder Lake , AMD , Android , Apple , ARM , Audio , Business , Camera , Cannon Lake , Cezanne (Zen 3) , Charts , Chinese Tech , Chromebook , Coffee Lake , Comet Lake , Console , Convertible / 2-in-1 , Cryptocurrency , Cyberlaw , Deal , Desktop , E-Mobility , Exclusive , Fail , Foldable , Gadget , Galaxy Note , Galaxy S , Gamecheck , Gaming , Geforce , Google Pixel , GPU , How To , Human 2.0 , Ice Lake , Intel Evo / Project Athena , Internet of Things (IoT) , iOS , iPad Pro , iPhone , Jasper Lake , Lakefield , Laptop , Launch , Linux / Unix , Lucienne (Zen 2) , MacBook , Mini PC , Monitor , MSI , OnePlus , Opinion , Phablet , Radeon , Renoir , Review Snippet , Rocket Lake , Rumor , Ryzen (Zen) , Science , Security , Single-Board Computer (SBC) , Smart Home , Smartphone , Smartwatch , Software , Storage , Tablet , ThinkPad , Thunderbolt , Tiger Lake , Touchscreen , Ultrabook , Virtual Reality (VR) / Augmented Reality (AR) , Wearable , Windows , Workstation , XPS , Zen 3 (Vermeer) Ticker Looks like its time to change the default password on your router, especially if you operate a home office. According to information supplied by the Department of Homeland Security (DHS), the Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI), and the British National Cyber Security Centre (NCSC), government-backed Russian hackers have been busy over a considerable period of time infiltrating vulnerable network devices for a number of reasons. The alert published by CERT states the Kremlin-backed clandestine operatives are carrying out the attacks for the following purposes: [...] to support espionage, extract intellectual property, maintain persistent access to victim networks, and potentially lay a foundation for future offensive operations. According to the alert, systems that have been affected include Generic Routing Encapsulation (GRE) enabled devices, Cisco Smart Install (SMI) enabled devices, and Simple Network Management Protocol (SNMP) enabled network devices. The report then offers technical solutions for those who are concerned about being hacked by Russian agents, beyond switching the device off and on again. Russia has been accused of utilizing aspects of cyberwarfare on numerous occasions, such as during the 2016 United States elections, the 2016 UK referendum on exiting the EU (Brexit), and being behind the 2017 French President e-mail leaks. Viewed of Thank you for reading! On your next view you will be asked to log in to your subscriber account or create an account and subscribepurchase a subscription to continue reading. Managing Editor Having lived and worked in Indy on and off since 1977, and currently living in Carmel, I've seen the city change a great deal. I love covering the arts in all its forms, and the places where the arts and broader cultural issues intersect. Data released on Tuesday indicated that growth might have been cooling by the end of the quarter. Industrial production rose 6 percent in March, less than most economists had expected. Urban fixed-asset investment also rose less than expected. The central bank announced a measure Tuesday evening that would make it easier for commercial banks to keep lending, a move that would tend to support continued economic growth and that could indicate concern on the banks part. The central bank, the Peoples Bank of China, said that it was reducing by a full percentage point the reserves that commercial banks are required to deposit with it, freeing up more cash for commercial banks to lend to businesses and households. Another measure experts look to for insight into Chinas economy is trade, which at one time was a major driver of Chinese growth. Over the last decade, however, it has been far eclipsed in importance by Chinese investment and household spending. The latest figures show exports to the United States are growing considerably faster than Chinas purchases of American goods. That could provoke more ire from President Trump, who had threatened to impose $150 billion in tariffs on Chinese products. The trade figures present a mixed picture of how painful those tariffs could be for China. Over all, trade is not as important to Chinas economy as it was a decade ago, suggesting the country could better weather a trade fight. But the data also suggests Chinas exports to the United States, specifically, have become more valuable to Chinas economy as it increasingly makes most or even all of the parts that go inside what it sells abroad. LONDON Natalie Massenet said she had planned to keep a low profile after she stepped down in 2015 as the executive chairwoman of Net-a-Porter, the popular luxury e-commerce site she founded. After more than two-and-a-half years away, she is returning to e-commerce but as a venture capitalist, not a fashion entrepreneur. Ms. Massenet has teamed up with Nick Brown, an investor in consumer start-ups, to form Imaginary Ventures. The new firm announced on Tuesday that it has raised $75 million for its first fund, money that the two expect to pour into direct-to-consumer start-ups like Glossier, which sells beauty product to millennials, and Keeps, a hair-loss prevention company. I didnt have a specific plan other than to take a break, Ms. Massenet said. But while talking to various entrepreneurs, I found that this was something I enjoyed. A suspect is in custody after a freshman was fatally stabbed at Binghamton University. It was the second killing of a student there in five weeks, leaving the campus tense and grieving. The victim, Joao Souza, 19, was attacked in his dormitory suite around 10:30 p.m. on Sunday. Timothy Faughnan, the universitys police chief, said at a news conference Monday morning that emergency responders had found Mr. Souza seriously injured from what appeared to be stab wounds from a knife and taken him to the hospital, where he was pronounced dead. Surveillance footage from the dorm, Windham Hall, showed a man in dark pants and a dark hooded sweatshirt, believed to be the attacker. Late Monday, university and police officials announced that Michael M. Roque, 20, had been arrested and charged with second-degree murder. Mr. Roque, a student at Binghamton, has pleaded not guilty and is being represented by a public defender. Several states in India are facing acute shortage of currency for the previous two weeks. Some of the states which are badly affected are Assam, Andhra Pradesh, Telangana, Karnataka, Maharashtra, Rajasthan, Uttar Pradesh and Madhya Pradesh. People in these states are angry as most of the ATMs have gone dry. However, the government claims that there is enough cash with the banks. Finance Minister Arun Jaitley in a tweet said that he has reviewed the currency situation in the country and there was more than adequate currency available with the Banks. "The temporary shortage caused by sudden and unusual increase in (demand) in some areas is being tackled quickly," he said. According to MoS Finance SP Shukla, the government has cash currency of Rs 1,25,000 crore right now. "There is one problem that some states have less currency and others have more. Govt has formed state-wise committee and RBI also formed committee to transfer currency from one state to other," the Minister said. The government has termed the situation as sudden and temporary which it wants to fix in three days. A month back, the Reserve Bank disallowed banks from moving excess cash in one circle to deficient circles. Due to this, now many circles have excess cash and others have less or nothing. Banks are saying the RBI is providing more of Rs 200 and Rs 100 notes. Here are some reasons that may have caused the latest cash crunch in the states. Festivals Reports suggest that the various festivals like Baisakhi, Bihu and other harvest festivals might have pushed the demand for cash in the states. A Finance Ministry official recently told India Today that when Assam was celebrating Bihu on Saturday, there were extra withdrawals a few days prior to the festival. "So, the cash supply to some other states was reduced in volume. But normal supply has now resumed and the situation will return to normal soon," he said Elections There has been a rise in demand for cash in Karnataka, which goes to poll on May 12. It has been a practice to hoard cash before any election to meet huge campaign expenses. It happens across the party and candidates try to get as much cash to lure voters during the poll season. Last week, the Finance Ministry held a meeting with the RBI officials to ensure that there was no large-scale hoarding of cash which might set in panic among people. FRDI Bill The Economic Times today reported that the certain provisions in the proposed Financial Resolution and Deposit Insurance Bill-2017 sparked a rumour that the money would not be safe in banks if the Bill became a law. This rumour drove people to ATMs and bank branches to withdraw their deposits money, it said. ATM Recalibration The India Today report said that in most of the states, recalibration of ATM machines for Rs 200 notes have not been completed leading to shortage of cash. India has over 220,000 ATMs and some of the machines are yet to be calibrated. The introduction of new currency notes after demonetisation had faced a similar difficulty with the banks taking time to recalibrate the ATMs for the new Rs 2000 notes. Payment of wages It has been reported that the demand for smaller denomination is also higher due to the larger amount needed to pay harvest season wages. Apart from this, the highest denomination Rs 2000 notes is short in supply in some states. Now that tax day is upon us, consider that through the miracle of tax breaks some of your tax dollars will effectively be going to support groups that finance campaigns against same-sex marriage and gun safety. A number of these groups are also entitled to raise money from other sources for political purposes, without filing the disclosures that are required of other individuals and entities. Why? Theyve got God on their side. Last fall, for example, according to forms filed with the Internal Revenue Service, Focus on the Family, a conservative Christian organization that promotes socially conservative views on matters of public and family policy, declared itself a church. Focus on the Family doesnt have a congregation, doesnt host weddings or funerals and doesnt hold services. What it does do, with its nearly $90 million annual budget, is deliver radio and other programming that is often political to an estimated audience of 38 million listeners in the United States and beyond. It has funded ads against state legislators who support bills intended to prevent discrimination against L.G.B.T. people and it leads programs to combat what it calls gay activism in public schools. Why would such a group want to call itself a church? Short answer: money. Churches can raise tax-deductible contributions more easily, and with fewer restrictions, than other nonprofits can. They also enjoy additional tax shelters, such as property tax exemptions for clergy members or was that conservative radio personalities? To paraphrase the science-fiction writer William Gibson, the renewable energy future is already pretty much here; its just not very evenly distributed. True, there are issues of intermittency remaining the wind doesnt always blow, the sun doesnt always shine although batteries and other energy storage technologies are also making rapid progress. There are also some energy uses, especially transportation, where fossil fuels retain a significant advantage in cost and convenience. And exactly how were going to have carbon-neutral air travel is still, well, up in the air. But there is no longer any reason to believe that it would be hard to drastically decarbonize the economy. Indeed, there is no reason to believe that doing so would impose any significant economic cost. The realistic debate is about how hard it will be to get from 80 to 100 percent decarbonization. For now, however, the problem isnt technology its politics. The fossil fuel sector may represent a technological dead end, but it still has a lot of money and power. Lately it has been putting almost all of that money and power behind Republicans. For example, in the 2016 election cycle the coal mining industry gave 97 percent (!) of its contributions to G.O.P. candidates. What the industry got in return for that money wasnt just a president who talks nonsense about bringing back coal jobs and an administration that rejects the science of climate change. It got an Environmental Protection Agency head whos trying to suppress evidence on the damage pollution causes, and a secretary of energy who tried, unsuccessfully so far, to force natural gas and renewables to subsidize coal and nuclear plants. In the long run, these tactics probably wont stop the transition to renewable energy, and even the villains of this story probably realize that. Their goal is, instead, to slow things down, so they can extract as much profit as possible from their existing investments. Unfortunately, this really is a case of in the long run we are all dead. Every year that we delay the clean-energy transition will sicken or kill thousands while increasing the risk of climate catastrophe. The point is that Trump and company arent just trying to move us backward on social issues; theyre also trying to block technological progress. And the price of their obstructionism will be high. Mr. Rudin seeks to have the Alabama lawsuit dismissed. He is also asking for the New York court to declare that the play does not violate his agreement with Ms. Lee and that Ms. Carter does not have the authority to act on behalf of Ms. Lees estate. He is demanding that the estate award him damages in no event less than $10 million. The Agreement did not give Ms. Lee approval rights over the script of the Play, much less did it give her a right to purport to edit individual lines of dialogue, he argued in the lawsuit. It certainly did not give such rights to Ms. Carter, who is not an author, editor, literary agent or critic, and has no known expertise whatsoever in theater or writing. Ms. Carter emerged as a polarizing figure in the final years of Ms. Lees life, as a debate raged over whether or not Ms. Lee had authorized the publication of her second novel, Go Set a Watchman, which she had written in the 1950s and had abandoned. Ms. Carter initially said she stumbled upon the manuscript in a safe deposit box in 2014, but a conflicting account suggested the novel had been discovered years earlier. In a statement Monday, Ms. Carter said, As the personal representative of the Estate of Nelle Harper Lee, I must protect the integrity of her beloved American classic, and therefore had no choice but to file a lawsuit against Rudinplay for failing to honor its contract with Ms. Lee. It is my duty and privilege to defend the terms of Ms. Lees agreement with Rudinplay, and I am determined to do so. But, in his lawsuit, Mr. Rudin questioned Ms. Carters status as a representative of Ms. Lees will and for the first time accused Ms. Carter of having an ulterior motive in challenging the play: a desire to force the cancellation of the Broadway production because of a separate dispute between Ms. Lees estate and the heirs of Gregory Peck, who played Atticus Finch in the movie adaptation, over stage rights. While a local theater group in Ms. Lees hometown Monroeville, Ala., has staged a production based on the novel annually for nearly three decades, there has never been a Broadway adaptation of Mockingbird, one of the most beloved novels in American literature. In the lawsuit, Mr. Rudin suggests he already intends to postpone the new production, writing that the legal dispute has rendered it impossible for the play to premiere as scheduled in December, 2018, and unless this dispute is resolved in the immediate future, the play will be canceled. In an interview, Mr. Rudin said he was willing to take the unusual step of performing the play in a courtroom so a jury could determine whether or not the production is true to the spirit of the novel. A play and a book are two different things. A book is meant to be read; a play is meant to be performed, he said. CAMBRIDGE, Mass. The Cambridge police have launched an internal investigation into an incident on Friday night in which officers tackled and punched a black Harvard student they were trying to arrest as he stood naked in the median of a busy street. The police, who released a video of the scene on Sunday amid complaints about the officers conduct, said that the student, Selorm Ohene, 21, was apparently high on drugs and acting in an aggressive and unruly manner when they approached him and tried to calm him down. He came at them, the police said, with clenched fists. The video of the incident shows a few police officers standing in a circle around Mr. Ohene for several moments. As he stepped toward one officer, a second officer dove at his legs from behind, the video shows, and Mr. Ohene and the officers fell to the ground. Mr. Ohene could be heard crying out at that point. At least one officer then could be seen punching Mr. Ohene, and the police have acknowledged that an officer punched him five times in the stomach. The Harvard Black Law Students Association, some of whose members witnessed the scene, disputed the police account and said the officers acted without provocation. Even before the release of his book, A Higher Loyalty, the White House, working in concert with the Republican National Committee, began an all-out campaign to besmirch Lyin Comey the name of a website the party created to make the case as dishonest, self-serving and driven by partisanship. But with his one-liners and cutting asides about the president, Mr. Comey only appeared to play into the hands of allies of Mr. Trump, who are eager to paint the former F.B.I. director as just another figure working for the presidents defeat. And Mr. Comey has drawn bipartisan criticism with his latest efforts to explain and, to some degree, recast his much-criticized handling of the investigation into Hillary Clintons use of a private email server. Mark Mellman, a longtime Democratic pollster, said Mr. Comeys standing had been undermined by the one-two punch of liberal attacks over his role in the 2016 election and the more recent assault led by Mr. Trump and his Republican allies. Trump has tried to define him as a bad operator, and the problem for Comey is that you can quote a lot of Democrats saying the same, Mr. Mellman said. At this point, it seems unlikely that Mr. Comeys book or his performance in interviews to promote it will sway public opinion in a country that is already intensely polarized along partisan lines. Mr. Trumps approval ratings have been similar for months, and the roughly 40 percent of Americans who support him have proven remarkably unshakable, while the 56 percent who disapprove will probably not change their views on Mr. Comey's account. While Mr. Comey is sure to captivate the public for a few days with his biting descriptions of the president and dramatic of interactions with him, the combination of the supercharged news cycle and the looming and far more consequential investigation by Robert S. Mueller III, the special counsel probing Russias meddling in the 2016 election, is sure to eventually overshadow his memoir. It keeps the story of cover-ups and corruption on the public radar while Mueller is doing his investigation, but Comey is just a pit stop along the way of that, said Stephanie Cutter, a veteran Democratic strategist. Much to Comeys chagrin, his moment has passed. Theres nothing in this book we dont already know. He just adds one more hole to a ship thats already sinking. Mr. Comey plainly considers himself to be a figure who is above the political fray, driven and guided solely by facts. His friends and advisers say he wants the book to stir a conversation about the value of honesty. Speaking later with reporters aboard Air Force One as Mr. Trump headed to Florida, Ms. Sanders added that the president has been clear that hes going to be tough on Russia, but at the same time hed still like to have a good relationship with them. Another White House official, who spoke on condition of anonymity to describe internal deliberations, said Mr. Trump had decided not to go forward with the sanctions. Mr. Trump concluded that they were unnecessary because Moscows response to the airstrike was mainly bluster, the official said. Russia analysts said the whipsaw policy shift once again highlighted an administration struggling to find a coherent and consistent voice in dealing with Russia, which in the past four years has annexed Crimea, intervened in eastern Ukraine, sought to influence the American election in 2016, allegedly poisoned a former Russian spy living in Britain and propped up the murderous government of President Bashar al-Assad in Syria. Mr. Trump has mostly spoken hopefully of his efforts to forge a friendship with President Vladimir V. Putin of Russia, including congratulating him on a re-election widely denounced as a sham and even suggesting a White House meeting. At the same time, the Trump administration has imposed two rounds of sanctions against Russia in the last month, expelled 60 of Moscows diplomats and closed a consulate in retaliation for the poisoning attack in Britain. Trump seems to think that if he accepts what his advisers recommend on even days of the month and rejects their recommendations on odd days, the result will be a strategy, said Stephen Sestanovich, a scholar at the Council on Foreign Relations and Columbia University who served as ambassador to former Soviet states in the 1990s. YENISAKRAN, Turkey A Turkish court on Monday ordered an American pastor to remain behind bars as his trial opened on charges that he aided terrorist groups in Turkey. The pastor, Andrew Brunson, 50, who has worked in Turkey as a missionary for 23 years, has been detained for 18 months. He was arrested in the aftermath of the failed coup against President Recep Tayyip Erdogan in 2016, and American officials have been unsuccessful in their efforts to secure his release. Mr. Brunson, leader of the Resurrection Church in the seaside city of Izmir, stands accused of aiding the Kurdistan Workers Party, the P.K.K., which has been waging a separatist insurgency inside Turkey for three decades. He is also accused of having links to followers of Fethullah Gulen, an Islamist preacher who lives in Pennsylvania and who Turkey claims masterminded the coup attempt. In an emotional appeal to the court on Monday, Mr. Brunson said he had suffered a breakdown in jail, stopped eating and lost weight. He begged to be sent home under house arrest, but the judge upheld a judicial order last week that the pastor remain incarcerated for another month. Family and friends present for the proceeding had been hoping that Mr. Brunson would be freed now that his trial has finally begun. PARIS Were counting on you and your raised hands to bid for the street art selected by the M.B.A. students and go home victorious! said Arnaud Oliveux, the auctioneer and specialist in urban art at the French auction house Artcurial. Mr. Oliveux, 43, strode theatrically across the stage, hammer in hand, at the Theatre de la Ville-Espace Pierre Cardin in the Eighth Arrondissement and officially opened the second edition of the charity auction Street for Kids. The event is organized by 33 students pursuing masters degrees in art management, with a focus on the international art market, at the Icart School of Arts. The main characteristic of the movement, Ms. Bora said, is what we call ulah fluidity, like waves in a river. The sensuality that is so prevalent in many classical Indian dance forms is absent here. In this tradition, Ms. Bora explained, Krishna is not seen as a consort or a lover, but as a child. The love you have for a child is so pure it is like the love you have for the Lord. The mood is described as one of bhakti, or devotion. The participation of women has brought a flowering of the form. The style has acquired sophistication, Sunil Kothari, a scholar of Indian dance who has written extensively about Sattriya, said in an email from New Delhi. It was inevitable that it would be influenced by some elements of other dance styles. Its women who took Sattriya out of Assam, Ms. Bhuyan said last week at the studio near Philadelphias City Hall that she and Ms. Bora use for rehearsals. (These monks have toured to France, England, China and around India.) And it is through the efforts of Sattriya Dance Company, with the help of a grant from the Pew Center, that the monks have been able to travel to Philadelphia and New York as part of their first United States tour. FRANKFURT A sea of 100 multicolored banners in the atrium of the Schirn Kunsthalle here, roughly assembled using plywood, fabric and adhesive tape, provides the first indication that this art gallery is in protest mode. The 2015 installation by the British artist Phyllida Barlow is a pertinent symbol of our turbulent times an epoch of #MeToo, Black Lives Matter, marches for women and in defense of science, and demonstrations against gun violence. Held down with red and orange sandbags, Ms. Barlows banners are devoid of slogans or symbols, which serves this topical, ultracontemporary, international exhibition well. The show, called Power to the People, focuses on the universal subject of politics in art, not on the political issues themselves. Its achievement is that it takes a step back and shows how art can reflect our political world. Artists are asking some very fundamental, very interesting questions, Martina Weinhart, the curator of the exhibition, said in an interview. We dont want to answer them we want to raise them. The report of the 'Task Force on Artificial Intelligence for India's Economic Transformation', constituted by the Ministry of Commerce and Industry, and headed by V Kamakoti of IIT Madras is finally out (dipp.nic.in/whats-new/report-task-force-artificial-intelligence). It is a set of preliminary recommendations, and not as detailed as perhaps the subject demanded or even some of the other task force committee reports on other subjects. It focuses specifically on three policy questions: 1) What are the areas the government should play a role? 2) How can AI improve quality of life and solve problems for Indian citizens? and 3) What are the sectors that can generate employment and growth by the use of AI technology? It could perhaps have tackled a couple of other exceedingly important questions. For example, what are the policies needed to turn India into an AI research powerhouse, and not merely an user of AI solutions? Or for that matter, how does one guard against the dark side of AI, a topic which is being debated by many of the world's technology titans as well as researchers. Perhaps those questions were not part of the brief given by the ministry to the committee. But the committee members - who are all eminent people from different fields - could have expanded their brief as well. Despite that, there is a lot to praise about the report. It clearly identifies 10 important domains - Manufacturing, Fintech, Healthcare, Agriculture/Food Processing, Education, Retail/Customer Engagement, Aid for the Differently Abled/Accessibility Technology, Environment, National Security and Public Utility Services. It also highlights some of the work being done by AI focused tech companies and start ups which are working in these areas. The good part of the task force report is that it goes on to make some very concrete recommendations on each of these areas, which the government can follow up. Apart from specific pointers on each of these 10 domains, the report also makes some other suggestions. It calls for the setting up of an Inter-Ministerial National Artificial Intelligence Mission funded to the tune of Rs 1200 crores over 5 years. (The report's recommendations are all for a 5 year period). The main task of the mission should be setting up Centres of Excellence, setting up a generic AI testbed for developers to use as a validation platform, creation of interdisciplinary large data centre etc. The report also seeks setting up of Digital Data Centers, Market Places etc, for creating standards for development and deployment of AI solutions. Other suggestions include tax and other incentives for boosting use of AI; AI based curriculum for education and skilling; and leveraging international relationships and participation in AI based international standard setting discussions. The main problem with the survey is that it gives a glimpse of what the government should be doing - it just does not delve deep enough into the subject. In areas like national security, ethics in AI, and even in creating centres of excellence, it seems to skim the surface. The problem is that AI is a multi dimensional issue. One set is about how to use AI to improve services and get an edge. The other is on AI research and standard setting, which is what will differentiate one country from another. The second part cannot be segregated from the first one simply because the country which will become an AI research powerhouse will also set the standards, and also use the best of AI in creating solutions for its citizens and its industry. Currently, the US and China are locked in a battle to be the leaders in AI, and other countries are trying as well. India has been slow to react, being content more to be an user of AI solutions rather than creating AI solutions on its own. The task force had a golden chance to rectify that by recommending how we could join the race. Perhaps it was not its brief to answer that question - but there was no reason why it could not have expanded its brief. SEATTLE Yellow-and-black stickers indicating a donor to the local broadcaster KEXP are a common sight on bumpers and laptops in this music-loving town. But the venerable independent station found at 90.3 FM on Puget Sound airwaves would have to exhaust its sticker supply to thank its most recent donor. On Monday, the 46-year-old station announced a bequest of just under $10 million from an anonymous donor known as Suzanne. The stations executive director, Thomas Mara, believes it is the largest-ever gift to a single U.S. public radio station. The donation will create a permanent endowment, secure six months continuous cash reserves and fund a full-time education and outreach team. While the nature of a 24-hour live radio station doesnt easily allow for an all-hands office meeting, Mr. Mara, 54, described the jubilant atmosphere at the station after informing the staff via email. It was deeply moving to simply watch peoples expressions, he said. A lot of smiling, head shaking, even some tears. Suzanne died in 2016 and her estate lawyers informed the station of the gift in February 2017. For the last year, the stations leadership and board kept the gift under wraps while they received a crash course in setting up a permanent endowment. The Dent-Brocklehurst family in England owned an amazing painting. Hanging in Sudeley Castle, their ancestral home in Gloucestershire, it had been in the family since at least 1845. In fact, Parmigianinos Virgin and Child With Saint John the Baptist and Mary Magdalene, a pastoral Renaissance masterwork with a touch of eroticism the Virgins pink and blue gown has a see-through bodice had been in private hands for more than four centuries. When the family decided to sell, they worked with Sothebys, the auction house. But there was no auction. There was never going to be. The Parmigianino went to the J. Paul Getty Museum in Los Angeles, and the Dent-Brocklehursts and their agents earned a reported $31 million in what is known as a private treaty sale. LONDON William Forsythes new Playlist (Track 1, 2) for English National Ballet is a blast. Just 10 minutes long, it had the audience whooping during the performance and on its feet by the time the curtain came down. On its opening two nights, Thursday and Friday, viewers were rewarded with an encore in which Mr. Forsythe, a sprightly 68, came onstage for a brief, carefree boogie. It was a coup for Tamara Rojo, artistic director of English National Ballet, to secure this commission, Mr. Forsythes first creation for a British company in more than 20 years. It was presented on a program, Voices of America (through April 21), with works by Jerome Robbins and Aszure Barton, and another recent piece by Mr. Forsythe. Mr. Forsythe built his reputation by breaking the mold of classical ballet while remaining embedded in its tradition. When he began choreographing in the 1980s, he was vilified as much as praised for his exactingly physical and often highly intellectualized experiments. But Mr. Forsythe was soon in demand from ballet companies around the world, eager for a revitalizing shot of innovation. After a period in which he worked on a smaller scale and in a contemporary dance idiom, he has recently returned to the classical style that he considers his home ground. But he remains a mold breaker. Playlist looks as if Mr. Forsythe had asked himself what was the one most powerful force in dance today, and answered: hip-hop. Wisely, he does not imitate it, but lets its spirit infuse the choreography. In the opening scene or track the 12 dancers in the all-male cast are put through their classical paces, first in a series of formal poses, then in flashy sequences of beaten jumps and turning circles. If the look is balletic, the formations are not far from music video: tight, synchronized and quick cut. Dear Antoinette, In a 2013 interview on the FanBros podcast, Junot Diaz spoke about diversity fiction: Theres no person of color, theres no person from a marginalized community, that doesnt read the genres comic books, science fiction and not see how more honest these texts are about the way were living. About the way were oppressed; the way that power is used. Take it from Diaz, a MacArthur Grant and Pulitzer Prize winner; your voice is essential to these genres evolutions. Across the Universes Start your list with three black writers who conjure an array of speculative worlds. In N. K. Jemisins stately and brutal debut, The Hundred Thousand Kingdoms, even the flora and fauna an altarskirt rose that blooms at both the top and near the bottom of the stem; beasts that do not exist are imagined from scratch. Their creation is just a sliver of the meticulously imagined landscape in Jemisins epic in which a young woman is thrust into a battle over the inheritance of her grandfathers throne. Another supernatural setup shimmers on the fated journey undertaken by Onyesonwu, the sorceress who holds a diamond under her tongue in Nnedi Okorafors dark fantasy Who Fears Death, set in a postapocalyptic Sudan. And a dystopian vision similarly vivifies the quest for a human heart in Nalo Hopkinsons debut, Brown Girl in the Ring, an eerie mash-up of old Caribbean obeah and science fiction set in a futuristic Toronto riven by chaos in the city core. Your affection for the layered literary style and atmospheric pleasures of Dracula and Frankenstein led me to Jeffery Renard Allens Song of the Shank. The sprawling, fictionalized Civil War-era account of the life of Thomas Greene Wiggins, a blind savant pianist born into slavery and exploited by a string of characters, doesnt fit neatly into any one speculative genre. But fantastic ripples an enigmatic, utopian island and mythical ornate sea creatures break the narrative surface so that the proses lyrical pulse builds to one long, unbroken spell. Something Wicked Like Song of the Shank, The Changeling, Victor LaValles thorny, disquieting contemporary folk tale about race and parenthood (among other hot-button topics), features an alternatively imagined New York City that includes an enchanted version of Forest Park in Queens. A lost child, witchy characters and bloody scenes edge LaValles tale closer to horror than allegory, for the kind of frights you love. Expectations are high as North Koreas leader, Kim Jong-un, prepares to meet this month with President Moon Jae-in of South Korea. Both parties are working on a joint declaration and, according to a South Korean official, Mr. Kim will announce his willingness to denuclearize his country. Mr. Moon is seeking a comprehensive deal, in which Mr. Kim commits to dismantling his nuclear arsenal and President Trump reciprocates with security guarantees, including a peace treaty and normalized relations. Some U.S. hard-liners, like John Bolton, Mr. Trumps new national security adviser, reject that approach, saying that the North has no real intention of giving up nuclear weapons and only wants relief from sanctions. 1. It was Tax Day, and the I.R.S. had a message for last-minute filers: Come back on Dec. 31, 9999. The message, displayed on the payment section of the I.R.S. website, was the result of a technical glitch. The electronic filing system was also down for hours. The agency said the problems had been resolved. President Trump was not among those scrambling; he filed for an extension. And in our Opinion section, a guest writer confronts an ethical dilemma regarding her tax bill. She objects to many federal policies but notes that her tax dollars also go to causes she deems worthy, like Pell Grants, diplomacy and Frontline. SHANGHAI Beijing and Washington have threatened each other with tariffs for weeks, raising the prospect of a trade war. But on Tuesday, China took a step to lower tensions, offering to make it easier for foreign automakers and aerospace manufacturers to own factories in the country. The Chinese authorities said that in the next five years they would ease rules that have long required carmakers like General Motors, Toyota and Volkswagen to link up with a local partner before building a factory in China. For manufacturers of electric cars, as well as for companies that make jetliners, helicopters and drones, Beijing plans to move even faster, eliminating foreign ownership limits this year. Opening up the electric-car sector is a potential boon for Tesla Motors, which has already identified a site in Shanghai for a factory but has not wanted a partner for fear of losing control of its technology. Big automakers, especially Volkswagen, have also been preparing to set up large electric-vehicle subsidiaries in China as Beijing has made clear that it will use a mix of subsidies and penalties to shift the market sharply toward more electric cars. Loosening limits for electric carmakers and aerospace manufacturers is notable because those are two areas where Beijing and Washington have been increasingly at loggerheads. The sectors are among 10 industries in Beijings Made in China 2025 plan, which calls for extensive government support to expand Chinas production and self-sufficiency in everything from microchips to robotics. One of the most telling moments in the spectacle of Mark Zuckerbergs congressional testimony last week was when Representative Billy Long, a Missouri Republican, warned the co-founder of Facebook of what Congress was likely to do about its multiple concerns surrounding the social network. Congress is good at two things: doing nothing, and overreacting, he said. After years of the former, he said, were getting ready to overreact. That sounds worrisome. But I sympathize. Doing nothing and overreacting make sense when you have no clue of what is going on. And we dont. The cloud of questions aimed at Mr. Zuckerberg Is Facebook too dominant? Does it censor information? Whom does it share our data with? Does it help sell OxyContin? suggests that we dont really know what the problem with Facebook is. It also suggests we dont understand what Facebook does. That goes for the entire data-driven ecosystem, from Google to the auto companies riddling your car with sensors that can tell where youve been and how fast you got there. And that puts policymakers in an uncomfortable spot. The crucial issue for Congress, government regulators, members of the public and even Mr. Zuckerberg is how much all this data-driven stuff is worth to us. What do we stand to lose by, say, sharply limiting the data these companies can collect? What do we stand to gain? WASHINGTON A closely divided Supreme Court struggled on Tuesday to decide whether internet retailers should have to collect sales taxes in states where they have no physical presence. Brick-and-mortar businesses have long complained that they are disadvantaged by having to charge sales taxes while many of their online competitors do not. States have said that they are missing out on tens of billions of dollars in annual revenue under a 1992 Supreme Court ruling that helped spur the rise of internet shopping. By the end of arguments on Tuesday, it was not clear whether there were five votes to overrule the 1992 decision, Quill Corporation v. North Dakota, which said the Constitution bars states from collecting sales taxes from companies that do not have a substantial connection to the state. Several justices expressed concerns about imposing crushing burdens on small businesses that sell goods on the internet and about making them liable for back taxes. Justice Sonia Sotomayor said the case before the court, South Dakota v. Wayfair, No. 17-494, raised a host of questions and a whole new set of difficulties. Three parents whose children were killed at Sandy Hook Elementary School in 2012 filed a defamation lawsuit on Tuesday against Alex Jones, the right-wing conspiracy theorist who has long claimed the shooting was completely fake and a giant hoax perpetrated by opponents of the Second Amendment. Mr. Jones, the popular radio show host who also operates the conspiracy theory website Infowars, has questioned for years whether 20 children and six adults died in the school massacre in Newtown, Conn. To bolster his false claims, he often cites news reports and video clips from the hours after the shooting that turned out to be incomplete or based on wrong information. Soon after they buried their children, many Sandy Hook parents started to come under fierce attack by conspiracy theorists who have said they are actors in an elaborate scheme to enact stricter gun control laws. The fringe theories still thrive in small forums online but have reached a far greater audience through Mr. Jones, the most vocal propagator. The two lawsuits filed on Tuesday represent the first civil action taken by parents accusing Mr. Jones of defamation. One was filed by Leonard Pozner and his former wife, Veronique De La Rosa, and the other was filed by Neil Heslin. Their sons, Noah Pozner and Jesse Heslin, both 6, were killed at Sandy Hook. Monetising preferred airline seats is nothing new. For quite some time now, airlines have been charging passengers a seat selection fee for seats with extra leg room - think front row seats and the emergency exit row - as well as for window and aisle seats, especially in the front half of the plane since it means that one can deplane faster. But Air India has now started charging passengers even for the middle row seats in a clear attempt to boost ancillary revenues. Previously, the flag carrier was imposing the seat selection fee only on the front row seats on the long-haul flights, but according to The Times of India, it recently announced that now it will charge extra for most rows on domestic as well as international flights. So, basically if you want to ensure that your child sits next to you on the flight, be prepared to cough up extra. This extra charge for the middle seat is known as 'family fee' in some countries. The daily adds that in a circular issued to travel agents, Air India has listed the fee on various routes, which starts at Rs 100 for middle seats on domestic flights, and double that amount for the window or aisle seats. The middle seat fee has been fixed at Rs 200 on most international routes, except on Kathmandu flights where the fee is Rs 100. The emergency exit row fee ranges between Rs 800 and Rs 1,500, depending on the route, and choosing the window/aisle seat can set you back by anywhere from Rs 240 to Rs 1,500. However, the national carrier is reportedly demanding a whopping Rs 3,282 extra for the emergency exit row seats on the US-India routes while all the other window/aisle seats will cost Rs 985 extra. Thankfully, the middle seat fee is more wallet-friendly at Rs 197. Note that for inbound international flights, the seat selection charge will depend on the local currency of the country you take-off from. The fee is tacked on either at the time of booking a flight online or during web check in. Meanwhile, Jet Airways, which was already charging a seat fee for the middle seat in the front few rows, has moved on to what may become the next big game in town: Auctioning off an upgrade to its First Class and Premiere section. According to the website, those eligible for an upgrade will receive an email inviting bids from the airline seven days prior to departure. Pay the bid amount on credit card, and feel free to "modify your big at any time to increase your chances of winning", as it puts it. If your bid is successful, the airline will charge your card and confirm the upgrade via email within 24 hours of scheduled flight departure. Unsuccessful bids won't get charged and the original booking will stand. According to Statista, a leading international statistics portal, it was estimated that airlines would generate ancillary revenue of $82.2 billion worldwide in 2017.So what's next in the aviation world's increasingly fancy Nickel-and-Diming Policy? Lavatory fees, perhaps? In 1921, Anne OHare McCormick had little journalism experience when she wrote to Carr V. Van Anda, the managing editor at The New York Times. It might have been a long shot, but she asked if she could submit articles to the newspaper when she went to Europe with her husband. At the time, there were few women working as reporters, even fewer working as international correspondents. Most women wrote for the society pages. But the editor would be under no obligation to print her articles, and would have to pay her only if they were accepted. Try it, he responded. She would go on to overcome a mountain of obstacles for female reporters, earning worldwide respect and becoming the first woman to be awarded a Pulitzer Prize in one of its major journalism categories in 1937. It would be 14 years until the next woman would win. That is a striking contrast to the annual awards handed down this week, which included recognition of The Timess coverage of sexual harassment in Hollywood, media and other fields, an effort reported and edited mostly by women. (Women now have 39 percent of the bylines in The Times, just above the industry average of 38.1 percent, according to the Womens Media Center.) Sean Hannity was in the news, and during his prime-time show on Fox News on Monday night, it was clear that he knew it. During a court hearing earlier that day, Mr. Hannity was named as a client of President Trumps personal lawyer, Michael Cohen, whose office, home and hotel room were raided and searched by F.B.I. agents on April 9 as part of a criminal investigation. He had already denied being a client on his radio program and on Twitter, and when his Fox program Hannity came on at 9 p.m. Eastern, he vowed to address what he called the rumors and speculation. Before the raid, Mr. Cohen himself had been a frequent guest on Mr. Hannitys TV and radio programs. In the week since, Mr. Hannity had discussed the lawyer and his relationship to Mr. Trump multiple times without disclosing any significant connection to Mr. Cohen, something criticized on the air by the lawyer Alan Dershowitz, a frequent guest who had discussed the matter on the show during the past week. Starbucks said on Tuesday that it would close its more than 8,000 stores in the United States for one day to conduct anti-bias training after two African-American men were arrested at one of its stores last week, prompting outrage. Starbucks will close the stores May 29 to offer the training to 175,000 employees. Ive spent the last few days in Philadelphia with my leadership team listening to the community, learning what we did wrong and the steps we need to take to fix it, Kevin R. Johnson, the companys chief executive, said in a statement announcing the training. The two men were arrested after asking to use the restroom at a Starbucks in Philadelphia. An employee refused the request because the men had not bought anything, according to officials. The men sat down and were asked to leave, and an employee eventually called the police. The ensuing scene was recorded in a video that has been viewed more than 10 million times on Twitter. In it, police officers appear to handcuff both men, as a third man, Andrew Yaffe, confronts them. Allegiant and Norwegian Air are seen as trailblazers to officials at the Port Authority, because if their service succeeds, it will encourage other airlines to offer flights at Stewart. Stewart has enormous potential to be a real gateway airport to the New York area, said Rick Cotton, the authoritys executive director. The agency has spent $200 million over the past decade to improve the airport, and an additional $30 million has been set aside for the construction of a 20,000-square-foot hall for international arrivals. When complete in 2019, the hall will be able to process 400 passengers an hour. By focusing on a low-cost carrier identity, Stewart is part of a growing trend among airports in the United States. It is following a pattern established in Europe and Asia, where budget airlines have reinvigorated smaller airports on the outskirts of major cities, said Matthew J. Cornelius, vice president of air policy at Airport Council International, an industry group. Theyve had the ability to strengthen their power, and now the Europeans are coming across the Atlantic, Mr. Cornelius said, adding that the international airlines were seeking smaller airports like Stewart, as well as those in Hartford and Providence, R.I. Theyre used to operating at secondary airports, so its a natural. This attracts passengers like Gavin Bamford of Northern Ireland, who arranged to visit family in Pennsylvania after finding a $364 round-trip ticket to Stewart Airport on Norwegian Airs website. Before he returned to Belfast, he said that if fares remained low, he would come back to Stewart, rent a car and drive 400 miles to see relatives in Toronto. Stewart was not just about New York City for us, said Anders Lindstrom, Norwegian Airs director of communications for North America. We see a lot of customers from upstate New York who will drive for hours to get there, as well as from northern New Jersey and Connecticut. In a widely read article on antidepressant withdrawal published on April 8, The New York Times invited readers to describe their experiences coming off the drugs. More than 8,800 people responded teenagers, college students, new mothers, empty-nesters, retirees. Dozens did write in to say the drugs had been lifesaving, literally so. You fail to acknowledge that mood disorders can be lifelong, debilitating diseases requiring lifelong medical treatment, wrote Rachel S., of New York. A different kind of reader query would most likely have attracted thousands of responses of gratitude for drugs that offered relief to tens of millions of people with chronic mood problems. Some doctors chimed in, too, more than one calling our focus on withdrawal irresponsible and unduly alarming to those who might benefit from antidepressants. The volume and diversity of the other responses painted a different picture, showing how modern antidepressants, beginning with Prozac in 1987, have percolated through our culture and have shaped public understanding of mental health. These stories traced sharp demographic fault lines: Readers of different generations came to antidepressants, and tried to quit them, for different reasons. Depending on what the subjects are wearing, the closely cropped images conjure complicated representations that are not unlike his own views of modern policing. The side-by-side frames of Officer Eric King show him in uniform wearing his badge, handcuffs and firearm all symbols of state-sanctioned power long regarded suspiciously in many black communities. The second image is a portrait of Mr. King wearing a black hoodie an article of clothing that often results in black men and boys being seen as suspects on the streets of their communities. I approached this project from the lens of what W.E.B. Du Bois called double consciousness: the idea of having to fraction yourself in a space to survive, said Mr. Edwards, 29, of the project that is featured on his social justice oriented multimedia website, BlackVign. What is it like to have to navigate that as a black person in America? What is it like when you end up putting on this uniform that represents danger to a lot of people and can represent danger to you when youre out of the uniform and youre just wearing your black or brown skin? Lurking on my phone is an app I didnt put there, one I wouldnt have touched were it not for a few glasses of wine and a pointer-fingered dare from an insolent friend named Jeff. He was visiting from San Francisco, and as we sat in the white-brick backyard of a bar, he urged me to disclose my location to him on Find My Friends, a function that Apple began quietly placing on all iPhones in 2015. In a world where we use social media to broadcast highly curated versions of ourselves, the app offers a frightening antithesis: to tell the people in our lives, via a small orange dot moving across a map, exactly where we are at all times. What are you hiding? Jeff asked me, giggling and snapping his gum like some teenage villain. At first I objected to Jeffs challenge with profanity. But then I asked myself why. What was I hiding? He lived across the country, so at the very least the app couldnt make our friendship worse. It wouldnt keep me from the sort of white lies that keep society lubricated: Im going to turn in early, but have fun at the party, we say, even if what we really mean is, I need company but not yours, or Theres a walk Id like to take alone, a book Id rather read. Jeff is something like a sibling to me, the sort of friend who offers a ride to a faraway doctors appointment, then spends the ride gleefully mocking my haircut. Relenting to his taunt, I pulled out my phone and pressed a button that posed a terrifying question: Share location indefinitely? In the next few weeks, I was more in touch with Jeff than I had been in the half-decade since I left California. During his visit, wed spoken about all the hiking I wasnt doing and all the hiking that he was, so I took the opportunity, when I saw him stuck in gridlock traffic on the freeway at the foot of Potrero Hill, to text: Howre those great outdoors treating you, bud? During a week when I had dodged a call, claiming the careerist busyness of a New Yorker, he caught me strolling through Central Park at 3 on a Tuesday, and he volleyed back. Sometime in July, Jeff and his wife, Evyan, went up to the Russian River, where as a kid I learned to swim crosscurrent. Its a place I dream of often, and when I saw him there, I wrote to say that I missed them, missed the river. Send a picture, I wrote, and he did. It felt so much better to see it this way, a piece of their lives Id asked for, than to encounter it on Instagram and absently double-tap. But the countless, ever-multiplying communities of today are something different: not collections of humans functioning in unison but random assortments of people who do the same things, like the same things, hate the same things or believe the same things. Life online is absolutely full of communities. There are fan communities, hobbyist communities, communities for users or enthusiasts of every consumer product imaginable. Every interest, every circumstance and point of identification, it seems, benefits by gathering under this feel-good umbrella word, which instantly puts a friendly gloss on every activity. People who interact are a community. People who dont interact but share some quality or belief become a community. People who are lumped into communities by other communities are communities. Community makes everything sound better. It makes the activist community sound approachable; it makes the skin-care community sound important; it makes the Christian community sound inclusive and kind; it makes the medical community sound folksy and skilled at the bedside; it makes the homeless community sound voluntary; it makes the gun rights community sound humanistic; it makes the tech community sound like good citizens. The tech community, of course, is partly responsible for this explosion. Platforms like Facebook, which exist for the express purpose of creating community, turn out to be in the business of exploiting the communities theyve created for the benefit of those outside (the business community, the strategic communications community, the Moldovan hacker community). They invite members to participate, but not, in the end, to make decisions together; the largest rewards, and the greatest powers, stay private. The company lays claim to everything of value that can be extracted from the assembled group. Nobody feels any personal kinship with a community of billions of fellow Facebook users; only people who work for Facebook would ever describe things this way. But this communal language maintains the illusion that were all in this together, working for something that will benefit us all neatly keeping the focus on the things being liked and shared, rather than the ones being mined or sold. The psychologists David W. McMillan and David M. Chavis outlined four basic elements of community in a 1986 article titled Sense of Community: A Definition and Theory. There was membership, or the feeling of belonging; influence, or the sense of mattering, of making a difference to a group; reinforcement, or the feeling that members needs will be met; and shared emotional connection, or the belief that members have shared and will share history, common places, time together and similar experiences. McMillan and Chavis also cited an important distinction between two types of community that have long coexisted. One is geographical neighborhood, town, city and the other is relational, concerned with the interconnections among people. Our sense of community seems to shift steadily among these very different modes of thinking. Over the decades, its meaning has lost the precision of city limits and has expanded to accommodate groups with shared values, planned and intentional organizations and a general sense of interpersonal connectedness. In 2018, it feels as if community is about being recognized as a certain kind of person when its not merely about fitting into a broad category. In other words, our sense of community is less and less about being from someplace and more about being like someone. Since the first Tribeca Film Festival in 2002, its most famous co-founder, Robert De Niro, has played a part in the annual event. This year, he will be onstage interviewing an actor with whom he has frequently shared screen time of late, Bradley Cooper. But hes also a movie fan excited about the lineup. In a recent interview, Mr. De Niro, who has been outspoken in his opposition to the current administration (and recently surprised TV viewers by playing the special counsel Robert S. Mueller III on Saturday Night Live), shared his picks for movies and events at the festival, along with a few sharply political words. ITHACA, N.Y. A prosecutor dropped a hate crime charge on Tuesday against a white Cornell University sophomore who was arrested after a fight that involved an anti-black slur, ending a case that led to protests and soul-searching on the Ivy League campus. The student, John P.A. Greenwood, instead pleaded guilty to a noncriminal violation and will complete 75 hours of community service. Mr. Greenwood, 20, of Toronto, pleaded guilty to disorderly conduct, a violation, and admitted using the slur in the September altercation that left a black student with a bloody nose. But Mr. Greenwood denied taking part in the assault. Citing a level of doubt in the case and the victims desire to put the episode behind him, Matthew Van Houten, the Tompkins County district attorney, said on Tuesday that he had decided to drop three misdemeanor charges against Mr. Greenwood, including the charge of attempted assault as a hate crime. The cash crunch is back. Only this time it's not due to any note ban. The government has blamed the 'unusual spurt in currency demand' in the country in last three months for the cash shortage. "In the first 13 days of the current month, the currency supply increased by Rs 45,000 crores," the Ministry of Finance said in a circular. To meet the unprecedented demand, the government is planning to pull out all the stops to increase the supply of cash in the banking system. The RBI, which used to Rs 500 crore to Rs 2,500 crore worth of 500 rupee notes everyday, will now be printing Rs 70,000 to Rs 75,000 crore to meet the rising demand. The five-fold jump in printing Rs 500 denomination currency comes after the Economic Affairs Secretary Subhash Chandra Garg said that the government suspects that Rs 2,000 notes are being hoarded as they are not coming back into the circulation fast enough. "Rs 2,000 notes are circulating but of late we have noticed there has been lesser inflow coming back in the circulation. We have not got this investigated, but you can assume this is the one note which most suitable to hoard as this is a high value note. But this does not affect the overall supply of Rs 2,000 notes," Garg said. Garg also dismissed rumours that the cash shortage is related to the recent scams in the banking sector, including one allegedly perpetrated by Nirav Modi or the Financial Resolution and Deposit Insurance (FRDI) Bill. "(The crunch) may be some states started distributing more cash benefits rather than otherwise. Some psychological feeling why not keep some cash in pocket rather than keeping in banks. It has nothing to do with recent scams," Garg said. Usually, Garg said, the currency supply every month used to be around Rs 20,000 crore but in the last two-three months, it has doubled to Rs 40,000-Rs 45,000 crore. According to government, there are about Rs 6.7 lakh crore worth of Rs 2,000 notes in the system and they are more than adequate to meet the transaction demand. Hitting out at Prime Minister Narendra Modi for the ongoing cash crunch in the country, Congress President Rahul Gandhi said, "Modi Ji has destroyed the banking system. Nirav Modi fled with Rs 30,000 crore and PM didn't utter a word. We were forced to stand in queues as he snatched 500-1000 rupee notes from our pockets and put in Nirav Modi's pocket." The states which have been affected include Andhra Pradesh, Bihar, Gujarat, Assam, Karnataka, Maharashtra, Rajasthan, Uttar Pradesh, Madhya Pradesh and Telangana. Cash crunch is likely to hit Delhi-NCR soon as the last time cash was supplied to banks in the national capital was on last Wednesday. Several media reports have claimed that the lack of currency notes could be due to high demand of cash during Baisakhi, Bihu and other harvest season festivals. Allaying fears of a possible cash crunch due to shortage of cash at ATMs across the country, Finance Minister Arun Jaitley said that there is more than adequate currency in circulation and also available with the banks. "The temporary shortage caused by sudden and unusual increase in some areas is being tackled quickly," Jaitley added. A month ago, the RBI had disallowed banks from moving excess cash in one circle to deficient circles. As a result, now many circles have excess cash and others have nothing. On an average, about 8 per cent of ATMs in India are out of cash at any given time. While several states across the country have reported instances of ATMs going dry, the government has asked for at least three days to mitigate the lack of availability of currency. "We've cash currency of Rs 1,25,000 crore right now. There is one problem that some states have less currency and others have more. Government has formed state-wise committee & RBI also formed committee to transfer currency from one state to other. It'll be done in 3 days," SP Shukla, Minister of State for Finance told ANI. According to SBI Chairman Rajnish Kumar there has been an "imbalance" due to the crop procurement season, when demand for currency goes up. Kumar said such states are seeing heightened demand due to procurement season. "As of March, the currency in circulation was Rs 18.29 lakh crore as against Rs 17.89 lakh crore just before demonetisation," Kumar added. Meanwhile, the Finance Ministry tweeted saying that the government and the RBI have taken steps to meet this 'unusual' demand. "We had adequate reserves of currency notes which have been used to meet fully the extraordinary demand generated so far," the ministry tweeted. The Centre said it is taking all steps to ensure that ATMs are supplied with cash and to get non-functional ATMs normalised at the earliest. The government added that it continues to have in stock 'adequate currency notes of all denominations, including of Rs 500, Rs 200 and Rs 100 to meet any demand'. The Reserve Bank of India (RBI), on its part, has increased the supply to cash to the affected states. The finance ministry held a meeting with the RBI officials last week to ensure that there was no large-scale hoarding of cash which might set in panic among people. The ministry officials also held consultations with state officials and bank heads in the wake of shortage of cash. Madhya Pradesh Chief Minister Shivraj Singh Chauhan said there was a conspiracy behind Rs 2,000 notes disappearing from the market. With crucial elections around the corner, the cash shortage in many BJP-ruled states has begun to attract the ire from opposition parties. Reacting to the sudden cash crunch in the country, Congress President Rahul Gandhi blamed Prime Minister Narendra Modi for 'destroying the banking system'. "Nirav Modi fled with Rs 30,000 crore and PM didn't utter a word. We were forced to stand in queues as he snatched 500-1000 rupee notes from our pockets and put in Nirav Modi's pocket," Rahul Gandhi said on the cash shortage. The reason for the cash crunch this time could be the lack of higher denomination currency notes needed to pay harvest season wages. Also, in some states, the recalibration of ATM machines to dispense 200 rupee currency notes is yet to be completed. Highlighting that there is no reason to panic, Sanjeev Sanyal, Principal Economic Advisor in the Finance Ministry said that cash will soon be updated in ATMs. "There is spike in demand and we have more than adequate cash to resolve it. Speeding up printing of currency may be required," Sanyal added. with PTI inputs Some signs of progress did emerge late Tuesday afternoon, with the acting education commissioner saying he was willing to expedite the timetable for addressing school funding, one of Mr. Sweeneys key concerns. Mr. Murphy and Mr. Sweeney have never had a warm relationship, dating back to before Mr. Murphy was elected. But the two men, along with Craig Coughlin, the Democratic speaker of the Assembly, have committed to meeting in person every seven to 10 days to negotiate until the state budget is passed. But the dispute over Mr. Murphys nominees threatens to impede budget talks. The situation has become so fraught that some of New Jerseys African-American pastors are involved in trying to broker a resolution. Its unfortunate that we find ourselves here so early in the administration, said the Rev. Ronald L. Slaughter, senior pastor of Saint James A.M.E. Church in Newark, adding that he had spoken to both Mr. Murphy and Mr. Sweeney about the matter. I dont think Sweeney is a racist nor do I think Murphy called him a racist. Some of the tension between Mr. Murphy and Mr. Sweeney can be traced to the role played in last years election by the New Jersey Education Association, one of the states most powerful unions. While the union was vocal in its support of Mr. Murphy, it launched an expensive and caustic campaign to try to unseat Mr. Sweeney. At the time, Mr. Murphy said he would not choose sides between the union and Mr. Sweeney, and he never publicly called on the union to stop attacking a fellow Democrat. From Mr. Sweeneys point of view, Mr. Murphy did not do enough to call off the onslaught. The chance for a reboot of the relationship after the election was not helped when Mr. Sweeney did an about-face on one of Mr. Murphys key proposals: a tax on the wealthy. The day after Mr. Murphys election, Mr. Sweeney said on Twitter that the first bill he would pass with the new governor would be a long-overdue millionaires tax to fairly and fully fund our schools. The New York City Council opened a new front in its effort to assert its independence from the administration of Mayor Bill de Blasio, bringing a lawsuit against the citys Law Department in order to establish the right of Council members to file amicus briefs in court cases. The suit, filed on Tuesday in State Supreme Court in Manhattan, seeks to resolve a question of separation of powers at a time when the Council has become increasingly restive. The legal wrangling underscores an unfortunate reality for the Council and its outspoken speaker, Corey Johnson: New York Citys charter gives broad and strong authority to the mayor in most areas, so much so that members are left fighting over the ability to simply file paperwork in court that usually has little effect on the ultimate outcome of cases. The fight over powers stems from a court defeat earlier this year: Five Council members attempted to file a brief in support of homeowners, renters and others who had sued the city over its property tax system. A state Supreme Court judge ruled they could not do so under the City Charter. Daphne Sheldrick, a wildlife conservationist who saved hundreds of orphaned elephants in Africa, work chronicled in documentaries like Born to Be Wild, died on April 12 in Nairobi. She was 83. The cause was breast cancer, said an announcement on the website of the David Sheldrick Wildlife Trust, the organization Ms. Sheldrick founded in honor of her husband, a noted naturalist and crusader against poaching who died in 1977. Ms. Sheldrick, a British subject who was born in Africa and spent her life there, became an important voice in the movement to save the declining elephant population and raise awareness about poaching, which is fueled by the ivory trade. When she spoke about elephants, Ms. Sheldrick strove to convey their intelligence, their protective instincts and their remarkable memories, something Smithsonian Magazine invoked in 2005 when it highlighted her in an article called 35 Who Made a Difference. Karen Dawisha, a Russia scholar who researched Vladimir V. Putins circle of trusted friends from St. Petersburg in the 1990s and, in a 2014 book, labeled the state they plotted out a kleptocracy, died on April 11 in Oxford, Ohio. She was 68. Her husband, Adeed Dawisha, said the cause was lung cancer. Ms. Dawisha, who at the time was a professor of political science at the Havighurst Center for Russian and Post-Soviet Studies at Miami University in Oxford, distilled her research into Putins Kleptocracy: Who Owns Russia? The book argued that corruption and authoritarianism in Russia in recent decades were not byproducts of the countrys emergence from communism but rather building blocks of a plan devised in the early 1990s by Mr. Putin and a circle of trusted associates. Many were, like him, former K.G.B. officers who were appalled by the breakup of the Soviet Union. The book made accusations so weighty that Cambridge University Press, Professor Dawishas longtime publisher, refused to publish it for fear of being sued by Mr. Putin or his allies under Britains restrictive libel laws. Does the deficit matter? My column yesterday on the Democrats strong record of reducing the deficit led to some criticism thats worth sharing. The main point of the criticism: The Democrats dont deserve praise, because reducing the deficit is bad policy. David Kusnet, a former Clinton administration official, tweeted: Why should Democrats borrow the austerity policies preached by the Republicans whom Trump beat? Joe Weisenthal, of Bloomberg, chided me for furthering the unfounded notion that lower deficits are, per se, more responsible. A reader named Russell Sharp wrote, of the Democrats: They treat the deficit as a bigger deal than it should be. Whats accurate is that one party has done a good job of managing fiscal policy the way centrist pundits think it should be managed, whereas the other has not. All of this is part of a broader reconsideration, happening among both conservative and liberal writers, of how much policymakers should care about the deficit. Im of two minds about this reconsideration. On the one hand, there is some unavoidable arithmetic at work here. The deficit cant simply get larger and larger over time, without some serious economic consequences. If every president ran up the deficit as much as George W. Bush did, financial markets would at some point begin to punish the United States government, out of a legitimate fear that it wouldnt be able to repay its debts. Borrowing would become more expensive for this country, and our economy would suffer. Rising deficits forever just isnt a serious economic position. And we should be grateful that one of our two political parties understands as much and has acted responsibly to reduce the deficit. Over the past week, horrified Indians have protested vigorously on social media and in some cities. The disgust and the fury at the complicity of politicians, and the federal governments silence, grew into a thunderous chorus demanding that the prime minister speak up and fire the ministers backing the Hindu Ekta Manch. Belatedly reacting to popular outrage, Mr. Modi finally said: Incidents being discussed since past two days cannot be part of a civilized society. As a country, as a society, we all are ashamed of it. He promised justice. His vague statement delicately alluded to another case in the northern state of Uttar Pradesh, where a lawmaker from Mr. Modis party is accused of rape. Mr. Modi stayed away from his partys involvement in both cases. Yet instead of uniting India in horror, the incident has deepened religious, political and ethical divides. It has also made clear that there is no automatic political cost to crime or falsehood if it furthers the hegemonic political narrative. The politicians involved were sacked only after a huge public outcry. Government ministers, officials, right-leaning media and right-wing supporters have been perfectly sanguine about using the dead child to polarize society with whataboutery, fake news and wild conspiracy theories. A spokeswoman for Mr. Modis party, Meenakshi Lekhi, attacked opposition protests, suggesting that they were selective and opportunistic. You see their plan, she said. First shout minority minority, then Dalit Dalit and now women women and then try to somehow fix blame of state issues on the center. An influential ex-editor tweeted that Muslim Rohingya refugees were to blame for the crime. A B.J.P. youth activist posted a comment, now deleted, on his Facebook page saying that the rape must have been fun. A pornography site reported a surge in searches for videos using the raped and murdered girls name. The sense of national crisis today is because Indians feel a rising urgency to either counter this ethical collapse or to capitalize on it in the run-up to the next election. Mr. Modi came to power in 2014, and four years into his term, religious and cultural bigotry stands mainstreamed in Indian society. Many who voted for Mr. Modis economic promises are disappointed by his failure to deliver, and impatient with his deliberate silences around sectarian and sexual violence and hate speech by his party colleagues and ministers. The systematic destruction of democratic institutions is hard to ignore. Still, 70 years of independence is barely a blip on the radar of Jewish history. And the Jews of Israel are highly aware of our role as a small link in a long chain of Jewish history. We are modern Israelis, of course, but our consciousness is one of ancient Jews. In survey after survey, more Israelis choose Jewish over Israeli as their main identity. And by this they do not refer to a religion (Judaism) but to a nation (the Jewish people). Thus, when celebrating 70 years of statehood, we Jews must engage in a kind of balancing act. On one hand, we need to appreciate the great achievement of building this Jewish homeland in such a short time in such a hostile environment. On the other hand, we need to grasp the smallness of this achievement in the scheme of Jewish history. The prophet Jeremiah described the Babylonian exile as a 70-year affair. We consider that short. In the second century BCE, the Hasmonean kingdom, widely viewed as the last period of Jewish political autonomy before the founding of Israel, lasted for about eight decades before it became client of the Romans. This kingdom is still today a source of Jewish pride, but it is also a cautionary tale: Most Israelis plan for a future that extends much further than merely another decade of statehood. So being the luckiest Jew ever is a blessing and a burden. The more we have, the more obligated we are to guard it and the more afraid we are to lose it. Were afraid for psychological reasons: Jews thought they were lucky in the past, and it often ended badly for them (remember Germany in the early 20th century). But we are also afraid because of indisputably dangerous circumstances: There are people out there who want to harm us, deny us what we have and destroy us, from Iranian leaders to Palestinian extremists to anti-Semites around the world. And Israel faces other challenges, some of which are familiar to many countries: economic inequality, populism, homegrown radicalism and illegal immigration. Not even the lucky Jew can ignore these and other challenges that hover like clouds over the future of Jewish sovereignty and success. On Monday, two days after President Trump declared Mission Accomplished on the latest round of missile strikes against Syria, a bipartisan group of senators unveiled legislation intended to reassert Congresss relevance to the wars we fight. But the new Authorization for the Use of Military Force, introduced by Bob Corker, the chairman of the Senate Foreign Relations Committee Chairman, and the Democrat Tim Kaine, may end up doing the opposite. Senator Kaine is right that, as he said in a speech about the bill, for too long Congress has given presidents a blank check to wage war. The 2001 authorization, passed three days after the Sept. 11 attacks and aimed at the perpetrators of those attacks, has done just that. Three presidents in a row have warped its limited authority into an enabling act for globe-spanning presidential war. The Corker-Kaine resolution wont bring an end to the Forever War; it will institutionalize it. Instead of ratifying war powers that three presidents in a row have seized illegally, Congress should repeal and not replace the 2001 legislation. In authorizing the use of force against a list of terrorist organizations and their affiliates, the bill states that it establishes rigorous congressional oversight, improves transparency and ensures regular congressional review and debate. Such transparency requirements are an improvement over the status quo. But the bill also turns the constitutional warmaking process upside down. The agonizing conflict in Syria, which has vexed both the Obama and Trump administrations, is growing increasingly complex and dangerous. Now, more than ever, the United States needs to clarify its strategic objectives in Syria and pursue them with ruthless discipline. Russia and Iran have paid dearly to enable the Syrian leader, Bashar al-Assad, to dismantle the opposition and will stay in Syria to prop him up. The Islamic State has been dislodged from its caliphate but not yet defeated. And the horrific humanitarian plight of the Syrian people endures. The United States policy options, ever bad, are more limited and less effectual than ever. The airstrikes launched last week by the United States, France and Britain sent a necessary, calibrated message to Mr. Assad that the civilized world does not countenance chemical weapons use. But their deterrent effect is likely, again, to be fleeting, not least because the United States wary of provoking a wider conflict has twice demonstrated that it will not use regime-threatening force to punish Syrias use of chemical weapons. Moreover, the United States has been deliberately ambiguous about whether our current red line is the use of chlorine gas alone, to which the United States and its allies have never responded with force. (American officials have said the recent attack in Douma may have involved both chlorine and a far deadlier nerve agent, sarin, stores of which Syria seems to have surreptitiously retained or reconstituted despite a 2013 agreement to eliminate them.) If the United States responds to incidents involving only chlorine, it will be striking Syria more frequently. Bret: Im surprised to find myself writing this, but I think the strike was a waste of perfectly good cruise missiles. We did nearly the exact same thing last year, and it did nothing to stop Bashar al-Assad from slaughtering his own people and using chemical weapons on them. If we really believe, as I do, that the use of chemical weapons cannot be tolerated, then we cant allow the guy who used them to come away from the strike unscathed and given that hes immediately renewed his offensive in the area emboldened. The strike really was classic Trump: A show of force mainly for the sake of show, without any strategy behind it. Iran has entrenched itself in Syria alongside Russia, while Israel is quietly preparing for war on its northern front. The administration looks likely to pull out of the Iran nuclear deal next month, but little thought seems to have been given to what comes after. In all, just another reminder that the Trump disaster is global. Gail: Weve been looking for a good argument for so long I really wish I could pitch into this one. But my bottom line is that wed better avoid any serious conflicts as long as Trump is commander in chief. As to the Iran deal, the whole idea of pulling out of it is so traumatizing that I cant think of any response except crawling under the bed and assuming a fetal position. Now, lets be cowards and talk about domestic issues. Can we start with Paul Ryan? You wrote a wonderful column about what a weenie hes being by bailing out at this crucial moment. But I think we still disagree about his overall career. I see him as a guy who pretended to be all about balanced budgets but was really always just going for the tax cuts and screw the deficit. Same thing with Bush. Same thing with Reagan. Seems to be a pattern. Bret: I think your complaint is a tad unfair. If Republicans like Ryan had filibuster-proof control of the Senate, they would likely pass entitlement reform and gleefully take an ax to domestic spending to keep the budget balanced. There arent any honest deficit hawks anywhere in American politics they just want to slash the other guys priorities to fund their own. Arent most Democrats that way, too? I mean, would you let a deficit stand in the way of Medicare-for-all? They hurt, Lizzy said. If you ever put Band-Aids on your nipples, those things are stiff. Any time you move around you can just feel it. Its like an annoying, rubbing feeling, especially in a sensitive area. She wore the bandages for 45 minutes before she began crying in class. Her best friend took her to the bathroom and Lizzy lifted her shirt to show her the bandages. Then she peeled them off and contacted her mother. I got a text from Lizzy saying, This is not a dress code violation and I feel completely attacked, said Ms. Knop. She was adamant that if Lizzy had been wearing a see-through or form-fitting shirt without a bra, she wouldnt have allowed her daughter to leave the house. The fact is that she wore a long sleeve T-shirt that was not see-through. It wasnt even flattering, said Ms. Knop. So to say she was trying to be a distraction is absolutely absurd. She didnt even tell me about the Band-Aids until 28 hours later, she said. She was so embarrassed. In a prepared statement, Braden River High School officials said that the situation should have been handled differently. They maintained that Lizzy was in violation of the dress code and that their intention was to assist the student in addressing the situation. The incident happened two weeks ago Lizzys initial tweet about the incident went viral but the backlash is still going strong. On Monday, Lizzy and some of her classmates held a silent protest in support of the destigmitization of natural bodies. Despite threats of disciplinary action, about 30 female students opted not to wear bras, and a number of students decorated their backpacks with Band-Aids in the shape of an X. One student wore a shirt that read, Do my ni**ples offend you? (The asterisks were hers.) One of the earliest appearances of the muses was in a narrative poem called Theogony by the Greek poet Hesiod, who wrote around 700 B.C. that they were nine sisters born of Zeus and his lover Mnemosyne, or memory. Of them he wrote, they plucked and gave me a rod, a shoot of sturdy laurel, a marvelous thing, and breathed into me a divine voice. Homer invoked the muse for his epic poem (Sing to me of the man, Muse) as did Virgil. Over time, the muse became a less incantatory figure and more of a sexual one: The word is commonly used, for example, as a shorthand for the many wives and lovers Pablo Picasso captured in his work. With the rise of the model as celebrity in the latter half of the 20th century, the muse became more objectified. She could be the woman a fashion designer trusted to wear his clothes, both on and off the runway. Or she could be a figure of whom a world-famous photographers lens never tired. These women and their looks from Misia Serts bohemian opulence at the turn of the last century to Twiggys sprightly boyishness in the 1960s can be as much an expression of their times as their eras music, literature or even politics. In the early 80s, model-muses became as famous as the artists they inspired, paving the way for the supers of the subsequent decade such as Naomi Campbell, Cindy Crawford and Kate Moss. Today, the industrys commercial interests have transformed the role of the muse into something much more lucrative, but during the careers of models like Pat Cleveland and Alva Chinn, the relationship between model and designer was born more out of a sense of simpatico. Cleveland and Chinn were two of the first women of color to be photographed for mainstream fashion magazines and to walk the runways for major designers like Yves Saint Laurent and Karl Lagerfeld. Both, too, walked in the Battle of Versailles (a kind of fashion face-off between French and American designers in 1973) for the African-American designer Stephen Burrows, whose color-blocked, lettuce-edged dresses represented the free-spirited disco nights of the time. Cleveland said shed often be given clothes to go out dancing in the evening to see if they last through the night. Those words often appeared alongside drawings by Keith Haring, who wasnt just the patron artist of ACT UP but the emblematic artist of the city during that period. His work inspired by, and evocative of, graffiti brought the street into the gallery, and vice versa, much as Jean-Michel Basquiat and his high school friend Al Diaz did around the turn of the decade, when their symbol SAMO suddenly sprouted on walls all across the city, the siren of a new sensibility. The line between high and low culture, between fringe and mainstream, blurred. Hip-hop was one example. Madonna, who released her first album in 1983, was another. Both popularized and commercialized sounds and styles that Latino and black New Yorkers had already embraced. But they also reflected the abiding dissonance of those years: The very communities that were being creatively pillaged were being politically ignored and repressed, and their frustration would boil over as the decade progressed. Black New Yorkers marched in protest in 1986 after a young black man who was fleeing a mob of white youths was struck by a car and killed in the Howard Beach section of Queens. Those marchers were led by a fiery minister named Al Sharpton, whose relative anonymity at the start of the decade would be a distant memory by its end. Just as the era had its defining art and music, it had its signature restaurant, the Odeon. It opened in late 1980, pulling New Yorkers from more polished precincts to TriBeCa, which was then an urban frontier. In its sleek, unfussy dining room, glamour and grit sat cheek by jowl, and going to the bathroom to powder your nose could mean one of two things. That was immortalized in the novel Bright Lights, Big City, which was published in 1984 and greeted less as fiction than as a distillation of the zeitgeist in all its greedy, seedy glory. It featured an illustration of the Odeons Art Deco neon sign on its cover and established its author, Jay McInerney, as one of the nascent decades bards. Like his protagonist, he relished being naughty but yearned to be rich; those desires were hardly irreconcilable in a city that simultaneously embraced the materialism of the Reagan era and rejected its moralism, where stretch limos deposited partygoers in unseemly neighborhoods and yuppies ran rampant while Die Yuppie Scum graffiti spread. The Odeon was like Area, the rising Chelsea department store Barneys and so many other temples of the time: an improbable, irresistible nexus of tribes bankers and sculptors, models and socialite housewives, power publicists and literary brats that hadnt always played together before. There had been a dividing line between uptown and downtown, and we wanted to make Barneys a hit so that everybody would come, Simon Doonan, who became the stores display director in the mid-80s, told me. We broke down that division, which was more pronounced than it is now: The 1980s were when the cracks appeared. And Barneys was yet another gilded place to see and be seen, amid the wares of New York-based designers Calvin Klein, Ralph Lauren, Michael Kors who werent so much clothes makers as shamans, with a cache and currency that rivaled any Hollywood stars. Their labels live on, with less shimmer. So does the Odeon, minus the bathroom rites. But the most important survivor of the early 1980s something that was crystallized then is the idea of New York as a cradle like none other in America, the countrys messiest and most mesmerizing laboratory. New York today is stronger economically, culturally more important and has a much different position in the world than it did then, said Mitchell Moss, a professor of urban policy on the faculty of New York University since 1973. We have the early 1980s, in part, to thank for that. And I still feel the spirit, strivings and tensions of those years. Were a city once again at odds with the White House and its random and regressive edicts with what it exalts and what it ignores. People are marching, though with pussy hats and Black Lives Matter signs as well as rainbow flags. Were at the forefront of the perversely belated quest for justice for women who have been sexually harassed and abused, and were reckoning with how much our reality falls short of our ideals. New Yorkers, as always, come here to remake themselves and to reinvent the city around them. Its an unfinished story, in which certain chapters are bolder and more complicated than others. One of them is now. One of them was then. SAN FRANCISCO The embattled political data firm Cambridge Analytica quietly sought to develop its own virtual currency in recent months through a so-called initial coin offering, a novel fund-raising method that has come under growing scrutiny by financial regulators around the world. The offering was part of a broader, but still very private push that the firm was making into the nascent world of cryptocurrencies over the last year. Much like its acquisition of Facebook data to build psychological profiles of voters, the new business line pushed the firm into murky ethical and legal situations. Documents and emails obtained by The New York Times show that Cambridge Analyticas efforts to help promote another groups digital token, the Dragon Coin, associated the firm with a famous gangster in Macau who has gone by the nickname Broken Tooth. The goal of Cambridge Analyticas own coin offering? Raise money that would pay for the creation of a system to help people store and sell their online personal data to advertisers, Brittany Kaiser, a former Cambridge Analytica employee, said in an interview. The idea was to protect information from more or less what the firm did when it obtained the personal data of up to 87 million Facebook users. SHENZHEN, China In a grand hotel ballroom on Tuesday, Huawei executives laid out a soaring vision for the future. The Chinese electronics giant, already the worlds biggest supplier of the equipment that powers the wireless age, now wants to provide the digital backbone for artificial intelligence, the internet of things and other transformative technologies. But that future is increasingly looking as if it will not include the United States. Last week, the company laid off five American employees, including William B. Plummer, the executive who was the face of its Sisyphean efforts to win over Washington, according to people familiar with the matter. Huawei has also been dialing back its political outreach in the United States, these people said which could end a decade of mostly fruitless efforts to dispel Washingtons accusations that the company has ties to the Chinese government. Huaweis tactics are changing as its business prospects in the United States have darkened considerably. On Tuesday, the Federal Communications Commission voted to proceed with a new rule that could effectively kill off what little business the company has in the United States. Although the proposed rule does not mention Huawei by name, it would block federally subsidized telecommunications carriers from using suppliers deemed to pose a risk to American national security. Like other major tech companies, whether American or Chinese, Huawei (pronounced HWA-way) has been caught in the crossfire as the Trump administration ratchets up efforts to stop Chinas high-tech ambitions. The two countries are waging a new kind of cold war, and with each increasingly suspicious of the others technology, winners are chosen based on national allegiances. The #MeToo movement inspired women around the world to speak up about issues of gender equality and female equality. Now the tourism industry is focusing on empowerment, with new tours and programs designed specifically for women travelers . On March 8 International Womens Day 2018 Exodus Travels, a London-based adventure tourism operator, launched a series of all-female departures to locations as diverse as Iran, Myanmar and the French Riviera. The guided tours, which range from eight days to just over two weeks, cost an average of $2,500 and will pair groups of 4 to 16 women with local female guides on high-adrenaline itineraries. Travel is a male-dominated profession, so its very important to us that we hire female guides, which also helps educate the community in the places that we visit on the importance of females in the workplace, said Robin Brooks, Exodus Travels marketing and public relations manager. Women are feeling more empowered than ever and we wanted to be a part of that. Intrepid Travel, an adventure travel operator focused on small-group itineraries, also chose International Womens Day this year to respond to the #MeToo movement with its own line of female-only tours. The operator is launching three specialized itineraries for women only to Morocco, Iran and Jordan which promise to deliver a sense of sisterhood to travelers while they explore sites like the foothills of Azourki, Persepolis and the Dead Sea. For most of this year, Mr. Greitens, a former Navy SEAL who was elected governor in 2016, has been the target of investigations, charges that he is unfit to serve as governor and calls for his resignation or impeachment, even from members of his own party. His troubles burst into public view in January when a St. Louis television station broadcast a report that before he became governor, Mr. Greitens had an extramarital affair with a woman, had taken a nude or seminude photograph of her without her permission, and had threatened to make the image public if she told anyone about him. In February, the governor was indicted by a grand jury in St. Louis on a felony charge of invasion of privacy relating to the photograph. Separately, a House legislative committee in Missouri, mostly made up of Republicans, is investigating Mr. Greitens and could begin a process to impeach him at any time. Mr. Hawley, who has called for Mr. Greitens to resign, said on Tuesday that he had also referred evidence related to the Mission Continues donor list to the committee. A report released by the House committee last week contained even more explosive allegations against Mr. Greitens. The woman who had a sexual relationship with him in 2015 told the committee that he hit her and she felt coerced into performing oral sex. Mr. Greitens, a father of two, has insisted that the affair was consensual and that he and his wife, Sheena, have made peace with it. Mr. Greitens faces trial on the invasion-of-privacy charge in St. Louis on May 14, and has said he views the hearing as an opportunity to clear his name. He could face up to four years in prison if convicted. Missouri Republicans are concerned that the allegations swirling around the governor could hurt the party this fall in a competitive Senate race in which Mr. Hawley is hoping to unseat Senator Claire McCaskill, a Democrat. WASHINGTON A mystery that went unsolved for 73 years began when Herman Mulligan threw a grenade. In the thick of some of the most vicious fighting of World War II, on the island of Okinawa, Private First Class Mulligans grenade clattered into the dark maw of a Japanese bunker and blew up a cache of ammunition. The huge explosion obliterated most of the hillside, and blasted the 21-year-old Marine beyond recognition. Amid the chaos, his unidentified body was buried in a hasty battlefield grave, while the Marine Corps listed Private Mulligan as missing in action. In the years after the war, he was reclassified as unrecoverable, and the family that knew him gradually died off, until his memory was almost as lost as his bones. The privates story could have ended there, among the roughly 72,000 American troops from World War II who have not been accounted for. But the ending has been rewritten by a black-and-white snapshot found in a Marine veterans trunk. The photo inspired an informal network of volunteer sleuths to track down survivors of the battle, pore over forgotten maps and comb through yellowed files until they had traced Private Mulligans likely remains to a burial plot under a marble cross in Manila. Then they found a cousin, James Patterson, who could provide DNA for matching. Transferring the man would render moot several important and unresolved legal questions raised by his case. They include whether the Obama and Trump administrations claim that Congresss authorization to fight Al Qaeda covers the Islamic State, and whether the judge overseeing the mans lawsuit, Tanya S. Chutkan of the Federal District Court for the District of Columbia, had legitimate authority to order the government to give him at least 72 hours notice before any transfer. The man was born in the United States to visiting Saudi parents, making him an American citizen, but raised in Saudi Arabia, where he became a dual citizen. He was captured by a Syrian militia in September and turned over to American forces as a suspected low-level Islamic State member, raising a dilemma about what to do with him. While security officials wanted him to remain locked up somewhere, Justice Department officials struggled to assemble sufficient courtroom evidence to prosecute him. In the court filing on Tuesday, the Justice Department redacted details about the proposed transfer. But it said that after extensive discussion with his lawyer about the option, the man had decided not to consent to the transfer. Nevertheless, the government wants to proceed and urged Judge Chutkan not to interfere, saying that it was imperative that the transfer occur quickly and smoothly. A court order delaying or blocking the transfer would undermine the United States credibility with an important foreign partner that has agreed to this request, and could lead the other country to reconsider its agreement to take the man or could adversely affect its willingness to engage with the United States on some future detainee transfers, the filing said. WASHINGTON Attorney General Jeff Sessions proposed new regulations on Tuesday that could severely limit the amount of highly addictive opioid pain medication that drug companies can produce and force them to account for scores of illegitimate prescriptions across the country. The regulations would change how the Drug Enforcement Administration sets production quotas for drug companies. Those companies would have to work with states, the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention and other federal and state agencies to justify the number of pills they send to medical providers. Under this proposed new rule, if D.E.A. believes that a companys opioids are being diverted for misuse, then they will reduce the amount of opioids that company can make, Mr. Sessions said at an appearance in Raleigh, N.C., according to prepared remarks. The proposal allowed Mr. Sessions to put pressure on the powerful pharmaceutical industry without punishing it for the opioid crisis, which in 2016 contributed to more than 42,000 deaths in the United States, according to the C.D.C. While the change allows the drug agency to more actively track where pharmaceutical companies send their products, a 2016 law hamstrings the ability of the agency, which is part of the Department of Justice, to stop shipments. 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... Both are also quite young. Mr. Needham is 36 and Mr. Rubio is 46. And both believe that the Republican Party has not done enough to rethink its animating ideas and appeal to voters at a time when Mr. Trump remains woefully unpopular with younger Americans. In an interview on Tuesday, Mr. Rubio said that since his presidential campaign ended in March 2016, he has spent a lot of time contemplating what Mr. Trump got right and what he misjudged. And while Mr. Rubio insisted he had no plans to run for president again Its so far-off in the future, I dont know where my mind will be he said he believed that the conservative movements tenets need to evolve beyond sterile economic arguments of low taxes and high economic growth. I think the challenge is how the policies that come from those principles, by necessity, have to look different in the 21st century than they did in 1980 or 1985, Mr. Rubio said. America is not an economy. Its a country, he added, channeling some of Mr. Trumps populism. And we have a bigger job than just to increase G.D.P. Mr. Needham said he agreed with that diagnosis. Any fair-minded observer of the last several years would say conservatives have work to do in order to assure our principles remain relevant, Mr. Needham said in an interview. There was truth in candidate Trumps declaration that this is the Republican Party, not the Conservative Party. Our challenge as conservatives is to build a movement that inspires a majority coalition of Americans. But beyond their shared views on the partys need to have a better 20-year plan, the two have taken very distinct approaches to leadership. Mr. Needham has been a leading practitioner of the uncompromising, scorched-earth style of political combat that was a trademark of Tea Party-inspired politicians and activists. He frequently clashed with the Republican leadership in Congress and challenged it to drive a harder bargain on issues like defunding the Affordable Care Act, which led to a two-week government shutdown in 2013 that most Republicans came to see as ill advised. WASHINGTON The Supreme Court on Tuesday struck down a law that allowed the government to deport some immigrants who commit serious crimes, saying it was unconstitutionally vague. The decision will limit the Trump administrations efforts to deport people convicted of some kinds of crimes. The vote was 5 to 4, with Justice Neil M. Gorsuch joining the courts four more liberal members to form a bare majority, which was a first. Justice Gorsuch wrote that the law crossed a constitutional line. Vague laws, he wrote in a concurring opinion, invite arbitrary power. Justice Gorsuch had voted with the courts conservative majority in February in a different immigration case, one that ruled that people held in immigration detention, sometimes for years, are not entitled to periodic hearings to decide whether they may be released on bail. His vote in Tuesdays case was not entirely surprising, though, as he has a skepticism of vague laws that do not give people affected by them adequate notice of what they prohibit. WASHINGTON The Supreme Court announced on Tuesday that it would not decide whether federal prosecutors can force Microsoft to turn over digital data stored outside the United States. The move followed arguments in the case in February and the enactment of a new federal law that both sides said made the case moot. No live dispute remains between the parties, the court said in a brief, unsigned opinion. The case, United States v. Microsoft, No. 17-2, had seemed poised to be one of the most important of the current term. It posed the question of whether a 1986 law, enacted before the dawn of the big-data era, applied to digital information stored outside the nations borders. When the case was argued, several justices said Congress rather than the court should act to define the limits of privacy in the digital age. If Congress takes a look at this, realizing that much time and innovation has occurred since 1986, it can write a statute that takes account of various interests, Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg said. If Congress wants to regulate in this brave new world, it should do it. The impetus for the effort came largely from Mr. Smith, who has been arguing for several years that the world needs a digital Geneva Convention that sets norms of behavior for cyberspace just as the Geneva Conventions set rules for the conduct of war in the physical world. Although there was some progress in setting basic norms of behavior in cyberspace through a United Nations-organized group of experts several years ago, the movement has since faltered. Mr. Smith said over the weekend that the first move needed to come from the American companies that often find themselves acting as the first responders when cyberattacks hit their customers. This has become a much bigger problem, and I think what we have learned in the past few years is that we need to work together in much bigger ways, Mr. Smith said in an interview. We need to approach this in a principled way, and if we expect to get governments to do that, we have to start with some principles ourselves. Microsoft played a central role in trying to extinguish the WannaCry attack last year that struck the British health care system and companies around the world. The Trump administration, along with several other Western governments, later blamed that attack on North Korea. Last summer the NotPetya attack struck Ukraine, crippling systems throughout the country. Iran is suspected in a recent attack on a Saudi petrochemical plant. Yet not all governments are likely to embrace the Cybersecurity Tech Accord in part because the principles it espouses can run headlong into their own, usually secret efforts to develop cyberweapons. When Russias intelligence agencies obtained some of the National Security Agencys secrets about its own cyberweapons, it appeared to do so by manipulating a virus protection program sold by Kaspersky, a Russian firm. The company said it knew nothing about the intrusion into its products, but American officials do not believe the denials and have banned Kaspersky products from United States government systems. Kaspersky is not a signer to the new accord. WASHINGTON Millions of taxpayers who waited until Tuesday to file their 2017 tax returns and make payments through the Internal Revenue Services website were thwarted by a systemwide computer failure that advised last-minute filers to come back on Dec. 31, 9999. The website malfunction, which began in the early hours of Tuesday morning and was not resolved until early evening, crippled a crucial part of the agencys website that allows taxpayers to file returns electronically and make their tax payments directly through their bank accounts. The technology failure essentially brought the nations tax machinery to a halt on a day when millions of Americans were expected to file their tax returns, undermining the Trump administrations plan to use Tax Day to promote its recent $1.5 trillion tax overhaul. The I.R.S. said in a statement that taxpayers would be given an additional day to file their returns. On Tuesday, taxpayers could still file the old-fashioned way: by sending their returns and payments through the mail. But for most of the day, those seeking to make a payment online ahead of the midnight deadline were greeted with the message: This service is currently unavailable. The website said it was undergoing a planned outage beginning on Tax Day that would last until Dec. 31, 9999, but said tax payments were still due on April 17, despite the systems inability to process them. The Southwest plane, a two-engine Boeing 737, made an emergency landing at Philadelphia International Airport at about 11:20 a.m. It quickly lost altitude after the explosion and violently depressurized after shrapnel from the explosion burst through the window, said Max Kraidelman, 20, a passenger on the plane, Flight 1380. Soon after the explosion, Ms. Riordan was partially sucked out, Mr. Kraidelman said. The top half of her torso was out the window, he said. There was a lot of blood because she was hit by some of the shrapnel coming off the engine after it exploded. Mr. Kraidelman said passengers and flight attendants struggled to drag her back into the aircraft. When they did, she was unconscious and seriously injured, and flight attendants and passengers tried to revive her. Upon seeing the scene, one flight attendant began to cry, Mr. Tranchin said. They were doing CPR on her and using the defibrillator while we were landing, Mr. Kraidelman said. They were working on her while everyone else had their oxygen mask on. Mr. Tranchin said that one of the passengers helping had at one point placed his lower back up against the opening in the plane, in an apparent effort to help with the compression. The man did this for the next 20 minutes, Mr. Tranchin said, adding that the man later told him that the pressure at his back had been extreme. For more than a month, the police in Toronto have been trying to solve a mystery. They had a photograph of an unidentified dead man, and they had discovered human remains in planters where a man suspected of multiple killings had worked as a landscaper. On Monday, the police announced that they had charged the suspect, Bruce McArthur, with first-degree murder in the death of an eighth alleged victim Kirushna Kumar Kanagaratnam, the man in the photograph. The development was weeks in the making. Investigators released Mr. Kanagaratnams photograph to the public on March 5, declining to say where it had come from and appealing for help identifying him. They enlisted the assistance of an officer who spoke Tamil, and coordinated with Mr. Kanagaratnams family, who was still in Sri Lanka. The stress and anxiety over dealing with hundreds of tips, hundreds of missing-persons occurrences and dozens of potential identifications for the eighth victim has been enormous, Sgt. Hank Idsinga said at a news conference. SEOUL, South Korea Kim Jong-un, North Koreas leader, plans to formally announce his willingness to denuclearize his country when he meets with President Moon Jae-in of South Korea this month, an official from the South said on Tuesday. The statement is expected to be part of a joint declaration that the two leaders will adopt when they meet on April 27, said Mr. Moons chief of staff, Im Jong-seok. Negotiators from both Koreas have agreed on a rough framework for the joint declaration, he said. They are still discussing other aspects of the joint statement, such as whether the two Koreas would commit to holding summit meetings on a regular basis, Mr. Im said. South Korea is also trying to convince North Korea that Mr. Moon and Mr. Kim should hold a joint news conference at the end of their meeting in Panmunjom, the so-called truce village on the inter-Korean border. If necessary, Mr. Moons national security adviser, Chung Eui-yong, and his spy chief, Suh Hoon, will visit the North Korean capital, Pyongyang, again to resolve any significant issues before the summit meeting, Mr. Im said. A new civil rights movement in Pakistan is galvanizing a rapidly growing following among the countrys ethnic Pashtun minority by doing the nearly unthinkable: openly accusing the powerful and popular Pakistani military establishment of being oppressors who kill or whisk away Pashtuns by the thousands. Counting hundreds of thousands of supporters in just its third month, the Pashtun movement has wielded the pictures and names of dead family members along with the chant What kind of freedom is this? as an indictment of unchecked military authority. From its start, the movement has been haunted by the question of how long the security forces would tolerate it before cracking down. That time may be coming, many fear. Despite its largest rally yet, a demonstration of tens of thousands in the northern city of Peshawar on April 8, the movement has labored under an only rarely interrupted media blackout. Interviews with editors and reporters at several outlets detailed pressure to avoid covering the Pashtun movement as an unmistakable sign that both the demonstrators and the press are facing a new level of threat from the military. The countrys army chief, Gen. Qamar Javed Bajwa, ominously suggested at a public event last week that engineered protests threatened to reverse counterterrorism efforts by the military in recent years. SYDNEY, Australia For a brief moment on Monday, marijuana users rallied around a proposal from the Greens party to legalize the drugs use for recreational purposes in Australia. But those hopes were quashed the next day, as Greg Hunt, the minister for health, said the government would oppose the plan. Marijuana, he said, was a gateway to other drugs like methamphetamines. Our job is to protect the health of Australians, he said on Tuesday. This action by the Greens risks the health of Australians. Heres what you should know about the marijuana debate in Australia. [Want more Australia coverage? Sign up for the weekly Australia Letter.] A very small amount of liquid nerve agent was used in the March 4 poisoning of Sergei V. Skripal and his daughter, and it did not release gases or vapors, British environmental scientists said on Tuesday. The announcement came as the police prepared to withdraw from nine operational crime scenes in the medieval city of Salisbury and hand them over to scientists for a meticulous decontamination program. Already, tourists visiting Stonehenge and Salisburys 13th-century cathedral have gawked at crime-scene tape surrounding a series of sites that the two Russians visited on the day they were found collapsed on a bench beside the Avon River. A decontamination process could go on for a number of months and promises to be a vast undertaking, requiring backup from 190 army and air force specialists as well as input from the Defense Science and Technology Laboratory, the Home Office and the Ministry of Defense, the authorities said. BRUSSELS Emmanuel Macron, who beat back the far-right National Front to win the French presidency, said on Tuesday that there was an increasing fascination with illiberalism in Europe and that divisions over values within the European Union were like a European civil war. Speaking after the re-election this month in Hungary of Viktor Orban, the professed champion of illiberal democracy, and moves against the judiciary in Poland, Mr. Macron said that Europe was in a battle between the liberal democracy that shaped its postwar vision and a new populist authoritarianism that brushes aside dissents and cares little about the rule of law. Europeans must turn away from selfish nationalism, he told the European Parliament in Strasbourg, France. That was especially so in a world of larger and more powerful nations like Russia, China and a more disengaged United States under President Trump. Less than a year into his presidency, Mr. Macron is still trying to make his mark both at home, where he is facing union unrest and strikes, and in Europe. He used the speech to further stake out a position as a leading champion of the European Union at a time when states are clamoring for more sovereignty and populist forces have risen to weaken even his core partner, Chancellor Angela Merkel of Germany. WASHINGTON President Trump was watching television on Sunday when he saw Nikki R. Haley, his ambassador to the United Nations, announce that he would impose fresh sanctions on Russia. The president grew angry, according to an official informed about the moment. As far as he was concerned, he had decided no such thing. It was not the first time Mr. Trump has yelled at the television over something he saw Ms. Haley saying. This time, however, the divergence has spilled into public in a remarkable display of discord that stems not just from competing views of Russia but from larger questions of political ambition, jealousy, resentment and loyalty. The rift erupted into open conflict on Tuesday when a White House official blamed Ms. Haleys statement about sanctions on momentary confusion. That prompted her to fire back, saying that she did not get confused. The public disagreement embarrassed Ms. Haley and reinforced questions about Mr. Trumps foreign policy and who speaks for his administration. At the very least, the episode highlighted the crossed circuits over foreign policy in an administration with no secretary of state, an increasingly marginalized White House chief of staff and a national security adviser who has only been on the job for a week and has pushed out many of the senior national security officials in the White House but has yet to bring in his own team. LONDON Prime Minister Theresa May apologized on Tuesday for harsh treatment of some Caribbeans who have lived in Britain legally for decades but have trouble documenting their status, as her government reversed itself on an issue that had turned into a major embarrassment. The handling of the Caribbean-born Britons had become an example a shameful one, critics said of the Conservative governments attempts to manage the anti-immigrant sentiment that helped fuel Britains 2016 referendum to leave the European Union. The controversy began after the publication of recent reports in the British press about longtime legal residents of West Indian and Caribbean ancestry who had lost their jobs, been denied medical care, been evicted or even detained and threatened with deportation all because they could not prove that they had lived in the country since before 1973. Their stories have produced a storm of criticism aimed at the government. Even as Britain is confronting Russia over the nerve agent attack on a former spy in Salisbury, England, negotiating its divorce from the European Union and recently joined in missile strikes against Syria over accusations that the Syrian government used chemical weapons, the status of middle-aged and older Caribbean immigrants has taken up much of the governments time and attention. The nations counterterrorism law allows the death penalty for anyone who commits, incites, plans, finances or assists in acts of terrorism. So Iraqi courts are meting out one-size-fits-all punishment for the perpetrator of crimes against humanity as well for as the wife of an Islamic State fighter who may have had little say in her husbands career. Individual circumstances dont matter, said Belkis Wille, the senior researcher for Iraq for Human Rights Watch. Cooks, medical workers, everyone is given the death penalty. The low bar for conviction under the law, she said, also means that the courts are not bothering to investigate some of the worst crimes believed to have been committed by Islamic State members, such as slavery, rape or extrajudicial killings. Iraqs Justice Ministry rejects such criticism and praises the integrity of its judges and its standards of due process. If there is evidence then suspects are prosecuted, and if there is no evidence then they are released, said Abdul-Sattar al-Birqdar, a judge and Justice Ministry spokesman. The government has not released statistics about its terrorism detainees, but two people familiar with the court who were not authorized to speak to journalists said that approximately 13,000 people had been detained on suspicion of ties to the Islamic State since 2017, when the vast majority of arrests were made. Human Rights Watch estimated in December that at least 20,000 people accused of ties to the Islamic State were being held by the Iraqi authorities. Last month, The Associated Press reported that Iraq had detained or imprisoned at least 19,000 people since 2014 on accusations of connections to the Islamic State or other terrorism-related offenses. One day last week, she strode across the stage during a tour of the site at Jerusalems Mount Herzl, flanked by reporters and television cameras. A former brigadier general in the Israeli military, she told the chief engineer that she wanted zero casualties in this event. In 2012, an Israeli Army officer was killed during a rehearsal for the ceremonys flag parade when a lighting rig fell on her. On the way out Ms. Regev instructed an aide to check on the number of portable toilets and quantity of toilet paper, so there wouldnt be problems like in the past. Write that down! she said. This will be a breathtaking display, the likes of which we have never seen before in Israel, she told reporters. But many people apportion much of the blame for the brouhaha on her campaign to have her patron, Mr. Netanyahu, lead the ceremony instead of Mr. Edelstein, whom Ms. Regev views as a potential rival within Likud. Mr. Edelstein said he would boycott the ceremony if Mr. Netanyahu gave the keynote speech. Carmi Gillon, a former chief of Israels Shin Bet internal security agency, called on Israelis to switch off their televisions while Mr. Netanyahu spoke. Netanyahu supporters said Mr. Gillon should be the last person to preach about prime ministers, since Prime Minister Yitzhak Rabin was assassinated on his watch. Last week, the two sides announced a compromise that was to have ended the feud. The prime ministers office said that Mr. Netanyahu would light one of 12 torches, representing the 12 tribes of Israel, in the name of all the governments of Israel and, like the other torch lighters, make brief remarks relating to Israels Declaration of Independence. Inspectors from the Organization for the Prohibition of Chemical Weapons were seeking on Tuesday to enter Douma, a suburb of Damascus, where the United States and Western allies say the Syrian government dropped chemical weapons. Syria and its main backers, Iran and Russia, say claims of chemical weapons use were concocted by rebels, rescue workers and the West. Syrian state media said on Tuesday that inspectors had entered Douma. The organization would not comment on those reports. Its the second time recently that the organization has been thrust into a geopolitical crisis another high-profile case, the poisoning of a Russian former spy and his daughter in Britain, also drew attention to the group. SAN FRANCISCO Sailors arriving in San Francisco in the 19th century used two giant redwood trees perched on a hill to help guide their ships into the bay. The redwoods were felled for their lumber at around the time of the gold rush, but San Francisco now has a new beacon: Salesforce Tower, the tallest office building in the West. Clustered around the 1,070-foot tower are a collection of high rises built on the soft soil and sand on the edge of the bay. They represent a bold symbol of a new San Francisco, but also a potential danger for a city that sits precariously on unstable, earthquake-prone ground. San Francisco lives with the certainty that the Big One will come. But the city is also putting up taller and taller buildings clustered closer and closer together because of the states severe housing shortage. Now those competing pressures have prompted an anxious rethinking of building regulations. Experts are sending this message: The building code does not protect cities from earthquakes nearly as much as you might think. Its been over a century Wednesday marks the 112th anniversary since the last devastating earthquake and subsequent inferno razed San Francisco. Witnesses on the morning of April 18, 1906, described the citys streets as rising and falling like a ribbon carried by the wind. The violent shaking ignited a fire that lasted three days, destroying 500 city blocks and 28,000 buildings. Half of the population of around 400,000 was made homeless. Many were forced to flee the city. 1906 aerial photograph by George R. Lawrence/Library of Congress San Francisco Bay SAN FRANCISCO 2018 SAN FRANCISCO 2018 SAN FRANCISCO 2018 San Francisco Bay SAN FRANCISCO 2018 Diagram by The New York Times Millennium Tower 2009: 645 feet 340 Fremont 2016: 440 feet Salesforce Tower 2018: 1,070 feet 555 California St. 1969: 779 feet Transamerica Pyramid 1971: 853 feet Market St. San Francisco Bay SAN FRANCISCO 2018 Millennium Tower 2009: 645 feet Salesforce Tower 2018: 1,070 feet 555 California St. 1969: 779 feet Market St. SAN FRANCISCO 2018 Millennium Tower 2009 Salesforce Tower 2018 555 California St. 1969 Market St. SAN FRANCISCO 2018 Millennium Tower 2009: 645 feet 340 Fremont 2016: 440 feet Salesforce Tower 2018: 1,070 feet 555 California St. 1969: 779 feet Transamerica Pyramid 1971: 853 feet Market St. San Francisco Bay SAN FRANCISCO 2018 Diagram by The New York Times An airship captured the devastation in San Francisco after the 1906 earthquake and fire. With the city leveled, Los Angeles quickly grew to capture San Franciscos place as the premier city of the West. After decades of public hostility toward skyscrapers, the city has been advocating a more dense and more vertical downtown. San Francisco now has 160 buildings taller than 240 feet and a dozen more are planned or under construction. California has strict building requirements to protect schools and hospitals from a major earthquake. But not skyscrapers. A five-story building has the same strength requirements as a 50-story building. Yet skyscrapers cast a much broader shadow of risk across a city and their collapse or impairment could cause a cascade of consequences. How safe are San Franciscos skyscrapers? Even the engineers who design them cant provide exact answers. Earthquakes are too unpredictable. And too few major cities have been tested by major temblors. The profession does the best job we can to model and predict, but there are a number of uncertainties, said Ron Hamburger, one of the countrys leading structural engineers. We dont have as many records, particularly for large magnitude earthquakes, as we would like. Previous earthquakes have revealed flaws with some skyscrapers. A widely used welding technique was found to rupture during the 1994 Northridge earthquake in Los Angeles. (Many buildings in San Francisco and Los Angeles have not been retrofitted.) California has made significant strides in earthquake preparedness over the past century. Freeway overpasses, bridges and some municipal buildings have been strengthened. Many Californians live in single-family wood frame homes, which have been found to hold up relatively well during earthquakes. But until recently, high-rise buildings were not a focus of San Franciscos seismic safety. Newer high rises across California, which are typically built around a concrete core, are designed using computer modeling. This raises concerns among experts such as Thomas H. Heaton, the director of the Earthquake Engineering Research Laboratory at the California Institute of Technology and perhaps the most prominent skeptic of building high rises in earthquake zones. Readers asked us questions about this story on Twitter, Reddit, Facebook and in our comments. We answered some of those questions in this Q. and A. Its kind of like getting in a new airplane thats only been designed on paper but nobody has ever flown in it, he said. Last September, San Franciscos former mayor, Edwin M. Lee, responding to a scandal about a skyscraper that was sinking and leaning, ordered city officials to strengthen building codes for high rises and requested an independent study on their safety. Known as the Tall Buildings Study, it will for the first time create a detailed database of the more than 160 high rises, classified by building type. Ayse Hortacsu, the structural engineer who is leading the study, has deployed Stanford graduate students to pore over blueprints and records at the San Francisco Department of Building Inspection. It would have been great to do this before this building boom in San Francisco, Ms. Hortacsu said. But we are going to seize the moment and make the best out of it. For years the city restricted building height to 500 feet in most neighborhoods. The objection to high rises was largely cultural and aesthetic critics deplored Manhattanization and said high rises were not in keeping with the ethos of the city. But by 2004, city officials had put in motion a plan to redevelop a neighborhood of warehouses and vacant lots that today are the heart of downtown. The city pushed for the construction of a tall, iconic building the future Salesforce Tower, which can be seen in the right half of this photograph, shimmering over its neighbors. San Francisco, once a low-rise city, is in the middle of a building boom and now home to the tallest office building west of the Mississippi. Jim Wilson/The New York Times We saw that as a symbol of the new San Francisco and we wanted the building to be at least 1,000 feet in height, said Dean Macris, a key figure in conceiving the new high-rise San Francisco who led the planning board under four mayors. Now retired, Mr. Macris said the issue of seismic safety of high rises was never a factor in the redevelopment plans of the South of Market area, or SoMa, as its known. What shifted the debate on seismic safety was the sinking and tilting of the 58-floor Millennium Tower. When it was completed in 2009, the building won numerous awards for ingenuity from engineering associations, including Outstanding Structural Engineering Project of the Year by the San Francisco office of the American Society of Civil Engineers. Millennium Tower has sunk almost a foot and a half and is leaning 14 inches toward neighboring high rises. Jim Wilson/The New York Times The developer and city officials knew of the buildings flaws for years, but kept them confidential until 2016, when news leaked to the public. The latest measurements, taken in December, show that the building has sunk a foot and a half and is leaning 14 inches toward neighboring high rises. It is across the street from Salesforce Tower and right next to a transit hub for buses, trains and eventually high speed rail that is being touted as the Grand Central of the West. With the Millennium Tower, San Francisco got a foretaste of what it means to have a structurally compromised skyscraper. If the city is hit by a severe earthquake, experts fear there could be many more. The area around Millennium Tower is considered among the most hazardous for earthquakes. The United States Geological Survey rates the ground there layers of mud and clay as having a very high risk of acting like quicksand during an earthquake, a process known as liquefaction. TREASURE ISLAND San Francisco Golden Gate Bridge Golden Gate Likelihood that ground will liquefy in an earthquake NORTH BEACH PRESIDIO Bay Bridge VERY HIGH FINANCIAL DISTRICT Market Street RICHMOND DISTRICT SOUTH OF MARKET Golden Gate Park Pacific Ocean San Francisco Bay MISSION DISTRICT 19th Ave. Twin Peaks SAN ANDREAS FAULT SAN FRANCISCO HUNTERS POINT 1 MILE TREASURE ISLAND San Francisco Golden Gate Bridge Golden Gate Likelihood that ground will liquefy in an earthquake NORTH BEACH PRESIDIO FINANCIAL DISTRICT Bay Bridge VERY HIGH Market Street RICHMOND DISTRICT SOUTH OF MARKET Golden Gate Park Pacific Ocean San Francisco Bay MISSION DISTRICT Twin Peaks 19th Ave. SAN ANDREAS FAULT SAN FRANCISCO HUNTERS POINT 1 MILE TREASURE ISLAND San Francisco Golden Gate Bridge Golden Gate Likelihood that ground will liquefy in an earthquake NORTH BEACH PRESIDIO FINANCIAL DISTRICT Bay Bridge VERY HIGH Market Street RICHMOND DISTRICT SOUTH OF MARKET Golden Gate Park Pacific Ocean San Francisco Bay MISSION DISTRICT Twin Peaks 19th Ave. SAN ANDREAS FAULT SAN FRANCISCO HUNTERS POINT 1 MILE Likelihood that ground will liquefy in an earthquake Golden Gate Bridge Golden Gate VERY HIGH San Francisco FINANCIAL DISTRICT PRESIDIO Bay Bridge RICHMOND DISTRICT SOUTH OF MARKET Golden Gate Park San Francisco Bay MISSION DISTRICT 19th Ave. Twin Peaks SAN FRANCISCO 1 MILE Likelihood that ground will liquefy in an earthquake VERY HIGH FINANCIAL DISTRICT SOUTH OF MARKET Golden Gate Park San Francisco Bay 19th Ave. MISSION DISTRICT SAN FRANCISCO 1 MILE Sources: California Geological Survey; United States Geological Survey; The City and County of San Francisco. TREASURE ISLAND San Francisco Golden Gate Bridge Golden Gate Likelihood that ground will liquefy in an earthquake NORTH BEACH PRESIDIO Bay Bridge VERY HIGH FINANCIAL DISTRICT Market Street Buildings taller than 240 ft. RICHMOND DISTRICT SOUTH OF MARKET Golden Gate Park Pacific Ocean San Francisco Bay MISSION DISTRICT 19th Ave. Twin Peaks SAN ANDREAS FAULT SAN FRANCISCO HUNTERS POINT 1 MILE TREASURE ISLAND San Francisco Golden Gate Bridge Golden Gate Likelihood that ground will liquefy in an earthquake NORTH BEACH PRESIDIO FINANCIAL DISTRICT Bay Bridge VERY HIGH Buildings taller than 240 ft. Market Street RICHMOND DISTRICT SOUTH OF MARKET Golden Gate Park Pacific Ocean San Francisco Bay MISSION DISTRICT Twin Peaks 19th Ave. SAN ANDREAS FAULT SAN FRANCISCO HUNTERS POINT 1 MILE TREASURE ISLAND San Francisco Golden Gate Bridge Golden Gate Likelihood that ground will liquefy in an earthquake NORTH BEACH PRESIDIO FINANCIAL DISTRICT Bay Bridge VERY HIGH Buildings taller than 240 ft. Market Street RICHMOND DISTRICT SOUTH OF MARKET Golden Gate Park Pacific Ocean San Francisco Bay MISSION DISTRICT Twin Peaks 19th Ave. SAN ANDREAS FAULT SAN FRANCISCO HUNTERS POINT 1 MILE Likelihood that ground will liquefy in an earthquake VERY HIGH FINANCIAL DISTRICT Buildings taller than 240 ft. SOUTH OF MARKET Golden Gate Park San Francisco Bay 19th Ave. MISSION DISTRICT SAN FRANCISCO 1 MILE Likelihood that ground will liquefy in an earthquake Golden Gate Bridge Golden Gate VERY HIGH San Francisco FINANCIAL DISTRICT PRESIDIO Bay Bridge Buildings taller than 240 ft. RICHMOND DISTRICT SOUTH OF MARKET Golden Gate Park San Francisco Bay MISSION DISTRICT 19th Ave. Twin Peaks SAN FRANCISCO 1 MILE Sources: California Geological Survey; United States Geological Survey; The City and County of San Francisco. At least 100 buildings taller than 240 feet were built in areas that have a very high chance of liquefaction. In light of the problems with the Millennium Tower, there are now increasing calls in California for a reassessment of earthquake risks, much of it focused on strengthening the building code. Right now the code says a structure must be engineered to have a 90 percent chance of avoiding total collapse. But many experts believe that is not enough. Ten percent of buildings will collapse, said Lucy Jones, the former leader of natural hazards research at the United States Geological Survey who is leading a campaign to make building codes in California stronger. I dont understand why thats acceptable. The code also does not specify that a building be fit for occupancy after an earthquake. Many buildings might not collapse completely, but they could be damaged beyond repair. The interior walls, the plumbing, elevators all could be wrecked or damaged. When I tell people what the current building code gives them most people are shocked, Dr. Jones said. Enough buildings will be so badly damaged that people are going to find it too hard to live in L.A. or San Francisco. In January a Southern California assemblyman, Adrin Nazarian, introduced a bill in the State Legislature that would require the building code to make new buildings strong enough for functional recovery after an earthquake. The bill passed its first hurdle, a committee hearing, last week. Driving the push to change the code is the notion that California has so much more to lose than it did in 1906. San Francisco after the 1906 earthquake. Associated Press The billions of dollars of infrastructure, headquarters of global industries and the denser, more vertical downtown make San Francisco a much more interconnected and vulnerable place. The goal of the code, say proponents of a stronger one, should be the survival of cities strengthening water systems, electrical grids and cellular networks not just individual buildings. Weve been sitting on our hands for decades about this problem, said Keith Porter, a seismic engineer at the University of Colorado, who is hoping to spur greater public participation in a debate. Dr. Porters research offers warnings on the economic consequences of a major earthquake in the San Francisco Bay Area. He has calculated that one out of every four buildings in the Bay Area might not be usable after a magnitude 7 earthquake, which although severe is not the worst the area could experience. The map below shows areas where strong ground shaking is expected during an earthquake. At least 100 so-called soft-story buildings that require mandatory retrofitting are noncompliant and most are in the area of anticipated strong shaking. TREASURE ISLAND San Francisco Golden Gate Bridge Golden Gate Areas expected to experience strong shaking in a large-magnitude earthquake. NORTH BEACH PRESIDIO Bay Bridge FINANCIAL DISTRICT Market Street Older, wood-frame multistory buildings that need to be retrofitted to comply with city regulations. RICHMOND DISTRICT SOUTH OF MARKET Golden Gate Park Pacific Ocean San Francisco Bay MISSION DISTRICT 19th Ave. Twin Peaks SAN ANDREAS FAULT SAN FRANCISCO HUNTERS POINT 1 MILE TREASURE ISLAND San Francisco Golden Gate Bridge Golden Gate Areas expected to experience strong shaking in a large-magnitude earthquake. NORTH BEACH PRESIDIO FINANCIAL DISTRICT Bay Bridge Older, wood-frame multistory buildings that need to be retrofitted to comply with city regulations. Market Street RICHMOND DISTRICT SOUTH OF MARKET Golden Gate Park Pacific Ocean San Francisco Bay MISSION DISTRICT Twin Peaks 19th Ave. SAN ANDREAS FAULT SAN FRANCISCO HUNTERS POINT 1 MILE TREASURE ISLAND San Francisco Golden Gate Bridge Golden Gate Areas expected to experience strong shaking in a large-magnitude earthquake. NORTH BEACH PRESIDIO FINANCIAL DISTRICT Bay Bridge Older, wood-frame multistory buildings that need to be retrofitted to comply with city regulations. Market Street RICHMOND DISTRICT SOUTH OF MARKET Golden Gate Park Pacific Ocean San Francisco Bay MISSION DISTRICT Twin Peaks 19th Ave. SAN ANDREAS FAULT SAN FRANCISCO HUNTERS POINT 1 MILE Areas expected to experience strong shaking in a large-magnitude earthquake. Older, wood-frame multistory buildings that need to be retrofitted to comply with city regulations. Golden Gate Bridge Golden Gate San Francisco FINANCIAL DISTRICT PRESIDIO Bay Bridge RICHMOND DISTRICT SOUTH OF MARKET Golden Gate Park San Francisco Bay MISSION DISTRICT 19th Ave. Twin Peaks SAN FRANCISCO 1 MILE Areas expected to experience strong shaking in a large-magnitude earthquake. Older, wood-frame multistory buildings that need to be retrofitted to comply with city regulations. Golden Gate Bridge San Francisco FINANCIAL DISTRICT PRESIDIO SOUTH OF MARKET San Francisco Bay Golden Gate Park 19th Ave. MISSION DISTRICT SAN FRANCISCO 1 MILE Sources: California Geological Survey; United States Geological Survey; Department of Building Inspection. Note: Soft-story noncompliant building data is updated as of April 12, 2018. Dr. Porter calculates, hypothetically, that if buildings were built to a stronger standard, only 6 percent of buildings would be unusable. Some structural engineers, however, say our modern crop of high rises are strong enough. Ron Klemencic, the chief executive of Magnusson Klemencic Associates, the company that did the structural engineering for Salesforce Tower, says he agrees that water and sewage systems need higher strength requirements, but not high rises. Buildings falling on top of other buildings thats not going to happen, Mr. Klemencic said. How much would stronger buildings cost to build? At a time when the average price of a home in San Francisco is above $1.2 million, even a marginal increase in price tag is bound to meet resistance. We are already facing the concern of extremely high cost of housing and displacement, said Brian Strong, the director of the office of resilience in San Franciscos city government. In recent years the city has been focused on other seismic dangers, including older, low-rise apartment buildings with inadequate ground floor structures that could collapse, known as soft stories. Charles Richter, the earthquake pioneer who invented the scale used to measure their power, had strong opinions about skyscrapers. Dont build them in California, he said. In the years since Mr. Richters death in 1985, construction materials have become stronger and engineering more precise. Yet Hiroo Kanamori, an emeritus professor of seismology at the California Institute of Technology who developed the earthquake magnitude scale that replaced Dr. Richters, says the vast power and mysteries of earthquakes should continue to instill a deep humility. In recent decades scientists have recorded violent ground motions that were previously thought impossible. A soon-to-be-published paper by Caltech engineers showed that an earthquake with a similar intensity of the one that struck Chichi, Taiwan in 1999 would bring down or render unusable numerous steel frame high rises in Los Angeles. People say, Dont worry about it, its an outlier, Dr. Kanamori said. This is the problem with earthquakes. By nature of the process there are a lot of unpredictable elements. The mathematical (and other) thoughts of a (now retired) math teacher, Delhi-Mumbai expressway on the cards, Govt to allocate Rs 1 lakh crore for it India oi-Vikas By Vikas In a bid to reduce travel time between Delhi and Mumbai, the Union Government is planning to construct a dedicated expressway between the two metros. The ministry of road transport and highways has said that the new expressway would be built at a cost of Rs 1 lakh crore. Union road transport minister Nitin Gadkari has also reportedly spoken about plans to build Chambal expressway that would be connected to the Delhi-Mumbai expressway. "A sum of Rs 1 lakh crore will be spent on this expressway ... Nitin Gadkari outlined major initiatives of his ministry for de-congestion of Delhi NCR. A total of ten projects are underway costing Rs 35,600 crore," the ministry of road transport and highways said in a statement. An ambitious scheme of developing Eastern and Western Peripheral Expressways around Delhi was taken up, and the Eastern Peripheral Expressway will be inaugurated by Prime Minister Narendra Modi on April 29, reported PTI. About 40,000 commercial vehicles enter Delhi on a daily basis, which causes pollution and congestion in the city-state, Gadkari, who is also holding the portfolio of water resources and Ganga rejuvenation, said in the statement. Similarly, to ease traffic in East Delhi, Delhi-Meerut Expressway was envisaged, and its Delhi-Dasna portion will also be inaugurated by the Prime Minister on the same day by a roadshow. Gadkari said work on the signal-free corridor from Dhaula Kuan to Airport has been awarded at a cost of Rs 260 crore. He said, eight-lane fully access-controlled Dwarka Expressway is being developed in four packages. While three packages have already been awarded, the work on the expressway is likely to start in a month's time. Total investment in the project is Rs 9,500 crore. Additionally, under improvement of Mahipalpur at Rangpuri, a bypass is being envisaged to connect Dwarka/ NH8, he said. Regarding development of major junctions on NH8 in Gurugram like the flyover and underpass at IFFCO Chowk, Signature Tower intersection, Rajiv Chowk and Hero Honda Chowk, the minister said the work costing Rs 1,000 crore has been substantially completed. OneIndia News with PTI inputs Dinesh Gundu Rao's wife hits out at Pratap Simha for dragging her into controversy India oi-Chennabasaveshwar By Chennabasaveshwar Tabu Rao, the wife of Congress leader Dinesh Gundu Rao, hit out at BJP MP Pratap Simha for dragging her into the controversy of derogatory remarks against Uttar Pradesh CM Yogi Adityanath. In a video clip being circulated on social media, Pratap Simha said, "In yesterday night's candlelight march in Bengaluru, all of you heard Congress leader Dinesh Gundu Rao's disgusting remarks. Mr Dinesh Gundu Rao, you said the Uttar Pradesh CM Yogi Adityanath should be hit with slippers... Instead of Yogi, if you had said the same thing about a Mullah or a Maulvi, your wife Begum Tabbu would do the same to you (hit you with slippers.)" Tabu Rao wrote on Facebook: I am deeply hurt and aggrieved by the derogatory and objectionable reference to me by the honourable MP of Mysuru, Mr Pratap Simha, in a video clip being circulated on social media and regional television networks. "If Mr Simha is anguished by a statement made by my husband Mr Dinesh Gundu Rao in his capacity as the working president of the Congress, the MP is free to join issue with him, but to drag the womenfolk of the household into the controversy smacks of cowardice. The MP's reference to me as 'Begum Tabu' only exposes his communal and narrow mindset. It is no secret that I am a Muslim and am married to a Brahmin. We have been happily married for over two decades symbolising India's unity in diversity. As the honourable MP hails from Mysuru, I would urge him to follow poet laureate Kuvempu's Vishwa Manava (Universal Brotherhood) philosophy instead of sowing the seeds of ill will in the society." However, Dinesh Gundu Rao said it was an emotional outburst over the plight of the rape victims. Rao tweeted, "My reaction to the Yogi Adityanath controversy. It was an emotional outburst in a speech on the plight of the rape victims and the complete apathy by Adityanath govt. I regret if it's offensive but the abuse of law in UP is a serious issue." 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 How poultry business has changed lives of women in Dantewada, Chhattisgarh India oi-Oneindia Staff By Oneindia Staff Raipur, April 17: Their journey to stand on their own feet started almost eight months ago. Today, a group of women in Chhattisgarh's Dantewada are earning handsomely, thanks to the poultry business they started last year. To make their business model successful, the Krishi Vigyan Kendra asked the women entrepreneurs to rear special species of black chicken, Kadaknath. Not only the Krishi Vigyan Kendra guided them in their endeavour, the centre, under the Indian Council for Agricultural Research (ICAR), financially helped the rural women to start the poultry farm. The best part is that within eight months the women from Dantewada, badly-hit by the Naxal violence, have earned Rs 3 lakh by selling at least 300 chickens. "We started this business last year in May. The Krishi Vigyan Kendra had made this farm for us. In the last eight months we have earned Rs 3 lakh by selling 300 chickens," said a woman part of rearing and selling chickens on the farm. "#Chattisgarh: Selling a rare species of black chicken, Kadaknath has changed lives of women in Dantewada, say, 'we started this business last year in May. The Krishi Vigyan Kendra had made this farm for us. In the last 8 months we have earned Rs 3 lakh by selling 300 chickens," tweeted ANI. #Chattisgarh: Selling a rare species of black chicken, Kadaknath has changed lives of women in Dantewada, say, 'we started this business last year in May. The Krishi Vigyan Kendra had made this farm for us. In the last 8 months we have earned Rs 3 lakhs by selling 300 chickens." pic.twitter.com/a9KVr53gXT ANI (@ANI) April 16, 2018 Officials of the Krishi Vigyan Kendra said that there is a lot of potential for poultry farming in the area. "The idea is to empower the women and make them financially strong. We are happy that the women are working hard and making a profit in the business. We are guiding them in their journey," added an official. Another woman, who works in the farm, said that earning money has made her confident. "Now, people in my village respect me. I also feel a sense of achievement. I want more and more women to be a part of the poultry business," she smiled. If Rahul did not make Hindu terror comment, then is this Wikileaks cable lying? India oi-Vicky Nanjappa Following the acquittal of the five accused in the Mecca Masjid blast case, the Congress was quick to defend Rahul Gandhi. The party came out in his defence and said that he had never used the term Hindu terror. Congress spokesperson P L Punia said terrorism is a criminal mentality and it cannot be linked to any religion or community. "Rahul Gandhi or the Congress party has never used the words 'saffron terror'," he told reporters when asked about the BJP's allegations. "It is mere rubbish. There is nothing called saffron terror. It is our clear belief that terror cannot be linked to any religion or any community or caste. It is a criminal mentality which leads to criminal activity and it cannot be linked to any religion or community," he told reporters. Is the Congress telling the truth? In this context, one must revisit a 2010 incident which was exposed in a Wikileaks cable. In 2010, two years after the (26/11) Mumbai terror attack, US Secretary of State Hillary Clinton was on India tour. At the lunch organised by then prime minister Manmohan Singh, US Ambassador Timothy Roemer was sitting next to Rahul Gandhi and asked the Congress leader what he thinks about the LeT." In his response, Rahul told Roemer that forget LeT, it is the Hindu terror of this country which is a bigger threat. The US envoy Roemer sent this conversation as a cable to his country. Later, that cable was leaked and published by London-based The Guardian newspaper. The US envoy even wrote that the Congress General Secretary (Rahul Gandhi) was referring to the tensions created by some of the more polarising figures in the BJP such as Gujarat chief minister Narendra Modi. Karnataka: Will Congress not allow Kumaraswamy to be CM for full 5-year term? Is it chief minister Kumaraswamy or chief manager of Congress Ktaka ATM? BJP has an answer All is well between Congress, JD(S)? Kumaraswamy meets Rahul as Karnataka waits for full cabinet Karnataka elections 2018: Mahila Empowerment Party releases 1st list India oi-Chennabasaveshwar By Chennabasaveshwar All India Mahila Empowerment Party (AIMEP) has released its first of candidates for the Karnataka Assembly Elections. The party will be fielding candidates form all the 224 constituencies. Around 5700 people had applied for the party ticket, according to the party statement. The party has distributed ticket to Dalit, Lingayat, Mulsim candidates. Four assembly seats have been reserved for farmers. Human Rights activist, entrepreneur and CEO of Heera business group Dr. Nowhera Shaik founded to All India Mahila Empowerment Party to empower women cutting across caste, religion, and regional differences. Dr. Nowhera Shaik entered politics with a star-studded mega launch of 'All India Mahila Empowerment Party (MEP) in New Delhi in November 2017. She denies reports of MEP helping the BJP and ruled out an alliance with the saffron party. 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 A government delegation led by former First Lady Nana Konadu Agyeman-Rawlings has paid its respects to anti-apartheid icon Winnie Madikizela Mandela in South Africa. The delegation, which arrived in South Africa on Wednesday, was at the Mandela House on Friday where they paid their final respects to Winnie at a memorial event where Winnies body was brought to the house where she lived with Nelson Mandela before he was incarcerated. Nelson moved into the house in Orlando in 1946. On Saturday the delegation participated in a well-attended burial service held at the Orlando Stadium in Johannesburgs Soweto Township. In tribute to the fallen hero, Nana Konadu Agyeman-Rawlings described Winnie as one who singularly embodied the catalyst for uniting people on different continents towards one cause freedom for Madhiba, freedom for South Africa. The statement added, Her undeniable sacrificial and unflinching dedication to and love for her husband, the great Madhiba Nelson Mandela, throughout his protracted incarceration, as well as children over the years will be remembered by generations to come. Nana Konadu said, Mama Winnies fearless activism will not be easily forgotten. Winnie was the bravest of the brave. She carried her defiance with quiet dignity. Her legacy will live on as it resonates with heroic stories of what true legends are made. A great and courageous beacon, warrior and queen of Africa has passed on, but the challenge to succeeding generations to reach for the aspirational goals that her exemplary life attained, in significant measure, lives on in the hearts of the sons and daughters of Africa, the former First Lady stated. The funeral drew delegations from across the globe including African American civil rights activist Reverend Jesse Jackson, Kenyas Raila Odinga who represented his country, Congolese President Denis Sassou Nguesso and Namibian President Hage Geingob. Other members of the Ghana delegation were Deputy Foreign Affairs Minister Charles Owiredu, Deputy Information Minister Ama Dokua Asiamah-Adjei and Ambassador at Large Dr. Edward Mahama. 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. Featured Video Mecca Masjid case: NIA unlikely to go in appeal India oi-Vicky Nanjappa The National Investigation Agency is unlikely to file an appeal in the Mecca Masjid blasts case. All five accused were acquitted in the case for want of evidence. The NIA continues to ponder over whether to file an appeal in the case or not. Sources in the agency say that it is unlikely they may go in appeal as the evidence in the case is very flimsy. The NIA took over the probe in 2011 after both the Andhra Pradesh police and the CBI had investigated the matter. The NIA examined over 200 witnesses while 411 documents were exhibited. Congress conspired against Swami Aseemanand to keep Muslims happy says family The case was a non-starter and relied heavily on a confessional statement given by Swami Aseemanand. He, however, retracted his statement later in court. Moreover, several witnesses turned hostile in the case. The case also had several twists and turns. When the AP police first probed the case, it had blamed the HuJi for the blasts. There are 100 youth who were taken in for questioning and 21 were charged. Following this, the case was then handed over to the CBI which claimed that a Hindu terror group was behind the blasts. In 2011, the case was handed over to the NIA which filed a charge sheet in the case. Mecca Masjid case: 'Rahul Gandhi never used the word saffron terror', says Congress India oi-Staff By Oneindia Staff Writer The Congress came out in defence of Rahul Gandhi and said that he never used the word Hindu terror. The reactions came in the aftermath of an NIA court in Hyderabad acquitting all five accused in the Mecca Masjid blasts case. Congress spokesperson P L Punia said terrorism is a criminal mentality and it cannot be linked to any religion or community. "Rahul Gandhi or the Congress party has never used the words 'saffron terror'," he told reporters when asked about the BJP's allegations. "It is mere rubbish. There is nothing called saffron terror. It is our clear belief that terror cannot be linked to any religion or any community or caste. It is a criminal mentality which leads to criminal activity and it cannot be linked to any religion or community," he told reporters. Congress president Rahul Gandhi, who is visiting his constituency Amethi, steered clear of commenting on the issue and dodged a query by reporters on the 2007 Mecca Masjid blast.Asked about the acquittal, Punia said they will assess the judgement first and then discuss it. However, in preliminary reports, it has been stated that the evidence was not provided and the confessional statement is missing along with other documents. There seems some failure on the part of the prosecution. It would be proper to talk about it later after the judgement comes," he said. Congress leader Ghulam Nabi Azad, however, raised questions on the functioning of the National Investigation Agency (NIA) in the case. "It (acquittal) is happening in each case since the government was formed four years ago...people are losing faith in the agencies," he told news channels. Former Union Home Minister Shivraj Patil said he would have to study the judgement before commenting on it. "How can I comment whether the judgment is correct or wrong until I read judgment and the charge sheet? Will need to study details of the judgment before commenting on it, former Union Minister Shivraj Patil told PTI. It is the government which has to decide whether the NIA should appeal in the higher court or not, he added. Punia said, "We believe in the judiciary. If the court says documents have been stolen or evidence has not been present, then we can raise questions that it is the failure of the prosecution." A special anti-terror court in Hyderabad today acquitted Hindutva preacher Swami Aseemanand and four others in the 2007 Mecca Masjid blast case, holding that the prosecution failed to prove "even a single allegation" against them, lawyers said. A powerful blast, triggered by remote control, had ripped through the over four centuries-old mosque here during an assembly of devotees on May 18, 2007, when they had gathered for Friday prayers, killing nine people and wounding 58. "Prosecution (NIA) could not prove even a single allegation against any of the accused and all of them stand acquitted," J P Sharma, the counsel for Assemanand, told reporters quoting special judge for NIA cases K Ravinder Reddy who delivered the verdict amid tight security. Media was barred entry in the courtroom during the pronouncement of the judgement in the high-profile case, dubbed as one of "saffron terror", a term that riled the BJP and Hindu organisations no end.Aseemanand was acquitted last year in the 2007 Ajmer Dargah terror attack. He is an accused in the 2007 Samjhauta blasts case. Mecca Masjid verdict has shaken the confidence of Muslim community: NGO India oi-Staff By Oneindia Staff Writer A Hyderabad based NGO has strongly condemned the acquittal of five persons in connection with the Mecca Masjid blast case. The Civil Liberties Monitoring Committee which has been fighting for the Muslim youth who were initially booked in the case said that the agencies were never serious about the case. Lateef Mohammed Khan, general secretary of the NGO said in a statement that even the main accused Assemanand had admitted carrying out the blast. This committee strongly believes that from day one of the Makkah Masjid blast, police and other investigative agencies are not serious, instead, they were trying maximum to divert and dilute the investigation by blaming and implicating Muslim youth in Makkah Masjid blast case. Police and investigative agencies provided much time to the criminals of the blast to escape and eliminate the clues and evidence; not only this, in this case, police actually provided protection and helped for the acquittal to the criminals of the blast, the statement also read. Also Read | Mecca Masjid blast verdict: All accused acquitted by special NIA court "It is to be noted that Assemanand in December 2010 during the investigation had admitted and confessed in front of Metropolitan Magistrate under Section 164 of the Criminal Procedure Code that he was involved with others in carrying out the blasts at Muslim places but later he became hostile. It should also be noted that the documents regarding the confessional statements were misplaced in the trial court which were very crucial evidences against the criminals. Almost all the important witnesses of this case became hostile during the trial." "Overall in this case of Makkah Masjid bomb blast, the role of Hyderabad police is unfair and biased. Moreover, people of Hyderabad are suspicious of police, because before the Makkah Masjid bomb blast the role of Hyderabad police in fake encounter killing of Sohrabuddin was in headlines. Immediately after the Makkah Masjid blast, police opened fire on the people helping the blast victims and later blamed the Muslims for the blasts. The police even implicated tens of hundreds of Muslim youth in this case and spoiled their lives. The prosecution of this case was incompetent and the in the seriousness of prosecution is so high that the police officers who were the witness in this case also became hostile. It seems that all the trial was conducted under pressure and in favour of accused." Congress conspired against Swami Aseemanand to keep Muslims happy says family "The court verdict has shaken the confidence of the Muslim community from the Judiciary. There is a sense of injustice prevailing in the community because judiciary did not apply its mind in this case and failed to provide justice. Overall, this committee terms all this procedure as a mockery of justice." Nobody bombed Mecca Masjid: Why this key is key to the probe India oi-Vicky Nanjappa In the Mecca Masjid blast case, the NIA judge shot down the arguments put out by the probe agency stating that there was evidence to prove the charges against the accused. The court acquitted five persons in the case including Swami Aseemanand. The case has been laced with twists all through and the NIA incidentally was the third agency to probe into the case. The Andhra Pradesh police in its probe report blamed the Harkat-ul Jihadi Islami to the act and said that it was aimed at causing communal tension. The CBI then took over the probe and the narrative changed. The CBI blamed a few Hindus to be behind this incident. The NIA came along in 2011 and stuck to the same theory that the CBI had come up with. 221 witnesses and 411 exhibits later, the case resulted in acquittal. As a result of this verdict, both the Hindu and Muslim theories stand demolished. This brings us to the very pertinent question as to who bombed Mecca Masjid in Hyderabad. On May 18, 2007, a powerful bomb ripped through the Masjid. At the blast site, it was found that only one of the two bombs had exploded. The unexploded IED, a red shirt and a key were recovered from the site. The items recovered became a part of the crucial evidence. Till date, it is not known what the key was meant for and who the redshirt belonged to. At first, it was believed that the key was meant to trigger the device, but forensics went on to show that there was a mismatch between the key and the explosive device. None of the probe agencies was able to establish these details through their lengthy investigation. The mystery regarding the redshirt also continues. Interestingly when the case was handed over the NIA by the CBI, the red shirt was missing. The NIA never received the shirt, an officer associated with the probe said. The shirt would have been crucial to the probe as it would have helped in DNA sampling. Experts say that these are issues when the probe changes too many hands. The narrative in the case has changed too often and this automatically weakens any case. The other issue noticed in this case was the heavy reliance on the confessional statement given by Swami Aseemanand. In his confessional statement, he had said that his decision to come clean was after meeting with one youth called Abdul Kaleem. He said that Kaleem who was in a Hyderabad jail was tortured in connection with the same case and hence he decided to spill the beans. However, Aseemanand retracted his statement citing duress to be the reason. In addition to the retraction of the confessional statement, there were many witnesses who turned hostile. At key moments witnesses turned hostile and this proved to be fatal to the case. UP B.Ed JEE Exam to be held on July 30 Priyanka Gandhi Vadra to reach Lucknow on July 16; Key meetings scheduled in Delhi before visit UP: BJP MP Sakshi Maharaj demands action against alleged 'nightclub' India oi-Madhuri BJP MP Sakshi Maharaj who courted a fresh controversy by inaugurating a 'nightclub' in Lucknow on Monday demanded action against the same. Sakshi Maharaj in a written letter to Senior Superintendent of Police (SSP) demanded action against the alleged 'nightclub' that he had 'mistakenly' inaugurated. In his letter, the BJP MP said that he had been tricked into believing he was inaugurating a restaurant. "On Sunday, a lawyer named Rajjan Singh Chauhan of my constituency Unnao took me to inaugurate a restaurant in Aliganj, Lucknow. Sumit Singh and Amit Gupta, owners of the restaurant, had requested Chouhan to get their restaurant inaugurated by me," he said in the letter. The BJP MP further said in his letter to the senior police official that his sacred image has been badly hurt by the incident. The nightclub, called Let's Meet, was inaugurated by Sakshi Maharaj reportedly on Sunday. Sakshi Maharaj is known for his controversial remarks including when he asked Hindu women to have at least four children, sparking condemnation from the Opposition which alleged that the ruling party was trying to polarise society. Yashwant Sinha writes scathing letter against Modi govt, asks BJP MPs to speak up India oi-Oneindia Staff By Oneindia Staff New Delhi, April 17: Veteran Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) leader and former Union finance minister Yashwant Sinha has once again criticised the Narendra Modi government with full force. In an open letter, published by The Indian Express on Tuesday, Sinha made a no-holds-barred attack against the ruling BJP over its various failures. Right from attacking the Modi regime over the slow growth rate in the economy, lack of job opportunities to rise in crimes against women and girls, Sinha in a way expressed the anguish of common man in his letter. Sinha wrote the open letter to basically ask his BJP colleagues to speak up to the top bosses of the party about the issues they are facing. Since long, Sinha has been criticising the Modi government over various issues beginning from demonetisation. Those who disagree with Sinha said that he is attacking the BJP government as the veteran leader did not get any ministerial berth. Regarding the accusation, Sinha said that he aspires to hold no office as he has already stopped contesting elections. Below is the open letter of Sinha published by The Indian Express: We all worked very hard for the victory of the party in the 2014 Lok Sabha elections. Some of us had been struggling against the rule of the UPA government, in Parliament and outside, ever since it assumed office in 2004 while some others were enjoying the fruits of office in their respective states. We were delighted with the results of the 2014 elections and expected that the unprecedented victory would mark the beginning of a new and glorious chapter in our country's history. We backed the prime minister and his team to the hilt, and in full faith. The government has now completed nearly four years in office, presented five budgets and used up all the opportunity available to it to show results. At the end of it, however, we seem to have lost our way and the confidence of the voters. The economic situation is grim, despite tall claims to the contrary by the government that we are the world's fastest growing economy. A fast growing economy does not accumulate the kind of non-performing assets in its banks, as we have done over the last four years. In a fast growing economy the farmers are not in distress, the youth are not without jobs, small businesses do not stand destroyed and savings and investment do not fall as drastically as they have done over the last four years. What is worse, corruption has raised its ugly head again and banking scams are tumbling out of the closet one after another. The scamsters also manage to run away from the country somehow, as the government watches helplessly. Women are more unsafe today than ever before. Rapes have become the order of the day and instead of acting strictly against the rapists we have become their apologists. In many cases, our own people are involved in these heinous crimes. The minorities are alienated. The worst is that the Scheduled Castes and Tribes, the weaker sections of our society, have been exposed to atrocities and inequities as never before and the guarantees given to them in the Constitution stand threatened. The sum total of our foreign policy seems to consist of frequent foreign visits by the prime minister and his hugging foreign dignitaries, whether they like it or not. It is completely devoid of substance and has failed miserably even in our immediate neighbourhood, where China is trampling all over our interests. The smartly executed surgical strike by our brave jawans against Pakistan has been wasted and Pakistan continues to export terror to India unabated as we watch helplessly. Jammu and Kashmir continues to burn, Left wing extremism refuses to be tamed, and the common man is suffering as never before. Internal democracy in the party stands completely destroyed. Friends tell me that even in parliamentary party meetings, MPs do not get an opportunity, as in the past, to air their views. In the other party meetings, also, the communication is always one-way. They speak and you listen. The prime minister has no time for you. The party headquarter has become a corporate office where it is impossible to meet the CEO. The most important threat that has emerged over the last four years, however, is to our democracy. Institutions of democracy have been demeaned and denigrated. Parliament has been reduced to the level of a joke. The prime minister did not even once sit down with senior leaders of the Opposition parties in Parliament when the just-concluded Budget Session was being disrupted in order to find a way out. Then he fasted to shift the blame to others. The first part of the most important Budget Session was the shortest ever. I compare this to the days of Atal Bihari Vajpayee when all of us were under strict instructions to accommodate the Opposition and ensure that Parliament functioned. So we had adjournment motions, no-confidence motions and other discussions under any rule the Opposition wanted. The press conference by four senior-most judges of the Supreme Court was unprecedented in the annals of our democratic history. It brought out clearly the rot that has been allowed to afflict the highest judicial institution of our country. The judges have repeatedly pointed out that democracy in our country is under threat. Today, it appears as if winning elections by controlling the means of communication, specially the media and social media, is the sole purpose of our party and even that is threatened seriously now. I do not know how many of you will get the ticket for the next Lok Sabha elections but if previous experience is any guide, half of you at least will not. The chances of your winning the election, even if you get the ticket are fairly remote. In the last Lok Sabha election the BJP had secured only 31 per cent votes; 69 per cent was polled against it. So, if the opposition unites, you will be nowhere. The situation demands that you speak up in the national interest. I am glad to note that at least five Scheduled Caste MPs of the party have expressed their disenchantment with the government for not delivering on the promises made to the community. I am urging you to also express your opinion frankly before the bosses on all issues confronting us. If you remain silent now you will do a great disservice to the country. Future generations are unlikely to forgive you. It is your right to demand accountability from those who are in government today and are letting down the country. The interest of the country supersedes that of the party, just as the interest of the party supersedes the interest of an individual. I am appealing specially to Advaniji and Joshiji to take a stand in the national interest and ensure that the values they have made such unparalleled sacrifices to uphold are protected and preserved for future generations and corrective steps are taken in time. There have been some minor successes no doubt, but the big failures overshadow them completely. I hope you will give serious consideration to the issues I have raised in this letter. Please pick up courage, and speak up and save democracy and the country. Kulbhushan Jadhav case: India files second round of written reply in the ICJ International oi-PTI India today filed a fresh set of pleadings in the International Court of Justice (ICJ) relating to the case of its national Kulbhushan Jadhav, who was sentenced to death by a Pakistani military court in April last year on charges of espionage and terrorism. The second round of written reply by India in the case was in response to the submissions by Pakistan in the ICJ on December 13 last year, the Ministry of External Affairs (MEA)said. India had moved The Hague-based ICJ in May last after Jadhav, 47, was sentenced to death by a Pakistani military court on charges of espionage and terrorism. A 10-member bench of the ICJ on May 18 had restrained Pakistan from executing Jadhav till adjudication of the case. "In keeping with the Order of the International Court of Justice of 17 Janaury 2018, India today submitted its reply in the court in the case of Kulbhushan Jadhav," the MEA said. It said India remains committed to make all possible efforts to "secure and protect" the rights of Jadhav. India had moved The Hague-based ICJ in May last after Jadhav, 47, was sentenced to death by a Pakistani military court on charges of espionage and terrorism. A 10-member bench of the ICJ on May 18 had restrained Pakistan from executing Jadhav till adjudication of the case. " In keeping with the Order of the International Court of Justice of 17 Janaury 2018, India today submitted its reply in the court in the case of Kulbhushan Jadhav," the MEA said. It said India remains committed to make all possible efforts to "secure and protect" the rights of Jadhav. Following an order by the ICJ, India had filed its written pleadings in the case on September 13, 2017 and Pakistan submitted its "counter memorial" on December 13 last. "Today, India filed its Reply to Pakistan's submissions to the court. Pakistan has been given time till July 17 by the court to file its response (Rejoinder)," the MEA said. India has been maintaining that the trial of Jadhav by a military court in Pakistan was "farcical". In its statement today, the MEA reiterated this stand. Pakistan claims that its security forces arrested Jadhav from restive Balochistan province on March 3, 2016 after he reportedly entered from Iran. However, India maintains that Jadhav was kidnapped from Iran where he had business interests after retiring from the Navy. Jadhav's sentencing had evoked a sharp reaction in India. India had approached the ICJ for "egregious" violation of the provisions of the Vienna Convention on Consular Relations, 1963, by Pakistan in Jadhav's case. Pakistan has repeatedly denied India consular access to Jadhav on the grounds that it was not applicable in cases related to spies. For Breaking News and Instant Updates Allow Notifications Story first published: Tuesday, April 17, 2018, 22:11 [IST] Nepal has highest employment rate in South Asia, says its media citing WB report International oi-Shubham By Shubham Nepal has bagged the top slot in terms of job creation in South Asia with an employment rate of around 68 per cent, the Kathmandu Post has cited a recent report by the World Bank as saying. According to the Post, 32 per cent of the Himalayan country's working-age population (between 15 and 64) is either unemployed or voluntarily inactive and the figure is the lowest in the region which has a top performing economy like India. "This has made Nepal an exception, as its employment rate is higher than that of many other countries with a similar income level, says the latest World Bank report, 'Jobless Growth?'," the Post report said. The World Bank's report was released on Monday, April 16. The report also added that Nepal needs to create at least 2,86,900 jobs a year to maintain its good employment record. As per an economic survey by the government of Nepal, the country's labour market witnesses entry of at least 5,12,000 youth every year and because of limited opportunities, most of them find jobs abroad like in Malaysia and Gulf. However, the migration has gone down over the last couple of years and that has made it imperative for Nepal to create more opportunities at home, the Post reported. It said more than 42,000 people belonging to the working-age class joined the market each month in the last financial year and the number is set to increase, suggesting a reduced dependency ratio. Dependency ratio means the number of dependents (aged between zero to 14 and above 64) vis-a-vis the working population. Dependency ratio has fallen in entire South Asia from 63 per cent in 2005 to 55 per cent in 2015, the report added, saying it is expected to decline to go down to 50 per cent by 2025. This means the South Asian countries, including Nepal, have an opportunity to see a faster economic growth since more people would be working, the World Bank report said. New Russia sanctions: Haley says yes but Trump says no International oi-Shubham By Shubham US President Donald Trump did it again. Just when his national security team put up a determined will to teach Russia a lesson by imposing a fresh round of sanctions for supporting the Syrian regime's alleged use of chemical weapons against its own people a couple of weeks ago, the president himself trashed the idea, at least for the time being. On Sunday, April 15, US Ambassador to the United Nations Nikki Haley said that Washington would put a fresh round of sanctions on Russian companies who were found to be assisting the action of President Bashar al Assad. In an interview to a news channel, Haley said the act of making chemical weapons a part of our everyday life couldn't go on. However, soon after, the White House took a different stand on the matter, saying on Monday, April 17, that Trump was not approving additional sanctions against Russia. White House Press Secretary Sarah Sanders said in a statement that Washington was considering additional sanctions and the decision would be made "in the near future". Sanders also told the press aboard Air Force One that the president was firm on taking a tough stand on Russia but at the same time, he was in favour of having a good relationship with Russia. Other sources in the White House said on the condition of anonymity that Trump was against imposing fresh sanctions for he deemed them unnecessary after Russia came back with almost no response after the missile strikes that were conducted on Syria on April 14, NYT said. The conduct of the American establishment left the observers amused. Haley has been a harsh critic of Russia throughout, sometimes even eclipsing Trump who has projected himself more as a frenemy of Russian President Vladimir Putin than an enemy. Stephen Sestanovich, a scholar at the Council on Foreign Relations and Columbia University who also served as ambassador to former Soviet states in the 1990s, summed up the American policy inconsistency aptly. According to a report in New York Times, Sestanovich opined that Trump accepted his officials' advice on even days and rejected it on odd days, thinking it made up a strategy. "By and large, other governments don't know whether to laugh or cry at all this," he said, adding: "But in Russia, laughter is getting the upper hand," the NYT reported. USA's horrendous inconsistency Washington's policy on Russia has never been so horribly inconsistent as it has been in the Trump era. While the president, on one hand, congratulated Putin after the latter's re-election as the president of Russia and also harboured the thought of hosting him over a summit in the US; he also took the step of expelling scores of Russian diplomats from the US and closing down a Russian consulate in the wake of the Sergei Skripals case in the UK and threatened Moscow with missile strikes in Syria after the alleged chemical weapons attack in Douma in Damascus suburbs. The NYT report also said that Trump was displeased with Haley's remarks about imposing sanctions on Russia and his decision left the ambassador's credibility and the USA's global authority at stake. As a senior Democrat leader said, Trump was "out of step with the American people" and it certainly holds true. The American president is such a self-obsessed individual that he has zero acceptance of a teamwork and depends on his personal whims and fancies even when it comes to taking a serious call on matters of utmost significance. Trump allows his own viewpoints - logical or illogical - shape his administration's decisions and that is a risky game by all means. Trump, through his hasty steps, has reduced his own country's officials stationed across the world into a butt of the joke and it doesn't reflect well on the reputation of the world's only superpower. No wonder the world is witnessing a more vivid transition towards multi-polarity with America's sad decline. The Criminal Investigations Department (CID) of the Ghana Police Service has granted police enquiry bail to some former ministers in the erstwhile National Democratic Congress (NDC) government and Members of Parliament (MPs), who have been caught in an alleged double-salary scandal. The formal arrest and the grant of bail are said to have started last Thursday when some of the appointees honoured the CID invitation. It is unclear the number of the former appointees who honoured the police invitation, but Emmanuel Armah-Kofi Buah, MP for Ellembelle and Nii Laryea Afotey Agbo, MP for Kpone Katamanso, are said to have been interrogated by the police. More of the appointees are expected at the Financial Forensic Unit at the CID headquarters this week, with Inusah Fuseini who served as Minister of Roads and Highways under President Mahama indicating during a number of radio interviews that he is reporting today. As at press time yesterday, another NDC MP, whose name could not be disclosed, was said to have arrived at the CID office to be interrogated. A certain Bashir Fuseini Alhassan, who is believed to be ABA Fuseini, NDC MP for Sagnerigu and former deputy minister for the Northern Region, was also there last week and was made to write a statement before being admitted to bail. All those who have been to the CID headquarters and are said to be technically under arrest were made to write statements before they were granted bail. They all honoured the invitations with their lawyers. According to sources, the police had already written to the accounts department of parliament for more information concerning the double salary saga. The affected people have also been asked to submit their bank statements. Frantic Efforts Over the weekend, some of the former NDC appointees being investigated were said to be making frantic efforts to submit their bank statements to the CID. It emerged that a number of them sent their bank statements for scrutiny by the CID, despite the claim by top-notch members of the party that the move to investigate them was a case of political witch-hunt. Anomaly Detection DAILY GUIDE learnt that some of the former ministers cum MPs, who allegedly drew salaries as MPs and ministers of state, detected the double salary anomaly and notified the authorities for the right thing to be done. However, it is unclear whether the monies that had already been credited to the accounts of such people were returned to chest. Bernard Allotey Jacobs, NDC Central Regional Chairman, who conceded that some of the ex-ministers who were MPs actually received double salaries, said they were ready to use their ex-gratia to offset them. Its not clear if they had ever been paid double from 2013 to 2016 as being alleged. In all, about 48 names are on the list spanning five years from 2012. Inside Job Mr Bagbin, the second deputy speaker of parliament and NDC MP for Nadowli/Kaleo, has already confirmed that he had been contacted by the CID. On his Twitter handle on Wednesday, April 11 after the minoritys press conference Mr Bagbin alleged that some selfish individuals who want to lead the opposition party might have leaked the names to the CID. If anybody thinks that leaking our names to the police CID thwarts our chances and advances their selfish claim to leadership in our party, then my brother, think again because when we go down, we go down together. A word to the wise, according to the tweet. Haruna Iddrisu had also been contacted and is likely to meet the CID on Thursday, April 19, having told the police that he was out of the country. Specific Charge The police have said that the alleged double salary saga is contrary to Section 124 (1) of the Criminal and other Offences Act 1960 (Act 29) as amended in 2012 (Act 849). Section 124 relates to the offence of stealing. The list appears to show that a good number of the ministers, who served under former President John Mahama, took double salaries for four years, whilst others received double salaries for two and three years, probably because they were reshuffled. Salary Permutation In 2012, four of the ministers, who reportedly took double salaries, are currently not serving in parliament, but by 2013 the double salaried appointees had increased to 22 while in 2014 about 18 were said to have been involved. For 2015 and 2016, 15 and 12 appointees purportedly took double salaries respectively. This list showed that the appointees received double salaries at least once a month, whilst others received them monthly throughout the years. Clear Target In the ensuing heat, one of the affected MPs, Inusah Fuseini, said on Peace FM yesterday that the NPP government was targeting them, saying, There is some level of criminal targeting of former appointees. It appears that the value of fairness, equity and justice is not being followed. If a public servant has been given a double salary, they are not reported to CID. The person is called to refund the money and if that is not done, that is when you report the person to an investigative authority. But this was not done why the discrimination? 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. Featured Video Our resolve is to transform India, says PM Modi in Sweden International oi-Deepika By Deepika In his address to Indian Diaspora in Sweden, Prime Minister Narendra Modi on Tuesday said that India's image is rising globally. "I want to thank his majesty King of Sweden, the Prime Minister & the people who of Sweden for welcoming me and my delegation with so much of warmness," he said. "Language can be different, circumstances varied, but there is one thing that binds is all- and that is of being Indian. Whether it be Africa or the small countries of a Pacific Ocean, or ASEAN, Europe or Asian countries, all of them view India as a trustworthy friend," he added. PM Modi further said that now empowerment is a tool for poverty-stricken women. "There used to just slogans about Garibi Hatao. Now, empowerment is a tool especially for women who have been poverty stricken," says Modi. Speaking of the success of his government's Ujjwala scheme, PM says, "Many of you left India years ago. You might recall, one had to wait for days for LPG gas cylinder. Now suppliers call and ask 'can we deliver a cylinder'". Harping on his "New India" vision, PM Modi says his government would transform India. "All these programmes (brought by the government) are not reforms. This is transformation. This is our promise. We will transform India. The road ahead is long but we have our destination in sight and determination in heart," he said. US bill proposes permanent residency for a fee, Indians likely to benefit US to lift travel bans for fully vaccinated individuals from November: Check details Will review comprehensive global strategic partnership with Biden says PM Modi ahead of US visit Prison clashes in South Carolina leaves 7 inmates dead; 17 injured International oi-Shubham By Shubham Seven inmates were killed while at least 17 were seriously wounded on Sunday, April 15, after fights broke out between the prisoners inside a high-security jail in South Carolina. Spokesperson of the prison Jeff Taillon informed about the tragedy after the State Law Enforcement Division personnel helped in securing Lee Correctional Institution in Bishopville, Lee County, in the wee hours of Monday. Taillon said although no officer was injured in the fighting - considered one of the deadliest in the history of US prison incidents in recent years, the injured were administered medical treatment outside the institute. According to a local newspaper in South Carolina, the victims of the riot deemed a "nuisance" to two other prisoners who killed them. The fighting was described as "multiple inmate-on-inmate altercations". The correctional institution was opened in 1993 and it houses 1,500 offenders - all male who include some of the most violent offenders of the state. Two months ago, the correctional house made the headlines after one of its inmates killed another. The year 2017 saw the number of instances of inmates assaulting prison employees at 37, much higher than 21 recorded in 2015. That year, two officers were stabbed in a brawl. The Bishopville correctional institution has in fact seen the most number of deaths than any prison in South Carolina in the recent years. Riots in Sweden after Quran burning by far-right activists: All you need to know India, Sweden vow to strengthen defence cooperation, says PM Modi International oi-Deepika By Deepika India and Sweden today decided to strengthen their defence and security cooperation, and agreed on an innovation partnership for a 'win-win" outcome as Prime Minister Narendra Modi held talks with his Swedish counterpart. In a joint press statement after his talks with Swedish Prime Minister Stefan Lofven, Modi said they focused on how Sweden can help India in its development journey. The two sides have agreed an innovation partnership and a Joint Action Plan, the Prime Minister said. "I would like to commend the Indian govt and its strong focus on innovation as a key to progress and prosperity", Swedish PM Stefan Lofven said. He lauded India as "global power" and said the two countries are a "perfect match". This is my first visit to Sweden and a visit by an Indian PM after a gap of nearly 30 years. Sweden has been a strong contributor in India's Make in India campaign. Swedish PM led a big delegation to the Mumbai summit in 2016, said PM Modi. Meanwhile, India and Sweden have agreed to strengthen defence and security cooperation, reports PTI news agency. Earlier in the day, Prime Minister Narendra Modi had a "productive exchange" of views on bilateral and regional issues with his Swedish counterpart Stefan Lofven and called on Swedish King Carl XVI Gustaf. He called on King Gustaf and exchanged views on strengthening bilateral cooperation across several sectors. Modi arrived here in the capital of Sweden, the first bilateral visit by an Indian premier to the Nordic nation in 30 years. Modi is here on the first leg of his five-day foreign tour which will also take him to the UK where he will attend the Commonwealth Heads of Government Meeting (CHOGM). Ahead of his visit, Modi said in New Delhi that he was looking forward to deepening bilateral engagement with both countries in a number of areas including trade, investment and clean energy. India and Sweden will also jointly organise the India-Nordic Summit in Stockholm today. The summit will also be attended by the prime ministers of Finland, Norway, Denmark and Iceland. From Sweden, Modi will tonight travel to the UK where he will attend the CHOGM, besides holding bilateral talks with his British counterpart Theresa May. Theresa May wants better trade relations with Commonwealth for post-Brexit days International oi-Shubham By Shubham Britain's Prime Minister Theresa May on Monday, April 16, praised the idea of free trade among the members of the Commonwealth in a bid to see new sources of business as the country was looking to finalise its separation from European Union (EU), its current and biggest trading partner. The UK is set to formally separate itself from the EU on March 29, 2019. The Commonwealth Heads of Government Meeting 2018 started in London on Monday and will continue till April 20. May is looking to ensure support of the Commonwealth, a network of countries that were mostly colonies of Britain in the past for her country's future trade deals and drive home the point that the future of Britain is bright after it exits the EU. The Commonwealth is not a formal trading block and till recently, accounted for only nine per cent of British exports. In contrast, the EU voted for around 44 per cent of the British exports. Britain voted in favour of an exit from the EU in a referendum held in June 2016. Addressing the inauguration of a Commonwealth business forum, May sought the use of common standards across the network which features 53 countries saying protectionism posed a threat to the world economy. She batted for the Commonwealth saying it could set up a powerful example underlining the importance of free trade and an international order based on rules. She said freer and easier trade meant stronger economies, more jobs, more choice and all at lower prices. Britain has also been seeking trade deals with India, one of the fastest growing economies in the Commonwealth though the latter said it was in no rush to ink such an agreement and that the UK should be more open to Indian immigrants if it was really looking forward to a free trade deal. Colombia Hoy Para nunca olvidar Paginas vistas en total 'Parasite' painted on a statue of Queen, Elizabeth in Kent, England Sin palabras La UE le apunta a la paz Cada vez mas solo Precio del Brent To get the BRENT oil price, please enable Javascript. Precio del WTI To get the oil price, please enable Javascript. Dolar USA Vs Euro Precio del Oro To get the gold price, please enable Javascript. LULA y su Pueblo Bye Bye Homenaje al genial Quino Fueron ellos Una imagen que resume Tan bajo ha caido que se deja tocar el trasero? Porky y el Nene (archiconocido narcotraficante) Ladrones al poder Asi mira el perrito a su amo Crazy Clamor popular La nueva inquisicion Bolivia Chile Hoy Eso es todo amigos! Piensalo! Pinerachet No More Trump Adios Macri, hasta nunca La Marioneta se desinfla Asi o mas cinico Almugre Mexico en 1794 Mas arrastrado imposible Hasta cuando! La pura verdad Solidaridad con Palestina Serie Capitalismo Espejismos de la clase trabajadora Asi es! Comerciantes o delincuentes No pasaran! Asi es la vida USA HOY 01/01/1959 La avaricia no tiene limites AYUDA HUMANITARIA? Chile Hoy Asi son las cosas Mapa Electoral de Venezuela Patagonia argentina? Un aniversario mas del mayor genocidio de la Humanidad Retrato del franquismo en Espana Visca Catalunya! El Chulo de Madrid Cuando la policia se roba la democracia Una imagen dice mas que mil palabras La purita verdad Asi gobierna la maldita burguesia Mi pobre clase media Como Chavez nadie Comparte La Colmena via twitter Twittear Programa de la MUD Asi o mas clarito Por que Trump no ataco Corea del Norte? Hace 15 anos Por que la OEA no se pronuncio? Una verguenza nacional La luz que nos guia La Union Europea Premio Nobel de la Paz? Feudalismo ayer y hoy Obama, el mentiroso Curiosa coincidencia Un mundo de cerdos No es extrano? La Marioneta Los ricos protestan, los pobres celebran MARICORI Y OBAMA Cuantas muertes este ano? USA TODAY USA HOY 6 USA HOY 5 USA HOY 4 USA HOY 3 USA HOY 2 USA HOY (1) Insaciable Cronologia de un agresor Guarimbear en USA Mexico hoy Bolivar y Chavez Primero Amargado Dios los cria y ellos se juntan USA hoy (III) USA hoy (II) USA hoy Mexico hoy Mexico hoy Mexico hoy Obama La verdad sea dicha Los ricos Que no nos vea Obama Pobre Obama SOS PALESTINA VICMAN VICMAN VICMAN VICMAN VICMAN VICMAN VICMAN VICMAN VICMAN VICMAN VICMAN VICMAN VICMAN VICMAN VICMAN VICMAN VICMAN VICMAN VICMAN VICMAN VICMAN VICMAN VICMAN VICMAN VICMAN VICMAN VICMAN VICMAN VICMAN VICMAN VICMAN VICMAN Archivo del blog Archivo del blog marzo (4) abril (9) mayo (8) junio (10) julio (11) agosto (10) septiembre (17) octubre (11) noviembre (15) diciembre (10) enero (9) febrero (10) marzo (8) abril (5) mayo (6) junio (8) julio (13) agosto (10) septiembre (7) octubre (12) noviembre (8) diciembre (15) enero (17) febrero (11) marzo (11) abril (12) junio (6) julio (11) agosto (15) septiembre (5) octubre (15) noviembre (14) diciembre (11) enero (13) febrero (9) marzo (10) abril (8) mayo (7) junio (12) julio (12) agosto (8) septiembre (8) octubre (4) diciembre (8) enero (35) febrero (20) marzo (29) abril (19) mayo (21) junio (27) julio (21) agosto (28) septiembre (40) octubre (47) noviembre (21) diciembre (34) enero (62) febrero (81) marzo (117) abril (141) mayo (114) junio (111) julio (126) agosto (98) septiembre (160) octubre (234) noviembre (493) diciembre (319) enero (219) febrero (267) marzo (230) abril (291) mayo (347) junio (223) julio (179) agosto (191) septiembre (239) octubre (350) noviembre (406) diciembre (353) enero (284) febrero (202) marzo (274) abril (250) mayo (232) junio (251) julio (188) agosto (249) septiembre (230) octubre (178) noviembre (141) diciembre (164) enero (187) febrero (147) marzo (211) abril (190) mayo (199) junio (164) julio (162) agosto (174) septiembre (182) octubre (225) noviembre (114) diciembre (132) enero (223) febrero (147) marzo (133) abril (108) mayo (387) junio (465) julio (785) agosto (748) septiembre (485) octubre (681) noviembre (754) diciembre (805) enero (708) febrero (896) marzo (735) abril (831) mayo (723) junio (555) julio (658) agosto (619) septiembre (457) octubre (455) noviembre (295) diciembre (269) enero (534) febrero (556) marzo (205) abril (119) mayo (194) junio (255) julio (294) agosto (182) septiembre (207) octubre (340) noviembre (351) diciembre (281) enero (114) febrero (128) marzo (216) abril (195) mayo (116) junio (141) julio (182) agosto (181) septiembre (50) octubre (72) noviembre (104) diciembre (88) enero (168) febrero (102) marzo (151) abril (207) mayo (43) junio (72) julio (35) agosto (146) septiembre (54) octubre (2) Chavez Cuanto te queremos! Por culpa de Chavez Cerveza Polar Algun dia Colombia volvera a la ideologia de Bolivar Translate LOS REVOLUCIONARIOS NO TOMAN CACA-COLA No se trata solamente de un capricho, sino de una sana actitud en todos los sentidos. Desde la solidaridad con el pueblo colombiano donde la empresa Caca-Cola ha cometido los mas grandes abusos contra sus trabajadores incluyendo el presunto secuestro y asesinato de los dirigentes del sindicato, hasta la proteccion de la salud de nuestros hijos, enviciados por ese jarabe de cola y azucar, que les produce obesidad prematura. Pensemos tambien los revolucionarios, que ese dinero que gastamos en los refrescos es utilizado por esas empresas para financiar el terrorismo en nuestro pais. Es cierto, no se trata solo de la Caca-Cola, sino tambien de la cerveza, de los cigarrillos y todos esos articulos innecesarios y mas que eso, daninos para nuestra salud. Podriamos incluso pensar en un dia de parada para cada uno de ellos. Es cuestion de irnos organizando. Pero para empezar, que tal si dejamos de comprar Caca-Cola y sus similares? Cuando lo extraordinario se vuelve cotidiano... Discurso del Acto de Grado en Barinas en 12 de Febrero del 2005 Queridos Graduandos: Mas que un discurso, quiero dirigirles algunas palabras que escribi anoche, despues de visitar en las clinicas, a los estudiantes heridos, a consecuencia de los enfrentamientos con la policia de hace apenas dos dias. Me ha tocado por razones del destino, ser la persona que les otorgue el titulo que bien merecieron con sus estudios. Y me siento sumamente orgulloso de serlo. Me consta que la Universidad de Los Llanos Occidentales Ezequiel Zamora, a pesar de lo dicho por los enemigos de esta universidad, es una universidad de primera. No tendremos la mejor planta fisica, en los salones hace calor. En el comedor hace calor. Pero no es en lo material que las cosas deben valorarse. El mayor capital es el ser humano. Y en eso, nuestra UNELLEZ, lo digo con conocimiento de causa, esta sobrada. Los llaneros venezolanos son nobles, valientes, de coraje. En la UNELLEZ hacen vida, en este momento, aproximadamente 67000 personas. El 97% de ellas son estudiantes. Jovenes que, como Ustedes hasta el dia de hoy, buscan ese titulo, que constata los anos de dedicacion y de estudio. Los jovenes son el rio de la vida, ustedes graduados deben ser los capitanes de esos barcos que naveguen por el rio de la vida. Nuestra Patria atraviesa momentos muy dificiles porque decidio dejar de ser esa matrona de edad vetusta y complaciente, para ser joven, rebelde y altanera. Nuestra imagen ya no es la de una acaudalada ricachona mayamera. En nuestro rostro brilla ahora la sonrisa del Che Guevara, con su diente delantero torcido, su pelo largo y su boina con la estrella. Entender esto, a mi me ha tomado practicamente toda la vida. Tengo 53 anos, y ya perdi mi oportunidad de derramar sangre joven a causa de un ideal. Ustedes son jovenes, estan en la flor de la vida. No cometan por favor el error de renunciar a su instinto de rebelion. El Che Guevara fue Ministro de a Economia en Cuba. Los billetes y las monedas se adornaban con su rostro. Nada de eso le importo. Primero fue a Angola donde paso un penoso ano de combate. Despues se fue a Bolivia, donde encontro la muerte. El Che era el ultimo que comia, el que cargaba la mochila mas pesada. Siempre se sacrificaba por los demas en un estoicismo que mas parecia fervor religioso que ideologia marxista. Si quieren un modelo de vida. Ahi lo tienen. Dije hace unos momentos que el 97% de la poblacion de la UNELLEZ es estudiante. Se imaginan Ustedes la Universidad que podriamos tener si todos los estudiantes tuvieran la abnegacion, la combatividad del Che? Los momentos que se avecinan van a requerir de una gran unidad del pueblo venezolano. La alternativa de continuar siendo libres o regresar a la pobreza se nos planteara en los proximos dias de forma enmascarada, o quizas peor, desenmascarada, vestida con uniforme de soldado del Imperio. Por nuestra parte podemos esperar lo mejor. La macroeconomia no podria ir mejor, la justicia social ha mejorado notablemente. Las misiones ocupan un papel muy importante en el pago de dicha justicia social. Aqui en Barinas ya hemos cumplido con dos de las misiones, la mision Robinson y la mision Sucre. No hay analfabetismo y no hay exclusion en la educacion superior, en estas tierras de Zamora. Pero ay malhaya! Son precisamente estos exitos los que nos hacen mas antipaticos al Imperio. Para ellos, somos inclusive un mal ejemplo que se esta contagiando al resto del continente y cuidado sino al resto del mundo. Nunca venceremos al Imperio. Estara siempre ahi, acechando. Por lo menos hasta que el mismo no se autodestruya. Porque, sepanlo senores, el neoliberalismo es canibal. Cuando le ataque el hambre, se devorara a si mismo. Ustedes, queridos graduandos, a partir de hoy pasan a conformar la elite profesional que debe sostener este pais en los proximos cuarenta o cincuenta anos. Anos decisivos para el logro de nuestra libertad y del rescate de nuestra Soberania. No se dejen comprar. No se dejen corromper. No se dejen gritar. No se dejen pisar. Que nadie les diga que comer, o que vestirse, o que leer. Sean siempre autenticos, rebeldes, contestatarios. Pero eso si, profundamente patriotas, dignos de ser hijos de Bolivar. Muchas gracias y que Dios los bendiga. Alguna duda? Medio siglo de Holocausto Palestino Oscar Zanartu Nacio en Caracas en 1960. Ha realizado exposiciones individuales en las galerias Minotauro, Clave y San Francisco, y en salas de Coro, estado Falcon, y Puerto Ordaz, estado Bolivar. En Paris su obra ha sido exhibida en el Centro Cultural Tanagra, en la Exposicion Cite Internationale des Arts, en las galerias De Mars y Arver Space, al igual que en la Galeria Municipal Levallois, en Levallois Perret (Francia). En muestras colectivas, su obra se ha expuesto en Belgica, Francia, Estados Unidos y Venezuela; en Caracas intervino en la exposicion "Del genesis a la memoria", 1995, organizada por la Fundacion La Previsora. En 1982 obtuvo el Premio Nacional Critven y en 1990 la Mencion de Honor Jose Antonio Paez, en la Embajada de Venezuela en Paris. En 1991 se le concedio el primer premio de Pintura Itinerante, en Levallois Perret, Francia. OZ1 OZ2 OZ3 OZ4 Homenaje a Jason Galarraga La Victoria de Samotracia Odalisca Mas fotos de la nevada del pasado agosto 2008 La Sierra Nevada de Merida Nuestro precioso Churum Meru Homenaje a Picasso Autoretrato Sabes lo que bebes en una Coca-Cola? La formula de la Pepsi tiene una diferencia basica con la de la Coca-Cola y es intencional, para evitar el proceso judicial. La diferencia es a proposito, pero suficientemente parecida como para atraer a los consumidores de Coca-Cola que prefieren un gusto diferente con menos sal y azucar. Mi profesion? Tuve que aprender quimica, entender todo sobre componentes de gaseosas, conservantes, sales, acidos, cafeina, enlatado, produccion, permisos, aprobaciones y muchas otras cosas. Monte mi propio mini-laboratorio de analisis de productos. Sal en la Coca Cola? A patadas. El Cloruro de Sodio no solo refresca sino da mas sed, como para pedir otra gaseosa. Y no resulta desagradable porque la sal mata literalmente la sensibilidad al dulce... del que por cierto tambien tiene mucho: 39 gramos de azucar. De los 350 gramos de producto liquido, mas del 10% es azucar, o sea que en una lata de Coca-Cola mas de un centimetro y medio es puro azucar en polvo. Aproximadamente tres cucharadas soperas llenas de azucar por lata!!La formula de la Coca Cola es muy sencilla: Concentrado de azucar quemado caramelo- para dar color oscuro y gusto Acido fosforito (para darle el sabor acido) azucar (HFCS-jarabe de maiz de alta fructosa) Extracto de hojas de la planta de Coca (Africa e India) y otros pocos aromatizantes naturales de otras plantas Mucha Cafeina Conservante que puede ser Benzoato de Sodio o Potasio Dioxido de Carbono en cantidad para sentir freir la lengua cuando se bebe Sal para dar la sensacion de refrigeracion El uso del acido fosforito y no del acido citrico como en todas las demas gaseosas, es para dar la sensacion de dientes y boca limpia al beber. El acido fosforito literalmente frie todo y dana el esmalte de los dientes, cosa que el acido citrico lo hace en menor grado.Trate de comprar acido fosforito para ver las mil recomendaciones de seguridad que te dan para su manipulacion (quema el cristalino del ojo, quema la piel, etc...). Esta prohibido usar el acido fosforito en cualquier otra gaseosa; solo la Coca Cola tiene permiso. Porque claro, sin el acido fosforico, la Coca Cola sabria a jabon.El extracto de coca y otras hojas casi no cambia en nada el sabor. Es mas bien un efecto cosmetico. El extracto forma parte de la Coca-Cola porque legalmente tiene que ser asi. Pero sin el, no se nota ninguna diferencia en el gusto, que esta dado basicamente por las cantidades diferentes de azucar, azucar quemada, sales, acidos y conservantes.Sabor a que...? ja, ja, ja. Aqui en Bartow, sur de Orlando, hay una empresa quimica que produce aromatizantes y esencias para zumos. Envian diariamente camionadas de sales concentradas y esencias para las fabricas de helados, gaseosas, jugos, enlatados y comida colorida y aromatizada.Cuando visite por primera vez la fabrica, pedi ver el deposito de concentrados de frutas, que deberia ser inmenso, especialmente los de naranja, pina, fresa y tantos otros. El encargado me miro, se rio y me llevo a visitar los depositos inmensos... pero de colorantes y componentes quimicos. Las gaseosa de naranja no contiene naranja. En los zumos dizque de fresa, hasta los puntitos que quedan en suspension estan hechos de goma (una liga quimica que envuelve un semi-polimero). Pina, es un popurri de acidos y goma. La esencia para helado de aguacate usa peroxido de hidrogeno (agua oxigenada) para dar la sensacion espumosa tipica del aguacate. Bebidas Light? Quieres saber la cantidad de basura que tiene un refresco 'light'? Yo ni siquiera los uso para destapar mi lavaplatos pues temo que danen los tubos de PVC. Los productos endulzantes 'ligth' tienen una vida media muy corta. Por ejemplo el Despues de toda mi experiencia con la produccion de bebidas embasadas, puedo afirmar sin dudar un segundo: la mejor bebida es el agua, como tambien los jugos exprimidos de naranja o limon. Nada mas, cero azucar y cero sal. Publicado por loretahur En realidad, la formula secreta de la Coca-Cola se puede detallar en 18 segundos en cualquier espectrometro optico, y basicamente la conocen hasta los perros. Lo que ocurre es que no se puede fabricar igual, a no ser que uno disponga de unos cuantos millones de dolares para ganarle la demanda que te metera la Coca-Cola ante la justicia (ellos no perderian).La formula de la Pepsi tiene una diferencia basica con la de la Coca-Cola y es intencional, para evitar el proceso judicial. La diferencia es a proposito, pero suficientemente parecida como para atraer a los consumidores de Coca-Cola que prefieren un gusto diferente con menos sal y azucar.Tuve que aprender quimica, entender todo sobre componentes de gaseosas, conservantes, sales, acidos, cafeina, enlatado, produccion, permisos, aprobaciones y muchas otras cosas. Monte mi propio mini-laboratorio de analisis de productos.A patadas. El Cloruro de Sodio no solo refresca sino da mas sed, como para pedir otra gaseosa. Y no resulta desagradable porque la sal mata literalmente la sensibilidad al dulce... del que por cierto tambien tiene mucho: 39 gramos de azucar.De los 350 gramos de producto liquido, mas del 10% es azucar, o sea que en una lata de Coca-Cola mas de un centimetro y medio es puro azucar en polvo. Aproximadamente tres cucharadas soperas llenas de azucar por lata!!La formula de la Coca Cola es muy sencilla:Concentrado de azucar quemado caramelo- para dar color oscuro y gustoAcido fosforito (para darle el sabor acido)azucar (HFCS-jarabe de maiz de alta fructosa)Extracto de hojas de la planta de Coca (Africa e India) y otros pocos aromatizantes naturales de otras plantasMucha CafeinaConservante que puede ser Benzoato de Sodio o PotasioDioxido de Carbono en cantidad para sentir freir la lengua cuando se bebeSal para dar la sensacion de refrigeracionEl uso del acido fosforito y no del acido citrico como en todas las demas gaseosas, es para dar la sensacion de dientes y boca limpia al beber. El acido fosforito literalmente frie todo y dana el esmalte de los dientes, cosa que el acido citrico lo hace en menor grado.Trate de comprar acido fosforito para ver las mil recomendaciones de seguridad que te dan para su manipulacion (quema el cristalino del ojo, quema la piel, etc...). Esta prohibido usar el acido fosforito en cualquier otra gaseosa; solo la Coca Cola tiene permiso. Porque claro, sin el acido fosforico, la Coca Cola sabria a jabon.El extracto de coca y otras hojas casi no cambia en nada el sabor. Es mas bien un efecto cosmetico. El extracto forma parte de la Coca-Cola porque legalmente tiene que ser asi. Pero sin el, no se nota ninguna diferencia en el gusto, que esta dado basicamente por las cantidades diferentes de azucar, azucar quemada, sales, acidos y conservantes.Sabor a que...? ja, ja, ja.Aqui en Bartow, sur de Orlando, hay una empresa quimica que produce aromatizantes y esencias para zumos. Envian diariamente camionadas de sales concentradas y esencias para las fabricas de helados, gaseosas, jugos, enlatados y comida colorida y aromatizada.Cuando visite por primera vez la fabrica, pedi ver el deposito de concentrados de frutas, que deberia ser inmenso, especialmente los de naranja, pina, fresa y tantos otros. El encargado me miro, se rio y me llevo a visitar los depositos inmensos... pero de colorantes y componentes quimicos.Las gaseosa de naranja no contiene naranja.En los zumos dizque de fresa, hasta los puntitos que quedan en suspension estan hechos de goma (una liga quimica que envuelve un semi-polimero).Pina, es un popurri de acidos y goma.La esencia para helado de aguacate usa peroxido de hidrogeno (agua oxigenada) para dar la sensacion espumosa tipica del aguacate.Quieres saber la cantidad de basura que tiene un refresco 'light'? Yo ni siquiera los uso para destapar mi lavaplatos pues temo que danen los tubos de PVC. Los productos endulzantes 'ligth' tienen una vida media muy corta. Por ejemplo el aspartamo , despues de tres semanas mojado, pasa a tener gusto de trapo viejo sucio.Para evitar eso, se agregan una infinidad de otros productos quimicos, uno para alargar la vida del aspartamo, otro para neutralizar el color, otro para mantener el tercer quimico en suspension porque sino el fondo de la gaseosa quedaria oscuro, otro para evitar la cristalizacion del aspartamo, otro para realzar el sabor, dar mas intensidad al acido citrico o fosforito que perderia su sabor por el efecto de los cuatro productos quimicos iniciales... y asi sucesivamente.Un consejo final !!Despues de toda mi experiencia con la produccion de bebidas embasadas, puedo afirmar sin dudar un segundo: la mejor bebida es el agua, como tambien los jugos exprimidos de naranja o limon. Nada mas, cero azucar y cero sal.Publicado por loretahur MARGARINA o MANTEQUILLA La margarina fue producida originalmente para engordar a los pavos; cuandolo que hizo en realidad fue matarlos.Las personas que habian puesto el dinero para la investigacion quisieronrecobrarlo asi que empezaron a pensar en una forma de hacerlo.Tenian una sustancia blanca, que no tenia ningun atractivo como comestible,asi que le anadieron el color amarillo, para venderselo a lagente en lugar de la mantequilla.Que tal esa?... Ahora han sacado algunos nuevos sabores para vender mas alos incautos como usted y yo.CONOCE USTED la diferencia entre la margarina y la mantequilla?Siga leyendo hasta el final... porque se pone bastante interesante!Comparacion entre mantequilla y margarina: 1.- Ambas tienen la misma cantidad de calorias. 2.- La mantequilla es ligeramente mas alta en grasas saturadas: 8 gramos,comparada con los 5 gramos que tiene la margarina. 3.- Comer margarina en vez de mantequilla puede aumentar en 53% el riesgo deenfermedades coronarias en las mujeres, de acuerdo con un estudiomedico reciente de la Universidad de Harvard. 4.- Comer mantequilla aumenta la absorcion de gran cantidad de nutrientesque se encuentran en otros alimentos. 5.- La mantequilla provee beneficios nutricionales propios mientras lamargarina tiene solo los que le hayan sido anadidos al fabricarla. 6.- La mantequilla sabe mucho mejor que la margarina y mejora el sabor deotros alimentos.7.- La mantequilla ha existido durante siglos mientras que la margarinatiene menos de 100 anos. Ahora... sobre la margarina: 1.- Es muy alta en acidos grasos trans. (Si, esos que recien ahora loscientificos descubrieron que son malisimos y los gobiernoscomenzaron a prohibirlos) . 2.- Triple riesgo de enfermedades coronarias. 3.- Aumenta el colesterol total y el LDL (el colesterol malo) y disminuye elHDL (el colesterol bueno). 4.- Aumenta en cinco veces el riesgo de cancer. 5.- Disminuye la calidad de la leche materna. 6.- Disminuye la reaccion inmunologica del organismo. 7.- Disminuye la reaccion a la insulina. Y he aqui el factor mas inquietante (AQUI ESTA LA PARTE MAS INTERESANTE! ):A la margarina le falta UNA MOLECULA para ser PLASTICO...!!Solo este hecho es suficiente para evitar el uso de la margarina de porvida, y de cualquier otra cosa que sea hidrogenada (esto significaque se le anade hidrogeno, lo cual cambia la estructura molecular de lassubstancias).Usted puede ensayar lo siguiente:Compre un poco de margarina y dejela en el garaje o en un sitio sombreado.Dentro de unos dias notara dos cosas: * No habra moscas; ni siquiera esos molestos bichos se le acercaran (esto yale debe decir a usted algo). * No se pudre ni huele mal o diferente porque no tiene valor nutritivo; nadacrece en ella. Ni siquiera los diminutos microorganismos puedencrecer en ella.Por que? Porque es casi plastico!! No a la guerra, Si a la Paz Misterios de la ciencia... Los costos de la guerra medicos y capitalismo... Capitalismo... medicos (2) Quien educa a nuestros hijos? Los Medios... Sin Palabras... Chistes feministas - Cual es el problema, Eva? - Se que me has creado, que me has dado este hermoso jardin, todos estos maravillosos animales y esa serpiente con la que me muero de risa... pero no soy del todo feliz... - Como es eso, Eva? - replico Dios desde las alturas. - Me encuentro sola, y ademas estoy harta de comer manzanas... - Bueno Eva, en tal caso, tengo una solucion... creare un hombre para ti. - Que es un hombre? - Un hombre sera una criatura imperfecta, con muchas artimanas. Mentira, hara trampas, sera engreido... vamos, que te va a dar problemas... Pero, va a ser mas fuerte y rapido que tu y le gustara cazar y matar cosas... Tendra un aspecto simple, pero como te estas quejando, le creare de tal forma que satisfaga tus... eh... necesidades fisicas... Y tampoco sera muy listo, y destacara en cosas infantiles como pegarse o dar patadas a un balon... Necesitara tu consejo siempre para actuar cuerdamente. - Suena bien - dijo Eva, mientras levantaba la ceja ironicamente. - Cual es el truco?. - Pues... que lo tendras con una condicion. - Cual? - Como te decia, sera chulo, arrogante y muy narcisista... asi que le tendras que hacer creer que le hice a el primero... recuerda... es nuestro secreto... de mujer a mujer. Por que a los hombres no les puede dar la enfermedad de las vacas locas? Porque todos son unos cerdos Un dia, en el Paraiso, Eva llamo a Dios: Tengo un problema.- Cual es el problema, Eva?- Se que me has creado, que me has dado este hermoso jardin, todos estos maravillosos animales y esa serpiente con la que me muero de risa... pero no soy del todo feliz... - Como es eso, Eva? - replico Dios desde las alturas.- Me encuentro sola, y ademas estoy harta de comer manzanas...- Bueno Eva, en tal caso, tengo una solucion... creare un hombre para ti.- Que es un hombre?- Un hombre sera una criatura imperfecta, con muchas artimanas. Mentira, hara trampas, sera engreido... vamos, que te va a dar problemas... Pero, va a ser mas fuerte y rapido que tu y le gustara cazar y matar cosas... Tendra un aspecto simple, pero como te estas quejando, le creare de tal forma que satisfaga tus... eh... necesidades fisicas... Y tampoco sera muy listo, y destacara en cosas infantiles como pegarse o dar patadas a un balon... Necesitara tu consejo siempre para actuar cuerdamente.- Suena bien - dijo Eva, mientras levantaba la ceja ironicamente.- Cual es el truco?.- Pues... que lo tendras con una condicion.- Cual?- Como te decia, sera chulo, arrogante y muy narcisista... asi que le tendras que hacer creer que le hice a el primero... recuerda... es nuestro secreto... de mujer a mujer.Por que a los hombres no les puede dar la enfermedad de las vacas locas? Porque todos son unos cerdos Ellas... Ellas (2)... Tres venganzas femeninas VENGANZA NUMERO 1 Hoy mi hija cumple 21 anos y estoy muy contento porque es el ultimo pago de pension alimenticia que le doy, asi que llame a mi hijita para que viniera a mi casa y cuando llego le dije: -Hijita, quiero que lleves este cheque a casa de tu mama y que le digas que: Este es el ultimo maldito cheque que va recibir de mi en todo lo que le queda de su puta vida!!! Quiero que me digas la expresion que pone en su rostro. Asi que mi hija fue a entregar el cheque. Yo estaba ansioso por saber lo que la bruja tenia que decir y que cara pondria. Cuando mi hijita entro, le pregunte inmediatamente: -Que fue lo que te dijo tu madre? -Me dijo que justamente estaba esperando este dia para decirte que no eres mi papa! VENGANZA NUMERO 2 Un hombre que siempre molestaba a su mujer, paso un dia por la casa de unos amigos para que lo acompanaran al aeropuerto a dejar a su esposa que viajaba a Paris. A la salida de inmigracion, frente a todo el mundo, el le desea buen viaje y en tono burlon le grita: - Amor, no te olvides de traerme una hermosa francesita Ja ja ja!! Ella bajo la cabeza y se embarco muy molesta. La mujer paso quince dias en Francia. El marido otra vez pidio a sus amigos que lo acompanasen al aeropuerto a recibirla. Al verla llegar, lo primero que le grita a toda voz es: - Y amor me trajiste mi francesita?? - Hice todo lo posible, - contesta ella - ahora solo tenemos que rezar para que nazca nina. VENGANZA NUMERO 3 El marido, en su lecho de muerte, llama a su mujer. Con voz ronca y ya debil, le dice: - Muy bien, llego mi hora, pero antes quiero hacerte una confesion. - No, no, tranquilo, tu no debes hacer ningun esfuerzo. - Pero, mujer, es preciso - insiste el marido - Es preciso morir en paz. Te quiero confesar algo. - Esta bien, esta bien. Habla! - He tenido relaciones con tu hermana, tu mama y tu mejor amiga. - Lo se, lo se Por eso te envenene, hijo de puta!!! machismo y cibernetica Chiste machista La NASA ha enviado al espacio una mision experimental tripulada por dos monos y una mujer.Apenas abandona la atmosfera, se establece comunicacion con Houston. -Atencion, simio 1, verifique sistemas hidraulicos, controle adecuada presion de los propulsores de arranque. A 60.000 pies disminuya un 25% la velocidad. El simio hace la sena de OK. -Atencion, simio 2, nivele al cruzar la estratosfera y active sistemas anticongelantes. No olvide monitorear sistemas de comunicacion e indicadores de presion. Comprendido?. El simio hace la sena de OK. -Atencion, Houston llamando a mujer: no se olvide. -Mujer: Si, si, ya se! -interrumpe enojada- que no me olvide darles de comer a estos monos de mierda y que no se me vaya a ocurrir tocar nada!. .Spaghetti, Spaghetti, Spaghetti, Spaghetti, Spaghetti. Un abogado mantiene un romance con su secretaria.Al poco tiempo, esta queda embarazada y el abogado, que no quiere que su esposa se entere, le da a la secretaria una buena suma de dinero y le pide que se vaya a parir a Italia.Esta pregunta: Y como voy a hacerte saber cuando nazca el bebe ? El abogado responde: Para que mi mujer no se entere, tan solo enviame una postal y escribe por detras: Spaghetti. Y no te preocupes mas, que yo me encargare de todos los gastos. Pasan los meses y una manana la esposa del abogado lo llama al bufete, algo exaltada: Querido, acabo de recibir el correo y hay una postal muy extrana viene desde Italia. La verdad, no entiendo que significa.El abogado, tratando de ocultar sus nervios, contesta:Espera a que llegue a casa, a ver si yo entiendoCuando el hombre llega a casa y lee la postal, cae al suelo fulminado por un infarto.Llega una ambulancia y se lo lleva. Ya en el hospital, el jefe de cardiologia se queda consolando a la esposa y le pregunta cual ha sido el evento que precipito tan masivo ataque cardiaco. Entonces la esposa saca la postal y se la muestra diciendole: No me explico, doctor; el solamente leyo esta postal. Vea usted mismo lo que trae escrito.Spaghetti, Spaghetti, Spaghetti, Spaghetti, Spaghetti."Tres con salchicha y albondigas y dos con almejas Gol !!!! Chistes de Borrachos Entra un borracho a su casa todo manchado con lapiz labial por todos lados hecho un desastre, y la mujer le pregunta:-Hombre que te paso?Y el borracho le responde:-No me vas a creer, me pelee con un payaso! Este es un borracho que entra en un bar y le dice al camarero:-Me da cinco copas de whisky?Al rato:-Me da cuatro?Al rato:-Me da tres copas?Despues:-Me da dos copas?Luego le dice:-Me da una copa?Y le dice al camarero:-Ves? Cuanto menos bebo, mas borracho estoy!